Index of published articles

"Well, I'll be damned.

Hey, Marge. Would you look at this."

Below is a list of articles (and it's a long one)  published during the past few years and current as of July 15, 2008. After reading the lead, and if you so choose, click on the link. This will direct you to the complete article and the publication in which it appears.

PM Magazine: Profile

Bill “Rusty” Fraser:

City Manager and Musician, He Is Montpelier’s Main Attraction

Sunday Times Argus/Rutland Herald: Front Page

Part-time farming no gentlemanly pursuit
More Vermonters raising their own food

“Gentleman Farming. — Very pleasant to talk about — that is, to those who know nothing at all about farming, either ‘gentlemanly’ or vulgarly,’” writes a Mr. Jeffreys in the 1856 edition of The Horticulturist and Journal of Rural Art and Rural Taste.
Read on. Mr. Jeffreys is just warming up. Does this sound familiar? “I have witnessed sundry editions of gentlemanly farming which didn’t last a great while, and ending either in disgust, with a summary throwing-up of the occupation, or toning down into a practical, positive reality.” If so, you probably have more than a passing familiarity with life on the part-time farm. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080525/NEWS01/805250377

Entrepreneurs get a lift

The small talk turns to margaritas Friday morning during a chairlift ride at Bolton Valley’s Timberline Lodge.
Tim McCaffery explains to Virginia Munkelwitz the vexing problem margarita drinkers face: More often than not they lick the salt off of their glass rims well before the drink is finished. Obviously you can’t turn the half-full glass over to reapply the salt.
Munkelwitz nods in agreement. Yes, this is a conundrum. McCaffery then moves quickly to his ingenious solution – a hand-held device called The Edge, which re-applies salt to the rim of the upright, half-full margarita glass. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080316/NEWS01/803160403/1002/NEWS01

Sunday Times Argus/Rutland Herald: New Sunday Magazine

The falls guy
Vermonter is an expert on the world’s cascades

When his time comes, Dean Goss, 42, knows exactly where he wants his ashes scattered: the waterfall at Bristol Memorial Park on Route 17 near that village. That’s where Goss got his first taste of a waterfall 40 years ago.
”I am a little kid walking down the path, seeing the falls starting on the left-hand side of the path and coming toward a pretty impressive footbridge over a very deep gorge.”
That image stuck with Goss, who admits freely that over the years his fascination with waterfalls has turned into an obsession. “I collected information on waterfalls the way other kids collected baseball cards,” he says with a laugh. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080427/FEATURES02/819074114/1031/FEATURES02

To nail the look
Some Vermont women go to real lengths

Sunday Times Argus/Rutland Herald: Perspective

Hobnobbing with hobos
Whatever you do, don’t call them bums

The deep laugh lines in King Tuck’s leathery face remain long after he’s stopped laughing. Twenty-five years of riding the rails have left their mark.
”I left home at 15. We’s a poor family, I always felt I was always just another mouth to feed, you know. I just left home to take the burden off of my parents kind of,” says the 46-year-old Texan.
As he exhales a thick cloud of smoke from a hand-rolled Bugler cigarette, it’s sucked out the caboose’s open door, floats across the makeshift hobo jungle, and mixes in with the smoldering campfire. The fire was lit when the ‘bos arrived late on Thursday and kept burning until they broke camp on Monday.
The caboose is a permanent fixture at the Railroad Museum of Long Island. The hobos aren’t; they’re here just for the Sept. 27-30 hobo gathering. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071014/FEATURES05/710140312/1014/FEATURES05

Sunday Times Argus/Rutland Herald: 1 Day With

A job that soots them

Top-hatted and tuxedoed they’re not.
But by day’s end, and it’s been a busy one, their blue jeans and shirts are streaked with plenty of soot, and their overwhelming smoky scent leaves little doubt that Morrisville’s Dave and Pam Earley are chimney sweeps.
Forget that Mary Poppins image of rooftop-dancing sweeps or the darker Dickensian portrait of guttersnipes being lowered into bottomless chimneys to scour away aristocratic soot. This is 21st-century chimney sweeping, and Pam refers to herself as a chimney technician.
However, “I’m a chimney sweep,” amends her husband, Dave. “Not a tech.” (Click link below for complete article.)
http://timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071118/FEATURES07/71116007/1016/FEATURES07

