Cars and Bridges in Minneapolis

I was sitting in my office eating lunch and reading The Bridge, the community newspaper in the area where I work (the Seward neighborhood of Minneapolis). My eye fell on a headline: "HOURCAR now available at Seward Co-op."

I quickly read the story, which told me the HOURCAR car sharing service had set up a parking space two blocks away at the new Seward Co-op building. As I looked up from the story and glanced out my window, what did I see but the HOURCAR scooting past.


Now if I were Michelle Bachmann, I would think that was more than a coincidence. But since I am a skeptic, I will have to assume the odds of me seeing the HOURCAR are pretty good, since it lives only a couple of blocks away.

On a sadder note, The Bridge newspaper has just announced that it is going to cease printing and go online-only.

They plan to continue to commit just as many resources to creating neighborhood content (on a more timely basis), but without the printing and distribution costs... They want lots of people to sign up on the website to show support. I think I'll go do that now.

Plastic? No Thanks

Social misfit that I am, I've always been anti-credit card. It probably comes from reading too much science fiction -- something about the idea of cash disappearing in favor of a centralized exchange system that's completely surveillable never sat right with me.

As a teenager, I refused to get a Social Security number as long as possible, too. (This was back when parents could claim dependents on their income taxes without having to provide each child's Social Security number.) Reluctantly, I got a number right before my first job, the summer after I graduated from high school.

I've never had a credit card, and one thing that made me happy about moving to Minnesota in the mid-1980s was that businesses still took checks here. (Still did, until recently, but that's another blog post.)

Today, listening to All Things Considered on the way home, I was reminded of why I can't stand credit cards and refuse to have one. Robert Siegel and Michele Norris were talking with Joan Goldwasser from Kiplinger's, and they were playing questions collected from NPR listeners.

The first caller wanted to know why his card company had doubled his rate, despite the fact that he always paid on time with more than the minimum required. Goldwasser's answer: They can do anything they want as long as they give you 15 days' notice. It could be because you were late paying some other company (from your mortgage to your utilities to another card company) or it could be because you live in a neighborhood with a high default rate, even if you yourself pay all your debts on time. The obvious implication was that it could actually be for no reason whatsoever.

The second caller wanted to know if it was a good idea to cancel a credit card or not. Goldwasser's answer: probably not, since it will decrease your total amount of available credit, and could, therefore, give you a bad ratio of debt to amount of credit available. Card companies can also suddenly decrease your credit line for no reason, which has the same effect, even though you actually don't owe any more than you did before.

The idea that people make decisions about what to do in their financial life based on how it will affect their credit rating makes my blood boil. (You should have heard me talking to the radio on the way home today!)

Let's say you've realized that credit cards are bad for your spending habits and you want to get rid of all your cards. That's a bad idea, according to the people who know about credit scores. It'll wreak havoc with your credit rating.

Is that a racket or what? It's like saying a heroin addict can't get off the drug because it'll look bad to the dealer.

And when you do have a credit card with a company, it seems to me that the only thing the company should be allowed to use when setting your rate is your history with that company -- not what you did or didn't do with some other company, or, most absurdly, what people who live near you are doing.

Goldwasser said that the Federal Reserve is initiating new rules in 2010: Consumers will have longer to pay between when a bill is sent and when it's due. Interest rates will be more clearly stated on the bills and the initial contract, and they can't be changed for a year after you first sign up. Forty-five days' notice will be required instead of the present 15.

That's a start on reining in these uncontrolled, avaricious corporations.

Better yet, everyone should get rid of their cards.

Grow Your Own

A friend told me that Will Allen of Growing Power (one of my favorite organizations) was going to be speaking tonight on behalf of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. So we headed up to the Minneapolis Urban League office where the event was being held.

The place was crawling with people, but we got seats in the second row, right in front of the podium -- hence this picture.

I know I've already written this before, but Allen and his organization are so inspiring! They've created a model of what a locally based food system could be like, and they want to share everything they know. Some cool new facts I learned:

• Worms live for 50 years, so treat them like livestock
• Eight inches of woodchips covered in compost can be used to grow a garden right over asphalt
• The aquaponics system that Growing Power has worked out and will share with anyone who asks can be built for $3,000 worth of materials. They grow an incredible amount of fish (as well as plants) in the system.
• Growing Power works with kids and teens on its six farms (three in Milwaukee, three in Chicago), and also with teens who've been paroled from the prison system. So they're working on that part of the problem, too.
• It's important to farm the vertical space in the greenhouses. Growing Power plants salad greens in multiple tiers of hanging baskets... each basket has worms working in the soil.
• They've got their first anaerobic digester going now. The plan is to build one at Miller Brewing, so they can turn their brewing waste into methane and then into electricity.
  

I also heard at the event about Homegrown Minneapolis, the city's effort to get on board with local food production and distribution, from farmers' markets to community gardens to small-scale ag businesses in the city.

An evening well spent.

Natasha Saje: Love, Grief and 'The Wire'

Writer Natasha Saje has created one of the most beautiful examples of a multi-themed personal essay I've ever seen.

Originally from the New York Times, then reprinted where I saw it in the Pioneer Press on Sunday, the story was called "We Watched 'The Wire' and Waited for Death."

Saje combines wrenching thoughts about true love, race, class, and the process of dying from cancer -- all against a backdrop of the best television show of all time. In just 1,600 coherent words.

It's quite an achievement.

Unfun Facts About the Costs of a Public University

For the past few Sundays, the Star Tribune has been publishing front-page stories that can be read only in the print edition. After a week or so, they'll put them up on their website. This is their most recent strategy to reward subscribers who actually pay for the paper's content.

I'm not sure how it will work for them, but it definitely makes it harder to link to one of those stories the day it appears!

Today's story, written by Jenna Ross and Chao Xiong, is called "Generation Debt," and subtitled "Tuition at the U of M has doubled this decade. How can the average student expect to pay for school -- let alone pay back the increasing debt?"

After noting that 2009 was the first year in history when the amount of revenue the University of Minnesota received from tuition exceeded the amount it received from the state, the story went on to reveal some more unfun facts:

In 1968-69, a student could have clocked 6.2 a week at minimum wage to earn enough to cover annual tuition and fees of $385, according to the U. This year, a student would have to work 33.9 hours a week at minimum wage to cover tuition and fees.

