Prometheus
09-01-2006, 08:57 PM
I arrived in Brattleboro this afternoon (Friday). I haven't seen any nudity in town yet, but I was able to ask around a bit about the situation.
There is a small group of young men (late teens to early twenties) who spend most of their summers hanging out in the Harmony Place parking lot. This lot is right in the middle of downtown, but is surrounded by shops and restaurants which partially hide it from view of the main streets, like a courtyard. These guys don't appear to have regular jobs, and are hippies of a sort, occasionally playing music or riding bikes, but mostly just hanging out.
The major nudity event seems to have taken place during a heat wave in July, when the kids were trying to keep cool. Since then, most of the nudity seems to have taken the form of protests against the Brattleboro Selectboard (town council) which is considering enacting a townwide nudity ban.
The following text is from an article in the September 1 issue of The Commons, an independent, non-profit local newspaper:
The Harmony Lot kids seem like losers to some, but for me, they've always been local heroes. When everyone else's lives seem increasingly consumed by money, they make a special point of appearing not to have any. Rather than just getting jobs, they seem to eschew nine-to-five employment and work odd jobs, if at all. They sleep wherever or in fleabag apartments, they ride bikes and skateboards, and some of them think about changing the world. Elliot Street would not be Elliot Street without them, which is why a lot of people are not that upset by the fact that a few of them, during a heatwave back in July, were seen naked in Harmony Parking Lot.
The town has generally tolerated the Harmony youth congregations, and continues to do so even after the nudity incidents provoked a complaint from private citizen Teresa Toney. As it turns out, the mere act of being naked is not a crime in Vermont. But as Ms. Toney famously said, "The parking lot is not a strip club." Some citizens, including Ms. Toney, want an ordinance enacted pronto to outlaw the practice.
Apparently the third week of August was a slow news week. What started as a prank has become national news after the AP filed a story. Now it's been in dozens if not hundreds of papers, and it's even rumored that chief of police John Martin has been invited to appear on the O'Reilly show. Why are they al so interested? Is it that they want to make fun of wacky Vermont? Or just that naked people are inherently funny?
No matter how trivial this incident seems, there really are larger issues at stake. Brattleboro is engaged, like it or not, in what is likely to be a losing battle over freedom, albeit a small freedom. Unfortunately, it appears against the backdrop of a larger war, one that's being played out nationally and internationally under the guise of making people more free (i.e., 'secure') by giving them fewer personal freedoms. Vermont has traditionally given people a lot of freedom compared to other, more populous states. But here, as elsewhere, we still have occasion to think about how free we want ourselves (and others) to be.
It's been my impression that in general, we tend to opt for making ourselves less free, especially if those likely to be affected are people other than ourselves. Over the years, we've made laws against lots of things--spitting, littering, loitering, drinking, and all the other transgressions against the mores of public society. But still people do all of these things and more. Given the amount of attention this comparatively trivial matter has received both near and far, the Selectboard is bound to feel pressure to 'do something' about the perceived problem of nudity on our streets.
Meanwhile, the kids at Harmony Lot will probaly come up with some new way to test the patience of the uptight, and that is as it should be. Someone needs to explore the boundaries and traditionally we leave that to the young. But as much as it's commonplace for adults to decry the behavior of the next generation, we miss out when we jump to condemnation. Only those who haven't yet learned to fear can remind us that the cage we take for granted isn't really there. And anyway, we're always free to live and let live.
-- Lise LePage
There is a small group of young men (late teens to early twenties) who spend most of their summers hanging out in the Harmony Place parking lot. This lot is right in the middle of downtown, but is surrounded by shops and restaurants which partially hide it from view of the main streets, like a courtyard. These guys don't appear to have regular jobs, and are hippies of a sort, occasionally playing music or riding bikes, but mostly just hanging out.
The major nudity event seems to have taken place during a heat wave in July, when the kids were trying to keep cool. Since then, most of the nudity seems to have taken the form of protests against the Brattleboro Selectboard (town council) which is considering enacting a townwide nudity ban.
The following text is from an article in the September 1 issue of The Commons, an independent, non-profit local newspaper:
The Harmony Lot kids seem like losers to some, but for me, they've always been local heroes. When everyone else's lives seem increasingly consumed by money, they make a special point of appearing not to have any. Rather than just getting jobs, they seem to eschew nine-to-five employment and work odd jobs, if at all. They sleep wherever or in fleabag apartments, they ride bikes and skateboards, and some of them think about changing the world. Elliot Street would not be Elliot Street without them, which is why a lot of people are not that upset by the fact that a few of them, during a heatwave back in July, were seen naked in Harmony Parking Lot.
The town has generally tolerated the Harmony youth congregations, and continues to do so even after the nudity incidents provoked a complaint from private citizen Teresa Toney. As it turns out, the mere act of being naked is not a crime in Vermont. But as Ms. Toney famously said, "The parking lot is not a strip club." Some citizens, including Ms. Toney, want an ordinance enacted pronto to outlaw the practice.
Apparently the third week of August was a slow news week. What started as a prank has become national news after the AP filed a story. Now it's been in dozens if not hundreds of papers, and it's even rumored that chief of police John Martin has been invited to appear on the O'Reilly show. Why are they al so interested? Is it that they want to make fun of wacky Vermont? Or just that naked people are inherently funny?
No matter how trivial this incident seems, there really are larger issues at stake. Brattleboro is engaged, like it or not, in what is likely to be a losing battle over freedom, albeit a small freedom. Unfortunately, it appears against the backdrop of a larger war, one that's being played out nationally and internationally under the guise of making people more free (i.e., 'secure') by giving them fewer personal freedoms. Vermont has traditionally given people a lot of freedom compared to other, more populous states. But here, as elsewhere, we still have occasion to think about how free we want ourselves (and others) to be.
It's been my impression that in general, we tend to opt for making ourselves less free, especially if those likely to be affected are people other than ourselves. Over the years, we've made laws against lots of things--spitting, littering, loitering, drinking, and all the other transgressions against the mores of public society. But still people do all of these things and more. Given the amount of attention this comparatively trivial matter has received both near and far, the Selectboard is bound to feel pressure to 'do something' about the perceived problem of nudity on our streets.
Meanwhile, the kids at Harmony Lot will probaly come up with some new way to test the patience of the uptight, and that is as it should be. Someone needs to explore the boundaries and traditionally we leave that to the young. But as much as it's commonplace for adults to decry the behavior of the next generation, we miss out when we jump to condemnation. Only those who haven't yet learned to fear can remind us that the cage we take for granted isn't really there. And anyway, we're always free to live and let live.
-- Lise LePage