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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.
You can’t rush things with Truffle, my rescue-Pomeranian-who-spent-7 1/2 years-in-a-cage. It took weeks for him to make eye contact with me, and months to look anyone else in the eye.
There was once a sultan who liked to marry a beautiful young virgin every day and, after the wedding night, have her beheaded at dawn. This went on for years
My mother used to read me a story from a Catalan children’s book about a family—father, mother, little boy, and grandfather—who lived together in a big farmhouse. The grandfather was
One day, a year and a half ago, I spotted a couple of aquarium pebbles—those transparent, smooth bits of glass used to anchor aquarium plants—under the bushes near our front
Learning to play the violin is a recipe for perfectionism. A note is either in tune or it is not—no room for error there—and your fingers are supposed to magically
That year, I taught all my classes between nine and noon, because at two months of age that was the longest my younger daughter could go between feedings. At twelve
My grandmother—the one who lived on a farm in Catalonia a long time ago—used to raise chickens and rabbits for the table. My grandparents were landowners, and they lived literally
Years ago, I put a stone in the birdbath as a ramp for the convenience of the bees. Yet since then, I have only seen one bee stand on the
You can’t rush things with Truffle, my rescue-Pomeranian-who-spent-7 1/2 years-in-a-cage. It took weeks for him to make eye contact with me, and months to look anyone else in the eye.
There was once a sultan who liked to marry a beautiful young virgin every day and, after the wedding night, have her beheaded at dawn. This went on for years
My mother used to read me a story from a Catalan children’s book about a family—father, mother, little boy, and grandfather—who lived together in a big farmhouse. The grandfather was
One day, a year and a half ago, I spotted a couple of aquarium pebbles—those transparent, smooth bits of glass used to anchor aquarium plants—under the bushes near our front
Learning to play the violin is a recipe for perfectionism. A note is either in tune or it is not—no room for error there—and your fingers are supposed to magically
That year, I taught all my classes between nine and noon, because at two months of age that was the longest my younger daughter could go between feedings. At twelve
My grandmother—the one who lived on a farm in Catalonia a long time ago—used to raise chickens and rabbits for the table. My grandparents were landowners, and they lived literally
Years ago, I put a stone in the birdbath as a ramp for the convenience of the bees. Yet since then, I have only seen one bee stand on the