It’s not me saying that, it was Barack Obama, last month. Good advice, but as is often the case when you’re president, it landed him in hot water, so two weeks ago he went out of his way to praise the city and encourage people to visit and spend sums of money smaller than the college fund.

“Let me set the record straight – I love Vegas, always have,” he said. “Love Vegas. Enjoy myself every time I’ve got an opportunity to visit.”

There are a few verbal “tells” there. Just as George W. Bush mangled his words when he spoke about things he didn’t seem to care about – poor people, education – but never slipped when canceling international treaties or threatening small nations, so Mr. Obama says “let me be clear” or “set the record straight” when he’s about to be insincere. He also tends to drop the first person singular noun and begin his truncated sentence with the verb when he’s BS’ing.

It’s an occupational hazard and an irony that the leader of the world’s only superpower can’t express too many opinions in public, lest he have to grovel before some hypersensitive constituency. Our sense of “victim entitlement” has really hit overdrive when the president has to go out of his way to praise Vegas as a wholesome place to go lose your money.

Politicians are a bunch of phonies, we all know that, but we hesitate to acknowledge the part we play in making them so.

“I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession which I entered before my husband was in public life.” – Hillary Rodham Clinton, March 1992.

Ms. Rodham, er.. Mrs. Clinton got herself in hot water with that one, even had to share her cookie recipes. Although she had to phony up to make amends, I always thought the initial comment was a shot at all the phony political wives who never dared to have a career, lest it cause the least distraction from the alpha male in the relationship.

Similarly, Barbara Bush during the 1984 election campaign said of Geraldine Ferraro, “I can’t say it, but it rhymes with ‘witch.’” She too, had to backpedal and resort to such inanities as writing her cocker spaniel’s “autobiography” to soften her tough ol’ broad image.

So, it’s a curse, I suppose, this phoniness. (We won’t mention the Edwardses.) Once in a while, a politician comes along and cuts against the phony grain, making a name for him or herself as a straight shooter in the process. John McCain was that guy, until he ran for president and doused himself in Eau de Phonee.

Which is not to say public figures should abandon all phoniness. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi brags about his plastic surgery, appoints his mistresses to run ministries and all but dares the courts to indict him on criminal charges. That’s going a bit too far the other way.

A nice happy medium – Pierre and Margaret Trudeau, say. He was thrown out of the officers’ corps during World War II for lack of discipline, he married a woman 30 years his junior and she partied at Studio 54 (sans culottes) just before a Canadian national election. He lost that election, but staged a comeback a year later.

Alas, the US is not Canada and never will be. If the phony phad merely provided phodder for parlor games, it would be one thing, but the virus attacks every system in the body politic. It leads politicians to tell us they’re working on our behalf while they’re selling us out to the banks and oil, coal and insurance companies. It leads individual senators to cut of unemployment payments and send federal workers on furlough. It causes political parties to dangle the future of the nation over a cliff, because what they really care about is power, not governance.

In the end, phoniness may be the death of our democracy.

© Mark Floegel, 2010

Our legislators all have other jobs – they’re farmers and business people, professors and attorneys. There’s a law on the books that says a person cannot be fired from his or her day job because she or he is attending to legislative duties. Wealthy professionals are over-represented in the Vermont legislature, but show me a legislature where they’re not. All in all, I think we do pretty well.

Still, I sense an unvoiced inferiority complex when it comes to our legislature. We have New York just to the west and Massachusetts to the south and while we all thank good fortune every day that we are not those states, there’s a certain junior varsity air to the whole undertaking.

So what? The point of a legislature is not offices and staffers or worse, to provide a space for lobbyists to hang out all the year through. The point is to make good government and then go home. That’s what the Vermont legislature does in 16 weeks (more or less) each year.

Yesterday, the Vermont Senate, on a vote of 26-4, became to first legislative body in America to close a nuclear power plant, Vermont Yankee, which is owned by the Entergy Corporation of New Orleans, Louisiana.

The plant, first opened in 1972, is scheduled to close in 2012. Entergy Louisiana, which bought Vermont Yankee in 2002, wanted the legislature to extend its permission to operate another 20 years.

