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PHOTO OF THE DAY

“Clearing the lines”

Unknown photographer

From the Series “From the town where I was born.” A fishing boat coming into Portreath, Cornwall in 1905. The men on the quay are clearing the lines which means they are going to pull her into the harbor. The hut at the end of the pier is a shelter.

PASSAGES

Ted Hughes

Text selections by Vermont Views

The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldly enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.

...imagine what you are writing about. See it and live it. Do not think it up laboriously, as if you were working out mental arithmetic. Just look at it, touch it, smell it, listen to it, turn yourself into it. When you do this, the words look after themselves, like magic.

The dreamer in her Had fallen in love with me and she did not know it. That moment the dreamer in me Fell in love with her and I knew it.

And that's how we measure out our real respect for people—by the degree of feeling they can register, the voltage of life they can carry and tolerate—and enjoy. End of sermon. As Buddha says: live like a mighty river. And as the old Greeks said: live as though all your ancestors were living again through you.

Read more PASSAGES >>>

Recent Passages By: Ted Hughes, Harold Wilson, Charles Dickens, Toni Morrison, Iris Murdoch,  David Hockney, Allen Ginsberg, Abigail Adams, Thomas Hardy, John Ruskin, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Amy Lowell, Bernardo Bertolucci, Buffy Sainte-Marie, John Keats, David Niven - Actor, David Niven - PhD, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Joan Didion, Pablo Casals, Geoffrey Chaucer, Muddy Waters, Aretha Franklin, Dorothy Maclean Read their work here

The Animal One Thousand Miles Long: Seven Lengths of Vermont and Other Adventures.

Leath Tonino,  Trinity University Press, 2018.

Reviewed by Laura Stevenson

Debut collection of essays from a young writer celebrating Vermont

The animal in the title is a creature Aristotle invented in The Poetics (7B) to demonstrate that an observer of a gigantic object could see only its parts, and thus lost perception of its "unity and wholeness." Tonino implicitly compares Vermont to this animal; his twenty essays, collected from periodicals published between 2011 and 2017, portray his adventures and observations in all parts of the state. Together, they also portray his impossible yearning to experience the whole by feeling "the infinite invitation that is the terrain of home."

Young and vigorous, Tonino is an enthusiastic adventurer. "Seven Lengths of Vermont," for example, opens with his vow, upon returning from several years "bumming around the West," to rediscover his native Vermont by touring it in seven different ways in the course of a year. The reader (presumably ensconced on a sofa) then becomes his vicarious companion as he hikes the length of the Long Trail, hitch-hikes around the state in over thirty rides; completes a three-week, 300-mile ski trek along the Catamount Trail; bikes through the state in a tour of some 500 miles; paddles 260 miles in a canoe trek along the Connecticut River; swims, in ten days, the length of Lake Champlain; and finally, climbs into a friend's small plane for a two-hour “vast and fast” flyover of the whole state. At the end of the year, Tonino has experienced parts of Vermont from many angles and at many different speeds in an attempt to understand the whole.

<extract, read on>

Read the full review and other reviewed titles in this column.

The Devil in the Valley — Castle Freeman, Jr.

Vermont Exit Ramps II — Neil Shepard and Anthony Reczek

Half Wild: Stories — Robin MacArthur

A Refugee's Journey: A Memoir — Walter Hess

Vermont Non-GMO Cookbook — Tracey Medeiros

Robin MacArthur, Heart Spring Mountain.

Jackson Ellis, Lords of St. Thomas

Chris Bohjalian, The Flight Attendant

Beth Kanell, The Long Shadow

Kimberly Harrington, Amateur Hour: Motherhood in Essays and Swear Words

Jessie Haas, Rescue

Toni Ortner, Writing Shiva

Tony Weldon, Drunk in the Woods

Aesop Lake, Sarah Ward

The Animal One Thousand Miles Long: Seven Lengths of Vermont and Other Adventures. Leath Tonino

SHORTS

US impresses Albania

Vermont Views

GALLUP STATISTIC: Median approval across the 29 countries and areas stood at 18% in 2020, down from 22% for this same group in 2017. On its face, this decline is not good news for the next U.S. administration, but even worse news is the number of allies on the list of countries where approval dropped to historic lows: Ireland (20%), the United Kingdom (15%), Denmark (14%), Switzerland (10%), Germany (6%) and Iceland (5%).

NATO ally Albania stands out as the only country of the 29 where the U.S. earns majority approval -- and it typically gives the U.S. some of its highest marks -- but the 56% of Albanians who approve of U.S. leadership is also a new low.

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Dear Grandpa Ross

Elizabeth Hill

I wish I could’ve spent time with you on your dairy farm in Pleasant Valley. But, by the time I was born in ‘46, you were already seventy-six and retired to the little house in Westville. You passed away when I was nine, so I really only got to spend in-person time with you for a few weeks each year before your final day in the summer of ’55. 

How I loved it when we’d finally arrive in Westville each summer after an exhausting two-day journey from southern New Jersey to Nova Scotia—all six of us crunched together into our family’s pale green forward-backward Studebaker. Driving up the dirt driveway to your house, we were always greeted with lovely smells from Grandma’s fresh-baked bread, biscuits, and always an apple pie cooling on the kitchen windowsill. 

