* A Guy Who Makes a Stink (Today's Letter in Valley News)

Yours truly, proudly photographed shovel-in-hand six years ago after digging up my septic tank by hand at age 62.

* POOP, NUKE , and HECK: The 3 UN-Campaign PKvermonter YouTube Videos

* Baby-Face with Elvis Hair ! :" Let's ditch the Prom . . ."

I just discovered my Prom picture 

half a century later !  

Who is the hunk with the baby face and the Elvis hair?


I love to tell this story:  
My Prom date, who was (shall we say) much more "worldly" than I, and owned her own, brand new 1962 Bonneville convertible, said to me when I arrived at her house to pick her up in my father's Dodge Lancer, 

"Let's ditch the Prom and go to the back seat of my car."

She scared this country boy half to death !!  

(Although I do notice in this picture that the gleam hasn't gone completely out of my eye.)

1961 Dodge Lancer

Junior Prom, 1962

1962 Pontiac Bonneville Convertible

*Bad News for the UN-Campaign of Cranky Yankee?

(Update: I'm puzzled.

In the two hours since this post was published, its had 93 VIEWS but zero VIRAL views .

What does this mean?  

Am I supposed to be doing something I am not doing?  

I do NOT understand.

I need your advice and/or digital assistance.)

Are these Stats from Facebook representative of the Generation Gap ?

My lowest number of daily views is 812.  

My highest daily views 3,706.  

Yesterday was over 1,100 views!

But my next door neighbor, 

in his forties and of voting age, 

has never heard of 

my Facebook page!

Is my digital audience actually an audience of NON-voters?

If so, how can WE 

(all of my viewers and myself) 

get my Facebook page in front of 

ACTUAL voters?

Please Help.

PK

* Letter to Mr. Collea: Why I Won't Stand Outside Hartford High on November 6th

To:

Mr. Joseph Collea, Principal

Hartford High School

From:

Paul Keane,

Independent Candidate for the Vermont Legislature

Date:

September 20, 2012

Subject:

Election Day Polling Place

cc:

Mr. Riesburg

Mr. DeBalsi

Mr. Fogg

Mr. Heavisides

Mr. Frank

Mr. Franzoni

Mr. Christie

Mr. DeFelice

Ms. Vowinkel

Blind copies:(  )

Hi Joe,

Nice to see you at the joint meeting of the Boards the other night at the Getaway.

In answer to your question “Will you be standing outside on election day?”

let me say I’ve fretted about that.

I stopped in to the Town Clerk’s Office and they told me that a candidate can ONLY stand in the designated area ( ironically in the grassy area 20 feet outside Rm. B107, the room in which I taught for over two decades) and that if the candidate enters the school even to use the bathroom he/she must wear no campaign signs or buttons and speak no words about the campaign. 

The school  has become The Polling Place on that day and it cannot be violated with campaigning, except in the one designated area mentioned above.

Even if school were not in session, this presents a problem for me that other candidates do not have. 

As a recently retired teacher, all it would take is one student yelling out a window or one team member yelling out of the locker room “Go Keane” or “Vote Keane” to violate the Polling Place and put other candidates at a disadvantage.

Therefore my answer is: NO

I will not stand outside the High School with other candidates on election day.

This fits my campaign promise.

I will use ONLY social media:  No media interviews, no debates, no arm twisting, no back slapping, no glad handing, no baby kissing, no donations accepted, no money spent, no dehumanizing, impersonal, bubble-sheet surveys filled out, etc.

I will however stand on the crossroad berm for a rush-hour now and then the week before election in the center of town waving a sign and my dog Nemo’s pooper-scooper (see video below).

Those few hours of waving will be my entire campaign outside of the social media.

This is the first experiment of its kind as far as I know:  Can use of the social media alone win an election?

If it can’t, so be it.

Best wishes,

Paul

Paul D. Keane

(HHS, Ret.)

M.A., M.Div., M.Ed.

* Brava to Ms. Vowinkel who snubbed the Big City Paper: Too "Busy in the Garden" to talk to the New York Times!

L-R: Kevin Christie, Democrat; Paul Keane, Independent;
Sheila Vowinkel, Democrat; Alex DeFelice, Republican, chatting prior to a joint meeting of the Hartford Select Board and the Hartford School Board at the Getaway Cafe at Hartford High School, September 12, 2012

   I May Vote for Vowinkel,
 a candidate 
with 
Moxy!

