The Wild Goose Players, The Rotary Club of Bellows Falls, and local sponsors Mascoma Bank and M&T Bank have teamed up to create the first annual Bellows Falls Festival, The BFF, on Saturday, June 10, from 1 to 10 p.m.
The BFF is a one-day event that promises to be packed full of excitement and entertainment. The festival will take place outdoors at the Waypoint Center, 17 Depot St.
Food vendors Jamaican Jewelz, Bellows Falls Moose Club, Smokin' Bowls, and Tito's Taqueria will be on hand, with adult beverages provided by Donavan's, and lemonade and sweet treats available from Parks Place and the Bellows Falls Women's Club.
The BFF will include music and performances, including Ben Jennings Quartet's funky dance grooves and the Americana stories and dual harmonies of the Milk House Heaters, with Gaslight TInkers and Blue Motel rounding out the afternoon.
On May 15, the Londonderry Selectboard endorsed a plan to enhance the vacant lot on the north-east corner of the intersection of state Routes 11 and 100. However, there is still necessary work to be done before it is fully approved. Proposed by a subcommittee of the One Londonderry...
On Saturday, June 10, at 7:30 p.m., at the Vermont Jazz Center (VJC), director Eugene Uman will present a newly tooled version of the quintet, the Convergence Project. This quintet is a vehicle for Uman to change hats, to focus on performance and composing rather than the production and...
College news • Angelo Domina of Brattleboro was awarded a B.A. in political science from Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island. • The following local students recently earned their degrees at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts: Liam Kennedy of Brattleboro, magna cum laude with a B.A. in geography; Julianne Liebow of Townshend, summa cum laude with a B.A. in biology; Abbe Kathryn Cravinho of Bellows Falls, magna cum laude with a B.A. in mathematics; Kai S. Hammond of Putney,
The Next Stage Bandwagon Summer Series presents singer-songwriter and accordionist Gregorio Uribe at Cooper Field, 41 Sand Hill Rd., on Saturday, June 10, at 6 p.m. Uribe, known for “his passionate performances and musical versatility, has captivated audiences around the world,” say organizers. From venues such as Carnegie Hall and Madison Square Garden to the streets of Tierra del Fuego, “his talent knows no bounds,” they say. Uribe has collaborated with artists across various genres, including Rubén Blades, Carlos Vives,
The Putney Public Library, 55 Main St., hosts two well known Vermont poets on Tuesday, June 13, at 6:30 p.m. This event is free and open to the public. Terry Hauptman will read from her poems that incorporate many cultures both past and present, and Toni Ortner will read from her most recent book, Shadows and Silhouettes (Kelsay Books, 2022), which is a collection of her early work. Ortner lives in Putney and has had 29 books published by small...
When Morningside Cemetery opened at the turn of the 20th century, it proved so popular, the family of the late Vermont Gov. Levi K. Fuller (1841-1896) moved his grave to the new grounds, adding what was then the state's tallest memorial. In the 125 years since, the South Main Street cemetery has grown with the passing of generation upon generation of locals, from Antonio Abbiati (1920-2003), a monument creator who designed poet Robert Frost's crypt cover, to Leslie Zagrubski (1906-1999),
Student pilgrimage to Spain highlighted at dinner WILMINGTON - On Thursday, June 8, St. Mary's in the Mountains Episcopal Church, 13 East Main St., will host a dinner and presentation by Twin Valley High School students who walked the legendary pilgrimage route, the Camino de Santiago. Every other year since 2009, Twin Valley Athletic Director Buddy Hayford and a Spanish teacher have led a group of students along the most famous of the great medieval pilgrimage routes of Europe. For...
“Mist,” a collection of oil paintings and encaustics by Nina Salvatore, is on exhibit at the Putney Public Library, 55 Main St., through Aug. 26. Salvatore's paintings reflect her love of the natural world around her, especially her deep love of Vermont. On her walks, she says, she focuses on light and the patterns in the earth and is fascinated by mist and fog, and how these elements obscure one's vision only to reveal later another aspect of the view.
On Friday, June 9, at 5 p.m., the Brattleboro Literary Festival's monthly Literary Cocktail Hour series presents former three-term U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky talking about his new book, Jersey Breaks. Register for this online event at bit.ly/LitCocktail31. In late-1940s Long Branch, a historic but run-down Jersey Shore resort town, in a neighborhood of Italian, Black, and Jewish families, Robert Pinsky began his unlikely journey to becoming a poet. According to Pinsky, he descended from a bootlegger grandfather, an athletic...
Sponsored by the Kopkind Colony, founded in memory of celebrated political journalist Andrew Kopkind, CineSlam returns to the Latchis Theatre in downtown Brattleboro with a Pride Film Festival of Shorts on Saturday, June 24, at 4 p.m. CineSlam is Vermont's first LGBTQ film festival. “During these turbulent times for our LGBTQ+ community, when anti-LGBT laws are being passed by right-wing legislatures and LGBT Pride Events are being threatened and even canceled, it is vital for the New England community to...
