Editor's note: Owing to a production error, the identity and biographical information of the author of a Voices Viewpoint piece did not appear in the print version of the Oct. 1 issue of The Commons.
That piece, "An error that can't be unvoted," on page C1, was contributed by Nancy Braus, a retired independent bookseller and longtime activist.
The piece on the website is properly attributed.
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WARDSBORO-This year's Gilfeather Turnip Festival is being held Saturday, Oct. 25, from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. on Main Street in downtown Wardsboro. This event is billed by organizers as "America's best turnip culinary event showcasing Vermont's State Vegetable." Folks are invited to join with the whole town for...
PUTNEY-On Thursday, October 9, at 6:30 p.m., Putney Public Library presents visual artist Owen Schuh, of Westminster, who will discuss his work collaborating directly with mathematician professor Satyan Devadoss of the University of San Diego for more than a decade. Schuh is a painter who specializes in visual research...
PUTNEY-Next Stage Arts Project and Twilight Music present an evening of contemporary folk, roots, and Americana with The Clements Brothers and The Early Risers Friday, Oct. 10, at 7:30 p.m. The Clements Brothers - George (guitar) and Charles (upright bass) - are identical twins from New England. Playing and writing music together since childhood, they entered the Americana scene in 2012 as part of the internationally touring band The Lonely Heartstring Band, releasing two albums on Rounder Records. More recently,
BRATTLEBORO-C.X. Silver Gallery, 814 Western Ave., presents an exhibit by artist Karen Becker through Dec. 27. Becker's journey from earning a bachelor of fine arts in graphics at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn to Brattleboro has been a varied evolution, she says. It includes employment creating on-air graphics and photography for public television in New York City, being a typographer on Madison Avenue, working at Rolling Stone magazine in San Francisco and assisting with decorative murals for Diana Ross in Greenwich,
BRATTLEBORO-The Windham Philharmonic, in collaboration with Epsilon Spires, announces a concert Monday, Oct. 13, at 7 p.m. at Epsilon Spires, 190 Main St., for Indigenous Peoples' Day 2025: "an evening where music speaks as protest, as reckoning, as survival." At its heart stands Raven Chacon's Voiceless Mass, a Pulitzer Prize–winning work by the Diné composer that "confronts the silences enforced by colonialism, by Christian churches built on stolen land, and by the machinery of extractive power that still dominates, and...
WEST BRATTLEBORO-Bonnyvale Environmental Education Center (BEEC), 1221 Bonnyvale Rd., will once again transform its woods into a world of torchlight, shadows, and story. Forest of Mystery: The Fractured Mind of Franklin Kind runs in Brattleboro from Thursday, Oct. 23, through Saturday, Oct. 25, offering an immersive outdoor theater experience. Each fall, the Forest of Mystery turns BEEC's forests and fields into a realm of fantasy, with mystical scenes unfolding along torch-lit trails. This year's story enters the whimsical mind of...
Fall Book Sale at Moore Free LibraryNEWFANE - The annual fall book sale hosted by the Friends of the Moore Free Library will take place Saturday, Oct. 11, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Sunday, Oct. 12, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., at the Library on 23 West St., just steps away from the Newfane Heritage Festival taking place the same weekend in the village. Books in more than 30 categories of fiction, nonfiction, and young people's literature...
PUTNEY-The southern Vermont Empty Bowls steering committee announces its 22nd annual "Empty Bowls Dinner" - benefitting Foodworks, the region's most heavily utilized food shelf program operated by Groundworks Collaborative. This year's dinner will be held Saturday, Oct. 11, from 5 to 7 pm at Landmark College. Diners purchase tickets online or at the door. Each ticket includes a handmade bowl to keep, crafted and donated by local potters. The menu features soups donated by more than 12 area restaurants, accompanied...
Obituaries • Constance "Connie" Alexander, 85, died at Grace Cottage Hospital with family by her side, on Sept. 30, 2025. She was born to Leon and Eunice Thayer on Aug. 19, 1940 in Guilford. On April 5, 1958, she married William Alexander Sr. in West Brattleboro. Most of her working years were spent as an office manager in various places. She loved playing the keyboard and was a worship leader in her church in Burlington. She also traveled with another...
GMC hosts Shagbark Trail walkDUMMERSTON - The Green Mountain Conservancy (GMC) presents Roger Haydock at 10 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 11 (rain date Oct. 12), leading a hike along the Deer Run Nature Preserve's Shagbark Trail. The trail was completed last year and has recently been upgraded. While hikers gather, Haydock will talk about the geology of the area. He will also share anecdotes about his trail building and highlight features of the trail along the way. The Shagbark Trail features...
