I read with interest Nancy Braus's misguided letter about health care and had questions I would love answered.
Obamacare was passed on the promise that (and I quote Mr. Obama and others): “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan!” and then it turned out we could not keep our plan because some bureaucrat deemed it inadequate, even if it met our needs. Why take from us what we had and what worked for us as individuals with different needs?
Deductibles increased, as did premiums despite promises from Obama and others that premiums would decrease. Why the lie, and whom did that help?
If you could not afford the increased premiums and deductibles of Obamacare? Well, the Democrats unleashed the mad dogs of the Internal Revenue Service on everyone who failed to (or could not) comply.
As a current legislator who served on the House Committee on Energy and Technology, and as an elected public servant to my neighbors in Vernon, I have seen many interactions among state, local and federal officials over the years. Right now, I'm very concerned about the message the Vermont...
RAMParts Presents, in partnership with Exhibition on Screen, brings Leonardo Live: From the National Gallery, London to the Bellows Falls Opera house on Thursday, July 27, at 7 p.m. The 90-minute feature highlights what is considered the most remarkable exhibition of the 21st century: the largest-ever collection of Leonardo's...
For a second summer, Guilford Free Library and Guilford Center Stage are again collaborating on Stage & Stream, a weeklong theater and library camp this August 14-18. The session will be open to children in grades 5-8, and will be free to Guilford kids. Those from other towns may attend for a fee of $50 for the week. The camp day will run Monday through Friday, from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., at a pair of adjacent 1890s venues in...
With Windham County having a relatively low immigrant population, one might wonder: Does the Trump administration's travel ban and increased immigration enforcement affect this area? If so, how? One place to look is at higher education. The School for International Training in Brattleboro is an obvious choice. The graduate school's mission is to “[prepare] students to be interculturally effective leaders, professionals, and citizens,” and sends undergraduate and graduate students on field-based academic study abroad programs. True to its mission, SIT...
The next Wardsboro Curtain Call show on Saturday, July 22, opens with local favorite Hungrytown. The folk duo will take the stage at 7 p.m. at Wardsboro Town Hall on Main Street. They will open for singer-songwriter David Olney. Olney has released more than 20 albums during the past four decades. His music has been prominently featured in ABC-TV's Nashville and his intelligent songs have been recorded by Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, Del McCoury, Tim O'Brien, Front Country, Slaid Cleaves,
College news • The following local students received a degree from Norwich University at its May 13 commencement ceremony: Kidane Zacchary Hypolite of Brattleboro received a B.S in communications, James Ryan Vinci of Dummerston received a B.A. in criminal justice, and Malaysia A. Goodnow of Vernon received a B.S. in nursing, summa cum laude. • Cesar Augusto Rabello Borges Filho of Brattleboro, who is studying biomedical engineering, made the Dean's List for the spring 2017 semester at Rochester (N.Y.) Institute...
One of the common misconceptions about nuclear power plants is that once they are “shut down,” the work in ensuring safer conditions on the site is over. In fact, that is not true. The decommissioning process - now in progress at Vermont Yankee - is often the most dangerous time in the life cycle of a plant, as the staff overseeing operations has been drastically reduced. The terms of the decommissioning are critical in ensuring the safest outcome. Public officials...
The Yellow Barn season continues with the third week of Big Barn concerts on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Yellow Barn's popular free pre-concert discussion series continues at 7 p.m. on Saturday and, earlier on Saturday, daytime attendees have the opportunity to hear Donald Weilerstein's violin masterclass. The weekend marks the return of faculty members William Sharp, Lucy Shelton, and Eduardo Leandro, who will reprise his June performance of Vinko Globokar's Toucher for speaking percussionist, according to a news release. Baritone...
The sixth season of Pikes Falls Chamber Music Festival in the Town Hall in Jamaica will be held from July 26 to Aug. 5. This year, the festival will again hold a series of evening concerts and a family and community day, including an open mic night. In addition, festival musicians will bring their concerts to the Jamaica State Park, Townshend, and Brattleboro. This summer, the festival will welcome both the NakedEye Ensemble and Trio Amphion as they present guest...
The halls of Brattleboro Memorial Hospital will be adorned with the colorful landscape paintings of local artist Greg Moschetti through December. In his paintings, Moschetti creates places which have a sense of familiarity about them and draw the viewer into a feeling of peaceful solitude, according to a news release. These are most often open landscapes with nearby water and distant views. Many are set at day's beginning or end, when the light is waxing or waning. The show is...
