Notice of such importance I came in from the garden. . .

MW note: Got this e-mail that I just had to pass along, vacation or no vacation . . .

Dear Peace Loving Friends,

From the producers of The Inconvenient Truth, as well as Inglorious Basterds and Good Will Hunting, comes Countdown to Zero, a documentary account of the urgent movement to rid the world of nuclear weapons.Featuring the likes of Mikhail Gorbachev, Hillary Clinton, Tony Blairand Jimmy Carter, the film debuted to critical acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival and is set for widespread theatrical release in July.

JMU has been selected for a special screening, at which Global Zero (the NGO behind the documentary) representatives will be on hand toanswer questions and discuss the their efforts, as well as the recent events such as the treaty between the US and Russia and the global anti-proliferation summit.

This is a last minute opportunity.  I need your help to publicize it in your communities.  Please forward this email far and wide, post notices in your department, announce it at church, do whatever you can.  The showing will be at JMU, in the Health and Human Services Building, room 1301, on Tuesday, April 27th at 5:00pm. Please check out www.globalzero.org for more information.

Thank you.

Jack Marmorstein

blog on vacation . . .

It's out-in-the-gardens week for WMRA's blogger-in-chief. I'm back Tuesday, May 4th.

Probably with a sun-burned nose . . .






Okay gang, the first comment to this post was from Zillustration, to let me know he'd just posted his own gardening drawing. Thought the rest of you might enjoy it as much as I did.

Just doing it . . .

 

Ron Copeland in 2007

Our Community Place was operating when I got to Harrisonburg back in 1999. I remember its main activity as being a Monday soup kitchen. This was held in what's now The Little Grill Collective, but was then a yummy, comfortable, hippie-shabby restaurant called The Little Grill and owned by Ron Copeland.

Copeland sold the Little Grill to a group of employees in 2007 in order to put his energy into developing Our Community Place. From the outside, OCP appears to be both a place and a vision. The place is 17 E. Johnson Street; the vision seems to involve getting folks together to do as much good as they can while having as good a time as possible. As a certified Old Hippie, I can only think this is exactly the way people should be.

Here's a link to the OCP website, if you are not familiar with its doings and would like to know what they are.

I was very interested to learn yesterday that OCP has expanded geographically, that Our Community Place Farm has come into being. And we're all invited to celebrate its grand opening.

Here's the notice I got of this festive event.

GRAND OPENING: OCP FARM IN NEW MARKET!

Saturday, May 8th from 3pm to 8pm

The grand opening of the Our Community Place farm situated in New Market, Virginia occurs Saturday, May 8th from 3-8pm. On that day the public will be properly introduced to this 15-acre property with estate, once home to the Crossing Creeks residential program--purchased late last year through the extraordinary generosity of local businessmen. Now playing host to the Our Community Farms program, this lush and verdant site serves as spring bed for a recovery works program and sustainable agriculture projects.

Activities for this gala event include formal tours of the property, hayrides, circus activities, egg toss, and a human wheelbarrow race, to name a few. A complimentary dinner will be served at 5:30 pm, with light refreshments being provided throughout the day. Live music includes such local and regional luminaries as Robert St. Ours, Chris Howdyshell and The Dish Dogs, Nicholas Melas, Jessie Trainum, and Tom Weaver.

Visitors will be asked to consider a list of useful items The Farm needs to initiate many efforts, while continuing to grow others. On this list are such things as material for a landscape shed and landscaping trailers, a six-foot cattle gate, a butter churn and cream separator, an ensilage fork, and even a diesel truck.

The Farm is developing a station for converting used vegetable oil to biodiesel, and any and all related expertise is also invited. Five photogenic Alpacas (pictured left), whose wool might one day make exotic winter sweaters for local gift-givers, together with two Great Pyrenees dogs (below), who help guard the place, will be available for petting and family picture-taking.

Those who wish only to be bathed in love of service, while supporting the good this property and its programs bring to the community, may enjoy a wonderful day and evening in New Market. All are welcome to this special event free of charge. Donations graciously received. Our Community Place is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

The Farm is located at 18794 Mountain Valley Road and the phone is 540.740.2951. More information can also be found at www.ourcommunityplace.org, by e-mailing ourcommunityplace@gmail.com, or by calling 540.442.7727.

It's very easy to talk about accomplishing good work in this world; less easy to pull it off. Here's to Our Community Place, Farm, and folks for just doing it.

A special Harrisonburg post . . .

Oh my, government is in high decision-making mode, isn't it?  Virginia's governor and General Assembly are grappling with the state's budget shortfall; Congress is reforming Wall Street; the City of Harrisonburg, home to WMRA's studios, is reviewing its Comprehensive Plan.

So what is the Harrisonburg Comprehensive Plan?  According to the website . . .

The Comprehensive Plan presents a vision of what kind of community the City would like to be in the future. It identifies the steps required to move toward that vision by providing information about the City’s current conditions, long-term goals and objectives, and recommended implementation strategies. As described in the Code of Virginia, the Comprehensive Plan shall be general in nature; Harrisonburg’s Plan addresses a wide range of issues including land use, housing, education, transportation, recreation, the preservation of historic and natural resources, and economic development. The Plan serves as a long-term guide for the community and it helps city leaders make decisions about the many issues that occur throughout the governance of our city.

This February, I participated in a Harrisonburg Summit on Strengthening Local Business and the Economy. One of the sessions I attended was about Downtown green space, convened by Bibb Frazier. At this session I learned a couple of really important things about the future of Downtown Harrisonburg:

1. It's going to undergo a lot of development in the near future.
2. The Comprehensive Plan, as it now stands, doesn't really address maintaining or creating any green space as part of this development.
3. The Planning Commission welcomes citizen input, but
4. Almost nobody showed up at the last round of citizen input hearings.

Okay, citizens of Harrisonburg. There's a new round of hearings scheduled. It's your city. If you don't agree with what's planned, it would be a good idea go to the relevant hearing and let the Planning Commission know!

Here's a list of what's being discussed, when, along with a link to the  part of the plan under review at the first meeting. 

