Bill Heinz: war correspondent, sports columnist, novelist, and Vermonter
On a lovely. balmy September day—the kind we see far too rarely in Vermont—I pull up outside the Village at Filmore Pond on the outskirts of Bennington, Vermont, feeling what I assume are common qualms. The place is, after all, full of old people. You can call them “seniors” all you want but it doesn’t change what they are—old people. Nobody likes to be reminded that he, too, will get old. And that’s if you are lucky.
But, then, if you want wisdom and you like listening to stories from older and, perhaps, better times, then you have come to the right place. Inside these walls, you’ll find thousands of years of wisdom, hundreds and hundreds of stories. In fact, one of the great storytellers of American journalism lives here and I’ve come to visit him. He was one of the first people I met when I came to live in Vermont, over 20 years ago. He was an idol of mine (I was trying to be a writer) before I met him and the longer I knew him, and the more of his work I read, the more strongly I felt that way. It was hero worship, I suppose, but that’s okay because, recently, the rest of the American reading public has caught up with me. Read more…
-Geoffrey Norman