I remember from my days as a student activist at more than one public university that some people would argue that tuition should be higher and state subsidies lower, with financial aid for those who need it used to make up the difference. Why, these people wondered, should taxpayers subsidize everyone, including people who don't "need" the help?

And I also remember there was research that showed higher tuition kept significant numbers of low-income students from attending, even though they would be eligible for aid. The perception of nonaffordability had more effect than the reality of aid availability.

In today's Strib story, that "high tuition with high aid" model is said to be bad for the middle class, too. According to Patrick Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education,

"The aid never grows as fast as the cost, so we're always falling behind. Soon, middle-income people start thinking they need some help, too. You can'd do high tuition, high aid without squeezing the middle really hard."

One young woman featured in the story has unenrolled from classes because she owes the U too much money and they've frozen her account. Reading the information given about a person in her situation is frustrating, because there's so much we aren't told about her situation --

When Gamblain enrolled at the U two years ago, her parents earned just enough that she didn't qualify for a great financial aid package. Yet they didn't make enough to fund her education. [She] took out about $17,000 in private loans to subsidize her freshman year. With no co-signer, Gamblain was saddled with a 15 percent interest rate.

She took out all the federal loans for which she qualified for the first semester of her sophomore year, about $8,000. Grants totalled about $700. She was still $3,000 short [of the annual tuition and fees].

Now, I haven't had to deal with the labyrinthine college financial aid process yet, but it seems to me that this young woman or her family got some very bad advice somewhere along the line, and her parents are not doing all they can to help her. Why didn't they co-sign her loan? Could one or two (presumably working) adults really not come up with $3,000 to help their daughter stay in college?

Obviously, I don't know their circumstances, and for all I know they've been laid off from their jobs or have three other kids in school (although both are unlikely, since she'd probably have qualified for more aid in either case), but they've known for years this kid was college-bound. What about a little planning on the part of the adults in her life? Or at least co-signing her loan so she got a better interest rate?

Hopefully, featuring her plight in a front-page story will get the attention of somebody at the U's financial aid office so she can get some decent advice. It's sad that it takes a story like this to get her what she needs.

An Award-Winning Death?

Today's Star Tribune page 2 celebrity cavalcade included a short bit about the gospel music Dove Awards, which were held on Thursday. Check out this confounding lead sentence, which was juxtaposed to a photo of a man and a tearful woman holding hands:

Christian artist Steven Curtis Chapman, joined by wife Mary Beth, capped an emotional year in which he lost his 5-year-old daughter in an accident by winning artist of the year during the Gospel Music Association's Dove Awards in Nashville on Thursday.

Contrast that with this version (from the Strib website), which is the unedited text straight from AP:

Veteran Christian artist Steven Curtis Chapman capped an emotional year in which he lost his 5-year-old daughter in a tragic accident by winning artist of the year during the Gospel Music Association's Dove Awards on Thursday.

Although the AP version is slightly less confusing, don't both of those sentences read as if Chapman lost his daughter by winning artist of the year? And what's with the child being "his" daughter in the Strib version? Once the copy editor introduced Mary Beth into the text so that the paragraph could act as a caption for the photo, shouldn't it have become "their" daughter? Assuming it's her child, too?

Christian artist Steven Curtis Chapman (joined by wife Mary Beth) capped an emotional year, in which they lost their 5-year-old daughter in an accident, by winning artist of the year during the Gospel Music Association's Dove Awards in Nashville on Thursday.

Call me crazy, but those two little commas I stuck in there seem to make all the difference in the world to the meaning here. Better yet, maybe they could have figured out a way to break it into two sentences, perhaps including some of the details that were used a few paragraphs later.

Christian artist Steven Curtis Chapman, joined by wife Mary Beth, capped an emotional year by winning artist of the year during the Gospel Music Association's Dove Awards in Nashville on Thursday. The Chapmans, who lost their 5-year-old daughter in May when she was accidentally hit by a vehicle driven by her older brother in the driveway of their home, said the tragedy allowed the family to share their faith.

Here's the lead from another story (from the Grand Rapids Press), which played it completely differently than AP:

Singer-songwriters Steven Curtis Chapman and Brandon Heath were major winners in the 40th annual Gospel Music Association Dove Awards, presented Thursday in the Grand Ole Opry.

Chapman won the Dove as the year's top songwriter and was selected for artist of the year.

He acknowledged he likely was a sentimental favorite following the tragic death of his 5-year-old daughter, Maria, last May.

And to think, I never even heard of this guy until today.

You Can Call Me Al

Maybe it's not the typo it appears to be -- it's a strategy to snag all the Google users who don't know how to spell Aflac.

And just when did AFLAC stop being an acronym? I wasn't paying attention, I guess.

(As seen on Facebook, April 24, 2009.)

If Flash Is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Have Flash

My eyes are burning! Quick, get the Visine!

I've just watched this incredibly rococo Flash intro to the International Congress of Churches & Ministers website six or seven times, gaping open-mouthed each time.

I don't want to ruin it for you, but in case you're wondering: No, it's not a parody. It's real.

If you've seen many Flash intros on websites, you probably know that most of the time they're not very informational -- in fact, gee, maybe that's why it's called "Flash" instead of something like "Substance."

But this intro is the most content-free piece of Flash I have ever seen.

And the site that follows is a gold-plated edifice of didactic kitsch (two words you don't usually see together).

With continuous Flash fires belching flame out the top of the site (don't they remind you of the gaseous torches that accompanied the Great and Powerful Oz?) and a booming robo-voice reading all the important copy aloud in case the site's visitors can't read, it took me a while to figure out what the site was actually selling: For about $1,000 they will shelter your pseudo-church under their 501(c)3 nonprofit umbrella. For $100 they'll ordain you as a minister. And let you in on their group health insurance to boot.

ICCM is the brainchild of founder Michael Chitwood, who not only is led by God to help people help themselves, but also is "one of the nation's most coveted public speakers."

