Dear Editor, Recreational marijuana is legal in Vermont. 4/20 Day promotes a growing industry nationwide. Cannabis companies leverage the day as another opportunity to promote the industry and its products, similar to alcohol companies during the Super Bowl or St. Patrick’s Day.   These events have long moved past being counterculture protests. It’s a growing…

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 1 office and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) honored 11 New England companies and organizations, including Efficiency Vermont, as Energy Star partners for their outstanding leadership in promoting energy efficiency and tackling climate change, according to a news release March 28. “As we accelerate historic efforts to address…

I started playing competitive basketball when I was in the fifth grade. That was the first year where the elementary schools in my town (of which there were many) formed a league for intramural play. I competed for Dana School, which was located a few blocks up the road from where I lived.  I started…

I’m often tempted to peek at the eggs inside a phoebe’s nest when the parents leave it to forage for food. I’ve picked up a fallen robin’s egg shell and admired its delicate color and smoothness. I’ve marveled at the primal determination of the chick that pecked its way out of an egg to become…

Careful what you wish for, because you just might get it. I’m sure that’s a phrase you’re familiar with. This week, agreeable Venus shifts signs from where she’s strong, stable and secure to where she’s adaptable, curious and more easily influenced. Sure, the social mood may become lighter and more fluid, but are you actually…

By Liz DiMarco Weinmann  Over the past three years Vermont has thrived as a national example of doing the right things for our most vulnerable populations, and it’s our state’s nonprofits that deserve much of the credit.  Combating such perils as food insecurity, inadequate shelter, domestic violence, and other threats many Vermonters experience on a…

State Auditor Doug Hoffer released a new audit March 29 examining the Department of Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living’s performance inspecting long-term care homes housing vulnerable older Vermonters. The audit found that across seven years DAIL, as the department is called, was not performing annual facility inspections as required by law and rarely used enforcement…

By Lola Duffort/VTDigger A last-minute amendment tacked on to the Vermont House’s $8.5 billion state budget bill, H.494, would reallocate $20 million set aside for child care to house and provide services for certain unhoused Vermonters now living in hotels. A pandemic-era program housing about 2,800 people experiencing homelessness in hotels ran out of federal funding March 31, and…

We didn’t have time to practice so this first time was going to have to be the best time. Well, you don’t get to really practice anyways because it’s not like you can go in and use the hibachi tables while no one is looking. The only experience you can garner is from watching the hibachi…

After a 5 year hiatus due in part to Covid, the incredible Iron Chef Competition returned to Sushi Yoshi, Sunday, April 2. This year's charity event benefitted Joe Ceccacci and his dog Arlo who were involved in a car accident on the Pass this past December. Judges were DJ Dave, KO, Joe, Bud and Maggie.…

Bring in the bird feeders – and other ways to avoid bear-human conflict It is a question I face each year as March winds into April: when to take down the bird feeder. Our avian feeding station is basic: a single run-of-the-mill hopper, which I fill with a local mix of seed that seems to…

If you went to school in the Rutland area chances are your school yearbook is on the website of the Rutland Historical Society. Looking at it online allows you to visually reconnect with your high school days. I sit at a breakfast table weekly with some classmates and this often results in a “verbal reconnect”…

The sky has been on regular programming for a while now, but that all begins to change now that it’s April. Communication, planning and logistics planet, Mercury, enters Taurus – an annual occurrence. This year though, rather than spending threeish weeks there, we get two months of mayhem, thanks to the trickster heading in reverse…

By Dom Cioffi In 1977, Hall of Fame baseball player Reggie Jackson was traded to the New York Yankees, signing an unprecedented $3 million deal for five years. The trade was all the buzz in the MLB, but was particularly strong in the Northeast where fans live and die for their respective sports teams and…

By Anna Morris Among the very earliest signs of spring are the strange caterwauls of the barred owls that haunt our woods: “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?” Their hooted conversations, thrown back and forth through forests all over New England, signal the territory disputes, nest-site advertisement, and pair bonding that begin…