Brattleboro Memorial Hospital hosts “Conversations about Dementia,” which aims to foster discussion and share resources on some challenging and often uncomfortable topics.
The event is free and open to all, and runs April 21 from 6 to 8 p.m. in BMH's Brew Barry Conference Center.
Presented by Maggie Lewis, MPA, LNHA, director of programs and services for the Vermont Chapter of the Alzheimer's Association, this program will clarify signs and resources, and will outline what steps can be taken.
“Many in our community confront issues with Alzheimer's and related dementias,” says Lewis. “Often, we are unsure of seeing the signs of dementia and what steps need to be taken to plan for its occurrence.”...
The Bellows Falls Farmers' Market has hired a new Market Manager. Lisa Luciani brings more than 20 years of marketing communications experience, plus an appreciation for working farm families and a keen awareness of the challenges facing beginning farmers, to her new position. She is also the communications coordinator...
I was there at Vermont Yankee as a startup engineer. Where is the writer's proof that “toxic” materials were intentionally buried at the site? Where did these materials come from? The site was farmland before. Did the construction crew bury some construction waste that was legal to bury then,
The correlation between cannabis - marijuana - and “negative mental health outcomes” has been “unequivocally established,” reports the Indian Journal of Psychiatry. More than 30 other studies from around the world, from countries that include Sweden, Australia, and the United Kingdom, have shown the same. Yet the sentiment in the United States, espoused even by our president in a recent interview with The New York Times, is that smoking marijuana is merely a “bad habit” and “not very different from...
The Brattleboro Colonels' softball team forgot to read the script. You know the one - the script about the team that loses its star pitcher and several key seniors to graduation and struggles to forge a winning team the following season. After leading the Colonels to three state championships in four seasons, ace hurler Kayla Wood is now plying her trade for Castleton State College, and there are a number of young players to join the four returning starters from...
The state low-income weatherization program has been a tremendous success story in Vermont. Our energy costs are among the highest in the nation, hitting low-income families the hardest. Homes that are weatherized see an average of 37 percent energy savings, allowing these families to have more money for other basic needs. For every dollar invested in energy savings, $2.51 is returned to the household and community. Despite its clear benefits, Governor Shumlin's budget proposes cutting $2 million from the program.
The Arts Council of Windham County (ACWC) is sponsoring a forum, “Business Training for Artists,” on Thursday, April 24, from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Works Café, 118 Main St. The session, co-sponsored by the Brattleboro-West Arts and The Works Café, will explore opportunities for arts-specific business training in our area. The discussion is intended for artists of all disciplines - visual, performing, media, literary, crafts, and traditional. Artists who have taken the two-day Vermont Arts Council (VAC) professional...
Putney Friends Meeting invites one and all to celebrate the life of Pete Seeger with a sing-along concert with Peter Blood and Annie Patterson, creators of Rise Up Singing, North America's best-selling group-singing songbook, on Friday, April 25, at 7:30 p.m. at Next Stage Arts. During hundreds of concerts and workshops around the country and abroad, Patterson and Blood have filled rooms with spirited song and rousing harmony. An accomplished folk and jazz singer in her own right, Patterson will...
The 15th annual Roots on the River Music Festival takes place with a new format, a special headliner, and an exciting mix of artists. It all happens Thursday, June 5, through Sunday, June 8 at locations throughout town. This year's featured artist is Austin, Texas,-based singer/songwriter James McMurtry, a Roots favorite. ROTR is undergoing a major transition this year, as one of the festival's co-founders and mainstays, Fred J. Eaglesmith, has taken his leave as anchor headliner. “The festival has...
Business students at the Windham Regional Career Center have returned from the Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) Vermont state competition in Burlington with significant victories. Twenty-four Career Center students competed against peers statewide in such arenas as accounting, banking, business law, business ethics, finance, public speaking, economics, and marketing. They placed in 47 events and brought back 62 awards, including 18 for first place and nine each for second and third place. The local chapter earned second place as...
