The Commons will suspend publication for a week so our staff and contributors can recharge their batteries, enjoy the holiday season, and otherwise gird themselves to produce a good newspaper for you in 2016.
The next issue will be dated Wednesday, Jan. 6. Deadline for news and advertising is Friday, Jan. 1.
All of us at Vermont Independent Media and The Commons offer readers best holiday wishes in these waning days of 2015. See you next year.
...Brattleboro lists municipal Christmas, New Year's closings BRATTLEBORO - In observance of the Christmas holiday, all town offices will close at noon on Thursday, Dec. 24, and will be closed all day Friday, Dec. 25, with the exception of emergency services. Town offices will also be closed for the...
The New England Youth Theatre (NEYT) Alumni are back in Brattleboro for their sixth annual fundraising production of one of Shakespeare's classic farces: The Comedy of Errors. Mistaken identity causes chaos when two sets of twins separated at birth (two merchants both named Antipholus, with two servants named Dromio)
Winter is a time when many households living with lower incomes are particularly hard-pressed to meet their food expenses, given the added burden of heating costs. Some cut down on the food they consume, or buy cheaper, less nutritious food as a means to cope with these added expenses. But good nutrition is essential for good health in all seasons. Southeastern Vermont Community Action (SEVCA) can help Windham and Windsor county residents who are struggling get help with their food...
Village Center Designation is renewed PUTNEY - The Selectboard unanimously voted to instruct Town Manager Cynthia Stoddard to apply to the Vermont Downtown Development Board to renew the town's Village Center Designation. Stoddard told the board their approval of the renewal is part of the application process. According to the state's website, a designated village center “receives priority consideration for state grants... and other resources,” and “commercial property owners are eligible for tax credits to support building improvements.” Listers, Selectboard,
The Police and Fire Facilities Project should not proceed, as it is currently proposed, for the following reasons: • The town has not made a sufficient analysis of the project's affordability. It has not presented data that allows a clear understanding of how additional loans and higher taxes would impact taxpayers. What will the debt load be in five years adding this project to scheduled capital improvements in this period? • The problems described by the Police Department do not...
Obituaries • Stephen Mark Cartwright, 47, of Brattleboro. Died Dec. 5 at his home. Born in Rochford, in the county of Essex, England, he was most proud to be British, refusing to surrender his British citizenship in spite of living and working here for two-and-a-half decades. He considered his greatest achievement in life to be the birth of his daughter, Hayley Patricia Cartwright, and fatherhood. He was predeceased by his parents who fostered him when he was two years old,
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” contains a spelling error. Should it not be spelled “Grate?” Merriam-Webster tells us that the word “grate” is 1) to break into small pieces, 2) to grind against something with a harsh noise, 3) to have an irritating effect. All of these definitions seem appropriate.
The West Brattleboro Association (WBA) announced its Community Leader of the Year recipient during its annual Holiday Party on Dec. 14 at The New England House. The winner of this fifth annual award is the Bonnyvale Environmental Education Center (BEEC). Programs and activities BEEC has sponsored in its 24 years of existence include vacation camps attended by more than 100 children each year, various school and classroom programs throughout Windham County including preschool, elementary, and middle schools, both public and...
Through Jan. 3, Vermont is joining the nation in the “Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over” campaign, with a strong law enforcement presence on the state's highways. Law enforcement agencies across the state include the DUI Task Force, local police, sheriffs' departments, and the Vermont State Police Operation C.A.R.E (Combined Accident Reduction Effort) will be conducting extra patrols and sobriety checkpoints to detect impaired drivers. In addition, Vermont will utilize law enforcement Drug Recognition Experts (DRE) to evaluate any suspected...
On behalf of the staff, board, residents, and clients of Groundworks Collaborative, I extend our great and sincere thanks to Elliot Street Fish, Chips & More for selecting our organization to participate as the beneficiary of its inaugural Feeding Frenzy. The restaurant hosted the event on Nov. 4 and attracted a large and generous crowd. Sixty percent of the proceeds from the evening were donated to our organization. Groundworks Collaborative is the agency created from the recent merger of Morningside...
