Craig Anderson sold the first acoustic guitar he ever built — what was left of it — for a hundred bucks. It was made of bocote, a gold-colored wood that smells like dill pickles when it’s cut. The sound was “kinda thuddy,” as Anderson remembers it, but the guitar looked good and played in tune. It ended up in a craft show, where the heat from the display lamps reduced the instrument to scrap.... Read more

John Abele was 5 years old when his mother Catherine received the telegram from Washington, D.C. It was September 29, 1942.

“The Navy Department deeply regrets to inform you that your husband Lieutenant Commander Mannert Lincoln Abele United States Navy is missing . . .”... Read more

You won’t see Joshua B. Lobe in a courtroom very often. But he’s practicing as much law as any attorney in Vermont these days.... Read more

Governor Jim Douglas was well on his way to a fourth term November 4 when the IBM microchip plant in Essex Junction announced it was laying off 100 contract workers.

The election-day purge brings to 280 the number of IBM workers let go in 2008. The total number of manufacturing jobs lost this year, including a series of layoffs by a half-dozen other Vermont companies, tops out at nearly 600. ... Read more

Ken Libertoff had his jacket on and was almost out the door late one Friday afternoon when the phone rang in his office at the Vermont Association of Mental Health in Montpelier.

The caller was a nurse at Northeast Kingdom Human Services in Newport, and she was frantically searching for a psychiatrist to see one of the center’s clients. Libertoff is head of the leading advocacy group for the mentally ill in Vermont, but he’s not in the business of making referrals.... Read more

The U.S. prides itself on exporting democracy, but it’s not so great at getting ballots into the hands of its own citizens overseas. Two years ago, in the 2006 elections, Americans in foreign countries requested one million absentee ballots, but only one third of them — representing 5.5 percent of all eligible overseas voters — were actually counted, according to the federal Election Assistance Administration. Two-thirds of the uncounted ballots never reached the voters who requested them; another 10 percent arrived too late.... Read more

Mark Crispin Miller has a theory about why John McCain picked Sarah Palin to be his vice-presidential running mate.

It’s grounded in two bits of conventional wisdom. First, that George W. Bush was re-elected in 2004 thanks to a huge turnout of Christian “values voters”; second, that should McCain win the White House, it will be because Palin was able to mobilize that same constituency.... Read more

After failing to get a response from Burton Snowboards, citizens and anti-violence groups intend to express their displeasure with two controversial product lines by taking their complaints to the company’s front door.... Read more

The Calkins natural area, in South Burlington, is a gently rolling expanse of wildflowers, hardwood forest and wetlands. Voters approved the city’s purchase of the 110-acre property, at the corner of Dorset and Swift streets, in 1992 with the understanding that it would be set aside for recreation. Sixteen years later, South Burlington’s comprehensive land-use plan still envisions nothing more intrusive than the “unpaved walking trails” that now meander through the area.... Read more

At least two anti-violence organizations have asked to meet with representatives of Burton Snowboards to urge the company to stop selling product lines that feature nude women and self-mutilation.... Read more