MLT NEWSLETTER

Spring 2011

Cultivating Resilient Communities

Most readers of this newsletter know of if not actually know Maynard and with his two articles, you will get the idea that he is doing what he has always done, working towards a time when our energy picture won’t be dominated by fossil fuels. Another article is a contribution by another well known figure in the Kalamazoo Area, Roger Ulrich, who founded Lake Village Homestead in the very early 1970’s. Like Maynard, Roger taught at Western Michigan University, in his case, in Psychology becoming a nationally known behaviorist. There are other similarities between Maynard and Roger such as an agricultural and Mennonite background. I don’t think this newsletter has ever featured Roger, but it is long overdue! Prolific contributor Rita Bober writes about the synergisms of the “Three Sisters” culture.

AGAINST THE CURRENT: EFFORTS OF A TYPICAL TRANSITION INITIATIVE

Maynard Kaufman

As a young professor who helped to organize an Environmental Studies program during the energy crisis of the 1970s at my university, I was very quickly made aware of the connection between cheap and ample energy and cheap and ample food. The energy crisis was seen as a threat to our food supply. This recognition led me to take a half-time leave of absence and start an experimental “School of Homesteading” in 1973. There students learned the arts and skills of a self-reliant living in the countryside with special emphasis on food. Given the back-to-the-land movement of the 1970s, our “living-learning” kind of School had more applicants than we could handle. It was a teachable moment. I also worked with a group of organic farmers who organized at this time, and became a leader in the organic food and farming movement in Michigan during the next thirty years. To bring growers and eaters together I organized Michigan Organic Food and Farm Alliance in 1991.

LOCAL TRANSITION ACTIVITIES

Needless to say, this background experience helped me recognize the importance of the Transition movement when it moved from England to this country in 2008. This movement revived my interest in community organization around food issues. Our local Transition group organized in 2009 and was recognized as the 49th in this country, where there are now over 80. Because our Initiating Group included people from two counties in Southwest Michigan, we (Transition Van Buren-Allegan) organized as a “Temporary Initiating Hub” with a mission to catalyze and support Transition Towns in our area. At this time groups are organizing in five small towns in our area.

People who support the Transition Initiative often do so because they feel that governmental agencies have neglected to tell people about, or help them prepare for, the predicaments we face: peak oil and climate change. Politicians usually protect business interests by promoting economic growth. Peak oil and climate change present a challenge to economic growth. The transition model thus by-passes political action by working to organize communities on a very local level. The idea is to help people recognize our predicament and to develop strategies for local resilience. Resilience, in this context, means that we learn to depend on local abilities and resources rather than on commodities produced and made available through the use of fossil fuels.

The public outreach of our Transition group was to present two kinds of programs. The first was to offer films and discussions on peak oil and climate change. At these events I was surprised to discover that there was skepticism about the notion that peak oil was imminent and outright disbelief in the likelihood that humans are responsible for global warming.

The second kind of event we sponsored was what we called “reskilling” workshops to remind people of the many self-reliant abilities our grandparents had before oil did our work. These workshops were quite enthusiastically received, with much greater attendance than the events focused on the bad news of the predicaments. People clearly preferred the hands-on activities and were open to the recognition that these skills of the past, especially those related to local food production, may be needed again.

What this local response told us is that people know there are problems and are willing to prepare for them but they do not want to consciously focus on them. This local response seems to reflect a national sensibility. People who get their information from popular media do not know the facts about the predicaments we face. Many people still ask for a definition of the term “peak oil.” Rising prices of gasoline are obvious, but the tendency is to blame the government for excessive regulation, or environmentalists, or banks for not making capital available, and this tendency seems to take precedence over the recognition that there may actually be geological limits out there.

CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE TRAGEDY OF DENIAL

The issue of climate change is similar. Until about ten years ago, informed by a consensus among climate scientists, most people generally accepted the possibility that the burning of fossil fuels was contributing to climate change. In 2004, even the Department of Defense emphasized the danger of climate change and urged that it “should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern.” Then, as Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed went on to say, between 1998 and 2005, ExxonMobil funneled about $16 million to various groups with the aim of manufacturing uncertainty about the scientific consensus. These dissenting claims about climate change were reported by corporate-controlled media to present a so-called fair and balanced view on the topic, both for and against the reality of climate change. Soon public opinion began to shift dramatically. Now there is a feeling of uneasiness about the climate, but a growing reluctance to concede that our addiction to fossil fuels could be causing global warming. According to a poll by the Pew Research Center there was a rapid decrease in the number of Republican voters who believed there was evidence of climate change, down to only 35% by 2009. Increasing numbers of Americans now believe climate change is a hoax.

