Riding the Train When I boarded the northbound train in Brattleboro on Friday, gas was approaching $5/gallon, and my ticket cost less than making the 300-mile round-trip in my Prius. When I returned home on Sunday, gas had hit the five-dollar mark. If I calculated the cost of purchasing, registering, insuring and maintaining the car, […]

Ephemerals On May Day, Tim and I searched for ephemerals along the banks of the Rock River. An ephemeral is a plant that grows and dies within a few days.             I’d seen the mottled leaves of trout lilies spearing through the leaf litter days earlier. On this warm Sunday we found trout lilies blooming […]

It’s just as T. S. Eliot says in his 1925 poem, The Hollow Men, “This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper.” And so it is with the COVID-19 pandemic. The newest variant—BA.2—seems to be more transmissible than previous ones, and even less virulent. It comes just as I’m more […]

This post is dedicated to the Ukrainians fighting for their country’s sovereignty, and for all of us who still have the right to vote and self-determination. Overcoming Despair of Despotism “When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and […]

The Connecticut River New Hampshire and New York both claimed the Abenaki territory that is now called Vermont, a dispute that led to land disputes between the European settlers living here. Some thought they owned land in New York, others in New Hampshire. This caused problems when Vermont was an independent nation prior to becoming […]