What Makes Glohs Tick?

Hey everybody, welcome at last to the return of our favorite feature, the one in which I send someone questions via e-mail, the someone responds, I edit for clarity and space and to make it seem like we’re having a conversation and then give it a cute little punned title, also known as Questions for Whosiebritches. If you don’t like the title of this one I invite you to come up with a pun for Glohs/glow that’s any better. You can’t.

Anyway, on it with. This week’s subject is Warwick’s own Sasha Glohs, class of 1998, which, let me do the math real quick, makes her 46, 47, or thereabouts. I met Sasha a few Saturdays ago when she led a United Nation delegation into the darkest black dirt to study small-scale sustainable agriculture models.

Here’s a photo of the delegation. I don’t see Sasha in here, but her mother is in a gray shirt, immediately to the left of the woman in green sweater and camera bag strap. It was taken at Rodrimex Farm in Goshen, perhaps by Sasha herself.

About 40 people from many countries and aide programs from around the world visited Bobolink Farm, W. Rogowski Farms, Rodrimex and Bellvale Farms. We chatted about the delegation, the injury she suffered that day, her questionable taste in certain foods, and how to save big bucks at fancy city eateries. Let’s join our conversation in progress, as I ask Sasha about her business card.

Problem Solved: Your business card describes you as a “community investment coordinator” for the Union Square Hospitality Group. Um, what is that?

SG Ahhh….funny you should ask. Well, in a nutshell, I help our restaurants connect with organizations and people beyond the four walls of their business. It’s equal parts events planner, fundraiser, and community relations advisor. I also head up a group of our employees who are responsible for directing the charitable efforts of the restaurants.

PS: You were up in the homeland a couple weeks ago with a delegation from the U.N. Who were those people and why did they come here? And how did you get involved with that?

SG: They were a group of international civil society and government delegates to the 16^th UN Commission on Sustainable Development. They were in NYC for 2 (total violation of AP style – PS) weeks to discuss issues and best practices related to agriculture, sustainable development, water and land use, desertification, and Africa. The Hudson Valley tour was meant to showcase successes surrounding urban and rural partnerships, farmers’ markets, land management and diversification. I took a class at The New School in food policy and connected with the professor, Thomas Forster, who is one of the greatest gifts to the city, in terms of working towards greater social equity and establishing a progressive, integrated food policy. Since the class coincided with the Commission, it was a perfect opportunity to delve further into these issues, about which I feel very passionate. It was a wonderful experience to reflect and connect on an international level with people who are struggling with similar issues in their home countries.

PS: What was the chatter on the bus ride back to the city? What made an impression on people? What did you take away from that day?

SG: Truth be told, I couldn’t move my neck at the end of the day – must’ve been the stress – so I stayed in Warwick with my parents. But, I’ve heard that the entire trip made an impression on people. They were impressed with the variety of farms in the area, and how the farmers had adapted to changing global circumstances by diversifying their crops and approach to markets. Cheryl Rogowski is such a powerhouse in so many ways – she brought local officials, school principals, media, and neighbors together on her farm for a big lunch and presentation. Talk about community!

I think Martin Rodriguez’s farm, Rodrimex, made a huge impression on the group as well. To see and hear firsthand the story of how Martin’s family came to the US from Mexico and lived in NYC, and then (with the help of the New Farmer Development Program) was able to purchase land in Pine Island and use the knowledge and skills that they learned in Mexico to make a successful business here in the US…. That is a great story. Wow, I’m pretty certain that was a very grammatically incorrect run-on sentence.

PS: It was, but that’s OK. People get very excited about Questions for Whosiebritches and tend to speak in ways that rebel against accepted societal norms re: grammar, but this is a safe place so don’t sweat it. Now, your biographer wrote to me “other than sun-dried tomatoes, she has yet to find a food she does not like.” What do you have against sun-dried tomatoes?

SG: They taste like soap and have the consistency of soggy rubber.

PS: Funny, that’s how I feel about cilantro,which is one of the few things I don’t like. All of them because they pollute other flavors. I like pickles but don’t like them in anything because they make everything else taste like a pickle. Same with cilantro. And don’t get me started on olives. The worst food of all time.

SG: How could you hate olives? They’re little pieces of briny, salty flavor bombs.  They’re the ultimate drinking accompaniment and they very rarely disappoint.  You know exactly what you’re getting with an olive.  Matt, I’m actually a little offended by this statement, because they’re just about my favorite food.

