Bloggle

The birds are singing, the trees are budding, and the snow is all but a dirty-white memory. The crocuses that herself planted last fall which are not blue or purple, but yellow — Yellow! Scott, I blame you – are blooming. By golly it must be mud season Spring. And if that weren’t sign enough of the change of seasons, the dance-card is full of ecologically-minded events, many right here in Vermont.

• Earth day is Tuesday, April 22nd. This year — in the face of looming climate crisis — it’s important to not only act locally (you can find an Earth Day event near you) but also to make some noise.

  If you’ve been following the seemingly endless string of political debates (don’t even get me started on the recent ABC debacle) you may have noticed something missing — the climate crisis. That’s not an accident. Most all of these debates have been sponsored by front groups for Big Oil, and they’ve been excruciatingly effective at keeping global climate change out of the conversation. Let your elected representatives know that you haven’t forgotten the climate crisis.

• Vermonters will want to note, too, that Small Dog Electronics is once again doing their Earth Day affiliated electronics recycling event. It’s free (recycling fees are being picked up by Small Dog’s sponsoring partners) and it’s a great way to keep heavy metal “e-waste” out of Vermont landfills. Be sure to note, too, that it takes place Saturday, April 19th.

• Green Up Day is, as always, the first Saturday in May — this year, May 3^rd. Green Up Vermont is in its 38^th year, and this time ’round more than 12,000 volunteers will be lined up along the state’s highways, byways and streams, bagging and hauling off junk and garbage revealed by the snowmelt.

So get on out there and get your green on!

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I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

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Today is VOTR day. To those of you who haven’t been paying attention to United States presidential politics — whether because you’re a non US citizen or because you have your head buried in the sand — today is a remarkable day, and for a number of reasons.

Today the states of Vermont, Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island cast their votes in the presidential primaries (hence, VOTR, and yes; I’m inordinately chuffed that Vermont is listed first, if only for the purpose of a syncopic acronym.) In most presidential election years, this wouldn’t mean much; the race is usually decided long before Vermont’s very few delegates come into play.

But this isn’t any old race. It’s an historic event.

It’s quite likely that the outcome of this race will decide whether the oval office is inhabited by somebody — anybody — other than still another graying, white man. Unless, of course, something terribly unlikely occurs and John McCain is elected, presumably for the sole purpose of perpetuating the graying-white-man winning streak, as it seems he has little else to offer.

Even in that unlikely event, the outcome of this year’s presidential election is certain to have one result progressive-thinking folk can all get behind: the election of an individual whom the neoconservatives despise; an individual who may single-handedly cause the denizens of the hate-radio right to silence themselves, if only to keep from drowning in their collective froth and spume.

It truly is the dawning of a new day in America.

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Portland’s Stumptown Coffee Roasters has been doing some mighty fine things on the ground in Rwanda for a while now. Stumpies have been key players in the PEARL Project, a public / private partnership with USAID and Michican State University to revitalize agriculture – and life — in post-genocide Rwanda. PEARL has, by any measure, done great things, and among them it’s been instrumental in putting Rwandan coffee on the world stage as an emerging — and now preeminent — coffee origin. (Really! have you tasted Rwandan coffee lately? All kinds of awesome.)

Above and beyond PEARL, however, Duane Sorenson – Stumptown’s founder and chief protagonist — found a need that had gone unmet. The people harvesting coffee in Rwanda’s hilly terrain had to carry heavy loads of coffee cherry from remote growing regions to washing stations. And they had to do it quickly. Cheaply. Reliably. No matter the weather.

Rwandan coffee farmers needed bikes.

Back in Portland, Duane started putting things together. He rounded-up a network of avid sport cyclists and bike messengers (naturally… most all those messengers were fueled by Stumptown coffee already) and started fundraising. He held benefit dinners. Awareness-raising rides. And in a matter of months he had spun off a non-profit organization to focus on the effort, and had 260 custom-built cargo bikes in the ground in Rwanda.

Today Bikes to Rwanda is a year old. (Happy Birthday!) And to-date they have delivered 400 cargo bikes to Rwanda, opened a bicycle repair shop, arranged innovative financing for coffee growers and more. (Maybe you should think about giving them a tax-deductible birthday present?)

Learn all about it: watch the (awesomely) GOOD video, produced by Good Magazine.

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