Broad is the Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer who
sparked a debate not long ago with his New York Times Magazine article,
"How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body." In it, he implies that millions of
Americans unknowingly jeopardize their health – and possibly their lives
– every time they walk into a yoga class. He warns that students risk
nerve damage, hip degeneration, and strokes with every twist and bend of
class. In his more recent Op-Ed "Wounded Warrior Pose," Broad suggests
that men are more injury-prone than women on the mat. On the other
hand, none other than Broad has celebrated the health benefits of Yoga
in his largely non-sensationalized 2012 book "The Science of Yoga."

When
practiced safely, Yoga can help you find better balance, strength, and
flexibility – without wrecking your body. But Yoga can indeed be a
strenuous physical workout. So as a teacher charged with keeping
students safe, I ask new students at the beginning of all my classes if
they have any acute or chronic medical conditions. Most say "no" –
including one student who depended on an insulin pump, and another who
didn’t consider repeated shoulder dislocations noteworthy.

But
my favorite was a new student with a fresh scar peeking out of the neck
of his T-shirt. I wondered how far down his chest it went and asked how
he got it.

"Open heart surgery" he triumphantly replied. "Five weeks ago!"

Now,
all of those students benefited from Yoga. But they could just as
easily have ended up in the nearest emergency room – and one of Broad’s
Op-eds – had I not been aware of their health conditions and adjusted my
class plan accordingly.

Practicing Yoga helped me find strength,
flexibility and grace on the mat and in daily life. And in my teaching,
I’ve seen countless people experience similar benefits. I have several
students in their seventies accomplishing things they couldn’t imagine
possible when they started in their sixties.

But it’s a two-way
street. Anything from a funky knee to MS to spinal surgery requires
consultation with the teacher. When I was newly pregnant I wanted to
keep it confidential, so I spoke to my teacher privately before class.

And
it’s important to know that there’s no national licensing agency or
certification standards for teachers. Certification can mean anything
from many years of education – to just several hours, so it’s wise to
ask where and how the teacher became certified.

We must also be
willing to take personal responsibility for our bodies and our actions.
Broad has acknowledged that his own injury – which helped spark his
writings on the dangers of Yoga – resulted from his focus on a young,
attractive woman in class rather than his own pose.

And you have
to think for yourself andsometimes just say no. I once attended a class
where the teacher announced "if you’re back is hurting, that’s OK. Keep
going!"

But I didn’t keep going.

And I didn’t go back.

The post Spencer Rendahl: Yoga Woes appeared first on Welcome to the VPR Archive.

(Lange) It’s Sunday morning in Vermont, and according to a
recent national poll, a smaller percentage of our residents is in church
than in any other state in the Union. Some of us find that an
embarrassment; most of us, obviously, don’t. Many wonder why. It
shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out.

Consider
what our northern climate throws at us all through the year. Here it is
well after the vernal equinox, and the yard on the north side of the
house, where it’s in shade, still has big snowbanks. If you’re counting
on divine providence to adjust the weather to the calendar, you’re out
of luck. Maple syrup makers know better than to pray for a good year.
All they can do is hope for a better-than-average year, although none of
them can recall if there’s ever been an average year.

The
summer of 1903 brought a ferocious drought; crops withered in the
fields, and forest fires rampaged over the mountains. Just across Lake
Champlain, in Keene Valley, New York, the Congregational church held a
meeting to pray for rain. Old Orson Phelps, however, continued hoeing
his garden. Mrs. Washbond, on her way to church, asked him, "Don’t you
think the Lord’ll send us rain if we pray for it?

Orson glanced at the sky. "Ain’t no use prayin’ fer rain long’s the wind’s in the northwest."

"Well, why go to church at all? You do most Sundays."

"Pretty much just to be on the safe side."

I
come from a line of missionaries, but decided early that my interests
lay elsewhere. Moving to New England affirmed the wisdom of that
decision.

One young Vermonter’d always wanted to be a farmer,
but didn’t have any money or land. So he worked two jobs and scrimped
and saved, and finally was able to buy an old rundown place a few miles
from town. He and his wife worked it for years, till it became one of
the finest farms in the county.

The preacher stopped by one
afternoon to visit. They sat side by side on the front porch, looking
out on the hayfields, green pastures and Jersey cows, solid barns, and
the glittering trout pool at the foot of the hill.

"Isn’t it amazing, Brother," said the preacher, "what God and Man can do when they work together?"

"Yep," said the farmer. "You shoulda seen this place when just God was runnin’ it."

This is Willem Lange in Montpelier, and I gotta get back to…wait a minute! Even God took today off.

The post Lange: Going to Church appeared first on Welcome to the VPR Archive.

That’s when my girls shot past their cousins in height. By then, my daughters were so used to wearing hand-me-downs that it simply made sense to them to shop Salvation Armani, Saks Thrift Avenue and other second hand clothing emporiums.

It’s very gratifying to see my children practice thrift – as if I’ve been able to pass on the values my parents learned during the Great Depression of the 1930s and taught me. But for my kids, it’s not just a matter of thrift. It’s also a matter of taking the Three Rs to heart.

They’ve grown up with the mantra, Reduce, Recycle, Reuse. In high school, my youngest daughter resolved not to buy any new clothing for a year – and stuck to it. In college, my middle daughter culled jeans and a pair of practically new shoes dumped in the "Free Box" at the end of the term.

