Getting Started with Feline Diabetes

The initial diagnosis of feline diabetes (FD) can be overwhelming. It adds a new dimension of caregiving to the relationship we have with our cat as well as changing the day-to-day routine we have all established around feeding. But FD is not a death sentence and the changes it introduces into our households can be routinized fairly quickly. It is a complex disease though, and there is a lot to learn. The best sources of information are the Feline Diabetes Message Board FAQs and the Pet Diabetes Wiki.

You should also read and post on the message board. Ask questions, then ask more questions. Also check out Making the Most of Your FDMB Experience.

In the meantime, you must still care for your sugar cat. Here are a few tips to help you get started. As you learn more about feline diabetes, each of these tips can be customized for you and your cat.

1. If you are already using insulin, don't switch your cat to low carbohydrate diet unless you are hometesting. A low carbohydrate diet has a high probability of reducing your cat's insulin needs so when and if you do decide to switch, do so carefully. For details, read 10 Good Reasons NOT to Change that Diet Just Yet!
   
   
2. If your cat is on insulin, don't adjust dosages upward until your cat's body has had time to adjust to the current dose. This usually requires between 3-5 days. You can adjust downward at any time. Dose adjustments should be made in .2 or .5 unit increments.
   
   
3. Most FD cats benefit by being on a schedule, but don't be daunted by the prospect; most of us work and have a life, yet are able to manage our FD kitty by making a few adjustments in our day-to-day lives. If you choose to hometest, you can either test, feed, shoot OR feed, test, shoot. With fast acting insulin, such as NPH, you may need to wait for 30 minutes to an hour after feeding before shooting. Over time, you may refine this sequence to meet the needs of your unique kitty.
   
   
4. If you choose not to hometest, don't expect your vet will do everything for you. At minimum you need to know the clinical symptoms of hypoglycemia and be prepared to act quickly. Following a set schedule will help you recognize any odd behavior following an insulin shots.
   
   
5. Don't forget to test urine for ketones (weekly). If your cat has had ketones or DKA, you should test daily or every other day. Ketones and hypoglycemia are the most dangerous side effects of feline diabetes. Be sure to learn about both early on in your studies. -
   
   
6. Don't hesitate to ask lots of questions on FDMB. We've all been in your shoes, we like to share our experiences!
   
   
7. FDMB members have varying degrees of experience and knowledge regarding feline diabetes and often have differing opinions. Don't assume that what someone says is the one and only "right" answer. If you are asking for advice and getting divergent opinions, ask posters to explain why they are recommending a certain course of action. "Why" is an excellent question. Only you can decide what is right for you and your cat.
   
   
8. Don't piss off your vet over diet or hometesting. Your cat will need medical care beyond what you can do at home. Of course it is better to have a vet who will work with you on hometesting and dietary adjustments, but if you live in a small town and don't have choices, you need to find a way to work with the vet you have.
   Interviewing Vets for the Treatment of Your Diabetic Cat and
   Questions for Vets.
   
   
9. Don't feel like you are in this alone. FDMB is a community. We care about you and your cat. If someone doesn't answer your question right away, it only means no one is around who knows the answer. Be patient. If your question gets lost, repost it. Be persistent!
   
   
10. Don't worry yourself sick about feline diabetes. It is a manageable disease, especially if you don't stress yourself out. Go to the movies now and then. Take walks. Have fun. Your cat will be OK and you'll both be happier if you take as good of care of yourself as you take of your sugar kitty.

Remember, this is just a quick reference to help you start caring for your diabetic cat until you have time to read and understand the more technical information contained in the FAQs and the Pet Diabetes Wiki.

Bombast

"A life without bombast is not a life."

Steven Halkiotis, Orange County Commissioner, in response to chair Barry Jacobs' recognition of Halkiotis' 20 years of service. "We thank you for your compassion, your integrity, dedication, creativity and for your passion and even for your bombast on occasion." Halkiotis announced yesterday that he will not seek re-election.

I attended my first county commissioners meeting last week when OWASA was asked to explain to the commissioners how they handle assessments (adding service to existing neighborhoods with septic systems). The atmosphere was casual and collegial between the commissioners themselves and the presenters. I don't recall ever laughing out of amusement at a Carrboro or a Chapel Hill town meeting, but Commissioners Halkiotis' bombastic speech gave me a couple of good belly laughs that night.

I regret now that I haven't paid more attention to the county commissioners. We could certainly use more interesting characters in local politics. Sorry I missed the opportunity of getting to know Commissioner Halkiotis as a legislator and a bombast.

More on Net Neutrality

"Nothing less than the future of the internet is at stake in these discussions. We must preserve neutrality in the system in order to allow the new Googles of the world, the new Yahoo!s, the new Amazons to form. We risk losing the internet as catalyst for consumer choice, for economic growth, for technological innovation, and for global competitiveness." Vint Cerf , speaking to Congress on 2/7/06

GGC all -the-way

In my younger days, I ended many nights of partying on Franklin Street at Hectors. Not the best of places for vegetarians, but the GGC (Greek grilled cheese) all-the-way will go down in memory as one of my favorite foods.

Raspberries to the property owner that is forcing Hector's out of their space on the corner of Henderson and Franklin Street. I'm glad they'll be re-opening elsewhere but it won't be the same. Pretty soon all the remnants of old Chapel Hill will be gone. Thank goodness for the Shrunken Head!

First School

FPG Institute is proposing a new model of early childhood education. "This model offers a new way to think of children starting school that moves away from simply thinking of preschool, Head Start or More at Four as being an “add on” to the existing system, that is not fully integrated into how we think about educating children in our community." (Dick Clifford memo excerpted by Neil Pederson in his memo to the Sewell School Governance Committee)

The idea is to build the school at the back end of the Horace Williams Tract, close to Seawell School to create a natural transition from the preK-2nd students at First School into grades 3-5 at Seawell. On the surface, this is a great idea, like everything else that comes out of FPG Institute. Children from low-income homes are exposed to more non-educational television and less written and numerical materials than children in middle-to upper class homes. When they come to school, the disparity in readiness creates one of the most significant social problems of our era (IMHO).
I was happy to see the following also from the Dick Clifford memo (see above for reference):

"The model has as a major goal of reducing the achievement gap between children with great economic advantage and those with less advantages. About half the achievement gap exists prior to kindergarten entry according to recent studies. By reaching children earlier we have a chance to substantially reduce the gap at this point in their lives. We know that both your More at Four and Head Start programs have this same goal and we see a joint effort in First School as the next logical step in working toward school success for all. A clearly articulated model that cuts across the current age and grade configuration should be a major help in dealing with the achievement gap. We know that the school system has been committed to addressing this issue and believe First School will offer a new set of strategies to accomplish this common goal.

I understand the concerns expressed elsewhere about institutionalizing children at such a young age. But this proposal is an attempt to provide exposure to words and numbers and other intellectual activities that low SES children do not always receive at home. Children in lower-income homes don’t have as many books, newspaper, or magazines available to them in the home; their parents are less likely to be seen reading or calculating; their neighborhoods have less signage; they don’t travel as much so their neighborhoods and homes are the environments that establish their frames of reference. In essence, their environment does not convey the message that literacy (words and numbers) is a vital aspect of everyday life. Schools are built upon the basic assumption that words and numbers are the basic operational tools of life. If children come to schools without already having embraced that assumption, they are at significant disadvantage. As are the schools that have to balance their services between those who already ‘fit the mold’ and those that don’t.

The school district needs all the help it can get in resolving the minority achievement gap, and I've long wanted to see more interaction between the university and the school district. But I am concerned that Seawell isn't the best choice for students to populate this program. For one thing, Sewell Elementary is doing a better job of bridging the gap than 4 other district elementary schools.

Excerpted from the Chapel Hill Carrboro School ReportCard for 2004-2005

Elementary School	Black	Hispanic	Economically Disadvantaged	Limited English Proficiency	Disabilities
Seawell	74.2	87.5	80	78.9	81.5
FP Graham	66.1	76.7	65.9	74.1	65.6
Glenwood	78.1	89.5	78.0	76.2	72
McDougle	71.1	66.7	69.2	50	68.1
Carrboro	63.3	67.5	60	51.3	51.9
Ephesus	57.1	85.7	68.1	78.6	51.4
Estes Hills	60.8	71.4	61	64.7	57.9
Scroggs	88.2	73.3	73.3	80	80.6
Rashkis	74.4	57.1	65.7	83.3	63.6

I hope the school board will consider an assignment plan that pulls students from Frank Porter Graham, Carrboro, Ephesus, and McDougle as well as Seawell if they go forward with this project. The goal should be identifying strategies for reducing inequities, but I'm afraid the money savings may get in the way of their focus.

