On behalf of the family of Grace Beverly Adam, we extend our heartfelt thank-you to all our friends, neighbors, co-workers, and others whom we did not know but who reached out to share in our sorrow of our beloved daughter's death.
Many of you sent cards, food, flowers, donations, and other forms of support to our family in our time of need. We will be forever grateful for your kindness.
We especially thank Michael Atamaniuk, Eugene Uman, Brattleboro Area Hospice, and the Brattleboro Police Dept. for their understanding and gentleness. It was greatly appreciated.
...One of the banes of being old, at least in this youth-worshipping culture, is a deeply ingrained resistance to admitting that we have entered that less-than-revered end-of- life stage. So when my solidly middle-aged kids (three - I can still count them) began coaxing me to get some help...
Dec. 2, 2015 is a day that will be etched in our minds for the rest of our lives. After a quiet morning decorating our church for the Christmas holiday, I returned home for lunch. I then received a phone call that would dramatically change our lives. A co-worker...
Under the new leadership of Mitzi Johnson, the speaker of the Vermont House of Representatives, my committee assignment has been changed from the House Committee on Natural Resources and Energy to the House Committee on Health Care. The overall makeup of the health-care committee has changed dramatically: Of the 11 members of the committee, five are freshman house members. The chair remains the same, and two other members remain from the last biennium. With the debate over the health-care system...
There will be four candidates running for the two one-year seats on the Selectboard, while the current holder of a three-year seat will be unopposed for re-election. Town Clerk Hilary Francis announced Monday that, at the deadline for filing candidate petitions for the March 7 election, no one turned in papers to run for the three-year seat now held by David Schoales, according to a news release. All the action will be for the one-year seats as David Cadran, Avery...
The Brattleboro Concert Choir, under the direction of Susan Dedell, begins rehearsals for its May performances the second week of February. New choir members are always welcome. The spring concert, “On the Breath: New Currents,” will present exciting music by Ola Gjeilo, Will Todd, and John Tavener, as well as a new composition by Paul Dedell, according to a news release. Performances are scheduled for Saturday, May 20, at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, May 21, at 4 p.m. Brattleboro Concert...
It was a Saturday night, a time for dancing or dining or dating or dreaming, and yet 35 area nonprofits joined together at American Legion Post 5 in what was called a “Stone Soup Social.” It showed us that in Windham County, at least, our hearts are still in the right place. The social on Jan. 28 was put together by the Legion, Brooks Memorial Library, and the United Way of Windham County. Post 5 Vice Commander John Hagen said...
On Jan. 14, Feld Entertainment Inc., the corporate enterprise that owns Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, announced that “The Greatest Show on Earth” will give its last performance in May 2017. Not long afterward, it was reported that the Trump administration wants to eliminate - entirely - the National Endowment for the Arts. Brattleboro, home of the New England Center for Circus Arts (NECCA), is a regional hub for circus arts. NECCA serves over 2,000 individuals annually including...
My president. Oh, my president. Where will I go to find answers, to find solace now? What will your legacy be as we slide down this dark corridor into the unknown? I will miss your voice. The voice of hope. The deep bass stutter of you, as you search for the truth. What corner of this planet can I claim for solid ground? Where can the thoughts and dreams of a thoughtless American like me find purchase and grow? Create...
Congratulations to the 2016 graduated eighth-grade class of Dummerston. They were number one in the state in both English and math in the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium tests last year. And kudos to the Dummerston teachers who have taught these students over their elementary years in town. They are the best! We hear so much negative news about students these days, it is so refreshing to hear what is good. You make Dummerston proud.
Windmills destroy mountaintop environments. Solar is the way to go. There is no logic in windmills, which simply trade one problem (fossil fuels or nuclear for energy sources) and replacing it with another. Windmills typically require massive earth moving and jack-hammering to remove rock at the mountaintops to create access roads and sites for the turbines. In addition to cutting off migration routes, food habitat, and access for wildlife, windmills also render scenic mountains off limits to hikers and outdoor...
