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Vermont is a small, out-of-the-way place, and if recent discussions about its future are any indication, its residents often wonder if their way of life is compatible with the rest of the country’s. No other state proudly trumpets the fact that a sitting president refuses to visit; none has argued so passionately for secession — a movement that surely embodies collective concern about whether the United States of America can live up to its good name. ... Read more

Ahmed Museh, 22, isn’t sure what to do when he graduates from Winooski High School next month. He’s thinking college, then the Air Force. It’s been four years since Museh came to the United States from Kenya, where he spent his adolescence in a refugee camp. He hasn’t applied to college yet, and he doesn’t have the money.... Read more

Larry Young has worked on Northeast Kingdom roads for 38 years, and in his experience, they've never been in worse condition. At a March 18 “speak-out” in the Statehouse cafeteria, the 61-year-old senior maintenance worker for the Agency of Transportation praised the dedication of his crew before several dozen lawmakers. Just last month, he noted, when storms dumped several feet of snow in the midst of a flu outbreak in their ranks, drivers showed up to plow the roads, even though many of them were sick.... Read more

When Sgt. Michael Johnson was struck and killed by a fleeing motorist on Interstate 91 in June 2003, the 39-year-old state trooper left a wife, two sons and a daughter behind. The driver who hit Johnson, 23-year-old Erik Dailey of Lebanon, New Hampshire, had liability insurance coverage that was limited to $25,000. Since Vermont self-insures its employees for injuries caused by uninsured or underinsured motorists, the most Johnson’s family could hope to recover from the state was $250,000.... Read more

Debbie DeCell isn’t exactly hard to find. She and her husband have lived at the same Essex Junction address since the early 1990s, and they’ve received daily delivery of The Burlington Free Press for more than 15 years. So DeCell was more than a little vexed last month when the daily newspaper stopped showing up on her doorstep.

When DeCell called the paper’s toll-free hotline, she encountered another problem: The operator had never heard of Essex Junction.... Read more

VERMONT — Lambasted by fellow leftists and union activists, Northeast Kingdom moviemaker Jay Craven now says he regrets recording a radio ad extolling FairPoint Communications for bringing high-speed Internet access to parts of rural Vermont.

And if FairPoint were to formally ask him to appear in TV ads — a proposition the North Carolina-based company had tentatively floated a few months ago — “I’d say no,” Craven adds.... Read more

BURLINGTON — Campus activists attempting to unionize some 1700 University of Vermont employees say union-busting campus administrators are standing in the way. UVM’s largest class of non-union workers —clerical, technical and professional staff — are being represented by a homegrown effort called United Staff @UVM.... Read more

For weeks now, some 12,000 Writers Guild of America (WGA) members have been marching along well-organized picket lines in Hollywood. One of them is former Swanton resident Blaise Hemingway, a graduate of Missisquoi Valley Union High School and SUNY Plattsburgh

The strike is hurting our entire community, Hemingway, 30, said last week via email from his home in Burbank, California. People are losing jobs. Films that people have struggled for years to make are dying. Were simply trying to stay positive and make an unfortunate situation bearable.... Read more

About two-dozen college students in various states of undress traipsed around the University of Vermont campus last Wednesday to draw attention to what they consider too-low wages for UVM workers. The protest, organized by the Student Labor Project, specifically targeted UVM President Dan Fogel, whose annual salary is $301,144. In contrast, some university workers earn as little as $9 per hour, the students pointed out. The procession made its way from the fourth floor of the Davis Center to the front door of Fogel’s office, where the nudies clanged pans and chanted.... Read more

MONTPELIER — You may not be getting tortured on the playground during second period, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t the target of a bully. In fact, some worker advocates estimate that millions of adults across the country — mostly women — are bullied by co-workers on a regular basis. What is worse, they say, is that victims have no legal recourse.... Read more