GRAFTON - A dog census taken three years ago found approximately 200 dogs were licensed in Grafton. A recent update found that the number has declined in the past two years to 140 licenses issued.
A new dog census will be completed and Cynthia Gibbs and Kim Record were appointed by the Selectboard as dog census takers in March. The current report notes that two unlicensed dogs live in the town; the constable is required to contact the animal owners.
The Selectboard authorized the constable, Walter Critchfield, to contact the unlicensed animal owners.
...My wife and I started investigating solar power for our home four years ago. We learned that, based on our past usage, an array approximately 5 kilowatts in size would supply all our needs. Our design translated into 22 solar panels and cost a substantial amount, which included excavation...
Town seeks options for selling off guns VERNON - After the dismantling of the town Police Department last year, the Selectboard has worked to liquidate its former assets. One sticky point has been what to do with the guns. Citing concerns with liability, the town has hesitated to sell...
Terry Allen recently reported in In These Times on gun-drug runners carving a deep, two-way trench down the Northeast, leaving a toxic trail of violence, misery, and addiction. You can read her piece in the print edition of The Commons this week in Voices, where it appears with the kind permission of the magazine. To read it online: inthesetimes.com/article/18168/guns-heroin-vermont-new-york.
Vermont Theatre Company's production of Romeo and Juliet during the last weekend in June was our 26th Annual Shakespeare-in-the-Park performance and marked the end of our 31st season. For three shows, nearly 500 people came out to the Rotary Stage in Living Memorial Park to enjoy perfect Vermont summer evenings, picnics with families and friends, and 19 amazing actors performing one of Shakespeare's most popular and most-loved plays. (Unfortunately, we had to cancel Sunday's performance because of the rain. The...
During the next two years, the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks, and Recreation, part of the state's Agency of Natural Resources (ANR), plans to harvest a hemlock stand covering approximately 40 acres in the Roaring Brook Wildlife Management Area. Because access to the stand requires crossing the Vernon Town Forest through a truck road and a snowmobile trail, Aaron Hurst, a forester with the department, visited the July 6 Selectboard meeting to ask the town's permission to move forward with...
The Winston Prouty Center for Child Development has outgrown its building located off of Guilford Street. The school that supports early childhood education and family programs is looking to other nonprofits to share ownership of the former Austine School and Vermont Center for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing's (VCDHH) approximately 200-acre campus. Winston Prouty Executive Director Chloe Learey told The Commons this spring that the center had planned to break ground on a $2 million dollar expansion at its...
I am concerned about Vermont Public Service Department (PSD) Commissioner Chris Recchia's statement that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) plant decommissioning process is “broken” and that Vermont must lead the way to fix it. This position, if pursued, would once more have the state of Vermont challenging and encroaching on the federal preserve in all matters touching nuclear safety. The Public Service Department opposes the NRC's granting Vermont Yankee permission to access the decommissioning trust fund (DCT) to pay...
'Black Lives Matter' campaign begins in area GUILFORD - Local faith communities and organizations are collaborating in the next few weeks to make visible the community's concern for the lives of Black people in our midst. Beginning this weekend, signs with the words “Black Lives Matter”will begin appearing on the front lawns of churches and other buildings committed to creating a welcoming environment. Often it is what organizers call “micro-agressions” (small snubs or insults) that have the most exhausting impact...
Poet Rachel Hadas and video artist Shalom Gorewitz present a fusion of poetry and digital filmmaking on Wednesday, July 29, at 7 p.m., in the Brooks Memorial Library meeting room. Their collaborative process has been described as not illustrative or narrative, but instead a kind of syncretic linking. Hadas is the author of The Golden Road (poems), 2012, and the prose work Strange Relation: A Memoir of Marriage, Dementia, and Poetry (2011). Her awards and honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship,
College news • Alexander C. Breau of Vernon recently received the Hoyt Warner Computer Science Book Award at the College Honors Ceremonies at Western New England University. This award is determined first by overall GPA and the GPA in the major, then by an evaluation by the computer science faculty, who consider the student's potential for graduate study in computer science or a related field, as well as the student's service to the department. Graduating cum laude with a B.S.
On Saturday, July 25, at 7:30 p.m., Open Music Collective's (OMC) Summer Jazz Intensive will be celebrating its sixth year with a concert and reception at The Hooker-Dunham Theater on Main Street in Brattleboro, featuring special guests Mitch Seidman on guitar and Dr. Catherine Jensen-Hole on vocals. Also on the program will be Claire Arenius on drums, Carl Clements on woodwinds, and Jamie MacDonald on bass. Jensen-Hole is an active performer, composer, teacher, adjudicator (someone who gives a critical evaluation...
