Dear Editor,
Listen, people! Vermonters have what it takes! We don’t run from problems, we run TO them. For generations we have prepared for this. Our tendency is to be courteous and law-abiding. We give each other space, naturally (and by the same token we don’t like to be pushed). We embody “Yankee ingenuity” — if you don’t have it or can’t buy it, invent it, oftentimes with whatever is around the house (we’re notorious hoarders and packrats, too). We have been practicing thrift for generations, too, out of sheer necessity: “Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.” We often do, as Coolidge said, “beggar ourselves for others,” without being asked. Our town meeting tradition has welded our communities together through thick and thin. We are somewhat stoic and don’t complain over trivialities. Best of all, we have, we model and we teach our children a strong ethic of caring for and about others, and to stand up for what is right. And believe it or not, we can still smile and be merry all through it (with dry humor).
Julia Purdy, Rutland
