Apr 10-16, 2019
How the Opioid Epidemic Drives Sexual Exploitation in Vermont; Walking the Talk on the 350VT March; Verd Mont Collectors Are All Buttoned Up
Cover Story
Trafficked: How the Opioid Epidemic Drives Sexual Exploitation in Vermont
I was sitting at my kitchen table on a hot August afternoon in 2013 when I got a call from a number I didn’t recognize. I answered, hoping that it was my sister, whom I hadn’t talked to for several weeks. This wasn’t entirely unusual — Maddie was addicted to heroin and would sometimes disappear for…
The Cannabis Catch-Up: Money on My Mind
Ever wonder what it’s like to be a cannabis company’s money guy? National Public Radio dived right in and palled around with Tom DiGiovanni, the chief financial officer for California-based Canndescent. “Over the course of a month, we probably have $2 million in cash that’s in some state of transit,” he told reporter Yuki Noguchi.…
The USS Vermont Submarine Gets the Teddy Bear Treatment
A committee organizing a ceremony for the new USS Vermont submarine has collaborated on a special-edition stuffed animal with the Vermont Teddy Bear Company. The Dewey Bear, named after Montpelier-born Admiral George Dewey, comes in two colors and sizes, and the bruin’s shirt bears a special logo commemorating the Virginia-class fast attack sub. A portion…
‘Ada and the Engine’ Features a 19th-Century Woman and Her Algorithm
The name “Ada Lovelace” sounds like a curtsy and a combat boot to your petticoat all at once. And that sort of sums her up: The daughter of bad-boy Romantic poet George Gordon Byron, who ditched her and her mother when she was an infant, Ada was a mathematical whiz who shared her father’s lust…
Album Review: Troy Millette, ‘Living With a Ghost’
(Self-released, CD, digital download) In a 2015 review of Jason Isbell’s album Something More Than Free, Pitchfork’s Stephen Deusner described the singer-songwriter as having “an eye for telling details that accrue into specific settings and characters.” It might seem crazy to compare, well, anyone to one of modern-day Americana’s most popular and exalted performers, but…
Act 250 Revamp Mired in Montpelier Quagmire
During a break from an afternoon of highly technical testimony last week about how to modernize Act 250, Vermont’s landmark land-use law, Rep. Chris Bates (D-Bennington) shuffled back toward the committee room like a man condemned. “I don’t want to go back in there,” Bates said, his eyes wide with bewilderment. “Most of this is…
What Created the Weird Dirt Formations in a Shelburne Meadow?
Right now, Vermonters are ankle-deep in mud season, that ugly time of year when melting snow unearths winter’s long-concealed objects: toddlers’ bikes, errant Frisbees, windblown recyclables, dogs’ lost chew toys. Debris isn’t all that the receding snow cover reveals. In mid-March, Tim Guiterman spotted an unusual dirt formation in a meadow near his Shelburne home…
Lyric Theatre Hires Erin Evarts as Executive Director
Erin Evarts has been enamored of theater, both onstage and off, since she was a kid. Now the Hinesburg native has landed the role she was born to play. Last month, Evarts, 35, was named the new executive director of Vermont’s Lyric Theatre. “I’m absolutely stepping into my dream job,” she says. Evarts, who lives…
Album Review: Michael Chinworth, ‘Three Vapors’
(Self-released, digital download) Obsession usually bookends love. It’s there when one person first decides they have to have more of someone. And it’s there when one person can no longer be possessed: when their face drowns out any other image in the mind; when their voice lingers in the darkness; when, at the end, the…
Fastened Together: Verd Mont Button Club Celebrates 40 Years
The first rule of Button Club is: You do not talk about Button Club. The second rule of Button Club is: Actually, scratch that. Unlike the members of Fight Club, the 30 or so members of Vermont’s Verd Mont Button Club delight in talking about their group and hobby. And, when it comes to clothing…
Chard deNiord Talks Influences, Rituals and Being Poet Laureate
Vermont’s eighth poet laureate, Chard deNiord, is technically a lame duck. His four-year tenure ends this coming November, and the Vermont Arts Council has begun seeking nominations for his successor. In the meantime, deNiord is not, to loosely paraphrase Dylan Thomas, going gentle into that good night. Two or three days a week, he makes…
New Owners at Ripton Store Find Their Rural Groove
Back in Virginia, Eva Hoffmann was a technology integration specialist who worked with state-of-the-art computers in public schools. Now she spends her days operating a gilded, clamorous, World War I-era cash register behind a wooden counter at the Ripton Country Store. The technology downgrade is one of many adjustments that Hoffmann and her husband, Gary…
Emails Detail Conflict in Choosing Burlington School Principals
Two kinds of questions were being asked in the Integrated Arts Academy gymnasium on April 1: prearranged ones, posed via moderator to finalists for three Burlington elementary school principal posts, and burning ones, discussed in whispers by the parents who’d come to get a look at potential leaders of the city’s Champlain, Sustainability Academy at…
Movie Review: ‘Mary Magdalene’ Offers an Inspired Revisionist Take on an Age-Old Story
It’s going to be a sad day for me when Rooney Mara makes a superhero movie. She’s been doing her Audrey Hepburn-esque thing for more than a decade, so it’s something of a miracle that it hasn’t happened already. I admire gifted, intelligent actors who hold out. Of course, her ability to abstain from the…
Letters to the Editor (4/10/19)
Dairy Do I just wanted to thank Seven Days and writer Chelsea Edgar for the story about life on a dairy farm [“Milking It,” March 13]. I don’t always get a chance to read all the articles in the paper (I often keep back issues around until I get a chance to look at them,…
VPR’s Jane Lindholm and Melody Bodette Tap Into Kids’ Curiosity With ‘But Why?’
