BEDFORD, N.H. - Girl Scouts of the Green and White Mountains throughout New Hampshire and Vermont are participating in the Girl Scout Cookie program, which teaches essential entrepreneurial skills and is the largest girl-led business in the world.
This year, Girl Scout Cookies will sell at $5 a package and as always, 100 percent of the net revenue from GSGWM cookie sales stays local to fund local programming, while girls and their troops decide how to invest in community projects, personal enrichment opportunities, and more.
Past projects funded by cookie sales have included acquiring donations for local food banks, expanding STEM programming and outdoor adventures, and planting community gardens.
Girls also will sell cookies through the Digital Cookie platform, an innovative and educational web-based addition to the cookie program that helps girls run and manage their Girl Scout Cookie businesses online.
College news • The following local students were named to the fall 2017 Dean's List at Stonehill College in Easton, Mass.: Cameron Baldwin Wright, Class of 2020, from West Dummerston, Alexa Litchfield, Class of 2019, from Jamaica, and Sabin Litchfield, Class of 2020, from Jamaica. • The following local...
Bellows Falls is having the best season so far of our local girls' basketball teams, as coach Todd Wells is reaping the benefits of a population boom at the school. There are 13 players each on the varsity and junior varsity squads, and there is plenty of competition for...
The Brattleboro Music Center will present “French Connection,” a concert of flute music by French composers, Friday, Jan. 19, at 7:30 p.m., at the Brattleboro Music Center Auditorium, 72 Blanche Moyse Way. This concert is a tribute to Louis Moyse, co-founder of the Marlboro Music Festival and longtime Marlboro College faculty member. Moyse was also a member of the successful Moyse Trio, in which his father, Marcel, played flute, Louis the piano, and Blanche Honegger Moyse the violin. The evening...
Residents in 30 towns across Vermont - including Brattleboro, Dummerston, Londonderry, Marlboro, Newfane, Putney, and Weston - are petitioning to put climate change on their respective Town Meeting Day agendas and ballots. Despite Vermont's goal to power the state with 90 percent renewables by 2050, Vermont is far from meeting this mark. Vermont isn't alone. A recently released report from the United Nations shows that the worldwide effort to stem greenhouse gases has fallen short of the goal set by...
Vermont Performance Lab created the SEED Program in 2015 to help strengthen dance in the region by supporting local choreographers in the creation of new work. The program invests in Vermont artists by connecting them with tools and resources that build their work and capacity, according to a news release. Selection for SEED is a competitive process managed by VPL and each artist chosen is provided an artist fee, a residency at VPL, housing for up to five people for...
Since the tragic motorcycle accident involving Stanley and Laura Lynde this summer, feelings and thoughts have been festering in my gut. They were brought very clearly to the surface while driving to work recently, with the effect that I had to pull to the side of the road to regain normal breathing. Time to speak up. The Williamsville/Depot Road running between Route 30 and Williamsville is a warped, ribbony affair. Smack in the middle of the curves, here comes a...
It's a new year and a good time to join us! Inclusion Center is looking for people who are interested in helping our organization to grow and mature in various directions. Inclusion Center is an amazing program that works with all people who have disabilities or medical issues, and everyone else who has an interest in being with us. The possibilities for what Inclusion Center could be in the future are endless: A drop-in center within another program! Having our...
On Saturday, Jan. 20, at 7:30 pm, Stone Church Arts brings two Turkish music trios to Immanuel Episcopal Church, 20 Church St. The Brooklyn, N.Y.- based trio Dolunay (Turkish for “full moon”) draws upon the songs from the Turkish people living across Rumeli, the former region of the Ottoman Balkans. By turns romantic and elegant, vivacious and playful, the music of Çesni Trio is grounded in the flavors of Turkish makam music while remaining deeply personal and contemporary. The Dolunay...
According to Town Manager Peter Elwell, construction on the renovated and expanded Central Fire Station is now complete, but townspeople will have to wait a couple of weeks longer to get a look at it. A ribbon cutting and open house had originally been scheduled for Friday, Jan. 19. However, due to a calendar conflict, Elwell said the event has been rescheduled to be held on Friday, Feb. 9. Elwell said the town and the Fire Department personnel “are proud...
