I am, by genetic endowment half-Jewish, by upbringing Roman Catholic, and by choice, agnostic. I neither deny nor assert the existence of God.

I have seen the great comfort and goodness wrought by small churches of all persuasions in the small communities in which I have lived.

I also see the hell-born misery ultra-orthodoxies of all religious types wreak on people the world over. Be it the Taliban, ultra-Orthodox Jews, the far-right Christians or the Sunni-Shiite internecine wars, you name the orthodoxy, and history books and news archives will drown you in tales of persecution, torture and death.

Throughout history there have been oases of peace and sanity where Jews, Christians and Muslims or Buddhists, Muslims and Hindi have flourished in mutual respect. For four centuries prior to the 11th century, Jews, Christians and Muslims lived together under moderate Muslim rule in Cordoba, Spain. During the European Holocaust, Muslim Morocco prided itself on defying Vichy’s order to its French colonies to round up their Jews. The Islamic monarchy instead sheltered them from German and French persecution. But examples like these have been rare. And human carnage done in the name of various deities or “with God on our side” as Dylan sings, is common. The subjugation of women across all orthodoxies and the persecution of religious minorities and homosexuals is as prevalent today as the burning of non-Catholics was in the streets of Seville during the Spanish Inquisition.

The recent news coverage of Ultra-Orthodox Jews spitting on an 8-year old girl and calling her a “whore” even though she wore the modest uniform of the orthodox school she attended resembles Puritan extremism. And the requirement that women in Ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods ride in the back of buses recalls our hard-fought civil rights battles here at home.

The slaughter of Muslims by former neighbors with whom they had lived in peace for decades in the former Yugoslavia, the genocidal rampages in Africa, the multi-century cover up of sexual abuse of children in Catholic parishes, all in the name of religion must cause doubt about the existence of God or, at least, about his earthly designates.

I believe in a higher power. I am open, as I was as a young altar boy, to the loving and forgiving God who teaches that the meek shall inherit the earth.

But in observing the ongoing persecution and slaughter conducted on religious grounds, I can’t embrace or even trust religions managed by man in God’s name. I miss the spiritual discipline I knew as a child, but I can’t muster enough faith to forgive institutions willing to fight to accumulate earthly riches and political power – while at the same time perpetuating sexual subjugation of women and children.

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 1800’s, 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.

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 man-made 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 westward 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 VT Council on Rural Development, a broad coalition of Vermonters, legislators, non-profits 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.

 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 x-boxes 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.

The same puppeteer-oligarchs who have used their vast wealth to acquire judges and congressman now parade before us a succession of highly improbable candidates 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 all income classes and the interests of 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.

The foreword is the only attempt Schubart makes at directly connecting the stories to one another.  Otherwise, each section is meant to stand on its own and represents a specific hardship of food addiction or obesity.  Since each story can function individually, it is easy to carry the book with you and read a section at a time.  In the foreword Schubart writes straight from his heart and explains his own struggle with eating habits and his weight.  He is charming, compassionate and first introduces himself as “a man of girth, overweight, fat… there I said it,” setting the scene for a brutally honest series of stories.

He is able to insert humor both in the foreword and in the stories without allowing that to saturate the fact that what he’s about to unfold is deeply sad.

For the rest of the stories, though, he essentially removes himself and he resists any inclination you might expect from the author of a book like this to start giving dieting advice.  This makes the stories far more powerful, as the meanings and suffering in them are left to echo in your head.  He simply dedicates this book to “all those for whom food is a friend, an enemy, a compulsion, a joy.”

You should be warned, though, that despite how tender he is in writing, he makes no attempt to shield the reader from any of the hard-to-face truths.  Do not look to this book as a fast-track to comfort and inspiration.

Eventually, this book can lead you there, but not in the way you may expect.  Instead of high-energy motivational speeches, Schubart examines the depths of a food addiction and all the infinite ways that it can become a part of a person’s life.  He does this solely though telling stories—and rarely steps out of the story to consciously instruct you.  He leaves the lessons up to you to reflect on and draw your own conclusions from.

I respect his approach to food addiction in this book because it mimics the way the addiction functions in the world.  Unlike other addictions, it can never be completely extracted from a person’s life or body, which makes the process of fighting it infinitely harder. It also makes it harder to identify the addiction because it is a necessary part of life.  It is far easier to notice that a drug is taking over your life, since it is not readily presented to you in café windows and served to you when you visit someone’s home.

These stories are intricately intertwined with the story of a person’s life and Schubart focuses his attention there. Where other books would focus on the more regimented steps for getting help, this focuses on the stories of people who have suffered.

The stories seemed disjointed at first—not because the ultimate connection isn’t obvious, but because Schubart writes beautiful prose that makes you deeply care about the characters and it is sad to see them not reappear in later chapters.  Once I accepted this, I was able to get into the rhythm of the book and liked how different the stories were.

Some characters are presented upfront with their addiction and then Schubart takes you through the pain of living with it.  For example, one man’s story involves hiding his addiction from his wife and small child, who consistently worry about this health and try to monitor his eating habits.  Other characters’ stories begin with introductions that explain, and in many ways justifies, their resulting addictions, as Schubart leads you through histories of neglect and abuse.  One of his most compelling stories is a simple narration of the behaviors of an overweight woman he notices on a train.  His attention to her is so keen, only someone who has been in her shoes could truly capture the experience.

He tells stories in both third person and first, of men and women, single and married, younger and older, but there is one common line: their suffering.  It is clear and poignant as a step on the road to recovery because it creates a safe environment for others to begin thinking about their own story.  In addition to this, it is a deserving piece of fiction and a heartbreaking collection anyone can connect with and learn a personal lesson from.

Fat People
By Bill Schubart
Magic Hill LLC: November 11, 2011
Paperback, 214 pages
$15

Psych Central’s Recommendation: Worth Your Time! +++

http://psychcentral.com/lib/2011/fat-people/

“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.

The iconic US 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 fashion letters often expressed sentiment in the sender’s choice of stationary, 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.

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 six to ten, joining about thirty 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 seven. 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 fifty 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…”

We have little overt labor violence today , but labor’s once strong role in capitalism is now diminished. Official unemployment stands at 9%. Actual unemployment is almost double that according to the Washington Post. Other sources put the number broadly at one in five unemployed.

There are both short-term and endemic reasons for labor’s decline. Short term factors include employer malaise about the economy, pensions becoming self-directed retirement plans, employee loss of healthcare benefits, and emasculated unions.

Longer term factors include the proliferation of robotic labor, the importation of workers willing to work for less than a living wage, and the export of high-paying jobs to low-wage countries. More broadly, the combined impact of technological evolution, deregulation, and globalization have all combined to steeply undermine the negotiating stance of the American worker even though their productivity is and has been for decades among the highest in the world.

