• Chris Neal Bengtson, 65, of Ruskin, Fla., formerly of Brattleboro. Died Feb. 25 in Florida. Chris was born in South Bend, Ind., on Dec. 18, 1951, the son of William and Willeda (Hupp) Bengtson. He attended elementary and junior high school in Indiana before moving to Brattleboro with his family in 1966. A graduate of Brattleboro Union High School, Class of 1970, he excelled in varsity sports and, following graduation, he went on to attend the University of Vermont. He worked at The Book Press in Brattleboro for many years and also was a bartender at American Legion Post 5 in Brattleboro. He relocated to Florida in 2000, where he met his partner, Debbie Roush. He was a member of the Palmetto American Legion, Post 325 and also held membership in the Ruskin Moose Lodge 813. Additionally, he was a member of the Fraternal Order of Eagles, serving as an officer and was known as an excellent, hardworking volunteer with the club. He enjoyed golfing and fishing, and was an avid New England Patriots fan. He was known for his spirit of friendship and was loved by everyone who knew him. He will be deeply missed by all. Survivors include his two children, Joel and Trista; his former wife, Carol Bengtson; and his brother, Craig Bengtson, all of Brattleboro; and his beloved partner, Debbie Roush of Ruskin. Memorial information: A memorial gathering in celebration of his life will be held on Sunday, March 19, from 1 to 3 p.m.,. at American Legion Post 5 on Linden Street. Those who plan on attending are encouraged to dress casual and bring a fond memory to share of Chris. Donations to the Windham County Humane Society, P.O. Box 397, Brattleboro, VT 05302. To send messages of condolence, visit...
National Alliance on Mental Illness Vermont will sponsor the NAMI Family-to-Family Education Program specifically for family members, partners, and significant others of individuals with major depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, borderline personality disorder, panic disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder. The 12-week series of classes start...
On Saturday, March 11, from 3 to 5 p.m., Brattleboro Area Hospice will host a reading, song, and conversation event based on Kathy Leo's new book, On the Breath of a Song; the Practice of Bedside Singing for the Dying. The event will take place at the Guilford Community...
WBA meeting features Q&A with District 1 Town Meeting members WEST BRATTLEBORO - The next monthly meeting of the West Brattleboro Association will be held Thursday, March 9, at 6 p.m., in the Hayes Court Community Room on Garfield Drive. After a review of the treasury report and the 2017 budget, the Neighborhoods Fund, and BizUp activities, the Association will discuss various potential uses of the balance in the Sign Fund. A feature of this month's meeting is the Association's...
The Brattleboro Music Center recently was awarded a $21,000 Cultural Facilities Grant by the Vermont Arts Council. The award, which was announced Feb. 21 at a reception at the State House in Montpelier, will provide acoustic upgrades of the BMC's new music school, currently under construction off Guilford Street. Last summer, the BMC purchased the former Winston Prouty property across from Living Memorial Park for its future music campus. Generous contributions to the BMC's “Make a Place for Music” capital...
The art of Saxtons River Elementary School students will be on display at Main Street Arts from March 9 to April 21 in a show entitled “98 Works of Art.” All current students will have pieces hung in the gallery, with an opening reception for them and the public on Friday, March 9, from 5 to 6 p.m. Members of the student council will be selling snacks to support school projects. The exhibit provides a unique opportunity to see the...
Three students from Windham County will be at the Barre Opera House on March 8 to compete in the 2017 Vermont Poetry Out Loud state competition. These young people will join students from 34 Vermont high schools representing 11 counties to vie for the state championship in the national poetry recitation competition. The state winner will compete in the national competition in April. “The Poetry Out Loud program not only connects students to poets and poetry, it helps students develop...
In the Dummerston revote blocking Vernon's exit from the Union, I voted no in one weird election that made many feel conflicted. First off, Vernon was forced to choose between forfeiting all its assets to the district or lose school choice. That is a lousy deal, but Vernon was obliged to fold its hand and break away from the Act 46 Study Committee. Every time a woman left me, I never had a vote, so I was determined to make...
