BRATTLEBORO - The Brattleboro Development Credit Corp. (BDCC) is doing an an economic impact survey regarding flooding from Tropical Storm Irene.
BDCC plans to use the results to inform the bigger picture in terms of quantifying business loss in addition to building loss or damage. If your business had flood related economic loss due to the storm, please take the survey.
...Obituaries Editor's note: The Commons will publish brief biographical information for citizens of Windham County and others, on request, as community news, free of charge. • Norman J. Boyd, 75, of Marlboro. Died Oct. 17. Husband of Joyce Johnson for 53 years. Father of Anthony Boyd. Brother of the...
Tropical Storm Irene's floodwaters have returned to the Connecticut River after filling the Allen Brothers farm on Route 5 in Westminster with five feet of water, and the Allens and their employees are trying to rebuild. The store has partially reopened, and the company hopes to have the farm...
On the first Friday of each month, beginning Nov. 4, Marlboro College will sponsor “Friday Night (rainbow) Lights,” a drop-in group for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, queer, and questioning youth aged 20 and younger. The social and support group will take place from 6-9 p.m. in the “Chill Room” at the Marlboro College Graduate School, 28 Vernon St. The group will offer a place where young people can relax, watch a movie, play a board game, vent, bond, and talk...
The regular season ended for Vermont's soccer teams ended on Saturday, a season filled with surprises and disappointments. Under the surprise category falls the Bellows Falls Terriers girls' soccer team. After finishing 1-12-1 last season, they are having a dream season in 2011. With a 2-0 win over Long Trail School last Tuesday, the BF girls earned their eighth victory of the season. No other girls' soccer team in school history had ever reached those heights. Chelsea Wilder scored an...
As this reader pens this missive, Vermont Yankee's twin- Fukushima - has caused a permanent evacuation of 160,000. The plant has created a radioactive no-go zone bigger than that left by the 1945 atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What happened in Japan can happen in the United States. Actually, Fukushima is not a twin. After the uprate in 2006, our plant is licensed to run at 120 percent of its original design capacity, making the whole operation a science...
If you drive long enough, it will happen to you. Something small darts into the road in front of you. You slam on the brakes, but it's too late. There's a sickening thud, and in the rearview mirror you see a flattened chipmunk. Every year thousands of animals, from mice to moose, become roadway fatalities. Most of the victims seem to be squirrels. They have a manic and indecisive crossing style. Like rodent matadors they cheat death by dashing in...
The Vermont State Hospital in Waterbury, an integral - and controversial - part of the state's mental health system for well over a century, has treated its last patient. Last week, Gov. Peter Shumlin pronounced the antiquated facility, built in 1890 and flooded out by Tropical Storm Irene, finished as a treatment site for Vermonters in mental health crisis. “It is old, it is decrepit,” he said, and it does not serve Vermonters well. “It is my intention to never...
Just in time for Halloween, director Josh Moyse presents stage adaptations of two stories by Edgar Allan Poe at the Center for Digital Arts space at 74 Cotton Mill Hill. Edgar Allan Poe was a 19th-century author and poet best known for his tales of gothic horror. Moyse admits he chose the project largely due to the idea that it would be fun to examine Poe's works during Halloween, which Moyse calls his “favorite holiday.” But he was also drawn...
Everyone has his or her own way to cope with loneliness. During my last visit to Florida, I relied on baseball and my cat. Some background may be needed here: I am the sole caretaker of my 94-year-old mother, who lives in Florida. Because Mom had a rough year with her health, she couldn't spend part of the summer in Vermont this year. So when her doctors gave her the go-ahead, we happily decided to take a little three-day South...
On a gray, drizzly day in a region still drying out from Tropical Storm Irene, U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., visited Allen Brothers Farm to announce three agricultural bills aimed at opening federal funds for uninsured farmers. “You've got to farm another day,” said Welch to the farmers who met with him. “[Recovery is] impossible without money, and we've got to help,” he added. The farmers who spoke with Welch on Oct. 18 questioned whether the money would meet their...
