Bill McKibben - Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance

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The morning crowd at the Bennington Starbucks moved through the time-honored rituals with rote familiarity: ordering their caffeine and caramel in pidgin Italian, waiting like schoolkids for their names to be called, and then either exiting into the faintly cool January air or sinking childlike into an oversized, overplushed armchair for a hit of the Web. The stereo played, over and over, the same nine songs by agingaged, actuallyguitar hero Peter Frampton, now appropriately acoustic.

Then, right in the middle of some melancholy chord, a voice crackled over the sound system, a voice that some people in the coffee shop immediately recognized. Greetings, Green Mountain Starbuckers, said Vern Barclay in his deep radio baritone with just a hint of his Franklin County upbringing. This is a special message going out just to those of you in the nineteen Vermont shops. The other 34,513 Starbucks scattered across the planet Earth and aboard our lazily orbiting space station will continue to listen to Mr. Frampton mark the launch of his new album on Starbucks label. I know that all of us join in thanking the coffee giant for taking the musical icons of our various youths and encouraging them to noodle acoustically in the background, and it is a great pleasure to know that no matter which shop you visit, the soundtrack will be the sameits almost as reassuring as the muffled bu-dump bu-dump of the womb. But today, your friends here at Radio Free Vermont, underground, underpowered, and underfoot, wanted to take this opportunity to patch into the streaming Starbucks signal and remind you that we still have coffee shops in this state actually owned by Vermonters. Coffee shops where the money in the till doesnt disappear back to Seattle, where the cream in the MochaSexy CappaMolto comes from the cow down the road, and where the music on the stereo might actually come from your neighbors. You can find a list at RadioFreeVermont.org, if the authorities havent managed to shut it down today, and dont bother telling them Vern sent youtheyll know. Remember: small is kind of nice. And nowif perhaps your barista will be so kind as to turn up the volume a notch or twowe leave you with a little Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, straight out of Waitsfield.

As it happened, the manager was actually up on a stool trying to turn the speakers off. But not before Grace Potters voice on the chorus of Ah, Mary cut through the morning air:

Ah, Mary

Shell bake you cookies then shell burn your town

Ah, Mary

Ashes, ashes but she wont fall down

Meanwhile, about sixty miles north, a beer truck lumbered slowly off the Crown Point Bridge and began the drive up Route 22 toward Burlington. It hadnt gone a mile before the driver came to an orange detour sign in the middle of the road, and turned left on a dirt farm road. He drove about a mile more, past cows staring impassively at the sides of his truck with its pictures of two young women in bikinis, reclining in a hot tub and hoovering Coors Light long necks with an ardor that suggested deep and full-bodied pleasure. Around a bend in the road, the truck driver found another detour sign, and followed it for two miles, till yet another sign guided him down a dirt road next to a creek lined with willows, a creek still flowing in the mild January chill. After about a mile of thatwith the road turning into ruthe came upon a lady in a balaclava holding a Stop sign. The driver braked, and as he did two young menalso in balaclavasappeared, one on either side of the truck. Each had a tire pressure gauge, and within seconds air was hissing out of the front tires and the truck slumped slightly forward.

Apologies, said the lady in the balaclava. This will take a little while, Im afraid. If you wanted to walk to the nearest house and call the police thats fine, but its about four miles. Or you could wait a little while, and then well fill your tires again. Anyway weve made you a picnic. She put a paper sack on the seat beside him and started lifting things out. BLT, with bacon from Vermont Smoke and Cure. A whole pint of Strafford Creamery maple walnut ice cream. And heres something special: a bottle of the new Long Trail Coffee Stout in Bridgewater Corners. The coffee doesnt come from Vermont, but it is roasted hereyou can only have one, because were serious about DUI in this state, but I think youll find it filling. And weve got a gift pack of beers from fifty-one of Vermonts brewers to send home with you! Did you know we had more breweries per capita than any place on earth? I have no idea why they think we need Coors too. While she talkedthe driver just gapedthe two young men were busy hauling down cartons of beer. They opened each, quickly twisted the caps, and then turned the whole box upside down to drain. When the bottles were empty, they loaded the cartons into the back of two pickups.