BRATTLEBORO-The first installment of the 2025 Brattleboro Real Estate and Personal Property Taxes are due by 5 p.m. on Friday Aug. 15. Payments made after Aug. 15 will have an additional 1% interest added to the unpaid balance.
The town of Brattleboro utility bills are also due by 5 p.m. on Aug. 15. Payments made after Aug. 15 will have an additional 1% interest, as well as an 8% penalty, added to the unpaid balance.
Payments can be mailed to the Town of Brattleboro, 230 Main St., Suite 111, Brattleboro, VT 05301. Payments mailed with an official postmark of Aug. 15 will be considered on time.
Payments can also be made by dropping an envelope containing your check (no cash) into the locked drop box in the parking lot behind the Municipal Center. Payments deposited in the drop box after hours on the due date will not be considered on time. Include the quarterly payment stub to ensure the payment is applied properly.
BRATTLEBORO-Next Stage Arts continues its Bandwagon Summer Series with a performance by The Blue Dahlia, a world fusion group blending French chanson, reggae, klezmer, Latin rhythms, and more. The open-air concert will take place on Saturday, July 26, at 6 p.m. at the New England Center for Circus Arts...
BRATTLEBORO-Brattleboro Memorial Hospital (BMH) has been ranked by the Lown Institute Hospital Index (2025–2026) as Vermont's No. 1 acute care hospital in the areas of patient outcomes, patient satisfaction, community benefit, pay equity, and racial inclusivity. BMH also received five A grades that were awarded to hospitals rated among...
BRATTLEBORO-The Brattleboro Rotary Club recently awarded a total of $19,000 in scholarships to five local high school students who will be attending college this fall. The scholarships are funded by the Rotary's Gateway Foundation. This year's recipients include Benjamin Bibimba of Brattleboro, who will attend Vermont State University, Randolph; Charles Kinnersley of Brattleboro, who will attend Leeds Beckett University; Olivia Maillet of Hinsdale, New Hampshire, who will attend Colby-Sawyer College; Christopher Phelps of Hinsdale, who will attend the University of...
Big Al and Some Guys Band play at Springs Farm GUILFORD - The Big Al and Some Guys Band returns to the Springs Farm, 49 Carpenter Hill Rd., for another night of outdoor danceable rock music from the 1960s forward. Join them on Thursday, July 24, at 6:30 p.m. Bring a picnic, starting at 5:30 p.m., for an evening under the maple trees. Many locals and schoolchildren know lead singer Alex Lacy, the compost coordinator at the Windham Solid Waste...
WILMINGTON-The Deerfield Valley Players will present The Addams Family Musical Wednesday through Saturday, July 30–Aug. 2 at 7:00 pm in Memorial Hall in Wilmington. The show is based on characters created by longtime New Yorker cartoonist Charles Addams, who reside in an appropriately ghoulish mansion in Central Park and have an affinity for all things macabre. The production is directed by Caden Ari Adair, with musical direction by Barbara Lipstadt. Choreography is by Hillary Smith-Maddern and Adair, who is also...
College news • Corina Mitchell of Westminster West, Rese Mulkey of Stratton, and Ainerose Souza of Londonderry were named to the spring 2025 Dean's List at Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island. • Miles Ackerman-Hovis of Guilford has been named to Purchase (N.Y.) College's Dean's List for the spring 2025 semester. • Anna Bloom of Brattleboro, Eben Wagner of Brattleboro, and Broden Walsh of Marlboro were named to the spring 2025 Dean's List at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.
BRATTLEBORO-It started on the broiling side streets of downtown Brattleboro and ended just ahead of heavy rain at the Whetstone Pathway, but some 400 people still showed up for a "Good Trouble Lives On" pro-democracy march and rally on July 17. It was one of more than 1,600 peaceful, nonviolent events that were held around the nation on July 17 in memory of civil rights leader and lawmaker John Lewis, and inspired by his call that "when you see something...
SAXTONS RIVER-Main Street Arts' (MSA) board of directors recently voted to promote former program director Ashley Storrow to executive director. In a news release, MSA Board Chair Susan Still credits Storrow with transforming the organization into "the community arts center our board dreamed about. She embodies our MSA values of openness, playfulness, accessibility, and belonging. Her joyful presence is contagious! Ashley has proven herself capable of being a wise and effective executive director." Storrow is both an arts administrator and...
