Sunday, November 9, 2:00pm
Doors Open at 1pm

Join local Bennington author, Reg Darling, for a talk about his novel “I Would Prefer Not To: Life and Livelihood in the Confluence of Bureaucracy, Healthcare, and Politics” 

About the Book: Healthcare, health insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, and bureaucracy form a constellation of hot topics in America’s body politic and in American bodies. Public discussion has tended to revolve around operational and ideological semi-abstractions supplemented with poignant anecdotes and statistics. But there is another way to examine these issues: the living experience of working in the zone where they entangle and collide as governmental policy is shaped into operational reality. I Would Prefer Not To is an unflinching story of how things get done, the ways partisan ideologies leak into nonpartisan civil service, and one person’s spiritual and creative survival in a high-pressure world fraught with moral ambiguity.

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Reg Darling spent thirty years working in state government where the issues of healthcare, health insurance, and bureaucracy live, entangle, and collide as governmental policy is shaped into functional reality.

I Would Prefer Not To is a memoir of one person’s spiritual and creative survival in a world fraught with ethical ambiguity, paranoia, and stress. It offers an unflinching look at the frontline work of government, political intrusions into civil service, and how male-dominant power structures act to reduce even healthcare to a zero-sum scenario.

Darling lives in Vermont with his wife and cats. He worked for the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare for thirty years before retiring in 2004. He holds a Bachelor of Science. in General Studies from Clarion University of Pennsylvania and a Master of Arts in Studio Art from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. In the late 1980s and early 1990s he exhibited paintings in more than seventy solo, group, invitational, and juried shows. He is the author of six books and has published more than 80 essays, interviews and reviews in publications ranging from newspapers to outdoor magazines to literary journals.

His books can be ordered from any bookstore or online bookseller, but the Bennington Bookshop has signed copies in their local authors section. They are also available as e-books.

November Date TBD
Price: $15 Members, $25 Guests
Members save 40% on tickets

• Maximum Number of People: 50
• Cash or Check preferred
• Venmo or Credit Card add 3%
• Drinks available