Three studies commissioned by the High Meadows Fund concluded that if Vermonters were to retrofit their homes, they have the potential of saving $800 to $1,100 a year on their energy bills.
The studies from three Vermont nonprofit groups were released last week at the home of Marc and Tina Companion in South Burlington. The Companions recently invested $12,000 into making their house more energy efficient by retrofitting their home's air sealing, insulation and windows. They expect their energy bills to decrease 30 percent to 50 percent.
The Companions live in a modest 1,800 square foot home with three bedrooms and one bath built in the mid-1950s. The home is heated by a small heater in the basement that produces about 40,000 BTUs.
“Anecdotally, it definitely feels cooler in the summer and we can turn off the heater during the winter and only lose a few degrees over 3 to 4 hours,” said Marc Companion. “I knew we had to be more efficient, and saving money is how I convinced Tina to let me tear up the house.”...
World Learning played host to nearly 70 Mexican high school students this summer as part of new exchange designed to promote a more law-abiding culture in Mexico. They came from all over Mexico - from small towns in the green state of Morelos, from the mining state of San...
Obituaries Editor's note: The Commons will publish brief biographical information for citizens of Windham County and others, on request, as community news, free of charge. • Melissa M. “Wichie Poo” Barratt, 31, of Brattleboro. Died July 29. Sister of Erica Duby of Springfield, Sabrina Kingsbury of Winooski, Michelle Duby...
The Brattleboro Area Jewish Community will once again celebrate the diversity of Israel's fast-growing film industry by presenting its fifth Annual Israeli Film and Food Festival, offering four award-winning Israeli films. The film festival provides a fun summer activity that gives people the chance to see the creative film work coming out of Israel while raising money for the synagogue in Brattleboro. On Sunday, Aug. 21, Blood Relation and 2048 will be shown at the Mountain Park Cinema in West...
ZPots Studio Pottery, Post Oil Solutions (POS) and the Southeastern Vermont Watershed Alliance (SeVWA) are partnering to host a Community Creation Celebration on Saturday, Sept. 10, from noon to 8 p.m., at the Historic Brookline Church and the Round Schoolhouse on Grassy Brook Road. This will be a day of community with all types of artists gathering to celebrate the power of creativity while supporting the Earth. Area musicians will bring song, dance and drum circles to the day's event.
Thanks to Meeting Waters YMCA, hundreds of kids in southeastern Vermont can continue to learn and develop important social skills even after the bell rings at the end of the school day. At least as importantly, says, Steve Fortier, the organization's executive director, that also means that several hundred parents can work with the peace of mind that their child is in a safe and nurturing environment. “When Sue (Fortier, the Y's Program Director) and I created ASPIRE in 1998,
United Way of Windham County is holding an online “scavenger hunt” this month, with information on its website, www.unitedwaywindham.org, serving as clues to complete the challenge. All correct submissions will be entered into a drawing to win a free iPod touch, donated by Brown Computer Solutions. The winner will be announced at United Way's annual Day of Caring volunteer service event on Sept. 3. “Our organization is going through an exciting transformation,” said United Way of Windham County's Executive Director,
Many towns in Windham County received their charters in 1753 and 1754 from Benning Wentworth, the governor of New Hampshire. Guilford was among those towns, getting its charter in 1754. But in 1961, the town instead celebrated the bicentennial of the arrival of the first European settler in the town, Micah Rice, who set up his homestead in 1761 with his wife, Silence, and his infant daughter, Sarah, on what is now Weatherhead Hollow Road. “We haven't been able to...
Windham Family Practice is the first in the Brattleboro area to be recognized as a Vermont Blueprint for Health practice. Under the leadership of Thomas Evans, MD, Windham Family practice has been independently assessed as meeting national standards as an Advanced Primary Care Practice. The practice currently serves about 1,600 patients. “We are very proud of the team of doctors and staff at Windham,” said Steven Gordon, CEO of Brattleboro Memorial Hospital, which owns Windham Family Practice and is located...
The Crosby Fund of the Vermont Community Foundation recently made a $2,500 grant to the United Way of Windham County to help to meet the needs of those residents who were displaced as a result of the fire that devastated the historic Brooks House in downtown Brattleboro in April. Community donations, to the United Way fund designated for the Brooks House fire relief efforts, continue to make their way to the affected residents, according to Carmen Derby, executive director of...
It's not news that the U.S. Postal Service is on the economic ropes right now. It has lost billions of dollars a year as more people use e-mail instead of writing letters, and use electronic payments for their bills instead putting checks in the mail. For the past four decades, the USPS has operated as an independent government agency that is supposed to be self-supporting. And because it has a monopoly on first- and third-class (“standard”) mail, the postal service...
