12/02/1999

Are There No Prisons?

“God bless us, every one.”

Is it that time of year? Again? Already? Now that it’s December, Adrienne is spoiling for me to rent the 1951 British version of “A Christmas Carol,” with Alastair Sim. It’s a good movie, I’ll admit, but “A Christmas Carol” was written in 1843. Of what relevance could anything Charles Dickens wrote be to us 156 years later?

Early in the book, when a couple of 19th-century canvassers ask Scrooge for a donation to Christmas charity, Scrooge asks: “Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?” In those days, if you couldn’t pay your bills, instead of getting pre-approved for yet another credit card, you were sent to debtors’ prison; if you were poor you were packed off to a workhouse. All of that was long ago and far away. All that is just some Ghost of Christmas Past that should have disappeared years ago.
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By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary | Comments (0)
11/25/1999

Walking to Canada

Happy Thanksgiving. It’s a day for traditions, every family has them – turkey, dressing, pumpkin pie, going to church, watching football, visiting, playing cards in the back room, perhaps. How about a walk? I know any number of people who go out to stretch their legs and get a lungful of bracing air, either to work up an appetite or to walk off the big feed.

In the last week, I’ve been thinking about what it would be like if I took a Thanksgiving Day walk to Canada. The Canadian border is about 40 miles from my house, over mixed terrain. If I’m going to make it in one day, I’ll have to start early and leave before I’ve had my portion of turkey. It might be mild or cold, it might be raining or snowing.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)
11/18/1999

Brave New Twinkie

The Burlington paper, the Gannett Sunday rag, says that for the 14th time in the past five years Burlington – or Vermont – has made the national list of “best places to live.” Really? Well, we’ll see.

Vermont’s number one industry is tourism, so it’s no surprise that when the list-makers stop by for a few days, they have a good time, but that doesn’t necessarily make Vermont a nice place to live.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)
11/11/1999

Produce World, Meat World

There was snow on the mountaintops six weeks ago, which means it’s due in the valleys this week. I’ve seen a few flakes floating in the air, but nothing has accumulated on the ground. The harvest is in, which means no more fresh vegetables from the farm share. The Saturday public market has shut down for the season and I feel a kinship to the squirrels; we’re all having to work a bit harder to bring in our provisions.

Adrienne and I belong to the local co-op, where we can get organic produce throughout the year. Co-ops emerged after the second world war to sell not health food, but cheap food. It was the economy that first brought people to co-ops, but shoppers soon realized that since they owned the co-op they could easily get the items they wanted on the shelves, and the next thing you know, soy milk and organic ginger started showing up.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)
11/04/1999

Feeding the Hungry

The World Trade Organization, which is quickly becoming the transnational government of Planet Earth, will be meeting in Seattle at the end of this month. Right now, it looks as if the meeting will be a food fight with the delegates from Europe squaring off against the Americans over biotechnology and genetically-modified organisms in the food supply.

In the next month, there will be plenty of discussion of this in the newspapers, talk shows and on the web. One of the arguments put forward by the corporations which produce genetically-modified foods is that these technologies are needed to feed a world whose population now exceeds six billion.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)
10/28/1999

The Hammer of Justice

Here’s a piece of news you might have missed if you were watching CNN: a week ago today, a Scottish judge, Margaret Gimblett, acquitted three anti-nuclear protesters on charges of sabotaging a floating laboratory which supports British Trident nuclear submarines.

In June, the protesters – Ellen Moxley, Ulla Roder and Angie Zelter – boarded the laboratory and threw any number of computers into the waters of Loch Goil and destroyed testing equipment for operating model nuclear submarines. The damage came to about $100,000.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)
10/21/1999

Horror Stories

Autumn is slipping away from the north woods and I’ve been out camping again. Late at night, lying very still in my sleeping bag, I listen to the night sounds, raccoons rustling the dry leaves as they investigate the campsite, the clicking of bare twigs as the wind moves through the trees, the snort and stamp of the deer as they pick up human scent on the shifting wind.

I lie there and listen and it’s no surprise that all those horror stories come to mind. It’s dark and unfamiliar out there, almost anything can happen. Of course, part of the fun of a horror story – or horror movie – is that it might happen to you. The more realistic the setting, the scarier the story.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)