Monday, August 16

I am still undecided

Vermont comes with a level of access to state government that I've not seen in other states. When I lived in Rhode Island, I occasionally had very brief and fleeting interactions with legislators and politicians. The night Clinton got elected President, I got to meet now Senator Jack Reed in an elevator and tell him how much I admired and respected him. That's about as much as you get.

Vermont's a bit different. This season, I've had extended conversations with Peter Shumlin and Matt Dunne. Last year, I talked with Doug Racine and Floyd Nease at length at our blogger summit. When I criticized Challenges for Change a few months ago, I got an e-mail from speaker Smith.

This is so outside of the realm of what I tend to expect, but this access has left me in the position of not just choosing between abstracts and figures who give speeches but choosing between people with whom I've had extended conversations and have a bit of admiration and respect for.

I will say that I wish I'd had this opportunity with Markowitz, and because I've never met the woman and never had a chance to see how she interacts when I challenge her directly, I don't have a read on her and I just don't feel confident supporting her at this point. I truly respect that she may end up making an excellent governor and I'm open to that. If she wins the nomination, she has my full support.

But I'm not going to talk further about her here because I'm not writing about the abstracts. I'm writing about what I know best: what I've seen directly and witnessed with my eyes.

So, between the three candidates with whom I've had extended conversations, who are Shumlin, Racine and Dunne and why I'm having so much trouble choosing:

With respect to fund raising, this is Racine's weakest point by far, and honestly it concerns me. Dunne's powerful fund raising machine has actually shocked me in terms of its abilities, and I think that can be turned to great advantage in the general. Shumlin is just very, very good at talking to people, interacting with them and getting them to support him. In Dunne's case, I think it's superior organization that's leading to strong fund raising. In Shumlin's, I think it's primarily just force of personality.

I first met Doug Racine at a poverty forum. It was a fairly amazing experience and gave me great confidence in his ability to govern and lead on issues that are extremely important to me. If Racine becomes our nominee, I'd have no concern whatsoever advocating for him. I am also deeply respectful of his willingness to be open and direct about the tough choices in ways I don't see other candidates (save for Bartlett) doing. That makes me lean in his direction in a major way. Whereas Shumlin is extremely optimistic about how we can get things done (and I do think he's got some good ideas), I get the sense from him that he's more big picture and grand idea than small detail. I don't see that as a problem as much as it just doesn't make me as enthusiastic.

My biggest concern with Racine, aside from the money issue, is one that is hopelessly vague: when I see him at events this year (and I haven't gone to many) I don't get the feeling that he's enthusiastic about them. But I've only seen him at a few forums this year, and maybe I just caught him on off days, but it makes me worry that he's not excited about this race. From Shumlin and Dunne I see excitement. From Racine I see a great deal of confidence and ability, but not as much enthusiasm. This makes me think he'd make a great governor but I'm not convinced he'd make a great candidate in the general election.

My biggest concern with Shumlin is an echo of what I wrote before. When I met with him briefly a few weeks ago, he asked if I liked his ad on early education. I said "no." He wanted to know why and we talked about it a bit. My biggest concern was that I didn't get the sense that the ads focus on universal preK might end up causing child care providers to think they were putting him out of business. Peter reacted with surprise at my reaction, and I got the sense that he got it but I also felt kind of dismissed, as though what he said was more to placate me and he didn't remember what his ad actually said. That particular issue makes me question his depth of understanding. Like I said, I think he's big picture guy, but I'm fine tooth comb detail girl, so that's important to me.

But that said, I think Shumlin's charisma is phenomenal, and just having a conversation with the guy, I want to support him, and that psychology and charisma goes a long way in an election. So my support for him is the flip of that of Racine: I think he'd make a stronger candidate but I don't know that he'd make as good a governor.

Which brings us to Matt Dunne.

Watching Matt for me is like watching a time lapse video of several years over the course of a matter of minutes. When I look at the difference between how he did at the forum I live blogged last month (he did well, but not spectacularly well) and the depth and detail of what I've seen since, I'm extremely impressed. I like Matt. He's personable and he has charisma. My biggest concern about him is what I would have loved about him twenty years ago: his idealism. He talks about technological innovation, which I think is important, but he talks about it as though it's a cure-all. I've been fairly heavily involved in "technological innovation" at the state level. It sounds great on paper, but easily turns into bloated, expensive, waste, much of which is spent out of state and ends up costing us far more than we expect it to. So this concerns me and I worry about this. But from the campaign point of view, what Matt lacks in the over the top personality that Shumlin has, he makes up for in spades with a fund raising apparatus that's formidable.

