EAST MONTPELIER – I’m writing this during the afternoon of February 2. The sun is flooding the yard, raising the temperature to a dizzying 23 degrees, the snow lies deep in the woods, and there’s never been a bluer sky. Twenty-five years ago I wouldn’t be here; I’d be outside[Read More…]
East Montpelier
Contemplation and action balance each other
EAST MONTPELIER – One of the ways I deal with my anxiety about the state of our country and world is to stay busy. It serves as both a distraction and a way of feeling I am doing something positive, especially if my busyness has the purpose of helping others.[Read More…]
We have all been here before
EAST MONTPELIER – This unprepossessing gentleman pictured is I.F. Stone, crusading journalist and truth-teller. I’ve been reading “The Haunted Fifties,” a collection of his writings that includes a four-page piece he wrote in December 1953, more than seven decades ago, that stopped me in my tracks. It could literally have been written[Read More…]
Ranks up there with the stupidest
EAST MONTPELIER – The week just passed in Minneapolis, Minn., has been one of the most watched in perhaps all of American history. Aware that massive protests against the invasion of ICE were likely to occur, every news organization that could afford plane tickets for a film crew sent whatever[Read More…]
DUI, Car crash
EAST MONTPELIER – On January 15 at 5:30 p.m., Vermont State Police – Berlin Barracks received a call for a single vehicle crash at 2528 County Road in the town of East Montpelier. The operator at the scene was identified as Gavin Deiss. Troopers responded to the scene, and subsequent[Read More…]
Somewhere there’s an audacious reporter
EAST MONTPELIER – Political historian Heather Cox Richardson, author of the daily newsletter “Letters from an American,” opined the other day that the news of the past week has seemed to be breaking faster than ever. From the invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of its president and first lady, to[Read More…]
How very far I was from home
EAST MONTPELIER – The last few years, I’ve been traveling to my son’s house in Arkansas for Christmas. I’ll do the same this year. It’s such a treat, after rattling around alone in this house through the seasons, to be immersed in family life, children and grandchildren all over the[Read More…]
Will widows and orphans be left to their own devices?
EAST MONTPELIER – Around 1906, a young Harvard graduate student was browsing a used book store in Cambridge and came across a rare treasure: a prompter’s script used by Charles Dickens in his tour of the United States to perform readings from his work. It was an abbreviated version of “A[Read More…]
Holiday travel certainly necessary, no fun
EAST MONTPELIER – In the days leading up to Thanksgiving, the schoolmarmish features of the newsies were on full display. Like old-fashioned country preachers predicting the apocalypse, they warned of unprecedented numbers of holiday travelers. It is, after all, the weekend of our greatest domestic migration, clogging the highways and[Read More…]
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…]
Unprofessional relationship, Crash
EAST MONTPELIER – At about 12:30 p.m., October 10, the Vermont State Police received a report of an unprofessional relationship between a teacher and student at U-32 Middle and High School, located on Gallison Hill Road in the Town of East Montpelier, Washington County. Troopers from the Berlin Barracks responded[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…]
