The Summer Preview Issue 2015
The Summer Preview Issue: Foot Races for Fanatics; Lakes Beyond Champlain; Woodchuck Gardening Advice; Summer Dining Bucket List; Women’s Jail Drug Unit Criticized; Burlington v. Uber; A Q&A With Wyatt Cenac
Obituary: Richard J. Bissette, Anita Bechard Bissette, 1923-2014, 1921-2014, Waterbury
A military funeral service for the late Richard J. Bissette and Anita Bechard Bissette will be held at 1 p.m. on Tuesday, June 9, at the Vermont Veterans’ Cemetery at 487 Furnace Road, Randolph Center. All are welcome; the service will be held rain or shine, so come prepared. Family and friends are also invited…
Obituary: Louise Diamond, 1944-2015, Burlington
Native of Washington, D.C., long- time resident of Vermont, graduate of Oberlin College (1966), the University of Michigan (1967) and Union Institute (1990), Louise Hantman Lindner Sunfeather Diamond passed away peacefully on May 20th, 2015 in Burlington, Vermont. Louise lived a creative, joyful and incredibly productive life. She was deeply devoted to her friends and…
Obituary: Michael Rowley, 1968-2015, Westford
Michael Rowley, 46, passed away May 9, 2015 at the Fletcher Allen Medical Center in Burlington, VT. He was born in Burlington, VT, to Leonard and Aloyse Rowley. He grew up in Essex Junction, VT, and attended Mount Mansfield Union High School. Later, he joined the U.S. Army, trained at the U.S. Infantry School, and…
Obituary: George St. Gelais, 1920-2015, Hinesburg
George A St. Gelais, 94, of Hinesburg passed away Monday April 27, 2015 surrounded by his loving family. George was the first born of 14 children, he was born on Sept 26, 1920 on a farm in Colchester, VT. George loved fiddle music and dancing to it at the North East Fiddler and Champlain Fiddlers…
WTF: What’s Up With the Metal-Wrapped Tree?
[Image-1] Vermonters have a special place in their hearts for trees. We tap them, hug them, build wheelchair-accessible houses in their canopies and periodically dance naked around them by the light of the full moon. So when a Vermonter notices something awry with a tree — as one reader recently did during his commute through…
Letters to the Editor (5/20/15)
A Little History… The little building pictured in your article [WTF: “What’s With All the Tiny Houses in Burlington?” May 6] was actually Sharon’s Market. I was brought up across the fence in the back on Front Street. The Sharons lived in the house right next door back in the ’50s, maybe into the ’60s.…
Pitch Perfect 2
Mad Max: Fury Road is a sequel that boldly redefines its series. Pitch Perfect 2 is the kind of sequel we’re all more used to seeing: one that painstakingly hits every beat audiences liked in the first film, and hits it twice as hard. Since it’s a comedy about college a cappella, there’s no lack…
Scoreboard: Winners and Losers of the 2015 Legislative Session
Yes, we know governance isn’t a game. But politics sure is — and any politician who tells you otherwise is probably on the losing side. That’s why we at Seven Days bring you the Scoreboard every now and then. It’s our way of keeping track of who’s up and who’s down. So who won and…
Not Caleb, Good Childhood
(Self-released, digital download) There is a frantic immediacy about Good Childhood, the latest full-length recording from Burlington singer-songwriter Not Caleb. Not Caleb is, in fact, Caleb. Caleb Bauscher, to be precise. As its title suggests, his third record is primarily concerned with reflecting on his childhood. In the album’s liner notes, Bauscher writes nostalgically of…
Bring the Heat: Summer Preview 2015
The first thing we think of when warm weather finally comes, besides shedding the layers? Eating creemees. Jumping into, paddling across or otherwise enjoying a body of water. Getting our hands dirty in the garden, or visiting cute critters on the farm. We touch on all those things and more in this annual look ahead…
Blahvocado, Suck Up All Your Guts
(Self-released, digital download) We need to come up with a new pseudonym for songwriter and recent New Jersey transplant Matt Pignatore. For one thing, it’s a shame for such cool music to be released under the unappetizing — and perhaps self-deprecating — moniker Blahvacado. For another, there’s already a Vermont band called Bravacado, which could…
Soundbites: Kyle Gagnon Gets Weird
Kyle Gagnon is bombing. But it doesn’t seem to bother him. For one thing, he’s hardly the first comic to fall flat tonight. It’s a Wednesday evening at Nectar’s, a weekly slot occupied by the Vermont Comedy Club’s open mic. That means the lineup mostly consists of newbie comedians still honing their chops and established…
Seven Vermont Lakes That Aren’t Champlain
