Author: Emmett O'Connell (Page 161 of 177)

I’ll get to Jerry Falwell’s “With us or against Us” Christmas farther down, but first I want to explain something:

Christmas is two distinct holidays. One is secular, commercial and begins the day after tomorrow with Black Friday and ends Christmas morning. It is the center of our consumer culture, the reason for our season and such. If you don’t go overboard, I guess, there isn’t really anything wrong with secular Christmas, I just don’t like getting it confused with the other Christmas.

Religious sacred Christmas, some would argue, starts on St. Lucy’s Day. Others, myself included, say it starts on Christmas Day and ends on St. Stephen’s Day (ah the St. Stephen’s Day Murders). This Christmas is very different that the other secular one in that its a religious holiday. And, in an officially secular, not sectarian country, I understand some people don’t like to celebrate this one. Far be it for me to force anyone to celebrate this one instead of the other. I like to celebrate it, its the second most important day on the Catholic calendar.

What does piss me off are people (like Falwell) that bemoan the secularism of Christmas, and those that are trying to put Christ back into something that has become a secular, consumer season. They don’t bemoan the crassness of the season, the craziness of Black Friday, people running over each other at 5 in the morning running for DVD players. No, they sue Target who (this isn’t actually true) ban “Merry Christmas” from their stores.

So says David Batstone at Sjourners:

The American Family Association… announced a boycott on all Target stores, because, according to the group, the retailer has chosen not to use “Merry Christmas” on advertising and in-store promotions. Disputing that charge, Target spokeswoman Carolyn Brookter told the San Francisco Chronicle, “I don’t know where they’re coming from. We have no such policy on Christmas. You can see it in our stores.”

Her denial is unnecessary anyway, in my mind. If a store chooses to honor the holiday traditions of all its diverse shoppers, why should I punish their embrace?

I know that I am not the only American – Christian, Jewish, Muslim or other – who can’t be troubled to join these cultural wars. Share the joy of Christmas and Hanukkah – which begin on the same day this year – with each other. And express it in the way that delivers your best wishes. Those who are looking for offense will find their cause. Look instead for ways to celebrate the gifts of the season together.

I want to celebrate a religious holiday, and I don’t want to get it confused with a secular one. By pushing for more religious behavior in the secular Christmas (shopping malls, Target Stores, government in general) it ruins the sacred nature of Christmas. It cheapens it.

If they want to attack the crass, commercial Christmas, then do that. Go after the nature of our retail economy that literally depends on our spending habits during December to stay in business. Attack the consumer nature of our culture, that somehow if we don’t have the newest or shiniest things, we are lesser. Their point isn’t to attack consumerism, just to throw a Jesus blanket over a consumer holiday and call it good.

By setting up false choices like a “secular consumer Christmas” vs. “secular consumer Christmas (+Jesus),” the right announces a culture war that doesn’t really exist. People should be able to participate in an American consumer tradition (no matter how shallow), while still being able to follow their own particular religious tradition. Mine, for example, doesn’t include “He’s the reason for the season” buttons in Wal-mart.

A couple of days ago TJ Johnson became the second Olympia City Councilmember to register and participate at Olyblog. Good on TJ for making the effort. TJ is the second city councilmember (well, kind of) to get in on the action at Olyblog. Sorry, Jeff you’re only a city councilmember “elect” right now.

And, it was a hell of an effort. He really hung in there in a discussion on the downtown Business Improvement District that covered online anonymity, the political make-up of the council, the Nuclear Free Ordinance, among other things.

Hopefully, other city councilmembers will feel empowered by Jeff and TJ.

There are four more screenings of Walmart: The High Price of Low Cost this week. Worth seeing.

A couple things stuck me about the movie. There’s a story in the end of the movie about Inglewood, CA and how they kept Walmart out of town. I remember the story of how Walmart paid for an voter’s initiative to except them from local zoning, and that it failed. This part of the movie reminded me of the difference between professional politics and amateur politics.

There’s also subtle points in the movie, a picture of George W. Bush on an Arizona anti-Walmart activist’s wall and a former hardware store owner in Ohio saying that he’s “a conservative,” where you realize that this isn’t a partisan issue. Or at least, we haven’t made it a partisan issue. It’s not like the Democratic Party is beholden to the Waltons:

Republican candidates are the big winners in this year’s election. They received about 85% of the company’s (Walmart’s) contributions, including those of its political action committee, employees and children of founder Sam Walton.

Wal-Mart’s rise is significant because of the impact it might have on congressional debates about health care, labor and other hot-button regulatory issues, says Larry Noble, the center’s executive director. “They’re clearly making a move,” he says.

The company has more than $250 billion in annual revenue. (No. 2 is General Motors, with $187 billion in annual revenue.) Wal-Mart is also the USA’s biggest private employer, with 1.2 million workers.

