Working Backward to go Forward

I love reading Clair's posts- she speaks for us all! 

Yes, we are having a get together this weekend, just to hang out and talk about this project.

It should be fun. I will be exhausted, but happy when this proposal is complete.....

This has been a very tough but enlightening process for all of us. Today I listened to the author of 'The End of Nature",  & scholar-in-residence @ Middlebury College, Bill McKibben. His podcast is entitled "Deep Sustainability".

I have been wondering, as I work on my AoA proposal: What if we could work backwards from a vision of the future of Vermont that we all want, and the Vermont we want to preserve, and think about how we can get there, step by step? 

If we can't picture what Vermont could be, and document visually what we value, how can we ever get there? I agree with what Susan said: "I believe that we have to recognize the parts that make up the whole of Vermont before we can protect what we have here."

The irony is that we love so much of the past of Vermont that we need to keep its character... but we also need new technology, especially in terms of jobs & energy and communications as Dana says. Change can be scary. But working to keep what we have and make it better is exciting. Denser, walkable downtowns, affordable housing, a beautiful productive landscape that feeds us and supports the common Vermonter, better public transportation, high speed internet access & cell phone access, conserving energy and saving fuel costs- what would this look like? Maybe not too much different than what we have now-- just valuing more of the same. Perhaps all of the AoA finalists are talking about many of the same things? The images that people have posted so far are beautiful. (This blog aspect is rough! How much do we show?)

A friend who knows I am working on this proposal sent me an article in the NY Times about the Middlebury college class that documented Starksboro, VT & struggled with how to preserve what is there but allow growth...In his podcast McKibbon talks about his student that helped to change all the light bulbs in one VT town to compact fluorescent bulbs which will save millions of dollars in energy....So much to think about!

What if all of our houses produce electricity and become a decentralized grid of power plants? It is plausible, with technology. What if we all just start by conserving as much as possible? Sound like the past? Could we preserve what we have but make it even better? What could that look like?  

Just tossing around these ideas with our neighbors (and other AoA finalists) near and far would create a greater sense of of a shared mission (perhaps through technology- old and new?) and would help to get a discussion going among a larger audience and help to create a greater sense of community. 

Art can make this happen, and ironically to those perhaps without even internet access (!), and help to create Change.

Localvore/ Local store

  
According to the CFV two of Vermonter’s major concerns are:

“Provide for growth and development that doesn’t change VT’s essential character.”

“Our young people are leaving at a rate 4x the national average due to high taxes and lack of good career opportunities with larger companies.”

This is my question: why can’t we help the US economy and Vermont agriculture and small businesses if we just buy local, or even just made in the USA whenever possible?

I just finished reading the little book “A Year without Made in China.” I first heard about it on an NPR piece.

The idea is that a mother saw that most of her children’s Christmas presents were made in China and she decides to try to go one year without buying anything made in China because of safety issues, human rights abuses, & the trade deficit. It is interesting to think about the fact that most of what stocks the store shelves in the US nowadays is made in China. It is time consuming and more expensive to buy other than Chinese products, but important.

 It means changing our values and thinking about other costs to products beyond the dollar cost.

After reading the book, I started looking at all the labels on everything- from clothing to dishes to gifts. It really is shocking. I decided that I would try have a year without buying Chinese imports myself. Shopping became more of a challenge! Not that I shop that much. But, as a result, I often go without things I really didn’t need anyway-- or tend to fix things rather than buying new. Not a bad thing!

To add to this, a year ago I decided to try to be as much of a "localvore" as possible, after reading Michael Poland’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” , Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal Vegetable Mineral”  and the Canadian “Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally”. I realized how relatively poor the general quality of the food in stores is, how much better the quality of locally grown food is, and that we don’t pay enough for it-- so we get what we pay for. 

I have always had a garden, but I decided to plant a new asparagus bed, berry bushes, and fruit and nut trees (a “forest garden” – an edible landscape- which my good friend Jim Merkel, the sustainability guru,helped me plan). Now I put up as much food as possible, just as my family did when I was growing up. We always had a huge garden; we had 2000 apple trees on our farm and about 40 white-faced Herefords; milk came from a neighbor’s farm, so this is not new for me. However, things like olive oil and salt (although I just found out about Maine salt!) and coffee (I need good coffee to survive!) need to be bought. Beyond that I try to eat as local & low on the food chain as possible, and even try to following the 100 mile diet.

I found the Upper Valley’s Vital Communities website listing local farms and farmer’s markets, and with Jim’s help even found Vermont wheat for my bread baking, which is wonderful. Then I found this list of Vermont food and products. What if all Vermonters tried to use this as a buying guide? And if not made in VT, made in the USA? For instance, apparently very few shoes are made in the US, and the only stereo system that is is Bose. If we all tried this wouldn’t it help our economy?

It has been really hard to find things like music in the White River Junction area. Most of the bookstores are gone, because of places like Border’s, and even the Dartmouth Bookstore is now a Barnes & Nobel’s, although they don’t advertise that fact.

I had a recommendation from a friend to go to Music Matters in West Lebanon, across the Connecticut River. I finally got there this week only to see the shop front draped in “Going Out of Business” signs. When I asked the owner why, he said that the big box stores, Borders and Best Buy, had taken most of his business away. Just as I thought. But then he added that the REAL problem was the music companies charging too much for CDs, that it is much cheaper to download music for ipods from the internet. 

I left wondering if in one sense that was so bad, all the plastic saved when the music is downloaded—how do we measure that against local businesses lost? The owner of Music Matters said he didn’t know what he was going to do at the end of January when the store closed for good. Now how to make a 2-D representation of this….

