And hear our most excellent home-grown, all-Vermont Funk band, Electric Sorcery !! Playing 2:00 PM at the historic Gathering Inn, Hancock, Vermont !

The doors of sound have been ripped off the hinges by Electric Sorcery who routinely electrify Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. Towns are regularly woken out of their slumber by the by the wicked sound of this power trio.

Electric Sorcery takes psychedelic music firmly rooted in the 70s and adds their own special twist. Funky rhythms and psychedelic guitar riffs come together to create an intriguing sound that is sometimes very heavy.... This is a fun listen and anyone who gravitates towards the psychedelic sounds of the 70s needs to hear this… - SeaOfTranquility.org 

Meet & Eat    Greet & Drink

Saturday, September 25, from 2 – 4 PM  

1295 Route 100

Diagonally opposite the Hancock Hotel

Please bring your concerns, your hard questions, and your ideas.  The Independent vision for Vermont is all about you, your families and communities !

If Vermont were to secede from the United States of Empire and become an independent nation-state, how could it possibly survive as a separate republic? How would it function? Are there any examples of smaller, sustainable nation-states which might serve as a role model for a state like Vermont, should it decide to leave the Union?

“We are guinea pigs in a massive, uncontrolled, chemical experiment, the disastrous outcome of which is measured in disease and death."
-- Dr. Rick Smith, Canada

This past March, I went on a culinary tour of Tuscany that was led by Doug Mack and Linda Harmon of The Inn at Baldwin Creek.  With the fabulous connections that Doug and Linda have in that region, the tour was off the beaten path and brought us in contact with land stewards, wine producers, farmers, and slow-food leaders.  We ate amazing food, but it was the stories that came with each meal that left a lasting impression on me.  

Everyone envisioning a clean-energy future in the U.S. or Vermont should know that the best policy to create real cost-effective and fast deployment of renewable energy is what is known as a feed-in-tariff, or FIT. A FIT is the only policy that removes the monopolistic corporate controls over the utility grid and allows anyone to effectively become a power company with cost-effective renewable energy.  

BirdInTheHand

Folks,

As of Friday morning, I am officially on the ballot for Vermont Senator for Addison County!  Thanks to you all for your hard work and great ideas.  Your contributions have served to get the Independent word out there, encourage people to register to vote, even built a parade float.

But I’m not gonna do an NPR on you and beg for even more funds.  Funds’ll come, somehow.  What’s really needed is organisational help.  I’d like to set up a community forum in Addison County every month until the election.  A forum in which people from all walks of life can address the candidates directly with concerns, questions, and even vent steam together with neighbours on how broken the system is.  If you know something about community organising and publicity, please contact me directly, robert@senatorwagner.com.

Thatcher Moats wrote in today's Times Argus that the Montpelier City Council released a ruling on Friday that Vermont Compost's operations pose no "public health hazard or risk."

At the time, I could see no reason for holding the hearing. Moats quotes Mayor Mayor Hooper on her thoughts as to why the hearing took place:

Mayor Mary Hooper, who signed the six-page decision, said the duration of the conflict and unanswered questions surrounding it warranted a hearing to try to put the long-running dispute to rest.

"That in my mind … was sufficient to want to say, 'OK. Let's make an affirmative decision one way or another about what's going on, so we're not speculating,'" Hooper said.

Some other excerpts from the article:

The city's latest ruling is not surprising; nobody at the hearing presented evidence that food waste was creating a health risk...

[Vermont Compost owner Karl] Hammer said on Saturday that he was pleased with the ruling.

"It's a judicious and sensible point of view," he said.

It's also predictable, he added.

"It's what I expected they would do: determine there's no health threat because nobody was really saying there is one," he said.

Hooper said she hopes the issue is resolved for the sake of Vermont Compost and the LaRosas.

"It's a very important business in our community and I'm happy neighborhood concerns have been dealt with," he said.

The LaRosas could not be reached for comment Saturday.

State action on nominally unrelated issues may still threaten Vermont Compost's operations. Karl Hammer has expressed concerns that authority granted by the legislature this session to Act 250 officials may result in his farm being declared not a farm. 

Vermont Compost is the site for the June 22 quarterly meeting and midsummer celebration of the Central Vermont Food Systems Council; come on by starting at 5 pm.

