About 30% of Vermont voters chose Donald Trump, and the other 70% are working their way through various levels of disappointment, shock, horror and depression.

Neil Young’s song The Needle and the Damage Done details the devastating impact that Young witnessed heroin having on musicians in the early ‘70s . Now, nearly half a century later, we’re dealing with the impact of heroin’s far more powerful opioid cousins.

If I say I’ve gone cold turkey, you might assume I’m talking about Thanksgiving leftovers. But no: going cold turkey was all about putting myself on a media diet right after the presidential election.

By now, most of us have heard of the Dakota Access Pipeline and the protests against it that have been marked by increasingly violent confrontation. And yet, few of us may be aware of the legal underpinnings that led to this modern day story of struggle for native sovereignty and human rights.

My mother was a staunch Democrat whose Depression-era vote for Franklin Delano Roosevelt put her at serious odds with her Republican in-laws. My father liked Ike – Eisenhower, that is - who was Republican.

Thanksgiving is upon us, despite all the political turmoil, and for the sake of peace - both across the country and across the table - I'm trying to focus on gratitude - and things I think we can all be thankful for - like finally getting over this cold.

My husband and I just completed a loop out to Wisconsin and back. Driving our Prius among 18-wheelers doing 80 felt like being a ballerina dropped into the middle of an ice hockey playoff.

I’ve tuned out of the endless forensic analyses of how news media failed the electorate. In fact, other than having misread the political and cultural pulse of many Americans, I’m not sure the serious news organizations failed us at all. Many were just absent.

My mind has been going back to the year 1968 and the despair I felt after the assassination of Robert Kennedy.That event came as something of a last straw. But it wasn’t the last straw.

One of the more worrisome features of this election is that, of our last three presidents, two will have moved into the White House without having won the majority of the popular vote.