I recently wrote about “For the Love of Vermont,” an exhibit of more than 200 paintings from the Lyman Orton collection now on view at the Bennington Museum and the Southern Vermont Arts Center. I was writing for the Town of Bennington’s “Vermont Begins Here” site, and I touched it up for the Berkshire Edge:

https://theberkshireedge.com/for-the-love-of-vermont-the-lyman-orton-collection-opens-in-bennington-and-manchester/

Meanwhile, “Voices of the Fallen” came to the Bennington Battlefield on August 5 and 6 for six sold-out performances. Tom Hughes, one of our Vermont 250^th Commissioners, who has seen many re=enactments and knows the Saratoga campaign, thought highly of it, which I find reassuring. I had not seen rehearsals or costumes. They were in the hands of Ingrid Madelayne, director, and Peter Schaaphok, producer and costumier. We all collaborated on the scripts. I took the lead in drafting some, Ingrid and Peter others, in the style of our “Voices from the Grave” show of two years ago, with one exception: Sipp Ives’s monologue is written (by me) in the style of “Hamilton” rap. Here’s the actor, Marquis Heath, who performed it:

To see all those resurrected soldiers in the outfits they would have died in at their acting stations on the hilltop was an arresting sight. They did a splendid job. Audiences seemed attentive.

The show was notable for having a Mohawk actor from Akwesasne on the U.S.-Canada border play the Mohawk chief who was killed at the first encounter of British and American forces two days before the main battle. This is was what I had envisioned from the first, and it came to pass. Finding and funding the right person was a process of many months of persistence on our part, with critical help from NY Parks. The upshot was that we had Steven Thomson perform the monologue that I had excerpted in large part from the 1805 speech of Sagoyewatha/Red Jacket on Native and English religion, which reviews the history of white settlement on Native lands. The script had had to pass muster with the New York Bureau of Historic Preservation (we were performing in a NY State Park); we got the green light only ten days before the show. Darren Bonaparte, Federal Historic Preservation Officer for the St. Regis (Mohawk) Nation, had already given it his approval in correspondence with me. All the care and effort was worth it. Here a few pictures:

The whole cast:

We are going to mount an indoor production in Bennington on the Bennington Theater stage for two shows on November 11, Veterans Day. The “Voices of the Grave” show worked well indoors. I have high hopes for “Voices of the Fallen.”

I. The (new and improved) third edition of Robert Frost in Bennington County is out. The first edition was my foray into local history, at least between covers (I’d published a piece on Mark Twain’s 1871 visit to Bennington in the Bennington Banner in 1985). It took me three editions, but I think I’ve finally got it where I want it. “At Present in Vermont,” the excellent 2021 Frost exhibit at the Bennington Museum, as well as my own research into Frost’s involvement in the early years of Bennington College, helped. I was also able to incorporate my research onto the background of Frost’s “To a Young Wretch” and reproduce two woodcuts by J.J. Lankes. As ever, I’ve depended on the skills of graphic designer Leslie Noyes (with whom I first worked in 1985 on a catalogue for the Bennington July Program) to put words and images into an attractive package, now 32 pages long.

II. The Bennington Museum is a favorite subject for my occasional pieces. The exhibitions are consistently of a high caliber. The recent one called “A History of Bennington” was provocative in the best way. I published about it for “Vermont Begins Here,” VT Digger, and the Berkshire Edge:

https://theberkshireedge.com/the-bennington-museum-offers-a-fresh-take-on-the-history-of-the-town/

III. I recently wrote about a new trail up to a new lookout on Mt. Anthony.

I climbed all the way to the summit of the mountain for the first time, too. No view from the top, but a new lookout is planned even higher than the recently cleared and very fine one off Zaphod’s Run. 

IV. I just refreshed my old Bennington County town portraits for the SWVT Chamber’s Shires Area Guide. That was an early Voice and Word project and enabled me to get to know every town in this county, from Readsboro to Peru. I got to write sentences like “The store still carries the coarse-grained polenta favored by those hardy Italians” (the ones who came to work in Readsboro a century or so ago).

V. Lastly, I’m writing monologues for “Voices of the Fallen,” a sequel, at least in kind, to “Voices from the Grave,” the cemetery show that I and others put on two years ago in Old Bennington. Ingrid Madelyne is once again directing and co-writing. There are ten monologues, by nine men and one woman, who reads (in translation) from an actual letter from a Brunswick (German) soldier’s wife that was taken from his body at the Battle of Bennington and preserved at the Massachusetts Historical Society. Lion Miles quoted from it in his 1981 Battle Day address. The challenge is going to be to find actors (for one thing). Performances are only two months away (Aug. 5-6 at the Battlefield). The ten pieces from the Battle’s diverse cast of characters fit like a puzzle and tell the whole story (so to speak) of the Battle. Four men die instantly, five others of their wounds, so they learn the outcome before they die. Perhaps “puzzle” isn’t the right word, because it suggests 2-D pieces, and here we’re offering what strikes me as pieces in 3D (or 4). Don’t miss it.

