Dear Editor,
As I sit here on the south shore of Lake Memphremagog in Newport on this gorgeous autumn day, gazing east into rural Vermont farmland, north into rural Quebec and west into rural Vermont, and having researched Jay Stroud, the headmaster extraordinaire of Tabor Academy (now several years retired), I see with profound clarity the large ironic bulge out of the left side of his cheek in his recent commentary for VTDigger.
I hunted long and hard for words to describe the best tongue-in-cheek opinion piece I have ever read, and came up empty. “Satire,” “sarcasm,” “irony” and even “antiphrasis” — a word a preppie from the 1950s might posit — do not capture Stroud’s pungent and trenchant commentary — if that is what we should call it, because again I am at a loss for words!
From the Northeast Kingdom, I salute you!
Duncan F. Kilmartin
Newport, Vt.
