My Adventure With Ann Richards

“Are you it?” she asked when we first met at the Sheraton Hotel front desk. I was nervous and she was frantic. “What the hell is it about Vermont? I just drove up from Boston and I am starved. There is no damn place on your entire highway to eat. Why I finally got the driver to pull into one of your very nice rest stops and not a thing to eat. Get me an orange.”

Read the full article

Legality vs. Reality: Why Laws Aren’t Enough to Ensure Abortion Access in Vermont

The second line is faint but unmistakable, and it shows the one outcome of home pregnancy tests not celebrated on television commercials: unhappily expecting. I’m a sixteen-year-old victim of incest and rape. I’m twenty-three and in law school. I’m thirty, married with three children. I’m forty with grown children. I’m your mother, your sister, your daughter, niece, cousin, neighbor — and I want to terminate this pregnancy. What now?

Read the full article

BEYOND the Traditional, into the Limitless

Depth, emotion, and freedom are just some of the words that emerging artist Rachel Moore uses to describe the “powerfully passionate” art emanating from women at work today. The words wonderfully characterize the body of work to be found this summer in Stowe at the Helen Day Art Center (HDAC) in the group exhibit “Women’s Work: No Boundaries.”

Read the full article

Civil Unions and Marriage Laws in New England

More than 1,400 specific federal protections, rights, and responsibilities relate to the status of being married, according to the legal department at GLAD (Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, headquartered in Boston). These include the ability to share benefits – from Social Security and pension benefits to COBRA retirement benefits and ERISA (employer-provided health insurance); the ability to transfer property to a spouse without triggering the gift tax; and being taxed as a couple under IRS rules.

Read the full article

Baggage

I love it when it’s warm enough to drive around with the windows open, with all the signs of summer bursting forth. Ancient cemetery lilacs in bloom; new foals and calves in the herds; red-winged blackbirds staking out turf on fence posts and cat-tail stalks.

Read the full article