Help a gadfly sharpen his saw

I'm much better at observing what people do when they're already in office than talking to them about their plans if they make it.  To that end, I would like the help of my readers in interviewing candidates for the 2011 village elections.

Please tell me what issues you're going to be most interested in hearing about in the coming months.  I will take those data and create a poll so I can get a sense of the priorities of this particular slice of the community.  This will allow me to be consistent as I write about the candidates (which I plan on doing whether or not they talk to me directly), and it will also allow me to make sure I focus on the topics which others find relevant.

A reminder:  anonymous comments are permitted, and all comments are moderated.  If you would prefer your comment not be published, make a note of that in the comment itself and I will honor that request for this post.

New look for the Gadfly

Longtime readers will remember some unfinished business about sprucing up the look of the Gadfly.  The contest itself was not well-attended at first, but after a second call two of this blog's three readers submitted entries.  Choosing a winner was unfortunately sidelined by my attempts at journalism (which are overdue an explanation), but Google just added a bunch of new features and layouts which kicked the idea back into the light of day.

John Bligh contributed the winning design, and even updated it after he saw the new blog layout.  Fill in your own symbolism in the space below:

The new girl in town

Hello New Paltzians!

I'm Maria (Davila), and the newest Gadfly. I'm pretty amped about it. In January 2010, I celebrated my three year anniversary of living in New Paltz. However, I celebrated by moving to Gardiner. I find myself overly involved in the politics of New Paltz, and involved just the right amount in random community goings-on. I'm a Senior at SUNY New Paltz, Majoring in Political Science (concentrating in Political Theory) and Minoring in Environmental Studies. You'll see a lot of the philosophical influence in my posts. Once I graduate in May, I'm going to stay in Gardiner, and work in my field.

I consider myself centrist. This means that when it comes to local issues, I'm likely to examine all sides (the left AND the right), and play devil's advocate. Chances are, that means every reader will love me AND hate me at different points in our strange internet relationship. It's a roller coaster, baby!

I'm looking forward to engaging in my civic duty here at Gadfly. See you all in the blogosphere!

Gadflies on the horizon

I've been speaking with two potential new Gadflies, and may have gotten them both to agree and start posting within a week's time if all goes well.

New Gadflies mean new perspectives, and maybe even new issues discussed. The New Paltz Gadfly needs a diversity of bloggers in order to properly question all sides of issues relating to this community.

As a reminder, the basic standards for becoming a Gadfly are as follows:

1. Decent command of written English.
2. Ability to focus on an issue, rather than individuals.
3. Disagree with me about something of interest (lest I inadvertently recruit a bunch of yes-bloggers.)
4. Willingness to blog under your real name.
5. Desire to blog about issues affecting New Paltz.
6. Not being a jerk.
7. Basic technical knowledge: if you have never commented here because you can't figure out how, then posting will only be more frustrating for all of us. Letters to the editor may be your best course of action (and more people will read them anyway).
   

Feel free to comment here or otherwise contact Terence to apply!

Did somebody swat the Gadfly?

Over a month without any new posts . . . what gives? Well, life happened to both of us. If we could get more intelligent-yet-somewhat-polite people to participate we could prevent such sad little gaps, but blogging is apparently not a participatory sport for most of the residents of Die Pfalz, so we'll make do.

Some quick updates:

• The contest response was underwhelming - one and a half entries. Thank you to the person who submitted a complete entry! Having the community review a single entry is just plain silly, so I'll probably just show it to kT and we'll decide if we like it or not. Again, if there's a particular type of prize that would be motivational, please let us know - but if you do, you'd darn well better submit an entry if we agree to it!
• I've been avoiding committing to any political candidates yet, because I want to know who's running and make as informed a decision as I can. My biggest personal criterion is transparency in government, which means that incumbents with a track record for secrecy are going to have a harder time impressing me that untried candidates who have no such baggage. I'm sure kT has different criteria than I do, and if either of us endorse any candidates here it will not be a collective endorsement unless we say so. I kinda hope we disagree - the whole point of this blog is to get different New Paltz viewpoints represented.
• The free pool experiment continues.
• Woodland Pond will be the subject of a special Village Planning Board meeting on August 24. They want to change some of the requirements for getting a certificate of occupancy.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head.

