Vermont Air: Best of the Vermont Public Radio Commentaries

by Philip Baruth

For the last ten years, Vermont Public Radio has presented a remarkable array of voices from the region in concise commentaries designed specifically for commuter drive-time. Individually and collectively, over 60 people have achieved a wide following among 150,000 listeners spread over three states and Canada. Vermont Air presents three essays apiece from 26 of them. Chosen for their literary value, timelessness, and harmony, they range from art to education, from gardening to folklore, from news to history, from health to nature. This anthology saves these pieces from literally vanishing into thin air with its unique portrait of one decade's issues and events in the Green Mountain State.

Contributors -- Philip Baruth, Nick Boke, Allen Boye, Joe Citro, Will Curtis, Peg Devlyn, Lois Eby, Ellen David Friedman, Allen Gilbert, Vern Grubinger, Cheryl Hanna, Ron Krupp, Willem Lange, Ted Levin, John McClaughry, John Morton, Jules Older, Ruth Page, Ron Powers, Olin Robison, Dan Rockmore, Mary Barrosse Shwartz, Bill Seamans, Tom Slayton, Libby Sternberg, Jeff Wennberg.
Afterword by the editors.

208 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2002

About the author

Philip Baruth is a novelist, and has spent twelve years as a regular commentator for Vermont Public Radio. His commentary series, “Notes from the New Vermont,” focused on both the national and the local, the deeply political and the undeniably absurd.

In addition to Vermont Associated Press awards for commentary on Howard Dean and the effects of 9/11, Philip won a national Public Radio News Directors Award for “Lonesome Jim Does Totally Gnarly,” a spoof of Jeffords’s split with the GOP. “Birth Rate Blues,” his satirical take on Vermont’s low fertility stats, shared a 2009 Edward R. Murrow Award in the Overall Excellence category, then won a Public Radio News Directors Award several months later.

His 2003 novel The X President took this penchant for satire to new lengths: the book follows the desperate attempts of a 109-year-old Bill Clinton to re-write his historical legacy. The New York Times selected The X President as a Notable Book of 2003.

Philip lives in Burlington, Vermont, and has taught at the University of Vermont since 1993. Before that time, he earned a B.A. at Brown University, and his Ph.D at the University of California, Irvine. His latest novel, The Brothers Boswell (Soho Press), is a literary thriller, tracing the famous friendship between James Boswell and Samuel Johnson, author of the first modern dictionary. The Washington Post eventually selected Brothers Boswell as one of the Best Books of 2009.

Reviews

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Because these essays were written to be read aloud, the voice of the author comes through clearly. Dealing with issues across the spectrum in Vermont, the topics form an interesting snapshot of VT life and truly, because the essays are so short, I felt as if i was flipping through a stack of Polaroids. Because of the restrictions of the medium, these essays lack the depth of a traditional essay but they do spark a readers imagination and curiosity to explore further. I found them fascinating for the voice they give and the variety of the Vermont aesthetic they explore.