Jun 3-9, 2015
Digging on the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival With Reuben Jackson; Marijuana Dispensaries Compete; Game on for Ingress in BTV; Justin Bigelow’s Planet Food
Cover Story
Digging on Burlington Discover Jazz With Reuben Jackson
Reuben Jackson has a way with words. In a 2012 Seven Days story, former Vermont Public Radio jazz-show host George Thomas said of Jackson, “He thinks like a poet.” Especially when the conversation turns to jazz, he also speaks — and writes — like one. Jackson, 58, took over the role of hosting VPR’s “Friday…
Obituary: Patricia Novotny, Jericho, Vt
Patricia (”Pat”) Novotny died on June 3, 2015 at her home while in the loving care and embrace of her family. Pat was 75 years old. Pat was born to Edward and Irene Fey in New York. Both parents predeceased Pat. Several aunts, uncles and cousins, including most recently Ralph Pryor and Dorothy Kreher also…
Obituary: Joseph Henry “Joe” Rivers, 1947-2015, Burlington, Vt
Joseph “Joe” Henry Rivers, 67, passed away Feb. 22, 2015 in Venice, Florida. Joe was born on Aug. 3, 1947, the son of Robert and Katherine Rivers in Burlington, VT. He graduated Burlington High School in 1966 where he was an outstanding three-sport athlete, holding state track records in the mile and two-mile. He then…
Audrey Bernstein, Alright, OK, You Win
(Self-released, CD, digital download) Audrey Bernstein’s new album, Alright, OK, You Win, is like that out-of-focus camera shot in a movie with a late-night jazz club scene. There’s a slow pan over shimmering blue velvet curtains that swaddle a smoky stage where a beautiful, dreamlike figure stands. She occupies a sparkling, shapely dress. It’s alluring,…
Grazers Expands to Stowe
After just nine months in business, the owners of Grazers in Williston are bringing their burger-shake-martini concept to Stowe. According to co-owner Sam Handy Jr., the new restaurant will open on July 7 on the ground floor of the historic Butler House, where Mi Casa Kitchen & Bar (formerly Frida’s Taqueria & Grill) shuttered in…
Rise Up Bakery to Bring Loaves to Barre
About seven feet above floor level in a run-down brick building in Barre, a thick band of soot extends across two interior walls. This, Carolyn Shapiro explains, is the “burn line” — the most palpable evidence of the building’s history, and an augury of its future. Shapiro, a buoyant, energetic woman of 72, recently led…
Rowan’s Succeeds Milton’s Apollo Diner
Sam, Peter, Paul and Ann Handy are expanding northward, too. Last Tuesday, May 26, the siblings fired up the grill at the former Apollo Diner in Milton — which they’ve reopened as Rowan’s, the latest addition to the family’s growing empire of local eateries. A place that once served up Greco-Italian cuisine in the guise…
Soundbites: Jazz It Up
You kids like the jazz. Or maybe you don’t. I mean, what is jazz, really? While you ponder that pointless question, the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival looms on the horizon — this Friday, June 5, to be precise. And the 10 days and nights that follow will be loaded with more jazz, jazz-funk, jazz-blues, jazz-gospel,…
Should My Girlfriend Tell Me She’s Having Her Period Before We Have Sex?
