Search
Health Care
Healthcare: A Lucrative Business or a Definable Right?
In healthcare, as in hunger and housing, we’re staring down a moral choice. Is mammon or caritas – profit or wellbeing – the best driver of community health initiatives. In… Read More
Policy & Politics
Social Media, Free Speech, & The Right to Bear Arms
The term “social media” has never made linguistic sense to me. It seems like an oxymoron. To me “social” implies my predigital childhood, where people I knew walked and talked… Read More
Arts and Humanities
Hi, Bill: Rep. Kathleen James here (Bennington-4). Read with great interest your essay this morning on reinventing our schools as community hubs and thought you might be interested in a… Read More
Education
An Open or Shut Case? Our Community Schools
Photo courtesy of Nancy Stevens Many Vermont towns are torn between the financial imperative to consolidate their shrinking student populations into larger nearby educational facilities and their deep desire… Read More
Arts and Humanities
I chair the Events Committee at Ohavi Zedek Synagogue in Burlington. We feature an hour-long program once a month on the third Thursday called Lunch & Learn. (Of course, we’re… Read More
Arts and Humanities
Hello Bill, Sarah McClain here. I have been meaning to write to you since we met in August at the Vermont Leadership Institute “Innovation and Transformational Leadership” final session. As… Read More
Humor & Satire
When is a tool an object and when is it a consumer?
I love to work with my hands. I love tools – the simpler the better. The ratio of a tool’s utility to its simplicity defines a tool’s excellence for me.… Read More
Policy & Politics
Christmas Wish List or New Year's Resolutions?
It’s the end of what has been for many a devastating year. 2020 has magnified and amplified the damaging toll that our persistent socio-economic and environmental inequities have exacted on… Read More
Arts and Humanities
hi bill, my name is mark shanahan and i’m a writer at the boston globe. we’re interested in doing a piece on the media scene in vermont, about which i… Read More
Arts and Humanities
So enjoyed the article, so many VT connections–notice my phone number that I haven’t changed in 20 years. I’ve been involved with the Folklife Ctr and the Shelburne Museum and… Read More
Arts and Humanities
Bill, Hi to you and Kate, You missed, in last commentary, balancing a check book, I always let the bank win. Haha. It covers both math and person finance(a twofer).… Read More
Education
It’s Time to Question Our Public School Curriculum
While a taskforce of educators and consultants works to envisage and create a new and sustainable Vermont State College System this winter, the dialogue about our public grade schools continues… Read More
Policy & Politics
Vermont Politics
A friend from California recently asked me about two televised electoral charts she’d seen showing Vermont’s electoral voting response. She pointed out that the presidential chart was blue, mottled here… Read More