This has broad implications for a democratic society. After World War II, America gave birth to one the fastest growing and most productive middle classes in history. Six decades later, the polarization of American wealth is as it was in 1920. Many in the middle class are slipping into poverty. Very few achieve  the promised land of halcyon wealth. The link between worker’s rising productivity and commensurate compensation is broken. From 1980 to 2004 US gross domestic product per person rose by more than 60%, while wages, adjusted for inflation, actually fell. And in 2010, the richest 10% of Americans control 2/3 of the country’s net worth.

A nation’s strength is measured in great part by how wealth is distributed, as well as by how it nourishes and educates its children, and cares for its poor, sick and elderly.  By all measurements we are trending badly.

I am continually amazed by the ability of the very rich and influential to seduce and convert their struggling countrymen to their own cause. Their ability to nourish fear and confusion in those trying to make a go of it and showcase the illusory promise of their own great wealth defies logic. Perhaps we lack a leadership voice articulating the human benefits of moderation that community values impose. Perhaps the distrust that many conservatives have of science, education, intellect, and community is having the desired impact.

Born of violent conflict, Labor Day was supposed to celebrate the American worker, their productivity and their contribution to a thriving economy. Perhaps we should just call it the end of summer.

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.

Reading starts at 6:30 pm, Friday, August 5^{t,h ,} also a First Friday Art Walk evening. Call 802 652 4505

Two oaths or pledges in current fashion are the Pro-Life Leadership Presidential Pledge retailed by the Susan B. Anthony List, a group that raises money for anti-abortion candidates. Then there is the Grover Norquist – led Americans for Tax Reform whose anti-tax pledge that punishes GOP legislators who either take the pledge and then renege or waffle or who fail to take the pledge at all.

The Pro Life pledge commits signers ” to select only pro-life appointees for relevant Cabinet and Executive Branch positions,” and “to permanently end all taxpayer funding of abortion in all domestic and international spending programs, and defund Planned Parenthood” among other commitments. The Taxpayer Protection Pledge commits the signer to never support any new tax initiatives. If he or she contravenes the pledge, Americans for Tax Reform unleashes a barrage of opposition among its adherents.

These pledges are sold as prerequisites for getting the support of splinter groups of voters. But do these pledges ultimately constitute leadership or compromise it?

Seasoned leaders know that their success will depend largely on the diversity of options and solutions available to them and that leadership must be unencumbered by pre-electoral commitments, even those with which they might agree. An elected leader can have no foreknowledge of the challenges and events he will face. How would an anti-war pledge by Roosevelt have affected the outcome of World War II? FDR was loath to engage America in the war, but the escalating German aggression left him little choice.

Pre-election pledges drag us down as a nation and limit our options. They are quite simply political huckstering, divorced from the wisdom and charisma of true leadership, which, unlike many of today’s candidates, is expressed in humility, inquiry and open-mindedness.

Great leaders exhibit a sense of service to people and institutions, not to ideologies or special interests. They don’t trade political points for special- interest donations or restrictive pledges. They have the courage and humility to make clear that leadership calls on them to keep an open mind and the freedom to forge necessary change around consensus.

This bread and circuses approach to politics has precedents in our history and, every once in awhile, a leader surfaces among us who has the courage to walk away from the pervasive nonsense of politics and address honestly the economic, social, environmental or diplomatic challenges America faces. We can only hope that the next election will bring forth such a leader either from the incumbents or from the current gaggle of aspiring presidents, senators, congressmen and judges.

Any candidate who has shackled him or herself to a fixed-position pledge on anything prior to assuming the mantle of leadership will lose my vote, as they will have compromised the very essence of leadership.

To bring this home, executives at Dean Foods earn ten times what they earned in 1970 while their average workers earn 9% less for the same period. Meanwhile, Vermont farmers who supply the Dean enterprise have, until recently, been selling their milk for less than the price of production. Executive compensation in America is an international embarrassment. We go about the globe selling our principles of democratic equality while allowing some executives to loot their own businesses and stockholders here at home.

Recent news reports indicate that Vermonters, too, feel their business and nonprofit executives are overcompensated. But are they? We all feel more secure singing in a chorus than singing solo, but let’s look at reality.

I’ve lived in Vermont for 65 years and have earned everything from minimum wage to an average Vermont CEO’s salary. I’ve spent my adult life volunteering in the nonprofit sector and have seen nonprofit leadership salaries ranging from $36,000 to $1M a year and have yet to see an overcompensated executive in that sector. Mostly, I have seen the opposite.

When I chaired the board at Fletcher Allen, I helped negotiate the compensation for departing CEO Dr. Melinda Estes in 2003 and again in 2005. She earns $826,000 plus a potential performance bonus of $245,000 but only if she achieves certain quality and financial goals set by the Board. Here’s why I think the amount is right. … ”

Aside from the State itself, Fletcher Allen is the largest nonprofit, or for that matter, business enterprise in Vermont. The immense complexity of a 6800-employee enterprise that arguably has a direct and personal impact at some point on the lives and wellbeing of most Vermonters and many New Yorkers is a massive challenge. Dr. Estes came to Vermont from the Cleveland Clinic when Fletcher Allen was mired in a criminal scandal. The Board set her compensation at the national median for Academic Medical Centers of similar size in order to attract the kind of leadership that was needed for its own recovery. There are CEOs of private businesses in Vermont who earn considerably more than Dr. Estes running much smaller and less complex businesses.

So let’s think about compensation for Vermont business and non-profit leaders. I have worked in both sectors extensively and have yet to see compensation excesses here even approaching those in the rest of the country. In fact, I have seen much the opposite. I have seen earnest, hardworking people making a difference in the quality of our lives, usually at well below market rates. Vermont’s challenge is neither unemployment nor overcompensation; it’s under underemployment and under-compensation.

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.

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?

Such a commitment would lay the groundwork for durable economic prosperity through increased in-migration, technology transfer, entrepreneurial startups, reduced economic crime, fuller employment and salary growth. The move from childcare to early education, already in progress, would ready children for a demanding educational system and workplace.

We already have a jump on most states. Our educational outcomes are indeed better, though still far below those in many foreign countries. There are many who believe our Dept of Education needs to be rethought from the ground up, giving us an opportunity to bring educational leaders together to re-envisage how we might lead the nation in a 20-year continuum of quality education and lifelong learning. Kids could take a year off and go abroad or exit the system at 18 to work.

Such a breath-taking leap would require leadership across all sectors: the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government, the non-profit and philanthropic sector and the business community, which has long been a champion of early education and higher learning.

The effort resembles the trend in healthcare to refocus investments strategically away from repetitive symptomatic disease treatment towards education, prevention and disease management, all of which have better long-term outcomes and improve the wellbeing of society at large.

Educational excellence positively affects every social ill on which we spend billions. It spurs innovation, new business, enhances workforce quality and compensation. It reduces crime and incarceration, and enhances tax revenues.
Imagine Vermont as an international destination for those providing or seeking the highest quality education available.