You’d greet my brothers and me each with a hug and a chin rub with your day-old scratchy stubbles. I loved it when you would sit down on the old rickety wood rocking chair on the side porch, and then you’d pick me up onto your lap, and say “How’s my girl?” I was always fascinated by your shiny bald head, and the stump where your thumb used to be before it got stuck and detached itself when you cranked up the old Model T Ford.

Extract... Read More of this column and others by Elizabeth Hill >>>

Alice’s Gutter

Nicola Metcalf

It’s a 52 degree sunny day in November and after catching up a bit on the phone, Alice and I pounce on the opportunity to be outdoors together. We decide to go hiking on the land behind her house. My friend Alice is beautiful, slight, gray, and surefooted enough to do this at 90, though she stumbles once at the beginning and my heart stumbles too, thinking uh oh, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. We became close when I helped care for her declining, then dying, husband a number of years ago. It was an honor to witness the peaceful and loving end of their relationship, one that had been troubled and divided at times during a long marriage. I am “one of her people” now, as she puts it, our plan always having been that I will help care for her, too, when the time comes.

Alice is at ease in the out-of-doors though at times unsure she remembers which path we want to be on. Her blue gray eyes are bright beneath her dark blue, hand knit hat. We walk through crunchy brown leaves, step over branches and fallen trees, and squelch along in some mud. We make our way along a narrow trail, then a woods road, stopping frequently to chat 6 feet apart. We share what we and those we know are up to, and how we are making sense of our lives during uncertain times. She’s raked the leaves off her gardens three times over, and joints are complaining at a new level of discomfort and disability.  She tells me of her frustration losing memory and orientation. She misses her car, no longer trusted to drive after an accident that totaled the vehicle. She talks about living with her granddaughter Annie and Annie’s boyfriend, who live in her basement in a recently constructed efficiency apartment.

<extract> Read more of this and other columns by Nicola Metcalf >>>

WRITE WALK

The Other Side of the Bathroom Door

Susan Cruickshank

The pressure in my lower belly only intensifies as I fidget and sway. Side to side, I move in my standstill position in the line-up for the women’s bathroom. There are two women ahead of me. We’re all waiting for the two token stalls. I sigh audibly, both as a reflex and to convey my urgency, while still trying to hide my frustration with the far-too-slow people on the other side of the stall walls. 

There are areas in my life where I have no patience. And for a person who thinks of herself as a patient and flexible person, I find these moments unsettling, as they don’t match up with the person I think myself to be. Waiting in a public washroom line-up is one of the places where my impatience monster comes out and shows some of my ugly. I suppose I should be grateful for the pandemic’s lock-down in this regard, as there are few opportunities to use public washrooms. And so I’m able to avoid one of the main places this disproportionate reaction surfaces. 

Both sides of the bathroom door produce irritation and resentment. For even when I’ve secured a throne seat within a bathroom cubby, the huffing and puffing of another impatient bathroom-goer lead me to forget almost completely the discomfort which I only minutes before had been experiencing.

<Extract> Read More of this and other articles by Susan Cruickshank >>>

A Chance of Clearing

Charles Monette

The morning began cold, darkened over with clouds.  Driving up Route 30, patches of blue were coming into view.  Sun would soon follow.

When I arrived at the trailhead on Black Mountain road, sunlight was bright, reflecting on snow.  Two women were walking down the road with babies on their backs.  Their faces were smiling radiantly, basking in the joys of motherhood.  I returned their sun-glassed smiles as I readied for my hike.

Better prepared than my last sojourn, I pulled grippers over the soles of my boots. The snow on the trail was about 4-5 inches deep and had seen some traffic.  It was still powdery from the storm and fairly easy to negotiate.  Snow laden evergreen branches were hung over.  The mountain laurel looked miserable—leaves withered and spotted brown.  But it was a fine day to be on the mountain.

My pace was steady. The sun was arriving quietly, brightening the forest.  I was arriving quietly as well.  Reflecting later that morning, I realized that I hadn’t uttered a sound, nor seen anyone.  A Zen saying came to mind, “The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear.”  I heard trees creaking and bending, sighing with the wind.

A sudden gust would drop clumps of snow the size of tennis balls.  Some would burst into fine powdery puffs enveloping me in a seven-second snow storm.

<extract> Read more of this and other articles by Charles Monette >>>

OLD LADY BLOG

Solitude

Toni Ortner

Yesterday afternoon the sidewalks in Putney, Vermont were cleared, and there were banks of plowed snow mixed with sand and mud, but overnight the world turned a sparkling pristine white. There is a hush in the air; I hear a wren cry. A branch of the evergreen weighted down with snow brushes against my window. The snow on my car is mounded high and stiff and looks like a cake.

