“Closing the cycle: Advocates rally in support of cooling the river” [News, Sept. 19] offered excellent reporting on bad facts given to the reporter. The protesters said that the shad have decreased since the 1990s. What about the years since 1972 until the 1990s when the plant was operating?
Applications sought for town Human Services funding BRATTLEBORO - The Brattleboro Human Services Review Committee is accepting applications for fiscal year 2014 Human Services Funding. The application, as well as instructions and guidelines, are on the Brattleboro website, www.brattleboro.org The Human Services Review Committee information meeting is scheduled on...
Main Street Arts community arts center has announced its fall lineup of classes. Drawing for Beginners with Matthew Peake meets Wednesdays for six weeks through Oct. 24 from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Peake will follow the course with a six-week figure drawing class Wednesdays from 7 to 8:30 p.m., beginning Nov. 7. The fee for either class is $54 for members and $72 for nonmembers. Lynn Hoeft will lead two sessions in Beginning Watercolor on Sundays, Oct. 28 and Nov.
It has been the policy of the union organizing committee at the Brattleboro Food Co-op not to harass co-workers, but rather to give them multiple opportunities to talk with us or to attend meetings so that they can be better informed. We also trust that our co-workers are intelligent and mature enough to be able to make their own decisions. If any of our co-workers have felt that we used “inappropriate tactics,” we would certainly want to know about it.
While I am still neutral on the issue of whether the BASIC skatepark should be built in Crowell Park, I am strongly in favor of proper and legal community processes in deciding this, and I would like to observe some facts. I attended the Development Review Board (DRB) meeting of June 20, 2011, where the skatepark siting was first considered. After Zoning Administrator Brian Bannon testified that he thought this was a “minor” change to an existing facility, the board...
We are getting complaints from workers at the Brattleboro Food Co-op who are being badgered to remove their names from our petitions, not vise-versa. This is the most compassionate, caring group of union supporters I have ever had the pleasure of working with. I am very proud of their positive, up lifting, transparent, inclusive message.
At last! I'm not really referring to the mere three-week delay, but to the long 50 years that the Bellows Falls, Westminster, Grafton, Athens, Rockingham, Saxtons River, Bartonsville, and Cambridgeport children have waited to attend a school that was healthy, clean, well-heated and -cooled without drafts and suffocating heat and, most importantly, a school that is ready to enter the technological 21st century. Because of lack of loving care and simple maintenance, this beautiful building was left to deteriorate and...
Jack Beatty, news analyst for the public radio talk show On Point, considers the presumed inevitability of World War I and chronicles largely forgotten events leading up to the conflict in his talk, The Lost History of 1914: Reconsidering the Year the Great War Began, on Wednesday, Oct. 3, from 7 to 9 p.m., at the Brooks Memorial Library. This talk is the first presentation of the 2012-13 season of the First Wednesdays series, sponsored by the Vermont Humanities Council.
Employees from Entergy Vermont Yankee, C & S Wholesale Grocers, and GPI Construction of Brattleboro teamed up to offer their time and services to renovate the Brattleboro Area Drop In Center. The center, which opened in 1988, has needed attention for some time, its supporters said. Crews worked during the week of Sept. 17. “We wanted a community project for our employees to be involved with that would make a difference,” said Michael McKenney of Entergy Vermont Yankee and vice...
As a young police officer in the early 1960s, I was leaving the police station one afternoon and observed my first skateboarder on Grove Street Hill headed toward Main Street. The late Sgt. Albert Hall and I were both shocked to see that this young man was standing on his head with his hands keeping his body upright on the skateboard. From that time on, the complaints of skateboarders increased, and we heard the same remarks that we need a...
The Bellows Falls girls' soccer team had a breakthrough season last year. After slogging through a 1-12-1 record in 2010, the Terriers finished with an 11-4-1 record and advanced to the Division III semifinals for the first time in the program's history. So last Monday's game against Brattleboro was a good measuring stick for where the 2012 Terriers are at as a team. While the final score - Brattleboro 5, BF 1 - suggests it was a rout, let the...
Failure to keep adequate and appropriate records is a liability to our small towns. When municipalities become unable to provide documentation to substantiate or disprove accusations, it points to a deficiency in management. Over the years, I've seen town officials and employees who do not document incoming complaints, but rather ask the caller to call a different elected official (who also does not document the complaint). When we fail to centralize or even keep records, we forego the ability to...
