Jun 7-13, 2017
Vermont Tech’s Manufacturing Program Trains Better Workers; Vermont Attorneys Weigh Federal Drug-Crime Policy; Montréal’s Big, Festive Summer
Cover Story
Assembly Required: Vermont Tech’s New Manufacturing Degree Program Builds Better Workers
If Vermont manufacturers could design and assemble the ideal employee to join their future workforce, that person would look a lot like Ethan Guillemette. The 24-year-old, who’s built like a defensive lineman, grew up working on his family’s 200-head dairy farm in Shelburne, where he learned to take apart and repair farm implements when they…
Obituary: Judith G. Kane, 1930-2017
Judith Greta Kane “fell off the twig” as she would say, on May 22, a few weeks after learning of her cancer. Jude was born in London in 1930, and at age nine was evacuated to the countryside, along with her siblings, during the worst of the bombings of WWII. She married landscape architect Thomas…
The Parmelee Post: Rebellious Refrigerator Routinely Exceeds Proposed Wind Noise Decibel Limits
A Vermont family has grown increasingly concerned about a certain cold-hearted household appliance that appears to have a complete and utter disregard for what state regulators consider to be acceptable noise levels. The Wilburson family of Deerfield told the Parmelee Post that they are unsure what to do about a household refrigerator that is perpetually…
![Burlington Discover Jazz Festival [SIV492]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/episode492.webp?resize=1200%2C900&ssl=1)
Burlington Discover Jazz Festival [SIV492]
6/3/17: For ten days, Burlington Discover Jazz Festival brings the downtown to life with daily live music at dozens of venues and 100 free shows. On Sunday there was a rooftop show by Barika featuring Kat Wright at the top of Lakeview parking garage. A few hundred people attended to soak up the killer tunes…
A Vermont Collector Helps Others Buy Art, Too
Vermont art collector and archivist Mark Waskow bought his first piece of art at the 1998 South End Art Hop in Burlington. It was a table encrusted with cigarettes made by artist Gretchen Whittier. Now Waskow’s collection is so vast, it has a name: the Waskowmium. And he’s on a mission to share his love…
‘Bells & Whistles’ at the Museum of Everyday Life
In public, bells and whistles can proclaim a marriage or death or simply relay the time of day. In your pocket, they can announce the cold, digitized end of a relationship — or, more often, some forgettable interruption. Visitors to the exhibit “Bells & Whistles,” at the Museum of Everyday Life in Glover, are invited…
Governing by Numbers: Is Scott’s ‘Six-Three-One’ Slogan Good Public Policy?
Gov. Phil Scott leaned casually against the desk in his ceremonial Statehouse office last month, fielding questions from reporters about the final days of Vermont’s legislative session. Near the end of the impromptu press conference, one journalist asked whether he supported a bill requiring workplace accommodations for pregnant women. “I think if we’re serious about…
Free Will Astrology (6/7/17)
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): When I grow up, I’m not sure what I want to be. Have you ever heard that thought bouncing around your mind, Gemini? Or how about this one: Since I can’t decide what I want to be, I’ll just be everything. If you have been tempted to swear allegiance to either…
Ask Athena: I Want My Girlfriend to Watch Porn With Me
Dear Athena, I’m away from my girlfriend for a few weeks, and we have a few more weeks to go. We email and talk on the phone. I really like porn movies, and I’d never told her about that. I want to watch one with her when I get back. I wasn’t sure if my…
Letters to the Editor (6/7/17)
Thanks, But… I was pleased with Dan Bolles’ sensitive portrayal of my work in [“A Human Touch,” May 31] but don’t understand why he wrote that I no longer photograph! I am certainly still documenting musicians — and will continue doing so as long as my fingers and eyes still work! My skill has been…
Movie Review: Rock and Roll Meets the Mob in Documentary ‘Bang! The Bert Berns Story’
Like many, my list of top-10 movies includes two Godfathers. I’m also far from alone in loving ’60s rock music and accept as fact that the best of it was made by the Beatles. So take a wild guess how much fun I had watching Bang! The Bert Berns Story, a documentary about the only…
Movie Review: ‘Wonder Woman’ Packs a Punch
Not many movies these days have pivotal scenes set in the trenches of World War I. So, watching the “no-man’s-land” set piece in Wonder Woman, I flashed back to a very different film released this spring: The Lost City of Z. In that low-key historical drama, an explorer’s quasi-hallucinatory vision of the Amazon briefly lifts…
Vermont Manufacturers Provide On-Site English Classes
On the evening of May 31, Chanon Bernstein sat in the conference room at Rhino Foods manufacturing company with a pen and seven certificates. An English instructor from Vermont Adult Learning, he carefully signed each one. The first read: “Theogene Mahoro has successfully completed the Rhino Foods English at Work course.” An hour later, Mahoro…
Ill Winds: New Rules Could Hamstring Vermont Wind Power
On Thursday, an obscure legislative committee will have the final say over new wind-power rules that have sent shock waves through Vermont’s renewable-energy community. “It is really a ban on wind,” says AllEarth Renewables CEO David Blittersdorf, who has pushed wind projects of his own. “I am going to have to stop any development if…
El Gato Brings Mexican Fare to Queen City Brewery
Pine Street in Burlington’s South End has gained yet another food offering with the recent addition of fare from El Gato Cantina. Through the summer, the Mexican restaurant with locations in Burlington and Essex Junction will serve food Fridays and Saturdays at Queen City Brewery at 703 Pine Street, according to Queen City cofounder and…
Soundbites: Recapping and Previewing JazzFest
Before we dig into the remaining days of the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival, I have a plea: Oh, great and mighty Sun, what have we, the common mortals who walk the muddy plains of this floating blue marble called Earth, done to anger thee? Have we offended you? Why do you hide your nurturing glow…
Eat This Week, June 7 to 13, 2017: Life’s a Beach!
