Valley Futures

VFN Monthly Meeting Minutes of 01/08/10

Attendees: Susan Klein, Rob Williams, Jared Cadwell, Stan Ward, Joshua Schwartz, Dan Holtz, Amy Todisco, David Hartshorn, Gregor Barnum, Peter Forbes, Ginny McGinn, Jen Higgins, David Dion, Tom Barefoot, Susan Johnson, Suzie Snow, Jill Arace, Geri Pocachinni???, Mike Dupee, Carmen Dupee, and John Donaldson

1) Time Bank –    Jen, Suzie and Geri from Rootswork described this project which the Rootswork board has approved as a pilot project. They anticipate that 2010 will be a slow but steady building year to get to a critical mass of participants. The Time Bank is an organized system to exchange services, using “Community Weaver” software provided by timebanks.org.  It will be similar to the Onion River Exchange in Montpelier (see http://www.orexchange.org/).  The Onion River Exchange has grown from 35 members to over 300 in 28 towns.

Jen is pulling a working group together and would like VFN participation to make it a collaborative effort.  Anyone interested in working on this should contact Jen.

2) Music Bank -  Mike Dupee presented this idea for bringing the Valley music community together.  It is still a work in progress.  The effort may kick off with an Open Mike night in February, perhaps to also help kick off the Time Bank.

3) Community Pot Luck -  The first potluck, organized by Jill Arace and Susan Klein will be held at the Waitsfield Church at 6 pm on January 24^th.  Posters made by Dan Holtz were distributed.  There may be music, but this will be done at the end so it doesn’t interfere with the social mixing.  People are encouraged to bring their own “plateware” in addition to a food item to share.  Help is needed to set up at 5:45.

4) Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grants Update – Josh reported that 6 or the 7 local grant applicants made the first cut.  About $ 11 million was requested statewide for the $ 6 million that is available. More comprehensive applications are due February 2 and results will be announced in May.

5)   Update on Local Community Initiatives Class taught at UVM – Chip Sawyer reported that based on the resounding success of the recent class, another class will be given next fall and we should be thinking of projects for the students.  All information and output from the recent class is hosted on the Mad River Valley Planning District website (http://www.mrvpd.org/DocumentsLibrary.php).

6) Announcements –

1. Ad hoc agriculture group – Gregor announced the second meeting of this group will be February 15.  Hardwick representatives will be reporting on what they have done at this meeting.
2. Gross National Happiness International Conference – Tom Barefoot said the conference will take place in Burlington on June 1 – 4.  GNH is based on the premise that the calculation of “wealth” should consider other aspects besides economic development: the preservation of the environment and the quality of life of the people. (See http://gnhusa.org/).  Some background sessions will be held in February and the group is looking for volunteers to help test community measures to indicate progress.
3. Workshop – Susan Klein said Rob Williams is working with the MRV Chamber to lead a workshop on demystifying Facebook, Twitter, Blogger and other social media outlets. He will show how to use these Web 2.0 tools to further business and to work together through social media for general benefit of the MRV business community.  The workshop will be Tuesday, January 12 from 9am-noon at the Big Picture Theater. It is free to chamber members and $10 for all others.
4. New section on Mad River Valley.com website – see http://www.madrivervalley.com/vermont/directory/by_type.asp?catid=108 for a new section on Local Food Producers.
5. Another Karaoke Night -  organized by Dan Holtz will be held January 22 at the Big Picture.  Will Susan Klein give an encore performance of Harper Valley PTA?

Next meeting is Friday 2/12 at the Green Cup.

Submitted by John Donaldson

Tags: Announcements, Energy, Local Currency, VFN Monthly Minutes by Joshua Schwartz
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For the Pleasure of Knowing our Neighbors: Community Potluck Suppers Begin this Month

Starting this month, valley residents are invited to join monthly community potluck suppers for the pleasure of enjoying each other’s company and getting to know neighbors.  “It’s just like the good old days!” says local farmer David Hartshorn.  The suppers will be held at the Waitsfield United Church on Sundays at 6 pm.  This month’s supper will take place on January 24th and subsequent suppers will be held the last Sunday of the month through May.  Bring your family, friends, visitors, and a dish to share.  (Also bring your own place setting to avoid extra trash.  Compostable tableware will be available as well.)  The suppers are sponsored by the Valley Futures Network, a grassroots, citizen effort focusing on building a healthy and sustainable 21st century future for Mad River Valley communities.  For more information contact Jill Arace at jarace@gmavt.net, 496-9974.

Free music will begin at 7:30 provided by the Mad River Valley Music Bank.

Tags: Uncategorized by Joshua Schwartz
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Unless you’ve been living in the wilderness of the rural Vermont frontier, you probably have heard that uber-director James (Titanic and Aliens) Cameron is back with an incredible “game-changing” new film called “Avatar” that has imperial audiences and critics talking. Much has been made, and rightly so, of the movie’s brilliance: the creation of an entirely new language, for example, and the film’s iridescent three-dimensional visuality – a phenomenal spectacle – and well-worth seeing on the big screen. Equally interesting, though, is “Avatar’s” highly critical anti-imperial vision, dismissed by most mainstream critics, like the New Yorker’s David Denby, as little more than echoes of 1960s counter-culture. For anyone considering the United States as Empire, however, “Avatar’s” evocative and disturbing storyline – “Aliens” meets “Dances With Wolves” meets Lord of the Rings” – proves much more damning than not.