But it’s my oldest daughter who has taken recycled fashion to a new level. She hosts a biannual Clothing Swap for her conservation-minded friends. Twice a year, she invites about twenty-five fashionistas to bring the clothes they’re tired of wearing to her house for a swap. By all accounts, the event is a great success.

The partygoers model their picks for each other – getting immediate feedback about what’s flattering – and what isn’t. Everyone leaves with a new wardrobe, but no one spends a dime, and any garments unclaimed at the end go to charity. They choose a different beneficiary each time.

I’ve never made it to one of these events, though I’ve donated a few times. But my current favorite item of clothing came from the most recent Swap, when my daughter snagged me a pair of unclaimed jeans – in a lovely shade of purple!

I have no way of knowing if those early years of wearing their cousins hand-me-downs influenced my daughters’ penchant for wearing used clothing, or if it’s part of their zeitgeist – part of their environmentalist education.

I do know that the Clothing Swap sounds like fun – and it certainly makes sense. The young women who go are all just a few years out of college, gaining a toe-hold in starter jobs. Many of them work for non-profits, doing good work for little pay. But that doesn’t stop them from looking their best or dressing for success. They just do it wearing other people’s clothes.

The post Luskin: Other People’s Clothes appeared first on Welcome to the VPR Archive.

When I complained
to him that I felt as if I were watching some slow-motion home horror
movie in which those who don’t believe in science refused to change
their minds, he smiled. He said roughly 30% of us are deniers. About 30%
are believers . And those numbers haven’t changed much for a while, but
there is movement in the middle.

This is complicated stuff, he
continued. It’s a kind of three-dimensional chess game. Even among those
who believe climate change is a problem, there are battles between
developed and developing worlds, between scientists and politicians,
between those who advocate for centralized decision-making and those who
favor decentralization.

Dr. Zia says this is a perfect example
of the "tragedy of the commons" in which the theory holds that when
everyone has access to a common good, their individual self interest
drives them to get the maximum out of it. In our headlong devotion to
economic growth we dump millions of tons of greenhouse gases into that
finite common space. It’s like over-fishing the seas.

Big
problems demand big solutions. Some think, Dr. Zia among them, that we
need an international trade tax, because the free trade system
contributes to climate change as the ever greater production of more goods and
services leads to more greenhouse gas emissions – twenty percent of
which come from deforestation.

We also need a global carbon tax. Some complain, it’s not politically feasible, but
I’d argue that’s only because we’ve let the fossil fuel and
transportation lobbies hijack the discourse.

Taxes are sticks,
Dr. Zia says, and they can change behavior. For example, tobacco taxes
have been successful in reducing tobacco use in this country. Similarly,
gasoline taxes have been successful in Europe in improving the fuel
economy of cars.

The public policy challenge is to effectively
communicate to the public the risk of mass human migration, more floods
and droughts five times worse than the Dust Bowl, and the sheer chaos
that can be expected with an ever-warmer world – without creating social
paralysis or even greater denial .

Much depends upon how we
frame the issue. It’s both a matter of inter national and national
security – and a moral issue of obligations to our fellow creatures.

Despite
all this, Dr. Zia is still a guarded optimist. He says attitudes are
changing, especially with the young; we seem to be more adaptive in our
thinking; and lots of technological options are emerging to address it.
Climate change now comes up in every discussion about our recent extreme
weather patterns.

Dr. Zia would also like to sequester 25-30
trillion dollars worth of fossil fuel and persuade the countries that
own them not to mine or extract that resource.

When I rolled my eyes, he looked at me and said, "You didn’t really think this would be easy, now did you?"

The post Mares: Global Warming Challenge appeared first on Welcome to the VPR Archive.

French
cafés are unchanging period pieces: you can still eat blanquette de
veau at Hemingway’s Brasserie Lipp or sip espresso at Café de Flore,
where Picasso once pondered Cubism.

Writers still find
sustenance in the city’s cafés, says a French magazine. Well-dressed
businesspeople meet for lunch and locals hang out.

A similar
eclecticism can be found in Vermont’s cafés, where political and
business types make plans, retired friends meet for tea, and the
self-employed type away on their laptops.

I never saw a Wi-Fi
sign in a French café – nor a laptop – except for a Starbucks or two.
Most café-goers were talking. And talking. They’d share an iPhone photo –
but that was it for electronics. Solo café patrons in Paris read the
newspaper or write in notebooks.

Cafés in Paris feature dark
wooden interiors, gleaming brass, framed prints, and often, rose-tinged
walls. Vermont coffee shops favor farmhouse or minimalist interiors, and
exhibit local art. French cafés offer only their menus; our cafés also
sell mugs, t-shirts, and coffee for home. Conversation is the soundtrack
in Paris; our coffee shops play jazz and offer live music on weekends.

Parisians
sit at tightly-packed small tables – round or square – often in twos,
side by side, looking out to the street. Vermonters sit at loosely
arranged tables – facing laptops or their companions.

Patrons in
French cafés may eat quiche lorraine with mesclun salad, bread, and a
glass of red wine – or sip identical espressos, sodas, or Heinekens with
a friend. Vermonters enjoy coffee (plain or adorned), along with
muffins, scones, and soups produced on site.

French cafés
recently went smokeless – a change still being finessed by
establishments and patrons. On a rainy afternoon on Rue Cler, we sat
inside an enclosed space, four inches from the wall of the café – but
our neighbors all judged themselves to be "outside" and smoked freely.
Vermont smokers must head outside, regardless of weather.

