I was raised a Catholic, as was my father before me and I believe his father before him.
While I did not attend parochial elementary or high schools, I did matriculate at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. I have not, though, been a practicing Catholic since the age of 25, more than four and a half decades ago.
One of the primary reasons I left the Church was because of its paternalistic nature. There are still aspects of the Church I admire, including the service that many of its religious and lay members provide others.
I certainly got an excellent education at Holy Cross, where the faculty- especially the one-third who were Jesuit priests - challenged the religious beliefs we brought with us when we arrived.
Leading up to Brattleboro's March 20–21 Annual Representative Town Meeting (ARTM), the one issue I was cogitating most extensively about was the relationship between the body's Human Services budget and the Community Safety Review Team's report (CSRTR). The intersection of these two topics, however, did not fit squarely into...
At over 200 pages, the “Final Report on the Community Safety Review Process” for Brattleboro is now out and it is massive to get one's arms and thoughts around. I have not read it all by any means, though I have read some sections in detail. I did (via...
Emilie Kornheiser, a first-time state representative this 2019-2020 legislative term from the Windham 2-1 district (i.e. West Brattleboro), very much deserves to be returned for two more years. She quickly got up to speed in her first session, including grasping the intricacies of policy on many multifaceted questions. Her capabilities were so clear to others that partway through the biennium, House leadership named her to the Ways and Means Committee, a central committee of high importance and influence. I certainly...
At the Dec. 11 Brattleboro Selectboard meeting, Tom Franks, a member of the Brattleboro Town Energy Committee, presented an important proposal - that the town create and fund a new position of sustainability coordinator. He did so on behalf of a small group of like-minded individuals (myself included) and a number of local organizations that support the initiative or something close to it. As one of his slides explained, a sustainability coordinator would: • Focus on balancing social/equity, environmental, and...
I am glad that Milt Eaton has laid out for us the hard realities getting in the way of making progress. I am sorry, however, that he has shortchanged so greatly the need to still do so. Yes, it is helpful to be reminded of the enormity of the challenge, including population growth itself plus having the world moving toward a higher standard of living. No, we cannot back away from doing all we can to reduce greenhouse gases if...
The draft Windham Regional Commission Energy Plan is disturbing, because its wording and its biases would effectively exclude economically efficient, acutely needed, renewable wind energy almost everywhere in the county where it would be feasible to site. Yet, I have some sympathies with industrial-wind-energy opponents, with those who would like to preserve our ridgelines intact. Is there any middle ground to advocate for both? * * * Though I moved to southern Vermont only 15 years ago, I have been...
Lisa Merton and Alan Dater's new documentary, Burned, is excellent in many ways, though weak in a few. Arlene Distler's review of the film captures a lot accurately but is also flawed on a couple of main points. Their task has not been an easy one. The film covers a lot of ground: southeastern U.S. clear-cut logging that fuels huge electricity-producing plants in Europe; Berlin, N.H., answering its economic woes by hosting New England's biggest biomass power plant; the community...