Death takes a holiday

It’s quiet today at Rutland’s Aldous Funeral Home.
Dead quiet.
Funeral director George Hopp Jr., 28, holds open the door at the white clapboard home’s main rear entrance.
If this were a funeral he’d be pulling greeter duty, welcoming the friends and family of the deceased, the loved one, the dearly departed or any other euphemism visitors are wont to call the guest of honor.
At this funeral home, staff members are respectful of the “client” and refer to him or her by name when the body is being prepared and placed in the casket. They also use the word “dead” to describe that person. Not passed away. Not expired. Dead. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071028/FEATURES07/71029003/1016/FEATURES07

Fears of a clown

It’s a little after 9 this overcast morning as participants in the Burlington Kids Day parade gather for their annual trek down Main Street. It’s a surreal scene – Homer Simpson, Scooby-Doo, SpongeBob SquarePants and the Subway sandwich mascot are mingling with fez-topped Shriners and marching bands.
Joey the Clown, one of the parade’s mainstays, is supposed to be here, but he’s nowhere to be seen.
Aha! Down at the corner, a clown.
”Are you Joey the Clown?”
”No, he’s not here yet. I’m Bongo. Joey should be here in a while.”
Bongo, it turns out, is a member of a Shriners clown troupe, along with Waldo, Tyne (pronounced “Tiny”) and Geezer. And while the group’s fifth member, Joey, is a clown too, he’s not Joey THE Clown. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070527/FEATURES07/705270330/1016/FEATURES07

Sunday Times Argus/Rutland Herald: Living

It’s all in your mind
Vermont storytellers put their spin
on ancient tradition

Once upon a time, there was a woman who came from New Mexico and man who came from Philadelphia. Each had an eye, ear and tongue for language and a love of its magic. Then one day, many years ago, they met ...
When Tim Jennings was a child, his mother used to sing him to sleep every night with the English ballad “Barbara Allen.”
His grandmother, meanwhile, told him folktales and stories from the Brothers Grimm. There was no book, no illustrations. Just her voice and his imagination. The stories she told came alive in his mind. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080113/FEATURES07/303865199/1016/FEATURES07

Drop out, drop in
Vermont communes died out,
but their spirit is part of the state

On the July 18, 1969, cover of Life magazine, a group of scruffy young communards and their children stands before a log cabin somewhere in the foothills.
Half are smiling. Half aren’t.
The cover proclaims, or warns: “The Youth Communes: new way of living confronts the U.S.”
“Confronts” is an interesting choice of words, and it’s easy to imagine middle-class couples scurrying to their windows to look for signs of the hippie invasion.
Truth is that it had been under way across the country for a few years – usually attributed to the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, a disdain of 1950s values, the abundance of recreational drugs and a new desire to head back to the land. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070930/FEATURES07/709300330/1016/FEATURES07

It was 40 years ago today
(well, yesterday)

Can it really be 40 years since Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play? Just read the news today, oh boy.
”Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” was THE album of 1967; some say it was the album of all time.
Its 13 tracks fit together in symbiotic splendor, segueing effortlessly and brilliantly from one musical style to another, framed as one performance by the fictional band.
Visually it was also a masterpiece - a vividly theatrical presentation nothing like a typical album.
Of course it didn’t hurt that it was the music of The Beatles, who in just three years’ time had evolved from nice boys in matching suits who wanted to hold your hand to psychedelic pop icons in day-glo who’d love to turn you on. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070603/FEATURES07/70604006/1016/FEATURES07

Turning back time
collectors of 78s like the old sound

A 4-1/2-inch, half-ounce CD can hold up to 80 minutes of crystal-clear sound. A 10-inch, half-pound 78-rpm record, on the other hand, holds about 2-1/2 minutes of music that is accompanied by pops, skips and grinding surface noise that sounds as if bacon is frying in the background.
What kind of person would be drawn to collecting these relics? (Click link below for complete article.)
http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070408/FEATURES07/704080323/1016/FEATURES07