Due to the pandemic, I see only my family and walk with a friend at a distance of six feet and wearing a mask.  The hours of solitude have made me ask myself if I use my time constructively.  I structure each day to include physical therapy exercises, meditation, walking, reading, and watching films. I watch PBS News Hour each night, read letters by Heather Cox Richardson who keeps me abreast of what is happening politically and how it relates to historical events, and read The Morning edition of the New  York Times.  The phone rarely rings, so emails are my main form of communication.

I have been reading books by Thich Nhat Hanh who recommends being aware of one’s breathing in order to live happily in the present moment.  I breathe in and say the word calm and breathe out and say the word peace. Sometimes it works, but my mind wanders off into tapes of past events that caused me to feel grief or anger. What to do with such anger is an interesting question.

Read More of this and other articles by Toni Ortner >>>

ARCHETYPAL HIPPIE SPEAKS

The morass mind

Jeri Rose

<extract> The fear, the authority mandating distance, arresting anyone daring to mingle with others for any other purpose than buying things in corporate dispensing-of-goods-temples are arrested. The masks that are like a chainlink fence to a swarm of bees in effectiveness of a wall one president proposed to stop an influx of people we are to fear as criminals from a poor country hoping for some financial help without me denying that some indeed may be criminals wanting more than help but the fulfillment that pirates and all such robbers seek. Fear as power to make an atmosphere that the morass mind deems true the witchcraft notions that got women burned alive at the stake.

               Despite the overwhelming power and conditioning and acceptance that makes up this respiratory damper of atmosphere that is destructive of brain with diminished oxygen for the greater amounts of carbon dioxide we must intake with these masks, a large portion of the population does not accept the conclusions that the media spews from the authority that it supports that had it behaving like a pack of hyenas taking down the president with a universal hate that exhibited itself in words that prove the conspiracy in the complicity in the exact repetition of words ( vibration of air on  our airwaves) on channel after channel of those who are supposed to be reporting reality not a point of view mandated by some source wealthy enough to own them all.  Trump’s wealth nothing compared to the hoard of lucre that has stolen our airwaves from We the People.

               Trump’s People and Bernie’s People had one major connection that they breathe the same air of knowing that the system is wrong. Neither Trump nor Bernie knew enough. I admit I saw Bernie as the better man. My bias, full disclosure.

<extract> Read more of this and other columns by Jeri Rose >>>

MONKEY’S CLOAK

UNDER a GREY SKY

Julia Ferrari                      

Trees sway under a grey sky

Wind pushing leaves 

Cooled by shade

Light and dark all day

I hear my voice softly even-ing out.

Smoothing out its tensions,

Its fears.

The path as tightly wound as the brittle ice 

That surrounded me,

Inched me in,

Almost ended me. 

But now snows have melted

And the fragile world has thawed

Turning shades of pale and deepening green

Covering every inch in vibrating textures

gently moving

gently alive.

  Julia Ferrari

 (© 6/14/18)

Read more Monkey’s Cloak

IN BETWEEN

Covid 19, Civil Unrest and the Deeper Healing of the Planet

Julia Ferrari

One of the things I find myself asking in this time of great upheaval is “What is its purpose?” Having gone thru personal upheaval when I lost my husband and business partner, I have felt that abyss under my feet before… the feeling of  not knowing what will happen, what the future will hold etc. During that time the regular world was moving at its regular pace, but for me, everything had changed, everything had altered and my usual world had stopped. I ambled along in a disbelieving fog, unable to see the path, unable to understand what had happened—how could my normal life be gone in an in start?

This current world drama of a rampant novel virus and civil unrest that very few of us (excerpt for some scientists and civil leaders) had expected or anticipated has left us flat footed and afloat in this new world of unreality.

After being in seclusion for a few weeks alone after the first signs of Covid in March, I went out to get groceries and began to see what major changes we were undergoing. This has continued for almost a year and as far as I can tell there are many reactions to the disruption: to blame and feel anger, to stay in shock and fear (buying excess supplies or guns) or we can feel it in its rawness and have that change and heal us. 

For me after a great loss I choose to feel it all, to open my heart to the pain, rather than push those feelings down. That was not always easy…it hurt, but I believe that was my path out of limbo and back into really appreciating life. William Irwin Thompson said in his book “The Time Falling Bodies Take To Light”; We are all on edge. Human beings feel safe and secure when they can stand comfortably in the center of things, either in the center of an age or in the center of a class of people with a common word view but when they come to an edge, they feel nervous and unsettled. There, at the edge, we see familiar things end and something else begin…”

Extract Read more Julia Ferrari

OPEN MIND

"Automated Lottery"

Offie Wortham

The proposed "Automated Lottery" would raise 10 times more money for our public schools!

Wouldn’t it be nice to receive a message on your phone or computer that told you $50, $100, $1,000, or even $35,000 had recently been deposited directly into an account you have in a local bank? When we asked the creator of the proposed “Automated Lottery” at his home in Johnson, Vermont how this system would work he gave us some of the details of this revolutionary development which he believes will eventually be used worldwide.

