Category Archives: Vermont

American Machine – Must See

Posted on Thursday, September 27, 2007 by • No comments yet

Front Porch Forum is about people connecting with their neighbors and getting involved in their neighborhoods. That involvement ranges from organizing a blow-out block party, to watering the next door neighbor’s plants when she’s away, to just becoming aware of a spate of bicycle thefts on the street. All that tuning in adds up to a heightened sense of community within the neighborhood… a simple and powerful thing.

Which brings me to American Machine, the new play created by local artist Jim Lantz. Jim has done a rare thing… he’s written, produced, and directed this show on his own… with a great team of people around him, but not housed within some larger organization. He’s taken the creative, career AND financial risks.

In doing this, he’s offering all folks local to the Burlington area a chance to tune in and get involved in local arts and national political discourse.

It’s simple, if you want to live in a place that has this kind of creative economy coursing through it, then you need to turn out, buy tickets, and take in the play. The show is clearly an artistic success. Now it’s up to local residents to make it a financial success by filling the seats. Get tickets here (show runs through Oct. 7, 2007).

To the play… my wife and I attended tonight’s performance with friends. While Front Porch Forum is a sponsor of the play and American Machine advertised in FPF, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I thought it might be lean toward a heavy-handed political piece… not at all.

Simply, I was enthralled. The production grabbed my attention and kept it the whole show. The six characters, their stories and their relationships all rang true, even when the drama flared. I know I’ll be thinking of the characters for some time, wondering what comes next for them. And the political message struck me as timeless, not about policy minutia.

I look forward to discussing the play with neighbors out on the sidewalk in the coming days… lots to mull over.

One last idea for locals… post a message about American Machine on your FPF neighborhood forum… help spread the word and build local community! Here are some details.

Free pass for neighbors

Posted on Saturday, September 22, 2007 by • No comments yet

The chair of the board of a well known Vermont attraction just made a lovely offer to the folks on her neighborhood’s forum… send her a note and she’ll provide a free pass. As she put it…

Just forum hoodies, please, not everyone you know because I can only manage so much!

Yet another new use of Front Porch Forum.

Geese Going North

Posted on Tuesday, September 11, 2007 by • No comments yet

Posted by Wendy in one of the FPF Winooski neighborhood forums this evening…

Hello neighbors. Its hard to believe that the night is slipping in on us sooner than later and the temperatures have grown cooler. I fight to keep the windows open as long as possible. One- because I appreciate the fresh air. Two- because winter isn’t far off and we’ll be holed up indoors. Unless you’re a snow sportsman. I meant to bring in my houseplants on Sunday but it rained. Decided it would do them good to stay out another week.

My parents moved to Essex Center in August. A year ago my dad was diagnosed with ALS. My sister bought a home and built an apartment unto it. She and I take turns putting my father to bed at night. There just aren’t enough LNAs in the VNA Hospice program to work evening shifts. Dad can no longer talk or walk or even support his own head. It makes you wake up and take notice of simple things you take for granted. Like being able to scratch an itch on your nose or say thank you or eat ice cream. We don’t know how long he’ll be with us. But each day on this earth, I consider a gift. Because each day he is alive, I can show him how much I love him.

I’ve got daffodil bulbs we salvaged from the old home. Need to put them out soon. Dad was the one who loved gardening. He misses working the soil. Weeding. Sharing the harvest. I’m the only one out of five kids who makes the effort to garden. Such as it is.

Days grow shorter and the geese are headed north. Sometimes it good just be able to acknowledge that.

Thank you, Wendy.

Neighbors Rally together to Fight Crime

Posted on Sunday, September 2, 2007 by • No comments yet

Matt Ryan of the Burlington Free Press yesterday covered a troubling story that’s been a hot topic of conversation on the Westford Neighborhood Forum for some time…

Harmony Schutt and her neighbors on Osgood Hill Road in Westford are fed up with theft.

The thieves, whom victims identify as neighborhood teens, break into cars and homes to steal mostly beer, gas and loose change, but the petty crimes are costing homeowners more than just stolen property…

Schutt lives alone and said her house has been broken into six times this summer. Schutt’s house is hidden from the road behind a row of trees, which makes it an easy target, Schutt said. The most recent break-in occurred Aug. 22 when thieves broke her sliding glass door to get in. The door will cost between $650 and $850 to fix, Schutt said. Thieves have cut holes in screens to unlock windows and have stolen wine, beer, cash and condoms. She called Vermont State Police and recently installed a surveillance camera to deter criminals.

