Phil Galewitz: Well-insured Vermont’s medical woes
At the University of Vermont Medical Center, in Burlington.
RICHMOND, Vt. — On a warm autumn morning, Roger Brown walked through a grove of towering trees whose sap fuels his maple syrup business. He was checking for damage after recent flooding. But these days, his workers’ health worries him more than his trees’.
This story also ran on The Daily Yonder. It can be republished for free.
The cost of Slopeside Syrup’s employee health insurance premiums spiked 24% this year. Next year it will rise 14%.
The jumps mean less money to pay workers, and expensive insurance coverage that doesn’t ensure employees can get care, Brown said. “Vermont is seen as the most progressive state, so how is health care here so screwed up?”
Vermont consistently ranks among the healthiest states, and its unemployment and uninsured rates are among the lowest. Yet Vermonters pay the highest prices nationwide for individual health coverage, and state reports show its providers and insurers are in financial trouble. Nine of the state’s 14 hospitals are losing money, and the state’s largest insurer is struggling to remain solvent. Long waits for care have become increasingly common, according to state reports and interviews with residents and industry officials.
Rising health costs are a problem across the country, but Vermont’s situation surprises health experts because virtually all its residents have insurance and the state regulates care and coverage prices.
For more than 15 years, federal and state policymakers have focused on increasing the number of people insured, which they expected would shore up hospital finances and make care more available and affordable.
“Vermont’s struggles are a wake-up call that insurance is only one piece of the puzzle to ensuring access to care,” said Keith Mueller, a rural health expert at the University of Iowa.
Regulators and consultants say the state’s small, aging population of about 650,000 makes spreading insurance risk difficult. That demographic challenge is compounded by geography, as many Vermonters live in rural areas, where it’s difficult to attract more health workers to address shortages.
At least part of the cost spike can be attributed to patients crossing state lines for quicker care in New York and Massachusetts. Those visits can be more expensive for both insurers and patients because of long ambulance rides and charges from out-of-network providers.
Patients who stay, like Lynne Drevik, face long waits. Drevik said her doctor told her in April that she needed knee replacement surgeries — but the earliest appointment would be in January for one knee and the following April for the other.
Drevik, 59, said it hurts to climb the stairs in the 19th-century farmhouse in Montgomery Center she and her husband operate as an inn and a spa. “My life is on hold here, and it’s hard to make any plans,” she said. “It’s terrible.”
The Phineas Swann Inn & Spa in Montgomery Center, Vermont, owned by Lynne Drevik and her husband, Darren. Lynne is waiting over nine months for knee replacement surgeries.(Phil Galewitz/KFF Health News)
Health experts say some of the state’s health system troubles are self-inflicted.
Unlike most states, Vermont regulates hospital and insurance prices through an independent agency, the Green Mountain Care Board. Until recently, the board typically approved whatever price changes companies wanted, said Julie Wasserman, a health consultant in Vermont.
The board allowed one health system — the University of Vermont Health Network — to control about two-thirds of the state’s hospital market and allowed its main facility, the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington, to raise its prices until it ranked among the nation’s most expensive, she said, citing data the board presented in September.
Hospital officials contend their prices are no higher than industry averages.
But for 2025, the board required the University of Vermont Medical Center to cut the prices it bills private insurers by 1%.
The nonprofit system says it is navigating its own challenges. Top officials say a severe lack of housing makes it hard to recruit workers, while too few mental health providers, nursing homes, and long-term care services often create delays in discharging patients, adding to costs.
Two-thirds of the system’s patients are covered by Medicare or Medicaid, said CEO Sunny Eappen. Both government programs pay providers lower rates than private insurance, which Eappen said makes it difficult to afford rising prices for drugs, medical devices, and labor.
Officials at the University of Vermont Medical Center point to several ways they are trying to adapt. They cited, for example, $9 million the hospital system has contributed to the construction of two large apartment buildings to house new workers, at a subsidized price for lower-income employees.
The University of Vermont has spent millions of dollars to help build apartments a short drive from its main hospital to alleviate the shortage of housing that’s been a barrier to recruiting and retaining employees.(Phil Galewitz/KFF Health News)
The hospital also has worked with community partners to open a mental health urgent care center, providing an alternative to the emergency room.
In the ER, curtains separate areas in the hallway where patients can lie on beds or gurneys for hours waiting for a room. The hospital also uses what was a storage closet as an overflow room to provide care.
“It’s good to get patients into a hallway, as it’s better than a chair,” said Mariah McNamara, an ER doctor and associate chief medical officer with the hospital.
Mariah McNamara — an emergency room doctor at the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington, the state’s only academic medical center — in an ER hallway where patients are treated when the hospital is full.(Phil Galewitz/KFF Health News)
For the about 250 days a year when the hospital is full, doctors face pressure to discharge patients without the ideal home or community care setup, she said. “We have to go in the direction of letting you go home without patient services and giving that a try, because otherwise the hospital is going to be full of people, and that includes people that don’t need to be here,” McNamara said.
Searching for solutions, the Green Mountain Care Board hired a consultant who recommended a number of changes, including converting four rural hospitals into outpatient facilities, in a worst-case scenario, and consolidating specialty services at several others.
The consultant, Bruce Hamory, said in a call with reporters that his report provides a road map for Vermont, where “the health care system is no match for demographic, workforce, and housing challenges.”
But he cautioned that any fix would require sacrifice from everyone, including patients, employers, and health providers. “There is no simple single policy solution,” he said.
One place Hamory recommended converting to an outpatient center only was North Country Hospital in Newport, a village in Vermont’s least populated region, known as the Northeast Kingdom.
North Country Hospital in Newport, Vermont, faces financial challenges. (Phil Galewitz/KFF Health News)
The Newport, Vermont, marina on Lake Memphremagog, 5 miles from the Canadian border. Newport is so close to Quebec, most radio stations are French-language and a Canadian flag flies downtown. (Phil Galewitz/KFF Health News)
Denise Carter, chief nursing officer, and CEO Tom Frank in North Country Hospital’s recently expanded emergency room.(Phil Galewitz/KFF Health News)
The 25-bed hospital has lost money for years, partly because of an electronic health record system that has made it difficult to bill patients. But the hospital also has struggled to attract providers and make enough money to pay them.
Officials said they would fight any plans to close the hospital, which recently dropped several specialty services, including pulmonology, neurology, urology, and orthopedics. It doesn’t have the cash to upgrade patient rooms to include bathroom doors wide enough for wheelchairs.
On a recent morning, CEO Tom Frank walked the halls of his hospital. The facility was quiet, with just 14 admitted patients and only a couple of people in the ER. “This place used to be bustling,” he said of the former pulmonology clinic.
Frank said the hospital breaks even treating Medicare patients, loses money treating Medicaid patients, and makes money from a dwindling number of privately insured patients.
The state’s strict regulations have earned it an antihousing, antibusiness reputation, he said. “The cost of health care is a symptom of a larger problem.”
About 30 miles south of Newport, Andy Kehler often worries about the cost of providing health insurance to the 85 workers at Jasper Hill Farm, the cheesemaking business he co-owns.
“It’s an issue every year for us, and it looks like there is no end in sight,” he said.
