Category: Items

Catholic Dissenter
Chris Kessing of Assumption College has a blog. Like everybody else, he blogs about Tom Lewis.

Anarchism begins in the home
Michael Iafrate, thinking about Howard Zinn:

From a radically Catholic perspective, since the central social reality is the Church, and not the state, it is more helpful to think of the family as the basic building block of the Church — the new society — rather than the basic unit of the state, or of society. Indeed, in Catholic circles you sometimes hear it said that the family is the “domestic church.” If, as I believe, the Church is (also) a political reality, an alternative social body and way of life that will always be at odds with the societies in which it finds itself, then the family, as the “domestic church,” will also be a revolutionary society that resists indoctrination into the system of domination and violence, or, drawing on Zinn’s terms, an ecclesial “pocket of insurrection.”

Worst op-ed ever
This NY Times anti-vegan op-ed is so bad, Erik Marcus issued an “emergency podcast.” You might want to compare the op-ed with the thoughts of an actual nutritionist, the staff of Vegan Outreach, or Isa Chandra Moscowitz.

Nameless Mike
One nice thing about digitizing videos as a WCCA volunteer rather than an employee is that I can post whatever I feel like on a particular day, without taking other things into concern.

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Here’s an interview from 2005 with vegan ultra-athlete Mike Benedetti, talking about his hikes of the Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, and Continental Divide Trail. (This happens to be the first time I met Mauro. Kinda neat to have a recording of the beginning moments of a friendship.)

Rolling your own municipal network infrastructure
The cable/phone duopoly has done a cruddy job wiring our nation. DIY on the local level is one solution sometimes tossed about. Doc Searls shares his thoughts:

Q: Isn’t local infrastructure build-out a case of government competing with private industry?

A: No.  It’s a case of citizens finding a way to do what a protected duopoly cannot.  What we are doing is also not competitive.  We want to open our new fiber infrastructure to use by anybody, including cable and phone companies.  We have their interests at heart too.  By building out pure Net infrastructure — rather than competing with cable TV and phone systems — we are protecting and supporting their core businesses.

WoMag interviews Corey Dolgon
Allen Fletcher interviews Worcester State sociology prof Corey Dolgon on the socio-economic vibe of the city. If you like this, you might want to listen to an interview I did with him last year.

I had a little bit over-romanticized some of this post- industrialism in that it really wasn’t a post World War II de-industrialization, as much as it was like other New England towns, a kind of post World War I de-industrialization, and that Worcester has been struggling with these issues for a much longer time.

Plenty interviews OKC Catholic Worker Bob Waldrop
A nice article about Bob (who sometimes contributes to Pie and Coffee). Food co-op people take note:

Waldrop is the founder of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative (OFC), a monthly buying club that connects Oklahoma customers with Oklahoma farmers. The first month it existed, the cooperative generated $3,500 from 60 members. Fewer than four years later the April 2007 order stood at nearly $36,500. That’s a lot of local food and a lot of money in farmers’ pockets, and OFC board members expect that number to nearly double by the end of the year.

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All my friends draw Z Magazine covers
Last year, Tom Lechner got his art on the cover of the American leftist Z Magazine. This month, Rudi Cilibrasi got his art on the cover of the Amsterdam street Z Magazine.

Some of my friends are nominated for awards
You can vote for Zack Berger as “Best Overall” blogger in the Jewish and Israeli Blog Awards.

Others are coffee drinkers
The other day I started tracking my coffee consumption in my Google Chat status . . . now I am hearing that friends of friends are doing it. I love the internet.

Government channel
Worcester’s city run government channel is slowly experimenting with publishing multimedia online. If the city would just declare footage of the council meetings as public domain, I predict that within a month the meetings would be uploaded on a regular basis . . . . Continue reading “Items”

Worcester Activist is down
In fact, more than a dozen local websites are down. The shared account got cancelled. Somebody is moving them today, and they should be back soon.

Giant flag looms over Worcester
I’ve seen them run studio photos of candidates in the T&G, but never one so photoshopped.

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WPI ditches battery cage eggs: Interview with Drew Wilson about how the WPI cafeterias were persuaded to stop buying eggs from hens raised in battery cages. More details may accrue at the Worcester Activist No Battery Eggs page. The Humane Society is coordinating this campaign nationwide. For footage from one of New York state’s largest egg farms, which uses battery cages, see this movie.
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