RE: “For one Brattleboro nonprofit, shutdown creates real-estate limbo” [News, Oct. 16]:
I'm curious to know just how Turning Point plans to buy the building, even at a bargain-basement price.
If I recall, Turning Point had to leave its premises on Elm Street because they couldn't meet the rent.
The other concern, as noted in the article is “the building's proximity to the Elliot Street neighborhood with [its] reputation for crime and drugs.”...
As members of the local business community munched their breakfast muffins and slurped coffee, a leading Vermont economist delivered his customary stomach-churning assessment of the Vermont economy. Arthur Woolf, an associate professor at the University of Vermont and a co-founder of Northern Economic Consulting, Inc., presented economic information familiar...
This past month, I attended the annual conference of the Council of State Governments (CSG) in Kansas City, Mo. Since all of you generously sent me there, I'd like to share some of what I learned. While there, I attended “Education Reform and Transformation: Fact or Fiction,” presented by...
David Macaulay, author and illustrator of “Castle,” “Cathedral,” and “The Way We Work,” will discuss his current projects and challenges in his work in a talk entitled “Life in the Studio” at Brooks Memorial Library on Wednesday, Nov. 6, at 7 p.m. in the Main Room. The presentation is part of the Vermont Humanities Council First Wednesday Lecture series. Macaulay is an award-winning author and illustrator whose books have sold millions of copies in the United States alone, and his...
G.S. Precision is the latest business to join Brattleboro Memorial Hospital's “The Doorway to Exceptional Care” capital campaign, and what a contribution they made. Hospital officials announced the Brattleboro-based company has pledged $100,000 to help renovate and expand the Emergency Department. “G.S. Precision's slogan is, 'Quality, Efficiency and Reliability,' and that is exactly what they are supporting with their gift to BMH,” says Steven R. Gordon, the hospital's president and CEO. The number of patients coming to the Emergency Department...
Births • In Brattleboro (Memorial Hospital), Oct. 17, 2013, a daughter, Molly Louise Boyd, to Debbie (Stepp) and Jim Boyd of West Chesterfield, N.H.; granddaughter to Sam and Sue Stepp, the late Eugene Boyd, and the late Brenda Hoskeer. School news • The Brattleboro Elks #1499 recently honored 4 students from Brattleboro Union High School as their Students of the Month for October. Hillary Renaud, a 12th-grader and daughter of Michael and Shirley Renaud of Vernon, hopes to move on...
The Root Social Justice Center hosts an opening celebration during Gallery Walk on Friday, Nov. 1, from 5 to 9 p.m. Housed on the ground floor of the Whetstone Studio for the Arts building at 28 Williams St., The Root Social Justice Center provides a physically and financially accessible space to support and gather communities working for social justice. The Root is a co-work office collective by day and a community space on evenings and weekends. Members of The Root...
Horribles Parade set for Oct. 31 BRATTLEBORO - The annual Horribles Parade will be held on Thursday, Oct. 31 at 6 p.m. All “ghosts, goblins, witches, scarecrows, and what-have-yous” should meet down in the Brattleboro Food Co-op parking lot. The parade will begin at 6 p.m. sharp and go up Main Street to the Gibson-Aiken Center for costume judging, prizes, goodie bags, and more. This event is co-sponsored by the Brattleboro Police Department and Brattleboro Recreation and Parks. For more...
Popolo plans a month of events at its restaurant and the adjacent Windham Ballroom featuring movies, cocktail parties, and concerts from a broad array of regional and national touring musicians. The fall season kicks off on Friday, Nov. 1, with a Day of the Dead party featuring “dark rock-art practitioners” Intercept. The night includes a high-dollar costume contest judged by Popolo staff and Intercept members with first and second prizes totaling $450. According to an event announcement from Popolo, Day...
