Caught in the Middle…East: Move over, Colin Powell—Burlington may have something to teach its warring sister cities
Burlington’s three-way sister-city program with Arad in Israel and Bethlehem on the West Bank was marked at birth by both contentiousness and conciliation. And so it has remained for the past 10-and-a-half years, with bitter disputes among political adversaries who have, in the process, become close friends. If only the paradoxes in the Middle East…
The Grunge Report: A clinical study looks at the physiology of forgiveness
Love hurts. For “Nadine,” a Winooski graduate student who wants to remain anonymous, it even howls with pain. “I went ballistic after I walked in on my boyfriend with another girl, who had her legs in the air,” she says, retelling a tale of justifiable fury that became “a grievance story” she has repeated over…
Secession Story
In 1832, in the remote reaches of northern New Hampshire just across the river from Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, a motley assortment of lumberers, trappers, scofflaws, desperadoes and French-Canadian habitants banded together and withdrew from the Union. They called their new nation the Indian Stream Republic — a boreal fastness of beaver bogs, dense spruce and…
This Play Is Your Play
More Woody Bonnie Christensen isn’t a folksinger, but her voice has joined in on a good many labor songs while standing in picket lines in New York City. A member of the Screen Actors’ Guild, Christensen is an enthusiastic protester and has often belted the lyrics to Woody Guthrie’s most inflammatory songs. More recently, Christensen…
Austen Empowered
The Novelist in a nutshell: Jane Austen should’ve gotten laid. Leave it to a male playwright — in this case the eminent Howard Fast — to reduce the 19th-century novelist to a lonely, wide-eyed virgin whose only fulfillment will come from marriage to a retired sea captain. In this production, directed by and starring Grace…
Mother Tongue: For the Stones of Vermont, poetry is all in the family
At the end of March, poet Ruth Stone experienced two firsts: She read in public with her daughter Abigail and Abigail’s three children — Hillery, Walter and Bianca — and when she got up to read, she discovered that she couldn’t. The 86-year-old writer’s eyesight has been gradually deteriorating, and on that night at Burlington’s…
Beating Around the Bush
Now that the media have decided it’s safe to criticize the Bush administration and its leader, Poppy’s pride, I want to know: What took them so long? And what’s behind the tactical switch? Last week — just in advance of learning that Bush was “briefed” about terrorist attacks before September 11 — fading CBS news…
Media Matters
funny thing happened to my journalistic mission last week at Governor Howard Dean’s weekly press conference. I went in looking for the guv’s response to Agriculture Commissioner Leon Graves, who recently lambasted opponents of the controversial egg farm in Highgate. Graves had called those opposed to the proposed expansion of the ag operation “nothing but…
Flick Chick
Even earthbound people clueless about skateboarding are likely to enjoy Dogtown and Z-Boys, a documentary chronicling the obscure origins of a sport that first took off in the early 1970s. What contemporary American town doesn’t have kids zooming into the air courtesy of these seemingly insubstantial pieces of wood on wheels? Today’s youth culture apparently…
Politics of Blame
Early indications are that this year’s Vermont election will offer a heavy dose of Republicans blaming Democrats for the falling sky. The GOP’s gubernatorial hopeful Jim Douglas has radio and TV spots airing this week designed to strike fear into the hearts of every Vermont worker. “Vermont’s economy is taking a turn for the worse,”…
