On a rare free afternoon last Thursday, my daughter and I decided to be proactive and shop for basketball shoes. Basketball season doesn’t start until after Thanksgiving, but Sadie is fourteen, wears a size 11 shoe and has a very skinny foot. We’ve learned from previous experience, shoe shopping is not always easy. The real trouble is there are not many […]
A few weeks ago, the printer at the Job Bank broke. I didn’t think it was a big deal. After all, it was less than a year old so it was under warranty. I knew I had filled out the online product registration. I put in a call to customer service to find out what I needed to do to […]
I took on the job as director of the Job Bank just a little over a year ago. This is newsletter #56. Are you surprised I haven’t run out of things to say yet? Sometimes I am, but then another interesting thing happens. There are so many stories to tell in the Upper Valley. Part of my job as director […]
How many times during your adult life have you wished you could clone yourself to get everything done? I have often wished for an extra pair of hands. When my children were little, there just never seemed to be enough hours in the day. Today, young parents are having more trouble than ever trying to make ends meet, afford good […]
My daughter has taught me more about using my computer in the last year than I would have thought possible. It’s not that what she knows is vast, but her experience with a computer is more playful. I look at my keyboard and first think “typewriter”— old Mrs. Fair covering my fingers and tapping out with her pointer on the board […]
Halfway through his shower on Sunday night, after a long day working in the yard, my husband lost the water— not the hot water, not the water pressure, but the water. Bam! Just like that: no water. It was already dark but he had to head out down to the pump house expecting that a bug had tripped a circuit. It’s […]
As Baby Boomers move swiftly toward retirement, Millennials are primed to take over. We have been taking a glimpse into how things have been going for three young adults navigating the challenges of a 21st century workforce. Mike and Amy both chose career tracks that included college. Not everyone goes that route. Is choosing not to go to college still […]
As Baby Boomers move swiftly toward retirement, Millennials are primed to take over. Let’s take a glimpse into how things have been going for three young adults navigating the challenges of a 21st century workforce. Last week we met Mike who graduated from college and spent ten years moving through a series of jobs learning life lessons from each. This […]
As Baby Boomers move swiftly toward retirement Millennials are primed to take over. Let’s take a glimpse into how things have been going for three young adults navigating the challenges of a 21st century workforce. Up first: Mike. Mike was a pretty typical high school student: good, not great, mostly A’s, a few B’s, some AP classes. He played a […]
Thirty years ago, we added a large cedar deck to the back of our house. I wanted cedar because I didn’t like the chemicals in pressure-treated wood. My husband, the builder, didn’t agree. We compromised. The frame is made of pressure-treated wood that should last forever, but the planks you walk on are cedar, now aged to silver. Every couple of years […]
Sticky. If you asked me one word to describe a hot Vermont summer day, I would choose “sticky.” You know, days where a dip in the lake is more like a dip into a lukewarm bathtub. Days where the walk from the kitchen to the living room can leave you dripping with sweat. Days where the skies are ripe with […]
I have been living in Vermont for about five years. I suspect everyone I have met during these years thinks of me differently from the way I think of myself. Why? I have six children. Many of you know my youngest child, who is fourteen and still in school. Some of you know my youngest son, who is 24, because […]
Slip’n Slides are great in theory. You take a run and fling yourself onto a slick, wet strip of plastic and have a thrilling ride down the pathway until you splash into a bottom bumper. The reality, of course, is that you go nowhere most of the time. You slip off into the grass some of the time. Every once […]
On Sunday, June 10, Dartmouth College held their 2018 commencement ceremony. The invited speaker was Mindy Kaling, Dartmouth alum, comedy writer and actor. She advised graduates, “You have to have insane confidence in yourself, even if it’s not real. You need to be your own cheerleader now because there isn’t a roomful of people waving pompoms to tell you ‘You […]
As I was leaving the library Friday afternoon, two young couples were perusing the books for sale in the front foyer. One of the women exclaimed to her friends as she opened the door, ” Ooh, this is a real library” She’s right, of course. I often have the same thought myself. Lots of libraries are not quite what they […]
When taxis were yellow you knew who to call. When summer arrived there was time for it all. No school for the kids, and hot summer weather, Daylight ’til nine to spend time together. No ticks in the long grass, no cable TV, No blasted cell phones that ring gleefully. Pancakes for breakfast, drive-in movies at night. Playing Monopoly, flying […]
Summertime and the living is easy…. Grown-ups rarely get the long easy days they did when they were children, so ‘easy’ may not be the correct word. Summertime is still unique. The pace relaxes, but work still needs to get done. My family is an example of the modern families people are hoping to attract to the Woodstock area. My […]
Two weeks ago, my husband finally broke down and bought a laptop. He commutes back and forth from Massachusetts to Woodstock every weekend carrying two large file boxes. We have all been trying to get him to give up his old desktop and buy a laptop so he can be more portable. Finally he agreed. I spent the weekend teaching […]
A few weekends ago, my family headed over to the Experimental Balloon Festival in Post Mills, Vermont. We had never heard of Post Mills, but it turns out to be a part of Thetford. We planned to have a family volunteer experience flipping pancakes at the annual Revels North Pancake breakfast. We signed up for the second shift and needed […]
“Aging at home” has become the new catch phrase to describe the preference many senior citizens have to stay at home instead of moving to a retirement community or (even less desirable) into a nursing home. It may be a new phrase but it is not a new desire. My grandfather, Papa, fought bitterly until the very end to stay […]
Today the sun is shining and everything is green and blooming. This week the Job Bank had twenty-seven requests for garden help—a new record. Driving around, there is someone at almost every house and business, outside, either mowing or planting. Things look magical for this long anticipated kick off to summer… Salty drinks served with limes and laughter, lots. Scratchy […]
In Tobago, on the side of the road, hanging precariously off the edge of a cliff is a tiny shop, where Jaffa sells handmade chocolate. The shop is cool and dark. The smell is intoxicating. There is barely room for three of us to squeeze in. Once our eyes have adjusted to the dark interior we see a small display […]
Everybody loves spring—the promise of warmer weather. The early crocuses are cheered even as the die-hard skiers mourn the melting snow. Mud Season or not, summer is right around the corner. First we have a Season of Green—our best kept secret. “No,” you say, “I know Vermont in the spring. It’s muddy and brown. Trails are closed and there’s nothing […]
When my first child was mid-way through his first year of nursery school, my husband and I attended our first parent-teacher conference. We knew we had a great kid and couldn’t wait to hear how well he was doing at school. The teacher welcomed us into a bright, inviting classroom and asked us to take a seat in two diminutive […]
We live in an amazing time in history. Our phones can do more today than the roomful of computers NASA used when they sent men to the moon. My daughter had her first tech “really” moment last week when she learned that Facebook wasn’t around when she was born. Facebook is my platform, so it must have been around since […]
