Social Networking | Ghost of Midnight

Seeking frozen rhubarb in #BTV #VT

Posted on Saturday, February 12, 2011 by Michael • Comments are off for this post

A friend reported that one of the things he loves about Front Porch Forum is that it inspires him to be a better neighbor. For evidence, he cited this recent posting from Deb in Burlington…

A elderly friend is turning 88 this week and he loves rhubarb pie. Does anyone have rhubarb in their freezer from last summer that I can buy or trade for (pie or cookies)?

I see what he means. I especially love the way Deb’s posting will rope others into her act of neighborliness. Kinda makes me want to go clear the iced-up snow covering my neighbor’s impassable front steps. Maybe I’ll get a cookie!

Neighborliness in the snow

Posted on Friday, February 11, 2011 by Michael • Comments are off for this post

From Sarah in Burlington’s Old North End today on Front Porch Forum…

I would like to thank my neighbor for helping to free my car from the snowbank at the end of my driveway this week. Relying on each other makes a neighborhood, and you came to my rescue when I really needed help, with my dog barking at you the entire time to boot! Thanks again for your help.

We’re seeing many such postings during these past few weeks of extreme snow in Vermont.

How to reconnect #VT neighbors?

Posted on Thursday, February 10, 2011 by Michael • Comments are off for this post

Front Porch Forum has people from across Middlesex communicating in ways they haven’t in years.

Received this quote tonight from a very plugged-in person in her rural Vermont town. I love it. That’s a critical part of FPF’s mission… to help neighbors connect… and not just online. Rather, once FPF gets rolling in a community, people start talking with neighbors more face-to-face at the store, school, church, sidewalk, etc. This becomes ever more important with Town Meeting in a couple weeks.

Random Acts of Kindness in Vermont

Posted on Thursday, February 10, 2011 by Michael • Comments are off for this post

Here’s a Front Porch Forum posting from Winooski today. During the last few weeks of heavy snow, we’ve seen a lot of this kind of thing.

I wanted to extend a heartfelt thank you to my neighbors on Dion St who have cleared my driveway on several occasions this winter. Your random act of kindness is so appreciated, thank you again and again!

It’s heartening to read about these kind actions and the gratitude of the recipients… especially as we head into Town Meeting Day, a time when debate among neighbors inevitably heats up.

Be like the neighbors… then beat them…

Posted on Friday, January 21, 2011 by Michael • 1 comment

Thanks to #BTV #VT ECHO‘s Molly Loomis for sharing this Washington Post article by David A. Fahrenthold…

To a psychologist, climate change looks as if it was designed to be ignored. It is a global problem, with no obvious villains and no one-step solutions, whose worst effects seem as if they’ll befall somebody else at some other time. In short, if someone set out to draw up a problem that people would not care about, one expert on human behavior said, it would look exactly like climate change…

One U.S. researcher thought television is to blame: All those TV ads have made Americans more focused on their own wants, she theorized, and less likely to care about the long-term good.

The obstacles to progress… there’s a sense that this is a problem for somebody else or some other time… the science can be confusing… humankind’s deep-seated love for the status quo and willingness to defend it… humans can fret about only so many things at once.

Psychological researchers say one possible way to overcome all these obstacles is to frame the changes needed to curb carbon emissions as “saving” the American way of life, instead of changing it. Another is to pair warnings about the climate with concrete suggestions about what to do, so people can act instead of just stewing in worry.

Another is to tap into two powerful human impulses: to be like one’s neighbors and then to beat them at something.

In one small study around San Diego in 2007, researchers hung four fliers on doorknobs. One told homeowners that they should conserve energy because it helped the environment. One said saving energy was socially responsible. One said that it saved money. The fourth said that the majority of neighbors in the community were doing it.

The researchers waited and then read the meters. The houses with the fourth flier showed the most change.

“Simply urging people — or telling them that it’s a good idea to recycle or conserve energy — is the same as nothing,” said Robert Cialdini, a professor at Arizona State University who worked on the study.

