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A unique community supported cultural magazine exploring Quality of Life and Spirit of Place in our bio-region, with extraordinary photographs, 22 regular columnists plus feature articles, galleries & essays, new articles and photos every day. 100s more articles in the Archive.

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PHOTO OF THE DAY

Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

Henry David Thoreau

Photo: Phil Innes, Retreat Meadows

“We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.”

PASSAGES

Harold Wilson

Text selections by Vermont Views

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

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

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

"A week is a long time in politics."

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

"The monarchy is a labor intensive industry."

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

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

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

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

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

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MEANDERINGS

Tale of two skies

Charles Monette

The quiet. It’s always the quiet that greets me. Eye-level mix of sunlit leaves, more golden, woods more open, gaze more distant within/beyond the trees. Leaves noisier below; more of them layered down brown… brushing. It had been ten days since my last visit to Black Mountain.

A robin’s blue-egg sky held the sun. Blueness so deep… so blue,

so beautiful!

cloudless blue

cobalt to azure

on a warm Native American summer day

Temps in the mid-sixties. Coppery leaves jostled ever so gently on breezes. It was an ever so day. Small birds chickadeein’ either side of the trail as I walked by. Playful chirps buoying me on my way. Once past, their songs quieted, and quiet returned to my walk uphill.

tens of thousands, tens of thousands

forced to evacuate their homes Thursday, yesterday

dry winds and high heat fed flames and fears north of LA

Atop, I couldn’t see smoke to the west… I saw it on the news… a video’s red-gold glow. Power had ignited fuel; widespread blackouts; … foothill folks couldn’t watch TV! Had to smell, hear, see it, feel it on the run…

18 million under red flag warning California, October 25, 2019

no hope to quench the dry, moisten the drought parched land

when she’s lit… windswept fire sweeps wild, 75 mile per hour wild

alarming plumes…. none dare call it dire

climate change conferences burnt to the ground

another star searing fame

Santa Ana fan whipping flames

We Vermonters are fortunate not to know LA’s golden glow, except in the movies. Our autumn hillsides blaze metaphorically, nature cycling over graves and the land of our ancestors. Looking southwest, pristine appreciation filled my eyes. Shades of rusty rolling reds, yellows and green mountain greens lolled placid ‘neath the orb of day.

Finnish Fandango

WHAT HAPPENED TO FRUGALITY?

Anneli Karniala

I opened the drawer and counted 12 individual socks, 6 pair. With worn heels, some with actual holes. They never got thrown out like the cotton socks. I draw the line at cotton socks; they get chucked! ...No, these 12 socks are all excellent quality, thick, warm Smart Wool-brand socks.

And why have I saved 6 pair of woolen socks with worn heels? Because they've each cost at least $20. That's $120 worth of good socks in my repair drawer. And luckily I have 2 darning eggs made of beautiful, smooth wood. They could be art objects, they are that lovely. So my plan for this autumn is to mend all the socks and add them to the other good ones that I already have. Then I'll have winter socks for the next decade at least! And I already know that, should I become so inspired, I can knit more socks using all the knitting wool I've amassed...and reinforce the toes and heels with extra darning wool in the process. Brilliant!

It makes me feel very 'righteous' and thrifty to know that I'll be darning my socks!

I remember my mother being very thrifty in the 1950's when I was a kid. My father had started his construction business, my mother worked full-time. And despite my mother's outward calm and belief that everything in the future would work out well, I know she was cautious with spending and most likely worried that the money might run out before the end of each month. My parents had also come from wartime in Finland in the 1940's, so ask anyone of that generation: most knew how to be frugal and to save.

For example, my mother could make a delicious meal for the 4 of us out of one thick pork chop and some mashed potatoes. It was "läskisoosia", or pork gravy. Still one of my favorite comfort foods. Leftovers were eaten, never thrown out. At the church rummage sales, she would carefully examine the used clothing in order to get the best items for all of us.