Brattleboro Music Center presents a Faculty Recital featuring romantic works sure to warm winter-weary hearts. “Messengers of Love: Duos and Solos,” is scheduled for Sunday, March 12, at 4 p.m., at St. Michael's Episcopal Church, 16 Bradley Ave. Soprano Junko Watanabe and mezzo-soprano Jennifer Hansen will be accompanied by Evelyn Zuckerman at the piano. They will perform works by Robert Schumann, Hector Berlioz, Ernest Chausson, Henry Purcell, Johannes Brahms, and Gabriel Fauré. In a news release, Hansen said the concert...
The Rockingham Arts and Museum Project, in tandem with artists Chris Sherwin, Jeanette Staley, and Clare Adams, will host an Artists' Town Meeting at 33 Bridge St. in Bellows Falls on Thursday, March 16, starting at 6 p.m. The location at 33 Bridge St. is home to WOOL-FM and Chris Sherwin's Glass Studio. The meeting is informal and includes a pot luck. The focus of these meetings is to bring together artists, artisans, and local growers to share ideas, challenges,
After nearly 40 years, Bob Backus is retiring. Dr. Bob joined the medical staff of Grace Cottage Hospital in the early 1970s. The indispensable nurse-choreographer of the office, Sue Clark, would greet you as Dr. Bob buzzed out to escort you to his office and into a rocking chair draped with a well-worn crocheted throw. You'd sit amidst his museum/office festooned with photos of the people of the valley, his medical-related cartoons, and posters offering some none-too-subtle advice about smoking.
At least eight members of the Guilford Community Church - including three youth and the Rev. Lise Sparrow - will march in Washington D.C. to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline. More than 100 other United Church of Christ members have pledged to participate in the March 10 event, organized by the Standing Rock Sioux and the Cheyenne River Sioux tribes and their allies, according to an article at UCC.org. The article notes UCC participants are encouraged to wear purple “in...
Vermont Performance Lab, in association with Marlboro College, is bringing Seattle-based choreographer Alice Gosti to Southern Vermont as part of a series that features artists who are making a social impact through their work. Over a 10-day artist residency in the Drury Gallery on the Marlboro College campus, Gosti will work on a new performance installation that grapples with and engages the community with issues surrounding immigration and homelessness in America. As part of the residency, the Performance Lab is...
After nearly 16 months of work, it appears voters won't get a chance to weigh in on a five-town school merger proposal in Windham Southeast Supervisory Union. Following two failed attempts to cut Vernon loose from the union's consolidation talks, the members of Windham Southeast's Act 46 Study Committee convened March 2 and decided to ask state education officials for guidance on what to do next. The committee could have tried to forge ahead by asking voters in Brattleboro, Dummerston,
There will be a lot more drama as the Vermont high school basketball playoffs conclude this week for the boys and begin for the girls. But you'll be hard pressed to come up with anything that can top what transpired in the BUHS gym on March 1. Brattleboro, the No. 6 seed in the Division I boys' tourney, was host to the No. 11 Spaulding Crimson Tide for a first-round game. The two teams played a wild and emotional 32...
A Good Wife [2016 • Mirjana Karanovic • 91 min • Serbia • Drama] Milena faces devastating choices - not only has her doctor found a lump in her breast, but she has just come across a videotape that appears to implicate her husband's military unit in the Balkan War genocide. Is the façade of her comfortable family life about to crumble? The Good Wife explores how a woman long expected to be the caretaker of everyone around her must...