Algiers Bridge closed, detours posted GUILFORD - The Route 5 bridge in Algiers Village was closed to traffic on July 12 as contractors began work on its replacement. The contractor, Renaud Bros. of Vernon, has 28 days to complete the work and re-open Route 5 by Aug. 9. According to project information director Jill Barrett, the bridge has been demolished and work has begun on excavating the two bridge abutments. This week, Barrett said Renaud Bros. will concentrate on the...
The Brattleboro branch of the American Association of University Women has awarded four college scholarships of $1,000 each to Windham County students - three to high school graduates and one to an older student continuing her work toward a college degree. Leland & Gray Union High School graduates Kelsey Jade Hescock of Wardsboro and Madison Russ of Townshend will enroll at the Community College of Vermont and the Pennsylvania College of Technology, respectively. Hescock plans to become a nurse. Russ...
The board of directors for the Meeting Waters YMCA has selected Susan Fortier to serve as the organization's new executive director. She has served as the organization's program director since the fall of 1998 and she will be replacing her husband, Steve Fortier, as the regional Y's staff leader. Steve recently left the YMCA to become the new director of external relations at Keene State College. The board chair, John Hagen, said that with Steve's departure, the board was looking...
Ukulele extravaganza in Jamaica JAMAICA - On Thursday, July 20, at 7 p.m, join two of Vermont's finest ukulele players at the Jamaica Town Hall on Route 30 for an evening dedicated to the joys of playing and listening to the friendly little stringed instrument. Admission at the door is $10 for adults, $5 for kids and seniors. Led by seasoned musicians Ben Carr and Jake Geppert, the evening will feature a beginners' workshop, a performance, and an open jam...
The town's annual Old Home Day will be held on Saturday, July 22. Residents, former residents, and friends and neighbors are welcome to join in this townwide celebration. The day kicks off the Salmon Hole Dash 5K walk/run event at Jamaica State Park. Registration begins at 7:15 a.m., with a start time of 8 a.m. Prizes, refreshments, music, and event shirts are included. Admission to Jamaica State Park will be free all day to the public. Old Home Day festivities...
Selectboard sets tax rate DUMMERSTON - The Selectboard set the 2017 municipal tax rate at the July 5 regular Board meeting. The tax rate is 0.323 percent, giving the town a $850,035.87 budget, with a $1,090.82 buffer. “When we set the tax rate, we usually set it so we have a little bit of a buffer,” Selectboard Chair Zeke Goodband said.
Selectboard sets tax rate PUTNEY - The Selectboard set the 2017 municipal tax rate at the July 5 regular Board meeting. The general fund rate is 0.3953, which is about four cents higher than last year's rate. The highway fund is up by about one cent; this year's rate is 0.3123. The local education agreement went down slightly, to .0086. The residential education rate decreased by about 10 cents from last year, to 1.6436. The non-residential education rate, which went...
Once again, Dover voters have overwhelmingly OK'd merging their school district with neighboring Wardsboro. In a special election held July 11, the tally was 47-9 in favor of creating a new district with shared board governance between the two towns. Both towns' elementary schools will remain open. Dover already had approved the Act 46 merger plan in March. But the revote was made necessary by an error in the previous vote warning's language. Despite that glitch, Dover School Board Chairman...
Once again this summer, the Aging in Place Initiative is sponsoring a weekly, free lecture series on subjects useful and interesting not just to seniors, but to the public in general. Town Nurse Jennifer Fitzgerald has lined up a list of speakers for this series, which will be held in the downstairs space at St. Mary's in the Mountains Episcopal Church at 3 p.m. every Thursday afternoon through Sept. 28. July 20 is devoted to “Death and Dying 101.” It's...
New York City's Village Light Opera Group is returning to the Deerfield Valley for the 22nd consecutive summer to present “High Notes,” a musical concert. Performed by an all-volunteer chorus of 35 singers, this concert is the major fund raiser of the summer for MHCA (formerly Memorial Hall Center for the Arts). The group will present songs from Broadway shows, old standards, Gilbert & Sullivan, and operettas. MHCA is a not-for-profit charitable arts organization founded in 1997. Their mission is...