On the floor of her closet was a flat rectangular box and it contained used wrapping paper and ribbon that she saved and reused -- so recycling was by no means a new concept. In one of the kitchen drawers, she saved all sizes and lengths of string, each formed into a neat figure-8. That was when it was still allowed and even expected, that packages sent through the mail would be wrapped in brown paper (used supermarket bags) and firmly secured criss-cross with string.

Extract Read more Anneli Karniala

WATER’S EDGE

Burying Roger

Nicola Metcalf

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

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

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

<extract> Read more Nicola Metcalf >>>

How I Write

Vincent Panella

THE CHANNEL

These journal entries center on a fragment written forty-odd years ago. I recently found the pages typed on carbon paper, yet through all those years I mulled over the story and its possibilities – a confined setting, clear situation, very few characters, maybe a one-act, maybe a short story, but still no desire to get back in. This summer I re-entered the typescript and came up with a story line that might work:

A young man named Larry heads for Hollywood with a copy of his first novel soon to be published. The premise of the novel is a young man’s affair with his father’s lover. Larry’s car breaks down in the Mojave just outside of Barstow. He ends up in a radiator shop and there he meets a Samaritan type called Fenwick, also a writer, and they talk about his novel, what he invented, what he remembered – what was ‘true to life - and that blurry line between art and lived experience.

The dated entries here are edited for clarity. The original fragment was page after page about his car breaking down on a long hill.....almost nothing about substance, character, motivation, etc. Forty years ago – like now – I’m still learning. It’s working title was Barstow, but gradually a theme emerged, and the title Hill of Dreams helped me shape it. The entries span two months of this year but I must have worked on the story twice as long as that. In most cases the journal entries prompt the writing of actual text, which is done on screen, on paper, and sometimes with an Olivetti.

7/21/19 - Took a look at what I did to Barstow - still on the opening, how I chopped it to s - - -. Now all the car details are almost gone – the old V-8 burning oil, the crankcase ventilation valve, oil gauge idiot light, the retread tires because the character has so little money.

7/22 - Woke up thinking Bartow was f----- - that the whole gambit is a cliche - Larry writes a novel based on life, sort of – the premise being that his main character has an affair with his father’s lover. Larry has rendered a real life experience into a novel – his novel is within this story. The story is that that Larry’s heading for Cali with a novel in which the central action is drawn from his life and a threat to his family’s privacy. And his car breaks down on the long hill outside of town.

– and where a movie producer is interested in the novel as Larry imagines famous actors playing his family members and what their reaction might be.

Then his car breaks down on the Hill of Dreams. Fenwick (name borrowed from a Boll story) takes him to a hotel while he waits for a new radiator. They have some yet to be written convo about his situation, what he's written about his father etc. In the end Larry drives off into the sunset, back up the hill of dreams. End of story.

Scene: "I call it the Hill of Dreams," Fenwick said, They were sitting in the hotel lobby at a small bar and tables with a view of a garden and a raft of Eucalyptus trees.

Fenwick points out the similarity between Larry and the Okies generations back - heading for a new life out west, beaten by the hill, or not beaten....Fenwick there to pick up the pieces.

Larry felt a little buzz from the whiskey, a comfortable feeling, the big room with its open windows along the wall was cool and comfortable without any air conditioning as was his room where he'd slept well and long, realizing that the past four nights he'd been sleeping in the back seat of the Pontiac.

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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.

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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

SELECTED LETTERS

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

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.

IN BETWEEN

How Very Rich and Deep our Lives

Julia Ferrari

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

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

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

Extract Read more Julia Ferrari

OLD LADY BLOG

Two Pieces

Toni Ortner

For the 10 year old girl from Syria

The mirror stopped laughing when the bullets shattered the window.

Shards of glass flew through the startled air.

Familiar voices stopped when the wires were cut.

Description fled in dust.

It was the end of metaphor.

You huddled on the floor

in the dark arms of morning.

For Earl Thompson (Yakima Indian nation)

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

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

Read More of this article >>>

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.

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

WORLD & US ENERGY NEWS

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.

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.