UnlockingBy Alice B. Fogel
This is an unprecedented time for all of us and there is understandably a lot of fear and anxiety in the community about the COVID-19 coronavirus. We anticipate that many people in our community will become infected with COVID-19, but it is important to note that the great majority of patien…
Editor’s note: Dennis Jensen’s column has been suspended until after the COVID-19 crisis has passed. We apologize for the inconvenience. We hope to have our regular stable of writers back in place soon.
We are lucky this March: no deep snow to keep us from approaching our fruit trees, ladder and clippers in hand. Some years we still have thigh-deep snow in March, which is the traditional time to prune our apples, pears, peaches and more.
Around the middle of March, I begin to feel that springtime urge to hit the road, to lace up the winter-neglected running shoes and start slogging through some miles. My early-season jogs take me past a wetland area that stubbornly spans both sides of a road near my home. It’s a usual — and …
You don’t need a prairie or large lot to attract and support pollinators. A meadow or informal, formal and even container gardens can bring in bees, butterflies and hummingbirds to help pollinate plants. It’s just a matter of selecting the right plants, adjusting your maintenance practices, …
“Start in a comfortable seated position.”
The world seems to be in turmoil. Recent news is disconcerting, at best. But I stay cheerful and you can, too, by being creative and/or by enjoying the outdoors. Being outside always perks me up. I love looking at my snowdrops, winter aconite and crocus. For creativity, I recently went out t…
The outbreak of COVID-19 is forcing us to change how we work, shop, communicate and educate. The recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Vermont Department of Health are very clear: the best insurance against spreading this disease is staying home and limit…
While acupuncture is perhaps the most widely known form of soft-tissue work to originate in East Asia, it is by no means the only one that is useful for treating musculoskeletal pain and enhancing well-being. Many of these modalities work especially well when combined with each other, or as …
This planet has survived cataclysmic challenges over its 4.5 billion years of existence: Glaciers that locked near continents in a deep freeze, volcanoes that spewed ash, earthquakes, continental shifts and more. And it came close to shutting down all animal life some 65 million years ago wh…
Sometimes it pays to be an insomniac. One frigid winter night, I climbed out of my restless bed and slipped outside to stand under a sky littered with stars and take in the complete silence of darkness. Suddenly, a ruckus broke out along the edge of the pond near my home. A series of high-pi…
Yes, it’s that time of year.
With apologies to T.S. Eliot: Here I am, an old man in a muddy month, reading to a dog, waiting for the end of a plague.
I’ve been to Hermit Lake many times through the years, yet only recently developed a sense of disorientation. I don’t recognize anything, except the trail heading up the so-called Little Headwall to the great bowl of Tuckerman Ravine and, of course, the beetling, east-facing cirque itself, c…
Whitetail deer are as much a part of Vermont as maple syrup and Bernie Sanders. You may love maple syrup but not be a fan of our independent, socialist senator, but he is, nevertheless, a staple of the Green Mountain State.
During the summer, I often spy common garter snakes sunning themselves in my garden. As the snow piles up through winter covering the landscape in cold white, I wonder where these warmth-seeking creatures have gone. Without fur or fluffed-up feathers for insulation, how do these ectotherms s…
On an early March Monday night, a few people hammered on stained glass projects in a brightly lit, 16-foot-square workshop in Lyndon Center. In the nearby wood shop, Cub Scouts were shaping wooden cars for race tracks. In another area, a couple was working together on a garden décor project,…
The 2020 Census officially began March 12 and will continue into summer. The Census happens every 10 years and is a requirement in the U.S. Constitution. Your participation in the Census count is a great opportunity to help our local community. Each year, the federal government distributes a…
I recently attended a lecture and slide show by Dan Jaffe, horticulturalist at Norcross Wildlife Sanctuary in Wales, Massachusetts. Dan Jaffe is a talented and passionate gardener who single-handedly maintains 75 acres of woodland, meadow and bog garden.
Vermont is “leading the nation” in health-care payment reform and is seeing early examples of higher-quality, lower-cost care, a national expert says.
Vermonters who have been around for long enough may agree that winters are not what they used to be. Snow is less predictable, thaws come more frequently, and sugaring seasons are more erratic.
Town Meeting Day in Marshfield included an unusual addition this year. In a classroom, off to the side from the main attraction, where our town still sits down to discuss local business in the Twinfield School cafeteria, was a professional interview space. Two stools sat in the middle of the…
Not too far north of us — about 650 miles as the raven flies — lie the three towns of Labrador City and Wabush, Newfoundland, and Fermont, Quebec. While we here at 44º north gaze mournfully out at the persistent snow and long, perhaps, for the onset (and departure!) of mud season, the merry …
SIESTA KEY, Fla. — Day five. I am taking my daily walk down a busy highway just north of here and something, overhead, catches my eye. I look up and there, not 30 feet above, an osprey flies over, its wings beating with purpose and a huge limb clutched in its talons. I watch it fly off and l…
On a picture-perfect winter morning last year, 20 Saint Michael’s College students and I visited Vermont Fish and Wildlife scientists for ice fishing at Knight’s Point on Lake Champlain. We drilled holes, baited hooks, learned about ice safety, identified fish — and even caught a few.
