I was what conservative business interests would have you believe is a “job creator.” I and several very smart managers ran, and some still do, a company that worked with national clients.

At our peak, we employed more than 250 Vermonters. Today the company employs fewer than 100, but not because its current owners are paralyzed by fear of taxes or regulation, but because the market has shrunk to that level and any company committed to its own survival must adjust its overheads to profitably match its revenues.

I hate to disappoint you, but as president and part owner I was not the “job creator.” The market was. We were entrepreneurs and an overheated consumer market created our jobs. Neither tax rates nor regulations played a role in our decisions to hire. We had no choice but to hire as many Vermonters as we could, knowing full well that the market could shrink at any time, and when it did, so would our company.

Promoting the idea that all business leaders are “job creators” is as shallow as the assertion that all business leaders should be exempt from regulatory and statutory oversight, while the rest of us should not.

The paranoid language trumped up by those who dislike government assumes that most Americans are much less intelligent than, in fact, we are. We learn by education, example and experience. An MBA and accumulated or inherited wealth are not the only determinants of wisdom.

The obvious effort to create and embed a popular language coded deftly with terms like “free up the job creators,” “government intrusion,” and “tax and spend,” arrogantly assumes that most Americans live in a perpetual state of fear-induced ignorance. This is frankly an insult.

We have lived through much worse: the labor abuses of the industrial revolution in the late 1800s, the Great Depression, the self-sacrifice asked of us during World War II, and now the economic slump that was largely created by a deregulated finance industry, over-marketing, and a culture of excess consumerism. In time, this, too, will correct through the resilience of the American people and the relentless acceleration of innovation.

In fact, conservative ideologues do their own long-range business interests a terrible disservice by pretending that the current economic slump is simply the result of over-zealous government. They preclude any intelligent discussion with working Americans about the critical importance of quality education, environmental intelligence and the new impacts of automation and innovation on the future workplace.

The assumption that Americans with their collective experience must be managed like children to ensure the well-being of the job creators is self-serving and shortsighted.
Business interests have always been well cared for in this country — especially since President Reagan took office. It would be much more productive to lead an honest conversation about our place in the global economy and the economic well-being of all Americans — and not just the privileged few.

VTDigger

In time and perhaps with age, we learn to doubt or at least question the predictions of gurus and futurists. Our landscapes are riddled with the remnants of “model communities” and retail and industrial endeavors that either turned out to be fads or investment pipedreams. Nature, or our “higher power,” or whomever we personally delegate with cosmic change, has a way of humbling our dreams and periodically reminding us of our rightful place in the universe.

Tropical Storm Irene recently did so, reminding us that our peaceable kingdom can be swept away.

Watching the city of Detroit — decimated not by nature, but by manmade reversals of fortune — plow vacant residential communities under to make way for urban farming enterprises also reminds us of the ebb and flow of human enterprise. Nature’s force is inherently entropic, seemingly wanting the built environment to revert to a natural one.

Every place has built landscapes, working landscapes and natural landscapes. For the last hundred years, Vermont has been defined by the beauty of all three. With the migration of sheep and dairy farming moving down off the hillsides into the fertile river valleys, much of Vermont’s former working landscape has reforested itself.

Most communities fiercely defend the growth of their built environments against out-of-scale or sore-thumb development. But who cares for the working landscape, the farmlands, forests and riparian networks out of which many Vermonters harvest renewable energy and timber, and on which they grow grains, produce and graze animals?

The ebb and flow of human activity in the working landscape creates risks. We’ve all seen farm fields blossom into housing developments, depriving young farmers of land and infrastructure on which to begin new farming enterprises. Nature too, takes its course and fallow fields that once produced hay for livestock overgrow with alder and prickly ash.

At the behest of the Vermont Council on Rural Development, a broad coalition of Vermonters, legislators, nonprofits and businesses committed to maintaining this vital economic and aesthetic component of our landscape is addressing this risk, responding to studies that show that Vermont’s working landscape could well be lost within a generation without a plan for investment and stewardship.

