Dec 9-15, 2015
Controversy About the Overdose Drug Narcan; Author Alex Wolff Talks Basketball and Obama; French Bistro de Margot Gets It Right
Cover Story
Staying Alive: The Highs and Lows of Overdose-Reversing Narcan
“My son dropped dead in there,” the sixtysomething man told a reporter, pointing toward his bathroom. His pronouncement was only slightly hyperbolic. After attempting to quit heroin, “George” said, his son misjudged how much his body could handle. As the passed-out addict’s lips turned blue, his father located a plastic syringe fitted with a foam…
Obituary: Dr. Alfred “Tuna” Charles Snider, Burlington
Dr. Alfred “Tuna” Charles Snider, of Burlington, teacher, scholar and mentor of the University of Vermont debate team for over 30 years, died December 11. He is survived by his wife, Bojana Skrt; daughter Sarah Jane; son-in-law Justin Matthew Green; and grandsons Jackson Matthew and Levi Martin Green. He also left a sister, Janet Hermanaeu;…
Obituary: Albert James “Jim” Oxenham, 1935-2015, Essex Junction
Albert James “Jim” Oxenham passed away December 13, 2015, at Mansfield Place in Essex Junction under his own terms. Jim was born the only child of Albert and Joan Oxenham on June 20, 1935. He was a 1957 graduate of Rutgers University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in business marketing. Thereafter, Jim joined the…
Obituary: Thomas Earl McGregor Jr., 1958-2015, Grand Isle
Thomas Earl McGregor Jr., 57, died Saturday, December 12th surrounded by family and friends after a long battle with cancer. Tom was born November 29th, 1958 in Burlington to Thomas Earl McGregor Sr. and Patricia Rock Potvin. A graduate of the University of West Virginia and longtime resident of the greater Burlington area, Tom worked…
Obituary: Carlene Claire Mulheron
Carlene Claire Mulheron, age 77 years, a lifelong area resident, died suddenly early Wednesday morning, December 9, 2015, at her Victoria Lane apartment. Born in Alburgh on, July 29, 1938, she was the daughter of the late Ira and Edith (Mott) Curtis. She graduated from Swanton High School and on, November 26, 1955, was married…
Obituary: Charles Arthur Hatin
Charles Arthur Hatin, age 77 years, a resident of Alburgh for 35 years died suddenly Monday, December 7, 2015, at his home. Born in Burlington on, January 20, 1938, he was the son of the late Alphonse and Grace (Cameron) Hatin. He attended Burlington schools and on, December 22, 1977, he married the former Joan…
Obituary: Janet B. (Guertin) Vittum
Janet B. (Guertin) Vittum, age 74, passed away on Tuesday, Dec. 8th, 2015 in Swanton. Janet was born in St. Albans on, February 19, 1941, to Theodore and Dorothy Boisvert. Janet was a graduate of Bellows Free Academy in St. Albans. She worked for many decades at the Northwestern Medical Center, known in the past…
Obituary: David Allen Miller
David Allen Miller, age 54 years, died suddenly on Saturday, December 5, 2015, in a motor vehicle hit and run in East Highgate. David was the son of Harold and Virginia (White) Miller . David was a man with a big heart. He adored his nieces and nephews and talked about them with anyone who…
Krampus
Back in the good old days (OK, the 1990s), movie theaters in Burlington still had late shows on Christmas Eve. One of my best movie-going experiences was seeing Scream at one of these near-empty pre-Yuletide screenings. Another December 24, I chose a VHS copy of The Ring over a midnight service. It’s not that I…
The Audacity of Hoop Author Talks Basketball and Obama
Let’s imagine the opening shots of the inevitable future biopic on the life and times of President Barack Obama. It starts with a close-up of a basketball dribbled on a blacktop court. The camera pans slowly out to reveal the hustle and flow of a playground pickup game; a blur of whirling elbows and sneakers;…
Four More Local Albums you (Probably) Haven’t Heard
So many records, so little time. Seven Days gets more album submissions than we know what to do with. And, given the ease of record making these days, it’s difficult to keep up. Still, we try to get to every local release that comes across the music desk, no matter how obscure or far out. To that…
Clean Living at Chasworth Farm Soap Studio
Lucille the mannequin relaxes in a claw-foot tub at Chasworth Farm Soap Studio in St. Albans. She wears just a stretch of red ribbon wrapped around her torso; everything below is properly hidden beneath shimmery shreds of opalescent tinsel. “We had this big, gorgeous window, and I thought it would be fun,” says Marcia J.…
