Powerful. Thank you for all the energy you expended to craft this article. Well done.
...On Aug. 15, the Friends of Vernon Center held its first public event at the Governor Hunt House in Vernon, which the Friends are working to redevelop into a community center for the town. We wish to thank everyone who worked on this event and contributed goods or services...
The town of Halifax recently hosted COVID-19 vaccination clinics and ice cream socials. There are many people - and one dog - to thank for these very successful events. Selectboard Member Pete Silverberg proposed the clinics, and all board members approved. The kind and professional crews of Rescue Inc.
Thank you for bringing this story to light, and thank you to Mindy Haskins Rogers for her bravery in sharing it. I'm relatively new to the community, don't have kids in the school system, and don't know any of the people mentioned in the piece, but I support speaking truth to power, even (and especially) when it makes people uncomfortable and shatters the silence around these types of crimes. Those who believe that child abuse, sexual assault, and the sexual...
The Boys & Girls Club Brattleboro and Retreat Farm are joining up again to deliver Kids Club, a licensed after-school care program that they said “supports healthy social-emotional development, outdoor skills, and respect for the planet and each other.” This program begins Sept. 1 and will operate at Retreat Farm. This fully outdoor program will provide children with access to the barn, the pasture, the field, the animals, the forest playground, and everything the Retreat Farm has to offer. The...
The National Alliance on Mental Illness of Vermont (NAMI Vermont), aided by a grant from the Vermont Department of Mental Health, continues to offer education and support to those with family members that live with mental illness. Their program is offered yearly in several counties across Vermont. In addition to helping with the everyday challenges that might be expected by the friends and family of those living with mental illness, the classes provide up-to-date research surrounding mental illness. Classes run...
RiseVT–Windham County is spreading the importance of families eating dinner together in the area with a pilot program focusing on easy-to-make dips and sauces to accompany fresh, seasonal veggies. As part of its Dinner Together initiative, which focuses on the social and emotional benefits of families sharing meals together, local Program Manager Elisha Underwood and her team created Summer Harvest Seasoning Packets and a Summer Cooking Demonstration video series. “These local additions to Dinner Together offer recipes, tips, and ingredients...
College news • Jesse Jerome-Wrenn of Dummerston, a member of the Class of 2024 majoring in mechanical engineering, was named to the 2021 Dean's List at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y. • Caya Greenspan-Layman of Wilmington, a member of the Class of 2022 at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa., shared an honorable mention award for fiction in the Edwin A. Miller Writing Awards and a first prize for feature writing in the Muhlenberg Weekly Journalism Awards. • Tuckerman Wunderle of...
Ironically, what is potentially most promising about our situation today is that the same circumstances that confront us with social collapse and possible extinction also conspire to present us with an unprecedented opportunity to finally get it right, to live the values-informed existence we have been searching for all along, and that we now require more than ever, as a condition of our very survival. As the Chinese ideograms for the word suggest, crisis is a time not only of...
Historical Society of Windham County plans annual meeting NEWFANE - The annual meeting of the Historical Society of Windham County will be held at the NewBrook Fire and Rescue station on Route 30 on Friday, Aug. 27. A brief business meeting at 5:30 p.m. will be followed by the traditional storytelling program at 6 p.m. This year's storytellers will be Dr. Robert Backus of Wardsboro and Dr. Robert Tortolani of Brattleboro. They will share their experiences of medical care in...
Green Mountain RSVP (Retired and Senior Volunteer Program) of Windham County is part of a nationwide organization of more than 400,000 senior volunteers, aged 55 and older, who help fill unmet needs in communities, especially among the elderly and disadvantaged. They describe themselves as “an active community of seniors helping fellow seniors stay healthy, independent, and able to enjoy life longer at home.” Green Mountain RSVP has a wide variety of volunteer positions available with local nonprofits such as senior...
The Brattleboro Museum & Art Center (BMAC) presents “Representations of Railroading,” a free online talk by Scott Lothes, president and executive director of the Center for Railroad Photography & Art, on Thursday, Aug. 26, at 7:30 p.m. Register at brattleboromuseum.org. As one of the world's most transformative technologies, railroads are frequent subjects of all forms of art. This presentation will trace that long relationship, focusing on paintings from the 1830s to the present. The talk is offered in connection with...
As an elected official for some 30 years, I have had previous unproductive interactions with Emily Peyton and would like to respond to her latest attention grab - attacking Michael Mrowicki in a letter to the editor. I served in the Legislature with Mike for eight years. There is not a hateful bone in his body. As for some of the rhetoric to which Peyton was responding, many of us have been holding our emotional breath for four ghastly years...