So that's it. I haven't decided yet. I like them all. I like different things about them and have different concerns about each of them. But none of these concerns are major. They're more "well, ideally what I'd like is..." I mean, ideally, I'd like my next car to have keyless entry but it's not like I'd pass on a great vehicle just because it didn't.

And that's it for me: Dunne, Shumlin, Racine: these are people I would trust to be governor and do a good, possibly great, job at it. These are people I think could wage a serious effort against Brian Dubie and have a very strong shot at beating him. And maybe that's the problem: it's not that the candidates have weaknesses but that the choices are so good this time around that I have to focus on the weaknesses to differentiate between them.

So yeah, I still haven't made up my mind.

Anyone want to take a stab at convincing me?

Monday, August 2

Julie Waters e-notes: Mon, August 2, 2010

Hey all: just a few quick things:

(1) I will be playing this Friday at the Farmer's Market in Bellows Falls.

(2) If you're in the area, I currently have an art exhibit in Newburyport, MA, at the Parker River Wildlife Refuge visitor's center. The exhibit will go through the month of August.

(3) In September, I will be performing at Pleasant Valley Brewing in Saxton's River.

Still working on the new CD. Still doing web design. Still blogging. Things are crazy but good.
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More info: http://juliewaters.com/

Julie's photography: http://juliesmagiclightshow.com/
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Upcoming events for Julie Waters
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Friday, August 6th Julie Performing Live at Bellows Falls Farmer's Market at Waypoint Center; Bellows Falls, VT

Sunday, August 8th 2nd Sundays Song Circle at RAMP Gallery; Bellows Falls, VT

Friday, September 17th Julie Waters Live in Performance at Pleasant Valley Brewing Pub; Saxton's River, VT

Sunday, August 1

Julie Waters to be featured Artist of the Month at Parker River Visitor's Center

Vermont nature and wildlife photographer Julie Waters will be the August 2010 Artist of the Month at the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge Visitor's Center in Newburyport, MA.

Throughout this Summer, the Visitor's Center has been featuring shows by artists each month. This is Julie's first solo show, featuring prints of wildlife photographed throughout New England ranging from relatively common (American Robins on the Nest & a Great Blue Heron) to the exceptional (one photograph is of a pair of butterflies that appear to be engaged in aerial combat and another is a 42-minute exposure night shot showing the stars in motion over a local orchard). The exhibit will be available during normal Visitor Center Hours throughout the Month of August.

The Visitor's Center is at 6 Plum Island Turnpike, Newburyport, MA.

A gallery of some of the prints to be exhibited is available here

For more information, please contact Julie Waters, julie@riverartsproject.com, 802.451.1947

Wednesday, July 21

One of these things is not like the other

Netflix often makes recommendations based on movies and/or tv shows I
watched. Under "Action and Adventure" its first suggestion is "Dr.
Horrible's Sing Along Blog."

Tuesday, July 20

A brief commentary on a conversation with Matt Dunne

A few days ago, I posted the following in a comment thread over on Green Mountain Daily:

I like Dunne, but I wish he'd run for Lt. Gov instead. I think he's got some good ideas, but his responses at the forum I live blogged made me feel like he might not be quite ready for the top slot. There was a lot of commentary about how he's a great candidate because of things his parents did, which I think of as very weak answers.

When I say I "like" Dunne, I mean I like him a lot. I've had conversations with the man and I think he's a really great guy.

He dropped me a note and asked if I'd be willing to talk for a few. We connected this afternoon and a good conversation. Fair note: I did not tell him I would be blogging about this (nor at the time did I expect to be) but we also never addressed the conversation as "off the record" in any sense and I do not expect that he will be offended or upset by anything I have to say in this post.

So we had a really good conversation, one in which I pointed out a few things that I thought of as fairly serious problems about his messaging. One was the issue I mentioned above, referencing his parents. I don't think that's necessarily settled, but I can see where he was coming from on it.

The other thing I brought up was that Matt made multiple references to his experience as administrator of AmeriCorps Vista during the forum I live blogged. I can see why he'd want to bring up administrative experience but I didn't get the sense that he understood much about child care or early childhood education. He said during our conversation that he did a lot to support early childhood education through AC Vista, and I asked him if he could articulate any specific examples of that.

Now-- to be clear: I am a teacher. Asking people to articulate examples is a huge part of what I do. It's kind of a crucial element. I am never convinced that someone understands a concept until I hear specifics.

So that's why I asked.

I got an answer I didn't expect.

Matt rattled off a series of examples of ways in which his organization supported early childhood education. He cited specific research about the various ways we can support parents and children in need. He spoke with an intense amount of detail about these issues and genuinely knows exactly what he's talking about.

