Kino Queda
No other December release has been as eagerly anticipated or hotly debated as the Osama bin Laden confession. We could call it No Sex, Lies and Videotape. Despite poor production values and repetitive dialogue, the misogynist, all-male cast comes across as a sort of Murder, Incorporated for the new millennium. Unlike that Depression-era American crime…
Bern Out? Absolutely Absurd: The Life and Times of Bernie Sanders by Donald McNowski
Winter, the darkest and most elemental of seasons, seems a fitting time to read House and Garden, John Engels’ new collection of poetry. Written from the points of view of Adam and Eve, relocated in Vermont — the next best thing to Paradise — this volume explores life in exile: the regrets, longings, existential isolation…
Dirty Dancing? Isadora, A Sensational Life, by Peter Kurth
The mother of modern dance didn’t much like the art form. Not the dance of the time, anyway, which was the late 1800s and early 1900s. As Isadora Duncan was giving birth to the concept of new movement, dance barely existed outside of music halls in the United States. There was classical ballet in Russia…
Meeting the Carvers: Fiction
The first time I met my boyfriend’s parents was on Thanksgiving, 1992. Mark and I had been together for eight months. Up to that point, his parents had been little more than disembodied voices on the answering machine, and I had contentedly settled into my role as the boyfriend persona non grata. Mark’s coming out…
Ring Master: Tolkien teacher Michael Stanton confirms his Hobbit habit with a new book
If you’re a fan of Frodo or seriously spooked by the hissing Gollum, Michael Stanton understands. Until his recent retirement from the University of Vermont, the 63-year-old English literature professor spent three decades teaching generations of fantasy-loving students about The Lord of the Rings. The Colchester resident was captivated by the Tolkien novel in 1965,…
Bootleggers, Brothels and Border Patrols: Conversations with Vermonters, Volume 7
During the Prohibition era, “King” Conrad Labelle made $100,000 smuggling alcohol over the U.S.-Canadian border. He owned a fleet of fast cars — Cadillacs and Studebakers. “And when I used to shoot through, they couldn’t stop me,” he told an interviewer from the Vermont Folklife Center. “I was a very good driver. I was one…
Class Officer: Fiction
The teacher gives a perfunctory, perky-eyed glance around the room, chin thrust upward like a prairie dog peering across the tops of these drooping heads: the Jewish kid in the yarmulke, the kinky-haired midriff exhibitionist, the guy with the shaved head and his own name — KEVIN — tattooed on his arm, in case he…
Kid Stuff
Gov. Howard Dean, fresh from his trip to Ouagadougou, met with reporters in the state capital Monday afternoon for a wide-ranging, free- flowing exchange. No sign of jet lag. Ho-Ho was in great form. In fact, our favorite presidential hopeful was positively glowing and eagerly took on all comers. Dr. Dean stoutly defended his use…
