Vaneasa Stearns, owner of the illustrious Lincoln General Store here in Lincoln, Vermont, has been in this column a lot over the 23 years I have been writing Idyll Banter. Her most recent appearance that was more than a mere cameo was two summers ago, on her and her husband’s 25th wedding anniversary. I chronicled […]
Category Archives: Vermont
28
Jun
Jun
Don O’Connell has a serious issue with Charlie Brown’s friends. He is also, just for the record, not wild about any of the reindeer but Rudolph. “They’re bullies,” he observed of most of the Peanuts characters. “They treat Charlie Brown horribly. The only one who likes him is Linus – and that kid has serious […]
09
Jun
Jun
Neil Gaiman says, “This is how you do it; you sit down at the keyboard and put one word after another until it’s done.” Dorothy Parker caustically (but accurately) observed that “writing is the art of applying the ass to the seat.” And Stephen King recommends “butt glue” — or “gluing your butt to the […]
24
May
May
The first time my daughter, Grace Experience, appeared in this column, she was in utero: it was Mother’s Day, 1993. How long ago was 1993? Most of us weren’t sending email. (Most of us didn’t know what email was.) Bill Clinton was in his first year in the White House. I had hair — and […]
20
May
May
Why garden? Note the verb. In your mind’s eye, conjure a backyard vegetable plot. Imagine activity and effort. Visualize stooping. Lifting. Tilling. Seeding. Planting. Watering. Weeding. Thinning. (I abhor thinning. I haven’t the heart to rip from the soil the small, fragile leaves that will become lettuce or carrots or beets.) There are more — […]
10
May
May
In November 1993, not quite a week before my wife’s and my daughter was born, my wife made a sacrifice of epic proportions: she went with me to see the four-hour movie, “Gettysburg,” on a Friday night date. Our baby was going to arrive any day now, and this might be our last chance for […]
03
May
May
My wife confessed something to me this week: whenever I leave on a bike ride, whether it’s a brief 15-mile jaunt or a journey that will last 30 to 50 miles, she says a little prayer. She prays that I will come home safely. She shared this with me because already this spring three Vermonters […]
12
Apr
Apr
When Hannah Woodruff was in seventh grade, she and her classmates at the Crossett Brook Middle School in Duxbury, Vermont were given a rather ambitious assignment: they were each supposed to change the world. Or, at the very least, they were supposed to try. Hannah decided that her individual project would involve the homeless. This […]
22
Mar
Mar
Not long ago, a reader stopped me on Church Street in Burlington, Vermont and asked, “Do your cats still play turd hockey?” I admitted that our five are a little older now, and have accepted the realities of age. “Now it’s more like shuffleboard,” I told her. And then she asked me about Funny Face. […]
16
Mar
Mar
Vermont has roughly 8,700 miles of dirt roads, according to the Vermont Agency of Transportation. That’s roughly 55 percent of our streets, highways, boulevards, courts, dead ends, avenues, and … roads. And this time of the year, that’s 8,700 miles of mud. How far is 8,700 miles? Imagine driving all the way from Anchorage, Alaska […]