Buying and selling

If you’re interested in collecting 78s, a good place to start is by contacting the New England Society for the Preservation of Recorded Sound (http://nesprs.tripod.com), founded in 1968. This group’s main interest is the shellac period in recorded sound (that is, 78s); it meets quarterly.
Old 78s — and the turntables to play them on — can be found in antiques stores, thrift shops, at rummage sales and yard sales and, naturally, on eBay. Some used record stores sell them for a couple of bucks apiece. A few actually buy them.
But many record stores do not accept 78s, even for free. Call ahead before lugging your late grandmother’s entire big-band collection to a store to sell. Most 78s have no rarity and thus no value. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070408/FEATURES07/704080324/1016/FEATURES07

Thinking outside the litter box
Vermont’s animal communicators

are a different breed

Author Hugh Lofting was on to something back in 1922 when he wrote his second book in the series about the doctor who talked to the animals. He would doubtless find it fascinating that today, hundreds of people get paid to do just that.
They call themselves animal communicators, and Vermont has several who offer their services professionally. Nationally they number some 350, according to Penelope Smith, 60, of Prescott, Ariz., a driving force in the field since 1971. Of course, most pet owners (a word that animal communicators dislike) talk to their dogs or cats regularly, usually in silly baby talk. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070304/FEATURES07/703040339/1016/FEATURES07

Good to Go
No rush, but gravestone owners think ahead

Looking back, U.S. Navy veteran Carl Hooker says he did the right thing some 10 years ago. His actions, he says, were “responsible and important. But it was kind of creepy.”
Hooker, then 36, reserved a plot in the Vermont Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Randolph in a section set aside for married couples, right in front of his father-in-law’s plot. He also purchased a granite upright memorial to go with it.
(Click link below for complete article.)
http://timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070114/FEATURES07/701140332/1016/FEATURES07

Christmas trees by the thousands
for only $5!

Charlie Brown would be beside himself with this offer. This year, as it has done since 1932, the Green Mountain National Forest is offering frugal and/or adventurous Vermonters fresh-cut evergreens — up to 20 feet tall — for only $5. Sound too good to be true? Chances are this won’t be the most symmetrical or lushest Christmas tree, but consider the experience — and the price. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061210/FEATURES07/612100418/1016/FEATURES07

Cemeteries aren’t just for the dead

The children who attend Rutland’s northwestern neighborhood school aren’t spooked in the least.
But should a ball fly over the chain link fence and land in the tiny cemetery that lies within their grassy playground, a grown-up has to retrieve it. The pupils have known since their kindergarten indoctrination that the graveyard is hallowed ground. This is what Rob Bliss, the principal at Northwest Primary School and Pierpoint Primary Learning Center, tells them in his simple, straightforward manner: “There used to be a women’s prison nearby, so there are some people buried in there, and we want to respect them.” (Click link below for complete article.)
http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061029/NEWS/610290309/1016/FEATURES07

Eureka!
The light comes on for Vermont inventors

David Albright, inventor of a “wood splitter with multiple wood splitting wedges on a rotating member,” is the first of the night’s seven presenters. He’s a little nervous, but moderator Danielle O’Hallisay, also an inventor, puts him at ease with a quip. “What could be more Vermontish than splitting wood?” she asks an audience of about 40 people – fellow inventors and curiosity-seekers – who’ve come to Thursday’s third annual meeting of the nonprofit group InventVermont at Vermont College in Montpelier. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061015/NEWS/61014002/1016/FEATURES07

The private I’s have it
A peek at Vermont’s door-knocking
cyber-gumshoes

Maybe it’s best if we start at the beginning. Clear up a few things. Care for a shot of bourbon? Me neither. Not these days. There are plenty of misconceptions about who I am and what I do. I’m strictly on the up and up. No busting down doors. No packing a concealed roscoe. That’s pure fiction, sweetheart. Search for a missing person or tail an unfaithful spouse? Occasionally. Excuse me, doll, while I take this call on my cell phone. Oh, sorry. It was just the fax, ma’am. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060730/NEWS/60728005/1016/FEATURES07

This spot is hot
When ‘free’ Internet falls into your laptop,
the ethics police go on alert

