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About six years ago, a strange little animated film reached our shores from Japan. Spirited Away, the work of Japanese history buff Hayao Miyazaki, contained a scene in which a girl escapes from her pursuers in a boat resembling a wooden barrel cut in half at its midsection — a taraibune.... Read more

Real crime is no laughing matter, especially a vicious homicide. Yet the audience for Mildred Taken Crazy — a short play based on a notorious late-19th-century murder in Montpelier — can expect some humor at its performance in Burlington next week. Bellows Falls-based actors/playwrights Steve Friedman and Denny Partridge like to say: “Our plays are always funny, no matter how serious.”... Read more

Bewigged and in breeches, stiff and stern — this is how we often picture our Founding Fathers. Politicians today, especially on the right, tap into this severe image of moral rectitude. They invoke America’s Christian heritage as a sacred touchstone, bequeathed to us by great men who cribbed from the Bible as they drafted the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.... Read more

Were it not for Todd Hebert’s Geronimo T-shirt, beaded-and-fringed buckskin jacket, and ball cap that reads, “Native American,” most people would take the goateed, 36-year-old Persian Gulf vet for a native Vermonter. Of course, by definition he is: Hebert is one of some 5000 Abenakis in the region. He is also the curator of the new Ndakinna (“Our Land”) Cultural Center and Museum on Rt. 2 in East Montpelier, through which he’s determined to educate visitors on all things indigenous.... Read more

A picture is worth a thousand words, to be sure, but it can’t be often that an exhibition of 19th-century paintings informs a heated discussion of . . . Home Depot. That’s what happened last Thursday evening at the T.W. Wood Gallery in Montpelier. The genre images were made by the venue’s namesake, Thomas Waterman Wood (1823-1903); the occasion was the annual meeting of the Montpelier Heritage Group.... Read more

"Just one?" The waitress steps from behind the counter in her uniform — stonewashed blue jeans, white Pepsi T-shirt, big hair — and greets the robust trucker at the door.

"Actually," he mutters, "I just need a bathroom."

"Oh, sure. Straight ahead. Turn left at Hulk Hogan."

The trucker grins as he passes the Bulging Blond One in all his red-and-yellow Hulkamania glory — made of cardboard, of course. When he emerges from the men's room, he requests a menu.... Read more

Emma Ottolenghi and Judy Tyson want Vermont women to remember how it used to be. Back in the years before 1972, getting an abortion wasn’t a matter of making an appointment at the local clinic. In those days, a Vermonter with sufficient funds and savvy could get a referral from the Clergy Counseling Service to a big-city provider, usually a doctor working in an unmarked room. Or she could fly to England to have the procedure. The U.K. legalized abortion in 1967.... Read more

The home and workshop of Ray Bates, “The British Clockmaker,” is not hard to find. It’s the only white colonial in Newfane with a giant Union Jack painted on the door. But you don’t just drop by for a visit — he’s got a six-month backlog and keeps the place locked tight to prevent tourists from wandering in.... Read more

Imagine this problem: You’re in charge of a historically significant and irreplaceable collection of photographs. You must protect it from the ravages of time and constant handling, yet make the images readily accessible and encourage people to view them. Until recently, you would have been in what Joseph Heller called a Catch-22 — a difficult situation with no good solution.... Read more

Are green, architecturally designed developments the answer to the problem of affordable housing in Vermont? Members of Vermont CORA (Congress of Residential Architects) from across the state have spent the last two years collaborating on their own interpretations of that architectural Holy Grail: housing that is green and, yes, affordable.... Read more