About
Vermonters love to brag about how fiercely independent they are. But, I have been everywhere, have lived a bunch of places, and have met a bunch of people. Vermonters are among the most fiercely dependent people I have ever encountered. Hell, even their junior senator is an avowed socialist. You can’t get more fiercely dependent than that. It’s pretty much the definition of dependence.
Here’s a photo of the grinning Senator Sanders:
There are three kinds of people residing in Vermont. First, there are the Real Vermonters™ and there are the Neo Vermonters. The Real Vermonters™ are a predominantly pleasant crowd, most have been here for a while. Most are not particularly wealthy, though some are. Most Real Vermonters™ are not socialists or otherwise idiots, though some are. Before the influx of the Neo Vermonters, this was largely a Republican state.
Neo Vermonters simply outnumber Real Vermonters™. They are mostly from Boston or New York or some similar place. They left their stinking, impersonal cities for the bucolic beauty and friendly society of Vermont. They didn’t turn off their Volvos before they started changing the place to be more like the stinking impersonal cities. I mean the air don’t stink, but many of these Neo Vermonters are freeze dried hippies and trust fund liberals, and you’d probably rather be intellectually upwind.
Then there are people like me. I’m no kind of Vermonter. Depending on my mood, I’m either an Alabamian (I spent a lot my youth and young adulthood in Alabama, went to college there and spent the formative part of my professional career in Huntsville) or an Tennessean (my ancestral home is Tennessee, and I spent much of my childhood there), but never a Vermonter or any other kind of Yankee. In fact, I’m pretty much unreconstructed. That may make itself obvious in this blog.
I’ve got to say something here about my friends and neighbors: I love ‘em. Nothing here is intended to offend them if they happen to read this (and I hope they do). The stuff above about Real and Neo Vermonters is stereotype. It is true enough, but it applies to groups, not individuals. My friends and neighbors are individuals, and statistical analysis doesn’t apply to individuals. My friends and neighbors are fine folks all, and they make my life much more pleasant than it otherwise might be. I hope I return the favor.
“Why do you live there, if you’re just going to make fun of the joint?” I hear you ask. ”The road into Vermont leads out, too,” you say. Well, on the positive side, I love it here. I love the climate, I love the people, I love the quiet. If I had to choose between Burlington, Vermont and Huntsville, Alabama, I’d choose Huntsville. But that’s not the choice. I have chosen to live in a more civilized part of Vermont.
On the negative side, there are fools everywhere. Vermont has no exclusive rights to daffy, sheeplike people. Nor does the twenty-first century. Intellectually lazy people exist everywhere and all the time. At least that is the assumption I operate under. Vermont is silly, but it is no worse than any place else, and better than most places.
And cynically: it seems like there’s about three testicles in Vermont, and I got two of them. I’m no man among men down south, but here I’m a powerhouse.
Here’s me:
Handsome devil, ain’t I? Or just another grinning idiot. Probably the latter.