I will not be jetlagged, or silent.

Landed in the wee hours of the morning, here in Amsterdam. And since it’s October, it stays nice and dark until at least 7am, so I just pretended it was night time and I had a meal, read some blogs, and unpacked. – Which explains why I woke up in the middle of the afternoon.

On the flight over I had a chance to catch up with podcasts, mainstream and alternative. One of the podcasts that made me gag and foam at the mouth was, as usual, Meet the Press. They had a senate candidate debate between two Ohio politicians. Now I know I’m a broken record on this subject, but I cannot and will not remain silent when I see and hear fraud, hypocracy, and distraction disguised as an election.

These two candidates are the same. That is clear from the basic fact that they spend alot of time and energy trying to prove that they are not the same. Hard work when you’re both warmongering, wealthy, and puppets of two parties that share a common goal: having power and pleasing the powerful.

To some extent I blame Meet the Press for giving this a stage and pretending there is a debate to be had. Tim Russert should have spent his time exposing both men for being poorly informed on international affairs and completely vague about their domestic agenda.

I turned off the interview after 20 minutes and somewhat appropriately, selected the film “American Dreamz”.

bm157 The Mayor of Bogota, His Profile and Policies

In the third installment of the series on global mayors, we turn to Bogota, Colombia. The city is run by the man they call Lucho, and with help from a guest in Bogota, we will learn who this mayor is, what he is doing for the city, and what he isn’t doing. And perhaps — why?

More info on Lucho

 

Torture Museum USA

During a conversation with an old friend at William PAterson U today, I was telling her about Amsterdam’s torture museum. Suddenly it just came to me, I said to her: “I guess soon the US will have lots of torture museums as well.” And I laughed. She looked unpleased, and said — I know.

On that note, my flight leaves in 12 hours. So Ill sleep, pack, take one more spin around this one horse town, stopping off to give a big hug to the owner of my favorite cafe. then its back to Amsterdam and back to real pod-journalism and world news commentary.

bmtv21 Citizen Journalists in Asbury Park


Being the citizen journalists that we are, two associates and I headed to Asbury Park, New JErsey this week. A very unique city, with a very sad story. This vlog is an attempt to capture some of what it looks like today and what is happening that will effect the future.

Because He Can

I crossed 5th Av. as quickly as possible and headed towards the car that had just pulled over to pick me up. Out popped the great Tony Pierce, who just happened to be passing through NYC on the same day I was visiting the Trippist people. I glanced at the California plates and took note of the sirius satellite radio, and off we drove towards Union Square.

We walked the streets and caught up on what each of us has been up to. In his case, driving across the United States. I couldn’t remember, though I’m a loyal reader of the busblog, why he was making this trip. When asked, his response was simple: “Because I can.” He even tried to convince me to delay my return to Amsterdam and drive down to DC with him. Tempting, but I’m falling way too behind on my life in Holland to delay my return this coming week.

Manhattan is just as it always was. Which at some level amazes me; so many cities are heavily pursuing traffic limits, congestion charges, car-free neighborhoods and pedestrian centers. New York City still lets any clown drive his or her jalopy right into its heart. Somehow the streets don’t completely clog like Dick Cheney’s arteries… allowing for some traffic to flow in between very long pauses and holdups.

We passed by the Voice but didn’t go in. Went by Yaffa but didn’t stop to eat. Looked towards Washington Square but didn’t stop to sit. It was and has been my whirlwind visit, and as usual I’m not doing half the things I intended to do.

A New Jersey Company Town

Yesterday afternoon, as part of our two- day exploration of south jersey, NoCoins, Leah and myself set off in search of a village called Whitesbog, where cranberries and blueberries were historically (and presently) grown.

For those who haven’t been taught much about this fair state where I was born, the South of New Jersey has a large area of Pine Barrens, where there are a plethora of state parks. The Whitesbog village is located in Lebanon State Forest, strangely renamed the Brendan T. Byrne state forest, but Im just going to keep calling it Lebanon because I think its a more beautiful name.

So I had a general idea where to drive to, and after an hour or so of riding in circles through narrow roads between the pine forests, we suddenly came upon the little sign for Whitesbog Village. From there, a very skinny and bumpy road, which passed several fields of what I assume were blueberries, eventually came to a clearing and a whole series of houses which looked very 1800’s. Even stranger was the fact that no one was around; each house was closed up and perfectly silent, as if everyone had fled the town and left it for accidental tourists like us to discover.

We managed to find a map on a rickety bulletin board, and decided to walk the village in search of strange buildings and eventually – blueberry fields. Apparently it is Maine that produces the most blueberries in north america, 25% of all blueberries to be exact. In Europe it is France and Austria that grow the most. New Jersey, meanwhile, comes in just behind Maine, along with a few other states, as a major producer of high-bush blueberries.

As lovely as it was, to walk around what seemed to be a ghost town and among the wild blueberry bushes, it was also extremely erie. NoCoins talked about how it was mostly Italian workers, who were hired from South Philly as seasonal workers, who lived in these little bungalows in the middle of nowhere. He talked about how they would be paid with credit and then use this credit to purchase food and goods from the company store, a pseudo slavery, in many ways.

I kept thinking of those Italian workers, as we snapped photo after photo. What happened to them. How terrible or wonderful was their time in this village? And what of their children and children’s children?

Seemed like alot of sacrafices were required, so that people could have their berries.