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PHOTO OF THE DAY

Cats

Poem by Charles Baudelaire

Photo by Andrea

They are alike, prim scholar and perfervid lover:

When comes the season of decay, they both decide

Upon sweet, husky cats to be the household pride;

Cats choose, like them, to sit, and like them, shudder.

Like partisans of carnal dalliance and science,

They search for silence and the shadowings of dread;

Hell well might harness them as horses for the dead,

If it could bend their native proudness in compliance.

In reverie they emulate the noble mood

Of giant sphinxes stretched in depths of solitude

Who seem to slumber in a never-ending dream;

Within their fertile loins a sparkling magic lies;

Finer than any sand are dusts of gold that gleam,

Vague starpoints, in the mystic iris of their eyes.

PASSAGES

Thomas Hardy

Text selections by Vermont Views

I am the family face; Flesh perishes, I live on, Projecting trait and trace Through time to times anon, And leaping from place to place Over oblivion. [Suicide note by a boy who killed himself and his two younger siblings:] Done because we are too menny.

Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change.

If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the inquisition might have let him alone.

The sudden disappointment of a hope leaves a scar which the ultimate fulfillment of that hope never entirely removes.

If way to the better there be, it exacts a full look at the worst.

“Justice” was done, and the President of the Immortals (in Aeschylean phrase) had ended his sport with Tess.

It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.

Yes; quaint and curious war is! You shoot a fellow down You’d treat if met where any bar is, Or help to half-a-crown.

Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.

Read more PASSAGES >>>

Recent Passages By: 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

Robin MacArthur,

Heart Spring Mountain.

Harper Collins: Ecco, 2018

Reviewed by Laura Stevenson

A Compelling Vermont Novel from Robin MacArthur

As Heart Spring Mountain opens, Tropical Storm Irene is raging through southern Vermont. Bonnie, long a heroin addict, shoots up and walks out into the storm to stand on a bridge, watching the torrent rise and shouting her exhilaration to her long-absent daughter, Vale. Far away in New Orleans, Vale gets a late-night call from Vermont; her aunt ("a near stranger"), tells her that a bridge has collapsed, and her mother has been missing for eight hours. Vale hasn't phoned Bonnie for two months, hasn't seen her since she left home eight years before, but she returns to Vermont and starts looking for Bonnie. Her search gradually draws her into her larger family, which has lived on Heart Spring Mountain since 1803. MacArthur gracefully dispenses with such novelistic props as letters, photograph albums, or diaries, and instead lets three generations of that family speak for themselves in short, interlaced chapters, each carefully dated. We follow the 1956 first-person narrative of Lena, who lives in her grandfather's hunting cabin with her one-eyed owl, Otie. We follow the dementia-tinged 2011 narrative of Hazel, Lena's 90-year-old sister, the owner of the farmhouse the family's ancestors built in the early nineteenth century. We meet Deb, gradually piecing together her progress from a hippie commune in 1974, through her marriage to Hazel's son Stephen, to the present, where she becomes Vale's compassionate anchor and Hazel's nurse. In the book's two center sections, which contain wonderfully intricate plotting, the present-tense historical narratives from the mid-twentieth century combine with Vale's search to reveal long hidden family secrets. Be forewarned: the gradual, subtle revelation of these secrets is best appreciated by readers who jot down family names and relationships as they read along.

The resulting book, like MacArthur's 2016 short story collection Half Wild, portrays a Vermont little known to outsiders. Here again, we find women living in cabins, shacks, and trailers with no running water and seldom-running cars. It also portrays a Vermont that is largely unfamiliar even to Vermont "natives." The non-chronological sequence of the chapters demonstrates the value of the Abenaki mindset that Vale finds in Evan Pritchard's book No Word For Time, in which past and future are important primarily in how they relate to "now." <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.

NOT QUITE THE THING

Sponsored by Delectable Mountain Cloth

Caption It!

MM Kizi

Series 27 images

SHORTS

Nurses, Immigrants, Religion, & forget the Almond Milk

Vermont Views

STATISTIC: Nurses remain the most revered of 20 occupations rated for their honesty and ethics. Members of Congress and telemarketers are the least revered. — Gallup

STATISTIC: In contrast to most prior refugee situations, Americans are more likely to approve (51%) than disapprove (43%) of letting Central American refugees into the U.S. — Gallup

STATISTIC: Seventy-two percent of Americans say religion is important to them, but few think its influence on U.S. life is increasing, and a record-low 46% say it can solve most problems — Gallup

STATISTIC: What people don’t know is the environmental damage almond plantations are doing in California, and the water cost. It takes a bonkers 1,611 US gallons (6,098 litres) to produce 1 litre of almond milk,” says the Sustainable Restaurant Association’s Pete Hemingway. Over 80% of the world’s almonds are grown in California, which has been in severe drought for most of this decade.

