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Your support powers every story we tell. We're committed to producing high-quality, fact-based news and information that gives you the facts in this community we call home. If our work has helped you stay informed, take action, or feel more connected to Windham County – please give now to help us reach our goal of raising $150,000 by December 31st.
• Graveside committal services with full military honors for William “Bill” Fleming will be conducted Saturday, Dec. 13, at 11 a.m. in Locust Ridge Cemetery. A memorial gathering in celebration of his life will follow the burial, to be held at the American Legion from noon to 4 p.m. Mr. Fleming, 80, of Brattleboro, died Nov.15, 2025, at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital. To view his full obituary or offer condolences, visit atamaniuk.com.
This Milestones item was submitted to The Commons.
...MONTPELIER-Those who heat with wood may be wondering if their firewood is dry and ready to burn. Vermonters can check out a moisture meter for free from several local public libraries, thanks to a statewide loan program from the Department of Libraries and the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC).
BELLOWS FALLS-Pulitzer-prize nominated author Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling will appear at the Rockingham Free Public Library Friday, Dec. 12, at 7 p.m., reading from and discussing his work. The event will be hosted by Bellows Falls artist and event presenter Charlie Hunter. What happens when libertarians take over a small New...
BRATTLEBORO-New England Center for Circus Arts (NECCA’s) annual holiday circus show is ABBAsolutely fabulous, with two performances Sunday, Dec. 14, at 1 and 4 p.m. “Get ready to boogie and ‘have the time of your life’ at this dazzling student show,” wrote organizers in a news release, a show they promise “will transport you into a world where high-flying acts meet the hottest disco beats in a cabaret style extravaganza.” Organizers said to expect “a spectacular display of talent, energy,
WEST BRATTLEBORO-A holiday music tradition returns to West Brattleboro on Sunday, Dec. 14, at 3 p.m. “TubaChristmas” brings together players of valved, low-brass instruments, including the tuba and euphonium (also known as a baritone horn), to rehearse and perform Christmas carols specially arranged in four parts for a tuba choir. TubaChristmas events take place in over 300 cities throughout the United States and in several other countries. The West Brattleboro event will be held at the First Congregational Church, 880...
BRATTLEBORO-The Public Assets Institute, Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG), and Planned Parenthood will host a presentation on what they call “the unprecedented challenges posed by federal rollbacks and cuts,” on Thursday, Dec. 11, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at American Legion Post 5 on Linden Street. These groups have been presenting their data at meetings all across Vermont to inform residents about changes and what they mean for working families and at-risk communities. The panel of experts at the...
BURLINGTON-The University of Vermont (UVM) Extension is offering its signature Extension Master Gardener (EMG) program in 2026. The fully online program provides new and seasoned gardeners with research-based information on core horticulture topics, including soil fertility, botany, pest management, pollinator plants, tree care, and vegetable and fruit growing. Track 1 is for those who have lived in Vermont for more than one year and would like to become a Certified Extension Master Gardener (EMG) volunteer to help other Vermonters learn...
BRATTLEBORO-The meeting of the Windham County Genealogy Interest Group will focus on "Using an AI Assistant for Genealogy & Do You Know About Elephind? The Free Newspaper Search Portal," Saturday, Dec. 13, from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., via Zoom and in person at Brooks Memorial Library, 224 Main St. In case of inclement weather, it will be Zoom only. "NotebookLM can be a powerful tool for genealogy research by acting as a personalized AI assistant that organizes, analyzes, and...
Craft and learn about healthy watersheds with WCNRCD BRATTLEBORO — Join Windham County Natural Resources Conservation District (WCNRCD) and Bobbin & Skein, 51 Main St., on Thursday, Dec. 11, from 5 to 7 p.m., for hands-on crafting workshop themed around healthy watersheds. Starting at 5 p.m., a representative from WCNRCD will talk about the importance of healthy waterways and positive impacts everyone can have on local watersheds. After this overview, participants will create water-themed crafts at three different stations. Crafting...
MONTPELIER-Sixteen Vermont news organizations have been honored with the Local Civic Journalism Awards, a new program designed to steer state and philanthropic dollars to news outlets that inform Vermonters and foster civic engagement. The recipients represent a broad cross-section of local and regional news organizations - including both newspapers that have served their communities for well over a century and digital-only enterprises that have sprung up in recent years to fill a void. They include nonprofit and for-profit entities and...
