EAST MONTPELIER – It had been a lovely weekend, courtesy of Martin Luther King Jr.: lots of pleasant conversation and snacks in the two chairs in the office, supper at Julio’s Friday, lunch at the Wayside Saturday, shopping for groceries at the Chopper. Icy cold outside, but snug inside. Bea[Read More…]

EAST MONTPELIER – Clack, clack, clackety, ding, zzzzut, clunk. Clackclack clackety-clack… That onomatopoetic rhythm is tattooed in my memory of the 1970s more clearly than the Vietnam War, the Peanut Farmer President, or even the Beatles. Up in the attic loft there was a man possessed of ideas, a primitive[Read More…]

by Willem Lange  EAST MONTPELIER – The narration, a modern version of the second chapter of Luke, began the old familiar Christmas story. Mary and Joseph shuffled down the church aisle on cue, Mary cuddling a bundle clearly intended to be the baby Jesus, and Joseph strangely empty-handed. The mother[Read More…]

by Willem Lange EAST MONTPELIER – You know you’ve reached the age of mental saturation when, in spite of everything that’ll be happening between now and New Year’s Day, your major concern isn’t whether or not you’ll take the Polar Plunge into the sea to welcome in the new year,[Read More…]

by Willem Lange EAST MONTPELIER – For almost 50 years, during the week before Christmas, I’ve been haunted by a spirit – the ghost of Charles Dickens, who rose from the grinding poverty of his childhood home to become England’s most famous writer. At the peak of his fame, crowds[Read More…]

by Willem Lange EAST MONTPELIER – My father, raised conservative Dutch Reformed and later ordained an Episcopal priest, never would venture onto a computer or the internet, even when I gave him the computer and showed him how. When I asked him why, his answer was a bit evasive, but[Read More…]

by Willem Lange EAST MONTPELIER – My friend, the late Walker Weed of Etna, N.H., was the oldest member of the Geriatric Adventure Society, and easily the most experienced. When he offered an opinion or a pronouncement, I listened. He opined one day that if you ever have had an[Read More…]

by Willem Lange ST. HUBERTS, N.Y. — It was what my grandfather used to call a “Bummelzug day.” A Bummelzug is a local train that stops at every station; and when you’re having that kind of day, there are a million things you have to do before you can get[Read More…]

by Willem Lange I’ve never been to Punxsutawney, Pa. – have, in fact, no desire ever to go there. Besides, as I listen to today’s news, I feel that we’re there, all of us, trapped in the film Groundhog Day with Bill Murray, experiencing the same day, over and over, and feeling[Read More…]

by Willem Lange EAST MONTPELIER – A few months ago my companion Bea (a very charming widow of whom you have heard me speak previously) was chatting with a divorced friend and happened to mention that she was keeping company with an elderly widower. “Does he live near you?” the[Read More…]

by Willem Lange EAST MONTPELIER – For years and years folks got along with an old grandfather’s clock, Or just a common old sun dial sittin’ out on a block. Then the dollar watch it had its day and wrist watch it was fine. Then along came a man who[Read More…]

by Willem Lange EAST MONTPELIER – What would you have done? I was committed to a Friday-Sunday weekend down by the seashore in Nahant, just north of Boston, and I had a fund-raiser commitment Thursday at a senior living community in Peterborough, sort of halfway there from Montpelier. It didn’t[Read More…]