“The world exists to end up in a book,” wrote Mallarmé. I like to have ulterior purposes as a tourist, so I was happy to take a “day trip to Wilmington, Vermont” assignment from the Berkshire Edge in order to put my existence into writing for others. Wilmington is only 20 miles east of Bennington on the Molly Stark Scenic Byway (a.k.a. Route 9), but my prior experience of the town was limited to lunch at Dot’s, dinner at the Anchor, and time spent at Bartleby’s Books, which carries my titles and once hosted a poetry reading by me and other minor poet. Oh, and I had stopped to get a photo of the statue of Molly Stark herself for my Battle book. Amelia and I made a day trip of it on September 30 and had a good time. You will too (pp. 55-57):

Last year I wrote about the Bennington Museum’s annual end-of-year art show for the Berkshire Edge’s online news site. I did it again:

I thought those Bennington Triangle T-shirts were so clever that I bid a modest sum on one and was one of the winners. Meanwhile Amelia bid on a piece by Bennington’s Rhonda Ratray just for fun and found she had bought the painting. I hadn’t mentioned to her that it was one of my favorite works in the show. It illustrates an incident in the childhood of the protagonist of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, when it rained stones on her house:

I never thought I would provide the text for a sermon from the pulpit of Old Bennington’s Old First Church, but I was told that the Rev. Clarke used at a Sunday morning service in December my piece from several years ago telling the story of Robert Frost’s Christmas poem “To a Young Wretch.” In Frost’s poem, “Christmas feeling” prevails (barely) over resentment at a young spruce’s having been rustled from Frost’s Gully property in South Shaftsbury by two local youths, who were caught soon after the act by the local constable. The poem is a splendid parable about justice and forgiveness in a case where two “goods” were opposed. It concludes:

And though in tinsel chain and popcorn rope
My tree, a captive in your window bay,
Has lost its footing on my mountain slope
And lost the stars of heaven, may, oh, may
The symbol star it lifts against your ceiling
Help me accept its fate with Christmas feeling.

On that note, see you next year!

My last post, if I remember, was in December of last year, I am embarrassed to say. I’ve been too busy to be looking backward. I have a moment now, with only one project in the works: a ceremony of remembrance on Veterans Day at the Bennington Battlefield. We’ll be presenting remembrances of the Battle by three women and two male veterans of the fighting. 

“QR-code Audio Enhancements for the Bennington Battlefield” is the name of the N.Y. Parks-funded project that I began work on a year ago. The inauguration of the codes came during a Battle Day (August 16) ceremony on the hilltop. A number of the voice actors who had played various parts were present. This was the press release, if you’re curious. 

https://www.benningtonbanner.com/community-news/audio-comes-to-the-bennington-battlefield/article_82d6d038-1a5d-11ed-a805-2f54888c6a2e.html

I got a kick out of coaching actors in my own home studio, as well as directing Broadway luminary Kevin McGuire remotely at a studio in midtown Manhattan. He voiced both George Washington and General Burgoyne. His mug adorns the rack card we just released to promote the project. You can scan the QR code right from your screen, I’ll bet.

A talented local composer, Darrell Holovach, wrote neo-Revolutionary background music for the introductions and directed three musicians in performing it. We posted 21 files in all. Now we’ll see if visitors to the Battlefield are using it (we can track activity; the files are also available at benningtonbattlefield.org under “Links”). I voiced the introductions and the action-packed account of veteran David Holbrook.

In July I delivered my first project as a “historian for hire.” The Mount Anthony County Club commissioned a club history for their 125^th anniversary celebration and website. I made a 12-minute (and 90-slide) presentation to 100 or so guests at the dinner that followed an afternoon tournament. I wanted to make it entertaining – this wasn’t a Historical Society audience. There were some emotional moments as well as some levity. For me, the project was a window on the history of Bennington I hadn’t looked through before. The Bennington Banner gave the celebration a good review:

https://www.benningtonbanner.com/business/125-years-of-fores-mount-anthony-country-club-celebrates-a-century-and-quarter-of-golf/article_a8ed80f8-06c8-11ed-810e-0f690ea3671f.html

Meanwhile, I’ve continued to write and photograph a monthly promotional post for the Town of Bennington’s Vermont Begins Here site. Latest post: “Breakfast in Bennington.”

It gave me a chance not only to eat at the Blue Benn (and other establishments) but to take notice of the excellent new book on the Benn by my friend Peter Crabtree and his collaborator Caitlin Randall. 

A well-designed set of three signage panels about the town of Bennington has gone up as part of the Putnam block renovations. It’s located behind the Bennington Bookshop adjacent to the municipal parking lot. I wrote the copy and contributed some photography. Here’s what the panels look like:

My work as co-chair of the Vermont 250^th Education Committee continues, too. I was pleased to see that my little book on the Battle of Bennington was chosen to be included among those to be distributed to public and school libraries in Vermont.

I gave my talk “The Black Presence at the Battle of Bennington” at the Hoosick Historical Society in August and at the Orwell (Vt.) Free Library in October, the latter under the aegis of the Vermont Council on the Humanities Speakers Bureau program.

I still voice the occasional corporate script for the Greek studios I have worked with for many years, and I recently wrote a profile of the town of Wilmington (Vt.) for the Berkshire Edge magazine. That’s the Voice and Word report for today, not to say “for this year.”