Contest Extension

We've only gotten one-and-a-half entries to the banner contest for the Gadfly blog, so it will be extended. Please feel free to comment here if you have an idea for a more exciting prize that might appeal to graphic artists. I know I can specifically ask some (Matt Maley and Bill Mulcahy come to mind), but I'd rather just seek help in advertising the contest and getting entries.

Contest will continue until, oh, the rain stops for three days in a row. No, that's horrible, just kidding, let's push it out through July or until we get give entries, whichever comes first.

Graphic Gadfly Goodness!

It's time for this blog to look a little more like New Paltz.

It's time for this blog to find a way to allow people who don't prefer writing to express gadflyish views.

So, we're having a contest to design a banner for the New Paltz Gadfly. Here are the rules:

1. The banner should be appropriately sized to look good replacing the text at the top of the page. I can't give you the specifics, which is one of the reasons why we're having a contest in the first place.
2. The graphic should include "New Paltz Gadfly" in it.
3. Don't include anything that will become dated quickly, such as the names or images of current elected officials. Try to make a design that will make as much sense in ten years as it does now.
4. If you submit a design, you agree to allow your submission to be used on, and elsewhere for the promotion of, this blog.
5. Entries will be posted without entrant names so that readers may comment. Anonymous comments won't be permitted on those posts.
6. The winner's name and entry will be announced after the contest ends. The names of the other entrants will be added to their entries at this time, if and only if they agree.
7. Contest entries must be emailed in png, gif, or jpg format to terence@terencepward.com no later than June 30, 2009.

And prizes?
Acclamation, acclamation, and more acclamation. If you have an idea for a prize that you would want, send it along with the entry. If it's doable, your prize may just be the prize, even if you don't win!

On identifying blog post authors

I have had two people express to me that they have difficulty figuring out who has written a particular blog post.  The way the free and easy layouts on Blogger work, the poster's identity is always listed at the end, like it is done in a number of newspapers.  It's located just below the post text, along with the labels, date and time of the post.  It's a little bit smaller than the post's text, and is preceded by the words "posted by" and a colon.  I changed the text color so it's a bit darker, but any other changes would involve me spending far more time on this volunteer exercise than I have available.

If you happen to be good at CSS already, I'd be happy to let you take a crack at it, but honestly I don't think it's such a challenge to look at the bottom of the post to see who wrote it.  You have to do the same thing with the New Paltz Times, and although that paper has gotten many complaints from many people, I've never heard anyone grump about the location of the byline.

I have hopes that this blog will grow in diversity so that it can't be easily located on a political map, and if that happens the number of writers will be larger.  So far no confirmed Libertarians, Right to Lifers, Anarchists, Communists, or Rosicrucians have stepped up to the plate, but if you're consistently intelligent and civil and disagree with me more than a third of the time I'd like to talk to you.

Meet the Gadflies

New Paltz Gadfly isn't intended to be a solo operation - anyone who fits the requirements is permitted to throw their two cents in! Here's a list of contributors to the blog:

Terence P Ward is a freelance writer who has been slowly revising his personal history, and expects to have been born in New Paltz by 2015. Right now he's claiming to have lived here for twenty years. His user picture reflects a time when he had short hair, something he misses more and more as he tries to create a donation for Locks of Love.

KT Tobin Flusser is Chair of the Save the Middle School and is a close watcher of the New Paltz Board of Education. She is on the steering committee for New Paltz GreenWorks and has more initials than anyone else in New Paltz. KT is a doctoral candidate in Sociology at SUNY Albany, her dissertation topic is women in politics in Ulster County.

The New Paltz Gadfly seeks to be a blog that brings in views from a number of different New Paltz perspectives. Among those that have been invited to participate but have not yet done so are Butch Dener, Rachel Lagodka, Ira Margolis, and Mike Cerasaro.

Want to be a gadfly? It's easier than you think to do! There are a few simple rules you have to agree to follow:

1. You must live in New Paltz.
2. Your posts must relate to New Paltz.
3. You have to post under your real name. We're all neighbors here, and the New Paltz Gadfly isn't a forum for anonymous personal attacks. Take responsibility for your words.
4. The administrator reserves the right to delete posts that are out of bounds of good taste, which will like involve excessive profanity, unadulterated hate speech, and flat-out libel.
   

Think you fit the bill? Then get yourself a blogger account and slap a comment onto this post. You'll be up and complaining in no time.