Eight hundred people showed up for the meeting. So many that it was necessary to use the school gymnasium instead of the more intimate and comfortable auditorium, as planned.

It is a hard trick, here in Vermont, getting that many people to come out at night to attend a meeting on some issue of public concern. While the state is famous for its town meetings (see Norman Rockwell’s Freedom of Speech painting), most issues are settled by secret ballot these days rather than by public debate and a show of hands, the parliamentary device known as “dividing the house.” People hereabouts say the only public meeting guaranteed to draw a big crowd is one where the issue being debated has to do with the deer season. Propose the legal taking of female deer during rifle season and they will come. Otherwise .  .  . not so much.