Hello, Winter.

Man, I'm beat. Didn't even run, bike or swim today, either.

Woke up, took the kids to the bus stop. Re-started the fire. Showered. Ran into Brattleboro to pick up a prescription. Stopped by this salvage place to see if there were any bargains on farm/garden tools. It's really cool, but had little time to really do it justice.

Grabbed some groceries. Ran home and did the day job thing. Fairly busy (and frustrating) day. Took a break to see what was local news, and happened upon an advertisement for a free Bucks fireplace insert.

For those of you who have no idea of what a fireplace insert is, or what it does, here's a quick take. Light a fire in your fireplace. The heat goes ... up the chimney. Light a fire in a wood stove. The heat goes ... into the house. An insert basically turns your fireplace into a big, honking wood stove.

Guess which is better when you're living in Vermont?

I called the woman who was offering it and arranged to run down there to look at it and make sure it'd fit in the fireplace. Then I called a semi-local firewood guy and ordered a truckload. Ouch. It's $190 for a cord. Cheaper than gas, but still steep. He couldn't deliver until tomorrow, so I scooted down to the general store and picked up some camp wood. (My chainsaw ain't great, and my shoulder is worse.)

As long as I was out and about, scooted over the take a look at the insert. It looked great, but (a) wouldn't fit in the Subaru, and (b) didn't stand a chance in hell of moving it anywhere by myself. Damn thing must weigh nearly a ton. Sue, the lady who had it, said she'd hold on to it for a week or so while I figured out a way to get it home and in the fireplace. Sue runs a community group that helps out senior citizens with heating needs; she was giving the insert away because no one wanted it.

"I'm worried for the old folks," she said. "This winter is going to be hard."

Got home and restarted the fire before the snow started to fly; we're supposed to get a foot or more between now and Tuesday. The firewood guy hadn't shown up, so I called to see when he'd make it. Said he couldn't be here until tomorrow morning. Asked if his dump truck might be available for an insert pickup run. Offered to pay.

"Oh, hell, no," he said. "Folks in Vermont are friendly."

In tomorrow's episode, we'll see how friendly Vermont folks are when putting a half-ton piece of cast iron into a fireplace.

Me Tube

Worked all day, actually got quite a bit done.

Took off around 3p to go to the hospital for X-rays and MRI. The X-rays were a pain. Had to do contortions all over the table so they could get a good shot of my shoulder. Hurt like hell. Then, into the tube, which is about the size of your average Manhattan studio apartment. Finally got comfortable about 30 minutes into it, then fell asleep for the last 10 minutes. They'll have results next week. Part of me hopes it's arthritis and can be rehabbed. I'd be amazed, though.

Other depressing news: Ali Samsam Bakhtiari died recently. He was one of the few folks from the Middle East who -- I think -- got the idea that we'll eventually run out of oil. He took pains to disassociate himself from the "peak oil" community, but the message was pretty clear. Here's a link to testimony before the Australian Senate:

http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/senate/commttee/S9515.pdf

Cold tonight, with snow showers.

Asshattery to the Nth Degree

I just saw this in my GMC magazine.

And I am pissed.

Trees Illegally Cut on Public Land at Big Jay

Worst Easement Violation in the History of GMC's Land Protection Program

General Contact: Becca Washburn

Media Contact: Becca Washburn

Phone: 802-244-7037 x32

Email: -->Posted: 10/29/2007

Nearly 1000 Trees Illegally Cut at Big Jay.

On July 11th 2007 the Green Mountain Club (GMC) received a call from tram operators at Jay Peak Resort which would lead to the discovery of the largest easement violation in the history of GMC’s stewardship program.

A chainsaw and other tools had been used to cut an illegal trail almost 2,000 feet long from near the summit of Big Jay down to the existing system of logging roads leading to Route 242. Nearly 1,000 trees had been cut and the opening ranged in width from 20 to 60 feet.

Within two weeks, two individuals had been arrested and confessed to the crime as a result of the combined efforts of GMC staff and volunteers and Wardens Brad Mann and Mark Schichtle.

Support Restoration of Big Jay - Donate Online Now

Big Jay Restoration - Volunteer Opportunities

A sub-committee of GMC’s stewardship committee was formed to assist and advise in responding to the easement violation, including evaluating legal options, short-term restoration efforts, and long-term management of the damaged property.

The committee has solicited advice from several experts regarding ecological restoration and management of backcountry skiing. There has been an overwhelming response of support from the backcountry skiing community.

Many skiers and riders have expressed their disgust at this act of vandalism and offered to help with restoration of the site. On October 14th, GMC staff and volunteers, supervised by ecologist Jeff Parsons, installed waterbars made up of logs and brush (which had been left at the sides of the cut by the violators) in order to stabilize the thin shallow soils.

Additionally, concerned backcountry skiers have taken advantage of several events this fall to start a dialogue about responsible stewardship of public lands and raise funds for restoration efforts on Big Jay.

The following events helped to raise awareness and funding for Big Jay restoration:

October 13, 2007

Teton Gravity Research, Burlington, VT

Lost & Found Ski Movie Premier

October 17, 2007

PW07 Ski Movie Premier, Arlington, MA

October 26, 2007

Petra Cliffs, Burlington, VT

Ski Mountaineering Slide Show

November 2, 2007

PW07 Ski Movie Premier, Burlington, VT

The Green Mountain Club, as the holder of a conservation easement on the property is obligated to protect the natural resources on Big Jay, which was a trail-less peak with prime Bicknell’s thrush habitat when acquired in 1993.

In the words of former Jay Peak Ski Patroller and GMC stewardship volunteer, Russ Ford, “As backcountry skiing has gone from the province of a few to a mass-marketed activity, we’re loving these places to death. We need to develop a Leave No Trace ethic for backcountry skiing like we’ve done for hiking and backpacking. If you’re not a good enough skier to ski natural glades without cutting, stick to the ski resorts’ maintained trails.”

This is a very costly project. You can help by providing financial support or through volunteer projects. Thank you!

Support Restoration of Big Jay - Donate Online Now

Big Jay Restoration - Volunteer Opportunities

Wet.

Rain, sleet, snow. It's the triathlon of late fall in New England. Forecast calls for rain or snow until Friday. I'll be looking forward to it.

Worked, worked, worked on the day job today. Kept waiting for a bit of a break in the mist. Told myself if I didn't just break down and get a little wet doing chores, I'd wind up getting very wet doing chores. Which is about what happened. The mist became a downpour just as we started running out of daylight (around 4p these days). I got 15 eggs, but I was not happy.

Hoping I'll be happier tomorrow after a radiologist looks at my shoulder and decides I'm just a wussy. Going back and forth between tendon problems and bone spur problems. Woke up this morning and couldn't elevate my arm much more than 45 degrees.

And as long as I'm in a grumpy mood, here's a spot-on NY Times illustration from a story on flying cattle class:

Off With Their Heads

Started with a little light chainsaw work today. The chainsaw is in its last throes -- I had to tighten the chain about every two cuts and oil it every few minutes, too. Still got a little more than a tenth of a cord done. Supposed to get colder this week, with a bunch of freezing rain and sleet.

