A Violation of Both the Law and the Spirit: The desecration of Robert Frost's farmhouse

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: By DAN BARRY
Published: January 28, 2008


Homer Noble Farm

RIPTON, Vt.

Imagining that late December night of long darkness, you can almost hear these youths of Vermont tramping up to the isolated farmhouse to intrude upon the sanctuary stillness. The break of snow beneath their feet would be the least of it. They had driven or walked a half-mile up a snow-covered lane called Frost Road, then trudged past a large blue sign that explained the historic significance of the farmhouse and the cabin beyond. And now they were entering the coldness of an uninhabited place, carrying with them cases of beer, bottles of rum and a store of ignorance about things that matter here.

Over the next several hours, more than 30 teenagers and young adults toasted their post-adolescence with liquor carrying the added kick of illicitness. By early morning they were gone, leaving a wounded house watched over by winter-stripped birches and sugar maples. The damage left in their wake reflected some alcohol-induced mischief tinged with certain anger. Broken window, broken screen, broken dishes, broken antiques. Pieces of a broken chair used for wood in the fireplace. Gobs of phlegm spat upon hanging artwork. Vomit, urine, beer everywhere. And a blanket of yellow, pollenlike dust, discharged from fire extinguishers in parting punctuation.

Before long, distressing word spread from Ripton to Middlebury and beyond that the preserved farmhouse once owned by Robert Frost had been vandalized — desecrated, some said. If these children of the Green Mountains knew this house was once Frost’s, then shame. If they did not know, then shame still; they should have....

Here...Frost lingers. Peering down from his portrait in the Middlebury Inn. Speaking through snippets of poetry displayed at the Robert Frost Interpretive Trail. Shuffling in spirit around the Homer Noble Farm, which he bought in 1939 and lived in during summer and fall: there in the rustic cabin above, writing, ruminating, while his close friend and protector, Kay Morrison, in the now-vandalized farmhouse just below, screened visitors eager for an audience with the great and garrulous bard — who might very well talk and talk until those visitors fairly begged to be dismissed....

***

...(State Police) Sergeant Hodsden had more than two dozen young people photographed, fingerprinted and cited for unlawful trespass, with a few also cited for unlawful mischief. He cannot shake the indifference of one youth in particular, who asked whether he could use his mug shot on his Facebook page. In conveying his disgust over this communal breach, the police sergeant employed the Frostian technique of repetition. “They should have known,” he said. “They should have known.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/28/us/28land.html?ref=todayspaper

[Botany]

1. The house can be fixed but the shame will stay.

The Lockless Door
by: Robert Frost

It went many years,
But at last came a knock,
And I thought of the door
With no lock to lock.

I blew out the light,
I tip-toed the floor,
And raised both hands
In prayer to the door.

But the knock came again
My window was wide;
I climbed on the sill
And descended outside.

Back over the sill
I bade a "Come in"
To whoever the knock
At the door may have been.

So at a knock
I emptied my cage
To hide in the world
And alter with age.

[DeepModem Mom]

3. Wow -- thank you, Botany! nt

[stellanoir]

2. How terribly sad.

[sinkingfeeling]

4. Where's that guy posting about how awful those of us over 45 are?