Read More shorts

URBAN NATURALIST

A Loud and Colorful Advance Party Marks the End of Hogle Sanctuary's Winter Silence

Lloyd Graf

<extracts> Finally there are signs that the figurative bird repellent is beginning to wear off. Vultures appeared in Sanctuary and town skies in the 2'd week of March, and quickly became a welcome, if delayed roosting presence on both north and south ends. Robins migrating from southern climes recently joined the sparse but rugged group of over-wintering companions on the scene. For me, though, Hogle's silence ended definitively (and literally) on the morning of March 17, St Patrick's Sunday. I parked by the Sanctuary's Eaton Avenue entrance under partly sunny 9:30 AM skies and started down the trail toward the boardwalk and viewing area. As it developed I had to give up my descent at the top of the riser zone and survey the boardwalk, the massive old cement pump station, and some of the waters from on high. The most traveled part of the Eaton trail has recently been, and remained on that day a treacherous packed-down strip of ice. The remnant of once- navigable snow alongside the trail has also been largely iced over. The Eaton approach still remained tricky as recently as March 21 though the risk factor may by now have given way to the mere nuisance factor of mud season gunk.

Suddenly I was treated to an unmistakable and unexpected spring anthem: a series of loud, shrill, overtone-laden “kon-ka-reeeeee's “, the signature calls of Red-winged blackbirds, filtered down from the Eaton Ave neighborhood I was now returning to. As I emerged from the woods, I was greeted by visual confirmation. Some 12-15 blackbirds were artfully distributed on the barren branches of an Oak or Maple tree in a yard on the east side of Eaton Ave's north-south stretch. Back-lit by the eastern sun, the birds all appeared similarly dark, but occasional flashes of red epaulet combined with continuing vocalizations served to establish that I was viewing a small flock of Red-winged blackbirds.

This was exciting to me, in that Red-wings are among the most visually striking, and entertainingly aggressive of all spring harbinger species. The fact that they are also voraciously insectivorous is both encouraging (their efforts will be appreciated very soon, when mosquitoes and flies make their appearances) and perplexing, in that their favored prey insects were not yet obviously there for them as they huddled in the 31F chill. One assumes that the Red-wings must have known what they were up to, though they have not been sighted since that Sunday, neither by me nor by residents whom I buttonholed. Let's hope they're holed up in some life-sustaining local haven or have found well-stocked bird feeders.

Red-wings are great favorites of mine, in part because of their vivid looks (that is the males' epaulet-flashing sinister good looks; the females are tastefully brown-mottled with a subtle russety suggestion on the tips of back feathers) , remarkable vocalizations and consumption of nuisancy insects, and in part owing to the manic, shrill high-energy ferocity with which they defend their territories and nests against any and all intruders. An anecdote from Chicago days 3 decades ago serves to illustrate. Strolling through Lincoln Park, a prosperous, neighborhood often referred to as a “yuppie town”, and specifically through the Lincoln Park Zoo on a glorious warm spring morning, I came upon a knot of people, many resplendent in Sunday morning finery, gathered around a Tapir's outdoor stomping ground. It was quickly evident what had attracted these folk's attention: the Tapir, a large, sturdy, and as it developed, studly male, was experiencing the glandular surges of spring in a distinctively masculine way. One after another, would-be passers-by of various genders and ages joined the clutch of gawkers captivated by the beast's equine-scale endowment. So awe-struck were they, that they were unaware, at least initially, of the entry of another testosterone-fueled character onto the stage: a furious male Red-wing. Enraged by the proximity of the human gaggle to his and his mate's nest in a nearby tree, he first circled the group screeching avian expletives. Then as his ire escalated, he started dive-bombing people's heads, especially ladies' up-do hairstyles and Easter season hats. By the time the crowd dispersed, some members having left to avoid avian strafing runs, others as the tapir's rampancy gradually waned, the Red-wing had knocked a hat off one woman's head and disarranged a couple more.

Extract Read More Lloyd Graf

OPEN MIND

What is Trump’s “Base”?

Offie Wortham

The characteristics most likely to be shared by a member of The Base are a non-college white person, over 50, evangelicals, and the rural. They have few positive contacts or relationships with people of other religions or ethnic and minority groups. Therefore, they create stereotypes. These are not merely voters for Trump, but they are those who appear to support him through thick and thin, those who, in his words, would still vote for him even if he shot someone on 5th Avenue. These are people who enjoy his tweeting and his insults to others, and they are a reflection of his mind and actions.

Non-college men appear to have been trampled by globalization, the dissolution of manufacturing employment, and other negative economic factors for the last few decades. The causes are mysterious, but these men and their mates seem to be deeply angry and identify with the political extremism manifested in Trump.