Surely the corruption of science has encouraged this denial, but the roots of this denial are deep in the American ethos. John Michael Greer has argued that although we think of Christianity as our main religion, it is the myth or ideology of progress that is the real and effective civil religion in our society, and progress is measured by economic growth. The possibility of limits to growth is resisted and denied. People are glad to feel that peak oil and climate change are a hoax. Cheap energy has given us a prosperous and easy life, and the myth of progress tells us it will continue and improve. The possibility that it could end, that the current recession may be unrelieved, generates denial and anger. This is manifest in the irrational and extravagant statements made by spokespersons in the Tea Party movement.

It is tragic that governments, who seem to believe that the prosperity of energy corporations is more important than the preservation of the earth, are unable to take action to save the earth. And it is tragic that the people, who are led to think that maintaining economic growth will preserve our way of life, are thereby choosing the more destructive option. Although a deliberate reduction in the rate of fossil fuel use may damage the economy, the long-term costs of runaway global warming are likely to be even worse. This is a predicament in which we lose either way. Many people would prefer to pay the bill later, or let their children pay for it. But it would be better to act now, before those “tipping points” are reached that automatically accelerate the global warming process. Since the United States still emits more greenhouse gases, per capita, than any other nation, we are the ones who must act. Although China’s new industries now generate the largest total amount of greenhouse gases, China and India are not likely to be first to reduce their emissions as they try to improve their standard of living. And they produce the goods we import and consume.

COLLAPSE AND TRANSFORMATION

It is in the context of the threat posed by climate change that the Transition movement, along with hundreds of other organizations and movements, is urging a deliberate reduction in the burning of fossil fuels. We could hope that the end of cheap oil would curtail global warming, but the substitutes for conventional oil, such as ethanol or tar sands, generate even more greenhouse gases. Ethanol, produced with subsidies to agribusiness, is raising food prices for the poor around the world. The oil and coal should be left in the ground. In saying this, I can understand that some readers may see such statements as the apocalyptic ravings of a madman. Environmental warnings have indeed often been overstated and given an apocalyptic tone. But, as philosopher Clive Hamilton reminded us, the risks of climate change have actually been understated, perhaps because climate scientists are more conservative than environmental writers, or perhaps because the warming process is more rapid than was expected. In any case, people who envision the end of progress are likely to move on to the apocalyptic myth of the end of the world. This is an occupational hazard for those who take climate change seriously, and it can be paralyzing. We see the eventual collapse of our industrial society because the oil on which it depends is limited, along with the earth’s ability to absorb greenhouse gases.

But apocalyptic awareness is itself a transitional phase; endings open to new beginnings. As a religious form, apocalypse is revelation; the end of the old world leads on to visions of a new earth. This is concisely expressed in the title of a recent book on climate change: Evolution’s Edge: the Coming Collapse and Transformation of our World. The sustainable world we hope for cannot emerge until the old industrial world has collapsed, at least as a possibility in our consciousness. Once this happens we are ready to build the new society along more agrarian lines. An article I published in the early 1970s on the new homesteading movement was subtitled “from utopia to eutopia,” from the no place of industrial society to the good place on the land.

Let us see how this might work out in food systems, which is where Transition activists often begin. Although most of our food is now produced by energy-intensive industrial methods, food prices will rise as the cost of energy rises. This will reinforce local food production and marketing, which has already had phenomenal growth. It may be serendipitous that the local and organic food movement emerged even before it was needed. In fact, people who raise their own food find it deeply satisfying and enjoyable. Or it may be that ordinary people, cells in the cultural organism, felt the need for local self-reliance and acted on it. This seems to be what happened in the new homesteading movement of the 1970s. The back-to-the-land movement in that decade was a surprise to demographers and cultural historians.

