Dec 30, 2015 – Jan 5, 2016
Vermont News Updates 2015; Highs and Lows in Vermont Food; Top 10 Vermont CDs
Obituary: Ralph Stanley Colt Jr., 1936-2016, Jericho
Ralph Stanley Colt Jr. passed away on January 10th 2016 after living with Alzheimer’s Disease for several years. He died at his home in Jericho with family by his side. Ralph served in the U.S. Navy for four years and worked at IBM for thirty-one years. He could speak German and enjoyed learning other languages.…
Obituary: Kirk L. Williams, Burlington
Kirk L. Williams died of a sudden illness on 1/4/16. Kirk was born in Brooklyn, NY to Patricia Huffman Williams and some dude from France. Very early in their childhoods Kirk and his sister, Trish, were lovingly adopted by their father, Darrell H. Williams. To quote Kirk, “My family members were no strangers to creativity…
Obituary: Richard Aldon “Dick” Ladabouche, Essex
Richard Aldon “Dick” Ladabouche, of Essex passed away on Saturday December 19, 2015. He is survived by his wife Joyce Ladabouche, two daughters, Tammy Curavoo, and Lisa Senna and husband Rob, several grandchildren, great grandchildren, nieces and nephews, three sisters; Mary Derouchie, Joyce Bovine and husband Bill and Carol Ladabouche, two brothers Bobby, and George…
Soundbites: Who the F Are the Medallions?
Is Madaila? Is Not Madaila. The controversy has been raging for … at least a week or two: Are the Medallions, the disco-funk band that claims to have time traveled to Vermont from the 1970s and is headlining the Rusty Nail in Stowe on New Year’s Eve, really just local dance-pop band Madaila? But with…
Update: A Notorious Sex Offender Settles Into a Quiet Life
Richard Laws’ release from prison in April caused a news media firestorm. Authorities announced that a sex offender was being set free. Media outlets rushed to spread the word and even filmed Laws being dropped off in Burlington. Police printed up flyers with his mug shot, warning the public. The notices wound up affixed to…
WTF: Questions That Went by the Wayside
We get a lot of queries from inquiring minds, aka our readers, every year. This column runs every other week, so that gives us just 26 opportunities to answer them. (Or 25, given that we’re squandering this one on not answering any.) Of course, we lean toward questions that have a retrievable answer — or…
Sabra Field on Film: A New Doc Celebrates Her Life and Work
The first contact between artist Sabra Field and filmmaker Bill Phillips was anything but auspicious. Phillips and his family had just moved to tiny East Barnard. On a spring morning in 1975, they were stunned when a dog ran onto their porch and shook their tiny kitten by the nape of its neck, killing it.…
Visiting Critic Program Brings Perspective to Local Arts
As many Vermonters know, small is beautiful. Yet small can also be limiting — particularly for artists, whose career vitality often depends on reaching, and responding to, broader audiences. “How do we get people [to Vermont] to see the work that’s being made here?” asks Burlington City Arts curator DJ Hellerman in a recent conversation…
Update: Cops Drop Facebook Shaming
Law-breakers don’t generally inspire a lot of sympathy. But when police in South Burlington and Winooski started posting mug shots of crime suspects on their Facebook pages, it prompted a debate about a social media trend in law enforcement. Police chiefs in the two communities defended the practice, pointing out that suspect photos are public…
My Brother Is Dating an Awful, Evil Woman
Dear Athena, I have a brother who is dating someone so completely awful and evil, and I hate her. She talks shit behind his back. She is manipulative and tries to keep us away from him. She is also into drugs and a bad influence on him. They’ve been together on and off for a…
Update: At Vermont Vets’ Home, No Rest From Funding Challenges
The Vermont Veterans’ Home has been on shaky financial ground since the Great Recession. The number of patients has dropped at this special nursing home that serves veterans of military service, their spouses and “gold star” parents who’ve lost a son or daughter in the line of duty. It has lost some federal funding because…
Name Game: 2015 in Aptronyms
By now, most of our readers are familiar with the phenomenon of — if not the name for — aptronyms: surnames that seem uncannily suited to their bearers’ professions, pursuits or extracurricular activities. Collecting them over 12 months of news and listing them in Seven Days’ year-end issue has been a tradition for the past…
Update: Vermont’s Medical Marijuana Industry Is on the Move
Six months ago Seven Days found Vermont’s two-year-old medical-marijuana industry trying to manage booming customer demand in Chittenden County. Operators of the Burlington dispensary were looking to open to a grow facility in Milton, where some officials were skeptical of associating with — not to mention leasing space to — such a business. At the same time,…
Life Stories: Vermonters We Lost in 2015
When former lieutenant governor Barbara Snelling died on November 2, every major media outlet in Vermont — and the Boston Globe — noted her passing. Legendary University of Vermont debate director Alfred “Tuna” Snider, who died in December, was memorialized on Slate and in the New York Times. Chef and restaurateur Michel Mahe’s death spawned…
Update: Is Burlington Ready to Grow … Up?
