Friday, June 9, from 5 to 7 p.m., the Rear Defrosters will play at what has become an annual summer concert in the Guilford Fairgrounds Cattle Barn.
This will be the Library's second year hosting the Rear Defrosters, a honky tonk, country-soul, rock-n-roll band, whose players come from Vermont, New Hampshire, and Western Massachusetts.
This year's Send a Kid to Camp Raffle drawing will be held during the concert to help fund the Library's summer camp, which offers three weeks of free programming for Guilford students who've completed any grade from kindergarten through eighth grade. Interested parties may visit guilfordfreelibraryvt.org/summer-camp-2023 for more information.
Raffle tickets are $10 and can be purchased in person at the library, 4024 Guilford Center Road, on the library website, or by contacting a Library Trustee or Friend of the Library.
Three gardens in the Saxtons River/Rockingham area are open for the Main Street Arts Garden Tour on the weekend of June 10 and 11. The Garden Tour is part of a larger program on the art of gardening that MSA is launching this year. Participants may enjoy different arts...
Town of Brattleboro launches 'Town Matters' podcast BRATTLEBORO - The town of Brattleboro has begun a new podcast series,“Town Matters,” hosted by Town Manager John Potter. This new series will provide listeners with brief updates about town government. The show aims to inform the public and encourage active participation...
On Friday, May 19, the Brattleboro Area Jewish Community will show the film, Green Rebel, a documentary about an Israeli-American doing large-scale solar energy work in Africa. Leaders in 12 African nations and Belize have nominated him for the Nobel Prize. Green Rebel is an Israel/Africa story. The film follows the struggles of solar energy visionary and businessman, Yosef Abramowitz, and his African partners to provide solutions to both global climate change and to inequality in Africa. Working together, they...
The Hooker-Dunham Theater and Gallery presents Year of the Rooster, by Olivia Dufault, directed by Ben Stockman. This play is described in a news release as “a fiercely dark comedy about cockfighting, connections, and clawing your way to the top.” Its main character, Gil, is a loser. He works at McDonald's, lives with his ailing mother, and hasn't had a girlfriend since-ever. But that's all about to change. He's been secretly training, and drugging, a rooster to fight. And Odysseus...
Village Square Booksellers, 33 The Square, welcomes New Hampshire author Maureen Clancy Thibodeau on Friday, May 19, at 6 p.m. Clancy will read from and discuss her book, The Trophy Hunters. This is a Bellows Falls 3rd Friday (BF3F) event. Thibodeau lives in southwestern New Hampshire with her husband, dog, and cats in a very small town. She enjoys many outdoor activities, sports and hobbies, and is also a certified aromatherapist and an estate sale planner. She says the idea...
In 2001, a small group of active and retired firefighters joined together to create the Vermont Chapter II of the Red Knights here in southern Vermont/New Hampshire. The Red Knights are an international organization of firefighters who enjoy riding motorcycles. To put more meaning to the mission of the Chapter, in 2002, the group created its inaugural “Paul's Ride” in memory of David Emery's brother Paul McAuliffe and his valiant fight against cancer. For 20 years, the ride has been...
Obituaries • Mary Elsie Aiken, 94, of Putney. Died peacefully with her family by her side on May 9, 2023, following a brief period of declining health. Mrs. Aiken was born at home in the family homestead on July 2, 1928, the daughter of Ruben and Elsie (Fuller) Blood. She was raised and educated in Putney graduating from Brattleboro High School. She was employed as a machine operator at the former American Optical Co. in Brattleboro for many years until...
The NXT Gallery presents an art exhibit by Karen Becker, titled “Bearing Witness, Part 2,” from Sunday, May 21, to Aug. 13, 2023 at the NXT Gallery, 15 Kimball Hill. The opening reception for the exhibit will be held on May 21 from 3 to 5 pm. The majority of the exhibition is devoted to Becker's love of nature and the threat of the climate crisis. The animals and trees represented all bear witness to the devastation that is unfolding...
An event commemorating the 25th anniversary of the death of The Rev. Shirley Harris Crockett, pastor of the Guilford Community Church, U. C. C., from 1976 to 1997, will be held at the church Sunday, May 21, starting at 2:30 p.m. Her husband, the Rev. Larrimore Crockett, is organizing the event, with the help of Andy Davis, and will serve as emcee and storyteller. They say it will be “an extravaganza of story-telling, music and archival videos, all shining light...
