Valley Futures

Tags: Arts and Media, Transitions Potluck Dinner by Rob Williams
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Tags: Arts and Media, Transitions Potluck Dinner by Rob Williams
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One item explored in the Transition Handbook, and discussed at the Valley’s Transition Handbook Potluck Dinners/Reading Group, is the creation of a well defined vision of the future. The Valley has a long history of forward thinking visions, ranging from the Valley-wide Vision 20/20 project (foundation of VFN) to each of the towns’ municipal plans to the VFN Retreats vision exercise. I have always been fascinated by exciting methods that communities utilize to share their goals. Well, hats off to Pennsylvania’s Kutztown Middle School students for their imagined and engineered vision of a town in year 2203. The fictional city of Vetniborg, Iceland won the Kutztown team first place in the Philadelphia Regional Future City Competion, qualifying them for next week’s national event in Washington, DC. The well thought out essay of their envisioned city, developed to revitalize Iceland’s economy on sustainable design principles following its financial collapse in 2008, is available here: http://www.icenews.is/index.php/2009/02/10/vetniborg-essay/.

Tags: Energy, Transition Towns, Transitions Potluck Dinner by Joshua Schwartz
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Note: As part of the emerging Valley Futures Network conversation, we extended an open invitation to anyone interested in reading and discussing Rob Hopkins’ new Transition Handbook to attend a three Thursday potluck dinner and conversation, hosted and facilitated by Kinny Perot and Richard Czaplinski. We hope to see more of these conversations in the months ahead!

Transition Handbook Dinner Potluck and Conversation
Tuesday, January 22, 2009 – “The Hand”
Kinny Perot and Richard Czaplinski – Facilitators

Present around the table:  Bill Maclay, Kinny Perot, Richard Czaplinski, Bob Ferris,, Carol, Bobbi Rood, Carlene Ramus, Mac Rood, Sue Frechette, John Donaldson

Kinny got us thinking about scale and size with a mental exercise about How big is a million seconds: A trillion ?   She read in a recent New Yorker book review:
“take a guess at how long a million seconds is. Now try to guess the same for a billion seconds. Ready? A million seconds is less than twelve days; a billion is almost thirty-two years.” (from John Allen Paulos, Innumeracy in Heroes and Zereos, John Lanchester)

Kinny mentioned that she had received some feedback from previous evenings that people are wondering about VFN’s role and whether VFN should become a TT network.  Tonight’s work will be taking a look at action planning:  this section of the book is entitled “The Hand” .  (Section 1 was The Head, Section 2 The Heart_

Q.  Introduce yourself:  Per Transition Towns what is already going on around the Valley or what are you doing  that parallels or reflects these ideas?

Richard –From Warren, this is my house and I am contributing free consulting to help people build root sellers, along with friend Lee Blackwell

Bob Ferris – Valley – Helping with a project to evaluate sites in the valley for wind production and to promote wind power as an alternative energy source

Kinny Perot-  Lives here.  VFN Agriculture committee and the Kingsbury Farm project

Bill Maclay –  Warren – Energy Plan for the Valley – Weatherization workshops

John Donaldson – Pittsburgh and Waitsfield -  VFN – Land Bank  not direct connection but in the sense that it provides local housing for people who work in the Valley

Sue Frechette – Board of health center focusing energy on health education, how to help people and kids naturally integrate health into their lives with exercise and finding alternative ways of education

Mac Rood in Warren –Involved in restarting the permitting process for the small hydro project in Warren

Carlene Ramus – Kingsbury Farm – Alternative currency – Onion River Exchange – Kate Plummer and Rob Williams are helping bring this along

Bobbi Rood– Warren – Seed swap happening tonight, food Coop in E. Warren

Carol – Fayston – Localvore movement and personally re-skilling idea growing flax and fibers and re-learning knitting and weaving, relearning hand-crafts

Kinny – remarked and wondered about whether Transitions Town addressed clothing as a category?

Richard – There is a lot more we can add to the list.  We have a lot happening in the valley with respect to the ideas and activities explored in the book.  Are there any ideas that we left off and want to add regarding local food and local businesses that help foster TT ideas?

