4 - The Eagle
September 29, 2012
www.addison-eagle.com
Opinion
A COMMUNITY SERVICE: This community newspaper and its delivery are made possible by the advertisers you’ll find on the pages inside. Our twenty plus employees and this publishing company would not exist without their generous support of our efforts to gather and distribute your community news and events. Please thank them by supporting them and buying locally. And finally, thanks to you, our loyal readers, for your support and encouragement over the past 17 years from all of us here at The Addison Eagle & Green Mountain Outlook.
20940
Viewpoint
From the editor
Thoughts about things to come
A
recent weekend edition of USA Today included a special section, titled “The Next 30 Years”. It focused on what life, and day-to-day things, will be like in the year 2042—30 years hence. The special section included interviews with some of the world’s most notable visionaries in their fields, such as Hollywood’s James Cameron (on the future of cinema and video), architect Andres Duany (on the future of American lifestyles and urban living), high-flying celebrity British capitalist Sir Richard Branson (on the future of private spaceflight), and—well—you get the idea. While Sir Richard’s prediction, that millions of common folk (aka, you and me) will be flying in 90-minute-long hypersonic, suborbital aerospace arcs between New York and Tokyo by 2042 is wild at best, others were less science fictional and grounded in 2012 reality. For example, architect and urban planner Andres Duany—who is best known for crafting the faux, beachfront Pleasantville known as Seaside, Fla.—predicts that by 2042 more people will be living in bigger cities with smaller homes, smaller yards, and ever shrinking personal transportation options. Duany’s idea of utopia 2042 is for more people to sit on their newly crafted front porches and spend more time pedaling bicycles to work. While quaint for the most part, Duany may be on to something. Duany likes designing his post-modern houses with old-fashioned front porches based on the Ray Bradburyesque idea that our culture lost something when front porches vanished from architectural plans. Thus, we no longer take the time to know our neighbors or sit and rock alongside Aunt Bee after a hard time commuting our gas guzzlers two hours to the office. No matter, finding time to relax, reflect, and meditate everyday is a very healthy idea, but how much of this is just wishful, thinking on the part of some visionaries and academics? Who will keep our ever-shrinking sector of the ever-growing competitive world marketplace going while we relax and enjoy a bike ride to work (after sipping comfrey tea and reading USA Today on the front porch)? In 2012 reality, things seem to be going the other way. Now, of Duany’s idea about shrinking personal space, I think he’s on to something. Have you visited a large American city like New York or Boston recently? Proximity to entertainment, culture, and all-night bar hopping aside, have you ever really second guessed your choice of fleeing such a place to live in Vermont? In the cities of the year 2042 of visionaries like Duany, there’ll be even less chance of finding your personal center compared to life in today’s cities. Duany’s “New Urbanism”—of ever more elbow-to-elbow jostling (while we grow zucchini next to rooftop solar panels and windmills)—may have its utopian appeal, it’s not really the kind of future I choose to live in. There must be something, which blends the best of all futures, someplace in between. Still, many of our currently elected, central-planning-prone politicians on the national stage seem determined to get us into Duany’s “New Urbanism” as quickly as possible. They want us out of our cars and onto sidewalks (which every Vermont home should have by 2042), as they take away our Big Gulps, our smokes, our comfortable luxe sedans—even our gasoline. And all for what? So, we have more time to sit on the front porch? Don’t get me wrong. I don’t totally disagree with Duany’s vision of what future life will be like, but how much of our current, perceived scarcity of resources and diminished horizons are just our generation’s version of the fear of the future? (I remember my father stocking U.S. Civil Defense nutrition-cracker tins in the basement of our family’s suburban house when the Cuban Missile Crisis was dominating the front pages of newspapers). No matter, I guess there’s one thing about predicting the future that is certain: it never turns out the way you imagined it—or planned for it. Louis Varricchio
Visit us today at
www.addison-eagle.com PUBLISHER GENERAL MANAGER MANAGING EDITOR OFFICE MANAGER PRODUCTION DESIGN
Edward Coats Mark Brady Lou Varricchio Tami Smith Denton Publications Production Team EDITORIAL WRITERS Martin Harris John McClaughry Lou Varricchio TELEMARKETING Shelley Roscoe ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES David Allaire • Tom Bahre • Sarah Lapore Heidi Littlefield • Martha Povey CONTRIBUTORS Rusty DeWees • Alice Dubenetsky Catherine Oliverio • Beth Schaeffer
New Market Press, Inc., 16 Creek Rd., Suite 5A, Middlebury, Vermont 05753 Phone: 802-388-6397 • Fax: 802-388-6399 • theeagle@addison-eagle.com Members of: CPNE (Community Papers of New England) IFPA (Independent Free Papers of America) • AFCP (Association of Free Community Papers) One of Vermont’s Most Read Weekly Newspapers Winner of FCPNE and AFCP News Graphic Design Awards ©2012. New Market Press, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or part without written permission of the publisher. Editorial comments, news, press releases, letters to the editor and items of interest are welcome. Please include: name, address and phone number for verification. Subscriptions: All New Market Press publications are available for a subscription $47 per year; $24 six months. First Class Subscription: $150/year. Subscriptions may also be purchased at our web site www.newmarketpressvt.com New Market Press, Inc. and its advertisers are not liable for typographical errors, misprints or other misinformation made in a good faith effort to produce an accurate weekly newspaper. The opinions expressed by the editorial page editor and guest columnists are not necessarily those of New Market Press, and New Market Press cannot be held liable for the facts or opinions stated therein.