Andy Kehler, a co-owner of Jasper Hill Farm, inside a vault in the caves where the farm ripens its cheeses, which sell across the country. Often on his mind is the cost of providing health insurance for his 85 workers. “It’s an issue every year for us, and it looks like there is no end in sight” to double-digit increases, he says.(Phil Galewitz/KFF Health News)
Jasper Hill pays half the cost of its workers’ health insurance premiums because that’s all it can afford, Kehler said. Employees pay $1,700 a month for a family, with a $5,000 deductible.
“The coverage we provide is inadequate for what you pay,” he said.
Phil Galewitz is a KFF News reporter. pgalewitz@kff.org, @philgalewitz
Related Topics
Make peace with the bleakness
My sorrow, when she’s here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.
Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She’s glad the birds are gone away,
She’s glad her simple worsted grey
Is silver now with clinging mist.
The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.
Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.
— “My November Guest,’’ by Robert Frost (1874-1963)
Adriana Craciun: In the Arctic, the essential Global Seed Vault
The Global Seed Vault
BOSTON
Two-thirds of the world’s food comes today from just nine plants: sugar cane, maize (corn), rice, wheat, potatoes, soybeans, oil-palm fruit, sugar beet and cassava. In the past, farmers grew tens of thousands of crop varieties around the world. This biodiversity protected agriculture from crop losses caused by plant diseases and climate change.
Today, seed banks around the world are doing much of the work of saving crop varieties that could be essential resources under future growing conditions. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway supports them all. It is the world’s most famous backup site for seeds that are more precious than data.
Tens of thousands of new seeds from around the world arrived at the seed vault on Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, in mid-October 2024. This was one of the largest deposits in the vault’s 16-year history.
And on Oct. 31, crop scientists Cary Fowler and Geoffrey Hawtin, who played key roles in creating the Global Seed Vault, received the US$500,000 World Food Prize, which recognizes work that has helped increase the supply, quality or accessibility of food worldwide.
The Global Seed Vault has been politically controversial since it opened in 2008. It is the most visible site in a global agricultural research network associated with the United Nations and funders such as the World Bank.
These organizations supported the Green Revolution – a concerted effort to introduce high-yielding seeds to developing nations in the mid-20th century. This effort saved millions of people from starvation, but it shifted agriculture in a technology-intensive direction. The Global Seed Vault has become a lightning rod for critiques of that effort and its long-term impacts.
I have visited the vault and am completing a book about connections between scientific research on seeds and ideas about immortality over centuries. My research shows that the Global Seed Vault’s controversies are in part inspired by religious associations that predate it. But these cultural beliefs also remain essential for the vault’s support and influence and thus for its goal of protecting biodiversity.
The Global Seed Vault gives scientists the tools they may need to breed crops that can cope with a changing climate.
Backup for a global network
Several hundred million seeds from thousands of species of agricultural plants live inside the Global Seed Vault. They come from 80 nations and are tucked away in special metallic pouches that keep them dry.
The vault is designed to prolong their dormancy at zero degrees Fahrenheit (-18 degrees Celsius) in three ice-covered caverns inside a sandstone mountain. The air is so cold inside that when I entered the vault, my eyelashes and the inside of my nose froze.
The Global Seed Vault is owned by Norway and run by the Nordic Genetic Resources Centre. It was created under a U.N. treaty governing over 1,700 seed banks, where seeds are stored away from farms, to serve as what the U.N. calls “the ultimate insurance policy for the world’s food supply.”
This network enables nations, nongovernmental organizations, scientists and farmers to save and exchange seeds for research, breeding and replanting. The vault is the backup collection for all of these seed banks, storing their duplicate seeds at no charge to them.
Potatoes and sweet potatoes cultivated at the International Potato Center in Lima, Peru. Seeds of these plants are stored at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Ernesto Benavides/AFP via Getty Images
The seed vault’s cultural meaning
The vault’s Arctic location and striking appearance contribute to both its public appeal and its controversies.
Svalbard is often described as a remote, frozen wasteland. For conspiracy theorists, early visits to the Global Seed Vault by billionaires such as Bill Gates and George Soros, and representatives from Google and Monsanto, signaled that the vault had a secret purpose or benefited global elites.
In fact, however, the archipelago of Svalbard has daily flights to other Norwegian cities. Its cosmopolitan capital, Longyearbyen, is home to 2,700 people from 50 countries, drawn by ecotourism and scientific research – hardly a well-hidden site for covert activities.
The vault’s entrance features a striking installation by Norwegian artist Dyveke Sanne. An illuminated kaleidoscope of mirrors, this iconic artwork glows in the long Arctic night and draws many tourists.
Because of its mission to preserve seeds through potential disasters, media regularly describe the Global Seed Vault as the “doomsday vault,” or a “modern Noah’s Ark.” Singled out based on its location, appearance and associations with Biblical myths such as the Flood, the Garden of Eden and the apocalypse, the vault has acquired a public meaning unlike that of any other seed bank.
The politics of seed conservation
One consequence is that the vault often serves as a lightning rod for critics who view seed conservation as the latest stage in a long history of Europeans removing natural resources from developing nations. But these critiques don’t really reflect how the Global Seed Vault works.
The vault and its sister seed banks don’t diminish cultivation of seeds grown by farmers in fields. The two methods complement one another, and seed depositors retain ownership of their seeds.
Another misleading criticism argues that storing seeds at Svalbard prevents these plants from adapting to climate change and could render them useless in a warmer future. But storing seeds in a dormant state actually mirrors plants’ own survival strategy.
Dormancy is the mysterious plant behavior that “protects against an unpredictable future,” according to biologist Anthony Trewavas. Plants are experts in coping with climate unpredictability by essentially hibernating.
Seed dormancy allows plants to hedge their bets on the future; the Global Seed Vault extends this state for decades or longer. While varieties in the field may become extinct, their banked seeds live to fight another day.
Storing more than seeds
In 2017, a delegation of Quechua farmers from the Peruvian Andes traveled to Svalbard to deposit seeds of their sacred potato varieties in the vault. In songs and prayers, they said goodbye to the seeds as their “loved ones” and “endangered children.” “We’re not just leaving genes, but also a family,” one farmer told Svalbard officials.
The farmers said the vault would protect what they called their “Indigenous biocultural heritage” – an interweaving of scientific and cultural value, and of plants and people, that for the farmers evoked the sacred.
People from around the world have sought to attach their art to the Global Seed Vault for a similar reason. In 2018, the Svalbard Seed Cultures Ark began depositing artworks that attach stories to seeds in a nearby mine.
Pope Francis sent an envoy with a handmade copy of a book reflecting on the pope’s message of hope to the world during the COVID-19 pandemic. Japanese sculptor Mitsuaki Tanabe created a 9-meter-long steel grain of rice for the vault’s opening and was permitted to place a miniature version inside.
Seeds sleeping in Svalbard are far from their home soil, but each one is enveloped in an invisible web of the microbes and fungi that traveled with it. These microbiomes are still interacting with each seed in ways scientists are just beginning to understand.
I see the Global Seed Vault as a lively and fragile place, powered not by money or technology but by the strange power of seeds. The World Food Prize once again highlights their vital promise.
Adriana Craciun is a professor of English and the Emma MacLachlan Metcalf Chair of Humanities at Boston University
She doesn’t work for or receive any compensation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond her academic appointment.
Windblown joy
”If Milkman Can Fly So Can I” (acrylic and metallic leaf foil foil on canvas), by Yowshien Kuo, at the Bates College Museum of Art, Lewiston, Maine.
-- Courtesy of the artist.
