Now that she is the Democratic candidate, can we give Hillary Rodham Clinton her due?
She's not perfect - what politician, or human being, is? But she has taken more heat than anyone running for office should have to, and now the time is here to “put a sock in it,” as the British say.
Or, as my high school typing teacher taught us, “Now is the time to come to the aid of the party.”
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For many of us here in Vermont, the decision to support Bernie Sanders for president of the United States was rooted in deep social-justice convictions, but not necessarily in the realities of our lives. Except perhaps for women - who understand on a daily, personal level the consequences of...
Tom and Sally Fegley have started a new property management business serving Windham County. In a news release, the Fegleys said Windham Property Management Inc. (WPMI) will offer “easy one-stop shopping for a full range of property management services.” “We know of no other property management company in the...
Tucker Reed Road Bridge project begins DUMMERSTON - A.S. Clark & Sons of West Dummerston, the contractor working on the Tucker Reed Road Bridge replacement, began construction the week of Aug. 15, Highway Foreman Lee Chamberlin told the Selectboard at their regular Aug. 17 meeting. Town officials closed the bridge on May 13 after a resident reported an abutment fell into the brook. Chamberlin said A.S. Clark completed the bridge's footings during the first week, and the following weeks would...
Stevens & Associates recently welcomed three new members to the architecture and engineering firm. • Bob Crego is a Project Manager for Development. Crego brings with him over 25 years of professional experience in the community development field, largely as an affordable housing developer. In addition to his role as the founding director for Valley Cares, Inc. in Townshend, VT, Crego's past experience includes organizational and project development, financing management, grant writing, and business planning. He is currently working on...
Southeastern Vermont Community Action is one of five community organizations in Vermont to receive additional funding for the state's Weatherization Program, which helps low-income homeowners and renters reduce their energy usage, lower their utility bills, and improve the overall comfort and safety of their homes. Priority is given to people getting Fuel Assistance, high-energy-use homes, families with young children, older Vermonters, and people with disabilities, according to a news release. “This program weatherizes between 800 to 1,000 homes in Vermont...
Western Avenue paving begins BRATTLEBORO - The town has contracted with Vermont Roadworks LLC to resurface Western Avenue from Allerton Avenue to Chestnut Hill. After milling the pavement this week, the Department of Public Works plans to pave Western Avenue Sept. 6. On-street parking won't be allowed during evening work. For more information, contact Highway and Utilities Superintendent Hannah O'Connell at 802-254-4255 or [email protected]. BAJC to host I-91 'coffee break' GUILFORD - The Brattleboro Area Jewish Community will host a...
“We acknowledge that this is a pretty serious burden on the people on the other side of the bridge,” Selectboard Chair Sheila Morse said at the Aug. 8 regular Board meeting. It was the first time the Board had met since the Aug. 4 announcement of the extended end-date for the Green River covered bridge detour. When construction began on the bridge, the planned date to reopen it to pedestrian and vehicular traffic was no later than Aug. 26. This...
The Latchis Theatre is showing Charlie Chaplin's 1936 film, “Modern Times,” on Thursday, Sept. 1. Unlike in most screenings of this silent movie, however, the accompanying music will come not from the film's soundtrack but from local musician Dan DeWalt's piano, as he provides a live, part-composed, part-improvised score. DeWalt is a composer and multi-instrumentalist, playing in various bands, such as Simba and the Creacion Latin Big Band, and in various regional musical theater productions. Considered by the American Film...
Is a general store in the town's future? At least 175 residents think so, according to information provided by Annette Roydon, chair of the Store Committee, which was formed after the first few community visits from the Vermont Council for Rural Development. During these community visits, officials with the Council meet with residents of a particular town and ask them what they need to make their town a better place to live, work, and visit. After townspeople identify their top...
On Thursday, Sept. 8, at 7 p.m., there will be a presentation about Brattleboro's Stephen Daye Press in the History Center at 196 Main St. This event is open to the public and admission is free. Founded in 1932 by John S. and Marion R. Hooper, the Stephen Daye Press published books about New England, according to a news release. It is considered the first in the field of regional publishers in the United States. John, Mary Ann, and Steve...
College news • Beau Doucette of Wilmington graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture and Community Planning degree from the University of Rhode Island. • Sarah Harlow of Putney, a member of Colby-Sawyer College's 2016 undergraduate nursing class, was honored with her classmates by New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan for their professional success and their future contributions in the health care field. Of the 33 graduates in the Class of 2016, 27 are now employed as Registered Nurses...
Susan Dedell, director of the Brattleboro Concert Choir, has announced the start of the 2016-17 season, with rehearsals of Johannes Brahms' Ein Deutches Requiem (“A German Requiem”) beginning in September. Performances of the Requiem with full orchestra and soloists are scheduled at the Latchis Theatre on Jan. 14-15, 2017, according to a news release. The choir welcomes new members. Singers who haven't sung with the choir and returning singers who haven't sung with the choir for the past year are...
