A recent revival of “Middlebury Money” in Middlebury, Vermont – officially endorsed by Bill McKibben! – got me thinking about our own “Decatur Dollars” gift card and if a reinvented program with similar incentives might be applied here in Georgia that would provide Decatur with it’s own local currency.

Here’s the note in full from the the Better Middlebury Partnershp Middlebury Money Committee, which explains the problems with the original iteration of “Middlebury Money” and what the town has done recently to give the program a new “hook” that will hopefully inspire residents and businesses to continually use and spend it the new currency.

The Better Middlebury Partnership is excited to announce an exciting new Middlebury Money campaign, to be rolled out in the coming weeks – just in time for the holidays!

Many of you are probably familiar with Middlebury Money. Our organization (then the Middlebury Business Association) introduced it several years ago as a universal Middlebury gift certificate. We had moderate success, selling as much as $27,000 worth of Middlebury Money a year, sparking business for local merchants and service providers. Nonetheless, this year we challenged ourselves to improve the program.

We realized that to-date Middlebury Money was primarily being purchased to give as a gift – few people were purchasing it for their own use. Bryan Phelps, owner of Noonie’s Deli and one of our newest board members, suggested that we give Middlebury Money a real “hook,” a feature that would inspire consumers – residents, consumers, repeat visitors, even businesses – to buy Middlebury Money and to use it to spend locally.

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Blogger Bud Thomas Wheatley reports over on CL’s newly-redesigned Fresh Loaf…

Bill McKibben, author of End of Nature and Deep Economy, will speak at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, March 11, at the Holy Trinity Episcopal Parish in Decatur (map here). The event is co-sponsored by the Georgia Center for the Book and Georgia Interfaith Power and Light. A collection of his essays, The Bill McKibben Reader, goes on sale tomorrow. One of his more recent works, Fight Global Warming Now – The Handbook for Taking Action in Your Community, is worth a look, judging that the General Assembly this year isn’t taking any steps to address the phenomenon.

McKibben’s writings have been informing audiences about global warming long before An Inconvenient Truth made climate change a dinner table conversation topic. In fact, Al Gore attributes much of his passion to the cause to McKibben. According to this Wikipedia entry Gore wrote in 2007 “when I was serving in the Senate, Bill McKibben’s descriptions of the planetary impacts… made such an impression on me that it led, among other things, to my receiving the honorific title ‘Ozone Man’ from the first president Bush.”

McKibben writes for many big name pubs like The New York Times, The Atlantic and Harpers. Plus he’s a scholar in residence at Middlebury College, just down the street from where my mom now lives.