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Number 42 | Summer 2011
V O I C E S
O F
I N D E P E N D E N C E
Vermont’s statewide independent news journal
“A gem—literate, radical, provocative.” Orion magazine
Hemp for (an Independent) Vermont Eric Lineback
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wo hundred and twenty years ago (March 4, 1791), the U.S. Congress ratified the formerly independent republic of Vermont’s petition to become the fourteenth state in the American union. Around that same time, Thomas Jefferson, one of our greatest and most eloquent Founding Fathers, said “The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive.” He also said “Hemp is of first necessity to the wealth and protection of the country.” In fact, hemp in those days was not only considered a vital national resource, it was also an economic powerhouse. What is hemp, and why was it so valuable that it was even used as currency? In short, hemp, a non-drug variety of the Cannabis sativa L. plant, can sustainably provide the raw materials for all of mankind’s most basic needs: food, fuel, clothing, and shelter. And that is precisely why it can and should be part of any concept of (or plan for) a free and independent Vermont.
A Brief Hemp History Lesson The subject of why or whether to grow industrial hemp in the United States is often debated yet much misunderstood. The controversy surrounding the plant obscures much of its historical and potential impact – and its adaptability to diverse industries. It never used to be thus. From the first plantings in Jamestown, when it was illegal not to grow hemp, to our Founding Fathers’ hemp plantations, to the hemp sails and rigging of the clipper ships that sailed the 19th-century seas, to the hemp-canvas-covered wagons of the pioneers headed west, to the sturdy hemp Levi’s pants of the original 49ers seeking their fortune in the California hills, to the massive “Hemp for Victory” government program of World War II, hemp has developed a long and illustrious history in America. In fact, hemp has been used extensively for millennia in cultures around the world and belongs to humanity’s common agricultural and commercial heritage.
E. GEORGE LARRABEE
The seed was known for its healthy protein and rich oil. The outer bast fiber from the stalk was used for clothing, canvas, and rope manufacture. The useful inner-core fiber (or hurds) was used for construction and paper production. The Declaration of Independence was drafted on hemp paper, and the finest Bible paper remains hemp-based even today. In the early 20th century, some researchers were beginning to look at using the cellulose from hemp as an affordable and renewable raw material for plastics. Henry Ford built a prototype car made out of agricultural fiber biocomposites, including hemp. Despite large renewed domestic production during WWII, hemp’s cultivation and use in the U.S. was discontinued in the mid-20th continued on page 4
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VERMONT COMMONS
SUMMER 2011
Editorial
Daddy National and Vermont’s Summer of Sovereignty
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n our Summer 2011 issue, Ellen Kahler and Ben Falk continue our coverage of the important food-sovereignty question. Ben’s answer to the Vermont monsoons? Grow rice. Taylor Silvestri covers personal financial sovereignty, Gaelan Brown summarizes local energy, and Matt Cropp takes a practical look at organizing for political sovereignty in a free Vermont. Vermont veteran energy-activist Dan Dewalt explains the sovereignty implications of the Entergy suit against Vermont, including the fact that the Vermont Legislature cannot consider nuclear safety in its decision. This is because under national law (I don’t call it federal anymore because federalism is dead) the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is given absolute jurisdiction over nuclear safety, purportedly due to its expertise and unbiased analysis of nuclear safety.
largest investor-owned utility, CVPS, home of cow-power. Bye-bye sovereignty over electricity. Vermont’s second-largest utility, Green Mountain Power Corp., is owned by Quebec company Gaz Metro, which quickly proffered a competitive bid for CVPS. And don’t forget that all the Connecticut and Deerfield River hydroelectric dams, producing up to 567 megawatts of power, are owned by TransCanada of Ontario, and all the power is sold to Massachusetts (search our website for
Rick Foley’s articles in previous issues of Vermont Commons). That’s pretty much what Entergy has in mind if it is re-licensed to operate for 20 years. Let’s see now . . . We buy 280MW from VY, and there are 567MW of hydro in Vermont that we can’t use. Can you pronounce “eminent domain”? Energy is a resource. When out-ofstate companies own all your resources, you are a banana republic. Get it? continued on page 6
Contributors Jacqueline Brook, who contributed this issue’s political cartoon, is a Vermont citizen who is represented by no one in Washington. Gaelan Brown serves Vermont Commons: Voices of Independence, as its business manager and as a member of the editorial board. He blogs as “An Energy Optimist” at www.vtcommons.org.
Last year the Vermont Senate tied
Juliet Buck is an activist, wannabe homesteader, wife, and mother of two, who is making other plans while watching it all go to hell from South Burlington. She blogs under the moniker Radical SAHM.
itself up in knots not to breathe a
Matthew Cropp is an independent journalist and historian from Burlington.
word about safety in its deliberations.
Lauren-Glenn Davitian is an activist and organizer specializing in issues related to communitybased media. She is executive director of CCTV Center for Media & Democracy, and lives in Burlington.
Why not? Does the industry-puppet NRC have any remaining credibility concerning its ability to determine safety of nuclear plants? Last year the Vermont Senate tied itself up in knots not to breathe a word about safety in its deliberations. Why the hell not? Does the industry-puppet NRC have any remaining credibility concerning its ability to determine safety of nuclear plants? According to local nuclear engineer Arnie Gunderson, the NRC’s position on nuclear containment is that reactor containment systems can’t leak. Then Gunderson showed the NRC several photos of leaks in U.S. nuclear reactors (See Fairewinds.org). NRC’s position? Nuclear containments can’t leak. Three breached reactor cores at Fukushima? Nuclear containments can’t leak. The NRC has approved every uprate in power and every license extension it has ever seen, including approving GE Mark I Vermont Yankee the day before the GE Mark I Fukushima meltdown, core breach, and triple explosion. How ironic. They can evaluate safety better than Vermont experts? I’ll take Gunderson over the NRC any day. It’s just another case of the corporate-controlled national government overstepping its reach and denying sovereignty to states over issues for which they have no constitutional basis. That doesn’t begin to cover the sovereignty issues that are in play here in Vermont and elsewhere. It is a veritable states-rights summer. Recently, Newfoundland-based energy corporation Fortis bid for ownership of Vermont’s
Dan DeWalt is a musician, woodworker, and teacher who lives in Newfane. Carl Etnier is director of Peak Oil Awareness in Montpelier. He hosts two radio shows and blogs on the subjects of peak oil and relocalizing. Ben Falk works with Whole Systems Design, LLC, in “human-habitat systems,” creating sustainable buildings and landscapes to meet emerging climate and economic challenges, sharing tools and techniques through Whole Systems Skills transition trainings. www. wholesystemsdesign.com. Gary Flomenhoft teaches energy technology and policy at the University of Vermont, and is a member of the editorial board of Vermont Commons: Voices of Independence. The Greenneck loves heavy metal music, combustion motors, animals, and working the land. He lives in a self-built, solar-powered home in northern Vermont and may or may not be based on the life of Ben Hewitt, author of The Town That Food Saved and proprietor of benhewitt.net. Ellen Kahler is executive director of the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund. Bill Kauffman, the author of nine books, lives in his native Upstate New York with his family. Jasmine Lamb is a teacher and coach. She writes the blog, All is Listening: Loving Your Imperfect Life, at www.allislistening.com. Eric Lineback , of Dummerston, is co-founder and treasurer of Vote Hemp, Inc., a national, single-issue 501c(4) nonprofit organization dedicated to the acceptance of and a free market for low-THC industrial hemp and to changes in current law to allow U.S. farmers to once again grow the crop. He can be reached at lineback@votehemp.com. Robin Lloyd is a long-time filmmaker, journalist, and progressive political activist who lives in Burlington. She serves on the editorial board for Vermont Commons: Voices of Independence. Kirkpatrick Sale, the author of a dozen books, including After Eden: The Evolution of Human Domination (Duke), is the director of the Middlebury Institute. Taylor M. Silvestri, a student at Champlain College, attributes her failures to public schooling and her successes to every book she’s ever read. Jonathan Stevens is an attorney who has practiced law in Vermont since 1980. His office is located in Burlington. In addition to a conventional law practice, he also advises people who wish to represent themselves. His website is www.proselegalservices.com. Rob Williams, editor and publisher of Vermont Commons: Voices of Independence, is a teacher, historian, writer, musician and yak farmer living in the Mad River Valley.
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VERMONT COMMONS
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IN THIS ISSUE 1 Hemp For (An Independent) Vermont
Eric Lineback 2 Editorial: Daddy National and
Vermont Commons welcomes your input. Please e-mail letters to editor@vtcommons.org or post to PO Box 1121, Waitsfield, Vermont 05673. Although we will try to print your letters in their entirety, we may edit to fit. Please be concise. Be sure to include your contact information (name, address, telephone, and e-mail) for verification purposes.
VERMONT COMMONS: VOICES OF INDEPENDENCE www.vtcommons.org
Publisher Emeritus Ian Baldwin Editor/Publisher Rob Williams Managing Editor Will Lindner Editor-At-Large Kirkpatrick Sale Art Directors Peter Holm, Abrah Griggs Business Manager Gaelan Brown Advertising Designer Serena Fox
Editorial Board Ian Baldwin, Gaelan Brown, Juliet Buck, Matthew Cropp, Cheryl Diersch, Gary Flomenhoft, Rick Foley, Robin Lloyd, Robert Wagner, and Rob Williams Editorial Office and Submissions 98 Wallis Woods Road, Waitsfield, Vermont 05673 Business Office and Advertising PO Box 1121, Waitsfield, Vermont 05673 Circulation 10,000 copies in 350 venues throughout Vermont six times a year, and through PO subscription.
CORRECTION: We made a factual error in the “Energy Optimist” column in the Spring 2011 issue of Vermont Commons. The column read, in part, “It’s a little-known fact that a few years ago Vermont sold the rights to existing hydropower sites on the Deerfield and Connecticut rivers that total 580 megawatts of capacity.” Actually, the state did not own the dams and their hydroelectric generating systems. The dams were owned by U.S. Gen New England, which was forced to sell them in a bankruptcy proceeding in 2004. The Douglas Administration investigated partnering with two companies to purchase the dams (for a 25-percent state ownership), but never proposed an actual bid. TransCanada was the only entity to bid for the dams, and now owns them (the company’s website now lists their total output capacity at 567MW). Localpower proponents have frequently faulted the Douglas Administration for its decision. We thank letter-writer John McClaughry (below), who was one of several people who noted the error.
Letters to the Editor STATE’S SLIPPERY HANDLING OF VY Editor, Vermont Commons: In your interesting spring issue Gaelan Brown writes, “It’s a little known fact that a few years ago Vermont sold the rights to existing hydropower sites on the Deerfield and Connecticut rivers that
Vermont’s Summer of Sovereignty Gary Flomenhoft 3 Letters to the Editor 7 Vermont’s Year of Reckoning with Entergy Nuclear Dan DeWalt 9 Radical SAHM: Osama bin Laden—The U.S. of Empire’s Boogey Man Juliet Buck 11 Vermont Vox Populi (1): ‘Hit The Capitalist Over The Head’—Interview with Peter and Elka Schumann Robin Lloyd and Rob Williams 13 Bye Bye Miss American Empire: Made in Vermont—Meet Frank Bryan, The Independence Movement’s Avatar Bill Kauffman 16 Farm To Plate: A Blueprint for Vermont’s Farm and Food Future Ellen Kahler 17 Homestead Security: When Life Gives You Water, Make Swales, Ponds, Paddies Ben Falk 23 Organizing for a Free Vermont Matthew Cropp 25 The Greenneck: Jack of All Trades, Slave to None Ben Hewitt 26 Free Vermont Media: Navigating The Coming Chaos, Achieving ‘Freedom Through Frugality’ Taylor Silvestri 28 Energy Optimist: Optimized Energy Lifeboats Gaelan Brown 30 Vermont Vox Populi (2): Vermont’s Summer Valley Stage Music Festival— Interview with Promoter Don Sheldon Rob Williams 32 Transition Times: Hardwick Organizes Local Transportation Carl Etnier 33 Secession Briefs: The Piecemeal Construction of Common Law Jonathan Stevens 35 Perhaps Collapse: Hope in a Donkey Delivery Jasmine Lamb 37 Media By The People: The Future of Civility? Lauren-Glenn Davitian 39 Dispersions: Reflexive Patriotism— Last Refuge of a Scoundrel Nation Kirkpatrick Sale Vermont Commons is a print and online forum for exploring the idea of Vermont independence—political, economic, social, and spiritual. We are unaffiliated with any other organization or media, and interested in all points of view. We welcome your letters, thoughts, and participation.
total 580 Mw of capacity.” In fact, Vermont never owned any rights relating to the plants in question. In 2004 the state partnered to make a bid on the plants, which were being sold out of bankruptcy, but the bid was unsuccessful. The officious “Open Letter to Entergy” states that in return for allowing Entergy to keep making profits, “the state of Vermont received the right to permit or deny continued operation continued on page 8
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Hemp, continued from page 1 century. This was largely due to misinformed and misguided fears that industrial hemp is marijuana, and hemp became demonized during the “reefer madness” craze that swept the country over much of the last century. Despite easily discernable and widely accepted differences between the two distinct plant varieties, serious misconceptions continue to persist today. The ongoing blurring of this distinction, out of ignorance or for political purposes, is precisely why American farmers have not been allowed to grow this lucrative crop in modern times. Non-viable hemp seed, oil and fiber, though, are all currently legal for trade in the U.S., and domestic industry has continued to import both the raw materials and finished goods for diverse uses. The size of the retail domestic hemp industry is estimated by the Hemp Industries Association (HIA) to be more than $400 million today, which is a drop in the bucket compared to its true potential. Fortunately, common sense has an ability to shine through even the cloudiest situations. Environmental and economic interests are swiftly cutting through the policy murk, and support for hemp is forming into a broad political base, including farmers, business interests, nutritionists, environmentalists, states’ rights proponents, a wide range of activists, and “green” consumers. Hemp, of course, is not a total panacea for the social, economic, and environmental woes that plague our planet today. Indeed, no single crop can be. But, with focused and sustained research and development in both public and private sectors, hemp and other similar crops are poised to spur dramatic – and certainly vital – change. These renewable resources will transition our major industries from depending on non-renewable, fast-disappearing resource bases to being driven and supported on a sustainable economic basis by the annual agri-industrial produce of the Earth’s fertile fields.
Hemp – industrial, purposeful, valuable, sustainable hemp, not dope – as far as the eye can see. Yet the corporate-controlled U.S. Congress seems purposefully blind. ANDREA HERMANN
circle” concept, that has captured the interest of industrialists and environmentalists alike. Hemp’s positive environmental and economic impact on farmland as well as rotational crops illustrates the importance of efficient land use, as it promotes political, social and economic stability, whereas wasteful and inefficient land use contributes to fluctuations and decay.
The Problem: Centralized Agricultural Production and Non-Sustainable Land Use To understand why the deregulation and re-commercialization of industrial hemp is so desirable today, it helps to understand the context of the larger agricultural and industrial picture. In recent decades, the political, economic and
Hemp, a non-drug variety of the Cannabis sativa L. plant, can sustainably provide the raw materials for all of mankind’s most basic needs: food, fuel, clothing, and shelter – and that is why it should be part of any plan for a free and independent Vermont. With more than 30 other nations growing industrial hemp, the U.S. is the only major industrialized nation in the world to effectively prohibit its production. Yet we are poised to take advantage of an unprecedented opportunity. The states are leading the fight, and Vermont is already on the forefront of that battle, along with several other states, having legalized the crop in 2008. Still, no hemp crop has been planted here, due to conflicts with federal law. Will it take an independent Vermont to finally return this crop to our fields?
Bio-regional Economies and the Environmental Benefits of Hemp Hemp is the premier and model crop for a new decentralizing agricultural-industrial trend called bio-regional economics, also known as the “closed
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social landscape in the United States has become increasingly dominated by large, privately owned entities. This trend toward the globalization of trade, taking advantage of lower costs of production in developing countries, often comes at the expense of local farming and commerce. Arguably, much of the disenfranchisement of the American populace, as well as the stagnation and atrophying of so many American family farms, comes as a result of their talent, labor, and natural resources being turned into commodities in the name of free trade. In the early 21st century, the time has come to seek a balance. All too often, land is overused or polluted in an effort to maximize short-term production at the expense of long-term viability, a model that serves large, centralized concerns but does little to protect the environment or its inhabitants.
When resources are predictably spent, or prices get too high, global organizations which have had use of the land while it was fertile have the option to move on to other parts of the world. However, communities tied to that land must now provide the same income without the large buyers, and often with weak topsoil, polluted waterways, or clear-cut forests. Taxpayers pay for bailout or cleanup programs made necessary by this flawed cycle. The exit of the larger entity’s purchasing requirements creates a spotty local feedstock market, further harming local industry. In the meantime, the same larger entity can afford to import alternate-source feedstocks at prices much lower than local areas, with weak or spent land, can produce. The cycle of poor performance, wastefulness, and pollution is perpetuated through what are generally accepted accounting principles and other short-sighted assumptions that ignore critical external considerations such as environmental and social costs. For example, the costs of water, timber products, and fossil fuels dictate modern commerce by framing the definitions of efficiency and profitability. Government subsidization of water and logging on public land encourages wastefulness and discourages conservation. Unrealistically low petroleum costs enable commerce that would otherwise not be economically feasible if we accounted for the “true” military and environmental costs of securing and exploiting these resources. Capital lending structures provide that the costs and risks involved in setting up one centralized mill versus many smaller mills to effect the same output are lower, yet since larger mills often have no efficient way of utilizing process wastes, the environmental costs are ultimately higher. Forcing the land to impossible returns without recycling and recovering the waste generated is the course this nation has been on for more than half a century. The social, economic, and environmental costs become clearest when consider-
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VERMONT COMMONS
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An Update on Industrial Hemp Legislation in the U.S. and Vermont, and a Call for Action
Seeds – but not “seeds and stems” (tip of the cap to Commander Cody). LIVING HARVEST
ing the continuously shrinking number of farms in the U.S., the continuing loss of topsoil, and the decreasing availability of irrigation water in many areas. This path logically leads to further dwindling resources which will, in turn, concentrate the country’s natural resources, and therefore much of its wealth, in the hands of a few. This is not the vision of the Founding Fathers as outlined in the Constitution of the United States.