NEWFANE-Since 1970, volunteers have made the Newfane Heritage Festival in the heart of historic Newfane village a fall season destination. People will once again celebrate community, crafts, and entertainment on Indigenous Peoples Day weekend, Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 12 and 13, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., rain or shine. More than 65 juried artists and craftspeople will display and sell their work in the tents set up on the Town Common in front of the Windham County Courthouse and the...
PUTNEY-The Putney School will hold its 90th annual Harvest Festival Sunday, Oct. 12, beginning at 10 a.m. on the school's campus at 418 Houghton Brook Rd. and continuing until 3:30 p.m. Alumni, parents, the local community, and friends of the school are all welcome to this free event. Attendees of all ages can roam among a range of farm and craft booths, vendors, kids' activities, and food stalls. The Harvest Festival is a tradition as old as the school itself.
BRATTLEBORO-The Community Asylum Seekers Project (CASP), a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting asylum seekers and creating a welcoming home for them in southern Vermont, recently appointed Sharon Hall-Smith as its new executive director. "I have always been a passionate supporter of immigration justice," Hall-Smith said in a news release. "While not an immigrant myself, my connection is both personal and professional." She continued to say some of her family members are immigrants, "and I have seen firsthand the resilience and...
MARLBORO-Juno Orchestra, led by Music Director Zon Eastes, will perform "Bach!" Sunday, Oct. 12, at 2:30 p.m. at Persons Auditorium, Potash Hill, in Marlboro. Featured performers will be soprano Junko Watanabe and baritone Randall Scarlata, each with longtime connections to this area. Scarlata will be featured for Bach's Cantata 56, "Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen," and be joined by Watanabe for the Cantata 57, "Selig ist der Mann." The Brattleboro Camerata choir will round out the ensemble for the...
The writer served as a state senator representing Windham County from 2003 to 2023. PUTNEY-A 1928 quote by Calvin Coolidge is carved in marble in the State House - presumably because we believe it and are proud of it: "If the spirit of liberty should vanish in other parts of the Union, and support of our institutions should vanish, it could all be replenished from the generous store held by the people of this brave little state of Vermont." Many...
PUTNEY-The "Vermont Zydeco Party," a celebration of zydeco music at Next Stage Arts, features two of the area's top zydeco bands who will bring their performances to Putney on Saturday, Oct. 11, from 3 to 8:30 p.m. Set in the Community Room with its wooden floors, there's plenty of room to dance and enjoy this event. "Whether you're a seasoned Zydeco dancer or new to the scene, this event promises something for everyone," organizers wrote in a news release. For...
BRATTLEBORO-Following is an open letter - a confessional - to President Donald Trump: Recently, you declared, in your unrivaled wisdom, "Antifa" to be an actual organization with terrorist intent. It is with an overwhelming sense of patriotic xenophobia that I feel compelled to confess that I may be the actual president, chief financial officer, and director of alumni relations of "Antifa." May I further disclose that we are an old and venerable organization with countless members here and throughout the world.
BRATTLEBORO-Sandglass Theater's community event, "Puppets in Paradise" (PIP), returns Friday through Sunday, Oct. 10–12, featuring varied artists and a spectacle to open the weekend. All the performances will be held at Retreat Farm on Route 30. Audiences can walk around the farm and encounter short-form puppet performances, theater artists, and musicians amidst the fields, historic barns, and animals. Food and refreshments from local vendors will be available. Puppets in Paradise runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday and...
BRATTLEBORO-Anne Koplinka-Loehr, a seventh- and eighth-grade social studies teacher at Brattleboro Area Middle School (BAMS), has been awarded a 2025 Rowland Fellowship to integrate restorative practices throughout the middle school. Koplinka-Loehr, the first Rowland Fellow from BAMS and the Windham Southeast School District, will serve as a teacher on special assignment this academic year, facilitating a group of staff members and students. Even though she's the one with the fellowship, "I definitely see it as something that we are doing...
DUMMERSTON-It takes an almost incalculable amount of community volunteer work to bake nearly 1,000 apple pies in around 70 hours spread out over 10 days, but the volunteers who report to the basement kitchen of Dummerston Congregational Church during the two week run-up to its annual Apple Pie Festival specialize in doing the impossible. Volunteers began preparing and baking pies on Sept. 30 for the 56th annual edition of the church's pie fest. On the morning of Oct. 2 -
Elayne Clift (elayne-clift.com) has written this column about women, politics, and social issues for almost 20 years. BRATTLEBORO-Two centuries ago, an obscure Scotsman named Alexander Fraser Tytler observed, by some accounts, that "a democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government." Yet here we are, nearly 250 years into America's experiment with a government "of the people, by the people, for the people," as Abraham Lincoln proclaimed in his Gettysburg address. Sadly, now Tytler's idea - that democracy fails...
