Category: life

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asides life

A Tweet Before Dying

From A Tweet Before Dying:

The whole tech industry—by which I mean the cluster of companies that sell code-empowered products to billions of humans—is in extraordinary decline… I’m grieving a little over here. But life must go on, despite who…owns Twitter, and how ridiculous the metaverse might be. That’s why every morning, sometimes before breakfast, when I am in despair, I remember the three letters that always bring me comfort: PDF… This was the original function of the web—to transmit learned texts to those seeking them. Humans have been transmitting for millennia, of course, which is how historians are able to quote Pliny’s last tweet (“Something up w/ Vesuvius, brb”). But the seeking is important, too; people should explore, not simply feed. Whatever will move society forward is not hidden inside the deflating giants. It’s out there in some pitiful PDF, with a title like “A New Platform for Communication” or “Machine Learning Applications for Community Organization.”

Categories
life politics

Negotiate From A Position of Power

In 2020, a millionaire named Raj Bhakta purchased my alma mater and neighbor, Green Mountain College. He didn’t know what he’d do with the old girl when he purchased it (I had some ideas), but two years later, he has a better sense of things.

According to the development papers he recently submitted to our town, he now “seeks to turn the property into a regional destination for agrotourism, hospitality, small businesses, and post-graduate food and beverage education.” He imagines that “the campus will become the incubator for entrepreneurs developing new businesses who seek to locate in a dynamic and energetic work community.”

The estimated $100 million plan has three phases to be developed over the next decade:

  • Phase 1 (2023-2026) will convert existing college dorms into a 100-room destination hotel and twenty-three new condos, turn the college’s gym into a spa/fitness/wellness center, convert the main cafeteria into a convention center and the library into a “bulk storage tasting space,” and finally, construct a new “antique small craft distillery”
  • Phase 2 (2026-2028) will see the development of a brewery/tasting room, the addition of 40+ apartments, a sports complex, an equestrian center, and outdoor gardens
  • Phase 3 (2028-2030+) will include a post-graduate education center, a roastery, sports fields, improved trails, and a walking garden

The first part of the plan requires developing a significant number of new parking lots and some new road construction (to avoid traffic on the residential terrace beside the property). They hope to shield most of the parking behind three-foot-high brick walls (similar to the walls already on campus) with “dark-sky friendly” lighting. They hope to build enough parking for 549 vehicles (an increase of 412 from what the college had).

Finally, he would like to add a helipad to the circle in front of the college. Because the property anchors the west end of Main Street, the helipad would dominate the view on Main Street.

GMCTo attract investors to the project, Bhakta asked the town in March to stabilize his property taxes for the next ten years. He argued that he already pays more taxes than the college ever did (since the college was a non-profit educational institution), and he’s not asking for a tax waiver — just tax stabilization. He suggested in a presentation to the town that he would use “his current $100,000 tax bill as a base to which a surcharge equivalent to a quarter of a percent of the development’s gross revenues would be added.”

When he made the presentation, he added a veiled threat: a religious group had contacted him about purchasing the property, and if the town didn’t back his development plan, he might have to sell to them; as a religious institution, they’d be tax exempt, so stable taxes with him would be better than no taxes at all.

About a week after the presentation, the town voted to give the select board the power to explore a tax stabilization deal with Bhakta. Still, any agreement would be subject to the approval of the town’s voters.

The tax stabilization deal is perhaps the only leverage the town has over what happens at the former college. We learned the hard way that zoning, permitting, and democracy doesn’t work. Despite the zoning board and the town’s voters rejecting the construction of a Dollar General in town, the developer had deep enough pockets to fight it in court, and the town ran out of money to keep up our appeals. The Dollar General should open at the front gate of our town any month now.

