Occupy D.C.?
National strike? No work, no school, no shopping, no participation in the fossil-fuel civilization one day per week to start with?
What is our tipping point?
When will we start acting like we're in the bottom of the ninth inning, with two outs?...
I'm so grateful to my readers for the outpouring of support in response to the publication of my story of being silenced for telling my story of childhood sexual abuse. The response has been as astounding as it's been affirming. I thank everyone who sent messages of support by...
Because of where I work - at the Hotel Pharmacy in Brattleboro - I have seen firsthand what drug abuse can do to a family as well as to a community. I want to explore why substance abuse seems to be so prominent in such a rural area, and...
My wife, Patricia, died beside me in bed. The shock of her departure threw me into a whirlpool of emotion unlike anything I ever anticipated. The depth of my loss was beyond what I might have foreseen and surpassed all of my life's experience. I lost my direction, my future, my compass. My dearest friend was gone in the most profound manner. My only good fortune at that point was that she was not my only friend. To others I...
The “Met: Live in HD” series continues at the Latchis Theatre on Saturday, Nov. 10, at 1 p.m., with the North American premiere of Marnie by Vermont-born composer Nico Muhly and librettist Nicholas Wright. Based on Winston Graham's haunting novel, which inspired the classic Alfred Hitchcock film, Marnie is the tale of a beautiful woman in late-1950s England running from a mysterious past, who assumes a series of new names, identities, and physical appearances. Marnie is caught in her deceit...
Children at Moore Court, a low-income housing complex near Green Street School, have been exploring food in art as part of their regular “Art in the Neighborhood” project. On Oct. 23, the American Heart Association treated the children and residents of Moore Court to a healthy meal as part of their Art in the Neighborhood gathering. The children worked on art projects before the meal was served. “Art in the Neighborhood has been providing free art classes to children in...
Marlboro College's Music for a Sunday Afternoon series continues on Nov. 11 with pianist Benjamin Hochman in a program including two world premieres - Gilad Cohen's Circling Time and Jesse Brault's Sonata Shambhala. The concert will take place at 3 p.m. in Marlboro's Ragle Hall, Serkin Center for the Performing Arts, and is free and open to the public. Hochman's eloquent and virtuosic performances have excited audiences and critics alike. He performs in major cities around the world as a...
Health of Beaver Brook to be discussed at forum WILMINGTON - Connecticut River Conservancy and Deerfield River Watershed Association invite landowners and concerned citizens to join them Thursday, Nov. 8, from 5 to 7 p.m., at Memorial Hall, 14 West Main St., for a public forum to learn about and discuss the health of one of Wilmington's downtown waterways, Beaver Brook. Refreshments will be served. Volunteers with Deerfield River Watershed Association have been conducting water quality sampling in Beaver Brook...
In September, the Green River Watershed Alliance, with help from the Windham Regional Commission and the Windham County Conservation District, hosted “A Dark & Stormy Night...,” a community storytelling forum about flood hazards and community preparedness in Guilford. According to a news release, the forum came in light of infrastructure damage and the neighborhood response of Tropical Storm Irene in 2011 and other subsequent flooding events in southern Vermont. During the evening, members of the community gathered in the cafeteria...
College news • Sarah Osgood of Brattleboro recently graduated with a B.S. in nursing from St. Anselm's College in Manchester, N.H. • Elias Lombardi of Brattleboro and Devin Millerick of Vernon were recognized by Castleton University for superior academic achievement as first-year students at the Phi Eta Sigma National Honor Society induction ceremony on Oct. 18. Phi Eta Sigma is the oldest and largest honor society for first-year college and university students. To be eligible for induction, students must earn...
A concert spotlighting the music and magic of “The American Mandolin” is set for Thursday, Nov. 8, at the Brattleboro Music Center. The 7 p.m. concert will feature Flynn Cohen and August Watters, who recently played Carnegie Hall. The duo will demonstrate the breadth of mandolin music by performing selections covering 400 years of plucked string compositions ranging from classical, folk, and popular styles. The Emmy-winning Watters will also deliver a presentation on the American mandolin tradition, tracing its roots...
Broad Brook Community Center invites friends and neighbors to its second Apple Pie (and ice cream) Social on Sunday, Nov. 11, at 3 p.m., to celebrate the grand re-opening of the Center after a first phase of accessibility and safety improvements. The Center is located at 3940 Guilford Center Road. Admission is free. As announced at the first Apple Pie Social last October, the Community Center's board of directors is engaged in a fundraising campaign to invest $1.2 million to...