Emily Peyton's demand for Rep. Mike Mrowicki's resignation is a textbook example of using emotional rhetoric when you have nothing substantial to say. To read Peyton's letter is to leave the reader wondering what Mrowicki's act of hatred was - it offers you no clue. Even when you slog through her repeated accusations of hatred and protestations of love, you will arrive at the end still trying to identify her precise point. To borrow a line from Shakespeare's Macbeth, Peyton's...
Tatsuya Nakatani, renowned avant-garde percussionist composer and sound artist, will perform a solo set and a duet with Bonnie Kane at 118 Elliot on Saturday, Aug. 28. The concert begins at 7 p.m., and the suggested donation is $10. Active internationally since the 1990s, Nakatani has released more than 80 recordings and tours extensively, performing more than 150 concerts a year. His primary focus is his solo work and his large ensemble project, the Nakatani Gong Orchestra. Originally from Japan...
Epsilon Spires presents Dr. William Tortolano, of St. Michael's College, to play the historic Estey 300 pipe organ in the Sanctuary at 190 Main St., on Wednesday, Sept. 1 at noon. The free concert inaugurates an ongoing live Lunchtime Organ Series continuing every first Wednesday, featuring accomplished organists from near and far. “Audiences are invited to bring lunch, find a comfortable spot, and become immersed as the music fills this acoustically exceptional hall,” event organizers write in a news release.
I have never liked the heat - all my life I have tried to avoid extreme heat, thus my living in Vermont. But thanks to unmitigated climate destruction, the extreme heat has followed. The summers in southern Vermont, even those hottest times, never felt like this day: 96 to 98 degrees and massive humidity, and the night cool-off waiting until 11 p.m. or midnight. For the first 20 years of my life in Vermont, the summers were mostly bearable without...
A special school election will be held on Tuesday, Aug. 31, with voters in Athens, Grafton, and Westminster asked to vote to approve the financial terms of Westminster's withdrawal from the Windham Northeast Union Elementary School District (WNUESD). According to a news release, this election is a requirement of the State Board of Education in order for Westminster to be fully authorized to reinstate its town school district, effective July 1, 2022. Westminster is to assume the debt remaining for...
With an increased number of COVID-19 cases linked to the delta variant, Brattleboro Memorial Hospital said this week that there has been increased demand for testing and vaccines. In a news release, BMH President and CEO Steve Gordon announced new policies and procedures in place “to keep our staff, patients, and entire community safe.” BMH has moved its testing clinic to the parking lot in front of Brattleboro Family Medicine (behind Brattleboro House of Pizza on 417 Canal St.) and...
You have done exactly the right thing, without question. Anyone who has not experienced sexual predation or assault, especially in childhood, has no idea how forcefully, viscerally, and destructively it resonates throughout one's lifetime, and therefore there is no ground on which to declare this better left in the past. I won't go on, here, at the length I'm tempted to; except to mention how stunned I was to see the statistic of age 52 as the average age of...
Thank you to Mindy Haskins Rogers for writing this. Sexual abuse happens on so many levels - even today, it is confusing whether an action is abuse or not. Abusers mess with our minds, leaving us wondering if we've encouraged them, if we're being too sensitive, if this is normal behavior. However, if we are uncomfortable, that is enough information. Get out. Let others know. The Women's Freedom Center is a powerful resource, and we are fortunate to have it.
It is so important to shine a light on the dark corners of our institutions. Parents and members of the community place trust that children will be protected from harm in these safe spaces. What has been revealed, time and again, is that our trust must not be blind. Thank you for providing a responsible, considerate place for these truths to be revealed. My hope is that, as a society, we begin to recognize the red flags of abuse through...
Celebrated, innovative Sandglass Theater, a progenitor of puppetry for social change, is back with its biennial Puppets in Paradise. Held this year at the burgeoning Retreat Farm venue, the festival connects audiences with artists from the region and from the rest of the world for two days of theater arts and puppetry, which this year will shine a lens on the environment, race, and empowerment, according to a Sandglass newsletter. Historically a significant fundraiser for Sandglass, this year, with a...
On Friday, Aug. 27, starting at 7 p.m., the Backlot Cinema at Epsilon Spires, 190 Main St., will be site of a free outdoor event featuring a screening of the Indian film Ship of Theseus. The evening will be hosted by Vidhi Salla of the international radio show Vidhi's Bollywood Jukebox and includes a Zoom interview with the cinematographer of the film, Pankaj Kumar; Indian cuisine catered by Shital's Indian Vegetarian Food, of West Dover; and an Indian handicraft bazaar,
Over the past few years, the Retreat Farm has been gradually assuming a larger role in the regional food system in Windham County. Now, the nonprofit is poised to take a bigger step with its proposal to repurpose the former Grafton Village Cheese Company's production plant on the farm's Route 30 campus into a regional food center. The Retreat Farm has a powerful ally in U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who is in the process of securing $3 million of...
