‘Stand tall’
‘Hands off’
State senator delivers speech duing protest in Montpelier
Nearly 500 line streets to protest Trump, Musk policies
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Volume 54 Number 15
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April 10, 2025
Holding the line
Frogger
Librarians grapple with uncertainty over federal fiats LIBERTY DARR & BRIANA BRADY STAFF WRITERS
PHOTO BY BRIANA BRADY
A wood frog gets ferried safely across Pond Road at Shelburne’s Big Night event, which took place Saturday night.
Students direct trio of one-act plays BRIANA BRADY STAFF WRITER
“Well, I can hardly eat muffins in an agitated manner, can I?” Clark Clark, as Algernon Montcrief in the “Importance of Being Earnest,” declared on stage during a dress rehearsal of the play at
Champlain Valley Union High School last week. Clark then continued happily munching on a muffin to laughter from those in the scattered audience. “The Importance of Being Earnest” cast members were taking their turns to rehearse on the school’s stage — it was one
of three one-act plays the students put on this past weekend, as well as “Game Night” and “Hurry Up and Wait.” All the plays were entirely student directed, each led by a pair of directors in their senior See ONE-ACT PLAYS on page 2
On a particularly balmy spring day last week, a woman was meandering around the Charlotte library when Margaret Woodruff, the library director and friendly face around the building most days, approached her to ask if she needed any help. The woman explained that she had just gotten into town to scout a property she’s looking to buy. It seemed fitting that Woodruff was one of the first people to greet her in her new town, and that one of the first places she visited was the local library. News for librarians across the country has been far less bright in recent weeks. Woodruff and several other library directors across Chittenden County have been grappling with President Donald Trump’s recent executive order seeking to eliminate “to the maximum extent” the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the primary source of federal support for the nation’s museums and libraries. Last week, the institute placed its entire 70-person staff on administrative leave.
“We have never had to think about having to defend ourselves as an institution before,” Woodruff said. “We’ve never considered libraries to be the ‘bad guy.’ It’s really so unprecedented.” In Vermont, the institute provides roughly one-third of the state’s Department of Libraries’ funding, which in 2024, amounted to roughly $1.2 million, said Commissioner and State Librarian Catherine Delneo. Those federal funds support a slew of shared services within the state, from the interlibrary loan program — the service that moves books and other materials across the state’s libraries and libraries across the nation — to the ABLE library service for the blind and visually impaired, online databases, as well as other resources and professional development for library workers. Delneo said the state department has been using the Institute of Museum and Library Services funds to provide grants of about $680 annually to help offset local courier costs for the interlibrary loan service for 116 public libraries See LIBRARIANS on page 12
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