Are We Here Yet Podcast

For our latest Are We Here yet? podcast we offer four perspectives sure to keep you contemplating on this upcoming Indigenous People’s Day.

Our Season III guest Doug Harris, retired archivist for the Narragansett Tribe spoke to us regarding New England’s Ceremonial Stone Landscape for episodes 87 and 88.  We feature two clips here, the first focused on answering the question, ‘what is this place and who are we?’ The second which ends our podcast focuses on his groundbreaking work alongside Smithsonian documentarian Ted Timreck, our guest for episode 132, which has dispelled many falsehoods about the peoples of this part of North America.  How they lived, traded and thrived for thousands of years. 

Sandwiched between our clips of Doug Harris we offer contemporary native American poets and their work with poet and essayist Joshua Michael Stewart, a frequent guest of our show. We originally aired his reading of these six poems in 2021.  

Joshua is the author of three books of poetry, his latest being 2022’s ‘Love Something’.  His soon to publish ‘Welcome Home, Russell Edson’ combines the graphic novel with the prose poem. He writes for M the Media Project under the feature, ‘The Way of Wind and Stream’. 

Listen to our episode on Kerouac at 100 from March 2022. 

But first, our host Scott M. Graves reads from his 2020 essay ‘Borders’.  Scott was investigating the early colonial New England period of King Philip's War for several years which led him to taking a deeper dive into the competing concepts over land ownership between indigenous and English colonial cultures. 

‘It didn’t escape me at the time that I was doing this amateur investigative work while the question of immigration in the US was speeding into a raging crisis,’ he told us. ‘what results here are my thoughts on a very deep, very flawed piece of debris just underneath our skin that continues to leave scars on our culture.  We can and should do better’.  The issue h only become more polarizing and central to the presidential election in 2024.

CEO Kimmerly Nace is dedicated to changing the narrative on how we see our waste.  She’s passionate about making this planet, or rather making its people work better for a sustainable planet for all of us, creatures large and small. 

Imagine a world where our toughest waste issues become some of our most profitable revenue centers? Literally turning problems into profit; using our existing financial incentives for good and not greed. 

We spoke about her team at Brightwater Tools of Brattleboro, VT and it’s origin story in the international mission organization she also founded the Rich Earth Institute. 

Today’s discussion is on regenerative sanitation.  Realizing better nutrient management by diverting the worst offending liquid, our urine, out of the water system and into our soils for crop production.  

Or as I like to say, making our Pee pay. That’s the latest from SMG’s ‘Are We Here Yet?’ podcast. 

…And in the Jazz Room…We met pianist/composer, Orrin Evans at the Pittsburgh International Jazz Festival.  In part two of this interview we talk about the origins of several songs featured on his CD “The Red Door” and learn about the musicians who are featured on this recording. Click here to learn more about Orrin Evans.

Startup founders: today’s audio plat savoureux from the Innova802 crew focused on our guest Matt Cropp, executive director of the Vermont Employee Ownership Center (VEOC).

We discussed why you need to consider your future exit now at the onset of your enterprise and why you should take a serious look at forming an employee-owned enterprise and how.

The history of tech and tech enabled companies since the post WWII years is a history of equity sharing so it’s often a short walk for companies to consider employee ownership (co-operative models, employee stock ownership plan (ESOP)).  

We defined how these models work alongside equity-sharing and market-rate employment and what benefits come to founders and when.  Most notable we’ll tell you how creating an ESOP and planning for a liquidity event are not mutually exclusive. 

We tie the combination of tech business culture and employee ownership to rural development.  How these elements can and should be used to transform communities throughout fly-over, USA.

BTW, Watch closely, that is if we see forward momentum in Congress, of an important piece of legislation for incentivising more employee ownership called the Employee Equity Investment Act.  