According to Chitwood, ICCM wants to help keep houses of worship in order, since there is so much stress in running a church as a nonprofit. He tells us in his recorded voice-over that 80 percent of pastors have marital or financial problems, 52 percent of seminary graduates leave the ministry in their first year, 82 of churches and nonprofits are out of compliance with the IRS ... and 11 churches per week are closing.

Wow, who knew it was so tough to run a church?

As for SharperFX, the company that designed the website (and whose own site looks suspiciously similar to the ICCM site): This conceptually empty, glossy extravaganza of a style is an odd way to package churches if you take them seriously. All you're doing is setting them up for ridicule.

Jon, You've Driven a Wedge into My Heart

Well, I've had my first disappointment with Jon Tevlin and his new column at the Star Tribune. It's not a divorce; more of a bad argument, but nonetheless, I'm sad about it.

As you may have heard, the Trader Joe's grocery chain is in talks to open a store on Lyndale Avenue in South Minneapolis, about a block from the Wedge Co-op (the single-store co-op with the most members of any co-op in the U.S.).

I've never been in a Trader Joe's, but the German-owned chain is well-known for competing with locally owned natural food co-ops, often using its chain buying power to undercut the co-ops' prices on generally comparable foods (not sure how TJ's does on local and fair-trade foods, so that adjective "comparable" is used with a grain of salt).

A major aspect of the location battle arises from a zoning variance being sought by TJ's so they can sell their "Two Buck Chuck" wines and other alcohol. In Minnesota, the land of 10,000 restrictions on the sale of full-strength beer and wine in grocery stores, grocers need a separate entrance for their liquor stores, and they have to be at least 2,000 feet from other liquor-selling enterprises. The location TJ's has in mind is too close to Hum's Liquors, another neighborhood institution, and so it needs a zoning variance. This proximity has kept the Wedge from selling beer and wine as well. But TJ's thinks they can get the variance.

Enter today's column by Jon Tevlin, who, as it happens, lives right in the Wedge neighborhood. Much of the story merely recounts the issues, but the verbiage gets more critical after the term "political correctness" crops up:

...the Wedge Community Co-op [is] a neighborhood institution that likes to tell you that the apple you are buying was purchased from Ole down in Belle Plaine just this morning.

When a straightforward development story appeared in this paper last week, readers responded in the comments section as though Rush Limbaugh had crashed their hookah party.

Wow, let's unpack that, Jon. You seem to be implying that the Wedge's commitment to local foods and supporting local farmers is just a marketing scheme, rather than a reason for existing. And then you follow with a pretty nasty swipe, saying all Wedge shoppers are a bunch of drug users.

Later in the story, Jon gives us some quotes from trend watchers at Iconoculture and Mintel International. The latter commentator, named Marcia Morgelonsky, refers to TJ's as the "revenge of the Chicest" -- "the personification of what clean hippies want in a store." And then Marcia is quoted as saying about the Wedge, "I can almost smell the patchouli from here. I'm sneezing."

Geez, what decade is this? Has Marcia been in a co-op lately? This is the Wedge, which the Strib's own food writer, Rick Nelson, can't seem to go a week without praising.

Jon clearly has issues with an institution he perceives as "sanctimonious," where "shoppers sniff derisively at my cart because of a reckless disregard for my carbon footprint." Too bad if it's locally owned by people in the neighborhood, instead of a European billionaire.

I wonder which one of the stores keeps more of its shoppers' dollars in Minnesota? And which one will still be there to feed the neighborhood if the natural food trend peaks?

Anyway, it just makes me sad that a talented writer is using his abilities and his bully pulpit to belittle a homegrown institution.

_______________

Update: After writing, I read the comment thread on the Strib website, which followed the paper's original story, and which Jon described as full of hookah-smoking Wedge supporters. (I didn't want to read it before writing because I find that the ugliness of the comments often takes the words right out of my mouth.)

Of the 72 comments on the thread, at least half would have to be considered anti-Wedge (mostly saying the overpriced Wedge and Hum's would lose in a fair competition with the wonderful Trader Joe's, ignoring the fact that TJ's off-sale liquor variance would mean unfair competition).

Those who were against TJ's move into the neighborhood mentioned the incredible traffic and parking problems that would result in an already-choked area, and some wondered why TJ's doesn't move somewhere a bit further south (Lake Street and south of 38th were mentioned). Others pointed out that TJ's is owned by a German millionaire (and were duly slapped by the anti-Wedge crowd for inciting class warfare).

Still others pointed out that the developer who owns the building where TJ's would be located has a couple dozen unsold condos on his hands, and he's planning to add even more, anchored by the TJ's store, and that this is not good for the neighborhood.

Sure sounds like a lot of hookah smoking to me, Jon.

My favorite comment was from a user going by "dillrod":

Food should be dirt cheap

And sprinkled with just a hint of E.Coli. And preferably shipped in from Guatemala. Whatever it takes to keep it cheap - get rid of costly regulation, grow it with peasant labor in Argentina. I'm an American who believes in the free market and true competition (provided the legislature grants me special variances none of my competitors get) and I deserve to have my food cheap. After all, this obesity can be costly to maintain with high food prices.

Finally, a Post about the Torture Memos

Thanks to BoingBoing, I've just been checking out the blog of a woman who goes by LegoFesto. Her blog's reason for being is to show photos of Lego assemblages she has made that reproduce current events, particularly from the Iraq war and the war on terror.

The image resonated because I've been trying to bring myself to write about the hideous stories I've been reading since the release of the Justice Department's torture memos. Among others, these news stories particularly caught my attention:

• The New York Times story on April 17, which revealed that the interrogators knew the tactics wouldn't work on their prisoner because he had already given up what he had to say, but then they used them anyway until he pleased for his life.
  
• The Washington Post story from April 19 that described how the Justice officials specifically tried to make rules for torture methods that would not "shock the conscience" of those who learned about them. (You'll need to sign up for a free account with the WaPo to see that one, sorry.) The story points out that medical doctors were involved in okaying the torture: "Doctors had to evaluate in advance the ability of each detainee to survive the coercion; slaps to the head and gut could not provoke severe or lasting pain; the water used for dousing had to be safe for drinking, and those holding the hose had to stop at two-thirds of the time that normally causes hypothermia."
  

