I am sitting at my desk in my tiny house in my tiny town in my tiny state. This is a state of 621,760 and one well-founded estimate says that in 2009 there were 300,000 wage earners paying taxes in this state. [CORRECTION!!! My friend Bill says: 310,000 income tax filers of whom 160,000 must pay something. The rest are income-sensitized out of any income tax liability."] That is, all the schools and all the roads are paid for by 160,000 people. In normal times, these two issues are hugely contentious at town meetings which determine the expenditures by local government. This town of 800 or so people has a $2 million school budget for 57 elementary school kids and 22 children who are bused to area middle and high schools. We are lucky that the town came out relatively unscathed though Rodney and Alida lost their sweet corn and there are sections of road out on North St. and West St.

My friend Emmett came by this morning with 5 lovely garden tomatoes. I gave him a yellow squash and some patty pan squash and some sun gold tomatoes. Linda and Ursula are drowning in a half bushel of tomatoes for sauce, from another neighbor's garden. I describe gardeners as a generous breed. Sometimes we are too generous.

But I am struck by this generosity at a time when there are people who can't get out of their homes because of the road closures and bridges that have washed out.There is an estimate of 250 road closures state-wide due to Hurricane Irene.One friend can't get to her job in a town a half hour from here, across the washed out east-west Rt. 4. Her father leaves his truck at the paved road and gets on the 4 wheeler at the top of a logging road to get home--before dark. The small bridge to his trailer was washed out. Multiply that by tens of thousands.

I am actually longing for some protein and since I don't eat meat and eat fairly little poultry, that means fish. And there isn't any in the freezer.I can drive to the town with the supermarkets - that section of road is open. Not everyone can. Multiply that by some thousands.

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So I am thinking ...I am teaching a class in NYC in a newly minted program in Sustainable Interior Environments, and the first class was drowned out by Hurricane Irene. I am teaching students I have never met, by email and the internet. Certainly driving to NYC is not a sustainable solution but the train system is a disaster, and it won't be easy to get to Boston to take the bus to NYC which had been my plan.

And that's not much more sustainable than driving to NYC in the first place.

I suppose I am hyper-aware of what sustainability means when the road system has failed. Vermont has few roads to begin with - two major north south roads and a handful of major east west roads, and three southern/central ones had been severed as of last night.

So I have asked my student-colleagues to define sustainability. And they will no doubt talk about "green materials" and low energy use.

And I am thinking that sustainability has something to do with living in communities that don't require a trip to the supermarket for protein (which if I ate meat I could do here). Which reminds me that two of our friends have start-up farms and one raises chickens. I wonder how they are faring.

And living in a place where if I have squash and you have tomatoes, we both eat decent food. A NYC friend took an apple from my tree that I had transported from VT and ate it without washing it. "No sprays," she said.

I understand that two warring parties in town came together to get North Street paved (though there may be some remuneration involved).

Now if only .... My husband sometimes says that my posts aren't finished. I think he's right again.

Back in Vermont

So I am back in my tiny little house in this tiny town... You may be wondering who I am and why I am sending you these notes. I could tell you in more specific ways who I am... and I will do that eventually. But for now, what matters is the wind and the water.

I was expecting to meet you on Monday. I was expecting that we would get to know each other as colleagues and friends. Instead of standing in a classroom somewhere on the west side of Manhattan, I was weaving through roads beside muddy cornfields, some submerged in five to 6 feet of water, roiling from the Battenkill River.

I followed the route the GPS picked for me, up through Paramus' shopping corridor and the land of cheap(er) gas where they still clean the windshield for you. I was routed to the Palisades where I hadn't been since I was a girl, driving with my father whose love for the car was exceeded only by his need for ritual. He stacked the change from his pockets in size order every night. He scooped the excess butter from the holes in his bread and used it on other areas. He has been gone some 15 years now. And my mother is not well.

That's why I was in New York--along with meeting you. I was there to help her with some medical procedures. And I was sitting on the couch in the apartment I grew up in while I wrote to you. I have always been a New Yorker, even when I have tried to leave it behind. And I know the view outside the single pane windows over the park as well as I know anything in my life. I listened to the storm from Irene come in at 5 in the morning. I heard it on the metal housing of the air conditioner. I watched the clouds on Sunday as the wind picked up, and yes, I walked to the Hudson. I needed the air. I lay down on a bench in Hudson Park and watched the clouds roll over me. I walked back through the west village and had lemon granita in a place I have gone to since I was a teenager. I walked back to the apartment and packed.

I left at midday and wound through roads choked with traffic, and a highway that was startlingly empty. I wound my way around barriers at tiny bridges over brooks that had become rivers. I watched the driver of an 18-wheeler back up, his rig of wood shavings for animals slanted uphill into a farm field, so that he could make a U-turn and return on the country road that had been "closed." We both had taken a chance that we could get through. We both had failed. When I asked him what was ahead, he said in heavily accented French: "No pass. No pass."

I imagined sleeping the night in the car as I hit another place I had to detour, and then another. I was grateful when I found myself on a familiar road that would lead me home. I chose the last stretch for its topography -- away from rivers and the lake, toward the higher ground that would be unlikely to flood.

It took 7 1/2 hours to get back to my tiny little house at the center of a town of 800. It should have taken 5 at most. It was just past dusk, and I could see, but not the details that daylight would bring. The garden looked as though I had never been gone. The tomatoes were on the tomato plants, the corn was standing high, and the flowers were blooming yellow and purple. In the morning, I picked squash and an enormous puff ball from the lawn by the lilac tree.

So who do you think I am as I write all this? Are you intrigued or bored? I have never had the "luxury" of meeting my colleagues without seeing them and having them see me.... so what do you "know" about me now?

The Environmental Autobiography is a portrait of the places we live (and work, and heal, and learn, and play), and the manner in which these places mark us, impact our values for place. How does the ritual of stacking change every night tell you something about my father? How does the knowledge that I grew up on the corner of Washington Square Park make you think of me? And the idea that there is a garden where I live now, in a town of 800? What does the story of wind and water make you think?

Here's what I know of you... you are eager. You have chosen this because you are willing to take risks. You want to do something that hasn't been done before. We have struggled with the technology of broken connections. One of your colleagues asked me to "forgive her persistence." I like persistence. I admire it.

Here's what I know of you. I know there are three men and 7 women. I know you have names that suggest some experience of other cultures though you may all have grown up in New York.

Here's what I know of you. You have professional backgrounds to bring to the table.

What I don't know is what motivates you. What I don't know is what it is that you want from this course and this curriculum. What I don't know, yet, is what you have to teach.

I am looking forward to your "voices"--in your blogs and in person. We have a lot to learn together.

Getting wet...

It has been a wild day. I didn't sleep well, waking frequently to listen to the drops of rain on the metal housing of the air conditioner. I expected the rain to come on harder, and to be partnered with wind. Instead it seemed half-hearted, and my fears that the old single pane glass would be sprung from the metal frames seemed foolish.

It was only later that the winds came. They arrived in the afternoon, like a late-comer arriving at a party when everyone else has gone. I could hear them rattling the northern and western windows, the ones over Washington Square Park, and I longed for the air, but didn't dare test the old hooks at the base of the frames.

I had been longing for a walk, having been cooped in the apartment for what seemed like days, and when I went downstairs I knew that I would end up somehow at the river.