The comprehensive plan, entitled Investing in our Farm and Forest Future, celebrates the generations of farm and forest families and entrepreneurs whose work has produced the landscape that is central to Vermont’s identity. It states that Vermont will never conserve the working landscape simply by fiat or by purchase, but must invest in the economic foundation of the land itself by supporting the farm and forest enterprises that are its stewards.

It outlines clear steps to make Vermont a national leader and to inspire, attract and nurture a creative new generation of food, farm and forest entrepreneurs as a foundation for our future prosperity. As we celebrate and make our New Year commitments to improve our lives and communities, this will be one of mine.

VTDigger

I recently read an editorial juxtaposing two disparate yet related visions that have haunted me, as any good op-ed should. The writer alluded to the crowds in Cairo’s Tahrir Square clamoring for democracy and free speech and to the crowds of American shoppers clamoring for Blu-Rays, Xboxes, and Wii consoles.

The piece made me stop again and ask myself who and what we are becoming. Was the shopper who pepper-sprayed her competing shoppers as she charged a display of Xboxes really a sign of what we’ve become or just another nutcase? If we invested as much in observing our democratic rights and obligations as we do in consumption and the accumulation of wealth, would we not be the better for it?

As the bellwether of democratic freedom, America has always taught more effectively by example than by heavy-handed diplomacy or propaganda. Yet our own democracy is corroding as we consume more and allow finite wealth to concentrate among fewer and fewer so they can now afford to buy the governing process itself.

Those same puppeteers who have used their vast wealth to acquire judges and congressmen now support a slate of highly improbable candidates who seem woefully lacking in presidential stature. They rail against government but are silent about what their philosophy of governing would be. They’re silent on democracy’s fundamental mandate to balance the interests of the middle class, the poor and the wealthy; or between business, individuals, and the environment. They simply deny the capacity of government to enhance our lives and communities.

Has the afterglow of decades of over-consumption brought about a lethargy in which we happily offer up our democratic rights and obligations to those for whom real democracy is an impediment to the further accumulation of wealth?

After Irene, Vermonters again demonstrated the value of active communities and strong local government. Much of Irene’s social and economic damage was quickly mitigated by neighbors helping neighbors, even though much damage remains.

Even as we try to redesign how they are funded, we value our state’s quality health care and our community schools. During Vermont’s “Republican Century” we never lost our belief in a social safety net that helped those who had fallen by the wayside back onto the ladder toward prosperity. We still engage one another respectfully in our towns and in our Statehouse in an effort to balance cost-effective government and economic opportunity and we do so using the democratic process.

We must pay the same fierce attention nationally. Vermont can neither secede, nor can we succeed without being part of a strong democratic nation.

We must work to safeguard the democracy of the nation itself by being vigilant about the tranquilizing effects of consumption and constantly challenging those who seek to spend their vast fortunes buying legislative outcomes, deregulation, candidates and elections.

We are a nation predicated on equal opportunity and, as such, became the light of the world … the same light that now inspires the Arab Spring.

VTDigger

We recently visited London’s Victoria and Albert Museum to see a show called “The Power of Making.” The show begins with this eloquent statement by its curator, Daniel Charny: 



“Making is the most powerful way that we solve problems, express ideas and shape our world. What and how we make defines who we are and communicates who we want to be. For many people, making is critical for survival, for others…a way of thinking, inventing and innovating. And for some it’s simply a delight to be able to shape a material and say, ‘I made that.’ The power of making is that it fulfills each of these human needs and desires.” Charny concluded by saying, “The knowledge of how to make – both everyday objects and highly skilled creations – is one of humanity’s most precious resources.”



I left this extraordinary show wondering if we at home were losing the knowledge and power of making. America is still a great innovator, but we’ve lost much of our postwar status as the great maker of things.



