• Black History Month lecture looks at black farming community in Vermont: As part of its programming for Black History Month, Marlboro College will present a free, public lecture by Elise A. Guyette, author of Discovering Black Vermont: African-American Farmers in Hinesburgh, Vermont 1790-1890 on Monday, Feb. 7, at 7 p.m., in Ragle Hall.
Guyette will discuss the research and writing of Discovering Black Vermont (University of Vermont Press, 2010), which began with inquiries into a destroyed black cemetery on a rural hill in Hinesburg. Through town records, court documents, newspapers and photographs, she reconstructed the story of three generations of free blacks trying to build a life and community. The Vermont Historical Society gave the book its 2010 Award of Excellence.
James Brewer Stewart, professor emeritus of history at Macalester College called Discovering Black Vermont, “A gem of a book. Guyette brings this long-overlooked history to life in a manner that is as highly instructive to scholars of race relations and African-American History as it is revealing to general readers.”
Guyette is a former public school teacher and president of the Vermont Alliance for Social Studies (VASS). She is presently a doctoral candidate and an adjunct faculty member at the University of Vermont. Guyette also works as a consultant on ethnohistory, social sciences and curriculum development for schools, theaters, television and museums.
We're here to do good work,” were the introductory words from incoming Agency of Human Services Secretary Doug Racine to the House Human Services Committee. He went on to share his charge from Gov. Peter Shumlin: “Government's job is to do good work. Government is not the problem; government...
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. • Rua J. Bickford, 83, of West Chesterfield, N.H., formerly of Northfield, Mass. Died Jan. 29 at Applewood in Winchester, N.H. Wife of the...
Spiro Leristas grew up in a family of 11 children - five brothers and six sisters. While some of them are not immediately close by - two remain in Greece, for example, and one works as a taxi driver in New York - on weekends, it feels as though all of them are at Village Pizza, eating, talking, planning, gesturing, rolling their eyes, and cooking at their Putney Road establishment, just north of the Route 5 roundabout at Exit 3...
We would like to thank everyone who participated in this year's Project Feed the Thousands campaign. With your help, we were able to meet our goal of 25 tractor trailer trucks of food (equivalent to 62,500 bags of groceries). Although we fell short of our monetary goal, each and every one of you who contributed (from loose change to a can of tuna fish to generous checks) helped over 12,000 area residents in need. Through your contributions, Project Feed the...
Heading into the final month of the high school basketball season, the Leland & Gray girls look like they are a team that could contend for a state championship. Leland & Gray finished last week with a 9-1 record, the most wins that the Rebels have had in five years. They are tied with Enosburg Falls for the top spot in Division III. On Jan. 24, the Rebels crushed Black River, 55-23. Aly Marcucci led the Rebels on offense with...
December and January were busy months for the board of directors of Home at Last, a local nonprofit that helps find affordable housing for homeless veterans. A modestly successful annual fund drive was concluded, which raised $24,000. The board also welcomed four new members, and elected new officers as well. Kate Harty of Springfield is recently retired from the White River Junction Veterans' Administration facility, where she served for many years as Director of Nursing and Outpatient Care. Most recently,
Dr. William C. Hsiao's report on the potential for a single-payer health care system in Vermont has met with optimism and excitement by local lawmakers and community. But that optimism was mixed with healthy doses of reality. Hsiao, the K.T. Li Professor of Economics at the Harvard School of Public Health, presented his team's 130-page report, Health System Reform Design: Achieving Affordable Universal Health Care in Vermont, to the Legislature on Jan. 19. While still in draft form until after...
The year 2010 echoed the worst of times for New England's Great River, the Connecticut. Last Jan. 7, radioactive tritium was found leaking at Entergy's aging Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, right to the river's edge. The plume continues. As of Dec.15, still-rising tritium levels at wells next to the river registered 495,000 picocuries per liter--25-times the EPA safe drinking water standard. Yet on Nov. 18, Entergy halted their groundwater extraction that slowed the radionuclide flow to the river. May 3,
While many people, including our president, are calling for “civility of debate,” I fear that ship sailed long ago. The real issue today is understanding the debasement of our language, and how we in America have traveled from George Carlin to George Orwell. Carlin warned about “soft language,” or our culture's way of obscuring meaning with euphemism. When did toilet paper become “bathroom tissue,” he asked. When did “the dump” became “the landfill”? When did old people became “senior citizens”
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How many of us understand the extent to which the British Petroleum oil spill has disrupted the lives of families? Months later, when the oil spill is no longer hitting the headlines, the shrimpers' boats sit idle in harbors, and thousands of fisherman have lost their jobs. Feed the Children trucks move into the cities with hundreds of clamoring children. A reporter on NPR speaks of these Gulf Coast fishermen as the last of the hunter/gatherers who feel they must...