Appeals and suggestions for reducing the financial burden to the home-owning taxpayers by several representatives at the Brattleboro Representative Town Meeting (RTM) had no effect. Why? Do people not listen to reason? Or subscribe to spending within the confines of one's resources? As one representative said, “We cannot buy a Cadillac on a Chevy budget.” With so many expressing concern that Brattleboro cannot afford a $16 million budget (in addition to more than $15 million for the school budget), I...
Overflow Shelter has urgent need for volunteers BRATTLEBORO - The Brattleboro Area Overflow Shelter says it's in desperate need of people to cover night shifts from 1 to 7 a.m. for the rest of April. These second shift times need to be filled: Wednesday, April 16; Monday, April 21; Wednesday, April 23; Monday, April 28; Tuesday, April 29; and Wednesday, April 30. The shelter reports it's been pressed to serve more homeless than ever - 34 as of last week...
Births • In Brattleboro (Memorial Hospital), March 31, 2014, a son, Miles Edward Becker, to Megan (Mooney) and Michael Becker of Brattleboro; grandson to Carol Wing of Springfield, Edward and Judi Becker of Springfield, and Elizabeth and Bruce Arruda of Dartmouth, Mass. • In Brattleboro (Memorial Hospital), March 30, 2014, a daughter, Riya Nicole Westmoreland, to Renee Aplin and Cody Westmoreland of Winchester, N.H.; granddaughter to Michelle Aplin, Todd Aplin, Geraldine Nadeau, Tanya Badger, Jeanenne Graham, Goldie Curl, and Gary...
The Bondville Boys, an eclectic and edgy bluegrass band, will play a concert and dance at the Robert H. Gibson River Garden in downtown Brattleboro on Friday, April 18, from 7 to 10:30 p.m. The event is a benefit for Strolling of the Heifers, which has established its headquarters at the River Garden and is raising funds for renovations and improvements, including air conditioning and a demonstration kitchen. The Bondville Boys, so named because “some of us are from Bondville,
Brattleboro Development Credit Corp. Executive Director Patricia Moulton already knew she was leaving when she stood before the Brattleboro Area Chamber of Commerce on April 7 and presented a 30-minute explanation to of what BDCC and Southeast Vermont Economic Development Strategies (SeVEDS) are doing in (as the talk was entitled) “Advancing the Economic Landscape of Southeast Vermont.” But even though she was just days away from a formal announcement that she accepted the post of Secretary of Commerce in the...
“Putney's a tough crowd, food-wise,” says Putney General Store co-owner and pharmacist Jim Heal. “Our customers know their food; they want the best ingredients, local, whenever possible, and they want it to taste great and be presented well. It's like a gallery where the art not only has to look good, it has to taste good.” The new kitchen roster rising to that challenge at Vermont's longest-operated general store: kitchen manager and chef Ryan Muller, and Kathy Mazziott, Susan McDormand,
Bayada Home Health Care has named Kimberley VanderZee as its associate director of the Brattleboro home care office. VanderZee will manage the team and oversee all operations of the office, which provides nursing and assistive (personal) care services to people in Windham and Windsor counties. “I'm thrilled to have Kimberley lead the Brattleboro office,” said Nicholas McCardle, division director for Bayada in Vermont. “She has a wealth of knowledge and experience in caring for seniors, and she's dedicated to helping...
UNIMA (Union Internationale de la Marionnette) has selected Putney's Sandglass Theater to perform “Autumn Portraits” in Cuba during its international conference April 17 to 28. The UNIMA Festival takes place every four years, always in a different country. Eric Bass, Sandglass's co-artistic director and founder, will perform his solo work four times throughout the festival. According to Bass, the invitation is an honor. “Sandglass performed in the 1984 festival in Dresden, East Germany (before the reunification). In those days, the...
Taking down the last segment of the northbound span of the West River Bridge on Interstate 91 turned out to be more troublesome than expected. According to PCL Civil Constructors Inc., the primary contractor for the I-91 project, the last remaining part of the bridge started leaning slightly last Saturday during the removal of a portion of the structure. As a result, PCL contacted the Vermont Agency of Transportation, and both agreed that the adjacent I-91 southbound bridge structure be...
