A multi-department effort led to the arrests of 11 people on May 16 on a variety of heroin-related charges.
According to Lt. Shane Harris of the Bellows Falls Police Department, eight police departments and 21 officers were engaged in the drug arrests in the morning hours.
Harris, the lieutenant in charge of the investigation, told The Commons the probe had been going on for “several weeks” but declined to be more specific.
According to a press release, this investigation was the result of ongoing cooperation between community members and law enforcement “in identifying individuals and groups responsible for the trafficking of heroin and other opioids in this community.”...
It's tough to say goodbye to something you have helped to create and build for nearly a quarter-century. That's a big reason why Bruce Corwin's decision to step down as director of the Brattleboro American Legion Band is not so much a goodbye as it is scaling back of...
This year's official annual observance of National Nurse's Week took place from May 6–12. It's a special time when those of us who have made a career in health care step back to appreciate our nurse colleagues for their extraordinary compassion, skill, and dedication. The American Nurses Association has...
This Thursday, May 22, Putney will hold a Special Town Meeting to decide: Will the town continue with Rescue Inc. as its ambulance service, or contract with another provider? I hope that Putney residents will attend this meeting and make their voices heard - again. At Putney's Annual Town Meeting in March, voters debated the Selectboard's proposal to change ambulance services. After years of contracting with Rescue Inc., the board presented a budget with funding for Golden Cross Ambulance Service.
As Windham County blazes a trail toward a revitalized economy pending the closure of a local nuclear plant - and major employer - the state on May 14 took public input on how best to use a related $5.3 million green energy windfall. Approximately 50 people attended meeting that day at Brattleboro Union High School, there at the invitation of the Clean Energy Development Board (which manages Vermont's Clean Energy Development Fund), to offer project ideas. Proposals included biomass, hemp,
Brattleboro Police officers Ryan Washburn and Adam Petlock greet people entering Bruegger's Bagels off Canal Street. “Welcome, can I get you a cup of coffee?” asks Washburn, his dark sunglasses propped on his forehead. Washburn and Petlock head up a new community outreach program for the BPD called Coffee with a Cop. Banners announcing the event stretch across the store's entryway and hang in its window. The two-hour, early-morning affair on May 14 drew a crowd that grew and shrunk...
For anyone surveying the national landscape on animal cruelty, it is easy to fall into near despair. The cases of heinous animal torture and abuse - and the incidents of unintentional cruelty as well - seem to be becoming only more horrifying and more wanton. Worse, while blogs and Facebook pages reveal a systemic and dark reality for animals in our society, our wealthiest and most prestigious animal “protection” organizations and their top leaders are far too often the topic...
Brattleboro Music Center offers a full lineup of new programs this summer perfect for children as young as 5, teens, and adults to find opportunities to play, sing, and take part in ensembles. “Camp Presto” (ages 5-9) provides a great introduction to music and playing an instrument; “Time Traveling Through Music” (ages 7-12) explores time through music; “Traditional Arts Camp” (ages 9-14) explores traditional music and arts; “Musicals Workshop” (ages 7-12) is all about singing for theater. “Chamber Music for...
College news • Emma Maki of Putney graduated from Colby-Sawyer College in New London, N.H., on May 10 as a member of the Wesson Honors Program. Maki majored in nursing. The Wesson Honors Program is an intensive academic, cultural and social opportunities for the most motivated and capable Colby-Sawyer students who combine a solid work ethic and natural ability with intellectual curiosity. Maki, Sarah Harlow of Putney, and Amy Blazej of Windham were also all named to the Colby-Sawyer Dean's...
Senior meals return to Williamsville WILLIAMSVILLE - On Thursday, May 22 at noon, at the Williamsville Town Hall in the downstairs dining room, there will be a dinner for seniors in Williamsville and surrounding communities. On the menu: salad, rolls, and braised pot roast with potatoes and vegetables, with chocolate lava dump cake for dessert. The meal is prepared by Jon Julian, hosted by Nancy Rysz and Nissa Petrak, and sponsored by Senior Solutions. The suggested donation is $3.50 for...
