Category Archives: Commentary

Not Measured By Length

1/28/2010 – 12:19 pm

In the autumn of 1987, I canvassed Kensington, Maryland on behalf of the US Public Interest Research Group. I was talking to citizens about acid rain. (Seems almost quaint now.) Canvassing’s a tough job. You get many noes for each yes and you have to keep a thick skin about you. At one house, the […]

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Re-Creation Stories

1/21/2010 – 8:42 am

January sun was warm in Washington on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. It caused me to slip the jacket from my shoulders as I walked on New Hampshire Avenue. There were no eviction piles of possessions along the curb this week, as there were in November. Instead, Christmas trees had been put to the curb, […]

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Rick’s Tale

1/14/2010 – 1:30 pm

They say the classic Washington, DC career has four stages: Idealism, Pragmatism, Ambition and Corruption (a/k/a IPAC). Read a few DC biographies, you’ll see the pattern. I don’t have to name names. The exception proves the rule and one exception is my friend, I’ll call him Rick. (It’s his name.) Rick’s been in DC for […]

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Warmer and Wetter

1/7/2010 – 8:56 am

My new year began with snow. Thirty-three inches of it, the biggest snowstorm in 120 years of recorded weather history in Burlington. It began Saturday morning and didn’t stop until Monday morning. I shoveled and napped, shoveled and napped. We were supposed to attend a holiday party Saturday night; instead we gathered at the neighbors […]

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Did You Ever Go Clear?

12/31/2009 – 11:31 am

It’s ten in the morning, the end of December. I’m writing you now to see if you’re better. Vermont is cold but I like where I’m living. There’s silence on Howard Street all through the evening. It’s New Year’s Eve morning; I’m listening to Leonard Cohen through the computer. The sky outside is a gray […]

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Two Priests Walk Into….

12/24/2009 – 10:59 am

A chain store? A casino? Two stories in Wednesday’s Washington Post: The first was about Father Tim Jones, an Anglican priest at the parish of St. Lawrence in York, England. From the pulpit last Sunday, Fr. Tim said shoplifting is not a sin, if the act was caused by need instead of greed. He encouraged […]

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Stockholm Syndrome in Copenhagen

12/17/2009 – 8:32 am

It’s cold in Vermont. Our long autumn has given way to the winter weather that always beats the calendar winter by a few weeks here. Frank Capra snowflakes fall past my window as I type. On Saturday evening, in the company of a 14-year-old girl, I walked to a park in the south end of […]

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