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PHOTO OF THE DAY

Lock Down Cat Nap

Photo: Phil Innes, Gracie Wu and Zoe

After almost completing the puzzle time for a nap on the handy cover blanket.

#4•Ups and Downs•

A shut-down column for the Plague Year 2020.                    

G came by with a new puppy and thanked me for saving his life. That’s a bit strong I said — not from my perspective said he.

And it’s true, I delivered him 20 meals a week for 3 months when he was doing chemo, and this was encouraging to him.

I also completed another jigsaw puzzle [illus] and set up an exchange with a neighbor who sent me several, some said ‘support war bonds’ and were from 1943.

Downs were the on-line census I completed including responding to the question ‘Race?’ I have detested this formal declaration on American forms every since I came here in 1984. The census then proceeded to decline ‘Race’ by asking about color. I presume this is skin color and it offered me several for my own including Germanic, English and Irish. Not quite knowing how to fit this quare I wrote English, which is true only upon a nationalist basis, though I could have written Irish if the census folks were interested in 1500 years ago. I say I detest this question since Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a racist as someone who sub-divides the human race. And, you know, formal declarations of race simply substantiate the problem, the uniquely American problem, as if indeed human beings were of different races.

And to end on another downer: a kid [some spots still, prob 20 yo] at Walgreens was wearing no mandatory mask, so I challenged him why not, and he said without apology he was not comfortable in one, and then I asked what about the rest of us, to which he shrugged. They served him anyway even though it was against the law — likely because people have been shot after refusing service by pimpled young male white-trash impatient of any inhibition whatever.

<extract> Read more Dairy Home Companion

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.

Read more PASSAGES >>>

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

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

Leath Tonino,  Trinity University Press, 2018.

Reviewed by Laura Stevenson

Debut collection of essays from a young writer celebrating Vermont

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

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

There are more parts, of course, and more ways to investigate them. In "The Smiles are Huge" Tonino goes jack-jumping, a winter sport practiced only in Vermont. Other portraits of his cold and exhausting winter adventures (biathlons, New Year's Day kayaking, sled-packing) prove that Vermont offers winter opportunities far beyond commercial skiing. Mingled with Tonino's delightfully ironic portrayals of his adventures are interesting considerations of Vermont's present wilderness (its official Wilderness areas) and its unofficial wildness, thousands of acres of trees that are the result of ecological collapse and subsequent regeneration. Between 1791 and the War of 1812, Tonino says, Vermont had the fastest growing population of any state in the union; a half-century later, its population had declined 40%. Why?

<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

Hello Mary Jane

Vermont Views

STATISTIC: The July 2019 Gallup survey found that the likelihood to smoke marijuana varies significantly by gender, age, and political ideology. Men (15%) are more likely to smoke marijuana than women (9%). At 22%, 18- to 29-year-olds are the most likely age group to smoke marijuana -- about twice as likely as those between the ages of 30 and 64, and seven times as likely as adults older than 65.Liberals (24%) are six times more likely to smoke marijuana than conservatives (4%), and twice as likely as moderates (12%).

The Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act that would federally decriminalize marijuana passed the House Judiciary Committee in November 2019, but, with that bill yet to make it to the House floor and facing an uncertain future in the Senate, the use of marijuana remains illegal under federal law. Meanwhile, 33 states have legalized marijuana in some way for adults -- whether for medicinal or recreational use; however, only one of those states, Florida, is in the South, which is reflected in that region's lower rate of marijuana users.

Between 13% and 16% of adults across the East, Midwest and West smoke marijuana, versus 7% in the South.

Read More shorts

A July 4th Address on Freedom In America

Rob Mitchell — Murfreesboro,Tennessee

  No idea is more fundamental to Americans' sense of themselves as individuals and as a nation than Freedom. The central term in our political vocabulary, Freedom or Liberty, is deeply embedded in the documentary record of our history and the language of everyday life. The Declaration of Independence lists liberty among mankind's inalienable rights; the Constitution announces as its purpose to secure ‘Liberty's Blessings’. The United States fought the Civil War to bring about a new birth of Freedom, World War II for Freedom from fascist genocide, the Cold War to defend the Free World.

