Commentary Series

The Unbearable Realness of Wall-E

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For Commentator Philip Baruth, summer blockbusters are like Christmas fruitcakes: not very enjoyable, but at least they let you know what month it is.  Philip went to see Pixar’s animated tale Wall-E and found it just so-so.  That is, until life began to imitate art.  And then he had the time of his life.
Commentary Series

The Case for Leahy

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With the Democratic nomination finally in hand, Barack Obama last week created an informal committee to help sift the names of potential running mates. Vermont Senator Pat Leahy has apparently agreed to lend a hand. But commentator Philip Baruth, himself an early supporter and now an Obama delegate to the Democratic National Convention, believes that Leahy could easily play a more central role.
Commentary Series

The Road

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Commentator Philip Baruth is a novelist who teaches at the University of Vermont. He got off to an early start on his summer reading list this year, only to confront a book powerful enough, and bleak enough, to shadow an entire summer.
Commentary Series

Multitudes and a Torch

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Commentator Philip Baruth’s Vermont, whatever else might be said about it, is a very strange place. Today he imagines confronting the Olympic torch, and all of the political contradictions now implicit within it.
Commentary Series

Financial Aid?

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Commentator Philip Baruth is a novelist who teaches at the University of Vermont. When his older brother died, he offered to help his nephew with applications for college and financial aid – and he was appalled by what he learned. But there’s a hint of a silver lining: Vermont’s Freshman Congressman has been very much on the case.
Commentary Series

Three Birches

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The recent ice storm, like all storms, brought down some things and not others. Commentator Philip Baruth, a novelist who teaches at UVM, woke to find that the ice had fallen heaviest on one of his birch trees – the one he’s always worried over the most.
Commentary Series

Basking

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For complex reasons having to do with frontloaded primaries and competing slates of superdelegates, Vermont’s Democratic Primary seems certain to actually matter, this time around. Commentator Philip Baruth is a novelist who teaches at the University of Vermont, and he’s loving it, so much so that he’d like to offer a modest proposal for keeping this new feeling alive.
Commentary Series

Libraries and the E-State

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Commentator Philip Baruth is a novelist who teaches at the University of Vermont, and he’s a strong supporter of Governor Douglas’s "E-State Initiative" – a proposal to provide universal broadband and cellular coverage within Vermont’s borders. But without libraries to close the digital divide, Philip argues, the E in "E-State" could very well come to stand for "Exclusive."
Commentary Series

Best of Breed

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Commentator Philip Baruth is a novelist who teaches at UVM. Recently, over a two-day stretch, he took in a Burlington Cat Show – and spent time in a hotel crowded with national media in New Hampshire. Only eventually could he make out any difference at all between the two.
Commentary Series

Green Mountain Roids

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In light of the Mitchell Report on steroids, the Rutland Herald polled coaches and trainers in Vermont – and found that the problem was not widespread in the state. But the poll led commentator Philip Baruth to imagine a scenario worthy of Jose Canseco: what if the Presidential candidates in New Hampshire all used steroids, and Vermont was the source of their Juice?