If you have unwanted, unused, or expired prescription drugs, you no longer have to wait for drug take-back events. Brattleboro Memorial Hospital recently installed a MedDrop Drug Take Back box. The MedDrop box is located in the entryway of the main entrance of the hospital. The blue box has a secure drawer to add the drugs that go into a locked safe. People who want to drop unwanted drugs don't have to be patients at the hospital. “The ability to...
John Hadden, founding member of Shakespeare & Co., is offering the first of several Shakespeare workshops at Main Street Arts Saturday and Sunday, Jan. 20 and 21, from 6 to 9 p.m. “We think of Shakespeare's language as old,” Hadden said in a news release, “but it is actually 400 years younger than ours.” The former artistic director of Hubbard Hall Theater Co. has taught Shakespeare to everyone from eighth-graders to celebrity actors and is convinced that anyone who wants...
Next Stage Arts Project and Twilight Music present International Bluegrass Music Association Banjo Player of the Year Tony Trischka and his band Territory, plus contemporary folk and bluegrass quartet The Stockwell Brothers Band at Next Stage on Saturday, Jan. 20, at 7:30 p.m. In a consistently adventurous musical career that spans nearly half a century, Trischka has established himself as one of America's foremost visionaries of the five-string banjo and perhaps the most influential banjo player in the roots music...
Director Tony Lechner invites everyone to join Rock Voices, the area's only community rock chorus, for an evening of rock and pop classics. The concert will take place at Brattleboro's Centre Congregational Church, 193 Main St., on Saturday, Jan. 20, at 7 p.m. Doors open at 6 p.m. Backed by a professional rock band - featuring local legend Mitch Chakour on keyboard - this choir of more than 100 members performs the music of Buffalo Springfield, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder,
On Saturday, Jan. 20, the first anniversary of the inauguration of President Donald J. Trump, there will be what organizers call “a gathering in solidarity with the 2018 Women's March,” from 11 a.m. to noon, at Pliny Park at the corner of Main and High streets. The Pliny Park event is designed to coincide with “Power To The Polls,” an event commemorating the first anniversary of the 2017 Women's March that drew more than 1 million people to Washington and...
As the Selectboard makes their way through the Fiscal Year 2019 budget cycle, they recently moved forward on some proposed general fund items. Since the beginning of the FY19 budget discussions, the total budget has gone up about $58,000 to $14,653,643, due to an increase in workers' compensation insurance and the cost of snow removal at the police station, a decrease in the town's bond interest, and a few other items. For taxpayers in Brattleboro, this means a 3.16 percent...
A month after the Bellows Falls Fire Department was forced to lay off four firefighters, the remaining staff are doing the best they can to serve the town, but it's not a perfect scenario, BFFD Chief Shaun McGinnis told The Commons. Last August, the village trustees unanimously voted to eliminate four full-time positions from the department. Village voters in May originally passed a $1,998,070 budget, with $1,941,290 to be raised through property taxes. However, a petition drive successfully forced a...
The Vermont Public Utilities Commission (PUC) will soon hold its final public hearing on the proposed sale of Vermont Yankee to NorthStar . This will be the final opportunity for residents of Vernon, of Windham County, and of Vermont to publicly say whether the sale is - to quote the PUC mission statement - “consistent with the long-term public good of the state.” Prior to a November 2016 announcement of the proposed sale, site owner Entergy had planned to mothball...
Good day to you, fellow human beings. It's not every publication day that the latest edition of The Commons is delivered amidst a plowable snowfall, but it is most assuredly so this Wednesday! Please note that Winter Storm Warnings are posted for Windham County today (the same goes for Bennington County to the west, and Cheshire County to the east). After our mid-week snowstorm, we will enjoy fair weather through the weekend with rain possible by early next week. Rain...
A fascinating conversation has been taking place in Vermont over the last several years - a conversation about whether “environmentalism” and “entrepreneurialism” can exist together. It is a conversation driven, in part, by the anticipated effects of climate change, and the challenge to do something about it. Of course, in Vermont the economy and the environment are deeply intertwined. For most - if not all - of our history, we have relied a great deal on our unique and healthy...
You will often hear me saying the phrase “I love Pudge” - the affectionate nickname we give my hefty beefcake of a dog, Rocky. He has been a part of my life for over three years. I found him in northern Vermont at a shelter I was working for at the time. It was love at first sight. Throughout the years, Rocky has taught me so much about dogs and our relationships with them. Not only that, but their relationships...