BRATTLEBORO-The Brattleboro Camerata presents “I Stand Here and Sing,” featuring the music of Bach and Hassler, Sunday, Dec. 14, at the Brattleboro Music Center. The 4 p.m. program includes Hans Leo Hassler’s “Dixit Maria” and “Missa super: Dixit Maria,” and Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Jesu, meine Freude,” BWV 227. Camerata Music Director Jonathan Harvey called the program “music to fill the spirit, with moods ranging from anxiously furious to tranquil and loving.” The program explores the musical connections between Hassler, one...
-The winter high school sports season in Vermont began on Dec. 1 as athletes started their preseason practices and coaches around the state started assembling their basketball, hockey, and ski teams. With dreams of a playoff run dancing in their heads, local teams will be taking to the court and ice starting this weekend. • Girls’ basketball starts Friday, Dec. 12, with the Leland & Gray Tip-Off Tourney in Townshend. Friday’s opening round has Brattleboro taking on Mount Anthony at...
Elayne Clift (elayne-clift.com) has written this column about women, politics, and social issues for almost 20 years. BRATTLEBORO-It was bad enough when the White House Oval Office was suddenly transformed into a fire sale of faux gold decorations dripping from the mantlepiece and every other available space. Before that it was an elegant room in the White House, lovingly called the “people’s house,” which has always been recognized as a National Historic Site. The “Oval” was a warm and elegant...
VERNON-On a chilly November afternoon, people representing organizations across Windham County filed through the door to Vernon’s Governor Hunt House Community Center. Inside, staff of the Good Energy Collective (GEC), a think tank and research organization based in Sacramento, California, greeted participants who had come to help researchers answer a question: “Can siting for nuclear waste facilities truly be community-centric?” As the participants headed toward a table filled with coffee and sandwiches, they paused to read flyers tacked to bulletin...
BRATTLEBORO-I was sad to see my friends, acquaintances, and community members condemn our representative, Becca Balint, for naming Israel’s genocide in Gaza. I am perplexed as to why she was singled out when our whole congressional delegation called out the genocide while submitting a resolution calling for ceasefire, peace, and a two-nation solution. I respectfully disagree with the recent letter from Vermont Friends of Israel asserting that Balint has relied on “long-debunked accusations and recycled falsehoods.” But I do agree...
BRATTLEBORO-I empathize with individuals on the streets who are suffering with addiction. I was placed on a benzodiazepine for more than two years, and I am now withdrawing from it. First, it was done with uninformed consent, and the drug was not to be dispensed for more than two weeks. I have been on this drug for more than two years. The withdrawal process has me feeling anxious, angry, and full of angst. Apparently, it might take more than a...
BRATTLEBORO-The 18-piece Vermont Jazz Center (VJC) Big Band, which marks 21 years of performing big band jazz, will celebrate the legacy of Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, and other world-class male vocalists in a swing-dance performance featuring acclaimed vocalist Peter Eldridge on Friday, Dec. 12 at 7:30 p.m. All profits from this concert will subsidize VJC's educational programs. Eldridge is best known for his work as a founding member of the internationally celebrated vocal group, the New York Voices. He...
NEWFANE-Dan DeWalt’s first sentence — “when Vermont Town Meetings speak, the nation and the world listen” — is a classic example of grandiose thinking. Reality check: I doubt very much that any decision in Washington, D.C., is predicated on a vote at Newfane’s Town Meeting. Similarly, I see little indication that it has any impact on decisions made in Montpelier. Just because we think Newfane town affairs are the reason for Town Meetings, we are accused of everything from being...
NEWFANE-To the people who signed on to Mark Treinkman's genocide-denial screed of half truths and contempt: Have you no shame? Dan DeWalt Newfane This letter to the editor was submitted to The Commons. This piece, published in print in the Voices section or as a column in the news sections, represents the opinion of the writer. In the newspaper and on this website, we strive to ensure that opinions are based on fair expression of established fact. In the spirit...
GUILFORD-Military in our streets, masked agents disappearing our fellow workers, social programs gutted, health care and food aid in peril: Where have Americans seen this before? Oh, yes: in the governments the U.S. has foisted on other peoples around the world over the past century, from Chile to Vietnam, from Guatemala to Iran. We did not seem to notice when our CIA and military created coups and supported bloody dictators. Well, we should have had more empathy, as the chickens...
Sophie Lampard Dennis has lived in Marlboro for 38 years. She is an educator who recently retired after 20 years as an associate professor at Landmark College in Putney. Her three children all attended Marlboro Elementary School. MARLBORO-Imagine, if you will, a town with no children. What does it look like? How does it feel? How does it sound? Would you want to live there? Here in Marlboro, we the voters are being asked to seriously consider closing our local elementary...
