Keep School Buses Local (And Other Reasons To Know The People Around You)

           I live in a small town.  And in our town a local story has struck a nerve.  The story is whether it is worth saving money by awarding our school bus contract to a national company or whether it is better to spend more, maybe $50,000 or so, so our school buses are run locally.  Although it’s a local story it is a universal question, but I’ve got to back into it.

We have a new Thai place in town.  It is in the same spot as the old Thai place and has the same staff and décor as the old Thai place.  It’s even run by the same wonderful woman, who works hard.  I don’t know why they have changed their name and said they are new – it might be strategic and it might be personal – but as part of the grand opening they threw an open house.  Free food and a big party.  

The kids and I joined a swarm of neighbors and friends.  We walked in to a warm welcome and were hustled to a long family-style table.  We saw many familiar faces around the place as we elbowed our way to the platters of pad Thai and sushi, aromatic chicken and spicy dumplings.  We looked around at tables crowded with parents and kids, couples out on a free date, lone diners elbow to elbow with big groups, all enjoying the buffet party.  A guitarist belted tunes and hammered away on his axe, like a John Hiatt shouting over the restaurant din.  Ski bums, worker bees, and hangers on at a free feast.  Like a church supper, we all talked and laughed.  We commented on the savory rice, welcoming the new-old Thai place – Hot Spice – to it’s new, well same, home on the Mountain Road.

            And right on the heels of the Thai Place Open House came the rousing annual Christmas party at our local paper, the Stowe Reporter.  Early in the cycle of holiday revels, the Stowe Reporter Party opens the season and is a real throw down.  The party spills from the reception area of the paper’s headquarters – an old clapboard house in town – photo in last post – into the small rabbit warren of offices and up the windy, creaky wooden staircase.  Some years it’s a bender (I didn’t stay long enough this year to say).  The publisher’s palatial penthouse was jammed, elbow-to-elbow, with an entire town, including many faces from the Thai feast. 

Writers, ad guys, managers, business owners, friends, enemies, colleagues, their kids, town officials and at least one dog libated to ring in the season at the town’s weekly broadsheet.  Finding someone to talk with was about as easy as putting off chores.

It’s all a part of being in a small town.  We are living out of each other’s pockets.  We say ‘good morning’ when we drop the kids off at school, share a kind word when we see each other getting coffee ten minutes later at the gas station, nod hello at the grocery store, smile kindly when driving politely through the stop sign in town.  Our accountant’s daughter is our baby sitter. Everything we do is with the people we live around.  It is community and the commonality of each event is we are all at them together.  Well, not all, that would be weird, but the overlap is interesting.  We socialize with each other and see each other regularly.  This is not typical, but it is small-town normal.  There are upsides and downsides to living in close quarters.

            We could easily live where we are anonymous.  Where each event we attend is with a different group of people; where we don’t know the diners around us at a restaurant or the faces at the elementary school in the morning or the coffee shop later in the day.  Urban anonymity is a short drive in any direction.  Sixty million people live within a five-hour drive of our town. 

But we live here, saying hello to the same six people five times on a given day.  More than any reason to be here – where it is cold and dark half the year, the mosquitoes have names and you cannot get take-out – is community.  And this is why the idea of pulling the school bus contract has struck a nerve.  

            Stories about school bus contracts do not make the paper in most places in America.  The big yellow buses move through towns and cities countrywide.  For the most part the drivers are as unknown to the parents as, well, the other parents.  I bet though people crave stories like the bus contract story.  People crave connectivity even if they’d like it with a healthy dose of anonymity (and the availability of take-out).

            With seven billion people on the planet isn’t it nice to know a few of the people around you?  I think it is.

A month ago our kids’ school bus driver came up to us at, yes, the Thai place in Waterbury, a town down the road.  We learned from her our street was going to close and we chatted for a while.  She knew us.  She came up to us.  A friend told me about how her third grader – doing what he was supposed to do – got off the bus at the end of a quiet dirt road.  It would be dark soon.  The driver stopped the bus and called the parent, double-checking the drop-off was right.  Has your child lost a backpack?  It’ll be at the bus barn.  Substitute driver?  Oh that’s Mr. McHugh, a cop and neighbor in town.  At many away sports events the only parents in the room are the bus drivers.

