A little sunshine
Tree talk
First Amendment guru urges transparency
Deforestation differs from forest management
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March 17, 2022
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Clemmons barn will soon become performing arts center
Ice cold swim
COREY MCDONALD STAFF WRITER
ment agencies for about five years. As technology improves, the vests get lighter, and the heavier ones get retired. The request for vests is the latest of Scott’s acts of solidarity with Ukraine. Those include canceling any purchase contracts with Russia and removing Russian vodka from liquor stores and bars; severing official relations with Vermont’s sister state in Russia and asking Vermont cities and towns to suspend similar sister city relationships; and asking the Legislature to appropriate $643,077 for humanitarian efforts in Ukraine — one dollar for every Vermonter.
The Big Barn at the Clemmons Family Farm is already considered a hub for Vermont’s community of Black artists. Now, with federal funds secured for the historic, 148-acre farm, the barn will soon be transformed into a venue for African American and African diaspora visual and performing arts programs. Sen. Patrick Leahy last week announced more than $167 million in funding for specific Vermont projects across the state, including $5 million for Shelburne Farms, as well as $500,000 for the African American Arts & Culture Center at the Clemmons Family Farm — one of the 22 landmarks on the state’s African American Heritage Trail. “As chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee I made sure that Vermonters have had a center seat at the table in writing this bill,” Leahy said in a statement. “From providing resources to grow ‘made in Vermont’ ideas like the farm to school program, to supporting our rural village and downtown spaces, and everything in between, this bill reflects Vermont priorities and ideas and values.” Lydia Clemmons, the president and executive director of the Clemmons Family Farm, said the majority of the $500,000 will go toward continuing work on the big barn as a visual and performing arts center. “It’s just amazing,” Clemmons said. “This is just setting us on the trajectory toward converting the whole farm into a center for the public, for everybody to learn about my parents’ legacy, but also African American (and) African diaspora history, and to just come together as a community.” The project will be in collaboration with Zena Howard, the award-winning archi-
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See LEAHY on page 2
PHOTO BY AL FREY
Several Champlain Valley Union High School sports teams took the Penguin Plunge March 12, jumping into an icy cold Lake Champlain to raise money for Special Olympics Vermont.
Cops donate armor for Ukraine TOMMY GARDNER STAFF WRITER
Last week, Lamoille County sheriff Roger Marcoux found himself repaying a favor from three decades ago, donating surplus body armor to help in a conflict far from Vermont’s mountains. Gov. Phil Scott last week called on Vermont law enforcement agencies and any person with unused body armor to donate it to the Ukrainian war effort. Marcoux said he is familiar with people needing help protecting themselves from violence, from the receiving end. When he was working for federal Drug Enforcement Agency in the 1990s, often
undercover, stationed in Haiti with local police surrounded by violent gangs, he reached out to Vermont’s state police force and Sen. Patrick Leahy to help get body armor shipped to the country. Marcoux said Kevlar couldn’t simply be exported during that era, because of the tight rein on the technology. “It was a big game changer,” he said. Marcoux said his department last week was able to donate outdated body armor capable of holding ceramic plate inserts. Ceramic is used in armor to break bullets apart, which slows it down, making it less likely to penetrate. Marcoux said ballistic vests are only suitable for use in American law enforce-