Outside of the helipad (which I’m entirely opposed to from a noise pollution standpoint), I’m not opposed to Bhakta’s plan. It supports the goals of our official town plan, which seeks to “grow Poultney’s outdoor recreational economy, support existing businesses, and encourage new ones.” With a focus on agrotourism, the renovation of dorms into a 100-room hotel, and the conversion of other dorms into condos (I’m guessing for short-term rental purposes), it could bring the tourists every Vermont town needs to survive and thrive.

I have concerns about the destruction of the trees on campus and how the added parking lots will contribute to run-off pollution into the Poultney River. I hope regulations around Act 250, Vermont’s land use and development law, may help balance those concerns.

With all of that, the tax stabilization deal does give the town some leverage over Bhakta’s plan. One of my neighbors suggested the select board could use that leverage to ensure Bhakta hires a certain percentage of contractors, construction workers, and service industry folks from the local pool (however that gets defined). The town could also require he set aside a certain percentage of the 40+ apartments built in Phase 2 for low-income Vermonters. I support both of those proposals and encourage the town’s residents to brainstorm even more.

Bhakta said in his presentation that the town’s support of his development is vital to his success. If that’s true, let’s ensure (in writing) that his development contributes to the town’s success as well.

Categories
life

I Just Had A Panic Attack

My kiddo jumped on a trampoline at our neighbor’s house. My wife took her mother to a couple of stores in town. The foliage in my region may have hit its peak. The calendar read Friday. The clock read 4:20 in the afternoon.

Despite having had tachycardia the past four times I smoked cannabis, I wondered, would one hit actually hurt? I tucked the leaf of my hybrid strain of Banana Punch with 20% THC into the blown-glass bowl, stepped onto our back porch, sparked the lighter, put my lips to the hole, and inhaled the smoke.

Would one hit actually hurt?

~~

The day before, I spent roughly four hours with my butt in a chair reading and writing about how close the Russian Federation and the United States are to starting a nuclear war. Ever seen the movie Thirteen Days, the one where Kevin Costner works in the Kennedy White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis? Remember how intensely scared they all were?

Later that night, President Biden compared this moment to that moment.

Would one nuclear missile actually hurt?

~~

Earlier that week, the longtime town manager of my hometown died suddenly from a heart attack while mowing his lawn. He was seventy years old with a short, rotund body. I did not know him well enough to call him a friend, but I knew him enough to have laughed with him several times, and I respected him greatly. I am so grateful for his skills and dedication,  him being the person who managed the town where I chose to start a family.

He retired a few years ago but stayed involved, volunteering, fundraising, and offering his skills and advice wherever it was needed. He made an impact, and he will be missed.

Today, I ate two slices of supreme pizza from the local gas station for lunch. With our school having gone remote this week due to too many teachers testing positive for COVID-19, retrieving the pizza was only the third time I stood up between 10 am and 3 pm, and it was the most prolonged period I stood until the end of the workday when I took my dog for a mile long walk.

Would mowing the lawn actually hurt?

~~

My brother tells me I need to chill out.

He says learning about nuclear war, the devastating effects of climate change, the rise of fascism, the increase in school and police shootings, the local impacts of the opioid epidemic, the worrying trends in children’s mental health, the greed of the capitalists, the exploitation of laborers, the rising costs of food, the horrific nearness of sex offenders and human traffickers, the villainy of the military-industrial complex, etc. is contributing to my anxiety.

He also says reading dystopian science fiction makes me overthink the problems of our current time and the future. He believes thinking too much is bad for me.

Would one more article actually hurt?

~~

I took the hit, got the dough started for tonight’s dinner (homemade pizza), opened a Conehead IPA, retrieved my Kindle (Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power), opened my front door, and with my dog at my side, sat in a gliding chair (the one we used when rocking our kiddo to sleep ten years ago) and started to read.

The tingle started immediately, a message from my body to my brain that something had changed and my brain better take notice.

~~

I’m teaching a high-school class this quarter on evolution. I possess just enough knowledge to lead a high-school classroom but not enough to be genuinely confident. Darwin and I shared the same lack of knowledge: Darwin knew nothing of chromosomes and DNA, and outside of the Punnett square, neither did I.