The Solution: Efficient Land Use and Bio-regional Industry A bio-regional economy focuses on obtaining high value for the resources of the local land, recycling the waste and end products ad infinitum, and thereby creating a “closed circle” of farming and industry. One of the central principles of this practice is that a significant portion of local needs should be provided for with resources grown or produced in that same region. This includes food, shelter, and energy, as well as the talent and labor required for a society to function and grow. The resources must be managed by taking care of the environment and eliminating waste. When a society can care for its land and provide for itself without importing or trading with others for its basic necessities, it is self-sufficient, sovereign, and powerfully immune to the dictates of private or public entities whose interests may run counter to their own. Should we examine the motivations and philosophies of the Founding Fathers, we may conclude that this concept is as close to the “American Way” as any, and ought to be encouraged through the sound application of public policy. The bio-regional model welcomes the contributions of both small and large organizations. Large companies often have the capital to finance a closed-circle industrial system, while smaller companies often have the talent and nimbleness to effect such change. While smaller farms grow biomass for energy alongside food crops, grain elevators at large organizations become refueling stations. Fragmented small producers can consolidate their waste to be fed into the recycling plants operated by large producers of the same commodities. The opportunities for cooperation are limitless. While accelerating globalization seems to defy efforts that strengthen regional industries, the two concepts are not mutually exclusive. Both are important symbiotic elements in a healthy world economy – a global mosaic of strong bioregional economies. Related regional industries
The U.S. hemp industry today is valued at more than $400 million in annual retail sales and growing – and thus is becoming more politically influential. For the fourth time since the federal government outlawed hemp farming in the United States over 70 years ago, a federal bill was introduced on May 11, which, if passed, will remove restrictions on the cultivation of industrial hemp. Chief sponsor Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) introduced H.R. 1831, The Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2011, almost identical to his 2009 bill (H.R. 1866), along with 22 original co-sponsors. As of this writing, Vote Hemp is working with a Democratic senator who is preparing to introduce companion legislation in the Senate in support of industrial hemp farming. To date, 29 states have introduced hemp legislation and 17 have passed legislation; six states (Maine, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, Vermont, and West Virginia) have already authorized the licensing of farmers to grow the crop. However, despite state authorization, farmers in these states risk raids by federal agents, prison time, and land forfeiture if they plant the crop, due to the failure of federal policy to distinguish non-drug oilseed and fiber varieties of Cannabis (i.e., industrial hemp) from psychoactive varieties. While the Vermont Legislature has dabbled in hemp going back to 1996, it reached a milestone with the introduction of H.267, a bill proposing to permit the development of an industrial hemp industry in the state, on February 9, 2007. The bill sailed through the House Agriculture Committee unanimously in early 2008, after being held over from 2007. It soon after overwhelmingly passed the House and Senate. In an interesting twist, the bill was allowed to become law by Governor Douglas without his signature, but the secretary of state refused to accept it and asked for an opinion from the attorney general, who ultimately supported the governor’s action. The secretary of state accepted the opinion and made the bill Act 212 on June 27, 2008. On May 6, 2009, the Vermont Legislature passed JRS 26, a joint resolution in support of Act 212. The resolution urged Congress to recognize industrial hemp as a valuable agricultural commodity and urged the DEA to allow states to regulate industrial hemp farming without federal applications, licenses, or fees. The citizens of Vermont now need to increase the pressure on their federal legislators to support this issue in Congress, as well as urge their state legislators to allow the secretary of agriculture to promulgate hemp farming regulations. Please take action today at www.VoteHemp.com. Vermont’s future depends on you. that have managed to loop their production and waste streams will experience higher productivity, competitive advantage, export potential, and ultimately less waste in a cleaner environment. At the same time, an information-empowered marketplace will mean a barrier-free exchange for and between regional economies worldwide.
The U.S. is the only major industrialized nation in the world to effectively prohibit the production of industrial hemp. Hemp and the Bio-regional Model of Capitalism As an industrial crop, hemp is particularly well suited for the bio-regional model because it fits every tenet of this model’s philosophy. Everything produced from hemp can be recycled back into industry or back into the land. To operate the bio-regional model without hemp, in fact, would be like running a recycling plant without plastic bottles or aluminum cans. Hemp’s inherent usefulness in a world poised to close the industrial circle is clear. Pure capitalism assumes its noblest identity when the freedom to exchange value for value is expanded to all members of society. Everyone
may be free to trade their talent and labor for lawful currency and vice versa, helping themselves and others at once, and ensuring prosperity. However, when such prosperity is narrowly defined as the accumulation of currency, this ideal begins to break down, stratifying society by way of inequitable resource access and the creation of social unrest. Conversely, when prosperity means indefinite land production, clean air and water, and access to resources for the vast majority of citizens, society functions smoothly and profitably. Because of its versatility, its beneficial agronomics, and the need for local processing, hemp is poised to play a potentially vital role in the maintenance of society’s resources and the distribution of wealth along the most idealistic lines of capitalism.
Hemp and an Independent Vermont Vermonters – indeed all Americans – must begin to ask more questions about the nature of our political, economic and social systems. Have we truly maintained the ideals of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, or have these been sacrificed at the altar of political expediency? Have we maintained and increased our resources to the benefit of our people, or have we allowed them to be squandered by a small few who happen to influence the lawmakers that permit them such license? What are the likely consequences of our present path, and what is the price of doing nothing? continued on page 6
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Hemp, continued from page 5 More specifically, let us ask why the federal government has prevented any enactment of the aforementioned state hemp legislation. The pretense for more than 70 years has been that hemp is the same as marijuana, a “dangerous drug.” While the contention that marijuana is dangerous has yet to be supported by the facts, too many powerful interests have too much at stake in squashing the debate about hemp.
When a society can care for its land and provide for itself without importing or trading with others for its basic necessities, it is self-sufficient,
who will also make the bold choices ultimately required for an independent Vermont. Indeed, hemp and the bio-regional economic model fit perfectly with and support all the principles adopted by the Second Vermont Republic: political independence, human scale, sustainability, economic solidarity, power sharing, equal opportunity, tension reduction, and mutuality. It is notable that Ceres, the patroness of agriculture, is embodied in the statue that sits atop the Vermont Statehouse. The state has a long history of farming and extensive experience in agriculture. As Thomas H. Naylor pointed out in his 2008 essay entitled Could Vermont Survive Economically as an Independent Republic?, “Although Vermont farms are small and fairly few in number, they still provide the glue which makes the whole state work. Their importance to the future of Vermont
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cannot be overstated … Values such as independence, self-sufficiency, democracy, resourcefulness, hard work, perseverance and a strong sense of community can be traced directly to the family farm. Without these values, there would be no Vermont.” History, research, and modern experience have established that hemp can provide a remarkably wide range of benefits for humans and their environment. With broad-based political support behind us and environmental renewal, independence, and a potential economic bonanza before us, the choice to fully deregulate and commercialize the hemp plant is clearly one of common sense for (an independent) Vermont. • © Copyright 2011 Vote Hemp, Inc. and Eric Lineback
sovereign, and powerfully immune to the dictates of private or public entities whose interests may run counter to their own. Industrial hemp is the most versatile crop on earth and has been for thousands of years. It makes markets in industries currently plagued by environmental chaos, providing solutions as well as profits. The proper use of this crop will encourage the development of social, economic and political systems that return the power over land use to the people who live and work on it and will create broad-based regional prosperity and independence. The arguments used against hemp are based on ignorance and misinformation. One only needs to look to Canada, Asia, or Europe for workable economic and law-enforcement models. There is a giant, untapped voting block of hemp-educated people with the power to assert the truth and elect politicians who will work to create and protect the rights that allow its cultivation – and
A policy not only to legalize but to encourage the production of hemp could be an economic cornerstone of a Second Vermont Republic. ANDREA HERMANN
Editorial, continued from page 2 Another sovereignty issue arises with the recent passage of Shumlin’s healthcare bill, Green Mountain Care. A national waiver is required, or the program can’t go forward. Why the hell not? We have to go begging “Daddy National” for permission to make our own laws, where the national government has no business being anyway? Regardless of what you think of the bill, what gives Daddy National the right to dictate our healthcare laws here in Vermont? Where does it say in the U.S. Constitution that the national government has jurisdiction over healthcare, or over nuclear power plants for that matter? Single-payer is not socialized medicine; it merely throws the insurance company parasites out of the system like a good dose of Quell.
Some states are not taking the loss of sovereignty lying down. Texas (where secession rumblings have been stirring for years) apparently didn’t like TSA groping of some adolescent girls, grandmothers, and reportedly Miss America’s vagina. Texas passed House Bill 1937 by a vote of 138-0, making groping without probable cause a felony. Daddy National’s response? The Western Texas Division U.S. District Attorney’s Office sent a letter threatening to shut down air traffic in the state. Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst secretly strong-armed the Senate to kill the bill. After a rally by broadcaster Alex Jones and other outraged Texans, the Senate may reconsider the bill in a special session requiring only a majority vote. Last month, U.S. Attorney Tristram J. Coffin, in Vermont, sent a letter to lawmakers stating
that proposed marijuana dispensaries are drugtrafficking operations that would be violating federal drug laws. The national government has been threatening a crackdown in every state that has legalized medical marijuana. Then Vermont passed Senate bill S.17 anyway, authorizing medical marijuana dispensaries, and calling the U.S. government’s bluff. I guess there is some hope for Vermont to claim sovereignty over something – at least for some of our homegrown crops. This summer, celebrate Vermont’s season of sovereignty, remember the birthday of the first Vermont republic – July 7, 1777 – and consider jumping in to work on behalf of an independent republic for Vermont again. Gary Flomenhoft
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Vermont’s Year of Reckoning with Entergy Nuclear Dan DeWalt
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n a cynical move calculated to take advantage of all of the power and perks that large U.S.based corporations currently enjoy and abuse in the U.S. of Empire, Entergy Nuclear of Louisiana has decided to run to the federal courts to ask to be relieved of its duty to obey the laws of the state of Vermont. Strident, dismissive commentary by nuclear shills calling themselves “attaches” notwithstanding, this is nothing more than Entergy flipping off Vermont and its citizens, while counting on the U.S. Supreme Court to ultimately give the company the victory that has been denied it because of Entergy’s untruthful, careless and callous operation of the Vermont Yankee reactor in Vernon, Vermont. The Vermont Legislature understood that, by law, they could only act on questions about the reactor’s reliability and future costs to the state when they acted to prevent Entergy from getting a Certificate of Public Good from the Public Service Board. Campaign statements about the
This is a struggle where commonsense folk are saying no to insatiable corporate greed and to federal-government overreach. safety of VY – a legitimate concern, considering the lies and leaks at VY, not to mention the nuclear catastrophe underway in Japan – have no bearing on the case of deciding whether the Legislature acted within the parameters allowed it by federal law. Entergy never thought it would come to this.
They are used to Louisiana, where the legislature is in the pocket of big energy and the governor has to go along to get along. What a surprise to discover a citizen legislature that knows how to ask questions and can smell the stench of false
had spoken: There would be no more insubordination from the rabble in Westminster. But the rabble responded, and within a few short days 400 men had rallied to free the prisoners, the sheriff and his posse were in jail, and
This is nothing more than Entergy flipping off Vermont and its citizens, while counting on the U.S. Supreme Court to ultimately give them the victory. testimony! Even worse, the state elected a governor who would reverse the policy of working in Entergy’s interest and instead work to protect the people of Vermont from corporate abuse. Smugly, Entergy CEO Jackie Wayne Leonard has dismissed our state and its laws, calling upon his army of lawyers and public relation firms to turn reality on its head. And since he contends the issue is no longer in the hands of the Vermont government, he need not concern himself with us any longer. He is in for another big surprise, because Vermont has a history of standing up for itself when dealing directly with threats to our collective well-being, whether they come from insidious cankers like slavery or from misdirected, over-reaching central-government power. In 1775, when the British Crown, as represented by the New York courts, was about to nullify the legitimacy of Vermont properties acquired through New Hampshire land grants, Vermonters from Westminster occupied the courthouse to ensure that the hearing could not be held. The Crown’s sheriff gathered a posse and attacked the courthouse, capturing and jailing those inside while wounding several and killing one. The Crown
the New York court would never again be held in Westminster. This was the first bloodshed of the American Revolution, and it led not only to Vermont becoming free of New York domination but also to the formation of the Vermont Republic, which lasted until we joined the United States in 1791. In 1968, Vermont outlawed billboards. Some advertisers thought that they could ignore the ban, but on the morning that it went into effect virtually all of the billboards still standing found themselves chain-sawed and chopped into oblivion. We take our civics and our rights very seriously in this state, and we are no more ready to stand idly by and suffer J. Wayne and Entergy’s depredations than our Westminster predecessors were to suffer at the hand of the Crown and New York. While we may have been among the first Americans to rise up and stand for our rights, we also recognize when others are taking the lead. Vermonters in 2011 have been encouraged and inspired by people across the globe standing up for their rights and peacefully toppling corrupt and militaristic governments. We have learned how nonviolent protest writ large can rekindle a continued on page 8
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Vermont’s Year of Reckoning, continued from page 7 collective consciousness in a seemingly slumbering populace, leading to revolutionary change. And we are building that consciousness now, in order to stand up for ourselves if the courts decide to abrogate Vermont law. What J. Wayne doesn’t understand is that we will see to it that Vermont Yankee closes on March 21, 2012, just as it has been scheduled to do in its operating license. By next March, we will know how many people will be needed to prevent the plant from continuing operation, and we will have recruited sufficient numbers of volunteers to maintain a prophylactic presence around the plant for as many days, weeks, or months as it takes for Entergy to finally pull the plug. This will not be a symbolic effort by the state’s
environmentalists. This is a struggle that will be supported by Vermonters of all stripes, as it is about much more than the question of why we would run a leaky reactor for 20 more years in order to generate hundreds of tons more radioactive waste that cannot be made safe for tens of thousands of years. No, this is also a struggle where commonsense folk are saying no to insatiable corporate greed and to federalgovernment overreach. This is a struggle where informed Vermonters are asking why so many other industrialized countries are rethinking or ending their nuclear power programs, while our officials blithely plow forward, hand in hand with their corporate sponsors, intoning a mantra of wishful thinking passed off as official wisdom. This is a struggle where Vermont tea party and
progressive types will work hand in hand to rid ourselves of the scourge of parasites like Entergy in order to get to the job of living together and building a sensible future for our state. This will be a defense of our state’s sovereignty and our own safety, unlike any that has been seen in this country in decades. We have acted together as a state in a legal and responsible manner. Our Vermont politicians have done their job. The governor and the attorney general are still working for us, but we will be there to do what they cannot if we are betrayed by the federal courts. There will be a reckoning, and just as happened in Westminster in 1775, the people will prevail. •
Letters, continued from page 3 of the Entergy Corporation-owned Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant for twenty years beyond [2012].” In the first place, the state didn’t “receive” any right from the 2002 MOU with Entergy. Entergy merely agreed to apply to the Public Service Board for a new Certificate of Public Good for VY’s continued operation. But four years later the anti-nuclear Democratic general assembly unilaterally changed the 2002 deal, interposing itself between Entergy and the PSB. Furthermore, the general assembly has been unwilling to abide even by its unilaterally declared new deal. Sec. 1 of Act 160 of 2006, addressing both spentfuel storage and continued operation of the plant after March 21, 2012, says “the general assembly shall consider concurrently the issue of storage of spent nuclear fuel… and the operation of Vermont Yankee nuclear power station after March 21, 2012… and shall grant the approval or deny approval of such activities concurrently.” A plain reading of this statute requires that the general assembly – House and Senate, in the same biennial session – must either grant or deny approval for spent-fuel storage and continued operation of VYNPS. Gov. Shumlin declared that Entergy had supported this material change by the Legislature to the 2002 agreement. That proved to be a false statement. Entergy repeatedly opposed the Legislature’s changing the deal it had agreed to. In 2007 Entergy duly filed its application with
the PSB. Lengthy docket proceedings then ensued – but Act 160 prohibits the PSB from issuing any final order on Entergy’s application. Has the general assembly acted either to grant or deny approval as required by Act 160? No. (The disapproval vote by the 2010 Senate is not an act of the general assembly). So who is breaking its word here? Entergy promised it would not raise a preemption challenge if it sought an extension, but would abide by the decision of the PSB under the statutes and procedures in force in 2002. But the state subsequently forbade the PSB from acting on Entergy’s application. That’s clearly a material breach of the agreement. Moreover, the general assembly deliberately and shamefully refused to abide by its own law requiring it to grant or deny approval. So who is in violation of the laws of this state? This general assembly’s failure to act is even more disgraceful because there was little doubt about the outcome: both House and Senate would have voted to disapprove continued operation of the plant. The only reason I can imagine for this refusal to have a vote was the legislative leadership’s perceived need to shield their anti-nuclear members from ever having to face the likely costly consequences of voting to shut Vermont Yankee down. So much for accountability to the people. To paraphrase the Open Letter, who would willingly do business with a state that so readily violates the terms of contract? Forgive me for believing that a lot of businesses won’t, absent substantial subsidies to placate their concerns
about the state’s dishonorable behavior in this case. John McClaughry Kirby
Creating Wealth: Economic Resilience for the State of Vermont Want to know how to form a state bank? Start a currency? Call us at 802-456-1123. Ask for Ethan Allen.
