By David Fortier
Come Sunday morning, TBE will be meeting after a week off. We have plenty to discuss, beginning with the news that there will be a public hearing of the Ordinance Committee in regards to a proposed cannabis dispensary here in town. That hearing will be Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. at the Bristol Public Library. Already the Republicans on the Board of Education have written an open letter to the mayor and city council denouncing the sale of recreational cannabis locally.
Click here for a link to the meeting agenda and the proposed ordinance.
Other than that, the school year has begun, sports are on the horizon, and at least one public event has been scheduled for the new Rockwell Theater at the Bristol Arts and Innovation Magnet School. The annual Mum Festival Miss Bristol competition will be held there at the end of the month.
It is an election year, this time around state-wide and federal, for our local state house and senate offices, as well as governor and U.S. House and Senate positions. Campaign signs are popping up across the city. We plan to cover the election more regularly over the weeks to come.
Reading listening, the New York Times reported that an artwork created by an AI (Artificial Intelligence) Program engaged by a human being won an art contest at the Colorado State Fair. The prize, $300. How typing a few works into a text box and having a software program conjure an artwork equates to creating a piece of art is beyond me.
Maybe a reader can help me with this. I have associated art with skill and mastery. Where is the mastery here? And, that AI searches the internet and snatches images from the works of others makes me wonder who is really creating this art. Tell me. I am interested in hearing someone make sense of this.
I am reading a bunch of things, among them “Great Blue: New and Selected Poems” by Brendan Galvin. Galvin taught at CCSU while was there, but I did not take a class with him. My loss, I am guessing, since these poems are ones that resonate with me. I picked up the book at school from the discarded shelf. I can’t help myself. The book was published in 1990 by University of Illinois Press.
As with all writers worth the time, Galvin is a storyteller. Whether about wildlife, specially, birds and trees, or about an imaginary street, the poems are populated with people and their stories, voices and conflicts and beauty. And of course, there abounds a wry sense of humor, something that is evident in one poem “Fear of Gray’s Anatomy,” after opening it out of curiosity, he starts and ends with, “I will not open Gray’s Anatomy again.”
And then there is Wendell Berry’s, “Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community.” This collection of essays, again found on the discarded shelf, was published in 1992. It might have been written yesterday. Take, for instance, this:
“The ‘free market’ theorists assume, in short, that an adequate national economy may be composed of many consumers, few producers, and even fewer rich manipulators at the top. This theory attributes a kind of creative or magical power to money that money does not have, and that is dangerous enough. But it also and more dangerously involves an inevitable, large-scale dependence on foreign supplies.”
That was written in early 1990 during the Gulf War, long before our experience with COVID-19 and supply-chain problems.
For listening I listened to an old podcast featuring Thomas Piketty from back in June. Piketty is the French economist who chronicles economic inequality and the tome titled, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” that against all odds became an international bestseller. The podcast, “Thomas Piketty’s Case for ‘Participatory Socialism,’” is another marvelous offering from The Ezra Klein Show. Click here.
It is definitely worth listening to twice, if not more, times. In reality, it may be necessary because Piketty is fluent in English but speaks with a pronounced accent.
Have a good week!
“Come Sunday morning” is intended to be a weekly review, a recounting of the past week and an anticipation of week to come. Among its features will be reviews of old and new books, sharing of favorite podcasts, some family news, Bristol events and happenings and issues surrounding education, work and community journalism. He can be reached at dfortier@bristoledition.org.
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