The Brattleboro Rotary Club recently awarded a total of $13,500 in scholarships to five local high school students who will attend college this fall. The scholarships are funded by The Gateway Foundation, an affiliate of the Brattleboro Rotary Club. This year's recipients include Francesca Carasi-Schwartz of Brattleboro, who will attend the University of Vermont; Rebecca M. Gringeri of Hinsdale, who will attend Hampshire College; Kayle M. Hussey of Hinsdale, N.H., who will attend Richmond University in London; Jarrod R. Price...
Vermont filmmaker Jay Craven will hit the road this summer for a series of film screenings and personal reflections to pay tribute to his 30-year collaborator, Northeast Kingdom writer Howard Frank Mosher. Craven will kick off his tour Thursday, July 27, at 7 p.m., with a date at Next Stage Arts in Putney. “Howard Mosher died pretty unexpectedly in late January,” Craven said in a news release. “And many Vermonters already miss him for his laugh-out-loud humor and fertile imagination...
The Selectboard approved three infrastructure projects - all water and sewer related - at the July 11 meeting. The immediate costs are just over $60,000, but one of the motions the Board passed includes the town's taking over operations at a state-owned wastewater pump station, which will cost the town money to run. However, Town Manager Peter B. Elwell assured Board members they will recoup some of those expenses through revenue. Welcome Center Pump Station A few months ago, the...
Twilight Music continues its 15th annual Twilight On The Tavern Lawn series of folk-rock, world beat, rock, pop, Celtic, blues, and bluegrass summer concerts on Sunday, July 23, with The Gaslight Tinkers. The Gaslight Tinkers' blend of African, Caribbean, funk, reggae, and Latin rhythms creates a “joyously danceable” sound around a core of traditional roots, New England old time, and Celtic fiddle music, “merging boundless positive energy with melody and song,” according to a news release. Audrey Knuth (fiddle), Jopey...
A Washington, D.C.-based company has signed a contract to take apart and ship away Vermont Yankee's reactor. Areva Nuclear Materials' deal with NorthStar Group Services is contingent on NorthStar's receiving state and federal permission to buy and decommission the idled Vernon nuclear plant. Areva's involvement in the cleanup project has been known since the proposed NorthStar deal went public last November. But administrators said the contract signing, announced July 11, “formalizes” the company's role in what would be a crucial,
Since its founding in 1951, Marlboro Music has been a major influence on four generations of young musicians who have gone on to become leading figures in all areas of music. The retreat's second weekend of programs reflects the tradition it pioneered of master artists playing alongside exceptional young professionals. The concerts on Saturday, July 22, at 8 p.m., and Sunday, July 23, at 2:30 p.m., on the campus of Marlboro College, will include Artistic Director Mitsuko Uchida; former St.
On July 16, hours before a group of estranged NECCA coaches and students were to rally on the Town Common, Blair Belt was planning how she was going to rehearse her fabric routine before she was to perform with fellow members of her circus community. Belt said she would seek out a swing set from which to do the rigging. “At least, we know it's safe for children,” she observed. She dismissed the alternative of using trees as “wildly dangerous.”
The closure of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in December 2014 has meant the loss of some 600 jobs locally. Jim Verzino, Director and Co-founder of Windham Grows, is working on a seven-year-plan to fill that gap by helping to expand local businesses that derive their products or services from agriculture. “The goal is to create more jobs while supporting farms,” said Verzino. “But this doesn't mean farm jobs.” With $300,000 in funding from a variety of sources, including...
Construction is scheduled to start next month on a housing complex that is designed, in part, to address homelessness in the Brattleboro area. With the recent issuance of a state land-use permit, Windham & Windsor Housing Trust now has all approvals needed to begin transforming the Lamplighter Inn Motel into an apartment complex called Great River Terrace. Half of Great River Terrace's apartments will be available for those who have experienced chronic homelessness. And there will be a variety of...
Life is short - or, as the millennials say, yolo (you only live once). We often use both phrases when we indulge ourselves. But what is hidden beneath these casual sayings? Often, it is a fear that what we want in life is fleeting, so we should grab an ephemeral moment that might make us happy. For years, I have been mulling a related behavior of why, knowing we are mortal and our time is limited, all of us have...
While a nonprofit organization has a board of directors to oversee the best interest and growth of its organization, I am worried and concerned because the board of the New England Center for Circus Arts chose to remove the artistic directors, who were also founders of NECCA. This event reminds me of the experience of ReNew Building Materials and Salvage, a very useful and financially sustainable, environmentally friendly business for recycling and reusing building materials that some might remember from...
