Feb 1-7, 2017
How Tim Ashe Came to Power in the Vermont Senate; What Would an Arts Funding Cut Mean to Vermont?; Remembering Howard Frank Mosher, 1942-2017
Cover Story
Full Disclosure: How Burlington Prog Tim Ashe Came to Power in the Vermont Senate
In May 1999, then-congressman Bernie Sanders was on the hunt for a front-desk assistant in his Burlington office. His old pal, University of Vermont philosophy professor Richard Sugarman, recommended a favorite student who had just completed a thesis on the Czech playwright-turned-president Václav Havel. Twenty-two-year-old history and English major Timothy Ashe was game. “I had…
The Parmelee Post: New Bill Would Prohibit Practicing Yoga After Eating Kale
The Vermont House introduced a bill on Friday that seeks to limit the ingestion of kale prior to attending yoga classes. The “Namaste Clean Air Act” would require yogis to wait a minimum of five hours after consuming kale in any form before publicly participating in the ancient practice. Believed to be the first of…
![Chinese New Year [SIV476]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/episode476-scaled.webp?resize=1200%2C900&ssl=1)
Chinese New Year [SIV476]
1/28/17: Dozens gathered at Tuttle Middle School in South Burlington Saturday to celebrate the Chinese New Year, organized by the Vermont Chinese School. After sharing a feast, family and friends gathered for a performance which included dancing, song and dragons. This is the Year of the Rooster and it is a time for the Chinese…
Book Review: The Sleepwalker by Chris Bohjalian
Longtime readers of best-selling Lincoln author Chris Bohjalian know that his novels tend to pivot around provocative questions with no obvious answer. Book clubs should get plenty of discussion out of the puzzle at the core of his latest, The Sleepwalker: How much responsibility can individuals bear for the things they do in a state…
Movie Review: ‘I Am Not Your Negro’ Brings James Baldwin’s Searing Vision Into the Present
As sacrilegious as it might seem, I’m going to begin a review of a film about the great writer and social critic James Baldwin with a quote from a recent episode of Jerry Seinfeld’s “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.” Stick with me. I haven’t lost it. In the January 19 webcast, Seinfeld — who’s about…
F-16 Aviator Must Take Civilian Pilot Exam After Small Plane Crash
The Federal Aviation Administration has ordered a South Burlington-based F-16 pilot who crashed a small plane last year to retake his pilot’s exam — or lose his civilian license to fly. John Rahill serves in the Vermont Air National Guard but was off duty when he wrecked a Piper PA-11 plane September 19 on Savage Island.…
What’s the Story With Montpelier’s Mystery Wall?
Drivers who’ve waited at the traffic signal at the intersection of Routes 2 and 12 in Montpelier — known locally as Memorial Drive and Northfield Street, respectively — may have noticed a decades-old concrete wall built into the hillside on the intersection’s southwest corner. Mostly obscured by vegetation in warmer months, the 30-foot-high slab is…
Chasing Trump: Polite Critics No Match for the Donald
Republican Gov. Phil Scott won praise this week for a statement released Monday evening outlining five action steps he would take in response to President Donald Trump’s executive order limiting immigration and refugee resettlement. Upon closer reading, however, it became clear that the governor’s intentions — just like those of Democratic officeholders — are no…
Movie Review: ’20th Century Women’ Invites Us to Hang Out in 1979
Some irony is built into this rambling, immensely likable semiautobiographical film from writer-director Mike Mills (Beginners). If 20th Century Women had been released in 1979, the year in which it’s set, the title would have been a proud declaration of with-it-ness, a cheeky assertion of the title characters’ freedom to be who they wanted to…
Vermonters Who Run With the Big Dogs at Westminster
Fred has quite a head on his shoulders. It’s as big and blocky as a toaster oven, with a wrinkled, velvety brow, brown and droopy Abe Vigoda eyes and a broad, jowly smile —all breed standards for an English mastiff. Only when Fred’s owner, Brian Carten, opens the rear door of his Subaru Forester to…
My Wife Wants Me to Go Nude in the Garden
Dear Athena, I noticed you deal with all sorts of questions, so I thought you might solve one I have about my wife. When the weather is warm and we sit in the sun, quite often she asks me if I will go nude, even in our garden. I don’t have a big penis —…
Free Will Astrology (2/1/16)
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Who would have guessed that Aquarian Charles Darwin, the pioneering theorist of evolution, had a playful streak? Once he placed a male flower’s pollen under a glass along with an unfertilized female flower to see if anything interesting would happen. “That’s a fool’s experiment,” he confessed to a colleague. “But I…
Theater Review: Native Gardens, Vermont Stage
In Native Gardens, a recent play by Karen Zacarías produced by Vermont Stage, a fence between two backyards triggers an avalanche of neighborly animosity, all to comic effect. It erupts from two couples who see themselves as the nicest possible neighbors but can’t retain their civility when their differences — not to mention their taste…
A Middlebury Church Reveals Its ‘Holy Honey’
For years, Deborah Dickerson noticed the honeybees buzzing around Memorial Baptist Church. They were always congregating around the roof. And at certain times of year, dead worker bees would litter the wheelchair ramp entrance. Dickerson and her husband have kept honeybees at their Bristol home for decades. So she was keenly aware of, and curious…
Soundbites: Scrappy Book, Dark Days
It’s been just about two months since the beloved Burlington DIY venue 242 Main rocked its last show ever. That is, possibly rocked its last show ever. While there’s still no news as to the future of the club, there is some news regarding its past. Seven Days previously reported that local documentarian Bill Simmon,…
Carrying on a Literary Legacy at Ruth Stone Foundation
