Hey, fans of Dog Mountain, Stephen Huneck's artwork and/or dogs: National Public Radio's "Weekend All Things Considered" will feature "Dog Mountain: A Love Story" on Sunday, May 31. That program airs 5-6 p.m. on Vermont Public Radio.

The audio documentary was produced by Dan Collison and Elizabeth Meister, a married couple who, like thousands of people before them, were enchanted with the late Huneck's Dog Chapel during a visit several years ago. The unique shrine-to-doggies-past has been the subject of many an article, including in Seven Days, as well as TV and radio programs. Through their nonprofit media company Long Haul Productions, Collison and Meister also created a website that "continues the story online."

The story is about Stephen and Gwen Huneck, who tragically died in separate suicides; as well as about the love that dog owners have for their furry friends. Woof.

This week's terrorist attack on French satirical publication Charlie Hebdo sent shockwaves throughout France and the world. And while any massacre of any humans is horrific and terrifying, this one particularly hit home with cartoonists, satirists and journalists worldwide. The defiant demonstration of solidarity on the streets of Paris, and the electronic reverberations in tens of thousands of "Je suis Charlie" (I am Charlie) posts, are the only heartening aspects of this sad event.

Not surprisingly, cartoonists have responded in force the way they do best: by putting pen to paper. Vermont cartoonist laureate and New Yorker cartoonist Ed Koren shared the drawing above with Seven Days. The reference is to a lithograph by French satirist Honoré Daumier (1808-79), who was the chief draftsman at a magazine called La Caricature. The event to which the drawing referred was a brutal governmental repression that resulted in the killing of a working-class family by government troops.

This time, terrorist-censors massacred 12 at a satirical magazine, and now the Paris police have killed two suspects in turn, and another militant.

In a statement Koren sent to the New Yorker, he wrote in part: 

The work of our French colleagues, who were regarded as public intellectuals contributing to the civic discourse, drew on a long tradition of graphic provocateurs and observers, holding the feet of authority and dogma to the fire of high standards and reason. My heart is broken by the loss of so many comrades who fearlessly continued that tradition, whose huge talents are lost to us by such laughless and brutal and ignorant censors.

May we all stand with them — Cabu, Wolinsky, Charb, Tignous — mourning and honoring their genius, next to our drawing boards, reaffirming and continuing their work. 

Added Koren, "The pen — drawing and writing — will continue to be mightier than the semi-automatic weapon."

Nous sommes Charlie.

If you're an unabashed National Public Radio geek like me, perhaps you've had the following experience: You suddenly recognize that the song used as the segue between one story and the next is a subtle — and sometimes not-so-subtle —commentary on the story you just heard. In radio, such melodic interludes are called "bumper music" or "musical beds."

In late October, I caught one such musical nod on Vermont Public Radio following the weekly sports piece by "Morning Edition" commentator Frank Deford. Following an especially long Game Six of the World Series, Deford aired a piece called "Start World Series Games Earlier; Let Us Sleep." 

In it, Deford bemoaned the fact that Major League Baseball insists on starting playoff games too late in the evening for most East Coast fans, especially kids, to catch the end of the game, "so children are denied baseball's championship and grow up mixed-martial-arts fans instead."

Following Deford's piece, VPR aired an instrumental cover of Eric Clapton's "After Midnight," which got me wondering: Who selects VPR's bumper music, and what were some of his or her favorites? And, what other musical inside jokes did I miss in 2014?

It turns out, VPR's morning bumper music is chosen by VPR's "Morning Edition" local host Mitch Wertlieb, who wakes up each morning at an ungodly hour so that the rest of us know what's happening in the world.

A bottle of wine awaits Bo Muller-Moore in his Montpelier studio. But he won't open it until he's done with press for the day. And that may take a while.

It's not every day that a Vermont T-shirt artist bests a major corporation. But that's just what Muller-Moore did, and people are taking notice.

Today, the designer and his lawyers, Ashlyn Lembree and Daniel Richardson, announced their second major victory against fast-food chain Chick-fil-A. The first came when a court overturned the giant's cease-and-desist order demanding that Muller-Moore not only stop using the logo Eat More Kale — which the company claimed too closely resembled its motto "Eat Mor Chikin" — but turn over rights to Chick-fil-A.

Now, Muller-Moore has won the right to trademark his design. That trademark should be finalized within the next six months.

