It has come to my attention that almost half of Vermont's seven watershed coordinators employed by the Agency of Natural Resources' Department of Environmental Conservation are currently threatened with losing their jobs as part of the state's effort to balance their budget. I am writing to request that we all deeply consider how this will affect the future of Vermont's streams, rivers, forests, farms, and communities over the next many decades before our legislators cast their votes.
On behalf of more than 200 friends and members and the board of directors for the West River Watershed Alliance (WRWA), I ask that you please tell our senators and state representatives that we need to keep our watershed coordinators.
Marie Levesque Caduto is the watershed coordinator for the West, Williams and Saxtons Rivers, also known as Basin 11, the region of the state where I have had the privilege to work as Director of WRWA's flagship Water Quality Monitoring Program (WQMP). This program is only one small, very tangible impact Marie and her counterparts have had on the state's watershed resources. Marie is the guiding light for our organization and others like it throughout our region. She is our connection to the state's conservation efforts and is instrumental in helping us to obtain funding to continue to engage Vermont's local citizens in conserving and restoring their watershed resources.
As you know, Vermont's economy is closely tied to its natural resources. For this reason alone, it makes very little sense to put jobs from the Agency of Natural Resources on the chopping block – these positions are not fluff! During Maries' 3½-year tenure as a watershed planner for Basin 11, Basin 10, and Basin 13 she has brought in over $700,000 in grant funds to support numerous monitoring, planning, and restoration...
When our founding fathers convened in the blistering hot weather in the Philadelphia courthouse during the summer of 1787, they did not plan to create a new government. They simply planned to amend the Articles of Confederation, the existing law of the land, which did not provide the federal...
One of the better-recognized calls to environmental action over the past two decades has been to “think globally, act locally.” Sometimes "act locally" means personal lifestyle changes: reduce our trash output by recycling, drive our cars smarter and less often, and just plain consume less. In these tough financial...
Windham Art Gallery (WAG) recently completed a lengthy project in which selected artist members of the gallery painted and will now permanently install some 25 door panels at the Vermont Veteran's Home in Bennington. The permanent installation process follows a month-long exhibit of the panels at the gallery in February. "The original plan was to install the panels in March and after the WAG exhibition, because it just seemed the sooner-the-better," said gallery artist member Leonard Ragouzeos, head of the...
Area residents will remember David Chase, whose play As Fair as You Were will premiere at the Vermont Theatre Company this month, as the founder of Brattleboro Community Television, a "caustic columnist" for the Brattleboro Reformer, and the author of the novel A Peasant of West Brattleboro. The (sort-of) new play, directed by Eric Morgan Cutler, is set at a lakeside cabin in rural Vermont and revolves around the late-in-life marriage of Maggie and Walt. The wedding brings family members...
In a place like Saxtons River, with its cluster of old Vermont homes all painted white, it is sometimes hard to imagine the vastly individual worlds that exist behind the prevailing façade. From outside, Julia Zanes and Donald Saaf's house doesn't stand out from its surroundings. It too is painted white, with nothing to really distinguish it to the casual observer. Approaching it, however, a few things could catch your eye: a giant soapstone carving, for example, or an impromtu...
The other day, after we'd woken to a couple of inches of new snow, following a day of sunshine and melt, I overheard a woman in the grocery store say, “I wish spring would get here already.” What we'd had was “sugar snow” - probably on account of it being sugaring season, but possibly because this short-lived sprinkling of snow is like a dusting of confectionary sugar. Sloppy as it is, sugar snow momentarily freshens the landscape, then melts as...
Esther Cleveland was a first: Born in the White House in 1893, her two-year old sister, Ruth, was already popular with the public. Quentin Roosevelt, Teddy's youngest, roller skated through the halls and shot spitballs at a portrait of Andrew Jackson. His notorious older sister, Alice, slid down banisters to greet dignitaries. Tad and Willie Lincoln, the same age as the Obama daughters, once herded goats into a sitting room. More recently, Caroline and John Kennedy are remembered for their...
“At St. Brigid's Kitchen we are only treating the symptoms of hunger, not the disease of inequality and oppression that causes the hunger. The disease of injustice demands the attention of all of us and its solution will regrettably take time.” These sentences are from the mission statement of St. Brigid's Kitchen, a ministry of St. Michael's Catholic Parish, which cooks and serves free midday meals four days a week. And just as those sentences reflect a broad and complex...
It would be difficult to exaggerate the reshaping of childhood that has taken place over the last 25 years. Those who do not have young children in their lives may find it hard to believe that the changes are more than the usual generational divide. Time magazine shrugs off the concerns of parents and educators about the remaking of Dora the Explorer (shorter skirt, longer legs, longer hair) as the predictable reaction of overprotective parents. However, parents, caregivers, and teachers...
Although it's receding from the airwaves and from the thoughts of our politicians, the war in Iraq continues. As of April 1, 4,263 American soldiers had died, and tens of thousands have been wounded and compromised. And even these somber numbers pale in comparison with the deaths of up to one million Iraqis and the displacement of millions more. President Obama plans to keep tens of thousands of troops in Iraq for years to come, so, although the casualty rate...
The Asian Cultural Center of Vermont (ACCV) and the American-Indonesian Chamber of Commerce (AICC) will present "Spotlight Indonesia," a series of events on April 29-30 designed to showcase Indonesian business and cultural offerings to the United States and fortify cross-cultural opportunity and to highlight several important and under-utilized green-industry connections between Vermont and the multi-island country. The upcoming events are phase two of a program that commenced on March 13-14 with a business forum at Marlboro College Graduate Center in...