Issue #509
A ‘Collide-A-Scape’ of movement
From May 17 through 19, the Brattleboro School of Dance will present four performances of “Collide-A-Scape,” our 40th annual Spring Show.
“Collide-A-Scape” features dancers aged 7 to 70 participating in a true community endeavor that's fun, imaginative, and professional. It is not your ordinary dance recital. It's a high-quality dance performance of original works.
Working people: organize, stand up, and fight back
Having just passed another International Workers' Day on May 1, it's a good time to take stock of the condition of workers in the United States. We find politicians and the ruling class drooling about low unemployment and a booming economy. Who are the true beneficiaries in this economy?
Supreme Court could push transgender or gay employees into the closet
I finally accepted that I was transgender when I turned 20. I had been denying it to myself for over two years by this point. This was an utterly terrifying realization. For months, I agonized over every interaction, hoping and praying that no one could tell that I was...
More
May is Flag Month for Brattleboro’s American Legion Post 5
With the upcoming Memorial Day holiday, Brattleboro's American Legion Post 5 is using the month of May for a series of community projects centered on the American flag and on recognizing the veterans who gave their lives in service to our country. In a news release, John Hagen, the post commander, explained that the idea emerged from discussions of the American Legion's centennial anniversary. “Our members were looking for ways that we could highlight the 100 years of service by...
Ultimate disc makes debut as varsity sport
In 2017, the Vermont Principals' Association green-lighted ultimate disc (don't call it Frisbee, since that is a trademarked name) as a high school varsity-level sport. After years of unofficial club status, this year marks the first official season as a VPA-sanctioned activity. Played on a field slightly smaller than a football field by teams of seven, ultimate is a simple game. Players pass a disc down the field until a teammate catches it in the end zone. If the disc...
Land of the free?
Walking the aisles while shopping at the local big-box discount store (you know the one!), I suddenly began to question something deeply personal about myself: How come I could never see myself veering towards the political Left? And, then, a couple of aisles later, it came to me. I realized that those with left-leaning views vote for their legislative representatives based on the “free stuff” promised to them from every campaign podium. Free health care! Free community college tuition! Reparations!
Windham Ballroom hosts producer/songwriter
“I was always writing songs, since I was a teen, but I probably wrote 200 songs before I wrote a really good one,” Gurf Morlix says in his bio on gurfmorlix.com. “For me, it was a tough code to crack.” Morlix performs on Thursday, May 16, at the Windham Ballroom at Popolo, 36 The Square. The perspective of this producer, singer, guitarist, and songwriter on his body of work may be somewhat skewed by his years of working with such...
Camp for A Common Cause fundraiser planned for May 17
On Friday, May 17, Groundworks Collaborative will host the seventh annual Camp for a Common Cause on the Brattleboro Common. Brattleboro's Seasonal Overflow Shelter closed for the season on April 29. “This community remains without a permanent home for the Shelter next season, which makes this community campout all the more poignant,” Groundworks' Executive Director Josh Davis said in a news release. This year's event will feature a family-friendly community barbecue with live music from VT Shakedown starting at 6...
Around the Towns
Water line project update BRATTLEBORO - The Brattleboro Department of Public Works says Zaluzny Excavating has successfully installed the entire 275 feet of new 12-inch ductile iron water pipe and has begun the process of tying over buildings in the area. Service interruptions will continue intermittently throughout this week until all new service lines are connected. Shutdown for the Brooks House businesses and residences is scheduled to occur the evening of Wednesday, May 8, beginning at 10 p.m., and extending...
Stroll seeks volunteers for parade, weekend events
Strolling of the Heifers seeks volunteers for their annual Parade and Expo, Slow Living Summit, Friday Evening Festival, and Tour de Heifer, all of which will occur June 6 through 9. Volunteers are needed in the following places/times and for the following roles: • Slow Living Summit: “The Future of Women in Food Entrepreneurship”-Thursday and Friday, June 6 and 7. Morning or afternoon shifts. Registration table, workshop monitors. • Specialty Food and VT Beverage Expo: Friday, June 7; 5 to...
WWAC talk highlights Chinese treatment of Muslim minorities
On Friday, May 10, the Windham World Affairs Council will present “The Uyghurs of Xinjiang: Perfecting the Surveillance State in China's Muslim Borderland.” The talk, which is free and open to the public, will take place in the parlor of Centre Congregational Church, 193 Main St. There will be coffee, tea, and conversation starting at 7 p.m., and the talk will begin at 7:30 p.m., followed by a question-and-answer session. According to a news release, inspiration for this topic came...