Americans' love of freedom has been represented by liberty poles, caps, and statues, and acted out throughout history by the burning of stamps and burning draft cards. The quest for Freedom by running away from slavery, and demonstrating for the right to vote. The idea of “Freedom” occupies a more prominent place in public and private discourse in the United States than elsewhere in the world. The ubiquitous American excuse invoked by disobedient children and assertive adults “it’s a free country” is not familiar in other societies. Every man in the street, white, black, red or yellow knows that this is 'the land of the free' and the ‘cradle of liberty.'

Perhaps because of its very ubiquity the history of Freedom is a tale of debates, disagreements, and struggles rather than a set of timeless categories or an evolutionary narrative toward a preordained goal. And the meaning of Freedom has been constructed not only in congressional debates and political treatises, but on plantations and picket lines and in city streets and college campuses. If the pursuit of freedom has been a battleground throughout our history, so too has been the definition of those entitled to enjoy its blessings.

The United States, founded on the premise that Liberty is an entitlement of all humanity, undeniably deprived many of its own people of freedom. It has been through battles at the boundaries, the efforts of racial minorities, women, workers, and other groups to secure freedom, as they understood it, that the meaning of freedom has been both deepened and transformed. The concept extends now into realms for which it was not originally intended. Time and again in our history, the definition of Freedom has been transformed by the demands of excluded groups for inclusion. 

  The glorification of Freedom as the essential characteristic of American life opened the door for others to seize on the language of Freedom for their own purposes. Most striking was the civil rights movement, with its freedom rides, freedom schools, freedom marches, and the insistent cry “freedom now”.

When Martin Luther King, Jr. ended his great oration on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial with the words, “free at last, free at last thank God almighty, I’m free at last,” he was not referring to getting the government off his back or paying low taxes. Freedom for blacks meant empowerment, equality, recognition as a group and as individuals. Most white Americans believe that Freedom is something they possess, and that some outside force is trying to take away. Most African-Americans view Freedom not as a possession to be defended, but as a goal yet to be achieved.

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

WRITE WALK

Life is Uncomfortable

Susan Cruickshank

I know it may be obvious to most, but it has taken me a good chunk of my life to realize that practically all of human experience is in the tension of discomfort. Even when you are doing something that you love, pure pleasure is fleeting. 

I wish I had known this at twenty.

So much of my experience was more typical than I had thought it was. How many times did I think I was ‘doing it wrong,’ or there was ‘something wrong with ME,’ just because there was struggle involved and the road to get there, wherever “there” was, was filled with challenge and hard work.

I knew the lexicon’s meaning of ‘hard work’ but never made the leap to applying it in real-time. There was a complete disconnect between the words and what their implications would actually look like, feel like, in my day-to-day experience. Hold-ups and unforeseen problems made me anxious and often truly scared.

I don’t think I’m alone.

I think a lot of people, most I would say, think life should be much easier than it is, and by expecting it to be, this wrong thought makes life even harder. How much unnecessary grief and angst do we add to the work that is already challenging because we are fearful of ANY sort of discomfort and delay?

I don’t know how I learned it to be true, but for me, it absolutely was so, that discomfort and inconvenience were legitimate red flags that were warning me that something was wrong. I wasted so much time. So much time fearful of a paper tiger of misinformation.

My Eureka moment that I want to share with those who may be as misguided as I once was is this:

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

OLD LADY BLOG

Swimmer

Toni Ortner

It was a moonless night, and I stood on the loading dock near the Brooklyn Bridge, and watched the lights of New York wink on and off on the opposite side of the river.  I wore a one piece spandex black bathing suit. The voice on the loud speaker was giving directions.

One box of chocolate per 10 swimmers must be divided evenly.  No cameras cell phones or electronic devices are permitted.  Swimmers must pass Riker’s Island. The currents around the island are vicious. Prisoners who escape and attempt to swim across the river to the city drown. This is an emergency. You know the risks. If you swim mate drowns, keep swimming. Those who are unable to sign the consent form and agree to this stipulation are free to leave now.

There is no traffic in or out of the city. The streets and avenues are patrolled by tanks and armed personnel, and pedestrians are not allowed outdoors because of the virus. Those who venture outside are shot. No boats are permitted on the river, so we have no choice. We must use swimmers.

I had volunteered to be a swimmer. We were going to drag floats on which were cartons packed with food and had to push the rafts to the shore at 101 Street where volunteers would pick them up.

