First, let me admit I was wrong. Last week I predicted that incumbent Vermont Attorney General Bill Sorrell would defeat challenger TJ Donovan by five percentage points in the Democratic primary. Actually, Mr. Sorrell won by fewer than two points. I was right about Mr. Donovan winning the city of Burlington (home to both men) and Chittenden County, and Mr. Sorrell’s strength in the rest of the state carried him to slim victory.
Forgive me, also, for doting on this particular race, but I see Shakespearean outlines. The Leddy-Donovan and Hartigan-Sorrell clans were rebels together 50 years ago when Republicans ran just about everything in the Green Mountains. Then after 20 years in the trenches, just as the Dems – the twin clans leading the way – had become real players, that darn Bernie Sanders was elected mayor of Burlington by a scant 10 votes and the city was in the hands of the Progressive Party for the next 30 years. (If you want to drive an old-line Burlington Democrat crazy, say something nice about the Progs.) The Prog reign ended in March, with the election of Democrat Miro Weinberger, but in the heady moment of victory, the young prince of the Leddy-Donovans decided to turn his sword against the aging chieftain of the Hartigan-Sorrells, with sundered friendships and hard feelings all around.
The campaign began in civility and ended in acrimony, with Mr. Donovan burying the needle on the nasty meter in the last few weeks. Out-organized and clutching fewer endorsements, Mr. Sorrell’s victory was mostly delivered by $184,000 in Super PAC contributions and the unabashed support of former Governor Howard Dean.
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The Second Spring
Some gardeners refer to September as “the second spring.” The heat and dry dust of summer has passed, rain returns and fast-growing plants like lettuce can be sown and brought to table before the first frost does them in. Or so we’re led to believe. A phrase from Grace Paley, “green as green September” returns to my mind every year.
Well, maybe and maybe not. This whole lettuce in September business was never part of my childhood in Western New York, because the first frost could, and usually did, come long before any September-planted lettuce would be ready. “Second Spring” was more of a mid-Atlantic state thing.
Now the mid-Atlantic climate is here. A research professor in plant and soil sciences told me a few years back that it’s helpful for a person of my age to think of Vermont as Maryland in terms of climate. Things have changed that much.
The remnants of Hurricane Isaac blew through Tuesday night, soaking us with the most rain we’ve gotten in quite some time, but it was a short, intense rain, the kind that runs off and leaves dry soil an inch below the surface. I know Bob Dylan wrote “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” about the threat of nuclear war – the song turned 50 this summer – but listening now seems an eerie prediction of a post-global warming world.
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