Llewellyn King: Immigrants’ buoyancy, including success in science
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
I have been exploring the heights of scientific endeavor in reporting on artificial intelligence, from its use in medical research (especially promising) to its use in utilities and transportation. It is notable that many of the high achievers weren’t born here.
They have come here from everywhere, but the number of Asians is notable — and in that group, the number of women stands out.
As an immigrant, originally from what was called Rhodesia and is now called Zimbabwe, I am interested in why immigrants are so buoyant, so upwardly mobile in their adopted countries. I can distill it to two things: They came to succeed, and they mostly aren’t encumbered with the social limits of their upbringing and molded expectations. America is a clean slate when you first get here.
A friend from Serbia, who ascended the heights of academe and lectured at Tulane University, said his father told him, “Don’t go to America unless you want to succeed.”
A Korean mechanical engineer, who studied at American universities and now heads an engineering company that seeks to ease the electricity crisis, told me, “I want to try harder and do something for America. I chose to come here. I want to succeed, and I want America to succeed.”
When I sat at lunch in New York with an AI startup’s senior staff, we noticed that none of us was born an American. Two of the developers were born in India, one in Spain and me in Zimbabwe.
We started to talk about what made America a haven for good minds in science and engineering and we decided it was the magnet of opportunity, Ronald Reagan’s “shining city upon a hill.”
There was agreement from the startup scientists-engineers — I like the British word “boffins” for scientists and engineers taken together — that if that ever changes, if the anti-immigrant sentiment overwhelms good judgment, then the flow will stop, and the talented won’t come to America to pursue their dreams. They will go elsewhere or stay at home.
In the last several years, I have visited AI companies, interviewed many in that industry and at the great universities, such as Brown, UC Berkeley, MIT and Stanford, and companies such as Google and Nvidia. The one thing that stands out is how many of those at the forefront weren’t born in America or are first generation.
They come from all over the globe. But Asians are clearly a major force in the higher reaches of U.S. research.
At a AI conference, organized by the MIT Technology Review, the whole story of what is happening at the cutting-edge of AI was on view: faces from all over the world, new American faces. The number immigrants was awesome, notably from Asia. They were people from the upper tier of U.S. science and engineering confidently adding to the sum of the nation’s knowledge and wealth,
Consider the leaders of top U.S. tech companies who are immigrants: Microsoft, Satya Nadella (India); Google, Sundar Pichai (India); Tesla, Elon Musk (South Africa); and Nvidia, Jensen Huang (Taiwan). Of the top seven, only Apple’s Tim Cook, Facebook’s Jeff Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Andy Jassy can be said to be traditional Americans.
A cautionary tale: A talented computer engineer from Mexico with a family that might have been plucked from the cover of the Saturday Evening Post lived in the same building as I do. During the Trump administration, they went back to Mexico.
There had been some clerical error in his paperwork. But the humiliation of being treated as a criminal was such that rather than fight immigration bureaucracy, he and his family returned voluntarily to Mexico. America’s loss.
Every country that has had a large influx of migrants knows that they can bring with them much that is undesirable. From Britain to Germany to Australia, immigration has had a downside: drugs, crime and religions that make assimilation difficult.
But waves of immigrants have built America, from the Scandinavian and German wheat farmers that turned the prairies into a vast larder to Jews from Europe who moved to Hollywood in the 1930s and made America pre-eminent in entertainment, to today’s global wave that is redefining Yankee know-how in the world of neural networks and quantum computing.
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. His email is llewellynking1@gmail.com and he’s based in Rhode Island.
Pictures with words
From Jane Kent’s show “Between the Covers” at Burlington (Vt.) City Arts through Jan. 18.
The gallery says her show features books, broadsheets, prints, and working drawings created by the artist in collaboration with six authors over the past 25 years. Here, Kent’s artist’s books are shown together with a selection of working drawings for the first time. Each project incorporates text written by a distinguished poet or writer: Privacy, 1999 (Richard Ford); The Orchid Thief Re-imagined, 2003 (Susan Orlean); Skating, 2011 (Richard Ford); Untitled, 2015 (Dorothea Grossman); The Flaneur Tends a Well-Liked Summer Cocktail, 2019 (Major Jackson); and Little Albert, 2023 (Joyce Carol Oates).
Her political profession brought triumph and tragedy
Rose Kennedy with President John F.Kennedy in 1962.
“I looked on child-rearing not only as a work of love and duty but as a profession that was fully as interesting and challenging as any honorable profession in the world and one that demanded the best that I could bring to it.”
— Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy (1895-2005), matriarch of the Massachusetts-based Kennedy political family.
Rachel Meade: RFK Jr. and the left-to-far-right populist pipeline
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. endorsing Trump at a rally in Arizona on Aug. 23, 2024.
BOSTON
When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ended his independent presidential run in August 2024 and endorsed Republican Donald Trump, it might have seemed a surprising turn of events.
Kennedy began his presidential run as a Democrat and is the scion of a Democratic dynasty. Nephew to former President John F. Kennedy and the son of former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, Kennedy spent most of his career as a lawyer representing environmental groups that sued polluting corporations and municipalities.
Yet Kennedy, 70, has long held positions that put him at odds with the Democratic mainstream. He pushes public health misinformation around vaccines and HIV/AIDS, opposes U.S. military involvement in foreign wars, including in Ukraine, and claims that the CIA assassinated his uncle.
Kennedy’s ideologically mixed politics are hard to categorize in traditional left-right terms.r
My political science research finds that Kennedy’s journey from left-aligned skepticism into Trumpism is part of a broader trend of contemporary left-to-right populist transformations happening across the United States.
Rise of the populist alternative media
Populism is a political story that presents the good “people” of a nation as in a struggle against its “elites,” who have corrupted democratic institutions to further their own selfish interests. It cuts across the ideological spectrum, often combining left-wing economic critiques with right-wing cultural ones.
Based on my research, I find that Kennedy uses a populist style of speech that matches the rhetoric of today’s online alternative media, also known as the “alternative influence network.”
Robert Kennedy Jr., a onetime Democrat, after endorsing Republican Donald Trump on Aug. 23, 2024. AP Photo/Evan Vucci
If populism cuts across the ideological spectrum, so does the alternative media.
This network of politically diverse independent podcasters, YouTube hosts and other creators connects with young, politically disaffected audiences by mixing politics with comedy and pop culture, and presenting themselves as embattled defenders of free thinking – in opposition to mainstream media and mainstream parties.
Top-rated shows include “Breaking Points,” “Stay Free with Russell Brand,” “The Joe Rogan Experience,” The Culture War with Tim Pool and “This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von.”
While many of these shows have been around since the 2010s, the network expanded throughout the Trump era. Their popularity skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic, when public distrust in government, anger over pandemic restrictions and vaccine skepticism surged.
These shows hosted Kennedy frequently throughout his presidential run in 2023 and 2024.
Kennedy finds his audience
I analyzed a set of Kennedy’s appearances for this story. Both Kennedy and alternative media hosts claim to care about “the real issues” facing Americans such as war, corporate and political malfeasance and economic troubles. They condemn the “mainstream” for promoting frivolous “culture war” topics related to race and identity politics.
Kennedy and the alternative media hosts also combine left and right arguments in a typically populist way. They claim that corporations control the government and that liberals and corporations censor free speech.
For example, on a May 2024, episode of “Stay Free with Russell Brand,” Brand asserted that corrupt institutions are backed by the “deep state.” He asked Kennedy how he would fight these powerful interests.