Questions for now:

1. Who will be attending this new school? Will this new school taking students exclusively from the (middle class) northern neighborhoods currently served by Seawell or will it also pull from FPG elementary and Carrboro where there is a more diverse student population (racially and SES)?

2. The minority achievement gap is the most significant performance problem in our school district. According to the literature, children who come to school ready to learn lose the benefits of early age programming by late elementary/middle school. Where do the students of CHCCS most benefit--an additional readiness program or late elementary/middle grades programs that help prevent the erosion of benefits from current readiness programs? Does the financial situation dictate making a choice between the two?

3. What criteria will the school board use for making this decision? Can we take the financial aspects of it off the table for the first round of discussions? How will the school board and district administrators communicate with the public? Will public review come early enough to actually have an impact on decision making?

I'm much less skeptical of the programming part of this project than I was when I first heard about it. Hopefully, the implementation plan will focus on serving the most underserved children and not get too tangled up with finances.

Changing Paradigms

This week we saw the 'messiness' of appointing someone to a position that should have been filled through election. The public debate of the Carrboro Alderman was painful, circular, and at times appeared to be downright, heavy-handed bullying. For a while there was two groups on the board, publicly defined by the individual that group was supporting for the open seat.

The ideological differences between those two groups is of critical importance for members of the community to understand. Too bad those different positions were so singularly attributed to representation for the annexation area, to be referred to as northeast Carrboro from here on out (thanks for the suggestion Mark!). Certainly that was a consideration, but I think it was masking the deeper divide on issues of growth.

On one hand, there is the 'go slow, minimize change' group. Those individuals are working to maintain the status quo of Carrboro as a small, funky bedroom community of Chapel Hill. In many ways, this is the group I most closely identify with. At least, it is the group that has my emotional support. The other group is working from the assumption that future growth within the urban services boundary will take place in Carrboro and that we need to acknowledge the inevitability of change and to plan for it. While I don't like the way change is destroying the small-town, close knit community feeling of Carrboro, I also intellectually understand that denying this position will force development outside the urban services boundary and result in sprawl/environmental degradation.

Donella Meadows says that 'If you want to understand the deepest malfunctions of systems, pay attention to the rules, and to who has power over them.' (Rule 4 of Leverage Points) What do we know now that the 'no/limited growth' group has control of the rules?

• Environmental regulations within Carrboro zoning control will become stricter. On the surface this is hardly objectionable. And yet, we don't live in a bubble. What happens to growth that is kept out of Carrboro? We certainly won't stop it from occurring, so we should assume it will go where there are fewer restrictions, such as Chatham County. They may be downstream from our waterways, but their traffic certainly flows northward.

• The stock of affordable housing will increase. Again, hardly objectionable. And yet, focusing on supply through zoning ordinances/policy is tied so closely to development of luxury housing that we should be prepared for the current trend of decreasing proportions of low-to-moderate income residents to high-income residents to continue, creating a more economically bifurcated population.

• Taxes will most likely continue to increase. I'm not a no-government supporter. I don't object to paying for taxes that provide valuable human services and environmental protection. I do mind wasting my hard earned money on unsustainable infrastructure and administrative services. I definitely object to the impact annual tax increases is having on the composition of the community. Gentrification and out-migration of Carrboro's African-American population will leave this community looking more like Cary than Carrboro.

• The cultural divide between old and new Carrboro will turn local government into a war zone. The repercussions of the appointment process will have a significant and detrimental long-term impact on old Carrboro. There's no way to predict whether appointing someone from the newly annexed northeast Carrboro area would have smoother over the transition, but there is no doubt in my mind that the failure to appoint someone with a legitimate claim to representing those who were not able to vote will have a major impact on the 2007 election. Fortunately the residents of northeast Carrboro do have a strong environmental and social justice ethic, but they will change us in other ways.

Up until now, local growth has been caught up in a series of postive feedback loops ("any place where the more you have of something, the more you have the possibility of having more"). The more growth we see, the more pressure is placed on local government and human service agencies, the higher the taxes go, the more we need development to support the burden of growth. The reputation of our school system contributes to those growth pressures. The better our kids do on national tests, the more development occurs to support wealthy families who want their kids to go to school here.

What steps/policies will the new majority on the BOA undertake to break the growth cycle? Will they be successful or will they create more turmoil? Will they acknowledge the complexities or fall back on positions they've shared in previous contexts? And how much pressure will they feel to act quickly before the 2007 election? Will they dance with the system or try to control it?

The question that can never be answered but which we should never forget, is how the use of appointment rather than election impacts everything that happens over the next couple of years. Yes, I know there was no way around appointment. But the appointment could have been made on the basis of the last election by appointing the 4th runner up. That one little decision may be the one flap of a seagull's wings for Carrboro.

And where does Dan Coleman fit in all this? Without his participation in the electoral process and having been subjected to the intense questioning of groups like the Sierra Club, we really don't know but we might have a clue. In one of his pre-campaign season editorials, he speculated about a candidate of the future: "In the future, Carrboro may find itself on the horns of a dilemma: On the one hand, a marvelous case study that small really can be beautiful; on the other, a small town facing the challenge of trying to affordably meet the expectations of an increasingly affluent population....Some future candidate might posit a merger with Chapel Hill as a way to resolve this tension."

Where's my crystal ball? Certainly sounds like a campaign issue that would get him traction with Carrboro's newest neighborhoods in 2007.

Point In Time Count

Last week, we did a community point-in-time count of homeless people here in Orange County. The goal is to count everyone in the county who classifies as homeless by HUD standards. By far the largest portion of our homeless population is covered by the service agencies, but we also had to count those individuals who live on the street and don't use the services. In the past, the street count portion has been handled by the police exclusively. As part of our effort to increase the accuracy of our reporting, we decided to try using volunteers rather than the police this year. Since it was our first time to use volunteers, we decided to start slow and partner volunteers with police officers and then use those volunteers to develop a training program for a summer count. Our goal is to make this an entirely volunteer activity; it's going to take much more training and preparation than I anticipated.

I went out with the Carrboro officer from 9:00 pm - 11:30 pm. It was a very cold and windy night so fortunately we only found two guys, both of whom were willing to talk with us. We began by driving around looking for anyone walking. Next we began checking out a list of places that had been compiled by the other officers on the force (underpasses, abandoned houses, etc.). Fortunately, we only found two guys out that night. They were just walking around trying to keep warm. When we pulled up in the car, they were very hesitant to talk with us at first (no surprise there!), but the the police officer really knew how to talk to them and help them relax their guard. They told us that homelessness, substance abuse, and unemployment are a vicious cycle. If you drink, you can't hold a job; if you can't hold a job, you lose your housing; if you lose your housing, you can't get a new job; if you can't get a new job, you keep on drinking.

It's interesting to see the town late at night from the eyes of a cop. I had no idea that people hangout in the rafters of road overpasses, or that there are small communities of individuals living in tent cities within the urban area. All we saw was the sites that night, but one place we went really scared me. Besides being outside with only industrial plastic covering beds that had been pulled out of dumpsters, the amount of trash spread around the site was just unbelievable. I've lived in cities so I've seen desperate poverty, but this was different. I can't imagine living like that or how it must feel to be so totally cut off from the wealth and prosperity that is this community. It was a very humbling experience.

...homelessness deprives people of far more than shelter. They have no place from which to be productive and giving, to be restored, to be welcomed, to be themselves, to give physical expression to their personalities. The homeless are, quite simply, deprived of their humanity. Restoring that to them requires more than grudging public expenditure and warehouses where they can sleep at night....I don't know the solution for homelessness. What I do know is that it requires more than an impersonal institution that removes the homeless from our sight and our minds. It requires some attention, some engagement from all of us, some willingness to focus on homeless people not as statistics but as individuals, needing care, needing to be welcomed back as full members of the human race.

