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1 week ago | 
rutlandherald.com | Walt Amses
It was a weekend where the country anted up and laid its cards on the table but the exuberance of metaphorical victory and the misery of symbolic defeat were both eventually overshadowed by shots ringing out in the Minnesota night, reminding us of where we live now and that the widening chasm between us is more than just a series of competing parades.
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2 weeks ago | 
rutlandherald.com | Walt Amses
The Stonewall riots marked the beginning of the modern gay rights movement, the point at which the LGBTQ+ community stood up and fought off the relentless goon squads, the blackmail and the homophobic hatred, thundering the solidarity that would mark the next 50 years: “We’re here, we’re not going anywhere, and we’re not gonna take it anymore!” While we can readily envision August 1969 and the peace, love, and tranquility of Woodstock, we would do well to remember that two months before...
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3 weeks ago | 
rutlandherald.com | Walt Amses
After a winter I fervently wished for but barely tolerated when it finally arrived, I’m grappling with the first 85° day since perhaps last September, which, since my resilience crumbles even further when hypothermia gives way to hyperthermia, I find more intolerable than freezing my extremities off.
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4 weeks ago | 
timesargus.com | Walt Amses
I completely understand that a man for whom every interaction is a self-dealing, transactional encounter, simply doesn’t get why anyone would risk their life or well-being for a cause greater than themselves. When said man is president of the United States, it’s just another in a long line of humiliations for a country whose once highly revered global status has been in free fall since he swore a quickly forgotten oath to the Constitution on Jan. 20.
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1 month ago | 
timesargus.com | Walt Amses
I’m walking in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest on a cross-country ski trail that in mid-May is surrounded by a hundred different shades of green as the understory comes alive after a typically snowy winter in the Cascades foothills. We’re on the lower slopes of Mount Adams, a 12,000-foot volcano named for President John Adams, which hasn’t erupted in over a thousand years.
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1 month ago | 
timesargus.com | Walt Amses
Although many of my WTF moments can be attributed to a simple love of vulgarity likely honed in adolescence when my friend, Bob, and I would spew all the obscenities we could think of on Saturday afternoons as we dutifully made our way to St. Andrews, where a whisky-drenched priest stalked the confessional. We always kept count, just in case: “Bless me, father, for I said 367 curse words,” hoping he’d nod off before we got to the stuff that demanded eternal damnation for being 12-year-old boys.
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1 month ago | 
rutlandherald.com | Walt Amses
When we moved into the house one early December over 40 years ago, the first flakes of a powerful winter storm were working their way northward along the Atlantic coast. The big blue spruce was already here but it wasn’t very big at the time, and we didn’t notice it at first. Late autumn 1983 had already delivered several nor’easters with tons of snow and enough cold to have it stick around so the little tree remained mostly buried until the January thaw.
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1 month ago | 
timesargus.com | Walt Amses
When we moved into the house one early December over 40 years ago, the first flakes of a powerful winter storm were working their way northward along the Atlantic coast. The big blue spruce was already here but it wasn’t very big at the time, and we didn’t notice it at first. Late autumn 1983 had already delivered several nor’easters with tons of snow and enough cold to have it stick around so the little tree remained mostly buried until the January thaw.
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1 month ago | 
timesargus.com | Walt Amses
Although Donald Trump’s assault on honesty began almost 10 years ago when the accidental president declared war on press freedom, providing legions of fact checkers with well paying jobs that guaranteed overtime. Even before being elected, the make-believe mogul, already a reality television star thanks to 14 seasons of “The Apprentice,” floated accusations the 2016 election would be “rigged” if he lost, which he fully expected he would, as did everyone else.
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2 months ago | 
timesargus.com | Walt Amses
Vladimir Putin, exuding a calm power, glides confidently down the hockey rink, an imperceptible juke splits the defense like the Red Sea and the Russian Strongman slams home his seventh goal of the game. It’s only the first period, but the opposition knows any semblance of actual defending would likely find them taking the ice on the Kamchatka Peninsula for the next five years.
