Come gather ‘round people wherever you roam As we prepare to bury the life we have known And accept that from now there’ll be no going home Your money’s no longer worth saving The meat is all gone, we’re left nothing but bones For the times, they are a changin’ Apologies to Bob Dylan, but […]
I live 40 miles from the Canadian border. If I’m given the right incentive, I can walk from my house to Canada. But what’s sufficient incentive? What if a hike to the border could save my life and the lives of my friends and family? That would be sufficient incentive. Let’s raise the stakes. Let’s […]
Summers are short in Vermont. You can feel this one beginning to slip away already with the recent chill in the evening air. It seems, however, that from the minute the snow melts until it falls again, someone is running a gas-powered engine within one hundred yards of my house. Power mowers, weed whackers, leaf […]
A reader said to me the other day, “You’re stuff’s getting dark lately.” She was right; it has. I don’t know what to do about that, given I define the mission of this site as calling it as I see it. Right now, it looks dark. If it’s any consolation, it’s worse if you live […]
It’s hot in Vermont. It’s been in the 90s and humid for weeks. This is great for cherries and plums, grapes and apples. My neighbor’s been making cherry jam for days (add a hot stove to the equation) and she’s had to prop up the boughs of her plum tree, so heavy are they with […]
Vermont had its first AMBER alert last week. (AMBER is an acronym for America’s Missing: Broadcasting Emergency Response, a cumbersome tribute to Amber Hagerman, who was abducted and murdered in Texas in 1996.) Twelve-year-old Brooke Bennett disappeared on the 25th of June. Stories soon circulated that she had lied to her mother about where she […]
Where Things Used to Be
I’ve been driving around southern Louisiana this week. It’s my first visit in three years, since I was here in the weeks after Hurricane Katrina. Life has changed here. I’m not sure if Louisianans live in the future while the rest of us live in the present or if they live in the present while […]