Here are my two principal memories of my years at sleep-away summer camps: Replacing the prescription toothpaste another camper had brought from home with paste from the craft tent -- a trick I learned from my older brother -- and playing Capture the Flag for hours in a monsoon in a field that drained about as well as a rainforest. When we weren't sliding on our faces, we were sinking hip-high in slop. It was massive amounts of fun.

Of course, it wasn't nearly as much fun as watching the face of the kid whose toothpaste we vandalized brush his teeth, especially since he was a pompous bully who deserved what he got. But Capture the Flag in quicksand also didn't result in my having to miss the camp movie after I confessed that I was the culprit.

Now, I don't recall my parents expressing any special angst or sadness when they dropped me off at a camp for the summer. For all I know, they drove home each year and spent the month of July naked. Invited their neighbors over for keg parties in the garage. Smoked cigarettes. (Actually, I know my mom smoked cigarettes. In the 1960s, she smoked like a steel mill.)

My wife asked her mother whether she ever felt any sadness after she left her daughters at sleep-away camp, and I have never heard my mother-in-law laugh so hard. She was practically hyperventilating when she was done.

Well, last weekend, my wife and I dropped off our 13-year-old daughter at the school outside of Boston where she is going spend a sizable chunk of the summer, learning more about acting, dance and performing. This is her first time away from home at a camp or a school, and I was completely unprepared for two things:

First, her complete unwillingness to replace her new roommate's toothpaste with glue when I offered to scare up some Elmer's; second, how adult she suddenly seemed.

Her room, like most boarding school dorm rooms, was pretty Spartan. At one point, I was holding in my arms the sheets that we had brought for her mattress, and I offered to make her bed for her. I realized that while she is expected to make her bed at least once every geologic eon when she is home, she herself has never actually been the one to put the clean sheets on it.

"I can do it," she said.

"You know how?" I asked, preparing to explain to her the difference between a fitted and a top sheet.

She nodded. It seems the last time she spent a week alone at her grandmother's in New Hampshire, her grandmother had unceremoniously stripped the bed and insisted that she learn how to make it. Apparently, she figured it was about time that her granddaughter knew how to do such a thing.

Then our daughter realized that her dorm room closet lacked hangers, and we hadn't brought any. She asked us if we could send her some.

"Hangers?" my wife asked incredulously. "Do you actually plan on hanging up your clothes?" She was surprised because our daughter's dresses at home reside like mushrooms on the floor of her bedroom, colorful balls of fabric around which a person navigates gingerly. How many are on the floor at any given time? Enough that I no longer know for sure the exact color of her carpet. Here, however, she was not merely planning to make up her bed, she was planning to place her dresses on hangers!

When my wife and I left her to return to Vermont, she was doing just fine. She was composed, serene. My wife, on the other hand, was sobbing like Niagara Falls. I tried to cheer her up by telling her that she could put Elmer's Glue in my Crest, but it was clear it was going to take more than a juvenile prank to fill the gap left by our now absent juvenile. It's not merely that our little girl is gone for the summer: It's that the girl is no longer little.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on July 1.)

Old art can be overrated. Do we appreciate Botticelli's painting of the Birth of Venus because it's really old -- five centuries and counting -- or because of its composition and grace? OK, that's a ridiculous question. We all know people flock to the painting because Venus is standing on that seashell completely naked.

A better example? Michaelangelo's colossal statue of David. Wait, he's naked, too.

Still, it doesn't always take centuries to realize that a work of art is great, and sometimes an artist doesn't even have to put a naked person in it, (though, clearly, naked people help). Moreover, sometimes a great work of art is consciously designed not to last. Consider, for example, the elegant ice sculpture. Or the mighty snowman. Or the humble sandcastle.

Or, better yet, consider Lincoln painter Reed Prescott's giant mosaic of a seashell made largely of ... seashells. In the interest of journalistic full disclosure, I should tell you that Reed is a friend of mine.

But he is also a talented artist and a man with a vision ... or, perhaps, a man with way too much time on his hands. Or, maybe, a man who simply was taken by his family to one too many antique stores and salt water taffy stands on his vacation last month, and decided that he would rather stay at the beach than look at yet another antique writing desk or chamber pot. (OK, I probably don't need to modify chamber pot with "antique." At least I hope I don't.) Either way, last month while at the beach on Cape Cod, Reed created one of those extraordinary works of art that have a lifespan of hours. He spent the better part of one entire day creating a giant seashell at the edge of the ocean comprised largely of slipper shells, ark shells, scallop shells and dead crab parts.

Yes, dead crab parts. It's sort of like when you were seven years old and built a teepee out of the stuff you didn't eat at Red Lobster, except in this case your mother doesn't tell you not to play with your food.

Additional color was provided by great drapes of seaweed and sea lettuce.

How giant was the mosaic? It was roughly 20 square feet when Reed was through, a piece of art that might have grown even larger if he had had more time. It was colorful, swirling and meticulous -- and, because Reed had built it by design at the edge of the surf at low tide, absolutely doomed. We're talking Dead Shell Walking. When the tide returned, it would disappear almost as quickly as a sandcastle.

