The Love & Marriage Issue 2018
A Bridal Florist Grows Her Business in Winooski; A Foodie and a Fussy Eater Find Love in the Kitchen
Seriously: Tango’d Up in Love
In this episode, Bryan and Dinvinity Shakrah dance around some of the topics covered in Seven Days’ Love & Marriage Issue. CREDITS: Written, filmed and edited by: Bryan Parmelee Artwork/photography by: Matthew Thorsen, Thom Glick, James Buck, Luke Eastman, Dreamstime Logo/art direction: Don Eggert Backdrop mural: Anthill Collective Music/audio by: Bryan Parmelee, Freesound Related Stories
Slideshow: Winter is a Drag Ball 2018 — “Make America Drag Again”
Stars, stripes and sequins dominated at the 23rd annual Winter Is a Drag Ball, held last Saturday, February 10th. The theme? “Make America Drag Again.” Party hostesses from the House of LeMay were recognized for raising $236,000 for the Vermont People With AIDS Coalition over the past 17 years. For more about the history of Drag…
The Cannabis Catch-Up: Here Comes Another Vermont Dispensary
The first medical marijuana dispensary in southwestern Vermont is one step closer to opening. With little fuss, regulators in Bennington approved PhytoScience Institute’s plan to open on Depot Street in a space formerly used by the Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles. The dispensary would be the first in Bennington County, reports the Bennington Banner. It…
The Parmelee Post: Vermont Legalizes the Cultivation of Up to One Gazillion Mature Potholes
With the stroke of a pen, Vermont today became the first state in the nation to, through legislative action, legalize the cultivation of up to one gazillion potholes. “Today marks a historic day for all the recreational pothole users in this state,” exclaimed asphalt fatigue advocate Barry Withersmore. “No longer will our citizens need to…
![Vermont Farm Show [SIV521]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/episode521.webp?resize=1200%2C900&ssl=1)
Vermont Farm Show [SIV521]
1/31/18: Since 1931, the Vermont Farm Show has been a gathering place for all things agriculture in our state. The three day event was held at the Champlain Valley Exposition in Essex Junction and attracted over 150 exhibitors, farmers and spectators. Eva met a young farmer wannabe, learned about a robotic milking machine, enjoyed maple…
Hogan’s Return: Longtime Public Servant Blasts Mega-Prison Plan
It was as if the concept of “gravitas” had walked in and taken a seat. Last Thursday, Con Hogan made a now-rare return to familiar stomping grounds. He came to the Statehouse to testify before the House Corrections and Institutions Committee about a proposed mega-prison floated by state officials. Hogan is a former state corrections…
Quick Lit: Review of ‘The Möbius Strip Club of Grief’ by Bianca Stone
A Möbius strip is a surface with only one side and one boundary (think of a ribbon connected in a circle with one twist). It doesn’t have a front or a back — in that sense, it’s a confounding object. That’s also true of Bianca Stone’s new book of poetry, The Möbius Strip Club of…
Album Review: Bostjan Zupancic, ‘Nothing Special’
(Self-released, CD, digital download) You ever go to a potluck dinner where someone has made a really strange dish? It has some stuff in it you’ve never had before, or perhaps it’s been prepared in a way you’re not accustomed to. But then you take a bite and … you know what? You don’t hate…
JAGfest 2.0 Brings New Work From Playwrights of Color
It’s been almost two years since JAG Productions came onto the scene in the Upper Valley. This weekend, Jarvis Antonio Green, company founder and namesake, will launch JAGfest 2.0, the second iteration of a new-play festival that develops work by emerging black playwrights. Green has been part of the theater scene in the White River…
Eat This Week, February 7 to 13, 2018: For the Gals
