My Sense of Place
So I’ve been vacationing for the last week, and will be for another several days, at my mother’s home in Northfield, Vermont – home of Norwich University whose Online Masters Program ads dominate the landscape of the TAC family of blogs. Just ten miles south of Montpelier, this is truly the heart of the once and future Green Mountain Republic, situated in Washington County, the larger of the state’s only two totally interior counties.
Just over the mountain is the SVR stronghold of Warren, home to the spectacular Warren Falls swimming hole that easily rivals any such formation in the Caribbean. Within a 20-mile radius are the two pillars of the Vermont Dairy Industry, the Cabot Creamery and, of course, the Ben and Jerry’s Factory in Waterbury. And least we forget Montpelier, the smallest state capital in America and as such so beautiful on so many levels, and its twin city of Barre, granite capital of the world and one time Wobbly stronghold, home for nine years to the Italian anarchist icon Luigi Galleani.
I hadn’t been here since January (actually watched the coronation of He Who Completes Us at the Montpelier City Hall gathering, knowing in advance it would be the healthiest distance and environment), so I was starting to think that my love for this place was waning. I drove up with my mom from Maryland, driving through a trip down memory lane in Pennsylvania and the Catskills in New York, both of which bordered on depressing – and so once again I’ve happily reaffirmed my love for these Green Mountains, the one place in my life where I’ve truly not wanted to leave as I’ve left.
When my mom first moved up here three years ago, I got my first taste of the intriguing possibility that anarcho-capitalism just might work – not only driving for the first time on that notorious shibboleth of privately maintained roads, but also learning about the New England town meeting: the property owners of a given community gathering to set their own tax rates to purchase the services that they themselves decide upon, and yes, Rothbardian purists, to establish commons.
But even this pales in comparison to what I’ve only fully appreciated for the first time on this stay – the rise and triumph of the economy of scale based in organic agriculture. In these tiny towns, the weekly farmers’ market is the major social event, and the organic movement has taken over the mainstream. And how delightful its been to see my mother having gotten over the sticker shock of buying local and establishing solid personal relationships with the local growers.
Two nights ago we had a delectable pork shoulder roast over our open pit barbecue raised by a lovely lesbian couple who just came up a year ago from Capitol Hill to the other side of town, and with local potatoes and zucchini to boot. Today we passed through Hardwick, about forty miles north, where we were lucky enough to pass by their farmers’ market and got a titilating brisket, and in a few days I’ll make my old family recipe pot roast in a dutch oven in the aforementioned open pit.
As Peter Hitchens said of his travels to Bhutan, even conservatives have their utopia. So in that spirit, may I declare, I have seen the future and it works!
Ah! Conservative paradise! Finally, a place where tradition, permanence, culture, institution, and lesbianism can flourish!
Something’s missing here.
Thanks for the info on Norwich U. I had no idea it was a real institution. Now if there was just some Conservative paradise in the Sunbelt…
Mr. Ross will have to excuse my dissent from his enthusiastic praises of Vermont. What he experienced is not uncommon among those who boost the progressive urban refugees who have supplanted the native population, as, like Gramsci, they have marched through the institutions of the Green Mountain State. Known as “flatlanders” by the natives, these wealthy liberal elites have foisted on Vermonters everything from gay marriage to the socialistic Catamount Health program to an unsustainable and reckless budget. I may applaud their quaint imitations of distributism and agrarianism but neither Chesterton nor Tate would be amused. It seems his sense of place is distinctly off.
“Ah! Conservative paradise! Finally, a place where tradition, permanence, culture, institution, and lesbianism can flourish!”
Vermont is what you get when you mix together paleoconservatism and real, honest-to-God McGovernite leftism (quite distinct from the centralized, grandiose FDR/LBJ/Obama type).
A couple points:
1) As Bill Kauffman has said in his praises of Vermont in TAC, there is a difference between the real leftists who migrated in the 60s and 70s and as such established real communities, and the Park Avenue liberals who followed them. In defense of my mother, whose values most TAC readers would deplore, she is certainly more of the former than the latter.
2) I must say I find the whole “People’s Republic” narrative quite tiresome. It is perhaps a fair description of Burlington, but most of the folks I’ve gotten to know up here are, whatever their foibles, ruggedly individualist and instinctively conservative – in short, the kind of people you would more likely run into at a Ron Paul rally than at a Take Back America conference.
The so-called “real leftists” favor some things the traditionalist Right can embrace: civic communitarianism, organic society, agrarianism, localism, etc. but then they also embrace civil libertarianism which is destructive to community and offends the sensibilities of a Chestertonian or Kirkian who thinks the natural family is the basic unit of society. It is also my experience that these same “real leftists” are as committed to abstract rights like health care and abortion as their so-called “Park Avenue liberal” cousins.
I’ve lived here 30 years and I also find the “People’s Republic” narrative quite tiresome, if only because it is true.
“The so-called “real leftists” favor some things the traditionalist Right can embrace: civic communitarianism, organic society, agrarianism, localism, etc.”
They are also at least not hostile to gun rights, too, at least I think so since from what I understand Vermont has some of the most Second Amendment friendly laws in the country.
I see your point about the downside, though. Still, the country would be a better place if the choice was between Pat Buchanan and Bernie Sanders rather than George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
“I must say I find the whole “People’s Republic” narrative quite tiresome. It is perhaps a fair description of Burlington, but most of the folks I’ve gotten to know up here are, whatever their foibles, ruggedly individualist and instinctively conservative – in short, the kind of people you would more likely run into at a Ron Paul rally than at a Take Back America conference.”
Oh really? Is that why Obama carried not only every county in Vermont, but all but one county in all of New England?
VA_Paleocon, my understanding is that Vermont has practically no gun laws at all. Now Thats 2nd Amendment friendly!
[...] was deeply gratified to read Jack Ross’ paen to the Green Mountain Republic at Post Right. I would urge him, however, before going all Benedict Option on the place to consider [...]