Columns
Mountain Times columnists share personal experiences on themes they’ve chosen as a focus. Find a personality you relate to and follow them weekly!
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Remembering forward
June 11, 2025
We are in a strange time. You might be yearning, remembering the world that was. A world you can never go back to. A world you can remember like it was yesterday, even though it may be many years ago. It may only be yesterday. A world that you can still see, taste, smell, and…
Rockin’ the Region with Rivalry
June 11, 2025
Jacob Vahey, 14, and Lila Bucci, 15, who form the duo group Rivalry, are the youngest musicians I’ve interviewed to date. Coincidentally, Vahey’s Mom, Laura, attends my music bingo at the Public House Pub in Quechee. Rivalry played the Public House on St Patrick’s Day and Cinco De Mayo. They’ll return to play there on…
Fun outdoor activities for kids in the 50s
June 11, 2025
I find it refreshing to see the kids in my neighborhood outside now that warm weather has arrived. Some are on bikes. Others are “shooting hoops” or playing soccer in their backyards. Riding bikes was probably the most popular outdoor activity for kids growing up on our street back in the ‘50s. We all began…
Market-rate housing is the affordable housing solution
June 11, 2025
Editor’s note: Stephen Box is a Rutland-based general contractor, landlord, and advocate for citizen developers. When it comes to increasing the number of available affordable housing units in Vermont, there are two strategies. The first approach is to build more affordable housing, and this is the current favored strategy of Vermont’s non-profit housing developers with…
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Fact: TIF builds education and municipal funds
June 11, 2025
The cost of living in Vermont continues to rise, especially in communities with greater affordability challenges but with fewer resources to invest in major infrastructure projects necessary to address those needs. A recent bill that passed in the Vermont Legislature aims to allow communities to leverage the same financing model behind TIF for small-scale housing…
Observations from the motorcycle
June 11, 2025
The world flies by. Or, more accurately, Vermont does. I’m on the back of our treasured motorcycle, riding with friends through our brave little state. The roads are winding, the paths are twisted, and the streets are super cute. We can ride for miles and miles and miles and somehow always see something completely different.…
Goldenrod crab spiders: Masters of disguise
June 11, 2025
On a spring morning walk, I stop to smell a painted trillium and am greeted by a goldenrod crab spider(Misumena vatia). Bending down for a sniff of the white and pink blooms, I am face to face with the perfectly camouflaged white spider, hidden thanks to a remarkable color-changing ability. A member of the family…
‘The Phoenician Scheme’ goes according to Wes Anderson’s plan
June 11, 2025
“The Phoenician Scheme” marks the 12th feature film in writer/director Wes Anderson’s near 30-year career. Anderson, working from a script co-written with frequent screenwriting collaborator Roman Coppola, channels his innermost self to produce another exacting artifact of precise framing, intricate set design, stitch-perfect costumes, and a caravan of his favorite stock actors, plus a few…
Fowl play
June 11, 2025
There are talkers, and then there are TALKERS. If you work in an office, you likely know the type: the person who can turn a simple “Good morning” into a TED Talk video. These people don’t just stop by your desk—they plant themselves in your doorway, one hand on the frame, the other gesturing wildly.…
A Riddle, a rainbow, and the road to 100
June 4, 2025
A cloud is my mother. The wind is my father. My son is a cool stream. My daughter is the fruit of the land. A rainbow is my bed. The earth is my final resting place. The above is a riddle and very appropriate. See if you can solve it. If not, the answer can…
Ain’t no party like a Patch party
June 4, 2025
I always ski on June 1st. Some years, the lifts are running, and I’m surrounded by a thousand of my closest friends and fellow ski bums, the line wrapping around the base lodge. Some of us are there for the bragging rights, others for the free t-shirt, and some time at the Umbrella Bar. There’s…
Drawing on inspiration
June 4, 2025
I know it was second grade because I remember the classroom. And I know what teacher was involved because I never forgot her or the moment I’m about to highlight. The year was 1974. I don’t have many memories from that stage of my life, but the following was poignant enough to have possibly set…
Celestial creature: Indigo bunting
June 4, 2025
There is nothing like the royal blue of an indigo bunting. In the Northeast, they arrive fashionably late to the spring fling, behind the vanguard of migrating warblers and other songbirds. On my morning walk in my frequent birding spot – my “patch,” as birders call it –I heard the sharp double-noted tune: “Look! Look!…
Not everything has to shift
June 4, 2025
They say when everything changes, change everything. What happens if you don’t want to change, though? What if you want things to be exactly as they always were? What if you’re a little bit reluctant to go out into the unknown, preferring familiar pastures, preferring the safe, known, and familiar? They also say that things…
‘Iron Man: Crash’ delivers b-b-b-byte-sized glitches
June 4, 2025
Welcome to the “Iron Man: Crash” graphic novel database review entry. Journal log: 6-4-25. This data upload processes 1980s comics history: Sub context: 1988. Reflection: the 1980s — a decade of big hair, neon lights, and comic book experimentation. Things got weird through experimentation. Comics were deviating from their established trajectory. Boy Scout capes and…
An IMAX theater in Rutland? If you build it, they will come
June 4, 2025
Don’t let the headline excite you or fool you. An IMAX theater is not coming to Rutland, or anywhere else in Vermont for that matter, any time soon. And if I know Vermont like I have over the past decade, it’s never coming, so don’t hold your breath. Anytime the request for a new movie…
Hartford’s TIF district: A case study in downtown renewal
May 28, 2025
Over the last 15 years, Hartford, Vermont, has undergone a quiet but impressive transformation, reflecting the vision of its residents and meeting the needs of the community. Its village center—White River Junction—now hums with new life in the form of boutique shops, a Turkish bakery, seasonal flower stand and even a Prohibition-style restaurant. Powered in…
Rockin’ the Region with Dennis McNally
May 28, 2025
My interview with Fred Tackett of Little Feat happened because of their publicist, Dennis McNally. I didn’t know who McNally was, but my friend Annie Sullivan questioned if he was the same guy of Grateful Dead fame. A Google search confirmed they were one and the same. McNally became the Grateful Dead’s biographer in 1980…
A variety of fears
May 28, 2025
One of the TV talk shows I was watching recently discussed fears. The comment was made that we outgrow most childhood fears, but some remain. Fear of the dark is a common one when you are young. I remember a night light solved that problem for me. My bedroom door was left open, and there…