“The major agencies of government have all been captured by the industries they’re supposed to regulate and act as sock puppets serving the mercantile interests of these big corporations,” responded Kennedy. “I have a particular ability to unravel that because I’ve litigated against so many of these agencies.”
My research found that Kennedy often bonded with his alternative media hosts over his perception that liberal media sources – allegedly controlled by the Democratic National Committee or the CIA – were censoring his campaign.
Like Kennedy, alternative media hosts often identify as former or disaffected Democrats. Many used to work at mainstream left news sites, where they say they experienced censorship.
‘This little island of free speech’
In a June 2023 episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” Rogan explained that he no longer identifies as a liberal because of the “orthodoxy it preaches” around issues like vaccines. He then cited YouTube’s removal of some of Kennedy’s vaccine-related videos for violating its COVID-19 misinformation policy.
Kennedy had just spent 90 minutes outlining his journey toward vaccine skepticism, which started with meeting a mother who believed vaccines caused her son’s autism.
“If a woman tells you something about her child, you should listen,” he said.
Kennedy also described being convinced by a set of studies that public health officials had ignored.
“Trust the experts is not a function of science, it’s a function of religion,” he said. “I’ve been litigating 40 years; there’s experts on both sides.”
Afterward, he thanked Rogan for maintaining “this little island of free speech in a desert of suppression and of critical thinking.”
Kennedy reiterated this point in the Aug. 23, 2024, speech that ended his campaign, saying the “alternative media” had kept his ideas alive, while the mainstream networks had shut him out despite his historically high third-party poll numbers of 15% to 20%.
“The DNC-allied mainstream media networks maintained a near-perfect embargo on interviews with me,” Kennedy said.
Speaking directly to the reporters in the room, he added, “Your institutions and media made themselves government mouthpieces and stenographers for the organs of power.”
So far, Democrats have largely ignored the political power of alternative media shows. bsd studio via Getty Images Plus
Left-to-right pipeline
Trust in a range of U.S. institutions is at historical lows. Americans on both the right and the left are skeptical of power and crave radical change.
Alternative media hosts tap into this desire, helping to push some disaffected listeners down the same left-to-right pipeline that landed Kennedy in Trump’s orbit.
Trump and his allies are adept at harnessing the power of the alternative media ecosystem. Trump has appeared on male-centric shows like “This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von and ”The Joe Rogan Experience,“ and he founded the alternative social media platform Truth Social.
Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon hosts an influential podcast called the "War Room” on another MAGA alternative media platform, Rumble. Known for its fiery populist rhetoric, the “War Room” broadcasts live for an astonishing 22 hours a week.
Until recently, Democrats have largely embraced traditional media. During the first months of her 2024 presidential campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris appeared on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” ABC’s “The View” and MSNBC’s “Stephanie Ruhle.”
Then, on Oct. 12, Harris appeared on “Call her Daddy.” Spotify’s second-most popular podcast, it has a young, female audience. Days later, she sat down for an interview with Fox News and is reportedly in talks to appear on Joe Rogan’s show.
Kennedy might approve of all this aisle-crossing.
“Step outside the culture war!” he tweeted in July 2024. “Step outside the politics of hating the other side!”
Rachel Meade is a lecturer in political science at Boston University.
She does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment
‘Metaphorical women’
“In Concert” (archival pigment print), by Wendy Seller, in her show "Hybridized Worlds,’’ at Kingston Gallery, Boston, through Dec. 1.
The gallery says:
“Wendy Seller’s practice explores the fusion of traditional painting techniques and digital image-building. Seller’s embrace of these polar-opposite art making approaches enables her to create intangible, hybridized worlds that integrate past and present, populated by magical figures and surreal landscapes….
“In ‘Hybridized Worlds,’ Seller uses collected imagery to create metaphorical women who emit internal power, fortitude, assertiveness, and wit. Seller sees her collages as decisively positive as she observe changes within society concerning women’s lives.’’
Slowly
“Coming Home’’ (mixed media), by Cassie Doyon, in the Galatea Fine Art (Boston)members show “Seize the Day’’ Oct 31-Dec. 1.
Masochism, not sadism
James Russell Lowell, circa 1855
“Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.’’
— James Russell Lowell (1819-1991), Massachusetts-based poet
In search of precision
From Kenji Nakahashi’s show “Strange Beauty,’’ at the Bruce Museum of Art, Greenwich, Conn., Feb. 6-May 4, 2025.
The museum says:
“Best known for his conceptual and street photography, Kenji Nakahashi (American, b. Japan, 1947–2017)produced a highly experimental body of work grounded in the everyday.’’
Stephanie Armour: Prepare to lose health coverage if Trump takes power
“People in this election are focused on issues that affect their family, “If people believe their own insurance will be affected by Trump, it could matter.”
— Robert Blendon, a professor emeritus of health policy and political analysis at Harvard
Via Kaiser Family Foundation Health News
Health care is suddenly front and center in the final sprint to the presidential election, and the outcome will shape the Affordable Care Act and the coverage it gives to more than 40 million people.
Besides reproductive rights, health care for most of the campaign has been an in-the-shadows issue. However, recent comments from former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, about possible changes to the ACA have opened Republicans up to heavier scrutiny.
More than 1,500 doctors across the country recently released a letter calling on Trump to reveal details about how he would alter the ACA, saying the information is needed so voters can make an informed decision. The letter came from the Committee to Protect Health Care, a national advocacy group of physicians.
“It’s remarkable that a decade and a half after the ACA passed, we are still debating these fundamental issues,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News. “Democrats want to protect people with preexisting conditions, which requires money and regulation. Republicans have looked to scale back federal regulation, and the byproduct is fewer protections.”
The two parties’ tickets hold starkly different goals for the ACA, a sweeping law passed under former President Barack Obama that set minimum benefit standards, made more people eligible for Medicaid, and ensured consumers with preexisting health conditions couldn’t be denied health coverage.
Vice President Kamala Harris, who previously backed a universal health care plan, wants to expand and strengthen the health law, popularly known as Obamacare. She supports making permanent temporary enhanced subsidies that lower the cost of premiums. And she’s expected to press Congress to extend Medicaid coverage to more people in the 10 states that have so far not expanded the program.
Trump, who repeatedly tried and failed to repeal the ACA, said in the September presidential debate that he has “concepts of a plan” to replace or change the legislation. Although that sound bite became a bit of a laugh line because Trump had promised an alternative health insurance plan many times during his administration and never delivered, Vance later provided more details.
He said the next Trump administration would deregulate insurance markets — a change that some health analysts say could provide more choice but erode protections for people with preexisting conditions. He seemed to adjust his position during the vice presidential debate, saying the ACA’s protections for preexisting conditions should be left in place.
Such health-policy changes could be advanced as part of a large tax measure in 2025, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) told NBC News. That could also open the door to changes in Medicaid. Conservatives have long sought to remake the health insurance program for low-income or disabled people from the current system, in which the federal government contributes a formula-based percentage of states’ total Medicaid costs, to one that caps federal outlays through block grants or per capita funding limits. ACA advocates say that would shift significant costs to states and force most or all states to drop the expansion of the program over time.
Democrats are trying to turn the comments into a political liability for Trump, with the Harris campaign running ads saying Trump doesn’t have a health plan to replace the ACA. Harris’ campaign also released a 43-page report, “The Trump-Vance ‘Concept’ on Health Care,” asserting that her opponents would “rip away coverage from people with preexisting conditions and raise costs for millions.”