I'm not saying I was wrong above. In that forum, at that time, he did not articulate this depth of understanding, but that forum was just a few weeks ago. This is not the sort of information and understanding that you glean by drilling yourself on it over a few short weeks. I found myself *extremely* impressed with the conversation we had. I did, of course, have to mention that I never got the sense that he understood early childhood education to the extent that he clearly does during that forum and I wish he had been more articulate about it at the time. Even with a three-minute timer, if he'd just rattled off a few of those statistics during the forum, he would have swayed a *lot* of people in attendance, so I consider that to have been a missed opportunity.

But, that said, I'm writing this to give Matt props for listening to what I had to say and being willing to have a fairly uncomfortable conversation with someone who had kind of slammed him in a public forum. I'm still undecided, but now instead of being undecided between Shumlin and Racine, I'm undecided between Shumlin, Dunne and Racine. Part of me thinks I shouldn't really be thanking Matt for this, but really, I know I should.

So... to Matt, more like what I heard from you today. You've got a more complicated mind than I gave you credit for. To Peter and Doug, you may have your work cut out for you at the other early childhood forums. If Matt brings his A game to those forums, you might be in some trouble.

To Deb, please just show up.

Friday, July 9

Julie Waters e-notes: Fri, July 9, 2010

I made the mistake of wearing red while sitting on the porch.  A ruby-throated hummingbird showed up about three feet away from me before realizing I wasn't food, but when it came back, it was a bit wary for a bit, hiding in the bushes before figuring out that bee balm made a much better food than I did.Hey all-- just a few quick notes:



See specific dates-- I'll be performing in August at Waypoint Center in Bellows Falls and in September at Pleasant Valley Brewing, and next week I'll be hosting the Kindred Folk monthly song circle at Twilight Tea Lounge.




I also have been playing with some very new sounds and uploaded a couple experiments:



http://www.juliewaters.com/mp3/Grand_Central.mp3



http://juliewaters.com/mp3/Orpheus.mp3



I'd love to hear what you think of them.



Other than that, busier than I'd expect this Summer-- not so much in gigs but lots of web work and photography, but always looking for more-- if you know anyone who needs help with web design, feel free to drop me a note. I've learned how to do specialty design for mobile devices which load different versions of the page if you're browsing from an iPod, Blackberry, Android, etc.



Finally, a deep thought: I think the people behind this global warming hoax have carried the joke just a little too far this week.



Very funny. Now can we please have our mild Summers back?
Hope everyone is well!



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More info: http://juliewaters.com/



Julie's photography: http://juliesmagiclightshow.com/



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Upcoming events for Julie Waters



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Sunday, July 11th 2nd Sundays Song Circle at RAMP Gallery; Bellows Falls, VT



Tuesday, July 13th Kindred Folk Song Circle at Twilight Tea Lounge; Brattleboro, VT



Friday, August 6th Julie Performing Live at Bellows Falls Farmer's Market at Waypoint Center; Bellows Falls, VT



Sunday, August 8th 2nd Sundays Song Circle at RAMP Gallery; Bellows Falls, VT



Friday, September 17th Julie Waters Live in Performance at Pleasant Valley Brewing Pub; Saxton's River, VT

Monday, June 28

Deep Thought

I was was taught today that I can blame minor weight gain on "the humidity."

Take that, personal responsibility!

Sunday, June 27

Birding the Northeast Kingdom

Just driving down the road we spotted this first year moose feeding in the muck.  I love getting good photos of Moose.Birding and camping in Northern Vermont this month took us through Island Pond, Victory Basin and a part of the Sylvio Conte refuge network. We had good sightings of birds, butterflies and even one fairly cool sighting of a young bull moose. We stayed at Brighton State Park which is a nice campground. We arrived on a Friday night and almost bagged out Saturday morning due to rain, mosquitoes and general misery. [sidenote: we stopped for coffee and found a coffee shop with a right to life magazine on one table and a Second Vermont Republic on another. Never let it be said that Vermont is easy to understand]. But, we stuck it out, and it's a good thing we did. The trip yielded not only some pretty amazing looks at birds (including two life birds), but a wide array of insects as well.

ISLAND POND

Our campground in Island Pond didn't yield a lot of sightings, but it did show us a couple very cool things. First, this photo...
If you look closely, you'll notice two birds here: a black-throated blue warbler and a ruby-throated hummingbird, both competing for access to the holes left behind by a yellow-bellied sapsucker
...takes a bit of explanation.

