NXT Gallery, 15 Kimball Hill, hosts the opening reception of "Dragon Land," an exhibition by artist and acupuncturist Sarah H. Paulson. The event will take place on Sunday, Nov. 19, from 4 to 6 p.m.
"My art practice is performative," Paulson says in a news release. "I believe that performance, in its sacred form, has the capacity to bring the human being closest to what it means to be human. This sentiment is at the heart of all my work, including my drawings and paintings."
Paulson says "Dragon Land" presents inner worlds, creatures, and dynamic communication through her paintings. The unique aspect of this series is the canvas itself: a collaborative creation, involving artists, dancers, writers, and musicians who dipped their feet in pigment and contributed to the foundation of these artworks. Natural earth-based inks, crafted from a variety of organic sources, serve as the primary medium for this series.
"It is my hope that these landscapes can speak to the viewer in a language that transcends the spoken word," Paulson explains. "Art teaches me with every brushstroke and every gesture."...
Palaver Strings' Beehive Chamber Series returns to the Brattleboro Music Center (BMC) Friday, Nov. 10, with a program entitled "Homeland." The 7 p.m. concert will explore folk-inspired music by diverse composers paying homage to their homelands: Carlos Guastavino (Argentina), Violetta Parra (Chile), Leoš Janáček (Czech Republic), and Béla Bártok...
Former owner tells diner tales at RFPL BELLOWS FALLS - Charlie Jarras, former owner of Miss Bellows Falls Diner and host of Travels with Charlie on FACT-TV, offers an evening of stories and anecdotes from employees and customers alike on Thursday, Nov. 9, at 7 p.m., at the Rockingham...
Obituaries • Robert W. Anderson, 80, of Brattleboro. Died in the comfort of his home on Oct. 24, 2023. Robert was born Jan. 21, 1943 to Victor and Laura Anderson of Spencer, Wisconsin. He was a strong and dedicated individual who loved his family and had a passion for the outdoors. Robert was known for his hardworking nature and his love for farming, which he pursued for over 40 years. In 1986, he and his family moved to Brattleboro, Vermont,
Project Feed the Thousands has begun its 30th annual campaign against hunger in our communities. Organizers said in a news release that they will work to make this year's campaign "the most successful ever in its 30-year history" and said they are "undeterred by rampant inflation and other economic factors that make food insecurity a prolific, incessant, and persistent concern for countless individuals and families in our area." Project Feed is a community-wide food drive collecting cash and non-perishable food...
The first winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture, Wings (1927, 180 minutes) will be shown at Epsilon Spires on Friday, Nov. 10; doors open at 7 p.m. This screening will feature live organ accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis, a renowned New England silent film accompanist, on Epsilon Spires's historic Estey pipe organ. There will be one intermission. Wings tells the story of two World War I flying aces (Charles "Buddy" Rogers and Richard Arlen) who are rivals over the...
Sarasa Ensemble presents "Tendrils of the Soul," a special anniversary program that demonstrates the depth and power of the First Viennese School masters Friday, Nov. 17, at the Brattleboro Music Center. The 7 p.m. concert will feature Beethoven's "Cavatina" from his String Quartet No. 13, Haydn's String Quartet in C major, Op. 54 No. 2, and Schubert's String Quintet in C major. Performers are Zenas Hsu, Amy Galluzzo, violins; Marka Gustavsson, viola; and Timothy Merton and Jennifer Morsches, cellos. The...
Bartleby's Books will host an event at the store with Madeleine May Kunin on Sunday, Nov. 12, at 2 p.m. Kunin will read from her new book of poetry, Walk with Me, published this fall. In this collection, Kunin invites the audience to step into her world, to slow down, and find new serenity and unexpected love in older age. Kunin explores the nuances of everyday moments that cultivate a bittersweet appreciation for simple joys. Walk With Me is "a...