The police “say they can’t do anything, so I’m hoping to catch them on that little camera,” Schutt said.

Local victims are turning to other means…

A few neighbors had posted signs in their yards asking for stolen items to be returned. One sign, nailed to a telephone pole, read, “Two 18-packs of beer — $35. Money in truck — $17. Look on thieves faces when caught — priceless.”

Rose Elder, 52, said thieves stole a cooler of beer from her son’s truck in her driveway and have siphoned gas from her car.

“They steal just the easy stuff that they can take,” Elder said. Warren Oalican, who lives next door to Elder and across the road from Schutt, responded to a message Schutt posted on Front Porch Forum, an online site where neighbors can share information. Oalican, 38, said he’s been trying to organize his neighbors to stop theft.

“We’ve been here three years, and ever since we moved in, I was aware there was a crime problem,” Oalican said, citing theft, loitering and underage drinking. “It’s been really bad in the past three or four months.” He said he had not had anything stolen.

Oalican, who lives with his wife, 2-year-old son and 4-month old daughter, said he worries about the potential for homeowners and criminals to get into violent confrontations.

“I don’t care why you broke into my house, you might as well be after my kids,” Oalican said. “I don’t want people to get hurt.”

UPDATE:  Seven Days reported on this story this week too…

The irony is that locals believe they know exactly who is committing the crimes — the neighborhood email listserv, Front Porch Forum, has been abuzz with speculation.

Soup Mama Gauging Interest

Posted on Tuesday, August 28, 2007 by • No comments yet

Burlington’s creative economy rarely ceases to amaze me.  And I’ve got a great view as the local Front Porch Forum moderator.  Here’s today’s entry from a member of the ONE East Neighborhood Forum in Burlington…

Hi Neighbors – I’m considering a weekly soup delivery to wherever you want it, home or office. It can be a drag to pay for overpriced sandwiches for lunch or bother with packing your own and I’m sure you know those nights where you don’t want to cook, don’t have the energy to go out, or don’t want greasy take-out. That’s when the Soup Mama will fill the void. I’m a neighborhood mom who wants to serve you some homemade soup. Since this endeavor would be in the neighborhood, deliveries will be made with a bicycle.  For all those interested please e-mail me.  Thank you.  -Lorraine M.

FPF Members help Design Playground

Posted on Monday, August 27, 2007 by • No comments yet

Here’s another great use of Front Porch Forum… this time by the City of Burlington’s Parks and Rec. Department…

The Department of Parks and Recreation has received funding in the new fiscal year 2008 budget to replace the playground at Schmanska Park on Grove Street. With input from the Front Porch Forum, we have completed the design process and have ordered the play equipment. Installation is scheduled for mid October. A colored perspective of the new playground may be view by going to the department’s website at http://www.enjoyburlington.com. There is a link to the design on our home page.

Ditto for Baird Park.  Melissa Young used FPF to reach neighbors in several neighborhoods surrounding the two playgrounds in question.

Grayboxx ranks Burlington

Posted on Monday, August 27, 2007 by • 9 comments

Grayboxx has been generating some buzz online recently with its impending launch… which happened today. And lo and behold, its first target is our very own Burlington, Vermont. From its press release…

Grayboxx Inc., a Silicon Valley-based online local search firm, today announced that Burlington is the first city to gain access to the company’s unique “neighbor-recommended” local search service. By using patent-pending techniques to accurately determine the community popularity and approval for local businesses, grayboxx.com provides the most meaningful local recommendations on the Web. Grayboxx will roll out its service to other communities across the United States in the coming months.

For people who live outside of the largest metropolitan areas, there are few, if any, online local search options that provide extensive business rankings and recommendations. Grayboxx’s unique approach to local search has enabled it to assemble a critical mass of community feedback on more than 3,000 of Burlington’s businesses. The site features more than 12,000 “neighbor recommendations”, covering everything from antique shops to violin stores.

Wow! Burlington’s population is about 38,000… a little more than 12,000 households. Here’s how it works, according to the company…

Grayboxx’s innovative PreferenceScoring™ engine is able to translate everyday actions people take with or about businesses into meaningful expressions of business popularity and quality. For example, when a user checks out a restaurant online, makes a reservation, and then a week later makes another reservation, this can be considered as a positive recommendation of the restaurant.

