Feb 18-24, 2015
James Ehlers Is Lake Champlain’s Loudest — and Most Divisive — Advocate; Mayoral Hopefuls Woo a New Winooski; Street Artists in Middlebury; VT Writer John Fusco on His Netflix Hit; An Old-School Workout Reborn
Cover Story
Water Warrior: James Ehlers Is Lake Champlain’s Loudest and Most Divisive Advocate
A year ago, Governor Peter Shumlin shocked Vermont — and the nation — by devoting his entire State of the State address to Vermont’s opiate epidemic. This year, he picked another problem that has reached crisis proportions: the poor water quality in Lake Champlain. Despite significant investments, the governor conceded that Vermont’s signature attraction is threatened…
Dive Bars: A ‘Romantic’ Night With the Hubby at Planet Rock
It’s below zero outside and the club is deserted except for three women wearing G-string panties and barely there bikini tops. They teeter over a stained old pool table in strappy, four-inch platform shoes with towering spike heels. The bartender (also female, but in jeans and a flannel shirt) and two dudes — bouncers, I assume —…
Obituary: Carolyn Wood, 1952-2015, Burlington
The happiest moments of Carolyn Wood’s life were those in which she was surrounded by music and children. These often included her children and grandchildren, in whom she nurtured a love for music from their earliest days and throughout their lives together. But her passion for sharing music extended well beyond her own family. She…
Obituary: Bernard E. Germain, 1938-2015, Burlington
Bernard E. Germain passed away on February 18, 2015 in his home. Bernard was born in Burlington, Vermont on October 9, 1938, the son of Edgar and Laura (Bouffard) Germain. He spent his childhood in Winooski and attended St. Francis Xavier School. He was a 1957 graduate of Cathedral High School in Burlington and graduated…
Obituary: Patricia Ann Duguie, 1945-2015, Burlington
Patricia Ann (Winegar) Duguie, 69, passed way February 19, 2015 with her loving family by her side at University of Vermont Medical Center. She was born June 13, 1945 in Pittsfield, MA to John and Milddred (Rogers) Winegar. Pat proudly graduated from High School at the age of 36. Pat worked at Wal-Mart for many…
Obituary: Emile Joseph Salomon Lagrandeur
Emile Joseph Salomon Lagrandeur, age 77 years, a longtime Franklin County resident and more recently of Messenger Street, Saint Albans City, died Saturday afternoon February 14, 2015, at the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington. Born in Frelighsburg, Quebec Canada on January 31, 1938, he was the son of the late Joseph and Louise…
Obituary: Chad “Bear” Bourgeois
Chad “Bear” Bourgeois, age 36 years, died unexpectedly, from natural causes, on Tuesday, February 17, 2015, at his Misty Meadows home. Born in Saint Albans on, January 3, 1979, he was the son of Daniel and Francine (Potvin) Bourgeois. He graduated from Missisquoi Valley Union High School and furthered his education at Ohio University receiving…
Obituary: Chad Anthony Bourgeois
Chad Anthony Bourgeois, age 36 years, died unexpectedly of natural causes on Tuesday, February 17, 2015, at his Misty Meadows residence in Highgate Springs. Funeral Arrangements are incomplete and will be announced later this week. Arrangements are under the direction of The Kidder Memorial Home, 89 Grand Avenue, Swanton 05488. To offer private online condolences…
Fifty Shades of Grey
I went to Fifty Shades of Grey prepared to mock it mercilessly. But over the course of last weekend, something happened. As I skimmed the 50,000 cultural commentaries that dissected Fifty Shades as the definitive statement on female sexuality, soccer moms’ sexuality, the sexual revolution, modern depravity, mainstream cluelessness about alternative sexuality and on and…
Newport Ciderhouse Bar & Grill Replaces Brown Dog Bistro
In January, Newport Ciderhouse Bar & Grill replaced Brown Dog Bistro as the in-house restaurant at Newport’s Northeast Kingdom Tasting Center. Eden Ice Cider co-owner Eleanor Leger took the reins after the Brown Dog closed in late December due to family illness. (Read more about Leger and her company in this week’s feature.) The restaurant…
Trying Old-School-Inspired Workout Cardiosport
The Queen City’s clocks have yet to strike 6 a.m. on a recent weekday. But Brian Loeffler is bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, setting out a maze of soccer balls and orange cones in the group fitness room at the OnTrack health and physical therapy center in Main Street Landing. I’m making my first foray into Cardio…
Vermont Lantern Parades Punctuate the Darkness
Town by town, Gowri Savoor is lighting up Vermont — literally. Since 2010, the Vermont artist has been one of the guiding lights behind Waterbury’s annual River of Light parade, a winter event in which residents promenade through town carrying illuminated homemade lanterns. The project is part sculpture, part performance and wholly community based, and…
Winter is a Drag Ball 2015
