My wife asked me when I was going to do the multi-volume history of Rutland, and I said “Never, I won’t live that long.” But I had a title for it, and it’s very simple. It’s almost……… And that wasn’t negative, it was very positive. So many times Rutland has reached a pinnacle… it was almost a full-blown city, the largest city in Vermont, almost, but then it broke up. Its transportation had been good… almost. The promise for a Route 7 fix, giving you a full line from Bennington to Burlington. Oh we will take care if it… almost. It never happened, it’s not going to happen.

Now I had a theory on the almost. Now there are two ways you can talk about it. You can talk about development of roads, political status, etc. But probably the real one thing that you have going for you, and I always sensed it coming here as a newbie, is the people. They are a special kind of people. It’s a unique group of people. Sometimes if you want to be number one, you can’t be that concerned with the personal part of it. For example, if it’s a basketball team as a coach you have to run rough-shod over the characters to get to be number one.

But I think unconsciously people in this community said it’s not worth being number one if we have to lose sense of who we are, if we have to change who we are. I think if you look at this community, we like who we are, we like our neighbors, we like our friends. There is some great stuff here- it’s the hidden kind of stuff. And we don’t have to the largest city, or the best city, or the greatest. We didn’t have to win the blood drive. It was nice to say “Yes, we can do this. Rutlanders can do great things.” But to be the greatest in the world kind of thing, there is a price you pay in human terms to get there. And that’s why I thought almost is a perfect one-word title for this community. You can use it if you want.