20941
The value of Liberty and Life
S
ome days it’s hard to be optimistic and positive about the future. Current events around the world, wrangling political parties warning us the other side will drive us into Armageddon, the unemployment rate, fuel prices and the general mood of folks lately is anything but uplifting. I’ve heard some people say the mood is downright mean-spirited and that people seem to be self consumed. Some blame it on the talking heads; others blame it on the political system, TV programming, the media, or the internet. In reality there is plenty of blame to go around, but most of us need look no further than the mirror. We’ve all played a role in the arrival of the dark clouds hanging over our heads these days. The liberty and freedoms we so thankfully enjoy don’t create happiness by themselves, they only set the stage. Like a big jigsaw puzzle, one piece can have an overwhelming influence over the other pieces or it can just fall into place with all of the others. Sometimes the solution to the puzzle is right in front of us, we just have to look. Other times, the solution can be lost in the sheer number of pieces surrounding it. Look no further than the recent events in the Middle East. After years of totalitarian rule, where every move of the people was controlled by a stiffhanded dictator, years of pent-up anger and a desire to test the limits of this newfound freedom are being released. The population there is finding they are as frustrated now as they were before they overthrew the former government. How much do you think their lives would improve if they brought about death to America, as they so often chant during their protests? On the other hand, how much have our lives or the world changed since the deaths of Osama Bin Laden, Sadim Hussein or Moammar Gadhafi? Those three men were killers and treated the people of their nations horribly, but their deaths alone have not brought about instant gratification to their nations, nor have their deaths altered people’s attitudes toward America. They were once influential pieces to the puzzle, but they were never the complete picture. There is no magic formula to finding happiness and a life of freedom and liberty. Like a puzzle it’s a process and one that, after more than 200 years of existence, America is still working to complete. At the core of our Constitution and the rights we’ve been awarded as a free people it all boils down to the value we place on those rights. Without realizing the full value these rights give us they are only words on paper that governments, leaders, lawyers
Destination: Redondo
W
riters write about interesting old people, and farmers, and sick people and poor folks, and about benevolent movements to create new energy, and or save present energy, and buy food within a fiveminute scooter ride of our home. We write about the flavor of the month thing to hate, like rich people (not my attitude. I like rich people; they’re the same as poor people, I like them. Funny, though, how folks who hate rich people don’t hate the ones who do something directly beneficial for them like employ them, or save their lives on the operating table, or invent snowboarding. We write about how we love our cats, kids, parents, grandparents, dogs, community and state, and why we’re suspicious of government and politicians, and pesticides, and rap lyrics, and who’s responsible for the rise in the cost of gas and food and property taxes. We write about were we’d like to travel, were we have traveled, how we traveled and whom we traveled with. We write about changing leaves, styles, and tires, and when fall is about gone into winter, and about not getting any younger, getting older, wiser, fatter, weaker, thinner and stronger. We write about the danged Holidays. Not just the Holiday Season. New Years Day, Presidents Day, Martin Luther King Day, Bennington Battle Day, Memorial Day, all the Day days and the others whose titles don’t include Day. Halloween, Christmas Eve, and Christmas, we write about them all, about how we feel about them, what we do during them, how important or unimportant they are to us. We write about living, dying, heaven and hell and football, drinking, parties, and writing, and cripes almighty all that we write has been written before. Is there a topic we don’t write about? Yes. 24 year-old women. A high school kid when she attended a concert I worked. She, her friends and I took a photo, then later she spied a feeler I’d placed looking for help and I hired her to work my merchandise table, at that Champlain Valley Fair. Sixteen I’ll guess she was; dependable, prompt, smart, quick and trustworthy. Lucky for me she worked my booth all through high school and college to earn extra money. No booth hours to give her this year, but fall house-buttonup work needed doing, so she came over and helped with that. She also assisted on a half-day photo session I did early