Area youth bands will attempt to launch their musical careers by competing at Youth Services' Battle of the Bands at the River Garden on Friday, Nov. 2, during Gallery Walk night, from 7 to 10 p.m. This event is part of Youth Services' 40th Anniversary celebration. The public is encouraged to attend and vote for their favorite group with their applause. In addition to the audience and youth judges, several individuals from both the recording and music industry will help...
Obituaries • Doris Squire Goss, 90, of Brattleboro. Died Sept. 17 at home. Wife of the late John P. Goss. Mother of Deborah Goss of Lexington, Mass.; Janet Burke and her husband, Jim, of Montpelier; Heather Fischer and her husband Sam of Mashpee, Mass.; and John Rollin and Emily Goss of Carnelian Bay, Calif. Sister of Polly S. Quinn of Hinesburg, and the late Helen Evans, Anne Hayer, Horace Squire, and Ruth Briggs. Born in Moretown, the daughter of the...
RE: “Still waiting, moving on, still more to do,” Aug. 29: Thanks for this informative article. As a Rockingham taxpayer whose taxes went up 17 percent this past year, I've been told that the cost of the Bartonsville Bridge plus the library renovations plus the school renovations guarantee years of double-digit tax increases. Prospective real-estate buyers are already scared off by the town's steep taxes...to say nothing of how these taxes affect folks who already live here. If FEMA doesn't...
On the village greens of cities and towns all over Vermont, you will see monuments honoring those who died to preserve the Union during the Civil War. Most, like the monument of the Brattleboro Town Common, face south. Legend has it that they were built that way so that the Confederate states don't get any ideas about rebelling again. The record of Vermonters in the Civil War is a proud one, as this little state delivered more in manpower and...
Few of the many people who attend the Marlboro Music Festival realize that some of the fine string instruments that they have been listening to were made only a few miles away in the rural Vermont countryside. Since 1981, Doug Cox, one of 16 area artists who will display their work in the Brattleboro-West Arts (BWA) annual open studio tour this weekend, has built more than 600 violins, violas, cellos, and baroque instruments. His instruments have received awards from the...
As an employee and shareholder of the Brattleboro Food Co-op, I have to question the validity of many of the signatures on the petition during the recent union organization drive [News, Sept. 12]. When questionable and inappropriate tactics are used to get people to sign, that is not a “vote” for the union. People are signing so that they will be left alone after being approached over and over again, usually while they are trying to work.
I am extremely grateful and humbled to be honored with the Democratic nomination for state representative to the Windham-3 district. Many people worked very hard to help me reach this point, and my thanks go out to every person who voted, made phone calls, wrote letters, placed lawn signs, and talked to friends and neighbors. I encourage all of you to continue to contact me and help direct your representation in Montpelier. My contact information is 802-376-1134 and [email protected]. Please...
I am truly enjoying the campaign trail this election season, even with the task of coping with an uninterested press. Unfortunately, our democracy is ruled by whatever choices the press will offer. In Vermont, the press will say that poll numbers decide their interest in covering the candidate. It must be obvious to any thinking person that poll numbers can only be honestly developed after public scrutiny, not before; in article after article, the press frames the election for governor...
State Representative Mike Mrowicki now works with the Vermont Fatherhood Initiative, “a fledgling group of dedicated volunteers made up of parents, professionals and concerned citizens who believe fathers count and that responsible fathering is an essential part of healthy child development,” according to a 2011 press release. The story “Hungry people, fewer resources” [News, Sept. 19] affiliated him with his previous employer, Putney Family Services. Dave Gale, identified in the same piece, says that his participation in an interview on...
The Rockingham Free Public Library (RFPL) is celebrating Banned Books Week, Sept. 30 through Oct. 6, an annual celebration of the freedom to read. Drawing on the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment, local librarians work to ensure that everyone is free to choose from a diversity of viewpoints and an array of possibilities in selecting reading material. The RFPL is hosting a display and encouraging community members to visit and check out a banned book. Librarians will talk about...
We recently placed a “Re-Site the Skate Park: Preserve Crowell Lot” sign in our front yard. The following morning, the sign has been stolen. This is not the first time we have been vandalized since publicly opposing the skatepark plan, despite having never been vandalized in nine years previously. Apparently, the compromise being sought is too much to ask. I walked around the neighborhood a bit to see if others' signs had been removed, and it appears they have not.
