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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.
BRATTLEBORO — Beginning in early February and continuing through mid-April, AARP Foundation is providing free tax assistance and preparation through its Tax-Aide program.
AARP Foundation Tax-Aide is a volunteer-based tax preparation service. Volunteers are trained and IRS-certified every year to ensure they understand the latest changes to the U.S. Tax Code.
Tax-Aide will have two sites available again this year:
• Brattleboro Senior Center, 207 Main St., from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. on Thursdays, beginning Feb. 5. Call 802-257-7570 to schedule an appointment.
BELLOWS FALLS-Four contemporary singer-songwriters — John Gorka, Patty Larkin, Cliff Eberhardt, and Lucy Kaplansky — will perform an evening of music, “On a Winter’s Night,” Thursday, Jan. 8, at the Bellows Falls Opera House. “In 1994, folk-music den-mother, Christine Lavin, first gathered a group for a songwriting and performing...
BRATTLEBORO-An experimental group exhibit, “Work in Progress,” opens Thursday, Jan. 8, at 118 Elliot. The exhibit features the work of six painters who make up the 118 collective of artists: Tina Olsen, Ellen Cone Maddrey, Gayle Robertson, John Loggia, Liza Cassidy and Mary Therese Wright. Organizers wrote in a...
BRATTLEBORO-Artist Erika Ranee, a New York-based painter known for her dynamic abstract work, will present a hands-on workshop at the River Gallery School, 32 Main St., #201, Saturday, Jan. 17, from 2 to 4 p.m. Advance registration is required ($45; $35 for BMAC members). The workshop will be followed by an artist talk at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center (BMAC) at 5 p.m. Offered in connection with Ranee’s BMAC exhibition, “I Don’t Like to Draw,” these events provide a...
BRATTLEBORO-In September and October of 2025, artist Evie Lovett worked with students in the Art in the Neighborhood program, to create print images using a photographic process known as "cyanotype." The project, titled "Out of the Blue," referenced the blue monochromatic prints resulting from this simple sun-printing process and the element of surprise in their creation. Students also wrote poems based on their prints. The prints are currently on display at Brooks Memorial Library through the month of January. Art...
-This is the second season that Brattleboro Union High School has had a varsity girls’ gymnastics team, and it is steadily growing in stature. That growth could be seen in a pair of home meets for the Bears at the Gibson-Aiken Center during the holiday break. Brattleboro welcomed Middlebury on Dec. 27, and won the meet, 126.3-89.7. Lauren Chute led the way with first place performances in the floor (9.25), beam (9.40), and vault (9.10), and a second place on...
NEWFANE-As it does annually, Crowell Art Gallery at Moore Free Library, 23 West St., is featuring the Robert L. Crowell Art Collection. The collection will be shown until Friday, Jan. 30, during the library’s operating hours: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, 1 to 5 p.m.; Thursdays, 1 to 6 p.m.; and Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Displayed will be artwork by Mallory Lake, Jules Olitski, Emily Mason, Wolf Kahn, Janet Fish, Eric Aho, Diedre Scherer, Roger Sandes, James Urbaska, David...
BRATTLEBORO-ByWay Books & More, 399 Canal St., will host Joanne McNeil Hayes Sunday, Jan. 11, at 2 p.m. as she presents her collection of poetry based on the midwestern small town of Naperville, Illinois. Jennifer Ramstetter assisted McNeil Hayes with her prairie research. Part of that research was discovering the many connections between Vermont and Naperville with early 19th-century Vermont residents emigrating to Naperville specifically in search of fertile farmland. McNeil Hayes grew up in Naperville, writing poems about midwestern...
BRATTLEBORO-Join director Bob Thies and Rock Voices Brattleboro, a community rock choir, for an evening of choral music. The concert will be held at Centre Congregational Church, 193 Main St., Friday, Jan. 9, at 7:30 p.m. Rock Voices is backed by a full, professional rock band. Harmonies of Tony Lechner’s arrangements are sung by a 100-voice choir. This season’s songs are all Rock Voices greatest hits, including songs by Ozzy Osbourne, James Taylor, Adele, The Beach Boys, Supertramp, The Bangles,
BRATTLEBORO-On Jan. 3, Vermonters woke up to the news of the U.S. military’s attack on Venezuela over the weekend that led to the capture of the country’s leader, Nicolás Maduro. Within hours, a protest at Pliny Park was organized by Indivisible Brattleboro for the next day. Despite it being a cold and raw Sunday afternoon, approximately 200 people turned out on Jan. 4 to condemn the attack. Protestors lined the sidewalks on both sides of Main Street near Pliny Park.
BRATTLEBORO-The Vermont Jazz Center is excited to present Grammy Award–winning pianist Zaccai Curtis in concert Saturday, Jan. 17, at 7:30 p.m., when he will be performing two sets of Latin jazz with the musicians who appeared with him on the award-winning album Cubop Lives! He will be joined on stage by his brother, Luques Curtis, on bass, plus three percussionists: Willie Martinez III (timbales), Camilo Molina (congas, pandero), and Reinaldo DeJesus (bongos, chekere, guiro). Curtis based the instrumentation and groove...
