Owner of Minor’s Country Store provided for his family, friends and community
Calais man was a lifelong skier, teacher and gardener
Updated December 28, 2020. New England Culinary Institute has announced that it will discontinue all credit-bearing programs, effectively closing the 40-year-old Montpelier-based culinary school after its current students complete their degrees. The undated website announcement signed by NECI president Milan Milasinovic states that no specific closing date has been set, but that the school expects…
Restoration architect helped shape towns and villages across Vermont
Québec-born woman was a force and lived for her children
Dear Reverend, I’ve got the hots for Santa Claus, and I don’t understand why. I really want to get it on with my husband while he wears a Santa suit, but I don’t want to tell him because I’m afraid he’ll think I’m messed up. Chris Tingle (female, 38) Dear Chris Tingle, So much about…
What happens as we reach closer to the veil and cross over? This question has tortured poets, philosophers and spiritual seekers for millennia. And while great thinkers and faithful devotees tend to use logical systems and religion to answer this eternal question, the poets revel in doubt and speculation. Chard deNiord, Vermont’s poet laureate from…
Seven Days writers can’t possibly read, much less review, all the books that arrive in a steady stream by post, email and, in one memorable case, a team of jingling reindeer pulling a sleigh. So this monthly feature is our way of introducing you to a handful of books by Vermont authors. To do that,…
We will always be flatlanders. I get that. But nevertheless, we’d like to join your Vermont. My wife and I moved to Middlebury this summer, and not because of COVID-19. It was just a coincidence that the pandemic hit and, three months later, we found ourselves in the safest state in the land. She was…
Here we are, on the precipice of a New Year’s Eve like none we’ve ever experienced. I know I’m getting ahead of myself a smidge, because the big night isn’t until next week. But next week’s music section will be dedicated solely to recapping the year’s best local albums. I’m particularly pleased with this year’s…
Smoking Gun? [Re “Weinberger Knew of Burlington Police Chief’s Anonymous Twitter Account,” December 15]: There is one way to get to the bottom of the mayor’s apparently false account of the actions he claims to have taken when he learned of the chief’s online activities. If he took the chief’s gun and badge, there would…
(Self released, digital) I love when a record has a big mood. And if the two overriding themes driving that mood are outer space and the lonesome West? Yippee ki-yay, parental fornicator! Vermont’s oddball alt-country outfit Western Terrestrials deliver the peanut butter and jelly of genre tropes on their newest album, Back in the Saddle…
(Self-released, digital) In 2017, music critic Ann Powers published an essay introducing “Turning the Tables,” an NPR series honoring influential women in American popular music. Powers noted in her piece that “the general history of popular music is told through the great works of men, and that without a serious revision of the canon, women…
Our streaming entertainment options are overwhelming — and not always easy to sort through. This week, I caught up with playwright and TV writer Radha Blank’s The Forty-Year-Old Version, a Netflix original that is popping up on some 2020 “best of” lists. The deal When she appeared on a prestigious “30 under 30” list, playwright…
In March, voters in Burlington will consider a ballot measure that would set up a powerful police oversight board with the authority to directly punish city officers for misconduct. The seven-member “independent community control board” could suspend, demote and even fire cops accused of wrongdoing, including the chief of police. The new model would require…
The outgoing president has called the press the “enemy of the people.” So naturally that became the name of the Seven Days house band — an occasional ensemble composed of musical employees plucked from the paper’s production department. Pre-COVID-19, our designers worked together in a pod, surrounded by dogs and great music. They’re already a…
The 19-year-old woman whose poetry I’ve been reading alternately rages with political protest and coos with gender-bending sensuality and self-discovery. On the first page of her book, titled simply Soul, Devyn Thompson is photographed in black and white and is shockingly posed to look like she’s hanging herself. On page 21, she wears a slinky…
Vermont’s new law establishing a retail marijuana market does too little to recruit people of color to the legal cannabis industry, racial justice advocates say. They are calling for changes to ensure that members of groups disproportionately targeted by past enforcement of cannabis laws would be poised to benefit when the legal market comes online…
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): The birds known as red knots breed every year in the Arctic regions. Then they fly south — way south — down to the southern edge of South America, more than 9,000 miles away. A few months later they make the return trip to the far north. In 1995, ornithologists managed to…
If ever there were a year that called for a stiff drink, it would be 2020. Make it a double for John Dubie, owner of Pearl Street Beverage in Burlington. This year he suffered the one-two punch of a revenue-decimating pandemic followed by a July 1 building fire that gutted the liquor store he founded…
Stephen Cramer’s affinity for hot sauce goes back to his years in graduate school. The award-winning poet and senior lecturer in the University of Vermont English department was living in Harlem, N.Y., “cooking my first meals in my life,” he said in a recent phone conversation. “I made a lot of rice,” he continued. “One…
Damon Brink believed he had found a path to spiritual fulfillment, self-awareness and financial success. Days into his initial training with a mysterious group outside of Albany, N.Y., he had become captivated by its teachings. “I didn’t really want to leave,” Brink recalled. “At the end of the day, I was exhausted but happy —…
The dozens of books that arrive at the Seven Days offices over the course of a year span a wide range of genres, topics and moods. We get tiny poetry chapbooks bound with thread stitches, as well as critically acclaimed novels, meandering memoirs and folksy self-help guides. We acknowledge as many as space allows —…
Melissa Squires knows a thing or two about tough times during the holidays. Back in December 2012, the Manchester mom of three learned her father had terminal cancer. Hoping to honor him, she decided to perform “26 acts of kindness,” a national movement created that month after the murders of kids and staff at Sandy…
At first, novelist Howard Norman was simply a devoted customer of Bohemian Bakery, first at its original location close to his home in Calais and then after it moved to Montpelier in 2016. Norman became friendly over the years with the bakery’s married co-owners, Robert Hunt and Annie Bakst. “He was the first customer almost…
Nothing beats curling up with a good book somewhere cozy in the winter. That should be especially true this winter as we collectively hunker down and wait our turn for the coronavirus vaccines and for warmer, hopefully pandemic-free days ahead. But many of us have already plowed though our nightstand stacks over the past nine…
Cookbooks, at their simplest, are collections of pages filled with ingredients and instructions. But if we return to them often enough, they transform from prescriptive steps and grocery lists into something special. Sure, it’s easy to google a recipe and pick the one touting its “quick, easy steps” — especially this year, when cooking can…
Chefs rarely follow recipes, but many of them find plenty to savor in cookbooks, nonetheless. They read for inspiration, education, context and community. They earmark pages that reveal fresh approaches to technique. They scribble down notes of promising flavor combinations. We asked three chefs, one cookbook author and one plant nursery owner to share the…