Sun was starting to go down quickly, so I drove a couple of nails into a stump and sharpened the cleaver. Had second thoughts about the cleaver, so I got the air rifle out and tried a couple of head shots. Didn't work out so well -- I just had a dizzy rooster. So we grabbed the cleaver and Lisa took off the first head. I grabbed another one and lopped off its head. We hung them to dry while the water heated, then dunked 'em. Took about 10 minutes to pluck. Gutting was a little trickier, since it's been about five years since I cleaned birds. Only nicked one gall bladder, and that was while pulling it out. So, no harm done.

John came downstairs while the chickens were being dealt with on the kitchen island. I don't know if he was impressed or appalled, but he had a one-word comment on the subject.

"Well," he said.

Chicken didn't taste bad. It was mighty lean, but we seasoned the hell out of it. Saved the bones for some stock, and the drumsticks and wings for frying. And bonus: The hens responded by laying 20 eggs. New world record!

So the frightening thing is, we cut wood for heat and killed a couple of roosters for dinner. Which is pretty darn sustainable, no? Probably more than most folks do, but it just didn't seem like so much ..

And final outrage du jour: The Lincoln commercial with Harry Connick Jr. Using post-Katrina New Orleans as a backdrop ... for selling cars? Yeesh. Ick. Yuck. Tacky.

Tourism Hell

Didn't do so much today. Hauled garbage to the dump, cleaned the car, a little mild cleaning. Scored 17 eggs this afternoon. Dodged tourists all over the place. Speaking of which, these folks live not too far down the road from us. I like the whole agritourism concept, as long as it doesn't involve tourists:

November 23, 2007
Down on the Farm With Your Sleeves Rolled Up
By EMILY BIUSO

AT an early morning hour most vacationers would spend unconscious, a few intrepid city dwellers outfitted in borrowed boots hunch over a creek full of watercress, carefully cutting the plants with kitchen scissors.

For their hosts, farmers in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina, it’s the start of a regular workday. But for the visitors, it’s a delicate balance between learning on the fly and trying to be of use on a working farm.

Hoeing, seeding and picking may not sound like a holiday, yet the appeal of agritourism is gaining in the United States. More and more people want to see where their food comes from, and the same drive that leads them to visit farmers’ markets or join community-supported agriculture farm-share programs draws them to the farm itself.

“I shop at the farmers’ market, but I didn’t really know how these people operate or how a farm functions,” said Elizabeth Schafer, who works for a visual-effects company in Los Angeles and decided to visit Maverick Farms in Valle Crucis, N.C., after a year of working 50-to-60-hour weeks. “It definitely made me appreciate what needs to be accomplished to put food on the table.”

The arrangement at Maverick Farms is simple: vacationers pay $120 a night to stay in a room in the hosts’ beautiful two-story, 125-year-old farmhouse, and they are also invited to work at harvesting, seeding and other chores. For each hour of labor, $7 is deducted from the bill. Up to 25 percent of the bill can be worked off. At night, the farmers cook dinner from food they grew, and the guests/laborers are encouraged to join them. At the end of the stay, visitors can, if they like, leave a donation for the food they’ve eaten.

Agritourism includes a wide variety of farm activities. Though most visitors simply spend an afternoon picking fruit or feeding animals, others remain several days, contributing labor to tasks ranging from planting crops to building greenhouses.

In Vermont, income from agritourism totaled $19.5 million in 2002, nearly twice the amount in 2000, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. Though there are no similar statistics for more recent years, agritourism leaders in the state say the figures continue to rise. In North Carolina, 46 percent of agritourism operators surveyed by the state Department of Agriculture reported an increase in income in 2004 from 2003. And in Tennessee, agritourism enterprises directly added about $17 million to the economy in 2006 and bring in more than three million visitors a year, according to the state agritourism coordinator.

“It’s grown because more farmers are finding out it’s an important avenue to bring in revenue and stay on the farm,” said Rich Pirog, associate director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University in Ames. “Secondarily, it’s increasing because we’ve moved to an experience economy. People want to have a farm experience.”

Melissa Gunderson is a chef and caterer in Norcross, Ga. She, her husband, Eric, and their two young sons, Sam and Benjamin, visited Maverick in September. Since their stay, Ms. Gunderson has noticed a new appreciation of eggs by 3-year-old Sam. When she cracks one open for a recipe, he remembers seeing them up close in Maverick’s chicken coop. “I’m so shocked he remembers that experience,” she said.

MAVERICK FARMS is a working farm that was started by five novices in 2004, all friends in their 20s and 30s. Three had grown up on farms, but none had experience running one. They began it to help preserve family land from development, and important components of the farm’s daily practices are reducing waste, saving energy and fostering local involvement whenever possible. Boarding tourists who want to learn about farming has always been part of the business model.

“Agritourism is an incredible education tool,” said Tom Philpott, a co-founder and co-director of Maverick who also writes about food and farming for the environmental Web site Grist.org. “This is a way to come and do a typical afternoon on a farm. Maybe somebody does this, and it sparks something.”

Mr. Philpott was first exposed to farming when he traveled around Italy and stayed at agriturismos. In Italy, such projects have been supported by the government since 1985, and farmers receive tax breaks to play host to visitors. It’s a much more robust industry there and elsewhere in Europe, and many American farmers and educators have traveled abroad to see what methods can be imported from the Europeans.

Beth Kennett, the owner of Liberty Hill Farm in Rochester, Vt., accompanied Senator Patrick Leahy on a 1998 trade mission to Ireland and saw how agritourism was done there.

“In Ireland, they consider this economic development,” she said. “It put a whole other spin on it for me. I thought: ‘This is real. This is a business model. We can emulate this in Vermont.’”

In the mid-1990s, Ms. Kennett, other local farmers and the University of Vermont Extension Service formed the Vermont Farms! Association to organize agritourism in the state. After the trip with Senator Leahy, the association received an agritourism grant from the Department of Agriculture, according to Ms. Kennett, who is now the association’s chairwoman. Today, it offers training, support and marketing to farmers and provides guidance to associations in other states.

Jill Adams of Adams Farm in Wilmington, Vt., and secretary of Vermont Farms!, is a fifth-generation farmer on her family’s land but not the first to welcome paying guests. In the 1880s, her ancestors put up families from New York who sought a retreat from city life. Her parents, William and Sharon Adams, closed off the farm to concentrate on dairy farming in the early 1970s, but in 1980 they decided to diversify and bought a team of Belgian draft horses to pull sleighs filled with visitors around the farm.

The popularity of the rides and interest in the farm led the Adamses to take the government’s offer to buy their whole herd of cattle as part of a federal program in 1986. The family was no longer in dairy farming, and they began to focus on agritourism and marketing their maple syrup and other products directly to consumers. In 1992, Jill Adams reopened the farm to the public. She now has more than 10,000 visitors a year. In addition to the sleigh rides, visitors can milk goats, gather eggs from the chicken coop, watch sheep herding and see yarn being spun.

Good story, if a bit "safari-like" on the part of the writer. Not sure I'm in agreement with the phrase "intrepid city dwellers" if it involves cutting watercress. This was the story that made me see red -- I mean, WTF? And why can't there be an acronym for "Who Gives a Shit?" Maybe WGAS?

November 25, 2007
Tightening the Beltway, the Elite Shop Costco
By ASHLEY PARKER
WASHINGTON

RICHARD PERLE said he was game for a reconnaissance mission.

