Is it only me, or have some of you noticed that you never see Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Batman in the same room? I am not saying, of course, that the senator and the Dark Knight are the same person or that they may even be twins who were separated at birth. But the news last month that our six-term U.S. senator (and longtime Batman fan) filmed a scene for next summer's Batman flick, "The Dark Knight," can't help but fuel speculation that the man who helped bring down former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales does indeed double at night as the Caped Crusader.

Just for the record, I do not believe that Gonzales is either the Riddler or the Joker, despite testimony earlier this year that would have been hilarious had it been on a "Saturday Night Live" sketch and not, alas, before the Senate Judiciary Committee. And though earlier this summer President Bush called Gonzales the Eternal General, it became clear last week that this was just a bizarre bit of wishful thinking.

I should also note that I do not think Gonzales is Mr. Freeze, either. Mr. Freeze is really Lonnie Rafferty, a friend of mine growing up -- and the reason I jumped out a second story window when I was 6 years old. My buddies Lonnie and Mark Leland and I were playing Batman one afternoon, and I was actually getting to be Batman instead of Robin for a change. Why? Lonnie, who usually played Batman, had broken his leg and one of his crutches made the perfect ice gun for Mr. Freeze. So, Lonnie was Mr. Freeze, I was promoted to Batman, and Mark became Robin. Unfortunately, I managed to leave my utility belt in the living room of the Rafferty's house, and now Robin and I were upstairs and we could hear Mr. Freeze hopping on one leg up the steps. Thump-pause. Thump-pause. Thump-pause. It was jump or be frozen. I jumped. Mark didn't. He was the wiser lad.

Interestingly, while that was the first time an eventual Vermonter would confront Mr. Freeze, it was not the last. Years later, Sen. Leahy would be an extra in the 1997 film, "Batman and Robin," a movie which featured Arnold Schwarzenegger (now Gov. Schwarzenegger) as Mr. Freeze.

In any case, I first began to ponder seriously the idea that Sen. Leahy -- who has honorary doctorates from Georgetown and Norwich, among other schools -- and the superhero might be one and the same when I discovered that Batman is 6 feet, 2 inches tall. (Where did I discover this? The source of all indisputably accurate, categorically true information: The Internet.) That's pretty tall -- like, I thought, our senior senator. It's actually, I have since learned, not quite as tall as Sen. Leahy, but Batman has been around since 1939, and we all shrink a little with age.

And then, of course, there is the small matter of those two letters: DC. Is it just a coincidence that Sen. Leahy works in a town with that moniker and the Dark Knight is published by a comic empire that uses them, too?

Finally, there is the Kellogg-Hubbard Library connection. Whatever money Sen. Leahy makes from his work on Batman movies (and comics), he donates to the K-H library in Montpelier, where he had his very first library card. What does this prove?

Well, take these simple words: "Pat's library card? Name it K-H."

If you rearrange the letters, it reveals a long hidden truth about the secret identity of the Dark Knight -- and you will see it's not really Bruce Wayne: "Dr. Patrick Leahy is 'r Batman."

Holy heifer, Senator. I rest my case.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on September 2.)

First of all, a clarification: I did not come in dead last in the third stage of the Green Mountain Stage Race, Vermont's arduous four-day Labor Day Weekend bike race. Why? I wasn't in the third stage. I wasn't in any stage. I wasn't even a participant.

Now, if I were a participant, I would have come in dead last. Or I would have needed a defibrillator. Or I simply would have come in dead.

The third stage is a 65-mile marathon that travels from Sugarbush North to the top of the Appalachian Gap, via Warren, Hancock, East Middlebury, Bristol, and South Starksboro. (The pros race even farther.) Yes, the distance between Sugarbush North and the top of the Ap Gap is a couple of miles as the crow flies; it's only 65 miles if you are a maniac riding in the Green Mountain Stage Race and want to pedal in the exact opposite direction of your eventual destination and scale a pair of gaps in a day.