It’s easy to forget, when you live near the sparkling expanse of Lake Champlain, that Vermont has lots of other lakes. To be exact, 46 named lakes, according to the Watershed Management Division of the state Department of Environmental Conservation. And that doesn’t include some sizable ponds and reservoirs. These bodies of water boast their…
Essex Community Players Get Their Shakespeare On
Rehearsals spanned eight weeks instead of the typical four to six. The cast of 17 is much larger than those of most contemporary plays. The show requires lighting, sets, costumes, props and makeup that convey a shipwreck, magic and swordplay. The lines are tough to learn, and filled with poetry that can intimidate an audience.…
I Want to Pee on My Girlfriend
Dear Athena, I want to pee on my girlfriend when we are getting ready to have sex, and I am afraid of asking her if she would be into it. First of all, is it weird that I want to do that? I’ve never done it before, and I don’t know why I want to…
Interview: Comedian Wyatt Cenac
Wyatt Cenac is perhaps best known for his time as a correspondent on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” which ended in 2012. But Cenac is first and foremost a standup comedian. He has two excellent TV specials under his belt, including “Wyatt Cenac: Brooklyn,” which was released in late 2014 via Netflix…
News Quirks (5/20/15)
Curses, Foiled Again Moments after robbing a tourist of her gold chain on a street in Miami Beach, Fla., the gunman returned to the scene in his Mercedes and confronted the victim about the poor quality of the jewelry, complaining it was fake. The victim flagged down police and pointed out Daniel Sion Palmer, 26.…
Talking Art With Sumru Tekin
Conceptual art can be a hard sell, and Sumru Tekin’s sound and video installation “One Day” is no exception. It doesn’t help that the exhibition is tucked away in a dim room on the second floor of the BCA Center, with a heavy drapery partially pulled across its entrance. This theatrical touch helps keep the…
Free Will Astrology (5/20/15)
ARIES (March 21-April 19): James McNeil Whistler was an influential painter in the latter half of the 19th century. He advocated the “art for art’s sake” credo, insisting that the best art doesn’t need to teach or moralize. As far as he was concerned, its most important purpose was to bring forth “glorious harmony” from…
Breaking Down the Green Mountain Comedy Fest
Now entering its seventh year, the annual Green Mountain Comedy Festival is better than ever. But with 30 shows and more than 100 improv, sketch and standup comedians of local, regional and national renown performing, sorting out the five-day laugh riot is a tall order. Where to begin? To help make sense of it all,…
Asleep at the Deal: Democrats Dodge a Veto Fight
A sleepy Sen. Mark MacDonald (D-Orange) may have saved Vermont Democrats from civil war late Friday night. With a day remaining before their self-imposed adjournment deadline, legislators were scrambling to sign off on final budget, tax and health care bills. But they remained at loggerheads with Gov. Peter Shumlin, who’d spent weeks bashing their budget…
Béla Bartók: Peasant Jewels by Sylvia Parker
In 1987, after she built her house in Berlin, Vt., pianist Sylvia Parker began hearing rumors about the neighborhood’s musical history. “People started asking me, did I know anything about a musician who once lived up the road?” recalls the University of Vermont music professor. “Finally I just heard too much of the gossip to…
Opinion: Against Policing
When Gov. Peter Shumlin appointed a former state representative to investigate allegations that Vermont Attorney General Bill Sorrell violated campaign finance laws — by, for instance, rewarding donors with state contracts — the AG allowed that it was the proper thing to do. “I can’t investigate myself,” he told local media. The attorney general has…
A Giant Hummingbird (Mural) for Burlington
The tiny ruby-throated hummingbird is a familiar sight in Vermont, where it darts about flowers and backyard feeders every summer. But the hummingbird that has just alighted in downtown Burlington is several kinds of unusual. For one thing, it’s not a bird but a painting thereof. For another, it’s enormous: At about 28 feet tall,…
Training for Vermont Race of Endless Loops: Infinitus
If insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, what happens when you lope an infinite loop through the woods of Goshen in a new trail race that requires up to 10 days to complete? That’s what I wondered when I (apparently already insane) signed up for the Infinitus,…
Vermont Coffee Company to Open On-Site Café
Soon Middlebury’s Exchange Street — once called the “craftiest street in Vermont” in these pages for its concentration of craft food and beverage businesses — will be home to a bona fide café. The Vermont Coffee Company, known for its organic, fair-trade beans, is in the final stages of opening a new café and retail space…