            It is just not worth saving a few dollars by shipping the bus contract out of town.  Being analytical and efficient has its place, but is not everything and can in fact be quite corrosive.  The cold calculus of economics is devastating communities worldwide.  Look at some basic barometers – school quality, neighborhood safety, teen drug use – and we are failing.  Call it commonsense or call it a ‘happiness index.’  What is at stake when we give up some basic connectivity is nothing less than our humanity.

Sounds a stretch but think about it:  regardless of where we live community is all about connectivity.  The buses are true connectors – they take the kids from one life – home – to another, bigger, more anonymous life – driving the kids to school, sport events, the Boston Science Museum, Maine, even New York City.  That connector could be a less expensive one, separate from community.  Or, if we’re up for it, it could be us.  

Why is it important to have connectors?  It makes the world safer; people are more polite, makes it harder to rationalize unethical behavior if you know your victims (right, bankers?); less worry and more help getting through the day; more smiles during the day; peace of mind; less likely to drive like a nut.  The more connectors we have in life - the more we know about what is going on around us - the better is, well, life. 

Here's the question, and in the case of the school bus it is a simple one:  How much is it worth to know who is driving your kids to school?  The answer is a lot.

The harder versions of this question are how much is it worth to know who is growing your food, making your shoes, sewing your clothes, policing your streets, running your bank, running the businesses we rely on?  Calculus might be more complicated but the answer is the same:  Local is better.  

And I don’t think it only works rural.  It might not be the most efficient way to run the world, but it would be the most human way.

David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2011 David Rocchio

Local Paper Throws Holiday Fest

The Stowe Reporter is our local weekly.  It's annual Christmas/Holiday Party gathers the whole town.  See the windows all steamed up?  Great way to start the holiday season.










David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2011 David Rocchio

The Road We Live On

            For where we live, in northern Vermont, our road is a busy street.  It is straight and it is paved - two rare features for our neck of the woods - and therefore it is subject to being treated not as a quiet country byway but as a good old American highway.  This road, Stagecoach Road, was recently closed for two weeks.  This all stems from Irene.  As hurricanes go Irene was not too windy or too violent.  Irene though carried massive amounts of rain. I could stand outside in the downpour and smell the sea air, which is notable only because we live hundreds of miles from the sea.  Irene was a beautiful storm but a dangerous one. No one was hurt, and we escaped with no damage, but the tail end of our road took the brunt of the storm. A neighbor's basement collapsed. The edge of the street near where it meets the main road to town eroded away. 

            For a month or more after the storm the town end of Stagecoach was cut to one lane of traffic.  This change was welcome to anyone living on the road because it slowed traffic for a short stretch.  This slowed the racers.

            We didn’t hear of the plan to close the road.  This doesn’t mean the plan wasn’t discussed publicly; it just means the bad shape of the road simply didn’t register on the scale of things to worry about.  My son did ask one day whether when they fixed the road it would be blocked off; we talked about it on a drive to school one morning.  We concluded, ‘no, the road would be left open.’  We didn’t talk about it again.  And we were wrong.

In fact we only heard the road was going to be cut from the rest of town when we ran into the kids’ school bus driver at the Thai Restaurant in Waterbury, a town near the interstate.  Yikes.  No school bus.  Need to drive north, to the neighboring town in the other direction, Morristown, and then reverse direction, adding time to the day.  Adjustments were called for. We put the planning gears in motion, set the alarm a bit earlier and prepared to learn a new commute to the school, a new plan to get the shopping done, a new pattern to coming home for lunch.

In fact though getting to town was not the big news of the detour.  The big news was the quiet.  Our little straightaway of road is typically not treated like the settled country lane it is.  Our country road is treated like a speedway.  Somehow saving up to one and one half minutes on a drive to Mo’ville justifies pushing the old Buick up to eighty while flying by the old Misty Meadow Herb Farm.  And it is to some even worth passing at breakneck speed, not for a second thinking a family might be pulling out of a driveway on this narrow road.

