Predictably, the horror of the Newtown killings has once again raised the cry for gun control as the way to deal with the mass murders that have afflicted our nation.
According to Mother Jones, at least 62 mass murders - where the shooter killed four or more people - have taken place in 30 states since 1982.
Even though public support for gun control has dropped over the last decade and didn't improve after other mass shootings, it appears that some kind of policy might emerge from Washington this time.
The New York Times reported on Dec. 19 that “President Obama said he will submit broad new proposals on gun control no later than January and will commit his office to overcoming political opposition in the wake of the shootings in Newtown.”...
Though at times we might be embattled, it is far and away the things that unite us that lay down the common ground before us. Given a chance, together we can continue to effect change. When I first canvassed for marijuana decriminalization in Vermont in 2010, to my great...
Ninety musicians presented a double requiem chorus this past weekend which brought joy and light to listeners in packed pews at the First Baptist Church in Brattleboro. It was yet another superb production by the well-trained and well-rehearsed Brattleboro Concert Choir, aided by vocal soloists and instrumentalists all under...
Obituaries • Ruthmae Bridges, 87, of Keene, N.H., formerly of Brattleboro. Died Jan. 16 at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H. Wife of the late Ansil Roland “Jimbo” Bridges for 57 years. Mother of Ruthmae Bridget Gardner and her husband, Bruce, of Guilford; and the late Ronald W. Bridges. Sister of the late James K. Bacher. Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., the daughter of the late James and Ruth (Bergstrom) Bacher, she was raised and educated in Brooklyn. She had worked...
Nimbus Dance Works presents a night of contemporary dance on Thursday, Feb. 7, at 7 p.m., at Marlboro College's Serkin Dance Studio. The performance features “Shadow of Sound” by Taiwanese choreographer Huang Yi performed by American and Taiwanese dancers and Charles Weidman's 1936 masterpiece of socio-political dance, “Lynchtown.” Nimbus Dance Works (www.nimbusdanceworks.org) is a New Jersey based dance company composed of dancers drawn from major companies such as the Martha Graham Dance Company, Ballet Hispanico, and Ailey II. The China...
If you love hockey, and love to see it played with smoothness, efficiency, and smarts, you'll enjoy watching the Brattleboro Colonels boys' hockey team right now. The Colonels still play with their trademark aggressiveness, but now, they are a little smarter about how they use their size and strength. But most of all, the Colonels are playing with patience. They're not making mistakes, and they are controlling the puck and creating scoring chances. Brattleboro offered a near flawless example of...
Meeting Waters YMCA and Brattleboro Memorial Hospital have teamed up to bring the YMCA's Diabetes Prevention Program to the Brattleboro area. The year-long Wednesday-nights program begins Feb. 6, from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. It is available at no cost to participants thanks to support from the Vermont Blueprint for Health. The YMCA's Diabetes Prevention Program helps adults at high risk of developing Type 2 diabetes reduce their risk for developing the disease by taking steps to improve their overall health...
It happens every year. They start out in the fall, leaving the Canadian arctic, heading south. They trudge across miles of frozen forest, wade through icy streams, and climb barbed wire fences. They have to cross the border illegally, because governments don't issue passports. Some of them get busted and melt in overheated holding cells waiting for lawyers who never show up. Once they make it into the United States, the problems of snowmen have only begun. They have to...
Farming in Myanmar is topic of talk at Putney library PUTNEY - The Putney Public Library presents Howard Prussack, who will speak on “Myanmar: People, Farms and other Treasures” Thursday, Jan. 31, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at the library. Prussack, co-owner of High Meadows Farm, will show slides and relate his experience as an agricultural expert in Myanmar, formerly Burma, in November, 2012. He toured Myanmar and worked with tomato and onion farmers, sharing ideas for development, technology, and...
During the boom years for downhill skiing in Vermont in the 1950s and 1960s, ski areas big and small popped up on hillsides all across the state. Today, nearly every one them is gone. But one man is making sure they are not forgotten. Since 1998, Jeremy Davis has been combing New England in search of defunct ski areas, many that now only exist in memory. His New England Lost Ski Areas Project website lists the histories of 598 lost...