Concerned citizens soon will have a face-to-face opportunity to question the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission about the sale of Vermont Yankee. A spokesman says the NRC has “informally committed” to attending a future meeting of the Vermont Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel to discuss the plant's proposed license transfer to NorthStar Group Services. The commitment came after multiple requests for the NRC to travel to Vermont for a public meeting. A date for the meeting has not yet been set,
Passions ran high, and thoughtful discussion flew out the window at Dummerston Town Meeting when Act 46 came up for discussion. But before that, other philosophical issues occupied the 200 or so townspeople who came to the seven-hour meeting. These issues, discussed under the calm, firm but gentle hand of Town Moderator Cindy Jerome, were: farm land preservation, or as Jodi Normandeau put it to applause, “The town needs to take a stand that we do not want used car...
Really glad to see this article and to consider how to build strong and educated citizens. Community College of Vermont and the Six College Collaborative in Windham County are places you might find support to talk about classes, internships, certificates, and degrees to make Vermont a place to live, work, and thrive. If it love it here, let us help you find options that work for you. Come to CCV and talk with our career consultant, Charity Houghton, and/or our...
I hope you're having a good moment when your eyes scan this column. I also hope that you like late winter conditions, because we've got more on the way after a one-day warm-up for Wednesday. Thereafter, a series of cold fronts will drop us into the freezer by the weekend with some light snow chances Friday, a very, VERY low chance on Sunday, and an interesting setup for Monday night into Tuesday. For Wednesday, behind a frontal passage we'll enjoy...
Voters chose numbers over letters at Monday night's Town Meeting. Despite the Vernon Public Library Board of Trustees' pleas to leave the budget alone, enough townspeople agreed with the Selectboard's claim that Vernon can't afford the library it currently has. Rejecting a petition from Library Director Kris Berberian, voters affirmed a library budget of $70,000 for fiscal year 2018. This represents a 38 percent reduction from fiscal 2017's budget. In December, after the Selectboard approved the $70,000 budget, Berberian successfully...
In the opening night of Vernon's Annual Town Meeting on March 6, voters defeated the proposed school budget of $4,079,300 on a 272-222 vote. Vernon School Board chair Mike Hebert explained “our budget is not going up 14 percent. It's a change in how the state calculates an equalized pupil.” Otherwise, Hebert said, the budget went down by about 6 percent. The budget's defeat means the School Board will need to revise it and try again, as they need voters...
Moderator Deborah Lee Luskin said that while it was a longer Town Meeting than last year, mostly because of “the long conversation about school consolidation,” all the articles on the warrant passed. Neil Pelsue, Jr., who serves on the Act 46 Study Committee, “very patiently and calmly answered [residents'] questions,” Luskin said. Luskin said she was happy that after 10 years of asking, she finally got a parliamentarian to assist her at Town Meeting. Gary Delius, who also serves on...
Area school consolidation efforts took a hit on Town Meeting Day, as voters rejected two of Windham County's three Act 46 merger proposals. In Windham Northeast Supervisory Union, a four-town merger failed. And in Windham Central, only half of a two-tiered Act 46 plan gained approval. While voters in four of the five Leland & Gray union towns voted to merge, a companion plan in Dover, Marlboro, and Wardsboro was rejected. Even as he sorted through the complicated results on...
Through April 28, The Dianich Gallery, 139 Main St., will exhibit the work of the late painter Gilbert “Gib” Taylor, whose paintings explore the context and planes of color. Taylor is well known not only for his artwork but also for his nearly 30-year tenure on the visual arts faculty at Marlboro College. The show will feature large oils on canvas as well as watercolors, many painted in the artist's Westminster West studio during the 1980s and 1990s. Gilbert Taylor...
If you live in what Susan Sontag famously called the Kingdom of the Sick, you will find yourself waking up one day asking how you arrived in this somewhat dreary place. Many of the roads from away lead to the Forest of Nowhere in Particular, winding aimlessly through the dense growth of a life filled with the usual combination of good and bad habits. Very few of us know what made us sick - we just end up with cancer...
