Dec 6-12, 2017
Three Photographers Document Vermont’s Changing Ways of Life; Gun Sense Vermont Moves Forward With New Leader; In Windsor’s Artisans Park, Food Businesses Thrive
Cover Story
How Three Photographers View a Changing Vermont
In a 1988 music video, Vermont comedy duo Gould & Stearns sang, “Vermont is a third-world country (but the people don’t know).” Provocation? Perhaps. But that statement evokes a contradiction at the core of our state’s identity: The way of life that, for many, has bestowed Vermont with its particular charm is an endangered one. That same paradox…
Obituary: Kathleen O’Neil, 1957-2017
Kathleen O’Neil passed away peacefully on November 13 at her home in Warren after a long battle against metastatic breast cancer. She was born in Troy, N.Y., on October 27, 1957. She was one of two children brought up by her loving parents, Aileen and Albert O’Neil of Woodford, Vt., where she spent her childhood…
Seriously: About Last Week
In this episode, Bryan catches up on the news he missed while out of the office and plays tag with a six-year-old to better understand the process of selecting a buyer for Burlington Telecom. Featuring Michael Frank as “Timmy.” CREDITS Written, filmed and edited by: Bryan Parmelee Photography/artwork by: Burlington City Arts, Katie Jickling, Jon…
The Cannabis Catch-Up: Stories This Week From Around the Web
Welcome to the Cannabis Catch-Up! Seven Days wants to keep you up on the latest cannabis news from around the country. Every Friday, we’ll round up our favorite stories from the week that was. The biggest news this week came Wednesday, when the Los Angeles City Council approved recreational marijuana sales. While cannabis has been legal…
Obituary: Joan M. Cawley, 1930-2017
Joan Marie Cawley (Ardini), 87, passed away peacefully on Wednesday December 6, 2017 after a long illness. Joan was born in Winthrop Massachusetts on June 6, 1930 and raised in Revere, Massachusetts by her mother Emily and her father Edward. Joan graduated at the top of her class from Revere High School in 1948, followed…
![Female Founders Speakers Series [SIV513]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/episode513.webp?resize=1200%2C900&ssl=1)
Female Founders Speakers Series [SIV513]
11/29/17: Season Two of the Female Founders Speaker Series kicked off last Wednesday at Hotel Vermont in Burlington with a panel of women leaders from Burton Snowboards. Donna Carpenter, CEO and co-owner, discussed what it took to build a global brand while also increasing the numbers of women in leadership positions at Burton from 10%…
Sandi Earle’s Recipes Are Beer-Enhanced
Before Sandi Earle became the executive chef of Champlain College, she cooked at McDonald’s, sliced meat at a bygone deli in the Old North End, managed the kitchen at the old Ground Round Grill & Bar, and worked the line at the Windjammer’s Upper Deck Pub. She has baked biscotti and banana bread for Burlington…
Ask Athena: Hemorrhoids Are Affecting My Sex Life
Dear Athena, I have hemorrhoids. My boyfriend has a very large penis, and we like to do it doggy style. The last time we had sex, the stimulation was so much that I thought I pooped, but it was a hemorrhoid poking out! It was so embarrassing that I had to stop, but he doesn’t…
Facebook Group Sensi-Babeington Offers a Safe Forum
It’s no secret that the internet is a scary place. It’s home to bullies and scammers of every stripe. It may be slowly sucking the souls of America’s children (just kidding, sort of). But there’s one corner of the web, on Facebook, where Burlington “babes” have gathered to find solace, solidarity and safe access to…
Page 32: Five Short Takes on New Vermont Books
Seven Days writers can’t possibly read, much less review, all the books that arrive in a steady stream by post, email and, in one memorable case, a murder of magpies. So this monthly feature is our way of introducing you to five books by Vermont authors. To do that, we contextualize each book just a…
Eat This Week, December 6 to 12, 2017: Going in Circles
Sip holiday-themed cocktails and snack on free treats from Miss Weinerz and Sneakers Bistro while shopping for gifts all around the Winooski roundabout. Vendors offer craft foods, clothing, jewelry and everybody’s favorite stocking stuffer: goodies infused with CBD. Don’t forget to leave some out for Santa. He’ll need it. Winooski Holiday Pop-Up Shop: Thursday, December…
Vermont’s Ma & Pembum Crafts Leather Bags With an Altruistic Mission
Four years ago, Phebe Mott had a nightmare: “My kids had been taken, and I didn’t know where,” she says. Sitting in a sunlit booth at the Bristol Bakery & Café in Hinesburg, she recalls the dream and shudders. “It was like a movie,” she continues quietly. “Somehow, I found out they were at this…
Movie Review: Even Denzel Washington Can’t Make a Case for Legal Drama ‘Roman J. Israel, Esq.’
