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PHOTO OF THE DAY

Simplicity

Emily Dickinson

Photo: Kate Hill Cantrill

How happy is the little stone

That rambles in the road alone,

And doesn't care about careers,

And exigencies never fears;

Whose coat of elemental brown

A passing universe put on;

And independent as the sun,

Associates or glows alone,

Fulfilling absolute decree

In casual simplicity.

PASSAGES

Toni Morrison

Text selections by Vermont View

"Make a difference about something other than yourselves."

"Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another."

"As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think."

"Some Native American writers enjoy being called Native American writers."

"If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it."

"When there is pain, there are no words. All pain is the same."

"All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was."

"You need a whole community to raise a child. I have raised two children, alone."

"Somebody has to take responsibility for being a leader."

"I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it."

Read more PASSAGES >>>

Recent Passages By: 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

Essays on beauty of Northeast Kingdom.

Tony Whedon, Drunk in the Woods. Green Writers Press, 2018

Reviewed by Laura Stevenson

Drunk in the Woods is a collection of sixteen essays, of which all but the first and last have been previously published in journals of essays, fiction, and poetry. Many of the essays describe the harsh beauty of the Northeast Kingdom, where Whedon and his wife have lived near the Canadian border for over a quarter century in a cabin which, during their early years, had no running water or electricity. The shadow of Thoreau hovers metaphorically behind Whedon's withdrawal from society, and stylistically behind his delicate descriptions of the woods, its animals, and its vistas, but another shadow looms more closely. For "drunk in the woods" is not just the state of being its title essay describes. Collectively, the essays portray a narrator who, despite years of recovery, presents himself as A drunk in the woods.

The woods is more than a setting; it's a state of mind, an inspiration. The second essay, "Nightwalk," meditates on the woods' darkness, which a person accustomed to electricity thinks of simply as "the absence of light." But after long winter evenings lit by stars or, inside, a kerosene lamp that throws light only a few feet, darkness attains a texture, "an eerie dark silence in a dusk that doesn't fall, but emerges from the hollows, the dark wet riverbanks, the mounded snow." Whedon's intimate perception of landscape appears again in "Deer Park," a meditation on an ancient hemlock grove, its eight-hundred-year-old trees, and its changes over the seasons. These two essays, however, are exceptional in that they contain "pure" nature writing – some of the finest in the collection. The other woodland observations are intermingled with the narrator's reflections on his years of alcoholism and recovery. The mixture is achieved in short linked scenes whose flickering tense shifts mirror the movement from sights presently beheld – a pond, a garden, a woodpecker -- to memories that the sight calls up spontaneously. The result is a gracefully ambiguous hybrid of memoir and nature writing. In "Drunk in the Woods," for example, memory is tinged with regret for "an alcoholic landscape – a drunk landscape, as opposed to the sober one I live in now, the same trees, years later, the same brook, but with more clarity." Behind the syntax hovers the distant possibility that the drunken landscape, not the sober one, allows more clarity of vision.

Whedon's hybrid allows him to avoid the AA cliché of "I was a sinner, but now I'm saved" and instead capture the complicated inter-relationship of drunkenness and sobriety.

<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

NOT QUITE THE THING

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SHORTS

China more optimistic for children’s future  than US

Vermont Views

STATISTIC: WASHINGTON, D.C. -- As children across the U.S. begin a new school year, a majority of Americans (74%) continue to believe most children in their country have the opportunity to learn and grow every day, but they are solidly less likely to think so today than they were a decade ago. As a result of this downturn, the U.S. has dropped from 31st to 69th in the world on this measure since 2008, putting its current ranking well behind those of many wealthy economies and global competitors, including China. — Gallup

STATISTIC: The U.S. has deficits other than trade to worry about with China. Since the early days of the global economic crisis, China has led the U.S. by as much as 20 percentage points on Gallup's question of whether most children in their respective countries have the opportunity to learn and grow every day. In 2018, 92% of Chinese adults said most children in their country have these types of opportunities, while 74% of U.S. adults said the same.

