The Walpolean

BELLOWS FALLS, VT — It’s been described as the love child of The Little Rascals, TED Talks, and NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts. One part songs, one part stories, one part science, one part humanities. Words and music. Arts and smarts.

It’s Stage 33 Live, a homegrown radio and television variety program showcasing performers and presenters from the region that’s being brought to life by group of volunteers in Bellows Falls, Vermont. The program will be recorded during public listening events at 33 Bridge Street in Bellows Falls, the former factory building that is also home to community radio station WOOL-FM, Sherwin Art Glass, Charlie Hunter Fine Art, and other artist studios.

“We’ve got tons of talented and studied people around here,” states Mark Piepkorn, one of Stage 33’s founders. “By shining a light on them, we can encourage more local participation in spoken word arts, humanities, sciences, and music. And by opening the program for syndication to public and commercial radio and television, and making it available on the internet, we can show the world that it’s worth a trip to the area to catch a show, take in an event, grab a meal, stay a night or two and check things out.”

Local people have helped cultivate the performance space, donated key components, volunteered time and expertise, and provided other assistance. The Stage 33 Live team brings experience in audio recording, video production, event promotion, media experience, artist relations, and other talents to the table.

“We’re close to a proper launch,” Piepkorn says. We’re doing a test run on Sundays in April with three open stage nights for original, family-friendly spoken word and music; a concert with River HALO and The Break Maids; and the premier of the newest episode of The Secret Life of Death.”

The listening events are free to attend; donations are welcome. Audience seating capacity is limited to 50, plus standing room. For more information on the series and the project, see www.stage33live.com. Stage time and slots are limited; first come, first served; participant reservations are highly recommended. Contact stage33@stage33live.com or phone/text (802) 289-0148.

Stage 33 Live is a volunteer-run, independent 501(c)3 nonprofit initiative.

In case you missed the forum, here are the notes. – Lil

Addressing the challenges journalism faces today, a three-person panel with varying ties to the field — researcher, editor, reporter — spoke and answered questions in front of an audience of 60 at the Walpole Town Hall, the evening of February 28th, in a forum sponsored by the Fall Mountain Alliance and moderated by long-time science journalist Ben Daviss.

“Liberty and the Press”

“The news is in the news,” said Ben Daviss in introduction. “Newspapers are laying off their reporters. Public distrust of our flagship news organizations is at an all-time high.  People are migrating for their information to social media and to online sources — perhaps a new form of Russian roulette.   And there are calls from the White House for news to be investigated or censored.”  He then noted what Thomas Jefferson wrote — “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press and that cannot be limited without being lost.”

Daviss posed the questions “Where do things stand now?” and “How do we navigate this new world?”

The panelists were:

• Nancy West, after 30 years as general assignment reporter for the New Hampshire Union Leader, now the publisher of InDepthNH.org, a nonprofit center for public-interest reporting in New Hampshire, which she founded in 2015.  She has been honored by both the New England Press Association and New Hampshire Press Association for government reporting.

• Dr. Kristen Nevious, director of the Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communication at Franklin Pierce University.  

• Paul Miller, executive editor of the Keene Sentinel where he’s been for 35 years.  He is a member of the board of directors of the New England Society of Newspaper Editors and a three-time New Hampshire Newspaper Columnist of the Year. He still writes his occasional “Out in Public” column in the Sentinel.

Moderator Daviss has been an independent magazine journalist for more than 35 years, with articles in Discover,Smithsonian, and in more than 40 other publications on four continents.

“The Wild West”

“It’s the wild west,” said West of conditions for journalists today.

The panelists talked of shifting technologies, sharpening divides, and the increasing role of belief and doubt in confounding  journalistic efforts to convey information.  They also addressed responses to such challenges.

“I was an expert at changing typewriter ribbons,” said Nevious of when she started out.  ”Now students are using SD cards.” She talked of the multi-tasking that today’s students must do — tweet, take video, do an interview, send back to the station–illustrating the wide range of new technologies involved in transmitting print, video, and audio aspects of a story.

