Some of our elected officials wonder few people ever speak up around here.
It’s simple: they owe their soul to the company store.
If you don’t go along, you don’t get business.
As Tennessee Ernie Ford sang in that old Merle Travis song:
Continue readingYou load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store
90-second movie trailers of local issues, tonight at 7PM, Bailey Auditorium, VSU, Valdosta, Lowndes County, GA. We sent in some submissions, and I hope you did, too; once we thought of them as trailers, it was pretty easy (by “we” I mean Gretchen”).
Desiree Carter, VDT, 22 Jan 2016,
Valdosta State showcases ‘Causes’,
“Causes” is a mini-festival created by Dr. Matthew Richard in the anthropology department of Valdosta State University.
“I came up with this in 2008 when Facebook and YouTube were new,” said Richard. “It’s a neat way to challenge students and to show that things learned in class can be applied to real life.”
To Richard, this project embodies Continue reading
Anybody can enter; they’ve been reaching out to everybody.
90 seconds of video (or narration over stills)
on your favorite subject! PDF.
Dr. Matthew Richard says:
Causes 5 is Jan. 23, 2016 at 7 pm in Bailey Auditorium on campus! come one, come all!
-jsq
A “mini-film festival” celebrating what matters to you most
Have an issue that you’re passionate about?
Submit a 90-second mini-documentary about it; spread awareness about your cause and maybe win a cash pri3e!January 23, 2016
Deadline for film submissions is Continue reading
The VSU Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, 100 Black Men of Valdosta, and the Valdosta-Lowndes Metro Section of the National Council of Negro Women held a candidate forum at Mathis City Auditorum on October 6th 2015: here are LAKE videos.
The
the Valdosta Daily Times provided some background:
“Each candidate will be given three minutes to describe themselves, their platform and why they’re seeking their position,” [Valdosta City Council member Alvin] Payton said. “We will then allow two minutes for each candidate to answer a minimum of two questions from the floor. Some questions can be answered quicker than others. After those two minutes, each candidate will be given two minutes to wrap up their position.”
The forum will only involve candidates running for Valdosta City Council and the position of Valdosta mayor.
Below are links to the LAKE video each candidate forum section, followed by a video playlist. Continue reading
Update 2015-07-24: Hayden adds detail in comments on this article: Andy Thomas, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 23 July 2015, Valdosta State U. Will Pay $900,000 to Settle Student’s Free-Speech Lawsuit.
Finally!
Expelled for protesting a parking garage,
after VSU then-president Zaccari claimed a facebook collage was “threatening”.
If the powers that be around here want to be a metropolitan area,
maybe VSU should act like an institution of higher learning.
Then it wouldn’t have to pay settlements like this.
Katie Barrows, FIRE, 23 July 2015, Eight Years After Student’s Unjust Expulsion from Valdosta State U., $900K Settlement Ends ‘Barnes v. Zaccari’ Continue reading
According to a thesis at Georgia Southern, hospitals are the most likely
industry to form microgrids, and it’s not just
New York State doing microgrids; even Alabama has one.
South Georgia Medical Center plus VSU seems like a good microgrid opportunity.
Put solar panels on the roofs, buy some Tesla Powerwalls for backup,
experiment with some wind….
Maybe the Valdosta-Lowndes Development Authority could help.
And use the electricity bill money saved to fund public transportation!
Matthew S. Purser, Georgia Southern, Spring 2014, A Technical and Economic Feasibility Study of Implementing a Microgrid at Georgia Southern University. Continue reading
Students, staff, faculty, and administration all say divest from fossil fuels. What will the VSU Foundation do now? One year after the committee was appointed 10 April 2014, it made a decision 8 April 2015:
S.A.V.E. applauds the decision by the President’s Special Committee on Campus Sustainability to support fossil fuel divestment. Leadership and stewardship are part and parcel to Valdosta State’s role as an institution of higher education and we call on VSU to honor these ethos by divesting from fossil fuels, ending its profiteering from ecological harm, environmental destruction, and human suffering.
Benjamin Vieth, the representative of Students Against Violating the Environment (S.A.V.E.) on that Committee, sent the above announcement after approval by S.A.V.E. Among other organizations included on that committee, Continue reading
Some of this is happening locally: Valdosta is planting trees along Hill Avenue, Lowndes County is building Naylor Park with a boat ramp that will be part of the Alapaha River Water Trail and VLPRA has long been thinking about a blueway on the Withlacoochee River, where it already has a string of parks and ramps. Valdosta has the Azalea City Trail across several parks and VSU. Imagine if that Trail extended a little farther on each end, connecting the Withlacoochee River and the Alapaha River: a greenway between two blueways. Imagine if Lowndes County planted trees in that concrete median in Bemiss Road. Imagine a bus running down that parkway….
Janice Astbury, the nature of cities, 29 March 2015, Green Transport Routes Are Social-Cultural-Ecological Corridors,
…natural corridors do not appear on the standard online GPS systems that people increasingly use to plan their routes. In other cases, the path is suddenly interrupted by infrastructure hostile to pedestrians and cyclists. It is clear that green and active transport routes are an afterthought, an add-on, rather than a core part of the city’s transport strategy.
Local government should invest in developing and maintaining the natural connective tissue of the city. In the same way that significant investment is made in arterial roads because they are believed to serve everyone and to connect up vital places, so inviting connective green infrastructure should be supported. The canals, footpaths, and cycleways that provide routes for active transport should appear prominently on maps and signage. Whole systems should be indicated when possible, even when portions of them are currently inaccessible, in order to enhance system understanding, and to encourage thinking about connecting up fragmented corridors.
Few people complain when a county or city spends millions of dollars on Continue reading
The Sheriff’s office could use more space,
and VSU would like a research center downtown.
For context, videos of the other hearings, and the Committee’s report,
see
Courthouse Preservation Committee Meetings.
Stop the Sabal Trail pipeline to help fossil fuel divestment. WALB got the connection at VSU Thursday 11 February 2015.
Colter Anstaett, WALB, 12 February 2015, Lowndes environmental groups march through VSU,
“We’re using so much at a rate that, within our generation or our lifetime, there’s gonna be catastrophic changes that won’t be reversed,” SAVE President Adrianna Taylor….
Taylor also said she believed that if the university ultimately did divest from fossil fuels, it would show that VSU students have the ability to critically think at the same level as students at Stanford, Harvard, and Continue reading