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“Quality of Life, Spirit of Place”
vermont views magazine
Home page
“Quality of Life, Spirit of Place”
Vermont Views Magazine
Home Page
Features
Articles
Columns
Covid 19, Civil Unrest and the Deeper Healing of the Planet
Julia Ferarri
Noteworthy
Charles Monette
Archetypal Hippie in Covid
Jeri Rose
Jolene - A Short-Story told in PartsPart 5 and 6 — Part 5 “Dinner.”
Susan Cruickshank
"Automated Lottery"
Offie Wortham
A Golden Age of the Written Word – Brattleboro 1995-2004
Steve Minkin
Jolene - A Short-Story told in Parts — Part 4
Susan Cruickshank
Lessons Learned
Anneli Karniala
Deriving Meaning in Life
Jeri Rose
2020 Winter Solstice —
A Celestial Dawning
Elizabeth Hill
Candles and Covid
Nanci Bern
I Got Covid
Rob Mitchell
No excuse
Offie Wortham
Dead brown leaves
Charles Monette
Re-Booting America
Elizabeth Hill
#8 •Don’t ask what your country... grow up!•
September 28, 2020
Toni Ortner
Jolene - A Short-Story told in Parts — Part 3
Susan Cruickshank
THE POINT
Vincent Panella
Walking Home
Elizabeth Hill
Grounding in the Time of Lava
Nanci Bern
The new bi-polar madness
Jeri Rose
Early days of August
Charles Monette
Black Vultures
Lloyd Graf
3 to 5 minutes on racial justice, no thanks
Offie Wortham
Jolene - A Short-Story told in Parts — Part 2
Susan Cruickshank
Toward Restoring the Republic
Jeri Rose
R & B IN THE US
Anneli Karniala
The RBG Effect
Elizabeth Hill
A Tale for Today
Nanci Bern
Arriving
Nicola Metcalf
August 12, 2020
Toni Ortner
#7• Neu Carz•
The Universal Field in Practice
Jeri Rose
Jolene - A Short-Story told in Parts — Part 1
Susan Cruickshank
Listening to vibrations
Charles Monette
A SEA CHANGE FROM FEAR
Anneli Karniala
Entering a Brand New Portal
Elizabeth Hill
#6•News from Hunger Ground Zero•
River-Bottom Dirt and an Innocent Canoe
Susan Cruickshank
Flashback
Jeri Rose
Jesi’s stone
Charles Monette
Transforming Us
A tribute to John Lewis
Elizabeth Hill
#5•Soup Kitchen + Taboo Inquiry•
A Graphic Journal Slide Show
Linda Rubinstein
The Ugly Iris
Nicola Metcalf
Nurses Have Rights Too
(Or Should)
Rob Mitchell
Life is Uncomfortable
Susan Cruickshank
Swimmer & The River Styx
Toni Ortner
Semmelweis — a book review
Vincent Panella
Understand the anger
Offie Wortham
An American Life Full of Grace
Elizabeth Hill
I have become very stupid
Nanci Bern
The Three Amigos
Susan Cruickshank
A NEW NORMAL LEXICON
Anneli Karniala
#4•Ups and Downs•
#3•Jig and Drabble•
#2•baby talk•
#1•Paradise Postponed•
Mountain is open
Charles Monette
•a series•
March 28, 2020 — Rome Frozen
Toni Ortner
A Lovely Little Thing Called Hope
Elizabeth Hill
Paper-Bag Crowns & the Pandemic Anniversary
Susan Cruickshank
Nurses Have Rights Too
(Or Should)
Rob Mitchell
Facetime goodbye
Charles Monette
Entering the Space
Between Us
Nanci Bern
After New Zealand — A Series of Vignettes from Soul to Soul
#3 Look to The Rainbow
Elizabeth Hill
Meandering in place
Charles Monette
My grandmother died of the Spanish Flu
Vincent Panella
IMAGINE A WATERFALL
Anneli Karniala
Hip Hip Hooray!
Susan Cruickshank
What about your contribution?
BRIDGING BACK TO LOVE
Julia Ferarri
After New Zealand — A Series of Vignettes from Soul to Soul
Glow Worms- Who Knew?
Elizabeth Hill
Paid Sick Leave
Offie Wortham
Bernie in the age of
corona-virus
Darwin’s Theory of Adaption and My Crampons
Susan Cruickshank
Dust of Winter
Charles Monette
My brother Lonnie
Offie Wortham
After New Zealand — A Series of Vignettes from Soul to Soul
Elizabeth Hill
saturday’s quiet morn
Charles Monette
OCEANS RISING
Nicola Metcalf
Why is Martin Luther King Day a day off from school?