Mr. Perle, the neoconservative and former adviser to Donald Rumsfeld, offered to walk through his local Costco, pointing out the products that he said were increasingly drawing D.C. power shoppers like himself.

That Richard Perle? The gourmand with a home in Provence who once dreamed of opening a chain of soufflé restaurants?

Yes, Mr. Perle proudly shops in Costco’s cement warehouses stocked with three-pound jars of peeled garlic and jumbo packs of toilet paper. And he has no problem serving the store’s offerings to dinner guests.

“Because it should have been Dean & DeLuca?” he asked, sounding half incredulous and half amused. “I really think there’s a socio-cultural thing here, and people are entitled to their pretensions.”

As a recent article in Vanity Fair lamented, the days of glamorous Washington dinner parties are long gone. Indeed, some hostesses today aren’t above serving Costco salmon, nicely dressed up with a dollop of crème fraîche.

Mr. Perle said he shopped at Costco once a week when he was in town, and at a dinner party he held recently for several colleagues and friends, most ingredients were from there — the beef for his daube à la Provençal, the limes for his lime soufflé. The salmon for gravlax — also from Costco. He said he always received compliments, and he always got double takes when he told his guests where he shopped.

He’s not the only D.C. host or hostess to go big box.

“I do it — Costco all the way,” said the writer Sally Quinn, who is known for the power salons she puts on with her husband, the former Washington Post editor, Ben Bradlee, at her Georgetown town house. “I just started.”

Stuff

Been a busy week:

Up to 12-18 eggs per day. Yay!

The lump of two months is apparently benign. Yay!

Going in Tuesday for a shoulder MRI and x-rays. Boo!

Finally got the house mess sorted out. Yay!

Chainsaw is working again. Yay!

Four "yay" and one "boo." Probably not horrible.

Yeesh. Christmas is here. Or, I should say, shopping season is here. I'm sorry. Going shopping on Thanksgiving is just ... disgusting. Occurred to me that two years ago, I was toodling around the largest shopping mall on the East Coast on the day after Thanksgiving. On this day after Thanksgiving, I took a lunch break to acquire the following:

*** One 50-pound bag layer feed
*** One 50-pound bag grower feed
*** One 50-pound bag whole corn
*** One 50-pound bag rabbit food
*** Two bales of mulch hay
*** One bale aspen shavings

I think I like the Vermont day-after-Thanksgiving concept better.

Also picked up a couple of big winter jackets for kids. They'll need 'em. Single digits tonight.

Have moved the big turkeys into the new chicken barn. They don't seem to appreciate their offspring very much at all. I've let the small chickens out into the chicken yard, but they're not too excited about the big, wide world out there. Plus, the big chickens in the adjacent yard are heckling them, I think.

Woke up mid-week with 10 more baby Angoras. Grand total of 21 in the hutch now. Dogs can't decide whether to run to the rabbit hutch, the chicken coop, or the chicken barn. It's making Stink crazier than usual, I think.

Really need to get back on the training treadmill, but I'm waiting until I hear a bit more about what's going to be involved with the shoulder. It's been a problem for about six, seven years now. I think that means it's time to stop whining about it and get it fixed. Went for my annual physical, and it was just hanging there. Approximate transcript of patient-doctor conversation follows:

Doctor: That arm's been a problem for a long time.

Patient: Quite a while.

Doctor: I'm giving you some painkillers and scheduling an MRI and x-rays.

Patient: Don't need them.

Doctor: They're not for you. They're for me.

Patient: Excuse me?

Doctor: If you take enough of these, you won't be able to whine.

He then proceeded to let me know that my cholesterol was getting high. Gave him three dozen eggs on the theory that if I raise everyone else's levels, maybe mine won't seem so high.

Lastly: I've bitched about this before. But I was glad to see the following in the Washington Post. My tribe has been screwed, screwed, screwed for 400 years. And we're morons! They ask us to help out with the Jamestown celebration, and we do it. How dumb is that?

As Year's End Nears, Disappointment
Va. Tribes Had Hoped Jamestown Events
Would Help Them Gain Sovereign Indian Nation Status
By Brigid Schulte
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 23, 2007; B01

They have donned their fringed buckskin, bone breastplates and finest headdresses made of turkey feather or porcupine hair. They have danced for the Queen of England. They have smiled for President George W. Bush.

At every turn during this Jamestown 400 Commemoration, Virginia's remaining Indian tribes have done everything asked of them.

As the anniversary year draws to a close, however, they do not have the one thing they wanted most: federal recognition as sovereign Indian nations, equal to the Navajo, Arapaho and the Sioux. "First to greet. Last to be recognized," had been their rallying cry. Now, many Virginia Indians find themselves in a familiar, hollow place.

"You're left feeling that this is all kind of superficial, from the Indian point of view. Like we were used one more time," said Chief Ann Richardson of the Rappahannock tribe. "You feel like in 2008, they might just forget about us again."

"Broken promises to Indians," added Chief Ken Adams of the Upper Mattaponi. "The cycle does repeat itself, doesn't it?"

On Wednesday, leaders from some of the eight state-recognized Indian tribes again donned their regalia to offer their annual Thanksgiving tribute of fish and game to the governor, honoring the 1646 treaty with the British Crown that gave them the reservation land that over the centuries only two tribes, the Pamunkey and Mattaponi, have been able to hold on to.

There was such excitement this time last year, tribal members said, as they readied for the world's eyes. "Now, we're afraid that we've lost the moment," said Reginald Tupponce, an Upper Mattaponi leader who recently resigned his position from the Virginia Indian Tribal Alliance for Life, a group that hosts pow wows and yard sales and raffles baked goods to raise funds to lobby for federal recognition.

The road to federal recognition for any tribe is steep and uncertain. The Bureau of Indian Affairs has a Federal Office of Acknowledgement that requires tribes to prove, with reams of exacting documents and genealogies, that they have been in continuous existence from the time of first contact with European settlers. That's 400 years for Virginia Indians.

"The procedures put in place were so stringent, they were designed to limit the groups that could come in," said Mark E. Miller, a historian who has written books about forgotten eastern tribes.

So a process that was designed to take two years for the 300-some tribes that have applied instead generally takes 20, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Some tribes have instead appealed to Congress. But some powerful figures, such as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), argue that lawmakers do not have the expertise to make the call. And in the days since the Indian gaming/Jack Abramoff scandal that sent lobbyists to jail for defrauding Indian tribes, the route through Congress has become close to impossible.

Tupponce remembers sitting in the gallery high above the House of Representatives in spring, holding his breath as lawmakers debated whether to pass the legislation that would give sovereign status to six Virginia tribes: the Chickahominy, Eastern Chickahominy, Nansemond, Upper Mattaponi, Rappahannock and Monacan.

The bill would enable their children to apply for scholarships and would open up federal funds for housing, health care and economic development.

It would mean that they could finally petition the federal government to return the bones of their ancestors from the drawers and boxes of Smithsonian warehouses to be buried with respect, something that only tribes with federal status are allowed to do.

I suppose if there's a bright side, we're no longer considered "colored," which we were in Virginia until the 1960s. Still, you've got to wonder what the hell it takes for the federal government to say, "Oh, yes. Indians lived here once, didn't they?"

