BRATTLEBORO - The Windham Solid Waste Management District will be assisting the Guilford Fair committee with setting up a system for keeping recyclables, such as empty bottles and cans, and compostables, such as dirty napkins and unfinished food, out of the landfill by setting up event bins at several locations throughout the fair.
"This kind of effort is usually only successful with help from folks who can assist fairgoers as they dispose of their unwanted items," said WSWMD Outreach Coordinator Alex Lacy in a news release. "I've seen the positive impact this can have at festivals and events in our region and beyond and even helped out at a few of them. I'd like to add the Guilford Fair to that list of successful events. Can you help?"
High school students at Twin Valley, Leland & Gray, or Brattleboro Union High Schools who need to complete their community service time before graduation could contribute toward that requirement by serving at this event. Nonstudents are also welcome to help, Lacy added.
Volunteers are needed for Sunday, Aug. 31, and Monday, Sept. 1, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. WSWMD will need a total of 24 2.5-hour shifts covered. Volunteers will receive free entry to the fair on the day they are helping out.
PUTNEY-Join Youth Poet Laureate of Vermont Emma Paris for a reading at Putney Public Library, 55 Main St., on Tuesday, Aug. 19, at 7 p.m. Paris is a Putney resident and a student at Bennington College, studying poetry and ecology with a focus on environmental data interpretation for creative...
PUTNEY-Next Stage Arts continues its Bandwagon Summer Series Saturday, Aug. 16, at the Putney Inn Field, 57 Putney Landing Rd with a double bill of Charlie & The Tropicales, a 1960s-inspired Caribbean jazz band led by New Orleans trombonist Charlie Halloran, and the Heather Pierson Trio, known for their...
"There comes a time when passive demonstrations with clever signs are not enough to respond to escalating authoritarianism," organizers of the recent Non-Violent Direct Action (NVDA) training in Ascutney wrote in a news release. Presenters Steve Crofter and Laurel Green will lead half-day NVDA training sessions throughout southeastern Vermont in August. Crofter and Green have decades of experience with political action and have recently begun preparing Vermonters with workshops on the principles and practice of NVDA. Among other topics, the...
PUTNEY-A new initiative is working to address the growing number of high-paying job vacancies in technology, engineering, and manufacturing across the state. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Science and Technology Research Initiative for the Vermont Economy (STRIVE) is designed to expand access to STEM jobs through research funding, educational programming, and workforce development - all with the goal of "creating clear, sustainable career pathways for Vermonters." Led by Landmark College, Bennington College, the Community College of Vermont...
BELLOWS FALLS-Our Place in Bellows Falls has a new logo and a new tagline to better reflect its important role in the community. "Since its founding 34 years ago, Our Place has been the go-to place for folks who need help feeding themselves and their families," said OP Executive Director Dave Billings. "That has been our primary goal, and it continues to be." "The new logo represents the diverse nature of our clientele, incorporates the spoon and fork, denoting our...
Obituaries • Pauline Ann "Polly" Belair, 92, formerly of Brattleboro. Died peacefully on Oct. 16, 2024, in Ocala, Florida, with daughters Julie and Renee present. Born on December 25, 1932, in Brattleboro, Polly lived a life marked by compassion, devotion, and quiet strength. She was the daughter of William H. and Doris (Sequin) Clarke of Brattleboro. She graduated as valedictorian from St. Michael's Catholic School, a testament to her intelligence and dedication from an early age. Though she initially pursued...
BELLOWS FALLS-In honor of 20 years on the airwaves, 91.5 WOOL.fm (Black Sheep Radio) is hosting "Mission: Transmission!" a full-day fundraising block party to help raise money for a replacement of its aging transmitter. This milestone celebration takes place on Saturday, Aug. 23, from 2 to 10 p.m. at the Waypoint Center, 17 Depot St. The event will be a day of live music, food, fun, and community spirit, all in support of keeping independent, local radio alive and thriving.
WEST BRATTLEBORO-Lifelong mixed-media collage artist Elizabeth Lewis is showing some "puzzling bird miniatures" at All Souls Church (ASC) in West Brattleboro during the month of August. A reception for the artist will be held on Sunday, Aug. 17, from 11.30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Lewis is a resident of Putney and a member of ASC, housed in the West Village Meetinghouse, where she mounted her first exhibit in 1981, the year she moved to Vermont from Los Angeles, California. This...
BRATTLEBORO-After an 11-year hiatus from teaching in Brattleboro, master Senegalese dancer and teacher Caro Diallo is back in town. Diallo taught his style of African dance for 10 years and was the central teacher of the Abene Festival prior to 2014 in Brattleboro. Diallo is teaching dance every Sunday evening until Oct. 5 at Inner Heat Yoga, 464 Putney Rd., from 5:15 to 6:45 p.m. Classes are accompanied by live drumming with Ult Mundane and friends. Mundane teaches a drum...
MARLBORO-Marlboro Music's 2025 summer season concludes this weekend with the traditional Beethoven Choral Fantasy among 11 chamber music masterworks; rarely-heard, large-ensemble pieces; and contemporary music by two recent Marlboro composers in residence. In a news release, event promoters wrote that, with its community spirit and multitude of voices, the Sunday, August 17, performance of the Choral Fantasy, with co-Artistic Director Jonathan Biss at the piano, "will epitomize Marlboro's idealistic, collaborative approach to music making." Throughout the weekend, audiences will also...