PS: You’re right, i do know what I’m getting with olives – they’re gross and would ruin my drinking. But despite this parting of the ways, I still want your tips on good places to eat in Orange County and the big city.

SG: Clearly, I’m slightly biased since I work for one of the best restaurant groups in NYC (and completely our her mind re: olives and sun-dried tomatoes-PS).  Gramercy Tavern, not only for its food, but for its soul.  I feel instantly at ease when I walk in, which is not the case for many of these shi-shi places in the city.  In Warwick, The Crystal Inn has some pretty inventive dishes and uses local ingredients.  The Iron Forge, especially the Tap Room downstairs (where I’ve been eating wings since high school(not continuously-PS)), is delicious.

PS: Speaking of your restaurant group, if we mention your name at Blue Smoke do we get a discount?

SG: Ha!  I wish I got a discount if I mentioned my name.

This Week’s Stupid Things, or Let’s Stop Doing Them.

I’m not looking for a new job, but i get journalism job postings delivered to my Google Reader and I scan them just about every day because, one, that’s what one does in my business, and two, I got laid off last summer and if I hadn’t had something else on the skillet already, that could’ve been very bad for me.

I just came across this post, which resembles listings I’ve seen about 500 times in the last few months and to me, exemplifies many things wrong with papers today, especially small and mid-sized papers, including mine, the Fightin’ Times Herald-Record.

So, the ad:

If variety is the spice of life, then we have an opportunity for you. Kansas Media One is searching for a full-time reporter who can produce quality stories for a daily community newspaper that serves Leavenworth County. For the daily Leavenworth Times newspaper, the reporter will focus primarily on Leavenworth County, but will also report on news events around the city of Leavenworth. There also will be opportunities to produce feature packages. Applicants should have reporting experience and a background in journalism, English or other related fields. Knowledge or experience with pagination layout is considered an attribute, but is not necessary.

In other words, come do everything and never be any more than mediocre at any of it!

The bias against specialization in media companies is self-defeating and then some. It’s fostered newsrooms full of haggard reporters who aren’t nearly the stars they could be because they’re spread so thin.

And it’s a huge factor in newspapers’ dwindling readership and influence because reporters are not given the chance to become experts in the communities they cover, or experts in education policy, or experts in government finance, or really great writers or videographers or whatever. What a fellow journalists calls F.U. skills. He’s talking in the context of the job market, but F.U. skills attract readers.

Overwork and unreasonable expectations = stenography. Stenography of some sorts (the sentencing of the principal child molester, the city council vote, etc.) is very important, but we need to stop doing so much of it. It’s important but it’s also about the easiest thing a reporter does, and there are people willing to do it for us for free.

Papers aren’t so bad on figuring out what new stuff to do. They’re awful at figuring out what to cut. So here’s my three-step cure to ease workloads and mental anguish while encouraging innovation and the use of important new skills like video, blogging, multimedia-ing in general.

1. It’s past time to understand 99 percent of car accidents, fires and arrests are the mundane details of life and people really don’t care, despite what page views say. In almost every instance these stories are cupcakes, eaten because they’re there, but wouldn’t be missed if they were not. Ever hear anyone crave a cupcake? This applies especially in non-competitive markets. Don’t confuse this point with me saying get rid fo cop reporters. Our cop reporter, Oliver Mackson, is one of our best reporters, and he doesn’t do the kind of stories I’m talking about. The rest of us do them endlessly.

2. In most cases, kill the early a.m. cops and traffic update shifts that’ve popped up like mushrooms in the last couple of years. These shifts are poison mushrooms and do nothing but eat a reporter’s time. There is no more useless exercise in all of reporting than an early morning round of cold calls to cop shops asking “anything goin’ on?”

We all know cops love talking to the media when they have a big bust to report. If there’s been a murder, we’re gonna know already. As for traffic tie-ups, who better to report these than people caught in them? It’s worked for radio stations for decades. Why does anyone think a reporter sitting at a desk will do a better job of reporting them? My paper already has a place for readers to upload bad potholes, so why not let them send traffic advisories, too?

There will be times actual reporters are needed on these issues, but not nearly often enough to have a dedicated shift five days a week. It’s tantamount to flushing 10 hours of reporter time that could be spent talking to sources in cafes, or editing a cool video project, or writing a really strong narrative piece, or, in my case, playing with a spreadsheet.

