#VT – My “seeking snowshoe” post received many responses and we were able to get out and enjoy the fresh snow because of our generous neighbors. Happy New Year to all – we are lucky to live in such a great community!

That was posted by Laura on the Huntington Front Porch Forum today.  Happy New Year indeed!

In 1925 the French anthropologist Marcel Mauss published his classic essay “The Gift,” which argued that contrary to the textbook account of primitive man merrily trading beaver pelts for wampum, no society was ever based on barter. The dominant practice for thousands of years was instead voluntary gift-giving, which created a binding sense of obligation between potentially hostile groups. To give a gift was not an act based on calculation, but on the refusal to calculate. In the societies Mauss studied most closely — the Maori of New Zealand, the Haida of the Pacific Northwest — people rejected the principles of economic self-interest in favor of arrangements where everyone was perpetually indebted to someone else.

“Perpetually indebted to someone else”… this sums up so much of what I love about my community life in Burlington, VT right now.  We have a critical mass of people who willingly have jumped into debt with each other… not monetary debt, rather favor debt.

I was raised to value making my contribution to others while taking great pains to avoid accepting the same from others.  So were lots of folks here.  But that’s a recipe for setting yourself apart, for isolation.  As my family has learned to accept favors from those around us, it’s made our contributions to others that much more meaningful and personal.

Now, through Front Porch Forum, MealTrain, our church, school, neighborhood and other means, we ask and offer favors daily from hundreds of friends, neighbors and acquaintances.  Each request works against isolation and lays down another thread in the web of community that supports our life.  This is a crucial asset… as much as our house, my job, the kids’ college savings.

My brother and his family are planning a holiday visit to see us in Vermont this month.  We could all jam into our house, but I know they would sleep better if we had more space for the two families.  Hotels are expensive and distant… B&Bs too.  So, I put the word out to neighbors and got several offers of empty houses that we could use on our block.  These neighbors are traveling out of state and are glad to share their home while they’re away.  We’ve done this a dozen times over the past few years… offering or asking for empty-house guest lodging.  Make that hundreds of times if we include other favors… meals, rides, tools, advice, kids stuff, labor, baby/pet sitting, on and on.

This is incredibly generous and trusting of all involved… but it’s also keeping each of us “perpetually indebted to our neighbors” in a way that makes our community stronger with each exchange.

You have made my life shine through Front Porch Forum.  I have met people, some of my own neighbors.  We have bought things, received free things, have new customers for our cord wood business.  Bless you all… this is so amazing.  My husband has lived here all his 56 years.  I have been here for 33 years.  We have ALL lost touch with each other.  Let the love shine!

Thanks Tammy!  The note above arrived via handwritten card in the P.O. Box, including a $25 contribution.  We’ve gotten hundreds of these testimonials… each one makes my day!

Best to leave it to FPF members… here’s a tiny sample of the Vermont spirit we’re seeing again and again…

I recently posted on Front Porch Forum a call to arms for clean up help at our new home in Richmond after Hurricane Irene.  Within 2 hours a fleet of kind, loving and generous people were at the house. Yesterday there were more. Words cannot express our deep feeling of gratitude. Although it has been difficult to be so intimately involved in such tragedy it has shone light on the things that matter most in the world. Community.

For those of you who were planning to come tomorrow morning, it would be lovely to see you and get a hug, but I think most of the volunteer-dirty-work has magically been taken care of.

- Eva Kauppila

In Moretown…

Our home is open for laundry, showers, water etc. We are also willing to run any errands into Waitsfield, Williston, anywhere! Also wondering if anyone needs pet supplies; food, liter, etc!  PLEASE CALL US.

- The Buskera

And in Middlesex…

I just wanted to express my appreciation to all of you great neighbors and local officials for posting important information on flooding (road conditions), heartfelt questions about flooding (how can we help?) and valuable answers about flooding (links and phone numbers).

I also want to thank Front Porch Forum for their extra effort in making the postings available right away. I know they are putting in a lot of extra work to get information out on behalf of many towns around the state hit hard by the flood.

I keep thinking of my favorite quote from President Calvin Coolidge — part of an impromptu speech he gave as he viewed Vermont’s recovery effort after the Great Flood of 1927. I am sure a lot of you have thought of it too:

“I love Vermont because of her hills and valleys, her scenery and invigorating climate, but most of all because of her indomitable people. They are a race of pioneers who have almost beggared themselves to serve others. If the spirit of liberty should vanish in other parts of the union and support of our institutions should languish, it could all be replenished from the generous store held by the people of this brave little state of Vermont.”

- Susan Clark

Wow. We stopped counting the number of kind and generous neighbors who offered us a fridge to borrow … it was at least 15!

THANK YOU to everyone for your generosity and support of our local business. And thanks to Front Porch Forum for giving us a way to access that generosity.

With our borrowed fridge in place, we are happy to say that the bakery hours will continue uninterrupted. We look forward to seeing you on Fridays at the Richmond Farmer’s Market and/or on Saturday mornings on our front porch.

And if you were one of the many people who contacted us with a fridge offer, please stop by for a little “thank you” treat!

Thanks again,
Patti Delaney & Dean Menke
Backdoor Bakery

Neighborhoods have become much less important as social units, with people much less likely to interact with, or even know, their neighbors… Online community is growing and filling in some of the gap.  But it doesn’t replicate all the functions of face-to-face interaction.  (Full quote here… see “Economies of Reciprocity.”)

