One person was killed and another was injured on Oct. 6 after a northbound Amtrak passenger train collided with his car at a rail crossing in Vernon.
According to Vermont State Police, a dispatcher received a 911 call just after 5 p.m., reporting an automobile accident near the intersection of Route 142 and Bemis Road in Vernon.
Upon arrival at the scene, state troopers learned the crash involved the northbound Amtrak Vermonter had struck the vehicle.
Both occupants of the 2002 Toyota RAV4 were transported to Brattleboro Memorial Hospital, where the driver of the car, Craig Hudson, 53, of Brattleboro, was pronounced dead.
In Stile Moderno presents "Misero Amante: Songs of Love and Suffering" on Friday, Oct. 13 at the Brattleboro Music Center. The program for the 7 p.m. concert invites the audience into the world of 17th-century Italy to indulge in every poet's favorite subject: the joys and pains of love.
Main Street Arts (MSA) will be starting several wellness programs this autumn, including yoga, tai chi, and Feldenkrais workshops. The whole body being well contributes to participating in positive life experiences, which help everyone to be more resilient. "A person's wellness impacts their ability to be creative and present...
The Putney Selectboard will present and receive comments in person and virtually on the "Planning Commission Approved Draft 2023 Putney Town Plan" at two public hearings scheduled for Tuesday, Oct. 24, at 5:30 p.m., and Wednesday, Nov. 8, at 5:30 p.m., at Putney Town Hall, 127 Main St. The Draft 2023 Putney Town Plan covers the entire town of Putney. Drafted with community input, it addresses State municipal planning goals as well as the Putney community aspirations and priorities. The...
Southeastern Vermont Community Action (SEVCA) is actively seeking area residents to consider joining their Board of Directors. People who possess these skills or areas of expertise are especially welcome to apply: legal, fundraising, governance, financial or multi-year budget planning, human resources, assessment and strategic planning, early childhood education, social work, diversity and inclusion, or other assets essential to a strong and resilient business. In addition, they say, those who live below poverty level, are a member of an under-represented or...
The Grammar School (TGS) has announced the creation of The Otis Fund, designed to enhance student diversity at the school's pre-K through eighth-grade campus. Named for TGS graduate Otis Jacobson (class of 2018) and initially funded by a generous $50,000 donation from his parents, Candace Damon and David Jacobson, the scholarship is intended to support students from BIPOC communities throughout their years at TGS. According to David Jacobson, the donation is part of "an ongoing drive to increase diversity in...
What is happening in Palestine and Israel has finally put to a lie the pretense that the United States was or ever could be an "honest broker" - as Washington has long labeled itself - in negotiating a fair and just peace. Since Saturday, Oct. 7, regardless of whether they are liberal, conservative, or somewhere in between, U.S. officials with President Joe Biden first out of the gate have been falling over themselves in the rush to justify any action...
On Sunday, Oct. 15, at 5:30 p.m., Bard Owl - T. Breeze Verdant and Annie Landenberger - will be featured performers in the Grafton Community Church's (GCC) 2023 Evensong Series. In lieu of morning worship that Sunday, the church offers the Evensong tradition coordinated by GCC Music Minister Ken Olsson. Of the series, Olsson said in a news release that "we wanted to offer to the community a concert series with a touch of worship." Pastor Bill Watson added, "In...
The food came rolling in recently as Our Place Drop-in Center almost doubled the amount it collected over last year's Overflow the Opera House food drive. "The generous people of this area dropped off 2,238 pounds of food for our pantry," said Our Place Executive Director Dave Billings in a news release. "They also donated almost $12,500 in cash that we can use to purchase food." With the help of the employees of Chroma Technology and Sonnax and a design...
The Next Stage Bandwagon Summer Series presents Reverend Vince Anderson and His Love Choir on Saturday, Oct. 14, at 3 p.m. at the Putney Inn, 57 Putney Landing Rd. "Reverend Vince utilizes his mixture of gospel, funk, and dance music as a platform to preach peace, tolerance, and love of humanity," Keith Marks, executive director of Next Stage Arts, said in a news release. "We hosted the Rev and his Love Choir last year inside the theater, and after that...
Next Stage Arts presents composer and 2018 Guggenheim Fellow Felipe Salles's multimedia work, The New Immigrant Experience, on Friday, October 13, at 7:30 p.m. at Next Stage Arts, 15 Kimball Hill. The project portrays experiences of the almost 700,000 individuals currently protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, commonly referred to as "Dreamers" based on the never-passed proposals in Congress called the DREAM (Development, Relief, and Education, for Alien Minors) Act. Salles himself emigrated from Brazil to...