Seven states are now allowing the purchase of lottery tickets on-line. All states are expected to do the same thing in the near future, as well as many countries. We can now purchase lottery tickets from our home 28 days in advance. You can use a credit card, or you can also pay with your Bill Pay from any bank. This is what many people use to make their car payments, auto insurance, church donations and many other things. It is setup easily from home or by going to your bank. When programmed to pay a certain amount on specific days, payments are made for any period of time, from a week to over a year. It can be stopped at anytime with a phone call.

Research has shown that it is better to play the same number every day rather than jump around hoping for more success with a different number. Statistics prove that using the same number gives one a much better chance of winning. Therefore, a person should pick one number and stick with it for at least a year.

<extract>    Read More Offie Wortham >>>

WRITE ON !

A Golden Age of the Written Word – Brattleboro 1995-2004

By Steve Minkin

What is it that makes our town feel so special? As an immigrant to Brattleboro there were certain markers such as the welcoming physical appearance of an old town with historic buildings framed by Wantastiquet.  The gateway to Vermont always felt to me as if it had a singular richness distinct from communities just across the borders to the South and East.

When I lived in Greenfield, Brattleboro was a mecca for young alternative life-style families who came to dine on vegetarian food and have fun at the very child friendly Common Ground. There were the art galleries downtown, a welcoming place – where people said ‘hello how are you’ to one and all and yes, on Flat Street – the wonderful adventures of shopping and putting in member hours at the Coop – then a very small oasis.

My first visit to the town was back in 1965 when much of Putney Road was still farmland. I was on my way to India via the Experiment in International Living. In many ways Brattleboro seemed more exotic to someone with a New York mindset than was the destination I was flying to halfway around the world.

I moved to Brattleboro in the 1990s, from Greenfield after living in England and Bangladesh and two years teaching at the University of Iowa. I remember walking to the Brooks Memorial Library on my first weekend as a resident and ‘lo and behold’ a group of authors and poets that included Veranda Porch, Arlene Distler, Karen Hesse, and Martha Ramsey were sharing their work which frankly ‘blew me away.’ I had taken up writing poetry in Iowa after a long hiatus and I marveled at the sense of community among writers living in my new adoptive home.

<Extract>

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Finnish Fandango

LESSONS  LEARNED

Anneli Karniala

It was sometime in the early 1950's, a cold day, so probably late fall or winter. Maybe I was 6 or 7 years old. We lived in the house in West Barnstable built by my father, the former Finnish war hero from the Winter War, who then became a Helsinki police detective, then non-English-speaking immigrant to America.

We were sitting at the green-painted kitchen table set with the daily-tablecloth of oilcloth. We were just starting to eat supper, my mother, my father, my sister, and I. We ate "supper" around 6pm; it was not called dinner. Dinner was a few times a month, a "Sunday dinner" around 1pm every other or every third weekend when my mother had an actual weekend off from her nursing job, a 35-min. drive away.  

Maybe we were about to eat Finnish pork gravy, "läskisoosia", or Finnish meatballs, "lihapulia", with gravy, potatoes, and mixed veggies. The veggies would have come from the new Frigidaire, or "icebox" as we were still in the habit of referring to it then. The big problem with the "fridge" as it came to be called -- even until this day -- was that the small top freezer with pull-down door didn't hold much, and it all too frequently needed to be defrosted. Plus the heavy metal door handle was a good foot long and had to be pulled down -- difficult for little kids who wanted to raid the fridge!

My parents sat at either end of the table, and I was next to my sister, with the one table leaf on our side lifted up for us. I could see the kitchen window straight ahead and the outside door to my left. Suddenly I heard a motor running in the dirt driveway. Maybe someone was just "dropping in" to say "hi", as folks were want to do in those days. But at supper time?  

Then I saw the exhaust from the tailpipe of my father's pick-up truck!  Someone had started my father's truck.  Out in our very own driveway! Those were the days of keys left in vehicles and house doors unlocked or with a key under the proverbial mat.

Extract Read more of this and other articles by Anneli Karniala

AN A-MUSING LIFE

Candles and Covid

Nanci Bern

I light 2 menorahs each night of Chanukah. One is the traditional House of Hillel (what we were taught in Hebrew School) way that increases the number of candles each night. The other is according to the House of Shammai that decreases the candles each night. I have been doing this for years.

Rabbi Hillel’s practice is "Ma'alin Ba'Kodesh ve'ayn Moridin,”: “One increases in matters of holiness and does not diminish.” From small to large you are creating unity by joining one light to another expanding together. Rabbi Shammai goes in the opposite direction. The potential is all there on the first night. We decrease to create a unity of the many who have become one.

The light of Chanukah expands and contracts. Each night we kindle the cadence of its spirit. Candles and oils bring menorahs to fullness of energy whichever direction they go. Their flames dance with our prayers. This is the grace that Chanukah gives us. The light glistens as it swells and reaches toward the infinite, and then contracts to its center. Menorahs working in tandem like this illustrate the spiritual meaning of this holiday for me. Just as consciousness needs to move, light needs to expand and contract in order to thrive and keep in balance. It can’t be day or night all of the time. We need them both. This dynamic is part of all life.

Friends have become accustomed to my taking up more room on the table as we have gone from home to home to celebrate together bringing our menorahs with us. Now they would feel something were amiss if I did not bring them both.