-If you saw the Tenney Field grandstand at Brattleboro Union High School in March, you would have seen a dilapidated mess. Unused since 2017, when it was closed due to safety concerns, its continued existence was very much in doubt. But after voters in the Windham Southeast School District signed off on a three-year, $450,000 capital plan to renovate the grandstand, work has progressed through the spring and summer months to give the historic structure a second chance. The crumbling...
Roger Allbee served as secretary of agriculture, farms, and markets for Vermont in the administration of former Governor Jim Douglas. This piece is adapted from a post on his blog, "What Ceres Might Say," where you can also find an extensive bibliography. TOWNSHEND-Much has been written about the Gilded Age, which spanned from the 1870s to about 1900. Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, in their 1873 novel The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, coined the term during a time...
WILMINGTON-For those who regularly dine at the Maple Leaf Tavern, employees Analia Franco and Erick Mackay have become familiar faces. Though it wasn't necessarily in either of their life plans to live in Vermont, both say they've found stability here thanks to the willingness of owner Sean Pusey to help them obtain visas to continue working at the restaurant at 3 North Main St. Franco and Mackay hail from Paraguay and Honduras, respectively. They met while working at Mount Snow...
BRATTLEBORO-We set out on a fierce act of protest. This month in Brattleboro, beginning on Aug. 18, TUNDI brings Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelung to the center of our lives in Brattleboro - not as an epic or monumental artwork, nor as a museum piece, nor even as an opera or myth, but as a raw confrontation with the systems that are being rigged to fail us, with outrageous benefits to a corrupt oligarchy. This cycle that we perform...
BRATTLEBORO-Bill Holiday was born and raised here in Brattleboro. He went to Windham College, and he taught social studies in a very innovative way at Brattleboro Union High School for 48 years. He's been in the Brattleboro area all these years, and still is doing things that are exciting and going by his curiosity of the world and its people. He has organized field studies, taking his students and other educators outside the school building to where history unfolded: Alabama...
WESTMINSTER WEST-My recent essay in The Commons revealed the unique position of Vermont as a seedbed of significant religious movements. I want to acknowledge that the seed for that fascinating idea was a late friend, Ken Dean. Ken was a longtime Vermont political activist, with a spiritual bent. It was his passing remark in a conversation that stimulated my interest in this aspect of Vermont's religious heritage. The reference to "seven farmhouses" was his description. Bravo, Ken Dean, and thank...
PUTNEY-It was certainly not their first career when Kate and Charles Dodge founded the Putney Mountain Winery in 1998. But now, having successfully built a sophisticated wine business, they are moving on to their life's next chapter. On Aug. 1, they finalized the sale of the company to five of their employees - who call their company "The Fermented Five" - and who will carry the business into the future as an employee cooperative. Before the winery, Charles, 83, had...
Chloe Learey is the executive director of Winston Prouty Center for Child and Family Development in Brattleboro and serves as the steering committee chair of the Vermont Early Childhood Advocacy Alliance, as the vice chair of the Brattleboro Memorial Hospital board of directors, and as a member of the board of directors of the Vermont Community Loan Fund. BRATTLEBORO-Vermont's housing shortage has become one of the most pressing issues affecting nearly every corner of the state, and Windham County is...
ROCKINGHAM-The town Selectboard and the village trustees of Bellows Falls and Saxtons River have decided on new property tax rates and, over the weekend, released a tax fact sheet with the rates on the town website. The new rates follow the 2024 property value reappraisals, the town's first in eight years, where Rockingham's Grand List saw a 50% increase in property values, its bottom line rising from $492 million to $741 million. Tax bills for fiscal year July 1, 2025,
Django Grace describes himself as an environmentalist, skier, chiller, and lifelong Brattleborian. He graduated from Brattleboro Union High School in 2024 and will enter his sophomore year of college at Columbia University this fall. He plans to study political science and environmental policy, and eventually hopes to work in the Vermont Legislature. BRATTLEBORO-Upon my return from freshman year of college, I was quickly reminded of the immense political passion that the people of Brattleboro carry. I spent the last year...
WILLIAMSVILLE-For better or for worse, I have some 90 shows under my belt - if you count the five co-created with Leland & Gray kids to tour the Peoples Republic of China with Journey East, and if you don't count the Peter Pan I abridged and "directed" the summer I was 9, or the many pageants I led in Providence and then in Brattleboro. So when I was asked by the Rock River Players (RRP), which we founded 10 years...
PUTNEY-In May, two friends, both residents of Putney Meadows senior housing, were walking on the sidewalk near the Putney Food Co-op when a car jumped the curb and hit them. Deborah Bozetarnik, 68, was slightly injured, but the injuries of 77-year-old Diane Clementine were severe and, after a lengthy hospitalization, she died on June 2. Responding to the shock of the accident and concerned about pedestrian safety, Putney Community Cares Inc. (PCCI) has initiated the WalkSafe Putney project. The program...
BRATTLEBORO-Less than two months before the close of its fiscal year, Brattleboro Memorial Hospital is still trying to find enough cost reductions and new revenue to balance its current $119 million budget. "FY25 has been a financially challenging year," hospital leaders wrote to state health care regulators in a memo shared at an Aug. 6 review hearing. "BMH currently has a comprehensive financial recovery plan in place; however, we are at risk of failing to fully deliver on some of...