News consumers have followed the technology.  “Two-thirds of people get their news on social media,” she noted.  This move has hit newspapers hard.  West observed “In 2000, the New Hampshire Union Leader had 28 reporters.  Today it has six.”  She added that thenumber of news jobs declined statewide over 56% from 2000 to 2016.

“Loss of Common Ground”

As newspapers struggle to adapt and survive, they also operate in a more fractious environment.

Miller said, “There are two disruptors: the political divide and the growing wage gap.

We’ve lost the middle in both places.” “There is a win-at-any-cost political divide.”  And he said the wage gap leads to a greater sense of disenfranchisement, apathy, social problems of homelessness, drug addiction, and domestic abuse.  “The loss of the middle, of a common ground, has created a vacuum,” he said.  “It contributes to an easy buy-in with those who propagate fake news, who prey on fear and desperation.”

The power of information to redress these gaps is hampered by the power of beliefs.  Miller said, “Forty-six percent of people hold beliefs they won’t change.  They won’t be swayed by facts.”

Miller finds, “We have a fact-resistant part of our population that has really dug in since the 2016 election.”

Rumors, Hoaxes, Lies, Information Weaponized

Another challenge to journalists is misinformation, which Miller sees as “pervasive” and “push-button simple.”  The proliferation of fake news has brought new attention to something that Nevious says has been around for a long time with many names — rumor, impostor, lies, hoax, fabricated reports, weaponized information.  She gave an example (citing the Newseum, 11/14/16) when in the 1800’s, The Sun in New York circulated a story about bat-like creatures on the moon — a hoax done to boost sales and divert attention from the issue of the abolition of slavery.  The anonymity available on the Internet, she observed, eases the spread of unsubstantiated news.

Other examples she gave highlighted the reach, power, speed, and scope of fake news.

• She noted the false account of the Pope endorsing Trump that was “seen by one million Facebook users and shared more times than any other news story–real or fake–on the election.”

• The Pizzagate conspiracy story, she pointed out, prompted someone to show up at the restaurant with a gun.

• In the case of the Parkland shooting, she said the Washington Post noted in a 2/27 story that  “forty-seven minutes after news broke” messages appeared on an anonymous chat board seeking Jewish involvement and crisis actors.

• Russia has long tried to plant misinformation in the American public to roil the waters (with fake stories, she said, drawing on examples revealed in a Chicago Tribune article 2/22, that President Kennedy’s assassination was directed by the FBI and CIA and that the AIDS virus had been manufactured by the U.S.).  Such weaponized information has been vastly empowered by the advent of the Internet, as evidenced, she noted, by the recent indictments by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III who’s investigating whether Russia tried to influence the 2016 presidential election.

Fixes lag woefully behind.  She noted the case of Miami Herald reporter Alex Harris whose tweet was hacked during the Parkland school shooting to say that she was looking for pictures of dead bodies.  While Twitter could address the problem of an account that had been taken over, Nevious said, it didn’t have an immediate fix for a single hijacked tweet.

“Public Enemy”

In addition to dealing with such increasingly murky waters, the environment has turned hostile for journalists.  “We have a President who’s declared the media a public enemy,” Miller observed, and referenced Trump’s practice during campaign rallies of confining reporters to a specified area and then deriding them, riling up the crowd.

And then there is the sheer overload of incoming information. Miller said that a poll found “fifty-eight percent say there is so muchinformation out there that they don’t know what to make of it.” This is a problem that afflicts not only readers, but newspapers themselves.  Miller commented, “We do so much on a reactionary basis.  We don’t do a good job of getting ahead of the news.”

The barrage of fake news and charges of fake news are fueling doubt and distrust.  “Forty-eight percent of Americans lack confidence in the media,” Miller said, wryly adding “That’s only one percent  higher than those who believe in haunted houses.”

Responding to the Challenges

The panelists also talked of ways journalists and news consumers can address these challenges.

