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(03/10/16 4:13am)
You may have passed it by on your way to Burlington, or you might have turned the car and parked like we did. Monroe St. Books is an unabashed, yet not entirely flashy, used bookstore on Rt. 7 North, lined floor to ceiling with peeling paperbacks and once-loved hardcovers.
Upon entering the store, we find the owner squatted on a small stool amidst the children’s books. The lines on his forehead sit above his wide-rimmed glasses, and they crinkle together when he tells us of the vastness of his collection. They have 100,000 used books on display and 60,000 more in the back.
“People sometimes come in here and they have a panic attack – they have to lie down or leave,” store owner Dick Chodkowski says. “They can’t handle it because there’s too many books. They profess that they love books, but it’s just too much for them. It’s kind of sad. I always tell them to just concentrate on one area.”
He turns toward the rows of picture books before him, brushing his fingers against the bindings.
Chodkowski explains his store was a hobby that got out of control; he brushes much of his story aside and keeps his pages bound.
“It’s easy to collect books. There’s no end to the books. It’s finding the good books that’s tough,” Chodkowski says. Chodkowski and his wife, Flanzy, have spent hours upon hours with the books over the years, as they’ve built upon their collection. He takes pride in the variety of Monroe St.’s selection, with stacks of beekeepers’ guides, old mysteries and collections of poems.
“There’s a book for everyone,” he says. When we ask if he has a favorite, he furrows his brow, saying, “I don’t have a favorite; I can’t play favorites. They’re all my children.”
I ask if he can help me find what I’m looking for, the original Winnie the Pooh, one of a four-part collection I’ve been tracking down. He knows his shelves well and leads me directly to A.A. Milne, where the exact book sits, slightly dusted and waiting. Though the story and the copy are both well-used, there is a sense of newness as I claim it as my own. I slide it off the shelf with satisfaction, an act I’m sure Chodkowski has seen countless times. He thanks me, and turns back to his work.
With a story in every nook and cranny, the multitude of treasures in this bookstore gives increasing meaning to what lies within the bindings.
Leaving Monroe St. Books, the book I grip in my hand is more than merely what’s written on the pages; it is the whir of stories that have been opened and closed, passed down to new hands, and are ready to be lived again.
(01/28/16 3:30am)
The train tracks that run through town, seemingly broken down décor, are scheduled for a substantial improvement. The Vermont Agency of Transportation plans to lower the railroad beds to accommodate double-decker trains and renovate the two rail bridges in town.
The replacement of deteriorating bridges on Merchants Row and Main Street is tentatively set to begin this summer and span over the next four years.
Middlebury is scheduled to become an official Amtrak stop, with a station off McIntyre Lane. The train will enable easier transportation, linking the town to Burlington and Rutland.
Initial construction plans outlined 20 hour work days for seven days a week in order to complete the renovations as quickly as possible.
The project has been met with significant controversy since it was approved in 2012. From the high cost, now approaching $40 million, to the disruption of the town, the backlash toward the advancements have not gone unnoticed.
Locals have expressed concerns over the construction disrupting the community with its noise and expanse.
The construction will substantially interfere with traffic patterns due to long-term road closures. Local business owners in particular are concerned that the project will decrease their sales. Some have already begun to relocate elsewhere.
Other concerns include the ecologic repercussions of induced runoff into Otter Creek and the risk posed to historic buildings near the construction site.
Chris Cole, the director of policy, planning and intermodal development for VTrans, is pushing forward. He said that investing in the rail systems is what will help ensure Vermont’s economic success.
The budget includes funds to implement a temporary parking garage and to relocate a public transit bus stop in order to mitigate the impacts of construction.
Moving forward, Middlebury officials are working to reduce the scale and duration of the renovation. Community members generally endorse the renovation of the bridges, as they are over due for structural upkeep. The most forceful push is to change the minimum clearance requirement that dictates the ex- tent of the rail bed construction.