Vermont Tech creates new LNA course
Vermont Technical College has created a new Licensed Nurse Assistant program that will be taught at its Brattleboro Campus. According to a news release, Vermont Tech is starting this new course “in response to the tremendous need for LNAs in our region. Many long-term care and acute care facilities hire LNAs and, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the demand for LNAs is growing faster than [demand] for workers in nearly every other job or position.” Nursing assistants...
Microgrids on the horizon
I'm in the process of learning about Enphase Energy and its IQ8, which advances the technology behind its microinverters and batteries to become grid-agnostic and, eventually, allow for non-grid usage. In the not terribly-long-from-now future, we should be able to make our own microgrids without Green Mountain Power's involvement at all. Zola Electric has completed field testing with the Enphase products in Africa, and the technology looks tremendously promising.
Celebrate spring with field-grown pansies
This year, Singing River Farm hosts Pansy Pick-up Days instead of its usual Pansy Festival. The dates for this two day event are May 11 and 12, Mother's Day weekend. Hundreds of field-grown pansies will be for sale between noon and 4 p.m. each day. The pansies will be on display at the farmhouse, 2/10 of a mile north of Vermont Route 103 at 2128 Brockways Mills Road in Rockingham, between Exit 7 of Interstate 91 and Chester. Singing River...
Co-op supports civil-rights banner with Bag a Bean program
Beans add up to dollars for local nonprofits at the Brattleboro Food Co-op. Come shop at the Co-op and donate to We Celebrate Democracy/Civil Rights For All banner at the same time. We are one of three nonprofits featured in the co-op's Bag a Bean Program for May. The others are Safe Place Child Advocacy Center and Brattleboro Coalition for Active Transportation. You have seen the banner flying over Main Street, marching in the Strolling of the Heifers and Brattleboro...
Milestones
College news • Allison V. Stamler of Brattleboro has been selected for membership in Gamma Sigma Alpha, the national academic Greek honorary society, at St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y.. Stamler is a member of the Class of 2020 and is majoring in English. Obituaries • Joan E. Gray, 72, of Brattleboro. Died April 28, 2019 at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital, following an extended illness. Born in Hartford, Conn., on April 1, 1947, the daughter of Kenneth and Norma (McGrath) Ashley,
Workshop explores how older houses work
Sustainable Energy Outreach Network and the Rockingham Conservation Commission will present a two-part program, “How Older Houses Work,” on May 23 and 30 from 5:30 to 8 pm. This is an opportunity to learn about drafts, moisture, and heat, how they're interrelated, and how buildings function as a system. Peter Yost, principal of Building-Wright, will be the presenter. He has more than 30 years of experience in building, researching, teaching, writing, and consulting on high performance buildings. His expertise ranges...
Towns, schools count down to merger
The final countdown has begun toward the July 1 deadline for the creation of a Windham Southeast School District Board, for which early voting is already in progress. In the midst of this legal transition, a consortium of Vermont school districts has filed a motion for summary judgment, urging the court to immediately vacate the state Department of Education's Nov. 30, 2018 order. The May 6 filing calls the DOE's mandate “unconstitutional and contrary to law.” If no judicial or...
Putney Library celebrates spring with an evening of women nature writers
On Wednesday, May 15, at 7 p.m., join Michelle Blake, Putney Public Library's Writer in Residence, for an evening of women nature writers. Participants will read and celebrate the women who have created their own particular worlds in the fields of nature writing - Rachel Carson, of course, and Annie Dillard, Susan Fenimore Cooper, Rebecca Solnit, Diane Ackerman, Leslie Silko, Gretel Ehrlich, Sue Hubbell, Terry Tempest Williams, Camille Dungy, and many more. Blake will do a short introduction to Sue...
Keelan, Jewett face off in concert at Main Street Arts
Hugh Keelan on the piano and Joe Jewett on the violin face off Sunday, May 12, at 3 p.m., in a Classic(al) Saxtons River Spectacular as Main Street Arts continues its Hands On! concert series. Concertgoers are invited to see all the action up close as Keelan interprets the music of Johannes Brahms on the MSA piano and Jewett matches him on his own instrument with works by Lou Harrison. While Brahms' name is familiar to classical music fans, Harrison's...
