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The Globe is so inconsistent these days

Yo, Globe:

Please stop leaving your readers hanging. The other day, you performed a valuable service by using a story about truck restrictions on the Longfellow Bridge to educate your thousands of Wyoming readers that the bridge is sometimes known as the Salt and Pepper Bridge because its towers look like "spice shakers."

That's why I'm so disappointed with today's installment in your fascinating series on well off Bostonians who move to Vermont to become farmers (part 1). In it, you state the following without any explanation:

In their household, DeGuevara is the unofficial head chef while working full time as a massage therapist and a plant spirit medicine practitioner in private practice in neighboring Putney.

Say what? Plant spirit medicine practitioner? What the hell does that mean? Does she lay hands on cartons of broccoli to cure it of mold? Does she use the spirit of Brother Apple and Sister Goldenrod to heal the sick and raise the dead? Come on, we're busy people and we don't always have access to Google. Just spell it out for us (it's not that hard to do). And if you felt you had to leave out the explanation because space is a problem, surely you could have found something to trim, like, oh:

One day, over a lunch of black bean soup, corn bread, squash, fermented garlic scapes, and endive salad, Dodd announces, "The problem with pasta is it's too delicious."

Pasta? How can its deliciousness be a problem?

I mean, who doesn't know that the problem with pasta is its deliciousness? Duh!

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Comments

Oh, the Humanity!

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If anybody can cure heartburn, it's gotta be a plant spirit medicine practictitioner.

Because if I ate fermented garlic scapes, I just know them plant spirits'd get a little backed up.

But I bet they'd taste awesome the first time!

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Finally it all makes sense...it's a statewide
emigration to Vermont!

Pack up the Prius, the Globe says there's a
rush at the border. Cheesemaking and plant spirit
medicine are the new dotcom and subprime economic bubbles.

It must be true, I read it in the Globe!

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Sounds like one of the many nicknames my Grandma's dozen siblings would use for fermented and distilled grains and potato starches.

Either that or Wacky Tabacky.

Hey! Valen - pass me some of that Plant Spirit Medicine there woodja?

or Stop bogartin' that plant spirit medicine and get it over here!

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I'm a Plant Spirit Medicine Practitioner!

Now git offen my gad damn land!

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Are there any adults left over there at the Globe?
In the old days of journalism they had something
called editors. And yes, I'm dating myself.

Cheese makers and Plant Spirit Medicine
Practitioners in Vermont, breathless reporting on
the "salt and pepper" bridge. Huh?

To paraphrase Back to the Future: "Hello, McCrory?"
(rapping on forehead...) "HELLO, Brian McCrory! HELLO!"

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Bob is dating... himself? I'm jumping on that bandwagon! Self, I'm fixin' oysters and chocolate fondue just for you tonight, you hot little thing!

Seriously, though. Hello, editors? Human interest stories can also be about NON-RICH people who lead interesting lives and DON'T move to Vermont. Or do you have to be rich to be considered "interesting"? Ouch.

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Um, actually, this one doesn't SAY they're rich. Fie on me for stereotyping back-to-the-landers. :P

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The clues are all there that at least one member of the couple is not exactly hurting.

For starters, the reporter says she'll try to show why the pair would "opt to reverse their convenient, disposable, whatever-their-hearts-desire modern lives for the hard work of simplicity."

Whatever-their-hearts-desire modern lives? Doesn't exactly sound like a hardscrabble existence, does it?

But also, the article mentions that Dodd is from California, and then adds: "It started because the couple wanted a greater relationship with the food they ate. Dodd had moved to her family's property in Vermont as an adult, after having spent some formative years there."

The family's property? Some formative years? Sounds like rich folks from California who wanted a little pied-a-terre back East. I could, of course, be completely wrong.

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Who else would?

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Sounds more like an art project than a food item. Sample usage (in my overactive imagination): "I love the cloudscapes by Georgia O'Keefe, the landscapes of Bierstadt, and the fermented garlic scapes of Adrienne DeGuevara."

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I found the pasta/slow food bit more interesting than I would have an explanation of the whole plant-spirit thing. Just replace "plant spirit medicine practitioner" with "hippie" and continue on your way.

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