I began a layman’s shallow dive into the current state of genetic knowledge using Khan Academy’s AP-level lessons on heredity to learn the basics, then pursued the questions that remained in academic journals.

I listened to the popular-science book, The Gene: An Intimate History, in half-hour segments as I drove to and from my students’ homes.

As a result, I now have a dilettante’s understanding of DNA, RNA, and proteins.

Because human evolution involves the development of our brain, I continued my investigation by reading a book by a neuroscientist from Northeastern titled Seven and a Half Lessons about the Brain, which eradicated some of my misunderstandings (for example, that whole “lizard brain” thing? Totally not true).

When my body created a tingling sensation, I understood that the cannabinoids within the flowers of the cannabis plant (which we think evolved to protect the plant from insect predation and UV light) bind to CB1 receptors in my central nervous system.

The structure of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is similar to a chemical naturally produced by the body that sends messages between nerve cells, particularly messages related to “pleasure, memory, concentration, movement, coordination, and sensory and time perception.” The similar structure allows THC to co-opt those messages, causing strange effects on all of the above.

Sitting in the glider, feeling the tingling come on, I knew exactly what it was and why it was happening.

But I didn’t understand why my heart rate soared from a typical 68 bpm to 130 bpm in less than two minutes.

~~

“Okay,” I thought. “You’re fine. Tachycardia happened before, and you’ve survived. Try taking a shower and see how it goes.”

I stood from the glider, walked inside the house, and climbed the stairs to my bathroom. By the time I reached the top, my heart rate was 149 bpm, and I felt lightheaded.

“Okay,” I thought. “Maybe instead of standing in a shower, you might want to sit down.”

I moved to my bedroom, sat on the edge, pulled my iPhone out of my pocket, and said, “Hey Siri, play the Grateful Dead.” I put the phone directly behind me so the sound waves would hit both of my ears simultaneously, placed my hands on my thighs, and took control of my breathing.

In through the nose. Hold for five seconds. Out through the mouth. In through the nose. Hold for five seconds. Out through the mouth.

The sweats and hot flash started just as the first notes of Jerry and the boys came through the speakers. Siri decided what I really needed to hear right then was “Fire on the Mountain.”

I chuckled and kept breathing.

~~

In low doses, cannabis increases the chemicals in the sympathetic nervous system (SNS). The SNS affects several organs in the body. It dilates our eyes, tightens our digestive systems, and causes us to sweat, among other things.

It also tells our heart to beat faster.

In short, the sympathetic nervous system regulates our “fight or flight” function.

Simultaneously, cannabis decreases the chemicals in our parasympathetic nervous system (PNS). One doctor characterizes the PNS’s targets as our “rest and digest” function. It contracts our pupils, relaxes our sphincters and urethras, and…surprise, surprise…lowers our heart rate.

At high doses, cannabis has the reverse effect, increasing the chemicals in our PNS and decreasing the ones in our SNS, making us feel highly relaxed; hence, the stereotype of a stoner sitting gonged out on his couch.

I took one hit: a low dose.

~~

In through the nose. Hold for five seconds. Out through the mouth.

My heart rate came back down to about 110 bpm. “Okay,” I thought. “That’s doable. Let’s take a shower.”

I stood up. Bad idea.

Immediately, my vision contracted to a point, and my sense of legs felt weak. Deep, slow breath. Deep, slow breath.

Downstairs, the back door opened, and my 10-year-old kiddo and their friend entered the house.

Uh-oh.

They went right into the living room and turned on the Nintendo Switch. Like any good ten year old, they couldn’t care less where their dad was.

Siri decided to follow “Fire on the Mountain” with “Help on the Way.”

Good call, Siri. I lay on the bed, retrieved the phone, and called my wife.

