Brave Little State is the show where you, the audience, ask us questions about Vermont. And we try to find the answers.
Today, we take on a big one from Courtney Rabuffo in North Hero:
“Are Vermonters happy? And are they happier than people in other New England states?”
Reporter Mitch Wertlieb criss-crosses the state in search of what makes a happy life.
Note: Our show is made for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We’ve also provided a transcript. Transcripts are generated using a combination of robots and human transcribers, and they may contain errors.
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Sabine Poux: From Vermont Public, this is Brave Little State. I’m Sabine Poux.
Mitch Wertlieb: And I’m Mitch Wertlieb.
Its meaning is forever being explored in music, literature, art and science. The Declaration of Independence proclaims the pursuit of it to be an inalienable right. Countries all over the world get an annual ranking for it. It’s a topic just about everyone can relate to, even if no one can say just exactly what it means.
In this episode we’re reaching out to talk to Vermonters about happiness.
Happiness is admittedly a pretty big topic. Here’s how we got into it:
Courtney Rabuffo: My name is Courtney Rabuffo, I live in North Hero, and my question is: “Are Vermonters happy? And are they happier than people in other New England states?”
Mitch Wertlieb: So, are Vermonters happy? The quick answer for you, Courtney, is: We don’t know. Thanks for tuning in to the shortest episode ever of Brave Little State.
We’re joking, of course. We do have some data about happiness in Vermont. The University of Vermont’s Center for Rural Studies interviewed more than 400 Vermonters for its first ever happiness study in 2013, and it found that Vermonters ranked higher in happiness metrics than the national average.
It is harder to say how Vermonters stack up against other New Englanders – to get to that second part of Courtney’s question.
I’m sure, for example, that some Vermonters are happier than some Rhode Islanders, and vice versa.
Although, we can assume people in Connecticut are the least happy, just because of their proximity to New York.
And before you send the angry emails, that was just me putting on my Red Sox hat to take an undeserving swing at Yankees fans. To be clear, I harbor no ill will toward the good folks of the Nutmeg state — or the Empire State, for that matter.
The point is: Courtney’s question deserves more than a straightforward “yes” or “no.” And anyway, like many thinkers before her, Courtney seems preoccupied with another question entirely: about what makes a happy life.
Courtney Rabuffo: So I will tell you that I, um … I have, I don't like to necessarily use the word suffer, but I have low-grade depression. And since moving to Vermont, just being in the environment, I have felt so much better with everything that has been going on in the last year and a half.
And if, if I'm feeling bad, what I found is, you know, as I'm driving home and I'm tired and I cross over the causeway, and I look over and I've got Mallets Bay and the Adirondacks on one side, and the lake on the other, and I just take a deep breath, and I can feel myself start to relax.
Mitch Wertlieb: Courtney and her partner relocated to North Hero about a year and a half ago. And the transition was not without its challenges. Not long after the move, their house was damaged in an electrical fire.
Soon after, a neighbor came by to help.
Courtney Rabuffo: And before the firefighters left, she said, you know, you need to go upstairs and get a bag, and you guys are going to stay with us for a couple of days.
Mitch Wertlieb: I mean, you had just met these people.
Courtney Rabuffo: Mhm.
Mitch Wertlieb: It wasn’t a one-off. A couple days later, a complete stranger brought them a chicken pot pie at the Hero’s Welcome General Store.
Courtney Rabuffo: She said, you know, “I hope this helps make things better, at least, you know, you've got dinner.” And I almost burst into tears right there. I mean, I was so touched.
Mitch Wertlieb: Appreciation — this is one of Courtney’s ingredients to a happy life. We wanted to hear others’.
So, we asked you — who’s the happiest Vermonter you know? And what’s their secret?
And wow – your responses blew us away.
Dawn Holtz: Being a human being is hard.
Mike Ferland: It helped me find purpose and something to do with my time.
Paul Dudley: Even the bad days are still kind of good days.
Amber Skye Arnold: I think freedom is joy.
Constance Ada Johnson: To tell you the truth, I think that we're all put here to be good to one another.
Mitch Wertlieb: In this episode: five Vermonters on happiness.
We’re a proud member of the NPR network. Welcome.
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Philosophy
Mitch Wertlieb: Now, if you really want to think deeply about happiness — maybe even meditate on its meaning — you might try speaking with the director of a Buddhist retreat center.
