With humble beginnings, a flyer and a meeting place, a paradigm began to shift in Southern Vermont.
On June 13, 2005, in the community room at Brooks Memorial Library in Brattleboro, community organizer Tim Stevenson screened The End of Suburbia, a film that addressed “world oil peak and the inevitable decline of fossil fuels.”
“About 15 to 20 people showed up,” Stevenson said. “Most of the people at least knew something about peak oil and global warming issues. We all shared those concerns. We were attuned to the idea of not calling on or depending on Washington, D.C. for a solution.”
With that small gathering, Post Oil Solutions (POS) was born with a specific mission in mind: “To empower the people of the central Connecticut River Valley bioregion to develop sustainable, collaborative, and socially just communities leading to a self-sufficient, post-petroleum society."...
The Grafton Music Festival will take place from Friday, July 2, through Sunday, July 4 with most of the events free for all ages and are a complement to the festivities taking place throughout southern Vermont. The main event to the weekend of music is the 20th annual Vermont...
Congratulations to Marlboro College for receiving an $83,000 Vermont Clean Energy Development Fund (VCEDF) grant to retrofit a classroom at Dalrymple Hall, and to the Brattleboro Retreat for receiving a similar $50,000 grant to buy and install an energy-efficient boiler. Energy efficiency is an important part of the state...
After six years, the on-again/off-again hard rock and metal band Curst is definitely on again. The band recently completed and released its debut CD, Vermont Democracy, which has actually been in the works since 2006. In fact, all the delays and various ebbs and flows of this band and this recording have not only changed the music over time, but also became an inside joke of sorts for the band. It spawned the CD's tongue-in-cheek reference to the many-years-long recording...
Computer thieves have hit other education facilities in the area. About $15,000 to $20,000 worth of specialized computers were stolen from the Windham Regional Career Center in Brattleboro three years ago. “They showed us all the holes in our security system,” Director David Coughlin said. Cameras and alarms guard the facility at night, but Coughlin said that the thieves operated similarly to those in the 1990 art theft at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Coughlin said the thieves...
I am now an official candidates for governor of Vermont. My interest in this political job is to use my talents to inspire others to reach down further inside of themselves and live up to their highest potential. That is what I am good at. I am also good at speaking truth to power. I am also likely the most frugal of candidates, perhaps winning the “necessity is the mother of invention” award itself. I believe in joy and bounty,
Cornerstone Pediatrics on the move BELLOWS FALLS- Cornerstone Pediatrics in Bellows Falls is celebrating its move to 22 Bridge St. with an open house and ribbon cutting at the new office site from 4 to 7 p.m. on Thursday, July 8. There will be refreshments and also activities for children. The open house and ribbon cutting event is sponsored by Brattleboro Memorial Hospital and the Bellows Falls Chamber of Commerce. This is a chance to meet (or re-meet) the staff,
Five local high school baseball players recently participated in the annual North-South doubleheader, with the top, recently-graduated senior ballplayers throughout Vermont. The Brattleboro Union High School battery included pitcher Devin Rhodes and catcher Kyle Whitworth, who were both named to the squad, along with another pretty good local battery from three-time state champs Leland & Gray, pitcher Gabe Pozzi and catcher Tyler Russell. Also named to the team was Vermont Academy and Brattleboro Post 5 Legion infielder/pitcher Adam Harrison. Rhodes...
Over the past few years, Elliot Street and the Harmony Parking Lot have developed the reputation of being places that are unsafe and filled with troublemakers. Is it deserved? Brattleboro Police Chief Eugene Wrinn recently pointed out that the area constitutes about 3 percent of his department's calls. “You can play the numbers however you want, but if people perceive it's a problem, then it's real. No one should have to feel that way [afraid],” he said. There have been...
Ask local veterans about the quality of health care they get from the Veterans Administration, and they usually have good things to say. Ask them what they don't like, and they'll say driving more than an hour to the VA medical center at White River Junction to get that care. Now, those long trips up Interstate 91 will be greatly reduced, with the opening the VA's new Community Based Outpatient Clinic (CBOC) in the Exit 1 Industrial Park. The Brattleboro...
Art and Meditation class work on exhibit BRATTLEBORO- During July, the River Gallery School will feature paintings and assemblage by student/artists who have been participating in the Art and Meditation class. The work in this exhibit is personal, intimate and a testimony to the inner journeys and landscapes of the exhibiting artists. “To follow one's 'thread' not knowing where it may go asks for courage and willingness to trust one's creative vision. What emerges in the art is self-revelatory and...