The artist, who retains a day job at a local bakery, admits that he would like to be celebrating with burgers at Three Penny Taproom, but he realizes that he must make, er, kale, while it lasts.

"The reality is, I'll do a couple months' worth of business tonight. My busy season is about to kick in," he says. "It’s an unusual situation i find myself in. Another artist would kill to be in this position."

Hoping not to bore him with the same third degree he'd had all day, we asked the Eat More Kale dude a few easy questions.

I don't know about you guys, but my awkward family photos tend to just gather dust on the mantel. I see them, I cringe, I walk away. Not Mike Bender, the 1997 Middlebury College grad behind the popular website awkwardfamilyphotos.com. 

In April 2009, the Los Angeles-based screenwriter — who penned the script for Not Another Teen Movie (2001) and several seasons of the MTV Movie Awards — traveled home for a vacation and spotted his mom displaying a ski vacation photograph. He admits that his first impulse was to cringe. 

"At first, I couldn’t understand why she was memorializing what I thought was an awkward moment," Bender recalls.

Then inspiration struck: "I sat down with my writing partner [and childhood friend Doug Chernack] at the time and told him about it. He was like, Oh, my God, my house is full of those. We thought if we had them, everyone must have them. So we launched a website to see if people would submit theirs."

Not many people work the same job for 30 years these days. When they do, they might get a watch to mark the occasion. If you’re Walter Parker, the 30-year classical music host on Vermont Public Radio, you get a live hour-and-a-half concert played by musicians you’ve known for years, and a live audience to applaud both them and you. Oh, and cake and champagne for all.

More than 100 people turned out to hear Parker’s free tribute concert at Elley-Long Center in Colchester on Wednesday. Hosted by its lead organizer and Parker’s newest colleague, morning classical host Kari Anderson, the “variety show,” as she called it, was also broadcast live. And tuning in, no doubt, were many of VPR Classical’s 42,100 weekly listeners (the Nielsen Audio numbers for fall 2013).

Parker is now the wise old owl in Vermont’s classical-music forest, the one who, as he recalled during the concert, brought the “barely teenaged” violinist Soovin Kim and a young boy who played piano, Ignat Solzhenitsyn, to perform live in the VPR studio long before anyone knew their names. Parker has interviewed and hosted performances by pretty much every musician and ensemble in the state since he began doing so at VPR’s original headquarters in Windsor. Not surprisingly, he had a hand in choosing who performed in his concert.

Nearly 15 years ago, director Ang Lee scored a major international hit with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, a film that uses Hollywood-style storytelling to introduce global audiences to the wonders of Hong Kong martial arts films.

The movie, which stars legendary Hong Kong actors Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh, grossed more than $200 million worldwide, and inspired all manner of ancillary materials: comic books, video games, even a TV series in Taiwan — but no sequel, a surprising thing for a film that raked in critical acclaim as well as box-office returns.

Next summer, the film's many fans will finally have the chance to see its story continue, thanks in part to Morrisville screenwriter John Fusco. Fusco wrote the screenplay for the sequel Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon II: The Green Destiny, which is currently in production under the direction of legendary martial arts choreographer and director Yuen Woo-Ping. Michelle Yeoh reprises her role in the sequel, and is joined by the martial-arts film star Donnie Yen.

If you frequent Twitter or Facebook, chances are the catchy name of a new website — Ello — flitted across your screen recently. The social media website toggled from stealth mode to widespread sensation over the course of just a few days this week: For a time yesterday, the currently invite-only website shut down the ability for existing users to send out invitation codes. The explanation: "Ello has gone viral." 

But Ello has been brewing for months — in Vermont, of all places. The company is based in Burlington and funded by Vermont venture capital. 

If you're still scratching your head about what the hell-o is Ello, don't worry; we've got you covered. 

1. This is social media with a manifesto.

The site's motto is "Beautiful, Simple and Ad-Free" — and Ello, at first glance, delivers on the promise. The site is clean and spare, with plenty of white space — think a sort of Facebook/Tumblr hybrid, redesigned by (and populated with, if the user profile photos are any hint) hipsters. You can post messages, add photos, reply "@" ("at") your fellow-Ello-ers and invite friends to join — fueling the site's exponential growth. 

Ello promises to do more than look good. The site's manifesto declares, "Your social network" — read: Facebook — "is owned by advertisers ... You are the product that's bought and sold." Ello sets itself up as the alternative: 

We believe there is a better way. We believe in audacity. We believe in beauty, simplicity, and transparency. We believe that the people who make things and the people who use them should be in partnership.

