Just how small is this world really? Sarah Aghjayan, 21, has been going to the University of Vermont since the autumn of 2010 and will begin her senior year there this September. Our paths have never crossed in Vermont. Yet last month we met seven time zones to the east in a now largely Kurdish […]
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According to a July 2014 study by insure.com, a consumer insurance website, we Vermonters are not at our best when we are behind the wheel of a vehicle. Of the fifty states and the District of Columbia, we are the sixth rudest. We babble incessantly on our phones when we are supposed to be focused […]
Tomorrow night, around 10:29 p.m. in the Eastern Time zone, the autumnal equinox arrives. We all know what that means. Beginning this week, the nights will be longer than the days. There will be a decided chill in the air. And my vegetable garden will look like it belongs in the backyard of a haunted […]
I didn’t watch “Breaking Bad” when AMC was airing an episode a week between 2008 and 2013. Instead, my wife and I binge-watched two and three episodes at a time via Netflix, watching the entire series in about five and a half months – instead of five and a half years. But I have […]
Midway through the 2013 Ben Stiller remake of “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” Kristen Wiig walks across a Newfoundland dock singing the David Bowie classic, “Space Oddity,” while strumming a guitar. Stiller, as the milquetoast Walter Mitty, is showing uncharacteristic dash by jumping aboard a helicopter captained by a drunk, depressed karaoke singer. Wiig […]
The three-story Yenikoy elementary school rises from a plateau like a mesa in south-central Turkey. It is the only building for miles, its exterior walls a pale yellow reminiscent of sweet corn. But the playground swings and slides beside it are a full-on rainbow of crayons: The bright blue of a cerulean sky. The crisp […]
Zulkuf knows perhaps a dozen words in English, which is roughly 11 more words than I can speak in Kurdish. Sipas means thank you, and that’s the extent of my Kurdish vocabulary. He is a 41-year-old Kurd from south-central Turkey. But, like me, he is adept at communicating with hand signals and smiles. Or frowns. […]
Recently I came across a photo of my mother introducing me to a doll about an inch or two taller than I am. It is Christmas morning and I am three years old. The doll is called Peter Playpal and it is – literally and metaphorically – that year’s big present from Santa Claus. My […]
We are now beyond the halfway point of August and nearing the final third of the season we call summer. The sun sets a little sooner. The gardens are going to seed. There’s a real chill in the air some nights. And that, of course, means it’s time to get serious about. . .eggnog. Earlier […]
Later this week I will be facing one of my toughest decisions of the summer: Do I begin my visit to Addison County Fair and Field Days with a maple creemee or a maple doughnut? That’s right, Tuesday marks the start of the high season for county fairs and festivals here in Vermont, an opportunity […]
