Someone recommended this and I had it on my wish list so, being tired of Christmas stories for now and having a few days between group reads, I picked up on it. It’s cute but it has some meaning. But the subtitle is “A Fable of Resistance” so …
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Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance
by Bill McKibbon
2017 / 240 pages
read by Danny Campbell
rating: 7 (but it’s fun) / general fiction
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Bill McKibbon is a fairly well known and award winning activist and author working mostly on global warming issues but involved in other things as well. He also developed the website https://350.org/about/
Radio Free Vermont is his first novel and it’s been acclaimed by his followers including Bernie Sanders.
Vern Barclay is 72 years old and he’s not a happy camper. He lives in a Vermont he almost doesn’t recognize although he’s lived there for 68 years. It’s just not the same what with its Walmarts, Starbucks, Colorado beer and other big business enterprises. He’s been a radio announcer all his life and even that’s changed – bought out by a corporation out of Oklahoma – so there’s no more local talk-show commentary intermingled with music and an occasional store opening live event. That’s all been changed. Actually, he can barely even get online although he has a computer savvy supporter who helps.
Instead he decides to run pod-casts comes to the point of being a fugitive (possibly a terrorist) because of a little incident involving toilets at the local Walmart opening. It wasn’t pretty but Vern really doesn’t care – he has something to say and he will say it.
“underground, underpowered, and underfoot”
The tone is humorous on the surface, but underneath there is a serious message about the changes Vermont and the world are looking at as well as the forces working against opposition. McKibbon, as can be expected, uses Barclay as his mouthpiece.
(Guns are allowed but a standing military isn’t.)
https://www.npr.org/2017/11/08/561217701/radio-free-vermont-offers-a-modest-proposal-for-resistance
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