Welcome to Rumble to Rumble Strip, this is Erica Heilman. It's been dark here for a long time.

It's dark when I get up and dark most days and then dark again around 5 o'clock.

My friend said I should go to a tanning booth. That is the

sound of my tanning machine. Every year I forget how this goes that by around the third week in January, it's like I'm seeing everything and every one through the wrong end of a telescope.

A telescope draped in a dirty sheet.

I stopped wanting to answer the phone. I have a

hard time picking out a serial at the store. A lot of mornings it just seems

easier to wear what I wore to bed. Not everyone in Vermont is like this. I'm not saying it happens to everyone.

When he first announced that he said Muslim ban. He called me up, he said, put a commission together,

show me the right way to do it legally.

After Trump's first week in office, I feel worse than most years, and actually the whole world seems on edge.

It seems like no one can decide how to help or what to do,

or how much to look or look away.

I ended up at Duncan Donuts and Barry.

Duncan Donuts and the library are the last two public places in most towns around here,

where everyone's welcome, and no one wonders how long you'll be there.

For about a dollar, you can stay atin Donuts as long as you want.

I went there to talk with people, not about Trump necessarily,

but about how their lives are going and whether they fit into this famous

middle class we keep hearing so much about.

Also I went there because in January in Vermont it's good to sit in a bright place with a cup of

coffee and talk with strangers. So yeah, I've worked in the granted industry my whole life and now I go out and go to the cemeteries and mainly my work is adding on death dates and I find

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