Offie Wortham
The Glimmering Tail of the In-Between
Susan Cruickshank
POOL
Vincent Panella
Wurz that?
Pass the Abundance Please, It's Next to The Holiday Pie
Nanci Bern
Letter from Australia
Annie Matthews
Welcome Bay and Beyond
Elizabeth Hill
A book review
Vincent Panella
Broken twigs on snow
Charles Monette
Forging a Relationship with Fire
Susan Cruickshank
IT'S ABSOLUTELY FREE !
Anneli Karniala
A Gift for the Season
Jeri Rose
Growing Up
Jeri Rose
Findhorn Foundation
Doug Hoyt
There are Four Seasons
A Walk Around the Block with Mister Rogers
Elizabeth Hill
The Animal One Thousand Miles Long: Seven Lengths of Vermont and Other Adventures — by Leath Tonino
Laura Stevenson
Slow travel plans for the holidays
Charles Monette
boy child
Charles Monette
So far it’s been a good run
Offie Wortham
Three New Images
Kate Hill Cantrill
Draining The Swamp at 510
Elizabeth Hill
Love’s Grace
Nanci Bern
Fall Epiphany
Susan Cruickshank
Tale of two skies
Charles Monette
Vermont “Maternity Homes”
Beth Kanell
eco-virtue, eco-ethos, eco-sin
Charles Monette
Resurrecting The Grail
Elizabeth Hill
WHAT HAPPENED TO FRUGALITY?
Anneli Karniala
Django
Susan Cruickshank
One Art,
Elizabeth Bishop
Kate Hill Cantrill
In striking contrast
Charles Monette
Burying Roger
Nicola Metcalf
2019
Publisher Challenge Essays
Vincent Panella
Tony Weldon,
Drunk in the woods
Laura Stevenson
Ruminations From the
Yellow Brick Road
Elizabeth Hill
The Recipe
Susan Cruickshank
Encase the world in iron
Charles Monette
The Funeral
Anneli Karniala
5,000 Vermonters at risk
Emily Cohen
Stones kicking back
Charles Monette
Facets of Woo Woo
Jeri Rose
A Bowl of Cherries
Elizabeth Hill
The Fickleness of the Toronto Coffee Society
Susan Cruickshank
Two Kinds of Truth
Beth Kanell
A short recollection from fifty years ago
Jeri Rose
How Very Rich and
Deep our Lives
Julia Ferarri
You and Me
Elizabeth Hill
Green Mountain Mourning
Susan Cruickshank
Mexico City closed today
Charles Monette
Mountain laurels in June, mountain laurels in bloom
Charles Monette
The Vital Un-Silencing
Nanci Bern
Two Pieces
Toni Ortner
Real or Not Real? Famous Words of the Vermont Supreme Court
Beth Kanell
Kilkenny, Ireland
Doug Hoyt
Watching the maestro
Anneli Karniala
The Hills of Nova Scotia
Elizabeth Hill
Beth Kanell, The Long Shadow
Laura Stevenson
Blurb Writers At The Edge
Distler, Mayo, Innes
Walmart Universe
Nicola Metcalf
Random Birthdays
Susan Cruickshank
Another foggy morning
Charles Monette
Kilkenny, Ireland
Doug Hoyt
George and Agnes
Howard Prussack
River of the Lonely Way
Charles Monette
Special
Elizabeth Hill
“When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn?”
A major essay;
part 3 of 4
The Immigration Act of 1924, or Johnson–Reed Act, including the Asian Exclusion Act and National Origins Act
Offie Wortham
Uncle Paul, Big Macs
& Thank You’s
Susan Cruickshank
A robot picked my strawberry today
Charles Monette
Into the grey
Charles Monette
Mud bumps of April
Charles Monette
Speech to the congregation
Vincent Panella
Mud
Susan Cruickshank
Red-Handed
Elizabeth Hill
TO READ OR NOT TO READ!
Anneli Karniala
Division Tactics
Jeri Rose
Wildlife
Lawrence Klepp
Environment there and here, Special Report by Phil Innes
Phil Innes
Trapped, part II
Toni Ortner
A Loud and Colorful Advance Party Marks the End of Hogle Sanctuary's Winter Silence
Lloyd Graf
And Still
Phil Innes
What is Trump’s “Base”?
Offie Wortham
Trapped
Toni Ortner
Two Knives
Nicola Metcalf
Dance Everybody Dance
Elizabeth Hill
Why are 380 people in prison in Vermont without a trial?
Offie Wortham
At Eternity’s Gate
Lawrence Klepp
All’s relative
Charles Monette
February thermoplasticity
Charles Monette
SAFETY IN NUMBERS?
