While affirming its following of COVID-19 safety regimens and state government protocols with regard to the fencing camp held on the Degrees of Freedom campus in August, Seth Andrew, the founder of the nascent program told town officials that he and his team will “not be bullied or engage with anyone who continues the unfounded and xenophobic attacks on us or anyone not from Marlboro.”
In the end, town officials concluded that the participants in the fencing camp adequately followed protocols but pointed to wording on the program's website that triggered intervention from Town Health Officer Susanne Shapiro.
“I think this probably wouldn't have come to the attention or triggered Susanne's alert around the issue,” Chair Jesse Kreitzer said at the meeting.
On Aug. 27, the Selectboard acknowledged receipt of a letter from resident T. Hunter Wilson. Kreitzer read portions of the letter and subsequent correspondence among leaders of Degrees of Freedom and Shapiro.
River Valley Credit Union has come a long way from the financial institution that was formed at a kitchen table in Putney in 1946 and for a time run from a folding table and cigar box at the Putney General Store. RVCU - in its current form, a result...
A number of years ago, I worked in a village whose police chief was a man of few words whose body language conveyed an air of dominance and intimidation. My first direct encounter was shortly after I set up my office as a publishing freelancer. My car needed to...
As the morning of Sunday, May 31 was making way for afternoon, the street was quiet. People, young and old, almost entirely in masks, almost every single person carrying a handmade sign, assembled, clustering tentatively along a sidewalk that few have graced in the time of COVID-19. The gathering picked up steam on the street corners, where Elliot meets Main and where Main meets High at Pliny Park. Under the steady sun, people streamed to the sidewalks in droves, as...
In what he called “in a way, not a difficult decision but a sad one,” State Rep. Nader Hashim, citing economic pressures, has announced that he will not seek reelection as one of the two lawmakers representing the Windham-4 district in Montpelier. In an announcement released on Facebook on Monday, the first-term Democrat said that he and family members have experienced the abrupt and unanticipated economic crunch that has accompanied the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. As a response, political newcomer Michelle...
Townspeople gathered to give voice to an abundance of varied and deep concerns about the future plans of their town's college. On the morning of Nov. 23, a standing-room-only crowd packed the Community Center - a group comprised mostly of town residents, but also a handful of people from the college community - who wondered what will become of the Marlboro College campus on South Road. Earlier in the month, Marlboro College and Emerson College, based in Boston, announced the...
Beginning with this week's paper, Commons readers will see some new bylines in stories about Marlboro College's affiliation with - and proposed assimilation into - Emerson College in Boston. Our newspaper will bring you work from the young journalists at Emerson's student newspaper, The Berkeley Beacon (berkeleybeacon.com), who are covering this story with clarity, resolve, thoughtfulness, and compassion. “Immediately, we knew as a paper that we needed to hear from the students and faculty of Marlboro, and that a phone...
If I've come to understand anything about our home over the two decades we've lived here, it's that there is no predicting from year to year the bounty that we might expect from our various fruit trees in the backyard. Several weeks after my wife Susi and I moved in, we were buried in an avalanche of beautiful, sweet, white-fleshed peaches. A few years later - 2003, if I recall correctly - we ceremoniously harvested the apple. This fall, we...