CASH CAMEL: Frog Hollow in Uzbekistan? “It makes sense,” says Vermont clothing designer Gay Ellis, who spent last month working as an international craft consultant along the old silk route in Central Asia. Here in Vermont Ellis sews those brightly colored Lapp-inspired wool jackets, hats and belted pullovers that glow in a blizzard. In Uzbekistan, she was training artisans whose products date back to camel caravan days in capitalist concepts of marketing, product and export development. “They had a hard time understanding you could make what you wanted and then find the customer,” she says. The idea of organizing a guild, however, went over better than expected in a former Soviet republic that boasts age-old techniques in alabaster and wood carving, coral, silver and turquoise jewelry, tiles, calligraphy and ceramics. “Already some of the finer art museums in the country are sending very expensive tours there,” Ellis says. Here, here.

GIVE AND TAKE: Art buyers stand out in Burlington. Art thieves apparently don’t. Some kleptoconnoisseur made off unnoticed with two paintings at a studio sale hosted last month by Janet Fredericks and Georgia Myers —- both belonged to Myers. The following week Fredericks lost one from the lobby of Merrill Lynch — a small painting of a boat in a gold-leaf frame that was insured for $600. “It was probably somebody who liked the piece and thought they could have it without paying for it,” Fredericks says. Fine line between robbery and investment. . . Speaking of stealing from the poor, what kind of low-life grinch would rip off the Peace and Justice Store? One that made off with $500 before manager Kathy Bouton realized three of the five deposits in her backpack were missing. “I would have jumped off a bridge if they had gotten all five,” Bouton says, noting the store is taking up a collection to replace the Christmas cash. Call 863-8326 to improve your karma.

MUSICAL CHAIRS: The toughest job you’ll ever love could be the one Laura Cole is leaving. In three weeks, Cole is giving up steady employment as development director of Burlington City Arts for a seasonal job marketing the Discover Jazz Festival. “It gives me a chance to get back into the part of arts administration that I love —- events management and administration,” she says. “And it’s one project, not a gijillion.” Good timing, too. Burlington City Arts could lose as much as $60,000 from the National Endowment next year . . . Good Citizen has lost its “brainy” half. After a year chasing down stories, ads and photographs for the quarterly music magazine, Patricia Braine has left Vermont for Florida. Andrew Smith is in the process of dissolving his former partnership and incorporating a whole new business with Nicole Hegeman and former Envy bass player Melanie Nunnick. As usual, his future plans are big: national distribution, band management and “Good Citizen monorails all over Burlington,” he says.

IN BRIEF: The Vermont Council on the Arts got an earful from artists in Burlington two weeks ago. Director Nicolette Clarke will report on similar meetings from all over the state Wednesday night — January 20 — on the call-in show “Switchboard” on Vermont Public Radio. Gingrich bashers telephone toll-free . . . Pat Leahy was well prepped for his Lane Series reading of “A Child’s Christmas in Wales.” Question is, how will Howard Dean handle “The Night Before Christmas?” “I thought about asking him to read a William Burroughs short story or something,” says “Talk of Vermont” host Jeff Kaufman. “Another show, I guess.” Tune in Friday at 11 a.m. on WFAD . . . Steve Goldberg learned a lot about theater this fall producing his own play in New York. “I was just throwing a line into the sea,” he says of the experience. “You can only do so much here.” So much indeed. The prolific playwright has another one, complete with hallucinogenic title. Curb Divers of Redemption opens in January with a star-studded cast: Paul Schnabel, Tracey Girdich, Jordan Gullikson and our favorite on-air actor, WKDR deejay Louis Manno. Describing his new play as “dangerous,” Goldberg predicts, “I think I am about to make some pretty big breakthroughs.” 

This article appears in December 20 • 1995.

Paula Routly is publisher, editor-in-chief and cofounder of Seven Days. Her first glimpse of Vermont from the Adirondacks led her to Middlebury College for a closer look. After graduation, in 1983 she moved to Burlington and worked for the Flynn, the Vanguard Press, the Burlington Free Press and Vermont Times – in that order. In 1995, she and Pamela Polston started Seven Days newspaper. Routly ran the business and built the news side of the operation, which she edited for years. She has spearheaded...