Category Archives: Arts and culture

About That Amazing Art Installation…

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“Oh, great!” was my initial reaction to news of a massive art installation planned for the Essex Experience, a rather depressing retail sprawl just off Route 2A and Highway 289. The project, named Babaroosa, is inspired by the insanely successful Meow Wolf multisensory environments in Santa Fe, Denver, and Las Vegas.

Creators Teresa and Robert Davis promise “a labyrinth of over 60 rooms intricately woven through a 20,000 square foot complex.” It might sound like an artistic fever dream, but it’s got some serious money behind it. They’ve secured $7.25 million in loans from the Vermont Economic Development Authority and the Vermont State Employees Credit Union. Essex Experience owner Peter Edelmann will contribute $5 million in real estate, about which more below. The Davises are raising nearly $11 million in investor equity.

I’m looking forward to a visit if it comes to pass. However… the location is a terrible place to put a major tourist attraction.

The Davises foresee a half million visitors a year. Seems like a stretch, but Meow Wolf has become an entertainment phenomenon in a few short years. Let’s take their word for it.

The most popular tourist attraction in Vermont is the Ben & Jerry’s factory on Route 100 in Waterbury.with 350,000 visitors per year. It contributes substantially to the horrendous traffic on Route 100, but at least it’s only a short hop from the interstate.

The Essex Experience is six miles north of I-89 Exit 12. Doesn’t sound like much, but those six miles include the sprawling mallage just off the freeway, the busy US-2/2A intersection, a crawl into Essex, the Five Corners junction, and another crawl to 289. Virtually all of it is two-lane road. It takes 15-20 minutes to make the trip if traffic is unusually light.

I know because I made the trip in 16 minutes on Monday morning at about 10:00 a.m. Rush hour was over, and retail traffic had yet to pick up. Still, traffic moved consistently below the speed limit — which varied from 25 to 40 mph.

The Davises are talking about nearly doubling traffic along that route. Yikes.

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Black Boxes

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W.E.B. DuB — wait, Frederick Dou — no, he had a beard. James Baldwi — nah, he’s the skinny one. I got it! Zora Neale Hurston.

The late British author Joanna Russ wrote a truly excellent book called “How to Suppress Women’s Writing,” which is the slam-dunk answer to those who say “If female authors are equal to men, why didn’t they write more Great Books?” (Ditto music, art, or any other form of expression.) Russ goes through the eleven-stage process that prevents women from writing and, if they manage to get published, minimizes their accomplishments.

It’s a quick and eye-opening read. Or if you’re strapped for time, the eleven points are summarized on the book’s Wikipedia page. Which, unlike Scots Wiki, appears to be legit.

An identical book could be written called “How to Suppress Black People’s Writing” or, well, insert your ethnic group or subcategory here. This hit me like a two-by-four — as I confessed earlier, very much belatedly — while I was reading Stamped From the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi. He organizes his chronicle of racist thought in America around the lives of five people: Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, William Lloyd Garrison, W.E.B. DuBois and Angela Davis.

One thing I never knew: How long and distinguished the careers of DuBois and Davis were. I’d always thought of DuBois as a figure of the distant past, specifically the late 19th Century and the first couple decades of the 20th. But as I learned from reading Kendi’s book, DuBois was a respected figure and a widely published author through nearly two-thirds of the 20th Century. He died on August 27, 1963, on the eve of the March on Washington.

(Many of you, I’m sure, are thinking “No shit, Sherlock.” But as I wrote previously, I am a reasonably well-educated and well-read person who tries to explore important issues and think clearly about them, and yet my knowledge is embarrassingly limited. I suspect I am representative of many well-intentioned wypipo.)

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Marlboro “merger” shows just how bad things are in higher ed

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Nice little place you got here. Shame if something happened to it.

Marlboro College has announced an “alliance” with Boston-based Emerson College, which basically involves Marlboro paying $40 million for the right to be chewed up and swallowed.

Such a deal.

