Issue #738

EOS Project takes audience on a 'journey'

The Brattleboro Music Center's EOS (Educate-Open-Strengthen) Project presents "Journey" on Sunday, Nov. 5, at the Brattleboro Music Center. The 4 p.m. concert will feature compositions, songs, and improvisations of classical, jazz, Aboriginal, and Native American music.

This program follows one musician along a diverse musical journey has included playing with symphony orchestras, exploring jazz, and performing children's and family music with the (1)RosenShontz duo.

The audience will hear works of composers encountered over the years - including (2)Marjorie Adams, Scott Joplin, Amy Beach, Carlos Nakai, Miles Davis, Cab Calloway, and Louis Armstrong - and be introduced to the influences of the Native American and Aboriginal musical traditions. The concert will feature an array of instruments, including clarinets, recorders, voice, bass, percussion, piano, and didgeridoo.

Performers include BMC faculty members Bill Shontz, winds and voice; Becky Graber, piano; and Steve Rice, percussion; as well as Vermont Jazz Center faculty member Eugene Uman, piano; and retired Keene State College faculty Don Baldini, bass.

Read More

RFPL offers digital literacy workshops

The Rockingham Free Public Library (RFPL) will host free basic digital literacy training workshops for the community this autumn to help close the digital divide. RFPL is among 215 public libraries nationwide awarded funding by the Public Library Association (PLA) this year to conduct digital literacy workshops using new...

Read More

Milestones

Obituaries • Joel Fletcher Bengtson, 43, of Brattleboro. Died Oct. 9, 2023 at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New HampShire, where he had been an inpatient since Aug. 19. He died peacefully following years of declining health that included diabetes which he was diagnosed with when he was four...

Read More

More

Next Stage hosts Osher lectures

Putney Community Cares is presenting a pair of Osher Lifelong Learning events at Next Stage in Putney and online. These events, sponsored by the University of Vermont, require advance registration, and events will be cancelled due to low enrollment, if necessary. On Sunday, Nov. 12, from 10 a.m. to noon, William "Bill" Holiday will host "JFK Assassination - What They Told Me." The talk is based on his upcoming book of the same name detailing experiences related to him by...

Read More

Klein is featured artist at Harmony Collective

A new exhibit by Sandy Klein,"Expressions of Repose: the soft retirement of a character maker," opens on Friday, Nov. 3, from 5 to 8 p.m., at the Harmony Collective, 49 Elliot St. Klein says she has been making dolls for as long as she can remember. As a child, she made yarn and corn dolls, wrapping and folding natural fibers into figures. In her teens she began to sew, making flat but "very groovy stuffed animals," she says. In her...

Read More

Around the Towns

Rec. Dept. seeks input on town pool upgrades BRATTLEBORO - The Brattleboro Recreation and Parks Department invites the community to participate in an interactive session to share ideas about improvements to the pool and aquatics facilities at Living Memorial Park. The session is on [email protected]. GunSenseVT to hold candlelight vigil on Nov. 2 BRATTLEBORO - A candlelight vigil will take place on Thursday, Nov. 2, at 5 p.m., at Pliny Park will support the people of Lewiston, Maine, and to...

Read More

Next Stage presents The Clements Brothers, Genevieve Racette on Nov. 3

Next Stage Arts Project and Twilight Music present an evening of contemporary folk music with The Clements Brothers and Geneviève Racette at Next Stage on Friday, Nov. 3, at 7:30 p.m. Québécois folk-pop singer/songwriter Racette has emerged as a rising star in both Québécois- and English-speaking Canadian music scenes. She is currently on her fifth U.S. tour, collaborating with artists such as The Bros. Landreth, Abbie Thomas, and Halley Neal. Since the release of her first EP in 2014, Racette...

Read More

118 Elliot opens exhibit with new work by four artists

"Becoming The Landscape," an exhibition of recent large-scale paintings by artists Mary Therese Wright, Tina Olsen, Ellen Maddrey, and John Loggia, will inaugurate a new curatorial partnership among the artists at 118 Elliot. The show opens with a reception from 5 to 8 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 3, and runs through Nov. 26. Gallery hours are by appointment at [email protected] or calling 802-380-9072. Mary Therese Wright's artwork and community based projects have been shown throughout the United States since 1989.

Read More

Circus Workshop Weekend draws international roster of artists, educators

New England Center for Circus Arts' (NECCA) Circus Workshop Weekend is returning for the first time since the pandemic, Nov. 3–5. The inaugural event was 10 years ago. The weekend will offer space for the circus community to gather for workshops, community events, and performances with participants from New Zealand, England, Canada, and the U.S. "Brattleboro has become home for American Circus, and NECCA's Circus Workshop Weekend is a celebration of this vibrant community," say organizers. "Brattleboro won Strongest Town...