Puppeteer Brad Shur visits from Boston to present “The Magic Soup and Other Stories” at Sandglass Theater in Putney on Saturday, Feb. 2. Uncle Murray is coming over for dinner, but there's no food in sight! A young man's search for a family recipe brings folk tales to life in the fast-food-filled kitchen of his bachelor pad. Based on a collection of traditional Yiddish stories, “The Magic Soup” teaches that it is those with wit, humor and imagination who have...
I pastor a church of strong political opinions, both Republican and Democrat. I have parishioners who support the Tea Party and parishioners for whom the Democrats are far too conservative. But every Sunday morning, when we pass the peace of Christ in worship, they cross the aisles, shake hands, hug, and sincerely communicate their care for one another. My parishioners teach me about more than what it means to be a good American. They teach me about what it means...
The Vermont Department of Health's Agency of Human Services has awarded Twin States Network a $45,000 grant to fund one-on-one counseling for Vermonters living with HIV. CLEAR, which stands for Choose Life: Empowerment, Action, Results!, is a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention HIV intervention. The project's goals are to support people living with HIV in: • Achieving their short- and long-term goals; • Dealing more effectively with problems; • Developing daily routines that support and maximize physical and mental...
The Legislature is taking up a bill to make drivers' licenses and identification cards available for all Vermont residents. This is important, because a driver's license provides essential mobility in our rural state to fulfill fundamental human needs and rights to access health care, food, transportation, housing, socializing, and work. Currently, many undocumented migrant workers are not able to get a driver's license. Farmers rely on migrant workers to produce our dairy products, fruits, and vegetables. Both farmers and their...
Twilight Music presents acoustic Gypsy Pop quintet Occidental Gypsy at Hooker-Dunham Theater & Gallery on Friday, Feb. 1, at 8 p.m. Occidental Gypsy is pioneering the sound of Gypsy Pop, with their mélange of uptempo, high-energy rhythms of Gypsy swing/jazz melded with the catchy melodic hooks of contemporary American music. The group was formed by brothers Brett and Jeff Feldman as a straight-ahead Gypsy jazz quartet. With the release of its album “Over Here” (2011) and the addition of new...
I am sitting at the airport, about to head home from the the 56th presidential inauguration; overhead, they are “paging the person who just lost their iPhone.” I hear people walking by, talking about Obama. A tote bag with those big ears declares “forward.” It feels like everyone in the city was here to celebrate. I know some were just here because they live here, but I have to say, the waitstaff, pedestrians and Metro workers I talked to radiated...
Plenty of postal clerks retire without garnering a celebration. But Peter Sederstrom is no ordinary clerk. After 33 years and three months with the U.S. Postal Service, and 12 years as the lead clerk at the North Brattleboro post office on Putney Road, Sederstrom worked his last day behind the counter on Jan. 25. And his many loyal customers threw him a party to say goodbye to “Pete the Postman." The party in the post office lobby was organized by...
Falls Area Community Television (FACT) is getting a new look and better functionality, thanks to the 5 percent franchise fees cable towns collect and earmark for public access television. Executive Director Jacob Stradling said the renovations will bring “greater appeal from the door. It wasn't immediately clear (we are) a TV station.” Renovations are budgeted at around $26,000, Stradling said, but the cost might push $35,000. Funding comes from donations and cable provider franchise fees. Stradling said the biggest change...
Despite temperatures dipping into the teens, more than 100 people gathered on Jan. 26 to celebrate the opening of the new Lower Bartonsville Covered Bridge. The new bridge is a replica of the original single-lane, lattice-truss span that was built in 1870 and swept away by the Williams River during record-breaking flooding caused by Tropical Storm Irene on Aug. 28, 2011. The widely viewed YouTube video of the bridge's collapse became an international symbol for the devastation that Irene caused...
