Brian Pine has a new title at Burlington’s Community and Economic Development Office: assistant director of housing and baseball.

Pine is quietly coordinating a City Hall-sanctioned fundraising effort to keep Minor League Baseball (MiLB) in the Queen City. On Monday, July 12, in a rare display of tripartisan solidarity, the Burlington City Council got behind the idea.

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New York looks different than Vermont, and it’s not just because of the industrial wind farms. The Empire State still embraces “outdoor advertising” — think Times Square — while its Green Mountain neighbor banned billboards back in 1968. A few Vermont businesses take advantage of New York’s regs to advertise themselves in a way they can’t on their home turf.

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Logan Franks learned to swim two years ago in a Baghdad pool that used to be the private property of Saddam Hussein. For the past three months, the 22-year-old Marine reservist from Plattsburgh has been plying the waters of Lake Placid’s Mirror Lake in preparation for his first competitive triathlon.

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Brian Dubie got a hero’s welcome at a recent campaign rally in his hometown of Essex Junction. Hundreds of supporters, many dressed in forest-green “Dubie Co-Pilot” T-shirts, had crammed into a small building at the Champlain Valley Expo on a rainy Saturday in June to help the Republican lieutenant governor launch his campaign for governor.

The cheering began the moment Dubie stepped inside. Then the screaming and whistling gave way to a thunderous chant.

“BRI-AN! BRI-AN! BRI-AN!” Dubie’s supporters yelled in unison.

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“Earmark.” Nothing sounds sweeter to a Vermont nonprofit than a guaranteed federal appropriation to fund a specific project. Rep. Peter Welch requested 29 of them last year as part of the federal budgeting process, for local organizations ranging from the Chittenden County Transportation Authority to the Northern Forest Canoe Trail.

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Beth Robinson remembers going door to door in the waning days of the 2000 election, handing out campaign literature for imperiled lawmakers who had supported civil unions.

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To announce her “clean energy jobs plan” last week, Deb Markowitz summoned the media to a Winooski factory that manufactures solar-powered hot-water heaters. When only two reporters showed up, the CEO of Sunward Solar called a dozen sweaty workers off the factory floor into an air-conditioned showroom to be an audience for the secretary of state who hopes to be Vermont’s next governor.

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Burlington bus riders have been waiting 18 years for the arrival of an indoor station in the downtown area. That’s not quite as long as the city has anticipated the Southern Connector, but almost.

Meanwhile, conditions at the current terminal on Cherry Street have grown more unpleasant in recent years as ridership has increased along with the number and frequency of buses arriving and departing.

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Rutland has a sister city in Japan and another in the UK. Bennington has a sister city in Nicaragua, and Montpelier has one in France. Burlington has partnerships with seven other cities around the globe.

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Politics makes strange bedfellows, but it can also produce unlikely adversaries. Consider the current case of Congressman Peter Welch and Vermont’s credit unions, community banks and small retailers.

On money matters, these interest groups are often in sync with one another and with Welch’s populist politics. But convergence has given way to conflict over a major component in the financial regulatory reform package expected to become law in the coming week.

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