Interview: Master Gardener Ron Krupp
Ron Krupp’s book The Woodchuck’s Guide to Gardening has been a fixture in local garden shops for more than a decade, its bright green binding recognizable from across a room. No ordinary gardening guide, it combines how-to information with a gardening journal, homespun anecdotes and even poetry. Published by the author’s own Whetstone Books, The…
Three Needs Resumes Brewing
When Three Needs Taproom & Brewery opened on College Street in Burlington in 1995, it was one of the few places in Vermont where patrons could sip a beer brewed in-house. In 2012, owner Glenn Walter moved his pub to Pearl Street, where he found the cost of outfitting a brewery in the new space…
Fleming Museum Hires New Curator
On the heels of last week’s Seven Days cover story about director Janie Cohen, the University of Vermont’s Fleming Museum of Art has revealed that it will soon have a new curator on staff — one who was hired away from another New England academic art museum. Andrea Rosen will join the Fleming staff on…
Vermont Gets Its First Local Corn Tortilla
Locavores can now add another item to their grocery list: tortillas. All Souls Tortilleria, a Waitsfield-based company, is giving Vermont its first homemade version of the staple. All Souls cofounders Sam Fuller and Hubert d’Autremont both hail from Arizona, where Latin flavors dominate. The two started making tortillas together five years ago at weekly gatherings…
Taxi Trials: Are Burlington’s Standards Lower Than Uber’s?
One driver peddled drugs out of his cab. Another posed a lewd question to a 14-year-old girl. A third continued to pick up passengers after getting busted for driving under the influence of drugs. Allegations of misconduct in Burlington’s cab industry have so accelerated that one of the regulators recently sent out a plea for…
Endurance Athletes Flock to Goshen
“By the end of [a long race], it looks like a Michael Jackson ‘Thriller’ video,” says Andy Weinberg. The boyish 45-year-old hops up from his chair in the athletic complex at Castleton State College, where he teaches physical education, and demonstrates a zombie-like lurch across the room. Weinberg is talking about the kind of long-distance…
Mad Max: Fury Road
Moviemaking, you may have noticed, has become a franchise factory, a mill that churns out business plans and Marvel-verse flow charts and is powered by predictability. It’s kind of an IBM of moving images. Much is manufactured. Little is created. Once upon a time, audiences scoffed at the sequel, the remake and the reboot. They…
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Bloom-Time Festival at the Hort Farm [SIV399]
5/16/15: The 20th Annual Bloom-Time Festival and Open House was held at UVM’s Horticulture Research and Education Center in South Burlington on Saturday. Organized by the Friends of the Horticultural Farm, visitors toured the the blooming lilacs, crab apple trees and magnolias. Music: The Swing Peepers, ReArranged This episode of Stuck in Vermont was made…
Controversial Program Locks Down Drug-Addicted Female Inmates
Ed Adams paused outside a locked door inside the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility and waited for a guard to buzz him in. “I don’t usually bring tours in here,” Adams said. “I get bombarded.” But the women in this secure unit within Vermont’s sole women’s prison hardly glanced up, let alone approached superintendent Adams with…
Farm Share: Lambing Season at Bonnieview Farm
The milking parlor at Craftsbury Common’s Bonnieview Farm is teeming with children. Two interns from Sterling College — who arrived days ago to work for the summer — slap milkers on the ewes as the students look on. As one ewe rids herself of last night’s dinner the children erupt in giggles, because poop is always…
Michael’s on the Hill Owners Take Over Crop Bistro
After a week of closure, Stowe’s Crop Bistro & Brewery reopened last Thursday with Laura and Michael Kloeti, owners of Michael’s on the Hill in Waterbury Center, at the helm. Originally opened in early 2012 by chef and multistate restaurateur Steve Schimoler, Crop struggled to retain employees and suffered from high turnover; chef Tom Bivins…
Seven Days Staffers’ Summer Dining Bucket List
Summer in Vermont is synonymous with deliciousness. It’s the season for farmers markets and fresh produce. And also creemees — everyone has their favorite soft-serve stand — and snack-bar clam rolls and BYO drinking at drive-in theaters. In summer, we dine out-of-doors, whether on our patios or out on the town. We sip cool wine or cocktails…
