Peter Miller (3)

My mom grew up in Vermont, and has spent her professional career as a field biologist in the streams across the entirety of the state. I have family in Charlotte, relatives buried in Hinesburg, and lived in Burlington for a summer. My phone number is from Vermont. You might call it my spiritual home.

I first found this book while on summer vacation in the Northeast Kingdom, on the shelf of Green Mountain Books in Lyndonville. A Christmas or two later, my parents picked up a copy for me of his show more earlier book on the same theme, "Vermont People," and then a year or two later, "Vermont Farm Women."

Although I haven't read the entirety of Peter Miller's works, it seems as though it would be hard to classify "A Lifetime of Vermont People" as anything other than his magnum opus. At times, Miller comes across as an ornery old man that can't navigate changing times (he is), and yet, he has captured something essential about Vermont and Vermonters in his pages.

My mom is a photographer, and has done various black and white photography projects with me over the years, which we've developed in the basement. Maybe its due to this firsthand experience, but I wouldn't have Miller's black and white photography any other way (although it feels unfortunate that he switched away from film later on). He says he based the layout on what he learned from his time at "Life," and you can see how that's the case. The layout and print quality of this book are archival quality. Even just the detail and contrast on the cover is stunning every time I look at it.

The breadth of the book—covering sixty-two years of sixty different Vermont stories (individuals and family with a few oddities thrown in, such as general stores and one-room schoolhouses)—is staggering. It is a miracle of Miller's love for Vermont and a long life of photography and dedication to community that has produced this book.

Where's "Vermont People" was somber, "A Lifetime of Vermont People" has crossed the border into cantankerous tone. This book is Miller's way of mourning and commemorating a bygone era. Many of Miller's friends, which you'll meet in the pages of this book, died half a century ago. This is a beautiful thing and a sacred task.

So what is the essence of Vermont? It is something too subtle and deep to sum up in a few words. Read the book instead. show less

Peter Miller has been photographing and writing about Vermonters for many decades at this point. He has arrived at the curmudgeon stage of his life, and decided to write a book that really highlights these attitudes. I've enjoyed his past book, so decided to give this one a try as well.

The first thing you'll note about this book is that most of it is the words of Vermonters that Miller has interviewed (most of them old white men like himself). They have many of the same sorts of views that show more stereotypes might suggest. Most of the book's subjects are likely Trump supporters (although only one of them comes out and says it). This book was published in 2017, and it is a very approachable way of hearing how many Americans make their way to Trumpland.

For many people in the book, the bulk of their taxes go to property tax—they've inherited land and housing and infrastructure, and make very little income. Many of these people have either lost their house due to taxes, or might soon. This is different than my experience and the experience of many of my peers, who pay the bulk of their taxes in income tax, not property tax. The issue does pose the question of whether income and property tax might be integrated, as it isn't particularly humane to require these people to either earn more money or lose their houses to taxes.

It is fun to hear about Vermonters that still don't have electricity and running water, and want to keep in that way.

The book has a striking dedication: to Romaine Tenney—a Vermonter from Ascutney who committed suicide by burning down his house in protest of the construction of Interstate 91 (which required him to vacate the property). There is something admirable about this commitment to place. It is reminiscent of the Ecuadorian Shuar declaration by Domingo Ankwash to foreign miners: "to get the gold, they will have to kill every one of us." On the other hand, we must ask ourselves if Tenney is more of an ornery settler than an indigenous person.

A theme throughout the book is that, if you move to Vermont, you need to assimilate. This is consistent with the regional culture outlined in Colin Woodard's "American Nations"—namely, that Yankeeedom is and has always demanded assimilation (unlike, say New York, which has an attitude of tolerance, if not cooperation).

I would love to see a book like this that continues the anthropological study to other demographics within Vermont. show less

Last year I read "Vermont People," (and wrote quite a bit about it); this year I read "Vermont Farm Women."

Over the history of the United States, farmers have mostly been men. Miller's choice to write a book both about Vermont, a radical place in many ways, and female farmers, is a feministic move that I applaud.

It seems as though much of the material in the book comes from around the year 2000, covering a more recent era than Miller's "Vermont People."

The book is both beautiful—for the show more romantic portrait of rural life that it provides, and tragic—in that the era of the self-sufficient homestead in Vermont has come to a close, with the state essentially having become an over-priced vacationland for city folks from Boston and New York.

If you find Vermont's aesthetic appealing, and have interest in farming and feminism, this is an excellent book. show less

I picked this book up for the first time in a bookstore in the Northeast Kingdom, a year and a half ago. My family has been vacationing in the summers for the past fifteen years [after Squam Lake got too expensive].

My parents got this book for me for Christmas a few weeks ago. In the inscription my mother wrote, "This is the Vermont I grew up in." I just finished reading it at friend's vacation house in the White Mountains.

My mother grew up in Vermont, and has some ancestry there. I would show more have been raised there, had my father not gotten a job in Massachusetts first.

Vermont has always been both idyllic and iconic to me. I feel as though I share a cultural heritage with Vermont, and have spent time farming and homesteading over the years.

This book was first published in 1990, and the revised edition, printed in 2004, features the stories and portraits of Vermonters from 1960 to 1997. It tell the story of the generations that come before me. Vermont was a very different place the Vermont I've become familiar with.

The two times I've lived in Vermont I've lived in Burlington. These two times are the only times in my life that I've lived in a non-rural landscape, which is one of the reasons I left.

Especially with the Bernie Sanders' recent popularity, I think a lot of Americans get the idea that Burlington is the symbol of Vermont. Burton Snowboards and Ben & Jerry's, other global ambassadors for Vermont, also have strong relationships with Burlington. And yet Burlington in an urban center, when the essence of Vermont lies in its rural nature.

Not one profile in the book covers a resident of Burlington or Brattleboro. There are a few references to Montpelier, the state capital, but that's hardly an urban center.

Not everyone in the book was born in Vermont, but they all exhibit some aspect of a Vermonter [as opposed to the out-of-staters that see Vermont as a nice place to vacation]. Also, Miller notably excludes famous people, as a Vermonter isn't a celebrity.

The story of Vermont of the past fifty years is the story of gentrification. Many people in the book despise this fact, and pine for the good old days. Others are grateful for the economic development brought by tourism [skiing being the leading industry].

I should note that Vermont is also a national leader in the local food and local economic movements. But these facets aren't highlighted by this book.

By no means does Miller narrate a romantic account of Vermont life. A somber tone permeates throughout. In his introduction, he poses the question: was it "the temper of the people that made them Vermonters, or...was it the roughness of the land and the climate that forged these newcomers into such distinct personalities?" For all it's beauty, Vermont is not an easy place.

The book has been more inspiring than I anticipated. There's a certain authenticity to it which we rarely encounter in modern life.

The Vermont that Miller lived is now dead. It's a Vermont I never had the privilege of experiencing. Its myth, and the way of being that such a myth may galvanize, can live on if we keep telling it's story.

As a side note, there is a sister book to this one, "Vermont Farm Women," that is equally compelling. I only started here because it was written first. That's my next stop. show less