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PHOTO OF THE DAY

New Personal Supercomputer

Photo — Phil Innes

This past week I lashed out and bought myself a new batteryless supercomputer from my stimulus check to write down important thoughts.

OLD LADY BLOG

Gratitude

Toni Ortner

March 26, 2021: Six tulips are left of 12 and have lasted two weeks.  Each day I cut the stems on an angle and pour fresh water into the vase.  White rays radiate from the center. When the petals opened wide, the bright pink faded to mauve.  Thich Nhat Hanh says if you look closely at a flower you see the sun, clouds, rain, dirt, and air and without any single one of these elements, the tulip would cease to exist.

I walked on Main Street to the General store and back today under an overcast gray sky without a glimmer of sun. The snow on the edge of the sidewalk has vanished. The only places that hold snow and ice are deep in the woods. I passed a garden with a carpet of withered brown leaves and tiny white, yellow, and purple crocuses.

As I walked, the sun peeped out, and the clouds were shades of gray. Then deep blue patches appeared, and the gray clouds turned white. Finally, the orchard is free of snow, but a white boulder in the center bulges like an eye.  The sun became stronger. Two fat brown hens with heads held up to catch the warmth stood on either side of an apple tree. The two white geese were strutting in their usual path, the male ahead head held high headed towards a fresh pile of apples, oranges, and pears left next to the old weathered red barn.

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

ARCHETYPAL HIPPIE SPEAKS

Thoughts on the Virus from a Hippie Doctor of Chiropractic

Jeri Rose

Despite so many contrarian scientists denying that there is a virus, I have felt that there is some reality to the virus model, and it seems there still is something that was released that fills that idea. On the other hand, there is the odd proliferation of some reaction that appears to infect the people and to cause the symptoms we call the flu or the common cold.

If we remember that an electron can exist as a wave and a particle, and this virus is one response coming with the actualization of the 5G electric output, then it can manifest in the response that appears as a virus and a collection of wave like symptoms that is the methodology of the flu. I have had the common cold and when the virus bursts from my cells it causes a wave of symptoms that feel awful. I presume a truth to the conceptual model that the virus got into my cells and has caused them to become virus incubators which release the newly formed viruses in large numbers into my blood stream which I have found can be ameliorated by use of a homeopathic called occilococcinum. Now homeopathics are actually effective as a vibration, which of course is a wave in motion...so the wave of the homeopathic counters the wave action of the virus particles rendering them less potent to create the symptoms and enables the immune system which we know is made up of white blood cells, and T cells and more things noted by our science as substances where our science fails to be aware and responsive to vibration and waves.

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

Passing of a great friend

Charles Monette

Although, I’ve enjoyed many hikes on Black Mountain in recent weeks, I haven’t felt compelled to write about them.  Some of life’s more sombre occasions & happenings have taken my focus.

My best friend of almost 40 years, Wayne London, finally let go.  As Milton would say, he “tripped the light fantastic”. Parkinson’s disease had slowly rendered his body “weak and wobbly.”  After a dance of many years, it took his last breath.  Wayne’s mind was questioning to the end, trying to understand his principles of M.A.S.H. (Metaphysical And Spiritual Healing).

We had talked of his insights and theories on many a walk up Black Mountain.  Full spectrum lighting, left-handedness, the Phi proportion, Alzheimer’s, morphic resonance, epigenetics, the grid, labyrinths, and yes, Parkinson’s dis-ease.  Not ease!  Countless other metaphysical phenomena stirred and fascinated this Doctor of Medicine from Harvard Medical School.  Yet Wayne referred to himself humbly as “a doc helping sick people get better.”  And “I am also a teacher, reminding people of forgotten and misunderstood history, practices, wisdom and lore.”  In his office, a quote of Einstein’s on a long black wooden block with white lettering always amused me, “If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it.”

I was blessed to be a student of his teaching.  Patterns in Math, Music, Physiology, the natural world invigorated him.  In his own words, he was, “wired for visionary thinking!” Prompting, “We need to reconnect with nature.”  Black Mountain was/is a spiritual place for doing just that.

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

They’re Here! The Singing Mystical Cicadas- Brood X

Elizabeth Hill

“Do you know the legend about cicadas?

They say they are the souls of poets who cannot keep quiet because, when they were alive, they never wrote the poems they wanted to.”

~John Berger

Brood X, the Great Eastern Brood is among the geographically largest of all 17-year periodical cicadas. Over the next month or so, billions of cicadas from Brood X—as in Roman numeral 10—will be emerging in New York, Illinois, northern Georgia, Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and parts of New Jersey. 

In the mid-Atlantic states where I live, the waning Spring weather has been rather cool, so the cicadas are mostly still underground. The mass will emerge when the soil temperature is about 64 degrees Fahrenheit. The most recent sound and sighting reports have been around Washington DC; Bethesda, Maryland; Knoxville, Tennessee: and Cincinnati, Ohio. Other northern places such as Detroit, Chicago, and St Louis have also had sightings. If you live in some of these areas and haven’t seen or heard anything yet, just wait.

