"The Strolling of the Heifers is one of the great events in Vermont," Sanders said Wednesday. "Orly and her staff do an excellent job. It celebrates Vermont agriculture and family farms. It brings people together and it's a lot of fun. It gives us an opportunity to visit with a lot of old friends."
The parade starts at 10 a.m. and Sanders will speak from the Gazebo on the Brattleboro Common at 11 a.m.
In case the cynics in this nation think Bernie Sanders is just staging a photo op with a cow, Here are some photos of Sen. Sanders at previous Strolls!
"Sanders is an honorary co-chairman of The Strolling of the Heifers Board of Directors," says the Brattleboro Reformer, "He has been a regular participant in the celebration of local agriculture since the event was introduced in 2001 and has competed in the celebrity milking contests." (the stroll haz goats, too, but real Vermonters don't milk goats.)
Strolling of the Heifers founder Orly Munzing said she ran into Sanders in Brattleboro before the first parade when she had the idea to organize a weekend-long local agriculture event. And that's a good example of how The People can make things come out the way we want.
Tired of a Fast Food Nation? Time for some Slow Food instead, at the Slow Living Expo.
"He loved the idea from the start," Munzing said. "He totally got it. He told me he supported local agriculture [he does] and thought it was a great idea. He gave me the courage to do this."
...and speaking of courage, other cows may say Eat Mor Chickin', but Real Vermonters know Kale isn't Chikin, and Sanders is fine with people eating cows, as long as the corporations pay their taxes.
"The people of Vermont and the people of America have a right to know what’s in the food that they eat,” says Sanders. He is not trying to dictate what we should eat, that's an issue for individual states, he says, while calling out Monsanto and the Teapartiers at the same time. And he called out Greenspan five years before 2008 happened, with an invitation to "Come to Vermont. Meet real people."
Meanwhile, across the river, in a completely different state [of mind] life's persistent questions rain down on Bernie's charade parade:
DOES ANY stricture of journalistic propriety or social etiquette require us to participate in Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ charade? Is it obligatory to take seriously his pose of being an “independent” and a “socialist”? It gives excitable Democratic activists a frisson of naughtiness to pretend that he is both. Actually, he is neither.
Now that sounds like an invitation, to me. Looking for a little excitement on Saturday? Come experience a Friesian of Naughtiness in Brattleboro, VT. Not your style?
Don't have a cow, Man!
Live Free or Die and come see Sanders in
Keene, NH, instead, Saturday, at 1 p.m. at the Keene Recreation Center at 312 Washington St.