In the East a funeral for a mother; and in the West a funeral for a father–as if pain was a child–requiring a hand on both sides of our state.
Fires and floods, murders and accidents. How much will Southern Vermont be required to take? At first I thought the curse was on Brattleboro, but there seems to be a similar infliction on the Deerfield Valley.
This morning, friends in the West attended the funeral of not one, but two fathers–both killed in the same tragedy–one by accident, the other by anguish.
I headed East for another two taken–Rita Corbin died 11 days after the collision that also claimed the life of her 17 year-old grandson. But it was love, not loss that echoed in Rita’s absence; just as it had after the fire and the flood and the murder. And so it is, that I offer the echo of love to our friends in the West, in the hope that a sweeter balance can be restored.
Autumn Snow, Shannon Albritton, all rights reserved, 2011
It’s a quintessential Vermont day, and we’re all trying to hold onto the last breaths of autumn before the big snow. The vendors at the farmers market are shivering, but they’re also grinning. The market closes today–for the season. No more waking at dawn to make egg rolls or harvest vegetables. They’ve shown up for us for the past 6 months, and now they’ll pack it up until spring comes round again.
Like a party crasher–with guests–snow is the forecast, and not just flurries. A foot. Facebook posts prematurely turn toward woodstoves and woolens, muffins and hot soup. The bloggers are stirring too. Three neighbors post at once. Jodi, about our road. Shannon, about the weather. Kevin, about… taking a dump.
To tell the truth, I’m not sure what Kevin’s post is about, and I’m not even sure I’m supposed to blow his cover. This is the first that Nature Man has “blogged” if I’m not mistaken. Mostly, he just spouts. Vitriol. Like this:
I was takin a dump the other morning while the wife had the National Pompous Radio on in the kitchen. I know, I should have got up and shut the door to the shitter, but I was mid-turd, so I had to sit there listening to them blather. They were interviewing some fellow who was a leader of something called the Tea Party. He was talkin all tough about cutting taxes and job creators and Cripes knows what else, and all I’m thinkin is, buddy, you named your group after something my daughter does with a stuffed bear and a headless Barbie doll.
Natureman suggests a KEG PARTY instead; which is where I need to be in 30 minutes. Actually it’s a cider-pressing, but there’s always beer. Do you think it’s still on? The white stuff has begun to fall.
After 18 years in these Green Mountains, summer is by far my favorite season; but when the snow comes around, like an old lover, it doesn’t matter how many times he’s been dumped, he stills turns me on.
This is crushing news to those of us who hold onto the sun until the ice freezes our fingers, and releases them, frost by frost, until we have lost our grip on summer, and even fall.
Today’s was a hard frost, but at least the sun is shining. Yesterday, when it was mostly grey, I saw my body flinging itself off a cliff over and over again. Luckily I was in my bed, under the covers, with a novel, ignoring the coming gloom of November.
In the evening, a friend invited us to gather around a fire in the woods behind her home. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to do anything. But I did, and I was a better for it.
As the first star pieced the sky, I soaked up as much yellow and orange and red as I could from the flames inside her pit. This is our way of capturing the sun, I thought. This is our way of making it ours, until it returns again to wake the world in tender greens.
Snow is the forecast this week. Snow. There. I said it. The “S” word. (But I refuse to say the “W” word–no matter what the forecast.)
As a Vermonter of 18 years, I accept snow around Halloween, although I welcome a balmy night on which to Trick or Treat. Either is possible this time of year, as the Earth begins to rock us toward the “W” word– into that long, white slumber of deep.
Occupy Brattleboro, October 15, 2011, Kelly Salasin
On Saturday I joined the Occupy Movement in the comfort of my own town park in Brattleboro, Vermont. “What are we doing here?” my eleven-year old asked, “This isn’t Wall Street.”
I explained that this was our way of showing our support for what started in NYC. My son looked around the small park and noticed his school nurse, some younger classmates, and our neighbors from up the road. I introduced him to the midwife who assisted us with his older brother’s birth. “Helena came from across the state to be here,” I said, as she and I shared a sweet embrace.