The Vermont Jazz Center launches its 10-week “Emerging Artist” season with a choice that fits its concept perfectly. As the goal of the series is to present young musicians who deserve to be heard - those on the cutting edge, performing original, fresh, high-quality music - then Kavita Shah is all that and more. A talented singer, Shah also is a tireless organizer with a vision and a body of work challenging the definition of jazz while paying deep respect...
The Twin Valley boys' soccer team rolled through an undefeated season to establish themselves once again as the team to beat in Division IV. On a sunny, blustery quarterfinal match on Friday afternoon at Baker Field, the Wildcats made it 15 consecutive wins with a 5-0 victory over the eighth-seeded Arlington Eagles. Twin Valley got a bye to the quarterfinal round, while Arlington had to play a first-round match against No. 9 Craftsbury, which the Eagles won, 7-0. Sporting pink...
For its fall production, the Bellows Falls Union High School Drama Club performs Oscar Wilde's beloved farce, “The Importance of Being Earnest,” on Friday, Nov. 15 at 7:30 p.m., and Saturday, Nov. 16 at 2 and 7:30 p.m., at the BFUHS auditorium. Many students came out for auditions, so this year there are primary and understudy casts. In addition to the two traditional evening performances, the cast will perform at a school assembly and a matinee. “It's a wonderful opportunity...
Once again, the board and so many volunteers and donors have given the community the amazing Brattleboro Literary Festival. Wow! However, to hold a festival event in an inaccessible venue such as the Hooker-Dunham Theater is not right. It is my understanding that any organization that receives funding from a federal source, such as the National Endowment for the Arts, or from a state source, such as the Vermont Arts Council, is by law required to hold events in accessible...
The Bellows Falls Union High School Literary Kick-Off project presents a public screening of the basketball documentary film “Through the Fire” on Thursday, Nov. 7 at 6:30 p.m. at the Rockingham Free Public Library. Basketball ought to be just a game, but on the playgrounds of the Coney Island neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., it's much more than that: For many young men, it represents their only route out of poverty and the housing projects that dominate the Coney Island landscape.
I have been following the news about the Rockingham Free Public Library and its firing of its director, Célina Houlné, in the newspapers and on FACT-TV with incredulity, dismay, sadness, and anger. I was the library director in that library from 1979 to 1985, when I resigned to become the founding director of library services at Landmark College, where I worked for 11 years until my retirement. I have met Ms. Houlné only two or three times since she was...
Brattleboro Memorial Hospital has received a grant from the Susan G. Komen Vermont-New Hampshire affiliate to support access to early detection and treatment programs for disabled patients. With the Komen grant, BMH has purchased a specialized “mammochair” to enhance the patient experience and enable BMH technologists to maximize patient positioning and ensure better images for diagnosis. The mammography chair is maneuverable, allowing the technologist to manipulate positions without constantly repositioning the patient. The chance of a woman having invasive breast...
Brattleboro Development Credit Corp. (BDCC), in partnership with business and municipal representatives from towns within the West River Valley, invites you to a meeting aimed at strengthening business interests in the West River Valley and along the Route 30 and Route 100 corridor. The meeting is Thursday, Nov. 7, at 7 p.m. at the Townshend Town Offices on Route 30. In the wake of Tropical Storm Irene, BDCC has been asked to participate in a number of community conversations in...
Vermont Partnership for Fairness and Diversity has opened general registration for the second annual Vermont Vision for a Multicultural Future conference. Vermont Partnership convenes its signature conference at the Grand Summit Resort Hotel and Conference Center at Mount Snow on Thursday, Nov. 7 at 1 p.m. The day-and-a-half-long conference will bring together Vermont leaders and others working to strengthen business and institutional practices for an increasingly diverse marketplace within the state and beyond. The conference closes Nov. 8 at 5...
The Brattleboro Town District School Board held a public meeting Oct. 22, and the public packed the room. Parents, community members, and teachers past and present filled the meeting room on the second floor of the Brattleboro Food Co-op. More than 20 people spoke at the meeting, and the speakers' experiences of the Brattleboro town schools varied. Some fell at the rah-rah-best-place-ever end of the spectrum. Experiences at the opposite end of the spectrum etched lines of anxiety across the...
