Where have the once vibrant Vermont towns gone?

What are the cohesive elements in Vermont’s 247 towns and cities? What sustains their human connection, commerce and community?

Though born in New York City, I grew up in Morrisville from the age of 3. It was a small bustling town. On weekends, the daytime streets were filled with shoppers and timely gossip. Our two movie theaters flourished as they projected the latest Hollywood oater, romance or comedy. We had three locally owned pharmacies, each with an ice cream fountain and a choice of counter stools or booths. We had three dry goods stores — Gillen’s, Morrill’s “Wrong End Store,” and Ben Franklin. I will spare you a list of all the small local shops which carried everything anyone rich or poor might need or want.

My brother and I visited my sister in Morrisville yesterday for our quarterly “sibling lunch.” Morrisville’s downtown is a different landscape today, almost no people and hardly a trace of its former retail commerce.

On a recent trek to Quebec for a cheese hunt, my wife and I drove up through the Kingdom … even gloomier — boarded-up storefronts, one gas station and convenience store selling fossil fuel, liquor, tobacco, THC vapes, candy, soda, lottery tickets, ultra-processed food and online sports gambling offers. Don’t look for a cabbage or an acorn squash.

This dismal trek through what I remembered as vibrant small towns had me thinking about what makes for a connected and healthy community.

My first thought was that it’s the gathering places such as churches, libraries, schools, cafes and soda fountains, town parks and social clubs like the 4H and the Grange. Morrisville ladies had the “Uplift Club,” the name of which was a source of bawdy speculation among us kids.

In our four white churches, people came together to pray, sing, eat and talk with one another about, among other things, who needed sympathy or material support. Religious fervor ranged from Bible-thumping theism to open doors for all seeking spiritual growth or solace, but in all cases, people came together to help one another.

I left the Catholic Church in which I was raised when I was 18, but have since had a “second coming” and occasionally accompany my wife to the wonderful United Church of Hinesburg that welcomes all comers, offers time for reflection, avoids judgment of others and even acknowledges human religious doubts. The only two requisites are a desire to connect and to find ways to help others. Several townsfolk come simply to sing together. The spiritual power of music is evident. On Palm Sunday a guest cellist joined the church keyboardist in a performance of Arvo Part’s Spiegel im Spiegel, which left the attendees transfixed.

Some of my other strongest memories are of events: band concerts, parades and fall and spring dances at our volunteer fire department.

When Morrisville’s annual 4th of July parade wound its way through town, we saw the full breadth of our community. Seeing 4H young people leading the animals they’d raised and cared for from birth always drew a standing ovation from those sitting on front porches and lining the parade route in lawn chairs.

I’ll never forget the 10-year-old girl with her right arm outstretched, her hand holding the nose-ring of an 1800-pound ox she’d raised from birth as she beamed with pride.

The other major element that drew us together were our schools — our small kindergartens and nursery schools, the old wood-framed primary school in the center of town, the middle school up the hill, and next to it, Peoples Academy, the high school.

Having local schools brought us together. Parents living within a mile of the school whose children didn’t ride on buses often walked with their kids to school. Parents were welcomed to visit and observe and often helped out in the classroom or joined the PTA. Sports events drew us all together to cheer on our children as they vied on the playing fields or in winter on the hardwood gym floor. Bleachers filled with extended families cheered on their young.

As Vermont, like other states, feels the accelerating pressures of so-called progress, we must work to protect the families and communities that nurture our very humanity.

The “social determinants of health” are the conditions grounded in the places where we are born, live, learn, work, play, worship and age that nurture our well-being, mental and spiritual.

It’s vital that our state and community leaders stay focused on these critical elements of social and economic well-being but, frankly, we’re not doing very well.

Per capita homelessness in Vermont is among the worst in the nation with 53 out of every 10,000.

One in nine Vermonters experience hunger and one in seven Vermont children do.

Vermont has the most expensive healthcare insurance in the United States with a silver plan costing $1157 a month.

Vermont has some of the highest rates of substance use in the country, including higher drinking rates, higher cannabis-use rates and among the highest heroin-use rates for people aged 18-25.  Approximately 13.73 percent of Vermont residents reported past-month use of illicit drugs; the national average was 8.82 percent.

Eighteen percent of Vermont households live in poverty including one in eight children — and one in four Black children.

Vermonters spent $140 million placing some seven million bets in online sports betting last year and a significant number of Vermont gamblers struggle with gambling addiction.

By way of good news, Vermont has the seventh highest high school graduation rate in the country. The flip side of this is that only 31 percent of Vermont graduates are proficient in reading skills.

What has happened?

We love to brag about how “progressive” we are as a state and natter on about the Vermont “quality of life.” But there has always been a cognitive dissonance between the colorful farms and pastures depicted for newcomers and tourists in Vermont Life magazine and how deeply it belied the struggles of actually working a small Vermont hill farm.

Life here can be good indeed for those of us who can afford it, but for many Vermonters, life is hard. Even as countless Vermonters work and volunteer their time and resources to support their neighbors, we can and must do better as a state to ensure the common good. How can we rebuild our once vibrant communities? Where are our leaders? We must all start by facing the realities of life today, which means telling the truth.