By Karen D. Lorentz What makes for special vacation memories? There’s no one-size-fits all answer, but there are some fun things to do that might just tip the scales to remember the year when we didn’t have a ton of snow and we skied some and then explored the world of extracurricular fun! Killington The…

By Dom Cioffi For as long as I can remember, I’ve been making and breaking New Year’s resolutions. Every year it’s the same thing: Once Christmas wraps up, and over the days leading up to New Year’s Eve, I begin analyzing what I could do to either improve myself or help others in the coming…

Crow communication is cawfully complicated By Joe Rankin “Caw! Caw!” Every spring we hear it. And my wife says, “that’s My Crow.” It’s apparently the bird’s name. She capitalizes it in her tone. I think she hasn’t bestowed a more formal name because she doesn’t know whether it’s a male or female. My Crow is…

By Brady Crain Pip “the impaler” is Brady Crain’s current pet pig. There have been worse times for Pip the Impaler. Even now, he sits in a pile of hay, giving me his apple eyes, knowing that just beyond his reach is a treasure trove of sweet things: apple, pineapple, and other fruits unimaginable. For…

What kid doesn’t love ice skating? Back in the 1950s our Rutland City neighborhood had a couple of swampy areas that froze over. After a snowstorm the kids would get shovels and turn them into skating rinks. The ice was never very smooth but it served the intended purpose. Neighborhood skating got a whole lot…

Did you hear about the 2,000-person brawl that took place at Kentucky’s second-largest indoor shopping mall last week? A teenage riot of epic proportions, it shut down the Mall St. Matthews in suburban Louisville two hours early on Boxing Day, as local police, responding to alleged gunshots and general unruliness, strove to break up fights…

Submitted Donal O’Shaughnessy You will get more than just music from Donal O’ Shaughnessy when you go see him play at McGrath’s Irish Pub this Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. It is a show filled with jokes, stories and both Irish and Folk music. He appreciates when you sing along or even get up…

By Dave Mance III If you’re a hunter who’s ever ordered something from a sporting goods company, it’s probably safe to assume that you’ve been inundated with catalogues over the past four months. God help you if you save your seed catalogues, too. If you take a moment to flip through your now complete seasonal…

By Bryan Golden The New Year is a time of resolutions. It’s a time when people commit to making a change in their life. Losing weight, changing jobs, saving money, making money, a new relationship, getting in shape, going back to school, or giving up smoking are just some of the goals people set for…

To follow up on the post-injury introspective I wrote about in my past column, here is a comparative study with a different injury, more comprehensive but slightly less acutely catastrophic. On Thursday March 22, 2012, I finished a contracting job at 3 a.m., got about four hours of sleep, and saddled up to catch a…

I don’t know if you’ve ever eaten at Chipotle: the company operates a single restaurant in Vermont (in Burlington), but with roughly 2,000 locations worldwide and billions in yearly revenue, the fast-casual Mexican chain has reigned for the past decade as the trendiest large-scale dining enterprise in the United States. Chipotle Mexican Grill is Taco…

My wife and I have an annual tradition of heading to the largest mall we can find on the final weekend before Christmas. We don’t do this because we need last-minute gifts. We do it because we like to find the calm within the chaos. That may sound strange, so I’ll explain. For as many…

By Cal Garrison, a.k.a. Mother of the Skye This week's Horoscopes are coming out under the light of a Scorpio Moon, with enough planetary movement to give us something to talk about. For starters, Mercury and Mars have just changed signs and they just so happen to be squaring each other. Mercury, in Aquarius, rules…

Submitted The Lynch Bros: Duane Carleton and Tim Lynch make up a dynamic duo with their musical infuences and styles. The Lynch Bros are the new act at Moguls Sports Pub every Thursday night at 9 p.m. One of the Bros you all may know, Mr. Duane Carleton a.k.a. The Human Jukebox. The other bro…

By Meghan McCarthy McPhaul For several days last winter, a barred owl perched atop a dead white birch tree in our field. As winters go, last year’s was very cold, and the owl puffed up against the stubbornly below-freezing temperatures, its streaky brown and white feathers fluffed and fluttering in the icy breeze. Occasionally the…