French
café staff are surprised by "to-go" requests. To go where? Why not sit
down and enjoy that café Americano and lemony madeleine right here?

So
I’m now back in a Vermont coffee shop, conducting this highly
unscientific survey and enjoying our own burgeoning café culture. It
includes establishments like Burlington ‘s Uncommon Grounds, Richmond’s
On the Rise Bakery, Middlesex’s Red Hen Café, and Rutland’s Coffee
Exchange Café – to name just a few.

It’s chilly outside as three
teenagers pile into Capitol Grounds in Montpelier. They place their
orders, sit down, and turn to their iPhones. After texting and checking
Facebook, they settle down for a friendly Vermont coffee shop chat.

The post Harrington: Cafe Culture appeared first on Welcome to the VPR Archive.

Fast forward a century-and-a-half: President
Obama received 93% of the black vote. The party of Lincoln, who gave his
life to save the Union and extend freedom to all, is now unattractive
to the descendants of those whose rights and welfare were the very
reason for its founding.

The fastest-growing minority in our
nation, Hispanics, also overwhelmingly rejected the Republicans last
year. A survey concludes that it wasn’t due to the Republican
presidential candidate’s stance on immigration, as is widely believed;
rather, respondents said that they trust the Democrats to fix the
economy and improve education. Eight years earlier President Bush had
received nearly half of Hispanic votes, but Governor Romney attracted
barely a quarter. These are family-oriented, church-going folks who
believe in entrepreneurship – and ought to have responded to a
Republican message.

Surely swing voters last fall were
unimpressed by the relentless quest for the President’s birth
certificate and the insensitive comments about rape by several Senate
nominees. And it couldn’t have helped that the GOP presidential
standard-bearer appeared to dismiss 47% of the electorate as moochers.
Clearly, to compete in future elections, something has to change. Part
of the answer is greater success in fundraising, voter turnout and using
social media, but it will take much more.

The Republican
National Committee just released a study showing an obvious diagnosis,
but there are two different visions of where the party should go. One is
of ideological purity. The other is of broadening the party base,
becoming the true big tent, accepting differences among those who call
themselves Republicans and directing the collective energy to winning
elections.

First of all, mutual respect is essential.
Republicans have strongly held views on many controversial topics, such
as gay marriage, abortion, physician-assisted suicide and gun control.
But surely we can acknowledge all points of view on these issues and
still work together to achieve our common goals.

Outreach is
critical. I’ve had the privilege of participating in several
naturalization ceremonies when new Americans took the oath of allegiance
and assumed the obligations of citizenship. Immigrants are among the
most patriotic people I’ve met and should be receptive to Republican
ideas. Only a party that welcomes them will succeed; otherwise it will
be swamped by changing demographics.

Relevance is key. Every
American wants a decent job, a safe and pleasant place to live, a good
education for his or her kids and financial security throughout one’s
working years and beyond. That’s what Republicans should be discussing
with the American people. The Democrats were discouraged after the
Reagan years, but they came back. Today’s path to success for the GOP is
clear – the Party needs only to take it.

The post Douglas: Republican Revival appeared first on Welcome to the VPR Archive.

This
group has been meeting since before our babies were born, first in
prenatal yoga, then at a couples’ birthing class, and now weekly, with
our babies. A Nor’easter was heading our way, so schools and businesses
had closed in anticipation of the storm. When we arrived, we were
excited to see that the four other babies had both parents there as
well. One of the other moms exclaimed, "It’s so great to have the dads
here, too!" Then, remembering that our family was different, restated,
"I mean the other parents."

Laura and I are used to being in
this situation. We knew that our friend didn’t mean to insult us, and we
didn’t take offense. But it was a small reminder that our family
doesn’t fit into the mold of "mother, father, child."

In so many
ways, our family is the same as the other families in our group: We
also feel tired after months of interrupted sleep; we have changed
countless dirty diapers; we marvel at each new milestone in our
daughter’s life. And yet we are reminded, as we were that day, that
there are ways in which being one of two moms is different.

Some
of these ways are more tangible than others. In our moms’ group, we
talk about whether or not we want to have another child, and when. I
share our timeline – we will start trying again this spring, when our
daughter is one – but it will not be me who will carry the next child.
This time, Laura wants to be the one to conceive. She, too, wants to
experience pregnancy, labor, childbirth, and breastfeeding.

For
us, the decision about whether or not to have another child is both
simpler and more complicated. Two women conceiving a child require an
impressive amount of logistics – it cannot happen by accident – but we
do not have to wait for my body to recover from the strains of being
pregnant, the intensity of childbirth, or the demands of breastfeeding.

In
fact, if the timing is right, we hope to be able to breastfeed
simultaneously, each of us creating an intimate bond with both of our
children. We envision how both babies could nurse with either one of us:
I could give Laura a break by nursing the new baby in the middle of the
night; she could enhance her relationship to our first child by nursing
her as a toddler.

As my wife stood by my side throughout the
year I tried to get pregnant, the hours of preparatory birthing classes,
the powerful contractions during labor, the discomfort of a clogged
milk duct, she imagined, "Next time, this could be me." Even the most
compassionate husbands are unable to do this.

And so, on days
like that snow day last winter, I think, yes, it’s great to have the
dads here, too, but for me, it’s even better to have another mom.

The post Mnookin: Two Moms appeared first on Welcome to the VPR Archive.

