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PHOTO OF THE DAY

Sicilian Dreams

Soon to be published new title by an esteemed Vermont Views columnist, Vincent Panella

Economic and gender inequities inspire a story set in 1907, when over a quarter-million Italians passed through Ellis Island. One of them is a widower and idealist who leaves his precocious daughter behind while joining a group of migrants who plan to return home. Santo soon learns that the old world has followed him, and he finds himself caught between two real life characters, Detective Joe Petrosino of New York’s Italian Squad, and his nemesis, Vito Cascio Ferro, an architect of the infamous Black Hand.

PASSAGES

Ted Hughes

Text selections by Vermont Views

The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldly enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.

...imagine what you are writing about. See it and live it. Do not think it up laboriously, as if you were working out mental arithmetic. Just look at it, touch it, smell it, listen to it, turn yourself into it. When you do this, the words look after themselves, like magic.

The dreamer in her Had fallen in love with me and she did not know it. That moment the dreamer in me Fell in love with her and I knew it.

And that's how we measure out our real respect for people—by the degree of feeling they can register, the voltage of life they can carry and tolerate—and enjoy. End of sermon. As Buddha says: live like a mighty river. And as the old Greeks said: live as though all your ancestors were living again through you.

Read more PASSAGES >>>

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

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.

<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

Dead brown leaves

Charles Monette

<extract> In thinking of mask compliance, I consider healthcare workers, doctors, and nurses who are once again overwhelmed by the numbers of sick people filling the wards and corridors of their hospitals.  They wear their masks all day long!  I consider their health… mental… physical, their isolation from their families… some dying, and it seems to me the least I can do is wear a mask.  Their wellbeing is more important than my selfish comfort!  Okay, preacher…

Splashes of sun were dispersed willy nilly throughout the forest.  Hidden oddities rose to view as low growth bushes shed their leaves.  Lichen stamped granite rocks, and small stone boulders were appearing.  A strange small, ground level woodshed I had never noticed came into view.   How did that get there?  Visibility through the trees was about 50 yards.  At that distance, you were met by a hazy, yet solid, wall of evergreens.  In the right, angled sun, some tree shadows landed and were resting on sister trees to their north.  Large swaths of the ground were united in shade.  In those areas, shadows had gone.  Mountain laurel bushes [illus.] looked hearty, strong in dark verdigris green all the way up, either side of the trail.  Their leaves held fast.  They looked ready for winter; leaves hale enough to hold the snow.

Shimmering, silvery stumps of trees gone by dotted the mountaintop. A cool breeze to the east let go as I descended west past scrub oak and pine to a sun-soaked spot below.  The sun was warm on my face.  I took it in.  Looking south and east, the sky was a wispy miasma of watered-down clouds.  One section looked as if a white cirrus puzzle had burst and pieces had just drifted apart.  Grey underbellies of others held aloft dirigibles in a dream.

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

Re-Booting America

Elizabeth Hill

“I'm no longer accepting the things I cannot change...

I'm changing the things I cannot accept.” 

~Angela Davis

As Americans approach the tail end of 2020, we find ourselves, and our country—like it or not—transforming. This past year has not only laid bare the enormously divisive black hole of racial, gender, political, and economic inequalities among our citizenry. It has also highlighted unspeakable injustices perpetrated by the privileged upon our most vulnerable, including those seeking safety and a better life at our country’s borders.

“Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”

~Fannie Lou Hamer

All of this and more is happening during a deadly and rampantly-out-of-control pandemic, which has already infected more than ten million people; so far taking the lives of nearly a quarter of a million people. Since the current administration has chosen to ignore this now-again-escalating health crisis, we the people need to be extra vigilant by continuing to wear face masks, to keep social distancing, and staying away from indoor crowds. 

“You can’t wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.” 

~Navajo

Whether we are aware of it or not, I’m quite sure the chaos we’ve lived in these past few years has altered us—not just in our collective outer world—but also in our own inner worlds.

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

#8•Don’t ask what your country... grow up!•

A shut-down column for the Plague Year 2020.                    

The third local supermarket didn’t have any either, but like the other two it had hundreds of types of bottled water — but not one Brita filter replacement.

It had filtered water, spring water, water from France and Italy, and of course that low carbon bottle from Fiji.

Previously all three markets had had Brita-type filters, a simple carbon-filter inserted into a jug, but now none. Amazon had it.

It’s no use looking to the government to legislate that stores of a certain size must carry filters, and it’s no use either complaining about billions of plastic bottles in the land-fill, or getting recycled or going straight into the ocean.

