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Just after 5 p.m. last Wednesday, St. Paul Street in Burlington was jammed with station wagons, SUVs and trucks. One white pickup whizzed by pulling a cigarette boat the size of a spacious backyard porch. Then, during a lull in traffic, 34-year-old Debbie Safran piloted her brilliant yellow Smart car into the fray.... Read more

When his time comes, Dean Goss, 42, knows exactly where he wants his ashes scattered: on the waterfall at Bristol Memorial Park on Route 17. That’s where Goss got his first taste of an airborne stream 40 years ago. “I am a little kid walking down the path,” he remembers, “seeing the falls starting on the lefthand side of the path and coming toward a pretty impressive footbridge over a very deep gorge.”... Read more

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After swapping one million light bulbs in Canada, Project Porchlight launches in the States. 36,000 CFLs (compact fluorescent light bulbs) are headed onto Vermont porches free of charge.

Want to save money and the environment at the same time? What's in your porchlight?

Marx believed that the edifice of capitalism was built upon misery, and misery would bring the edifice down. To increase productivity and profit, he reasoned, bosses assembled workers in factories. Once there, though, the workers would soon notice that they were all similarly miserable — and that they outnumbered the bosses. The workers would organize and overthrow the bosses. Capital created its own revolutionary proletariat, Marx concluded: The system contained “the seeds of its own destruction.”... Read more

The Holsteins grazing in the pasture of the St. Lawrence Valley Dairy in Chateaugay, N.Y., seem oblivious to the massive white turbines churning the air above them. Chris Recore’s 96 milkers hear louder noises as they chew their cud: the drone of the milking machine, the rumble of tractors, even the belching and mooing of the herd itself.

Press your ear against the tower — it’s about the girth of a California Redwood — and it’s quieter than a hair dryer. When the grass grows back, Recore expects his cows to graze directly under the spinning blades, unfazed.... Read more

Roam the aisles of your local natural foods store, or even your supermarket, and you’ll find bottle after bottle of household products that claim to be “green.” Kitchen cleaners and dishwashing liquids — packaged in tasteful, earthy tones from moss to hunter — beckon from the shelves with siren words: Eco-friendly. Natural. Pure.

But just because a product claims to be safe for the environment doesn’t always mean it is.... Read more

Putney Road in Brattleboro is a busy, traffic-choked, multi-lane highway that runs parallel to the tranquil Connecticut River. It’s the kind of strip where you’d expect to find a Home Depot — and for the next seven weeks you wouldn’t be disappointed. After that, the hardware behemoth is shutting down. It’s one of 15 Home Depots around the country that, for one reason or another, didn’t make the financial grade.... Read more

Green building is hardly black and white. The national protocols — the so-called LEED standards, for “Leadership in Energy and Design” — don’t account for regional nuance.... Read more

The Upper Valley Food Co-op in White River Junction was abuzz last Tuesday, but the talk wasn’t about the rising cost of food. Will Allen of East Thetford’s Cedar Circle Farm was about to discuss his new book, The War on Bugs.

“Oh, that’s good,” a woman in the check-out line said to the cashier. “But does he spray things, or does he just talk?”

The answer, on both counts, is a resounding, “No.”... Read more

This column makes it official — all is fair game now. I want to thank Seven Days for welcoming me aboard. And thanks in advance to the many well wishers — and probably not-so-well wishers — whom I hope will read this column closely each week.

Some of you know me from my various stints in journalism. I’ve covered Vermont politics and its people since high school, when I was a sports stringer for The Barton Chronicle. More recently, I founded and ran The Vermont Guardian, a statewide print weekly and online daily.... Read more