THE TIME HAS COME Editor, Vermont Commons: I find your newspaper of interest. I think the federal government no longer serves the needs of its people. (Actually, it hasn’t for a very long time, but its abuse of its people has only gotten worse since 9/11). The way the banks were handled during the recession convinced me that not only is the game rigged, but that they could openly do whatever they want. To not come to the aid of the people destroyed by the banks’ recklessness is a crime. I’ve always tended towards states’ rights in the federalist/democrat debate. My initial interest in secession was to use it as leverage to get the states more rights, but now I think we should just get out! Mark Doughty Stockbridge
SUMMER 2011
VERMONT COMMONS
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Radical SAHM: O sama Bin Laden—The U.S. Of Empire’s Middle Eastern Boogey Man
Y
ou know how you watch CSI and you point and laugh and roll your eyes at the rank silliness of all the 72” LCD touch screens, rotating holograms, state-of-the-art sample libraries, and instant DNA analysis? Well, it appears lots of people think that shit is, like, totally real.
ficient for a trial. Any other explanation constitutes a resounding condemnation of the capacity of the justice system to… well, adjudicate stuff. We didn’t even forge ahead with the pretence of a trial under whose auspices we could have
“I know DNA . . . and you cannot, repeat CANNOT, take a tissue sample from a shot-in-the-noggin dead guy in a north-central Pakistan Special Forces op, extract the DNA, prepare the DNA for assay, test the DNA, curate the raw DNA sequence data, assemble the reads or QC the genotype, compare the tested DNA to a reference, and make a positive identity determination… all in 12 hours. So maybe they did get Osama. But there is no fucking way they had any genetic proof of it by the time they dumped the body over the side.” – some guy that knows DNA
The artifice and myth of the “War
I’m not saying he isn’t dead, but I am saying that the government is, like, totally lying about how he died, and in so doing revealing a fundamental contempt for the justice system. The government’s behavior also confirms that the U.S. Empire is currently running on a very rich fuel mix of third-grade-level storytelling and cognitive dissonance on steroids. The corporate media meme is that bin Laden was executed without trial and his corpse “buried at sea” (no doubt this phrase is 2011’s “hiking the Appalachian trail”) because the U.S. would have been paralyzed by the media firestorm and controversy that a bin Laden trial would have caused. Bull to the shit. There are only two reasons to execute a guy and then dump the body rather than bringing him to trial: either it isn’t him or your evidence is insuf-
emerged at the very least united in the presumption that the executive branch does not have the right to unilaterally decide who is guilty and what constitutes justice. We could have maintained that this is for society as whole to decide and that that is what a fucking judiciary is for. That we didn’t jump in with both feet for even a sham trial speaks unfortunate volumes. After World War II the international community managed to have trials for high-ranking Nazis who outright murdered six million Jews (and gypsies, homosexuals, mentally ill, and retarded people – basically, anyone who would ruin the holiday picture) and were in large part responsible for a war that killed 60 million people in a dozen different countries. As I write, Ratko Mladic is on his way to Hague for trial having been accused of almost unfathomable war
on Terror” is so delicate, and the American people’s acceptance of even the most fatuous rationale is so complete, that the truth is both not an option and unnecessary.
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crimes. Falling back on the non-reasoning of bin Laden being some special strain of evil so pure and so virulent that his treatment defies adherence to the rule of law, while at the same time somewhat eagerly assuming ourselves incapable of riding the tumultuous waves of a trial is not only an admission that we are a less viable nation with less viable institutions than we were 65 years ago, but that Serbia is currently eating our law-and-order lunch. Since we are on the subject of Nazis, if I hear one more spokeswhore prattle on about how bin Laden was “the Hitler of our generation” I am going to hurl. Oh, how we love to fellate ourselves with the idea that bL and his dusty band of not-so-merry men actually constituted an existential threat to the United States. That a bunch of guys with box cutters and IEDs could topple America Fuck Yeah!™ is both insane and pathetic. More informative is how the American people can swallow the following logic: bin Laden’s death is a glorious victory over the threat of Al Qaeda and proof of American supremacy, AND bin Laden’s death does not diminish the threat of Al Qaeda one schmear and actually ratchets up the stakes of the “War on Terror” to the extent that Congress (which has its thumb securely up its ass in respect to the patently illegal war we are waging in Libya) used concern over retribution as a rationale to extend the vile and injurious USA PATRIOT Act for four more years without fact finding or debate. We simply can’t be the greatest nation on earth if we shiver in the shade thrown by a few hundred very angry extremists, yet this is exactly the contradictory rhetoric being delivered and accepted. When it’s suggested that the government offer continued on page 10
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Radical Sahm, continued from page 9 some “proof ” of their purported exploits, they are quick to contend that the longer this stays in the news, the more inflamed bin Laden’s acolytes could become. (And then they call you a “deather” and tell you to go share a padded cell with Orly Taitz.) Call me crazy, but methinks the carnival images of red-faced, chest-thumping puerile glee sent round the world half a dozen times is going set aflame whatever righteous tinder is out there all on its own. This is an excuse to not present evidence which might reveal either a 10-year-old time stamp on the video or unflattering details of his execution that do not fit the asinine semper fidelis narrative in play. The other reason we can’t be allowed to see these images or images like them is because doing so may disabuse us of the notion that war isn’t a horrible, indiscriminate, brutal, wasteful, soulkilling venture and that seeing the dead body of a mythical creature construct like bin Laden might trigger the realization that he was just a man and not the potentially world-ending cataclysm that the self-serving conflict industry has very deliberately made him out to be. This kind of Oprahbrand light-bulb moment would put a serious cramp in Lockheed-Martin and Co.’s style, as well as that of the resplendent epauletted birds of prey roosting in the overburdened upper branches of the military. I’m not a fan of reductionism, but in this case it’s pretty simple: Those who profit from war want war to continue, even if they have to tell you that you are both wet and dry at the same time to sell it. The “War on Terror” is just a means to an end: a deeply militarized surveillance state capable of global-resource domination in the interest of the Corporatocracy.
As if . . . Now, to the Amateur Hour storytelling. Bin Laden’s death was initially breathlessly described using the following details: He was living in a luxury million-dollar mansion (bad Muslim!), he was both armed and actively engaged in a firefight with U.S. forces when he was killed (suicide by SEAL!), and he used his wife as a human shield during the battle (pussy!). Amazingly, not only have all of these seemingly intentionally inflammatory details proved to be false but they also appear to have been gleaned from a 1990s Steven Segal screenplay. Seriously, the only missing detail was them bursting into the room just as bL was about sodomize the senator’s corn-fed daughter and then having him beg piteously for his life while admitting to being a McDonald’s-loving, Laverne and Shirleywatching hypocritical fraud. The pathology of this narrative cannot be overstated, especially given that most people wouldn’t have cared if they had just marched up and shot him in the back. Or in his sleep. Or in a coma. The posturing artifice and myth of the “War on Terror” is so delicate, and the American people’s acceptance of even the most fatuous rationale is so complete, that the truth is both not an option and unnecessary. For instance, only in a state of suspended disbelief powerful enough to watch Tron 2 can one simultaneously believe that the invasion of Afghanistan was worth the blood
VERMONT COMMONS
and treasure, and that, in light of recent events, an invasion of Pakistan is not. For the love of Pete, they harbored him after the fact! Lots of ink has been spilled celebrating the efficiency of bin Laden’s assassination. No dead villagers to dig the bullets out of this time! A nice neat job, booya! Well, if you ignore the fact that we have been at war in the region for more than 10 years, killed around a million people, created tens of millions of refugees, spent trillions of dollars lent by China (and thus put ourselves into a supplicant political position), and inflamed the hatred of untold numbers of people who rightly object to being murdered and occupied, it was neat. If you ignore the fact that we were the first big investor in Al Qaeda, that we financed, armed, and trained the Mujahedeen back when they were being good little terrorists fighting the Soviets, it was neat. In short, if you ignore the fact that we created the terrorist threat and a blow back-flavored Petri agar to grow it in, then today is a proud day and you should run out and buy a T-shirt. Bonus points if it has an eagle on it. Even if you wholeheartedly accept that bin Laden was responsible for coordinating the 9/11 attack and that there had to be a non-proportional response i.e. (“He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue” in Afghanistan), a study published in The Lancet, the only peer-reviewed study of the Iraqi death count, found that as of 2006, more than 655,000
SUMMER 2011
Iraqi deaths had been caused by the U.S. occupation of Iraq. An invasion and occupation of a country that did not attack us or even harbor those who did, that waited years for a suitable pretext and, in the end, was rationalized by intelligence we damn well knew to be false, has – as of five years ago, mind you – killed 2.5 percent of Iraq’s population. Let’s dispel with some dubious logic: engaging in an activity with the endgame being death and destruction (what “they” do) is morally indistinguishable from engaging in an activity where death and destruction are just profitable by-products (what “we” do). Take a moment to imagine how you would feel if a foreign army invaded our country, killed seven million people, and forced our president to hide in a hole before being hung. Then riddle me this: If we feel entitled to kill more than a million people to ostensibly avenge 2,751 deaths, what are the families of those million innocent dead entitled to do to us? Unlike the conjured menace of one Middle Eastern boogey man, that is a thought that should keep you up at night. •
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Vermont Vox Populi: “ Hit the Capitalist Over The Head and Create a New World” –
An Interview with Bread and Puppet Theater’s Peter and Elka Schumann Robin Lloyd and Rob Williams
Robin Lloyd: Why did the two of you originally come to
Vermont?
We looked at a map of all the states and we went with our finger, like a pendulum, over the map and it stopped in Vermont. It was like dowsing. (laughter) Elka Schumann: In our first Vermont stay, we were in Putney for a year in ’63. Peter was an art teacher in a grammar school; I was substituting for a Russian teacher. Then, in 1970, we got an invitation from Goddard to create a theater in residence. Peter: . . . and all these people were there – Jules and Helen Rabin, Barry Goldenson, Michael Appleby, the president, Jerry Witherspoon, and a big student body that wanted us. Peter Schumann:
R.L.: But a lot of your friends thought leaving New York
City, and your work there with inner city kids, was a bad idea.
Quite a few good friends were upset, including Grace (Paley) and Bob (Nichols). “How could you abandon all those kids?” But I wasn’t happy with those big slum workshops we did in New York City. We worked with kids in the South Bronx and Coney Island for the summer, and then we abandoned those kids. We weren’t social workers. It’s so random, how artists are used as cultural workers in these social-work situations. I remember when they got me to work in East Harlem. They had failed to run a program that appealed to the kids; the kids from that block did not know the kids from the next block because of the gang system. At the end, we took them to Coney Island. None of us were social workers. We wanted to do our crazy art, our political art. Peter:
Artists Peter and Elka Schumann, founders of the legendary Bread & Puppet Theater. ROB WILLIAMS
Elka: We lost our wonderful space, a courthouse, for a dollar a year. R.L.: How did rural life change you and/or your art? Peter: As a refugee kid in Germany my family
lived in the country at the end of the war in 1944. When I was 10 the bombs of the Allies came to our town in Silesia, and we heard the rumbling of the Russian tanks in the distance. Ninetynine percent of the people fled. It was a mixed German/Polish population; we fled to another part of Germany and we ended up at the Balkan Sea living the life of refugees, which means you have nothing, you have to make everything yourself. My mother made clothes from wool that the sheep scraped on the fences and she spun it and knitted and made pants for us. And the gleaning of the fields. I worked as a 10-year-old milking cows so we got milk. R.L.: So that was the golden age of your childhood.
(laughter)
[Goddard’s] Cate Farm in Vermont was wonderful. We had been talking for a couple of years as wanting a life connected to the seasons. It felt time to leave New York City. This offer came; it was great; our life became different. In New York City, we had privacy, but we attempted communal living at Cate Farm. It felt great to make that change. Elka:
that as a godsend. That [federal policy] killed the small farms in our area. So we got in touch with farms and politicians. Later microwave towers were an issue; now it’s the windmills. Elka: The theater creates a very strong community. Friends of friends; neighbors. Now Outward Bound comes for two days for workshops. These are local kids from poor families. Hardly any one of them has been here before. Rob Williams: What has been the goal of Bread and
Puppet over the years? Peter: Hit the capitalist over the head. Elka: With a papier-mâché hammer. Peter: . . . and create a new world. Make
them giggle and then start a new system. The system is rotten and sold out and terrible; it is not what it pretends to be. You know, I grew up in fascist Germany. To not be afraid of what neighbors see you do, to not have to whisper to your parents, is a wonderful thing, but on the other hand, this country does that to other countries by supporting these crooked regimes all over the place – and we are participants by being taxpayers. R.L.: Do you pay income tax? You live almost below the
poverty line. Peter: Now we are recipients of Social Security. R.L.: It creates dilemmas for us all. How does art get at
these issues? R.L.: How did you get to know Vermont history?
Peter: When we came here to Vermont we got involved in the issues. During the ‘80s [Congress passed the ‘Whole Herd Buyout’]. Farmers could kill their dairy herds. Farmers in their 50s took
It’s a search for one giant spectacle. It’s a piecemeal work with sculpture. It’s never finished. It’s huge. It’s done with garbage. In a year, for material expenses, we only spent $1,500. continued on page 12 Peter:
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Vermont Vox Populi, continued from page 11 Cardboard, wood from the forest is retrieved, cheap fabrics, trickery… Elka: The giant show was the Domestic Resurrection Circus [which ended in 1998]. We couldn’t continue like that anymore. Now our performances are dispersed over eight or nine weekends all July and August. We do a smaller version, and we have enough parking places. Now every weekend we also have internships with over 50 people. American college students come here and participate in all the work that goes into a show: preparing meals, packing the puppets, stacking our winter wood, work in the print shop. That exposure is our outreach. Peter says we’re not a school or a summer camp; it’s a chance for people to see how things can work outside the system. If you want to make art, you find cheap material and make art. You don’t need to get a grant or go to a fancy art school. To make a theater, you just do it with the means you have. R.W.: I like the relational element you describe. You meet
people, you hear their stories, and out of that comes theater.
(to Peter): So you should have a lot of shows about American colleges (laughter). Peter: Yes, yes, it’s getting younger and younger here on the farm, you know. The company is younger and younger every year.
Peter Schumann, chatting with Robin Lloyd on the subjects of art and political and spiritual independence. ROB WILLIAMS
We always want to deal with
“Okay, join the movement to pry Vermont loose from the war-makers. Get out of there. This terrible idea of running a military government; they are not even admitting to it, that they are a military government. This is the awful thing. They call it “less government,” and they allocate more money to it than ever. I mean, it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.
Second Vermont Republic ideas.
R.L.: So the Democrats and the Republicans are both in
Elka
Definitely. –Peter Schumann Elka: And we’re older and older. Peter: People used to be in their
early thirties, but now they come here in their twenties, and they don’t last long; they wear out ‘cause they have to pay their college, their student loans, and they have to go and get a better job. There are all kind of influences… Yes, they’re getting younger and younger. R.W.: I remember when we had lunch together at the
River Run Café with Thomas Naylor. I asked you both about how you felt about this idea of Vermont independence, and I remember you had a very interesting answer. I wonder if you can share that here for our readers.
We were really happy when we heard of this idea, because we are always grappling with people, who always say to us after our shows, “Well, what can we do, what can we do, what can there be done?” It’s so hard to answer these simplistic questions. But here was a friendly, and really handsome, and truly pragmatically possible idea. Elka: Up to a point. Peter: You know, to a certain point, to adhere to… To say and to propose to others, at least we can strive for independence from this gigantic empire-state that has outlived its reasonability… its humanity, for sure. So to now say to people,
collusion…
Yeah. Bernie and Leahy support the building of the F-35 in Burlington. So Lockheed- Martin is in the driver’s seat there. We are making a play out of it. Peter:
Peter: Think of the big walls we could build. Elka: Out of granite. R.W.: Well, it’s funny, because a lot of people say “So,
you wanna build walls around Vermont, you want to be isolationist,” and we say, “No, exactly the opposite.” Assuming that the United States would allow this, then why couldn’t we just continue trading with Canada, our number-one trading partner, and neighboring states, and grow more of our own food over time, and harvest more of our own energy, and live more simply? R.L.: It doesn’t need to be an abrupt thing. The U.S.
government is crumbling in its own way.
And the whole local-food movement is growing. Elka:
R.W.: So, Elka, you just said “Vermont independence up
to a point…”
Well, I don’t want to put down the idea, but it’s hard to imagine how there could be this separation, that it would be allowed, and what… that 90 percent of all the food we consume comes from outside. I don’t know. All the practical things… To solve it would be a huge job. Peter: But there is a simpler way of looking at it, and that is the fact that, if it were taken seriously on the national level the National Guard would be all over us. The fact that it’s taken as a joke… Elka: It’s allowed, just like puppet theater. Elka:
Peter:
R.W.: Maybe it’s an evolutionary process… Elka: Oh yeah… (laughter) R.L.: Did you say you’d be dealing with Vermont
independence this summer?
Oh yeah, we always do. We always want to deal with Second Vermont Republic ideas. Definitely. Peter:
R.W.: What do you hope Bread and Puppet’s legacy will
be?