Lee Chaney enjoyed a lifelong love of musical instruments, especially those with keyboards. Over the years he built a sizable and varied personal collection of instruments, and even established a modest museum in his home for others to view his collection. A professor of educational psychology in Jacksonville, Ala., for more than 40 years, Chaney retired to Clinton, N.C., where he died on March 4, 2012. Now his son, John Chaney, has decided that Brattleboro's Estey Organ Museum is the...
“I've come here tonight to set your souls on fire,” The Beehive Queen tells her audiences. And that's what she plans to do Saturday, April 19, at 7:30 p.m., when Next Stage Arts Project presents Christine Ohlman & Rebel Montez. The flashy, platinum-blonde singer/songwriter Christine Ohlman, a.k.a. The Beehive Queen, is the longtime vocalist with NBC's Saturday Night Live Band. When she's not working at NBC, she sings with her own band, Rebel Montez, which includes Massachusetts guitar legend Cliff...
Stone Church Arts presents The Cello/Piano Project, featuring Eugene Friesen, cellist, and Tim Ray, pianist, on Saturday, April 19 at 7:30 p.m. Musical passion, sweeping melody and rocking rhythm mark the one-of-a-kind evenings of The Cello/Piano Project. Contemporary jazz, Brazilian classics and American folk tunes are the soil from which the duo's joyful interplay blooms, and chamber music is changed forever. This Stone Church Arts concerts takes place at Immanuel Episcopal Church, 20 Church St. As featured players with the...
Brattleboro Community Television announces its lineup of spring video production classes. Learn to make videos to share with local residents on cable channels 8 and 10. The cost of the workshops is $20 per person. All classes are held at the Brattleboro Municipal Center, 230 Main St., suite 303. The schedule includes: • Audio for video - Tuesday, April 22, 6:30 to 8 p.m. • Camera fundamentals - Wednesday, April 23 and Thursday, April 24, 6:30 to 8 p.m. •
On May 31, 2009, Dr. George Tiller of Wichita, Kan., one of the few doctors in the United States then performing third-trimester abortions, became the eighth American abortion clinic worker to be assassinated after Roe v. Wade. Four American doctors openly provide the procedure today: LeRoy Carhart, Warren Hern, Susan Robinson, and Shelley Sella, who risk their lives to do work that many believe constitutes murder but that these doctors and their millions of supporters believe is profoundly important for...
The Vermont Folklife Center welcomes back to its home turf the legendary drag troupe Ladies of the Rainbow for a bawdy performance, “Mistresses of Mayhem: The Ladies of the Rainbow Return,” on Saturday, April 26, at 8 p.m. The show is at the Carl M. Dessaint VFW Post 1034, 40 Black Mountain Rd. Doors open at 7 p.m. This evening of adult comedy and general entertainment marks the 10th anniversary of the Ladies' first downtown Brattleboro appearance, and is a...
Grace Cottage Hospital Auxiliary Fair Day is bringing back a wonderful tradition - this year's event again includes an art show, and artists and craftspeople are asked to sign up early to arrange to display their works. Fair Day is Saturday, Aug. 2, from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. in Townshend Church on Townshend Common. Artwork and crafts pieces in the show will be for sale, with a portion of the proceeds benefitting Grace Cottage Hospital. To exhibit, contact Lois...
The Brattleboro Interfaith Clergy Association offers an observance of Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah), Sunday, April 27, at 4 p.m. at the Brattleboro Area Jewish Community, 151 Greenleaf St. The hour-long service includes music and readings from the Holocaust era. Participating in the service are members of the clergy and various Brattleboro-area faith communities, including musicians Linda Hecker and Daniel Kasnitz. Carl H. Rosner, Holocaust survivor and a father and grandfather of members of the Brattleboro Area Jewish Community, will...
With opening day less than three weeks away, the Brattleboro Area Farmers' Market got some good news on the eve of its 2014 season. It found out last week that it had been awarded a $6,300 U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development grant to purchase a two-acre lot adjacent to Route 9 that is long associated with the market. The market, which is four decades old, has been working to secure the Route 9 location for more than 15 years.
