Apr 2-8, 2014
In the studio with Windham Hill Records founder Will Ackerman; Keurig Green Mountain Expands; Mt. Mansfield Media Keeps It Weird; Vermonters Share Road-Food Favs;
Cover Story
In the Studio With Windham Hill Founder Will Ackerman
Peter Jennison is having a hell of a time. Seated at the Steinway Model B grand piano of producer Will Ackerman’s Imaginary Road Studios in Dummerston, Vt., the pianist is struggling to play a particularly tricky section of a song he’s recording for his new album. Ackerman and his recording engineer, Tom Eaton, sit at…
Obituary: Dale Jean LaBombard
Dale Jean LaBombard, age 74 years, a lifelong resident of this area died unexpectedly early Sunday morning March 30, 2014, while visiting her sister in Port St. Lucie, Florida. Born at home in Highgate Springs on May 21, 1939, she was the daughter of the late Harold and Dora (Dow) Olds. She attended Highgate schools…
Obituary: David James Greenwood, Sr.
David James Greenwood, Sr., age 59 years, a lifelong area resident died late Sunday afternoon April 6, 2014, at his Lamkin St. residence with loving family at his side. Born in St. Albans on July 30, 1954, he was the son of the late Sylvester Joseph Greenwood and Edna Lena Laplant Austin. He attended Franklin…
Forgotten Drinks of Colonial New England by Corin Hirsch
Many a harebrained scheme has been hatched in a bar. It might’ve seemed brilliant at the time, but that plan you once had for disco-ball streetlights surely belongs in the dustbin of history. A few gems, though, have exceeded their humble, boozy origins to have a pretty major impact. One such idea was the founding…
Obituary: Winifred (Winnie) Bean, 1918-2014, Burlington
Winifred (Winnie) M. Bean, 95, passed away peacefully in her home with loving family by her side on Monday, March 31, 2014. Winnie was born on December 8, 1918, in Newport Center, Vt., the daughter of Evard and Bernice Cushing Norris. She attended Winooski High School. On February 23, 1935, she married Clifford R. Bean…
Chef Jed Cohan Reopens Long-Closed North Royalton Inn
In 1818, stagecoaches began stopping for food and rest at Jacob Fox’s inn, an establishment that would welcome guests for nearly two centuries. After a closure in 2004, the Fox Stand Inn will soon begin serving hungry travelers (and locals) again as the Fox Stand Tavern & Catering. Last week, after six years of painstaking…
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Eight films in, everybody goes to a new Wes Anderson release knowing exactly what to expect. That’s not a sign of predictability or imaginative limitation. On the contrary. It’s the sign of an artist who’s visionary in every aspect of his craft and has perfected an unmistakable signature style. I think of other filmmakers who’ve…
Book review: Translations From Bark Beetle: Poems, Jody Gladding
Translations From Bark Beetle, by Jody Gladding of East Calais, is more than a simple collection of poetry. It’s a convention-defying poetic gallery, meaning it’s not the kind of volume where you go from page to page reading isolated islands of verse. For one thing, many of these poems weren’t even written on paper. They…
CCTA Strike Moves Into Week Three, Bringing Devilish Details Along for the Ride
It can sometimes seem as if the problems between Chittenden County Transportation Authority drivers and managers are about much more than a contract. In picket lines and at public forums, drivers rage at bosses who they say don’t listen and are bent on punishing hardworking employees. Meanwhile, at CCTA headquarters, managers have posted a security…
Genre-Defying Nellie McKay Performs at the FlynnSpace
Even more striking than Nellie McKay’s ability to play nearly any instrument and tap into nearly any genre is her astounding confidence. McKay is a musician who is just as comfortable belting a show tune as she is rapping, and just as convincing with social satire as she is with a slinky love song. There’s…
Oliver Charles Avelle Boright
On March 14, 2014, at Fletcher Allen Health Care, Erin Avelle-Boright and Jonathan Boright welcomed a baby boy, Oliver Charles Avelle Boright.
