For years I’ve been wanting to make a show about the terrible cultural divides growing in our country, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it without getting into boring conversations about politics. So I backed into an experiment. I asked my editor at Vermont Public if I could drive around and ask people, ‘what class are you?’, just to see what would happen. And he said, ‘sure.’ So I did. This is the series that came of that experiment. And even though these conversations took place in rural Vermont, I think they are indicative of what people are thinking and feeling all over the country. And maybe we should all be having these conversations? I don’t know. Here is the series, What Class Are You?
This series was produced for Vermont Public, and I am grateful to them for allowing me to share it with the Rumble Strip audience.
Mary Lake is a sheep farmer and sheep shearer and itinerant slaughterer. She is a tall, muscular woman in bib overalls and a baseball hat and dangly earrings she carved out of a ram’s horn. She wears a chain around her waist with a scabbard full of knives. And she loves sheep, which is one reason she participates in their slaughter. This is a story about where food comes from.
** The first version of this story aired on Vermont Public. I am grateful to Vermont Public for allowing me to share this story with Rumble Strip listeners!
Mary Lake’s business is Can-Do Shearing in Tunbridge, Vermont
Thank you Amelia Meath!!