Spring

Fred & Pat CarmichaelBy Susanne Washburn
Photography by Hubert Schriebl

"I  think our wives are seeing too much of each other," says Fred Carmichael, on meeting an acquaintance in Manchester. "It's all about the Dorset Historical Society, isn't it?" replies the interlocutor. "That's what they s-a-y," is Fred's rejoinder. He's a bottomless source of such impromptu lines-this author of forty published plays, most of them in the comedy-mystery genre. He delivers his characteristic banter in the local supermarket, on the Northshire's marble sidewalks, and to Meals On Wheels clients. At a late afternoon reading of verse by an historic Dorset poet, he announces to those assembling in the large circle of chairs: "I want you all to know: We are free for dinner."

Pat, his wife of 55 years, may seem the straight man to his comic antics, but she can deliver a good laugh line just as well. Actress, songstress, stage director (both in Dorset and on tour), she is equally of the essence of theatre. Recalling one early aspect of her career-a stint as a cabaret chanteuse-Fred reports, "I married a nightclub singer." » read more

By Ellen Ecker Ogden
Photography by Hubert Schriebl

Chris MorrowChris Morrow is looking to do more than merely sell books. He wants his locally owned Northshire Bookstore to be a placewhich can act as an underpinning of a better world.

Chris Morrow may well have the most coveted job in the world among people who love books.  Sure, it's a desk job, and his desk is a makeshift affair; with two tables squeezed together to form an "L" piled with tall stacks of books, and a laptop computer balanced on an old typing table. "I love books," admits Chris Morrow, president and general manager of the Northshire Bookstore, which his parents, Barbara and Ed, started in 1976, "But they have never been my sole focus."

The peacock blue walls contain an eclectic mix of paintings, weavings, prayer flags and sculptures; all are evidence that his interests clearly go beyond just books; there is Tibetan Buddhism, world travel, family and the community, all evidence of the untraditional path he had taken before deciding to return to » read more

By Frederica Templeton
Images courtesy of The American Museum of Fly Fishing

PleisnerThe land between Green and Taconic mountain ranges is a place of small rivers and streams, charming old played-out farms, fields and pastures that have gone by, crumbling stone walls, and abandoned orchards.  Still, it is our land and we love it. It is also iconic country to legions of fly fishermen and upland hunters even though most of them have never been here.  But they have seen this country painted superbly and with undeniable feeling.  Have, in other words, seen it through the eyes of a great artist who fished and hunted this little corner of the world, loved it intensely, and put that love into his paintings.

Ogden Pleissner never thought of himself as someone who did "sporting art."  He was not, emphatically, one of those hacks who turned out stylized stuff for the covers of catalogues and the numbered print racket.  He considered himself, with absolute legitimacy, a "painter of landscapes who also liked to hunt and fish."  His work has been compared, with justification, to that of Winslow Homer and Andrew Wyeth.  » read more

By Kristin McDonald
Photography by Hubert Schriebl 

Habitat CrewThis past fall Happy Valley on Lewis Road in Rupert got a little happier. It used to be that to visit the George Lewis family there, you'd go to the 1970s-era mobile home in the middle of the bucolic dairy farm land that has been in the Lewis family for 13 generations.  But now that home has been gutted and in its place is a bright, open, much larger stick-built raised ranch with plenty of space for the Lewis's: George, Kelli, son Tyler, 20, and daughter Savannah, 15.  "The trailer was home," says Kelli, "but as the kids got bigger, we wanted more space. We wanted more for ourselves as well.  We prayed for years for our longtime dream of a new house. But on the salary of a dairy farmer and my job as an elementary school paraprofessional, it wasn't going to happen."  Until the day that Kelli saw the flier at church seeking applicants for Habitat for Humanity. » read more

By Peggy Shinn
Photography by Hubert Schriebl 

In the cycling world, Andy Bishop has been where most of us only dream of going. In a 17-year cycling career that began in Tucson, Arizona, he has raced on five continents and in the Tour de France four times, finishing three. He has raced alongside men with the names of LeMond, Rooks, and Theunise and up the 21 turns of the legendary Alpe d'Huez in France with more than a half-million rabid cycling fans screaming in his ears. When he switched to mountain biking in 1996, he took to the woods, racing single-track loops that many of us have only read about in magazines. » read more

By Laurie Sullivan
Photography by James Schriebl

Their mutual love of Vermont, skiing and each other drew Jaimi Christensen and Jim Ryan to the quaint white colonial church with its tall spire in Manchester. » read more

Vermont Oil Man: Donny DorrBy Susanne Washburn
Photography by Hubert Schriebl

There's not a dot.com to be found anywhere in the Manchester mini-empire of Donny Dorr, whose businesses range from oil sales to hay sales, from septic systems to mobile home sites and other real estate. He's a Vermont native whose father and grandfather were, as he says, "horse traders-the equivalent of today's car dealer." Along Manchester's North Road, his grandfather kept as many as 400 horses. » read more

Going Native: Brookies are very powerful little adversaries despite their size.  Photo by Jim Lapageby Paul Fersen 

The last houses on the road are behind me. The sign that warns me the road is not open in winter slips past. » read more