It's not like we rail against the road.  We are adjusted to it.  We sit on the porch in the summer, drinking our morning coffee, watching the pick up trucks drive by.  Occasionally we swear at a crazy driver thinking this is a Batman Movie but mostly we take it in stride.  But then they blocked the road and everything became quiet.

And the quiet was welcome. Yes, we had peace for two terrific weeks.  We could hear the breeze.  No car noises marred the kids’ band practice.  The hens could graze along the edge of the road.  We could collect the mail without safety goggles, helmet and yellow vests.

The peace wasn’t perfect.  Despite three signs saying, I’d say pretty clearly, “Road Closed,” there were some who drove past the signs, past the barriers and up to the construction site thinking the signs meant road closed “but not for me.”  Picture it: car drives by confidently toward the end of the road, pauses, looking for a cut in the work to sneak through, realizes there is no cut through and then skulks back north with tailpipe between legs.

Road closed. Cut off.  No one calling by.  Deeply quiet.  Forced to change long-settled patterns of behavior.  One big rainstorm and we’re all in turmoil.

Okay, it was little things like we shopped at the big grocery store in Morrisville rather than our own little one in town. It wasn’t big things, like Berlin, August 1961; waking up one morning faced with the Berlin Wall.  But it was a window into how things can change. 

Geography and the vagaries of civil engineers have as much to do with community as what we want to define ourselves. One minute we are a short, straight mile from the edge of town and the next minute we are a looping ride in the wrong direction, by a small golf course and then back into town with the traffic.  Inconvenience, change, busting up of routine; it is always difficult.

            Just before the roadwork was done I drove my little girl down to see the construction site.  The steamrollers were blocking the road so I parked and we walked onto the shiny black macadam, looking down to the new retaining walls and massive piles of moved earth and the huge machines parked, waiting for the new day.  Just across the barriers was the road to town, so close we could taste it.  In a day we’d have our road back, new and improved.  How exciting! 

            My little girl didn’t care.  When I turned to get her reaction she was well into her walk home; already past the vet’s house; not at all interested in the newness and the construction site and the reopening of our artery.  She was striding down the deserted asphalt strip in the gloam of a late fall dusk.  There was no traffic.  It was quiet.  She had adjusted to Stagecoach as cul-de-sac and all was well with her world.

David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2011 David Rocchio

How To Survive Stick Season

            Stick season is one good windstorm away.  When it comes, when the leaves are all down and the grass finally dead, the forests closed to anyone not wearing a bright orange hat, the firewood either stacked or it’s too late, the clocks fallen back into that incredible gloam, it is time to hunker down.

Baseball and Photography

It seems no one where I live gives a rat's ass about the baseball playoffs.  This fall is terrific baseball, though, and for those of us who grew up with the old division in baseball the idea of a Tigers - Brewers world series is pretty cool.  Texas and St. Louis are good too.

Another great thing about following baseball is reading about the games in the papers and the best thing about the coverage is always the photography.  This shot by David Phillip of the AP is almost perfect.  Everyone is leaning; the image is practically moving; the result -- safe or out -- is in the balance; the crowd forms a perfect backdrop, you can almost make out the beers in the fans' hands tilting with the play, about to be spilled when the umpire makes his call.  Pretty cool shot.


David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2011 David Rocchio

This photo of my sister Tina, niece Giulia, son Callum and me at Capalbio was so beautifully captured by new friend and photographer Fabio Mazzarella.


David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2011 David Rocchio

Capalbio Cinema International Short Film Festival

The short film festival in Capalbio feels much more like an extraordinary retreat for filmmakers than it does a festival.  I have met filmmakers from everywhere.  A few specific places:  Cairo, Holland, Vladivostock, Portugal, Norway, Taiwan, Palestine, Italy.  Oh, yeah.  Italy.

Not only am I making new friends who share a passion in filmmaking but I am making these friends just north of Rome, where Tuscany begins, in Maremma.  Capalbio itself is an ancient fortified hill town facing the sea.  The festival is in a village between the citadel and the sea.

