Welcome to This Spot on Earth. This is a home for a selection of my essays on nature, healing, and family. Other topics include AI, the dignity of loving one’s work, and the weight of something colorless.
I reflect at times on campaigning and then serving my first year in the Vermont House, and some of the experiences that got me there, like visiting George Floyd Square and before that, re-facing a Civil War monument with my son.
I’d love for you to sign up so that I can notify you every week or so about new posts. Enjoy reading! -Tristan
In Jenny’s garden, turning hate to love
How to love a hated weed, or at least co-exist with it?
In which we welcome Loie Roberts, and give him our all.
Loie Q.E. Roberts spent 38 weeks and six days in a womb of amniotic fluid before pressing his way out into air-breathing humanity on July 26, 2024 at 3:21 a.m.
Can we use behavioral science to fight for Vermonters struggling with opioids?
Both tech and pharma companies use behavioral tactics to hook Vermonters on their products. I voted “Yes” on H.72 because I would consider it irresponsible to not deploy behavioral science to fight back.
Expecting Birdie
I devoted my last column to how I parent my son to grow up feeling secure, capable, and independent. Should I be any different as a dad to a daughter?
The last conversation with my father
Our baby is due August 3, and especially with it being her first, Alison is concerned about whether we’re prepared—for successful nursing, for co-sleeping, for all of it.
Untitled (Thoreau’s right. I am a tool.)
“Theory of mind” is a good start, but there’s clearly more. I give you: the “theory of spirit.”
Dear Governor, Let’s turn Vermont’s darkness into delight
I nominate the eclipse as the defining event of the 2020s. Call it the “Totalicade.”
Friends underground, friends in the stars
A book I first read at age four or five and have returned to often since is The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
Three women who changed my mind
This March, I celebrate Michelle and all of the history-making women in the Vermont Legislature, along with the female constituents whose wisdom I listen to.
The peony doesn’t bloom without all of us
Do peonies suffer imposter syndrome? I started wondering about this when Sallie told me last summer that peony buds can’t open without help from black ants.
Here’s to a pregnant 2024!
Should I suicide? No. I never will. Not because I don’t have hard thoughts.
Dear Digger, hands off my pierogis, Part 2
“Did you hear about the Polack wolf stuck in a trap?”
For reasons that remain a mystery to me, Polacks and blondes were the butts of all jokes in my grade school in Schuylerville, N.Y. I heard violence against women and Poles like this and worse twenty times a day between art class and gym.
Dear Digger, hands off my pierogis, Part 1
“That’s where there’s been a lot of healing for me,” my friend Julia Chase told me yesterday.
An instant classic
These days, the Book of Luke has been contrasting in my mind with the Book of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
On keeping the "uppy" in "puppy"
“Your dog out-ranks you by one,” said Corporal Dave Robinson at Sunday’s Vets Town Hall at Brattleboro’s American Legion.
I believe you, Patience.
I haven’t seen Patience since high school, but she’s been cemented in my memory since 3rd grade with the peace symbols.
Ghost story
This wouldn’t be a ghost story if it had a solid conclusion. But I pray you heed it well.