The holidays are chaos for parents

“Our daughter’s first Christmas is now more than a week in the rear view mirror, and we’re all still recovering.”

“If golf has taught me anything, it’s that progress is never permanent.”

While many people may think that pickleball is a sport for the “older generation,” I would like to refute this claim.

If you ever begin to fear that random acts of kindness or joyful interactions with strangers have become a thing of the past, then I have a recommendation: Set up a lemonade stand.

I stumbled, literally, upon a dusty roll of butcher paper I’d unceremoniously shoved in a corner months ago after my husband, Bill, brought it home from a kind woman at Ripton Community Trash Day. Bingo!

On a recent day off, I was reading the excellent book on copyediting called “Dreyer’s English,” when the expert wordsmith mentions that a character can be quoted as having “susurrated.” (p119). I didn’t know what the word means (turns out it means somethi … (read more)

I’m in church when the Amtrak train, the Ethan Allen Express, rumbles by on Sunday mornings. It used to be at 11:05, right near the end of the service during the last hymn or the closing words. The schedule has changed: now it goes by at 10:42, right in t … (read more)

We are in an unprecedented and terrifying time in American history. Our nation, the people we love and services we depend on are under threat as never before in my lifetime. So seeing a great night of comedy close with “And in the end, the love you take/I … (read more)

Have you ever watched your friend’s face disappear into someone else’s winter coat? Let me explain.

It was the culmination of four months of specific training, and a desire to return to my passion for running that had taken a back seat in my life for nearly a decade during which my husband and I bought and renovated a house, expanded our family, and est … (read more)

The last time we rode the chairlift to see fall foliage at the Snowbowl, in 2019, I couldn’t really appreciate the autumnal glory because I was too busy clinging to my 2-year-old’s wiggly little body, imagining it slipping under the lap bar and plummeting … (read more)

The most impactful class I ever took was “The Construct of Race in the United States.” It was taught by two history teachers at the public high school in Stowe that I attended from 2018 to 2022.

My passion for politics started early. I was seven when my family attended a fundraising event for the Obama Victory Fund at the Sheraton Hotel in Burlington. At first, the setting was loud and overwhelming, but silence fell over the crowd as soon as the … (read more)

For the better part of the past eight years, different aspects of my identity have been used as weapons in the tug-of-war between the two major factions of American politics.  

This election year, 2024, also marks the end of my four years studying abroad in a U.S. college. Four years at Middlebury was four years under the Biden administration as a noncitizen, a student from China.