College news • Caroline Mehner of West Wardsboro, Samuel Thibault of Williamsville, and Owen Rounds of Westminster all recently graduated from the University of Hartford in West Hartford, Connecticut. Milestones • Richard "Dick" Barker, 78, formerly of Brookline. Died Sept. 18, 2023 at the home of his eldest brother, Tom Barker, of Londonderry. Dick was born on Sept. 11, 1945, nine days after the end of World War II, in Pittsfield, Massachusaetts to Norman Barker and Catherine Reid. The second...
Winter is just around the corner, and heating fuel prices remain at historic highs, according to Button Up Vermont, the campaign every autumn to raise awareness around weatherizing homes. Button Up encourages homeowners to weatherize their homes so they'll be warm and comfortable in the cold months ahead. And increased weatherization incentives and financing options make preparing homes more affordable than ever. The program has begun this month and seeks to help Vermonters get the tools, rebates, and resources they...
Applications for Human Services funding due by Nov. 8 BRATTLEBORO - The Representative Town Meeting Human Services Review Committee is accepting applications for fiscal year 2025 Human Services Funding. The application, as well as instructions and guidelines, are posted at brattleboro.org. The deadline to submit applications to the Town Manager's Office via email is Wednesday, Nov. 8, at 5 p.m. All applications should be sent to Jessica Sticklor at [email protected]. She may also be called for more information about the...
Oct. 9 is Indigenous Peoples Day - an opportunity for all Americans to acknowledge the resilience and diversity of Native cultures in the United States, and celebrate the contributions of those who have been in relationship with the Land long before the arrival of Christopher Columbus. We are the four Western Abenaki tribes recognized by the state of Vermont: Abenaki Nation of Missisquoi, Elnu Abenaki Tribe, Ko'asek Traditional Band of the Koas Abenaki Nation, and Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk...
The Friends of the West River Trail (FWRT) are launching a new volunteer opportunity called "Adopt an Acre." A 26-acre parcel of land the trail runs through, called the Riverstone Preserve, includes an interpretive trail, called the Sibosen Trail. FWRT owns this property on which they have a conservation easement with the Vermont Land Trust. In their Land Management Plan, FWRT pledged to mitigate and control the invasive plants on this property. For several years, with the help of grant...
Organizers of the 22nd annual Brattleboro Literary Festival say this year's event "will tell the story of us - stories about who we are, how we are surviving, and what issues are we facing as humans with a focus on people who are marginalized." The festival's nearly 40 indoor programs during the weekend of Oct. 13-15 will feature nonfiction from Tracy Kidder, Will Schwalbe, Jonathan Rosen, Neil King Jr., Martha McPhee, Chloé Cooper Jones, and Jeff Sharlet; fiction from Kelly...
Three Vermont artists - Matthew J. Peake, Gordon Korstange, and Gretchen Abendschein - will lead "Alone Together," a workshop on creating merge collages at Main Street Arts (MSA) on Sunday, Oct. 15, at 2 p.m. The fee for the workshop is $20 per person. An exhibit of their own merge collages runs through Oct. 29. The art show displays a number of collaborative and individual works available for purchase, with a portion of the sales going to MSA. "We have...
The Rockingham Historic Preservation Commission will host a reception for the town's 2023 Old House Award winners on Sunday, October 15, at 10 a.m. at the Rockingham Meeting House, 11 Meeting House Rd, Rockingham Village. The public is invited to congratulate the winners and celebrate historic preservation efforts underway throughout the town. "Restored between 1906 and 1907, the meeting house is the birthplace of historic preservation in Rockingham, setting the pace for our region," said John Leppman, commission chair, in...
Owing to a production error, the print edition of last week's Commons omitted the byline and author information for "We can break the car's cultural grip," a piece written by Rebecca Jones of Brattleboro. Jones is a physician practicing in Brattleboro and a member of 350 Brattleboro, a local volunteer group dedicated to climate justice. To be clear, this was squarely my mistake. The online version of the piece was properly attributed. * * * On a related note: As...
