2/4/12: Duane Merrill and his son Ethan are antique dealers who have a deep appreciation for all things old. Last Saturday, Eva headed to Merrill's Auction Gallery in Williston to see them in action.

Music: Kevin MacLeod, "Fig Leaf Rag - distressed", Rick & The Ramblers Western Swing Band, What Goes Around, "You Got What I Want"... Read more

It’s tough to spend a Vermont winter single. These cold, dark nights seem made for cuddle buddies and crackling fires, and just when the daylight hours begin to make their slow comeback, February brings one last, cruel wallop: Valentine’s Day. ... Read more

If matchmaker Nicole Leclerc could offer only one piece of dating advice, it would be this: Whatever you do, do not talk about your ex on the first date. Seems easy, right? Wrong. Leclerc watches people self-destruct on the topic all the time.

The bubbly, blond 44-year-old, who uses phrases such as “that’s wack” and makes them sound endearing, has run the dating service Compatibles since 2004. She’s guided close to a thousand men and women, she says, through the emotional minefields of searching for love.... Read more

A few weeks after I moved to Burlington, a friend encouraged me to try online dating. At first, I was hesitant. “You’ve got to,” she said, hijacking my computer. But the only successful online pairing that jumped to my mind was that of my high school history teacher, a bombastic, 5-foot-tall guy who loved to extol the virtues of Match.com, where he’d met his 5-foot-tall Thai wife.... Read more

We didn’t have an appointment when we showed up at the Round Barn Farm in Waitsfield. Daniel and I had just gotten engaged, and my parents were in town, so, on a whim, we decided to look at potential wedding venues.... Read more

ARIES (March 21-April 19): “Marriage must be a relation either of sympathy or conquest,” said author George Eliot. I believe the same is true even about intimate bonds that have not been legally consecrated. Each tends to either be a collaboration of equals who are striving for common goals or else a power struggle in which one party seeks to dominate the other. Which of those two models has characterized your romantic history, Aries? Now is an excellent time to begin working to ensure that the partnership model will predominate for the rest of your long life.... Read more

Curses, Foiled Again
After three men stole a coin collection worth several thousand dollars from a home in Corbett, Ore., they redeemed the coins in a Coinstar coin-counting machine for about $450, according to Multnomah County sheriff’s deputies. The machine rejected about 500 silver quarters, which the suspects cashed in at a bank for face value. “The obvious answer,” victim Dan Johnson Sr. said, is “that the crooks were idiots.” Deputies identified one of the suspects as Johnson’s son, Dan Johnson Jr. (Portland’s KPTV-TV)... Read more

John and Jackie Kennedy did it. So did John Lennon and Yoko Ono. More recently, teen sensations Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez succumbed. These celebrity couples and many thousands of regular folks have had cozy tête-à-têtes in a photo booth. While it can elicit all manner of goofy poses, the photo booth has long been the province of romance, as well.... Read more

1/29/12: The Young Street Rink in Colchester is a backyard ice rink that has been maintained by the Young Street community for about a decade. Over the years this patch of ice has become the neighborhood hot spot.  Eva visits on a Sunday night for a bonfire, burgers and a tour.
Music: Kevin MacLeod, "Porch Swing Days"

Commuters who routinely travel the stretch of Interstate 89 between Waterbury and Montpelier may have occasionally been jolted out of their subconscious driving trance by the sight of a large, perpetual flame burning just north of the Middlesex exit. The blaze isn’t always visible during daylight hours, as one reader observed recently, but at night it seems to hover in midair like some disembodied Olympic torch.... Read more