Issue #631
Governor requests federal funds to repair July flood damage
Gov. Phil Scott has made a formal request for federal disaster funds to assist communities in Windham and Bennington counties in paying for repairs to public infrastructure damaged in floods of July 29 and 30.
Local and state officials estimate communities in those counties suffered more than $4 million in damages.
Water-quality organizations to collaborate on regional planning efforts
The Windham County Natural Resources Conservation District (WCNRCD), Connecticut River Conservancy (CRC), and the Windham Regional Commission (WRC) have announced a collaboration to provide outreach and services to the public and municipalities to enhance water quality and tactical basin planning in southeastern Vermont. “The strong collaborative efforts among our...
Ask the River project plans ‘convergence’
Since 2019, the Ask the River Project has traveled throughout Vermont, engaging communities with their watersheds and making 25-foot silk cyanotype banners. On Saturday, Sept. 25, people will gather from around the state at Depot Street Greenspace, 23 Depot St., behind the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center and the...
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BF girls win Pickering Invitational meet
Mid-September in Bellows Falls for cross-country fans means that it's time for the annual Pickering Invitational, named for longtime coach Russ Pickering and run over the superb course at Bellows Falls Union High School in Westminster. The “Terrier Harriers” are in a state of transition this year. No boys went out for cross-country and only six girls are running with the varsity team. With senior Abby Broadley, the three-time individual Division III state champion, deciding to take a mental health...
Kat Wright, Pete Bernhard will perform
Next Stage Arts Project and Twilight Music present Kat Wright and her trio, plus Pete Bernhard, as part of the 2021 Next Stage Bandwagon Summer Series, an outdoor, socially distanced concert series. The event takes place on Sunday, Sept. 26, at 4 p.m., on the field behind the Putney Inn. As described on the musician's website, Kat Wright's voice is “both sultry and dynamic, delicate yet powerful, and gritty but highly emotive and nuanced, [and] has been described as 'a...
Fall Gala to raise funds for museum
The Brattleboro Museum & Art Center (BMAC) is holding its Fall Gala on Friday, Sept. 24, at 6 p.m., at Alyson's Orchard in Walpole, N.H. All proceeds will support the museum's education programs and its work on behalf of emerging and underrepresented artists and curators. Additionally, the event will honor BMAC chief curator and former director Mara Williams, who is retiring at the end of 2021 after more than 30 years of service to BMAC. The event will include drinks,
Main Street Arts offers fall classes in theater, art, writing, movement, and music
After a hiatus of more than a year, Main Street Arts has a full slate of arts classes for adults and older teens this fall. Offerings include theater, visual arts, writing, movement, and music, all hosted at 35 Main St. Come learn about the classes and meet the teachers at an open house on Sunday, Sept. 26 at 5 p.m., and enjoy a potluck around MSA's new fire pit. In addition to classes, MSA is hosting a number of community...
U.S. flouts international law by ignoring nuclear weapons prohibition treaty
On Aug. 13, I stood on Main Street, Brattleboro, with my two friends, Daniel Sicken and Bill Pearson, to protest the United States' arsenal of nuclear weapons. Here is what I learned while standing in solidarity with them: Nuclear weapons are against international law, and the United States (legally) violates that law. How can this conclusion be made? The United Nations' Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons outlaws the development, manufacture, testing, possession, transfer, acquisition, stockpiling, use or threat...
Hiroya Tsukamoto to perform in Bellows Falls
Guitarist and composer Hiroya Tsukamoto will bring his fusion of folk, jazz, and world music back to Stage 33 Live, 33 Bridge St., on Sunday, Sept. 26 for a matinee performance. Tsukamoto leads concerts internationally, including multiple appearances at the Blue Note in New York City and on Japanese National Television. In 2018, he won second place in the International Finger Style Guitar Championship. “Eclectic and immersive, Tsukamoto takes audiences on an earthy, organic odyssey with breathtaking instrumental abilities and...
Community effort brings ‘Little Free Pantry’ to Saxtons River
Earlier this year, Berta Martin happened upon a Little Free Pantry in Burlington. Part of a nationwide movement, Little Free Pantries (littlefreepantry.org) are sidewalk food shelves that are open around the clock. Their motto and operating principle is: “Take what you need, or leave what you can.” According to a news release, Martin said she loved how the pantries were accessible to all and served as a community resource during challenging pandemic times. She put out the word to see...