If VTrans agrees to lower the mini- mum clearance requirement from 21 to 19 feet, the cost, length and inconvenience of the project would be reduced significantly. With hopes, the rail system will find its way to blend with the town in an efficient manner, increasing overall transportation convenience with- out hindering the locals or landscape.
(12/10/15 12:05am)
We met Erin and Hannah, co-founder of the North End Honeys, in Bristol in October. They had just finished playing a set at a harvest fair, an upbeat and self defined “screaming honky tonk” duo with crooning harmonies and smooth strummed guitars. We stopped to chat as the two blonde friends started to pack up their van. They kindly propped open their back door with a lone crutch and welcomed us into conversation.
The North End Honeys is a relatively recent group and started playing together in Burlington just about six months ago. Hannah had heard Erin playing at a local spot and said she knew that they had to play together. When they finally started to make music, it all unfolded rather quickly.
“We didn’t know each other, but we were like, ‘Let’s go on tour!’ That was the first thing we said! And it’s actually happening now and it’s just so weird because we weren’t friends at all. It was like the friendship music relationship of going on a first date with someone and saying ‘We’re getting married—it’s gonna be sick!’” Erin laughed, nudging Hannah, who gave a smirk in return.
The duo had to develop depth faster than most friendships in order to sing, write and drive for days on end together. “We definitely did everything about this pretty backwards,” Hannah added. “We’re complete opposites and we rushed into it not knowing. I didn’t know how his brain worked, and he didn’t know about mine.”
The two also both articulated the importance of having music as the center of their bond.
“All of my closest friends are probably due to music, Hannah being one of them,” Erin said. “And for me, performing is one of the only times when my brain is calm.”
Hannah nodded, agreeing as she expanded on Erin’s ideas, “It’s one of the only things that I really love and I know it’s not going anywhere. Cause you can love somebody and they can leave, or you can love certain things and they can break, but I’m going to be able to play music forever.”
Sitting in the back of their van, one could see the history of their band building amidst the clutter of papers and stack of guitar cases.
We noticed how they worked together in dialogue, supporting each other through playful banter and more serious musings.
It was clear that Hannah and Erin are two songwriters learning to write on a page together, rather than try to pull the other onto his or her own. “We’re balancing it out,” Erin explained. “We’re pushing each other to grow a little bit in the ways we haven’t worked on so much. This sounds kind of cliché or whatever, but Hannah’s pushing me to move a little a faster and I’m teaching her to slow down a little bit. I think we have a really good thing going on.”
As we listened, we found lessons of true collaboration, finding humor in the little things and not being afraid to get up and go for it. Needless to say, the Honeys had our hearts. So, look out for this dynamic duo; they’re coming to Middlebury in January!
(11/19/15 3:38am)
I was sitting in Bristol Bakery the other day, when the man next to me offered to clear my plate.
“I’ve got nothing better to do,” he said as he took the cups and bowls of a few neighboring tables into his hands. I hadn’t planned on interviewing that day and was without my camera, but something struck me by his offer: he wanted to engage. Maybe, I thought, he also wanted to be heard.
(11/13/15 4:56am)
Last weekend at Champlain Orchards, Humans of Vermont met Rustin Swenson, a Norwegian turned Vermonter, and the self-proclaimed reason Bernie Sanders is running for Presidential office. We sought out Swenson for his refined taste in fashion, as he was adorned in a fine grey suit with a brightly colored vest, shirt and tie all of varying patterns. His hat read: “Swenson for Governor,” and his wide rimmed glasses seemed subtle compared to his wild white hair. He set the tone immediately as we approached him, reaching into his vest pocket and asking, “What do you want? To see my green card?” He laughed and began chatting away in a thick accent; words rolled off his tongue with quick wit as he first told us about his wife, his “favorite person in Vermont.”
“When I met my wife, wow,” he said. “She was driving an old Saab. My kind of car, right? She’s really fantastic.” When Swenson’s wife later came up to him during our interview, he introduced us.
“This is my lovely wife,” he said.