--Donella Meadows, Being Homeless is More Than Being Without Shelter

Net Neutrality, or Keep the Internet Free

Net neutrality is the basis of the Internet, the assumption that 'all users are entitled to access content and services or run applications and devices of their choice.' A couple of posters to Squeeze the Pulp don't want a municipal network because they fear government would destroy the concept of net neutrality.

But it's really the big businesses are that systematically attempting to destroy free and open access of the Internet. Cable providers (telecomms) and phone companies (telecos) are at each others throats in their attempts to protect their communications turf. On January 11 representatives from Verison, Time-Warner, Bellsouth, and others met withe NC Revenue Laws Committee to try and convince our legislators to regulate use of the Internet. The telecomms want to prevent telecos from offering video services, and the telecos want to prevent the telecomms from offering voice over IP telephony.

The companies that control the pipes want to discriminate in favor of their own applications, while shutting out or slowing down competing services. These companies have a business incentive to create their own affiliates to compete with the most popular applications — like search engines, voice-over-the-Internet, and streaming video archives.

They now seek to pad their pockets further by becoming gatekeepers to all things digital — deciding what content, applications and services we can use. The telco and cable giants — which dominate 98 percent of the broadband market — not only expect consumers to pay to access the Internet, but they want to charge content producers for using their wires to deliver it. (Deadend for the Internet)

Businesses have every right to expect reasonable profits but access to the Internet and other telecommunications services can no longer be considered luxury service. Local news sources do not provide indepth reporting and analysis; more and more businesses will only accept online job applications; schools budgets don't fund print reference books, etc. Without access, living and working in this community is seriously curtailed.

Access has two components. First, is the information available and representative of all views and second, is it available to everyone, regardless of income level. Through a municipal network we can assure access on both levels.

Here's what I believe:

• A municipal networks is the only means of protecting our free and open access to the Internet and all its associated benefits.
• Local government should support the creation of a non-profit organization that would oversee the design, installation, and ultimately the management of the service; but that service should be protected against any interference by local governments in policymaking, etc.
• Local governments should commit to use the service to support their own operations, thus creating a significant market demand from the start and reducing their own municipal expenditures for network access.
  
• The service should be low-cost but not free. It should follow the similar cost of service principles written into the OWASA charter.
  
• Taxes should not be used to fund ongoing operation although municipal funding will be necessary for start up costs.
• Such a service will create new, well-paying jobs to support our local economy and will continue to support economic development by reducing business costs and creating new business opportunities, especially if we can bundle Internet, telephone, and cable services.

Ultimately, I want telecommunications in southern Orange County to be treated as a utility--a basic function necessary to life in the 21st century. Just as I trust OWASA to protect my water supply, I will trust a similarly structured utility to protect my access to a free and open Internet.

The Free Expression Policy Project has put together an excellent "overview of the mass media system and the concerns of the media democracy movement"

Feline Diabetes

My lovely Lucy was diagnosed with feline diabetes in September 2004. Initially we were told to give her 1 unit of Humulin L every 12 hours. Between September 2004 and March 2005 she had 4-5 UTIs and lost 4 pounds. She had complete workup done in April and came home limping badly. The bloodwork was another $300 and told us nothing. So I started looking for a new vet. Before I was able to make a well-cat appointment, something happened, I don't know what, but Lucy developed a huge abscess on her belly and nearly died. She has very thick fur and has always hated having her belly touched so it took several days to figure out that her malaise and inappetance was due to something other than the diabetes or another UTI.

Fortunately, I was able to get an appointment with one of the vets I had on my list; she found the abscess and rushed Lucy into surgery. She spent the next 3 weeks recovering. But she didn't really recover. By big, funny, pesky girl was wasting away. She stayed curled up in a ball sleeping 24 hours a day. If I picked her up, she just laid there--didn't try to bite or get down, very abnormal behavior. Every morning I expected to find her gone. Everytime I left the house I was scared to come back in. Nothing helped. She had a very odd, intermittent twitching in her head and her eyes were scarey looking. She just looked at me like I was failing her. I was miserable.

All this time, we followed the vet's advice completely. We had bloodwork whenever we were told, and I fed Purina kidney formula (dry) for CRF. My friends were all telling me to let her go, but I had to try one more time. I found a vet who would come to the house and hoped that she would see something different since Lucy wouldn't be as stressed out if we went to a clinic. Lucy was doing the twitching thing right in this vets lap. Another big bill with no advice other than making the end of her life as comfortable as possible.

That's when I took charge. I found the Feline Diabetes Message Board (FDMB) where I was told to begin hometesting. Why didn't I think of that before? No physician would ever allow a human patient to take insulin without a blood glucose check. In retrospect, I believe the twitching was a result of low blood glucose. I'm not sure if she ever had a full-blown hypo, I was too ignorant to recognize it if she did. We also switched to a high-protein, low carbohydrate canned food (Fancy Feast) and then to Wellness. That change along brought almost normal BG levels. Following the recommendations of the folks at Phydeaux and some FDMB members, we then changed to a raw diet (Nature's Variety frozen medallions). Within a week, Lucy was off insulin.

Within two months, due to dietary changes, Lucy went from near death to being a diet controlled diabetic, the twitching ended, and her eyes took back their normal mischievious glint. She's gained her weight back, along with her fractiousness. Her neuropathy is gone (methyl-B12); she runs, she plays, she growls at the mailman and neighborhood cats who come into her yard. My old friend once again helps me type and read the newspaper. She demands her breakfast as soon as I open my eyes every morning. I can't believe I waited so long to take charge.

I've offered to show the vet how we do the hometesting and share my data with her, but she's not interested. I've written to the North Carolina Veterinary Medical Association to encourage them to stop prescribing dry food and to start expecting owners to hometest. No one, human or feline, should have to settle for the uninformed care Lucy had for the first year of her diabetic life. Vets are professionals who should be more willing to work with us than to demand that we put everything about our cat's health in their hands. I'm still hoping to find someone with the right attitude; I will never again be a passive caregiver.

Accountability

On November 8, the Board of Education for the Chapel Hill-Carrboro School System enacted a policy, effective this year, that requires all students in the 8th grade and higher, to pass end-of-course exams in order to pass the course associated with that exam. Although students who do not pass the exam on the first try will be given additional opportunities for remediation and retesting, the fact is that kids who worked hard all year long, were assessed by their teachers to be proficient in the topic, could still find themselves judged to be inadequate based on a single test. These 10 new high stakes exams are in addition to an already full agenda of placement tests, achievement tests, graduation exams, and of course, course exams.

The justification for this new policy is accountability. But accountability for what?

• Holding students accountable for their own performance? Their semester-long record provides that data in a much more timely fashion.
  
• Holding teachers accountable for teaching the standard curriculum? Should students be penalized if their teachers are not aligning their instruction with state standards?
  
• Holding administrators accountable for placing well qualified teachers in each classroom? Again, should students be penalized if the district is not performing up to expected standards?

I believe in accountability, but in this instance, children are being victimized by adults who are misapplying the concept. If we want to make teachers accountable for teaching the standard curriculum, then let's adopt item banks of assessment items within each content area and require teachers to use those items in their course exams throughout the school year. Then if students are not doing well, we can more easily trace the problems back to individual student performance or to teachers who are not following the standard curriculum.

Assessments are intended to provide feedback in a timely fashion. When offered in a timely fashion, this feedback allows students to review materials before progressing on to the next unit or course and lets teachers know when they need to review materials that were inadequately taught the first time. End of course testing is an inspection process that punishes students in an attempt to “make teachers accountable in teaching the N.C. standard course of study.” You cannot inspect quality into a product on the assembly line, and you cannot inspect quality into a student at the end of the year.

When provided throughtout the school year, standard assessments, such as shared item banks of test questions, can ensure that teachers are counseled and/or replaced without punishing students by causing them to retake a course. And if we really believe in accountability, then let's look at data on minority student achievement over the past 20 years. That cumulative data speaks volumes on the LACK of accountability we impose upon the district administration, including the Board of Education.

Teachers and administrators do need to make sure that students are proficient in one course before moving on. But adding new high-stakes tests is misguided at best and at worse it will further erode the confidence of all children who are already stressed by the sheer volume of testing.

