Interviews with Frank Bryan, Elsa Gilbertson; informal talk with harvest dinner cooks

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In this interview, Frank Bryan of Starksboro talks in his office in the Political Science department at UVM.  He greeted us with a sort of hardboiled curtness that was not unfriendly, but had the air of an old Hollywood newspaperman.  “Go,” he ejected, as soon as we were seated and minimal pleasantries dispensed.  We were still fumblng with the record button.  Bryan here discusses:

0:40 length of habitation in Starksboro.

1:15 Story of moving to Starksboro in ’70.  Deer camp, one-room.  “Al Gore would’ve loved us.  Our carbon footprint was almost nothing.  One room, no telephone.”

2:20 “heartbreaking” to have to bulldoze some of the self-built additions that were shoddy.

2:50 “anyway that’s all just personal shit”

3:00 Sloppy VT construction

3:15 we build better now

3:55 “We’re so much better off than we were 50 years ago.”  This impacts “community in VT.”

Attributes VT rural growth since the 60s to “technology” enabling people to “live comfortably” in VT, whereas 1860-1960 it was “too cold, lonely and depressing”, which he describes rather poetically.

5:48 How Bryan got his cabin and land.

6:15 Career history.  Mentions multiple marriages

6:30 7 kids in all.  All but 2 in VT.  Kids’ careers.

7:30 asks Bryan about whether people “raise their kids to leave”.  He discussefs telecommuting, imagines a future where it dominates the economy.

9:30 Telecommuters in Starksboro.  “Quite a few” though we don’t have the stats by town yet.”  “This is important for any scholar of the potenntial for place and community.”

10:25 Bryan envisions “more local organizations.”  “People are slowly becoming – I think – satisfied with where they live.

11:19 Bryan imagines that we are “becoming an ancillary world, where most of us aren’t doing anything but organizing.  Takes fairly routine examples of automation as

12:20 Worries about the future economy of ancillary telecommmuters being “class-based.”

12:50 the “three groups” in all communities.  The small percentage of “down-and-outers” who don’t participate.  The working-class professionals, who’ve been there a long time and are the backbone of civic structure.  The newcomers, often more professional-class, who sometimes get involved but often defer to the locals.

15:00 A lot of the good programs around the school are populated mostly by the kids of professionals.

15:20 discusses own background as a working-class kid with little interest in such things.  Mentions childhood, working on farms.

16:18 On the “bedroom community” and civic engagement.  “I wouldn’t put a percentagve on it, but there’s enough so you know it’s there.”  “Sure it’s a problem, but… what are you gonna do?  “As long as the profession is the driving force, you’re gonna be in trouble”

18:00 rural isolation a privilege.  But in terms of carbon footprint, “the most responsible Americans are the ones who live in the trailer parks.”

18:30 The poorer kids ride school buses more.  Seems about to say something about “bias” and “transportation.”  “The bus system in CVU is called the shame train.”  Talks about how kids who have cars are able to participate more in co-curriculars.

20:50 “What do you think Starksboro can do to change that?”  Bryan hesitates.  “Maintain local institutions.  It’s “nice to hope that we can educate people the think that way” (i.e., to participate in the various things we’ve been talking about.)

21:30 “The real solution is one that’s not popular with either conservatives or liberals… and that is: decentralizing power to the locality.”

21:50 In Starksboro, about 10-12% of the registered voters show up to Town Meeting.  State average is about 10-15%.

22:47 “Why is it such a low percentage?  Fundamentally, it’s because we decide almost nothing at the local level.”

23:27 “The main thing is, the reason we’re losing community in VT is that the community doesn’t have to get together to solve common problems.”  “Local control” used to be a conservative value.

24:00 “In the 50s, when I grew up, the towns in VT were pretty much responsible for social welfare.  It was declining, and it had been since the 30s.”  But education especially was still locally controlled to the level of curriculum.

24:50 Pithy comment on democracy involving fighting.

25:19 “If you take anything from this interview, this is what’s key”: contradiction in liberals who “want more community” and yet want “the state to solve all our problems.”  Contrary to the early centralizing IT, IT now can be a locality-empowering force.

26:16 Imagines a locally-controlled taxation system.  The rationale for centralizing taxes was admin efficiency.  Now electronics could easily reduce those costs to almost nothing, Bryan claims.

28:40 Income tax would be the only local tax that could pump money into the infrastructure in Starksboro, because the property isn’t worth much and there’s no sales to tax.

29:35 In sum: Starksboro in the next 10-20 years.  “We have a good infrastructure of community-conscious people in Starksboro, so I’m optimistic about that.  But I don’t think we can do much unless we’re empowered.  So that’s kinda pessimistic.

30:10 Imagining a left-right coalition for local power, bringing together the communalist wing of old conservatism, and the new communalism that came out of the 70s.  Criticizes Gen X (though he doesn’t name them) for their excessive individualism and materialism.

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