February 20, 2007
Ski lift, Vermont ::
vermont — tagged 1970s, flickr, photos, summer, vacation and vermont
4:30 pm
Ski Lift
Originally uploaded by rbglasson.
Someone posted a bunch of pictures from what looks like a summer vacation to Vermont back in the 1970’s. So great for so many different reasons. Unfortunately, there’s no tags or photo sets, so you have to dig through the set on your own.
October 22, 2006
Hitting the big time, Vermont style ::
vermont — tagged farming, friends, old shaw farm and vermont
5:29 pm
It’s nice to see my friends Peter and Mary Ellen get some well-deserved attention from the local media. They do great work and are truly excellent people.
September 24, 2006
Vermonters secede! ::
vermont — tagged history, politics, secession, vermont and weird
8:36 pm
The LA Times has an article about the Vermont secession movement (NB: I, like 92 percent of those polled in the state, do not support it). Overall the article is ok, though its general tone is a little glib. And the two main problems I found? The article refers to the Ethan Allen Institute as a “non-partisan” think tank. However, for anyone who pays any attention at all to politics in the state, the EAI is famous (or infamous) as a group of conservative free-market zealots. So sure, they may be non-partisan, but who do you think they support come election time? Certainly not the party that advocates for single-payer healthcare.
Secondly I noted something about the leader of the Second Vermont Republic, Thomas Naylor. According to the LA Times piece, Naylor grew quite wealthy after running an software company early in the PC era. (His bio substantiates that he did work in tech, but didn’t mention that he might have gotten rich off it.) But now Naylor spends much of his intellectual efforts (when he’s not defending holocaust-questioning anti-semites) railing against the economic systems and cultural phenomena that made him rich and allowed him to pursue his ongoing political ends. Note particularly his complaints in the Technofascist Manifesto (whatever that may be), e.g., Article 1, entitled “Affluenza,” in which he asks some unnamed vaguely defined body of robot citizens to “[t]each me how to be a moneymaking, money spending machine.” Then in Article 2, “Technomania, he longs to “[m]ake high-tech mountains out of low-tech molehills.” And then my two favorites, Articles 3 and 4, in which he complains of the Internet: “our information, communication trade, and entertainment medium of choice – is a wellspring from which money, meaning, power, and instant gratification flow.” (Please note, I found all this on the Vermont Republic’s website.) And finally, of course, the general complaint in Article 4 that we Americans are under the minstaken belief that “[b]igger and faster make better.” So there is clearly some dissonance between Naylor’s professed beliefs and the reality of his life.
For me, I’m really not even interested in debating the merits of the argument that Vermont should secede. In fact, I have to work hard not to dismiss the argument out of hand, because I just can’t get past the stark hypocracy of the movement’s leader.
September 21, 2006
VDB on those Vermont Senate ads ::
politics, vermont — tagged bernie, cynicism, funny, politics, senate, tarrant, vermont and vitriol
3:13 pm
So, Vermonters aren’t that accustomed to negative campaigning. Well, at least we try not to be accustomed to such things, wishing instead to exude a stoic, detatched understanding of politics, all the while shaking our heads in exasperation at the depths to which political candidates in other states can stoop just to get elected. Well, things are changing this election with the new television ads from Republican Rich Tarrant. And by far, Vermont Daily Briefing has the funniest review of them:
And the ugly, sour, unforgiving hits just kept on coming: every spokesperson in every Tarrant ad looked like your high school gym coach after a three-day bender; more uglythe old woman who lives in the deserted house at the end of the block who chases kids away with a tarnished Civil War saber; or the evil old fart who monitors your apartment from his dank porch in the shade of a diseased elm down the block.
September 10, 2006
Enjoying the view ::
personal, vermont — tagged cycling and vermont
12:38 pm
So, this weekend has proven to be quite an adventurous one. Yesterday Josh and I headed out to the Millstone Pathways festival, which consisted largely of our participation in a biking parade that went from the Barre Granite Museum to the start of a newly-opened bike trail in Barre Town. We had lunch, and I learned about the current status of the trails. And most importantly, I got some maps and some great ideas on for bike rides that I’ll be able to take before winter sets in and makes biking pretty much impossible.
