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Around the Bend: House cooling plans full of hot air

Posted on June 6, 2013 |
By Jessie Raymond



Last Saturday night, during a period of heat-induced delirium, I briefly reconsidered my longstanding opposition to air conditioning.

My inner stoic Vermonter says A/C this far north is a sign of weakness and a waste of money. True, I am not stoic by nature or a Vermonter by birth, but I still believe artificial cooling is for sissies. Just Saturday afternoon, in fact, I had been bragging to a friend that our bedroom is always cool enough for sleeping, even during heat waves.

I swear I never heard the minor piano chords threatening in the background.

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Around the Bend: Keeping it simple, the hard way

Posted on May 23, 2013 |
By Jessie Raymond



Seven years ago, my husband, Mark, and I impulsively bought an old farmhouse, with land and a couple of barns. We set out to fulfill our dream of “the simple life”: tending animals and growing our own food.

Yes, we are idiots.

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Jessie Raymond: Redialing opinion on smartphone

Posted on May 9, 2013 |
By Jessie Raymond



As a person who considers herself (a) frugal and (b) skeptical of new technology, I have a confession to make.

I want a smartphone. Desperately.

This admission gets two reactions. The first, from people who sometimes don’t even look up from their own phones as they respond, is, “Well, duh.” The other, the one that echoed my own sentiments until a few weeks ago, is, “Ugh, no. Why would anyone spend that kind of money every month on a stupid phone whose use is causing the rapid meltdown of society as we know it?”

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Jessie Raymond: The waiting game can take its toll

Posted on April 25, 2013 |
By Jessie Raymond



The other afternoon I found myself standing next to a lovely young woman. She wore a flowing ankle-length skirt and an expression of pure contentment. Her languid movements and placid countenance reflected the soul of a person who has transcended the pressures of daily life and found a space where time has no meaning.

I wanted to kick her in the shins.

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Around the Bend: Bring on the zombie apocalypse

Posted on April 11, 2013 |
By Jessie Raymond



I know zombies are hot in popular culture right now, but until Sunday night, when I caught part of a Discovery Channel documentary — with the not-at-all alarming title “Zombie Apocalypse” — I had no idea that zombies posed an actual threat.

The zombies I know from TV, movies and video games are undead humans who stagger around looking for live brains to eat. They don’t generally move very quickly or with much precision and their enunciation is poor at best. But what they lack in agility they make up for in perseverance.

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Jessie Raymond: School sports take a toll on parents

Posted on March 28, 2013 |
By Jessie Raymond



If your kids play sports, you know only too well the pain of bleacher fatigue, or, as it is known in medical journals, gluteus maximus agonius.

The prolonged sitting on pullout bleachers for sporting events causes numbness of the backside, an ache in the lower back and stiff knees and hips. (In colonial America, rule-breakers were originally forced to sit for hours on a set of bleachers in the town square. The stocks and pillory were adopted only after bleachers were deemed “intollerably crewell.”)

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Around the Bend: Vicious turkey is a sign of spring

Posted on March 14, 2013 |
By Jessie Raymond



Did you notice anything different about last weekend? If you’re like me you stepped outside, detected a change in the air, surveyed the layer of grime on the colorless landscape and thought, “Ah, it’s springtime in Vermont.”

Isn’t it beautiful?

I’m not saying the daffodils are up or that a reasonable person would take off their snow tires just yet. But for me the weekend marked an unmistakable turning point in the seasons.

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Around the Bend: Internet overload calls for timeout

Posted on February 28, 2013 |
By Jessie Raymond



I love the Internet. A lot. If it dispensed food I’d never leave the computer.

But it’s time the Internet and I took a little break.

Things were better years ago. Every morning, I’d fix a cup of coffee and sit down to read my email, pausing only to let the dog and cat in or out 10 to 20 times. (For you young people, “email” was a popular thing before Facebook. It was a handy method of communicating — privately! — with people you knew in real life.)

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Tight grip

Posted on February 25, 2013 |
By Jessie Raymond



wrestlingGebo.jpg

MIDDLEBURY UNION HIGH School freshman Nate Gebo works a half-nelson on an opponent on the way to a fifth-place finish at the state high school wrestling championships in Vergennes Saturday.

Independent photo/Jessie Raymond

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Around the Bend: Signs of aging are hard to see

Posted on February 14, 2013 |
By Jessie Raymond



A few months ago, I found this tidbit on the Internet:

“As people age, the lens of the eye becomes less elastic, losing its ability to focuson objects up close. This process, called presbyopia, is a natural part of aging, and affects nearly everyone over the age of 40.”

“Yeah,” I said when I read it, “maybe everyone over the age of 40 who isn’t awesome. But not me.”

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