The best example of climate psychology in action might be programs run by the Arlington energy efficiency software company Opower. In 12 areas around the country, the firm sends mailings to utility customers. The sheets compare each customer’s power usage to that of neighbors with similar houses and offer tips for catching up, such as turning off lights and lowering the temperature settings of water heaters.

It works, the company says, lowering electricity usage by 2 percent in several test cases. The fliers never say a word about climate change.

Fascinating. Our experience with Front Porch Forum on a variety of topics jibes with this… that is, best pitch tends to be… join your neighbors vs. join because it’s good for you or your community or your wallet or the environment (all true by the way!). And getting the competitive juices flowing appeals to many.

7 Ways to Make your Neighborhood a Better Place

Posted on Wednesday, January 12, 2011 by Michael • Comments are off for this post

Kevin Harris offers this U.K. gem on building community within a neighborhood. Same goes most places…

Here’s a tidy post from my friend Liz Ixer over on Harringay Online, rehashing this o.p. and suggesting seven ways to make your neighbourhood a better place. Liz makes the principles locally pertinent and weaves-in the role of the neighbourhood online network.

I see lists like this quite often, this one has the virtue of simple practicality and relative brevity. The headings are:

Plant something

Pick up litter

Get to know your neighbours

Find out who your government/local representatives are

If you see something, say something

Shop locally

Go for a walk.

And credit to the original poster, Sarah Goodyear, who makes this point under the heading ‘Get to know your neighbours’:

‘If anything bad happens – a blackout, a flood, or worse – these are the people you need to know. It starts with hello.’

Caring about neighbors…

Posted on Monday, January 10, 2011 by Michael • Comments are off for this post

#BTV #VT — Many local online efforts focus on making information available to people… that’s a great start. But it’s just a start if your goal is building community and helping people get involved locally.

Burlington City Councilor David Berezniak posted this thoughtful message to his neighbors on Front Porch Forum yesterday…

There are many aspects to living in the ONE [Old North End] that are positive and it is nice to have the ability to share them with each other. Front Porch Forum makes this possible. This is a great service and well deserves our continued support. But please remember, this is not a substitute for meeting, talking with, or getting to know your actual next door neighbors. Ask them if they have joined FPF, let them know you read it and how easy it is to join. Begin to put real faces to some of the postings on here. Start using FPF with a core group of your neighbors as an icebreaker. You may find sharing a genuine feeling of caring about what happens to your neighbors and their stuff also gives them a reason to feel the same way about you.

FPF available in 60 #VT towns

Posted on Monday, January 10, 2011 by Michael • 4 comments

Don’t miss this Vermont-original community-building opportunity.
Another dozen Vermont towns can now benefit from Front Porch Forum thanks to e-Vermont, the Community Broadband Project, and the Knight News Challenge.

Front Porch Forum (FPF) was created in 2006 in Burlington and now more than 23,000 households subscribe across 60 Vermont towns.

If you live in one of the towns listed below, SIGN UP for your community Front Porch Forum today at: http://frontporchforum.com. Join in the conversations that are already happening in your community.

Also, please let friends and family in these Vermont towns know that Front Porch Forum is available, and encourage them to sign up! Only through more participation, will these towns realize the full community-building benefits of FPF. To sign up go to: http://frontporchforum.com

Why join Front Porch Forum?
FPF hosts online neighborhood/town forums where nearby neighbors connect and get involved in their local community. In this era of busyness and individual isolation, where it’s hard to find volunteers for local committees and people increasingly don’t know their neighbors, Front Porch Forum helps people meet those around them and talk about issues. And it’s free to residents in any of the Vermont communities below.