Prouty Presents! features music, food, and fun for all
On Saturday, Sept. 25, 12 bands will perform on the Winston Prouty Campus at Prouty Presents! Music for the organization's free community event will begin at 11 a.m., and sets will be 20 to 30 minutes each. The lineup includes Unworried Birds (instrumental rock), Ukulele Sisters and Friends (ukulele classics), Galera De Samba (10-person percussion ensemble), Vermont Jazz Center Sextet, Donkey No-No (improvised strings and percussion), Occasional Bliss (eclectic Americana duo), the Windham Philharmonic, Slow Pony (folk ensemble), Two Roads...
Milestones
College news • The following students were named to the summer 2021 President's List at Southern New Hampshire University: Rebecca Best of Bellows Falls, Rachael Morse of Brattleboro, Megan Shanks of Westminster and Thomas Salmon of Bellows Falls. Obituaries • Frederick W. Bacon Jr., 93, of Williamsville. Died at home on Sept. 12, 2021, after a period of declining health. He was born on Jan. 29, 1928 in Newton, Mass. He grew up in Belmont, Mass., graduated from Belmont High...
Around the Towns
Town seeks to fill board vacancies BRATTLEBORO - The town is seeking residents to serve on the following committees and boards: ADA Committee; Agricultural Advisory Committee; Arts Committee; Cemetery Committee; Citizen Police Communications Committee (CPCC); Conservation Commission; Development Review Board (member and alternate); Energy Committee; Fence Viewers; Inspector of Lumber; Shingles; and Wood; Planning Commission; and the Senior Solutions Advisory Council. Applications can be found at bit.ly/631-boards-application; more information on the town and town government is available at brattleboro.org; or...
Landmark College shares several top honors in annual college ranking
Landmark College tied for the top rating in two regional categories of the U.S. News & World Report 2022 Best Colleges rankings. The college shares the top honors in Best Undergraduate Teaching - North Region with Colby-Sawyer College in New Hampshire and in Most Innovative Colleges - North Region with Cooper Union in New York City. This is the third straight year that the Putney-based institution that exclusively enrolls students with learning differences (including dyslexia, ADHD, autism, and executive function...
Retreat stance on opioid policy raises questions, reflects apathy
I appreciate the excellent Special Focus section on the opioid epidemic. However, this sidebar left me feeling discouraged, with more questions than answers, because apparently the answer to the question posed in the headline is “no.” The excuses that the Brattleboro Retreat's senior director of patient care services, Kurt White, gives to this question indicate what is wrong with this country. He relays that we can look at what other countries do, but “not every country has the same set-up...
Refugees could bring new focus on housing
While plans move ahead to bring refugees and asylum seekers here from abroad, many are concerned with the already worrisome existing housing shortage and how that is being addressed to help residents and refugees alike. Multiple people involved with local housing needs and the refugee efforts told The Commons that welcoming refugees doesn't appreciably worsen the longstanding problems for people accessing the area's housing market. And, they said, the spotlight from the refugee resettlement efforts could, in fact, bring new...
Art historian to discuss photographer Minor White
The Brattleboro Museum & Art Center (BMAC) presents “Minor White: Photographer, Teacher, Advocate,” a free online talk by art historian Catherine Barth on Thursday, Sept. 30, at 7 p.m. Register at brattleboromuseum.org. Barth received her doctorate degree in art history from Emory University in 2021. Her dissertation, “Frederick Sommer: Photography at the Limits of the Avant-Garde,” includes an examination of Sommer's relationship with White as well as with Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, and Nancy and Beaumont Newhall, all key figures...
For 60 years, Vermonters look beyond Vermont
On March 22, 1961, in the glow of the heady idealism of John F. Kennedy's New Frontier, an organization formed here with a goal of promoting a better understanding of the world. Among the founders of the Windham World Affairs Council (WWAC) were Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, U.S. Sen. George Aiken, psychologist and foreign policy expert Hildegard Durfee, and environmentalist Arthur Westing. Sixty years later, this local affiliate of the nonprofit World Affairs Councils of America remains its smallest chapter and...
Klein returns to perform on Estey organ
Epsilon Spires will once again present Gavin Klein on the historic Estey 300 pipe organ in the Sanctuary at 190 Main St. The free concert on Wednesday, Oct. 6, at noon continues the arts venue's monthly live Lunchtime Organ Series, held every first Wednesday. “Audiences are invited to bring lunch, find a comfortable spot, and become immersed as the music fills the acoustically exceptional hall,” the event organizers write. In this recital, Klein, age 17, will showcase music from around...
