Apr 10-16, 2013
Vermont’s ACLU Is on the Lookout for Drones, Discrimination and Bad Cops
Cover Story
Vermont’s ACLU Director is Sounding the Alarm About Government Intrusion. Is Anyone Listening?
Allen Gilbert has been thinking a lot about drones lately. Not the ones that rain Hellfire missiles on militants in remote parts of the Middle East and Asia. But spy drones that could monitor the movements of Vermonters — and, indeed, of all Americans — here at home. “I think we’ll have drones flying overhead…
Is a Vermont Entrepreneur’s New Game-Specific Crowdfunding Site a Game Changer?
Video game developers looking to get their ideas off the ground have a new way to raise some quick cash. GameLaunched, an international, game-focused crowdfunding platform, debuted last month. The website’s co-founder Steve Foley lives here in Vermont; he works out of his home in South Burlington. Why does Foley think the world needs yet…
Nancy MacDowell, Green Mountain Harmony
(Self-released, CD) Last year, local singer Nancy MacDowell realized a dream nearly 20 years in the making with the release of her second album, Green Mountain Harmony. For 13 years, MacDowell was the host of a radio show, the “Sunday Morning Sampler” on WLVB, which featured an array of guest musicians stopping by to talk…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): German theologian Martin Luther (1483-1546) was a central figure in the rebellion against the Catholic Church that led to the Protestant Reformation. You’ll never guess where he was when he was struck by the epiphany that became the core axiom of his new religion. I’ll tell you: He was sitting on…
News Quirks
Curses, Foiled Again After someone threw rocks with threatening messages and misspelled words through the window of Judge Frank T. Carpenter, investigators in Hudson County, N.J., named Dennis Sabol, 47, as their suspect. Carpenter explained that when he dismissed Sabol’s complaint against two men Sabol said assaulted him, “Sabol became incensed to the point that…
Taste Test: Review of Maple City Diner in St. Albans
Some of Vermont’s oldest operational restaurants are diners. Berlin’s Wayside Restaurant & Bakery opened in 1918, while Burlington favorite Henry’s Diner has been slinging hearty breakfasts since 1925. It could be said that along with maple syrup and cheddar cheese, diners are the backbone of Green Mountain food culture. Maple City Diner in St. Albans…
Readers Defend Gluten-Free Diets and Point Out Problems With Modern Wheat
Sometimes, an article touches a nerve. So it was with “The Trouble With Wheat,” which ran in the Seven Days food section on March 6. The article previewed a lecture by Julie Miller Jones, a University of Minnesota nutritionist who was due to speak at the annual Northern Grain Growers conference in Essex that weekend.…
Work: Lesley-Ann Dupigny-Giroux, Vermont Climatologist
“Get into an elevator, and what does everyone start talking about?” asks Lesley-Ann Dupigny-Giroux, a University of Vermont associate professor of geography. “The weather. It’s something that’s always on our minds.” Maybe so, but for most of us, that means checking the WeatherBug app on our iPhone, which is nothing like the kind of data…
Three Local Albums (and One DVD) You Probably Haven’t Heard
So many records, so little time. Seven Days gets more album submissions than we know what to do with. And, given the ease of record making these days, it’s difficult to keep up. Still, we try to get to every local release that comes across the music desk, no matter how obscure. To that end,…
Burlington Artist Ishana Ingerman Aims to Weave Together Vermont’s Fiber Network
What’s a woman to do with a pickup truck full of fiber? If you’re Ishana Ingerman, you’re about to launch a very warm-and-fuzzy enterprise: making stylish coats from the hair of animals raised in Vermont. In a wearable twist on the locavore movement, Ingerman says she wants “to bring together a sense of place through…
WTF: What’s With the Extra-Tall Utility Poles on the Burlington Waterfront?
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: We just had to ask…
Capoeira Packs a Punch With Dance, Music and Martial Arts
Before you can learn capoeira in Fabio “Fua” Nascimento’s class, you have to learn a little Portuguese. At the beginning of each session, he passes out instruments — a drum, a cowbell, a tambourine — and tells his students to repeat after him, his big voice soaring: A maré tá cheia ioio, or “The tide…
The Secret Genius of Pedal Steel Guitar Builder Jerry Fessenden
“This is a horrible little shop,” Jerry Fessenden says as he opens the door to a shack abutting the muddy driveway of his rural Montpelier home. Inside, exposed insulation stuffed between ceiling beams holds in what little warmth a small space heater against a far wall can crank out. Dusty scraps of Formica are stacked…
Art Review: Sarah Horne and Clark Derbes, West Branch Gallery & Sculpture Park
Walk into Stowe’s West Branch Gallery this month, and you’re immediately faced with opposites: the ethereal gesture drawings of Sarah Horne, and the weight and color of Clark Derbes’ sculptures. Yin and yang, soft and hard, subtle and bright, sweeping circles and tight grids, female and male. It’s an appealing juxtaposition in which the two…
Montgomery Elementary School Beats the Odds on Student Achievement
Nationwide, educators are grappling with one of the biggest challenges to hit schools in decades. Since the 1960s, the difference in test scores between economically privileged and underprivileged students has grown 40 percent. Increasingly, income determines a student’s likelihood of success, more so even than factors such as race. It’s a problem everyone recognizes but…
![Reward Volunteers [306]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/episode306.webp?resize=400%2C300&ssl=1)
Reward Volunteers [306]
4/7/13: The Reward Volunteers app was created by Cabot Creamery Cooperative to celebrate the work of volunteers with recognition and prizes. Using this app for the iPhone and internet, individuals across the country have logged over 90,000 volunteer hours for about 1,800 organizations. Eva visits with three Vermont organizations and meets volunteers that have logged…
Letters to the Editor
Pro-“Union” The credibility of this story [Off Message, “John McClaughry: Free-Market Conservative and … Champion of Frogs?” April 4] is completely impugned by its scandalous statement that I, John McClaughry, am “Vermont’s foremost advocate for seceding from the Union.” Far from being the foremost advocate for secession, I have continuously and unequivocally opposed Vermont’s secession…