Let's call him Daniel. He's ordinarily a law-abiding Vermonter. But a few months ago, shortly after discontinuing his high-speed Internet service, he opened his laptop one evening in his apartment. "It said I was connected.." (Click link below for complete article.)
http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060604/NEWS/606040327/1016/EDUCATION05

You mean, like the song?
Some lyrically named Vermonters
just can’t stanza it anymore

So, just what is it about Leila Cosgrove, 22, of Burlington, and Cecilia Talamantes, 40, of Medford, Mass., that would make a man get down, begging, on his knees?
First, follow the bouncing ball back to the year 1970 when Eric Clapton, masquerading as "Derek" of Derek and The Dominos, wailed: "Layla, you've got me on my knees. Layla, I'm begging darling, please," and Simon and Garfunkel harmonized: "Oh, Cecilia, I'm down on my knees; I'm begging you please to come home." (Click link below for complete article.)
http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060423/NEWS/604230325/1016/EDUCATION05

To belong or not to belong?
Vermont’s social and fraternal clubs
struggle to find new members

Groucho Marx is credited with saying, “I wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as a member.”
In his day, had Groucho deigned to join the Masons — a group with a current worldwide membership of some 5 million — he would have agreed to “. . .promise and swear, without any hesitation. . . under no less a penalty than that of having my throat cut across, my tongue torn out, and with my body buried in the sands of the sea at low-water mark, where the tide ebbs and flows twice in twenty-four hours, should I ever knowingly or willfully violate this, my solemn Obligation of an Entered Apprentice.”
That’s a lot to swallow — for anyone. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060305/NEWS/60306017/1016/FEATURES07

Rock on ...
You might be surprised at what
people want played at their funerals

That great journey into the afterlife might be made to the strains of Led Zeppelin’s "Stairway to Heaven” — or AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” — if a national trend continues.
Try this at a formal gathering, and hear the conversation die: Ask how many people have considered what type of music will be played for their own funeral or if they’ve prepared their own playlist. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060115/NEWS/60115001/1016/FEATURES07

Vermont Sunday Magazine: In Person

Bill ‘Rusty’ Fraser
City manager and musician,
he is Montpelier’s Maine attraction

“It’s like a benevolent dictatorship,” Montpelier City Manager Bill Fraser says with a wry grin from his office at Montpelier’s City Hall.
Fraser, 48, is referring to his lead role in Rusty Romance, the “roots ‘n’ roll” band he fronts under his alter ego, Rusty: cowboy-hatted, often hidden behind shades, and always closing the show with his upbeat song, “We Brought The Fun.”
The band functions somewhat like the city, Fraser says, in that it has “really great people” who bring in ideas and initiatives. “We sort them out. … I might try to say, ‘Well here’s the general direction I’d like us to go in,’ and then everyone figures out, as a team, how were going to get there.”
Ah, spoken like a true diplomat.
Diplomacy, it seems, is city manager Fraser’s forte. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://vermonttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080113/FEATURES/801130304/1002/FEATURES02

Verandah Porche
The truth be told of Guilford’s reigning poet

“Excuse me. Is that Verandah Porche’s house?” “That all depends on who you are,” says one of her neighbors as two white geese send out warning honks from a nearby pen.
“Here for an interview.”
“Then that’s her house.”
Inside her home Porche grins when she hears about her neighbor’s remark.
It’s par for the course in these parts, she says. Up here, neighbors watch out for one another.
Seated at her wooden kitchen table, Porche brings out a framed photograph that shows seven hippie kids in front of an old building. It was taken in August 1968, she says, the group’s first day at Total Loss Farm. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://vermonttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070930/FEATURES/70928003/1002/FEATURES02

Kim Bent and Kathleen Keenan
The spotlight shines
on Lost Nation Theater’s directors

Hunkered down on a well-worn sofa in the tiny Green Room backstage at Montpelier’s Lost Nation Theater, Kim Bent, founding artistic director,is recovering from a bout with pneumonia. He’s a bit subdued today as he sucks on throat lozenges. But he still has plenty to say about the 30-year-old theater. So does his wife and producing artistic director, Kathleen Keenan, sitting next to him.
”Lost nation is an area near where I grew up. There are lost nations all over the country. They are always rural. Their boundaries are nebulous. Sometimes they are on the map; sometimes they’re not. I wanted to come up with a theater that was based here, one that would be relevant to the area,” he says. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://vermonttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070715/FEATURES/707150305/1002/FEATURES02

