Valley Futures

On June 15th, Mad River Path Association will host a Valley Dog Owner Summit from 6:30-8PM at the Waitsfield Elementary School gym. The event will be a community forum to discuss the topic of an off-leash area for dogs. Presenters will provide information about dog safety, local leash ordinances, and the Mad River Path. The goal will be to identify actions to help the community find an off-leash area for Valley dogs. The Waitsfield Elementary School cannot allows dogs in the building, however dog owners and non-dog owners should join us to share your thoughts and ideas for this common goal. We hope to see you there!

Tags: Announcements by Joshua Schwartz
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What might our community look like when we can no longer count on large quantities of cheap fossil fuels? What can we do now that will preserve what we value, prepare us for this inevitable change, and create the better future we desire?

These and other questions will be discussed at a community presentation and discussion of Transition Towns to be held on Tuesday, June 1st at 7 pm at the Waitsfield Elementary School. The public is invited and the event is free.

Transition is a grassroots, community-based movement that began in Great Britain in 2006 and has quickly spread across the globe. Its aim is to build community resilience in the face of such challenges as peak oil, climate change and economic crisis. Five residents of the Mad River Valley (Stan Ward, Gaelan Brown, Jasna Brown, Ben Falk and Bill MacClay) will share their knowledge and experience of working with the Transition movement and similar initiatives in the Mad River Valley, help participants explore the relevance of this model for the valley, and discuss possible next steps.

Topics to be addressed will include: What is a Transition Town? What have been some of the accomplishments of other Transition Towns? How might this model help us promote sustainable development in the Mad River Valley? And what are some specific projects that could be done?

Proposed projects include but are not limited to:

• A community-funded commercial kitchen and food-processing plant that is open to anyone to use, similar to the “Vermont Food Venture Center” being built in Hardwick;
• A community-funded slaughter-house and meat-packaging/distribution center;
• A community-funded composting operation, including a household compost pick-up service added to the local trash collection system, and compost sold to local farmers and gardeners at low cost;
• A renewable energy co-op to organize group-net-metering wind and solar projects;
• A firewood CSA system to support local loggers and ensure affordable, local firewood, perhaps including a community investment in wood processing equipment; and
• Community-funded tree-farms for fruits, nuts, and mushrooms (edible landscape).

This event is sponsored by the Valley Futures Network and the Carbon Shredders. For additional information contact Jill Arace at 496-9974 or jarace@gmavt.net.

Tags: Announcements, Energy, Transition Towns by Joshua Schwartz
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He has been called “the crown prince of the New Folk Movement” by Rolling Stone magazine.

He has toured all over the world for more than two decades.

His songs have been recorded by a wide range of musical artists in a diverse variety of genres.

And, after years of dangling carrots in front of him, our own Mad River Valley folk music impresario Bruce Jones, visionary founder of the Valley Acoustic Showcase, has finally convinced John Gorka to come and play at the Valley Player’s theater on Sunday night, May 16.

How good a songwriter and performer is John Gorka?

“Listening to John Gorka sing, one can get goosebumps all over,” observes The New York Times. “There are many reasons – fresh lyrics, a stunning emotional baritone voice, his twisted humor – but to focus on one limits the experience.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Check him out at www.johngorka.com.

I’ve listened to John Gorka for years, and seen him perform at festivals and venues all over the country. I never grow tired of the experience.

I think of Gorka as the Stephen Wright of folk music. He is wickedly funny in the most understated of ways, and almost deadpan on stage, but when he opens his mouth to sing, his voice – by turns haunting, melancholic, and wryly witty – captures the whole universe of human emotions in keenly observed turns of phrase. His mojo is hard to describe, really – Gorka must be heard to be believed.

And his writing is truly unique. Perhaps his most famous ballad is an old tune called “I’m from New Jersey,” in which he sings of the promise and peril of being a denizen of the Garden State.

A sampling:

I’m from New Jersey / It’s like Ohio
Only more so / imagine that.
Girls from New Jersey have this great big hair/
They’re found in shopping malls / I will take you there.

What makes Gorka a gifted songwriter is his ability completely empathize with his subject. He sings on a wide range of topics: war, love, peace, lust, and the often-wrenching changes the world brings to the unsuspecting, as is the case with one of his most powerful tunes, called “Houses in the Fields” (which I’ve heard him play on both the guitar and the piano):

They’re growing houses in the fields between the towns/
And the Starlight Drive-In Movie is closing down/
The road has gone to the way it was before/
And spaces won’t be spaces anymore.