Right next to Billings is Ira Allen Chapel, with its
bright white columnar front and tall, cheery, brick-and-white colonial
revival tower, which helpfully offers clock faces showing the time of
day. Billings’ much smaller towers are ornate and darkly Romantic,
almost odd. The slightly taller north tower sports elongated, arched
windows opening into a belfry, and wears a pointed, shingled hat. Its
tiny south tower seems a squat medieval lump, radiating mystery. The
building extends outward from its front arched and gabled pavilion, a
tapestry of complicated windows and dark stonework.

It looks the
way you’d think a college library should look. It was designed by one
of the leading American architects of the Victorian era, Henry Hobson
Richardson and is a prime example of the style that came to be known as
Richardsonian Romanesque.

At its dedication in 1885, Prof. N.G.
Clark described the building as "an oration in stone," and that seems
about right. It is one of the most important buildings in Vermont, both
historically and architecturally.

The building has long been a
favorite haunt of UVM students. Its interior is as complex and elaborate
– and as pleasantly dusky – as its stony exterior, and offers various
niches for quiet study or uninterrupted dozing.

However,
Billings has a long history of not quite fitting in. First as a library
and then as a student center, the building was deemed inadequate. In
1961, UVM’s libraries were moved to the much larger Bailey-Howe library
building, a marble-fronted modernist cube that offers plenty of space
but little soul. That building fits in perfectly with the rest of UVM’s
East Campus, which has become a hodgepodge of undistinguished
lumpen-modernist buildings with no sense of coherency or design.

But
for Billings, there is hope. UVM’s new administration has decided to
return the building to something close to its original use: a quiet
retreat for research and study.

The University’s superb Special
Collections division will move into the building, as will the Center for
Research on Vermont, and the Leonard and Carolyn Miller Center for
Holocaust Studies. (Because of the pioneering work in holocaust studies
by the late Prof. Raul Hilberg, UVM is a leader in this field of
scholarship.)

This is all very good news, perhaps especially for
Vermont studies. Both Special Collections and The Center for Research
on Vermont have long needed more adequate quarters.

And now, in this very special – if slightly mysterious – old building, they have it at last.

The post Slayton: UVM’s Billings Library appeared first on Welcome to the VPR Archive.

I’ve
attended too many public meetings recently where the comments and
questions raised rarely rise above the speaker’s personal interests …my
taxes, my property, my guns, my view… my, my, my. It all begins to
sound like the terrible twos, before toddlers pass beyond the
narcissistic state of being the center of the universe, as they have
been since birth, and begin to understand for the first time that they
are but one in a family.

In the political arena, I believe the
great mass of voting independents who commit to understanding issues and
judging the character and wisdom of our would-be leaders, whether
liberal or conservative, make up the great strength of our country.
Those on either extreme seem more like ice-bound dinosaurs, loud but
useless.

In the civic arena, I have come to appreciate those who
understand the balance between the rights and concerns of individuals
and the obligations and value of community. They aren’t always the same.
The catchphrase is "not in my backyard," which begs the question,
"then, in whose?"

Having grown up in Vermont, my metaphor for
this growing imbalance is posted land and "no trespassing" signs. When I
was young, in the middle of the last century, no one posted their land
unless they were from away or doing something illegal on it. The
respectful use of one another’s property was understood to be a valuable
community benefit.
 
Today where I live in Hinesburg, I believe
our property is one of the few remaining tracts of open land on which
people are welcome to visit, recreate and hunt.
 
As the political
pendulum swings from left to right and back again, it’s more important
than ever that we also find the right balance between our own interests
and those of a strong community.

The post Schubart: The New Narcissism appeared first on Welcome to the VPR Archive.

I don’t know the merits of her recipe, but here’s why citing
it provoked outrage- too often articles about a woman’s scientific
accomplishments are written in a way that suggests we, the readers, should be
equally interested in her domestic accomplishments. We aren’t.

Except. . . this was an obituary, not science reporting. If
it said Ms. Brill made a mean beef stroganoff, chances are the people who knew
and loved her remembered her fondly for the stroganoff and told the reporter as
much. And we know that memory isn’t because they coveted the recipe but because
they coveted the time they shared with her, at meals, at holidays, at
celebrations, and, I suppose, at potlucks too.  

When my friends enter the New York Times obituary
demographic, I don’t care if they’ve won the Nobel Prize, I’m going to remember
some for braised veal and others for poutine on a stick. I’ll remember that
after a particularly long day at work, my beau always makes a dinner of steak,
rice and green beans, and I swear it tastes different when he’s the chef. I’ve
made the same soft pretzels for Thanksgiving and Christmas every year since I
was in seventh grade, and someone had darn well better remember that. That’s
what makes us friends and family, not colleagues and associates.

Even if we think only in professional terms, there’s still
harm done when we decide what is, and is not, worthwhile for other people to
value. The truth is that we have no idea what will inspire the next brilliant
contribution to society, so let’s not limit our options.

Look at the example of food. Food carries a *lot* of
different values. There’s food security, childhood nutrition, environmental
protection, rural economic development, food safety, animal welfare, energy demand,
crop diversity, culinary diversity, regional self sufficiency, local self
sufficiency, and you see where I’m going here. . . caring about food isn’t
beneath anyone’s dignity, not even a rocket scientist’s.

Granted, most people aren’t thinking about this long list of
issues while making dinner, but the ideas that shape our careers can come from
anywhere. What begins as a casual interest in food might evolve into any number
of achievements, from inventing a new biofuel to recalibrating foreign aid. Hobbies
matter – especially for brilliant people. Hobbies introduce new ideas and
connect us to new people, they help us think creatively and see beyond the
workplace.