You know, you get to vote for TWO of the above candidates in the election. I actually have voted for Mr. Christie in prior elections and for Mr. DeFelice for Select Board.

But I did not know Ms. Vowinkel until I met her at the joint Select/School Board meeting the other night, even though I had both of her children, Alex and Emily,  in class a decade ago. (They use her husband's name, so I can be forgiven my mistake.)

 I was sitting next to Ms. Vowinkel  in the audience and she was sitting next to the Valley News reporter, when Ms. Vowinkel mentioned that the New York Times had called for an interview and SHE "TURNED THEM DOWN"  ! 

"Tell them I'm busy in the garden" she told her  husband, Peter Tenenbaum, when he shouted out the phone message to her in the dooryard.

That's the best story of the campaign, in my opinion.

It belongs on the front page of the Valley News  : "Vermont Candidate Snubs New York Times" 

I may vote for her JUST FOR THAT ! 

 I admire moxy.

You can guess the name of  the other candidate I definitely will vote for on election day. 

His initials are "PK".



PS

I mentioned the snub to Valley News reporter but it didn't register as a worthwhile story I guess when the reporter got back to headquarters.  

So I'm printing it myself here.  

This blog has had 3,000 page views.

* Mitt Romney Loaned Me His Dog !

(This photo is for my pal, Scout.)

* Parents Challenged to Revolt Across America !

America's School Boards:

Look into Your Hearts
and 
Weep in Shame

I have never used my Yale Divinity School degree in the last 32 years since it was awarded in 1980, except at funerals and weddings.

I thought I would go to my grave having not found a "cause"  which needed  that degree.

And now that "cause" is clear to me after retiring from twenty-five years as a Vermont public school teacher:

      Children, especially “late bloomers” like myself,  who are being harmed by the cruelty of “standardized testing” need a champion, one whose credentials are not intimidated by the phonies  who run the U.S. Department of Education’s  “Race to the Top”, which tramples on those children every time it forces those kids to take a standardized test and has the unmitigated gall to compare, analyze and publish  those kids and their “so called “achievements”  with other kids around the nation of the same age and grade level who take the test.

* Hold Your Nose and Vote !

Letter to the Editor

The Valley News

Word count:  227

Dear Editor:

I’ve been having  a lot of fun running my NON-campaign as an Independent from Hartford for the Vermont House. I never intended to do this. The idea just came to me out of the blue. I’ve spent a total of $17.35 to date. And my facebook page and blog at google’s  “pkvermonter” (one word) have had thousands of views, at absolutely ZERO cost to the taxpayers.

One friend of mine (well, he may not be a friend any more) told me “You have managed to offend just about everybody since you announced you were a candidate”.  And then he rattled them off: Married people, divorced people, divorce lawyers, gay people, educators, school boards, bubble-chart-test makers, the governor, the legislature, the state board of education, Washington bureaucrats, Obama, Romney---and on and on.

That’s me.

I’m the kinda guy who makes a stink. 

If you are unwise enough to vote for me (and I sincerely hope you ARE), you may have to hold your nose when you do so.

Here is the date to remember: The Wednesday before election October 31^st, deadline to register to vote at the Town Clerk’s office,  171 Bridge Street.

After that, you’re out.

Good luck to all the Hartford candidates on November 6.  May the sweetest smelling win, lose, or draw.

Paul D. Keane

Independent Candidate for the Vermont House

* American Parents Unite ! Revolt Against Your School Board

BOOOST

Better Opt-Out of Standardized Testing

* Eight Words from a Mother that Changed My Life Forever

My mother and baby brother in 1947.

In a previous post, I paid homage to my own mother and her inspirational effect on my average life as a student, which was always hindered by my poor performance on tests.  I was a ‘late bloomer’ and “as every mother knows, you cannot rush a rose.” Link http://pkvermonter.blogspot.com/2012/08/rose-is-rose-is-rose-is-rose-not.html

Now I want to pay homage to another mother, who shall remain anonymous, who, in eight words, changed forever my life as a teacher over twenty years ago.

Allow me to explain.

Twenty or more years ago, her son was my student in my eleventh grade English class.  He was often late but always made up his work in the required time.  He could be unpleasant , but that is often a teen-age characteristic, and I accept it as a given of growing up.