Fortunately, Reed photographed it. And while an image can't possibly do the mosaic justice, I was nonetheless impressed when I saw the picture of the shell made of shells. It wasn't just lovely to look at: Its sheer ephemerality made it poignant in a way that art that's created with a legacy in mind is not. The beauty of the shell resided in large measure in its sheer transience, its fleeting existence on that beach.

Next year Reed once again will spend a week on Cape Cod. His 2007 mosaic will be long gone, each piece scattered by the tides to some other part of the great scythe-shaped peninsula. Will he create another one? I hope so. And I hope it's even bigger and more ambitious than this year's version. One suggestion? Follow Botticelli's lead and add a naked goddess to the shell. Then it will be both fleeting and timeless, and will officially earn the moniker of "great art."

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on July 8.)

Frankly, I knew all along that Homer and Marge Simpson and the kids lived in Vermont. The tip-off for me wasn't the proximity to the nuclear power plant. It wasn't even Bart's iconic, "Don't have a cow, man," a trenchant reference to falling milk prices. It was the episode last season when Lisa went to a writer's conference in Vermont, Wordloaf, and it only took about seven seconds of TV time to drive there.

Am I surprised that our Springfield, however, actually won the USA Today video poll? A little. It's not that the video the Vermont Film Commission produced wasn't terrific: It was. I could watch WCAX-TV's Tim Kavanagh imitate Homer Simpson and chase a rolling, giant pink doughnut down the street for hours, even though Homer Simpson has more hair than Kavanagh. (Of course, even I have more hair than Kavanagh, and there are fish in the ocean with more hair than me.)

No, I was a little stunned because Vermont usually exists on television solely as the Land of the Romantic Bed and Breakfast. When characters on "Seinfeld," "Friends" and "Will & Grace" wanted amorous weekends away from the city, they always came here. Our biggest TV star is actually the Ben & Jerry's ice cream pint -- not the Homer Simpson doughnut -- which appears often when a female character is home and alone and trying to convince herself that food is love.

We won in what is generally considered a monumental upset against much larger Springfields. We were the David to the Goliath Springfields in states like New Jersey, Oregon and Massachusetts.

And yet win we did, sneaking past runner-up Springfield, Ill. by a mere 733 votes -- or a little more than half the population of my little village of Lincoln. My wife came racing into my library on Tuesday afternoon when the victory was announced, absolutely beaming. She was bursting with what she referred to as "incredibly big news!" Normally, this would mean that one of our cats had actually caught a small, annoying animal -- smaller and even more annoying, that is, than one of our cats (who are extremely annoying), such as a mole or a mouse. This story, in her opinion, was every bit as satisfying as something like that, and produced precisely the same swell of pride.

Which might be an indication of why our Springfield is now the Simpsons' Springfield: Vermont is so small that we still care about each other and take pleasure in the success of our neighbors in ways that bigger states don't. I was discussing this issue with Jack Thurston of WCAX the day after the announcement, and he said it better and more succinctly than I could: "Does anyone in Chicago really care about Springfield, Ill.? Probably not -- at least not the way that someone in Burlington is going to root for someone in Springfield, Vt."

I think he's correct. More of us here in the Green Mountains actually bothered to vote for Springfield, Vt., than people in (for instance) Newark, N.J., bothered to vote for the Garden State Springfield. This may be an indication of just how much we care about each other. Or, perhaps, it's simply an indication that we are all really unproductive workers and our employers need to watch how much time we are spending on sites like youtube.com when we are supposed to be on the job. It may also mean that each of us is in serious need of a life.

Either way, I love the idea that Hollywood is coming to Springfield, Vt. I love the idea that a group of Vermonters thought big. Really big.

Next up? Let's make our presidential primary count and move our primary up to February 2008. Or January. Or even next month. Sure, Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani will never be as hip as Homer Simpson. But it sure would be fun to watch them running after a rolling, giant pink doughnut.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on July 15.)

(Prior to the arrival this week of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," the Boston Globe asked me and three other writers to offer our thoughts on how the book might end. This was my response -- the last page of the last novel.)

Hermione motioned toward the portkey, a cupcake the size of a quaffle, and murmured quietly, “It’s time to go.”

Harry thought about this, and wondered why almost everything he and Ron and Hermione had ever said was modified by an adverb. Was this a spell left upon Hogwarts by an ancient Slytherin professor?

He noticed now that the crowd around the tombstones was finally starting to thin, though it was clear the large brood of Weasleys was going to remain there well after the rest of the mourners had left. Harry wasn’t surprised that so many more people had come to say good-bye to Ron than to Snape, but he still wished there had been more people there for the potions master in the end. After all, they would never have trapped Voldemort were it not for him.

“You know,” Hermione continued softly, a little ruefully, “everyone was sure it was going to be you. Everyone was sure it was you who was going to die.”