A $200 million plan to rebuild Burlington Town Center — the Queen City’s aging mall — is forcing Vermont’s largest city to envision its future. The construction of two 14-story towers would require changes to the 105-foot height limit now in place downtown. At 150 feet, they’d significantly alter Burlington’s low-rise skyline — and rank as the tallest…
Vermont Trekkies Launch Web-Based TV Series
Seven Days’ September 9 story “Beaming There” covered the launch of Trekonderoga, a first-ever “Star Trek” convention held in Ticonderoga, N.Y. The three-day event, hosted in the town’s Retro Film Studios, was the brainchild of James Cawley, a 48-year-old Ticonderoga native and diehard Trekkie. Over the past decade, Cawley recreated the entire film set of…
Free Will Astrology (12/30/15)
CAPRICORN (Dec. 21-Jan 19) In his essay “The Etiquette of Freedom,” poet Gary Snyder says that wildness “is perennially within us, dormant as a hard-shelled seed, awaiting the fire or flood that awakes it again.” The fact that it’s a “hard-shelled” seed is a crucial detail. The vital stuff inside the stiff outer coating may…
Update: Colchester Officials Give Up the Buoy Battle
In June, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers gave Bruce Barry permission to install 22 buoys off his lakeshore property on Malletts Bay, a boating mecca. The purpose: to create a safe swimming area for future inhabitants of Barry’s housing development. The Colchester Selectboard had unanimously opposed the buoys on the grounds that they would…
Recapping the Top Local Recordings of 2015
Top 10 Local Recordings of 2015 Madaila, The Dance Maryse Smith, The Way It Is Michael Chorney & Hollar General, Shameless Light The Mountain Says No, JV Black Rabbit, Red Flannel Hash Francesca Blanchard, deux visions Reverend Ben Donovan & the Congregation, Reverend Ben Donovan & the Congregation Pistol Fist, Wrist Soup Kelly Ravin, County Tracks…
![Where Are They Now? [SIV426]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/episode426-4-scaled-e1755138458752.webp?resize=640%2C508&ssl=1)
Where Are They Now? [SIV426]
12/29/15: I’ve been making my Stuck in Vermont video series for Seven Days for almost nine years. The videos have been seen over 3 million times online and shorter versions play every Thursday on WCAX. I’ve been lucky enough to meet fascinating people up and down our state and I love sharing their stories with…
Update: Alleged Serial Poacher Mounts a Vigorous Defense
Wayne Dion of Irasburg may be one of the most prolific deer poachers in Vermont, according to the Fish & Wildlife officials who arrested him. While searching his home in late 2014, game wardens found more than 100 deer mounts, seven freezers full of apples and corn, which can be used for animal bait, and…
How South End Artists Weighed in on planBTV
Outside the South End Arts and Business Association office on Pine Street, a “metered” bike rack is tucked against the brick wall. Both functional and free (the meters don’t operate), it quietly represents what has been a sometimes-contentious public conversation over the past year. Tyler Vendituoli received a stipend from Burlington City Arts to create…
Dropping the Ball: Celebrating New Year’s Eve, the Y2K Way…
Originally published December 1, 1999 The pressure has never been greater to make it to midnight — if for no other reason that to count yourself among the millennial masses when the great odometer in the sky turns to 2-0-0-0. Like missing Woodstock, it will be hard to explain to future generations how — and…
Update: Still Spooked, Murphy the Dog Eludes Capture
In June 2014, Morrisville resident Kirstin Campbell got into a minor car crash in Stowe. When Campbell checked on her beloved 3-year-old golden retriever, Murphy, he bolted from the backseat. He has been on the loose ever since. “If you say his name, he runs like a jackrabbit,” Campbell’s grandfather, Ed Hamel, told Seven Days.…
Update: Money and Mask Ban Keep Burlington ‘Furry’-Free
During Burlington’s Mardi Gras celebration last February, a city employee ordered a band of people dressed as furry animals to remove their masks. The charge: They were “performing” on Church Street without the required permit. The revelers were members of Vermont Furs — people known as “furries,” who share an interest in anthropomorphic cartoon animals.…
Update: In the Tiny Town of Victory, the Feuding Goes On
The Northeast Kingdom may look sepia-toned to outsiders, but the burg of Victory, population 62, has been embroiled in a decades-long feud. Members of two factions in the tiny town — the Vermont equivalent of the Hatfields versus the McCoys — have taken out no-trespass orders and accused each other of tapping phones, killing pets and…
What Happened to the VHS ’70s Show?