Anneli Karniala
Lessons We Must Learn
Jeri Rose
Stan and Ollie
Lawrence Klepp
What In your Life
is Calling You?
Julia Ferarri
ElizaVanGoghbeth
Elizabeth Hill
Kairos
Phil Innes
Unpacking Weaponized Masculinity
Greg Hessel
Five Chill Words
Evolution of democracy from economy to ecology
Ruminations on Kale
Nicola Metcalf
490 — a Record!
Caravanserai
Auld Lang Syne
Susan Cruickshank
Ultima thule
Charles Monette
Transcultural Awareness Dining
Offie Wortham
A Ladybug’s New Year
Elizabeth Hill
One Moment, Please
Nanci Bern
Secret Voting in Congress, The Answer to the Gridlock
Offie Wortham
Scandinavian Christmas Dishes
Feature Article
Anneli Karniala
Newz and the perennial season
Sunday quiet
Charles Monette
WHAT'S THE RUSH?
Anneli Karniala
An Encroaching Lawlessness
Julia Ferarri
Morning on the Mountain
Nicola Metcalf
For the gardener who is gone
Toni Ortner
Moments of Silence
Charles Monette
Shower Etiquette
Susan Cruickshank
Choosing Hope
Elizabeth Hill
Walls Have Ears
Alan Rayner
Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Lawrence Klepp
Italian Impressions
Nicola Metcalf
An Austere Hogle Sanctuary Sleeps in Beneath a Chill Sunday Morning Sun
Lloyd Graf
Apple Cottage Cheese Pancakes
Susan Cruickshank
Why do we really have a drug problem in Vermont?
Offie Wortham
Colette
Lawrence Klepp
Of Home
Elizabeth Hill
a rainbow swirling jet stream
Charles Monette
Apple-bobbing and Remembering the Dead
Anneli Karniala
Witch Hat To Wear
Nanci Bern
TYRANT!
Phil Innes
TEXAS TOAST, VOLUNTEERING FOR BETO — Parts I & 2
Vincent Panella
Has Bean Has Travelled
Apache foggy morning
Charles Monette
Spiritual Smorgasbord for Soul Sisters
Elizabeth Hill
BUT (YOU SAY) IT'S ONLY A BOOK !
Anneli Karniala
Where’s the Gravy?
Susan Cruickshank
Twelve Good Men
Just one day in the energy life of the planet
September 2018
George Harvey
Why I chose to look ugly, and the reasoning behind it.
Susan Polgar
The Wife
Lawrence Klepp
Got Milk? --
Not this kind, you don't!
Anneli Karniala
Typewriter days
Vincent Panella
Beyond the bees
Charles Monette
Focused Light from a Different Star
•
Part 1 Self Portrait Frida Kahlo 1940
Creation of the Birds
•
Part 2 Remedios Varo 1958
•
Part 3 Join, Elizabeth Murray, 1980
•
Part 4 IXI by Susan Rothenberg 1977
•
Part 5 The Artist’s Wife in the Garden at Skagen 1893
•
Part 6 Gathering Paradise, Sandy Skoglund, 1991,
color Cibachrome photograph
•
Part 7 The Savage Sparkler, Alice Aycock, 1981, steel, sheet metal, heating coils, florescent lights, motors and fans
Toni Ortner
A Touch is All it Takes
Nicola Metcalf
Ladies I Need Your Help
Susan Cruickshank
#1 Sennen
#2 Surfing at Portreath
#3 Air Mail?
#4 Tall Ship at the Brixham Pirate Fest
#5 You can’t have a pirate ship without pirates
Anne Lenten, Ed.
Rainbow Connections
Elizabeth Hill
Woodier
Blink little fire-beetle, flash and glimmer
Lloyd Graf
You Can’t Do That
Charles Monette
How To Evaporate Hate?
Black Panther meets Klansman
Offie Wortham and Curtiss Reed Jr.
Losing the Garden
Julia Ferarri
Write Walk EXTRA
Rabid Fan & Conversion
Susan Cruickshank
Crossing The Finnish Line
Anneli Karniala
The Blazing Sun
Charles Monette
To Have a Piece of Cake
Elizabeth Hill
Is that You Aunt Helen?
Susan Cruickshank
Letting if flow
Nanci Bern
Lessons We Must Learn
Jeri Rose
hell to swelter
Charles Monette
Sleeping With Herodotus
Vincent Panella
Maine morning
Nicola Metcalf
How Can an Educated Person be Poor in Our Affluent Society?
Anonymous
“Thus, I was of the opinion...”