Some of our South Pond friends were gathered too. Sparrow was there with her new baby, and Ted and his wife were there with their colleague from Nicaragua. Charlie and Kate told us that both of their sons, in different parts of the country, were gathering today. Students and teaching colleagues of my husband were also well represented.
“There are Occupy Movements in Rome and London this weekend as well,” he added.
“They’re happening over the world,” Kate echoed.
While we talked, young people led chants, while others of all ages stood by the road with signs. The thumbs up and solidarity honking was non-stop. People rolled down their windows to cheer. A local lawyer. Truck drivers. Teenagers. Old guys. BMW’s. Beaters. Delivery vans. NY plates, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts.
After an hour, my son walked into town to spend his pocket change, while my husband and I occupied a blanket apart from the crowd. A man from New Hampshire dropped down beside us, saying that he needed to soak up my “peace” vibe. I chuckled to myself, imagining an entire movement of people lying in the grass under the sun.
This guy had been in Boston for the rallies there, where it was much more intense, and he said that he preferred the energy here. After a few moments of silence, he was up again, off to talk with Health Care activists and 350-ers and some young men shouting about Ron Paul.
“If Ron Paul were running this country, those kids would never have gotten to this rally,” my husband said. “Our roads would still be missing.”
After 3 hours, I was ready to go. I wanted to get a bite to eat before the literary event with Ken Burns and David Blistein at the museum. There was no specific mention of Occupy Brattleboro at this large gathering, not even by the local organizer, but she did reference the fire and the floods and the murders. I appreciated that.
I also appreciated Ken’s message that we have to see ourselves in each other, that it’s our arrogance that makes us think that our views are uniquely right or that our times are special or that we are living our lives more fully than the generations before us. We each have our individual stories, he said; we each contain generosity and greed, sincerity and hypocrisy.
His friend David Blistein echoed these thoughts, saying that our righteousness prevented us from truly “feeling” our history, or seeing the other side. It doesn’t allow something new to happen, he said.
I couldn’t wait to get into the discussion during the Q& A, but there was more. David read from his new book, Real Time, with the voice of Harriet Tubman who had this to say to our self-absorbed generation:
At least those people knew they were slaves… (unlike the)people in the so-called ‘free’ world today. Because they plainly are not aware of their chains… Getting up at dawn to travel in a little metal box just so you can spend the whole day in another little box? That’s slavery. Having to look at the words on your computer before even saying hello to your children? That’s slavery. Sitting in front of your TV for hours at a time? That’s slavery. Thinking that the wealth in your bank account is more important than the wealth in your heart. That’s slavery. Living with a husband or wife whom you’ve forgotten how to love. That’s slavery.
It occurred to me that although “our times” seem so divided and alternately so “enlightened,” there is an arrogance in distinguishing ourselves from the past. It’s what Ken Burn’s calls, “the tyranny of the present.” But I didn’t whole-heartedly agree with either man’s view, and so when it was time, I shot my hand into the air.
“As a memoirist,” I said, “I do see the same history repeat itself in my family with the most uncanny details; But I’ve also seen it evolve. Each generation may pick up the same story, but they also make it a little better. I see the same evolution with Occupy Wall Street. They’ve created the space for something new to emerge–from the people.”
I could have wrestled these thoughts into the wee hours of the night with these two, but hundreds of people were ready to descend upon them, and I had a husband waiting across town with a glass of chardonnay and a late night burger.
It had been a good day in Brattleboro, made up of everything I love and admired about her. She had survived the fire, the murders, the floods and was still doing what she does best–engaging people in what matters to them.
It wasn’t just the Literary Festival, or the Occupation at Wells Fountain Park. It was the general hum of the town–among the staff behind the Co-op’s deli line or Amy’s bakery; in the arm chairs of the library; on the lawn of Brattleboro Savings and Loan with Fish from WKVT; at the newly restored Latchis with the broken marquee, still offering up opera and jazz; and down the street at the youth theater (NEYT) exploring homophobia with their latest play.