“Maisie, they’re interviewing weirdos.” She tried to urge him along, saying it was time to leave, but instead he held his ground and wrapped his arm around her. “This is my claim to fame. I’m her husband, you know?”
The conversation turned towards his passion for historic Vermont, as he opened up about working to restore old local buildings.
“Vermont’s future lies in the restoration of its past history,” he said. “It’s our past tradition that made us what we are.” He continued to explain his investment in the state, listing the numerous articles he has written in support of protecting various sites. But we soon discovered that where Swenson truly shines is in his unique governmental perspective.
“Every year I go to the Montpelier Capital 4th of July Parade,” he began, his hands in motion. “In fact, last year, at the end of the parade, there was Bernie Sanders just standing around, and I said ‘Bernie, I’ve been waiting ten years for you! When are you going to run for office? I can’t wait around forever! I’m not getting any younger, you know?’ and he said ‘Well, I’m not either.’” Rustin placed his hands on his hips, acting out the conversation for his audience.
“Maybe I’m the reason why he’s running right now. You give me credit for that, okay?” He paused briefly before continuing, “I did run for governor last year. I got 35 votes. I didn’t run to win I just ran to make my point. I ran on the Coffee Party. Forget this Tea Party, I ran on the Coffee Party. Everybody gets a free cup of coffee. You like that, yeah?”
Yeah, we like it. Coffee Party 2016; vote Rustin Swensen.
(11/05/15 3:50am)
On Saturday, Oct. 31, Humans of VT took to South Street to talk to trick-or-treaters. Flickering jack-o’-lanterns, witches, the cast of Frozen (including a real-life pony dressed as Sven!) and mad scientists flooded the streets. The rush of trick-or-treating was like a relay: run up the porch, pass the bag of candy to mom, sprint down to the house that gives away two pieces, catch up with the big kids a few yards away. We paused on a porch that featured Elvis and Perry the Platypus.
“What’s your favorite thing about Halloween?”
“This,” Perry answered. “Getting to see everybody’s families, and realize how we all come together.” The chorus of “Trick or treat!” sounded as the masses flowed on and off the porch.
“Hey, look at you! You’re a purple cat!” Elvis said to a young girl reaching her hand into the bowl of candy.
“Yeah. Just this,” she echoed once more.
We found our way within the crowd, somewhere in between candy givers and takers. The parents traveled in clumps behind, a subset of the Halloween madness we hadn’t noticed years ago when we were the candy collectors.
Though it was difficult to stop students for pictures, let alone interviews, we caught up with one mom while her daughter explored the yard of a Harry Potter themed house. She wore a sparkly hat to dress up her Patagonia puff, and had a red solo cup in her hand.
“We do the same thing college kids do,” she said. “Except we need it more, because we have little kids.”
Though we didn’t see too many other red cups on South Street that night, it certainly brought the juxtaposition into view.
The College was also celebrating in fine fashion – with perhaps a little less clothing, give or take.
The comparison was plain: two communities running parallel, with the exchange of candy for alcohol and parents for Public Safety.
Just an hour earlier I had been at a college party, on a yard filled shoulder to shoulder with loud music and spilling drinks; hopping over to the other side on South Street, we saw how we could blend in, but couldn’t fit in.
How could what once entirely shaped our Halloween nights become so foreign? A tradition found in flux, the transition taking place just two streets over. The same solo-cup woman commented to us that she thought the gap between the larger Middlebury community and the College had been somewhat bridged in the twenty-some years since she had attended the institution. But she also saw that there was still a divide, as could be seen on nights such as Halloween.
So, we wondered, we have this space between the streets; is it one we wish to fill?
(10/14/15 10:35pm)
Last spring, three Middlebury seniors started Humans of Vermont, an independent study modeled after the popular Humans of New York, created in 2010 by Brandon Stanton.