I don’t care about a legacy. I have this philosophy that “things go away,” and that’s fine by me. You know, we’re not trying to fix this up. Elka has archives, and we have the barn, and the barn is full of little sawdust piles of beetles who eat away at the barn, and eventually the barn will gracefully, or not so gracefully, collapse. And that’s how art should be also. It should gracefully collapse and disappear. And that’s what’s good about these ephemeral arts that we’re in; there’s nothing lasting there. Like a dance! A dance isn’t long – it’s for short. Or like music. That’s the nature of music. And theater. You come. And you go away. • Peter:
R.W.: We’re in the same business, perhaps. For
the moment, that’s its greatest power. There is a lightheartedness about it. Peter: Exactly, exactly. R.W.: But it does, like theater, provoke some reflection. Peter: Oh, more than that, I’m sure. It’s a very
attractive idea to many people. I think so. R.L.: And Vermont is specially designed, with a lake on
one side, a river on the other, a foreign country on the top side, and it’s only at the bottom that we’re really connected. (laughter)
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Bye Bye Miss American Empire
Made in Vermont: Meet Frank Bryan, the Green Mountain Independence Movement’s Avatar Bill Kauffman Bill Kauffman, resident of New York state, is the author of Bye Bye Miss American Empire (Chelsea Green, 2010), a book that explores the unaffiliated secession movement in the U.S. With the author’s permission, Vermont Commons: Voices of Independence has been publishing excerpts from the book focusing on Vermont’s participation and leadership in secession from the U.S. Here, we present our fifth and final installment from Kauffman’s book. While many seek the truth by scanning galaxies through powerful telescopes, my eyes have been glued to a microscope—looking down, not up, inward, not outward. America has often seemed transfixed by big. I am captivated by small. —Frank Bryan
W
e have come back, time and again, to Vermont, our virid little inspiration, the state that is not island or peninsula or archipelago or Francophone or Polynesian and yet breathes independence like no other of its 49 sisters. We will speak more of the Second Vermont Republic, but just as William Carlos Williams said there are no ideas but in things, I believe that there are no ideas but in people, and who better to introduce us to Vermont than its native-son avatar and intellectual and my candidate for its first president? Frank Bryan is that rare political scientist who can begin one statistics-dappled tome by describing his wife as “the sexiest wench in the galaxy” and enliven another with footnotes recounting his first gun, cows he has milked, getting beat up in a dance hall over a girl, and the abandoned farms of his Vermont boyhood: “The only trace of the old McEachearn place is in a faraway corner of my heart.”
his magnum opus, the most searching and sympathetic book ever written about the townmeeting democracy of New England. The book is a veritable four-leaf clover of academia: a witty work of political science written from a defiantly rural populist point of view. If we are going to conclude this book [Bye Bye Miss American Empire] with a look at the Second Vermont Republic, the sophisticated, down-home, and generously localist secessionist band in the Green Mountain State, we need first to meet the archetypal – the exemplary – Vermonter. I met Frank Bryan over breakfast at the Oasis Diner on Bank Street, the working-class Democratic eatery in downtown Burlington that for 50-plus years, until its sale in 2007, was owned and operated by the Lines family, making it an oasis of family ownership in the desert of Applebee’s and Olive Gardens. Former governor Howard Dean may be the best-known living political Vermonter, but Dean, Bryan notes, is a cosmopolitan flatlander who was “raised in an environment as completely estranged from town meetings as one can imagine.” Although Dean has displayed spasmodic heterodoxy, notably in his 2004 presidential campaign, he does not embody the “curious mixture of radicalism, populism, and conservatism” that Bryan says has defined Vermont politics since the days when Anti-Masonry and abolition were in vogue. If the Green Mountains had a face, it would be Frank Bryan. He is the real Vermont, the enduring Vermont, not the picture postcard, not the New York Times reader in her airconditioned summer home, but the Vermont of Robert Frost (a Grover Cleveland Democrat who placed his faith in “insubordinate Americans”)
Frank Bryan is the real Vermont, the enduring Vermont, the Vermont of Robert Frost and George Aiken, who explained that “some folks just naturally love the mountains, and like to live up among them where freedom of thought and action is logical and inherent.” He once ran afoul of the town ordinances of Starksboro, where he lives in a converted deer camp on Big Hollow Road, by having 20 junker Chevettes in his yard. (As a communitarian, not a libertarian, he disposed of these parts-cars with only moderate grumbling.) Bryan is a legendary character at the University of Vermont, where he teaches political science: He is the hornyhanded son of toil who does regression analysis, the regular-guy intellectual who prefers the company of “working-class people . . . the old Vermonters.” The irrepressible Bryan made a major contribution to his field (and his country, which is Vermont) with Real Democracy (2004),
and craggily iconic Republican senator George Aiken, who explained that “some folks just naturally love the mountains, and like to live up among them where freedom of thought and action is logical and inherent.” “My mother raised me a Democrat. Vermont raised me a democrat. This book springs from a life of fighting the dissonance between the two,” writes Bryan in Real Democracy. Son of a single mom who worked in the mills, Bryan has that “redneck’s chip on my shoulder” essential to a healthy, authentic populism. His Class of ’59 at Newbury High totaled seven, which led to his politics: “Keep it small. The basketball isn’t good,
UVM political scientist, author, and sometime Vermont Commons contributor Frank Bryan, who wrestles with the nuances of Vermont independence. FRANK BRYAN
but everybody gets to play,” as he told the Vermont Quarterly. After graduation, “I went off to school and heard about how poor and destitute and dumb people like me were because of the size of my community.” One summer he hiked Mount Moosilauke with his brother, who was studying for the priesthood. “I went up that mountain a Kennedy Democrat and came down a Goldwater conservative because my brother convinced me that the Democrats were going to destroy the small towns; they didn’t care about small farms or town meeting.” Bryan has since shed his illusions about the commitment of Republicans to any small-town value not reducible to the bottom line on an annual corporate report. The modern GOP is the party of war and Wal-Mart (four of which deface Vermont, the last state to have been infected by the Arkansas Plague). Bryan now calls himself a “decentralist communitarian” whose heart “is with the small is beautiful crowd.” Yet he is no dewy-eyed idealizer of The People: “Jefferson said rural people are the chosen people of God. That’s a bunch of crap. But forced intimacy is good for society; it makes us tolerant. The reason I’ll stop and help you out of a snow bank on Big Hollow Road isn’t because I particularly like you. But I might see you tomorrow at the store and have to explain why I didn’t. And I expect reciprocity.” Washington–New York conservatives despise Vermont for its “liberalism,” though I cannot see how Bernie Sanders is any more destructive of American liberties than, say, Rudy Giuliani. Or perhaps they hate Frank Bryan’s state because, lacking any sense of place or local loyalties themselves, they fear communities organized on a human scale. Burlington, Vermont’s largest city, has fewer than forty thousand residents, and the state leads the nation in the percentage of its population living in towns of under twenty-five hundred. continued on page 14
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Bye Bye Miss American Empire, continued from page 13 Frank Bryan calls himself a “Vermont patriot.” One recalls G. K. Chesterton’s dictum that a patriot boasts never of the largeness of his country but rather of its littleness. As Bryan and John McClaughry wrote in The Vermont Papers (1989), their blueprint for a devolutionary overhaul of state government: “Vermont matters most because it is small, not in spite of it.” • • • The proposals that Vermont secede from the United States and Kingdom County secede from Vermont were moved and passed, as they had been annually since 1791, when the Green Mountain State first joined the Union. These were the only two measures the people of Lost Nation ever agreed upon unanimously. —Howard Frank Mosher, Northern Borders (1994) Mosher, Bryan’s favorite Vermont novelist, depicts town meeting as a blend of cussedness and community, radicalism and renewal. Elsewhere Mosher has written of Northern Vermont as being “full of fiercely antiauthoritarian, independent-minded individualists” for whom “independence, rooted in local land ownership and local government, seems to have remained the chief objective.” Ecce Frank Bryan. Bryan views town meeting as the palladium of this independence. His research into its workings and meaning has been his “life’s work,” says Harvard’s Jane Mansbridge. Real Democracy is the result. Every March since 1969, Professor Bryan has sent his students at St. Michael’s College and later the University of Vermont, to the school gyms, auditoriums, church cellars, and fire stations of the 236 Vermont towns holding annual meetings at which the citizens present – about 20 percent of a town’s population, on average – vote on budgets, elect officials, levy taxes, and otherwise decide
Bryan with a team of oxen. Rooted in Vermont. FRANK BRYAN
whichever governmental business has not been usurped by the central authorities in Montpelier and Washington, D.C. Bryan’s sample is enormous: almost 1,500 town meetings “encompassing 238,603 acts of participation by 63,140 citizens in 210 towns.” This mountain of data is vast and unique, for as Bryan notes incredulously, “No article on town meeting has ever been published in a major political science journal. Never . . . We know much more about the Greek democracy of twenty-five hundred years ago than we do about real democracy in America today.” Why the neglect and nescience among political scientists? “They don’t trust common people,” he says of his confreres. “They were trained by professors who were trained by people who were terrified by fascism and the ‘tyranny of the majority.’” Transient suburbanites and hyper-mobile city dwellers fear nothing so much as the unlettered rural man with a voice and a meaningful vote. They cannot see that the diffusion of power inherent in town meeting is the best defense against tyranny. Bryan quotes Goldwater speechwriter turned Wobbly Karl Hess, who “once said that Adolf Hitler as chancellor of Germany is a horror; Adolf Hitler at a town meeting would be an asshole.”
SUMMER 2011
Yes, localized direct democracy is majoritarian, but the citizen unhappy with a law may appeal to her neighbors, who are often kin or lifelong friends. At the national level, however, she is just a single vote in a mass of anonymous millions – not even a brick in the wall. A Vermonter who dislikes his town’s junk-car ordinance can remonstrate with his landsmen; a Vermonter who dislikes the Wall Street bailout or the Iraq War can shut up or get drunk, but he can’t get within a Free Speech Zone of Barack Obama. Bryan’s central finding is that “real democracy works better in small places – dramatically better.” The smaller the town, the higher the percentage of citizens who participate in town meeting. The only other variable with any potency is the presence of controversial items on the agenda. If town meeting is waning, as pulseless technocrats often claim, it is because “Vermont towns have steadily been losing the authority to deal with controversial issues.” Voting up or down on the purchase of a snowplow is fine, but for grassroots democracy to thrive we must restore to small places control over education, welfare, and economic regulation. “Issues are absolutely essential,” Bryan stresses. “Liberals think you go to town meeting because you have a civic duty. There’s some of that, but no one is damn fool enough to give up a spring day [for that]. But if their kids’ education is up for grabs, they’ll damn well be there.” Bryan sums up the key to successful direct democracy: “Keep jurisdictions small and give them real things to do.” • • • And where do I live by preference, when I am not teaching? Vermont. Why? Because it is, in most of the ways of freedom and space, more like the West I grew up in than most of the Contemporary West is. —Wallace Stegner, 1971
SUMMER 2011
Since the 1930s Vermont has attracted rusticating intellectuals who “bought abandoned farms and stayed from last frost to first,” Bryan jokes. Vermont doughtily gave landslide-loser Alf Landon three of his eight electoral votes in the presidential campaign of 1936, and on Town Meeting Day of that same year her gallant citizens rejected by a vote of 42,318–30,987 the Green Mountain Parkway, a federal proposal to build a freeway through the Green Mountains, despoiling them in the service of faster travel and carwindow tourism. Frank Bryan calls the defeat of the Green Mountain Parkway “the most democratic expression of environmental consciousness in American history.” I suppose that today’s Beltway conservatives would revile Vermont for spurning national greatness, progress, and the gracious gift of asphalt. (Bryan later opposed, unsuccessfully, the infliction of the Interstate Highway System upon northern Vermont. The Vermont writer Castle Freeman, Jr., as fine a novelist as you’ll find anywhere, described I-91 as a “serpent, vast, corrupting worm, fell messenger, incubus – a soul-harlot lewdly lying beside the chaste green hills.”) The rejection of the Green Mountain Parkway, which Frank Bryan sees as mythic in its defiance and radical in its implications, reveals an old Vermont that is green and truculent, little and rebellious. I am reminded of Where the Rivers Flow North (1993), Vermont filmmaker Jay Craven’s fine adaptation of Howard Frank Mosher’s story of a hook-handed Northern Vermont logger and his Indian common-law wife, played con brio by Rip Torn and Tantoo Cardinal. The leased land on which the logger’s family has lived and died for generations is bought by the Northern Power Co., which intends to flood it for a dam. The logger, declaring that he will not be “bribed off my land,” tries instead to cut down the trees and, not incidentally, ruin the “nature park” the power company has planned. Northern Power would deliver the Vermont desired by many of the newest immigrants: no old Vermonters, but plenty of nature parks. Frank Bryan describes the two waves of post– World War II immigration to his state: the first salutary, the second malignant. “The first were hippies who came for ideological reasons: They wanted to live small, get a horse or cow. They bought chain saws and wounded themselves. But they’ve done a lot to preserve town meeting and local government because they were real lefties.” The “post-1980s influx,” by contrast, “is much more upscale: Let’s go to the cleanest, safest state in America and get a trophy house with a nice view. They want to preserve the ambience of small – no old Chevettes in the yard; cows are okay as long as they don’t shit too much – but they want to use the politics of centralized authority. They don’t care who’s living here or how we make decisions as long as Vermont looks like a theme park. They want to be in Vermont but they don’t want to live in Vermont. We spend tons of money to preserve old farm buildings but there’s nothing like that to preserve town meeting or the citizen legislature or the two-year term for governor [which is under bipartisan assault] or
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Frank Bryan and his oxen marching in the Bristol July independence parade. FRANK BRYAN
the democratic values that created [Vermont] in the first place.” Bryan notes the social gulf between the old Vermont and the new. “The people that had the [anti-gay-civil-unions] take back vermont signs were the people that created the image that these new guys want: They extol them. When a farmer stands up at a town meeting the flatlanders all go, ‘It’s a farmer!’ – like God is here. But do they invite them over for tea? No. They don’t socialize with them.” (Civil unions between same-sex couples “didn’t have much impact,” says Bryan. “The right thought everything’s going to hell, we’ll be the haven, but nothing like that happened.” The way the unions were achieved, however – by a “courtdirected legislative cave-in” – affronted Bryan’s democratic sensibilities. “We overturned twentyfive hundred years of Judeo-Christian tradition in three months without an election. The people who backed civil unions were so intolerant of those who didn’t; the professional people couldn’t understand why the rednecks were all bent out of shape.” They were bent further out of shape by Vermont’s 2009 enshrinement of gay marriage.) The Take Back Vermonters were acting in a long Vermont tradition of resistance to centralized tyranny. The state’s political genius was a kind of stony Jeffersonianism – without the stain of slavery. Vermont learned early the virtues of states’ rights when it defied the Fugitive Slave Act. Vermont would not return a slave without a “Bill of Sale from the Almighty,” declared state Supreme Court Justice Theophilus Harrington in 1804. Vermont remained an independent republic, outside the nascent union, from 1777 to 1791, and imaginative Vermonters are asking why not go out again? In 1990 Bryan traveled the state with Vermont Supreme Court Justice John Dooley debating secession from the union. Bryan, who argued the affirmative, is “very sympathetic” to the campaign for a Second Vermont Republic. “When I put the secession argument to the test intellectually, I can’t think of a reason not to, even
economically,” says Bryan, who nevertheless opposed secession for several years for perhaps the only legitimate reason: sentiment. “I couldn’t sit around and let a bunch of crazy Vermonters like me tear down the American flag. My heart would break.” But in the intervening years the rest of America broke his heart, and he is with the secessionists today, if reluctantly. • • • The regionalist who actually lives in the place he loves is often given to alternating fits of lachrymose romanticism and utter despair. Bryan sounds the occasional plangent note, but in the main he radiates optimism: a quondam technophobe, he credits computer technology with making possible “a dramatic decentralization of lifestyle and culture.” “People are living and working in the same place,” he says. “They don’t have to drive to a centralized workplace, which was the great dislocation of the twentieth century.” The divorce of work and home visited upon us horrors ranging from day care to the Interstate Highway System; its reunion may bear fruit delicious, including the revitalization of local democracy. In any event, Frank Bryan is in Vermont, for better or worse. As a patriot, he stands on what he stands for. With Real Democracy, he gave his state, and us outlanders as well, the most detailed and affectionate portrait ever painted of town meeting, which is, says Bryan, “where you learn to be a good citizen.” His book is also an act of love. It shows Vermont how to stay Vermont. For as Bryan avers, “The only way to save Vermont is to preserve our democratic institutions.” Bryan likes to quote Jack London, who said, Neil Youngishly: “I would rather my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled in dry rot.” Those fires you see lighting the Green Mountain sky are Frank Bryan’s bonfire, which burns so brilliantly because its kindling is so dear to him, so dear and so wonderfully, lifegivingly small. •
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Farm To Plate:
A Blueprint for Vermont’s Farm and Food Future Ellen Kahler and the VSJF staff
A
s spring gives way to summer and high water levels recede, we are at the start of another growing season. Local farmers’ markets will be flush with spring greens and peas. Lambs are being born. Fields are being prepped and crops planted. Then comes the first and second cuts of hay and bees buzzing with their spring pollination frenzy. Vermont’s local food system is growing stronger by the day, and for the first time, we have a blueprint – the Farm to Plate Strategic Plan – to coordinate action, direct investment, and measure progress toward 10-year goals. When implemented, Farm to Plate (F2P) will support unprecedented growth and sustainability in the farm-and-food sector. The Farm to Plate planning process began when the Legislature passed Act 54 in 2009, directing the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund (VSJF), in consultation with other stakeholders, to develop a 10-year strategic plan to strengthen Vermont’s food system. Nine researchers and more than 1,200 Vermonters contributed to the development of the plan in order to ensure that the final product was data-driven, reflective of the current state of the entire food system, and wellvetted by knowledgeable practitioners. Eighteen months in the making, the Farm to Plate Executive Summary is full of statistics about Vermont’s food system and detailed analyses about its strengths and weaknesses. It contains 33 goals and 60 high-priority strategies that the plan’s drafters say will lead to job creation, greater economic output, and increased access for Vermont and regional consumers to healthy, fresh food. The report found that the state can expect 1,500 new private-sector jobs over the next 10 years if Vermonters double their consumption of locally
ELLEN KAHLER
Agriculture is Economic Development: 2011 Legislative Session To support the renaissance in agriculture, Governor Shumlin agreed to include a number of high-priority strategies in the Jobs Bill (H.287) and allocated $500,000 towards those strategies, including:
• Funding to establish a meat cutters training program in the state • Funding for matching grants to slaughterhouses for equipment and process improvements • Funding for matching grants for produce farmers who want to become GAP (Good Agricultural Practices) certified so that they can sell to larger retail outlets • Continued funding for small grants for Farm to School projects • Funding for student loan repayments for large-animal veterinarians • Local Foods Coordination at the Agency of Agriculture (includes a full-time staff position at the Agency, possible matching grant funding, and other match-making tasks) • Travel funds for the Agency of Agriculture so that staff can participate in 2012 Farm Bill negotiations in Washington, D.C., and other regional local food and dairy-related meetings • Continued funding for implementation of the Farm to Plate Investment Program (to coordinate and evaluate implementation of the strategic plan) • Further directives on state purchases of locally produced food and agricultural products
The House Commerce and Agriculture committees worked on H.287 first, passing it in the full House by a 122-13 vote on second reading, before sending it over to the Senate Committees on Agriculture and Economic Development for consideration. The bill was passed out of the Senate Economic Development Committee (chaired by State Sen. Vince Illuzzi from Orleans County), and then the full Senate, before being signed by the governor. produced food from just 5 percent to 10 percent of their total food purchases. “If the strategies in the plan are implemented, we estimate that total economic output will increase by $135 million per year. That’s over $1 billion in new economic output over the 10 year life of the plan,” said Ellen Kahler, executive director of the VSJF. Implementation of the Farm to Plate Strategic Plan is underway in earnest across the state. For instance, the Center for an Agricultural Economy and Northeast Vermont Development Association recently released a draft food-systems strategic plan specifically for the three counties of the Northeast Kingdom (NEK). This regional plan uses the F2P plan as its foundation and indicates specific areas of focus that make sense for the NEK, given the types of farms and business opportunities present and the kinds of crops best suited for the Kingdom. The Addison County Relocalization Network is just about to release the results of its countywide survey of producers and institutional buyers, which focused on identifying the level of interest of local producers in scaling up to serve institutional markets. The Rutland Area Farm & Food Link and Valley Food & Farm (which represents 21 towns in the Upper Valley of Vermont and New Hampshire) are both honing in on how they can best support local food production and consumption in their areas.