His newest CD, entitled “So Dark You See,” delivers more of his trademark wit and wisdom voiced with his remarkable delivery. Only Gorka would dare to put an old Robert Burns poem to music, deliver an old Utah Phillips classic cover called “I Think Of You,” and then turn around and throw down a moving meditation on growing up in “Ignorance and Privilege,” in which he sings of the sacrifices Depression Era parents made for their sometimes-unappreciative progeny.

And if this review doesn’t convince you to see Gorka live, Bruce Jones has invited local up-and-comer Nikki Matheson to open the evening. Matheson has just finished recording a beautiful new CD entitled “Invisible Angel,” a project she started eight years ago while living in Paris, and has just finished with Vermont uber-producer Colin McCaffrey. You can listen to her at www.nikkimatheson.com.)

Two fabulous performers in our Valley on one spring evening.

Don’t miss it.

Tags: Announcements, Arts and Media by Rob Williams
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Daisy Mayhem! Getting “Ranky Tanky” in the Mad River Valley

Concert Details:
Sunday, March 28 at 10:30 am.
The Big Picture Cafe and Theater
$20 families / $5 individuals

Arts writer Rob Williams talked with Rani Arbo about their new “Ranky Tanky” CD, being a musician and a Mom, and their upcoming Spring Hill School fund-raising concert at the Big Picture.

Q: So Daisy Mayhem has produced three wonderful CDs – why a kids project?

Kid projects are de rigeur here now – the band collectively has four, ages 12, 9, 6, and 3 1/2. And four months, if you count Ranky Tanky, which gestated about as long as the rest of them did. As parents, we’re all tuned in to family life. We’re musicians, artists, carpenters, writers, recording engineers – but everyone’s main channel is still parenting. We love playing together as a band, we love hanging out with our kids – so why not make a soundtrack for all that fun? This band’s danceable, uplifting music has always appealed to kids, so we knew we could do a decent job of it. We have just changed the themes a little. Less love and death and more animals.

Q. What does “Ranky Tanky” mean? Is it some sort of “kids only” code phrase?

It’s the catchphrase in the album’s title track, a song from the Georgia Sea Islands called “Ranky Tanky,” also known as “The Old Woman from Brewster.” It’s a traditional children’s game – which we teach the audience – that involves moving your elbows, knees, hips (whatever we call out) and singing, “ranky tanky!”

Q. How did you go about selecting which songs to bring to the recording?

The answer is as varied as the songs. Some we’d already been performing at grown up shows – including “Ranky Tanky” and Tom Petty’s “Wildflowers.” Others were remembered from our own childhoods, like “The Green Grass Grows All Around,” or “Kind Kangaroo” (a lullaby Scott’s grandmother used to sing for him). Others were covers of songs we love – not necessarily children’s tunes, but perfectly suited to them anyway – such as “Purple People Eater,” Cat Stevens’ “If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out,” Nat King Cole’s “Kee-mo, Ky-mo,” or the Meters’ “They All Ask’d for You.” Still others were songs we sang to our own children. “Morningtown Ride” was Anand’s son Jack’s favorite lullaby for a while; I sang Quinn to bed with “Bushel and a Peck.”

Q. As you were making this CD, were you inspired by any other kids’ musicians?

Glad you asked, because I left two important covers off the list above. We are everlastingly inspired by Billy Jonas, a North Carolina-based percussionist who uses recycled materials – like Scott’s Drumship Enterprise, but on a much larger scale. Billy is also a guitarist and a brilliant songwriter for kids. He writes to their quirkiness, curiosity, and deep intelligence, with songs that are catchy, funny, and smart. We covered his “Bear to the Left” on Ranky Tanky. We also found (via YouTube!) a song from an LA-based duo, Renee and Jeremy, called “It’s a Big World, Baby.” We recreated it as a lush, gorgeous lullaby. It’s the last song on the CD, and it’s a heartstring-puller, reminding us that our wee ones are only “little for a little while.” My 6-year-old son calls it “the baby song,” and doesn’t like it one bit.

Q. What’s your favorite song on the project, and why?

I have two. One is the first track, Cat Stevens’ “If you want to Sing Out, Sing Out,” which is getting lots of play on Sirius XM Kids’ Radio right now. The song was used in the movie “Harold and Maude” (and thereby has gained us an odd collection of 30-40 year old male fans). We decided to record it, learned it, arranged it, and recorded it all in one day, and it still feels like one of the freshest songs on the CD. Plus, the message is just loud and clear: Be who you are. Sing Out. Be free.

