In the Upper Valley, members of various faith and secular communities have come together to form the Upper Valley Refugee Working Group. The Working Group focuses both on refugees coming to the immediate area, as well as helping the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program based in Rutland, VT. In January, The Upper Valley Refugee Working Group hosted Light the Way, a benefit for both the Upper Valley Haven and the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program.

Light the Way announced goals, “on a practical level, every household needs a lamp or two to brighten the home! …Light the Way will collect gently used table and floor lamps to be given to resettling refugee households to brighten the years ahead.” Also, Light the Way was intended to be “a space of refuge to raise community awareness of the needs of those seeking shelter among us: refugee families arriving in Vermont and New Hampshire during the coming year, as well as those families seeking refuge already present in our communities.”

I had the chance to speak to Julie Püttgen, the organizer of Light the Way, about the project and the Upper Valley Refugee Working Group. The Working Group was started, in part, by Paul Manganiello and Our Savior Lutheran Church in Hanover, NH. Julie wasn’t part of the original group, but she joined when she saw a post on the listserv last year.

It’s amazing, she noted, “I’m a Buddhist, I didn’t have much contact previously to being involved with this group, with the local church communities, and it’s been terrific. I feel so glad to be connected to so many people of good will and good faith.”

There are members of many different area churches that come; there are Mormons, Jews, secular Atheists, and more. Julie was amazed by this mix of faiths, because, as she pointed out, we are quite good at hunkering down in our immediate worlds, and this group isn’t like that.

For the Light the Way event, one of the members of the Working Group, Sarah Nordstrom, approached her church, The Church of Christ at Dartmouth College, to see if they would be willing to donate their space for the event. And boy were they willing!

Julie said, “I felt like I kept pushing the envelope,” as thoughts grew. Through both her own ideas and suggestions from friends, it evolved from collecting lamps to a whole weekend event. After Friday’s opening events, Saturday was full of panel discussions, tai chi, a protest march, refugee yoga, a community dinner and dance, and Sunday held a closing event. Every time she approached the Church with more plans, they responded positively, further offering up their space.

“I felt like there were opportunities for people to show up to Light the Way with whatever their gifts were… some people donated just beautiful, beautiful things. One guy came in, and his mother-in-law had been a refugee from Czechoslovakia, and she had moved to this area, and she had made this beautiful ceramic lamp base and the lamp had on it this beautiful handmade lampshade.”

For Julie, Light the Way was significant for many reasons. Julie is a first-generation immigrant from Switzerland, and from 1974 to 2006 was a resident alien in this country. For some time, she went abroad and screwed up a bit; she reentered the country on a tourist visa which ended up making her deportable for a period. Julie noted that while she had less to worry about than others, as being sent back to Switzerland wasn’t going to be horrific, but it wasn’t where she wanted to be. She said “I had the tiniest taste of what it felt like to be an illegal immigrant in this country,” and, during that time, she met several families struggling to stay together which made a strong impact on her.

She also spent a good deal of time working with refugees in various countries, struggling to make it out of dangerous situations. “[Recently] I got a message from an Iranian woman I was working with in France last year, and she was writing to tell me that she and her husband had just been officially recognized as asylum seekers in the UK and they went the most scary, dangerous way possible in that they snuck onto a truck. They paid ‘people smugglers’ to take them from Gallés, France to the UK.

When I was there, they were trying every single night to do this, and she was pregnant, and she fell off a truck and had a miscarriage. So, in this really short time that I knew her, I just had this sense of the total desperation of their case, and I couldn’t believe it, they did it, through this completely perilous route, they found refuge.”

But as much as we might hear about those horrible experiences overseas and wonder what we can do, Julie wanted to make sure this event demonstrated that refugee work doesn’t have to be about international events. Refugees are also living among and coming to our community, and there is immediate work to be done.

With spring just around the corner, Norwich residents are looking forward to the return of greenery and spending time outdoors. As the weather warms, the volunteers who keep Norwich green are rolling up their sleeves and ready to get to work maintaining the town’s trails, forests, parks, and conservation easements. These eager volunteers are supported by a large network of organizations both in Norwich and across the Upper Valley.

The new pump track at Huntley Meadow is maintained by a wide range of volunteers, including Emily Biolsi’s class at the Marion Cross School. This fall, the students worked together with community volunteers and Ryan Johnson, a member of the Norwich Recreation Council. Johnson showed the students what work needed to be done and gave them instructions on how to use the tools, which were supplied by the Upper Valley Trails Alliance. Jill Kearney, Director of the Norwich Recreation Department, says of the student volunteer day: “Days like that just are a highlight. It’s fabulous to see that the kids have a teacher who is so excited about environmental stewardship. When the kids go back there they don’t want to leave trash on the side of the track because they worked on it. It’s great to see these values being passed on and see the kids caring for the community and being a steward.”

