Apr 29 – May 5, 2015
The Past, Present and Future of Winooski’s Waking Windows Music Festival; Ag in the Hot Seat; Wendy Whelan on Modern Dance; Restaurant Week Diaries
Cover Story
Waking Windows 5: The Past, Present and Future of Winooski’s Music Festival
Burlington is northern Vermont’s nightlife hub on most nights. But the typically bustling Queen City could be a bit of a ghost town this weekend, May 1 to 3. Why? Because all the cool kids will be hanging out on the other side of the river in Winooski, taking in the sights and, more importantly,…
The Water Diviner
It’s fair, I think, to question whether this is a film Russell Crowe would have appeared in if he hadn’t also directed it. He does himself a big favor by doing so, providing the only star power in the wannabe sweeping epic. My guess is, if the Oscar winner weren’t making his behind-the-camera debut with…
![Seth Rogen Returns to BTV [SIV397]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/episode397.webp?resize=1200%2C900&ssl=1)
Seth Rogen Returns to BTV [SIV397]
4/25/15: Seth Rogen and his wife Lauren Miller Rogen returned to Burlington on Saturday to represent Hilarity for Charity, a non-profit they started in 2011 to raise funds for the Alzheimer’s Association. Both actors have deeply personal ties to this disease, Lauren Miller Rogen’s mother was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s at the age of…
UVM Student Matthew Lipke Screens Third Film
You’ve heard the rap on millennials. Narcissistic. No work ethic. Perhaps you’ve even read Mark Bauerlein’s The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30). Generation Y is the Rodney Dangerfield of demographics: It just don’t get no respect. If you buy a word…
News Quirks 4/29/15)
Curses, Foiled Again Police responding to a drug complaint in Richmond, Va., spotted two men, who began running away. One of the fleeing men, later identified as Darnell Elliotte, 20, fired several shots at the officers. He missed them but shot himself in the leg, allowing his pursuers to apprehend him. (Richmond Times-Dispatch) A subcontractor…
Waterbury Gets a Coffee Shop
In recent years, Waterbury has blossomed into quite the culinary destination. With award-winning breweries and restaurants such as Hen of the Wood, Prohibition Pig, the Reservoir Restaurant & Tap Room and the Alchemist, it’s become a must-stop spot on any Vermont food tour. But the town doesn’t have many places to grab a quick lunch…
Landfill: Bristol Aims to Load Up Dump Before It Closes
The Bristol landfill was buzzing with activity on a recent Saturday morning. A pickup truck dropped off a large load of old toys and furniture. People added black 30-gallon trash bags to a pile that would be bulldozed, compacted and then covered with a fresh layer of dirt at the end of the day. At…
Theater Review: The Mountaintop, Vermont Stage Company
Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop is a fierce, sweet call to action. The playwright employs a touch of magical realism to reimagine Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s last night on Earth. Her fictional conversation between King and a chambermaid at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., addresses race with both humor and gravity — and inadvertent…
Crazy Circus Peanuts
Business picks up in April. As winter recedes, customers whom I haven’t heard from in months poke their heads out of their gopher holes and consider the world. Sniffing the spring air and spying the snow-free grounds, they call me and venture downtown for the evening. “Made it through the winter in one piece?” I…
Ex Machina
Longtime Seven Days readers will know the name of Bina48, a “socially advanced robot” created by Hanson Robotics for the Terasem Movement Foundation in Lincoln. They may have read Megan James’ 2013 interview with Bina48, and the dire predictions that followed in Judith Levine’s Poli Psy column. Efforts to create a humanlike artificial intelligence, Levine…
Champlain College Game Studio Courts Recruiters, Women
Last Friday night, the video clips that played on a large screen in Champlain College’s Alumni Auditorium offered an impressive sampling of the skills this year’s graduating game-design students had learned over the past four years. There were intricate 3D renderings of gritty urban landscapes; anatomically precise spiders, medieval sword fighters and robotic reptiles; vertiginous…
Brave New Bureaucracy: REAL Licenses Slow Down Vermont Drivers
Several dozen people sat in a waiting room, each holding a ticket identified by a different letter and number. “Come on, A72,” a man wearing a red fleece jacket chanted periodically, as if he were cheering on a racehorse. A bored teenager tried to amuse himself by methodically rolling what looked like a joint —…
Callithumpian Consort to Perform Composer Alvin Lucier’s ‘Hanover’
Nearly a century ago, the father of composer Alvin Lucier played violin in the very first Dartmouth College jazz band, alongside a pianist, a drummer, two saxophonists and three — count ’em, three — banjo players. “That’s too many banjos!” Lucier said with a laugh during a phone conversation with Seven Days. Unfazed by that…
Vermont Police Facebook Pages Get Likes … and Hates
The collection of mug shots posted on the South Burlington Police Facebook page is a bizarre rogues’ gallery. Some of the subjects look dazed or drunk; others ashamed. Almost all seem unhappy, which is not surprising given that they were photographed after being arrested for everything from shoplifting and drunk driving to soliciting prostitutes. “It’s…
Classical Musicians Making More CDs Than Ever