The cinema is a beautiful old block of a building.  The plush seats face a huge screen and the black ceiling is so high above us I feel I am watching films under the stars.  We move from the cinema to a restaurant.  We can choose from pasta or risotto.  We are given wine.  We talk about film, cameras, actors and extras, permits, shooting without permits, editing, music, sound.  We talk about the films we've seen -- both the films each has made and the others we viewed but did not make.  The films are all good, and different, and interesting.  Some are odd and some are sweet.  Some I like and some are not my cup of tea.  They are all worth seeing.  Seeing.  It is why we are here.

And then we go to the sea.  The Mediterranian is straight ahead.  The interns drive us in the fresh, black Lancia Deltas to the beach.  They drive very fast.  We hold on.  It is windy.  The sand stings our legs.  It is cold but the sea is warm.  We swim, and dive, and talk about film.  "This is like in a movie!"  Of course.

The interns drive us everywhere.  To an artist's lair for lunch.  To the hotel.  To the cinema.  To the beach.  From the airport, from the stazione, from real life.  They are young and interesting.  Interested.

Interested.  How can you not be interested when there is so much?  Films about revolution in the Middle East; photography from the farthest reaches of Russia; film noir, comedy, farce, suspense, animation; conversation at lunch with a Sicilian; a lecture on tweeting revolution.

Whether a retreat or a festival or both, Capalbio has been a touchstone.  It is inviting, chaotic, franetic.  It is rewarding and energizing.  I will take it with me and am glad to have been invited to be here.






David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2011 David Rocchio

End of A Season.

David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2011 David Rocchio

Signs of Fall -- Half Way There

David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2011 David Rocchio

History In The Making

           I write a column for my weekly newspaper, the Stowe Reporter.  I wrote for a while for a big Vermont daily and was asked to write for another one.  I didn't, though because there is something very close to life about a local weekly paper.  Local papers are about layers of lives lived in one place.  I had this thought in mind as I read last week's Reporter.

After Irene: A Hometown Tour

            The Green Cup, a coffee shop nestled next to the covered bridge in Waitsfield, Vermont, is gone.  Wiped out by Irene.  It was gutted by the raging flood.  Next to it, the old white clapboard photo studio, lifted off it’s 19^th century foundation, sits slammed into the coffee house.  The two buildings are jammed together like a car wreck.  Just down the street also gone is a wonderful restaurant called Mint and a dozen or more other small businesses next to the Mad River.

I drove through Waitsfield, Fayston and Warren.  Stopping to help mop up a bit, driving all the way to Granville – usually a fifteen minute drive south of my home town of Warren but this day taking an hour over torn-up, patched up and mangled dirt roads (Route 100 through Granville Gulf is washed out).  Talking to people along the way, I found communities that had been slapped hard but not knocked down.

Travel to France: Provence, Grasse, Cabris and the Perfect B&B

Here is a piece about a terrific Inn in the south of France.  But first, a disclaimer:  I am not a travel writer.  Not only am I not a travel writer, I don’t read travel magazines or guides or books or websites dedicated to explaining where people should go and what they should see.  This is because I like to discover, meaning I would prefer to find a place worth seeing by turning down a small road without even a utility line strung alongside, while quite hungry, and it being late, and we not knowing where we are headed, but having an instinct we can find something interesting along the way.  It doesn't always work, of course.  We have suffered some pretty awful nights.  We have also come upon some true and unimaginably extraordinary experiences (and meals and views and places to sleep or hike or swim or rest).  And I don’t think the experience is the same if you haven’t found a place yourself.  And if you go to the places touted in the tour books guess what you find?  People who read tour books.  And I typically take the view, well, that these experiences are interesting in part because they are private and known only to self and those with whom we choose to share such experiences.  So I’ve not written about them.  But I am not sure about my decision to keep exploration so private.

dirt road ride with Cal

David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2011 David Rocchio

Memorial Day, Loss and Rememberance

In the United States 30 May is Memorial Day.  It is a day for reflection, personal and public.  In the public corner, our little town marks the day well and quietly.  Each year the town hosts a small parade.  It is really just the high school marching band and veterans of wars walking at march pace from the center of the village to the cemetery on the edge of town.  The parade is managed with dignity and just enough fun.  The marching band is always prepared and poised.  The old soldiers, represented by the American Legion, take the responsibility for the day seriously.  The cemetery too is well maintained and ready for its close up.