Traveling to different parts of the state, these students began to collect the stories and photos of various Vermonters and posted them on Facebook. As the desire to drive beyond Middlebury College and listen to the people of Vermont grew, the page quickly accumulated ‘likes’. This year, the project is run by Wendy Walcoff ’16.5, Olivia Wiggins ’18.5, Emily Robinson ’18.5, and Grace Levin ’18.5.
Each weekend, they make their way to a new destination; a harvest fair, an apple orchard, a small town’s main street. With questions ranging from, “What is a moment in your life you would like to return to?” to “What is something that you have learned recently?” or even “Have you ever been in love?” the conversations begin beneath the surface for both listener and speaker. As it turns out, people want to be heard.
At a recent harvest fair in Bristol, Vermont, Humans of Vermont spoke with a blacksmith, a local band, a fireman, a family of four, a jeweler and many other attendees. One woman, Ellen Spring, a print maker and mother of two teenage girls, opened up immediately upon being asked about her artwork.
“I say, somewhat facetiously, that I’m kind of doing what I’ve been doing since I was eight years old,” Ellen laughed, pointing to her colorful shirts with vegetable block-prints. Without much prompting, she began speaking of her passion, her family and the ideas that ground her.
“It hasn’t always been incredibly clear to me what my path should be,” She articulated. “It was just that choices were made easier because I felt like it was okay to choose happiness. When I first got out of art school it was kind of like..ah I guess I have to go to New York because that’s where artists go. But I didn’t really want to go to New York. And then I thought: ‘Oh, I don’t have to!’”
Ellen recalled her decisions with ease, and her words spoke directly to the eager ears of those college students persisting under the pressure of the job hunt.
“It’s okay to choose to follow your heart. I didn’t go into this thinking ‘I’m gonna be rich.’ But it’s a living, and I’ve been doing it for 30 something years now. And I still love it. That’s kind of what has always kept me going: that I feel really lucky to get up every morning and do something I love.”
As the collection of stories builds, The Campus will feature excerpts from the people and places gathered by Humans of Vermont. A reminder to share, to listen, and that sometimes all you have to do is ask.
(04/16/14 5:29pm)
This past Friday evening, the Swing Dance Club took the stage for their first official performance in McCullough Social Space, lighting up the room with energy and dance moves. The show, featuring nearly 50 dancers with a wide range of experience, attracted a full house of students and community members. The club brought levity and laughter to the crowd, leaving the audience with impressed smiles and the repetition of, “I wanna swing dance!”
The pre-performance process began in December when the three co-directors shared a MiddRides shift. As Melanie Dennis ’14 drove the van, Eleni Polychroniadou ’14 and Tim Fraser ’16 alternated as driver’s assistants, using the time to brainstorm the show, which would take place a few months later. Through collaboration and hours upon hours of choreography, rehearsal and logistics, they pieced together The Swing Express.
When Polychroniadou and Dennis first joined the Swing Club their freshman fall, neither of them thought that they would be sitting in these seats, having just completed such a successful production.
“I never anticipated being a swing dancer,” Polychroniadou said. She decided to join the Swing Club her first semester after discovering swing dance in Greece just prior. Polychroniadou said she “fell in love with the movement,” but felt that the dance community she had found in Greece was lacking on campus.
The club was small in 2010, with a core group of around ten people and not a strong sense of camaraderie. As she took over the club her freshman year, Polychroniadou worked to change the system to one that fostered stronger relationships. With the implementation of biweekly meetings, club dinners and a continual effort to reach out to the wider Middlebury community, the club began to progress. Although Dennis has stepped down as president of the club this year, it is now run by Fraser, Dennis and Lindsey Hunt ’14, and flourishes as a community, welcoming one and all to come join the fun.
Last weekend’s show started to develop this January during the J-term Swing Workshop. The workshop advertised both the club and the performance and gathered a group of dancers that spanned across all departments and campus activities. Fraser explained that the show and club have provided a space for students from all sectors of campus to collaborate.
“That’s the best part about swing,” Polychroniadou added. “It brings anybody and everybody, people who think they can’t dance, people who think they can and people who would not have any other overlap.”