Although white men without a college education haven’t suffered the same historical discrimination as blacks, other minorities, or women, their suffering is not imagined. The Hamilton Project has found that the full-time, full-year employment rate of men without a bachelor's degree fell from 76 % percent in 1990 to 68 % 2013. While real wages have grown for men and women with a four-year degree or better in the last 25 years, they've fallen meaningfully for non-college men. They who agreed with the statement “people like me don't have any say about what the government does” are also likely to be a part of Trump’s base.

Trump has been a master of generating fears of non-white outsiders, by likening Mexican immigrants to rapists, calling African countries “shitholes”, promising to deport illegal immigrants and to build a wall between the U.S. and its neighbors, pledging to keep Muslims out of the country during the Syrian diaspora, and playing coy with his relationship with the KKK.

<extract>    Read More Offie Wortham >>>

OLD LADY BLOG

Trapped

Toni Ortner

I was walking in the mall down a long narrow corridor with dirty gray carpet. There were urine and water stains and smidges of oil. I could see the sunset in the skylight above my head. Red, orange, green and blue neon lights blinked on and off, on and off, in the signs above each store. There was liquor, lingerie, shoes, baby clothes, luggage, and chocolate shops. I did not stop to stare in any of the windows but continued to methodically walk.  I was so tired I thought I would collapse. I wanted to take a nap.  I saw a plastic bench I had not seen before and sat down heavily. I stared at a fake potted palm tree that had tinsel hanging from the branches although it was near Easter, another season.  I saw no clock. I checked my wrist but found no watch. Perhaps time had no relevance here and only destination mattered; if that were so, I was spinning like a hamster on a wheel. I started out that morning to get a new dress and shoes to wear to a party, but I had forgotten the reason I came to the mall.  

If I did not know my destination, there was no chance I would arrive. Was it such a surprise then that I was walking hour after hour?  Years might pass. It would make no difference to anyone else if I disappeared. If there were no places to buy food, even a hot dog or hamburger or a slice of pizza and a glass of water, I would starve to death in this damn mall. Furthermore, why was I the only human being walking down this corridor? Did the government declare a national emergency?

I must have dozed off because when I blinked the shops were gone. In their place were identical doors. Each door was painted a hideous shade of gray blue, and the doors had black numbers affixed to them.  I sat opposite number 99. <extract>

Read More Toni Ortner >>>

MONKEY’S CLOAK

And still

Phil Innes

Photo: Phil Innes

spitting snow

right into the eye

immediate

not nearly a courtship

direct

far before thought

afore flirting

not heavy heated russian romantic snow

with massive chords

nor pragmatic

vermont economies

though through eyes

which witnessed

way back

somehow a surviving

memory and pattern and

surviving innocence

and still an option

and still

<extract> Read more Monkey’s Cloak

WATER’S EDGE

Two Knives

Nicola Metcalf

1986. It was a bright and fresh Saturday morning. The mild weather of early spring beckoned. I headed out for a macrobiotic cooking class in lower Manhattan from my apartment in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, right on the edge of Red Hook. I lived in a 4-story apartment building made of concrete block walls where I shared an apartment with two other 20-somethings. Our space was large and light filled by NYC standards, with high ceilings and large windows.

I packed my Japanese Nakiri knife in its box, and placed it in my leather shoulder bag with the foldover top. I was in a good mood, given the weather and relaxation of a weekend after working 9-5 as a temp in midtown Manhattan. Mid morning, I walked the block and a half to the subway stop, anticipating the pleasure of learning more about macrobiotic cooking. I bought my token at the booth, and entered the dank smelly stairwell leading to the elevated train platform. A busy train had just emptied as I made my way, walking against a flood of people hurrying down to street level.

After climbing 2 stairways, I reached the final, long and very steep escalator. As I approached the bottom of the escalator, the last few riders stepped off. The coast was clear. Slowly the escalator carried me up, up towards the platform and fresher air.  When I reached the top, a man stepped out from the wall to my right, holding a large knife. No one else was in sight. My first impression was he was a scarecrow, so thin and gaunt, tattered, stuffing falling out of him. High hollow cheekbones, sunken eyes, with sallow brown skin he waited for me, a wasted human being. Stunned and terrified as the truth penetrated, I turned before the escalator brought me to him. I ran and leapt down the upward moving stairs three, four, five at a time, frantic heart racing to catch up with the release of adrenalin. As I turned, my bag fell off my shoulder.

<extract> Read more Nicola Metcalf >>>

Dance Everybody Dance

Elizabeth Hill

“If spirit is the seed, dance is the water of its evolution.”

― Shah Asad Rizvi

We were teenagers at the time, and that evening the church hall was filled with people of all ages. My best friend and I didn’t know what to expect. We’d been invited there by a mutual friend who was a member of this Armenian congregation. As the unfamiliar music began, everyone came together, forming a large circle—each person linking pinkies with their neighbors—both right and left. Except for my friend and I, everyone else knew the words to the song being played, as well as the simple dance steps that were being demonstrated by a few of the people in the circle.

