both new to,” she explains. Under their guidance
the magazine began to produce themed issues,
including: At Home in Vermont (March/April) Arts &
Culture (May/June) and Education (September/October).
Kate left VERMONT Magazine at the end of December,
2006 to pursue a career as a staff member of Casting for
Recovery, a retreat program that combines breast
cancer education and support with the therapeutic sport
of fly fishing. Kate is today a licensed clinical social
worker at Equinox Counseling in Manchester,
Vermont. Ultimately, Joe left the magazine in
2008 for another fly fishing magazine (this time,
Fly Rod & Reel in Maine) but missed Vermont,
so he and his wife, Robin, and their son, Teagan,
moved back to the Green Mountain State. Joe joined up
with St. Johnsbury Academy as Director of Marketing
and Communications, continuing to write on a free-
lance basis for editor Phil Jordan at VERMONT
Magazine. Later, Michelle Boisse, a production and
layout expert at the fly-fishing publishing compa-
ny, joined VERMONT Magazine as its art director.
Today, Joe is the marketing and communications
manager at Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, first
learning about VSC when writers Karl Decker and
Nancy Levine wrote about Johnson for a
department in VERMONT Magazine. Joe also spent time
as a Customer Success Manager at Lane Press, the former
printer of VERMONT Magazine.
Joe’s relationship with Karl (writer and photographer) and
Nancy (a pediatric nurse and writer) goes back to 2004,
when Joe took them on to be the team that would for six
years contribute the “Around our Towns” department to
the magazine’s content. “In those six years,” Nancy says,
“we toured Vermont from the one-room schoolhouse
with six students in Norton in the Northeast Kingdom
to Marlboro with its small, innovative college, sum-
mer music festival and legendary Hogback Mountain.
We visited and wrote about 35 towns and interviewed
at least 3,000 Vermonters in their homes, restaurants,
small factories, fields or in the back of pickup trucks.”
“We tried to tell the stories of the towns through the
words of those folks,” says Karl. “They told the towns’
histories, spoke of their work, of the town’s economy
and their owns dreams, successes and often the very
real struggle of living in ever-changing Vermont com-
munities.” By 2009, following Joe’s 2008 departure,
Kathleen James was VERMONT Magazine’s editor, and
Karl and Nancy left. He began to work on a novel, and
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Nancy, devoted more time to her nursing responsibilities.
“I had a great time working at VERMONT Magazine—
and never had more fun than the occasional times when
I’d get to leave the office to write and report a story myself,”
Kathleen recalls. “I met a young couple, recent Russian
immigrants, who’d bought and renovated an
abandoned home on one of the state’s most remote
hilltops. I spent a quiet afternoon with the monks at
the Weston Priory. I learned to bake a world-class
apple pie at the King Arthur Flour baking school. I
met farmers, artists, writers and country store own-
ers who were forging a new life in an old-time way.
In celebrating the soul of Vermont, I was able to
gather up little pieces of this wonderful state—my
home—and tuck them away in my own heart and mind.”
In defining the soul of a truly unique state like
Vermont, it’s also important to hear firsthand from the
folks who live here. “We did this in several ways: by
running Q&A interviews with interesting, often off-
beat Vermonters, and by expanding the letters page—
Post Box 05250—well beyond the standard commen-
tary on recently published articles,” Kathleen says.
In special sections and stand-alone supplements, the
magazine also explored Vermont’s thriving arts and
cultural scene (a focus every year of the May-June issue),
its role as a tourism and wedding destination (Vermont
Weddings), and the many builders, artisans, landscape
designers and homeowners who create beautiful living
spaces—both indoor and outdoor—around the state
(Vermont Homes). Photographer Carolyn Bates of
Burlington was a mainstay for this section, traveling the
two-lanes and back roads to shoot homes in dozens of
communities.
By 2010, Kathleen was also editor of Skiing History
magazine and in November, left VERMONT Magazine
to concentrate on that bi-monthly journal, while also
working as a grantwriter for The BOMA Project. She
was elected to the Vermont House of Representatives
in the 2018 legislative election; she today represents the
Bennington-4 District. She remains editor of Skiing
History and executive director of its parent organization,
the nonprofit International Skiing History Association.
Philip R. Jordan, who joined VERMONT Magazine in
early 2008 as an advertising salesperson (and had also
worked in marketing the publication) became editor.
As someone who had traveled Vermont extensively
during a previous sales career, and also worked