3. We need to spend a lot less time at meetings. I spent seven hours at a meeting in Tuxedo Park last night. Got home at 2 a.m. had to be at work at 7. Got three hours of sleep. You can imagine how productive I was today (quite, surprisingly, but my bounce-back ability doesn’t disprove the point).

I went because there were important items on the agenda and the officials in the village go out of their way to not talk to me, so sometimes I need to show up just to hear what they have to say on a particular topic. But last night I did something I’ve done way too much of in my young career – I stayed at a meeting just because I thought I was supposed to (and also out of pride, especially when 1:30 arrived and i was the only one there).

But I didn’t have to, for two important reasons.

A.) Almost every public meeting is a show trial. Real decisions get made in back rooms through back channels, no matter how much integrity sits on a particular board, council, whatever. Show me an official who says he didn’t know how he would vote when he got to a meeting and I’ll show you a liar. That’s like me saying I don’t have opinions on the stories I cover.

It’s worth going to some meetings to meet the other people who go, to get a sense of the dynamics of the governing body, to build good will, to learn, etc. But in many way there the least important place to have loafers on the ground.

So, last night, I spent seven hours being a stenographer instead of four hours reporting and three hours sleeping. And it was even more stupid because Tuxedo Park is the perfect example of letting regular folk do our grunt work.

Which leads to

B.)The world is full of citizen journalists.

The people who write for those sites are hugely important to other people in Tuxedo Park and me. I barely bother with the official Web site because these sites have much more of what I want to know. I get reports of every municipal meeting, architectural review board included, updates on community events, births and deaths and some really helpful political commentary.

In other words, I know a lot about Tuxedo Park without ever leaving my desk. I’ve gotten to know the people on the sites and lot of other people in the village, so I know many of their biases and where they’re coming from on various issues. And because I have put in my time at some of the same meetings, I know I can trust the reporting.

And when the time comes, I can step in with coverage in the paper, not as the all knowing sage, but as the disinterested party who’s made the effort to study the issues from many sides, learn the back story and provide the context of what’s really going on. The market term is adding value.

Now that I’ve gone on for some time, the point is simple and hardly original, but at my own paper and based on what I see in want ads, it’s not happening:

There are lots of smart people in the world who are interested in citizen journalism and just as capable as reporters of covering a meeting or a traffic jam. Building relationships with these people is the solution to free up reporters to do the substantive work of real value to the people who don’t have time and/or expertise to do it.

Nick Cave AKA My Boy Crush

Got tickets to see Nick Cave today. Those who know me well will immediately wonder what will happen between now and Oct. 4 to prevent me from actually seeing the show(in 2001, it was 9/11), but still, tickets.

In honor of, here are a couple of Cave clips.

First from the mid 90’s, with Kylie Minogue

And from the the oughts:

Our Latest Military Disgrace, or I’m a Fool

Here’s what Army football player Mike Viti said this week of people who think maybe it’s a touch unfair he doesn’t have to fulfill the service commitment he made in exchange for the free ride to one of the best schools in the country:

“People have their opinions, but I didn’t go to West Point to further my pro career,” he said. “This is an alternative. There are different ways of serving your country. If you don’t see that, you are a fool.”

Well,  either I’m a fool or Viti, who just signed a contract with the Buffalo Bills, compared playing in the NFL to active duty service in the Army, whether that be in a desert hellhole in Iraq, a mountain hellhole in Afghanistan, or any of the 500 dangerous and/or humanitarian missions someone in the Army could participate in.

To paraphrase Viti, some people serve their country in the searing heat of a Baghdad summer, while others do it on the icy gridiron of a Buffalo winter. Granted, there are probably far fewer drug addicts, wife beaters and serial paternity cases in the Army than there are in the NFL, and football players are no strangers to gun play, but there’s markedly fewer suicide-bombings in football, unless you count the Philadelphia Eagles, who roll over and die on a regular basis.

The Army says its program to allow “talented” people to skip the service requirement in exchange for a job as high-profile, part-time recruiter is a valuable way to shore up enrollment. I think my colleague Justin Rodriguez in the sports department is on to something when he says it’s probably more about getting better football players to beat Navy.

