Champlain College’s mascot is a beaver. I’m not going to say a word. Wait, I will say this: It’s a guy beaver. The school’s mascot is a guy beaver and he was (I am guessing) named after some dude on “Masterpiece Theater” or “Downton Abbey:” Chauncey. Not judging, but are we really surprised that when […]
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Once again, Valentine’s Day is nearing, that moment each year when we celebrate what it means to be in love. The traditional gifts? Cards and flowers and candy. Really uncomfortable lingerie. Some people, however, try to transcend tradition. I asked readers this year for some of the worst or strangest Valentine’s gifts they had ever […]
We are now but hours away from one of those epic, annual, Roman numeral-sized moments when as a nation we put our trials and tribulations aside, and savor a common interest. A shared passion. I am referring, of course, to the reality that later today almost every sentient human being in America is going to […]
The Sochi Olympics are but days away, which means that people who care passionately about curling are about to have their one moment in time. The same is true for cartographers, since before this month there were not a lot of people in the U.S. who could have found Sochi on a map. A month […]
Despite the reality that “twerking” was the word most often searched for on Google in 2013 – a word that, just for the record, my spell check wants to change to “tweaking” or “twirling” – I am actually a little encouraged by the state of humankind. Note that I said a little. I like Miley […]
This past week we officially put 2013 into the history books. Looking back, we all learned to twerk. Kim and Kanye and Kate and William had babies. Alec got mad. So did Reese. And the real news? Tornadoes, a cataclysmic civil war, and a terrorist attack in Boston. A health care revolution ushered in by […]
Over the years, I have made my share of New Year’s resolutions. I have resolved to stop biting my nails, to be more organized, and to answer all the mail I receive. The results? I still bite my nails, my library looks clean but has secret stacks of projects I haven’t dealt with or filed, […]
This Tuesday night, Christmas Eve, my daughter will be home from college and the two of us will be in the community room beneath the sanctuary of the United Church of Lincoln. There are three services, but the first one – the 7 p.m. service – is the one with a nativity. So, the two […]
“It’s never too late to have a happy childhood,” novelist Tom Robbins wrote in “Still Life with Woodpecker.” And so when Kayla Lopez was a scared eight-year-old child living in Winooski, she made a decision. “I just said, ‘Take me,’” Kayla Lopez, now 22, recalls. “I picked up the phone and called a neighbor and […]
As this year winds down, I realize I missed a big story: Not health care. Not the government shutdown. Not even the fact that Rome was besieged with poop from migrating birds – birds which, according to a city council spokeswoman, had been eating olives before flying over the Eternal City, “so their mess becomes […]
