The Northern New England Region of the American Red Cross continues to deploy volunteers to large-scale disasters around the country. Faced with wildfires, hurricanes, and other disasters, the humanitarian organization needs additional volunteers to help people in urgent need.
For the past several weeks, the Red Cross says it has been helping tens of thousands of people whose lives have been uprooted by the Midwest Derecho in Iowa, the relentless wildfires in the West, and hurricanes Laura and Sally in the Gulf Coast states.
More than 5,000 Red Crossers have supported disaster relief efforts on the ground or virtually since Aug. 19. Many have themselves been affected by the ongoing wildfires or hurricanes. As of last week, the Red Cross and its partners cared for nearly 30,000 people in emergency lodgings.
The organization needs more volunteers to support disaster relief efforts locally and around the country by helping with staff shelter reception, registration, feeding, dormitory, information collection, and other vital tasks. Review the most urgently needed volunteer positions at redcross.org/volunteertoday.
Condos: Ballots will be mailed to all active registered voters MONTPELIER - Vermont Secretary of State Jim Condos issued a reminder to active, registered Vermont voters that they will automatically receive a ballot for the Nov. 3 general election in the mail this week. The ballots will be sent...
Compassionate Brattleboro, with input from local residents, is presenting its 2020 Unsung Hero Awards to Tom Green, Sheila Humphreys, and Lorelei Morrissette. Green has been a leading engine in the Edible Brattleboro movement, creating gardens in the area both to inspire an interest in gardening and to provide food...
Each year, Turning Point of Windham County hosts A Beautiful Journey, a storytelling event where people in recovery from substance-use disorder share their personal stories. Organizers say these stories range “from the time before they used substances, to the time when substance use consumed their lives and, finally, to the time when they found recovery through hope and connection with their communities.” “They will tell us that substance-use disorder is not a choice; it is a brain disease that impacts...
Omega Optical, a leading manufacturer of precision optical filters and coatings, announced on Sept. 15 that it has been acquired by Artemis Capital Partners, a Boston-based private equity firm focused exclusively on partnering with differentiated industrial technology companies. Omega, founded in 1969 by Dr. Robert “Bob” Johnson, manufactures filter products designed and fabricated to control the passage of light and enable a broad range of mission-critical optical applications, including flow cytometry, fluorescence microscopy, spectroscopy, LiDAR, machine vision, and satellite imaging...
In an effort to boost voter turnout in Windham County, the Windham County Democratic Committee (WCDC) is inviting students who are not old enough to vote to participate in this year's election by voicing the concerns and issues that they want voters to consider when casting ballots. Entitled #VoteForMe, the project invites students to submit letters to the editor of their local papers or post one-minute videos on Facebook or Instagram encouraging those who receive ballots to exercise their right...
BRATTLEBORO - Utilities Division crews from the Department of Public Works will start spring flushing of the town water mains on Thursday, Sept. 24 at 10 p.m. and continue work through Saturday, Oct. 10. Water-main flushing will occur during both night and day. Some daytime flushing will continue throughout the weeks of Oct. 13 and 19. Customers are asked to check the flushing schedule closely, as flushing causes water discoloration, low water pressure, and, in some areas, periods of no...
After a successful launch in Brattleboro, a program designed to provide nutritious meals to Vermonters affected by the COVID-19 crisis while helping support local restaurants is going statewide. The program, the first of its kind in the country, is now being made available in a dozen or more regional hubs, including northern Windham County, thanks to a recent $5 million grant from the Vermont Agency of Commerce & Community Development (ACCD). According to a news release, Southeastern Vermont Community Action...
On Saturday, Sept. 26 at 4 p.m., local dance school SoBo Studio will host its first SoBo Studio Social Distance Show at Living Memorial Park's Rotary Theater. “All the feelings of the quarantine will be wrapped into one demented bundle of joy, pain, confusion, and ecstatic despair,” organizers said in a news release. “The show will be packed with dance, comedy sketches, improv theater, storytelling, social commentary, political pontificating, and a post-apocalyptic fashion show.” The show is free, although donations...
College news • William Baker of Londonderry, a member of the Class of 2020, recently received a B.A. in religion from Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y. Transitions • Certified Family Nurse Practitioner Anna Olivier, APRN, has joined Putney Family Healthcare. Olivier grew up in Putney and attended and graduated from Putney Central School and Brattleboro Union High School. She received her B.A. in biology from Mount Holyoke College and her M.S. in nursing from Yale School of Nursing. She recently...
