Pilgrimage

Bennington College, Bennington, VT.

When I was a teenager, Shirley Jackson was one of my favorite authors. I bought and read everything of hers that I could find, and I still have most of those old paperback copies. Today, Richard and I stopped in Bennington and North Bennington to find and visit her old haunts.

We saw Bennington College, where her husband was a professor and where Jennings Hall, seen partially here, was supposedly the inspiration for the site of her novel The Haunting of Hill House.

We also saw both her houses in North Bennington, as well as Powers Market, where she did her grocery shopping.

Richard wasn't familiar with Shirley Jackson's work, so I made him read her most famous work, the short story "The Lottery," out loud in the car on the way from New York to Vermont today. He was not impressed, to put it mildly. "A stupid story" were his exact words, I believe.

(Speaking of stupid, all of my photos today after we left Bennington College were ruined. That is what happens when you accidentally change the ISO setting on your camera to some ridiculously high number and don't notice for a few hours. To say I was annoyed was putting it mildly!)