Now, as prices for energy-intensive food rise and markets adjust to that, the structure of Agriculture will adapt and land will gradually be made available for small-scale producers. Thus the end of the old system can make way for the new. Could such a modest change be seen as a harbinger of a more general transformation? As more and more people raise and buy food locally, food becomes a central, and centering, activity in their lives. New ways of thinking soon follow these new activities. Thus food provides grounding for the desired transformation of consciousness, a hope we can all share with New Age thinkers.

SOURCES CITED

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization. Pluto Press, 2010

John Michael Greer, The Long Descent: a User’s Guide to the End of the Industrial Age.  New Society Publishers, 2008

Clive Hamilton, Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth about Climate Change.  Earthscan, 2010

Maynard Kaufman, “The New Homesteading Movement: From Utopia to Eutopia” in Sallie TeSelle, (ed.) The Family, Communes and Utopian Societies. Harper Torchbooks, 1972

Graeme Taylor, Evolution’s Edge: The Coming Collapse and Transformation of our World.  New Society Publishers, 2008

SUGGESTED PULL QUOTES

“Between 1998 and 2005 Exxon-Mobil had funneled about $16 million to various groups with the aim of manufacturing uncertainty about the scientific consensus [on climate change.]”

“We should act soon, before those ‘tipping points’ are reached that automatically accelerate the global warming process.”

“The Transition movement, along with hundreds of other organizations and movements is urging a deliberate reduction in the burning of fossil fuels.’

“The sustainable world we hope for cannot emerge until the old world has collapsed, at least as a possibility in our consciousness.”

BIOGRAPHICAL STATEMENT

Maynard Kaufman enjoys working on the development of a Transition Initiative in his town, including a community currency along the lines of a Local Exchange and Trading System.

Lake Village Homestead

A Letter by Roger Ulrich December 27, 2010

I received the fall 2010 MLT Newsletter: Cultivating Resilient Communities and I thought it might be of interest to you, if I was to share some thoughts regarding these words that were used in relation to MLT and the Transition Movement. It appears that the MLT board agreed at the MLT August Meeting to work with the Transition Van Buren-Allegan group to educate people about the key issues of peak oil, climate change, economic decline, and resilience as the goals for each group are similar.

Certainly the issues that you have included as concerns of the Transition Movement are issues that we folks at the Lake Village Homestead Farm CO-OP have been considering since our inception and in fact were the issues I lived with as a youth growing up in the “Anabaptist Amish Mennonite” culture that existed in the area surrounding the towns and cities of Central Illinois. Every last on of my relatives and cousins became bankers, lawyers, ministers, politicians, teachers. C. Henry Smith was an older cousin received a PhD from U of Chicago, cousin Tim was President at Heston and among other things taught at Blufton. Cousins Willard and Milton both cousins and each with a PhD were educators, Willard at Goshen, Milton at Lake Forest. In my Dad’s case he became an owner and manager of a John Deere Implement Company Store. Beginning in about 1924, Dad started working off the farm from which Grandpa C.M Ulrich with his eleven children made their livelihood. He worked with his team of mules helping build U.S. 24 which went through Eureka. He also hauled peas, sweet corn and pumpkins and other crops from farms to the Eureka Canning factory, and soon after turning 21 years old started working full time at the Eureka grain elevator. This work he did until about 1927 when he married Della Smith and went into business with her father, granddad C.H. Smith, another farmer, selling and trading John Deere tractors and farm implements for money and horses which were being no longer respected as the “bringers” of energy for tilling and harvesting at the same level as were the modern GAS GUZZLING Technological Wonders called tractors and trucks. The horses Dad took in on trade were then resold to be made into meat for the French and Belgians who were less fussy when it came to eating horses that were Amish Mennonites.

Once again, speaking of “Transition Movements”, those days defined a Transition Movement beyond words!! A “get bigger or get out” attitude (before Earl Butts) was fostered by banks, Universities, attorneys, politicians, you name it. All of it was a part of what led to an economic crash that by 1936 left my Dad broke and out of the tractor business. The farmers couldn’t pay dad for the tractors and other farms stuff because somehow the wheat, oats, corn, soybeans, pumpkins, peas, and hay didn’t bring in enough money (even when you fed foodstuffs through hogs, sheep, chickens, cattle, etc, etc.) to pay for the tractors they bought on time.

