Einstein famously said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” And lately, I’ve been trying to apply that deceptively simple-sounding bit of wisdom to the significant environmental problem of accumulating plastic.

Picture this: a group of news reporters assigned to cover a large rally. Roped off from the event at the back of the room, they type away, writing their news stories until the speaker draws the crowd’s attention to them. Then the crowd turns hostile, chanting, pointing and yelling.

It’s well accepted that a picture is worth a thousand words, as any visual learner or marketer will attest. But, how does one visualize something as enormous as the U.S. economy - the largest in the world at $19 trillion – and how do we view Vermont’s economy in comparison?

I’m preparing to teach a course this fall about social media. And I’m beginning to think it’s going to resemble something akin to a science fiction movie in which the creators of a vast new technology lose control over what they’ve made.

Efforts to defund the National Endowment of the Arts are a quadrennial budget issue here at home. And in many countries, artists, like journalists, are censored, jailed, or even assassinated.

On his ninety-second birthday just over a year ago, Dad announced, “This is my last birthday. No more.”

Vermont has some very major long term problems to solve - like serious unfunded pension liabilities and increasing pollution of Lake Champlain.

When we moved to the so-called Lake District in south central Vermont, we didn’t realize what that meant. A full decade later, we’re still discovering the beautiful lakes and their generous four-season offerings.

This summer, I’ve been spending a lot of my free time swimming in the lakes and rivers of Vermont, and if the filled parking lots and packed beaches are any indication – so are most Vermonters.

It was 1965 when the delegates of the United Nations gathered in San Francisco to celebrate the founding of the U.N. in that city 20 years before. I was a curious teenager, so together with my pal Pete, we snuck into the Opera House as anniversary preparations were under way — to get a glimpse of history.