I'm a strong advocate of the general concept that good dialogue can work wonders for resolving conflicts, building community, and improving the world we live in. (That's dialogue instead of, say, violence, explosive angry yelling, paternalism or monarchy, snap judgments, knee-jerk fear-mongering, heated debate, or silence and avoidance.) As a result, I am constantly aware of the need for better dialogue in my own community of Richmond, Indiana, and for venues that facilitate that practice. I would go so far as to say that Richmond is, on the whole, handicapped by the poor quality of public discussion about the issues that matter to us, and that addressing this handicap is one of the opportunities most ripe for the picking in our community today.
Continue reading "The quality of public dialogue in Richmond"
Category: places
I am hesitant to write more about the conversion of Hayes Arboretum land into commercial shopping space - so much has already been said. But I feel compelled to point out my sense that Richmond, as a community, is finding some good in a situation that, for a while, only seemed to have negative feelings and outcomes attached to it all around. Indeed, I am hopeful (perhaps naively so) that it may serve as a turning point in how we shape Richmond's future.
Continue reading "Oops, we ALL cut the trees down"
In an editorial today, the Palladium-Item called for Richmond and Wayne County to embrace job growth in the retail and service sectors, as opposed to the manufacturing sector. I generally support their call for an intentional focus on facilitating the kinds of economic growth that Richmond needs, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that they address the difference between the immediate concerns of the unemployed ("if you are without work...there is little reason to scoff at any kind of paying job") and the obligations of those working on economic development to focus on a longer-term vision ("a carefully crafted plan for attracting select retail and services businesses can build upon important quality of life factors locally"). This is a distinction often passed over in our community and many others; the most prevalent calls are usually for bringing in any jobs at all, no matter what the benefits and long-term impact on the community.
Continue reading "Search for more jobs requires driving vision"
Plastic grocery bags. Some people throw them away. Some people ball them up and keep them forever. Some people crochet them into wreaths, rugs, purses and other beautiful things. I definitely fall into the "keep them forever" camp, or at least I did until I learned that some grocery stores around the nation are getting smart about re-using these pervasive pabulum pouches, and offering you a discount on your purchase if you bring your own bags instead of using new ones. If done right, the result can be a leveling-off of the rate at which you acquire new bags, cost savings, and no extra hassle - a blessing for pack-rats everywhere.
Continue reading "Bring Your Own Bags, Save Money"
I recently wrote in the Summersault weblog about how website content syndication is changing the way we use the web. Of course, if the sites you care about aren't syndicating their content, the phenomenon is a little less exciting. For me, the only ones I cared about that were in this category were local news sources. For a few years I'd been running hacked up Perl scripts that tried to retrieve headlines from the sites of local papers, but it tended to be hit and miss and I never really took the time to take a more structured approach until now. Using the Template::Extract Perl module and a handy article from Simon Cozens about spidering hacks, I was able to formalize and simplify the creation of custom RSS feeds scraped from sites without them built-in. So, here are the first few, to which you are welcome to point your own newsreader:
Please avoid refreshing these more than once an hour. If there are other feeds you'd like to see, let me know. I'll add new ones on my feeds page as they come. Enjoy!
If you read through my weblog, you might get the impression that I find joy in whining and complaining about the poor customer service practices of companies I deal with. Really, I tend to be a pretty positive person, and don't go out looking to pick people/places/things apart just for fun. But sometimes I just gotta share.