Nick Krembs and Jim Faughnan, Norwich Trails Committee members, with UVTA staff on Gile Mountain

John Girard is a former teacher at the Marion Cross school and another member of the Norwich Recreation Council. When he isn’t coaching basketball and baseball, Girard leads an annual cleanup of the baseball diamonds. He organizes a Saturday morning Green Up Day at the baseball diamond and invites all the parents of the season’s players. The Recreation Department supplies shovels, edgers, and wheelbarrows; the volunteers also care for the base pads and rake the infield. This all-volunteer annual event gets everyone (including the fields) ready for spring baseball.

The Upper Valley Trails Alliance (UVTA) works throughout the Upper Valley, but has a strong focus in Norwich due to its office location in town. UVTA works with the Norwich Trails Committee and the Norwich Fire District to assess trail maintenance needs, such as trail re-routes, bridge planning, and treadway clearing. Volunteers from UVTA recently completed a five-year-long project in Norwich on the beloved Gile Mountain trail, installing stone steps to make the trail more sustainable for the thousands of hikers who come annually. Over 100 volunteers worked with UVTA and the Norwich trails committee at Gile Mountain, averaging one to two volunteer groups working on the project per week during the trail season. UVTA has also worked with volunteers from King Arthur Flour to complete bog-bridge improvements on the “Spirit in Nature” path, as well as clearing portions of the King Arthur Trail. This spring, UVTA will be working on a trail project near the Dresden Athletic Field, connecting to the King Arthur field. They are also planning out a new mountain bike area for kids around the Dresden Athletic Field during the 2017 trail season.

The Upper Valley Land Trust (UVLT) manages several conservation easements in Norwich. They acquired the Norwich Gateway property in 2009, which had been previously abandoned and was overrun with invasive buckthorn and honeysuckle. With the help of over a thousand volunteer hours from Hypertherm and Norwich community members, there’s virtually no buckthorn or honeysuckle left on the property, giving native plants a chance to compete and thrive. Volunteers continue to maintain the habitat and remove the invasives each year, while educating the community about habitat restoration. UVLT also manages the Milton Frye Nature Area, which is connected to the Marion Cross School. The students use it as an outdoor classroom with the help of environmental education coordinator Lindsay Putnam. The students learn about invasive species as part of the curriculum and work alongside UVLT volunteers to keep the invasives at bay.

Students from Ms. Biolsi’s 6th-grade class working on the Pump Track with UVTA and Norwich Rec

At the Brook Mead Conservation Area, UVLT owns the land at Norwich Farms, which is used by Vermont Technical College as a teaching farm, as well as having forest areas and trails on the land. Every Earth Day, UVLT trains community volunteers to help with easement monitoring. There are 15 vernal pools on the property, and UVLT volunteers help collect natural resource data from the pools and submit the data to the state. UVLT is also partnering with a researcher at Dartmouth College who is conducting research on wood frogs and a reptile survey on the property. “The land is here to serve lots of values. The citizen science part is very important to us,” says Jason Berard, the Stewardship Director at UVLT. In coordination with Norwich Trails Committee, UVLT is also working to link the Brook Mead trails to neighboring trails on Parcel 5 and the Blue Ribbon Trail on Gile Mountain.

Berard encourages community members to reach out to UVLT with ideas and suggestions for ways to better serve Norwich residents. “We’re always interested in hearing how we can be of use to the community.” he says. “Our portfolio is here to serve the whole community. We want to hear needs the community has for land we own.”

Publisher’s Note: The Norwich Times’ mission is to uplift, inspire and build positive community through the printed page. We do not publish anything pertaining to national or even local politics or any other sensationalist or potentially divisive content.

While running this article, seemingly about the Women’s March, could be construed as political, my intention is not about politics at all. What inspired me to walk this fine line, and to tell the stories of local people who attended one March or another, was the overwhelming takeaway for each was peace and love. No matter which side of an issue one is on, it’s hard not to agree that peace and love are common values among all humans.

When reaching out to some of the women whom we knew had attended, we specifically asked them to focus on the inspiring stories and positive feelings they felt during the whole experience outside their political views. While some of their agendas are embedded in their stories, our intention is not to promote their viewpoints, but rather to let their voices speak to the power they felt by taking action for something in which they believe strongly, and in the overall uplifting and inspiring experiences they each had.

