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Rene Kirby is a self-proclaimed "gimp without a whimp." He has never let his small stature detract from his active lifestyle.

Rene (said "REEN") never wastes time complaining. Whether he is getting around on all fours or using his specially tailored bike, he feels better constructed than the "normies."... Read more

BURLINGTON — Autism Spectrum Disorder affects approximately one in every 150 young children in America. In Vermont, the numbers are worse. ASD diagnoses in the Green Mountain State have increased by 20 percent per year since 1997 — compared to the national figure of between 10 and 17 percent.... Read more

The turkey was titanic: a 28-pounder, the largest I’d ever cooked. After brining it, lifting it out, drying it off, stuffing it, trussing it, and sticking it in the oven, I thought I was done wrestling with mammoth poultry. But I’d miscalculated the number of meat-eaters at our Thanksgiving meal: A projected 25 guests had dwindled to nine, and six were vegetarians. After dinner, I hauled the leftover meat into cold storage. Over the next few days, I moved heavy pots of mashed potatoes, tried to empty the brining container solo, and made about 16 quarts of turkey soup.... Read more

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On August 5, teams gathered from all over Vermont on a muddy field in Essex for a day of mud volleyball.

It was the 18th Annual Mud Volleyball Tournament and the proceeds benefited The Epilepsy Foundation of VT.

The Town of Essex provided the field and the firetrucks which poured over 160,000 gallons of water into the parched earth.... Read more

Like many a 5-year-old, Tristan Timpone is going through a wizard phase.

But the boy is one of a growing number of Vermont children who practice a particularly esoteric strain of magic. Just ask his mother. Or his occupational therapist. Or his speech pathologist.... Read more

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Caring for a parent who has Alzheimer's disease can be numbing, frustrating and sometimes unexpectedly illuminating, as part-time Vermonter Judith Levine showed in her memoir Do You Remember Me? Poet and artist Deanna Shapiro of Ferrisburgh is another writer who's used her talent to shed light on one of life's darker passages. She chronicles the last year of her 92-year-old mother's life in a book called Conver-sations at the Nursing Home: A Mother, a Daughter and Alzheimer's, recently published by small Georgia poetry press PRA Publishing.... Read more

BURLINGTON - Politicians from opposite ends of the spectrum may be able to put differences aside to participate in an autism conference this weekend, but those with conflicting ideas about the best way to treat the condition apparently cannot.

Rep. Bernie Sanders and Gov. Jim Douglas will both be keynote speakers at the three-day "miniDAN!" Conference at UVM. But while the gathering will be held at the Billings Student Center, UVM's School of Medicine has chosen not to co-sponsor, or even endorse, the event.... Read more

BURLINGTON -- At a time when the American Red Cross has been trying to raise public awareness of its "critical need," some people are questioning whether the organization is actually turning down perfectly good blood. In April, Seven Days reported on the Red Cross' policy of not accepting donations from gay or bisexual men who have had sex with other men since 1977. Now a University of Vermont senior says she believes the nonprofit turned down a donor because she's developmentally disabled.... Read more

None of us really wants to know what it's like to live with ALS -- that is, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, more commonly called Lou Gehrig's Disease. But a new, Vermont-made documentary makes doing so entirely watchable, even uplifting. Mind Games: A Love Story, by Barnard filmmaker Teo Zagar, tells the story of Dr. Tom French, also of Barnard, who beat the odds of ALS' typical "life sentence" -- instead of three to five years, he survived nine. The film screens this Friday in Burlington's City Hall Auditorium.... Read more