Wow. Northampton.

Yes, it’s been a long time. But I have an excuse, and it’s spelled N-o-r-t-h-a-m-p-t-o-n.

We’ve moved from the New York to the Western Massachusetts, and after almost four weeks here it’s fair to say we’re feeling settled in. Routines have emerged, we’re getting used to living in a house (with insane bugs and boilers that break), and life in a small town is not so bad if you can share it with good friends and work that you care about.

So count me feeling blessed. I ride my bike a mile and a half to work each day, passing through beautiful New England-y land full of century-old farmhouses, and spotting more than a Subarus and Priuses along the way. Arlo loves it here and already has a posse of kids he can call friends.

We have a bunch of friends as well, mos of whom have settled in town after adventures in New York and Boston, just as we did.

I realized before we moved that my needs in life are fairly simple: I want to be able to focus on the kind of work I love and can obsess about, I want to be able to focus on my family in a complete and unhindered way, and I want to be surrounded by friends I care about and want to see. Oh, and the ability to play tennis a lot is helpful too. So far, so good.

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Categories: general.

By Josh

— July 28, 2009 at 11:21 pm

The Daily Show’s missed opportunity

Like thousands of my fellow nerd-geek-politicos, I’ve been watching the post-election situation in Iran unfold via multiple channels, but most consistently on Twitter. It’s not just that the platform lets us watch — in real time — as protesters organize and report information. It’s also a tremendous source of information about what’s being written off of Twitter. True to form, folks pass around links to deeper analysis and criticism, making Twitter — and the #iranelection hashtag — the most vital and current source for both breaking news and analysis of the Iran situation.

Twitter, of course, is filling the void left by cable news and other forms of traditional media. I explored that idea a bit in a post on the Save the Internet blog, but I also was disappointed by another, less traditional news source.

Last night I tuned into to the Daily Show expecting to see an echo of this criticism. Isn’t this what Jon Stewart is for, to skewer the media to which he’s built a career playing the evil twin?

I guess it was too much to ask. Instead, we got a few pat lines about Joe Biden’s poor use of words (easy target), and more depressingly, a bunch of dumb jokes about Muslim people, going after women in chadors, illustrating an Iranian student as a dude in non-Western clothes, and generally painting Iranians as a people who’ve barely emerged from the 19th century. Watch it:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c

Irandecision 2009 – Sham, Wow

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Newt Gingrich Unedited Interview

The funny thing is, this whole episode has shown a lot people, including me, what a uniquely modern place Iran is. Check out the street art that’s showing up in Tehran, including a little dude holding a picture frame, who’s apparently everywhere.

And have you noticed how well-dressed the young Iranian men are? They look like they’re all wearing Diesel jeans and Armani t-shirts. Maybe next time the Daily Show won’t have to resort to this kind of crass stereotyping to make its point.

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Categories: general.

Tags: daily show, iran, iranelection, jon stewart

By Josh

— June 16, 2009 at 9:28 am

Up and reading before dawn

Waking up at six in the morning on a Saturday means one thing: your seven-month-old is up. The early morning led me to catch up on some reading, so here’s a list of some things I was happy to stumble upon through my early-morning baby haze (actually posted at night, when I had time to hit the publish button):

- In These Times posted a fun, informative interview with Craig Aaron, our senior program director at Free Press. Good quotes include “Fixing the media is key to advancing any issue you care about. Whatever your first issue may be, the media should probably be your second.” Also, “As I once rapped before my sixth-grade class: ‘My name’s Craig Aaron, not Aaron Craig. If you call me Aaron Craig, I’ll break your leg.’”

- A simple formula for a satisfying breakfast that is comprised of something savory (greens, pasta), parmesan cheese, and a fried egg. Yum.

- This is why you’re fat. Also, weird meat. (Courtesy of GastroNomalies)

- Colin Delany explains the “enduring value of the communications tripod” using his standard down-to-earth and reasonable way of explaining things.

And:

- Michael Pollan or Michel Foucault? (via Ezra Klein’s own tab dump)

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Categories: general.

By Josh

— June 6, 2009 at 11:29 pm

Next government bailout: dairy?

Folks were rightly bummed after reading a recent New York Times piece that signaled the death knell for organic dairy farms. The short of it is that peaking supply and slowing demand are forcing dairy farmers — many of whom incurred enormous debts to make the switch to organic — to go belly up. There’s just too much milk clogging up the tubes of the nation’s wholesalers, and small farmers are suddenly hawking a valueless product.

