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By Credit search: For the Valley News

By STEVE TAYLOR

It was going to become “the Ben and Jerry’s of beer” and as the concept took shape it generated a lot of buzz in the Upper Valley some 40 years ago.

By MARGARET ML BYRNES

With multiple polls showing housing as the top issue in New Hampshire by a wide margin, it’s no shock that the current legislative session is awash with proposals ostensibly aimed at addressing the state’s housing crisis. These bills are framed as attempts to tackle the shortage of affordable housing and to foster development, which sounds like a no-lose proposition. But take a step back and you’ll notice that most of these proposals are sweeping, one-size-fits-all statewide planning and zoning mandates.

By PAUL STEINHAUSER

All systems are go for U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas to announce his candidacy for U.S. Senate in the 2026 race to succeed retiring longtime Sen. Jeanne Shaheen.

By JIM BEDNAR

I served my country for almost 40 years, not in uniform but with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the agency that managed 60% of our humanitarian and development assistance. I have hundreds of on-the-ground examples of how USAID employees served America’s interests. (Over the agency’s six decades of work, 99 USAID staff gave their lives in service to their country.)

By MICKI COLBECK

The river is fully melted now. She sings a lullaby that helps me sleep. In the morning, the little brown dogs and I will go along the banks to see if the red petals of the beaked hazelnuts are opening. Then up into the wet fir woods to look for liverworts and mosses and the first flowers of the forest, the leatherwood tree.

By NEIL ODELL

Fairness is a level playing field, a basic expectation. Whether it’s a soccer game or a courtroom, the same rules should apply to everyone. That’s how public systems are supposed to work.

By LISA K. MADDEN

The 60-year-old Medicaid system, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965, ensures that individuals have access to critical mental health and substance use treatment, along with primary care. In 2025, the Medicaid system serves about 184,000 individuals in New Hampshire, or 13% of the state’s population.

By LINDSAY KURRLE

Too often in Vermont, popular and necessary housing construction is derailed, delayed or diminished by a small number of folks abusing the appeals process who have no direct skin in the game and are reluctant to welcome new neighbors. While appeals are valuable in certain cases, they also drive-up costs, affecting every homebuyer, renter and builder in Vermont. When the project involves public money, appeals also drive-up costs for taxpayers.

By CHERYL CHARLES

Vermonters spoke loud and clear this Town Meeting Day: they support their public schools. With over 90% of school budget proposals winning voter approval and budgets passing in at least 101 districts, the message is undeniable — Vermont communities value their schools and want to see them strengthened, not dismantled.

By SCOTT BECK

A considerable amount of attention and work this legislative session has been devoted to Vermont’s PreK-12 public education system and how it is funded. This is important work — 30% of Vermont state spending is devoted to our most precious resource, 83,000 children.

By TRIS WYKES

BARRE, Vt. — Windsor High girls basketball coach Kabray Rockwood descended the stairs to his team’s locker room in the basement of the Barre Auditorium on Thursday night.

By TRIS WYKES

BARRE, Vt. — The heat and humidity generated by warming spring temperatures and a couple of thousand bodies packed into the Barre Auditorium on Thursday drove a gaggle of high school basketball fans out the back door during halftime of the Oxbow-Peoples girls game.

By DAN MACKIE

Nobody likes to think about infrastructure until there’s a big crack in it. And now my thoughts are turning daily to the crumbling and closed “dry bridge,” my gateway to the Route 12A shopping district, where I worked for 30 years amid the swirling dust and creeping traffic.

By TRIS WYKES

BARRE, Vt. — Hartford High’s Cavan Benjamin rushed the puck into the U-32 end Friday night. The rangy defenseman curled out from behind the net and flung a perfect pass back between the circles to gliding hockey teammate Nolan Morlock.

By NARAIN BATRA

Congressman Seth Moulton (D-MA) in a recent conversation at Dartmouth’s Rockefeller Center for Public Policy with Russell Muirhead, a government professor at Dartmouth, spoke with refreshing candor that the Democratic Party is in peril. It needs a serious re-evaluation of its deplorable electoral performance despite facing an opponent perceived as deeply flawed.

By ERIKA MOEN

Scientific research advances knowledge, knowledge is power, and as a result there has been and likely always will be politicization of science by those in power. For years, politicians have made it difficult or impossible to conduct research on gun violence or climate change.

By RANDALL BALMER

Mitch McConnell’s announcement that he will not seek reelection next year brings to a close the political career of the longest-serving Senate leader history. He is also the longest-serving senator from Kentucky.

By MICKI COLBECK

Almost three decades ago my kids and I came to Vermont in search of a better life. My son had come earlier in his old Datsun pickup after college let out, but I needed to pack up our house and finish up what would be my last year of teaching public school art in Missouri. My 11-year-old daughter and I, along with Molly, our black and brown husky; our orange cat Fuzzman; our gerbil Ralph; my Martin guitar, and our tent and camping gear filled our Saturn wagon. Saying goodbye to the old limestone hills along the meandering Mississippi, we headed northeast to Vermont. Deep and forested green mountains lifted high through tectonic orogenies, seemed like the cover of a camping catalogue.

By MICHAEL HOYT

On Tuesday, Hartford voters will have the chance to weigh in on the budget as well as a proposal to adopt a local 1% sales tax. I strongly support both measures.

By MATTHEW MATULE

I’ve been following the development of the proposed Royalton flood hazard area regulations by the town Planning Commission, and effectively rubber-stamped by a well-meaning Selectboard, since there was a public meeting about it in May 2024. As noted by the Planning Commission chair in that meeting (and subsequently reiterated), the proposed proposed bylaws are a “complete rewrite” of whatever flood-related measures are currently in effect in Royalton.

By ABBE BJORKLAND and ROBIN KAISER

We read with dismay the recent opinion piece written by Bill Hamlen (“We need reliable data about energy sources”; Feb. 13). This piece could have been written in the 1960s. We don’t believe it addresses current energy technologies, costs or environmental realities.