HINSDALE, N.H.-The author is appalled that the United States is stopping drugs from coming here via speedboat, and that the Vermont Air National Guard has been ordered to serve. Please list for me an "unlawful" order that has been issued by our president. Protecting U.S. citizens is a crucial function of our government. The cost of drugs entering our country and the havoc they wreak here far outweighs the cost of a military response. If anyone objects to immigration laws,
BRATTLEBORO-Two new Narcan dispensers are now available in Brattleboro, one at Groundworks and one at Brooks Memorial Library, made possible through a partnership between the AIDS Project of Southern Vermont and the Community Substance Use Response (CSUR). The effort focuses on meeting people where they are by placing lifesaving medication in accessible, familiar spaces. As Library Director Starr LaTronica says, "The mission of libraries is to connect people with the resources they need. We are grateful to be able to...
Tim Kipp, retired history teacher of 39 years, has been a political activist since the 1960s, including draft and tax resistance, civil rights, and anti-war organizing. He is one of the founders of the Vermont Progressive Party, has been a longtime field organizer for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, and is currently active with the Vermont Indivisible movement. BRATTLEBORO-After nearly five years of the Trump reign, the siege on democracy intensifies. Citizens have learned much about the intentions and the trajectory...
MARLBORO-I recently read a fascinating article in Smithsonian about Robert H. Jackson, a chief prosecutor for the United States in the 1940s and later a Supreme Court justice. He is most well-known for his role in the Nuremberg trials, during which he addressed the International Military Tribunal about the atrocities committed by the Nazis in World War II. He made the case to the international panel of judges at war's end in 1945–46 and helped to draft the charter that...
BRATTLEBORO-Two years ago, as the Brattleboro Selectboard was considering a suite of changes to the town's land use regulations brought forward by the Planning Department, the board lauded those changes for being "inclusionary and reduc[ing] barriers to housing." Now, in response to the housing crisis becoming even more dire, the board has approved a transparently exclusionary interim zoning regulation that will hinder the work of social service groups' efforts to address that same housing crisis (alongside the opioid crisis, the...
DOVER-“The reality of this Legislature is that compromise is not optional” said Windham County’s only independent lawmaker, Rep. Laura Sibilia (I-Dover, Jamaica, Somerset, Stratton, and Wardsboro). Sibilia is returning to the House of Representatives with an agenda to strengthen systems that are under real strain. She is the ranking member of the House Energy & Digital Infrastructure Committee, the ranking member of the House Rural Economic Development Caucus, co-chair of the Vermont National Guard & Veterans Affairs Legislative Caucus, and...
BRATTLEBORO-This year, the Legislature will be concerned with economics, more economics and then, yes, even more economics. As the second half of the Vermont Legislature’s 2025-26 biennium began on Jan. 6, this refrain was on everyone’s lips: “This will be a hard season.” It certainly was on the lips of Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (D-Windham-7), and she should know. As chair of the House Ways and Means Committee and chair of the Joint Fiscal Committee, she has her pulse on the...
Beatriz Fantini lived in Venezuela for 10 years. She attended college there and worked as a journalist in Caracas and Maracaibo. She has been working with a group of Venezuelans since they arrived in Brattleboro last year. BRATTLEBORO-A telephone call from Caracas at 2:30 a.m. woke one of them up. They then started calling one another to share their joy. For these Venezuelans who live in Brattleboro, the stunning news about the American mission to capture Nicolás Maduro was the...
ROCKINGHAM-It became official on Dec. 29: Shaun McGinnis was named the permanent chief of the new, consolidated Rockingham Fire and Rescue Department (RFRD). The appointment of McGinnis, who had been serving in an interim capacity, was one of the last acts of outgoing Municipal Manager Scott Pickup, who has taken a similar position in Springfield. An interim municipal manager, Alex Torpey, was also named at the meeting. Pickup’s appointment of McGinnis was ratified by a resolution from the Rockingham Selectboard,
GUILFORD-Guilford-based singer-songwriter Luke Concannon is Irish, but he grew up in England, where he was influenced by Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell, Otis Redding, and Aretha Franklin, as well as by hip-hop “that did what singer-songwriters did in the ’60s, in terms of speaking truth to power and finding liberating ways of creating.” Inevitably, too, he was infused with his native Celtic roots music. “Music was a family affair,” says Concannon, who grew up with “sort of hippie-type parents.” “My dad’s...
Obituaries • Elwin Curtis Blood, 88, of Hinsdale, New Hampshire. Died unexpectedly Dec. 30, 2025, in the Emergency Department at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital after being stricken at his home. Elwin was born May 4, 1937, in Huntington, Vermont, the son of Edwin and Katherine (Zeno) Blood. He was raised in Huntington where he attended public school. A proud veteran, he served his country in the Air Force during the Korean Conflict, returning home to Vermont following his honorable discharge from...
Laura Chapman is a civic volunteer, social justice activist, and works with human-services nonprofits that help neighbors in need. PUTNEY-Not that long ago, Brattleboro voted to formally identify itself as a Compassionate Community: a town that commits to dignity, care, inclusion, and shared responsibility for one another, especially in moments of vulnerability. I believe this to be true and, through my professional and volunteer work, have seen it in action many times. As individuals, most of the people who serve...
BRATTLEBORO-Brown and Roberts Hardware on Main Street has sold the nuts and bolts of life for more than a century. So when the Aubuchon chain announced it was acquiring the business and six other locally owned Vermont stores in 2024, the news gave shoppers pause. Make that paws. “Please welcome our newest employees!” reads an entrance sign featuring a photo of two black cats. “Keep them safe and shut the door.” Makita and Milwaukee — named after popular brands of...