Giuliano Cecchinelli
A sculptor who cares
from ‘the littlest job to the biggest job’

Saint-like, 63-year-old Giuliano Cecchinelli offers his hands, palms up, for inspection. The palms are leather tough. Fingers and thumbs are calloused and crooked from 53 years of carving stone. But, says their owner proudly, they are pliable and never sore. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://vermonttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070415/FEATURES/704150312/1002/FEATURES02

Dave Keller
The thrill endures
for a Vermont blues-and-soul man

Thank Jimi Hendrix and his impossible-to-duplicate guitar wizardry. If Dave Keller had come even close to copying Hendrix’s acid-rock riffs, he would not be here in Montpelier, covering the state’s musical landscape with its patches of blues and brass.
Legend has it Keller (who was born during the Summer of Love, the same year The Jimi Hendrix Experience made its U.S. debut, at 1967’s The Monterey International Pop Music Festival) went straight to Hendrix’s sources. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://vermonttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070325/FEATURES/703250311/1002/FEATURES02

Elliot Morse
Seventh-generation Vermonter
lives by (what else?) the Morse code

Gov. James Douglas take note. If you are looking for a spokesman to capture the hearts and souls of our fine state, a genuine article in flannel shirt and Carhartt jacket, whose seventh-generation Vermont accent is the real McCoy and not some faked-for-radio nonsense, then drive up to East Montpelier’s Morse Farm Maple Sugarworks and watch Elliot, the Morse family’s elder statesman, in action. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. A picture of his grandfather, hangs in our Statehouse: Gov. George Aiken. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://vermonttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070218/FEATURES/702180304/1002/FEATURES02

Geof Hewitt
Vermont’s slam poet laureate
doesn’t mince his words

“The points are not the point: The point is the poetry,” says Geof Hewitt (quoting fellow poetry slammer Allan Wolf), as the crowd settles down at the first Vermont Statehouse Poetry Slam.
Emcee Hewitt reminds the 20 slammers to be mindful of their language. The event is, after all, being held in the hallowed House chamber. Plus, there are kids in the audience. As it turns out, one of those kids, 11-year-old Sophia Scoppettone of Montpelier, ends up winning the event with her satirical “God Bless My SUV” and claims the first prize: a copy of the recently published Hewitt’s Guide to Slam Poetry and Poetry Slam. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://vermonttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070204/FEATURES/702040304/1002/FEATURES02

Steve Gillette
He heard the songs of the Kingston Trio, and has been singing and composing since

Several times a day, from oldies radio stations around the globe, the Sunshine Company’s 1967 hit “Back On The Street Again” travels through time and the airwaves and into cars, homes and businesses.
For its composer, 64-year-old Steve Gillette, that song was his one, and only, AM-radio pop hit. It was also the title of his 1968 Vanguard Records folk album, his second. Other artists have recorded that song over the years, too. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://vermonttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070128/FEATURES/70126003/1002/FEATURES02

Patti Casey
The ‘Gospel,’ and other things, according to singer/songwriter Casey

“I would rather take out my own gallbladder with an oyster fork than play solo,” says Patti Casey from her Montpelier home. “I get really nervous, but once I’m there I’m fine. As soon as I start playing I get totally goofy. And then I’m fine.”
It’s difficult to imagine Casey nervous. Full of energy, yes. She’s been performing professionally for some 20 years in a musical career that has taken from her hometown of Vergennes to the hallowed Prairie Home Companion stage in 2001. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://vermonttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061231/FEATURES/61229001/1002/FEATURES02