Not everyone buys into the social contract, though. Libertarians and some far right conservatives firmly believe that, as Ronald Reagan said, “Government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem.” These folks simply do not 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 enterprise or even greed, establish the social and economic hierarchy. Neither do they believe generally in much of a social safety net for helping those who don’t compete as well as they do and end up at the bottom of the hierarchy.  The Libertarian mantra is reflected on the license plates of our tax-lite neighbor across the river, “Live free or drop dead” and in First Lady, Nancy Reagan’s simplistic solution to addiction, “Just say no.”

At the other extreme, are those who believe that government can and should do whatever it takes to meet the needs of all of its citizens, demanding little of them and consigning many to a paralytic and enduring welfare state at unsustainable expense.

The bitter polarity between these two extremes dominates what has become a current media circus. I would suggest, however, that both extremes of this ideological keyboard like the bass and treble extremes on a piano, receive very little actual play with a general audience. Many names like Sarah Palin and Donald Trump associated with the conservative extreme, and a similar number on the media-challenged far left, will eventually sink in the mire of political history.

Of much greater interest should be the 70% of people in the middle who may be Republicans, Democrats or Independents, but tend to vote for people whom they believe reflect their personal values and demonstrate at least a modicum of integrity and wisdom.

During the 18 months I worked on the Blue Ribbon Tax Commission, I found myself thinking a lot about the social contract here in Vermont. We listened to a wide range of single-issue advocates, economists, academics, and taxpayers up and down the income spectrum. We developed a number of economic models as we tried out policy variations, all of which maintained Vermont’s progressive income tax structure.

We sought out the hard data behind then-Governor Jim Douglas’ recurring triple headline that Vermont was the highest taxed state in the country; that wealthy Vermonters were fleeing the state in droves; and that Vermont was a bad place to do business. We could find no data to support any of the three claims.

We found out that indeed Vermont is in the top quartile of higher taxed states, as one might expect of a state with only 310,000 income tax filers and a challenging and diverse infrastructure. Our position is, in actual fact, between 10^th and 12^th, depending on what tax burden formula one chooses.

We found that, on average, the same number of people move into the state as move out, but those moving in have a 19% higher income than those moving out. This is good and bad news. Bad in that Vermont has the second highest income polarity in the country.

I leave it to you, the business backbone of Vermont, to decide if this is a terrible state in which to do business compared to the rest of the U.S.

What drew me to re-examine the wellbeing of the social contract here in Vermont was my certainty that the primary responsibility of a leader in any sector is to tell the truth to his or her people. Governor Douglas chose instead to make an ideological point that would support lower taxation and less regulation. He asserted facts while providing no data to support them. Had he looked for data, he would not have found them. Only his personal ideology did.

Sadly, we live in a time when leaders can repeat a catch phrase until it becomes true, even if it isn’t. The left can be guilty of the same toxic maneuver.

This, “Just say it enough times and it becomes true” phenomenon, along with the economic demise of quality journalism, the conflation of news and opinion, and the rise of blogs and comedy programs as a source of news, has helped erode citizens’ understanding of and belief in a social contract.

The decline in serious journalism and in its readership lays open the public arena to attack from unchallenged ideologues with the greatest financial resources and the loudest voices. Read here “Citizens United case.” Right now, these ideologues dispute the idea that the taxes we pay can be a sound investment in our security, wellbeing, education, environment and prosperity. These wealthier and more powerful elements have succeeded in demonizing taxes and regulation as inhibiting business growth, even though no historical data supports this position.

I think a lot about the social contract. It has a long history. It goes back to the philosophical writing of St Augustine, Jean Jacques Rousseau and Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. Prosperous, intellectually tolerant communities are notable throughout our 4000 years of recorded history.

I have lost interest in political extremes, except that I occasionally listen in on their rants and read their polemics, simply to understand just how wide the chasm they define is. I am much more interested in the art of the possible, in the center, where I believe the majority of us live of our lives.

I have spent forty years in Vermont working in the for-profit and the for-mission communities. I have spent the same number of years observing the political scene, though never working in it.

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.

Con Hogan, when he was asked by Governor Snelling to lead the Agency of Human Services, our most expensive state agency, made the comment that he could not manage what he could not measure, and so, in collaboration with his staff and AHS’s constituent agencies, defined a set of measurable outcomes that would quantify the caliber of his leadership, the effectiveness of his agency and the agencies it served, and would define for Vermonters the return on their tax investment in the social safety net.

This concept of measuring the efficacy of government mission and return on taxpayer investment was unique and took many by surprise.

I was Chair of the VT Business Roundtable at the time and invited Con in to explain his initiative. Con had been CEO of a prominent Vermont business, so his plan was not a novel idea to the 120 CEO’s to whom Con laid it out. What was new and daring was the idea of measuring performance in government. The thirty-plus agency performance metrics survived the Snelling and Dean administrations, but were then removed by incoming Governor Douglas. Could this have been because they constituted a political liability?  Many political leaders are not fond of measurement.

But open and honest measurement may be the only way to rebuild Vermonters’ belief and trust in their social contract. I assume you all invest to some degree. I doubt you buy equities, funds or bonds and pay no attention to how they are performing, but that is what has been expected of us in the current social contract.

It thus becomes easy for those who reject the idea of a social contract or those wishing to enhance their ratings in the media, to focus solely on government failures, ineptitude, or, even worse, to just make things up.

The understanding that one can’t manage if one can’t measure is a durable axiom that government and the for-mission sector must take to heart. And, by the way, if you don’t measure the effect of your work, others will at your peril.

Last night, the community honored Gretchen Morse. For the last twenty years, Gretchen has led the United Way of Chittenden County. Realizing early on that the philanthropic resources from businesses and individuals in Chittenden County could never support in any depth all of the social safety net organizations in need, she began a collaborative effort with United Way’s many service partners to establish social and economic goals and objectives for the region, agreeing on performance metrics, and focusing support on partners who could best deliver on the agreed-upon outcomes. In so doing, they vastly increased the effectiveness of donor generosity and made a significant difference in Chittenden County. This exemplary initiative has become an exemplar for non-profits and philanthropists around the country.

Open government is the best policy for strengthening the social contract between a government and its citizens. A government that rigorously measures and shares its successes and failures with its citizens is the best way to rebuild trust in the social contract.

In an open marriage between the Public Assets and Ethan Allen Institutes, whom one might imagine, could agree on little else, the Vermont Transparency website was established in 2009 to open up government to its citizens. You can see it at VTtransparency.org.  It’s worth a serious look and worthy of your support. A well-resourced and managed transparency site is but one tool needed to rebuild the social contract though. Better access, navigation, and use of our VT historical archives is also a key tool on which Vermont State Archivist Gregory Sanford is doing yeoman work.  We tend to believe that every government challenge we encounter is new and that older and sometimes even wiser statesmen and women have not addressed these issues before in our history.

And finally, government must seize the opportunity and communicate back honestly to its citizens how their investment is doing. It must learn to measure itself, using both data and story. It must learn that failures are a learning opportunity and when fully understood can prevent their repetition.

It must learn to trust the wisdom of its taxpayer-investors and steer clear of toxic political grandstanding and voter manipulation. The taxpayers we heard from on the commission were not fools and government does itself a disservice by assuming the least of its investors.

