The Boys & Girls Club of Brattleboro begins 2022 at its Flat Street Teen Club with programming for everyone in grades 6–12, beginning Monday, Jan. 10.
The full range of skill-based programs focus on workforce development, community service, environmental stewardship, and academic achievement in collaboration with HatchSpace, New England Youth Theatre, the Root Social Justice Center, Windham County Humane Society, and others.
All programs are free for members.
Membership is available for kids in our community in grades 6-12. The cost is $25 for a season and $100 for the entire year, with no one turned away for lack of funds.
We have just experienced the season when many people focus on what they want and try to figure out what other loved ones want and need. I often go back to the children's picture book Corduroy, about a stuffed bear in a department store who wanders around at night...
As the cold of winter brings us in, I think back at last summer and the excitement of the Next Stage Arts Bandwagon Series that brought us out. Surprise, talent, and variety released in an outdoor venue that so countered the gloom of the pandemic that had consumed us.
Now that the ongoing war on women is at full throttle and the protection of Roe v. Wade has been undermined and nearly eliminated altogether by our highest court, it is way past the time for reproductive justice in this country. To facilitate reproductive justice, where do we start? We all can start by educating ourselves and others. One might want to learn specifically about trigger bans and the countless laws that are introduced across the U.S. every year that...
The thought of Becca Balint representing us in Congress fills me with bucketloads of hope. I honestly can't imagine anyone more prepared to show up and fight for us all, whether it's taking care of the needs of working families or protecting democracy itself. Readers of her newspaper column in the Brattleboro Reformer will know that no matter how frenzied the political process, every week Becca could be counted on to rise above the fray, reflect deeply on issues that...
Obituaries • Constance Ethel “Connie” Beebe, 74, formerly of Brattleboro and a resident at Vernon Green Nursing Home for the past three years. Died Dec. 28, 2021 at Vernon Green. She was born in Fort Benning, Ga., on April 5, 1947, the daughter of Robert C. and Helen (Savard) Springer. She was raised and educated in Barre and was a graduate of Spaulding High School. She had been employed as a phlebotomist at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital and previously had worked...
Vermont Everyone Eats (VEE), the COVID-19 response program that provides meal assistance while supporting local restaurants, farmers, and food producers, will continue through April 1. This additional extension - its fourth - is made possible thanks to the continued commitment from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to cover the costs of what was originally designed as a five-month program. Vermont Everyone Eats provides nutritious meals to Vermonters in need of food assistance as well as a stabilizing source of income...
I'm uncomfortable with The Commons publishing Mindy Haskins Rogers' criticisms of the WSESD School Board on its recent statement regarding a sexual assault investigation. If the goal of journalist Virginia Ray is to evaluate how the WSESD conducts and speaks of such an investigation legally and in the best interest of students, staff, and the community, I suggest that she interview attorneys, union reps, the Vermont School Boards Association, policy experts, the police chief, and private investigators, not Mindy Haskins...
I just needed to give big, big shout-out to the Wilmington, Vermont caring community. I received a most generous holiday gift from the Deerfield Valley Lions with help from the Rotary Club of Deerfield Valley and the Readsboro Lions Club. Such generosity deserves recognition. It also does make we wonder why we can't all get along during these stressful times of corona/omicron and politics.
The Omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus has begun to hit Vermont hard. The Vermont Department of Health reported Jan. 4 that 68,957 people have tested positive for COVID-19 in the state since March 2020, including 3,962 people in Windham County. According to the Health Department, 1,727 new COVID-19 cases were reported on Jan. 4. Added to 2,625 new cases reported for the period between Dec. 30 and Jan. 3, this makes 4,352 new cases since Dec. 29. There were...
The Windham Southeast School District Board has chosen attorney Aimee Goddard of Buehler & Annis, PLC to serve as independent investigator into sexual abuse charges dating back to the early 1970s, following evidence “to wherever the investigation takes it,” as School Board Chair David Schoales put it. The decision was made at the board's Dec. 21 meeting, held at the Dummerston School and livestreamed on Zoom. “We have identified an investigator and a law firm we would like to retain...
The Agency of Transportation continues with its very-long-term terrible plan to build four rotaries between the Marina and the current, poorly functioning rotary at Exit 3 on I-91. This plan has been in the works for decades, as the AOT has purchased expensive land for right of ways for these rotaries. The first dirt has not been extracted for this project, yet as long ago as three years, AOT Secretary Joe Flynn told me that it is too late to...
