On June 29th 1956, President Dwight Eisenhower signed the “Federal-Aid Highway Act” authorizing “a national system of Interstate and Defense Highways”. Today, and $500 billion later, that system extends almost 48,000 miles through all fifty states and Puerto Rico.

I haven’t been able to get the Orlando Pulse’s nightclub shooting out of my mind. Massacres like this one always rattle me, but this one feels closer. It's like the distance got smaller between Orlando and Brattleboro, LBGTQ and straight, Anglo and Hispanic, armed and un-armed. Most analysts blame homophobia and hate. But as soon as I started reading the names of the dead I knew homophobia and hate were not the whole story.

The other day I ran in to my state representative at the grocery store, where we chatted about our kids’ whereabouts as we loaded our carts for the weekend. I’d already hugged one of my state senators when we bumped into each other outside the farm store, where we stopped to talked gardens. “It must be a relief to be home,” I said. She agreed, then said she was on her way to deliver her petition to be on the ballot again in the fall.

Let’s get this disclosure out of the way. I taught journalism at Lyndon State College from 2007-2012. I might still be there if, in 2011, the threat of budget cuts had not been real, and my job - even though I hold a doctorate - had not seemed so shaky.

That Saturday, my wife and our two young daughters went to a Pride Family Picnic near our Brattleboro home. It was organized by Green Mountain Crossroads, a regional nonprofit creating community for rural LGBTQ people. We spent a peaceful, misty morning eating potluck food from rainbow-colored plates and swapping stories with other queer families. We felt safe, nurtured, and proud.

My father was a difficult man – hard working all his life and hard drinking for much of my youth. We were estranged for many years, until his cancer diagnosis.With the urging of my sister, I went home. He was in his seventies, me in my forties. Greeting me at the door, he asked, “Why have you come?” I answered, “Because you’re dying.” He let me in, and we began to navigate through a lifetime of hurt.

After 14 months, villagers in his Tanzanian town of 7500 now call Newfane’s Dan Saynor Babu, which means grandfather. The locals revere elders, and at 62, Saynor is currently the only Peace Corps volunteer in his area over 30.

The 1964 Wilderness Act was a milestone in American environmental history. After hundreds of years of clearing away the wilderness, the official policy of the nation was now to preserve the country’s remaining wild areas. Much of this wilderness is now protected in the national parks. In fact, more than half the area of the national park system is wilderness.

Visitors to our national parks may notice that the boundaries of many parks are marked by straight lines. These lines are political boundaries that have...

Though the national parks have famously been called “America’s best idea," this sentiment is not universally accepted.