The southern Vermont school has been searching for a partner, and this agreement shows just how desperate the search had become. Marlboro is signing over its $30 million endowment and its $10 million real estate portfolio to Emerson which, I guess, means that Marlboro’s market value was negative $40 million? Yikes.

Here’s a little whipped cream on that sundae: Marlboro says it’s shutting down after the current academic year — but this “merger” won’t be finalized until next July!

After the college shuts down.

So, what’s Plan B? We all set ourselves on fire?

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Metapost: On bad words

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We get comments, we do, we do. Of late, they’ve included a couple of complaints about my occasionally salty language. To be fair, that language appeared in the headlines of two recent pieces, not buried somewhere in the text, so the offending words were hard to ignore.

I appreciate the feedback and I take it seriously, but I can’t promise to cut it out. There are times, especially these days, when a good Anglo-Saxonism is absolutely the appropriate response to some bit of political bullshittery or ratfuckery.

Oops, I did it again.

Besides, the only benefit of having A Blog Of One’s Own is that one gets to set The Rules Of One’s Own. I ain’t in this for the money, Lord knows.

Also, I find Vermont politics to be a little too reserved. This is fine, for the most part; I’d hate to cover that mess in D.C. where everyone’s hackles are permanently on Code Red. But our politicians commonly back away from any kind of real confrontation — or exposure of disagreements behind the scenes — out of an overly developed sense of politesse.

Which, up to a point, is a virtue. But there are times when differences that affect policy outcomes warrant a bit of sunshine. Or when a little vinegar improves the flavor.

I see myself as the vinegar. Or, in the words of my Twitter bio: “Political analyst, poo-flinging monkey.”

So yeah, I fling some poo from time to time, and I will continue to do so. Somtimes I’ll even call it “shit.” If you don’t like it, I will defend to the death your right not to read it.

Buy my book!

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Ye Olde Blogge is about to go into cold storage. It shall remain intact, but as long as I serve as political columnist for Seven Days, I won’t be posting new material here.

A farewell message will follow. But first I’m exercising a bit of Blogger’s Privilege and posting a shameless plug for my book, which has nothing to do with Vermont politics. Indeed, it stems from an entirely different chapter in my life.

From 2000 to 2005 I worked at New Hampshire Public Radio as a news anchor, reporter, and host of a daily interview show. “The Front Porch” was resolutely unpolitical. Its tagline was “Interesting people from New Hampshire” — by which I meant the NHPR listening area, including parts of Vermont, Maine, and Massachusetts.

When I launched the show, the joking response was, “So how long before you run out of interesting people in New Hampshire?” My answer, timidly at first but with more conviction as time went on, was ‘I honestly don’t think we ever will.”

And I was right.

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Point of Spousal Privilege

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I’ve been told that Governor Shumlin’s wife is a fan of this blog. Oh well, let’s alienate another regular… 

Apparently when you’re married to the governor, you get to use his ceremonial office as a sounding board for your pique.

That’s the lesson I drew from Katie Hunt’s art installation, on display in hubby’s ceremonial office at the Statehouse. There are two works, each comprised of a set of papier mache figures. And it’s hard not to see them as Hunt’s own personal Festivus celebration with the Vermont media as the recipient of her Airing of Grievances.

Deets, and pictures, after the jump.

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Keith Knight!!!!

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Drove down to Dartmouth College today for a talk by one of my favorite comic artists, a guy who ought to be much more well-known than he is: Keith Knight, creator of three (count ‘em — three) syndicated comics. Hardest-working man in the funny papers.

Knight, for those tragically unaware, is a young black man whose work features a rich and dynamic mix of political commentary, true-life narrative, goofball humor, and a visual style that’s bursting with energy.

I first came across his original creation, The K Chronicles, in the comics pages of Seven Days. Unfortunately, a couple years ago the paper revamped its comics and dropped the strip. I don’t know if it was too black or too funny or what, but it was a great loss. Fortunately, you can find his work online and he’s published a half-dozen compilations, some of which are still in print.