It may be a well-written story, but when using a very common name such as Steven Jones, it might be helpful to add a middle initial. Unfortunately, I am a local accountant, age 45, and I was not buying cocaine from Sultan Rashed just before his death.
I am really grateful to Susie Webster-Toleno for writing this piece and to The Commons for publishing it. If prayer were nothing more than a psychological pill or a mindless ritual, it would be cruel to disregard all the tragedy and injustice in the world with a bland “You're in our prayers.” But I have, and I know many others also have, found tangible comfort and strength and healing in earnest and sincere prayer, and in the prayers of others...
The Commons quotes Ann Braden: “This is not about being pro-gun or anti-gun. It's about gun responsibility.” If Braden were only truthful in her statement. For the past 230 years, Vermonters have been the safest and most responsible firearm owners in this country. That is why we are the safest state in the union and one of the safest places in the world. It is still insulting for her and Gun Sense Vermont, her astroturf organization, to defame the good...
In a benefit concert for Arts Bring Connection, the Vermont Jazz Center Sextet will play jazz standards and original works at Main Street Arts in Saxtons River on Dec. 28 at 7:30 p.m. Created by Mary Hepburn, the founder and former Director of Main Street Arts, Arts Bring Connection (ABC) is a program designed to bring Cubans and Americans together through music and the arts. Hepburn and ABC will be taking a group of 21 artists and musicians to four...
It was a quiet afternoon at the Brooks Memorial Library. Retiring director Jerry Carbone and incoming director Starr LaTronica were standing on the main floor sharing a gentle collegial joke. When it appeared that a quieter space was needed for an interview, Carbone took out the key to his office, bowed and presented it to LaTronica in a mock-officious fashion, saying, “Here's the key to YOUR office. It's YOURS now.” In such small ways are the community's vitally important transitions...
Art historian Carol Berry will consider the influences upon the work of 19th-century painter Vincent Van Gogh in a talk at Brooks Memorial Library in Brattleboro on Jan. 6 at 7 p.m. Her talk, Vincent Van Gogh: What Influenced Him and His Influence on Art, is part of the Vermont Humanities Council's First Wednesdays lecture series and is free and open to the public. Berry will look at the personal experiences, painters, and authors that shaped Van Gogh's work, and...
The Village Harmony Alumnae Ensemble will perform on Wednesday, Jan. 6, at 7 p.m., at Centre Congregational Church on Main Street. This world music ensemble includes 14 college-aged and young adult Village Harmony veterans; many have sung and traveled with Village Harmony for several years. The program features songs and dances from South Africa, American shape-note songs, quartet gospel and contemporary compositions, traditional songs from Corsica and the Balkans, Spanish Renaissance works by Guerro, and contemporary pieces by Estonian composer...
As members of Newfane's Building Committee gather information on renovation options for the Town Offices building, the numbers keep racking up. The building has a multitude of issues, from a lack of insulation to little privacy for those visiting town officials to discuss their taxes. Committee members have discussed these options with the Selectboard: continuing to address the issues piecemeal, a complete renovation of the existing structure, and selling the town office building and constructing a new one. A few...
Town records preserved VERNON - According to Assistant Town Clerk Aina Lindquist, Vernon's town records have not been copied for the past three years, and 21 books need to be scanned. At the Dec. 7 regular Selectboard meeting, Lindquist proposed the town use the NEMRC (New England Municipal Resource Center) module to maintain a digital copy of the records. She said the one-time cost for the module is $250, and her office's fund has enough money to cover the cost...
Entergy is accelerating its plans to move Vermont Yankee's spent nuclear fuel into more stable storage, with administrators saying they've developed a “safe and efficient” proposal for getting the job done on time. If a state permitting process goes as expected, crews will start transferring the Vernon plant's spent fuel to dry cask storage in 2017 – two years earlier than initially planned. Entergy announced the change on Dec. 16, but had first disclosed consideration of a schedule shift in...