Vermont’s motto is Freedom and Unity, which perfectly expresses the dynamic tension between taking care of oneself and one’s community. We need to go back and look at the art of the possible that was presumed by those who wrote this elegant motto, and our government needs to step up and be accountable for the investments we Vermonters make in our own wellbeing.

It is illegal for competitors to conspire to fix prices. In the 20th century, price-fixing regulation, though hard to prosecute, was taken seriously by businesses. Milton Friedman, a philosopher of free-market economic theory and opponent of business regulation, couldn’t foresee the impact of real-time, encrypted networks linking business offerings, competitors, and market transactions. These networks enable instantaneous and unison price changes that are responsive to competition and markets and that, so far, defy prosecution.

I recently went out West. A comparison of online airline prices yielded no competitive opportunities for this consumer. Later, when I suggested to our car rental agent that $144 for a one-day rental and $146 for a one-week was illogical, and that I might take my business elsewhere, he assured me that I would find similar pricing that day for all the rental booths lining that side of the airport. He went silent when I suggested that that was anti-competitive, if not collusive.

It’s annoying how all our familiar hotels prices rise in New York and fall in unison. It’s disturbing, however, that our “free market” providers of wireless, cable, satellite, and credit card services also have remarkably similar pricing and that we have only a couple to choose from.

The free-market was lionized at a time when regulation had teeth. The rare monopolies were strictly regulated and the concept of a free market with many consumer choices had meaning. Price fixing was prosecuted. Conspiracies had to be conducted in person or on phones that could be tapped. Digital networks changed all that.

So did the Reagan-Thatcher era. “Starve-the-beast” conservative politicians realized they could never sell the elimination of regulatory agencies to the American people, so they simply impoverished them. This stimulated a staggering aggregation of business ownership primarily by roll-up financiers rather than seasoned business owners. We are now living the consequences of this new economic landscape. So please explain how unregulated free market economics will stem the further polarization of wealth and opportunity and the gradual destruction of our vaunted middle class?

I believe in consistent, strategic regulation that is enforced. I believe that businesses – like citizens – need rules and consequences. The application of different rules and judicial consequences for different economic classes, and a blind adherence to economic absolutes will only further erode our once pioneering economy.

Fat People is not a prescriptive or a diet book. It neither encourages nor endorses recovery theories. My only goal in writing the stories in Fat People is to have both those whose lives are defined by their weight and those who live with and love them have a better understanding of the commonality of  fear, isolation, and prejudice with which compulsive eaters live.

Bill Schubart is the author of The Lamoille Stories, a best-selling collection of New England short stories. Fat People is his second collection and portrays the lives of fourteen people and their relationships with food. For most people, food is a source of sustenance and pleasure but, for many, it is their only friend, their sole source of pleasure and ultimately their addictive nemesis. Bill Schubart is a fat person and a keen and sympathetic observer of those whose lives are defined by their obesity. Fat People will add to our understanding of how easily food can overwhelm a life. The author lives in Vermont with his wife and family and is a frequent commentator on public radio.

Fletcher Free Library. Burlington, Thursday, May 19 at noon. Call 802 863 3403 for further information.

It’s not about the environment. It’s not about Sara Palin’s intellect or the entropic Tea Party. It’s a mastodon battle between ideologies. Much editorial writing simply misses this point. So, sadly, do liberals.

Underlying the childish antics in our capital is a deadly serious battle of philosophies. On one side is an experienced dinosaur with clear objectives and a well conceived strategy for winning. On the other side is a disorganized dinosaur with good intentions and no strategy.

The mastodons have been circling each other for decades. The conservative mastodon cannot forget the success of liberal mastodons in the Roosevelt periods, when the first Roosevelt, a conservative, splintered the business trusts and created public lands. Then, shortly thereafter, the second Roosevelt, a liberal, built the basis of a modern government focused on the economic well-being of its citizens. This enraged the conservative mastodon and he’s been trying ever since to undo the work of his opponent.

If Democrats continue to measure projected outcomes of this battle by unwanted pregnancies, high school dropouts, starving seniors, uncared-for-vets, or the medically uninsured, they will lose this fight.

This fight is as basic to American hopes and aspirations as one can get. One mastodon believes that government, writ large, is a necessary evil, good only for a severely limited menu of responsibilities which includes national defense, a criminal justice system and some national infrastructure, although even these conservatives have tried to privatize every one of these government fundamentals in the last few decades. Implicit in their belief system is that business, regulated only by the constraints of a free market, can manage any complex socio-economic system better than government.

The other mastodon believes that Government has the potential to function at a higher level and, in fact, should regulate business,environmental, and detrimental social behavior. Indeed it ought to focus on the well being of its citizens and that the Atlas Shrugged philosophy of survival of the fittest, although it mimics the plant and animal worlds, is irrelevant to a just and benevolent society of human beings.

Only when we fully understand what these dinosaurs are fighting about will we be able to have a real discussion about what we are to become as a nation.

In more normal times, data and story are compelling elements in policy and decision making, but in this epic battle of behemoths, they are sadly irrelevant, except, of course, for the fact that real people and the climates they inhabit may get trampled.

Personally, I believe in the possibility of good government. One that is wholly transparent and accountable to its citizens. If we focused more on framing the elements of good government and less on circling one another and trumpeting our philosophical differences we might make progress.

The event on May 14th will include a silent auction and live auction of first edition & signed copies of books by and about Vermont. Bill Schubart will join other Vermont authors donating books to support this event. He will also read briefly and discuss his book about Morrisville, The Lamoille Stories. For further info, contact Pat Stevens at 888-4374.

Bill gained weight when he was about eight and has spent half a century trying to balance the great pleasure of good healthy food with the addictive and palliative eating of more processed foods that are a factor in obesity. His weight has moved between 200 and 450 lbs.

Bill is author also of the highly successful collection entitledThe Lamoille Stories.

Bill will read briefly from the stories and will openly and happily answer questions about his own experience and sign copies of his book. Phoenix Books is at 21A in Essex Way. For further information call 872 7111.

As an experiment several years ago, I hauled out some antique components and connected them together on our deck. The kids were around for a barbecue and I played Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Marley, Mahler’s 4th and Dvorak’s American Quintet at Woodstock volumes. This explains why we’ve always lived in the country.

The kids were impressed. I also played music from MP3 files on a computer and from CD’s. They had not realized the palpable difference in sound quality.

I grew up in the era of Heathkits, homemade Williamson amplifier circuits pieced together from old power supplies and KT-88 tubes. Eico, HH Scott, Fisher – as in Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center – were the brands. We made bass reflex cabinets out of plywood leftovers and old 15” speakers we traded. We dreamed of someday owning Klipschorn corner speakers, the Rolls Royce of speakers.