This is something we can take care of ourselves in our town by asking stores to carry the item, and if they don’t buying from Amazon and telling everyone about it.

<extract> Read more Dairy Home Companion

OLD LADY BLOG

September 28, 2020

Toni Ortner

We had been marching for weeks and carried a sign that said WE THE PEOPLE.  It happened spontaneously, and more and more people joined us as we passed. We were lucky to have had only one day of rain. Today I hummed a little song. It went, “White sky, yellow leaf black crow.” The rhythm of the words calmed me and reminded me of death poems by Buddhist monks.

I was 80. My death could be imminent.  How long would it take for the contents of my apartment (box) to be disposed of?  My body was a shell I would leave behind. I did not want to know what would happen to it or whether it would be buried, burnt, or dissected.

Although I was surrounded by this enormous crowd, I felt utterly alone. There was too much time to think.  Had I wasted my life marching in protests, carrying signs, and writing articles about freedom and human rights? Instead of being a journalist, I could have been a carpenter or learned all the facts about leaves, clouds, birds, or trees.

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

WRITE WALK

Jolene - A Short-Story told in Parts — Part 3

Susan Cruickshank

The words hung in the air for an endless moment as emotions that Jolene had been swallowing down since she had first decided to apply for college began to collect in her throat and form an Adam’s apple of regret and pain. The tears were further down, but Jolene knew they were coming. But she was most shocked to discover what came in between. It was searing anger that tasted metallic and corrosive in her mouth. And she tried to swallow it away like she did when the sour acid announcing vomit’s arrival in flu season slithered up the inside of her nape while she hugged the toilet bowl.

Jolene had experienced hot emotions before, like when she got less than an A on an assignment or when Jean was being annoying, but never with Papa and Mama. She never needed to. They were her safe spot and Jolene felt like she was theirs. And so when the disappointment and shame that had winded and weakened her moved over and let anger take the lead, she was afraid.

Jolene didn’t say anything after her anger stepped in, she just looked down at her indoor shoes, flip-flops that she had worn last summer that now made their way inside and had become her warm weather house shoes when Jolene put her winter slippers away. The tears that were in the queue chose an alternate route. Rather than hanging out in the lump in her throat, they began to make her eyes burn as she tried to blink them away. In the silence Mama spoke once more.

“You know I once had a dream to go to college. I wanted to be a nurse.”

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

THE FIRST GLASS

THE POINT

Vincent Panella

When someone bought him a drink he took a cigar instead, and his bartender brought the Antonio y Cleopatra box kept in the glass cabinet with the cocktail glasses. The box opened to the picture of the lovers – Antony in armor and Cleo reclining like Venus next to a slave with a feather fan. He knew the story because he read history and the dimensions of their love made the cigar taste sweeter and deeper.

Sometimes he did take a drink and the bartender would pour the scotch below the one-ounce line of the shot glass. He drank — or sipped really – never finishing because drinking wasn’t the point. He drank with certain people, one or two big spenders, liquor salesmen, but always with Joe, whose last name never passed his lips even though they’d been doing business for years.  Joe owned the juke box and cigarette machine, and once every two weeks he pulled up in his Buick and with a couple of pass keys took out the coin boxes and dumped the quarters onto a booth table. He and Joe would slide the coins into paper rolls and fold the ends over and tap each end to keep the coins tight. Each roll held forty quarters – ten dollars worth — and they stacked them like cord wood, then divided them equally, after which, as a sign of good will, Joe passed him a roll from his half. When this was done he - Al Cimorelli, owner in 1960 of a bar in Newburgh, New York – would nod to his bartender who brought water chasers and shot glasses and the bottle of Chivas Regal and poured shots for both men below the one-ounce line. They would salute and sip but not finish because drinking wasn’t the point. These moments celebrated who they were, their labor, the bond of their common background, their English laced with old world dialect as the most powerful of bonds — language limited and secret, something between them rolling off their tongues, in separate words and sometimes complete sentences when the subject required discretion, like taxes, black people, police, money, but not women, women were private. This was the bond of blood and work.         

Joe talked about business and how the blacks were ruining the town, and Cimorelli nodded but did not repeat the dialect slurs. He never used those words not only because they were offensive but because the woman he was in love with — as he was once in love with his present wife – was of that color.

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

AN A-MUSING LIFE

Grounding in the Time of Lava

Nanci Bern

I let part of my garden go untended this year. It grew in wild abandon. It ignored my care-placed stone circles and lines of plantings when I created it years ago and scoffed at my incessant weeding habits of the past. It exploded into extravagant plumes of plants I had no idea lingered within its depth. They sidled up to my perennials with a come-hither sway to their leaves. The party was on, and it was wonderous.

