MONTPELIER-With spring clearing underway in parts of the state, the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) is reminding Vermonters to follow a few guidelines for on-premise or backyard open burning.
"Burning materials from spring cleanup can release harmful pollution that can impact neighboring properties," said DEC Commissioner Jason Batchelder in a news release. "By following these guidelines, Vermonters can help reduce air pollution, avoid nuisance impacts, and protect human and environmental health."
On-premise or backyard burning of brush, deadwood, or tree cuttings collected from normal property maintenance is allowed under the Vermont Air Pollution Control Regulations, as long as no public or private nuisance, such as excessive smoke, is created.
Use these guidelines during backyard burning:...
WESTMINSTER WEST-The 60-voice River Singers Community Chorus will perform a concert of eclectic world music at 4 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, April 27 and 28, at the Westminster West Church. The River Singers, in its 33rd year, is a multi-generational community choir led by Mary Cay Brass. The...
PUTNEY-Next Stage Arts presents an intimate encounter of voice and strings, sounds and cultures, with Duo Andalus, featuring Lala Tamar, at Next Stage, 15 Kimball Hill, on Sunday, April 28, at 7 p.m. "Take a trip through the Mediterranean - Flamenco, Ladino, Moroccan, Jewish, Arabic - merging together with...
BRATTLEBORO-Brattleboro Sunrise Rotary has rebooted its walking history tour of Brattleboro, offering participants a journey through time while supporting a worthy cause. This fundraiser will take place on select Saturdays through 2024 at 11 a.m., with tours on April 27 and May 18, as well as summer and fall tours to be announced. "This walking tour provides a wonderful opportunity for both residents and visitors alike to connect with the rich history of Brattleboro," Sandy Shriver, one of the Brattleboro...
Brattleboro Time Trade holds its annual meeting on April 28 BRATTLEBORO - Brattleboro Time Trade (BTT) will hold its annual meeting on Sunday, April 28, from 1 to 4 p.m., at The Root Social Justice Center, 28 Williams St. The meeting is free and open to all who are interested in timebanking, a form of alternative currency allowing people to exchange goods and services using time instead of money. The keynote speaker and facilitator will be Eric Bachman, a longtime...
Saturday, April 27, is the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency's (DEA) National Drug Take Back Day. The Windham County Prevention Partnership (WCPP) says it is using this opportunity to raise awareness about proper storage and disposal of prescription medications. "This initiative addresses a vital public safety and public health issue," said the WCPP in a news release. "Medicines that are left in home cabinets are highly susceptible to misuse and abuse. Rates of prescription drug misuse in the U.S. are alarmingly...
Arts Council of Windham County (ACWC) has opened the application period for the 2024 Brattleboro Town Arts Fund (TAF) program. Now in its fifth year, the TAF program will offer grants between $1,000 and $3,000 for creative, community-focused projects completed between July 2024 and May 2025. Applications are due by May 15. The program overview and application guidelines can be found at artswindhamcounty.org/taf. TAF's mission is to promote the development and presentation of creative projects that contribute positively to the...
PUTNEY-Long River CircleSinging, led by Paris Kern, will be presented on Sunday, April 28, from 3 to 5 p.m., at Next Stage Arts, 15 Kimball Hill. This "composed in the moment" singing format was created by Bobby McFerrin and his colleagues. Kern has been leading circles since 2013 and says she is excited to bring this to southern Vermont. "CircleSinging is an opportunity to tune in, listen deeply, shed beliefs and judgments, and tap into something larger than a single...
BELLOWS FALLS-Treasure or trash? Collectors will be able to find out if that family heirloom Grandma passed along is worth hanging onto at an antiques and uniques appraisal event Sunday, May 5, in Bellows Falls. The fundraiser runs from 1 to 5 p.m. at the United Church on School Street and is a benefit for the Bellows Falls Woman's Club scholarship fund. Admission is free. Several appraisers will be on hand to evaluate items and provide information about them. Up...
BRATTLEBORO-One winter not so long ago, Tony, a professional juggler, discovered that a huge icicle had fallen from his roof and penetrated the ceiling above his living room. Several gallons of water had collected in a large pouch there, held back only by paint, which he punctured and drained into a bucket. Surveying the damage, he sighed, knowing that repairs would be costly. However, as a new member of Brattleboro Time Trade, or BTT, a local time-bank organization that began...
BRATTLEBORO-Microdosing, writes author Lauren Alderfer, is not a pill to be taken like an aspirin to get rid of a headache. Instead, she said, the practice "offers the possibility to connect and live in a greater presence of being. [It] supports overall health and well-being and in so doing the headache may very well disappear." According to Peter Grinspoon of Harvard Health Publishing, microdosing "involves taking a fraction of a regular dose" of psychedelic substances such as LSD or psilocybin,
BRATTLEBORO-Five years ago, this community received an early Christmas present with the November 2019 news of a proposed $30 million arts and apartment block for downtown. "This project," Brattleboro Museum & Art Center director Danny Lichtenfeld said then of the priciest Main Street plan in local history, "will encourage enduring economic and civic vitality." Four months later, the COVID-19 pandemic upended everything. The museum and its partners at M & S Development saw funding for their seven-story building dry up...
Obituaries • Maureen A. (Eakins) Bell, 53, of Brattleboro. Died suddenly at her home on April 10, 2024. Maureen was born on Feb. 4, 1971, to Francis and Patricia (Lawless) Eakins. She attended St. Michael's Catholic School and Brattleboro Union High School. Maureen worked at various jobs locally, most recently as a home health aide for Bayada. She held her clients close to her heart. She had just enrolled in a course to receive her LNA certification to be able...