Over the last few decades we migrated from tangible value creation in the making and manufacture of things to intangible, if not questionable, value creation by simply asserting agency. That is to say, we became agents of, rather than creators of, value. We let others make our things; we found it was easier and just as profitable to insert ourselves into the value chain rather than initiate it. 



Now that world economies are slowing down and income levels in former slave labor economies are rising, opportunities to intermediate are shrinking; and so true value creation is reasserting itself as the principal economic driver. But our factories are rusting; our skilled labor has been out of work for decades; and our children show little interest in engineering and innovation professions. 



In the arts, the making of things is thriving, while its agencies are in decline – with record companies, agents and publishers all at risk. New technologies have allowed artists direct access to markets as they conceive, realize and promote their conceptions. 



We need to look ahead and find our way back to the making of things. In a world of reduced expectations, our children will need to learn to understand, make and repair things as their grandparents did. We’ll need to educate them in the power of making and innovating and creating real economic, artistic and human value. 

The show was a testament to the durable will of invention and creation. Sadly, many of the crafters in the show were of previous generations or lived in foreign countries where the making of things is still a necessity. 



On the positive side, there were several extraordinary homemade 3-dimensional printers that converted code into objects formed out of quick-drying foam. With no intended irony, one handmade printer kept producing endless replicas of the Statue of Liberty.

VTDigger

I think the heat-drunk garter snake living in our mail box is an omen. As I lower the battered cover and reach gingerly inside to get our mail, I wonder if the battered mailbox itself isn’t an artifact of a bygone era.

The iconic U.S. Postal system is bankrupt. Its valiant history calls up the pony express, postmen and women bearing parcels trudging through knee-deep Christmas snows, country stores with mailboxes on the wall. Could this all be history? Should it be?

It makes little sense for thousands of postal workers to drive cars or vans, or push handcarts to every doorstep in America six days a week to deliver a handful of catalogs, magazines, credit card offers, sale flyers and donation requests.

In a good week, my wife and I get one or two 1st class letters of any substance. In a similar week, we get a thousand emails, many of which bring news from family, friends and loved ones.

Let’s be honest. Email has supplanted 1st class mail as a means of staying in touch. It’s free and immediate even though it lacks the beauty and significance of a well-penned letter that can be held, read and treasured. Old fashioned letters often expressed sentiment in the sender’s choice of stationery, an expressive stamp or, in even earlier days, the sender’s favorite scent.

Today we need to limit delivery to local post offices and charge for home delivery. Private contractors might manage these deliveries as they do with newspaper and parcel services. Home delivery six days a week is an unnecessary luxury. Those who still depend on it should be treated as a special class. Those of us who don’t should let it go. In truth, very little of the mail I remove from the mailbox even makes it to the house. I toss it in recycling on the way in.

Raise the price of 1st class to reflect its actual value, cost and rarity. Businesses get preferential rates for many of their mailings even though most business transactions like marketing, purchasing and billing have moved to the Web. Print catalogs are still mailed as they enable consumer browsing which remains difficult online.

Sadly, we must curtail non-essential federal services except to those for whom they remain essential. Maintaining traditional postal services and standards for those of us who no longer need them is a waste of money that could be better invested elsewhere in the social contract. I’d be happy to either pick up my mail as I pass through town or pay extra for three-day-a-week delivery.

I’ll miss our dented mailbox and its somnolent resident. I’ll miss resetting the post every spring after the snowplow finishes the wreckage of the night-riding vandals. We do need our postal system but must rescale it for today’s needs. We can’t afford to maintain a revered tradition with diminishing utility.

VTDigger

There are many events in our lives that forge us as human beings, but in general, childhood play, early work and exposure to death are among the most important.

As a new grandfather, I’ve been thinking a lot about child-rearing, how it has changed and professionalized in a way that leaves many of our young adults pasteurized and ill-prepared for the germ warfare that is life on earth.

