PUTNEY - Putney Farmers Market, located on Carol Brown Way, is seeking vendors of all kinds. Summer 2024 applications are available at putneyfarmersmarket.org, or contact the market manager at putneyfarmersmarket@gmail.com.
This Town and Village item was submitted to The Commons.
...College news • Annmarie Mulkey of Stratton was named to the Dean's List for the fall 2023 semester at the Albany (N.Y.) College of Pharmacy and Life Sciences. • Paul Threewitt of West Dover was awarded the fall 2023 Dean's Letter of Commendation, which recognizes the outstanding academic achievements...
"Domestic Pleasures," a series of black and white photographs by Lynne Weinstein, is on exhibit at the Putney Public Library through June 1. Weinstein is a teacher and photographer whose work has been supported by the Vermont Arts Council and the Vermont Community Foundation Arts Fund. Before teaching at...
The Community College of Vermont (CCV) has partnered with the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) and Microsoft to deliver a free cyber skills course for Vermonters. The course is made possible by a grant from AACC and Microsoft, and funding is available on a first-come, first-served basis. The one-credit class, Foundations of Information Security, will be offered in a Flex format, meaning students can participate remotely and at their own pace. Students will examine the issues of online threats,
The multiple factors that have driven a migrant exodus from Central America over the past 10 years will be considered at Windham World Affairs Council's talk with Latin America expert Dr. Sarah Osten on Thursday, March 21, at 6:30 p.m. at 118 Elliot, 118 Elliot St. The event is co-sponsored by the Community Asylum Seekers Project (CASP). Executive Director Liv Berelson describes CASP as "a nonprofit founded in 2016 that supports asylum seekers in the Brattleboro area. We provide lodging,
Vermont Theatre Company is seeking actors for its first ever 24-Hour Play Festival, which will be performed Saturday, April 27, at the Evening Star Grange in Dummerston. Four short plays will be written, cast, rehearsed, and performed within a 24-hour period. "24-hour plays are a fun, fast, and intense way to create theater," note organizers in a news release. Actors will audition for a group of writers and directors on Friday, April 26, at 6 p.m. at the Grange. Writers...
Next Stage Arts Project and Twilight Music present roots and world music quintet The Gaslight Tinkers at Next Stage on Friday, March 22, at 7:30 p.m. The Gaslight Tinkers' mix of sound includes global rhythms, traditional New England old timey, and celtic fiddle music organizers call "joyful [...] merging boundless positive energy with melody and song." Band members draw from their extensive musical backgrounds, they say, and "craft a sound that brings world traditions together." Since its formation in 2012,
Brattleboro House Concerts - Under the Maple (chez Grossman/Peel) presents banjo player, singer, songwriter, and percussive dancer Evie Ladin on Thursday, March 28 at 7 p.m. Ladin's clawhammer banjo playing, voice, real stories, and rhythmic dance have been heard from A Prairie Home Companion to Lincoln Center, Celtic Connections to Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, Brazil to Bali. A creator and facilitator, Ladin grew up steeped in traditional folk music/dance up and down the East Coast, engaging in new work and classic...
I smell maple syrup in the air and travel back to the kitchen of Grandma and Grandpa John. I am 12. Daddy has brought them the first taste of maple syrup from Hazelton's Orchard. Grandma has promised to make sugar cakes with me. Grandma heats the syrup in her cast iron pot. She shows me a long-handled wooden spoon, and she asks if I remember how to tell whether the syrup is hot enough for candy. She lifts the spoon...
The Marlboro Studio School is enrolling for its third term of studio classes beginning this April on the 500+ acre Potash Hill campus on South Road. Spring 2024 course offerings include week-long workshops and multi-week studio classes. The School began offering studio classes in the spring of 2023 in the visual arts facilities of the former Marlboro College. In response to positive feedback, the Marlboro Studio School has increased the number of courses, widened the breadth of media offered in...
Thank you to all of the voters who turned out for the Brattleboro election on March 5. Democracy is alive and well in our town. And thank you to those who voted for me. I hope to represent those who voted for me and those who voted for other candidates. The Brattleboro Selectboard is a nonpartisan institution, and that means that we have a great deal of potential for collaboration and consensus-building. I hope to promote that climate on the...
Howard (Howie) Prussack is relaxed, sitting in the warmth of his greenhouse on this overcast March day, enjoying 70-degree weather among the tomato plants he started in late February. "The celery is up, and we're potting turmeric today. We're also working on ginger propagation," Prussack says. Turmeric and ginger? "People are getting older and want foods that keep us healthy," he says. "Powerful herbs and vegetables, carrots, turmeric, ginger - they are all important as one ages." These are new...
Our four local high schools were well represented at the Vermont Basketball Coaches Association's (VBCA) Senior All-Star Games at Windsor High School on March 16. Unfortunately, their presence wasn't enough as the North all-stars swept all four games. On the South's Division III-IV girls' team was Eryn Ross and Delaney Lockerby of Bellows Falls and Maggie Parker and Mary Sanderson of Leland & Gray. Parker scored eight points as the North won, 49-46, in the closest game of the day.
Daffodils can break your heart in so many lovely ways. "I wandered lonely as a cloud/That floats on high o'er vales and hills/When all at once I saw a crowd/A host, of golden daffodils," wrote William Wordsworth a few years after he and his sister, while walking by a lake, unexpectedly came upon great masses of the flowers. But he was with his sister, so how lonely could he be? Dorothy Wordsworth described that walk with her brother this way...
Tim Wessel is a former member of the Brattleboro Selectboard and was an independent candidate for state Senate in 2023. At a few pro-Palestinian protests that have taken place in town, two of which I've witnessed in person, I've seen several of my good friends and many other familiar Brattleboro faces - people whom I greatly respect, sincerely expressing their horror at the civilian casualties that have happened in Gaza. As a father, I connect viscerally with this horror, and...