W hen my siblings and I were growing up and we did something untoward that got us into trouble, my mother would say, “Let that be a lesson to you!” I've remembered that line whenever someone thinks I'm overreacting when I say the Trump administration opened the way to a functioning autocracy rapidly morphing into full-blown fascism. I think about the truism that “history is prologue.” We should be taking that truth more seriously. A chilling December article in The...
In their first four games of the season, the Brattleboro boys' ice hockey team gave up 20 goals and scored seven goals. That gave the Colonels a 2-2 season record heading into a Dec. 27 matinee at Withington Rink against the Mount Mansfield Cougars. The Colonels scored more goals against Mount Mansfield than in any of their first four games, but unfortunately followed the pattern of giving up too many goals in a wild 6-5 win for the visiting Cougars.
As a Vermonter who has lived here all my life and seen the uplifting of individual rights grow, thanks to our Legislature and those voting for those decision-makers, I am urging others to support the passage of the Reproductive Liberty Amendment (Proposition 5) to our state constitution. In light of the 15-week ban on abortion services in Mississippi, argued recently before the U.S. Supreme Court, and the six-week ban on the same in Texas, it is not unlikely that the...
Tree collection service benefits BUHS Music Dept.BRATTLEBORO - The Brattleboro Union High School Music Department is once again offering the Merry Mulch Christmas tree collection service to residents on three Saturdays: Jan. 8, 15, and 22. Proceeds will benefit future music department travel. This program, in its 31st year, is endorsed by the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food, and Markets as well as by the New Hampshire–Vermont Christmas Tree Association. For $10, members of the band and chorus will transport...
The Brattleboro Museum & Art Center (BMAC) will present a free online talk by artist Michael Abrams on Thursday, Jan. 6, at 7 p.m. He will welcome viewers to his Jamaica studio via Zoom and Facebook Live for a conversation about his installation “Arcadia Rediscovered” and his work as a landscape painter. Register at brattleboromuseum.org. Abrams, who works primarily in oil on canvas, panel, and prepared paper, “is known for misty, layered vistas suffused with light,” said BMAC Chief Curator...
Vermonters have been vigilant and ahead of the curve since the COVID-19 pandemic began almost two years ago. By most yardsticks, the state has done well in navigating the pandemic, with some of the lowest positivity rates in the country, and fewer virus-related deaths than in most other states. “Vermont has done a better job than other states, but this feels like one of those times when we've been forgotten - again,” noted one local child care provider, speaking to...
After a forensic dive into 18 generations of paint on the exterior and four layers on the interior, conservator and paint analyst Dr. Susan Buck will make a return presentation about her work at the historic Rockingham Meeting House on Monday, Jan. 17, at 7 p.m. via Zoom. Buck, who teaches part-time at the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation and conducts paint analyses in her own Virginia lab, has been doing this work since 1995. She considers herself...
The emergency room is bustling when I arrive. Patients are in beds in the hallway because the rooms are full. I used to love the bustle of the Emergency Department - the sound of the monitors, the sense of purpose - but lately things have been hard. I check the board: four patients waiting to be seen ... shortness of breath, cough, fever. All likely Covid. I put my N95 mask on, my level-three mask, my gown, my gloves, my...
Next Stage Arts Project and Twilight Music present an evening of bluegrass, jazz, gypsy, classical, and roots music by the Vermont Mandolin Trio - Matt Flinner, Will Patton, and Jamie Masefield - accompanied by acoustic bassist Pat Melvin on Saturday, Jan. 8 at 7:30 p.m. The three Vermont mandolinists perform the music of Bill Monroe, Django Reinhardt, J.S. Bach, and others, with fiddler/singer Lissa Schneckenburger of Brattleboro opening the show at 15 Kimball Hill. Flinner, nominated for a Grammy award...
For more than 45 years, the River Gallery School (RGS) has been a welcoming haven for artists young and old, of any type and experience, from green and curious to accomplished. As it creates its way toward the half-century mark, the engaging little walk-up school looks forward to the future while it celebrates past leadership. After nearly 30 years, artist Lydia Thomson will step down from RGS administration as its artistic director, while Donna Hawes, executive director since 2014, assumes...