Doctors, for pity's sake. What part of "First, do no harm" did they not understand? Which reminds me, it's probably time to read medical ethicist Stephen Miles's book, Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity and the War on Terror (published back in 2006).

I wonder if any government employees refused to take part in the tactics, and if the amnesty that's been declared for those who obeyed and carried out the orders applies to the employees who refused the orders (assuming there were any).

I believe that when future generations look back on the last eight years, they will be as shocked by what came to pass in this country as we are by any of our worst atrocities. And they will not understand how it could have happened.

They won't be alone in that lack of understanding, because -- like many -- I've felt the same way for years.

Glimpses of a Child's Formative Years

When my own daughter number one was still able to express her age with the fingers on one hand (OK, probably two hands), she would get very attached to images or three-dimensional objects she had made using reusable materials.

In order to free up the Legos, clay, or whatever, we'd promise to take a picture of it (like many a foxy parent before us). With a digital camera, there's no expense to it, and it was an easy way to get her to put things away.

Now I am glad that we have these little reminders of her younger years.


I loved these magnet tiles. They were slightly smushy and good for hours of rearrangement.


She went through an extended clay period in third and fourth grades. This is one of the few things we have to show for it.


We sold the Light Bright at a garage sale last year. Sigh.

Elizabeth Warren Explains It All

I've been interested in the work of Elizabeth Warren, professor of law at Harvard, since I saw her on Now with Bill Moyers back in 2003 or so. They were discussing the then-pending bankruptcy bill (you know, the one that made it harder for regular people to declare bankruptcy). She explained how Hillary Clinton had completely changed her position on the bill from being against it when she was First Lady to being for it once she was in the Senate, receiving campaign contributions from the big banking interests.

After that interview, I read and liked Warren's book, The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke. Since then, she's been keeping busy, most recently as chair of the congressional committee that's attempting to oversee the Toxic Assets Recovery Program.

Because of that role, she was on the Daily Show a couple of days ago talking about the TARP, and explaining how deregulation got us into this mess. This four-and-a-half minute video is both a good intro to Elizabeth Warren and the current situation.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Elizabeth Warren Pt. 2
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

(In case the embedded video doesn't work for you, here's a link to the same thing on the Daily Show site.)

One of the pieces of defunct regulation Warren mentions in the video, the Glass-Steagell Act, was originally passed during the Depression, only to be repealed in 1999 (the vote was 90 to 8 in the Senate). As this article from the Nov. 5, 1999 New York Times makes clear, not everyone agreed that Glass-Steagell was no longer needed (thank you, Paul Wellstone!):

The decision to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 provoked dire warnings from a handful of dissenters that the deregulation of Wall Street would someday wreak havoc on the nation's financial system. The original idea behind Glass-Steagall was that separation between bankers and brokers would reduce the potential conflicts of interest that were thought to have contributed to the speculative stock frenzy before the Depression....

Senator Paul Wellstone, Democrat of Minnesota, said that Congress had ''seemed determined to unlearn the lessons from our past mistakes.''

Reading the Times article is like being slapped in the face over and over. And given the year it passed and the broad majority that supported it, clearly it was a fine example of a bipartisan blunder.

The Bunny and the Princess, Yours for $45.98 Each

Ashton-Drake Galleries does it again -- another collectible "baby" doll, sure to put you into a sugar coma.

For $39.99 plus $5.99 shipping, you can have this 5.5"-tall resin doll (complete with "plush bunny hat"). Of course, this is actually just the first in a series of figures called "Hats Off to You!" and by requesting the bunny doll, you're asking to be signed up for the whole series ("You may cancel your subscription at any time").

What's next in the series? Why, it's "Princess in Training," of course!

What is this obsession that so many Americans have with calling little girls "Princess"? Last night at a restaurant, an extended family was seated next to me and I heard the grandmother ask the two-year-old girl if she was a princess in that voice adults use with young children. I don't think the kid was labeling herself that way; it was grandma's suggestion.

Nobody calls little boys "Prince" (except one family in Minneapolis). Princess is part of the way people assure themselves of a girl's femininity (interlaced with layers and layers of pink and purple). Prince, on the other hand, has a vaguely effeminate air to it.

Ashton-Drake Galleries is actually the Bradford Group, a $5.5 million, 80-employee, privately held marketing company based in Niles, Illinois (near O'Hare Airport). As I read on one site that described the business, Bradford's primary market is women over 35 years of age.

I don't mean to speak for my gender and age group, but geez, women, can't we get over this willingness to fork over cash for creepy plastic dolls?

Turning [Lots of] Water into [a Little] Fuel

As if causing food shortages and contributing to the problem of antibiotics resistance isn't enough, a recent study puts another nail in the coffin of corn-based ethanol production.

On April 14, the Pioneer Press reported on a study by three researchers at the University of Minnesota, published in Environmental Science & Technology. They found the amount of water needed to produce the corn used to make ethanol varies incredibly by state. In the moderately rainy Midwest, it's 5 - 10 gallons of water per gallon of ethanol (plus another five gallons in the production process itself).

But assuming the goal is for ethanol production to be localized, many other states would get in on the ethanol action, as government biofuel mandates seem to imply. And that would lead to ethanol production in states with fuel-to-water ratios like this:

Georgia 1 : 100
Nebraska and Kansas: 1 : 500
Wyoming and Colorado: 1 : 1,000+
California: 1 : 2,000

I seem to recall that these dry states have other uses for this water. Hmm.

Who Needs a Straw for a Hot Drink, Anyway?

As seen at Common Roots Cafe, Lyndale Avenue, Minneapolis.

The Worst Recession Since 1981

Over the last six to nine months, I've seen stories similar to this one (from the March 28 Pioneer Press) at least once a week:

If you lived through the 1981 recession ... and are convinced the one today doesn't feel as bad -- yet -- you're right. And now there's an easy way for you to check.

After launching a national recession-comparison tool on its web site in early January, the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis has added state data to the site, minneapolisfed.org.... The interactive tool allows the curious to compare employment levels in any state during any of the post-war recessions -- 1953, 1957, 1960, 1969, 1973, 1980, 1981, 1990, 2001 -- to employment levels in today's downturn.