 When it came time to average his final grade, it came out to an 89.5(in other words, a B + for the marking period).

 This was before the days of computer grading and all “rounding-up” of grades was at the discretion of the teacher, not at the discretion of the machine. 

I had promised myself  and my students that if their final average was a plus .5% , I would push it over to the next full number, in this case a 90, or an A-.

Now I have a confession to make.

I am a stickler for attendance. I didn’t like the fact that he was absent or tardy once or twice every week.

 I re-calculated his average just to make sure it wasn’t an 89.4, in which case I would leave it a B+. 

Every time in came out 89.5, so I pushed it over. 

It went on his report card as an A-. 

I did it because I had given my word to myself and my students and I wanted to keep my word. 

I did not do it out of joy.

And now, the eight words that changed my life, as a teacher -----  and as a human being.

A month later, this student was killed in a tragic accident.

I attended the funeral, a bit heartsick.

Going through the receiving line, I introduced myself to his grieving mother as her son’s “English teacher.”  She shook my hand and I continued on, waiting my turn to approach the casket. 

As I stood in front of the casket, gazing down mouthing a silent prayer, I felt a gentle tug at my sleeve. 

His mother had left the receiving line and joined me .

We both gazed at her son’s lifeless body, and then she looked at me and said these  heart rending words: “It was the only ‘A’ he ever got.”

The blood drained from my face, as I realized that I could have denied this mother and son that moment of joy had I been a stingy, number-crunching, teacher.

Never again would I trespass on the possibility of denying a child and his/her parents that joy.

I will go to my own grave with that mother’s words ringing in my ears.

I am a better human being for having heard them.

“It was the only ‘A’ he ever got.”

Paul D. Keane,

M.A., M.Div., M.Ed.

Retired English teacher

* From my heart to you.

PLEASE PASS THIS POST TO EVERY HARTFORD RESIDENT YOU KNOW.

I want to speak from my heart to my young supporters. 

Since this facebook page opened three months ago, the lowest daily number of views has been 837, and the highest has been 3,776.

I am really touched by your interest and support. 

Thank you.

As Bill Clinton said yesterday about Barack Obama, "All the support in the world won’t amount to a hill of beans, unless you REGISTER to vote."

If you have already registered (you must be 18 or older) you don’t have to do it again.

If you have not registered, the DEADLINE at the Hartford Town Clerk is the Wednesday in the week BEFORE election,  that is Wednesday, October 31st.  

(171 Bridge Street).

Bring your driver’s license.

If you want me to win, you have to vote for me. And you can’t do that if you are not registered.

Enough said?

Thank you again for your amazing support on facebook.

BTW—my blog, The Cranky Yankee, http://pkvermonter.blogspot.com/ has also had a weekly total of 2889.

Amazing.

Your grateful former teacher and fellow citizen,

PK

* The Four Excellent Candidates for Two of Hartford's Seats in the Vermont House of Representatives

Best Wishes 

to all of the Candidates 

on Election Day

L-R: Kevin Christie, Democrat; Paul Keane, Independent;
Sheila Vowinkel, Democrat; Alex DeFelice, Republican, chatting prior to a joint meeting of the Hartford Select Board and the Hartford School Board at the Getaway Cafe at Hartford High School, September 12, 2012

Mr. Martin Frank

Editorial Page Editor

The Valley News

Dear Mr. Frank,

I am reluctant to criticize the Valley News.  It has been very kind to me over the last 27 years, publishing my letters to the editor. It certainly was kind to me earlier this year by putting my bid for the legislature as an Independent candidate on its front page.

Who wouldn’t want to keep in your good graces.

Only a fool would spurn you.

Yet I must say, I was nonplussed yesterday when Mr. Gregg , your news editor, declined my invitation to send a photographer to the combined Hartford School and Select Boards' meeting last night.

I told him that this was probably the ONLY time during the election that all four candidates from Hartford for the legislature  would be in the same room together and  I thought it would make a good photo. He said something like “We will be contacting all the candidates as the campaign gets under way.”

This is an odd point of a view for a newspaper to espouse. 

It amounts to “We will let YOU know when WE are ready to record news about the election campaign. We’ll get back to you.”

Really.