Entering the business allowed us to further indulge our passion and we bought two of a limited number of 16-foot folded horn bass units made by JB Lansing. These 200 lb. units each sported two 15-inch bass drivers in a 2-inch thick box five feet high and 3-feet wide. They projected groin-trembling bass from 28 hertz to about 200 hertz. We needed a crane to get them onto scaffolding. One could lie down comfortably inside the horn opening. More appallingly, they could be plugged directly into a wall socket and would play 60 hertz house current at 144 decibels without burning up, after which anyone in the same room would need hearing aids.

The midrange horns with their aluminum lenses weighed about thirty pounds each and a bar of high-end ring tweeters completed the sound spectrum. This was all driven by racks of hissing and sizzling McIntosh tube amplifiers – none of today’s nonsense with two a little, black boxes perched on spindly tripods.

As a father, I always dragged my children at least once to a live opera where they could hear a full orchestra and unamplified singers perform. Pit orchestras today are much smaller than they were when I was a kid, but the experience is still magical, reminding us of what real music can sound like.

The great disadvantage of personal, portable music devices is that they both commoditize and privatize music. Music was written to be heard and shared communally. A young person walking around alone, listening only to the pulsing middle range of the musical spectrum is to me a sad evolution of music.

Like a national health system, most other civilized countries have, with varying degrees of success, committed taxpayer funds to a non-commercial broadcast system.

The first key to the success of a government-supported broadcast enterprise is the impermeability of the editorial firewall between the government’s self-interests and management’s daily editorial decisions to collect, edit, and publish news consistent with commonly understood standards of journalistic integrity.

The other success factor is governance. There must be an independent, diverse and disinterested governing board that holds it to the same standards as any business enterprise. The focus is not on profit, however, but on mission.  Leadership must assure the attributes of a professional news organization, such as audience measurement and feedback loops, a public ombudsman, fact-checking, a clear distinction between news and opinion, and regular personnel performance reviews.

Libertarians believe that government should not be in the news business. Conservatives may feel as libertarians do or they may not like the way the news is presented. Liberals generally prefer a national news service even when it brings them news they don’t like or presents opposing viewpoints.

The problem is made more complex by the fact that fewer consumers know the difference anymore between hard news and opinion and regularly conflate the two.

There is no philosophical reason to hate properly presented news, regardless of the source. It’s like hating the weather. One can disagree with or even hate opinion, but not news. The real measurement of a good public broadcast system is whether all editorial opinions are given equal time by articulate spokespeople.

I believe having a world-class broadcast service representing America is vital to our strategic interests. We are still, to varying degrees, recognized as a world leader. Why not lead here as well, in the same way that Britain’s BBC has since radiotelephony began? The only durable way to lead is by example. Military marketing of democracy has proven temporary at best.

Domestically, I believe that the imperative for such a news and information service derives from our founding commitment to an accessible educational system, which, after all, is one predicate of a functioning democracy along with a free press. Such a system is also justified by the generally accepted government mandate to maintain a secure and accessible communication infrastructure. As Internet technology advances and offers citizens enhanced opportunities for journalistic participation and feedback, the link between such a public broadcast network and democracy is only strengthened.

Why do we feel we need to tear down what we don’t like, rather than improve it? I can sympathize with libertarians who are philosophically opposed to entrepreneurial government initiatives, but am less sympathetic to the far right who don’t like the message and prefer to shoot the messenger rather than participate in a discussion of how to improve the system.

Bill gained weight when he was about eight and has spent half a century trying to balance the great pleasure of good healthy food with the addictive and palliative eating of more processed foods that are a factor in obesity. His weight has moved between 200 and 450 lbs.

Bill is author also of the highly successful collection entitledThe Lamoille Stories.

Bill will read briefly from the stories and will openly and happily answer questions about his own experience and sign copies of his book. Misty Valley is on The Green on Main Street.

On the strength of a sonnet I had written at Exeter, I was accepted into a senior creative writing class taught by legendary Harkness professor George Bennett. Over his forty-five-year career he taught several American writers like James Agee and the poet Charles Pratt.

Mr. Bennett sat at the head of an oval Harkness table, saying little other than to occasionally ask unsettling questions about a work we had read or written, or to challenge an assertion by one of us, or to catalyze a flagging discussion that we were expected to sustain for the length of the class.

Once, as a class began with the fourteen of us stymied and mute when asked to discuss T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, Mr. Bennett sat quietly for fifty-five minutes and simply stared at us until the bell rang. We were all at a loss and desperate to evade his serene and questioning regard. And, when the bell finally rang, we bolted from the classroom, vowing to one another never to let this happen again.

At eighteen, I was convinced that Erato, the muse of poetry, would infuse me and my clattery Smith Corona portable typewriter with inspiration and that, like Kerouac, I would produce a finished stream of lyric poems and novels that would be the envy of my cohorts and inspire awe in Mr. Bennett.

I returned, however, from each classroom reading with copious notes on my work. Mr. Bennett routinely suggested that I revisit the fifty-page Strunk and White Elements of Style that we had all committed largely to memory. Any literary arrogance had long since fallen by the wayside.

I learned of Flaubert’s pursuit of le mot juste. I learned to write, rewrite, and to question every word choice and phrase. I learned to strip my work of florid descriptors and lofty phrases and to rely more on declarative sentences composed of well-chosen verbs and nouns. I avoided adjectives and adverbs and gradually my short stories and poetry earned a nod from Mr. Bennett rather than a blank stare.

The Harkness roundtable discussion, then characterized as “cooperative inquiry,” was not expected to impart knowledge. Students were expected to acquire this for themselves. The inquiry was designed to test reason and to induce creative thinking.
There are many gaps in my knowledge today, but I credit Mr. Bennett with my ability to reason and to think creatively.

In the spring of 1963, we began to see blood spots in the white handkerchief into which Mr. Bennett increasingly coughed during class. Rumors circulated among us about a diagnosis of lung cancer and we were indeed the last class to experience his minimalist teaching style. For me and many other writers, he remains a legend.

Bill Schubart ’68 is a retired businessman living in Hinesburg. His commentaries can be heard on VPR and he is the author ofThe Lamoille Stories and Fat People. His new novel, Photographic Memory, is coming in the spring.

Will leaders do the hard work of applying shared principles to balance their budgets or will they use “financial exigency” to achieve their own ideological ends? Socially deaf ideologues, obsessed with their own political and religious beliefs, are already gaming the stressed system to try and rid society of imagined ills like immigrants, gays, abortions, unions, regulations and minimum wage. These are many of the same people who, prior to the recent greed-driven economic downturn, convinced voters and politicians that regulation would impede prosperity,  which then, in a naïve, over-consuming market, ended prosperity.

Reasonable people can agree that for any enterprise to subsist, revenues must match or exceed expenses. Businesses respond by cutting costs. Non-profits hone missions and programs to match revenues. Government is still dithering in a thicket of politics.

Up to now, weak politicians have kicked the ball down the road to enhance re-electoral opportunity. Inexperienced leaders will promote “across the board cuts,” because strategic cuts are harder, even though they enhance the enterprise and balance the budget.