Whatever the reason is, it’s abominable, and reinforces the last message our society needs to hear – be good at something that doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of the world and the world will shift its rules and expectations just for you.

Meanwhile, we’ll keep loading up on poor and uneducated people as insurgent fodder, and you, the really talented bio-chemist from West Point, you have fun in Iraq, too.

Mike Viti’s gotta go play him some football. Fool.

The Real Problems with Vanity Fair

Wow this Miley Cyrus photo really has the idiocracy in a tizzy.

But really, who cares?

I’m more interested in what I think are more important issues. Leave aside for a moment the picture calls to mind the phrase ridden hard and put away wet , I’d like to focus on the ridiculous cultural agreement that Annie Leibowtiz is a great artist.

To stay with my horse metaphor theme, she’s a one-trick pony if ever there was one. Celebrity + vacant stare copied from works of 20th Century masters like August Sander and Walker Evans = A Leibowitz.

Is it just me or does pretty much every picture she’s ever taken look like this?

The difference is the subject is always a celebrity so she doesn’t have to actually capture anything because viewers of the pictures already possess all the information they need to react to the picture. So they look past its lousy quality to the boring issue of “packaged teenage celebrity looks like tramp.”

Something else: You’ll notice on the cover “Barbara Walters remembers …”

Again I wonder, who cares?

All this talk about people who should go away and won’t finally puts me in the mood for the All Go Away Already team I promised a while ago. Coming very soon.

Tuxedo Park Viewshed Map

At last, here’s the full-color and useful map I asked for and promised to share three months ago. It’s changing in response to concerns raised by homeowners. As you’ll see, this iteration affects about half the village.

tuxedo-park-overlay-01-15-08-21

Carrying the Torch

By request from L.C., one of my southern California fans (I’m HUGE in California), a post on the Olympic torch silliness.

Now, as long and even short-time Matt King appreciaters know, Im all for agitating, smashing the system, etc. But show me an Olympic torch relay protester and I’ll show you a latte-sipping, upper middle class, guilt-ridden liberal who more than likely can’t be bothered to spend an hour a week helping out at a food pantry. But man, throw a party in the street and give him an excuse to act like a jackass and he’s there.

It’s like going to the Bridge School benefit without having to sit through a half-dozen dreadful indie bands before you get to hear Neil Young. The cool stuff starts right away and you’re cool just for being there.

And don’t forget your skinhead types. Here’s an excerpt from the latest on sfgate.com. Note the use of the always promising “I’m not a racist but …

Police said no arrests had occurred and that clashes related to the protests had been minor. But at least one person was detained in front of the ballpark this morning, and a few hours later, a confrontation between the two sides escalated to a physical violence, when a San Francisco man named Kevin Johnson, 48, walked into a crowd of torch supporters and began yelling, “Communists!”

The crowd encircled Johnson and the confrontation escalated when Johnson pulled a Chinese flag off a man’s backpack. Then, someone grabbed Johnson’s throat and another person punched him in the face before police intervened and walked him to safety.

“I know it sounds racist, but if they want the Olympics in China they should go back to China,” he said.

Exactly. Back to China with all of you, you damn people who came here from China. Just leave the pork buns behind. Especially the barbecued pork buns, because those are yummy. And I bet a million dollars Kevin Johnson, 48, makes lousy pork buns, despite his awesome patriotism and commitment to human rights in Tibet. A second million says Kevin Johnson, 48, has no idea where is this Tibet.

Now, I went to the Olympics once, Athens 2004 (womens’ water polo believe it or not). And for those of you who haven’t been, as long as it’s anywhere other than Atlanta, I can’t urge you enough to go. It’s the best party in the world. Plus there are pole vaulters.

(Originally, there was a picture of a pole vaulter here, but I did a little more research and discovered she may still be in high school. If that’s your thing, I suggest you check out bykevinjohnson,48.com.)

And even though there were men with very scary looking guns everywhere because Al Qaeda in Athens was supposed to attack the Olympics, there wasn’t a shred of political agita to be seen (except for me promising everyone I met we couldn’t possible be dumb enough to elect Bush in ‘04).

And it’s not because Athens is apathetic (Apathens!). A short time after the Olympics, Colin Powell showed his face there and people showed up at the embassy with torches, and not the Olympic kind.

It was because the Olympics is not the proper venue. It’s a party, a celebration, a test of which countries have the best steroid masking agents.

