Green Up’s Fresh Lesson

Ask any Vermonter to tell you something unique about our state and undoubtedly you will get an earful. State pride runs deep in the Green Mountains and starts early with the education of children about the importance of place. Your doing business with us allows us to support an exceptional program that celebrates the beauty of this particular place.

Each spring after a hard winter, the sound of peepers reminds us there is hope ahead in the form of warm days and shrinking snow banks. With this, though, often comes the appearance of roadside litter that has been hidden all winter. Luckily, there’s Green Up Vermont Day.

Vermont was the first to designate a day to clean up the entire state. Started in 1970 by Governor Deane C. Davis, this tradition continues, with thousands of Vermonters getting out on the first Saturday in May to pick up our roadsides. It’s spring cleaning on a massive scale.

In a way, I grew up with Green Up. I remember walking the back roads of my town as a youngster and the valuable impression this left on me to care for my community and its land. We are proud of this excellent program and share this pride by being one of Green Up’s lead supporters.

We hope you come visit our state soon, and when you do please slow down and notice our clean roadsides, absence of billboards, and truly distinct way of life. Then carry this message home with you; we teach the children today what they will do tomorrow.

~Eliot Orton, for The Orton Family, Proprietors

It’s Not About Sex, It’s About Aging Well

On February 15^th, the Associated Press published an article about my catalogue business, The Vermont Country Store, offering what we call Intimate Solutions to our customers whose average age is around 60. The article focused on the controversy around these products, about the letters I received from customers and of the concerns some have had with the decision to offer these products in the first place.

Industry “experts” were contacted and a chorus of “They should stick to their brand image” poured forth. Brand image? Hell, I’m running a store, trying to meet the needs of my customers, not worry about what corporate types think I should do. My shopkeepers’ intuition told me there was a need for these products by our customers, and it turned out I was right. This, along with my willingness to talk about sex by “older folks,” certainly got the old party lines humming.

NPR’s weekly show Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me was hilarious in their treatment of our offerings and I’m still chuckling. Bloggers are having a field day. In the blog Alas Jeff Fecke wrote, “…turns out that the people who are buying the manual typewriters are also having sex — and it’s less embarrassing to order your vibrator from the Vermont Country Store than to take a trip into town to Sex World. But just because you’re wearing old-fashioned pajamas, that doesn’t mean that you don’t have a libido. I’m rather cheered by the fact that a catalog aimed at the over-fifty set is aware that over-fifty doesn’t mean over intimacy.” Bravo!

Our catalogue is called The Voice of The Mountains. When my father, Vrest Orton, started it in 1946, he offered up his opinions alongside the merchandise and we still do. The greatest thing our customers have in common is getting older. To that end, we have adopted the cause of Aging Well and are promoting a discussion with and among these customers, many who are elderly, many who are adult children of elders. Aging Well, as I see it, is about promoting a cultural shift on two fronts.

One is to challenge Ageism – the negative image of older folks held by younger ones – and to demonstrate the tremendous mutual benefit to both groups of changing that outlook. It galled me to hear a reporter covering President Obama’s inauguration comment on Bush the elder as he was walking to his seat, saying he was really showing his age as if he had one foot in the grave. Come on! President Bush Senior demonstrated great energy and determination. So what if he was walking slowly and with a cane. He was going to get there by God! I admired him. CNN ought to rap that reporter’s knuckles.

Two is to uncover and promote, through conversations with and among our customers, moving away from the image of narrowing-down life as we age to one of expanding life. The old ideal of growing up, working, retiring and dying, is itself dying. When I read that retirement communities in Arizona – minimum age 55 and no kids allowed – blame their increasing vacancy rates on the economy, I say they have their heads in the sand. It’s not just the economy-it’s also a sign of a changing culture that I hope will see the benefits of multi-generational communities.

My narrow generation, those born in the winds-of, and during World War II, (I in 1941), are the forward scouts into the cultural territory of our following brothers and sisters, the Boomers. We venture into the darkness of aging with Ray-O-Vac flashlights, but the Boomers are coming with Xenon, whose white glare will illuminate the new culture of aging.

Okay, so even though I and my sons do not like reading complaints from customers about products to do with sex I have to ask them to rip that page out of the catalogue if they don’t care to look at it. Yes, I offered these products because I had the merchant’s sense that many of our customers would rather buy them from us instead of, as the blogger said, running down to Sex World, or visiting some uncomfortable web site. And they do.

But, again, it’s not about sex. It’s about more deeply understanding the changing culture around aging well through a conversation with those who know a thing or two about the subject. The culture around aging needs to change and we aim to help do something about it. If, along the way, we bump into taboo subjects that make some uncomfortable, we will take them on in our characteristic no-nonsense, practical Vermont way.

Lyman Orton, Proprietor
The Vermont Country Store
Weston, Vermont

We're All Getting Older. What's Our Outlook?

Lyman Orton (r.) with son Eliot and nephew Eric.

Over the next 21 years the number of us over age 65 will about double! This has huge implications for America. And I believe that we, who will make up the 71 million Americans over 65 by 2030, should do our part to address this issue.

