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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.

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PHOTO OF THE DAY

Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station

From an on-going series of aerial photos

Photo: Len Emery

(Yankee-Vernon) Yankee-Vernon: Most people don't see the proximity of Vernon Dam and Vermont Yankee on the Connecticut River in Vernon. The only thing that gives a clue is the Vernon generating station entrance on US Rt 5, which is close to Yankee. Vernon Dam generates approximately 32,000 KW of hydroelectric power for the region. This photo was taken in August of 2016. Sources: HanoverConservancy.org, Wikipedia.org, Transcanada Power

PASSAGES

Harold Wilson

Text selections by Vermont Views

Given a fair wind, we will negotiate our way into the Common Market, head held high, not crawling in. Negotiations? Yes. Unconditional acceptance of whatever terms are offered us? No.

The ambition of the present Labour government is that every worker in the country will have a greater than average income.

"The main essentials of a successful prime minister are sleep and a sense of history."

"A week is a long time in politics."

"One man's wage increase is another man's price increase."

"The monarchy is a labor intensive industry."

"I'm at my best in a messy, middle-of-the-road muddle."

"I'm an optimist, but an optimist who carries a raincoat."

"Whichever party is in office, the Treasury is in power."

"Everybody should have an equal chance - but they shouldn't have a flying start."

The labour party is like a stage-coach. If you rattle along at great speed everybody inside is too exhilarated or too seasick to cause any trouble. But if you stop everybody gets out and argues about where to go next.

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VERMONT DIARY

Wurz that?

Phil Innes

The latest addition to Northern Vermont Public Radio is a fellow called Chris Kurzak who unfortunately reports on the weather with more than the usual New England swallowing of vowels, in any long sentence, above 5 words, he dispenses with them entirely, and even spaces between words, rendering his pronouncements incomprehensible. Seems strange to have a reporter with a speech defect.

It is usual for the weather station to report on Route 2, which if you live down here in the Deep South, is the relatively close road to us to Boston, but have no idea where the northern one is. Today we received notice that snow levels could be particularly high in the northern mountains and also on the Massachusetts border, without mention of Brattleboro, Wilmington or Bennington in particular, as if this might bore northern listeners — or those north of route 2, I should say.

As with the weather, it is an open joke that NPR doesn’t know where southern Vermont is, has been so for 35 years. Even a State senator told me so! And I did meet with their management corporately one day at a Brattleboro event held in a field, and they were all clustered together smiling and joking, and I mentioned I published an on-line magazine about quality of life and spirit of place with some 15 columnists. This was disconcerting to the group who continued their jovial but inert celebration together, and not only was there no promised follow up after exchange of business cards, I noted that I should not take this personally, since they ignored everyone else at the event too.

But isn’t Vermont the place where we achieve a realization of Jefferson’s Bill of Rights, not just in its potential, but in the actual manifestation of it? How about some stories from our vocal community to substantiate both its practice and its’ famed progress which the entire contry might hear? I had fondly thought that I could contribute substantial material to that prospect written by my columnists — and that it might be more compelling than Tales of Lake Wobegone and Norwegian White Man Farmers.

Nope.

Not just me neither. My opinion here is same as sentiment by senior organizers of the Strolling, as well as widespread in the arts community in Windham county, and especially about written material, a majority art most suitable for the radio.

We don’t get that from Northern Vermont Public Radio, we get slurred like Chris Kurzak’s weather report. All that gets reported is that the state’s dumping of certain psychiatric cases to the Retreat as occurred after the Waterbury facility literally went under during Irene, thence to be released ‘to the care of the community’ when their insurance runs out causes financial and other distress here, emphasis on local financial burden, rather than quality of life. It wasn’t just a flood of people then, it’s a river flowing south.

Are we like poor cousins in a banana republic run out of bananas, will turnips do?

Nope.

There is something far more lively going on here in terms of Planetary Consciousness than is reported by the fat cats up north who only identify with us since they are forced too, since we are also ‘Vermont’, and need mention now and again, perhaps even as a ‘gateway’ to the Real Vermont waiting tourist dollars and offering the best retirement homes?