In March and April of this year, the Vermont Historical Society in Barre hosted a series of community forums on the influence of 1970s counterculture on the state — and vice versa. These gatherings, which Kevin J. Kelley wrote about in March, marked the early stages of a VHS research project called “1970s Counterculture and…
Update: A DCF Caseworker’s Slaying Reverberates Statewide
Those still inside Barre City Place rushed to the windows to peer at the parking lot below. Lara Sobel, 48, a state Department for Children and Families caseworker, was on the ground, mortally wounded. A woman with a rifle stood nearby, yelling that DCF had taken her 9-year-old daughter. Police affidavits later identified the shooter…
Vermont’s Top 10 Political Stories of 2015
Last December, shortly before this end-of-year column went to press, we had to make a significant last-minute edit. A few hours earlier, Gov. Peter Shumlin dropped the biggest news of the year: He was abandoning his long-promised plan to build a single-payer-style health care system in Vermont. That decision, in many ways, drove the politics…
Update: Randy Quaid Is Stuck in Vermont, Legally
How did actor Randy Quaid — of Brokeback Mountain and National Lampoon’s Vacation fame — and his wife, Evi, end up in little Lincoln, Vt.? The story reads like a bad movie script. Arrest warrants issued in California had charged the pair with squatting in their former Hollywood home and skipping out on hotel bills. The Quaids…
Update: Middlebury Police Probe Potential Link to Cold Case
“The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst” mesmerized HBO viewers earlier this year with the story of the creepy and eccentric member of a prominent New York City real estate family who may have gotten away with murder. It focused on the disappearance of Durst’s wife and the killings of two other people…
Update: Finally Christine
Dave Hallquist was leading a double life when Seven Days observed the 59-year-old chief executive officer of Vermont Electric Cooperative last month: Among friends and family, Hallquist was Christine. Among colleagues, employees and board members at the state’s second-largest electric utility, the CEO was still operating as Dave. Preparing to take the final step in…
Letters to the Editor (12/30/15)
A Better Way? At a recent meeting at the Champlain Elementary School, there was no dialogue to speak of [Off Message: “Champlain Parkway Reviewed at ‘Unexpectedly Civil’ Meeting,” December 1]. It was clear the $30 million, 2.5-mile road is a fait accompli, which means something that has been done and cannot change. I would like…
The Good, the Bad and the Wacky Films of 2015
Rick Kisonak: Hollywood is a pretty happy place right now, and the reason has nothing to do with holiday cheer. Rather, it has to do with sequels, remakes and reboots. And, more than anything else, with franchises. Largely on the basis of their grosses, 2015’s box office has already surpassed last year’s by 4 to…
Update: The Weakening Loonie Keeps Some Canadians at Home
For more than a decade, Canadian customers could buy their baguettes at the Newport Natural Market and Café with their own colorful currency. But last spring, a sign went up at the cash register to announce that the border-community store would no longer accept loonies. Its value — roughly on par with the U.S. dollar…
The Local Scene on the Best Music of 2015
Each December, Seven Days polls area musicians, club owners, talent buyers and others to find out which records rocked their ears over the preceding year. We ask for their favorite local and nonlocal albums. (See our own top 10 Vermont albums) As a bonus, we also ask for predictions of what might come to pass…
Jurassic World Director Colin Trevorrow Looks Ahead
In an unremarkable suite of offices in an unremarkable brick building in downtown Burlington, the director of the year’s biggest movie (barring the possibility of Death Star-size returns for Star Wars: The Force Awakens) is quietly working on his next project. It’s a decidedly smaller-scale film: no far-flung location shoots, no $150 million budget and…
2015’s Highs and Lows in Vermont Food
Food writers want every restaurant to be exceptional. We crave exquisite, thoughtfully prepared food sourced from the best local farms and fishermen. We swoon for service that’s charming and professional but casual and fun, and for friendly bartenders who know what we’re drinking before we do. We yearn for chefs who honor their own heritage…