So my other cousins and I went to school; forgot for the most part how to farm but did well with number 2 pencils, marking True or False, A,B,C,D or all of the above on High School and College tests. We graduated, got cars and “better jobs: and some of us like Maynard Kaufman and I received PhD’s and talked and wrote our way to the innards of Academia and back out again onto the Earth where what we learned from our original family farms began to make more and more sense to us. When I looked around in horror to find that far too many folks had been pushed and pulled into lifestyles and a brainwashing via our education system(that left Honors College kids at WMU thinking that it hurt the mother hen when the baby chickens nurse with those hard little beaks and food was “no big deal” that you get at Meijer’s, or restaurants like Zazio’s or Big Macs at McDonald’s), I figured we needed another transition.

Thus starting around 1966, I began to work toward the goal of getting some land upon which there could be initiated a community like B.F. Skinner’s Walden Two. That all happened in about 1971 and I soon found that I wasn’t getting much help keeping alive on the land from Harvard types. Skinner told me he didn’t know anything all that much about farming. He had them milking Herefords in an early, pre-published version of Walden Two until some farmer he knew explained the difference between beef breeds and milk breeds. Also any fool farm kid who has ever been around sheep in any serious fashion would sense that a story in which the wise elders of the community (i.e. Walden Two) who explained to visitors that a string was all that was necessary to confine sheep since years back the grandparents had been raised within an electric wire fence… was bullshit!

I can tell you the early years at Lake Village were rough especially when it came to raising food, planting gardens, canning, handling goats, sheep, chickens, cattle, pigs, (My God, Pigs!), it was at this juncture that I began to see that I had to forget about relying so much on the written and spoken word but rather (for heaven’s sake) find some people who knew something about the Earth not because of what they said or had written or read, but rather what they could do.

To make a long story short we found ourselves, heading down to Northern Indiana and getting in touch with distant Amish cousins who have the best record in the nation for the lowest rate of high school drop outs, i.e. zero. The trick of course was that they did not allow their kids to go the H.S. in the first place and thus take the first steps towards the world of Publish or Perish…, make a lot of money and buy all the gas and oil you need. I want to emphasize that I’m not against education, I am for it big time. Just don’t make it synonymous solely with a piece of paper called a School Diploma or a College Degree.

In short, we at Lake Village have been trying to reverse the Transition which took my dad and millions like him off the farm to where they were all convinced to drive cars and not a horse and buggy, and to plow and harvest with power coming from the oil that we kill for.

Finally I see also in your Newsletter that you have listed people giving talks, workshops and advice initiating educational and working programs in communities. Most important for me is the question: Do you by chance know of anyone who would like to live and work on a working farm like ours who isn’t doing so at the moment and would at least like to try it for a day or so? If you do, have them contact us, we could use some hands in the dirt. In return we have land, housing, food and some cash that we could share with them that hopefully would make their adventure gratifying in more ways that one.

I think it would be a good thing if your group and our Lake Village family were to explore further ways in which we might join forces as we move down the path to still another Transition, Armageddon or Heaven, call it what you will.

Roger Ulrich

Visit www.lakevillagehomestead.org for more information! (ed.)

The Three Sisters

By Rita Bober

Gitchi Manitou, Great Spirit, gave the People all living plants. The People learned how to live with those plants and this interaction made it possible for them to survive. Jack Weatherford in his book, Indian Givers, How The Indians of the Americas Transformed The World, describes how Natives of the Americas gifted the rest of the world with knowledge of many species of plants previously unknown. These include white and sweet potatoes, sunflowers, amaranth, quinoa, chilies, beans, corn, squashes, peanuts or groundnuts, wild rice, among other edible plants. Native people were also known for having “chacras” or traditional Indian farming plots back in the jungle which today sound a lot like “edible forests” or permaculture gardens. For over five hundred years, Native farmers have been teaching others how to grow and process plants. Some of us are beginning to listen.

By the Late Woodland period of history, about 500-1600 A.D., many of these plants had been brought from South America through Central America and Mexico to most of North America where they changed the hunter-gatherer lifestyles of Native Peoples in this area. The People developed strains of corn adapted to shorter growing seasons and used a mixed crop field system that enabled them to improve their agricultural base to a more subsistence economy. The Three Sisters garden evolved from this early traditional Indian farming system. What exactly is the Three Sisters system of gardening?

