By Brady Crain The shoulder is coming along, and next week I will be able to lift weights. This week was marked by lots of walking and lots of road riding, because of the gorgeous weather. One interesting thing that happened to me was that as I was headed down West Hill Road the other…

By Mary Ellen Shaw Having grown up with party lines and phones without a dial, I am truly amazed by the way communication has changed. Dial phones were probably as welcome to my parents’ generation as cell phones are to mine. But what is the history of the telephone? Going back to 1900, there were…

By Brett Yates I was hired in 2008 as a youth culture columnist for the Mountain Times, just a few months after my 20th birthday, and one of the earliest articles I wrote was an impassioned denunciation of emo music, as feverishly and embarrassingly over-the-top as the genre itself. My polemic identified the key ingredients…

By Dom Cioffi A few months ago, one of my coworkers was in my office to discuss an upcoming project. In the middle of our conversation, the internet radio I was tuned into started playing a song that I absolutely love. I abruptly stopped her in mid-sentence and turned up the volume. “You know who…

By Cal Garrison a.k.a. Mother of the Skye This week’s Horoscopes are coming out under the light of a Gemini Moon. The Moon will trine the Sun before the day is out. This will give the first day of the week a harmonious outset, but all things are subject to change. Positioned in Libra, the…

By Cal Garrison, a.k.a. Mother of the Skye This week’s Horoscopes are coming out under the light of a Virgo Sun, and an Aquarius Moon that remained void until around 10:30 a.m. (EST) on Monday morning. If your first day of the week got off to a slow start, don’t worry. Until it enters Pisces, and resumes…

By Cal Garrison, a.k.a. Mother of the Skye This week’s horoscopes are coming out in the aftermath of the fall Euinox, under the light of a Sagittarius Moon. According to the doomsday crowd, the world was due to end on Saturday, Sept. 23, and lo and behold, we’re still here. Recent cataclysmic events had me…

By Susan Shea On a hike this spring, we walked through a clear-cut area with tall grass and brambles. Afterwards, our pant legs were crawling with black-legged ticks (Ixodes scapularis), also known as deer ticks, the kind that carry Lyme disease. Scientists with the Vermont Department of Health recently examined over 2,000 ticks and found…

By Brady Crain I promised last week that I would start doing more interesting things to write about. Then came a few good hard intellectual and emotional kicks to the groin.  I won’t get into it too much, but this sort of thing used to spin me out for weeks, or months, even years. How…

By Marguerite Jill-Dye I sat in the library of a great man whose vision has touched people’s lives all over the world. His name is Father Ernesto Bustio from Guemes, Spain, in the Province of Cantabria. His adjoining office walls and rafters were filled with shelves of slides, videos, photos, and DVDs of the people…

By Brett Yates Sour Patch Kids, the iconic child-shaped treat invented in the 1970s by a Long Island man named Frank Galatolie, are, in my opinion, perhaps the greatest mass-produced American candy. To me, their astringent artificiality best captures the essence of what “candy” means in an industrialized society. It’s not a “sweet,” not a…

By  Cal Garrison, a.k.a. Mother of the Skye This week’s Horoscopes are coming out under the light of a Virgo Moon, with aspects that show me that all we have to do is pay attention to what’s in front of us, knowing that life’s astrological underpinnings form the backbone for every aspect of our experience.…

Pip the guinea pig, peaking out from his blanket fort By Brady Crain I have, based on the orders of everyone, been taking it much easier.  I lift or do pushup/pullup sets every two days, walk at least once a day, and trail run every two to three days, between four and 12 miles. Easy…

By Kevin Theissen It doesn’t take a degree in finance to see that the cost of college continues to rise. In its 2015 report, the College Board showed that public four-year institutions raised prices an average of 3.4 percent annually between the 2005-06 and 2015-16 school years. Put another way: A $5,000 education in 2005-06…

By Marguerite Jill Dye I feel as if I’m abandoning a sinking ship, leaving America for a pilgrimage across Spain during this perilous time of crises, turmoil, and uncertainty. Keeping up with the news, one can only wonder, has Armageddon begun? Scenes from “Mad Max” and “Water World” flash before my eyes, movies I never…