Read More Toni Ortner >>>

THE FIRST GLASS

Semmelweis — a book review

Vincent Panella

To call this book prescient is an understatement. To say it resonates with the movement for women’s rights and also with the Covid-19 pandemic, is also an understatement. Anthony Valerio, whose books of fiction and nonfiction all keenly sense the ironies of human nature, has recreated the sad but tragic life of a man before his time —  a  Hungarian scientist and physician whose research in the mid-1800’s saved thousands of women’s lives. Doctor Ignaz Semmelweis, obsessed with discovering why so many pregnant women died of childbed or puerperal fever, concluded that simple hygiene such as washing one’s hands could slow or even prevent the spread of this deadly virus. Unfortunately, he and his theory would be denied recognition by jealous colleagues who who did everything possible to end his career and pervert his accomplishments. Valerio gives us a deep look into the medical world of Vienna and elsewhere at a time when the stethoscope was just coming into use as physicians were still putting their ears to a patient’s chest to hear a heartbeat; when autopsies were performed without the basic personal hygiene practiced today.

Semmelweis, who never received his due, was a little known but consequential figure in medical history and Valerio writes his story with a clear eye. This was a life that inspired such writers as Ibsen, Celine and Vonnegut, all who wrote about him directly or indirectly, and who recognized the universal story of genius denied by jealousies that caused more human suffering. Who would have known today’s obvious fact that washing one’s hands could help prevent the spread of a virus? One man, Semmelweis, whose up and down career suffered the whim of superiors, was obsessed with discovering the cause of high death rates among pregnant women lying in hospitals. By exhaustive experimentation he concluded that those performing autopsies with their unwashed hands often reeking of cadaverous fluids, were spreading childhood or puerperal fever – a disease known since ancient times.

 This is a compelling and cautionary tale of a man before his time, whose proven theory that simple hygiene could save lives perhaps cost his own life. Because of turf wars among his colleagues, he was denied recognition. His ideas were trashed as quackery despite the data to back them up. His career faltered.  His physical and mental health declined as resistance to his theories was  unrelenting. At a certain point, and perhaps because of these disappointments, Semmelweis suffered a nervous breakdown, was committed to an asylum, and after being beaten violently by guards, died from his wounds at age forty-seven. Valerios’s talent is to recognize the irony of genius denied, and to bring it home.

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

OPEN MIND

Understand the anger

by Offie Wortham

Tim Scott, who is the African American senator from South Carolina, says that he has been stopped and questioned by police 10 times during his years in the Senate. Why have I, a retired African American man in Vermont, never been stopped by the police? I also lived in suburban areas in Atlanta, Georgia for two years, Virginia for ten years, Philadelphia for ten, Cleveland for two, Santa Monica for two, San Francisco for two New Jersey for ten, and in New York state for over ten years. Never have I been stopped unless I had violated the law by speeding or a violation on my car.

The primary purpose of this short paper is to examine the relative importance of race along with class in measuring citizen satisfaction with the police to help us better understand the anger becoming increasing evident in the poorer communities across the nation. Here in Vermont I know of at least two white males who have been stopped and arrested for a variety of reasons. Is it because they were driving older cars? Was it their place of residence, or was it their beards? What is the “Bubble” over me that protects me from aggressive police officers? Do I just have “Black or Brown Privilege” where ever I drive, or is it because I live in Johnson, VT? Let me try to explain why I believe I have positive relationships with the police and the effects of neighborhood racial composition and socioeconomic status which have long been under researched and ignored.

<Extract>

Read More of this column >>>

An American Life Full of Grace

Elizabeth Hill

“Fear is a disease that eats away at logic and makes man inhuman.” 

~Marian Anderson 

Marian Anderson, born in Philadelphia Pa., was an African-American contralto opera singer who performed world-wide. The Italian conductor, Arturo Toscanini, celebrated her voice as, “One that comes around once in a hundred years.”

Anderson performed in countless Concert Halls across America. Though beloved by her audiences, she was subjected to racial restrictions regarding accommodations, dining rooms, travel, restrooms, and backstage dressing rooms. 

“Prejudice is like a hair across your cheek.

You can’t see it, you can’t find it with your fingers,

but you keep brushing at it because the feel of it is irritating.”