“The cicadas were singing a song. It was a one-noted, one-worded; 

the words sounded like ‘please’. They were singing and singing and singing

and the whole world was falling down.”

~Karen Foxlee

I find it ironic that cicadas are beginning to emerge around Washington, DC—the seat of our teetering Democracy—now grappling with enormously deep political divisions, racism, violence, voter suppression, and systemic inequality. All of this is happening as we Americans are slowly emerging from a more-than-a-year-long pandemic that has not only taken five hundred eighty-nine thousand American lives, as well as countless more around the world.

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

Wisdom

Steve Minkin

A giant pair of celestial eyes at the base of a 30 feet high golden spire watched over her. Julie’s red hair appeared like a splotch of paint dropped impasto onto the vibrant mix of people, monkeys and dogs moving below. She had entered a realm of profound personal transformation and was overjoyed by her good fortune.

Holy texts refer to Swayambu as “the womb of creation”. The accounts of its origins have more in common with the cosmology of Quantum Physics than they do with our ordinary perceptions of cause and effect. The massive stupa came into being at the moment the Buddha of Boundless Light destroyed all illusions

The stupa consisted of a large sold white dome topped by a golden spire connected to lines of prayer flags. Around the stupa were houses, schools and temples where monks some wearing fantastical hats bellowed chants, blew long alpine trumpets, beat drums and clashed symbols. All their efforts were directed at creating esoteric pathways though the mysteries separating life and death.

Pilgrims offered food to various incarnations of the Buddha. These were quickly snatched away by thieving monkeys. Dogs wondered freely and children played, many of them shaven headed and dressed in monk’s robes. Julie couldn't stop taking picture after picture as if the camera afforded her a direct line into the experience of the people around her.

<extract> Read more of this and other columns by Steve Minkin >>>

WRITE WALK

Straitjacket Emotions

Susan Cruickshank

She bellowed like Chewbacca, guttural, and LOUD. It always amazed me how loud someone so petite could be. Even when she was wearing her large hearing aids, which hung off her protruding ears, ears that looked like two tiny teacups, the high decimal sound that emanated from her mouth made it clear that she had no awareness of her screeching volume. And yet, she could see the wincing of others that her ear-piercing vocalizations produced, and I suspect her choleric temperament appreciated the immediate effect of her words.

Kelly O’Leary* was developmentally delayed and deaf, but she liked to pretend that she was just hard of hearing.

In her early 60s, she dressed like she was heading off to the mall with her high school friends. But instead of picking up a bottle of hair dye as an act of rebellious expression, she needed it to cover up her grey roots. And when a hearing person spoke to her, she nodded and smiled as if she had heard and understood every word, when those who knew her, knew she had understood nothing.

She had a boyfriend who was also intellectually delayed. He was bush-man handsome with a scruffy beard. Charming, if he didn’t talk. Michael* didn’t speak in words. Instead, he had a moaning grunt.  He had no interest in the relating aspects of a committed relationship; rather, he wanted a girlfriend so he could bury his head between warm breasts on the dance floor at the monthly sock hop.  But if truth be told, he would have preferred to be alone in his room lying on top of one of his girly magazines.

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

Finnish Fandango

APRIL 26, 2021 – 35 YEARS AFTER CHERNOBYL

Anneli Karniala

On Saturday April 26, 1986, I do not remember exactly what I was doing at our row house in Århus, Denmark. Maybe cleaning up, going food shopping, or playing a board game with the children. But certainly not considering, or even being aware of, any inherent national danger. The children were 13,12, and 5 at that time, and it was my 12th year living in this safe Scandinavian country.

Little did I, or any others living in Denmark, know, that on precisely that day, April 26th, there occurred a nuclear accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant at the city of Pripyat, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union, about 1900 km away..... It was just life as usual for all of us in Denmark, both on that Saturday the 26th as well as on Sunday the 27th.  

Why didn't we know anything immediately on April 26th? 

Firstly, because the Soviet Union withheld the crucial information about the explosion in the nuclear reactor --- withheld that day even from the inhabitants of that area in the Ukraine. Secondly, it took 2 days for the wind to carry the radioactivity to Sweden.

Why Sweden? 

The Swedish power plant was the first outside of the Soviet Union to detect radioactivity from the blast. It was on April 28th -- 2 days after the nuclear explosion -- that Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant on the east coast of southern Sweden, about 1000km from Chernobyl, had alarms go off indicating high radioactivity on their monitors. Investigations quickly showed the radioactivity was NOT from Forsmark, and was publicized internationally. And this forced the Soviet Union to publicly acknowledge the nuclear disaster, after having covered it up to the rest of the world for 2 full days. 

