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I was born in Barcelona, where I went to a school run by German nuns, studied solfeggio, and played the violin. When I was ten, my parents and I moved to Ecuador, where I had a number of exotic pets and strange adventures. Four years later, we landed in Birmingham, Alabama. None of us spoke English, and the strange adventures continued. (Many of these appear in My Green Vermont.)
Survived high school. Got B.A. in French and Biology, Ph.D. in Romance Languages (French and Spanish). Gave up the Church and the violin, got married, had two daughters, taught at a liberal arts college in Maryland. Also grew veggies, made bread, kept chickens, milked goats, and wrote for newspapers and magazines. Got bored with teaching, took up running, and went into higher ed administration. Was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), and learned to live in a totally different way.
I started My Green Vermont when we moved to that state. For ten years I lived with my spouse, three dogs, twelve hens, two goats, and assorted passing wildlife in a house on a hill, surrounded by fields and woods. In 2014, we moved to a cottage in a continuing care residential community near Lake Champlain. Gave up livestock and vegetable gardening in favor of wild birds, honeybees, a little red dog, and a gray cat.
My Green Vermont is a fertile compost pile made up of stories about the weirdness of growing up in three countries and three languages; portraits of beloved animals, both wild and domestic; and reflections on aging, being kind to the earth, and staying as calm as possible. I hope you will visit often, and add your own stories and reactions.
A summer afternoon near Lake Champlain, the house shut tight against the smoke (O Canada!). I go to investigate a commotion in the mudroom and find the cat Telemann disporting
“The world is now dominated by an animal that doesn’t think it’s an animal. And the future is being imagined by an animal that doesn’t want to be an animal,”
When the solstice comes around, I swear I can feel the earth’s axis tilt, towards the sun in December, and towards the darkness, alas, in June. The courting songs of
A bear has been messing with the beehive across from my house. The first night it tipped over the hive and carried off a couple of frames. In the morning,
Thich Nhat Hanh read my soul when he said, riffing on Descartes, “I think; therefore, I am not here.” That’s me, to the core. I am almost never here. I
“Never,” my grandmother used to tell me when I was fifteen, “trust a man with a nose on his face.” Yet she, my other grandmother, and my mother as well,
A summer evening in a Catalan village. I have spent the day running up and down the dusty path in front of my grandparents’ farmhouse, and now it’s bedtime. “But
A little over a year ago I wrote an ardent defense of the dandelion, Taraxacum officinalis. I accused Taraxacophobes of being prejudiced against a plant that isn’t merely harmless, but
A summer afternoon near Lake Champlain, the house shut tight against the smoke (O Canada!). I go to investigate a commotion in the mudroom and find the cat Telemann disporting
“The world is now dominated by an animal that doesn’t think it’s an animal. And the future is being imagined by an animal that doesn’t want to be an animal,”
When the solstice comes around, I swear I can feel the earth’s axis tilt, towards the sun in December, and towards the darkness, alas, in June. The courting songs of
A bear has been messing with the beehive across from my house. The first night it tipped over the hive and carried off a couple of frames. In the morning,
Thich Nhat Hanh read my soul when he said, riffing on Descartes, “I think; therefore, I am not here.” That’s me, to the core. I am almost never here. I
“Never,” my grandmother used to tell me when I was fifteen, “trust a man with a nose on his face.” Yet she, my other grandmother, and my mother as well,
A summer evening in a Catalan village. I have spent the day running up and down the dusty path in front of my grandparents’ farmhouse, and now it’s bedtime. “But
A little over a year ago I wrote an ardent defense of the dandelion, Taraxacum officinalis. I accused Taraxacophobes of being prejudiced against a plant that isn’t merely harmless, but