Bianca Stone comes from a family of Vermont writers. The 33-year-old artist and poet is the granddaughter of acclaimed poet Ruth Stone, the daughter of novelist Abigail Stone, the niece of artist and writer Phoebe Stone, and sister to poet Hillery Stone. Now, the longtime New York resident and Middlebury native is getting back to…
Takeout Dinner at the Kitchen in Stowe
Earlier this week, Stowe’s newest lunch-and-dinner stop rounded out its first month in business. The Kitchen, which replaced Bender’s Burritos at 1880 Mountain Road the week after Christmas, is the second Stowe business from chef-owner Neil Handwerger. The new spot builds on the success of Café on Main (formerly Jamie’s on Main), where Handwerger and…
A Midcentury Mural Finds New Home at Vermont History Museum
Next week, a 50-foot-long canvas mural commissioned in 1958 will become the crown jewel of the Vermont History Museum. The painting, titled “Tribute to Vermont,” depicts 350 years of state history in small vignettes separated by trees, a smokestack and other vertical elements spanning its eight-foot height. The artist was Paul Sample, then the first…
Mental Health Workers Seek to Ease Their ‘Duty to Warn’
In February 2011, 21-year-old Evan Rapoza walked into the basement of a St. Johnsbury apartment building where Michael Kuligoski was fixing the furnace. Rapoza attacked the 50-year-old repairman with a pipe wrench, strangled him with a belt and tried to drown him in a bucket of water. Rapoza, who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, had never…
Letters to the Editor (2/1/17)
Can you Help? [Re Off Message: “Louras: Trump Plan Would Be ‘End of Refugee Resettlement for Rutland,” January 25]: You know what I’m really disheartened to hear? That we shouldn’t help refugees from other countries, because we have Americans here who need help first. And what do we tell our fellow Americans? We tell them…
Owners to Close Osteria Pane e Salute, Open Hart Tavernetta
Two decades after opening its doors, Deirdre Heekin and Caleb Barber’s Woodstock restaurant, Osteria Pane e Salute, will close in April. But eaters lamenting the loss of the Italian oasis needn’t worry; the two are moving their cooking operation to their biodynamic farm and winery in Barnard, also home base to La Garagista wine. Hart…
In Memoriam: On the Death of Howard Frank Mosher
When I first arrived in Vermont in the fall of 1969, fresh out of college, to teach high school English in Barton (and to write, I promised myself), by chance I moved into a place a mile down the road from Howard and Phillis Mosher. Five years my senior, Howard himself had been teaching at…
What Would Federal Cuts to the Arts Mean in Vermont?
Last week, the Hill reported that President Donald Trump’s transition team is considering privatizing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and eliminating funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The moves, if enacted, would come as part of the new administration’s plan to slash billions from the federal…
Four More Local Albums You (Probably) Haven’t Heard
One of the blessings of the local music scene is its magnitude and bounty. It’s also a curse — Seven Days receives so many album submissions, we often don’t find space to review in a timely fashion everything that comes our way. Here are four local albums that maybe flew under your radar in 2016.…
Gov. Scott’s Education Funding Plan Appears Doomed. Now What?
As a candidate for governor, Phil Scott often bemoaned how Vermont’s education costs keep rising despite a declining number of students. The Republican talked about how Vermont employers have trouble finding qualified workers. He spoke about how parents need better access to quality, affordable childcare. But during a year on the campaign trail, Scott never…
Art Review: Bahar Behbahani, Hood Downtown
A current ad campaign for the Friends of the Public Garden in Boston declares, “In literature, paradise is usually a garden. Real life, too.” Behind that pithy appeal are layers and layers of human history, and the weight that comes with it. For Brooklyn-based Iranian artist Bahar Behbahani, the intricacies of the garden — specifically…
Jarv & Thief, The Boiler Room
(Self-released, CD, digital download) Jarv is part of the Windsor hip-hop crew Maiden Voyage, a group that spent years building a reputation for high-energy live sets. It’s a prolific group. All of the members of MV crank out solo material, but none more than Jarv. He’s a standout talent onstage, too, so a solo career…
Apartment 3, Apartment 3
(Section Sign Records, digital download, vinyl) There is a great word I learned from reading a friend’s toilet paper once. He was an oddball living in the woods of North Carolina, and, God bless him, he had word-of-the-day toilet paper in his bathroom. As I walked into the commode, I saw the word “insouciance” printed…
Thato Ratsebe Helps Refugees Settle Into New Lives
Name: Thato Ratsebe Town: Essex Junction Job: Assistant director & programs manager at the Association of Africans Living in Vermont Thato Ratsebe believes that empowerment is the key to self-sufficiency. As a staffer at the nonprofit Association of Africans Living in Vermont, she’s often called on to assist refugees, immigrants and asylum seekers in their…
Obituary: Dezsoe Rottler, 1927-2017
Dezsoe “Dezi” Rottler passed on into spirit on January 29, 2017 at the VNA Respite House in Colchester, Vermont. He struggled with the loss of his wife, Connie Rottler due to Alzheimer’s disease, who passed away in February, 2015. He lived with Parkinson’s disease for the last few years, which was a challenge he handled…
Piecemeal Pies Puts a Spin on British Classics
Few foods seem more disdainfully British than buttered shell peas. Maybe scattered with herbs, they appear in mounds beside ashen roast mutton or beef. In a flash of fork-evading green, they scuttle-roll to the edge of the plate, boiled to their mealy and pitted worst. Salt and a glossy slick of butter are their only…
Burlington’s Magnolia Rebrands, Offers Dinners
For nearly a decade, Magnolia Bistro has been serving the Burlington community breakfast, brunch and lunch. On January 2, the restaurant closed its doors at One Lawson Lane for a conceptual renovation. Chef-owner Shannon Reilly aims to reopen mid-February with a new approach and a new name: Magnolia Reserved. Though “details are still evolving,” says…