Jeri Rose
Affirmative Action should be based on Need not Race!
Offie Wortham
Mother and Child
Elizabeth Hill
Ten Minute Plays
Lawrence Klepp
Understory vines
Charles Monette
Of hippos and their snacks
Nanci Bern
I See You
Susan Cruickshank
Fifty Years of Gratitude in One Beautiful Weekend
Elizabeth Hill
Don’t free Tibet, yet
to Mother Teresa
András Adorján
Compassion is volunteering to feed the hungry
Jane Southworth
Perfect
Jeri Rose
Searching For All the Moments We Put on Hold
Julia Ferarri
So what is Donald Trump
Offie Wortham
Fake News & Side-Seams
Susan Cruickshank
In Light of Pee
Nicola Metcalf
May Hem at 510
Elizabeth Hill
Horoscope & Water Wars
Toni Ortner
Here comes the sun
Charles Monette
I set myself afire
Charles Monette
barking soliloquies
Susan Cruickshank
Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool
Lawrence Klepp
Blooming through the gloaming
Elizabeth Hill
Ode to a Goddess
Charles Monette
Black Man/Black Panther
Offie Wortham
Peaceful
Charles Monette
Shawabty and Snowdrops
Elizabeth Hill
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Lawrence Klepp
I’ll stay here till I get here
Charles Monette
Writer and Agent
Toni Ortner
The American Way
Covered Bridge Cathedral
Susan Cruickshank
The Darkest Hour
Lawrence Klepp
Not So Plain Jane
Elizabeth Hill
The Resolution Revolution
Nanci Bern
The Man on Newfane Hill
Susan Cruickshank
LETTERS FROM CUBA — 15
Some sentences from Cuba
Mac Gander
LETTERS FROM CUBA — 13
What’s time to a shoat?
Shanta Lee Gander
“Social Relationships”
Offie Wortham
Untitled
Phil Innes
Like a Dan Shore Report
My Weekend with Lenny
Elizabeth Hill
This Poet Walks Into A Bar...
Vincent Panella
Lady Bird
Lawrence Klepp
Whither the storm?
Todd Vincent Crosby
“...spanning 6 1/2 to 7 feet”
Lloyd Graf
Women,
you can’t get there from here
Who do fools fall in love — Letter from a friend
Offie Wortham
Multiculturalism is the opposite of Integration
Offie Wortham
The Fruitcake Caper
Elizabeth Hill
OUR EXPECTATIONS
Julia Ferarri
Cut To The Core
Nanci Bern
75 at tea
Todd Vincent Crosby
Wonderstruck
Lawrence Klepp
All souls’ elegy
Charles Monette
Little Miss Buster
Elizabeth Hill
Gapstow Bridge
Toni Ortner
A Slow Day at Hogle Sanctuary is Salvaged by a Furry Visitor's Aquatic Star Turn
Lloyd Graf
You cancelled your vacation
Charles Monette
Thay
Elizabeth Hill
Light footprints
Charles Monette
A Remembrance of Yom Kippur Angels and the Dancing Rabbi
Nanci Bern
Bread and Circuses
Jeri Rose
DEMOLITION
Vincent Panella
Nighthawks
Lloyd Graf
Wind River
Lawrence Klepp
A Cross By The Sea
Toni Ortner
A Man Named Shin
Elizabeth Hill
Full Circle Meander
Charles Monette
A Rational Solution to our Dilemma in Afghanistan.
Offie Wortham
Charlottesville
The Heart of the Serpent
Nanci Bern
Malvern Hill
Charles Monette
Dunkirk
Lawrence Klepp
So Who Came
To Your Funeral?
Offie Wortham
Cicero’s Hands
Mike Murray
2030 — a short story
Offie Wortham
How To Fold A Presby Cap
Elizabeth Hill
A July summer’s midday morn
Charles Monette
Reflection
Julia Ferarri
The Art of Flight
Nanci Bern
For The Birds
Jumping Through Time
in My Life
Jeri Rose
Baby Buddha
Elizabeth Hill
A Transcultural Awareness Experience
Offie Wortham
A Blackbird with Snow Covered Red Hills 1946
for Georgia O’Keefe
Toni Ortner
overflowingly so
Charles Monette
John Dante’s Inferno,
A Playboy’s Life -
by Anthony Valerio
Vincent Panella
From the Hands
of Our Fathers
Elizabeth Hill
Their Finest
Lawrence Klepp
Rights and privileges
Jeri Rose
Does Lifestyle Matter more than Race?