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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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Our Man In

Vermont

by Doug Hoyt

This is the first return to Vermont since my escape from the kale gang.  The plan is to retrieve shadily-gained  but desperately-needed  funds from a hollowed-out tree trunk  in the Madame Sherri Forest  near Brattleboro (with a tip of the hat to Madame Sherri!).  All place names en route have been ingeniously altered so as to foil the machinations of the constabulary, and the constabular canines.

The approach to Vermont got serious in a small town that we shall cleverly moniker 'switch-Ip',  where there is a  clam-box-shaped  clam-box-sales-outlet known as the Clam Box.  Although the box was rather small, now we know how many clams it takes to fill the box up tall.

Next was a refreshing repast in a town named something uncannily similar to Newbellypup, Chassamusetts  (on the mackMerri River) for a New England IPA. This style of beer is all the rage, and is named after a newer part of England,  as well as India.  The bridge north from Newbellypup leads one state closer to Vermont - - a state called Gnu Clotheshamper.  There, there is a town we shall be referring to as Salisburysteak,  where you can buy this diner (pictured top right), if you like. Across the street from your new diner in Salisburysteak,  is,  however, direct competition:  the Gourmet Pantry, where they have gourmet bait, and they have gourmet tackle. And ice and pizza.

<Extract>

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Ruminations From the Yellow Brick Road

Elizabeth Hill

...Birds fly over the rainbow, why then oh why can’t I. 

If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow, why oh why can’t I?

~ Dorothy

This summer marks the 80th Anniversary of MGM’s film premier of The Wizard Of Oz. The original novel titled “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” was written in 1900 by L. Frank Baum, who later wrote fourteen Oz adventure sequels. Baum’s stories were written as allegories. His characters, environments, and situations each symbolize deeper meanings and conditions of human experience.

Year after year, I have gone out of my way to watch The Wizard of Oz on TCM. Every time I see it, I come away with more questions, amazements, and a deep feeling of gratitude for this timeless and magical what my youngest daughter would call a heartwarming melodrama.

Both the book and movie have generated countless elaborate theories regarding the symbolism of the story. The range of theories span the gamut of political, spiritual, atheist, psychological, even monetary.

For instance, some folks interpret The Wizard of Oz as depicting the downfall of the Populist movement at the beginning of the twentieth century. In it, Dorothy would symbolize the common citizen, Tin Man, the industrial workers, and Scarecrow, the farmers. The Cowardly Lion stood for one particular politician who was seen by many as all talk and no action. The Wizard was thought to represent the President during that time, namely, Grover Cleveland or William McKinley. The Yellow Brick Road stood for the gold standard, and Oz which is an abbreviation for the ounce may have represented the standard for measuring gold, while Emerald City represented the dollar. The Wicked Witch of the East was considered to be a stand-in for the banking industry; and her sister, The Wicked Witch of the West, who met her demise by water,was thought to be drought. This theory, first introduced in the 1960s, has been mostly discredited, though some still hold to it.

Toto, I've got a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.

~Dorothy Gale

Through the years, many Christians have interpreted the Wizard of Oz as an allegory of faith, sometimes referencing it in sermons. In this version, The Yellow Brick road stands for the path to enlightenment, on which the characters encounter good and evil, temptation, and sin as they advance toward The Emerald City, aka Heaven. Some Christians interpret Oz, in its entirety, as Heaven. And, in the end, the Wicked Witch of the West is killed by water, suggesting baptism.

I’ll get you, my Pretty, and your little dog too!

~The Wicked Witch of the West

Extract Read More Elizabeth Hill >>>

WRITE WALK

The Recipe

Susan Cruickshank

It doesn’t smell like what you think it would. 

It has a pungency like burnt garlic or motor oil. And you cling to this difference because you don’t want it to be what you deep down know it is.

I look down at the silver metal bowl which holds a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, a half cup of baking soda and a teaspoon of Dawn dishwashing liquid that has made a layer of suds that sits foaming as I dip my yellow sponge into its contents. The shaking Hungarian Vizsla, a medium-sized dog named Zoe, buries her snout deeper into the crook of my neck.