Lost Opportunities

I've been overwhelmed by the costs of NOT acting (opportunity cost) lately. Here's a list of lost or potentially lost opportunities in our community:

• If Katrina Ryan is not appointed to fill Mark Chilton's seat on the Carrboro Board of Alderman, will that signify the last possible opportunity for bringing the northern residents into the community or will it be the last straw that makes them fight for years to change the community? Will we lose Carrboro through the disenfranchisement while trying to save it from Katrina's different way of looking at the world?
  
  
• If Chapel Hill doesn't move more quickly on creating a wireless network, will they lose the opportunity to telecommunication lobbists that want to stop municipal networks altogether?
  
  
• Is there any chance that the Chapel Hill Carrboro City Schools can really improve minority student achievement now that they've enacted the requirement for passing end-of-course test in order to pass the course? Or have they further alienated students who already feel marginalized?

Downtown Wifi Update

Yesterday the Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership Board of Directors voted to survey downtown business owners about their current provision/costs/use of wireless internet connectivity, their perception on customer demand for the service, the benefits, and the challenges of offering it as a town-supplied service.

I have four concerns with this approach:

1. Business owners are not the only stakeholders in downtown. Such a survey would omit the interests and perspectives of students, residents, and visitors. If we believe the decision to take action on a municipal network (in either direction) should be an inclusive process, then we need to survey everyone simultaneously, ensuring that the surveys are aligned with one another for planning purposes.
   
   
2. What happens if the business owners express their lack of support for the project? Does it get put on hold or is the town's technology committee then forced to move forward in opposition to the business owners?
   
   
3. We've talked this issue to death without providing compelling reasons for moving forward. Here’s my compelling reasons: a) Wireless should be undertaken to ensure regular & reliable access to broadband service, a basic need for participation in the political and economic sectors of our community. b) Wireless has been demonstrated to significantly improve the responsiveness of emergency services such as police and fire. With all the complaints about crime in downtown, how can we possibly consider a municipal network as a business amenity only? I do not support the creation of a municipal network just because it might bring more shoppers into downtown Chapel Hill.
   
   
4. Reliability on surveys requires some degree of common understanding respondents. Demographic questions provide a way of determining how understanding might vary among different categories of respondents. To be fair, the researcher proposing the survey will be adding demographic questions to the draft survey, but I don't believe we know enough about the downtown business owners understanding of wireless to determine what demographic factors may influence their responses. Does business size matter (number of employees, net income, etc.)? Current use of technology (backend system, basis for operation, nice-to-have)? etc. The only thing I know about this group is that, according to the news media, several of them share an assumption that they would be expected to pay for this nework, including deployment into adjacent low-income neighborhoods. That's a pre-conception that could significantly bias this survey. While I support the concept of internet access becoming a public utility (a necessity), there are many payment options that need to be publicly explored. Until we have some ideas for how the network should be designed (address based, mobile, combination), there can be no real understanding of upfront or maintenance cost except in comparison to current charges through Time Warner or one of the other telecomms.

Until we have a real plan for how to move forward, including information on different levels of service and payment options, ie product proposals, I do not believe a survey is the best first step. We need a needs assessment that begins with open-ended data collection methodologies, such as interviews, focus groups, etc. to determine the interests (need) and concerns of each stakeholder group. With that broad data in hand, then we could construct survey(s) that will provide us with more reliable information on how to structure services/products options. That is the data business owners, elected officials, and other stakeholders will need to make an informed decision on whether or not a municipal network is worth undertaking.

Wireless, Community Development & Sustainability

Evolution of the Network Idea
Two years ago the Chapel Hill Information Technology Committee began discussing a town network. At that time, we were focussed on laying conduit for future fiber that would support municipal services such as traffic signals, police and emergency services, transit and the town's Internet access. The intent was to reduce the town's costs for telecommunications while improving operational services.

Community Development
The IT Committee met with Council in October 2004 to discuss e-democracy. One of the concerns Council expressed about e-democracy was the digital divide. Will Raymond introduced the network issue to Council at that time by assuring them that we have the technical capability to provide Northside and Pine Knolls residents with free Internet access as an outgrowth of a network in downtown. Since that meeting, we have promoted the community development benefits of a town-wide network and for better or worse, it has superseded the previously promoted improvement of town services & reduction in fees paid to Time Warner. It appears that we've confounded community development (the social justice issue) and economic development (bringing new businesses & cost efficiencies into town). The community appears to be split on their willingness to fund the network as a community development project.

Sustainability
According to the Wikipedia, sustainability is a systemic concept, relating to the continuity of economic, social, and environmental aspects of human society. The Carrboro model (also known as StarBucks or free love model) of free roaming wifi service with bandwidth contributed by one or more business entities has become the only approach Chapel Hillians understand and/or are willing to discuss. It's the highly visible, local model so it makes sense from a cognitive perspective, but it's also frustrating. The possibilities are getting lost in complaints that coffee drinkers and poor people don't need broadband. Community development is economic development. School aged children need Internet access to do their school work. It's virtually impossible to apply for a job without Internet access. The high cost of rents in downtown could be offset through more affordable telecommunications. Town services could be greatly improved (and some automated). But instead, we debate whether or not poor people need broadband.

Current Status
As of yesterday, the Downtown Partnership is taking the lead on determining the viability of setting up a Chapel Hill Downtown wireless network. I have no details other than they will not be including service to Northside or Pine Knolls or improved town services in their investigation. I hope that decision is reconsidered. If not, the investigation will basically be determining whether the Carrboro approach will work for Chapel Hill. Some will be happy, but for how long?

Mobile Media
In Athens GA, the University and the Town partnered to create a wireless network called WAGz. Although it works in coffee shops, it isn't free and it was developed to serve as a research testbed for the development of new mobile media applications.

The Wireless Athens Georgia Zone (WAGz) lights the public areas of downtown Athens with WiFi (802.11b) connectivity. Anyone with a WiFi-enabled device can access information about Athens and web-based projects designed by NMI students. In the WAGz, people can send and receive a variety of text, audio, and video information.

But the WAGz really isn’t about wireless technology. The WAGz is a mobile media sandbox in which we want to discover the compelling applications for wireless. The WAGz provides us with a real-world research test-bed where we can explore the types of mobile media content that will drive the wireless industry.

Open Letter to Donna Brazile

Dear Ms. Brazile,

I appreciated your Washington Post Op-Ed on the rebuilding of your New Orleans home. Watching your home being devastated and your neighbors being sacrificed must have been a heartbreaking experience and you and the residents of New Orleans have my most heartfelt sympathy. I am proud that my state of North Carolina has been so generous in rushing to send aid and comfort.

However, before you fully embrace the President's beginning of an outline of a plan, I hope you will also consider the poor and ignored citizens in other parts of this country upon whose backs this rebuilding will occur. Where will the money come from to undertake this massive reconstruction? Precedence says it will come from human services. Who will profit from the rebuilding efforts? Precedence says it will go to large, ridiculously wealthy corporations. Are you ready to rebuild your home on the backs of the poor here in North Carolina? Are you ready to sacrifice future generations to even more staggering debt?

I too want to see New Orleans rebuilt, but the conditions under which that occurs must not take away from the poor, the aged, the already underserved elsewhere. I urge you to use your powerful voice to seek equity and justice for everyone as the plans for rebuilding take shape.

Sincerely,

Terri Buckner
Carrboro, North Carolina

Failure of Compassion

This is an outstanding pictorial timeline of Hurricane Katrina and the federal response.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/3/201947/4345

Other timelines

Bush's Disastrous Response: A Timeline http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/4/111017/0402

Timeline of Reactions to Katrina News
http://scoop.epluribusmedia.org/story/2005/9/3/161145/0263

Washington Monthly: Kevin Drum
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007023.php

From dKosopedia, the free political encyclopedia
http://www.dkosopedia.com/index.php/Hurricane_Katrina_Chronology


Think Progress:
http://thinkprogress.org/katrina-timeline/

A society is measured by how it treats the weak and vulnerable
George W. Bush, State of the Union, Feb 2, 2005.

The Big Boot, The Wall and The Mirror

This is an essay from Elisabeth Gleckler, Assistant Professor, University of New Orleans, Health Promotion Program. She evacuated to Baton Rouge before Katrina hit.