The most common vegetable plants grown in earlier times were corn, beans, and squash. For thousands of years, they have been planted together, eaten together, and celebrated together as a symbol of the interconnectedness of all life. The ancient Native peoples planted these vegetables in a particular way that enhanced the growth and viability of each of them. Without modern scientific knowledge, The People knew that these three plants complemented each other – the corn would grow tall and allow the pole beans to climb its stalks. While the corn depleted some nutrients from the soil, the beans would replenish nitrogen in the soil and help the plants to grow faster. The squash plants with their large leaves, provide shade to prevent “weeds” from growing and hold moisture to help the plants during a dry season. Corn was planted first in mounds spaced about four feet apart. The small mounds or hills hold moisture better thus helping to stabilize the soil. In the book Buffalo Bird Woman’s Garden: Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians, by Gilbert L. Wilson, Buffalo Bird Woman describes how she planted six to eight corn seeds in the inner circle (two in each direction), thinned to the best 3-4 plants. Then when the corn was about four inches high, the pole beans were planted close to the growing corn. Around the perimeter of the circle of corn and beans, the squash were planted.

What varieties of seeds should one use? It is best to grow heirloom or open-pollinated seeds. Native peoples had many types of corn including soft, 8 rowed flint, dent and even popcorn. They came in many colors, white, yellow, red, black, purple or blue, and calico or multi-colored. Pod, Miami, and Tom Thumb popcorn are some of the names of these corns. Beans included mostly dry beans such as Hidatsa Shield, True Red Cranberry, and Cherokee Trail of Tears. Squash included acorn, butternut, pumpkins, and gourds.

The Grandmothers knew many ways to prepare the corn they had harvested. In cooking the Three Sisters, they seemed to know that combining these three vegetables resulted in a complete nutritional meal. Today we know that corn lacks two essential amino acids – lysine and tryptophane as well as riboflavin and niacin. These are supplied by the beans. Squash are rich in carbohydrates and Vitamin A and provide vegetable fats that cannot be gotten from corn and beans.

Corn is a plant that cannot cultivate or reseed itself. It needs a human hand to help. Today, we humans can continue The Three Sisters garden started thousands of years ago by Natives by planting our open-pollinated corn, dry beans and squash as the Ancient Ones did with mindfulness, care, and thanksgiving.

Here’s a Three Sisters recipe to try:

Three Sisters Corn Casserole

Vegetable oil spray 1 pint low-fat sour cream

2 eggs, beaten 1 pound frozen corn

1 pound cooked dry beans such as 1 pound squash, diced

Nodak pinto or Sequora bean 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter

1 cup yellow cornmeal ½ cup diced jalapeno peppers (optional)

½ cup diced Monterey Jack cheese Salt to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Coat a 13-by-9-by-2-inch baking dish with vegetable oil spray. Set aside. In a large mixing bowl, mix sour cream and eggs. Blend well. Add corn, beans, squash, butter, cornmeal, peppers if desired, cheese and salt to taste, mixing well after each addition. Pour into prepared baking dish. Bake 45 minutes or until golden brown. Makes 10 1-cup servings.

SCOTT WALL’S VISION IN A WORLD OF RISING ENERGY COSTS

Maynard Kaufman

One of South Haven’s more imaginative entrepreneurs unveiled a proposal for an agri-economic zone in what could he called the Black River Watershed. Recognizing that conventional industry has been leaving South Haven, Scott Wall argued for a collective effort that would build on the wealth of agricultural diversity in this area and process, store, develop second tier products, market and distribute what farmers produce. He suggested this might be a cooperative process that would improve income for existing farmers, open opportunities for new farmers, create jobs, and revitalize the city. Like most proposals for local business, he argued that money should stay in the community rather than be sucked out by transnational corporations.

Scott Wall and the other speakers at this meeting on March 31 agreed in a general way that agricultural methods should be “sustainable,” but, except for one speaker who mentioned only economic sustainability, there was little discussion of sustainability in an ecological context, and virtually no recognition that the energy basis of our society is changing rapidly. In the last nine years the price of oil went up from $20 per barrel to over $100 per barrel now. During these years prices rose because global demand was growing faster than the supply, and that demand keeps growing as the US, India and China continue to use more oil. Prices for oil and other forms of fossil fuel are likely to continue rising until, eventually, these high prices put a damper on the economy as they cause another recession so that demand is reduced. Rising costs of energy threaten the national economy, which is already precarious, and make local revitalization even more important.