Other work of note by MacKenzie Wark

Mentioned by co-host Will Jeffries : Slicing Pie(Fair Equity investment tool) 

And in the Jazz Room…We met pianist/composer, Orrin Evans at the Pittsburgh International Jazz Festival.  In part one of this interview we talk about his CD “The Red Door”, the meaning of red, the Jazz Train and Jazz elders. Click here to learn more about Orrin Evans.

We examine local real estate markets and the unique mix of property and economic development components at the local level here at the ‘Are We Here Yet?’ podcast so our listeners can find inspiration for their own local efforts back home. 

This episode host Scott Graves sat down with Ed Bove, Executive Director of the Rutland Redevelopment Authority in Scott’s adoptive hometown of Rutland, VT.  Scott found resonance with Ed in their shared interest in incremental development and generally a ‘Strong Towns’ approach to neighborhood building.  

 Listen to our interview with Strong Towns founder Charles Marohn from 2021.

The discussion centered on how Rutland and the RRA are working to assist private developers to realize current Mayor Mike Doenges goal of 1000 units of housing in 5 years.  

Given Vermont’s past as an often development-resistant region, this may seem like a tall order.  There is little consensus on whether we need more housing at the broadest level, though municipal and state leadership understand there is a housing crisis affecting all of us, particularly working-class people in Vermont.

Additional housing needs range from the state’s number of 36,000 units, Vermont Futures Project estimate a bit higher and to those estimates by Knowledge Towns of 75,000 or more. 

 Listen to our interview with Kevin Chu, Vermont Futures Project

 Listen to our interview with Dominic Endicott, co-author of Knowledge Towns

There is even more difference of opinion when it comes to what kind of housing and for whom it might be built for. 

Far from a complaint session, our discussion centered on the solutions being implemented through Ed and the RRA’s efforts along with other municipal players.  

Our conversation gave us an opportunity to discuss the efforts of Breaking Housing Matters, a national housing initiative working on a pilot in Rutland, VT.  

 Listen to our interview with BHM founder Peter de Krassel

Ed’s thoughts immediately went to the innovative parts of BHM in creating new streams of development capital, an essential part of creating more interest in Rutland and the state of Vermont from emerging developers both local and from afar. 

And in the Jazz Room…We met with Orchestra Leader/Composer Maria Schneider at the Newport Jazz Festival. This show is a bit different as per Maria’s request she asked I play 30 seconds of music and one full composition from her project "Data Lords".

As you listen to this interview she talks not only about creating her music, but defending the copyrights of her work in this world of free music streaming and music distributors charging artist exorbitant fees for their use digitally. Click to learn more about Maria

Without getting to Jargon-ey,  our guest Gregory Thomas and yours truly explored where and how we in the private sector and within institutions can support the journey from on-the-shelf research to marketplace success. 

Gregory is The Executive Director and Lecturer for the Berthiaume Center for Entrepreneurship, Isenberg School University of Massachusetts Amherst. 

UMASS is a leader in cutting edge research for a number of Massachusetts tech sectors. The UMASS system which includes campuses in Lowell, Dartmouth, Boston and the Chan Medical School in Worcester offers a robust set of innovation-driven resources for students and community members.  

How can the private sector better interact with programs like those at Berthiaume? How do we build a more robust, diverse and resource rich Pioneer Valley tech sector? How do we best access ideas in financial modeling, management and tech transfer so, in the end, we’re building an economy that is better at creating well-paying, meaningful work?  These are the themes of our conversation this hour. 

At SMGraves Associates, we’ve joined up with Living Local 413 to develop a series of mixed-use properties in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts as desirable locations for tech and tech enabled entrepreneurs to live, work and find important resources through our programming including access to venture capital, accelerators and top-tier mentors. We’re eager to work with and help our private sector partners leverage relationships with the region’s best institutions like UMASS.

The team at Innova802 enter the solutions-driven world of biomimicry with Vermont entrepreneur Byron Garcia.  Byron is the founder of Natural Designs where he and his team study the natural flora and fauna of the planet for clues to solving some of industry’s most pressing issues.  Projects include improvements to data center cooling systems through the mimicry of beetle wings and elephant ears and a whole new class of non-nicotinoid pesticides that prohibit the infestation of pests without killing them or any other organism.  

