• “5 Artists, 3 Days” exhibit: Artists Petria Mitchell, Mallory Lake, Jim Giddings, Carolyn Dinicola Fawley and Bobbi Angell will hold a joint show, “5 Artists, 3 Days,” at the Gallery at Headroom Stages, 17 Elliot St., Brattleboro, on Dec. 10-12.
An opening reception will be held on Friday, Dec. 10, from 5:30-7:30. The studio will be open on Saturday and Sunday, Dec. 11-12, from noon-5 p.m., both days.
For more information, call 802-257-4021.
...Meeting Waters YMCA is, for the 10th consecutive year, offering its popular Snow Day Program in Brattleboro. The Snow Day Program combines with the Meeting Waters YMCA's ASPIRE and Lewis Day Camp to provide year-round “out-of-school” care for school-age children from the Brattleboro area and their working parents. The...
Before the Brattleboro Reformer, there was The Phoenix, and before that, the local newspaper was called the Brattleboro' Messenger. Bridie Carmichael of Dummerston recently shared the Saturday, Jan. 7, 1832 issue of this newspaper with me. It was found in her father's home in Saxtons River and is remarkably...
Most of us have heard of Easter Island, that remote place in the South Pacific where giant-headed stone statues stare forlornly out to sea. In its story, there may be a message for us today. Archeologists and paleontologists, using carbon dating and pollen analysis, determined that the island was first settled about 400 A.D. Settlers arrived in a subtropical paradise with abundant resources. By about 1400, the island was deforested. With deforestation went the wood needed for cookfires, shelter, seafaring...
The Vermont Symphony Orchestra Brass Quintet and Robert De Cormier and the vocal group Counterpoint will present music of the season Saturday, Dec. 18, at 5 p.m., at the historic White Church. The musicians will present carols and Renaissance pieces, as well as The Nutcracker Suite, The Christmas Story, and more. The Brass Quintet will perform The Cordoban Puppet, a new composition by 18-year-old composer Joshua Clinger of Newport. Clinger, a recent graduate of North County Union High School, is...
You might call the Calvary Chapel in West Townshend the church too tough to die. How else would you explain why the building is still standing after a runaway moving van careened down Windham Hill Road last Monday, flew across Route 30 and slammed into the ground between the chapel and the West Townshend Community Post Office and art gallery building? Ron Millette, the nondenominational Christian church's pastor and also a logger, called the forces that rocked the original 193-year-old...
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. • Philip L. Jillson, 65, of Readsboro. Died Nov. 21 at the Southwestern Vermont Medical Center in Bennington. Husband of Martha (Morse) Jillson for 44 years. Father of Stephanie Taylor and husband Trent of Brandon; and Layle Luke and husband Chris of Murfreesboro, Tenn. Brother of Harold Sprague of Whitingham; Roger Sprague of Gettysburg, Pa.;
The Vermont Jazz Center will be swinging into the holiday season again with the fabulous sounds of the big band era presented by their own 17-piece big band accompanied by special guest vocalists on Friday, Dec. 3 at 8 p.m. at the Jazz Center on 72 Cotton Mill Hill. The big band concert has become an annual tradition for the VJC and is truly an expression of community. It includes some neighbors you might not have known were excellent musicians...
Friends of Music at Guilford presents its 40th annual Community Messiah Sing on Saturday, Dec. 4, at 1 p.m. The event takes place at Centre Congregational Church at 193 Main St., which has co-sponsored the event since 1980. This seasonal program provides an opportunity for everyone to join in singing the Christmas choruses and a few choruses from later sections of Handel's Messiah. Friends of Music provides vocal soloists for the arias, a trumpeter, an organist, and a conductor. The...
The Cherry Street Artisans announces the dates for their third annual open house and café, and the addition of new members. This unique event is scheduled for Saturday, Dec. 4, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday, Dec. 5, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 44 Cherry St., near Esteryville and the hospital. Cherry Street Artisans Open House and Café is a show of 12 artisans' work in a friendly and beautiful Victorian home on Cherry Street in...
They don't have a name for their organization yet, but the people involved with the West Townshend Country Store and Community Post Office - an actual U.S. Post Office with designated “community” status - finally have the beginnings of a board of directors. Clare Adams of West Townshend - an artist, teacher, farmer and driving force behind this multi-purpose and good-humored center for art, music, food, education and social networking - was unanimously elected president of the board of the...
Julian F. Thompson, author of 18 young adult novels, including The Grounding of Group 6, and the newly self-published author of Getting In, says he is one of a small number of adults who actually likes and gets along with teenagers. As such a person, he enjoys writing about and for them. He founded and ran an alternative high school for seven years, during which he learned more about the demographic he would later write for. “I started life as...
The Arts Council of Windham County presented its annual “Friend of the Arts” award to Marie Procter, ACWC honorary trustee, on Nov. 15 at a special gathering held at the Robert H. Gibson River Garden, attended by more than 40 people, including many past recipients of the award. Procter was chosen to receive the award for her more than 20 years of service to the Arts Council of Windham County. During this period of time, Procter held the offices of...
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's 2009 Food Security in the United States report, 57 percent of those reporting food insecurity - the lack of access to food - had participated in federal food and nutrition assistance programs. Food secure households spent 33 percent more on food than the food insecure households. A little less than a half million families with children experienced “very low food security” - defined by the government as disrupted meals and reduced food intake...
The Green Mountain Boys are marching home again. Members of the 86th Infantry Brigade Combat team will be returning from Afghanistan over the next few weeks. The 3,400 soldiers in the brigade - including nearly 1,400 Vermont Army National Guard members - have been lauded by civilian and military leaders alike as the best-trained, hardest who were-working unit in Afghanistan. This praise is not surprising. In every conflict in our nation's history - from the capture of Fort Ticonderoga to...