The Brattleboro Museum & Art Center presents an exhibit of photographs by John Willis titled “House/Home, A Work in Progress.” An opening reception is scheduled for Friday, Sept. 2, at 5:30 p.m., during Brattleboro's monthly Gallery Walk. The exhibit will remain on view through Oct. 23. Willis will give a free gallery talk on Thursday, Sept. 15, at 7 p.m. For nearly 25 years, Willis has visited and worked on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, home of the...
Good day, fine people! If you like sunshine, you're in luck, because there's no shortage of it in the forecast. The only plausible chance for rainy weather occurs Wednesday afternoon and night extending into the first half of Thursday. Beyond that, there is a very, very low chance that a tropical system now down in the Gulf of Mexico skirts the southern New England coastline, bringing the chance for more showers to southern Vermont by early next week, but most...
As it has for a half-century, Friends of Music at Guilford opens its annual music season with a concert in a rural barn on Saturday night of Labor Day Weekend. The Organ Barn is at Tree Frog Farm in an idyllic setting near the state line where Guilford meets Leyden, Massachusetts. The intimate Organ Barn seats about 100 concertgoers, and on Sunday afternoon, 200 or more people flock to the site for picnicking and an orchestra concert outside the Barn.
Students at the three Brattleboro elementary schools - Academy School, Green Street School, and Oak Grove School - will notice a big change in the cafeteria this year. Thanks to a new Universal Free School Meals program, all school meals, including breakfast, lunch, and after-school meals, will be free for every student. School meals have always been available for free to some students, depending on income. Parents have had to fill out an eligibility form, which is then used to...
Town officials are unhappy with upcoming changes to the state's training requirements for listers. Cost, time, and a lack of support for southern towns were cited as problems at the discussion during the Aug. 17 regular Selectboard meeting. Lister Christopher Landin appeared at the Board meeting to announce the changes, which require all listers to attend a series of seminars. The trainings last four days, and listers who don't take them soon can't sign “411” forms - certifications of the...
Vermont Yankee administrators say they're getting a stubborn groundwater-intrusion problem under control, and they're no longer actively pursuing a proposal to discharge tainted water into the Connecticut River. While liquid continues to seep into the shut-down nuclear plant's turbine building, that is happening at a greatly reduced rate, spokesman Marty Cohn said. So there is no current need to consider discharging the water, Cohn said. In fact, he said Vermont Yankee is cutting back on tanker-truck shipments that had been...
Mount Snow's parent company is proposing a $20 million stock sale to help relieve the pressure of continued delays in the Dover resort's EB-5 foreign investment program. Missouri-based Peak Resorts last week announced the financial maneuver, which is subject to shareholder approval in October. Administrators said they need more working capital due to cash constraints, and they cited two factors behind the decision: An unseasonably warm winter in 2015-16 cut deep into the ski company's revenues, and the delayed release...
“To Watch, To Wait and To Wonder: Works in Clay,” a show partnering ceramic artists Susan Wilson and Anna Koloseike, will be on exhibit in the Crowell Gallery at the Moore Free Library from Sept. 1 to 29. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, Sept. 3, from 3 to 6 p.m., according to a news release. As always, Crowell Gallery exhibits are free and open to the public. Wilson's work in clay is about finding her place in...
To support From the River, To the River, The Brattleboro River Valley Strummers will perform an acoustic set of river songs during Gallery Walk on Friday, Sept. 2, from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m., at the new riverfront park on Depot Street overlooking the Connecticut River. Singing along is welcomed, and songs about rivers will include “Proud Mary,” “Down By the Riverside,” “Deep River Blues,” and some originals, according to a news release. The Strummers include Johnny (Ungerleider) Rivers, Bill (Conley)
Ever hear the story of the “ski train?” The exotic actress who spent summers in a fur coat - and nothing else? The chambermaid who saved the day by standing in the shadow of a wrecking crane? This building - called Union Station upon its opening in Aug. 12, 1916 - is as much a part of the local landscape as the surrounding mountains that were quarried to provide fieldstone blocks for its walls. Physically speaking, the former railroad depot...
“It's not a fire sale,” Todd Darrah said when asked why he put his popular eatery, the Chelsea Royal Diner, on the market. He and Janet Picard, his life partner and co-owner of the restaurant, are “looking for the next chapter in our life.” “I have bad elbows, knees, and shoulders,” Darrah pointed out, “and I want to be healthy when we retire. My goal is to change my seven-days work ethic to a more reasonable one.” But, Darrah's in...
Christina Moore's resume doesn't lack for variety: She's spent time on a research boat in Alaska, worked on communications networks in Iraq, and assisted with Hurricane Sandy recovery in New York. But there are two common threads - technological expertise and emergency response - that run through the Halifax resident's life and career. The devastating floods of Tropical Storm Irene in 2011 led Moore to form Storm Petrel LLC, which has woven those two threads into a new software package...
