East Coast Kahuna

Vermont trip

During the summer we visited some spots in the state of Vermont. My wife, son and I picked up my daughter at the end of her basketball camp in the Adirondacks (about an hour north of Albany) and took a side trip to Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

At least in Ithaca, Vermont has a great reputation. The state is known for being "green". Environment has a high priority, the mountains are named "Green" (heard of the Green Mountain Boys?). We noticed that there weren't billboards on the highways - Vermont actually has a law against them.

Ithaca also has a reputation for being enlightened and environmental-conscious. We've had recycling of many items on the county level long before it started catching on (in Hawaii, they've only recently started deposits on bottle - it's ashame really, Hawaii is so dependent on tourism and they should be more proactive about taking care of their solid wastes - now that my Iolani classmate Mufi Hannemann is Mayor of Honolulu I expect things to get a lot better.)
I've heard of a lot of folks leaving Ithaca to retire in Vermont - and not only because the skiing is better, it's more the attitudes of the communites.

Vermont is also know as a place for upstart entrepreneurs (everyone has heard of Ben & Jerry's ice cream - we visited the factory). If I didn't already have deep roots in Ithaca, Vermont might be attractive for me in many respects - although I haven't researched the Asian-American aspects, the glimpse I had on this past trip showed limited Japanese influence.

posted by tjh14850 @ 12:40 PM