Then today I got up kind of early and headed out to explore the trails, using the maps I’d collected from yesterday’s festival. I got all the way to the Grand Lookout at the top of Millstone Quarry, which has some truly stellar views (see above, as well as here, here, and here). Really, it was one of the best bike rides I’ve been on in recent memory, and as summer ends and autumn makes its presence known, I’ve started to remember how much I love the season, with its chilled northwestern winds, gorgeous foliage, and thoughts turning toward winter.
Oh, and get this: there was a raffle at the Pathways Festival, and with my registration I won second prize, which was a two-day stay at the Millstone Hill Lodge. Not too bad. I can’t be sure, but I think this is the first raffle I’ve won. So not too bad at all.
June 26, 2006
If I’d skipped the lecture, today would have been much better ::
narrative, personal, vermont — No Tags
5:30 pm
I woke up at 3:30 AM to the sound of rain on the standing-seam roof. It was a downpour without any wind, it was like a constant stream of water that comes from a shower head. It was nice to listen to for a while, but it wound up keeping me awake for about an hour. I got back to sleep and woke up just before 7. The alarm clock was blinking 1:17, so the power had gone out at some point. I laid in bed dozing, listening to the rain, seriously contemplating skipping out on this morning’s bankruptcy lecture. But no, I thought to myself, I need to get up and see the lecture. I understood bankrupcy only in the most general terms, and the extent of that knowledge came from what my Corporations professor incidentally mentioned during a somewhat meandering lecture.
Turns out I should have stayed in bed, because the bar review people sent along an old version of the video that didn’t match up with our handouts. So we spent most of our time totally lost—like he’d refer to hypotheticals that were just not there, then he would skip one to two-page sections of the lecture notes. So these bar review people tell us that they’re going to send up the CD’s of the lecture by the end of the week, and those will match up with the notes. Guh.
Notwithstanding that, things are generally moving along pretty well. I got my car back today after it was in the shop for almost two weeks. (Fuel line leak, then a brake line rupture; the real problem is that my car has 200,000 miles on it and needs to be retired.) Now, after a day of bar study, I’ll be heading up to Higher Ground to see Devotchka with Josh, which should be fun. I know Josh only through the Internet and through friends, but I feel like I know him personally. One of those weird things about spending as much time online as I do. I’m looking forward to spending a little time on the road for the first time in ten days.
June 24, 2006
New home ::
narrative, personal, vermont — No Tags
9:05 am
So I’m sitting here in the local coffee shop, drinking espresso and getting caught up on Internet. One of the strange things about my new place is that I have no Internet there—for the first time in four years or so, I actually don’t have at least a 1Mb line going into the house—which means that I have to make certain adjustments to my surfing habits. So far it’s working out OK—I get up in the morning, grab my ancient Power Book and head either here or to school and, well, do exactly what I’m doing right now. And another benefit? I’ve been forced to break my old bad habit of screwing around online until just before I go to bed, which always made sleeping difficult.
More generally, I’ve quickly grown accustomed to living in South Royalton over the past few days. There’s a lot of stuff to appreciate. Like for example: when I go out biking, I do it only for the exercise, and not as a method of getting myself to school. (I don’t know why, but in retrospect relying on my bike to get to school created a certain level of stress for me, even though my bike is now more reliable than my car). Also, being so close to school means that I don’t have to spend as much time picking and choosing all the books and other things I’ll need to have with me for the entire day. If I forget anything, I just have to walk up the street. Oh, and this town is full of people I know in some capacity or another, which made it feel like home even before I moved here. And as this photo shows, the evenings here can be overwhelmingly beautiful. It was a strike of good fortune for me to wind up here like I did.
I know my time in South Royalton will be brief, but it’s nice to think of this as my new home.
June 8, 2006
Bio Jet ::
vermont, legal photos — No Tags
9:07 pm
Bio Jet
Originally uploaded by gjs.
