'What Makes Vermont Special' We just want to thank you for writing about country stores ["If We Don't Have It, You Don't Need It," March 12]. In February, we went to the Wayside Country Store in West Arlington, which you featured. We had not been there before, but we had a wonderful conversation wit h Nancy Tschorn, and I asked the group of old coffee drinkers around the table if they were the "government in exile." They laughed. We have been to many of these stores around the state, and I think they are part of what makes Vermont special. I would encourage all your readers to support them whenever possible. Thanks for all your good work. Robert Fuller and Alyson Parker Lincoln COVID-19 Was 'The Twilight Zone' The pandemic was more than simply "blurry" ["Viral Stories: The Vermont Historical Society Unveils Its COVID-19 Oral History Project With a New Book Edited by Garrett Graff" and From the Publisher: "Five Years ... and Counting," March 12]. It was an episode of "The Twilight Zone," a pile of contradictions flirting with mass insanity. Disinfecting my groceries in those first weeks because someone on TV recommended it. Then losing my job — four months into "15 days to slow the spread." A café refusing my cash because it could be infected but keeping their tip jar. Following colored arrows on floors — because science — only to read Dr. Anthony Fauci's statement, years later, that they just made up that six-foot stuff. Picking up a mask at the hospital, then reading on the box, "Not intended to provide protection against biological pathogenic airborne particulates." Wearing a mask to enter a restaurant only to remove it at the table. Seeing so many people masked all alone in their cars. Watching the rollout of myriad vaccine "incentives," from free junk food to million-dollar lotteries to (for some) getting fired if you decline. Hearing Vermont's health commissioner proclaim our nation-leading vaccination rate and "wall of immunity" "even if it's a variant" — and then reading, six months later, about record cases from the next variant. Hearing experts and pundits push vaccination to stop the spread, only for them to eventually say, with straight faces, that the vaccines actually weren't designed for that. The world tumbled into its "new normal" orbit, an ordeal dotted with paradoxes amid the suffering. It kicked off a decade that only grows… ...read more read less