The Vermont Food Venture Center is scheduled to open in Hardwick within the next couple of months. NOFA-VT is exploring opportunities for farms to sell to institutional markets. The Agency of Agriculture recently convened a meeting with the Meat and Poultry Producers Association to learn more about slaughter and livestock producers’ needs and interests. These are but a sampling of the exciting activities already underway. “2011 will be a big year for us,” said Kahler. “We’ll meet with as many Vermonters as we can to help them navigate the various parts of the full Farm to Plate plan, and to begin the ten-year process of implementing as many of the strategies as we collectively can.” She also indicated that the VSJF will track and measure progress annually and is required to report back to the Legislature and Administration each January. “It’s a huge undertaking, but given everyone’s enthusiasm and passion for local, fresh food and this planning process to date, not to mention how many important initiatives are already underway, I have no doubt we’ll be able to pull it off,” Kahler said. To read the Executive Summary and chapters of the full Farm to Plate Strategic Plan, visit the website: http://www.vsjf.org/project-details/5/ farm-to-plate-initiative. •
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Homestead Security: When Life Gives You Water, Make Swales, Ponds and Paddies Ben Falk
T
he rain woke me up this morning, again. Falling now in sheets across my ponds, fruit trees, and vegetable beds, drenching the sheep and the ducks alike is the seventeenth or eighteenth inch of rain that’s fallen this spring, and – at this writing on May 19 – we still have more than a month to go. “Normally” we get about four to six inches of rain in May total; but we’ve already received about eight to nine inches on this site in central Vermont since the month began, and it’s still raining hard. The forecast calls for another inch or two to finish this week alone. What do 10-plus inches of rain in a month mean for us? For me as a homesteader it means some washed-out vegetables – my cabbages are looking somewhat poor in their low-lying bed – and slow starts to other vegetables. Luckily, many are in a raised cold frame, but my beans may be rotting in the soil after sitting there for the better part of a week with no sun to warm the soil for sprouting. Yet, my rice paddies are overflowing, the ponds are brimming, the ducks are finding slugs and snails wherever they look.
There’s perhaps nothing we can do to more quickly enhance the biodiversity of species in our landscapes than to create water bodies. This rain is very good for the perch and bluegill in my ponds, for the ducks that make eggs and meat, and for the now fast-growing rice crop that thrives in water-logged conditions. Another foot of rain doesn’t hurt a crop that’s already flooded and liking it. My pasture also looks great. With every inch of rain it seems to have grown two to four inches this month and the sward of clover, vetch, and rye is thicker every day. The sheep seem to tolerate the cool rain, thankful for the bounty of fresh grass it
Making food while mitigating flooding: terraced water capture and use via ponds, swales and paddies at the Whole Systems Research Farm. BEN FALK
delivers. May pasture growth is normally about three times faster than July growth, anyway, largely because of moisture. If it keeps raining the pasture will keep on growing rapidly. The tree and berry crops look fantastic as well. We’ve earthworked the landscape of this research farm so that our perennial plantings are on top of mounds running sideways across the slope “on contour.” These plants have all the access to water they could want in the bottoms of these swales, but are free from inundation being planted up high on each mound. Since rain pulls down significant quantities of nitrogen from the atmosphere as it falls (washed from the air at greater rates that any other time in the historical record) it stimulates plant growth; it’s literally liquid fertilizer. Accordingly, rainforests – the rainiest environments in the world – have the fastest biomass production. So plant crops that can avoid inundation due to their growing situation, along with those that don’t mind the lack of sunshine and heat, are thriving along with the fish, ducks, and pasture. This includes the perennial crops: apple, pear, plum, cherry, quince, peach, walnut, hickory, chestnut, oak, blueberry, aronia berry, seaberry, honeyberry, gooseberry, currant, and a score of other permanent producers. Some aspects of this farm system are actually greatly benefiting from this cool, wet weather while conventional fields of corn and other fragile bare-
The first terraced paddy agricultural system in New England, but not the last. BEN FALK
soil annuals sit mired along the river bottoms, too soft for machinery to deal with. Ponds, swales, and paddies have been a part of the working landscape since agriculture emerged, especially on sloped lands. Since water is the basis of productive biological systems, retaining and distributing this storehouse of fertility and life within a landscape is key to its success as a living, productive environment. The climate, topography, and soils, along with the ease of access to machinery and cheap energy (for now) in the northeastern U.S., offers a particularly timely opportunity to capture, store, and distribute water via ponds on farms. continued on page 18
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Homestead Security, continued from page 17
An optimized pond profile showing boulders and shallow edges for habitat and water quality enhancement.
Uses Ponds, paddies, and swales in this climate can be cropped for a variety of outputs, most established of which are fish, rice, and berries respectively. Shallow-water systems such as paddies have the unique ability to be fertigated easily (nutrient-rich water delivery), which allows rapid growth of heavy-feeding plants in an otherwise poor fertility situation. These systems can also be perpetually productive on account of water as the nutrient-delivery mechanism: witness paddies that have produced a staple rice crop for centuries upon centuries in sloping landscapes. It is likely that other cropping possibilities beyond rice will emerge with continued innovation of fertigation in both paddies and swales in the coming decades. Ponds, especially, have many uses beyond what can actually be produced inside of them, and it is these uses that make them an especially attractive working-landscape feature. These include: Microclimate enhancement: Water bodies capture and store solar energy and release this heat slowly, especially in the autumn, to the adjacent area. In our testing on the Whole Systems Design Research Farm this affect varies from year to year with the severity of the fall’s first frost. Our three ponds will often not buffer against frost if the first freeze is about 27° F or less, yet will extend the growing season by weeks if the first frost in the fall is a mild one, which is usually the case. Wildlife: There’s perhaps nothing we can do to more quickly enhance the biodiversity of species in our landscapes than to create water bodies. In addition, amphibians are in need of particularly strong support, given the decline in health of their populations in recent years. Ponds with large wetland edges are ideal – and often rarely found – habitats in many areas of the Northeast. Each time we’ve built a pond at least three species of frog and two species of salamander arrive on site within weeks. The values ponds offer for beneficial insects, birds, and mammals can also be observed in short order. Storage for Distribution: Large water storage is invaluable for fire control and irrigation as well as for drought-proofing a landscape over time. It takes three days or less to make
a pond that can hold 100,000 gallons or more, making it the most economical means of storing large quantities of water. Farms with a need for irrigation often recognize the opportunity to gravity-feed such water via a supply located high in the landscape so that its water can be fed to the entire farm without pumps or electricity. Capturing surface water from as many acres as possible is important for farms to be adaptive to shifting climate conditions and the adverse affects of drought punctuated by intense rain events. A well-sited and properly integrated pond can be the most crucial “shock absorber” farms have to large precipitation fluctuations. Ponds in this capacity serve like batteries, storing excess energy (water) when it is abundant so that it can be distributed slowly over a long period of time (drought). Other: Recreation, food storage, and increasing radiative light for crops and building interiors are several other important side benefits of well-integrated ponds – which demand more space than possible here to discuss but are worth mentioning. Management over time is more involved than the scope of this article permits but the following are basic ground rules for ecologically-enhancing multipurpose ponds: Don’t mow to the water’s edge. That’s the best way to wreck the most abundant wildlife habitat a pond offers. If you must make access via a mower do so in limited areas along its perimeter. Seed any bare areas that are not greened up every spring through early summer until there are none left. This can take three years or more depending on vigilance and weather.
Keep a watchful eye on overflow spillways (recommended) and drainage fixtures/pipes (not recommended) to prevent clogging and waterline rising to a dangerous point. Swales, paddies, and ponds are some of the most important features we can install today to ensure a more productive, multifunctional and resilient landscape tomorrow. Well-designed and -constructed water-retaining and -distribution systems such as these can help homes and farms become more fit for a future that is likely to bring with it adverse conditions including drought, flood, increased pest pressures, increased costs of inputs and other stresses that only highly resilient, low-input systems will handle successfully. •
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News From Chelsea Green Publishing
Gram Teel The following excerpt is from Chapter 1 of Alone and Invisible No More: How Grassroots Community Action and 21st Century Technologies Can Empower Elders to Stay in Their Homes and Lead Healthier, Happier Lives by Allan S. Teel, MD
H
ow could growing up next door to doting grandparents in a quiet suburban neighborhood not make the elder world attractive? Whether it was Gram’s fresh cupcakes and her uniquely soft ice cream from her antique refrigerator, or collecting stamps with my grandfather on a warm summer Friday night in front of a black-and-white television and the floor fan, or independently exploring the drainage streams in their basement with our homemade toy boats after school—everything about my grandparents’ home seemed all at once attractively quiet and orderly, curious, and supportive, full of treats and treasures in a very understated way. As I grew older and more consumed by my own pursuits, the appeal of time with them never diminished. So when Gram turned ninety at her condo in Massachusetts and was driving my father crazy with her repetitious questions and stories, it seemed only natural to move her into an apartment near my wife and me in Maine. Because she wanted to have her cat with her, and wanted to maintain her independence as much as possible, institutional care was not an option. She was still driving despite barely seeing over the dashboard, and her car was an essential part of her self-sufficiency. She never had an accident, and never got lost. At McDonald’s, she would eat inexpensively, and introduce herself to each new acquaintance as simply “Gram.” Despite her quiet manner, she would occasionally let you in on her many secrets. Once while I was in my twenties, when we were talking about life in general and about my parents’ divorce in particu lar, I marveled at how she had been happily married for almost fifty years. She quietly said, “It wasn’t always easy you know. . . .” No further elaboration. That was as close to a complaint as I ever heard from her. That was often the way her generation approached such delicate issues. And for her, it had not always been easy. Although growing up as the oldest child in an upper-middle-class family, she was so painf ully shy that she could not attend school regularly.
Having outgoing younger siblings did not help. As an adult, her third child was born just as the stock market crashed and her father’s bank failed. Gram then raised her family during the depression, as did so many of her generation. Gram taught me a lot about successful aging. After Gramp’s death, she continued as the reliable friend and taxi for many of her former neighbors who then lived in the area’s senior apartment complexes. As fewer and fewer of her friends drove, she became busier. Gram derived great satisfaction and sense of purpose from her role in their lives. She took many to lunch and to their appointments. Her community service had started much earlier. Her father had funded and her mother had administered the Home for the Aged in Reading, Massachusetts. After her kids were grown, Gram was appointed its president, and as my dad said, “She really got her teeth into it.” There she found her voice, and effectively advocated for and cared for its residents until the home closed in the 1960s with the advent of a local nursing home. From my preschool days, I have vague memor ies of being exposed to the world of isolated rooming-house elders. So in many ways, it seems that taking an advocacy role for elders is in my blood. From the time I first noticed, Gram never seemed in a hurry. She moved at a tempered pace and yet never seemed to waste a step. She did not have unattainable expectations. She was flexible enough to roll with the opportunities that presented themselves on a regular basis. Loneliness was her biggest lament. She never had enough visitors. She loved to hear from her family, but she preferred them to visit and bring their children, or their friends, and photographs, and tell her about their latest projects.
Gram always treated our friends as one of the family—making everyone comfortable in an easy chair or at the kitchen table. Gram went to bed shortly after supper, and she rarely got up at night, and never had to change bedding unnecessarily. She was one of the lucky ones. It is curious in this time of technically complex medical care how important it is to have good bladder control to maintain one’s independence and not be placed in residential care owing to urinary incontinence. We have made this issue one of the triggers leading to institutionalization even though a change in venue does not solve the problem. This is an example of how concern about one very specific trigger can blind family and healthcare decisionmakers to an elder’s overall enjoyment of life. In a not so distant past, extended families lived near each other, and frequent intergenerational contact was the norm. Family relationships were often very fluid, and visits quite informal. In my case, it was commonplace to be instructed to go to Gram’s house after school. Most importantly, very few members of the older generation were isolated. Even as twenty-first-century life has become more complicated, and the key issues of aging get more technical and the approaches to them become more institutionalized, most of what is important in day-to-day life is still nonmedical: staying connected to family, friends, and lifelong interests. Community is important. Remaining independent keeps one healthier. Having a purpose, whether it is caring for a pet, or participating in the life of an extended family or a neighbor is essential. No matter what our age, we need a reason to get up in the morning. We feel much better when we do something for others, and by extension, doing for others keeps us mentally and physically healthier. Worrying is unhealthy, and solves very few problems. Intergenerational connections are vital to reducing loneliness and isolation and provide extraordinary mutual benefit. So much of my thinking in the movement to revolutionize eldercare as we know it is shaped by Gram and her simple principles. This graceful, matter-of-fact woman, and many others like her, understood their own needs and fulfilled them in part by embracing and serving others in true community. Revisiting her story is not a wistful exercise in nostalgia; rather it is a blueprint for a better way.
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VERMONT COMMONS
SUMMER 2011
News From Chelsea Green Publishing
Enduring Freedom:
Missed Opportunities and the New Occupation The following excerpt is from Killing the Cranes: A Reporter’s Journey Through Three Decades of War in Afghanistan by Edward Girardet
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fficially, America’s longest war began on October 7, 2001, when US and British warplanes started bombing suspected Talib and al Qaeda positions in Afghanistan. In reality, it started when the United States began supporting the mujahideen, especially the extremists, and engaged with bin Laden. Washington’s “war on terrorism” has become a full-fledged counterinsurgency and the country has descended steadily into chaos and insecurity that is far worse than during the Taliban. Washington’s “Operation Enduring Freedom” purportedly aimed to punish the Taliban for welcoming those suspected of involvement with the 9/11 terror attacks. More specifically, its declared objective was to capture bin Laden and put out of action the training camps and opera t ional bases believed to be preparing future assaults against the West. By collaborating with the United Front (Northern Alliance) forces, the military Coalition also intended to help install a more moderate, broad-based, and, above all, Western-style government in Kabul. Perhaps the most glaring weakness of this strategy was the role of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Neither Washington nor London sought to admonish publicly the Islamabad government for its backing of the Taliban right up to the time of the US invasion. This support enabled al Qaeda and thousands of other foreign Islamic legionnaires to operate on Afghan territory. Nor did the United States reprimand Saudi Arabia, which had recognized the Talib regime. Furthermore, many questioned whether the US really was intent on capturing bin Laden. For many Afghans, however, the Western intervention promised the possibility of a peaceful resolution, once and for all, to over two decades of war, which had already cost over 1.5 million lives and destroyed much of their country. As during the Soviet invasion, much of the world’s mainstream media had descended on northern Afghanistan as Coalition warplanes pounded the Taliban in the fall of 2001. Although several media outlets such as Fox TV broadcast propaganda-style coverage, others including
Britain’s BBC, ITV, and Guardian as well as German, French, and other European networks were of a far higher standard. The Arab network Al Jazeera also provided interesting perspectives, which one simply did not see on Western television. This was possibly a reason why the Al Jazeera news bureau in Kabul received a direct hit by a US missile in November 2001. No one was hurt and US officials apologized, claiming that they had believed it to be a “terrorist site.” On the morning of November 13, 2001, Peter Jouvenal, the BBC’s John Simpson, ITV’s Julian Manyon, and other Western journalists entered Kabul at the forefront of the United Front troops. Two days prior to 9/11, Peter had been in Peshawar negotiating with the Taliban to set up a BBC office in Kabul. When news of the terrorist attacks came through, Peter immediately began preparing the logistics for its coverage over the next three months.
“As we drew nearer to the city we could see the grim evidence of battle,” reported Simpson as he traveled with Peter and the BBC team. “The roads were littered with the bodies of former supporters of the Northern Alliance who had switched sides and joined the Taliban—no mercy for them.” Thousands of jubilant United Front troops surged toward the capital, but were ordered to halt as part of a deal with the Americans not to move beyond the outskirts. Most obeyed, forming a gigantic traffic jam of troops, tanks, trucks, and APCs. The journalists continued on foot, even ahead of the troops. They were welcomed by rejoicing people shouting “kill the Taliban.” Most Taliban had fled, but lying in the streets were the bodies of foreign Islamic legionnaires, mainly Arabs and Pakistanis. Particularly loathed by the Afghans, they had been lynched or shot. On a hillside above the city, shots rang out as soldiers hunted down remain i ng Taliban. The men surrendered and were led away to face Northern Alliance justice. Many were executed. With the Talib regime gone, I was keen on returning to Afghanistan as soon as possible. I wanted to set up journalism programs as part of an international initiative to develop a new and independent Afghan media. Like everyone else, I assumed that with the Taliban gone, and al Qaeda dismantled, a new and open government would be installed to oversee a vibrant recovery process. The international aid community was also stepping up operations. My wife, Lori, an American aid worker and former journalist from Indiana, and I decided to move to Islamabad. She was working with the World Health Organization (WHO), while I would represent Media Action International, and also continue with my reporting. We rented a large house in a pleasant, leafy suburb, sent our two children to the international schools, and proceeded to take turns traveling between Islamabad and Kabul.
