Recently, my family joined dozens of others from Mother Up!: Families Rise Up for Climate Action, a project of 350Vermont, to make a presentation to the Climate Solutions Caucus at the State House .

I’ve always loved Valentine’s Day. Not for the cupids or romantic dinners with partners. But, for the holiday of grade school: when everyone got a Valentine, because it was a day to celebrate Love, writ large. An official day for Kindness.

A couple of years ago, voters in Burlington overwhelmingly supported a local measure that would have restricted firearms in Burlington bars, required safe firearm storage within the city, and made it easier for police to confiscate guns in cases involving suspected domestic abuse. The legislature, controlled by a near supermajority of Democrats, failed to approve the special measure.

In Vermont, there was relief when the State Police got a tip that may have prevented more school violence. The target was Fair Haven High School near Rutland; the suspect was an 18 year old former student who had laid out his plans in a journal.

Coyotes woke me up the other night with a serenade of the wildest kind echoing off the hills, a sound that makes me yearn for the passage of House Bill 636, which would make Vermont the only state besides California to ban coyote-hunting competitions.

I recently happened upon a statement by a top Fox News exec that went something like this: In Olympics, let's focus on the winner of the race and not the race of the winner.

In 1999, Portugal was the heroin capital of Europe, with fully one percent of the population addicted to hard drugs. But in 2001 they decriminalized all substances and spent a vast amount of their public money on treatment rather than drug enforcement.

Most of us have causes that we’re passionate about. In my case, I’m passionate about trying to eliminate homelessness and provide decent housing for low and moderate income families.

It’s such a joy to see the long list of Vermonters representing at the Olympic Games and fun to see the stories on so many athletes from Norwich. I grew up there with a generation of Olympic skiers and must be some sort of slacker.

Historian Kenneth Clark argued that, to survive, a civilization requires one thing above all: confidence. Confidence in itself; confidence in its culture and laws; confidence in the individual and collective capacities of its citizens to shape the future.