What you see here is two birds. On the lower left is a black-throated blue warbler. In the upper right is a ruby-throated hummingbird.

In between them is a tree full of holes. Those holes are wells dug out by this yellow-bellied sapsucker:
Yellow-bellied sapsucker
What you saw above was the hummingbird and the warbler getting in each others' face over access to the well holes.

SYLVIO CONTE

Sylvio Conte is a lot of driving to get kind of in the middle of nowhere. It turns out that one of the "trails" we went in to visit (Molly Beattie) takes you through complex, winding narrow dirt roads to hit a boardwalk which is approximately 50" long and then just stops. By that point, frustration was at a bit of a high and I just decided I wanted to walk along the road for a bit; I didn't even care which direction, because I just was really annoyed. Three miles of walking later, I was in a much better mood, partially because of this:
In Northeastern Vermont, there is a long and complicated drive to get out to a nature trail that it turns out is just one very tiny boardwalk that doesn't go anywhere.  After that disappointment, we decided to just try a walk down the road instead, which was kind of nice because it yielded this photo of a Gray Jay, first time I've ever seen one.
This is a Gray Jay, the first of the two life birds I got on this trip. I was particularly pleased with this photo because I just had a few seconds to get it. I heard the bird first (and luckily, recognized the call). Then, I looked, spotted it, fired off about five shots and this was the best of them. Not a spectacular shot, but a life bird is a life bird.

I was also particularly pleased with this photo:
Tiger swallowtail, feeding and then flying
I was photographing a Tiger Swallowtail when it took off from the flower and caught it in motion. I also got this cool shot of Arctic Skippers:
I'm told these are Arctic Skippers.
There's a lot more in the photos, but if you click on the Sylvio Conte link from above, you'll see the whole gallery.

VICTORY BASIN

So I have to start with this: we parked at a pullover spot which had an empty bird feeder nearby. We chose the shady spot which was directly under the feeder, not thinking much of it. Just as we started walking, about 15 minutes in, someone pulled up next to us and asked if that was our car back there. We said it was and he warned us that a bear had just just come out of the woods by our car ("it looked like it came right out of your car!") and to be careful. So we thought about it, and decided we'd give the bear plenty of time to finish whatever it was doing and continued on our walk. Fast forward more than an hour as we'd walked up the road quite a ways and were heading back.

About 15 minutes from our car, a guy pulled up next to us and asked if we had a really big black dog and if it might be near our car which he saw a little ways back. Of course, we figured out right away that he wasn't talking about a great big dog but instead a small black bear. Now... black bears are not dangerous except under some specific circumstances, one of those being if you startle them. So we started making lots of noise as we walked back, even singing ("Shiny happy ursines holding hands!") and planning ("if it's not between us and the car we can set off the car alarm") what to do. Turned out to be the most uneventful eventful walk we'd ever had-- no sign of the bear, but a lot of fairly rapid heart racing when I realized that the car was close enough to the trees that I wouldn't be able to see if there were a bear in there. But once we were in the car, we felt a little cheated-- not even a hint of a bear? Oh well.

Anyway... Victory Basin's a pretty awesome place to bird. Last year we had some fairly amazing looks at warblers. This year, not so much luck with warblers, but a life bird and some amazing butterflies, as well as this:
This is the first time I ever got a photo of a ruffed grouse doing its tail display like this.
. I've seen Ruffed Grouse a few times before, even locally, but I've never had one do its display like this. Neat.

There was also this neat shot:
While taking this photo of a great spangled frittilary, I didn't expect to see a 2nd one flying towards it this close.  This turned into one of the best photos of butterflies I've ever taken.
I was taking a photo of one butterfly when another came rearing up behind it.

The coolest thing, however, was a new life bird. This black-backed woodpecker...
Notice the yellow mark on this woodpecker's head?  That's one of the distinguishing features of the black-backed woodpecker, which is pretty cool since I'd never manage to photograph one before today, especially given how close it was willing to get to us.

Notice the yellow mark on this woodpecker's head?  That's one of the distinguishing features of the black-backed woodpecker, which is pretty cool since I'd never manage to photograph one before today, especially given how close it was willing to get to us.
...was just pecking away on a nearby tree and I got some okay photos of it, but then it flew in much closer, and I got the one shown.