Offie Wortham
Robin in the rain
Elizabeth Hill
Luck
Vincent Panella
Change of Season
Immigrants in Vermont
Philip B. Scott, Governor
The language I speak
is a language of grief
Toni Ortner
Tarnished Gold
Jeri Rose
Other voices
Charles Monette
Elle
Lawrence Klepp
The Great Exodus-Salamanders and Passover Crossings
Nanci Bern
One Sip at a Time
Nanci Bern
This Land
Elizabeth Hill
The British Aren’t Coming — Alas
But The Goalposts Keep Moving!
Offie Wortham
‘Beware the ides of March’
Charles Monette
Grey Tower
Phil Innes
Writing like a Painter
Vincent Panella
Archetypal Hippie Speaks
Racism vs Sexism
Jeri Rose
Ice floes slow
Charles Monette
The Sanctuary in Late Winter:
a Long-Deferred Visit to Hogle Offers Rewards and Raises Concerns
— part 2 —
Lloyd Graf
Mein Yertle
Elizabeth Hill
Lion
Lawrence Klepp
The Sanctuary in Late Winter:
a Long-Deferred Visit to Hogle Offers Rewards and Raises Concerns
— part 1 —
Lloyd Graf
White as Snow
Charles Monette
People Power in Pink
Elizabeth Hill
Populism
Offie Wortham
White Buffalo in the Sky
Charles Monette
Venus Smiled
Charles Monette
A resolute spirit
Nanci Bern
For the Birds
Vincent Panella
New Year’s Reflections on
“Charlotte’s Web”
Elizabeth Hill
Spiritual Theft in the
Year of the Monkey
Manchester by the Sea
Lawrence Klepp
White Mountain
Charles Monette
San Diego, Ocean Beach – November 17, 2016
Vincent Panella
Vermont Views Magazine
A unique community supported cultural magazine exploring Quality of Life and Spirit of Place in our bio-region, with extraordinary photographs, 22 regular columnists plus feature articles, galleries & essays, new articles and photos every day. 100s more articles in the Archive.
Contact the magazine HERE
PHOTO OF THE DAY
Unknown photographer
1)From which unique location is this pie made?
2)When is it traditionally made?
3)What is the name of the pie?
PASSAGES
Text selections by Vermont Views
The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldly enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.
...imagine what you are writing about. See it and live it. Do not think it up laboriously, as if you were working out mental arithmetic. Just look at it, touch it, smell it, listen to it, turn yourself into it. When you do this, the words look after themselves, like magic.
The dreamer in her Had fallen in love with me and she did not know it. That moment the dreamer in me Fell in love with her and I knew it.
And that's how we measure out our real respect for people—by the degree of feeling they can register, the voltage of life they can carry and tolerate—and enjoy. End of sermon. As Buddha says: live like a mighty river. And as the old Greeks said: live as though all your ancestors were living again through you.
Recent Passages By: Ted Hughes, Harold Wilson, Charles Dickens, Toni Morrison, Iris Murdoch, David Hockney, Allen Ginsberg, Abigail Adams, Thomas Hardy, John Ruskin, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Amy Lowell, Bernardo Bertolucci, Buffy Sainte-Marie, John Keats, David Niven - Actor, David Niven - PhD, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Joan Didion, Pablo Casals, Geoffrey Chaucer, Muddy Waters, Aretha Franklin, Dorothy Maclean Read their work here
VERMONT AUTHORS REVIEWED
Leath Tonino, Trinity University Press, 2018.
Reviewed by Laura Stevenson
Debut collection of essays from a young writer celebrating Vermont
The animal in the title is a creature Aristotle invented in The Poetics (7B) to demonstrate that an observer of a gigantic object could see only its parts, and thus lost perception of its "unity and wholeness." Tonino implicitly compares Vermont to this animal; his twenty essays, collected from periodicals published between 2011 and 2017, portray his adventures and observations in all parts of the state. Together, they also portray his impossible yearning to experience the whole by feeling "the infinite invitation that is the terrain of home."
Young and vigorous, Tonino is an enthusiastic adventurer. "Seven Lengths of Vermont," for example, opens with his vow, upon returning from several years "bumming around the West," to rediscover his native Vermont by touring it in seven different ways in the course of a year. The reader (presumably ensconced on a sofa) then becomes his vicarious companion as he hikes the length of the Long Trail, hitch-hikes around the state in over thirty rides; completes a three-week, 300-mile ski trek along the Catamount Trail; bikes through the state in a tour of some 500 miles; paddles 260 miles in a canoe trek along the Connecticut River; swims, in ten days, the length of Lake Champlain; and finally, climbs into a friend's small plane for a two-hour “vast and fast” flyover of the whole state. At the end of the year, Tonino has experienced parts of Vermont from many angles and at many different speeds in an attempt to understand the whole.
