Sep 21-27, 2016
AG Candidate T.J. Donovan: Bold Moves and Political Ambitions; Glass Acts at the Bern Gallery Pipe Classic; Philosophy Profs Consider the Ethics of Food Systems
Cover Story
‘TV T.J.’ Donovan: The Likely Next AG Pushes Criminal Justice Reform
T.J. Donovan was running behind schedule last Friday morning. He was supposed to be in plea negotiations on a pending fraud case, and then in a meeting with his top deputy prosecutors. So he got a little annoyed when a secretary reminded him, “You promised Dan Sedon 10 minutes.” Sedon, one of Vermont’s most respected…
Obituary: David Budbill, 1940-2016
David Budbill died peacefully at his home in the early morning hours of September 25th with his wife of 50 years, Lois Eby, and his daughter, Nadine Wolf Budbill, by his side. A passionate lover of his family and friends, the woods, and all things human, he did not want to leave this life but…
DIY: Backyard Stone Fire Pit
On a crisp Vermont evening, there’s nothing like toasting marshmallows over an open fire. Two years ago, however, things got a bit too crispy for the Karpinski family when they lost their vacation home — a condominium at Sugarbush Resort — to a fire that may have been caused by a neighbor’s wood-burning fireplace. Still,…
Perfect Sense: A New Space in Barre Lets Kids With Autism Explore and Relax
For Maleia Darling, a 20-year-old Barre woman living with autism, the everyday world is often unbearably overstimulating. Fluorescent lights, for example, cause her physical discomfort — they flicker painfully in her eyes and distract her. Though she’s learned ways to better navigate the world and has fewer meltdowns than she used to, it’s still a…
The Parmelee Post: Indigenous Vermonters Form Abenaki First Group
Emotions ran high at the Swanton Public Library last week during the inaugural meeting of the newly formed anti-settlement group, Abenaki First. “Enough is enough,” exclaimed group leader Don Edchute. “There are now more than 600,000 non-indigenous Vermonters living on this land. It’s about time we put our foot down and finally put an end…
Isole Dinner Club Launches Lit-Inspired Supper Series
In 2011, local chef Richard Witting founded the Isole Dinner Club. For a couple of years, he hosted themed meals in Burlington and Winooski exploring old cookbooks and global cuisines. Then the chef got busy with other projects — namely, pursuing an anthropology degree at the University of Vermont, running Firefly Catering and collaborating with…
Artist Divines Climate-Change Anxiety With Tarot
Scientists have a lot to say about climate change and the future. But what about diviners? Ask Brooklyn-based contemporary artist James Leonard. This Thursday, September 22, he’s bringing his “Tent of Casually Observed Phenologies” to Burlington’s Peace & Justice Center, where he invites visitors to receive free climate-change-related tarot readings. Phenology is the study of…
Blowing Big at Bern Gallery’s Pipe Classic 11
As Eusheen Goines quickly approached his 3 p.m. deadline, he was smoking on a pipe — not puffing it, but creating it. The Evergreen, Colo.-based artist, known among professional glassblowers by his first name, stood at a two-foot jet of blue fire, rapidly working rods of raw glass into a stunning work of art. It…
Vermont Sculptor Lars Fisk Shows Balls in NYC
A sculptor born and bred in Vermont is soaring to star status in the Manhattan art world. The New York Times recently attested to — and assisted — his ascent with a profile and online slide show of some of his pieces, which he makes and stores in his quirky home on a weedy lot…
Kälte Brewing Brings Lagers to Morrisville
While most drinkers prefer a frosty brew to a tepid one, temperature is especially important when it comes to lagers, which require weeks of cool-temperature conditioning, or “lagering,” post-fermentation. In German, Kälte means “cold,” so it’s an apropos name for a brewery that crafts German-style lagers. That’s what Hardwick native Nic Volk plans to focus…
Soundbites: Thoughts on GPN; New Records Galore!
Before we dig into the news of the week, I’d like to take a moment to reflect on last weekend’s Grand Point North festival and the unofficial close of festival season. In a word: Fun! In a few more words… I actually didn’t catch nearly as much of Grand Point North this year as I…
Book Review: Lost Wax: Essays by Jericho Parms
The title of Jericho Parms’ book, Lost Wax, might confound anyone removed from the art world. A hundred pages into this debut collection of 18 lyrical personal essays, a reader may still wonder, What is this wax, why is it lost and will she ever get it back? “‘Lost wax’ is a sculpture term,” a…
Luther, Luther
(Crow on Ten Records, vinyl) Everyone in Vermont knows how it goes. There comes a point, usually sometime in late January, when the glow of the snow at night stops being beautiful. Winter becomes an antagonist, a jailer. You shut yourself off and stay in shelter, eventually ruminating on other times you felt this miserable.…
Theater Review: The Syringa Tree, Lost Nation Theater
In The Syringa Tree, a one-woman show playing at Lost Nation Theater, Courtney Wood whirls onto the stage and rivets the audience’s attention from her first remarks: a sweet but silly theory of fortune-telling by one’s fingernails. A solo show often rests on virtuosity alone, without two or more actors to face each other to…
Dave Keller, Right Back Atcha
(Tastee-Tone Records, CD, digital download) Dave Keller has lightened up. The Vermont bluesman’s 2014 album Soul Changes was a deeply personal work, written and recorded in the aftermath of the end of his marriage and the death of his father. Three years later, Keller appears to have exorcised his demons and emerged from his darkness…
Art Review: ‘The SHE Project, Part I,’ Living/Learning Gallery
Kristen M. Watson and Mary Admasian’s collaborative installation “The SHE Project: Part I” feels barely contained by its site — the small gallery in the University of Vermont’s Living/Learning Center. The exhibit is packed with many hundreds of carefully grouped and arranged cosmetics bottles and containers, beauty aids of all kinds, hair-dye cans and even…
The Odd Couple: Starch-Shirted Brock, Ponytailed Zuckerman Vie for LG
Tom Ostler of White River Junction was just about to bite into an Italian sausage at the Tunbridge World’s Fair last Thursday when Sen. David Zuckerman (P/D-Chittenden), a candidate for lieutenant governor, came by and handed him a campaign flier. “I just really haven’t followed the race,” Ostler told a reporter after Zuckerman had moved…
Free Will Astrology (9/21/16)
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): I’m confident that I will never again need to moonlight as a janitor or dishwasher in order to pay my bills. My gig as a horoscope columnist provides me with enough money to eat well, so it’s no longer necessary to shoplift bread or scavenge for dented cans of beets in…
![River of Light: Harvest Moon Winooski Paddle [SIV460]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/episode460-2.webp?resize=1200%2C900&ssl=1)
River of Light: Harvest Moon Winooski Paddle [SIV460]
9/16/16: More than 60 people embarked on a moonlit adventure Friday night on the lower Winooski River in brightly lit kayaks, canoes, and SUPs on a River of Light, Harvest Moon Winooski Paddle. Friends of the Winooski River, a watershed protection group, organized this event which they plan to make annual. Their goal is to…
Is There a Penis Size That’s Just Too Small?
