The Brattleboro Retreat had its Oscar moment on Feb. 26, when two of its own were honored for their work in two film festivals whose subjects deal with mental illness and addiction.
Dr. Robert E. Simpson, executive director and CEO and Konstantin von Krusenstiern, senior development director were presented with Producer's Circle Awards at Rhode Island's annual Oscar Night America party in Providence.
The award is presented to community and business leaders who have helped to nurture and build what has become Flickers: Rhode Island International Film Festival, which now has a presence throughout the New England region.
For the past three years, Flickers has worked with the Brattleboro Retreat creating both the Flickers North Country Film Festival and the Anna's Vision Film Festival.
Citing a need to crack down on unregulated spending in political campaigns, U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., unveiled a pair of proposals at the River Garden last week. In his visit on March 2, Welch called on the Internal Revenue Service to investigate whether nonprofit 501(c)(4) organizations affiliated with...
Sugar on Snow supper served in Grafton GRAFTON - A traditional Sugar on Snow supper will be served on Saturday, March 10 in Grafton at the chapel on Main Street (next to the Brick Church). Seatings are at 5 and 7 p.m. The menu includes ham, baked beans, scalloped...
Village Trustees recently presented the public with the proposed final design for the Saxtons River Park, which will emerge where the old Sandri building stood before it was torn down last year, on the corner of Westminster Road and Route 121 in the village. After almost a year of public comment and near weekly meetings with Terrigenous, a Chester landscape design firm, a final design was presented for approval at the Saxtons River Elementary School on Feb. 27, giving the...
Contract negotiations are always a challenge for school boards. On one hand, we all want to honor teachers for their dedication and hard work. On the other, we have an obligation to taxpayers to work within the financial realities facing our families and our nation. Recent years have been particularly hard economically; many, if not most, local citizens haven't seen a pay raise in years and many have lost jobs during the recession. Across the country, workers have been forced...
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. • Pauline L. Gates, 87, of Halifax. Died Feb. 27 at Pine Heights in Brattleboro. Wife of the late Eugene V. Gates for 62 years. Mother of Eugene P. Gates and his longtime companion, Flo Wilson, of Wilmington; Katherine Nebelski and her husband, William, of Hinsdale, N.H.; Sandra Gates Stevens of Greenfield, Mass.; Linda Swanson...
As you almost had to figure, it took until the 29th day of February before southern Vermont got itself a big snowstorm. And Feb. 29 also marked the start of the hockey and boys' basketball playoffs, so the foot or so of snow we received last Wednesday and Thursday made hash of the schedule for some teams. For the Brattleboro Colonels boys' basketball team, it meant two days of waiting, followed by back-to-back games on Friday and Saturday at the...
The Leland & Gray Players will present Metamorphoses, the second show in the troupe's 16th season, from March 15 to 17 in the Dutton Gymnasium on the Leland & Gray Campus on Route 30. Tony-award winning playwright Mary Zimmerman brings many of the original myths from Ovid's Metamorphoses to the stage in this play. Focused on change and transformation, the Players set each myth in a specific time period ranging from the '20s to the present day. Highlights from the...
The Gonzalo Bergarra Quartet will perform at the Vermont Jazz Center (VJC) in the “Hot Jazz for Warm Homes” Winter Benefit Concert, which will assist Windham County families and individuals struggling with unmet fuel assistance needs. The performance will take place on Saturday, March 10 at 8 p.m. at the VJC's performance space at 72 Cotton Mill Hill. Proceeds will be donated to Southeastern Vermont Community Action (SEVCA) and the Windham County Heat Fund, both of which provide emergency fuel...
The article that Nicole Charlebois wrote a few weeks back about her struggle with addiction [“Survival: A young woman recounts her difficult journey through drug addiction and recovery,” Voices, Feb. 8] was amazing and truly inspiring. Many people hear the words “drug addict” and they picture someone homeless on the street. We see these people every day. We walk by them on our way to work, school, home. We go on about our lives as if they do not exist.
The owners of Putney's much-loved Front Porch Café recently announced that they are closing their doors because of the recession, rising food costs and rent, shrinking income, etc. As a lover of the food and warmth of this little café, I rushed over for a last meal. I ordered and then popped my favorite question, “Do you have health insurance for your five employees?” “No!” they said. (I knew that few small businesses can afford it.) Insurance is costing more,
A second try at mediation in the legal dispute over a proposed 12,000-square-foot skatepark at the Crowell Lot has proven to be successful. At a special meeting Feb. 29, the Selectboard announced that it reached an agreement with a resident of Western Avenue, where the park is located, who appealed to the Vermont Environmental Court the decision of the Development Review Board (DRB) last summer to approve a permit for the skatepark. Barry Adams, who filed the appeal with the...
