Cox bids farewell to Ripton selectboard after four decades

During her selectboard tenure, Laurie Cox has helped Ripton negotiate a gift-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement with Middlebury College; update town office technology, rebuild after 11 floods, and plan construction of a new municipal fire station and sand/salt shed.

Laurie Cox reflects on 40 years of public service on the Ripton selectboard.

The warming of our world didn’t seem so bad when it meant I could actually get ripe tomatoes before the first frost. Now it’s clear it means much more. It means ticks, flash flooding, landslides

It is the big Christmas concert at my junior high school. A young soloist with a piano accompaniment is just finishing the first verse of “O Holy Night,” her sweet voice soaring. Suddenly, massed choruses and the orchestra with deeply resonating tympanies … (read more)

As a small child, if I got hurt, one of my parents would tend to my injury. Then they would “kiss it to make it better.” Did a kiss actually fix my skinned knee? No, but it did help. I felt better with that kiss. If I got a shot at my doctor’s, they would … (read more)

Then came the sound: a single goose high above us, flying through the night. Its call surprised me. Geese are a harbinger of what is coming seasonally, but also a reminder of those with whom we share our world.

This past summer I had the amazing opportunity to visit Greece. It was a family event with eleven people participating, and as a group we stayed on two islands.

I walk along a trail that winds into the woods. Leaves overhead dapple the sun, harlequin patterns of light and shade moving on my path. I breathe in; breathe out. Trees cool the air, embrace the earth.

You could say that I owe my life to Boeing. Until the advent of Amazon and Microsoft, it was the largest employer in the Seattle area, even in the early years of World War II, as the Depression came to an end.

Have you ever been lost? Before there were the map apps, it surely happened more frequently while driving. Hiking can be a different situation.

It was almost thirty years ago when we received a phone call from Indonesia. While we did not know the person calling, she was actually a Vermonter from the Vergennes area who lived in that part of the world.

Most of us have heard the story of Noah’s ark. It’s often told to young children, perhaps because of the compelling images of all those animals, coming two by two.

This summer we’ve had the chance to see all too much rain, and while we’ve not seen a lot of fires directly, their smoke has blurred our skies, their destructive potential displayed on our televisions. What next? Where do we go from here?

To our south, people likely are hunkering down to spend the next several months indoors, if they can, with air conditioning blasting. Meanwhile, I look forward to spending my time outdoors.

“Can anybody live in Vermont?” asked the two young boys who had been visiting us for a couple of summers in the 1980s.