“Um, honey. I’m having a really bad panic attack. You have to come home.”

This is not the first time we’ve been through this. She was in line with my mother-in-law at the grocery store around the corner. “I’m just putting stuff on the conveyor,” she said. “What do you want me to do?”

I told her I felt like I was going to faint, and our child had just come home. I teared up as I told her I really didn’t want our kiddo to come up the stairs and find me unresponsive on the bed. The sadness of that vision overwhelmed me, and I had difficulty talking. “Can you leave your mom there and maybe go back after…” I trailed off. This wasn’t an option; who knew how long the effects would last? I pictured my mother-in-law standing outside the grocery store, wondering if everything was all right.

“Just keep talking,” I begged. And my wife did. All through putting the groceries on the conveyor, getting them checked out, putting them in the bag, carrying them to the car, and coming home. Just her voice.

Like a child she is pure; she is not to blame.

~~

My wife came home, and we got through it together. I cried about failing as a father, husband, and provider, being unable to save all of my students from the traumas in their lives, and my lack of self-discipline with exercise, diet, and addiction.

“How many warnings are enough?”

Later that evening, I threw all of my cannabis in the trash.

Categories
life politics

On The Night They Bombed Ukraine

Is it basically one gang against another gang? 

And you and me, victims and witnesses.

Speaking as a generally-stay-within-100-miles-of-my-home American citizen whose relationship to “the world” is mediated by individuals and corporations publishing their interpretations of the world onto the Internet (most often and most insidiously in the form of a capitalistically-motivated algorithm), I have to believe that the felt reality of capitalist-driven, consumer- and public-debt financed colonialism feels an awful lot like an American citizen in a security-forces uniform staring down at you from behind the barrel of a gun.

What does it feel like to be in Ukraine tonight? Fear. Anger. Rage. Pride. Intolerable grief. 

Witnesses and victims. 

Except they’re staring up the barrel of a Russian-financed gun, into the eyes of a Russian-financed citizen standing in a Russian-financed security-forces uniform. A rose by any other name would still smell as crony capitalist. 

And for what? Money and turf; and the rare metals and gasses hidden just beneath that turf.

Say what you want about the former President (and I have), but he wasn’t always wrong. Elite citizens of the United States and their family members have interests in the land we call Ukraine. Some of them belong to Biden’s gang. Some of them belong to Putin’s gang. 

None of the gang members are treasonous; nor are they patriotic. The elite citizens of the United States have long-since abandoned the ideology of nationalism, laying their heads instead on the satin-sheets of crony capitalism. 

It’s not “Down with Russia” or “Let’s Go Joe or Brandon”. It’s witnesses and victims feeling powerless on the Internet while two gangs that neither of us belong to destroy yet another generation of Homo sapiens.

Thoughts and prayers.

Categories
life

Dog Bites Childhood

My most vivid memory of the now-famous Dave Portnoy involves running down the side of his house while his family’s dog, which I don’t think was big, barked at and chased me. I remember tears in my eyes. I was probably eleven or twelve years old. We had gone to his house either before or after Pop Warner football practice. That was the last time I ever went to Dave Portnoy’s house.

I remember walking down the hill across from the basketball court with my best friend beside me. We’re maybe ten or twelve years old. A sleek black dog shoots out from a driveway across the street to our left. Without care for my friend, I drop the basketball and streak down the hill. Before my heart beats twice, I am down the hill, across the busy street, and through the fence to (what I somehow imagine) is the safety of the basketball court. I don’t remember what happened behind me, but I know the dog did not attack my friend.

I’m maybe fourteen years old. I have a job washing dishes at a pizza joint within walking distance of my parents’ house. My oldest brother, a pizza-delivery driver, got me the job. Except for the owner, everyone who works there is from the neighborhood. I’ve known all of them (at least by reputation) my whole life.

