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By JIM KENYON

SOUTH ROYALTON — After four years of newspapering in Las Vegas, Warren Johnston was ready for a change of scenery.Scenery being the optimum word. Johnston and his wife, Sandy, had in mind a place with more trees than asphalt and a night sky not lit in...

By JIM KENYON

With the help of family and volunteers, Jed Smith and his mother, Martha, have made noticeable progress in cleaning up their two properties that Lyme officials have asserted for years violate the town’s zoning ordinance.The Smiths have removed five...

By JIM KENYON

With all of her wheeling and dealing this summer, real estate investor and developer Jolin Kish seems bent on turning Hanover into her personal Monopoly board.Kish started by selling four of her residential properties on West Wheelock Street to...

By JIM KENYON

During a visit to the summer day camp run by a southern Windsor County YMCA on Wednesday morning, I talked with Ashley Denofrio’s 11-year-old niece.I asked her what she’d be doing, if not attending camp.“I’d be home, probably sleeping,” she said....

By JIM KENYON

This week, Ian Struckhoff learned he won’t be prosecuted for standing on the Dartmouth Green during a peaceful pro-Palestinian demonstration one night last month.Forgive Struckhoff, 45, if he doesn’t feel like celebrating. The criminal trespass charge...

By JIM KENYON

In March, Ashley Denofrio agreed to become the court-appointed legal guardian for her two nieces in hopes of bringing much-needed stability to their lives.As Denofrio has learned, however, the state of New Hampshire isn’t big on providing the...

By JIM KENYON

I can think of 92 reasons why graduates at Dartmouth College’s 2024 commencement ceremony on Sunday might want to walk out in protest.The first 91 are easy to identify. It’s the number of people, including 67 students and five staff members, President...

By JIM KENYON

In the end, what choice did Jim Vanier have, really? He could have continued drawing a paycheck by looking after and mentoring kids at the Carter Community Building in downtown Lebanon as he’s done for more than 50 years. But it would have meant...

By JIM KENYON

On a bitter cold February night in 1963, Howard Coffin packed his cardboard suitcase and walked to U.S. Route 5 in the village of Lyndonville, Vt., where he stuck out his thumb to hitch a ride home to Woodstock.“A trucker came by and picked me up,”...

By JIM KENYON

Andrew Tefft wasn’t inside a tent on the Dartmouth College Green. He hadn’t locked arms with protesters who had formed a circle around the short-lived encampment. The 45-year-old Hanover native didn’t have a pro-Palestinian sign.Still within 30...

By JIM KENYON

Under sunny skies and (slightly) warmer temperatures, Dartmouth students flocked to the college’s quintessential campus Green this week. They left their camping gear behind, though.They didn’t join the masses of students at other elite colleges across...

By JIM KENYON

In talking with people while following up on a couple of recent columns, new developments emerged. Some were more surprising than others. With apologies to “Saturday Night Live,” here’s my Weekend Update: Waiting pays offJennifer Kahn’s wage dispute...

By JIM KENYON

A gang of gung-ho Republican election deniers got their day in Vermont Superior Court last week. But it wasn’t the outcome of the 2020 presidential election that has these Windsor County partisans in a tizzy.They’re riled up about the Windsor County...

By JIM KENYON

For everyone who thinks college athletes deserve to get paid for the work they do on behalf of their schools, the 13-2 vote by Dartmouth men’s basketball players to unionize Tuesday was cause for celebration.Unfortunately, Dartmouth President Sian...

By JIM KENYON

Within hours of two Dartmouth student-activists being arrested on Oct. 28 for refusing to leave a camping tent they had pitched on the lawn outside President Sian Leah Beilock’s office, Minnesota attorney Kira Kelley started getting phone calls, text...

By JIM KENYON

At around 1 a.m. on Oct. 28, Hanover police arrested two Dartmouth College students for criminal trespass on their own campus. After the student-activists were hauled away in handcuffs, cops involved in the encounter would have written a report with...

By JIM KENYON

As revolts go, the one staged by a small band of Windsor County Republicans against Chairman John MacGovern last Saturday was tame and orderly.That’s not to say the GOP renegades, however, still don’t pose a threat to democratic norms.The 50 or so...

By JIM KENYON

Jesse Keenum, a 67-year-old disabled veteran, is staying home for the holidays — and hopefully well beyond — after his landlord recently backed off from trying to kick him out of the Lebanon apartment he’s lived in for 14 years.While Keenum’s case...

By JIM KENYON

Overcharging, as it’s known in the legal world, is a ploy that prosecutors use to coerce criminal defendants into accepting a plea bargain.By tacking on multiple charges from a single incident, the prosecution gains all-important leverage. In exchange...

By JIM KENYON

To paraphrase Rodney Dangerfield, I went to a fight the other morning, and a meeting of the Windsor County Republican Executive Committee broke out.How bad (or amusing, if you’re a Democrat) was it?The dozen Republicans in the room didn’t make it...

By JIM KENYON

When Tom Harty, the pastor at United Church of Bethel, brought up an idea to parishioners on a recent Sunday morning, he wasn’t quite sure what the reaction might be.Harty, a former Vermont State Police trooper, recognized that any individual or group...