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By JIM KENYON

Mohsen Mahdawi was looking forward to a break from city life and spending a long holiday weekend at the hilltop cabin he built a few years ago in West Fairlee.With foliage season nearing its peak, Mahdawi expected to do some leaf peeping. He...

By JIM KENYON

When I met 16-year-old Hudson Ranney at the Boston Dreams coffee shop in Windsor, it was 10 in the morning and he was munching on a Moose Tracks ice cream cone while checking messages on his Apple Watch between bites.A stereotypical teen? No...

By JIM KENYON

It was bad enough that Dartmouth College President Sian Leah Beilock and her administration overreacted by having Hanover police arrest two students who were peacefully protesting on the lawn outside her office last month.Now it appears the...

By JIM KENYON

A recently constructed 10-foot high solid wooden wall runs the length of the property facing the highway. A private security force brought in from New York patrols the grounds 24/7 with holstered sidearms.After commandeering the former rest area on...

By JIM KENYON

About a week ago, I got a call from Raelene Lemery, who had bittersweet news. The nonprofit thrift shop on South Royalton’s main street that she’s run for 40 years is closing later this month.I say bittersweet because Lemery has been a one-person...

By JIM KENYON

The parade of white men chosen to serve as town manager in Vermont’s wealthiest community marches on. Brennan Duffy makes seven. For his sake, I hope seven is a lucky number.Since Norwich switched — with voters’ approval — to a town manager form of...

By JIM KENYON

More Upper Valley communities — big and small — could use a public meeting like the one that Hartland held last week.The topic was policing. How many cops, if any, does the town need? Can police serve as an effective deterrent to crime? Other than...

By JIM KENYON

When I stopped by the Carter Community Building in downtown Lebanon unannounced Friday, Jim Vanier had just finished sweeping the linoleum floor and tidying up before 25 kids were due to arrive for the free after-school program that he’s served for 50...

By JIM KENYON

The Upper Valley’s housing crunch is making it nearly impossible for many employers to persuade workers from other parts of the country to move here.But Dartmouth College has come up with a remedy.Granted, it’s no magic bullet. Only an ultra-wealthy...

By JIM KENYON

I never thought a price tag could be put on reading, but the Vermont Department of Corrections has found a way.On Aug. 1, the DOC implemented a policy change that in upcoming months will increase the cost of purchasing new books, among other items, by...

By JIM KENYON

NORWICH — Renee Manheimer’s husband and two children were aware that she had overcome great adversity and perilous situations early in her life. How much hardship was unclear.She spared them many of the details of what she endured growing up without a...

By JIM KENYON

An 18-year-old Pennie Armstrong had just started training to become a nurse in the early 1960s when she contracted polio, even though she’d been vaccinated against the debilitating, life-threatening virus.Armstrong spent the next few months at the...

By JIM KENYON

After the Windsor Selectboard voted in October to block advocates for the LGBTQ+ community from planting a “Pride” tree on the town common, Amanda Jordan Smith could have given up the fight. Instead, she dug in. Jordan Smith, a former Selectboard...

By JIM KENYON

Before turning in for the night, Dave Gifford wedges wax plugs into both ears and cranks up the white noise machine next to the bed in his studio apartment near downtown Lebanon.“And I still get woken up at 5 in the morning,” Gifford said. “The floor...

By JIM KENYON

The day after Keith Gokey was hospitalized in December with third-degree burns over 40% of his body, a Hartford police officer wrote in her investigative report that it was believed “due to the extent of his injuries, he will not survive.” Four and a...

By JIM KENYON

With Dartmouth graduate students voting this week on whether to unionize, college officials likely believe their efforts to defeat the initiative at the ballot box are doomed.But that doesn’t mean they’re not going to great lengths — and expense, I...

By JIM KENYON

Ben Goodwin found the one-page letter — in essence an eviction notice — under the door of his room early last week. He had until Sunday morning to “exit,” the letter stated.The Quality Inn on Route 120 in Lebanon has been Goodwin’s home for nearly...

By JIM KENYON

Last month, the state of Vermont finalized a $4.5 million out-of-court settlement with youths who alleged they were victims of “obscene abuse” while locked up at the Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation Center in Essex.The money — after lawyers get their...

By JIM KENYON

The distance between Cornish’s public library and the town’s shuttered general store is only about 200 yards.But when it comes to whether the town should keep the library where it’s been for 113 years or move its contents across Route 120 to the...

By JIM KENYON

Lee Cutting and John Walsh were the best of friends. Whether they were good influences on each other is arguable.But they had a bond. His name was Jim Beam. “We put away a lot of bourbon,” Walsh told me.For 10 years, Cutting, 64, and Walsh, 72, lived...

By JIM KENYON

Paul Karp, who grew up in Lebanon and raised a family here, was looking for a way to help needy kids in his community. In 1987, Karpy, as he’s known around the city, found it.The Karp’s Klassic, an end-of-the-season recreational basketball tournament,...