The Brattleboro Bears played their best football game of the season in a 26-20 win over the Bellows Falls Terriers on Oct. 6 at Hadley Field. Bears quarterback Karson Elliott, who played the entire game, threw for three touchdowns - two to Jackson Emery and another to Alex Papadimitriou - and ran for a 60-yard touchdown in the fourth quarter, providing the margin of victory. Brattleboro's defense also turned in a strong performance, recovering three fumbles and not allowing BF's...
When Vermont sent its first female representative to Washington this past year, it was in itself a historic moment. But U.S. Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., has become part of a greater, and more tragic history. She has found herself inside what she calls "a Republican Civil War." In the House, just days after mustering just enough votes for a last-minute 45-day funding bill that averted a shutdown of the federal government, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., was ousted...
HB Lozito recalls living in a big city out West when memories began to bubble of a small-town childhood back East. Lozito appreciated the freedom that the San Francisco Bay Area offered someone who uses the word "queer" with pride and "they" as a singular pronoun. But the concrete metropolis didn't have the more grounded moments of the thirty-something's birthplace in Maine. "I had been living in a very large population of LGBTQ people, but it also felt important to...
On Oct. 10, Brattleboro-based poet Diana Whitney's new collection, Dark Beds, was released by June Road Press. This Friday at Epsilon Spires, Whitney will read from that collection at the 2023 Brattleboro Literary Festival. The publisher's media release describes Dark Beds as "an anthem for the 'sandwich generation' caught between demands, yearning to reclaim desire and find fulfillment, maybe even some magic, in the everyday. These poems shimmer with longing and infuse the fatigue of caregiving, motherhood, and domesticity -
The Vermont Jazz Center will present Cyrus Chestnut in a trio concert on Saturday, Oct. 14 at 7:30 p.m. Called "the best jazz pianist of his generation" by Time magazine, Chestnut will appear with bassist Herman Burney and drummer Kelton Norris. Chestnut's repertoire includes selections from the Great American Songbook, spirituals, jazz standards, and original music as well as surprising transformations from other genres. Along with his interpretations of jazz-related gems, his recordings include compositions by Elvis Presley, Erik Satie,
Madeleine Kunin still fields calls about serving in the last millennium as Vermont's first and so far only female governor, and later as deputy U.S. education secretary and ambassador to her birthplace of Switzerland. But, now retired, the Democratic politico turned published poet would rather wrestle with more present, personal questions. At summer's end, green leaves, shake themselves red with excitement. Same as last year, still a surprise. Each day must decide before it reveals itself - Will it still...
To anyone who knows The Nutcracker ballet, surely one of the most delightful scenes is when Mother Ginger arrives in all her larger-than-life glory and suddenly the stage is filled with wee Bon Bons, or Polichinelles, spilling out from under her colossal skirt to twirl and dance. The skirt is so big that the role of Mother Ginger is traditionally played by a tall male who can navigate in the about-100-pound-dress-full of children and work the apparatus under the skirt...
Christina Schneider - performing under as stage persona Locate S,1 - takes the stage at the Stone Church on Saturday night and will open Ruth Garbus's performance [story, this issue] with a stripped-down version of her band, she tells The Commons. The opening set will include Schneider on guitar and Vox, Kevin Barnes (who also plays in the band Of Montreal) on bass, and Clayton Rychlik on drums. Schneider, 34, is excited for her return to southern Vermont after a...
Back in town after playing three shows in California recently, singer-songwriter Ruth Garbus, 42, recalls a story from her band's West Coast visit, where they "had a magical time in Santa Cruz staying at a friend's place." Garbus describes "a giant tortoise that roams freely around the property, along with other animals, including Coral," a terrier who was "constantly running and jumping and getting into mischief." "But when we played our set, she lay on the grass and stared at...
I was born in Burlington and raised in Chittenden County. I graduated high school in Essex Junction, and then graduated with an associate's degree from Champlain College. I have worked in retail, in home health care, as a contractor for the U.S. Immigration & Naturalization Service, and ultimately as an occupancy analyst for JPMorgan Chase. I am a son, a brother, an uncle, and a friend to many. I am a writer, an artist, a nerd, and a novice ukulele...
On Wednesday, Sept. 27, I went for a walk before sunset. Heading up Kimball Hill, I noticed several brightly colored objects scattered around the sidewalk ahead of me. As I approached, I saw three carrots, one broken in half, and two green plastic bags discarded a bit farther up. Those who have children at Putney Central School are probably aware that the school offers a program called Food for Kids, giving students the opportunity to go "shopping" for free groceries...