Uni Form: A one-wheeling woman considers her cycle
Everybody loves the death-defying, sword-swallowing unicyclist who juggles flaming torches as he glides across a tightrope. But only a select few freaks want to be that guy. Esoteric skills attract me like a turbo-charged tractor beam. And unicycling, unlike some of my other quirky pursuits, results in an impressive array of scrapes and bruises. They…
Comic Relief: Punch lines come easily to an unlikely standup team: an Arab and a Jew
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A Vermont rabbi walks into a bar and announces that, in the wake of 9/11 and continuing troubles in the Middle East, he’s going to perform a series of comedy shows — with an Arab-American comic as his partner. The bartender says, “What is this, a joke?”…
Enron Medicine
Tis a mighty foul wind blowing on Hospital Hill this week. And the ghosts of Mary Fletcher and Fanny Allen cannot be resting peacefully these days. Anyone who thinks the sickening stench is the result of little more than a shaky “creative” financing plan for a parking garage probably still thinks Watergate was just about…
Burning Issues
Which scares you the most — a nation crawling with pyromaniac forest rangers or the fact that Larry Hagman — J.R. of “Dallas” fame — wants his friends to eat him when he dies? “I want to be fed through a wood chipper,” Hagman says, “be spread over a wheat field, then have a cake…
Work: Birgit Deeds, Shelburne Farms gardener
Two yellow finches fritter away a hot July afternoon among the flowers at Shelburne Farms, and it’s easy to imagine yourself back in the early 1900s, when Lila Vanderbilt Webb was still in charge of the garden. For the past 17 years, Birgit Deeds has carried on her predecessor’s passion for planting by tending the…
Farmer’s Market
Those moans you’re hearing from the hills of Vermont aren’t necessarily from the dwindling number of farmers trying to get their hay in. It’s more likely coming from the estimated 70 percent of Vermonters who’ve got money parked in a stock market that’s caught in a downward spiral. Contrary to the image we like to…
Drive to Survive: The Lost Boys of Sudan find freedom behind the wheel
When Abraham Awolich passed his driver’s test last week, the rite of passage carried a far deeper meaning than it does for his young American counterparts. In his case, the connection between wheels and freedom is unmistakably poignant. At 23, he is one of the so-called “Lost Boys of Sudan” who trekked across East Africa…
Don’t Forget Your Rubber: Tracking Vermont’s tires, from car to coal
It’s no secret that Americans have had a long-running love affair with cars, but we don’t give much thought to the actual wheels that enable us to weave our merry way through the concrete-burdened landscape. Generally, we drive them until they’re bald, dread the day we have to cough up the dough for some new…
Mow Joes Working: “Redneck” riders kick grass in Bradford
Look out, NASCAR — another four-wheeled activity just might be taking the lead as America’s fastest growing sport, no flags down. Er, make that “fastest mowing.” That’s just one of the puns on the Web site of the 10-year-old U.S. Lawn Mower Racing Association — a truly grassroots organization whose current president likes to be…
