Nov 25 – Dec 1, 2015
A Picture of Nectar’s: 40 Years of a Musical Landmark; Green Mountain Hate Groups; Thanksgiving Drink Pairings
Cover Story
Nectar’s, a Burlington Landmark, at 40
The Unknown Blues Band are blowing the roof off the room in downtown Burlington. Paul Asbell is laying down delectably smooth licks on his guitar, the kind of effortless runs that defy the presumed physical limits of human fingers. Dave Grippo launches into a solo that sounds like he’s screaming into his saxophone as much…
Obituary: Blanche A. Jutras
Blanche passed away peacefully on Wed., Nov. 25, 2015, at Birchwood Terrace Memory Care in Burlington, VT, released from her long struggle with Alzheimer’s Disease with her family by her side. Blanche was born October 22, 1924 in Fairfield, VT, the daughter of Herbert and Lina Therrien. She grew up and attended school in Fairfield.…
Obituary: Elizabeth Anne “Lizzie” Burke-Tabor, 1956-2015, Waitsfield
After an all-too-brief life of selfless service to others, Elizabeth Anne “Lizzie” Burke-Tabor, 59, passed away peacefully, in the company of family and loved ones, in hospice at the Central Vermont Medical Center on Monday, November 23, 2015. Born in Dedham, Mass., to Edward J. Burke and Elizabeth Drinkwater, Lizzie studied political science at Keene State…
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2
The Hunger Games is probably the least idealistic of YA franchises. Having lured her readers in with exciting scenarios that suggest life-size video game play, author Suzanne Collins turned around and used the final book in her series to drive home the point that real war is a game without victors. Mockingjay is a lengthy…
Page 32: Seven Short Book Reviews
Seven Days writers can’t possibly read, much less review, the many books that arrive in a steady stream by post, email and, in one memorable case, a flock of trained parrots. So this monthly feature, Page 32, is our way of introducing you to seven books by Vermont authors. To do that, we’ll contextualize each…
Katie Trautz Heads Up the Chandler Center for the Arts
Chandler Center for the Arts has been at the heart of Randolph, literally and figuratively, for more than 100 years. Located midway along the town’s picturesque Main Street, the Chandler hosts an enviable series of concerts, plays and art exhibits, as well as the annual Celtic-Québécois-themed New World Festival. But the familiar institution will take…
Burlington Eyes New Rules for Prized Residential Parking Spots
Damian Dryjas skateboarded along Burlington’s North Union Street, dodging the whizzing traffic and skirting the cars parked bumper-to-bumper at the crowded curb. The 21-year-old Champlain College student had just sold his truck, he explained. He was forcing himself to end his wasteful personal transportation habits. How wasteful? Rather than walk 25 minutes from his apartment…
Dinner Decorum
Originally published November 22, 2006 Holidays are all about ritual and tradition. But knowing how the Pilgrims operated is clearly an insufficient guide for modern guests and hosts. For example, how do you deal with technology at the table? What happens when each of your guests is on a different diet? We asked Peter Post,…
Vermont Comedy Club Opens With a Lot of Funny People
On opening night, the bathrooms of the new Vermont Comedy Club in downtown Burlington still smelled of fresh paint, the polished concrete floors glistened, and founders Natalie Miller and Nathan Hartswick couldn’t have been happier. All four nights of Vermont’s Funniest Comedian, the annual standup competition they founded in 2012, had sold out. The bar…
![Mr. Baggins’ Adventures at Spread Too Thin Farm [SIV421]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/episode421.webp?resize=1200%2C900&ssl=1)
Mr. Baggins’ Adventures at Spread Too Thin Farm [SIV421]
11/21/15: Jean Cross has always loved animals and over the years has adopted an assortment of 13 creatures big and small, many of them requiring special attention. Mr. Baggins was a very shy pony who came to Spread Too Thin Farm in Ferrisburgh a year and a half ago. Slowly Jean has worked with Baggins,…
Free Will Astrology (11/25/15)
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): From the dawn of civilization until 1995, humans cataloged about 900 comets in our solar system. But since then, we have expanded that tally by more than 3,000. Most of the recent discoveries have been made not by professional astronomers, but by laypeople, including two 13-year-olds. They have used the internet…
A Peek Under the Hood Shows Vermont Has Few Hate Groups
As he awaits trial in Vermont’s Northwest State Correctional Facility, William Schenk may face more trouble than he realizes. Schenk already knows that for allegedly leaving Ku Klux Klan recruitment fliers at the homes of two Burlington women — a Mexican American and an African American — he could be sent to prison for more…
I’m Still a Virgin and I’m So Embarrassed
Dear Athena, I’m in college and turning 21 soon, and I am still a virgin. I am so embarrassed that all my other girlfriends have done it and I still haven’t. It’s so lame and pathetic, and the longer time passes, the lamer I feel. I didn’t have a boyfriend long enough in high school…
Eef, The Carlisle Sessions
(Club Fub Records/Tup Keewah Recordings, digital download) It’s tempting to reduce bands to their stylistic influences, or to whittle their sound into some contrived sub-subgenre that ultimately makes it more difficult to imagine what the band sounds like. And doing so only results in pretentious showboating on the critic’s part. So I’m left to characterize…
Letters to the Editor (11/25/15)
