Thanks to the work of many in our community, Free Speech TV is bringing its 24/7 independent news, analysis and documentaries to Burlington Telecom. Starting March 1st, we’ll be able to tune in to FSTV on BT’s newest channel (122) on its “basic tier.”

But first, we need to rally to finish the task of making Burlington the first city in the country to offer a fulltime FSTV channel on cable. FSTV has until the end of February to raise a one-time $10,000 to cover its start-up costs.

Here’s some more good news: We raised half the money before we even launched this page.

A group of us founded the Friends of Free Speech TV in Burlington, and we’ve already pledged $5,000 as a Founding Friends Challenge Fund. That means that for every dollar you pledge here, we’ll kick in another dollar to match you. If we can raise just $5,000 by the end of February, FSTV will receive the full $10,000 it needs to launch its new channel in our community.

When: Thursday, February 16, 2012: 8:00 am to 4:00 pm
Where: Vermont Technical College, Randolph Center
Register: Visit http://evermontworkshop.org for details and to register

Join community leaders from around the state to share ideas and learn how online tools are being used to create jobs, reinvent schools, attract visitors, improve civic involvement, and enliven Vermont communities. The workshop is sponsored by the e-Vermont Community Broadband Project.

Anne Galloway of VtDigger.org will be the keynote speaker. Session topics include mobilizing community resources for emergencies, a hands-on lab exploring online tools for business, a showcase of how technology is expanding the classroom for 4-6th graders, a look at conducting town meetings in the digital age, and ways to increase public Internet access in your town (and why).

Registration is $20 and includes course offerings, refreshments, lunch and the chance to win a Kindle reader and other prizes in our raffle drawing.

For more information about the day go to evermontworkshop.org. Pre-register online, by phone 802-859-3090, or by e-mail joanna@snellingcenter.org.

As America’s cities become larger and life gets more complicated, some long for a return to a small-town lifestyle, where they are greeted by name, and the front porch — overlooking a picture-postcard main street — is a place to talk to neighbors. While this rosy view of rural living may not exactly square with reality — especially in hard economic times with high unemployment — the urge to enjoy a more rural lifestyle is attractive to many.

e-Vermont, a consortium of seven different organizations, has come together to improve the economic outlook of rural Vermont through technology, while at the same time preserving what’s most attractive about a region better known for its maple syrup, skiing and mountain vistas than Internet connectivity and job growth…

As for those conversations on the front porch, there’s a forum for that called “Front Porch Forum.” … “it’s a platform for neighborhood conversations, with the goal of things spilling over from online conversations to in-person conversations. Needless to say, public officials take a keen interest in that, not just to follow what’s going on but to have an engaged citizenry.”

Typical items on the forum might be someone selling firewood, eggs or a canoe. Missing pets are frequent items, as well as local government issues such as a proposed tax hike to pay for heating repairs at the school, which may be on the agenda for the next town meeting…

Susan Clark, a resident of Middlesex, is a sixth-generation Vermonter who co-authored All Those in Favor: Rediscovering the Secrets of Town Meeting and Community. She wanted more frequent connections with her community than the once-yearly town meetings. So when she heard about Front Porch Forum, she became a community volunteer…

Clark said that in keeping with the benefits of face-to-face meetings, Front Porch Forum isn’t anonymous, and the person’s street… is also listed… And unlike social networking sites like Facebook, she said, “Front Porch Forum wants you to know what’s going on in your community so you’ll get out from behind your computer and go out and go to the yard sale or the town meeting or the school play or the concert or any of those things.”

Clark said that the forum helps connect the public with local government, but she cautions against loading a forum with such things as planning commission documents at first. Wait until they are hooked on community events and items of personal interest, she said.

When Duane Sorrel, of Middlesex, moved to town he found out about Front Porch Forum at a town meeting. Sorrel, in a YouTube video, said that when he posted his information, he got a dozen customers for his automotive business in the first two days. “My favorite post,” he says in the video, “is ‘lately there’s been bears eating chickens.’ That’s been pretty interesting.”

Patrick Kitano at Streetfight.com comments on that news, along with Nextdoor, Outside.in, Topix, and Facebook today… an interesting piece.

Indeed, the “neighbor conversation” online space is heating up tremendously, with at least a couple dozen start-ups and digital media giants trying to crack the code of neighborhood-level traction.