or citizens can easily minimize. But when we place great value and cherish these rights as one of our most prized possesDan Alexander sions, and are willing to Thoughts from risk everything for fear Behind the Pressline of losing them, we begin to understand their true value. Let me put it another way. Recently I was visiting an employee who experienced a serious accident while on the job that placed him in the hospital, paralyzed from the shoulders down. We are all praying an operation will restore the full use of his body, but until the results of the operation are realized he is left hoping for the simple things many of us take for granted every day. In speaking with him, the joys of moving his body at will, hugging his wife, children and grandchildren, walking on his own two feet once again and the joy of just living his life will now be the greatest of gifts. When the stark realization of what you’ve lost may never return you truly realize the value of what you’ve lost, and if returned, no day in the future would ever be taken for granted. If every human being could come to that simple realization, without undergoing the pain of losing or never having known those precious gifts, and be willing to celebrate that same opportunity with every other human life that shares this small planet, how great would this world be and how thankful and respectful would we be toward each other? Oh sure, we would still have problems to resolve, but we would be far more understanding and willing to work with each other to overcome the simple things while valuing the irreplaceable things. Is any day not a great day where you have your health, family and the freedom to pursue your version of happiness? The most self destructive thing we can do in life is to assume that our happiness comes from someone else’s misery. In life, in politics and in our communities happiness is built on the simple joys of building something together and celebrating the joy of that accomplishment. This country, while far from perfect, will only find its way out from under the dark clouds when we remember to cherish how far we’ve come as a nation and work together to pass along that same opportunity and these important values to the generations that follow. Dan Alexander is associate publisher of New Market Press. He may be reached at dan@newmarketpressvt.com.
September. All work she hustled by periodically keeping in touch via email. Love me some hustlers. She teaches piano, rides horses, farms, works with kids, paints, can drive a large tractor, and hold a sun reflector (used to light photo subjects) with the best of em. She reads books, can talk music, movies, pop culture (not including politics), and if talk turns to something she’s not familiar with, she listens, and gets it. Very impressed with her painting work. She treated my entire 46-foot wrap around deck, and spindles, without spilling a drop, in three and one-half hours. I’d guess Erin could do about anything with an ounce of instruction. So can a lot of other folks, right? Right. But a lot of folks don’t want to do just about anything. A lot of folks want to do just about enough. Erin’s soon to be all over the map. She’s all set to high tail it from the Green Mountain State she loves so much and head west. Thoroughly figured, detailed, timed, and budgeted, is her 3,000-mile trip west (estimate), to Redondo Beach, Calif. A fine place for her to bed for now, or forever; she’s leaving it open. Her sister and brother in-law and niece live there, so she’s well anchored from which to sniff out potential ground for her roots to take hold. By the way, for Erin, this isn’t a “there’s nothing going on around here”, or “I gotta get the heck out of Dodge City” thing. She likes Dodge. She loves Dodge. She just recognizes independence as a gift; placing herself far away from what she knows is a potential rewards holding challenge that would be silly to pass up. Why don’t we write much about 24 year-old women? Cause few are as brassy as Erin. “Hey, Erin, you all ready for your trip?” Finishing the treatment of the deck. “Well, I still have one thing to shop for.” “What’s that?,” I ask. “Pepper spray.” Rusty DeWees tours Vermont and Northern New York with his act “The Logger.” His column appears weekly. He can be reached at rustyd@pshift.com. Listen for The Logger, Rusty DeWees, Thursdays at 7:40 on the Big Station, 98.9 WOKO or visit his website at www.thelogger.com