Gradually, we mastered the steps and came into sync with the rhythm. Though we couldn’t sing the Armenian words, we hummed along as the circle of pinkie-linked people gently danced forward in circular unison.

Each dance continued for several minutes, long enough to feel a sense of calmness and belonging with each new dance and song. Not only were the people welcoming, but so too were the dances.

Our small suburban home town included a number of Armenian families—most of whom were related to each other. Since no one talked about it then, I didn’t realize until more recent times that the Armenians of my parents’ generation had to escape a horrific genocide in their native country to find asylum here in America. It’s seems only natural that, once they arrived in this country, refugee friends and relatives would settle near each other like they did in the villages of their homeland. Looking back, I wonder if the folk dances they knew in Armenia might have taken on a different meaning after having survived their flight to safety?

At the time, the only other community-based dancing I was familiar with was Scottish square-dancing, which I’d enjoyed every summer when my family visited our relatives in Nova Scotia.

In later years, I learned about—and came to love—Sacred Dance. Dances from many cultures around the world came to Findhorn where I was living via guests that graciously shared their country’s folk dances, each adding to the community’s treasure trove of dancing diversity.

Extract Read More Elizabeth Hill >>>

SCREENplay

At Eternity’s Gate

Lawrence Klepp

More movies have been made about Van Gogh than about any other artist (or poet, novelist, composer, tax accountant…etc.). You can see why. A rough-hewn, vagabond outsider-genius, unappreciated in his lifetime (he sold just one painting before his early death at 37), he’s the archetype of the suffering artist, and we do like our artists to suffer. Nobody lines up to see a movie about a well-fed, monotonously successful painter, and there are such—Julian Schnabel, for instance. The director of this film began, back in the 1980s, as a much-publicized painter noted for the broken crockery glued onto large, densely painted neo-expressionist canvases that didn’t remind anyone of Van Gogh. 

But Van Gogh checks all the boxes. Long-suffering, feverish devotion to his art? Yes. Poverty? Extreme. Madness? Just enough. Mental illness ran in the family, and he had an erratic life of impulsive changes of place and occupation and sudden rages. His father early on threatened to have him committed, and toward the end of his life, which is all this film covers, he was in and out of asylums. 

He was misunderstood not only by the usual suspects, the public and the myopic critics, but by some of his fellow artists. Paul Gauguin, who for a short time shared the famous yellow house in Arles with him, tells him at one point in this movie, “You overpaint. Your surface looks like it’s made of clay…it’s more like sculpture,” and insists that he is working too fast. But Van Gogh responds, “Painting has to be done in one clear gesture, has to be done fast…I want to be out of control, I want to be in a fever state.” He thought he was channeling a divine energy, a life force, that united him with nature, with the pulsing landscapes and starry nights and blossoming trees, and it was lightning in a bottle—he had to move fast to catch it.

<extract> Read More SCREENplay

MEANDERINGS

February thermoplasticity

Charles Monette

Sun bright!  Azurean sky magnificent, endlessly blue on a cloudless day!

Warm for the first week of February.  A grand day to hike Black Mountain with a friend.  We eased into the one parking spot at the trailhead on Black Mountain road and set out.

I’ve often led in my life: as a point man in Vietnam, a field foreman of a carpentry crew, a professor, a director, a father.  These days, I welcome the chance to follow, to let others lead.  On a hike, it is also good to give a friend the go ahead to view the trail unimpeded. To walk it fresh without my butt in the way.

So, we set off with Mildred in the lead.  A regular hiker of Monadnock, her stride was strong and effortless.  Mine was slower and somewhat labored.  Lest she leave me in the snow, I called to her and asked if we could go at a KP pace.  “KP?”, she asked.  “Yes, that’s a kissing pace.”  Ever the romantic, I explained a trekking methodology that I had just invented on the spot.  The beauty of the technique was that it would allow me to gracefully catch up at certain fallback intervals without losing face.  When she got too far ahead, I would ask her to stop until I caught up and was rejuvenated by a kiss.  This enabled us to each go at our own pace, and to be easy on the mountain.  After drifting apart, we would soon greet each other anew, and bask in the warmth of our caresses.  Soon Mildred was turning around frequently, and waiting for me to reach her The sunlight was bright, danced on our smiles ‘neath sun-glassed eyes.  Come on folks! Valentine’s day will soon be upon us!

I was going to title this column, February thaw.  Thinking about it, I felt that January already had dibs on that moniker.

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

Finnish Fandango

SAFETY IN NUMBERS?

Anneli Karniala

The Aeroflot plane landed. In Moscow. 

A sight I had never seen before in my life greeted me in that terminal building: a number of hefty, unfriendly-looking soldiers with real rifles. They were positioned at strategic locations: top of a stairway, bottom, around the corner. You get the idea. 