There was a biodiesel conference at VLS today, but us bar review students weren’t invited. But there we a lot of veggiemobiles parked in the lot—this Jetta TDI was one of the better ones I saw.
June 6, 2006
More new music: The Little Ones ::
music, vermont — No Tags
2:33 pm
Here in Vermont we’re having a few days of warm temperatures and light wind before we get back to what is becoming the all-too-common days of torrential rain. I’ve grown accustomed to this Pacific Northwest-like weather over the past few weeks, and, like citizens of Seattle and Portland have been doing for years, I now deeply appreciate any chance I get to go outside and not be wet, cold, and shivering. Today is just one of those days of respite, and I’m trying to enjoy it as much as I can, considering that I have a bar exam to study for.
Music by The Little Ones provides a perfect soundtrack to a day like this. This morning I found, by way of the KEXP Song of the Day podcast (iTunes link), the song Lovers Who Uncover (mp3). I now cannot recommend it to you enough. It’s upbeat and dense sound, with two guitar lines, each playing simple chord progressions, floating over a fast-paced drum beat. And they come together to produce a sound that is both tense and in-the-moment. When I hear the song, I can’t sit still, I need to go out walking and appreciate the day. Nothing makes me happier than that today.
But what can you compare them to? Imagine, if you will, the child produced by a love triangle involving Built to Spill, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, and The Shins. Here you have the next generation of a sound that I can only hope continues to evolve.
May 23, 2006
Done! ::
personal, vermont — No Tags
7:30 pm
So, if you haven’t already figured out from the photos, I graduated on Saturday. It was really an excellent event, filled with friends and family and friends and realizations of all the connections I’d made over the past three years with my school and the people there. It was emotional yet fun, difficult yet unmissable.
So, the timeline: graduated on Saturday; family get-together in the afternoon; party on Saturday night that lasted well into the morning hours of Sunday; not enough sleep before hanging out with my family on Sunday; nap on Sunday afternoon (of course!); dinner with family on Sunday evening; caught up on sleep Sunday night; said goodbye to family on Monday morning; returned to a semi-regular life by noon on Monday. It’s exactly what you might expect from a graduation from law school. Or from anywhere else for that matter.
In the late morning on Monday I got back on my bike for the first time in my post-JD life. Although that wasn’t all that meaningful by itself, I rode through South Royalton, by school for the first time after graduation, and was struck by a not-insignificant wave of nostalgia for a phase of my life that was just recently completed. The two weeks of rain we had gotten had finally subsided, leaving cool temperatures, a smell of mud and manure everywhere, and a general sense that everything had been cleaned out. I rode past school, which was oddly silent and empty of students, past the town green that had just a few people on it, and past moving vans parked in front of every other house with fresh law graduates filling them with their possessions to be moved all over the country. I expected, when I saw this, to feel stranded or stuck, but those feelings never presented themselves. That led me to believe that I’d made the right decision to stay here. The ride was the perfect way to say goodbye to my life as a law student and to get a certain perspective—however small—on what the past three years have meant to me. I don’t have much else to say about it, other than saying goodbye always takes longer—and is much harder—than I want it to be.
Tomorrow I start my overpriced bar review course. That will last up until the first week of July, at which point I’ll really be able to freak out about the upcoming test. (Yikes!) But at this point I’ll just take everyone’s advice and believe that I will do just fine.
April 5, 2006
MP3s for Maple Syrup ::
personal, vermont — No Tags
10:15 pm
So, last week marked the height of sugaring season here in Vermont, and that meant that everywhere you drove in the state you could find smoke billowing from the sides of mountains, where it before seemd impossible that houses even existed. As I rode my bike to school last week, I could swear I could smell cooking sap mixed with woodsmoke everywhere. That was was quite nice. And for my part, since neither Jessamyn nor I have a sugaring operation of our own, this time of year means doing little tech jobs for others, which usually results in us getting paid in syrup.
