Good day to you! In the broader view, we will continue to have the northern branch of the jet stream pushing low pressure systems from the eastern Pacific Ocean eastward across the northern part of the United States.
These systems will continue to land in New England every few days. Given this pattern, we can expect more periods of drier sunny days over the next week, followed by periods of showery, muggy days. Temperatures will continue to remain at seasonal levels or just below. No heat waves of any kind of are on the horizon, so summer heat worshippers are not going to be too happy with this forecast.
Having said all that, let's get to the details!
For Wednesday and Thursday, high pressure will build into the region and provide us with mostly sunny days, low humidity, and calm weather conditions. Highs on Wednesday are expected to reach the low 70s in the mountains and upper 70s in the valley in the southeastern areas of Windham County. Lows will dip into the upper 40s to low 50s for a chilly night Wednesday evening!...
The Jamaica Community Arts Council is looking for a few good comics to perform at their first comedy night at the historic town hall on Thursday, Sept. 7. The group is hoping to get a variety of acts to fill the evening with monologues, musicians with funny songs, partners...
RAMParts Presents, in partnership with Exhibition on Screen, brings Vermeer and Music: The Art of Love and Leisure to the Bellows Falls Opera House on Thursday, Aug. 24, at 7 p.m. The 90-minute feature was filmed in London, New York, Washington D.C., Amsterdam, the Hague, and Delft, and guides...
The Windham Regional Woodlands Association has awarded scholarships totaling $6,000 to two Brattleboro Union High School graduates who will attend college this fall. This year's recipients are Samuel Stevens of Brattleboro, who will attend Green Mountain College, and Tanner Bell of Guilford, who will attend Unity College in Maine. Each student will receive $3,000. Windham Regional Woodlands Association established the Scholarship Fund in 1993 to support local students attending college in preparation for a career in forestry or an allied...
Greater Falls Connections recently announced that Gina DeCampo of Bellows Falls as the recipient of the 2017 Active Community Engagement Award. The award is the group's way to recognize inspired, positive action happening every day around the Bellows Falls area. “Recipients of this award are the unsung heroes within our community who foster positive change and are dedicated to creating safe, healthy, and fun options for youth, families, and the community at large,” according to a news release. DeCampo, a...
Meeting to discuss village designation status SAXTONS RIVER - Village residents, business owners, real estate professionals, and property owners are invited to a meeting about the benefits of Village Center designation Friday, Aug. 18, at 1 p.m., at the Saxtons River Inn. Saxtons River's previous Village Center designation has lapsed and is due for renewal this fall. The program's purpose is to revitalize and help maintain small- to medium-sized historic centers with existing civic and commercial buildings. It supports the...
Bellows Falls Union High School and Castleton University alum Michael LaBeau played in the Alaska Baseball League (ABL) this summer. The ABL is an amateur collegiate summer baseball league with five teams in four Alaskan cities. It has a long and storied history of attracting the top college players from the West Coast who are looking for a shot at the major leagues. Many great ballplayers, including Tom Seaver, Dave Winfield, Mark McGwire, Jeff Kent, Randy Johnson, Jared Weaver, Barry...
Those trying to hail a cab in Brattleboro should make other plans. As of the end of June, Brattleboro Taxi has been closed. It was the only licensed taxi company in town, and there are no known plans to reopen it. Patrons calling the company's phone to arrange for service have heard an outgoing voice mail message announcing its immediate closing “until further notice” for a “complete revamp.” But no revamp is imminent, and the company's owner and manager were...
College news • The following local students received academic awards during the spring 2017 semester at Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y.: William Baker of Londonderry, a member of the Class of 2020, earned the Dean's Award, and Kristina Wittler of South Newfane, a member of the Class of 2019, earned the Dean's Award with distinction. Obituaries • Elizabeth Ann Garfield Greenhoe, 91, of Dummerston. Died Aug. 1 at her home. Born in Cambridge, Mass., on July 29, 1926, to James...