Fortunately, we found one in Barnet, or I should say, she found us. Dawn Holtz was so excited we were doing an episode on happiness that she got in touch as soon as she saw the question had won the voting round.
Mitch Wertlieb: So where are we – describe where we are again?
Dawn Holtz: So this is our gompa – also known as meditation hall.
Mitch Wertlieb: Dawn is 47, and has been the director of the Milarepa Buddhist Center for nearly eight years.
The center isn’t easy to find – you have to go up a steep gravel path off US-Route 5 to get there, but it’s worth the trip. The large, two-story building has space to sleep 14 people, some of whom come for extended retreats.
Dawn Holtz: Many people come here who aren't Buddhists and have no intention of becoming a Buddhist, but, you know, can appreciate the philosophy. Can appreciate the idea of kind of working with your mind, working with your emotions.
Mitch Wertlieb: Elaborate statues and figurines of Tibetan Buddhist monks decorate the center’s interior, and a loft upstairs houses a meditation hall featuring small rectangular boxes. Inside are scrolls with all 108 teachings of the Buddha on them, all written in Sanskrit.
It’s all very spiritual, even ethereal. But in talking about the meaning of happiness with Dawn, I found her to be quite down-to-earth.
Dawn Holtz: I mean, I think if you ask anybody, being a human being is hard.
Mitch Wertlieb: Yeah.
Dawn Holtz: You know? I mean, and some days it just sucks, you know, and some days it's, it's the most awesome thing in the world. And that's what Buddhism is kind of talking about, is like this constant, up and down, up and down. “And now I feel this. And now I feel this.” And, you know, “I'm happy, you know, I'm happy if I have this chocolate,” or I'm happy if I, you know… And it's like, well, no, you're not happy. You're experiencing pleasure from that particular thing, but, but happiness is: You're fine, whether the chocolate is there or not.
And I think just kind of waking up to the understanding that it's not always going to look pretty, and you might experience some really tough grief or anger, or whatever it is, you know, and kind of being able to weather that and kind of stay the course, you know. And to me, that feels like an indicator of happiness.
Communication
Mitch Wertlieb: When we asked people to identify the happiest Vermonter they knew for this episode, not one, not two, but three of you agreed: It’s got to be 46-year-old Paul Dudley.
I met him in a parking lot in Waitsfield, and right out of the gate, we started talking about work.
Mitch Wertlieb: Does your job make you happy?
Paul Dudley: Oh, it really does. It really, really does. Even the bad days are still kind of good days.
Mitch Wertlieb: Why?
Paul Dudley: Um, because you're helping to improve. You're doing something that I recognize as a value to an individual, but also to the community.
Mitch Wertlieb: Show of hands if you can guess Paul’s job.
Paul Dudley: I run a driving school for teenagers. So that's really what it is. I help teenagers to learn the skills, habits and judgment for driving and, you know, get a driver's license and look forward to more of that for years to come.
Mitch Wertlieb: Now if you’re thinking to yourself, “Teaching teens to drive all day sounds like my personal hell,” you’re not alone. And Paul says both learning to drive, and teaching, it takes guts.
Paul Dudley: Teaching someone to drive is a really good kind of metaphor for your own courage looking forward. In this case, it's because in the driver ed car, they have a second set of eyes. They have a calm voice who has not all the answers, but a lot of the answers and a lot of advice. And critically, for a student who doesn't have a ton of courage, they know I have a brake pedal on my side of the car, and that helps me in the courage department too.
Mitch Wertlieb: I forgot about the brake pedal. That's important.
Mitch Wertlieb: Paul was instructing two students on the day I visited, So we strolled over to meet Mason Jones of North Fayston and Emily Hill of Moretown, both 15 years old.
Mitch Wertlieb: How's it going so far? How's your instructor? Pretend he's not here.
Mason Jones: He's really fun. He's nice, he's good, he's calm and I really enjoy driving with him. He's not very like, “spookable” might be the word.
Emily Hill: Yeah, he rolls with the punches really well, and is very adaptable. And so that's really helpful, and he's also really easy to communicate with. So if there's, like, an issue or anything, he's easy to talk to about it.
Mitch Wertlieb: In work and life, in and out of the car – Paul thinks about communication a lot.