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SUMMER 2011
VERMONT COMMONS
21
News From Chelsea Green Publishing
Natural Lighting The following excerpt is from Chapter 4 of Passive Solar Architecture: Heating, Cooling, Ventilation, Daylighting, and More Using Natural Flows by David A. Bainbridge and Ken Haggard
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atural lighting uses sunlight and diffuse radiation from the sky to provide light inside buildings. It should be considered essential for every new building. Natural light adds delight to our lives by providing movement, change, and connection to the outdoor environment. Global greenhouse gas emissions and the environmental impacts of mining, power production, and power distribution can be greatly reduced by integrating natural light; and unlike artificial light, natu ral light works when the power grid goes down. Interest in natural light has increased in the last few years as the many benefits of natural light have become clearer. Studies have proven natural light can improve moods, spirit, performance, and health. Students in schools with natural light perform better, with marked improvements in both English and mathematics. Natural light in work settings tends to increase the productivity of workers and reduce absenteeism. Lockheed found productivity at one facility increased 15 percent when they moved from a conventional building into a naturally lit building, and days off work dropped by 15 percent. The Herman Miller Company found even higher productivity gains in its daylit furniture factory. In larger facilities, human resources are often 90 to 95 percent of the company’s operating budget (far exceeding the initial cost of the building and energy costs of operation), so small investments in natural light up front will yield considerable savings over the long run. Surveys consistently show that people prefer natural light and desire a connection to it. In most cases, they want a view to the outside rather than a luminous panel. User control, flexibility, and adjustable controls are also preferred.
identified the number one cause of bird fatalities to be buildings due to the specular reflection from glass window and wall systems. These reflections, rather than the usual suspects—cats, vehicles, or pesticides—can be minimized with good design. Since birds can see the ultraviolet end of the spectrum, glass can also be coated with a UV pattern to allow them to see the glass while it remains transparent to humans. The ultimate source of all natural light is the sun, yet only part of the light used for natural lighting is received as direct sunlight. The rest arrives as indirect or diffuse radiation reflected off dust or water particles in the atmosphere or reflected radiation bounced off other structures or features of the landscape. The proportion of each varies as a function of both building orientation and design, variation in ground surface, cloudiness and type of clouds, atmospheric clarity, and the sun’s daily and seasonal path and position. The main factors influencing natural light available for use are microclimate and solar altitude. The same tools for solar geometry can be used to determine shading and solar obstructions. North and south light also vary, with diffuse and direct sunlight being influenced by the sky exposure angle.
Visible Light Measured in wavelengths, the typical human eye perceives a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum from violet to red light from about 380 to 750 nanometers. Different creatures can see variations of this range; for instance, ultraviolet light can be sensed by most insects and some birds, while some snakes can see the infrared heat given off by warm-blooded bodies. For the most part, natural lighting is concerned with the visible spectrum—although studies have recently
Summary Natural light should be an integral consideration in the design of every new building; it reduces heat gain from lighting to one-fourth of the heat from fluorescent lights and as little as one-sixth of the heat from incandescent lights. This can lead to a substantial reduction in air-conditioning load and substantial energy and financial savings as well as reduction in global greenhouse gases, because lighting adds 30 to 50 percent of the cooling load in many commercial buildings.
The health benefits of natural light are well documented. Businesses and schools are catching on as they realize workers are healthier, more positive, and more productive with natural light. These benefits far outweigh the benefit of lower utility bills. Students have demonstrated fewer behavioral problems under full-spectrum light, which makes the learning environment more pleasant and efficient for everyone, including the teachers. Interior design must be developed and integrated with the natural lighting system. Office layout, including placement of desks, monitors, and other equipment, needs to consider lighting requirements and lighting opportunities and constraints. The planning should also consider where different activities and tasks will be undertaken. Good interior design can help a poorly developed light system function better, while poor interior design can cripple a brill iant daylight design. Lighting design influences color and material choices, the design of interior partitions and interior decoration, and choice and placement of fixtures and equipment. Everyone must be encouraged to understand and accept responsibility for his or her potential impacts on lighting. High reflectances are usually desirable for the ceiling and walls, partitions, and floors. However, desktops, storage, and partitions in workers’ viewscapes should be chosen for moderate reflectance to reduce potential glare problems on computer screens and other monitors. In 2007, about 526 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity were used for lighting by the residential and commercial sectors. This was equal to about 19 percent of the total electricity consumed by both of those sectors and 14 percent of total US electricity consumption (US Energy Information Administration). The use of natural light can not only reduce the pollution associated with electricity production, but also save quite a bit in terms of water resources, since 47 percent of US water use is for energy production. Even with abundant natural light, people have been programmed to reach for the lights as they enter a room. It is time for everyone to think before automatically hitting the switch. After all, even though electricity is subsidized to make it affordable now, that will not be the case in the future. Natural light will play an increasing role in buildings in the future, just as it did before the fossil-fool era.
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VERMONT COMMONS
SUMMER 2011
News From Chelsea Green Publishing Plant Blindness The following excerpt is from Slow Gardening: A No-Stress Philosophy for All Senses and Seasons by Felder Rushing
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here’s a reason why most of us can’t see the trees for the forest—we have become “plant blind” from seeing too much at one time, for a long time. Plant blindness is a fairly new term coined by botanist-educators who have been studying why children are not growing up appreciating plants as much as their grandparents did. Fewer kids have eaten a sun-warmed tomato just picked off the vine, have climbed a tree and felt its bark, or have smelled crushed mint. This leads to kids not even noticing the plants to begin with—the inability to see or notice the plants in one’s environment. Plant blindness is mostly an eye-brain connection thing; even with our eyes wide open, we simply can’t understand all that we see. Think about it this way: What was the color of the last car in front of you at the stoplight? You probably stared right at the license plate, but unless it was highly personalized you didn’t “notice” it, right? It’s the same with plants, or anything. Most of us have very efficient sight, with eyes that generate some 10 million bits of information every second that are sent to the brain for processing. Trouble is, the brain extracts only about 40 bits per second, and fully processes
a mere 16 bits that reach our conscious atten tion. So we react or respond mostly to movement, conspicuous colors, patterns, or other stuff that really stands out. Because plants are all around us all the time and they don’t move very much, we see, but literally can’t process the trees for the forest, unless we make ourselves pay attention. Most of us end up noticing the movement of animals (birds, butterflies, squirrels) rather than the plants themselves, which can easily lead to glossing over the importance of plants. Our brains usually classify most plants— the solar collectors and food- and air-making machines of our planet—as inferior to animals, and plants lose their importance. We can’t see the flowers for the butterfl ies, and we end up valuing butterflies over the plants they help propagate. What to do—hug a tree? Better yet, let’s give young people the important “little” experiences in touching, smelling, tasting, drawing, and growing plants. Help them to notice, and focus, so they will better understand what is around them. All life depends on plants. Let’s not turn a blind eye to them.
SUMMER 2011
VERMONT COMMONS
23
Organizing for a Free Vermont Matthew Cropp
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ver the course of last year’s political season, I was fortunate to have had the opportunity to meet an enormous number of Vermonters who support our state’s political independence. In my travels assisting Dennis Steele with his gubernatorial campaign, I came to find that such people come from all walks of life and, interestingly, from all political perspectives. The breadth and depth of our movement’s diversity surprised and interested me; when I started with the campaign, I had assumed that most of our support would come from just one or two ideological camps. Instead, I encountered among Vermont’s separatists a truly staggering array of beliefs and worldviews; in our ranks we can count substantial numbers of libertarians, socialists, liberals, and conservatives, in addition to many folks whose innovative and thoughtful perspectives fall into no easily recognizable categories. Such diversity comes with risks, and our movement has certainly seen its fair share of squabbling rooted in divergent political visions. However, as we worked our way through those disputes, a possible consensus seems to have emerged which has the potential to transform our respective differences from a liability into a source of strength. Essentially, it is this: though we may have very different visions for the nature of the society in which we would like to live, we recognize that
none of our visions will receive a fair shake as long as we’re part of the United States. The scale of the federal government and its empire is such that it is not, and cannot be reformed into, a forum for honest debate over the best interests of its constituents. Instead, it is a machine for the perpetuation of the privilege of the well-connected and powerful, and has consistently taken their side against the interests of the average person. In a free Vermont, on the other hand, our own political vision(s) might or might not be adopted, depending on the will of the people, but they’d certainly have the opportunity to be honestly considered and rationally debated. Though we disagree on many things, we all desire, in the words of the Vermont Constitution, “government . . . instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation, or community.” The federal government is not, and is seemingly immune to attempts to reform it into, such a government; a free Vermont, on the other hand, could be. Since the candidates for Vermont independence announced the start of their campaigns in January of 2010, the progress our movement has made has been remarkable. However, we cannot afford to lose the momentum and connections that last year’s campaigns have brought us. I believe it to be essential that, in the next few months, we begin the work of building a grass-
roots organization that can serve as the core of the movement for Vermont’s peaceful departure from the United States. However, this cannot be a traditional political party along the lines of the Republicans, Democrats, or Progressives. Rather, the Vermont Independence Alliance (VIA) must honor the aforementioned consensus not only in its platform, but in its very organizational structure.
Platform and structure In terms of the platform, the organization should keep things simple; as soon as it attempts to specifically define what a free Vermont would look like, it will begin alienating potential supporters and weakening its ability to achieve its primary goal. The VIA should confine itself to three simple principles: First, that its members agree that Vermonters deserve to live in an independent Vermont and the organization will strive to advance that goal. Second, that Vermonters deserve to have their views fairly represented in the government, and the group will work to achieve electoral reforms aimed at demolishing the structural barriers that sustain the two-party duopoly. Third, it should honor the fact that independence is inextricably tied to greater responsibility, continued on page 24
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Organizing for a Free Vermont, continued from page 23 by sponsoring and supporting service projects designed to meet local needs with local resources and contribute to the increased independence of Vermont’s communities from centralized authority. To realize this vision, VIA’s structure should emerge in a grassroots, bottom-up manner. To start with, committees of interested Vermonters will be organized on a county-wide basis and subsequently elect officers responsible for organizing activities and campaigns in their respective counties. At a minimum, the officers will be expected to organize at least one membership meeting and one community-service activity on a bimonthly basis; ideally, those events will simply serve as the base upon which a great many other creative projects might be developed. In election years, the county committees will have the option to democratically endorse candidates who are sympathetic to the organization’s aims, and will back up those endorsements with campaign volunteers and financial support. Once committees on the county level are firmly established, they will federate into a statewide organization by adopting a constitution and bylaws and electing a state committee. This latter group will be responsible for coordinating activities and campaigns that affect the whole of Vermont in a variety of ways. This could include (but is certainly not limited to) providing support for statewide candidates who are endorsed by a vote of the membership, organizing a yearly state convention, and providing extra support to county committees as needed.
VERMONT COMMONS
Once up and running, the Vermont Independence Alliance might effectively push forward the independence agenda in a number of ways. By engaging in locally oriented service activities, we will help to make our communities more
SUMMER 2011
of publicity and stir the handful of independence candidates were able to make in the last election on a shoestring, having such a resource in place would greatly increase the visibility and influence of our movement.
The scale of the federal government and its empire is such that it is not, and cannot be reformed into, a forum for honest debate over the best interests of its constituents. materially ready for independence and we’ll also have the opportunity to demonstrate the positive, constructive nature of our movement. In this time of increasing government austerity, our communities are experiencing a growing chasm between needs and the resources that are available to meet them. By stepping in and helping to creatively fill some of those gaps with local resources, VIA will demonstrate to Vermonters that our movement means business and can get positive things done. Also, by building a network of committed volunteers, VIA will force politicians to begin engaging with the ideas of the independence movement. At the moment, it is easy for them to ignore us since there are minimal political consequences for doing so. However, if we can muster the necessary human and financial resources to have an effect on the outcome of close local elections, candidates will have to sit up and take notice. Furthermore, such a network would allow the organization to provide a robust foundation in which independence-minded candidates might root their campaigns. Given the amount
In addition to these obvious effects, the grassroots, democratic nature of VIA will create a space in which activists might engage in constant experimentation in search of better ways to advance our movement. Some projects will fail while others succeed, but the lessons learned by one county can be communicated to the rest of the organization, resulting in a stronger, more effective movement. By bringing together the skills, perspectives, resources, and insights of the great diversity of people who make up the independence movement, VIA could serve as a big tent under which truly important work can be done. If this appeals to you and you’d like to get involved, please head over to our website (www. vtindependence.org) and sign up. As soon as your county receives a sufficient number of expressions of interest, a meeting will be organized and the work of the Vermont Independence Alliance will begin in earnest in your community. Together, let’s take the next step on the path toward a Free Vermont! •
SUMMER 2011
VERMONT COMMONS
25
The Greenneck: Jack of all Trades, Slave To None Ben Hewitt
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ummer came as summer does, fast and undeniable, bringing with it the means to fill each of its days from their gauzy 5 a.m. beginnings to the exhausted, body-sore collapse into sleep. Firewood to be cut, split, and stacked, a woodshed to be built for the firewood to be stacked into, a stand of mature fir to be thinned, skidded, and sawn. Then the boards, redolent of the earthy sweetness of fresh-cut lumber, to be stickered and covered. The orchard to be pruned, the raspberries thinned and trellised, dozens of vegetable beds broadforked, weeded, and seeded. The sheep and pigs and cows turned out to pasture. Hay to be baled, bales to be loaded, thrown, stacked. And then the cows freshen and there is suddenly milk everywhere and even better, cream: to turn to butter, to cut the bitterness of strong coffee, to slurp by the cupful straight from a quart jar while standing before the open fridge in chainsaw chaps and a sweat-damp T-shirt. Fishing trips with the boys, walking downhill through the woods to the neighbor’s stream, where the brookies hide in the shadows of a tumbledown stone bridge, half or more fallen in, uncrossed for decades and perhaps even generations. Fish that dwell beneath bridges that can no longer be crossed: how apt a metaphor
for 21st century America and her people. The barely kept secret of my life is this: For all the activities that fill each of my days, I am not very good at much of anything. Sure, I can claim basic competence on many fronts but the hard truth is, I rarely if ever do anything with excellence. It seems as if my knowledge and skills have spread like a
If there is any consolation for broad mediocrity, it is this: The era of specialization, fueled by the relentless extraction of finite resources and the ever-increasing debt burden of our nation, is coming to a close. sudden rain atop a parched land, creating a latticework of water that runs helter-skelter across the surface, never accumulating, never soaking into the thirsty earth below. There are times I bemoan this trait and resolve to overcome it. Part of this, I’ve no doubt, is my ego speaking, acquiescing to the truth that our society does not reward the generalists. It does not celebrate mediocrity; hell, it barely tolerates it. If only I cultivated one of my half-skills until it blos-
“Leaner. Greener.”
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somed into something more, something of exception and distinction, might I garner more praise and money? I suspect I might. Yet I have settled on a way of life (or perhaps it has settled on me?) that is unlikely ever to tolerate specialization. The sweet, bone-satisfying work of running our little farm demands a skill set so broad and varied that true excellence – and the investment of time required to achieve it – in any single arena seems unlikely. Or maybe that’s just my laziness talking. Maybe I simply lack the mettle that would allow me to excel. If there is any consolation it is this: The era of specialization, fueled by the relentless extraction of finite resources and the ever-increasing debt burden of our nation, is coming to a close. A world without these excesses does not tolerate specialization in one category at the exclusion of basic competence in another; the subcontracting of life’s essentials is a luxury reserved for times of plenty. I am learning to embrace the commonplace truth of myself. I am beginning to accept that wading in many rivers is more rewarding and arguably more practical than swimming in one. I recognize, at last, that being only okay at something – or lots of somethings – is enough. In a sense, it is its own skill: the unheralded talent of mediocrity. And you know what? I’m pretty damn good at it. •
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VERMONT COMMONS
SUMMER 2011
Free Vermont Media: Navigating the Coming Chaos, Achieving “Freedom Through Frugality”
Taylor Silvestri
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et’s play a word-association game. When I say, “a college kid’s first Spring Break,” what comes to mind? Jamaica? Getting a tan in a cheetah-print bikini? Swarms of frat boys and sorority girls on the set of MTV’s weeklong stint in Miami? The girl next door gone wild? How about some wholesome underage drinking? I’m sure plenty of the United States’ college population partook in said activities, even if not to the ridiculous extent shows like 20/20 and E News Specials portray. But this year, my only destination was home — Scranton, Pennsylvania, where the weather was more in tune with Burlington’s than Miami’s. The warmth beneath blankets is tropical enough for me, and I didn’t have a goal of getting a tan, getting a lay, or getting wasted. I just had one goal: ignore all of my schoolwork and read a book. Shouldn’t be too difficult, right? Think again. The first day I was home I made the mistake of reading Jane Dwinell’s Freedom Through Frugality in the living room, instead of the privacy of my own room. I also made the larger mistake of leaving the book on the coffee table. The next day, and every day after that, I would walk into the living room to see my father reading the book. Each time I’d ask him how he was liking it, in hopes he would hand it over so I could finally read it. His response? “I’m thinking of making some serious changes around here.” “Must be pretty compelling,” I said. Freedom Through Frugality, I found out, was definitely compelling, as well as honest and logical. Turns out my father hijacking the book wasn’t such a mistake, even if it delayed my reading.
You will be transformed. It’s all about creating a life that is spiritually, emotionally, and financially stable and sustainable. After all, everyone could use some extra money and time on their hands, my father included. But as Dwinell, who frequents Vermont Commons with her co-authored blog “Common Sense,” points out, being frugal is not about being cheap or living in fear. It’s about “being deliberate and careful with your resources… understanding the true cost of things… and common sense.” True frugality will offer you peace of mind, and a chance to get through major life changes or tragedies without the excess anxiety money often produces. As Dwinell says, “We all have problems at one time or another, but at least those problems won’t be exacerbated by being in debt, facing clutter, paying high utility bills, or having nothing fun to do.” A frugal life offers a life in which you have the time and money to do what makes you happy and gives you joy.
Carolyn Baker Look for information about Carolyn Baker’s September 2011 Vermont Book tour in the next issue.
Jane Dwinell
For my father, that might mean a trip with the family to New York City every now and then to see a Broadway show. That can get pretty expensive; five tickets to the show, two rooms in a hotel on 42nd Street, three meals worth of food for those five people, not to mention gas money, parking, and the countless people constantly being tipped for their services. But it does not have to be such an expense if approached in a logical, frugal mindset. We live only two hours away from the city, so instead of going to an evening show, we can hit up a matinee, go to dinner afterwards, then drive home the same night. No hotel and only one meal in the city seems very agreeable. Anyway, it’s much better than no trip at all. Plus, with all that money saved, we could afford to go more often.
Our own fears of what our inner self consists of prevent us from exploration.