Kingdom Monologues: Seeking Stories in the NEK
Anyone who has seen a production of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues knows that the 1996 play emboldened the notion of storytelling. The show consists of a group of actresses who talk about the female experience — everything from body image to orgasm to genital mutilation — and has been staged hundreds of times around…
Soundbites: Hello, Smokin’ Grass!; Goodbye, Maryse Smith
Together Again Continuing on a theme, let’s talk about Nectar’s 40th anniversary. No, I didn’t make a colossally embarrassing mistake requiring a nearly full-column-length mea culpa. Judging by the “It’s Been [1] Weeks Since Your Last Major Fuckup” sign hanging over my desk, I think we’re good on that front. Rather, this Thursday, December 10,…
Maple Landmark Woodcraft Branches Out
In the second-floor assembly room at Maple Landmark Woodcraft in Middlebury, employees sit in rows of workbenches and busily pound wheels and magnets onto NameTrains, the company’s alphabet-letter cars that connect to form names and words. Once each wooden car is completed, a worker at the end of the assembly line zooms it down a…
At Off Center, Jordan Gullikson’s New Play and Theater ‘Lab’
As the days grow shorter and our artificially illuminated nights grow longer, Burlington actor and playwright Jordan Gullikson’s newest work provides a timely commentary. A staged reading of his Blood Maze (Thieves of Darkness) on Saturday, December 19, will close out the Off Center for the Dramatic Arts’ inaugural season of a yearlong series of…
The Spot’s ‘Sober Kitchen’ Kicks the Habit
Even people who have never worked in a restaurant are likely to have heard tales about the boozy, druggy excesses of kitchen staffers. The one about the line cooks who kept fifths of whiskey alongside the knives at their stations. The one about the chef who sniffed half an ounce of cocaine to get through…
Mark Giroux Brings the Greens for Christmas
Name: Mark Giroux Town: Newport Job: Owner, Mark’s Vermont Christmas Wreath Company Mark Giroux grew up poor. His parents made and sold Christmas wreaths every holiday season to afford Christmas presents for him and his six siblings. The whole family helped, scavenging the woods for brush, assembling the wreaths by hand and selling them door-to-door.…
Maay Maay on the Mic: Somali Bantu TV
On a Saturday morning in early December, Mohamed Muktar scribbled furiously on his legal pad, oblivious to the flurry of activity in the studio of Vermont Community Access Media (VCAM) in Burlington. Filming for Muktar’s weekly news program, “Somali Bantu TV,” was about to start, and he was finalizing the list of issues he’d be…
Heroin Worship: Can Methadone Fix Vermont’s Growing Drug Problem?
This story was originally published November 10, 1999. The story of Nina H. belies the impression that heroin is a new phenomenon in Vermont. It’s been here at least 20 years. One thing is different, though: “In 1994 you couldn’t buy heroin in City Hall Park in Burlington,” says Nina. “Now you can.” Her friend…
Get Your Hunger Games On at VTAG
How does it feel to be struck by an arrow squarely in the nape of the neck? Normally you wouldn’t be able to answer this — because you’d be dead. But on a recent day at Shelburne’s Field House, I find myself experiencing the sensation and living to tell about it, given that said arrow…
Free Will Astrology (12/9/15)
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): My old friend Jeff started working at a gambling casino in Atlantic City. “You’ve gone over to the dark side!” I kidded. He acknowledged that 90 percent of the casino’s visitors lose money gambling. On the bright side, he said, 95 percent of them leave happy. I don’t encourage you to…
He’s Happy With the Way Things Are, But I’m Not
Dear Athena, I’m in my thirties and am dating a man who’s nearly 50. We’ve been together for a few years; we also share a business. I love him and want to be with him, but I know he is really not into anything too serious. I wanted to move in, and he wasn’t into…
Author Jay Parini on Writing, Memory and Gore Vidal
Jay Parini’s Empire of Self: A Life of Gore Vidal, published in October, is not the first biography of the late writer, raconteur and political gadfly (1925-2012). Indeed, Vidal’s status as a larger-than-life figure in American letters fairly ensures that bookshelves will continue to groan with inquiries into his life. What distinguishes Empire of Self…
Will Highway Safety Put the Brakes on Legalizing Pot in Vermont?
