Issue #475
A piece of restaurant history
Dining al fresco with Charles Mallory at Artisan Restaurant at Four Columns Inn in Newfane inevitably turns into a conversation about the ways in which food in Vermont is unlike food anywhere else.
Mallory is the CEO of Greenwich Hospitality Group, a company he founded in 1999, which owns the inn and upscale, attention-to-detail properties in Connecticut and Texas. He also is celebrated for his success in his shipping brokerage firm; for his activities in the vintage automotive world; and for his collection of antique cars, some of which become an attraction at the inn when parked in front of the great classical portico with its four fluted Greek-revival-style columns.
Donors give record amount of cash in this year’s ‘Load the Latchis’
Libby Bennett balanced on a stair stage left in the Latchis' main theater. Hunched over her calculator, the development director for Groundworks Collaborative counted the small piles of cash and checks that surrounded her. Individual donors gave more than $3,000 in cash, checks, and online donations for the eighth...
Milestones
College news • The following local students are now members of the Class of 2022 at Castleton University: Haley Brown of South Newfane, Kyle Derosia of Vernon, Lucy Lawlor of Saxtons River, Jenner Lyman of Grafton, Benjamin Nelson-Betz of Dummerston, and Jordan Wright of Brattleboro. • Ellis Oliver of...
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Valley Lions Club announces scholarship awards
The Valley Lions Club, serving the West River Valley communities of Newfane, Brookline, Townshend, Jamaica, and Wardsboro, recently awarded their 25th annual First Year College Scholarship to selected Leland & Gray High School graduates. The graduating students each were presented with a $2,000 check to be used toward their college expenses. The scholarships were awarded based on students' submitted applications highlighting their academics, community service, and need for financial support. This year, the Valley Lions Club Scholarship Committee received and...
Lisa McCormick brings her singer-songwriter ukulele show to Next Stage
Next Stage Arts Project, 15 Kimball Hill, presents singer/songwriter Lisa McCormick in a special CD release concert on Saturday, Sept. 8, at 7:30 p.m. at Next Stage. Tickets are $16 in advance, $18 at the door, available online, through the Next Stage website (www.nextstagearts.org), at the Putney Co-op or Turn It Up in Brattleboro. Though she's currently making waves as a prime local instigator of the “Ukulele Revolution,” McCormick has long been known as an outstanding guitarist and singer/songwriter whose...
Westminster West Community Fair to be held Sept. 8
The 29th annual Westminster West Community Fair will be held on Saturday, Sept. 8, and this year honors Westminster Cares, the community-based volunteer organization founded 30 years ago. Admission to the fair, held in the heart of the village off Westminster West Road, is free. It starts at 8:30 a.m. and runs until 3 p.m., and includes a fun run for kids and 5K race for adults; bake sale; a parade through the village; and a raffle. The “pick your...
Around the Towns
Drainage work begins on Flat Street BRATTLEBORO - Beginning this week, the Highway Division of the Brattleboro Department of Public Works will be working on Flat Street. Crews will be installing new drainage on Flat Street in the area of the Boys & Girls Club. The work is estimated to take approximately two weeks to complete. During that time, the sidewalk on the north side of Flat Street (near Sam's Outdoor Outfitters and the Boys & Girls Club) will be...
MSA offers fall art classes
Main Street Arts will offer a range of classes in September, including those listed below. For more details, or to register, visit www.mainstreetarts.org/fall-2018-classes or call 802-869-2960. • String Band with Jill Newton. Wednesdays, Sept. 5 through Dec. 5 (13 weeks, no class on Nov. 21), 5 to 6:15 p.m. Play your instrument in a group setting and practice traditional square dance and fiddle tunes from around the world. All string instruments are welcome. • Life Drawing Studio Session with Charles...
Rear Defrosters plan EP release party
On Friday Sept. 7, at 8 p.m., Brattleboro's homegrown classic country band The Rear Defrosters takes the stage at the Stone Church, 210 Main St., to celebrate the release of their new EP, Gentleman Farmer. The event will be a double EP release party with the Boston-based country band formerly known as Girls, Guns and Glory - now going by the name Ward Hayden and the Outliers - releasing their own EP, Can't Judge a Book. Featuring a large and...
Free gelding clinic offered by Gerta’s Equine Rescue
Gerda's Equine Rescue will host a free gelding clinic on Sept. 8 for owners who might not otherwise be able to afford the procedure. According to a news release, the VT/NH Veterinary Clinic (based in Dummerston) and students from the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, along with other area veterinarians, have all graciously volunteered their time and expertise to perform the gelding and microchipping. Patterson Veterinary has agreed to donate all of the medication needed for the...