BRATTLEBORO-A workshop on Thursday, July 24, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. in the Selectboard Meeting Room at the Municipal Center, 230 Main St. will focus on the implementation of the draft Windham Region Cultural Plan. Organizers say this interactive session "invites community members, artists, cultural organizations, and stakeholders to actively participate in shaping the future of arts and culture in the region by developing concrete steps for the plan's realization." The Windham Region Cultural Plan, developed with support from the...
GUILFORD-Guilford Center Stage will hold open auditions for actors for their fall production, Agatha! in two sessions: Wednesday, July 30, 7 to 9 p.m. and Saturday, Aug. 2, 10 a.m. - 1 p.m. at Broad Brook Community Center. Directed by Miles Ledoux, of Springfield, Vermont, Agatha! is a pair of one-act Agatha Christie plays: The Yellow Iris is a radio play Christie wrote in the 1930s, which introduced the character of detective Hercule Poirot. The Thumb Mark of Saint Peter,
SAXTONS RIVER-The free Sunday concerts in the Saxtons River Park continue July 27 at 3 p.m. with the music of Jake & Friends. The concert will feature local folk musician Jake Grieco on guitar. He will be joined by Cedar Stanistreet on fiddle and Jake Morrow on mandolin. Together, they blend Celtic, Americana, bluegrass, and traditional folk music with instrumental grooves and vocal harmonies. Grieco is a native of Rockingham and graduate of Bellows Falls Union High School who has...
PUTNEY-Twilight Music and Next Stage Arts Project continue the 22nd Twilight On The Tavern Lawn series of bluegrass, Americana, world, swing, and pop music summer concerts on Sunday, July 27, with Gypsy jazz quartet Silverback Swing. The seven concert series continues every other Sunday through August 24. Silverback Swing plays music from French cafes of a bygone era - also known as Jazz Manouche or Hot Club music, in the style of the great French Romani guitarist Django Reinhardt. The...
MARLBORO-Under the artistic direction of Mitsuko Uchida and Jonathan Biss, Marlboro Music's 74th summer season continues with weekend concerts on Saturday, July 26, and Sunday, July 27, and free, open rehearsals throughout the week in Persons Auditorium, 2472 South Rd. Festival performances and rehearsals continue through Sunday, Aug. 17. The July 26 and 27 programs feature seven chamber music works from three centuries performed by Uchida and 25 musical artists and young musical leaders. Saturday's program spotlights Brahms and the...
GUILFORD-On Saturday, July 26, beginning at 7 p.m., Kopkind will hold a free public event, screening two short films documenting community efforts 50 years apart in historical time but "similarly resonant of the human instinct toward both mutual aid and making something beautiful in concert," wrote organizers in a news release. Mac Christopher's new film, La Liga, tells the story of immigrant dairy workers in rural Vermont forging bonds of mutuality through soccer, "the beautiful game." Undocumented life is often...
PUTNEY-Yellow Barn's 56th summer season continues this week with four performances and a masterclass with cellist Laurence Lesser. Starting the three-concert series on Thursday, July 24, is a program with four duos by Debussy (for cello and piano), Bartók (for violin and piano), Isang Yun (for clarinet and piano), and Saint-Saëns (for bassoon and piano). These duos bookend a performance of a string quartet by Vermont-based composer Travis Laplante, and the evening concludes with a vocal trio performed by sopranos...
BRATTLEBORO-Plans to create a downtown restroom/police sub-station in the town-owned Brattleboro Transportation Center on Flat Street will move forward now that the Selectboard has voted 3-2 to do so. At the board's July 8 meeting, board members Elizabeth McLoughlin, Amanda Ellis-Thurber, and Peter Case voted to award the contract to All Seasons Construction of Springfield. Members Isaac Evans-Frantz and Oscar Heller voted against awarding the contract. The project, aimed to keep police eyes on the street where rising public safety...
-Brattleboro faced two of the best baseball teams in the state - Essex Town and Colchester - in the opening weekend of the Vermont Little League 12U state tournament at South Main Street Field and came away with two heart-stopping victories to advance to the championship game. On July 19, Cole Systo hit a two-run homer and made a game-saving unassisted double play at first base to end the game and give Brattleboro a 2-0 victory over Essex. Cooper Deyo...
