My wife and I have a big anniversary to celebrate this week: Not a wedding anniversary or a meeting anniversary or even the anniversary of the first time one of us got a car stuck in 2 or 3 feet of Green Mountain slop on a dirt road in mud season. (We try to forget those March experiences, not commemorate them.) It was 20 years ago this Wednesday that my wife and I inadvertently began our pilgrimage to Vermont when we were cab-napped in Manhattan.

Some of you know the basics. On March 8, 1986, my young wife and I hailed a cab in Greenwich Village around 11 at night, and told the driver our destination was Brooklyn -- where we lived. As anyone who has ever watched "Sex and the City" knows, New York City cab drivers hate to go to the outer boroughs on a Friday or Saturday night because there's no return fare. Still, our driver was only annoyed -- not yet completely enraged. He wouldn't get Hannibal Lecter-furious until he was pulled over for speeding a few minutes later, and I helpfully suggested that he turn off his meter while the police wrote him his ticket. When we resumed our drive together, the cabbie had transformed himself into Insane Angry Hackie, and proceeded to drive like a madman for 45 minutes, ignoring stoplights and traffic signs, and taking us nowhere near our apartment. It was a NASCAR worthy performance, except for all those pedestrians and mailboxes he nearly plowed into.

He finally deposited us in front of a crack house that a half-dozen NYPD regulars had just stormed. There were three guys with Tower Records bags overflowing with guns and drug paraphernalia, and one officer strongly encouraged my wife and me to lie down where we were -- though most of what he said would have been censored by the networks.

Not long after that we saw an article in a newspaper that referenced the People's Republic of Burlington. The rest, as they say, is history.

Still, I find it amazing that my wife and I have been here almost 20 years now. That's more than three times longer than I've lived anywhere else. It's not half my life, but it's pretty darn close. We were practically babies when we decided to move here!

Getting to spend so much of our lives in Vermont has been a huge gift. Over the years, I have chronicled myriad reasons why I love this place, ranging from its size to its scenery to its residents: People whose families have lived here for generations and people who, like my wife and me, had the great good fortune to discover its magic, move here, and be warmly embraced. Certainly I wouldn't have written most of the books that I have if I hadn't wound up here.

And, of course, I owe it all to a cab driver with serious anger management issues. A cab driver who, alas, I have never properly thanked.

Oh, sure, the day after he cab-napped us I called the New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission. But that wasn't to thank him; that was to tell someone that one of their drivers was a criminal sociopath.

In all fairness, however, the record must also show that he didn't chase us when we left his cab without paying. And we were in that cab a pretty darn long time.

Now, I'm often surprised by the people around the country who read this column. And so my hope is that somewhere out there this morning there is a very special cab driver sipping his coffee (decaffeinated, given his temper) and perusing either this newspaper or its Web site. And I hope he sees this column and realizes that I am deeply appreciative of what he did for my wife and me back in 1986.

Thank you, Mr. Cabbie. And, just for the record, if you should ever come near my family again, I'll get a restraining order that will keep you 17 states away. Are we good?

And I thank you, too, Vermont -- for everything.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on March 5, 2006.)

Everyone understands presidential succession: If something should happen to the President of the United States, the Vice President takes over, (unless he is taking a hunter safety course). And if something should happen to the vice president, then we revert to a monarchy and Queen Latifah takes charge. Or Bono.

OK, most of us don't know a whole lot about presidential succession once we get past Dr. Phil.

But most of us, apparently, know even less about the First Amendment. Last week Chicago's McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum released a study indicating that Americans know the five members of Matt Groening's Simpsons cartoon family a whole lot better than we know the five freedoms specified in the First Amendment.

I should note in the interest of journalistic full disclosure -- and so I don't sound like a complete dweeb -- that I could only name three of the five rights myself: Freedom of speech, press, and religion. I missed the right to assembly and the right to petition the government. I should also note that I could name more Simpsons than rights: Four. I got Homer, Marge, Bart, and super smart Lisa. I missed baby Maggie. (I always miss baby Maggie.)

