Bordertown

Ginny Sassaman is a co-founder, past president, and advisory board member of Gross National Happiness USA , and the creator of the Happiness Paradigm. Since 2013, she has served as a lay preacher at Unitarian Universalist churches in Vermont, Massachusetts, Wisconsin and South Carolina. Originally from central Pennsylvania, Ginny and her husband spent many years living in Washington, DC, before se...

D. Davis is an amazing musician who has performed with a wide range of artists in Vermont since he arrived in Burlington in 1997. Originally from Brielle, NJ, D. grew up walking the beaches at the New Jersey Shore. Music was a big part of family life and Dee found joy in family music sessions including friends and family of all ages. In the podcast we talk about D.'s journey from NJ to Vermon...

Charlie Watt is the owner and operator of Home Coming Seeds , an open-pollinated seed farm specializing in vegetable, flower and herb seeds with a focus on bioregional adaptation.  Charlie was hired in May of 2023 to manage the Montpelier Community Feast Farm , a no-till farm run by the Parks and Trees Department in collaboration with Montpelier's Community Services Department. They grow fres...

Born and raised in New Jersey, Karen Hatcher spent much of her career, managing nonprofit organizations. She made her way to New England about 13 years ago and lives with her husband Mark who is a luthier. Since the flood of July 10th 2024, Karen, along with Michael Zahner, has been managing fundraising and grant coordination for disaster recovery in the town of Plainfield. An an October 9th, 2024...

Meg Mott has been called a Constitutional Wrangler, whose stated mission is “teach ordinary citizens how to think through the various constitutional issues in a specific controversy”. Meg is a writer, teacher and the town moderator of Putney, Vermont. She uses dynamic and innovative strategies to help people find a common language. After twenty years of teaching political theory and constitutional...

Don Taylor is a middle school educator at the Main Street Middle School (MSMS) in Montpelier, Vermont. After spending 17 years teaching language arts and social studies, Don was the driving force behind the creation of the MSMS_SUSTAIN program, which he co-directs with Drew McNaughton. MSMS_SUSTAIN is a learning program predicated on the belief that students of the 21st century must know and under...

Kianna Bromley is the Founder and Director of the Montpelier Performing Arts Hub . She has been involved in theater & performance throughout her life and attributes her love for theater (as well as her approach to theater, to the summer camp she attended throughout her childhood, The Young People’s Center for the Creative Arts in East Hampton Connecticut. Kianna came to Vermont to attend colle...

Professor Ben t. Matchstick founded Cardboard Teck Instantute in 2005. He is a performing artist working in the mediums of cardboard, games, and stories.  Ben has worked as a youth advocate, librarian, cafe owner , educator, puppeteer, artist, and entrepreneur in Vermont for 20+ years. He is the founder of Cardboard Teck Instantute. Ben is the co-creator (with Pete Talbot) of the award-winning Pin...

This week’s podcast is the Posthumous interview with Eric Zencey. Eric was a professor, writer and social critic. He passed on July 1st, 2019. Eric Zencey, novelist, essayist, lecturer, and social thinker was a tireless evangelist for a new way of thinking about humankind’s relationship with nature. Eric arrived in Vermont in 1980 to teach at Goddard College, quickly developing a deep love for his...

The Ecological Planning Laboratory (EPL) at the University of Vermont is a partnership between UVM Extension and the Field Naturalist Graduate program, in year two of a three-year pilot phase. The EPL helps communities tackle vital projects on their land, with an emphasis on social-ecological health at the watershed scale. As their website states, “sustaining momentum over years is often the great...

Paul Gambill is the Executive Director of the Community Engagement Lab . Their mission is to "bring people of all ages together in projects that activate their creativity to imagine and build more just and thriving communities". Their current project, The Montpelier Bridges to Belonging shares the stories that connect us to each other — and the stories that reveal where we need to build...

This episode features Paul Carnahan. Librarian of the Vermont Historical Society (VHS) from 1990 to 2022. Paul  currently serves on Montpelier’s Historic Preservation Commission and the board of the Montpelier Historical Society . He recently became part of Montpelier’s Commission for Recovery and Resiliency , offering a historical perspective on Montpelier, as the Commission envisions a resilient...