Tired

Been a long week. Long Sunday, and it'll be a long Monday.

Up this morning and finished the chicken run fence. Lots of digging, chicken wire stapling. Still have to put netting over the top to keep out the hawks and owls. Think the chickens were excited, though. They laid 19 eggs today, a new record.

We finally put tarps over the gardens. Lisa piled a ton of really nasty compost on it, and Stink saw fit to wallow in it, which earned him a shower this morning. He's a much older Stink, a much wiser Stink ... a much sadder Stink. Gave Pepper a shower, too. They were some pretty miserable border collies after all was said and done. And Gray Kitten sat and watched. Ever seen a cat smirk?

Anyway. Did what I could with the chicken run while Lisa hung plastic in the rabbit coop. Very exciting -- one of the local yarn stores saw her Angora gloves and wants her to spin Angora for them.

Sawed a three-by-six foot pile of wood. It's getting colder in a hurry, into the teens. So we're burning a fair amount of wood.

Tomorrow's going to be rough. Will has to be at school before 6a. Then I'll take John to the bus stop at 630a. Then off to the doctor's appointment when they open for some nagging issues. The shoulder/arm issue is near the top of the list, but I've got to have a few other things looked into, ASAP. I know, the shoulder is the least of my problems right now, but I'm still hoping to get something done for it. At this point, even surgery would be an improvement.

Hope to run down to the CSA during lunch and pick up most of my half-pig. It's either that or cut wood. Then work through the afternoon and pick up Will from his field trip around 8p. They're going to Burlington for a youth group conference; he's very excited. If I get a few, I may take John to the mountain to fill out paperwork for his job.

Maybe I'll catch my breath Tuesday.

Of Chickens and Chainsaws

So I'm very pleased with the chickens lately. I'm averaging 11 eggs per day. The New Hampshire Reds are laying more than the Aruacanas, which is expected. I'll get about seven brown eggs and four green eggs. And the baby chickens are starting to look like real Aruacanas, with the black and gold feathers. Very pretty.

The chainsaw, I am less pleased about.

Damn cover keeps popping on it, which means I have to tighten the chain about every five minutes. I just need a new chainsaw. I got the boys off to school about 645a, and cut wood until 8a, when the screw that holds the cover popped off. Couldn't find it, so I had to quit for the day.

Wrapped up the day job early and went for a 5-K. A rather vegetative experience, but good for me. I usually do a lot of thinking -- get some of my best ideas while running -- but I just turned the brain off for 27:03 and enjoyed the movement.

Wrapped up the run and took cans to be recycled, got my hair cut, grabbed some groceries, bought a new screw and chain for the chainsaw and picked up a bag of corn at the Agway. Came home, made dinner for the kids. Lisa's making semi-local pie -- Grafton cheese, CSA kale and onion, and our own green eggs.

Hope to get the damn chainsaw working tomorrow and throw some compost on the garden over the weekend. And in the "enough, already!" category, from WCAX-TV:

Brattleboro Considers Nudity Ordinance
Brattleboro, Vermont - November 7, 2007

The select board in Brattleboro is once again working on an ordinance that would ban public nudity.

They have asked Interim Town Manager Barbara Sondag to prepare a draft ordinance for them to review at their next meeting in two weeks. The select board enacted an emergency nudity ban this summer, but later voted down plans to make it permanent, because they couldn't agree on a punishment.

The board has reached a compromise that would make public nudity in Brattleboro a civil violation.

Passing an anti-nudity ordinance in Vermont in November seems like the height of unnecessary legislation. It's getting down to 20 already at night; another month, and anyone walking around Brattleboro with no clothes will confirm Darwinian theory.

So we're worrying about frostbitten wee parts in this neck of the woods, while other places are doing some really interesting stuff, like this:

In Berkeley we're thinking a lot about solar this week, because on Tuesday, the Berkeley City Council approved a breakthrough financing plan aimed at encouraging local solar panel and solar water heater installations.

Green Wombat has the full story, but the basics are simple. The city foots the bill for the installation, but homeowners retain ownership and pay the city back over 20 years via an annual property assessment. And if they sell their house before the bill is completely paid off, no worries -- the liability for the remaining bill, along with the solar panels, goes to the next owner of the house.

(Disclaimer: Green Wombat is not only a co-resident of Berkeley, but a fellow member of the Malcolm X Elementary PTA. I will now shamelessly steal from him: "Solar power in Berkeley: By Any Means Necessary.)

The math sure looks good to me. The annual property assessment fee adds up to about a year's worth of electricity bills. Like many homeowners, I've been daunted by the $20,000-$30,000 price tag for a solar installation. But I'm going to be lining up with my Berkeley brethren to apply for participation in the "Sustainable Energy Financing District" when it is up and running, perhaps as early as 2008.

Imagine if the federal government supported a similar program. My guess is that leadership on this issue might make buying some shares in a solar power start-up a pretty good investment. Oh, wait a minute: Solar power start-ups are already some of the hottest action on the market, without the federal government doing a damn thing. As Green Wombat also reported on Thursday, the stock price of thin-film solar module maker First Solar shot up 34 percent on Thursday, to a Googlish $224.43. The performance is all the more remarkable when considering how badly the rest of the market did this week.

Green Wombat bills itself as covering "the intersection of the environment, technology, business and policy." But if you review the last six posts as of the morning of Nov. 9, every single one concerned some aspect of solar power, with a heavy focus on California. Solar power is exploding in California, and a horde of venture-capital funded start-ups are jostling with each other to get a piece of the action. So while Democrats and Republicans trade jabs over who is responsible for the current price of a gallon of gas, and by the latest reports are fumbling a major opportunity to pass legislation that would significantly boost the production of renewable energy, here in California, something powerful is actually happening.

Then again, almost all our power in Vermont should be coming from the Quebec hydro plant on Rupert River by 2012. So nyeah. We're cleaner and greener and can afford to bicker about trivial crap like clothing-optional towns.

Book Deals

... just about everything today has to do with books. Except, of course, the chainsaw, which I retrieved during lunch. The cover had snapped, which meant the chain kept coming loose. It's the sort of thing that can cause an excessive amount of excitement, so I had it fixed. Plus, it's getting colder by the day, and we can use the wood. Snow flurries the last two mornings, and the leaves are pretty much history.

One of the ducks was attacked a few weeks ago by the turkeys (and the chickens piled on), so I had it in a crate next to the coop. I thought they'd pecked its eyes out, but turned out it was just blood that had crusted over. So when it made its great escape from the crate this morning -- God knows how -- Lisa put it and four small ducklings into the chicken run. Which sent the boy ducks into a fighting tizzy and made the collies go absolutely beserk, but things seem to have calmed down now. Got 11 eggs, which seems to be par for the course these days.

So, books. I'm dealing with three (and possibly four) publishers for books on various and sundry subjects. I need to break down and just hire an agent. I'm beginning to see why some people feel the need to hand over 10 percent of their advances, or whatever it is that agents get these days. I'll resist the temptation another month or so ... maybe.

Anyway. I've vented. I feel better.

But while going through the loft, I found a book that contains the following passages. Guess when this was written:

"In so far as summer residents occupy productive land, take it out of use and let it revert to brush, they are a detriment to the agriculture of the state. Certainly this is true in the more productive valleys.

