On the cold night of December 30th, 2005, I joined my friend Oliver to see the Five Town Massive art, music and film event at Holley Hall in Bristol, Vermont.
I was there primarily to see the wonderfully weird animation done by Oliver’s brother-in-law, Ethan Clarke (visit his site, mega-beast.com for a taste), but the night took a somewhat surprising turn.
First of all, Holley Hall was turned into a hip gallery space, packed with all sorts of creative folks, young and old, at a far higher density than I would have ever thought. Though I live just over the border in Monkton, I consider Bristol to be my home town. And I couldn’t help feel some pride at seeing all this activity so close to home.
So, I looked at some of the art on the walls, enjoyed a pretty humorous monologue from a poetry jammer, and then…
Anaïs Mitchell took the stage, alone, with her acoustic guitar.
Now, there’s a certain type of earnest folky singer/songwriter style that I really don’t care for very much. The kind of Jewel-esque cute and maudlin variety that used to dominate the Point until fairly recently.
So, I sat prepared to endure the inevitable until the film portion of the evening began.
But, from the first notes she plucked and the first hint of the distinctive timbre of her voice, I was entranced.
A review on her website describes it perfectly — and now as I’m pasting it in, I realize it says exactly what I’ve already said, but better…
Anaïs Mitchell walks on stage with an acoustic guitar and arrant grace evocative of both Sandy Denny and Cyndi Lauper in the same stride. Voices hush and heads turn in unison to catch the self-assured vixen with the bright, childlike smile as she steps forward to place a hand on the mic – and take it back again. In a gesture of coy flirtation and pure poetry, she drops her gaze and lets fingers light on strings instead, breaking open a bittersweet melody. The first syllables escape her mouth, and it isn’t long before you realize: this is no chick folksinger. This is no fly-by indie rock grrl. You are in the presence of an artist. A classic. Like a young Marilyn Monroe captured in the crisp, black-and-white frames of a D.A. Pennebaker concert reel, Anais Mitchell is an artistic legend in the making.
My eyes quite literally began to fill with tears as her performance continued. Not just because her performance was genuinely moving, but because ever since becoming a parent (I now am a father of three), when I’m confronted with such seemingly effortless talent like this — whether in the arts or in sport — from a person more than 10 years younger than I am, I well up with the pride of a parent.
Well, my wife and I have a pretend talent agency, focused on young and upcoming actors and musicians, that we started over a decade ago. (We’ve got a pretty strong track record. You’d be impressed. Really.)
So, right then and there, amidst the peeling paint on the balcony, I won out in a fierce imaginary bidding war, and I signed Ms. Mitchell. Oh yes, I did.
But, clearly, I’m not the only person who recognized her talent.
Casey Rea is reporting in this week’s Seven Days that she’s just signed with Ani DiFranco’s Righteous Babe label.
Rea writes…
So how did Mitchell end up getting signed by one of her musical heroes? Coincidence played a part, but talent proved to be the clincher. Longtime Buffalo promoter/musician Michael Meldrum, whom Mitchell calls “a fairy godfather to young artists,†heard her last album, Hymns for the Exiled, and invited her to play some area gigs. “Turns out he was Ani’s childhood guitar teacher,†Mitchell explains. “Somehow, she happened not to be on tour when I came through Buffalo, and Michael convinced her and her manager to come down to catch my show.†They were suitably impressed.
This Vermonter’s got a great future ahead of her. I just wish I’d signed her for real.
The President Is Still Relevant Here The Most Obvious Note Headline Ever
Wow, they just can’t help themselves… Kinda sad, really.
Get a load of this… The White House has disappeared “Mission Accomplished” from the video of Bush’s carrier speech…
Oh and, also breaking…
Later today, on the heels of the astounding electoral victory by the Democratic Party, the rising — and now vindicated — star of the party, Howard “Fiddy State” Dean, will announce his engagement to Britney Spears…
Exit Voices is a place for Burlington voters to share their thoughts and concerns about the people and issues on the ballot. On election day, this blog serves as an online coffee shop where citizens can discuss Vermont politics. All are welcome to participate. Exit Voices is a joint collaboration between CCTV Center for Media and Democracy, Vermont Community Access Media and Candleblog.
The Exit Voices crew (that would be Bill Simmon) is also asking that if you have a blog of your own that you cross-post any of your blog entries on election day in the comments section there.
As Bill said via email: “Ideally, we would like to use Exit Voices as an aggregator of Vermont political blog posts as well as make it a place for non-bloggers to congregate and discuss the elections.”
Michael Powell (I’m assuming not that Michael Powell) writes…
Bernie Sanders ran a tight ship. He balanced budgets, picked top-drawer appointees and showed up at 2 a.m. to ride fire engines and snowplows until services improved. He had a listed phone number and answered it. He denounced the depredations of capitalism until a cable company agreed to wire the city — and to repair sliced-up streets on its own dime. He kept his campaign promise and obtained a minor league baseball team.
They named it the Vermont Reds. [Nice touch, there, Mr. Powell]
Moody’s Investor Service gave him a thumbs-up. Sanders, who is married and has four grown children, road-tested his show in a 1986 run for governor. He got just 14 percent of the vote, but he carried the French Catholic farm belt. The farmers didn’t agree with or understand him. But they liked his manner, which was as plain as theirs.
In 1990 he won in a landslide against an incumbent Republican congressman, carrying Burlington but also Hardwick, a hardtack bit of outback Vermont. The state’s median income is the second lowest in New England, and poverty is rising. “There are no fancy folks there — it’s the no-gun-control and snowmobile crowd,” said McClaughry, who ran for the state Senate that year. “Bernie and I were the leading vote-getters in Hardwick. It really annoyed me.”
