GETTING A HAIR CUT IN ST. ALBANS -12/08

Valblog

12/08

GETTING A HAIR CUT IN ST. ALBANS

Is it true for the rest of you? Once assigned a topic of research it becomes the only thing you want to talk about when out of the studio. That’s why I found myself listening to the halcyon musings of a former Goddard College professor of photography and a former student at Goddard who were serendipitously having their hairs cut and dyed at the same time I was.

It’s a curious thing about Vermonters, whether they’ve newly settled in the state or have been around for centuries, whenever a visitor asks them about their resident home they always talk about how good it used to be – before now. Before the way of life they loved growing up or moved here to enjoy – changed.

The present always seems to be an imperfect work in progress and the future a patchwork of their remembered past and a few technical improvements, like internet connectivity, functional bus service, and less than three jobs. Yet ‘their Vermont’ of almost any decade, continues to have a mythically successful image among non-Vermonters leading, I suppose, to repeating the cycle just described above.

However, this particular set of memories concerned Vermont’s former branding as the commune capital of the East and a former home of the Weathermen. And, interestingly, although their tales were fascinating - images of Weathermen conducting military drills (how did that work among this most anarchistic of groups? Was the cadence, “left, left, left?”) and slogging through mud season while freezing your ass off during the ‘back-to-nature-decade - made for great stories, neither of them wanted to integrate those memories into an envisioned future for the state. Possibly because they - in their present lives – were fully integrated into the lifestyles they had rebelled against in the 60’s. They both owned their own homes, had mortgages, and credit cards. They’re protests took the form of buying organic produce and using ‘green grocery bags’ – a lifestyle available to those who can afford to choose where to shop.

Both told me their vision for a future St. Albans would be minus Costco, minus the ‘prescription’ drugs that drive the crime rate in town and more community activities on the town green – like band concerts. Asked about ‘branding’ they talked about St. Albans’ past as a railroad town – here we go again, I thought. Proof that progress seems to be a lot more cyclical than linear in its development.