• Youth Services has promoted Leigh Madalinski, RAMP assistant coordinator for the past school year, to case manager for its Big Brothers Big Sisters' school and community-based mentoring programs. Madalinski came to Youth Services with three years experience working with school-aged children at both the therapeutic residential and day school programs at the Community House in Brattleboro.
• Jane Black Breslend, 70, formerly of Bellows Falls. Died Nov. 1 at Westwood Health Center in Keene, N.H. Mother of Ashley Tarvit and her husband, Edward; Alissa Houle and her husband, Timothy; and Christian Breslend and his fiancé, Wendy Lufkin. Sister of Susan Smith and the late Carl Black. Born in Bellows Falls, the daughter of the late Russell and Theodora (Orth) Black, she was a graduate of Bellows Falls High School and worked as a private health care provider. She moved 10 years ago to the New Hampshire seacoast where she had always wanted to be. She was an independent woman who had a small group of friends she enjoyed spending time with. Memorial information: Services will be private at the convenience of the family. Arrangements are in the care of Fenton & Hennessey Funeral Home in Bellows Falls.
• Fannie Zimmer Mantel, 92, of Newfane. Died Oct. 25 at her home. Wife of the late William Mantel. Mother of Burk and Joan Mantel of Eagle, Idaho; Laurie and Wally Mariani of Burlington; Henriette Mantel of New York, N.Y.; Chloe Mantel and William Taylor of Wellesley, Mass.; and the late Jeffrey Zimmer Mantel. She was born and raised in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., where she graduated from the Poughkeepsie Business Institute. After graduation, she joined IBM, where she worked in the company's front office alongside Thomas Watson Sr. During World War II, while she worked at IBM,...
The Selectboard said it is on the fence about whether to invest in a public Internet wireless “hotspot” at Broad Brook Grange, and are curious to know whether the Grange would be interested in hosting such a device. According to Town Administrator Katie Buckley, speaking at the Oct. 28...
In anticipation of our 50th Brattleboro Union High School Reunion, June 20-22, 2014, the class of 1964 organizing committee is interested in locating our missing classmates: James Guyette, Barbara McKinnon, Cathy Miller, Randal Sage, Harry Starkey, Gerald Stillings, Christopher Wellman, and Daniel Wilsey. If you are aware of any...
The U.S. Department of Agriculture announces the Vermont Agency of Agriculture as the recipient of an $88,500 matching grant under the Federal-State Marketing Improvement Program (FSMIP), one of the largest awards for this highly competitive 2013 program. The Agency of Agriculture, in collaboration with Vermont Department of Tourism and Marketing, University of Vermont Extension, Shelburne Farms, and Vermont Agricultural and Culinary Tourism Council, will use this funding “to amplify the economic impacts and mitigate risks of agricultural and culinary tourism...
The Main Street Arts “Taste of the Arts, Tales from a Community” series continues Thursday, Nov. 14 at 6 p.m., with a presentation by musician Will Danforth. The talk follows a catered dinner at Chivers Center, Vermont Academy. Danforth is known mainly as an acoustic multi-instrumentalist who haunts the “roots” regions. He has been a traditionalist, a singer-songwriter, and much in between: from temples to taprooms and toddlers to elders. After five albums and a couple of songwriting awards, things...
In a rare New England appearance, acclaimed singer-songwriter David Berkeley will give a solo concert at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center (BMAC) on Thursday, Nov. 7, at 7 p.m. Berkeley will perform selections from his newest album, “The Fire in My Head,” released in July. If there is a genre of American literary songwriters out there, David Berkeley could be its poster child. The Harvard graduate's memoir, “140 Goats and a Guitar,” accompanied his fourth album, “Some Kind of...
Organizers of Marlboro Music have announced the dates for its five weekends of chamber music concerts next summer: The season opens July 19-20 and runs through Aug. 15-17, 2014. Participating artists include Artistic Director Mitsuko Uchida and fellow pianists Jonathan Biss, Bruno Canino, and Cynthia Raim. They're joined by a wealth of string players, including some from the Guarneri, Johannes, Juilliard, Mendelssohn, Muir, and Pro Arte quartets: violinists Lucy Chapman, Viviane Hagner, Soovin Kim, Joseph Lin and Hiroko Yajima; violists...
Since its first dinner four decades ago at the former Common Ground restaurant on Elliot Street, the annual Brattleboro Community Thanksgiving Dinner has opened its doors to one and all on the last Thursday of November. This year's meal will be served on Thursday, Nov. 28, from noon to 5 p.m., at the River Garden on Main Street. The small army of volunteers that makes the free dinner happen each year has begun its preparations for this year's feast, according...