The Louisiana folks have – to be honest – run the place into the ground. A cooling tower collapse, a transformer fire, a crane dropping high-level radioactive waste, missing fuel rods – it would be funny if it wasn’t tragic.

The latest fiasco has been leaks of tritium and cobalt-60 that Entergy cannot neither find nor plug for the last seven weeks. We do know the leak is from an underground pipe – a pipe Entergy Louisiana officials swore under oath did not exist.

Yesterday Curtis Hebert, new guy in Vermont (the old guy got sent on vacation after the leak) held a (sorta) press conference before the Senate met. He read a statement and refused to take questions. The statement said lawyers hired by Entergy to conduct an “independent internal investigation” found Entergy officials didn’t lie to regulators about the supposedly nonexistent leaky pipe. (Translation: “We’re not dishonest, we’re incompetent. Can we please keep running a nuke in your state?”)

The snow flew all through the day, heavy flakes that accumulated like wet cement. Town meeting, our annual exercise in direct democracy, is next Tuesday and we always seem to get a blizzard within a week of town meeting.

Inside the statehouse, a holiday atmosphere reigned. Some two hundred supporters of closing Vermont Yankee crowded the halls. Entergy Louisiana had trucked in 50 plant workers the day before, but none we present for the actual debate. Off looking for the leaks, I suppose. A public gallery runs the perimeter of the Senate chamber. Citizens sit so close, they can reach out and tap legislators on the shoulder.

Extra police officers were in the halls to help with crowd control, but environmental organizers kept everyone headed where they needed go. I saw one police officer cooing to a year-old baby who had a “Retire Vermont Yankee as Planned” sticker on her snugli. A delegation of Russian citizens on a cultural exchange passed through the crowd with their interpreter. Their eyes were wide in amazement. Doesn’t look like this back home, does it folks?

The final vote – 26 to 4 – is in keeping with conversations I’ve had with fellow Vermonters in the last few years. Most people know the time for nuclear power is past and look forward to a renewable energy future. A few people disagree, are dug in and put out that they constitute such a small minority. It’s OK, they’ll get over it. We’ll welcome them back. It’s Vermont, after all. We’ll be living together for the rest of our lives.

© Mark Floegel, 2010

It’s strange her husband told reporters he didn’t know she had a gun – until he remembered he’d accompanied her to a shooting range several times in recent weeks.

It’s strange the Bishops were questioned in a 1993 case in which a bomb was planted in one of their Harvard professor’s houses. (No one was ever charged with a crime in connection with the incident.)

It’s very strange that Ms. Bishop’s brother died of a shotgun blast 1986, a blast delivered by Ms. Bishop. The official story (until this week, that is) was the shooting was an accident. This was Ms. Bishop’s story, corroborated by her mother. Ms. Bishop supposedly was trying to unload the weapon, with which she was unfamiliar, when it went off – once into a wall, once into a ceiling and once into her brother. He died of the wound.

It’s strange that she then ran down the street with the shotgun, pointing it at drivers, apparently trying to hijack their cars. She was arrested and taken to the police station in her hometown of Braintree, Massachusetts for booking.

While that process was underway, Police Chief John Polio called the station and ordered Ms. Bishop released. Apparently, Ms. Bishop’s mother was a member of the town’s police personnel committee and called Mr. Polio for assistance.

Releasing someone who is at least a “person of interest” in a fatal shooting did not sit well with officers on the force, but the chief’s the chief, so Ms. Bishop was released to her mother’s custody. Apparently, Chief Polio told officers Ms. Bishop was “too emotional” to be interviewed and she would be questioned when she’d calmed down.

I used to be a police reporter and I have to say, I’ve never heard of police granting anyone a “cool down” period before questioning. (“Sarge, let’s let this fellow have a few hours to gather his thoughts. We want a nice, level playing field when we ask him questions. Wouldn’t want him to making contradictory statements or anything.”)

Ms. Bishop was given 11 days (!) to cool and eventually, her brother’s death was ruled an accident and everyone forgot about it – perhaps even during the 1993 Harvard bomb investigation – until Ms. Bishop (allegedly!) shot six people, killing three.

