My first men’s physique show By Kyle Finneron “Men’s physique debut, you’re on deck!” the announcer said. The other competitors and I looked at each other in a panic. I grabbed a handful of tanner and started to smear it all over my chest and arms. Let me back up, just a bit, to the…

By Kevin Theissen “It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so,” wrote Mark Twain. In 2016, NerdWallet commissioned a survey to get a better handle on Americans’ thoughts about lying when money is involved. It’s interesting to note which money-saving lies participants found acceptable. The list included: Logging on to someone else’s retail or media…

By Brett Yates To make things immediately clear, “Hot Dog… The Movie” is not good. Indeed, one could go so far as to call its post-ellipsis subtitle aspirational, or at least a reflection of a certain need for self-reassurance: “Hot Dog,” a low-budget comedy directed by Peter Markle, really is just barely a movie at…

By Cal Garrison, a.k.a. Mother of the Skye This week’s Horoscopes are coming out in the wake of the Easter rituals, under the light of a Capricorn Moon. There are lots of changes going on in the next two weeks. Between the Easter Bunny and the IRS most of us don’t know if we’re coming…

By Dom Cioffi I took my family to the ocean this past weekend for a birthday celebration. This needed to be a bigger-than-normal event since my son was officially transferring into the realm of a teenager. The plan was to soak up some sun, play a little golf and eat to our hearts’ desire. I…

Five great bands, one great DJ. That is what is in store at the 3rd annual Dazed & Defrosted concert at Killington Resort this Saturday, April 22, 11 a.m.-6 p.m. The best part is, it’s free! Enjoy Earth Day with soft bumps, cold brews, on-snow demos, photo booth and an environmental village. If you are…

By Susan Shea In the northern forest of New England, a big gray cat crouches silently in a dense thicket of fir along a snowshoe hare run. Its pointed ears, topped with long tufts of black hair, twitch as it listens intently. The cat’s face is framed by a fur ruff and its yellow-green eyes…

By Marguerite Jill Dye There comes a time in life on earth that calls for a passionate and forceful reaction, a moment when our hearts and souls determine a moral clarity of action. It’s not the time to become immune, to calculate benefits, or shut down. It’s the time that compels us to act from the…

I will admit that I have become a lost soul when it comes to using the library for reference material these days. I was a pro at finding things in the old card catalogs. The Dewey Decimal System and I were good friends back then. I liked the library so much that I almost got…

So now I have some thinking to do. As I mentioned before, the day after the cortisone shot I was pain free. In the week after I have been in more pain than I was before the shot. They say to give it a couple of weeks, that the cortisone crystallizes in the tissues where…

By Kyle Finneron As I write this I am looking at my “finalist” trophy from the Organization of Competition Bodies (OCB) Men’s Physique show I competed in earlier this month. Since my last column I have consumed a nauseating amount of food, I’ve been sick twice, which is very rare for me, and I’ve been…

By Kevin Theissen The U.S Market The bull market celebrated its eighth anniversary in March, but stock prices were mixed for the month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 0.7 percent, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index ended essentially flat. The NASDAQ Composite rose 1.48 percent, according to The Wall Street Journal. Stocks carried forward…

By Brett Yates Editor’s note: The following is the first in a short series of reviews of mostly older films whose narratives prominently feature skiing and ski resorts. The opening shot of “Downhill Racer,” the 1969 Alpine drama starring Robert Redford, initially registers as an abstract composition: a dark, diagonal bolt against a white backdrop.…

By Dom Cioffi  Throughout my school days (elementary through college), I rarely stepped foot into a library. Sure, I wandered in whenever I had a book report due or needed to research something, but other than that, I avoided the institution like the plague.  To me, the library represented work, and I was much more…

By Elise Tillinghast Every year around this time, my husband, kids and I haul out the tent blind from our garage and set it up in the field in front of our house. We toss in a few folding chairs, a thermos, maybe a neighbor. At dusk, we take our seats. First come the vocalizations…