Our Town is hurting
Our Town, full of playful spirit, friendly faces
good hearts, is hurting.
Young people taken from us...
The Supreme Court decision that struck down Roe v. Wade has rightfully been a call to arms for women. It is outrageous that five all-too-human beings should be able to decide for all women what they can or can't do with their womanhood. To have to decide to abort...
As a longtime admirer of Russian culture and as someone whose ancestors came to this country from Ukraine, I have found myself putting in a lot of time watching, reading, and thinking about the war now raging there. Russian President Vladimir Putin may have deeply held beliefs that Ukraine...
When I first heard of Becca Balint, it was because we were on opposite sides of an issue. The issue was whether or not to build affordable individual homes on land that led down a wooded hillside to cemeteries off of South Main Street. Byron Stookey, longtime head of Brattleboro Area Affordable Housing, was leading the charge for a small development. I supported this project, but it was the most conflicted decision I've ever had to make. I had spent...
On Saturday, May 29, a new show - a particularly important one - goes up at Mitchell-Giddings Fine Arts. “Jackie Abrams: 45 Years of Making” brings together basketry from the Brattleboro artist's many series over her lifetime, from the traditional basketry of her early years to works in her “Precarious Shelters” series - more symbols of those shapes that hold our lives, as baskets hold our objects. Over the past 45 years, Abrams has collaborated with glass artist Josh Bernbaum...
What a perfect time for Toni Ortner's book, Daybook III: Morning Is Long Since Gone, to come out! This third “daybook” is comprised of a series of imaginings and musings - maybe dreams, maybe reveries, maybe memories - interspersed with 14 illustrations by Ortner's collaborator, Linda Rubinstein. A very short chapter might be prompted by world news of the past, present, future. Sometimes there is an exploration of personal insights based on these dreams or imaginings. These short “set pieces”
David Zuckerman and Brenda Siegel would be the duo that Vermont needs to move the state forward with vision, compassion, and commitment. Most of us know what Zuckerman, a Democratic candidate for governor, stands for. He has been a longtime surrogate and worker for Bernie Sanders and represents those ideals: economic and social justice, respect for the environment, and the urgency of consequences of climate change. Brenda Siegel is a less-known figure, but the candidate for lieutenant governor increasingly has...
Agnès Varda was an innovator and creative force in French cinema going back to the time of the French New Wave in the 1950s and 1960s. Since then, she has forged a path that's all her own. The documentary Varda by Agnès, produced by her daughter, Rosalie Varda, takes the filmgoer on a tour of “the Vard's” oeuvre, even giving us a glimpse of her years as a still photographer. It is both biopic and film history. In a review...