Through word of mouth and a fruitful workshop, the club collected nearly 50 students for their large-scale production.
Consisting of 14 routines, the swing show proved adaptable to various tunes and forms of footwork. From the ‘20s Charleston, to Jazz to Fusion dance, the three co-directors evenly split the choreography, with the exception of a few performers choreographing their own pieces. Part of the choreography included a handful of elementary school girls from Bridport. Dennis and Fraser, the pioneers of the elementary routine, visited the school in Bridport once a week for six weeks to teach the dance. Dennis said that they learned faster than they had expected, and even picked up difficult moves visually without having to be taught. The young girls’ routine proved to be one of the highlights of the evening, and one of Dennis’s favorite parts about putting on the show.
The Swing Club’s value on involvement with the wider Middlebury community was demonstrated by the donation of all of Friday night’s proceeds to the Charter House, Middlebury’s local homeless shelter. The tie came from Polychroniadou’s decision to fuse dance with The Charter House’s need for a fundraiser. With a nearly sold out show, Polychroniadou proudly stated an estimation of $1,500 in donations. Fraser explained that looking forward, they hope to continue community engagement through frequent visits to local nursing homes, participation in Puppets for Education, (a Burlington based non-profit) and further investment in local schools.
So, what’s in the near future for Swing Club? For starters, come one and all to McCullough on Monday and Wednesday nights at 7:30; Mondays for lessons, Wednesdays for free dance. Then, make sure you don’t miss the first ever “Swing Fest,” May 2-4. If you like to dance, and even if you don’t, this is another Swing Club event you simply cannot miss.
(02/26/14 5:43pm)
From small talk in Proctor, to late-night brownie binges and even later nights in the library, the constant chatter that echoes through campus concerning the “perfect girl” not only exists, but has taken a toll on the College campus. With an acceptance rate of 17.3 percent, it is no question that our endeavors to get here had the power to jeopardize our mental health. Sadly, our strenuous efforts to arrive at Middlebury all too often permeated our experiences here: whether it be a sister, close friend or even ourselves, we have all witnessed the manifestations of perfectionism, and most of us have stood by as someone we loved engaged in acts of self-hatred.
“We have to be funny. We have to be well read. We have to be in shape. We have to care about the planet…we’re expected to be social while also maintaining perfect grades,” said Elli Itin ’16, co-president of Feminist Action club and coordinator of Wednesday’s “Perfect Girls” talk by Courtney Martin. “We’re told we have to be everything. I’m exhausted of hearing about friends of mine who have been hospitalized for eating disorders, of overhearing conversations in the dining halls of girls saying, ‘I can’t eat any bread tonight because I didn’t work out for an hour.’ I’m tired of having people comment on everyone’s weight, both guys and girls; I’m tired of watching people pile on bracelets from cutting […] I think we’re all exhausted from dealing with this.”
On Wednesday, Feb. 19, students, mostly female, gathered in McCullough Social Space and prepared to confront the stimulating issue of society’s pressure to be “perfect” when famed feminist Martin took the stage. A native of Colorado, Martin wrote her first book, “Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating our Bodies,” as a reaction to the culture of self-hatred she experienced during her time at Barnard College. Itin introduced Martin to the crowd of over 200 students and community members, listing her accolades – five books, editor of Feministing.com, founder of The Secret Society for Creative Philanthropy and appearances in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek and on Good Morning America, The TODAY Show – invited the audience to “catalyze a conversation about the voices in our heads telling us that we aren’t good enough.”
“Well that was a bad-ass intro,” Martin laughed, inviting levity on stage for a conversational, comfortable atmosphere. Approaching a sensitive topic with grace, Martin announced, “I love learning from you how this [perfectionist trend] is showing up specifically at Middlebury. I’m here to learn as much as I am to speak.” She began the conversation with a question, asking those of us to stand that knew someone who had suffered from a “full blown” eating disorder. Four or five people remained seated as nearly the whole audience stood.