It’s all about having more “life energy,” or the emotional, spiritual, and financial energy and resources to do what gives you joy. Being frugal, “careful, thoughtful, and with the awareness that our time is precious and that our choices do matter,” can help give you that life energy. Dwinell provides an easily digestible outline for how to better manage your time and money. And if you are looking to start transitioning into a more frugal lifestyle as soon as possible, Freedom Through Frugality is the perfect book to use not only as a launching pad, but as support throughout the process. Dwinell covers every aspect of living, from home life and transportation, to food and entertainment. And if you are not looking for a radical, 180-degree change, she makes it easy to pick and choose what and how you begin the quest into your frugal future. Whether you decide to start small or dive in head first, either way you will be transformed. It’s all about creating a life that is spiritually, emotionally, and financially stable and sustainable.
Personalized transition If you are looking for something that pushes for that 180-degree change, check out Carolyn Baker’s latest book, Navigating the Coming Chaos: A Handbook for Inner Transition. The book is rooted in the Transition Movement, a relatively new movement (just six years old) that focuses on creating communities that can survive tough challenges such as climate change, peak oil, and economic crisis. Baker takes the spirit of resilience that is characteristic of the Transition Movement and turns it inward, to the mind, body, and spirit.
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VERMONT COMMONS
While the movement focuses on outward action, Navigating the Coming Chaos gives you the tools to make an inner transition in order to make that outer transition possible. Baker starts off by introducing the pros and cons of both the external and internal, looking at the hunter-gatherers of our early civilization and the psychology of Carl Jung. She says, “Disconnection from
Being frugal, “careful, thoughtful, and with the awareness that our time is precious and that our choices do matter,” can help give you that life energy. the inner world estranges us from that in which the outer world matters most – other members of the earth community and the earth itself.” It takes a solid concept of self and an awareness of the mind and heart before you venture to change the way in which you interact with your community.
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It’s no easy task, cultivating an inner life. There are so many distractions in a world “addicted to noise, meaningless activity, and superficial interactions.” Reality television, political white noise, and recreational cynicism all serve as road blocks to creating this inner lifestyle. And above all, our own fears of what our inner self consists of prevent us from exploration. But Baker offers plenty of direction in how not to simply overcome, but to withstand existing internal conflict, and internal conflict caused by external forces. She devotes an entire section of her book to “Becoming a Warrior of Vulnerability,” or learning to accept and embrace darker emotions such as anger, fear, despair, and anxiety. She explores “the shadow,” as Carl Jung says, and how harnessing the power of that shadow can give you courage to face adversity. Though Navigating the Coming Chaos might ask you to give much of your time, energy, and thought, (just think, after reading Freedom Through Frugality, you will have this time and energy) it is reader-friendly and well organized. Each chapter begins with a poem or quote, giving cameo spots to Rumi, Roethke, Satre, Faulkner, and others. Then, at the end of each chapter, there is a reasonable amount of tough, reflective questions (averaging around seven but never exceeding 10) that help the reader process and internalize the material presented. The road Baker suggests is not easy. It asks difficult questions that require thought, honesty, and willingness, but the payoff is worth it. I might not have committed to every idea put forth in both Freedom Through Frugality and Navigating the Coming Chaos – nor should I, if I were to consider myself a critical, responsible reader. I might not have radically changed the way I spend my money. After all, I am a college kid — I don’t have any money to spend anyway. But I did radically change the way I spent my time. If I want to read a book, I read a book. Instead of eating breakfast and checking my Facebook, I eat breakfast and I read a poem or two. Both of these books will positively affect your life, or at the very least, make you question the way you live your life. And I think we can all agree that a good amount of questioning is a healthy habit to have. •
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SUMMER 2011
An Energy Optimist: Optimized Energy Lifeboats Gaelan Brown
T
he Oxford English dictionary defines “optimize” as “to make the best or most effective use of a situation as possible.” What choice do we have other than to make the best we can with what we’ve got? Should we not all call ourselves “optimists,” then? The good news for Vermonters is that we have the potential to survive, even thrive, in the age of energy descent and systemic collapse. We are not overpopulated and our natural resources could support a sustainable steady-state economy, even though we are currently dependent on external resources and economies that could be described as a “house of cards.” But as the global house of cards teeters, it’s becoming obvious that we need to shed our dependencies and invest in contingency plans. We need to first be clear about our particular resources and opportunities. • Vermont is not overpopulated. There are 6.5 million acres of land in Vermont, which equates to 26 acres of land per household. Eighteen of these per-household acres are forested and eight are open farmland. The
average household needs less than four acres of farmland to supply their annual food needs. The average Vermont household needs less than 10 acres of forest to sustainably supply all the firewood they need in perpetuity, without the forest shrinking. Consequently, we have twice the farm and forest land we need to sustain our population – meaning there are ample land resources to devote to commercial activities. • Vermont has more acres devoted to organic farming, per capita, than any other U.S. state. We have the most evolved local-food movement and we have a growing culture of young people who are getting into sustainable farming, food production, and permaculture. • Vermont has highly developed composting infrastructure and productivity. • Vermont is the healthiest state in the U.S. according to the “America’s Health Rankings 2008” report. • Vermont’s economy has not suffered like other states’; our unemployment is still below 7 percent and Vermont has a higher percentage of its economy devoted to agriculture and manufacturing than most other states. • Tourism from urban elites of the East Coast and Montreal will likely continue to bring
money into Vermont. Even during a collapse, the rich will need places to recreate. • There are an estimated 40,000 wild turkeys and 150,000 deer walking around our woods (according to Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife biologists). • Vermont leads the U.S. in efficiency programs and intellectual knowledge regarding biomass energy, renewable energy, and forestry. However, we have challenges and risks ahead of us. Access to energy is the foundation of any economy, and right now Vermont is almost entirely dependent on imported energy sources such as Canadian hydropower and electricity from natural gas and uranium. And we are totally reliant on fuel oil and propane for winter heating. Even though we have no in-state fossil-fuel production, we have a lot of untapped potential that could be developed quickly if we reincarnate the culture of innovation and Yankee ingenuity this state was known for in the 1800s. Here are several proven lifeboat-resources and strategies that are close at hand and simply in need of investment: • A transition to wood-fired heating as a bridge strategy to reduce Vermont’s annual fossil-
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fuel imports would keep $500 million to $700 million in Vermont’s economy. www. SunwoodSystems.com, www.Pellergy.com and many other locally owned Vermont entrepreneurs are ready to provide you an affordable solution if you require an automated furnace instead of a normal woodstove. • All Earth Renewables (www.AllEarth Renewables.com, Williston) and Sunward Solar Hot Water (www.GoSunward.com, Vergennes/Winooski) both offer Vermontmade solar PV and hot water systems, and they both offer affordable financing options. • Northern Power Systems (www.Northern Power.com, Barre), Vermont’s original wind-turbine manufacturer, offers an industry-leading 100kW community wind turbine that is ideal for group net metering and institutional applications. Northern Power recently got a federal grant to develop a 450kW direct-drive turbine based on their unique design, and they installed North America’s largest direct-drive utility-scale wind turbine (2.2 megawatts) in Michigan. All Earth Renewables makes home/farmscale wind turbines as well. • Avatar Energy out of South Burlington builds small-scale “cow power” systems that make cow dung into odor-free compost and eliminate storm-water runoff and pollution issues while generating large amounts of natural gas to generate electricity.
VERMONT COMMONS
• www.CompostPower.org, www.Highfields Composting.org, www.VermontCompost .com, Burlington’s Intervale, and many other composting organizations are developing high-value composting networks and processes to keep our farms productive without fossil fuel-derived fertilizers. These organizations are also exploring ways to harvest energy from the composting process, including a successful project to heat a greenhouse with a mound of bark mulch (check out Vermont Compost on Main Street in Montpelier). • Biochar-gasification reactors from Victory Gas Works can produce electricity and heat, while making biochar to build up our soils. Turn-key systems can be purchased for less than $5,000 which can generate electricity by gasifying woodchips, at a cost that is lower than today’s retail power rates (www .VictoryGasifier.com and www.GEKGassifier .com). • Micro-hydro diversion systems have enormous potential in Vermont (versus “run of river dams” that block fish flow or hurt river health). The Vermont Renewable Energy Atlas (www.VtEnergyAtlas.com) maps out thousands of feasible micro-hydro sites and provides estimates of their annual kWh productivity based on flow/head. • Vermont has 567 megawatts of largescale hydropower on the Connecticut and Deerfield rivers, which is equivalent to Vermont Yankee’s base-load capacity (at lower
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cost). Too bad then-Gov. Douglas allowed these U.S. Gen-owned dams to be sold to TransCanada in 2004, without the state attempting to purchase them. We should explore ways for the state, or for in-state entities, to gain ownership. • We have ignored the potential for harvesting fuel wood and/or switch-grass, for pellets, along Vermont’s highways. Ben Falk and others have mapped this out, but where’s the money that’s needed to make this investment? • GreenWindMill, based in Brattleboro, has a patented design for a residential-scale, vertical-axis wind turbine that offers impressive ROI potential. The company is looking for investors to bring this design to market (http://greenwindmills.blogspot.com/). Dear reader, I ask you this: how much money do you have invested in Wall Street casino-capitalism (a.k.a. 401k, IRA, mutual funds, stocks, bonds, derivatives, futures, etc.)? Even if the average Vermont household has only $25,000 in these papergambling investments, (the average 401k balance across America today is $70,000), that would mean Vermont has a collective liquid resource of $6.2 billion that could instead be invested in Vermont’s re-localized food and energy economy. Vermont’s innovators and entrepreneurs offer real solutions, but they need financial partners and customers who are willing to invest in a sustainable future. It’s time to walk (or run) the talk. •
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Vermont Vox Populi: Celebrating Central Vermont’s Annual Summer Valley Stage Music Festival – An Interview with Music Promoter Don Sheldon Rob Williams We first met as musicians years ago, Don. What inspired you to start Valley Stage?
I remember I had just been to one of Levon Helm’s Mid-Night Rambles at his home in Woodstock, New York, and the idea of informal house concerts had also just been brought to my attention. My own home was too small for such an event but when I looked out to my front yard, the vision of an outdoor concert in a natural amphitheatre with Camel’s Hump in the background was compelling. I had had television production experience from when I lived in New York City, and a passion for music that outweighs every other focus of mine. The elements fell into place. Don Sheldon:
Vermont is full of summer musical festivals. What makes Valley Stage distinctive?
First of all, it’s an afternoon/early evening event that is very family-friendly. Performances begin at 1 p.m. and the last act ends around 8:309:00 p.m. – plenty of time to get the kids to bed at a decent hour. Another thing is we don’t focus as much on the acts being known as we do on creating a unique setting for music, food, and family fun. Many who attend have expressed being pleasantly surprised by the acts, many of whom they’d previously not heard. We have local acts D.S.:
but often look to more nationally known talent that brings out the “real” fans of theirs while making new converts.
Manitoba, and played an eclectic mix of bluegrass, zydeco, Quebecois, soul, gospel, and even a rendition of Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love”
We pride ourselves on having excellent sound, good staging and lighting, a full array of food choices, a great silent auction, and four topnotch acts at a reasonable price. What’s been the hardest part of getting this annual event off the ground?
The hardest thing has been making the community at large aware that this is a “real” concert, not just “a party in Don’s front yard.” We pride ourselves on having excellent sound, good staging and lighting, a full array of food choices, a great silent auction, and four topnotch acts at a reasonable price. I think that the numerous (38) video files that appear on YouTube will attest to the level of performances that have taken place here in the first five years of the festival. D.S.:
Give us your three favorite musical highlights from festivals past. D.S.: I’ll have to say that there were four that I will
always remember. The Duhks in 2008 were probably my favorite act. They reign from Winnipeg,
that brought the house, or should I say the yard, down. Ed Gerhard, solo guitarist from New Hampshire, performed at the 2007 concert. I remember there almost being a reverence in the air as he performed brilliant renditions of old blues standards, covers of Lennon’s “Imagine,” the Beatles’ “If I Fell/In My Life,” as well as Hawaiian melodies on a Weisenborn guitar. He had everyone entranced. Vermont’s own Anais Mitchell played here in 2008. She was accompanied brilliantly by Michael Chorney and Robinson Morse. I had seen/heard her on a few occasions prior, but felt that her Valley Stage show was an angelic moment for her. We were fortunate to have her perform here before she began to become more nationally known.
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VERMONT COMMONS
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Singer/songwriter Daisy May Erlewine at the Valley Stage music festival.
Good times and good music (here, provided by Rani Arbo and Daisy Mayhem) in the shadows of the Green Mountains.
Last but not least was Robbie Fulk’s performance here last year. Robbie is one of the best singer/songwriters who comes from Chicago, and has remained relatively unknown here in the East but has a loyal following elsewhere. He performed with his quartet and they played an array of country, rockabilly, and rock ‘n’ rollinspired tunes with great musicianship and a tightness that only comes with playing together for years. His guitarist, Grant Tye, is one of the best I’ve ever heard. They even played covers of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” and the Jacksons’ “Goin’ Back to Indiana” that caught everyone off guard.
New Mexico, Austin, Texas, Connecticut, and even here in Vermont. I’ve had many shows of appreciation and personally it’s the reciprocity from the community that keeps my commitment in place.
We don’t focus as much on the acts
Where do you see Valley Stage going these next several years?
family fun. Many who attend have
D.S.: Though
expressed being pleasantly surprised
How has the Huntington community responded to having a festival in their midst?
The 25 percent of the community that even knows what’s going on here seem to be very thankful for this little event that fills the air each August. Many have expressed the thrill of being able to travel locally and hear topnotch music from all over the U.S. including San Francisco, Nashville, Austin, and this year from Santa Fe, D.S.:
the Valley Stage to date has come at a [financial] cost, it is incredibly rewarding, and barring an out-and-out financial disaster it will continue as is. I don’t intend to change much except to bring new music (and hopefully more people) here each year. One thing we have discussed is holding a competition featuring local acts. The winner would open up next year’s concert. We’re anxious to give a local performer the chance to play on a stage with professional musicians before a friendly audience and walk away with a great experience and a professionally produced video that they’ll cherish for years to come. Give us a taste of this summer’s lineup, and how do we get tickets?
This year’s headliner is Danny Barnes, an extraordinary banjo player, singer/songwriter out of Austin, Texas. The likes of Dave Matthews, Phish’s Mike Gordon, Bill Frisell, and many others feel that Danny is one of the best performers and has a unique style all his own. Opening this year’s Valley Stage is Round Mountain out of Santa Fe, New Mexico. They consist of the two Rothschild D.S.:
Valley Stage The
Music Festival Presents: Blackbird Swale Huntington, Vermont.
being known as we do on creating a unique setting for music, food, and
by the acts, many of whom they’d previously not heard. Brothers who play an array of different instruments creating their own unique style blending together accordion, trumpet, sitar, bagpipe, that includes dance rhythms from West Africa, the Balkans, and the Caribbean. The String Fingers Band from Connecticut is a five-piece ensemble that mixes bluegrass, Americana, and their own originals that take from many diverse genres. Last but not least, Colin McCaffrey heads up the Stone Cold Roosters, every Vermonter’s favorite rockabilly country swing band. • This year’s Valley Music Festival will be held on August 13. Tickets can be purchased at the Valley Stage website; www.valleystage.net or at the Flynn Theatre box office. For more information you can also contact us by calling 802-434-4563.
Your support will help keep Vermont a rural and sustainable place to live. August 13, 2011 12:00 – 9:30 p.m.
Danny Barnes
Stone Cold Roosters,
Round Mountain, and String Fingers Band
www.valleystage.net
www.vspop.org
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Transition Times: Hardwick Organizes Local Transportation Carl Etnier
I
n the 1930s, Katheryn Breer of Horn of the Moon Farm in East Montpelier walked to high school in Montpelier. She did this even though her father had one of the first cars in the area, which he used to deliver eggs and milk from the farm. The 14-mile round trip was too much to do every day, so she boarded with a family in town and walked home after school Saturday to spend the weekend with her family. Now, the average Vermont car is driven 17,000 miles a year; school buses transport students daily from Horn of the Moon neighborhood to U-32, a more-distant high school; and daily driv-
Organizing rural communities to reduce transportation-related oil consumption is one of Vermont’s biggest toughest challenges. Transition Town Hardwick is having a go at it. COURTESY OF CARL ETNIER
Hardwick Rideshare founders hope to attract enough members to build a ride-board kiosk, design an on-line ride board, or perhaps organize a ride board on the radio or cable access TV. ing commutes from Montpelier to Burlington or further are not uncommon. In a state that has taken advantage of low land prices and low gas prices to spread settlement sparsely throughout the countryside, one of the greatest conundrums in the transition away from oil is how to tackle transportation as oil supplies dwindle and prices soar. Technophiles point to new fuels: ethanol, biodiesel, natural gas, hydrogen in fuel cells, or electricity in batteries. The problems are that
the new fuels that can go into existing cars are themselves quite limited, and that shifting the technology of much of the car fleet over to other fuels takes decades. Electric cars, hybrid or purely electric, are rare and expensive, and even before the Great Recession led people to cut back their spending, it took 17 years to turn over the U.S. car fleet. Staying put more is one obvious solution. In The Long Emergency, James Howard Kunstler writes that he expects people in the countryside to stay there most of the time in the future. Another option is depending on the kindness of strangers. Responding to peak oil and climate change, Marci Young of Morrisville sold her car years ago and doggedly hitchhikes most places she goes. For those less intrepid, organized carpooling represents a more secure way to double, triple, or further multiply the efficiency of existing vehicles. On Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, the Hardwick Rideshare project of Transition Town
Hardwick set up a table in a soggy field devoted to an agriculture and sustainability fair. Around the corner from a Buffalo Mountain Co-op stand featuring hamburgers from local beef, the table was their first significant outreach attempt to build a network of people carpooling with each other. Marcia Smith, 70, staffed the table. Her house in Walden is six miles from Hardwick. “Some people bike it,” she said, “but I’m not up to that.” Many existing services support people who want to travel without driving a car. One handout from Hardwick Rideshare lists many of those, including the Vermont Bicycle and Pedestrian Coalition, regional bus services, a “model of effectiveness” for local carpooling (HinesburgRides. org), and the Agency of Transportation web site for carpooling both to work and to one-time events (ConnectingCommuters.org). With Hardwick at the junction of Routes 14, 15, and 16, there are a lot of directions that people travel to town from. Hardwick Rideshare gathered information about which roads people travel on and how they want to participate in the budding rideshare program. Smith, along with the other Hardwick Rideshare founders, Emily Laxner and Nancy Notterman, hopes to attract enough members to build a ride-board kiosk, design an on-line ride board, or perhaps organize a ride board on the radio or cable access TV. Smith would also like to see a lot more taxis. “Make it easier to run a taxi service,” she suggests. Smith has lived without a car for much of the last year, and she has found neighbors willing to give her rides. Still, she looks forward to having a more systematic rideshare system. “If it’s organized, you can fit your travel into a plan. It’s hard to call up people and ask them when they’re going to town.” •
Calling All Vermont Musicians!