I look at it from the perspective of "Aging Well," and want to shift our culture from the belief that "as we get older we become less able" toward our "ableness," the abilities we possess and gain. Shift the conversation away from Ageism — that prejudice that dismisses older folks as having less worth in society — and show them a thing or two! Can we run as fast as 20-year-olds? Of course not. But have we gained experience and wisdom so we do not run into the side of the barn, as they are wont to do? You bet! Don't you feel better already?

I do not propose we deny aging, but rather embrace it. One of my proudest days occurred 5 years ago when my youngest son Eliot finally beat me cycling up Terrible Mountain (yes that's the real name, 4 miles north of Weston). I still trash talk him sometimes on our bikes, but I've never beaten him again. Hey, what a monkey off my back! If you are now elderly you have much experience and wisdom to provide on being old. If you are like me, a middle-age-to-older adult with living parent(s), you have learned a lot about the subject from your parent(s) and are likely thinking about yourself reaching their age. If your parents died when you were younger, you can learn from joining the forum on the subject that we are going to start online — more about that and other Aging Well issues next time. In the meantime, write or email me.

Lyman Orton for The Orton Family, Proprietors

Aging Well: A Continuing Series from The Orton Family

We are examining the issues, challenges, opportunities, and changes that need to occur in regard to the aging of America. Your comments, ideas, challenges, and dreams about aging are very important to us. Currently, we are creating forums to connect all of you, our customers, around the subject, so you might help one another, share stories, and collectively come up with necessary changes and solutions. Stay tuned!

As published in our Spring, 2009 catalogue

Guidelines and Standards


Welcome to The Vermont Country Store Community
Come on in, get to know us, and join in!

Our community is about who we are—not just what we do. Our goal is to make The Vermont Country Store Community a warm, inviting place for you to connect with us and others by sharing stories and memories. Our blog focuses on old-fashioned values, aging well and the values of a simpler time, to name just a few. Oh, and we'll be doing plenty of listening—we look forward to your comments and contributions.

You can learn about some of our community features below:

Blogs
The term “blog” is a blend of the words “web” and “log.” A blog is a place where writers share their thoughts and experiences and invite readers to comment on their entries. At our Community, you’ll find blogs written by the Orton Family, our merchants, customer service representatives, and other key members of The Vermont Country Store Family.

Profiles
In online communities, your profile is a way to share a little bit about yourself and express your personality with other community members. In our community, we encourage you to use your first name, last initial, city or town of residence, and state, as well as a photograph of yourself (instead of an avatar). We want to foster an environment of open and honest communication among our members. We are real people and want to celebrate our diversity—which we love about us and you.

The Vermont Country Store Community Standards and Guidelines

The Vermont Country Store Community has guidelines to help keep this a welcoming and positive community for all of us. While we review all user submissions before they are posted to ensure that the content is appropriate for the Website, we do ask our members to review the Guidelines below and abide by them.

In keeping with our goal to provide a warm, positive and healthy place to interact and get to know others, we may reject or remove material that isn’t (in our judgment) consistent with these standards and we’ll revoke posting privileges if we need to. We intend for the Website to provide a forum for the free exchange of information and frank discussion among users. But, since The Vermont Country Store prides itself on being a responsible corporate citizen, we cannot allow users to engage in conduct that is damaging to other users, The Vermont Country Store itself, or other companies. So use good judgment and please follow these guidelines!

Courteous
We encourage conversations between our members and us. We welcome the exchange of ideas including differences of opinion and healthy debates, but any posts that attack or harass an individual or group will be removed.

Respectful
We embrace a diverse collection of thoughts, ideas, and opinions, all with a sense of humor and good will. We welcome frank discussions, but offensive slang terms won’t do. Content that includes discrimination, cultural insensitivity, or defamation has no place in our community and will be removed. We don’t allow threatening, racist, abusive, hateful or violent language or behavior.

Comfortable
The Vermont Country Store Community members expect a clean, frank, environment for comfortable interaction. We’ll remove posts, member names, subject lines, photos, audio or video files containing profanity, sexually graphic or offensive material.

Appropriate
Naturally, we’ll remove anything that suggests or encourages illegal, inappropriate or dangerous behavior.

Useful
Post only those items readers will enjoy or find useful. We’ll remove spam, solicitations and the like. And you need to have permission to post any copyrighted content. If you submit photos or footage that includes persons other than yourself, you must have the express permission of the others included. Please do not submit photos with kids in them unless they’re your own!

Responsible
Please don’t post any personal info that you don’t want the world to know—your own or anyone else’s. The posting of personal information of any staff or user (real names, email addresses, home addresses, etc) should be avoided. It is common courtesy not to post personal information about other users. Any such information may be edited or removed by administrators/moderators at any time.


Linking
No links or URLs may be included in any member posted content.

Trolling
The Vermont Country Store Community will not tolerate trolls. People who post expressly for the purpose of getting a rise out of people or creating trouble will be summarily banned without any sort of warning.

The Vermont Country Store has the right to take content down for any reason.
Should you have any concerns or cause for dissatisfaction, The Vermont Country Store Community moderators want to know about it and can best assist you by speaking with you directly. Please contact our Customer Community Service Department here.

Thank you for following our community standards and keeping our community a fun place to be!