So that's some highlights (and a couple lowlights) from our camping trip. Just a couple more things before I wrap it up, entirely personal, and totally pandering, so feel free to skip to the end at this point :)
  1. I've completely redesigned my photos site. If you click on any of the images shown above, you'll see larger versions of the photos in the new site. This site is a fairly major redesign, so I'd love any feeedback anyone has.
  2. I've been taking time to seriously hone my web building skills as well as design a line of note cards based on my photography. If you're interested, feel free to check out the site and I'd love to hear whatever feedback you have on that as well.
  3. As far as web design goes, I'm particularly interested in feedback from people using iPod touch/iPhone, Android, Blackberry or other hand held browsers. I made a point of designing a different layout for those browsers (on both sites) and would especially appreciate any suggestions. I can only simulate so many environments from my MacBook Pro.
Okay: the pandering and/or personal commentary is now over, and I shall simply leave you with a video I made the other day, taking a hummingbird in flight and slowing it down to about 1/4 its original speed:

Monday, June 7

Julie Waters e-notes: Mon, June 7, 2010

So it's been a bit of time since I sent anything out, and figured I should do a catch-up e-mail.

I'm not going to say a lot about this, but my life changed fairly dramatically about a month ago (those of you who know me personally either know what I'm talking about or should feel free to send me an e-mail asking if you don't know), but the upshot is that I've started to delve into some projects that have been lingering for some time and not getting done due to other factors. Here's what I've been up to:

* new CD project: I'm taking the time to get moving on the new CD and am looking into doing something fairly original with it-- my hope is to use the local cable access facility to video-record the entire process of recording the new CD and making a documentary out of it. It will take me about two solid days to get everything done and I need to find if they've got time available for that. If not, I can still do it from home, but it will be a lot more fun if I can video it and use green screen technology to do such things as make music videos where I play three different instruments and incorporate them all into the same video.

* a line of note cards at http://chickadeecards.com/ -- I've put some real work into the design of these cards as well as the site design, so even if you're not interested in the cards, I'd love to get feedback on the site and how it works for you.

* getting seriously back into pushing my web design skills. I've put some serious time into honing my web skills. One of the major things I learned how to do was to create completely different sites depending on the browser being used. That's my long way of saying that sites have a different layout, design and structure on an iPod or blackberry than they do on a laptop computer. This is fairly huge and I hope to be doing a lot more of that.

In the meantime, I've got a gig coming up in Saxons River on September 17th @ Pleasant Valley, am looking into organizing another benefit show for the Fall, and am the featured artist of the month at the Parker River Wildlife Refuge visitor center for August.

Hope everyone's well!
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More info: http://juliewaters.com/

Julie's photography: http://juliesmagiclightshow.com/
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Upcoming events for Julie Waters
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Sunday, July 11th 2nd Sundays Song Circle at RAMP Gallery; Bellows Falls, VT

Sunday, August 8th 2nd Sundays Song Circle at RAMP Gallery; Bellows Falls, VT

Saturday, March 13

Birds in sequence

This was a good week to be photographing hawks (among other birds). This red-tail gave me some good looks at it:

This red-tailed hawk was much more willing to let me photograph it, but it still did not seem amused by my presence

This red-tailed hawk was much more willing to let me photograph it, but it still did not seem amused by my presence

This red-tailed hawk was much more willing to let me photograph it, but it still did not seem amused by my presence

This red-tailed hawk was much more willing to let me photograph it, but it still did not seem amused by my presence

This red-tailed hawk was much more willing to let me photograph it, but it still did not seem amused by my presence

This mallard was doing a mating display:

One nice feature of having a very fast camera (mine can do over five frames per second) is that you can get a nice series of shots such as this mallard doing its mating displays

One nice feature of having a very fast camera (mine can do over five frames per second) is that you can get a nice series of shots such as this mallard doing its mating displays

One nice feature of having a very fast camera (mine can do over five frames per second) is that you can get a nice series of shots such as this mallard doing its mating displays

One nice feature of having a very fast camera (mine can do over five frames per second) is that you can get a nice series of shots such as this mallard doing its mating displays

One nice feature of having a very fast camera (mine can do over five frames per second) is that you can get a nice series of shots such as this mallard doing its mating displays

The other red-tail I spotted was having none of it when I tried to photograph it:

Red-tailed hawk, as soon as I pulled over to photograph it.

Red-tailed hawk, as soon as I pulled over to photograph it.

Red-tailed hawk, as soon as I pulled over to photograph it.

Red-tailed hawk, as soon as I pulled over to photograph it.

Red-tailed hawk, as soon as I pulled over to photograph it.

Red-tailed hawk, as soon as I pulled over to photograph it.

Red-tailed hawk, as soon as I pulled over to photograph it.

Other birds included this flock of canada geese:

Canada geese in flight

And this rare Greater White-Fronted Goose (visitor from across the ocean which sometimes pops up around here in migration times):

Greater white fronted goose (first I've ever seen) with canada geese