Just snapped this one of UVM’s Old Mill out the car window as I was coming home yesterday. The sun was setting. Over a century-and-a-half standing there and still looking as magnificent as ever, if not more so?

Just read Matt Sutkoski’s news story in the morning Freeps about the first public informational meeting on the latest schemes for constructing or not-constructing the Williston-Essex leg of the Chittenden County Circumferential Highway. Mention the CIRC and I think of moon-landings.

I don’t know if it’s funnier than it is sad? The road to nowhere! A feedlot for lawyers!

Shifting gears to local media....

Got a little item in “Inside Track” today about our local Fox affiliate starting up a local news operation. Hurray! Nude anchors!

Just kidding.

About the nude anchors.

Things change. And the world of news, from print to electronic to online, is a swiftly changing world. In fact, one friend was wondering if Gannett would ever sell The Burlington Free Press?

You’re dreaming?

Well, the idea was prompted by the published report Tuesday that Gannett is selling its local "award-winning" daily in Marion, Indiana. Gannett's owned it since 1971. No buyer has been named as yet, but the sale is expected to a done-deal in a month:

President and Publisher Juli Metzger said the paper's 75 employees will maintain their benefits pending the sale, and that operations will continue as normal in both the print and online product.

"This is a great newspaper and a great community," she said. "It's the people who make up the Chronicle-Tribune, not who owns it."

Juli Metzger? The assistant managing editor at The Burlington Free Press back in the early-mid 1990s?

Indeed. The same Juli Metzger who admitted on the witness stand in Chittenden County Superior Court that she had she had lied under oath to protect Gannett’s interests. It was in a lawsuit brought by a fired Freeps city hall reporter. Remember Paul Teetor?

After Metzger’s admission to lying under oath, Gannett proposed an out-of-court settlement Teetor accepted. Metzger was rewarded, apparently, with a transfer/promotion to an Ohio Gannett-chain paper and in 2000 won Gannett’s “Editor of the Year” prize! She moved to the Chronicle-Tribune in 2005.

Hey, everything's for sale, right?

Anyway, my story for today is that I am for the first time in memory going to miss the opening of the Vermont Business Expo at the Sheraton. The 23rd annual. One can always get a sense of the strength of the Vermont economy by the quality and quantity of the freebies. I'm a pen guy.

But it's Chemo Day #6 pour moi up at the Mary Fanny. Takes all day. So far so good. And I picked up Al Gore's latest at Borders yesterday for my chemo read while on the IV.

The Assault on Reason.

Where was this guy in 2000?