Holidays in Montpelier and Ferguson

   

 Typical Vermont Streetscape

 Mauricio at Sunset

      Christmas came early this year in the form of a snowstorm that socked central New England the day before Thanksgiving. We had planned, months earlier, to visit Vermont on our annual trip to Boston in order to reunite with a San Francisco escapee, our German friend, Katharina. She had moved to the Green Mountains last summer with her Dutch husband, Glen, to live on thirty acres of virginal pine forest they had purchased decades ago. The couple had tired of the city. In many ways, Mauricio and I are always ready to follow suit, as we seem to eternally live out the fable of "The Princess and the Pea," where no amount of Californian comfort is quite cozy enough. I'm also reminded, when I hear myself drivel onward about travel and restlessness and home, of the joke of the Irish boomerang. Punchline: "It doesn't come back - it just sings songs about how badly it wants to."

 Snow Scene 1, photo credit: Katharina Mack

 Snow Scene 2, photo credit: Katharina Mack

 Kat and Tesla

      Montpelier, the brave capital of the Green Mountain State, is basically two intersecting streets with a booming population of 8,000 (matching that of our Lower Haight neighborhood). The capital, like all of Northern New England, really does have a certain flintiness intermixed with progressive values. Vermont Governor, Democrat Peter Shumlin, had just survived a reelection but (just this past month) decided to drop the Single-Payer healthcare after it became a heavy, rusty and expensive anchor around his political neck. While Vermont's unemployment sits at a respectable 4.3%, many of the available jobs are low-paying-service-sector jobs. Montpelier is a different beast. The big joke in Montpelier, Katharina said, is that everyone you meet is a lawyer.

 Diner, South Royalton

 Thrift Store, South Royalton

      According to the United States Census Bureau, Vermont is overwhelming white at 95% and its human population of 626K lags that of the city of Boston (at 646K). Still, in the smallest capital of the 2nd smallest state, we managed to have loads of fun like exchanging stories over Katharina's wood-burning stove, grabbing a beer at Sweet Melissa's on an open-mic folk night and dining on crepes at the Skinny Pancake. The Vermonters we met that night and morning were friendly enough but they demanded eye contact (a refreshing departure from San Francisco where my main complaint is that passersby look right through you).

 Good Crepes, Montpelier, VT

 Good Beer and Music, Montpelier, VT

      Could I live in a place so overwhelmingly white? Yes, but what would I lose in doing so? In cutting-edge segregation maps, San Francisco scores pretty high although we are blessed with many different ethnic groups. I'm not going to lie: diversity for me is mainly about the great access to food but also for that racial and cultural intermingling where courtesy and humor can bridge the gap by light years. But I often wonder if the lack of pedestrian eye contact in California springs from this respect (or fear) of not wanting to test boundaries.

 A View of White Mountains

 Blue Betty, photo credit: Katharina Mack

      Vermont's lily-white demographic onslaught was made all the more poignant by the sheets of ivory snow and sleet that really picked up its pace as we made a tourist detour at Dartmouth College. On the 40 mph trudge back to Boston, we also faced an onslaught of news on the radio about Ferguson, Missouri. Folks were still discussing the fact that Officer Wilson had been not been indicted by a grand jury just two days before. Tensions were high and radio journalists were declaring 2014 "The Year of the Ferguson Thanksgiving." 992 miles separate Montpelier, Vermont from Ferguson, Missouri but it terms of experience, it can feel like lifetimes.

 Tesla, photo credit: Katharina Mack