Yestermorrow as a center for re-skilling; architects and builders who have this as a basic focus, bio-mass, local wood mill, Richard’s portable mill, hydroponic gardening, Farmer’s Market, Water, conservation/ land trust, carbon shredders, yak meat and fiber, dairy farms and protected meadow lands, maple syrup production, cheese makers, local arts- Arts Festival, Phantom Theater, Valley Players, Film Festival, Local telephone company, local radio, local paper, beef, pork and lamb, chicken, bees, eggs.  Closer to the carrying capacity than a lot of other areas.  Free air. Mad River Path. The Mad River Community Fund.

Q: Do we know with a certainty that there is enough land here to produce all the food we need.  Mad River Sustainability Group, Mrs. G, has taken a look at this.

Q: When was the peak of the valley towns?  Some thought it was in the last century, others thought it was in the 1960s.

Q: Is the area the correct scale for grain production?  Discussion that local areas would produce what they are scaled best for and that communities could exchange products, like potatoes or beans for grain.  Valley is ideal for growing potatoes and there used to be a lot of that here.

Bobbi pointed out that sometimes potato crops failed and people just ate dried beans.

Q. What have we taken from the Transition Town book that is useful in moving these ideas forward or is something we found meaningful?

Bob read a Scientific study that what damage we have done at this point and the effects of our carbon footprint will be with us for 1000 years, even if we stop doing anything.  He liked the idea of the reverse graph and changing the paradigm from one of having reached peak oil and flipped it so that we think in terms of climbing out of the pit from fossil fuel use.  This is progress and opportunity.

Bill: Reminded of the sidebar about optimism and pessimism, the world is going to go is where it is going to go, but what is the choice about what you want to do

Bill: Carrying capacity question: If we switch to wood just to heat our homes we will end up depeleting the forest resources, but sticter energy conservation could make more efficient use  of our current heating systems.  We already have the ability t cut our use by 90%.  It istotally achievable and not a big deal.  Problem of looking at cost now and speculating about the future costs.  Exploring how we can deal with using existing buildings and outfitting them for greater efficiency i.e. thicker walls, more insulation, extracting heat from air and heat pumps.

Bobbi thinks that a key issue is raising awareness.  Wondering about how to get the word out and to get people on board, not just the people around the table

Kinny  The reality of how big this is and the effects is mind boggling and can be overwhelming.  She responded to the idea of keeping this fun and not pounding people with a doom and gloom message.

Bob had a cab driver in DC who was taking about the peak oil issue and saying that we really need to make changes, indication that this is becoming mainstream thinking and that people want to make some changes and adjustments.

Carlene heard that the InterFaith Council is sponsoring a film showing at the
Big Picture of two of the films mentioned in the TT book– End of Suburbia and An Inconvenient Truth.

Bobbi – We need better marketing of the right stuff.  Liked the sample posters and press release information.

MAC and John –Need to raise fuel prices.  When people are paying  $4-10 a gallon they will change their patterns of consumption..   Denmark doesn’t import oil anymore and is exporting energy (2/7 note from Carlene from Thomas L. Friedman’s 2008 book Hot, Flat, and Crowded where he noted what Denmark has accomplished with gas taxes.

-in 1985 they decided against nuclear, and for energy efficency and renewables through the use of taxation
-in the 1990s they added a CO2 tax to increase efficiency (even though they had discovered offshore oil by then)
-in 2008 gas was $9/gal
-since 1981 their economy has grown 70% and their energy consumption has remained flat
-solar and wind now provide 16% of their total energy consumption (1/3 of all wind turbines in the world now come from Denmark)
-in 1973 99% of their energy came from the Middle East and today 0%)

Richard noted the questions related to oil use at the chapter end. Finland, Sweden and Greenland don’t export oil.   TT link to:  check out the oil depletion map
www.lastoilshock.com

Q. How do you make a shift further in that direction in a way that is different than today?

Raise Awareness

Important question Energy plan:  how do we create energy in the valley?

Bill: Incremental conservation may not pay in the long run, but doing whatever we can do to conserve is important.  People need incentives to make the bigger changes, since the numbers today don’t justify more that adopting minimum standards may not be enough in the future.