In Burlington, the New North End’s summer food truck gathering returns for its second season with biweekly dates behind the hockey arena at Leddy Park. Bring your beach blanket and a Frisbee — but not Fido — and line up for diverse dinners that might range from sizzling burgers and titillating tacos to Jamaican jerk chicken, dumplings…
Theater Review: ‘Into the Woods,’ Lost Nation Theater
A narrator says the magic words “once upon a time” and snaps his fingers, sending two dozen fairy-tale characters on quests in a musical that explores what happens before and after happily ever after. In Lost Nation Theater’s production of Into the Woods, a seasoned cast emphasizes the laughter and warmth of the 1988 Tony…
Will Vermont’s Federal Prosecutors Get Tougher on Drug Crimes?
Erica Heilman of the Rumble Strip podcast created an episode to accompany this story. Hear excerpts from her interviews with Vermont defense attorneys throughout the article, and listen to the podcast here. Only a few people were in the courtroom on the day Sarah Ellwood had to go before a federal judge — for the second…
Beaucoup de Summer Festivities in Montréal
Between the current political environment in the U.S. and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s boyish good looks, many Vermonters might already be thinking O Canada! But this summer, our friendly northern neighbor is really pulling out the stops to court visitors. For starters, there are two big birthday parties: the country’s 150th and the province of…
What’s That Bird That Calls ‘Dorito’?
Have you ever been walking down the street, minding your own business, when some bird started screaming about tortilla chips? One Seven Days reader had that very experience — kind of. More specifically, he wrote in asking if we could identify a bird he’s heard repeatedly in Chittenden County whose call sounds like the name…
A Lichtenstein Sails Into Middlebury College
When it comes to scrambling high and low art, pop artist Roy Lichtenstein could be considered one of the great masters. In 1994, decades after his rise to fame in the 1960s, he received an unlikely commission, one that could be seen as the ultimate vindication of his calculated cultural transgressions. It was to design…
Album Review: Josh Panda, ‘Shake It Up’
(Pandarue Productions, LP, digital download) The so-called Saturn return is a pseudoscientific concept that correlates the planet Saturn’s orbit with profound personal life changes. Supposedly, as the ringed planet approaches the same place in its revolution it was when you were born — which takes approximately 29 years — you enter a new age of dramatic…
Burlington’s Phil Yates & the Affiliates Say Farewell
Phil Yates is leaving town. As he sits in the kitchen of his Burlington home and takes a sip of wine, he looks from wall to wall as if trying to memorize every detail before he’s gone. “I’m going to miss this house,” he says after a long moment, light glinting off his black-rimmed glasses.…
Album Review: Robinson Morse’s Sound of Mind, ‘Enough Is Plenty’
(Recombination Records, CD, digital download) Few figures in the realm of local jazz — or almost any musical idiom, really — are as widely respected among peers as Robinson Morse. The central Vermont bassist has been a scene cornerstone since he was a teenager — then laying down the funkdafied low end for Michael Chorney’s…
A Historical Roadside Marker in Randolph Goes Missing
A historical whodunit in Randolph Center revolves around a missing roadside marker. Vermont State Police, along with the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation, are looking for the large bronze placard that disappeared several months ago — possibly as long ago as December. State historic preservation officer Laura Trieschmann said a community member noticed the sign…
Office Politics: Juggling 3.2 Million Square Feet of Space
A stately brick Victorian overlooks Montpelier from 11 wooded acres atop a hill. A fairy-tale turret adorns the third floor. Birds chirping from tree branches break the silence. The property feels like a forest retreat, but the 127-year-old home is little more than a stone’s throw from the Statehouse.* The prime piece of real estate, known…
At UVM, a Grad Student Masters Poutine
If you’ve ever been out late at night in Montréal, you’ve probably plunged a fork into a plate of crispy French fries dappled with squeaky curds and smothered in silken brown gravy. Some of the curds may have melted enough to twirl around your fork. Maybe they were laced with pulled pork or hunks of…
A Grilled Cheese and a Great View at Shelburne Farms
William Seward Webb and Lila Vanderbilt Webb founded their grand private estate on Lake Champlain in Shelburne in the 1880s. Their home and farmland came to encompass 3,800 acres. Prominent landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted was hired to conceive the landscaping and gardens. Architect Robert H. Robertson designed a collection of spectacular buildings. What we…
Railroad Café in Morrisville Opens for Breakfast and Lunch
On Saturday, Morrisville got a new breakfast option when the Railroad Café opened for coffee and light morning fare. The new spot is the latest from owners Kim Kaufman and Jimmy Goldsmith and operator Steve Foster, whose other efforts include 10 Railroad Street in Morrisville and the Blue Donkey in Stowe. The new café shares…
