Dear Mistress,... Read more

6/15/13: Local Motion supporters gathered at the "cut" to celebrate the reopening of the Island Line Trail bike ferry on Saturday. Record flooding in 2011 severely eroded the trail and put the bike ferry out of commission for two years. TAGS: burlington, business, champlain islands, colchester, culture, environment, fitness, health, health & fitness, history, outdoors, sports, stuck in vermont, tourism, transportation, video, water, weather

No matter how you look at it, irony abounds in the very public leadership feud that engulfed the state’s second largest labor union last week.

The board of the Vermont State Employees Association, which represents some 5200 state workers, voted 10-6 last Wednesday to fire executive director Mark Mitchell. Just five days later, the board reversed course — voting 10-7 to reinstate the union boss and put him on paid leave, pending an investigation.

What’s so ironic about that? ... Read more

It is easy to take the music community for granted. Familiarity even sometimes breeds contempt — or at least apathy. But if that closeness can be suffocating, it is also an asset. It’s what makes Burlington, well, Burlington. And sometimes it takes a tragedy to remind us of that. ... Read more

(Self-released, CD, digital download)

Armed with just an acoustic guitar and a pleasant voice, Burlington-based songwriter Hana Zara might seem to be cut from the same time-honored cloth as countless idealistic coffee-house songwriters before her. Zara may hold high ideals, but as her new album Tatterhood reveals, she is not your average folkie.... Read more

(State & Main Records, CD, digital download)... Read more

“Grow or die” would be too stark a way to describe the options facing Burlington College, according to President Christine Plunkett. But “we do need to grow,” she conceded in an interview last week.

To achieve that goal, one of the country’s smallest higher-education institutions plans to triple its enrollment and build housing for more than 200 students on the North Avenue property it purchased two years ago from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington for a cool $10 million.... Read more

Should a tattoo of a Japanese koi fish or a Chinese character disqualify a would-be state trooper from patrolling Vermont’s highways? Right now it could. Since 2007, the Vermont State Police has banned visible tattoos on troopers.... Read more

Long before he became entangled in a messy land dispute with an East Montpelier neighbor, Gov. Peter Shumlin spent three decades building a real estate empire from his hometown of Putney. ... Read more

A blackboard out front advertises sautéed free-range chicken livers. In many small Vermont towns, this might be more discouraging than enticing. But this is Montgomery Center, the town that was once home to Zack’s on the Rocks. And in some ways, a new establishment simply known as the Inn is the inheritor of Zack’s purple robes.... Read more