The Brattleboro Area Prevention Coalition (BAPC), in collaboration with the Vermont Department of Liquor Control (DLC), is co-sponsoring the DLC's Responsible Beverage Service Trainings. There are two separate, three-hour trainings: one geared specifically to retailers who sell alcohol and tobacco, and the other for establishments that serve alcohol. The next training opportunity for store clerks, cashiers, and managers will be held on Wednesday, March 14 from 3 to 6 p.m. The next training opportunity for all restaurant, club, and hotel...
According to the Brattleboro Traffic Safety Committee, there have been nine crashes involving pedestrians and vehicles in town in the last six months. Two of the nine crashes have resulted in the death of a pedestrian. In the most recent accident, on Feb. 27, a pedestrian was critically injured. In reviewing data from the nine most recent accidents, the committee found that six of the nine accidents occurred between 6 and 9 p.m., with four of those six occurring between...
Beginning on March 14, the Bellows Falls Opera House Cinema will show movies as part of its new Classic Film Series every Wednesday at 7 p.m. The theme for March is “A Feast for the Eyes.” Films scheduled are Gone With The Wind (March 14), The Wizard of Oz (March 21), and The African Queen (March 28). April's theme will be “Classic Black-and-White Dramas,” and May's will be “Great Musicals.” Municipal Manager Tim Cullenen said that the theater, located in...
The Connecticut River Watershed Council appreciates Vernon Representative Mike Hebert's engagement with our recent evaluation of Vermont Yankee's now long-pending application to renew their long-expired thermal discharge permit [“Something fishy,” Viewpoint, Feb. 29]. I'm sorry, however, that he's rushed into the breach without hearing what our experts said, understanding the law, or listening to the valid questions being asked by state and federal regulatory agencies as well as our experts. What our experts have concluded is that Entergy hasn't made...
On Saturday, March 10, the Meeting House School will hold its Annual Mudfling Event from 7 to 10 p.m. in Marlboro Center at the Meeting House, featuring a live performance by Red Heart the Ticker. “It's our last local gig before our second child comes along in May...and who knows for how long after that,” says Robin MacArthur, who performs “eclectic folk music from the woods of Vermont” with her husband, Tyler Gibbons. To raise funds for the preschool, the...
Melinda Holden Bussino of Westminster West, the executive director of the Brattleboro Area Drop In Center, died Sunday morning at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital. She was 65. Bussino had been hospitalized since Feb. 25 after suffering a massive heart attack while swimming laps at the Colonial Hotel's pool on Putney Road. She has been the executive director of the Drop In Center since January 1989. The daytime shelter on South Main Street serves as a community food shelf and offers support...
The need to protect the trees and playground in Crowell Park, inadequate parking, lack of public toilets, lack of access to drinking water, concerns for pedestrian safety, graffiti, trash, and noise (vs. sound): these issues all speak to a much larger one: the quality of life in a residential neighborhood. This might not be such a pressing issue if the park space in question was larger than 2.1 acres. (The park land is actually over 4 acres, but most of...
This time of year, I often sit in front of the fire with a pile of cookbooks at my feet like a little group of faithful dogs. I pick them up one by one, leaf through the pages in a leisurely manner, not necessarily looking for recipes for tomorrow's dinner. Cookbooks filled with ingredients and methods can be strangely devoid of a voice or a story that makes me care about the food described. I know why I cook, what...
I have been skateboarding for 12 years. I grew up in a town in northeast Florida that had a mindset toward skateboarding that was similar to Brattleboro's: laws banning skateboarding on public property, no public skatepark, etc. When it was determined that a public skatepark would be built within a quasi-residential, mixed-used recreation park, a similar backlash ensued. All of the same arguments that we've heard lately in Brattleboro were brought about: noise issues, drug use, vandalism, declining property values,
Re: “Legal costs better spent elsewhere” [Letters, Feb. 29]: This is a very misguided idea. At issue is a constitutional question that has far-reaching implications for the rights of states and the powers of the legislatures that represent the citizens at the state level. Further, the Vermont Yankee case rests on an agreement that Entergy made with the state of Vermont when the company purchased Vermont Yankee 10 years ago. If Judge Murtha's decision were to go unchallenged, it would...