Three out of five Burlington, VT households connect with their neighbors through our offering, FrontPorchForum.com.  Amazingly, in 2011 HALF of them posted.

Most of us want to be more  connected to the people and place around where we live… this is a huge opportunity.

“… without a diary, their travels would ‘be no better than a flight of birds through the air,’ leaving no trace.” John Adams to his grand sons, George (14) & John (12), as they sailed for London 1815 – John Adams – David McCullough p. 617-4

I woke up this morning thinking about FPF and its predecessor maplecorner.com, seeing these as our collective community diaries that record where we have been and help us work together where we are going. Thank you everyone for broadening our community, giving us a way to better understand each other.

Our Dream - A compilation of dreams and lines written by Mrs. Earle-Centers’ 5th and 6th grade students at Calais Elementary (written after watching Dr. King’s speech in 1963 in Washington, D.C.)

I have a dream that one day everyone will have a friend.
I have a dream that one day people who are poor will get homes and food.
I have a dream that one day all humans will be equal in money, and in health—that no one will be hungry or forced to work to death.
I have a dream that everyone will have food and water and that no one in this world will starve.

I have hope and faith we will be able to help endangered animals, give them homes and treat them well.
I have a dream that people will stop abusing animals.

I have a dream that one day everyone will be safe.
I have hope and faith that we will be able to adopt kids that need help, be there for them and give them care.
I have a dream that all kids will get their own rights and learn to have some kind of freedom.

I have a dream that one day all people will be nice to each other.
I have a dream that one day, everyone can just be friendly, not mean or hurtful.
I have a dream that we will stop the flow of harmful words.
I have a dream that one day we will stand up against bullying and that bullying will stop.
I have a dream that that the people who were getting bullied will be happy.

I have a dream that everyone, no matter what race, will be friends not foes.
I have a dream that one day there will be no nuclear bombs or nuclear power of any kind.
I have a dream that one day this nation will make peace with other nations.
I have a dream that one day this whole world will be in peace, and that angry wars will come to an end,

I have a dream that one day everyone will show the people of the world that they care about what they need.
I have a dream that one day our nation’s weak will be strong, and the strong will be stronger.
I have a dream that our nation will carry on together and with strength.

I have a dream that one day everyone will get along.

When, a couple of years ago, a small group of us got together and submitted Cambridge’s e-Vermont application we didn’t realize how integral Front Porch Forum would become to the day-to-day life of our community.

We’ve had a few controversies but there seems to be a self-correcting mechanism in the common sense of FPF subscribers. “It was on the Forum”, has become a fairly common response in town when asked how someone learned of a new business or community service. The Cambridge Front Porch Forum now reaches into more than half of the households in town and I expect that the number of households served will increase yet again when our long promised 100% broadband coverage becomes a reality by next summer. Our Cambridge FPF membership seems to have reached a critical mass and new members join almost daily even though there has been no organized membership drive, that I know of, since last year’s 4th of July celebration. Word of mouth seems to be working! Congratulations to all Cambridge Forum subscribers for making it a valuable community resource and thanks to our local businesses who utilize the Forum with restraint to offer special value opportunities to our community.

Music to my ears!  Thanks for sharing, Dennis.  We see the points made above happen again and again in other FPF towns, namely…

• People don’t realize how much value FPF will bring… six months into it they are amazed.
• After an early effort to prime the pump, word-of-mouth keeps new members walking in the virtual door.
• FPF typically has the occasional controversy, but it doesn’t go so far as to poison the conversation and drive people away.  I’m glad this appears to be “self-correcting”… we’ve worked hard for years to refine our process with this end in mind.
• Universal broadband availability isn’t necessary for FPF to get started and make a big impact, AND with widespread broadband adoption FPF becomes even more valuable to local folks.

UPDATE:  From another Cambridge FPF member…

A bunch of people were gathered last night in Jeffersonville, and the subject of FPF came up to great kudos for the work you are doing.  In fact, some lamented on behalf of friends who live nearby and do not have FPF.

