Pomp & Circumstance
SB Nite Out
Students graduate from Rice
Don’t miss the Devon McGarry Band June 22
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the JUNE 8, 2023
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VOLUME 47, NO. 23
State rep’s home is vandalized after motel evictions KATE O’FARRELL VTDIGGER
COURTESY PHOTO
Jim Westphalen photographing an old structure. His documentary, “Vanish: Disappearing Icons of a Rural America,” is scheduled to screen during the Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival.
Fine art photographer releases first film
Documentary stands as call to preserve rural history COREY MCDONALD STAFF WRITER
Jim Westphalen is up on a wintry Saturday morning, driving through Sheldon, Vermont to photograph an old 19th-century cow barn — all that’s left of a once-thriving farmland built along the old Missisquoi rail-
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road line that was destroyed by a fire. The camera pans over him as he sets his tripod up in the middle of a snowy expanse to capture a still image of the weather-worn building. In the freezing cold, he takes as much time gazing at the structure as he does staring through his camera lens. This is what Westphalen has been doing
for the past four years: driving endlessly to find the old prairie churches, the paintpeeled barns, the old ranch homes with sagging porches and concaving, weather-battered roofs, and the one-room schoolhouses.
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See FILM on page 12
A Vermont state representative’s home was vandalized with paint soon after hundreds of people were required to move out of motels on Thursday. “Isn’t it nice to have a home” was written in red capital letters on the garage door of Democrat Martin LaLonde’s house in South Burlington, according to Police Chief Shawn Burke. LaLonde reported the graffiti around 9 a.m. on Friday, Burke said, and police are investigating. The letters could be seen through an apparent fresh coat of white paint later in the morning. Republican Gov. Phil Scott and Democratic leaders in the House and Senate declined to extend a pandemic-era program that used federal cash, which has since run dry, to expand the number of unhoused people who could stay in the state’s hotels and motels. The program’s end — and the waves of See LALONDE on page 13
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