Some have called this year’s alleged foreign interference in our Presidential campaign unprecedented. But while the circumstances are unique, the idea of a power play by a foreign government during election time is not new.

Once a year, I gather with my fellow state business roundtable executives to network, commiserate, and share best practices. This year we met in Detroit, where I happened to stay at the same hotel as the LA Rams football team, who were in town to play the Lions.

Technology as a solution to society’s ills is a compelling story-line – like nuclear power will be too cheap to meter, or carbon sequestration will address climate change, and driver-less cars will reduce air pollution.

My brother, Ken, lives in Dallas. He met his future wife at an election night party forty years ago, the night Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald Ford. And every four years since then, they’ve hosted a bipartisan election night party.

The recent and prolonged spate of unseasonably warm days often called “Indian Summer” has got me thinking about the future.

In a deli at the top of Church Street in Burlington there’s a vintage photo from the post-Civil War era of the street itself - still just a dirt road lined with modest buildings that look like bungalow-style homes.

In the current political climate, there is little room for discussing climate change. But in my forty years of living in Vermont, this is the warmest Fall I’ve ever experienced. And, each year, spring seems to come just a little bit earlier. Now that it’s apple harvest time, I’m reminded of how precious this year’s apple crop is.

Seventy-five years ago today at 6:56 pm, the modern renewable-energy era began. On a mountain in Vermont called Grandpa’s Knob, the world’s first megawatt-scale wind turbine was connected to the electric grid, generating power for thousands in the Champlain Valley below.

My friend Ed Granai and I were nine years old when we decided that we needed campaign buttons promoting either Wendell L. Willkie or the incumbent, Franklin D. Roosevelt for the office of president. We wanted buttons from both.

If food waste were a country, it would be the third largest producer of greenhouse gases on Earth.