For those of you who’ve followed the ins and outs of VDB over the last 5 years, one name should begin to sound eerily familiar: “Don,” a.k.a. Jim DeFilippi, retired school teacher, Vermont author, and now the State Senate campaign’s man in Winooski. The thing about Don is that you name the event, and he’s always there. He’s that kind of friend.

DeFilippi discusses a potential “Bonnie Situation” with VDB at the campaign’s recent kick-off.

A BBQ down on North Beach? Don’s there. A fiction reading for 6 visibly uncomfortable people in a really big empty room down in Brandon? Don somehow manages to make the scene. Which is to say you can always count on the guy, when the rubber meets the road.

After grazing the food table, Don keeps a weather eye out for trouble at the 2007 Hamburger Summit.

After a while you start to wonder where the guy finds the time to be everywhere, supporting more or less everyone at once. But you really wonder when you see the scale of some of his side projects.

Take Brown Fedora Books.

DeFilippi realized, a while back, that the increasingly commercial paper-and-ink publishing world wasn’t meeting his needs, or those of many of his friends in the world of Vermont literature.

And so he set out to create a wide-ranging library of free downloads, including his own always gritty, often hilarious crime novels.

His latest offering is a collection of the best of VDB called Sled Dogs and Heavyweights, and it brings together a very judicious mix of interviews, commentary, and quick satirical bits to give it all some snap.

It’s yours for the clicking, free of charge.

That’s the beauty of Brown Fedora books: they’re rebar tough, built to last. And you don’t pay one thin dime.

Grazie mille, Don.