("Idyll Banter")

[fiefoe]

Chris Bohjalian writes newspaper columns about life in a small Vermont town. The usual adjectives apply: close-knit, quaint, snowy, hardy & so on. The darkest secret revealed here? The family actually use their picturesque red barn as a garbage dump.

• We have a preschool that teaches the kids to sing "I Am a Pizza" In French and brings in a justice of the peace to marry the children's stuffed animals.
• I remembered my resolve when I'd made the map four years ago, after losing our septic tank for the seconds time in a decade. I'd spent a day digging and dowsing (yes, dowsing), and failed to find anything more valuable than a garden trowel. <> With the resolve of Scarlett O'Hara at the end of the first half of Gone With the Wind, I'd stood that day at sunset with a clump of dirt in my hand, and vowed I would never, ever misplace our humanure humidor again.
• By their very nature, libraries are generationally democratic.
  
• (During a school play:) "I think I want to give my mommy a kiss," (Bridgette Bartlett, four) said soon after meeting the Tin Man, at which point she simply walked off the stage and into her mother's lap and did just that.
  

---

Overheard: "Nothing like a fire drill to make you wish you'd gone to the bathroom."