Snapshot Series

Twenty-five years ago, responding to the Vermont Supreme Court’s “Baker Decision,” the Vermont Legislature created the first comprehensive legal recognition for same-sex couples in the United States. The establishment of Civil Unions was an historic step toward full Marriage Equality. Long-time Vermont LGBTQ political activist and politician Bill Lippert remembers the fierce battle and political backlash around Civil Unions, and considers the lessons learned from the fight.

Alexander von Humboldt was a Prussian polymath, geographer, naturalist, and explorer who visited the United States in 1804 specifically to meet President Thomas Jefferson. Humboldt used his influential voice to urge the United States to live up to its democratic ideals. Eleanor Jones Harvey, senior curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, explores Humboldt’s influence on America’s cultural values. 

The recent devastating fires in Maui and Los Angeles are only the tip of a fiery iceberg that modern humans have created. How are we to respond to such events, emotionally and rationally? Drawing from his new book, Following Nature’s Lead: Ancient Ways of Living in a Dying World, UVM professor M. D. Usher explores what the Buddha, the Stoic philosopher Seneca, and Henry David Thoreau can teach about climate trauma. 

Educator Kenneth M. Cadow is the author of Gather, the wildly popular Vermont Reads 2024 selection and a National Book Award Finalist. Kenneth will read from his book and talk about the novel’s themes of rural life, resilience, class differences, addiction and recovery, housing and food insecurity, a deep relationship to the land, and the power of community. 

In 1962, Virginia Naeve attended her first international peace conference in Geneva, Switzerland. It was there that southern Black activists described the enduring poverty of the rural South and the burgeoning civil rights movement. UVM Professor of African American History Pamela Nicole Walker tells how Naeve returned home to Jamaica, VT to fight for peace and civil rights using mostly pen, paper, and a lot of gumption.