No one merits a New York Times obituary simply because they
had varied interests and were well loved by people around them, but perhaps
they shouldn’t be remembered  based only on their career, either. The true best
practice is to memorialize a whole person, not just a resume.

The post Labun Jordan: Not Rocket Science appeared first on Welcome to the VPR Archive.

The Long Trail took its first step from dream to reality on March 11, 1910,
at a meeting of 23 people in Burlington, when the Green Mountain Club
was formed. Work began on Camel’s Hump and Mount Mansfield, reaching Jay
Peak in 1927, with the final link to Canada achieved in 1930. Trail
completion was ce1ebrated by the lighting of flares from mountain top to
mountain top.

This foot path in the wilderness, the oldest long
distance hiking trail in the USA, was inspiration for the Appalachian
Trail, from Georgia to Maine, which coincides with the Long Trail from
Williamstown, Mass. to Sherburne Pass, Route 4, just north of Pico Peak.

This
sounds like a perfect story, but not so fast. Vermont was in the depths
of the Great Depression of the l930’s. There was much poverty and
unemployment. Vermont was money poor, so a plan emerged to take
advantage of the Long Trail, draw federal money to Vermont and put
Vermonters to work on a paved auto parkway stretching from Massachusetts
to Canada, right along the spine of the Green Mountain peaks; a Vermont
copy of the North Carolina Blue Ridge Parkway.

Ironically, one
of the prime movers of this idea was none other than the same James P.
Taylor, father of the Long Trail. It may be difficult for us to
understand how a man who envisioned a "Foot Path in the Wilderness,"
could, a few years later, promote a skyline motor highway with all the
necessary feeder roads that would have been required.

However,
as Taylor put it: "The mountains have not proved to be blessings. They
have inevitably been a hindrance to the state of Vermont. Unclimbed,
they have made a commonwealth of valley dwellers, complacent and
provincial." Taylor believed that if Vermonters would not hike the
mountains, at least they could get there by car.

Taylor’s goals
may have seemed worthy enough at the time, for some 60 years ago not
everyone understood what environmental devastation a skyline drive would
bring. Still, it was a big issue even then and the state was polarized.

The
issue went to the Vermont State Legislature where it was debated and
defeated by 15 votes. But the governor wanted to be sure so he brought
the issue to the March Town Meetings in 1936. More than 74,000 people
voted and the parkway was defeated by a margin of just over 1,400 votes.

The conflict between the bucolic nature of our state and unchecked development was as keenly felt in the 1930’s as it is today.
Fortunately for all of us, James P. Taylor’s vision of a "Foot Path in
the Wilderness" has survived and the scenic parkways remain in the
valleys and the lowlands.

This is Bob Northrop from Underhill.

The post Northrop: Long Trail Reprise appeared first on Welcome to the VPR Archive.

In answer to the
concern that the guns bought back and destroyed might include guns used
in a crime, the LAPD insists that the significant benefits from its
program of getting guns off its streets far outweigh the slim chance
that one of the weapons destroyed may have been used in a crime.

In
fact, the LAPD is now seeing tangible results from its buy-back
program. Its officers find fewer guns when responding to
domestic-violence incidents in which a Los Angeles ordinance requires
police-officers to temporarily confiscate firearms. Apparently, some of
the parties in these households have already decided it’s too dangerous
to continue owning firearms. And I’m convinced that even if hunters or
target shooters like me wouldn’t want to sell our guns, many others who
have a gun just lying around and don’t know how to get rid of it might.

Now
in the wake of the brazen killings a few days ago of a District
Attorney and his wife, in their Texas home by a killer armed with
assault weapons, I’m also ready to propose that the buyback program
favor the removal of assault weapons from American streets. Together
with legislation to ban assault weapon ownership and make using them in a
crime punishable by a mandatory 25 year jail sentence, the buyback
program could well succeed in eliminating most of the 3 million assault
weapons in circulation. Sen. Diane Feinstein’s bill that exempts
hundreds of assault weapons and allows those who already possess one to
keep them, is still going nowhere in the Senate. So I think we should
restart the thinking on these weapons and aim high.

After all,
when the government wanted to ban machine-guns in the 1930s, nobody
talked about exempting some of them, or allowing existing owners of
machine guns to keep their lethal firearms. Today nobody laments the
disappearance of machine-guns from the American closet.

There is a
reason the LAPD and virtually every police department in the country
wants to eliminate assault weapons from the streets. Police officers are
increasingly outgunned and must fight back with one arm tied behind
their back because while the criminals can spray city streets with
bullets, the police have to worry about innocent bystanders.

So
enough of gun-legislation half-measures. It’s high time for legislators
to put the safety of our police-officers, and the mayhem in American
homes and streets before concerns about the consequences of opposing the
gun-lobby. I can assure them there are many gun owners like me who
would like to see strong regulations on firearms… now.

The post Kashmeri: Assault Weapons Ban appeared first on Welcome to the VPR Archive.

There is a long history of
North Korea making belligerent threats to annihilate South Korea along
with the approximately 28,000 American troops still stationed there.
Over the years, the three generations of the Kim dynasty have continued
to blame the "enemy" in Washington for the abject failure of North
Korea’s own political and economic system. They’ve often resorted to
murder and extortion. Just three years ago, the North Koreans torpedoed a
South Korean naval vessel which went down with 46 sailors aboard.