To some eyes this would look like a hot mess, but to me it just looked hot. Well, not at first. I am an intuitive enough gardener to feel what my patch of solace and creative expression needs. I back it up with science, of course because I don’t want to do anything blatantly ignorant. I love the design stage that begins to enliven my winter hands. Oh, the lists and diagrams! But this year I knew I had to bow to what the garden was calling for. The Devas needed to breathe big this year. What first looked like pandemonium became wild, passionate wisdom. What an opulent panorama for my dailyish grounding practice.

Grounding, to me, means to become present to where you are. This gives me the capacity to expand toward what is beyond and to look back to the past without dissolving into a traumatized mound of mud. These days we need to do this more than ever.

I conjure the requisite grounding cord to come from the spirit of this lush growth. It rises from the bounty and transforms into a verdant green vine. We swoon with delight in the loamy richness of it all. It is bedazzled with drops of dew from the morning that glitter in my mind’s eye.

Read more of this and other columns by Nanci Bern

ARCHETYPAL HIPPIE SPEAKS

The new bi-polar madness

Jeri Rose

A philosophy professor at a university posed this question for his final exam: “WHY?” His students opened their blue books and began feverishly writing. Only two wrote for a moment and then got up and handed in their replies.

The professor gave an A to the one word answer…”Because…” and a B to the two word answer …”Why not?” and the grade of C went to all the struggling ones who took the entire hour to answer.

Understanding the slant of mind that had the philosophy professor value the answer Because over the answer Why not? indicates a bias about a framework of thought that is particularly Western in its origins. There is no denying the advancements and workings that the scientific method has wrought in its answer that fills in what follows Because. Because sets up the quest to know, to further understand and implement the workings of reality accessing for us all the fine technical electronic devices that are now added to the motors and cranes, trains and electricity that are a given in the reality we operate in.

However, Why not? embodies an attitude of acceptance of what is. It can be followed by Because, but it does not require that the appreciation of what is be augmented, delved into, explored. Because… is a Western preoccupation while Why not? stems from the East, from a sense of inwardness that expresses itself in the outer world encouraging the perceiver of that outer world to recognize the awareness of his/her own inner energy directing outward. The East encourages and does not fear subjectivity while the West denies the possibility of any knowledge (and science is knowledge) emanating from the vastness of inner space.

<extract> Read more Jeri Rose >>>

URBAN NATURALIST

Black Vultures

Lloyd Graf

I was headed N on Canal around 10 AM a few days ago and ducked onto Birge St for an end run around a semi- mediated slow-down. Just beyond the computer shop I saw the pair of Black Vultures pictured in the Sept 28 photo enthusiastically rooting away at an unidentified roadside  carcass.

Couple this sighting with the 2 Blacks commemorating this past July 4 with a patriotic raid on a yummy road-kill skunk by the driveway to  Triple T 's sheds, dumpsters and garbage truck bays along Hghwy 142's all purpose disposal corridor at the base of bluffs leading to Morningside Cemetery and  Rich's photo-documented sighting of 3 similarly engaged Blacks along Fuller back in DEC of ‘19.  — then throw in Oct 2018 southbound flyover of a trio of Blacks —  Walnut St St Michael school lot —    throw in one mix-up with turks when triple T dumpster must have been a bonanza.

Extract Read More of this and other articles by Lloyd Graf

OPEN MIND

3 to 5 minutes on racial justice, no thanks

by Offie Wortham

Dear Jessie or Tommy,

Just had to write the letter below for my sanity. I really want to be of service in the community, but watching events go down hill in Johnson, Vt and the country with regards to race relations is very depressing. Instead of having carefully conducted conversations around issues we have given in to dangerous name-calling and control by guilt-ridden whites and angry blacks. Where do we go from there? If you care to print my piece please include the picture. Just want people to know I am a person-of-color who likes Vermont very much, and wants to work with others who understand the democratic process.

Offie Wortham

Resigns from being considered to be on The Racial Justice Commission in Johnson. October 5th, 2020

    I have lived in Johnson for over 10 years, and in Vermont for over twelve. I came to Johnson to teach Sociology, Psychology, and Human Relations at Johnson State. Anyone interested in my qualifications to be a volunteer on a committee in Johnson can just type my name into GOOGLE and view the resume from Marist College.