The 410-mile long Connecticut River and nearby tributaries are now cleaner of trash thanks to the hard work of over 2,200 dedicated residents and Source to Sea Cleanup volunteers. On Oct. 4 and 5, the volunteers from businesses, faith communities, watershed groups, schools, and youth organizations grabbed trash bags and work gloves for the 17th annual Source to Sea Cleanup, organized by the Connecticut River Watershed Council (CRWC). This year, 124 cleanup groups participated in all four states of the...
Newfane Garden Club to meet NEWFANE - The Newfane Garden Club will hold a meeting and presentation on pressing flowers on Thursday, Nov. 7, at 2 p.m., at the Newfane Congregational Church. Following a brief business meeting, Ellie Roden, owner of Green Mountain Pressed Flowers, will demonstrate how to create gorgeous pressed-flower artwork using her unique style, and how to use the microwave oven technique to process roadside and woodland flowers. Guests are always welcome. Hostesses for this event are...
Brattleboro Development Credit Corp., Windham Regional Commission, and Bennington County Regional Commission are presenting a village-and-town-revitalization workshop at the Town Office, 100 Old School St., on Wednesday, Nov. 13, at 6:30 p.m. This workshop, focusing on the importance of a well-planned and -implemented design for a downtown or village center, is open to anyone interested in organizing to create a more resilient village or town center economy. Panelists are Richard Amore, planning coordinator for the Vermont Agency of Commerce and...
Up in Montpelier, a firestorm is taking place. One woman, Gwendolyn Hallsmith, is working tirelessly to educate people about, and make happen, a public bank for Vermont. As a result, people involved with big-money interests are looking to have her fired for the civic work she does beyond her day job as Montpelier City Planner. There is a good deal of misinformation about a Vermont Partnership Public Bank. Our local banks do not see how beneficial it will be for...
“Duty's Faithful Child: A Visit With Louisa May Alcott” will be presented at All Souls Church (West Village Meetinghouse) on Sunday, Nov. 10, at 10 a.m. This event, sponsored by the Vermont Humanities Council, will replace the usual morning church service. As with all Sunday services at All Souls, the public is cordially invited to attend without charge. All Souls, located at 29 South St., across and up the hill from the West Brattleboro Fire Station, is accessible to people...
The two most dominant teams during the fall high school sports season - the Twin Valley boys' soccer team and the Bellows Falls' field hockey team - were both driven by the need to avenge last season's disappointments. For top-seeded and undefeated Twin Valley, it was mission accomplished last Saturday as the Wildcats beat the team that defeated them in last year's Division IV final, the No. 2 Proctor Phantoms, by a 3-0 score at Whitcomb High School in Bethel.
Community members who wish to volunteer or make donations should contact the committee members listed below: • Food/supply donations: Ray Branagan, 802-579-4649 or [email protected] (turkey); Lindsay Cobb, 802-376-3792 or [email protected] (vegetables and desserts). • Kitchen work: Mark Schutlz, 603-336-0008 or [email protected]; Peter Wiles, 802-254-4687 or [email protected]. • Prepare a dessert: Lindsay Cobb, 802-376-3792 or [email protected]. • Deliver meals on Thanksgiving: Peter Wiles, 802-254-4687 or [email protected]. • Prepare vegetables on Wednesday, Nov. 27, at Masonic Hall, 2-9 p.m.: Lindsay Cobb, 802-376-3792...
Next Stage Arts Project and Twilight Music present Winnipeg, Canada-based roots music quintet The Duhks at Next Stage on Saturday, Nov. 9, at 7:30 p.m. The Grammy-nominated and Juno award-winning band's original members have reunited after a three-year hiatus. You'll find Jessee Havey on vocals; Tania Elizabeth on fiddle; Jordan McConnell on guitar, pipes, whistles, and vocals; Leonard Podolak on banjo and vocals; and Scott Senior on percussion. Vermont-based Americana, folk, and roots music duo Red Heart The Ticker opens...
Many of us chose to live in Vermont because we liked the old-fashioned lifestyle: local milk from dairy farms, heating with wood, gravity-flow spring water, sugaring with horses, visiting friends, and cooking for bake sales and potluck dinners instead of watching TV all evening. But times are changing. Dairy farms are disappearing. Old wood-heating systems can't be used because they're not up to modern specs. Spring water is considered questionable. Sugaring is done with plastic tubing and pumps. And everyone...
T'aint summer. T'aint Foliage. T'aint winter. T'aint no leaf peepers. T'aint no ski bums. T'aint no tourist money flowing in, and t'aint no locals going out. T'aint Halloween. T'aint none of them other holidays, neither. T'aint a whole lot going on, and t'aint a whole lot to do. It's t'aint season, everybody! T'aint season marks that special time in Vermont where we take a pregnant pause and ... wait. Folks are saving money for the materialistic barrage from Black Friday...