Valentine’s Day starts early this year — for women looking to make a mark. In Middlebury, Stonecutter Spirits is assembling a stellar team of women entrepreneurs to take back the Hallmark Holiday with merriment, snacks, booze and blowouts. On Tuesday, February 13, tasting room visitors can meet women makers and get their sparkle on with…
The Art of the Mooch
Parasitic forces make humans anxious — for proof, we need only look at the enduring mythos of vampires who sleep in coffins, skulk in the dark and drain unsuspecting passersby of their life juice. “HUSK,” a newly opened group show at Burlington’s S.P.A.C.E. Gallery, mines the narratively rich material of the parasite for results that,…
How Green Mountain is Your Love? A Vermont Compatibility Quiz
Finding a compatible partner is among life’s great challenges — one that can feel especially daunting in Vermont, where the sparse population limits your choices. Sure, you can always pick up, move to a metropolis like Boston or New York City, and gorge yourself on the all-you-can-date buffet of singles. But what if you’ve already…
Busts in Sleepy Lamoille County Show Heroin’s Long Tendrils
Esperanza Delarosa and her daughter, Susan Mateo, both of the Bronx, N.Y., were charged on January 23 with conspiracy to distribute heroin, fentanyl and oxycodone. Such cases are no longer rare in Vermont. But the brazen way that Delarosa, 50, and Mateo, 25, allegedly set up shop in Morrisville and Stowe — and put down…
The Love & Marriage Issue — 2018
We just love love here at Seven Days. As this annual issue suggests, we’re fans of marriage, too — so much so that a few staffers have done it several times! Clearly, we should leave the jokes to comedian Matthew Broussard, who performs in Burlington on Valentine’s Day. Need a date for the show? Take…
At Winooski’s Nectar & Root, a Bridal Florist Grows Her Business
Erin Ostreicher is living her childhood fantasy. The 32-year-old florist says that when she was a kid growing up in Westport, Conn., she dreamed of working with flowers. She made dolls out of hyacinth, drew blooming buds incessantly and sketched her “dream greenhouse.” Now the Skidmore College graduate runs her own bridal-oriented floral design company,…
Theater Review: ‘Only Yesterday,’ Northern Stage
The rich harmonics of the opening chord of “A Hard Day’s Night” are the energetic start to Bob Stevens’ Only Yesterday, taking us back to 1964 when Beatlemania was at its peak. In its world premiere at Northern Stage, the play imagines how John Lennon and Paul McCartney spent the day when their U.S. tour…
Heady Times: Eli Harrington Champions Pot in Vermont
Eli Harrington surveyed the Vermont Statehouse cafeteria as hemp growers bragged about their fall harvest and entrepreneurs offered free samples of cannabidiol-infused chocolate to lawmakers, lobbyists and even a burly state trooper. The Cannabis in the Capitol education fair on January 9 clearly brought satisfaction to the 30-year-old Harrington, who, in his tweed jacket and…
Hackie: Long Live Customer Zero
The woman who phoned me from Kohl’s department store at University Mall was, to use talk-radio lingo, a first-time caller. How a new customer obtains my taxi phone number is often a mystery to me. Because I’ve never advertised and have no website or online presence to speak of, my business growth, such as it…
The Elephant in the Room: Are Burlington Republicans a Dying Breed?
GOP party chair Paco DeFrancis blamed bad winter weather the first time a gathering of Burlington Republicans failed to attract a sufficient number of committee members to hold a vote. But on the day of the second attempt, January 25, there was no snowstorm, and local Republicans still couldn’t assemble the quorum of 10 committee…
Ask Athena: I’m Stuck on My Ex
Dear Athena, How can I get over my ex? We dated for a year, lived together for eight months and were deeply in love with each other. It was the healthiest romantic relationship I’ve ever had and the first time I lived with a partner. But, ultimately, the 23-year age difference was just too big…
Soundbites: They Shoot Vermonters, Don’t They?
