Posts Tagged ‘Lake Champlain’
waxen mask
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Welcome back to a travelogue of a series of adventures experienced in the month of September, wherein an Amtrak rail pass was utilized to visit several other cities in the northeastern section of the USA. This section details a 72 hour interval spent in Burlington, Vermont. There are two other posts preceding this one, and this is hardly the last Burlington one.
Pictured above is the summit of Church Street, where the Unitarian Church (aka the Brick Meeting House) has towered over the City of Burlington since 1817. The original bell for this church was cast by Paul Revere, and its steeple was replaced in 1958 after a lightning strike caused catastrophic damage to the original model. Worshippers who call this building home are the First Unitarian Universalist Society of Burlington, Vermont.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Church Street Marketplace is a pedestrianized four block open air shopping district, and has been since 1981, one which is encapsulated by a larger Burlington Historic District. The shot above looks down the hill from the properties of the Unitarian Church, at the intersection of Pearl and Church Streets. The ornate building on the left is an apartment building, the one on the right is a Masonic temple.
There are a few national chains located here – CVS, LL Bean, that sort of thing. A series of locally owned shops, selling all sorts of stuff you probably don’t need but want, await shoppers. There’s also a series of restaurants and bars, and at the bottom of the hill is Burlington City Hall.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Apparently, a former Mayor of Burlington back in the 1960’s hated commercial signage impinging on and hanging over the public way so the City has strict laws about such matters. There’s all sorts of rules that apply to you in this particular area that are ignored or don’t apply just a couple of blocks away. No smoking or radio playing, for instance. There was a not insignificant number of homeless people and or junkies milling about in this area, panhandling. Everybody has to make a living, I guess.
Saying that, the Burlington Police Department and municipal government seemed to practice a somewhat lighter touch than the NYPD and NYC would regarding this particular population. It’s not a difference of scale, either, both law enforcement and other municipal employees were personally witnessed by me as being respectful and kind towards the street people. Maybe they kick the crap out of them somewhere else that the tourists can’t see, like NYC does, but I didn’t sense that sort of move as being the local modus operandi.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s a lot of New England goodness in Burlington, and I could have spent days wandering the streets and marveling at sights like the Flynn Theater Marquis pictured above. Officially known as “The Flynn” in modernity, this theater complex opened in 1930 and presented both Vaudeville Shows and movies. It was renovated, restored, and reopened in 1981, and serves Burlington as a live music and theater venue for several groups, including the Vermont Symphony Orchestra. The Art Deco Societies of America lists the restoration of the Flynn as being one of the 10 most important restoration projects in the entire country.
The hour was growing late on our first day in Burlington, so Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself made a right on College Street and headed down the hill towards the shoreline of Lake Champlain where we had spotted a waterfront cocktail establishment earlier in the day. Sunset was coming.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the side of the 1840 built Follett House at 63 College Street pictured above, which we passed on the way to get our sunset drink. It’s the last of a line of Greek revival mansions which once overlooked the water from the ridge it sits on, and was built by a wealthy Real Estate and Railroad Executive named Timothy Follett. It’s on the register of National Historic Places too, but that seems to be old hat for Burlington.
I try to maintain a nearly military schedule when traveling, incidentally, one which is the utter opposite of my night owl NYC persona. I wake up early, often before sunrise, and am showered/dressed/walking out of the door by 6:30 – 7:00 a.m. In the rest of the country, breakfast fare is not served after ten in the morning, you’ve got a ninety minute interval for lunch that starts at 11:30, and they start rolling up the sidewalks by about an hour after sunset so if you don’t eat dinner by seven or so – it’s a microwave burrito at a gas station convenience store for you.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
We finished our first full day in Burlington therefore quite petered out, and a couple of pints of beer were gladly quaffed. We had done the waterfront walking trails heading north, swung through and took a look at Lakeview Cemetery, visited the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum and its trails, visited Church Street, and now we were going to wind down Day One with a drink while watching the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself descend.
Tomorrow – sunset at Lake Champlain.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
awed sessions
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Burlington, Vermont is found along the shoreline of Lake Champlain. You’re not terribly far (45 miles) from the National Border with Canada in Burlington, and it’s something like a two hour drive to get to Montreal. Burlington is a college town, with a large campus devoted to the University of Vermont and another to Champlain College. Just under 43,000 Americans call this city home, but Our Lady of the Pentacle and I were just visiting for a mere 72 hours.
Burlington has a feather in its cap, as it’s the first and only city in the entire United States to power its ambitions using renewable energy sources. Everywhere you look, there’s solar panels and wind turbines, and apparently the local power plant burns locally grown and farmed wood rather than fossil fuels to motivate the dynamos. It’s the home base of political superstar Bernie Sanders, who was Mayor of Burlington for an interval, and it was under his watch that the City transformed its post industrial decay into what it is now.
Look at that – the answer to all things isn’t “Luxury Condos,” and politicians who don’t just talk, they do.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
To the west, on what I believe to be the New York State side of Lake Champlain, storms were brewing. If you haven’t been to this part of the country before, it’s essentially a temperate rain forest. The mountains aren’t huge, but there are a lot of them, which means a lot of valleys too. When the sun rises, mist and fog do as well, which agglutinate into fairly unpredictable overhead weather. You experience distinct climatological conditions in Vermont depending on what time of day it is.
Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself desired to be outside, nevertheless, after our long hermitage during the Covid lockdowns. There’s a series of waterfront bike and pedestrian paths, created by the Sanders era urban renewal projects, along the Lake Champlain waterfront. We followed them.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One was intrigued by the various islands found in Lake Champlain, some of which are occupied, as I was told by some of the locals. Obviously, you need to have your own boat and dock to interact with the rest of the world, but what a splendid sense of isolation this sort of lifestyle must offer.
The rain building to the west was moving towards us, and we decided to move away from the waterfront on the way to our next destination.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Lakeview Cemetery was established in 1872, and several notable Vermonters are interred there. It’s officially a “Victorian Lawn Park” cemetery in design, and had that certain New England sort of stolidity encoded into every monument and planting. Beautifully maintained, like many cemeteries it was teeming with birds and bees and critters. Accidental island of green, cemeteries are.
Alongside those notables, lots of common folk are also buried here. I didn’t do a deep dive into research for Lakeview, since – as mentioned above – we were only going to be in town for 72 hours. Saying that, we were out of the hotel room every day in the early morning and didn’t come back until well after dark.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the Louisa Howard Chapel, a high Victorian gothic style chapel gifted to the city of Burlington by (notable) Louisa Howard. It’s on the National Register of Historic Places. One observation about this part of the country is that they don’t fool around when they’re building churches.
The Chapel is tiny, but it could probably bounce an artillery shell off of its stout walls and masonry. There are massive churches of every denomination here in Burlington and the surrounding towns which are – as the Brits would say – “gob smacking.” I could spend weeks and possibly months photographing them.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In terms of the politicians actually “putting up or shutting up,” another thing that I can recommend about this northern city of just under 43,000 people is this – if you’re a refugee fleeing from some war torn situation, Burlington sets out its welcome mat for you. Vermont is one of the “whitest” states in the northeast, and Burlington’s population is something like 85% of European decent. When you see Middle Eastern or Far Eastern faces there, they kind of stick out. Casual chats with strangers revealed Afghani, Syrian, even West and North African inflected accents who described the new life they were experiencing in America and the generosity and kindness of the Vermonters when they arrived here. That’s the good stuff, I tell’s ya.
Tomorrow – more from the northlands.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
The Newtown Pentacle 