The Selectboard will visit four sites for the potential town skatepark in August. The board hopes interested members of the public will attend, and provide feedback.
The Aug. 4 special Selectboard meeting will start at 5:30 p.m. at the Elm Street parking lot.
After viewing the site and collecting public comment, the board will move to the Crowell Lot at the intersection of Union Hill and Western Avenue. Then the board will visit the sites at Living Memorial Park off Western Avenue.
The Skate Park Site Committee presented its top-recommended sites for a 6,500 square-foot skate park to the town on July 1.
Economic development topped all the lists as the Selectboard outlined its goals during a special meeting on July 22. Board member Donna Macomber said she hopes the town develops a strategy for tapping into arts resources in the community. She also suggested the town build its identity as a...
Green River Covered Bridge closed to traffic GUILFORD - The Green River Covered Bridge will be closed to all vehicular traffic through Friday, Sept. 15. The bridge will reopen for pedestrian traffic on Wednesday, Aug. 27. The town of Guilford has contracted with Zaluzny Excavating, in partnership with Welch...
College news • The following local residents graduated from Rochester (N.Y.) Institute of Technology: Eric Cawley of Brattleboro received a B.S. in mechanical engineering from RIT's Kate Gleason College of Engineering, Katherine Given of Brattleboro received a B.F.A. in industrial design from RIT's College of Imaging Arts and Sciences, and Danielle Nutter of South Londonderry received a B.S. in chemical engineering from RIT's Kate Gleason College of Engineering. Transitions • Just So Pediatrics welcomes new pediatrician Dr. Heather Lesage-Horton to...
The Grace Cottage Hospital Fair Day is held annually on the first Saturday in August on the Townshend Common. This year's Fair Day is Aug. 2. from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. The event, organized by the GCH Auxiliary, is, according to The Boston Globe, “New England at its best.” The fair features activities to please the whole family: a live auction, bargain booths, bingo, pony rides, face painting, jewelry, food, kids' games, a costume booth for kids, a dunking...
Lamont Barnett asked me to write a letter supporting him for the position of assistant judge, and I readily agreed. I have known him for several years and served with him on the Rockingham Selectboard when he was chair. Some of his qualifications for this position are clear. He is extremely sharp and remembers everything down to the smallest detail. If he says he's going to do something, he'll do it. And the most important trait for this position is...
Western Avenue will receive tender loving care thanks to a grant from the Vermont Agency of Transportation. The Selectboard approved a construction bid from Lane Construction Co. of Northfield, Mass., on July 22. The $132,904 project includes paving Western Avenue with about three-quarters of an inch of new asphalt in the travel lanes. The state has agreed to reimburse the town for work on this road up to $150,000, Hannah O'Connell, highway and utilities superintendent for the Department of Public...
The Putney Foodshelf recently received notification from the IRS that it has earned its status as an independent nonprofit charitable organization. The designation does not affect the Foodshelf in any way other than that organizers there can now plan for the future. When the Foodshelf began in 2005 at the Genesis Church of the Brethren, it enjoyed 501(c)(3) status through the church. When the church closed in 2009, the Foodshelf moved to the Putney Community Center. That board allowed the...
For the third consecutive year, Jamaica is opening its doors to musicians, composers, and visual artists from all over the country for the Pikes Falls Chamber Music Festival (PFCM). Founded by its artistic director, Susanna Loewy, who wanted to present a free festival of chamber music for the town where she had spent so many summers in her youth, PFCM has been growing each year, adding more concerts, visual arts, and other community events. This year, PFCM will include 10...
Twenty-two of the 75 resident artists at Marlboro Music will share the discoveries they have made during the first five weeks of this summer's in-depth rehearsals in this coming weekend's concerts, Saturday, Aug. 2, at 8:30 p.m., and Sunday, Aug. 3, at 2:30 p.m. Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, 2014 resident composer, will have two works performed on Saturday: “Changing Light” with soprano Ashley Emerson and Joshua Smith, principal flute of the Cleveland Orchestra; and “Cloud Trio” with violinist David McCarroll,
Meeting Waters YMCA ran its first summer camp on a borrowed field in North Westminster in June 1965. Fifty years later, the regional Y's camps still meet a vital need in keeping kids engaged and active in the summer while providing daylong relief for working parents. In that time, more than 12,000 area children have spent one to eight weeks of summer developing new skills, forming friendships, and making lasting memories. On Thursday, Aug. 7, from 6 to 8 p.m.,
It takes a serious ostrich mentality to assert that this nation takes care of its poor. Since Reagan emptied the psych wards, we have had a homeless crisis. San Diego's current solution is to give the homeless a one-way bus ticket out of town. The current solution is to move them down the road or to hide them - say, under Penn Station. UNICEF? Another “charitable” organization that eats more money in administrative costs than it delivers to its supposed...
Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel's words have kept rising up for me lately, as the war against women keeps taking us backward in time. From Supreme Court decisions affecting basic rights for access to health care for women to a recent incident of a sports-radio announcer calling a woman reporter a ”gutless bitch” because he didn't like the way she interviewed an athlete, women continue to be targets for oppression. Many women are speaking out and calling others...
It's amazing watching what people reveal about themselves when tensions in the Middle East explode. Some otherwise liberal, compassionate souls with big hearts suddenly morph into raging self-appointed authorities. Others who've suffered deeply and have reason not to be kind toward oppressors become surprisingly gentle. Some spew invectives, while others weep for dying children. But nothing rivals what has taken place on social media since the horrific conflict between Israel and the Palestinians began. Having responded to a friend's pro-Israel...
