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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.
Glaringly absent from The Commons' thorough coverage of the Democratic race for state Senator is any mention from the candidates of the current global warming crisis.
Appalled but not surprised, I find Democrats - and Republicans - living in denial of the unprecedented threat we humans now face. What's wrong with this picture?
Our very survival is at stake, and people go along with the status quo, life as usual.
Life is not usual! We need to seriously address our over-use of fossil fuels immediately to give ourselves and our children the opportunity to even have a future, much less live comfortably.
Recently, the Brattleboro Area Farmers' Market had a children's day. Children set up tables and sold cookies, illustrated cards, stories they had written, painted rocks. Many of them were girls. Wanting to encourage the writer among them, I bought “The Goofy Dog,” a story written and illustrated by an...
Appeals and suggestions for reducing the financial burden to the home-owning taxpayers by several representatives at the Brattleboro Representative Town Meeting (RTM) had no effect. Why? Do people not listen to reason? Or subscribe to spending within the confines of one's resources? As one representative said, “We cannot buy...
Some people think it will take a crisis to move people to action. I believe there are some people, however, willing to read the handwriting on the wall and take action before a crisis in order to prevent a crisis. Unfortunately, these people do not seem to be in governmental positions of influence, as evidenced by: 1) The toxic chemicals being dumped into drinking water of the Elk River in West Virginia recently. (The potential problem had been known and...
When I was growing up, difficult as it is to believe, there were no TVs, the telephone operator connected you to your party, and a real person actually answered if you called an agency or the electric company. People kept connected by telephone, the post office, and face-to-face social exchanges. But my best memories are of being a child doing child things. I entered the playground through a huge gate that was opened in the morning and closed at night.
I recently had a birthday. One of my “traditions” is to eat ice cream at the Chelsea Royal Diner's outdoor stand. It was a beautiful day - Vermont at its best with a clear blue sky and just warm enough for comfort. Birthdays do call up thinking on the past. As I reveled in the family surrounding me, the diner itself seemed to speak. It is such a humble edifice. It speaks of earlier times and good, affordable meals. This...
All my life there has been someone older to show me the way. When I was a child, it was grandparents. Since they had all emigrated to America, I grew up with a vision of America as the land of opportunity. If you worked hard, stayed in school, you might not get rich, but you would always eat. There was no question that I, the oldest grandchild, would be the first to graduate from high school and, a wonder in...
After reading the political ad Peter Shumlin ran in the paper, his proclamation of “Pink Ribbon Days,“ I wonder how many people are helped or healed of cancer by the wearing of pink ribbons? How many people do you know who are well from wearing them? Since radiation and chemotherapy, promoted by the American Medical Association, can often be lethal in and of themselves, I would like to know more about the potential of other cancer cures. There appear to...