Dear Athena, Is there a penis size that is just too small? I am worried that I am abnormal and it will affect any relationship I have. I have had two bad experiences with this so far in my life, and I do not want to keep setting myself up to be hurt every time…
Letters to the Editor (9/21/16)
Greed, in Deed One cannot help but sympathize with the Thibault family [“Brothers’ Keeper,” August 31]. Losing two of three children to something as senseless as drug overdose has got to be really tough. Nevertheless, I find Robert Sand’s point of view on this problem quite compelling. Sand’s argument of a “souped-up motorcycle,” however, could…
Moran on Main? Officials Seek Solutions for Memorial Auditorium
Cresting the hill at the top of Main Street, visitors to Burlington come upon the University of Vermont’s manicured green and the fine old buildings lining its eastern edge. Dead ahead, Lake Champlain and the Adirondacks present a beckoning vista. Proceeding toward downtown, motorists and pedestrians pass well-preserved mansions on both sides of the city’s…
Charlotte, Connected By Land
“Will you go to Charlotte?” the young man at the curb asked me through my passenger window. It was Saturday night, and I was first in line at the long taxi queue on lower Church Street. In this new era of the Uber taxi, I increasingly find myself making use of the taxi stands. Trolling…
Complete Unknown
The Unbearable Lightness of Being Somebody Different Every Few Years for the Most Pretentious, Hyper-Corny Reasons Conceivable would have served as a far more apt title for this third feature from Joshua Marston (Maria Full of Grace). With the accent on “unbearable.” Complete Unknown accomplishes the unthinkable: Against all odds, Marston has somehow managed to…
Bridget Jones’s Baby
Twelve years after Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, was anyone holding their breath for another installment in the singleton’s saga? But in the interim, something a little scary has happened: The ailing romantic-comedy genre has been squeezed out of our theaters to make room for more superheroes and stoner comedies. That, if nothing else,…
Kelly Ravin Turns Alt-Country Bard
Kelly Ravin is where he often is these days: standing on the stage of a small local bar. He’s tuning his low-slung guitar as I cross the threshold of the Monkey House, my vision adjusting from the bright, late-summer sun to the dusk of the Winooski juke joint. When he sees me, Ravin smiles and…
Modern Threads: Brazil’s Luísa Maita on Her New Record
Change is the only true constant, as the rapid pace of technology perpetually underscores. But it can be difficult to accept. Brazilian singer-songwriter Luísa Maita, though, accepts it willingly. Change, particularly that fueled by technology, is the driving inspiration behind her new album, Fio da Memória, which translates from Portuguese as “thread of memory.” That…
State Auditor Doug Hoffer Wants to Keep His (59th) Job
Doug Hoffer keeps a running list of every job he’s ever had. The document has columns for position, employer, location and dates. It’s ordered chronologically, beginning with the summer of ’64, when Hoffer, then 12 years old, caddied at a Connecticut golf course. Asked about the list, Hoffer, 65, responded half-seriously: “Do you really think…
Bess O’Brien Doc Gives Voice to Eating Disorders
When Bess O’Brien was in the midst of a statewide tour of her 2013 film The Hungry Heart, a documentary about Vermont’s opioid addiction crisis, she met a man named Norm, whose daughter had struggled with eating disorders for years. He suggested the documentarian make a film on that topic. Nearly three years and many…
Ethicists Consider the Rights and Wrongs of Food Systems
I’m sitting on a love seat in the lounge of the University of Vermont’s philosophy department with a sumptuous picnic spread out in front of me on a folding table. There are three kinds of cheese, from Cabot’s populist Seriously Sharp cheddar to Jasper Hill’s spruce bark-wrapped, brine-washed Winnimere. There’s a summer sausage from Maple…
Documenting Memorial Auditorium — on Instagram
Mary Zompetti is a newcomer to Memorial Auditorium, but the photographer is already developing an unusual relationship with the old building. The Grand Isle resident has directed Burlington City Arts’ Community Darkroom and Digital Media Lab for 12 years from a basement office in the BCA Center on Church Street. But this summer she relocated…
Shinjuku Station Offers Takeout Sushi in Burlington
In the kitchen of Shinjuku Station, located at 260 North Street in Burlington, across from Mawuhi African Market, lives a robot of sorts nicknamed Suzy. The Japanese machine makes sushi rice into perfect rectangles, taking the most time-consuming step out of the process of rolling maki. When you make hundreds of eel, salmon and vegetarian…
