Town Halls
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 01/22/2013 - 22:40Earlier this month, I organized a Citizen's Town Hall where people from Woodbridge and the surrounding area could come and discuss the issues to be addressed in Hartford this year. It was a nice, informal little gathering with about a dozen people showing up, including people from the League of Women Voters and State Rep. Lezlye Zupkus and others. We talked about how there have been other gatherings like this, sponsored by the league and other groups and how we thought it would be good to continue meeting like this. We briefly introduced ourselves and talked a little bit about the issues we hoped to see addressed in Hartford. We agreed to meet again on Thursday, Feb 7th at 6:30 PM, again at Wheeler's Market-Cafe in Woodbridge.
Since then, Rep. Zupkus has announced that she will be holding a town hall in Bethany on Tuesday, January 29th at 6:30 PM. State Rep. Themis Klarides announced that she would be participating in that town hall.
I also received an email from Rep. Brandon McGee that he will be holding four town halls in his district between January 22nd and Feb 13th. It is great to see more opportunities for people to come together and address issues in Hartford.
On top of this, several people have been sharing various bills that have been introduced in Hartford via Facebook, creating a sort of virtual town hall. One person posted a link to AN ACT PROVIDING FREE ADMISSION TO AND PARKING AT STATE PARKS FOR CONNECTICUT VETERANS and another posted a link to AN ACT CONCERNING A SINGLE-PAYER HEALTH CARE SYSTEM, introduced by State Senator Joe Crisco from Woodbridge.
I've also set up a Facebook Interest Group of state legislators that I am friends of or who have publicly accessible Facebook Pages that I've found. You can see what some of the State Legislators are up to on the list.
It seems like this could be a good year for discussing what goes on in the Connecticut General Assembly, and I hope many people participate.
The Inauguration
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 01/21/2013 - 20:59The light snow was enough to turn the the minimal Martin Luther King Day evening commute into a traffic jam, so I sat in the car listening to reports of inauguration day. At lunch time, I watched President Obama's speech with coworkers who spend a lot of time focused on effective communications. It seemed like the pundits had heard a different speech, but perhaps that reflects the different frameworks we heard it from.
On the news, people talked about the speech in terms of the political conflicts of the day. Did President Obama extend enough of an olive branch to get us past the next debt ceiling deliberation or fiscal cliff folly? Will he be able to make headway on the legislative agenda implied in his speech? It all seemed so transactional, so petty, so caught in the moment.
I listened to it from a broader perspective, where did it fit on the arc of history, from the Gettysburg Address and Emancipation Proclamation to Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech? I've often bewailed the lack of great speeches in modern day politics. Perhaps it is because of the focus on the soundbite and the immediate win. This speech did not have those flaws, or, as it seems some modern day pundits believe, those essential elements.
It fit well with the inauguration poem; 'One Today'. The poem, like the inaugural address was not part of some transactional moment, but instead took its appropriate place on the arc of history. As I watched Richard Blanco and thought of Chief Justice Roberts, I thought that Blanco had the loftier seat. Inauguration poems are something to remember, to savor, much more than so many of the Supreme Court decisions.
I remember the inauguration of a college president I attended. The inaugural poet was Denise Levertov, and her words have stuck with me for decades. I remember reading a story about about a farmwife heading to the county fair, and only seeing the quilts. For me, I'll remember the wordcraft. Later, I shall spend time reading Blanco's poems. Bu now, bedtime approaches. I'm tired, but still I must pause to practice putting words together and praise those who have do so, so eloquently.
Writing Excercise
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 01/20/2013 - 20:53The temperature was in the fifties today. It has already dropped into the thirties and the teens are in the forecast for tonight. It seems like everyone I have been speaking to recently has been exhausted, and I an no different. I've slept much of the weekend, and could probably sleep more, if there was more time.
Much of my sleep has been so deep it has been dreamless. At other times, I've surfaced enough to enter into long complicated dreams. They have many of the standard aspects of dreams, flying, being back in college. In one part, I was holding these long nails, I'd guess they were about the length from my elbows to my finger tips, which I've always heard is about eighteen inches. They were probably a quarter of an inch across, and if you took a cross section of them, they were shaped like plus signs, and not the typical circle. I believe these nails were part of what made it possible for me to fly.
I flew by tall apartment buildings, probably around ten stories tall. Each floor had a balcony with large, thin furry dogs on them, something like Irish Wolfhounds. At the end of my flight I ended up in some lounge where there was a piano, someone commented, "This is poetry, but what is that to me?"
So, here I am tired, yet writing, working on the discipline of writing. This evening's blog post, as the temperatures drop outside, is further from poetry than some of my other writing, but the question, "what is that to me' echoes in my ears. The intent of this blog post is to stay disciplined, to write every day, but what sort of impact will it have? Will it inspire others to pursue their craft with discipline? Will there be nuggets in here that will inspire people, spawn a new creative idea?
Hacker, 2013
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 01/19/2013 - 08:11For Allen Ginsberg and Aaron Swartz
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.
The angry fix they sought was far different from that of Ginsberg's friends.
These hipsters were typing something other than 'starry dynamo' into the search engines.
They were Google mapping the seats of power at midday, not the negro streets at dawn.
They were fighting a in new revolution, a revolution that would take their life and liberty.
A junkie with a knife can be scary. He'll take the cash in your pockets and rush off for his fix,
leaving you shaken as you walk home. But a hacker with a mission, now that is dangerous.
He will shake the very means of production and distribution, the economy you depend upon
to get that cash into your pockets.
It's all well and good when they take down an Arab dictator.
It's tolerable when they change the news media and political process, as long as it can be co-opted by the press and politicians.
But when they start threatening the profitability of the legal and academic presses in the greatest democracy of the world, they must be hounded, driven underground, labeled hacker and felon, until they kill themselves.
Social Media for Social Good
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 01/18/2013 - 10:57Recently, I’ve been asked to speak at several events around using social media to help address some of the root causes of social problems in our communities, and to promote the growth of vibrant, inclusive communities, especially as it relates to health care. I’ve also had several individual discussions with people interested in finding ways to enhance their social media skills as part of a larger effort to serve the good of their communities.
For some time now, a bunch of people working in health care social media in Connecticut have been gathering monthly for breakfast and weekly online to discuss health care and social media in Connecticut. From my recent discussions, it seems like there might be some benefit for people around Middletown, where I work, who are interested in working together to use social media for social good to gather, share ideas, and find ways to work together.
If you’re interested, please let me know.