At the risk of incurring your displeasure, let me say that social media will obviate the necessity for news organizations which presume to “make” the news, instead of “reporting” the news. Indeed, they are already in the process of subverting the paper media.

Never discouraged, I  arranged to have the photo taken myself  instead of by the absent Valley News photographer, taken with my own camera by our Town Manager, Hunter Riesberg.

I posted the result on my facebook page Paul Keane, Independent (3776 views during a one week period) and my blog The Cranky Yankee (2889 page views). http://pkvermonter.blogspot.com

I mentioned to Valley News reporter Maggie Cassidy who sat near me  my displeasure at my declined invitation by Mr. Gregg.

She did not seem moved. 

Nor did she seem moved by what was manifestly a lively sparring match  over  the joint boards’ proposed  agenda which I warned  the audience may be a capitulation to city-values  over small town Vermont values.  It was, incidentally,  a sparring match between myself and  the current legislative representative, Mr. Christie, who, as School Board Chair, found it difficult  --- nay inconvenient --- to find time for questions from the public, if the public was the Independent candidate for the same seat he currently holds in the legislature. (I suppose that is not news either. Do please let me know when the Valley News is ready to receive some.)

On my third interruption, he somehow managed to squeeze me in.

I suppose this criticism of the Valley News'  cafeteria style news reporting (or photography, in this case) is unwelcome . 

Who likes to be criticized?

And I suppose it puts in jeopardy the publication of the letter I wrote to the editor three weeks ago in tribute to my departed mother which challenges parents across America to revolt against school boards who damage our children’s self esteem and self image by promoting standardized testing.

You have the power to disregard, delay, or diminish that letter.

I have the power to go my own way  ----- a path I know well.

Yours respectfully,

Paul D. Keane

Independent Candidate

for the Vermont House.

* Look what I found on Google Images !

* (DIC) The Data-Industrial-Complex: Bubble Sheet Mentality at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center Headquarters

On Fri, Aug 31, 2012 at 5:04 PM, Paul Keane

   Dr. James N. Weinstein, MD
   CEO and President
   Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center

Dear Dr. Weinstein,

Thanks for your cordial reply. The professionals at DHMC saved my life, so I am a bit touchy about making sure they have enough breathing room to do their job. 

In the drive for efficiency and its measurement, we may suck the oxygen out of the examination room.

Recall the  Chinese farmer who was so anxious to see his rice plants grow that he pulled them up every day to measure their roots.

Best wishes,

Paul

Paul D. Keane

   M.A., M.Div., M.Ed.
   Independent Candidate for the Vermont House

On Fri, Aug 31, 2012 at 2:50 PM, Jim Weinstein, CEO and President wrote:

Good Afternoon Mr. Keane,

I wanted to reply to your thoughtful email to thank you for expressing your gratitude to your care providers and for your overall satisfaction of care for twenty plus years at Dartmouth Hitchcock!  I have been at D-H for 16 years and I believe it to be an outstanding academic medical center and I am proud to work with such skilled and professional colleagues.

I also sincerely appreciate your comments and criticism about the questionnaire.  As leader of D-H, one of my main goals is to improve the quality of care we provide. We rely on feedback from our patients to improve our care and processes.  I want to apologize for any  inconvenience and negative perception this has produced.

Thanks again for taking the time to communicate.

Sincerely,

Jim

Dr. James N. Weinstein

CEO and President

A Culture of Caring

From: Paul Keane
Sent: Friday, August 31, 2012 9:25 AM

Subject: "Your Request for Feedback"

To:

Dr. James N. Weinstein, MD,

President and CEO

Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center

Lebanon, NH

cc:

Dr. Edward Catherwood, MD

Dr. Beach Conger, MD

Dr. John Seigne, MD

Dr. Vernon Pais, MD

Dr. M. Shane Chapman, MD

Dear Dr. Weinstein,

As I do not operate behind people’s backs, I am sending courtesy copies here to the fine physicians at DHMC who have kept me alive and percolating for the last four years, subsequent to the removal of half a kidney for cancer.

Yesterday I received a survey from Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, or its software surrogate, asking me to comment on my recent experience with an MD whose name was typed into an empty space on the mass-produced bubble sheet I was expected to fill-in.

Simultaneously, I  received yesterday a candidate survey from an association of labor unions called “Working Vermont,” since I am an Independent candidate for the Vermont legislature, a survey seeking to know my opinions about labor matters.