Windham County will celebrate its past with the third annual history fair on Saturday, Aug. 13, from 10 a.m.-4 p.m., on the historic Common in Newfane, in front of the County Courthouse. The event will feature exhibits by the Vermont Historical Society, the Historical Society of Windham County, the Estey Organ Museum, the Brookline Round School House, and Brookline Church Preservation Association, as well as eight historical societies in Windham County, including those from Brattleboro, Dover, Dummerston, Jamaica, Townshend, Vernon,
Brattleboro and the surrounding area is radioactive. According to the Vermont Department of Health, Vermont has low-grade levels of radiation that fall below the 120 millirem “danger” zone set by the federal government, but are certainly higher than the naturally occurring 9-millirem levels. An average day in Brattleboro can be accompanied by a sultry 15-20 millirem radiation reading, the maximum level allowed annually by the state. This has been going on for more than 30 years now. That adds up...
Our utilities are planning for an energy-insecure future in which they will have to make changes to the way they produce and distribute electricity. Increasing reliance on wind power, for example, requires that we allow the frequency of our distributed electric power to vary more than it has been allowed to since the Great Depression. It will also affect some traffic lights, plug-in clocks, timers and anything that loses the time after a power outage. In fact, a test of...
We are a free people. Our free speech rights under the First Amendment were not revoked by the Atomic Energy Act. Neither were the rights of the Vermont Legislature. So what's “pre-empted?” We and our representatives are free to discuss nuclear safety, if any, and take it into account in our decision-making. We are free to note that the nuclear hazard is so extreme that (a) we are forbidden as a state to regulate it, and (b) no nuclear plant...
The Windham County economy has been flat for the past decade, with significant job losses, little new investment, an aging workforce, and virtually no population growth. A few years ago, C & S Wholesale Grocers, one of the major employers and mainstays of the Windham County economy, made the decision to move their corporate headquarters to Keene, N.H. This year, Vermont Yankee is facing the possible end of a 40-year relationship with the Windham County community. This is based in...
An open letter to Karl Rove: I want to speak to you with a clear and non-emotional voice. You, Grover Norquist, Jack Abramoff, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, and all of your cronies and friends have created this horrible, racist message that will lead to fascism and despair. Why do you hate us? Why do you hate your fellow Americans so much? Is this some passive-aggressive compulsion to dominate left over from being bullied as a child, a compulsion that...
Vermont gave it a good try, but in the end, the result was the same as New Hampshire rolled over Vermont, 45-21, at the 58th annual Shrine Maple Sugar Bowl on Saturday at MacLeay-Royce Field in Windsor. New Hampshire holds a 43-13-2 edge on Vermont and has won 21 of the previous 23 contests. Vermont's last victory in the game that matches the top recently graduated senior football stars came in 2000. Vermont hoped to break the losing streak with...
On Friday, Aug. 19, pianist Robert Merfeld, cellist Paul Cohen and Adrian Sahlean, an award winning literary translator of several volumes of poetry, will present an evening of music and poetry at 8:00 p.m. in Ragle Hall, Serkin Center for the Performing Arts at Marlboro College. The concert, Heat for the Body, Heat for the Soul, is a benefit for the Windham County Heat Fund and Ann Gengarelly's Poetry Studio. The program will include Brahms (Sonata Op. 38 in e...
Paracyclist Alicia Brelsford Dana's custom-made “Freedom Ryder” handcycle was stolen on July 30. Thanks to an outpouring of publicity and community concern, Dana got her bike back. Her friends began a fundraiser last week to raise money to buy a replacement - valued at $8,000 - and to help support her training for USA Cycling Paracycling National Championships next June in Augusta, Ga. Dana, 42, grew up in southern Vermont and was a cross-country ski racer. But in 1986, during...
One of the highlights of the annual Grace Cottage Hospital Fair is the Birthday Parade, where those who were born at the hospital march to the Common. This year, one of the marchers returned to the Townshend Common after a long absence. James A. Adams was born June 30, 1950 at Grace Cottage Hospital. He was the 69th baby delivered by Dr. Carlos Otis, the late founder of the 62-year-old hospital. Adams said he found out how many babies Otis...
Editor Anne Galloway of the news website VTDigger.org recently spent a long day driving around the state with Gov. Peter Shumlin. Among her conclusions after 13 hours of meeting and greeting is that the former state Senate leader has changed his ways and “appeared to have sworn off whiplash, headline statements.” Quite possibly, but you wouldn't necessarily know that from the comments Shumlin made, while Galloway was watching and scribbling, about the Vermont Yankee lawsuit. Please do not misunderstand. I...
Our system is so completely $%#@ up! You know it. I know it. So are you going take me seriously, or are you going to say, “Oh, she isn't real, only those two candidates that rise to top of the corporate Democrat and Republican pile are real politicians?” Are you one of those people who have a layer of hypocrisy between your inner anguish and anger, and what politician you will consider? If a politician doesn't ride in a fancy...
