The Three Hs: housing, hunger and healthcare

  Photo courtesy VTDigger A basic goal of civil government is that its citizens should have a secure place protected from the elements in which to live and perhaps raise… Read More

We need to rethink our systems of governing

  Vermont State House   On Election Day, as I confronted my voting ballot in the Hinesburg Town Hall, I was daunted to find that for the first time there… Read More

Real leaders don’t amplify differences, they bridge them.

Vermont State Capital Governor Phil Scott pulled off a trifecta win in the latest election. The “most popular” governor in the country, a non-MAGA, conservative Republican in a liberal state,… Read More

Preventing chronic toxic stress in our communities

Life is stressful. No amount of wealth or privilege protects us from stress. In fact, there’s reason to believe that privilege, insofar as it isolates us from a shared humanity,… Read More

Book bans, censorship… what’s next?

Courtesy Morrisville Centennial Library I oppose book bans. Having said that, I don’t believe freedom is an absolute. History has taught us that we need commonly agreed upon limits to… Read More

Rural Free Delivery (RFD)… Rest in Peace (RIP)?

Shutterstock I think the heat-drunk garter snake living in our mailbox is an omen. As I lower the dented cover and reach gingerly inside to get our mail, I wonder… Read More

The Arc of Aging and Leadership

  Shutterstock image Like a good novel, our lives have a narrative arc, during which we are actively participating in and relevant to our world. We are born, rise slowly… Read More

School Budgets and Property Taxes

Champlain Valley Union High School Do we honestly believe we overpay our children’s teachers? There is a logical disconnect in our discussions about local school budgets driving property tax increases.… Read More

The Ghost Quartet: Part I

                         If we zoom out and look with cynicism at the health care crisis in America, we see a… Read More

Can We Get our Legislative Act Together?

Public domain image   I don’t know whether it’s the natural wariness of Vermont’s early immigrants who succeeded the native peoples who had foraged and hunted here for millennia but… Read More

Save the Children: Eliminate Cellphones in Our Schools

Public Domain image Vermont Senate Bill 284, “Phone-free School Legislation,” now sitting in the House Education Committee is winding its way through the legislature and should garner the attention of… Read More

What are the dumbest things we do or don’t do in Vermont?

We like to think of ourselves as progressive, pioneering and aware of our neighbors’ needs. Why then do we have some of the worst socioeconomic benchmarks in America? Unsheltered: As… Read More