An evening of community contra dances will take place at the Evening Star Grange in Dummerston Center on Saturday, March 18, from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Andy Davis will call the dances. He will be joined by the Witman Family Band, featuring Ellery Witman on fiddle, Everest Witman on guitar, Alden Witman on Irish whistle, and Avery Witman on cello. The band is from Brattleboro and the Village Dance Series is honored to open the season with this extraordinary group...
It's safe to say Julie Moore, in her first public appearance here as state Agency of Natural Resources secretary, wasn't hoping to hear the word “Kafkaesque.” But that was just one of the terms that area residents used at a March 2 meeting to describe their frustrations with the agency's permitting processes and with the state's Act 250 land-use regulations. During the penultimate stop on her statewide “listening tour,” Moore and her deputy secretary, Peter Walke, sought to assure the...
Under a brilliant blue sky, more than 800 people came out on a cold, blustery Saturday afternoon to get a firsthand look at the new $60.2 million bridge that spans the West River. Cars speeding northward on Interstate 91 will use the northbound lanes of the 1,036-foot-long concrete bridge on March 13. But on March 4, area residents could walk across the span and admire the vista looking east toward the Retreat Meadows and Mt. Wantastiquet. School buses shuttled visitors...
Debating the merits of Act 46 and budget issues took up a good portion of this year's Annual Town Meeting. But Marlboro voters, as they traditionally do, were thinking beyond the town's borders. Resident Woody Bernhard introduced language for a sentiment he thought the town should stand for: “We, the voters of the town of Marlboro, Vermont, proudly support the civil rights of all people, without regard to their race, religion, gender or economic status.” “For me, it's an anti-fascist...
Tranquil meeting in Guilford; road crew lauded GUILFORD - Voters breezed through the Town Meeting warrant on March 7, passing all articles by unanimous voice vote. This included $956,653 for the highway budget, which was $34,947 less than the current budget, and $849,918 for the general fund budget, which is a $60,996 increase over the current budget. Roads Commissioner Dan Zumbruski noted that “the budget is down a little” because of the retirement this year of two long-term employees: Allan...
Student Art Month spotlights and gives public recognition to the outstanding visual art created by elementary, middle school, and high school students in Windham County. Sponsored by the Arts Council of Windham County, the month-long event spotlights more than 300 pieces of featured student work from 18 schools. Here's where some of the art can seen during the month of March: • Two-dimensional art by high-school students can be viewed at the Robert H. Gibson River Garden 157 Main St.,
With the electronic vote tabulator buzzing in the background, Town Clerk Hilary Francis read down the list of unofficial election results Tuesday. Brandie E. Starr and Tim Wessel are Brattleboro's newest Selectboard members. Starr took the most votes with 930, followed by Wessel with 895. Both new board members will serve one-year terms. Candidate Davey Cadran trailed with 542. This is the second time Cadran has run for the board. The town School Board also has a new member. Spoon...
When you have been on this earth for over a half a century, you can expect assorted traumatic events over that period of time, events that make you reexamine all your most basic beliefs. The only thing left to do is to get your act together and move on as best you can. A bit of therapy can also help you deal with the new truths. The powers-that-be decided that there was no such thing as a brontosaurus, and that...
Neptune's Car (Holly Hanson and Steve Hayes), an award-winning acoustic duo from Massachusetts and New Hampshire, will perform their original, contemporary folk music on Saturday, March 11, at 7:30 p.m., at Immanuel Episcopal Church, 20 Church St. Their three albums have appeared on many “Best of” lists and have charted in the top 5 on folk-music radio twice. In April 2015, The Great American Song Contest awarded Hanson with an Outstanding Achievement in Songwriting in the Folk/Americana category for her...
When you're running away from the police at the same time you're shooting a film, you don't worry about glamour or color or framing a beautiful shot. So independent films are very different from the ones made in Hollywood. And that's why the slate of films in this, the 26th year of the Women's Film Festival, has a lot to say about activism and very little to say about beauty and style. The festival, as always, is a fundraiser for...