The Vermont Humanities Council will bring two First Wednesdays talks to Brattleboro in February as part of its monthly First Wednesdays series. On Wednesday, Feb. 6, at 7 p.m., at Brooks Memorial Library, UVM professor and lifelong Vermonter Frank Bryan will consider the cultural and historical impact of the Interstate Highway System on Vermont in his talk, “Concrete, Culture, and Community: The Impact of the Interstate Highway on Vermont.” Bryan is the author of “Real Democracy: The New England Town...
Towns across Vermont continue to wrestle with Tropical Storm Irene-related repairs and find themselves stuck, in the words of one town official here, between an abutment and the river. Newfane has engaged a disaster management service, Storm Petrel of Halifax, to help it negotiate state and federal regulations on reimbursable costs of rebuilding. The Lynch and Hickey Road bridges are moving forward relatively easily. A third project is more complex, but is on the list of projects the town has...
Singer and songwriter Patty Larkin is returning to Vermont for a concert for Next Stage Arts Project on Saturday, Feb. 9, at 7:30 p.m. For more than 25 years, this Boston-based singer-songwriter and guitarist has redefined the boundaries of folk-urban pop music with her inventive guitar wizardry and uncompromising vocals and lyrics. Larkin is performing in Putney at the behest of Maria Basescu, the new executive director of Next Stage Arts Project. “I have been friends with Maria from years...
RE: “Insect impact: State forester says Hemlock Woolly Adelgid can now be found all over Windham County” [Jan. 23]: Your article is very informative about the biology of the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid, but it leaves the reader hanging if they do identify an infestation and want to know what to do to stay ahead of the pest in favor of saving the tree. There are excellent options available that are easy to apply and inexpensive compared to tree removal.
Vermont Performance Lab (VPL) and the Redfern Arts Center at Keene State College are joining forces to present Niicugni, a performance piece by native Alaskan choreographer Emily Johnson and Catalyst Dance on Feb. 13. The second in a trilogy of works related to Johnson's Yup'ik heritage, Niicugni investigates identity, place, memory, and community of the indigenous people. The first part of the trilogy, The Thank-you Bar, was presented by the Guilford-based arts residency program for experimental works in 2010. The...
In a public meeting on Jan. 23, members of Whitingham Ambulance Service, Inc. (WASI) met with community leaders to discuss a proposed tax increase to pay for full-time, around-the-clock staffing by licensed EMTs. Founded in 1966, WASI is a not-for-profit emergency medical and ambulance service with a predominantly volunteer staff that provides skilled pre-hospital emergency medical care, education, and training to community members in allied health and emergency medicine, and community outreach on health and safety related topics. This funding...
If our national obesity problem costs us big bucks, it has also spurred the multi-million-dollar diet industry. I know; I've paid in to any number of weight-loss schemes. Sometimes, when I've been desperate, I've even been suckered into trying a Quick Fix. Quick fixes abound, and I've tried most: the Scarsdale diet, the South Beach diet, the low-fat diet, the low-carb diet, the low-glycemic diet, the grapefruit diet, the protein diet, the dog-food diet. Okay, not the dog-food diet. The...
The Connecticut Valley Music Festival Association's District VI Winter Music Festival will be held at the Bellows Falls Union High School on Friday and Saturday, Feb. 1-2. A closing concert on Sunday, Feb. 2, at 4 p.m., at the BFUHS Auditorium, will be a culmination of the work of student musicians from Bellows Falls, Brattleboro, Black River, Dummerston, Green Mountain, Guilford, Halifax, Hartford, Hartland, Kurn Hattin, Leland & Gray, Marlboro, Mid-Vermont Christian Academy, Putney, Springfield, Twin Valley, Vermont Academy, Weathersfield,
Did you ever want to express your love to someone but weren't sure how to do it? Or perhaps you wanted to write a heartfelt letter but never quite got around to it? This February, you will have your chance. “One Thousand Love Letters” is a project conceived by local artists to create a participatory community art installation that is both an invitation and a challenge. Beginning during Gallery Walk on Friday, Feb. 1, and culminating two weeks later on...
