Monthly Archives: September 2011

Baltimore IS the City that Reads

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Ten months of planning came together on a rainy Friday, September 23 as the 2011 Baltimore Book Festival, the city’s 16th, opened. The annual event goes on rain or shine at Mt. Vernon Place in downtown Baltimore. The three-day festival features both local and nationally renowned authors as well as live music.

Baltimore Book Festival opens in the rain. (Source: Greg Cundiff)

Regional Literary Culture

Literary life thrives in the Mid-Atlantic region with both Baltimore and Washington D.C. hosting book festivals at the end of September. This year the Library of Congress expanded the National Book Festival to a two-day event. Mary Carole McCauley of the Baltimore Sunframed this as a competition between the two cities. She quotes Judy Cooper of the Enoch Pratt Free Library as saying, “We started it. We were the first in the area. And now that they’re running for two days instead of just one, it is kind of a problem.” In the same article both Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Kathy Hornig of the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts (BOPA) indicated that they were not concerned about one festival detracting from the other. Speaking to Sustainworx, Heather St. Clair said, “It speaks to the quality of the readers in the region that we can support two events like this.”

Group Effort

Pulling off a quality event is no mean task. Randi Vega, Director of Cultural Affairs for BOPA said that a core staff of five begins planning the event in December. However, ultimately the entire organization has a hand in the planning and execution of the event. In a separate interview St. Clair said that 33 staffers were involved in all aspects of the festival. In addition to BOPA staff an army of 100 volunteers work in a variety of capacities to ensure that the festival is a great experience for festivalgoers and authors alike according to BOPA Volunteer Coordinator, Debbie Zink. According to Zink the 100 volunteers contributed about 628 hours worth of effort in activities as varied as bicycle parkers, children’s craft helpers, and author hospitality hosts. Zink said that she enjoys most about the Book Festival is that owing to its smaller scale compared to ArtScape it is a “pleasure to see everyone again, and spend more time with the volunteers.”

Story book characters roam the festival to delight young and old. (Source: Greg Cundiff)

Events such as this quite often live or die by the weather forecast. The weekend’s was not promising. It rained all day Friday, quite heavily at times.  Despite the rain, members of the Maryland Romance Writers that gave a noontime presentation were greeted with a packed house. Festival participants were treated to much nicer weather on Saturday and Sunday. The final musical performance on Sunday under clear skies featured Navasha Daya. Her neo soul act had the crowd clapping and dancing.

Navasha Daya performing at the Baltimore Book Festival, September 25, 2011 (Source: Greg Cundiff)

According to the Festival website, “The Baltimore Book Festival features more than 200 authors speaking on 7 stages throughout the festival!” Among this year’s presenting authors, Sherman Alexie talked about his book, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian; Laura Lippman talked about her book, The Most Dangerous Thing; and Tavis Smiley talked about his book Fail Up: 20 Lessons on Building Success from Failure.

Fr. Tony promotes, Grace Before Meals. (Source: Greg Cundiff)

Solyndra Fails, Does DOE Loan Guarantee Program as Well?

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Solyndra LLC, a recipient of U.S. Department of Energy loan guarantees filed for bankruptcy in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, District of Delaware on September 6, 2011. The filing followed the firm’s suspension of operations and the lay off of 11,000 employees reports Tom Hals of Reuters. The report also states that, “The company has secured debts of $783.8 million, according to court documents.” In addition to the $535 million in federal loan guarantees, Reuters reports that, “Solyndra raised more than $700 million by selling preferred shares to venture capitalists, including Argonaut Ventures LLC of San Francisco, which owns about 39 percent of the company. Argonaut is also among the company’s first-lien lenders, meaning it will be the first to be repaid, ahead of the U.S. government.”

Conservative Outrage

News of the Solyndra bankruptcy quickly sparked ire in conservative circles. David Roberts of Grist writes that, “For a mix of financial and ideological reasons, U.S. conservative movement activists, operators, and politicos hate clean energy.” He further claims that, “What Solyndra gives them is a symbol, something to use as a stand-in to discredit not just the DOE loan program, but all government support for clean energy and indeed clean energy itself.”

A prime example of the conservative response is Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan’s Sunday afternoon tweet on the subject, “#Solyndra = Exhibit A in case against President’s failed econ policies. Crony capitalism at its worst.” Ryan’s comment was retweeted over 100 times. Candi posting as @louielouieee has this to contribute to the conversation, “Why is the @barackobama administration flipping the bird at taxpayers? #Solyndra #Acorn #Unions.” Along the same vein, @ConservativeLA opines that, “Martha Stewart went to prison, so why should the Obama Administration get a pass: tinyurl.com/4xafw3r #Solyndra #tcot.”

Slow Response From The Left

The left side of the twitterverse has been thus far relatively quiet on the issue. Kevin Drum of Mother Jones credits this lack of clear voice on the lack of “a clear attack line.” He notes that, “Liberals didn’t have the same luxury. At the time this story broke, none of us knew enough about Solyndra to really have any idea if the company itself was defensible, so a bit of hesitancy was inevitable.” Sunday afternoon, @EcoJive reminded followers that, “Bush admin pushed #Solyndra loan guarantee for two years http://ow.ly/6xBgj #solar #energy #eco #green #power #ff @EcoJive” Writing from Vancouver, @UrquhartMP writes, So out of 40 loans 1 fails and that’s a scandal? Sounds like success to me. #Solyndra”

Company Background

According to the company website,before shuttering operations, Solyndra developed and manufactured, “proprietary cylindrical modules incorporating copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS) thin-film technology. Our panels employ cylindrical modules which capture sunlight across a 360-degree photovoltaic surface capable of converting direct, diffuse and reflected sunlight into electricity. In the industry sometimes panels are referred to as modules; at Solyndra, each panel is made up of individual modules.” The company’s product was well received. In March of 2010 The Wall Street Journal named it a top clean-tech company noting that it had “the capital, executive experience and investor know-how to succeed in an increasingly crowded field.”

Silicon Prices

While the right alleges all manner of sinister motives on the part of the Obama administration, Think Progress makes some connections between falling silicon prices and the eventual downfall of Solyndra.  The events leading up to the bankruptcy filings are displayed on this timeline.


(Source:Center for American Progress)

NBC’s Chris Hayes features the Solyndra ‘scandal’ on the premiere of his new show.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
(Source: MSNBC)

Massachusetts Democratic Representative Ed Markey talks about the affair during a hearing before the Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.

(Source: House Energy and Commerce Committee)

To further understand the rationale behind the federal loan guarantee program and how it works Richard Caperton of the Center for American Progress answers some questions.

 
(source: Center for American Progress Action Fund)

Twitter feeds used to prepare this article can be found on my Solyndra List.