As a provider of high-quality aging services at Valley Cares Inc. in Townshend, I am concerned about proposed changes to the Medicaid program. I recently sent a letter to Representative Peter Welch and to Senators Bernie Sanders and Patrick Leahy urging them to preserve its present structure and financing and to leave its expansion in place as Congress considers the future of the Affordable Care Act. Medicaid is the most important financial resource available for families who need help in...
Now more than ever, it is crucial for us to strengthen our local communities. Our local school - and our local involvement with and control over our school - forms the architecture that makes our town resilient and responsive in so many ways. Please join me in voting no to the school merger (Act 46) on Town Meeting day.
Vermont author Kate Hennessy, granddaughter of Dorothy Day, journalist, suffragette, and a founder of the Catholic Worker social justice movement, discusses her new book, Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved by Beauty, at 6 p.m., on Friday, Feb. 3, at Everyone's Books, 25 Elliot St. Dorothy Day (1897-1980) was a prominent Catholic, writer, social activist, and co-founder of the Catholic Workers, dedicated to serving the poorest of the poor. Her life has been revealed through her own writings as...
Recently, I had the opportunity to attend a meeting about Community Conscious Policing (created by Brandon Lee at Training4Transformation). It was extremely eye-opening and a breath of fresh air. The 20 people there from all walks of life included correctional officers, Families First employees, racial justice activists, politicians, victims of police brutality, Brattleboro Police Department officers, Windham County Sheriffs, etc. You get the idea. I had no idea how this was going to go. I was pleasantly surprised. People shared...
If officials with the Southeastern Vermont Economic Development Strategies want funding from Town Meeting this year, they'll have to work harder to get it. During the Jan. 4 regular Selectboard meeting, the Board discussed the organization's request. SeVEDS, a nonprofit affiliated with the Brattleboro Development Credit Corp., seeks $5,592 in taxpayer funding - $3 per person - and asked the Selectboard to either include them in the municipal budget or create a separate article in the Town Meeting agenda to...
The Selectboard got quite an earful at the Jan. 4 public hearing on the proposed parking ordinance, held at the Community Center. About 30 people showed up to mostly express their alarm and opposition, and, after going back into session at the regular Selectboard meeting, the Board unanimously defeated the ordinance. After receiving complaints from a few West Street residents last year about cars impeding the flow of traffic in West Dummerston village, the Selectboard discussed the matter in their...
I am disappointed that Governor Phil Scott is choosing to play politics with our children's future in his first budget. The bottom line: level funding school budgets means cuts in real terms and higher property taxes by shifting more expenditures into the education budget. That's not the way to go. Along with that, the governor is asking school boards across the state to tear up the budgets they've been working on for months and start anew. In most cases, those...
Your paper is excellent - for starting fires. Thank you for being free.
Vermont Technical College, as the educational partner of the federal Small Business Administration's (SBA) Emerging Leaders program, is seeking 20 entrepreneurs throughout the state to participate in a free business course starting in April. Emerging Leaders is a free executive-level training program for established business owners poised for growth. Over the course of seven months at Vermont Tech's Williston campus, each participating entrepreneur will learn immediate ways to improve their business and will create a three-year strategic growth plan to...
The Downtown Brattleboro Alliance announced that a newly extended Bratt LUV Crawl is set for Thursday, Feb. 9, from 6 to 9 p.m. Last year, the LUV Crawl featured 13 unique Vermont “tastes” in 13 shops around downtown. The event was a success, with participants' only regret being that there wasn't quite enough time to enjoy all the shops and tastes fully. Nearly 170 people braved the frigid temps last year, on one of the coldest nights of the season,
College news • The following local students received academic honors at Castleton University for the fall 2016 semester: Casey Gould of Brattleboro, Olson Humphrey of Londonderry, and Nicole Wershoven of Whitingham all were named to Castleton's President's List, while Spencer Butter of Brattleboro, Alex Derosia of Brattleboro, Tyler Higley of Vernon, Molly O'Callaghan of Brookline, Alyssa Palumbo of Whitingham, Julian Plumadore of Townshend, Meghan Powell of Vernon, Grandon Smith of Londonderry, Kayla Wood of Dummerston, and Rachel Yrsha of Londonderry.