Dear Athena, I was eating out my girlfriend the other night, and then we started having sex. After we finished, we noticed she had her period. I don’t care about the mess or that we had sex, really, but I was kind of grossed out and pissed she didn’t tell me before I went down…
‘Patsy Cline’ to Take the Stage in Lost Nation Theater’s Latest
The musical Always… Patsy Cline runs only two acts in 90 minutes. In her actual life, the country and pop music star only got 30 years — she died in a plane crash in 1963. But her short time in the music business brought Cline remarkable success. Her hit songs are still well known today:…
Dream House: Soteria Vermont Welcomes Mental Health Patients
From the outside, the Soteria Vermont house on Burlington’s Manhattan Drive isn’t particularly noteworthy. With faded yellow clapboards and purple trim, it blends right in with other houses in the neighborhood. What’s going on inside, however, sets it apart. The first of its kind in Vermont, Soteria is a five-bed mental health treatment facility that…
Montpelier’s Center for Arts and Learning Opens Its Doors
A long block from downtown Montpelier, a tidy brick building looms over Barre Street. Once a convent and Catholic school, the building may look square on the outside, but inside musicians hone their craft and boisterous children animate the once-prayerful quarters. Now the Center for Arts and Learning (CAL), this structure houses founding organizations Monteverdi…
Shelter Skelter: Domestic Abuse Survivors Wind Up in Seedy Motels
Last month, state Sen. Norm McAllister (R-Franklin) was charged with sexual assault and other crimes involving three women. One of them has since died, apparently from natural causes. Key questions remain unanswered, including what happened to another of the alleged victims — a woman who lived on his property and told police she felt compelled…
Local Artists Depict Their Lives Through Comic Art
Somewhere at the intersection of memoir, fine art and illustration sits “Graphic Lives,” a four-artist installation that opens this week at Burlington’s New City Galerie. In using the medium of illustration to represent events and ideas from the artists’ lives, the show calls into question the standard definitions of “memoir” and “comics.” Vermont artists Glynnis…
Work: Eleni Floyd, Heritage Toyota
Eleni Floyd moved from her native Greece to Vermont in 1992 when her husband landed at job with IBM in Essex Junction. She initially worked for Chittenden Bank, but when a friend went to work for a local dealership now known as Heritage Toyota Scion, Floyd visited one day and decided, on a whim, to…
Art Review: Kit Donnelly, WalkOver Gallery
After three decades of trying to make it as an artist in Vermont, Kit Donnelly is giving up and moving to — of all places — New Jersey. Her destination, however, is not the northern Jersey of chemical plants, the six-lane turnpike and “The Sopranos.” Donnelly is moving to the Victorian town of Cape May…
Ingress ‘Agents’ Seek Portals in Burlington
Tread carefully, Vermonters; it’s a brave new world out there. Even as you walk down familiar streets, that other world is all around you, divided by factions and populated by spies. And you might never know it unless you happen to notice an odd assortment of people on Church Street who are wearing blue and…
Aloha
It’s probably not politically correct to call Aloha the redheaded stepchild of the summer movie season, but that’s what writer-director Cameron Crowe’s latest has become. First it was slammed by former Sony cochair Amy Pascal in last year’s email leak. Then it was bumped from December to May in a gesture of bad faith. The…
Seven Low-Cost Options at the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival
As wonderful as the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival is, you could go broke trying to see everything. Lucky for you, there are scads of relatively wallet-friendly options. Here are seven picks, all under $30 — and in some cases free — to keep you bopping, bebopping and post-bopping through the festival on the cheap. Natalie…
San Andreas
If you’ve been longing to witness the destruction of Los Angeles and San Francisco in glorious 3D, San Andreas delivers the goods. But the digital carnage may leave you feeling empty, because in every other respect — story, characters, dialogue — the film flatlines. It’s a snooze enlivened by regular orgies of heavy stuff falling…
Going It Alone, and Female, in the Woods
Jocelyn Hebert needs no encouragement from Hollywood to hit the hiking trail all by herself. For years, she’s ventured deep into the woods with only her backpack for company. Animals, accidents and creepy strangers aren’t worries for her, although occasionally the whisper of the wind gives her the shivers. “Seriously, the wind can be eerie,”…
Free Will Astrology (6/3/15)
ARIES (March 21-April 19): The Persian scholar Avicenna was so well-rounded in his knowledge that he wrote two different encyclopedias. Even as a teenager, he was obsessed with learning all he could. He got especially consumed with trying to master Aristotle’s Metaphysics, which did not easily yield its secrets to him. He read it 40…
Letters to the Editor (6/3/15)
Believe in Bernie Why does everyone say Bernie can’t win [Off Message: “Sanders Endorsees Decline to Return the Favor,” May 21]? If everyone votes for him who believes in him, he can win! Hillary, just like the rest of them, is owned by big money. She may talk about the issues facing Middle America, but…
News Quirks (6/3/15)
Curses, Foiled Again Investigators said David Menzies, 30, tried to steal bicycles and apparel from a bike shop in Wesley Chapel, Fla., that is located next to a self-defense and jujitsu studio — “definitely a bad environment to come and try to break the law,” Hammerfist Krav Maga co-owner Jason Carrio said. Hammerfist instructors confronted…
Young Muslims Find Community at Weekend Islamic School
Fathima Bariyajaan strode across the stage to fix a hand-painted date tree. Then she paused to adjust the headscarf that rested on her shoulders. It was an hour before the Weekend Islamic School would hold its annual show at the Winooski Middle School auditorium to mark the end of its academic year. About 70 students…
Push Comes to Gov: Will Shumlin Face a Primary?
