Comments to Copley Board Strategic Planning Meeting: Trapp Lodge 102822

Background: I grew up 500 feet from the original 1932 Copley Hospital. I had my tonsils and appendix removed there by Doctor Phil Goddard, our family doc, and he set… Read More

How Vermont’s Media Helps Keep the State Together by Bill McKibben in the New Yorker: A Riposte

Photo courtesy of UVM I have great respect for Bill McKibben. His clarity on humankind’s threats to the environment and his ability to draft an army of planet guardians is… Read More

Don’t defund the police, fire, and rescue, consolidate and fund them cost-efficiently

Last Monday, VTDigger reported on a convocation on “Crime and Punishment” in Burlington City Hall held by a group called “The Keep Vermont Safe Coalition.” I flattered myself by imagining… Read More

After the inaugural run of the new Burlington – New York Amtrak service on July 29th, 2022, an elegy… 1953 – A Vermont Train Journey

4-8-2 600 Montreal–New York Ambassador at White River Jct., Vt., Aug. 27, 1951. Photo by Jim Shaughnessy Traces of opalescent light emblazon the western horizon as we drive south along… Read More

Crime and Punishment

  The many challenges Vermont currently faces demand courage, bold thinking, and leadership if they’re to be solved. In the past, we’ve occasionally had a leader emerge with the courage… Read More

Vermont Healthcare: A Ship at Sea

I was asked recently if there was a simple way to keep track of how our healthcare system measures up? My “simple” answer was, “Yes, count the number of people… Read More

Complex Systems(II), Simple Solutions

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

Complex Systems: a process for change

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

Healthcare: a self-driving truck with no GPS

“After major budget shortfall projection, UVM Health Network suspends adolescent mental health unit project” “The ball’s in your court,” Brumsted told regulators on Wednesday. “That (money) either sits there and… Read More

Homage aux Soeurs

    Sister Elizabeth Candon            Sister Irene Duchesneau            Sister Janice Ryan Photo: Times Argus             … Read More

Review: Laura Budofsky Wisniewski’s collection of poems entitled Sanctuary, Vermont, April 3, 2022,

  The best poetry exists in that sparse nether world between music and words, straddling both, blending harmony (assonance and consonance) rhythm (cadence and meter), and meaning (literal and metaphoric).… Read More

The Power of the Lemonade Stand

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