In search of the 10,000 steps my phone app tells me I should get daily, I walked the tracks yesterday returning to my car at the ice cream place so that a hot fudge sundae could totally undo any benefit of the walk. It's hard to beat the quality of rust you can find in a trainyard. The first concert I ever attended in Unity was in that trainyard (Vance Gilbert, many years ago). From the tracks you get a different view of Unity that shows quite a bit of undeveloped land. That view supports the comp plan's goal to keep development downtown.

We are having quite the crazy three-way governor's race here. I am putting in some shifts of GOTV calling this weekend. I want to know that I've done what I could to get rid of the cartoonish ignoramus we currently have for a governor. As George Smith pointed out, "Give him another four years and you may not be able to afford to live in your own house." One ray of hope for future elections is that there will be a petition at the polls on Tuesday to institute ranked-choice voting in Maine. Can't wait to sign that. Without some sort of run-off arrangement, we could have 10 candidates for an office and someone could win with 11% of the vote. I am also voting for the bears. When folks tout "science" and their incomes depend on the results going their way, that is not science. I am very much pro-hunting, but baiting and snaring is not hunting.

For an exercise option, a trail walk is winning out over the workout room in the basement just about every time. Today I walked the Bikeway Trail and the Fairgrounds Loop. Lots of color left. The pedometer app on my phone says I did about 5000 steps or 2.5 miles. Someday the Bikeway Trail will hook up with the Connor Mill Trail at the bridge over Sandy Stream creating a five mile loop. Trails next to water are the best which is why Connor Mill Trail is my favorite. However, the trail bridge over Bacon Brook was washed out last spring and the best part of that trail is on the other side of Bacon Brook. So I am working with whomever to get a solution to crossing the brook. It doesn't have to be a bridge, or it could be a bridge that's moved back up the brook aways where the sides are more on the same level.

Working with whomever seems to be how I go about working with other people on stuff I want to happen. Ad hoc committees of free-range activists working with non-profits if they are not too bogged down in their own shit. I am not board member material. Boards are about funding the operating expenses of organizations; they are defensive. Committees are about getting something done; they are the offense that interacts with the world. I'm meeting with some other free radicals next week to talk about community solar.

I've started in on the cold, clear writing of Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate. She does not hold back and she has no patience for the "fetish of centrism--of reasonableness, seriousness, splitting the difference, and generally not getting overly excited about anything."

Slavery wasn't a crisis for British and American elites until abolitionism turned it into one. Racial discrimination wasn't a crisis until the civil rights movement turned it into one. Sex discrimination wasn't a crisis until feminism turned it into one. Apartheid wasn't a crisis until the anti-apartheid movement turned it into one. In the very same way, if enough of us stop looking away and decide that climate change is a crisis worthy of Marshall Plan levels of response, then it will become one, and the political class will have to respond, both by making resources available and by bending the free market rules that have proven so pliable when elite interests are in peril.
...
So my mind keeps coming back to the question: what is wrong with us? What is really preventing us from putting out the fire that is threatening to burn down our collective house? I think the answer is far more simple than many have led us to believe: we have not done the things that are necessary to lower emissions because those things fundamentally conflict with deregulated capitalism, the reigning ideology for the entire period we have been struggling to find a way out of this crisis. We are stuck because the actions that would give us the best chance of averting catastrophe--and would benefit the vast majority--are extremely threatening to an elite minority that has a stranglehold over our economy, our political process, and most of our major media outlets. That problem might not have been insurmountable had it presented itself at another point in our history. But it is our great collective misfortune that the scientific community made its decisive diagnosis of the climate threat at the precise moment when those elites were enjoying more unfettered political, cultural, and intellectual power than at any point since the 1920s.

Besides squash glowing in their box at market today, there's this sweet potato vichyssoise with creme fraiche, apple, and dill from last night's dinner at the Lost Kitchen in Freedom. Everything about that place is pretty special.

