Clippings: Taming the Cornwall bear

Over the last year or two, there have been a number of Cornwall Bear sightings reported on Front Porch Forum and elsewhere. I myself saw the Cornwall Bear.

Clippings: The incredible shrinking shoes

A crew has been repaving our road since last week. On Friday, 4-year-old Frankie and I went to check it out.

Clippings: 1966 series was a labor of love

I’ve become an archive nerd. I know there are some people who will read this and cheer, but for the other 99.9%, I’ll explain. A couple of years ago, in attempt to understand the finer points of various discussions in the Mount Abraham Unified School Dist … (read more)

Clippings: 1966 series was a labor of love

I’ve become an archive nerd.I know there are some people who will read this and cheer, but for the other 99.9%, I’ll explain.A couple of years ago, in attempt to understand the finer points of various discussions in the Mount Abraham Unified School Distri … (read more)

Clippings: 9/11: What 20 years has done to ‘never forget’

I will never forget how I stepped out of the shower and heard people down in the street screaming, or how it was Carolyn who heard them screaming and called me to the window.How my parents in Virginia called us, frantic, telling us about the Pentagon and … (read more)

Clippings: Global thinking isn’t good enough

Global thinking is supposed to save the world.Throughout my life — and particularly as a student — I have been told time and time again that we just need more universal understanding, communication and focus.We are, after all, “citizens of the world” and … (read more)

Clippings: Le Carré more than a spy novelist

If your summer reading list needs a bit more intrigue and suspense to it, look no further than a book by John Le Carré, the English espionage novelist who passed away last December.But if you aren’t a big thriller person, I still recommend Le Carré: The a … (read more)

Clippings: Everyone should read Sufi poetry

Language possesses magic.Right now, much of its power is tuned toward harm. So much of the English language has been curled, hammered and molded around colonialism. Our stories are heavy with capitalist urgency and linear processing, our metaphors are thi … (read more)

Clippings: If it’s not one bug, it’s another…

The COVID-19 summer of 2020 taught us that being outside was safer than being inside, as long as you had a mask at the ready and stayed at least six feet away from the nearest human.Well, the early summer of 2021 has me wishing the insect world would lear … (read more)

Clippings: Hey, I was just being colloquial!

I never was good at math, ever. But I liked to read as a kid, and to write. I got that from my mom, who was the wordsmith in the family. When I asked her what a word meant, she just pointed to the dictionary on the music stand in the living room: “C’mon, … (read more)

Clippings: Notes of a pandemic skywatcher

I am not a winter person. I don’t like winter. Never have. I have lived in Maine or Vermont nearly my whole life. That’s probably why I don’t like it: pure Yankee obstinacy. I don’t want to live anywhere else though, even in winter. Winter is winter in Ve … (read more)

Clippings: Hairy sidekick helps fix breaking news

For 36 years, my job was all about mingling with people. In their homes or businesses, in coffee shops, schools, office buildings, on park benches, in statehouses, homeless shelters, college campuses and packed meeting rooms. I was once accorded 10 minute … (read more)

Clippings: Obituary for a spirited rescue dog

We lost one of our two rescue dogs late last week, and one of my first responses was to write her obituary.  If I were a runner or a woodworker, I probably would have grieved by pounding the pavement or starting a new shop project, but my instinct was to … (read more)

Clippings: Freedom and justice before ‘unity’

U.S. presidential elections are often followed by calls for unity — or presumptions or hopes that unity will somehow prevail. Many of those calls and presumptions and hopes have appeared on the editorial pages of this newspaper, which was founded in 1946 … (read more)

Clippings: A summer day with fall foliage

As I write this, It’s almost painfully beautiful outside. It is the weekend of the 25th of September, on Saturday. It’s like a mid-summer day, with temperatures nearly 80, but with fall foliage hastening to turn. I drove into town on this day, late aftern … (read more)

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