Play hard / hard work / work good

Above: Bravely tackling the difficult challenges of elegant dining and luxury shopping.

Below:  In the wake of Vermont’s flood, professional clean-up crews have been arriving from all over the country. Among them are immigrants and refugees who live as far away as Texas, Michigan, Chicago, and Florida. Some of the workers travel from disaster to disaster under contract to national clean-up corporations. They take on the hard, dirty, and sometimes dangerous work of gutting stores and houses, ripping out rotting floors and molding sheet rock for low pay. The man here, originally from Venezuela, goes back and forth with his crew from this Barre worksite to a B&Bs two hours away. There, they cook dinner, grab sleep, then breakfast, and pack the next day's lunches. 

Vermont professional crews, along with kids and other community volunteers, are showing up to help in stricken towns and villages across the state, feeding workers, hauling out mud and debris, donating goods, and setting up tool lending libraries, where sump pumps and humidifiers are the hot items.