The walk from work to home takes me past backyards I’ve played hide-and-go-seek in. I know which neighbors don’t mind kids on their property and which ones will yell at you. I’ve lost a good number of toys in these trees. This is my neighborhood and has been for (maybe?) fourteen years.

But for some reason, I don’t know the dog whose owner hasn’t tied it up on a property that doesn’t have a fence around it, nor do I expect the dog to dart from the shadows of those thick bushes like a monster from my nightmares; but my body knows it needs to run.

I decide which closest mother in which closest house will save me, and I run to her. I spent my formative years standing in the back vestibule of her apartment, hovering between the screen door to her backyard and the door to her kitchen, waiting for one of her two sons to come out and play with my brothers and me. Sprinting down the avenue, I hope she’ll be able to answer her front door before this dog, this monster I hadn’t known to be wary of, catches me between its jaws and violently ends my life.

My memory of this terrified sprint begins like a crane shot in a movie. A short, skinny teenaged kid races across the bottom of the frame only to be followed by an athletic dog on the chase. The memory smashes into my first-person perspective as I grab the metal railing at the bottom of my neighbor’s stairs and pivot my direction ninety degrees without losing momentum. I’m up the stairs in a bouncy-camera kind of way, and the camera looks back over my shoulder as the dog clumsily tries to make its cut without the benefit of the railing. Somehow I’ve wedged myself between my neighbor’s metal screen door already, shielding my body from the dog’s sure-to-be-blood-stained fangs. With one hand, I try to turn the black knob on my neighbor’s front door, and with the other, I pull the outer screen door tighter against me. I scream for help and beg at the top of my lungs for the dog to go away. The dog leaps at the door repeatedly. Its nails scrape against the metal; its snout pushes at the screen. The monster barks and barks.

I don’t want to die.

The door opens behind me, and I stumble backward into the front vestibule and into my friends’ mother’s plump body. She catches me before she knows who I am, and then a look of concern and confusion comes over her face as she recognizes me. The dog’s weight against the screen door slams it shut, and the dog barks and barks on the other side of it. I hear its desperate desire to mangle my body.

My friend’s mother looks out at the animal, brushes me aside, opens the door, steps out onto her porch, and commands the dog to go away. To my surprise, it does. It spins and bounds down the stairs with no animosity towards her nor any fear of her authority. From the bottom of the steps, the dog turns and looks up at me, and I realize it just wants to play. I look up at my friend’s mother, and I can see on her face that she’s embarrassed for me. I ask if I can stay for a little bit and catch my breath, but secretly, I’m giving the dog enough time to run back home.

“Of course,” my friends’ mother says.

I choose to wait in the vestibule.

My fear of dogs was a known thing in my neighborhood. The other parents knew that when I came over, they would have to put the dog “away.” Usually, they just let it into the backyard and that was that. If they forgot, I’d sheepishly ask my friends’ mothers if their dogs could go outside for a while or if it could get shut inside a room, and there would always be a look when I asked, a kind of eye roll or a “for god’s sake,” and even as a small kid, I knew they were embarrassed for me.

I remember sitting on the floor of the dining room of my friend’s house. We’re playing with our G.I. Joe action figures. His little gray dog, which they’ve “put away,” scratches on the opposite side of the door next to me. I remember trying my hardest not to ask my friend to put the dog in a different room, one that was farther away. I remember trying to be brave.

But I also knew that if he didn’t stop his dog from scratching at the door, the tiny little monster would rip through it and tear me apart.

My terror overwhelmed my ability to think. Terrified, I leaped from the floor, ran from his house, and burst down his hill. At the bottom, I turned left, dashed up my street and down my driveway. I charged up the steps, through the back door and across the kitchen floor. I sprinted down our three-step hallway, grabbed the wooden banister on my left to support my at-speed-one-eighty, then onetwothreefour double-steps up the stairs, onto the landing, and into my bedroom. I slammed the door shut behind me, creating one last irrational barrier between me and that terrifying, ankle-high, perfectly-loved, little gray dog.

