“It’s more about inspiring public discussion than it is about helping one side to win or one side to lose.�
One of the Café commentors raised a worthwhile question when he/she asked “Doesn’t anybody on this website care about things besides the school system? There are a lot of other issues that matter to residentsâ€? (see Verumi’s comment under “Seadog presents the Facts…â€?). I think the answer is simply that Café’ers write about the things that are important to them (us). The perception of importance of the subjects is absolutely necessary in order to motivate us to think and spend the time putting our thoughts into words in a manner that we hope will convey our ideas to others. In doing so our mission is to weigh, organize, analyze and present information about things relevant to Woodstock that we feel people need to know in order to make sense of our world and improve our environment.
I have to say that after the better part of a year of reading and some writing at the Café, I have experienced the same feelings that I experienced in publishing my own research. I knew that other scientists were reading my papers because most were published in reputable journals and quite a few of these papers were highly referenced by other papers. The fact that others were reading the ideas that I had put into writing was a very fulfilling part of my work …this meant that perhaps my ideas would have an impact in some unimaginable way. When a thousand journal articles referenced one of my papers, this could only mean that hundreds of thousands understood my message, or if one hundred papers referenced one of my papers, then perhaps thousands were aware of it. Likewise, in our microcosm of Woodstock, if five or ten people comment in response to a Café post, then possibly hundreds may have actually read the article and either appreciated the statement… or rejected it.
It’s really no different publishing at the Café than publishing in Nature or Cell. We have embarked on a mission that is full of diversions and surprises. We are intoxicated by the moment but are never quite satisfied because we are always looking for the next novel concept, i.e. the revelation not yet written and the part of the story not yet told. We have seen genius and creativity in the writings of ‘Bowman’, ‘Randy’, ‘Stranded’, ‘Quid’, ‘Seadog’ just to name a few, but there have been many others as well. The recent article by Becki “No District Left Standing� was very well written as ‘Rocket Scientist’ was quick to point out. Our articles do not stem from power because we are for the most part anonymous; instead their value stems from how close we are to reality. This is why I see no need to sign this article. It doesn’t matter who I am; it only matters what I have said. By putting these thoughts in writing, the reader has a chance to consider what I have said without loosing the precise detail of what I have said in a sort of ‘benchmark’ statement. This experience is no different from writing about scientific discoveries that ultimately require verification by others.
I recall the announcement of two physicists in Utah that they had created “cold fusion�. Seeing these bozos interviewed on TV or reading about them in the news carried little weight. What mattered was when they put their experiments and ideas in writing so that others could understand precisely what they were saying and attempt to understand and verify their results. Very quickly the story did not hold up. These physicists had fooled themselves and subsequently were dismissed by the scientific community around them. The same may be true at the Café. We present our ideas, thoughts, and beliefs as close to the verifiable truth as we can but we cannot avoid finding out how they stand up to inspection by others. If others don’t agree, but you believe you are right, you should be willing to take hit after hit and, if need be, fight and re-fight the same battles until you win. This is what we have experienced at the Café. With time, the truth will prevail, freedom of speech will be sustained, and some degree of democracy will be preserved.
Writing and reading at the Café has been a continual course in adult education. The job of trying to tell the truth may be more complicated than trying to hide it. I believe that most of the authors at the Café are trying to tell the truth, but some of the authors may not recognize the truth or have a vested interest in corrupting the truth for some self-serving motive. But, I have confidence that the Café readers who are looking for the truth will be able to discern the truth and reject the “logical fallacies� described by ‘Bowman’.
Those who try to hide the truth for various reasons may do so simply by not being open or failing to provide a mechanism for dissemination of information. This may be why the Town of Woodstock has no functional web site or official medium for dissemination of information to all of its citizens. By contrast the Board of Education has a functional rapidly updated website. Perhaps also the leadership in Woodstock does not understand the importance of communication. I’m sure that as they read this article, they are thinking “Why don’t they just give me a call or visit me at City Hall… anyway most don’t even care.� What the leadership misunderstands is that it is their obligation to disseminate information in a public way, not a ‘personalized’ private way, and that this information be verifiable and consistent with the truth. Frank Cordon stood up for this principle at the last BOE meeting and his stand was memorialized in the Villager on October 27th.
Prior to the Café, a vast majority of Woodstock citizens lived in a virtual blackout of local public affairs. In this vacuum Café’ers have created a medium where information about Woodstock can be disseminated freely to challenge the ‘official’ view of reality. Now the majority of uniformed is less ‘vast’. And, almost certainly, the Café has become a nuisance to a minority who would prefer to suppress free exchange of thoughts and ideas to control a dominion that they perceive as their own. Someone said that the “real news is the news you and I need to keep our freedoms.� This is not only true in the national sense, but locally too.