<extract, read on>
Read the full review and other reviewed titles in this column.
The Devil in the Valley — Castle Freeman, Jr.
Vermont Exit Ramps II — Neil Shepard and Anthony Reczek
Half Wild: Stories — Robin MacArthur
A Refugee's Journey: A Memoir — Walter Hess
Vermont Non-GMO Cookbook — Tracey Medeiros
Robin MacArthur, Heart Spring Mountain.
Jackson Ellis, Lords of St. Thomas
Chris Bohjalian, The Flight Attendant
Beth Kanell, The Long Shadow
Kimberly Harrington, Amateur Hour: Motherhood in Essays and Swear Words
Jessie Haas, Rescue
Toni Ortner, Writing Shiva
Tony Weldon, Drunk in the Woods
Aesop Lake, Sarah Ward
The Animal One Thousand Miles Long: Seven Lengths of Vermont and Other Adventures. Leath Tonino
SHORTS
Vermont Views
GALLUP STATISTIC: Median approval across the 29 countries and areas stood at 18% in 2020, down from 22% for this same group in 2017. On its face, this decline is not good news for the next U.S. administration, but even worse news is the number of allies on the list of countries where approval dropped to historic lows: Ireland (20%), the United Kingdom (15%), Denmark (14%), Switzerland (10%), Germany (6%) and Iceland (5%).
NATO ally Albania stands out as the only country of the 29 where the U.S. earns majority approval -- and it typically gives the U.S. some of its highest marks -- but the 56% of Albanians who approve of U.S. leadership is also a new low.
Read More shorts
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 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
MEANDERINGS
Charles Monette
January 12th Time and events abuzz in my head. Hadn’t been to Black Mountain since last November. The holidays, Covid, foot maladies, eye surgery, and other uncertainties had kept me grounded. Though not 100%, I knew today was the day I had to get back on the mountain. Arriving at the trailhead and getting out of my car, I slipped on some ice and nearly landed on my keister. German slang, funny, keister; not funny if you fall on it with your new age! Is this an omen? Hell no. I’m going all the way to the top with a new eye, and two feet that were feeling the best they had in months. As my friend, Willie, used to say, “Onward thru the fog.”
A bleak grey sky greeted me, but I chose to resist feeling like the weather. Not glove cold, but I took them along in case. I wore my black herringbone wool topcoat with its large pockets to carry what I needed: a bottle of water, the gloves, two notepads… a pen. The sky hovered grey.
Each step up the mountain had to be measured and calculated due to ice. Once again, the center of the trail was marked with icy footprints of hikers gone by.
It would be slippery the whole way up and down! Stopping frequently to look down and about slowed my gait. Deer tracks were plentiful. Lots of brown and down, brittle branches, scattered twigs and a spare bevy of coppery elliptical leaves. Some paired as if they had come down together in surrender on snow. Pretty!
<extract> Read more of this and other articles by Charles Monette >>>
ARCHETYPAL HIPPIE SPEAKS
Jeri Rose
There is a great TV show “This is Us” that begins with the birth of triplets where the joy of that event is marred because one dies at birth. In the hospital that day, another baby was brought in having been abandoned and born on the same day. The family who lost one triplet, adopts that abandoned baby. The parents of these babes are incredible in extending their love to all three children, attempting to understand their uniqueness and capacity. The kids grow up with their problems and strengths that get them through those problems.
The baby they adopted is African American and they treat him as one of the family. Indeed, because he is a genius and they recognize this, the parents give him extra support to develop that intelligence.
Now as a grown man, he is having an identity crisis because his family did not take into consideration that he had a darker skin among pale people. In this time, that oversight is seen as an inexcusable lack of sensitivity.
Sure, the world makes people who are dark feel different and exposes them to attention that is often negative and even vicious and dangerous. Yet if we think about how we ought to be toward one another, there is nothing different about people with more melanin except that visually they are darker.
<extract> Read more of this and other columns by Jeri Rose >>>
WRITE WALK
Jolene - A Short-Story told in Parts
Part 5 and 6 — Part 5 “Dinner.”
Susan Cruickshank
Jolene was like a Pavlovian dog at the sound of her mother’s call, and when she heard it, she bounded down the stairs. The muscle memory of holding the thick oak banister, smooth and solid, the game of avoiding the squeaky step, five steps down, the pattern of her gallop –– like a Morse code message that spelled out Yahoo! –– all the way to the last step, had been an evening ritual since Jolene could maneuver the stairs. What a relief to have a moment of reprieve from the ache in her chest and her gnawing thoughts.
