[tkx7]

vermont is very hilly and high in elevation- discuss.

[ontheroad]

Chaz,

I never did make it to that larger bookstore, but may when I return East and North.

When you visit the Valley, you might try the Black Pearl in Amherst (79 Main) for a great cuppa and good good eats.

And a drive away, but a pleasure to visit is the Montague Book Mill (formally a grist mill) for lunch, coffee, a great view and lots of books (mostly academic).

Perhaps we'll cross paths!

[harry chickpea]

LOL. Vermont is hilly, but not high in elevation. It just seems like it.

I would NEVER retire to Burlington, although of all the towns and cities in Vt that would be my first pick. The Fletcher Free Library alone is years worth of research for any bibliophile or historian. Burlington also sits in a unique spot where the constant cloud cover sometimes has a break. Talked with my more learned brother about this and he provided some scientific name for the effect, and said that it was absolutely true.

However, the UVM students in Burlington are cutting up more than in the past and the area is more crowded, so I would think twice even if I could stand the cold winters and was willing to pay the tax burden.

[square peg]

About the constant cloud cover: Before I moved here 20 years ago, someone pointed out to me that Northern VT was second only to the pacific northwest in this regard. I travel weekly to the champlain valley and honestly - I just don't notice it as being different from where I grew up in NH. Could be just me though.

[grimstuff]

Several of my gauges are: number of bookstores, availability of research material, comfortable coffee houses (not a chain), good movie and theatre, ability to have an informed conversation with locals, and a good shopping network.

I like your criteria. It's a lot like the "Lawyer Quotient" used to determine how much resistance there might be against development in a locality. It's a different topic of course, but it represents a measure of social capital, inderectly.

In fact, I wonder if the same concept can be applied: take the number of coffee shops in a city, divide by number of all other retail establishments. Take that number and divide it by the same proportion in the entire state, or county. If the result is higher than 1, you may have a city with a high Coffee Quotient, therefore giving a rudimentary idea of how stimulating the place might be, as per our criteria.