Category — History

I think this list includes all of the mayors except our current mayor Miro Weinberger.  You can see that quite a few Burlington streets are named for mayors- Woodbury, Crombie, Van Patten, Blodgett, Drew and Henry.  And look at Captain James E. Burke of the Starship Burlington over here! He served four terms between 1903 and 1935!

http://rangevoting.org/BurlMayors.txt

Harbor Hideaway restaurant on Shelburne Road is no more. I remember eating there once when I was really little. There was a real skeleton in a casket in the foyer, was there not?

Update. Yes.  There was .  My memories from 30 years ago or more still work.  Now where are my keys?

I kind of feel my blog used to be better. Check out this page from the past…

http://burlingtonpol.blogspot.com/2008_02_01_archive.html

City Council Dem Caucus Chair Ed Adrian forwarded me this memo written by attorney Dan Richardson of “eat more kale” fame.  He indicates the city would have an uphill battle to give voting rights to non-citizens.

Click Here to Read Memo

It’s 11:15pm.

Events are swirling around and around like the plastic bag in American Beauty.  I need to capture the day before midnight. 

First of all I just saw the clip on WPTZ of Bob Kiss stepping in and doing the absolutely courageous and moral thing in asking the police to release Haley the protester and de-escalate the tension in City Hall Park tonight.  Most other mayors in America would have cowered beind their desks.  Bob stepped into a cold hard rain stayed true to his own heart.  In a very real sense this may have been his mayorship’s finest hour.  Bob I am so, so proud of you.  I want you to know that.

Earlier in the day a 35 year old man named Josh shot himself in City Hall Park and later died.

Last night Eugene and maybe some other members of Gogol Bordello played a show city hall park.  They are playing at Higher Ground tonight. 

From 7-8:30pm I took the kids to see my father who is 102 years old and my brother.  My brother would have had the power to get me into the sold-out Gogol show if I had anywhere near the energy to go.  Every time they come part of me wants to go, since the last Eugene performance I saw was a Fags show at Club Toast, but I never have wanted it bad enough to overcome my constant exhaustion from life- from parenting, home maintenance, school boarding, negotiating marriage, and the emotional toll from whatever it is I do for work.   Pamala Racine personally invited me to Gogol show three years ago ago and I didn’t even go then.  I had all the same excuses.  Then I think- Damn. Eugene is my age.  How does he have the energy?

There’s something happening with a blogger names Jim Romenesko.  He left the blog he worked for earlier than he was going to over being disciplined about proper attribution.  Readers are crying foul.  As a blogger I always use quotation marks and block quotes, but then again I don’t always do that with the ever-changing tagline.  I guess Romenesko did a sort of news aggregation site, so most readers may have accepted his links as tantamount to quotes.  Everybody has to decide how they want to behave out here in the internets and readers have to decide for themselves what standards they want to hold bloggers to.  My disclaimer has served me well.

And about the Democratic caucus Sunday… Well that’s the big event, huh?  I will have my interview with Jason Lorber transcribed and published before the caucus.  I’m sorry but I only got to interviewing two of the three and a half Dems running.   It’s all circumstantial.  Bram reached out to me about an interview and Jason just happen to come into the Bagel Cafe when I was interviewing Bram, so I offered to interview Jason too- really out of pure awkwardness.   As some of you have already guessed, I’m supporting Bram Kranichfeld for the nomination, but I extend an open invitation to interview Miro or Tim should either win Sunday.  I will reserve my endorsement for mayor itself until we are much closer to March.  There’s great freedom in being an independent, but of couse it comes at a price for anyone interested in an office higher than school board.  Like a wise man once told me “You saw what happened to Dan Smith.”

Thank you to the 154 visitors who read this blog today, most of whom are from Burlington.  See you tomorrow.

When I ran for city council in 1995 I was fortunate to meet Sadie White. When she winked at me, I knew I was going to win.

Here is the video of Jonathan Leopold telling Matty Tanner and “Mike Jones” that the Board of Finance was briefed in May of 2008 about Burlington Telecom’s inability to get financing and of its continued use of pooled city cash in violation of its certificate of public good.  May 2008 was about a year before the story broke and almost a year before the re-election of mayor Bob Kiss.  If Kurt Wright had wanted to, or had been smart enough to, he certainly could have used that information in the last election, and he probably would have won. You may recall that at the time the Board of Finance was made up of the following five people- Mayor Kiss, Chief Administrative officer Leopold and a city councilor from each party.  Democrat Andy Montroll, Republican Kurt Wright and Progressive Time Ashe.

And Where’s Lloyd Benson when you need him?  This week the Vermont chapter president of the American Federation of Teachers called Ashe the best choice saying  “Tim Ashe is a young Bernie Sanders.”  That’s like saying The Phantom Menace is as good as the orignal Star Wars.  Ridiculous on its face.   Somebody’s got to say it…

“Senator, I served with Bernie Sanders. I knew Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Bernie Sanders.”