The Windham Solid Waste Management District (WSWMD) opened a new permanent depot for accepting and storing household hazardous waste (HHW) on May 1.
An existing specially designed three-compartment metal container with alarms and fire suppression was rehabilitated for the structure, as permitted by the Vermont Department of Environment Conservation.
According to WSWMD, in the first 17 weeks the depot has been open, it has served 192 households, an average of 11 each week.
The facility is open from 9 to 11 a.m. on Thursdays, by appointment, or by contacting the District at 802-257-0272 or contacting via windhamsolidwaste.org. A fee of $5 per vehicle is charged for up to 10 gallons of HHW. Larger quantities from residents, businesses, and schools can also be processed for a fee.
Manitou hosts healing walk WILLIAMSVILLE - The Manitou Project will hold its Healing Walk on Friday, Sept. 10, from 4 to 5:30 p.m. The walk will be led by Fred Taylor and will include poems or other readings, and chances to share about the experience. Healing Walks will be...
The Windham World Affairs Council (WWAC), founded in 1961, will celebrate its 60th anniversary with a party for new and returning members on Sunday, Sept. 12 from 2 to 4 p.m. The event will be held outdoors at Lilac Ridge Farm, 264 Ames Hill Rd., and will include live...
College news • Madison Derosia of Guilford recently graduated from Bryant University in Smithfield, R.I., with a Master of Business Administration degree in business analytics. • Taylor Humphrey of West Townshend, a psychology major and member of the Class of 2021, was honored during the spring 2021 Honors Convocation for the School of Mathematics and Sciences at The College of St. Rose in Albany, N.Y.. Humphrey received the Outstanding Senior award, which recognizes graduating seniors who have at least a...
Shelly Walker officially started as the new full-time town administrator on Aug. 30. She replaces Wendy Harrison, who has served as part-time interim administrator since November. The Selectboard voted to make the appointment at its Aug. 17 meeting. Walker has served in her hometown of Winchester, N.H. as municipal administrator from 2013 to 2016, and previously as the town's executive assistant. Earlier, she served as a classroom aide, computer classroom assistant, and software instructor in the Winchester school system. Since...
I'm amazed, and ironically happy, to report that on Labor Day I witnessed a “George Floyd–type incident” in Brattleboro, Vermont. Ironically happy because, as far as I could tell, any injury to the suspect or police officer involved were minor. So why do I compare it to what happened to George Floyd? Let me explain. Senator Bernie Sanders appeared on Brattleboro's Town Common at noon on Labor Day to give a speech which focused on describing and promoting the $3.5...
During the spring semester of the 2020-21 school year, 16 Leland & Gray Union High School students and three Twin Valley High School students earned a Windham Work Ready credential by completing a semester-long career preparation intensive. According to a news release, the program was designed and implemented by Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation's (BDCC) Pipelines and Pathways Program (P3) for Twin Valley students and was created in close collaboration with Leland & Grays's Senior Survival class. P3 is a BDCC...
Roxcell Bartholomew explores the psychological impact of his personal and cultural history in his first solo gallery show, “Melting Pot,” at 118 Elliot. These recent paintings employ a technique of enhanced automatic painting where the artist “allows the composition to develop freely without premeditation then refines the image into a colorful dreamscape that seems to have materialized as an architectural detail,” a technique described in a news release for the show. Bartholomew was born in St. Vincent, an island in...
After what a news release describes as “thorough deliberation,” Valley Cares, Inc. has announced that it can no longer provide Meals on Wheels to approximately 28 people in the region. “This really has been a tough decision for us,” JoAnne Blanchard, executive director of the community-based nonprofit organization, said in the release. “We decided that we just need to focus on our residents [at West River Valley Senior Housing].” “With everything else that has happened in the past year and...
Window Dressers, a nonprofit organization that offers insulating window inserts for local homes, is coming to town. Inserts are installed from the inside of windows and held in place by friction. Depending on the efficiency of your windows and home, you could see fuel savings of up to 20 percent with inserts in place. The inserts are built of pine frames and wrapped drum-tight with a durable plastic film to create clear views through an insulating air space. Around the...
On Friday, Sept. 10, the Brattleboro Literary Festival continues its 20th anniversary year with a Literary Cocktail Hour at 7 p.m. that will feature four female memoirists and the books in which they tell their stories. Megan Culhane Galbraith, Keema Waterfield, Sari Fordham, and Gina Troisi will converse with local author and activist Diana Whitney. Galbraith, a visual artist, writer, and adoptee, was born in a Catholic charity hospital in New York City to a teenaged resident of the Guild...
