The Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation (BDCC) board of directors recently voted to fund Welcoming Communities, a new program that seeks to make the region more welcoming, equitable, and inclusive for community members who are BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color), foreign-born workers, and non-citizen residents.
According to a news release, BDCC says the initiative “will improve how existing BDCC programs serve diverse audiences, and launch new targeted activities through partnerships with employers and community-based organizations,” with a long term goal of building “a robust system that will support immigration and in-migration to southern Vermont and an increase in demographic diversity.”
The need to increase the size and quality of the workforce was first identified in the region's 2014 Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS). Since then, workforce participation, labor force numbers, school populations, and birth rates have continued to plummet.
BDCC says it is working to retain and attract people through programs like Young Professionals and Stay to Stay, and for the past five years has sought opportunities to lower barriers for BIPOC and foreign-born people.
Putney monthly free produce distribution is April 22 PUTNEY - The Vermont Foodbank and the Putney Foodshelf will co-sponsor the next monthly drop of free produce and some nonperishables on Thursday, April 22, from 9:30 to 10:15 a.m., at Putney Meadows, 17 Carol Brown Way (the white building across...
An online singalong concert of songs, to repair the breach and support asylum seekers, will support the work of the Windham County–based Community Asylum Seekers Project (CASP). “Repairing the Breach, Songs for the Journey,” by Annie Patterson and Peter Blood, of Amherst, Mass., takes place on Saturday, May 8,
What is going on with the millions of Republican/conservative/Trumpist Americans who refuse the reality of public health? I continue to follow - in awe - the strange, ignorant, and hostile views of people who deny repeated realities. It feels completely counterintuitive to think that there are still Covid deniers, but those people are still out there. In a December 2020 survey, they comprised 13 percent of the United States population. Their explanations for the illnesses and deaths are thoroughly convoluted.
The Brattleboro Museum & Art Center (BMAC) exhibit “All Flowers Keep the Light” - on view through Sunday, June 13 - was postponed for nearly a year because of the pandemic. Initially conceived as an exploration of artwork harnessing the beauty and symbolic potential of flowers to mark personal loss, it was expanded to include work commemorating communal and societal ruptures. Curated by BMAC Chief Curator Mara Williams, “All Flowers Keep the Light” draws its title from a line in...
College news • Hanako Kusumi, a member of the Class of 2023 from South Londonderry, has been selected for membership into the St. Lawrence University chapter of Omicron Delta Kappa, a national leadership honorary society for college students, faculty, staff, administrators, and alumni. • Abigail Dryden of Londonderry has been placed on the Gettysburg (Pa.) College Dean's Honor list for outstanding academic achievement in the fall 2020 semester. Obituaries • Jeffrey Evanuk, 56, of Brattleboro. Died April 6, 2021 at...
Utilities Division crews from the Department of Public Works will start spring flushing of the town water mains on Thursday, April 22 at 10 p.m. and continue work through Saturday, May 8. Some daytime flushing will continue throughout the weeks of May 10 and 17. Customers are asked to check the flushing schedule closely, as flushing causes water discoloration, low water pressure, and, in some areas, periods of no water. Water-main flushing will occur during both night (10 p.m. to...
Six extraordinary artists - Craig Taborn, Kris Davis, Elio Villafranca, Harvey Diamond, Hidemi Akaiwa, and Camila Cortina - will come together on Friday and Saturday, April 23 and 24, for the Vermont Jazz Center's fifth annual Solo Jazz Piano Festival. These six venerated artists, representing a wide variety of piano styles, will pour their hearts into their performances and communicate their unique ideas in master classes, and it will all be livestreamed at vtjazz.org and facebook.com/VermontJazzCenter/live. For music lovers who...
Set in North Haven, a fictional Vermont community with its gallery of locals, eccentrics, and survivors, probably recognizable to residents in the know, the characters in Mimi Morton's posthumously released collection of short stories, Life List, written over a period of 12 years, become as indelibly imprinted in the imaginations of the book's readers as, say, those living in Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio. One thing that often makes a short story no more than a minor accomplishment is, paradoxically, its...
Here's a list of what towns in Windham County are doing on Green Up Day, and whom to contact if you want more information: • Athens: Lynn Morgan, 802-869-2227 or [email protected]. Leave full bags and large debris along roadsides. Routes may be worked on anytime between April 26 and May 1. • Brattleboro: Brattleboro Subaru, 1234 Putney Rd., (bag pickup and drop-off); Robin Rieske, 802-275-7232 or [email protected]. Bags available on Green Up Day from 8 a.m. to noon at Brattleboro...
“Pandemic Heroes” is the theme of Gallery 34 at River Gallery's April exhibition, highlighting the artistic works of nationally recognized artist Lori Schreiner, of Brattleboro. The display features the artist's interpretation of 12 individuals who have been “quite recognizable, and perhaps even controversial, during the course of the pandemic,” according to a news release. “Ranging from Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases to George Floyd, the victim of racial violence by police, the exhibition...
Participating poets in the Poetry Around Town project will hold a virtual reading on Thursday, April 22, 2021 at 6:30 p.m. The joint project by three local writing organizations - Write Action, Time to Write, and the Brattleboro Literary Festival - celebrates National Poetry Month by displaying 58 poems by 37 area poets in downtown shop and restaurant windows through April. A recorded version of the Zoom reading will be available on the Youtube channel of the Brattleboro Literary Festival.
