The recent theft of the catalytic converter from the van used by Our Place Drop-in Center is proving to be more than just an inconvenience.
“We use the van to pick up large boxes of food for our food pantry through the Everyone Eats program,” said the center's director, Lisa Pitcher, in a news release. “Now we are scrambling to find volunteers with vehicles large enough to bring the donations to the center.”
Pitcher said the center is serving record numbers of people, with 2,079 breakfasts and lunches served in September, an average of 99 a day. In addition, 82 households representing 221 people, including 59 children, accessed the food pantry.
The van is also used to pick up donations from local farms and grocery stores such as Pete's Stand, Shaw's, Black River Produce, and the Vermont Country Store.
Brattleboro Area Hospice (BAH) has announced the establishment of the Friends of Cicely Saunders, a legacy program named after the British nurse who founded the hospice and palliative care movements. With the encouragement of several people who have named BAH as a beneficiary in their wills, organization leadership has...
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, 1 in 3 Americans say they have experienced hunger, and many have faced unemployment and financial hardship. Additionally, a 2021 study found hunger is associated with a 257-percent-higher risk of anxiety and a 253-percent-higher risk of depression. Life during COVID-19 has only exacerbated these...
“Suspended Disbelief,” a showing of new works by Jana Zeller, goes on exhibit at Gallery in the Woods for November with an opening reception on Friday, Nov. 5, from 5 to 7 p.m. This new body of work has been created since the start of the COVID-19 lockdown. As described in a news release, “It explores the atmosphere of abandoned theater spaces, the presence of another world within our world, and ghostly appearances attempting to connect with our surroundings.” “Each...
The Brattleboro Music Center Chamber Series continues Friday, Nov. 5 with violinist Jennifer Koh performing works by Bach. The concert is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. at the BMC at 72 Blanche Moyse Way. Tickets, at $25, are available at bmcvt.org. Koh, who will perform the six sonatas and partitas for solo violin by J.S. Bach, is, as described in a news release about the concert, “recognized for intense, commanding performances, delivered with dazzling virtuosity and technical assurance. She is a...
Gerda's Equine Rescue, a nonprofit horse rescue organization that rescues, rehabilitates, and re-homes mainly slaughterbound horses, is offering a free blanket bank to help horse owners in need of a little help this winter. “We want to help keep horses in good, caring homes. This program is a simple way we can do just that,” said Gerda Silver, president and founder, in a news release. “Lots of people experience financial hardship at some point of their lives,” Silver continued. “Horses...
After being closed for 18 months due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Brattleboro Walk-In Clinic will reopen Tuesday, Nov. 9. “We're really excited about it,” said clinic Vice President Adrian Segar. In 2020, “we had to close,” he said. “We just felt that particularly with volunteer providers it wasn't safe to open the clinic at that time.” “We're not a hospital building and don't have the resources to do the kind of safety checks and so on that hospitals did...
Obituaries • Travis Matthew Bacon, 30, of West Brattleboro. Died unexpectedly Oct. 23, 2021 at his home. Travis was born in Brattleboro on September 24, 1991, the son of Matthew D. and Doreen (Wilson) Bacon. He attended Brattleboro public schools and graduated from Brattleboro Union High School with the Class of 2010. He had worked as a machinist for Bradford Machine Co. in Brattleboro, and previously had been employed for Fleming Oil Company and, later, at 7-Eleven on Marlboro Road...
Vermont writers featured at Putney library PUTNEY - The Putney Public Library will hold a series of Zoom events featuring the poetry and fiction of writers in Vermont.The series will be on the first Thursday of every month from 7 to 8 p.m., starting Nov. 4. Toni Ortner, whose latest books are Daybook I and Daybook II by Deerbrook Editions and Daybook III by Ardent Writer Press, will host the readings. Kicking off the series will be Vincent Panella, author...
The Brattleboro Winter Farmers' Market opens its 16th season on Saturday, Nov. 6, once again in the C.F. Church Building at 80 Flat St. This year, the market - one of the few weekly indoor Vermont farmers' markets open for in-person shopping for the extended winter season - will again take measures for the safety of customers and vendors. Organizers will limit the number of customers in the space at one time, and encourage them to move through the market,
Next Stage Arts Project and Twilight Music present an evening of Celtic music by Kalos (Jeremiah McLane, Eric McDonald, and Ryan McKasson), with bagpiper Dan Houghton and harpist Rachel Clemente, on Friday, Nov. 5, at 7:30 p.m. Kalos is described in a news release as “a trio of interpreters and composers of Celtic roots music [that] explores the dark corners floating on its edges, delivering an alluring musical complexity full of spontaneity and joyful exuberance.” “McDonald, McKasson, and McLane draw...
Want to get something off your chest? Want to advocate for a compelling social issue? Learn how to write persuasive letters to the editors and op-eds and get them published. Hear what the editors of our local papers expect for effective opinion writing as part of the third event in the Media Mentoring Project, a series of workshops produced by Vermont Independent Media (VIM), publisher of The Commons. “Speaking Your Truth: Opinion Writing” is scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 9, at...
