Off the Leash: Subversive Journeys Around Vermont

by Helen Husher

Release Date: 01 September, 1999

Edition: Hardcover

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A Fascinating Little Book

This book was given to me as a gift from a friend of mine who knows how fanatically in love with my home state I am. I was skeptical, expecting another quaintifying take on how picturesque Vermont supposedly is. Instead, I found a thoughtful, well-researched book, full of discoveries and anecdotes surprising even to a Vermonter whose family has lived in the state for generations. Husher captures what's truly amazing about the state, and any small place really - the accessibility and exhilarating simplicity of its beauty and its history.

Open your eyes

This book describes a number of fascinating ordinary places that are tucked around the state of Vermont. What makes the places fascinating is Husher's historical details- -for each place, she tells the story of how the site came to be and what made it famous. Some of the sites, like the Donohue Sea Caves are eons old, while others like the Bread and Puppet Museum were developed only recently. Some are famous, like Champ, the monster of the deep, while others are virtually unknown, like the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870.

Although Husher probably didn't intend to make a statement about art, I found the juxtaposition of the state highway rest area art and the Bread and Circus Musuem quite telling. She describes how a group of artists, including some famous ones, in the 1970s created a series of sculptures to be displayed to ordinary people at rest stops. Since this was to be people's art, it was made in ordinary media such as concrete. Funny enough, even though people drive by these creations every day and walk right past them at the rest stops, nobody seems to notice them, and the concrete is rotting away in the elements. Is this a tragedy? For whom? It seems to me that if the art is so unengaging that people don't notice it even when it's placed right in front of their faces, it's not art at all but a sad Emperor's new clothes kind of waste of space. In contrast, other art described in this book, such as the puppets at the Bread and Puppet Circus are so compelling and interesting, that they draw people in to see them in such a far-off corner of the state as Glover. Likewise, the sculpted granite headstones in the Hope Cemetery in Barre were created by artists who work in a medium that would last for generations. That's because they were doing their art on commission, responding to the wishes of their patrons and communicating through their art to their entire community. The abandoned highway art seems more like taunt the audience- -give them something incomprehensible and ugly, but since the audience won't appreciate it anyway, don't bother to make it last.