On Earth Day 1990, the United Nations invited 40 astronauts and cosmonauts to the General Assembly. Represented were the United States, France, Russia, Germany, Saudi Arabia, and Spain. Six of these, all from different countries, were selected to address the audience in their native tongue, and asked to describe their strongest impression in having gazed upon the Earth from space. One of those was American astronaut Jerry Carr. “Although none of the speakers knew in advance what the others would...
I love the seashore and beach most of the year. I am not too keen about the seashore during the summer when the sun is producing melanoma and the sand is littered with debris that has drifted from inland, scattered in nearly naked lumps all over the place. But in the fall, winter, and spring, that debris has been gathered up and returned to its cityscape. Then the seashore beach is in its elemental form. The rising and falling tides...
On Sunday, Nov. 10, at 4 p.m., the Wistaria Chamber Music Society brings its annual Schubertiad to Centre Congregational Church on Main Street. For nine years, Wistaria has performed a different Schubertiad in Massachusetts; this is the first time the ensemble is bringing a Schubertiad to Brattleboro. David Perkins, Wistaria's artistic director, explains that a Schubertiad was the name given by Franz Schubert and his friends to their lively gatherings in 19th century Vienna salons, “where wine, laughter, and dancing...
In the wake of the sale of The Boston Globe and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette to Red Sox owner and hedge fund billionaire John Henry for $70 million in cash, and the sale of The Washington Post to Amazon.com founder and billionaire Jeff Bezos for $250 million, Bloomberg News columnist Megan McArdle recently asked, “Should we be worried that soon billionaires will own all our major news outlets?” Her answer? “It may come to that, but I don't find...
Back in the 1990s, Bob Barrett had an idea. The longtime Grafton real estate agent saw his friends and neighbors in his town struggle to stay in homes that had become too burdensome. They wanted to stay in Grafton, but there was no housing available for able-bodied elders who simply wanted a smaller, more manageable place to live. Barrett got in contact with Bob Crego, the former executive director of Valley Cares, and pitched the idea of building affordable senior...
Keep a lookout for blue and orange Smoke-Free Zone signs in downtown Brattleboro. Brattleboro Area Prevention Coalition (BAPC) and the Brattleboro Area Interfaith Senior Youth Group have teamed up to create awareness about the danger of secondhand smoke in the downtown Brattleboro area. During Gallery Walk on Nov. 1, members of the youth group provided downtown Brattleboro businesses with Smoke-Free Zone window decals. More than 20 downtown Brattleboro businesses have agreed to support the project by allowing the teens to...
The world of cheese can be a very odd place, especially for someone who is just venturing out beyond the typical grocery store offerings. For example, it's strange enough to ponder the practice of wrapping a cheese in fabric (cheesecloth), instead of wax or plastic, during the cheese's aging process, but consider this: some cheeses are wrapped in leaves and grass while they mature. Yes, “foliage” is not just a season when tourists descend on our quaint New England towns.
Thanksgiving is a holiday almost totally given over to the eating of food. There are no presents, few songs, and decoration is usually limited to hanging three cobs of Indian corn on the front door. But our tables are transformed into groaning boards, in more ways than one. Occasionally, we speak a word or two of actual thanks at the beginning or end of the meal, but most of our energy goes into digestion. The world of food does not...
Grafton Village Cheese, a business of the nonprofit Windham Foundation, has been recognized as a 2013 “Editors' Choice Food Awards” winner in Yankee's November/December issue. Grafton Village Cheese's Vermont Clothbound Cheddar was recognized by the regional magazine's editors as a favorite artisanal New England food in the dairy and cheese category. Vermont Clothbound Cheddar is a classic milled-curd, cow's-milk cheddar wrapped in cheesecloth and then aged slowly in the company's own aging caves for at least six months. The process...
Vermont law enforcement agencies, set up at 57 locations statewide, collected a record amount of residents' unused or unwanted prescription medications for a successful Drug Take Back Day Oct. 26. According to Vermont State Police in a press release, officers accepted nearly 3,500 pounds of pills - up from the 2,393 pounds collected at the year's first take-back, in April - and properly disposed of them, all in an effort to combat the problem of abuse or misuse of prescription...
The West Brattleboro Association is making flower bulbs available free of charge to any neighborhood group willing to plant them in a public place in West Brattleboro. “What better way to build strong neighborhoods than to work together to plant for the future and see the flowering of our work in the spring?” says Doug Cox, project coordinator. The project will make a large bag of bulbs, worth about $50, available to the first five neighborhoods that agree to plant...
I am sure if teachers at Academy School were to hear that a child in their classroom were being bullied that they would take the situation seriously. They would listen to the victim and the harmer, and they would consider the bystanders. They would engage the parents and work with all relevant children and adults to deal constructively with the problem. This was certainly the case when my daughter was being bullied at Academy School 10 years ago. I appreciated...