Send Us Your Music!
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VERMONT COMMONS
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Secession Briefs: The Piecemeal Construction of Common Law Jonathan Stevens “The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes
W
hat will happen to our law if we become independent? Will Vermont common law become Vermont Commons law? Do we want Vermont common law to become Vermont Commons law? What is meant by common law? The term “common law” originated in the reign of Henry II, in the 1150s and 1160s. The common law was the law that emerged as the king’s judges followed each other’s decisions to create a unified system of precedent throughout England. Common law, also known as case law or precedent, is law developed by judges through decisions of courts and similar tribunals rather than through legislative statutes or executive branch action. It is law that is made to resolve a dispute between the parties to a lawsuit. The court’s decision is tailored to address the dispute before it. The decision binds only the parties to the suit but it also becomes precedent for future cases on the principle that it is unfair to treat similar facts differently on different occasions. The courts, in the process of resolving disputes, construe and interpret regulations, statutes and constitutional clauses, thereby entwining legislative and executive actions into the common law.
The binding effect of court decisions on future decisions is known as the doctrine of stare decisis. Most of the law that governs our daily existence is common law – that is, law evolved through the courts to resolve conflicts. Vermont is a common law state. Virtually all of the law governing our daily affairs originated in the courts in the form of court decisions. It
It serves values which may or may not serve us as a community. Loyalty, kindness, and generosity are irrelevant in legal proceedings. Our common law system began in the Middle Ages to enforce property rights. Property was the source of wealth. Property rights included the right to own property, the right to set boundaries, and the right to use it as you please.
Vermont Commons is a notion that we will collaborate to support a Vermont community of interests. Common law is not collaborative. It is the opposite. It is law born in the crucible of adversarial proceedings. is law without idealism or lofty goals. Justice is not a goal of common law. It is a byproduct. Common law serves the function of resolving disputes orderly, predictably and finally. Is this a system that will serve us well in the future? Maybe, maybe not. Vermont Commons puts forth a notion that we will collaborate to support a Vermont community of interests. Common law is not collaborative. It is the opposite. It is law born in the crucible of adversarial proceedings.
To own land was to control the people who lived on it, to exclude others, and to extract resources and dump waste without limitation. The common law gradually recognized and enforced rights that supported commerce, such as the right to make a contract. Sometimes the parties to a dispute would argue about the fairness of the court proceeding itself and common law developed to define the process and jurisdiccontinued on page 34
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Secession Briefs, continued from page 33 tion of the courts. The common law developed rules governing the jurisdiction of courts, the kind of evidence that would be admissible in a trial, and the process for appealing a judgment. Common law is made one case at a time, always with regard to what has been decided in the past, and almost never with regard to how a decision might affect the future. It isn’t possible to see the logic of the common law in one decision. A recent Vermont Supreme Court decision illustrates the baroque machinery of common law. The case of Coutu v. Town of Cavendish began with the plaintiff, a helicopter pilot, making a decision in 2008 to build a helipad on his property in Cavendish. Vermont statutes require someone who wants to build a private landing site at his home to first obtain a certificate of approval from the Vermont Transportation Board. As a condition to receiving such approval, “the application shall be supported by documentation showing that the proposed facility has received municipal approval.” Cavendish does not have a zoning ordinance, so there were no standards by which the town could base a decision. The select board chose not to act. After the town would neither grant him approval for the helipad nor send a letter to the Vermont Transportation Board explaining that it had no zoning ordinance – and thus no authority upon which to base an approval or denial – plaintiff attempted to apply for a permit directly to the Transportation Board. He was denied for lack of municipal approval. He then sought
VERMONT COMMONS
a declaratory ruling from the board as to the scope of the town’s authority in these matters; however, the secretary of the board refused a hearing. The plaintiff filed suit in Washington Superior Court seeking (1) an injunction directed at the town requiring it to grant approval of his proposed helipad and to admit that it lacked authority to withhold approval; (2) review of the board secretary’s refusal to hear his petition for a declaratory ruling to determine the scope of the town’s authority; and (3) an injunction directed at the Transportation Board requiring it to consider his petition on the merits. The trial court ruled against him on all issues. He appealed to the Vermont Supreme Court. The Supreme Court rendered a decision. However, it’s worth noting first what the court did not decide. The Supreme Court did not decide whether the plaintiff did or did not have the right to construct a helipad. It did not decide whether the town had authority to approve or disapprove the project. The court did not decide whether the Transportation Board should have granted the plaintiff a hearing. The Supreme Court decided one thing. It decided that it had no jurisdiction to rule on the plaintiff ’s claim against the town. Why? Because he had not timely filed his appeal. All other issues were remanded back to the trial court for further proceedings. The process had taken three years. Isn’t it right for a landowner to be able to choose how he uses his land? Isn’t it fair to require a town to make a decision when peti-
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tioned by a resident? Shouldn’t the state be compelled to have a hearing when a citizen petitions for relief? Instead, the Vermont Supreme Court balanced its decision on a seemingly insignificant procedural technicality – i.e., the legal time limit for taking an appeal. The result of the decision obliquely prevented a property owner from using his property for a smelly, noisy activity that would invade the privacy of his neighbors. Is it right? Is it just? Was anything actually decided? The common law isn’t one decision. It is hundreds of thousands of decisions made over the course of centuries. Common law is more than the rules. The judges and lawyers who practice law embody common law. It is true that we could rid ourselves of common law by ridding ourselves of lawyers. As Shakespeare famously said in King Henry VI, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” And then what . . . kill each other? In an ordered society it is a fundamental to have a reliable way to resolve disputes. The focus of common law involves private, marketplace justice and allows aggrieved parties to solve both civil disputes and criminal offenses using the standards of community morality. Disputes with government are political and don’t belong in the courts. How do we disengage our legal decisions from our political decisions? Whoever it is that unties the knot of our legal system, it isn’t likely to be a lawyer, for the same reason that it isn’t likely that a fish discovered water. •
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Perhaps Collapse: Hope in a Donkey Delivery Jasmine Lamb
I
don’t read the news. That is to say I don’t watch, stream, download, or do the mainstream news in any form. Not out of any deep conviction or moral belief at this point, but because years ago I was addicted; I thought that somehow the world would fall into even greater disrepair if I wasn’t following along, or at the very least I’d somehow no longer belong. But the murder and mismanagement started to seep under my skin and make me sick. So one day I went cold turkey and quit. I twitched on the floor and crawled under the bed and wanted to turn up the radio dial but I didn’t. And then slowly I emerged into a new life. One where I paid attention to other things: to the birds out the window, the news of the neighbors, the new clown act coming to town. But recently word of natural disaster and terrible humancreated catastrophe has been coming to my door anyway, not to be avoided, walking in, sitting at my table, and staring straight at me. I look back in despair. And I start to worry over my own neighborhoods and communities, our future, wondering what disaster is next. And so amidst all this I’ve shifted my attention from all these interdependent disasters to look at
what else is in the world today. Not out of a need to deny the great challenges we face or to hope that they will go away if I just hide under enough covers, but to embrace all the movements, lifegiving, community-building, fertility-sustaining projects we know about and don’t know about,
The enthusiasm was great because the need for animal power has never actually disappeared in the town, only the animals have. haven’t imagined and have imagined, that are under our noses and underway in distant lands. I want to tell you about one of them dear to my heart. I know you could tell me a list of them as well, as they are there in all our neighborhoods, being hatched in our hearts and minds, stitching our lives together, feeding our earth, sustaining the fabric of our being, slowly, quietly, truly. The Chalford Donkey Project began three years ago when my stepsister Anna got it in mind to own donkeys. Anna lives in Chalford, continued on page 36
Teddy, one of the Chalford donkeys, on his Saturday rounds. JASMINE LAMB
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Perhaps Collapse, continued from page 35 the shop asking the neighborhood if they liked out of laundry detergent and so it’s not in her England, a small village on the edge of the the idea of bringing donkeys back to the village shopping bag. Cotswolds with a low “high” street and narrow, and wondering how people might utilize them. This story of village life and donkey deliversteep, winding lanes going up the edges of Rack The enthusiasm was great because the need for ies is adorable, but in fact coaxing Teddy up the Hill. Rack Hill is the most densely populated animal power has never actually disappeared in steep lane was exhausting. I was breaking into part of the village and dozens of the houses can the town, only the animals have. Between local a good sweat as I cajoled him with the lead as only be reached by “donkey path.” But for many support and the media finding this story charmAnna made suggestions to his backend that he years there have been no donkeys in town and ing, Anna raised the money, built the paddocks get a move on. Of course, poor guy, he was the so people carry in their shopping and coal and and sheds (with lots of help), and got Teddy and one carrying the heavy load. As you can imaghousehold goods. Chester: the Chalford Donkeys. ine every passerby, person in their garden, and At one time not that long ago, before World When I was visiting my father and stepmother little child we encountered was aglow with joy War II, the high street was lined with small this past month in Chalford, I helped Anna and delight at the sight of the Chalford donkey at shops. Goods came in along the work. It seems to stir a deep and canal that ran alongside the high not-so-distant interdependent street, and later came by rail. All connection we humans have The sight of the Chalford donkey at work the shops had a donkey on hand with the work animal. So even seems to stir a deep and not-so-distant interdependent to do deliveries of goods up to if the Chalford donkeys aren’t the stone cottages built into yet tipping the balance toward connection we humans have with the work animal. the steep terraced hill. Came a animal power in the town combination of war, economic they are at least unleashing the hardship, and the advance of the ancient need in everyone’s heart. automobile, and the shops closed, the donkeys with the Saturday-morning donkey deliveries. This project and a thousand other little underdeparted (many villagers did, as well), and the After trying out a number of schemes Anna the-news-radar endeavors do give me hope – not people that remained were left in these modern has committed to the Saturday delivery day, because they will save us from an uncertain times to carry their own loads. because besides her sidelining as the resident future, but because they savor the abundant presToday the only shop down along the high donkey woman she also works full time as an ent; they arise from a spirit of possibility and out street in the village is the little corner store that artist and teacher. When we arrive at the shop of intrinsic values that inspire and sustain empaoccupies the front end of the post office. After with Teddy (Chester seems to have a hurt foot thy, community, collaboration, and love. • too many shopkeepers found the store economion this particular morning) a dozen or so villagcally unviable the community took it over. It is ers have already called in their shopping orders To learn more about the Chalford Donkey Project go to staffed by volunteers and sells all the usual candy and a line of shopping bags awaits us beneath http://chalforddonkeyproject.blogspot.com/. and newspapers along with breads from the the canned goods. We load up Teddy’s panniers local bakeries, and cheese from the local farmand the man running the shop that morning ers. Three years ago Anna put up a clipboard at asks us to apologize to Milly that they are all
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Media By The People: The Future of Civility? Lauren-Glenn Davitian The foundation of any community is the quality of its relationships and levels of trust between people and across its institutions. —National Civility Center
C
an we talk? Much has been made of the loss of civility in our public life. It’s no surprise to hear about the bickering and stalemate in Congress, but we like to think we are above it in Vermont. In our hearts, we know that the best kind of democracy depends on all of us (not just the people with power) weighing in, having our say, listening to each other, changing our minds, and shaping our community together. But what kind of example are we setting for the next generation, and each other? Recently, at a meeting of Vermont’s community TV leaders, we discussed the importance of the work we do, and why it matters that we bring cameras into town halls. One channel director from southern Vermont piped up: “We just started televising a Select Board in our neck of the woods. Shortly after the first meeting aired, we got a call from a woman who is regular at the meetings. ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘that was the first meeting where the selectmen did not curse at me.’” Is it a primal reaction to treat people badly when they don’t agree with us? Some scientists contend altruism has an evolutionary purpose. But most parents will tell you that it is the rare person who thinks first about others and second about himself. Civility and manners must be taught, through thought, word, and deed.
Fifth-graders attending northeastern-region Waldorf Schools gather for the Greek Pentathlon, which included competition in javelin throwing (above), and imparted lessons in civility and respect. LAUREN-GLENN DAVITIAN
marvel at the poor example they are setting. And when I see how quickly Vermont is absorbing people from all corners of the globe, I wonder if we are equipped to welcome them with grace and understanding. Civility (and lack of it) takes many forms – but it is a requirement for living and leading in Vermont and the rest of the rapidly changing world.
The Greek Pentathlon enabled these children to bring competition, compassion, and community together. This is the kind of practice in civility that benefits all of us. When I watch a Burlington City Council meeting or read the comments on the Burlington Free Press website, I wonder where the sensible parents are. Did anyone teach these people to “seek first to understand”? When I listen to national leaders betray their ignorance and small-mindedness, I wonder who taught them to be public servants. I
Recently my daughter’s fifth-grade class participated in the long-awaited Greek Pentathlon. Children from six Waldorf schools, from Ottawa, New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont, gathered for two days to participate in five ancient events: javelin, long jump, discus throw, running, and wrestling. They’ve been practicing each of these events since September, with an emphasis on truth (measurement), beauty (physical form) and goodness (sportsmanship). These Olympics wrap up their study of Greek culture and politics, including their study of Athenian Democracy – the first direct democracy based on “people power,” in which everyone was expected to take an active role as a leader and citizen. You may remember that the Greek Olympiad (started in 776 B.C.) was a brief time of peace, when the warriors from each of the city states put down their arms and gathered to honor the gods through sports and performing arts. As one parent explained it: “The Olympics were an
expression of that golden age when the ideal of the human form, in physical beauty and inner grace, comes together to create something heroic within the individual and blesses all those who are fortunate to witness the event.” For these 130 fifth graders in Vermont in 2011, the Pentathlon is an opportunity to meet entirely new people, face their fears, and compete with their hearts. Unfolding over two days, the children left their school identities behind as they joined their city state’s (Athens, Sparta, Marathon, and Corinth) renown for poise, strength, endurance, and hospitality. The young athletes participated in each of the five sports, demonstrating remarkable concentration and form during the discus and javelin – bringing strength, stamina to the long jump, wrestling, and running. The final event – a massive relay race – was stunning to behold. The fifth graders became one body, focused on the run, handing off the baton, giving their all – cheered on by new friends, beloved teachers, and families. During the closing ceremonies, they celebrated together, with medals that recognized both their achievements and connection with each other. In the wide world, common understanding is often considered to be a sideshow to the main stage of individual achievement. But the ancient Pentathlon lays an important foundation for democracy today. It enabled these children to bring competition, compassion, and community together. This is the kind of practice in civility that benefits all of us. It may very well be that these young people will set the example for us as they forge the future of democracy in the new millennium. •
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Dispersions: Reflexive Patriotism—Last Refuge of a Scoundrel Nation Kirkpatrick Sale
O
f course one of the difficulties in putting across the benefits of, the need for, nonviolent secession is the very deep-seated fundamentalism of “we’re-number-one” American patriotism. If there is no perception that the U.S. government is thoroughly malodorous, corrupt, and iniquitous, if at the base of every brain is the belief in “one-nation-indivisible” (a phrase, by the way, created in 1892 by a socialist ideologue to brainwash young boys), and if there is no underlying sense that what we do around the world as an imperial power ranges from maladroit to evil, then there’s no way anyone could possibly comprehend, much less support, nonviolent secession. What brings this to mind is the reactions around the country this past May to the announcement that U.S. Special Forces had assassinated Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. At so-called Ground Zero, in front of the White House, at stadiums across the country, on college campuses and village greens coast to coast, those who happened to be up late on a Sunday night (a number of them fortified by alcohol) burst out in wild flag-waving celebrations and raucous “yoo-ess-ay” cheers. It didn’t matter that this was an achievement that for some reason took intelligence agencies a full 10 years to bring off, that its significance in the actual putting down of Islamic terrorism would seem to be uncertain, or that it had and would have no effect whatsoever on the bogged-down war in Afghanistan. It didn’t even matter that this kind of killing – assassination
of political leaders in foreign lands – is generally regarded as contrary to an international law that in general discourages people going around offing bad guys they don’t like, and contrary indeed to an American regulation that operated for nearly three decades until overturned in the heat of 9/11. President Ford, following recommendations of the Church Committee, issued Executive Order 11905 in 1976 saying, “No employee of the United
Those who unblinkingly and reflexively approve of it with wild public demonstrations are guilty of the worst of patriotism, the last refuge of a scoundrel nation. States shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination,” which was understood to mean the killing of foreign leaders, and that was endorsed by every succeeding president because it just seemed a sensible and intelligent – and perhaps moral – policy. That was changed in September 2001 with a law that then allowed the president to use “all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided” the 9/11 attacks. That apparently gives Obama the legal cover he needed to go after Osama, but it still carries a bad odor – which is why the word “assassination” still has negative connotations the world over. Yet none of this seemed to operate with an
American public that quickly adopted the Wild West mentality of “Wanted-Dead-or-Alive” that George Bush used to stir up. You don’t bother to capture and try the Devil – you shoot him down in cold blood. And any sidekicks that go down with him? Well, that’s collateral damage, not killing. I’m not saying that bin Laden was anything but a dangerous enemy of this country’s, even though it was clear his influence was waning and his army shrinking. I’m saying that assassination of a political leader on foreign soil is a reprehensible practice and a moral transgression, and that’s why for three decades it was taken as a given in this country that it was impermissible and is more or less outlawed in international codes. And I’m saying that those who unblinkingly and reflexively approve of it with wild public demonstrations are guilty of the worst of patriotism, the last refuge of a scoundrel nation. And that last refuge is sought perhaps most desperately when that nation is entangled in the morass of at least four foreign wars (including Libya and Pakistan, leaving Somalia aside), that are not being won and are not winnable, and are costing many trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of casualties, military and civilian. All of this is an indication of the depth of that unthinking and unreasonable sickness of mind that supports the United States of Empire unreflectively and stands in the way of any sensible contemplation of the virtues of secession. •
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