Paul Dudley: Yes, and maybe that really starts to circle back to one of the keys to happiness, as I see it, is just communication. And oddly enough, in driver's ed today, we're talking about communication – fun fact – and that turns out to be tons of things. You know, we communicate with other people in the car with turn signals and the horn and brake lights and, you know, occasionally waving and things like that. But that's reflected in how we live, how people drive is reflected in … or how they live is reflected in how they drive, is maybe another way to say it.
Mitch Wertlieb: Speaking of how people drive, I wanted to see for myself how Mason and Emily’s parking skills were coming along.
Mitch Wertlieb: Would it bother either of you if I got in the back seat and tried to be real quiet and just kind of watched him show you some parallel parking? Would that be OK?
Mason Jones: Yeah that’s totally fine.
Paul Dudley: Jump right in, Mitch!
Mitch Wertlieb: This is exciting.
(car door slams)
Paul Dudley: I think we would go right into the maneuver once you get set with it. Do you feel like your tail is about lined up with them?
Mason: I feel like it’s pretty lined up with it. I mean the truck’s way longer.
Paul Dudley: Yeah, but I agree. I think our position is really good. So I’ll talk you right through it. Let’s pop it here in reverse …
Kindness
Constance Ada Johnson: (over a speaker) Hello?
Mitch Wertlieb: Hi, Constance?
Constance Ada Johnson: Yes.
Mitch Wertlieb: It’s Mitch from Vermont Public.
Constance Ada Johnson: Are you here?
Mitch Wertlieb: Yeah, I’m here, I'm at the door.
Constance Ada Johnson: OK, well, I’ll punch “9” and the door will open slowly.
(door opens)
Constance Ada Johnson: My name is Constance Ada Johnson, originally was Folsom Johnson, and I'm 90 years old. I can hardly believe it, but I am 90 – April 16, 1934, was my birthday.
Mitch Wertlieb: Sitting down at a small table just off her kitchen in Burlington, Constance Ada Johnson points to a Tupperware container:
Constance Ada Johnson: These are your brownies, by the way.
Mitch Wertlieb: I can’t believe you made me brownies! You’re so nice, you didn’t have to do that!
Constance: Well I said I would, didn’t I?
Mitch Wertlieb: She did, and they were delicious.
Constance came to us by way of her daughter, Winona, who told us her mom is the happiest person she knows. Constance has packed a lot of living into her 90 years. She was born the oldest of nine children during the Great Depression. She married her husband Larry in Northfield in 1952 and later pursued politics, when she gathered enough signatures to become a delegate to the 1968 Republican National Convention. That made her Vermont’s youngest woman GOP delegate in state history.
But when it comes to happiness — Constance goes back to her roots.
Constance Ada Johnson: I think, the most important thing to me … I had wonderful parents. Grew up on Vermont farms, no indoor plumbing, no electricity. You know, just, that's the way it was.
Mitch Wertlieb: Were you happy in those years when you didn't have the indoor plumbing, the electricity?
Constance Ada Johnson: Yeah, oh, sure. Oh yeah. I had good parents, wonderful parents, although I kind of laugh at myself now because I have a two bedroom apartment here, but when people come and stay, I apologize. I only have one bathroom. Do you think that's funny?
Mitch Wertlieb: I do think that’s a little funny! You don’t have to apologize for that at all.
Mitch Wertlieb: So, already, you can sense a couple of things about Constance. She made brownies for someone she’d never met before, she apologizes for having only one bathroom in her apartment for visitors to use. This is definitely someone who thinks about others before herself.
Constance Ada Johnson: And to tell you the truth, I think the fact that I've always been very naive, I think that helps you to be happy.
Mitch Wertlieb: Really?
Constance Ada Johnson: I really, I thought about that since you, since you're called. I thought, you know, I really, because I, I swear, in some ways, I still am naive, but it just, so what?
Mitch Wertlieb: When you say naive – in what sense?
Constance Ada Johnson: I trust people. I think most people are doing the best they can.
Mitch Wertlieb: But don’t mistake that self-described naivete as an example of someone who hasn’t experienced hard times and loss.
Constance Ada Johnson: Actually, when I was 15, our house burned.
Mitch Wertlieb: Oh my.
