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2.3, September 2005
Nebula

feisty little daily newspaper. I wrote lots of features about ordinary people that I saw
as extraordinary. Especially the older people. I loved their stories and their ways of

expressing themselves. It was a privilege to meet them and write about them, and take
their pictures. My articles were pasted on refrigerators up and down the valley. It was
a job I loved, but I left it to write Mattanza, then Stone Boudoir.

When I quit my Reformer job at the end of 1991, I didn’t have enough money to rent

an apartment or house, so the older people in the valley took me in. For a few years I
lived in a turret room in an old Victorian house in Townshend that belonged to a 90-

year-old widower. After he died, his daughters asked me stay on until they sold the
house. Then I was invited to live here, in this simple room in an old farmhouse on

Newfane Hill. The kind lady who owns the house and lives downstairs teaches art to
children. She let me choose my own rent, and said if I couldn’t pay it I could stay on
anyway. I have been here 15 years, and wrote both my books at this Vermont maple

table which I got for $19 at auction. I love every stream, pond, river, tree and hill that
surrounds us.

E.M. At home in Vermont and at ease in the world. Thank you very much,
Theresa!

Marino: …An Interview with Theresa Maggio 125