The Big Boot, The Wall and The Mirror
It is early in the school year and I should be setting up my students with internships and arranging for my students in health classes for their field experiences in one of the New Orleans public schools. On Saturday afternoon, I was supposed to attend the wedding of one of my favorite undergraduate students. Instead I am writing from a coffee shop somewhere in Baton Rouge with everything I own in my car and homeless. How I ended up here in dirty clothes and needing a shower instead of grading class assignments is story worth telling. This essay, my first reaction to Katrina, takes the form of a warning to the rest of the nation. As an educator I have a tendency to use mnemonics to help people retain lessons. So, here is my Katrina mnemonic: the big boot, the wall and the mirror.

First, the Big Boot
I take this lesson directly from anti-racism training by The People’s Institute in New Orleans. We live in a worldwide economic system of oppression. Deliberately, I do not use “United States” because with the way that modern economies and governments are constructed; this goes beyond national geographic borders. There is enormous wealth and power concentrated in the hands of few. The way to gain more money and power is by exploiting the powerlessness and poverty of the many. It used to be that we believed the American dream that anyone could succeed and, occasionally there is a freak of nature and a few people do rise to a level of control. By in large, if you are born in poverty you will stay there.

Even beyond the lack of access to opportunity, people are robbed of their vision of personal agency because of the predominate belief that the poor are in that state because they did something to deserve it; circumstances of the destitution be damned. I do believe in personal responsibility, but I also believe in the power of the environment and context. In a twisted way, a certain amount of poverty is good for business. Poor people means there is cheap labor. It has become irrelevant if those cheap workers are in the US or in Indonesia. Exploiting their destitution offers profound economic benefits to the powerful. The Big Boot is the economic structure hovering over the masses of us who do not have power – which is most of us, whether we recognize it or not.

In a disaster there is an additional boot - charity. How dare the people who are taking our charity ever have their own perception of our magnanimity! There are very clear behaviors that need to be acted out when charity is handed out and if you are receiving charity, those relationships had better not be violated. Never mind that the role of a civilized government is to step in to protect the individual when they are powerless. Ideally, people should expect that without having to beg or grovel.

New Orleans’ particular piece of the boot is an abandoned population who at minimum wage, truly and metaphorically, changed the linens of the people who came to New Orleans to gorge on food and drink until they threw up on Bourbon Street and made it to a street where residents didn’t even visit. There is a pattern of exploitation and the people left behind in Katrina had plenty of reason to act out, not that I approve of shooting or attacking anyone. The destruction of New Orleans is based on a long, complex and profound history of betrayal of public trust.

The lesson we need to learn from watching Katrina is that we need to wake up to the system and deliberately examine it without the fantasy of the American Dream or without thinking that this country is a functioning democracy that can operate without active oversight by the public. Labor unions are a good thing. Local politics closely observed by citizens is a good thing. Investigations into the motivations of public officials are good things. Investigations into the financial dealings of corporations are a very good thing. Not buying from corporations that take advantage of people is a good thing. Demanding a piece of the profits of industry to be returned to support the community in which they operate is more than a good thing. It is necessary.

The second point is our distance from the wall
Once, my brother tried to explain advance mathematics and chaos theory to me. Always the patient educator, he said it was like standing next to a wall. When you look at the view in front of it, all you see is disordered marks. When you step back a little you see that what is in your view is actually lines of something bigger. A little further back finds that it is not disordered scratches on the wall but a picture. With enough distance, what is rendered on the wall becomes a picture. In the case of Katrina, please step far to the rear to see that the picture is a repeating pattern at the global level.

New Orleans and the gulf coast have been your canary in the coal mine. It is us in New Orleans now; it will be you a little later. The water off the coast was 91 degrees as Katrina passed over it. Put a storm system over that heat and you are just pouring fuel into the tank of the hurricane. The wetlands that could have helped protect from storm surge are decimated because no one wanted to flood the wetlands with silt-rich water from the Mississippi River to keep the ratio of nutrients and water supporting wetlands vegetation. Real estate developers had laid down miles of housing tracts in the land that needed to be periodically flooded. Canals and pipelines had been dug, for oil and chemical companies, into the marshes which changed the flow of water and brought new salinity into tracts of marsh. Chemical companies released effluents and warm water. They cooled their plants with water from the aquifer and dumped it back out. For decades oil companies have reaped enormous profits from sucking oil from below the earthen plate that is the Mississippi delta as the land began to sink and the coast line receded. The present White House is lead by two ex-oil industry executives who have turned over consumer and environmental protections to the control of industry influenced policy wonks. This is about looting citizen control of government and letting business interests dominate over health and welfare of the public. And where is the leadership for the common man that we say is part of the American system of government? It is in the hallways of Halliburton.

And finally, they way we see ourselves, The Mirror
I watched the media coverage of Katrina in the houses of my friends. Until September 1, several days into the disaster, the only talking head who put a moment of deep reality into their commentary was Winton Marsalis, a man who is always astute about race and poverty. He talked about the desperation of people in New Orleans, indirectly saying, “What do you expect?” when the TV interviewer asked him about the rioting in the streets when social control collapsed. It took several more days for people to begin to think past the inflammatory images, to reflect upon the status of people left behind – figuratively and literally. Of course a rapper had to yell at the president on a telethon and a congresswoman had to threaten him with bodily harm before a little better analysis began.

The opposite of the stepping back from the wall is modern commercial television reporting. By dint of the technology, cameras only catch a tiny picture of the horizon and not smell, feeling, and only some filtered sound. The view is interpreted by talking heads who gain a direct benefit of inflating frightening and shocking images and stories. Add to this a cadre of people who earn their money and power by being seen in front of a TV camera talking about New Orleans without knowing the city or commenting about the situation without being there; having no training in disasters or in interpreting human behavior. It becomes a nasty gumbo of near-reality and manipulation.

TV makes people think they are really there, experiencing the event. One sees the image and it triggers a belief that they have an understanding of the issue. It is a dangerous mix of confidence builder and a profoundly small frame that is made smaller because of the interpreters who stand between viewer and the images. The stories come at us so fast that they can’t be processed and only some stories make the screen. It is clearly not reality yet it provokes strong emotions as if it were.

Many people have commented about the racism of the images and the media coverage. Sure there is institutional racism and clear cases of overt racism in the coverage. The color of the skin is a proxy identifier for oppression, poverty, and powerlessness. There is nothing inherent about the nature of skin color except that it has been western civilization’s visual cue to dehumanize the person in that skin for some form of economic profit. So, what TV producers have done in capturing images based on deeply imbedded racism is a reflection of our civilization’s overall pattern of brutalization. That’s not to make an apology for the disgusting coverage. One would think if they get paid the big salaries to be commentators and reporters they should have enough wits to see this clearly and earn their keep by actually offering some meaningful text.

But, the people who are in the frame need to keep many people watching so that advertising time is sold. The whole system exists to increase consumption of a lot of stuff that none of us need. One example was that in the midst of the first days of the Katrina TV coverage, there was an ad for an SUV. How close to the wall are we standing for that not to provoke outrage?

TV does not encourage us to step back and process the sad irony of global warming and big, fat cars that waste precious oil and a city inundated with water in the midst of a weakened wetland. I see lots of SUVs proudly displaying George Bush bumper stickers. The reflective moment does not make good TV, so we get “fair and balanced” “headline” news on tickertapes across the screen masquerading as useful information.

So, the wall holds the mirror and we hope, as in other times in history that the boot is ready to kick it.
When we bring these little lessons behind the mnemonics together, there is a profound warning. The Mayans in Central America had a great civilization. They suddenly imploded and disappeared as a dominant social force before the Spanish came to the “New World.” Recent theories point to an ecological disaster that finished their cities and political systems. We are no better than the Mayans and their fate will be our fate.

We can’t wait for the President of the United States to decide to accept a theory of global warming until it becomes economically convenient for himself and his friends. If he is blinded, then we need to take off his blindfold. We should be demanding stronger federal tax breaks and outright funding for non-oil technologies. We need to invest in public transportation and quit dicking around and use it. Forget the “death tax.” Tax the rich, they are good at making money and they owe it to the system where they made it. All that garbage you see on TV, turn off the tube and don’t buy it. You don’t need the newest junk to be a well-rounded and personally rich human being. Buying packaged goods from China? Well, don’t be surprised if you end up getting laid off from your job. Are you buying from a mega-plex shopping box store? If you end up having no viable local businesses, then you only have yourself to blame. Ever wonder what happened to local farms? Then purchase your food from people closer to the producer instead of massive markets. Hate the corruption in government? Then oversee it and get involved. Run for office, get on a committee. You should have more time to assure that it protects the interests of you and your children if you stop watching re-runs on TV. We have to turn the American capitalism around to operate farther from the wall, put the boot down and look in the mirror.