Extract Read more of this and other articles by Anneli Karniala

A Cautionary Horror Tale

Margot Harrison, The Glare. Hyperion, 2020

Reviewed by Laura Stevenson

Hedda lives on a small ranch in Arizona with her mother. They have goats and chickens, a garden, books … but no "glare," Hedda's word for anything to do with computers, iPads, and iPhones. She knows the lack of technology in her life has something to do with a computer experience that left her "off kilter" when she was six. She also remembers that a baby-sitter she was fond of poured drain cleaner in her eyes because of something dreadful she saw on a computer, and still insisted, "I can still see it!" But she doesn't know the whole story. She is about to find out; her mother is going to spend a month or two nursing a friend who is dying in Australia, and for the first time in ten years, Hedda is going to spend time in San Francisco with her father, step-mother, half brother—and the world of the glare. Her mother is clearly worried about her and has made her father promise to expose Hedda to computers as little as possible. Hedda resents that protectiveness; she's sixteen, fully in enough control of her life to prevent herself from going "off-kilter" in the real world. She even plans to persuade her father to let her go to high school rather than continuing the home schooling she's used to.

<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

URBAN NATURALIST

Killdeer

Lloyd Graf

A Killdeer skitters,

Wing-droops, squeaks piteously.

I love those  Killdeer

Yes Killdeer have been a source of delight to me for most of the past 60-plus years,  Since the 1950s when I prowled pastures maintained by what was then Camp Detrick near my Frederick MD childhood home, I have more than enjoyed encounters with these smallish, incredibly spiffy plovers in meadows, vacant lots, farm and athletic fields and mudflats everywhere I've lived and most places I've visited from MD/Boston/NYNY to Chicago/Cincinnati to  the San Francisco Bay area  'Their presence was often revealed from a distance by unmistakable plaintive high-pitched piping vocalizations emanating from cover or from elegant pointy - winged flight suggestive of both small falcons and Nighthawks..They also traveled nimbly on the ground, sprinting rapidly for short distances then "freezing" in place, an element of their foraging strategy for insects and other small prey.  Seen close up Kildeer are sartorially splendid.  Landlocked lifestyle notwithstanding, their double black neck rings against a pale background go together with black caps to somehow create a nautical impression, and they are very shipshape craft indeed.  

When I moved to Brattleboro my natural expectation that Killdeer would be abundant in the area was buoyed by 1990's encounters a mere 27 miles up the line.

Extract Read More of this and other articles by Lloyd Graf

Bath

Nicola Metcalf

I soak in the tub with a homemade bath bomb given to me for Christmas. There are flecks of things:  petals of lavender, sweet birch, and calendula, floating around, oily and nourishing. These bits and the hair I have just shaved off my legs cling to the sides of the tub like high tide line at the beach. 

I go to scrub my feet with pumice stone, something I rarely take the time for but is needed. They are dry with a crust of dead skin, starting to crack in one spot.  As I start in, one big toe looks so pink and happy to finally get some loving care and attention. This makes me smile, a big deal on a day like today. Next I delight in my big brown bush, gently laced with gray, a soft cushiony triangle swaying in the cloudy water.   It’s a generous thing.  stalwart, proud, and loyal. A friend. I remember my mother cautioning me in a conversation about pubic hair. “Enjoy it while you have it” she said in a tone of disappointment tinged with resentment. It will leave me too someday, but we’ll always share fond memories. 

Lastly I examine my belly where the flesh is loosening. Grabbing small handfuls, pushing and pulling it this way and that. Today I contemplate a development there, a pasture of new growth. Little red dots and small light brown bumps with rough tops:  cherry hemangiomas and seborrheic keratoses. Tiny for now, these will deepen in color and size as time goes on. I find it unattractive. I don’t want to say goodbye to smooth skin. But two out of three ain’t bad. I will have to come back to the pasture on another day. Maybe with a picnic basket and blanket, I will consider the landscape again with a kinder view.

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

THE FIRST GLASS

Splice

Vincent Panella

           You don’t join two independent clauses with a comma. It’s not strong enough; it needs a conjunction for help; it lacks the stopping power of a semicolon. However, when confronted with a pair of independent clauses, the writer must do something, for without a connector of any kind, you have a “run on” – perhaps equally offensive. These rules apply more to essay or academic writing. Read fiction and they’re violated time and again; but for formal writing, the rules of grammar apply, usually.

            In my freshman year I had an English teacher named Dr. Goodfellow. In those days tenured faculty — not TA’s — taught the core courses. Dr. Goodfellow was aptly named, soft spoken but strict, three-piece tweed suit every day, in winter a yellow V-neck under his vest. He spoke the kind of English we were supposed to write. In his class we read Profiles in Courage and Huckleberry Finn, the last a rich source of assignments for Friday’s in-class themes. These were returned the following Monday, critiqued in detail and with a letter grade.

            At the time I thought highly of myself as a writer, especially after my senior year in high school when I received an A in English and was encouraged to write by a teacher whose name escapes me. She started off my love of writing with a take home assignment: we were to write an essay called My Pet Peeve.

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

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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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

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?

Read More VERMONT DIARY >>>

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

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