Q: What do we want to do… do we want to promote developing an EDAP?

Find something and do it.

Bob: Wondering about using the Open sSpace methodology at a local event.  Does that work well?

Richard Transition Town meeting in Montpelier. Can go to the web and find out what happened in all of the groups.

Kinny: Three things she is thinking about: Valley Demographics- involving younger people in this discussion, planning for 20 years from now, what will happen with the ski areas?

Bob : Concern if we work our guts off to build energy capacity in the valley and that gets gobbled by development.  Need to have a conversation about this, that the point isn’t for the town to sacrifice so that the developers can have what they need.  We all need to make shifts.

Bobbi : How do you figure what is the right size for business and infrastructure development?  (Concern here about whether small and local makes sense for all functions.. maybe hospitals and schools being centrally located is the most efficient use for those types of activities, we will need to take a look at things like this.  Secondarily, use of buildings for multiple activities, like encouraging sharing school space for services like counseling after school hours might make sense.)

Group: We need to start to plan but can’t figure all out ahead of time

Kinny:  When we think of energy we talk of fossil fuels. What are
Heating fuel and transportation fuel costs? Public meetings about energy totally about electricity, the smallest proportion of what we are using, what about other forms?

Bill:  The state ought to develop an energy plan. Bill. Investing in the future by investing in the past.

Kinny: How do people have fun making this happen?

Sue: observation: evaluation for wind energy at certain sites… projects are formulated based on people’s passions… Really making change is marrying of passion and evaluation to come up with ideas that will work and make things happen. There needs to take place a Marrying of passion and analysis

Do we want to become a TT group, how do we keep the passion alive and build awareness?

Carlene:  Join other groups and link events.

Bobbi :Valley wide calendar – like the idea of the Steering committee and then disbanding and reforming as action groups.

Carol: the group that starts it out has to plan their demise There to create a sense of community and spread the information. Rob Hopkins energetic person, people doing Transition Towns very upbeat and bring about community. How do you find out what groups are where and how do you go about figuring out how to get involved, how do you connect?

Discussion about being inclusive and offering meetings and retreats at times when people who work can attend.  Mini retreats.

Valley Futures Network, similar to Transitions Town initiative, people at meetings can take excellent notes and get the word out.

Q: How do you get the people who aren’t around the table to come to these things.

Valley futures less clear.  Transitions towns more focused.

Carlene read that about 5000 is the ideal size for a transition town and that is about the size of the Valley.

Kinny: Getting the films would be great.

Carlene: how do you utilize some of these psychological models.  Guided conversations. Try to pair up with organizations that are already doing it. (Like the Green Sancuary Movement – Richard)

Carol emphasized that we need a Community Center that is inclusive,.. The  Big Picture attracts a particular crown and is kind of exclusive.  How does building a community  work in a place without a center.

Mac: There are a lot of different groups to reach out to, ie. The planning district, a resource, the fire departments, the planning commissions the selectboards, churches, chamber. They can do their own outreach.

Next steps:
Check in with the Montpelier group and learn about what they are doing.
Go to the Legislature
If you are trying to gauge level of interest don’t just look at numbers, these can be misleading.  A crowd of 65 around this area is a good turn out.

Transition stuff is already what is going on with Valley Futures.  If you just added EDAP to the VFN list it would be a great addition.  It would not make sense to re-invent the wheel.  Peter Forbes will be offering other retreats over the next few years, but we need to think about how to make this also include one day events at different times to accommodate people’s needs and events that are open to all and don’t require an invitation.

Encourage others to read the book in VFN and revise and reinvigorate focus to
TT.

Tags: Transition Towns, Transitions Potluck Dinner by Bobbi Rood
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Note: As part of the emerging Valley Futures Network conversation, we extended an open invitation to anyone interested in reading and discussing Rob Hopkins’ new Transition Handbook to attend a three Thursday potluck dinner and conversation, hosted and facilitated by Kinny Perot and Richard Czaplinski. We hope to see more of these conversations in the months ahead!