I really loved and hated New Orleans. People are lying or they are tourists if they say that they loved it without hesitation. Great art and music came from the depths of its poverty. The corruption was colossal and evil. When you worked there you have to have a special touch to get things done because people thought about things differently than in other parts of the country. You had to stop, watch and suspend judgment to learn the lessons that the city had to offer. As a professor in a state university located in the city, I had a lot of respect for my college students. Many were the first one in their family to go to college, most worked low paying jobs and had spouses and children on top of class and assignments. My heart aches for New Orleans. I already miss people and relationships and it has only been a week since Katrina hit as I write this. The thing that New Orleans had that I have never found anywhere else was a kind of “old school” combination of strong community, wry insight into humanity, awareness of oppression and racism, mixed with social irreverence and understanding of what is truly valuable in life. The streets stank because life sticks but it did not stop people from their lives and loves. There was really was no other place like this city and the people living there. The rest of the country may not yet understand the loss, but this city provided something irreplaceable. I hope you all take the warning.

Liberty v Freedom

After reading through the Drudge Report this afternoon, I decided to tackle Instapundit to get the conservative take on the feds poor performance in New Orleans. Got sidetracked by a book review of Rick Santorum's It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good.

The review says:

In Santorum's view, freedom is not the same as liberty. Or, to put it differently, there are two kinds of freedom. One is "no-fault freedom," individual autonomy uncoupled from any larger purpose: "freedom to choose, irrespective of the choice." This, he says, is "the liberal definition of freedom," and it is the one that has taken over in the culture and been imposed on the country by the courts.

Quite different is "the conservative view of freedom," "the liberty our Founders understood." This is "freedom coupled with the responsibility to something bigger or higher than the self." True liberty is freedom in the service of virtue -- not "the freedom to be as selfish as I want to be," or "the freedom to be left alone," but "the freedom to attend to one's duties -- duties to God, to family, and to neighbors."

Funny, but Santorum, Mr. Ultra Conservative, is sounding very liberal to me. Appears that the good senator is rejecting Reagan's belief that government is the problem, not the solution to our problems. But rather than embracing the communitarian stance of Hilary's It Takes A Village, it seems Mr. Santorum wants us all to have the freedom that comes from good governance, but ONLY if we fit the right profile.

This kind of freedom depends upon and serves virtue, and virtue's indispensable incubator and transmitter is the family. Thus "selflessness in the family is the basis for the political liberty we cherish as Americans." If government is to defend liberty and promote the common welfare, then it must promote and defend the integrity of the traditional family. In doing so, it will foster virtue and rebuild the country's declining social and moral capital, thus fostering liberty and strengthening family. The liberal cycle of decline -- families weaken, disorder spreads, government steps in, families weaken still further -- will be reversed.

There you go...what Santorum wants to conserve is the traditional family. While he escapes the precious individualism of Reagan and Bush, he just can't quite embrace the concept of liberty for all. He has reversed the cause and effect of traditional conservatives (less government = more personal freedom) by claiming that "If you shore up the family, you will strengthen the social fabric and ultimately reduce dependence on government."

A list of the government interventions that Santorum endorses includes national service, promotion of prison ministries, "individual development accounts," publicly financed trust funds for children, community-investment incentives, strengthened obscenity enforcement, covenant marriage, assorted tax breaks, economic literacy programs in "every school in America" (his italics), and more.

While I am thrilled to hear that Mr. Santorum believes in national service and economic literacy, I am troubled that he has absconded with liberal applications of liberty by impliciting promoting the paternalistic vision of family. I think I am more comfortable with less government conservatives. I wonder what he thinks will happen to us non-traditionals in his perfect vision of the future.

Poverty and Education

David Berliner is an educational researcher after my own heart. In his 2005 speech at AERA's annual convention, he explores the relationship of poverty to school reform.

Those who blame poor children and their families, like Herrnstein and Murray, or those who blame the teachers and administrators who serve those kids and families in our public schools, like Rod Paige, Jeanne Allen, Checker Finn, William Bennett, and dozens of other well known school critics, are all refusing to acknowledge the root problem contended with by too many American schools, namely, that there is a 600 pound gorilla in the school house.

The gorilla is poverty.

As educators and scholars we continually talk about school reform as if it must take place inside the schools. We advocate, for the most part, for adequacy in funding, high quality teachers, professional development, greater subject matter preparation, cooperative learning, technologically enhanced instruction, community involvement, and lots of other ideas and methods I also promote. Some of the most lauded of our school reform programs in our most distressed schools do show some success, but success often means bringing the students who are at the 20th percentile in reading and mathematics skills up to the 30th percentile in those skills. Statistical significance and a respectable effect size for a school reform effort is certainly worthy of our admiration, but it just doesn’t get as much accomplished as needs to be done.....Schooling alone may be too weak an intervention for improving the lives of most children now living in poverty.

While the poverty rate in Orange County is 14.1%, one of the highest in the state, our childhood poverty rate is much lower than that of our neighbors.

Locality	Child Poverty	ChildPovRate
Alamance	4,063	13.3%
Chatham	1,358	12.7%
Durham	8,556	17.2%
Orange	2,127	9.0%
Wake	13,275	8.6%

Berliner asks "Why do we put so much of our attention and resources into trying to fix what goes on inside low performing schools when the causes of low performance may reside outside the school? Is it possible that we might be better off devoting more of our attention and resources than we now do toward helping the families in the communities that are served by those schools? That would certainly be a competitive strategy for solving the problem of low academic performance if it is simply poverty (along with its associated multitude of difficulties) that prevents most poor children from doing well."

Good questions. He identifies housing prices, real wages, job creation and tax revenues as the community factors affecting child poverty rates. What is the relationship between those factors and poverty in Orange County? I'm going to try and get data from the two school systems and from the county economic development commission to create a better profile of poverty in Orange before the November elections. We need a realistic understanding of the relationship between affordable housing, wages, community services (including education), and taxes (including the proposed district tax) may impact overall poverty and child poverty in order to make informed decisions in this upcoming election.

Black Friday 2005

Today the FCC unanimously agreed to treat the high-speed Internet service, known as digital subscriber line (DSL), as an “information service,” which insulates it from many traditional telephone rules, such as requirements to lease network access to independent ISPs, such as Earthlink, AOL, etc. The move supposedly eliminates any 'unfair competition' with cable broadband since they were designated as "information services" in 2002. As part of this new decision, 9 months from now, DSL providers will no longer have to contribute 10 percent of their revenue into the Universal Service fund, a program to subsidize phone service in rural areas and the e-rate program.

OK, so now all broadband services will be classified as information services rather than telecommunication services. How does that affect the Ensign-McCain Free Market Telecommunications Framework Act of 2005? According to McCain's aide, his intent in sponsoring this bill is to make broadband service more universally available and that he doesn't support the provision within this bill that outlaws municipal networks. Certainly the amendment to the Telecommunications Act of 1996 is a ringing endorsement of municipal networks/universal access. And now this..

Consumers Union (CU) and the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) warned that today’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) order restricting access of competitors to digital subscriber lines (DSL) will force existing independent broadband providers out of the market and drive up the price of high-speed Internet for consumers. ...

The FCC’s action today underscores the need for a competitive broadband alternative that does not depend on cable or phone lines—wireless Internet," said Kimmelman. "As the FCC shuts off competitor access to DSL and cable lines, it should free up airwaves to foster affordable wireless Internet offered by independent companies." HearUsNow.org

No more dialup? The only positive aspect of this decision is that it might help Chapel Hill and Carrboro move forward on developing municipal networks, sooner rather than later.

Municipal Wireless

For the first time in my life, I want to move to New York City--just to vote for Andrew Rasiej. He's running for public advocate on a platform of wireless (Wi-Fi) and cellphone Internet access from every home, business and school in the city. Thomas Friedman, in today's NY Times, quotes him as saying: "we can't trust the telecom companies to make sure that everyone is connected because new technologies, like free Internet telephony, threaten their business models." But it gets better. He is advocating for "civic photo-blogging - having people use their cellphones to take pictures of potholes or crime, and then, using Google maps, e-mailing the pictures and precise locations to City Hall." This guy understands the concept of e-democracy, separate and apart from digital government. On his blog Rasiej says: "Every day, thousands of civic-minded individuals and organizations in hundreds of neighborhoods selflessly work to clean up our parks, improve our schools, care for neighbors, and strengthen our communities. Yet, too often, our voices and concerns are not heard and our collective power is never felt, because city government is stuck in an old paradigm: elect one person and supposedly they will solve our problems."