But this Chanukah will be different. <extract>

Read more of this and other columns by Nanci Bern

I got Covid

Rob Mitchell — Murfreesboro,Tennessee

  Yes. I will admit it. I had Covid. I thought I was cautious. I locked down my office to outside visitors. I installed temperature stations and hand sanitizers. I WORE A MASK!

Yet, still I did a stupid thing. I attended a visitation for someone I had worked with in the insurance business. There were over 1000 people there. Still, I wore a mask, washed my hands and I was exposed when I dropped my mask and shook hands and gave my condolences.

That was a Wednesday. I was tested on Sunday but only because my wife insisted. I had no fever and just a stuffy nose. The doctor's office was as shocked as I was that I was positive. Monday, I didn't feel so well at all. My wife God bless her also tested positive but never had a fever and really never felt bad.

My fever for the next week hovered around 102 degrees. I was told to hyper dose on D3, Zinc, Vitamin C and drink lots of fluids. All I wanted to do was sleep. I was not hungry. I was just tired and my bones felt like they were being crushed. Not a great feeling at all.

I bought an O2 saturation monitor and over a week watched as my oxygen level dropped from 94% to 85%. Anything under 90% they want you to go into the hospital. I just toughed it out. I coughed a lot and stuff which could be described( but shouldn't') came out of my sinuses that made we concerned that brain matter may be leaking out.

Yes, I know there are those who say 98% of people testing positive recover. I'm glad to have made it into the 98%. I was not happy to catch it or expose my family to it. Thank God none of them were impacted to a great extent.

Only an idiot would not try to protect themselves and their loved ones. Only an idiot like me would let down their guard and potentially endanger the lives of those I love. I never thought Covid was a hoax or was not dangerous. But we have to remember to always play defense when you don't understand your opponent. You may still lose the game but hopefully you will play a full game and not end up a victim to a "fool's gambit"

<Extract> Read more of this and other letters to Vermont Views >>>

OPEN MIND

No excuse

by Offie Wortham

It is time we stopped blaming the vast differences in test scores and graduation rates on the educational system alone. Check the differences out for your local schools and colleges nationwide on GOOGLE. Elementary and high schools where 100% read at the expected level, and others only 25%. Community colleges with a 25% graduation rate, and selective colleges with a 95% graduation rate.

If an elementary school teacher is blessed with students who can read and write before kindergarten isn’t their success rate going to be better than the teacher assigned a room full of students who come to school hating to read and only want to be rap stars or rich athletes?

Isn’t it time we agree that the problem begins in the home, and not anywhere else. Some people are better role models and educators for their children. This is a fact.

Poverty and low adult educational levels are not excuses for the performance of children in life and in school. Many of our greatest leaders and citizens have risen out of great poverty. Institutional racism and sexism cannot be used as the primary reasons for lower grades or poor demonstration on a job."

Read More of this column >>>

#8•Don’t ask what your country... grow up!•

A shut-down column for the Plague Year 2020.                    

The third local supermarket didn’t have any either, but like the other two it had hundreds of types of bottled water — but not one Brita filter replacement.

It had filtered water, spring water, water from France and Italy, and of course that low carbon bottle from Fiji.

Previously all three markets had had Brita-type filters, a simple carbon-filter inserted into a jug, but now none. Amazon had it.

It’s no use looking to the government to legislate that stores of a certain size must carry filters, and it’s no use either complaining about billions of plastic bottles in the land-fill, or getting recycled or going straight into the ocean.

This is something we can take care of ourselves in our town by asking stores to carry the item, and if they don’t buying from Amazon and telling everyone about it.

<extract> Read more Dairy Home Companion

THE FIRST GLASS

THE POINT

Vincent Panella

When someone bought him a drink he took a cigar instead, and his bartender brought the Antonio y Cleopatra box kept in the glass cabinet with the cocktail glasses. The box opened to the picture of the lovers – Antony in armor and Cleo reclining like Venus next to a slave with a feather fan. He knew the story because he read history and the dimensions of their love made the cigar taste sweeter and deeper.

Sometimes he did take a drink and the bartender would pour the scotch below the one-ounce line of the shot glass. He drank — or sipped really – never finishing because drinking wasn’t the point. He drank with certain people, one or two big spenders, liquor salesmen, but always with Joe, whose last name never passed his lips even though they’d been doing business for years.  Joe owned the juke box and cigarette machine, and once every two weeks he pulled up in his Buick and with a couple of pass keys took out the coin boxes and dumped the quarters onto a booth table. He and Joe would slide the coins into paper rolls and fold the ends over and tap each end to keep the coins tight. Each roll held forty quarters – ten dollars worth — and they stacked them like cord wood, then divided them equally, after which, as a sign of good will, Joe passed him a roll from his half. When this was done he - Al Cimorelli, owner in 1960 of a bar in Newburgh, New York – would nod to his bartender who brought water chasers and shot glasses and the bottle of Chivas Regal and poured shots for both men below the one-ounce line. They would salute and sip but not finish because drinking wasn’t the point. These moments celebrated who they were, their labor, the bond of their common background, their English laced with old world dialect as the most powerful of bonds — language limited and secret, something between them rolling off their tongues, in separate words and sometimes complete sentences when the subject required discretion, like taxes, black people, police, money, but not women, women were private. This was the bond of blood and work.         