The World Health Organization defines patient safety as “the absence of preventable harm to a patient during the process of health care and reduction of risk of unnecessary harm associated with health care to an acceptable minimum.” The idea of an “acceptable minimum” of harm might seem stra…
On Feb. 24 this year, I went to my vegetable garden with a snow shovel. It was a warm, sunny day, and I was ready for spring. Now, people say that old timers like me are more patient than young whipper-snappers, but I’m not sure that’s true. We have less time left on the planet, so some of u…
After a five-inch snowfall overnight, the little dirt road I live on is plowed clean. I keep my steps over to the side where, under the snow, the walking is safer. I tend to stay off the road, slippery from the light traffic that comes along from time to time.
Red dresses and pink ribbons have helped millions of Americans become aware of the separate tolls heart disease and breast cancer take on women. But not everyone is aware of how the illnesses can intersect.
Red dresses and pink ribbons have helped millions of Americans become aware of the separate tolls heart disease and breast cancer take on women. But not everyone is aware of how the illnesses can intersect.
Nearly half of Americans didn’t go outside in 2018. Like, at all. Let that figure set in for a moment.
Every once in a while, as I’m tramping through the winter woods on my snowshoes, it occurs to me that I am walking on top of frogs.
The newspapers this past week recorded the filing for bankruptcy protection by the Boy Scouts of America. Even for those of us who’ve seen it coming for years, it was sad news. But only mildly sad. In a way, the development is just desserts. Or, perhaps, the extinction of a woolly mammoth, u…
Seasonal Affective Disorder
With February ending, it’s time to switch gears from American Heart Month to National Nutrition Month. This annual campaign, sponsored by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, draws attention to the importance of healthy eating and lifestyles. This year’s theme, “Eat Right, Bite by Bite,” …
Winter is long, and for a gardening guy like me, winter can be oppressive. I keep sane, in part, by starting seeds indoors. I am just now getting ready to start a few plants that need a long head start before they go outside.
Create an outdoor space to relax and recharge. Transform a corner of your landscape, deck or balcony into your own escape from everyday deadlines and stress.
At town meeting in 2018, the South Royalton Food Shelf made a modest request: They asked for $500 per month, totaling $6,000 annually, from the town budget to purchase fresh food and shelf-stable goods for local families in need. After some discussion, one resident rose to the microphone and…
On a walk one winter afternoon, I spotted two white objects darting across a snow-covered field. White on white, they were difficult to identify at first. It was a short-tailed weasel chasing a snowshoe hare!
Gazing out the window from my study on another dismal February day, with memories — photos of me and my sons during our hunting and fishing adventures — surrounding me, I sometimes drift off to another world. This usually happens with the inspiration of nothing, in terms of what I should wri…
Robert Frost, writing with, I presume, a fountain pen, is distracted by a tiny dot of a bug running across his page. He moves “to stop it with a period of ink,” but holds off, and watches as it reaches his still-damp words, pauses and turns to flee. He lets it be, impressed that he’s dealing…
Exercise often. Maintain a healthy weight. Eat a nutritious diet. Don’t smoke. You’re already aware of the basics that make up a heart-healthy lifestyle. But there’s a lesser-known habit that’s also important for protecting your ticker: getting enough fluids.
We’ve all done it — gotten overzealous in spring and overplanted or planted the wrong varieties for our tastes and needs. Make this the year you plan your garden for the best return on your investment.
Ruth Stout, born in Topeka, Kansas, in 1884, lived to the ripe old age of 96. She was an early proponent of organic gardening and was also (as seen from her writing) a sweet, funny, intelligent and common-sense person. I recently read her book, “Gardening without Work:” for the aging, the bu…
Central Vermont Home Health & Hospice has partnered with the American Heart Association of Vermont for American Heart Month, in February, to help you make informed, heart-healthy choices when you go to the grocery store and out to dinner.
I reeled in some really big striped bass, thanks to Randy. I took Steve out for a turkey hunt a long time ago. There was a deep brotherhood, borne from the sky, between Hal and me.
Central Vermont Home Health & Hospice has partnered with the American Heart Association of Vermont for American Heart Month, in February, to help you make informed, heart-healthy choices when you go to the grocery store and out to dinner.
Larry and Helen Whittaker’s house lies just north of the Arctic Circle at 67º49’N, 115º05’W, at the mouth of the Coppermine River. The dining room on the southeast corner of the house features two very unArctic picture windows, one looking east over Coronation Gulf — part of the route of the…
Since ancient times, the heart has been a symbol of our emotions. But scientists have uncovered a physical link between emotions and heart health.