We are prepared for life not so much by how we are raised, but by the examples our parents set for us, and by the risks we are encouraged to manage ourselves.

The professionalization of child-rearing — the blogs, the books, the child-proofing specialists — all ensure that our children will survive childhood, but what do they teach our children about survival?

I remember my father sending us off into the nearby pasture with a hammer, a glass jar of nails and some boards so we could dam up the brook and make a wading pool. We were a motley collection of neighborhood kids from 6 to 10, joining about 30 Jersey cows in Mr. Farr’s pasture. We hit our thumbs with the hammer, Vick cut himself when he tripped and the glass jar broke. We had manure on our sneakers and we splashed in the muddy puddle we had made with the boards. We took risks, we got hurt and we learned practical things. We were home by dusk.

My first real job at 18 was on a chainsaw crew cutting survey lines through evergreen forests in Island Pond. I had to be at work at 7. We took breaks when the boss said to and we quit when the boss said. Not even the two experienced men in our crew ever suggested we quit for the day in a downpour or a cloud of blackflies. When told to do something, I knew I could ask how, but not why. I knew that my “better idea” was best kept to myself. Like the grown men who taught me so much, I was expected to do what I was told when I was told to do it. I got cut up and bitten and had a few near misses with the chainsaw, but I survived and learned.

As recently as 50 years ago, people died precipitously for the most part. Lingering deaths were the exception. Deaths were an intimate affair peopled by family, close friends and neighbors. We were not protected from death and dying like many children today. We saw people near death and after death. We saw open caskets. It took much of the fear of death away and helped us understand that death, too, is part of life.

I worry that by insulating our children from all life’s physical and emotional risks, making decisions for them, scheduling their lives and screening their acquaintances, we make it harder for them to deal with life’s essential imperfections.

Now, don’t I sound just like a first-time grandfather… “Well, when I was a kid…”

VTDigger

At a dinner party several years ago, a woman of a certain age introduced herself to me and initiated an artful flirtation that eventuated in a warm friendship, not just with me but with my wife.

The age-old art of flirting is at grave risk in this new age of accelerated “hooking up” and “friends with benefits.” In fact, we may be losing the underlying allure of healthy eroticism.

A friend of ours, a former photographic editor of New York Magazine, recently produced a coffee table book that posed this question somewhat differently but effectively. It’s a collection of porn film stars standing nude on the left page and posed elegantly clothed on the right. Without making the question explicit, (no pun intended), the book leaves us little doubt as to which is the more erotic image.

After all, it’s the anticipation of physical joy that imbues us with desire in all its tantalizing urgency. It’s the richly imagined but totally unknown outcome that entices us and feeds that desire.

Flirting is indeed the beginning of seduction. But that seduction does not need to culminate in sex. It may lead to lifelong friendship rather than to a bedroom. Done right, it is a delightful game that allows for a choice about which direction the relationship will go, a bantering interplay or a serious relationship. Think tango rather than pole-dancing.

Like the fully-clothed photographs, flirting engages partners slowly, the as-yet-unknown sparking attraction in part because the direction of the relationship is up in the air and the imagination holds sway.

The accomplished flirter uses his or her skill carefully, turning on their charm as another species might initiate the slow release of pheromones when meeting a possible mate.

Akin to the art of grooming and elegant dress, flirting is a subtle expression of a desire to attract, possibly sexually but possibly not. Flirting conveys by movement, demeanor, and wit, sometimes bluntly and sometimes subtly, the desire to know someone better.

Today’s tawdry come-ons leave little to the imagination, accelerate at warp speed and often leave partners disappointed and adrift in the sexuality of loneliness, gorging on sex to feed an emptiness that only slowly-crafted friendships can alleviate.

Even married people can flirt, as the goal of a flirtation is not necessarily infidelity. The person, however, who overuses their peacock charms becomes known as a flirt in the same way that an overused clever expression soon becomes a cliché.