Thursday, April 29^th – Land use and Transportation,

Chapter 5 Land Use & Development Quality - Chapter 6 Neighborhoods and Housing - Chapter 11 Transportation    

Wednesday, May 5^th – Natural Resources and Community & Safety Issues,

    

Thursday, May 13^th – Cultural Resources and Revitalization, and

Wednesday, May 19^th – Housing and Collaboration.

"It's the economy, stupid"

James Carville

Remember that James Carville phrase from the Clinton-Bush 1992 presidential campaign? Well, for every phrase there is a season, and that phrase's season appears to have come around again. At least as far as public broadcasting's state funding is concerned.

Unless you've been hiding in a groundhog burrow for the past year or so, you're aware that Virginia is facing a 4 billion dollar budget deficit, and so in order to save 2.4 million over 4 years ($600 thousand for fiscal year 2011), Governor Bob McDonnell has proposed a budget amendment that cuts Community Service Grant (CSG) funding for public broadcasting.

To put this in perspective, what it means for WMRA is $85,000 dollars lost out of an annual budget of 1.2 million.

Tom DuVal, our fearless leader, sent out this update via e-mail this morning.

The House upheld the Governor's budget amendment that would institute the 4-year phase out of Community Service Grant (CSG) funding for public broadcasting, but rejected his amendment for elimination of funding for radio reading services (e.g. Valley Voice). The House also upheld his amendment to eliminate a one-time state tourism promotion grant that would have given us about $10,000, and which we would match 2-for-1 with free promotion.

The Senate rejected the 4-year CSG phase out and the tourism funding elimination.

My understanding is that the Governor can still exercise his line-item veto of any or all of the above. Expectations are that he won't veto the tourism or radio reading service items, but may veto the CSGs.

Ever since level-headed Martha Graham called me gently to task for posting a "yikes!" alert on the WMRA Facebook page, I have resisted any impulse to an alarmist reaction in my postings or blogs. It's not only cheap journalism, it's not helpful.

Also, don't look at me to scream "foul!" at Bob McDonnell. The budget cuts have to be made somewhere; he's our elected governor and so wielder of the line-item veto. He's perfectly entitled to do what he thinks is right.

And there's also this interesting point to consider, made yesterday on WMRA's Facebook page by Michele Russell Christopher:

I hate to say it, but we who know how good it is should contribute more, even twice as much. I don't believe that public broadcasting should be government funded. It takes away our credibility.

For what it's worth, here's my take on the situation:

However the state budget situation plays out, I have great faith in the WMRA community. I feel perfectly confident in paraphrasing Gloria Gaynor by saying, we will survive!

I bake a completely edible apple pie. Anyone for a really big bake sale????

Harsh vote followed by harsh words for public broadcasting . . .

MW note: This was just sent to me by WMRA's Tom Graham who keeps up with this important issue for all the rest of us. . .

As noted below in the latest update from the Virginian Pilot political blog, the House has voted to support the Governor's call to cut public broadcasting funding.

That was expected. It is in the State Senate that opposition to such cuts has been strongest in the past.

Cosgrove quips hit puppets

Chesapeake Republican Del. John Cosgrove uttered the line of day (so far) during a debate on the House of Delegates floor over proposed state funding cuts for public broadcasting.

Among Gov. Bob McDonnell's amendments to Virginia's two-year spending plan is a recommendation that more than $2 million in state dollars for public television and radio be phased out over the next four years.

Public broadcasting officials like WHRO president Bert Schmidt contend that the proposed funding reductions would not only limit station operations, but also their ability to offer educational services provided to schools through a contract with the state.

Amid the back-and-forth on the topic, Cosgrove offered these comments: "What's more important? Is it cops on the street or Knit and Crochet today?"

"Personally, I'm going to support policemen and teachers before I support Bert and Ernie," he added.

The House approved McDonnell's public broadcasting funding cuts, but rejected his amendment to reduce funding for the educational services program. The Senate will consider the public broadcasting funding issue later today.
-- Julian Walker

What's really going on out there????

David Brooks' column yesterday in The New York Times riffed on a new study just published by Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse M. Shapiro (both of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business) that measured ideological segregation on the Internet. Brooks called his column "Riders on the Storm," I assume co-opting the title of a 1971 Doors song that begins . . .

Riders on the storm
Riders on the storm
Into this house we're born
Into this world we're thrown

I guess the meaning of Mr. Brooks' title to be that, as far as life out there on the information highway goes, we're all just -- duh -- riders on the storm.

Mr. Brooks began yesterday's column by referring to a 2001 essay by Cass Sunstein, a legal scholar who now administers the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Sunstein's essay echoed concerns he'd voiced in his 2001 book, Republic.com; which makes, as Publishers Weekly puts it, "the counter-intuitive claim that the Internet causes us to become more extremist and close-minded, rather than exposing us to a haphazardly unbiased array of unexpected viewpoints."

In his column, David Brooks had this to say about Mr. Sunstein's essay (and of  his writings in general):

[Cass] Sunstein was particularly concerned about this because he has done very important work over the years about our cognitive biases. We like hearing evidence that confirms our suppositions. We filter out evidence that challenges them. . . .

. . .Sunstein’s fear was that the Internet might lead to a more ghettoized, polarized and insular electorate. Those fears were supported by some other studies, and they certainly matched my own experience. Every day I seem to meet people who live in partisan ghettos, ignorant about the other side.

The Gentzkow-Shapiro study seems to show that use of the Internet is not the path most traveled to the information ghetto. As Mr.Brooks put it,

. . . People who spend a lot of time on Glenn Beck’s Web site are more likely to visit The New York Times’s Web site than average Internet users. People who spend time on the most liberal sites are more likely to go to foxnews.com than average Internet users. Even white supremacists and neo-Nazis travel far and wide across the Web.

It is so easy to click over to another site that people travel widely. And they’re not even following links most of the time; they have their own traveling patterns.

Gentzkow and Shapiro found that the Internet is actually more ideologically integrated than old-fashioned forms of face-to-face association — like meeting people at work, at church or through community groups. You’re more likely to overlap with political opponents online than in your own neighborhood.