An Oct. 20 groundbreaking ceremony marked the beginning of the next step in upgrading passenger service on Amtrak's Vermonter. Vermont Transportation Secretary Brian Searles joined officials from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts - including Lt. Gov. Timothy P. Murray, Congressman John Olver, D-Mass., and Massachusetts Secretary of Transportation Richard A. Davey - and U.S. Federal Railroad Administrator Joseph Szabo to kick off reconstruction of the Pan Am Southern's rail line between East Northfield and Springfield, Mass. The “Knowledge Corridor” project, so-called...
Down in New York last week, my wife Laura Richardson and I spent a day among the citizens of Occupy Wall Street. What a live group of everybody. The best pacifism of the 1960s prevails in an even loftier incarnation, the sort of powerful silence that Martin Luther King Jr. meant everyone to express, because he then and they now understand that the basic social structure must be replaced. There's no point whatever in protesting this figure or that, this...
Cory Walker's fourth season farming in Vermont turned into a wet one. Walker listened to U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., introduce three agricultural assistance bills during the congressman's recent visit to Allen Brothers Farm. The farmer has not purchased federal crop insurance for his farm, Guerrilla Grown Produce. Walker explained the insurance does not meet the needs of small organic farmers but instead favors “large-scale grain” farms. Walker rents fields for Guerrilla Grown and plants in two-week cycles on small...
For the past 18 months, the faculty and staff at Bellows Falls Union High School has been preparing for the New England Association of Schools and Colleges' (NEASC) visit in November. School administrators say they are very excited about having the opportunity to impress the NEASC team with the wide array of programs, activities, courses, and academic supports at the school This NEASC evaluators examine every aspect of a school and, ultimately, extends accreditation to institutions that meet its standards.
Despite what we hear from our pro-Vermont Yankee neighbors, nuclear power is nasty stuff. Its genealogy can be traced back to the two atomic bombs the United States dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 killing approximately 214,000 people. The resulting black eye for the U.S. prompted the development of a “peaceful atom” initiative that would use nuclear fission to boil water into steam to operate turbines to generate electricity. It was going to be power “too cheap to meter.”
Edward Jaffe [“Perfection: political tactic or prerequisite?,” Point/Counterpoint, Oct. 19] makes a personal judgement that perfection is required in the use of nuclear power. Thirty governments around the world committed to nuclear power judge differently. They compare to the alternatives. The math that he suggests - risk from one plant times the number of plants - was done 35 years ago in the NRC's official report on risk (WASH 1400, the Rasmussen Report). Mr. Jaffe persists in the tired old...
The debate on the Vermont Energy Plan has been hot and heavy. Many people say that achieving a 90-percent reliance on renewable power by 2050 is impossible, would be too costly, or will require new technology that might never be developed. One thing no one seems to notice, however, is that the envisioned goal has already been achieved in Europe communities. We can look to real, working systems to see how to do it. One example is a town in...
Well put, Edward Jaffe [“Perfection: political tactic or prerequisite?,” Point/Counterpoint, Oct. 19] . But I wonder why you wrote, “Multiply 10 years by 103 really old plants” NRC commercial reactor license extensions are for 20 years! (The original license period of 40 years was intended to be a really long time, beyond which no one would ever consider operation.) I live near yet another Fukushima-style General Electric reactor, Pilgrim, in Massachusetts. Being able to buy home insurance against a reactor...
I am saddened and disturbed by the recent actions of the Board of Directors of The Gathering Place. Lynn Bedell, who worked as its executive director, built up and maintained a vibrant, financially sound, much-loved program. The staff were very happy with her leadership as well as the support and respect they received from her program participants. Their families and caregivers were happy with the caring, safe, fun environment that Lynn and the wonderful staff made available at The Gathering...
Like Cesar Chávez, the labor leader celebrated in a new one-man show, Fred Blanco believes in making people feel uncomfortable. Blanco wants “to force an audience to re-examine their beliefs. Nothing could be greater than if they went home thinking about the ideas in the performance for hours.” From award winning solo-performer Blanco, The Stories of Cesar Chávez comes to Hooker-Dunham Theatre on Thursday, Nov. 3. This dramatic bilingual portrayal of the civil-rights activist and labor leader blends fact and...
