Sharp-eyed observers might have noticed that the golden dome of Vermont’s State House has begun to look a bit shabby. Its lustrous gold leaf finish now looks slightly worn and patchy. And there are flaws and cracks in the white-painted cylindrical “drum” that supports the gold cap.

I was at the Green Mountain Film Festival last weekend. Living an hour away, I tend to say I’ll go more often than I do, but the Vermont ACLU was co-sponsoring a screening of the documentary Equal Means Equal and I had agreed to moderate a panel following the film.

For a while now I’ve been harping on the need for state agencies to improve delivery of services through technology and digital channels. Over the years we’ve sadly seen a number of terrible state technology products and only once in a while a good one.

The Sears catalogue, back in the day, was the size of the New York City phone book. When there was a New York City phone book. It had everything from clothing to sporting goods to farm implements. It was awesome. As recently as the 1970s Sears was still so colossal that it was able to build America’s tallest building in Chicago. Now, the company no longer has the catalogue or the skyscraper.

Not long ago, after she’d finished reading two science-related magazines, my aunt passed them along to me and for some unknown reason I turned first to the prominent last page of the issue of MIT Technology Review.

The election of President Trump has reminded me of Elizabeth Kűbler-Ross' five stages of grief. The first is denial – as in how could 63 million people be so wrong? After that comes anger, followed by bargaining, depression and finally acceptance.

Back when I moved to Vermont in the 80s, it took many cords of wood to stoke fires, and mittens and the occasional mail flyer often disappeared into the January snow banks, not to reappear until the snow melted in March – or even April. Pipes froze as well as rivers, and so did Lake Champlain - all the way across.

Early visitors to Vermont found it a beautiful and wild place but with far too many trees. So they set to work, carving farm fields out of the old-growth forests, pulling stumps from the ground, cutting 100-foot fir trees into chunks for firewood, planks for houses and masts for ships. By the time they were done, Vermont was nearly 80 percent cleared. The remaining trees were mostly relegated to the sides of mountains and the northern regions of the state.

Earlier this month, the nation was jolted by a Tweet from President Trump, notable for a questionable historical reference. He wrote: “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”

Living in two cultures can be enriching, sometimes it’s just plain baffling. Being a citizen of two countries helps - it makes it harder to dismiss baffling behavior as “typically German” or “typically American”.