Keeping your community covered. We're committed to producing high-quality, fact-based news and information that gives you the facts in this community we call home. If our work has helped you stay informed, take action, or feel more connected to Windham County – please give now to help us reach our goal of raising $150,000 by December 31st.
Keeping your community covered. We're committed to producing high-quality, fact-based news and information that gives you the facts in this community we call home. If our work has helped you stay informed, take action, or feel more connected to Windham County – please give now to help us reach our goal of raising $150,000 by December 31st.
The Grafton Volunteer Fire Department (GVFD) recently held technical rescue training during what Brattleboro's Rescue Inc. technical rescue trainer Capt. Drew Hazleton termed “ideal conditions” - an iced pond with open water at around 34 to 38 degrees and air temperatures in the “low teens.”
Masochistic? Not when the training covers ice and water rescues.
Rescue Inc. conducts training throughout Windham County, about 40 sessions per year.
“This is one of our primary goals, to get people trained so they can effect more rescues [on their own],” Hazleton said.
Having convened a homeless housing summit last June in Montpelier, Gov. Peter Shumlin signaled his concern that all Vermonters be safely sheltered and housed throughout the year, while recognizing that barriers exist to keeping chronically homeless people housed. Last Wednesday, Shumlin issued an executive order that reconstitutes the Vermont...
Greater Falls Warming Shelter (GFWS) board members met last week and made the decision to “take care of our own,” through a tiered response to house homeless people during this coldest time of the year in Vermont. As a result, the organization will sever its ties with Hundred Nights,
Two Windham County residents were arrested last fall for forging prescriptions stolen from a Rockingham doctor's office, only one recent example of abuse of prescription drugs on the rise. More difficult to nail down than other kinds of drug misuse and abuse because many people believe that prescription drugs are more legitimate or safer, officials are left struggling to get a handle on the problem. When formulated as prescription drugs, opioids - drugs that are chemically related to the compounds...
Art and activism are natural links for 44-year-old writer and actor Kathryn Blume of Charlotte, who will perform her one-women show, The Boycott, at Vermont Academy next week. Though the show is a benefit for Destination Bellows Falls and The Green Island Project, a local sustainable business group “facilitating a green economy,” Blume said, “I never really thought of myself as an activist before. I think of it as being a responsible citizen.” Blume has been performing The Boycott since...
There comes a time in every artist's life when assessments need to be made, and directions chosen and changed. Chicago-born dynamo Clara Rose Thornton, whose work has appeared in numerous regional publications, is moving on to greener pastures: New York City. Thornton, who bills herself as a film, wine, and visual arts critic, music journalist, and editor, is pulling out all the stops this weekend and in a grand thank-you gesture, is producing the Rose Harvest Midwinter Festival. The two-day...
A nonprofit organization from Keene N.H., 100 Nights, will open an overnight warming shelter in Bellows Falls, founder Don Primrose said. Where that shelter will be located is still up in the air. Seeking a temporary permit for the shelter, Primrose said that he is just responding to a need following the permit denial of the Greater Falls Overnight Warming Shelter last month, based on a tie vote of the zoning board [The Commons, Dec. 7]. Hoping for a temporary...
In the woods about a mile from the center of town, and at least 45 minutes of walking quickly, sans backpack, to The Square, a young man and woman courageously insist “we like it out here away from people.” But when faced with the growing reality of living in a tent in the woods this winter, Phae and Jared, a couple in their 30s, accept all offers of help and assistance. They ask for none. “I like to help myself,”