In a sort of surreal thrill ride of an opinion piece [“Diplomacy, war, and the future of VY”] in The Commons and The Reformer last week, Jeffrey Lewis led us on an historically charged adventure in search of violence, war, and economic decay, culminating in a public-relations nightmare. What's puzzling is why he tried use Entergy Nuclear's litigation against the state of Vermont as his example. First, he dismisses the attorney general's legal arguments in the face of “a well-reasoned...
Conk-a-reeeee! Nine inches of black feathers, he stretches his neck skyward, opens his pointed bill, and pours forth nasally, gurgling phrases, sounds that could only be called a “song” by another of his species. As he sings, his wings open in flightless display, and red epaulets flash with sun-drenched brilliance even on the grayest of days. The Red-wing Blackbird has returned. In any year, regardless of the depth of the snow pack, the thickness of the ice on the pond,
I live on a dirt road in a green wood where most of my neighbors are called MacArthur - a robust clan steeped in music, books, and extended family. They do the work of woodcraft and gardens, weather and song. Over the past 20 years, I've watched a handful of the younger ones, babes in arms, become grinning “half-pints” rollicking the hay wagon. They grew up in the way their parents did: school across the field, supper from the yard,
On Thursday, March 8, at 7:30 p.m., the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center (BMAC), in partnership with Vermont Public Television and Brattleboro Community Television, presents a free screening of the widely acclaimed documentary Revenge of the Electric Car, which chronicles the story of the global resurgence of electric cars. The screening will take place at BMAC and will be followed by a discussion with Daniel Hoviss, electric car enthusiast and energy coordinator for the town of Putney. At 7 p.m.,
As I sit here grieving the loss of Melinda Bussino, I find myself wondering about my love of Brattleboro as a whole. People who live here like to talk about “the community,” and it always makes me wince. I see Brattleboro as being a grouping of circles, like the rings that form when you throw a polished rock into a pond. Each circle is round and full and each one is in the center of the next one, and in...
The date “March 21, 2012” rings with an emotional resonance in Windham County to people on both sides of the issue of whether Vermont Yankee should continue operating. As the last day of the plant's first 40 years of operation looms closer, even the most diehard antinuclear activists have conceded the likelihood that the plant will remain open despite a cornucopia of issues that remain under the state's jurisdiction. That doesn't mean that those opposing the plant have accepted the...
It's a little after 5 p.m. on an unseasonably cold Monday in Brattleboro. About two dozen people are waiting under the alcove of the side entrance to the First Baptist Church, waiting for the Overflow Shelter to open. Lucie Fortier drives in and parks her car in the parking lot at the rear of the church. Another night at the shelter is beginning. Volunteers from All Souls Church filter in, bringing in pans of lasagna, salad bowls of greens, and...
I should like to alert you to several errors in your reporting in a column by Jeff Potter [Editor's Notebook, Feb. 29]. You cited my magazine as vermontviews.com, which is actually a blog for a Burlington PBS station, and since the topic was on reporting rape perhaps they will not like it. Instead, I wonder if you will make these corrections to fact and to detail in print: a) The correct URL is vermontviews.org. b) I know it is usual...
Occasionally I'll read a book that really shakes me up. Eli Pariser's new book The Filter Bubble is one of those. In it, Pariser describes the increasing use of our Internet search history to personalize our Internet experiences. Most of the largest web companies - Google, Facebook, Twitter - develop algorithms to ensure we get the information that we are most likely to want. On one hand, this is something we all know. If I search for running shoes, it's...
Dorian Elgers-Lo, a 17-year-old senior at Amherst (Mass.) Regional High School, was this year's winner of the Windham Orchestra's 26th annual Concerto Competition, for young musicians, held at the Brattleboro Music Center on Feb. 12. Elgers-Lo has been playing piano for 10 years, studying previously with Ludmila Krasin, and currently with Gilles Vonsattel. He has won several regional and state piano competitions. In 2011, he placed second in the Bay State Contest, and placed first in the Young Artists' Piano...
The Brattleboro Selectboard remains unchanged after Tuesday's election with voters re-electing all the incumbents. According to Town Clerk Annette Cappy, of the 8,310 registered voters, 1,829 cast ballots. Cappy said this number represented a 22 percent voter turnout, which was lightly higher than last year's 18 percent. In the only contested Selectboard race, incumbent David Gartenstein won a three-year seat with 1,109 votes, with challenger Kathryn Turnas II garnering 511 votes. Incumbent Christopher Chapman won a second 1-year term with...