Dear Governor-elect Shumlin,

Congratulations and thanks for taking up the challenges we face. May I suggest some priorities as you move ahead?  You know from your own political experience that there are no… Read More

Election Day 2010: Now it’s our turn

We are at a critical turning point in Vermont. We must confront who we are, who we want to be and what we believe in. As the nation at large… Read More

Myths of Economic Development & Taxation in Vermont

Before I get down to economic development, let me make a few general remarks that may unsettle your thinking: All too often, economic development is defined not by its opportunities… Read More

Citizens United: Mammon or Democracy?

Much is being written today about the Supreme Court’s recent Citizens United decision, extending the right of free speech to corporations. This about-face in legal tradition immediately opened the floodgates… Read More

Snippet from “Fat People:” “Dear Diary,”

“Fatty, fatty, two by four, Couldn’t fit through the bathroom door, So she did it on the floor.” Dear Diary, Since Marty’s visit to the principal’s office, he no longer… Read More

Change is Not Progress

Recently, I was having breakfast with a friend who has just returned from yet another country where he routinely explains to presidents and prime ministers how to establish telecommunications networks… Read More

Leyte Gulf 1944, excerpt

On a coral reef you lay to die and breathless lay there eye to eye

Fat People, Baybie Denton, excerpt

Baybie Denton lives in a trailer behind the dump. Her stepbrother Floyd lives in a nearby trailer perpendicular to hers so he can’t look in her windows, least that’s what Baybie thinks. Baybie is blind from birth and Floyd sees to her needs when he’s sober enough to do so.

Photographic Memory, excerpt

His thoughts drifted and he remembered himself sitting far back on the bench seat in the cab of a snowplow. It was dark and Uncle Ben was at the wheel of his sister-in-law’s dump truck with its two rusty yellow plows on the right front, a curved scarifier plow that lifted the snow from the ground and then a deflector blade higher up that sent the snow aloft in a continuous white stream to the side of the road, burying the pasture fence.

Fannie Fancher and Crazy Chase

It was his second day in first grade and his first time walking home from school. Maple Street was a half-mile long, one of several streets in Morrisville beautifully canopied… Read More

Did He Pass or Did He Die?

The father of a dear friend died last month. In relaying the news to me, he said his father had “passed.” My mind immediately sought a grammatical object, knowing full… Read More

Vermont’s Two Electoral Systems

Vermont has two electoral systems. The traditional one we all know and a shadow cabinet of older men who, over the years, have provided many great services to Vermont, but… Read More