‘A Little Jail Time’ [Re “Persistent Pipeline Protesters Are Pushing the Limits,” November 18]: Imposing jail sentences on gas-pipeline protesters has not been, and won’t become, a deterrent. What’s a little jail time compared to environmental catastrophe? Pipeline explosions are occurring all over the United States; pipeline projects are being protested, prevented and canceled in…
Aftershocks From Paris Attacks Reach Refugee-Friendly Vermont
Imam Islam Hassan gripped the sides of the wooden minbar, or pulpit, as he delivered a sermon during last Friday’s midday prayer at the Islamic Society of Vermont’s mosque in Colchester. “How many people have hijacked this faith and say they’re acting in the name of Islam?” he asked an attentive, 250-strong, multiethnic congregation. “Brothers…
Three Films Commemorate World AIDS Day
“In 1979, friends began to get sick with lingering flus, night sweats and ongoing fatigue,” begins John Killacky’s voice-over in his film “Walking With the Dead.” The 1996 short is one of three films he made in the ’90s to grieve the physical and emotional devastation of AIDS in the gay community. On Tuesday, December…
Kevin Sabourin, When I Rise
(Self-released, CD, digital download) If you’re attuned to rock and roll in the North Country, you’re probably at least peripherally familiar with Plattsburgh’s Lucid. The band is a long-tenured and hard-touring act on both sides of Lake Champlain but maybe hasn’t gotten the recognition it deserves on the Vermont side. Lucid’s primary creative architect, vocalist…
Soundbites: Thank You, Thank You
Thank You, Thank You The Thanksgiving week Soundbites used to terrify me. Like, keep-me-up-at-night kind of terrified. Why? Because this is one of the few weeks of the year in which I’m genuinely strapped for stuff to write about. Because of the holiday, the local music calendar is typically pretty thin this week. And the…
What a Messina: Bill Sorrell’s Albuquerque Attorney
Two weeks ago, Attorney General Bill Sorrell’s office filed a motion in Vermont Superior Court to allow Albuquerque attorney Michael Messina to represent the state in a groundwater contamination lawsuit against 29 oil and gas companies. Routine though it appeared, the filing raised David Cleary’s hackles. For months, the Rutland attorney has been questioning Sorrell’s…
How to Answer Your Nutty Uncle’s Questions About Bernie Sanders
This week, as Vermonters gather with family and friends for Thanksgiving dinner, they’re likely to get some questions about their independent senator who’s running for president. We’ve known and followed Bernie Sanders for years and are familiar with his populist message and irate delivery. But those who are just starting to “feel the Bern” might…
Spare the Mime
The woman who climbed into the shotgun seat of my taxi had white powder makeup covering her face and accentuating her large, sad-raccoon eyes. She wore classic black ballet flats and black-and-white-striped tights. In the center of her chest was a scarily realistic gaping bullet hole. She looked at me, and I looked at her.…
An NEK Dream: Carriage House Café & Grill
One year, six months and 12 days ago, Bonnie Poginy’s husband handed her the key to an old carriage house in Orleans village. “He totally surprised me,” Poginy recalls. Then the couple spent the next year and a half planning, cleaning, renovating and hiring their way to a restaurant. When the Carriage House Café &…
Talking Art With Painter Kalin Thomas
Kalin Thomas started oil painting just three and a half years ago. The Burlington artist is only 28, but if you look at his work, you might think he was 68 and had spent decades studying the likes of Raphael, Titian, Pontormo and Dürer. Thomas didn’t need a time machine to hang with the old…
Howard Frank Mosher’s Most Personal Tale Yet: God’s Kingdom
In the months after he published A Stranger in the Kingdom in 1989, Howard Frank Mosher fielded dozens of phone calls from fellow Northeast Kingdom residents. They were not offering congratulations. They were enraged that Mosher had drawn inspiration for the novel from one of the ugliest events in the region’s history — the so-called…
Finely Feathered: Birdfolk Collective
Nicole Carey, owner of Winooski boutique Birdfolk Collective, is familiar with the infamous “Put a Bird on It” sketch from the satirical television show “Portlandia,” in which giggling hipsters stencil birds on just about everything to “make it pretty.” In fact, the self-proclaimed “bird nerd” embraces customers’ associations with the clip. “People come in here…
Thanksgiving Drink Pairings for Grateful Guests
There’s nothing like a big family get-together to drive everyone to drink. Maybe you have to listen to your Uncle Bill’s story about that time he met Ronald Reagan in a hotel lobby in Los Angeles — which he will tell, since he tells it every year. Or maybe cousin Chloe’s kids are running circles,…
What to Eat at Vermont Comedy Club
When Vermont Comedy Club opened with a series of sold-out shows last week, most of the patrons were there for giggles, not dinner. But nothing gets the laughter flowing like a nip of booze, and married owners Nathan Hartswick and Natalie Miller would have been foolish to open without a well-stocked bar. Also, nothing is…
Spotlight
Hold the presses: Award season is upon us and, following decades of virtual invisibility, Michael Keaton will be central to the conversation for a second year in a row. Now that’s what I call news. He’s great as a hard-driving editor in Spotlight, one of the great newspaper movies of all time, a film on…
Obituary: James “Jim” Patrick Barrett, Burlington 1949-2015
James “Jim” Patrick Barrett, of Burlington and most recently of Saranac Lake, NY, passed away after a short illness in his home on Wednesday, November 18, 2015. He was born on May, 1, 1949 in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and spent his childhood growing up in Andover, MA, and in Burlington. He graduated from the University of…
