As truck traffic groaned down Montpelier’s Main Street one recent Monday, John Snell paused by a large curbside ash tree whose trunk was nicked and scraped. Street trees don’t have an easy life: bombarded with road salt, climbed by children and dinged by the occasional front bumper. But the 15 green ash trees in downtown…
Active community member worked to make the world a better place
Burlington artist, musician and creative spirit was known for his colorful murals
Lots of energy goes into the selection, reporting and presentation of Seven Days’ journalism. But these days the 15 pages of help-wanted ads in back of the paper tell an important story, too: Vermont businesses are starting to rebound from the coronavirus pandemic. But slowing down the process is a shortage of labor. Our job…
When theater on Zoom is laugh-out-loud funny and manages a goofy but real actor-audience connection, it’s evidence that live performance has nearly magical power. With professional actors hitting the comic notes, the Northern Stage production of a new, irreverent adaptation of The Lodger uses Jack the Ripper as a backdrop for an amusing meditation on…
Everyone knows the childhood game of Telephone, right? Well, imagine if, instead of being a linear progression from one ear to the next, the prompts went to multiple people at once, creating more of a family tree than a telephone wire. And, instead of a continuum of words that are misconstrued along the way, the…
First-time purchasers of beverages in Vermont could be forgiven their puzzlement over the state’s bottle deposit law: Wine cooler containers require a 5-cent deposit; wine bottles don’t. Cans from local Zero Gravity Craft Brewery carry a nickel deposit; cans from local Citizen Cider don’t. And that plastic bottle of Poland Springs sparkling water gets returned,…
Vermont has spent nearly $200 million in the past five years to clean up its waterways. But the threats to water quality only seem to have intensified, reinforcing the questions in some quarters about whether the state really has the will to do what’s necessary to restore lakes and streams. Much of the focus in…
Exactly one year to the day after a Black man in Barre vanished, local officials gathered members of the media for an update on the case. Standing on the front lawn of the Hollow Inn & Motel, where Ralph “Rizz” Jean-Marie was last seen, Barre City Police Chief Tim Bombardier and Washington County State’s Attorney…
Drifters in Burlington’s Old North End will close on April 30, according to the café’s social media accounts. The April 12 announcement reads in part: “The decision comes after months of consideration and we can’t emphasize enough that we would never have made it through this last year if it weren’t for the help of…
Making clothes specific to individual bodies, particularly female bodies, verges on a lost art. A wedding dress might be the only “fitted” item some women ever own, and most never experience the kind of tailoring that goes into, say, a man’s formal suit. Kat Whitledge aims to change that, one body at a time. The…
(Self-released, digital) Silence_castor’s YouTube page displays dozens of demo videos featuring the electronic artist’s synth collection. The dazzling array of colorful boxes is a garden of tech. Knobs and buttons sprout up from the units like spring buds. Twisting, rainbow-hued wires connect one piece to another like roots and vines. Silence_castor, aka graphic designer Nathan…
Brothers Ryan and Rory Van Tuinen are closer today than they’ve ever been before. Seeing one’s sibling almost die repeatedly forges a powerful fraternal bond. For years, Ryan and Rory lived in emotional isolation from their family and each other. Ryan, now 26, drank heavily and suffered from depression and social anxiety, which at times…
Our streaming entertainment options are overwhelming — and not always easy to sort through. As the Oscars approach, many of us seek out serious films about the human condition. But … sometimes we just want to see the movie about the sexy fish-alien that everyone’s talking about — the one that inspired a flurry of…
1. Strong Words Tuesday 27 & Wednesday 28 “Clark bridges a Tennessee landscape’s past and present in her stellar debut, evincing a potent mix of history, injury, and divided identity,” reads a Publishers Weekly review of prize-winning poet Tiana Clark’s 2018 collection I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood. Clark reads original passages…
(Self-released, digital) Rap life is an act of self-creation: You choose a new name, then spend the rest of your career becoming it. Bilé — pronounced bee-lay — is a young Burlington artist who started that journey with 2020’s PICCO. EP, a bright blast of emo trap. His debut LP, INSULT TO INJURY, is a…
Hartswick and Soul [Re “Bracing for Impact: The Threat of Normal,” April 7]: Please give Nathan Hartswick a regular column! “Mr. Charlie” Frazier Huntington Why Retire RASTA? Sasha Goldstein’s [802 Much: “Name-Dropping,” March 31] about the Rochester/Randolph Sports Trail Alliance was nice — except for one big mistake! Executive director Angus McCusker is quoted as…
Champlain Valley Union High School senior Lena Kerest participates in an annual girls’ activism workshop in New York City and is a member of several high school clubs focused on social justice, women’s issues and human rights. Last summer, she decided to channel her benevolent energy in a new way — by starting a giving…
Everyone’s heard of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, the gangster couple who robbed and shotgunned their way into American folklore during the Great Depression. Nearly 90 years after they were killed in a shoot-out with police, Bonnie and Clyde remain embedded in pop culture and synonymous with lovers on the run. But they were hardly…
Dear Reverend, It seems like the only thing anyone is talking about on social media these days is the COVID-19 vaccine — how hard it was to get an appointment, when their appointment is, they already got it, how they’re reacting to it. I swear, if I see another vaccine selfie or a photo of…
No one in local nightlife has quite the same cachet and name recognition as Craig Mitchell. The career DJ arrived in Vermont more than 30 years ago, making him one of the longest-serving DJs currently active in the Green Mountain State. Mitchell has deejayed at practically every bar and club this side of Lake Champlain,…
Eli Enman had an inkling that more skiers were coming to his family’s cross-country trails in Huntington this winter when he had to clear his second, overflow parking area much more often than usual. He also added a third portable toilet to handle the flow. “We definitely had to keep an eye on our parking…
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Some traditional Buddhist monks sit on city streets in Asia with a “begging bowl” in front of them. It’s a clay or iron container they use to solicit money and food from passersby who want to support them. Contemporary American poet Mariannne Boruch regards the begging bowl as a metaphor that…
Woman who died of cancer was grateful for Vermont’s Death With Dignity law
In a corner of the recently expanded Charlotte Library, a two-drawer card catalog sits on a mustard-yellow floral tablecloth. But instead of old-school index cards listing books, its drawers hold small paper envelopes of old-school seeds with evocative names such as Dragon Langerie bush bean, Brandywine tomato and Corno di Toro (horn of the bull)…
It takes a lot of caffeine to keep up with Vermont’s ever-evolving coffee industry. The pandemic might have disrupted the routine of stopping for a daily cuppa on the way to the office or an afternoon pick-me-up with coworkers, but it hasn’t prevented new cafés from opening. Vivid Coffee took over the New Moon Café…
After a year of navigating guidelines for one-way traffic flow, preorders and limited capacities, Vermont’s farmers markets are gearing up for a fairly normal summer. While farmers markets had their own special guidelines in 2020, they’re now part of the Group A sector in the Scott administration’s Vermont Forward plan for reopening the state, which…
Tiny Thai Restaurant, which has been a mainstay eatery in the heart of Winooski, is moving north but staying in the Onion City. The Thai restaurant, which specializes in family-style cuisine and offers a variety of stir-fries and curries, served its last meals at 24 Main Street on April 10, according to a sign in…