It's interesting that so many of our local candidates are emphasizing their willingness to "listen" and "collaborate." Do they think their predecessors were unwilling? Maybe the challenge of being a public official is changing and we need to rethink the role (beyond just paying them a full time salary). Andrew Raseij says: "The public official or candidate will no longer just be the one who talks to the many or tries to listen to the many. Rather, he or she will be a hub of connectivity for the many to work with the many - creating networks of public advocates to identify and solve problems and get behind politicians who get it." To accomplish that, we need better municipal infrastructure that 1) provides town-wide connectivity, 2) ensures all citizens have easy, 24-hour access to a computer hooked up to the network, and 3) ensures that all citizens have the skills and knowledge needed to take advantage of the network. We need technology access to be as much a part of town infrastructure as access to telephones or drinking water. Right now, Laurin Easthom in Chapel Hill is the only candidate addressing this issue. Will others join in? Anyone from Carrboro interested?

Starpoint Development: Wastewater/Stormwater issues

Today's Herald-Sun and Chapel Hill News have articles on the fight against the Starpoint development. Both articles are focussed exclusively on Walmart. Unfortunately, if this becomes a fight only about Walmart, we could find ourselves having to accept another big box retail on the site. To me the traffic and environmental problems of building a large new retail space on the site is the REAL problem–regardless of whether its Walmart or Target or Costco that moves in.

The size of the proposed development clearly extends beyond the 20 (out of ~69) acres zoned for business. And even if they scaled plans back some, the facility's wastewater treatment spray field would still have to be located in sensitive watershed.

Since Chatham County doesn't have a centralized wastewater treatment facility, every new development going in outside of Pittsboro is building their own (smaller developments are using septic fields). The technology for spray systems is relatively safe if the field is properly sited (soil/drainage). However, over time, the systems must be well managed by experienced managers who constantly monitor performance and ensure regular maintenance. Since the Division of Water Quality doesn't have adequate staff to constantly monitor all the new facilities supporting Chatham's rapid development, I can't imagine why they continue to approve their construction.

This particular site drains into the Upper New Hope Arm of the Jordan Lake where there is a proposed federal mandate to reduce nutrient loads by 35%. While this center will not be adding point source discharge (if their system is properly sited and maintained), they will undoubtedly be contributing to nonpoint source (stormwater) runoff. For a facility this large, the probability of error in the siting, sizing, and construction of retention ponds is significant and if such an error occured, it would be Chapel Hill that has to deal with it (Morgan Creek).

Carolina Lily!

My Carolina Lily (Lilium michauxxi) is blooming! I didn't notice it when it walked through the garden early this morning. The downward bloom and it's small size doesn't make it stand out from the background. Thank goodness for the Japanese beetles. If I hadn't gone back out to pick them off the roses, I might have missed this bloom altogether.

According to Plant Delights, "From West Virginia south to Florida and west to Texas, Lilium michauxii can be found growing in dry open woodlands and occasionally in bogs. The 4' tall stalks are adorned with fleshy green whorls of leaves. In early summer, the stalks are topped with large orange flowers. Each downward-facing recurved flower is orange toward the tips changing to cream near the center. The petals are also heavily spotted orange-brown. When the bulbs first flower, each stalk will only produce one or two flowers, but as the bulbs enlarge, it is possible to have as many as six flowers per stalk. Lilium michauxii makes a nice colony thanks to underground rhizomes."

I was worried that the dry weather this summer would prevent a first year bloom, but true to it's native breeding, it survived. The pictures I've seen don't really do justice to this incredible bloom. No wonder it's such a popular traditional quilt pattern.

Blogging Teach-In

The Blogging Teach-In today was incredibly informative. How generous of these guys (Anton, Jackson, and Corey) to give so freely of their time and expertise. Anton started the workshop with a brief introduction to blogging terminology and features followed by a demo of the different blogging softwares. He did a great job of simplifying the technical terms for the small, but eager audience of non-techies. He should definitely consider teaching at some point. After Anton's intro, the group broke into small groups. Jackson helped me set up an RSS feed (actually, I found out I already done set it up, but didn't know how to make it visible or how to reference it) which was my initial purpose in coming to the workshop. Then he helped me set up the Smith Level Road documentary link through my navigation column. Thank you Jackson!

On my way out, I stopped and chatted with Ouida, an instructional technologist from DPI. She showed me some new instructional technologies that they are working with. The one I liked the best is geocaching, webquests using GPS.

I tried to show her the Smith Level Road documentary link and found it wasn'linking to Flickr so I went back over to Jackson who was helping Will Raymond with something. We fixed up my problem and in the meantime, Corey came over to show Will how he is using Google to create a graphic map of the home locations of candidates running in the fall election. Unfortunately, I can't find that link, but did enjoy playing around the with GIS map my neighborhood. This map shows just how close the proposed Walmart is to Heritage Hills. The Lee-Moore Oil Co land runs between Smith Level Road and Woodbridge on the east side of 15-501.

TV Dinners

Gerry Thomas, inventor of the frozen (TV) dinner, died in Phoenix AZ on July 18, 2005. In 1954, Swanson and Sons found themselves with 260 tons of unsold turkey after Thanksgiving. As the company searched for ways to make use of the turkeys, Mr. Thomas, a company sales rep from 1948-1970, was visiting the Pan American Airlines food kitchens where they were experimenting with a single-compartment aluminum foil tray as a way of serving hot meals inflight.

By 1954, television had moved from the black and white, limited programming for the wealthy to live, color broadcasts found in the average home. Although Gerry Thomas didn't own a television himself, he knew that more and more families were eating their dinners in front of televisions. Mr. Thomas, like Tess McGill in Working Girl, made an outside-the-box connection between the turkeys and television and changed our society forever.

"He convinced the Swanson brothers to make up, as an experiment, 5,000 frozen turkey dinners, complemented by corn bread dressing, bright green peas and sweet potatoes. This was a big gamble for Swanson at the time. Swanson employed a few dozen women armed with ice cream scoops to fill the trays. The women worked through the night. Thomas also designed a clever package that resembled a TV screen complete with volume and channel knobs printed on its front. The dinner cost 98 cents. It was bold thinking for a person who did not even own a TV set at the time.

"He reasoned that the dinners would sell as convenience items to housewives who were entranced by post-War, time-saving appliances. They could sell the frozen dinners to families accustomed to gathering around the new television sets to watch popular programs like I Love Lucy. The dinners could be cooked in 25 minutes at 425 degrees. Being fast and convenient, they fit nicely on a TV tray in the living room so diners didn’t have to drag themselves away from their favorite television shows.

"Just as the Swanson’s had greatly overestimated the number of turkeys for Thanksgiving of 1954, they now had greatly underestimated the demand for the new type of frozen dinner.

"In 1955, Swanson sold ten million of the frozen dinners. Of note, most people didn’t even own freezers so the dinners were bought and prepared the same day. Later in 1955, Swanson added fried chicken, Salisbury Steak and meatloaf to its line. Throughout the 1950s Swanson dinners were touted by public figures ranging from President Eisenhower to Howdy Doody." John Fraim www.symbolism.org

Jeff Einstein adds this commentary:

"Some social scientists might interpret the introduction of the TV Dinner as an unintentional precursor to the later emancipation of American women, at least from the kitchen. Perhaps. But I see something more: I interpret it as the beginning of our addiction to television, what happened the moment we began to ritualize our obsession with it.

The dinner table – an essential ritual of family life – all but disappeared for millions of American families over the next few generations. The original evening news – what was going on within our families and our neighborhoods – was suddenly replaced with a commercial network TV version that didn't care a lick about us, our families, or our neighborhoods. The fragmentation of the American family accelerated as the number of TVs per household increased; soon everyone was eating in front of their own televisions in their own rooms.