You see, when I was growing up at the time of the Wars of the Medes and Persians and when I went to college just after the Hundred Years War and when I was bringing up my children during the Korean, Cold, and Vietnam Wars, there were no women. Women are a very recent invention. I predate the invention of women by decades. Well, if you insist on pedantic accuracy, women have been invented several times in widely varying localities, but the inventors just didn't know how to sell the product. Their distribution techniques were rudimentary and their market research was nil, and so of course the concept just didn't get off the ground. Even with a genius behind it an invention has to find its market, and it seemed like for a long time the idea of women just didn't make it to the bottom line. Models like the Austen and the Bronte were too complicated, and people just laughed at the Suffragette, and the Woolf was way too far ahead of its time.
...
And another thing. Ernest Hemingway would have died rather than get old. And he did. He shot himself. A short sentence. Anything rather than a long sentence, a life sentence. Death sentences are short and very, very manly. Life sentences aren't. They go on and on, all full of syntax and qualifying clauses and confusing references and getting old. And that brings up the real proof of what a mess I have made of being a man: I am not even young. Just about the time they finally started inventing women, I started getting old. And I went right on doing it. Shamelessly. I have allowed myself to get old and haven't done one single thing about it, with a gun or anything.

An indicator of how busy this fall season has been is that our dock is still in the water. Today I have two meetings and an afternoon of driving the candidate. But great stuff is getting done. This new website for Unity Barn Raisers has just gone live. I have some co-conspirators for getting a solution to the Bacon Brook crossing on Connor Mill Trail. The candidates forum is looking like the thing with other theater opportunities after that. I see a way to get the town a monthly newsletter, and I'm thinking Tinkering is the way to go for some after school programming. And in the midst of it, there are rides on back roads with tunnels of color. Yesterday was Damariscotta where people looked like seals sunning on the rocks. I wasn't there for the pumpkin races; I was there for the great bookstore and the ride down the twistable turnable route 220. From my desk now I see the morning sun has just hit the Burnham shore lighting up the yellows and reds. Burnham is best viewed from a distance.

In keeping with my practice of noting technology upgrades for future reference, I herewith note that I've upgraded the phone to the Samsung Galaxy S5 which is about the biggest phone that will still fit in a pocket. It's fast and pretty with Android 4.4, a 2.5 GHz processor, a 1080 by 1920 screen, and a 16 megapixel camera that auto-focuses in .3 seconds. I've ordered a 64 GB micro SD card for it so I can put music on it now that we have a silly little 2 GB data plan that would go bust if I stream music in the car.

On Unity's annual Day of Service on Saturday, when townies and college students combine efforts on clean up and trail projects, I drew the cool job of driving around and getting pictures of all the teams. The color on the hills and backroads and Lucinda Williams singing "When I Look At the World" was intoxicating. I couldn't always find the teams, but there were great distractions like the park, the blue truck, and the bridge by the Freedom Mill. I could do a second slide show of Things Jean Was Not Sent To Take Pictures Of. The Day was a great success ending with a roast pig dinner at the community center and this Amy Calder article in the local paper. A highlight was the installation of Faith's Little Library in Triplet Park. We need more of these around town.

Unity Barn Raisers, who organizes Day of Service and other community events, is an essential part of Unity. It exists to do things that the town cannot do for itself, like grant-writing, organizing volunteers, creating community events. UBR had a rough couple of years with a less than competant director, but I think with the recent addition of some younger, more awake board members and Mary Leaming as programs director, the fun is back and we are on a path to bring more subsets of townies into community. I'm making them a new responsive website with a gazillion photos of people building community.

We took some leaf-peeping back roads through Morrill to Camden yesterday, ogled the view from Mt. Battie, said Hi to Edna St. Vincent Millay looking out to sea, found a good, new-to-us place right on the wharf for lunch. I love all the twisty odd pathways, and stone steps, and village greens around the library, and the little bridge with flowers and benches on the way back to the car.