Vermont Edition

With America’s 250th, there’s been a lot of focus on Vermont’s early history. You can always read about it in a book, but historical reenactors are out there bringing those stories back to life. Today on Vermont Edition, we go back in time with two members of Whitcomb’s Rangers. These Revolutionary War reenactors portray an actual Continental Army Ranger unit. They’ll tell us about their upcoming...

Summer in our region provides many opportunities to see live music outdoors. This year, Montréal’s summer festival season is more packed than ever. Vermont Edition’s managing producer Jon Ehrens sits down with Seven Days music editor Chris Farnsworth to discuss the Montreal music scene writ large, and some of Chris's favorite new acts.  We also explore the curious case of the anonymous duo Angine...

Brattleboro Memorial Hospital plans to close its labor and delivery unit within the next year. As other rural hospitals scale back on maternity care, what will fill in the gap?  Today on Vermont Edition: the cost — and curtailing — of rural maternity care. In the last 5 years, around 140 rural hospitals nationwide have stopped delivering babies, including Copley Hospital, in Lamoille County. We'll...

Vermont’s dairy industry has constricted dramatically over the last decade. According to data from UVM Extension, there were 838 dairy farms a decade ago. That number dropped to 414 at the start of this year. Current projects indicate that another 50 will close by the end of this year.  The processing sector is consolidating, too. Last month, Franklin Foods announced it’s closing its dairy process...

About 150 Vermonters are incarcerated in Mississippi. Brave Little State explains why.

Today is the latest installment in our monthly series, Town by Town. Each month, we hone in on a different town or municipality in the state.  This month, we're shining a light on Middlesex in Washington County. Fitting for a town with the word “middle” in its name, Middlesex is in central Vermont along I-89 and Route 2. It has a reputation as a commuter town where lots of people who live there wo...

UVM Health, Vermont’s largest health care provider, needs to reduce expenses by at least 300 million dollars over the next three years. That's the recommendation an independent liaison team sent to the hospital network and state regulators in May.  This comes on top of major revenue losses due to Medicaid changes.   This past month, 76 jobs were permanently eliminated earlier this month at UVM Hea...

This hour, Vermont Edition brings you the stories of three creative people in our region and their new projects. We begin with Richard Hawley of Ripton. He recently celebrated the publication of the seventh volume of his series On My Way Out: A Reflection on Closure . A mixture of memoir, diary and philosophical musings, the book explores such topics as mortality, retirement and friendship. Musici...

As it turns out, many people visit the Green Mountain state just to tee off here. We’ll parse over the numbers, and discuss how the golf industry is attempting to counter perceptions that it's not ecologically friendly and a sport just for the elite.  Joining us to discuss the sport are David Jankowski , president of the Vermont PGA , and Mark Finch , director of grounds at Country Club of Vermont...

In the latest installment of our series, Vermont Edition At Home, we head to the Montpelier home of writer Katherine Paterson .  The award-winning author has written more than 40 books, including The Great Gilly Hopkins , Jacob Have I Loved , Bread and Roses Too , among many others. Her best-known book, Bridge to Terabithia , was adapted into a Hollywood movie in 2007. Paterson is one of only six...

Earlier this year, Vermont’s first director of animal welfare, Lisa Milot , released a report on how the state responds to animal welfare and cruelty cases. She discussed plans to modernize the system, emphasizing the need for clearer standards, stronger enforcement and additional resources. We also heard from Medora Plimpton , who runs Howling Mountain Wildlife Rescue from her home in Starksboro....

A new graphic novel tells the story of Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake, two seamstresses in 1800s Addison County. The two women lived together as a couple for nearly half a century, and they were accepted and beloved by their community. They're buried under the same gravestone in Weybridge. Norwich cartoonist Tillie Walden tells this love story in her new historical graphic novel 'Charity & Sy...

This Friday is Juneteenth, a holiday marking the date that some of the last enslaved people in the Confederacy received word that they were free. Juneteenth celebrations date back to the 1860s, but it didn’t become a federal holiday in 2021. Now, communities across our region mark Juneteenth with storytelling events, speaker series, community meals and music . The Highland Center for the Arts in G...

The FIFA World Cup is underway in stadiums across the US, Canada and Mexico. Toronto and Vancouver in Canada are two of the World Cup host cities. For Vermonters, the closest place to see a match is Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass. It’s been temporarily renamed Boston Stadium for the duration of the Cup, on FIFA’s insistence. Giving us the lowdown on Boston is GBH News reporter Esteban Bustil...

Burlington High School says goodbye to its Macy's location

Howard Dean is a former Vermont governor, presidential candidate and Democratic National Committee chair. But before all that, he was just a local physician who really wanted Burlington to have a bike path. In the latest installment of our occasional series Vermont Edition At Home, Howard Dean invites us into his living room in Burlington.  He talks candidly about his upbringing in New York and hi...

The U.S. Mint ceased making new pennies in November. Our humble, one-cent, copper-and-zinc coin can still be used as currency, but its circulation will dwindle in the years ahead. Vermont's first coin — before it became a U.S. state — was also made of copper. These coins date back to days of the Green Mountain Boys, when Vermont was its own republic. Historian Jon Mathewson of Middletown Springs s...

Need a book recommendation? Check out Vermont Edition's summer reading list

Battery energy storage systems — BESS — are popping up across the country. They strengthen the electrical grid by storing energy and releasing it at high demand times, and can lower energy costs for customers. But some neighbors of some proposed facilities have concerns about safety and aesthetics. In Vergennes, residents are pushing back against plans by the company Lightshift to build one on Pan...

It's is the latest installment of our Town by Town series. where every month, we take an hour to learn about a randomly selected town or city in Vermont, with the goal of hitting all 252 of them. Today: Brattleboro, in Windham County. Home to a little over 12,000 people, making it one of the larger municipalities in the state. The town sits right along the Connecticut River. It was named after Col...

Design-build architects are trained not just to envision a home or structure, but to build it themselves and to improvise based on their on-site experiences. For years this movement centered around Prickly Mountain in Warren. A handful of visionary young architects moved to Vermont’s Mad River Valley in the 1960s to explore the more creative and experimental aspects of homebuilding.  Waitsfield fi...

First, we're joined by Vermont's Attorney General Charity Clark , who discusses her ongoing legal battle against Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. Then, a roundtable of historians and curators discuss the events going on around the state this summer to commemorate the 250th birthday of America. We're joined by Stephen Perkins of the Vermont Historical Society, Angie Grove of the...

The Vermont Legislature adjourned for the session Friday evening after Democratic lawmakers and Gov. Phil Scott reached an agreement on education reform. Lawmakers also passed a budget bill and a yield bill to set tax rates, and Gov. Scott is expected to sign all three.  To help us make sense of this sessions' hot topics are a trio of Vermont Public statehouse reporters: Peter Hirschfeld and Lola...

What hours of bodycam footage reveal about ICE operations in Vermont

Have you ever thought about just how many insect species call your yard home? There are thousands of species to discover just outside your door. The app iNaturalist lets users upload photos to identify insects, animals, fungi and more. Each iNaturalist entry helps the team at the Vermont Center for Ecostudies (VCE) catalogue every living species in the Vermont Atlas of Life .  Two VCE biologists d...