Transition Handbook Dinner Potluck and Conversation
Tuesday, January 29, 2009
Kinny Perot and Richard Czaplinski – Facilitators

Present: Bill Maclay, Sue Frechette, Charlie Hosford, Erin Maile O’Keefe, Kevin O’Keefe, Carol Hosford, Kinny Perot, John Donaldson, Richard Czaplinski, Bobbi Rood, Jared Cadwell, Stan Ward, Joshua Schwartz, Alex Maclay, Lisa Loomis, and Rob Williams.

Richard: Have you ever changed your behavior or habit, and what was the catalyst for doing so?

Lisa: Use a clothesline – motivated by sleeping in sheets that had been dried on a line.

Kinny: On the vegetarian front, read about how much grain goes into producing a pound of meat, tried eating “veggie” for a week, month, year – thirteen years. Pregnancy re-introduced meat in the form of craving for it – try to eat local meat when consuming. Driving fewer miles – using a Honda hybrid, being aware of the amount of fuel being consumed – raising awareness. “Give myself a star for not driving each day.”

Carol: Taking shorter showers – “Button Up” workshop with Brad Cook was a catalyst.

Charlie: Finding change in local eating. As a child, I rode a bike everywhere. I can remember when my parents bought an old used car – gave up some of the “bike life.”

Alex: Seeing the movie “Flow” raised issues about the importance of our drinking water – taking action is important. As long we buy bottled water, for example, we’re part of the problem (related to “Flow.”)

Stan: Changing behaviors has been a big part of my life recently. But there are challenges – driving more slowly is hard. Ha. Not flying – ever. Wow. (Won’t have to see my sister-in-law again. JOKE. Ha.) Motivation? We are addicted to oil – this is one way to try and take personal responsibility, limit oneself to personal modes of transportation.

Erin: I’ve tried to reduce consumption through eliminating packaging – e-mail from a young woman who is carrying all the garbage she produces in her backpack, to make a statement about the nature of our “throwaway” society. (Stan: Keep a diary of what you throw out.)

Sue: I was a fat high school/college kid. Read a book by Nancy Clark – ask yourself how you feel after eating (100 calories of orange is different that 100 calories of chocolate). Awareness – can apply to all kinds of life situations.

Josh: Awareness and accountability. Not having cable television for years – having a child changed my media behavior.

Kevin: During the early 1990s, I joined a CSA, and ate a beautifully tasting tomato. Changed my life.

John: Becoming aware of the consequences of our actions is key, as we say here, but perhaps we are unusual. Most people are motivated by fear (where’s the gas?) rather than by foresight. How do we get ourselves to transform their behavior?

Stan: Peak Oil can be presented in a fearful way, and this often turns off people and the discussion.

Sue: Analogy of an obese friend who didn’t recognize he was overweight until his doctor told him.

Rob: The “cult of experts” is tough to overcome. Can we find value in discussion and planning with our neighbors?

Richard: Page 93 of TRANSITION HANDBOOK – invert the Peak Oil curve, and celebrate the transition. What’s your reaction to the reading?

Josh: My first reaction – thank goodness for the VFN vision for the place we live in. I’m a planner – and our emerging plans could be much larger than we can even imagine now.

Kinny: Are we really that different than other people? I don’t know, actually. But if I lived in a city now, I’d be more concerned because I didn’t have as much say or control over systems – water, etc. (Channeling Rupert Blair, old timer in Mad River, “we didn’t know when the depression hit, ‘cause it was always a depression here…) And my mind is stuck on this question of “are we different?”

Carol: Riding the trains in NYC – signs that talk about saving energy – seems to be more enlightenment there than previously.

Charlie: Are the cities toast in a post-carbon world? (City dwellers use less energy than their suburban and rural counterparts, on a per individual basis.)

Bobbi: The downside of living in the cities, post Peak Oil, is how will folks survive? The energy “descent” – I like this idea. How would I do my job?

Erin: Parallel to the medical model. We wait until something really bad happens before we attend to it. A labor support dula, I trained as, and what’s interesting about this is that my biggest part of my job is to make women aware of their choices. Maybe that’s what we need to do – to increase the awareness that people have choices.

Stan: In the transition course, we did an exercise where we imagine ourselves in 2030. Some remarkable imaginings here (and lots of laughter – will we still be alive, as old folks? Ha.)