This study suggests that Internet users are a bunch of ideological Jack Kerouacs. They’re not burrowing down into comforting nests. . .

That sounds so optimistic, don't you think?

Lachlan Markay, writer for NewsBusters, an online site that exists to expose alleged liberal media bias also wrote about the Gentzkow-Shapirostudy yesterday.

One of the gripes about online journalism often aired by the Helen Thomases and the Chuck Todds of the world is that online news consumers will only consume news that reinforces their worldview or political beliefs. A new scholarly study challenges that assumption . . .

The study found that the Internet exposes people to ideas that they do not normally encounter in face-to-face interactions during their daily lives. Though this should come as little surprise -- with the wealth of information the web provides, how could it not regularly challenge worldviews and preconceptions? -- it is perhaps worth reminding the skeptics.

Also optimistic, right?

But what the Gentzkow-Shapirostudy study doesn't address is why we, the polarized American electorate, visit the sites we visit. And how we behave while we are on them. And whether we ever actually consider the arguments made on these sights.

Sadly, it seems to me, if the comments we leave are any indication, we are not visiting sites with which we have ideological differences in order to engage in information gathering and civil discourse.

For example, this morning I clicked on the first article I could find on the front page of The Washington Post that had "Obama" in its headline. It was about nominating our next Supreme Court justice.

I then read the comments, which were largely rude and illogical. It made me wonder if a lot of people posting responses had even read the articles.

I wondered the same when I scanned the comments attached to a similar article posted on Fox News.

So, I'd like to ask Drs. Gentzkow and Shapiro, Mr. Brooks and Mr Markay, what good they think comes of all the time folks are spending on-line, riding around in the information storm.

Maybe Mr. Sunstein is right to worry.

Old Hank . . .

Mine was a family of high and liberal culture. Mom joyfully read us Shakespeare and Dickens; Pop lead passionate discussions of philosophy and politics. The approved musical  genre was classical, although My Fair Lady was allowed as well as Odetta Sings Dylan and a Marian Anderson recording of spirituals. Needless to say, Hank Williams was not on our radar.

My neighbor, Helen Ferebee, however, loved country music, loved old Hank. In the summer when the windows were open, music would float over into our yard. Once, when I was visiting, Helen played me some Hank Williams songs. I can't remember which ones, but I do remember the feel and sound of them. It crawled inside me and settled down, as real experience always does.

When I went home and asked my parents about Hank Williams, I was instructed that he and his music were not much.

 

My mother and father both went to Columbia University, guardian of the culturally prestigious Pulitzer Prizes awarded annually in 20 categories for "distinguished" work done in the last year. As to what makes work "distinguished" that "is left up to the Nominating Juries and The Pulitzer Prize Board . . ."  

Last week, right along with classical composer, Jennifer Higdon and novelist Paul Harding (pretty  highfalutin company, if you ask me) Hank Williams finally got his --got a Pulitizer. Not a prize, as Williams has been dead since 1953, but a Citation, for, according to the a Pulitzer press release, “his craftsmanship as a songwriter who expressed universal feelings with poignant simplicity and played a pivotal role in transforming country music into a major musical and cultural force in American life.” 

The Pulitzer Prize press release went on to explain that . . .

The Board, chaired by Anders Gyllenhaal, executive editor of the Miami Herald, made the award after a confidential survey of experts in popular music.

“The citation, above all, recognizes the lasting impact of Williams as a creative force that influenced a wide range of other musicians and performers,” said Sig Gissler, administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes. “At the same time, the award highlights the Board’s desire to broaden its Music Prize and recognize the full range of musical excellence that might not have been considered in the past.

The process sounds all very proper and well-documented doesn't it? As though the Pulitzer is trying to acknowledge its historically somewhat narrow-minded view of music, without loosing its clout with people such as my mother and father.

I must say I celebrated the Pulitzer's decision. I know he's not always singing on pitch, but, for once, I didn't let that drive me away. I've been gratefully listening to Hank Williams regularly ever since I discovered the good company of small-town country music stations back in the 80's when I was freelancing. I had a pickup with a camper top, and I'd spend days out on the road looking for stories. It was lonesome at times, and, to me, Hank Williams songs were as good company as company could get. If that man knew anything, he knew life As Jim Fusilli wrote in the Wall Street Journal blog, "Speak Easy":

Though Williams was a star in his day who understood the power of image, at the core of his work was his ability to write and sing lines that resonated not only in the mind but deep in the heart of his listeners – which is why his songs so easily cross genres for other performers: His words speak of what we know to be true.

If that isn't distinguished work, worthy of a Pulitzer, I don't know what is.

Hank Williams wrote and recorded about 150 songs in his 6 year career. Here's a link to their lyrics. If you've never listened to old Hank because you think you wouldn't like anything so "country," why not download a couple of his Pulitzer Prize winning songs and give them an objective try? With as open a mind as you'd approach Paul Harding's Pulitzer Prize winning novel.

Va. Public Broadcasting Funds In Peril

Note from MW:  WMRA's Tom Graham forwarded this Jeff Schapiro article from Sunday's Richmond Times-Dispatch. If you have time to read them, you might find the comments interesting.
. .

BOB BROWN/TIMES-DISPATCH

Gov. Bob McDonnell is gunning for Big Bird

JEFF E. SCHAPIRO TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
Published: April 18, 2010 

The Republican's proposed revisions to Virginia's pending two-year, $83 billion budget would put the state on a four-year trajectory to end aid to public radio and television stations -- long an objective of the GOP-dominated House of Delegates.

McDonnell wants the General Assembly, which returns to Richmond on Wednesday to put the finishing touches on legislation passed this winter, to eliminate $592,835 for public broadcasting in the second half of the 2010-12 spending cycle.

McDonnell, who is approaching the 100-day mark of his fledgling administration, is recommending overall spending increases of $42 million. They would be financed with reductions totaling $51 million, including nearly $10 million in cuts in services for emotionally disturbed children.

To erase a $4 billion shortfall without higher taxes, McDonnell and the legislature earlier this year slashed programs that, at the peak of the recession, had been off-limits or largely shielded from reductions.

