Keeping your community covered. We're committed to producing high-quality, fact-based news and information that gives you the facts in this community we call home. If our work has helped you stay informed, take action, or feel more connected to Windham County – please give now to help us reach our goal of raising $150,000 by December 31st.
Keeping your community covered. We're committed to producing high-quality, fact-based news and information that gives you the facts in this community we call home. If our work has helped you stay informed, take action, or feel more connected to Windham County – please give now to help us reach our goal of raising $150,000 by December 31st.
For many, the high school years are an emotional minefield. Some manage to navigate it successfully. Others are scarred for life by the experience.
And for those who do not identify as heterosexual, the high school years can be pure hell.
The recent spate of news coverage of the suicides of six gay youths around the country has focused attention on the plight of LGBTQ youth - those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, otherwise describe themselves as “queer,” or still question their sexual identity. Their struggles in a setting where being different is fodder for bullying, or worse.
Disproportionately, young people who identify as other than straight kill or attempt to kill themselves.
New England has a long and rich history of ghosts and unexplained events, and the valley around the Great Falls is no different. The Commons chased down a couple of ghost stories and was invited along to photograph spirits. You make up your own mind whether you believe or...
The Vermont Department of Labor (VDOL) says the unemployment rate for Vermont is 6 percent, as of August. However, that figure does not count those who have maxed out their unemployment benefits and extended benefits, or those who have become disillusioned or depressed and have given up looking for...
“It's time to move on to something else.” That's what Walter Slowinski, M.D., said of his Oct. 22 departure from the Putney Medical Office, where he has been practicing for the last 12 years. Slowinski said his decision has nothing to do with finances and everything to do with wanting to focus on his lifelong passion for making clay pots, developing a web presence to market them, finding galleries to carry his ceramics, and “moving [his] work out into the...
Over a lunchtime conversation at Our Place Drop-In center, chef Matt and volunteer Kenny both acknowledge their homelessness at one point in their lives, saying that is at least part of why they work and volunteer at Our Place - they know and understand the need people have for such a place. Our Place Drop-In Center is on 4 Island St., and provides two meals four days a week. It also has a food shelf, a shower and a telephone.
For the second straight year, men, women and children who have no place else to go on cold nights in winter will have at least a floor to sleep on and warm shelter overnight in Bellows Falls. The village's overnight shelter will open on Nov. 15, if all goes according to plan, according to Louise Luring of Our Place Drop-In Center and who also serves on the shelter steering committee. Alpha G Corporation is renting space for the overnight shelter...
The great flood of 1927 wiped out many roads and bridges around Vermont. The reconstruction work that followed this disaster gave the state better, smoother roads and made driving hilly, sometimes mountainous byways, more comfortable and accessible by car. As roads were paved, touring families loaded into their cars and viewed “the best foliage” on routes that appear in the Federal Writers Project's 1937 guidebook Vermont: A Guide to the Green Mountain State. In southern Vermont, one “loop tour” from...
“I can't in good conscience state that there are gangsters operating in Bellows Falls.” That's what Police Chief Ron Lake said in response to rumors that had been circulating online about alleged members of a “White Russians gang” in recent arrests as part of a drug raid, and other allegations that some young people in town have joined gangs. Lake cautioned that one can't judge on looks alone whether someone is a gang member or not. In the case of...
