Relax.

Poopsie Endorsement Seen as Key Factor in Narrow Win…

Breaking News…

Peter Shumlin and Poopsie

Tonight has been a crazy primary election for the Democratic nomination for governor, but I’m getting ready to call it so I can publish this post and go to bed.  I’ll just live blog the AP results until I’m comfortable clicking “publish.”  Thanks to Seven Days for their fun chat room tonight.  Yeah I know.  It’s not live blogging if don’t publish it, right?  Well I count myself as a reader too, so it’s “live” as I write it to me.

8/25/10

12:47am- 88.5% of precincts reporting- Racine up by 13 votes- 16,443 (25.1%) to Shumlin’s 16,656 (25.1%)
1:01am-88.8% of precincts reporting- Racine up by 81 votes- 16,443 (25.1%) to Shumlin’s 16,575 (25.0%)
1:08am-89.2% of precincts reporting- Shumlin up by 121 votes- 16,90 (25.1%) to Shumlin’s 16,7=839 (25.9%)
Wait a minute- I can just cut and paste from the Times Argus site…
1:13 a.m. – With 234 of Vermont’s 260 (90%) precincts reporting, Peter Shumlin’s lead is just 87 votes in the Democratic governor’s primary.

Peter Shumlin – 17,053 votes (25%) Doug Racine – 16,966 votes (25%) Deb Markowitz – 16,456 votes (24%) Matt Dunne – 14,222 votes (21%) Susan Bartlett – 3,524 votes (5%) (Associated Press and Times Argus figures)

1:33am- Alright.  Screw it.  I’m ready to make the call.  Based on the numbers still out in the southern counties, BurlingtonPol.com now officially projects- Peter Shumlin has won the Democratic gubernatorial nomination.  Good night.

Marc is my former next door neighbor and an important Burlington writer.  He makes my blog list.

Novels:
Tsim-tsum
The Good Doctor Guillotin
The Annotated Nose
Skulk
The Lamentations of Julius Marantz
Golem Song
The Education of Arnold Hitler
Insect Dreams, the Half Life of Gregor Samsa
(now also in German, from Parthas Verlag, Berlin)

Memoir:
Rehearsing With Gods: Photographs and Essays on the Bread & Puppet Theater (with Ron Simon, photographer)

Website:
http://web.me.com/mestrin/marcestrin/Home.html

Blog:
http://marcestrin.blogspot.com

Facebook profile:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1019780892&ref=mf#/profile.php?v=info&ref=mf&id=1019780892

Facebook page: Novels and other Texts:
ttp://www.facebook.com/pages/Marc-Estrin-Novels-and-other-Texts/177742610805?ref=mf

I haven’t forgotten my responsibility to blog about AWOL II (After Work/Off-Line) a Baruth for State Senate campain event that happened last Tuesday, August 10th from 4-6 pm at August First Bakery in Burlington.

When I arrived Philip was talking to Ed Adrian who was just leaving to get to a Markowitz for governor campaign event.  Ed tried to get me to come along.  “C’mon,” he said “you’re officially undecided aren’t you?”

“I don’t know…Poopsie’s pretty into Shumlin.  We might be a Shumlin household…”

This was the first time I’ve ever been to August First.  I first went to August First in August.  Great ambiance.  Great setting.  Sitting there I felt like I could as easily be in San Francisco.

I hung out with Charity Tensel for a while.  She helped organize the event.  As Charity and I talked, I kept an ear to Philip’s informal round-table with four or five interested attendees.

Lauren Ober was there buying coffee or pie or something, and Charity was all excited to meet her.  “I love your writing!” Charity told Lauren Ober adoringly.

“And I also, have read some of your writing,” said I.  Ober said something neutral, and hustled out with the aura of a rugby player with a minor wound.  Thinking about Lauren Ober always gives me pause.  She has a career and I don’t.   How can that be?

Um… that was it.  I got back to my car just before it started pouring rain.

Why do bills always ask you to write the amount you’re enclosing?  What?  Like they’re not gonna look at the check?

http://muckraker-gg.blogspot.com/

…been here longer than me.