Yet
there is a tangible difference between past such incidents and what is
happening today – namely – North Korea now has nuclear weapons. Last
month, James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, presented a
report to the Senate Intelligence Committee which concluded that North
Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile programs pose a "serious threat" to
the U.S. and its allies in Asia.

We know that the Kim regime
fired a long range rocket in December and two months later detonated
underground what it called a "smaller and lighter" nuclear device. But
there is no evidence in the public domain that the North Koreans
actually have been able to "weaponize" their nuclear device. To do that
they would have to make a nuclear warhead small enough and sufficiently
sophisticated to be mounted onto one of their long range missiles. If
they had achieved that capability, the alarm bells in Washington would
almost certainly be a lot louder than they are at the present.

The
U.S. did beef up its presence in annual Korean military exercises with
two nuclear capable B-2 stealth bombers and other high-tech planes and
ships. Yet in recent days the White House has appeared to be trying to
ease the growing tensions. Jay Carney, the White House press secretary
said on Monday, "We are not seeing changes in the North Korean military
posture such as large scale mobilizations," He described this is a
"disconnect" between North Korea’s rhetoric and its actions.

The
Kim regime responded by announcing it was going to restart what was
once its main nuclear reactor, which might eventually increase its
nuclear weapons stockpile. And Wednesday it blocked South Korean workers
from entering a huge industrial zone which is the last remaining symbol
of inter-Korean cooperation – and a crucial money-maker for the North.

North
Korea is the last remaining Stalinist country standing. It is erratic
and treacherous. But in the dangerous world of nuclear politics, it
cannot be ignored. What is needed soon is the right combination of
carrot and stick diplomacy in serious negotiations that have been too
long delayed.

The post Dunsmore: North Korean Threat appeared first on Welcome to the VPR Archive.

It was
moving to watch each man dressed in prison garb walk to the lectern to
read his work. White pages of poems fluttered in shaking hands as they
projected their voices across the room, just as we had practiced days
before the event. Their words hung in the air and were heard by others,
perhaps as their voices had never been listened to before. That day,
they stood tall through the power of poetry.

Once seen as
rarified territory occupied by writers, academics, lovers and
intellectual eggheads, poetry has crept into our homes and sat down in
the kitchen with us. Garrison Keillor reads a poem to us at breakfast or
during our commute, a president invites a poet to memorialize his
inauguration in the January cold as millions hang on every word, and
high octane poetry slams bring fresh young voices to the table.

We
have a United States poet laureate and individual ones in nearly every
state in the union. One of them, Billy Collins, was called "the most
popular poet in America" by the New York Times after he gained millions
of followers by reading on public radio’s Prairie Home Companion.
Perhaps turning a poet into a literary celebrity in real time did more
for the genre than centuries of book publishing ever could.

I am
part of a circle of poetry appreciators that meets each month to share
aloud lines that we love. In decidedly Vermont style, we gather in a
yurt on the edge of a field that is blanketed with snow in winter and
swales of green in summer. Inside, the words of Mary Oliver, Robert
Frost, William Carlos Williams and Walt Whitman mingle with those of
unknowns whose work becomes an invitation into a new room. Poems about
ordinary loneliness, laundry, lust and the art of killing chickens share
space with the intricate constructions of Shakespeare and John Donne.
One of us recites from memory, several have sung their poems, and the
rest read in turn from books, magazines and creased internet printouts.
Hours pass by, but we hardly notice because we are bobbing together on
the sea of poetry.

April is National Poetry Month and might be
the perfect time for each of us to choose just one poem to commit to
memory. It can be shared with anyone, but once it’s in your pocket, it
will be yours and will keep you company for the rest of your life.

The post McCallum: Poetry Month appeared first on Welcome to the VPR Archive.

My friends and I found it last
summer while searching for a completely different Waterbury Cemetery. We
hiked up a winding bike path and then scaled a steep dirt hill – all on
a hunch and a rumor – expecting to see a few dozen hundred-year-old
slate stones lost in tall grass. Instead there was a small monument,
less than thirty years old, sitting alone under a canopy of trees. It
was a graveyard without graves. This was the Vermont State Hospital
Cemetery. The plaque on the stone read, "May their spirits soar" and
"You are remembered."

To talk about the Vermont State Hospital
recalls a time when caring for the mentally ill was, you might say,
unenlightened. The Vermont State Hospital was built in 1890 to ease
overcrowding at a Brattleboro hospital. It’s where the state shut away
alcoholics, the criminally insane and people suffering from mental
illness. The "Asylum Cemetery" opened just one year after the
hospital accepted its first patient.

Joseph Warren, 45, was the first to
be buried there in 1892. His cause of death is unknown. Two years
later, Sarah Townshend, 61, was the sixth patient buried there. Her
cause of death is listed as "acute mania." The granite monument was
erected in 1991, long after the original wooden crosses had rotted away.
It’s dedicated to the "twenty or so residents of the hospital" at the
site.

The world almost lost even this little bit of information
when the Hospital flooded in Tropical Storm Irene. Luckily, Ann Donahue,
a state representative from Northfield, researched the cemetery and compiled a list of 28 people likely to have been buried there.

She is
the sponsor of a Statehouse resolution passed by the legislature this
year requiring Vermont to officially take over maintenance of the
cemetery. That resolution also directs the Department of Mental Health
to determine the identities of those buried there.

