Video: Dear Vermont
Tuesday, July 3rd, 2012Every episode of State of the Re:Union, we ask listeners to write a letter to their city. For our Vermont episode, we featured writer and musician Robin MacArthur’s love letter to her home state. The piece is scored by Red Heart the Ticker, the band Robin plays in with her husband Tyler Gibbons.
Photography and multimedia production by Sara Brooke Curtis, with help from Laura Starecheski.
Visit our Vermont page for more stories from this episode. And be sure to check out State of the Re:Union’s other videos on our YouTube Channel.
Sometimes you don’t know how perfect a place is… until you’ve left it. That’s what Chuck Palahniuk discovered. He grew up in a part of southeastern Washington, called the Tri-Cities—after the trio of cities clustered along the Columbia River: Richland, Pasco and Kennewick. It’s in this area that, in the 1940s, the federal government bought up a huge piece of land to make plutonium for nuclear bombs. And theTri-Cities are still shaped by the odd hybrid of farming the soils of the region– and plutonium production. Every episode of State of the Re:Union, we ask residents to write a letter to the place they live. Chuck, who’s the author of Fight Club, and several other books, writes that, with time even things you never appreciated become oddly… perfect.
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The Ozarks have long been an isolated part of the country. Steep mountains break up the landscape into hills and hollows, making each little town into its own microcosm. Here, families have stayed in the same hollows for generations with little influence from the outside world, which means that their daily life is steeped in the past. In this episode, SOTRU goes deep into the lives of people who live with the ghosts of their past.
Baltimore is a city of many neighborhoods, of intense divides—racial, class, and otherwise– not easily overcome. It’s a city bogged down by a reputation for crime, poverty and dysfunction (thanks, in part, to the acclaimed TV show The Wire)—a reputation not entirely undeserved. But all of that often overshadows the passion and dedication many Baltimoreans have for their city, and for taking on what’s wrong with it in ways small and large.
Quaint storefronts along Main streets, covered bridges over clear streams, cows from dairy farms dotting green valleys: across the state, these are the iconic images of Vermont. But beyond its pastoral beauty, this is a place that prides itself on its independent spirit. In this hour, we’ll hear a range of stories of the way Vermont’s “small town state” identity manifests: from finding new ways to treat mental health problems, to a gallery with a surprising monthly ritual to dealing with the most devastating natural disaster the state has ever seen.