~Marian Anderson

By 1939, Anderson’s popularity had outgrown most of Washington DC’s concert halls. However, Constitutional Hall, built in 1929 by The Daughters of the American Revolution, had a capacity of 4,000 spectators. Anderson’s agent—Sol Hurok from Howard University—approached the management of Constitutional Hall, hoping to book the venue for an Easter Sunday concert for their annual fundraiser.  Hurok was told the venue was already booked. Hurok then offered several more dates for a concert, but was given the same response. Shortly after that, Hurok discovered those dates had all been available for white performers. Apparently, the DAR had accepted their largest funding for the Hall’s construction under the condition that only whites would be allowed to perform on that stage.

Marian Anderson had twice performed at The White House, and when First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt—a member of the DAR—found out about the rejection, she was outraged! To the DAR she wrote, “I am in complete disagreement with the attitude taken in refusing Constitution Hall to a great artist. You have set an example which seems to me unfortunate, and I feel obliged to send in to you my resignation. You had an opportunity to lead in an enlightened way and it seems to me that your organization has failed.”

Though the DAR president general tried to dissuade her, Mrs. Roosevelt arranged an outdoor Easter Sunday 1939 concert at The Lincoln Memorial, overseen by the Department of The Interior.

On Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939, Harold Ickes—the Secretary of the Interior—introduced Marian Anderson saying, “In this great auditorium under the sky, all of us are free. . . Genius knows no color line.” 

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

AN A-MUSING LIFE

I have become very stupid

Nanci Bern

“Winter is coming”. No, sorry Game of Thrones, “Reopening is coming”, and I don’t think dragons are going to be of help for this one. So, what is next? We are beginning to venture forward. It may not be as far and wide as we have been able to before, but we must start to re-navigate this part of our lives.

To mask or not to mask: that is the question:

Whether ‘tis safer to clothe thy nose or suffer
The winds of naked breath in dappled trek,

Or to sling words against the railing of opposition

Never again with past comradery now to die,

Mourn the waning of reasonable discourse

There seems no way around the reality that no matter what your opinion regarding the ‘Virus’, the ‘Pandemic’, you are going to piss someone off; and it may be someone you consider a deep and lasting friend with whom you have alwaysish been on the same page.

“Wait, what? How can that be?”, you moan. “We sign the same petitions, but now she says I am uninformed and making bad and hurtful choices!” “He and I root for the same team!” (writer’s note: that last bit was politically incorrect) “He and I always chant together!” (writer’s note-okay that last bit dripped with privilege).  ”We go to concerts together!” (writers note-is that better?) “Well, now what do I do? Clearly my friend thinks I have become very stupid.”

Okay, let’s unpack this. I want you to remember that this pandemic thing and all the havoc it is creating sits in each and everyone’s living room. It lurks around the corners and eats the last piece of pie in the fridge when we are not looking.

Read more Nanci Bern

Finnish Fandango

A  NEW  NORMAL  LEXICON

Anneli Karniala

     There are many unusual words floating around in normal conversations and in the media since the start of this coronavirus pandemic. Some common words have certainly taken on new meanings. And some have different connotations, depending upon who you are.

     You might have your own list of relevant words, and perhaps more will pop up with time.

     The following is my list...for now.  The words following each letter are in alphabetical order, and thus not in order of importance.

A   adaptation,  aerosol,  age,  ageusia,  anosmia,  antibody,  antigen,  anxiety,  assault rifles,  autoimmune disease 

B   baking,  battleground states,  blaming,  bots,  burnout

C   CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention),  civility,  climate change,  coma,  compassion,  contact-tracing,  contaminate,  coronavirus,  corruption,  Covid-19,  crisis,      curbside-pickup

D   data,  death,  depression,  disinfect,  distancing,  divisiveness,  droplets

E   economy,  emergency,  empathy,  employee,  employer,  employment,  epidemic,  epidemiology,  escapism,  essential business,  essential worker,  exposure

F   face-covering,  fact-checking,  false,  fatigue,  Fauci,  fear,  FEMA (Federal Emergency, Management Agency),  fever,  first responders,  front-line workers,  furlough   

