Paula Routly: Seven Days’ Archives Tell Vermont’s History

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield still had control of their ice cream empire in September 1995 when the New Republic magazine first critiqued their “crunchy capitalism.” I noted the exposé in the inaugural issue of Seven Days. It was one of several short, pithy items I composed and compiled into a column, “Backtalk,” that lasted for seven years. The debut weekly installment also shared the breaking news that Phish were moving their management office to a top-secret location in Burlington and, in addition to coffee, Muddy Waters was pouring wine.

Also in that “back-to-school” issue: a mind-blowing first-person account from political columnist Peter Freyne about his past life studying to become a Catholic priest; a humor piece, “12 Courses We’d Most Like to Take,” that imagined the content of academic classes based on their weird titles; and a Burlington-focused novella excerpt by then 33-year-old University of Vermont assistant English professor Philip Baruth, who went on to run for the Vermont Senate, became president pro tempore and just retired.

This is Vermont cultural history, folks.

Alas, only a few select stories from the early years of Seven Days have been properly digitized. The issues are online, exactly as they appeared, and you can flip through them, serendipitously discovering amazing articles — and historic ads — along the way. But to search for and find specific stories or people that Seven Days covered between 1995 and 2002 has been almost impossible.

One exception: Bernie Sanders. When he ran for president in 2016, we combed through the Seven Days archives in search of every mention of the man and went through the laborious process of converting print stories, mostly Freyne’s “Inside Track” column, to a searchable format. At a time when the world was suddenly discovering Bernie, our goal was to draw national attention to all the local reporting on him.

Only a few select stories from the early years of Seven Days have been properly digitized — until now.

I’m more worried about losing track of the other people who have shaped this state. Every time a local icon dies and I know we wrote about them, I start looking. A year or two ago, I met a woman at a Vermont Italian Cultural Association event who turned out to be the daughter of the late neurologist Ken Ciongoli. I had profiled him in a 1998 cover story she had never seen — and didn’t know existed. She begged me to find the piece. Because it wasn’t digitized, I wrestled the heavy bound print archive up onto the Xerox machine and made some 11-by-17-inch copies for her.

The sad news of UVM art professor Ed Owre’s death earlier this year reminded us that Seven Days cofounder Pamela Polston went kitsch shopping with him in December 1995 and wrote a funny and insightful cover story about the experience, which said so much about him. There was no time for scanning, with its inevitable glitches. Pamela retyped the whole article, word by word, so the family could share it before the funeral.

There had to be an easier way — and, at last, we found it. Correction: Sarah Sieber, who has been working for us all summer, figured out on her own how to use Adobe Acrobat to clean up the text so it’s easier to digitize. A 2020 graduate of Bard College, Sarah is known for her problem-solving abilities. Working mostly alone, she’s been resurrecting old stories faster than I can proof and publish them.

Maybe you have to be a certain age to appreciate the value of archives and the rich stories they contain. For them to live on, though, requires a kind of tech translation.

Luckily, Sarah, who is new to Burlington, was up for a “crash course in local history,” as she put it. Digitizing stories from 1996, she recognized a young Greg Delanty, a poet and Saint Michael’s College professor whom she met at the train station. “Though I’ve lived here less than a year, I began to realize that Burlington is a town where such connections come easily,” she said.

This project aims to keep it that way.