The 2021 edition of Green Up Day is set for Saturday, May 1 - back on schedule. Traditionally held on the first Saturday in May, this annual roadside cleanup sees Vermonters of all ages get outside and clean up miles of roads throughout the state. Last year, it was delayed a month because of the chaos of the pandemic. Inspired by the first Earth Day in 1970, Green Up Day is Vermont's largest all-volunteer, statewide, one-day event. Green Up Vermont,
Artist Jennifer Mack-Watkins, Daricia Mia DeMarr of Black Women in Visual Art, and Novella Ford of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture will discuss Black identity and representation in art in “Holding Space: Reflections on Children of the Sun,” a free online conversation presented by the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center (BMAC) on Wednesday, April 28 at 7 p.m. In her debut solo museum exhibition, “Children of the Sun,” Mack-Watkins explores history, recalls childhood memories, and acknowledges the...
Changes in local phone dialing are in the works as a result of a new Federal Communications Commission (FCC) order to ensure swift access to suicide prevention help. On July 16, 2020, the agency adopted an order approving 988 as a three-digit abbreviated dialing code to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline starting July 16, 2022. Until then, customers must continue to dial 1-800-273-8255 to reach the Lifeline. According to a news release, the FCC order requires all telecommunications carriers,
After their plans were delayed for a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA) Tristate Chapter 843 has resumed raising funds to support the visit of the Moving Wall to town in 2021. A half-size replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., the wall is 252 feet long and made of 74 black aluminum panels. It will be on display on Moore Field on Putney Road, near the junction of Routes 5 and 9...
We cannot have another accidental death during a police apprehension. Why not give law enforcement tranquilizer guns? Officers have only split seconds to make a potentially lethal decision. With a tranquilizer gun, they can shoot first and ask questions later. Was that just a shiny object in the suspect's hands or a handgun? No joke intended. Let's give the police tranquilizer guns and end these accidental killings.
National Volunteer Week - April 18–24 - was first established in 1974 to recognize and celebrate the efforts of volunteers across the country. At Brattleboro Memorial Hospital, it is a time to honor and thank volunteers for their commitment to patient care and their compassion toward patients, staff, and the community. Last year, we observed the holiday without volunteers present in the hospital, asking them to keep their distance and stay home to protect our community. This past year, their...
The Brattleboro High School/Brattleboro Union High School Athletic Hall of Fame announces its creation and the induction of its class of 2021. All went through an official nominating process that culminated in their selection by the 10-member Hall of Fame Committee. According to the organization's website, “The purpose of the BHS/BUHS Athletic Hall of Fame is to recognize, honor, and provide an enduring memorial for those persons whose outstanding contributions have enriched the athletic programs and brought honor to the...
Let us consider Earth and the community of planets as seeds broadcast into a field - in this case, a solar field. Just as plant seeds can find themselves in locations that are too dry or too hot or too cold for sprouting, so most of the planets in the solar field landed in conditions not favorable for growth. Only Earth was in a promising situation for germination. The Earth-seed, a living planet, began to blossom. * * * The...
Mild-mannered engineer Bob Stevens wasn't seeking to become a development superhero when he donned a hard hat 10 years ago to venture into the smoldering shell of Brattleboro's fire-ravaged Brooks House. “I went through with emergency responders to determine if the structure was stable,” he recently recalled. “Everything was so wet, the building was literally weeping.” Stevens determined the central downtown block was soaked but salvageable. What he didn't know was that he and several partners would buy it and,
Four local seniors have been selected to play for the Vermont team in the 68th annual Shrine Maple Sugar Bowl, set to make its return this summer after a one-year hiatus due to COVID-19. Brattleboro's Henry Thurber and Elijah Isham and Bellows Falls' Jack Burke and Jack Herrington are the local representatives on the Vermont Shrine Team, which will be coached by Brattleboro's Chad Pacheco. The four will be among the best senior high school football players in Vermont and...
Adapting his work to the global pandemic, photographer Ezra Distler is creating black-and-white portraits of essential workers. Distler, who has taken “maybe 1,500 or more” portraits of townspeople over the years, had received a grant last year from the Arts Council of Windham County for the Brattleboro Town Arts Fund to continue his work, with a focus on at-risk communities. “I applied in January, and got approved, I think, in February,” he said. “And then in March, everything changed.” Distler...
Six southern Vermont communities with poor - or no - internet could have access to high-speed service by next year, as negotiations are in progress for a vendor to provide broadband to some of the most analog towns in the region. Efforts to bring reliable and affordable communications to the far-flung hills got a big assist in recent days, when a Covid relief bill became law, distributing $3.2 million in state aid from the federal American Rescue Plan to the...
A popular senior boy cornered me alone in the basement of the dining hall, where I had gone to use one of the school's few pay phones. This boy, 18 or 19 years old to my 14, began pressuring me to have sex with him. I refused, but he persisted, complimenting my looks, professing his desires, and masterfully laying on the charm. Eventually, feeling worn down and not knowing what else to do, I gave up and schlepped with him...