Twenty minutes of waiting moves like a long-winded sermon––painfully slow––before we can rinse Zoe’s first course of treatment off and the tomato juice round can begin. 

This is the first time I’ve encountered the spray of a skunk up close. And like so many things, it’s different from what I imagined it to be.

My legs are beginning to go numb. I’m sitting crossed-legged, wedged up against one wall of the shower, fully dressed in blue jeans and a long-sleeve t-shirt. The decision for suitable clothing was not a high priority when I climbed into the stall to begin slathering Zoe with this abrasive concoction.

Water is now rushing out of the tap, a foot from the shower’s floor, so close to where Zoe stands and I sit, as we find the right temperature before pulling up the knob sending the water pressure upward to be released like rain. I’m now made aware of my clothing as the water begins to seep through my jeans, creating a pouch of wetness that is pooling at my crotch. 

Jennifer is here. So is her husband, Greg.

She’s standing at the shower door, barefoot. She’s also in jeans, damp, but not drenched, holding the shower’s nozzle, moving it over Zoe’s coat as I follow with my hands. My fingertips pushing the water through the coir-textured fur until it is emptied of peroxide, baking soda, and Dawn.  As the water falls and the denim in my jeans becomes a second skin, my t-shirt slips down my shoulder soaking. The steam of the water’s heat begins to hold the bathroom’s light in misty vapor, as my thoughts take in snatches of awareness of how unlikely it is to have this woman from my past standing beside me.

Jennifer is part of my post-university days when long walks along deserted country roads and pints of beer at The Only Cafe on Hunter Street in Peterborough, Ontario were regular occurrences.

<Extract> Read More Susan Cruickshank >>>

MONKEY’S CLOAK

Encase the world in iron

Charles Monette

Photo: Wildfire

Charles Monette

Encase the world in iron

our lungs on life support

widespread deforestation

ashens widespread desolation

widespread, why Bernie’ d say, “that’s HUGE”!

raging fires ignite bitter disputes

humans bellow-blame-flames… deniers loot

international crisis… quick convene the gang of 7

distill Macron hysteria, ‘raise a glass, give a toast to heaven’

we’ll talk after lunch… of oranges

why this is preposterous, sensationalist,

exaggerated environmental collusion

wildfires up 84% ‘cross a once great Brazilian nation

still ranchers denude, farmers’ clear-cut profits soybean cultivation

burns like a panic… this widespread climate collusion

Amazon, (not talkin .com), gave 20% of Earth’s oxygen

now dioxide’s absorption drains down a leaking carbon sink

shall we disrupt commercial interests? earmarked sustainability?

or just encase the world in iron to increase longevity

not fearing waters’ heights, just widespread calamity

<extract> Read more Monkey’s Cloak

Finnish Fandango

THE FUNERAL

Anneli Karniala

I was unable to attend the funeral a few days ago on August 18th. It was an upsetting and sad gathering. I really would have liked to have attended. I would have worn a long black dress, black boots, a black hat, and dark glasses -- but with a shimmering white necklace in reverence.

Pity, we two had never really met. I would have liked that so much, but it was just not to be. There would certainly have been many adventures to experience together. Excitement. Joy. Wonder. Gratitude.

After all, we had a common bond: the Nordic spirit. The human spirit. The love of raw, breath-taking Nature. The respect for all living creatures.

But now there is only the headstone, the plaque, replacing the life gone by of Okjökull, known as Ok for short. 

I do plan to pay my respects in person some day and see that headstone, erected in Borgarfjördur, Iceland.  It reads in both Icelandic and English. The English:

                            A letter to the future

       Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier.  

       In the next 200 years, all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path.

       This monument is to acknowledge that we know

       what is happening and know what needs to be done.

       Only you know if we did it.