Arson investigators from the Vermont State Police are asking for help from the public in finding the culprit behind a series of suspicious fires in Windham County over the past few weeks. Detective Sgt. Matthew Hill of the State Police's Fire and Explosion Investigation Unit (FEIU) said in a news release that his unit is working with the Putney and Marlboro fire departments in an investigation of six fires that have taken place within Windham County since Oct. 2: •
Bill Lowe's Signifyin' Natives will perform on Sunday, Nov. 7, at 3 p.m., in Next Stage's theater on Kimball Hill. The band is an ongoing project of rotating personnel under Lowe's leadership. In its current iteration, the septet includes Bill Lowe (tuba, bass trombone); Hafez Modirzadeh (saxophones); Taylor Ho Bynum (cornet); Kevin Harris (piano); Ken Filiano (acoustic bass); Luther Gray (drums); and Naledi Masilo (vocals). The concert is co-produced with the Vermont Jazz Center. “Bill Lowe is a jazz legend...
If Lorena Cuevas were a book, she'd be hard to catalogue. The new library director for Moore Free Library holds a bachelor of arts degree in art history from Fordham University and has extensive experience in arts administration, staff development, and operational management. She is also a professional hospice chaplain with a master of divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York. Since 2018, she has worked as a librarian at Brooks Memorial Library in Brattleboro. How does one...
At 7 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 12, the multimedia arts venue Epsilon Spires will host an immersive sound bath followed by a screening of Her Socialist Smile, a new documentary chronicling Helen Keller's political activism. The term “sound bath” describes an experience where listeners are enveloped in sound waves, creating a meditative environment that can foster shifts in perception. “A primary intention behind the pairing of this sound bath offering with the screening of Her Socialist Smile is to draw...
For its November exhibit, the Crowell Gallery at Moore Free Library, 23 West St., presents “Ricia Gordon - The Language of Color and Form.” A reception for the Brattleboro artist will be held on Saturday, Nov. 6, from 1 to 2:30 p.m. For the past 11 years, Gordon explored the world of abstract painting with oils. She says that for her, it was all about the process of painting, the challenges, and the excitement she experienced in her studio. She...
In an affirmation of the idea that the town wants, needs, and welcomes newcomers, community leaders, social service providers, and concerned citizens filled an airy second-floor room at the Cotton Mill on Oct. 29 to celebrate the opening of the Brattleboro Multicultural Community Center. As the town prepares to welcome the first group of refugees from Afghanistan by the end of this month, the center will play a key role in aiding the transition for these newcomers. However, offering care...
Nov. 9, 2021 marks the 83rd anniversary of Kristallnacht, The Night of Broken Glass. On that night, Nazis and Nazi sympathizers raided synagogues, Jewish homes, and Jewish businesses throughout Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. They burned buildings, desecrated holy texts, rounded up Jews and brought them to concentration camps, and smashed the windows of Jewish homes and businesses. Local officials were told to look the other way and let the terror happen. Ordinary citizens, who had been...
Football can seem complicated, but at its heart is one very simple concept - a team's success depends on imposing your physical will on your opponent. Running the football is usually the most effective way to do that and, in Vermont high school football, the teams that are successful are the teams that have a strong offensive line and running backs who can bludgeon their way through defenses. The fifth-seeded Lyndon Vikings put on a clinic in this kind of...
It is 10:30 p.m. in Vermont, and I am typing on my laptop by the light of an emergency lamp I bought many years ago, when I was compelled to buy survival equipment. I spent enormous sums on a tent that could withstand freezing temperatures as well as heat, packs of freeze-dried food, water purifying tablets, magnetic compasses, folding forks and knives and spoons and pots and pans, and a solar stove, not to mention a large red canvas escape...
In 1940, Alice Duer Miller wrote a beautiful epic poem, “The White Cliffs.” An American who married a British man just prior to World War I, she soon lost her husband serving a country that wasn't hers. As she penned the poem, she faced the possibility of losing her son to World War II, again for a country not her own. Yet her last poetic lines are “I am American bred,/I have seen much to hate here - much to...
The Rock River Players present Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's classic screwball comedy, The Front Page, Friday through Sunday, Nov. 5 through 7 and Friday through Sunday, Nov. 12 through 14 at the Williamsville Hall, 35 Dover Rd. “Mounting this ambitious production has been an epic journey of its own,” Director Bahman Mahdavi said in a news release. “We started in the fall of 2019 and are delighted to finally perform the show in front of a public audience after...
Author Katherine Paterson, who writes books for children and young adults, is a two-time winner of the prestigious John Newbery Medal for children's books and a two-time winner of the National Book Award. To put that in perspective, it almost never happens. Paterson, 92, has written more than 30 books and won over 20 national and international awards. She writes with empathy, vividness, and clarity about the uncomfortable truths of characters who immediately come alive on the page. “Most of...