Commons, Groundworks present community conversation on homelessness BRATTLEBORO - The Commons and Groundworks Collaborative will host another Voices Live! community conversation on homelessness on Thursday, Feb. 2, from 6 to 7:30 p.m., at the River Garden on Main Street. The discussion will include what will happen next for the Seasonal Overflow Shelter, Great River Terrace (Lamplighter Project), and the Groundworks Drop In Center, as well as an update on other issues around homelessness in the Brattleboro area. A panel of...
Local nonprofits and their clients that rely on Town Meeting money narrowly avoided losing the entire Vernon funding stream earlier this month. The Selectboard came very close to eliminating the line item in the budget that provides taxpayer funding to local organizations. Early each year, officials with organizations that serve a town's residents submit a petition containing the signatures of at least 5 percent of registered voters to the Town Clerk asking for inclusion on March's Town Meeting agenda. The...
During the month of February, the Crowell Gallery at the Moore Free Library presents “The Cove: Early Morning on the River.” The show features a series of paintings of Barton Cove on the Connecticut River. Photographs taken by photographer Rafaela Calicchio inspire 12 of the paintings, each representing the river in the early morning in a month of the year. Additional studies and sketches showing the artist's approach to the river and to painting itself complete the exhibit. Nancy Calicchio's...
This February, the community is invited to celebrate African-American History Month by reading Brown Girl Dreaming, by Jacqueline Woodson, the 2017 Vermont Reads selection. According to a news release, the book is a beautiful memoir of the author's childhood, written in verse, which tells the story of a young person finding her voice and examines the strength of family bonds. In reflecting on the book, Ms. Woodson said, “Raised in South Carolina and New York, I always felt halfway home...
Next Stage Arts Project and Twilight Music present a midwinter dance party featuring The Gaslight Tinkers and The Bluebird Orchestra on Friday, Feb. 10, at 7:30 p.m. The Gaslight Tinkers' blend of African, Caribbean, funk, reggae, and Latin rhythms creates a joyously danceable sound around a core of traditional roots, New England old time, and Celtic fiddle music, merging boundless positive energy with melody and song, according to a news release. Audrey Knuth (fiddle), Jopey Fitzpatrick (drums), Garrett Sawyer (bass),
How did Bach become Bach? The Sarasa Chamber Music Ensemble seeks to answer that question with “Connecting Passageways to Bach,” a concert focused on composers who helped steer Johann Sebastian Bach's pathway to becoming one of the great pillars of Western Classical Music. According to a news release, the concert will showcase music for two cellos - including the rare five-string piccolo cello - performed on period instruments by members of the internationally-acclaimed Sarasa ensemble: Timothy Merton, Baroque cello; Jennifer...
The Vermont Symphony Orchestra's “Fiddlesticks!” String Trio will present performances in two Windham County schools on Feb. 10. They will perform at Central Elementary School in Bellows Falls at 9 and 10 a.m., and at Westminster Center School at 2 p.m. Members of “Fiddlesticks” are: David Gusakov, of Bristol, violin; Hilary Hatch, of Leicester, violin and viola; and Bonnie Klimowski, of Fairfax, cello. (They also bring “Godzilla,” the bass fiddle, with them.) Their dynamic performances are designed to introduce children...