Every summer at Marlboro Music, an international, multi-generational community forms anew, comprising some 80 professional musicians, as well as staff members, spouses, and children. For seven decades, it has been Marlboro's mission to mentor emerging artists, to provide nearly unlimited rehearsal time and artistic freedom, and to create a nurturing community with a joyful and loving spirit, surrounded by the verdant beauty of southern Vermont. The 2023 season of Marlboro Music concerts will take place on Saturday evenings and Sunday...
Thanks to the wonders of interlibrary loan, I'm reading The Place No One Knew, a 1963 Sierra Club book by photographer Eliot Porter, about the incomparable Glen Canyon in Utah just before it was flooded and lost forever, thanks to U.S. Department of the Interior and the thirst of white people in the southwest and California. The book is a series of magnificent photographs opposite memorable quotations. One of these, by famed Supreme Court justice William O. Douglas, particularly struck...
A Rockingham Meeting House Association spring meet-up will be held on Sunday, May 21, at 4 p.m. at the Rockingham Meeting House, 11 Meeting House Road in Rockingham Village. Since 1911, the Association has worked with the town Selectboard to steward the building that is the birthplace of the town, now a National Historic Landmark and Vermont's oldest public building. The “old town barn” is open to the public every summer through the fall. Both public and private events are...
The Brattleboro Music Center's EOS (Educate, Open, Strengthen) Project explores “Undreamed Shores” at the BMC on Thursday, May 25. The 7 p.m. concert will include Michi Wiancko's To Unpathed Waters, Undreamed Shores, as well as Dr. Etan Nasreddin-Longo's String Quartet for Benzaiten and Yoshi Campbell, and Jose Lezcano's Tango Overture for String Quartet. This EOS concert features and celebrates the talent and artistry of BIPOC composers from the tri-state region of southern Vermont, western New Hampshire, and western Massachusetts. Performing...
Beautifully crafted instruments, made in Brattleboro: That's what you can see, hear, and play when you visit the Estey Organ Museum this season. As part of its mission to collect, preserve, and interpret the physical and cultural heritage of the Estey Organ Company (1846–1960), one of the world's largest organ manufacturers, the museum displays instruments dating as far back as the mid-1800s. Museum volunteers periodically offer organs and organ parts to the public. “Estey is unique in that anyone who...
Mitchell-Giddings Fine Arts, 183 Main Street, presents “David Rohn: As I See It,” an exhibition of watercolors and oil paintings, opening with an artist reception Saturday, May 27, from 5 to 7 p.m. The show continues through June 9, and all are invited to an artist talk scheduled for Saturday, June 17, at 5 p.m. Rohn was the anchor and chairman of the Windham College art department. Upon the college's closing, he taught in New Jersey and New York, but...
“In response to anti-LGBTQ+ legislation against trans folks that's on the rise and, especially, as a response to anti-semitism that's now palpable in New York City.” That's the reason Putney native and actor/playwright Kati Schwartz is bringing Indecent, by Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Paula Vogel, to Next Stage Arts at the end of the month. Now based in New York City, Schwartz, whose energy and mission are behind the upcoming production, is an alumna of Putney Central School who went on...
The dignity and rights of Vermont's special education student population deserve more than a throwaway line at the end of a lengthy commentary that asks this same population of children to continue to stand back as private and independent schools deny their admittance despite accepting our public tax dollars. It's clear this practice is immoral. It should soon be illegal. At a time when adults in other parts of the country are working through their schools boards and legislatures to...
The snowplows and sanders are put away for the season. Spring is here, and that means the start of construction season around Windham County. The Vermont Agency of Transportation (VTrans) has several big projects going, the biggest being the $61 million Brattleboro-Hinsdale bridge project and the $27.5 million roadway reconstruction of Route 30 between Brattleboro and Newfane. The focus of the bridge project so far has been on the Vermont side, as construction crews work on building retaining walls and...
The Committee of Conference has reached an agreement on the budget as it affects people using the General Assistance Motel Program. This agreement creates a preventable humanitarian crisis caused by a state-sponsored unsheltering of nearly 3,000 people, including 500 to 600 children. This is a deliberate and abject failure of our state legislature and governor to care for those who are most vulnerable in our state. In the past couple of months, nearly 200 people using the program have written...
Every time we drive or bike on Route 30, the $27 million dollar pricetag for rebuilding a functional road shows off the state's priorities. Many commuters on Route 30 have expressed the sentiment that the road was perfectly adequate, as were the replaced guardrails. Cars rule. At the same moment, the state has decided that thousands of the poorest and least able Vermonters are to be tossed onto the curb like yesterday's trash. The lack of funding for emergency housing...
