I urge Dummerston residents to come to Town Meeting and vote to restore the town's annual investment in farmland protection to $5,000.
The world's leading scientists say climate change is a major threat to Earth's ability to support human life. Cars are a major cause of climate change.
Protecting open space is one of the best ways to stop climate change. When people live in areas like downtown Brattleboro and Putney, they can get to work, to school, and to shopping without a car.
The U.S. is losing about 6,000 acres of open space every day. The number of houses in Dummerston has gone from about 300 in 1960 to about 800 today. Hundreds of acres of farmland in Dummerston are vulnerable to being paved.
Several members of Lions Clubs from throughout Vermont and Vermont Lions Charities recently presented a check to Grace Cottage Hospital in the amount of $13,250 to help fund four generators for the hospital's campus. The donation was the result of an interesting sequence of events. Taylor Young at WCAX-TV...
Homework, final exams, and graduation - all in just 14 weeks. The burgeoning partnership between Community College of Vermont and Brattleboro Memorial Hospital has created a program that fast-tracks students through an accelerated College-to-Career certification program for Medical Assisting. And last month, this partnership program graduated its second class...
For years, outdoor enthusiasts in the Bellows Falls area have longed for a scenic hiking/biking trail to connect Bellows Falls and Saxtons River to both the Windmill Hill Pinnacle Association trails at Bald Hill and the larger Pinnacle ridgeline trail network. In 2015, that desire became more focused and culminated in a collaboration by the Bellows Falls Historical Society, Rockingham Conservation Commission, and Windmill Hill Pinnacle Association that was named the Saxtons River Valley Trails Initiative. Growing interest in that...
A few years ago, we wrote a satirical column on “toppling the patriarchy in eight easy steps.” (It's still online, if you're curious.) Since then, who could've imagined either the progress or the backlash we've seen just in this past year alone? Even as bits of scaffold come tumbling down, it's worth revisiting the last step we offered, as a beacon beyond the whole Love Boat theme of February: “Resist media-hyped consciousness. Support everyone's birthright to define themselves, and start...
The Preservation Trust of Vermont has awarded the Townshend Historical Society six $250 Robert Sincerbeaux Fund matching grants, totaling $1,500. The money will be used to hire Michael Weitzner from Thistle Stone Works of Brattleboro to complete conditions assessments on the six surviving, historically significant stone arch bridges in Townshend, built between 1894 and 1910 by Robert Follett. A local dollar-for-dollar match is required. Weitzner's final report will include not only his assessment of the bridges' current conditions, but also...
The Windham World Affairs Council opens its 2018 season of talks and presentations with Dr. Edward Cameron, who will speak on “Brexit and The European Union” on Friday, Feb. 16, at 7 p.m., at the Marlboro College Graduate Center, 28 Vernon St. This talk is free and open to the public, and attendees are invited to come at 6:30 p.m. for coffee, tea, and conversation before the talk, according to a news release. For 60 years, the European Union was...
Auditors' Reports now available BRATTLEBORO - The Brattleboro Town and Town School District Auditors' Reports for fiscal year ending June 30, 2017, are available upon request and may be picked up at the Brattleboro Town Clerk's office, 230 Main St. The Auditors' Reports will also be available as part of the Town and School District Annual Report, which will be available at the Town Clerk's office no later than Feb. 23. Based on a vote at the 2010 Representative Town...
College news • Ava Marie Zizza of Wilmington was named to the University of Alabama's Dean's List for the fall 2017 semester. • Eben Holderness, a senior linguistics major from Brattleboro, has been named to the Dean's List for the fall 2017 semester at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass. • Amelia Nick of West Dover, a member of the Class of 2020 majoring in Fine Arts, was named to the Dean's List for the fall 2017 semester at Marist College...
The Brattleboro Women's Chorus will begin its spring session soon. All women and girls age 10 and older are invited to join. New singers are welcome to try the first two rehearsals and see if chorus is right for them. The spring repertoire will feature Vermont songs - songs about Vermont and ones by Vermont composers and arrangers, including several by Chorus Director Becky Graber. Some of the songs will be performed by a group from the chorus at the...
On Jan. 2, my first day of work as energy and facilities manager for the small city of Lebanon, N.H. (pronounced “Leb'-nin” by locals), my car died at the base of Mount Ascutney. I assumed at the time that it was remnant biodiesel in the engine clogging the fuel filter, but shops and parts stores from Springfield to Claremont assured me that diesel vehicles all over were sputtering in the minus-20-degree Fahrenheit weather. I eventually popped in a new filter...