But when she walked into the kitchen, despite all the windows being open and the evening breeze strong enough to make the curtains blow, the heaviness in the room had a stifling effect. Mama looked down at her plate. The awkward silence that felt like it had the wrong address caused the few seconds of normal to leap off Jolene’s body and run for the door. Papa reached for his napkin and nudged his knife loudly against his empty plate. The piercing staccato of steel against china sent a sound wave out into the room as Jolene settled herself in her chair.
For a moment, no one moved, and no one spoke. Other families might have been able to continue with the meal in silence, but for these three, conversation at suppertime was as important as the food. Papa began. “Mama told me about your news, Jolene.”
<Extract> Read More of this and other articles by Susan Cruickshank >>>
OPEN MIND
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>
Finnish Fandango
Anneli Karniala
It was sometime in the early 1950's, a cold day, so probably late fall or winter. Maybe I was 6 or 7 years old. We lived in the house in West Barnstable built by my father, the former Finnish war hero from the Winter War, who then became a Helsinki police detective, then non-English-speaking immigrant to America.
We were sitting at the green-painted kitchen table set with the daily-tablecloth of oilcloth. We were just starting to eat supper, my mother, my father, my sister, and I. We ate "supper" around 6pm; it was not called dinner. Dinner was a few times a month, a "Sunday dinner" around 1pm every other or every third weekend when my mother had an actual weekend off from her nursing job, a 35-min. drive away.
Maybe we were about to eat Finnish pork gravy, "läskisoosia", or Finnish meatballs, "lihapulia", with gravy, potatoes, and mixed veggies. The veggies would have come from the new Frigidaire, or "icebox" as we were still in the habit of referring to it then. The big problem with the "fridge" as it came to be called -- even until this day -- was that the small top freezer with pull-down door didn't hold much, and it all too frequently needed to be defrosted. Plus the heavy metal door handle was a good foot long and had to be pulled down -- difficult for little kids who wanted to raid the fridge!
My parents sat at either end of the table, and I was next to my sister, with the one table leaf on our side lifted up for us. I could see the kitchen window straight ahead and the outside door to my left. Suddenly I heard a motor running in the dirt driveway. Maybe someone was just "dropping in" to say "hi", as folks were want to do in those days. But at supper time?
Then I saw the exhaust from the tailpipe of my father's pick-up truck! Someone had started my father's truck. Out in our very own driveway! Those were the days of keys left in vehicles and house doors unlocked or with a key under the proverbial mat.
Extract Read more of this and other articles by Anneli Karniala
LOVE IN ACTION
Elizabeth Hill
“As above, so below; as within, so without;
as the universe, so the soul…”
~Hermes Trismegistus
Astronomers and Astrologers alike agree! An unprecedented celestial event is coming on December 21st, our Winter Solstice. It will be, in fact, the beginning of a brand New Era.
Astronomy is the study of everything outside of the earth's atmosphere—planets, stars, asteroids, galaxies—as well as the properties and relationships of those celestial bodies. By contrast, Astrology is the study of how planetary positions, motions, and properties affect people and events on Earth. For several millennia, the need to improve astrological predictions was one of the main components for astronomical theories and observations.
Though some today associate the word ‘zodiac’ only with Astrology, it is also important in Astronomy, as it defines the annual path of the sun across our sky.
This year’s Winter Solstice will find Jupiter and Saturn—energetic polar opposites of the Cosmos—positioning themselves at zero degrees in the sign of Aquarius, close enough to appear from earth as one single very bright star. These two planets have not been this close together for 800 years!
Extract... Read More of this column and others by Elizabeth Hill >>>
AN A-MUSING LIFE
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
SELECTED LETTERS
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 >>>
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."
DAIRY HOME COMPANION
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
OLD LADY BLOG
Toni Ortner
We had been marching for weeks and carried a sign that said WE THE PEOPLE. It happened spontaneously, and more and more people joined us as we passed. We were lucky to have had only one day of rain. Today I hummed a little song. It went, “White sky, yellow leaf black crow.” The rhythm of the words calmed me and reminded me of death poems by Buddhist monks.
I was 80. My death could be imminent. How long would it take for the contents of my apartment (box) to be disposed of? My body was a shell I would leave behind. I did not want to know what would happen to it or whether it would be buried, burnt, or dissected.
Although I was surrounded by this enormous crowd, I felt utterly alone. There was too much time to think. Had I wasted my life marching in protests, carrying signs, and writing articles about freedom and human rights? Instead of being a journalist, I could have been a carpenter or learned all the facts about leaves, clouds, birds, or trees.