The sexual taboos of many cultures inevitably led to subtler forms of seduction. Many of these taboos had an important function in their society and may have developed out of an innate human understanding that the rush to procreate often accelerates beyond the capacity of young people to develop meaningful relationships. By slowing down those nature urges, society could strengthen the very relationships that protect its offspring.

And, best of all, this slowing down has the added benefit of enhancing desire and the joy of a possible union between human beings — sexual or not.

VTDigger

We recently decided to dig a pond in the retired pasture next to our house. It raised some questions, the most common of which is, “Is the bottom yucky?” I have learned to dismiss the question with a simple lie, saying only that we used hard wood flooring for the bottom. If the person is older, I just say the bottom is linoleum. This seems to satisfy most people since we decided to sidestep the issue of “yucky bottoms” altogether by building elaborate stone steps into the pond. We had talked about one of those stair climbers that seniors install in their homes, but learned they pose a significant risk of electrocution when installed in water.

In truth, the pond bottom is yucky. The bottoms of all ponds are yucky unless one uses flooring, which, I am told, makes it hard for fish to feed. We were advised by the pond excavator of the habitat needs of the trout we planned to stock the pond with. Trout are very private and like shade. He suggested I place large rocks in the bottom for them to hide in. Our attorney recommended against this as it might pose a risk to humans diving in, but I ignored him and built a trout castle out of stone. It’s kind of a low slung raised ranch with plenty of privacy to encourage discrete breeding and the raising of little smelts.

I also get asked if there are snapping turtles, water snakes, or leeches in the pond. We took an innovative approach to these perennial pond-owner problems. I had a number of three-inch-high enamel traffic signs made with a universal reptile symbol inside a circle with a diagonal line through it. These form a tight perimeter around the pond or at least they did until my neighbor ran over them noisily showing off his new ride-on mower that sports a built-in cooler for Switchback. Anyway, the rainbows are supposed to eat the leeches.

A grumpy conservative friend of mine asked about the regulatory hurdles I had to fight to get permission to dig the pond. Honestly, they were remarkably few.We had to fill out a one-page sheet detailing our plans for the pond and submit it to the design review board with a blank check. Our good neighbors signed off on the deal when we gave them permission to have their two pink flamingoes and a lawn chair by the pond. Only a few showed up for the hearing: a wild turkey who said nothing but took copious notes, two does who wanted to know if we planned to post the land around the pond, a mud hen who claimed ancient nesting rights and a hippie farmer seeking to retain his “strolling of the heifers” right-of-way.

Frankly, the pond is a joy. The water is like a clear broth on top where we swim and pea soup near the bottom where we don’t. Its natural beauty has only been enhanced by our neighbor’s pink flamingoes, though the growing number of personal injury attorney’s business cards tacked to trees around the pond is becoming an eyesore.

One last thing for pond owners, be sure and reset your Google privacy settings for Google Earth. The You-tube videos of me skinny-dipping, though funny, are embarrassing. This prompted me to check all my privacy settings, and unbeknownst to us, my Google cell phone, sitting in its charger on the bedroom dresser, was sending videos to my Facebook page of my wife and me reading in bed surrounded by our naked cats.

VTDigger

“Government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem.” So declared President Ronald Reagan 30 years ago, earning for himself an almost cult-like status among anti-government libertarians and many conservatives.

I think a lot about the social contract. It has a long history, going back to the philosophical writing of St Augustine, Jean Jacques Rousseau and Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.

In essence, it is an agreement between citizens and their elected government to manage a set of tasks, tasks which only government can carry out with any efficiency and effectiveness, and which benefit society as a whole rather than specific individuals or entities and improve the environment and the economy on which that society’s prosperity is based.

Opponents don’t believe in the possibility of good and beneficial government. Their “Atlas Shrugged” vision of the world, in which a free and unregulated market, along with personal ambition or even greed, establish the social and economic hierarchy. Neither do they believe in much of a social safety net for those who don’t compete as well as they do and end up at the bottom of their economic hierarchy.