Charlie: We’re about to move into a time where history will repeat itself. The post Peak Oil world feels like my world as a kid – we never bought anything new, we recycled everything, and lived self-sufficiently. If oil ended tomorrow – the sooner the better, ha – I feel absolutely confident that I/we could make it.

Stan: Inspiring. We did this before. We’ve just been an oil-induced vacation.

Kinny: The Cuba movie – THE POWER OF COMMUNITY. Solutions-oriented and actual history. Cuba’s “Special Period” when the USSR collapsed in 1990-1991 and most of Cuba’s fossil fuel energy suddenly got cut off. How did they survive? And what does this story hold for us here? The weather here in Vermont helps prepare people for being “cut off.”

Jared: I am interested in what we might come up with for next steps as a group, using the TRANSITION HANDBOOK and our own skills as a guide.

Charlie: What role does local governance play in supporting a VFN sort of vision?

Jared: Part of me says “get government out of the way, let energized folks lead.” Another part of me says: “business as usual no longer applies.” People in elected positions maybe have a different role now – “this is the way we always do stuff,” maybe that won’t cut it any more? There is real competency and interest around doing things differently – energy, food, agriculture, etc.

Alex: The biggest hurdle we face is the sense that these dilemmas are distant – we shouldn’t worry about that. How do we do this?

Lisa: We start incorporating these ideas into a planning process for the Valley. Get the planning process working from the ground up.

Bill: We’re actually doing stuff that’s talked about in the book. That’s comforting. What’s missing is the sense of urgency and explicit connection to the “shift happens” paradigm.

Carol: Shift will come, and we move towards it on step at a time.

Bobbi: Centralized recycling (not) versus local compost (yes).

Bobbi: What about time banks?

Erin: Currency is key.

Stan: What attracts me to this Valley is the sense of community. Reading TH, this positive vision of the future, is an amazing thing.

Richard: Any last burning questions?

Kevin: I didn’t grow up with any real skills, so I needed a tree removed, and my woodchuck friend quoted me a price, and then he and I dropped the tree together, save $500, took me three days of work, but now I have a relationship to the tree and the wood that I didn’t have before. How do we value what’s significant? Our relationships will get stronger if we have to carpool, etc. – there is gold here.

Kinny: Quote from the book. “My expectations interfere with my will to act.”

Rob: Can we make a list of concrete ideas and initiatives from THE HANDS part for the last Thursday meeting?

Tags: Transition Towns, Transitions Potluck Dinner by Rob Williams
1 Comment »

Note: As part of the emerging Valley Futures Network conversation, we extended an open invitation to anyone interested in reading and discussing Rob Hopkins’ new Transition Handbook to attend a three Thursday potluck dinner and conversation, hosted and facilitated by Kinny Perot and Richard Czaplinski. We hope to see more of these conversations in the months ahead!

Transition Handbook Dinner Potluck and Conversation
Tuesday, January 22, 2009
Kinny Perot and Richard Czaplinski – Facilitators

Present Around the Table: Alex Maclay, Bill Maclay, Kinny Perot, Richard Czaplinski, Peter Forbes, Jared Cadwell, Sue Frechette, Mac Rood, Carlene Ramus, Kate Williams, and Rob Williams

Interested in attending a Valley Futures potluck? Contact hope@valleyfutures.net.

“One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.” - Andrew Gide

TRANSITION HANDBOOK Part 1:
How did reading it make you feel?

Richard: I felt hopeful reading part 1.

Alex: I felt overwhelmed by the technical aspects of the presentation, but the charts were useful. “Resiliency” was a concept that had “legs” for me.

Jared: I felt skeptical, feeling a bit of “been there, done that” in reading the opening chapters. Second reaction – so many systems seem to be breaking down – “Rome is burning.” Third reaction – Reassurance – there is opportunity in the midst of crises we seem to be facing – the opportunities we have to grasp can be addressed locally.

Kate: My first reaction to crisis is to “light a candle” and plant an extra garden row. Secondly, the idea of “resilience” has power. Thirdly, as a select board member, there seem some good ideas for visioning a better future for the Valley.

