Vermont Summer Culture

Bread and Puppets

One Sunday in Vermont we went to a Bread and Puppets performance, which is very hard to describe—it needs to be experienced! It is a circus of sorts, and reminded me of Cirque du Soleil without the gymnastics, but with the European mood, and outlandish costumery. B and P was started by an Austrian that everyone knows as “Peter”, who is supposedly 70ish but is as buff as a 20 year old. At the end of the performance, bread is served from a big, outdoor oven, hence the name (and the people line up in the most polite and civil fashion, taking only one piece of bread and moving on...it's the little things that say so much, you know?)

Some of Bread and Puppets is inexplicable. For instance, the event began with a giant set of ears roaming through the gathering crowd. But B and P is mostly social commentary in the form of wicked satire. Mocking the growing surveillance society, “security cameras” moved among the crowd, taking pictures of us to be shown at our torture sessions, of course. The B and P performance consisted mostly a series of vignettes that pointed out the criminality of our so-called leaders.

My children definitely noticed these figures , as if showing a penis crosses an extra special line of taboo. But what's the reason for that, anyway? I recall the big whooping deal made in Dallas over a group of children taken to the Dallas Museum of Art where they happened to see NAKED male statues! What kind of uptight culture would get so worked up over the human body?

The B and P experience is part of the larger culture here in Vermont of rebellion to authority. Coming from Texas—and a white collar oh-so-politically-correct-corporate-culture to boot—I was quite surprised to see such open contempt for government. But the best part is the reaction among the locals to all this. They just shrug and say “that's the North East Kingdom!”, as if there is no other way things could be. And you know what? There IS no other way things should be.

North East Kingdom Music Festival

My friend Hickory got me a job working as a volunteer at a local music festival, The North East Kingdom Music Festival. This is probably the largest summer festival in this part of Vermont and still everybody seems to know everybody else.

So many locals work the show—and so pay no admission—that the show is lucky to break even. The festival happens on “Bill's land” and so everybody driving up claims to know Bill and describes how far they go back together, but we were instructed to show no mercy on such claims. I worked parking, which didn't entail too much, so I helped them with clean up the day after.

And what an awesome festival! The stage was built by "The Old School Builders", and I wish I had more photographs of it since this one does it no justice. This wooden stage could hold a battleship, and the sound quality was marvelous. There were also performances on a small stage and these I enjoyed the most. What made them special was the audience reaction as some of the bands were well-known and the locals sang and danced and brought the bands to a higher level. Plus, blue grass is naturally pleasing to me as the style demands extreme proficiency of the players. There were times I became so lost in the performances I swear I had out of body experiences. This was so incredibly fun! I'll never forget it.

One of the really cool and interesting things about our journey is to watch how our children are blossoming into maturity. Both Connor and Alexis pursued their own interests at the festival. They befriended a vendor of crystals, named Shawn, who turned out to be pretty cool and soon they were helping him sell his wares (for a cut of the action, of course). They learned how to wrap a crystal in silver wire and have since worked on their own original pieces. The social interactions they place themselves in are absolutely priceless. At times Janet and I just had to stand back and watch. We are so proud of them.

The festival capped our stay in Vermont and we had such a fun time there. Thank you again Earthdancer and Hickory. We miss you, Vermont! Here is one of Alexis' cloud pictures.