Over the past 40 years, Denzel Washington has played so many attorneys (at least five by my count), he could probably pass the bar. He’s argued cases in modern classics (Philadelphia), in ho-hum paycheck projects (The Pelican Brief) and in films so disposable I’d wager nobody reading this can recall them (Heart Condition, Ricochet ……
New Burger Joint Buddy’s Famous Comes to Montpelier
After owning and operating Park Row Café in Waterbury for more than two decades, Jeff Stoudt has left it to open a restaurant in Montpelier: Buddy’s Famous at 15 Barre Street. Buddy’s opened in late November in the building that was home to Angeleno’s Pizza for 37 years. It serves burgers, fries, shakes and fruit…
Why Does Vermont Often Appear at the Top, or Bottom, of State Rankings?
We’ve entered the season when local news outlets look back on the past year and compile their best-of/worst-of lists. Invariably, those lists mention how Vermont stacks up relative to other states on some trend. As surely as you’ll hear “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” played ad nauseam in the local mall, Vermont will show…
Letters to the Editor (12/6/17)
Local Lifeline When you purchase items on Amazon that you could have purchased from your downtown community merchant in Montpelier, Barre or Church Street in Burlington, you are voting for a vacant downtown. You are voting for the elimination of local jobs. You are voting for substantial decreases to your community’s tax base that helps…
A Gunshot Survivor Aims to Secure Background Checks in Vermont
The new leader of Gun Sense Vermont understands gun violence better than most. When Clai Lasher-Sommers was 13, her abusive stepfather shot her in the back with a high-powered hunting rifle. Forty-seven years later, lead shrapnel is still working its way out of her body, leaving sores on her skin as it surfaces. Earlier this…
Rutland’s Chaffee Art Center Embarks on Expansive Makeover
The Chaffee Art Center in Rutland has been closed since May. But big plans are afoot there, and not just to renovate its historic building or expand arts programming — though both will occur. Executive director Jim Boughton and the center’s board of directors, led by new president Dimitri Ampatiellos, are on a visionary mission.…
Questions, and Answers, About ‘The Bachelor: Winter Games’
Earlier this fall, reports began circulating that a spin-off of ABC’s hit reality dating series “The Bachelor” would be filmed in Vermont over the winter. The new series, called “The Bachelor: Winter Games,” is reportedly a cold-weather version of another popular “Bachelor” offshoot, “Bachelor in Paradise.” Shot in Mexico, that show featured losers — er,…
Album Review: Metamorph, ‘E T H E R’
(Self-released, CD, digital download) Each corner of the back cover for E T H E R, the latest album from Montpelier-based tantric-techno duo Metamorph, is adorned with a symbol: a yin-yang, an ankh, a Sanskrit om and a pentacle. Each has ties to disparate geographical regions and historical periods, but all are related to mysticism…
Album Reveiw: Ol’ Crow & LoKi, ‘ET’
(Milkhaus, digital download) Vermont hip-hop has had a strong run in 2017, with more shows, more artists and more albums than any year in recent memory. That trend is largely due to the hard work of young, tight-knit collectives such as artisan record label and studio Milkhaus. Hungry, bursting with ideas and constantly improving, this…
Seven Questions for Vermont Folklife Center’s Kathleen Haughey
Two years ago, Kathleen Haughey moved from Rhode Island, where she had completed a master’s degree in ethnomusicology at Brown University, to become the education director at Vermont Folklife Center in Middlebury. During her interview for the position, she felt an immediate chemistry with the institution’s longtime co-executive director, Greg Sharrow, Haughey recalled. She came…
Movie Review: Kids Run Wild in the Gritty, Joyous Indie ‘The Florida Project’
Whether it villainizes or sanctifies them, Hollywood seldom offers us convincing portraits of the contemporary poor. Panhandlers and welfare moms apparently don’t fit the aesthetics of the dream factory. But, as we discover in writer-director Sean Baker’s new movie, they fit just fine into the physical margins of another dream factory: Orlando, Fla.’s Walt Disney…
Free Will Astrology (12/6/17)
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21) As far back as ancient Egypt, Rome and Greece, people staged ceremonies to mark the embarkation of a new ship. The intention was to bestow a blessing for the maiden voyage and ever thereafter. Good luck! Safe travels! Beginning in 18th-century Britain and America, such rituals often featured the smashing of…
