Faith in Vermont
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Faith Gong: An invitation to mourn — and hope
On Monday, Nov. 25, 1963, all federal agencies and departments in the United States were closed. For four days, all of the commercial television networks suspended their regular…
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Faith Gong: On thin ice
This Thanksgiving, I wondered whether Californians discuss their lawns the way that Vermonters discuss their heat. When our family had recently moved to Vermont, my husband and I…
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Faith Gong: Stone Soup
When I began writing this column in 2012, my vision was that it would be a space to record the observations and anecdotes of my young family as…
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Faith Gong: An Election Day reflection in praise of tongue-biting
I am acutely aware that this column will be published the day before Election Day. There are intense emotions swirling around November 3, 2020: an election that falls…
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Faith Gong: Geese-eye view
My daughters began digging the hole on the first weekend of October. The large window over our kitchen sink is my window on the world — or the…
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Faith Gong: Summer of the wasps
Summer is now firmly behind us. It’s the time of year when I like to snuggle up in my fall uniform (jeans and a flannel shirt) with a…
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Faith Gong: A tale of two roosters
Fall has arrived suddenly and dramatically in Vermont, with plunging temperatures and nighttime frosts. This shouldn’t have surprised, me, as this has hardly been a year of subtlety;…
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Faith Gong: Be like little children
I have a confession to make: With five children in our family, I can no longer remember important individual milestones. Were you to ask me at what ages…
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Faith Gong: Mushrooms, zinnias, and changing minds
The baby is beginning to have strong opinions. At the moment, his preferences manifest themselves most in the matter of food. For the first four months of his…
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Faith Gong: Invisible Friends
There are seven people who live in our house, and then there are the ones you can’t see. I learned long ago never to use the words “imaginary friends” to…
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Faith Gong: Maintaining
We went to Maine this summer. It felt like a minor miracle that we were able to pull off this trip: the only normal, scheduled event that hasn’t…
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Faith Gong: Letter from Maine: Fog and face masks
Much to my surprise, I am writing this column from the front porch of our rental house in Ogunquit, Maine. It is the tenth summer that I have…
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Faith Gong: Alpaca dreamin’
I’ve been known to say, “More love is always a good thing!” I’ve been known to live that maxim, too, which is how I ended up with a…
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Faith Gong: Wrestling with monsters
This morning, I collected our family’s weekly order of library books at the pickup spot in Ilsley Public Library’s back garden (an event that inspires a level of…
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Faith Gong: Of quizzes and identity crises
My children have done many things to amuse themselves while staying at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. They have read, read, and read some more. They have logged…
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Faith Gong: Beauty on the driveway
For the past 65 days, one of my lifelines has been a quarter-mile strip of sandy gravel. Its surface is mostly white, except for the places where we…