Read More

Watercolor pencil workshop offered in Bellows Falls

The Saxtons River Art Guild announces a one-day workshop on using watercolor pencils, given by Lynn Zimmerman, on Saturday, Nov. 4, at the United Church of Bellows Falls, 8 School St., from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Participants can bring their own set of watercolor pencils; however, all high-quality tools and materials will be supplied. A list of suggested supplies will be sent upon registration. Artists of any level are welcome. (1)By the end of the class, students will have...

Read More

The power of hope

Ever since David Hogg, X González, and other high school student leaders began organizing against gun violence, when their Florida school experienced a massacre in 2018 that killed 17 people and injured 17 more, I've clung to the belief that if we could get to the Parkland generation as political leaders, we just might save our country. I believe that now more than ever. David Hogg is 23 now and a student at Harvard University. It should come as no...

Read More

BCTV leader will leave a station in good hands

This article is supposed to be about Cor Trowbridge. Yet, as she consults the press release she wrote announcing that she will step down after 18 years as Brattleboro Community Television's executive director, she uses the opportunity to pitch the station. "For me, that's the headline: BCTV is in great shape and completely ready to go to the next level with a new leader," she said. BCTV was the first station of its kind in Vermont. Between its four full-time...

Read More

Terriers, Wildcats, Rebels advance in playoffs

Injuries are unavoidable in high school football and it's rare for most teams to reach the playoffs with the same lineup that started the season. Unfortunately, Bellows Falls has been hit harder than most. Quarterback Eli Allbee was knocked out in Week 2 against Hartford with a broken collarbone. Running back Walker James suffered an ankle injury against Lyndon in Week 7, and running back Blake Bertrand suffered a concussion against North Country in Week 8. "We've only played one...

Read More

A cat’s tale

Even a dog person who'd shoo a cat goodbye would be hard put to resist Don Pedro Pepito, the orange tabby at the center of Kate Spencer's children's book, The Cat Who Walked the Camino, released in September. The writer, illustrator, and independent publisher, who has lived over the border in Montague, Massachusetts for decades, might best be remembered locally for traveling north daily to run her Brattleboro store, Maple Leaf Music, for 33 years before selling the now-defunct business...

Read More

The most toxic substance on the planet

A few additions to Emma Cotton's informative review of the ongoing decommissioning of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant in Vernon are in order. Scott State, CEO of NorthStar, the company decommissioning the plant, suggests that the spent fuel at the plant will remain there "as it stands today [...] for some time." "Some time" is of course a relative term, given Mr. State's concession that "in perpetuity is how long that fuel can stay there." This raises the question:

Read More

A good start

Rep. Becca Balint can help stop genocide in Israel and Palestine by forcing a vote on U.S. military participation in the war: She can introduce a Gaza War Powers Resolution. Hamas's Oct. 7 attack on Israel represented the country's deadliest in decades and killed more Jewish people than in any day since the Holocaust. In response, the Israeli defense minister ordered a "complete siege," cutting Gaza off from electricity, fuel, food, and water. Israel is pummeling Gaza, striking mosques, churches,

Read More

Getting a second chance

Steven Haisley has developed a CBD-infused salve, which he has named Second Chance. That's because when he was offered a second chance, he took it. And it changed his life. "About 23 years ago, I got sober," he said. "I was one of those people you read about in the papers, time after time. I was on probation, and I was given a choice: jail or rehab. I chose rehab." Haisley had started coming to the Brattleboro area in his...

Read More

Farming, family, and food for their neighbors

Pete's Stand, a third-generation vegetable farm and farmstand owned and operated by Teresa and John Janiszyn, has been awarded the 2023 Cooperator of the Year by the Cheshire County Conservation District (CCCD) and the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NCRS). The award is intended to honor the efforts of the farmer "to steward the natural resources on their land in cooperation with the Conservation District and the NCRS," according to the Conservation District. The CCCD says it "promotes the conservation...

Read More

Museum makes a move — suddenly

While the Southern Vermont Natural History Museum on Hogback Mountain has closed, the organization remains open as a nonprofit, providing its signature nature-based education programs and hosting periodic classes, camps, and events at its Mountainside location at 117 Adams Cross Rd. Museum Managing Director Michael Clough explains that building conditions precipitated the decision to make the move a bit sooner than anticipated, although it has long been the plan. "A lot of the problems with the building have been ongoing...

Read More

Taking back Tuesdays

After graduating college, I moved back home to Brattleboro for a short time. I started working at an office on the crest of High Street, and every day I'd rumble down the hill on my way home. I'd see one of my favorite vignettes of my hometown this way - Mount Wantastiquet - along with red brick buildings, overflowing flowerpots, and passersby on foot. However, a regular occurrence started to sour my view. At first they were few, then they...

Read More

Oasis for slow time

The lead on one recent Reuters story was stark, announcing that dozens of states are suing Meta Platforms and its subsidiary, Instagram, "accusing them of fueling a youth mental health crisis by making their social media platforms addictive." Yet despite the reported negative effects of social media on our youth, there is "hope in the midst of these troubling times," says Ann Gengarelly, director and founder of The Poetry Studio at 242 Piney Brook Way. There are "no computers, no...

Read More