Unless people get active to stop the plan, thousands of acres of Green Mountain National Forest that are about 10 miles from Brattleboro will probably be clear-cut logged soon.
“They are coming hard with the the chainsaws to Green Mountain National Forest,” Chris Matera told me.
Matera lives in Northampton, Mass., and was the main subject of a New York Times article about logging. To get an idea of what this logging will look like, see “before and after” photos that Matera took last year in New Hampshire at: www.maforests.org/WMNF.pdf.
“What a sorry site it will be to look down from the top of Mount Snow and see clear cuts instead of that beautiful intact forest we see now.”...
I urge Dummerston residents to come to Town Meeting and vote to restore the town's annual investment in farmland protection to $5,000. The world's leading scientists say climate change is a major threat to Earth's ability to support human life. Cars are a major cause of climate change. Protecting...
On Oct. 4, a woman was hit by a truck while she was walking across Putney Road in Brattleboro between Hannaford and Martin's Fireside True Value hardware store. She was taken to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. There is no crosswalk at this intersection, though it is frequently used by pedestrians.
No nation keeps such a high percentage of its people in prison as the USA. Europe's rate is a third of ours. In Vermont, 10 percent of prisoners are African American. Just 1 percent of Vermonters are black. In Brattleboro on Sept. 27, there will be a freedom march. The goal is to get politicians to reduce the prison population. The march starts at 5 p.m. at Pliny Park. Speaking at a 15-minute rally before the march will be Anna...
For thousands of years, Native Americans lived on the land now known as Dummerston, Vermont, and made decisions by consensus. Since the town of Dummerston was founded by Europeans about 265 years ago, direct democracy has continued through Annual Town Meeting. Now, the Selectboard seeks to drive a “dagger into the heart of town meeting.” Those were the words of University of Vermont politics professor Frank Bryan, author of a book about Vermont town meetings, when he learned on May...
The U.S. is losing an average of 6,000 acres of open space every DAY, according to the Trust for Public Land. In Dummerston, in 1960, there were about 300 houses. Today, there are about 800. Almost all of those new houses were single-family houses built in remote areas of farmland and forestland, far from other homes. One of the best ways to stop climate change is to protect open space. Protecting farmland is a good investment. Farmland attracts tourists and...
If you live in Vermont, you can vote for president, governor, and other politicians any time between now and Nov. 7 at your town office. You can also vote by mail now, or at a polling place on Nov. 8. The most important thing the governor and Vermont legislature do is protect farmland and forestland from development. The U.S. is losing an average of 6,000 acres of open space every day, according to www.tpl.org/ourland. The pavers are busy in Vermont.
More than 10 percent of the people in Vermont prisons are African American. Just 1 percent of people in Vermont are black. No other nation on earth incarcerates such a high percentage of its people. As of 2008, the USA had about 751 people in prison or jail for every 100,000 in population. “England's rate is 151; Germany's is 88; and Japan's is 63.” That's according to a 2008 New York Times article, and those numbers were virtually unchanged as...