My Speech on the Floor of the House Honoring the NEK
This year Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom turns 60 years old. As you heard when the resolution was read two days ago, the now late Vermont Governor George Aiken may not have coined the name “Northeast Kingdom,” but he helped introduce it to the world. We introduced this resolution because of the Northeast Kingdom’s tremendous love and respect for this man who would go on to become one of this country’s most powerful, respected, and beloved U.S. senators.
In my travels around the state I have come to the conclusion that not everybody understands the Kingdom or the people who call it home. When some people who don’t live in the Kingdom talk about it they talk as if it is a far off land. On the other hand, whether it is true or not, it has been said that the drive north is like driving back into an earlier time, back into a simpler, not necessarily easier, time in the history of Vermont.
The harsh weather and challenging times have bred a particularly fiercely independent, yet loyal, breed of Vermonter. Truth be told, most of us enjoy the challenges that Mother Nature sometimes dishes out to us. Whether most of us like to admit it or not, we look forward to the news of an approaching Arctic blast, or that a Nor’easter is barreling in our direction. It not only tests us and toughens us, but it helps us better appreciate the first days of spring, the days when the first drops of sap begin to flow from sugar maples.
When many people think about the Northeast Kingdom they think of the fact that our economy often lags behind much of the rest of the state. Well, I say, “Don’t pity us. We are richer than you think.” It is true that scraping up a living in the Kingdom isn’t always easy but thanks to good old Yankee ingenuity most of us manage to get by just fine. Besides that, while the rest of the nation has been brought to its knees by this economic recession, we do not despair easily. We have been bred to survive tough times. It is in our blood. As we did during the Great Depression, we will survive this crisis with our respect and dignity intact as we forge ahead into the ever-changing future while at the same time struggling to maintain our rural way of life.
Yes, it is true that many of the people of the Northeast Kingdom might have less money than folks in other parts of the state, and I’m down here working to change that, but we have things that no amount of money can buy — most notably the beauty and peace of a region where we can live our lives where our friends and neighbors are like family. We play together, work together, and even occasionally fight together, but when tragedy or tough times strike we are there for one another. We are family — we are the people of the Northeast Kingdom ¬— and we invite you, and the rest of the people of the Vermont, and the people of the world, to our little piece of heaven.