"Another thing the summer residents do to Vermont agriculture is to put a premium on factory goods and specialties shipped in from out of state, have them carried in the stores and thus help to persuade Vermont residents that it is easier and cheaper to get dollars, exchange them for canned goods sold in the stores, and abandon long-established gardens in the course of the turnover. Thus the state is made less dependent upon its own agriculture and more dependent on dollars, many of which will be used to buy out-of-state produce.

"If this process goes far enough, Vermont will develop a suburban or vacationland economy, built on the dollars of those who make thier income elsewhere and spend part of it during a few weeks or months of the Vermont summer. Such an exonomy is predominantly parasitic in terms of production, although income and expense accounts may be in balance. Carried to its logical conclusion, it would make Vermonters sell their labor power to summer residents, mowing their lawns and doing their laundry, thus greatly reducing their own economic self-dependence. Such an economy may attract more cheap dollars to the state, but it will hardly produce self-reliant men.

"Summer people do more than upset Vermont's economy. By living on their places during the summer and closing them for the balance of the year, they turn sections of the State into ghost towns. Neighborhoods, to be meaningful, must have continuity. Part-time towns are parasitic dead towns."

The above was written in 19-'effin-54, in The Good Life. I can't say I agree with an enormous portion of the Nearings' experiment -- the rants against putting animals into bondage are just a bit much, and there seems to be quite a bit too much holier-than-thou-ness going on -- but give them huge props for prescience.

Finally, a really wonderful start on the Ryan Shay tragedy from the NY Times:

November 8, 2007
Small Town Mourns a Running Marvel
By JERÉ LONGMAN and AIMEE BERG

CENTRAL LAKE, Mich., Nov. 7 — It snowed the night they brought Ryan Shay home to bury him. Three hundred candles in paper bags lined the inner lane of the high school track. The wind extinguished some candles and ignited several bags into balls of flame.

“A kid from a village of 1,000 makes it big, that’s a million-to-one shot,” Quinn Barry, the athletic director at Central Lake High, said as he patiently relit candles, maintaining his frozen vigil. “But Ryan always had a plan.”

This was Tuesday. On Sunday, 150 people had come to walk or run in tribute to Shay, who died a day earlier at the Olympic men’s marathon trials in New York of causes still undetermined. Now there was a lone, thin runner circling the track in tribute, wearing a skullcap and tights, only his footsteps announcing him in the dark football stadium.

Two cars drove up near the track, one leaving its headlights on. A mother and her son’s wife climbed out and hugged several friends in this woeful homecoming.

“The most beautiful thing I’ve seen,” said Susan Shay, Ryan’s mother. “Everyone has been so supportive.”

Beautiful lead, but the story lost me here:

Much remains unknown. Autopsy and toxicology reports have yet to be completed. Given the tarnished nature of running, where doping has been widespread, Shay’s father has asked that the toxicology report be made public so that it might absolve any suspicion that Ryan used illicit substances. The New York medical examiner’s office declined to say what specific substances would be screened.

Marathon doping? Um, excuse me? I'm sure there are some asshats out there who are doing it for marathons, but I always thought drugs were good for short bursts of energy, not for hours of entertainment. Of course, shows what I know. But I just keep thinking, Please, God, no more Rosie Ruiz, and please don't let this sport turn into professional cycling.

So, the plan for tomorrow: Run. Cut wood. Work. Rest. Enjoy.

Frustration Overload

... with the day job. So I did the best thing you can do in these circumstances. And went running.

I feel a bit better now.

Bake It

A good piece from The Simple Dollar on baking your own bread. Why? Here's one good reason -- look at the ingredients in store-bought:

Enriched wheat flour (flour, barley malt, ferrous sulfate (iron), “B” vitamins (niacin, thaimine mononitrate (B1), riboflavin (B2), folic acid)), water, sweetener (high fructose corn syrup or sugar), yeast, wheat bran, whole wheat flour, wheat gluten, molasses. Contains 2% or less of: soybean oil, salt, sweet dairy whey, butter (cream, salt, enzymes), maltodextrin, honey, corn syrup, calcium sulfate, soy flur, dough conditioners (may contain: dicalcium phosphate, calcium dioxide, sodium stearoyl lactylate, ethoxylated mono and diglycerides, mono and diglycerides, and/or datem), yeast nutrients (may contain: ammonium sulfate, ammonium chloride, calcium carbonate, monocalcium phosphate, and/or ammonium phosphate), cornstarch, wheat starch, vinegar, natural flavor, beta carotene (color), enzymes, calcium propionate (to retain freshness), soy lecithin.

It's sometimes a pain in the butt, and it's always time-consuming. But it's worth it. We do pretty much all our own bread; sometimes, buying hamburger buns, or as a treat, potato bread for the kids. But for day-to-day stuff, we do all our own. The kids snack like fiends on it.

It also, of course, takes fewer calories to produce.

So I'm looking at the "all-new Chrysler Town and Country minivan" while reading about a new game: "Peak Oil Shock Me."

An increasingly popular parlor game among peak oil activists is to see who can serve up the most shocking morsel of peak oil news at any one sitting. There are now plenty of morsels to choose from on an almost daily basis. Here are some recent samples:

A former Saudi Aramco executive said he believes the world has peaked.

Production at the large international oil companies appears to be dropping like a stone. (Recent reports on Shell, BP and Exxon tell the story.)

Greenland's offshore undiscovered reserves are estimated to be far less than previously thought.

Persistent new highs in the oil price of late only add to the end-times quality of the game.

Just a bit of cognitive dissonance going on ...

Speaking of which, the price dropped a bit today. Be entertaining (if that's the right word) to see what happens on Wednesday when the next inventory report comes out. Seems as though lately it drops on Monday and Tuesday, then goes up midweek.

Cringe

I had to take a second from the day job because ... well, because I've been going more or less nonstop since 645a (with a couple of postings here and a slice of crusty old bread there, nibbled in between beatings) ... and to see if anyone else who's ever run 26.2 just winced when they saw the Katie Holmes marathon photos.

This, of course, is speaking as one who sang the "I Am Stuck On Band-Aid" jingle from about mile 22 to 26.2 of my last one ... when I realized that the chest-area Band-Aids keeping me from being even more uncomfortable were becoming a little loose.

Cringe away:

Ouch.

Either she didn't actually run the entire race (I can't imagine), or she's some sort of superhuman mutant. But if you were a superhuman mutant, wouldn't you shoot for something better than a 5+ marathon? I'm just saying, there's a contradiction here.

Dead Trees. Very Dead Trees.

I like newspapers. A lot. Been reading them for nearly 40 years. But the latest numbers are just scary.

Six months ago, average daily paid circulation for weekdays was about 14.8 million, for the top 25 newspapers. It's now about 14.4 million. For weekends, the average Sunday numbers were about 15.7 million. Now, that figure has dropped to roughly 15 million.

So about 1 million fewer newspapers are being sold, yes?

Of course, no telling how many readers have stopped taking dead tree versions and are getting their fix online. Still, 1 million fewer papers is one of those canary-in-the-coal-mine numbers.

I suppose if there's any hope, it's here: Television writers have gone on strike. Between that and the cancellation of "Dog, The Bounty Hunter," maybe there's hope for western civilization yet.

Read of the week: The Book of Vice.

