The In-Sight Photography Project invites you to its first annual exhibition of the work of alumni who have continued with photography after taking classes at In-Sight.
Visitors can stop by the In-Sight gallery on Flat Street throughout December to see work from Wyatt Andrews, Evan Darling, Helen Jones, Kayla Rice, Michelle Stephens, Zachary Stephens, Rachael Warriner, and others.
An opening reception is set for the Dec. 5 Gallery Walk, 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.
...This is my third try for a life in southeastern Vermont. The first two attempts to live in Putney and then in Brattleboro were stymied by a lack of job opportunities. This time (when I did not get the Brattleboro job that I expected - and yes, race may...
There is a closet I've been inching my way out of for a few years now, and perhaps the time has come to throw caution to the winds and come out full bore. Judgment be damned. First, let me bring you up to speed. Two minutes from my house...
It is hard to imagine the effects such a policy would have: first and foremost, on the poor, disabled, and elderly. These people, who are least able to afford any increase in their costs, would be left behind. They would be unable to keep their lights on, unable to have air conditioning in the summer to avoid heat stroke, and unable to afford heat in the winter. How brutal it would be to institute a so-called carbon tax that will...
This story was very well-written: facts stated, neutrality kept. I would now like to see if the handgun laws can be looked at. Michael Martin at the Brattleboro Food Co-op, Katelyn McFadden, and now these two deaths: Something needs to be done. And let's make sure that Robin O'Neill also gets the mental-health care that she needs.
A Thanksgiving tribute to our brave and dedicated Brattleboro police officers: When you are hurtling into the night, heart pounding, to answer a 911 call; when you are protecting a woman from being battered; when you are directing traffic around an accident on a cold, rainy day on a crazy-busy road; when you are valiantly putting yourself at risk to make our community safer: We see you. When you would rather be home with your loved ones than making the...
Girls on the Run Vermont is now in its 15th year of helping girls reach their limitless potential through an innovative program that fosters self-esteem, confidence, and fitness. We are deeply thankful for the overwhelming community support we have received throughout the years. Applications for new program locations are now being accepted, as we are marking this anniversary by expanding our program by up to 15 new sites. If your school, community center, or recreation department would like to offer...
Newfane Garden Club to meet NEWFANE - The Newfane Garden Club will hold its next meeting and holiday party on Thursday, Dec. 4 at noon at the Newfane Congregational Church. Club members will have a pot luck luncheon and decorate holiday wreaths for the public buildings in Newfane. Bring a food item for the luncheon, decorations for the wreaths, and a small wrapped gift for a man or woman. Gifts will be distributed to patients at Grace Cottage Hospital and...
The strikers in front of the FairPoint building on Main Street want it to be recognized that they are in an uphill battle against that company. FairPoint did not renew its workers' contract this summer and is offering them one that requires a one-third cut in pay and an inferior health plan at a higher rate. In addition, pensions are frozen. The man I spoke to said that it was a case of FairPoint wanting to bust the union. Unions...
Births • In Brattleboro (Memorial Hospital), Nov. 5, 2014, a daughter, Aubree Kathleen Moore, to Alice Gay and Benjamin Moore of Williamsville; granddaughter to Gary Gay, Stephanie Fouriner, Barbara Pacific, David Moore, and Kathleen Moore. Obituaries • Shirley Rosella Armour, 90, formerly of Brattleboro. Died Nov. 24 in Altamonte Springs, Fla. Wife of the Charles Raymond Armour for 62 years. Mother of Katherine of Altamonte Springs, Fla., Richard of Lake Worth, Fla., and the late Charles Raymond Armour Jr. Born...
The Shareholder Forum at the Brattleboro Food Co-op has met six times since its initial meeting on Aug. 10. We've continued to meet monthly primarily as a “for shareholders, by shareholders” space for people to voice their concerns and learn together about how we can make change and what that change should be. The forum is also open to community members who aren't shareholders of the co-op. It is the result of a deeper history of the Brattleboro Food Co-op:
Every once in a while, an opportunity comes along which cannot be passed up. Such was the case when Phil Stimmel, Managing Director of the Estey Organ Museum in Brattleboro, received an email from Jim Krekel, a teacher in eastern Iowa. Some friends of his had an Estey reed organ, which had been in their home for many years. They had no use for it, and wondered if he could find a home for it, or perhaps arrange to take...
