So my story, like so many of ours around here, starts with spending far too much time in a Subaru - specifically, a 2001 white Subaru Forester with what someone referred to as “freckles.” Those freckles were actually dime-sized and quarter-sized and plate-sized rust spots. But I like I the term “freckles” a lot better.
This Subaru - which I decided for unknown reasons to name “Willie” - and I went through a lot together, ups and downs. Willie was with me when I graduated from the Westminster West School in 2002. I was lucky enough to have Claire Oglesby - a force in this community - as my first-grade teacher in her last year of teaching, so I just slipped in under the wire. Claire also had a 2001 Subaru Forester - I was honored to have the same car.
This car was the first car that my mother purchased after she and my dad divorced when I was 6 years old. She was saying, “OK, I have my own mode of transportation. I am my own woman. I'm a single parent. And here we go.”
Even at that time, I recognized the power of that. I remember thinking in my 6-year-old way, “Wow, my mom's a bad-ass.” (Probably not in those words.) So Willie was a stamp of independence.
As the second whitest state in the nation, Vermont is distinctively poised to address the atrocities that were perpetrated in Charlottesville on Aug. 12. White people, myself included, are responsible for living out what so many of us here preach: anti-racism, acceptance of all religions, and especially taking action...
There is nothing quite like serendipity. April 29, 1975 is the day that the last U.S. helicopters took off from the South Vietnam capital of Saigon, and returned home. April 29 also happened to be the day that two local men very much involved in the Vietnam War, Alan...
Senator White?” The pristine room becomes completely silent as I enter, and I pause for a second, afraid I've interrupted a life-or-death debate - and then I realize, no, this is what I'm here for. This is what I'm supposed to do. I step fully into the Government Operations Committee room of the Vermont State House and close the door with a quiet click behind me, trying to disrupt the now-resumed conversation as little as possible. I pass, almost invisibly,