Today's New York Times Magazine has a funny and fascinating article about freegans in Buffalo, New York, whose embrace of a lifestyle unencumbered by property relations has led them down the road to taking legal ownership of the mansion they'd been squatting in.

As I read the first part of the long article about young people living in a falling-apart mansion that they didn't own, I wondered how much effort they'd put into maintaining something that they could potentially be evicted from at any moment. It turns out that they put in a lot of effort, even before they had legal title. And they even cleaned up at least one other vacant property in the area, and they befriended neighbors.

The neighbors supported the squatters, in a twist that was surprising to the housing court judge who had been notified of the illegal occupation. The neighbors approached him at a Little League game and asked him to let the squatters stay, as their presence kept away the "thieves, drug dealers, and arsonists." (I picture a Scooby-Doo-like ring of the thieves, drug dealers, and arsonists wringing their hands and saying that they'd have gotten away with hanging out in the neighborhood, "if it hadn't been for those meddling kids.") 

The squatters were also unfailingly polite to authorities like a housing inspector and the judge, who commented that their politeness “probably gave them an unfair advantage that they shouldn’t have had.” 

The bust of the housing market has led to a boom of empty homes, and the bust in the economy as a whole has led more people to lose their ability to pay their bills and keep their homes. The article nicely captures one successful approach to improving a derelict home while providing low-income housing. More confrontational approaches are the subject of an hour-long, downloadable radio documentary by Circle A Radio in Portland, Oregon. Seven organizations are profiled from Boston to San Francisco, and including Midwestern cities like Toledo, Chicago, and Madison. They are part of a national Take Back the Land movement that uses Alinsky-like techniques to put people in empty homes or help them remain in their own homes. 

Meanwhile, on p. A19 of the New York print edition, the Times continues its bemused skepticism towards those who think that industrial civilization, which has radically changed life on most places on the planet, has some further dramatic changes in store. (An exception to its skeptical coverage is last year's favorable Magazine article about Transition Towns in the US, focusing on Sand Point, Idaho.)

Update: CollapseNet is Live ! 

http://collapsenet.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1042...

We are not ineffective, we are not few in number. You are not alone. 

TWEET: #CollapseNet #Vermont #VTGov #Montp #TransitionTown  

Folks,

This will be a way for individuals, families and communities who are building lifeboats in Vermont, to connect, share information and expertise, teach, learn and reskill.

Please pass this on. If you are on Twitter, please tweet the ablve links with the hashtag #CollapseNet.

Here’s the press release:

• http://www.collapsenet.com
• http://www.collapsenetwork.com
• http://www.collapsenet.net

May 21, 2010 – CollapseNet ™, a long-anticipated new effort from internationally-recognized author, lecturer and activist Michael C. Ruppert, will officially launch on Tuesday June 8, 2010. The site will be a first-of-its-kind effort to promote the rapid and focused sharing of information between millions around the world who are preparing for the collapse of human industrial civilization – The Lifeboat Movement.

CORRECTED BELOW

Montpelier City Council members met last night in a confusing and confused hearing about Vermont Compost. That the hearing was held at all showed how difficult local authorities can make life for farm businesses working to relocalize our food production.

The hearing was called to investigate whether there was evidence of threats to public health stemming from the feeding of food residuals to chickens at the Montpelier farm since February. In February, Vermont Compost changed its feeding methods, so the chickens now receive food in an enclosure that wild birds like crows don't have access to. Before that, the chickens were fed outside, and neighbors on one side complained that crows were transporting recognizable food residuals and dropping it on their property.

It's confusing that City Council members were convening at all. According to Mayor Mary Hooper and Health Officer Gesualdo Schneider, the hearing was called to respond to an appeal by neighbors Steven and Barbara LaRosa* of a voluntary agreement between Vermont Compost and the health officer. Yet the City Council had no statutory basis for hearing an appeal, according to Steve Stitzel, the attorney advising the Council. So without evidence of any problem, and without a basis to hear an appeal, why go through the cost and effort of a hearing?

(Afterwards, Stitzel called the process a "quasi-appeal" when asked for the basis for excluding the public and the press from the deliberative phase of the meeting. When pressed, he discarded that term and referred to a different statute.)

There was even confusion about what public body was meeting last night.