Extract Read more Anneli Karniala

MONKEY’S CLOAK

Facetime goodbye

Charles Monette                     

Mom spirited “the lady of the Lamp” for 37 years

white on white uniform, “doing the sick no harm”

immaculate… always on time

Loved to waltz with dad

gliding, weaving arm ‘n arm ‘round the floor

at Roseland…

So many years ago…

her smile would light his eyes

his eyes would smile back

Now her living was assisted; gentle help

to get along at Bradley house

dad’s eyes had closed long ago

One day, a quiet invasion turned upheaval

staff and nurses running ‘round spellbound

locking up, locking down

A virus had hitchhiked on a suitcase

multiplied, spread amok, all the rage

temperatures rising

Mom caught a chill, then a fever

coughs followed, continued,

soon shortness of breath

<extract> Read more Monkey’s Cloak

Mountain is open

Charles Monette

A strange thing to say.  The mountain is open.  The mountain is always open, it’s just been closed to us Homosapiens these past few months.  The Nature Conservancy’s policy.  Made sense with so much uncertainty.  Our governor, Scott and his medical and governing advisors, are also handling this well.  Early stay-at-home order, social distancing a practice, mask wearing advisory, and more.  Vermonters following the official re-opening book.  Taking small gradual steps to intermingle midst the COVID-19 contagion.  The well-being of the citizenry at the forefront of the response.

The nurses, the doctors, the 1st responders, the essential workers deserve our highest praise and thanks and support for their selfless sacrifice and giving. 

“The highest wisdom is loving kindness.”

– The Talmud

May 20th, 2020, a twenty something kind of day.  Great to be back on the Mountain!  Nice day for it!  It being a fresh air hike amid the green new leaf life of trees of Black Mountain.  Birds fly low in chirps of greeting.  I feel welcomed.

Yet, a feeling of uncertainty is palpable, of not knowing what lie ahead on the trail.  Like lovers separated by a virus, there was a restless wonder of how, when, where and why we’d meet up.

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

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 >>>

IN BETWEEN

BRIDGING BACK TO LOVE

Julia Ferrari

In this tumult of times, when things are uncertain, unknown, frightening and surreal, what do we know with truth and how can we utilize what we are experiencing toward living a better human life?

During trying times the best or the worst of us comes out. I find myself becoming aware of the best that such trials can bring to us. Besides noticing the person who ignores the sign to buy just one package of toilet paper and grabs two, or the man who buys two bottles of rubbing alcohol only to sell them online later for 17 times what he paid for them, I also feel and see the more positive possibilities amid the restlessness and fear: the open caring ability of the human heart. Each of us can choose how we weather this storm. We can become more self-focused, falling into greed and the worry of limitation or we can realize that we all have enough—enough love to give kindness, enough patience to give consideration, enough of a scarce product to let someone else have some and share.

Life and death experiences bring us closer to our essential selves as all the frivolities drop away from the necessities. In the face of such circumstances we can see what is really important through all the clouds of chaos and bring into focus what is essential in our lives. Yes, we all want to protect ourselves and our loved ones, but it is important to see that this reflex is part of a greater concern for the whole community. We can choose to feel only fear or we can also feel deep concern for each other’s wellbeing.  This is one way to grow as a human being. 

Extract Read more Julia Ferrari

WATER’S EDGE

OCEANS RISING

Nicola Metcalf

Plastic containers everywhere for single serving sized pieces of pie, sesame noodles, and nuts, you name it. You can have it all in a plastic box. Single serving, single use, single insult to the planet. No one wants to talk about it. I am not innocent. We may feel healthy and righteous buying organic while ignoring the planetary cost of packaging. Gleaming transparent containers scream at me the cost to the oceans, the impact of factories that make them, and the deteriorating health of the planet under our feet.

Their contents lure me. A moist, delicious piece of tiramisu, a handy portion of tamari roasted almonds, an elegant row of sushi packaged with individual portions of wasabi, tamari, pickled ginger, and a set of chopsticks. What could be easier?  Beware the ease of ease. It makes one soft in all the wrong places. 

It dawned on me that bulk food departments might disappear in the near future. Tall stacks of sexy, expensive, specialty items sit right next to the humble and whole unprocessed foods waiting in plexiglass bulk bins at Whole Foods. In another aisle, prepackaged grab and go beckons the harried shopper, take me! Take me! You don’t need to let go of your cart, make a decision about how much to buy, or search for a pen to write down the PLU. We will feed your need for efficiency.