Pour a cup of tea or a glass of wine, or just sit back and reflect on experiences from the last two years as local contributors to the anthology A 21st Century Plague: Poetry from a Pandemic read from their work at an online event sponsored by Brooks Memorial Library on Wednesday, Sept. 8. at 7 p.m. The book, edited by Elayne Clift of Saxtons River, was released earlier this year. Throughout history and across all cultures, stories have helped...
Songwriters Jerry Appell and Holiday Eames of Rock in the Classroom will present an educational music video, “Numbers Never Lie,” to an international conference on Sept. 26. The music video will be presented at Virtual Ongoing Interdisciplinary Collaborations on Educating with Song (VOICES), an international conference of artists and educators that promotes the use of art and music in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education. “Numbers Never Lie” explores how quantitative data can both illuminate and distort issues related...
Next Stage Arts Project and Twilight Music present an evening of Celtic music by high-energy bagpipes/fiddle/guitar trio Cantrip with special guest Alasdair White plus Keith Murphy and Yann Falquet as part of the 2021 Next Stage Bandwagon Summer Series on Saturday, Sept. 11, at 5 p.m., at Scott Farm, 707 Kipling Rd. From the strong base of its Celtic roots, Cantrip branches out into the music of other European cultures. With border pipes, fiddle, guitar, and three voices, Dan Houghton,
In 1940, Alice Duer Miller wrote a beautiful epic poem, The White Cliffs. An American who had married a British man just prior to World War I, she soon lost her husband, who was serving a country that wasn't hers. As she penned the poem, she faced the possibility of losing her son to World War II - again, for a country not her own. Yet, her last poetic lines are these: “I am American bred. I have seen much...
The Brattleboro Museum & Art Center (BMAC) presents “Lollapalooza Nation: The Rise of Alternative Rock in the 1990s,” a free online talk by music historian Theo Cateforis, on Thursday, Sept. 16, at 7:30 p.m. Register at brattleboromuseum.org. Painter John Newsom, who curated the current BMAC exhibit “Expedition,” has cited Lollapalooza as one source of inspiration for the group shows he organizes. The groundbreaking festival transformed the music scene in the 1990s, when Newsom was a student at Rhode Island School...
Few football coaches were happy with having to play 7-on-7 touch football last year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Bellows Falls coach Bob Lockerby was among the unhappiest. The Terriers are all about running the football, and have been that way for decades. Touch football took away running, blocking, and tackling, and forced the Terriers to play a totally alien style of ball. Thankfully, 11-on-11 tackle football returned to Vermont on Sept. 3, and Bellows Falls was back to playing...
The Sarasa Ensemble announces its 2021–22 concert series with live performances at the Brattleboro Music Center. Founded in 1997, the chamber music ensemble is “a performing collective of more than one hundred instrumentalists and singers, presenting music spanning the 17th to the 21st centuries, on both period and modern instruments,” as described website of the group, based in Cambridge, Mass. The concerts are performed in Cambridge and Lexington, Mass., and in Brattleboro. Sarasa's first concert of the season, “Points of...
Joel “Veena” Eisenkramer's deep love for the classical music of north India has propelled him from his roots in southern Vermont to living and performing all over India and the world. On Sunday, Sept. 12, he will be performing a concert of Indian ragas on the 20-stringed Indian slide guitar at the Stone Church, accompanied by tabla artist Mir Naqibul Islam. Eisenkramer, who performs as Joel Veena, began his study of the Indian slide guitar in 2007 while on a...
St. Michael's Episcopal Church on Bradley Avenue will have a Sunday School open house outside, under the tent, on Sunday, Sept. 12, from 9:30 to 10 a.m. All are invited to stop by and learn more about Godly Play, Holy Mayhem, and the Youth Discipleship Group, as well as how to register children for Sunday School. The church has modified and simplified its offerings for children and youth this fall. Its leaders say they are open to being flexible (depending...
Liberty Union, Vermont's alternative political party that was established in 1970 in opposition to the Vietnam War and in support of working people around the world of all races, genders, and sexual orientations, is changing its name. On the 2022 election ballots, Vermonters will see a new name - the Green Mountain Peace and Justice Party. As described in a news release, the renamed party “continues to place environmental protection at the forefront of its agenda, along with advocating for...