All through the regular American Legion Baseball season, Rutland Post 31 was the top dog in the Southern Division, and Brattleboro Post 5 and Bellows Falls Post 37 were left to fight for the scraps. But in the state Legion tournament at Castleton State College, it was Brattleboro and Bellows Falls that advanced to the quarterfinals, while Rutland was knocked out early. It was one illustration of how little separated were the top four teams in the South, and how...
A forum of the four Democratic candidates for State Senate kicked the 2014 election season into gear. About 50 people filled the small first-floor meeting room of the Townshend Town Hall the evening of July 24. The candidates answered questions on healthcare reform, school consolidation, energy policies, economic development, and campaign finance. Incumbent Sen. Jeanette White of Putney and newcomers Becca Balint of Brattleboro, Joan Bowman of Putney, and former state Commissioner of Agriculture Roger Allbee of Townshend spoke before...
If you could redevelop Melrose Terrace, what would you create? The Brattleboro Housing Authority wants to know. When it comes to planning for what BHA Executive Director Chris Hart calls “Melrose Terrace's second life,” the sky is the limit. Hart has set a goal of receiving 100 ideas from the community. She won't comment on what finances or regulations might allow at the site. “I want your ideas,” said Hart. “I don't want them influenced by anything. This is the...
It was an unusual site for a labor rally. In the parking lot of Fast Eddie's ice cream stand on Putney Road, about 60 FairPoint Communications workers and their family members gathered around a 12-foot-high inflatable rat to call attention to the lack of progress toward a new labor contract. Representatives of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 1400 and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Locals 2320, 2326, and 2327 have been in negotiations with FairPoint management since...
Stone Church Arts presents an evening of new music for cello and guitar featuring Eugene Friesen with Ian Ethan Case. The evening - Friday, Aug. 1, from 7:30 - includes solos and duets with new collaborative compositions involving “looping”: live, recorded layers of sound producing a large ensemble effect. The show is presented alongside Friesen's “Creative Cello Workshop,” July 31 through Aug. 3, in which 15 cellists from all over North America will descend here for an intensive weekend of...
John and Arlene Rec marked their 75th wedding anniversary last week with a lunchtime celebration at Vernon Green Nursing Home, where they live. Both are 94 years old. Arlene was born on Jan. 23, 1920, in South Vernon, above the railroad station where her family lived. Her mother, Alta (Richardson) Smith, was a homemaker. Her father, Guy Smith, was the station agent in South Vernon for many years back when the station was a busy passenger stop. She grew up...
“Sitting 'Round The Piano,” a musical revue in which local singers and performers belt out their favorite show tunes, premieres July 31 at Actors Theatre Playhouse and runs through Aug. 9. Did you ever want to sing your favorite songs from your favorite musicals in a room filled with your friends and fans? Doing just that are Cindy Choate, Leslie Cotter, Nancy Groff, Jason Guerino, Julie Olssen, Ken Olssen, Ray Mahoney, Joanne Mead, and Mark and Marilyn Tullgren, all under...
During Friday evening's Gallery Walk, the Celebration Brass Band will be on hand to entertain at the Robert H. River Garden on Main Street, home of Strolling of the Heifers. “Farms in Seven Media,” the exhibit at the Stroll's Gallery at the Garden, is on view through August. The Gallery will be open from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.; the music starts at approximately 6. Organizers say revelers should bring their dancing shoes. The Celebration Brass Band is Brattleboro's taste of...
Tom Scheidler's upcoming one-man art show, “Of Two Minds,” will be his fourth in the last 18 months. While this is a laudable accomplishment for nearly any artist, that Scheidler has been drawing for just under two years - at least for this round - makes the show, at Vermont Artisan Designs on Main Street, even more remarkable. Scheidler's introduction to drawing came when he was a fifth-grade student in parochial school, where, he says, “not much art was taught.”
Cartooning and illustration for the 7 to 13 set is the focus of a five-day class at Main Street Arts this summer, led by children's illustrator and author Christine Mix. Sessions run the week of Aug. 11 from 9:30 a.m. to noon. Mix describes the class as “a Mix'ed up bag of tricks including basic drawing skills such as action, perspective, character development, and old-fashioned animation tricks.” Students will be introduced to drawings from master illustrators, cartoonists, and animators. Students...
Last Friday morning, the sidewalks in downtown Brattleboro were covered with the chalk-written names and ages of Palestinian civilians who have been killed in Gaza since the Israeli military began its bombardment on July 7. This silent protest was an attention-grabbing way of illustrating the rising death toll from the latest of Israel's periodic bombardments and incursions into Palestinian territory to keep radical groups like Hamas under control. The cycle of violence is a familiar one. Hamas fighters in Gaza...
Rockingham Old Home Days follows a popular tradition in New England rooted in it's earliest European settlements, with “pilgrimages” calling former residents home to where their families settled and they were raised. That tradition continues with a few twists. According to Frances and Leverett Lovell's History of the Town of Rockingham, Vermont: Including the villages of Bellows Falls, Saxtons River, Rockingham, Cambridgeport and Bartonsville, 1907-1957, the first “return of the natives” of former Rockingham residents took place atop Meeting House...
According to Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to the United States from 2009 to 2013, “The war against Israel has passed through three phases.” “The first was the attempt to annihilate Israel by conventional means,” he says. “It began with Israel's birth in 1948, when Arab armies nearly captured Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and ended in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when Israeli forces came within artillery range of Cairo and Damascus. “The next stage, starting in the early 1970s, sought...