Tag Archives: Hardwick Gazette

News You Should View: Podcasts & Chicken Soup

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This week’s edition of NYSV is a bit heavy on audio content and what we might call “human interest stories” — the inspiring features that are a staple of print journalism. Not the most earth-shattering content, but it’s an important aspect of a balanced news diet, especially when our plates are so often loaded down with heavy, indigestible fare.

There are quite a few podcasts in Vermont. The best are worth including in your regular rotation, and the others occasionally rise to that level. We’ve got some great examples this week, starting with (I think) the most gifted audio reporter in the state, Erica Heilman.

“Health Insurance is Hard.” That’s the title of Heilman’s latest “Rumble Strip” podcast. It’s more of an impressionist study in the frustrations of health care. And you can tell she’s an artist because she manages to get through an 18-minute story about bureaucratic hell without ever invoking the word “Kafkaesque.”

You could say this is about her friend Justin Lander’s effort to get health care without going bankrupt — or crazy. But it’s not a narrative. Heilman weaves together Justin’s words, exasperating voice mail, real live customer service staffers providing no actual customer service, and extensive use of the wallpaper “music” that serenades you while you’re on hold. It’s meant to be calming, but in Heilman’s piece it manages to be infuriating. Bernie was right: Medicare for all. (Bonus! The podcast opens with a rough-hewn but completely apropos “jingle” for her sponsor, East Hill Tree Farm.)

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News You Should View: There’s Some Good Stuff Out There

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Not much of a subtitle, sorry. More of a restatement of this weekly feature’s origin: Our media landscape may be vastly reduced from its former glory days, but there’s still some good stuff being produced that’s worth your time. This week’s haul…

Quite Literally Ripped from the Headlines. You won’t often find a summer theater company cited in this space, but one of the Weston Playhouse’s 2025 offerings is “A Distinct Society,” a new play set in the Haskell Free Library that centers around its unique straddle-the-border location. From the description: “When an Iranian father and his daughter, separated by the international border, start using the library as a meeting place, the denizens of this quiet sanctuary find their lives suddenly full of excitement and consequence.” Presumably the play was written before the recent crackdown at Haskell, but it seems all the more relevant right now. Excitement and consequence indeed. Performances from August 20-31.

Burlington Dems Get Fast and Loose with the Chats. For the second week in a row, Seven Days enters the honor roll for the kind of story that made its reputation: A public records request that uncovered extensive texts among Democratic members of City Council during 2024 meetings, including a lot of chatty, gossipy stuff and more than a few close brushes with open meetings law. The Dems, who have a working majority on Council, would often discuss tactics amongst themselves while taking part in a public meeting. Council President Ben Traverse says texting is “simply part of modern government,” but he also told his fellow Dems to cool their jets after Seven Days filed its public records request. Technically they’re not violating the law because there were only six Democrats on the 12-member Council but Independent Mark Barlow is a Dem in all but name, so if the letter of the law hasn’t been violated, the spirit of the law has gotten a damn good rogering.

Embezzlement in Hardwick? Really now. The Hardwick Gazette reports that a local woman embezzled thousands of dollars from three local nonprofit organizations. The victims included the East Hardwick Fire District (which has been reimbursed by the alleged thief), NEK Arts, and the Hardwick Downtown Partnership. The total involved was less than $20,000 all told, but you might expect that organizations in and around Hardwick would be a bit more careful after the infamous $1.6 million embezzlement case involving the Hardwick Electric Department. It’s been a while, but still. (Discloure: I serve on the board of Northeast Kingdom Public Journalism, which operates the Gazette. But I would have listed this story in any case.)

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