We believe a social network can be a tool for empowerment. Not a tool to deceive, coerce, and manipulate — but a place to connect, create, and celebrate life.

Given the site's explosion in popularity and hype in recent days, the message is striking a deep chord. 

2. Yes, you heard right: Ello is based in Vermont.

Cofounder Paul Budnitz, who teamed up with Colorado-based design firm Berger & Föhr and hacker collective Mode Set, lives in Shelburne, and splits his time between New York and the Green Mountain State. Budnitz is one of seven cofounders, who collectively own a majority share in the company. According to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings, Ello shares the same address — 47 Maple Street, the home of the Karma Bird House and a number of start-up companies — as Budnitz's high-end bicycle company, Budnitz Bicycles. 

3. Cofounder Budnitz is a serial entrepreneur — and a successful one at that.

As Sarah Tuff wrote last year for Seven Days, Budnitz is no stranger to good design. Before Budnitz Bicycles (the self-proclaimed maker of the "lightest, fastest, and most elegant city bikes in the world"), he started KidRobot, a creator of art toys, fashion apparel and accessories. Several of KidRobot's creations are in the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

4. Vermont venture capital funding played a big part in launching the site. And that's provoking some consternation in the peanut gallery.

Shelburne-based FreshTracks Capital invested $435,000 in seed funding in Ello in January. When that news broke yesterday in a post on the new website itself, critics immediately alleged Ello had made a pact with the devil. How could the site, they wondered, maintain its ad-free promises with a venture capital firm looking for a return on its investment?

According to a story at Gigaom.com, a site devoted to news about emerging technologies, FreshTracks partner Cairn Cross met Budnitz about a year ago in Vermont. "Budnitz pitched FreshTracks on his ad-free social network concept, monetized with a freemium plan where users would pay for added features, and Cross was intrigued," according to the tech site.

According to Gigaom, Cross wasn't concerned about allegations that big VC would push Ello to the dark side.

“We practice venture capital in a way that very few people practice it. We’re really small-town venture. We’re patient, we have long exit horizons, we’ve had some successes, we’ve been around for awhile,” Cross told the website.

FreshTracks partners declined to speak with Seven Days for this story, instead directing us to Budnitz himself, who was unavailable for an interview today. 

5. The site's timing is great.

Part of the buzz surrounding Ello has to do with the most recent backlash against Facebook, this one having to do with the so-called "real name" policy. Facebook insists that users set up profiles under their legal names — the one that appears on a passport or credit card. The site is cracking down on users who don't comply. It's riled members who use pseudonyms on the site for a variety of reasons; think drag performers, queer or trans individuals, musicians, roller derby competitors or professionals who want to keep their professional and private lives separate. 

Ello doesn't have the same requirement. 

6. In particular, the site is said to appeal to gay and lesbian users "fleeing" Facebook.

"Is Ello the Anti-Facebook ... We've All Been Waiting For?" asked the site queerty.com in one headline. Over on the Daily Dot, a similar headline reads: "The Great Gay Facebook Exodus Begins." When Daily Dot writer Taylor Hatmaker asked Budnitz about the so-called exodus, Budnitz confirmed that Ello has seen an uptick in interest from LGBTQ users.

"Yes, we’ve been hearing about the Facebook drama too over the last few days," Budnitz said. "Ello welcomes the LGBTQ community and we’re very excited to see so many people moving over! "

After a group of Radical Faeries signed up a couple of days ago, Budnitz has been watching an uptick in queer users joining Ello—"which makes us very happy," he notes. "There does seem to be a bit of an avalanche since then."

7. That said, not everyone is convinced that Ello is a be-all, end-all solution to the perennial hand-wringing over Facebook. 

There are plenty of doubts already brewing about Ello — including the aforementioned uneasiness around the site's funding. The site's in beta mode, which means while Ello is promising more features as the site expands, there's still limited functionality right now. As Tech Crunch reported yesterday, the site lacks privacy controls, or the ability to block abusive users. 

And users and pundits alike say it's too soon to know if Ello can last. Ello isn't the first upstart to take on Facebook: "We’ve seen Facebook alternatives, like Diaspora, come and go. Or ones like Google+ come then fall flat," wrote Tech Crunch. "Ello might be onto something more organic. Diaspora was certainly too geeky and probably way too early. Perhaps it’s Ello’s time?"

Only time will tell.