I have pulled up out of my swan dive into obesity. After working so hard for so long, it has felt funny to take rest days. I took five of them, and in that time, I went from looking like a granite statue to looking like a combination of the Pillsbury Dough Boy, the Michelin…

By Cal Garrison, a.k.a. Mother of the Skye This week's Horoscopes are coming out under the light of an Aries Moon, in the wake of the Blood Moon Eclipse: if we're still here, all present and accounted for, then the apocalyptic gossip that preceded the event, was nothing but an exaggerated barrage of fear porn.…

By Dom Cioffi He was always going to be an athlete . . . Since the day my son was born, I’ve made sure that he was involved in sports. I didn’t do this because of my ego or because I have a secret fantasy that he will one day make millions as a professional athlete. I did it because…

Nausea. Twitchiness. Abject nervousness. Hot skin. Fear. Loathing. Frothing at the mouth. So the Thursday before the Spartan, I finally registered for the Ultra Beast. I waited, because as a nascent real estate agent I have very little money, and I had the sincerest hopes that the Spartan organization—with dozens of open spots in the…

Every year at this time I have a twinge of envy for students who go back to school. Fortunately for my parents, I loved school from day one. In fact, I loved it so much that I would have been a “professional student” after college if I could have earned a paycheck for learning! My…

By Barbara Mackay Eight or so years ago I collected milkweed seeds and painstakingly buried them one at a time under leaf debris at the back edge of my yard, hoping they would mature and attract more monarch butterflies to my home. The project has been wildly successful, but recently the monarch population has declined.…

Earlier this month, the California-based craft beer powerhouse Lagunitas Brewing Company announced that it was entering into a “joint venture” and/or “powerful new partnership” with Heineken International, a Dutch corporation that, in addition to putting skunky pale lagers into transparent green bottles under its own name, owns “over 170 beer brands” in “more than 70…

By Cal Garrison, a.k.a. Mother of the Skye This week's Horoscopes are coming out under the light of a Capricorn Moon, with a slew of astrological activity backing up its conjunction with the Cardinal earth axis. There's so much going on, I'd be a fool to think that I could dissect all of it and…

Editor’s note: Brady Crain is a former full time stage hand, musician, engineer, stand-up comic, and musician, who grew up in Randolph, Vt. He is now a Realtor® with Killington Pico Realty. Earlier this summer he decided to enter a 60-kilometer running race in the Chic Chocs mountains of Quebec. This weekend he will attempt…

By Dom Cioffi Are you ready? Well, you better be because the world is about to end. I’m not joking. An asteroid is headed toward the earth and on Sept. 28 it is going to impact our planet, destroying infrastructure on an epic scale and causing a mass extinction not seen since the age of the dinosaurs. I know…

By Todd McLeish In 2006, I joined a team of biologists to trap bats in Vermont’s Chittenden County. We were searching for North America’s rarest bat, the Indiana bat, which had recently been discovered breeding in a forest in Middlebury. The biologists hoped to identify additional populations of this endangered species and develop a better…

When I was a little girl back in the 1950s this was a very exciting time of year. It was fair time! The fairgrounds have been located at 175 South Main Street in Rutland since 1856. The Vermont State Fair acquired its name in 1972. But my guess is that most people have always referred…

What is it with people who claim that breakfast is their favorite meal of the day? Stop saying this, people. In fact, it’s come to my attention that the phrase “favorite meal of the day” is employed solely in the context of breakfast: no one ever uses it to describe lunch or dinner. Yet both…

By Cal Garrison, a.k.a. Mother of the Skye This week's Horoscopes are coming out under the light of a Virgo Sun, a waxing, Libra Moon, and a bevy of aspects that have us teetering on the brink of something huge. Between the headlines and the crystal ball, rumor has it that the shit really IS…

By Dom Cioffi I first sensed that something was awry with the gentleman standing next to me when I noticed that the conversation he was having was completely one-sided.  I had just run into a local coffee shop to grab a snack prior to seeing this week’s film when the raggedy old man next to me…