Perfect Union? In Montpelier and Cincinnati, Judity Sturnick puts Vermont College back on course
Dressed in bright reds suited for a seasonal greeting card, Judith Sturnick acknowledges she can count at least two blessings as Christmas approaches: The 62-year-old educator recently assumed the presidency of Vermont College, after negotiating a deal to put it under the umbrella of the nationwide Union Institute. And, late last week, she tied the…
Oy, Tannenbaum: A tree-thinking Jew sizes up the Christmas conifer
To tree, or not to tree? In homes like mine, where I am Jewish and my husband is not, that is the question. Our situation is hardly unique. According to recent estimates, fully one-third of married American Jews have non-Jewish spouses. Hallmark cashes in on this trend with a cheerful card showing a house with…
The Seven Days of Christmas: Holiday memories from our, well, stable of writers
Nancy Stearns Bercaw At 26, I was living the dream: single, unemployed and sponging off my parents. No rent, no responsibilities, no life. How did the downwardly mobile bachelor fill his days? By watching the entire PBS Civil War series; reading Anna Karenina; and ingesting hearty doses of anti-depressants. When that failed, I auditioned for…
Ouagadougou?
Our favorite presidential hopeful is visiting Africa this week, attending an international AIDS conference and enhancing his foreign affairs resume. Gov. Howard Dean M.D. has suddenly become Vermont’s premier world traveler. Since September 11, he’s been to Germany, Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Finland and Canada. Now he’s in the heart of deepest darkest Africa — the…
Guys Night Out
I was driving two big guys to a house in Malletts Bay. Apparently they had been downtown on the prowl for women and had struck out. They were disappointed and expressed it with anger — the one emotion so many men in our culture give themselves permission to display. Not, thankfully, smash-the-taxi-window-angry; just peeved-and-ornery angry.…
The Monologist Prepares
THE MONOLOGIST PREPARES: You don’t say “break a leg” to Spalding Gray these days. The 60-year-old monologist was shaky on stage last Saturday as a result of a recent automobile accident in Ireland that damaged his hip. He can still climb up on a massage table, though, for his ritual pre-performance rub down. Former Burlingtonian…
Creche Course: A Montreal museum makes the nativity scene
The crèche, or nativity scene, of Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus is one of the most universal and enduring symbols of Christianity, and its annual display is a tradition worldwide. One history of the custom says that actors dramatically portraying the scene eventually were replaced with figurines, and lo, a new folk-art form was…
Flick Chick
Since November 16, Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone has been raking in the big bucks. The Fellowship of the Ring, coming December 21, should be another blockbuster. Wedged in between those wizards and hobbits, Focus is a fictional but far less phantasmagoric movie — also depicting good versus evil — that opens this week…
Water Music: Navigating the lake-inspired latest from Burlington pianist Lar Duggan
If there were an award for best under-recorded jazz artist in Burlington, it would be a toss-up between two long-time regulars on the local scene — James Harvey and Lar Duggan. Harvey recently released his first solo album, and Duggan has just come out with the second in a professional career that has so far…
