Travel

If anyone needs a ride, I’m now approved by Uber for servicing the Brattleboro area. Will tailer hours to demand. I’m based in downtown Bratt, and will provide rides anywhere in the region. Request a pickup from the Uber app anytime you need to get to or from somewhere. More affordable, luxurious and convenient then a taxi.

I was out on errands and was thinking about the long list of disasters we’ve seen lately – hurricanes, wildfires, droughts, earthquakes, nuclear saber-rattling, and so on. No specific thoughts, but just general awe of the list.

The River Gallery School in Brattleboro will sponsor a trip for artists to Provence, France, from October 14-21. Anyone interested in learning more about the trip can attend an informational meeting on Thursday, July 13 from 6:00 to 7:00 pm at the school at 32 Main Street in Brattleboro.

All are Invited to a Special Presentation of Photos, Stories, and Exhibit of a Kroka Expedition on Saturday, March 11th at 1:30 PM – 3:00 PM at the The Dummerston Community Center. 

The River Gallery School will take artists in search of inspiration and sunshine to Mexico in February on a tour led by instructor Mary Giammarino. The trip will be based in Oaxaca and run from February 4 to 11, 2017.

In the mornings, the tour will introduce participants to the sights of southern Mexico, with daily instruction in oils, water colors and pastels by the trip’s resident art instructor. Afternoons and evenings will be devoted to exploring the small city’s many galleries, workshops and art museums, not to mention the excellent cuisine.

Brattleboro’s River Gallery School has previously run artist tours to Italy and Spain.

(I know the answer to this one!)

It’s a real picture of a real place. I find the location surprising.

For many years, I regarded a vacation as a necessity.  Like the two day weekend, I considered it vital to my health and well-being.  Then I stopped being able to afford the time or money to take a vacation, and next thing you know, a decade and a half had gone by.  Guess what? I lived.  But my body has taken a beating, because the continual ongoing activities of my job — typing, mousing, clicking — are gradually rendering my right arm useless.

Magnificent views of Nepal and Everest

 May take some time to load. Be patient, it’s worth the wait.

Just out of curiousity, I’m wondering how many people actually got to have some real vacation in their Summer.

Did you get away? Even long weekends count. Have a “Staycation”? They don’t count. I’m talking about the real, pack a bag and get out of the house and away from our everyday life sort of break.

Brattleboro. The Vermont Community Foundation has awarded Vermont Partnership for Fairness and Diversity an $11,000 Innovations and Collaborations grant. The grant will support Vermont Partnership’s development of the nearly three-year old Vermont African American Heritage Trail to be more accessible to Vermont school children and families.

The Vermont African-American Heritage Trail includes nineteen sites of importance to black history in the state and brings visitors to Vermont museums and cultural sites where exhibits, tours, and personal explorations illuminate the lives of African Americans for whom the Green Mountain State was part of their identity.

Americans love a realistic spectacle, the more realistic the better.  So says Umberto Eco in Travels in Hyper Reality, a survey of American theme parks and attractions that argues the premise that for Americans, the real is not real enough, and that enhanced reality (or even enhanced unreality) are sometimes better than the thing itself.  One could certainly make that case with the theme park called Niagara Falls, which I was fortunate enough to visit recently at night, when Niagara transitions from mere natural wonder into a 20th century spectacular worthy of Las Vegas.

Trains will now stop in Greenfield and Northampton instead of Amherst. This project replaces the Palmer backup move and combined with already completed work in Vermont and work in Connecticut to be completed by 2016, will take an hour and a half off the schedule.

The faster running times are not yet evident.  Seven separate slow orders remain on the new line as construction is finished up.  Rather than try to run the new schedule while it’s not yet achievable, Amtrak has kept the running times in Vermont the same for the time being and will introduce the new schedule in the spring.  Trains will leave Vermont points about half an hour later than they do now and arrive about half an hour earlier in the evening.  Top speed in Massachusetts will be 79 mph.

I was raised on a small rural farm between two rushing rivers not far from the western shore of the Chesapeake with luxuriant greenery and cultivated fields not even topped by the best of Vermont’s prolific shades of green.

After leaving home and hitchhiking 6000 miles in a Summer of Love east-west-east roundtrip, I ended up in New York City, where I spent most of my adult life.

Now, after seven years as a Vermonter I can indulge myself locally in the greenacres and only look back to recall or revisit my storied life in the concrete canyons.

Dear Friends,

Here is a suggested Saturday Itinerary to enjoy the best of the tri-village area:

Morning: Attend Westminster Cares Garden Tour 10am at Hayward Gardens in Westminster West, a benefit for Westminster Cares, contact Westminster Cares for more information 722-3607 or wecares2@sover.net

Lunch: Leisurely lunch at one of many fine local eateries

Afternoon: Attend Putney Cares and NeighborWorks HEAT Squad Home Energy Audit Open House, 2-5pm Putney Cares Activities Barn, 54 Kimball Hill Rd. Putney. Contact Bruce Whitney for more information 802-246-2111 or bwhitney.wwht@gmail.com

Hell. It’s been years since I submitted anything to iBrattleboro. I do look at it every once in awhile, mostly to see that things are okay in one of my favorite places to live. But, I haven’t been there since 2004. I sense everything is okay. And I do hope all my friends there are happy, or at least struggling towards a worthwhile goal.

When I lived in Brattleboro I always thought, “this would be a good place to stay.” Yeah, I know. It has its quirks. But I’ll never forget my first day there when a postal worker spent ten minutes helping a homeless person get their mail straightened out. And I thought, “if I’m ever poor, this is where I want to live.”

Brattleboro is a lovely place in the springtime, but sometimes, you just feel like going out and experiencing spring somewhere else for an afternoon.  This is especially true if you have out of town guests, as many of us do during the summer.  This year, we took advantage of my brother’s visit to take two very different day trips.  The first was down to Northampton, where we toured the many gardens of Smith College.  The second was a multi-stop drive out to southwestern Vermont where we checked out two lakes and the Southern Vermont Arts Center.  Both trips were great fun with plenty of variety to keep things interesting.

The Gardens At Smith College

Travelers from around Windham Country and Vermont can now visit Spain, Holland, Italy and France with Travel Fever Tours, a new company based in Putney. The company specializes in small group tours, each focusing on a theme or activity, such as cycling, birding, art, or the history and culture of a specific location in Europe.

Travel Fever Tours has been founded by long-time Putney residents Cicely Carroll and Bob Lawson who have spent large parts of the past decade living or working in Spain, Italy and Switzerland. After exploring Europe on their own, the two will now be sharing their favorite spots and activities with small groups of up to 12 people.

Puma Quispe, in association with Ed Liebfried of Divine Within, LLC (Guilford, VT) invite you to join us for a journey of initiation in Peru. 

This is not the typical Sacred Valley journey. You’ll experience the “Hatun Karpay” over a 10-day period, in traditional sacred locations in Cusco, the Sacred Valley, Machu Picchu and climaxing with our great initiation at Apu Ausangate – perhaps the most sacred mountain in the Andean tradition. 

Puma is a master altomesayok, trained traditionally yet fluent in English and a master tour guide. 

The Rockingham Free Public Library is planning an excursion to Boston and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum for Saturday, April 13. A chartered bus will depart Bellows Falls at 7AM, returning at 7PM. The cost is $95 per person and includes round trip transportation and a museum tour. There will be time for shopping and lunch in addition to the tour.