The case of Amy Bishop is strange indeed. What’s not strange is that kid-glove treatment is given to educated, politically connected white people. Can you imagine an African-American male wanted for questioning in a shotgun death being released to his mom for a “cool down” period?

In another Boston suburb last summer, educated, wealthy, politically connected African-American Henry Louis Gates was arrested after being found inside his own home. He was, by all accounts, agitated when he was accosted by the police officer. He was not given a “cool down” period. His mother was not called. He was taken away in handcuffs and charged, although the charges were later dropped.

On Tuesday, the Justice Department decided no federal charges will be brought against the five New York City police officers who fired 50 bullets into a car carrying Sean Bell, killing Mr. Bell on what was to have been his wedding day in 2006. Two men in the car with Mr. Bell were injured. None of the men in the car were armed.

No state charges were brought against the officers. They may be subject to internal department sanctions, but that possibility is currently unclear.

The only “cool down” period Mr. Bell received was in the morgue.

© Mark Floegel, 2010

It’s not universally true. There are times when this administration moves with surprising speed and efficiency. Just last week, President Obama put a task force on a 180-day deadline to figure out how to “overcome barriers to the widespread, cost-effective deployment of CCS within 10 years, with the goal of bringing 5 to 10 commercial demonstration projects on line by 2016.”

And I’ll bet he gets – if not his lofty goal – at least a big, thick report with plenty of recommendations for subsidies, because… Oh right, you may not know what CCS stands for. It’s “carbon capture and storage.”

The idea is that through the miracle of technology, we can capture the CO2 that would otherwise be emitted from the burning of coal and pump in deep underground, where it will never leak out into the atmosphere, thus allowing us to continue using our plentiful coal resources without worrying about global warming.

It’s a myth. It doesn’t exist and never will exist. Carbon capture and storage has been studied for 20 years and we’re not even sure how it would work theoretically, much less in a “widespread, cost-effective” way. We know we can spend outrageous amounts of money trying to grab the CO2 and push it underground. No one thinks it will stay put. The myth, however, is convenient because it allows the people who mine and ship and burn coal – the one substance that is killing our planet more than any other – to keep on with business as usual.

Mr. Obama has given civil servants 10 years to bring the myth to life, in a move deliberately intended to evoke John F. Kennedy’s challenge to put a man on the moon. The moon was not a myth.

Last year’s stimulus package included $3.8 billion for CCS and the new task force – well, like I said – more subsidies for the project. There was nothing like $3.8 billion in the stimulus package for renewable energy sources like solar or wind, even though those technologies are not myths, they’re proven sources of clean energy that are free, once the solar panels or wind turbines are built.

That last sentence explains all you need to know. Because sun and wind are free, no money changes hands selling them, no huge profits are made, so sun and wind can’t afford a big DC lobby like the coal lobby. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like wind and solar aren’t global, billion-dollar businesses. They are and they’ll get bigger. But they’re not coal (or oil). Unfortunately, the intellectual property for sun and wind technologies, which the US owned twenty years ago, is now controlled by Germany and China. We’ve fallen behind, but it’s still possible to catch up. It’s not possible to catch up if we waste our subsidies (and therefore the brainpower of our engineers) on chimeras like CCS.

Mr. Obama gets all this, but he used to be the senator from Illinois and downstate Illinois is coal country. So is Indiana and Pennsylvania and Virginia and Ohio. Mr. Obama won all those states in 2008. He’d like to win them again in 2012 and he’d like Democrats to win in those states later this year. (West Virginia and Wyoming are coal states too and although he didn’t win them, Mr. Obama would like to make inroads.)

Which brings us to the Supreme Court and its decision last month in the case of Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission. The five-justice majority ruled there should be no limits on the amount of money corporations can spend on advertising supporting or attacking electoral candidates. The floodgates are open.

Mr. Obama, to his credit, disagreed with the ruling and went so far as to scold the justices as they sat before him at the State of the Union address (and Justice Samuel Alito sassed Mr. Obama back to his face).