"When you have to make those stark choices, particularly for families with loved ones with intellectual disabilities, the choice becomes much clearer," said Robert Vaughn, staff director of the House Appropriations Committee

Some of the governor's recommended tweaks to the budget could lead to a clash with the Democratic-controlled Virginia Senate.

"I'll probably oppose that," Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles J. Colgan, D-Prince William, said of the McDonnell proposal on public broadcasting. "It's quite a bit of money for those stations. That's a pretty good hit."

The Senate could prove the last line of defense against McDonnell amendments.
For his revisions to be included in the budget, they require majority votes in both chambers. In the smaller body -- the Senate -- that means McDonnell may have to persuade members of the Democratic majority to break ranks on issues important to the party, such as health care and education.

McDonnell, however, may get the last word. Under Virginia's constitution, the governor has an item veto that allows him to strike features he deems offensive from the budget. Overriding a veto is difficult, requiring a two-thirds vote in each body.

Other McDonnell-written revisions that may spark debate during the one-day spring session include proposed limits on access to some mental-health drugs for new patients under Medicaid, a health-care program for low-income Virginians.

Sen. R. Edward Houck, D-Spotsylvania, who is Colgan's second-in-command on the budget-writing panel, and Del. Riley E. Ingram, R-Hopewell, a member of the Appropriations Committee, are joining mental-health groups in pressing lawmakers to reject the McDonnell proposal.

Also, there could be dust-ups over further restrictions on public financing of abortion. McDonnell also wants to prohibit coverage, under the state employee health-insurance plan, of the purchase of erectile-dysfunction drugs.

And if McDonnell gets his way, state workers -- who have gone without a pay raise since December 2006 -- may stand a better chance of getting a 3 percent bonus later this year.
McDonnell is recommending that the $82 million to finance the bonus -- the money would come from a possible surplus -- should be held in the state's general fund rather than returned to agencies. That, he said, would be an inducement to employees to save money for their agencies.

The judicial times, they are a changing . . .

 

Justice Antonin Scalia

Whether from the influence of their intellect, their religion, their life experiences, or their legal training, the conservatives on the Supreme Court, of whom Justice Scalia is generally held to be the most conservative, are beginning to be accused of judicial activism, a rather vague term defined in this way by Answers.com.

The charge that judges are going beyond their appropriate powers and engaging in making law and not merely interpreting it. Against this position is placed the ideal of judicial restraint, which counsels judges to resist the temptation to influence public policy through their decisions and decrees.

Describing a judge as "activist" is almost always meant pejoratively. For example, here is a January 2010 opinion piece published in Los Angeles Times. It was written by Erwin Chemerinsky, current and founding dean of the University of California, Irvine School of Law  in response the the Court's recent 5 to 4 ruling on campaign finance reform.

[Judicial Activism] . . is never defined with any precision and has often been used to refer to decisions that conservatives simply don't like. But if judicial activism has any meaning, it surely refers to decisions that overturn laws and overrule precedents. In contrast, judicial restraint occurs when courts defer to the other branches of government and follow precedents.

By this definition, judicial activism can be good or bad. Brown vs. Board of Education was activist in that it declared unconstitutional laws in many states requiring the segregation of the races in education. To do so, the justices overruled a 58-year-old precedent upholding such laws. But virtually all agree today that Brown was one of the greatest moments in Supreme Court history.

To conservatives, though, the phrase "judicial activism" has come to mean any decision with a liberal outcome. President George W. Bush declared: "The judges ought not to take the place of the legislative branch of government. . . . I don't believe in liberal activist judges. I believe in strict constructionists." The 2008 Republican platform declared that "[j]udicial activism is a grave threat to the rule of law because unaccountable federal judges are usurping democracy, ignoring the Constitution and its separation of powers, and imposing their personal opinions upon the public."

The court's campaign finance decision makes this conservative rhetoric laughable. . McCain-Feingold was a continuation of statutes that have existed since 1906 limiting corporate spending in federal election campaigns. The act was intended to prevent the enormous wealth of corporations from distorting elections and protect corporate shareholders from having their money used for purposes with which they disagree.

For years, conservatives have argued that judicial restraint requires deferring to the choices of the elected branches of government. No such deference was evident when the court's five most conservative justices struck down this provision of the McCain-Feingold law on Thursday.

This is what Nina Totenberg  had to say about judicial activism, yesterday, on Talk of the Nation. 

...for years Republicans accused or conservatives accused liberals of being activists, and now liberals accuse conservatives of being activists.

It's all in the eye of the beholder. And because our politics have become so polarized and so, frankly, poisoned, and because in particular the such an essential part of the Republican Party base are social conservatives, for whom some of the things that the court did involving gay rights, involving abortion, involving school prayer even, are loathed. And that has really galvanized a certain wing of the Republican Party.

These issues have become more and more politicized. And the whole question of court nomination and confirmation has become, as a result - and selection - has become, as a result, much more politicized. . .

Our politics, vis-a-vis judicial nominations and confirmation, have changed dramatically. They probably have changed dramatically for the worse because there's no subtlety here, and distortion is the name of the game for all sides.

This morning, on the front page of The Washington Post,  there was a Howard Kurtz column that seems to exemplify the aforementioned downward slide of our whole judicial confirmation process.

White House complains about CBS News blog post saying that possible Supreme Court nominee is gay

Kurtz's column tells how CBS news published an online column by Ben Domenech, a former Bush administration aide and Republican Senate staffer,  making  assertions about the sexual orientation of Solicitor General Elena Kagan, widely viewed as a leading candidate for the Supreme Court. Domenech wrote

" that President Obama would "please" much of his base by picking the "first openly gay justice."

CBS initially refused to pull the posting, prompting Anita Dunn, a former White House communications director who is working with the administration on the high court vacancy, to say: "The fact that they've chosen to become enablers of people posting lies on their site tells us where the journalistic standards of CBS are in 2010." She said the network was giving a platform to a blogger "with a history of plagiarism" who was "applying old stereotypes to single women with successful careers."

The network deleted the posting Thursday night after Domenech said he was merely repeating a rumor.