In 1925 the French anthropologist Marcel Mauss published his classic essay “The Gift,” which argued that contrary to the textbook account of primitive man merrily trading beaver pelts for wampum, no society was ever based on barter. The dominant practice for thousands of years was instead voluntary gift-giving, which created a binding sense of obligation between potentially hostile groups. To give a gift was not an act based on calculation, but on the refusal to calculate. In the societies Mauss studied most closely — the Maori of New Zealand, the Haida of the Pacific Northwest — people rejected the principles of economic self-interest in favor of arrangements where everyone was perpetually indebted to someone else.

“Perpetually indebted to someone else”… this sums up so much of what I love about my community life in Burlington, VT right now.  We have a critical mass of people who willingly have jumped into debt with each other… not monetary debt, rather favor debt.

I was raised to value making my contribution to others while taking great pains to avoid accepting the same from others.  So were lots of folks here.  But that’s a recipe for setting yourself apart, for isolation.  As my family has learned to accept favors from those around us, it’s made our contributions to others that much more meaningful and personal.

Now, through Front Porch Forum, MealTrain, our church, school, neighborhood and other means, we ask and offer favors daily from hundreds of friends, neighbors and acquaintances.  Each request works against isolation and lays down another thread in the web of community that supports our life.  This is a crucial asset… as much as our house, my job, the kids’ college savings.

My brother and his family are planning a holiday visit to see us in Vermont this month.  We could all jam into our house, but I know they would sleep better if we had more space for the two families.  Hotels are expensive and distant… B&Bs too.  So, I put the word out to neighbors and got several offers of empty houses that we could use on our block.  These neighbors are traveling out of state and are glad to share their home while they’re away.  We’ve done this a dozen times over the past few years… offering or asking for empty-house guest lodging.  Make that hundreds of times if we include other favors… meals, rides, tools, advice, kids stuff, labor, baby/pet sitting, on and on.

This is incredibly generous and trusting of all involved… but it’s also keeping each of us “perpetually indebted to our neighbors” in a way that makes our community stronger with each exchange.

Today’s Burlington Free Press had a thoughtful article on a declining middle class, as exemplified by a Jeffersonville family… My impressions:

1) Good for my Cambridge village neighbor Mike Moser for providing factual background and context for the story. As someone involved in helping Vermonters discuss important policy issues, I have found that the more relevant facts I have, the better. Sounds obvious but it is remarkable how easily I go straight to interpretation and opinion when what I really need is more information.

2) As I read it I said “thank God for my job” because just three years ago that’s where I was, working three iffy jobs to unsuccessfully scrape together enough money to pay the bills. My family and church communities were helpful in every way when I asked them, but what I really needed is what I finally got – a good paying job. This job gave my wife a good last two years of her life in more ways than one. Sometimes I think that government and non-profits would help people more if they would focus more on simply letting the job creators do their thing. Local applications of this might be – sorry if I offend – saying “no” a little less reflexively to new business proposals. I know there are tradeoffs, but as we weigh the pros and cons in our own minds and in forums like this, perhaps the life-saving creation of a few good jobs should count a little more.

3) As I read it I also said “thank God for the safety net” beyond church and family that provided health care and yes even food at the most difficult times. I made perhaps 10 visits to Lamoille County food shelfs back in the dark old days, swallowing my pride because it was my job to provide, and when my labor wasn’t enough, then my willingness to ask would have to suffice. It was hard, but it was made easier by the welcoming attitude of the staff, as well as by their willingness to make distinctions between food for the really needy (basic, locally donated foods bought with donated cash) and the less-in-demand grocery store perishables, and then finally the federal commodities. What also made it easier was, frankly, going to other towns. I simply don’t know if I could have gone to a Cambridge food shelf. It was so much less humiliating to go to Morrisville, and that has nothing to do with their attitude and everything to do with my vanity. It is a big step to go from feeling compassion for one of “them” to actually being one of “them”. I apologize if I sound politically incorrect, but that is how it felt. So I would recommend that food shelves not be in the least bit territorial. If someone lives in another town, there is a reason they go elsewhere, unless of course they just don’t know. One can say “you shouldn’t feel that way” but – I did, and I suspect others might also.

So, what can we do to help our underemployed neighbors? In a nutshell, here are three things I can think of, maybe you have ideas too: be more open to local job creation; buy services locally; and support the local safety net. FPF is a great tool for doing all three, but it’s up to us as individuals and as a community to go the extra mile, as a great man once said.

By the way, more than 40% of Cambridge households are FPF members.