Nevertheless, there are people in Bristol who thought I was in stage three last Sunday, and they were really quite supportive. What happened, essentially, was this:

After church here in Lincoln, I decided to climb on my bicycle and ride from my home toward East Middlebury. This is 25 to 30 miles roundtrip, depending upon how far you go, and none of it is especially arduous. There are two hills, one on the way back into Bristol and one on the way back into Lincoln, and they are both small. They are most assuredly not gaps. The whole ride takes a couple of hours.

I was vaguely aware of the Green Mountain Stage Race when I left, but I wasn't thinking about its route. By the time I got to Bristol, I was. Suddenly there were groups and groups of cyclists coming toward me, pedaling hard in the opposite direction. They were going north as I was going south and they were going a lot faster than me. They were, I realized, the racers.

I continued on my merry way another 40 minutes toward East Middlebury, waving at the sheriffs who were helping to direct the racers, chatting with one who's a friend, because pretty soon most of the racers were long past and I was in no hurry. The sheriffs thought there may have been a straggler or two, but the riders were well beyond East Middlebury by then. And so I turned around and started home on Vermont 116, cycling now in the same direction as the racers but very, very far behind them.

And that's when I heard the first cheers. I was passing a lawn sale and someone yelled, "Hang in there, man, doesn't matter where you finish!" At the next house, a woman in a lawn chair hollered helpfully, "And the last shall be first!" And as a car passed me, the fellow riding shotgun rolled down his window and pounded on the outside of his door as he reassured me, "Hey, Dude, it's cool just to finish!"

For the next six or seven miles, people were encouraging me that I could do it, I could make it, and the goal was simply to survive. Didn't matter that I was in last place.

It was actually rather uplifting, a moving statement about the human condition and our appreciation for the underdog. Suddenly I found myself pumping a little harder. I wasn't in the race; I wasn't even close to the racers. But I did not want to let down those intrepid race fans who thought I was the ultimate loser. It was a little like that 1979 cycling movie, "Breaking Away," except for the fact that I look nothing like Dennis Quaid and I wasn't a part of the competition.

When I reached my driveway, I coasted to a stop with my arms raised above my head in victory, and would have shouted "Vittoria!" or Victory! in Italian if there had been any signs of life other than my three sleeping cats on the porch. Still, it was a good race. I just wasn't in it.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on September 9.)

The Lincoln General Store has a mighty impressive inventory for a three-room emporium half way up an east-west mountain road that closes to the east in the winter. In all fairness, there are also a lot of things you cannot find there. For example, the store does not stock the $300 CatGenie, the self-washing, self-flushing cat litter box with a robot arm that scoops and scrapes and cleans and I would have to presume -- scares the heck out of any cat that is even thinking of letting down his guard and squatting inside it. But the shop does have plenty of cat litter.

And while the Lincoln General Store sells T-shirts and sweatshirts and ball caps, it doesn't sell shoes. So, if you are in the market for a pair of Rene Caovilla beaded slingback stilettos ($1,250), keep looking.

And, yes, the illustrious little deli and grocery does sell ice cream lots of ice cream. But you'll need to go elsewhere if you want a swirl of soft serve in a cone, because it lacks a creemee machine. (My wife has always been a little relieved that it doesn't sell creemees, because she fears she would live at the store if it did, and by now would be roughly the size of a Volkswagen.)

What the store does have in indisputable abundance is loyalty. For over a decade and a half now, Vaneasa and Dan Stearns have owned the store and run it as if they were related to every single human being who lives in Lincoln, hunts in Lincoln, or has merely passed through the hillside hamlet on a bicycle or leaf-peeping jaunt.

In all fairness, the two of them actually are related to a sizable percentage of the community. But, still, their store has always been a hospitable port in a storm. . .or a blizzard ... or (in 1998) a flash flood that rumbled through the town. Apparently, it takes more than black ice or chasms in the asphalt that were 40 feet wide to keep them away, since the store has never once failed to open since they took over back in October 1991. In 1998, their store was one of five to be awarded Storekeeper of the Year by the Preservation Trust of Vermont.