                            Ágúst 2019

                            415ppm CO2

Extract Read more Anneli Karniala

5,000 Vermonts at risk

Emily Cohen is the Senior Adult Programs Manager at Vermont Foodbank

Dear Network Partners,

Do you have a minute to help protect 3SquaresVT?  There is currently a proposal by the USDA to change who is eligible for 3SVT. This change would push 3 million people out of the program, including more than 5,000 Vermont households.  If you'd like a brush up on the specifics, please read this op-ed from John Sayles, CEO of the VT Foodbank, and Anore Horton, the executive director of Hunger Free Vermont:

https://www.rutlandherald.com/opinion/perspective/horton-sayles-cuts-would-be-devastating/article_ba6ca49f-97e5-5347-ab0c-df4dedb74452.html

and/or this Washington Post article:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/07/23/usda-proposes-snap-change-that-would-push-million-americans-off-food-stamps/

Most importantly, please submit a comment in opposition of this change. The commenting period ends Sept 23. Visit Hunger Free VT’s website to comment: https://www.hungerfreevt.org/protect3squaresvt

If you use Twitter, I'd like to ask you to join us in retweeting or tweeting your own thoughts on this important subject. Official hashtags are #ProtectSNAP or #HandsOffSNAP

Thanks for your help,

Emily Cohen

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

MEANDERINGS

Stones kicking back

Charles Monette

It was one of those lush, late days of summer when the deciduous blend evergreen. The mountainside was fully covered with deep verdant greenery.  Leaves well fed, plump with chlorophyll.

An optimal day for hiking.  Sunny… sunlight lightening my mood.  Temp a touch above warm.  The forest freshly alive as if it had just come out of the showers… and it had.

Rusty dead leaves and pine needles were bunched together sporadically on the trail, left behind by streamlets that had washed torrentially down the trail.  Thoughts along the way were easy all alone.  Plenty of time to notice.

Usually the beauty is up and about and away.  But today, I found myself looking down and around at the roots crisscrossing the trail.  Some large ones creating the rise and run of a step.  Others set as slightly raised trip snares.  Good to notice them before they snag the tip of your hiking boot.

A lone brilliant orange monarch greeted me at the top of the mountain.  Floating about from flower to flower, it was one alight ahead of my camera snap. Wings up-closed deprived me of its orange glory until it finally flitted away into the wood.

It was a fine day on the mountain!  I felt blessed to be among the splendor of the sky, the solidity of the stones and the tranquility of the trees.  The air was fresh and free.

The king of heaven must’ve opened a box of cotton balls then gently tossed them down to form the sky below.  Content where they landed as Shelley’s, “islands  in a dark blue sea”, they floated slowly east on the hint of a breeze. A few had a silver underbelly, but most were fluff white, their beauty majestic in the radiant azure sky!

I was hoping to see a hawk.  I would’ve settled for a turkey vulture gliding on currents of air while casting shadows on the ground about me.  But nary a one of either.  Just about to give up, a lone sparrow darted on a line to the northwest.  <extract> Read more of this and other articles by Charles Monette >>>

ARCHETYPAL HIPPIE SPEAKS

Facets of Woo Woo

Jeri Rose

First of all, I need to clarify what Woo Woo means. Woo Woo is all that atheists deny. It is all that science denies as metaphysics. Deja vu is understood as being some glitch in brain cells. Coincidence is mere accident. Woo Woo is anything not real in the aspect of physical codifiable, touchable, quantifiable, bound by physics and chemistry. It is the object of religion, of ghost stories, of energies emitted by good and evil.

Besides the denial of atheists, people relate to Woo Woo in a variety of ways . People who deny ghosts might believe in God. There are people who believe in a Devil and do not believe in God. Woo Woo has a lot to do with belief, but the world seems to point to Woo Woo as real, seems to manifest Woo Woo in order to create or back up belief.

When a green house finch flew onto the stage while Bernie Sanders was speaking, everyone knew that was a sign of some spiritual acceptance of Bernie from a higher realm. Bernie looked at the bird and said “this bird does not know…” and the bird flew from the stage floor to face him on his podium. Bernie referred to the bird as a dove of peace. So what Bernie did not know was that the bird was not a dove but a green house finch. The preferred food of that species is hemp seed. Had Bernie come out for farmers having the mandate to grow hemp for seed and for fuel and for paper, he would have won so many more people that the Democrats would not have been able to cheat him out of his win. It is not Woo Woo that a bird flew onto the stage and the podium. Those are verifiable facts. The idea that the bird’s appearance was some heavenly sign falls into the Woo Woo belief system. Bernie’s ignorance of what the bird knew and of its species was not Woo Woo but an indication of his ignorance made public. My assertion that the bird was attempting to school Bernie by facing him on the podium and that the bird by its very existence exhibited a need that was expressed by the actions of that bird is of course Woo Woo. Whether Woo Woo has reality in this scene or is to be relegated to the atheist notion that there is no reality to Woo Woo is up to each person to decide.

