SHELBURNE – I am finding tenderness amid the tumult in today’s world. Neighbors are helping neighbors. Federally defunded social profits are collaborating. Strangers in countries at war with each other are coming together to grieve and heal together. They occasionally make the news. This is a tender time of year[Read More…]
Monthly Musings
Billy’s birthday
SHELBURNE – My dear husband, Bill Alley, will be 90 years old on April 20. He asked me the other day, “How can this be?” I told him he’s been working on it for 90 years. We laughed about being a piece of work! Laughter is a gift at 90. [Read More…]
Meaning-making
SHELBURNE – Many news clips these days begin with a dismal disaster headline followed by, “What does this mean going forward?” The answer is often, “We don’t know. The message keeps changing.” I watch the devastation in disbelief. “Eve of Destruction,” Barry McGuire’s song from the ‘60s, rings in my[Read More…]
Frigid February
SHELBURNE – With ice on our roads and ICE in the streets, it feels frighteningly frigid this February. One needs a warm up while the other requires a cool down. Dr. Dan Siegel, Founder of the Mindsight Institute, loves alliteration and describes the stress response as “fight, flight or freeze.”[Read More…]
The Crack of Dawn
When my mind races down the rabbit hole of brokenness, I remind myself of Leonard Cohen’s song, “Anthem.” “There is a crack in everything/that’s how the light gets in.” My inbox has been flooded with the year-in-review emails: all the breaking news of 2025. Well into 2026 now, it seems[Read More…]
Leading together
SHELBURNE – The day before Thanksgiving last year, the new executive director of the Vermont Council on Rural Development (VCRD), Denise Smith, came for a visit. After talking for two hours, we wondered how we had not met before. We imagined convening Vermont women nonprofit executive directors in a way[Read More…]
Savoring seventy-five
SHELBURNE – In this season of giving thanks, I am grateful for the actual and aspiring Wrinkled Radicals I know. Some of you shared my October blog with staff, family and friends. I can visualize us all sitting around a Thanksgiving table practicing radical Grace, each with a food-insecure guest. [Read More…]
Wrinkled radical
SHELBURNE – I recently read Senator Ron Wyden’s memoir, “It Takes Chutzpah.” Ron was fresh out of the University of Oregon School of Law in 1974 when Ruth Haefner, a retired social worker in Portland, asked him to help her co-found an Oregon branch of the Grey Panthers. Ruth’s friend,[Read More…]
Blessings In Backpacks
SHELBURNE – The Sunday before school started, the Greensboro United Church of Christ service was longer than usual as pre-K through grad school students were invited to come forward with their backpacks. Ed, our pastor, placed his hand over his heart and then put his hand with love and blessings[Read More…]
Positive Possibilities
SHELBURNE – “The unknown is where all outcomes are possible; enter it with grace.” That was the wisdom on my Yogi tea bag this morning. I sipped and sat with Grace as I welcomed the positive possibilities of the day. A few I could name. Most would be a surprise.[Read More…]
Precious Presence
June 30 was WholeHeart, Inc.’s last day as a nonprofit. July 1 was my precious pup, Emerson’s, sixth anniversary. He passed on our way to the veterinarian after pawing his obituary. In lieu of flowers, donations to WholeHeart were encouraged. Emerson was WholeHeart’s Ambassador of Unconditional Love. He graced many[Read More…]
Joyful June
SHELBURNE – Looking out the window sitting at my meditation altar on June 1, I saw birds, bees and a baby bunny. Bunny picked a dandelion and munched contentedly on it from stem to going-to-seed flower. The season’s first hummingbird flew overhead to bless the meal. Grace whispered, “It’s going[Read More…]
