A new policy will make the Bellows Falls Opera House more viable and more attractive to a wider range of performers and events - a goal that offers significant promise for financial return to the local economy and creative stimulus to the community, organizers say. At a recent board...
My thanks to the voters of Dover, Readsboro, Searsburg, Somerset, Stamford, and Wardsboro for re-electing me. Thanks to all who worked on my behalf, and thanks to Geralyn Sniatkowski for giving constituents a choice in this election. I will continue to work for our district on educational funding reform,
Four Windham County towns have been chosen to receive approximately $52,000 in grant funds to help reduce their carbon footprints, reduce overall energy consumption, and save money on heating costs in municipal buildings. The grants, awarded by the Windham Regional Commission, are part of the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG) program, provided through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 via Vermont's Clean Energy Development Fund. The Windham Regional Commission's Energy Committee reviewed 15 applications, totaling over...
The Windham Orchestra will present Rhapsody in Blue in its first concert of the 2010-11 season, on Friday, Nov. 19, at Vermont Academy in Saxtons River and Sunday, Nov. 21, at the Latchis Theatre in Brattleboro. Hugh Keelan is the Music Director for the Windham Orchestra's 41st concert season. He has created a series of concerts that combine great symphonic works with intriguing, out of the mainstream, orchestral gems that are sure to please this season's concertgoers. Opening concerts in...
The Republicans won big on Tuesday. Not only have they taken over the U.S. House of Representatives and made gains in the Senate - but many of the newly-elected Republican members campaigned on extreme right-wing positions. I want to take this opportunity to discuss a few of the major issues that will surface in the near future, what the debate will be about, and what my views are. • Should the Bush-era tax cuts for the top 2 percent be...
Obituaries Editor's note: The Commons will publish brief biographical information for citizens of Windham County and others, on request, as community news, free of charge. • Russell Robinson “Bob” Barrett Jr., 96, of Grafton. Died Nov. 7 at Valley Cares Assisted Living in Townshend. Husband of Virginia Mulford for 68 years. Father of Lynn Barrett of Dummerston Center; Russell Robinson Barrett, III and his wife Dorothy of Northfield, Vt.; and Randi Barrett and her partner Joanne Pereira of Elmore. Predeceased...
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By all measures, the Brattleboro Rotary Club's Mexican Film & Food Festival held on Nov. 7 was a total success. Close to 150 folks came to the Latchis Theatre and Brattleboro Museum & Art Center to see Mexican films and sample Mexican fare. Between the program book advertising and ticket sales, we achieved our goal. In April of 2011, through Casita Linda, a Mexican nonprofit organization that builds adobe brick homes for families in and the surrounding areas in the...
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Performing arts • Gathering in Gratitude at the Stone Church: Community players from age six to elders will perform in “The Night Passage” on Nov. 20 and 21 at the Stone Church in downtown Brattleboro. The play is the fourth annual Gathering in Gratitude performance, with performances at 2 and 7 p.m. on Saturday and 2 p.m. on Sunday. Tickets are $10 for individuals and $30 for families, with proceeds going to Project Feed the Thousands. They can be purchased...
The Vermont Medical Society (VMS) recently honored five Vermonters for their outstanding contributions to the health and well being of the state's residents. The award recipients were recognized during the 197th annual meeting of VMS at the Equinox Resort in Manchester. The Distinguished Service Award was presented to Peter Gibbons, MD, who has for many years served as the Chief Radiologist at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital. Fellow BMH physician, Richard Burtis, MD, a winner of the award himself in 1999, nominated...
How does one forget 30 years of time? It happened to me. During a recent conversation, I realized that my family had been in the U.S. for 30 years now, as of last Thanksgiving. I have no recollection of our arrival in America, which city we landed in, how long we waited in lines, or who met us at the airport. How strange it must have felt for my parents, scanning the metal and concrete buildings for something familiar: a...
Howard Shaffer's Viewpoint piece [“The Banana Menace,” The Commons, Nov. 10] questioned whether nuclear energy foes will ever put Vermont Yankee's tritium leaks into perspective. Consider what follows to be an attempt to do just that. What we're dealing with is not simply the tritium (and cobalt, cesium, and strontium) that has been leaking into the public domain groundwater and probably the Connecticut River. The attention to tritium may simply be because the word tritium attracts more public attention than...
Four regional leaders have recently joined the Board of Directors of Meeting Waters YMCA, which serves more than two dozen communities in the Brattleboro, Bellows Falls, Springfield and Fall Mountain regions. Incoming board members are Antonia Andreoli of Walpole, N.H., Sean McDonald from Rockingham, Walter Spinrad from Chester and Squeak Stone of Brattleboro. Andreoli is a partner at Galloway Real Estate. Prior to that career, she was a social studies teacher at both Fall Mountain Regional High School and Brattleboro...
For the first time since 2003, the Bellows Falls Terriers football team are state champs. BF rolled over the Windsor Yellowjackets, the defending Division III champs, 39-22, on Saturday at Castleton State College's Spartan Stadium. The top-seeded Terriers (8-3) made their first trip to a championship game since losing to South Burlington in the 2005 Division II final. The Terriers last won a title in 2003 with a 43-0 win over Burlington in the Division II final. Saturday's victory was...