Brattleboro Police Sgt. Mark Carignan has been identified by Vermont State Police as the officer involved in an fatal April 4 shooting. Carignan, 40, has been on the Brattleboro police force since 2002. A former patrol officer and detective, he is currently the day shift sergeant. According to state police, the shooting occurred while Brattleboro Police were attempting to serve a search warrant in connection with a drug investigation at the America's Best Inn, 959 Putney Rd. State police said...
Next Stage Arts Project and Twilight Music present French-Algerian acoustic guitarist, singer, and composer Pierre Bensusan at Next Stage, 15 Kimball Hill, on Friday, April 18, at 7:30 p.m. Voted best world-music guitar player in 2008 by Guitar Player magazine readers' choice, Bensusan's name became synonymous with contemporary acoustic guitar genius long before the terms “new age,” “new acoustic music,” and “world music” were coined. He makes a guitar sound like a band as he brings the audience on a...
It's hard to improve a difficult road configuration but the town's Department of Public Works and its engineering and surveying contractor have taken the challenge. The DPW and Holden Engineering & Surveying, Inc., from Bedford, N.H., held a public meeting April 9 to gather feedback on preliminary designs to improve safety and flow for pedestrians and motorists at the intersection of Western Avenue, Union Hill, and Cedar Street. Approximately 20 people attended the meeting, held in the Selectboard Meeting Room...
The River Valley Workforce Investment Board hosts the third annual River Valley Employment Fair on Wednesday, April 23, from 3 to 6 p.m. at Nolin-Murray Meeting Center, 40 Summer St., Springfield. Employers attending - and hiring - include Leddy Group, PepsiCo, ADA Traffic Control, Black River Produce, Heartland Automotive Services, Health Care and Rehabilitation Services (HCRS), Moore Nanotechnology Systems, Cedar Hill Continuing Care Community, SEI/Aaron's, Red River, Visiting Nurse & Hospice of Vermont and Hampshire, Jeld-Wen, Len-Tex Corporation, Amcomm Wireless,
When it was announced last week that Lawrence Miller was leaving his spot as head of the Agency of Commerce and Community Development to become the state's health care czar, there was little doubt of about who his replacement would be. When it comes to economic development in Vermont, Patricia Moulton is known as a star performer. And so Moulton, who was midway through her fourth month as executive director of the Brattleboro Development Credit Corp., and had barely started...
Snow on the lawn and wasps in the air ... on the same day. -Susie Crowther * * * Calls of the Cardinals and Chickadees searching for a mate. Of course, the chorus of the tree frog concerts. No mistaking these sure sounds of spring. -Cathy Bergmann * * * The first sign is smelling skunks. -Laura Austan * * * It hits 64 in the shade. -Allison Teague * * * The sound of motorcycles coming down the valley...
Green Up Day has been an annual tradition in Vermont since 1970, and local Green Up committee volunteers are busy pulling together the details of meeting sites, making sure there are refreshments for volunteers, putting up reminder posters, and many other tasks. One of these tasks is finding the funds to underwrite the costs. Doing its part, burton Car Wash and Detailing is holding its ninth annual Green Up benefit on Friday, April 18, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Approving the town's $16 million fiscal year 2015 municipal budget has become a word problem to boggle the best high school algebra teacher. And, luckily for said hypothetical high school algebra teacher, neither the District #6 nor the town school district budget is up for revote. But the question for Brattleboro voters: If the majority of Town Meeting Members approved the municipal budget last month at Representative Town Meeting - and then nine days later, 56 meeting members submit a...
On May 2, a trickle of water worked its way through a weakening matrix of mud and sticks in the base of the dam that contained Popple's Pond. As the flow increased to a torrent, the waters plunged downstream where, a quarter mile below, the flood aroused the interest of a crew of engineers, the likely descendants of the beavers that created the pond decades ago. Although the downstream beavers had projects at hand, something in this flood roused them;
Daffodils can break your heart in so many lovely ways. “I wandered lonely as a cloud/That floats on high o'er vales and hills/When all at once I saw a crowd/A host, of golden daffodils,” wrote William Wordsworth a few years after he and his sister, while walking by a lake, unexpectedly came upon great masses of the flowers. But he was with his sister, so how lonely could he be? Dorothy Wordsworth described that walk with her brother this way...