‘What a tremendous gift’
Dec. 24, 2020: The reality is that we are all dying, and dying is a beautiful part of life. Taking a good, honest look at death feels so essential, yet is hard to do in the everyday grind - it seems it can be truly looked at only when we are face to face with it. Now don't go thinking, not for one second, that I am special. “That Angela, she's amazing - if anyone can heal from cancer, she...
Addressing institutional betrayal
We write to you as concerned members of the community, parents of students, and graduates/former students of the district and Brattleboro Union High School. Since the publication of Mindy Haskins Rogers' article in The Commons [“No more secrecy,” Viewpoint, Aug. 11] detailing years of grooming and abuse at BUHS, we have been actively involved in discussions about healing and accountability. Some of us participated in the School Board meeting on Aug. 24, and we seek to be both resources to...
Windham town clerk: all ballots were counted
Rep. Carolyn Partridge asserts that “an early ballot was left in the town office drop box after hours before the voting deadline that apparently was not counted.” I can, and do, confirm that every ballot that was deposited in either the drop box at the office, received in the mail, or put into the ballot box was counted in the special election. No ballot was left in the drop box that was uncounted, and no ballots were received by my...
An apology from acting supt. builds trust and healing
I want to thank Acting Superintendent Mark Speno, Oak Grove School Principal Mary Kaufmann, and several members of the Windham Southeast School District and Windham Southeast Supervisory Union boards for acknowledging the harm that has been done in the wake of revelations of sexual abuse of a former Brattleboro Union High School teacher perpetrated against students [“No more secrecy,” Viewpoint, Aug. 11]. In the weeks following Mindy Haskins Rogers' article, others and I have been fierce advocates for a survivor-centered...
A stranger in the grocery line turns forgetfulness into a blessing
I was recently the recipient of a random act of kindness, and I want to thank the stranger who helped me. I'd driven to the grocery store during my lunch break to pick up last-minute needs on a frantic Friday before leaving on vacation. It wasn't until the cashier rang up my items that I realized I'd left my wallet on my desk. I could picture it sitting next to my keyboard as I tried to figure out how I...
The power of a name
Maya Lin, the architect who designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., once spoke of “the sense of the power of a name.” That power shaped her design of the V-shaped wall of polished black granite, engraved with the names of nearly 58,000 American service members who were killed in combat during the Vietnam War. Those names, listed in the chronological order of their deaths, from the first names in 1959 to the final names in 1975, have a...
Happy birthday, WVEW!
In a national landscape of extreme media consolidation and focus-group-tested, lowest-common-denominator, homogenized radio, southeastern Vermont boasts something music- and free-speech fans in other regions can only dream about: two commercial-free community radio stations, run completely by volunteers, where program hosts can do almost whatever they like on the air. One of them, WVEW-LPFM, in Brattleboro, celebrates its 15th anniversary this month. The nonprofit radio station's leaders - a group of three directors, and a small handful of other volunteers -
Vermont opens its doors
The state has been approved to welcome up to 100 Afghan refugees at the same time that the refugee resettlement movement overseen by the Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC) has hired a director for a new office here. Gov. Phil Scott made the announcement last week regarding the Afghan refugees that the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) has been approved by the U.S. Department of State to bring here. They are expected within weeks, although no exact arrival...
Why are we forced to regain our rights?
On Sept. 1, the Texas Heartbeat Act came into effect. This act allows individuals to sue anyone who performs or assists in an abortion being performed at or around six weeks after conception (about when a fetus's heart starts beating). This could be anyone involved, from the one who does the procedure to a person who provides transportation to the clinic. If a defendant is proven liable, they could face charges of at least $10,000. This effectively intimidates clinics out...
‘How to live well, to live honestly, and to live fully into the belief that a better world is possible’
Abi Healey: My friendship with Angela Berkfield started with new parenting (we were both pregnant for the first time) and quickly moved into common interests and a deep connection. When my son was born, and wasn't able to nurse effectively, she became one of his milk mamas, stocking our freezer with mason jars full of breast milk. The first summer of our kids' lives, we gardened together; when our babies were just a few months old, she proposed that our...