Fair sailing

Kids in the UK are in their first week of summer vacation.  My own kids have been off school so long already that I've lost track of time.  It must be more than a month already.  The days and weeks all roll into each other.

The Girl has no camp this week, but she's putting in all the hours she can at the library being a "book buddy".  And the Boy continues to spend all his available hours with his own favourite buddy.  They have built quite a flotilla of boats - it's costing me a fortune in sticky tape, but it keeps them out of mischief.

I've been preparing for a fair trade town-related breakfast meeting tomorrow.  It's encouraging to see that the FT movement over here is really starting to grow.  When I first began looking into FT Town campaigns in the US, in late 2008, there were only seven declared FTTs in the whole of the USA.  Now there are 23, including major cities like Boston and Chicago, and there are 40 on-going campaigns.  More than half of the 50 States have FTT activity going on somewhere - including Texas.  Here in the Capital Region of New York we have one declared FT Town (Ballston Spa), plus my own town's active campaign, and in the last few months a Fair Trade University (Siena) and the USA's first ever Fair Trade High School (Emma Willard).  There's a way to go before the US catches up with the UK (where there are more than 500 FT Towns and thousands of FT schools), but every step heads in the right direction.