How long ago was 1991? Well, George Bush was in the White House the other George Bush. Minnie Pearl was on "Hee Haw." And a lot of the cast of "High School Musical 2" was in diapers.

Now after nearly 16 years of manning the registers, Vaneasa and Dan have announced to the community that they are putting the store up for sale. An era is coming to an end.

And what an era it was. Priscilla Presley shopped there. Paul Newman dropped by. And every autumn whole bus loads of tourists would descend upon the store in search of maple syrup and cola: The syrup was to take back to the flat lands and the cola to settle their stomachs after traversing the tortuous switchbacks of the Lincoln Gap in a bus.

Vaneasa and Dan were the switchboard for a town that still doesn't have cell phone coverage. They relayed messages about hungry llamas and roiling septic tanks, they told us whether the schools were open or closed, and they informed us when we asked why the fire trucks had just raced north on Quaker Street.

Why are they are packing it in and selling the store? Because, pure and simple, it's time. The store has been open nearly 64,000 hours on their watch (and counting), and it's time to find a job that doesn't demand their attention seven days a week. They want to be able to spend time with their teenage daughters, before the girls disappear completely into adulthood.

And while Vaneasa and Dan will be a tough act to follow, they are leaving behind a store with a devoted following and the monopoly on Slim Jims for a solid five miles. Sure, you couldn't sell many pairs of slingback stilettos there. But adding a creemee machine? Now that would be progress.

Thank you, my friends, for being there these many years.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on September 16.)

Today marks the autumnal equinox, which means that spring has officially arrived ... if you live in Rio de Janeiro. Here in Vermont, Land of the Giant Zucchini, it is now officially fall. (Just for the record, at the moment my wife has on the kitchen counter a zucchini the size of a baseball bat. It is not inconceivable that Barry Bonds used this very zucchini to club his record-shattering 756th home run.)

Yes, the nights are longer than the days, and the days are only as long as they were in the middle of March. In other words, the last time the days were this short there were sugar makers who were still waiting for their first sap run, and there was serious snow in the woods.

If this sounds bleak, it is important to remember as well that autumn remains the season for which our illustrious state is best known. No one goes to Florida in September or October to see the fall foliage. (People go to Florida in the autumn to see hurricanes.) Once when I was in Tuscany -- a place on the planet that is no slouch when it comes to stunning scenery and spectacular vistas -- a person who had lived his entire life in that corner of Italy told me that there were two things he wanted to see before he died: the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa and the leaves changing colors in Vermont.

The fellow told me this at a dinner party, and there was a woman sitting near us from Hollywood who was working on a screenplay for a movie based on the space shuttle Challenger disaster from 1986, and she had all sorts of astonishing stories about that tragedy. Nevertheless, all everyone wanted to talk about were the Vermont leaves.

Well, everyone but me. I kept wanting to talk about the space program, but the rest of the table wanted to hear about autumn in the Green Mountains. My sense is that our hostess could have walked in from the kitchen and told us that she had just served us a stew made from puppies, and still people would have asked me about the shades of red and yellow and orange that mark the woods here in the fall.

My point? Sometimes we take autumn in Vermont for granted. Certainly I do. First of all, as a parent, I am so focused on the chaos that marks the start of the school year that often I forget to look at the mountains and watch the remarkable ribbons of color work their way down from the peaks to the valleys. Then, when my daughter is starting to settle into her routine, I begin to concentrate on winterizing the house and making sure my wood is in and the gardens are put to bed. If I notice the leaves at all, it seems, it is only because I note there are fewer of them on the trees and I am reminded that the clock is ticking.