Michael T. Jermyn
Photographer is a digital-age disciple
of the old masters

Michael T. Jermyn looks down at stacks of photographs he’s taken recently. They’re spread across the floor of his home in Montpelier, which he admits is about to burst at the seams from all his photos. Another 200 framed shots hang from groaning walls.
His last name, he says by way of introduction, means ‘the German’ And it’s pronounced ‘German,’ but ‘Germaine’ in Ireland. His red hair (“Not much left after three kids, but I still have my boyish enthusiasm. Some people say I look like a leprechaun.”) can be linked to one of his ancestors – the Irish rebel “Red” Hugh O’Neill who lived in the 1600s.
(Click link below for complete article.)
http://vermonttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061203/FEATURES/61130002/1002/FEATURES02

'Diner' Don Sawyer
Guilford watercolorist paints
a pretty picture of classic eateries

Lunch-hour rush at the Putney Diner. Both regulars and tourists file in, and the din of clinking dishes and cheerful banter increases by the minute. This is the way a diner is supposed to sound.
Don Sawyer, 61, a regular fixture, sits at the counter on one of the well-worn stools and nurses a cup of coffee. His artwork stares down from the walls. It's also displayed in crates that are arranged strategically so that patrons can see it — bump into it is more like it — on their way in and out. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://vermonttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061119/FEATURES/611190307/1002/FEATURES02

Harry Bliss
Laughing out loud with a New Yorker magazine
cover artist and cartoonist

It's an innocent enough looking pen-and-ink drawing: a smiling Pinocchio, his head poking out from a stack of firewood. "I wasn't sure about the smile," says Harry Bliss of his latest creation. "I thought: Would he be smiling?
Of course he would. He's a wooden doll." Bliss laughs. A second, closer look at the picture reveals a cabin in the background with smoke curling from the chimney. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://vermonttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061112/FEATURES/611120308/1002/FEATURES02

Rick Winston
Films are his life at Savoy Theater
and Green Mountain Film Festival

Rick Winston, co-owner of Montpelier's Savoy Theater, says he can't remember a time when he wasn't a film buff.
As a kid growing up in Yonkers, N. Y., in the 1950s, he would be glued to the television set for hours at a time, watching old black-and-white movies with his parents, forging a life-long fascination with film.
He realized the emotional power of film when, as a boy, he watched his mother cry when Spencer Tracy died at the end of 1937's "Captains Courageous." (Click link below for complete article.)
http://vermonttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061015/FEATURES/610150313/1002/FEATURES02

Hal Mayforth
Nationally recognized illustrator
is‘under the radar’in Vermont,

and that’s OK with him

Hal Mayforth draws funny. Thousands of his stressed-out, bewildered, bug-eyed little men with bulbous noses and his arsenal of anthropomorphic animals, letters, fruits, vegetables, hotdogs and machines have accompanied articles in "The Wall Street Journal," "The New York Times," "U.S. News & World Report," "Time," "Newsweek" and various other publications for the past 20 years. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://vermonttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060618/FEATURES/606180309/1002/FEATURES02

Harry and Norma Mazer
True confessions of Montpelier’s
premier writing couple

Meet Harry and Norma Mazer, married 56 years, and experts at finishing each other's sentences.
When not finishing, they're at least critiquing, revising or rewriting. It's all in a day's work for the two internationally acclaimed authors of children's and young adult books who moved to Montpelier from New York two years ago. They're a handsome couple who look the way writers are supposed to look. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://vermonttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060702/FEATURES/607020308/1002/FEATURES02

Grace Potter
Traveling the road from Waitsfield
to Bonnaroo with amazing Grace

Grace Potter blew into her hometown for a few days of rest and relaxation after a recent show at St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y.
That show, she says, was special because her band, Grace Potter & The Nocturnals, formed there. "There's a lot of history and a lot of gratitude that we owed to those people. It was such an incredible show. I ripped my voice apart, but it was so great." (Click link below for complete article.)
http://vermonttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060521/FEATURES/60518001/1002/FEATURES02

Mark LeGrand
With Hank Williams as a model,
he thrives in the world of honky-tonk

It's Friday, 6 p.m. and show time. Honky Tonk Happy Hour is off and running, and the Pabst Blue Ribbon begins to flow freely at Montpelier's Langdon Street Cafe.
Bathed in the glow of red floodlights, lean and lanky, Mark LeGrand, 53, smiles at the crowd: "Good evening 'tonkheads," he says as his Lovesick Bandits ease into "Lost Highway" by Hank Williams. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://www.marklegrand.com/

