By Guest Commentator Patty Cantrell
Posted on July 18, 2008

It is 1974 in Springfield, Missouri, and they are still showing movies downtown at a theater on the city's Park Central Square. I am 10 years old, and my sister and I are thrilled to be out on that sweltering summer night with our very cool Aunt Robin and Uncle Romie. We're off to see Herbie the Love Bug Rides Again. The smash Disney hit is about a lovable, racing-striped Volkswagen Beetle who saves a little old lady and her historic home from the wrecking ball of "progress."

Bright colors, loud crashes, and daring escapes will make an impression on any kid. But it is the moral of Herbie's story—that people and place matter—that has kept the little VW zooming around my mind through the years. He roared in again just a few weeks ago when I sat down with some 500 hometown business leaders at the sixth national convening of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE).

The BALLE conference had both Herbie and me doing wheelies! I was thrilled to learn that so many people I met, representing many more folks back home, are starting a new kind of progress: rebuilding neighborhoods and local businesses in their own towns. — read more