As a member of the Transition Initiative, an international movement that urges less dependence on fossil fuels and helps communities develop resilience in the face of peak oil, I want to mention other reasons for localization. Although more people are raising vegetables and small fruit in their gardens already, many more are interested in reskilling workshops designed to help people regain the skills they lost as oil did our work for us. The threat of much higher prices for fuels may also prompt a back-to-the-land movement by middle class folks who still have some resources to make a change. This happened during the energy crisis of the 1970s.

The rising costs of burning fossil fuels to power the industrial economies of the world take a number of forms. There is the cost in dollars per barrel, as in the case of oil. Then there is the cost of lost jobs as recession slows the economy. In addition, there is the cost of the environmental damage that burning fossil fuels causes. This includes oil spills, as in the Gulf of Mexico or the spill into the Kalamazoo River east of Kalamazoo last summer, along with many other examples of such environmental damage. The ecological and political pollution caused by Shell in Nigeria, or the damage Chevron has done in Ecuador, come to mind. But the most long-lasting damage is the addition of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, to the atmosphere when fossil fuels are burned. These gases threaten to change our climate, create more violent storms, and raise ocean levels. Most of these costs are externalized, to be paid by our children and grandchildren, while energy corporations make obscene profits.

These energy considerations add urgency to the proposal for local economic activity. In fact, they will gradually force more local production. But it would be wise to keep energy considerations in mind as plans are made for an agri-economy. For example, strong emphasis should be placed on organic methods of production since they do not depend on pesticides and fertilizers made of fossil fuels. The making of compost, or bio-char, from local wastes may also be a collective process. As prices for conventional produce continue to rise, prices for organic produce will be competitive or lower. Organic methods of production use around 30% less energy. At this time people still buy products from the global supermarket which enjoys economies of scale, but when the rising cost of energy makes local produce cheaper people will shift to buying local.

The processing of locally-produced food in a world of expensive energy will require great ingenuity. There are processing facilities nearby, in Coloma or in Lawton. When, a few years ago, I inquired about processing organic produce on certain days, some were willing to do it. But they would need enormous volumes of produce, perhaps as much as the produce from four hundred acres. The relocalization of our food system will certainly need to be a cooperative effort.

Scott Wall’s vision of a regional agri-economy is both desirable and possible, but in a world constrained by expensive energy, it is also necessary for the future well-being of our community. It should have the support of people in the community. Although the large-scale processing needed to feed larger cities may be difficult, a local system of distribution will certainly be of help to people in the area who will find prices for imported food in the supermarket rising in tandem with rising energy prices. And with better marketing both old and new farmers will thrive along with more food-related jobs. Organic methods of production that are ecologically sustainable and energy-conserving will provide the resilience that will be needed as we move into uncertain times.

The Roots of OGM, Organic Growers of Michigan, a DVD.

A 48 minute video of a conversation between Founders: Judy Yaeger and Maynard Kaufman in 2010. Maynard and Judy discuss the origins (1973), character, evolution, obstacles confronted and demise (late 1990's) of Organic Growers of Michigan, one of the earlier such groups in the country. This Southwest Michigan chapter of OGM evolved into a statewide organization with many regional chapters. Order this DVD TODAY by sending $5.00 to the address on the membership form.

At the MLT Board meeting in January, I announced my intention to step aside as newsletter editor. A little history of this job is in order. Sally Kaufman was the first editor with her debut in 1979 with the first issue (this was at least 2 yrs after MLT’s inception). She was the trailblazer editor with many issues throughout the 1980’s. Shortly before her death in 1990 she passed it on to fellow board member Mike Phillips. Mike, literary aficionado that he is, wrote and solicited articles, oftentimes fiction, that described different aesthetic sides of nature and the back to the land movement. throughout the 1990’s. In 2000, when he had enough, it was my turn and over the next ten years I left my mark (at least I think I did, somebody can enlighten me as to what it is). But I feel my time is up and someone else should have this opportunity. And that person is none other than former board member Al (Swan) Huntoon who will be your newsletter host starting the next issue. Thank you!      Jon Towne