Vermonters wait for return of train routes
Windham County's only daily passenger train, Amtrak's Vermonter, has not stopped in Brattleboro or Bellows Falls since March 26, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
And it may be weeks, if not months, before the train returns to the rails of Vermont.
Source to Sea Cleanup begins, with emphasis on waste reduction
The Connecticut River Conservancy (CRC) is hosting its 24th annual Source to Sea Cleanup throughout September. This year, CRC is asking participants and all who enjoy our rivers to join in demanding an end to trashed waterways. “After cleaning up 1,167 tons of trash over the past 23 years,
Brattleboro Concert Choir presents ‘Stay-at-Home Sing-Along’ series
The Brattleboro Concert Choir (BCC) has launched its Stay-At-Home Sing-Along program in the spirit of enthusiastically committing to building and maintaining musical community. “Especially now, music is an essential source of joy, solace, solidarity, and hope,” the organization writes in a news release. Every other Sunday at 2 p.m.,
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In-Sight prepares for annual auction
In-Sight Photography Project's 22nd annual auction is an event where, as the organization put in a news release, “a broad community of artists and In-Sight supporters come together to put on an exhibition that showcases the wide breadth of creativity and vision present in the photo world. It would not be possible without the hundreds of bidders who buy the work.” And the event's organizers say they want to recognize that broad-based support from the arts and photographic worlds by...
BMC features live performance by Sarasa Ensemble
The Brattleboro Music Center Season Guest Concert features the Sarasa Ensemble performing “Don Quixote, Knight Errant.” The Cambridge, Mass.–based group will offer two live performances, with very limited seating to ensure adequate social distancing. They are set for Friday, Sept. 18, at 5 and 7 p.m. at the BMC. A performance also will be streamed on Sarasa's YouTube channel Sunday, Sept. 20, at 3 p.m. The ensemble's opening program for the 2020-21 season, “On the Fringe,” celebrates world literature's original...
Baker Street Readers perform Poe in new album ‘The Poe Project’
The Baker Street Readers will release a first album, The Poe Project, on Oct. 26. The Readers, James Gelter and Tony Grobe, usually perform Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, first as a monthly live show and now as a podcast available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Patreon. For their next project, the Readers have decided to dive into another 19th-century author's work: that of Edgar Allan Poe. The Poe Project will not be a simple audiobook, but an...
Around the Towns
Rental assistance program accepting applications BRATTLEBORO - Help is available for renters experiencing hardships due to the COVID-19 crisis. If you need help paying your current or past-due rent and you have a very low income, call 211. Otherwise, contact your landlord and apply together for the Rental Housing Stabilization Program through the Vermont State Housing Authority (VSHA). The program pays landlords directly to bring the tenant's rent account current, up to the VSHA payment standards, with the balance waived.
Museum presentations tie in with current exhibits on homelessness
Over the past five years, the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center (BMAC) has regularly presented artwork that serves as a platform for the exploration of social issues, including LGBTQ equality, addiction and recovery, and attitudes toward firearms. This fall, in conjunction with two exhibits focused on homelessness, BMAC will present a series of events exploring that issue from national and local perspectives. Initially planned to take place in person and subsequently postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic, these three free...
Second act
This October, the projector at the Bellows Falls Opera House will again light the movie screen. Community members have joined forces to reopen the historic theater after many months of dormancy due to the statewide COVID-19 response. Former and current Opera House staff members Jennifer Tolaro-Heidbrink, Tim Heidbrink, Shawn Douglass, Josh Mosher, and Ella Cademartori have been working to reopen the theater, which has been operated by the town of Rockingham. This group has approximately 40 years' worth of collective...
Empty Bowls fundraiser goes virtual with curbside pickup
A fixture of autumn in southeast Vermont, the Empty Bowls fundraiser for Foodworks, the food shelf at Groundworks Collaborative, will look very different this year. “It's Empty Bowls in the time of COVID,” Groundworks Board Member Beth Kiendl said in a news release. “We're tweaking just about every aspect of the event this year and hoping the community will continue to support this important work - providing emergency food to all who need it in our community.” Staff and volunteers...
Community leaders get support, from the ground up
Vermont runs on volunteerism and local leaders. They might serve as library trustees, as organizers of a local meal site, or in an elected seat on their Selectboard. Yet, while many people serve, not all can count on a network of peers or a way to learn new leadership skills to advance community projects. That's the impetus behind the launch of the Vermont Community Leadership Network, an online portal that will serve as a place for leaders of all stripes...
Brent Birnbaum, Christin Ripley debut exhibition at Epsilon Spires
Artist Brent Birnbaum's new body of work will be on view at Epsilon Spires with a socially-distanced opening reception on Friday, Sept. 18 and by appointment until Friday, Nov. 6. Birnbaum's latest series of assemblages is composed of board games that the artist systematically deconstructed into hundreds of smaller “spaces,” which he then recombined in collage. He began by cutting the pathways and territories out from existing games to break the set logic of the boards and then created the...
Senior bowling kicks off a COVID-tized fall sports season
When the last local sports roundup appeared in this space on March 18, a state of emergency had just been declared in Vermont and sports activities came to halt because of COVID-19. We had no idea what was going to happen next. We hunkered down in our homes, got into the habit of wearing masks and sanitizing our hands all the time, and did what was needed to keep ourselves and our neighbors virus-free. Six months later, we can justifiably...
Coyne enters race for Windham-3 state rep.
I am a local person running for state representative as an independent for the Windham-3 district. I am running for quite a few reasons. The number one reason is because I have traveled throughout the country and I think Vermont is the greatest place around. I am proud to say that I have called Vermont home for as long as I can remember. It is so great that as we all know in Vermont, we make more maple syrup than...
Time running short to respond to Census
The U.S. Census is the bedrock of our democracy. The mission of the Census, held every 10 years, is to count all people living in the United States once, only once, and in the right place. We determine Congressional representation, redistricting, and critical funding allotments for every state in the country through our Census numbers. We are talking about the annual allocation of $1.5 trillion in federal funding to states and localities. That's a lot of help our communities need...
Sandglass Theater takes it outside with ‘Footpath to the Puppets’ and an outdoor gallery
Sandglass Theater has announced two outdoor, socially distanced events in September: Footpath to the Puppets from Sept. 11 to 13 (rain dates: Sept. 18 to 20) and a walkthrough gallery exhibition featuring new works by Ines Zeller Bass with a popup crankie performance. The theater describes Footpath to the Puppets as “a rollicking walkthrough experience for audiences with three outdoor performance stations.” This event will feature the work of co-founders Eric Bass and Ines Zeller Bass, co-artistic director Shoshana Bass,
Yellow Barn continues its tribute to founder David Wells with Bach’s Cello Suites
On Sept. 15, Yellow Barn's “Patio Noise” series explores the complete Bach Cello Suites, a continuation of Yellow Barn's tribute to its founder, David Wells, which took place in two concerts streamed from the Big Barn in July. Joining Artistic Director Seth Knopp on the patio will be the four cellists involved with last summer's Bach Suites residency: Natasha Brofsky and Michael Katz from New York City, and Gabriel Martins and Aaron Wolff from Boston. Listeners are invited to join...
Why people believe in genuinely fake news
In July, The Washington Post estimated that, as president, Donald J. Trump has told more than 20,000 lies. In a press conference on Aug. 8, Trump betrayed the truth yet again and he got called on it. The president gloated about his administration having passed the Veterans Choice Act, a piece of legislation that made it possible for veterans to use their government health benefits at providers other than VA hospitals. In reality, it was signed into law by former...