I am sorry to disappoint you and the labor unions, but on principle, I do not surrender my thinking capacity to the words and choices of others.

Surveys and bubble sheets demean human dignity and I will not participate in their use.

 As a recently retired Vermont public school teacher, I was always ashamed during my twenty-five years of teaching, every time I was required by the “higher-ups” to participate in administering such bubble sheet exercises to children. I believe they actively harm children’s self esteem and self image, just as I believe such bubble sheet evaluations harm doctors’ self esteem and self image and the very status of the medical profession itself.

Need I say that doctors are professionals, not products?

Their science approaches an art, it is not a service to be advertised. (“89% of all DHMC physicians meet their patients on time and treat them within a 20 minute period”)

It is disgraceful to diminish their dignity and their image to the general public by asking that public to tangle itself up in the flypaper of trivialities and inconsequentialities which I found enumerated in your software company’s “survey”.

Particularly galling was this question: “How well were you kept informed regarding any wait you experienced? : Poor/Fair/Good/Very Good/ Excellent/ Don’t know.” [“Good?”  I was informed “good” ?!  Come now, really. UGH],

Not only are the choices imbecilic and ungrammatical, but the process of a bubble-sheet-survey diminishes the very profession of medicine and the institution of  Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center itself, (which purports to have authored or approved the survey) by luring unsuspecting patients into the false belief that they should be evaluating their physician.

Despite having spent 17 years in college and acquiring four degrees, I am in no position to evaluate a physician on anything at all (except his or her  hair style), especially whether he/she is on time, or whether he/she had the staff  inform me “good” about the exact nature of  and reasons for my wait.

I was born in 1944 and I was raised to believe that it was natural, expected, and  even LAUDABLE, for the doctor to be late for his/her appointments, because he/she was giving another patient the care the patient needed.

I consider it a mark of my doctor’s competence if he is late. 

He is CARING for another patient, in exactly the same way I want him to CARE for ME, with whatever amount of time it may take-------- not a twenty-minute medical encounter, recorded on a bubble sheet and evaluated by a mindless computer, aggregated by an administrator and advertised to the public.

My doctor is caring for his patients with his mind and his heart, not with a twenty-minute medical tidbit.

That’s what I want and what I expect. (Be as late as you want, good doctor.)

I suppose you feel  I do not understand your imperatives as the chief executive officer of a vast Ivy League Hospital, even though I was born in one (Yale/New Haven Hospital, then called Grace/New Haven) and participated in a project with them in 1982-4 while a student at Yale Divinity School, a project on AIDS which wound up on “60 Minutes.”  http://aidsatyale.blogspot.com/

I suppose that some remote accrediting or government or private funding source is badgering  you to survey your patients, record their “feedback,”  analyze that feedback and demonstrate that you have used that analysis to improve your “outputs,” and meet expected “benchmarks,”-------that is if you want to gain accreditation or government funds.

And of course all this procedure must be accomplished through digital programs, feeding the insatiable Data-Industrial-Complex , which grows more grotesquely obese every year. (One wonders if it will suffer a debilitating cerebral accident soon.)

Well, I do understand.----- I  understand all too well.

You, and the rest of  the “21^st century” professions, are trapped in the exponential expansion of Data which society almost worships in a mindless idolatry.

Enough.

I don’t want to leave you on a sour note. 

So let me say that as a twenty-plus year patient at DHMC (formerly Mary Hitchcock) I am totally satisfied with your service. 

Indeed two of your brilliant physicians saved my life four years ago and did so with great sensitivity to my needs.  Every physician I have had the good fortune to encounter at DHMC in these two decades has treated me with respect and dignity.

They have cared for me with both mind and heart.  (I am beginning to wonder how they managed it, when they are caught up in the mind-numbing hospital administrivia I found in my mailbox today.)

I would be happy to write a personal recommendation for any or all of them should they so desire, in English sentences, with a signature. 

But I will not bubble-wrap them in the suffocating data your office desires.

Let the doctors alone. Let them practice medicine. “Do no harm [ to them ! ]”

I do not regret at all refusing to add more bureaucratic flypaper to their lives by declining to engage this survey .

It would demean them and dehumanize me.

Yours sincerely,

Paul D. Keane

M.A., M.Div., M.Ed.

Independent Candidate for the Vermont House