Peter Adair is the author of the books Sacred Universe and Sacred Earth. WESTMINSTER WEST-Unlikely as it may be, Vermont has been either the incubator, seedbed, or birthplace of founders of seven important religious movements. Our hills, it seems, generate and support independent and distinctive modes of spiritual development. Seven Vermont farmhouses have nurtured soul as well as soil. * * * Whitingham (1801) Sharon (1805) Born the ninth child of John Young and Abigail Howe on a farm in...
PUTNEY-Natalie Dreyer, the new executive director of Next Stage Arts, brings with her a wealth of arts administration experience and her happiness at becoming a full-time member of the community. Dreyer, 37, is the director of curriculum and collaborative learning at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. She was chosen because she was "eloquent," "insightful" and "warm," said Board Co-chair Heather Brubaker, who was part of the search committee. "She's a terrific writer," she said. "And being a good communicator...
SAXTONS RIVER-Following is an open letter to President Trump. Your Majesty, I use this term only to remind myself that despite the clear role modifications noted by so many of your followers you have been freely chosen to represent the voting American public as you see fit. Your tenure has been amazing. In the mere seven months since you took office our lives have been radically altered, largely by reducing or eliminating services. Huge numbers of federal employees have been...
Much has been written about the effort expended on changing the way Vermont's education is provided. So what else of interest happened this session? Windham County's lawmakers, all Democrats except for one independent, passed laws that may help prevent children from becoming addicted to the internet. They discussed bills that curb the cost of health insurance and also ones that protect affordable meals and farmers markets. They discussed how to prevent violence in hospitals. They passed a bill that prevented...
BRATTLEBORO-Selectboard members heard from the Hinsdale, New Hampshire, town administrator that that town's Selectboard would consider only two options regarding the defunct Anna Hunt Marsh and Charles Dana bridges: that Brattleboro buy the Dana bridge and the island it's located on, or that the town support Hinsdale's petition to the state to raze both bridges. Instead, about two hours after Katherine Lynch visited in person and conveyed that message, the Selectboard voted 3–2 to support keeping the bridges open for...
BRATTLEBORO-When they reflect on the 10th anniversary of 118 Elliot, John Loggia and Lissa Weinmann, the owners and co-directors of the performing arts venue, are astonished anew at the breadth and depth of programming they have offered to the community. That first show in 2015 - Native American teens from Pine Ridge Indian Reservation did a "Gathering in Gratitude" as a soft opening - which "set the tone for this almost anthropological experiment we've been running at 118," Weinmann wrote...
BRATTLEBORO-The results from the Charter Revision Committee's recent poll in Districts 7, 8, and 9 are telling: 66%, 78%, and 62% of respondents, respectively, expressed serious concerns about the Representative Town Meeting (RTM), noting its lack of effectiveness and transparency and its failure to reflect the will of the people. These concerns are well-justified. Each RTM member represents 60 voters, based on 150 representatives for 9,000 voters. In the most recent budget vote, 11 members of the voting body abstained,
BRATTLEBORO-While it's encouraging that we're finally approaching a more inclusive way of recognizing the voices of Brattleboro residents, let's not stop short. Let's take this initiative all the way to the finish line - and make it truly inclusive for all. The survey that solidified the proposed Representative Town Meeting (RTM) changes made one thing clear: many of us want a different forum - one where every voice is heard and, even more importantly, every vote counts equally. We now...
BRATTLEBORO-I recently spoke with jazz saxophonist and composer Jeff Lederer, who splits his time between Guilford and Brooklyn, New York, about the upcoming Nu Mu Festival No. 4, which he co-founded with John Loggia. (See companion interview this issue.) Lederer is a Grammy-nominated reeds performer and composer whose work crosses the lines between jazz, improvised music, and Afro-Caribbean traditions. He teaches at the New School in New York City, where he advises graduate students on their composition projects; he also...
Wilda L. White, Hilary Melton, and Malaika Puffer are founding directors of MadFreedom Advocates, Inc., a grassroots, nonprofit organization run by and for psychiatric survivors, mad folks, and others marginalized by the mental health system. "We're working towards equal rights, better services, and ending discrimination," they write. "MadFreedom Advocates works across Vermont to support leadership, education, and advocacy for people with lived experience of trauma, institutionalization, neurodivergence, extreme states, or other marginalization by sanism." WATERBURY CENTER-MadFreedom Advocates grieves the killing...