Every so often, politicians on the campaign trail will hold something they call a “town meeting.” They’ll round up a hundred of the locals and answer questions — though the questions tend to be carefully scripted and there are TV cameras present to capture the candidate’s carefully scripted responses. These town meetings are nothing like […]
Tag Archives: Town Meeting
One of my favorite short stories is Rebecca Rule’s “Yankee Curse.” Here is how it begins: “At School District Meeting, Miranda knits. May your neighbors steal from your wood pile, Mort Wallace. The points of her flexi-needle slide in and out of the heavy burgundy wool. May they incinerate their garbage in a barrel at […]
I love it when presidential aspirants have what we in the media call a “town meeting” style debate. Those debates are not town meetings — and not simply because there are no school board officials there we can pretend are slow-moving zombies in an Xbox game designed for violent teens with 666 tattooed on their […]
Over thirty years ago, when Will Sipsey and Lisa Gray were living in Brighton, Mass., Lisa shared with Will a book she had brought home from the used bookstore in Cambridge where she worked: A dusty and dog-eared copy of everyone’s favorite page-turning bestseller, “Robert’s Rules of Order.” If you’re young and in love – […]
Tomorrow night when Lincoln, Vermont gathers in Burnham Hall for Town Meeting, the big elephant in the room will be whether our school systems have let us down by creating a generation of adults who write only in CAPITAL LETTERS. Or in bold face. Or by underlining EVERYTHING. Or – most egregious of all – […]