I've been watching the national effort to politicize Burlington College's demise and am saddened by the venality of our politics and our dangerous ignorance of nonprofit governance. It's endemic in Vermont, where too many of our major nonprofits have limped through a decade or two of unreviewed leadership performance, mission decay, and disconnection from constituents because their boards have no idea what the obligations and liabilities of board members are or even what board service means. * * * I...
Good day to you! While we can expect some isolated to scattered showers or thunderstorms through Thursday evening, along with drying for Friday, the chance for showers and thunderstorms will increase again over the weekend. In fact, Sunday could produce some severe weather in the region, so stay tuned to locally-updated outlets in southern Vermont for the latest. Showery weather looks to continue into at least early next week before we get some drying and cooling towards next Wednesday. To...
When someone asks Brandie Starr for money on the streets of Brattleboro, she often offers to buy them a sandwich. “I've never had anybody turn me down,” Starr said. “I usually buy a sandwich, a bag of chips, and a drink. And sometimes a brownie, because everybody needs a brownie.” But Starr, a Brattleboro Selectboard member, knows that not everyone can be so accommodating - especially if they're trying to run a small business and fear that panhandlers are driving...
The Selectboard recently granted the Robb Family Farm, a 110-year-old farm in West Brattleboro, a Fiscal Year 2018 tax waiver through the Farm Tax Stabilization Program, which was created to preserve actively farmed land in town. The Robb's participation in the program isn't new, but there was a question about whether the Selectboard would allow the family to continue receiving the tax break because of some of the program's rules. As Town Manager Peter B. Elwell explained at the July...
Is a community famous for ski jumping and heifer strolling ready to dive into a “Brattle Paddle”? The New England Canoe and Kayak Racing Association, set to bring its touring competition to town Sunday, July 23, hopes so. Organizers expect some 70 racers and dozens of recreational boaters to speed along the Connecticut and West rivers in an event aiming to pull enough of a crowd to become an annual tradition. “Here in Brattleboro we have this huge resource that...
Kate Anderson was the president of the NECCA board of trustees until she resigned in May. “Despite working through many stresses, the board was very strong and stable up until end of May,” she said. “Going forward, there was very active discussion as to how to move the founders into teaching and coaching.” Anderson said that the board “were caught between the proverbial rock and hard place.” “The twins are beloved, yet the board had to concern itself with the...
Phil and Marsha Steckler have been big supporters of NECCA and the nonprofit's capital campaign to build its trapezium. “We have [supported], and we will continue to support, NECCA, assuming it continues to be a world-class facility for circus arts,” Phil Steckler said last week. But he echoed concerns about organizational growing pains. “The vision and the dream of the organization are more important than any one individual,” Steckler said. “We continue to support the founders, and I think Elsie...
Anyone who has seen pictures of the Taliban-battered giant Buddhas in Afghanistan, or the destruction of the ancient city of Palmyra by ISIS, will understand why environmentalists and naturalists are devastated by Donald Trump's executive order calling for the identification of U.S. national monuments that could be rescinded or resized. The destructive nature of that executive order is on a scale no less traumatic than the travesties committed by the world's two-most-uncivilized bodies, and the fact that the present administration...
The Brattleboro 12-year-old Little League All-Stars took the first step toward a second consecutive state title with a four-game sweep of Bennington in the District 2 playoffs last week. Brattleboro will now go for a second straight state Little League 12-year-old title. The state tournament begins this weekend in Essex. After winning Game 1 in a 13-9 slugfest in Bennington on July 8, the series tightened up in Game 2 in Brattleboro on July 9. Forester Avard was the hero...
In early 2014, Roger Allbee set aside the issue he knew best - agriculture - to become the top administrator of Vermont's smallest hospital. It has been, he says, “a learning experience.” Allbee, who on July 13 announced his pending retirement from Grace Cottage Hospital, said he has become well-acquainted during the past three years with the regulatory and financial problems rural hospitals face. But he is also convinced there's still a place for a small, independent hospital focused on...
This was supposed to be a summer of triumph for the New England Center for Circus Arts. In the space of a week, the 10-year-old nonprofit spun into chaos after its founders, Elsie Smith and Serenity Smith Forchion, announced that they had been relieved of their duties as the school's artistic directors. A public revolt by coaches and staff ensued. Twenty of the school's 35 staff members went on strike, and eight of them resigned. A social media campaign erupted,