This edition of NYSV features content posted last week by Vermont media outlets. I did most of the groundwork last weekend, and then other stuff intervened — a pair of more timely items and a bit of semi-elective surgery, to be specific. So here it is, finally. And once again, these pieces were posted in the last full week of September. Mostly.

Hey look, another local newspaper! Somehow I had never heard of The North Star Monthly, published in Danville, Vermont. That is, until it won a big fat award from the New England Newspaper Association. The Monthly took home NENPA’s “Newspaper of the Year” award in the Specialty Publications category. I will definitely add it to my list of Vermont media sources.

Other Vermont publications receiving hardware included The Vermont Standard of Woodstock, which will feature a bit later in this post, and Usual Suspects VTDigger and Seven Days. Vermont dailies were shut out of the awards for Daily Newspaper which, considering the quality of most of ’em, isn’t much of a surprise. The closest dailies to get NENPA recognition were The Keene Daily Sentinel (Keene, NH) and The Berkshire Eagle (Pittsfield, MA).

The Old Guy’s Still Got It. If Mike Donoghue did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. The former Burlington Free Press fixture is now a freelancer who focuses mainly on cops and courts, and has a knack for swooping in and grabbing scoops from under the noses of established outlets. This time he scored a pair of stories about Windsor County Sheriff Ryan Palmer, commissioned and published by The Vermont Standard.

Palmer took office after upsetting 34-year incumbent Michael Chamberlain in 2022, and he seems to be having trouble with the finer points of the office. Donoghue discovered that Palmer had failed to properly register at least seven of his officers, which means they were never formally commissioned. After Donoghue’s initial story, which is now buried in The Standard’s unwieldy website, Palmer started getting his ducks in a row. He has since begun to go through the required process for at least some of the unregistered deputies. But as Donoghue reports, the question remains: “What impact the lack of recorded appointments would have on pending criminal charges in Vermont Superior Court, and even recent criminal convictions during 2 ½ years that Palmer has served as county sheriff.” Yikes.

Sticker shock in J-ville. The News & Citizen’s Aaron Calvin (of course) reports that Jeffersonville has imposed breathtaking rate increases on town water users. “Capacity concerns with Jeffersonville’s water source” led to a 2018 state-mandated moratorium on new connections to the village’s water system. That means virtually no new construction… which means the village has no choice but to recoup all costs from existing customers. The result, after years of trying to trim expenses: “The village increased water rates by a whopping 49% this year alone.” Village officials have been trying to identify new water sources, so far with no success. Ouch.

Super Sidebars. Double honors to Paul Fixx of The Hardwick Gazette, including one from this week’s issue, for adding value and perspective via the sidebar. Last week, The Gazette ran a story from VTDigger about the state ethics commission punting on giving advice about local ethics issues because the Legislature didn’t give the commission enough resources to do the job. Fixx posted a sidebar about the ethics policies in The Gazette’s 11 communities. Not the deepest of dives, but it took commitment and provided valuable context to Gazette readers.

This week, as previously noted, The Gazette scooped the entire Vermont journalism community on the detention of nine people by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Hardwick. Fixx not only pulled off the scoop, but he posted a meaty sidebar about what people should and shouldn’t do if they think a federal bust is going down. It was definitely a case of “news you can use.”

Some towns take themselves waaaaaay too seriously. From professional eye-roller Shawn Cunningham of The Chester Telegraph comes word of what must have been a soul-crushing meeting of the town’s Planning Commission. At issue: Should Green Mountain Union High School be allowed to put up an LED sign out front? And as with seemingly every piddly zoning issue, it’s not at all as simple as it ought to be. I mean, why shouldn’t a school have an electric sign? It’s not like Weed-A-Rama wants to open a store on the town green with a fully-lit sign featuring a pair of Cheech and Chong characters partaking of the sacred herb. But as Cunningham reports, the issue has “been on [the commission’s] radar for a while,” and now appears “a bit more complex than originally believed.” I realize why communities need to have standards, but c’mon now, really?

Local papers are about connecting the community. Coverage of town meetings and the occasional ICE raid are necessary, but so are the stories about real people that knit a newspaper’s community together. We’ve got two entries in this category. First, The Commons’ Joyce Marcel relates the story of Michael Winot, who’s celebrating the 40th anniversary of his heart transplant. He has, Marcel writes, “been living with a donor heart longer than almost anyone else in the world.”

Winot is now 58; the original transplant happened, 58 minus 40, when he was 18 years old. And now he’s on the transplant list again, which doesn’t faze him one bit. He’s never let his health, better or worse, affect how he’s lived his life. Marcel:

He has been part of the NewBrook Fire Department for 42 years and is the assistant fire chief. He has raced into burning buildings, rescued people from icy waters, inhaled smoke, responded to car accidents, and restored dying patients’ heartbeats with CPR while holding on for dear life in a rushing ambulance.

He works for the Newfane road crew, maintaining roads, plowing, and grading. He hunts and fishes. He has done excavation work. He sugars.

Pardon, but I feel a twinge in my neck. Ow. Gonna go lie down for a while.

Finally, from The Addison Independent, a story that appears in digital form without a byline about Diana Fanning, who’s celebrating “her 50th anniversary as an Affiliate Artist at Middlebury College” with a solo concert on Saturday evening in Robison Hall. (Here’s the link, although you will probably encounter a paywall.) Fanning has no plans to slow down; she’ll continue to teach “as long as students are interested in learning from me.” As for her approach to performing:

“It’s a big responsibility to get up in front of an audience and perform a piece of music — it’s scary. It takes courage,” Fanning said. “But it’s not about you — how fast your fingers go or whether you miss notes — it’s about what kind of experience the audience has. Will they love it? Will they understand what you’re trying to say? Will they understand what the composer is trying to say?”

Beautiful stuff. Wish I could be there.