Paving underway on Frost, Elm streets
BRATTLEBORO - Northeast Paving (a contractor for Brattleboro Public Works) will continue paving work on Frost and Elm street and Lynde Place this week through Friday, Oct. 20. The work is expected to be completed this week, weather permitting.
Crews will be working between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. No parking will be allowed on the streets, and motorists should expect delays in the area and seek alternate routes.
For more information or questions, contact Highway Supervisor Darren Pacheco at 802-254-4255 or [email protected].
West West film series debuts with 'Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai'
WESTMINSTER WEST - A screening and artist talkback of Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai will take place at the Westminster West Congregational Church, 44 Church St., on Sunday, Oct. 22 at 6:30 p.m.
This film by Lisa Merton and Alan Dater tells the story of 2004 Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai, whose simple act of planting trees grew into a nationwide movement to safeguard the environment, protect human rights, and defend democracy.
As described in a news release, the film is set in the context of Kenya's politically and environmentally tumultuous 1980s and 1990s and "captures a worldview in which nothing is impossible and gives a loving, and intimate portrait of Wangari Maathai."
A discussion with Merton and Dater will follow the screening.
Admission is by donation, and light refreshments will be available.
This film debuts a four-film series featuring talkbacks by neighbors involved in their creation. Subsequent Sundays will feature:
• Johnny Cash! The Man, His World, His Music (1969) on Oct. 29, a musical documentary whose three filmmakers included Dater.
• Jo Dery's short film Georgia's Line (2001) and Laina Barakat's Light Attaching to a Girl (2022), presented by producer Jennifer Latham on Nov. 5.
• Michael Moore's Capitalism, a Love Story (2009), presented by Line Producer Jennifer Latham on Nov. 12.
Brooks Library hosts a look at car culture and its influence on the planet
BRATTLEBORO - In Vermont, our cars appear to many of us as natural as our mountains, moose, and fall colors. However, with climate change bearing down on our state, carbon emissions are now seen by concerned Vermonters as the prime issue with our auto-centric culture. But could we be missing something even bigger?
Join Dave Cohen for a free workshop, Our Cars, Our Bodies, Our Earth - and an examination of what he calls "the influence of the automobile on our minds and bodies that probes the fascinatingly elusive psychology of the automobile and its pervasive influence on our vision of the world and place in it" - on Tuesday, Oct. 24, at 7 p.m., in the main reading room of Brooks Memorial Library.
Cohen says he will focus on "how the collective super-sizing of our bodies in cars (power, weight, speed, size, noise etc.) has profoundly transformed the integrity of our sacred relations to both the human and more-than-human worlds. Furthermore, we will explore how this immense power is perhaps undermining our response to the most significant crisis we have ever faced - climate change."
Most importantly, he adds, "we'll embark on a world tour of remarkable efforts that are challenging automobilism - the unbridled and indiscriminate use of motor vehicles. We will consider how Vermont can greatly benefit from this burst of innovation (planning, micromobility, technology, psychology and more) that is inspiring human-scale living, a reconsideration of our place in the world, and helping us to move beyond a 1950's model of automobility and transportation consumerism."
Cohen, an integrative psychotherapist in Brattleboro specializing in ecopsychology, founded VBike, a Vermont advocacy group dedicated to promoting new bike design and technologies for everyday mobility and providing free e-bike and e-cargo bike consultations to all Vermonters. His work is featured on numerous podcasts and highlighted in the internationally screened cargo-bike documentary Motherload.
The venue is accessible to people in wheelchairs. For more information, call 802-254-5290 or visit brookslibraryvt.org.
Hospice offers holiday grief support, Death Cafe
BRATTLEBORO - Brattleboro Area Hospice will host a pair of events dealing with death, grief support, and the holidays.
On Tuesday, Oct. 24 from 5:30 to 7 p.m., a Holiday Grief Support and Memorial at the organization's headquarters at 191 Canal St. will provide an evening of grief support and a time to remember loved ones around the holidays.
Hospice staff will offer coping skills, time to share stories and concerns, and non-religious ornaments on which a name or message can be written and which can then be hung on a tree.
There is no need to register for the program, and you don't have to be a current Hospice client to participate.
On Wednesday, Oct. 25, from 6 to 8 p.m., Brattleboro Area Hospice will host a death café at Experienced Goods, 80 Flat St.
In many traditions, according to organizers, "October is the season when the veil between the world of the living and the spirit world is the thinnest." At a death café, people - often strangers - gather to eat snacks, drink tea, and discuss death. The objective is "to increase awareness of death with a view to helping people make the most of their (finite) lives."
A death café is a group-directed discussion of death with no agenda, objectives, or themes; it does not provide grief support or counseling. As space is limited, attendees should register in advance at [email protected] or 802-257-0775.
Senior lunch served in Dummerston
BRATTLEBORO - Evening Star Grange and Senior Solutions will present their second meal in October on Wednesday, Oct. 25, with takeout meals available for pickup from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., and in-house serving at noon.
On the menu this week is golumpki (both meat and veggie-based), roasted red potatoes, and root vegetables with lemon breeze for dessert.
Reservations are strongly suggested "to help us prepare enough food," organizers explain, "but if you forget, come anyway."
To register, call the Grange Hall at 802-254-1138 and leave your name, phone number, the number of meals wanted, and whether you are eating in or taking it home.
A donation of $3 for those 60 and older and $4 for the younger folks is suggested.
Explore the petroglyphs of the West River on guided walk
BRATTLEBORO (WANTASTEGOK) - On Oct. 25, at 4 p.m., Rich Holschuh, director of the Atowi Project, will lead a free guided walk along the site of petroglyphs in Wantastegok (West River/Brattleboro).
Those participating in the event, organized by Putney Community Cares in collaboration with Atowi Project, will learn more about the significance of the petroglyphs in Abenaki cosmology, both in history and their relevance today as a sacred site.
Gather at 350 Putney Rd.; enter off Eaton Avenue, corner lot.
This Town and Village item was submitted to The Commons.