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OPEN MIND

So far it’s been a good run

Offie Wortham

<extract> After attending 7 other colleges and getting degrees from 5 of them, including a Master’s and a PhD, I married four times, had three partners, (for a total of 55 years) and around 30-40 girlfriends before, between, and after these committed relationships. I once had a stable of 5, and had a lot of fun with my hobby. From two of the marriages I have three wonderful daughters, who have given me seven beautiful grandchildren.

Eventually, there were over 60 cars, including a new Porsche convertible, a red Jaguar, three BMW’s, an MG convertible, three Mercedes, an Alpha Romeo, a jet black businessman’s BMW motorcycle; and five other convertibles. Have lived in seven homes and over 20 apartments in New York, Atlanta, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Vermont, Ohio, Santa Monica, and San Francisco. Have been to Paris, Switzerland, London, Italy, Spain, and the Bahamas so far.

I was a Community Organizer and Director of many large programs on college campuses and in several major cities and national human and civil rights organizations. I had my own office and lab conducting experiments at IBM’s top “Blue Sky” research facility in the world. As a Senior Electronic Research Technician, or “Rocket Scientist”, I did final tests on the Saturn Missile at Douglas Missile & Space prior to launches in the California deserts preparing for the first moon landings.

I worked closely with the FBI in 1971 initially developing the obscure concept of “Psychological Profiling.” Around that time I also collaborated with the American Cancer Society to promote a button I conceived reading “HELP! Your smoking is hazardous to my health” which began the movement against second-hand smoke worldwide. I had dinner and dialogue with Eleanor Roosevelt, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, and Coretta King. I lived 6 months with Pete Seeger and Toshie. Went with Harry Belafonte and 7 students to confront President Eisenhower at the White House about his resistance to support the 1954 Supreme Court Decision on school desegregation.

But like any long journey, there have been some rough times. I’ve had cancer and lost my prostate. Fell on ice and had serious brain surgery. Broke my neck and lost a front tooth playing high school football. The late discovery of the broken neck at a special examination at West Point prevented me from becoming the youngest person ever in the AF Aviation Cadets and possibly the first black in the Air Force Academy. I had scored the highest score ever on the AFOQT which is the test all graduates of the Air Force Academy, West Point, Annapolis, and OCS must pass to get admitted into pilot or astronaut training. I was only 20.

<extract> Read More Offie Wortham >>>

ON MY WALKS

Three New Images

Kate Hill Cantrill

A New Series introducing the photography of Kate Hill Cantrill with text or poetry selection of her choice.

"It is possible to imagine a person so entirely that the image resists attempts to dislodge it."

Amy Hempel

<extract> See more Kate Hill Cantrill >>>

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.

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WATER’S EDGE

Burying Roger

Nicola Metcalf

When I think of Roger, I think of his shoes. Practical brown leather walking shoes with laces. They were blown out on the sides, but he kept wearing them in the fashion of Quakers who intend to live simple lives and avoid the seeds of war. At times, I thought this was simply taking things a bit too far. Feet vulnerable to ice, water, and snow in our New England climate. Something about the shoes accented Roger’s gnome-like persona. He was of small stature, with frizzled gray hair and beard, and wore clean but old and sometimes threadbare clothing. He had a ready twinkle in his eye and mischievous grin. His shoes were still functional enough, however, and I understood Roger’s refusal to add them to our pile of human garbage on the planet.

When we buried Roger, it was a beautiful and very warm June day, just shy of uncomfortably hot. Twenty or so of us gathered at the burial ground where his grave had been dug the day before. Our many shovels leaned against the Meetinghouse nearby. Ice tea and water, lemonade and cookies were set up on a table in the shade of a tree, along with a bench and some folding chairs. His wife, Shirley, wore a long dress with a wide brimmed hat in her simple and elegant style. She carried a basket of flowers cut from their yard. At the appointed hour, an unmarked mini van from the funeral home backed up to the burial ground, nothing indicating it was a hearse.