Members of the Marine Corps League Detachment 798 are inviting the public to help them celebrate the 238th birthday of the U.S. Marine Corps. The celebration will be in the form of a dinner-dance Saturday, Nov. 9, at the American Legion in Brattleboro and the guest speaker will be acclaimed author Archer Mayor, the New York Times best-selling author of the Vermont-based series featuring Det. Joe Gunther. In addition to being a mystery writer, Mayor is a death investigator for...
The Windham County Maple Association will hold its annual meeting on Wednesday, Nov. 6, at 6:30 p.m., in the Community Room of the Brattleboro Savings & Loan, 221 Main St. Mike Farrell, director of the Uihlein Forest/Cornell University Department of Natural Resources, will touch on some of the main topics in his newly released book, The Sugarmaker's Companion, including pricing and selling maple sap, marketing to create a profitable business model, and tapping birch trees for birch syrup production. He...
In the classic fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm, a humble tradesman, “The Brave Little Tailor,” wipes out seven flies with one hit and then emblazons “seven in one blow” on his garment. He does nothing, of course, to disabuse his adversaries of the notion that he has slain seven people. Thus begins the tailor's adventurous journey of misunderstanding. Adapted from this story, “Seven In One Blow, or The Brave Little Kid,” tells the story of a child living in...
We arrived that afternoon to a grey drizzle and foot-numbing chill. No one had prepared Mrs. Hudson's cousin's flat for us. The heat was metered. We didn't know how to turn it on. “Can all of England be this cold and wet in May?” asked Mrs. Hudson, a Southern lady of 82, who had asked me to come as her companion to England. According to the guidebook, a restaurant described as “in the wall of the cathedral” was within walking...
Three films, each about a strong, spirited woman who takes us along for the ride as she embarks on her path of self-discovery, highlight the Brattleboro Film Festival's commitment to feature characters often unseen in mainstream media. As we embrace their stories and struggles, we begin to care deeply about them. In these films, we see the possibilities that life offers these characters, and their personal journeys become our own. In the wildly and internationally popular comedy English Vinglish, we...
On Saturday, Nov. 2, at 7:30 p.m., the New England Center for Circus Arts (NECCA) in Brattleboro presents the hometown premiere of “World Circus,” the first feature film of its director and producer, Angela Snow. For two months, Snow and her crew followed five top circus acts from around the world as each prepared for the Academy Awards of circus competitions, the Monte Carlo Circus Festival. In collaboration with the World Circus Federation, and including interviews from the founder of...
In Hannah Arendt, we see the world through the eyes of those who have witnessed atrocities beyond imagination and now must find a way to learn from experience. In The Act of Killing, we are asked to identify directly with the perpetrators of similar horrors. In both films, we are asked to see ourselves in the most heinous of humans. Margarethe von Trotta's drama, with Barbara Sukowa playing the title character, centers on the 1961 trial of Nazi war criminal...
Three nonprofits are collaborating to bring a unique Haitian artist to perform for the first time in Southern Vermont. Next Stage Arts Project and Green Mountain Crossroads have joined forces with Sandglass Theater to kick off the 2013 “Voices of Community” series with the residency of poet and theater artist Lenelle Moïse. Moïse will present her one-woman show “Womb-Words, Thirsting” on Nov. 2 and 3 at Sandglass Theater in Putney. Moïse is a powerhouse of a performer, says Kirk Murphy,
The shuttering of Vermont Yankee at the end of 2014 will change the face of Windham County, local organizations told state lawmakers amid school announcements over Vernon Elementary School's intercom. Closing the 41-year-old nuclear reactor - an operation that employs approximately 620 people - will alter the region's economic and social landscape, said those testifying Monday to members of the two House committees: Commerce and Economic Development, and Natural Resources and Energy. The lawmakers hosted a joint meeting to take...
