Castleton Media and Communication Professor Dave Blow is passionate about many things, but at the very top of his list are his family, skiing, and telling a good story.
Blow, who graduated from Castleton in 1989, returned to teach the university’s journalism classes in 2005 after having spent 15 years as a reporter and editor for The Post Star newspaper in Glens Falls, New York. Although he traded in the newsroom for the classroom, Blow still regularly writes question and answer columns for The Post Star, as well as a ski column in the winter months.
“Skiing is a big passion of mine, plus I write about it so it kind of forces me to get out there a lot more and go to different mountains, because I don’t want to keep writing about the same ones,” he said.
Blow doesn’t stop at sharing the ski conditions at West Mountain though. Many of his other columns include anecdotes from time spent with his family. He openly shares peeks into his family life, including a recent father-daughter cruise, the time his (then) 75-year-old mother slid down an icy camp road on her Flexible Flyer metal runner sled, and even introducing readers to the family’s 17-year-old cat, Tia, who he jokingly says runs their household. One of Blow’s favorite columns is one he wrote from the perspective of his old baseball glove, the same glove his daughter was using to pitch softball.
“I share that in class and I still get emotional,” Blow said. “We still have that glove.”
Blow is, in many ways, the quintessential family man. His two daughters, Kirsti and Sarah, are now in college, leaving him and his wife, Tania, at home with the newest addition to their family — a dog named Bear — and, of course, Tia the cat. Blow and his daughters have bonded over a shared love of music in the last few years.
“I love hearing my daughter play music. My youngest daughter gets on stage with her often. Those are special moments,” he said.
With an empty nest, Blow will continue to fill his time with the other things that bring him joy: skiing on a fresh powder day, ice skating on the pond near his home, and finding new stories to tell.
“I like interviewing anybody. The guy that sells corn on the side of the road has been one of my favorite people to talk to,” he said. “I think everybody has a story, you just have to get them comfortable enough with you to tell it.”