I own a crystal ball which a person whom I know took from my home to his home in an apartment on my property. I was upset to see this thing removed from my place. I took it back and the man who took it went nuts because he believed that the crystal was enabling him to communicate with his dead wife. Of course crystal balls have been used for such means in many cultures. So while this belief on his part falls into Woo Woo, it has time tested continuity that if there is reality to this use of a crystal ball, the man may indeed have had some experience by using the object.

When I say the guy went nuts, I can describe his actions. He screamed, he flailed his arms and jumped up and down. This went on for a half an hour and then he grabbed the ball from my hand and said that if I was going to take it from him, then he was going to throw it into the ocean. He threatened this for several minutes and finally did throw it.

<extract> Read more Jeri Rose >>>

Real Vermont Stories

Two Kinds of Truth

by Beth Kanell

            Because I write historical fiction, I require two kinds of historical “truth” for my books: The first, obviously, is the dates-and-places-and-names kind, which underlies each scene and the forces of history. The second is emotional truth. And that is the harder truth to find.

            As an example, consider Abolition: the movement to abolish slavery. Many Vermonters proudly proclaim that Vermont did away with slavery in its state constitution – which turns out to not be true in the first sense, since the phrasing was “no male person, born in this country, or brought from over sea, ought to be holden by law, to serve any person, as a servant, slave or apprentice, after he arrives to the age of twenty-one Years, nor female, in like manner, after she arrives to the age of eighteen years, unless they are bound by their own consent, after they arrive to such age, or bound by law, for the payment of debts, damages, fines, costs, or the like.” If you read this precisely, you’ll find that child slavery was legal. Research in the past decade has uncovered a shocking amount of it.

            A lot of fair-minded Vermonters are sure that the Civil War veterans in their families joined up to fight to get rid of slavery – but more Vermonters fought for the sake of holding together the Union of states. People also picture their ancestors deciding that white people and dark-skinned were somehow equivalent and thus should be citizens and not enslaved. Here, emotional research shows a different picture: Most Vermonters who cared about Abolition did so from a religious point of view, considering the soul and the damage done to a soul by becoming an enslaver.

            Even tougher is figuring out the emotional truth of Vermont’s earliest years—the lives of veterans who’d fought in the Revolutionary War. A sort of fife-and-drum, Yankee Doodle Dandy image suggests merriment and derring-do. But the first sort of truth shows us soldiers who ranged from barely old enough to hold a weapon, to men in their sixties and older with seasoning in the “French and Indian War” (1754-1763).

<Extract>

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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

AN A-MUSING LIFE

The Vital Un-Silencing

Nanci Bern

“Your silence will not protect you.” Audre Lorde

There are many ways to silence. Some are sought for healing and growth. It quiets the clatter of superfluous thought so we can hear our truth. This silence is the vibration of inspiration and the note of creation. Its intonation is the heart of mind.

Silence also comes from fear and hopelessness. Its hammer of stultification pounds down words without warning. One is hit with the molten scream of no sound. The more you resist, the harder it turns you like a glassblower until you relent to its heat.

This happened to me. An obscene convergence of the urge to speak, overwhelm of what needs to be said, and dread of a reaction crashed itself on my spirit. I became mute. This was fostered by the sheer weight of the reality that the world has morphed into a dystopic battleground. I did not fight my inertia because I did not have the wherewithal to. I gave into it.