Have I mentioned how much I love unusual, competitive feats of endurance? I’m not talking about marathons and triathlons — though I have much respect for those who swim, bike and run their way to glory. I’m talking about situations when everyday people subject themselves to quirky yet grueling acts of tenacity — like in Hands…
Seven Restaurateurs Talk Food and Romance
For chefs, Valentine’s Day means a lot of deuces. That’s restaurant lingo for a table for two, the configuration that fills dining rooms on February 14. Oysters, Champagne and chocolate are standard fare, set on a white tablecloth with a candle burning. But a romantic spread can involve much more than those totems. Seven Days…
Dr. Tango Teaches Newlyweds to Pivot With Panache
At many North American nuptials, among the first things couples do after the ceremony is step onto a dance floor. Some choose to improvise: They might wrap arms around each other and sway to a beloved song. Others prepare in advance by taking classes and attending social dance events in ballroom, salsa or swing. But…
Varsity’s Stephanie Smith Talks Filmmaking and Reliving High School
Jubilant indie-rock quintet Varsity emerged from Chicago’s DIY scene in the mid-2010s. Lyricist/keyboardist Stephanie Smith fronts the project and, in a recent interview with Seven Days, describes her hometown scene as supportive and inclusive. “We all want the same thing,” she says of her band and the Windy City’s other burgeoning acts. “It’s not necessarily…
Movie Review: ‘Darkest Hour’ Channels Churchill with Award-Worthy Aplomb
As the sagacious cultural observer Seth Rogen noted of the cinema in Knocked Up, “Good things come in pairs: Volcano/Dante’s Peak, Deep Impact/Armageddon.” 2017 offered a rare critically acclaimed example of the phenomenon: Dunkirk/Darkest Hour. What are the odds of two films offering mirror images of the same chapter in British history in the same…
Comedian Matthew Broussard On Valentine’s Day and the Mathematics of Jokes
Matthew Broussard is a self-described horrible procrastinator. “I will never be doing the thing I need to be doing,” he said in an interview with Seven Days. But his dawdling tendencies have served him well. Prior to becoming a full-time standup comic, the New Jersey native worked in finance. Broussard, who was raised in Atlanta,…
Treading Water: Vermont’s Pols Are Going Nowhere Fast on Clean Lakes
It appears the Vermont legislature will join Gov. Phil Scott in delaying again any decision on how to raise millions in new revenue to pay for Vermont’s billion-dollar cleanup of its waterways. Environmental advocates and federal regulators are looking on with increasing concern. A temporary source of cleanup funds — $13.5 million a year in…
River Run Chef Bottles His Barbecue Sauce
Jimmy D. Kennedy’s River Run restaurant in Plainfield, which closed in 2010, was famous for its catfish, its hush puppies and its customers, who included David Mamet. Now those who never got to taste the Mississippi native chef’s barbecue sauce will have their chance. With the help of co-packer Joshua Pfeil and Michael Pelchar, formerly…
Movie Review: Oscar-Nominated Doc ‘Last Men in Aleppo’ Portrays a Last Stand
Last weekend, instead of catching a horror movie about the Winchester Mystery House, I streamed a searing cinematic record of real horrors. A 2018 Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary Feature, Last Men in Aleppo (currently streaming on iTunes and Netflix) is not an easy film to forget or ignore. Syrian filmmaker Firas Fayyad shot…
Album Review: Helen Hummel, ‘Many Waters’
(Self-released, CD, digital download) Acoustic singer-songwriter albums compel the listener to scrutinize the little things. When nearly every song is a bare-bones voice-and-guitar composition, the variations among them are minuscule, but nonetheless interesting or important — a crescendo here, a restrained chord wedged between two emphatic ones there, the ragged break of the singer’s voice…
Free Will Astrology (2/7/18)
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Charles Nelson Reilly was a famous American actor, director and drama teacher. He appeared in or directed numerous films, plays and TV shows. But in the 1970s, when he was in his forties, he also spent quality time impersonating a banana in a series of commercials for Bic Banana Ink Crayons.…
Letters to the Editor (2/7/18)
Infinite Bias Your cover story on the Burlington mayoral race [“Two Against One,” January 31] shows you’ve already ruled out Infinite Culcleasure’s campaign. That’s wrong. It’s even worse that you’re not transparent about your opinion and use artwork and a headline that leads readers to believe you’re covering all three fairly. It’s simply untrue that…
Lawsuit: Vermont Hemp Company Founder Lifted Cannabis Crop
A Burlington woman has sued the Vermont Hemp Company and its founder, Joel Bedard, in a dispute over a hemp harvest. Cynthea Hausman is alleging that she and Bedard entered into an agreement to grow hemp on several acres of her family farm in Addison after the two met at a conference last April. Hausman…
When Opposites Attract in the Kitchen
My husband, Dan, likes to tell people about the first time I cooked for him. I was 23, a senior in college; he, a 26-year-old union carpenter. “She was wearing this hot little black slip,” he’ll say, recalling my youthful tendency to skip wearing clothes whenever possible. I remember it, too: a languid lunch in…
Poké Bowls Coming to Williston
The Scale Poké Bar, a restaurant that specializes in poké bowls, is expected to open on March 15 at 373 Blair Park Road in Williston, said Neil Farr, who owns the business with his wife, Perry. “My wife and I have been together for seven years,” Farr said. “For six years, we’ve been working on…
New Breweries Open in Berlin, Killington
Good golly, Miss Molly, more beer! On the Barre-Montpelier Road in Berlin, Leo and Kelly Foy opened Dog River Brewery just over a month ago. Meanwhile, at the Spa at the Woods at 53 Village Circle Road in Killington, Mike Philbrick and Vince Wynn began pouring hop-forward IPAs and bold stouts by Killington Beer Company…