So even though President Obama disagrees with what the court has done, he recognizes the new reality. That reality says that unless the Democrats kneel before King Coal and quick, King Coal’s lobbyists will line up the tee vee ads and machine-gun Democratic candidates in coal country this fall. Plain and simple.

Mr. Obama’s doing what he has to do to keep his party (and maybe – or maybe not -his majority) alive in this election cycle. All it will cost is his children’s future. Our children’s future, too.

© Mark Floegel, 2010

This is bad timing for Yankee’s owner, Entergy of Louisiana, because the Vermont legislature is currently considering Entergy’s request to extend the 38-year-old plant’s license to operate for another 20 years. (Vermont is the only state in which the legislature has the power to intervene in a nuclear plant’s license.)

Even Governor Jim Douglas, who has been an unabashed Entergy supporter until now, demanded the firing of Entergy Vice President Jay Thayer. Mr. Thayer swore under oath that Vermont Yankee has no underground pipes. Then it was discovered that the tritium was leaking from – underground pipes. (Still a friend to Entergy, the governor has also called for a “timeout” to allow the corporation to rebuild the people’s shattered trust. After all, you wouldn’t want to decide whether or not to go ahead and get married after you catch your intended in bed with your best friend, you’d want to give it time to rebuild trust.)

It’s unclear at this point who is the dog and who is the pony in this dog-and-pony show, but Entergy did get rid of Mr. Thayer. (Which is not to say he was fired. He was placed on “administrative leave” pending investigation, which means he goes on vacation until this whole thing blows over; when he returns with a tan, he’ll be sent off to tell whoppers about some other Entergy facility.)

The new face of Entergy in Vermont is Curt Hebert, Jr., Entergy’s vice president of external affairs and former head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Mr. Hebert is known as a lifelong opponent of government intervention in energy markets. (Then why was he the federal government’s chief energy regulator, you ask? He was appointed by George W. Bush.)

So up here in Vermont, the public, press and politicians are seriously cheesed off at the out-of-state corporation that has mismanaged the state’s only nuke since it bought it in 2002 and has been caught passing misinformation again and again. What’s Entergy’s response? To send a bitter foe of government intervention to the one state where the government has more power to intervene than any other. It makes one wonder if Entergy’s CEO Wayne Leonard might be spending too much time in the radiation room.

Mr. Hebert’s greatest claim to fame is that he presided over the federal government’s deer-in-the-headlights inaction when the 2000-2001 energy crisis caused rolling blackouts in California. (Heckuva job, Curty!)

According to published accounts, Mr. Hebert – acting on Dick Cheney’s orders – covered up the market manipulation by Enron and others that led to the California and instead encouraged California to cancel its environmental regulations. Now his kind ministrations will be visited on Vermont. Oh boy.

To paraphrase Lord Acton, power corrupts and nuclear power corrupts absolutely.

© Mark Floegel, 2010

In the cab, Matt was ready to bubble over. He’s a recent convert to Facebook and through the online social network, he’d been found by friends from Jackson Heights, Queens he’d lost touch with some 45 years ago.

“I was in a doo-wop group back then,” he said. “We were all in doo-wop groups. It didn’t keep us off the streets, but it did keep us out of trouble.”

Matt’s group, a quintet, was Jimmy and the Chapels. “The name never made any sense, but it sounded good.” The Jimmy in the group was Jimmy Spinelli, who now tours with the professional doo-wop group The Duprees.

“I sang bass and baritone and occasionally I’d get off a tenor piece, but mostly bass and baritone,” Matt said. “Jimmy, of course was the best. He was born with a cleft palate and when he spoke, you could hardly make out what he was saying, but when he sang, it was crystal clear. Singing was the therapy back then. And he had a great voice, just a great voice.”

“He was the best singer in the group, but I was still shocked to find out he’s still doing it – and doing it professionally – all these years later.”

“We all had ethnic names – there was Jimmy, Tony Perez, Paul Horowitz, me (Matt’s Irish) and Steve, whose last name I just can not remember. Steve sang falsetto. He sounded like a soprano. Strange thing – he couldn’t carry tune as a baritone or tenor, but that falsetto – wow. If the song didn’t have a falsetto part, we’d make one up.”