The headline on the story? "Think this recession is bad? Check out 1981..."

I remember the recession of 1981 (and its extension into 1982). I graduated from college in '82 and couldn't find a job, despite what I (in my naive way) thought was a stellar resume.

I don't recall thinking my lack of success was because of the economy particularly, although I do remember indulging my new habit of listening to All Things Considered that summer and exclaiming over the fact that the stock market was continually going up, despite the fact that the economy was in the tank. (1982 was the year the stock market finally picked up after almost 10 years of stagnant results.)

It's weird to read all the stories in recent months about students graduating from college with no job prospects, since that was exactly what happened to my cohort -- only nobody was talking about it in a 24-hour news cycle back then, so we didn't realize how bad we had it. We'd lived through the inflationary '70s and the energy crisis, plus we were all worried we would be nuked any minute (I also remember attending the million-plus-person antinuclear march in New York City during June of 1982 -- just found my $15 dollar round-trip bus ticket).

So not finding a job right away was just part of life. I guess we did okay in the long run.

New York Is Going to the Dogs

Danish photographer Peter Funch sets up his camera on street corners in New York, shooting the same scene repeatedly throughout the day. Then he composites different people into the same scene for social commentary or humorous effect.

It's good to see someone using Photoshop for something other than putting the heads of celebrities onto someone else's naked body.

(Via BoingBoing)

Walking the Talk

Great story in the Sunday Star Tribune about a group of volunteers with the Community Justice Project who work with ex-cons to reintegrate them into mainstream life. Written by Jeff Strickler, the article brings attention to some of the unsung heroes who are around us every day.

Heroes like Henry Bridges, an MTC bus driver who has mentored 100 men after they were released from prison. He keeps in touch with them after they move beyond the program, too. As Strickler quotes Bridges, "Just because people have been locked up in jail doesn't mean that they don't deserve a second chance... When people get out of jail and prove that they are willing to step forward, we need to help them become good citizens."

In general, 45 percent of Minnesota ex-cons return to prison within a year of release; for Community Justice Project participants, the rate is 13 percent. (Some of that success rate comes from the fact that the program is selective -- they're looking for people who have had a change of approach while in prison.)

The Community Justice Project is a joint program of the Minneapolis Council of Churches and the Minneapolis Police Department, and is run by Hillary Freeman, a woman who's both a cop and a UCC minister. But it's not a "faith-based program," a la the Bush administration: About 75 percent of the mentors are motivated by religious conviction, but 25 percent "don't have anything to do with churches," according to Freeman.

With 1 in every 100 U.S. adults in prison (according to the Pew Center on the States), having a plan for how to successfully reintegrate them into society seems pretty essential. Thanks to Jeff Strickler for bringing this great program to wider awareness.

Volunteers are always needed at the Community Justice Project; to find out more or sign up to attend their next info session, call 612-673-2892.

Down at the VFC

As anyone knows who knows me, I'm a fan of food co-ops. I even visit co-ops when on vacation (yes, it's a sickness, I know).

Food co-ops from across the country are running a video contest, asking members and staffers to show why "My Co-op Rocks." It's been fun to watch the short videos as they've been put up, but I think the winner has emerged, unless something really great gets posted before the deadline on April 17.

Created by a group at Viroqua Food Co-op in the Driftless Region of southwestern Wisconsin, the video does just about everything right -- it uses music and lyrics to get its message across, it's fairly visually interesting, and it's well edited. I actually wanted to watch it more than once, which is a good sign.



Viroqua is one of the co-ops I've visited -- both its old and new stores. Other co-ops I've visited outside of Minnesota, in no particular order...

• Bloomingfoods (Bloomington, Ind., home of elenabella)
• Lexington Cooperative Market (Buffalo, N.Y.)
• Davis Food Co-op (Davis, Calif.)
• Hanover Consumer Cooperative (Hanover, N.H. -- all three stores)
• Upper Valley Food Co-op (White River Junction, Vt.)
• Brattleboro Food Co-op (Brattleboro, Vt.)
• The Food Co-op (Port Townsend, Wash.)
• Good Foods Market (Lexington, Ky.)
• Outpost Natural Foods (Milwaukee and Wauwatosa)
• Food Front (Portland, Ore.)
• PCC Natural Markets (Fremont neighborhood of Seattle)
• GreenStar Co-op (Ithaca, N.Y.)
• Harvest Co-op (Cambridge, Mass.)
• Whole Foods Co-op (Erie, Pa.)
• New Pioneer Co-op (Iowa City, Ia.)
• Oneota Community C0-op (Decorah, Ia.)
• People's Food Co-op (La Crosse, Wis.)
• Tacoma Park Co-op (Maryland -- before it merged with Silver Spring)
• SUNY Binghamton Food Co-op (Vestal, N.Y.)
• Plus the late lamented Hyde Park Co-op in Chicago.

Peeps in Motion

The St. Paul Pioneer Press is, appropriately, one of the pioneers of Peeps diorama contests, and this year they've also started a Peeps video contest.

One of the videos is a fun stop-frame animation (think June Taylor dancers, only with pink and yellow marshmallow creatures), but my favorite was called Mayhem at Mickey's, complete with a nicely made model of Mickey's Diner (a downtown St. Paul landmark) as it was during the RNC... only in the video, it's not the RNC, it's the PNC (Peeps National Convention).

Mein Kat

Once again, I had one of those moments where something I had thought was unique to my family and personal history turns out to be an internet meme. I don't know whether to love it or hate it.

When I was a child, one of the many cats we had was a black and white mutt with a little black spot under his nose. He had a mean personality, and so somebody in the family started calling him Hitler.

Well, it turns out, of course, that there is an entire website devoted to cats that look like Hitler.


It goes without saying that all the cats shown on the site have little "mustaches," but these two "kitlers" were my favorites -- the first one because of its angled "bangs," and the second because of the incongruous combination of fat cat, dour expression, and Alfalfa hairdo.

The site has pages listing responses both for and against the site's very existence, which I think is a first for any site I've seen. It's definitely a bit odd to live in a society that can create a joke out of animals resembling one of the biggest mass murderers of all time.