It's agonizing, yet unsurprising, to hear about the decades of trauma that may be caused by a single perpetrator of sexual harm when left unchecked. Sadly, that's kept global hotlines busy long before making many headlines. Yet what the tsunami of #MeToo has highlighted isn't just the enormous courage of survivors (and depravity of offenders), but also the enabling network of passive bystanders who often had information - who shoulda, coulda, woulda done something - but did not. And as...
I have read with deep personal interest Mindy Haskins Rogers' Viewpoint and all subsequent responses to it. I immediately wanted to respond, but hesitated. Outside of the Catholic Church scandal, we don't hear too much from men who have been sexually abused and how they've coped with it. I wonder why. So, here it is. In 1974, just before my 17th birthday, I was sexually molested by a heterosexual man. He was a good friend. He was 21 years old.
Let's be crystal clear: Those who promote banning the teaching of the inconvenient truths of American history are existential threats to Vermont's economic prosperity. They would have you believe that we are in the midst of a culture war. Not true - we are in a fight for the lifeblood of a strong, vibrant, and prosperous Vermont economy. To quote James Carville, “It's the economy, stupid!” * * * Over the last 50 years, our nation's consumer base has become...
“Clare Adams: Painting With Light,” the first of Canal Street Art Gallery's fall lineup of solo shows, opens Wednesday, Sept. 8 and will be on view to the public through Saturday, Oct. 9. On Friday, Sept. 17 - Third Friday Gallery Night - the public is invited to meet Adams and celebrate the exhibit of her recent work from 5 to 7 p.m. in the Outdoor Art Tent and in the Gallery. A live artist talk begins at 6 p.m.
We have lost millions of lives around the world to the Coronavirus and its variants. To end this pandemic, a large share of the world needs to be immunized with a vaccine. Vaccine inequity is everywhere. G7 countries - Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union - have purchased more than one third of the world's vaccine supply, despite making up only 10 percent of the global population. In the United States,
News we see on TV, online, or in the paper about the direction our country is moving is distressing. Whatever your hot button issues are, one of the key arenas for changing things is the political arena. That arena is open to everyone. Every voter who lives in Windham County can join with other like-minded voters and help the Republican Party organize your town's GOP Committee. Help bring balance back to the Legislature in Montpelier. If not you, who? If...
Sometimes, the choir needs to get preached to. In the bluest town in the bluest county of Vermont, approximately 500 people crowded onto the Brattleboro Common for an outdoor noontime “town meeting” on Labor Day with U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. The stop on Sept. 6 was part of a series of five such meetings held around Vermont during the Labor Day weekend, with stops in Springfield, Newport, St. Johnsbury, and Middlebury to talk about a $3.5 trillion budget resolution...
Grace Cottage Family Health & Hospital has received “age-friendly” certification and congratulations from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), which called the beloved and smallest hospital in the state “a leader in this rapidly growing movement committed to care of older adults.” In fact, Grace Cottage is among the first health care systems in the U.S. to implement IHI guidelines for age-friendly care. So far, just over 600 health-care institutions in the entire country have been named Age-Friendly Health Systems.
This week has marked Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year - a special time preceding two other important holy days, Yom Kippur and Sukkot, which also take place in September. I am sure I join with many in the local community in wishing all our Jewish neighbors a safe and prosperous new year. Even so, this time of heightened awareness and celebration can also be a time of heightened risk for our Jewish brothers and sisters. Within the past two...
Dreaming of opening a distillery, maker space, child care center, or golf simulator? You may be in luck. Town officials are thinking outside the box in an effort to encourage new businesses here with Dover Launch, a competition through which the person with the winning plan will receive $20,000 to help make their new business happen. Dover Economic Development Director Eric Durocher says the contest format was chosen “because we like the idea of the amount of interest it brings...
Is a picture worth a thousand bucks? This could very well be the case during the In-Sight Photography Project Benefit Auction, now underway. Local, national, and international artists have donated 109 works to this annual auction, which started 23 years ago. This special event is the biggest fundraiser activity for the project, with funds providing scholarships for local students to participate in the nonprofit's photography courses. In-Sight was originally founded one day in 1992 when two local educators, Bill Ledger...
About 26 people attended an open public brainstorming idea jam on Aug. 31 at Deerfield Bar & Bottle to give local residents, business owners, and second-home owners a chance to voice their opinions about what types of businesses would best fit the town. Attendees included Selectboard members, residents, and current business owners. “Everybody was interested in having the conversation,” Dover Economic Development Director Eric Durocher said after the meeting. “We were excited. I think it went extremely well.” Durocher says...