Republicans were tripped up in the past when they sought unsuccessfully to repeal the ACA. Instead, the law became more popular, and the risk Republicans posed to preexisting condition protections helped Democrats retake control of the House in 2018.
In a KFF poll last winter, two-thirds of the public said it is very important to maintain the law’s ban on charging people with health problems more for health insurance or rejecting their coverage.
“People in this election are focused on issues that affect their family,” said Robert Blendon, a professor emeritus of health policy and political analysis at Harvard. “If people believe their own insurance will be affected by Trump, it could matter.”
Vance, in a Sept. 15 interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” tried to minimize this impact.
“You want to make sure that preexisting coverage — conditions — are covered, you want to make sure that people have access to the doctors that they need, and you also want to implement some deregulatory agenda so that people can choose a health care plan that fits them,” he said.
Vance went on to say that the best way to ensure everyone is covered is to promote more choice and not put everyone in the same insurance risk pool.
Risk pools are fundamental to insurance. They refer to a group of people who share the burdens of health costs.
Under the ACA, enrollees are generally in the same pool regardless of their health status or preexisting conditions. This is done to control premium costs for everyone by using the lower costs incurred by healthy participants to keep in check the higher costs incurred by unhealthy participants. Separating sicker people into their own pool can lead to higher costs for people with chronic health conditions, potentially putting coverage out of financial reach for them.
The Harris campaign has seized on the threat, saying in its recent report that “health insurers will go back to discriminating on the basis of how healthy or unhealthy you are.”
But some ACA critics think there are ways to separate risk pools without undermining coverage.
“Unsurprisingly, it’s been blown out of proportion for political purposes,” said Theo Merkel, a former Trump aide who now is a senior research fellow at the Paragon Health Institute, a right-wing organization that produces health research and market-based policy proposals.
Adding short-term plans to coverage options won’t hurt the ACA marketplace and will give consumers more affordable options, said Merkel, who is also a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. The Trump administration increased the maximum duration of these plans, then Biden rolled it back to four months.
People eligible for subsidies would likely buy comprehensive ACA plans because — with the financial help — they would be affordable. Thus, the ACA market and its protections for preexisting conditions would continue to function, Merkel said. But offering short-term plans, too, would provide a more affordable option for people who don’t qualify for subsidies and who would be more likely to buy the noncompliant plans.
He also said that in states that allowed people to buy non-ACA-compliant plans outside the exchange, the exchanges performed better than in states that prohibited it. Another option, Merkel said, is a reinsurance program similar to one that operates in Alaska. Under the plan, the state pays insurers back for covering very expensive health claims, which helps keep premiums affordable.
But advocates of the ACA say separating sick and healthy people into different insurance risk pools will make health coverage unaffordable for people with chronic conditions, and that letting people purchase short-term health plans for longer durations will backfire.
“It uninsures people when they get sick,” said Leslie Dach, executive chair of Protect Our Care, which advocates for the health law. “There’s no reason to do this. It’s unconscionable and makes no economic sense. They will hide behind saying ‘we’re making it better,’ but it’s all untrue.”
Harris, meanwhile, wants to preserve the temporary expanded subsidies that have helped more people get lower-priced health coverage under the ACA. These expanded subsidies that help about 20 million people will expire at the end of 2025, setting the stage for a pitched battle in Congress between Republicans who want to let them run out and Democrats who say they should be made permanent.
Democrats in September introduced a bill to make them permanent. One challenge: The Congressional Budget Office estimated doing so would increase the federal deficit by more than $330 billion over 10 years.
In the end, the ability of either candidate to significantly grow or change the ACA rests with Congress. Polls suggest Republicans are in a good position to take control of the Senate, with the outcome in the House more up in the air. The margins, however, will likely be tight. In any case, many initiatives, such as expanding or restricting short-term health plans, also can be advanced with executive orders and regulations, as both Trump and Biden have done.
Stephanie Armour is a KFF Health News reporter
Coolidge looks at the history of his native state
Looking south from the summit of Mt.Mansfield, the Green Mountains’ highest peak.
Speech by then Vice President Calvin Coolidge
Title: The Green Mountains
Date: June 12, 1923
Location: Burlington, VT
Context: 150th anniversary of the settlement of the city of Burlington
We do not meet to-day so much to think new thoughts l as to rehearse old stories. Our purpose is not to survey new courses, but to relocate ancient landmarks. We review the past not in order that we may return to it but that we may find in what direction, straight and clear, it points into the future. We do not come here burdened with regrets or depressed by any memories of faded splendor, but to rejoice in the possession of hope fulfilled and to glory in the vision of desire realized. The promise which attended the founding and settlement of the city of Burlington has been abundantly redeemed.
The recorded beginnings of this locality lie far back on the verge of American history. When the Cavalier was struggling to plant the first colony in Virginia, just as Henry Hudson was entering the bay of New York, or ever the prow of the Pilgrim Mayflower had been turned toward Plymouth Rock, the great Champlain undoubtedly landed here in 1609. He determined, in no small part, by his fateful collision with the dominant Indian power of this region on the farther shore of the lake, which made them ever after hostile to France and friendly to England, that the prevailing civilization of this country was to be not Latin but Anglo-Saxon. For one hundred and fifty years the tide of conflict rose and fell, One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Settlement of the City of Burlington, Vermont, leaving inextinguishable marks and names, until the banners of the old régime passed down the lake forever to encounter Wolfe on the plains of Abraham, holding the master-key to this new continent.
So the time passed when this alluring territory was to be famed chiefly as the meeting-place of the contending forces of native Indians or invading white men and was to become the permanent habitation of a peaceful civilization. The days of conflict were not all gone, but the days of sufficient tranquillity for stable development had come. The power and influence of France, with its devotion and loyalty to church and King, were not to be swept away, for the good does not perish, but whatever it had wrought for good was to be merged in a new order. A new day was rising, a new life was stirring, a new era was opening for the Western world.
The beginnings of this city were tinged strongly with the dominant spirit of the times. The people of the land were for the first time coming to be consciously American. To a reassertion of the old rights there was beginning to be added the assertion of new rights. The colonists had come to feel their power and were reaching out to exercise it with a new boldness. Stronger impulses and broadening opportunities were rousing the old spirit of the pioneer. The country was on the eve of a new birth of freedom.
The territory now comprising most of the State of Vermont made a strong appeal to these sentiments. At first it was supposed to be under the jurisdiction of New Hampshire, which granted charters to many towns within its borders, under which the settlers held title to their lands; next, with the support of crown and Parliament, claimed by New York, which not only asserted political jurisdiction but undertook to deny the legality of the title to any lands not conveyed by its authority. These contentions brought on conflicts, both before the court and in the country, which resulted in the inhabitants, now hostile to the British rule that proposed to confiscate their homes, declaring their independence and organizing the new State of Vermont, and in that condition they maintained themselves, in spite of the constant opposition of powerful adjoining States, the threats of the Congress to send the army against them, and all the peril of war with a mighty empire, until finally admitted to the Union. Those days furnished no example of more heroic devotion than that which was exhibited by the unconquerable defenders of the Green Mountain State.
