Chronicles of Alternative Energy: Heating Your House with Chickens

The concept may come as a surprise to some, but the notion is an old and venerable one. In Medieval times, hovels were usually heated with people, animals and a… Read More

Why “Fat People?”

Even as we are born into families, compete to be accepted in school cliques, marry, join teams and clubs, live in neighborhoods, and compete socially, in some fundamental ways we… Read More

The Tyranny of the NRA

I have no aspirations for political office, so free speech comes quite easily. The massacre in Arizona ought to have raised the volume on our hushed national discussions about gun… Read More

Balancing Self-interest and Community Interest

All tax codes have winners and losers. Overtime, different classes of taxpayers advocate steadily for self-serving changes that eventually complicate and corrode the tax system. Legislators call these various deductions… Read More

Democracy, Money and Community

I was taught it’s not polite to talk about money, so here goes. Honesty, however, requires context. I grew up in a middle class family in Vermont. My stepfather’s family… Read More

Principles Underlying a Redesign of Vermont’s Tax Code

Bill Schubart serves with former Secretary of Administration in the Dean and Kunin Administrations, Kathy Hoyt, and the economist and radio commentator, Bill Sayre, on the Legislature’s Blue Ribbon Tax… Read More

Seven Days VT – Fat Chance

In 1982, Bill Schubart was fast approaching 500 pounds. He knew that if he were bedridden — or worse — by his heft, he couldn’t run his new media manufacturing and… Read More

A Winter Elegy

Just as most progress is incremental, so too are our losses. We rarely see what we’re losing until it’s gone. We may see a dying butternut tree without knowing of… Read More

The Price of Shaving Gear: I give up.

Luckily, I spent my puberty in an all-male boarding school in New Hampshire. I began to shave there, only because my father had given me a razor and a pack… Read More

Aunt Rose & Mr. Farr’s Jerseys

My imperious grandmother’s sister, maiden aunt Rose, was considered “frail.” She rarely saw anyone outside her coterie of effete friends who frequented the old Metropolitan Opera on 39th and Broadway.… Read More