Traditionally on the first weekend in November, Westminster Cares invites the community to honor those residents in town who are 90 years and older. This year, owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, the organization will “acknowledge and celebrate the town's elders with a drive-by celebration and parade,” according to a news release. Everyone is invited to participate. On Saturday, Sept. 26, from 2 to 2:30 p.m., guests of honor will be lined up (in their cars) along the back parking lot...
To the community of Putney; our town, state, and federal elected officials; and other towns taking up the work of understanding systemic racism: In 2016, the Putney Friends Meeting (Quakers) agreed to hang a Black Lives Matter sign in front of the Meetinghouse. We also agreed that we wanted to become a body that is actively involved to make our Quaker Meeting and our community as whole, active participants in the change that needs to happen to become more anti-racist.
The Inclusion Center invites the community to attend Zoom sessions on improv, conversation, games, and silliness and/or to just chat about how everyone is doing during the COVID-19 confinement. The organization offers online sessions Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays. Register for Zoom sessions at Inclusioncenter2013@gmail.com. Here's some of what's on tap: • Improv with Robin Zegge, Mondays, 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.: Zegge donates her time and incredible skill to Inclusion Center and leads participants in this fun program. She has...
When asked how she wanted to be remembered, Ruth Bader Ginsburg said: “Someone who used whatever talent she had to do her work to the very best of her ability. And to help repair tears in her society, to make things a little better through the use of whatever ability she has.” I was sitting by the lake with my friend and closest political confidant, Teddy Waszazak, as we received the news of her passing. This is a moment I...
Like so many of us, I have spent much of the last weekend grieving. The death of the Honorable Ruth Bader Ginsburg hit me late Friday night like a train. As a queer woman partnered to a non-binary trans person, we saw the safety of our family flash before our eyes in a moment. We cried together. We raged together. We talked seriously and honestly about our safety together. Our marriage was federally recognized by one vote, and now that...
On Tuesday, Sept. 29, performances inside the Big Barn and outside on a wooded trail will be the focus of the week's Yellow Barn Patio Noise, a series of interactive programming conversations led by Artistic Director Seth Knopp. Taking a look at Yellow Barn's concert stream from July 25, audience members will have the opportunity to talk to Yellow Barn musicians, and one another, about a program that explores interactions between love and nature from Amy Beth Kirsten's “ yes...
Ann Braden Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she wanted to be remembered as someone “who used whatever talent she had to do her work to the very best of her ability. And to help repair tears in her society, to make things a little better through the use of whatever ability she has.” I wonder if it's possible to cry all the way until election day. To cry while we fight for every inch of justice there is. We may think...
While summer has been gloomy for the Vermont tourist industry, the sector got a big boost last week from the Scott administration. At a Sept. 18 news briefing in Montpelier, Gov. Phil Scott announced lodging facilities may now rent all their rooms, as long as guests comply with all other requirements. Those mandates still include mask-wearing, physical distancing, and travel and quarantine rules, in addition to limits on dining and gathering size, he said. Scott also said that bar seating...
As Saturday turned to dusk at the quiet of a closed-for-the-weekend county courthouse in Brattleboro, a lone figure walked up, carrying a kerosene lantern. All over the country, vigils were taking place at courthouses, organized less than 24 hours after news of the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg broke the day before. To many, Ginsburg, 87, was a hero who as an attorney argued groundbreaking cases in front of the highest court in the land before she herself would be...
The premise of Brandie Starr's piece is that landlords don't have the best interests of their community if they don't support a proposal to limit up-front rental costs. I disagree with that premise. My husband and I are landlords of a three-unit building in town and have been renting it for more than 30 years. We currently charge first and last month's rent, and security deposit. For folks who struggle with the up-front deposit, we have offered a payment plan...
The town will spend up to $40,000 to pay two facilitators and a nine-member citizens committee for a three-month study of municipal law enforcement in the era of Black Lives Matter. The Selectboard voted Sept. 15 to hire Brattleboro social worker Emily Megas-Russell and educator Shea Witzberger from Dummerston to head a review of the use of town resources for police and social services “to ensure equitable and optimal community health, wellness, and safety.” “When we're talking about bringing people...