Jonathan Mingle Jonathan Mingle was supposed to be in Louisiana not Lincoln, Vt. At the beginning of last year, he won a prestigious journalism fellowship from the Alicia Patterson Foundation to spend a year traveling, researching and writing about the natural gas industry. He d already written a book,
Fire and Ice, focused on the deleterious effects of black carbon pollution. That particular study focused on a remote village in northern India, where the soot from cooking fires is changing the climate and way of life. When the pandemic changed his plans, Mingle found a different kind of existential threat in Vermont s Green Mountains: school consolidation. A Lincoln landowner since 2012, he was dimly aware that the town was struggling to find the money to keep its schools open. The bond vote for the high school had been voted down several times, and I knew there had been staff cuts year after year, Mingle said. Vermont
Caleb Kenna Lincoln Community School Anna Smith grew up in Lincoln, in a house just a stone s throw from the New Haven River and half a mile from the elementary school. Ever since she left, she s been trying to figure out how to get back. For now, her job as an elementary school health teacher keeps her in another town in Addison County, Leicester. So her father, who s retired and lives alone, is doing his best to keep her childhood home in decent shape affordable housing is scarce in the mountain town. He said, I m holding on to it because otherwise you won t be able to live here, Smith, 30, said. I told him, If the school isn t there, I would have some hard thinking to do.