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Recent Posts
- Is Town Meeting Obsolete?
- Town Meeting 2021
- Vermont’s superpower
- Rumble Strip: Town Meeting
- Movie Recommendation
- Town Agents in Cambridge
- The Day After the Election
- Media: Crossfire Hurricane
- Memorial to Secoriea Turner
- Unmasking the cult of Stalin
- Why you should watch “Mr. Jones”
- The Holodomor
- Matters of Race and Class
- A Path to Racial Reconciliation?
- Hamilton: An American Musical
- Lockdown in Vermont
- To wipe or not to wipe?
- Podcast Recommendation
- You Can’t Cheat A Pandemic
- Where do you get news?
Introduction to this blog
Author Archives: George Putnam
Is Town Meeting Obsolete?
Is Town Meeting Obsolete? That was the question of an online debate sponsored by the Moore Free Library of Newfane, Vermont, on March 16, 2021, two weeks after Town Meeting Day. Arguing for the question were: Richard Watts, Ph.D., a … Continue reading
Town Meeting 2021
There was no traditional town meeting in my town of Cambridge, Vermont, this year. Like the majority of Vermont towns, we voted all items by Australian ballot because of the pandemic lockdown. In-person voting took place on Town Meeting Day, … Continue reading
Vermont’s superpower
The following commentary in VTDigger by Susan Clark on 2/05/2021 is excellent: Vermont’s superpower, revealed: The ability to practice local democracy Susan’s thesis is that: a) civic skills acquired by actively practicing local democracy, especially in Vermont’s town meetings, are … Continue reading
Rumble Strip: Town Meeting
The Rumble Strip podcast by Erica Heilman on 2/05/2021 titled “Town Meeting” is excellent! It is well worth 30 minutes of your time. [Town meeting] is the most civilized and surprising social gathering of the year, every year. [Erica at … Continue reading
Movie Recommendation
This is a good time of year for watching movies. My movie recommendation for 2020 is Hamilton: An American Musical. What a year this has been! Impeachment, covid, lockdowns, George Floyd riots, the 2020 election. Hamilton is an important story … Continue reading
Town Agents in Cambridge
This post is part of a series of posts on “Learning about town government” in my town of Cambridge, Vermont. Please see the link for context, a disclaimer, and a list of posts in this series. The 2019 annual report … Continue reading
The Day After the Election
It’s the day after the election. Ballots are still being counted in some states. Where are we? There are 538 electoral votes in the election for president. It takes 270 votes to win. As of about 4 PM ET today, … Continue reading
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Media: Crossfire Hurricane
An occasional theme of this blog is: can we trust the media to tell us about the world in an accurate and balanced way? The example in this post involves presidential elections. All news sources have biases. The takeaway from … Continue reading
Memorial to Secoriea Turner
This post is a memorial to Secoriea Turner. It is my personal Black Lives Matter protest. Secoriea’s life mattered. Secoriea Turner was eight years old when she was shot in Atlanta, Georgia, on July 4. She was riding in a … Continue reading
Unmasking the cult of Stalin
Mr. Jones is a “must see” movie, as I wrote in Why you should watch “Mr. Jones”. A comment on that post led me to this article at Ukraine Today about a panel discussion with the writer and director of … Continue reading