However, recently while sitting under a winsome sun of what has been a light-starved spring, a wind whipped remaining autumn leaves into a vague frenzy. “Entelechy", I said. I haven’t used that word since college. Was Aristotle lurking behind a tree? Was he kicking those leaves? The juxtaposition of the seasonal burgeoning growth and the gaunt remains of fall felt like what I had been feeling come to life.

Entelechy, the vital force of a ‘thing’ (me), is what I have been at odds with. The pull to illuminate the truth amidst the chaos of ignorant beliefs that are causing violence and damage and the flat out fear of dangerous backlash was my battle. Part of the vitality that propels me is what I have come to call righteous beauty. It is to stand in a place of justice, love and clear mind to create a place of elegance and truth of thought and being. I was unable to sit, let alone stand.

But enough is finally enough and not holding my pen has become painful. No, this is not a metaphor. I have a shiny new one that is threatening to poke me in the eye if I don’t pick it up. Our bodies do not lie, even if our minds do. <extract>

Read more Nanci Bern

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>

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WATER’S EDGE

Walmart Universe

Nicola Metcalf

We discovered many campgrounds catered exclusively to RVs.  I scrambled on my iphone trying to locate possibilities. My partner and I were tired, hungry and testy, arguing over how to make a decision. He accused me of being too particular.  I bumped up against his resistance to making plans ahead of time.  We knew Walmart parking lots were an easy solution, and this seemed like the right time to try one.  But first we needed dinner.

Even though I had planned and packed plenty of home-cooked food that only required reheating, we had eaten out at restaurants for our first few meals.  This was because our cook-top blew the fuses on the first try, casting a blanket of disappointment and doubt over David’s handiwork.  He had been stressed gauging which size fuses were needed and where to find them, a process that took place over a day or so.  At this point, I wanted to be eating the perishable food waiting to spoil in the coolers.  David heard my concern and led the way, pulling us off a road leading to a construction site near a motel.  There I peed behind a dumpster and we fixed our dinner roadside.  We ate baked beans with sauteed hot dog slices heated on our newly working cooktop, thanks to new 60 amp fuses.  We played at being vagabonds. 

As it became dark, we headed to the nearby Walmart Supercenter.  We had been there earlier in the afternoon looking for a small and simple non-electric coffee maker since we’d left ours at home.  The place was quiet and cavernous with very few shoppers, and once again I marveled at American Capitalism.  Not surprisingly, Walmart had nothing small and simple in the category of coffee makers, only bulky Keurigs and complicated 12 cup machines.  There was a French Press, but it was too large to allow it valuable storage space in the van. 

Since we had forgotten to pack our hats as well, I asked where hats were located from an employee standing at one of the registers.  A tall woman in her 60s with an ambiguous shade of blonde hair, she held a spray bottle and cleaning cloth and was half-heartedly wiping down the register and its barcode reading wand.  The teller next to her was engaged helping customers make their purchases.  The woman gave me instructions in a southern accent I had trouble understanding.  She waved in the direction I was to go in, but was clearly was not about leave her station.  I couldn’t find them.  Another employee, one with a smile, graciously walked me where I wanted to go.

It was dark when we returned to Walmart for the night.  Shutting off the ignition, I looked out across the large and largely empty parking lot, sparsely dotted with trees.  Sure enough, just as we had heard about, six or seven other small vans, and one gigantic RV, were quietly posed for the night. Most rigs were parked beside one of several trees scattered across the lot, as if the tree marked a campsite, offering a gesture of camouflage and natural beauty.  People had parked evenly spaced from one another, and there was no sign of life behind tightly drawn, light-blocking curtains. I looked over at the van closest to us and spotted a woman slipping into the front cab from the rear, then quickly withdraw. We had quietly joined an underground community.  There we shared a common sense of purpose to gather somewhere free and relatively safe, outside the demands of a market economy.

<extract> Read more Nicola Metcalf >>>

WRITE ON !

George and Agnes

by Howard Prussack

George and Agnes Spaulding, who farmed just two miles south of our farm on Route 14, were intertwined in the fabric of our farm community for as far back as I can remember. Whether it was 4H, a Grange supper, the Tunbridge Fair, the Soil Conservation District, Farm Bureau or any other farm related event, they would be there.