But the crisis is here and now, and solving it will require leaders to re-engage citizens in a discussion about ethics, priorities, and the question, “What should government do?”

I believe government must ensure educational opportunity for all; build and maintain infrastructure; and regulate industry and the economy with a competitive eye. It must maintain a social safety net for those who have fallen out of the economy or can’t find their way in. It must preserve its environment, its built and working landscapes and its cultural heritage. It should tax its citizens fairly; organize defense, and ensure a system of equal justice. It must be transparent and open to its citizens. The rest is noise and waste.

The question of whether to raise revenue or reduce expenses is the wrong question. We’ll need to do both to restore equilibrium after excess. Governor Shumlin will need to articulate and lead. Shoot-from-the-hip statements not based in material fact will only fuel ignorant responses by the electorate and necessitate backpedaling.

We need all our leaders to forge consensus on priorities and goals, and on how we measure and communicate their progress to those who pay for it in taxes.

Here in Vermont we need our leaders to bring any new revenues in line with a streamlined enterprise.

We need to listen to and be influenced, but not governed by, both the wealthy and powerful and the poor and disadvantaged.  We need to constantly revisit the organizing principles of government.

Finally, we must make decisions based on both substantive data and human experience.  Just as the best of science, history and art inform our decisions, so do both data and story. If we select anecdotes or, worse, make up facts to suit or ends, we will only distort our decision-making further and deceive ourselves into more leadership stasis and an even more polarized society.

Bill will read from, discuss, take questions about, and sign his new book Fat People. He will also speak candidly about his own experience as a fat person and how he has managed living with his own compulsive eating.

Fat People is not a prescriptive or a diet book. It neither encourages nor endorses recovery theories. My only goal in writing the stories inFat People is to have both those whose lives are defined by their weight and those who live with and love them have a better understanding of the commonality of  fear, isolation, and prejudice with which compulsive eaters live.

Lincoln Library, Tuesday, April 26th @ 7:00 PM  Call 802 453 2665 for further information.

As of last year, Vermont had just over 4000 non-profits with annual revenues of $4B, almost 20% of our gross state product. Vermonters volunteer 20M hours annually to non-profits – in itself worth almost half a billion dollars – and this does not include civic service like select boards, state and local commissions, and school boards.

Vermonters believe in community. It would be fair to say that if Vermont had to pay for all the volunteer work done at the community and state levels, it would cease functioning.

There are challenges, however, and the obvious ones are detailed in the report – funding, governance, and leadership – essentially the same problems evident in the other two sectors, government and business.

The actual differences between the triad sectors are in fact, largely definitional and the lack of strategic planning and dialogue between them constitutes a strategic deficit in and of itself.

From its citizens, government gets highly contentious, mixed messages and mandates to collect taxes and use them to achieve often competing and ill-defined social, economic, and environmental ends. The task of the business sector is to strike a profitable and beneficial balance between the enrichment of owners and workers. The non-profit or “for-mission” sector often becomes the catchall alleviation of problems ill-addressed by the other two sectors.

Just as foundations with similar missions have recently joined forces to study and fund durable solutions, it will be important in a state of only 600,000+ people for the three sectors to better integrate their efforts strategically.

Cross-sector partnerships exist between business and government and between government and non-profits, but much more cross-sector dialogue and strategizing must occur at the triad level to conserve scarce resources and to fund, measure and produce better results.

With our documented commitment to community volunteerism and the scarce financial resources in our pockets, we can do more while spending less, but we need to talk together.

All three sectors optimized and communicating with one another are vital to Vermont’s future wellbeing. Who better to convene this dialogue than Governor Shumlin, The Vermont Community Foundation, and The Vermont Business Roundtable?

As Con Hogan, a veteran of all three sectors, states in the report’s forward, “The first challenge is to understand that things are not the same and they won’t be the same. Having that fundamental insight is an important force that causes people to think more quickly and more strategically about the future.”

Fat People is not a prescriptive or a diet book. It neither encourages nor endorses recovery theories. My only goal in writing the stories inFat People is to have both those whose lives are defined by their weight and those who live with and love them have a better understanding of the commonality of  fear, isolation, and prejudice with which compulsive eaters live.

Ilsley Library, Saturday, May 14th @ 10:30 AM.  Call 802 388 4095 for further information.

The lack of chimneys held heat in effectively for those still breathing. The combination of poultry, sheep, children and old people in a 180 square foot clay and wattle smokehouse made for many a cozy evening. The subsequent invention of convent schools, assisted-living huts, and craft guilds, however, during the Italian Renaissance signaled the early break-up of the family and created the first severe energy shortage.

The invention of the flue by François Chimbley in Normandy relieved many huts of smoke, but also of heat generated by closely knit families and animals living largely on legumes. The removal of smoke and stench from living quarters extended life expectancy well into the 20s and even 30s, but like many environmental advances, created a new problem – heat loss.

With recent social upheavals in the Middle East now driving the price of oil up towards $4.00 a gallon, we face a similar crisis today here in New England, where the winters can be severe. As farming decreased in the last century, so did the reason for large families. Various alternative heat sources have since been tried, but with limited success.

For example, the brief experiment with indoor composting in the 60s worked well enough as long as everyone huddled around a wet, smelly pile in the living room. This modest heat source was plagued with problems like carpet stains and rodents.

The Clivus Multrum composting toilet was a popular outgrowth of this technology using both human excreta and kitchen vegetable scraps as fuel. Early models, however, generated very little heat and delivered insalubrious bathroom odors to food preparation areas in the kitchen.

New Englanders have counted for years on firewood to heat their homes, but when the cost of a woodstove approached that of a late model used car and cordwood climbed to $300 a cord, many reattached old thermostats to their walls.

Today’s innovative back-to-the-landers are refining the medieval art of heating with animals while maintaining a low carbon foot print. Chickens seem particularly well suited to this endeavor.

I recently visited the straw-bale home of Sunrise and Reefer LeBoeuf in East Fairfield. Their 1200 square foot bale-house was warm and comfortable. Reefer explained the novel heating system as he shooed away a herd of buff cochins curious to see if I was carrying any grain on me.

“We recommend .6 hens per square foot. This captures optimum body heat output,” he explained.

Curious about the hen’s other two outputs, I asked about hygiene and eggs.

“As Sunrise and me learned early on, hen’s is incontinent and no amount of effort can train ‘em. We tried various gimmicks, but nothing worked ‘cept what you see over there.”

Reefer pointed to a flock of Roomba robot vacuum cleaners darting in and out among the hens.

“Very effective these li’l units,” Reefer said. “We have six and they go all day and night. As to the eggs, we give ‘em away. The hard part is finding ‘em. The girls lay’em all over the house. They ‘specially like bookshelves and clothes closets.”

I asked if the house stayed warm when the temperature dropped below zero. Reefer explained that their neighbors raised meat birds, and they simply borrow a couple of dozen from them during a cold snap. Having read about the price of grain rising as more of it was diverted to making biofuels, I asked about the economy of feed.