To survive, news enterprises adapt and sacrifice.  Miller says the Keene Sentinel manages to be profitable because it is highly diversified with multiple revenue streams.  In addition to print and online editions, he said they are on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, publish niche magazines like Fiddlehead, and do distribution and printing.  In what must be an understatement, he said, “It’s a lot of work.”

West, noting that “I could never have started a newspaper,” did start an online one  (InDepthNH.org).  She stressed it was not done to compete with conventional newspapers, but instead to do stories too expensive for them to cover.  She has used a non-profit model. “My strong talent is to get people to do things for free,” she said, adding, “People are supportive of each other in this business.”

“Navigating a Sea of Information”

As to the threat posed by fake news (and cries of ”fake news” aimed at legitimate news), Nevious said, we need to ”learn how to navigate that sea of information.”  She said 25 states and Washington, D.C. have introduced or passed bills regarding news and media literacy, including Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut — but not, she emphasized,  New Hampshire or Vermont.  She said we need to foster skepticism without crossing over into cynicism.

After the event, she provided some tips (from  the Lompoc Record and from Buzzfeed):

• Ask questions:

o Who is the author of the article? (name, qualifications)?

o Who is the intended audience?

o What is the message?

o How is it being conveyed?  Language used (emotive or factual)?  Use of caps?

o Is the same information carried by other sites you know to be reputable?  (Paste key words of the topic or quotes from prominent people into the search engine.)

• Check the About Page for who is running the site.  Are there disclaimers?  Is it satire?

• To trace who owns a domain, use ICANN  Whois Lookup.  Be wary if the owner is not available.

• To do a reverse image search:

o With Chrome, right-click on the image to search in Google.

o TinEye will trace an uploaded image and return a list of places it is used.

Miller said we need to do “a better job of recognizing misinformation.”  Nevious later  indicated a few of some 48 fact-checking sites: Factcheck.org, Snopes.com, and Politifact.com.

“Proxy for the Public”

West said that for journalists, “We just need to do our job to the best of our ability” and asks herself “How does the public benefit from this story?”  “Journalists love their work,” she said, impassioned, “Their mission is to tell the truth,” adding, “I try not to be swayed by quick hits on the Internet.”

In the vein of doing their job, Miller said the Keene Sentinel’s standard is one of an “apolitical, independent, and verified press.”  “The press is a proxy for the public,” Miller continued, and with that in mind, he says, his newspaper only uses sources the editors consider to be competent and credible.  If a source insists on anonymity, the editor has to know their name, why they’re credible, and how their information will advance the story.  And even then, “it still doesn’t mean we greenlight it.”

Both Miller and West talked of pressing for the right to know and filing Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) requests.  “Our mission is to hold government accountable,” West emphasized.  And Miller said that while in the past newspaper operations were mysterious to the public, now transparency is paramount.  He gave the example that when, after nine months, their paper finally got and published the cause of death of a city official, his publisher wisely had him write an accompanying editorial column on why they had done it.  Otherwise, without readers having a sense of who their reporters are, they run the risk of fulfilling this equation: “‘I don’t know you’ + ‘I don’t understand you’ = ‘I don’t trust you.’”

Beyond accountability, credibility, and transparency is also the sheer insistence on basic coverage.  After the forum, Miller said that when Trump barred the Washington Post from access, the Postresponded by saying they were going to have 35 reporters cover him 24/7.

“Giving a Voice”

What they cover is also key. West seeks to “give voices to marginalized people, places, and ideas.”  Along similar lines, Miller talked of the importance of understanding their readers, as well as those who are not reading them.  He also talked of the need to understand the partisan divide between Democrats and Republicans and how it surfaces in the topics that interest them  He noted, “A Knight Foundation report found that Democrats were more likely to read about social issues, natural disasters, the environment, science, and technology.  Republicans are more apt to read stories about traffic and weather, business and the economy, and crime and public safety.”  Summarizing that, he said, “Democrats’ interests are more outwards, aimed at improving the world and Republicans’ interests are more inwards–utilitarian, improving the quality of daily life.”  He cautioned care in the use of analytics, but considers them to the extent they increase understanding.