How, I ask, with my sad head in my hands, does sexual orientation (whether rumored or true) come to be seen as relevant in the selection of a Supreme Court judge if a justice is supposed to be dispassionately applying the Constitution to legal questions?

Of Tea and Taxes . . .

I am on everyone's e-mail list. I've been made well aware that today is not only tax day, it is also the day of the Richmond Tea Party's 2nd Annual Tax Day Rally.

 

"The day has finally arrived!" the organization's website announces. "We hope you are coming and bringing all your friends, neighbors and co-workers. Please don't miss this amazing event. Don't let Congress think you have given up after 12 months of fighting. Let's show every politician we are committed for the long haul! Come hear what we are about, what we have accomplished, and what we have planned for 2010!"

There is a list of speakers of whom I've never heard, but then I don't live in Richmond. The headliner appears to be Charles Payne, of Fox Business News, who has as unusual a resume for a journalist as I do. If custom prevails, I'm sure by the time those speakers get through, the crowd of Richmond Tea Partiers will be even angrier at the government than they were when they arrived. 

Today is also the Thursday after last weekend's quadrennially held Southern Republican Leadership Conference. As Don Gonyea, NPR's National Political Reporter, put it yesterday on Talk of the Nation . . .

It was a very conservative conference. And it seemed every speaker - save Ron Paul and Rick Perry, the Texas governor - spent a good bit of time talking about President Obama as a socialist. And about - I mean, Newt Gingrich used the phrase over and over and over, that the president is running a secular socialist machine; and Sarah Palin, certainly, goes there. So the rhetoric was very, very much red meat and kind of aimed at keeping the anger up, and doing that to kind of fuel the energy that they see out there. But when you get down to debating health care, if it's going to live in the details, it's harder to portray things that way.

So who are these extremely conservative, extremely angry people? There's a fascinating new poll reported today in the The New York Times that addresses just that question. The front page (as of this moment) article begins this way:

Tea Party supporters are wealthier and more well-educated than the general public, and are no more or less afraid of falling into a lower socioeconomic class, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

The 18 percent of Americans who identify themselves as Tea Party supporters tend to be Republican, white, male, married and older than 45.

They hold more conservative views on a range of issues than Republicans generally. They are also more likely to describe themselves as “very conservative” and President Obama as “very liberal.”

And while most Republicans say they are “dissatisfied” with Washington, Tea Party supporters are more likely to classify themselves as “angry.”

What, I'd like to know, what does all this anger accomplish? Where are all these angry peoples' ideas for productive policies and solutions to the difficult problems facing us? And I'd really like to know what those speakers who work so hard at keeping  other peoples' anger aroused think they are accomplishing toward the greater good?

I spent yesterday at Longwood University, sitting in on 5 sections of students studying effective ways to participate as citizens of communities, states, and this country. Our conversation focused on how to have productive conversations among people who don't agree. We talked about the difference between civil discourse, where a person wants to engage others' minds; and inflammatory discourse, which aims at provoking an emotional response. And, by golly, those students seemed to really get it!

Perhaps it's a course more of us should look into.

On the road again . . .

Yesterday afternoon I drove from Harrisonburg to Farmville -- via Gordonsville and Dillwyn and points in between. It was over the mountains and through the woods of springtime Virginia, on the bluest of blue-line highways. There was not a McDonald's or a Wal-Mart or a mall around for mile after mile after mile.

My mission? To sit in on 5 classes on essay writing at Longwood University today beginning at 8 AM, so all I have time to do in this short, very early-morning post is wonder at the beauty of yesterday's getting from there to here.

It always seems to me that there is one day every spring when the new leaves are there, yet not fully out. On that one day, Virginia's trees are decked out in every imaginable shade of green. On that day, to my way of being, all we have to do to feel lucky to be alive is open our eyes.

Yesterday was that day--the annual celebration of springtime green. And, in my opinion, there was no luckier person in the world than this one who had to drive from Harrisonburg to Farmville through Virginia's springtime woods.

An accidental discovery of a brilliant idea. . .

The last time I forgot to take a book to the gym was a couple of years ago. The  result was in an essay published in The Chicago Tribune.

Yesterday I forgot my book, again. And so was facing 30 minutes on the elliptical with nothing to read.

Collegiate gym music eliminated any chance of slipping into a Zen-like aerobic trance. Watching a mute Dr. Phil or a soap opera was out for reasons of personal taste. That left reading magazines.

There were two on the racks. A year-old Forbes still had its cover.Reading the year-old Forbes was actually okay. It was interesting to see the present as the future. And just when the appeal of this was waning, a wonderful gym staff member brought me a brand new Time magazine.

Usually, I'm so pressured by the flood of available information that I flit from article to article in magazines, skimming everything, looking for what I can use for work. But since this Time magazine was all I had for the remainder of my elliptical time, I settled down and read it. From the beginning. Which meant that pretty shortly I was reading Barbara Kiviat's article, "Can Price Shopping Improve Health Care? And becoming deeply impressed, yet again, with how simple the solutions to complex problems can sometimes seem.

We all agree (don't we?) that health care costs too much. It's nice when our insurance picks up the tab, but that does not address the core problem that the bill is just too high. Ms.Kiviat (pictured left) opines that a little market transparency just might do wonders in the cost department

Here are a couple of paragraphs from the article to give you an idea of her reasoning.

. . .Congress has overhauled the industry, but the revolution has largely been about increasing access to health care, not simplifying it. We are left with the same opaque system of perverse incentives--paying providers for more tests and procedures, not necessarily effective ones. And we lack even the most basic element of the free market: price information. I recently went to a doctor and asked how much my office visit and X-ray would cost. Staffers told me that they didn't know and, since I have insurance, I shouldn't care.

I should care, though. In fact, I do. There are many reasons health care costs are spiraling out of control, but the simplest one to understand is this: nobody knows what anything costs. Providers get paid through a tangle of insurance-company agreements and billing schedules that change from patient to patient. No wonder a hospital can sneak a $100 box of Kleenex onto your bill and the price of an MRI can range from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. If you don't know what something costs, you can't know if it costs too much.

