Vermonter.com

By Brent Hallenbeck, Burlington (Vt.) Free Press
SPRINGFIELD, Vt. — It was easy to find the festivities for the world premiere of The Simpsons Movie Saturday in downtown Springfield. All you had to do was follow the people with the sky-high blue hair.

Diane Bilotta was wearing a beehive wig mimicking the famous blue hairdo of Marge Simpson, the long-suffering wife of Homer, her fellow yellow-skinned cartoon character.

“It puts Springfield on the map,” the Grantham, N.H., woman said, clutching a Homer Simpson doll as she stood outside the Springfield Theater where the film would debut in about two hours. “It’s a lovely town, and Marge and Homer wouldn’t live anywhere else.”

It’s only been a couple of weeks since the world learned that the Springfield that Homer, Marge and their children Bart, Lisa and Maggie call home is Springfield, Vt., a well-worn town of 9,300 in a pretty spot among hills buffeting the Connecticut River that defines the Vermont/New Hampshire border.

Full article can be read here.

A new lighthouse for the Lake Memphremagog waterfront came rolling down Newport’s Main Street early Wednesday morning with a State Police escort.

Lighthouses typically light the way for boaters around obstacles. Early Wednesday morning a lighthouse was placed on the shores of Lake Memphremagog, not to light the way for boaters, but to light the way for a brighter future for downtown Newport.

“This is awesome,” Newport City Mayor Ellwood “Woody” Guyette repeated numerous times as he watched the replica of the old-fashioned light house being erected on the lower end of Main Street near the railroad bridge in the general area of what will become known as Steamboat Wharf (the name of a dock that once stood there). The lighthouse is a dream come true for Bill and Nancy Cook of Newport. In addition to having the lighthouse built, the couple are in the final stages of bringing the days of the tour boat back to the lake that stretches from Newport, Vermont, about 30 miles north to Magog, Quebec. Hopes are that the Newport Belle, a 70-passenger tour boat, will set sail on the lake in July. A new website is also in progress at http://www.newportbelletours.com/
“This is just the beginning of the downtown revitalization,” Guyette said optimistically, commending the Cooks for making their dreams become reality while bettering the city.

Read the full article with photos at the Vermont Northland Journal.

From the Caledonian Record:

BY JEANNE MILES, Staff Writer
Saturday April 14, 2007

ST. JOHNSBURY — Business at Weidmann Electrical Technology in St. Johnsbury is booming. So much, the company is looking to expand its operations.

But that expansion will not take place in Vermont due to high taxes and a strong impression by investors that Vermont is unfriendly to business, according to a letter sent April 2 by John Goodrich, vice president and general manager of Weidmann Technology.

“The paradox of the situation is this: we are extremely busy but are unable to expand in Vermont,” Goodrich wrote.

Read the full article here

New Vermont made movie starring Kris Kristofferson coming in May 2006, from Kingdom County Productions:

“Based on the award-winning novel by Howard Frank Mosher, Disappearances is a spellbinding tale of high-stakes whiskey-smuggling, a family’s mysterious past, and a young boy’s rite of passage.

Quebec Bill, desperate to raise money to preserve his endangered cattle herd at the end of a long winter, resorts to whiskey smuggling, a traditional family occupation. He takes his son, Wild Bill, on an unforgettable journey that will long remain etched in the viewer’s mind, through vast reaches of the Canadian wilderness and into a haunted and elusive past. What they find is the stuff of genuine legend.”

Also, be sure to check out the fantastic book by Scott Wheeler “Rumrunners and Revenuers: Prohibition in Vermont” for the true story and it’s effects on the state of vermont.