He shook his head. Certainly he’d heard the rumors. “No, not me,” said Harry determinedly. “I think I knew all along it would be Ron.”

“But Harry, how?”

“My name’s on the title of everything,” Harry shrugged. “And you’re a girl.”

“Harry, that’s sexist!” said Hermione indignantly.

“No, that’s literature. My story may be over, but what of my children – what Professor Dumbledore saw in the Progeny-Scope? Ron and I could have done may remarkable things together. . .but conceive a child? I think not.”

Harry felt the professor’s hand on his shoulder through his robes, and turned. The aging headmaster had been comforting Ron’s parents, but in his free hand he still held the clear sack with the glittering, brain-shaped Cere-Brawl. The Cere-Brawl would forever imprison Voldemort’s violent, fighting urges. Harry understood that the Dark Lord would be no less evil, because – as Dumbledore had taught him – you can’t root out evil; now, however, that evil would be at once banal and benign. It would be evil without power, because there was no spell that could unlock a Cere-Brawl once it was sealed.

“Professor Dumbledore?”

“Yes, Harry?”

“Will you ever tell us who the wizard was who was working with you and Professor Snape – the one who was there when Snape pretended to throw the killing curse?”

“I could.”

“But you won’t.”

“That’s right,” said Dumbledore sagely. “Voldemort may be harmless, but there will always be Death Eaters just waiting to take his place. That, too, is the nature of evil. But I will give you a clue.”

“His name is in the Detritus-Arium, isn’t it?” volunteered Hermione brightly.

The professor shook his head. “No. But Harry, he has been with you as you’ve grown up. . .and he will be with you as you grow old.” Then, almost imperceptibly, he motioned with his chin and long beard toward Dudley Dursley. When Harry looked over at him, it appeared as if his obese cousin were actually trying to eat the cupcake portkey.
“Him?” asked Harry incredulously.

Dumbledore shrugged and turned away, and Harry felt Hermione taking his hand. “Come along, Harry,” she said, and somehow she found it within her to smile. “We have a new series to start.”

In the middle of May, I mentioned Jack the Cat in this column. Jack the Cat is not one of my cats, a point that would be obvious to anyone who has ever met one of my animals: Jack has a spine, and mine do not. Jack is also a renegade -- imagine Bruce Willis as a cat.

In all fairness, Jack has considerably more hair than Bruce Willis. Jack is not one of those disturbing, hairless cats that look like small, bald geriatric aliens. Jack is a furry gray tiger stripe with bright eyes, sharp features, and a hiss that could scare a rattlesnake. He lives a couple of houses away from mine and belongs to my friends, Todd and Jennifer Goodyear and their kids.

The point I made about Jack the Cat two months ago is that he can spray like a fire hose. We're talking water park power. He would mark a live lion if one ventured into the neighborhood.

As I have gotten to know him, however, I have come to realize that he is more than merely a squirt gun with legs. He is a leader -- and a subversive influence on my cats. Jack is the sort of bad boy on the block that my felines are starting to look up to. Right now it is in that interesting love/hate stage. First the hate: The other day Jack had four of my cats cornered on the front steps of my house. There they were, each sitting like a sphinx, watching him warily as he stared them down from 3 feet away on the front walkway. Four against one are not terrific odds in a cat fight, but Jack has my cats so cowed that the moment I opened the front door, the four of them bolted inside at warp speed. Jack wanted to follow, but I discouraged him.

The single time that one of my cats tried to stand up to Jack, he would have wound up eating her if my wife hadn't broken up the fight with the garden hose. That's what it took: a garden hose. And when my wife finally put the hose down, Jack -- the Cujo of Cats -- dove at my wife's shins, apparently believing that he could bring her down and eat her, too.

But then, however, there is the respect that my cats have for Jack, and the way they look up to him as a feline rebel without a cause. In their eyes, it seems, if Jack does it, it's cool. To wit: My cats, even the female ones, have started to spray. Just the other day my normally serene female, Horton, was spraying the church beside our house. There is a very sweet yellow Lab who lives nearby named Isabelle. When she was asleep near our house last Tuesday, I swear my cat Dorset -- who is over 18 years old and weighs about 6 ounces -- would have sprayed her if I hadn't reined the old girl in.

Moreover, my cats have started roaming beyond the confines of our yard, just like Jack. Suddenly, they are crossing driveways and streets, and they have lost all fear of the dogs who occasionally wander through our yards. (Exhibit A: Dorset's desire to spray a sleeping yellow Lab.) In fact, I'm not sure they're scared of anything or anyone other than Jack.

Now, make no mistake: I like Jack. I like his spunk and his sass. I like the fact that he swaggers when he walks. Here, however, is what I wish: If he is going to teach my cats anything, I would be mighty grateful if he would teach them to scare away the moles who have turned my lawn into a moonscape. That's right, including Jack, there are now five cats hanging around outside my house on any given day and, for all I know, twice that many moles.

Consequently, I am hoping that the next time Jack marks something ... it's a mole.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on July 22.)