And in The Jazz Room: Re re-visit Joan’s 2021 interview with the celebrated Jon Baptiste.

 

We had the distinct pleasure of engaging in conversation with two very special professionals.

In their report, Integrating Inner & Outer Systems Change, authors Stephen Posner & Kim Nolan offered us insight into the importance inner perspective within each of us plays in the necessary task of reimagining how we collectively survive and even thrive on the planet.

Our conversation was vivid.  I have to say I personally enjoyed these interviews, taken over two months this past spring, for many reasons.

Our solutions based conversation offers a number of internal and external applications each of us can engage in to make our lived experience together more meaningful while engaging in better systems practice.

People mentioned during our conversation Indy Johar post about the Pathways Forum we did with him recently: https://www.garrisoninstitute.org/the-common-good/

Arawana Hayashi: https://arawanahayashi.com

Bill McKibben: https://thirdact.org

Applied work mentioned in our conversation

Federal policy memo on Regenerative Agriculture.  https://fas.org/publication/a-national-initiative-to-revitalize-american-farming-and-advance-regenerative-agriculture/

Research papers on natural capital accounting for business:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212041621001170 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2212041622000304

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2212041620300413

https://www.wbcsd.org/Archive/Assess-and-Manage-Performance/Resources/Guide-to-Corporate-Ecosystem-Valuation

 

Doug Merrill is Regional Innovation Officer for UVM in Burlington, VT.

Doug is leading the charge for the Vermont GaN Tech Hub, a regional reshoring initiative spurred on by the CHIPs legislation.

Doug joined the Innova802 team to discuss the project's progress and its potential impact to the regional economy.

We also talked about what's so fab about gallium nitride microprocessing chips.

From a rural development perspective the state of Vermont is eager for this reshoring of technology-based manufacturing and research to benefit more than just Chittenden County.  This decentralization of economic benefit is something many of your rural communities are facing where you live and work.

Many top technology providers were mentioned in our podcast including Global Foundries.

Innova802 is a series of SMG's 'Are We Here Yet?' podcast.  We're delivering solutions-based audio content on rural development of tech and tech-enabled companies.  We bring you useful stories with a Vermont perspective to bring to your town.

 

 

For more than five years Travis Benson has represented the interests of citizens of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as a policy advocate, primarily working on issues of transparency.

His article, "Dissecting the 'Toxic' State House Culture", published May 25 in Commonwealth Beacon recounts the current dysfunction of the state legislature of Massachusetts.

The issues we discussed are not unique to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, a state near and dear to host Scott M. Graves, the state of his birth and upbringing.

For those listening in Massachusetts and other states, discover through our discussion some insight as to countering the issues Travis recounts. Issues you might also be facing in your home state.

If our efforts in community development, economic development, rural and urban alike are to take hold, we must get right with our political leaders and the daily requirements of governance.

 

My guest today is Ilana Preuss, founder of Recast City, LLC which she’s led for 10 years.

To date, Ilana has worked with 60 communities throughout the United States.

Her commitment is to apply her expertise in smart growth, community reinvestment, real estate analysis, and stakeholder engagement to create more opportunity for more people in more places and to create strong, inclusive, and resilient economies.

Her core beliefs navigate this approach.

Ilana is the author of 2021’s, Recast-Your-City: How to Save your downtown with Small Scale Manufacturing

Today’s subject: how we build stronger communities through small scale manufacturing.  

Those of us involved in redevelopment of downtown property and/or economic development generally should pay keen attention to today’s conversation.

Also mentioned in our conversation was the work of author Rachel Slade

And in The Jazz Room…

In Part 2 Arturo O'Farrell expands his thoughts to discuss the ”Still, Small Voice” that we, as a people, share and the non-profit organization he formed to benefit out-of-work performers of all genres during the Covid 19 quarantine. 

Learn more about Arturo.