The idea expressed in Barbara Kiviat's article is very simple and certainly not new: Hospitals and doctors would be required to post how much they charge for their services so price-conscious Americans can shop around if they wish to do so. Of course, there are other important factors besides price at play in medical decisions, but a little more price transparency would probably reduce the cost of that hospital Kleenex considerably.

Two states, Texas and Wisconsin have bills before their state legislatures to require posting the prices of medical procedures. And -- suprise! surprise!-- the U.S. Congress does, as well: H.R. 4700: Transparency in All Health Care Pricing Act of 2010.

Why has this idea never gotten legs? Why wasn't it acted on years ago? Is there any sane argument against posting medical costs? Is there any reason why H.R. 4700 should not just zip through Congress.

Yesterday, while perched high atop Mt. Elliptical, I couldn't think of a single one.

Invasive bushes and politics . . .

Ever since I discovered Buddleia davidii, a.k.a. the butterfly bush, I've planted some wherever I lived. The blooms keep the butterflies happy all summer and the seeds keep the birds fed all winter.

But  then I noticed butterfly bushes springing up, willy-nilly, in the rose garden, the vegetable garden, the perennial beds, in the middle of the lawn -- all places where they were not wanted and, in fact, did harm to those plants that were wanted. Well, low-and-behold! Over lunch one day, I learned that Buddleia davidii has officially been named an invasive species. Once installed in a garden, they tend to take over.

This weekend, while cutting back my current stock of intended butterfly bushes (pictured left from some recent summer) and yanking up dozens of intruders, I found my self thinking about the retirement of Justice Stevens from the United States Supreme Court and what it means to our American system of government.

There have been many articles in many newspapers since Justice John Paul Stevens announced his retirement last Friday. But one in Friday's The New York Times struck me, personally, as perhaps the most telling. It begins this way:

WASHINGTON — Justice John Paul Stevens, who announced his resignation from the Supreme Court on Friday after 34 years, may be the last justice from a time when ability and independence, rather than perceived ideology, were viewed as the crucial qualifications for a seat on the court.

Justice Stevens, a Republican appointed by Gerald Ford in 1975, has never been one to tout adherence to the supposed original meaning of the constitutional text. In a newly published, 1992 private memorandum to Justice Blackmun, Stevens expressed his thoughts on the subject this way. “Traditions — especially traditions in the law — are as likely to codify the preferences of those in power as they are to reflect necessity or proven wisdom.”

Yet Stevens retained respect for legal precedent, as pointed out in the same NYTimes article:

He grew disillusioned with the death penalty over the years, announcing in 2008 his conclusion that it violated the Eighth Amendment. But he went on to say that his conclusion did not justify “a refusal to respect precedents that remain a part of our law.”

Justice Stevens recently excoriated the majority of his colleagues over their decision to allow corporations to spend freely in elections, writing:

“Essentially, five justices were unhappy with the limited nature of the case before us, so they changed the case to give themselves an opportunity to change the law.”

But it is, perhaps, his decenting opinion in Bush v, Gore, the 2000 decision that made George W. Bush our country's president that, for me, marks Justice Stevens grasp of today's American reality; that the steady invasion of politics into our legal system is undermining our system of government.

“Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.”

In other words, in Justice Stevens opinion, even President Bush's supporters lost much, much more than they won through that particular Supreme Court decision.

I think it is remarkably telling that Justice Stevens' confirmation hearing was the last one not to be televised. It seems to me that our ability, as private citizens, to watch almost everything as it's happening has given a lot of us the mistaken impressions that we are well-informed and that our opinion should always be taken into account.

Most of us know nothing about Constitutional law, yet we energetically pressure Senators to confirm someone to the Supreme Court based on splinter political issues, rather than  the nominees actual "ability and independence." Without even a thought to the sad fact that, when we do this, we are actively working to undermine the health and strength of American Democracy.

Is it any wonder I found myself thinking about able and independent Justice Steven's retirement while yanking butterfly bushes out of the rose garden. Politics and Buddleia davidii are both invasive species. Unrestrained, they do great harm.

Now that the height of Everest is settled, what's next ?

I'm not really sure how I ended up on the website of The Kathmandu Post, Nepal's largest-selling English language newspaper, but late yesterday afternoon, there I was. Not only there, but reading an article dated today, Friday, April 9th, which, given that I was still deep in Thursday, provoked a momentary feeling that I'd passed into the Twilight Zone.

Anyone else old enough to remember talking about the Twilight Zone? Where time tilts and wiggles, and the perceived immutable and immovable limitations of the universe no longer apply? Where things happen that we mere plodding mortals never thought were possible?

But then perhaps I had gone to the Twilight Zone. Or we all have. For there on the front page of The Kathmandu Post was astonishing news. China and Nepal had resolved their decades long dispute about the height of Mount Everest.

According to a senior official at Nepal's Department of  Surveys, "The Chinese side -- led by Li Qingyuan -- accepted Nepal's claim that the snow height of Mount Everest is 8,848 metres, while the Nepali side recognized the Chinese claim that the rock height of the mountain is 8,844.43 metres."

Reading this on the front page of The Kathmandu Post, I experienced the unbearable lightness of hope. If China and Nepal had figured out how to settle the height of Mount Everest, they had obviously changed the way they went at settling disputes. Perhaps they can be induced to share their new ways with the rest of us, among whom it's become more fashionable to fan a dispute's flames than to settle it. Who knows? If these new ways can work out the height of Everest today; tomorrow they might work out world peace!

Of course nothing lasts forever, even the agree-upon height of Mount Everest. The further articles I read yesterday about this momentous settlement often went on to anticipate that future complications to the Everest situation could be expected in a few million (or was it billion?) years. Complications, sadly, that that are beyond China's and Nepal's control

It is my understanding that the the Himalayan Mountains, of which Everest is a part, formed as tectonic forces drove two continental plates (the Eurasian and the Indian) toward each other.When these plates collided, up popped the Himalayas. Interestingly, it seems that these plates are still having at each other, geologically speaking, and so Everest is still probably growing.

Which means the rock of the world's tallest mountain is mostly likely getting taller.

In contrast, however, the snow side is probably getting shorter. Temperatures on Everest, like most places, seem to be warming.

