EAST MONTPELIER – The apocalyptic traffic predicted for the last day of the Memorial Day weekend hadn’t become evident before Kiki and I covered the three hours and change from the North Shore back to Montpelier. As usual, I emptied everything temporary out of the car, put the leftovers from[Read More…]
East Montpelier
I’ve run out of elders
EAST MONTPELIER – Most of us have always been told, and believe it, too, that for wisdom we should look to our elders. At my age, however, I’ve about run out of elders, and I don’t feel particularly wise, myself. But I’ve discovered something that’s changing my attitude: my kids[Read More…]
Nowadays it’s most likely a Sharpie
EAST MONTPELIER – Charles Dickens, as most of us have read, went to work in a boot-black factory at the age of twelve to help with his family’s expenses after his father, John Dickens, had been sentenced to debtor’s prison. The factory, not surprisingly, was in a sagging, tumbledown old[Read More…]
Walking on water
EAST MONTPELIER – A couple of weeks ago I mentioned the luxurious digs I called home during one summer of the 1950s, and suggested that there was another story involved. There certainly was. Old George Lamb, who cooked for our work party up at the Ausable Lakes, heard that I[Read More…]
Terry J. Allen
EAST MONTPELIER – Terry J. Allen, an artist, photographer, journalist and activist, died at her home in East Montpelier, April 10, of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare and rapidly-progressing prion brain disorder. She was 78. Allen was born November 24, 1947, in Fall River, Mass. Brave and independent, headstrong and altruistic,[Read More…]
Joining the human race
EAST MONTPELIER – Summer, 1958. I was in temporary remission from higher education and looking for work. I possessed a copy of “On the Road” that I read rather as a bible. I still have it; it’s about eight feet behind me on the bookshelf. I was driving a 1946 Plymouth sedan[Read More…]
Bored with the details
EAST MONTPELIER – Whatever happened to the idyllic idea of living in our houses by the side of the road and being a friend to people? Whatever happened to listening to Walter Cronkite talk about the main story of the day? Ending with “And that’s the way it is.” Poor[Read More…]
Here’s where my amazement began
EAST MONTPELIER – As I age, I’m more and more frequently amazed at the complexity of various systems and the genius it must have taken to design and build them. The loop-the-loop highways of Montreal, Boston and Los Angeles are one example. Though much cursed, reviled and lampooned, it’s hard[Read More…]
Alaska can’t hold a candle . . .
EAST MONTPELIER – December 13, 1989 – Dear Sir – You are cordially invited to participate in the NINETEENTH ANNUAL INTERSTATE GERIATRIC SKI TOUR and GRAND SUB-ARCTIC BUSHWHACK to be held at the Hell Gate cabins in the Dartmouth College Grant from Friday, February 16, to Sunday, February 18, 1990.[Read More…]
“Gee!” I exclaimed as I took it from him
EAST MONTPELIER – I see by the news that the Iditarod Race is in full cry up in Alaska. There’s a ceremonial false start right near Anchorage: kind of a parade, really, with celebrities everywhere. Then next day, safely out of downtown, the real thing begins: a roughly thousand-mile slog[Read More…]
Bread and circuses
EAST MONTPELIER – I had the experience, some thirty years ago, of sharing a canoe in the Canadian Arctic with a delightful child psychiatrist. Naturally, we talked all day long of shoes and ships and sealing wax, I suppose, and I remember a few of the things I learned. One[Read More…]
Would-be Thomas Paines
by Willem Lange EAST MONTPELIER – The so-called Founding Fathers of the United States of America were far from perfect. Compromised by various interests as they were, however, they were more aware of the various imperfections of the human character than might have been a band of starry-eyed idealists. Thus[Read More…]