I remember the starkness. Everything was gray in the terminal. Cement-colored. 

It was winter in the late 1970's. I lived in Denmark at the time and could book a fairly cheap charter flight to Moscow, yes in the middle of winter. I had wanted to see who these Russian people were, that, in 1941 in the Continuation War between Finland and Russia, had shot and wounded my father in the mouth and jaw so severely that he spent over two years in a field hospital because of his "Russian dentist", as he called it. Of course it was only one Russian soldier that wounded my father, not the entire city of Moscow, but still.... I wanted to get a first-hand look at the country.

Perhaps a naïve notion at the time. To go to Russia, of all places. 

My thought was, that being an American citizen, I would never likely travel from the US to Russia. That seemed too crazy. However, since I could take a charter flight with a group of sensible, helpful Danes, why not? No one in Russia would start shooting Danes (had I seen too many espionage movies?), and therefore we would have safety in numbers. I'd be safe enough in a group, blend in with the others. After all, being a Finn, I too looked Scandinavian, like them.

It was a cold winter with lots of snow in Moscow. I had good warm boots with me and my mother's old mouton coat to wear; I could weather the weather, so to speak. 

From the airport terminal, we were driven by bus to Moscow-proper, passing huge apartment buildings on the outskirts of the city. Stone. Cement. No color anywhere.

Extract Read more Anneli Karniala

ARCHETYPAL HIPPIE SPEAKS

Correspondence and Confirmation

Jeri Rose

Walking out of the local health food store, I overheard a young man talking about having startled a turtle that then left its shell and dove into the ocean. I placed my purchases in my truck and returned to ask what he had been smoking? Skylar was sitting at one of the tables placed outside of that store for people to eat from the lunch bar inside. He was eating what looked like a delightful healthy meal with a young woman named Liana. He was blonde and she a raven; both were attractive and millennial. Neither of them batted an eye at my humorous intrusion. We introduced ourselves and Skylar told me, to answer my question, that this had been a dream. He told me more of the dream.

He had felt bad to have startled the turtle, so he backed away in order to allow the turtle to return and retrieve its shell. However, in the time span of the dream he recognized that there was a possibility that someone could come along and take the shell. Therefore he spent a half an hour guarding it until the turtle returned.

I said nothing delighted to hear the dream but not wanting to intrude; however, Liana seemed to sense that I might have something to say and asked what the dream meant. I said, “yes I do dream interpretation. This is a message from your subconscious to let you know about your spiritual development. You were aware that you had startled the turtle and took responsibility for having done that. Furthermore, you not only were respectful and aware, but also protective of the creature ensuring that it could be restored to its wholeness, by foreseeing that others in the world might do something out of ignorance to disable it.”

Skyler flushed and then said that a few days later he had gone to where this dream had been manifested.

<extract> Read more Jeri Rose >>>

IN BETWEEN

What In your Life is Calling You?

Julia Ferrari

For the past few months I’ve been stuck in a place where forward motion seems impossible and starting new things feels incomprehensibly blocked. So I’ve slowed way down and allowed myself to solve or be present with only one or two problems while just moving through this time, paying attention to what ails me, to how I speak to myself, listening to my inner critic — seeing myself and my life in a new light.

In life it is so easy to get caught up in our uneasiness, wanting to escape it as soon as possible. But sometimes it takes a slow and steady bearing of what is happening, of dealing with things as they are unfolding, to change them for the better. I remember when, soon after my husband died, I would lie awake night after night, thinking of all the things that were left undone and unaccomplished that day. This led to more sleepless nights until I saw it was not helping and decided I had to change it. As I lay down in bed I started to consciously list all the things I had accomplished that day, even if it was only one small thing. Then I would state the things I was grateful for and sure enough, I started to fall asleep again. This small effort slowed me down and showed me that when anxiety inducing situations happen, that increasing our anxiety about our progress is counter-intuitive. Every moment we feel anxious is a moment to look deeper, to see ourselves where we are. 

Pena Chodron in her book “Taking the Leap,” says “… our whole facade, the little song and dance we all do, is based on trying to avoid the groundlessness that permeates our lives. By learning to stay, we become very familiar with this place, and gradually, gradually, it loses its threat… We’re no longer invested in instantly trying to move away from insecurity. We think that facing our demons is reliving some traumatic event or discovering for sure that we’re worthless. But, in fact, it is just abiding with the uneasy, disquieting sensation of nowhere-to-run and finding that— guess what?—we don’t die; we don’t collapse. In fact, we feel profound relief and freedom.”

Many of us are self critical, berating ourselves for our mistakes. We can speak so sharply to ourselves, using searing language to disapprove of anything that irritates or displeases us about ourselves. We would not talk that way to another living soul, but in private we can be our own worst enemies, full of verbal abuse and scathing criticism.

