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"Everything Flows. Nothing Stands Still." - - Heraclitus - -

Spring highlights our natural cycles of change, renewal, new life, and new work. What we plant now and properly cultivate will determine what we later harvest.    

Our contributors are working hard, planting the seeds of change in their communities and through these pages. Our common goal remains to foster and explore independence, broadly defined. We have a lot of work to do.    

This essay was originally delivered by Rural Vermont Director Amy Shollenberger as a keynote address at the November 2008 Vermont Independence Convention, held in the legislative chambers of the Statehouse in Montpelier, Vermont.

What will you eat if Vermont secedes?   

I have been getting e-mails, phone calls and even a note from our mail carrier about proposed federal legislation titled H.R.875.  This bill, introduced by U.S. Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and with 40 sponsors, is titled the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009. 

Secession was my first original political thought.    

When Thomas Naylor, Kirkpatrick Sale, and I went on WDEV's Free Vermont Radio program this past fall, Kirk answered the question about how he came to favor secession, speaking of it as a political strategy with solidly argued economic, social, and political foundations. Asked the same question, I found myself speaking from intuition about a knowing that resides within the human soul. As a child caught in the chaos of a violent household, I came up with a plan:  to secede to an island with my friends.   

There is good reason why a movement for local autonomy and self-reliance, the focus of this publication, is arising at this moment in history: Quite simply, civilization as we know it has entered a serious crisis and appears to be on the brink of disintegration.

How quickly can Vermont create enough community resilience that we can weather economic turbulence, interruptions in energy supplies and other shocks, while maintaining what we value?   

Part of the answer lies in how fast the great re-skilling occurs. The great re-skilling is Transition Town-speak for widespread learning of the practical skills needed to thrive where one lives, with significantly less economic exchange with the outside world.

By now it is abundantly clear to most of us that we are into what James Howard Kunstler called “the long emergency.”  Radical changes in our livelihoods and lifestyles are imminent, impelled by the convergence of peak oil, global climate change and global economic contraction.  

Herbalist Annie McCleary is the director of the Wisdom of the Herbs School in Woodbury, Vermont. The school offers experiential learning programs focusing on wild plants, holistic health, and sustainable living skills, including harvesting and preparation of wild edibles and herbal home remedies.

“We’re going to build a green home that’s totally sustainable.”   

I listen to the voice on the other end of the phone.  He continues: “Everything my wife and I want to do there is going be green… the roof is going to be covered in solar panels and the building is going to be airtight…”