A long time ago I had a dream about sipping tea in a hot spring in the Himalayas with Bernie Sanders and the Dalai Lama.  Later in real life Bernie endorsed me for the city council, and I did actually meet the Dalai Lama in the Himalayas.  I went to a hot spring too, but that was in Idaho.  Last night I had a dream I was talking to Bernie Sanders on a train on its way to DC.  He was being unusually friendly, but coy.  I asked him about the logistics of how he won mayor as an independent.  He was all smiles.

The following is an email from our good friend and frequent BP contributor Jonas about a fun event to support a worthy cause.  I hope you don’t mind Jonas, but I didn’t see how I could write it better than you.

*************

(07.09.10)

Greetings,

My page: https://atl.etapestry.com/fundraiser/TravisRoyFoundation/WiffleBallTournament/individual.do?participationRef=2535.0.69762133

I had a nice chat with recent BHS assistant principal (and current Wheeler interim principal) Brian Williams this evening and he gave me the skinny on the cameras at the high school. According to Brian there are is/are:

3 cameras in C Building intended to deter theft of valuable equipment stored there; 4 cameras in the tech center intended to deter theft of valuable equipment stored there; 4 cameras in the cafeteria intended to deter naughty behavior; 1 camera in front of the school; 8 cameras around the grounds and exterior of the school (but none in c woods) to record who comes and goes; 3 cameras in the lobby; 1 camera outside the girls’ locker room; 2 cameras outside the boys’ locker room; about six other cameras in various places throughout the school.

Brian explained the plan for these cameras’ installation has been in the works for a couple of years and as Molly Walsh reported Sunday, they were installed during the last school year. Mr. Williams is clearly a big supporter of the cameras and touts what he sees as their effectiveness as a deterrent. “We had rash of thefts from the locker rooms” he explained “things like ipods, cell phones and cash were being stolen almost daily.” However after the cameras went in the thefts just about stopped completely, said Williams.

Williams said the cameras were “innocuous” in their placement and appearance, and provide school officials a much faster and more accurate method for figuring out events they might have previously been forced to piece together from conflicting accounts. He cited the case of a student fight in the cafeteria that precipitated numerous interviews about who did what, juxtaposed with another fight caught on camera outside the school’s main entrance. “With that one, we just had it” he explained, pointing out the cameras’ elimination of mystery and the detective work it generates.

So I’m on the School Board’s Policy and Advocacy Committee, ok?  And for the last couple of months we have been working on writing the School District’s surveillance camera policy. The superintendent and her assistant seemed to tell our committee that we already had a camera here and there, and the lawyers thought we’d better have policy about their use. That seemed perfectly reasonable, and I think we wrote a pretty good policy.

But this morning I read Molly Walsh’s story about it in the Burlington Free Press from Sunday “Burlington schools consider surveillance camera policy.” in it she writes:

“During the 2009-10 school year, district officials installed 32 cameras in and around Burlington High School. They also installed a camera at the Sustainability Academy at Lawrence Barnes.”

Um… 32 cameras at BHS? Jeanne never told our committee this. That does not seem like a small detail to me. We already have 32 cameras at one school? It probably wouldn’t have changed the policy at all, but I can’t imagine it wouldn’t have colored the discussion about it somewhat.

This is the second time I have learned important school information from the media that I should have learned from the superintendent. And I’ve been on the school board, what? Four months? Yeah. That’s just not good.

July 31, 2010

*Congratulations Jonas and Lily!

*Thank you for your service Marrisa.

Determinism: the philosophical view that every event, including all human thought and behavior, is determined by previous events.

Free Will: Screw previous events.  “I do what I want” (Like Eric Cartman).

Please note: right now on the Google there are:
About 2,460,000 results (0.31 seconds) for “free will vs determinism”
About 170,000 results (0.23 seconds) for “determinism vs free will”

That means alphabetical order is not usually followed when people put those two phrases versus each other. People like free will better. They may not believe in it, but it’s kind of a bummer to say everything is predetermined and there is no free will. Doesn’t exactly make you Mr. Laughs at parties. Still though, nobody will ever know so you might as well live like you have free will anyway. I mean, how could you not?