Constance Ada Johnson: To the ground. My dad was then 40, and my mother was 32 and they had seven children, and they lost everything. We lived up on a hill in Berlin. Our house was the last original house on that hill. All the rest of them had burned. By the time the firemen came from Northfield, the only water supply was down in the brook. It was too late, anyway. It took less than half an hour for it to burn.
Mitch Wertlieb: Constance, that's a pretty traumatic experience. I mean, that could have changed you and the way you look at life. You were 15. How did you move on from that and maintain a kind of happiness? Or did you?
Constance Ada Johnson: I did. I mean, I just felt so sorry for my parents, that's all. And I wish that there had been something I could have done.
Mitch Wertlieb: There it is again — that selflessness. Even then, all those years ago, Constance was focused not on herself, but on the happiness of others.
Mitch Wertlieb: Do you think that is a key to your own happiness?
Constance Ada Johnson: I do. I really, honestly do. If you are constantly a taker and not a giver, I don't see how you could be happy. I really don’t.
To tell you the truth. I think that we're all put here to be good to one another. I really do. And I think any talents that we have are given to us by God for us to share. That's why I keep on baking and bake— (laughter).
Mitch Wertlieb: We’ll be right back.
Purpose
Mitch Wertlieb: Welcome back to Brave Little State. I’m Mitch Wertlieb.
And this — is Mike Ferland.
[sound of Mike playing guitar]
When we asked you to nominate the happiest Vermonter you know, Mike got in touch to nominate… himself. Mike is 38 years old, a musician, and as he puts it, “an IT guy by day.” He grew up in Burlington but now lives in Georgia, Vermont, in an old two-story farmhouse.
Mike and his girlfriend Heather have converted the floor above the garage into a workshop and a jamming space, with a small stage. There’s a row of several guitars hanging on one wall of the room, all made by Mike.
Mitch Wertlieb: Hey man, I gotta tell you, that’s beautiful.
Mike Ferland: Oh, thank you. Thank you.
Mitch Wertlieb: It’s really really nice.
Mike Ferland: Yeah, it comes straight from the heart. You know, that’s how you do it – you make it sound good – is you just pour your sadness into the instrument, and nice things come out.
Mitch Wertlieb: For Mike, making guitars is a labor of happiness that was born out of a pretty dark place.
Mike Ferland: Like, I was in a real rough spot in my life. I had a fiance that left me on April Fool's Day, and so I was kind of in a sad state, and I was trying to find something to fill the void.
You know, I know myself enough to know what I have to do to fix myself when I'm in a bad state. And I knew that I needed something new and challenging, something that would really engage the, you know, the brain, and that's why I came back to my first love of music, and was like, “OK, OK, I want to make a song. I want to make music, but I really feel like I'm limited by some of my instruments. I want to try new things.”
Mitch Wertlieb: So, he started building his own.
Mike Ferland: And so after hundreds of hours of watching videos on YouTube, I started really getting into it, started buying tools. Like, it just kind of happened, and I started to find happiness in it. It helped me find purpose and something to do with my time, something to always think about, something to, you know, dream about, you know, just something to occupy that space and fill a void that I just needed to, you know, fill.
Mitch Wertlieb: Among the row of guitars in his workshop, Mike shows me the first one he ever made – he calls it, appropriately enough – “number one.”
Mike Ferland: So number one is a mahogany-bodied Stratocaster with a maple neck. It's got some type of vine abalone inlay that's going up the neck. So it looks really, really cool and rustic.
Mitch Wertlieb: What was the feeling like when you finally finished this guitar and you said, “I just made this?”
Mike Ferland: I would hearken it to science fiction, actually. When you see those Jedi dudes make a lightsaber, right? It's kind of the same thing where it's like, I've made this weapon from random materials that I found and now I'm dangerous.
So that's kind of how I felt when I put it together. I was like, “Wow, this is amazing, and it's mine.” You know, it feels right?
So that's “number one” in a nutshell.
Vision
Mitch Wertlieb: We’ve talked a lot in this episode about searching for personal happiness and what it feels like when you find it.
But happiness can be more than a personal pursuit. Sometimes, it’s tied to the conditions of your community. And that means thinking about the desires, needs and hopes of people who have often found themselves relegated to the margins of society.
