EAST MONTPELIER – It’s often difficult, given the evidence all around us, not to be pessimistic about the future of the human race. We seem to progress at a rate significantly slower than we regress or remain fixed in place, which is pretty much the same thing. The prime example,[Read More…]
Willem Lange
She Lived Through the Chaos
EAST MONTPELIER – In August of 1945, my family was living in a modest bungalow near the southwestern outskirts of Syracuse, N.Y. I was ten. My father was a missionary priest and traveled most of New York State north of Oneonta and Corning to visit his scattered parishes. With the[Read More…]
Universal Explosion of Growing Green
EAST MONTPELIER – The roof ridge of my house runs almost exactly east and west. I canted it about three degrees off, to 267 degrees west, so as to orient long face of the house due south with a slight nod to the morning sun for earlier solar heat, and[Read More…]
This One Hasn’t Been Scripted
EAST MONTPELIER − It’s been 92 years since the radio show, “Ma Perkins,” first aired in the United States. There probably aren’t many of us who remember it, which may be a blessing. Its modest daily domestic drama was sponsored by Procter & Gamble’s Oxydol laundry detergent, inspiring the term,[Read More…]
An Interview Sticks With Me
EAST MONTPELIER – There are several good features of my current racket of working with a television program rooted in the outdoors. I get to visit places I’d never have been able to get to myself, or, in some cases, even heard of. I get to meet and interview some[Read More…]
A Perfect Way to Celebrate our Birthday
EAST MONTPELIER – Years ago, the national anti-tobacco campaign slowly and with little apparent effect chipped away at Americans’ deadly addiction. That battle is far from over, but the results have been significant. Now in recent years, we’ve been getting warnings from dermatologists and cancer specialists about exposure to the[Read More…]
What if an Alien Species . . .
EAST MONTPELIER – In midsummer, the sun works its way around to the back of the house and a little before sunset floods the back porch with light and heat. This evening is no exception. Hot as it is, though, I know I’ll miss it when in a few weeks[Read More…]
Still, We Persist
EAST MONTPELIER – Donald Trump is a tough target for journalists and commentators to hit. Like a high-flying bomber that spews metallic chaff out its back end to confuse the radar of missiles, he so consistently floods the news cycles with outrages that by the time anyone has the chance[Read More…]
A View of my Beloved Country
EAST MONTPELIER – Making hay while the sun shines and the roads are free of slippery impediments to travel, I did a little extra driving this past weekend. In the process, I got a better-than-usual view of my beloved country, on the car radio, passing through small towns, on my[Read More…]
You Can’t Make This Stuff Up
EAST MONTPELIER – On Sunday mornings of the weekends that Bea drives up from Nahant, if the weather is warm and pleasant, we put the top down on the roadster, assure Kiki we won’t be gone long, and tool leisurely downstream along the Winooski River to Middlesex for coffee and[Read More…]
We Can Always Repeal It
EAST MONTPELIER – My kid was mountain biking on a hill near his home in Arkansas and realized he’d lost his cell phone out of his pocket somewhere along the trail. Without his phone, he was incommunicado, but another rider lent him his. He called home, his wife hit “Find[Read More…]
We Just Visited Them in their Stalls
by Willem Lange EAST MONTPELIER – My tour group’s transfer from Salzburg to Vienna was nothing if not leisurely. Our bus first took us to the gigantic abbey at Melk, a typically imperialistic pile of stone decorated with heroic figures. Thence we boarded the “Austria,” a cruise boat that took[Read More…]
