This commentary is by Nancy Tips of Windham.
Somehow, our little town of Windham down here in southern Vermont made it through yet another Town Meeting without any untoward events. It was a marathon meeting, lasting eight hours, but for the most part, a certain hostile civility reigned.
The truth is, we in Windham have developed a bit of an inferiority complex about how divided and angry we are. Many of us positively pant after community cohesion and beg others to mute our clarion calls for each other’s heads on a platter, lest we lower our property values. Others feel the need to apologize for our cantankerous little village. I place the blame for this sense of community shame squarely upon the shoulders of Norman Rockwell.
I would say that in general, Mr. Rockwell has a great deal to answer for. In particular, the illustration of “Freedom of Speech” in his “Four Freedoms” suite of paintings, is a monstrous example of creative cropping of an image to make a specious point.
In this particular painting, the roughly clad avatar of The Working Man occupies the center. He stands stiffly, presumably at a Town Meeting, and appears to be speaking. His glittering eyes are trained high up on the opposite wall. He is the very image of a punished child, forced to recite a poem before his hooting peers. He is closely surrounded by a few quizzical faces that appear to betray benevolent surprise that the poor fellow can put two words together. The Working Man takes up most of the picture, so Rockwell does not allow us to assess the wider audience.
The message that Norman likely intends us to receive is a beautiful one: The speaker’s eyes are uplifted in a sort of rapture of truth-telling, and we believe that his humble oratory will win hearts and minds. It makes us feel extremely puffy-chested to imagine that this man will succeed in his rhetorical endeavor, whatever it may be, and receive, if not a standing ovation, at least a few neighborly pats on the back.
It’s more likely that this poor gent is staring at the upper wall to avoid looking at the sourpuss neighbors, at least half of whom are highly annoyed by everything he is saying. The close cropping suggests that Rockwell appreciated this and made the choice not to portray the dead eyes, grim mouths, clenched jaws and stiff necks that would have accurately represented the New England community response to unpalatable truths presented by chuckle-headed neighbors. Artistic license, I believe it’s called.
Well, we in Windham aren’t quite so presentable. We have mostly learned to tolerate the death stares, zombie eyes, wooden faces and protectively crossed arms that are such an important part of the visual appeal of our beloved town meetings. But I do wish people would stop bolstering their opinions by citing preference for how we did things 200 years ago.
“We’ve done it this way for 200 years,” they say, and perhaps it’s true. But like Mr. Rockwell’s painting, this utterance crops out the following clauses: “and a lot of us never agreed to it and have been angry about it ever since.”
However, such is life in Windham, where we are simply unable to conform to Norman’s ideals. We even voted, by a sizable majority, to tuition our kids, likely ringing the death knell for our little school, which has been sputtering along on Rockwellian fumes for several years now. The size of the pro-school-choice vote suggests that at least some of our stone-faced voters were in fact moved by the impassioned pleas for school choice voiced by unhappy parents.
If this is indeed the case, that people actually overcame their prejudices long enough to allow their minds to be changed by something that went on at Town Meeting, then I say: Windham has absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. Our town is so much better than anything Norman Rockwell could possibly have painted.
