Archive

I have a love-hate relationship with religion. Born of a German-Jewish father and a mother of Dutch background and atheist tradition who married a Morrisville, Vermont Catholic after being widowed… Read More

Elmore Community School In an earlier column, I looked at the difficulty of addressing Vermont’s complex systems with our limited leadership and dated governance tools. As technology and information systems further complicate our… Read More

In the ‘60s, I began to understand that politics was something that could affect my life as I grew up. I watched Walter Cronkite report nightly on domestic and international… Read More

So much has been and is being written about reproductive choice that one is hard-pressed to say more. From the fact that three Trump-backed jurists hand-picked by the conservative Federalist… Read More

Since the agriculturalists in the Fertile Crescent supplanted many of the hunter-gatherers some 12,000 years ago, those early stirrings of capitalism have become embedded in our DNA. I see it… Read More

The Vermont State Constitution, dating from 1793, has been the basis of several pioneering events in Vermont history, The Marriage Equality Act and the Equal Educational Opportunity Act (Brigham Decision).… Read More

It’s time for a statute prohibiting hate-speech, online bullying, and threats of physical violence. Five years ago, then Representative Kiah Morris (D-Bennington) resigned from the Vermont Legislature, where she had… Read More

Economic Growth or Strong families and Communities? Robert Kennedy said in a 1968 speech at the University of Kansas: “Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health… Read More

I am a regular reader of True North Reports, which describes itself as “a news and information service dedicated to serving the public interest through accurate reporting, insightful commentary and informed… Read More

Like science, history is an ever-emerging narrative based on curiosity, exploration, discovery, debate and interpretation. But like science (and journalism), it must be informed by fact. The recent screed by… Read More

The most corrosive issue today affecting the American Dream is that so many families have had to give up on the idea of ever owning their own home. Affordable housing… Read More

The Vermont Council on Rural Development(VCRD)’s deep dive into the issues facing Vermont is informed by interviews with and input from thousands of Vermonters. Proposition 8 was of particular interest… Read More