Yep. I’m putting my philosophy minor to good use.

Thanks again to Philip, Odum and everyone for making this year’s politcal barbacue and hamburger summit fantastic fun. Here’s a few pictures and a short film from the event.

Poopsie’s all into Shumlin now.

Philip getting animated.

Yana and Arnie Gunderson’s dog.

Ed Adrian, me and Philip. My five year old Koko took this picture.

Charity did the honors and took our family portrait this year.

At North Beach today from 1-5.  Has it been a year already?

Before it was a sports bar. or Mongolian grill, or Hooters, or whatever, there was a restaurant on Williston Road Called “Ground Round.”  Before that it was also called Ground Round, but it was cool.

Anybody remember the old Ground Round?  They used to have a movie screen playing old Lone Ranger movies and Loonie Toons.  They had popcorn and video games, and funny mirrors.   It was awesome for kids when I was a kid.  I was lucky. 

This was back when Inda House was a Big Ben’s Pizza.

Happy Friday.  Thank God the work week has ended and I have a chance to sit down and write to you.  It’s a fleeting chance because I have go to Toys R Us when the Fam gets here in a couple of minutes.

I just wanted to say I’ve been thinking a lot about death, and how we all die, and how we like to say things like “man has controlled fire for thousands of years” when in reality one person has ever lived that long.  My father is, let’s just say- ehem- over 100 years old.  The police asked “how old is your father” before they let me on the plane out of Armenia last year.  I of course gave them the answer that matched what his passport says.  The other day my father was telling me a World War II story about meeting a former Bolshevik army officer.   Bolshevik.  Did you know that during the time he was a Nazi slave- he had a girlfriend in Hungary?  He dressed up as a Nazi soldier so he could enter her house and got rid of a gun that would have sent her to prison.  He saw 14 other prisoners shot to death as punishment for other prisoners’ escape.  It’s hard to explain.  He was dragged around Europe with chains on his feet for two years.  He said he was very near the battle of Stalingrad.  He is a story machine right now.  I think he’s feeling his age a little.

So we all die, including our own children someday.  As a parent you have to come to grips- Not only that you are responsible for that new person – but also for his or her eventual death.  How horrible.  I have to weigh that when thinking about whether I want a third child.  Sako the diamond dealer says more room will always somehow be made at the table.  But I have to ask myself whether I really believe that.  Look at the state of the world.  People are hungry and we’re eating into the natural environment at an alarming rate.  All economics are based on the wealth derived from the natural environment.  You can’t eat money.

At least as it is I can pretend to rationalize that me and my wife with our two kids have justifiably replaced ourselves.  We have a boy and a girl actually.  A little me and a little her.  In reality I know that since my wife and I are both living, we haven’t replaced two with two others.  We have added two to two.  And Poopsie and I are not the worst offenders, believe me.  My father for example.  He had seven children (two are deceased)…that we know of.

Family is home.  Time for a trip to Williston.  Whoo.

*****

Update 8:40pm: Back from Toys R Us.  The climate in that store sucks.  Everytime I go in there I feel like I might as well be in a warehouse in China where 98% of the toys were made.  Warehouse air and warehouse lighting.  Cheap plastic crap carrying trillions of invisible dust mites from accross the Pacific. 

The point I was going to make about death is that it makes all of life seem like a dream.  Despite the fact that it’s all we know, it’s existence that’s the aberration, and non-existence that’s the norm.  Think about it.  Time went back forever before you arrived, and it will go on forever after you’re gone.  Is life even real?  Is time?

Anyway.  Mr. Brown said “life is what you make it.” 

That’s essentially what I’m saying too.

Everything else is irrelevant.

Happy fourth of July Y’all!  Whoo!  I hope you’re all out there doing what you’re doing.  Barbecue, Revolutionary War reenactment, swimming- or what have you.  I went to a barbecue at Poopsie’s sister’s place and took a quick dip in the Huntington River.  Last night we saw the fireworks from Battery Park.  Not bad but they got started too late for the kids.  Yana was getting fussy.  “Me no love those pretty things!” she fussed. 

How about that stunt plane before the fireworks?!  Was that some crazy flying or what?