I still don’t know what my friend thought happened.

Now I’m forty-four years old, and thanks to some beautiful people and their animals, I am no longer terrified of dogs.

I got over my phobia when I entered into a relationship with a young woman whose family owned a dog; love and lust can cause many a person to transcend their fears.

I remain in control of the fear because I recognized it as a phobia — specifically (as the Internet tells me), cynophobia. As such, I see it as just another symptom of my Generalized Anxiety and Panic disorders.

I am lucky enough (at the moment) to have (what I believe) are decent handles on my disorders. I still have panic attacks — the last one was bad enough that I woke my wife in the middle of the night to help me. Still, bad ones are few and far between, and the not-so-bad ones only result in an extended period of irritability (which I try my best [and often fail] to curb for the sake of my family, friends, students, and colleagues).

As I write this, our eleven-month-old dog snores on the couch next to me, her neck surrounded by a blue, blow-up, donut-shaped cushion that we hope will prevent her from tearing at the stitches where her ovaries used to be. I love the little bitch with all my heart.

Despite this undeniable, unconditional love, I daily imagine her cute, sharp teeth tearing the flesh and muscle from my cheek [FLASH] my daughter’s cheek [FLASH] my wife’s cheek. I see it clearly: her crazed, wonky, little eye looking down at me as her fangs tear my face. She doesn’t know what she’s doing — the animal has taken over.

Thankfully, though the anxious vision remains, its effect on me has changed. I don’t run from dogs anymore. I don’t ask my friends to put their dogs in different rooms. I put my face up to my dog’s snout dozens of times a day, and I fall asleep each night with her nails poking in my back. I pry Lego pieces from her mouth, hold her when she barks at the mail carrier, and wrestle with her at playtime.

I might imagine her ferocity, but I know: it’s only my fluid imagination (hey!, that’s the name of this blog!).

The love I feel for our dog makes me sad for the childhood I could have had.

My family owned dogs before I was born, but they didn’t have one when I came along. My oldest brother brought home a puppy when I was three or four, but it bit me too many times and was too much work for my parents to deal with (on top of the three boys they already had), so we got rid of it.

If I hadn’t developed my phobia, I might have begged long enough for my parents to try again. I might have grown up with a dog (or two) and learned the kind of love a child only learns from a dog.

Further, I might not have avoided my friends’ houses throughout elementary, middle, and high school and thus not missed out on critical moments of friendship building.

I might have…I might have…I might have.

But I didn’t.

Thankfully, now my daughter can.

Categories
life

Hot Enough for Ya?

As I write this, a heatwave is devastating the Pacific Northwest, with nearly sixty locations breaking their all-time heat records, including Canada’s national heat record, reaching a peak of 118.2 degrees (F), almost a full fifty degrees warmer than average. It is so hot that, according to the BBC, “even a swimming pool [was] deemed too hot to function.”

New England, meanwhile, suffers under a heatwave of our own. The current temperature is 89° in the center of my southwestern Vermont village. The current “feels like” temperature, which measures ambient air temperature, relative humidity, and wind speed to approximate what the weather feels like on bare skin, is 102°. The National Weather Service has issued a heat advisory, cautioning residents to stay out of the sun (ideally in an air-conditioned room) and check up on relatives and neighbors.

Bob Williams, the owner of my local hardware store, moved his air-conditioners to the front of his store and offered his mid-range machines at a sale price. He says the sale is to clear out his overstock, but Bob has a history of going above and beyond for his customers when the weather turns against us. When winter storms hit or the river floods, he’ll sleep in the store to make sure his customers can get the tools they need to survive.

The heatwave in the Pacific Northwest has been caused, the weather professionals tell us, by a heat dome, a vast high-pressure zone that settles over a region like a cover on a pot, causing the heat to swelter beneath it, driving out the clouds and pushing up the temperature.