This past Memorial Day my daughter and I barreled into town from the north just barely in time for the parade, and got firmly stuck in a line of cars just past the grocery store, the police having blocked Maple Street early, giving the marching band plenty of room to maneuver.  Antonia and I parked the car in the dirt along the edge of the pavement and raced toward Cemetery Road, she carrying the camera, me hanging on to my morning coffee.  We first saw the parade in the distance, a small swarm of figures coming our way, up the slight hill from the center of town toward Cemetery Road, band music echoing up the hill toward the blocked traffic.  Antonia began firing pictures.  She took so many they play back like an old-fashioned movie, each frame not capturing quite enough of the action but more than enough to tell the story.

A Short Film for Summer: The Brothers

Here is a link to my short film, The Brothers, which we shot last summer.  It is the film of the story, The Brothers, posted here.  The story and the film are quite different.  Some of the story just could not be told in the same way.  Some of the story could have been shown in the same way but we didn't have any money.

The actors are all local kids in our small town.  Most are from my little league team of last summer.  Great kids and actors.  Oh.  And one is my son!

The dog is our dog, Dexter.  He did a terrific job.

We shot the film on our porch, on a ski jump in Hanover, NH and on the Long Trail in Northern Vermont.  We did all the shooting in two days with a crew of no more than four and at times just two.  All the sounds -- the entire soundtrack -- were recorded live 'on set.'

There are more stories to tell about the story and the making of the film.  I will get to them but not today.

Enjoy.

David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2011 David Rocchio

A 9/11 Flag and Losing Osama

     I was in my office the morning of 9/11. My secretary came in and said ‘a plane has flown into the World Trade Center.’ I kept working, not wanting to rubberneck. I did not walk down the hall to see what was going on until she came back, in tears, and said ‘a second plane has hit the other tower.’ So that’s how a living, decade-long nightmare starts.

     Two days later, like almost everyone else, we went out and bought a small American flag. We tied it to a fence post along the front of our field. Nearly everyone flew a flag, even those of us who are not the flag waving type. I decided then the flag would fly until the nightmare ended.
     It was a shockingly sad time but we were united in grief and horror. Not just in the US, either. I remember the headline on September 12, 2001 from Le Monde in France: “Nous sommes tous Américains,” or “We are all Americans.” Hundreds of thousands marched in support of the US. In Berlin. That unity obviously faded. Maybe now it is coming back.
     We heard the news bin Laden was dead this past Monday morning. We were getting the kids out the door for school. We were listening to a Canadian radio station so the story was first but not blaring as the CBC began its newscast. Given that understated Canadian way, it took a minute to sink in what the announcer was talking about. Jackie looked at me, and I thought for a second. Commandos, Pakistan, Obama, Osama.

My 9/11 Flag

More later, but this flag went out on 9/12.  I hadn't thought about it much until yesterday.


David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2011 David Rocchio

Winter Never Ending

We live where it is still winter.  Not mild wisps of the end of season winter, but full on two feet of snowpack and blowing winds winter.  We were all recently fooled by a predicted April Fool’s storm.  We were supposed to get two feet of heavy, wet snow.  We didn't.  We got three more inches of light snow.  It did not matter.  The extra layers would have been for bragging right only.  It is still like mid-winter here and absent an Old-Testament style rain we will be avoiding yard work, running baseball practices inside and enjoying skiing the sides of our mountains for a month to come.

