EAST MONTPELIER – A few months ago I saw a cartoon in The New Yorker. In it, a king stands on his raised veranda with an aide, looking down on an obviously angry crowd armed with pitchforks and torches. Nonplussed, he turns to his courtier, who advises something like this:[Read More…]
Willem Lange
People who made it possible
EAST MONTPELIER – “Mister Lange,” Judge Murphy intoned. “In the State of New York you are allowed to amass eight points in fourteen months on your driver’s license before a review of its status must be held. You have managed to amass fourteen points in eight months. Now, what do[Read More…]
Hope and wishful thinking
EAST MONTPELIER – I’m not much of a hand for praying anymore. More and more over the years it has come to seem too much like an implicit abdication of responsibility for desired outcomes. Still, thanks to many decades of indoctrination, I do occasionally slip into prayer-ful attitudes toward coming events. They[Read More…]
Pooh-poohing the winter’s inconveniences
EAST MONTPELIER – Well, it’s happened. We could feel it coming on for a few weeks: long shadows across the forest paths by four o’clock, nippy air flooding in through the door when I let Kiki out early, fog in the river valleys, the night light in the hall turning[Read More…]
So far, very little
Well, now, that was a weekend! Late on Monday afternoon, I’m still trying to collate all the details and events of the last three days and turn from them to face the coming week with some new ideas and insights. So far, very little. My friend Bea had scored a pair of[Read More…]
But suddenly, with overnight company in the offing
EAST MONTPELIER – It’s been a pretty peaceful and pleasant autumn here. The drought has been bedeviling farmers and orchardists, but it’s been perfect weather for my little convertible. The legislature and governor, though occasionally having differences of opinion, have at least not been calling each other names. The news[Read More…]
Probably think I’m losing it upstairs
EAST MONTPELIER – The back lot outside my office window is waist-high in a sea of goldenrod with little sprigs of purple asters peeping out here and there, a last feast for the bumbling bumblebees. Little flocklets of tiny birds, warblers, I’m guessing; they flit too fast for me, flow[Read More…]
There’s no crying need for anything additional from me
EAST MONTPELIER – Saturday morning, in bright sunshine and warming temperatures, a young man sat on the concrete railing of the Rialto bridge in downtown Montpelier. He bore two signs, one in each hand. I confess I can’t remember one of them, I think it had something to do with[Read More…]
Not old enough to remember
EAST MONTPELIER – For millions of Americans these days, the mantra du jour is, and has been for a while, “MAGA, Make America Great Again.” Putting aside for at least the moment many of the problems of the “good old days” that this slogan refers to, like racial segregation, disempowerment[Read More…]
The weak link was the ferry across the lake
EAST MONTPELIER – Labor Day weekend was scheduled to be a high-mileage event. Rather than my usual three hour-plus run from mid-Vermont to my friend Bea’s place on the ocean Friday afternoon, and then back on Monday noonish before my evening deadline, I committed to a high school class reunion[Read More…]
Ah, yes, the job
EAST MONTPELIER – In early June of 1962, after nine chaotic, fraught, and highly educational years in Ohio in pursuit of an undergraduate degree, I finally got one. I had the degree, a great part-time job (which I had to give up), no debts, no money, a one-year old VW[Read More…]
Re-enacting the first lap of the Gran Prix
EAST MONTPELIER – It’s hard for me to believe that I ever drove the width of New York State in vehicles of obviously uncertain (but certainly brief) futures without thinking twice about it. Thanksgiving holiday? No problem, even on an ancient Indian motorcycle with no windshield. Date in Buffalo? Here[Read More…]
