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Monday, February 18, 2008

You know you're living in Ann Arbor when...


Several Saturday nights ago, we went to a local book store to see Ira Glass from This American Life. If you don't know of Ira Glass and his wonderful NPR radio show, you are missing some of the most wonderful moments of listening pleasure ever. If you do know of him, but have never met him, he is as intelligent, funny, charming and self-effacing as you might imagine. I've never seen anyone delight so much in the various and sundry ways we Americans choose to live our lives. Yet, his humor is never cynical or cruel. He loves us! In all our crazy, silly, ironic and hypocritical glory--he sees who we want to be.

Anyway, he was at the bookstore promoting the Discovery Channel version of TAL and said a few words before opening it up to questions. He said, "I'm here for you, so please just ask me anything!" After answering a wild ride of questions, he met each one of us and signed everything and even let people take pictures. He never lost patience or was bored with any of us. I never saw anyone so endlessly curious about other people. It gave me hope.

You know you are living in Ann Arbor when over 200 people show up at a book store on a very cold winter Saturday night!

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Let's Have a Little Scientific Integrity



This week a group of concerned scientists issued a statement about government interference and political pressure brought to bear on scientific knowledge and research. It reminded me of a personal experience with just such an issue over 30 years ago.


We were living in a rural area and decided to raise "organic chickens"--chickens that were raised without hormones on only organic feed (grown without the help of Monsanto). To that end, we had to locate the grain and the proper additive so we could "make" our own special blend of feed. This required research, so we started where every good farmer would--at the local cooperative extension service.


Well, you would have thought we had decided to build a bomb, blow ourselves up and take our neighbors with us. These local representatives of the big university were totally in the pockets of BIG CHEMICAL. Any knowledge they had was thoroughly tainted. Any semblance of scientific objectivity about "organic chicken" was replaced with hysteria, fear and suspicion. We were looked upon as nut cases at best and subversives at worst.


Forgive me if I feel somewhat vindicated these days. . . .


Sunday, February 03, 2008

The Huron River


One of the really wonderful things about living in Ann Arbor is the Huron River and how much of its banks are totally accesible and not lined with multi-million dollar condos. How did they resist the developer's sweet talk? Good government, that's how. And I'm not afraid to say it. Those who hate government by policy--do so because it seeks to block them from exercising what they call "freedoms." Yeah...freedom to be a greedy slimeball. Freedom to destroy neighborhoods, suck the life out of small towns, devastate the environment. Somehow, the good people of Ann Arbor make their government work for them. We have a great transportation system, more parks were square mile than most small cities, recycling, and public services that seem to work most of the time. Progressives and liberals run this place and it stands as a model to how good government can work when the community's needs are put ahead of ideology.