As to what those who seek out news can do, Miller replied, “Engage us.”  West elaborated, “Read us.  Write checks.  Support letters to the editor.  Call.”  And in follow-up after the event,  Nevious pointed out that news used to be a noun.  Now it’s a verb.

###

• Megan Hughes, with the Fall Mountain Alliance

3/7/18

Panelist bios provided by Ben Daviss

Photos and sound engineering provided by Dennis Marcom

Winter Landscapes, a Watercolor Workshop with Robert O’Brien, presented by the Saxtons River Art Guild

Saturday, March 10th, from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

Paint the winter landscape in watercolor with award winning artist Robert O’Brien. The workshop will be held at the United Church, 8 School Street in Bellows Falls, Vermont on Saturday, March 10th, from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

Bring your materials and lunch. The fee is $60 for members and $80 for non-members.  To register call Carolyn Berglund at 603-352-7398.

Watercolors by Surry, New Hampshire artist Ray McClary will be on display at the Rockingham Medical Center in Bellows Falls, Vermont.  The watercolor display, which will be available during the months of March and April, is open to the public free of charge.  The exhibit is organized by the Saxtons River Art Guild, which is celebrating its 42th year of promoting fine arts with local art exhibits, open studio sessions, and workshops with award winning artists.  The group is a non-profit with membership throughout the Connecticut River Valley.

Thank you Megan Hughes for taking the notes, writing them up and sharing them with us! – Lil

Ken Burns — In the Wake of Vietnam

“History doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme,” said Ken Burns, quoting Mark Twain.  He talked about Vietnam, its significance, and documentary film-making in a talk hosted by the Walpole International Affairs Discussion Group before 190 people on February 13th  at Alyson’s Orchard.

“The Vietnam War” — co-directed and co-produced by Burns and Lynn Novick and written by Geoffrey C. Ward — traces the conflict and how the effects of war rippled through the lives of those who fought it, as well as through the very fabric of life, American and Vietnamese.  It is an account riven by different views — from all sides at all levels — of what was at stake, a telling marked by listening. The see-sawing of power and the death, wounding, and uprooting of millions is braided with personal accounts of those who had been in the thick of battle whose voices still bear the imprint decades later.

“The half-life of grief is endless,”said Burns of the loss of his mother when he was a child, but also speaking in the context of the grief engendered by war where the vast expanse of casualties threatens to numb feeling. “If we had given $600,000 to each South Vietnamese person,” he said at one point, “we would have spent less, the country would be successful, and three million more people would be alive.”

Burns ticks off a list: a President convinced the press lies, top documents stolen, deals made with other countries before a national election.  He is describing issues nearly half a century ago.  “Vietnam was a Pandora’s box” and the human actions and interactions revealed there, he said, are universal.  Speaking of the here and now, he remarked, “We are in uncharted waters.  We have never had anything like this,” adding, “The history “rhymes” in other countries’ experiences, but you don’t want me to name them.”  He spoke of journalism as something of a counterweight, “the first rough draft of history,” as Philip L. Graham, former publisher of the Washington Post, put it.  “But no one ever turns in a rough draft.  History eventually gets it right.”

The question-and-answer format of the talk was moderated by Bill Dakin, a Vermont veteran who was severely wounded in Vietnam.  In attendance was Thomas Vallely, a decorated Marine interviewed in the film and now Senior Advisor on Mainland Southeast Asia at Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center.

