Vermont Leadership
I know three places on the planet that are so exemplary of human fulfillment that they are the future for the rest of the world. One is Bali, a Hindu culture, one is Bhutan, a Buddhist culture, and Vermont, which is a world culture. Vermont has the possibility and the responsibility to offer the world a planet plan for future well being. Creative, collaborative community is the economic and political engine of Vermont’s world leadership.
Economy
The Vermont economy is becoming the power of creative community. We are learning not to take work, but to make work. And we are learning it by networked communities, teaching themselves and each other the growth of wealth from within. Community self sufficiency and self definition are the archetypal behaviors of American future prosperity.
Health Care
Health care is the responsibility of every individual, every family, and every community. At the community level it is possible to organize both insurance and health care services at one tenth the cost of contemporary medical institutional health care. Three registered nurses on eight hour shifts can handle 90% of all health care needs in any community, the rest they can send to appropriate services for severe and threatening needs. Communities nationwide that learned to insure and provide local clinics for health services have saved so much money in their first years of operation that they have been able to supplement the educational budgets of their community. Vermont will be a leader in this health care initiative.
Education
The rising cost of local education is over taxing the capacity of towns and families. The replacement to this increasingly difficult situation is to declare the entire town to be the teacher, the community to be the classroom, and the family of life to be the faculty. One name for this comprehensive community learning is Communiversity. The Communiversity movement is being invented and led by the state of Vermont.
Ecology
It is said that local ecology is universal cosmology. That is, whatever is done by nature in a local region is a living example of how the universe works, and why it works. That being the case, we have no choice but to make ecology the central concept of all our education, our politics, our economics, and our spirituality. In Vermont, this kind of invention is well underway.
Jobs
All politicians promise new jobs which they can not possibly deliver. What a “planetician” proposes to do is draw the meaning from the soul of every individual and help that “soul story” manifest as one’s life work. The combination and collaboration of those stories is the birth of the new economy, worldwide.
Vermont Yankee
Vermont Yankee, our state’s only nuclear power plant, is long overdue for decommissioning and deconstruction. This job, safely done, is on every reasonable agenda of every person, especially when those people who’s jobs are displaced are guided into the creation of alternative energy solutions as an area of work and livelihood. In life in general, there has to be a large empty space for the creation of it’s large replacement. The closing of Vermont Yankee will create the opportunity for Vermont to be the leading alternative energy state in the country. Vermont is already first in the nation in per capita of homes and business off the electric grid. This kind of initiative can only be helped by the closing of Vermont Yankee.
Vermontasaurus
When Brian Bolan’s roof caved from an overload of wet snow, and when Walter Malmquist decided to take down his collapsing mill building, there was an abundance of broken bits of timber and lumber available. Brian decided with the help of his neighbors not to burn his huge pile. Instead, he had the brilliant idea to transform all that lumber into a huge sculptural construction of a dinosaur. He invited the public and school children of the region to come and help in the construction process, which they did. In a matter of two weeks, the mighty dinosaur rose from the side of the grass landing strip of his airport to the delight of all those who love creativity and public art. Since then, various bureaucratic agencies of the government, local, and state, have weighed in with tedious complaints. But Brian’s spirit, and those who appreciate him, have risen to face every challenge, and one such appreciate visitor named Seth Itzkan, named the mighty creature “Vermontasaurus”. It has been such a booming, fire breathing success, that it has drawn notice worldwide on the Internet and all other forms of media. Vermont can be proud of the spirit of Brian Bolan and others like him, who put creativity first and mediocrity second.