I assume that Corey Daniels continues to be the shop steward of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 300. He is a good man. After the initial “huge” release of radiation at Fukushima, unmonitored due to the electrical outage, a new radioisotope was found. I wish to congratulate Mr. Daniels. The new radioactive element has been named Corium.
On Sundays, my husband and I stroll up our dirt road to MacArthur Road. Our walk is canopied by the lush growth of summer, until we arrive with the others under the warm sun at the farm stand, our community chapel. Each parishioner, barefoot in the grass, takes her communion from the tray beside the coffee pot - a golden scone filled with juicy goodness. Today's choice is raspberry or blueberry; the latter having just ripened upon the hill in...
The Vermont Telecommunications Authority (VTA) and VTel Wireless have reached an agreement to provide broadband accessibility within the towns of Newfane, Westminster, Stratton, and Wardsboro by November 2012. Equipment installed to service those four communities will also provide expanded broadband coverage to areas within the towns of Putney, Townshend, and Dummerston by November, according to the VTA. More than 1,600 addresses will have access to fourth-generation (4G) wireless broadband service, according to the VTA. It will provide broadband service that...
Several Windham County artists and organizations will share in more than $311,000 that the Vermont Arts Council has distributed around the state. Fifty-four awards totaling $215,243 will be funding Arts Learning, Community Arts, and Creation projects across Vermont. In addition, eleven organizations will each receive $7,000 and three organizations will receive $6,300 as the first installment in the multi-year Arts Partnership Grant program. Arts Learning grants fund in-school and out-of-school educational programs that enhance student learning through the arts. The...
Routine tests of fish caught in the Connecticut River near the Vermont Yankee nuclear power station in Vernon have revealed traces of strontium-90, according to the Vermont Department of Health. The department said the results require further investigation because although “the scientific literature includes evidence that edible portions of fish can retain strontium-90, this finding in the Connecticut River requires more sample data so we can better understand what it means.” Entergy, the plant's owner, issued a statement last week...
The Department of Public Works and the Fire Department have new vehicles coming their way, thanks to Brattleboro's fiscal year 2012 capital improvement plan. The Selectboard approved bids for one Fire Department and five Public Works Department vehicles. Fire Chief Michael Bucossi said five dealerships responded to the department's requests for bids on a new pickup truck. The bid amounts ranged from $29,950.25 to $38,575.00, said Bucossi. The Selectboard approved Bucossi's suggested offer made by Ford of Brattleboro for $29,950.25.
Contractors will evaluate Brattleboro's traffic signals in an attempt to reduce traffic snarls and improve road users' feelings about traveling downtown. The team is expected to arrive on Aug. 10 and stay for three days, said Public Works Director Steve Barrett. At last week's Selectboard meeting, board members and the public aired feelings of annoyances with the traffic light signaling project. Selectboard members uttered a weary and unrehearsed “yay” when Town Manager Barbara Sondag announced that the board would discuss...
Plastic police tape stretches across the mouth of the Brattleboro Food Co-op's parking lot. Employees gather on the Whetstone Bridge. Few speak. Two friends embrace. Bullets are metal and lead and inanimate. But the bullet that suspect Richard Gagnon of Marlboro allegedly fired on Tuesday morning that killed Michael Martin reverberated through a community largely accustomed to peace and safety. At approximately 8:15 a.m., Co-op employee Gagnon allegedly shot and killed Store Manager Martin at the store. Town and state...
The Brattleboro Food Co-op serves many area families. Dr. Jilisa Snyder, clinical director of the Brattleboro Retreat's Anna Marsh Clinic, offers words of guidance to parents and guardians looking to support their children in the aftermath of Tuesday's violence. The two “classic guidelines” for adults encompass creating a space for children to ask questions, and for the grown-ups to provide only the information asked for, said Snyder. Like adults, children will respond to violent events in their own way and...
The Vermont Digital Newspaper Project last week added its first batch of digitized newspaper pages to a national database dedicated to providing searchable digital copies of historic newspapers from all over the nation. Tom McMurdo, the project librarian for the state effort, said there are currently 25 states involved in the National Digital Newspaper Project along with Washington, D.C. Vermont recently added the database's oldest available pages, some from 1836, the earliest year within Vermont's range of funding. Two Windham...
A workplace dispute turned deadly at the Brattleboro Food Co-op on Tuesday morning. Store manager Michael Martin, 59, of Dummerston, was shot and killed inside the Co-op shortly after 8 a.m. Martin had worked at the Co-op for about five years. Richard E. Gagnon, 59, of Marlboro, was taken into custody by Brattleboro Police. Gagnon had been the manager of the store's beer and wine department since 1992, according to a blog that he wrote for the Co-op in 2006...