Archive - Nov 2009
November 23rd
Guess which country has the lowest fertility rate — Iran or the United States. It’s Iran.
The United States is one of the few rich nations of the world in which women have more children during their child-bearing years (15 to 49) than it takes to replace them and the fathers. Iran has a fertility rate of 1.9 for the whole country, 1.5 for the capital city of Tehran. The magic number is 2.1. Two to replace the parents, point one to compensate for early female deaths. The U.S. rate is at 2.1 or a bit higher.
MIDDLEBURY — Fans of offensive football got a treat on Saturday at Middlebury College’s Alumni Stadium, when two teams of Vermont high school senior standouts — including five local student-athletes — combined for 100 points in the ninth annual North-South All-Star Football Game.
When the ball stopped flying, the South team with two Otter Valley players defeated the North team with one Vergennes and two Middlebury athletes, 61-39.
ADDISON COUNTY — Helping Overcome Poverty’s Effects (HOPE) and other local nonprofits will spend the coming weeks working to lift people’s holiday spirits with some food and gifts they might not otherwise get in this tough economy.
ADDISON COUNTY — Some Vermont dairy farmers found themselves in the crosshairs of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Thursday when the agency rolled out its largest ever audit of employers in a crackdown on businesses shirking laws about employing foreign workers.
Reports Friday from the Addison County Migrant Workers Coalition and other farmers indicated that perhaps only four or five farms in the state would be issued subpoenas for employment records, though initial reports about the audits placed that number much higher.
ADDISON COUNTY — “It’s just a no-brainer to be a localvore on Thanksgiving.”
That’s according to Francie Caccavo, the owner of Olivia’s Crouton Company in New Haven. And it’s not hard to see why Caccavo embraces eating locally this time of year: Though the growing season is giving way to frosty temperatures, many farmers are still selling a bounty of root vegetables, squash and other produce.
MIDDLEBURY — Middlebury’s police dog program faces an uncertain future as newly appointed Vergennes Police Chief George Merkel. a Middlebury police officer, will be bringing his K-9 Akido with him to the Little City.
Merkel established Middlebury police’s K-9 program around five years ago, beginning with Blade, an animal he had inherited from a Vermont State Police trooper who had been deployed overseas with a National Guard unit. Blade has retired, but was replaced last June by another dog, Akido. Merkel owns both dogs.
FERRISBURGH — About two dozen Ferrisburgh residents and Ferrisburgh Central School parents and teachers who gathered in the FCS gym on Thursday night first talked about what they loved about the town’s elementary school. And then they talked about what they saw as the pluses and minuses about the proposal for one board to govern the public schools in the five Addison Northwest Supervisory Union towns.
November 20th
ADDISON COUNTY — Ten thousand lights, a half-mile of extension cords and 60 hours of hard work setting up — for Salisbury resident Wayne Smith, that sounds like a recipe for Christmas spirit.
Smith takes to his yard every November to start stringing up an extensive display of lights and holiday decorations that, for 15 years, has been his way of marking the season. It started small, with a few decorations here and there, but by the time Smith bought a bit more property at his home at the north end of Lake Dunmore, he had the room to go crazy.