From the Department of Cause and Effect

Sometimes, I don't think we're too bright up here.

Cause?

Poll: Vermont Wants Bush, Cheney Impeached
BURLINGTON, Vt., Nov. 1, 2007

(CBS) Earlier this year, town meetings across Vermont asked citizens if impeachment proceedings should be initiated against the president and vice president. Thirty-seven towns voted yes, and the Senate approved a resolution calling for impeachment. Now a statewide poll conducted by CBS affiliate WCAX in Burlington, Vt. posed the question to 400 likely voters.

Sixty-one percent said they would be in favor of Congress beginning impeachment proceedings against President Bush. Thirty-three percent opposed it, and 6% were not sure. The numbers for Vice President Cheney differed only slightly: Sixty-four percent favored impeachment, while 31% opposed it. Seventy-five percent of respondents said they categorized the president's performance as "fair" or "poor."

"I'm really overjoyed by this," said Jimmy Leas, a South Burlington lawyer who has been a vocal advocate of impeachment. He told WCAX correspondent Kate Duffy that the poll shows "here in Vermont, nearly two-thirds of the public understand we have a serious problem, and the way to address this is to remove the officials who are usurping power."

"The impeachment results are somewhat surprising, frankly, to me," Middlebury College professor and columnist Eric Davis said. He said the numbers are a sign that Vermonters are extremely dissatisfied with the administration. "Even though their terms are ending in a little bit more than a year, a majority of Vermonters don't want to even see them remaining in office until January 20, 2009."

Vermont's legislature took up the impeachment issue last spring. The Senate passed a resolution calling for the president's impeachment, but a similar effort failed in the House. Constitutionally, only Congress can impeach an executive, yet it could be spurred to do so by a state legislature, or by the motion of a single representative.

According to the Jefferson Manual, if a House member introduces impeachment as a question of privilege, it would supersede all other business before the Congress and must be addressed. Peter Welch, D-Vt., the state's sole Representative, has said he does not support the impeachment of Mr. Bush or Cheney.

Speaking at a town hall meeting on the issue in May, he argued impeachment would be a distraction and hamper efforts by some in Congress to end the Iraq war. Since then, the number of U.S. troops in Iraq has increased.

During this week's Democratic debate in Philadelphia, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, repeatedly called for articles of impeachment to be pushed forward. "I think that our democracy is in peril, and unless the Democrats and the Congress stand up for the Constitution, we are going to lose our country."

Leas said the effort isn't over. "The founding fathers decided we could have a Congress that's just as corrupt as the president and it's up to the people to get involved and take action," he said. "And this poll shows that the people understand this - [and] they don't like the direction this country is going." Impeachment of chief executives is rare: Congress has impeached only two presidents in the country's 231-year history - Andrew Johnson in 1868, and Bill Clinton in 1998. Both were acquitted by the Senate. Richard Nixon resigned from office before the House was to take up an impeachment vote against him in 1974.

"Would you favor or oppose Congress beginning impeachment proceedings against President Bush?"

Favor Total 61%
Women 64%
Men 58%

Oppose
Total 33%
Women 29%
Men 37%

Unsure
Total 6%
Women 7%
Men 5%

The poll was conducted for WCAX by Research 2000, October 17-19.© MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

******************************

Effect?

Politics
Vermonters Ponder Why Bush Hasn't Visited
by Steve Zind
Listen Now [3 min 37 sec] add to playlist
All Things Considered, October 30, 2007 ·

President Bush has visited every state in the country since he's been in office, except Vermont.

Residents speculate on why the president might have steered clear of the Green Mountain State, but they also point out that the state doesn't carry much political weight for Bush — with only three electoral votes and a tendency toward Democrats.

Still, the president has been invited to visit.

Food, Glorious Food

I was really blown away by Michael Pollan's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma. Here's his op-ed in the Sunday NY Times:

November 4, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
Weed It and Reap
By MICHAEL POLLAN
Berkeley, Calif.

FOR Americans who have been looking to Congress to reform the food system, these past few weeks have been, well, the best of times and the worst of times. A new politics has sprouted up around the farm bill, traditionally a parochial piece of legislation thrashed out in private between the various agricultural interests (wheat growers versus corn growers; meatpackers versus ranchers) without a whole lot of input or attention from mere eaters.

Not this year. The eaters have spoken, much to the consternation of farm-state legislators who have fought hard — and at least so far with success — to preserve the status quo.

Americans have begun to ask why the farm bill is subsidizing high-fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils at a time when rates of diabetes and obesity among children are soaring, or why the farm bill is underwriting factory farming (with subsidized grain) when feedlot wastes are polluting the countryside and, all too often, the meat supply. For the first time, the public health community has raised its voice in support of overturning farm policies that subsidize precisely the wrong kind of calories (added fat and added sugar), helping to make Twinkies cheaper than carrots and Coca-Cola competitive with water. Also for the first time, the international development community has weighed in on the debate, arguing that subsidized American exports are hobbling cotton farmers in Nigeria and corn farmers in Mexico.

On Capitol Hill, hearings on the farm bill have been packed, and newspapers like The San Francisco Chronicle are covering the legislation as closely as The Des Moines Register, bringing an unprecedented level of attention to what has long been one of the most obscure and least sexy pieces of legislation in Congress. Sensing the winds of reform at his back, Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, told a reporter in July: “This is not just a farm bill. It’s a food bill, and Americans who eat want a stake in it.”

Right now, that stake is looking more like a toothpick. Americans who eat have little to celebrate in the bill that Mr. Harkin is expected to bring to the floor this week. Like the House bill passed in July, the Senate product is very much a farm bill in the tradition- al let-them-eat-high-fructose-corn-syrup mold.

For starters, the Old Guard on both agriculture committees has managed to preserve the entire hoary contraption of direct payments, countercyclical payments and loan deficiency payments that subsidize the five big commodity crops — corn, wheat, rice, soybeans and cotton — to the tune of $42 billion over five years.

The Old Guard has also managed to add a $5 billion “permanent disaster” program (excuse me, but isn’t a permanent disaster a contradiction in terms?) to help farmers in the High Plains struggling to grow crops in a drought-prone region that, as the chronic need for disaster aid suggests, might not be the best place to grow crops.

When you consider that farm income is at record levels (thanks to the ethanol boom, itself fueled by another set of federal subsidies); that the World Trade Organization has ruled that several of these subsidies are illegal; that the federal government is broke and the president is threatening a veto, bringing forth a $288 billion farm bill that guarantees billions in payments to commodity farmers seems impressively defiant.

How could this have happened? For starters, farm bill critics did a far better job demonizing subsidies, and depicting commodity farmers as welfare queens, than they did proposing alternative — and politically appealing — forms of farm support. And then the farm lobby did what it has always done: bought off its critics with “programs.” For that reason “Americans who eat” can expect some nutritious crumbs from the farm bill, just enough to ensure that reform-minded legislators will hold their noses and support it.

It’s an old story: the “hunger lobby” gets its food stamps so long as the farm lobby can have its subsidies. Similar, if less lavish, terms are now being offered to the public health and environmental “interests” to get them on board. That’s why there’s more money in this farm bill for nutrition programs and, for the first time, about $2 billion to support “specialty crops” — farm-bill-speak for the kind of food people actually eat. (Since California grows most of the nation’s specialty crops, this was the price for the state delegation’s support. Cheap indeed!)