Extract Read more Julia Ferrari

WRITE WALK

The Newfane Hill Walking Club

Susan Cruickshank

The jangle of her collar and the sound of her opened mouth breathing in my ear came from the backseat as she readjusted herself in anticipation. She knew she was going for a walk and she knew she was getting a treat!

We had to drive to the end of the laneway because Annabelle had been habituated to the electric fence perimeter of her home’s property and would not cross it though it had been turned off for over a year. She was such a good girl that the only way to get her across the boundary line  that moved across the driveway was to drive her across. And that is exactly what we did each afternoon around two o’clock.

Barnaby was the first to join our crew. Barnaby was the Pyrenees bear, masquerading as a really big dog. He lived at the next house on Pound Road. Barnaby spent his weekdays outside on the front porch where his bed was set up for napping and watching the world go by, even though there wasn’t much world on the private laneway. This of course was when he wasn’t making the rounds in the neighborhood for treats and pats. He really did have a secret life that his people knew little about, a whole world of friends and experiences that were just his own.

The sound of his collar as he lumbered down Pound Road always reminded me of the pocket change in an old man’s pants. When he arrived at the crossroads of Pound and Timson Hill, he greeted Annabelle and me as we were adjusting her leash, just in time for the first shelling out of treats.  I suspect this was Barnaby’s initial motivation, the hope of a gastro handout, but I also think he was lonely.

And then our three became four.

Luna was the next and final member to join. She looked and moved like the Loonie Tunes’ Tasmanian Devil, her small sausaged body encased in course brown fur. She  had tornado capabilities, but unlike her grumpy cartoon counterpart, her motivation to twist into the air at breakneck speeds was pure joy.

<Extract> Read More Susan Cruickshank >>>

WRITE ON !

Unpacking Weaponized Masculinity

by Greg Hessel

About a year ago, a friend posted on Facebook, “#MeToo, and it’s a systems problem.  Otherwise it is just one giant game of whack-a-mole.”  As a consultant who has helped many organizations look at systems’ problems over the two last decades, I intuitively agreed with the post.  However, I was bothered that I could not identify the specific aspects of our system that have led to our epidemic of sexual harassment and assault. 

About the same time, I was rereading White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible White Knapsack, by Peggy McIntosh; a somewhat dated but classic diversity article that explores the many ways that whites in our society are privileged, and how most of those privileges are invisible to whites.  This led me to wonder even more about the systemic problems that contribute to sexual harassment, and why I couldn’t see them. 

With the help of some authors, friends and some participants in a recent diversity training I led, I want to offer this list as my first draft thinking of ways in which our system fuels the epidemic of sexual harassment.  I don’t offer it to let offenders off the hook in any way or imply that there is no personal responsibility for hurtful actions.  We all make choices and we need to be held accountable for those choices.  In fact, I believe one systemic contribution to sexual harassment has been not holding men accountable enough. 

That said, I don’t believe the problem will ever be solved if we don’t go beyond personal accountability and explore some of the broader system’s contributions.

<Extract>

Read More of this article >>>

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

VERMONT DIARY

Five Chill Words

Phil Innes

About 39 years ago I found myself seated in a group of people from all over the world at an orientation to The Findhorn Foundation, in Morayshire, Northern Scotland. People were introducing themselves and where they came from, and then it came the turn of the woman sat beside me dressed all in black who had been knitting through the introductions.

“Anna from Auschwitz”, she said.

Following that, I adjusted by own introduction away from Cornwall, it’s world class beaches, air, palm trees and dolphins in the river, since that may have seemed a too-conscious levity, and mumbled something else.

I was reminded of this incident by two more recent ones; a review by Laura Stevenson of a title by Walter Hess — A Refugee's Journey: A Memoir; and with simultaneous news reports of increased Holocaust Denial in Europe and in the USA.

Though Anna’s chilly announcement before resuming her knitting is not the thing I remember as much as what happened a few days later. Again meeting at ‘The Park’ in a well-lit room with flowers and upon a mid-session break for tea I felt a claw like hand on my arm — a couple of young Dutch people were chatting with a young German one, discussing what sort of herb teas there were available? As innocent an anecdote as could be imagined, but Anna gasped to me, “(Phil) I cannot hear this language”, and I could see there was an immanent syncope, so I picked her up and carried her outside — then we walked around awhile until lunch, not mentioning the episode at all, not then not ever.

I will not remark on that more except to say, being a Celt, that one does not accept things as randomly happening, and there is always something pert, something important or significant to understand about encounters even of the noir-romance. Not about making something of this into a noble cause on behalf of others, promoting it as a subject for general conversation, or even undertaking a sort of psychic voyage into another’s dark. I wrestled with this for a month or so and eventually let it go, feeling that the response ‘better to light a candle than curse the darkness’ seemed a little too intellectual.

