When my aging terrier started slowing down last year, I took it in stride. She was twelve, and according to an online calculator, old enough to collect doggie Social Security. But just one year later, I knew she’d hiked her last Vermont mountain.

Browsing in my favorite social change bookstore, I overheard two customers talking. One asked, ‘Have we ever had a more racist president than this one?’ And the other replied, 'Maybe Andrew Johnson?'

We often hear state leaders lamenting the so-called brain drain – meaning young people who move away - and the burden of caring for the Medicare crowd. Our demographics are a problem, they say, while credit agencies insist that in order to keep Vermont’s credit rating high, we need a bigger, younger population to spur economic growth.

For many Americans, where we came from is both a source of great pride and pain. My own family fled the city of Lahore in 1949 with just the clothes on their backs, leaving behind the land that my great great grandfather helped build. During the Partition of India, the border moved ten miles past Lahore, making it a part of the new Muslim nation of Pakistan.

I've been reading Robert Caro's latest book, Working , detailing how he researched and wrote his magisterial, vividly detailed biographies of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson. Caro began his career as a newspaper reporter. Though his books are historical biographies, his methods are investigative journalism at its very best: deep research into important, often obscure documents, interviewing people who know - both the powerful and the powerless - anyone who can show readers what is actually going on. And finally, clear writing that opens readers'eyes. It's interesting to note that Caro says while there's no such thing as truth, there are facts. It's the nonfiction writer's job to find the relevant facts and present them directly and vividly. And it's the honest presentation of facts that is the first and most important task of the journalist. I've been a Vermont journalist for something like 50 years now and last fall, I joined several other colleagues - who consider journalism an

Trying to rent an apartment in Vermont can be frustrating, given the shortage of apartments and the high monthly rents. And once people discover how expensive housing in Vermont has become, some potential employees turn down otherwise attractive, job offers. Representative Peter Welch has joined with a number of Democratic and Republican colleagues to co-sponsor a bill that aims to increase the Low Income Housing Tax Credit or LIHTC by 50%.

Most Vermonters know by now that ours is the second oldest population of all the states — after Maine's — and the need to keep young people here and attract new ones is widely understood and accepted. We're also a small state where growth is relatively slow, opportunity not boundless and housing hard to come by. In addition, our rural character makes a lot of people wary of unchecked sprawl, and so people here often view economic growth as a mixed blessing.

The first time I saw Rip Torn, he was wearing flippers, a facemask and snorkel. I'd written to him in January 1992 – and sent him the script for my first feature film, Where the Rivers Flow North . I said I thought he'd be great as Noel Lord, an aging Vermont logger struggling to accept the extinction of his way of life. But for six months, there was no reply.

Sometimes, you just know you're having a life-changing experience. In my case, it was a chance in early July to teach Russian college students about media in the U.S.A. It all started when a Vermont-based company, Project Harmony International, organized an exchange program through the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

My nine year old son plays soccer for his Plainfield, New Hampshire team, which makes me a soccer mom by default, even though I've never played the game myself. Normally we try to limit screen time during school vacation and spend our free time swimming, kayaking and hiking all over the Green and White mountains, but this year we made an exception for the World Cup.