The film Muscle Shoals chronicles the life of Rick Hall, a poverty-stricken Alabama native with a number of personal tragedies under his belt. In the 1960s, Hall assembled a group of white teenage musicians as the house band at Fame Studios, a new recording studio he had built in the small town of Muscle Shoals, Ala. Incredibly, “You Better Move On,” the first tune they recorded, was an instant hit. Sung by Arthur Alexander, a young black bellhop at a...
Alice Walker's great-great-great-great grandmother, “walked as a slave from Virginia to Eatonton, Ga. with two babies on her hips,” we learn early on in Pratibha Parmar's 2013 documentary Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth. “She lived to be 125 years old,” the writer says. “It is in memory of this walk that I choose to keep, and to embrace, my maiden name Walker.” Her surname - and that sojourn of her grandmother's - are apt metaphors for the extraordinary journey of...
Did you know that the honeybee is Vermont's state insect? It is also the state insect in 16 other states. This fact might seem like trivia, but it is not trivial. Honeybees are crucial to our survival. Bees are responsible for more than honey. They pollinate 70 of the 100 crop species that supply 90 percent of the world's food. But last year alone, 31 percent of the honeybee population in the United States was wiped out. Written and directed...
What makes a great love story? It comes from the shared experiences we all have in the agony and ecstasy of our passions, expressed through an art form that transcends time and personal traits. Even better, it's set against the backdrop of historical changes in which the protagonists are caught up. Its settings expand the vision to new and dynamic horizons. And, most of all, its characters are complex, multi-layered, and accomplished, as much formed by fate as they themselves...
There are plenty of family films out there that aren't really “family” friendly - they're “kid friendly,” yet barely tolerable to those kids' adult companions. But the visually stunning animated feature The Painting offers different levels of experience for viewers of all ages. The film takes you on a compelling journey in an evocatively parallel landscape, and it sweeps you up in stunning visuals and a sweeping musical score. It challenges you with visual and cultural references as well as...
The town's five proposed Tropical Storm Irene-related property buyouts are moving forward, though the Selectboard had cause to enter a closed-door executive session Oct. 17 to discuss what member Chris Druke later characterized as “legalities and documentation.” Speaking at the regular Selectboard meeting, Druke noted that the town was “making some progress” on the buyout of the properties totaled during Tropical Storm Irene in 2011. “It's looking likely that we've got some imminent closing dates … We're plodding along,” Druke...
San Francisco, 1985. Many will recall this time as a pivotal point in the history of the AIDS epidemic, with the introduction of a new blood test for HIV. It was also a time of a major cultural shift in San Francisco among the gay communities, and in society at large. At the time, people were all too aware of the disease that so many were dying from, but how to deal with it was still a mystery, and it...
Director Nora Jacobson started out with a desire to put interviews on film of people she cared deeply about and who she knew were important to Vermont's history. That effort has expanded over the past seven years until it became a six-part marathon of a film. Yet there is nothing extravagant or extraneous about Freedom and Unity: The Vermont Movie. Each segment is a tightly woven story of a chapter in Vermont's history, from the pre-Colonial era to the state's...
Many people believe that access to clean drinking water is the single-most-important environmental and social issue facing the world. Two films in the Brattleboro Film Festival touch on the topic and how multinational corporations have and continue to simultaneously pollute and profit from water. Hot Water, a film by Lizabeth Rogers, explores the legacy of uranium mining and the nuclear industry in the United States. The genesis of the movie occurred when Rogers was working on a story about Native...
The second Brattleboro Film Festival, which runs from Nov. 1 to 14, is pulling no punches. It plans to rip your heart right out of your chest, twist it, stomp it, tear it, and then put the beaten and bloody thing back, and then you will feel elated and elevated for having had the experience. Yes, many of the films are that tough. Yet looking through my notes, I also find the words “dazzling,” “stunning,” “brilliant!” “leaves you drowning in...