Online reservations are just one of the many methods used by the powerful new local search engine to assess the top recommendations in Burlington. Grayboxx works by processing anonymous information from a variety of sources to create implicit neighbor recommendations in more than 6,000 yellow page categories in Burlington or in any city. This approach differs greatly from that of current search giants, which rely on manually entered user reviews for their recommendations.

This sounds interesting. Wisdom from boiling down databases… the final dish depends on the ingredients (data) and the chef’s technique (Grayboxx’s software). Let’s see how it tastes…

The following are samples of grayboxx’s top results for businesses and services in Burlington, as ranked by the Burlington community.

The top neighbor-recommended “jewelers” in Burlington are:
* Fremeau Jewelers, with 34 neighbor recommendations
* Von Bargen’s Jewelry, with 12 recommendations
* Hannoush Jewelers, with 3 recommendations

The top three neighbor-recommended “taxi” services in Burlington are:
* Benway’s Taxi, with 38 neighbor recommendations
* Yellow Cab, with 8 recommendations
* Airport Taxi, with 5 recommendations

A search for “computer repair” in Burlington returns with the following:
* ReCycle North, with 47 neighbor recommendations
* Computer Rescue Squad, with 7 recommendations
* Pine Computers, with 4 recommendations

I just plugged in several other items… groceries, computer dealers, newspapers, shoes, pizza… maybe some of the databases they hope to mine are not quite ripe or fresh. As a local, I haven’t had one search produce what I would call “good advice from a neighbor.” Makes me wonder about the chef’s secret recipe (mysterious ranking criteria)… hard to trust when initial tests come up with what I’m seeing.

I know Grayboxx is taking aim at smaller markets, but this seems more suited for large anonymous metro areas. If I didn’t know anyone local to ask for a reliable and a reasonably priced taxi option, I’d be happy for this kind of service.

Burlington, and all of Vermont, is so reasonably scaled, that lots of this kind of information is near at hand. Ask a few co-workers, friends, etc. Indeed, this is one of the most common types of messages posted among neighbors on Front Porch Forum. People get real “neighbor recommendations” in Burlington everyday this way.

At this point, I’d rather ask a couple hundred neighbors for a computer repair recommendation through FPF than turn to this kind of service. Or I’d sooner take a peek at the local successful reader survey that our weekly alternative paper runs, the much coveted Daisies, by Seven Days. But Grayboxx may be more attractive than some of the other non-local data-driven behemoths stomping through the local online scenes these days. I’ll have to keep trying it… fun to have it here first.

And thanks to Greg Sterling for the lead.

Small Town Website Featured

Posted on Monday, August 27, 2007 by • 1 comment

Phyl Newbeck wrote an interesting piece for the Burlington Free Press on August 21, 2007 about a local online effort within Front Porch Forum‘s initial pilot area.

Jericho and Underhill collaborate in ways that few Vermont towns do.

They share a library district, a park district and a land trust. The two towns go even further in their collaboration by having a communal Web page and listserv known as “Two Towns Online.”

Although each town has a formal, municipal Web site, Two Towns Online provides additional interactive applications like collaborative document creation and a message board. Front Porch Forum offers three neighborhood-based listservs for Jericho and Underhill, but Two Towns Online founder Toby Brown feels that Two Towns Online is not redundant because it serves a larger audience and is the result of a group effort.

Two Towns On-Line wasn’t always a collaborative project. For almost a decade, Brown, a Web production manager and native of Jericho, was the sole force behind the page. That changed in 2005 when Jan DeVries, a retired businessman from Holland and newcomer to the town of Underhill, offered to provide additional applications such as Mediawiki.

Franco Gatti and Kelly King joined the duo, and the group formed a nonprofit organization and opened a dedicated bank account for the page. Gatti was born in Italy and moved to Jericho in 1994.

He retired from IBM with a desire to devote his time and energy to local projects and is responsible for the page’s virtual gallery for local artists and artisans. King is a home-schooling mother who is a lifetime resident of Jericho.

The Two Towns Online board is somewhat frustrated by the limited use that residents give the listserv. One hundred and thirty people are signed up, but conversation is limited. Still Brown is pleased with his efforts.

“It’s not a wild success, but it has become a community asset,” he said.

Brown sees the limited use as “reflective of our society where people aren’t tuned in to participating in the civil realm.”

