Middlebury actor plays the part of George Washington in touring play.
Coupon Queen Jill Cataldo tells us a great way to save involves better organization.
Page 3
FREE
ECRWSS PRESORTED STANDARD U.S. POSTAGE PAID NEW MARKET PRESS/ DENTON PUBLICATIONS
Take one
P.O. BOX 338 ELIZABETHTOWN, NY 12932 POSTAL PATRON
Page 4
Serving Addison and Chittenden Counties
November 7, 2009
In memoriam
Remembering Dike Blair Blair was local publisher, bookseller MIDDLEBURY — Robert Dike Blair died Saturday, Oct. 31, of natural causes. Dike— as he was known all his life as "Dike Blair" (not Robert)—was born in New Castle, Pa. in 1919, to George Dike Blair Jr. and Hazel (Singluff) Blair, attended local schools, then a year at the Hill School, then Williams College (graduated 1940; B.A. degree) After a year at Kaufmann's Store, he was drafted before Pearl Harbor and served in the U.S. Army (Regular Army), in the classification section, DEML, in five posts. In 1942, Dike and Reba Blizzard of Harrisburg, Pa., were married. She traveled with him post to post until his discharge in 1945.
Rocket Man
They wanted to be in New England and own a bookstore. For bookstore experience Dike worked for the Doubleday Book Shop chain, becoming manager of their Fisher Building Shop (Detroit) until he left in 1949, to start The Vermont Book Shop in Middlebury, sharing space with an antique shop in an old brick house on College Street (later the College Deanery). In 1955, the A & P moved out of a prime spot on Middlebury's Main Street, and Dike moved in. He added a record department which made the Vermont Book Shop Vermont's first book and record store. Robert
See BLAIR, page 14
The incredible shrinking Vermont job! RUTLAND/MIDDLEBURY — The Vermont labor force continued to shrink in September as 1,900 more unemployed Vermonters stopped looking for work. In May, the labor force reached a peak of 361,000, but has been falling since then. Last month it stood at 356,900. The labor force includes everyone defined as either employed or unemployed. Unemployed means an individual must have looked for work sometime in the past four weeks. When workers stop looking for work, they are no longer considered part of the labor force. The number of workers who give up looking for work, not surprisingly, rises during recessions.1 Unemployed workers per job opening in the Northeast continued to increase in August providing further justification for workers to feel discouraged. Vermont’s Department of Labor reported the official seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was down slightly in September to 6.7 percent and that employment also was down. Vermont continues to have the lowest unemployment rate in New England, but the rate appears to be dropping because people are leaving the labor force, not because they are going back to work. Even if, as some economists believe, the recession is coming to an end—that is, that the economy has stopped contracting and is beginning to grow again—it is likely that unemployed Vermonters will continue to have trouble finding jobs for quite some time. After the last two recessions—in the early 1990s and 2001—it took more than two and a half years for the number of Vermont jobs to return to their pre-recession peaks. The public sector shed 1,400 jobs in September, due to the end of a summer youth employment program and the Douglas administration’s continuing effort to reduce the number of state employees. The administration has cut 600 state jobs since the beginning of the recession in December 2007.
O ve r s t o c k Sale!
On...
Home of Harman Wood & Pellet Stoves
Also Close-Out Discounts On Other Stoves!
“Seeing Stars” writer Lou Varricchio was at Cape Canaveral, Fla., to see NASA’s new Ares 1-X rocket. The Ares-Orion stack will replace the space-shuttle-launcher by 2017. The giant rocket is as tall as a 30-story building. Varricchio was the only reporter from New England to attend the Oct. 20 event. See page 4 for his exclusive report about the nation’s newest rocket. Photo by Lou Varricchio
The
STOVE DEPOT Rt. 7, Ferrisburgh, VT
INC.
(Next To Mid State Sports)
870-3220
64674