Gov. Peter Shumlin looked pretty damn relieved Monday morning as he announced his administration had finally met a deadline to fix a component of the state’s sputtering health insurance exchange. Ten weeks after pledging to abandon Vermont Health Connect if he couldn’t get its “change of circumstance” functionality operational by the end of May, Shumlin…
WTF: Why Is There an Appliance Store in a Victorian-Era Home in Shelburne?
Frequent travelers through Shelburne have likely noticed the large white house on the west side of Route 7 between the Pierson Library and Village Wine and Coffee. The slate-roofed former private home, not far from the Shelburne Country Store and the Heart of the Village Inn, seems a likely candidate for an art gallery, real…
Ruth Stone Foundation Fights to Preserve the Late Poet’s Goshen Home
For late Vermont poet laureate Ruth Stone — whose 100th birthday would be June 8 — poetry was not just a sideline or a hobby. It was her sole vocation: She wrote verse, taught it and even, in a sense, dwelled in it. In the 1950s, Stone (1915-2011) bought a 19th-century farmhouse in Goshen using…
Vermont’s Medical Marijuana Industry Is Growing — in Chittenden County
Two years ago, Shayne Lynn launched one of the state’s first medical marijuana dispensaries with two employees and about a dozen patients. Today, he has 25 employees and 1,200 patients at two dispensaries in Burlington and Brattleboro. A growing and testing facility at an undisclosed location in South Burlington supplies the “retail” outlets, both of…
![Bernie Sanders’ Campaign Kickoff [SIV401]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/bernie13.webp?resize=1200%2C900&ssl=1)
Bernie Sanders’ Campaign Kickoff [SIV401]
5/26/15: U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders officially launched his presidential campaign Tuesday at Burlington’s Waterfront Park. National and local media flocked to cover the event and supporters numbered in the thousands. Eva talked to attendees at the waterfront and in City Hall Park about what brought them out to hear Bernie speak. Music: Mango Jam, Nicole…
Shannon Hawley, A Different Kind of Progress
(Self-released, CD, digital download) Shelburne-based singer-songwriter Shannon Hawley spent five years writing and recording her debut album, A Different Kind of Progress. While the album title is appropriate for the length of time it took to make, it might more accurately be called Hawley’s Fables, in the tradition of Aesop. A Different Kind of Progress…
Obituary: Yvonne Elaine Kujath, 1935-2015
Yvonne Elaine Kujath, 79, passed away unexpectedly at University of Vermont Medical Center on June 1, 2015. She was born on October 18, 1935 to Francis and Grace (Russell) St. Peter. She graduated from Champlain College with an Associates in Accounting and she worked at Pizzagalli, PC Construction Company for over 25 years a bookkeeper.…
Tap Room to Replace Psychedelicatessen
Fans of Burlington’s Psychedelicatessen have a month to get their pay-as-you-see-fit dumpling fix: The neighborhood eatery and performance space will serve its final meal the last weekend of June. But the space won’t be vacant for long, according to Phinneus Sonin, who has been running the operation as a “social experiment” since early 2014. The…
Grilling the Chef: Justin Bigelow of the Daily Planet
Chef: Justin Bigelow Age: 33 Restaurant: the Daily Planet Location: Burlington Restaurant Age: 33 Cuisine Type: New American Training: The Atlantic Culinary Academy (le Cordon Bleu, Dover, N.H.) Select experience: chef de cuisine, Mombo Restaurant, Portsmouth, N.H. (2012-2014); chef, Carriage House, Rye, N.H. (2004-2011); sous chef, Hartness House Inn, Springfield, Vt. (2001-2004) What’s on the…
Burlington’s Designbook Faces Off With Facebook
Last year, when Kyle Clark and Aaron Pollak launched their Burlington startup, Designbook, they chose a name that reflected the company’s mission and their mutual background in engineering. For engineers, a design book is for jotting down initial concepts, sketching designs, tracking the progress of current projects and planning future ones. Akin to a reporter’s…
