Steven K-Brooks, now retired from active real estate brokerage, writes on his website, Blog88.org. Contact him at [email protected].
Questioned at a Congressional hearing, the president of the University of Pennsylvania would not say that calling for the genocide of Jews violates the university's anti-bullying or harassment code of conduct.
She said such speech is "context-dependent" and only violates University rules if it "turns into conduct." The presidents of Harvard and MIT gave similar testimony at the Dec. 5 hearing.
Virginia Ray's front-page news story exemplifies covering a controversy without falling into ho-hum “neutrality,” but reporting the story fully and fairly so that the facts can speak for themselves. The non-transparency of a Selectboard, which declines to publicly discuss or explain important decisions, is an insult to the letter...
In his letter, Mark Tully writes: “Vermont is being flooded by COVID-19 hot-spotters looking to buy property. [...] Now, sociopath real estate agents in Brattleboro are trying to bring them into people's homes.” What is particularly odd is that Tully's most bitter complaint is that Vermont's rules include the following: “Special note about showing occupied homes: Realtors and landlords may not require occupants of a home or apartment to allow potential buyers or renters into their homes during this extraordinary...
I do not call myself a “white ally,” nor do I label myself in any way which commits me to a formulaic list of prescribed behavior. When I lived there in the late 1970s, Main Street separated East Buffalo from West Buffalo. It was a “color line” in a town where open racism was common. When Diane and I went to a Gino Vannelli concert together, neither of us expected to end up in jail. Diane, star-struck, hoped to meet...
The fellow who collected hundreds of signatures to amend the Brattleboro Town Charter to replace the Selectboard form of governance with that of a mayoral form of governance, told me that four local businessmen paid him. When he had collected enough signatures and it was his last day tabling at the Co-op, he joked that now he would be out of work. To my knowledge, past initiatives have made it onto the ballot only by the dedication of unpaid volunteers.
When my roommate, Frank Parker, was stopped by the doorman in the fancy lobby, it could only have been racism. My therapist's office was on the fifth floor; I had invited Frank to attend a session. We were in our early 20s. Frank always dressed well and was impeccably groomed. In those days, I was perennially scruffy, yet I always walked past the doorman, apparently unnoticed. By his skin color and features, Frank was identifiably “black.” Regardless of my ancestry...
I owe a debt of gratitude to Brattleboro Memorial Hospital Surgeon Thomas H. Lewis, who died unexpectedly earlier this month while on vacation. I first met Dr. Lewis in the old emergency room. The on-duty physician - an out-of-the-area doctor on loan to BMH - was verbally abusive. I was in distress, facing emergency surgery, which I understood would be under the knife of that horrible individual. Then, Dr. Lewis showed up. He had left a family picnic on a...