Not only is there plenty of snow but people are out and enjoying it.  Yes, there is some grousing but, come on, six months of hard winter is not okay.  Aside from the grousing though there is skiing and boarding to be had and on this past Sunday our local hill was like a community party spread out over 500 acres.  Kids zipped through every nook and cranny.  The ample, fat line at the chair lift was like being in line to buy groceries in our small town – can’t stand there without saying hello to a dozen people.  And the bluebird day made the ride up the lift an “E-ticket,” to borrow from Walt Disney-land, in its own right.  Mountain in high relief; the Notch standing out like an Albert Bierstad painting of Yosemite; the White Mountains to the East hovering like clouds on the horizon; the lift line in front of us a highway for speed, for deep tele-turns, for snowboarders arching their trays like they are in a ballet.  The upper sections on the front of the mountain were snow-filled and bone dry.  This is April in snow country and we might as well enjoy it.

It is hard to write about skiing.  There is a feeling associated with moving downhill, at speed, on skis or I will guess a snowboard, unlike almost any other endeavor.  Surfers probably feel the joy of unfettered motion every now and then.  Maybe ski-diving.  Michael Jordan felt it playing basketball, I’d guess.  There are not though too many sports where mortals can fly.  Skiing is as close as I’ll ever come to Michael Jordan.  That sense of peace is hard to come by in life.  Here?  It is a five-minute walk from any particular point on the compass.

            I have an old pair of skis.  They are Atomic GS, racing stock.  They are 210 cm long.  The bindings crank down until the boot is secured to the ski as if welded.  I use to take them out maybe once a year.  I would take them down a famous trail here -- the Nosedive -- which starts with three hard, steep turns through a shadowy gap on the side of our mountain.  I'd take them out on an early morning late in the winter.  I would point the skis into the turns at the top of the trail.  They’d set like rails.  I leaned them over and was anchored to the ground.  As I leaned the skis accelerated.  I rolled through my turns, taking the shock of the hill in my quads.  Eventually I just straightened out and flew.  The wind roared as I slid downhill.  And then I stopped.  And then would think ‘that was stupid.’  I’m old enough not to break them out any more.  Well, maybe one more time.

            The snow this year just built and built.  It was incremental.  And then it rained.  And then two feet of snow fell in what seemed like an hour.  Where we live it is touristic but also rural.  There is not a lot to do some days.  This year, though, there was lots of snow.  It seemed many days the entire town was on our hill.   There is lots to what makes up a community.  Here, the mountain is a big part of who we are.  This year it seems we used it more, it was kind to us and six months of winter does not feel so bad.

David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2011 David Rocchio

Time, Life, Watching Sleep.

When days are busy and interesting there is no time to write.  When quiet and settled there is time but nothing really to write about.

Today?  Stacked wood, read Wolf Hall, am now listening to opera on CBC 2.  My son is sleeping on the couch, a late-winter and late-day sun pouring onto him through the back window.  The dog rests by the door, occasionally moans, looks at me with big round eyes.  I eat too many roasted, salted nuts.  I drink a ton of water.

Next I will take the dog out, walking on the crusted top of a foot or more of old, beaten snow; make a shopping list for a dinner to be cooked (fettuccine with hot sausage, kale and cheese; slices of thick steak pan seared in oil and garlic and rosemary and then served on a bed of baby arugula and with a sauce of red wine vinegar and salt; a salad of young greens, olives, artichoke, pecorino cheese); shop; cook; drink; eat.

The past few months are too full to think about let alone write about.  At least not today.  Today I am focusing on as little as possible as well as possible.  I am busy just watching my son sleep.


David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2011 David Rocchio

A Late Winter Tale, About Backcountry Skiing, Deep Snow, Dogs and Rescue

Brian suggested we go for a backcountry ski; the second time we would be visiting this spot.  The last time we went to the Sterling forest was with a bigger group and at least one person was not up to exploring high on the ridge.  The area is mostly hardwood forest and the snow pack this year is thigh deep or more.  If you step off your skis you disappear.  This makes a back country trip challenging but also easier, if you have the right gear and know what you are doing.

There is no brush to slog through, no marshes or swamps to worry about, no problem being off a trail.  No bugs.  A compass and a map and we could go anywhere.  Brian called and suggested we go further north on this trip, higher on the slope, to an area call Bull Moose Ridge.  We would skin up, and it was steep in places, but once on the ridge we would have an easy time and then could ski back down through steep stands of old beech and maple trees.

