Features

This Week in History: November 6 - 12

10 years ago:
Wilmington’s development review board denied a request by Hermitage Club developers to rescind a condition requiring them to fund the construction of a garage to house a fire department ladder truck as part of their permit for a condominium hotel complex. The...

The cost of silence: Lessons from Kristallnacht

On Sunday, November 9, synagogues around the world will leave the lights on all night, marking the 87th anniversary of Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass. Kristallnacht was a turning point in the history of the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany and was a clear foreshadowing of events...

Claudette Hollenbeck

Aging in Place: History repeats itself in the span of one lifetime

In these extremely perplexing times, I am finding solace in, of all things, a Nova program on PBS chronicling the trajectory of homo sapiens (wise humans) from our origins in east Africa 300,000 years ago until we have spread all over the entire globe. There is no other mammalian creature that...

Laura Stevenson

One-Minute Book Reviews: Beloved children’s author Louis Sachar writes for older readers, too

Louis Sachar, a prolific author of children’s fiction, is best known for “Holes,” which won both the National Book Award and the Newbery Award in the late 1990s. “Holes” is a witty, slightly postmodern tale and its treatment of social (in)justice quickly earned it a reputation as a children’s...

This Week in History: October 30 - November 5

10 years ago:
Dover officials complained after they found that the town’s 1% local option tax wasn’t being collected on short-term rentals. The town discovered the issue thanks to a Dover economic development program that provided funding for video production companies...

Two centuries later, Dover’s “vampire” still looms large in local legend

By Lauren Harkawik
DOVER - Town clerks, it’s fair to say, have a more intimate relationship to town records than your average citizen. In Dover, there was even a time in history when town records were kept at the town clerk’s house. Now, they’re kept at the town office, inside a vault....

Claudette Hollenbeck

Aging in Place: The age of reason, the reason of age

Retirement is what you do between doctor’s appointments at my stage of life, or so they say. It is a dead bore to spend so much time traveling to and from distant doctors’ offices and then the obligatory cheery, “Hello, how are you today?” from the nurse. I have taken to answering with one word...

This Week in History: October 23 - 29

10 years ago:
Hermitage Club owner Jim Barnes reached an agreement with the US Attorney’s office in Vermont over unauthorized snowmobile trail work that took place on Green Mountain National Forest land at Haystack. Barnes and the Hermitage Club were fined $25,000 and...

Ellie Roden

A Window Into Judaism: The warmth, wit, and resilience of the historic Yiddish language

Do you know that if you use words like schlep, glitch, kvetch, chutzpah. klutz, schtick or maven, you are speaking Yiddish?
What is Yiddish?
A blend of German, Slavic, and Hebrew, Yiddish was the everyday language of Jewish communities in Central and Eastern Europe...

This Week in History - October 16 - 22

10 years ago:
School board members from Stamford, Readsboro, and Halifax, joined by Rep. Laura Sibilia, created a study committee to explore consolidation options under Act 46 or an earlier consolidation law, Act 153. They pondered whether they could meet the requirements...