And, of course, fall is all about the ticking clock. The world is growing quiescent, and in some cases actively dying. Let's face it: That gorgeous show in the branches is there because the leaf is no longer producing chlorophyll, and as it withers we witness its true colors.

Consequently, I think we all experience a wistfulness on some level. I do. My sense is a part of us even craves that melancholy after the vigor and the hilarity of summer.

And, perhaps, that, too, is one of the reasons why people flock here in the autumn. Yes, there are the remarkable colors of those leaves. But, like so much else in the world, it's not their beauty that moves us; it's the way their beauty won't last. It's more about transience than transcendence -- though Robert Frost said it much better than me:

Nature's first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on September 23.)

Poets have searched for centuries for the words to describe the bond that exists between parents and children, especially as children embark upon adulthood. Perhaps no writer has captured it as well as the 19-year-old St. Lawrence University student and scribe, Jen Leach:

"this creeps me out....
completely.
end of story."

This short poem -- not quite a haiku, but close in tone and simplicity -- appears on the wall of her mother's profile on Facebook.com.

For those of you who are middle-aged and have lives, Facebook is a social networking Web site that originally was filled largely (if not entirely) with college students: Hence the name. It was a way for college students to meet in the digital age. Imagine MySpace with less spam and fewer perverts.

In my continuing and absolutely pathetic attempts to deny the fact that I am middle-aged, I have a profile at Facebook. So does my wife.

Suddenly, whole neighborhoods of parents of teenagers and young adults have profiles on Facebook including Jen's mother, Diane, which is why Jen left that brief but profound missive on Diane's Facebook wall. Yes, that's right: Once again grown-ups have intruded upon something that young adults thought was cool and, by our very presence, made less cool.

You might recall this is what we would have done to the Beatles if Yoko Ono hadn't gotten there first. And, of course, this is precisely what we did do to "South Park," "Saturday Night Live," and personalized bobble-head dolls.

Oh, wait. Personalized bobble-head dolls were never cool.

Someday we will do this to shopping mall stores aimed at teens like Hot Topic, and there will be a lot of bald, paunchy guys in goth T-shirts with skulls. (My bad: Apparently, we've done that, too.)

In any case, Facebook has been transformed from an online world where teens could connect without fear of their parents hanging around, to a sort of all-purpose family reunion and multigenerational tent. I asked Jen about her post on her mother's profile page -- communicating with her entirely through Facebook -- and she responded, "It takes 'keeping tabs on your child' to a WHOLEEEE new level."

Yet Jen also sees the humor in her mother's arrival on Facebook. To wit, there is a details section of Facebook on which you can write how you met a particular person, and here is the information Jen suggested she could have offered about "Diane:"

"You lived in the same house. . .for 18 years. . .You met randomly in a hospital. . .idk. . .it was pretty awkward. . .doctors were involved. . ."

(Special note for adults who speak English, versus online slang: "idk" is online shorthand for "I don't know.")

Diane says she did not create a profile to check up on Jen. She signed up for Facebook because she and her family live in Williston, Vermont, a good 3 1/2 hours east of St. Lawrence, and getting to see her daughter's picture at Facebook and being able to jot her a quick note makes her feel closer to Jen. "It feels like she really isn't as far away as she is in reality," Diane says. "And that makes it so much better than e-mail -- kind of like those phone pictures that you get once in a while."

Moreover, Diane has connected with other family and friends through Facebook, including a pal from college.

In my wife's and my case, alas, we can't use the child-is-far-from-home excuse, since our daughter is still at home. So, why are we on Facebook? Is it simply that it's the greatest online time-waster since YouTube? (Last week I spent 15 minutes updating the "Where I've Lived" map on my Facebook page. Good Lord, I know where I've lived. Do I really need a Web page to remind me?)

No, I don't think it's the way we can procrastinate at Facebook that draws us there.

Rather, I think we have Facebook pages because the Web site does for the middle-aged soul what Botox does to the middle-aged forehead -- but without the botulinum.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on September 30.)