There’s also money for the environment: an additional $4 billion in the Senate bill to protect wetlands and grasslands and reward farmers for environmental stewardship, and billions in the House bill for environmental cleanup. There’s an important provision in both bills that will make it easier for schools to buy food from local farmers. And there’s money to promote farmers’ markets and otherwise support the local food movement.

But as important as these programs are, they are just programs — mere fleas on the elephant in the room. The name of that elephant is the commodity title, the all-important subsidy section of the bill. It dictates the rules of the entire food system. As long as the commodity title remains untouched, the way we eat will remain unchanged.

The explanation for this is straightforward. We would not need all these nutrition programs if the commodity title didn’t do such a good job making junk food and fast food so ubiquitous and cheap. Food stamps are crucial, surely, but they will be spent on processed rather than real food as long as the commodity title makes calories of fat and sugar the best deal in the supermarket. We would not need all these conservation programs if the commodity title, by paying farmers by the bushel, didn’t encourage them to maximize production with agrochemicals and plant their farms with just one crop fence row to fence row.

And the government would not need to pay feedlots to clean up the water or upgrade their manure pits if subsidized grain didn’t make rearing animals on feedlots more economical than keeping them on farms. Why does the farm bill pay feedlots to install waste treatment systems rather than simply pay ranchers to keep their animals on grass, where the soil would be only too happy to treat their waste at no cost?

However many worthwhile programs get tacked onto the farm bill to buy off its critics, they won’t bring meaningful reform to the American food system until the subsidies are addressed — until the underlying rules of the food game are rewritten. This is a conversation that the Old Guard on the agriculture committees simply does not want to have, at least not with us.

But its defiance on the subsidy question may actually be a sign of weakness, for one detects a note of defensiveness creeping into the rhetoric. “I know people on the outside can sit and complain about this,” Representative Collin Peterson of Minnesota, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, told The San Francisco Chronicle last summer. “But frankly most of those people have no clue what they’re talking about. Most people in the city have no concept of what’s going on here.”

It seems more likely that, this time around, people in the city and all across the country know exactly what’s going on — they just don’t like it.

Mr. Peterson’s farm bill passed the House by the smallest margin in years, and might have been picked apart on the floor if Representative Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, hadn’t leapt to its defense.

(She claimed to be helping freshmen Democrats from rural districts.)

But Senate rules are different, and Mr. Harkin’s bill will be challenged on the floor and very possibly improved. One sensible amendment that Senator Byron Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, and Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, are expected to introduce would put a $250,000 cap on the payments any one farmer can receive in a year. This would free roughly $1 billion for other purposes (like food stamps and conservation) and slow the consolidation of farms in the Midwest.

A more radical alternative proposed by Senator Richard Lugar, Republican of Indiana, and Senator Frank Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, would scrap the current subsidy system and replace it with a form of free government revenue insurance for all American farmers and ranchers, including the ones who grow actual food. Commodity farmers would receive a payment only when their income dropped more than 15 percent as the result of bad weather or price collapse. The $20 billion saved under this plan, called the Fresh Act, would go to conservation and nutrition programs, as well as to deficit reduction.

What finally emerges from Congress depends on exactly who is paying closest attention next week on the Senate floor and then later in the conference committee. We know the American Farm Bureau will be on the case, defending the commodity title on behalf of those who benefit from it most: the biggest commodity farmers, the corporations who sell them chemicals and equipment and, most of all, the buyers of cheap agricultural commodities — companies like Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, Coca-Cola and McDonald’s.

In the past that alliance could have passed a farm bill like this one without breaking a sweat. But the politics of food have changed, and probably for good. If the eaters and all the other “people on the outside” make themselves heard, we just might end up with something that looks less like a farm bill and more like the food bill a poorly fed America so badly needs.

Michael Pollan, a contributing writer at The Times Magazine and a professor of journalism at the University of California at Berkeley, is the author of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and the forthcoming “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto.”

First Chicago, Now New York ...

This one just doesn't make much sense. But I bet the Ryan Shay death gets a lot of studies going about the general healthiness of running 26.2 miles. Here's his last interview in the NY Post:

Sure, winning the Marathon is a big deal - but earning a trip to China to represent your country - which is what the top three Olympic runners are granted - isn't exactly a shabby parting gift.

"There's no question . . . if I qualify, this will be the greatest achievement of my life," says Ryan Shay, a 28-year-old Michigan native who didn't qualify back in 2004 due to hamstring problems.

"I've raced in N.Y. before, and I can't wait to feel all of the energy and excitement the crowd and the atmosphere provides. It's special here."

And on running-related matters, Salon has an article that ... is ... so ... true:

How Oprah ruined the marathonAmerica's competitive spirit has been wrecked by feel-good amateurs like Oprah whose only goal is to stagger across the finish line.
By Edward McClelland

Nov. 03, 2007 In 1971, the New York City Marathon was no bigger than a grade-school field day. It was the race's second year, and a shivering cult of 245 runners gathered in Central Park to run laps around the walking paths. Paying $2 to enter, they wore cotton T-shirts, drooping socks, and Tiger racing flats, those sneakers now cherished by Brooklyn hipsters. The first-place finisher, a high-school teacher named Norman Higgins, didn't even get gas money back to Connecticut.

Back then, America was more fascinated with competitive chess than with distance running. Yet at the next Olympic marathon, the U.S.'s Frank Shorter won the gold medal, transforming his oddball sport into a fitness mania.

This weekend's marathon will be a lot different from Norman Higgins' race. Now the ING New York Marathon (after its corporate sponsor), it's going to be a cattle call of 37,000 runners, each with far more sophisticated equipment than the pioneers of the 1970s. Today's runners suck gooey energy jolts from plastic tubes. Their $150 shoes are nearly shockproof.
With all these runners, and all this technology, you'd think America would be turning out faster and faster marathoners. Instead, the opposite is happening. The more we run marathons, the slower we get -- an average of 45 minutes slower over the last 25 years. Ryan Hall is the swiftest American-born marathoner ever. His best race isn't in the top 250 of all time.

Hall is running in this weekend's other New York marathon: Saturday's Olympic Trials in Central Park. Don't expect to see him on the victory stand in Beijing, though. Since Shorter retired, only one American man has won a medal in the marathon: Meb Keflezighi, who grew up in Eritrea, where he didn't see a car until he was 10 years old. You can look at this as a triumph of the melting pot, or you can look at it as soft Americans relying on an immigrant to do their arduous running.

It makes me ask: Has this country's marathoning spirit been trampled by hordes of joggers whose only goal is to stagger across the finish line? When I joined my high-school cross-country team, in 1982, American distance running was at its zenith. For the past decade, three Americans -- Shorter, Bill Rodgers and Alberto Salazar -- had dominated the marathon. I idolized Rodgers, the long-haired runner who'd dedicated himself to the sport after quitting smoking and losing his conscientious objector's job as an orderly in a mental hospital. One Patriots' Day, Rodgers showed up at the Boston Marathon wearing a hand-lettered T-shirt and a sweatband -- and set a course record.