The Downtown Brattleboro Alliance (DBA) has issued a request for proposals for their 2018 Economic Development Grants. DBA is the official Designated Downtown Organization for the town of Brattleboro. It says its mission is “to raise the vibrancy of the downtown community” by “magnifying what is already here ... Downtown is the heart of Brattleboro, the center of commerce, culture, and community life. Its health is the weathervane of the community, if downtown is healthy and thriving, the whole town...
Asian Cultural Center of Vermont presents this year's celebration of the Lunar New Year of China, Korea, and Vietnam on Sunday, Feb. 18, from 1 to 3:30 p.m., at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, 10 Vernon St. This potluck is the 16th annual celebration of its kind in southeastern Vermont. This year, they feature Li Fei Osbourne who will share a dance of the Yi people (one of the Chinese ethnic minorities) and then teach a Yi dance to...
“Anthologies” will be the theme in 2018 at Guilford Center Stage. The year also features a transition of the former Grange building to Broad Brook Community Center, with the first phase of renovations planned. The Broad Brook Grange organization will continue to occupy the building, presenting its familiar lineup with the Sugar on Snow Supper, Mother's Day Brunch, and Guilford Center Stage productions. For 2018, with renovations beginning in the summer, only the spring theater production will be in the...
More than 20 Compass School students attended the Independent School Education Innovator Awards in Montpelier on Jan. 24 as part of National School Choice Week and came home with four awards. Open to all schools in the state, these awards are intended to expand the recognition for all who participate in creating innovative, personalized, and effective educational environments. Compass received awards for Educator, Student, Parent, and the overall School award. School Director Rick Gordon was chosen first in the category...
They are words that strike fear in the hearts of coaches everywhere - “second night of a back-to-back.” It's a common situation in the NBA, where a team will play in two different cities on consecutive nights. Coaches always worry about how much energy their players have on the second night, and will try to adjust their rotations and the amount of playing time to minimize fatigue. While Vermont high schoolers don't worry about late night check-ins at hotels, flight...
When controversy surfaced within our family or in the neighborhood, Mama Bea, my great aunt, was fond of saying, “It is what it is, but it ain't what it seems!” When I first saw the “Everyone Loves a Parade!” mural on Burlington's Church Street, my first response as a black man was, “Where are my people?” However, as I examined the mural in greater detail and saw the logos of area businesses, my thoughts shifted to “Oh, this is a...
As I write, we are just entering our sixth week of the final year of the 2017-18 Legislative Session. It seems as if this year is not only busy but that we are also addressing many major issues: minimum wage, gun legislation, law-enforcement coverage and issues, dispatch, universal primary care, prisons and prisoners, among others. None of these issues have reached any conclusions, but we continue to work on them. We have, however, passed some major pieces of legislation. Legalizing...
After nearly four years of planning, work has begun on the 5-megawatt net-metered solar project on the town's former landfill at the Windham Solid Waste Management District's Old Ferry Road facility. The project is behind schedule. In March, 2017, an official with Sky Solar, the project owner, told the District's Board of Supervisors construction on the photovoltaic solar array would begin in July and the project would go online in November. Construction on the 17-acre parcel, which Sky Solar is...
As we honor the birth of Abraham Lincoln - our first Republican president - ten-score and nine years ago, and his struggle to keep us united, we wonder what his reaction would be to today's greatest threat to our union: a divisive monetary gap between those who create our wealth (labor) and those who seize the profits (capital). “And, inasmuch [as] most good things are produced by labour, it follows that [all] such things of right belong to those whose...
Those wishing to further their education after high school should pay close attention to two bills currently under consideration in the Vermont legislature. H.114 and S.257 would place major restrictions on where students who are pursuing post-secondary education or training can spend their state-funded grants and scholarships. This issue is called “portability.” For over 50 years, portability has allowed Vermont students to use these grants and scholarships to further their education, regardless of where they have chosen to attend college.
Main Street Arts continues its Hands On! music series with a concert Sunday, Feb. 18, at 3 p.m. Classical by Intention: Bach, Stravinsky and Fauré will feature Hugh Keelan on piano and Gudrun Weeks on violin. The program includes the Duo Concertant by Igor Stravinsky, J.S. Bach's Concerto nach Italienischen Gusto ('Italian' Concerto) and Sonata for Violin and Piano in A by Gabriel Fauré. Weeks currently plays with the Windham Orchestra and is one of the founders of the Brattleboro...
The Planning Commission is in the beginning stages of updating the Rockingham Town Plan. To help them along, the Vermont Department of Housing and Community Development recently awarded the town just over $12,000 in municipal planning grants. A Town Plan gives municipal officials a set of expressed recommendations to guide them in such areas as land use, public services such as communications and transportation, environmental protection, economic development, and land conservation. In Rockingham, as in most towns, the Planning Commission...