Meanwhile, the heatwave in New England comes from the Bermuda high, a near-constant high-pressure system usually centered over Bermuda. The system “meanders west and east through the summer,” sometimes moving as far west as Michigan. When it comes into contact with New England, heat and humidity soar, making our days hot and sticky like they are now.

As you can see, Pacific Northwest heat domes and New England heatwaves dominate my brain at the moment. I don’t do well in the heat, and the thought of 118.2° scares the shit out of me; writing this post has me on the edge of a panic attack.

Scientists predict that human-caused climate change is likely to increase the number of “extreme summer weather events” in the northern hemisphere by nearly fifty percent before the end of this century.

Examples of these events include:

Here in Vermont, climatologists predicted in 2014 that “the number of hot days reaching 87°F or warmer…[will] increase from about six per year to more than 20 per year.” But here in 2021, we’ve already had six days reaching 87° or warmer, and it’s not even July yet (last July had seven days hitting 87° or warmer).

A heatwave during this same week in 2018 killed four people in Vermont. While my region saw a high of 88° that week, temperatures reached 115° about sixty miles north, killing a 79-year-old woman in Essex Junction and cooking a 57-year-old woman and her two dogs in their mobile home.  

Along with the heat, climatologists expect increased precipitation for Vermont, with less snow and more rain (especially in the winter). They also anticipate floods and severe storms to have an increased impact on the state and extreme rainfall to become more frequent and intense.

Because of Vermont’s location in the jet stream, climatologists also expect more “blocking” weather patterns. A blocking weather pattern “occurs when centers of high pressure and/or low pressure set up over a region in such a way that they prevent other weather systems from moving through.” 

One example of a blocking pattern is the polar vortex that now seems to regularly settle over the midwest and northeastern parts of the United States. Disruptions to the polar vortex caused a coldwave in 2014 that dropped my local temperature to -17° and caused sub-zero averages for three days straight. The coldwave introduced the term “polar vortex” to the general public, and the phrase became so popular that meteorologists complained about its misuse.

I can only hope that the blocking patterns that settle over Vermont remain wintry in their origin. I can deal with the extreme cold of a polar vortex or the heavy, wet snowfall of a warmer winter.

But I know I can’t deal with increased heat, and heaven forbid we get a blocking pattern like a heat dome.

I know the climate is changing. I know it will get less fit for humans. But man, I can’t stand the heat.

Categories
life politics

Remembering The Tragic Murder of Ronald Amadon

On October 27, 1985, sometime around 2:30 A.M. in my home village in Vermont, Ronald Amadon, a food service worker at the local college, walked from one of the village’s two bars to his parents’ home about a quarter of a mile away. He had worked during the big Oktoberfest on campus and followed that with some celebrating at the bar. As he approached his parents’ home, he was attacked with a knife by John Kugler, a young man from a New York town just over the border who had recently escaped from a mental facility in New York and was now renting a mobile home in my village.

The Rutland Herald reported that a neighbor heard someone call out, “Help me! Help me!,” but the neighbor was too frightened to go outside. “[Amadon] was screaming his head off,” the neighbor said, “He was very hysterical.” Another neighbor said the victim “sounded like a woman,” while a third heard Amadon cry, “Oh my god!”

Amadon went to a nearby friend’s house, bleeding from his stab wounds, and asked his friend to call the ambulance. The friend asked who had stabbed him, and Amadon replied, “I don’t know who he is, but I’ll never forget his face.”

After calling for help, the friend reached out to Amadon’s parents, who lived just down the road. Amadon’s mother joined him in the ambulance on the way to Rutland Regional Medical Center. Tragically, he would not survive the journey.

Ronald Amadon died at 4:21 A.M. of one stab wound to the chest and one to the abdomen, as well as having cuts on his hand and lip.

Police initially stopped Kugler for a motor vehicle violation before arresting him for the murder. According to the Herald, Kugler said to a reporter, “Forgive me.”

