PUTNEY — We campaign in poetry but govern in prose, said former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo during his career.
As we worked through the issues of the 2013 legislative session, the verse of the campaign morphed into the detailed prose of bill drafting and creation of budget spreadsheets.
The good news is that Vermont is doing well, especially compared to other states - enjoying low unemployment, a forward-moving economy, and the solid foundation of a balanced budget.
Within all that, a narrative from a basic question also arose: Do we move forward into the 21st century with an amalgam of past success and new ideas? Or do we stay stuck, attached to old ideas that aren't working?
Democrats and Progressives answered with a consensus to move forward:
• On health care with Vermont Health Connect, our health exchange/web portal that provides access and subsidy for buying health care.
• On keeping our economy growing with investments in education, in our roads and bridges, in local agriculture, and in the green-energy economy.
• And on social justice for immigrant workers, equal pay for women, sensible laws around marijuana use, and compassionate considerations for elders to make end-of-life decisions.
Those decisions and others highlighted an emotional session.
In the House, with constant budget pressures from revenues still at 2008 levels but human service needs increasing every year, we could have veered into the muck of D.C.-style polemics, but we didn't. We kept it civil.
Likewise, on social issues, the discourse was sharp, but we still minded our manners.
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Now that I'm back home from the 16-week session, I'm quickly reminded why I love living here.
In other places, I often hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth about how bad the world is. Here, Vermonters not only survive but also thrive, under the most trying circumstances.
I recently read a more well-turned phrase than I can muster, for those who can't see the good all around us: “We all know that, as the old adage has it, 'It is later than we think,' … but I also say occasionally that it is lighter than you think.” In this light, let's not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness.” Indeed.
And here in Vermont, those examples of people working together to make it better aren't hard to find. Case in point is the recent Brattleboro Area AIDS Project's Walk for Life. Here, as diverse a group of Vermonters as can be came together for a sober cause.
Yet there was a profound sense of community and shared hope, right alongside the somber memorial for those we have lost to this plague.
We have more work to do, for sure, and I look forward to getting back to it next January.
In the meantime, I'll be looking around in awareness and gratitude for life here in 21st-century Vermont.