I recently participated in the Townshend Community Conversation about "Vermont's healthcare system to support hospital transformation." For two hours, residents of rural Windham County testified to the extraordinary way medical services are delivered at Grace Cottage Family Health and Hospital. It was a remarkable expression of gratitude and pride for an institution that delivers essential health care services to the rural community it serves. And for good reason. People can access a lot of primary care in Townshend, including pediatrics,
Wild Goose Players will present Claire in the Chair in the Cimetière, a new play written by Sean Hurley and directed by David Stern at Next Stage Arts in Putney, 15 Kimball Hill, on Fridays through Sundays, Nov. 10–12 and 17–19. As described in a news release, this play is "a whimsical comedy about life and death and finding one's purpose in the unlikeliest of places." 27-year-old Claire, a twin, moves into the local cemetery, where she believes her real...
Theatre Adventure invites everyone to its fall production, Belonging, at the West Village Meeting House, 29 South St., on Wednesday, Nov. 8, and Thursday, Nov. 9, at 10:30 a.m., and Friday, Nov. 10, at 7 p.m. The Nov. 10 show will be livestreamed. The Thursday Troupe has been learning and discovering more about themselves as individuals and in relationship with others and has been working with visiting artist Nettie Lu Lane, who is guiding them in the "Red Nose Clown"
Join curator and artist Michelle Samour on Wednesday, Nov. 15, at 7 p.m., for a tour of "Paper Made," a juried exhibit at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center (BMAC) that challenges assumptions about how paper can be used to make art. The exhibit, presented in partnership with Fiber Art Now, is on view through Feb. 11, 2024. The exhibit demonstrates that paper is not only a surface for drawn or printed images, it is also a material that tells...
Putney Friends Meeting (Quakers) joins the growing chorus of those reaching out to our friends and neighbors in light of another antisemitic symbol showing up in town. Even before the terrible war in the Middle East, a swastika was painted on the sidewalk near Putney Central School. Such a senseless act of hate hurts us all. We grieve for the violence in Gaza, Israel, and elsewhere. We mourn every life lost, every injury, and every hateful word and symbol used...
Outburst Arts, a free monthly teen arts night at Main Street Arts (MSA), will be held on the first Friday of the month, from 7 to 9 p.m. Teens from the greater Rockingham area are invited to make art, craft, listen to music, eat snacks, and spend time with new and old friends. "As the youth services librarian at the Rockingham Free Public Library, one of my goals is to create welcoming spaces where youth can express themselves and make...
Ian Diamondstone was on his phone speaking with a key player representing a major natural beverage company when a realization hit the logistics and trade consultant. The Brattleboro native, who operates an international trade consulting practice from Putney, realized that there, around the company's conference table discussing the ramón nut - "a tree seed that people in Central America have been using for thousands of years" - sat a flock of specialists representing the gamut of U.S. businesses, from finances...
The Vermont Division IV state soccer championships came to Applejack Stadium in Manchester on Nov. 4, with the defending champion Leland & Gray Rebels in the girls' final taking on the top-seeded Arlington Eagles, and the undefeated Twin Valley Wildcats facing the defending champions, the Winooski Spartans, in the boys' final. In a pair of games that showcased the four of the best soccer programs in Vermont, Arlington defeated Leland & Gray, 2-1, while Winooski kept its crown with a...
If a tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound? In southern Vermont, a more important question would be: Does it cause a power outage? Just think about the biggest weather events that hit southern Vermont this year - the March storm that left up to 4 feet of heavy wet snow in some towns and the massive rainstorm in July that delivered a month's worth of rain in a day and caused serious flash flooding. In between...
When the Leland and Gray (L&G) Players, the theater program at Leland & Gray Union Middle/High School, was left without direction at the end of the summer, the administration hustled: "It was very funny, actually," recalls Doran "Dory" Hamm, 38, the newly appointed Players' director. "The previous theater director left relatively quickly, so they put out a call." The three "main people who applied were us three," Hamm said, referencing himself and the other two people in a Zoom interview...
Rock River Players (RRP) revels in the eclectic. From Mary Chase's Harvey offered earlier this fall to David Mamet's Pulitzer Prize–winning Glengarry Glen Ross [story, this issue], opening Nov. 10, is about as far a stretch as one could make in modern American theater. Players' fare is as diverse as its Players. According to director Bahman Mahdavi, Glengarry Glen Ross is "masterfully written - an unrelenting story of small-time, cutthroat real estate salesmen trying to grind out a living by...