The story unfolds like this. Sometime in the future, a young and embittered U.S. ex-marine named Jake Sully (a convincing Sam Worthington) ships out to a remote mining colony called Pandora. Leg-less, Sully finds himself a mercenary working for the Company as a specially trained soldier who inhabits an “avatar,” a genetically hybridized creature designed to build relationships with the natives known as Na’Vi. Sully’s job is to “win hearts and minds,” as the old imperialistic propaganda goes. The Company’s ongoing goal? Profit-maximization through the pursuit of an element called “Unobtanium.” (I can see Cameron smiling.)

Tough-talking scientist Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) heads up the avatar program, and when she isn’t butting heads with the Company brass, she oversees training for Sully, who finds himself separated from his team on his first foray into the jungle. His life saved by a beautiful “barbarian,” he winds up in the hands of “the savages, and soon discovers that this indigenous community is defined by “the bond” – connections between all living things, The tall, lithe, tailed, blue, willowy creatures that Sully impersonates share a deep “hook up” (quite literally) to the stunning natural world of Pandora – cascading waterfalls, craggy chasms and canyons, and a diverse array of fascinating, marvelous (and ferocious) creatures.

The Omaticaya, as the natives call themselves, revere a mystical energetic force called Eywa, an animist Spirit that infuses all living things. “I have come to learn,” says Sully/Avatar to the “hostiles” at his first meeting. “It is hard to teach the Sky People,” one of the Na’Vi leaders responds. “It is hard to fill a vessel that is already full.” Sully soon finds himself torn between his attraction for the Na’Vi and their chief’s beautiful daughter, and his official avatar/marine mission – to convince the Na’Vi to move their village off of one of the largest Unobtanium deposits in the area. His training in “the flow of energy” and “spirits of animals” (“tree hugging crap,” Sully calls it at first) is by turns humorous and breath-takingly beautiful, helped along by the 3D/CGI throw down and the boundless imagination of Cameron and his team.

Most compelling, perhaps, is the oddly deja-vu-like quality of “Avatar.” Thematically, the scenes in the film – helicopter gunships thrashing down onto the green underbrush, muscled military men hoisting gigantic weapons, and the like – are eerie-ly reminiscent of moments from the Vietnam “police action” or dozens of other “theaters” of conflict that defined the 20th century, history’s bloodiest, and are quickly moving to define this next one. In the Age of Twitter, this time writer Wallace Stegner once called “the amputated present,” we are quick to forget our own history of violence against “the natives” and nature itself, and Cameron’s film brings back this history with disturbing three-dimensional vividness. By the time the rock-hard Company commander issues a “preemptive strike against the aboriginal horde” (“We will fight terror with terror,” he snarls) in an attempt to “blow a huge hole in their racial memory,” Cameron makes it clear to the point of cliché what histories he is retelling. When Sully and a small band of rogue Company employees decide to “go native” and mount an organized resistance campaign, it is hard not to stand up, remove the 3D glasses, and cheer.

How “Avatar” plays out I will not reveal here. The ultimate irony, perhaps, for Sully and for us all, is this: as we destroy the real world – beautiful, connected, sacred, organic – the only “place” many of us think we can retreat to is the world of networked electronic technology (Second Life, anyone?), itself a “Cyberia” created by the mining of the planet’s natural yet finite resources.

The ultimate form of Imperialism.

And it takes a Hollywood director to shock us back into our senses.

“All energy is borrowed,” Sully learns from his nubile and gifted young teacher, “and one day you must give it back.”

Bingo.

As we enter the 21st century and “the age of limits,” truer words have not been spoken.

At least not by Hollywood.

Tags: Arts and Media by Rob Williams
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My brother Christopher, a professional musician living in Nashville, Tennessee, is fond of saying that truly great songwriting is only obtained through intense suffering and personal pain.

While I have disputed his statement over the years, I grudgingly will admit that, in the case of a new sonic project from one of the Mad River Valley’s most prolific and hardest-working musicians, my brother may very well be dead on.

Let’s say you’ve been through a rough personal patch, and need to figure out some way of making sense of it all.

Many of us embrace therapy of one sort of another – a healthy response, to reach out and seek some support.

Multi-talented musician James Kinne of Fayston practices his own form of personal therapy.

But first, an aside.

To say that Kinne is perhaps the biggest holistic musical talent in the Mad River Valley – as an instrumentalist, a writer, a vocalist, and a producer with some remarkable ears – is probably a bald understatement (and I speak from personal experience, having performed with him for several years now.)

Simply put, Kinne makes music. Damn fine music.

From soup to nuts.

Here’s how he works.

He writes all the songs.

He plays all the instruments.

He records and mixes the whole project in his own home Stillwater Studio (with mastering help from Jim Bowen.)

And then, he puts his music out there for the world to hear.