In a later affidavit for the court, police alleged that Kugler told them “he killed Amadon when Amadon came walking past him acting like a homosexual.”

Amadon’s murder was not the only act of homophobic violence in the Rutland region in the mid-eighties. Two days later, a Herald story ran with the headline, “Rights Activists Decry Violence Directed At Gays.” The activists noted the homophobic slaying of a Brandon man in February 1984, whose “body was found on the ice at the base of a 120-foot-deep West Rutland marble quarry.”

On January 25, 1986, the Herald reported that a District Court judge ruled that, following a psychiatric assessment, “Kugler was incompetent to stand trial.” The psychiatrist found Kugler to be “suffering from delusions, paranoia, hallucinations, and possibly the scars of severe drug and alcohol abuse.” The psychiatrist reported that, as a teenager, Kugler used to sniff gasoline “until he nearly keeled over.” He later moved on to harder drugs, such as heroin and PCP.

Kugler was committed to the Vermont State Hospital in Waterbury, where psychiatrists expected him to spend the rest of his life.

Before his attack on Amadon, Kugler had been arrested in New York for assaulting another man with a large rock and a tire chain. Authorities placed him in the Capital District Psychiatric Center in Albany, but he later walked out without being stopped. Despite knowing his whereabouts before his attack on Amadon, Rutland County law enforcement could not return him to New York due to a loophole in Vermont’s laws. As the Herald reported at the time, “Vermont law has no provisions for Vermont officials returning an uncommitted mental patient to another state, as they can with criminal fugitives… With no pending criminal charges, extradition was impossible.”

Six years after the murder, in January 1992, the Herald reported that two psychiatrists found Kugler “was no longer insane and did not pose a threat to himself or others.” A judge ruled that he could be released back into the community but had to remain in state custody.

In July 1994, the Herald reported Kugler escaped from the Arroway halfway house in Burlington and “may be headed back to the Rutland area.” About ten days later, police changed their mind and said he “may be headed to New York.” The police expressed concern that Kugler could “become violent if he is no longer taking his medications” for “paranoid schizophrenia.” He later turned himself in.

But in August 1995, Kugler again escaped from psychiatric confinement, walking away from the state hospital in Waterbury. He had been staying in an unlocked ward and was allowed to roam the grounds. One day, he did not return. Kugler “turned up a week later near Philadelphia, where he was stopped by police for allegedly driving drunk.”

Meanwhile, Ronald Amadon remained murdered, dead at the age of 22, because he “acted like a homosexual.”

As you may know, June is Pride Month. It commemorates the 1969 uprising at the Stonewall Inn in New York, which became the catalyst for the modern LGBT movement for civil rights. As President Biden noted in his proclamation yesterday, “Pride is a time to recall the trials the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ+) community has endured and to rejoice in the triumphs of trailblazing individuals who have bravely fought — and continue to fight — for full equality.”

According to the Herald, Ronald Amadon “was thoughtful, quiet, and well-liked…a gentle man.” At Amadon’s funeral, Rev. Marshall Hudson-Knapp recalled, “Ron had a love for everyone he knew,” and he recited the lyrics of a song that Ronald had written as a boy, “My name is R-O-N-N-I-E. I’ll love you if you’ll love me. For that’s the way it’s meant to be.”

A friend recalled outside of the funeral, “He was a really special guy. He had a lot of friends.” He also loved antiquing and frequently stopped at area shops to browse. One store owner said, “I remember Ronnie stopping by just a few days before he died. He was a gentle and wonderful boy.”

As my village celebrates Pride for all the LGBTQ+ individuals we call our friends, family, and neighbors, we ought not to forget the ugly, homophobic tragedy that once occurred on our streets. Let us remember the life and death of Ronald Amadon.

Thanks to Monica Allen, who first reported on the case for the Rutland Herald in the 1980s, and to Liz Anderson, who followed up on the case for the Herald in the 1990s.