U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has launched his 11th annual State of the Union essay contest.
Each January, the president of the United States delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress, which outlines priorities for the coming year.
According to a news release, “Because Sen. Sanders knows that great ideas can come from everyone - not just those in power - and wants to encourage young people to become engaged in the political process, he created the State of the Union Essay Contest.”
The contest is an opportunity for Vermont high school students to describe a major issue facing our country and propose what they would do to solve it. The 250-to-500-word essays can center on any issue of national importance.
To read the full license applications submitted to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC): • Great River Hydro: greatriverhydro-relicensing.com/overview/documents. Open “Final Licensing Application” folder. Most information is in “Exhibit E." • FirstLight: northfieldrelicensing.com/Pages/Documents2020.aspx. The Executive Summary is a concise summary of what the application package includes. • CRC's recreation...
Broad Brook Community Center (BBCC) has announced a winter fund drive to support the major phase of renovations this spring. Thanks to a matching gift challenge, all donations received by Jan. 31, 2021 will be doubled. The BBCC purchased the 1896 building from Broad Brook Grange three years ago,
Now that the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given its approval for the emergency use of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, doses of the vaccine have begun arriving in Vermont. The first 1,950 doses of the vaccine were delivered on Dec. 14. They were split between the State Vaccine Depot and the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington. This is the first portion of the initial 5,850 doses that Vermont has been allocated. An dditional 1,950 doses arrived...
Antidote Books will host what the bookstore bills as its “first at-home literary event,” which will feature a reading and conversation with poet-memoirists Meredith Clark and Arisa White on Thursday, Dec. 17, at 7 p.m. Arisa White (arisawhite.com) is a Cave Canem fellow and an assistant professor of creative writing at Colby College. She is the author of four books, including the poetry collection You're the Most Beautiful Thing That Happened. She is co-author of Biddy Mason Speaks Up, which...
When the new state Legislature starts work in January, it will do so with an unprecedented number of women in key leadership positions, including two from Windham County: Becca Balint of Brattleboro and Emily Long of Newfane. Balint will serve as president pro tempore of the Senate, where she represents Windham County, and Long, who represents the Windham-5 district (Marlboro, Newfane, and Townshend), will be the House majority leader. Both Balint and Long were voted into their respective posts by...
As Vermont celebrates the holidays in the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic, people are learning to discuss ways to feel comfortable and stay safe before seeing friends and family. The Vermont Department of Health offers four tips to help have the “COVID talk” - a conversation to negotiate boundaries and establish expectations ahead of time. • Ask questions. Before you get together, start with an open and honest conversation about what everyone has been doing to stay healthy and how...
Obituaries • Marshall Parker Bills, 69, formerly of Brattleboro. Died Dec. 3, 2020 of lung cancer in Redlands, Calif. He was born in Brattleboro on April 23, 1951 to Allen H. and Gertrude U. Bills. Before moving to California in 1991, Marshall worked as Director of Public Works in Chesterfield, N.H., and had previously worked for the town of Bratteboro. In California, he was a long-distance truck driver, retiring in 2008. Marshall loved the outdoors and one of his greatest...
Dottie's Discount Foods closing its doors BRATTLEBORO - The Brattleboro Food Co-op says it has closed Dottie's Discount Foods on Flat Street after more than 10 years of operation. According to a news release, the Co-op had planned to wind down operations by the end of December, but Dottie's sold off the remainder of its inventory ahead of schedule, so it closed at the end of the day on Dec. 15. In place of Dottie's, the Co-op says that “new...
For this year's holiday edition of Bellows Falls 3rd Friday art night on Friday, Dec. 18, Canal Street Art Gallery (CSAG), 23 Canal St., will spotlight Corinne Greenhalgh through Jan. 2. On that same date, “LIVE Online with the Artists,” a Facebook Live event with Greenhalgh, will take place at facebook.com/canalstreetartgallery/live. All live events are also published to the Events page at canalstreetartgallery.com. CSAG has launched Online Viewing Rooms, an interactive feature that streams more about each artist's inspiration and...
Two energy companies that own hydroelectric facilities on the Connecticut River have filed their final revised license applications with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Great River Hydro (formerly TransCanada), owners of the Wilder, Bellows Falls, and Vernon dams, filed its application with FERC on Dec. 7. FirstLight Power, a subsidiary of ArcLight Capital Partners, a private equity firm based in Boston, owns the Northfield Mountain pumped storage project and the Turners Falls dam, both in Massachusetts. FirstLight filed its...
Applications for the second round of the Brattleboro Town Arts Fund are open. The arts fund, a program of the Arts Council of Windham County (ACWC) with funding from the town, provides $1,000 grants to 15 community-focused projects that would not otherwise happen without this backing. According to the fund's website, these projects can explore solutions to social or quality-of-life issues, support community building, expand accessibility and visibility for underrepresented artists and audiences, or highlight the town. The other changes...