It was amid such conditions that Burlington came into being. Though her territory was little vexed by all these conflicts, those who founded the town, whose names were early associated with its settlement and development, bore a dominant part in the brilliant and thrilling history of those significant times. One of these was that romantic figure, Ethan Allen, picturesque in word, dashing in action, a typical pioneer. Another was Remember Baker, a skilful mechanic, a trained woodsman, a brave officer, one of the trusted leaders of the settlers. Associated with them was Thomas Chittenden, a man of sound judgment and a strength of character that commanded the confidence of his fellow men. Joined with this band, though never directly connected with your city, was Seth Warner, wise, brilliant, cautious, a soldier gifted with the ability to command. Surpassing them all in breadth of intellect was Ira Allen, a man of affairs, a diplomat and a statesman. This group of pioneers, all Burlington proprietors except Warner, laid the foundation of the State of Vermont, and performed untold sevrice in the promotion of the American cause.
Burlington was chartered by Governor Wentworth of New Hampshire, June 7, 1763, apparently to parties nearly all resident of New York. A few years later the Onion River Company, composed of four of the Allens and Baker, appear as the proprietors. They cut a road through from Castleton to Colchester in 1772, and Ira Allen made the first survey of land within the town September 30 of that year. The first settler was Felix Powell, who came in 1773. He owned land at Apple Tree Point, on which he built a log house. He had also been the first settler in Dorset. In 1778 he sold his rights to James Murdock, of Saybrook, Connecticut, and so, having gained the fame of being the first settler, left others to finish what he had so well begun. In November, 1774, Stephen Lawrence of Sheffield and others bought land in town, but did little in the way of settlement. During this year and the following Lemuel Bradley and others established themselves on the Intervale, but in the summer of 1776 these settlements, in common with all north of Rutland County, were abandoned on account of the impending war.
The first meeting of the proprietors was held at Salisbury, Connecticut, March 23, 1774, of which Thomas Chittenden was the moderator and Ira Allen the clerk. During the ensuing year more meetings were held at Fort Frederick, which was a blockhouse they had built on the Colchester side of the river to protect the settlements, the last being May 1,.1775. Although this meeting stood adjourned to the first Monday of the following September, it was never held. Only a few days before news had come of the momentous events at Lexington and Concord. The land was aflame. No longer could men turn their thoughts to the peaceable affairs of territorial development. They listened to a sterner call than that which comes from commercial enterprise, yet they accorded to it an even more ready response. No other meeting of the proprietors was held until that of January 29, 1781, which met at the house of Noah Chittenden in Arlington.
A few days after the May meeting Ethan Allen was at Bennington sending for Baker and Warner, who were at Fort Frederick, to join him in the surprise attack on Ticonderoga and Crown Point, which they did. Allen captured Ticonderoga May 10, and Warner took Crown Point on May 11. These victories, with their capture of ammunition, arms, and about two hundred pieces of cannon, were to have a result all out of proportion to the small force engaged in their accomplishment. Just how important this operation turned out to be was best realized by the British when one morning in the following March they saw the cannon which Allen had captured so mounted on Dorchester Heights as to command their positions in the city and harbor and force them to evacuate Boston.
After the war the inhabitants began to return. Stephen Lawrence moved his family into town in 1783. Settlement proceeded rapidly. The first recorded town meeting was held in Burlington, March 19, 1787, when Stephen Lawrence, Frederick Saxton, and Samuel Allen were chosen selectmen. They voted to raise a tax of twopence on the pound to purchase town books, and the same for the repair of highways and bridges, but this later was reduced to one penny at a meeting held the first Monday of the following May. The first freemen’s meeting on record was held the first Tuesday of September, 1794. The last Tuesday of the following December occurred the first recorded election of a representative to Congress. The first recorded marriage is that of Lucy Caroline, a daughter of Ethan Allen, to Samuel Hitchcock, May 26, 1789, and the first recorded birth is that of their daughter, Loraine Allen Hitchcock, on June 5, 1790. So now the government of town, of State, and of nation was proceeding in accordance with public law. Immediately began that general development toward a modern city which has since continued without ceasing.
It is altogether probable that Ira Allen perceived the possibilities for the development of Burlington as a centre of population, transportation, and commerce, by reason of its location and natural advantages. He supported his judgment with his resources, which at that time were very considerable. He owned, at different periods, a large portion of all the land within the limits of the town. He was instrumental in locating here the University of Vermont, to which he made generous contribution. Although his residence was across the river. in Colchester, his chief interests and chief efforts were here.
The old names early associated with the town now began to appear—Ferrand, Catlin, Van Ness, Buel, Pearl, Sawyer, and others. The first store, always an important meeting-place in a new and small community, was built by Stephen Keyes and opened in 1789. Professional men, doctors and lawyers, soon joined the growing community, which became of sufficient importance and accessibility that the legislature met here in 1803.
The desire formally to organize the religious life soon appeared. About 1795 the Reverend Chauncey Lee preached here for some time, and was followed by Reverend Daniel C. Sanders, who preached at intervals until 1807. In 1799 the town voted to raise two hundred dollars, “to be paid in grain, beef, pork, butter, and cheese, to be delivered to the minister who shall be hired in Burlington for the year ensuing,” and it was further voted, on June 15, 1805, to form themselves into a religious society, known as the First Society of Social and Public Worship in the Town of Burlington. In 1810 this society was divided on the line of liberal and conservative. The conservatives took the name of the First Calvinistic Congregational Society, ordained Reverend Samuel Clark on April 19, 1810, and built the Unitarian Church in 1816. These were followed by the Methodist, Baptist, Episcopal, Catholic, and other churches, which now minister to the religious well-being of a devout people.
The cause of education must have had very early attention, for at the March meeting in 1790 it had been sufficiently developed so that it was voted to divide the town into school districts. In 1812 a system of graded schools was apparently started, and some years later the Burlington Academy took over the high-school work, which it continued until 1849, when the Union School superseded it. The Burlington Female Seminary, an institution which was of great importance, started in 1835. There were also other schools for young women. The University of Vermont was chartered and located in Burlington in 1791, a lot of fifty acres was assigned to it, and a building was begun in 1794 and completed in 1798. In 1799 citizens of the young town gave 2,300 pounds sterling to this enterprise, when the entire grand list of the town, as then figured, was but 2,174 pounds sterling, and the whole number of polls but 224. The Reverend Daniel C. Sanders was chosen president, October 17, 1800, and the university formally admitted four young men to its courses. The charge for tuition was established at ten dollars a year. The town was thus early equipped to provide that liberal education which is one of the foundations of an enlightened civilization.
One of the oldest newspapers in Vermont, known as The Sentinel, began to be published here in 1801. This was followed by The Free Press, which was started in 1827. The town has been, almost from its beginning, well provided with the best that could be had in the way of newspaper publications and has benefited through the tremendous influence which they wield for good by informing the public mind. Newspapers are one of the strongest supports of the republic.
Navigation was an early contributing force to the material welfare of the town. In early days it was carried on with a fleet of sailboats. The second steamboat in the world in actual point of construction, was built at Burlington, christened Vermont, and launched in June, 1808. By 1814 regular communication had been established with Boston by four-horse coach. The Champlain Canal, opened in 1823, connected the lake with the Hudson River, which left Burlington one of the chief ports on the continuous waterway from New York City to Montreal, while the coming of the railroads in · 1849 opened up the overland route to Boston.