Guthrie Galileo, Sauce Vapor
(In Space &Time Records, digital download) Sauce Vapor is Guthrie Galileo’s debut EP, released by In Space & Time Records. A student at the University of Vermont, the producer and singer currently calls Burlington his home. But the sounds Galileo offers on Sauce Vapor pay homage to his West Coast roots, specifically the Bay Area.…
Rachel Armstrong Talks About ‘Living Architecture’
Vermont is often seen as a nexus of sustainable practices. Land is regularly protected from development. Old buildings are renovated to be more energy efficient; many new ones are built according to LEED or other energy-conservation standards. Renewable energy sources are taking hold incrementally. And more and more Vermonters are making individual efforts to recycle,…
Enemy Self, Evolution Kills
(Self-released, digital download) In the early 2000s, local trip-hop outfit Manifest Nexto Me were among the most successful and well-traveled bands on the local scene. The quartet released a couple of well-received recordings and were best known as a hard-touring live act. Both on record and in concert, the group fused a dense, brooding sound…
Will the Keurig Green Mountain Cold-Cup Project Heat Up the Local Economy?
First came Tennessee, California and Québec. Next up: the United Kingdom, Sweden, Australia and South Korea. Keurig Green Mountain, as its executives say, is going global. Locals wondering what this means for Vermont should look to the sewer lines for answers. In February, Coca-Cola announced that it was buying a 10 percent stake in the…
Soundbites: GMCF Tix Onsale, Anaïs Mitchell Plays a Benefit and the Worst. Song. Ever.
Trolling Right Along The big news on the local music front this week is Phish bassist Mike Gordon’s show at the Higher Ground Ballroom on Sunday, April 6. If you didn’t know, Gordon recently released his latest solo record, Overstep, to modest critical acclaim. He’s been touring the record with some of his favorite, non-Phishin’…
Ken Burns Documents a Vermont School’s Gettysburg Address Project
Documentarian Ken Burns refers to it as “the Address.” A group of Vermont students and teachers who know the speech exceptionally well just call it “the Gettysburg.” Whatever name it’s given, Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Gettysburg Address is indubitably one of the most important documents in American history. Burns’ new film shows how that 10-sentence, two-minute…
Art Review: “Abstract Terrains” at Vermont Metro Gallery
Six months after the BCA Center opened the Vermont Metro Gallery on the building’s fourth floor, it’s clear this was a strategic mistake. Rather than situating this venue — and its exhibits — out of sight, BCA should have installed the modestly sized gallery at the Church Street Marketplace level. Gallery curator Kerri Macon has…
Warren’s Scrag Mountain Music Brings Together Composers and Community
Scrag Mountain Music, founded in 2011 by Warren residents Mary Bonhag and Evan Premo, is not your conventional classical chamber group. Audiences are told to “come as you are, pay what you can” — resulting in casually dressed listeners and a collection basket instead of tickets. Concertgoers are also encouraged to handle the instruments, look…
Mt. Mansfield Media Aims to Give Businesses “Share of Mind”
On a winter afternoon at Fletcher Allen Health Care, a buxom woman of a certain age lay wired to an EKG, seemingly unaware of a spat that was taking place across her prone form. “You betrayed the mustache!” cried a tow-headed 10-year-old boy wearing a red shirt, khaki slacks and a false mustache. He brandished…
Hashtag Harry
Click image above to enlarge comic… Dan Rinylo graduated from the Center for Cartoon Studies in 2013. See more of his work at drinylo.com Drawn & Paneled is a collaboration between Seven Days and the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, featuring works by past and present students.