WEST BRATTLEBORO-Activist singer-songwriting and folk music icons, Sally Rogers, Claudia Schmidt, and Emma's Revolution join together for a benefit concert at All Souls Church in West Brattleboro on Thursday, May 2, at 7 p.m. Funds are being raised for "Standing Together," a grassroots movement mobilizing Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel in pursuit of peace, equality, and social and climate justice. "At a time when we are all trying to come to terms with what's happening in Israel and Palestine,
BRATTLEBORO-Sunday, April 28, marks the final performance by the Blanche Moyse Chorale. The 4 p.m. concert at the Brattleboro Music Center will include two works by J. S. Bach: the motet "Jesu, meine Freude" and Cantata BWV 23 ("Du wahrer Gott und Davids Sohn"), as well as "Musikalische Exequien" by Heinrich Schütz. The Chorale will be led by conductor Mark Nelson. This will be the last performance of this group of singers as the Blanche Moyse Chorale, and it will...
BRATTLEBORO-Brooks Memorial Library will host four-minute readings by a group of poets who have poems in storefronts downtown as part of Poems Around Town (PAT), organized by Write Action and supported by the library and the Brattleboro Literary Festival. The reading will take place on Saturday, April 27, at 2 p.m. Celebrating National Poetry Month, poems are up for the month of April and sometimes beyond. This year, 42 downtown locations are participating, with more than 80 poems chosen from...
Elayne Clift (elayne-clift.com) has written this column about women, politics, and social issues from the earliest days of this newspaper. BRATTLEBORO-Back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when agrarian and rural lifestyles gave way to urbanization following the Industrial Revolution, everything changed for women in dramatic ways. As the late Barbara Ehrenreich pointed out in her important book, For Her Own Good, tenement living left women in despair as a total cultural and economic tidal wave began. Some...
WEST DUMMERSTON-After an exhaustive search, Samantha "Sam" Lucheck has been hired as the new executive director for Green Mountain Camp for Girls (GMC). Lucheck began her new position in December 2023, relocating from Wisconsin with her family this past February. Gina Stefanelli, a member of GMC's board of directors and head of the search and transition committee, says she is happy with the choice of Lucheck, who succeeds Billie Slade, who retired in December after 12 years. "We wanted to...
-The Brattleboro Bears baseball and softball teams each opened their seasons last week with three losses. • For the softball team, they endured a 21-2 loss to the Mount Anthony Patriots at Sawyer Field on April 15, followed by a 14-0 loss to the Keene Blackbirds on April 17 and a 24-1 loss to Rutland on April 20. All three games were ended in the fifth inning by the 12-run mercy rule. Mount Anthony pitcher Abby Foster struck out five...
BRATTLEBORO-The Windham World Affairs Council (WWAC) will continue its America 250 Speaker Series at 118 Elliot on Sunday, April 28, with climate change scientist Alexander More, an associate professor of environmental health at the University of Massachusetts Boston and a research scientist at Harvard University. His talk, "10 Things You Think Will Save the Planet, but Probably Won't ... and What Will," reflects his extensive research on the impact of climate change on the health and economy of populations and...
Libby Bennett and Rita Ramirez submitted this piece on behalf of Groundworks Collaborative, where they serve as executive director and board chair, respectively. BRATTLEBORO-This has been a most challenging year for Groundworks Collaborative, for the people we serve, and for the greater Brattleboro community. The staff and board of Groundworks are committed to resiliency and to building and maintaining caring relationships - understanding that we all must do our part to build a stronger community. "Our part" at Groundworks is...
BRATTLEBORO-As the town approaches the end of its current contract for solid waste collection, the only company interested in handling town trash in future has a caveat about how that will ultimately work: automation. Assistant Town Manager Patrick Moreland, who met with Selectboard members April 16 to lay out the plan for collection after the current contract ends June 30, called the mechanization qualifier "either a deal-maker or a deal-breaker, depending on how you look at it." In February, the...
Elizabeth Bridgewater is executive director of the Windham & Windsor Housing Trust. BRATTLEBORO-Every April, communities and housing organizations across this country recognize Fair Housing Month, commemorating the 1968 passage of the landmark civil rights law that outlawed discriminatory housing practices. Yet despite nearly six decades of fair housing efforts and advocacy, people of color continue to face challenges in realizing the American dream of homeownership. Our country has a deep history of systemic racial discrimination in the housing industry. This...
Jonathan Elwell organizes with Vermont Just Justice, an organization whose mission is "to promote the reform of the criminal legal system through monitoring and changing Vermont laws that promote mass incarceration and excessive punishment." BRATTLEBORO-On Tuesday, April 30, Jim Baker and Gov. Phil Scott's Public Safety Enhancement Team (PSET) will host more than 100 community, government, business, and nonprofit leaders at a "Call to Action Symposium - Public Safety Enhancement" at the SIT campus in Brattleboro. This event will be...
TOWNSHEND-The people of the West River Valley love Grace Cottage Family Health & Hospital for its role in providing health care to this underserved rural area, but they might not realize the economic contribution it makes to the region. While Grace Cottage - by numerous metrics, the smallest hospital in Vermont - relies on philanthropy to continue providing its services, it also pours a significant amount of money back into Windham County. Founded in 1949, Grace Cottage offers a small,
BRATTLEBORO-Filmmaker Andy Reichsman of Marlboro will visit the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center (BMAC) on Thursday, May 2, at 7 p.m. to share his story of reclaiming family artwork stolen by the Nazi-aligned Yugoslavian government during World War II. Nearly 80 years after the war ended, Reichsman became the first person to recover artwork that was looted during the Holocaust in Croatia, which was part of Yugoslavia for most of the 20th century. Three Croatian museums returned paintings, lithographs, and...