On Wednesday, Nov. 14, at 7 p.m., Next Stage will celebrate the six-month anniversary of its Fables Storytelling series with a cash-prize Story Slam. Fables is held on the second Wednesday of each month at the Next Stage Café in Putney. Fables is hosted and curated by Peter “Fish” Case, who has been telling stories and entertaining Windham, Cheshire, and Franklin counties as a radio personality for more than two decades. There will be food and a beer and wine...
Christ's Church will hold its 62nd annual Christmas Stocking Bazaar on Saturday, Nov. 10, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Since its inception in 1956, the Women's Fellowship bazaar has been a hallmark of the beginning of the holiday season in the village. Proceeds go to various missions of the fellowship and the church This year, the bazaar will take place wholly in the large dining room in the basement of the church, with entrance from the rear parking lot...
What made me go to Texas? Last spring, the news filtered in that a U.S. representative from El Paso named Robert Francis O'Rourke, nicknamed Beto (Bet-toe), was challenging Ted Cruz for a Senate seat held by Republicans since the early 1990s. Cruz was considered a lock at the time, and Texas opinion writers gave Beto no chance. Texas was flat-out red. Then came a turning point. At an August Town Hall meeting, Beto took a question from someone offended that...
Stone Church Arts brings the a capella quartet Big Woods Voices to the stone church on the hill in Bellows Falls on Friday, Nov. 9, at 7:30 p.m. The concert will be in the chapel at Immanuel Episcopal Church, 20 Church St. Big Woods Voices unites four veteran area singers in celebrating their common passion for a cappella harmony: Alan Blood, long-time member of area groups including the Blanche Moyse Chorale, I Cantori, Blue Moon, and House Blend; Will Danforth,
After eight years of custom-building, repairing, buying, selling, and inspecting motorcycles, Vintage Steele owners Josh Steele and Chris John are closing their business. The Canal Street shop will cease operations “at the end of the riding season,” Steele told The Commons. For Steele and John, their business undertaking didn't fail for lack of business - quite the opposite. “We have no downtime. We've been incredibly busy since day one, and we're still busy,” said Steele, who noted, “we have a...
How's the view from Olympus, ladies? The Bellows Falls field hockey team are the undefeated, undisputed heavyweight champions of Vermont field hockey after a 2-0 win over the three-time defending Division I state champs, the South Burlington Rebels, at the University of Vermont on Nov. 3. It might sound like I'm laying it on thick, but the numbers don't lie. Fifty-seven straight wins. A 118-5 scoring differential this season. And four straight state titles - two in Division III, one...
The seventh- and eighth-grade students at The Grammar School in Putney will perform scenes from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night on Thursday, Nov. 8, at 6:30 p.m. The show is free and open to the public. This production is the culmination of an intensive artist residency with Vermont teaching artist John Hadden, an accomplished actor and director. This residency was made possible by a generous grant from the Vermont Arts Council. Hadden is a founding member of Shakespeare & Company in Lenox,
Latchis Arts' popular Sunday morning Movies for Kids series opens for the season on Sunday, Nov. 11, at 11:30 a.m. Kids - and their big people and anyone who is a kid-at-heart - are invited to showings of movies at the Latchis Theatre on Sunday mornings at 11:30. Admission is by donation, and the concession stand will be open. The theme for November's selections is “Lost ... and Found,” highlighting endearing stories of individuals whose challenges in life are made...
If farmers can create a sustainable business model for selling garlic scapes and tomatoes by the season, why can't bakers do the same with cake and pastry? Patricia Austin, who operates Wild Flour Bakery from a commercial kitchen and bakery space at her home, asked herself that question and launched the Wild Flour Community Supported Bakery, which takes the farm-share concept and applies it to baked goods. She will offer “French- and American-style baked goods that are made of traditional...
Good day to you, citizens of southeastern Vermont! After excessive rainfall in recent weeks, we've got two pairs of sunny days upcoming through the next seven days, with a rainy Friday sandwiched in the middle. By early next week, the coldest air of autumn comes rushing into southern Vermont, and the potential for at least light accumulating snow exists by the middle of next week when a wintry system could visit our hills and dales. Having said that, let's jump...