At its annual meeting on Sept. 28, the Board of Directors of the United Way of Windham County elected four new members: Sharon Dunn Gordon, Pam Matweecha, Michael McKenney, and Anne Weinberg. “These new members represent diverse professional backgrounds and, together, their skills and expertise will further strengthen United Way's Board of Directors,” said Board Chair Bahman Mahdavi. “We are fortunate to have access to such a talented group of people, especially as we are looking at another difficult year...
I enjoy standing on the top deck of the parking garage in Brattleboro and watching the pigeons swirl over the downtown buildings. These masters of urban adaptation thrive in the barren habitats of cities and towns. As I walk down the stairs to Flat Street, I pause to watch the pigeons' activity in the rock retaining wall beneath Elliot Street. Like the ancient cliffs that gave them their name, Rock Pigeon, they build their simple nests in the wall and...
On Wednesday evening, Nov. 2, at 7 p.m., at the Latchis-4 Theatre on Main Street, there will be a presentation by award-winning documentary filmmaker Hitomi Kamanaka, who will discuss the issue of nuclear power in Japan and events there in the aftermath of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear disaster. She will also present selections from several of her films that address the dangers of nuclear power and weapons. Kamanaka's presentation will be accompanied by an informational exhibit covering the first six...
Two months after flooding from Tropical Storm Irene devastated the Glen Park mobile home community in West Brattleboro, there are still gutted trailers and piles of debris. Volunteers have been helping clean up the damage, but Glen Park residents are still frustrated by the pace of the recovery. According to figures issued recently by the Vermont Department of Economic, Housing and Community Development, more than 433 mobile homes were damaged or destroyed in 15 mobile home parks around the state.
Dartmouth College professor Annelise Orleck will discuss the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire in a talk at Brooks Memorial Library on Nov. 2. Her talk, “100 Years since Triangle: The Fire that Seared a Nation's Conscience,” is part of the Vermont Humanities Council's First Wednesdays lecture series and takes place at 7 p.m. On March 25, 1911, a fire at the factory in Greenwich Village killed 146 young workers, most of them young immigrant Jewish and Italian women. With exits...
The internationally acclaimed U.S. Army Jazz Ambassadors of Washington, D.C., will present a free public performance at the Brattleboro Union High School Auditorium on Sunday, Oct. 30, at 2 p.m. The concert is sponsored by American Legion Post 5. As the premier touring big band for the U.S. Army, the Jazz Ambassadors band travels thousands of miles each year throughout the nation and abroad, “keeping the will of the American people behind the members of the armed forces and supporting...
Workers during Sunday afternoon's shift change at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant were greeted by a group of sign-carrying people standing at the gates. Only on this day, the people standing in front of the plant were waving and shouting their encouragement. In what VY Site Vice President Michael J. Colomb said was likely a first at the plant, about 30 people gathered to express their support for Vermont Yankee. “They see a lot of the other side, so it's...
A vegetable garden was the big story from Oak Park, Michigan this past summer. Julie and Jason Bass had uprooted their front lawn, built raised beds, and planted some seeds. Voila! Lettuce, carrots, cucumbers, herbs! Their neighbor complained to city planner Kevin Rulkowski that the garden “disrupted the look of the neighborhood.” Rulkowski agreed, citing an ordinance requiring that city lawns contain “suitable” plant materials consisting of grass, trees, and flowers. Lawyers were hired, all parties went to court, and...
Nearly eight weeks ago, Melrose Terrace residents evacuated their homes as Tropical Storm Irene's rains swelled Whetstone Brook and sent it over its banks. The 26 residents displaced by Irene have been staying with family or friends or in hotels, said Christine Hart, executive director of the Brattleboro Housing Authority (BHA), which manages Melrose Terrace and five other properties. Melrose caters to elderly and disabled individuals and the BHA is now paying the bill for most of the temporary housing.