Recent changes to the Vermont liquor control laws have made it easier for small distillers to market and sell their products. Labyrinthian permitting and selling restrictions in the law made it dauntingly complicated for specialty houses to reach their public before the simplification of Sec. 1, VSA 2 went on the books in the last legislative session. Act 102 was passed and signed in May of this year. The biggest changes, distillers say, is that they are now allowed to...
Michael Bruno's new business plan - to fill the former Sam's Outdoor Outfitters space with consignment booths catering to a public looking for antique furniture, jewelry, lamps or rugs - has found approval with the town. Bruno successfully requested a $50,000 loan from the Town of Rockingham's revolving loan fund to start renovations on the building - which initially include asbestos removal on some pipes in the basement - and upgrades for public safety which will include a fire suppression...
Locked doors and a locked computer cart did not prevent thieves from stealing 28 computers worth approximately $34,000 from the Dummerston School on the night of June 19 and June 20. “Most schools [in the area] have alarm systems,” Vermont State Trooper Genevra Cushman said, adding Dummerston is unusual in this respect. According to Cushman, one or more intruders broke a window lock and entered the school. Locked doors prevented the thief or thieves from entering the classrooms via the...
A lingering recession and the prospect of a year of disruption from the Main Street/Route 5 reconstruction project has contributed to a growing sense of unease among downtown merchants. Brattleboro Area Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Jerry Goldberg acknowledges these challenges, but refuses to dwell on them. “We know people are worried,” said Goldberg, “but rather than retreating, we want to present ourselves in the best possible way we can. There's no better time than right now to promote our...
One part of Vermont’s rich and varied cultural history is owed to its hippie generation of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Vermont was a veritable Utopia for all who followed the era’s back-to-the-land movement and decided to come to Vermont to live organically on communes and self-made farms. Rebecca Lepkoff and Peter Simon, two famous photographers whose work captured the spirit, people and endeavors of the time, will be featured at the Vermont Center for Photography this week at...
At a special meeting on Tuesday, the Selectboard voted 4-1 to change the administration of the BeeLine town bus service from town control to an outside transit provider. Board member Dora Bouboulis cast the only dissenting vote. Both the Deerfield Valley Transit Association (DVTA) and Connecticut River Transit (CRT) have expressed interest in submitting proposals to run the BeeLine. Both already work closely with the BeeLine to provide connecting service to their respective routes. Both the DVTA and CRT have...
Thank you for printing a truthful account on what has happened not only to my nephew, David Snow, but the pain and anguish my family and I are all going through [“Candles on Elliot Street,” The Commons, June 23]. Andrew Sheets took many victims that night. He has changed all of our outlooks on life, and not in a good way. The world has become a frightening and cruel place, not to be trusted. Another “gift” from Sheets: My family...
Varied as the country itself, Argentina's women are brave, buoyant and beautiful. Sometimes they're silent, often they are flamboyant. They're classy, cosmopolitan, rurally regal. They range from little-known to infamous, from the politically active to the nameless poor. They own businesses, dance the tango, and have streets named for them in a Buenos Aires neighborhood where The Bridge of Woman commemorates them, even though Argentina remains largely machismo. Among them are The Madres de Plaza de Mayo, Argentine human...
By nearly a two-to-one margin on Tuesday, Brattleboro voters rejected a plan to have the town adopt a pay-as-you-throw system of trash disposal. As a result, Brattleboro residents will continue paying for trash pickup and disposal through property taxes. According to Town Clerk Annette Cappy, 2,000 residents - 22 percent of registered voters - cast ballots in the special referendum vote held at the Municipal Center, and 1,354 voted against PAYT, while 646 voted in favor. Cappy said 834 voters...
I am a proud military mom of Vermont. I am also a co-coordinator of the Yellow Ribbon group of Brattleboro. I first would like to thank you very much for all of support you have given us and especially the troops. With the 4th of July is right around the corner, I thought the timing would be right to honor my son, Sgt. Joshua S. Nadeau, currently serving overseas in Afghanistan with the 86th IBCT Mountain Infantry Brigade, Delta Co.
In evaluating the spin-off and related transactions, the central question is whether the acquisition by Enexus of controlling interests in Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee, LLC (EVY) and Entergy Nuclear Operations, Inc. (ENO) promotes the public good. EVY and ENO were issued a Certificate of Public Good for EVY to own and ENO to operate the VY Station. There are few more important public trusts than that assumed by the direct and indirect owners of nuclear power plants to ensure their...