The Burlington paper, the Gannett Sunday rag, says that for the 14th time in the past five years Burlington – or Vermont – has made the national list of “best places to live.” Really? Well, we’ll see.
Vermont’s number one industry is tourism, so it’s no surprise that when the list-makers stop by for a few days, they have a good time, but that doesn’t necessarily make Vermont a nice place to live.
Vermont’s largest employer is IBM, a fortune 500 company. Its facility is near Burlington and is surrounded by sprawl-type suburbs. Living there is the same as living in any other sprawl-type suburb, so why bother with a ranking?
Vermont does have – at least for now – a nice mix of small farms and small towns and we like to think of ourselves as an agricultural state, tourism and IBM notwithstanding. Got to keep the hill farms up and running so the tourists have something pretty to pass on their way to the ski lodge or outlet store.
Change can be a difficult thing to accept and the state of affairs I’ve just described seems to have left our commissioner of agriculture, Leon Graves, with an inferiority complex. After years of 4-H meetings and Farm Bureau dinners, he finally gets to be what he assumes is a big cheese – only to find he’s been replaced in the governor’s affections by a 22-year-old with a goatee who just opened a snowboard factory in an abandoned warehouse.
Something like that happens and I suppose it’s only natural for Commissioner Graves to be a little bitter and start looking for ways to win back the governor’s ever-roving eye. So it’s understandable that an impressionable young man might fall in with some bad influences, a fast crowd with big talk about how they were going to change the world – and Vermont, too. It was a great surprise to us all last week when Commissioner Graves, with scant warning to the public, or even to elected officials – announced he would host a forum on genetically-engineered foods.
Those of you who listen regularly know I’ve been on a mutant food kick lately, so I dropped everything and hustled down to the statehouse. So did a hundred other citizens. If you’re trying to make a good impression on the governor, you don’t want a wishy-washy debate about pros and cons. Oh no. In the view of Mr. Graves, it’s full speed ahead, doubters be damned.
The assembled panel told us that in the very near future, thanks to genetic engineering, the sick will take their medicine in the form of bananas, fortified rice will prevent blindness and parents will tell their children that they will have to go to bed early if they don’t eat their French fries, the idea being that junk food will be perfectly nutritious.
Pardon me if I’m not excited about the potential benefits of a diet of Twinkies and Coke. I wasn’t the only one who was appalled. I think most of the room was. One man stood to disagree and the audience was told that any attempt to contradict the invited panelists would result in a premature end to the forum. “We will shut this down right now,” the moderator said.
Another panelist, Dr. Michael Phillips, who was recently cited by the New York Times for his ethical shortcomings, told Vermonters that genetically-engineered foods are the way of the future and if we don’t it, we can move to France.
Yes, Vermont’s a great place to live – if you don’t mind being bullied. If you can keep your mouth shut and clean your plate. I don’t know where France falls in the list of places to live. I may soon find out.
Brave New Twinkie
The Burlington paper, the Gannett Sunday rag, says that for the 14th time in the past five years Burlington – or Vermont – has made the national list of “best places to live.” Really? Well, we’ll see.
Vermont’s number one industry is tourism, so it’s no surprise that when the list-makers stop by for a few days, they have a good time, but that doesn’t necessarily make Vermont a nice place to live.
Vermont’s largest employer is IBM, a fortune 500 company. Its facility is near Burlington and is surrounded by sprawl-type suburbs. Living there is the same as living in any other sprawl-type suburb, so why bother with a ranking?
Vermont does have – at least for now – a nice mix of small farms and small towns and we like to think of ourselves as an agricultural state, tourism and IBM notwithstanding. Got to keep the hill farms up and running so the tourists have something pretty to pass on their way to the ski lodge or outlet store.
Change can be a difficult thing to accept and the state of affairs I’ve just described seems to have left our commissioner of agriculture, Leon Graves, with an inferiority complex. After years of 4-H meetings and Farm Bureau dinners, he finally gets to be what he assumes is a big cheese – only to find he’s been replaced in the governor’s affections by a 22-year-old with a goatee who just opened a snowboard factory in an abandoned warehouse.
Something like that happens and I suppose it’s only natural for Commissioner Graves to be a little bitter and start looking for ways to win back the governor’s ever-roving eye. So it’s understandable that an impressionable young man might fall in with some bad influences, a fast crowd with big talk about how they were going to change the world – and Vermont, too. It was a great surprise to us all last week when Commissioner Graves, with scant warning to the public, or even to elected officials – announced he would host a forum on genetically-engineered foods.
Those of you who listen regularly know I’ve been on a mutant food kick lately, so I dropped everything and hustled down to the statehouse. So did a hundred other citizens. If you’re trying to make a good impression on the governor, you don’t want a wishy-washy debate about pros and cons. Oh no. In the view of Mr. Graves, it’s full speed ahead, doubters be damned.
The assembled panel told us that in the very near future, thanks to genetic engineering, the sick will take their medicine in the form of bananas, fortified rice will prevent blindness and parents will tell their children that they will have to go to bed early if they don’t eat their French fries, the idea being that junk food will be perfectly nutritious.
Pardon me if I’m not excited about the potential benefits of a diet of Twinkies and Coke. I wasn’t the only one who was appalled. I think most of the room was. One man stood to disagree and the audience was told that any attempt to contradict the invited panelists would result in a premature end to the forum. “We will shut this down right now,” the moderator said.
Another panelist, Dr. Michael Phillips, who was recently cited by the New York Times for his ethical shortcomings, told Vermonters that genetically-engineered foods are the way of the future and if we don’t it, we can move to France.
Yes, Vermont’s a great place to live – if you don’t mind being bullied. If you can keep your mouth shut and clean your plate. I don’t know where France falls in the list of places to live. I may soon find out.