Sue: I am going around an around here – the book may allow us to find more balance and move towards a more re-localized future for the Valley.

Mac: Consider a “carrot and stick” approach – any moves made towards reducing oil consumption here relieves the pressure from someone else to do less to make changes. Fossil fuel energy has to be more expensive for people to make the adjustments necessary to move towards a post-carbon lifestyle. Frustrating to read it.

Carlene: I felt relief after reading the book. The concept of “resilience” seems vital, and the book is hopeful after reading Richard Heinberg’s work and feeling depressed.
Bill: Appreciated the inverted “peak oil” graph, after feeling like the beginning of the book was a bit old hat/boring, having read much of this stuff before. Conclusion: the time is nigh for us to create an infrastructure for a world that will work, or we die. How do we put together a community energy structure for “real life” to happen? If we can get hold of some money/investment capital, we can leverage them for building local community energy generation. Peak Oil is here – fossil fuel energy costs will continue to go up, so how do we leverage it.

Kinny: I got the book a while ago, and read it rapidly when I realized that this dinner was happening. Ha. There wasn’t much new stuff here for me, but I like the word “resilience” and maybe this time we really have to deal with the consequences of peak oil. Three concepts related to resilience: diversity, modularity, and “tightness of feedbacks.” I love the fact that the book’s author, Rob Hopkins, studied permaculture and taught permaculture. Can the US move from “rugged individualism” to “interdependence”? I learned a bunch of stuff. Beyond Peak Oil and climate change, we have to add the financial crisis and other stuff to the list. I felt sad that Warren wise man (now gone) Rupert Blair wasn’t here (last depression, he said – we lived here, and produced everything we needed). I was also grateful for this Valley, grateful and optimistic, for the fact that the Valley is already looking at these issues. There is openness here to try stuff. What will happen in cities?

Peter: There is a big difference between “information” and “transformation.” I gobbled up the book, and I did feel something significant three years ago when I saw THE END OF SUBURBIA – that was the moment that would change us. Close to signing a contract to put in a 10 KW PV array to power Knoll Farm, etc. – lots of exciting changes on the horizon, and if this book helps us move forward, this is great. Let’s move from information to transformation.

Rob: The book makes me feel hopeful, because it is a text that is accessible, informative, and hopeful, telling the story of communities in transition, who are beginning to figure out how to re-invent themselves in the face of some fairly serious dilemmas.

Part 2: Free Wheeling/OPEN to Discussion

Kinny: What about population? The elephant in the room. And how do we wrestle with this? More awareness of this in the 1960s…

Rob: Throw in fossil fuel energy and our energy-intensive ag situation, and we’ll need more willing hands to grow food in the face of Peak Oil and food going forward.

Kate: How do we grow a movement to educate people about transformations ahead of us – emotional responses, intellectual responses, different people learn differently. My work in regional network-building – what is the right scale for food, energy, water? Localvores throw out the 100 mile radius – is this the right number?

Mac: Cost of energy – if the “true costs” of say, eating a banana showed up, we would appreciate the costs of eating locally versus eating globally. What about a gas tax, for example, as a way to discourage energy over-use and shift over to non-fossil fuel energy sources?

Kinny: Where would the action take place? State? Local? Federal?

Mac: This is a single collective action we could support.

Kinny: Phil Hoff supported a 5-cent gas tax back in the day.

Kate: Montpelier’s BERC (Biomass Energy Resource Center) tells us that higher fossil fuel costs change consumers behavior overnight.

Sue: This is a great community, and we can become more resilient than we already are, but who will come and spend money in the face of higher oil prices?

Here, much engaging conversation ensued about the RR and the viability (or not) of this.

Kate: Let’s rethink the creative tension between private property and “the commons” – we grow corn in the Valley to feed cows here that produce milk that leaves the Valley – is this sort of thing all that sustainable?

Peter: NH has a much lower per capita income than Vermont does. When oil prices were higher, the state of NH opened up the publicly-owned state parks to permit-driven wood-cutting for folks who needed wood for heating etc. Is this something that might have lessons for us here in Mad River?

Carlene: That sounds like desperation in some ways.

Peter: When families have kids who need warmth, I’m OK with that. I might be able to pay for PV cells, many folks cannot. (Class issues are a vital part of the conversation).