Past, present and future, the people in Brattleboro examine the chains, on all of us, and creatively endeavor to sing and read and gather to set us free.
(p.s. sometimes I think a little arrogance is in order to claim the change we want to see, especially if when its balanced by compassion and humility in the face of so much pain.)
Kelly Salasin, October 2011
The previous post on the Occupy Movement was: Occupy WHAT?
I can’t drive Route 9 without a swell of love for the labor that has restored our world in the past few weeks since Irene hijacked our streams. At each turn of the highway, I see orange cones where the guard rail once stood, and I know that a section of road was washed away there too.
To say that a “section was washed away” doesn’t do justice to the calamity of Irene. Entire segments of Route 9 simply vanished, roots and all, leaving cavernous holes in their place. The span of each missing stretch of road can be measured by the new pavement–ten to 100 foot stretches–sobering, if nothing else.
I’ve only been back on Route 9 as a driver for a week, but it’s been repaired enough for passage for at least two. That first week it opened was rough going, with dirt patches along the way, and road crews littered about.
On the few occasions where I was a passenger in someone else’s vehicle (due to a post-flood carpool), my stomach churned with each new turn of devastation–a bridge missing, a hillside vacant, a stream bed ten times its original size.
I worried aloud for the safety of drivers–those who didn’t know to slow down, and those who might be hurt because of that. I worried about rain, and new wash outs, and dampened spirits.
I kept to the backroads. They were familiar. And dependable. Some had been destroyed, but their repair seemed simpler, more straightforward; and I knew how to drive their earthy contours; and felt safer because of their realness.
And still, I was drawn back to the nightmare of Route 9, to its curves and climbs and horrors, just as I was tonight. At 6:00 pm, the road crews were gone, and the setting sun made purple mountain majesty of the sky, transforming everything, even the mangled roads, into… beauty.
Rubble strewn highway at MacArthur and Route 9
As I approached my turn at Route 9 and MacArthur, I saw that most of the rubble which has defined it has been cleared away; and I almost miss it.
My sister comes Friday and I want her to see what pain has been inflicted upon us. And yet, I’m equally afraid for her safety as she drives up my half-eaten dirt road at night. It’s narrower than ever and there’s no room for cars to pass in both directions at once. And what if it rains?
Tonight, I climb MacArthur without another driver in sight, and notice new gravel poured into the stream side of the road. I wonder where it came from, and how long it will take before they finish the job that overwhelms me just thinking about it.
There’s a large yellow truck at the top of the hill, and I slow down to take a look at the work that began yesterday at Neringa. Three weeks ago, a hundred wedding guests were stranded there when the bridge across the Whetstone collapsed.
Neringa wedding guests lining up for transport out of Vermont.
Rumor has it that the dam at the pond was the cause of the flooding down MacArthur and onto Route 9 and down into Bratttleboro, but I’m here to tell you, that dam is still intact. It’s how the guests crossed the pond and secured passage home to Canada or California or Massachusetts and Lithuania. It’s how the caretaker and his family get access to the car that’s parked in our driveway across the road. (Their truck is still stranded on the other side.)
There’s no sign of a bridge yet, but Bennett and the operator of that huge yellow excavator are talking, like men do, figuring out what’s what.
The trees that fell across the bridge were removed yesterday morning, and the monstrous culverts that ended up downstream were retrieved in the afternoon; so perhaps replacing them is next.
I’ve never thought too much about road making and bridge fashioning until now. I never thought too much about watersheds and erosion and stream redirection either. But for the past three weeks, I’ve been intrigued by every bit of it. Every bit.
When it doesn’t make me cry or cringe, driving on these roads makes my heart swell with every labor of love.
In the East a funeral for a mother; and in the West a funeral for a father–as if pain was a child–requiring a hand on both sides of our state.
This Vermont Life 