~ Jen MacMillen

Ann Marie Smith, Norwich VT

Ann Marie Smith and Allegra Lubrano in Boston

I knew from the time the March in DC was announced that I had to participate. I needed to do something. I worried that I couldn’t get to DC, and was delighted when Marches were announced for other cities; I knew then that I would go, I didn’t know where, but I knew I had to be at one. When I read that Elizabeth Warren would speak at the Boston rally, I was hopeful to go there. Being a displaced New York suburbanite, I was lucky my friend Allegra Lubrano (of Hanover, NH) who knows Boston, also wished to go. We were very glad to be there early to witness the ease at which everything unfolded that day. People simply flowed into the city all morning; they kept coming and coming. There were no bullhorns or sirens, no need for direction. Everyone was polite, cheerful, supportive, and to our pleasant surprise, there were no counter protestors, just one lone elderly man standing on a street corner with a sign and a ‘you know what’ hat. There were women and men of all ages, carrying children of all ages. It was wonderful to see every generation, gender, color, and culture represented. The synergy was palpable; you truly could feel the power of the people. We were lucky enough to be standing in the right spot when Elizabeth Warren’s car entered the Boston Commons. She rolled down her window and I reached out to shake her hand, she took it. I said “thank you,” to which she replied, “No, thank you!” Her speech brought roars from the already energized crowd and that heightened the preexisting feeling of unity and pride. The Mayor of Boston, Marty Walsh, spoke next and although it didn’t seem possible, he was even more spirited than Senator Warren. The crowd was ebullient, yet at the same time, the moment and the occasion itself, was bittersweet. As happy as I was to be there, I was filled with conflicting feelings. That we, in 2017, have to rally and prepare to defend the reproductive rights and equality for women is truly astonishing to me. That we are still fighting for equality, for women, people of color, immigrants, and the LGBTQ community makes me very sad. I saw so many women who were there rallying for the same causes they had spent their youth rallying for.

Team March by Cindy Pierce

Cindy Pierce of Etna, NH; Norwich resident, Kristin Brown; Elizabeth Keene of Springfield, NH; Laurie Harrington of Walpole, NH; and Andrea Johnstone of Plainfield, NH unite as women with a voice.

When our friend, Norwich resident, Kristin Brown booked rooms right after the Women’s March was announced, our plans for a road trip were set alight. Elizabeth Keene of Springfield, NH, Laurie Harrington of Walpole, NH, and Andrea Johnstone of Plainfield, NH (three Hanover High School guidance counselors), Kristin, and I started our drive at Laurie’s on a Friday afternoon.

Unified to step up to a whole new level of activism was sparked by the fact that we felt our country had hit rock bottom. Laurie explained her motivation to join the March, “Activist is not a word I would have ever used for myself. I went to DC to show solidarity…and to show that our country values compassion and tolerance over isolationism and fear.”

We felt the unity expanding beyond our group every time someone honked or waved in response to the “HEAR OUR VOICE” sign taped to the back of our car. Five educators driving for eleven hours provided ample opportunity to catch up on our families and work, as well as discuss how the changes in laws and policies would impact marginalized people in the country. We did acknowledge our own privilege to be able to make the trip and stand together for issues important to us.

Sea of pink hats

From the moment we entered the crowded subway in the morning, until we were walking away from the dispersing march, we were overwhelmed by the positive energy, warmth, and openness of all the participants. We were bolstered throughout the day by the meaningful (and hilarious) signs, the powerful speeches, and being surrounded by wildly interesting people. By the time we were getting off the subway, we knew that change and hope would prevail if we could avoid divisive anger. When we saw the news of marches around the world, it was clear that the revolution had begun.

Patriotic Marchers

Elizabeth described what inspired her to carry on with activism, “The March was inspiring and powerful, but what stood out for me the most was a renewed hope. It felt good to be doing something and being around the hundreds of thousands of people who were all there for a similar cause – a shared concern that our country might go backward.”

Laurie reminded us that showing up isn’t enough and that we need to respond to the call for action by the inspirational speakers like Gloria Steinem, Scarlett Johansson, Michael Moore, and the organizers of the March. Laurie has committed to make letter-writing, phone calls to her representatives, and finding ways to be involved in local politics a regular part of her life. “We all need to be activists now!”

As we got closer to home, Kristin reflected, “The March experience was like an ocean. We were a wave that crashed into DC. Our journey home was the wave retreating but with renewed energy and life picked up along the way, which will energize us through these next four years.”

Maggie Tiblier Pepper, Norwich, VT

Crowds of supporters

Thinking of friends around the world, I booked one of the very last seats on a round-trip overnight bus from Lebanon, NH to DC. Ten pm departure, 9am arrival. Eight pm departure, 7am arrival.

I took to the streets wearing my hand-knit pussyhat to stand united with the people. To protect each other; locally and globally.

