Aug 5-10, 2015
As Trouble Mount for Vermont’s Biggest Developer, Bill Stenger Remains Optimistic; A New Show for Rusty DeWees; Artists Revisit BTV Orphanage; Saap Spices Up Randolph
Cover Story
‘Sunshine Stenger’ Stays Optimistic Despite Mounting Troubles
Bill Stenger remembers well the day he promised economic salvation to Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. “It was September 27, 2012,” he recalled last Thursday, sliding a photograph across a conference room table at Jay Peak Resort. “The reason I remember that is because that’s my birthday.” The photo, snapped on the shores of Newport’s Lake Memphremagog,…
How a Vermont Socialist Improbably Won Key Elections — and a National Stage
Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign is surging. In July, nearly 10,000 supporters gathered in Madison, Wis., to hear the 73-year-old socialist senator denounce the Koch brothers and corporate greed. Another 7,500 came to hear him in Portland, Maine. He fired up a crowd of 11,000 in Phoenix, Ariz. More and more Americans are tuning in to…
Obituary: Benjamin Donald Wood-Lewis, 1999-2015 Burlington, VT
After 15 years of sharing his gifts of love and joy with us, Ben Wood-Lewis died at home surrounded by his adoring family. From the beginning, Ben drew amazing people to him with his sparkling eyes, unforgettable smile, resilience, work ethic, and empathy. He loved love, and his spirit lives on in the hearts of…
Obituary: Evangeline A. (Bluto) Morin, 1929-2015
Evangeline A. (Bluto) Morin, 85, passed away Wednesday August 5, 2015 surrounded by her loving family. She was born August 9, 1929 to Austin and Gladys (Berry) Bluto in Monson, MA. On March 26, 1951 she married the love of her life, Louis Morin. Evangeline enjoyed gardening, camping, had a love of birds, but most…
Inn at Weathersfield Welcomes Chef Michael Ehlenfeldt
When Marilee and Richard Spanjian bought the Inn at Weathersfield in 2012, they came with a vision. They wanted to create a place where the food was as important as the setting, where hungry pilgrims could come for exquisite farm-to-table dining and expand their own skill sets through classes and workshops tailored to home cooks.…
Reverend Ben Donovan & the Congregation, Reverend Ben Donovan & the Congregation
(Future Fields, CD, digital download) For a young guy, Ben Donovan sure is old-school. The Virginia transplant paid his musical dues in Burlington the hard way, busking for rent. If you spent any time on Church Street in the last couple of years, you’ve likely heard his silver-toned tenor giving voice to Buck Owens and…
International Short Films and an Actor’s Take on David Foster Wallace
One way to cure this year’s sun- or rain-induced summertime blues is to seek shelter in the nearest cinema. This week and next, local screens serve up treats for moviegoers of all tastes. Shredder Short International Film Festival The scrappiest film festival in Vermont, the Shredder Short International Film Festival, returns to Quechee this week…
Free Will Astrology (8/5/15)
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Charles de Lint is a novelist whose stories are influenced by folklore, myths and science fiction. In his book Yarrow, a wizardly character named Toby is skilled at conjuring. He can make small objects appear and disappear, for example. But Toby yearns for more. “I want to be magic,” he says.…
Local Artists Bring New Life to Former Burlington Orphanage
Since it closed in the early 1980s, the dusty rooms of St. Joseph’s Orphan Asylum have housed only memories of the thousands of children (and nuns) who passed through during its century of operation. On Thursday and Friday, August 6 and 7, five local artists will invite the public back to the former orphanage, located…
Book Review: Music for Wartime: Stories, Rebecca Makkai
Such a wide-ranging imagination is at work in Rebecca Makkai’s story collection Music for Wartime, it’s hard to know where to start. With Bach climbing out of a real-estate agent’s piano? With the chef who slips from his chains in a line of chained prisoners and spends years impersonating the physics professor forced to take…
Shelburne Tap House Opens for Dinner
After a couple of nights testing out its taps and bar menu on friends, Shelburne Tap House introduced its full dinner menu last Friday, July 31. The owners, chef Ed Lambert and his wife and business manager, Sandie Maynard, dealt with a few glitches — including a bunk fryolator — in time to feed an…
Sino-American Relations
Jing Yu and I were standing around the rotating luggage belt at Burlington International Airport on a Wednesday night. He had been on a 22-hour journey from his Chinese homeland and was understandably bushed. But this was his first visit to America, and his personality seemed naturally bubbly. No mere fatigue was going to dampen…
Theater Review: Outside Mullingar, Dorset Theatre Festival
Anthony is odd. Rosemary is stubborn. They’re both about 40 and have never married. They each live with their parents on neighboring farms in present-day Ireland. The two have known each other all their lives, and they don’t know enough about themselves to recognize what they want from life, or from each other. But they…
A Binge-Eating Clinic Slims Down After Its Permit Is Rejected
Karen Talbert freely admits she has struggled with her eating. “I could certainly sit down and eat a whole thing of Oreos,” she recounted in a telephone interview from her home in New Jersey. “I could graze all day, too. It was sort of mindless eating. Usually it was in reaction to something I didn’t…
Theater Review: Romeo and Juliet, Vermont Shakespeare Company
In Romeo and Juliet, a violent feud between two families is the backdrop for a love story. Shakespeare’s play is about an idealized love, but it’s also about youth itself. For these characters, the most powerful way to express an intense feeling is to be willing to go as far as death — to risk…
A Summer Evening of Fiddling and Talking Socks
Rusty DeWees was waiting to greet his guests as they drove up the long dirt road to the driveway of his home on the Worcester Ridge in Elmore, above Stowe. The setting sun added streaks of orange and red to a sweeping view of Mount Mansfield and points west. His email invitation to this “barn…
Will PlanBTV Disrupt the South End’s Original ‘Makers’?
