Connected in Vermont

Over the weekend I was reading and working up at our Vermont house. One of my tasks was to finish up some additional research on a sustainability/CR blog for posting on Monday. But when the weather cleared off at the end of the day, I decided to get out of the house and take a drive into Waitsfield for a walk around the village. Judy and I walked all the way up Main Street to the Old School House, then back up to Bridge Street and through the “tunnel” bridge, as Ollie calls it. The sweet, end of the day light inspired us to walk and photograph for a couple of hours.

On Monday, in the midst of all the Apollo 11 events, I got a Twitter message about a new follower, Jake Whitcomb. It turns out he works in Middlebury, Vermont as environmental program designer and co-founder of the non-profit Brighter Planet, whose focus is fighting global warming. Their advisory board is an environmental who’s who, including Terry Kellogg, Executive Director of One Percent for the Planet, and Mindy Lubber, President of Ceres, among other notable people.

It was a wow moment for many reasons.

One of my first blog posts about CSR was based in part on the Ceres principles. My weekend's work posted on Monday started off talking about Yvon Chouinard and One Percent for the Planet. But there were still more Vermont connections. The blog on the One Percent for the Planet website showed a picture of three young people standing in front of what looked like the Waitsfield "tunnel" bridge. They were summer interns who indeed had been photographed in front of the Waitsfield covered bridge, perhaps because their office is located just down the street in the Old School House we had walked by on Saturday.

I’m not surprised that leading experts and advocates for a sustainable planet live or are based in Vermont. That makes real sense to me. What is surprising are the tight connections between place - Mad River Valley, topic - corporate responsibility /sustainability, time - all in two days. A small world indeed.