The Café is not in business. The Café has apparently rejected the idea of selling ads to make some money which it could do. I have noted that Technorati, a well-known blog search-engine rates blog sites by the number of outside blog sites that link into a particular blog site. I have to laugh at this because we have learned at the Café that by being strictly local, dealing with hot-button issues that matter only to Woodstock and the surrounding towns, we have generated a feeding frenzy for local information and exchange of ideas. We don’t want outsiders, unless they can contribute to our own specialized interests. So Technorati has it wrong. Just check the commentary at USA Today’s blog or at other national blogs – for the most part this commentary is just simpering random one-liners (no-brainers). I have a friend who created a nationally recognized blog site. He was on the brink a few months ago of shutting it down because he said, “I just got tired of talking to idiots.�
I believe that the business of selling news is incompatible with providing a balanced view of reality. I think that this is demonstrated on a daily basis by conglomerate news businesses on TV and in the diminishing press. Café’ers are, in fact, citizen journalists. What qualifications does it take to be a journalist? What can they do that we can’t? I say “Nothing!� What a journalist does is simply to try to get the facts right, or at least to try to get as close as possible to the verifiable truth…and we are free like the wind. If we can expose the truth, then the possibility that we are not completely neutral is of less importance. It’s more about inspiring public discussion than it is about helping one side to win or one side to lose. I can honestly say that I have changed my opinions about several important issues in Woodstock that have been prominently debated at the Café. These changes in opinions have come from the persuasive arguments of others at the Café who remain anonymous, and I have learned a lot about Woodstock by reading the thoughts of others at the Café. I cannot say that this has been true in reading the Villager or by attending public meetings where reasonable debate is suppressed or not an option.
So what are our duties and obligations as Café’ers? We are obligated to our sources, our readers, and the community. We are obligated to “sift patiently through untidy realities, measure the claims of affected people, and present honestly the best available approximation of the truth� (Ed Wasserman, Professor at Washington and Lee University, speaking on ethics and journalism). Bill Moyers said, “the act of keeping the record straight is valuable in and of itself� as he quoted another noted journalist, Martha Gelhorn, who said, “Serious, careful, honest journalism is essential…� Hopefully the Café will be able to sustain these practices and goals while at the same time continuing to allow its contributors to speak freely.
The Cafe is most certainly a valuable tool to the people of Woodstock. While there is, at times, frivolous debate and ridiculously one-sided point of views displayed by some of this site’s posting members, the daily discussions are often fruitful — even if it does not necessarily yield immediate results at a school board, selectmen or town meeting.
For me, and many others in Woodstock, this is the virtual town hall where citizens can speak their minds freely, discussing whatever it is that irks them or pleases them in town.
More and more of those who read the postings on this site should definitely attend the meetings held by the boards that they often discuss at great length here. I attended a recent selectmen meeting and the only non-town personnel there was an older woman, a girl from WINY and a guy from the Villager. I have not been to one, but I would assume board of ed meetings draw similar crowds — or lack thereof. Informed discussion and debate is what will really move things forward in town, in the pages of the Villager and on the computer screens of Café readers.
Congrats to the Café for a year or so of success and growth and with any luck many more to go.
I too find the Cafe immensely informative. It is a great arena for true discussion. Certainly meetings like the public hearing on the Capital Plan last night are perfect illustration of how far from the freedom of expression we have come. While there was a certain amount of discussion and questions asked, the air was pregnant with the anticipated (and predictable) exhortations of the usual suspects at the back of the room. Perhaps the reason for the poor attendance at these meetings, especially the hearings, are this very same small group of bullies that insist on taking the stage and shouting everyone into silence. There actually were some new faces at the meeting – which made me wonder if they were Cafe readers. One woman actually asked questions and, in response to the tirade of one particularly obnoxious ‘citizen’, asked if she could ask him a question. His response was conditionally affirmative… the condition was that she not be ‘rude’!!! I can only hope that this brave woman was bolstered by the shriek of laughter that came from the rest of us and will return to join other public discussions in the future.
So, rock on Cafe! Keep it up and let’s keep talking!
The CPS crowd that usually heckle our meetings and scream at the PTO mothers remind me of arguments that we all used to have in junior high school. “You stink”…”no”…”YOU do”" I said it first”..”NO” I did”
I respect the administrator for allowing all points of views to be read even though some points may be made to manipulate the reader rather than to inform them (I’m sure Mr. Wetzel thanks you too!)
Along the lines of exposing truth, if you have an hour and wish to feel true outrage at how we have lost our country, I urge you to catch ‘Hacking Democracy’ recently featured on HBO.
Thanks for this thoughtful post. One of the things I really like about Woodstock is the diversity of people in town. The Cafe is a good place to experience that diversity – of backgrounds, interests and perspectives. It reminds us that not everyone thinks just like we do.
Unfortunately some people who post are only listening to themselves. It is also often difficult to distinguish fact from fiction/misinformation.
By the way, I hear the town is working on getting a functional government website up and running by 2007.
[...] Fascism Rears Its Ugly Head in Woodstock Citizen’s view of the value of the Café [...]
[...] (From Time.com by Lev Grossman, adapted (italics) from the World to Woodstock) — The “Great Man” theory of history is usually attributed to the Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle, who wrote that “the history of the world is but the biography of great men.” He believed that it is the few, the powerful and the famous who shape our collective destiny as a species. That theory took a serious beating this year. To be sure, there are individuals we could blame for the many painful and disturbing things that happened in 2006. The conflict in Iraq only got bloodier and more entrenched. A vicious skirmish erupted between Israel and Lebanon. A war dragged on in Sudan. A tin-pot dictator in North Korea got the bomb, and the president of Iran wants to go nuclear too. Meanwhile nobody fixed global warming, and Sony didn’t make enough PlayStation3s. But look at 2006 through a different lens and you’ll see another story, one that isn’t about conflict or great men. It’s a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. … It’s about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change Woodstock, but also change the way our Town changes. see a citizens view of writing at the Cafe [...]