The early settlers and proprietors had nearly all some share in the Revolutionary War. Some of them, like the Allens and their close associates, played a most heroic and important part. But this glory must all be shared with other places, for it represents not so much a local production as an importation. The next conflict was on a_ different basis. The War of 1812 and its causes were not popular issues in New England. A very considerable commerce was at stake, but beyond that the substantial element of this section preferred the conservatism of Great Britain to the radicalism and imperialism of France in that era. On February 2, 1809, the town unanimously adopted resolutions which declared its loyalty to the National Constitution and its government, but condemned the embargo policy of the Federal administration. Nevertheless, Burlington responded eagerly to every requirement for national defense when the actual need arose. Colonel Isaac Clark, being sent here, called out the local militia, purchased and fortified the Battery, which dates from that time, for the protection of the town. Captain Thomas MacDonough of the navy was stationed here. He had very valuable assistance from the people in winning the great naval battle at Plattsburg, September 11, 1814, by which he regained entire control of the lake. Captain Horace B. Sawyer, a native of the town, was made prisoner when the British captured the Growler and Eagle, but returned to serve on the famous frigate Constitution, taking part in her remarkable victory over the Cyane and Levant.
When the call came from Lincoln, in April of 1861, the Burlington company, under Captain David B. Peck, at once responded. Their example was followed by a host of others who served with distinction until the close of the war. The part which was taken by this town in the lesser contest with Spain and the brilliant and effective contribution made to the success of the Great War demonstrated that, in military spirit and power, it retains its ancient vigor. One of your townsmen, a graduate of the Naval Academy, Lieutenant-Commander Jonas H. Holden, was on the battleship Maine, but was rescued only to be lost on the vessel which mysteriously disappeared in the Gulf of Mexico during the World War. Another, Lieutenant Devere Harden, with the regular army, was the first American officer wounded in France, while still another, Admiral Henry T. Mayo, had the merited distinction of being commander-in-chief of the Atlantic fleet.
In the comparatively short space of time of a century and a half Burlington has steadily advanced from the day of Felix Powell, the lone settler on the northern frontier, to the day when it is the metropolis of an extensive and cultivated region of activity and industry. It became the centre of an important foreign and domestic commerce, and has ranked as one of the chief lumber ports of the nation in bygone times. The falls of the Winooski, on its border, have been a valuable source of water-power, which has supported the industrial interests of the region. Manufacturing has contributed to make this not only a source of distribution but a source of production. It provides employment for thousands of wage-earners and its annual output reaches many millions of dollars. In its material development Burlington has become a city marked by enterprise and wealth.
Men of ability and fame have given an added distinction to these surroundings, already honored by reason of the quality of its citizenship. It has been often represented in the governor of the State, in the national House and Senate, and in the high diplomatic stations of our country abroad. The first to be governor was Cornelius P. Van· Ness, who also served as minister to Spain, and the last was Urban A. Woodbury; Heman Allen was minister to Chili, and that learned scholar George P. Marsh was minister to both Turkey and Italy, while Edward J. Phelps was ambassador to Great Britain. One of the men who ranked very high as a United States senator, a profound lawyer, and an able statesman, was George F. Edmunds. One of your present citizens, a leading figure of the Vermont bar, Charles H. Darling, has been an assistant secretary of the navy.
The material resources and wealth of the’ community, the ability of distinguished men, the high character of the people, and the practical application of the teachings of religion, have all combined to make this city well-governed, well-educated, and richly endowed with many charities. All these forces have united to create a moral and spiritual power, the influence of which has been felt in the uttermost parts of the earth. The world is not what it would have been without that influence. It has increased the vigor of health, the strength of intellect, the power of character, and extended the domain of everlasting righteousness.
To-day we behold the wonder of all these accomplishments. We realize that they have been wrought by the hand of man working in harmony with the will of Divine Providence. When we inquire what manner of men they were, what principles they represented, what character they developed, the answer is revealed in their work. They were active, enterprising men, intent upon conducting a successful business. They were endowed with imagination and vision, but their chief guide was that hard common sense which is the result of continued experience with hardships and difficulties, always the heritage of the pioneer. They had come up out of much tribulation. Their methods were bold and direct, the very essence of all that was practical. They believed in common honesty and simple justice. They were determined to be free. It was in accordance with these standards that they fashioned their town and established their Commonwealth. The local public policy of that day is declared in the town charter. All the fit pine-trees were reserved for masting the royal navy. Of the seventy-two shares provided for in the charter, one was reserved for the incorporated society for the propagation of the gospel in foreign parts; one for the glebe for the Church of England; one for the first settled minister of the gospel; and one for the benefit of a school in the town.
Although the perils of war had left the region of Burlington bare of inhabitants, compelling the people to take refuge in more thickly populated and better-protected settlements at the south, they did not cease to exert a powerful influence over the destiny of those rebellious days. The founders of this city appear as leaders in the records of the public actions which established the State of Vermont. At the convention held in Dorset, September 25, 1776, Burlington was represented by Lemuel Bradley, and those present who were connected with the Onion River Company were Thomas Chittenden, Ira Allen, and Heman Allen. When the convention reconvened at Westminster Chittenden and the two Allens were present. Here, on January 16, 1777, they adopted the momentous resolutions asserting their readiness to do their “full proportion in maintaining and supporting the just war,” but declaring that they should hereafter be “a separate, free, and independent jurisdiction or state.” Chittenden was a member of the committee that drafted this declaration, and the Allens were on committees instructed to plan for further proceedings. The claim of independence that they set forth they made a reality by their future action.
When the convention met at Windsor, July 2, 1777, undoubtedly Chittenden and the two Allens were there, although almost the only record is the Constitution, which on July 8 was adopted. That document asserted that government was “derived from and founded on the authority of the people only,” forbade slavery, adopted manhood suffrage, recognized that conscience, speech, and press should be free, undertook to guarantee the protection of life, liberty, and property, prescribed trial by jury, provided for town and county schools and a State university, admonished the people to observe the Sabbath, maintain religious worship, and remember that “a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, industry, and frugality are absolutely necessary to preserve the blessings of liberty and keep government free.” Those who held these opinions were not likely tamely to submit or long to be deprived of success.
The charter of the town and the constitution of the State recognized religion as the foundation of human relationship. They acknowledged that their obligation of spreading the gospel was world-wide. Having contributed to the clergy at home and the missionary abroad, they extended liberal support to the cause of education. They knew that learning belonged to the people. In sustaining the royal navy they were not only providing for the defense of the realm but extending the domain of commerce. They were well aware that the observance of the plain virtues of life is not only the source of all individual character but the foundation of all national greatness. The principle of freedom and equality was not a visionary doctrine with them but a rule of action to be put into practice. Within the State of Vermont no person could ever be held as a slave and no man was ever too poor to have a vote.
These rights were neither secured nor maintained without the exaction of supreme sacrifice. Whatever property interests the inhabitants had in Burlington at the outbreak of the war were rendered practically valueless. The leading men of the region risked their lives in the capture of Ticonderoga and Crown Point. Remember Baker was killed by an enemy bullet in the closing days of the summer while leading a scouting party toward Canada. Ethan Allen, a month later, was captured in his attempt to take Montreal. Transported across the sea in irons, he was held for nearly three years in British prisons. It is probable that the house of a Felix Powell in Pittsford, which was plundered and burned in his absence, was that of your original settler. Mrs. Powell looked on, hidden in the woods near by. In such destitution she bore a child before the next morning. Some fell in the disaster at Hubbardton, others on the victorious field at Bennington. They all showed such a spirit that Burgoyne reported them to be the most active and most rebellious race on the continent, that hung like a gathering storm on his left. That storm, more violent than his forebodings, swept him to destruction at Saratoga.