The Rockingham Free Public Library had its third trustee resignation in nine months when Chair David Gould accepted with regret Paige Pietrzak's resignation at the regular meeting of the Trustees on April 8. Pietrzak is the third trustee to resign from the board in less than a year. Steve Fuller and David Buckley resigned from the board in June and September 2013, respectively. Gould told The Commons that the board would discuss candidates for replacing Pietrzak at the board's next...
Blenders whirr and cinnamon coats apple slices as educators from Vermont and New Hampshire make smoothies and snacks. Karen Saunders, workshop leader during the Food Connects fifth Annual Farm to School Conference, tells the teachers they don't need recipes. They and their students will figure out what tastes good. The exercise highlights the fun of teaching young students about nutrition and locally grown food at the conference on April 9. The activity also prepares students for more difficult questions around...
Bellows Falls resident Matthew Trieber is finishing up his first full term in the Vermont House of Representatives, working alongside fellow Windham-3 lawmaker Carolyn Partridge, D-Windham. It's been three years since Gov. Peter Shumlin appointed Trieber to fill out the remainder of the term of longtime Bellows Falls Rep. Michael Obuchowski when that former House Speaker joined the Shumlin administration as Buildings and General Services Commissioner. But the young Democrat, one of six openly gay Vermont legislators, has moved out...
As a Burlington resident and veteran transportation-policy-development person, a few times a year I take a day excursion on the Vermonter using the discount rate to shop and enjoy Brattleboro. But I find the lack of walkability an annoyance. Every Main Street intersection involves a substantial wait at a stoplight - yet the town plan for the Putney Road commercial strip is for full conversion of signals to roundabouts with their typical five or six seconds delay for those using...
At a recent breakfast meeting of the Brattleboro Area Chamber of Commerce, we heard from Pat Moulton, new executive director of the Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation (BDCC). She described the many efforts BDCC has embarked on to benefit our economy and people. I found her very impressive. Four days later, I was no longer as impressed. Pat took on her new job less than four months ago and, it was announced that she's leaving to be the state's new Secretary...
I am writing to urge all voters in Brattleboro to get out and vote on April 17 on the town budget. I am a town meeting representative who originally voted in favor of the police/fire proposal because, having toured the facilities, I could see the need. I can still see the need, but I no longer feel that town taxpayers can afford to do all three projects at the same time. Most town meeting reps at the meeting this March...
You did not mention that I am pushing for solar-powered battery-powered electric lights for the proposed park-and-ride project in Putney; that would save $22,000. Regular lighting will not save that money. This is a real error/omission in the article.
My concern about the decommissioning of Vermont Yankee is that we focus too much on ideologues without adequate focus on workers.
The news media and the Internet have recently been filled with stories about Heartbleed, a previously undetected flaw in the coding of the security infrastructure that makes up much of the web. The simplest explanation is that someone aware of this exploit could potentially access your passwords to all of your online accounts. It is considered by some to be the biggest threat on the Internet to date. Businesses and individuals don't so much need to understand the specifics of...
In February, the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Agriculture Statistic Service (NASS) released preliminary findings from the 2012 census. Conducted every five years, the Ag Census provides the most comprehensive data available about agriculture in Vermont and across the nation. These early census show Vermont agriculture is trending in a positive direction. Some highlights: • The overall number of farms in Vermont has increased by 5 percent in the last five years, from 6,984, to 7,338. • Vermont agricultural land...
Residents are invited to two public hearings to weigh in on proposed changes in the zoning bylaw and district map, the first such overhaul since zoning was established here in 1971. According to Planning Commission Chairman Sam Farwell, the changes will help guide development here in keeping with Vermont smart growth principles, and conform to what the Selectboard approved in Dummerston's Town Plan and Town Plan Map updates of 2010. Two initial forums on the matter are set: Tuesday, April...