When the appointed hour came, Roger’s son and daughter, along with Roger’s men’s group, gathered at the van’s open rear door. Wrapped in a shroud and lying on a quilt from his home, the body of their beloved father and dear friend emerged from the van. Grasping the sides of the quilt, they carried him to his grave lined on the bottom with fresh pine boughs. They squatted awkwardly as they negotiated how to lower him gently down. I worried for a moment that they might all tumble in after Roger. But it was only love I saw pouring into Roger’s grave, a lifetime of family, friendships and community. Love pouring into the earth right next to the Quaker Meetinghouse on land where he had worshipped for decades. Where he shouldered myriad tasks supporting the “life of the Meeting” and attended countless meetings and events. Where he sang, played, laughed, cried, listened, and argued. Where he ardently advocated for the things he believed in.

<extract> Read more Nicola Metcalf >>>

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.

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IN BETWEEN

How Very Rich and Deep our Lives

Julia Ferrari

When we think about our own significant and varied personal history, it can seem as if our lives are the contents of a movie reel, unrolling…with glimpses of some particular event —events that are remembered and treasured, many forgotten … and some better off not remembered in detail, at all. The good ones, those memories we remember with fondness—those are the moments we can hold close. Those moments become a place we can return to in memory again and again, even though as they were being lived they were just ordinary moments passing beneath us. Indeed, there are likely many such moments in which, at the time they are happening, we are unaware that they will eventually become those precious ones.

Remembering and revisiting positive or special events in our lives can make us feel very deeply, yet they were happening in moments that were fleeting, just like this moment. I remember one December when I was a young girl, as winter school vacation was out, we travelled in our camper down to Florida for Christmas. My mother was the traveller in the family, so she influenced us all and bestowed on me a deep love of traveling. We were driving late into the evening hoping to find something still open and found a park just as dusk was closing in. That winter night I remember seeing the amazing sight of Spanish Moss hanging like ancient beards from old oak trees in this very different climate, and the feeling of welcome from the cheerful, tiny but bright, multicolored Christmas lights that were hung at the entrance to the park. I remember the child in me feeling the realization that this holiday was celebrated here (in a warm climate) with the same joy for sharing as from where I had just come, many miles north. Being very young I had not yet spent that holiday in a different place, and the physical fact that it was celebrated here in a warm climate instead of a place that was cold was expanding for my young mind. I remember it like it was yesterday, and feel its essence still.

Another remembered essence was one afternoon, working with my partner, Dan Carr in our print shop. I was working at the composing frame, correcting and justifying type for the book we were working on and Dan was in the casting area, casting type when I suddenly, distinctly felt the moment in time. It was, I believe, in the mid to late 90’s, and we had been doing letterpress for quite some years on a daily basis, five days a week for at least 8 to 9 hours per day. So we were perhaps producing along the order of what a professional metal letterpress print shop might have been doing in the 1930’s or 40’s when the technology was at its prime. (Our equipment is still that of a modern 1930’s-40 ’s shop with the exception of a few much older pieces.) I remember knowing that Dan and I were at the top of our game, that we could do the work with skill and precision, and in a fluid manner. There was a sudden realization, with the sun coming in the shop windows, that we were in that place, doing what we loved…what our hearts and intuition had guided us to, and we had embraced it fully, without reservation, despite all the pitfalls (like no health care, only one [used] car, and no paid vacations. That moment became felt in me as an encounter with the essence of my life and vocation…of the totality of my choices.

Extract Read more Julia Ferrari

OLD LADY BLOG

Two Pieces

Toni Ortner

For the 10 year old girl from Syria

The mirror stopped laughing when the bullets shattered the window.

Shards of glass flew through the startled air.

Familiar voices stopped when the wires were cut.

Description fled in dust.

It was the end of metaphor.

You huddled on the floor

in the dark arms of morning.

For Earl Thompson (Yakima Indian nation)

He tried to see red and blue horses galloping across a plain, but the horses would not come. His wife was crying by his side. He thought if he saw them he would live to see another day. It was a full moon night in April, and the willows were about to bud. He tried to see red and blue horses, but something else appeared instead.

He was in a room without walls. A door opened into light. He stepped across the threshold into air. He had lost his arms and legs and feet. He floated without wings. He turned around. In the distance was a woman weeping by an empty bed. <extract>