Caregiving is a difficult process and takes many forms. A caregiver is someone who helps a neighbor living alone recover after an accident. It's a son who is helping his mother stay in her home. It is a daughter who is helping her father navigate which nursing home to choose. It is a couple trying to decide the best way to help their child with autism achieve independence.
It can also start without a moment's notice. An accidental fall or unexpected diagnosis can suddenly make a person the primary caregiver for a loved one.
Wheel Pad - a Wilmington-based company that manufactures home attachments and backyard tiny houses to make any property a safe, universally accessible place for people with mobility challenges - is hosting its first webinar, “How to Become a Caregiver,” on Wednesday, Feb. 10, at 6:30 p.m.
According to the National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP, 43 million people in the United States have provided unpaid caregiving for a loved one in the last 12 months - more than one in 10 people.
United Way of Windham County will not be offering in-person Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) for the 2020 tax year. The in-person model was “thwarted by COVID-19 precautions and limitations,” representatives said in a news release. To fill the void, United Way of Windham County, in partnership with the...
The Boys & Girls Club of Brattleboro announces its winter programming, with a combination of Boys & Girls Club of America offerings and a new offering - the Daily Drop-In -featuring collaborations with local nonprofit organizations. The club is collaborating with the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center (BMAC), River...
Most New Englanders have seen ice shanties on frozen lakes, but few, if any, have seen an ice shanty shaped like a fish - not to mention a stovepipe hat, a wishing well, or a wedge of cheese. The Brattleboro Museum & Art Center (BMAC) and Retreat Farm present all this and more in the inaugural Artful Ice Shanties Design-Build Competition, which organizers describe as “an outdoor celebration of the delightful possibilities of winter.” More than a dozen artistic and...
Each year for many years, Green Mountain RSVP (GMRSVP) has sponsored a food drive on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, honoring the civil rights leader on a national day of service to encourage all Americans to volunteer to improve their communities. With the current pandemic, GMRSVP wanted a safer activity and pivoted, addressing social isolation by participating in the MLK Day of Service Sunshine Project. More than 135 volunteers, working remotely, brightened the day of many older Vermonters by filling...
On Friday, Feb. 12, at 5 p.m., the Brattleboro Literary Festival continues its 20th anniversary year with a little literary armchair travel. Pour your favorite drink and join in on a rollicking road trip with Vermont author Jay Parini in an online discussion of his book Borges and Me: An Encounter. In 1971, Parini was an aspiring poet and graduate student of literature at University of St. Andrews in Scotland; he was also in flight from being drafted into service...
Forty years ago, employees of the General Services Administration dragged me down a hall by my hair and pulled the woman I was with by the underarms into an elevator from outside the cell block where our friends had been put. The story starts back in Boston, Mass., sometime between Christmas 1980, and New Year's the next week, when I found myself speaking at a press conference from the State House in Boston recommending that other young men not register...
Usually, every year on Town Meeting Day, Southeastern Vermont Economic Development Strategies (SeVEDS) asks voters in the Windham County region to approve funding for the economic development nonprofit. This year, the conversations with voters about the organization, its accomplishments, and its activities are taking place not on the floor, but online, in anticipation of Town Meetings taking place by Australian ballot as a pandemic-related public-safety measure. Normally, SeVEDS staff members attend local Selectboard meetings or Annual Town Meetings to explain...
College news • Three local students graduated after the fall 2020 semester from Castleton University. Abby Chapman of Brattleboro received a B.A. in Multidisciplinary Studies (cum laude), Keighan Eaker of Jamaica received a M.A. in Education, and Tyler Higley of Vernon received a M.S. in Athletic Leadership. • The following local students all graduated after the fall 2020 semester from Vermont Technical College: Thomas Drummey of West Halifax, A.E. in Mechanical Engineering Technology; Gary Grout of South Londonderry, B.S. in...
Auditor's report now available to Brattleboro residents BRATTLEBORO - The Town Auditor's report for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2020, is available, with copies both online and available to pick up or to receive by email or first-class mail. The report has been posted on the town's website (brattleboro.org). It is also available by contacting the Town Clerk's Office, 230 Main St., at 802-251-8157 or via curbside service at the Brooks Memorial Library (802-254-5290). The report will also be...
Parenting 4 Social Justice: Tips, Tools, and Inspiration for Conversations and Action with Kids - a new book by Putney author Angela Berkfeld, along with Chrissy Colón Bradt, Leila Raven, Jaimie Lynn Kessell, Rowan Parker, and Abigail Healey - looks at social justice issues through the lens of the authors' personal experiences both growing up and as parents. In 2015, Berkfeld, a social justice educator and activist and the mother of two kids, held her first workshop series on such...