Friends of Music at Guilford (FOMAG) presents its sixth annual Spring Organ Recital at 3 p.m. on Sunday, May 25, in the Organ Barn at idyllic Tree Frog Farm in the Guilford countryside. For this Memorial Day Weekend recital, Ken Olsson has chosen a singularly appropriate program: music by 19th-century Americans. Not only does it suit this national holiday, it also reflects FOMAG's continuing interest in American composers, specifically those associated with New England. Olsson says it also suits the...
Brattleboro Area Hospice offers its popular “Death and Dying for Beginners” class on four consecutive Wednesdays, May 28 thru June 18, from 6 to 8:30 p.m. at Parks Place, 44 School St. The class provides opportunities for individuals to explore awareness, attitudes, and feelings about death and dying. Participants will learn how to provide emotional and practical support to individuals and families facing or grieving a death. The class, structured around readings, discussion, and personal reflection, offers a time for...
Bread and Puppet Theater presents The Birdcatcher in Hell at Bellows Falls Opera House on Thursday, May 29, at 7 p.m. Done as kyÅgen, or comic interlude in the Japanese Noh cycle, this play was created in 1971 at Goddard College in response to President Nixon's pardon of Lt. William Calley, the only American soldier convicted over 1968's My Lai Massacre. The text also features passages of slaughter and mayhem from Homer's “Iliad.” Now, 43 years after its first performance,
H. Nicholas Muller III, retired executive director of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, will discuss one of Wright's most famous buildings in a talk at Brooks Memorial Library on June 4 at 7 p.m. “Fallingwater: An American Masterpiece,” part of the Vermont Humanities Council's First Wednesdays lecture series, is free and open to the public. Muller will share the story - and controversy - of Fallingwater, a house designed by Wright in 1935 in rural southwestern Pennsylvania. A historian, Muller...
“A Silent Language,” a show of paintings by Deborah Lazar, is on display at The Works Bakery Café at 118 Main St. The Putney artist and photographer's subjects include landscapes, still lifes, and portraits, all executed in a style called impressionist realism, with an emphasis on color and brushwork. Impressionist realism - “somewhat popular in the contemporary art world,” Lazar said - works on two levels. From afar, the paintings have a photographic quality, but up close the forms take...
Next Stage Arts Project, 15 Kimball Hill, presents a staged reading of the critically acclaimed one-man play Pierce to the Soul on Saturday, June 7, at 7:30 p.m. Pierce to the Soul tells the story of Elijah Pierce, a barber, preacher, and folk artist of no small significance. Playwright Chiquita Mullins Lee also performs the piece at Next Stage presentation. Says Mullins Lee, “What I wanted to capture about Pierce, the son of a former Mississippi slave who migrated north...
“It all comes full circle.” That's how ReNew Building Materials & Salvage founder and former executive director Erich Kruger describes the experience of liquidating the remains of the organization he once led. Kruger, who now runs Deconstruction Works, a building demolition and reuse cooperative, has been given the job of finding a home for the hundreds of cans of paint and the thousands of scraps of lumber, ceiling beams, windows, doors, and assorted other building ephemera that were left behind...
Post Oil Solutions Climate Change Café screens “The Wisdom to Survive: Climate Change, Capitalism, and Community,” on Tuesday, May 27, at 6 p.m. at Brooks Memorial Library's meeting room. Asking whether humankind has the wisdom to survive its climate change crisis, the film features author, educator, and journalist Bill McKibben; author, scholar, and systems theorist Joanna Macy; environmental lawyer and advocate James Gustave “Gus” Speth, and biologist and environmentalist Roger Payne. The film focuses on how we can live creatively...
I wrote a letter just before the April 2 special election, when the vote for additional funding was to be “reconsidered” after the first failed vote on the Leland & Gray budget on Feb. 5. I mentioned they would keep reconsidering a vote that didn't go their way until they wear down the opposition. They finally won on April 29 (393–290). It happened! On the third vote, the Townshend government school system got what they wanted. This “reconsideration” method of...
“Informed citizens deciding democratically” is my credo as an active Town Meeting participant. Though I voted for the Vernon Police Department, I am glad that a clear majority of Vernon voters present at Special Town Meeting chose by whom and how much local policing and law enforcement after July 1. In Vernon's new era of budgetary restraint, Windham County Sheriff Keith Clark prevailed on annual cost. The Vernon Police Department and its personnel have protected and served Vernon in an...
