Before we get to the best of Vermont media, a reminder that many organizations have begun their end-of-year fundraising campaigns. In these uncertain times there are numerous causes clamoring for a share of your generosity. But please make room in your list for the news outlets you depend on, by subscribing or making a donation. They keep you informed about critical issues. They provide information you couldn’t get anywhere else. They connect us to our communities and to each other. Vermont is blessed to have a lot of local and statewide news operations, and all of them could use your help. Thank you for attending my Ted talk.

Two sides of the immigrant story. From The News & Citizen, two very different pieces, both by Aaron Calvin. First, he covers a “chaotic and violent” action by Customs and Border Parol — this time at a Jeffersonville gas station, where seven people were detained. And as usual, federal officials provided virtually no information about who the detainees were, what they had allegedly done, or where they were taken. Your tax dollars at work.

Second, Calvin writes about Tony and Joie Lehouillier, owners of Foote Brook Farm in Johnson, who have depended on Jamaican migrant workers for years. Those workers helped the farm recover from the July 2023 floods; the Lehouilliers paid it back this month after Hurricane Melissa wreaked havoc on the workers’ communities in Jamaica. They raised enough money to send each of their four employees home with $1,600, and will continue to send food and relief supplies as they are able. Gee, maybe migrant workers aren’t a nameless, faceless threat after all.

Well, Act 73 seems to be going swimmingly. The clumsily-monickered School District Redistricting Task Force has less than a month remaining before its deadline for delivering up to three new school district maps to the Legislature, and let’s just say it’s not going well. The Hardwick Gazette‘s Paul Fixx covers “a community conversation” about Act 73 held by three Hardwick-area school districts in which, as the headline puts it, “More Questions Than Answers” were on offer. “It was clear there are a lot of questions left to be answered as the process moves forward, even for Caledonia County Sen. Scott Beck, an insider to the process,” Fixx reported. Great.

And then comes the latest installment of “There’s No “A” in Creemee,” in which podcast co-hosts Andy Julow and Joanna Grossman reflect on attending a Task Force meeting in Chittenden County. It produced widespread confusion — not only in the audience, but on the task force itself. “I don’t think it’s going the way anybody hoped that it would, and it may have been too big a task,” said Julow. Grossman offered, “None of these ideas will save money, and nobody has shown evidence that they will.” So tell me again what the hell we’re doing? And is it too late to just pull the plug on Act 73?

SNAP from the front lines. One of the things local newspapers do for their communities is to bring informed community voices to readers. In this case, The Commons published an essay by Robyn Stires, head of the Mercy Ministries Food Pantry at Agape Christian Fellowship in Brattleboro. In a few short paragraphs, she delivered a straightforward, fact-based argument for the federal food aid program known as SNAP. You know the program Republicans would like to defund? She wrote that “Over 40 million Americans… rely on SNAP benefits each month,” and added:

This isn’t about laziness or “handouts.” It’s a reflection of a deeper reality – where the cost of living has outpaced wages, where housing swallows half a paycheck, and where even full-time workers can’t always afford a full cart of groceries.

A pianist’s remembrance of his father. David Goodman’s “Vermont Conversation” podcast took a break from politics this week, to bring us the story of pianist Adam Tendler, a Barre native who’s become a well-known figure in contemporary music. It’s an amazing story about his estrangement from his father, the bagful of cash he inherited, and how he used the money to commission a series of “little masterpieces” for solo piano on the subject of inheritance. Tendler is performing those pieces on Sunday afternoon at the Barre Opera House. After hearing the interview, I bought a couple of tickets and I’m really looking forward to the experience.

Strained Pun Headline alert. A couple weeks ago, The Barre Montpelier Times Argus brought us a story by indefatigable cops-and-courts specialist Mike Donoghue about a man from Connecticut charged with defrauding the Vermont state treasurer’s office by “using both mail and wire fraud to steal $467,067 from the [Treasurer’s] Unclaimed Property Division.” Donoghue’s story was also published elsewhere, but it was the brilliant minds at my hometown newspaper who came up with the headline “Conn. man pleads not guilty to defrauding State Treasurer’s office.”

“Conn. man” accused of fraud, eh? Methinks the headline writers were having a bit of fun.