My brother, Tim and nephew, Danny are the genealogists in the family. Their insatiable curiosity and dogged determination have uncovered many fascinating facts about our family and connections to ancestors — both noble and not — who add a new understanding to who we are and why we are who we are.

The question on many minds following the Republican response to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address was “Where does the GOP find these people?”

Not unexpectedly, Vermont has once again hit a brick wall in public education funding. It’s nothing new. In fact, the wall was built and reinforced over decades by legislators, governors and school boards who jointly avoided addressing the root causes of the dilemma.

As Vermont revenues return to pre-pandemic levels, it is essential to look for ways to strengthen the support systems for Vermonters, to draw down as much remaining federal money as we can, and to look for efficiencies. In the House Committee on Health Care, we continue to examine what drives increased health care costs and explore ways to address this.

editor's pick

Open government mattered to all of us during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Government played an outsized role in our day-to-day lives then. Schools closed, storefronts shuttered and the officials making decisions about quarantines, mask mandates and vaccines often met in secret or exclusively online.

My body feels as though I’ve volunteered for a scientific study; becoming a proving ground of sorts, evaluating various pieces of adaptive equipment as I put my own durability to the test, slipping, sliding, slogging and crunching over back roads whose fluctuating consistency becomes more unpredictable with each passing winter.

Our state is facing multiple crises, mostly self-inflicted, the result of policies enacted by a Democratic supermajority made up of activists who are either out of touch with the real needs of Vermonters or too wrapped up in their own ideology to care. But we all need to get real about putting positive solutions in place — now — or we are doomed as citizens, individually and collectively as a state.

Revenues are back to their pre-pandemic levels and federal financial support is no longer there to boost the budget. So, as legislators, we won’t be able to do everything we want this year. We’re being realistic and focusing our efforts on the issues that matter most.

A total solar eclipse is one in which the moon casts a shadow on Earth as it moves between the Earth and the sun. This article examines the cause of eclipses and how they are predicted.

When I first played Old Maid as a child, I thought the old maid in question was an elderly housekeeper. That’s understandable, though it didn’t make the title of the card game any less offensive.

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