Voters going to the polls on Nov. 8 will need to head north. North up Putney Road that is. Voting in the Nov. 8 general election will happen at the VFW Carl Dessaint Post 1034 on Black Mountain Road. In a news release, the Board of Civil Authority said town bus service will provide free rides to people who need them. The board is also contacting local organizations and businesses and asking that they provide free transportation to voters. Normally,
Brattleboro and Bellows Falls start the high school football season this Friday night at 7. Bellows Falls hosts Springfield at Hadley Field for the annual renewal of a rivalry series that dates back to 1914. The game for “The Trophy” used to be the final game of the season for the Terriers and the Cosmos. With realignment, the two schools are in different divisions now, with BF in Division II and Springfield in Division III. So, the only way to...
“I've always written,” Robin MacArthur said, over a cup of tea on a recent morning. “I remember writing a story when I was around eight. I have a mountain of journals in my old bedroom in my parents' house. My parents' old cowshed was my playhouse, and I was home all the time,” she said. “I'd make pretend tea out of mud and sticks and I'd write.” She paused, then said, “That's what I'm still doing.” “Half Wild,” MacArthur's first...
A 1993 unauthorized biography of Donald Trump is getting a second life, thanks to a Brattleboro publisher, Echo Point Books & Media, whose specialty is exhuming out-of-print books and bringing them to new readers. “Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump” by Texas author Harry Hurt III chronicles the personal life and financial dealings of the current Republican presidential candidate in the days when he was tabloid fodder and not a political figure. The only controversy it generated...
Stories, coffee, and dessert - three ingredients congenial to any fun community gathering - were in abundant supply as four speakers capped the Historical Society of Windham County's annual meeting and potluck with stories of community, the effects of Interstate 91, one-room school houses, celebrity sightings, and reunited friends. The well-attended event took place on Aug. 19 at the NewBrook Fire Station on Route 30. Holding a stack of index cards, speaker Larry Clark got a chuckle from the audience...
Fire Chief Michael Bucossi watched as “smoke sifted out of the drawers” of a large metal cabinet containing artwork by local painter Jim Giddings. The flat file was inside the artist's studio at 562 Stark Rd. when the 20-by-16-foot building caught fire Monday evening. Multiple fire departments responded at approximately 7 p.m. According to fellow artist and wife Petria Mitchell, Giddings, a painter since the 1970s, “lost the vast majority of his life's work in the fire.” “The building is...
Main Street Arts will host an exhibit of the work of artist Shane Harris from Sept. 2 to Oct. 10, with an opening reception Thursday, Sept. 8, from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Entitled “Outdoor Perspectives,” the exhibit is a showcase of Harris' deep connection to the outdoor world of southeastern Vermont in all its seasons, according to a news release. By day an officer with the Bellows Falls Police Department, Harris spends his off hours by a brook, at the...
Voters in four Windham Southeast Supervisory Union towns finally have an official date - Nov. 8 - when they'll consider merging their school districts. On the same day, those voters in Brattleboro, Dummerston, Guilford, and Putney also will be deciding whether to allow Vernon out of a regional high school union. Though the matters are related, the plan to present two complex educational questions simultaneously is generating some concern. Town clerks are worried about an increased workload during an already...
The most common misconception people have about River Gallery School, located in the Wilder Building in the heart of downtown Brattleboro, is that it is a private institution. So believes Donna C. Hawes, the Development Coordinator/Administrator at the School, who wants to make clear that it is a nonprofit dedicated to serving the community of Southern Vermont. “Too many people are afraid to come through our doors,” she says. “They won't take any classes or workshops because they believe they...
Staff members at Brattleboro Community Television received a national award for overall excellence for its efforts to provide a mix of public, educational, and government programming to its eight-town audience. The Hometown Media Award, in the division for media organizations with budgets of less than $300,000, was presented by the Minneapolis-based Alliance for Community Media at its “Our Town” annual conference in Boston. BCTV staff attended the three-day event. The public access station provides community media services, including gavel-to-gavel broadcast...
The firefighters, town staff, and guests of the Brattleboro Fire Department delivered a fond farewell to Assistant Fire Chief Peter Lynch last week. Before expressing his gratitude in a short speech, an emotional Lynch said, “I have no idea if I will get through this or not. If it gets bad, pull the fire alarm.” Lynch is leaving the department after 32 years - nine as assistant fire chief - to become the Chief of Fire Service Training for the...
It was the rain, not the wind, that caused havoc. It was a storm we knew was coming to Vermont, and we also knew that there was a high probability of damage and possible loss of life. Irene was a big storm that was coming to a state that hadn't seen a sizable tropical storm or hurricane in years. But when Irene passed over Vermont - by then, downgraded from hurricane to tropical storm - on Sunday, Aug. 28, 2011,