The Brattleboro Fire Department would like to to remind all residents to remember the following points during this heating season to help protect themselves and to prevent needless deaths and injuries: • Carbon monoxide safety: Often called the silent killer, carbon monoxide is an invisible, odorless, colorless gas created when fuels (such as gasoline, wood, coal, natural gas, propane, oil, and methane) burn incompletely. In the home, heating and cooking equipment that burn fuel can be sources of carbon monoxide.
It's mid-November, and winter is around the corner. According to the state Department of Children and Families, more Vermont households than ever before will be receiving home heating assistance this season. As of earlier this month, nearly 19,000 Vermont households will have received money through the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), compared to nearly 16,000 households at the same time last year. Part of the increase is due to higher income limits for receiving aid -
From somewhere between the bottom line and the bottom of the heart, Grace Cottage Hospital has been dispensing health care in the West River Valley and beyond since 1949, when Carlos Otis, its first doctor, delivered its first baby, Aug. 8, the day after the then-12-bed hospital opened. More than six decades later, Grace Cottage is still devoted to providing family care as well as serving as a critical-access hospital - and planning for its future with a new medical...
Every November for the past 34 years, smokers have quit smoking by joining the American Cancer Society's Great American Smokeout. The Smokeout has played an important role in raising awareness about tobacco's deadly consequences and helping bring dramatic changes in Americans' attitudes about smoking. Grace Cottage Hospital will celebrate this year's 35th Anniversary of the National Great American Smokeout on Thursday, Nov. 18. The community is invited to the hospital's lunchroom and West Crispe Porch from 11 a.m. to 2:30...
On Nov. 13, the Rockingham Historical Commission honored the seven winners in its 13th Old House Award contest at an awards ceremony at Vermont Academy's Leavitt House. The contest is open to property owners in Rockingham and Bellows Falls. The commission said it was difficult to select winners out of a pool of 23 nominations, but that all the nominees have done well to maintain and improve the curb appeal of their historic houses and commercial buildings. Leavitt House was...
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At first it was the Norwegians, immigrants to the Midwest in the late 1880s, who had the passion for ski jumping. Americans had never heard of the sport. Some of the oldest ski jumping clubs in the nation were started in places like Red Wing and St. Paul, Minn., and in Ishpeming, Mich. It's easy to understand the thrill of flying off a hill, or in the case of some of these jumpers at the time, large rocks. Human beings...
For more than three decades, the annual Brattleboro Community Thanksgiving Dinner has carried on the tradition of serving meals and sharing friendship. Dinner will be served buffet-style at the River Garden on Thursday, Nov. 25, from noon until 5 p.m. Everyone is invited, and the meal is free. In past years, between 500 and 700 people sat down to the community-cooked meal, feasting on favorites like turkey (or vegetarian entrees), roasted root vegetables, gravy, ham, mashed Gilfeather turnips, garlic potatoes,
In the 50th anniversary year of its publication, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee has been named the Vermont Reads 2011 book by the Vermont Humanities Council. The classic novel is the latest pick for VHC's statewide one-book community reading program that began in 2003. Published in 1960, winner of the Pulitzer Prize the following year, and inspiration for an Academy Award-winning film, To Kill a Mockingbird tells the intertwined stories of some of the most unforgettable characters in...
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Rural health and pain management specialist Margaret Caudill-Slosberg, a medical doctor and a Ph.D who also holds a master's degree in public health, and who has taught at Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, recently examined democgraphics and health care trends in Windham County. Caudill-Slosberg, whose official title is Rural Health Quality Improvement Specialist Vermont Program for Quality in Health Care, did this work in partnership with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The link to...
When I moved to Vermont in December of 1999, I felt a twinge of trepidation. Although I find beauty in every season, I love the big bloom of summer best: the heat and light and wide open windows and the whirr of ceiling fans. I like sweating in the barn and the luxury of letting the garden tell me what to make for dinner. I'd visited Vermont often enough in winter to know it was no-fooling-around cold. I'd come in...
Write Action celebrates its 10th anniversary with a reading in the Main Room of the Brooks Memorial Library on Thursday, Nov. 18, at 7 p.m. Several authors featured in Write Action's 10th Anniversary commemorative anthology will give readings during the event including: • AA Burrows, along with his wife Elise and friend Ray Clark, have run their own publishing venture, Pro Lingua Associates, since 1980, publishing English-as-a-second-language training materials. He is a long-time member of Write Action. • Gena Corea...
A farmer collecting maple sap from wooden buckets in a snow-covered maple grove. It's an iconic Vermont image gracing postcards, maple syrup containers, state marketing materials and even the back of the Vermont state quarter. Despite the iconography, Vermont's maple industry has evolved and expanded in the last 40 years. First, metal sap buckets replaced wooden ones decades ago, and now food-grade tubing snaking from tree to tree has almost rendered any buckets obsolete. And in this litigious age, the...
Who knew that therapy dogs can help early-grade kids improve their reading skills? Apparently, almost everyone, from one shining shore to the other - or at least from the West River to the Great Salt Lake in Utah, where the Reading Education Assistance Dogs (R.E.A.D.) program was launched. A convincing and charming demonstration of the canine/kid reading phenomenon took place last week at the Townshend Public Library, which sponsored the event, Paws for Reading, with the Townshend Elementary School. The...