Oral history interviews with Chris Braithwaite

Oral history interviews with Chris Braithwaite

In his first interview on December 7, 2015, Chris Braithwaite speaks of his desire to become a journalist, transferring to Pomona College, and working as a journalist during summers. He describes an anti-war event in Oakland, California involving Ken Kesey and the Hell's Angels, a 1967 Newsweek magazine assignment in Los Angeles, "Trouble in Hippieland," and his response to Bobbie Kennedy's assassination in 1968. After graduating in 1968 he and his wife, Ellen, were invited by friends met at Pomona College to live together in West Glover, Vermont, at what became Entropy Acres. He describes their new life, now with twin boys, of self-sufficient living and subsistence farming, and reasoning behind their choices for this lifestyle. He mentions the neighboring Mullein Hill commune and its response to the announced "hippie invasion," their developing friendships with both the extensive local hippie subculture and native Vermonters, his work on the town road crew, and an incident that eventually broke up Entropy Acres.

In his second interview on December 12, 2015, Chris describes the start of The Chronicle, a newspaper in Barton, Vermont, attracting and maintaining the interest and support of both newcomers and native Vermonters, and how they reflected changes taking place in the larger cultural climate of the early 1970s. He discusses acceptance by the local community of the newcomers, and in return the newcomers' attraction to the culture that existed here. He describes staff drawn from the Northeast Kingdom pool of talent, their coverage of the Orleans County Council of Social Agencies (OCCSA) and its director, Tom Hahn, Bread and Puppet Theater, the "Island Pond Raid," and recalls stories about Governors Richard Snelling and Madeleine Kunin.

December, 2015

AudioFile1970s-55-56

MP3

Audio File

Glover (Vt.)

Northeast Kingdom (Vt.)

Permission to publish material from the Vermont 1970s Counterculture Project must be obtained from the Vermont Historical Society.

Rowell, Leslie

Braithwaite, Chris, 1944-

Glover (Vt.)

4 hr., 47 min., 17 sec.

Vermont Historical Society Library, 60 Washington Street, Barre, VT 05641-4209