Keeping your community covered. We're committed to producing high-quality, fact-based news and information that gives you the facts in this community we call home. If our work has helped you stay informed, take action, or feel more connected to Windham County – please give now to help us reach our goal of raising $150,000 by December 31st.
Keeping your community covered. We're committed to producing high-quality, fact-based news and information that gives you the facts in this community we call home. If our work has helped you stay informed, take action, or feel more connected to Windham County – please give now to help us reach our goal of raising $150,000 by December 31st.
Carol and I have been friends since we were barely past voting age, when we shared a country bungalow and would drive up the road six mornings a week to our jobs exercising racehorses on a neighboring farm.
Now we live miles apart. When we connect on the phone, it's a free-range conversation. We talk about politics, religion, horses, books, our work, our fears, and our dreams.
Recently we were talking about flirting, and Carol said, “If you don't go swimming, you won't drown.”
She borrowed this line from a groom she'd known on the racetrack.
A vegetable garden was the big story from Oak Park, Michigan this past summer. Julie and Jason Bass had uprooted their front lawn, built raised beds, and planted some seeds. Voila! Lettuce, carrots, cucumbers, herbs! Their neighbor complained to city planner Kevin Rulkowski that the garden “disrupted the look...
The sky was still dark when a parade of pigs trotted out of the woods and stomped into our barnyard. There were about 30 of them - sows, boars, shoats, gilts, and a few piglets - all squealing and bellowing. The two horses and two mini-donkeys left their feed...
A new collection of stories has been added to the Grafton Public Library. These stories are not bound in books. They dance through the rooms, flutter at the windows, and whisper in corners and in the memories of all who have heard them. Last February, librarian Michelle Dufort and I launched a monthly series of storytelling gatherings for adults. Inspired by The Moth Radio Hour on public radio, and reports of similar gatherings in Mad River, Montpelier, and Burlington, we...
On our sparsely populated three-mile stretch of rural dirt road, the bright cobra light hovering on top of a 30-foot pole is a glaring illustration of “incongruous.” Every first-time guest arriving at my house after dark asks the same question: “What's up with that street light?” “It depends on whom you ask,” I reply. Road rumors are rampant because, outside of a newsroom, why should anyone bother with facts? Some people claim the town installed the light when a security-conscious...
Yesterday, as the sun was coming up, I was out on the porch hanging laundry on the pulley line when a battered Ford pickup turned in my lane. It was odd to have a visitor at such an early hour, and I watched as the truck slowly ascended the hill and stopped at the woodshed. An old man stepped out. He was wearing baggy denim overalls, a tattered Carhartt jacket, muck boots, and a Red Sox cap. He was toting...
Cinderella bored the hell out of me. Sleeping Beauty, too. My mother recalled that I didn't ask to hear those stories. I wasn't interested in seeing them animated on the big screen either. “Those stories aren't real,” I said. Although I don't remember saying that, my opinion hasn't changed. I thought of this story a couple of weeks ago, when I heard Peggy Orenstein on NPR discussing her new book Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of...
Winter has had its way with me. I've stopped leaping out of bed in the mornings and saying to the cat, “Hooray, it's a new day! Let's get on with it!” No longer is each day a mystery. I know what it promises - more time on the tractor performing snow rearrangement and horse manure removal and less time writing. Now, even the prospect of two uninterrupted hours at my desk doesn't excite me. My cat, who normally sleeps later...
