Rolf Parker-Houghton

Vape cloud

As the Legislature is considering a ban on flavors in both cigarettes and e-cigarettes in Vermont, a prevention educator describes how some of these substances are created to hook users from a young age — for life

Rolf Parker-Houghton is program coordinator with Building a Positive Community, which offers programs that serve youth and families, including substance-use prevention, though he has written this piece as a concerned private citizen and not in his official capacity.

Parker-Houghton helps health care professionals get the information they need to help people sign up for smoking cessation classes. He also works with people who are addicted to nicotine to help find the help they need. He also works with interns and volunteers to document how corporations market, distribute, and sell nicotine products to young people.

Read More

Ambassador of art, love, and fun

A community grieves the sudden loss of Jonas Fricke, an artist who made murals and music, who built community, and who imbued Brattleboro with creativity and love — so much unconditional love

When I met Jonas Fricke more than 20 years ago, I was in deep need of some joy. I had seen a drunken man attack another man on Elliot Street, late at night after a bar closed, and the violence was haunting me. When I saw the poster advertising...

Read More

Man with a mission

Anti-Chinese sentiments caught fire in the United States in the late 1800s and early 1900s. One Brattleboro man made it his mission to enforce the Chinese Exclusion Act — as a federal district attorney, as a federal judge, and even as a vigilante on a train in Vernon.

In February of this year, Gov. Phil Scott nominated Nancy Waples to a seat on Vermont's Supreme Court, and she was unanimously confirmed by the Vermont Senate in late March. Judge Waples' ascendance could never have happened if ethnic quotas that limited the number of Asian people who could...

Read More

More

The case for expert opinion

On April 16, 1862, men from Brattleboro may have been trying not to panic, or at least not get killed, as they crossed the Warwick River near Lee's Mill, Va. The confederates were not waiting for the their enemies; they were firing explosive shells at them. Some men were killed outright; other men were wounded and drowned. One can imagine a symphony of fear, composed of shells, yells, shrieks of the wounded, and the splashing of water. How far away...

Read More