The draft Windham Regional Commission Energy Plan is disturbing, because its wording and its biases would effectively exclude economically efficient, acutely needed, renewable wind energy almost everywhere in the county where it would be feasible to site. Yet, I have some sympathies with industrial-wind-energy opponents, with those who would like to preserve our ridgelines intact. Is there any middle ground to advocate for both? * * * Though I moved to southern Vermont only 15 years ago, I have been...
It's been a rough year down in the soup kitchen. Three of our staff people have died, we have been flooded in our basement, the walls fell in in our cool room, and most recently in the cold weather we have suffered an inexplicable lack of meat for two weeks. A direct supply link to a supermarket has gone astray, and the Vermont Foodbank has no meat protein to offer us - and the weather has been brutal. We carry...
Rubavu, Rwanda, is almost on the opposite side of the globe from Brattleboro. However, through her work as executive director of Inshuti of Rwanda, Lauren Rose Marino is bringing residents of both places closer together. Inshuti of Rwanda, the Brattleboro-based nonprofit organization Marino founded, raises money to build homes for residents of Rubavu Sector. “We have constructed 21 homes since 2014,” she told The Commons. “Last year we built 10 houses, helping 14 adult and 42 children have a brighter...
Havana seems haunted by the past. The island itself was first visited by Columbus in the same year that Gutenberg printed the Bible. Within less than a century, the native Taino people had been decimated by disease and warfare. The earliest buildings and forts in Havana date from the 1500s. The long history of slavery only ended in 1888, and it was not until after Fidel Castro took power that the Jim Crow laws were abolished, about the same time...
For her last few public performances with the Brattleboro Music Center's Concert Choir at the Latchis Theatre, Music Director Susan Dedell will showcase a new work and a familiar favorite. On Jan. 20 and 21, BMC presents Having Seen the Moon, which includes Karl Jenkins' Requiem and Morten Lauridsen's Lux Aeterna. In selecting these works, Dedell continues to explore new music and contemporary composers at the same time as she revisits works that she has found particularly profound in the...
Domestic cats can be disturbing to those who don't know them. Such people usually call themselves “dog people,” but in reality, they're just afraid. I can relate to this. Cat lovers posting distracting memes on social media may give the impression that their favorite little pets exist to entertain humanity by making adorable faces accompanied by adorably ungrammatical captions, or to amuse us by leaping up in instinctual terror when confronted by a surreptitiously placed cucumber. In reality, domestic cats...
In the old cities of the world, you could hear music from many lands, evoking the past and the home countries of immigrants, mingling and becoming something new. A new suite of songs by Brattleboro composer Julian Gerstin celebrates these transformations, bringing together musical styles from Athens, Istanbul, Havana, Fort-de-France, and the streets of San Francisco in a jazz context. The Julian Gerstin Sextet is expanded for this occasion, with trombone, saxophone, and flute added to the sextet's usual lineup...
If you've ever been tormented by love - and who of us hasn't? - the early music group In Stile Moderno has created a concert just for you. “How Sweet the Torment: Madrigals of Monteverdi and his Contemporaries” will be offered Sunday, Jan. 21, at 6 p.m., at the Brattleboro Music Center, 72 Blanche Moyse Way. Tickets are $25-$10 and are available at the door. In Stile Moderno - the name means “in the modern style” - was founded in...
Artist Brian Cohen makes a return to Saxtons River for a show of his work at Main Street Arts now through Feb. 23. There will be a reception for the artist on Thursday, Jan. 18, from 5:30 to 7 p.m. A one-time resident of the village, the educator, artist, and writer now lives in Westmoreland, N.H. An illustrator, etcher, printmaker, and water colorist, Cohen founded Bridge Press, publisher of limited-edition artist's books and etchings, in 1989. He has shown in...
Pyeongchang isn't the only place ready to greet international athletes. Harris Hill, New England's only Olympic-size ski jump, is set to welcome competitors from the U.S. and Europe at its annual Presidents' Day weekend tournament in Brattleboro. Several of Harris Hill's past jumpers - Kevin Bickner, Michael Glasder, and William Rhoads, for example - won't be present, as they've earned spots to travel with Team USA to the Winter Games in Korea. But the local slope is expecting a slate...