End of A Season.

David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2011 David Rocchio

Signs of Fall -- Half Way There

David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2011 David Rocchio

History In The Making

           I write a column for my weekly newspaper, the Stowe Reporter.  I wrote for a while for a big Vermont daily and was asked to write for another one.  I didn't, though because there is something very close to life about a local weekly paper.  Local papers are about layers of lives lived in one place.  I had this thought in mind as I read last week's Reporter.

After Irene: A Hometown Tour

            The Green Cup, a coffee shop nestled next to the covered bridge in Waitsfield, Vermont, is gone.  Wiped out by Irene.  It was gutted by the raging flood.  Next to it, the old white clapboard photo studio, lifted off it’s 19^th century foundation, sits slammed into the coffee house.  The two buildings are jammed together like a car wreck.  Just down the street also gone is a wonderful restaurant called Mint and a dozen or more other small businesses next to the Mad River.

I drove through Waitsfield, Fayston and Warren.  Stopping to help mop up a bit, driving all the way to Granville – usually a fifteen minute drive south of my home town of Warren but this day taking an hour over torn-up, patched up and mangled dirt roads (Route 100 through Granville Gulf is washed out).  Talking to people along the way, I found communities that had been slapped hard but not knocked down.