With winter finally here, and the bare ground now covered with snow, the winter fun begins. With snow, the woods and fields take on a totally different feel. Tracks appear day by day which reveal a secret winter world. Being outside in the wintertime is a special joy and there is nothing better for getting through the winter months than having tons of fun outside in the snow and February sun. At Bonnyvale Environmental Education Center in West Brattleboro, they...
Area residents will join a coalition of grassroots groups and nonprofits from around Vermont to gather at the Statehouse in Montpelier on Thursday, Feb. 3, in a collective call for bold and comprehensive statewide action on climate change. A community bus will leave Brattleboro at 7.50 a.m. (from the Elliot Street Café, which will open at 7:30 a.m. on Feb. 3) and Putney at 8:10 a.m. (from the Putney Food Co-op) to take community members to Montpelier in time for...
As a sign of the increasing complexities of running a municipal government, Jamaica wants to appoint three of its town officers which had previously been elected. According to Selectboard Chair Alexandra Clark, Jamaica wants to hire its Town Clerk, Town Treasurer, and Delinquent Tax Collector - three positions that, under state statute, voters normally elect. But they're positions that require some specialized knowledge, and when candidates are nominated, they “don't have to know a debit from a credit,” said Town...
February programs for the Brattleboro Memorial Hospital New Moms Network start with a session they call Potpourri on Wednesday, Feb. 2. This is a time for new moms to come together and discuss various topics with each other and network. Moms meet on Wednesdays, from 9:30 to 11 a.m., in the BMH Exercise Room in the new Brew Barry Conference Room complex on the lower level of the main hospital (in the former PT gym). The program on Wednesday, Feb.
A New York City therapist wants to provide affordable and accessible mental health care in southern Vermont. To further that goal, Michael DeMarco, Ph.D., founder and executive director of Our Collective Mental Health Inc. in New York, is opening branch offices this month in Londonderry and Bellows Falls. The Bellows Falls practice will operate in the same block as the Chamber of Commerce, at 49 The Square. Because his practice is organized as a nonprofit with access to social services...
Over the past couple of years, Brattleboro has cemented its reputation as a food and agriculture hub. The Grafton Village Cheese Co., and the Commonwealth Dairy yogurt plant that will be opening soon, are signs of the town's growing niche in food production. Last summer, the Organic Trade Association decided to locate its offices here, a reflection of the region's support of organic agriculture. The Strolling of the Heifers has gained national fame for its annual bovine parade down Main...
The recent Malfunction Junction special Selectboard meeting provided a big update, where nothing happened - except a comedy of evasions. Evasion #1: After Orion Barber addressed the problem of exiting from the Co-op parking lot, stating it was a “terrible experience and it's really dangerous,” unnamed “officials” replied, according to the Reformer, that the same pattern is regularly used all over the state. I take this to be a response, but not a reply to the question, and it no...
Change is in the air at the Vermont Democratic Party (VDP), and part of that change is the election of a Brattleboro man to the party's executive committee. James Valente was unanimously elected as the VDP Exceutive Committee's secretary, and becomes the only member from Windham or Bennington counties on the board. He also becomes one of the youngest members of the panel. He was elected on Jan. 29. Valente, 26, is currently a clerk for Brattleboro attorney Thomas Costello...
“Freedom Now!” was the chant that came up from the 130 people packed into the New England Youth Theatre. The Women's Freedom Center, formally known as the Women's Crisis Center, celebrated its name change on Friday night with music sung by The Brattleboro Women's Chorus, a hula hoop performance, short films, a “freedom shoutout,” and a performance by singer-songwriter Kris Delmhorst. The name change represents more for the nearly-40-year-old center than swapping one word for another or mark the Freedom...
Ask any aspiring or recently successful author, and they will tell you exactly how difficult it is to get published in the current economic climate. That is why several Vermont authors - Archer Mayor, Deborah Lee Luskin, Joyce Marcel, and Vincent Panella - have all chosen to take the road less traveled. The four have experienced the ups and downs of taking responsibility for getting their own words into type, the type into pages, and the pages into books on...