Author: Willem Lange

by Willem Lange EAST MONTPELIER – The last time I saw my father, on his 100th birthday, we communicated with

“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” – Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.

A few days ago, I sent a friend instructions about finding my house, and added, “About two-thirds of the way up the driveway there are frozen ruts you should avoid. Left or right, doesn’t matter; just don’t get in ’em.”

Here it is Monday morning, and every news source I’ve tapped for information has assured me that the Northeast (that’s us) is in the grip of a ferocious winter storm. “Hammered,” “blasted,” and “buried” are the verbs of choice. “Onslaught” leads the nouns. That may be true somewhere, even in Vermont; but as the pup and I look out the window of my cozy office, we see only a thick cloud of small snowflakes softly blanketing the earth.

A lightly worn trail runs up a north slope in Hubbard Park, where Kiki and I walk most days. Near the top, in a grove of magnificent red oaks, stands a beautifully built stone bench, just the right height, that invites a sit-down to think and breathe and watch the woods below. Beside the bench, set into a boulder, is a bronze plaque dedicated to the memory of an infant named Falko, who lived only eight days in midsummer of 2020.

The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark outside already.

During my first year at a boarding school where all the students worked about ten hours a week, I was assigned menial labor in the barns. Perversely, perhaps, I loved it — spreading chopped silage as it poured in overhead from a chute, shoveling manure from the gutters behind the cows, grading apples and potatoes, beating the feathers from dead, scalded chickens (not a favorite), and slopping the hogs.

Much of the travel writing to which we’re exposed reminds me of the old fable of the six blind men inspecting and describing an elephant: it reports on only a portion – and often a small one, at that – of the reality of the travel destination.

by Willem Lange  EAST MONTPELIER – It was a stage set by Dickens: the best of times, the worst of

The hammer of autumn darkness and the return to “standard time” seemed to fall harder than usual this past week.