On October 26th, the people attending (only seven of us!) started off with a short discussion about the big picture of possible economic collapse, which drifted inevitably into more of a local slant on the North Country.
The future seems unpredictable, but we felt our area will be better off than many. We have the wood we need, a new generation of farms that will work at many levels, a strong localization movement and sense of independence, possibility of growing, manufacturing and using biofuels and pellets. We also have the Amish among us as a good example of how to handle things when we can no longer run to town to buy gas, the electricity begins to go down and we have to cut our energy use to 1/10 of what it is now.
County level government will become our most important government. There will be massive unemployment here, and people will have to take more basic jobs in agriculture, local manufacturing, etc. We have an opportunity to live truly in community with our neighbors and care for each other, because without this joining together, we won't survive. There is no individual survival.
We all have to learn new skills. This should be one of our priorities. A few suggestions: beware the corporations who may want to gobble up our forests or farmland; dairy farms could be converted to growing other things and dairy corn could be converted to grains for humans; the idea of the poor farm may need to be reinstituted where people with no homes can live, produce their own food and get trained.
The rest of the meeting we discussed the list of options for action we came up with at the first meeting and went around to see where people's interest lay. Here were the ideas for action from the small group of us that were there. I printed Jean's organizing of this list in the last email. Please come to the next meeting prepared to let us know where your interest lies.
- Run a series of sustainable living skills classes, perhaps in conjunction with another organization like Coop Extension. Use the skills of people in the group, as well as others, plus seniors, to come up with perhaps six hands-on classes to be given in the spring. Patricia Greene and Richard Douglass were particularly interested.
- Ann Heidenreich, Bill Hull and Jean Dawson were interested in transportation. Ann was excited about starting a web-based carpooling/ride site. Bill wanted to do something around public transport. Jean wanted to research what people will do if they can't use their cars.
- Dan Kelleher, Bill Hull, Richard Douglass and Rex Tuthill were interested in food actions--starting a community garden in town as an educational tool (possibly at SLU), helping people develop the skills they need to grow their own; looking at the whole farm concept, food security and distribution. Gardens in schools and prisons.
- Richard and Patricia were interested in beginning to organize within neighborhoods. Suggested we begin with the SoCan? (south of Canton) neighborhood as an example of what can be done.
Bill suggested that our group become a member of the Post Carbon Institute. He will do the research and bring his findings to the next meeting.
We decided that we need to open our group up and publicize it to get new members. Patricia will make up a news release and we should make an announcement and sign people up at the film showing. If the group is to continue, we need commitment from those of you interested to make our meetings a priority!
Hope to see you on November 10th, and then on the 30th.
Patricia