How to Live in La La Land, Responsibly

Turn on, tune in, but don’t just drop out — divest.

Photo by Andres Iga on Unsplash

I’m still a California girl at heart, but man, I love living in Vermont. It’s like the Shire. “Burlington doesn’t feel like it exists,” says Chris Fleming. “It was a Patagonia team-building retreat that got lost in the 90s and went insane… a city where the industry’s like 90% harp-maker’s apprentices.”

It really does feel like another world up here in the Green Mountain state. Not a billboard in sight. For the first time in my life, my health insurance covers all the blood tests I need and it’s paid for by the state. Everyone I know grows vegetables, brews medicinal tinctures and thinks Bernie Sanders is milquetoast.

Sure, we have our problems too — an entrenched housing crisis, rampant gentrification, ecological degradation, lack of racial and cultural diversity, inevitably racist policing and a mayor who keeps quashing citizen initiatives for community control of policing—but compared to most of America, Vermont is shockingly sane.

These off-the-beaten-path pockets of sanity really can come to feel like la la land, as if the real world’s problems don’t exist. These sort of idyllic, rural, progressive towns (think Port Townsend, WA; Arcata, CA; Bend, OR) tend to be monochromatically white and increasingly…