John McCain Tries Grocery Shopping

In an "unscheduled" photo-op campaign moment last Wednesday, John McCain strode the aisles of a Pennsylvania food store - walking the walk of America's everyman. Or perhaps stumbling would be a better word.

In-between lamenting the $4 a gallon price of milk and making small talk with Republican party planted Renee Gould, a young mother who just wants to feed her family (that's actually legit), McCain read nervously from a notecard, a cameraman knocked over a lot of jars of applesauce, and the loudspeaker calling a store staff member blared through his time with reporters.

Doesn't this remind you of when, in 1992, George Bush senior went to a supermarket and "was amazed by the technology" - aka a scanner for products at checkout. The New York Times reported, "Marlin Fitzwater, the White House spokesman, assured reporters that he had seen the President in a grocery store. A year or so ago. In Kennebunkport.

Some grocery stores began using electornic scanners as early as 1976, and the devices have been in general use in American supermarkets for a decade."

And then in April 2007, when Giuliani was on the campaign trail in Alabama he told reporters, "A gallon of milk is probably about a $1.50, a loaf of bread about a $1.25, $1.30." Right. Good thing our policy makers are really clued in here.
Leah

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Hmmm. John and Autry Must Have Been Working Lunch..

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Someone I Know Loves This Trashy Vampire Book

This is how the book came about:
I woke up (on that June 2nd) from a very vivid dream. In my dream, two people were having an intense conversation in a meadow in the woods. One of these people was just your average girl. The other person was fantastically beautiful, sparkly, and a vampire. They were discussing the difficulties inherent in the facts that A) they were falling in love with each other while B) the vampire was particularly attracted to the scent of her blood, and was having a difficult time restraining himself from killing her immediately. For what is essentially a transcript of my dream, please see Chapter 13 ("Confessions") of the book.

Who could it be?

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Stop the Insanity

I've been thinking a lot about what a sense of place might mean while working on my piece for the fall journal. I've been thinking about feeling grounded, imagining what it means to have roots, to feel an enduring connection to a place and often, therefore, to its people.

So, I'm reading Serious Eats today, and see that there's a group out there – Save Our Starbucks – that's fighting on the free-speech friendly internet super highway to keep their nearest coffee mogul outpost open. The part that strikes me is that they're not angry about having to go farther for coffee or worrying that Starbucks is seriously in a business downturn. Nope. As Serious Eats summarizes for the people of SOS "a loss of Starbucks symbolizes a loss of community." And it's the way this word, community, is used that's curious to me.

One visitor on www.saveourstarbucks.com writes, "We must stop this insanity. People are losing their jobs. Starbucks has been a responsible addition to the communities they serve, their employees and customers. Loss of community is NOT the American way. Time to rally and save our Starbucks. No more java jive!"

The café and coffee house have long been associated with community. The first known coffee house, Kiva Han, dates to 1457 and was in Istanbul, Turkey. After the Turks invaded Vienna, and were defeated, they left behind their precious coffee beans. And, soon enough, Europe became dotted with places to drink the potent brew. Coffee houses, like bars but without the mind-numbing alcoholic drinks, were renowned for the conversation they inspired in their guests. They were places to congregate, to think, and to create dialogue. The Enlightenment owes something to coffee houses, as does the political counter-culture of 20th century America. They were places where things began. This is the history that the coffee houses of today inherit.

But the question is this: can a constantly expanding market that reproduces ad infitum the same, standardized and climate-controlled shop (that looks and feels the same no matter where you are) actually produce a place that fosters community? No doubt it can refuel a community that depends on coffee to keep it moving. But can it create community? Is it fertile ground for connection, for the creation of neighborhood, as in what happens when people share something unique because they live close together and their lives, informed by this place, begin to join?

Maybe I just have a different sense of what community means than these SOSers. Rod Dreher of the Dallas Morning News sheds some light on just what it might mean to them. He describes Starbucks as the litmus test of middle-class legitimacy: "For Starbucks to leave means that your part of town, in terms of social psychology, is downwardly mobile. That, I think, is what most rattles folks about losing their Starbucks, even if they rarely went there. It's a status thing." Which is just so ironic, because coffee houses of old were (ideally) socially-leveling places where men (okay, so nothing's perfect) of all classes could come together and discuss ideas freely.

Reading Wendell Barry over lunch at the counter of Diner, I am struck by this quote, which delineates the two forms of producers that Barry sees in this world: "The exploiter's goal is money, profit; the nurturer's goal is health – his land's health, his own, his family's, his community's, his country's."

It seems that a sense of place entails an investment in the health of that place, that community. A dissenter on the SOS website writes, "Where were all of you when Starbucks was predatorily opening stores located to take business away from your locally owned coffee shop? Save your communities, not a massive corporate chain."
Leah

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The Rabid Dog and the GOP or What Color IS Vermont

Last week I received an email from Cerise Mayo, of Greenhorns, Serve Your Country Food, Slow Food and New Amsterdam Market, about composting in Vermont. The email was a letter to the editor of the Times Argus paper in Montpelier, Vermont. It reads like this:

Dear Editor:

We are a group of concerned citizens, including avid home gardeners, long-time commercial farmers and voracious consumers of fresh local food, who believe that the Vermont Compost Company of Montpelier is a most valuable and responsible business in our region that must be kept open and thriving.

We feel strongly that the recent action taken by the Vermont Natural Resources Board to shut down Vermont Compost is unjust and in clear violation of the state's own regulatory procedures and laws. The moratorium on compost operations that the Legislature passed and the Governor signed into law this past legislative session was written specifically to exempt from shutdown both Vermont Compost and the Intervale, two of the state's larger composting facilities, until an adequate regulatory definition could be officially determined as to whether "composting" qualifies as an agricultural activity. The administrative action taken to immediately suspend Vermont Compost's operations and fine the company $18,000 is a draconian and blatantly capricious action that we call on Governor Douglas to reverse immediately.

As the price of fuel skyrockets and the global food emergency intensifies, the state of Vermont desperately needs more agricultural facilities and local food and farm operations like Vermont Compost. To close down Vermont Compost, as well as the Intervale which is also teetering on the brink of collapse in the wake of inconsistent regulatory oversight, is a most dangerous and reckless failure in public policy that will undermine Vermont¹s ability to maintain and develop a vibrant farm economy for generations.

Keep Vermont Compost open!

-Martin Kemple, Middlesex
-Kelly Sullivan, Middlesex
-Lydia Russell, Montpelier

An entity called the Natural Resources Board is closing two-thirds of the composting facilities in Vermont? The irony is crystal. With a little more research this drama plays out like an episode of Desperate Housewives. I suppose that might be harsh but the neighbor down the road who recently complained about Mr. Hammer, owner of Vermont Compost, is a GOP fundraiser who has raised many moneys for Jim Douglas, THE GOVERNER. The other open compost facility, Vermont Natural Ag Products, is by run the governor's brother-in-law. At the same time across counties Vermont Yankee (again feel that cool irony), the nuclear power plant, has a crack in it. And Mr. Hammer is shut down because his facility is not considered a farm? Because the majority of waste he processes comes from other farms?

The only other voice I found in opposition to Mr. Hammer was one Ellen Beck who argues that he is a bad business man because he was reluctant to give his dogs rabies shots and "felt no need to get a permit from the town of East Montpelier when he erected a business sign." The business sign which I imagine is as offensive as the logo seen above...

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