Archive - Mar 1, 2012
MIDDLEBURY — Greg Vigne has intently listened to more than two decades of sermons from a spot in the pews at the Memorial Baptist Church of Middlebury.
Now Vigne, 49, is learning to appreciate the view from the pulpit, as he is currently delivering sermons to is fellow parishioners.
GRAFTON — The Middlebury Union High School girls’ Nordic ski team dominated the Division II field in both Friday’s freestyle competitions in Jericho and Tuesday’s classic races in Grafton and won the school’s first state championship in the sport since 1989.
In the midst of news surrounding Town Meeting, the presidential primaries, the Dow cruising over 13,000, North Korea agreeing to cut back on its testing of nuclear weapons, and the continuing threat of war with Iran by the same neoconservatives that pushed us unnecessarily into a war with Iraq, let’s pause for a moment to applaud a local milestone: the MUHS Nordic girls’ ski team won the D-II state championship this week.
It was the first state championship of any MUHS Nordic ski team since 1989.
It’s a special achievement for several reasons:
When my roommate, Nikhil, announced he was going to Mauritius for three months and asked if I could take care of his dog, I thought immediately of body heat. A 70-pound German shepherd throws off a lot of warmth, and I sleep in a poorly insulated room.
“Can he sleep in the bed?” I asked.
“He’s not really supposed to, but…”
“Done,” I said. “When do you leave?”
To New Haven sculptor Dennis Sparling, “art is about the mystery of things.”
Sparling, 67, fabricates sheet copper and wire into dynamic sculpture. Last year, Sparling finished work on his 9-foot-tall, 600-pound representation of Leonardo daVinci. The sculpture integrates daVinci’s drawings and paintings with his feats of engineering, architecture, and anatomy – all ranged around the standing patriarch.
My 22-year-old nephew Michael is both philosophical and artistic in nature. I describe him as contemplative and creative. He has also spent essentially his whole life within a short drive of mountains and trout streams. He has lived with his family in Colorado, Maine, western North Carolina and Alaska. He spent three years in Addison County at Middlebury College and another year studying abroad in mountainous Chile.