I want to slap a large photo of sea trash on the sliding front doors of Whole Foods. I want to gather all the containers from my neighborhood’s recycling bins. I would spill them in supermarket parking lots, let them come flying out my windows, tumbling out of my trunk, until people are walking through them chest deep, the noisy scrape of plastic containers filling the air. Oceans rising. I’d do it at food coops too, for even stores touting environmental awareness have joined the plastic container explosion. I want to hand out reusable containers and levy a deposit of a dollar or two, or maybe even ten (because interest has been accumulating). Let’s include plastic water bottles and K-cups, relative newcomers to the trash stream we are drowning in. 100% recycled or 100% recyclable - don’t be fooled. We’re living on a free lunch.

<extract> Read more Nicola Metcalf >>>

WRITE ON !

Why is Martin Luther King Day a day off from school?

by Offie Wortham

Today I had the opportunity to try to answer this question to my 8-year old grandson. He did not have any idea who Dr. King really was, and what life was like for people-of-color in the United States when Dr. King was a boy or a young man. Living in Vermont today, he had no knowledge of the history of the racism and violence in the country in the past against people-of-color.

How does one begin to explain that at one time it was against the law for a black person and a white person to marry or even live together? Can a young person today even comprehend that people were actually killed for looking at, or whistling at a person of a different race?

I felt I had to begin with the fact that when I was in high school in 1956 there was no such thing as interracial dating. And this was in Westchester County in New York! When I went to college in Ohio the barber refused to cut my hair and it led to demonstrations where water hoses were used to prevent a riot. A movie theater refused to sell me a ticket because they said I had to be a member. Over 200 students mobilized and demonstrated before he admitted Negroes. In the South in the 50’s students sat at lunch counters while people spit in their food and beat them off the seats and hit them with baseball bats until they were hospitalized. Thousands of black people were beaten, hung from trees, castrated, doused with gasoline, and set on fire… because they dared to violate some racist rule or law.

<Extract>

Read More of this article >>>

ARCHETYPAL HIPPIE SPEAKS

Growing Up

Jeri Rose

When I was in sixth grade, Adlai Stevenson ran for president. The news made a big deal out of him having a hole in his shoe. I thought that was disgraceful and unworthy of a person being president and went to the Republican headquarters and said I wanted to work for Eisenhower. As I was a young child, the local party leaders came to my home and spoke to my parents to find out if they were OK with having me volunteer.  I guess, my mother fielded that one because I did not get to do any political action.

Looking back on the situation, I recognize now that Adlai Stevenson was an excellent choice for president. I can forgive myself for shallow values at that age. Since then, I have seen perfectly good public servants drummed out of the possibility of leadership for saying WOW, for having a private affair, for being incapable of saving a person who was in the car with them when they had an accident. 

Then I can also see that a good half of this country is willing to have as their leader a blatant womanizer and molester of underaged females, who cheats those who work for him, who encourages racism and violence, who considers the role of president to be akin to being a king be president and this half of the country are willing to take arms against any who would depose him.

I also see a Democratic party willing to allow that half of the country to have that leader if they can not have their choice as their nominee. The Democrats consider themselves a private club that has the right to ignore the will of the people and that party leadership considers our votes to be mere suggestions. They presume to know better than we do what is in our best interests. Furthermore, they wish to dismantle the Electoral College which was created in order to balance the needs of the farmers against the numbers in the cities. They do not see that they need to find the means to present a platform that convinces the farmers that what they stand for will support and be in the best interests of those whose vast land labors feed the country.

We are at a place in our history more devastating than the one we were in when we actually were engaged in a Civil War.

<extract> Read more Jeri Rose >>>

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 >>>

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

URBAN NATURALIST

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

Lloyd Graf

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

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

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

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

Extract Read More Lloyd Graf

From The Archive

Evolution of democracy from economy to ecology

Editorial Essay

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

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

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

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

<extract> From The Archive

Blurb Writers At The Edge

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

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

—Phil Innes, Vermont Views Magazine

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

GALLERY ONE

A photographic essay on Devon and Cornwall

Anne Lenten, Ed.

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

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

See more photos in this article Gallery One >>>

GUEST ARTCLE

LETTERS FROM CUBA #15

Some sentences from Cuba

Mac Gander

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

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

GUEST ARTICLE

LETTERS FROM CUBA #12

What lies beneath: Our stories our ghosts

Shanta Lee Gander

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

Its not over ‘til

Vermont Views

hey, at least its not going to get below freezing

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

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