Vermont's mountains were in tough shape. Delicate ecological areas like the arctic-alpine zones on Mansfield and Camel's Hump were being pounded by tens of thousands of Vibram-soled boots or devastated by indiscriminate camping and fires. Fifty years ago, traffic on major summits increased 30% every year as eager backpackers overran popular campsites up and down Vermont's Long Trail.

I'll never forget a piece of graffiti that was prominent in downtown Brattleboro when I first moved here. It must have been considered art and not an eye sore, because no town or state official ever took it down. It said 'ROOT FOR THE UNDERDOG' - in letters six feet tall.

Roz Payne was fearless. And she made a difference. In fact, much of the culture we value in Vermont today was influenced by her passions. She contributed to the founding of the Onion River Co-op, now Burlington’s City Market and helped organize the People's Free Clinic, now the Community Health Center. And both, in turn, have inspired similar community-based assets throughout our region.

Time was that first year college students arrived on campus with their milk crates and graduated four years later. My parents were mortified that I took longer and bounced around between two institutions.

The unveiling of a State House exhibit earlier this month celebrating the history of the Abenaki people and their struggle for recognition was both symbolic and important. The exhibit isn’t large — a single glass-topped case in a corner of the downstairs lobby. But to the Abenaki leaders it's an historic milestone.

Over the long holiday weekend, many small parades and ceremonies throughout the state began or ended under the watchful gaze of uniformed Civil War Soldiers standing atop nearby monuments. And in researching a book I co-authored about war memorials, I learned some interesting facts about these so-called 'standing sentinels.'

In the decade since stepping down as President of Dartmouth, I've been working with veterans, especially encouraging them to continue their education. This Memorial Day, I'd like to remind each and every one of us to pause and do what we should do every day: remember those who sacrificed their lives in our wars.

In 11 years of reporting for CNN, I did my share of stories on abortion. And when the day-after abortion pill became available, I remember thinking that because early stage pregnancies could be ended with just a pill, the dynamics of the abortion debate would change. And they did – just not in the way I expected.

This spring I watched the Vermont Legislature through the eyes of twenty-five college students. Each week students traveled to the state’s capitol to watch and write about how bills become law – or not.

I'd been dreaming of taking a break from early spring in northern New England and spending two weeks in Spain as a family sounded like just the ticket.

For anyone living near the New Hampshire border, Presidential politics are in full swing. On almost a daily basis, one contender or another will be holding a public event. For example in one recent week, Presidential candidates appeared at 38 public events in New Hampshire including six in the Upper Valley.

Nobody knows what’s going to happen in next year's election, but that hasn't stopped people from trying to predict an unpredictable future. We all have our ideas about what we think should happen, but the possible outcomes are so varied that everyone has become a pundit, trying to weigh the maddening array of possibilities.

The theater world woke up recently to the surprising news that Anais Mitchell's innovative and powerful musical play, Hadestown , won fourteen 2019 Tony nominations - this year's largest cache.

I’ve been teaching for 10 years now and I’m just finishing up my 5th year at Champlain College. In my work, I get to connect with young people in a very transitional phase in their lives – from about 18 to 22 years old.

Syrian architect Mohamad Hafez was at the Fleming Museum recently to speak about how as a college student in Iowa back in 2004, he began to build miniature scenes of his native city, Damascus, to work through his homesickness. Three of his works can be seen at the Fleming Museum until May 10.

A mentor once told me that there are times in our lives when we are the arrow, flying swift and far. As we get older, we’re more often the bow, holding steady and helping to launch others further than we can see or imagine.

The recent fire that damaged Notre Dame triggered an outpouring of French anguish over the near-destruction of a building they considered a part of France’s soul. That got me thinking about our buildings here in Vermont. And which buildings, if any, are so important they sum up our experience as a state and stand for what we consider ourselves to be?

Decades ago, my kindergarten class memorized Robert Frost's Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening . I recall that we performed it several times, gap-toothed, cheerfully yelling the verses to general audience approval. The interesting thing is that the poem has stayed with me all these years, popping up at odd moments to warm my imagination.

For more than 20 years, April has been observed as National Poetry Month . It’s a time when poetry is shared across the country at readings and in workshops, on stage and in living rooms. When school children and adults are encouraged to read poetry, to memorize a favorite poem, or try their hand at writing one.

So I’ve been thinking a lot about France again – and not only because of the devastating Notre-Dame fire. News that the Vermont Senate had just given preliminary approval to a bill that would ban single-use plastic bags instantly carried me back to my earliest visit to France in the sixties, and the first time I saw people carrying purchases in string bags.

A friend of mine came across some old film recently showing street scenes of Rutland in 1941, and it’s a revealing trip back in time. The Rutland Lions Club made the film , which eventually came into the hands of the Rutland Historical Society.

I’d been living in California, where a phrase like “it’s freezing” merely meant a mad rush to get the warmest sweater possible. So when I told my friends I was moving to Vermont, they warned me it would be cold, really cold. I could handle “cold,” I told them.

Walkers came from around the state and stretched across age brackets: families with strollers, young children on bikes, teens, college students, partners, baby boomers, and an eighty-five-year-old from Windham County. I was one of them, joining both to speak out against business as usual and to grow a community with shared visions of sustaining life on this planet.

The impressive-looking flying buttresses of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris are still standing – now seen by many as symbols of strength and endurance. But at the Notre Dame they have no real structural function. Resembling earthbound wings, they’re strictly there for looks. And I should know, because I teach architectural history at Middlebury College.

A proposed new law with 60+ co-sponsors to address neonicitinoid pesticide use in Vermont has certainly struck an ecological nerve. Bill H-205 responds to the perils facing all pollinators these days, including stress, climate change, forage loss, narrowed genetic pool, pesticides, and pathogens.