Joe talked about business and how the blacks were ruining the town, and Cimorelli nodded but did not repeat the dialect slurs. He never used those words not only because they were offensive but because the woman he was in love with — as he was once in love with his present wife – was of that color.

<extract>  Read More of this and other articles by Vincent Panella >>>

URBAN NATURALIST

Black Vultures

Lloyd Graf

I was headed N on Canal around 10 AM a few days ago and ducked onto Birge St for an end run around a semi- mediated slow-down. Just beyond the computer shop I saw the pair of Black Vultures pictured in the Sept 28 photo enthusiastically rooting away at an unidentified roadside  carcass.

Couple this sighting with the 2 Blacks commemorating this past July 4 with a patriotic raid on a yummy road-kill skunk by the driveway to  Triple T 's sheds, dumpsters and garbage truck bays along Hghwy 142's all purpose disposal corridor at the base of bluffs leading to Morningside Cemetery and  Rich's photo-documented sighting of 3 similarly engaged Blacks along Fuller back in DEC of ‘19.  — then throw in Oct 2018 southbound flyover of a trio of Blacks —  Walnut St St Michael school lot —    throw in one mix-up with turks when triple T dumpster must have been a bonanza.

Extract Read More of this and other articles by Lloyd Graf

Pandemic Journal

An Introduction to the

Graphic Journal Slide Show

Linda Rubinstein

For many, a journal is a private place. Perhaps you can recall that the leatherette-covered diaries we kept as children came with lock and key. It was as close to a mental “room of one’s own” that we  could muster at ten or twelve years of age. It was where we recorded our pain and plans, our crushes and hopes, and our observations.. But a child I no longer am.

What drives my decades old practice of keeping word-and-image journals? I began in the late 1970’s during a four month stay in Pamplona, Spain. I needed an outlet for the challenges of living in another culture so I bought a sketch book and began to draw. Once this creative pathway opened, images started pouring out. That early work was all personal, done for me. I came home to find a new genre had surfaced—Artist Books—my muse had found her home. And so, starting with the comfort of the personal, I began the Pandemic Journal.

<extract>  Go to Pandemic Journal by Linda Rubinstein to watch the slide show>>>

What about your contribution?

Phil Innes

There is  a wicked inclination in the current age to skip personal responsibility and blab on in the newspapers at extraordinary length about the failure of the Fathers — a Freudian dream-cast of projections about fathers and authorities. Not only does the government get it in the chest for promising things which no twelve year old would credit possible, but no fifty year old would credit as even desirable. Doesn’t matter if you are Left or Right to understand this.

This used to be a community where citizens who had the wherewithal that took responsibility for those who had not. It was not desirable that government should fix things in Vermont when citizens could do as well or better themselves, and volunteerism was a part and even expected part of the social scene. Second-home ownership has not helped in this with Vermont being the second highest state in the Union for second-home ownership, including 81%, Quechee with 69% and Proctorsville.

But for those who live here regularly the time to have volunteered a contribution and get an orientation to it was last year. With some sort of acknowledged and sometimes measured training toward being competent in a skill, plus a regular attendance at a critical forum which makes a difference, a couple of months training at a few hours per week would have qualified anyone to attend on emergencies rather than wax large about the paternal and inadequate government in the newspapers, however efficient the government is, since the government cannot govern what the citizens are unwilling to perform.

[Captioned is Loaves and Fishes Community Kitchen in Brattleboro]

Otherwise what do you personally find yourself useful in contributing that is now accepted and included by a social body?

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Real Vermont Stories

Vermont “Maternity Homes”

by Beth Kanell

It began with a postcard. My husband Dave (who passed last April) collected them: colorful Vermont scenes, yes, but more importantly the black-and-white ones from the late 1800s and early to mid 1900s that showed actual scenes, especially in the Northeast Kingdom. There are hundreds of St. Johnsbury and Lyndonville images in his collection—but, proportional to both town size and events that seemed worth marketing as photographs, there are very few from, say, Granby or Victory in Essex County.

Or from Concord.

Dave plunged me into a new research project when he found a card labeled “Quimby Maternity Home, Concord, Vt.” His knowledge of postcard publishers and some quick investigation prompted him to added the information “1949–1953.”

As we, and then I, probed further, we found more than 50 documented births that took place, not just in the Quimby (also called Graves, for nurse Ardella “Nana” Graves — illustrated) Maternity home, but also in the Austin Maternity Home in the same small town (this one, run by Leah Virginia Austin). And both were clearly “supervised” by the local doctor, Frederick Russell Dickson, M.D.

“Maternity homes” in the rest of America seem to have often been places for unwed mothers to give birth and send their babies out for adoption. Dave and I found a single request from an adoptee born in 1946 at a Concord maternity home for clues to his parentage. But that turned out to be the exception. Online access led us to birth certificates of many babies simply born in these more supportive, medically encouraged “homes.” Mothers could arrive a day early, stay a few days afterward, have a break from parenting and get a good start with the new arrival.

