That is the title of the illustrated talk that I am giving through the Vermont Council on the Humanities Speakers Bureau. The Council co-sponsors talks such as mine at Vermont non-profits such as libraries, historical societies, etc. I had to audition for the part. My talk is a broader version of the one I gave at the Bennington Museum in February. Speakers have to hustle their gigs, so to speak, themselves, though the Council posts summaries of Speakers Bureau talks on its website. You can find news of mine at:
I’m looking forward to meeting some new Vermont audiences, ones that expect give and take, moreover.
The latest issue of the Walloomsack Review is out. That’s the Bennington Museum’s journal of local and Vermont history, and I have an article and a review in the current issue. The article is an investigation of the sources and significance of the figure of the black youth in Leroy Williams’s mural “Prisoners Taken at the Battle of Bennington” on view at the Museum. The review takes a raised-eyebrow look at Christopher Wren’s recent Those Turbulent Sons of Freedom: Ethan Allen’s Green Mountain Boys and the American Revolution.
The prose is lighter in the spring issue of BerkshiresCalendar.com, the magazine about what’s happening in the Berkshires region put out by the Berkshire Edge, which is an online source of news and event listings. This is the magazine’s second year, and the print run is 30,000. The magazine has high design and production values and it’s available (for the taking) at 130 outlets in the greater Berkshires area, including Southern Vermont, as of May 1 or so. The editors let me write in my own — frolicsome? — voice, and I get to take the cultural and economic pulse of the region. Which I am also doing for the Revolutionary period, since militia from the Berkshires fought at the Battle of Bennington.
The 2019 version of the Bennington-Manchester Chamber of Commerce’s Shires Area Guide will be out May 2. I wrote the town profiles, including six new ones for this year. I must admit I had fun covering the “lesser” towns of Bennington County, including Glastenbury (pop. 8), which is not necessarily a tourist magnet but (I hope) makes for good reading. I think I conjured a picture of Sandgate as some kind of Appalachian Shangri-La, and I got to mention that it’s where Daniel Shays (of Shay’s Rebellion) holed up in 1786. The stunning cover photo is by Cally McDougall of Studio Hill Farm in Shaftsbury; it’s a barrel sauna with a view, and it goes with their Airbnb rental.