Planning

On the last weekend in January, a small crowd of onlookers gathers at the edge of Brookfield Pond in central Vermont for what is – these days – a most unusual spectacle. An odd contraption of wooden beams and iron hardware stands on a patch of ice surrounded by rusted old saws and oversized tongs. A local historian narrates as two men move to the center of the ice and begin sawing. After a few minutes they use a strange fork to pry loose a block more than a foot thick. An ingenious lever system easily lifts this 300-pound block of ice off the water and lands it safely on the surface, frozen before it hits the ground.

Welcome to the Brookfield Ice Harvest. It’s one of the last of its kind - an event that’s essentially a relic, carried out by small northern towns to celebrate history and liven up the long, frozen winter.

Until WWII, harvesting ice was a necessary part of life. Before refrigerators, this was the only way that families and general stores could keep food products cold in the warmer months. The mammoth blocks of ice were stored between layers of sawdust until they melted, at which point people were out of luck until the next winter.

My husband, daughter and I watched the spectacle last weekend until our toes numbed. As we headed back toward the car my husband shook his head. “Sure seems like a lot of work when you can just open up the fridge.”

That’s for sure. But there are also consequences to opening up the fridge – and a thousand other modern conveniences – that we don’t think about. We’re so used to having things exactly when, where and how we want them that we rarely give thought to whether we could do without, or perhaps even do better without. I’m not about to ditch my appliances and head for the river with a saw and pitchfork, but the ice harvest did get me thinking about how we could embrace more of that old time ethic in our home lives and our communities, and why we should.

My Yankee ancestors have been touting a phrase for generations: “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.” I was excited to run across a new blog built on that concept, by blogger and writer Meg Hourihan. She’s challenged herself to buy nothing in 2012 except for what she’s used up or worn out. A great mantra and one that seems relatively easy to adopt until you’re faced with saying no to your niece’s request to buy girl scout cookies, or passing up that 90% off sale at your favorite store. But if we could all move in that direction, there’s no question our wallets, our closets, and especially the planet would be better for it.

If you’re intrigued but not quite ready to go whole hog, there are plenty of ways to start down this path. Closest Closet – one of last year’s CommunityMatters Strong Communities Competition applicants – is a unique project in Southern Maine that aims to help neighbors recycle and share, turning to each other rather than buying new. If you don’t happen to live in Southern Maine, check out the Freecycling Network – a similar concept, nationwide.

Communities often seem to do better than consumers at embracing this ethic, albeit by necessity. We’ve yet to hear about a town in the U.S. that isn’t facing budget shortfalls and cutbacks, and most places are pretty creative at making do and doing without when it comes to rec funds and school supplies. But the Minnesota non-profit Strong Towns has helped communities reexamine their decisions concerning land use and infrastructure improvements. Strong Towns’ “Curbside Chat” program and a companion booklet helps communities see why some “growth” and “progress” is actually setting us back.

Just as we want ice in July, we want bigger, smoother, nicer roads. We want new developments with views of the countryside. We want more growth, period. The problem is, the things that communities and consumers believe will make them stronger and wealthier often don’t.

I’m not a Luddite, and the message here isn’t that growth and conveniences are bad. But there are tradeoffs and there are alternatives – ones that people don’t often think about in today’s world. It is possible to harvest ice from a pond rather than pulling it out of the freezer. It’s possible to borrow that thingamajig from your neighbor’s garage rather than buying it online. It is possible to build our communities differently.

And it’s quite possible that using up, wearing out, and making do in some aspects of our lives and communities will prevent the very real possibility that we’ll have to do without in others.

Authentic Participation When Civic Discourse is Highly Polarized 

By Ken Snyder of PlaceMatters

The greater Chattanooga region has embarked upon an impressive effort to engage three states and 14 counties in a regional conversation about the future of the area. In November they invited the public to hear presentations from three consultant teams competing to provide technical and planning support for the overall process.

Over 350 people attended the session. During Q&A the meeting got confrontational at times. It was clear a fair number of residents had come to the event with concerns and questions about the project and to what extent there would be strings attached to Federal funds being pursued to support the initiative.

Last winter I gained a new appreciation for speed limits. During a month-long internship at the New York City Department of Transportation, I spent a lot of time working on safety initiatives to reduce speeding. I learned that 30 mph, the speed limit in most cities, is not arbitrary. A pedestrian hit by a vehicle going 40 mph is 3.5 times more likely to die than one hit at 30 mph. An entire campaign, “That’s Why It’s 30,” is built around this fact.

Coming from rural New England, speed limits have always been more of a nuisance than anything else. Slowing to 25 mph through an empty town, on a wide road with no crosswalks or sidewalks, sometimes feels silly. We do it to avoid a ticket, but I don’t often think about the real implications of speeding in these areas.

Several weeks ago while checking out the latest discussions at Wayne Senville’s Planning Commissioners Journal, my eye was drawn to the headline: “Plannerisms we can do without!”

Why is it, I’ve wondered, that planners and a myriad of other professionals rely on their own ingrown jargon to communicate with the rest of the world?

And, professional jargon aside, have you ever noticed that the more formal or professional the situation, the less direct the language? It’s almost that simple.

In a room filled with artwork, news clippings and photos, interested citizens spent the evening of November 15th celebrating Starksboro’s Art & Soul Civic Engagement project, which used art and storytelling to identify and enhance the community’s shared values.

The event, hosted in Bristol, Vermont’s Town Hall, aimed to share the stories and successes of the project, thank the key movers-and-shakers, acknowledge valuable partnerships, and inspire other communities to start their own creative community explorations.

Photo: Workshop participants take advantage of Belfast’s public art chairs while doing fieldwork.

Heart & Soul Community Planning is rooted in the idea that people share common values when it comes to what makes their cities and towns unique. Although the language people use may be similar across communities, the specifics of what people mean by that language can be quite different from place to place.

So how do you get beyond nebulous conversations about “sense of community” to a shared understanding of the specifics of your town? You get on the ground and figure it out.

Photo: Martina Rathgens (Flickr: size matters) [CC-BY-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

This morning on my way to work, I heard John Cougar Mellencamp’s “Born in a Small Town” on the radio. I cranked up the volume, rolled down the windows, and joined right in: “I was born in a small town, and I can breathe in a small town…”

As the words came out of my mouth, I felt a little hypocritical—I wasn’t born in a small town, I was born in Denver. (Incidentally, I am also able to breathe here in Denver, which is quite the feat.) What’s strange is, Denver feels like a small town. Each neighborhood has its own character, there’s intense loyalty to place, and it’s darn near impossible for me to go somewhere without running in to someone I know.

As part of our Heart & Soul Community Planning work with towns in the Northeast and Rocky Mountain regions, we at the Orton Family Foundation work to train residents in facilitation, story gathering, outreach and communication, scenario planning, implementation and stewardship.

We know our time with a community will end and the long-term success of our collaborative efforts depends on the community’s ability to carry on the challenging work of navigating change.

Many foundations and non-profits share this goal, but the difficulty of achieving it cannot be underestimated. Building sustained civic capacity requires immense dedication, awareness, encouragement and stewardship, and it is the linchpin to a community’s long-term success.