This year was quite easy. Back in January I was talking to one of the attorneys over at the clinic, who had gotten his wife an iPod Nano for the holidays. The problem was that she didn’t have a computer, so she had no way of loading songs onto the thing. So, as a temporary solution, I offered to rip down a bunch of her CDs to MP3’s onto my computer, then load them onto her Nano from my machine. Of course, that meant that her nano would be mated to my machine, and that she would lose all of her music once she got a new computer. The attorney was cool with that, he said. But after that conversation we didn’t talk about it again.
Fast forward to last week, when the sap was flowing and the truly hard core Vermonters were boiling down their crops into syrup. He approached me again with the same offer, and said he would pay me for my efforts. No, I said, how about syrup instead (he’d mentioned earlier that he had a small operation which wasn’t going all that well because of the tepid winter and recent spate of cool weather). He said it was a great idea. So last Wednesday I got the iPod and the CD’s, ripped down the tracks, and handed back the whole package by Friday (I even included an MP3 CD with all her CD tracks on it so they wouldn’t have to go through the process of ripping down the music again).
And the coolest part wasn’t even getting the syrup. Instead, it was having the attorney’s wife thank me for what I’d done. She of course had the iPod around her neck as she thanked me.
And this is why I so love living in this state.
March 8, 2006
Town meeting ::
politics, narrative, personal, photos, vermont, legal photos — No Tags
8:20 am
2006 town meeting agenda
Originally uploaded by gjs.
Yesterday was town meeting here in Bethel (as it was throughout the state). At one point in my life, I could see such a day as being time off from work or school, an extra day to shirk responsibilities. But yesterday, at least until noon, Jessamyn and I went to Whitcomb High School, met with the other Bethel citizens (Bethelites?) and dealt with the seventeen items on this year’s agenda.
In this picture, Jessamyn checks off each of the items on the agenda as we vote on them. Here’s my small Flickr set for the day.
February 4, 2006
The last bit of snow ::
personal, photos, vermont — No Tags
11:34 pm
Snow patch
Originally uploaded by gjs.
Jessamyn and I went on a walk today, and I took a picture of this, the last bit of snow in Bethel. Well, not really, but I continue to be amazed at this winter’s mildness nonetheless.
Wolf Parade[!] ::
personal, music, vermont — No Tags
1:27 pm
As Flatlander has already noted, Wolf Parade is scheduled to play here, in Vermont, in April. How cool is that? Since Apologies to the Queen Mary was probably one of my top five favorite releases of last year, buying tickets was pretty much automatic—no hemming, hawing, or otherwise trying to figure out whether I should go. In fact, Jessamyn and I already have our tickets. So, if you’re going, we’ll give a ride (assuming, of course, you live somewhere between Burlington and our central Vermont backwater town). Or maybe we’ll see you there.
Contra- ::
weird, personal, music, vermont — No Tags
9:42 am
Jessamyn and I went contra dancing last night. For those of you who know me, you’re probably thinking what the hell? Greg contra dancing? (And for those who don’t know me, maybe checking out my Last.fm stats will give you some idea of how outside-the-range-of-normal going doing such a thing as this might be.) Well, the whole reason we went was because back in 2003 (I think), I promised Jessamyn [update: for her birthday!] that we would go contra dancing at some point in the future. Now, two and a half years later, after failed attempts and last-minute changings-of-mind, we went last night, and over all it wasn’t too bad at all. I’d even call it fun. Now this morning I seem to have contra dancing on the mind. I found this useful Wikipedia page on contra dancing (we probably should have read it before we went, so maybe we would have an inkling of an understanding of what, say, a sashay is), and this excellent page on the mathematics of the contra dance. So even if you’re like me and a totally bad dancer, you’ll be reigned in my the unforgiving mathematical rules that govern the whole experience. (Best description: “you’re dancing like a fool, but it’s totally controlled!”) And it’s the mathematical nature of the dance, incidentally, that I think I found so appealing.
So, like all new discoveries, I’m now wondering how I could have gone this long not knowing that these dances existed. But if these listings of contra dancing organizations is any indication, it is a deeply rooted part of American culture, hiding in plain sight.