This cemetery
once overlooked the Winooski River and the farm fields of the State
Hospital – until we built a highway through that landscape. Now, the
cemetery is almost hidden. It’s a serene, peaceful location, to be sure;
but it’s also secret.

In life, the patients buried there were
shut away and out of sight. One hundred years later, evidence of their
death is hidden in the woods.

The Legislature’s Joint Fiscal
Office estimated it would cost $300 a year to weed-whack and rake the
Vermont State Hospital cemetery. Seems to me like a fair price to pay
for a small gesture of belated recognition and perhaps – atonement.

The post Barlow: Asylum Cemetery appeared first on Welcome to the VPR Archive.

That
night at the gala, John Kennedy Jr. observed that after leaving public
life and keeping "his own counsel" for many years, "Robert McNamara did
what few others have done. He took full responsibility for his
decisions and admitted that he was wrong. Judging from the reception he
got," Kennedy added, "I doubt many public servants will be brave enough
to follow his example." Kennedy concluded, "So tonight I would like to
toast someone I’ve known my whole life, not as a symbol of pain we
can’t forget, but as a man. And I would like to thank him for teaching
me something about bearing great adversity with great dignity…"
Kennedy
was right that McNamara was for millions a symbol of the pain caused by
that tragic war. When, in 1996, McNamara broke his silence and
published his book In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam,
many Americans were furious, looking on the book as way too little and
way too late.

When John F. Kennedy Jr. toasted him for having
done so and for having borne, perhaps, the adversity that comes from
having to live with those mistakes, he, too, was excoriated. What could
JFK Junior possibly have been thinking, some people asked themselves,
to salute Robert McNamara, of all people?

Teachers, ideally,
learn from their students as well as teach them. I learned something
from my former student, young John Kennedy, but I confess it took a long
time. Only now, after the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq,
do I understand in a way I didn’t fifteen years ago, that while
McNamara’s mistakes will be forever excruciatingly painful, it takes a
kind of courage and a kind of personal integrity and a kind of
patriotism, characteristics that I have long admired and that
conservatives often espouse, for a person like McNamara to acknowledge
his mistakes as he did. And a person, particularly a public person,
acknowledging his or her mistakes is indeed something worth honoring.

The post Gilbert: What JFK Jr. Taught Me appeared first on Welcome to the VPR Archive.

With spring comes a desire to get my
hands dirty and to start planting. It’s still way too early to do
anything outside – the ground is still mostly frozen, after all – but
planting seeds indoors satisfies my urge to garden.

I once knew
an old farmer who started seeds indoors in cottage cheese containers
that she kept near the wood stove and then put on a sunny window sill.
She must have started just a month before outdoor planting time, because
I’ve found that it’s impossible to keep seedlings happy for very long
with just the natural sunlight of a windowsill. You need some
fluorescent lights to keep them from getting long and spindly.

I
built a wooden A-frame rack to hold the plastic flats for my seedlings.
From that rack I hang 4-foot lights that I keep about 6 inches above my
seedlings. As they get taller, I raise the lights. Right now I‘ve
started a few early things and I’m getting ready to plant my tomato
seeds.

Tomatoes, for me, are the diamonds of the garden. Nothing
beats the taste of a Sungold cherry tomato or a Brandywine heirloom
slicer. Many of the tomato varieties I grow are not readily available as
seedlings, so I must start them myself. I love a French tomato called
the Ox Heart. And have you ever tasted an Isis Candy Shop, a Purple
Calabash or an Amana Orange? All are very nice tomatoes.

In
order to keep seeds lightly moist but not soggy, I use a peat-based seed
starting mix that I blend 50-50 with compost. It holds water nicely and
the compost provides some nutrition for my little seedlings. I start
seedlings in plastic 6-packs and cover each flat with a clear plastic
cover. The cover sits up an inch or two above the soil line, allowing
some plants to sprout and grow, while others are still waiting to
germinate.

After everything is up, I take off the lids and just
check the seedlings every day to see if they need a drink. The color of
the soil surface changes when it gets dry. I water with a 1-quart pop
bottle, applying water gently so I don’t disturb my tender seedlings.

When
seedlings are 2-3 inches tall I start to add some fish or seaweed-based
fertilizer to the water. I want my seedlings to have all the necessary
minerals for healthy growth. Chemical fertilizers don’t provide the
micronutrients I want for my seedlings.

It’ll be weeks before my
soil outdoors warms up and dries out. There’s nothing I can do about
that. But by puttering with seedlings indoors, I can keep from getting
cabin fever. I recommend it.

The post Homeyer: Spring Is Sprung! appeared first on Welcome to the VPR Archive.

Poets and
lovers alike romanticize spring, so it’s befitting that April not only
ushers in the season but is also the month to honor poetry. Again and
again over the ages, poets have tried to capture that special essence
that defines spring, to express in words its miracle.

Rumi, the
13th-century Persian poet, described the season as full of "Giddiness".
In spring he said, "Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading.
Take down a musical instrument."

April, Edna St Vincent Millay
tells us, "comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers … The
sun is hot on my neck… The smell of
the earth is good." And Gerard Manley Hopkins lifted his pen and voice
to say, "Nothing is so beautiful as spring- When weeds, in wheels, shoot
long and lovely and lush…"

Spring in Vermont, a friend of mine
says, is about optimism. But the end of March this year tested my
optimism – and my faith. I waited for warmth. I longed for the early
tree buds and the serenade of birdsong.
 