So there's a local cable internet provider, which I won't identify here by name, that I wish had better Insight into its own local network operations. Based on my experience, they have downtime / problems and my connection goes down when any of the following occur:
Continue reading "Whiny insights about local cable internet provider"
A few bits and pieces: I've recently returned from a great vacation. I took some of my time off to explore a few Richmond-area touristy type things that I haven't gotten to see yet, including a thorough tour of the Wayne County Historical Museum. They have quite an impressive collection, and I learned a lot I didn't know about this community. As a result I had one of those great moments of cosmic unity: I'd enjoyed reading about the history of the Wayne Corporation which was headquartered here in town. On Thursday, I was in North Carolina climbing onto a converted school bus for a whitewater rafting trip with the Nantahala Outdoor Center and thought to look at the bus's manufacturer label, and sure enough, it said "Wayne - Richmond, Indiana". Cool! (BTW, if you're ever looking for an awesome place to vacation in western NC, check out Earthshine Mountain Lodge - amazing place, people, and food.) And just a few months ago I was touring the Lincoln Park Conservatory in Chicago, and noticed that the metal winches used to open and close the glass panels were labeled "Quaker City Steel Works - Richmond, Indiana." Wowsers - this place really made a name for itself. Speaking of Chicago, I did several other museum tours there this time around, including a nice walkthrough of the Adler Planetarium (though the show "Stars of the Pharaohs" was minimally fascinating) and the Chicago Historical Society's exhibit Without Sanctuary, a visual history of lynching in America. The images of communities - men, women, children - laughing and smiling as they gathered to celebrate death were indescribably haunting. And finally, to end on a note of humor, if you haven't already, check out the June 22, 2056 edition of The Onion - hilarious.
The Richmond Palladium-Item newspaper seems to have multiple personalities when it comes to characterizing the nature of civil protest. In Friday's editorial, they so nobly say "It's our right to stand up for our beliefs, tell our elected officials we disagree, share our viewpoints with neighbors, family and friends, strive for the betterment of our country as a whole. That right brings with it a responsibility to respect others' ideas, hear out their concerns and try at the very least to understand our differences." The article then proceeds to condemn any protest that violates the law, indicating there is some concept of "vital" and "proper" protest, of which illegal acts are not a part. I suppose, then, that they would have had to condemn the entire U.S. civil rights movement, the actions of fellow journalists who disobey the law to protect sources, and a slew of other "improper" protests throughout the history of our country. (Perhaps they misunderstand that sometimes acting improperly is, unfortunately, the only way to draw attention to a cause, for better or worse.) But surely, then, the above statement means they do support and respect legal and peaceful acts that share viewpoints, encourage dialogue about our beliefs, and work to change our communities for the better, right? Like a written petition, maybe? Apparently not - they would call such actions "misguided" and "desperate" and "an affront to civic fair play", and go on to equate those actions with physical assault.
Wow. If I understand their position correctly as derived from their various published statements, the only kind of disagreement that is proper or fair is no real disagreement at all. It's sad and scary that a local institution that is theoretically so much a part of facilitating free speech and dialogue about the community - even when it involves acts of protest - seems to so manifestly misunderstand those opportunities, and the vehicles available for engaging in them.
This is the second year I've taken advantage of another great thing about the area, our local CSA (community supported agriculture) program through Boulder Belt Organics in Preble County, Ohio. Since I'm doing my own garden I'll probably just use it for a few months, but it's so nice to have locally and organically grown produce; and you can't beat that the "pick up point" for my share is at Mark's house one block away. One thing I especially like about CSAs in general is that the fees you pay to get the food more closely represent the "real cost" of producing it - when I shop at big grocery chain stores, I can't really tell if the price takes into account the oil and gas, foreign labor, and environmental resources/residual effects that go into producing those foods. When you use a CSA, all those things are pretty well laid out, and since the person handing you the food is typically also the person who cultivated it, you can always ask. Anyway, Lucy from Boulder Belt noted that USA Today recently had a profile of Community Supported Agriculture programs (printable/ad free version), which she thought might have been on the front page. I like that under the "cons" for using a CSA they list "vegetable variety" and "introduction to unfamiliar vegetables"...those are "pros" in my book!
The editorial cartoon in today's Palladium-Item depicts a lone protester standing in front of an imagined future strip mall in Richmond, with an onlooker suggesting that the protester get on with his life. It's a poignant visualization of one of the destructive attitudes that plagues this town and many others like it: "what's done is done, no use in whining about it, move on and make the best you can." At first glance this might seem to be an admirable approach to use with the difficult issues we all encounter in life, but some Richmond residents and decision makers often apply it pre-emptively to matters where there are still complex choices to make, nuanced options to ponder, and opportunities to seek alternatives for the betterment of our community. The logic is circular: because something might be so, it must be so.
Continue reading "Appreciating Choices that Matter"