In loving, living memory, John Melançon 1928 – 2007
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- To do
- Ted Rall, capitalist:
- Campaign season moratorium on old jokes
- On loss and life
- Media sexism needs to be addressed
- Replacing the system
- Clay Shirky: provide people the legal/practical benefits of incorporation without the rigidity/overhead (a PWGD goal)
- Greyhound complaints against the company moderated by praise of a driver
- Memo to Barack Obama: Subsidizing low-wage work is an inefficient anti-poverty program
- They may define you as a disease next
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Benjamin Maurice Melançon the First, A.D.H.D. variously known as BMM Inc., the Maurice Institute Library, and the godfather of CATSUP, is quite possibly a figment of his own imagination.
1928 – 2007
Tue, 2007/05/29 - 12:37am — Benjamin MelançonJohn C. Melançon, born circa 1928, lived a full life – of work, of solidarity, of travel, of love, of learning, but his death May 29 came too soon. He leaves his former wife Evelyn; three sons, Jakob Alfred, Benjamin Maurice, and Daniel Eugene; Daniel's wife Eva Marie, and two grandchildren by Eva and Daniel, Cassidy James and Xavier Elijah.
An orphan, John made his own living starting from a young age in New Orleans. He never went to school, let alone graduated high school or college. A lifelong student of life by reading and direct experience, his intelligence and depth and breadth of historical knowledge far surpassed that from any university education.
Before his marriage, John traveled and worked in other parts of the world, including Latin America, England, Europe, and Israel. With his wife and sons he traveled and camped through 47 of our 50 states.
He helped support his family as assistant manager of the Weston Golf Club, as owner of J&F Variety in downtown Natick, delivering pizza at Pizza Plus, and working receiving at Sears. Seriously physically compromised by emphysema in his last years, he kept a sharp eye on politics, and world affairs, and the Boston Celtics and Red Sox.
He considered the most meaningful part of his life, prior to his family, the time he spent in an intentional community in Georgia that supported the Southern civil rights movement as well as directly working with, and providing work for, the local poor white community.
A radical his entire life, he never accepted the inequality, racism, or unfairness of society, and never quite lost his belief in our ability to change the world.
Sometimes hidden, he had a deep and abiding love of humanity.
Ye Olde Front Page
These are links to the original content of this site. It will be slowly incorporated into the excellent open source free software content management system known as Drupal.
Note in particular that the "beMWeb makes web sites" link has been utterly superseded by the Agaric Design Collective (web development and graphic design).
Links: my best bookmarks.
beMWeb makes web sites.
CATSUP: Corporation for the Advancement of Totally Stupid and Useless Projects.
Library: books and knowledge at the Maurice Institute.
Publishing: BMM Publishing Company publishes original material.
Information about how to do things.
Issues: making the world better to live in.
Résumé: I’m ready for many things. Hire me.
Enterprises: divisions of Melançon Enterprises from BMM Labs to Obi-Wan Productions.
Benjamin Maurice Melançon am I, and vice versa
About this site: steal my style sheets and insult my design
Ted Rall, capitalist:
Wed, 2008/07/30 - 6:10pm — Benjamin Melançon"NEWS DOES NOT WANT TO BE FREE": Ted Rall, in his syndicated column that he posts free on his web site, quotes Chris Hedges: "Nearly all reporting--I would guess at least 80 percent--is done by newspapers and the wire services."
Rall goes on to write:
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Murder and Profit: Chiquita in Colombia
Wed, 2008/07/30 - 2:39pm — Benjamin MelançonThe massacres allowed them to take apart the systems of social assistance negotiated with the unions.
http://www.colectivodeabogados.org/article.php3?id_article=1364
Campaign season moratorium on old jokes
Sat, 2008/07/26 - 10:05am — Benjamin MelançonI wish I had been a little quicker to go on Internet record against apparent sexism in some coverage of Hilary Clinton, quite apart from my being thrilled she is not candidate for president anymore, and I hope this is both respectably early in John McCain's bid for the presidency, that it won't continue to be an issue, and that .
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Oppose S2913 the Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008.
Wed, 2008/07/16 - 7:01am — Benjamin MelançonUsing http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/home/
Dear Senator,
As a constituent, writer, web developer, and a copyright holder, I oppose this bill which will threaten both creator writes and the vital economic ecosystem of open source.
Oppose S2913 the Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008.
Corn controls us
Mon, 2008/07/07 - 3:32pm — Benjamin Melançon[File this under 'why care' and 'what we need to do']
Michael Pollan on the Cornification of Food (AR, Boulder Colorado)
One farmer can feed 129 of us with corn.
Rather than 12, before the munitions factory converted from bombs to fertilizer in 1947.
We're putting away 200 extra calories, to take up 30 to 40 percent of
the way we're feeding the world with corn makes it harder for the world
we can sell it so cheaply because our government subsidizes the cost of production of corn
1.5 million Mexican farmers left the land
Personal democracy is an oxymoron; the next renaissance must be for collective participation, reprogramming our culture
Sun, 2008/07/06 - 11:47am — Benjamin MelançonDouglas Rushkoff at the Personal Democracy Forum: Second day invocation speech video.
Some notes. Paraphrasings, not exact quotations, so I'm just putting the whole thing in brackets.
[
Personal democracy is an oxymoron.I'm on the here comes everybody side of this discussion. But it's the everybody that matters.
It's not the network.
It's the people.
The network is just a tool for people to be people again.
The problem with branding, the problem for top-down communication, all these Renaissance era ideas
Mass Support of Journalism through Funding Stories
Mon, 2008/06/30 - 7:08am — Benjamin MelançonThoughts from David Cohn's Representative Journalism: Funding Beats or Stories (cross-posted from a comment left there, with a couple typos corrected).
Key point, that people don't have to believe in "journalism" to contribute to its practice through spot.us.
This will bring many more people to get involved, which will make the funding of individual stories more independent of pressure from concentrated interests than beat-covering institutions.
Auction module and nonprofit fundraising
Tue, 2008/06/24 - 11:35pm — Benjamin MelançonIt is the general thought that Amazing Things is doing well and - although we are doing pretty well, we're only making it because of your support. Some of you are members - and that helps a lot - even at the lowest level. But it is our membership - especially at the higher levels and our auction that keeps us alive.
— Michael Moran, Amazing Things Arts Center
http://agaricdesign.com/amazing-auction-enhancements
http://agaric.chipin.com/amazing-auction
I make a living doing web design and development with a great team
The Agaric Design Collective
I'm trying to make possible a worldwide nonviolent revolution for justice, liberty, and making more good things doable.
People Who Give a Damn
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Favorite Quotations
America touts itself as the land of the free, but the number one freedom that you and I have is the freedom to enter into a subservient role in the workplace. Once you exercise this freedom you’ve lost all control over what you do, what is produced, and how it is produced. And in the end, the product doesn’t belong to you. The only way you can avoid bosses and jobs is if you don’t care about making a living. Which leads to the second freedom: the freedom to starve.