Today on the podcast we welcome Pat Moulton.  In November of 2023 Pat was appointed by Governor Phil Scott as the Central Vermont Recovery Officer for the State of Vermont. The Recovery Office is the state-level entity tasked with coordinating available federal funds and local mitigation and community revitalization work. Pat is the first geographic appointee to the office, focusing on central Ver...

Today we welcome Paul Costello, the former Executive Director of the Vermont Council on Rural Development . Paul retired from this position in 2021. Lifetime Vermonter, Paul dedicated most of his career to helping Vermont towns and cities build community, identify goals and visions and build strategies to accomplish these goals.  On July 11th, 2023, intense and widespread rainfall led to catastrop...

Today we welcome Jon Copans, the Executive Director of The Commission for Recovery & Resilience . On July 11th, 2023, intense and widespread rainfall led to catastrophic flooding throughout the state of Vermont, leaving the entire downtown of the capitol city, Montpelier, underwater. Immediately following the flood, Paul Costello, the former executive director of the Vermont Council on Rural D...

Today we welcome Hans Estrin from the University of Vermont’s Ecological Planning Laboratory. Hans talks about his childhood days in the Plainfield/Marshfield, VT area, describes the trajectory of his career and gives a glimpse of the Ecological Planning Laboratory emerging out the UVM. The Ecological Planning Laboratory helps communities tackle vital projects on their land, offering long-term sup...

Today on the podcast we welcome Ben Doyle and Aly Richards, from The Commission for Recovery and Resilience. On July 11th, 2023, intense and widespread rainfall led to catastrophic flooding throughout the State, leaving the entire downtown of the capitol city, Montpelier, underwater. As the flood-waters resided, Paul Costello, the former executive director of the Vermont Council on Rural Developme...

The Bordertown Flood series tells the stories of Central Vermonters experiencing the 2023 flood disaster. This episode features Beth Rusnock, president of the National Life Group Foundation and Daphne Larkin, Communications and Media Relations Director of the National Life Group . Beth Rusnock says that the National Life Group wants to make sure that "the communities that their campuses are a...

The Bordertown Flood series tells the stories of Central Vermonters experiencing the 2023 flood disaster. This episode feature Katie Trautz, the Executive Director of Montpelier Alive . Katie describes that Montpelier is not set-up as a resilient town in terms of systems,  however, the community is extremely song. And that community resilience is most important. Not every place has a community tha...

The Bordertown Flood series tells the stories of Central Vermonters experiencing the 2023 flood disaster.  Bill Fraser is the City Manager for Montpelier, Vermont, and has been in this role since 1995. The city manager is Appointed by the City Council, the City Manager is responsible for day-to-day operations of the city, advising the Council on public policy, and ensuring that their policies are...

The Bordertown Flood series tells the stories of Central Vermonters experiencing the 2023 flood disaster.  Jaquelyn Rieke is the owner/operator of the Onion River Campground, the founder of Nutty Steph’s and a co-founder of the Rabble-Rouser Chocolate & Craft Co. in Montpelier. Jaquelyn speaks of the lessons she learned from the river as it rose around her home, stranding her and several other...

The Bordertown Flood series tells the stories of Central Vermonters experiencing the 2023 flood disaster.  The Lost Nation Theater has been called “One of the Best Regional Theaters in America” — NYC Drama League. Incorporated in 1977 in Bristol Vermont, Lost Nation Theater moved to it’s home in Vermont in 1986 and has been a critical center-piece of the theater scene in Central Vermont ever since...

The Bordertown Flood series tells the stories of Central Vermonters experiencing the 2023 flood disaster.  Jaime Bedard. Jamie is the Executive Director of Just Basics , whose mission is to confront cycles of injustice by providing programs that increase awareness and access to basic resources needed for a resilient and vibrant community. Their main program is the Montpelier Food Pantry which had...

The Bordertown Flood series tells the stories of Central Vermonters experiencing the 2023 flood disaster.  Marek Zajac is the Farm & Forest Community Coordinator for the Montpelier Parks Department. He found himself at the center of volunteer activity as the City shifted the duties of the Parks Department to managing the volunteer HUB, the main focal point of disaster-response.   If you need f...

The Bordertown Flood series tells the stories of Central Vermonters experiencing the 2023 flood disaster.  Today we welcome Dan Groberg, who started his new job as Executive Director of the Kellogg Hubbard Library just 13 days before the flood. In the past Dan has also served as Executive Director of Montpelier Alive, the organization at the center of flood recovery and rebuilding. If you would li...