“A problem…” admitted Reefer, “but we feed the girls more table scraps and day-old bakery goods.”

Impressed with this new passive poultry heating technology, I said my farewells to Sunrise and Reefer and headed home with a gift basket of twelve dozen eggs and a new article for the Chronicles of Alternative Energy.

Fat People is not a prescriptive or a diet book. It neither encourages nor endorses recovery theories. My only goal in writing the stories in Fat People is to have both those whose lives are defined by their weight and those who live with and love them have a better understanding of the commonality of  fear, isolation, and prejudice with which compulsive eaters live.

Bill Schubart, author of Fat People

In many cases, however, the judgments and biases of fat people themselves are more punishing than those they experience from others. Many fat people even isolate when confronted positively by friends, family or spouses to engage them personally or sexually and the loneliness becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If mental wellbeing is characterized by a synchronous vision of how we see ourselves with how others see us, compulsive eaters are especially at risk. Both body image distortion – “I’m too fat” or “I‘m not as big as I look,” – and self-imposed isolation are common among fat people, as is the belief that these feelings are unique to them and not experienced by others. This is one of the reasons why Overeaters Anonymous and group therapies are such effective entries to recovery.

Fat People is not a prescriptive or a diet book. It neither encourages nor endorses recovery theories. My only goal in writing the stories in Fat People is to have both those whose lives are defined by their weight and those who live with and love them have a better understanding of the commonality of  fear, isolation, and prejudice with which compulsive eaters live.

When I was ten, I went away to summer camp. I joined the NRA in order to take riflery. I wanted a rifle like my friends, but my father said I would have to take the NRA course before he would consider such a thing. At camp, I earned my Pro-marksman, Marksman, Marksman 1^st, Class, and Bar 1 Sharpshooter medals. The following year my parents gave me a Winchester .22 rifle which I was free to use. It was not a deer rifle, but it was fun for target practice and small-game hunting. Mostly I used it to “pop rats” at the Morrisville dump with my pals after it closed. In those days the NRA was about safe hunting.

In the ensuing decades, the NRA has experienced mission creep, becoming a potent advocate of “concealed- carry” and “open-carry” laws within the states. This is gun-speak for a citizen’s right to carry either concealed pistols or pistols hanging openly from our belts in public and private places, a notion that has made us a laughing stock in many civilized countries with much lower homicide rates.

Not only has the NRA’s mission changed, so have its goals. 55 years ago, the NRA taught me how to hunt and shoot targets safely, and generally behave responsibly as an 11-year old rifle owner. Now it advocates for unlimited ownership of weapons. I say “weapons” only because I firmly believe a semi-automatic pistol with a 31 round clip is more like an antipersonnel mine than a gun.

I believe as strongly in the second amendment as I do in the first. There are a couple of old shotguns in our own home, though I hardly ever shoot them anymore. My wife’s grandmother was a champion skeet shooter and her gun came down to us.

To our detriment, however, we often confuse principles with absolutes. And principles often conflict, so they must be prioritized to guide us towards a beneficial outcome. The principle of free speech must be balanced against the principle of national security.

The NRA, with the trembling compliance of political leaders and the explicit support of a conservative court, has interpreted the second amendment as an absolute, arguably to the shame of those who wrote it.

NRA language has moved from sporting safety, to self-defense, to today…the citizen’s right to defend himself against growing government tyranny.

We really must ask ourselves, “Who exactly is the tyrant?” Is it an absolutist NRA hell-bent on seeing all citizens armed and ready to take on their government or is it an imperfect democracy struggling to respond to the broad spectrum of its citizens’ opinions about the role of government?

Our leaders need to talk out loud about this.

Since there is no intrinsic system for tax code maintenance, legislators periodically ask citizens to review the entire code and suggest both broad architectural changes as well as specific amendments. It is in this spirit that the Legislature appointed the Blue Ribbon Tax Commission. It was understood that the Commission’s job was not to raise or lower taxes nor to set the stage for legislators do so, as the Free Press hinted in an editorial last week. The job was to redesign the code and re-rationalize or eliminate all the accumulated and complicating amendments. The agreed upon modeling would presume revenue neutrality.

The Legislature subsequently amended the charge of the Commission, asking for it focus directly and solely on the education-funding model that is driven in part by the statewide property tax. This will explain why the Commission does not address the property tax in its recent findings. That report is due out this fall.

The Commission first sought agreement on the principles of a good tax code. It would have to be transparent to taxpayers; equitable, with similar earners paying similar taxes; simple and predictable from a compliance standpoint; competitive with regional states; produce a non-volatile source of state revenue; and maintain Vermont’s tradition of progressivity.

The Commission then moved into the research stage, taking relevant testimony from other states, think tanks and interested parties. The tax department provided voluminous data and change modeling analyses that are available on our website for citizens and legislators to review.

Many of the political claims about the tax code could not be substantiated by real data.

There are two ways of looking at the final work of the Commission. One is to ask if the recommendations follow the principles on which the commissioners had forged initial agreement? The other is to ask, “How’s this effect me?”

It is the hope of the Commission at large that Vermonters will look first at the overall work and ask themselves, “Do the Commission’s recommendations make for a better overall tax system for Vermont?” before assessing their own self-interests.

I asked one high-net-worth friend, “Would you rather have a 40% reduction in your top marginal income tax and forego deductions as they do in many neighboring states, or would you prefer to pay the higher rate and preserve your deductions?” He answered, “Well, I was sort of hoping for both.”

As Vermonters we have an obligation to balance self-interest with community interest. So far the response to the Commission’s report has been remarkably deliberative and thoughtful. There will always be those who will read any proposed change document for elements that they deem disadvantageous to their parochial interests and will react negatively to the whole. Vermonter’s responses, however, have been characteristically thoughtful.

I recently spoke with a large group of non-profits brought together by the Vermont Community Foundation, seeking a deeper understanding of the potential loss of the charitable deduction at the state level. It was a productive dialogue, which went well beyond the deduction itself to the greater opportunities for the non-profit community in a world with shrinking state resources.

The extension of a sales tax to consumer services has also generated substantial discussion and, in some quarters, dismay. When the sales tax on goods was first implemented, consumers spent, on average, 70% on goods and 30% on services. That ratio has inverted as we have become a service economy. The commission is recommending that the 6% you paid when you bought your lawn mower now be applied to the landscape service that may mow your lawn. As we become more of a service economy, this balances out the revenue from loss of sales. Business-to-business transactions were not included, just as they aren’t in sales, to preserve competitiveness. The much greater concern should be the lack of a national system for collecting sales taxes on e-commerce sales. Vermont is conservatively losing $35-40 million on Internet sales on which Vermonters in fact owe, but may or may not pay the tax.

A critical recommendation of the Commission is the automatic sunsetting of all tax expenditures. This does not mean or imply that many do not have social or economic benefit to Vermonters, but it calls on the Legislature to define, review and measure those benefits periodically with an eye towards better tax code maintenance and greater taxpayer transparency and understanding.