BRATTLEBORO-When you step into the art deco splendor of the Latchis Theatre this weekend, you will be stepping through a portal into a magical world of festivity, joy, fantastical heroism, delectable distortion of reality, and thrilling adventure. The Nutcracker ballet offers a sweet escape into the Land of the Sugar Plum Fairy, where tantalizing treats leap and twirl with rapture to the intoxicating score by Tchaikovsky. But what makes all this fantasy and beauty possible? It may seem everything is...
NEWFANE-Deborah Lee Luskin is mistaken in her understanding of the powers of the Selectboard when presented with a petition for non-town-related business to appear on the ballot at Town Meeting. In the memo "Rights to Reject Nonbinding Advisory Petitions," which can be found in the Vermont League of Cities & Towns guide to Town Meetings on its website, it is clear that municipalities have the right to reject non-binding advisory petitions, such as the ones presented to the Newfane Selectboard...
BRATTLEBORO-Brattleboro Memorial Hospital is projecting to end its current budget with a $14.5 million operating loss, potentially extending a string of annual shortfalls since 2020. “This is not the budget outcome we had hoped for,” Elizabeth McLarney, one of two acting co-CEOs, said in a Dec. 4 written statement. The 500-worker hospital, the main health care provider for about 55,000 people in southeastern Vermont, initially proposed a $121 million budget for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. Under the...
BRATTLEBORO-For the approximately 200 Afghan refugees who are now living, working, making friends, and paying taxes in Windham County, an undeniable chill is in the air. On Nov. 26, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29 — once part of a “Zero Unit,” a secret set of units of Afghans who operated under CIA direction and whose dangerous mandate in Afghanistan was to track down and kill Taliban leaders — has been accused of using his skills to shoot two West Virginia National Guard...
BELLOWS FALLS-Another historic but long-empty building in downtown Bellows Falls will have a new life as 7 Balls Brewing celebrates its soft opening this coming weekend at 94 Rockingham St. The brewery developed from years of home brewing by four local men: Scott Brandon, Steve Adams, Paul Lawrence, and Chris Sherwin, good friends since middle school. They graduated from Bellows Falls Union High School together but started home-brewing beer together only about eight years ago. At first, it was all...
BRATTLEBORO-Voters will weigh in next March at the polls on whether to continue the Representative Town Meeting (RTM) model or change to an open Town Meeting model. At the Selectboard’s Dec. 2 meeting, board members agreed unanimously to take the initiative to direct town staff to prepare the article for the Tuesday, March 3, 2026, town election. A draft article is expected at the end of January for their review. “Because it will be the will of the people immediately,
BRATTLEBORO-Recently, a majority of the Supreme Court justices expressed great skepticism about President Trump's executive overreach in his burgeoning tariff regime. While challenging the solicitor general's justification of Trump's use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs, Justice Gorsuch likened the president's illegal use of tariff authority to the illegal action of declaring war. Gorsuch pointed out not only that the president cannot declare war without the consent of Congress, the Constitution also does not even allow...
PUTNEY-This Saturday at Next Stage Arts, David Yazbek offers a one-man show, A Few Cheery Songs About Death, which, according to a press release, “promises an intimate night of music, witty repartee, and behind-the-scenes storytelling.” Yazbek, whose Putney stop is the show’s only stop in New England, has been described by The New York Times as “a daredevil juggler catching spiked pins in the traveling carnival of his imagination.” His current project is this 90-minute solo work — a weaving...
BRATTLEBORO-While Louisa May Alcott wrote a host of novels, poems, and short stories spanning sensationalist thrillers, feminist texts, and journalistic reportage, she may be best known for Little Women, a coming-of-age novel set in a Concord, Massachusetts-like New England town during the U.S. Civil War. New England Youth Theatre (NEYT) presents a scripted version of this enduring story of family love and perseverance as its 2025 holiday show. Adapted by Marisha Chamberlain and directed by NEYT’s artistic director, Ben Stockman,
KEENE, N.H.-As the days grow shorter through December, the Americana roots trio Low Lily seeks to add some light to this season of darkness with the group’s annual Winter Solstice Celebration tour, which comes to The Showroom at The Colonial Theatre in Keene on Friday, Dec. 12, at 7 p.m. The Brattleboro-based band is Liz Simmons, who plays guitar; her husband, Flynn Cohen, on guitar and mandolin; and Natalie Padilla on fiddle and banjo. Low Lily’s music is best described...
BURLINGTON-Following is a joint statement from the Vermont Afghan Alliance and the Central Vermont Refugee Action Network on the proposed action regarding refugees: The latest proposed action from the presidential administration regarding refugees is a truly disheartening one. What the administration describes - a reopening and review by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) of over 200,000 refugee cases dating from January 2021 to February of this year - would be devastating to a group in this country that has...