Letter from Vermont

Chalk it up to living on “Green Mountain Time.”  Two years have passed since our last post.  Whoops.  This is the occasion when my mother would say, “Life interrupted.”  For us, it has interrupted in several big, exciting, transformative ways since our last letter from Vermont.

But in that last post, I did allude to my favorite Frank Bunting story, which still puts a little smile on my face.  It seems Frank was a bit of an amateur actor in addition to his many other interests – a true Renaissance man.  One evening, Frank and our mutual friend Allon were dressed in full theatrical garb as medieval knights, driving along our beloved US Route 7 to the theater in Middlebury to take part in a show.  Well, US 7 is a fine Vermont road kept by “VTrans” in very good shape, and it is easy to let the car get away from you in certain places.  They were pulled over for going a bit too fast.  The officer approached the driver’s window, took one look inside at these two Knights of the Green Mountains, and became so overcome with laughter that he just waved them along without a word as he returned to his cruiser.  I can just imagine the innocent look on Frank’s face peeking out from under the visor of his suit of armor.

So what made me think to come back and compose a new letter from Vermont?  Well, yesterday was primary election day in Vermont, and the Democratic field in the governor’s contest was a crowded one, with five A-list contenders vying to succeed Middlebury’s own (Republican) Governor James Douglas as he retires after four terms.  The Democratic primary (the current Republican lieutenant governor was running without opposition for the Republican nomination) was a very close election, with the top two finishers within 200 votes of one another and the third place finisher within 700 of the winner.

And I was reminded of that sunny summer day when all five of them walked past my house.  Twice.  How did that happen?  Some other time (not such a long time this time) perhaps.

That dashing doughboy in the photo with Olya I last posted was our esteemed state representative Joe Acinapura.  Joe has been a wonderful individual to us in so many ways, encouraging Olya as she worked toward citizenship, fostering a supportive relationship with us and the inn, and generally being there for anyone who needs him.  He is a valued resource to so many of us in Brandon, and not above entertaining little Klara with hand puppets to make her smile.  So his “hello, welcome, new citizen” was especially meaningful for Olya and for me.

The “goodbye” was a little tougher on all of us.  Last week, Dick Kirby came by to tell us that “Bows ‘N’ Ivories” had lost a violinist.  Since Dick was standing right in front of me and I had eaten breakfast with Olya, I knew it must be Frank.  Frank Bunting died at his home on a Saturday morning.  I found out later he and I were Masonic brothers.  We Masons are fond of a certain aspiration from antiquity, to “live respected and die regretted.”  These words could have been written for Frank.  He was a beloved small-town attorney, and his sudden death was a shock and a loss to many.  His funeral at the church in Brandon where he and his wife were married more than 50 years ago was crowded with friends, colleagues, family, and acquaintances, all of us for a short while united as mourners.

 My fondest memory of Frank?  Some other time, perhaps.

 

A classic small town moment around lunchtime today.  Our friend Dick Kirby dropped by unannounced in that special way of his.  Dick and his wife Debbie live a couple of miles away from us, closer to the village.  Dick is retired from the utility company, and he and Debbie raise Angora goats on their hobby farm called Kirby’s Happy Hoofers.  All of the most fashionable ladies in Brandon have a pair of Debbie’s ultra-warm mohair mittens, which they wear when walking around the village for exercise or just in the course of running their errands.  Dick brought over two very soft and very warm pairs of socks, not for a special occasion, but as a gift between friends.  This is one of those small-town kindnesses that is so common that you wouldn’t call it special, but so special that you’d never consider it common.

Dick became our friend because my wife is a classically-trained Siberian violinist.  Dick is quite an impresario with his fiddle, and he and his good friends Frank Bunting (retired lawyer, violin and vocals) and Dottie Kline (Brandon’s piano maestro, but more on that another time) have a little group they call “Bows ‘N’ Ivories.”  Their quite-elderly third violin player had recently passed away, and they were looking for a new violinist shortly after we came to Vermont.  Perhaps I might mention that their repertoire tends to show-tunes, sing-a-longs, and generally nostalgic pieces which they perform for community events like Farmer’s Markets, senior center dinners, bus tours at the village inn, and so forth.  

My wife, Olya, is a good 40 years younger than any of them and knows none of the music they play.  Growing up in the Soviet Union and studying music in a formal setting, she hadn’t really heard a lot of numbers from the Great American Songbook, had she?  Still, she was game when he asked, and she’s been performing with them for a couple of years now, broadening her musical horizons from plain old Vivaldi concerti and Tchaikovsky tone-poems towards the more intriguing Tin Pan Alley and Broadway standards that keep the audiences tapping their toes and humming along at their concerts.  Frank leads the sing-a-longs through a paper megaphone and you would absolutely swear Rudy Vallee had come back for the evening.  Once in a while, Olya gets them to try something from her music case … nothing too heavy, you realize, but Bows ‘N’ Ivories does a pretty nice Pachelbel’s Canon now.

So how did a classically-trained Siberian violinist come to live in a small Vermont village?  Some other time, perhaps …