I was born and raised in Vermont - precisely, in Westminster. Like many others in the area, I grew up on a small family farm up a dirt road. I was surrounded by educated people who took great pride in gaining knowledge. I started my education early, but I officially started school when I was 6 years old. I began first grade at Westminster Center School in a traditional learning environment and felt bored and stifled. My parents, as believers...
The first big snowstorm of the season left about a foot of snow around Windham County on Nov. 26. Snowfall amounts reported to the National Weather Service office in Albany, N.Y., ranged from about 9 inches in Hinsdale, N.H., and Marlboro; 10 inches in Saxtons River, Windham, and West Dover; about 11 inches in Dummerston, Westminster, and Rockingham; and 13 inches in Stratton and Townshend. The storm caused outages across Vermont, but the damage was most severe in southern Vermont,
Brattleboro Time Trade (BTT) hosts a contra dance on Sunday, Dec. 7, from 7 to 10 p.m. at the Stone Church on Main Street. This event is a benefit for BTT's Scholarship Fund to help more people join the organization and to help defray its overhead costs. BTT is a service exchange network in which everyone's time is valued equally. It has 325 members who exchange services for time instead of money. Examples of these services are childcare, gardening, transportation,
The Brattleboro Rotary Club kicked off its 49th annual Christmas Tree Fundraiser on Nov. 29. The Brattleboro Rotary Club has sold Christmas trees as a fundraiser for local student scholarships since 1965. Vermont-grown trees of all shapes and sizes will be sold in front of Brattleboro Bowl on Putney Road from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily until the trees are gone. The Brattleboro Rotary Club, founded in 1950, is an active community service club of more than 80 members...
If the weather behaves on Sunday, Dec. 7, the streets of downtown Townshend will resound with neighs, whinnies, and the clip-clops of equines as the Holiday of Horses parade returns. Last year, in what organizer Laura Richardson described as “an impromptu, whimsical tribute to equines and local nonprofits,” the inaugural Holiday of Horses saw 20 horses ride from Leland & Gray Union High School, at the junction of Routes 30 and 35, continue around the Town Common up to Valley...
We are fairly new to the area and have enjoyed reading The Commons each week. We both appreciate good journalistic writing and have felt that The Commons covers local news stories with thoroughness and fairness, avoiding sensationalism. We were shocked, therefore, by the tone and content of Olga Peters' article covering the recent tragic shootings in Townshend. A word-by-word accounting of all or much of Robin O'Neill's uttering in the police cruiser was very unnecessary to a newspaper report of...
The few bars of a hymn sung by the Rev. Suzanne Andrews ring in the sanctuary of the First Baptist Church long after she walks with practiced steps across the sloping floor of the 19th century building's middle balcony. “It makes you feel like you're walking in a drunken stupor,” Andrews jokes about the vertigo-inducing floor. “But it's part of why the acoustics in here are so beautiful.” Andrews, affectionately dubbed “Pastor Sue” by her congregation, enthusiastically points to different...
A Selectboard meeting of less than an hour on Nov. 25 took up cemetery mowing bids, the highway budget, and a town dump truck being out of commission in advance of the recent snowstorm, but one thing it didn't hear were public comments. There weren't any. According to draft minutes of the meeting, held at the Town Office, Board Chair Zeke Goodband noted that no visitors were present and mentioned that the public is always welcome at Selectboard meetings and...
In 1960, my mother thought she had been blessed with an exceptionally content baby. I was barely out of the womb when she discovered that I had been stricken by polio. I was immobilized by paralysis, even stripped of my ability to cry. I certainly couldn't twist about and flail the way most newborns do. Inside my head, the pain must have been mythic in the punishing hands of this neurological disease. Hot pain rages over the scope of the...
At its annual end-of-season meeting on Nov. 24 at Hartford High School, the Vermont Interscholastic Football League (VIFL) met to discuss the subject that causes more hard feelings than anything else it deals with - realignment of the state's three high school football divisions. A plan was approved to divide the 33 schools that play varsity football into three divisions of 11 teams. Using a formula based on total male enrollment, the number of boys going out for football, and...
