we’ve had a slew of car trouble recently, reinforcing the reality that human misfortune is a wave and not a straight line.
back around 2019, made a vow to never purchase oil again. this choice changed the trajectory of this particular life, but more on that later.
on this particular weekday, the vow meant waking up early and driving our potentially unreliable tesla to the parking lot of the white river junction amtrak station, and temporarily swapping for a different electic vehicle using the newfangled company, turo. (which is essentially an air bnb for cars)
from there drove another stretch north to retta’s house.
spruce was along for the ride, so when a couple of low-to-the-ground hound dogs and a boisterous, weirdly-large, white, wooly creature (also a dog) emerged from the back door, i was both excited and terrified. excited because it’s great for spruce to socialize with his own species, and terrified because he’s a late-stage puppy who’s recently hit puberty and humps all beings around him~ both foreign and domestic.
retta is a recent friend who was kind enough to speak at last year’s liberty food fest where she shared the wisdom from her three decades of experience advocating on behalf of homeschoolers in the state of vermont. there’s a seismic overlap between the homeschooling movement and the food freedom movement, as both are made up of people who are perhaps a bit odd in choosing to opt out of the conventional state-sanctioned methods of educating and eating.
retta recently wrote a ‘letter to the editor’ in which she shared how a recent piece of vermont legislation (act 181) was devaluing her family’s land and making it very difficult for her to potentially sell a parcel to a young couple looking to lay down roots. the article captured my attention. i wanted to document her personal journey and to bring sound and image to one of the thousands of rural vermonters like retta (and myself) whose homes and livelihoods are being threatened by authoritarian governmental decrees dressed up as environmental stewardship.
we never really figured out the dog situation, but we good-naturedly dealt with challenges as they arose. the big, weirdly-thick white dog, who may have been named fred, would occasionally bark menacingly, which was a good thing as it probably was enough to deter spruce form attempts at reproduction.
retta led me into the house where we scoped out the best location to conduct the interview. her husband, who has alzheimer’s, was out-of-sight but always-on-mind in a nearby bedroom. after a little adjustment of chairs, i chose the spot, framed the shot and hit record.
(to be continued)