But at the same time, it seems to me that laughing at cats that look like Hitler diminishes Hitler, rather than lionizing him. (No pun intended.)

Drop All Charges

Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner has dismissed two of four charges against the RNC 8, a group of young people who were arrested in advance of the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.

The stupidity of the charges is highlighted by the overblown language of the ones that were dropped: Conspiracy to Commit Riot in Furtherance of Terrorism, and Conspiracy to Commit Criminal Damage to Property in Furtherance of Terrorism.

The remaining charges are Conspiracy to Commit Criminal Damage to Property in the First Degree (no terrorism intended, I guess) and Conspiracy to Commit Riot in the Second Degree (again, no terrorism was meant to be furthered, never mind what was mentioned earlier about about that terrorism stuff).

Gaertner, who is a Democrat, has her eye on the governor's office in 2010. Who knows how that plays into the legal strategy -- will she pander to the Right by prosecuting, or will her desire to get a nomination out of a bunch of DFL party activists possibly move her to drop the charges altogether?

In their official statement on the dropped charges, the RNC 8 said:

In the months leading up to the RNC, the defendants were involved in open, public organizing with a broad coalition of Twin Cities activists and community members. We continue to assert that the only “conspiracy” committed by the RNC 8 was to provide basic and necessary infrastructure for people who wished to engage in their fundamental right to dissent.

As you may recall, at least part of the state's case is based on informant testimony from a guy who has since been convicted of assault himself. Other parts of the case rely upon objects found in the defendents' homes, many of which could have completely innocent purposes (duct tape, anyone?).

She's Got Her Priorities in Order

There's no such thing as a slow news week for Michele Bachmann these days. She started off with a profile in the Star Tribune called "The Messenger," recounting her recent rise in profile. That piece was followed by this letter to the editor from Thomas Geng of Shorewood:

"The Messenger" shows Rep. Michele Bachmann is serious neither about policy nor legislation. Instead, her bombastic and divisive rhetoric is calculated only to attract the attention and money necessary to keep her firmly entrenched in Washington.

As a former congressional staffer for six years, I know the difference between a conscientious legislator and a headline hunter. The fact that Bachmann devotes three staff positions to "communications" speaks volumes about her real priorities. What a waste of staff resources, not to mention taxpayer dollars!

If Bachmann were serious about advancing public policy and achieving legislative results, she would convert at least two of those "communications" team members into substantive staff assistants. Bachmann's constituents, Minnesota and the nation would be better served either by a change in her priorities or by a change in representation of the Sixth District.

Three staff for a very junior representative... that's probably about 25 percent of her staff budget. Good point, Thomas!

Then yesterday came her latest screed, this time against AmeriCorps. Over the weekend, local website Dump Michele Bachmann picked up Michele talking on the conservative radio station KTLK, saying the White House thinks of AmeriCorps as:

re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward.... then [the young people] have to go to work in some of these politically correct forums.

The story was picked up by The Minnesota Independent, and it has now appeared on the Huffington Post and lots of other outlets.

Dump Michele Bachmann has been publicizing Michele's output for years, and was constantly frustrated at the way her outrageous statements were completely ignored by the maintream press.

But now that Michele has three communications staff members, I guess she's getting her message out!

Favorites from Andy Singer's CARtoons

I first heard of cartoonist Andy Singer when his No Exit cartoons were published in the Pioneer Press for a year or two about five years ago. I knew right away they were not the usual denizens of a daily newspaper -- more like something you'd see in a weekly.

The cartoon above was one of several I clipped out (back in the days before the blog) and had on my bulletin board at work. It also appears in his book CARtoons, along with dozens of other aggressively thought-provoking images about America's car addiction.

In addition to Andy's cogently written polemic that runs throughout, the short book contains a lot of great quotes from other anti-car thinkers, juxtaposed with his cartoons. Some of my favorites:

"In European communities auto use is generally between 30% and 48% of all trips; transit comprises between 11% and 26% of all trips; and pedestrian/bike trips are 33% to 50% of the total. In comparison, the U.S. the average mode split is 86% via auto, 8% walking, 3% bike and 3% transit. In the U.S., the commute itself constitutes only one-quarter of all car trips. Over 40% of car trips are for shopping, social or recreational purposes." Peter Calthorpe, "The Next American Metropilis," 1993. (page 14)

"Unlike the vacuum cleaner, the radio, or the bicycle, which retain their use value when everyone has one, the car, like a villa by the sea, is only desirable and useful insofar as the masses don't have one. That is how in both conception and original purpose the car is a luxury good. And the essence of luxury is that it cannot be democratized. If everyone can have luxury, no one gets any advantages from it." Andre Gorz, "L'ideologie Sociale de la Bagnole," in Le Sauvage, Sept.-Oct. 1973. (page 24) I don't believe Gorz's luxury analysis is completely true of the car, but it's definitely accurate that the more cars there are, the less ease there is in driving one, and also that car advertising emphasizes the idea of driving on empty, romanticized roads, promising people the luxury of space.

"In the mechanized, high-energy system developed during the last two centuries...there is only one efficient speed, faster; only one attractive destination, farther away; only one desirable size, bigger; only one rational quantitative goal, more." Lewis Mumford, The Pentagon of Power, 1970. (page 26)

"A car [in America] requires on average 30 square meters of space at one's home, 30 square meters near one's destination, 60 square meters of road surface, and about 20 square meters to be sold, repaired and maintained. Each car thus requires a ground surface equivalent to that of a four-person apartment." (page 55)

"An automobile lane can carry a maximum of just 1,500 cars per hour. By contrast, a single track of transit can carry 40,000 to 50,000 people per hour." Paraphrasing Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 1974. (page 47)


You can get your own copy of CARtoons direct from Andy for $10. For an extra $6, he'll include a CD of high resolution images of all the cartoons, which "may be freely reproduced for the non-profit use of individuals or groups fighting cars."

Your Computer Needs Its Sleep

The Star Tribune's Fixit columnist, Karen Youso, has an upcoming article on "phantom load" -- the electrical power that is used by all the appliances in your house or office even when they're not turned on. I had emailed her a while back to ask about this, and just heard that she's got a story due to be published on April 19.

