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Greetings to my buds from Indian Lake, NY. It’s a glorious spring day up here and I’m literally sitting on the front porch in shorts and a T-shirt watching the ice banks, which framed the railings, melt away as I write.

I had written, back in December, about Bill McKibben who had spoken at my son’s graduation regarding the importance of community. He had discussed the relevance of new ideas and innovative ways of solving problems. I am now reading his book, “Wandering Home” (A long Walk Across America’s Most Hopeful Landscape: Vermont’s Champlain Valley and New York’s Adirondacks) and would like to share with you a few passages. This one talks about walking through Bristol, Vermont:

Back in town, we head for the Bristol landfill. A few other guys in pickups are unloading debris, and so is the town’s sole garbage truck, a flatbed pulled by a phlegmatic pair of Percheron draft horses. Their driver bid low for the town contract a few years ago, and ever since then he’s ranged the town’s compact streets, picking up trash bags and recycling bins. The team walks at a pace that lets him load easily-indeed, he can usually count on the assistance of one or another young girl eager for the chance to be near the massive team. We came home, washed up, and then headed out for the short walk to dinner at Bristol’s new Bobcat Café, built with money loaned by community residents. Many of the financiers were lined up at the bar, enjoying their 25 percent discount on the Bobcat’s home-brewed beer. Do you see what I mean? People are trying things here.

Ah, Vermont. Could these ideas ever catch on in upstate NY? Anyone familiar with the logging which is being done locally with the draft horse team?

As you peruse the pages of this book, the ideas just keep on coming. Things we can do to build a sustainable economy and at the same time fight encroachment of Global Warming. In one of Stlo7’s posts about the environment, I made a comment about trying to eat “locally”, feeding your family with food produced within a 30-50 mile radius.

If “local” could become the new buzzword, then perhaps it would provide sizzle enough to justify a premium price again, that ten cents more a pound meaning the difference between a farmer making it, and a farm becoming Olde Farm Acres at $49,900 a building lot. That’s what Chris Granstrom had been talking about when he noted that Finger Lakes wine was still selling in the Finger Lakes. It’s why our local food co-op started posting pictures of the farmers above stacks of their cabbages. And Del Monte simply can’t do it-their economies of scale would disappear if customers in Rochester and Eugene and Tampa began demanding food from Rochester and Eugene and Tampa.

I’ve already talked too long, so let me leave you with this thought (which is also my bumper sticker from Hank Stone)

Think Globally, Act Neighborly.