    I volunteered for the Racial Justice Commission at the urging of a friend on the Johnson Village Select board. After participating in a ZOOM meeting 10/5/2002 I have decided to withdraw my name from the process of the selection for becoming a Commission member.  I could tell from listening to some commission members that they only wanted new members who shared their narrow political perspective in working on racial or ethnic problems in Johnson. I am a free thinker, registered as an Independent. It promised to be a humiliating and frustrating experience for me, to prove that I was going to be politically correct, which was of course impossible. I have been working over 50 years, professionally and in a volunteer capacity, to move our nation toward racial and economic justice everywhere I have lived.

    The allowing of only 3-5 minutes for a statement from a candidate is not how I think the selection process should be done. Interested candidates should be asked to submit a short resume or a list of volunteer activities where they have worked to bring people together religious, racial, economic, cultural, people in conversations to identify and resolve racial and ethnic problems in their community.

    I think I will stay in my retirement while I watch my fellow citizens find the kind of people they are looking for who agrees to with them, rather than choosing experienced independent thinkers who want to work with them in a democratic fashion to make Johnson a more friendly and less stressful village.

Sincerely, Offie Wortham

Read More of this column >>>

Finnish Fandango

R & B IN THE US

Anneli Karniala

     No, it's not Rhythm & Blues.

     It's Racism and Bigotry.  Yes, right here in the US of A. Make no mistake, both do exist and have existed here and in many parts of the world for centuries. Have we made any positive progress? You decide.

     Individual racism, seen as an individual's overt discrimination of others based on their skin color or race, upended the first US colonies ...first, against this country's Indigenous People and their lands. And it continues against them. Then in the treatment of Africans shipped here to be sold and to exist as slaves to white colonists. Black Americans attest to the continued unfair and abusive treatments they must endure. The number of horrific lynchings and killings of black Americans through the past many decades continue to this day, as does racial profiling by the police.

     Racism regarding Asian Americans has long existed in the US. Our vast expanses of railroads were built by Chinese people who were humiliated and restricted in their lives. During WWII Japanese Americans faced internment for 4 years in one of the 10 detention camps in the US. There have been instances in these last months of Asian Americans being spat upon, punched, and called racial slurs because the coronavirus originated in China and the man in the White House continues to derogatorily call it the "China virus" -- blatant racism.

     Today Mexicans in our Western states fear for their lives due to the xenophobic utterances and actions of top politicians and the entire 'build a wall' hype and paranoia.

     Racism has side-kicks in condemnation, hatred, and violence. Is that what we want?

     What happened to "...all men are created equal..." in the U.S. Declaration of Independence?  Equality.

     Institutional or systemic racism is racism that is so embedded in society that it is accepted as 'normal'.

Extract Read more of this and other articles by  Anneli Karniala

WATER’S EDGE

Arriving

Nicola Metcalf

I saw her going

And ran to get my brothers.

We stood and watched, heartstruck in our loss

in her high ceilinged bedroom

with its elegant pink flowered wall paper, plush pale carpet, and

sliding glass doors opening to the ocean’s view

she slipped away forever.

A few hours earlier the nurse had laid her hand on her forearm arm and said, “Rona, you’re doing just fine”.

Like you would to a woman in labor

Reassuring her the way was open, and she was welcome.

<extract> Read more Nicola Metcalf >>>

MONKEY’S CLOAK

Listening to vibrations

Charles Monette                     

eight suns equal releases in an instant

shockwave spreading

spreading out from two black holes merging

signal sent seven billion years ago

rattling laser detectors

LIGO VIRGO’s super-sensitive-gravitational-wave-detection-system

gravity’s pull so strong

matter had collapsed on itself

now nothing, not even light escaped

<extract> Read more Monkey’s Cloak

Pandemic Journal

An Introduction to the

Graphic Journal Slide Show

Linda Rubinstein

For many, a journal is a private place. Perhaps you can recall that the leatherette-covered diaries we kept as children came with lock and key. It was as close to a mental “room of one’s own” that we  could muster at ten or twelve years of age. It was where we recorded our pain and plans, our crushes and hopes, and our observations.. But a child I no longer am.

What drives my decades old practice of keeping word-and-image journals? I began in the late 1970’s during a four month stay in Pamplona, Spain. I needed an outlet for the challenges of living in another culture so I bought a sketch book and began to draw. Once this creative pathway opened, images started pouring out. That early work was all personal, done for me. I came home to find a new genre had surfaced—Artist Books—my muse had found her home. And so, starting with the comfort of the personal, I began the Pandemic Journal.

<extract>  Go to Pandemic Journal by Linda Rubinstein to watch the slide show>>>

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 >>>

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

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 >>>

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

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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