The Brattleboro Union High School Unified basketball team opened the 2023 playoffs on May 11 with a stress-free 72-39 win over the Otter Valley Otters. Despite it being an 11 a.m. start, and despite having to play the game in the Brattleboro Area Middle School gym, the BUHS players rolled with the changes and led from start to finish. Head coach Tyler Boone was beaming at the end of the game, not just because his team set a season-high for...
On June 1, the state's motel voucher program will end. The Legislative session has adjourned without funding the pandemic emergency program, which sheltered homeless people throughout the state as a public health measure, a public policy decision that housing advocates predict will have devastating ramifications across the state. Seven hotels in Brattleboro participate in the General Assistance Emergency Housing Program - the formal name for the voucher program. These hotels -Black Mountain Inn, Colonial Motel, Covered Bridge Inn, EconoLodge, Latchis...
For Stephen Rice, moments of joy come in “the countless moments in rehearsals when a piece of music we've been working onstarts sounding really good and everyone feels that powerful feeling of connection - that something truly special, unique, and memorable is happening.” Or they might come “in lessons when a student has been struggling with a skill or concept, and then there's the moment when it clicks and you can see the sense of understanding and accomplishment.” Next Thursday,
Mitch Davis Music teacher/band director/choral director, Brattleboro Union High School and Brattleboro Area Middle School, 1974–2004 I had the honor of working with Steve Rice for 17 years, and it was the highlight of my teaching career. Steve did his student teaching semester at BUHS in the spring of 1987 under the supervision of then–band director Juli Holmes and he was hired to replace her in the fall of 1987. I was his supervisor and colleague who shared a whole...
On May 12, I cast my final vote of the 2023 legislative session. I did so in the Vermont State House, in what is often called “the People's House.” It felt to this legislator like those who work in the “People's House” had not done enough to ensure that vulnerable people would have a house. The vote was for the state budget, which passed 90 yes to 53 no, sealing the fate of 1,800 households whose members will be forced...
With the 2022 Vermont rate of 37 opioid deaths per 100,000 people, who among us is asking themselves this question: “Why does Windham County have the distinction of having the highest rate in the state at 56.4 deaths per 100,000?” No stranger to the long-term effects of the family disease of addiction, we escaped death by opioid overdose - barely. I am writing today not because I have the answer or even an answer. I am, however, writing because I...
A wave of legislation being proposed by states in our country intentionally discriminates against and harms transgender people. For thousands of years, indigenous people, including our own Native Americans, recognized “two-spirit” people as possessing special gifts. They were honored, not bashed and feared. How did we regress from this thoughtful and decent way of treating people who are unique? Now, this fear has impacted sports. Regardless of gender identity, there has always been a vast difference between individuals and their...
Dan DeWalt's Viewpoint exposes everything that is wrong with politics up to the current day in 21st-century America. The logic of this politics is well-engrained by now: Blame everything that is wrong with America on white men. Think about that for a minute. Do you really find the Mickey Mouse and simplistic nature of this politics actually appealing? If our politics is to be dominated by a war on white men, is it any surprise that white men are exploring...
The recent conflict over the Brattleboro Union High School team names is a healthy one, and the WSESD board's decision to change the image is necessary and proper given society's evolving concepts of equality. Removing the blinders of white privilege benefits us all. Here's a recommendation that came from a venerable colleague many years ago, when the issue first emerged. Gary Blomgren, chair of the art department, presented the faculty with a sculpture - a golden ear of corn -
Following is an open letter to U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vermont): While the debate rages over whether the U.S. legislature has the right and responsibility to impose the code of ethics that binds other government institutions on Supreme Court appointees, I have come up with a simple solution that has the privilege of being uniquely designed for the highest-court-in-the-land officers, so venerated that we appoint them for life with no legally structured accountability other than the embarrassing and energy-intensive process...
Come September, Brattleboro Union High School administrators Hannah Parker and Cassie Damkoehler will switch roles after an advertised search for a new principal failed - and caused some upset. Following the second of four May 9 executive sessions, the Windham Southeast School District Board voted to appoint current Assistant Principal Parker as interim principal and current Interim Principal Damkoehler as assistant principal. Current Interim Assistant Principal Traci Lane, who is filling in for Chris Day while he is on a...
Theatre Adventure's Wednesday Troupe has created a new spring production, The Seeking Traveler and the Cloudworld, written for them by Maia Gilmour. From last year's show, the Curious Child character has grown up and, through great courage and with the aid of many magical characters, searches the oceanwide world for “the most beautiful art for all to enjoy.” The troupe sums up the plot: “Up in the clouds, the world is bright with sunshine and dew. The air feels soft...