A funny thing has happened to the classical music world over the past decade or so: It is swimming in compact disc recordings. This realization recently struck Shelburne pianist Paul Orgel, a critic for the past seven years for Fanfare Magazine, a leading classical-recordings review journal. The eight or so reviews Orgel writes per issue…
The Tax Man Cometh: Final Fights in the Vermont Legislature
Like a chastened schoolboy, Sen. Tim Ashe (D/P-Chittenden) wrote 10 times on a whiteboard in the Senate Finance Committee’s meeting room last week, “I do not need to fight every battle.” But by Friday afternoon, evidence was scant that the 38-year-old chair of the Senate’s tax-writing committee was heeding his own advice. With just weeks…
Vermont Artists in International ‘Telephone’ Online Exhibit
When Cabot artist Janet Van Fleet responded to an artists’ call, she didn’t know what she was getting herself into. Neither did Brattleboro painter Hannah Earley or any of the 320 other artists from around the world who participated in “Telephone: An International Arts Experiment.” They couldn’t have known because the work as a whole…
Maryse Smith’s New Album is Her Best Yet
Maryse Smith likes to take her time with things. Like, approximately three years. “I’m a slow mover,” she says, the faintest trace of a self-conscious grin creasing the corner of her mouth as she sips a late-afternoon beer at a bustling Burlington coffeehouse. Smith, 28, is discussing the creation of her new album, The Way…
Soundbites: Digging the Local Bands at WW5
Windows to the Soul Man, I really love Waking Windows. You might have gathered that, given the amount of coverage the fest is getting in this week’s issue. (We’re at about 4,500 words and counting, which is a lot.) But what can I say? I’m excited for it. I’m also proud of it, and I…
Neighbor in Need: Did Campbell Lobby His Way Into a Job?
Last year the Vermont House established its first-ever ethics panel, prompted by concerns about potential conflicts of interest among its 150 members. But the smaller, clubbier Vermont Senate declined to follow suit. “We really haven’t talked about it,” Senate President Pro Tem John Campbell (D-Windsor) said earlier this year. “I can’t remember the last time…
Deep River Saints, Acts of American Homes
(Self-released, CD, digital download) Deep River Saints began as a recording project for Patrick Crowley, formerly of the now-disbanded groups Cities on the Moon and What’s Good. After recruiting his former WG bandmate, drummer Erick Lattrell, Crowley added three other members to create Deep River Saints’ current lineup. The band exists largely as backing for…
Letters to the Editor (4/29/15)
Smokes Out I was very disappointed and dismayed to see a full-page ad for American Spirit cigarettes in your April 15 issue. As I am sure you are aware, smoking is the leading preventable cause of death in the U.S. — responsible for more than 480,000 deaths each year. It also causes untold suffering from…
Sleeping In, Sleeping In
(Self-released, digital download) When Burlington’s Sleeping In premiered their self-titled EP on Boston-based music blog Allston Pudding, writer Tim Gagnon posited that the band could be perceived as “a couple of Vermont guys that showed up a bit late to the endlessly moping shoegaze revival.” However, in light of a new crop of listeners being…
My Ex Wants Me Back But It Doesn’t Feel Right
Dear Athena, I was married to this woman for a few years. We had it OK, but things were hard and then she wanted a divorce. We settled quickly, but almost immediately after we divorced, she was seriously involved with someone else. And she wasn’t shy about flaunting it. It was really hard for me…
Former Ballerina Wendy Whelan Reinvents Herself as a Modern Dancer
In 2012, the New York Times dubbed Wendy Whelan “America’s greatest contemporary ballerina.” Last fall she bade farewell to her devoted fans and concluded a three-decade career with the New York City Ballet. But the 47-year-old artist wasn’t bowing out of the dance world just yet. For her next act, she aimed to reinvent herself…
Art Review: ‘Interpreting the Surface,’ Furchgott Sourdiffe Gallery
In 1976, American fiber artists felt cornered by the emphasis on weaving in academic programs and exhibitions. The loom’s grid was too restricting, too uniform, they said. They wanted recognition for the art of fabric’s more fluid possibilities: embroidery, stitching, quilting, dying, printing, appliqué, rug hooking, felting and so on. So that year, a group…
Free Will Astrology (4/29/15)
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Chris Moneymaker was employed as an accountant in Tennessee. On a whim, he paid $39 to enter an online poker tournament. Although he knew a lot about the game, he had never competed professionally. Nevertheless, he won the tournament. As his award, he received no money, but rather an invitation to…
Vermont Restaurant Week Diaries: Seven Days Dines Out
Can you believe this is the sixth year of Vermont Restaurant Week? For more than half a decade, Vermonters have been supping (and lunching) on prix-fixe meals around the state. If all of our waists are a little thicker than they were back in 2010, that’s the price we pay for the culinary excellence surrounding…
Pan-Asian Market and Restaurant Opens in Burlington
Bhakti Adhikari and his brother-in-law, Som Timsina, took over the lease at Burlington’s 242 North Winooski Avenue from 99 Asian Market Eatery in February. Experienced business owners, the pair opened their first Central Market Taste of Asia nearly three years ago in Winooski. They also own three brow-threading and henna salons in Vermont and Plattsburgh,…