The Rockingham Free Public Library (RFPL) will soon present “Teen Techie Tuesdays,” a series of programs designed to emphasize technological skill development and information literacy through gaming. This project is made possible through the “Make a Change Closer to Home” initiative, sponsored by Pepsi and Price Chopper. The companies are donating a total of $30,000 to be awarded to local organizations who want to make a difference in their communities. One of 15 grants in this category, Youth Librarian Samantha...
It's approaching noon in downtown Brattleboro on Thanksgiving Day, and all is quiet. Main Street is empty and the stores are closed as the town collectively catches its breath before the holiday season cranks up. The River Garden, however, is the exception to the calm. There is plenty of activity, as volunteers carry in tables and trays of food for the 37th annual Community Thanksgiving Dinner. More than 600 meals will be served today, and there is more than enough...
Mount Snow in West Dover and Okemo in Ludlow got an early start on the skiing and snowboarding season last week. Mount Snow opened on Thanksgiving day with four lifts serving about 10 percent of the mountain, including the Carinthia terrain park for the boarders. Okemo couldn't wait for the holiday and started its season on Nov. 23 with two lifts and four trails on the upper part of their mountain. Stowe and Killington were the only other Vermont ski...
Lingchi, also known as “the death of a thousand cuts,” was a method of public execution in China that involved cutting off pieces of a person's body until he or she died. Banned in 1905, this drastic punishment first became a metaphor and then came to rest in the English language as a cliché. Which is why it jumped into my mind on the day my 93-year-old mother, a former dancer who lives alone in a tiny independent living complex...
Green Mountain Railroad will not be running its Green Mountain Flyer excursions out of Bellows Falls next year, Deborah Murphy, manager of passenger service for Vermont Rail Systems, confirmed last week - a consequence of increasing demand on the company for freight transportation. The Santa Express trains that were run between Bellows Falls and Chester Depot last Saturday and Sunday were the last scheduled passenger runs on the line for the foreseeable future. For now, the Depot remains open for...
Go ahead. Blame the current credit crunch for the lack of jobs paying a livable wage and businesses exiting the region. But economic crunches are nothing new to Windham County. In fact, some say that the area has been in a recession for the last 20 years. The Southeastern Vermont Economic Development Strategy (SeVEDS), a group consisting of community and business leaders, has the recession in its crosshairs. SeVEDS participants met Nov. 16 in Bellows Falls for its second meeting,
Having just returned from a trip to Cuba, three Brattleboro Union High School seniors found the transition following a trip to such a different culture noteworthy. What they brought back to CLEA's (Civil Leadership and Education in Action, formerly the Child Labor Education and Action Project) involvement with Project Feed the Thousands is an awareness that goes beyond the scope of mere school projects. For 11 years, a steady group of 20 to 30 students involved in CLEA at the...
Entergy Corporation's low-key announcement might well have been posted on Craigslist: For Sale: Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant. Used, unpredictable radioactive leaks, occasional fires, poorly run, financially indebted, locally unpopular, politically shunned and currently not working. $180 million - or best offer. “Selling an old nuclear plant is like trying to build a new one,” said economist Mark Cooper of the University of Vermont Law School's Institute for Energy and the Environment. “No one in their right mind would buy...
For eight days in October, downtown merchants collected patrons' zip codes to assist Building a Better Brattleboro and consulting firm Arnett Muldrow & Associates develop a long-term economic development strategy. Data culled from the zip code collection helped snap a virtual group photo of downtown Brattleboro shoppers as they answered questions like what types of goods and services they spend money on, questions designed to find out what types of retail items “leak” money away from downtown. The survey was...
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The last time Elizabeth Bankowski served as a member of a gubernatorial transition team was in 1984 - the year Madeleine Kunin became governor. Bankowski was Kunin's campaign manager and became her chief of staff. Back then her liaison to Gov. Richard Snelling's office was Tim Hayward. As she works to help Gov.-elect Peter Shumlin establish his footing for his ascent to the Fifth Floor of the Pavilion Office Building on Jan. 6, Bankowski is working with Hayward again. This...
At once ephemeral and durable. Exquisite performance art. For the second year, November has been witness to power line contract crews working on the upgrade of high-voltage transmission lines on Fall Mountain in Walpole, N.H. This is a small part of ongoing line upgrade work occurring throughout the region. Most notably, there have been many hours of small turbine-powered helicopters unflinchingly hovering and deftly maneuvering in turbulent air with external loads, sometimes with external crews. These captivating performances won't be...
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Today is another day I was woken up by not one construction project but two using jackhammers and this horrible, awful machine that's injecting cement into the foundation of our building. I woke up with chest pains and I could not breathe. I had a dream that I had a violent accident and my thumb was being sliced off. I had what anyone could call a breakdown on Friday. I have had the worst Thanksgiving of my entire life due...
The first Friday of the month has come around again, so Brattleboro's Gallery Walk celebration of the arts will liven up the downtown and a few satellite locations within a short drive of Main Street. There are 47 listed venues, some with meet-the-artist receptions or live music to enhance the experience for art lovers. New or rejoining venues in the lineup this month include Brattleboro Historical Society at the Beal House, 974 Western Ave., West Brattleboro; Trinity Lutheran Church, 161...
Marlboro College Graduate School and United Way of Windham County will co-sponsor a “Social Media for Nonprofits” workshop on Saturday, Dec. 4. The day-long workshop will help nonprofits gain an understanding of how organizations can use Facebook, blogs, Twitter and Youtube to raise funds, market services and communicate with stakeholders. During the morning portion, Rebecca Brookes of Upstream Social Marketing will discuss integration of social media into an overall marketing strategy. Mike Hoefer of Hoeferweb will provide step-by-step instruction on...