Kinny: Energy profile for the MRV – How much energy comes in? How much goes out?

Jared: Talking with the Center for Rural Studies and Josh Schwartz and Caitrin Noel, we are recalibrating our info-gathering activities for MRV.

Richard: FRAMING QUESTION – How resilient is the Valley?

FOR EXAMPLE: What if the power goes out? What if no gas comes in? What if no food comes in? (Three hypothetical scenarios.)

Mac: We’re not all that resilient.

Kinny: CDC story-pandemics-are we prepared to not leave our house for three weeks? (Wood, heat, power, water…)

Peter: Can we do this sort of scenario planning without being alarmist?

Sue: Health Center conducting an emergency preparedness survey – Taking names of people to volunteer to get this group off the ground?

Kinny: Who has a plan?

Discussion ensued about plans, which towns have them, different houses with people who need help in case of fire or flood, etc.

Sue: Within the next 4-6 weeks, plan being pulled together to consider this.

Carlene: How do we make this sort of scenario fun?

Kate: MRV is full of creative people – how do we temper the seriousness of our situation with having fun and working together?

Kinny: Building a bomb shelter – as kids, this was fun and creative.
Richard: Where do I put my efforts, right livelihood wise? Is the work I am doing increasing our resilience, or not?

Sue: MRV seems relatively resilient, compared with other places. We can become more resilient, and become a model for other places. (We can’t change Boston, Hartford, etc.)

Peter: And the examples create change. Examples DRAW one towards change, rather than PUSH one towards change.

Sue: Tweak, build the future.

Alex: When Boston, Hartford, etc implode a little, folks will come here to find refuge, solace, hope, etc.

Mac: But remember, urban areas use much less energy than we do.

Kinny: Ditto.

Jared: The USSR’s market garden concept has been working for a long time – squirreling away carrots, beets, potatoes, week-ends working on the dacha. But this was the market dictating behavior.

Kate: What is the forecast in our own minds shaping our sense of the future?

Peter: Reality check – historically, people flock to cities, they don’t flee from them to the countryside. Just visited a CSA in NYC with 40,000 members and millions of dollars of investment.

Jared: What about Obama? It is possible that our national leaders get on the right path with regard to renewables, etc.

Bill: The argument used to be – don’t buy renewables until you totally insulate your house. Cuban model – “Power of Community” grassroots model for transforming communities into more renewable centers.

Peter: On the “pull” side – find the small doable projects that give glimpses of what resilience looks like, set examples by doing the “next right thing” (Carlene’s phrase). Can we do a wind project that takes care of 10 or 20 homes, rather than powers the whole Valley? Try different smaller strategies – if I had 5 cows, wouldn’t it by nice to have a local bottling plant where I could pasteurize my milk?

Kinny: Raw milk laws changed. (Political point – see www.ruralvermont.org).

Peter: Consider small projects where change ripples outward.

Alex: Focus on small “sexy” working projects.

Kinny: Vermont Family Forests in Bristol (David Brinn, LLC, working model).

Kate: What is our plan from here?

Two more weeks of hosting.

Richard: On a personal note, I built a 30-year-old root cellar that seems to work well (in Adamant), so we’re offering free root cellar consulting for anyone interested in designing and building root cellars.

Larger point: you can enjoy fine produce and food without fridges in Vermont all year round.

Tools – teach people how to use ‘em.

Rob: Hands-on workshops are key. Let’s do more of them.

Kinny: What about kids? How do we get them more involved?

Kate: Check out the Waitsfield school garden.

Alex: The “community garden” concept is wonderful.

Richard: FoodWorks in Montpelier does cool stuff.

Carlene: That “hunger for community” – let’s tap into it.

Richard: Being a kid on the farm, before we had machines to harvest corn, we get all the neighbors together for “husking bee,” and my dad would throw in a few red corn pieces, and you got to kiss the woman or man of your choice.

Sue: Part of a resilient community is to be “health oriented” – we ought to create a health group.

More kissing. Done.
THE END – UNTIL NEXT WEEK!

Tags: Transitions Potluck Dinner by Rob Williams
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