The subject of his talk is a sadly recurring theme in his work: police violence against African-Americans. It was entitled “They Shoot Black People, Don’t They?” which is also the title of a published collection of his work on the subject. “I’ve been doing comics about police brutality for 20 years. I’m sick of it.”

A recent example after the jump.

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Metapost: theVPO on the air

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On Thursday morning, I’ll be guest hosting “Open Mike” on WDEV Radio. Live broadcast from 9-11 a.m., also live streamed on WDEV’s website.

Should be a great show. In the first hour, I’ll be speaking with David Hall, the Mormon millionaire who wants to create a planned community in Tunbridge, Strafford, Royalton and Sharon that could house up to 20,000 people. As far as I know, this will be his first extensive radio interview since his plans hit the news.

My post on the topic, subtly entitled “The Mormons are Coming! The Mormons are Coming!” elicited a response from Mr. Hall himself, which led to an email exchange and, ultimately, his accepting my invitation to the interview. He has denied some of my more outrageous concerns; according to him, this community is based on ideas from Joseph Smith, but it is not intended as a Mormon outpost. Rather, it would be open to anyone willing to commit to a sustainable, planned community.

Second hour should be lively as well. My guest will be James Lockridge, founder and head of The Big Heavy World Foundation, a Burlington-based nonprofit that promotes Vermont music in a host of ways. He’s had his differences with the Burlington and Vermont arts establishment, which he sees as excessively insular and not supportive of new, bold ideas. I also plan to talk with him about the importance of the arts for (1) our economy and (2) attracting young people to Burlington and Vermont.

WDEV’s at 96.1 FM and 550 AM. The FM signal is strong on the I-89 corridor from Montpelier to Burlington; the AM is pretty strong in all directions. Hope you can join me!

Flynn Center Presents: Serenade for Tiny Violins

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A state tax reform measure that would cap itemized deductions at 2.5 times the standard deduction has picked up quite a bit of steam in the Legislature. And right on cue, here comes the Flynn Center’s John Killacky to sound the alarm: limiting itemized deductions “could have dire… consequences for Vermont’s nonprofits.”

tiny violinAwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

Pardon me if my heart doesn’t bleed. What he’s saying is that we have to let our wealthiest keep a whole lot of their money in hopes that they’ll give bits of it to charity. It’s a very inefficient way to encourage philanthropy, especially in a day when our regulation of “nonprofits” is so lax, it’s laughable.

Just one example. The Koch Brothers, and many of their fellow megawealthy conservatives, don’t actually donate much to political parties or candidates. No, they set up networks of nonprofit organizations with “educational” missions and — wowee! — promote their ideology while simultaneously pocketing huge tax savings. Yeah, we’re subsidizing conservative propaganda. Feels good, doesn’t it?

(We’re also subsidizing a fair bit of liberal propaganda. The Vermont Workers’ Center has become a very well-funded organization thanks to dozens of annual gifts from nonprofit foundations, many of them set up by wealthy individuals. Its biggest donor is the Ben & Jerry Foundation. I’m not equating the Vermont Workers’ Center with the Koch Brothers, but they both sail along on a rising tide of tax-deductible contributions.)

Back to Vermont. Killacky cites a survey that shows “67 percent of people interviewed confirmed that a decrease in income tax deductions would cause them to contribute less.”

Perhaps. I’d like to see how the study was conducted and how the questions were worded. But even if it’s legit, it should have little to no impact on Vermont’s debate over itemized deductions.

That’s because the big kahuna is the federal deduction. A change in Vermont law would have no effect on that far larger tax benefit. There would still be abundant incentive to contribute.

Killacky also fails to mention that Vermont’s current tax rules for the wealthy are among the most generous in the nation. If we put a cap on deductions, we’d no longer be an outlier in our generosity to our wealthiest citizens, but we’d still be plenty generous.

The scare tactics are entirely out of proportion to the real situation. I can understand why Killacky feels obligated to scurry to the defense of his fat-cat donors, but his arguments are unconvincing.