I rarely watch a television set during a weekday, but last Tuesday I did, and the program was Will Mikell’s Across the Fence show on WCAX. The subject was a young farm couple, Jimmy and Sarah Ackermann, of Hardwick.

Vermont has just gone through another major flood, with widespread damage in Addison County and the central section from Montpelier and Hardwick down to Londonderry.

An editorial in last Monday’s Wall Street Journal explains the astonishing homelessness problem in San Francisco.

“California has spent more than $20 billion on housing for the homeless since 2020, yet public encampments continue to grow. As San Francisco progressives are learning, government can build more shelter, but that doesn’t mean the homeless will use them.”

Every once in a while, I take a look at the bills introduced by my friend Sen. Peter Welch. As one might expect, any such search turns up a lot of expensive and/or unworkable liberal foolishness like the Green New Deal, but once in a while I find one that can win my support.

Two weeks ago, I promoted the centennial re-enactment of Calvin Coolidge’s taking the oath of office in a farmhouse in Plymouth Notch and was looking forward to attending the celebration program. Unfortunately, at the last minute I couldn’t go, so instead of reporting, let me share some of my favorite Calvin Coolidge quotations.

The evil of “Inequality” has always been a rallying point for advocates of socialism. In 2013 the publication of Capital in the Twenty First Century by French economist Thomas Piketty stimulated a new wave of debate. The title was a takeoff from Karl Marx’s seminal Capital, published in three volumes between 1867 and 1894.

My habit of looking for bright people who can educate me brought me earlier this year to Andrew Gentile, an industrial electrical engineer who works all over North America but lives near me in Sheffield.

Seven Days published a nice piece on June 28 titled “Green Mountain Meetups.” It was subtitled “Vermonters break bread, dance and forge communities in ‘third spaces’”.

Your TV screen has been showing distraught college students protesting the Supreme Court’s decision that President Biden has no authority to just cancel $420 billion in unpaid student debt.

I was heartened last week by another sterling example of the Vermont tradition of people stepping up to help neighbors in need, in this case neighbors whose driveway was washed out by the flooding in Middlesex.