Principles are not absolutes and different people may apply them differently, and commission members did in a few cases. I have presented here comments on the majority opinion, but the few dissents are important as well and are available on the Commission’s website.

It has been and honor and an education working on the Commission and I look forward to our next phase.

I grew up in a middle class family in Vermont. My stepfather’s family lived on what they earned. My mother came from a wealthy family that had inherited money earned by the prior generation. My father, who died before my birth, came from a family that earned its own wealth. They did not believe in inherited money, however, and gave what they had earned to charities when they died. From my two families of means, I eventually inherited an amount equal to half my annual compensation when I retired.

My stepfather taught me never to expect any inheritance at all but to plan my life with the understanding that I would live by what I earned. He also taught me the intrinsic value of working, first for another and later possibly for oneself, and that work annealed one and readied one for life, regardless of means. Both lessons have turned out to be true.

Devised originally as a uniform surrogate for barter, money is now a computer virus in our democracy, infecting everything. It buys not only goods and services now but also legislators, judges, politicians, regulators, sports competitions, and even educational degrees. Our Supreme Court has even extended certain human rights to corporations.

Though the pursuit of wealth has always been a facet of history, I wonder at the Olympian status we accord vast wealth in our own culture. I wonder why those with the least so vehemently revere, defend and trust those with the most. The current polarization of wealth in America is again what it was in 1920, the beginning of a long period of social and economic distress.

To complicate matters further, we with less have developed a media-induced sense of entitlement that expects government largesse to continually accelerate to meet our desires, not simply our basic needs in times of stress. This sense of entitlement combined with our belief that the rich’s ability to further enrich themselves should not be inhibited by taxation, has now completely beggared us.

Where does this lead?  Do we end like King Midas, who was granted his one wish of vast wealth, and ended up begging for his humanity?

I take some heart the in the increasing failure of consumer companies to enlist our children in the material feast. From the anarchy of the Internet, many of our children are forging their own medium of communication and self-expression that is not defined by what they own or wear. They’ve left TV, radio, magazines and record companies behind. They seem oddly unimpressed by their parents’ determined efforts to amass ever more money and things. Instead they find their own way to the human spirit and to build and live in their own communities, which may or may not include us.

I spent the first half of my life amassing things I wanted, but now find I must give many of them away to achieve any peace.

It was not the job of our commission to either raise or lower taxes, but to review years of accrued legislative patchwork and create a simpler, more equitable code. But before considering any changes, we determined to seek agreement on the principles that would underlie such a system. We took testimony from tax professionals, think tanks and foundations and made the time to discuss and distill their input into a set of principles against which proposed changes could be measured.

The first principle was that any changes be “fair and equitable,” which means simply that Vermonters of similar means are taxed similarly. Under this principle, we also agreed to maintain a progressive tax system.

The second principle was competitiveness. This is vital to retaining and attracting both business and wealth. Currently, the narrower “taxable income” base on which our income tax is calculated unfairly measures our competitiveness against neighboring states that tax on the broader “adjusted gross income” and therefore can collect the same revenue with apparent lower effective tax rates.

The third principle was simplicity and predictability, both for the tax filer and the tax department, which must interpret tax law and process tax returns in a timely manner. Most Vermonters and business owners want to fully comply with the law, and the more complex and variable it is, the more expensive and difficult that compliance becomes; the cost of audits deficits both the taxpayer and the Department. The average Vermont filer should be able to compute his own return. and be able to accurately predict their tax liability.

Sustainability is the fourth principle. Does the overall balance of the taxes and fees that Vermonters pay make for a predictable and sustainable flow of revenue to fund state government? Certain taxes and fees are more volatile than others. At present, Vermont has a well balanced portfolio of taxes and fees and the commission did not want to upset that balance.

The fifth principle was ubiquity, ensuring that as many Vermonters as are able have “skin in the game” by contributing according to their ability to the social compact.

The sixth principle was “interoperability,” which takes into account the total tax burden on Vermonters, that is, the federal taxes they must pay and how Vermont taxes interact with one another, specifically, the income sensitivity program which correlates property and income taxes.

Finally, a dominating principle was government accountability and transparency. It is vital to the social compact that Vermont citizens understand how their tax and fee investments in government services are functioning, what they cost, and their effectiveness at addressing social safety net-challenges, education, the environment, transportation and the other responsibilities of government.

The commission reached solid agreement on all these principles. In practice, however, principles could and did come into conflict as we modeled various improvements in the tax code, leading to both agreement and dissent.

The commission recognizes that Vermont’s challenges will be met not only by improvements to our tax and revenue system, but also by Vermonters making similarly difficult priority choices on the expense side, and leadership managing both priorities prudently.

Guided by the principles on which we agreed, we hope that our recommendations will make for an improved tax code. Our final report will be issued on January 13^th.

As it is in nature, so too is it in our communities. We see a once working sawmill no longer in production. We’re annoyed that there’s no longer a nearby slaughterhouse to butcher our pigs. Our daily newspaper gets thinner. A bridge is deemed unsafe. A bookstore closes. An iconic barn collapses quietly in winter. The country store gives way to a chain grocery store, and the gas station that repaired our car is now a convenience store that sells gas and junk food but offers no service.

Some changes are more subtle. Our enthusiasm for the Web erodes our privacy. A diminishing press corps emboldens politicians to take legislative shortcuts, diminishing transparency. Our town meetings slowly lose purview over social and economic decision-making. Our local impact on school quality and cost erodes with new federal and state mandates and relentlessly rising non-discretionary costs.

The rare but heinous crime gives birth to broad-brush new retributive laws that fill our prisons and divert investment from our communities and our children. Our salary goes up but our buying power goes down. A downtown slowly boards up its vacant storefronts. A skill disappears, a dialect is gone. There’s no longer a place in town to dance, hear music or share a meal. Our children get high marks but can’t write a simple declarative sentence. Our clothes feel tighter. Fruit and vegetables lose their taste. Families don’t meet over an evening meal. There’s no longer any silence. The night sky is lit, not by moon and stars, but by sodium lights. We tolerate our elders rather than seeking their wisdom. The list goes on.

Good things happen as well. But how is it that we have such a hard time foreseeing our communal losses and stemming them? Is it the accelerated pace of our lives or our notion that all progress is good, regardless of its impact on our past?

This is precisely why deliberation and reasoned dialogue are so vital to a civil society. Balancing the value of or our past with the promise and opportunity of our future requires us to listen to one another more carefully. The loud, ignorant voices that rail at one another in our places of lawmaking and our media do nothing to make a better world for us or our children.

Bill gained weight when he was about eight and has spent half a century trying to balance the great pleasure of good healthy food with the addictive and palliative eating of more processed foods that are a factor in obesity. His weight has moved between 200 and 500 lbs.

Bill is author also of the highly successful collection entitled The Lamoille Stories.

Bill will read briefly from the stories and will openly and happily answer questions about his own experience and sign copies of his book. Northshire is at 4869 Main Street, Call for information 802-362-3565 x154