Life just never sits still, does it?

Copying my own work . . .

I am a fortunate person, because, as I occasionally write and report on books and publishing for NPR,  Picador sends me advance copies of their books. And it was with great joy that I got an advance copy of The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg. 

Ms. Eisenberg, a lovely, Modigliani-esque, bird-like woman, teaches writing at U.Va. and so lives part-time in Charlottesville. I wrote the following author profile for NPR.org.

Deborah Eisenberg: City Life In The Smallest Spaces

by Martha Woodroof

Deborah Eisenberg, courtesy of the author

April 6, 2010

Deborah Eisenberg is that rarest of literary birds, a dedicated writer of short stories. And she writes them distinctively, effectively and imaginatively enough to have been named a 2009 MacArthur Fellow, for, in the foundation's words, "crafting distinctive portraits of contemporary American life in tales of striking precision, fluency, and moral depth."

This month, Picador is reissuing all 27 of her published stories in what Eisenberg refers to as one "great thick book." Picador Vice President and Publisher Frances Coady championed the anthology through a protracted wait for publication rights. "Publishers and booksellers all too often regard [the short story] as a warm-up exercise for a novel," Coady says. "And Deborah Eisenberg proves just how wrong this view can be. Her prose is exquisite. She is emotionally acute. She has a passionate following and it seems a great injustice to me that her readers have not, until now, been able to find all her work in one volume."

The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg
By Deborah Eisenberg
Paperback, 992 pages
Picador
List price: $22

Eisenberg quickly deflects most praise. "How funny!" she says when it's pointed out she'd been referred to quite regularly in print as a "genius" before the MacArthur "Genius Award."

An Eisenberg storyscape is usually a city one. "I think," she says, "that people are born with an urban gene or not. And I was."
Novelist Mona Simpson agrees. "Deborah Eisenberg is consummately urban," Simpson wrote in the November 2006 issue of The Atlantic, "as nonchalantly and inadvertently sophisticated as Proust."

Here's Eisenberg's vision of New York City at night from "Twilight of the Superheroes": "The avenues and bridges slung a trembling net of light across the rivers, over the buildings ... The lights floated up and up like bubbles."

Eisenberg's characters often hang suspended in their own lives; ambivalent, undecided, worried, waiting for the other shoe to come tumbling down from the heavens. This hospital scene is from "Some Other, Better Otto":

He waited in a room with others too dazed even to note the television that hissed and bristled in front of them or to turn the pages of the sticky, dog-eared magazines they held, from which they could have learned how to be happy, wealthy, and sexually appealing; they waited, like Otto, to learn instead what it was that destiny had already handed down: bad, not that bad, very, very bad.

Deborah Eisenberg and her urban gene actually grew up in the suburbs, "where I was a weirdo ... and very conspicuous. She moved permanently to New York in her 20s, but by her mid-30s she was still just kicking around the city, enjoying life with her "boyfriend" of then and now, writer and actor Wallace Shawn. So what triggered her own writing?

"I suppose the short answer would be I stopped smoking," Eisenberg says.

Say what?

Smoking was not only enjoyable, Eisenberg explains; it was useful as a narcotic for dealing with "a certain level of rage." She took to writing stories, she says, when cigarettes were no longer an option.

A certain level of rage about what?

"Oh, who knows? I was and am completely incurious about my own psyche. Maybe I was just born enraged. At any rate there was kind of a lot of it floating around."

Which, she adds, is not a bad thing for a writer.

Indeed. But why, then, write only short stories?

"I don't really know," Eisenberg says. "It was never a plan of mine, and it's not a plan of mine now. It's not as though I adamantly insist on some sort of primacy of the short story." It might, she says, have something to do with her liking of getting things into the smallest possible spaces.

"Of course," she adds, laughing (which she does easily) and citing The Brothers Karamazov, "the smallest possible space might indeed be a zillion pages."

So, how did Deborah Eisenberg of the easy laugh and the quick discomfort with praise react when the MacArthur Foundation called saying she'd been named a fellow?

"I was profoundly moved," she says simply. Then, after a pause, she adds, "It's deeply, deeply gratifying."

The backside of Monticello mountain . . .

Yesterday was not a hard day. In order to record this week's WMRA Civic Soapbox, I was forced to drive up Brown's Mountain, out past Monticello and Ash Lawn-Highland, deep into the lovely springtime countryside in which Thomas Jefferson's vision of an agrarian democracy took root.

1785 Aug. 23. "Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independant (sic), the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bands." (TJ to John Jay)

Indeed, I challenge you to stand on the lawn in front of Monticello and look in any direction--say across toward Ash Lawn-Highland, the home of Jefferson's great friend, James Monroe-- and not think this Jeffersonian vision of life makes great good sense. Or I'd wager that if you spent the day working in your own garden, it would all make great good  sense, as well. Our health -- mental, physical, moral -- is surely invigorated by contact with the earth.

Yesterday, however, I couldn't get to where I was going -- Blenheim Road -- by my usual route. I got to the end of the long, low stone wall that edges Morven, the 7,379-acre estate passed circuitously from Thomas Jefferson through John Kluge to the University of Virginia Foundation, and I was asked to detour. Something about drainage problems on the Patricia Kluge estate and vineyard (pictured above) had caused the Virginia Department of Transportation to close the road between Grand Cru Drive and Blenheim Road for the month of April.

Turn left, the detour sign said, and so I did. And crossed the backside of Monticello Mountain on roads I'd never driven before.

Gone were the manicured fields, the miles of white fences and stone walls, the eighteenth and nineteenth-century houses set well back from the road. Small houses lined this road; some, ill-maintained; none, of much architectural interest. The ground around them looked as though it would have all it could do to support any grass, let alone lush grass.

Yet surely this road is just as historical as the one I'd just left. Surely it was being settled at the same time Thomas Jefferson was accruing his thousands of acres a short detour away. Could this have been where the laborers who actually cultivated Jefferson's inspirational view lived, perhaps including his own slaves once they'd been freed?