We are living with the consequences of previous administrations’ autocracy
Elayne Clift stresses that there is not a political crisis but a constitutional crisis, yet the examples she gives are all political, not constitutional. The U.S. presidency has become steadily more autocratic over decades, most dramatically under Bush and Obama. Trump has actually attempted to correct that imbalance by returning policymaking to Congress when it belongs there. Perhaps that is the constitutional crisis that Clift is stressed about: that Congress long ago abdicated so many of its responsibilities and now...
A policy of ideals is incompatible with the political horse race
Elayne Clift's piece encapsulated perfectly what's happening. The media's portrayal of the us-versus-them playbook ends up normalizing what should be abnormal. No historical contexts - or, more importantly, no policy positions - that emerge from a framework of ideals based on helping people can come from the “horse race” mentality. The power of media will certainly define the Democratic field. Mayor Pete Buttigieg, for example, is such a creation. A good-government-and-transparency-policy person takes a back seat to the most recent...
‘Oasis’ means different things to different people
Howard Fairman, you sound like a bitter skier talking about snowboarders when the mountains started letting “those kind” on the slopes. Don't you believe in diversity on the trails? “Oasis” means different things to different people.
In Vermont, mass brainwashing over erasing Columbus is the priority
In the relentless struggle to erase Western civilization - and history itself - our Republican governor has signed into law the end of Columbus Day in Vermont, replacing it with Indigenous Peoples' Day. In other words, the only valid way to think of Christopher Columbus - a studious, well-read man - is that he conquered and hurt indigenous people. That's it. And how dare he spread the Word of God from Europe itself in the process of experiencing the Golden...
Why, oh why, do legislators believe what lobbyists say about safety of 5G?
With their push to legalize the 5G rollout in Vermont by succumbing to the pressure of industry lobbyists, the Legislature and Public Utility Commission fail in their jobs - fail to listen to citizens screaming, “Foul! Foul!” Everyday citizens of Vermont have done the research the legislators, commissioners, and the industry have failed to do. No studies by the industry have been done and yet they are willing to barge full steam ahead in their experiment on all us human...
Swimming in our own refuse. Why?
After just walking a very short stretch of road on this Earth Day and nearly filling a 39-gallon trash bag with mostly alcohol containers, I would like to see people who drink and drive and who trash our roadsides sentenced to community service, cleaning up miles of roadway of all this trash. Then I would like to see them made to haul all the bags somewhere where they can stand over a barrel of water and clean all of those...
Met Live series continues at Latchis with Poulenc’s ‘The Dialogues of the Carmelites’
On Saturday, May 11, opera fans will have a rare opportunity to experience a Met: Live in HD performance of Francis Poulenc's The Dialogues of the Carmelites, at the Latchis Theatre, 50 Main St., at noon. The Dialogues was created in 1955 and is based on historical fact. “Today, 40 individuals had their heads cut off, including 16 Carmelite nuns from Compiègne.” This statement, dated July 17, 1794, comes from the diary of 69-year-old Celestin Guittard de Floriban, an avid...
Kelly Young: write-in candidate for new WSSD board
Voters in Guilford, Brattleboro, Putney, and Dummerston will vote in a special election on Tuesday, May 21 for directors on the new Windham Southeast School District board. Each town will have two representatives. You'll discover on the ballot that one of the positions has no candidate listed. It's the two-year slot for Guilford. I'm pleased that Kelly Young has indicated that she will accept the position as a write-in candidate. In this election, all the positions are voted upon by...
‘Paranoid, vapid thinking’ in addressing white male demographic
I was dismayed to read the hateful, paranoid piece by Curtiss Reed Jr. To see all that is wrong with this piece, simply swap the phrase “white man” for “black,” “Hispanic,” “Muslim,” or any other word that identifies a group of people. In Reed's mind, if one member of a group of people commits a horrific crime, it is necessary to suspect every person of that group to be a criminal in waiting and even to fear them when you...
Wet/dry weather pattern continues to bring us a soggy spring
Good day to you, fine folks of southeastern Vermont! Man oh man, the first half of the spring of 2019 continues to deliver consistent bouts of wet weather, be it from frontal passages or actual storm systems. For now, we're stuck in this west-to-east flow that's sending these Pacific disturbances through southern Vermont, and we should remain there for at least the next week. We do have a couple of beautiful, fair weather days coming up for Wednesday and Saturday.
Brattleboro schools seek more applicants of color
The Town School Board recently signed a short-term contract with the Vermont Partnership for Fairness and Diversity to help recruit more people of color to education positions. The supervisory union is seeking to fill the principal position at Oak Grove School, as well as three teacher jobs in Brattleboro. Approximately 20 percent of the student body in Brattleboro's town schools are children of color, Board Chair David Schoales told The Commons. “We have children who don't see people who look...