“There was a candy store on the corner by my high school and we’d all be out there at lunch time, trios, quartets, quintets – sometimes we’d join together and have a whole doo-wop chorus. We’d do ‘In the Still of the Night,’ ‘Goody Goody,’ all those songs.”

“There was this group from over in Jersey City – that’s where doo-wop got started – and they’d had an audition at CBS records, so they told us who to talk to. I was elected spokesman for the group. I called the guy up and they brought us in. There was this big room, like an atrium with all these smaller rooms off of it.”

By now, we were at the airport and I had a plane to catch, but Matt’s eyes were shining and he was fully engaged in the story, so I let him roll on.

“These two guys from CBS took us into one of the rooms and said, ‘Let’s hear your stuff.’ We sang one and they said, ‘Sing another,’ and then another and another. We must have sung ten or twelve songs in all and when we came out of that little room everyone was standing … and applauding.” He seemed to be on the verge of saying “standing ovation,” but didn’t want to go that far.

“They were shaking our hands and slapping us on the back. That was the high point of my career – of my life, really.”

“We never got any further than that. One of the guys joined the Marines soon after, then I joined the Air Force and that was it, until last week, when I found out about Jimmy.”

“I went to The Duprees web site Friday and left Jimmy an email with the general email. I sure hope I hear back from him.”

© Mark Floegel, 2010

At one house, the father answered and said his family was eating dinner, which was usually a reason to send me away. Instead, he invited me to the table and asked if we could have a conversation about the environment with his wife and sons. It was one of those experiences that made the job worth while.

Better still, the elder son – Tony – came and canvassed for me the following summer. He was 17 years old, tall with a big jaw and glasses. He was a bit dorky and it was clear he had not yet accommodated himself to his new size. He was like a colt learning to run. Tony was not the best canvasser in the office that summer, but I took particular pleasure watching his progress. Although I was 27 (it seemed old at the time), I took an avuncular interest in him. It was like watching a coming-of-age movie.

Through the years, I’ve told Tony’s story at gatherings where canvassers and ex-canvassers meet. “Did you hear about the time, I canvassed this house and came away with a canvasser?” I was always proud of that.

On the evening of Martin Luther King Day in DC, I was attending an event and ran into Tony’s parents, Sam and Karabelle. I introduced myself and launched into my story about Tony. As I did, I watched emotions flicker over their faces, like a breeze across the surface of a pond. Wrapping up, I said, “He was such a great kid. What’s he up to now?”

Sam swallowed and said, “Tony died… in an automobile accident…. In 1995.” I expressed my shock and condolence and then they proceeded to tell me about the rest of Tony’s life.

A computer prodigy, he programmed his first machine at age 10. By 14, he volunteered for CISPES, the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, getting their software sorted at the height of the civil war and oppression in that country. By 17, he was working for me and soon after departed for MIT, where he pushed forward the boundary of software design.

His parents say Tony’s interest lay in open-source software. If you’re not familiar with the term, open-source software is developed and shared without regard to copyrights and royalties. Because it is held in the public domain, anyone can access it (and improve on it) for free. It’s a technological return to the concept of the village common, where all share and all benefit. Tony’s parents said he firmly believed in the power of technology to better the lives of people everywhere, not to line the pockets of a handful of entrepreneurs. As Steve Jobs launches another product designed to get consumers to shell out hundreds of dollars to Apple for a “content delivery device,” I realize again how much we lose when people like Tony die before their time.

Tony graduated from MIT, moved to California and met his fatal accident. He lives on through the Antonio Pizzigati Prize for Software in the Public Interest, awarded annually. It’s a fitting tribute. Please pass news about the prize along to the technically proficient. I’d be honored if I indirectly helped a worthy candidate find the prize.

The pain on Karabelle and Sam’s faces was clear as we spoke. Fifteen years after Tony’s death, it was clear my words brought it rushing back to the surface. At the same time, there was immense love and pride. I could see how much it meant to them to have a face come from the crowd and have a stranger recall Tony with affection. We would all be fortunate to be so remembered.

I searched for something appropriate to say. A phrase by the Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz came to mind, so I spoke it: “The quality of a life is not measured by its length.”

