Aug 28 – Sep 3, 2019
UVM’s Wanda Heading-Grant Champions Diversity and Tolerance on Campus; City Market Employees Push for Higher Wages; Dan Savage Dishes Dirty on the Hump! Film Festival
Cover Story
UVM Diversity Guru Wanda Heading-Grant Makes Hard Conversations Look Easy
Wanda Heading-Grant was 18 years old in the fall of 1983 when, as an incoming first-year student at the University of Vermont, she walked across the Burlington campus to visit a friend she’d made that summer. By the time she reached the friend’s dorm, Heading-Grant recalled, tears were streaming down her face. An African American…
The Cannabis Catch-Up: ‘This Ain’t Your Mother’s Marijuana’
The U.S. surgeon general and the secretary of Health and Human Services issued dire warnings at a press conference Thursday concerning the use of cannabis by pregnant women and young people. “This is a dangerous drug,” Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar II said. “No amount of marijuana use during pregnancy or adolescence…
Obituary: Eugene Shaver, 1936-2019
Former Burlington city councilor loved dogs, jokes and sports
Vermont Virtuosi, ‘The Third Highway’
(Self-released, CD, digital) David Gunn of Barre has been composing since 1969. Since he met his wife, flutist Laurel Ann Maurer, in 2009, his work has naturally paid particular attention to the flute, and with admirable results. Gunn’s first piece for flute choir won the 2012 National Flute Association Flute Choir Composition Competition for best…
Letters to the Editor (8/28/19)
Leave It to Beavers [Re Animal Issue, August 14]: I know there are so many animals out there, and in here with us where we live. But relevant to Vermont and, as it turns out, the natural and cultural history of the American continent are the beavers — Castor canadensis. Indian wars were fought over…
Theater Review: ‘Mamma Mia!,’ Stowe Theatre Guild
Because its infectious music sends a swirl of characters vamping across a stage, Mamma Mia! has been winning over audiences since 1999 on the strength of pure pop froth. The show will work for anyone willing to surrender to the 1970s ABBA songs that fuel performers in a state of exuberance for two and half…
Book Review: ‘Goodnight Stranger,’ by Miciah Bay Gault
Rarely does an author’s debut novel come with a blurb from a best-selling one. So when Montpelier writer Miciah Bay Gault’s Goodnight Stranger arrived with a cover plug from National Book Award winner George Saunders — author of the vividly imaginative collection of short stories Tenth of December — this reader’s curiosity was immediately piqued.…
Soundbites: Nightshade Festival Returns to Williston
Shady Lane As summer begins packing itself up for the year, you’ll want to get outside and soak up as much vitamin D as possible. Lucky for you, the third annual Nightshade Festival goes off this weekend, on Saturday, August 31. Located at Williston’s Red Barn Gardens, the all-day food-and-music crossover event is the brainchild…
My Boyfriend Has Been Getting Racy Underwear
Dear Reverend, I recently noticed that my boyfriend has been getting some really racy underwear. Bikinis, thongs, some with mesh insets, penis pouches, straps… Use your imagination. He doesn’t wear them in front of me; they just show up in the drawer. What the heck is going on? Panty Perplexed (male, 43) Dear Panty Perplexed,…
Short Takes on Five Vermont Books
Seven Days writers can’t possibly read, much less review, all the books that arrive in a steady stream by post, email and, in one memorable case, a scourge of mosquitoes. So this monthly feature is our way of introducing you to a handful of books by Vermont authors. To do that, we contextualize each book…
Art Review: ‘Rebecca Belmore: Facing the Monumental,’ Montréal Museum of Contemporary Art
Just before crossing the Honoré Mercier Bridge into Montréal, one sees a billboard emblazoned with a picture of a young woman. In 2006, 24-year-old Tiffany Morrison went missing after crossing the bridge to a bar in the LaSalle borough on the northern side of the St. Lawrence River. Four years later, what remained of her…
Artist Rebecca Kinkead Launches a Neighborly Project
A front porch is never just a porch, perhaps especially in the music world. Loretta Lynn, Robert Earl Keen and LeAnn Rimes all have opined about theirs in song. Lyle Lovett compared his to, among other things, a Hereford bull and a plate of enchiladas. Elton John reminisced about the “ghosts of the old South”…
Vermont Students Are Returning to Schools That Have Not Been Tested for Lead
State officials learned nearly a year ago that some Vermont schools had elevated levels of toxic lead in their drinking water. Results of a pilot study, released in September 2018, reported lead in each of the 16 schools sampled. Five of them, nearly a third, had levels exceeding federal standards. Gov. Phil Scott and Vermont…
Free Will Astrology (8/28/19)
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Shogun is a best-selling novel about an Englishman who transforms himself into a samurai warrior in 17th-century Japan. Written by James Clavell, it’s over 1,100 pages long. Clavell testified that the idea for the story sprang up in him when he read one line in his daughter’s school book: “In 1,600…
Are Chittenden County Recyclables Getting Recycled?
