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 […]
Tag Archives: Vermont
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 […]
08
Mar
Mar
Mark Redmond had been trying – and failing – to get some sleep since ten-thirty at night. He was on the front lawn of the Unitarian Church at the north end of Burlington, Vermont’s Church Street, curled up in his sleeping bag against the March cold, a flattened cardboard carton between him and the snow. […]
01
Mar
Mar
Every so often, politicians on the campaign trail will hold something they call a “town meeting.” They’ll round up a hundred of the locals and answer questions — though the questions tend to be carefully scripted and there are TV cameras present to capture the candidate’s carefully scripted responses. These town meetings are nothing like […]
15
Feb
Feb
A few winters ago, a childhood friend from Connecticut contacted me on Facebook. I had gone to elementary school with him and we had lost touch when my family moved to Florida just before I started eighth grade. He wrote how happy he was that I loved Vermont, but surprised that my wife and I […]
08
Feb
Feb
Lincoln’s Andrew Furtsch works out at the gym in Bristol in a pair of ratty Converse high tops. On the white toecap of one he has written in permanent black marker, “J.H.V.” On the other he has penned “2.8.11.” It was four years ago today that our friend John Henry Vautier passed away: February 8, […]
04
Jan
Jan
A lot of my friends here in the Land of the Polar Tomato – aka, Vermont – are not big fans of January. Those post-holiday blues, which are universal, are exacerbated by withering cold, dicey roads, and days that are very, very short. Admittedly, the days are growing longer, but those June and July evenings […]
14
Dec
Dec
This coming Thursday evening around 5:30, you’ll see a small crowd assembled on the exterior steps of Burlington, Vermont’s City Hall, looking out upon Church Street. Sometimes there are 30 people and sometimes there are 50. It might be snowing, but they’ll still be there. They’ll be holding candles and doing something poignant and powerful […]