My other favorite is “Where did you get that Hat,” which dates to a broadside published in 1901. I first heard it on a compilation of field recordings by Anne and Frank Warner, sung by Edith Perrin in 1941. She puts great character into her delivery, and Andrew did the song tremendous justice – all 30 seconds of it – with just a ukulele and his big personality.

Q. Some kids music is awfully saccharine – can we adults expect to like what we hear on your new project?

No artificial sweeteners. I will admit, though, that there are some arguably cute sing-alongs on Ranky Tanky. And that we do mention at least 25 different animals and one purple alien in the course of 17 songs. And, yes, we are earnest about having a great time. In the studio, we collapsed with laughter at the end of many of the takes, and some of that laughter (and all of that energy) stayed on the CD. But despite our earnestness, our life-is-good sensibility and our positive, sing-out-be-free attitude, Ranky Tanky isn’t syrupy. Or maybe it’s maple syrupy, but not Karo. The humor, the grooves, the camaraderie and the spontaneity of this CD feel too much like a party for that.

Q. Did the band bring any different musical mojo or sensibility to this project, as a kids project, or did you follow the same sort of recording process as you have with your other 3 CDs?

We planned less and we judged less. We had fewer preconceived notions and more fun. Perhaps that’s because this is a kids’ CD; more likely, it’s because it is our most recent CD. It has taken us years to learn, forget, and re-learn this lesson: the less you expect of it, the more a situation (or a recording) can just be what it is, what it’s meant to be. Not a bad metaphor for life, especially with kids…

Q. Can we expect you to play any other songs from any other of your albums (like, maybe, “Joy Comes Back” or “Finland”- wink wink, nudge nudge) during your Mad River performance?

I will give you your own personal concert of Finland, I promise! But it barely makes sense to even me, and it’s a real brooder….I think the kids would be totally nonplussed. We may do Joy Comes Back. If you request it, we will.

Tags: Announcements, Arts and Media by Rob Williams
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A Valley Futures Network Task Team has been formed to look at the question: would a local entrepreneurial Food and Agriculture Business Initiative work in the Valley and if so what might it look like? The Team is sponsoring some upcoming talks in the next months that bring in people from other towns that are doing similar initiatives.

On February 10th Andrew Meyer from the Center for an Agricultural Community will talk about their initiative in Hardwick.
The event will take place at the Big Picture on 2/10 from 6:30-9pm with coffee/dessert.

Tags: Agriculture, Announcements by Joshua Schwartz
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Based on the success of this past fall’s MRV focused UVM course, Local Community Initiatives, instructor Chip Sawyer is planning a second round in the fall of 2010. Now is the time to start planning the course, and more importantly, brainstorming potential projects.

The UVM course Local Community Initiatives is a service-learning course that allows undergraduate and graduate students to contribute to community projects in the Mad River Valley.  This course will be held in the fall of 2010.  The course was very successful and valuable for both students and Mad River Valley residents, alike, in the fall of 2009.  The final project reports are available at the Mad River Valley Planning District website at http://www.mrvpd.org/DocumentsLibrary.php.

Please see attached the course description and the list of expectations for students and project partners.

During the first weeks of the course, the students will choose from among 3-5 projects in the Mad River Valley.  Now is the time for interested community members to propose projects.  The projects will be compiled by the Mad River Valley Planning District and the Valley Futures Network.  A steering committee made up the of the course instructor, the Executive Director of the Mad River Valley Planning District, members of the Valley Futures Network, and other Mad River Valley community members will consider the projects submitted and choose a list to be proposed to the students.

Projects will be chosen based on:

• the likelihood of a project to be completed by students in the fall and winter of 2010;
• the learning potential that a project presents to the students and community partners;
• the extent to the which the project will contribute to efforts and partnerships going forward; and
• the impact that the project could have upon the Mad River Valley.

The deadline for projects is March 15th.

UVM Project Submittal Form Fall 2010.doc

List of Projects (originally compiled for Fall 2009 class)

Tags: Agriculture, Announcements, Energy by Joshua Schwartz
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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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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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Hear Allison Stanger in Mad River Valley at the Valley Players Theater at 7:00 pm on Thursday, November 5. Sponsored by the Green Mountain Global Forum.

“The American homeland is the planet.” – 9/11 Commission Report

Very rarely do I read a “policy wonkish” book in which I so clearly agree with the diagnosed problem, but feel like the solutions offered leave me completely at sea.

Allison Stanger’s One Nation Under Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power and the Future of Foreign Policy is such a book.