That same spirit had been exhibited in every hour of peril in all their history. They had established a reputation which gave entire credibility to Ethan Allen, when he declared: “I am resolutely determined to defend the independence of Vermont . . . and rather than fail will retire with the hardy Green Mountain Boys into the desolate caverns of the mountains and wage war with human nature at large.” Washington, who knew the power of their soldiers, issued a warning against any attempt by the Congress to subdue the State with the army. He knew, and plainly said, that such a people, occupying such a territory, could not be conquered. Besides, Washington admired courage, believed in freedom, and loved justice. It was said that he looked with sympathy on the cause of the struggling little State of Vermont.
Yet these people were neither quarrelsome, lawless, nor violent. They had that respect for constituted authority which had been bred in their race by more than a thousand years of liberty under the law. It has been their characteristic to submit their cause to the courts, as John Hampden submitted his cause, as James Otis submitted that of his clients; and only when the plain requirements of justice were denied did they determine to meet an illegal decision with righteous resistance. So the settlers of the Green Mountains, under the leadership of Ethan Allen and his associates, submitted their cause to the determination of the royal court at Albany.
When the court, which apparently had a personal interest in its own decision, found against them, and the opposing authorities intimated that it would be wise to submit because might oftentimes made right, it was found that the settlers were by no means inclined to yield to the application of that principle. Such a course might be decreed at Albany, but it would not be executed in Vermont. Allen remarked grimly, “The gods of the valleys are not the gods of the hills,” and further offered to make his meaning clear to those who would come up to Bennington. To those who went up with the unauthorized writ of this court, his word was kept. They were chastised with the twigs of the wilderness and sent home, bearing on their backs, as the test of the higher authority of this jurisdiction, the unmistakable imprint of the beech seal, in the hope that those who considered irrelevant and inadmissible the Warrant of the King, an Order of Council, and the Broad Seal of the Royal Province of New Hampshire might recognize the weight of this more impressive evidence.
Outlawed, with a price set on their heads, in constant peril of death, yet through all this conflict, though they met threat with threat, they never inflicted loss of life upon any one; they never resisted the execution of either civil or criminal process which they considered lawful. Such was the character of the men of that day, such were their works. The first moderator of the Onion River Company, Thomas Chittenden, became the first governor of the State, holding the office many years. The first clerk, Ira Allen, became the first State treasurer, ranking as a benefactor of mankind. Another member, Ethan Allen, became a national hero, holding forever the applause of his countrymen. They were supported by the invincible forces of truth and justice. They were destined to immortality.
The standards which the men of that day adopted, the principles in accordance with which they acted, have the power to supply their own vitality. They are self-perpetuating. Had the authorities of New York been content to exercise political jurisdiction over the Green Mountain region and leave undisturbed the land titles acquired and paid for in good faith, instead of using their power to further the unjust speculations of some of their high officials, undoubtedly the settlers would have remained a contented part of the Empire State. The desire to locate farther away from the molestations of Albany would not have sent the proprietors of the Onion River Company into this locality. The power of leadership which they developed would have been used for some other purpose than to defy the governor of New York and the King of Great Britain. The city of Burlington, with its population, its wealth, its commerce, its university, and the State of Vermont, with all its romantic history and its glorious contributions to liberty, would not have come into being. Ticonderoga and Crown Point might still hold a British garrison. There might have been no evacuation of Boston, no victory at Bennington, no decisive battle at Saratoga, and no final success at Yorktown. It was the overreaching greed for gain and an overmastering desire to impose an autocratic rule that raised up the makers of Burlington and set in her midst a crowning citadel of knowledge and of truth which will defend the cause of justice and liberty for all mankind forevermore.
When Ethan Allen and his eighty-three Green Mountain Boys stood within Fort Ticonderoga, in the dawn of that May morning, this man, some time to be charged with the darkness of infidelity, did not fail to utter the word of light when he demanded the garrison captain surrender “in the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress.” He there gave expression to the faith and the cause for which he and his fellow patriots ever stood ready to make the supreme sacrifice. For God and country. That faith has been justified. That cause has been prospered. Could there be any better description of the purpose which has created the city of Burlington? Could there be any firmer foundation on which its influence will stand through all eternity? The same sun is above us which lighted the morning of that day with all that it has come to mean. The same gleaming waters remain. The same shadowy mountains tower around us. The same dream city rises from the shore, now a reality. In those who shall continue to behold them, let them inspire the same spirit, the same abiding faith, the same power, through sacrifice, to minister to the same great cause. For God and country.
Abstract from real life
“Serpent #1” (digital print), by Jo Sandman, in her show ““Glyphs”at Brickbottom Artists Association and Gallery, Somerville, Mass., through Nov. 8.
The gallery says:
“As a young artist studying at Black Mountain College in the 1950s, Jo Sandman became interested in abstract shape as expressions of visually poetic language or glyphs. Her show includes collage, mixed media sculpture, and photography dating from the 1950s until 2014.’’
‘Inflexibly territorial’
Cutler, Maine
Waldoboro, Maine, in the late 19th Century,long after much of it had been deforested for farming.
“Many small towns I know in Maine are as tight-knit and interdependent as those I associate with rural communities in India or China; with deep roots and old loyalties, skeptical of authority, they are proud and inflexibly territorial.’
— Paul Theroux (1941), American travel writer and novelist.
William Morgan: The joy of a ferry ride across the Connecticut River
Looking toward the Chester-Hadlyme ferry as it crosses the Connecticut River.
— All photos are by William Morgan except the last one.
Is there anyone who does not love a ferry? One thinks of the large ferryboats across Long Island Sound or those heading to Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. Yet, the 65-foot Selden III has been making the five-minute crossing of the Connecticut River between Chester and Hadlyme, a village in Lyme, for three quarters of a century. It is now operated Apri1-Nov. 30.
The one-way fare for the nine-car ferry is $5 on weekdays and $6 on weekends. It is a delightful trip and a cheap, if supremely low-key, thrill. The hamlet of Hadlyme consists of a handful of handsome Federal and Greek revival houses. The attractive and historic town of Chester, on the western shore, has beautiful marshes and fields, a testament to the Connecticut River’s meandering history.
In Hadlyme,Conn.
There has been a ferry at this spot since 1769, and it was especially important during the American Revolution when the British controlled the coastal highway (what is now U.S. Route 1). I first discovered the ferry through the 1961 movie Parrish, which was set in the tobacco country farther up the valley. Starring Claudette Colbert and Karl Malden, the film opens with the eponymous protagonist Parrish, played by Troy Donahue, riding on the Chester-Hadlyme Ferry. Curious, I tracked the ferry down, and used it occasionally when I went to visit my dissertation adviser, who had retired to Chester.
Setting out on the Connecticut on a recent fall day.
Perhaps people who use the ferry every day are immune to its pleasures. But on a warm October afternoon, almost everyone left their cars to experience being on the water. A dozen years ago the State of Connecticut, seeking budget cuts, decided to close the ferry. There was a such an uproar that the state kept the service running. It is a welcome change of pace in a frantic world.
William Morgan is a Providence-based architecture writer who has published several books with New England themes, including A Simpler Way of Life: Old Farmhouses of New York and New England and The Cape Cod Cottage.
Better then to take the train and maybe it will again
Map of the various alignments of the Boston Post Road. Scanned from S. Jenkins’s The Old Boston Post Road, (G.P. Putnam and Sons, New York and London, 1914)
