The recent decision of the Great Falls Regional Chamber of Commerce to vacate its home in the Waypoint Center on the Island and move to new digs came as a shock to many on the Waypoint Center Board, including Selectboard Chair Tom MacPhee and Chamber president Deborah Murphy.
The lease is a four-party agreement between the town of Rockingham, the village of Bellows Falls, the Bellows Falls Downtown Development Association (BFDDA), and the COC. According to MacPhee and Murphy, negotiations were in play at the time of the meeting discussing a better lease agreement that are more in line with the Chamber's mission of promoting businesses in downtown.
However, during a regular November meeting that Murphy was not able to attend, Chamber Executive Director Roger Riccio was given permission by the board to pursue other options. Many of those present at the meeting felt the lease agreement with the town of Rockingham no longer served the organization's purposes.
Chamber secretary Michael Smith confirmed that Riccio had signed a lease for the space formerly occupied by the former Hula Cat secondhand shop in the Staircase building just off the Square. Smith said the move will occur “hopefully by February.”...
For the past 22 years, Melinda Bussino has been following her dream of helping others. As executive director of the Brattleboro Area Drop In Center, she has been one of the instrumental forces behind getting shelter, food, and clothing to the homeless of southeastern Vermont. This week, this sixth-generation...
The mark of a good business is how many repeat customers it has. There are so many of them at Elysian Hills Tree Farm that they keep an honor roll of the customers that have bought Christmas trees for more than 10 straight seasons. The “tree stars,” as they...
New rules under consideration by a Texas commission could hamper the decommissioning of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in the near future, according to experts and activists who oppose the change. They say the proposal, which would allow a Texas landfill to accept additional waste from out-of-state entities, including nuclear power companies like Entergy Corp., could give away space that is allotted for anticipated radioactive material from Vermont Yankee. Texas formed a compact with Vermont in 1998 to establish...
Mary Ellen Copeland's first experience with mental illness came from witnessing her mother's struggle with depression. She eventually got well and returned home, where Copeland saw her pick up the pieces of her life and work to maintain her wellness. Through the next decade, while Copeland struggled with her own mental health challenges and was hospitalized several times, she set out to talk to people and find out more about the process of recovery. With the aid of a vocational...
We taxpayers reach into several different pockets to pay our various taxes. We extract money from the economic activities of our daily lives, and that money makes up the revenue streams that make possible the civic life from which we all benefit. When our money arrives in Montpelier, it lands in one of several buckets, called funds, the two largest of which are the general fund and the education fund. Our public discourse is generally about spending and, therefore, taxes...
In early November, a delivery of nuclear waste en route to a “disposal site” in northern Germany met with some unanticipated obstacles. Dozens of farmers lined the route determined to block roadways with their tractors, trees and stumps cut down by protestors blocked the routes, and more than 3,000 people gathered in protest outside the site deemed acceptable to bury containers of highly toxic nuclear waste. Several times police had stop and to clear flocks of sheep and goats from...
“When my grandfather, whom we called John, went deer hunting, he wore his simple plaid jacket, carried his Winchester rifle from the 1940s and went out to the woods at sun up. He walked patiently all day, and came back when it was dark,” says native Brattleborian Michael Fairchild, now 59, who spent part of his youth growing up on Marlboro Avenue, the backyard to Oak Grove School. “He taught me patience. For a young boy, that's a wonderful skill...
It's been more than a year since The Commons first published an interview with writer Alexander R. Knight, author of the horror/science fiction short story volume Victoria's Place. Now Knight is back with a promising new “novelette” entitled After the Sun, a chilling horror story about a small group of people who end up trapped on the shoals of a lake after an apocalyptic event. The story, which Knight wrote back in 1998, had a promising start but a very...
The Brattleboro Rotary Club has been selling Christmas trees for decades, so its members know a thing or two about how to keep them fresh. They offer some tips: • Once you and your Christmas tree have safely returned home, make a fresh cut across the bottom of the trunk to open up the pores in the wood, allowing it to absorb water readily. • Make the cut about 1 inch above the old base, at a very slight angle.
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. • Robert “Bob” W. Adams, 85, of Bellows Falls. Died Dec. 2, at Grace Cottage Hospital in Townshend. Graduate of Bellows Falls High School. Served in the Army during World War II, and from 1944 to 1946, he worked on the Army's military railroad in the Philippines. Worked for the Rutland Railroad for 18 years,
They're sleek, they're computerized, and they're about to change the way we maneuver around downtown Brattleboro. A new traffic control system went into full operation this week, and from the black mast arms arching over Main Street to the higher pitched chirping sound coming from the pedestrian crossing signal, it's truly a new look and sound for motorists and others to get used to. New lights, and the electronic control boxes running them, have been installed at the High and...
