Joseph Lambert is near the top of my list of favorite cartoonists right now. His Annie Sullivan book was an amazing work for his first long form story. Be sure to also check out his collection, I Will Bite You from Secret Acres.
And for Vancouver listeners, the Cartoon College documentary we discuss, is playing at this years Vancouver International Film Festival and is the screening is sponsored by inkstuds home station, CiTR.
I grew up in the Upper Valley and didn’t leave until I was 25, in 1979. The town I grew up in was Lebanon, NH, one of the towns bordering WRJ, VT, where the CCS school is. My father, after he retired, used to be on the board of the Co-op food store right next door to the CCS building. I still have family living there.
I don’t believe the Upper Valley has changed much. The main population is a mixture of protestant Anglo hillbillies and French Canadians who came down from Canada generations ago to work in the local mills. These people have lived hardscrabble lives, scratching for a living, for generations. They can be quite cold and hard to get to know. The hillbilly segment is prone to the usual vices of alcohol, drugs, obesity and general abusiveness.
As an extreme case, a couple of these hillbilly kids broke into an aged Darthmouth professor’s house a few years ago to rob it and ended up killing the professor and his wife.
Another example is the famous dead punk rocker, GG Allin. Allin grew up in Concord, VT, a small town in northern VT. He was fairly typical of the hillbilly segment of VT/NH in many ways. As an aside, he never lost his accent and I love him dearly, although I got tired of his stage antics very early on.
The big draws of the Upper Valley are 1) it’s a cozy little town, 2) nearby ski areas and last but certainly not least, 3) all the cultural and intellectual joys radiating from the glorious Dartmouth College. The Dartmouth Hitchcock hospital is a premier medical facility as well, for all you worried little hypochondriac cartoon artistes.
Jobs tend to be pretty scarce, too.
The Upper Valley can be a very hard place to live.