I’ve lived in Montpelier for three weeks. This morning I went to the farmer’s market, and got an opportunity to see first hand what kind of people live here. Folks, this is a different culture from just about anything I have ever seen. It’s almost as if the Hippie lifestyle never actually died out, it just packed up and moved to Vermont.
For one thing, the people here are very anti-war. Not just the people who stand there and say “Hey, we don’t like war.” These people are almost militant about it (an oxymoron if ever there was one.) Yard sales are not to sell off their old crap, they are to raise money and spread awareness for the latest Peace March. It is not uncommon to see protests outside the court house. (I heard that there was a fight last week between two different protest groups, because each claimed that they were there first, their cause was more important, and thus they deserved more room on the front sidewalk. I have not verified if that is actually true.)
There are two types of farms here – Organic and Protested. You either love the land or you use chemicals. There is no middle ground. You use pesticides or you use chickens and ducks. You cannot do both, or a combination of different methods, or you’re a non-conformist. They are also very into nature here – someone told me that there are probably more solar houses here than any other state (unverified.) This is, to use the vernacular, “sticking it to the maaaaaaaaan.”
The women here apparently don’t believe in bras, which normally I would find sexy, but they also don’t believe in shaving. I saw a woman at Shaw’s this morning who had more hair under her arms than I do (and I’m part Italian.) I describe it as such – “See hard braless nipple, mind wanders, mouth salivates, stomach flips. Woman turns a bit, see armpit hair, mind siezes, mouth goes dry, stomach churns and reverses gear.”
On the other hand, everyone is really friendly. If you even think about crossing the street, drivers screech to a halt for miles so you can cross (except the motorcycles – they go around the stopped vehicles so they don’t have to remove their feet from the highway pegs.) Try that in Massachusetts and you’re more likely to become a flying object. (The difference beteeen NH and MA is that when someone gets run over in NH there are skid marks on the street.) Pass by someone on the sidewalk and more often than not they will smile and say “hi there,” and it’s a genuine greeting rather than the nervous, uncomfortable small talk people in other areas are compelled to make when encountering others.
Since Montpelier is a college town there are a lot of students from other states here, mostly younger people. They don’t interact much with other people – they have their little personal space, which consists of them, their cell phone, and their IPod. Everything and everyone else is irrelevent, and the rest of the world revolves around them. It’s no different than anywhere else I’ve been, except that they stand out more here. If you go to the Mall of New Hampshire or the Steeplegate Mall, you’re going to see an entire food court filled with 20-somethings making a cacophony of conversation noise, but none of them are actually talking to each other. They are all talking on their cell phones to people who are apparently not there with them. Don’t talk to the person at your table, talk to someone who is at another mall. Hell, for all they know their friend might be on the other side of the food court, but they’ll never know it because they are too busy watching videos on their cell phones to notice anything not directly related to them. It is not unusual to see two people get out of a car, both of them are talking on cell phones. I just want to scream, “You’re right here with each other, why are you talking on your phones?? Talk to each other!” I have to wonder sometimes if they ARE talking to each other, but they are so conditioned to use cell phones for everything that they can’t hold a conversation without one. When these people come here to attend Vermont College or NECI, suddenly they become a minority, and that kind of activity gets you dirty looks. It is NOT accepted here, AT ALL. People speak out against that sort of exclusionist behavior, and you’d be hard pressed to find a store that did not have a “NO CELL PHONES” sign on their window. Shop owners will throw you right out of the store if you walk in yacking on a phone (I’ve seen it happen about 4 times so far.) Montpelier is all about the small shops, and the owners just don’t want to listen to some self-centered Chatty Cathy screaming into her phone about how awful her life is. And that’s really why they are so annoying – if people SPOKE into their phones, it wouldn’t be so bad, but everyone has to SCREAM into their phones. Correct me if I am wrong, but this isn’t 1988 where cell phones were about as reliable as tin cans and string. Technology has moved forward a bit. It IS possible to speak quietly into your phone and still be heard. Instead, people walk around SHOUTING into their phones. The four people nearby, also on their phones, have to talk even louder into their phones, until you almost go deaf from the conversations around you. I for one am glad that Montpelier is so strict about their noise ordinances.