“Did you know that elephants have 42,000 muscles in their trunks?” Jane Lindholm asked me recently. I had to confess I did not. Humans, the Vermont Public Radio personality went on to explain, have about 650 to 800 muscles in their entire bodies, depending on how you categorize the muscle groups. Just four muscle groups…
Eat This Week, April 10 to 16, 2019: Mud Pie
Beer and pizza, pizza and beer. West Glover’s Parker Pie celebrates mud, glorious mud as only a brew-focused pizzeria can — with uncommon drafts from nearby Hill Farmstead Brewery and an array of rare cellared bottles from Brasserie Cantillon and other old-world breweries. And if good beer and fresh pizza makes your heart want to…
Art Review: ‘Harold Weston: Freedom in the Wilds,’ Shelburne Museum
Cobalt blue: That’s the color Shelburne Museum has painted its gallery for the current exhibit, “Harold Weston: Freedom in the Wilds.” On the lower level of the Pizzagalli Center for Art and Education, the electrifying hue provides an appropriately charged backdrop for the energetic paintings of 20th-century artist Weston. The very walls seem to illustrate…
Quick Hits on Overlooked Vermont Albums From 2018
Seven Days receives more book submissions than our staff writers can read and fully review. So, every month or so, we publish Page 32, a collection of short takes on books by Vermont-based authors that include a quote from, well, page 32. Though that page number is admittedly arbitrary, the micro-review gives readers an idea…
Soundbites: ’90s Nostalgia in Full Effect
Time After Time Greetings, kiddos! Since nostalgia is pretty much permanently on our brains these days, I want to draw your attention to a couple of noteworthy items that’ll make you yearn for yesteryear — assuming you’re old enough to have experienced yesteryear the first time around. On Saturday, April 13, Kyle “DJ Fattie B”…
Elephant’s Lament: VTGOP Ranks Are Deeply Divided
Over the past 15 years, Sen. Randy Brock (R-Franklin) has been a Republican Party stalwart. He’s had his wins and losses, but he has always answered the bell — serving as state auditor, legislator and gubernatorial nominee. Throughout this time, he has generously underwritten GOP causes. But Brock is fed up with the Vermont Republican…
Free Will Astrology (4/10/19)
ARIES (March 21-April 19): The Qing Dynasty controlled China from the mid-17th century to the early 20th century. It was the fifth biggest empire in world history. But eventually it faded, as all mighty regimes do. Revolution came in 1911, forcing the last emperor to abdicate and giving birth to the Republic of China. I’m…
Movie Review: The New ‘Pet Sematary’ Doesn’t Manage to Bury Its Campy Predecessor
Who cares if cats are camera-shy? This is the year they came into their own at the multiplex, thanks at least in part to the magic of CGI. Last fall we saw gratuitous feline reaction shots in Bohemian Rhapsody, followed earlier this year by the scene-stealing tabby of Captain Marvel. Now four credited Maine coons…
I’m Not Sure I Can Handle My Partner Calling Me ‘Mommy’
Dear Reverend, I met a guy at the grocery store last month. The line at the register was long, and we just hit it off while waiting. The only thing is, he’s older and more experienced than I am. I’m 20, and he is 32. We’ve been seeing each other for about three weeks now,…
The Trudge Report: Seven Days Joins a Walk to Save the Planet
If Samuel Beckett were alive today and writing bleak plays about climate activism, the plot would probably sound very much like Monday’s 19-mile trek from Richmond to Middlesex through hail, wind and rain. But the thing about people who sign up to walk 65 miles over five days in the name of forestalling global disaster…
Kingdom Taproom to Open Restaurant ‘Table’
St. Johnsbury’s Kingdom Taproom will mark five years in business later this month. To celebrate, its 16 owner-partners have opened a new restaurant: Located directly upstairs from Kingdom Taproom at 397 Railroad Street, Kingdom Table — called “Table” for short — offers a polished, full-service complement to the basement-level craft-beer speakeasy. By day, light streams…
Meat-forward Meals at Mark BBQ in Essex Junction
There are several reasons to go to Mark BBQ, a Texas-style barbecue restaurant in Essex Junction. The most obvious is meat. The ribs are thick and juicy, the brisket edged in fat. The sauce, if you want it, comes on the side. This is meat-forward meat. Another draw, no pun intended, is the chalkboard wall…