Amber Skye Arnold: I think one of the foundations of joy is being able to access freedom, you know. Like, I think freedom is joy. You know, the freedom to just be able to be who you are, and to run around and play and do whatever you want, without having to owe anyone anything for it, or to have to feel like you're not worthy, or you have to prove your worthiness in order to access joy, which I think is really like, a basic human need.
Mitch Wertlieb: Thirty-two-year-old Amber Skye Arnold sees a path to happiness through art and cultivation at the Susu Community Farm in Newfane. Amber co-founded the farm in 2020. It’s lush with fields and greenhouses full of plants, many of them indigenous to Africa.
Amber Skye Arnold: Yeah there’s a lot of medicinal herbs in here. We have sweet grass and tulsi and sage.
Mitch Wertlieb: Susu distributes a weekly CSA that’s free to Vermonters of color in Windham County.
At least, that’s where the work starts. Amber and Susu also host programs like pop-up adventure play for kids; and Grief Garden — that’s an elder-led ritual where people of the African diaspora can explore their grief together.
Amber Skye Arnold: I think, like, when a lot of people often interface with Susu, they think like, “Oh, Susu Community Farm. It's a farm. It's a place where they're growing food.” We're growing food because, yes, that's just something that's needed. But the real work we're up to here is really about building a culture of liberation, where we're really looking at: What do people need to feel nourished, to feel safety, dignity and belonging at the same time without having to sacrifice any of those things?
Mitch Wertlieb: A culture of liberation. Amber’s vision for Susu is clear, and deeply influenced by the work of the womanist thinkers before her – like the late science fiction writer Octavia Butler.
Butler’s Parable of the Sower is a prophetic novel written in the early ‘90s that chronicles a dystopian world scarred by climate change. The heroine of the novel tries to survive the collapse of her environment by creating a new religion, which envisions a society resistant to greed and the exploitation of others for personal gain.
Amber herself is a writer, and sees writing as a tool to build toward a better future.
Amber Skye Arnold: Being able to, like, speak what I imagine, and then seeing other people start to, kind of like, shift and think about, like, “Oh, I didn't even think about that being possible,” and organize around that.
Because I think, like, one of the things that's really important in creating these spaces that are kind of like existing in a world that isn't there yet. It's like you really have to help people create more space for them to visualize how they're reflected in those spaces, and like what kind of world they want to be part of, like imagining and creating.
Mitch Wertlieb: A world that centers Black joy and happiness, in spite of the systems of racial violence and trauma and white supremacy that persist today.
Amber Skye Arnold: And so to be able to have hope and to be able to imagine that something else is possible, you have to be able to hold both of those things. You're constantly holding the pain and the despair and the grief of what you're witnessing and what you're experiencing in your community. And then you're constantly, with your vision and your purpose and your action, declaring that a better world is possible.
We had our Grief Garden program here this past weekend, and one of the participants in the program was in the lower field, and I remember her walking up to us and just being like, “Everything just tastes sweeter when I'm here for some reason, like everything just tastes so sweet.” And I feel like those moments to me, speak to the essence of what happiness is, where it's something that's so indescribable that you can't even plan for but when you're in it, you know it, and you feel it and you know that it's real.
Mitch Wertlieb: It’s kind of a hard thing to be talking about happiness in 2024. Maybe that’s true for any time period you can think of. No one here is trying to sugarcoat the reality of our present day circumstances, and happiness may be a thing we chase after without ever catching up to.
But maybe happiness isn’t a thing you can grab, catch or capture. It could be like an unsolvable math problem, or more like trying to calculate the never-ending numbers of the pi equation.
But if you think about that other kind of pie – the kind you can eat and enjoy – a pretty good recipe to get at least a taste of happiness may have been provided by the folks we met in this episode.
Take Courtney’s appreciation, stir in some of Dawn’s philosophy, add a pinch of Paul’s communication skills, fold in Constance’s kindness with a dash of Mike’s purpose, and throw in a generous dollop of Amber’s vision for the future.
Bake, let cool, then serve and eat with the people you love.
I’m Mitch Wertlieb, for Brave Little State.
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Credits
This episode was reported by Mitch Wertlieb and produced by Sabine Poux. Editing and additional production from Josh Crane, Burgess Brown and Kevin Trevellyn. Ty Gibbons composed our theme music. Other music by Blue Dot Sessions.
Special thanks to Zoe McDonald, Winona Johnson and Heather Call.
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