After the shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas that left 26 dead and many wounded, many of us had the same thought: of all places for this to happen – a church, and in the middle of a worship service. One might think a church would provide some shelter from such things.

Galway Kinnell died at his home in Sheffield in 2014, at the age of 87. His many admirers mourned the loss, but also celebrated the poet who once said his job was “to figure out what’s happening within oneself, to figure out the connection between the self and the world, and to get it down in words that have a lasting shape.”

The late attorney Bob Gensburg was a tireless champion against injustice, even when it was difficult and unpopular.

Today, legislation is under consideration in Washington that would, by most accounts, amount to a massive transfer of wealth from middle class Americans to large corporations and the super rich.

William Mayer, pre-eminent American composer and some-time Vermonter, has died. Born in 1925, Mayer was a Phi Beta Kappa Yale graduate, and he studied composition at Juilliard and the Mannes School of Music.

I want to begin by saying I was a former employee of Time-Warner and I’m not a fan of big media mergers. While I personally had a good experience at CNN, big media has become so big, it’s just scary.

I recently attended a gala celebrating Holton Home, a senior residence in Brattleboro, that’s been providing care for elders since it was chartered as The Brattleboro Home for the Aged and Disabled in eighteen ninety-two.

Holiday dinners are not what they used to be for my family. They’re smaller and quieter. Parents and grandparents on both sides of the family are long gone, and Liz and I are now the senior generation.

Discussions about the proposed Federal tax bill have focused almost exclusively on political winners and losers. But I think we should be debating larger questions like whether we should add $150 billion to the deficit each year, especially given the low unemployment rate.

Growing up in a working-class family in Chicago, I did not experience a lot of culture - but a school trip to the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater changed my life.