Vermont Sunday Magazine: Books & Authors

Barre’s real-life whodunit murder of 1919

“One Less Woman - A Vermont Murder: 1919,” by Patricia W. Belding, illustrated 184 pages, Potash Brook Publishing, $16.95.
Barre history buffs are no doubt familiar with the city’s three B’s: Broadwell, Baker and Brown, an alliterative trio of murders that sent shockwaves through the Granite Center of the World in 1919, 1958 and 1982. The latter two murders remain unsolved.
The first, however, the 1919 strangulation-murder of Lucina Broadwell, a 29-year-old mother of three, was wrapped up that very year, its cast of characters long dead, buried, and forgotten largely for years - until Patricia Belding came along to do some literary exhuming. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://vermonttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070107/FEATURES/70112001/1002/vsmbooks

Vermont Sunday Magazine: In This State

My father, the philatelist

To the phalanx of philatelists whose idea of a good time is soaking cancelled stamps from envelopes or counting the days until some prized first-day cover is to be released, I understand your avocation/addiction. To their families, my sympathy.
When I was growing up my friends’ fathers hunted, or they tinkered in their garages and workshops. My father fettered away a good portion of his day with his stamp collection.
His was no mere hobby but a passion, an obsession. Looking back, it was probably an excuse to hole himself away from his family and a world that was evolving into something increasingly unfamiliar and contrary to his way of thinking. It was his attempt to restore order to a chaotic world. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://vermonttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070617/FEATURES/706170303/1002/FEATURES02

Spare the Rod Serling and spoil the child

Sometimes I like to fantasize that I’m on my deathbed, surrounded by keening family members. In the corner of the room lurks a shadowy figure in a sharkskin suit, cigarette in hand, speaking through clenched teeth into the big eye of a CBS-TV camera.
”Witness a sorry little man during his final hours. Throughout his life he’s cowered at the site of mannequins, fortune-telling machines, ventriloquist dummies, talking dolls and pig-nosed people. Tonight, we hear the sad tale of this pitiful specimen of humankind, a lifelong victim of . . . ‘The Twilight Zone.’ “
Theme music. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://vermonttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070225/FEATURES/70223002/1002/FEATURES02

The Liberace Museum is a sure bet

I have a confession to make – and it's a big one. I've visited the Liberace Museum in Las Vegas not once but twice. My first visit was the weekend preceding Sept. 11, 2001. My second, by pure coincidence, was the weekend preceding the fifth anniversary of September 11. Both visits were diversions from my real Las Vegas agenda: Blackjack.
(Click link below for complete article.)
http://vermonttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061022/FEATURES/610220307/1002/FEATURES02

Making the grade, awkwardly

Since time immemorial, and for students of all ages, returning to school after summer vacation will forever be a mixed school bag of emotions.
For males, boyhood ends abruptly at the end sixth grade, and the transition to manhood begins, sheepishly and gingerly, on the first day of seventh grade. My own transition began 41 years ago in the fall of 1965, swathed in swinging Carnaby Street couture, weighing 100 pounds and standing 5 feet tall. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://vermonttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060820/FEATURES/60817002/1002/FEATURES02

In my father’s slippered footsteps

Everybody works but father. He sits around all day. Feet in front of the fireplace, smokes his pipe of clay. Mother takes in washing. So does sister Ann. Everybody works at our house, but my old man.
Whenever I hear this silly old song sung by Groucho Marx I think of my father, Willard Everett Mullikin Jr., who was a ripe-and-retired 45-year-old when I was born. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://vermonttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060618/FEATURES/606180302/1002/FEATURES02

Vermont Sunday Magazine: Gallery Reviews

Hair, T-shirts and stuff from the coast

Sue Higby, executive director of Barre's Studio Place Arts, says she got her hair cut recently in honor of SPA's current exhibit — "Hair: A show of art made from or inspired by hair." The unusual exhibit runs through Sept. 23. An opening reception is scheduled at 5:30 p.m., Friday.
"You can see landscape painting anywhere (right upstairs, it turns out). We offer the alternative," she says, pointing to the first-floor gallery. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://vermonttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060827/FEATURES/608270308/1002/FEATURES02