Read More of this and other articles by Toni Ortner >>>
THE FIRST GLASS
Vincent Panella
When someone bought him a drink he took a cigar instead, and his bartender brought the Antonio y Cleopatra box kept in the glass cabinet with the cocktail glasses. The box opened to the picture of the lovers – Antony in armor and Cleo reclining like Venus next to a slave with a feather fan. He knew the story because he read history and the dimensions of their love made the cigar taste sweeter and deeper.
Sometimes he did take a drink and the bartender would pour the scotch below the one-ounce line of the shot glass. He drank — or sipped really – never finishing because drinking wasn’t the point. He drank with certain people, one or two big spenders, liquor salesmen, but always with Joe, whose last name never passed his lips even though they’d been doing business for years. Joe owned the juke box and cigarette machine, and once every two weeks he pulled up in his Buick and with a couple of pass keys took out the coin boxes and dumped the quarters onto a booth table. He and Joe would slide the coins into paper rolls and fold the ends over and tap each end to keep the coins tight. Each roll held forty quarters – ten dollars worth — and they stacked them like cord wood, then divided them equally, after which, as a sign of good will, Joe passed him a roll from his half. When this was done he - Al Cimorelli, owner in 1960 of a bar in Newburgh, New York – would nod to his bartender who brought water chasers and shot glasses and the bottle of Chivas Regal and poured shots for both men below the one-ounce line. They would salute and sip but not finish because drinking wasn’t the point. These moments celebrated who they were, their labor, the bond of their common background, their English laced with old world dialect as the most powerful of bonds — language limited and secret, something between them rolling off their tongues, in separate words and sometimes complete sentences when the subject required discretion, like taxes, black people, police, money, but not women, women were private. This was the bond of blood and work.
Joe talked about business and how the blacks were ruining the town, and Cimorelli nodded but did not repeat the dialect slurs. He never used those words not only because they were offensive but because the woman he was in love with — as he was once in love with his present wife – was of that color.
<extract> Read More of this and other articles by Vincent Panella >>>
URBAN NATURALIST
Lloyd Graf
I was headed N on Canal around 10 AM a few days ago and ducked onto Birge St for an end run around a semi- mediated slow-down. Just beyond the computer shop I saw the pair of Black Vultures pictured in the Sept 28 photo enthusiastically rooting away at an unidentified roadside carcass.
Couple this sighting with the 2 Blacks commemorating this past July 4 with a patriotic raid on a yummy road-kill skunk by the driveway to Triple T 's sheds, dumpsters and garbage truck bays along Hghwy 142's all purpose disposal corridor at the base of bluffs leading to Morningside Cemetery and Rich's photo-documented sighting of 3 similarly engaged Blacks along Fuller back in DEC of ‘19. — then throw in Oct 2018 southbound flyover of a trio of Blacks — Walnut St St Michael school lot — throw in one mix-up with turks when triple T dumpster must have been a bonanza.
Extract Read More of this and other articles by Lloyd Graf
WATER’S EDGE
Nicola Metcalf
I saw her going
And ran to get my brothers.
We stood and watched, heartstruck in our loss
in her high ceilinged bedroom
with its elegant pink flowered wall paper, plush pale carpet, and
sliding glass doors opening to the ocean’s view
she slipped away forever.
A few hours earlier the nurse had laid her hand on her forearm arm and said, “Rona, you’re doing just fine”.
Like you would to a woman in labor
Reassuring her the way was open, and she was welcome.
<extract> Read more Nicola Metcalf >>>
MONKEY’S CLOAK
Charles Monette
eight suns equal releases in an instant
shockwave spreading
spreading out from two black holes merging
signal sent seven billion years ago
rattling laser detectors
LIGO VIRGO’s super-sensitive-gravitational-wave-detection-system
gravity’s pull so strong
matter had collapsed on itself
now nothing, not even light escaped
<extract> Read more Monkey’s Cloak
Pandemic Journal
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>>>
VERMONT DIARY
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?
Real Vermont Stories
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>
How I Write
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>
SCREENplay
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
WORLD & US ENERGY NEWS
Special Environmental report by Phil Innes — Column George Harvey
In Iceland:
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:
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
SELECTED LETTERS
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
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
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
NOW, HERE, THIS!
Its not over ‘til
Vermont Views
hey, at least its not going to get below freezing
— that is down here in the valley in Brattleboro, though not on the hills and not up North. Looks like Brattleboro is snow-free through Wednesday!
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Susan Cruikshank Jolene - A Short-Story told in PartsPart 5 and 6 — Part 5 “Dinner.” Write Walk
Offie Wortham "Automated Lottery" Open Mind
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