The backside of Monticello Mountain, where Thomas Jefferson didn't live, is not very pretty. There's not much of a view. As far as I know, no one who settled it carefully recorded his or her thoughts in journals and letters for the enlightenment of future generations.And I suspect that the farming that went on there was less about philosophy and more about survival.

West Virginia . . .

I'm not sure I've ever done a story in rural West Virginia wearing anything but sensible shoes. Or hiking boots. Or rock-climbing slippers.

The state's terrain often makes your next foothold a challenge, and that can be cutting across a field as well as climbing Seneca Rocks. But the state's cragginess is also its loveliness. Its mountain mining towns are hard pressed to find enough level ground on which to build a bank and run a railroad track. The people who live in these towns stick up their houses in places the rest of us might find precarious.

 

War, West Virginia

The West Virginia coal miners (and their families) that I've met strike me as folks who keep going pretty cheerfully through what seems like the hardest of hard lives. Of course, I'm sure they're on their best behavior when reporters come to call; but you cannot really fake coming to terms with life, which is what most of them appear to this reporter to have done.

As you can perhaps tell, I have a great love for West Virginia, the wild and wonderful, almost uninhabitable, coal-mining part of the state. And great affection and respect for its people.They were born in a great place to vacation, but a tough place to make a living.

And it's a tough place to escape, as well, because it takes money to escape. And in this part of West Virginia, there's subsistence farming, the tourist industry, and coal mining. The last two might generate big money for their owners, but they offer getting-by wages only for their workers.

Way back in 2003, I was assigned by NPR to report on how West Virginians felt about CBS's bright idea to create a reality show called The Real Beverly Hillbillies. The idea was to select a real Appalachian family, plunk them down into Beverly Hills, and see what happened.

A lot of the folks I talked to around Appalachia were pretty offended by the idea. Except, that is, the West Virginia coal mining families, the people whom CBS was actually thinking of basing the show around, and they were all for it.

The fathers in these families were mostly second- and third-generation miners, currently driving  miles and miles to get work  in one of West Virginia's dwindling number of operational mines. These families lived in houses no one else wanted to buy, in towns without viable stores, and without organized activities for kids besides whatever went on at church. The grown-ups were looking for any way to give their children a few more options than they'd had themselves. To these people, getting a hundred grand for going on a TV reality show was the equivalent of winning a full scholarship to a better life.

The truth is that a lot of us never think about West Virginia coal miners. And, from my time among them, I really think they're fine with that, fine taking care of their own. Until that is, they go and make the front page of the New York Times by dying. And then they need help, and the world rushes in to supply it.

Jon C. Hancock/Associated Press

Families and friends waited alongside emergency personnel after a mine explosion at the Upper Big Branch Mine in Montcoal, W.Va.

Death Toll in West Virginia Coal Mine Blast Hits 25

MONTCOAL, W.Va. — The death toll from a blast at a West Virginia coal mine rose to 25 on Tuesday, federal safety officials said, making it the worst mining accident in the United States in 25 years.

 Now, we learn from ABC news that this was an explosion that was just waiting to happen.

The West Virginia coal mine where an explosion killed 25 workers and left another four unaccounted for in the worst mining disaster since 1984 had amassed scores of citations from mining safety officials, including 57 infractions just last month for violations that included repeatedly failing to develop and follow a ventilation plan. The federal records catalog the problems at the Upper Big Branch mine, operated by the Performance Coal Company. They show the company was fighting many of the steepest fines, or simply refusing to pay them. Performance is a subsidiary of Massey Energy. Another Massey subsidiary agreed to pay $4.2 million in criminal and civil fines last year and admitted to willfully violating mandatory safety standards that led to the deaths of two miners. The nation's sixth biggest mining company by production, Massey Energy took in $24 million in net income in the fourth quarter of 2009

Over the next week or so, the rest of us will probably stay pretty tightly focused on West Virginia coal miners. There will be many expressions of grief and concern from many important people. Those who are responsible for mine safety will become sound-bite machines. Massey Energy executives will come as close to wearing sackcloth and ashes and lashing themselves in public as current custom allows.

Then time will pass, and once again we'll forget about West Virginia and its coal miners. Or, at least, that's the way it's always been before.

 

Jeff Gentner/AP

Billy Pettry (left) sits with Brandon Gray and Caden Gray, 5, on the steps of the Marsh Fork Worship Center in Eunice, W.Va., near the entrance to Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch Coal Mine. "As miners we always looked out for one another," says Pettry, a retired coal miner of 20 years.

By the way, you can follow the latest developments in the West Virginia mining explosion story on NPR's two-way blog.

Priorities . . .

The above cartoon refers to budget choices Florida is making, but it does seem applicable to the situation in Virginia as well. Educational funding in the Commonwealth is being hit hard at both the state and local levels.

All around us are examples of Incredible Shrinking Education Budgets.

Here, for example, is one Charlottesville's Daily Progress most-commented on articles for last week:

County hears calls for low taxes, better schools

By Brandon Shulleeta
 March 31, 2010 

The crowd was split between residents thanking Albemarle supervisors for lowering taxes and those scorning them for not providing more education funding.

And then there's this Associated Press article posted last month on washingtonexaminer.com.

Virginia higher education faces more budget reductions; schools to raise tuition, cut back

By: ZINIE CHEN SAMPSON

RICHMOND, VA. — As state funding for Virginia's higher-education system continues to shrink, colleges and universities say they'll have to raise tuition again and consider more cutbacks, especially after federal stimulus money disappears.

The budget the General Assembly approved Sunday included across-the-board reductions of $243.5 million in the 2011-12 fiscal years, along with $40.5 million worth of cuts and cost savings.

Many Virginian's are adamant that control of public education remains with the state. Yet we seem to want to avoid making education a fiscal priority; which, could conceivably, in this time of shrinking state and local revenue, mean higher taxes.

What I'd like to know is how important is it to you that the next generation of Virginians be well-educated?  Or, in these hard times, is it more important for you to keep your taxes as low as possible and so keep as much money in your own pocket as possible.

We citizens speak louder with our budgeting priorities than we do with our rhetorical ones. My question is: Are our state and local budgets truly reflecting your priorities when it comes to education?