Files and spreadsheets surround Andrea Livermore's feet as she works in her office at the front of the Robert H. Gibson River Garden. Although the executive director of Building a Better Brattleboro (BaBB) is still compiling data, early numbers show the downtown organization has poured $30,564 since 2008 into the intended-to-be self-sustaining River Garden. “We've done everything about as bare bones as we responsibly can do it,” she said. BaBB, the organization charged as the voice of downtown property owners,
If adopted as is, Brattleboro’s proposed 2012 Town Plan will green-light a permanent town-wide confiscation of private land and would constitute the summary abridgment of our Fifth Amendment property rights. Also, if adopted as is, this state-mandated publication of Brattleboro’s vision for its development over the next five years and beyond would result in community-killing restrictions of our access to our common land. These threats stem directly from town government’s obsessive desire to satisfy the ideology and sloganeering of the...
The annual Collegiate A Cappella Benefit Concert turns 10 this year, and it rolls into the Latchis Theatre on Saturday, Feb. 2. Always a popular event, the concert got a big boost when the Tufts University Beelzebubs were showcased on NBC's a cappella reality/competition show, The Sing-Off, which aired nationwide in 2009, after which the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center - whom the concert benefits - was swamped with ticket orders and sold out the 750-seat show before the holidays.
Last week at New England Kurn Hattin Homes, the school used the occasion of Martin Luther King Jr. Day as the centerpiece of a week-long program on diversity that featured a string of activities, presenters, and discussions on the subject. School Principal Scotty Tabachnick, who was a diversity teacher at Brattleboro Union High School before taking the job at Kurn Hattin, said he developed Diversity Week as a run-up to a program on multiculturalism the school already had in the...
What Elayne Clift describes [“A worrying update,” Column, Jan. 21] is far from a new problem. Many years ago, as a young housewife and mother, I went to a psychiatrist. Within a few minutes of talking to him, I realized the the vast difference between us. I expected information and advice, and he expected me to turn over my life to him and give him unlimited power to label me with a life-altering diagnosis. The only “help” he had was...
The Select Board has terminated highway department crewman Walter “Bo” Royce from his position following the town becoming aware of what the Select Board Chair “disappearing fuel” within the department. The board made the vote at a special meeting Jan. 10 after three hours of deliberation in executive session. The vote follows a similar action at the board's Nov. 5, 2012 meeting, where, following a similar closed-to-the-public deliberation, the board voted to terminate Royce's employment “with just cause.” Select Board...
Real estate agents say location is criterion number one when selling a house. As Vermont attempts to increase its energy independence per its 2011 Comprehensive Energy Plan, a new effort is under way to determine location, location, location - and other attributes - for for new electric generation projects. The Energy Generation Siting Policy Commission held its first public hearing at Brattleboro Union High School on Jan. 23, drawing roughly 50 residents from the Windham County area. Some came from...
The Brattleboro Selectboard approved Building a Better Brattleboro's budget at a special meeting on Jan. 23. The fiscal year 2014 budget came in at $116,425. The downtown organization receives tax monies from a special tax assessment levied on downtown property owners that helps fund the town's participation in the state's Downtown Program. BaBB's budget took three meetings before receiving the Selectboard's seal of approval. Members of the Selectboard had questioned whether BaBB's activities justified the tax money the organization received.
It looks like there will be contested Selectboard races after all. After a brief moment of concern earlier this month that not enough candidates would step forward to run for three vacancies on the board, a full slate of candidates turned in their nomination papers to Town Clerk Annette Cappy before the Monday afternoon deadline. The elections for town and town school district officers will be held on Tuesday, March 5. Early voting will begin on Wednesday, Feb. 13. For...
A vague, late-night automated call on Jan. 27 from the Windham Southeast Supervisory Union (WSESU) alerting parents about plans for heightened security at the local schools the next day prompted a variety of reactions. At the top of the list, confusion. The message conveyed to each of the 11 schools through the WSESU's “Alert Now” system told listeners that school doors would be locked Monday, Jan. 28 due to security concerns. Law enforcement officers would conduct patrols at the schools,