But such maternity homes were not well documented. In the case of the ones in Concord, Dr. Dickson worked under contract for the local paper mill, which provided him space for a “dispensary,” and cared for many more illnesses, injuries, and preventive cases than the babies being born—and no records from the two maternity homes have been located.

So Dave and I went to local Facebook “pages” and “groups,” where residents current and past share their memories. To our astonishment, we discovered another maternity home that took patients at the same time period, the early 1900s, and it was about 20 miles from Concord, in Lyndonville, Vermont.

<Extract>

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How I Write

Vincent Panella

THE CHANNEL

These journal entries center on a fragment written forty-odd years ago. I recently found the pages typed on carbon paper, yet through all those years I mulled over the story and its possibilities – a confined setting, clear situation, very few characters, maybe a one-act, maybe a short story, but still no desire to get back in. This summer I re-entered the typescript and came up with a story line that might work: 

A young man named Larry heads for Hollywood with a copy of his first novel soon to be published. The premise of the novel is a young man’s affair with his father’s lover. Larry’s car breaks down in the Mojave just outside of Barstow. He ends up in a radiator shop and there he meets a Samaritan type called Fenwick, also a writer, and they talk about his novel, what he invented, what he remembered – what was ‘true to life - and that blurry line between art and lived experience.

The dated entries here are edited for clarity. The original fragment was page after page about his car breaking down on a long hill.....almost nothing about substance, character, motivation, etc. Forty years ago – like now – I’m still learning. It’s working title was Barstow, but gradually a theme emerged, and the title Hill of Dreams helped me shape it. The entries span two months of this year but I must have worked on the story twice as long as that. In most cases the journal entries prompt the writing of actual text, which is done on screen, on paper, and sometimes with an Olivetti.

 7/21/19 - Took a look at what I did to Barstow - still on the opening, how I chopped it to s - - -. Now all the car details are almost gone – the old V-8 burning oil, the crankcase ventilation valve, oil gauge idiot light, the retread tires because the character has so little money.

 7/22 -  Woke up thinking Bartow was f----- -  that the whole gambit is a cliche - Larry writes a novel based on life, sort of – the premise being that his main character has an affair with his father’s lover. Larry has rendered a real life experience into a novel – his novel is within this story. The story is that that Larry’s heading for Cali with a novel in which the central action is drawn from his life and a threat to his family’s privacy. And his car breaks down on the long hill outside of town.

 – and where a movie producer is interested in the novel as Larry imagines famous actors playing his family members and what their reaction might be.

 Then his car breaks down on the Hill of Dreams. Fenwick (name borrowed from a Boll story) takes him to a hotel while he waits for a new radiator. They have some yet to be written convo about his situation, what he's written about his father etc. In the end Larry drives off into the sunset, back up the hill of dreams. End of story.

 Scene: "I call it the Hill of Dreams," Fenwick said, They were sitting in the hotel lobby at a small bar and tables with a view of a garden and a raft of Eucalyptus trees.

Fenwick points out the similarity between Larry and the Okies generations back -  heading for a new life out west, beaten by the hill, or not beaten....Fenwick there to pick up the pieces.

Larry felt a little buzz from the whiskey, a comfortable feeling, the big room with its open windows along the wall was cool and comfortable without any air conditioning as was his room where he'd slept well and long, realizing that the past four nights he'd been sleeping in the back seat of the Pontiac.

<Extract>

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SCREENplay

Wildlife

Lawrence Klepp

Wildlife, the directorial debut of the actor Paul Dano, came and went quietly early this year, but it’s now available on streaming platforms, and it’s worth pursuing if you have a chance. In a year of outstanding female performers—Glenn Close, Olivia Colman, Viola Davis, Rachel Weisz, among others—the riveting work by Carey Mulligan in this film was largely overlooked. Based on a Richard Ford novel, the movie is set in a small town in Montana in 1960. The town, like many small Western towns, has a bleak, windswept, middle-of-nowhere ambience, but there’s a soaring mountain backdrop that is impressive in itself and lends the film a pathos of distance, a sense that life, or happiness, may be just over the horizon.

Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhaal play Jeanette and Jerry Brinson, a working-class couple in their mid-30s with a 14-year-old son, Joe (Ed Oxenbould). The family is barely making it financially but seems united and happy. But then Jerry gets fired from his job at a country club, having joined several members, at their invitation, for an off-hours game of golf and a drink afterward, thus violating club protocols. Jeanette, always smiling, always encouraging, is at first optimistic. She’s sure Jerry will quickly find another job. And, if necessary, she could work part-time, and they might move to a cheaper house, one even smaller and more nondescript than the one they’re renting.