I was raised to identify with the “oppressed,” not the “oppressor,” to question authority and especially the patriarchy.

Born in New Orleans and raised in San Francisco, I grew up navigating race, gender, and class. Some of my earliest memories include sitting in our family’s van singing “Ain’t gonna let that Henry Kissinger turn me around, turn me around, turn me around…”

I have had the privilege of single sex education, choice, and travel. I have walked the desert of Palmyra, seen check-out lines on American Indian Reservations, explored the halls of yadvashem, looked through the bars on Robben Island, stood in Tiananmen Square, seen the spinning wheel in India, and was arrested protesting “the first Gulf War.” To live is to witness, to question, and participate.

On January 21st, there was no other choice for me but to “represent,” set an example for our children, and question today’s leadership in America.

As history shows us, the people united will never be defeated.

John Pepper is living proof that even during these turbulent times in which we now live, the American dream of achieving corporate success is alive and well. However, spending time with Norwich resident John Pepper will quickly convince you that even with his history of

overwhelming corporate success, he has broken the mold for a top executive. No fancy board room for John. His Norwich home serves as his corporate headquarters, as well as a single desk in shared office space across the river.

“We want all our employees to excel,” says Boloco’s John Pepper.

John serves as CEO and cofounder of Boloco that was once described as “A Boston-based family of 22 restaurants and over 450 team members that serves globally inspired burritos, bowls, salads, smoothies and shakes with locations in MA, VT, MD, RI, DC, and of course, Hanover, NH.” John has modified that description.

“When the corporation went through financial difficulties in 2015, I returned to Boloco, bought out our institutional investors, and have since reduced the number of restaurants to 11. I now base everything right here in the Upper Valley. My wife Maggie and I pretty much had our choice as to where we wanted to live when I first left Boloco in 2013. Debating between Boston, San Francisco, and the Upper Valley, the whole family agreed on Norwich. This is where we call home.” John stated.

He is certainly no stranger to Norwich and Hanover. John has long been a fixture in both locations having graduated from Dartmouth College in 1991 and The Tuck School of Business in 1997.

“I really got to know the area as a second-year Tuck Student,” he explained. “I rented a house in Norwich up on Hawk Pine in the mid-’90s and later bought our first home way up on Turnpike and lived there for six years starting in 2003. All of our kids were born here. As Boloco was based in Boston, I commuted every week on the Dartmouth Coach and later Cape Air. That got a little tiring, so we left Norwich for 5 years to be in downtown Boston when the business was expanding quickly, but returned to Elm Street in 2014. We love it here.”

Once established in the late ’90s, Boloco and its cofounder charted a course that most powerful restaurant chains had not followed. Boloco’s mission statement placed its workers’ welfare over maximizing bottom line profits, an unheard-of policy in most corporate worlds. The following is a portion of Boloco’s mission statement: “Creating a platform to safely and systemically amplify the voice and increase the income of low-wage workers in retail, services, and hospitality. Most importantly, however, its long-time mission to positively impact the lives and futures of people who work in fast food through bold and inspired food practices has put the company on a different playing field.”

“We want all our employees to excel. Our workers should be able to move on in their lives and earn a wage that supports their families. We offer food service safety courses, ESOL classes, and leadership retreats that allow them to move forward and take management positions at Boloco or elsewhere. We believe in a higher wage not just as the right thing to do but as an effective long-term business strategy. Our average wage in Hanover, for example, comes to around $14.50 an hour, double the minimum wage,” John said. Today, Boloco is also one of the few restaurant companies in the country that is a certified B-Corporation, joining the likes of King Arthur Flour in legally recognizing a triple bottom line – people, environment and profits – as a company’s fiduciary responsibility.

Studying John’s self-written résumé will explain his passion for his workers and his dedication to the cause. Here is how he once described himself. “Passionate about finding and developing technology that aids the restaurant business and most importantly its hourly workers. Working on new technology start-up as of late 2014. Part-time Lyft/Uber driver, drone pilot, wannabe/try-to-be writer, inconsistent blogger, nervous but passionate speaker and enthusiastic adventurer. Got lucky one year and won the 2012 Regional Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year.”

John Pepper is not your average executive. He is originally from Cincinnati, Ohio and his wife Maggie was born in San Francisco, CA. They have established Norwich as their home base and have three children, daughters Tibby, age 13, and Izzy, age 11, and newest addition son Bo is three years old. At age 47, John hopes to add another challenge to that résumé.

“I just announced that I will run for the Selectboard here in Norwich. I am hopeful I can bring some new ideas and creative concepts to that position.”

John Pepper with Boston Mayor Menino