As people in folding chairs or on the State House steps watched, a tiny nub of black appeared on the bottom of the disk of the sun and then the moon steadily covered the light until it was darker than dusk, lights shone in the surrounding state office buildings, and the crowd gasped and cheered.
Some people lingered, but in short order every road out of town that could reach the southbound entrance ramp of I-89 was jammed with out-of-state cars and a few Vermont drivers, inching their way home. It was a long wait just to get onto the Interstate. And then a multi-hour crawl for anybody to get anywhere to the south. Traffic was grid-locked on State Street, Memorial Drive, Bailey Avenue, Main Street, basically anywhere that could get you to I-89. The stalled bumper-to-bumper line on Elm Street went on for miles as people who had been in northern Vermont headed down Route 12 into the city. Eventually, like the eclipse, they were all gone. Click here for a gallery.
Vermont public school teachers gathered at the State House in Montpelier last week to protest proposed changes in pensions for teachers and other state employees. The state legislature, which had not funded the pension plans adequately in past years, creating an ever-increasing deficit in the retirement system, considered a proposal to reduce pensions and require larger pay-in amounts, among other changes. The changes would not have affected those already retired or who would retire within five years. However, the reaction from teachers was swift and emphatic. By the end of the week the speaker of the state House of Representatives withdrew the proposal and planned to appoint a commission to study the situation over the summer.
Despite concerns about demonstrations in the wake of last week’s attack on the US Capitol, Vermont’s State House was practically deserted Sunday except for media and law enforcement. Police, reporters and a few curious citizens chatted, and it just another quiet, gray and snowy Vermont day, but one with security unheard of on a winter Sunday afternoon. The only demonstrators were down at Montpelier’s city hall several blocks away protesting against fascism.
It was the end of Agriculture, at least temporarily. Ceres, the god of Agriculture, came down from the dome of the Vermont State House in Montpelier yesterday. Carved from pine by State House Sergeant-at-Arms Dwight Dwinnell and associates in the 1930s to replace the 1859 version made by sculptor Larkin Mead, she was rotting away. A new one will be made, based on Mead’s original. This one will head to the Vermont Historical Society museum.
