Macaulay in hip Montpelier

“Why the Chicken Crossed the Road,’’ by the famed David Macaulay, in the show “Macaulay in Montpelier: Selected Drawing and Sketches,’’ though Nov. 2 at the Spotlight Gallery at the Vermont Arts Council.

David Macaulay, now a Vermonter but previously a Rhode Islander, is a British-born illustrator and writer whose books have sold over 3 million copies in the United States and have been translated into a dozen languages. According to Macaulay, the featured works were "selected in the dark from hundreds of illustrations and at least five times as many sketches," representing "a tiny sliver of the vast amount of flotsam left in the wake of each book.’’

State Street, in downtown Montpelier.

Downtown shops, not surprisingly including yoga.

Montpelier in 1884. Note the domed state capitol.

Montpelier, in the Green Mountains, while the smallest state capital, is a remarkably hip city with good restaurants (Sarducci’s is terrific), galleries and other small-scale retailing. In the 19th and 20 centuries the city also had a good number of small manufacturers.

The city also hosts the the Vermont College of Fine Arts and the New England Culinary Institute, the latter helping to explain the presence of good restaurants. The main drawbacks are the long winters and the Winooski River, which, while scenic, from time to time floods part of the downtown.

Get tough on taggers

From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' on GoLocal24.com

Localities and states need to get much tougher on graffiti “taggers’’  on publicly owned structures. Such public vandalism should be treated as felonies, with serious jail time, not as misdemeanors. And police and the rest of the law-enforcement community should make sure that photos of these people, who are mostly young males, be widely distributed to the public.

I was reminded of the need for this long-overdue change while reading about the graffiti guys’ attack on David Macaulay’s beautiful mural on a retaining wall alongside Route 95 in Providence. The state gave up and painted it over.

The effect of graffiti itself, and of leaving it visible far toolong, is much more serious than some might think. It signals lawlessness and menace to residents and visitors and tends to make people want to avoid areas where it’s common. Thus it’s bad for public morale and the economy.

It’s particularly offensive and depressing in such older areas as southern New England, with considerable manmade beauty in the form of old buildings.

Make this public vandalism a felony.