I put up feed for George and Agnes for about 10 years, chopping haylage and corn at either end of the growing season. It was usually a two day affair by the time we moved machinery in, did the work and packed up and left, and it was a consistent window into their lives and the routine they shared for many years. There was a time that I was putting up feed for nine dairy farms each year, scattered around two counties. Everyone wanted to be first to get their work done to get the optimum forage quality, and it was a delicate balancing act to satisfy everyone and not lose any business. Some farmers offered to prepay in return for earlier service, others emphasized the large amount of business they gave me and that should put them at the front of the list. Within just a few short years, Agnes had established their farm at the front of the pack, simply by calling and stating the date she wanted it done by and not leaving me any choice! If there was an early cold snap in September and the corn in the valley had gotten a hard frost, I could almost set my watch to the phone ringing at 6:30 that morning, Agnes on the line. “It’s Agnes, we’ve had a frost and need you here tomorrow to put in the corn.” If it hadn’t frosted by mid-September, I could predict that before the end of the Fair that she would say “We’ll see you this week to put in the corn.”

While there, I would be back and forth in the yard hauling in dozens of truckloads of feed all day long and it seemed that each time I looked up, Agnes was doing something different. Making a few rounds with the lawnmower, in the house making food for an event, working in the garden, jumping on the tractor to mow a few more acres of hay needed to finish the crop, in the car heading to one of the grandkid’s games, or to Village Pizza, and always barefoot. She and George had a distinct division of the summer work; she did the mowing, baling and other chores while he tedded, raked and did the milking. One summer evening George was raking in front of us and it went well past the start of chore time. He finished up and didn’t stick around the field too long, stating that “Agnes is milkin’, and she don’t like milkin’, so I better go.” as he headed back to the barn on the tractor at noticeably higher RPM’s than usual.

Photo Credit: Sam Lincoln, Randolph Center

<Extract>

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OPEN MIND

The Immigration Act of 1924, or Johnson–Reed Act, including the Asian Exclusion Act and National Origins Act

Offie Wortham

Part three of four of a major essay by Dr. Offie Wortham

         This was a United States federal law that prevented immigration from Asia, set quotas on the number of immigrants from the Eastern Hemisphere, and provided funding and an enforcement mechanism to carry out the longstanding ban on other immigrants.

An 1882 law had already put an end to Chinese immigration, but as Japanese (and, to a lesser degree, Korean and Filipino) laborers began arriving and putting down roots in western states, an exclusionary movement formed in reaction to the "Yellow Peril". Valentine S. McClatchy, founder of The McClatchy Company and a leader of the anti-Japanese movement, argued, "They come here specifically and professedly for the purpose of colonizing and establishing here permanently the proud Yamato race," citing their supposed inability to assimilate to American culture and the economic threat they posed to white businessmen and farmers. Despite some hesitation from President Calvin Coolidge and strong opposition from the Japanese government, with whom the U.S. government had previously maintained a cordial economic and political relationship, the act was signed into law on May 24, 1924.

The act set a total immigration quota of 165,000 for countries outside the Western Hemisphere (an 80% reduction from the pre-World War I average), and barred immigrants from Asia, including Japan and the Philippines (then under U.S. control). The act reduced the annual quota of any nationality from 3% to 2% of the number of foreign-born persons of such nationality residing in the United States in 1890 (though more recent censuses existed). The reduced quotas were set to last through 1927. No quotas on immigration from the Western Hemisphere were put in place.

According to the U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian, the purpose of the act was "to preserve the ideal of U.S. homogeneity.

The provisions of the act were so restrictive that in 1924 more Italians, Czechs, Yugoslavs, Greeks, Lithuanians, Hungarians, Poles, Portuguese, Romanians, Spaniards, Chinese, and Japanese left the United States than arrived as immigrants

The law was not modified to aid the flight of Jewish refugees in the 1930s or 1940s despite the rise of Nazi Germany. The quotas were adjusted to allow more Jewish refugees after World War II, allies in China and the Philippines. The immigration quotas were eased in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 and replaced in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.