Altogether a thousand people were surveyed, and 20 percent could name all five Simpsons, while only one respondent (not one percent -- one respondent) could name all five rights. A little more than a quarter of the sample could name at least two of the freedoms, while a little more than half could name at least two of the Simpsons.

Moreover, a fifth of the survey thought the right to own pets was a part of the First Amendment, while nearly two-fifths presumed that "taking the fifth" was a part of the First. Another 17 percent of the sample thought our colonial forefathers put the right to drive in the First Amendment.

Now, I know some people are alarmed that Americans know so little about the First Amendment. Others aren't troubled at all, and see this as merely further corroboration that we are a nation of sluggish bores who would rather watch Fox comedies than be active members of our democracy.

I fall in-between. What I find most unnerving is that I think the "Simpsons" is a legitimately clever television show watched by (sound of throat clearing) smart people. I'm glad it is so embedded into our culture that a sizable number of people can reference it. But I would like to believe that if those souls are smart enough to watch the Simpsons, they would be smart enough to do better on a First Amendment civics pop quiz. I wish all of us, including yours truly, knew the Constitution better.

My overriding sense is that the future of the republic is not immediately imperiled because we failed the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum survey. I believe most of us understand on an intuitive level that among the great gifts of living in this country are the rights to assemble and speak our minds and write cranky letters to the Government. Certainly here in Vermont we did a lot of that just this past week during Town Meeting. But I also wish we all had scored higher on the survey (yes, me too).

Why? Because I would hate to see us get too complacent. Too confident that no elected government would ever try to control the media. Or make any group feel uncomfortable for practicing their religion. Or abridge our right to gather. What is true about drama may also be true for democracy: To succeed it needs conflict and human transformation. And that, in turn, demands civil discourse. Discussion. Debate. It demands knowledge.

And so I wish we were all a little more thoughtful and concerned. A little wiser. A little more like. . .Lisa Simpson.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on March 12, 2006.)

As I travel around this great country, I am continually impressed by how many otherwise intelligent people presume that our little state is actually a city somewhere near Albany, N.Y. Or they know that Vermont is indeed a state, but all they can say for certain is that it's somewhere near Canada -- which, of course, it is, but for a lot of these folks it's clear that Brazil is somewhere near Canada, too.

There is serious alarm among some of our national movers and thinkers that we are falling way behind the rest of the world in math and science, but it is increasingly evident that we can add geography to that list, as well.

Periodically, of course, a Vermonter will do something that captures the country's fancy, and people briefly will ponder where we are on the planet. A governor will make a serious run at the presidency. A snowboarder will take a silver medal at the Olympics. Will and Grace or Rachel and Ross will leave Manhattan for a romantic weekend at a bed-and-breakfast here.

The one thing that everyone knows for sure about us, however, is this: We produce maple syrup. Someone in South Carolina might mistake us for New Hampshire and presume that we have a seacoast or (once) an Old Man of the Mountain. But it seems to me that we have the monopoly on maple syrup. Last year we produced almost 400,000 gallons of maple syrup, or a third of the entire U.S. production.

To put that in perspective, Vermont sugar makers thus boiled somewhere in the neighborhood of 16 million (yes, million) gallons of sap.

And to put that in perspective, imagine a lake made entirely of maple sap the size of Lake Champlain. (OK, that is a completely ridiculous exaggeration. Lake Champlain has roughly 6.8 trillion gallons of water, plus phosphorus, zebra mussels, and -- maybe -- a sea monster named Champ. So instead simply imagine a really big pond made entirely of maple sap. Or, perhaps, Horatio Sanz.) I personally think it's not all bad to be a state known largely for maple syrup. Oh, sometimes I wish it weren't such a commodity, and people viewed it more like fine wine. Imagine, for example, if each sugarhouse was like a vineyard with its own label and cachet. We could have maple syrup tasting tours, in which visitors compared the Grade A Dark Amber boiled by the Twin Maple Sugar Works in Lincoln with the same grade produced by Two Old Saps Sugar Works in Bristol. Would only the most sophisticated palates discern a difference? Probably. Would the packaging -- the shape of the jug, whether it's aluminum or plastic, the artwork -- impact perceptions? Absolutely.