Then I chanced upon two children in the community playing with bricks and one telling the other how to stack them properly, but not succeeding until the knowledgable child demonstrated how to do it.

Read More VERMONT DIARY >>>

AN A-MUSING LIFE

One Moment, Please

Nanci Bern

I am in a car on a New England highway. It is a sunny winter day. This ride could not be more different than the one I took last month. I recall that day because it is 4 days before New Year's Eve and we still have had no snow to speak of. This does not make my inner snow bunny smile.

It was 1:00 pm. The drive from Vermont took the requisite 3.5 hours. The sky grew grey and menacing the closer I got to New York City and the anticipation of having a much missed hometown exploit. Snow was in the forecast. I hadn't been in a winter snow in my beloved concrete jungle in years. Not that I do not appreciate where I live now; but I am split like a log being halved for a winter wood stove.

My friend came to the lobby and introduced me to the doorman. He entered me in the computer so other building folks would know that I passed muster to be allowed to traipse in and out for the week. When I saw myself being popped into the thing a.k.a., the real doorman, I wondered if it was related to H.A.L.

So up we went to settle me in, then just as quickly we spun around to walk the streets of Broadway and West End. Oh, the grit and wait, the harsh swirl of wind (?) that was wrapping itself around my ankles made me stop. I took a whiff of the air with my now New England snout and knew we were going to be in for it. 'This can't be good', I thought. I tried to ferry my friend along all of our stops to avoid the ensuing deluge, but she wouldn't heed my warning.

Yup, we got caught in it. We got so caught in it that I stopped seeing a way out. The snow came down fast, wet and heavy. Frenzy ensued. <extract>

Read more Nanci Bern

Scandinavian Christmas Dishes

Real food from scratch, submitted by Anneli Karniala

One thing is for sure. When there are only about 6 hours or less of daylight during December, depending on location, Scandinavians know how to light up the darkness. It is with beautifully set tables, candlelight along with lamplights, and delicious, satisfying food.  

There are many food traditions in Scandinavia around Christmastime, depending upon country, and whether referring to a company luncheon, a December dinner for guests, Little Christmas Eve dinner (Dec.23), Christmas Eve dinner (the 24th), Christmas Day luncheon (the 25th, actually another dinner!), or 2nd Christmas Day dinner (the 26th). 

As you can see, there's a lot of eating.  And drinking. Of wine, beer, vodka, glögg, eggnog, Akvavit, snaps, aperitifs, etc.  Not much is low-cal!

On Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, for example, there would be several courses.  Typically, the first course would include fish (smoked, or pickled, or salt-and-sugar cured), sausage, head cheese (not a cheese).  Then the main course would perhaps have one or two of the following: roast duck, roast pork, beef roast, turkey, ham along with various condiments and sauces. The accompanying dishes could be any of the following: braised red cabbage, creamed kale, caremelized potatoes, potato casserole, rutabaga casserole, beet salad, green beans, peas. Various breads or rolls are also served.

Here are 2 recipes that are often prepared at Christmas in Denmark.

LEVERPOSTEJ (Danish Liver Paté)

GRAVLAX   (salt-and-sugar-cured salmon)

serves 10-12

Read on for ingredients and procedures

Read more FOODISH

THE FIRST GLASS

TEXAS TOAST

VOLUNTEERING FOR BETO

PART 2

Vincent Panella

[Vermont Views Magazine does not take part in partisan stances in local or national politics, but it does, from time to time, observe the state of people who vote, their knowledge and acuity, if any]

A Beto volunteer calls.

"Have you been trained?"

"In what?"

"Phone banking and block walking. Have they sent you the webinars?"

"What's a webinar?"

"It's like an online seminar."

I watched the webinars on phone banking and block walking. For the former you log onto an automatic dialer and speak from a prewritten script. Block walking is based on the same principle: instead of phone numbers the system identifies voters' streets and houses from a smartphone GPS. The script is the same: get voters to commit.

"Will I see you in Dallas?" I ask the volunteer.

"No, I'm calling from another part of the state."

At Logan Airport I watch the Jet Blues line up and taxi, top lights blinking in the sunless afternoon. It's all New England, cloudy, chilly, ready to rain. A mental goodbye to home. Dallas will be in the nineties. I don't know what's in store. All I know is the address of the Dallas headquarters and my plan to walk in and introduce myself.

My  phone rings. Its another Beto volunteer. How am I?  Where am I? Is everything okay? I'm relieved that people are taking the time to reassure me that all is well. I tell him I've watched the webinars, that I have a smart phone and computer but would still need a little help. No problem. I begin to rest easy. He says to show up tomorrow at the headquarters.

