A few months ago, Rodney Rainville went with his wife and daughter to a store.
​
Walking in, they noticed that the store clerk was laughing with a customer. They thought nothing of it, until the store clerk’s demeanor suddenly changed.
​
The only difference? A man of color had walked in. The store clerk’s happiness disappeared, staring at the man and growing quiet. Read More.
By Lorenza Fechter
As we near March it is that time of year again. Budget season. Here in Montpelier, we have grown accustomed to relatively steady increases in the school budget. However, after 12 months of COVID-19, this upcoming budget may look different than in years past. MRPS Superintendent Libby Bonesteel and Business Manager Grant Giesler offer readers an inside look at what is in store for the upcoming school year. Read More.
By Anika Turcotte
Kyler Quelch is a senior at U-32 High School in East Montpelier. He has cerebral palsy, a condition that makes him a high-risk individual, and this year he is learning completely remote.
​
During the 2020 election, Kyler was following the results closely. Throughout the week, as votes were being counted, he would check the map of the electoral college, constantly refreshing. Read More.
By Anika Turcotte
On January 10, 2020, Donald Trump tweeted this about Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi: “She will go down as perhaps the least successful Speaker in U.S. History!” Read More.
A frequent forger, many of Borges’ works either examine the concept falsified information or are themselves falsified documents. In fact, after Borges’ death, thanks to the number of falsely-attributed works he created himself, there were actually several cases of poems being falsely attributed to Borges, under the mistaken belief that they were yet more of his forgeries. Borges’ works toy with the line between fact and fiction, and in The Book of Imaginary Beings he and his collaborators toy with the ideas of categorization, and ask whether or not some things, such as ideas or fiction, could ever be successfully categorized, or whether such categorization could even have any value. Read More.
By Noam Hessler
By Ronald Chesaux
Back in November, 2018, something of global concern took place in Shenzhen, China. This something by no means flew under the radar, but has been addressed little in both state and national legislatures. Two twin girls, nicknamed “Lulu and Nana”, were born with genes that were modified to be immune to HIV/AIDS. This was accomplished by means of a gene editing technology known as CRISPR Cas9, or CRISPR for short. Gene Editing technology has been around for a long time but the process is now exponentially easier and cheaper to complete. While CRISPR could be used to for either noble or sinister purposes, both need to be regulated before the issue gets out of hand. Essentially, CRISPR can be used to “quickly target, delete and repair any mutated sequence of DNA in any gene”. This means it could be used to eliminate diseases such as cancer in living adults, or to stop all hereditary diseases in human embryos. Diseases like Huntington’s, Hemophilia, or Muscular Dystrophy could be history. But there are perhaps, more terrifying applications. Read More.
By Noam Hessler
On average, at least eighteen million, sixty-three thousand people watched each episode of The Big Bang Theory’s eleventh season. Average statistics are not available for the twelfth season, the most recent season, but the results are expected to be similar, if perhaps slightly worse. For reference, eighteen million sixty-three thousand is a bit over twice the population of New York City. If the show’s viewership was forced to fit into the city, many of them would likely find themselves living in manholes, thanks to a lack of housing. Incidentally, a manhole is exactly where the Big Bang Theory’s writers deserve to be put. Read More.
By Mikaela Luke-Currier
On Friday, October 20, three survivors from the Parkland Shooting came to speak at Burlington advocating for change in gun violence. Emma Gonzalez, David Hogg and Alexander Wind all came to the Unitarian Church on a book tour for their recently published book Glimmer of Hope: How Tragedy Sparked a Movement, written by the Parkland Shooting survivors. The book is written from their perspective as they tell their stories. The authors emphasized the importance of the book being written from just their experience, unedited by the press and people’s varying opinions. Read More.
By Scarlett Davis