Music • Student concert at Open Music Collective: On Thursday, Dec. 9, at 7:30 p.m., the Open Music Collective will host a student ensembles concert featuring the music of Wayne Shorter and other works by Mongo Santamaría, Coltrane, Monk and Ray Anderson. Local favorites Steve Frankel (bass), Jon Mack (sax and flute), Kate Parsons (piano), Bahman Mahdavi (guitar) and Dan Borden (drums) have rehearsed challenging Wayne Shorter compositions including Ana Maria, Armageddon, Speak no Evil, and Water Babies. Shorter is...
The recent closure of Alici's Bistro, a restaurant on Harris Place, shows the inappropriate imbalance in the town of Brattleboro's approach between the need to increase parking revenues and the need to provide convenient parking for local businesses. The Harris Place lot was the last downtown parking lot that used meters until this summer, when the town removed all but 14 of the 64 meters in the lot and converted it into permit-only parking. Anyone who parks in those spaces...
Three student composers from The Grammar School traveled to St. Michael's College in Colchester on Dec. 6 to hear their original musical compositions played live by professional musicians in the Vermont Midi Project's Opus 21 Concert. The selected pieces are Summer's Dance by eighth-grader Jamie Lumley, a second time winner; Chaos by sixth-grader Russell Boswell; and My Friend The Wind by fifth-grader Isaac Freitas-Eagan. In his notes for the program, Isaac wrote, “I really liked watching my piece come together.
In September of 2000, Beth Wood was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. It began with simply forgetting to turn off the stove after she was done cooking one of her famous meals, or needing a reminder of her son's phone number. Then, as most Alzheimer patients do, she began to forget to eat or bathe. She would wake up unaware of where she was. She'd imagine people were stealing things, simply because she could not remember where they had previously been.
On Dec. 6, 2006, Susan Bourne of Saxtons River offered and facilitated the first gathering of KnittingTogether at the Rockingham Free Public Library in Bellows Falls. Her goals was simple: offer knitters of all levels a time and place where they could meet freely each week for a few hours to knit hats, mittens, scarves, and sweaters for local children and families. After two years at the public library, KnittingTogether moved its weekly sessions to the Saxtons River Inn in...
Union Institute & University's (UI&U) Brattleboro Center will host a commencement weekend on Dec. 11 and 12 for new graduates of the Bachelor of Arts Weekend residency program. On Saturday the 11th, the B.A. graduates will give presentations, open-to-the-public, based on their studies. The weekend events will culminate on Sunday the 12th at 11:45 a.m., in the Community Room at the Vermont Academic Center when the graduates, their families and UI&U Brattleboro faculty and staff gather for the commencement. “One...
A civil rights advocate has been ousted from the state advisory panel of the bipartisan U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) after a conservative majority objected to his commentary about the racial undertones of a political slogan in the November election. The future of the USCCR's Vermont State Advisory Committee (SAC) remains in political limbo after the commission voted Friday to renew the subcommittee's charter, but without its chairman, Curtiss Reed Jr. Reed, of Brattleboro, who had chaired the 17-member...
The Brattleboro Selectboard showed support for the hiring of an assistant town manager for the first time in public during a special meeting this week. Selectboard Chair Dick DeGray said the board had discussed the issue in executive sessions dealing with personnel matters, but Monday's meeting marked the first public discussion. “The major concern here is burnout,” said DeGray. “If [we don't hire an assistant], we'll burn out one of the better town managers this town has had in many...
The Selectboard has asked town department heads to review their proposed budgets once again and find more ways to cut the town's fiscal year 2012 budget. The draft budget discussed at Monday's special meeting shows a 4.6 percent increase over last year's level-funded budget. Selectboard Chair Dick DeGray said he preferred to see only a 3 percent increase for FY 2012. During the meeting, Town Manager Barbara Sondag and department heads suggested saving money by cutting funds for road paving...
A Vermont Yankee decommissioning forum will be held on Wednesday, Dec. 8, from 7-9 p.m., at the downtown campus of Greenfield Community College, 270 Main St. A four-person panel will discuss what will happen if Vermont Yankee stops operating in March 2012, what might happen before that date, and what local residents, elected officials, and town and regional bodies can do to make sure Vermont Yankee is properly dismantled and cleaned-up, with the radioactive waste safely stored. The panelists will...