Dec 14-20, 2011
Local DJ Don Mullally Has Been the Talk of St. Johnsbury for Nearly Six Decades; BPD Chief’s Concerns; Indoor Freestyle Training in Williston; Vermonters Go for Comfort Food
Cover Story
Mr. Saint Johnsbury
Local DJ Don Mullally has been the talk of the town for nearly six decades
Fletcher Allen and Fresenius Pull Plug on Sale of Dialysis Clinics
A for-profit company that wanted to buy Fletcher Allen Health Care’s five outpatient dialysis clinics announced today it’s pulling the plug on the $28-million sale. FAHC announced last year it wanted to sell off the clinics because they were losing about $1.8 million annually. Fresenius Medical Care proposed to buy them and run them through…
Maglianero Serves Up Lunch
Those in search of an easily achievable New Year’s resolution can add lunch at Maglianero to their lists. The hipster café at 47 Maple Street in Burlington begins lunch service on January 6, the first Friday of 2012. Each day, folks from the Chubby Muffin will deliver two sandwiches, two salads and a soup to…
Movies You Missed 18: Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame
This week in movies you missed: an ass-kicking, anachronistic genius detective from Hong Kong. Top that, Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes! What You Missed A 2010 mystery/action epic from prominent Hong Kong New Wave director Tsui Hark, based on the real Tang Dynasty official Di Renjie and latter-day fictions about his exploits. The year is 689…
State Health Department Bans “Bath Salts” and Five Synthetic Cannabinoids
“Tranquility”, “Cloud 9”, “Vanilla Sky” and similarly named products sold online as “bath salts” may sound as calm and relaxing as a hot bubble bath, but these ain’t your grandma’s epsom salts. Bath salts are the street name for the designer drug, Methylenedioxypyrovalerone (MDPK), a powerful new stimulant to hit the underground drug scene in…
Indefinite Detention? Vermont’s Senators Split on Support for Defense Spending Bill
Vermont’s U.S. senators parted ways last night over whether to support the $662 billion Pentagon spending bill, a sweeping piece of legislation that includes provisions civil libertarians fear will allow the military to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism rather than allow them a constitutional right to trial. Citing concerns with the size of…
The Concrete Rivals, Eat Their Weight in Snakes
(State & Main Records, digital download, CD) If you lived in Vermont 10,000 years ago, there was a good chance you had beachfront property overlooking the Champlain Sea. There was also a good chance there were gnarly waves to surf. As such, the Concrete Rivals, Montpelier’s new surf-metal trio, arrive fashionably late on the Vermont…
![Jay Peak’s Pump House [249]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/episode249.webp?resize=400%2C300&ssl=1)
Jay Peak’s Pump House [249]
12/12/11: Monday afternoon, hundreds of Vermont school kids celebrated the grand opening of the Pump House, Jay Peak’s indoor water park. Eva found her inner kid – floating along the river that encircles the park, hurtling down La Chute and slipping down the blue and green tubes over and over again. Music: La Strada, New…
Window Dressing
An East Montpelier builder argues for retrofitting old panes instead of replacing them
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Jim Moran (1908-1999) called himself a publicist, but I regard him as a pioneer performance artist. At various times in his colorful career, he led a bull through a china shop in New York City, changed horses in midstream in Nevada’s Truckee River and looked for a needle in a haystack…
News Quirks
Curses, Foiled Again A thief who tried to steal a Corvette in Prince George, British Columbia, stalled the car and then ran down the battery trying to restart it. Without power, the electric door locks wouldn’t work. Feeling trapped, the thief tried to break the side window with the victim’s antitheft steering wheel lock but…
Ground Crew
Art Review: Wendy James, Lynn Rupe and Carolyn Hack, Burlington International Airport
Bounce of Prevention
Snowboarders and skiers lower their injury risk while learning new tricks – indoors
Letters to the Editor
More Information, Please Last week’s Q&A with Greg Palast [“Muckraking Journalist Greg Palast on ‘Occupy,’ Big Oil and the U.S. Media”] contained an erroneous exchange. Seven Days said to Palast, “Yeah, but Britain doesn’t have a First Amendment or a Freedom of Information Act.” Palast responded, “That’s true.” No, not true. There is a British…
BCA Announces New Winner of Barbara Smail Award
And the winner is … Gregg Blasdel! The Burlington artist and retired St. Michael’s art prof is the recipient of the 10th annual Barbara Smail Award, which is granted to a mid-career artist and named for a beloved Vermont painter who died in 2001. It is supported by her friends and family along with Burlington…
St. Johnsbury’s Elements Food and Spirit To Close After Eight Years
St. Johnsbury received sad news this afternoon: Elements Food and Spirit, that oasis of creative local fare in a renovated mill building along the Passumpsic River, will close at the end of the year. Even though the news may hit hardest in the Northeast Kingdom, Elements’ reach was statewide. I used to live 45 minutes…
Welch Joins Last-Minute Call to Strip Indefinite-Detention Provision from Defense Bill
Rep. Peter Welch has joined 36 House members in challenging controversial provisions — namely, those that would allow the military to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens suspected of being terrorists — contained in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The proposed legislation, argue Welch and others, “authorizes indefinite military detention of suspected terrorists without protecting U.S.…