Dallas is all sprawl. Fast food joints abound, Chick-fil-A, Whataburger, Taco Bueno, a Spanish chain supermarket called La Michoacana. My Lyft driver is an Iranian named Mashid. We have a softball conversation about immigrants coming here for a better life, my grandparents, his grandparents, all the same, all good. We speed through a maze of highways and beltways and swirling  roads above our heads, all concrete and red steel. There's no feeling of a center. We're not in Kansas any more, but I don't say this to Mashid. We talk football, Vermont, snow and seasons. Does it snow in Dallas? Hardly and when it does, watch out.

At the end of the ride I channel Polonius. When trying to find out about his son, Laertes, then in Paris, he instructs his spy to "take as it were some distant knowledge of him." I tell Mashid that I've read about a race for Senate between someone called Beto O'Rourke and Ted Cruz.

"Who do  you think will win?"

"Cruz."

<extract>  Read More >>>

September 2018

George Harvey

Science and Technology:

¶ “Flood frequency of world’s largest river has increased fivefold, study finds” • Flooding on the Amazon River has increased fivefold over the last two or three decades, a new study has found. Analysis of more than 100 years of river level records from the Amazon showed that both floods and droughts had become more frequent. [The Independent]

World:

¶ “SIMEC Atlantis Unveils World’s Largest Tidal Turbine” • Tidal turbine maker SIMEC Atlantis Energy unveiled designs for what may be the world’s largest single-rotor tidal turbine, the 2-MW AR2000. SIMEC Atlantis’s 1.5-MW turbines are used at the world’s largest tidal stream away, the 6-MW MeyGen array off the north of Scotland. [CleanTechnica]

¶ Nearly 400 investors, with assets worth $32 trillion, announced The Investor Agenda, a first-of-its-kind global agenda aimed to accelerate and scale-up actions critical to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement. [CleanTechnica]

¶ “Electric For All Campaign From Volkswagen – 10 Million EVs Based On MEB Platform” • Volkswagen officially launched its “Electric For All” campaign this week with the official introduction of its MEB platform. The platform is where the powertrain, suspension, brakes, and other vital components all come together. [CleanTechnica]

Illustrated:— VW MEB platform

¶ “Renewables reach 37-year high” • Strong hydro and wind generation saw 85% of the New Zealand’s electricity produced from renewables in the June quarter, government data shows. The country has a target to achieve 90% renewable power by 2025. The Labour-led coalition has suggested going to 100% 2035. [Newsroom]

US:

¶ “Boise City Aims At 100% Renewable By 2030 For Municipal Operations” • The City of Boise has joined a growing list of cities across the country that have committed to transitioning to 100% renewable energy sources. The Boise city facilities are already fueled by a combination of renewable and non-renewable sources. [Boise State Public Radio]

¶ “Renewable energy proposition draws millions of dollars in campaign spending” • Arizona Prop 127 is an initiative to amend the state constitution to require power utilities to get more of their electricity from renewable resources. Both supporters and opponents are currently engaged in a fierce and expensive media battle. [Tucson Local Media]

¶ “Jacksonville utility company wants federal regulators to intervene on Plant Vogtle dispute” • Jacksonville Electric Authority asked federal energy regulators to intervene in its dispute with a Georgia electric agency over an agreement requiring Jacksonville’s ratepayers to help build two nuclear reactors in Georgia. [Savannah Morning News]

<extract> Read More World & US Energy News

SCAM Alert, EBT Cards

This note forwarded by Robert Oeser

Good afternoon, Hunger Council of the Windham Region members,

We are reaching out to you today to share an important announcement from the Department for Children and Families: The vendor who distributes 3SquaresVT benefits on Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) cards has received several reports of theft. Some Vermont participants have reported that their benefits were withdrawn from their cards through a bank in California — without their knowledge or permission. Similar reports have been received in other states.

The Vermont Department for Children and Families is working to replace the stolen benefits as soon as possible. Funds will be replaced by paper check to avoid further theft. There is currently a block on all transactions from California using Vermont EBT cards.

This theft of benefits is money for food stolen from low-income Vermonters. <extract, read more>

Read more 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

SPECIAL FEATURE

A Dance with Hermes

Ken Masters

‘Into this hallowed room (I remember a gratifying visiting Professor of Logic, who, whilst debunking “Eastern Philosophy”, and cutting short his fourteen pages of definitions of “consciousness”, waved his arms in the air, inviting in the energy to energise the very expression of his de-bunking – which intangibility I can not possibly recognise, classify, or exonerate) came one Lindsay Clarke, propagating one irritatingly intangible “(A Dance With) Hermes”, full of vital “presence”, whom I hoped I had seen off aeons ago.

Take #7

Vermont Views

January 19th 2019

The good news is that it isn’t 3 feet, only 2. The bad news is that the second foot is going to be sleet and freezing rain. 

Whatever the snowfall amounts Monday 21st January looks brutal with a high with windchill of -7F.

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