I've been wondering about this topic for a while. For instance, how much energy does a "sleeping" computer use vs. one that's turned off vs. one that's completely unplugged?

Karen was nice enough to send along a link to a study on standby power by Lawrence Berkeley Labs, which she used in writing her story. (This link goes to the study's data table, but be sure to click on the links on the left side of the page for more info.)

The frustrating thing about the Berkeley data is that the amount of power being used by different types of the same appliance varies pretty widely -- for instance, for desktop computers, the average draw while turned on was 73.97 watts, but one computer used as little as 27.5 and another as much as 180.83. Some computers used no power at all when off, while another used over 9 watts. In sleep mode, the average was 21.13, but one computer used 83.3 watts -- more than the average amount used by the desktop models when on!

And from the report, there's no way of knowing whether a specific model of a specific brand consistently delivers a certain power efficiency (say, a Mac vs. a bottom-of-the-barrel OEMed Windows box). A guy named Mr. Electricity says that in general, Macs use a bit less energy than PCs, laptops use less than desktops, and LCD monitors use way less than CRTs. The University of Pennsylvania has a chart that shows the draw for a range of Macs and PCs.

Of course, this isn't just (or even primarily) about computers. We've got lots of other appliances drawing power all the time, so much so that the Lawrence Berkeley folks report phantom load is estimated to use 5 - 10 percent of all electricity in the U.S.

Antibiotics Are Not Food

A week or so ago I read a story about a newly introduced bill in Congress that would prohibit using antibiotics on healthy animals raised for food. Animals could still be given the drugs if they were sick, but the bill would end the prophylactic use of antibiotics in Controlled Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs).

Cows and pigs that are raised or "finished" in CAFOs are much more likely to get sick because they are confined in small amounts of space, exposed to more of their own waste, and given foods that don't completely agree with them (i.e., cows' stomachs aren't meant to digest corn, they're meant to digest grass). When given routine antibiotics, they gain weight faster and bring in more money at slaughter.

How common is the practice? The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that 70 percent of all antibiotics sold in the U.S. are used on healthy livestock.

Unfortunately, there's lots of evidence that indicates this type of antibiotic use is leading to the resistant bacteria that are killing people in hospitals (and sometimes outside of hospitals) every day. The bill, introduced in the House by Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) and in the Senate by Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), is facing heavy lobbying already from meat-producing groups, who claim it will raise prices and threaten the safety of the U.S. food supply -- a bit of logic that I have trouble following.

Then a day or two later I stumbled across this story on Minnesota Public Radio's website, telling about another aspect of the antibiotics puzzle, and also tying into another pet peeve of mine, corn-based ethanol.

Basically, when ethanol is created from corn, the producers use antibiotics as part of the process, to prevent bacteria from competing with the enzymes and yeast that convert the corn sugars to alcohol. When the ethanol is ready, the leftovers from the process are called "distillers grain," and up until now that distillers grain has been sold to farmers as a cheap food for cows and pigs.

But the distillers grain still contains a hefty dose of -- you guessed it -- antibiotics!

Sometimes a bad use of technology just can't win for losing.

A Brief Whirlwind in Chicago

After a laid-back time in Wisconsin, we spent 24 hours in Chicago, mainly with the intent of visiting the Art Institute. After a brief visit and partial tour at the Newberry Library, we checked into the Essex Inn near Grant Park for the night. After a recent renovation, the Essex has adopted a different art theme for each floor, which leads to some odd juxtapositions.


Down the street from the hotel as we walked to dinner, I spied this fine piece of hypocrisy masquerading as cleverness:


I love the Chicago Symphony's logo. It's probably the best use of musical notation I've ever seen in an identity:


The next morning, we took a swing through Millennium Park, a sculpture garden and performance area adjacent to Grant Park (the place where Obama spoke on election night). The last time I was in Chicago, spring 2004, Millenium was still under construction.


The Crown Fountain by artist Jaume Plensa was getting some interaction from a bunch of barefoot high school girls, despite an ambient temperature of maybe 40 degrees.


We were all pretty impressed with the Cloud Gate sculpture by Anish Kapoor. It's a huge, highly polished stainless steel jelly bean, offering wonderful convex reflections of the surrounding Chicago architecture on its outside...


...and interesting convex light reflections for those who look up into its underside.


Inside the Institute, there were many faces in the crowd, from this 3rd century Afghani Buddha to the dancing ladies of Toulouse-Lautrec to over a hundred portraits of famous people by photographer Yousuf Karsh, who created the iconic images of Churchill, Hemingway, Bogart and many others.

The Institute's current special exhibit is dedicated to the works of Edvard Munch, placed in context with other paintings from the same time. It was a nuanced show, dedicated to revealing that while Munch encouraged his public image as a melancholic, even demented artist, he was actually more grounded than that, and was actively trying to establish a Scandinavian aesthetic in the midst of French dominance during the Impressionist period. The Scream, the curators seemed to be saying, was only one aspect of Munch's work. (No photos were allowed in the special exhibit, hence no photos to represent all of this.)

However, once outside the exhibit and in the gift store, there was no chance of erasing the usual association of Munch and his most famous work:

Vegetables Contain Disease

For the want of a hyphen the meaning was lost.

Seen at the St. Paul College cafeteria, March 16, 2009.

April Fool's Day, a Bit Late

Outrageous news from Peter Sieruta over at collectingchildrensbooks.com on 4/1/09 (and possibly even more outrageous news last year on 4/1/08 -- love that cover art!).

Taking a Break with Some Wood Type

Yes, I'm obsessed enough about the Hamilton Wood Type Museum to spend part of spring break there helping out as a volunteer. As I wrote last summer, the museum received a huge donation of presses, type and images from the Globe Corporation of Chicago, and hadn't had time to unpack it all.


I'm happy to report that a lot of progress has been made in the nine months since my last visit. The images have all been shelved by category, and much of the type has been sorted and put away as well. More boxes of type await sorting and shelving, so I did a bit of that.

While there, I also got a look at this intact printing form from 1893, created by the Hamilton Company for the Columbian Exhibition in Chicago:


It was never actually printed; instead, Hamilton workers painted some of the letters red, yellow and black and left others natural. It has been on display in the corporate office from the late 19th century until now, moving only so the museum can print it to make commemorative posters for its 10th anniversary celebration this Memorial Day weekend. (In case you're wondering -- they're shrink-wrapping the whole thing in plastic before inking it, so it won't affect the appearance of the form.)