Officially, spring
arrived on March 20th. Yet here in the North Country we celebrated not
with daisy chains but in a shower of snowflakes. The cold lingered on
and on until almost the end of the month. But now at last the snow gods
are curling up to sleep and wood nymphs dance again in the valley.
 
Being
optimistic in April really is about holding on, knowing green will
return and having the faith to envision it. Faith, what the Bible calls
the evidence of things not seen, and hope, that intangible mystery Emily
Dickinson described as "the thing with feathers that perches in the
soul, and sings the tune without words, and never stops at all."
 
Hope
and faith are for me what spring represents best. It’s the magic of
spring, and no one describes it better than word magician ee
cummings, who wrote …"in Just-spring … the world is mud-luscious…"
School boys, he says, are shooting marbles and playing pirate. Girls
are dancing hopscotch and skipping rope. You can tell, cummings
concludes, that it’s just-spring and "… the world is puddle-wonderful"

Right
now in Vermont it’s "justspring". The sap is flowing, the world is
greening. Winter has huffed its last huff and warmth curls us in a bear
hug. Hope in full bloom, in "justspring", in Vermont.

The post Averyt: A Mud-luscious World appeared first on Welcome to the VPR Archive.

Rockwell had been inspired by Roosevelt and was eager to contribute to the war effort. He got his best ideas while shaving and one morning remembered a town meeting when a neighbor opposed a popular proposal for a new school — an image that became "Freedom of Speech"

Freedom From Fear and Freedom From Want – AP/Corcoran Gallery

Rockwell’s big challenge was to narrate ideas without a text and to convey a meaning that could be understood in a matter of seconds by readers flipping through a magazine. He started with a basic idea, did a number of small sketches until he had one he liked, and then posed his models by taking hundreds of photos of his Arlington neighbors and friends – as individuals and in groups – before painting. Auto mechanic Carl Hess became the focus of "Freedom of Speech"; Mrs. Thaddeus Wheaton, the Rockwell family cook, presented the turkey in "Freedom from Want." Rockwell spent a month and a half on "Freedom of Speech", starting over four times; the whole series took almost six months to complete. They appeared in The Saturday Evening Post in February and March 1943 and were adopted by the federal Office of War Information as posters for the Victory Loan Drive.

This was a controversial choice. The Office of War Information was snarled in an ideological conflict over how war information should be presented. Distinguished artists and writers sought to speak seriously to the American people. Opposing them were advertisers and movie executives who believed that the war had to be "sold." The advertisers won and a former executive of Coca Cola, for whom Rockwell had done ads in the ‘30’s, chose his work to do the selling. The entire OWI Writer’s Division resigned in protest, leaving behind a satirical poster of the Statue of Liberty holding a Coke, with the caption "The War that Refreshes – The Four Delicious Freedoms."

Freedom Of Speech and Freedom To Worship – AP/Corcoran Gallery

Rockwell was stung – he considered himself a serious artist and hated being dismissed as an advertising illustrator. It didn’t help when executives of the Pioneer Suspender Company, noting their product worn by the caring father in "Freedom from Fear", proposed a campaign promoting the idea that anyone whose pants were supported by Pioneer Suspenders indeed had nothing to fear.

In the end, Rockwell had nothing to fear either. More than four million copies of his Four Freedoms were printed as posters during the war. Rockwell’s portrayals of his Vermont neighbors have become among the most widely recognized images in history – iconic expressions of American life and American values.

The post Henningsen: The Four Freedoms appeared first on Welcome to the VPR Archive.

This winter I’ve been hibernating
as well. From early January until early March I stayed pretty much in
my study – I’m tempted to call it my “den” but my mother would roll over
in her grave at the use of the word. I slept a lot and did a convincing
imitation of, if not a black bear, then at least of my black lab, Nell:
lie down, curl up, don’t move. I had mononucleosis and resultant
hepatitis and was flattened for a while. That I was married when I was
nineteen might have something to do with my not contracting the “kissing
disease” in adolescence when most people do. But we don’t want to go
there lest we wonder why I would suddenly fall prey in my 60s….

I
was perfectly content to nestle in this winter and not move. The
difficult part was that for a stretch of time the doctors weren’t
entirely convinced it was only mono, and speculation about scarier
things haunted us for what seemed like forever but was, in reality, only
about six weeks. After the first month I instituted a virtual medical
filter on my computer and refused to Google anything about bad blood and
bone marrow.

When I was cleared at the beginning of March, I
was elated but also humbled. I couldn’t help thinking about all the
people for whom bad diagnoses are confirmed. In the weeks when I thought
I might be really sick, I learned a lot. I realized that my family and
my friends are the most important things on earth to me. We all know
this but I felt it with a visceral urgency and this was a gift. No
longer did petty worries concern me, I just wanted to love the people I
love. When I was at my sickest, like everyone else, I wanted my mom.

Today
is Easter; black bear mommas are leading their tiny cubs from their
dens, squinting at the radiant sun, listening to birdsong and feeling
their hearts, slowed by slumber, quicken with hope and purpose. I feel
the same way; the stone has been rolled away from my imagined tomb – at
least for now – and it’s time to rejoice and start my seeds.

The message of Easter, so entwined with spring and rebirth, calls us to rejoice.

But
like mother bears, we are also entrusted with the care of those who
cannot fend for themselves, those for whom, alas, the darkness prevails.

The post Kittredge: On Hibernating appeared first on Welcome to the VPR Archive.