Shelagh Stephenson's Olivier award-winning family comedy, The Memory of Water, will have two staged reading performances at the Actors Theatre Playhouse on Saturday July 25 and Aug, 1 at 7:30 p.m. Staged readings enable actors to sit with script in hand for a fully realized and rehearsed performance - minus the scenery and the staging. The Memory of Water is a rapid-fire comedy involving three sisters who are reunited on the eve of their mother's funeral. The three sisters, however,
The noted Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, returns to Marlboro Music for the second consecutive year as Resident Composer, and will have two of her works performed on the second weekend of concerts at the Vermont retreat on Saturday, July 25, at 8:30 p.m., and Sunday, July 26, at 2:30 p.m. Saturday's program will include the Mozart Oboe Quartet in F Major, K. 370 and the Mendelssohn String Quintet in B flat Major, Op. 87, as well as the Saariaho Nymphea...
Pssst. Want an unregistered semi-automatic handgun, some heroin, and a way to make a 1,400-percent profit? First, the gun. In Vermont, you can legally buy it through a “private” sale at a gun show, yard sale, online, or from a dealer. Doesn't matter if you're a convicted murderer with a history of mental illness and a restraining order for domestic abuse. Anyone 16 or older with $600 can, for example, go to Armslist.com and arrange with a “private party” in...
Former Ambassador Peter Galbraith will speak on “The Iran Nuclear Agreement: Why It Is Good for America and How It May Change the Middle East,” as the first in the Windham World Affairs Council's new “Hot Off the Press” presentations meant to inform civic dialogue on issues of the moment. The free talk will take place on Friday, July 24, at 7 p.m. at the new performance space in town, 118 Elliot, located on 118 Elliot St., across from the...
Although Windham County Sheriff Keith Clark assured the Selectboard he has “always tried to keep [his] costs low” and pass his department's savings onto the towns he serves, costs for the town's 18{1/2} hours per month of police patrols have gone up enough this year to necessitate raising rates. Despite the increase, the board voted 4-1 to renew the town's yearly contract. Clark gave this news to the Selectboard at the July 8 meeting when he came to discuss the...
Brattleboro 12-year-old Little League All Stars defeated arch-rival Bennington in the seventh and deciding game on Tuesday by a score of 3-1. Brattleboro now moves on to the Vermont State Little League World Series this weekend in St. Johnsbury. The game was scoreless for four innings, but Brattleboro broke through in the bottom of the fourth inning to take a 2-0 lead. Brattleboro scored their third run in the bottom of the fifth with Tyler Millerick's home run over the...
Poets Coleman Barks and Marie Howe and master musicians Eugene Friesen, cello, and Jamey Haddad, percussion, will join for a concert that will celebrate the art of language in performance of collaboration between poets and storytellers and master musicians, with a special focus on the mystic poet Rumi. In Barks's translations, the timeless gifts of the great Sufi mystic Jelalludin Rumi (1207-1273) contain surprising insights into the working of the human heart and psyche. In performance, Coleman's entertaining style, anecdotes,
A few days into her tenure as the Brattleboro Food Co-op's general manager, Sabine Rhyne laughs when asked what has her shaking in her boots. “What doesn't?” she answers. The co-op's first new general manager in three decades, Rhyne took over from Alex Gyori, who retired last month as the store celebrated its 40th birthday. “It was a really hard decision for me,” she said. “I know how consuming it can be.” Rhyne smiles as she describes the realization that...
Bennington and Brattleboro are rivals in everything, and the Little League Baseball diamond is no exception. The best-of-seven series in the District 2 11-12-year old tournament came down to a seventh game this week which was won by Brattleboro in a nail-biting 3-1 finish on Tuesday night at South Main Street Field. The only run that Bennington scored was a sixth-inning home run by Quintin McIntyre off winning pitcher Alex Lier. Zinabu McNiece got the final three outs to earn...
My most harrowing camp story does not involve bears or bugs or bad weather. Instead, it was a surreal journey in search of dessert, a journey that brought me to a small-town general store where black is white, up is down, and pies are not for sale. This was July 2014, and 10 of us were camping out at Ricker Pond State Park in Groton. The weather was perfect all week, and we had hiked and swum and paddled ourselves...
Twilight Music continues its 13th annual Twilight On The Tavern Lawn series of folk, world beat, rock, jazz, zydeco, Celtic, swing, blues, and bluegrass summer concerts on Sunday, July 26, with an evening of high energy Scottish music by Cantrip. The seven-concert series continues every other Sunday through Aug. 23. All concerts begin at 6 p.m. in downtown Putney on the Putney Tavern lawn (attendees may bring a lawn chair or blanket) or at The Putney Community Center at 10...
The old Locke Farm's big red barn on the corner of Sunset Lake Road and Route 9 in West Brattleboro, between Sunnyside Solar and the Chelsea Royal Diner's backyard garden, seems very quiet. In nicer weather, sometimes a cook from the diner can be seen tending to a barbecue smoker just to the side of it. Hens cluck in their pen behind it. Occasionally a rooster crows. It's unlikely most visitors to the diner realize how lively that spot was...
