my green vermont

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Welcome to My Green Vermont

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. I got bored with teaching, took up running, and went into higher ed administration. I 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.

My Green Vermont
Latest Posts

Under the Fig Tree

While my uncle harnesses the horse to the farm cart, my mother and her sisters gather cutlery and linen. They fill baskets with food and the big porró with wine.

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My Drug of Choice

Before dying at the age of 51, the French writer Honoré de Balzac published over one hundred novels. Every day he would eat an early supper, go to bed until

Read More »

One More Birthday?

She was born on Bastille Day, and in her youth she embodied some of the rowdy spirit of the masses that stormed that fortress. She was a little flame of

Read More »

Wildlife in the Mudroom

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

Read More »

That Animal Feeling

“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,”

Read More »

Solstice Blues

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

Read More »

My Green Vermont
Latest Posts

Under the Fig Tree

While my uncle harnesses the horse to the farm cart, my mother and her sisters gather cutlery and linen. They fill baskets with food and the big porró with wine.

Read More »

My Drug of Choice

Before dying at the age of 51, the French writer Honoré de Balzac published over one hundred novels. Every day he would eat an early supper, go to bed until

Read More »

One More Birthday?

She was born on Bastille Day, and in her youth she embodied some of the rowdy spirit of the masses that stormed that fortress. She was a little flame of

Read More »

Wildlife in the Mudroom

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

Read More »

That Animal Feeling

“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,”

Read More »

Solstice Blues

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

Read More »