On Jan. 27, President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order on immigration that prohibited the entry of Syrian refugees to the U.S. indefinitely, put a hold on all refugee admissions for 120 days, and blocked citizens of the majority-Muslim nations of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from entering the U.S. for at least 90 days. Protests soon erupted throughout the country, from airports in metropolitan areas such Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., Seattle, and Los Angeles,
On Friday, Feb. 3, at 7:30 p.m., Stone Church Arts presents early Celtic music from Gaelic Scotland and Ireland revolving around St. Brigid and other Celtic saints and heroes. James Ruff, harp and vocals, will perform a concert entitled “Songs of Brigid, Celtic Goddess and Saint,” at Immanuel Episcopal Church, 20 Church St., the stone church on the hill, according to a news release. Brigid is a Celtic saint and the goddess of poetry, healing and smithcraft. She has been...
A New York company is asking federal regulators to green-light its acquisition of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant sometime later this year. Representatives of NorthStar Group Services Inc., the proposed buyer of the shut-down Vernon plant, and Entergy, the current owner, hope to close the sale by the end of 2018. But they're looking for regulatory approvals well before that: During a Jan. 24 meeting with the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, an Entergy executive proposed that the NRC approve...
As one who has sat through every minute of countless Act 46 and school board meetings in a large supervisory union, I think very highly of the communities and individuals who have been in the trenches during these months and years of hard work, sustaining accessible and effective education for the coming generations. The boards, the public, and administration officials have shown unflagging commitment, integrity, and a real sense of community. Even if we didn't have to deal with mandated...
Through Feb. 27, nine members of Brattleboro-West Arts will continue to display their work at The Robert H. Gibson River Garden, 157 Main St. Conceived at the suggestion of Orly Munzing, the founder of the Strolling of the Heifers organization, the show was installed Jan. 3 and features paintings in gouache, acrylic, wax, and oil; photographs; hooked and braided wall hangings; and large-scale prints. New BWA member Kay Curtis will be showing with the group for the first time. The...
The Trump administration has an ongoing conflict with the truth. The mainstream media continues to torture itself and consumers with its euphemistic language used to describe Trump's delusions: “untruths,” “falsehoods,” “misrepresentations,” “contradictions,” “unsubstantiated information,” and now - best of all, from Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway - “alternative facts.” The media needs a thesaurus. How about the words “lies” and “hypocrisy”? Perhaps we are expecting too much from media corporations that gave Trump some $2 billion worth of free coverage during...
Eight years ago, I stood on the National Mall, wrapped in the arms of my biracial same-sex lover, to experience the Inauguration ceremony of Barack Obama, a man whose campaign slogan had been, simply, “Hope.” And, indeed, we were full of hope on that day, in that season. When the program ended, we made our way to the far end of the Reflecting Pool and up into the Lincoln Memorial to read the full text of Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural...
Someone has to speak up against the proposed sale of Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee to a decommissioning company that prides itself on its relationship with Areva. Areva is in rough fiscal shape today, thanks to its inability to complete a Finnish nuke that is years over budget and long delayed, and thanks to delays in the new Vogtle nuclear reactors here in the United States, in Georgia. And then let's toss in the faulty parts that are in 19 U.S.
Discontent with the status quo is not new, and it's not just limited to those who were seduced by Donald Trump. Folks who care about justice, economic inequality, militarism and the education of our children have been shining the light on glaring problems and the neglect of those problems by our elected officials for a number of years. Here in Vermont, citizens have watched the state education funding formula go through a series of convoluted twists and turns over the...
Recently, a woman stopped me in front of the grocery store and asked me for change. “Please,” she said, “I'm homeless. I swear I am; look at my hands, look how cracked and dirty they are. I'm seven months pregnant.” She was talking a mile a minute and shaking. I gave her money and the bag of chips I was about to tear into myself. I was glad to give her money. But there were four homeless men on my...
Good day to you! After an above-average January in terms of temperatures we have flipped the pattern, at least temporarily. For January, we had a trough of lower pressures in the western U.S. and a ridge of higher pressures in the east. This allowed for milder air to flow in off of the Pacific and glide right into New England. These large-scale weather features have reversed for the time being, and is the reason we're seeing snow and cold in...