Meg Mott, a longtime Marlboro College professor of political science, serves as Putney's town moderator and describes herself as a "Constitution wrangler." Democracy has a lot to recommend it: all those opportunities to participate in the governing process, to consider public matters with your neighbors in Town Meeting or with elected representatives in Congress. Unlike a monarchy, with a single person in charge, or an aristocracy, with a few elites in charge, a democracy gives ordinary citizens the chance to...
To prepare the fiddleheads: First, soak your fiddleheads in cold water for 10 minutes and rub off any brown, papery scales with your fingers or a soft cloth. This substance is extremely bitter. Drain, add fresh water, and soak an additional 5 minutes. If the second water is still quite dark and murky, soak them a third time. These prep steps are extremely important, so don't rush the process. Put on some music and putter around with other tasks. It...
From my youngest childhood days, I remember foraging for fiddlehead ferns with my Uncle Leonard, a great forager of wild native foods. Heading out to the woods with him and my Aunt Mary was always a treat; she searched for antique bottles around old cellar holes, while he turned his attention to wild foods. In the spring, Uncle Leonard gathered fiddleheads along with the fragrant ramps (wild leeks) that grew in great abundance and, when we were lucky, morel mushrooms.
For those of you in the Windham Northeast wondering how negotiations are going, I've got news for you: Thanks to Susan Smallheer's recent story in the Brattleboro Reformer ["Windham Northeast Supervisory Union, teachers' union, head to mediation," March 11] you already know as much as the school boards do, which is: It's headed for mediation. Let me explain. Right now, it looks like after making nicey-nicey with the Windham Northeast Education Association for a few negotiating sessions, we just didn't...
Chloe Learey is the executive director of Winston Prouty Center for Child and Family Development in Brattleboro. In announcing that Learey would accompany her to the State of the Union address, U.S. Rep. Becca Balint said that her guest "understands the impacts bold and creative investments in housing mean for a family's stability and a child's future" and said that Learey "represents the type of creative community leadership we need across the state and the country to address the housing...
What happens when a couple combines high intelligence, high creative writing and art skills, along with what a native New Englander might call a "wicked good sense of humor"? For over 20 years, Rolf and Cynthia Parker-Houghton have merged their skills and talents to leave their creative marks - from the concrete to the absurd - on the region, creating institutions like the University of Brattleboro, which Rolf refers to as the "oldest non-existent university in the world." Its official...
The five candidates running for two open one-year seats on the Rockingham Selectboard - Jamey Berrick, John Dunbar, Bonnie North, Stan Talstra, and Deborah Wright - held a forum at the Rockingham Free Public Library. The March 13 forum also included candidate Rick Cowan, who is running unopposed for the three-year seat left vacant by Bonnie North. Voters will cast their ballots at the polls on Tuesday, April 2 at the Masonic Temple at 61 Westminster St. in Bellows Falls.
Mollie Burke, a Democrat, represents the Windham-8 District in the Vermont House of Representatives. As our attention turns to spring and daffodils pop up out of the ground, it is sobering to reflect on a winter that never really arrived. For more than 30 years, we have heard about the future weather and climate scenarios that would come to pass if we failed to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. Those warnings, mainly unheeded, predicted what...
Representative Town Meeting here will convene on Saturday, March 23, at 8:30 a.m., in the Brattleboro Union High School gymnasium. If members do not finish the warrant, the meeting will recess at 5 p.m. and continue on Sunday, March 24, at 8:30 a.m. In anticipation of the RTM, the Selectboard hosted an informational meeting on March 13. "This is not the meeting to get into substantive debate on any of the articles," warned Selectboard Chair Ian Goodnow, who several times...
After unofficially winning a three-year seat as a director on the Windham Southeast School District (WSESD) School Board by just two votes in the March 5 election, Colleen Savage has retained that win following a recount. In the end, newcomer Savage won the seat over newcomer Richard Leavy by eight votes, 1,672 to 1,664. Leavy requested the recount several days after the election. Incumbent Tim Maciel retained his seat and his initial vote count of 1,680 did not change following...
Less than a month after their third appeal was turned down, two neighbors of the Windham & Windsor Housing Trust's proposed affordable housing community on Alice Holway Drive have filed a fourth appeal - this time to the Vermont Supreme Court. Laura Campbell and Deborah Lazar have made the appeal, filed by attorney Hal Stevens, protesting the planned 25 units of mixed-income housing in two buildings on land on Alice Holway Drive next to the Putney Community Garden and Putney...
As a retired teacher in Brattleboro who has served the children and families of my community for 27 years, I am heartbroken to know that the horrific humanitarian conflict in Gaza continues. Since Oct. 7, this conflict has claimed tens of thousands of lives, mostly women and children. The lives of millions of civilians and the remaining hostages are again under threat, and the United Nations is warning of a famine soon. Rep. Becca Balint should use her position to...
Elizabeth Bridgewater is executive director of the Windham & Windsor Housing Trust, whose Alice Holway Drive apartment project in Putney is the subject of a series of appeals and lawsuits against the town regarding the project's approval process. As the Windham & Windsor Housing Trust and its co-developer Evernorth continue to plan for breaking ground on the Alice Holway Drive Development that will create 25 new rental homes in Putney, a lot of questions have been circulating about the project.
From the 1977 Likud Party platform, as published on the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise website: "The Right of the Jewish People to the Land of Israel (Eretz Israel): a. The right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is eternal and indisputable and is linked with the right to security and peace; therefore, Judea and Samaria will not be handed to any foreign administration; between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty." Sound familiar? Mary...