We always say that Democrats win on home-front issues, economics, healthcare and the environment. Using Walmart as a wedge and forcing Republicans to defend them… I don’t know, why wouldn’t it work?

You know you have a good blog going on when folks get so carried away on the comment threads that you have let some steam off with an open thread. You’ll notice I’ve never done that here (sniff, sniff). Anway, let some stream off yourself.

What I really hope this means is that the “blog-oh-sphere” in Olympia is turning a corner, that the online discussion actually means something here other than just people like me yelling into the wind. One city council member elect has gotten into the mix on Olyblog. I hope this grows.

Ok, from my reading so far, there are two ways to look at municipal wireless systems: “good for Emmett” and “good for Olympia.”

Good for Emmett would include being able to go downtown and not worry about being able to find an access point, it would just be there. That example is just on the surfaces, so sit and think for awhile about the various personal use applications that you would have if you could carry around an internet device and always have access. Buy tickets on the way to the movies, carry on a real time conversation on Olyblog.

Good for Olympia would be the sort of applications that a city government would get out of a wireless network. This would include applications that would aid the day-to-day operation of government, such as checking parking meters, emergency response, etc…

Or, as the Dayton, OH IT director puts it:

You go back, I give you the work ticket, you go out and do it. Well, if I can do that while you were rolling and while you’re fixing that pothole, I can send you via the system — via the Web — “Oh, by the way, your next job is right around the corner.”

From the city standpoint, … we could do things like automated meter reading for all of our water meters so that eventually, we don’t have a whole fleet of people just running out reading meters every day, 20 working days a month, just to get all those 77,000 meters read every month to bill somebody. Well, if you take 30 people off the city’s payroll, think of how much money that saves in taxes.

The way these could tie together financially in a muni wi-fi system would be that while most residents would get the benefit of a free system (well, not really free the city would pay for it), big users (the city, county, the port and private companies) that would really see a benefit would pay subscriptions for broader access.

Most of the folks I supported won, all except Phyllis. Which I feel bad about, I think I’ll always look back at her campaign as being something I could have worked harder on.

So, no big surprises, except (holy cow) Steve Klein getting destroyed in Yelm. Even though he spent apparently $50,000 on the race, he was beaten 4-1 by Ron Harding (I should note that us TCYD’s endorsed Harding Klein, mostly because he showed up to our forum).

Anyway, I didn’t assume that Klein would win, but I thought that his spending so much, even going to the point of burning campaign movie DVDs as handouts, would get him above 45 percent. I really assumed it would be a tight race. As far as I can tell, maybe spending $50,000 in Yelm isn’t the best idea. Maybe that was the thing that really hurt him, that he thought he could buy the seat.

Although even in Olympia being out-spent by your opponent isn’t the kiss of death, especially if you have some sort of incumbency (Harding was already on city council). Two years ago, Laura Ware was outspent 3-1 by Sandra Miller and still won a decisive victory. Ware won because she had the big issue of the day on her side (she opposed the convention center) and she raised enough to get her message out there.

Just about a year ago, there was a seemingly short discussion within the City of Olympia on wi-fi, with the conclusion to sit by and wait for the technology to come to them.

In Tumwater, there apparently been a larger discussion on setting up a few city owned wi-fi hotspots, with the cost at around $8,000 (scroll down to page 26).

I went down to the Olympia Library and the Community Center yesterday with my PDA, assuming that it would have been pretty easy for the city to set up small, private, wireless networks in either place. Nope, no signal as far as I could tell.

Also, apperantly, someone is setting up a cooperative wireless system (Cirgo):

Objectives of the wireless group are to create and maintain a low cost citywide wireless network for providing access to Internet services. Currently, no citywide network exists. Initially, the project will be piloted in downtown Olympia and if successful, will be expanded to the greater Olympia area and to other rural towns and counties in Western Washington.

For all the folks that were bashing downtown during the campaign season (Will someone please do something about DOWNTOWN?!?!??), I want to point out that among other things, downtown Oly has a world class film festival starting tonight.

My film plans for this coming week include, but are not necessarily limited to:
Interstate 5, 107 Miles South and
Fishermen’s Terminal

I’ve been interested in Municipal wi-fi for awhile, but it wasn’t until just recently when Keri and I stayed in downtown Spokane and enjoyed their free wireless access, that I really began thinking about it. Thinking about it in a “We in Olympia should do something like this.”

I’m going to be reading more about this. Here’s my first reading list:
Wired: Wi-Fi Cloud Covers Rural Oregon
Joho the Blog: Is free municipal wifi good?
Muniwireless (I know it’s not an article… I’m going to peruse their offerings)

Speaking of getting engaged online to foster civic engagement (see below), the City of Tumwater currently has two online polls running. One asks how everyone likes the new website, another asks for input on John Dodge’s idea from a few weeks ago about moving the old brewery whistle to the FishBowl brewery (the community’s last working brewery).

In addition to the polls, the city’s website also has a calendar with an RSS feed. Sweet.