Developing a forest management plan, constructing bat houses, updating amenities along a forest trail, a community climate change presentation, printing trail maps, and marking wildlife corridors, are all projects that have recently received financial support, thanks to grants from the Association of Vermont Conservation Commissions. As part of the Commissions' Tiny Grant Program, a grant was awarded to the Putney Conservation Commission to reprint its popular Putney Trails Map titled Places to Walk, Hike, Bike, and X-C in Putney, VT...
Twilight Music concludes its 15th annual “Twilight On The Tavern Lawn” series of folk-rock, world beat, rock, pop, Celtic, blues, and bluegrass summer concerts on Sunday, Aug. 20, with funk and world beat band Simba. Simba features blazing horns and scorching percussion in a highly danceable mix of funk, Latin, reggae, world beat, soca calypso, ska, jazz and blues. The eight-member band has been together for nearly three decades and includes Charlie Schneeweis, Wim Auer, Steve Sonntag, Derrik Jordan, Dan...
The Brattleboro Retreat and Turning Point of Windham County will present “Sharing Our Stories: A Writers for Recovery Public Reading,” on Monday, Aug. 21, at the Brooks Memorial Library, 224 Main St. The reading will begin at 7 p.m. Admission is free. This special reading will feature authors from Writers for Recovery, a Vermont network of free writing workshops for people recovering from addiction. Group members will read from works they created during a recent 10-week Writers for Recovery workshop...
A significant project to improve the Gibson-Aiken and Harris Parking Lots is about to get underway. According to a news release from Assistant Town Manager Patrick Moreland, the scope of the project includes replacing all pavement, installing new sidewalks and curbing, improving drainage, and repainting the markings in the lots. Moreland said the public should expect these lots to be closed for public parking during the majority of the estimated four-week project. A temporary access ramp will be built from...
Although the Planning Commission has made a few revisions to the Town Plan since its last version in February 2014, it's time for a complete update, according to Planning Commission Chair Joe Little. The purpose of Dummerston's Town Plan is to “provide guidelines for planning the future of the Town of Dummerston so that community actions, whether private or public, will conform to the wishes of its citizens, avoid the adverse and sometimes irreversible effects often associated with purely random...
Faced with cutting $241,290 from the fiscal year 2018 village budget, the village trustees unanimously voted on Aug. 9 to eliminate four full-time positions from the Bellows Falls Fire Department. Also at the special meeting, trustees voted to not hire the 10th officer slated to be added to the police department as a hedge against overtime expenses; to not buy any new vehicles for the water and sewer departments for FY18; and to cut their stipends for serving on the...
Dear concerned, well-intentioned neighbors, Could it happen here in Vermont? You bet it could! So stop wringing your hands over the death and injuries inflicted by white supremacists in far, faraway Charlottesville, Va. Stop jockeying amongst yourselves for those coveted civil rights merit badges (placard painting, silent vigil attendance, protest slogan chanting, street marching, published letter to the editor, etc.). And stop trying to convince the few people of color you know that you are one of the “good” white...
Despite a late start, administrators say Vermont Yankee's $143 million fuel storage project is on schedule to finish by the fall of 2018. That's not to imply, however, that anything related to the movement of radioactive spent fuel is happening quickly at the idled Vernon nuclear plant. In fact, as Vermont Yankee Construction Manager Ken Swanger watched a massive cask transporter roll along at 0.25 mph on a recent afternoon, he seemed to relish the snail's pace of the project.
Vermont PBS presents an exclusive preview screening of The Vietnam War, a film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, on Thursday, Aug. 24, at 7:30 p.m., at the Latchis Theatre, 50 Main St. This free screening event will include a 1-hour preview of all 10 episodes of the documentary, followed by a panel discussion with Dr. Robert Tortolani, who was an Army doctor in Vietnam in 1968-69; Dr. Thomas Hoskins, a Quaker who was a doctor in Vietnam for the...
Rebecca Balint: Friends, the news out of Charlottesville is truly horrifying. As many of you know, my dad's side of the family came to this country to escape this kind of ignorance and hatred. For weeks I have been searching in my attic for copies of letters that my grandfather, Leopold Bálint (Leo to his friends and family), sent to my grandmother, Elizabeth (Licy), when he was forced into the Jewish ghetto in Budapest, Hungary before he was deported to...