To be fair, there are some who believe that government can and should do everything to meet the needs of its citizens, demanding little of them and consigning many to durable and paralytic welfare status at astronomical cost.

Why this erosion in trust? My belief is that most Vermonters have not lost faith in the abstract idea of government but have become dangerously disconnected from its place in their lives. They struggle not with the idea of paying taxes but rather with their confusion about any visible benefits their tax investments might produce. All of which speaks to a need for more open and accountable government.

Let’s think locally. What constitutes open government? There are three critical tools.

The first is open and accessible meetings. The New York State Legislature now has video cameras in all of its meeting room. Citizens can watch on the Web all legislative deliberations and can simultaneously access image files of documents under discussion. The only vocal opponents of this initiative so far have been lobbyists.

The second tool is online access to public records, recently strengthened by Vermont’s new Public Records Law, H.73. The TexasTribune.org site is generally recognized as one of the most effective open government tools in the country for its navigable Web-access to public information. The Ethan Allen and Public Assets Institutes are collaborating on a VTTransparency.org site which is an excellent start here.

The third is government accountability to its citizens. New legislative and executive initiatives must articulate social, environmental and economic goals and objectives, and report on them to their taxpayer-investors. Feared as a political liability, measurement actually helps law and policymakers manage better. More important, measurement rebuilds trust in the citizenry that their taxes are producing visible community benefits. The social contract has two parties and government must become more accountable and accessible to the people who invest in it.

VTDigger

Many of society’s future creative endeavors will have no physical medium, raising questions about how those among us who choose some artform as a vocation will make a living. Let’s look at what has happened in just a few decades.

The brave new world of cloud-sourced media will be better for the planet as it eliminates media manufacturing and preserves resources used to create and transport media. The book industry traditionally pulps 50% of what it manufactures, a model of manufacturing inefficiency. But what will be the impact of all this change on creative endeavor?

Prior to the 20th century, music was performed and enjoyed only in live performance. Then came the cylinder, 78 RPM, 45, LP, and CD. Of all these, the LP came closest to being a truly collectible medium, as it contained not only music, but narrative context, and graphics. The CD narrowed the gap between a collectible and a consumable medium. MP3 players obviated the need for any medium and iTunes manages libraries. The new “cloud” libraries eliminate the need for anything physical, since money itself is now digital.

Before this century, books and newspapers were acquired and read in bound pages. Amazon has just announced that its ebook sales have eclipsed its hard copy sales. These ebook files are already stored in your Kindle or Nook and in the cloud.

Cinema, too, is racing headlong in this direction, despite Hollywood’s efforts.

In our house, we’re dropping cable, never watch the networks, rarely go to movie theaters, and watch most new and classic films on a high-def stream in the comfort of our own home. Streaming technology now comes in all new TV sets.

Performance arts like theater, opera, dance, will never disappear, they will only get more expensive as audiences shrink, often because of that expense. The fine arts, like sculpture and painting will likewise endure. In fact, books, LPs and CDS and DVDs won’t disappear entirely as there will always be collectors willing to pay the higher price for a tangible and collectible library.

If the collective creative content of our civilization, however, migrates to cloud libraries and we either pay once to have access in perpetuity or we pay-per-view for our books, music and film, how will the financial interests of anarchic artists prevail against the leviathan commercial interests that will own and control the cloud? When traditional piracy turns into hacking, as it already has, how will the financial interests of writers, composers, and filmmakers be protected?

The huge cost of media manufacturing, distribution and promotion has been the barrier to entry for artists managing their own content. As hard media dies out, the role of publishers, music companies and film studios does, too. Many writers and most musicians now self-publish and can get access to virtual distribution networks like iTunes and Amazon. But will a beneficial revenue model persist for artists or will it be subsumed by a monopoly of media giants?

VTDigger