GilfordGrok

Updated - in a number of places 

But most of all:

"And when do we get to be on the radio show? A.O."

Listen to Alec O'Meara of the Gilford Steamer as he is on "Meet The New Press" this Saturday!  While Pat and I are in Manchester, I'm quite sure the Doug will have plenty to talk about with Alec.

Hey, Alec is becoming a Grokster! 

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A work in process, this post is.....after all, we have to work for a living. 

From our Policies page, the words about returning emails could stand in well here in answering Mr. O'Meara:

...Since we have lives outside of the blogosphere and are married to other people and not this blog, emails may go unanswered....

Time is fleeting, and at least for me, I am just at about capacity (maybe a tad above).  Lately, life has been a rush of activity on a number of fronts - we do have lives outside of both 'Groks!'

From the Gilford Steamer:

We're starting to wonder what a newspaper has to do to get itself "Grokked" here,

 And yes, Alec, we do love that word 'Grokked"!  Thanks for coining it for use here in Gilford (as opposed to its real meaning in the book "Stranger in a Strange Land" by one of science fiction's greatest writers, Robert Heinlen.

after three consecutive papers with front page stories or editorials meant to further the discussion on some of the Budget Committee's favorite topics, town-by-town comparison studies, the football program, and the importance of the committee itself. Each week, we've waited each Friday and Monday to see if we'll get a response to what we feel are some pretty interesting points. So far? No mention.

Trust me, not from lack of desire!  As this post starts out, we do have to work for a living, sometimes long hours to boot.  And the BudComm has taken MUCH time. 

A front-page story that directly refers to Skip Murphy's "32 town" study from this past fall ran three weeks ago. No Grok, which was odd to us since the piece could have been interpreted to have shown that Gilford taxes are either favorable or unfavorable depending on your point of view. We thought something like that would have been right up the Grok's alley.

First, let us not forget that it was not the "Skip Murphy" report - it was commissioned by the Chair of the Budget Committee to an officially designated subcommittee tasked for this reason....this was not Skip Murphy deciding to spend oodles of time on a lark. 

Two weeks ago, we ran an editorial about the importance or significance of "keeping one's word," an issue that has been brought up in relation to the football issue in Gilford. There's been no Grok about that either, even though we specifically mentioned co-Grokker Doug Lambert by name. The only editorial response we got was a one-line feedback post on gilfordsteamer.com, which failed to clarify all issues.

Well, I think that if you had been at the BudComm meetings (I know, work constraints!  It gets us all that are not either retired or independently wealthy, or both), you would have heard a lot!  Your own paper had more than a few quotes, by the way....

Last week, we wrote an editorial about whether eliminating the Budget Committee would be good for the town, and concluded that fewer elected positions might offer stronger elections that would in turn better indicate voter opinion to all residents. This was a new point made on this particular debate, and you would think that it would deserve at least a nod from a site that looks to comment on all things Gilford, and yet, there was still no Grok.

If you click on the "about us" link at GilfordGrok.com the site says that site managers would "like to encourage discussion, especially if you disagree with us." Well, so do we.

So, we conclude our piece with the same sentence we began with: what does a newspaper have to do to get itself Grokked? And when do we get to be on the radio show? A.O.

Hey Alec!  Consider yourself Grokked (only kidding).  You must admit, the BudComm season has been rather hectic (hey, we miss seeing your smiling face!  Where have you been?), and that is just the meetings that are public - as I have said a number of times in this past season, it DOES take a lot of work to do the job right in between the meetings in studying the budgets.  Plus the work that goes into my submissions to you, plus a few other things that are "on the stove" lately (like "Meet The New Press" on WEMJ 1490AM, 2-4pm which is no small amount of time for prep work or processing the audio files for the podcasts).  Haven't heard it yet?  Click here and listen to those podcasts.  For example, take a listen to Congressman Tancredo on his Presidential run!

And most of all, family matters come before this all (although, sometimes it is too easy to cross that line).

Thus, the end of it all is - Alec, no time to respond........yet!

Yes, I will answer your front page missives in due course, but that will take a fair amount of time to do right, and that time has been taken up by other things.  Please be patient...trust me, there is a lot in town I'd like to write about, but we're only two schlubs in Central NH, right?

Oh, the radio?  Stick by your phone sir.....I have a feeling that it may be ringing soon.....