The last time we went we did not bring our dogs -- Brian has two and I have one, Dexter, a young Aussie.  We were out for hours and I thought it would be too difficult for the dogs.  And I felt guilty when the trip was done; the dog would have been fine.  So this time we agreed we'd take the dogs.

Yikes

Snowbound.








David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2011 David Rocchio

It's Not Like This Is All I Do.

But some days are better than others.

David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2010 David Rocchio

Oops. Colorado Snow Pack.

David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2010 David Rocchio

Backcountry Breckenridge Twelve Thousand Feet.

North Shoulder, Red Mountain, 11,900'.

David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2010 David Rocchio

There Is Nothing Like A Great Coffee Shop

Amazing Grace, Breckenridge, Colorado.

David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2010 David Rocchio

Changing the Focus in America

Politicians campaign using money raised from people, companies and interest groups.  They gain attention during the political process by riling their base, building a kindling of support and branching out to show different groups they can win and will represent them.  The most effective technique to raise money from a base is to advocate to the edges – argue to the core constituencies on emotional issues.  In presidential politics this is called being ‘in primary,’ which means staking out positions, sometimes extreme, which play to particular groups of motivated, core voters who will give money and vote your way.

As politics has become more crowded, and the paths to reach voters fractured and diffuse, the rhetoric and the tone of delivery on the campaign have grown harder.  To be noticed takes saying daring things and playing to your base.  Candidates look for ‘wedge issues’ to increase the emotional pull toward voters – or the emotional pull away from other candidates (and voters).

Wedge issues are things politicians can talk about to get people motivated.  Immigration, abortion, nuclear power, the death penalty, war.  These are issues capable of making people angry; they are issues where people might leave their logic and analysis behind them.  Anger motivates voters.

The sticky part is once a politician has motivated the base, raised tons of money and gotten elected how can they get anything done?  Once a politician has painted him or herself into a corner to be elected to Congress on – say – the issue of immigration, how does Congress then address immigration using logic and analysis?  Obviously it doesn’t.  Hence no immigration reform, energy policy, education reform, etc.  If a politician does compromise on issues to achieve results they get lost in the crowd, the party turns on them, they lose their base.  Lucky us.

Slobodan Milosevic was a politician like this.  He saw in the break-up of Yugoslavia a chance to advance his own political fortune by playing the Balkan Nationalism Card.  I wonder if he ever regretted having done that.

In America, we have taken longer to see the changes harsh wedge issue politics can bring to governance, but we see it now.  We cannot blame the vicious murders in Arizona on politics, but we can point to the harshness of the debate and admit it did not help.

I remember watching an interview with Bill Weld – the former Massachusetts and New York Governor – around the time of Bush v. Kerry.  The interviewer was trying to get Weld to bash Kerry and he wouldn’t.  He said, with a smile, Senator Kerry was a very good guy and would make a good president, even if Weld did not agree with everything Kerry said or would do as President.  I could almost see the interviewer slump.  He hated the answer.  He wanted blood, not judgment.

Cleary the media in America loves the wedge issue approach to politics.  We want our elections to be red meat and ratings – Super Bowls, not spelling bees.  That’s too bad.  But the media just serves up what we want – anger and righteousness and divisiveness, not thoughtful discord and discussion.  Sometimes we get what we ask for.

Typically, I write about what is just right in front of me.  Raising kids, planting a garden, fighting predators out to eat my chickens.  I do this specifically because it is all exactly like what everyone else experiences.  Ninety-nine percent of the people on this earth are focused on getting up in the morning, raising kids, cooking dinner, doing some work, finding some peace.  It is, well, life.

We live though in a society that is one hundred percent focused on the one percent of life that is not ordinary and expected.  That is, I submit, a mistake.  Mostly, it does not matter what we each believe about religion, war, the death penalty, immigration or education.  No matter what we each think we can all just go about our day and get along.  Something about the focus on that one percent is starting to get out of hand and we need to change that.  And no one can do it but each of us.  And the time to do it is now.

David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2010 David Rocchio