Opinion

Act 181 has the potential to implement Vermonters' vision

I have been spending time sitting with Act 181, listening intently to the community’s concerns. I’ve been sitting with my own concerns about the law. We have many interests to balance as we look to the future: The needs of our community, youth and adults alike; the needs of our natural...

Ann Manwaring

Lack of accountability in Legislature's proposed education reform

Vermont’s publicly funded education system is a community-based, statewide system tied together by its financing structure. It includes both public and private schools. For any system to serve those who benefit from it and those who pay for it, three things are required: sound financing,...

Not reform, sabotage

It is believed that the phrase “May you live in interesting times” originated in China. But it didn’t start there. It likely happened when a British diplomat in the 1930s described that time as an era of turbulence, danger, and chaotic change. That certainly suggests our own time of danger and...

Land-use restrictions will impose an unfair economic burden

The town of Halifax Selectboard is writing to register our deep concern regarding the implementation and consequences of Act 181. The town of Halifax believes that Act 181 should be repealed in its entirety. While generally supportive of the stated goals of the Act to address and promote Vermont’...

Deborah Lee Luskin

How can humans help forests thrive?

I didn’t become a full-blooded conservationist until I became a deer hunter. It was only through learning from the deer how to read the untamed landscape that I came to understand the natural world and my place in it. • I learned to walk into the woods in the dark and started to pay attention...

Rick Hildebrandt, Vermont Health Commissioner

We all need public health. Public health needs you.

In my first six months on the job as Vermont’s health commissioner, I’ve learned so much about the work we do as a state to provide one another with the opportunity to enjoy healthy lives. It’s not easy work, but it pays off: Vermont continues to perform among the top states in the nation on many...

A dissonance we can’t ignore

It was during the snowstorms in January when my family managed to meet up for a birthday celebration in sunny California where the temperatures were in the 60s and 70s and the sky was beautifully blue every day. The winter respite was lovely but sobering as well, because I knew we were lucky to...

No urn burial

Edith Forbes, “The Lawnmower Lady: A Novel.” Rootstock Publications, 2026. The Lawnmower Lady in Edith Forbes’s title is Fay Kirkwood, the 79-year-old owner of a Vermont pig farm that includes the small-engine repair shop she runs with her niece, Dryden. Fay dies in the book’s opening...

A dramatic change in women’s lives

I might know more about my recent family and ancestors than most people, needing to research it all when I was training to be a family therapist. It astonishes me today how different were the lives of my two grandmothers from the current lives of my two granddaughters. I have lived through the...

Home not where we reside but where we live

Where is your home? Where are you most at home?
Distinguished Princeton professor and author Joyce Carol Oates once wrote “Home is the place you find yourself in your dreams.” In your life do you dream about mountain escapes? Do you sometimes imagine an early afternoon escape from work to...