Letter Box

Thursday May 26, 2011

A friend and I decided that this year’s Brewers Festival would be a responsible time to try Brattleboro mass transit for the first time. We walked to the transit station downtown, figuring that would be a logical place to find information. We started looking for obvious signs with times when a bus might come. As we struggled, some children sitting on the street smoking informed us it would be by in about an hour. We decided to walk up to Putney Road because it would take less than an hour.

On Main Street we spotted a bus and ran to catch it. The driver informed us his was the very same bus that would be back in a hour and to wait “across the street.” We walked across the street. To our wonder, there was no bus sign or bus times. Reflecting on our journey up Main Street, we commented that it seemed like this town didn’t have any mass transit. Perhaps the signs are coming? We hope so.

We did end up taking a shuttle to downtown after the festival. It was a long wait and a small shuttle that was overflowing, but it made for a fun trip with a bunch of beer fans who were all happy they were not driving.

There are so many reminders these days about the amazingly beautiful place that we live. Overnight, it seems, our gray and brown landscapes

re-emerge with all the different shades of green. Flowers start to color our visual pallet, and each year to me it is a re-occurring miracle.

With these changes comes the never ending list of tasks: lawn mowed, garden weeded, fertilized and planted, wood split, moved and stacked, cleaning up the remnants of whatever lay hidden under the snow cover these many months. It can feel a bit overwhelming, but I wouldn’t trade it in for the world.

But this year my perspective has an added, bittersweet filter through which I look at the beauty of my surroundings. The earthquake and tsunami induced disasters at the Fukushima nuclear reactors have brought into focus the fragility of our beautiful southern Vermont home. Like us, generations of Japanese people have lived their lives in the shadow of these reactors, assured by their government and nuclear oversight body that the unthinkable could never happen there.

Even as the U.S. media seems to have moved on from the events in Japan, I can’t help but be reminded of all those people who have lost their homes, their livelihoods and their communities. A whole region, perhaps beginning to recover its outward beauty, has been changed forever in ways that are beyond our comprehension. The locally grown food is poisoned, the milk is toxic.

I purchase my milk and eggs at the farm next door. Many of my neighbors grow and sell organic vegetables. And just down the road is a nuclear reactor, the exact same model as the one “that would always be safe” in Japan. It is not by an ocean, where a tsunami would hit. And the chances of a strong earthquake are very small indeed. But as most of us can attest to, there are lots of things that fickle mom nature can bring us in Vermont that could cause the power to go out, and the back-up systems to fail. Not to mention the potential for human error or, God forbid, humans with evil intentions.

With more nuclear waste stored in its cooling pool than was at all the Fukushima reactors combined, and spent fuel rods stacked far closer together than the original design intended, our tiny heated swimming pool hanging in the air with a tin roof over it in Vernon is a disaster waiting to happen.

I cherish our green landscape, our green home here in the Green Mountains. I laud our legislators for taking the bold and visionary step of saying that it is time for Vermont to move on to different sources for its future electrical use. I support Vermont in its fight against the Entergy Corporation lawsuit, in its fight to maintain our right to choose.

On June 7, Post Oil Solutions will be on the Brattleboro Selectboard agenda to propose the formation of a Sustainable Community Task Force.

Our purpose in doing so is to suggest a way that the Brattleboro community can start to plan for the transition we’ll have to make in the years ahead as we enter an era of energy descent.

For at least 100 years, we’ve been dependent upon abundant, cheap, accessible petroleum for our highly technological, post-industrial, consumer-oriented way of life. The problem, however, is that neither this life, nor the energy source that has made it possible, are sustainable. Petroleum, like so many other resources that has built our modern civilization, is finite, and is presently or very near, peaking. What remains in the ground will no longer be easily accessible or inexpensive; demand will exceed production, especially as the economies of countries like India and China continue to grow at their present pace. Whatever residents currently depend upon fossil fuels for — food, transportation, energy, health care, municipal services, retail goods, education, culture and recreation, etc. — will become more expensive, less available.

Furthermore, fossil fuels are causing increasingly catastrophic damage to our planet. The global warming that results from their burning, along with the attendant climate change (floods, droughts, famine, violent storms, ice melt, species extinction) necessitates that we start immediately to greatly reduce our dependency on petroleum and seek green alternatives.

The good news is that Brattleboro is not starting from square one to make this transition. There are active citizen organizations (like Post Oil Solutions), as well as important town committees (Paul Cameron and his Climate Protection and Energy Committee) that are already involved. But these are not sufficient by themselves to adequately prepare the town for the transition that the historically unprecedented energy descent will require.

What is needed is an approach that engages the entire community, one that is premised on the understanding that energy descent is unavoidable. This necessitates municipal leadership for the townwide planning and mobilization necessary for its citizens to adapt to the changes this will entail. Already, some 600 municipalities throughout the country are making such an effort, including our neighbors up the road in Montpelier who are striving to be the first sustainable say capital.

Our proposal on June 7 is two-fold: first, that the Selectboard appoint a committee to look into the creation of such a Task Force that would then report back within a specified time (3-6 months) with its findings, and recommendations as to what such a body could look like in Brattleboro; and second, that it endorse a town collaboration with Post Oil Solutions to develop a road map for transitioning the community’s food sources away from its present heavy reliance on a largely imported, fossil fuel-dependent system to a community-based food system that is more resilient and sustainable to meet the needs of Brattleboro’s citizens.

We invite all interested citizens to join us on June 7.

Public law No. 110-181 changes section 9 of title 4 states; All U.S. Military Veterans can now salute the American Flag in any civilian attire and head cover. In the past active duty personnel had to be in uniform and prior service, Vets, had to be wearing an American Legion or Veterans of Foreign Wars service hat. So many Veterans could not qualify to join the A.L. or the VFW because the dates mandated by the U.S. Congress, dates the U.S. was in wars or conflicts.

Now all U.S. Military Veterans can stand up and salute our American Flag, whether it’s being raised or lowered, passing in a parade, displayed at a U.S. Veterans gravesite, or when the National Anthem is played. Salute and show the people around you that your past service has earned you the right. Vets remember this especially on Memorial Day, the Fourth of July and Veterans Day.

To all that have returned from deployment in Afghanistan or Iraq, Comrades welcome back to our world, Welcome Home. Thank you for your tour of duty and making it safer for all in the U.S.A.

More source:

Letterboxing North America
Letterbox - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Letter box - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Atlas Quest: A Letterboxing Community

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Submited at Thursday, May 26th, 2011 at 12:00 pm on Uncategorized by samantha
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