Stanger is no slouch. She is Middlebury College’s Russell Leng ‘60 Professor of International Politics and Economics, and directs the college’s Rohatyn Center for International Affairs. Her clear, concise, and thoughtful new book is “blurbed” by some high-powered people, including USMC General Anthony Zinni (who calls Stanger’s analysis “a superb work on government outsourcing and contracting”); Canadian Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff (“a clarion call to bring the business of government under more effective public control”); and Harvard University professor Joseph Nye (“well-reasoned”).

But her book’s conclusions left me scratching my head.

Stanger sets out to answer a big and crucially important question: In an age in which governments around the world have “outsourced” nearly everything to private for-profit corporations, how do citizens reestablish effective oversight over private-public partnerships? This outsourcing problem is so vast and extensive that even the Establishment New York Times, an overexuberant cheerleader for U.S. foreign policy if ever there was one, referred to contractors as a “fourth branch of government” in 2007, a sign of just how troublesome things have become.

Stanger’s extended case-study is the United States, a “republic-turned-Empire” (to her credit, Stanger is willing to entertain the use of the term “empire” to describe U.S. activities abroad) of 300 million citizens that has emerged over the past several decades as the richest, most powerful, most influential nation in the world, with as many as 1,000 military bases networked across more than 130 countries across the planet, 10,000 nuclear warheads, and an annual “defense” budget (read: “war-making”) larger than the next twenty countries combined.

Her conclusions?

What once was considered public oversight (the domain of Congress, the State Department, and other somewhat-publicly-accountable government organizations) for maintaining this emerging global “Empire of Bases” is increasingly being governed by the dictates of private for-profit corporate interests. In her book, Stanger examines what she calls “the evolution of military outsourcing,” including the privatization of U.S. matters diplomatic (which she rightly traces to the 1947 Congressional passage of the National Security Act), a process that has emerged in full dysfunctional flower with the 2001 creation of the so-called Department of Homeland Security, as well as the “slow death” of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

Stanger is at her best when chronicling the waste, fraud, and abuse that has accompanied ongoing outsourcing. The U.S. government’s six year invasion and occupation of Iraq is the most recent reminder of just how nasty things can get: more than 1 million Iraqi lives lost, billions of dollars “disappeared,” U.S. tax-supported private corporate armies waging a mercenary war against entire Mesopotamian cities (Fallujah, anyone?) while U.S. diplomats hole up inside the so-called “Green Zone,” home to the new U.S. embassy in downtown Baghdad: the largest, most extensive, and most expensive embassy compound the world has ever seen.

And Iraq is just the tip of the “outsourcing” iceberg.

While I appreciated her diagnosis of the “outsourcing” problem, I have two big issues with Stanger’s book.

The first is her continual acceptance (not unusual for a U.S. scholar/policy wonk) of the U.S. government’s officially stated “party line” on all matters diplomatic. When she asserts, for example, that the U.S.’s primary interest in invading and occupying Iraq was to help bring “democracy” to the Middle East, I found myself scrawling the word “nonsense” in the book’s margin. Her unwillingness to push beyond presidential rhetorical rationales for U.S. actions abroad – Oil? Support for Israel? Profit for “Defense” Corps like Halliburton and KBR? – deeply undercuts the credibility of her argument.

Second, and more troubling, are her “solutions,” packed into the last few pages of the book, which seem utopian to the extreme, even for this idealist. She speaks of “cultivating an emerging market for virtue” built on the “creativity of free individuals”; of “radical transparency in all government financial transactions” (and oddly, points to Wall-Street-Bankster-Backscratcher President Obama as a model here); of “loosening the grip of special interests on American politics” (yawn); and more to the point, of “restricting the use of no-bid contracts” and “demilitarizing U.S. foreign policy,” both wonderful ideas that any D.C. insider will be the first to tell you will never happen.

In short, to this decentralist reader, Stanger’s book is right in its diagnosis of what ails the United States, but wrong on the cure. Only a radical devolution of political and economic power away from the center (Washington, D.C. and Wall Street) and towards the periphery (Main Street and individual states, with Vermont leading the way, perhaps) will be able to stanch the “outsourcing” and the complete collapse of this once-great constitutional republic at the hands of those wringing a profit from its ruin.

To explore that phenomenon, however, Ms. Stanger may have to write another book.

Tags: Announcements, Arts and Media by Rob Williams
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The Valley Futures Network invites the Valley community to a potluck supper at 6pm on Sunday, November 1, at the Waitsfield United Church on Main Street in Historic Waitsfield. The Valley Futures Network will be holding an afternoon retreat and is ending its day with a potluck supper at the church. Please bring a salad, entrée or dessert to share.

Tags: Announcements by Joshua Schwartz
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