“Aletheia” is Kinne’s third solo effort, and it is easily his most ambitious project to date, comprised of no fewer than seventeen songs.

OK, so back to music and personal suffering.

“Aletheia” is built around the collapse of Kinne’s young marriage several months ago, and his resulting journey towards healing and a deeper understanding of this complicated project we call “living.”

I know what you are thinking. Sounds intense.

And it is.

Yet, Kinne has managed to craft a CD of songs that is hopeful, forward-looking, and manages to be at once deeply personal and big-picture universal.

“This Side Of,” the CD’s first track, kicks off the project with some edgy electric guitar power chording, as Kinne anchors the listener in a transitional moment. “In Spades” and “Games,” tracks 2 and 3, both come out of the gate with some infectiously hooky bass and electric guitar grooves. Kinne has a tremendous ear for melody, and is able to build ear-engaging arrangements around a variety of riffs with ease. Quite impressive.

My favorite track (#7) is a tune called “All I Know,” in which Kinne sings of loss, redemption and moving on. “You could have been the one to save my life, point me in the right direction,” he observes. “I could have been the hero in your life, if not for this lost connection.”

And then the kicker.

“Even though the path was overgrown,” he concludes, “I’d rather have grown old with you…than be alone.”

Indeed.

I could on for pages about the virtues of each of the seventeen songs on this CD.

Suffice to say, Kinne’s writing, his musicianship, and the arranging on this CD are first rate.

A short review can do it little justice.

“Aletheia” has to be heard to be believed.

Listen to the whole record online – for free – and decide for yourself at http://jameskinne.bandcamp.com/.

And then, purchase a copy and support one of the Valley’s finest working musicians.

Tags: Arts and Media by Rob Williams
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Like many young readers growing up in the 20th century, I read Sherlock Holmes as a kid.

I liked the English formality of the story – the cape, the hat, the pipe, the assured but self-effacing wit of the gifted detective.

I even fancied myself as his able if somewhat less studied assistant.

Elementary, my dear Watson, I mean, Williams.

Indeed, London’s Baker Street occupied my young imagination in the same way that Hogwarts Castle, perhaps, does for young readers today.

The new “Sherlock Holmes” film, starring the irrepressible Robert Downey Jr. as the astute English sleuth and Jude Law as his assistant, injects the famous and much-loved series with a renewed vitality. Think Hercule Poirot meets a 19th century Iron Man, helped along by a script that positively crackles, and director Guy Ritchie’s hyper-speedy and occasionally artsy slow-mo editing, which makes 19th century London feel like “The Matrix” on steroids.

The celluloid version finds Holmes and Watson less mentor and apprentice and more collegial equals. In a predictable but smart move, Downey plays Holmes as an ass-kicking and slightly snarky smarty-pants, as interested in thrashing the tar out of much more heavily-muscled gents in the boxing ring as he is in the intricacies of uncovering his subjects’ personal details. The repartee between Holmes and his long-suffering Watson feels a bit forced, in part because Jude Law is a charismatic force of nature in his own right, and must play a restrained second fiddle to Downey’s undeniably magnetic personality.

When the Holmes/Watson duo help Scotland Yard bust Lord Blackwood (symbolic name alert!), a former House of Lordsman-turned-seeming-sorcerer who ensnares beautiful maidens for warlock’s sport, the stage is set for mystery and intrigue. Throw in a sensual and mysterious love interest/adversary, and an unfolding and exotic journey through the streets of working class London, and “Sherlock Holmes” makes for entertaining cinema.

There are problems with the film. The villains – Blackwood and an even more shadowy figure named Professor Moriarty (think sequel – Sherlock, Part 2) – don’t engage with our heroes much, remaining in the shadows far too much to be all that interesting. The love relationship between Holmes and his mysterious girlfriend/adversary never really convinces. The biggest flaw, common in many detective films, is director Ritchie’s constant and somewhat annoying habit of using after-the-fact flashbacks to solve various mysteries for the viewer after they’ve occurred. After the fourth go-round, I began to feel like even more of an idiot than usual.

The film is also lengthy, clocking in at 2 plus hours, but never dull. Action sequences abound, punctuated by a narrative arc that feels surprisingly fresh, combining mystery, science, the occult, and political intrigue. To say more would ruin the Sherlock story.

See it for yourself.

Tags: Arts and Media by Rob Williams
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Throughout fall 2009, the Mad River Valley served as the focus of a University of Vermont course within its Community Development Applied Economics Department. The 14 students in the undergraduate service learning course, CDAE 295 “Local Community Initiatives,” participated and analyzed a handful of the Valley’s community organizations.

With local partners the Valley Futures Network and the Mad River Valley Planning District, the students learned about the different ways that community-members work together to identify challenges, resources and solutions and how they envision their future. The three projects were: a research-based analysis of the organizational structure of the Valley Futures Network, a similar analysis of the Mad River Path Association focusing on membership, and an inventory of renewable energy projects in the Valley.

I am happy to present the final presentations and reports from each of the three groups. Please note that these reports are based on data and impressions gathered by UVM students during the fall semester 2009.

Tags: Announcements, Energy by Joshua Schwartz
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