Burns said of the life of soldiers “Nothing is more vivifying than to know that your violent death is possible any second.”  On the front they could be set up as bait with commands to “Go out and draw fire.”  Without a draft, Burns said, “People don’t have skin in the game.  We have created a separate military class that suffers its losses apart and alone from the vast majority of Americans.” And, he noted, “the burdens of fighting fall disproportionately on the poor.” Discrimination by race existed, he said, but evaporated in battle.  The film shows the folly in war–of land being taken, then immediately abandoned.  Such folly was amplified when military decisions were made simply to advance a drive for re-election.  Asked about post-traumatic stress disorder, Burns said there are records of it back to the time of Agamemnon (who, in Homer’s Iliad, led the Greeks in the Trojan War 3,500 years ago).  The Greeks called it “divine madness, ” Burns said, and it has gone by other names since, including shell shock and combat fatigue.  Soldiers carried it home.  He mentioned one veteran driving with his four-year-old who suddenly found himself kicking in the windshield of another driver’s car.  He now talks himself down, saying the offending driver must be having a bad day. As to the Vietnamese, who suffered greater casualties, Burns said they had not seen photos of the carnage, were not given information, and had not been asked about their experiences.  He told of one North Vietnamese soldier who returned home to a muted welcome out of consideration for neighboring families mourning kin who had not returned.  For American troops, Burns said, “You went alone and came back alone.”

Asked what response to his film from the military interested him, Burns noted that they hated not having been able to stop traffic on the Ho Chi Minh Trail (dozens of paths coursing over thousands of miles). They consequently developed precision-guided bombing, with a loss over the last 25 years (not counting accidents) of only six planes.

Challenged on the idea of parallel patterns of history, Burns replied that yes, the agricultural and industrial revolutions change how we might live; that you could change culture, religion, and language; but that there is, as noted in Eccliastes, “nothing new under the sun,” that “human nature doesn’t change.”  He advocated for a return to the teaching of civics.  “It’s a manual of how you got things done together.”

In reference to the protests of the Sixties, Dakin asked if the fervor has died out or is it still there to tap.  “It’s still there,” Burns said, “Not only here, but around the world.”

Asked about what biases he might have, he answered, “I love this country.  I believe all people are created equal.” As to faults, he said, smiling, that he, like any other, can be hard-pressed to know what they are, citing his ancestor Robert Burns’ plea “for the gift to see ourselves as others see us.”  But, he said, he thinks working collaboratively mitigates against that.  He said they work to double-, triple-, and quadruple-check facts.  “Both sides,” he said, “trusted us to get it right.”

Rejecting the descriptor “historian,” Burns sees himself as a storyteller of the rhymes of history.  Initially, he found revisiting the issue of Vietnam “staggering.”  “Everything we thought we knew was wrong.”  But ultimately he found it “exhilarating.” He credits Novick for insisting on the inclusion of perspectives from the Vietnamese. He is drawn to the complexity of story, giving voice to “many truths,” and alert to what jazz musician Wynton Marsalis said, that “sometimes a thing and the opposite of a thing can be true at the same time.”  “Art,” Burns added, “can hit the yes and no at the same time.”   He embraces paradox, wanting to “always be asking who we are but never being able to answer it, of course.” And he seeks that improbable calculus where “1+1=3,” where the whole is more than the sum of the parts.  As to impact, “there is,” he said, “no such thing as a national conversation.”  “But,” he added, “you can ignite individual conversations.”  He tells of people saying their relatives never talked of their time in Vietnam.  But they watched the film and have begun to talk.   It is strong counterpoint to then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger intoning “No one will remember and none will care.” And maybe understanding can generate its own ripples.

– Megan Hughes

Thanks you, Paul Happ for the follow-up. – Lil

This is the “Grandparents Scam”. It is a standard, current, well known scam.

https://www.aarp.org/money/scams-fraud/info-2016/how-to-beat-grandparent-scam.html

Please let the PD know. They can’t do much but it is helpful for them to know about and keep track of these scams.

The scammers can gather enough info on the net to sound convincing. From there they are skilled at psychology, so they are able to ask leading questions and provide convincing “facts”. Just like the psychics who as “The Amazing Randi” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Randi) has shown, are skilled manipulators.

Maria Coneeny asked me to pass along this warning. – Lil

I have twice and Joe once received a phone call from a young man claiming to be my grandson. We quickly cut them off, but I understand that what they are doing is saying that they are in trouble and need immediate financial help. I’ve heard, but can’t confirm that it is true, that one of the ladies I know bought gift cards and followed instructions and sent them and was defrauded in such a way. This seems something to be concerned about.