Being Good With [You]...?

Want to share your stories and insights with TBAGV? Here's some helpful context - a little tea for thought - before we sit down over a cuppa oolong or joe together.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been seeding the idea of To Be a Good Vermonter around my community. Inevitably, some folks are gung-ho to get at the mic while others are…a little nervous.

I get it. I do a fair amount of public speaking on sensitive topics, largely in settings where a stranger can throw me a curveball question of the cancel-culture-inducing variety. BUT I know this isn’t everyone’s reality; some folks are circumspect (and rightly so) in this age of frequent near-constant surveillance. It doesn’t help that hardly a single person on the internet seems to be a student of Hanlon’s Razor¹ . If they were, they’d understand that malice thrives on cancellation, while innocent stupidity turns into malice when met with cultural cancellation. And some folks are simply worried that the thoughts that seem to clear and resonant to them won’t crystallize or feel as important when a microphone is in front of them. Or they’re afraid they won’t know the answer to something. But folks…this is To Be a Good Vermonter. This isn’t a test - it’s story hour meets personal manifesto. Lay it on me!

But, I digress. What I’m trying to say is, when a neighbor, friend, or colleague tells me, “Dang, I have plenty of stories and thoughts about what it means to be a good Vermonter…but, I dunno…I’m not so good with this kind of thing”…I get it. I really do.

That’s why I’m here reassure you by sharing some context about what it looks like to chat with me as part of TBAGV. Here’s a little Q&A to do that.

1. Where do we meet for this recorded chat?
   We can meet at your home, my home, your place of business, or a public place. If you’re a total stranger (i.e., not personally recommended by someone I’ve already interviewed or someone I know), we’d probably both feel more comfortable if we met at your home, your place of business, or a public place. All I need is a little clear table space to plop a laptop, a microphone, and two cups of tea.

2. What if I don’t like tea?
   That’s ok - us both having a comforting drink of some kind is the real purpose there. The important thing is that this doesn’t feel like a job interview - it’s more of a kaffeeklatsch² (or…teeklatsch).

3. What kinds of questions are you going to ask me?
   This is the one that folks really sweat. Don’t worry - I’m not going to spring in with “So, definitively, what does it mean to be a good Vermonter? A good American? A good human? Please tell me so I can be better at this, and so we can all be better at this.” Believe me, it WAS my plan, but Erica Heilman talked me out of it (thank you, Erica, from both myself and from future TBAGV participants everywhere).
   Instead, I’ll ask questions that will likely feel homey and familiar…and they’ll work together to triangulate your stories and thoughts about what it means to be a good Vermonter. Here are a few examples of things I might ask ya:

   1. If you weren’t born in Vermont, tell me about the first time you felt you were really at home in Vermont. Was it a place, a moment, a person?

   2. If you were born in Vermont, tell me about a time you traveled out of state and encountered something that made you say, like, “Dang, Toto…we’re not in the Green Mountains anymore.”

   3. Who’s a Vermonter that you really admire? What is it about them that you find so likable?

   4. When was the last time someone in your community did something unexpected that left a lasting impression on you?

   5. How do the challenges of Vermont life shape the way people here interact with one another?

   6. What are some things or behaviors that Vermonters just do not put up with? Why do you think that is?

The list goes on…for as long as the conversation does.

4. Do you share the whole recording, or is it edited? What if I say something I regret saying, or stutter, or say “um” a lot? What if my dog barks in the middle of my answer?
   Generally, I don’t plan to share the entirety of an unedited recording. The recording is partly for me to make a transcript so I can think deeper on our conversation, and partly to create some nifty podcast audio content. But this is about storytelling and sharing what’s important to you - nobody is out to get anyone. If you say something and then decide in the moment that you don’t want to have that in the recording, that’s ok - just say it right there in the recording so I’ll remember to take it out. And if you stutter or say “um” a lot, or have long pauses, or your dog barks, no worries - I have some fancy software that can take all those “ums” and unintentional long pauses and dog barks out in just click.

5. How does this culminate?
   Right now, the plan is to run TBAGV for a minimum of one year after hitting 1,000 subscribers. My goal is to speak with as many Vermonters as possible. For each person I speak with, I record audio, generate a transcript, share a Substack post, make a photographic portrait of the interviewee, and create a copper intaglio print related to our conversation.
   From the gathered interview transcripts and my notes, I plan to triangulate at least twelve “rules” for being a good Vermonter. These “rules” will be published in a delicious large-format printed volume with excerpts from interviews with folks who touched on this “rule”, as well as photographic portraits of these folks.
   I’ll also create an edition of copper intaglio + serigraph prints inspired by all of the “rules” for being a good Vermonter. I hope to mount an exhibition that includes all of the copper intaglio prints, intaglio + serigraph prints, photographic portraits, and other ephemera from the project.
   I’m sure the input from this project will inspire other work that isn’t directly related, as well. Ideas are already forming!

6. What’s the point of all this?
   Great question. I could wax poetic on this for a really, really long time…but I’ll sum it up like this: I used to be a pretty really awful person with rather warped ideas about what it meant to be a good human and a good American. I clawed my way out of being this way through the loving admonishment of a handful of folks whose emotional labor and intellectual input I definitely did not deserve, but who gave it freely anyway.
   
   That painful process of high-friction transcendence became the scaffolding for all of my artwork. I’ve been an artist for as long as I can remember³. I have a terminal degree in fine arts. I used to be a college art and art history professor. Nonetheless, none of that would mean anything without the almost painful thirst I have to resolve questions related to this scaffolding. My work studies utopian longing and failure, and the societal frictions that come from our personal ideals rubbing against the ideals of others - and even against other ideals we simultaneously hold. Consistently confronting how my own ideals are often at odds with one another gives me tremendous empathy for my fellow humans. After all, if I’m in friction with myself, how can I hate someone else for sharing a reality with me but coming to different conclusions, having different needs and desires? I started refining these ideas as a graduate student at Georgia State University, and kept my investigations chugging along when I graduated and took a professorship in the mountains of North Carolina.
   
   Then, in 2021, when the personal ideals of a hate group targeting me in North Carolina rubbed against my ability to live and teach safely, I decided to leave the South (land of my birth) once and for all. My then-partner/now-husband and I took stock of every nook and cranny of America to decide where we should put down roots. The two of us had collectively moved around 20 times in the previous decade; wherever we put roots down next, we wanted that to be where we stayed planted for good. So, based on our social, environmental, political, personal, and cultural ideals…where was the closest thing to utopia (at least, the closest thing that we could actually afford)? Where, essentially, could we keep working on being good people by surrounding ourselves with good people who built on a good place’s good history to help make that good place ever-better?
   
   And so, we came here - to Vermont. The rest is history in the making.
   I hope you’ll help me make it.

   

   We all have so much to learn from the land, the history, the culture, and the people of Vermont. Let’s learn it together, and let it shape us for the better.

1. Hanlon’s Razor is the adage that states “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”. That being a little unkind, I usually prefer Hubbard’s Razor, which is a take on Hanlon’s: “Never attribute to malice or stupidity that which can be explained by moderately rational individuals following incentives in a complex system.”

2. Kaffeeklatsch essentially refers to an informal midafternoon meet-up to rejuvenate with coffee, sweets, and hot gossip with friends. Those Germans realllly know how to do it right.

3. If you want to see and/or read about my work, you can check it out here.