Anyway- God Bless America and enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Toward the end of her life two years ago, my mother tended to wear sneakers with velcro straps for their ease of use.  She was overweight and in immense pain from cancer, so I would often help her to put on and take off these shoes with the velcro straps.

The other day I was helping my three year old daughter Yana put on her little sneakers with velcro straps  and a peculiar déjà vu hit me.  Yana looks like and reminds me of my mother in many ways.  She has the same sort of look in her eyes sometimes, and it’s hard to explain but her legs are shaped sort of the same as my mom’s.  Putting miniature velcro sneakers on my daughter’s feet sent me on a flashback to when I put velcro sneakers on my mother’s feet. 

Just now I came out of the shower and Yana came running up with a pink towel that used to belong at my parents’ house but has now ended up in mine.  You know how material things will shuffle themselves around like that.  The pink towel is pretty old and has loose threads, but is still functional.  Yana has claimed it. 

“See my pink towel?” she said. 

“That used to be your grandma’s towel.” I said. 

Yana smiled with curiosity “yeah?”

“But now it’s yours!  It’s your pink towel!”

“Yay!” said my little girl, and then she squeezed the old pink towel in a hug.

I received a press release announcing a new report by ‘Voices for Vermont’s Children’ called “Challenging Poverty: Supporting Children and Families in Difficult Times” (Warning: It’s depressing.)

Here’s the associated press release sent out by the group’s research coordinator Nicole Mace.

Burlington Schools Superintendent Jeanne Collins has a blog.   Check it out:

BSD Superintendent’s Blog

Did you feel that earthquake today?  I knew immediately that it was an earthquake and also that there was nothing to worry about.  Vermont has earthquakes sometimes.  This was probably my fourth or fifth.

And how about this fellow Michael Hastings, huh?  My brother in law called me today to say it was his good friend Michael who wrote the Rolling Stone article that got the U.S. commander in Afghanistan fired.  He said I probably met Hastings at his wedding five years ago.  I don’t remember.

Non sequitur alert.  I attended the special school board meeting yesterday where four of us attended in person and four other commissioners attended by phone to muster a quarum of eight so we could appoint Brian Williams the interim principle of Wheeler Elementary aka The Integrated Arts Academy.

I’ve had a terrible feeling about the puncture in the earth at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico since it started leaking oil on April 20.  I just have never had a clear picture in my mind of what it looks like down there.  For example, when I picture BP shearing off a jagged pipe and putting a cap on it, it’s hard for me to conceptualize how that fix did not solve the problem, but it obviously didn’t.  I also didn’t get how pumping golf balls and tires into it was supposed to succeed in stopping the flow, when pumping heavy mud into it had just failed.  Now there’s serious talk about detonating a nuclear explosion on it to try to stop the flow, and some reports that are circulating are unbelievably dire:

“A dire report circulating in the Kremlin today that was prepared for Prime Minister Putin by Anatoly Sagalevich of Russia’s Shirshov Institute of Oceanology warns that the Gulf of Mexico sea floor has been fractured “beyond all repair” and our World should begin preparing for an ecological disaster “beyond comprehension” unless “extraordinary measures” are undertaken to stop the massive flow of oil into our Planet’s eleventh largest body of water.

Most important to note about Sagalevich’s warning is that he and his fellow scientists from the Russian Academy of Sciences are the only human beings to have actually been to the Gulf of Mexico oil leak site after their being called to the disaster scene by British oil giant BP shortly after the April 22nd sinking of the Deepwater Horizon oil platform.”

I don’t know if the report is true, but I do know the oil has been locked away under the crust of the earth at the bottom of the sea for a long time.  Maybe millions of years.  I know no other animal or sea creature on earth would have ever attempted to drill a hole at the bottom of the ocean for any purpose.  I know that as recently as only 200 years ago, drilling a deep hole at the bottom of the ocean would have been impossible, even for humans.

Humans have very little experience with poking holes in the earth at the bottom of the ocean, and the earth itself has very little experience with getting those holes poked into it. 

In other words, we have no idea what we’re fucking with down there.  It might be worse than we can possibly comprehend.