Vermont Sunday Magazine: Food

Pan de muerto
A sweet must for a Day of the Dead celebration

At first blush this may seem just a little too creepy: a round loaf of bread topped with crossed bones. Sometimes it's even baked in the shape of a skull. But it's always part of a homemade altar and is often brought to the cemetery as an offering to dead relatives on Nov. 2. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://vermonttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061029/FEATURES/610290302/1002/FEATURES02

Times Argus Food & Dining

Bowled over

Montpelier restaurant takes soup to another level

The late George Carlin, ever the linguistic wisenheimer, referred to soup as “food’s last chance,” a notion that makes Pam Root cringe. “Americans are soup Philistines,” says the owner of That’s Life Soup, a tiny eatery located off the beaten path on Montpelier’s Elm Street.
”In the United States people have no idea the amount of soup the rest of the world eats. In Italy and France, soup is dinner,” Root says from a small table fitted with a crisp white linen tablecloth.
She knows her soup from the bottom of the bowl up and shudders at the American concept of soup born from refrigerator sweepings. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080715/FEATURES17/807150325/1034/FEATURES17

The crème de la creemee

Tongues (and a few tails) are wagging in the Dairy Creme parking lot as the temperature hits 70 on this sunny Sunday afternoon in Montpelier, and owner Cliff Dodge, 50, is all smiles.
“All of my business, to be honest with you, is all based on the weather.”
Today looks to be a winner as the lot fills with cars, trucks, motorcycles and bicycles and the line swells.
A creemee stand is not a hurry-and-get-the-people-served business, Dodge explains.
“It’s more let’s stand in line and gossip with people that we haven’t seen in a long time. We may have a long line of people waiting to place their orders, but we find that they’re out laughing and joking. They are having a good time there.”
A Sunday afternoon at Dairy Creme is the yang to the yin of a Saturday morning at the Montpelier Farmers Market. Here it’s Eat More Cones, not Eat More Kale. And calories be damned. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080527/FEATURES17/674974143/1034/FEATURES17
 

The co-op’s Deborah Messing waxes eloquent

If the moon were in fact made of green cheese, there’d be no question that wedges of this extra-terrestrial (extra terroir in cheese speak) variety would be available at Montpelier’s Hunger Mountain Co-op.
The co-op’s cheese section groans with an abundance of cheeses – some 256 individual wedges, wheels and bricks – from around the world, nation and state, says Deborah Messing who has overseen the department since the early 1990s when the co-op was still located on Barre Street. “It was a tiny little department, as large as a chest of drawers. Back then the cheddar we got was from New York state,” she recalls with a laugh. (Click link below for complete article.)

http://timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080520/FEATURES17/805200303/1034/FEATURES17

Fiddling about

Vermont’s culinary rite of spring

They’re sure signs of spring: tight green coils breaking through snow-free earth along riverbanks and forest floors.
The lucky ones escape and unfurl heavenward as 3-foot fronds. Others are gathered while still in their crosier or fiddlehead stage by hungry and determined foragers. Those end up in a pot, boiled, with a splash of vinegar and a pinch of salt, or in a sauté pan with butter and garlic.
Either way they’re pure heaven to the hordes of fiddlehead fanatics. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080429/FEATURES17/804290303/1034/FEATURES17

‘New England Cooks’

where the studio eats it up

Macaroons in the Meadows

Might as well get this out the way since everyone asks. Yes, Gesine (pronounced Guh-ZEEN-ah) Prado, who owns Gesine Confectionary & Gourmet Market in the Meadow area of Montpelier with her husband, Ray, is indeed the sister of actress Sandra Bullock. And, yes, on opening day – Aug. 2, 2005 – Bullock worked the counter. The media gobbled this up, and while this publicity was good for the start-up business, the proof of Gesine’s success has been in the pudding – well, pastries, sandwiches and coffee actually.
Two and half years later, the business is booming, says Prado. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080408/FEATURES17/804080311/1034/FEATURES17

Turning food and drink into gold

Vermont’s chefs get fresh…

with the Vermont Fresh Network