In a field as volatile as health care, it helps to have friends. Brattleboro Memorial Hospital president and CEO Steve Gordon has cultivated many friends and allies for the hospital in Windham County, Montpelier, and in Washington, D.C. That work has helped to strengthen the hospital's standing at a time when it seems every aspect of health care in Vermont is up in the air due to the Affordable Care Act on the federal level, and Green Mountain Care, Vermont's...
Rockingham Free Public Library and the WNESU Early Education Center are teaming up to present “Little Lit: Math and Science,” a fun evening with books, toys, and early math and science literacy on Saturday, May 31, at 6 p.m. in the WNESU building at Cherry Hill. Families with children aged birth through 5 are welcome to take part in this free program. Each family will receive free books, toys, and lots of activities to help their children develop early math...
With four games left in the regular season, the Brattleboro boys' lacrosse team is in complete control of its destiny. At 10-2, it's the top team in the Marble Valley League and the No. 2 ranked team in Division I. A strong finish will keep the team on top. The Colonels completed a stretch of six games in 13 days last Saturday afternoon with a 10-6 win over the East Longmeadow (Mass.) Spartans at Natowich Field. Brattleboro scored in the...
The Vermont Attorney General's office has started the long process of drafting the rules that will govern the new labelling law for food with genetically engineered ingredients when it goes into effect in two years. According to Assistant Attorney General Kate Whelley McCabe, the AG's office started preparing for the process of research and public comment before Governor Peter Shumlin signed the bill May 8. Some new state statutes stand on their own, while other new laws dictate that a...
After four children and several years of parenting, you could say my emotional responses to certain things have changed over time. I know the particular sound a child makes when a foot is caught between two crib rails. Kids, I know the difference between hunger and boredom, and I know, I know, I know when you are fake upset or fake crying. I'm like a crying Yoda. The Navy Seal of crying. If you fake cry, I will not come.
Using hands-on learning, students from the horticulture program at River Valley Technical Center sharpened their skills last week in downtown Bellows Falls. Under the supervision of their instructor, John Harmer, several students worked among the street trees in the Square to improve their health and visual appeal. Plans for the project began last fall with a site visit. Students then created a proposal for the work to be completed and submitted a work plan and schedule for the project. Over...
I am not sure where Daniel Cohen got the idea that (to quote his letter) the piece I wrote [“Buzz kill,” Viewpoint, April 16] “wants to maintain the thoroughly useless, life-destroying, tax-funded War on Drugs.” My intention (as stated in the piece) was to “educate, not legislate.” From my Viewpoint: “Should legalization occur, the state Legislature would certainly need to include funding for major educational programs to inform youth and parents about the connections between marijuana and mental health.” My...
Three young apple threes planted by residents at Ledgewood Heights for Earth Day are growing strong. Approximately 15 children participated in the tree planting as part of the Art in the Neighborhood program at Ledgewood and Moore Court. The children have taken care to water the trees as part of their art class. Ledgewood maintenance personnel are keeping an eye on the trees as well, said Chelsea Nuñez, resident services coordinator at Brattleboro Housing Authority. “We've got a lot of...
The AIDS Project of Southern Vermont has many volunteers and friends, but none more beloved than Shirley Squires of Guilford. Since the death of her son, Ron, in 1993, the 83-year-old great-grandmother has been a tireless fundraiser and advocate for the AIDS Project, which was founded in 1988 and provides direct services to people living with HIV/AIDS and prevention services in Windham, Bennington and southern Windsor counties. And last Saturday, before the start of the AIDS Project's annual Walk for...
On Thursday, May 22, the town of Putney will be holding a Special Town Meeting to call a re-vote of its budget. At the heart of this re-vote is the question of whether the town should continue to partner with Rescue Inc. for ambulance services. Although this issue was discussed and voted on at the Annual Town Meeting in March, recommending the Selectboard reaffirm Putney's relationship with Rescue Inc., a recent petition circulated in the town and acquired 85 signatures...