What if your town is not on the list?
Interested in bringing FPF to your community? Please add your town to the waitlist at http://frontporchforum.com/join

– Alburgh
– Arlington
– Averill
– Avery’s Gore
– Bloomfield
– Bolton
– Bridgewater*
– Brighton/Village of Island Pond
– Bristol
– Brunswick

– Buells Gore
– Burlington
– Calais*
– Cambridge
– Canaan/Village of Beecher Falls
– Castleton*
– Charlotte
– Colchester
– Dover*
– Essex Junction Village

– Essex Town
– Fairfield*
– Ferdinand
– Grand Isle
– Hardwick*
– Hinesburg
– Huntington
– Isle La Motte
– Jay*
– Jericho

– Lemington
– Lewis
– Ludlow
– Middlesex
– Middletown Springs*
– Milton
– Moretown*
– Morristown*
– Newport City
– North Hero

– Norton
– Poultney
– Pownal
– Richford*
– Richmond
– Sandgate
– Shelburne
– South Burlington
– South Hero
– St. George

– Starksboro
– Stewartstown, NH
– Sunderland
– Underhill
– Vergennes*
– Warner’s Grant
– Warren Gore
– West Rutland
– Westfield*
– Westford

– Williston
– Winooski

* e-Vermont communities newly participating in FPF

#VT’s new Lt. Gov. pushes Civic Engagement

Posted on Friday, January 7, 2011 by Michael • Comments are off for this post

New Vermont Lt. Governor Phil Scott (Rep.) was sworn in yesterday and gave a speech centered on civic engagement. I invite our new Lt. Gov. to see how Front Porch Forum is helping Vermont neighbors connect and get involved locally… e-Vermont too. Some choice quotes…

… as many of you know, 46 percent of registered voters didn’t vote in November. That’s 209,000 Vermonters whose only choice on November 2 was not to show up. They decided it wasn’t worth it, or it didn’t matter, or it wouldn’t do any good, to make their voice heard. My experience shows that’s just not the case… I don’t think any of us fully realized until November 2 what that frustration had turned into; it turned into 209,000 people who had apparently given up… Civic involvement isn’t something that’s only relevant on even-numbered years.

All of us here in the Legislature need to reach out to those folks and welcome them in, even when we might not agree with their views. We need to open our doors. In order to live up to the intentions and the expectations of our accessible government, we ourselves need to be more accessible. That will mean different things for each of us. For me, that means literally opening my office door downstairs a morning or two a week and inviting you in for coffee and conversation. It means opening my virtual doors…

When I challenge Vermonters to get involved, I’m not just talking about the work we do in Montpelier. Because I really believe we all want to help each other; sometimes we just need to know how… one theme that I’ve stressed… is self-reliance, and its partner, volunteerism. In my mind, those are two sides of the same coin. Being self-reliant doesn’t just mean looking after yourself, although that’s important… But self-reliance also means looking after our neighbors, and giving them the support they may need to get to the next step in their lives.

That has a lot of implications.

That means buying local, and supporting the merchants on Main Street instead of the website in California.

That means helping Vermont’s manufacturers to identify suppliers and trading partners who are here within our borders or close by in our region.

That means making it easier and more affordable for more of us to eat local food, supporting our farmers, reducing transportation costs, and getting fresher and healthier things to eat.

That means investing in energy policies that help us become more independent.

Personally, I suspect that a great deal of the collective frustration that caused those 209,000 people to stay home on November 2 was the sense that our elected officials and candidates kept talking about the goals — creating jobs, jump-starting the economy, and helping our most vulnerable — but didn’t talk enough about how we would get there. Buying local and encouraging innovative local partnerships are part of my vision for how we do it…

Our challenge in Montpelier is to come up with solutions that will strengthen Vermont. Your challenge is to come up with solutions that will help your neighbor and strengthen your community. If we all work together, we will strengthen the legacy of the state that we love to call home.

← Older posts

Newer posts →

About Blog

Ghost of Midnight is an online journal about fostering community within neighborhoods, with a special focus on Front Porch Forum (FPF). My wife, Valerie, and I founded FPF in 2006... read more

Category Archives: Social Networking

Search the Blog

Yearly Archives

Post Categories