Two Vermonts- old and new?

My great-grandfather worked on the railroad in Bellows Falls. Someone told me there is a picture of him at the new Ellis Island in New York, working on the rails. I haven't gotten there to see it yet.

Now the railroad tracks are very quiet, compared to how they used to be. I keep imagining a commuter rail running up the center of Route 91 stopping at each exit where zip cars wait. Or along the river, with the stations full of life again, like they are in Connecticut and New York and other parts of the country where commuter rail works. 

A friend of mine just visited from New York and there was only one train a day she could take, and it took most all day to get here. It's not like Japan where there are super-efficient electric high speed Shinkansen bullet trains. What if we had those here? Or at least a more convenient train schedule?

My grandmother worked for 50 years in Robertson Paper Mill in Bellows Falls, now run down and almost closed. Her parents were Polish immigrants who worked in the woolen and paper mills and machine tool industry along the Connecticut River in Springfield, Windsor and Claremont.

When Clair first posted in her blog that she was reading "Two Vermonts" I read it, too. It was very interesting because it articulated a lot of what I felt growing up. Even though my great-grandfather's family came to Vermont in the 1880's they were foreigners, uneducated immigrants, much different than the English settlers who seemed somehow to always be more true Vermonters. Even growing up I felt this to be the case, except for the fact that there is a large Polish population in Bellows Falls, so everyone knows my family there.

Many of the same issues addressed early in the 20th century face Vermont now: the need for growth and development vs. the worry of compromising Vermont’s essential character, younger people leaving and the need for good career opportunities, the need of an updated infrastructure, etc.

I have also been reading "Plan B: 3.0” by Lester Brown. “Plan B” outlines most all of the social, environmental and political issues that face our planet and gives a larger context to the issues that Vermonters are facing as identified by the CFV.

It can be downloaded and read free here: http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PB3/Contents.htm

Everyone should read this book (the print version is easier to read than the on-line version). It is daunting to read about all the problems our civilization is currently facing and how they are inter-related, but important to understand. In the second half of the book Brown lays out potential solutions and calls on everyone to choose an issue they are interested in and to act in their own communities.

I am wondering if we use this as a model for Plan “V” - as a way to envision the future, preserve our values, and call for action at the community level. In doing so Vermonters can be leaders in working towards solutions, in our state, in our country, and in the world.

Defining the Project

Reading Clair’s, Elizabeth’s, Susan’s, C.B.’s and Mariella’s blogs for the past two months, and those of increasingly more of the finalists (with John Zwick’s strong ‘encouragement’!) I have both enjoyed learning what is going on in everyone’s minds and become more and more intimidated by the thoughtfulness of the entries. The AoA blogs are works of art in themselves.

In the time since we all met in Montpelier for the inspiring introduction to the project by Lyman Orton, Alex Aldrich, Sarah Waring and all the others, I have been doing a great deal of reading and travelling around the state photographing and struggling with my ideas. I also have been making visual notes through making photographs, drawings and collages. It seems that I am constantly working through ideas. No matter what else I am (supposed to be) doing, the enormity of the task in front of us, and the fast approaching January deadline, has been daunting. My mind constantly wanders back to my AoA proposal. As others are asking, how can a work of art- such as a painting- make change?

I have not, however, been ready to try my hand at ‘blogging.’ This is both because I have felt that my ideas are not yet worth sharing as I struggle to articulate them visually, but also because I am not a writer. It has been a bit comforting, however, to read that others have also noted some discomfort with ‘vomiting in public.’ JZ, however, gave me some encouragement, and I am trying to follow through.

I spend a great deal of my time teaching, and over the past 12 years I have intentionally put myself in a situation where I need to articulate my ideas to my students on a daily basis. In so doing I force myself to do the very thing which is hardest for me to do. My students are in general are a very intelligent bunch, and it helps to push me in my own work when I am constantly reminded that we are all learning, all of the time. If we are not green, we are not alive!

So, now as I embark on my first blog, I am already learning as much by working on my Art of Action proposal as I do through teaching. As I take the plunge, I have decided to use this blog to organize my ideas for helping to create a structure for Vermonters (and myself!) to work together to envision what Vermont could be. I am hoping to do this by creating a dialogue, and in my proposal I hope that I can work with the other AOA finalists to create this vision. I wish this was a group project instead of a ‘competition’—making it so is another goal have set for myself...hopefully the other finalists and other interested parties will be able to help here! This is such a challenging project I feel the results will be stronger if we can find a way to work together.

My background in architecture as well as art, and my experience with large public art projects in the US and abroad when I worked with the environmental artist Michael Singer, and through community projects in sustainable design in my own practice, have allowed me to begin thinking about approaching this project not only through making photographs, drawings and collages, but through creating a structure for public engagement and policy making. I will use this blog to record/organize/ ask for input about my notes for addressing the challenges identified by Vermonters through the Council on the Future of Vermont.

So, please, if you are reading this as my notes coalesce I would love to get some feedback!

Now to get going....

Defining the Project:
Here are the issues I will attempt to address in future blog entries as identified by the CFV:  

Challenges:
- the increasing costs of living, such as transportation, heating and electricity
- the health and viability of Vermont farms and the agricultural sector
- the tax rate in Vermont
- the state's existing public infrastructure and its future maintenance
- a shortage of affordable housing
- the way Vermont finances public education

Here are the Values to use as a starting point for addressing the above:
- pride in the working landscape and its heritage
- pride in being from or living in Vermont
- Vermont’s spirit of independence
- the privacy in Vermont
- that Vermont’s creative communities are valuable to the state
- the small size and scale of the state
- trust in neighbors