It is hard to know where to start with this long op-ed piece by Dan DeWalt. He starts off asking about how people can believe certain things and not accept facts. What facts, I wonder? The facts he believes? Are we not able to have our own beliefs? Then he says that beliefs that are contrary to his are “incomprehensible to most Americans.” Actually, that isn't true. Rasmussen polling shows about a 50/50 split in our country and 56 percent...
I'm frustrated with the so-called leadership of this country. The sound of President Biden's unity-themed inaugural address had barely faded when the democratically led Congress voted to impeach the former president for his incitement to riot on Jan. 6. Did he deserve it? Absolutely! Is he still in power? No. Does it say anywhere in the Constitution that the Congress needs to immediately send the article to the Senate for a trial? No. In case no one has noticed, there...
Windham County Sheriff Mark Anderson has established the Windham County Sheriff's Advisory, comprised of a group of county residents who will advise him on community needs, interests, and concerns as they relate to the operations in Vermont. The Advisory, which first began organizing last August, is now reviewing the department's fair and impartial policing policy, last revised in 2019, to ensure that it addresses the needs, values and concerns of county residents. According to a news release, while the Advisory...
The COVID-19 pandemic presented profound challenges nationwide, and downtown Brattleboro was no exception.The constantly changing landscape of shutdowns and reopenings, evolving safety mandates, reduced revenue, and shared trauma has made for an unthinkably difficult time. However, we are proud to report that we met the challenges head on and that we succeeded in supporting our community in ways we never imagined possible. We focused our strategy around three prongs: keeping our community safe, responding to urgent needs, and uplifting our...
I first grasped the idea of mob mentality in To Kill a Mockingbird. In Mr. Bierman's eighth grade English class, I was loving the novel, for beyond the prejudices Harper Lee aimed powerfully to defuse were even more powerful lessons. These I'd recall when I, in turn, first led my own students through Lee's riches many years later. Readers may recall the tense, poignant scene when Atticus Finch sits outside the Maycomb, Ala. jailhouse to keep watch over his client,
The idea for Circus in Place came out of a collaborative brainstorm by a group of circus artists in Vermont whose livelihoods were turned upside down during the global pandemic. “All of our touring contracts were cancelled,” Kevin O'Keefe of Circus Minimus, a circus artist who lives in West Brattleboro, said in a news release. “So we came together to build an outdoor, site-specific performance event that a local audience could see safely.” But due to out-of-state travel restrictions, most...
Like many people who ran for election in Vermont after Donald J. Trump became president, Brandie Starr ran for Selectboard because, she said, remaining a bystander was no longer tenable. Starr, who has decided to step down from the Selectboard when her term ends after Annual Representative Town Meeting, has served as chair and vice-chair of the board during her four years on the board. The experience has refined her view of authority, as well as her own approach. “I'm...
William “Bill” Forchion will take viewers on a philosophical and spiritual journey in “Spirit Dance: A conversation with the ancestors” in Episode 4 of SOLOs, a co-production of the Hooker-Dunham Theater and the Rock River Players. Forchion's work premieres on Friday, Feb. 5 at 7:30 p.m. on YouTube and Brattleboro Community Television (channel 8/1075) with a discussion immediately following at 8:25 p.m. via Zoom. The link to the YouTube premiere is bit.ly/598-solos. To get the Zoom invitation, email [email protected]. Information...
It was once the most affluent country in Latin America. The average person owned a car, and even those living in the poor outskirts of its major cities had a refrigerator, a gas stove, and a television set - things then considered luxuries - even when they did not always have access to running water. I lived in Venezuela with my parents and sisters from 1954 to 1964. Exiled from my native Bolivia after a revolution, arriving in the capital...
One of my earlier educational memories was the completely-age-inappropriate graphic descriptions of the extermination of millions of Jews and others in World War II by the Nazis and their allies in my Jewish religion class. The fear and sadness I felt at that time has never gone away, although as a peace and justice activist, I have tried to put those emotions into action. The very idea of a massive genocide in a country as diverse as the United States...
Vermont electoral officials agree: The COVID-19 pandemic will significantly upend this year's traditional Town Meeting season. They just can't sum up how yet. “We know of a few towns that have said they're going to change their date or move to Australian ballot,” said Secretary of State Jim Condos. “But everybody at this point is kind of playing it by ear.” In a typical year, Vermont's municipalities would now be posting notices for town meetings and votes on or around...