With nearly a year of groundwork behind them, the Water Street Land Use Committee seeks volunteers of all ages to bring to life a biodiverse, wildflower meadow in Jamaica Village. Work dates for the Jamaica Community Pollinator Project are scheduled for Saturday, June 10 and 17, from 9 a.m. to noon. “Natural pollinator habitats are under threat from climate change, invasive species, pesticides, real estate development, and fragmentation,” Committee Chair Jacki Brown said in a news release. “Reserving space for...
The Brattleboro Area Jewish Community presents Klezmer Music and Dance Party on Sunday, June 11, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. From 10 a.m. to noon, there will be two concurrent artist-in-residence workshops. The first is “Go Figure: Learning the Basics of Klezmer Dance,” with Steven Weintraub. Everyone is invited, with no experience necessary. Weintraub received his dance training in Manhattan with Alvin Ailey and Erick Hawkins, among others. According to the artist's website, he is in international demand as...
In-Sight Photography Project invites all youth (ages 11 to 18) who live within an hour of Brattleboro to submit images to their first-ever Youth Photo Contest and Fair. Images can be submitted between July 1 and Aug. 20 in one of five categories: Analog Film, Artistic, People, Places, and The New England Experience. Participants can submit up to three images in each category. Contest images will be on display in In-Sight's Tiny Gallery on Friday, Sept. 1, from 5 to...
The Vermont Women's Fund, a component fund of the Vermont Community Foundation, has announced the recipients of its 2023 annual grant round. A total of $412,135 was awarded this year - the largest amount ever distributed by the philanthropic resource dedicated to women and girls. “The Vermont Women's Fund Council applauds the work of these individual nonprofit organizations, with the intent that the cumulative impact of these grants creates opportunities for Vermont's women and girls so they can rise and...
The Arts Council of Windham County (ACWC) has announced the grantees for this year's Brattleboro Town Arts Fund (TAF) program. Nine community-focused creative projects were selected from a competitive field of proposals received in this fourth year of the TAF program. According to a news release, TAF “promotes the development and presentation of creative projects that contribute positively to the greater community and to the vibrancy and diversity of Brattleboro's arts and cultural landscape. TAF projects explore social and quality-of-life...
Service to the community was the unifying theme in the stories of the three people honored by the Brattleboro Area Chamber of Commerce at its annual awards gathering on June 1 on the porch of the recently opened Bar 580 on Canal Street. Being named Member of the Year was a bittersweet honor for Mary Giamartino, who operated the last locally owned pharmacy in town until its closing in February, a victim of changing economics. For Tito Garza, getting the...
The last two local teams standing after the first week of the Vermont high school playoffs are the Bellows Falls and Leland & Gray softball teams. Both advanced into their respective semifinals with dramatic wins. • No, 5 Leland & Gray and No, 4 Poultney met for the third time in a week on June 2, and the Rebels came away with a 9-5 win in extra innings in a Division IV quarterfinal game. There was not a lot separating...
The job of state legislator has its ups and downs and sideways. Two weeks ago, The Commons reported on the most memorable moments that members of our Windham County delegation experienced during their time in Montpelier. Now it is time to learn about the priorities they accomplished and some of their more interesting frustrations. The first frustration is easy: Republican Gov. Phil Scott's veto of the Legislature's budget on May 27, which evoked scathing comments from Democratic leadership in the...
Photos of close to 150 people - from generations past as well as some of the just shy of 2,000 people who call this iconic town home today - will soon be featured in an exhibit Faces of Dummerston. Society member Chuck Fish has been working to help organize and create this event at the Dummerston Historical Society for many months. “It's important to remember that this exhibit represents the town,” he said. “It is an attempt to portray a...
Local growers and buyers are assessing the damage from a late-spring frost across Vermont that severely damaged thousands of acres of crops. According to the U.S. National Weather Service in Burlington, many below-freezing temperatures were recorded overnight May 17 into the early morning hours of May 18. “We're still grappling, but it was evident that there was significant damage right away,” said Simon Renault, general manager of Scott Farm in Dummerston.“We have a weather station in the orchard and saw...
It's out with the Colonels, and in with the Bears at Brattleboro Union High School. Although the Windham Southeast School District (WSESD) board of directors has not yet voted to approve the new branding, students have chosen the Bears as their mascot going forward. “We started the process with a school-wide process that lasted a week of having students and staff submit their ideas,” said Principal Cassie Damkoehler. “After the week, we had 136 submissions, many of which were the...
On a recent hot morning outside the Quality Inn on Putney Road, Kayla and Travis are loading bags of clothing and small pieces of furniture into the back of a pickup truck. They are part of the first wave of evictions from Vermont motels, after the end of the federally funded pandemic-era program that sheltered some 3,000 Vermonters (and around 270 people in Brattleboro) experiencing homelessness. In Brattleboro, an informal group of local service providers, town administrators, and leaders from...