Some horrifying stats from the piece, emphasis mine:

The contracts of 10 of Maine’s 65 organic dairies will not be renewed by HP Hood, one of the region’s three large processors. In Vermont, 32 dairy farms have closed since Dec. 1, significantly altering the face of New England’s dairy industry.

Vermont is a big dairy farming state, but it is a small state; thirty-two farms is a lot of farms. And then there’s this:

Organic Valley, a nationwide cooperative, told Maine organic dairy farmers last month that its sales growth had dropped to near zero from about 20 percent six months ago.

Yikes.

I was surprised and happy to see some pushback from the foodosphere. While acknowledging that there’s a real, tragic problem in the dairy industry, the Ethicurean took issue with some of the report, including the notion that the “price of organic feed shot up.” As the Ethicurean points out, there’s no mention of farms that rely more on pasture (read: grass) than feed.

And Ali at GastroNomalies points out that “ALL feed costs have gone up, not just organic.” It seems that the Times, while solidly reporting the crisis, apparently twisted the story just a bit to make it look like only organic farmers are suffering. Unfortunately, the reality is worse than that; all farmers are hurting.

So do we, as the Ethicurean suggests, get the government involved to buy up all the surplus milk and sell it cheap to school lunch programs? It’s a good idea, but it seems a bit too pat and easy. Do we allow these farms to go under and cite market forces, over which we (allegedly) have no control? Or do we inaugurate yet another federal bailout for small farmers — and not the big ones, who have been bailed out for decades — for the sake of mythic nostalgia for an old, pure America?

Someone get me a Pontiac, a mortgage, and a milkshake.

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Categories: food.

Tags: dairy farms, ethicurean, milk

By Josh

— May 31, 2009 at 10:05 am

Five Thoughts on Memorial Day

The extended Memorial Day weekend — combined with the fact that we’ve finally, after a month of searching, found a place to live in Northampton — has given me some much-needed mental space in which to slow down, relax, and assess.

First of all, I’m just so psyched about finding a house in Northampton to live in. It’s in my favorite neighborhood in the city, it’s a bike ride from work, and it has three bedrooms, a porch, a backyard, a fireplace, and a washer and dryer. Some of you might think it’s a bit banal to get excited over these things, but if you’ve lived in New York at all you’ll know that these features all seem luxurious. Just having a bathroom that can fit two people at a time is thrilling. I’m gonna invade Nicole’s bathroom time, just because I can.

Five other things I let my mind drift to today (in no specific order):

1. The importance of doing work that you really care about. In this case, I’m pretty proud to be able to tell people that I’m doing online organizing for media reform. A copy of Free Press’ Changing Media – a book that was produced for our Summit this month — is sitting on my desk, and it’s a reminder of the important work we’re doing and the ways it connect to real peoples’ lives.

Forgive me for sounding self-important, but working on media reform is a huge deal because it’s at the root of so much of what we call “democracy.” From a free and accessible media springs everything else that we hold dear — education, transparency, accountability, community action, a healthy populace, etc. So I’m pleased to be helping fight the good fight.

1a. The importance of working with people you respect and admire. All of my colleagues at Free Press appear to share my enthusiasm for the work we do. That’s key.

2. The necessity of work-sanctioned free time, formerly known as weekends. After a few years of working for startups or startup-like outfits, it’s a relief to treat a weekend like a weekend and know that your colleagues are doing the same.

2a. The wonder of spending time with your kid.

3. This is random, but it occurred to me tonight that including delicious links on my blogs is spammy and boring. A quick call to friends on Twitter confirmed it. Delicious links, begone.

4. Coney Island is a treasure, even when it sucks.

We walked down the boardwalk today from Coney down to Brighton Beach. The people are crazy and the attractions burned out, but I never get tired of it. The site of so many completely different New Yorkers sharing the boardwalk is enough to bring me down once or twice a summer.

5. Ironically, the move from Brooklyn to Northampton will mean getting to see much, much more music than we saw in New York, at least in the last couple of years. Ever since we’ve had Arlo (and really, since Nicole’s been pregnant), our rate of concert-going has trickled down to pretty much nothing given the logistics of it all. But now that going to a show means a walk down the street, and now that we have built-in babysitters in-laws living 15 minutes away, we’ll be much freer to see shows.

We’ve already started; last week we saw an amazing Bonnie “Prince” Billy show. Tonight, we bought tickets to see St. Vincent. Please, lords of Pioneer Valley, brings us some Grizzly Bear.

5a. The change in pace and location may be enough to get me to pick up my instruments again and seek out some bandmates. Look out!

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Categories: Internet, general.

By Josh

— May 25, 2009 at 12:16 am