Similar to the start of European immigration, the Chinese started immigrating to the United States after a population explosion and a food shortage in China. Other push factors were the Opium War and the Taiping rebellion. While in the United States the Chinese endured constantly changing U.S. immigration priorities. When immigrants could be used for cheap labor they were instantly recruited and embraced but the second an economic shift took place in the United States, immigrants were given the cold shoulder.

<extract>    Read More Offie Wortham >>>

THE FIRST GLASS

Speech to the congregation

Vincent Panella

Palm Sunday, 2019, Centre Congregational Church, Brattleboro.

This is my short speech to the congregation as a Loaves and Fishes volunteer.

Good morning, and thank you. My name is Vincent Panella, and I’m a retired teacher and a writer. I’ve been living in Vermont since 1976. I volunteer at Loaves and Fishes for the Friday meal – as you know we also serve a meal on Tuesdays.

So, if I were to tell you what it’s like to work there, I’d like to characterize it in a few words – so let’s say, satisfying, inspiring, and tiring. Satisfying because I’m lucky enough to be able to give up one day a week to a good cause. Inspiring because this is a tangible way of adding some good to a world lacking in compassion. Tiring because one never stops moving until the last fork is put away.

Growing up in an Italian family in which food was a part of physical and mental sustenance, it was natural when I looked around for a place to volunteer that I would gravitate to the kitchen.

So with all that said, let me try to describe my day on a job from eight in the morning to one or one-thirty in the afternoon, a job in which it’s impossible for me to describe every thing I do – but I will try.

When I arrive at the kitchen at eight or so, Ruth and Phil and John and Josie are already cooking the soup and meat courses and preparing desserts and planning for the day’s meal and for next Tuesday‘s meal as well. I have evolved into the salad bar and prep man. The first thing to do after talking with Ruth and the others about what to prepare, is to check the walk-in cooler and whatever food has been donated from the supermarkets and local businesses like Amy’s and the coop. We also set up a coffee bar for early arrivals, which are usually people who just like to hang out or come in from the cold, but who also help with whatever jobs they’re willing to do or offer to do.

<extract>  Read More >>>

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

ARCHETYPAL HIPPIE SPEAKS

Division Tactics

Jeri Rose

If you think being a Jew is different from being any other human group,whether you were born a Jew or not, you are a racist. The same goes for thinking that women are significantly differently from men. It is sexism to think the sexes are significantly different from one another in the essence of being human. Sure we can analyze and codify differences among people. We can note differences in bone structure between those from Europe and those from Africa. These differences arise from isolated genetic breeding. However, there is only a basic experience of reality that is human and our literature and art express our sameness, even though our societies have differences, as humans, we display a commonality of experience that marks us as one human race.

It does not matter if you think some group is better or worse. It is racism to think that we are different in some essential way from one another. Racism is not necessarily a bad thing as a conveyor of hate; it is simply wrong. There is one human race expressed as male and female. There are people who hypothesize that keeping people divided in their concept of how we think about each other, serves the purposes of those who rule us. I think that might be true; however, looking at human interactions, we see that the separation point of view may arise from within ourselves whether or not it is abetted by those who have control of media and the encouragement of our societal considerations.

Babies are born with temperament for fearing what is new or curiosity to explore what is new. They exhibit these traits before they are socialized to express them. Thus I posit that both ways of responding to the world are natural to us and based in aspects that promote survival. Being wary keeps one alive but so does curiosity. The conservative and the liberal are both valid viewpoints and can add to human civilization.

<extract> Read more Jeri Rose >>>

From The Archive

Evolution of democracy from economy to ecology

Editorial Essay

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

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

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

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

<extract> From The Archive

VERMONT DIARY

Five Chill Words

Phil Innes

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

“Anna from Auschwitz”, she said.

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

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

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

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

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

Read More VERMONT DIARY >>>

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

SPECIAL FEATURE

A Dance with Hermes

Ken Masters

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

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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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’ Open Mind

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Lawrence Klepp Wildlife SCREENplay

George Harvey Environment there and here, Special Report by Phil Innes World & US Energy News

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