- SENY DAFFE OF the West African drumming & dance ensemble Jeh Kulu teaches Mary Hogan fourth-graders some new moves as part of a week-long residency at the Middlebury elementary school last week. Independent photo/Steve James
- THE JEH KULU ensemble, Ismael Bangoura, left, Seny Daffe and Assane Coly, at Mary Hogan Elementary School. Independent photo/Steve James
- STUDENTS OF ALL GRADES at Middlebury’s Mary Hogan Elementary School learned to drum and dance during a residency by the Je Kulu drums & dance group last week. The Burlington group features artists from Guinea, West Africa. Independent photo/Steve James
- STUDENTS OF ALL GRADES at Middlebury’s Mary Hogan Elementary School learned to drum and dance during a residency by the Je Kulu drums & dance group last week. The Burlington group features artists from Guinea, West Africa. Independent photo/Steve James
- STUDENTS OF ALL GRADES at Middlebury’s Mary Hogan Elementary School learned to drum and dance during a residency by the Je Kulu drums & dance group last week. The Burlington group features artists from Guinea, West Africa. Independent photo/Steve James
- SUGARMAKER WILL WERNER works up a sweat in his family’s Middlebury sugarhouse in mid-March while fueling the evaporator that was boiling his maple sap into golden, delicious maple syrup. Independent photo/Steve James
- FOLKS AT MIDDLEBURY’S Werner Tree Farm are working hard one day last week on this year’s maple syrup crop. Cheryl Werner pours some finished product from a metal bucket. The sap, collected directly from maple trees, is often sent through a reverse osmosis machine, which takes out some of the water before going into the evaporator. Boiling takes out more water until the liquid is measured to be about 68% sugar. Then it is ready to package, sell and pour on pancakes. Independent photo/Steve James
- THE MIDDLEBURY SKI & Snowboard Club held its annual Bash at the Bowl celebration on a Saturday in late March under sunny skies and springlike temps. Not only was the Bash a great time and drew a huge crowd gathered here at the Middlebury College Snowbowl base lodge in Hancock, but more than 40 corporate sponsors helped raise more than $18,000 to support the club’s scholarship fund. That fund enables families, who might otherwise not be able to do so, get their children equipped and on the snow for the season. “We cannot express enough how grateful we are, MSSC President Holmes Jacobs said. Photo provided
- A WAVE OF protests against possible changes at the U.S. Postal Services has been sweeping the country, and this past Thursday, March 20, it crested in Vergennes. That afternoon, a large group of people outside the Vergennes Post Office held homemade signs decrying possible plans by President Trump to shrink and possibly privatize the USPS. This hard core of protesters was still there when the newspaper showed up. Independent photo/Steve James