Burlington officials have been soliciting feedback about a plan for future growth in the city’s South End, which hosts some of its most desirable residential neighborhoods and also the bustling Pine Street corridor, which is zoned “enterprise” for “light manufacturing.” They’ve heard plenty from a well-organized group of artists and small-business owners who are worried…
Stenger’s ‘Renaissance’ Raises Hope — and Skepticism — in Newport
In March, wrecking crews demolished one of four commercial blocks in downtown Newport. Where a four-story apartment and commercial buildings once stood, only cellar holes remain. The demolition, by Jay Peak Resort president Bill Stenger, was touted as a key step toward the economic rebirth of this city on the shores of picturesque Lake Memphremagog,…
![Vermont Open Farm Week [SIV408]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/episode408-5.webp?resize=1200%2C900&ssl=1)
Vermont Open Farm Week [SIV408]
7/28/15: August 3-9 is Open Farm Week and across Vermont, farmers are opening their doors to the public to show them what makes our state so special. Eva visited one of the participating farms, Boston Post Dairy, in Enosburg Falls to watch two of the four sisters who run the farm as they made Tres…
Letters to the Editor (8/4/15)
Oh Buoy There are two reasons why jurisdiction over navigable waters is not local [“Who Decides? New Buoys in Lake Champlain Roil Colchester Board,” July 22]. First, it doesn’t belong to you. Second, boaters who defend their rights should not be forced to repeat their struggle 100,000 times with 100,000 local jurisdictions. Conflicts between boaters…
Being There: Walking Conversations at Cold Hollow Sculpture Park
Cold Hollow Sculpture Park is unique in Vermont: Encompassing 35 acres of rolling meadow, hayfields and woods in Enosburg Falls, the site displays some 50 large-scale steel sculptures by a single artist, David Stromeyer. Seen against the wide summer sky and forested hills, the works — some measuring 30 feet in one direction — integrate…
Mixing It Up With Guild Bartender Sean McKenzie
Name: Sean McKenzie Age: 29 Restaurant: Guild Tavern Location: South Burlington Restaurant age: almost 3 Cuisine type: New American/steakhouse Select experience: bartender, Pizzeria Verità, Burlington (2012-2013); bartender, 219 West, Austin, Texas (2011-2012) What’s on the cocktail list? Classics like Rob Roy, silver gin fizz and the scofflaw; originals like the bourbon-y Nut House, rye-based Steel…
‘A Girl in the Race’? Sue Minter Weighs a Run for Governor
Thirty-eight years ago, high school junior Sue Minter moved with her family from Philadelphia, Pa., to Providence, R.I., and enrolled at the Moses Brown School. The centuries-old Quaker prep school had just turned coed, and Minter’s female classmates thought a girl should run for student council president. The next year, she did — and won.…
Kings of the Road: Vintage Trailers Roll Into Montpelier
For one day this weekend, the streets and parking lots of downtown Montpelier will look like the site of an alien invasion — or at least a time-travel voyage back to the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. On Saturday, August 8, the capital city hosts its first-ever Vermont Vintage Trailer Show. It will feature plenty of…
Vacation
You know what’s missing from this sequel to the 1983 family road trip classic? Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo as the heads of the Griswold clan? Nope, those actors both do cameos. Beautiful woman driving a sports car in the next lane, à la Christie Brinkley? Check. Lindsey Buckingham’s “Holiday Road”? Present and accounted for.…
Seven Dandelions 2015
The 2015 Seven Daysies award winners were announced this week — see the snazzy magazine insert in the print issue. And once again, Seven Days readers have let their collective voice be heard regarding just who are the best of the best in local food, shopping, outdoors and recreation, services, media, and arts and entertainment.…
Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation
Some blockbuster film franchises come with a ton of plot and continuity baggage, some with a little. And then there’s the Mission: Impossible series. All you really need to know about secret agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is that the “IMF” he works for is the Impossible Missions Force and not the International Monetary Fund.…
My Guy Wants to Take a Break But I Don’t
Dear Athena, I have been dating a guy (more like “going out,” as we did not consider each other “boyfriend and girlfriend”), and when all seemed well, he said that we should “pick things up in September when school starts.” He also said that he feels we’re both too busy for a relationship, even though…
Soundbites: A Good Week for Jam Fans; Joe Adler Moves On
Jam On Following last week’s epic, maybe even historic, rock-and-roll blowout, the live music slate this week seems downright tame in comparison. True, the volume ain’t cranked up quite as loud. But we were at a solid 11 last week, which rarely happens. So the bar is set awfully high. Speaking of awfully high, it’s…
The Bloomers, The Bloomers
(Self-released, digital download) The Bloomers opens on a slow roll of distortion chased by thrashing drums. These sounds are set against an apathetic drawl of vocals seldom strained above a conversational tone detailing a night in a house of wax with Madame Tussaud. That song, “Me and Madame Tussaud,” is a pretty good indication of…
Saap, Vermont’s First Isan Thai Restaurant, Digs Deep
“This food is not shy in any sense,” Connor Morgan told Seven Days last spring, weeks before his family opened Saap, where he is the general manager. Located in a Queen Anne Victorian perched on a knoll on the outskirts of Randolph, the restaurant is Vermont’s first to serve cuisine rooted in Thailand’s northeastern region,…
Down Home Kitchen Comes to Montpelier
The former site of Rivendell Books, 100 Main Street in Montpelier, occupies a spot on the National Register of Historic Places — but the pedigree didn’t make it any easier for Mary Alice Proffitt to open a restaurant there. When she took over the space early this year, Proffitt says, the structural engineering report declared…