Harris Hill ski jump is the only Olympic-size slope in New England and one of just six in the nation. This weekend, that could be a problem. Thousands of spectators at the hill's annual Presidents' Day weekend competition are used to hearing public address announcer Peter Graves introduce athletes before they soar off a launchpad 30 stories high at 60 mph. This month, however, the Vermonter's voice is echoing over the loudspeakers at the 2018 Winter Games in South Korea.
May the day you read this column feature all manner of serendipitously supportive happenings and positive transpirations in your life. In other words, I hope you have a good day! As for southern Vermont's sensible weather, we are in a very mild pattern for the remainder of February as it looks now. Aside from some rain and snow showers Thursday night into Friday morning, and some rain showers early next week, we've got fairly pedestrian weather ahead. Let's jump into...
Brattleboro Community Television will team up with The Commons to present a Selectboard candidates forum on Wednesday, Feb. 21, from 6 to 7:30 p.m., at the BCTV studios on the third floor of the Municipal Center, 230 Main St. Randolph T. Holhut, news editor of The Commons, will moderate. Olga Peters, host of “Green Mountain Mornings” on WKVT Radio, will ask questions, along with another panelist still to be determined. The forum will be broadcast live on BCTV, and streamed...
Colored pencil enthusiasts are invited to open their pencil boxes and explore their creativity in a workshop offered at Main Street Arts on Saturday, Feb. 17, from 1 to 5 p.m. Award-winning colored pencilist Liz Guzynski will lead the “Colored Pencil for Everyone” workshop. “I hope to introduce a wide range of people in this area to colored pencil because it's such a wonderful low-barrier entry into the world of painting and illustration,” she explains, although she maintains it is...
As Etta Mattison maneuvered a giant pair of scissors to snip the ribbon that spanned the new bay doors on the renovated Central Fire Station, a long-anticipated project was finally complete. The Brattleboro Fire Department now has a bigger, brighter, cleaner central station, where the vehicles fit through the bay doors, and the asbestos has been removed. Mattison's husband, the late T. Howard Mattison, was chief of the Brattleboro Fire Department for 30 years. Mattison said she was there to...
The documentary series [framed] continues at Next Stage in Putney on Thursday, Feb. 22, at 7:30 p.m., with When the Levees Broke, Spike Lee's 2006 documentary film about the devastation of New Orleans following the failure of the levees during Hurricane Katrina. The film was shot in late August and early September 2005, premiered at the New Orleans Arena on Aug. 16, 2006, and was first aired on HBO the following week, according to a news release. Parts 1 and...
Well, we just celebrated the first birthday of the Trump administration. We must have eaten too much cake at the party, because we're all feeling sick. But let's not be too quick to place the blame for the mess we're in. We would like to blame the misogynist-in-chief. We would like to blame the “angry white class” who believed his lies. We would like to blame the 30 to 40 percent of the population who actually agree with the divider-in-chief.
In 1998, the Brattleboro Union High School Diversity Education program was started after a black baby doll was burned in the fire during a football game and a confederate flag was hung in the gym. Since then, the program's focus has been based on building a diverse-inclusive community that has become part of the fabric of the Windham Southeast Supervisory Union. Diversity and equity work - ignited out of necessity from the local community - has been supported by the...
The Breast Archives, a radical documentary exposing how breasts can affect self-esteem and life experiences for women, is showing in Brattleboro on Sunday, Feb. 18, at 4 p.m., at 118 Elliot. Tickets are $10 (suggested donation), and all proceeds will benefit Planned Parenthood of Northern New England's Brattleboro health center. According to a news release, the film shares the unadulterated stories of nine women who disclose bodily shame and disconnection. As these women slowly reconnect with their body-based stories, they...
Artist Evie Lovett and poet Diana Whitney have each drawn inspiration from the Connecticut River in their work in a multimedia exhibition entitled Thaw: A Conversation in Words and Imagery. Lovett's encaustic paintings and several of Whitney's poems will be on display in the gallery at Next Stage Arts Project in Putney from Feb. 17 until May 15. The opening reception is Saturday, Feb. 17, from 4 to 6 p.m., which includes a poetry reading by Whitney at 5 p.m.
When you think about romance, sooner or later the pot-throwing scene from the 1980s movie, Ghost - the one where gorgeous dead lover Patrick Swayze embraces equally gorgeous yet still alive lover Demi Moore, while together their hands deeply caress wet clay - comes to mind. It's a good guess that it came to the minds of the producers of the cheesy TV show, The Bachelor, too. That may be why producers at ABC chose in December to film a...