Vermont Edition

Charlotte's Yvan Plouffe is a retired dairy farmer who sugars, tends to his plum and peach trees, and raises 10,000 roses every year to hand out all around town. He also does woodwork, metalwork and pottery, the latter of which he took up just ten years ago at age 70. And he lives in a house he built himself, along with most of the furniture inside of it.

As Vermont's sole statesman in the U.S. House of Representatives, Rep. Peter Welch deals with consequential issues that affect his home state and the country.

It's a centuries-old tradition with a wild history and deep New England roots. We're talking about American country dancing, including contra dance. We'll hear from the author of a book that traces the story of this tradition, and we'll talk about how and why it still appeals to so many people today.

Robin Turnau , who has served as president and CEO of Vermont Public Radio since 2009, is stepping down from her position on May 4th . She first started working at the station in 1989 as a membership and volunteer coordinator. Succeeding Turnau as CEO and president is Scott Finn, formerly of West Virginia Public Broadcasting. Before her departure, Turnau spoke to Vermont Edition about her time at VPR and where she thinks that the station is headed.

In February, Jack Sawyer was accused of a thwarted shooting plot involving Fair Haven Union High School. Already the case against the 18-year-old Poultney man has taken many twists and turns. We'll look at what has transpired so far in the case and how it's grabbed the attention of the entire state.

At the Orchard Elementary School in South Burlington, students come from a variety of cultural backgrounds. In fact, about a third of the students speak a language other than English at home. Last fall, a group of Orchard fifth-graders gathered to discuss It Ain’t So Awful, Falafel, a novel about an Iranian-born girl living in California in the late 1970s and early 1980s – much like author Firoozeh Dumas.

"One hundred years of bondage - broken!" That's what Phil Hoff shouted to an exuberant crowd of supporters in Winooski when he was elected Governor in 1962, ending more than a century of Republicans holding that office. Hoff died last week at 93. We're talking about his career and the enormous changes that it marked in the state's political landscape.

Several dozen Vermont towns are taking part Saturday in a national project to collect unused prescription and over-the-counter drugs.

Rep. Peter Welch has joined a bipartisan effort of House members who want to protect Special Counsel Robert Mueller from being fired by President Donald Trump.

The end of the Legislative session looms, but there is still time for movement on a number of key issues. We get input on education funding, financing clean water efforts, the state minimum wage and paid family leave from the Republican legislative leadership.

As the temperatures slowly climb northward, you're about to see a lot of movement outside. Especially if you look really closely at the spring migration of reptiles and amphibians.

How did you or your family first come to Vermont? Maybe your family traces its history beyond memory. Perhaps you’re a transplant who remembers the first footstep in the Green Mountain State. St. Michael's College professor emeritus Daniel Bean has researched the unique history of a small group of Vermonters: orphans and foundlings rounded up in major cities and brought here on what he calls "orphan trains."

Twitter user Ricky Vaughn has been called " Trump’s most influential white nationalist troll. " The account drew attention during the 2016 presidential election for political (and often white nationalist and anti-Semitic) posts. Huffington Post reporter Luke O'Brien found the man behind the handle is Waterbury native and Middlebury graduate Douglass Mackey.

Bitcoin. Cryptocurrency. These and other buzzwords make headlines in the world of finance, but underlying it all is a new piece of financial technology called blockchain. And state lawmakers are betting this new technology could be Vermont's next moneymaker, much like the state's captive insurance market.

Ask any legislator in Montpelier and they'll probably agree that getting the state's education funding model right could be their most difficult task. Now a bill passed by the House sets about shifting some of the burden of paying for our schools from property taxes to income taxes.