Stone Church Arts presents evening of ragas on Indian slide guitar by Joel 'Veena' Eisenkramer
In a rare local appearance, Joel 'Veena' Eisenkramer, presents a Stone Church Arts concert of traditional North Indian evening ragas played on the 20-stringed Indian slide guitar on Saturday, May 11, at 7:30 p.m. Eisenkramer will be accompanied on tabla by Rajesh Pai. The concert takes place in the beautiful and historic Immanuel Episcopal Church, the stone church on the hill, 20 Church St., Bellows Falls. For the past 11 years, Eisenkramer has studied and performed Hindustani classical music, traveling...
Whichety, whichety, whichety
Warblers are irritating, and that's the truth. It's a beautiful spring morning, the mist just disappearing and the sun promising a full Monty. I take my binoculars and stroll quietly down to the mailboxes and, just like yesterday, I hear a yellow warbler singing full bore, whichety, whichety, whichety. Where? Must be right there in that bush. But I can't see it. No. She/he emerges, flitting from branch to branch veiled by the baby yellow-green leaves of spring, barely hatched.
For one town, hiring first HR director proves complicated
Two years after facing tough questions about the diversity of its municipal workforce and procedures in recruitment, and after almost a year of searching, the town has hired its first human resources director. Town Manager Peter Elwell told board members at the May 7 Selectboard meeting that Sally Nix will begin work on June 17. He also described the process of hiring Nix, painting a portrait of a long journey that took him, his colleagues in the Municipal Center, and...
Happy birthday, Pete!
Folk singer, activist, and the musical conscience of our nation, Pete Seeger, would have been 100 this year. All Souls Church, 29 South St., will host a singalong concert on Sunday, May 12, at 7 p.m., to celebrate Seeger's music and his life-long efforts on behalf of peace, justice, and the earth. The concert will feature well-known performers with deep connections to Seeger, including Sally Rogers, Emma's Revolution, Peter Siegel, Annie Patterson, and Peter Blood. Those who attend the tribute...
Club builds 20 years of connections
Members, families, and staff of the Boys & Girls Club of Brattleboro - and members of the community - crowded into the nonprofit's Flat Street location on May 3 to kick off its 20th anniversary. Guests toured the building, which previously served as a parking garage and, more recently, a nightclub, as some members played board games, ping-pong, and basketball, while others skated in the town's only indoor skatepark. The Club will celebrate its 20th anniversary throughout the summer, and...
New hope for Haiti
In 2018, I traveled with a Florida-based United Church of Christ delegation to Pétion-Ville, a community on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Haiti Partners, a remarkable organization that is changing lives multigenerationally - primarily through education - hosted us. I immediately thought about Brattleboro's interest in sister communities and wondered if Pétion-Ville might be a natural fit. Having studied southern African history for two decades, I'm aware of the brutality that can result from a society's having been colonized. A...
Greening up
Hundreds of volunteers fanned their way through Windham County on May 4 for Green Up Day, Vermont's statewide cleanup of litter along 13,000 miles of roadsides. Robin Rieske, who organized efforts in Brattleboro, said the details of this year's efforts won't be available for a few days, but the event's website (greenupvermont.org) says the one-day workforce numbers 22,500. Eli Coughlin-Galbraith observed that while driving between downtown Brattleboro and Bunker Farm in Dummerston, they “saw no fewer than three awesome teams...
Quebecois quintet Les Poules à Colin visits Next Stage
A double-bill of Quebecois and Scottish music comes to Next Stage Arts on May 17 at 7:30 p.m. Les Poules à Colin is a Montreal-based quintet that, despite the young ages of its members (22 to 27), has been touring Canada, the U.S., Europe, the U.K., Australia, and Africa for more than eight years. Their sound seamlessly blends music drawn from some of Quebec's finest trad musicians with North American influences that range from old-time to jazz. Les Poules à...
We need 20,920 more Vermonters to tackle climate change. Are you one?
According to an article in a recent issue of The Nation, “In an 18-month period, TV and print outlets gave 40 times more coverage to the Kardashians than to the acidification of oceans caused by rising temperatures” - and this was in 2012, before most of the really exciting Kardashian news was happening! In the same article it was revealed that many networks avoid news about climate change because the news is “a ratings killer.” And yet, climate change continues.