[SustainableTompkins] The Once & Future Republic of VT

[Tony Del Plato]

Karl,
I love Wendell Berry. It's also clear that while national agencies are not
addressing the needs of localities, there are many in our communities who
support and advance the colonial economic agenda.
I'd to see your take on an article I posted this morning on more family
farms arising out of the increased oil prices and the fall of industrial
agriculture.
best
Tony

On 4/2/07, northsheep at juno.com <northsheep at juno.com> wrote:
>
> As sustainability/relocalization movements across the country become
> increasingly aware of the obstacles to their goals that national  power
> structures present, I believe they will of necessity become more
> secessionist. Vermont is only a front runner in what is likely to become
> a trend.
>
> The poet laureate of sustainable agriculture, Wendell Berry, in The
> Unsettling of America, said that we live in a colonial economy where
> hinterlands are subject in many ways to the goals and exploitation of
> elites in centers of power. Centers controlling peripheries for their own
> self interest. At all levels of scale - from county to international
> empire. In Cortland County where I farm, the local real estate cabal, in
> cahoots with the county Chamber of Commerce and the county dept of
> development has constituted a local center of power whose historical
> pattern of decision making defies any vision of county sustainability.
> Wendell said that the colonial economy is in evidence all over the world.
>
>
> I foresee that the issue of degree of secession will require wrenching
> decisions and much struggle, since our local quality of life is currently
> so entangled with larger structures of the national political economy.
> But as our ties to those larger structures reveal themselves as chains
> increasingly detrimental to the construction of sustainable futures for
> local communities, I believe we shall have to break many of these chains,
> making new rules as we go, to assert independence. I discuss this
> question in regard to the development of a local food system in
> Successful Strategies for Food System Change: New Rules or Market
> Populism, available at
> http://www.geocities.com/northsheep/foodchange.html
>
> Karl North
> Northland Sheep Dairy, Freetown, New York USA
>      www.geocities.com/northsheep/
> "Mother Nature never farms without animals" - Albert Howard
> "Pueblo que canta no morira" - Cuban saying
>
> On Mon, 2 Apr 2007 11:38:57 -0400 "Tony Del Plato"
> <tonydelplato at gmail.com> writes:
> > Friends, Ithacans & Countrymen & women, lend me your minds:
> > Does the following story suggest a direction for Americans to
> > consider along
> > the road to a sustainable society?
> > Tony Del Plato
> >
> >
> >
> >   <http://www.washingtonpost.com/?referrer=emailarticle>
> >
> <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/emailafriend?contentId=AR200703
> 3002076&sent=no&referrer=emailarticle>
> >  **
> > The Once and Future Republic of Vermont
> >
> <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/30/AR200703
> 3002076.html?referrer=emailarticle>
> > *By Ian Baldwin and Frank Bryan*
> > The winds of secession are blowing in the Green Mountain State.
> >
> >
> <http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/wpni.email/emailafriend;ad=bb;kw=emailafr
> iend;ord=1175511896508?>
> >  Do you love D.C.? Get the insider's guide to where to stay, what to
> > do and
> > where to eat. Go to
> >
> www.washingtonpost.com/cityguide<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/cit
> yguide/index.html?referrer=emailarticle>for
> > your guide to
> > D.C. now. (c) 2007 The Washington Post Company | Privacy
> >
> Policy<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/interact/longterm/talk/member
> s.htm?referrer=emailarticle>
> >
> >
> > --
> > And the time came when the risk
> > to remain tight in a bud
> > was more painful than the risk
> > it took to blossom- Anais Nin
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> >
> >
>
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>



-- 
And the time came when the risk
to remain tight in a bud
was more painful than the risk
it took to blossom- Anais Nin