Aug. 2, 2014 started out as a normal Saturday morning for Catherine Fournier and her husband, Rick Chapin. It was 10 a.m. They were having a conversation in the kitchen in their home in Guilford. And then Fournier collapsed. Her heart had stopped beating. She was in full cardiac arrest. Chapin called 911, and then started performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on his wife. Guided by the 911 operator, he kept her alive until Rescue Inc. and Guilford Fire and Rescue...
Some of the more interesting work in the area's arts venues is being shown through Dec. 10 at the Crowell Gallery at Moore Free Library. Nan Heminway and Marilyn Allen, who first met at the River Gallery School many years ago, teamed up for this exhibit after discovering that their approach to art, the underlying intuitive themes that “got them going,” had a lot in common. This is not all that apparent on entering the gallery. Nothing would seem more...
There's a lot of history sitting in the basement of American Legion Post 5. The Legion home on Linden Street has accumulated all sorts of artifacts over the years, and Post 5 historian Russel Grabiec decided more people needed to see them. Together with Daniel Guadalupe of the Brattleboro Historical Society, they put together a display at the Historical Society's History Center at the Masonic Building on Main Street to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the start of World War...
In 2011, Tropical Storm Irene hit and brought the state of Vermont to its knees. Recovery was difficult and felt endless. In the immediate aftermath, we had one another, and we had the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The National Guard arrived with manpower and FEMA rode into town with their capes of governmental red tape billowing in the flood mud dust and got right down to the business of business. Our quiet, brookside neighborhood was hit hard. When my...
In December 1975, two already well-known English folk singers joined forces with two contra dance musicians and performed a few concerts of folk carols and songs of the season. They chose a line from one of their songs as the name of the program, Nowell Sing We Clear. Forty years later, and still one of the area's most popular holiday programs, Nowell Sing We Clear, featuring Tony Barrand, Fred Breunig, Andy Davis, and John Roberts, will be presented at the...
The San Francisco-based women's vocal ensemble Kitka will perform its critically acclaimed “Wintersongs” program in a free holiday concert on Friday, Dec. 5, at 7 p.m. at the Latchis Theatre. Marlboro College and Kingdom County Productions is presenting this showcase of seasonal music from a wide variety of Eastern European ethnic and spiritual traditions as a gift to the community. Kitka is an American women's vocal arts ensemble inspired by traditional songs and vocal techniques from Eastern Europe. Dedicated to...
Last year, Jacob Alan Roberts hit the ground running as the new part-time downtown coordinator with the organization then known as Building a Better Brattleboro. He spent his first two days on the job moving the organization from its longtime home in the iconic River Garden to a second-floor office further down Main Street. BaBB had just sold the building, whose expenses had far outpaced its revenues, to fellow nonprofit Strolling of the Heifers. A year later, Roberts sits in...
On Saturday, Dec. 13, Compass School hosts a Caribbean dinner and a musical performance by Eugene and Julian's Latin Party Band, featuring renowned musicians Eugene Uman and Julian Gerstin. Uman is a pianist and composer who has performed with Sheila Jordan, Jay Clayton, George Mraz, Jimmy Heath, Donald Byrd, and many others. Uman has written more than 120 wide-ranging jazz compositions and appears in numerous ensembles including The Convergence Project, the As Yet Quintet, and Zabap. He also directs the...
This month, local actor Kristina Meima returns to the same play on the same stage where she took her first steps as a performer. Beginning Dec. 4 at New England Youth Theatre (NEYT), the 17-year-old Meima takes the role of governess Fräulein Maria in Rodgers and Hammerstein's “The Sound Of Music,” the musical based on the true story of the Trapp Family Singers in World War II-era Austria. “It'll be my last show around here,” she says. In 2015, Meima...
Three-ring binders filled with documents concerning the Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor surround Tom Buchanan. He flips through the tabbed and highlighted pages looking for a statement Entergy made in one of its many dockets before the Vermont Public Service Board (PSB). Jim Matteau watches Buchanan from a nearby chair, arms crossed, and smiles. Matteau, the former executive director of the Windham Regional Commission, recalls that in more than one PSB hearing, Entergy's lawyers would attend with reams of documents. Matteau,