© Mark Floegel, 2010

From the stereo in the coffee shop, I heard Professor Longhair whistling “Big Chief” and was reminded that Carnival season has begun. Carnival, which some people think is limited to Mardi Gras, is one of the oldest human rituals. Historian Karen Armstrong traces its history back to the Babylonian creation story.

In that story, the gods overcame the Earth’s initial chaos and established order. In the Babylonian springtime as the Earth was renewed after winter, the gods (and the king) had to annually reassert their power, so the king was symbolically dethroned, chaos (in the form of unfettered celebration) reigned and in the end the king (and gods) were re-throned and order was restored.

Quaint, isn’t it? Little of this remains in our society today. Christian syncretists took over the holiday and changed its meaning two millennia ago. (“Carnival” is derived from the Latin carne vale or “farewell to meat,” a reference to meatless fasting imposed during Lent.)

That the meaning of a given ritual should change over time is inevitable. There’s no point mourning about that, but it’s disappointing that what was once Carnival has devolved – at least in the US – into an occasion for public inebriation, the display of certain body parts (you know which ones I mean) and the distribution of cheap plastic beads.

On another hand, consider what unfolds in Haiti, a nation with a long history of celebrating Carnival. There are no celebrations this year. Instead, the Babylonian creation story is enacted before our eyes or perhaps it’s the Haitian re-creation story. Chaos reigns. Looting, rape, murder, fights over the few scraps of food available. What goes down on Bourbon Street are pale vestiges of the real thing occurring now in Port-au-Prince. It’s horrible to see and more horrible to know no god or king will arrive in four weeks to restore order. (Here’s a 60 Minutes piece on what doctors there struggle with.)

Pat Robertson, in his widely broadcast ignorance, ascribed the torture of the Haitian people to a pact made with the devil two hundred years ago. Just as no god will descend from the sky to make things right in Haiti, so it is that no supernatural demon caused the misery there now. Which is not to say that the Haitians are not victims of the agents of evil.

Throughout its history of European occupation Haiti’s natives were first wiped out, then replaced with African slaves. They threw off their shackles 200 years ago (which Mr. Robertson thinks was the devil’s work), but life has not been easy there since. Haiti has long been the “away” in the phrase “throw away.” It’s where we take our waste, where we exploit the poor there for their labor and natural resources. The western hemisphere has used and discarded Haiti a dozen times.

Gods and kings are in Haiti’s past. If they are to recreate their world, they will need our help. If we choose to help Haiti, we choose to help ourselves, because their world is our world.

© Mark Floegel, 2010

Many groups are sending aid to Haiti. Two of the most effective are Partners in Health, which has been serving the medical needs of poor Haitians for 25 years. Another is Doctors Without Borders. The Greenpeace vessel Esperanza is now shuttling supplies into rural areas for DWB, as we did in Indonesia after the 2004 tsunami and in Samoa in 2009. Money donated to these groups goes right where it’s needed most.

http://doctorswithoutborders.org/

http://www.standwithhaiti.org/haiti

The exception proves the rule and one exception is my friend, I’ll call him Rick. (It’s his name.) Rick’s been in DC for almost 30 years, most of that time spent lobbying the Hill and the agencies. In a town where seniority and personal connections are currency, he’s got a pocket full. Pragmatic? Yes. Idealistic? Not exactly. What was once idealism has hardened into something resembling weary cynicism, but the important thing is that his convictions remain unchanged. His ambitions are for his causes, not himself. There is no trace of corruption. Pretty remarkable in this town.

I’m in DC this week and he told me this story Tuesday. I think it illustrates how he’s managed to keep his conscience clear. (Disclosure: what follows is paraphrased. Rick is incapable of the kind of brevity this space demands.)

“So I was up in the Senate offices yesterday afternoon and I was headed over to the Metro at Union Station. A bunch of people were all standing on the corner, waiting for the light to change by the little park north of the Senate.

“I looked across the street and there were these homeless guys hanging out. They had their clothes hanging on the bushes, trying to dry them. They had their possessions stashed in shopping carts. One guy was sitting on a milk crate on the corner opposite from where I was waiting for the light. He’s looking down at the ground. I think maybe he’s asleep.