Volunteers are invited to join Connecticut River Conservancy’s Source to Sea Cleanup
Registration is now open for the Connecticut River Conservancy's Source to Sea Cleanup. The annual event, now in its 22nd year, has grown into New England's largest river cleanup and won the American Rivers award for most miles cleaned in 2017. CRC invites volunteers to continue the tradition of getting dirty for cleaner rivers on Friday and Saturday, Sept. 28 and 29. There are three ways for volunteers to get involved in the Source to Sea Cleanup this year: Report...
New theater company debuts at Hooker-Dunham
For its inaugural season, Turbulent Times Theater presents two chilling works by acclaimed contemporary playwright Caryl Churchill. Performances will be presented Sept. 7 and 8, at 7:30 p.m., at the Hooker-Dunham Theater, 139 Main St. A Number deals with issues of identity, parenting, and the perennial opposition of nature and nurture. When Bernard is contacted by a medical researcher and informed that he is one of a number of genetically identical clones, he confronts his father with what he has...
Town to buy second sidewalk snowplow
It's hard to imagine with the hot, muggy weather this summer, but in three months, the town could be covered in snow. To prepare, the Selectboard recently approved a bid for the purchase of a second sidewalk plow. This was part of a slate of capital equipment bid awards Town Manager Peter B. Elwell presented to the Board for their approval at the Aug. 7 regular Selectboard meeting. Elwell noted all five items were approved earlier in the year by...
Brattleboro bus routes, schedules will change
The Current, the bus line that serves Brattleboro and Hinsdale, N.H., will soon have a new schedule. Randy Shoonmaker, the CEO of Southeast Vermont Transit, the company that operates The Current, estimated the new route and schedule changes will take effect on Oct. 1. The transit company is working with a design agency to lay out the new schedule and service map, and Shoonmaker promised they will be much easier to read. “We're doing everything we can to make them...
Selectboard briefs
State takes a pass on Municipal Center rental BRATTLEBORO - Town Manager Peter B. Elwell announced at the Aug. 21 regular Selectboard meeting that the town won't lease part of the Municipal Center to the state. When the Brattleboro Police Department moved to their new building at 62 Black Mountain Rd. last fall, the town needed a new tenant. Communications between the state and the town, including a letter of intent from the State Commissioner of Buildings and Services Christopher...
For rural internet access, a Venn diagram of doom
By the 1930s, “nearly 90 percent of U.S. urban dwellers had electricity, but 90 percent of rural homes were without power,” according to University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives Research on the Economic Impact of Cooperatives. “Investor-owned utilities often denied service to rural areas, citing high development costs and low profit margins. Consequently, even when they could purchase electricity, rural consumers paid far higher prices than urban consumers.” Vermont has state-of-the-art communication technologies. We have cell service throughout much of...
Say goodbye to heat and humidity as cooler air moves in
Good day to you, denizens of the windy hamlets of southeastern Vermont! We've been enduring very warm to hot temperatures and very high humidity recently. Thankfully, these conditions are coming to an end, at least for the next week. (If you listen closely, you can hear a high-pitched squeal to your south - that's me screaming for joy down in western Massachusetts!) While cooler more seasonal temperatures will arrive by Friday, we do have two more hot days and a...
Seeing the USA in a different way
Author Mary Ann Hooper will read and discuss her book Across America and Back - Retracing My Great Grandparents' Remarkable Journey, recently published by the University of Nevada Press. Hooper will give a short presentation with photos and read from her book, followed by questions and discussion, on Wednesday, Sept. 12, at 7 p.m., at Brooks Memorial Library. This event is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be available. Her book will be available to buy and she...
Pet owners and their blinders of entitlement
“Get away from my car, you f-ing a-hole! I don't need any information! I love my dogs!” That was the reaction of an elderly woman in Palm Springs, Calif., when offered printed educational information on the risks to her two small dogs that she left alone in her car while she shopped for groceries for over an hour. “These people are interfering with my right to live my life the way I choose!” So screamed an angry dog owner at...
Raiders spoil Colonels’ football opener, 35-0
Are the Brattleboro Colonels in for another tough year in Division I football? After watching the Colonels lose to the Rutland Raiders, 35-0, in the season opener at Natowich Field on Aug. 31, you can't help but feel discouraged. To the Colonels' credit, they played the Raiders to a scoreless tie through most of the first half. But with five minutes left in the second quarter, Rutland all but put the game away with three touchdowns before the halftime whistle.
Art in the Neighborhood finishes summer semester
Art in the Neighborhood, a local nonprofit organization that provides tuition-free art classes to children in low-income housing communities in Brattleboro, has just finished its six-week summer session. A 12-week semester will start the week of Sept. 10. Classes operate year-round at Westgate Housing, Ledgewood Heights, and Moore Court. In a news release, executive director Mollie Burke said the program has been expanding this past year to include Community Outreach projects at Moore Court. Some fall projects will include a...
