E Pluribus Unum

When Al Gore got it so wrong several years ago (out of one many) he pointed out a fundamental difference in how some people think about the country. What has struck me on this trip was how different this part of the country is from where I live - and yet there are things about it which I find similar to the West.

We left the Cooperstown area today on the way to Vermont. Most of the trip was from small town New York to small town Vermont (that is, in part, a contradiction of terms - the largest town in Vermont is still very small). About half way through the trip we stopped near Saratoga to visit a friend who I had worked with in California who moved back to his home area after he retired. His house is on the lake in Saratoga and was a family "camp" until he rebuilt it several years ago - it is now a year round residence.

In my mind my friend has constructed an ideal retirement. He spends some time each year working in Africa on a project that he discovered by Googling "Volunteer Africa" - he decided to go there and lend his expertise in community building. He has now done that for several years. Each year he goes back and builds a bit more. He also does tutoring of the track staff at Saratoga Race Track. In both cases he discovered a need and figured out how to fill it. He is less concerned about making a mark than in figuring out a way to add something back to his community. The generosity of his spirit is quite compelling.

We found people on the whole trip who were friendly and helpful - most of the trip was on smaller roads with a lot of turns. The Google Maps were mostly right - so for both parts of the trip we found our way pretty easily. In one case we stopped to take the first picture and almost immediately a guy stopped and asked if we were lost - he then suggested a different way to get to Vermont - which because a bridge was out on the route we were going to take.

Tonight a small group of us saluted a colleague who has taken a job in a related field but outside what I do for a living. She is a good young professional who grew in her role in Vermont who is now working for the University of Vermont. She has a good career ahead of her. When this young lawyer began her career I got to know her because I knew her father. It has been fun to watch her advance.

The three pictures are somewhat representative of our day. The first is a classic house we saw on one of the back roads we drove. The architecture in this part of the country has a lot of these era of housing and also a lot of victorians. But there are also some classic brick houses. My friend in the Saratoga area described the winters as brutal - that seemed to be a common descriptor. The second looks a lot like most of the roads we were on. The third is of an moth that looks a lot like a Hummingbird. Obviously this part is very different from our time in New York City and even Cooperstown - but it shows the rich diversity of what puts us together.