As Yellow Barn's Summer Season began its 46th season in Putney, the chamber music school and festival took a moment to look back. In a birthday concert with what Executive Director Catherine Stephan called the “octogenarians” at Yellow Barn, three veteran Yellow Barn faculty members to whom the current season is dedicated - pianists Peter Frankl and Gilbert Kalish and cellist Bonnie Hampton - joined young Yellow Barn artists for a sold-out concert celebrating the classical era of chamber music.
The Brattlyn Brothers will perform live at the gazebo at the Brattleboro Common on Tuesday, July 28, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. This is a free concert sponsored by the Brattleboro Recreation and Parks Department. The band says they play classic rock and roll music the way it was meant to be played. With a selection of tunes from artists including The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Wilson Pickett, The Beach Boys, and Van Morrison, they present music of the...
The Friends of Brooks Memorial Library will host a concert by the Brattleboro Baroque Quartet on Friday, July 24, at 7:30 p.m., at the Brooks Library on Main Street in Brattleboro. The quartet members are Martin Hanft on the traverso and recorder; Michelle Liechti on the violin; Laurie Rabut on the viola da gamba, and Wendy Redlinger at the harpsichord. The performance will be a salon-style event with seating in the round. The musicians will speak briefly about their instruments...
Samirah Evans' annual Leo Party returns to the Arts Block in Greenfield, Mass., on Saturday, July 25, joined this year by fellow Leo and vocalist, Rebecca Holtz. The two jazz and blues singers have shared the stage many times, and they will have a familiar trio supporting them in Eugene Uman (piano), Dave Picchi (bass) and Jon Fisher. With Holtz set to move to California this fall, Evans says it will be very special for her to share the spotlight...
The fourth annual Mountain Hideaways House and Garden Tour, sponsored by the Friends of the Wardsboro Library, is scheduled for Saturday, July 25, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., rain or shine. The self-guided driving tour features the interiors and gardens of homes in Wardsboro, West Wardsboro, Stratton, Jamaica (just over the Wardsboro line) and the recently renovated Wardsboro Public Library and perennial gardens located at 170 Main St. The tour begins at the Wardsboro Town Hall on Main Street,
On Saturday, July 25, at 8 p.m., Readsboro Arts presents The Maverick Street Band, featuring Agona Hardison, in concert in the historic EJ Bullock Building at 7012 Main St. The Maverick Street Band plays country, rock, and roots music, accompanied by Hardison's vocals. Tickets are $12 in advance or $15 at the door, with cabaret seating. Advance tickets are available by calling 802-423-7706 to order. For more information, visit www.readsboroarts.org. This concert is part of the Readsboro Arts 2015 Summer...
Art work by Matthew J. Peake will be on display at Main Street Arts through Aug. 14. Peake's pastels feature an aerial perspective of people in abstract ways - by gestural shape - on a geometric background in a form he calls “Overlooks.” The subjects include a view of diners at a table, women sharing a purchase, men chatting, and people and the shadows they create in passing. The artist began his career as a family physician in rural Vermont...
Early one Wednesday morning, Laurie Callahan parked in the southeast corner of the lot of the C.F. Church building on Flat Street in Brattleboro. At about 7 a.m., she walked down a narrow path toward to the shores of the Whetstone Brook. Other than the high-pitched call of distant delivery trucks' beeping backup signals, the only sound interrupting the brook babbling was birds chirping. Along the way, Callahan picked up beer cans and collected them in a dirty, discarded plastic...
Three high-profile robberies in the final week of June set the local social media sphere atwitter. But members of law enforcement say that the overall rates of bank robberies and commercial theft remain consistent in town. What is on the rise, say police, is drug use as a motivating factor behind the crimes, and they observe that law enforcement and the court systems are changing to meet the trend. Court documents obtained by The Commons show that drugs played a...
Early on a warm Monday afternoon on June 29, the echo from police sirens ricocheted off the downtown buildings. A hold-up alarm had been triggered at the People's United Bank on Main Street. According to court documents, suspect Jared R. Fahmy walked into the the bank at approximately 12:45 p.m. He wrote a note at the check writing station and passed it to a teller. The affidavit written by the Brattleboro Police Department states that Fahmy's note read, “this is...
Leadership is essential to the success of almost any enterprise you can name, and its absence is invariably the cause of its failure. Governments (big and small), workplaces, businesses, schools, churches, fraternal and civic organizations, sports teams, political groups, theater companies, choruses, clubs, families, or just about any other gathering of people whose purpose in coming together is to accomplish a common task, all require leadership to be successful, however defined. Furthermore, leadership need not be the authoritarian, partisan, abusive,
A preview of View From Table Rock, followed by a question-and-answer session with the 30-minute documentary film's director, Lyle Sorensen, takes place Wednesday, July 29, at 7:30 p.m., at the Bellows Falls Opera House. Guided by two antique bird's-eye-view lithographs depicting Bellows Falls in the 1800s, Sorensen explores the past and present. The film shows how most bird's-eye views were created and how a unique rock formation overlooking Bellows Falls offered artists a vantage point that hikers still visit today.