And it closes with this…
You nose up the rutted dirt roads north of Lyndonville and brake by a log cabin with three cords of fresh-split wood under the porch. Two political signs are in the grass — for Jim Douglas, the Republican governor, and for “Bernie,” the socialist.
Frankie Paquette, 63, asks you to sit in his kitchen while his wife, Millie, knits. He’s a wiry millworker whose mill moved south of the border three years ago. He subsists on odd jobs and no health insurance, hoping to limp to 65 and Medicare. He’s talked with Sanders twice and the congressman’s office helped him obtain college loans for his sons.
“Bernie’s got really crazy ideas,” Paquette says. “But he’s for the little guy who ain’t got three dollars for gasoline in February. That’s me and I’m for him.”
Courtesy of Pollster.com, here’s what will probably be the final polling averages on the big three Vermont races before election day.
As the cliche goes… It’s all about the ground game now.
[These charts are slightly interactive… Check and uncheck the checkboxes to your heart’s content… But, please, check yourself before you wreck yourself.]
And, a bit of wrapping up on the fake Kerry controversy before the weekend.
The wind-following Thomas Friedman says what all Democrats should have stood together to say…
George Bush, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld think you’re stupid. Yes, they do…
They think they can take a mangled quip about President Bush and Iraq by John Kerry — a man who is not even running for office but who, unlike Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, never ran away from combat service — and get you to vote against all Democrats in this election.
Every time you hear Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney lash out against Mr. Kerry, I hope you will say to yourself, “They must think I’m stupid.” Because they surely do.
The only problem with Friedman’s analysis is that it has really been the press that has perpetuated this story. So, it’s not that Bush, Cheney and Rove simply think the American people are stupid.
Rather, they know that the press will act far more stupidly.
As Somerby constantly reminds us, not understanding this essential fact of the Freak Show — and not doing everything you can to change it — will allow St. McCain to waltz into the White House.
What Scudder Parker needs, more than anything, is for Democrats to come home.
If just five percent of whimsical Jim Douglas voters decide finally to throw their support to Scudder, the race will be dead even. In other words, the opportunity is here. A better one won’t come along for years. Parker has done his part, and more. He and his volunteers have raced the state from north to south a thousand times, and he’s hit Douglas on his record hard, every day for nearly a year.
But if he’s going to close the deal, he needs an entirely different sort of help.
Because it’s no longer about Scudder Parker, not really. It’s about all of us now, and our own cautious, uncommitted egos.
“You want to be a winner,†Eddie’s disgusted mentor Bert tells him, “you got to keep your head. And you got to remember that there’s a loser somewhere in you, whining at you, and you got to learn to cut his water off. Otherwise you better get a steady job.â€
To which VDB says, Amen.
Yes, Amen.
And in case you doubt that Scudder is still in the game, just take a look at this polling chart from the great minds at Pollster.com.
Look closely at those thin blue and red lines that indicate the confidence intervals. And see how nicely they resolve into a point right around 45%.
Just remember, Jim Douglas needs 50% to prevent the Democratic controlled state legislature from deciding his fate.
Fellow Vermont blogger, Mark Floegel, offers his views on Bush’s recent signing of the “National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007″.
A little benignly titled document which just happens to “modify two laws on the books – the Insurrection Act of 1807 and the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. Those two laws limit the ability of the president to use military forces within the borders of the United States.”
Outside of the blogosphere — and perhaps Keith Olbermann — I doubt anyone’s even heard of it.
Let’s put paranoid thinking and conspiracy theories aside for the moment and reflect on how this development is the latest maneuver by the Bush White House and its Congressional allies to advance the “unitary executive†theory of government, in which power is usurped from the legislative and judicial branches of government and vested in the person of the president.
It’s paranoid delusion to expect Mr. Bush to put tanks in the street next Wednesday, after the Democrats have taken over one or both houses of Congress. It’s not paranoid to think Mr. Bush, the Republicans and the corporate forces that control them are playing a very long, patient game. They’ll be willing to wait through a few cycles of Democratic control of Congress and another four or eight years of a Democratic administration, if needs be. (If it’s a Hillary Clinton administration and if it’s anything like Bill’s, corporations will find an ally rather than a foe.)
The nearly-unnoticed rider on the Defense Authorization Act falls into the same category as the national identification card, warrantless wiretapping, suspension of habeas corpus and the declaration of citizens to be “enemy combatants†based on secret evidence. It’s another miserable step on the road to a totalitarian state.
People who love America – patriots – have been feeling good this week, anticipating that a Democratic Congress will at last yank the leash on George W. Bush. If and when it happens, such a shift will be cause for celebration, but we’ll wake to a sober morning after and realize it will take years, if not decades to undo all the damage that’s been done. [my emphasis]
And that, my friends, may be the real Long War ahead.
Anaïs Mitchell walks on stage with an acoustic guitar and arrant grace evocative of both Sandy Denny and Cyndi Lauper in the same stride. Voices hush and heads turn in unison to catch the self-assured vixen with the bright, childlike smile as she steps forward to place a hand on the mic – and take it back again. In a gesture of coy flirtation and pure poetry, she drops her gaze and lets fingers light on strings instead, breaking open a bittersweet melody. The first syllables escape her mouth, and it isn’t long before you realize: this is no chick folksinger. This is no fly-by indie rock grrl. You are in the presence of an artist. A classic. Like a young Marilyn Monroe captured in the crisp, black-and-white frames of a D.A. Pennebaker concert reel, Anais Mitchell is an artistic legend in the making.