The public is invited to the 18th annual Write Action Potluck Picnic on Sunday, Aug. 20, from noon to 4 p.m. Participants are asked to bring a dish to share and are invited to bring writing for an open reading (five-minute maximum, which should be about 500 to 600 words). During the first public announcement of contest winners, judges will introduce the winning poems and prose pieces. Contest winners will be invited to read before the open reading, and prizes...
The Turner family had a name for their hardscrabble Grafton homestead, and that name reflected a long journey from slavery to freedom. “The home place was named 'Journey's End,' 'cause father never wanted to go no further after he got up there on that hilltop,” recalled Daisy Turner, whose parents founded the farm in the early 1870s. The Turner family's tale survives because of Daisy's prodigious and well-documented gifts as a storyteller. But their mountaintop home has been mostly reclaimed...
Two acclaimed acoustic duos will team up for a night of original acoustic folk, country, and rock music, in a concert to benefit the South Newfane Schoolhouse, Saturday Aug. 26. Jon Fried and Deena Shoshkes, and Elena Skye and Boo Reiners, longtime friends, colleagues, and collaborators on the Americana and indie pop music scene who also share strong ties to the Williamsville/South Newfane community, will present an evening of “great songs, harmonies, and good times,” according to a news release.
Susie Webster-Toleno: I can't stop thinking about the scenes from Charlottesville. I'm so angry that the ugliness on display is still a thing, and yet feel so helpless about it. I hear (“well-meaning”) white liberals expressing ire but also saying, “but, of course, free speech.” I simply can't imagine how that sounds to people of color and Muslim and Jewish folks and LGBTQI-etc. friends and neighbors. Yes, free speech. But I have the ability to emphasize that point precisely because...
A small, abandoned dam in Dummerston is one of five “deadbeat dams” set for removal during the next two months in Vermont. According to the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources' Department of Environmental Conservation (dec.vermont.gov/watershed/rivers/streamflow-protection/dam-removal), there are about 1,200 known dams on its Vermont Dam Inventory. “While several hundred are valued and properly maintained, others are not and are slowly deteriorating. Some have been essentially abandoned. It is these dams - those that no longer serve a useful purpose, impose...
Everyone said there wasn't enough time. “I am always on the lookout for ways to benefit the arts in our town,” says Lissa Weinmann, co-owner of 118 Elliott, a fully-accessible multipurpose space for arts and education in Brattleboro. She first heard of a possible grant on “Creating Humanities Communities” from the National Endowment for the Humanities at the very beginning of this year, when she attended a conference about arts funding in upstate Vermont. “I realized this was big news,
In many ways, the town's seasonal overflow shelter has been operating on borrowed time. So administrators have decided to try something entirely new when cold weather arrives this fall. The overnight shelter will move out of downtown and relocate to the new Winston Prouty campus for the 2017-18 season, officials announced on Aug. 14. The program also is gaining a full-time staff and adding professional medical, substance-abuse, and mental-health services. The move presents logistical challenges, some of which likely will...
Lakou Mizik, a multigenerational collective of Haitian musicians, will perform on Aug. 24 at 118 Elliot. Doors open at 7 p.m. This is Lakou Mizik's second North American tour this year, including performances at the New Orleans Jazz Festival and the Edmonton Folk Festival. Their music is a soulful stew of deeply danceable grooves that feels “strangely familiar yet intensely new,” according to a news release - and 100 percent Haitian. Their 2016 album, Wa Di Yo, was voted one...
A small group of community leaders recently met with State Historic Preservation Officer Laura V. Trieschmann in the offices of the Rockingham Arts and Museum Project to work on getting Vermont LGBTQ heritage sites on the state and national historic registry. The process may start in Bellows Falls. It is no coincidence that this meeting, in the Mary Exner Block, took place a few doors down from the restaurant Popolo, the former site of Andrew's Inn. In the 1970s and...