Come Sunday morning, we all will have had a few days to consider the Trump court case decision and what it means for and to each of us. At the very least, it is important to pull back from that knee jerk reaction, get some distance and reflect about the context.
There is plenty going on across the news media, social media, podcasts, tweets (can we call them that anymore?), reels and feeds. This messiness, this immediacy, this in our faces 24/7 stream of information makes me yearn for a simpler time of news cycles that allowed 24 hours between one newspaper delivery and the next, one major news cast and the next.
That made things easier for us–now we need much more discipline to regulate these cycles in our own lives, and by all counts, we are falling way short of attending to this.
Which leads to this week’s listening and reading.
***
For listening, there is the Ezra Klein Show podcast episode, “Your Mind Is Being Fracked,” featuring D. Graham Burnett, a professor of science at Princeton. Burnett is working on a book about a laboratory study of attention. In addition, he is the co-founder of the Strother School of Radical Attention. There is enough in this discussion to occupy anyone of us for days, if not weeks, months and years. (Don’t let that frighten you off–it’s a challenge.) Click here.
After listening to Klein and Burnett, come on back to earth with a touching tribute from a daughter to her dad, “The Detroit Pistons Were My Father’s Second Family,” by Molly McCloskey. Jack McCloskey coached the Detroit Pistons when the Lakers and the Celtics were all the rage, and he managed to grab a few championships anyhow. But this is a different sports story. Click here.
***
City meetings this week include the following:
On Monday, June 3
- Police Memorial Committee, 5 p.m., cancelled.
- Parking Authority, 6:30 p.m., Meeting Room 1-1, city hall.
- Library Board of Directors, 6:30 p.m., Bristol Public Library, 5 High St.
- Conservation Commission/Inland Wetlands and Watercourses Agency, 6:30 p.m., council chambers, city hall.
On Tuesday, June 4
- Economic and Community Development Downtown Committee Special Meeting, 1 p.m., council chambers, city hall.
- Ordinance Commitee, 5 p.m., Meeting Room 1-1, city hall.
- Zoning Board of Appeals, 7 p.m. council chambers, city hall–cancelled.
On Wednesday, June 5
- Code Enforcement Committee, 9 a.m., council chambers, city hall.
- Arts & Culture Commission, 6:30 p.m., Meeting Room 1-3, city hall.
On Thursday, June 6
- Economic and Community Development, 5 p.m., council chambers, city hall.
- Transportation Commission Special Meeting, 6 p.m., Meeting Room 1-3, city hall.
On Friday, June 7
- No meeting scheduled.
TBE will do our best to update meeting times and locations, but it’s a good idea to check the agendas ahead of time for cancellations. Click here for specific meetings and times.
***
One more time: A practical matter–updating your credit card information might be a little more challenging than we here at TBE might have thought. There are several things to consider.
First, if you get a message that your credit card needs to be updated, login to TBE and click on the membership tab. Here is where things can get tricky. If under billing change, a tab appears for billing, click on it and you will find the appropriate fields to update.
However, if the billing tab does not appear, it means that you need to update your information on your PayPal account or on your Stripe account.
Sorry for the inconvenience — and thank you for your patience and support.
Of course, to build a viable business, we need funding. Consider becoming a member by signing up for monthly recurring donations of $6, $12, or $24 or making a one-time donation of $60 or even better donating more. It might seem outrageous, but 5,000 members paying $6 a month would allow us to hire editors and reporters who would do a great job covering Bristol.
If you are writing a check for a donation, write the check out to Central Connecticut Online Journalism Project, our official 501(c)(3) designation. The same name will appear on any digital receipts.
***
As part of our citizen journalism initiative, TBE will seeking 12 people with Bristol stories that they would like to share in the form of long-form journalism. This project involves identifying 12 people with a uniquely Bristol story, something that happened here in Bristol that says something about who we are as a community–during a specific time in our history. Please email editor@bristoledition.org if interested. Type Bristol Stories candidate in the subject line.
We will work with each person to develop a well-written long-form piece of storytelling for publication in TBE and possibly in other forms. More on this in the future.
***
Enjoy!
All TBE readers, supporters and donors
The Bristol Edition will be limiting the number of stories non-members and free readers may access each week. This decision is based on our financial projections and, most certainly, to remind people that TBE is serious about providing accurate, timely and thorough reporting for Bristol. To do this we have devised a financial support structure that makes unlimited access extremely affordable, beginning with a $6 monthly donation.
- Non-members will be able to access four (4) articles per week.
- Free readers and people who have subscribed by email will be able to access four (4) articles per week.
- Donors and financial supporters will have unlimited access as long as they log in.
Note: Donors may have to contact TBE if they find they are being limited, since we will need to set up a membership account for you. Email editor@bristoledition.org for instructions. Sorry for any inconvenience. People with financial difficulties may write editor@bristoledition.org to be considered for free access.