The other day I was telling a friend about my new pals, the alpacas on Bristol, Vermont’s Burpee Road. I see a portion of the small herd of ten animals almost every time I bike past them. Now they’re so familiar with my arrival that they stroll over to the wire fence and say hello […]
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The other day I was thumbing casually through a brand new collection of poems, observations, and very brief essays by incarcerated Vermont women, “Hear Me, See Me,” when I found myself sitting upright, unexpectedly moved. I had just read a brief essay, “Junky Mom,” and saw this parenthetical beside the author’s byline: “Deceased 2012.” Last […]
The biking season here in Vermont is winding down – at least for me it is. I’m not a rider who climbs on a bike in the snow or pedals intrepidly when the temperature is flirting with freezing. The latest in the year I have ridden is the second week in November. I do some […]
It’s mid-September, that time of the year when the leaves begin their kaleidoscopic transformation in Arizona and tourists from around the world descend upon the state to savor the breathtaking foliage. This fairy tale was brought to you by “Arizona Highway” magazine, which boasts in its October issue that autumn in Arizona is better than […]
If you live in the Northeast – especially Vermont and coastal New Jersey – you still remember vividly where you were the last weekend in August 2011, when a seriously dislikable shrew named Irene roared ashore. A hurricane when she hit New Jersey and a tropical storm when she reached Vermont, Irene devastated the two […]
A child brings two heavy buckets of water into the home of a strange old woman and discovers there a wall of cages with dogs trapped inside – and a small carpet on the floor that has been woven from dog fur. A nine-year-old girl refuses to go to bed, reducing her parents to tears […]
That great gust of wind – think a Wizard of Oz-sized tornado – you just felt was the collective exhalation of parents everywhere: Their children are finally back in school. Yup, those back-to-school sales that began in July are now a distant memory because our kids really are back in school. And while Art Linkletter […]
When most of us think of the Champlain Valley Fair, which opened yesterday in Essex Junction, Vermont, we don’t think of fine dining. We think of pork boners. (I just love that I can write those two words in a family newspaper.) We imagine the fried dough. We revel in our memories of Mini Cooper-sized […]
Thursday night, my wife and I were at the #1 Auto Parts Demolition Derby at the Addison County Fair and Field Days in New Haven, Vermont to cheer on our good friend, Amanda Bull. She and her family had taken her ancient Plymouth Acclaim and gotten it ready for the competition. That meant removing the […]
When, years ago, my wife and I bought a yellow Victorian beside a white clapboard church here in Lincoln, Vermont, we figured we’d wander in most Easters and Christmas Eves. Maybe we’d pop in occasionally on other Sunday mornings when, for whatever the reason, we were uncharacteristically inspired. . .or we’d decided not to sleep […]
