Let me start by saying that “ignorance” is a meaningless word. It’s a judgment that lacks any clarity. I grew up among many undereducated people who had more wisdom and common sense than later friends who graduated from Ivy League schools and, forty years hence, find themselves lost in a random and complex world.

President Trump’s recent immigration restrictions may be an irrational and perhaps unconstitutional response to an imaginary threat, but they’re certainly consistent with our history. Lady Liberty may lift her lamp beside the golden door but too often that door’s been slammed shut.

On Martin Luther King Junior’s birthday, the Brattleboro Literary Festival organized a Writers Resist event in solidarity with a nationwide effort spearheaded by PEN America to “re-inaugurate” democracy. Seventeen local authors spoke about their belief in “art and artists’ power and responsibility to resist.” My mother, Wendy Mnookin, and I attended.

My father has cultivated some wonderful friendships in his adopted hometown of Rockport, Massachusetts, but one group of friends stands out for their devotion, constancy and punctuality.

In this session of the legislature, lawmakers have the chance to help student journalism thrive in Vermont.

I’ve recently had a good reason to take an interest in programs designed to improve senior physical and mental well-being - and along the way, perhaps even reduce Medicare costs.

Robert Frost, poet, Vermonter, and sometime farmer, captured the conundrum of walls perhaps better than anyone else, when he wrote, more than a century ago, "something there is that doesn't love a wall."

When my daughter, who has her own infant daughter, mentioned that many local people would be marching in Washington, New York, Boston, Montpelier and Greenfield, Mass., and asked if there were any marches closer, I realized that there weren’t.

During the first three days of the Korean War, Seoul, South Korea was overrun and devastated. Today it’s a beautiful, thriving city with modern office towers, a world class subway system and a twenty-first century airport. But, just like the United States, South Korea is experiencing the loss of manufacturing jobs – a problem that South Koreans blame on technology and cheap labor from Indonesia.

Writer Zadie Smith has said she sometimes wishes she could go to jail, so she could finally read as much as she wants.