Roger Wilco
It was a huge snowfall for so late in the season, just over a foot and a half in Burlington when it finally stopped coming down on Thursday. By Friday afternoon, it had reached 40 degrees, and the streets streamed with snowmelt. Toward evening, the temperature dropped below freezing again, and the Queen City became…
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Vinny Lizotte Refocuses [SIV347]
3/21/14: After more than three decades on upper Church Street, Vinny Lizotte, the founder of LeZot Camera Repair, is moving his business to Williston. Eva spends an afternoon with Vinny and watches him tackle the intricate puzzle of a broken DSLR camera. LeZot Camera, the retail store, will remain in the same spot at the…
Vermont Teaching Artists Try Out Universal Design for Learning
“What’s this made of?” teaching artist Kim Desjardins asked a class of wide-eyed kindergartners one recent morning at Burlington’s Integrated Arts Academy. She held up a clay relief tile, a two-dimensional square containing three-dimensional figures of a tree and the sun. “Play-Doh,” one boy declared confidently. “It’s like Play-Doh,” Desjardins said. “What’s Play-Doh made of?”…
Letters to the Editor (4/2/14)
Special Treatment? I read the article about the lesbian couple suing the town of Addison [“Two Against a Town,” March 19]. I read the article a few times to make sure it was written in an unbiased form. It appeared to be just that — unbiased. In my humble opinion, hoping these two don’t want…
Dues and Dont’s: A New Union Powerhouse Takes on Burlington’s HowardCenter
As it seeks to grow its membership in Vermont, a national labor union is taking on the state’s largest human services provider — in court and over the airwaves. Last month, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees sued the Burlington-based HowardCenter for failing to give its workers a pay increase the union…
Newly Single After 20 Years of Marriage, I’m Ready to Date
Dear Athena, I’m newly single after 20 years of marriage and kids, and I’m just relearning how to date. I met someone through an ad that I took out recently, and he is amazing. We have a really strong emotional connection, but I feel I should wait to have sex with him. He’s not pressuring…
News Quirks (4/2/14)
Curses, Foiled Again Michigan authorities identified Jules Bahler, 21, as the suspect in three bank robberies after he posted his picture on Facebook holding a submachine gun like the one used in the holdups. When questioned, Bahler confessed to the robberies. (Smoking Gun) A Friend, Indeed After Chicago Transit Authority train operator Brittney Haywood crashed…
Free Will Astrology (4/2/14)
Aries (March 21-April 19) In his novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera says that the brain has “a special area which we might call poetic memory and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful.” In the coming days, it will be especially important for you to tap…
Lawmakers Consider Historic Overhaul of Vermont’s Education System
Rote memorization is out; personalized education is in. Textbooks are fading and iPads ascendant. But while education itself may have evolved greatly in Vermont since the 19th century, the state’s system of governing its schools — a patchwork of small, mostly town-by-town school boards — has remained largely unchanged. The state could be in for…
Citizen Cider’s Tasting Room Opens in the South End This Weekend
The newly acid-etched floors of Suite 114 at 316 Pine Street are covered with a deep, swirling red that’s both mesmerizing and slightly alarming. “Yeah, it looks like we sacrificed something in here,” jokes Kris Nelson, one of Citizen Cider’s three owners. Later this week, Queen City residents will be able to check out the…
Noah
Noah has gotten a lot of flack for its free interpretation of the Genesis Flood narrative; even the Washington Post ran the clickbait headline “How accurate is Noah?” Leaving aside the question of whether religious texts themselves are “accurate,” or need to be, it’s worth noting that people didn’t always seek literalism in their biblical…
Uncle Pop Pop’s Tapas Restaurant to Open in Essex
Bocadillos and patatas bravas will soon join the Chittenden County foodscape when a tapas, sandwich and rum spot arrives in Essex Junction. Uncle Pop Pop’s Sandwich & Tapas Shop will open in the Essex Towne Marketplace by late spring. Its menu will center on seafood dishes — such as fish tacos and seafood stew with…
Vermonters Share Their Road-Food Favorites
The old term “you can’t get there from here” still rings true in Vermont. For many workers in a state with a widely dispersed population, driving long distances is simply part of the job. But we all still have to eat — even if we’re doing it in the car. Take James, my other half.…