To schoolboys who raced three miles, the marathon was a rigorous, forbidding distance -- an extreme sport, like mountaineering. The only marathoner I knew was a friend of my father's. His narrow cheeks were bearded, he owned five pairs of cross-country skis, and he was president of the local Sierra Club. Eventually, running consumed him. He left his family and moved to Jackson, Wyo., where he could live among others of his kind.

The American runners of that era were propelled by a "double wave" of self-abnegating philosophies, theorizes Tom Derderian, who trained with Rodgers and Salazar at the Greater Boston Track Club. They were "heirs both to the warrior mentality of their World War II fathers and the new consciousness of the 60s and 70s," he told author John Brant for the book "Duel in the Sun," an account of the 1982 Boston Marathon, considered the last great American distance race.

After high school, I was a decent recreational runner -- I could break 20 minutes in the 5K -- but somehow, I got it in my mind that I wouldn't be a real runner until I did a marathon. Too lazy, too cocky or too ignorant to do heavy mileage in training, I finished the Chicago Marathon in an ignominious 4 hours and 16 minutes, alternating between cramping and nausea the last four miles. Embarrassed, I resolved to try again, but then a knee problem limited my runs to 10 miles.

I had to give up marathoning just as everyone else was getting into it. Not just the rest of the running world. Everyone. The mid-1990s gave us two new long-distance heroes. The first was Oprah Winfrey. If Frank Shorter inspired the first running boom, Oprah inspired the second, by running the Marine Corps Marathon. And it was a much bigger boom. This was not a spindly 24-year-old Yalie gliding through Old World Munich. This was a middle-aged woman hauling her flab around the District of Columbia. If Oprah could run a marathon, shame on anyone who couldn't.

When Oprah expanded the sport, she also lowered the bar for excellence. For the previous generation of marathoners, the goal had been qualifying for Boston. Now, it was beating Oprah. Her time of four hours and 29 minutes -- the Oprah Line -- became the new benchmark for a respectable race. (That was P. Diddy's goal when he ran New York.)
Once the supreme test for hardened runners, the marathon became a gateway into the sport. Soon, gravel paths were crowded with 5-mile-an-hour joggers out to check "26.2 miles" off their life lists. Team in Training, which raises money for leukemia research, promised to turn loafers into marathoners in 20 weeks. I met a lawyer who started running because, "They say if you can run a marathon, you can do anything!" The marathon was no longer a competition. It was a self-improvement exercise.

The guru of these new runners was an ex-music professor named John Bingham, who writes a Runner's World column under the handle "the Penguin." At age 43, Bingham took the admirable step of throwing away his cigarettes and signing up for a race. Unlike Bill Rodgers, he was not headed for athletic glory. He finished dead last. Bingham did not respond by training harder. Instead, he embraced his God-given lack of talent -- and urged readers to do the same. Absolving runners of the pressure to actually run was a brilliant feel-good message. Thanks to his book, "No Need for Speed," Bingham became the most celebrated marathoner in America. (If you don't believe me, go to the marathon starting chute and ask the runners if they've ever heard of Ryan Hall. Then ask about the Penguin.)

A few years ago, I had a chance to jog with Bingham, on Chicago's lakefront path. As we puttered along, a young man bounded past, with a kudu stride. "I call those 'nylon shorts guys,'" Bingham said, with a touch of disdain. "I could run in under four hours. But I don't want to. The price would be so high it's not worth it."

I just didn't get it. After my knee injury, I'd returned to the 5K. I pushed myself into the pain zone, puked after races, and fought my way back down to 20 minutes -- a far more satisfying feat than a four-hour marathon. I was doing all I could do, with what I still had. Yet here was a man whose legs would carry him 26 miles, and he was content to stop for walking breaks.

Like Oprah, Bingham deserves praise for luring insecure, overweight novices off their couches and into running shoes. He's also terrific for business. In the last 15 years, the Chicago Marathon field has increased tenfold, to 45,000. But with this change in the running culture, the average finishing time for men has dropped from 3:32 to 4:15 -- not far from the Oprah Line, or my own performance. Last month's Chicago Marathon had to be shut down mid-race, because undertrained five- and six-hour marathoners couldn't handle that much time in the 85-degree heat.

You can't just blame the Penguin Brigade for messing up the curve. The last year an American-born man won a major marathon? 1983. (We have produced one first-class female marathoner -- Deena Kastor has won in Chicago and London -- although we're still waiting for another Joan Benoit Samuelson, gold medalist at the first Olympic women's marathon, in 1984.) The running bum -- that post-collegiate dropout who works in a shoe store so he can train 100 miles a week -- has almost disappeared. Despite the fact that marathon fields are the size of Sauron's host, more guys broke two and a half hours in the 1980s.

"When the attitude simply becomes to finish, that attitude becomes pervasive," says an old marathoner. "The marathon was once this incredible challenge, to finish it and to finish as fast as you can. I just think there's a mind-set out there about the marathon, and it's a different mind-set from 25 years ago."

If the marathon is populist enough for everyone to pin on a number, it's also populist enough for everyone to kick ass. If you're running the New York City Marathon this weekend, remember, it's a race. True, no matter how hard you push, you're not going to win a gold medal. But maybe a kid in high school will, someday. If the pack can drag the best runners back, we can push them forward, too.

I'm ready to do my part. My bum knee just carried me through a half-marathon. Next spring, I'm going the full distance -- and I'm going to do it in the spirit of the first running boom, in under three and a half hours. I may even wear a cotton T-shirt and a sweatband.

Here's the best explanation of the "oil curse" I've seen, courtesy of the NY Times Magazine:

It may seem paradoxical, but finding a hole in the ground that spouts money can be one of the worst things to happen to a nation. With one or two exceptions, oil-dependent countries are poorer, more conflict-ridden and despotic. OPEC’s own studies show the perils of relying on oil. Between 1965 and 1998, the economies of OPEC members contracted by 1.3 percent a year. Oil-dependent nations do especially badly by their poor: infant survival, nutrition, life expectancy, literacy, schooling — all are worse in oil-producing countries. The history of oil-dependent countries has produced what Terry Lynn Karl, a Stanford University professor, calls the paradox of plenty.

Oil not only creates very few jobs, it also destroys jobs in other sectors. By pushing up a country’s exchange rate, the export of oil distorts the economy. “Oil rents drive out any other productive activity,” Karl says. “Why would you bother to produce your own food if you could buy it? Why would you bother to develop any kind of export industry if oil makes your money worth more and that hurts all your other exports?” The most successful societies develop a middle class through manufacturing; oil makes this extremely difficult.

Oil concentrates a country’s wealth in the state, creating a culture where money is made by soliciting politicians and bureaucrats rather than by making things and selling them. Oil states also ask their citizens for little in taxes, and where citizens pay little in taxes, they demand little in accountability. Those in power distribute oil money to stay in power. Thus oil states tend to be highly corrupt.

And in other news, today:

Another record -- 15 eggs! I think the organic layer feed and night lighting are working wonders.

Beautiful sunset tonight. Bright red everywhere.

Chance of snow middle of next week. Sigh.

Long Day, Short Day

... so I started working before the sun rose today (about 645a) and am still working well after it's set (about 745p). Yeeesh.

But on the bright side, I got 11 eggs from the peeps today -- a new record.

It's getting chilly out there. Lows in the 20s already. Maybe a wee bit of snow tonight, but I kind of doubt it.