When is a Tool a Device and When is it the Buyer?

I love to work with my hands. I love tools – the simpler the better. The ratio of a tool’s utility to its simplicity defines a tool’s excellence for me.… Read More

Stepping Outside this Insular Nation

We are outside security. Through thick glass, we watch our son hoist his backpack into the X-ray machine and wait to be summoned by the TSA agent through the metal… Read More

Vermont’s Mixed History on Race

  Like many Vermonters, I’ve been watching with pain and empathy the protests unfolding in countless cities and towns across the country. Watching the murder of George Floyd has called… Read More

The True Cost of Adverse Childhood Experiences

Do you know what an A.C.E. is? It’s not your local hardware store, the winning card in your hand, nor your friend who plays professional tennis. It’s an increasing used… Read More

The Dignity of All Work

Neighbors in an upscale condo development were speculating about what the guy in the end-unit must do for a living to afford a sailboat, motorcycle, and camper. Curious, one strolled… Read More

Identity Politics

I’ve recently learned I’m a “privileged, cisgendered, white male.” This feels somewhat alien to me still – but it’s new so I’m willing to try it on and figure out… Read More

Sexual Behavior

Any male not now asking himself about his own behavior towards woman and children is extending the risk to both into future generations. Sexual abuse rolls forward from generation to… Read More

Ourselves, our children

At seventy-two, I often hear myself say, “Well, when I was young…” followed by some judgment about the behavior of today’s kids. I seem to remember my parent’s expectations of… Read More

The Comforts of a Mediocre Education

It’s no secret that many colleges and prep schools are in financial trouble. Accrediting organizations predict a significant number of institutional failures in the next decade. We even feel the… Read More

Who Will Save Us from Ourselves?

As humans, we’re living in a time when our evolutionary capacity as humans to understand, regulate, and use technological innovation in a way beneficial to mankind and our planetary home… Read More

On suicide, and what it tells us about our social and economic policies

Society is ill-served by our narrow definition of suicide. Suicide is more widespread than our definition would like to admit – “the act of an instance of taking one’s own… Read More

When reverence for our past blinds us to our future….

I love Vermont. I’ve lived here seventy years, and like my father, I’ve turned down opportunities to move away and earn more money. But I don’t trust the Vermont myth… Read More