The page may not be fully utilized as of yet but it is, as DeVries notes, most definitely designed in the Vermont tradition as it has no billboards and accepts no advertising.

Toby, Jan, Franco and Kelly deserve praise for all the work they’ve done… lots of good stuff on their site.

For the record, Front Porch Forum hosts four neighborhood forums covering 100% of Jericho and Underhill towns.  To date, about 140 households have joined.  None of these neighborhood forums are among our top tier in terms of member count or message traffic… but they are all getting there.

Neighborhood Planning Assemblies Online

Posted on Saturday, August 18, 2007 by • 2 comments

Two of Burlington’s Neighborhood Planning Assemblies are now online…

All of the NPA Steering Committee members deserve thanks from the citizens of Burlington for the volunteer work they do on our behalf. About 25 of these good folks also participate on their neighborhood’s Front Porch Forum and have access to all of the neighborhood forums in their ward.

Kudos in particular to Basil Vansuch (Ward 5) and Lea Terhune (Wards 4 and 7) for creating these NPA blogs and thanks for mentioning Front Porch Forum on them.

President Clinton invokes Community

Posted on Thursday, August 16, 2007 by • No comments yet

A colleague just sent me this video link of President Clinton’s commencement speech at Middlebury College this year. Worth watching; here’s the transcript. It’s all about the need for community as a fundamental building block for positive change…

[T]here’s a community here in the best sense, and that’s really what we have to build in the world… Every successful community has three things, whether it’s a university, a sports team, a business, an orchestra, a family; you name it. They all have three things: a broadly shared opportunity to participate; a broadly felt responsibility for the success of the enterprise, whatever it is; and a genuine sense of belonging…

So there are plenty of problems out there. Why would I come to you and ask you to think most about community? Because I believe questions of community and identity, personal identity, will determine our collective capacity to deal with all the problems. The most important thing you’ve got coming out of this Middlebury education is the understanding of the elemental value that makes all communities possible in an interdependent world, which is that our differences are really neat, they make life more interesting, and they aid in the search for truth. But our common humanity matters more.

So much of the world’s difficulties today are rooted in the rejection of that simple premise. Think about all the political, the religious, almost psychological fundamentalism that drives the wars and the conflicts and the demonization in the world today. All of it is premised on the simple fact that our differences are more important than whatever we have in common. When the terrorist bombings hit London not so long ago, the most traumatic thing for many British citizens was that the people who set the bombs off were British citizens. It was in no sense an invasion. They felt somehow violated and disoriented, and I read painful article after article where people were saying, “I just don’t get it. I work with these people. They’re nice people. I don’t understand it. My kids played with their children. We went to sporting events on the weekend. We had all this contact.” What happened? The people who set the bombs off did not feel they belonged. They believed that their differences were more important than what they had in common.

Even though they lived and worked and sometimes played with other people, the same people somehow became less human to them.

As my colleague pointed out to me… that sounds like what Front Porch Forum is about. Right on.

Now someone reading this might think I’m out in left field somewhere near the warning track… “what’s finding a babysitter and ‘table saw for sale’ messages have to do with peace, love and understanding?” Fair enough. But in my experience that’s where it can start.

I know of just such a case… call them Mr. Blue and Mr. Red. Mr. Blue had a Howard Dean for President bumper sticker on his hybrid (covering his Nader sticker). His neighbor of a couple years, Mr. Red, was all red, white and Bush on his SUV.

Mr. Blue admitted to loathing Mr. Red, who he had never really met, based on his bumper sticker… couldn’t help himself. Don’t know about Mr. Red’s feelings, but they probably weren’t too warm and fuzzy toward Mr. Blue.

Enter Front Porch Forum. Over a few months each neighbor posted several items. As Mr. Blue read Mr. Red’s postings… his Lions Club was collecting used eyeglasses for charity, he was looking to sell some photography equipment, he recommended a roofer and car mechanic to the neighborhood… Mr. Blue’s view began to change. At some point Mr. Red stopped being just a bumper sticker to him.

Not sure when it started, but they began having sidewalk conversations about photography and roofers. Then they were sitting on Mr. Red’s front porch talking Red Sox, neighborhood history, kids and grandkids, personal health. This wasn’t the enemy, rather a neighbor to be respected, supported, learned from, leaned on.

Has this happened more than once courtesy of Front Porch Forum? I don’t know. But I can hope… and keep working on it.

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

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