Greg Corrigan, technical director of the museum, showed us some of the less-often-seen parts of the collection.


It's hard for me to describe how beautiful each piece of type is as an object, but this R begins to get at it. Cut from a solid piece of rock maple and about 5" tall, the letter appears to have never been printed.

It's just one letter in a pile of letters at the museum, waiting to be put away.

Here Comes Everybody

Now that I've finished Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations, I'm recommending it to anyone who has an interest in the ways things have been changing lately -- the death of the newspaper, the rise of social media, the shift in how politics operates, and more.

There were a lot of ah-ha moments as I read the book. Shirky does a good job of explaining how structured organizations have operated up until now, a necessary base for understanding how things have changed. I have to admit, this is not something I've thought a lot about, having had a lifelong resistance to joining structured organizations. That type of structure has a minimum cost to it, and because of that cost, companies have not been able to provide some services or products because the cost is too high compared to the price people would be willing to pay for them.

Examples where social media, which allow for organizing without organizations, have provided a service that no traditional corporation could afford to provide:

• Flickr photo sharing from events
• Flash mobs organized via LiveJournal or groups organized with Meetup
• A far-ranging encyclopedia created by users via the Wikipedia.

Key concepts in the book

Publish, then filter. Up until now, the standard has been filter, then publish -- which was the job of the editor, paid by some type of corporation. With social media, the cost of publishing has decreased so drastically that there is no need to limit what gets published. This turns everything on its head:

Though the filtering of the good from the mediocre starts as an economic imperative, the public enjoys the value of that filtering as well, because we have historically relied on the publisher's judgment to help ensure minimum standards of quality. Where publishing is hard and expensive, every instance of the written word comes with an implicit promise: someone besides the writer thought this was worth reading. (pages 97-98).

Mass amateurization, which results from the loss of preemptive filtering. The Wikipedia is an example of this, and while one might expect it means all those amateurs would contribute equally, that is typically not the case. In fact, there is a fairly standard curve that shows the amount of participation in different collaborative media, and that curve is very high at the left end (a small number of users) and very low for a long time at the right end (the vast majority of users).


Power law distribution is the name for that curve. Shirky writes, "This pattern is general to social media: on mailing lists with more than a couple dozen participants, the most active writer is generally much more active than the person in the number-two slot, and far more active than the average." (page 124) And this imbalance is not a bad thing:

...the imbalance drives large social systems rather than damaging them. Fewer than two percent of Wikipedia users ever contribute, yet it is enough to create profound value for millions of users....

Though the word "ecosystem" is overused as a way to make simple situations seem more complex, it is merited here, because large social systems cannot be understood as a simple aggregation of the behavior of some nonexistent "average" user. (page 125)

This power law distribution is key to how social media work, because a few people who care a lot about something can suddenly have an effect because they can more easily hook up with a lot of people who care a little:

Having a handful of highly motivated people and a mass of barely motivated ones used to be a recipe for frustration. The people who were on fire wondered why the general population didn't care more, and the general population wondered why those obsessed people didn't just shut up. Now the highly motivated people can create a context more easily in which the barely motivated people can be effective without having to become activists themselves. (page 182)

Open source works because it makes failure free. Well, not free to the person who fails, but free to the larger group. Here, the classic example is the development of the Linux operating system. It's publish then filter yet again -- or, as in the old saying, throw a bunch of ideas against the wall and see which ones stick. It almost sounds like natural selection.

The takeaway

The book concludes with a set of parameters that any successful social medium or movement must meet. Of course, these are easy to assess post hoc, and hard to create on purpose. They are:

• A plausible promise (why join?)
  
• An effective tool (how will coordination happen?)
  
• An acceptable bargain with the users/members (what can they expect, and what is expected of them?)

The promise is essential because, as Shirky writes, "Any new claim on someone's time must obviously offer some value, but more important, it must offer some value higher than something else she already does, or she won't free up the time." (page 262)

For instance, why have I started visiting Facebook every day? (And why did I just go reflexively check it when I wrote that sentence?) It's because it's giving me something -- mundane, day-to-day connection with people from all different parts of my life history. What have I given up to have time for it? Probably some television watching. Not much of a loss.

Getting a social media group going is hard, Shirky points out. Most people don't want to put energy into something that doesn't have critical mass, but a group can't attain critical mass without people putting energy into it. It's like stone soup for the soul, and the solution, he says, is for the organizers to be active hosts, circulating constantly to make people feel welcome. He quotes one of the founders of Flickr: "you have to greet the first 10,000 users personally." (page 264)

Finding the right tool is next. Two criteria to use in assessing tools are the number of people involved and the duration of the involvement. Shirky emphasizes that we not poo-poo existing tools like blogs or wikis, or even long-standing ones like email lists and discussion groups. He writes, "The most profound effects of social tools lag their invention by years, because it isn't until they have a critical mass of adopters, adopters who take these tools for granted, that their real effects begin to appear." (page 270)

Finally, the bargain. "The essential aspect of the bargain is that the users have to agree to it... the bargain has to be part of the lived experience of interaction." (page 273) A wiki's bargain is that anyone can write, and anyone can edit anyone else's copy. Wikis that work do so because adherents take ownership, and prevent pranksters from destroying the content (at least, from destroying it for any great length of time). Some Flickr groups work by having rules about commenting on others' photos two times for every photo you upload, which leads to everyone getting feedback, thus fulfilling the group's bargain.

As an aside, Shirky points out that the way those Flickr groups work is called "equality matching," in the words of a UCLA anthropologist named Alan Page Fiske, who has written about four modes of participation: equality matching, communal sharing, authority ranking and market pricing. Traditional publishing with an editor's vetting is an example of authority ranking; market pricing is all too familiar in our capitalist economy. Which left me wondering how communal sharing would play out. Guess I'll have to go look up some of Fiske's work.

It's information like that, sprinkled throughout Here Comes Everybody, that makes reading Clay Shirky so fun and invigorating. There's always something more to think about.