Two Notorious Crashes Fuel Marijuana Legalization Debate
Recent news that the drivers in two deadly crashes had used marijuana is adding fuel to the ongoing debate over whether the drug should be legalized in Vermont. Wrong-way driver Steven Bourgoin had THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, in his system when he slammed into a car carrying five Mad River Valley teenagers last…
The New ‘Collected Poems’ Invites Re-Reading Galway Kinnell
A munificently talented and prolific generation of American poets is leaving us. In recent years, we’ve lost Adrienne Rich, Philip Levine, Maxine Kumin, Daniel Hoffman, Carolyn Kizer, Galway Kinnell, and, in 2017, John Ashbery and Richard Wilbur — all writers born in the 1920s. One of those losses has particular significance for Vermonters. This month,…
A Vermont Lawyer Says He’ll Take Payment in Bitcoin
In Vermont, the practice of bartering for goods and services is as old as the hills. But accepting payment in cryptocurrency? That’s just plain futuristic in a state where internet access is still sketchy in places. But David Sterrett, a lawyer from Monkton who has offices in Williston and Boston, is willing to give it…
New Zine ‘Sniff This BTV’ Showcases Skateboarders
Evan Litsios sounds like an ethnographer when he talks about Burlington’s skateboarding scene. Its culture, he asserts, is built on a foundation of shared stories and oral histories, whether related to tricks, local skate spots or the reflections of longtime skateboarders. On Thursday, December 7, a few of those stories will manifest physically in the…
Trivial Pursuits: The Strange Allure of Low-Numbered License Plates
Ever think about your license plate? I don’t. Couldn’t even tell you the number. But apparently, some of Vermont’s most prominent citizens think about it quite a lot. I’m talking specifically of low-number plates. You’ve probably seen them around and briefly wondered who’s driving that car with license number 136 or 899 or whatever. The…
Soundbites: Let’s Dance; Syl-ver Lining
Let’s Dance In case you haven’t already heard, Vermont was recently selected as the primary shooting location for “The Bachelor: Winter Games,” an upcoming installment of ABC television’s “The Bachelor” franchise. Several competitive reality series exist in the so-called Bachelor Nation, including the flagship series, “The Bachelorette,” “Bachelor in Paradise” and, as of February 2018,…
Four More Local Albums You (Probably) Haven’t Heard
Vermont’s music scene is an embarrassment of riches. If you find yourself wondering how it’s possible for a state with such a small population to produce so many homegrown records per year, know that you’re not alone. The number of albums Seven Days receives for review constantly amazes and overwhelms us. To wit: 2018 is…
How the Burlington Telecom ‘Debacle’ Divided a City Council
Five hours into the Burlington City Council’s November 27 meeting, Councilor Dave Hartnett (D-North District) decided to take matters into his own hands. His colleagues were trying for the third time to select a buyer for Burlington Telecom, and, in Hartnett’s view, they were once again headed for a deadlock. So, just before 11 p.m.,…
Food Businesses Thrive at Windsor’s Artisans Park
At SILO Distillery in Windsor, the bartenders shake up a drink called Patio Punch. It’s a combination of cucumber vodka, pink grapefruit juice and orange marmalade from Blake Hill Preserves. And at nearby Blake Hill, the shelves are jam-packed with 10-ounce jars of gem-colored fruit. Among them is an award-winning orange marmalade made with SILO’s…
Burlington’s Cobblestone Deli Changes Location and Name
Cobblestone Deli in Burlington has moved and changed its name, trading its Battery Street location for a storefront at 55 Main Street and becoming Main Street Deli & Cobblestone Catering. The new business, owned by Peter Liska and Nick Betcher, operates under an LLC called Artisan Culinary Kitchen, said Betcher. The enterprise has three branches:…
Jamaican Supreme Moves Indoors, on Weekends
For four years, Bilon Bailey has been dishing up curried goat, jerk chicken, beef patties and fried plantains from his Jamaican Supreme food truck. Now he’s adding a part-time brick-and-mortar location to the mix. Beginning this weekend, Jamaican Supreme will serve lunch and dinner in the Little Red Kitchen at 505 Riverside Avenue in Burlington…