Turnip soufflé? I know. Turnips are a common vegetable, peasant food, abundant in heartiness, sharp in taste, and modest in appearance. Some would even say ugly. “Soufflé” brings to mind images of French restaurants and fancy brunch with champagne. Can these two create a happy marriage? After the first hard freeze in Southern Vermont, farmers start harvesting the Gilfeather turnip. This hardy local vegetable, our “official state vegetable” (complete with an annual festival), is sweeter and creamier than the usual...
Sometimes just as everything seems over, it turns out to be simply a new beginning. When Robert Merfeld was finally diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, he had to face up to his growing suspicion that his career as a pianist was coming to an end. MS is an unpredictable, often disabling disease of the central nervous system that disrupts the flow of information within the brain and between the brain and body. Merfeld for a long time had found it increasingly...
Voting in the United States has again become a proprietary right, as equal access to the ballot box is not open to all. The history of voting in our country is one of exclusion, inclusion, and suppression. Initially, the Constitution excluded women, slaves, minorities, Native Americans, and white men who did not own property. It remanded the electoral process to the states, thus creating a complex, confusing, and an unequal system vulnerable to local machinations and prejudices. Throughout U.S. history,
Jatoba played its last regular show in 2017, but, in the words of member Jason Scaggs, the self-described “groovegrass” band has “left some loose ends hanging around." Like the CD that was crowdfunded on Kickstarter in 2015. But that album, the band's third, is now complete, and a CD release party will celebrate the arrival of “Last Man Standing” on Saturday, Nov. 10, with three of its original lineup - Scaggs, John Jamison, and Jeff Richardson - back on stage...
Windham County's races for the Vermont House of Representatives and Senate yielded no surprises on Nov. 6, as Democrats flipped one district into the blue column and easily won the rest of the races. In the only contested House race, the Windham-1 seat vacated by Republican Mike Hebert of Vernon was captured by political newcomer Sara Coffey of Guilford. The Democrat defeated Republican newcomer Patrick Gilligan of Vernon, 1,256–665, leaving the GOP without a state representative from Windham County for...
Republican Gov. Phil Scott won his second term in convincing fashion on Tuesday night. Scott, 60, first elected to the post in 2016, defeated Christine Hallquist, a 62-year-old Democrat from Hyde Park. Scott got 55 percent of the vote to Hallquist's 40 percent. Hallquist, the former CEO of the Vermont Electric Co-op, was seeking to become the first transgender gubernatorial candidate to be elected governor in the United States. But she was going up against a long history of Vermont...
The final stages of planning are underway for Out in the Open, the annual summit for rural LGBTQ folks, which takes place this year from Nov. 9 through 11. This year, the event will offer three full days of workshops, field trips, and discussions related to working, living, and thriving as a small-town queer person. There's also a dance party. For Green Mountain Crossroads, the nonprofit community and advocacy group that has organized the summit, a lot has been happening.
The admonition for poor people to “get a job” to improve their circumstances ignores a central reality: employment with good pay and dignity is sometimes out of reach for those without support or housing, or for those with a history of incarceration. Emilie Kornheiser, who was hired six months ago as director of workforce development at Youth Services, has put together a plan to help the organization's clients not only get jobs, but also start and operate businesses. The nonprofit...
Curtiss Reed Jr. has seen this fall's Saturday Night Live skit in which a self-identified “neo-Confederate” seeks “an agrarian community where everyone lives in harmony, because every single person is white.” “That sounds like Vermont,” another character offers as a punchline. But the subsequent 3.2 million and counting YouTube views aren't stopping Reed, the executive director of the Vermont Partnership for Fairness and Diversity, from working to rewrite the script. “We're being painted in a way that's really unfortunate,” he...
The Brattleboro Women's Chorus will present their annual fall concerts, “Keep Hope Alive,” on Nov. 17 and 18 at The Brick Church (formerly the First Baptist Church) on Main Street. Joining the 80 women and director Becky Graber will be Cathy Martin on piano, Julian McBrowne on bass, and Lisa McCormick on guitar and with her ukulele orchestra. Several songs will feature arrangements by local musicians, including Andy Davis' four-part arrangement of Let the Life I've Lived and Peter Amidon's...
Election Day's heavy rains didn't deter voters in southeast Windham County. Poll workers and town clerks in Brattleboro, Dummerston, Guilford, Newfane, and Putney all sang the same refrain: “It's been busy today!” Elections officials in the area also reported unusually large numbers of early and absentee voters, and they weren't alone in the state. At 8:53 a.m., Secretary of State Jim Condos posted on Twitter: “As of this morning 68,959 voters have cast early/absentee ballots. That's more than double the...