Wet weather is to blame for paving problems on South Wardsboro and Wiswall Hill roads, but the town's contractor has vowed to make it right. That's according to Fred Cheney, a paving foreman from Lane Construction of Northfield, Mass., addressing the Selectboard Oct. 17. A September “monsoon,” Cheney said, soaked the paving materials and turned them into a mess. He said his company looked forward to correcting the work early next year, pointed out that the contract included a year...
The Selectboard received two bids from contractors to improve the Town Office basement and attic and haul away a massive safe, but a chunk of the money officials thought they'd set aside in a capital fund, a $15,000 allocation, has expired. According to Town Office Building Committee Member Guenther Garbe, addressing selectmen Oct. 17 just before the bids were unsealed, those funds are unavailable. “'You didn't spend it. It's gone,' Garbe characterized the town treasurer as saying. “I am under...
Work to replace a key bridge in town is within weeks of completion, and another will wrap up in spring 2014. According to Selectboard member Chris Druke, speaking at the Oct. 17 board meeting, work on Hunter Brook Bridge, off Dover Road, is on track to move motorists along as early as November. “We've got beams; we're moving now. That was kind of amazing, watching those go in. That was nice. So I guess we're getting ready to put a...
Fantastical creatures fashioned out of glass, a huge and growing map of an imaginary world, a suite of prints by one of Vermont's best-loved artists, and artwork inspired by astronauts' impressions of the earth from space - all this and more will be on view at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center (BMAC) when four new exhibits open during Brattleboro's monthly Gallery Walk on Friday, Nov. 1, at 5:30 p.m. Many of the exhibiting artists will be in attendance at...
The Boy in the Bubble, By Kealan O'Rourke Is wonderfully animated, and only eight minutes short. About a young lad's first true love and quick heartache, He protects himself inside a bubble that can't break. You'll instantly recognize the voice of the narrator, Alan Rickman, a.k.a. Severus, from those films of H. Potter. This tale's by turns creepy, Tim Burton-esque, and quite moving, As the boy in the bubble reawakens to loving. When a girl with green eyes makes young...
Kathryn Blume, co-founder and Executive Director of Vermontivate!, an award-winning sustainability game, will be in Brattleboro on Wednesday, Nov. 6, hosted by the Brattleboro Energy Committee. She'll be sharing the story of creating a frolicsome on-line/real-world competition which infuses joy and creativity into the serious and important work of tackling the global climate crisis. Launched in May 2012, Vermontivate! has had players from towns all over the state racking up points for everything from changing lightbulbs and starting compost piles...
The Shumlin administration has recommended that a quasi-judicial board grant Entergy a license to continue operating Vermont Yankee through the end of 2014, as long as the company meets three conditions. Among the conditions proposed by the Vermont Department of Public Service is the creation a new $120 million fund to pay for site restoration. Under the proposal, Entergy, the owner of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, would be required to make a deposit of $60 million to that...
I can't recall when I became pro-choice. Maybe it was by default, when I “chose” to have an abortion, two of them, two months apart from each other, at the ripe age of 16. (Though I know others who made the same “choice” and who are equally pro-life.) I never gave abortion much thought, not politically speaking. It was a personal, desperate, practical act that, inside, I knew was wrong. But I grasped at it anyway. Afterward, when I became...
She's a young mother, pregnant with her second child, who relies on the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) for food and medicine when her son gets sick. When the federal government shut down, she became one of almost nine million mothers - and their children younger than 5 - who lost their vouchers for food, baby formula, and breastfeeding support. She's a victim of domestic violence who had nowhere to go for help because funds...
The West Brattleboro Association has celebrated another successful barbecue. To raise funds for programs that help our neighbors and our neighborhood, we sold 216 half chickens over Columbus Day weekend. We could not have done it without the support of our generous members and sponsors. Most of all, we thank the community members who came and enjoyed the food on this beautiful day. Our happy customers and the picture-perfect setting remind us how lucky we are every year.