It's official: as of 2016, foods sold in Vermont containing genetically engineered (GE) ingredients will require that fact to be disclosed on labels. Governor Peter Shumlin signed the landmark bill into law on May 8. But even as a celebration broke out on the Statehouse steps, companies and associations like the Grocery Manufacturing Association (GMA) threatened to file lawsuits against the state - a reaction that is hardly surprising, since the law itself appropriates state money for its legal defense.
Move over, Madonna and Lady Gaga, here comes Tosca. At least that's what Windham Orchestra Director Hugh Keelan contends about Puccini's opera. “Tosca is like a rock concert,” Keelan says. “Although it needs no electronics or amplifiers, the singing is so high-voltage that this opera is viscerally powerful. Hearing live the vocal power of these 'superhuman' opera singers, people will be astonished by the sheer sound in a way that listening to opera on records or at the cinema cannot...
The town of Rockingham has closed on the second of three properties involved in the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) buy-out program. The property, at 409 Saxtons River Rd. (Route 121), was heavily damaged by flooding from the Saxtons River during Tropical Storm Irene in August 2011. The owner lost the home and almost all belongings when the river rose quickly. The house has been moved off its foundation and ripped open. The house and site debris will be cleaned...
The Brattleboro Museum & Art Center (BMAC) presents the 12th B.E.A.N. Micro-Grant Dinner on Sunday, June 1, at 6 p.m. For $12, guests are invited to enjoy dinner and live music at the museum and to help decide which community-oriented art projects will receive the proceeds of the event. To be eligible for funding, applicants must submit brief project proposals at www.brattleboromuseum.org by Wednesday, May 28, at midnight. Individuals, groups, teams, businesses, schools, nonprofit organizations, and others may submit proposals.
Public appeals for money and volunteers are commonplace, but Rich Earth Institute seeks households willing to donate urine for its Urine Nutrient Reclamation Project. According to Abe Noe-Hays, research director of Rich Earth Institute, urine is rich with nitrogen and phosphorus, which is what farmers need for fertilizer. Last year, thanks to 170 local urine donors, REI recycled 3,000 gallons, he said. The goal this year: 6,000 gallons of urine for EPA- and USDA-funded studies. The research will establish best...
Bright yellow signs along Vermont's roads over Memorial Day weekend will guide visitors to studios of craftspeople and fine artists across the state during the 2014 Open Studio Tour on May 24 and 25. Open Studio Weekend is a statewide celebration of the visual arts and creative process, offering a unique opportunity for visitors to meet a wide variety of artists and craftspeople in their studios, some of which are open to the public only during this event. The self-guided...
Two candidates are in the running to be named to the Selectboard in a vote that takes place Wednesday, May 28. Voters will decide whether Kirk Douglas Goodwin or J. Gus Plummer will fill the remainder of the 2014 term of Bill Kearns, who resigned in April. David Ross is the only candidate named on the ballot to fill the term for moderator. The election is technically a Special Town Meeting, with voting by Australian ballot taking place at the...
The fiscal year 2015 village budget of $1,851,602 was passed Monday night at the annual Village Meeting, as voters got the good news that the grand list had improved this year, due to the completion of the electrical substation on the island, owned by New England Power Company. All the articles on the warrant passed, including approval for purchase of a new pickup truck for the fire department. The department sought to replace an aging truck that's experiencing some mechanical...
Membership fees for Brattleboro Time Trade are $60 per year. The wrong amount was reported in the May 14 edition of The Commons.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission will hold a public meeting on Wednesday, May 28, to discuss the agency's annual review of safety performance at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon. The meeting is scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. in the auditorium at Brattleboro Union High School. It will include a brief presentation on the decommissioning process followed by a formal question-and-answer session regarding plant performance and regulatory oversight topics. There will be a security bag search at...
Our cats were both 19. We knew that our days with them were numbered, that at that age, for any cat, life itself is a terminal illness. But in the end, when they died, it wasn't any easier. My wife Susi and I had adopted Kaatskill from the animal shelter at the dawn of our married life in 1996; Goldberry came to our door on a bitter winter night, cold and hungry, gaunt and covered with sores, just a few...