As colleagues, students, family and friends mourn the death of Vermont Law School professor and VPR commentator Cheryl Hanna, we present a collection of the commentaries — both legal and personal — that Hanna contributed to VPR over the years.

Vermont Law School has announced that Professor Cheryl Hanna, a prominent professor and expert in constitutional law, has died.

From the VLS announcement:

It is with the most profound sorrow that we announce the untimely death of our dear colleague Professor Cheryl Hanna.

Vermont sends nearly 500 prisoners to privately run out-of-state facilities in Kentucky and Arizona. The contract with the company that operates these jails, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), comes up for renewal next year.

Now, a group of concerned Vermonters is proposing that room be made here to return these prisoners to the state.

The Vermont Public Service Board ordered Vermont Gas Systems to stop digging for its pipeline near power lines owned by the Vermont Electric Cooperative, citing environmental and health concerns.

Vermont Gas approached the Public Service Board after the state Agency of Natural Resources alerted the company to the possibility that soil contaminated with Pentachlorophenol (PCP) could be disturbed by pipeline construction.

The 1960s and '70s saw a lot of people arrive in Vermont with the back-to-the-land movement. Their idealism followed the legacies of people like Helen and Scott Nearing, and even Henry David Thoreau well before them. On the next Vermont Edition, we discuss the impulse to find meaning in a life close to nature. Our guest is Rebecca Kneale Gould, a writer and senior lecturer at Middlebury College.

Sen. Patrick Leahy joined an unlikely group in Burlington today to show off his new legislation that will make it easier for used cell phones to work on a variety of cellular networks.

At the Women Helping Battered Women offices in Burlington, Leahy introduced women’s advocates and a telecom official to speak about the new bill, which he said will help shelters like the one in Burlington.

Leahy said the new law will help shelters use donated phones to pass out to women in need.

The state of Vermont is working to reduce phosphorus pollution in the Lake Champlain watershed.

A lot of the focus has been on farms, and now the state is turning attention to smaller scale agriculture, and that means owners of much smaller parcels of land will also have to react to the regulations already on the books.

For many of us, summer is a time to kick back with a good book.  And in some neighborhoods, finding something new to read is as easy as strolling down the street. Little free libraries have been sprouting all over the world—including Vermont. Some are no bigger than a bird house. Others are as large as a phone booth. You leave a book, and take one—no card necessary.

Beware the wild parsnip.

That’s a warning sprouting in emails around the state, as the invasive weed spreads. It looks like a little yellow umbrella atop a stem that can be as long as five feet tall. It won’t hurt to brush along it, but if you break the stem, and the sap on your skin is exposed to sunlight, you can get a nasty burn. Harry Roberts, of Norwich, is seeing more and more of this pesky weed as he motorcycles around the state.

“It’s a very sinister plant and it starts at the roadside and if you don’t mow the adjacent field it takes over the field,” he says.

Public Post looks into Vermont's customizable emergency alert system, which is online and expanding. Several ski areas have taken on major projects, from a new orange  "six pack bubble chairlift" at Okemo to a parking garage in Stowe. And now's the time to nominate your favorite summer or fall event for the Vermont Chamber's top ten list.