Remember when it seemed that recycling could save the world — when our plastic bottles were whisked away along with our guilt about the state of the planet? Our waste isn’t really waste, we might have thought. It’s amorphous material that can be transformed into new products again and again. All we have to do…
Union Pushes for $15-an-Hour Wages at City Market
When Patrick Kearney moved to Burlington in 2016, the only place he wanted to work was City Market, Onion River Co-op. The member-owned grocery store has a bargaining unit. As a union man through and through, Kearney wanted in. Kearney came with 11 years of experience at a Hanover, N.H., co-op where he and his…
Ill Equipped? When Kids Are in Mental Health Crisis, the Cops Arrive — With Handcuffs and Pepper Spray
On the afternoon of June 13, 2018, a New North End resident dialed 911 to report that a 5- or 6-year-old girl with a knife was wandering through his yard. The caller told the dispatcher he knew the child; she was a neighbor who had developmental issues. He mentioned that she was accompanied by her…
Eat This Week, August 27 to September 3, 2019: Taco Time
The mood will be Mexican in central Vermont on Friday, when a community taco dinner offering meat, veggies and all the fixings is held in Brookfield. Community Tacos Dinner Night: Friday, August 30, 6-8 p.m., at Brookfield Old Town Hall. $15; donations for kids under 18, BYOB. Info, bhale0723@gmail.com.
Officials: Bigfoot Not to Blame for Bradford Bridge Project Delay
Sasquatch is not to blame for delays on a bridge project in Bradford. That was the message delivered Monday at the Upper Valley town’s post office, where someone left an unsigned flyer warning those with “agitated imaginations” to stop spreading rumors about the Creamery Bridge. “The prolonged closure of the bridge is due primarily to…
Dan Savage Dishes Dirty on the Hump! Film Festival
Dan Savage has a favorite story he likes to tell about Hump! Film Festival, the amateur-porn film festival he cofounded 15 years ago. Following a showing in Seattle, where the fest was born, a woman approached him and relayed that she hated porn. She added that she found it dehumanizing and had been cajoled into…
‘Ready or Not,’ Here Comes an Uninspired Horror Flick
Nationally, half of marriages end in divorce. In the monied Le Domas clan, a notable percentage ends in blood sport. Such is the case for Grace, a young bride played by Samara Weaving in Ready or Not. Having hours earlier married into the board-game dynasty, and believing the time for consummation has arrived, she’s informed…
‘The Peanut Butter Falcon’ Soars When It Doesn’t Try Too Hard
The marketing for The Peanut Butter Falcon calls it “set in the world of a modern Mark Twain.” That would be fine — the mismatched heroes do travel by raft — if the screenplay didn’t drive the point home by having a character draw the Twain comparison, too. The homespun whimsy is there, but the…
On ‘Highest Lows,’ St. Albans Rapper D.FRENCH Gets to Work
Highest Lows by newcomer D.FRENCH is, simply put, one of the best Vermont rap albums of the year. It’s an urgent introduction to a talented MC, known to his friends and family as Dominic French. Though the record is a cool, confident triumph, the story behind it cuts deep with stories about small towns, young…
Matt Hall, ‘Say Goodbye to Hollywood’
(Third Eye Industries, digital) Matt Hall doesn’t rest. In the last few years, no other musician in the area has been more prolific. The Plattsburgh, N.Y.-based songwriter has released a fecund and often aggressive catalog. Between fronting punk outfit Marco Polio and drumming in synth-pop group the Mountain Carol, Hall is a busy dude —…