Schor discusses competing theories that may explain this… and looks at people, projects and places pushing back on this troubling trend.  A compelling read.

If there’s anything I’ve learned while helping to organize Common Security Clubs in communities around the nation, it’s that there is no “one size fits all” club. They are as different as the individuals who comprise them.

But a common thread is that clubs provide a way for people get to know each other. It’s an old-fashioned concept—knowing your community—but it’s badly needed in our time of increasing insecurity and isolation.

“We usually spend about 45 minutes on a ‘check-in’ with each other,” says Paul Miller in Boston, whose club has been meeting for two years. “The focus is simply on hearing each other, and providing support whenever possible. People get to air their concerns and receive affirmation.”

“We’re taking baby steps toward a new type of community,” adds Jared Gardner, a facilitator in Portland, Oregon. “We want people to feel connected and empowered. That’s what the groups are all about.”

In the past, neighbors knew each other and engaged more naturally in mutual aid, sharing common resources and helping those in need. Nowadays, our mutual aid muscles are out of shape and pretty flabby. Clubs help us to start flexing and stretching them again, little by little.

Can Americans share? Or, at least, not steal?

That question hung over the rows of identical fire-red bicycles lined up last week for the start of Capital Bikeshare in Washington, the nation’s largest bike-sharing program.

Similar programs also began this year in Denver and Minneapolis, with another to start in Miami this fall. At the same time, start-up companies with names like SnapGoods, Share Some Sugar and NeighborGoods are trying to make money by using social networks to let people borrow or lend their stuff, either free or for a fee.

These companies are looking to join a familiar list — including Netflix, Zipcar and Pandora, the online radio service — built on access to goods and services, rather than ownership.

But the question is whether most consumers would ever accept time share ownership of a bike or a blender. After a bike share program began in Denver, one gubernatorial candidate in Colorado attacked the program as un-American.

But some scholars say that the Internet — by fostering collaboration on a communal, open platform — has changed the way Americans think about sharing and ownership. Collaborative habits online are beginning to find expression in the real world.

“I thought that online was an exception,” said Yochai Benkler, co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, whose coming book, “The Penguin and the Leviathan,” focuses on the explosion of cooperative endeavors, both online and off. “I now am more confident that the phenomenon is not limited to online but is a general phenomenon of human behavior.”

So far, he said, there have been no formal studies into whether the Internet has affected offline cooperation or attitudes about ownership…

This kind of offline sharing happens everyday in via Front Porch Forum in our Vermont service region.

I’m real jazzed up about a recent FPF interaction I had and I would like to share it with my lovely neighbors.  I was recently in need of a bike trailer, so I posted the request to FPF, and got a number of solid replies. (Thanks to all for that!)  One woman, Julie, replied that she had an old bike trailer I could have.  Have!  When I came to get it she told me that she had had it sitting in her garage for a long time, unsure of what to do with it.  Enter FPF.  Now she has more garage space, I’ve got a bike trailer, and yesterday I took my compost down to the Intervale and did three loads of laundry SANS CAR!!  Thanks to Julie, FPF, and all you grand neighbors.

Other benefits… now Katie has met several more of her nearby neighbors, which helps to weave the fabric of community.  Along the same lines, all of her neighbors who read FPF got to share in this exchange… a lovely shot in the arm.

As Front Porch Forum is high on our list of FPF we appreciate about this neighborhood and this community, we decided to make a financial contribution to support this very worthy cause.   We encourage you to do the same in whatever amount fits your budget.  Clearly we all want this forum to be around for a long, long time!

Where else can you possibly find out about all of the amazing things happening right in the neighborhood, and engage in such lively dialogue with your neighbors about Burlington happenings?  Our FPF is tailored to the ONE and its fantastic blend of personalities, opinions, and politics — so evident with each edition landing in our in-box.  Our family calendar routinely fills up each week (and quickly!) with events and activities we read about on FPF — often they are free and within easy walking distance.  Bumping into friends once there only further reminds us of the value of FPF.

FPF has helped us to…  meet our neighbors through buying, selling, and bartering,  find a dog sitter,  learn about nearby businesses we love to support, formulate our opinions regarding local politics, better connect our kids to local sports, theatre, music and art, sample new and delicious foods, and advertise a variety of school-related events with outstanding results.  There is nothing else out there that helps us feel connected and stay connected in quite the same way, whether it be by posting information or by reading someone else’s news.   Financially supporting this local venture helps to ensure that a quality service that we all increasingly rely on stays viable and strong during these trying economic times.  Supporting this local Vermont venture just feels right.

We hope you too will support Front Porch Forum!  Now’s the time.

-Siobhan Donegan
-Vince Brennan, Burlington School Commissioner

And another note just arrived from the O.N.E…

I’m also urging my neighbors to support Front Porch Forum.  Look at what we all gain by gathering online to share tips, questions, and information that bind all of us together based on shared interests and concerns.  During this season of gratitude, please consider donating to preserve the wonderful effort behind FPF.  Thank you!

-Megan Humphrey

UPDATE: Another nice note from nearby the two above today… from Maggie…

I loaned a guitar to someone for four weeks and was unexpectedly rewarded with baked goods!  Thanks for building community.