A developer has a little more time to finish two long-planned hydroelectric projects on the West River. The Vermont Public Service Board has granted a six-month extension for commissioning hydroelectric turbines at U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' dams in Jamaica and Townshend, pushing the deadline from Dec. 31 to June 30, 2016. The projects are being developed by New Jersey-based Eagle Creek Renewable Energy, doing business locally as Blue Heron Hydro LLC. Blue Heron has long-term renewable energy contracts with...
Staff from the Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT) brought good news to town on Dec. 15. Thanks to AOT's asset management program, part of a Federal Highway Administration mandate, the state will repair the deck of the Elliot Street bridge this summer. The bridge sits in a busy section of town that connects downtown and Canal Street. On one side of the bridge is the junction of Elliot Street, Union Hill, Williams Street, and Flat Street. On the other side...
Several opportunities to get involved in Dummerston's municipal government are coming up this Town Meeting Day. “At the top of the list, Pam McFadden will not be running for re-election to the Town Clerk's position,” Selectboard Chair Zeke Goodband told The Commons. The Town Clerk is a 30-hour-per-week position with pay and benefits. The Town Treasurer position will also be open come Town Meeting Day. Laurie Frechette is not seeking re-election. This is a paid, 15-hour-per-week job. Two seats are...
St. Michael's Episcopal Church BRATTLEBORO - Toddlers, children and teens offer a Christmas pageant, Vermont style, at 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve at St. Michael's Episcopal Church on Bradley Avenue in Brattleboro. Several years ago youth of the parish expressed a wish to make the pageant more personal to them as Vermonters; thus the church has seen different twists each year from the entrance of a live goat to the delivery of apple pie and Gilfeather turnips; from gifts of...
Although it was only 1 p.m. at Vedrana Greatorex's house, the sun seemed to be already going down. It's a hard time of year, dark and cold - and, as Greatorex pointed out, even more so for refugees. Greatorex is the creator and organizer of the Carry Me Home Project, a local effort that ships donated supplies to refugee mothers and children making their way across Europe, many without food, winter jackets, or shoes. The project began unassumingly, when Greatorex...
Rod McCullum has what you might call conflicting feelings about storage of spent nuclear fuel at Vermont Yankee. “The fuel will be safe here,” said McCullum, a senior director at the Nuclear Energy Institute. “The fuel shouldn't stay here.” By that, McCullum was saying he has full confidence in the safety of Vermont Yankee's planned dry cask storage system for the radioactive material. But he also was lamenting the lack of a long-term federal plan for moving that waste out...
Last Night Brattleboro presents the 14th annual concert of New England, Irish, and French-Canadian dance music; fiddling from around the world; singing; and poetry. The concert is Thursday, Dec. 31, at the First Baptist Church, 190 Main St., starting at 7 p.m. Keith Murphy (guitar, mandolin, piano, foot percussion) and Becky Tracy (fiddle) will play dance tunes and traditional songs. Tracy plays with the contra dance band Wild Asparagus, while Murphy plays a central role in the Childsplay concerts both...
On Dec. 5, Hayley Cartwright's world turned upside down with the sudden death of her father, Steve. The 17-year-old student was exceptionally close to the 47-year-old British expatriate. With the death of the local marketing professional and popular local radio personality, whose “Brit on Bratt” segment ran for years on WTSA, the emotional loss was staggering enough. But Cartwright, whose mother and other relatives are not in any position to take on the financial burden, has been faced with a...
The building at 11 Arch St. waits, unused, fading into the background like a hermit long forgotten by its lived-in neighbors. Its windows, blinded by the boards covering them, further the building's air of dormancy. No one has used the building, which has served as a studio space, electric substation, machine shop, and even a bowling alley, in at least a decade. A new chapter in the building's life has begun, with the sale of 11 Arch St. last week...
The United States is spewing out the war rhetoric. Anti-Obama-ites say that ISIS poses a new threat, that the president created that threat by his lack of martial fervor, that ISIS has declared war on the “homeland” itself, that the world has changed (yet again). Have they forgotten that Osama bin Laden very publicly declared war on the U.S. after our troops stayed in Saudi Arabia after the first Gulf War? We paid little heed to his threat, but he...
Though more than two months have passed since sewage-tainted water overflowing from a gravity pipe being installed by the town flooded the 10 businesses in Black Mountain Square, none of the parties involved in the construction has assumed responsibility. Total damages to the businesses and the building that houses them exceed $500,000, but reimbursement is being held up while the town, excavating contractor Kingsbury Construction Co., and engineering firm Hoyle, Tanner & Associates of Manchester, N.H. spar over who is...
The other day, as I was pulling into the parking lot of my local post office, I experienced momentary amnesia, I think, due to a new condition I am going to call violence numbness, or VN for short. It registered to me that the U.S. flag was at half-mast - an image still asynchronous with normal, day-in-the-life, small-town Vermont, still a sore thumb among the more cheerful and reassuring touchy-feelers on the landscape this time of year: the twinkly Christmas...
“Light & Shade: Cyanotypes and Drawings by Tom Fels” will be on view at Mitchell • Giddings Fine Arts, in downtown Brattleboro, from Jan. 7 to Feb. 7, 2016. Works on display include large cyanotype prints from the Arbor and Catalpa Series from 2011 to 2014, and a selection of smaller minimalist drawings from the Linea Series of 2014. Concurrent with this exhibition, several of Fels's large drawings from his recent Classics series are included in the biennial Open Call...
The breakfast crowd fills The Restless Rooster Cafe on Elliot Street. Det. Ryan Washburn of the Brattleboro Police Department greets people coming through the door. Washburn, along with fellow officer Adam Petlock, have spearheaded a community outreach program called Coffee with a Cop (CWAC) for almost two years. Most interactions between police officers and the public occur during a crisis. CWAC provides an opportunity to speak with officers and ask questions outside of tense or heated situations. This morning, on...
On a quiet campus nestled among hundreds of acres of woodland, Marlboro College leaders proudly use the phrase “intentionally small.” But even in an egalitarian, close-knit academic setting, it's possible to have too much of a good thing. As college enrollment declines across the nation, Marlboro's undergraduate numbers are both an example and a magnification of that trend. The school's student body this fall is about 50 percent lower than the high-water mark of 356 in 2004, and there are...
If you have been coaching as long as Twin Valley's Buddy Hayford, you learn that keeping an even emotional keel is essential, because the inherent unpredictability of high schoolers assures that the highs and lows will come in equal measure. Last week, Hayford had the high of picking up his 400th career win as a girls' varsity basketball coach, and the low with watching a shorthanded team with players out of their respective comfort zones get clobbered by West Rutland,
For nearly two hours, Windham County Sheriff Keith Clark was grilled by an audience of 50 last week about his proposed Liberty Mill Justice Center project, which aims to transform a derelict paper mill into a detention center. Sitting in the audience was Jeanette White, one of the county's two state senators who represent the communities surrounding the former Chemco plant at 203 Paper Mill Rd. - including many residents who have come out strongly in opposition to the project.
The Selectboard approved a bid from Renaud Brothers of Vernon for a total of $386,379, to repair the fragile 200-foot dry-laid stone retaining wall holding up Green Street Extension. Renaud Brothers submitted the lowest bid of the five that the Department of Public Works received. The DPW closed the one-way portion of Green Street, known as Green Street Extension, in September 2014 because the wall was leaning outwards towards the Harmony Parking Lot. Staff monitored and measured movement in the...
The West Dummerston Covered Bridge has “been getting hit every couple of weeks now, it seems like,” Roads Foreman Lee Chamberlin told the Selectboard at its Dec. 9 regular meeting. The cost of repairing an early December collision between a box truck and the bridge will be covered by the driver's insurance, Chamberlin told board members. The bridge will be closed for a few hours while the construction company makes those repairs, he said. This will allow Chamberlin and his...
Rita Corbin, a graphic artist and printmaker, became involved in the Catholic Worker movement while living in New York City in the 1950s. The founder, Dorothy Day, hired Corbin to make illustrations for the Catholic Worker newspaper and they became friends. Corbin became a lifelong contributor and was one of the three primary Catholic Worker artists, along with Fritz Eichenberg and Ade Bethune. In 1954, she married Martin Corbin, editor and literary critic. They worked on Liberation magazine with activist...