Forest, Spring (in process)

For a few weeks in early spring, sugarbushes (maple woods) are busy places, with tree after tree either festooned the old-fashioned way with metal buckets hanging from hammered spigots, or beribboned in the modern style by lines of hosing running to collecting barrels. Either way the precious sap will be carefully collected, trucked in a pickup down a muddy back road, and boiled for hours by closely watching families in many a small, steamy sugarhouse.

Town, Summer (in process)

Where's there's a town in Vermont, there's a river. Montpelier's waterway no longer is used for industrial energy or transportation, but the Winooski is still, as a thing of beauty, a vital part of the town's economy, and provides (like rivers that run through cities everywhere) the lifeblood of this place.

Memorial Day Sketchbook

Here's one in memory of my father Sammie Abbott: artist, World War 2 veteran (and "pre-mature anti-fascist"), builder of stone walls, organizer pamphleteer extraordinaire, and ceaseless scourge of city planners. Back in the 1970's I drew this of my dad lecturing three unfortunate Highway Department bureaucrats on why the North Central Freeway (ten lanes of traffic that was to run from the Maryland suburbs through the heart of the nation's capital and under the Lincoln Memorial) should not be built. It wasn't--one of the few urban freeways defeated during the destructive era of "urban renewal". To peace-loving fighters everywhere, thank you.