In the Israel/Hamas war, a ceasefire may not be the final answer, but surely it has to be the first step - now! We urge Rep. Becca Balint to immediately sign the Ceasefire Now House resolution. What else will stop the killing of innocent civilians? And we wish Sens. Sanders and Welch would introduce, and promote, a similar resolution in the Senate. It is disappointing that our Vermont delegation has been totally silent on this issue. This Voices Letters from...
A black box is hidden deep in the woods in Putney. "Black Box" is the name of a museum built by artist Christopher Sproat. The museum contains his work, and a neighbor of his invited me. The idea of a real museum sitting in the woods - a museum that I had never heard of all the years I lived in Vermont - seemed absurd. "Surely, it could not be a real museum," I thought. "The artist must have a...
My knowledge of the Israel/Hamas situation is superficial at best. While I know some about the history and some about the current situation, I have never studied it in any depth. My own DNA has no Jewish or Palestinian percentages. Over 18 years ago I did marry into a secular Jewish family, and I have certainly come to know their stories of escape from Nazi Germany and Nazi Austria in the late 1930s. Regarding the history of violent conflict in...
The only registered Rosie the Riveter Memorial Garden in the state now has a more prominent location at Hetty Green Park, where it honors the memory of Margaret Clapper Tidd, a Rosie who lived in Bellows Falls from the time she graduated from high school until her death in 2019. A brief history and dedication of the Rosie the Riveter Memorial, in its new location at the park on School Street, was given by historian David Deacon on Oct. 14.
Virginia Ray's article described how a permit for a Windham-Windsor Housing Trust project in Putney, issued by the Putney Development Review Board (DRB) on March 9, 2022, "allows the land to be subdivided into two parcels." The reporter may have been misinformed. The deed registered in the Putney town record for the sale to Windham-Windsor Housing Trust dated Sept. 18, 2023 describes the land as three parcels: one parcel described as Lot B, purportedly being sold to the Community Garden,
There has been such an incredible amount of violence, destruction and, yes, murder (as I write, over 8,500 and counting) in Gaza since the Hamas attack - not to mention over the many previous decades - I think one has to be either numb or willfully blind not to be shocked and cry out "No! Not in our name!" the way over 400 arrested protestors, including members of Jewish Voice for Peace, did at Grand Central Station in New York...
Connecting kids and bicycles is part of a new educational initiative at Leland & Gray Union High School. Nine students in grades 9 through 11 are enrolled in Project Bike Tech (PBT) and Bike Tech in School, a bicycle education program similar to auto shop, but for bicycles. "I'm over the moon," says lead teacher Kevin Burke, who is also the school's snowboard coach and a lifelong biking enthusiast. "I'm super excited." He says "it's just really exciting to be...
An estimated 15,000 gallons of heating oil spilled from a tank at the Soundview Paper Company mill on Nov. 2, much of it entering Sacketts Brook, which flows into the Connecticut River. Authorities have thus far recovered more than 12,000 gallons of the sludgy No. 2 heating oil, according to Mike Nucci, an environmental analyst with the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation spill team. He said he expected authorities to discover more of the missing oil when they excavate the...
I have been a moviegoer all my life. When given the choice of seeing a movie or doing almost anything else, I always choose the film. On a recent rainy Sunday, I saw the Killers of the Flower Moon, a film which you have to be dead not to have heard of at this point. I had read the book years ago (David Grann), and had been intrigued by the story, particularly the history of how the FBI became a...
Since the Iranian-sponsored Hamas devastation wrought on Oct. 7 - a Jewish Sabbath Day as well as what should have been the joyous holiday of Simchat Torah - I have struggled to share the horror and sadness I feel. But I know when people don't respond to unjust and cruel behavior, they are complicit. To those who call for peace and harmony for all people, without going back to Biblical times, I want to remind you who the people of...
U.S. actor and comedian David Koechner brings his brand of stand-up comedy to the Bellows Falls Opera House on Sunday, Nov. 12. "It's a power-packed 90 minutes," says Koechner, 61, on a recent afternoon phone call from his home in Los Angeles. This is Koechner's first show back in Vermont since 2015, when he played the role of Pete Parker in the short film The Parker Tribe. The semiautobiographical film, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, was written and...