Century Armed: Vermont Importer’s Guns Used in Mass Shootings
A Vermont arms dealer imported the AK-47-style gun used to kill two children and a young man last month at a garlic festival in Gilroy, Calif., federal authorities told Seven Days. The company, Century International Arms, may also be tied to the weapon used in an even deadlier mass shooting this month at a Walmart…
Obituary: Kari Bierbaum, 1967-2018
Brunswick, Maine native was athletic outdoorswoman, diving instructor and master gardener
C is for Cannabis: Now That It’s Legal, What Do We Tell Our Kids About Marijuana?
While our parents might have been able to pretend that marijuana didn’t exist when we were growing up — and avoid the discomfort of talking about it — if you’re raising kids in Vermont today, there’s no hiding your head in the sand. To date, 33 states, including Vermont, and the District of Columbia have…
Tech With a Human Touch: Cyber Civics Teaches Middle Schoolers to Think Critically and Ethically About the Digital World
In this virtual age, let’s sink our hands into what is real. In this age of light-speed communication, let’s learn how to use our inner voices. In this age of increasingly powerful machines, let’s learn to use the incredible powers within. Once a week, middle schoolers at Lake Champlain Waldorf School in Shelburne recite these…
The Art of… Active Sitting
Since schools have existed, teachers have been telling kids to sit still and pay attention. But what if that pedagogical wisdom is all wrong? That’s the assertion of Turner Osler, a University of Vermont professor and former trauma surgeon and research epidemiologist, who founded innovative chair company QOR360 with his son, Lex. The father-son duo…
If You Build It: Little Libraries Blend Books and Community Engagement
Nearly a decade ago, Windsor resident Amanda Smith learned about Little Free Library, a nonprofit organization that supports communities in creating freestanding boxes where people can swap books. She always thought it would be fun to start one of her own. So when her family moved to a neighborhood with lots of foot traffic a…
Field-to-Fork Cooking Seminar Connects Wild-Caught and Local Foods
Heirloom tomatoes, a pint of blueberries and … bear meat? These ingredients don’t often fill the same grocery bag, but things got a little wild at the Field-to-Fork: Wild Food Cooking seminar held on August 14 at City Market, Onion River Co-op’s store in Burlington’s South End. Organized by the Vermont Department of Fish &…
Eating, Drinking and Relaxing in Montréal’s Saint-Henri Neighborhood
When my friends and I set off for Montréal’s Saint-Henri neighborhood, we had three goals. The first was to eat well with no reservations. The second was to spend as much time as possible outside. And the third? To keep our eyes open for signs of change. Located in southwest Montréal to the west of…
ArtsRiot Chef George Lambertson Heads Out to ‘Taste America’
George Lambertson, chef and co-owner of ArtsRiot at 400 Pine Street in Burlington, will leave his position as chef in the first week of October, he told Seven Days. Lambertson, 39, will remain an owner of the business. Lambertson has been chef at ArtsRiot for five years, having taken charge of the kitchen in September…
Vermont Salumi Opens New Expanded Quarters in Barre
The historic Homer Fitts department store building on Main Street in Barre is the new home of Vermont Salumi, a locally owned charcuterie company whose products are sold at various Vermont co-ops and specialty stores. Owner Peter Colman started in 2011 with a line of fresh sausages made at Cate Farm in Plainfield; he’s been…
