From the Publisher: Best-Laid Plans

You’re reading the third version of my “From the Publisher” column. I wrote the first one on Sunday afternoon, after editing what was supposed to be this week’s cover story about Unadilla Theatre in Marshfield. The piece gave me a chance to recall my first trip down Blachly Road in the mid-1990s, pre-GPS. A few miles in, I was convinced I’d made a wrong turn. How could there be a performing arts center so far off the beaten track? I easily found 500 words to celebrate the efforts of Unadilla founders Bill Blachly and Ann O’Brien and noted other seasonal endeavors in Vermont that are comparably magical. The concluding message: Seize the summer.

Then it started to rain. On Monday came reports of flooding, water rescues and crumbling roads. The Winooski River overflowed its banks in Montpelier, inundating State Street. In anticipation of similar destruction downstream, volunteers converged on the Burlington Intervale to help the farmers there salvage their crops. We sent intern Katie Futterman, along with photographer Daria Bishop, to cover their efforts and waited to hear whether the flood would rival Tropical Storm Irene.

That deluge, on August 28, 2011, also happened on a Sunday and took a full 24 hours to unfold. We scrambled the jets to write about it and, considering the size of our news team at the time, did a decent job. Breaking news on deadline is a challenge for a weekly newspaper. Having a website helps, but it doesn’t solve the potential problem of producing a print product that is so carefully planned, it doesn’t reflect current reality.

This time around, we convened an emergency meeting of editors on Monday afternoon to reconsider the Unadilla cover and other stories in this issue that don’t address the floods. Photos, video and reports from the field suggested the weather story was getting bigger. At the same time, I argued that 99-year-old Blachly deserved the cover, too, and art director Diane Sullivan had designed it beautifully. Thinking wishfully, we held off on a total overhaul. I wrote a new ending for my weekly message: “We have nature to thank for the setting that makes the summertime arts in Vermont so special. Then, every 10 years or so, she steals the show.”

By Tuesday morning, with reports of towns along the Winooski River underwater, it became clear that a few tweaks to the print paper would not be enough. We scrapped all the planned news stories for flood ones and bumped Blachly from the cover — sorry, Bill. Food editor Melissa Pasanen started reporting on restaurants impacted by floodwaters and swapped out a dry piece about Martone’s Market & Café in Essex Junction for a wet one about culinary casualties that she first published online on Tuesday afternoon.

The news team fanned out across the state. Senior multimedia producer Eva Sollberger crowdsourced flood videos from social media. Photographer James Buck drove to Londonderry. Culture coeditor Carolyn Fox and calendar writer Emily Hamilton updated the events pages to reflect the weather conditions, dropping one spotlight on a gathering that had been postponed and adding a new one. Our resourceful design team reconfigured the paper on the fly — and kept us on track to meet our deadlines.

As Seven Days went to press on Tuesday night, we were still worried about the safety of fellow Vermonters in the path of rising rivers and streams.

From the comfort of my home office, I keep looking up at a framed cover of the paper from September 14, 2011 — our Performing Arts Preview, published right after Tropical Storm Irene. It shows a ballerina in pink tights and a tutu striking a graceful pose in the water-soaked furrows of a farm field. Instead of toe shoes, she’s wearing mud boots.

It’s too early to say how this week’s floods will impact Unadilla. Dual runs of The Pirates of Penzance and A Midsummer Night’s Dream were supposed to wrap this weekend. Reached via email, Blachly suggested we consult the road commissioner and provided his phone number. “Blachly Road is washed out in both directions,” he wrote. “A pickup occupies the middle of the former road with water up to its windows in a 6 ft ditch.”

My bets are on Blachly, O’Brien — and Vermont — that the shows will go on.