I'm so thankful for people like Mike Mrowicki who speak plainly and clearly about the enormous gap between sane, honest, rational, and ethical people and those who support Donald Trump. Mr. Mrowicki's recent Legislative Update [“In search of common ground,” Dec. 2] laments the possibility of finding common ground between Democrats and ReTrumplicans, and he couldn't be more correct. Now that Trump has attempted a coup, his latest assault on our democratic republic, the gap is clear between traitors to...
I am constantly amazed when Republicans such as Gerard Cloutier suggest that they support Donald Trump's “return to law and order” and “ethics of hard work.” First off, the Trump administration is the most corrupt in my lifetime - he puts fellow Republican crook, and law-and- order hypocrite, Richard Nixon and his merry band of thieves to shame. The number of Trump's friends who have been indicted, the profiteering of millions of dollars off his properties from our tax dollars,
Brattleboro is due to get a new Amtrak station, and that will provide a great opportunity for the town. The original 1849 train station has survived and is owned by the town (the Archery building). In the 30-plus years the building served as the town's station, it witnessed a lot of history. From it, many of Vermont's sons left to fight in the Civil War, and a large number of war wounded returned to a large hospital in town. The...
The awareness around intimate partner violence (IPV) has been brought to the fore with the COVID-19 pandemic - media attention has highlighted that globally, women already experiencing abuse are at risk of heightened violence along with a general proliferation of IPV overall during the pandemic. Pandemic or not, however, in 2013 the World Health Organization described this type of gender violence as “a global health problem of epidemic proportions” - affecting 30 percent of women worldwide. The violence women endure...
As nature preserves go, the ridgeline property rising up from the West River as it straddles the towns of Dummerston, Brookline, and Newfane doesn't look much different from the rest of the vistas one sees while driving on Route 30 west of Brattleboro. Yet these 626 acres make up a parcel so biodiverse that it includes representatives of nearly every important species of flora and fauna in the Green Mountain State. It is one of the few large semi-wilderness areas...
Retreat Farm, a nonprofit dedicated to connecting people to the land and to one another, has received a $35,000 grant from the Gannett Family Fund at the Vermont Community Foundation to support the farm's efforts to address food insecurity in the wake of COVID-19. At the beginning of the pandemic, the farm launched an emergency food pantry and ramped up its production of vegetables and meat to share directly with people in need and through several food pantry partners throughout...
I was expecting a ghost town when I dropped my 13-year-old daughter off at Okemo on a recent Sunday. I'd been working from home for months, only seeing the occasional friend for a walk, and assumed most Vermonters were similarly wary of public spaces during the pandemic. So it was shocking to drive up to the mountain and see crowds waiting in the lift lines and cars swarming the parking lots, many of them with out-of-state plates. Through the lodge...
In August, 41 Halifax residents sued their town concerning its handling of the resignation of a Selectboard member. Last week, they voluntarily dismissed their complaint. This story of “Resignationgate” - why the plaintiffs sued and why they dismissed their suit - can't be told without first telling the story of “Gravelgate.” In late 2019, two Selectboard members - Lewis Sumner and Mitch Green - negotiated with the third Selectboard member, Brad Rafus, to buy 10 acres of his property to...
To Gov. Phil Scott: I applaud your efforts to keep us all safe from COVID-19. However, you made a mistake in shuttering all school sports, some of which are no danger at all for COVID-19. One, specifically, is especially low risk, and is also a central part of Vermont culture. Cross-country skiing is very central to Vermont culture, as central to it as maple syrup and dairy products - actually, I think, much more so. Vermont produced Olympians and Olympic...
Roger Sandes is not taking the pandemic lying down. One of the founding members of the renowned Rock River Artists and creator of graphic-intensive, often grand-scale works, Sandes says he has found inspiration in the COVID-19 era to get more of his art into the world. “Many of my sales tend to be face to face,” he said in a news release, “so getting my art out to people in the time of COVID has been particularly difficult.” As a...
When Kate O'Connor steps away from her role as executive director of the Brattleboro Area Chamber of Commerce on Dec. 31, it will mark the first time since 1969 that a member of her family will not be involved in public service in this area. “I have been here for seven years, and I think for a person to grow and for a business to grow, you need new blood,” said O'Connor. “Sometimes if you're the same person being there...
Racial justice activist Curtiss Reed Jr. had a dream. A Ben & Jerry's ice cream dream. A Ben & Jerry's ice cream dream that the company would create its first flavor recognizing a current person of color - specifically, football quarterback and fellow advocate Colin Kaepernick. This month, that dream suddenly and surprisingly came true. The Vermont ice cream maker has announced it will honor Kaepernick with a new frozen dessert, with its theme a blend of the player's civil...