@Normal= @Normal=[S"","Normal","Normal"]<*L*h"Standard"*kn0*kt0*ra0*rb0*d0*p(0,0,0,0,0,0,g,"U.S. English")> @body=[S"","body"]<*L*h"Standard"*kn0*kt0*ra0*rb0*d0*p(0,0,0,12,0,0,g,"U.S. English")Ps100t0h100z10.5k0b0cKf"AGaramond-Regular"> @body:<\<>he D.C. snipers were in the headlines one year ago Wednesday. But that doesn<\#146>t mean the smaller stories of the day went unreported. All over America, 529 women were writing about their lives, documenting the 24-hour period in day-diary form at the invitation of three Vermont editors. Thirty-five of their accounts are gathered in This Day: Diaries from American Women.<$> <\#147>The biggest surprise was how readily women agreed to do this for us,<\#148> says Joni Cole, one of three Dartmouth-educated women who put the book together. <\#147>I love the validation that Miss America signed on as well as the President of N.O.W.<\#148> Also the infertile CEO of Frederick<\#146>s of Hollywood and a female prisoner convicted of killing her own children. It doesn<\#146>t get much more diverse than that. <\#147>You just don<\#146>t have a clue about other people<\#146>s lives,<\#148> says Cole, suggesting the appeal of a readable reality show is <\#147>part voyeurism and part inspiration. We get to satisfy our curiosity about other people, but we also get to see if we<\#146>re normal.<\#148> In fact, Cole came up with the idea for the book during a bad patch in her own life. She asked a few friends exactly what they were doing <\m> and feeling <\m> all day, and <\#147>the responses they sent back were illuminating,<\#148> Cole writes in the introduction. <\#147>Part itinerary, part journal, these <\#145>day diaries<\#146> revealed their lives from the inside out <\m> showing not only how they spent their time but what was in their head and hearts.<\#148> Short-term, it was comforting. Long-term, it turned into a book project with co-editors B.K. Rakhra and Rebecca Joffrey. There are plenty of frazzled females in the paperback pages of This Life.<$> But also a day in the life of a woman preparing to end her marriage and straight talk from a devoted caregiver whose ALS-afflicted husband criticizes her care. Anatomy professor Jean Szilva of Winooski is the book<\#146>s sole Vermonter. The hour-by-hour format encourages a simple sincerity not often associated with self-conscious <\#147>journaling.<\#148> No, that doesn<\#146>t make a Celine Dion-loving Miss America any more interesting as she recaps a day of phone interviews from a hotel room. But her celebrity status may help sell a few more books. Ditto sitar player Anoushka Shankar. For the most part, the women featured in This Day<$> are <\#147>ordinary people,<\#148> as Cole puts it, noting that aspect of the book kept big-name publishers away. They<\#146>re missing out, and so are all those women who think they<\#146>re alone out there. <\#147>One of the strengths of fiction is that you get to share somebody else<\#146>s perspective. You can never do that in real life. The closest you can come is to read their diary,<\#148> Cole asserts. <\#147>A diary, unlike a memoir, really does feel more spontaneous, more candid, more unprotected, closer to the bone<\#148> . . . If honesty is a prerequisite for a one-day diary project, a five-day assignment calls for a real writer. That<\#146>s why the online magazine Slate<$> recruited Sue Halpern to be its featured <\#147>diarist<\#148> last week. It was good timing for the Ripton writer, a Guggenheim-winning author-journalist who is married to Middlebury scholar Bill McKibben. Her first novel, The Book of Hard Things,<$> just came out and there<\#146>s an ad for it at the end of every column on Slate<$>. Better promotion still is the writing itself. Halpern<\#146>s narrative in five installments weaves together the Red Sox drama, a persistent car salesman, Howard Dean, parenting, foliage and family reactions to her book. Her mother asks, <\#147>I thought most novels were 600 pages long. How come yours is so short?<\#148> It<\#146>s the funny, deep and engaging journal you wish<$> you could write. @$:<*ra0*rb0*p(0,0,0,12,0,0,g,"U.S. English")><\>> india inc.<$z10.5f"AGaramond-Regular"> Improving the lives of women in India is a pressing matter for Evan Goldsmith. When he<\#146>s not managing projects for the Vermont Forum on Sprawl, the South Burlington resident is trying to crack U.S. markets for a group of craftswomen who make pressed-flower greeting cards in the foothills of the Himalayas. Goldsmith founded <\#147>Hope for Women<\#148> in conjunction with an Indian nonprofit. <\#147>The idea was to create job opportunities so indigenous women can educate their children and take control of their lives and future,<\#148> Goldsmith says. He<\#146>s already selling the product on www.hopeforwomen.com, where you can buy boxes of eight for $16.95. The next step is finding regular retail outlets. Write on. and then there was one... <$z10.5f"AGaramond-Regular">A Single Pebble thrived in two locations <\m> Berlin and Burlington <\m> for a year and a half. But the co-owners of Vermont<\#146>s best Chinese restaurant, Steve Bogart and Phil Gentile, recently decided close the older, smaller restaurant next to a bowling alley on the Barre-Montpelier Road. Manager Gentile sold out to chef Bogart, who will concentrate all his Chinese-cooking efforts in Burlington. The Queen City spot, which is newer, was turning the larger profit. But that wasn<\#146>t the only reason for the consolidation. <\#147>Both of us were racing back and forth,<\#148> says 56-year-old Gentile, who is looking for a new venture that doesn<\#146>t involve working weekends. <\#147>If we were in our thirties, we wouldn<\#146>t think twice about this.<\#148> m