Richard Schmidt's letter [“Anti-VY group tells slanted story about shad,” Letters, Sept. 19] has a few bloopers in it: • Mr. Schmidt mischaracterizes our funding sources. A variety of foundations fund CRWC, none of which identifies as antinuclear. We never applied for grants to undertake antinuclear activities. These funding sources and the members of CRWC, through their dues and donations, have funded us to protect the river, not to mount an antinuclear campaign. • Contrary to Mr. Schmidt's claim, biologists...
In “The madness of history” [Viewpoint, Sept. 5], the writer uses the phrase “the societal stigma of mental illness.” Never would I cooperate with someone's claim of “stigma,” and never would I suggest any prejudice is universal, the “societal” stigma, for example. That this appears on your page suggests that you have internalized it. You have removed other “stigmas” from your mind and paper, please remove this one. And if I may, a question: If someone detects a stigma, it...
The Vilas Bridge that spans the Connecticut River and links Bellows Falls and North Walpole, N.H., may have moved up the list to No. 8 in New Hampshire's 2011 bridge priority list. But according to New Hampshire Department of Transportation (NHDOT) Bridge Design Administrator Mark Richardson, it has dropped to No. 23 on this year's list. This came as disappointment to Bellows Falls and Rockingham residents, who feel the Vilas Bridge is critical to their economy. Meanwhile, on the alternate...
The Selectboard and an ad-hoc committee are considering two separate proposals to put an arts studio and gallery in the former Archery Building, the town-owned structure at 26 Depot St. While about two dozen people showed up in July for a tour of the building, only two submitted proposals before the Sept. 12 deadline set by the town. Fulcrum Arts, a collaboration of glassblower Randi Solin and ceramic artist Natalie Blake, is making its third try at moving its current...
In a post on my blog some time ago, I made a passing comment that European birds are dull. My comment prompted an e-mail from a British birder: “You have obviously never felt the numinous awe when in the presence of a Garden Warbler in full nuptial splendour! Some would say that they even surpass Warbling Vireos in their sheer beautiousness.” It was a busy time, and it took a while for my mental processor to register the comparison to...
Two financial questions relating to upgraded police and fire facilities will go before the Representative Town Meeting Members on Oct. 20. Meeting members will vote at a Special Town Meeting whether to assess a 1 percent sales tax and whether to approve a bond for the multi-million dollar upgrades to the police and fire stations. Funds generated by the 1 percent sales tax would help finance the capital improvements to the three stations. Without the tax, said Selectboard Chair Dick...
Poets from around the region will participate in a worldwide effort to “share in a day of global healing,” according to event organizer GennaRose Nethercott, organizer and moderator of the 100 Thousand Poets for Change reading on Saturday. The free reading, one of 800 such events in 115 countries, is designed to share poetry and song that gives voice to peace, economic justice, and environmental sustainability, though poets at the Brattleboro event will speak to all contents. “Any art within...
Melrose Terrace, Moore Court, Hayes Court, the former R.S. Roberts property on Fairground Road, and the People's United Bank/ReNew lot on Putney Road have made the final cut as the Brattleboro Housing Authority (BHA) moves ahead with creating new affordable housing. If these sites prove feasible, they could provide 260 to 300 units. Project Manager Adam Hubbard said these five properties represent the best of the best of the 25 properties vetted by the BHA as potential housing sites. The...
Local and federal representatives met Sept. 20 to discuss the Brattleboro Housing Authority's current housing plans and offer support for the BHA's future. Meeting attendees included representatives from Housing and Urban Development (HUD); the Federal Emergency Agency (FEMA); representatives from the offices of U.S. Sens. Patrick Leahy and Bernie Sanders, and Congressman Peter Welch; town officials; BHA staff; the Windham-Windsor Housing Trust; and engineering firm Stevens & Associates. According to Adam Hubbard, Project Manager for Stevens & Associates and the...
The penultimate step of solar-powering at the new Brattleboro Food Co-op took place late last week as six workers operated a 70-foot-high crane to lift the solar panels and related equipment from truck beds to the roof of the building at the bottom of Main Street in Brattleboro. The last step, installing and turning on the photovoltaic solar array to supply 30.6 kilowatts of electricity to the busy and complex building below, is planned for mid-November, according to Tom Simon,
The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) will open this fall's six-week series of lectures on Monday, Oct. 8. In the morning programs, Meg Mott will present “The Politics of Eating,” an investigation of how food production and consumption pertain to the right ordering of society. Meg teaches political theory at Marlboro College and is a popular OLLI lecturer. The afternoon lectures, “The Marvelous Machine: The Workings of the Human Body,” will be presented by Bob Engel, also of the Marlboro...