“Beyond the full blown eating disorder, what I am most interested in talking about with you today, is not the top line diagnosable eating disorders … what I am most interested in is the glacier underneath. The iceberg on top is what we see as these full blown diagnosed eating disorders, but underneath there is this huge massive epidemic of women and men, importantly, who are self hating,” Courtney explained. Over half of women between the ages of 18 and 25 would prefer to be run over by a truck than be fat and another two thirds would prefer to be more stupid, she highlighted.
“How can we stop settling for self-hate and redefine success to include wellness?” Martin asked.
In approaching a response, Courtney was certain to define the root of body-image issues: “[They’re] not really about beauty, but at this deep, deep level they’re about this existential sense: what makes me worth something? What makes me seen by others? What makes me feel in control of the world? It isn’t about food or fitness, but about the deepest questions we can ask about who we are.” The effort to “be everything to all people,” (in Martin’s words), and further, to make it look effortless, all too frequently results in self-harm.
But does this problem affect the wider Middlebury demographic? Prior to the lecture, a student edited one of the posters for “Perfect Girls,” commenting that the group that the poster addressed was one “of white women.”
“It’s statistically true — that the richer you are, the more privilege you come from, the whiter you are, the more likely you are to have an eating disorder,” she explained. However, this idea has led to misdiagnoses of women of color. A recent study showed that black women are as likely to binge and purge, and are more likely to fast and abuse laxatives or diuretics.
“A lot of times we think that the only beauty ideal in our culture is the white, thin, beauty ideal. Well there are actually many beauty ideals in our culture,” Martin said.
So how does this issue play a role on campus? A large part lies within the word “effortless.” As one student explained, “I think that it’s much more masked here. I think that there’s a lot of obsessive behavior, but I think the problem at Middlebury is that we convince ourselves of effortless perfection…not only do we convince ourselves that we need to be perfect and that our peers are perfect, but that it all comes very effortlessly — hugely detrimental to the psyche because a) no one’s perfect, and b) it certainly isn’t without trying.”
One freshman-feb said that before she came to Middlebury, she was told not to worry about the “freshman-fifteen,” because “you lose weight here.” Whether or not this is true for you, when 35 percent of Middlebury students are varsity athletes, it is hard to overlook the college’s reputation that places an emphasis on fitness and food. As one senior cross-country runner explained, “Being fit here isn’t just being healthy and being in shape, it’s, ‘Are you an All-American?’…It’s cool [at Middlebury] to run a marathon, to be the football star, be a lacrosse boy...and it changes what it means to have a good body; to be fit.” We’ve adopted the mentality that fitness equates to value, and though it is important to be healthy and self-aware, we’ve lost a sense of true success by setting too high of standards for ourselves and others.
“I’d say the dominant scene at Middlebury is probably the athletic scene. But there’s other sides of Middlebury campus, and I would say those sides are no less overachieving, just in different ways,” Lily Andrews ’14 commented. As a Gender Studies major, Andrews explained that for her, achieving is making social justice initiatives and proving her leadership. Hannah Geldermann ’16, an Environmental-Chemistry major and pre-med, illustrated a similar perfectionist mindset within her field, described the intense self-inflicted pressure in a pre-professional atmosphere. Jiya Pandya ’17, explained, “You can somehow never do enough at Middlebury.”
We have set impossibly high standards for ourselves in all regards, and in turn have suffered the consequences. The last question to pose is now that we’re aware, how do we invoke change? Courtney offered steps to move towards a shifting mindset.
“We can change conversations about weight to well being. We can speak up against fat discrimination. We can think about ‘With who do we feel the happiest and most beautiful, and how can we hang out with them all the time?’”
She further explained that we need to trust ourselves if we need professional help, we can get involved with feminism on campus, and endorse health rather than “perfection.” Itin explained, “We have to reach back into our little kid selves, and ask if our eight-year old selves saw us now, would they be happy with our choices? Not our resumes, but the way we treat ourselves.”
Additional Reporting by IZZY FLEMING