As our addiction to TV escalated, so did our appetites. What started as an innocent snack in front of the TV evolved into an all-you-can-eat buffet, and dinnertime soon extended straight through primetime to bedtime, nonstop for decades. We grew fat not only because we couldn't stop eating in front of the TV, but because we couldn't turn off the TV in the first place.

The demise of the dinner table, the subsequent fragmentation of family and community, and the ascent of obesity as a primary American health risk are just a few of the many unintended consequences that ensued once we ritualized our obsession with television. But addiction is all about unintended consequences, if for no other reason than the simple fact that no one ever aspires to become an addict."

NC Builders Lobby

According to the Statesville Record and Landmark the NC Home Builders Association lobbyists are once again working against the best interests of citizens.

House Bill 648 and Senate Bill 508 - dubbed the Exempt Builders’ Inventory - would exempt developers from paying property tax increases on the value of any improvements made in developing their land for up to five years.

The result could be a loss of more than $1.38 million in tax revenue for the county, local municipalities and fire departments.

The average citizen “will be paying higher taxes,” said Iredell County Tax Administrator Bill Doolittle.

Can our elected officials really believe statements like this from Paul Wilms, director of government affairs for the N.C. Home Builders Association, "the bill will ultimately benefit counties by making homes more affordable to first-time homebuyers. It will cost local governments in the short term, but that is insignificant compared to the contributions,” he said."

No wonder our local governments are in such financial straits.

Tazz and Lucky Girl

I'm taking care of a friend's pets for a few days, an adolescent cat named Tazz and an elderly parakeet named Lucky Girl (she appeared at the house one day a few years ago). Tazz is totally pissed off at having lost her nearly constant attention. So when I am there, she demands my full attention. Yesterday I needed to change the paper in the bird cage and knocked down a hanging toy in the process. When I reached into the cage to rehang the toy, Lucky Girl flew out. Tazz started jumping up in the air, Lucky was flying wildly around the house, and I was having visions of telling the boys that Tazz ate Lucky through my error. Finally trapped Tazz and shut her up in the bathroom and eventually caught Lucky (to much very loud yowling in the background). I won't have to admit my ineptitude to the boys now and Tazz came in to observe while I cleaned her little box. She likes to observe from the sink!

CAFTA

I was undecided about CAFTA until today's State of Things (my first call in!). Mike Munger, chair of the political science department at Duke University (an economist), claims that textile workers who currently make $40,000 will have to take lower salaries ($28,000 in his example) in the retail sector in order to save consumers money on a pair of jeans. My call-in question was whether anyone had done any studies to determine the cost to the COMMUNITY for the loss of the mill. In other words, what happens to the cost of services when those workers have less disposable income (reduced sales tax) and when migration away from the community reduces overall property tax revenues. Dr. Munger's response was that those types of studies need to be conducted but only AFTER CAFTA is ratified. I didn't get to hear the entire discussion so I'm not going to make any assumptions about the validity of Munger's argument. But I was finally able to decide that I don't support CAFTA and have written to David Price to say so. As much as I believe that American's should be helping Central and South America, Africa, and all the other third world countries, I cannot accept that we have to do so at the expense of our own people. I'm looking for references on enlightened foreign policy!

Economic Self-Interest & Wal-Mart

For years I have been talking to anyone who would listen about economic literacy. After reading an essay at Inequality.org though, I've decided I need a new term. Economic self-interest is what I've chosen. Between all the Wal-Mart and economic development reports I've been reading lately, I think its a term that applies to our local situation. I first heard 'economic self-interest' after the 2004 presidential election when the country's poor voted en masse for GW Bush. Then the term was used to question why people who fall into the lowest income brackets would vote for someone whose sole economic policy is tax cuts for the rich. Did their 'values' take precedence over their long-term economic solvency? Or is economics such an obscure discipline for the average individual that they make decisions without clear understanding?

Shopping at Wal-Mart or any other large (big box) chain store is an extension of the principle. On the surface you meet your needs for low prices, but when Wal-Mart's sheer size and low prices drive other stores out of business and your property tax rockets upward, are low prices worth it? When local retail shopping options decline, property taxes go up. If the Walmart is out of county, your property taxes go up due to loss sales tax receipts. Since Wal-Marts doesn't provide comprehensive health insurance (and none for older workers), its county tax payers who shoulder the burden through the county's medicaid bill. Then there's the environmental costs (stormwater) of all that impervious surface.

"It’s Wal-Mart in the role of Adam Smith’s invisible hand. And the Milwaukee employees of Master Lock who shopped at Wal-Mart to save money helped that hand shove their own jobs right to Nogales. Not consciously, not directly, but inevitably. “Do we as consumers appreciate what we’re doing?” Larrimore asks. “I don’t think so. But even if we do, I think we say, Here’s a Master Lock for $9, here’s another lock for $6–let the other guy pay $9.” (The Walmart You Don't Know)

Invasion of the leaf eaters

Japanese beetles have invaded my garden. This is the first year I've had them so I didn't start controlling them early enough. They are all over the hydrangeas and the cone flowers. Had to cut the rose mallow down it had been so badly chewed up. The wild rose was also in bad shape; I didn't cut it down completely but it got a pretty severe trimming. Unfortunately, I planted a rose of sharon tree a couple of years ago. I didn't realize it was an invasive at the time. It appears to be the biggest attractor. I'm seriously considering going back out and chopping it down but I'm afraid I'll disturb the roots of the adjacent peonies (transplants from my father's garden who got them from his father).

Open Meetings: questions and answers from the Attorney General's Office

Question 1. I've gone through as much as I can find on open meetings in North Carolina and do not find anything addressing the use of communication technologies other than conference calls and broadcast (video). Is there any current explanation on the use of email and/or listservs, blogs, etc. are used in conjunction with the open meetings law?

RESPONSE: Currently, there are no statutes that explicity uses the term listserv, blogs, etc as it relates to the open meetings law, however it does mention electronic means so that would cover that form of media.

Before getting into more detailed answer, let me review how a "public body" is defined under the open meetings law found in G.S. 143-318.9 et seq. In general a public body is any authority, board, commission, council or other body of state or local government that meets two conditions:

1. It must have at least 2 members, and
2. It must be authorized to exercise at least one of the following five functions: legislative, policy-making, quasi-judicial, administrative or advisory.

The law is triggered when there is an "official meeting" of a public body. An official meeting occurs whenever a majority of the members of a group meet - in person or by some electronic means, such as: conference call video conference, etc. in order to do any of the following: conduct a hearing, deliberate, take action or otherwise transact public business.

Deliberate, as I mentioned to you in our call, is to examine, weigh, and reflect upon the reasons for or against a possible decision, if a board receives a briefing regarding an item that amounts to deliberating as well because it connotes not only a collective discussion but also a collective acquiring of information on the basis of which it will later act.

As I mentioned to you during our phone call, the use of the blog or listserv for "meeting" to transact the bodies business in my opinion falls under the open meetings law and as such requires that prior to having these meetings you should comply with the notice requirements under the open meetings law.

Question 2. My expectation would have been that the listserv should be made available to anyone who wants to subscribe as means of compliance rather than shutting it down. To me that is more conducive with the concept of open government. The listserv is set to to archive all messages and post them to a publicly available website. Does that change anything?

RESPONSE: As I mentioned to you this morning, the open meetings law allows for people to attend the meeting, but it does not give them the right to address the public body or participate in its deliberations. The ability to subscribe as means to attend the public body's meetings via the listserv.

Question 3. The Manager did differentiate between using the listserv for distribution of materials and 'substantive' discussion. Is there an official definition of what constitutes 'substantive'?

RESPONSE: It is ok to use the listserv to send materials. For example sharing a news article or materials that will be used during the official meeting. If the materials that are being sent are in the form of a briefing, that is if it going to be used a part of the "deliberative" or "substantive" discussion, then the body should convene an official meeting to receive that briefing.

Question 4. If small groups of committee members have email discussions, are those email messages subject to the public records law?

RESPONSE: Yes. In the pre e-mail days these would have been treated as memorandum and placing it in a members mailbox.

END RESPONSES FROM AG office.

While the town has an email policy and a records retention policy on email for staff, the town council operational procedures do not address email or public records. According to David Lawrence, staff policies do not apply to elected or appointed officials. A little earlier today, I was accused of focusing too much time on bureaucracy and rulemaking. And yet, these are the types of rules and practices that undergird open government.