I understand the media spotlight on the torch relay makes it seem like a good opportunity to raise awareness of one’s cause. But it’s a meaningless one-day act. It’s not like thousands of people around the country are getting all worked up today about China’s human rights record because Kevin Johnson, 48, got into a fight on the street.

Changing the world takes a lot more than angry, empty gestures. I imagine it takes a lot of hard work. Just getting officials in Tuxedo Park to follow open records laws takes a lot of hard work (actually, that may be harder than changing the world).

But why preach it when a much more talented man can sing it. Below is the song the brilliant Jarvis Cocker wrote about the Live 8 concerts a couple summers ago. It’s spot on.

Trapped in my Hometown

Just got back from my 83rd trip to the pharmacy in the last few days. While I was there, a dispute. A patron was mad because the little box pies advertised as four for a dollar are actually 39 cents each if one does not buy all four.

There are lots of tattoo parlors here. I just passed Underground Ink and one called Year of the Dragon Tattooz. I’m gonna go back and get “mad data skillz” tattooed on my azz.

Lou Reed and John Cale wrote a song about my hometown, called “Small Town.” Video below. If you’re in a hurry, here’s the last few lines:

When you’re growing up in a small town

you know you’ll grow down in a small town

there’s only one good use for a small town

you hate it and you know you’ll have to leave

F Me? F You!, or Greenwood Lake and Tuxedo at the Bargaining Table

After a month off, school officials from Greenwood Lake and Tuxedo got together Wednesday to talk about a new contract.

The meeting was at Tuxedo’s high school, but it may as well have at a preschool. It was that productive.

Here’s a brief snippet of dialog to give you a flavor. I paraphrase only slightly.

Tuxedo official: uh-uh!

GWL official: nuh-uh!

Tuxedo official: is that a threat!

GWL official: it’s not a threat!

Tuxedo Superintendent Joe Zanetti tried to put a good face on it and claim it wasn’t a waste of an evening, but it was a waste of an evening.

Two months into negotiations that have produced nothing but more hard feelings, a couple of things are clear.

• The honey-dipped olive branches Tuxedo officials held out to Greenwood Lake residents when they tried to leave for Warwick last year have been replaced with slime-coated middle fingers.
• The districts made a huge mistake by not enlisting a neutral and professional mediator.

But that mistake can still be undone, even though the districts plan to get together and argue in circles for another two hours Tuesday night in Greenwood Lake.

It’s not too late to hire someone to help. Tuxedo Board President Jim Hickey and Greenwood Lake Board President Kathy Gilson show no ability to work together.

And here’s some more unsolicited advice – stop arguing about taxes and figuring out what’s best for students.

It’d be really great if just once Jim Hickey followed up “at the end of the day,” with “I have to do what’s right for our kids” instead of “my duty is to our taxpayers.”

All I heard last fall was how much people in Tuxedo and Tuxedo Park love and cherish their school and its students, be they from Tuxedo or Greenwood Lake.

So how about everyone gets together with a mediator and talks about what they want a high school education to look like and then figures out what that costs and stop trying to stick each other with the check?

My brush with Spitzer/Ashley Dupre Scandal, or I Need a Bath

Monday was a big day for me. By big I mean I interviewed probably the least credible source of my shortish reporting career.

I speak of Jason Jarocki, a man so in need of attention he’s trying to take a media tour to “correct the record” about his tenuous and probably half-true link to the scandal that felled Eliot Sptizer. Except no one cares.

As my wise friend R put it, she now knows “the guy who interviewed the guy who used to screw the girl who screwed Spitzer.”

You can read about my encounter here and below is the video. Both are worthwhile and equally amusing but the video doesn’t make clear how often Jarocki adds 2 and 2 and gets 22, which just happens to be Ashley Dupre’s age.

When I got the assignment I embraced it as a chance to get down in the mud, which is something I never do (I think the media already has that covered). But after I met with Jarocki I tried to spike the story. I don’t think he’s telling the truth and if I talked to him in the course of reporting any other story on any topic, I wouldn’t use him as a source. I hope the story conveys that.

I don’t know the real story either, but my guess is that Jarocki and Dupre had some kind of business relationship. Perhaps he was trying to manage her. I also think he’s trying to turn his connection to her into cash. As his lawyer put it, Jarocki will know the next opportunity to talk about her when he sees it.

OK, enjoy the video: