It was hard to do. I had to try several times. But I met the goal, despite setbacks. I finally wrote two letters, with more to come.
I wrote to our president on stylish pink stationery, and I wrote directly to Leonard Peltier.
Using the guidance of Amnesty International's Write for Rights campaign, I wrote in advance of the Dec. 17 write-in that I'm hosting at my house, and to which you are invited.
We've got to inundate the White House - and fast - with our communiques on behalf of Mr. Peltier, a native Lakota American who's been in federal prison, often in solitary confinement (as punishment), for over 40 years.
The Brattleboro Music Center's Chamber Music Series continues with a performance by the Chiara Quartet - known for playing from memory, without printed sheet music - bringing fresh excitement to traditional string-quartet repertoire and creating insightful interpretations of new music. The concert is on Friday, Dec. 16, at 7:30...
The fourth and final installment of the Windham World Affairs Council's “Understanding Cuba Through Film” series is on Friday, Dec. 16, with a holiday celebration at 118 Elliot in Downtown Brattleboro. The evening starts with dinner at 6:30 p.m., with a delicious, vegetarian-friendly dinner by donation (black beans, rice,
For three years, the International Moose Convention has hosted a karaoke contest featuring the top 12 finalists nationwide who have competed at local lodges across the country. In order to have the opportunity to be one of those finalists in 2017 and perhaps win the top prize of $5,000, contestants must begin by competing at a Moose Lodge. The Moose Lodge of Bellows Falls, 59 Westminster St., will hold the second of three practice rounds for this competition on Saturday,
The Brattleboro Foreign Trade Zone is hosting a free training session about Foreign Trade Zones and the opportunities they offer. It is one of three sessions sponsored by the Vermont Department of Economic Development and Regional Development Corporations of Vermont in conjunction with the three Foreign Trade Zones in Vermont. The other sessions will be held in Burlington and St. Johnsbury. The Brattleboro session will be held at the Vermont Agricultural and Business Education Center from 8:30 a.m. to noon...
The state has approved a Rockingham manufacturer's plans to undertake an expansion project carrying an estimated $19 million to $20 million price tag. Chroma Technology Corp. on Dec. 1 received an Act 250 land-use permit for a 36,800-square-foot addition that will more than double the optical filter manufacturer's physical presence in Rockingham. The project is expected to create at least 20 to 25 new jobs over several years, while also retaining Chroma's 113 jobs in this area. It has received...
Scrabble at Brooks Library BRATTLEBORO - A weekly drop-in Scrabble night will be offered at Brooks Memorial Library, 224 Main St., beginning Wednesday, Dec. 14, at 6 p.m. Drop-in Scrabble will continue weekly on Wednesdays at 6 p.m. in the Local History Room, except on First Wednesdays. Contact the library at [email protected] or 802-254-5290 for more information. Legal help offered at Senior Center BRATTLEBORO - The Brattleboro Senior Center and Vermont Legal Aid will host a free Legal Aid Clinic...
Oak Meadow will hold information sessions about its downtown collaborative-learning center for high school students, Brattleboro School Without Walls, the first Wednesday of every month. The sessions will take place at 5:30 p.m. at Oak Meadow, 132 Main St. (in the Brooks House), and will be led by learning center Director Jessica Turner. According to a news release, School Without Walls provides a high-quality, low-cost, hybrid learning environment for students. Students spend three days a week taking Oak Meadow courses...
Because lack of transportation can be a barrier to necessary healthcare for many in Windham County, Grace Cottage Family Health & Hospital has partnered with Green Mountain RSVP to recruit new volunteer drivers in the West River Valley and surrounding towns so that seniors can have improved access to medical appointments and wellness services in the area. This is a neighbor-to-neighbor assistance program for people living without good transportation or too far from transit services, according to a news release.
The great poet Wystan H. Auden once wrote, “But poetry makes nothing happen.” And a few years later, wisely, he reversed himself. Poetry makes many things happen, especially when it comes alive in the minds of high school students. On Friday, Dec. 16, at 2 p.m., at Brattleboro Union High School, the school will present its eighth annual Poetry Out Loud Competition. Poetry Out Loud, which grows more in popularity each year, is a national poetry recitation competition for high...
Denise “Jane” Ashworth says she has been writing all her life. However, the Holton Home resident hasn't run out of stories to tell or new experiences to try. Ashworth, who turns 100 in April, held a book release and signing party on Dec. 10 to celebrate her first children's book, Zoa and the Fawn. The book tells the story of a Siamese kitten, Zoa, who lives near the Cherokee National Forest in Tennessee. One day, as he chases a mouse...
Simba will celebrate the end of the year and the longest night with their annual Winter Solstice Celebration on Wednesday, Dec. 21, at 7 p.m., at 118 Elliot in downtown Brattleboro. Admission is $10 per person, with a $25 family maximum Simba is a danceable world beat band featuring funky grooves and some excellent local musicians, including Bob Stabach (sax), Dan DeWalt (trombone, keys, steelpan), Wim Auer (bass), Charlie Schneeweis (trumpet), Derrik Jordan (guitar, percussion, vocals) and special guests.
We were two of many white, impassioned, brokenhearted millennials drawn like flies to the sticky-sweet crossroads of environmental justice and indigenous sovereignty on sacred land scarred by old and new wounds gouged by settler colonialism. We were asked to come, and for all our reasoning, flawed and sound, we arrived at this intersection to witness and participate in a powerful movement. We travelled 1,800 miles to Cannon Ball, North Dakota with the Vermont Builders Delegation to assist in winterizing camp.
Transitions • Robert Bassett, M.D. has joined the Brattleboro Memorial Hospital Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine department. He comes to BMH from his most recent appointment at Valley Regional Hospital in Claremont, N.H., preceded by positions at hospitals in California and Kansas. He has taught extensively within the University of Southern California School of Medicine, and has co-authored and contributed to many scholarly articles on a wide range of orthopaedic conditions and procedures. He is board-certified in Orthopaedic Surgery, with a...
For Vermont Selectboards, the end of the calendar year brings talks to determine the town's budget for the following fiscal year. In Vernon, at their regular Nov. 21 Selectboard meeting, the Board reviewed the assessments the town pays to some of its service providers, including the Windham Regional Commission. But one Board member expressed alarm at this year's rate increase. When Board members discussed the fees the town will pay the Commission for fiscal year 2018, Steve Skibniowsky complained about...
The Selectboard passed a new junk ordinance at its Dec. 5 regular meeting. It goes into effect Feb. 3, 2017. During the previous meeting on Nov. 21, there was some question whether Board members were interested in creating it. “First of all, do you want a junk ordinance?” Town Administrator Michelle Pong asked Board members at the Nov. 21 meeting. She explained this legislation would cover “trash and junk cars in someone's yard,” and define when a car goes from...
Only 58 times during the past 400 years has New Year's Eve coincided with a Saturday night. The New Year's Eve celebration is a modern spectacle that took its big American leap in 1904 when The New York Times turned the night into a secular blowout. It was a Saturday in 1904 when the Times commemorated their new headquarters in the recently renamed Times Square. A few years later the ball started dropping and Times Square became the center of...
Congratulations to the Robbs. I was taken to the farm many times by my grandparents, Louis and Marie Trey. (Our family members, the Treys and the Dobbs, were honeymooners together in the late 1920s.) Bertha was very kind to me as a 5 year old. Charlie showed me the kittens. Glad to hear of your successes.
The holiday season isn't joyous for everyone. For those dealing with grief, loss, pain, loneliness, depression, or any other burden that makes it difficult to get through the holiday season, the time between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day can be emotionally excruciating. That's why St. Michael's Episcopal Church on Putney Road will be hosting the Longest Night service, on Sunday, Dec. 18, at 4 p.m. This will be the third year of the service, according to Devin Starlanyl, a lay...
While my wife is teaching at a major university in Hangzhou, China, the recent site of the G20 conference, I am spending my time enrolled in the university's intensive Chinese language and culture program. I am the oldest student in my class by a multiple of two, if not three, times the next oldest student. Although we have lived here since September, we are still getting to know our neighborhood, and our neighbors. There are very few Americans around and...
On Monday, Dec. 19, at 7:30 p.m., Open Music Collective will host a concert, “Songs that Make You Smile,” featuring the Vocal Jazz Repertoire Class. Over the course of the fall semester, five singers have worked with a rhythm section on a selection of songs from the Great American Songbook. The singers include Anne Thomas, Becky Graber, Patti Smith, Ruth Garbus, and Scott Sizer and will be backed up by Claire Arenius on drums, Kate Parsons on piano, and Jamie...
The Hamilton Electors are in the process of doing something extraordinary! This movement began within the Electoral College to encourage fellow electors to vote their conscience. Their goal is simple: to persuade 37 electors to either change their vote from Donald Trump to another qualified individual, or to abstain from voting altogether. Changing the vote of 37 electors is so important because this will trigger the U.S. House of Representatives to name our next president. With a new vote comes...
Windham County residents who toss their recyclables into any of the 100 roll-off bins maintained by the Windham Solid Waste Management District will soon have to do something else with all those beer bottles, milk jugs, and junk mail. At the Dec. 8 District Board of Supervisors meeting, the body voted 13-10 to close the District's Materials Recovery Facility at the end of Fiscal Year 2017 on June 30. The final budget they passed reflects “no MRF, no trucking,” and...
It will soon become clear to wage earners that they've been deceived about Donald Trump's priorities, and it will become clear to objective observers that he isn't up to the job of president. At that point, the objective cannot be “how to live with him.” For the good of this country and the world, it will have to be “how to remove him.” Habitual lying, boorishness, and conflicts of interest might not be grounds for impeachment. But his being a...
Brava, brava, brava to local filmmaker, humanitarian, and educator, Teresa Savel. The Dec. 1 premier showing of her film Palomita (its name translates to “little dove”) at the Bellows Falls Opera House was a life-altering and -affirming experience. This documentary jewel enabled viewers to connect our local concerns for child care and women's care directly to a small village in Peru dealing with the same issues. The film opens at the Kurn Hattin Homes for Children in Westminster, where a...
There seems to be some confusion over the recent denial of the permit for Energy Transfer Partners to continue its drilling for the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota, where demonstrations organized by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe have been taking place. The Water Protectors have been trying to defend from drilling by the oil company a body of water that serves not only the Standing Rock reservation but also 18 million people downstream. In the past 20 years, 9,006...
The election of Donald Trump and the right-wing majority frightens me. I fear a repressive government disinclined to perform the primary mandate of its sovereignty: to protect from harm those who live under its authority. I fear a government of ideologues whose inclination, which they make no attempt to hide, is to act in opposition to the interests of the majority. I fear a cruel government whose actions will benefit its true constituents: the social Darwinists and the 1 percent.
Scott State has acknowledged that his company, New York–based NorthStar Group Services, has never tackled a job like Vermont Yankee - in other words, taking ownership of a commercial nuclear plant and taking responsibility for decommissioning. He describes a Waste Control Specialists' Texas disposal facility for low-level radioactive waste - a facility that is non-existing - as a “critical” part of the Yankee project. Oh, and Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists currently is a defendant in a U.S. Department of Justice...
Isn't it about time you fellow Democrats stop calling anyone who did not vote for Hillary Clinton stupid? I do not know the circumstances of anyone who did not go to college, but I'm sure it was not because they were stupid. You, Randolph Holhut, were either financially secure or received a substantial scholarship, but implying that 59 million people in this country are stupid makes you look ignorant. People have different opinions and ideas, but that does not make...
We, the family of Joyce Scott, extend our sincere appreciation to our friends, family, and co-workers for their expressions of sympathy. We are forever grateful for the many cards, notes of remembrance, food and donations to her charities: Rescue Inc., Putney Cares, and Kurn Hattin Homes. We also thank Grace Cottage Hospital, Brattleboro Memorial Hospital, Dr. Elizabeth McLarney, Vernon Hall, and Rescue Inc. for the wonderful care she received. Thanks also to Mike Atamaniuk and staff, Father Fred McLaughlin for...
I think Patience Merriman is absolutely correct! My wife and I just joined the ACLU and will align ourselves with the organization's works in the coming months and years. Here are other measures: • Speak out against groups that make lists of liberal professors and others. Call them all the horrible things that they are. • If you fly the stars and stripes, fly it upside down. That's a distress signal, and boy, are we distressed. • Personally, I always...
This letter makes me think of email chain letters, where if I don't say “amen” to something someone sends me, as one example, then bad things will happen. I never do them. Not because I don't believe in saying “amen,” but I am just more private about it. So, just because a merchant doesn't post a sign in the window, it doesn't mean they aren't of the same mind.
I have to agree with Sandra Golden. As much as I believe that voicing our opinions and protesting out loud is necessary, encouraging people to destroy property and break the law is not only foolish but also irresponsible. I don't care for Donald Trump or his supporters, but I would hope that most of us - no matter how much we dislike any of them - would refrain from lowering ourselves to the level that Prudence Merriman spoke of [“It's...
Thank you for upholding Vermont's maple syrup gold standard, Robb family!
Congratulations, Robbs! You are some of the hardest working people I know, and you deserve every maple product sale you get from this opportunity and others!
Prayers for strength and peace. We, no matter what our religions or backgrounds, have been entrusted to care for the Earth and everything on it. These companies see things and people only for their possibility of exploitation. Their leaders need to know that someone will always hold them accountable! I sure don't want to stand in their shoes come judgement day!!
Six people were driven from their homes Dec. 10 after an apartment fire at 572-574 South Main St. According to a report from Brattleboro Fire Chief Michael Bucossi, the fire was reported at about 6:50 a.m., and Engine 1, Engine 4, and Rescue 2 all responded to the initial call. Brattleboro Police arrived five minutes later, and saw smoke coming from the roof and eaves. Brattleboro Fire Capt. Ron Hubbard, the officer in charge of Engine 1, sounded a second...
Good morning, afternoon, or evening to you! Winter has most certainly arrived, and we've got more active early winter weather on the way to southern Vermont, including a brutal blast of very cold Arctic air, a couple of periods of accumulating snow, and some ice and rain thrown in for good measure. Let's jump to the details! For Wednesday, we'll enjoy a sunny but cold day, as high pressure builds in for much of the day. Highs will reach the...
Vernon won't be leaving a regional school union, in spite of the town's wishes to do so. In a Dec. 13 four-town election to decide whether Vernon School District could withdraw from Brattleboro Union High School District No. 6 - which Vernon voters approved in August - the town of Dummerston voted against the move on a tally of 100 “no” votes and 84 “yes” votes. Though Brattleboro, Guilford, and Putney joined Vernon to allow that town's exit from the...
Bellows Falls Union High School sophomores Lia Clark and Sophie Hislop had an idea. They wanted to start a student newspaper to showcase stories about the high school, featuring articles about students, written by students. So they organized a student news club, and The Howler - an online news site covering the school, the local community, and beyond - was born. Clark and Hislop were named co-editors of the site, and their Wednesday meetings have attracted students interested in writing...
“O, Happy Yule!,” Friends of Music at Guilford's 44th annual holiday program at Christ Church, the iconic New England landmark off Route 5 in the Algiers section of Guilford, is set for Dec. 16 and 17. Performances on Friday at 7:30 p.m., and Saturday at 4 p.m. will include vocal music, instrumental interludes, a holiday story, and a brief carol sing, the traditional format. The “O, Happy Yule!” subtitle refers to this season's thematic choice of music from the British...
Yellow Barn welcomes soprano Laura Strickling, pianist Liza Stepanova, and Venezuelan-American composer Reinaldo Moya for a residency of love songs honoring turn-of-the-century Spanish composer Enrique Granados (1867-1916). The residency explores two major works: Cancíones amatorias, a collection of songs by Granados set to Renaissance Spanish love poems, and Ciudades del Porvenir (Cities from a Future to Come), a newly commissioned Spanish-language song cycle by Moya, according to a news release. On Sunday, Dec. 18, at 3 p.m., their residency will...
Two games may be too small of a sample size to take the measure of the Brattleboro Colonels girls' hockey team. But after an impressive 4-2 win in the home opener against the Burr & Burton Bulldogs last Saturday night, Colonels coach Linda Burke said “I think we might have something here.” That something is a tough, resilient team that appears solid in every phase of the game. While the Colonels started the season Dec. 7 with a 3-0 loss...
Five years ago, the West Townshend Country Store was a mostly empty shell in need of repair. On Dec. 7, it was bustling with activity inside and out as West River Community Project - the nonprofit that has revitalized the building - celebrated the official opening of a community kitchen meant to serve farmers, entrepreneurs, and others. The kitchen is the culmination of a project that also has brought a cafe, thrift shop, farmers' market, and outdoor oven to the...
Featuring performers from advanced youth and professional adult programs, with special guest artists in character roles, the New England Center for Circus Arts' annual Nutcracker performance runs Dec. 16 to 18 at the school's theater space at the former Austine School gymnasium in Brattleboro. This year's special guest performer is Erin Ball, a longtime Circus Arts student and a professional aerialist from Canada. Ball had a burgeoning career as an aerialist when she suffered a near-fatal case of frostbite and...
Sophia Howlett has worked in more than 40 countries during her career as an educator, administrator, researcher, and writer. But Howlett says her new post - as president of SIT in Brattleboro - represents a fresh challenge. That's because she sees opportunities for change and possible expansion within the school's graduate institute and study abroad programs. Howlett is scheduled to take SIT's top job in early January, and she said she's eager to work with faculty and students to “shape...
“We all have an intrinsic feeling for the places where we stage our lives and dispense our days,” said Lisa Mendelsund in explaining the premise behind a new group exhibit, “Sense of Place.” But in the stressful blur of today's society, “we may have forgotten to look for ourselves in those very spaces.” Mendelsund, co-curator of the show at 118 Elliot Street Gallery, which “seeks to restore our feeling” for those spaces that fall below our radar in our daily...
The West Brattleboro Association announced its 2016 Community Leader of the Year recipient during the annual Holiday Party on Dec. 8 at Dalem's Chalet. The winner of this sixth annual award is Nancy Barber, who served as a trustee of the Association for a number of years and as board secretary. In addition to her service on the board, Barber participated in a number of events and committees including helping to organize the “Fun in the Field” events that raised...