<extract> Read More SCREENplay

Environment there and here

Special Environmental report by Phil Innes — Column George Harvey

In Iceland:

¶ Katrin Jakobsdottir, the 41-year-old chairwoman of the Left-Green Movement, has been elected Prime Minister of Iceland. One of the most well-liked politicians in Iceland, Katrín, a former education minister and avowed environmentalist, has pledged to set Iceland on the path to carbon neutrality by 2040. As Iceland’s fourth prime minister in only two years, Katrín will take office at a time when national politics have been tainted by public distrust and scandal. A democratic socialist, Katrín is viewed as a bridge-building leader that may lead the country towards positive, incremental change. “She is the party leader who can best unite voters from the left and right,” said Eva H. Onnudottir, a political scientist at the University of Iceland, according to the New York Times. “Because this coalition includes parties from the left to the right, their work will be more about managing the system instead of making ‘revolutionary’ changes.”

In an era when climate change is making it necessary for countries around the world to implement sustainable energy solutions, Iceland presents a unique situation. ... The story of Iceland's transition from fossil fuels may serve as an inspiration to other countries seeking to increase their share of renewable energy.

About 85% of all houses in Iceland are heated with geothermal energy. ... Renewable energy provided almost 100% of electricity production, with about 73% coming from hydropower and 27% from geothermal power.

In the USA:

¶ President Trump's first EPA Administrator, Scott Pruitt, resigned effective July 6, 2018, amid a series of scandals. Deputy Administrator Andrew Wheeler, a former coal industry lobbyist, started serving as acting administrator on July 9, 2018. Wheeler was confirmed as EPA Administrator on February 28, 2019.

The mission of EPA is to protect human health and the environment. EPA's purpose is to ensure that: ... the United States plays a leadership role in working with other nations to protect the global environment.

The EPA has 14,172 employees, and has a budget of $8,200,000,000.

<extract> Read More World & US Energy News

From The Archive

Evolution of democracy from economy to ecology

Editorial Essay

...Not too long ago these [energy] subjects were spoken of as ‘alternatives’, but in the chaotic energy scene of today they are currently only an alternative to chaos itself. One may scoff at specific proposed solutions, but the main problems can no longer be denied.

Elsewhere, Brattleboro as an influential hub to an extensive bio-region, a region without a name, is taking steps to implement a topic suggested by Wendell Berry in an essay he had published at Orion Press, Winter 2001. He titled the central essay The Idea of a Local Economy. This too, said Berry, is not an ‘alternative’ to anything but disempowerment. ‘Without prosperous local economies, the people have no power and the land no voice.’

Indeed, I remember William Irwin Thompson, founder of the Lindisfarne Foundation, New York City, saying much the same in 1982 — that the evolution of democracy will occur when we begin to shift from economy to ecology, thereby an intelligence of bio-regions provides the basis for action within the region, and Berry’s Local Economy is also the base of an enhanced local polity.

Certainly just being ‘aware’ of the difficulties in the world is altogether too passive and we might also consider a term coined by Buckminster Fuller in terms of the right way to harness our technology and economy; Imagineering.

<extract> From The Archive

Blurb Writers At The Edge

Not everyday a Vermont Views columnist has a book published. Here is Daybook 1 by Toni Ortner with reviews by Arlene Distler, Tim Mayo and Phil Innes

This would be Steinbeck if he hadn’t fooled around in other people’s kitchens. This is a full-score Cohen with two more notes, not reaching anywhere, but ever taking in. The words come humming out of the dark to shatter crystalline on the floor as sharp edged duo-tone fridge magnets familiar and mysterious as if designed by Paul Klee — not made in China or the Old Country, made in the Wild East of New York is more like it. There are hiding demons in the text waiting to pierce you, and there are non-resident angels flirting with sin.

—Phil Innes, Vermont Views Magazine

Read more of this and other letters to Vermont Views >>>

GALLERY ONE

A photographic essay on Devon and Cornwall

Anne Lenten, Ed.

A series of photographs about ‘another place’ collected by the remarkable photographer Anne Lenten — Notes by Phil Innes

#6 Mining conditions haven’t changed much in 100 years

See more photos in this article Gallery One >>>

GUEST ARTCLE

LETTERS FROM CUBA #15

Some sentences from Cuba

Mac Gander

It is dawn in La Habana and I am listening to Bob Marley’s “Rebel Music” as my wife Shanta sleeps in the next room and I mark the end of our third week here. One week to go. Travel is exhausting. There is no moment in which one does not wish to be awake.

I am thinking of the opening trope in Denis Johnson’s “Fiskadoro,” where he invokes Marley as one of the three great gods still left in the Florida Keys after a nuclear holocaust, a book that ends with a war-ship returning to those shores after a 90-year quarantine, from Cuba, a grey ship that is taller than the sky.

GUEST ARTICLE

LETTERS FROM CUBA #12

What lies beneath: Our stories our ghosts

Shanta Lee Gander

Who came first?  Europa or Europe?  With some research, I could get an answer, but the story of a girl who keeps dreaming about two continents fighting over her and who meets her fate and immortality with a God turned beautiful bull is an old one

Its not over ‘til

Vermont Views

hey, at least its not going to get below freezing

— that is down here in the valley in Brattleboro, though not on the hills and not up North. Looks like Brattleboro is snow-free through Wednesday!

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