Cirque Us, a Boston-based circus company, will be performing “RagTag: A Circus in Stitches'' at New England Center for Circus Arts (NECCA) on Thursday, Sept. 2. “Join this RagTag group of thread-barren, yarn-spinning characters as they explore a new patchwork world,” as NECCA described the show in a news release. “You'll be entwined with their group of mismatched artists as they stitch together a tapestry of talents.” Cirque Us, founded by NECCA graduate Doug Stewart, is a multifaceted circus company...
For the first time in more than two years, graduates crossed the stage in person at School for International Training on Aug. 21, during SIT Graduate Institute's 55th commencement ceremony. The event marked a milestone for students who had completed their master's degrees - some remotely from their homes and others at SIT centers around the world - during a global pandemic. Thirty-seven students from the class of 2021 were awarded diplomas during an event that blended in-person and online...
The Guilford Country Store doesn't normally play host to international diplomats. So it was a bit of a change on Aug. 19 when the newly appointed Lithuanian ambassador to the United States, Audra PlepytÄ—, spoke to reporters at a table in the café area at the rear of the store. She was accompanied by her attaché, RytÄ— KukulskytÄ—, and by the honorary consul of Lithuania to Vermont, Kerry E. Secrest of Brattleboro. PlepytÄ—, 49, was appointed to the post in...
Brattleboro Brattleboro Bus 1 - a.m. ||7:30||Mountain Home Trailer Park (Office) ||7:34||Mountain Home Trailer Park (West Side) ||7:38||1063 Marlboro Rd. ||7:40||1215 Marlboro Rd. ||7:44||Sherwood Cir. and Tudor Ln. ||7:46||Third Level Westgate Dr. ||7:48||First Level Westgate Dr. ||7:52||Western Ave. and Edward Hghts. ||7:54||Stockwell Dr. and Carriage Hill Rd. ||7:55||Academy School (Transfer Green Street/Oak Grove to B2) ||8:06||1215 Marlboro Rd. ||8:10||Sherwood Cir. and Tudor Ln. ||8:12||Third Level Westgate Dr. ||8:14||First Level Westgate ||8:18||Western Ave. and Edward Hghts. ||8:20||Stockwell Dr. and Carriage Hill...
Refugee resettlement here continues to receive support on both state and local levels after Selectboard members met with representatives of the Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation (BDCC) and the Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC), two agencies that have been working in tandem on a resettlement initiative. Gov. Phil Scott also expressed his offer of asylum following the recent Taliban takeover in Afghanistan. At his Aug. 17 press conference, Scott said his office had again reached out to a senior member of...
This month marks 10 years since Tropical Storm Irene swept through the state, washing away roads, bridges and homes, downing power and phone lines, and leaving behind a mess. And in Newfane, in the face of this natural disaster, residents pulled together to help one another. We held nightly potlucks at Williamsville Hall, where we shared food and news and where we stockpiled donations of essentials for those who lost everything. We set up a phone line and Wi-Fi so...
Academy School 860 Western Ave., Brattleboro (802-254-3743; academyschoolvt.com) • School starts: Wednesday, Sept. 1. • New teachers and staff include, according to school district meeting minutes: Keira Carmichael and Erin Hodge (music); Emily McLoughlin, academic support; Meghan Dillingham, school nurse; Emily Hartz and Joan Carey, instructional coach. Bellows Falls Middle School 15 School St., Bellows Falls (802-463-4366; bfms.wnesu.org) • School starts: Tuesday, Sept. 7. • Sports practices begin: Thursday, Sept. 9. • Picture day: Friday, Sept. 10. • Preparing the...
To understate: These are uncertain times. Times that raise questions and epiphanies; fears and, sometimes, joy; times which want expression. We all need vehicles through which we can tap imagination and creativity, self-discovery and understanding. Kids, though, may need such vehicles more than the rest of us - and now more than ever. What can't yet be fully articulated in words might be witnessed in a drawing or a characterization, in a dance piece or a musical performance. In art.
The Vermont Principals' Association had their annual media day last week in Montpelier to outline what will be happening in high school sports in the 2022-22 school year. Mixed in with the announcements regarding when and where championship games will be played was a topic rarely discussed by the VPA - the mental health of student-athletes. “It's a significant issue and especially big with COVID,” VPA Associate Executive Director Bob Johnson told the Rutland Herald. “We're putting plans in place.
Why don't we walk more? Anyone who can afford to do so drives a car most places in the U.S. Walking is a luxury activity for health or social reasons, not a mode of transportation. The folks who do walk to get somewhere are disproportionately poor, are vagrants, or are flying a sign. I work in sustainability, a field that looks deeply at practical obstacles to walking and mass transit. Today, I want to talk on an emotional level. In...