BELLOWS FALLS-The last of the corn. The fanciful mounds of winter squash. Hardy greens. The remains of the summer tomatoes and peppers. Are all in abundance in the farm markets right now, and there's much to be made from these treasures. Get the corn while it lasts, and buy a lot, blanch it, and pop it in the freezer to use all winter. You will thank yourself. Don't forget to freeze a few of the cobs as well. When you...
-The surprise team of the fall sports season has been the Bellows Falls girls' soccer team. After so many lean seasons, the Terrier girls have come into their own in 2025. With four games left in the regular season, BF has a 9-1 record and the No. 5 ranking in Division III. Their only loss this season came on Oct. 2 with a 3-1 defeat at the hands of Mount St. Joseph. The Terriers had a combined record of 6-40...
Jo Schneiderman is a retired educator and health administrator. Sarah Schneiderman found a new setting for her show, "More Garbage Than Fish," which runs through November at Old State Andrew's Church, 59 Tariffville Rd., in Bloomfield, Connecticut. Two other artists subsequently pulled their work from the exhibition in solidarity. For more information and to see more of Sarah Scheiderman's work, visit sarahschneiderman.com. BRATTLEBORO-My sister, Sarah Schneiderman, asked me to write a piece about self-censorship in the time of increasing authoritarianism...
BRATTLEBORO-Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark thinks about her oath of office daily, a pledge to uphold the Constitution of the United States and doing "equal right and justice to all person [...] according to law." She also regularly draws inspiration from a quote by musician and activist Joan Baez: "Action is the antidote to despair." Nine months into Clark's second term, her office has filed multiple suits against the Trump administration. She told an audience gathered in the Brattleboro Union...
WILLIAMSVILLE-Every day we wake up to news of yet another assault on our Constitution and our dignity as human beings, courtesy of the Trump administration, driven by his megalomania and Stephen Miller's rabid racism and messianic hatred of all things not-white. MAGA is counting on us to just keep reeling in disbelief as they get their ducks in order to impose full-on military rule. This is a critical moment when we cannot afford to ease our resistance efforts, even though...
BRATTLEBORO-Are you thinking about our Constitution's First Amendment today? I am. Before our revolution in 1776, Benjamin Franklin, one of our founding fathers, a resister of British tyranny at the risk of his life, wrote this (spelling and capitalization modernized): "I am an enemy to vice and a friend to virtue [and] a mortal enemy to arbitrary government and unlimited power. I am naturally very jealous for the rights and liberties of my country, and the least appearance of an...
BRATTLEBORO-Charlie Kirk very publicly said that he believed it was worth the cost of a few gunshot deaths each year in order to preserve the Second Amendment. I don't know if anyone got a chance to ask him how he would feel if his own death was among those, but certainly there is irony in the fact that that has now happened - and incredible hypocrisy in the fact that people are losing their livelihoods for pointing that out. Karen...
BRATTLEBORO-Brattleboro Memorial Hospital CEO Christopher Dougherty is on a leave of absence as state regulators express fears about the not-for-profit's fiscal health. "Stated as directly as possible, we are deeply concerned about BMH's solvency," the Green Mountain Care Board wrote in a recent budget decision. "We believe that its leadership must make big strides to adjust course." The 500-employee hospital named Dougherty as its chief executive officer in the spring of 2022. Two days after the state's Oct. 1 report,
BRATTLEBORO-Approximately 25 people turned out Sept. 11 for a Selectboard public budget listening session at Brooks Memorial Library, offering strong and sometimes conflicting feedback for both greater fiscal austerity and more creative revenue generation. Selectboard Chair Elizabeth McLoughlin opened the meeting by clarifying the current budget is not a "double-digit tax increase," as she noted has been reported. "The increased tax rate due to the municipal budget was an increase of 8.9%," she said. "When that tax was factored together...
BRATTLEBORO-Chuck Collins of Guilford has given us another text worthy of attention from those who care about climate, equity, democracy, and prosperity. Burned by Billionaires - the eighth book by or co-authored by Collins - is, according to promotional materials, "a scathing exposé of the hidden impact of America's ultra wealthy on our social, economic, political, and ecological landscape - as well as a path toward a more equitable future." As described in a 2016 profile in The Commons, Collins...
Marc Thurman is the director of the Centers for Diversity and Inclusion at Landmark College. He graduated from the college in 2018 and is also head coach of the men's basketball team. He lives in Putney and was a founding member of the town's Putney Equity and Inclusion Advisory Committee. PUTNEY-October marks Learning Disability (LD) Awareness Month, a time set aside to shine a light on the challenges and successes of people who learn differently. For me and my colleagues...