By Guy Page
Father’s Day is this Sunday.
In case you’ve forgotten.
Across Vermont, many dads will enjoy phone calls, Sunday brunches, shout outs in church – the usual annual offerings made in the Afterthought Parental Holiday.
A 2019 report saw Father’s Day spending at $16 billion, which sounds like a lot, especially when you consider indulging Dad’s appetite for the desert of his choice. But that’s peanuts compared to Mother’s Day spending: $25 billion. As a dad writing on Oprah.com (for real!) said: Mother’s Day is joyous, brimming with flowers and jewelry and breakfasts-in-bed, while Father’s Day can seem tacked on—a participation trophy.”
In Vermont this year, there will be at least four new-ish Father’s Day options. Three are variations on tried-and-true standbys: creemees, baseball, and the Father’s Day sermon. The fourth? Not so much.
VTDigger last month launched a feature that has been conspicuously lacking from Vermont media: a good creemee locator.
The intrepid online news outfit noticed that the State of Vermont Agency of Agriculture and Food Markets already had a locator, or sorts. So it filed a Public Records Request for the information and the result is one of those maps covered with clickable blue dots, each one representing a creemee stand.
Events at a 5:05 PM Sunday evening baseball game between the Vermont Lake Monsters and the Westfield Starfires will encourage dads to avoid cancer, which kills more men than women, a UVM Health Network statement said. Over 300 cancer center patients, clinicians, and caregivers will be at the game. A father and survivor of stage 4 melanoma will throw out the first pitch to his son.
According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, men have higher rates of getting and dying from cancer than women. June is a month to draw attention to cancers affecting men and encourage early detection. These cancers include skin cancers, colon, prostate, and lung cancer.
For the Traditional Family-minded, Dr. Pat Fagan will hold a Fatherhood Project seminar 10 AM – 1 PM Saturday, June 17 at Valley Bible Church on East Main Street in Middlebury. The father of eight and grandfather of 18 will speak on the vital role of the father in human culture. The event is sponsored by the Vermont Institute for Human Flourishing. Sunday morning, Fagan will speak at Vibrant Church in South Burlington on the subject of fatherhood.
And…..
Rutland County Pride will hold a ‘Daddy’s Day’ brunch and drag show, located at the local Elks Club, Sunday morning.
The event is billed as for “16+ Mature Audiences,” according to a poster on the Rutland County Pride Facebook page.
The decision by a local civic organization to host the event doesn’t sit well with Todd Fillmore, a local businessman and Scout leader.
“I am deeply disturbed by the Rutland Elks’ decision to continue hosting the “Drag Brunch” on Fathers’ Day, despite being alerted to the openly perverse nature of at least one drag performer’s public statements and persona,” said Fillmore. “The drag queen known as “Giardia B”/”HausOfSTDs” [photo appearing on Rutland Pride page, but not in event poster] intentionally invokes the perverse image of an intestinal parasite known to be sexually transmitted among gay males by anal/oral sexual contact, and his disturbing public TikTok message to parents who are concerned about drag queens’ contact with their children is blunt: “Girl, —- your kids, and —- you too!”
“In the name of profits, this unmistakable message has now been enabled and indirectly endorsed by the Rutland Elks club which, I emphasize, publicly defines itself as ‘a distinctively American, intensely patriotic, family oriented organization…’
“The irony is extreme.”
In an email shared with VDC, an Elks leader told Fillmore: “What we are doing for the Pride organization is simply renting our hall out for their use like any other organization. We will not and can not discriminate or we open ourselves up to possible legal action against us.”
With all of these choices, what’s a governor to do? Gov. Phil Scott was asked at his press conference yesterday whether a VTDigger-located creemee was on his personal Father’s Day agenda.
Do you plan to enjoy a Father’s Day Maple Creemee, and if so will you be using VTDigger’s creemee locator?
“I do enjoy maple creemees,” Scott answered – no surprise to the press who heard him repeatedly urge Anthony Fauci to visit Vermont to enjoy our unique soft-serve confection. But apparently the guv will employ the time-honored tactic used by dads to escape the phone and other distractions:
“That’s usually my day of mowing, so I don’t know if I’ll have time for creemees.”