On Nov. 7, 1938, Herschel Grynszpan, a German-born Jew, shot Ernst von Rath, a German minister. When vom Rath died two days later, the Nazi minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, let it be known that any “spontaneous” demonstrations of German anger at the Jews would not be stopped by the government. Leaders of the “Brown Shirts” took this to mean that it was the time to take “action” against the Jews of Germany. During the next two days, the Jews...
The New York Times calls quintessential 1960s folk music icon Arlo Guthrie “a superb folk singer” and “a polished raconteur.” Anyone who has ever attended one of Guthrie's concerts can testify to the latter, when he interrupts a song to riff on whatever happens to come to mind. His digressions are ironic and funny, even goofy, but they always carry his trademark passion: to illuminate the pressing issues that face our world. Kingdom County Productions and Marlboro College present an...
Some of my favorite early memories involve the Washington Redskins. For as long as I remember, I've watched games on Sundays. My father is a Washington, D.C. native who has been a fan of the team since they moved to town from Boston in 1937. I've watched the 'Skins play with four generations of my family and, though I now live near a team that regularly makes the playoffs, my loyalty remains with my oft-beleaguered Washington football team. I am...
College was not an option when Andy Paciulli graduated from high school. His grades were too low for “regular” community college, said Paciulli, now principal of Academy School, one of the town's three elementary schools. Instead, he enrolled in a night-school program, which helped him raise his grade-point average to 3.0 so he could enroll in community college. Whether students at Academy School go on to college or straight into a career, Paciulli said he wants all of them to...
On a frigid November Monday evening, 60 people crowded into the Municipal Center in Jacksonville to ask experts some questions about the state's new health insurance exchange, Vermont Health Connect. The audience sat watching the panel, and the panel sat watching the audience, and Dr. Karen Hein, physician and Green Mountain Care board member, said she could see the looks of “concern, confusion, and consternation.” She sought to reassure audience members that the state is following federal and state laws,
After more than three decades, Alan Blood won't be sticking needles in people's arms anymore. The 65-year-old Putney resident is retiring from his job as a medical assistant at Putney Family Healthcare, and his friends, patients, and co-workers threw a party for him on Nov. 1 at the Putney fire station. Blood started working for Dr. Thomas R. Hoskins, a general practitioner, in 1981 at what was then the Putney Medical Office. “He opened his office a couple of doors...
So what was occupying Wall Street about? For a number of years, we have slowly, quietly watched our freedoms being surrendered to economic power in the form of corporate law and accumulation of wealth buttressed by our non-independent, selective media. Wall Street symbolically represents the intersection of these forces. Slowly, this loss of freedoms has taken form as the best and the brightest - those formally educated by our universities - sculpted laws to craft corporate hegemony over the law...
The Brattleboro Community Justice Center celebrated its tenth anniversary with two arts exhibits during this month's Gallery Walk - one by victims of violent crimes and the other by violent offenders. “Saving a Place at the Table” serves to honor and remember Vermonters who have been victims of violent crime. The exhibit features table-place settings for those killed by criminal violence and those whose lives have been significantly changed by that violence. These place settings are meant to give a...
The investigation into the cause of an apartment house fire at 214 Elliot St. that left 17 people homeless on Oct. 16 is now closed, according to Brattleboro Fire Chief Michael Bucossi. In a news release on Tuesday, Bucossi said Brattleboro Fire Department investigators met with the Vermont State Police Fire Investigation Unit to review information gathered after a three-alarm fire destroyed the three-story structure. Bucossi said that no new information about the cause of the fire has come to...
The Brattleboro Retreat received another visit from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) this week. CMS is resurveying the private psychiatric hospital following a number of compliance issues on the part of the Retreat earlier this year. Once the survey is completed, it has 10 days to report any findings to the Retreat. If surveyors find that the hospital is not following the Plan of Correction the Retreat submitted to federal regulators, CMS will terminate its provider agreement on...
By a 4-1 vote, with John Allen opposed, the Brattleboro Selectboard approved a request to form a Skate Park Site Selection Committee to evaluate locations in town to build a skateboard park. The request was made by Brattleboro Area Skatepark Is Coming (BASIC), the current committee overseeing the proposed construction of a skatepark at the Crowell Lot on Western Avenue. Selectboard chair David Gartenstein stressed that the Crowell Lot site, the source of much controversy over the past couple of...
Assessments are sure to rise for member municipalities through the Windham Solid Waste Management District, with Guilford's annual contribution due to head north from the current $25,451.30. That's according to Cheryl Franklin, the town's WSWMD representative, apprising selectmen of District budget woes at the Selectboard's Oct. 28 meeting. Franklin said WSWMD is operating at a last-reported deficit of $117,000, not including capital expenditures. Revenue in June and July was down “quite a bit,” she said, owing in part to the...