Historical Society hosts talk on the Great New England Hurricane of 1938
On Thursday, Sept. 13, at 7 p.m., at Union Hall on West Street, Steve Long will talk about how the Great New England Hurricane of 1938 transformed the region, bringing about social and ecological changes that can still be observed. Long is the founder of Northern Woodlands magazine and was its editor for 17 years. Copies of his 2016 book, Thirty Eight: The Hurricane that Transformed New England, will be available for purchase. Today, it seems hard to believe that,
Out of the past
For about 225 years, some of the first Europeans to settle in town rested in so much peace their remains were forgotten. They were buried in the town's long-neglected first cemetery, high up on Newfane Hill, lost beneath the deep growth of trees just a few feet from Otis Lane. In the last few months, Historical Society of Windham County board members Richard Marek and Laura Wallingford-Bacon did some detective work and learned of the existence of the cemetery -
Leaning into culture shock
For those of you who haven't had the experience of living and working abroad, I have a few thoughts. I've learned to ask a lot of questions of landlords when I rent a new place, as very often you don't see them for quite a while after you sign the paperwork. So here you are, moving into a new place. Think of all the questions you need to ask. Where does the trash go? What's the internet password? How do...
BAJC hosts Hirschhorn as artist-in-residence
The Brattleboro Area Jewish Community will welcome nationally-famed performer, teacher, and composer Cantor Linda Hirschhorn for a weeklong artist-in-residence program on Oct. 30 through Nov. 3. Hirschhorn is the founder of Vocolot, the first Jewish women's a cappella ensemble, and has released two songbooks and eight recordings of original material. Her songs and choral arrangements have been published in major Jewish and folk anthologies, are performed by professional and amateur groups around the world, and have been used in video,
Marlboro gets space to create community
The downstairs at the Marlboro Meeting House is currently a work-in-progress. In a small room off the main hall, space has been cleared for a future public library. In the large multipurpose room, pieces of donated furniture - a comfortable couch, a few café tables and chairs, bookshelves - are stationed at various points across the floor. Stacked against the walls are scores of colorful paintings by Betsy MacArthur, waiting to be sold or displayed. Many have already found homes.
Totally tomatoes!
“What's for dinner?” “Tomatoes.” “Didn't we have tomatoes for lunch?” “Yep. Guess what we're having for breakfast?” * * * We wait all year for that blush of red in the garden, and the first few are precious. Nothing beats the flavor of fresh tomato, unadorned except for a sprinkle of salt, or the ritual of the first tomato sandwich - white bread, mayonnaise, thick slice of tomato, salt. Then, all at once, we have tomatoes in abundance! We make...
What’s for dessert? Peach cobbler!
Our local peaches are beautiful and abundant, and it's time for a special dessert: peach cobbler. It's best to use a mix of sweet ripe fruit and a few that are still just a tad hard. The fruit that is slightly underripe has more pectin, which will help in the setting of the juices. You can also add a few raspberries - only a few - if you have them on hand to add another element of flavor and color.
Writing for herself — and then the world
When Ann Braden, discouraged by rejection, tried to stop writing, she realized she needed that activity in her life. Her persistence was vindicated on Sept. 4, when her first book, The Benefits of Being an Octopus, was released. The book follows Zoey, a 12-year-girl, struggling as the caretaker for her three young siblings, watching as her mother's confidence get diminished by a boyfriend, and wishing for invisibility. Zoey takes comfort in her favorite animal, the octopus, and its ability to...
Dairy farm marks 150th anniversary
Fifty years ago, New England supported more than 11,500 dairy farms. Only 1,500 still operate today. One of them, the Corse Farm Dairy, like many others, is a family farm - but one that has spanned six generations and recently celebrated a century and a half of operation. “My great-great grandfather moved here from Somerset in 1868,” said Leon Corse, who now works the property with his wife, Linda, and their daughter, Abbie. “He bought the farm, and the mortgage...
Jonathan Biss to perform a benefit concert for Marlboro Town Library
On Sunday, Sept. 16, at 4 p.m., at the Brattleboro Music Center, Jonathan Biss, world-renowned pianist and co-director of the Marlboro Music Festival, will perform a concert to benefit the brand-new Marlboro Town Library. The program will include Haydn's Sonata in A flat major, Hob XV: 46; Beethoven's Sonata in E flat Major, Op. 31 no. 3; Mozart's Menuet in D Major, K. 355 and Adagio in B minor, K. 540; and Schumann's Davidsbündlertänze, Op. 6. A post-concert reception with...