“I thought, ‘OK, we’re gonna cross the street and he’s gonna hit us up for money. Why wouldn’t he? He’s got everything he owns in the world right there. He even had a little Christmas tree someone probably threw away.

“So the light changes and off we all go like a school of fish. I’m waiting for the pitch when the guy on the milk crate suddenly puts his head up and says in a real loud voice, ‘Hey, how about getting a smile?’

“That was it. No pitch, no ask for money. Here we all are with our briefcases, running from one thing to another and he says, ‘How about a smile?’ So I smiled and he caught my eye and said, ‘Yeah! All right!’

“It made me think. I had completely pre-judged the guy. I’m thinking he’s a panhandler, a homeless guy, someone you never think about except as an annoyance and what does he do? He just asks me for a smile.”

Whatever else may have transpired between Rick and Mr. Milk Crate is none of my business or yours. I’m sure some folks reading this will say, “Well, Milk Crate Guy just had a more sophisticated begging pitch.” They may be right. The moral of the story, I think, is that if we want to remain uncorrupted, we have to keep an eye out for the little events that cross our paths, recall us to our true values and keep us on the course we originally intended to steer.

© Mark Floegel, 2010

Adrienne and I have lived in Vermont for 12 years, or for one-tenth of the recorded history of weather. The newspaper published a list of the 20 largest snowstorms in Burlington history. It’s reasonable to assume we have witnessed 10 percent of those storms, but that assumption would be incorrect. According to the National Weather Service, I have witnessed 65 percent – or seven – of Burlington’s 20 worst snowstorms.

What gives? Global warming. It’s counterintuitive to think of snowstorms and global warming in the same sentence, but the long-term forecast for this part of the world is warmer and wetter.

In Vermont’s traditional weather pattern (and by “traditional,” I mean the way things used to be), the six weeks from New Year’s Eve until St. Valentine’s Day were the window for sub-zero temperatures. “As the days lengthen, the cold strengthens,” was the post-solstice proverb, according to David Ludlum in The Vermont Weather Book, published in 1985. (I keep a copy on my bookshelf, for sentimental reasons.)

When we first moved here, I remember the temperature plummeting between Christmas and New Years and no one wanting to stand outside and watch the midnight fireworks.

This year, all through our record storm, the thermometer hovered between 15 and 30 degrees. Mercifully, it stayed closer to 20 than 30, which meant the prodigious amounts of snow I was manually shifting were light powder instead of heavy cake.

None of which is to say that it can’t be 20 or 30 in Vermont in January or that it still won’t be below zero for some or all of the next five weeks (or even beyond). No single storm or season should convince us of anything, but snow rarely falls in sub-zero weather. For one thing, the lack of clouds contributes to the piercing cold.

When I opened the paper to see that I’ve been here for 65 percent of Burlington’s worst winter storms, it doesn’t prove anything, but it does seem to be an indication that things are changing and quickly.

I did a quick search of these commentaries (because I can’t remember what I write from month to month). The last time I used the term “warmer and wetter” was in July of last year. Spring and early summer had been all but washed out. It stayed that way through the end of July. August was the only bit of summer we got last year. “Global warming – hogwash!” some of my neighbors scoffed, just as they did last week, up to their hips in snow.

You’re free to believe or not believe, act or remain inert, as you see fit. I once heard a woman say to a Buddhist, “I don’t believe in reincarnation.” He answered, “Reincarnation either exists or it doesn’t, what you and I believe has nothing to do with it.”

Same goes for global warming, with an important exception. Unlike reincarnation (which may or may not exist), if global warming exists (and I believe it does), it is we who have brought it into existence and it is we who will determine its severity. Some scientists doubt the existence of global warming. Some scientists doubt the existence of evolution. The proportion of doubting scientists in each case in is infinitesimally small.

For now, I will enjoy the snow and the winter. I am a child of the north and having spent a decade of my life away, I have an appreciation of it, especially the profound silence of the two-day blizzard. I promise myself to wear winter like a cloak and savor it as it passes away.

© Mark Floegel, 2010