Bob Spear, wood carver, founder of the Birds of Vermont Museum
Eighty-one-year-old woodcarver and naturalist Bob Spear has birds on the brain — and has since he started crafting them from wood in 1938. That’s when the teen-ager, then living on a Colchester farm, used a jackknife to carve a couple of parakeets. Spear now lives next door to the Birds of Vermont Museum in Huntington…
Flick Chick
Appropriating hipster lingo from the jazz world, a group of performers collectively known as the Rat Pack captured the country’s imagination four decades ago. “You dig?” was the rhetorical question that punctuated their conversations. At the nucleus of “the Clan,” as it was also called, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Peter Lawford and Sammy Davis, Jr.…
Making a Scene: An abundance of drama classes teached Vermonters how to act
If it’s true that "acting is suffering," as T.S. Eliot once wrote, then woe unto the handful of student thespians assembled in Jock MacDonald’s class. On a recent Wednesday evening, the drama coach is requiring them to dig deeper and deeper into the emotional subtext of scenes they’re recreating from well-known films. Even ostensible comedies…
Tome, Sweet, Tome: Bear Pond Books, Montpelier
You can tell a lot about a bookstore by which fiction “faces out.” At Bear Pond Books in Montpelier, Vermont writers Lee Durkee, Robert Jones and Archer Mayor get as much exposure as Stephen King and John Grisham. Scanning floor-to-ceiling stacks serviced by an old sliding wooden ladder, it’s clear local literati are masterminding the…
Silk Route: Isadora
“It looks like it’s going to be a lingerie Christmas,” a recent issue of the trade journal Women’s Wear proclaimed. That’s good news, of course, for Irene Callisto, owner of Isadora. The pretty, boudoir-ish shop on College Street in Burlington is a respite from the harsh world at any time of year, but the holidays…
Sex in the Country? Good stuff
Let’s face it — St. Albans is not exactly Sin City. Decked out for Christmas, its wholesome Main Street looks like it was lifted from an episode of “Leave it to Beaver.” Uh, make that “Happy Days.” In fact, “Rail City” is home to the annual maple festival and one of the state’s largest selection…
Comics Relief: Earth Prime Comics
Do you dream of bounding over tall buildings, or spending your days conquering evil? Maybe you just appreciate great stories and masterful illustration. If so, Earth Prime Comics, on lower Church Street in Burlington, is the place to be. Comic lovers, underground artists, toy fanatics and collectors have long depended on this small shop for…
Creative Clutter: Provisions, Waitsfield
Back in horse-and-buggy days, rural folk used to ride into town to pick up “provisions,” maybe catching some vittles at a country café on the way home. Holly McIntyre knows that the word “provisions” did and still does mean “things you need.” But a glance around her Waitsfield shop of the same name suggests that…
Badge of Courage
High Noon” on Capitol Hill will hit this Thursday when Attorney General John Ashcroft finally appears in the witness chair before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Mr. Ashcroft will, after weeks of dodging an appearance, finally be eyeball-to-eyeball with the senior senator from Vermont, Patrick Leahy. For weeks, the attorney general and the chairman have sparred…
