Burlington, VT

Post-Election Addendum: ::SIGH:: I nailed the Brexit outcome so I was surprised by my surprise that evening. I was rooting for you Bernie :/ Maybe I'm an optimist because I do see hope. When my class in elementary school befriended Bill on Capitol Hill I didn't think I would ever live to see an African-American President let alone a strong Third Party candidate shortly after his second term. Maybe we're almost there*, almost to the CHANGE we all crave for in D.C., but maybe in four years. Or maybe in two, when we vote to change up Congress a bit. So for the time being let's have faith in his steep, steep, steep, learning curve in D.C. 

* Nix that, we are there. Our antiquated voting system just needs to effin' change along with D.C.


There are so many answers to the elusive "What is love?" But here's my test: as batty as the person sleeping next to you makes you feel, you have no urge to smother them with your pillow. In fact, the opposite happens. You feel your heart swelling, no, expanding -- and this is the key. If it doesn't happen you may not love the person, though you may be in love. In a slightly different version of my test, the one applied to places because we do have relationships with them, Bellingham failed over and over again. It just wasn't meant to be when I felt my lungs -- not my heart -- expanding to shout, "Ay yi yi, you probably have bananas on your kitchen counter!" To the often asked, "Did you bike here?" Here being any establishment built using reclaimed ___, selling local ___ and home-brewed ___. My cushionless ass had better things to prove than a point by enduring the pain on a mildly cushioned seat for more than 20 minutes in the rain, hail, snow, and occasional sun.

Yet, after our separation, I longed to visit Burlington for all the reasons I was in love with Bellingham: water, the earth in one's food, and connectedness. Oh, and chocolate. Lake Champlain Chocolates are some of my favourite building blocks of serotonin. When I signed up for the tour after eating my sample, I was as happy as happy can be. Taking a seat in front of the glass window separating the addicts from their dealers, I wondered why they were working in a lab rather than Willy Wonka's chocolate factory...

"Welcome to Lake Champlain factory! To our right is our factory. Since we're a chocolatier and not a bean to bar chocolate maker, I'll be providing the tour from your seats." #saywhaaaat

Not in Burlington, VT -- the birthplace Ben & Jerry's and rBGH protests, the first city in the U.S. to run on renewable energy, the only city in America that has foot pedals on doors to exit public restrooms (#genius) -- that Burlington, VT sells chocolate that isn't made from scratch? Yeah... and Ben & Jerry's sold out to Unilever in 2000... and there's some suspicion how the city may be cutting down trees to "renew" its renewable energy.

My former quasi-Bellingham self would have shown no mercy for such shady dealings. Funny how we can become more tolerant with age because I totally get it now like Obama. It's all a clusterfuck closer to the top, more so if your heart is in the right place. And I think Burlington's is, including Lake Champlain Chocolates. We can't knock a company for not sourcing all of their ingredients in 1983. We can, however, see their genius. They decided to combine local cream, honey, and maple syrup with a not local but loved by many locals ingredient, chocolate. By the end of the "tour" I was thinking about things on a larger scale, "It seems like a no-brainer, amazing how more companies didn't do this back then."

Glorified tree house

Glorified sundial

From what I've read (without going into a full-blown research or investigation because I have people to do and things to see... #kidding), what happened to Ben & Jerry wasn't 100% under their control because they were a public company with public stakeholders. If you've ever waited tables or taken someone's order, you know what the general public is like: mostly bad, some good. So when the Benefit Corporate Legislation* finally passed ten years after their sale, Vermont was the second state to adopt it.

Taking all this history into account and the chance that Burlington is chopping down trees to renew their energy in 2016 seems slim. Even if they did chop a tree here and there to top-off the needed weight of biomass (which is usually wood waste from mills etc.), are we still going to fault them because the entire city is running on renewable energy? And yes, there's the renewable vs. clean and carbon-free debate -- but nuclear is clean. See what I mean, clusterfuck. No one one thing or process has a halo around it. The real thing we should be focusing on is good for the greater whole.

Now, who will I vote for this November... #ineedtojoininstagramsoicancreatemyownhashtagtorelaymyinnerconflict


* Glad you asked, from Wikipedia: A benefit corporation's directors and officers operate the business with the same authority as in a traditional corporation but are required to consider the impact of their decisions not only on shareholders but also on society and the environment.

Length of Stay

Two days and one night

Docking Index

      

Seven anchors. True, I love it a tiny bit more than Bellingham because they get the clusterfuck, bake the best bagels I've had in my entire life and have radio stations that play all the R&B jams I grew up with (I nearly caused an accident when I heard Groove Theory on the radio). Sadly, they also have a phenomenon I generally try to avoid, lake effect snow.