Staff Blog
Faith in Vermont: Planting Panic
Next year, I tell myself, I’ll know better.
Next year, I will commit to very little between April and June, and I will clear our family’s schedule for an entire month beginning two weeks before Memorial Day. No signing up for...
Faith in Vermont: Three Moments of Community
The playground of my youngest child’s preschool is larger than the school building. It is not a modern playground of shiny metal and brightly-colored plastic; it’s wooden, haphazardly assembled, and contains more grass, dirt, and...
Faith in Vermont: Agway Adventures
I am sitting in Carol’s Hungry Mind Café to write this column, as I do nearly every Saturday afternoon. Usually I crave this time, when my husband takes our daughters so that I can have a handful of silent and solitary hours...
Faith in Vermont: Backyard Birds and Growing Up
I have become a person who watches birds.
For as long I’ve known him – my entire life – my father has been a birdwatcher. Growing up, we always had bird feeders in the yard and birdhouses (which he built himself) on our...
Faith in Vermont: Stumbling Towards Spring
I don’t want to brag, but this winter my husband and I built a compost bin and installed a fence around our (chicken-less) chicken coop. We count these among the proudest accomplishments of our nearly 15-year marriage, neck-and-neck with...
Faith in Vermont: Reflections On My First Town Meeting
Every year, around the first Tuesday in March, Vermont feels pretty proud of itself. That’s because, as any Vermonter can tell you, the first Tuesday in March is Town Meeting Day: the day when citizens meet in towns across the state to...
Poem: Sea of Branches Protest
Sea of Branches Protest
If I didn’t know better, I would think
I was in a ship’s hold, hearing the beams
groan, sails snap against their stays.
And not here under March’s bare
canopy. The heaving branches.
A...
Poem: Early, early Red-winged
Early, Early Red-winged
There must be a mistake.
It’s not March yet.
That black bird’s sitting on a back
field fence. No other one’s
in sight.
No friends or strays
who’ve left their...
Faith in Vermont: On the Ice
Just like that, winter is over.
At least, that’s what it feels like today, as I look out at snowless fields under a sunny blue sky. The temperatures over the past week have been unseasonably warm for February in Vermont, culminating in...
Faith in Vermont: Surprised by Love
The weekend getaway was a surprise Christmas present from my husband.
Throughout our 18-year relationship, my husband has excelled at surprises. While we were dating, he orchestrated a “traveling surprise birthday party” for me:...