Vermont Yankee's radioactive spent fuel soon will be on the move. In April, a contractor will begin loading the shut-down Vernon nuclear plant's fuel into sealed casks, which will be placed on a concrete pad. The fuel is not going far: The pad is a short walk from the plant's reactor building, where thousands of spent fuel assemblies currently are stored. But the move is important for two reasons: It's central to a proposed sale of Vermont Yankee, and it...
Danny Lichtenfeld, Director of the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, believes that, at least in one way, science and natural history museums have it all over museums dedicated to fine art. In science and natural history museums, he said, patrons can have an interactive experience, while the cardinal rule in spaces dedicated to fine art has always been: Look, but don't touch. “In the world of art museums, you don't generally get to handle the artwork, let alone objects that...
The bowling program at Brattleboro Union High School hosted its first home match of the season at Brattleboro Bowl on Jan. 28. Bowling at BUHS started as a club sport in 2005, and it became an exhibition sport in 2012. For the 2016-17 season, Brattleboro is joined by Enosburg, Essex, Fair Haven, Hartford, Lyndon, Oxbow, Randolph, Springfield, South Burlington, South Royalton, and Windsor in fielding co-ed varsity teams sanctioned by the Vermont Principals' Association. Brattleboro played host to teams from...
When Dick Cheney and the Koch Brothers say that a new White House executive order on immigration has gone too far, that just might be an indication that our new president has gone too far. Less than two full weeks into his presidential term - after a firehose of spectacularly horrible executive orders and policy changes, all executed ham-handedly - Donald J. Trump might have done what so many lesser people could not: unite the majority of a bifurcated country.
Bartleby's Books is hosting its annual exhibit of Nicki Steel photography for the month of February. Steel will be showing her popular “Hearts in Nature” series of photos, as well as new material from 2016. Steel describes this past year as her “year of the birds.” She spent seven weeks in Marlboro, photographing 13 great blue herons as they grew from newly hatched chicks to fledglings. She also spent time taking pictures of the loons which nested on Lake Raponda,
Jazz enthusiasts and anyone looking for a night out with excellent music are in for a treat when the Vermont Jazz Center Sextet comes to the Bellows Falls Union High School auditorium on Thursday, Feb. 2, at 7 p.m. The Vermont Jazz Center's community outreach ensemble has been working with students at BFUHS in a jazz improvisational workshop led by guest conductor Rob Freeberg. The concert is the culmination of these workshops and will feature the Jazz Improv, Bellows Falls...
As Town Meeting Day draws near, Marlboro School Board members find themselves in an awkward situation. On one hand, they're committed to a March 7 vote on a proposed Act 46 merger with Dover and Wardsboro school districts. But on the other hand, there's growing sentiment that Marlboro voters may reject the plan because it will close the town's middle school. And school officials say they haven't had enough time, resources, or regulatory clarity to study alternative merger options for...
The Brattleboro Area Chamber of Commerce gave its 2016 Person of the Year award to the late James Banslaben. Banslaben, 57, was found dead in an apartment on Elliot Street on Oct. 10, 2016. He was a downtown fixture and a indefatigable volunteer for Bratttleboro Community Television and other causes big and small. It is the first time since the Chamber started the award in 1954 that it has been given posthumously. Executive director Kate O'Connor said at the Chamber's...
The Northeast Recycling Council celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. And in more good news for the Brattleboro-based nonprofit, the Council was recently chosen to help coordinate the Vermont Green Business Program. The Green Business Program, an environmental assistance and recognition program for companies operating under sustainable business practices, is administered by the Vermont Environmental Assistance Office of the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources. Although most laypeople don't know about Northeast Recycling Council, their influence extends into a variety of...
Two Saturdays ago, I marched in Washington, D.C. After staying up until 2 a.m. crafting my own clear backpack, I woke up three hours later and went through my checklist. I woke my niece up. We put on layers and headed for the Metro, where two people from the Women's March helped us to find our way. In front of us walked three women wearing pussy hats. As the train arrived, we looked inside and saw swarms of more women...