Next week the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers' Association will be holding its fifth annual open house weekend, in which sugarhouses across the state will be offering visitors the chance to watch sap boil into syrup. Watching sap boil is a lot more interesting than watching water boil because it smells fantastic and there's a raging fire underneath the evaporator. Little children, especially little children like me who are forced to live in the bodies of middle-aged men, love raging fires.

Now, will we ever get a popular buddy movie filmed here about tasting along the lines of the surprise 2004 hit, "Sideways?" Unlikely. Of course, even if by some miracle someone did want to make a movie about maple, it would be filmed in Canada. It's not that they produce a lot more maple syrup than we do, (although they do). It's not even the reality that U.S. filmmakers can stretch their budgets much further in Canada.

It's the fact that Hollywood is a long way from Vermont, and I'm honestly not sure they could find us.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on March 19, 2006.)

The Pony Express lasted a mere 18 months. From April 1860 through October 1861, roughly 90 riders linked Missouri and California. It took about 10 days for a letter to travel the length of the trail, and cost $5 at the start of the service and $1 at the end.

What killed the Pony Express? The completion of the transcontinental telegraph line. Suddenly, information that once took a week-and-a-half to be conveyed took minutes.

Earlier this winter, Western Union sent its last telegram. Though the service survived the arrival of telephones, cell phones and fax machines, it was no match for the Internet. In 2005, Western Union delivered a mere 20,000 telegrams.

I receive that much Viagra spam daily.

Now, I personally won't miss the telegram. I can recall receiving exactly two in my entire life, and both were from my wondrously eccentric godfather: The first was to commemorate the sale of my first short story, and the second was to celebrate the announcement that I was engaged to be married. In both cases, the inherent glamour and romance of the medium was apparent.

Likewise, the only telegram I ever sent was to my wife's cousin the day before she was married because I was going to be unable to attend the ceremony. She and her fiance both knew that I wasn't going to be there, and so -- once more -- the purpose of the telegram was more about style than substance.

Nevertheless, I will miss the notion of the telegram. I will miss it in the same way that I miss certain other social anachronisms that in reality were only a small part of my personal experience, such as the idea that men and boys were expected to dress up before boarding an airplane. The truth is that socks and sports jackets on airplanes were passe well before I grew up. But there is nonetheless something uncivilized about sitting beside a guy in shorts and Teva sandals at 35,000 feet. Airline seats are small and I fly frequently, and the result has been unnervingly close proximity to many strange hairy toes.

Likewise, I miss the concept that we once wrote long, newsy letters by hand -- but, again, this is more of an idea to me than it is a firsthand memory. I have neither received nor written a long newsy letter since my mother insisted I write them to grandparents. But there is something cultured and reassuring about receiving a letter in the mail. My sister-in-law in Paris and my wife still correspond this way. They share critical information -- health and deaths and criminally bad fashion decisions -- via the Internet, but they still ruminate at length about the state of their lives in handwritten letters they craft by pen.

I hope I don't sound like a Luddite, or like my father who steadfastly refuses to have anything to do with computers. Usually I savor new technologies, even those ones designed largely to allow us to watch "Dancing/Skating/Kickboxing with the Stars" without commercial interruption and on our own schedules. But with few exceptions, most technological progress is about doing things faster. More quickly.

As a journalist, I have gone from mailing my manuscripts, to sending hard copies via Federal Express, to sending disks via Federal Express, to submitting the stories electronically. What used to take days, now takes seconds.

In most ways, it is easier. The last thing I want to do is go back in time or live in a world where there is no Internet. Imagine if we had to wait weekly for People magazine to give us the latest dish on Paris Hilton, rather than keeping up with her daily on our msn.com home pages. Sort of makes global climate change seem like a minor inconvenience.

But with speed comes stress.

And with casualness comes hairy toes.

We'll probably never find a way to marry the brave new world of higher technology with old world civility. But I still have one hope for whatever technology someday replaces the Internet, and it is this: Whatever it is, let it please demand we wear socks.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on March 26, 2006.)