Life Became Very Blurry

For more background on this episode, please visit: https://vermonthistory.org/act-250-1970

In the 1960s and early 1970s, Vermont acquired a reputation for being a haven for hippies and a hotbed of counter-cultural communal living.  There was some truth to that. But the communes and alternative life-styles of that generation had a deeper history than most outsiders—and most of the commune residents themselves—knew.  And, like their predecessors in the nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, the often colorful, sometimes controversial, and much-discussed communal experiments of the late twentieth century ended up having a profound impact on the next generation of Vermonters.

For more background on this episode, please visit: https://vermonthistory.org/back-to-the-land-communes-in-vt-1968

For more background on this episode, please visit: https://vermonthistory.org/vt-ny-youth-project-1968

For more background on this episode, please visit: https://vermonthistory.org/aiken-formula-myth-and-reality-1966

For more background on this episode, please visit: https://vermonthistory.org/dowsing-in-danville-1961

For more background on this episode, please visit: https://vermonthistory.org/democrats-rising-1958

For more background on this episode, please visit: https://vermonthistory.org/hi-tech-comes-to-vermont-1957

For more background on this episode, please visit: https://vermonthistory.org/consuela-northrop-bailey-1954

The most noteworthy expression of McCarthyism in Vermont involved the University of Vermont’s 1953 firing of Professor Alex B. Novikoff for the “crime” of invoking the Fifth Amendment before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.

For more background on this episode, please visit: https://vermonthistory.org/case-of-alex-b-novikoff-1953

For more background on this episode, please visit: https://vermonthistory.org/maple-sugaring-1947