Vermont State Police Lt. John Flannigan was at his son’s basketball practice after hours on December 1 when he got a text message, asking if he was available to return to work to test a man suspected of drugged driving. According to police, they’d gotten calls about a driver stopped in traffic on busy Route…
Little Bruce Junior, It’s a Bummer Baby
(Self-released, Cassette, digital download) Is it better to describe an album by how it sounds or by how it feels? To me, those two are interchangeable, and not in some synesthetic way pulled from an Oliver Sacks case study. Rather, in a way that seems universal. Sublime and West Coast hip-hop sound like summer to…
Irasburg Howls Over Wind Turbine Plan
Long stretches of wooden fence went up on private land along both sides of Kidder Hill Road last month in Irasburg. The so-called Good Fences Project has nothing to do with charity — or neighborliness. Locals are hoping to literally block the placement of two 500-foot-tall wind turbines on the property of AllEarth Renewables CEO…
Hot Box Honey, Flight of the Raven
(Self-released, CD, digital download) If there’s one thing the local music scene has been lacking in recent years, it’s a jazzy mini-orchestra. I mean, how else are local hepcats and flappers supposed to get their Lindy hop on if Pink Martini don’t happen to be swinging through town? Thanks to Hot Box Honey, that’s no…
Suspended Animation: Support Fades for McAllister’s Expulsion
p, .storyHead { padding: 0 170px; } h5 { margin: 0 0 1em 100px !important; } @media (max-width: 480px) { p, .storyHead { padding: 0; } h5 { margin: 0 0 1em !important; } } Seven months after Sen. Norm McAllister was arrested outside the Statehouse on sexual assault charges, his colleagues are preparing for…
Overnight Projects Artists Find Their Place
For two days last August, the unusual and somewhat controversial exhibition “An Order” occupied the site of Burlington’s former orphanage, St. Joseph’s. Curated by Monkton artist Abbey Meaker, the show had a significance that hinged on its brief public “resurrection” of a deeply storied building. Meaker and four other local artists — Wylie Sofia Garcia,…
Beyond the Walls: Champlain College Curator Chris Thompson
Chris Thompson is the art curator for the whole of Champlain College. But until this semester, the college had no dedicated gallery space. So, for a year, he operated like a curatorial Banksy, commandeering the odd blank wall or atrium around campus for brief installations of art and sculpture. Now Thompson has an operational hub:…
![ULU Reboots at Danform [SIV423]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/episode423.webp?resize=1200%2C900&ssl=1)
ULU Reboots at Danform [SIV423]
12/4/15: Vermonter Scott Hardy started making ULU Boots in 2002 and gained quite a following in our wintry climate. Scott sold the company to Chaco Footwear in 2007. Chaco was bought by Wolverine World Wide in 2009 and the ULU brand was shelved. For the past six and a half years, it has been impossible…
Being Veronica
It was a week after the Paris terrorist attack, and the Queen City was experiencing the aftershocks. Not that people weren’t enjoying their weekend, but the feeling on the streets was subdued, the usual revelry turned down a few notches. A large video screen stands atop the front doors of Nectar’s downtown nightclub. Throughout the…
Letters to the Editor (12/9/15)
Y Move? Wow. I didn’t realize I’d been walking into a dungeon-like Y for the past 25-plus years. Good thing I read Molly Walsh’s article [“The Y and What For: A Tale of Two Rehab Projects,” December 2]. Walsh states that many elderly cannot use the Y because of the handicap access difficulty and the parking,…
A Health Care Advocate Hatches a Plan to Cover All Young Vermonters
Late last year, Gov. Peter Shumlin shocked many by announcing he was dropping his pursuit of a single-payer health care system because it was too expensive. Shumlin called the abandonment of his signature initiative the “greatest disappointment of my political life.” It stalled progress toward state-guaranteed health care for all. Now Peter Sterling, a respected…
The Letters
You have to hand it to writer-director William Riead: Few filmmakers possess the vision required to reduce the story of someone as outsize as Mother Teresa to 114 minutes of mind-numbing lifelessness. If this movie had an iota less energy or drama, it would be a still photo. Do yourself a favor — before seeing…
French Bistro de Margot Gets It Right
On Friday, November 13, the roll-down gate was open at La Belle Équipe, a popular bistro in Paris’s 11th arrondissement. The night was mild and diners spilled across the threshold into sidewalk seating. A group gathered for a birthday celebration. Then two men stepped out of a car and massacred 19 people in a shower…
Fit to Be Thai’d Moves to Sugarbush Inn
When Nattaya and Bruce Isaacson opened Fit to Be Thai’d at the Slide Brook Lodge & Tavern this summer, it didn’t take long for the phone lines to light up. With few Thai options in the Mad River Valley, locals clamored for an authentic taste of the Pacific Rim. As orders mounted, the couple felt…
Stowe Bowl Scores With Upscale Food and Drink
Many bowlers agree that nothing pairs better with goofy shoes and a game of strikes and gutter balls than a cold brewski (or 10). Those brewskis are typically mass-market pilsners poured from a pitcher. Hungry? Grab a basket of mushy fries or a wan slice of pizza and call it good. But not at Stowe…