This year marked the 20th anniversary of Burlington’s “Winter Is a Drag Ball.” Last Saturday, scantily clad Vermonters of all persuasions came out of hibernation to strut their stuff at Higher Ground, and Seven Days staff photographer Matthew Thorsen was there to capture it all. Hosted by the gender-bending babes of the House of LeMay,…
No Small ‘Change’: A $1.5 Million Education Grant Hangs in the Balance
The Burlington School District appears to be regaining its balance after a turbulent 12 months of leadership conflicts and fiscal disorder. Former critics have begun to praise the school board and interim superintendent Howard Smith for his efforts in the last three months to mend relationships and clean up the books. But last year’s drama…
![Rutland Raiders Reign at VCCA [SIV388]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/episode388.webp?resize=1200%2C900&ssl=1)
Rutland Raiders Reign at VCCA [SIV388]
2/14/15: The Rutland Raiders Varsity Cheerleading Squad recently made local headlines for being the 2nd high school team in Vermont to make it to Nationals (Essex placed 3rd in 2005). RHS Cheer placed 2nd and put Vermont cheerleading on the map. Eva caught up with the Raiders at the VCCA Cheerleading Competition at Mill River…
Letters to the Editor (02/18/15)
Carpe Diem [Re Off Message: Montpeculiar: “Senate Panel OKs Latin, not Latin American, Motto,” February 12]: As an erstwhile student of Latin, I say to both Angela Kubicke and Sen. Joe Benning: “Bene, bene, optimum quidem!” Pete Gummere St. Johnsbury Cautionary Tale Mark Davis claimed my attention with his telling of the recently deceased 71-year-old…
Jamie Lee Thurston on his Dad, New Record and Not-Quite Stardom
When a young Jamie Lee Thurston left his Vermont home for Los Angeles, and later Nashville, in 1999, local fans believed the singer was bound for country-music glory. But a funny thing happened on the way to the Grand Ole Opry: He didn’t get there. That’s not to say that Thurston, a Waterbury native and…
Roundabout Winooski: Mayoral Candidates Vie to Lead a Changing City
Bill Norful sat at a corner table last Friday at the MLC Bakeshop in downtown Winooski, looking every bit the attorney on lunch break in creased slacks and a collared shirt, but no jacket. Norful promised he’d be there — on the city’s Front Porch Forum email newsletter — between 12:30 and 1:30 p.m. And he was,…
News Quirks (02/18/15)
Curses, Foiled Again Jeffrey Wood, 19, announced a robbery at a convenience store in Washington, D.C., where two police detectives were shopping. They were in plain clothes, but one had her badge hanging from her neck. She told the suspect, “Stop playing, I got 17,” referring to the number of bullets in her gun. Wood…
Vermont Lottery Rolls the Dice With Gambling Machines in Bars
Last November, Shooters Saloon in St. Albans acquired its first Touch Play lottery machine. The gray, 5-foot-tall console looks like a hybrid arcade game and automated teller machine. After feeding it cash, players can try the video gambling games King’s Gold and Bank Busters — or buy a conventional lottery ticket, such as Powerball and…
Soundbites: VT Showcase at SXSW; New argonaut&wasp EP
Go (South) West, Young Man! (And Women!) For mid-February, it’s a remarkably busy week on the local music front. And we’ll get to all that in a moment. (Though I’m honestly tempted to just write “Sturgill Simpson” over and over again until I hit my 1,200-word column limit.) But we begin this week’s column with…
Talking Art: Nick Neddo
For most painters, making art begins when brush is put to canvas. But for Nick Neddo, a wilderness skills instructor and artist living in Montpelier, the creative process begins with the paint itself. For the past five years, the Vermont native has made his own art supplies from foraged roots, clay, sticks and stones. “There’s…
Alpenglow, Chapel EP
(Section Sign Records, CD, digital download, vinyl) Vermont indie-folk band Alpenglow left the Green Mountains for Brooklyn last year, despite the explicit, but perhaps tongue-in-cheek, advice of Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy not to do so. Really, the move was a natural and obvious one. Few local groups have ever ascended so swiftly as the Middlebury College-born…
I See Fish People, Guitar in the Shallows
(Self-released, CD, digital download) If a fish sings underwater, does it make a sound? If it did, Ben Maddox, formerly of the Enosburg Falls-based folk-rock trio Farm, would probably be there to hear it. As Seven Days reported in 2012, Farm began producing a web series of HD underwater videos, documenting various fish found in…
Free Will Astrology (02/18/15)
ARIES (March 21-April 19): There are many different facets to your intelligence, and each matures at a different rate. So, for example, your ability to think symbolically may evolve more slowly than your ability to think abstractly. Your wisdom about why humans act the way they do may ripen more rapidly than your insight into…
Kingsman: The Secret Service
Counterprogramming. The definition of the word is the release of writer-director Matthew Vaughn’s ultraviolent, psychedelic and mad-as-a-hatter paean to the British spy film (featuring an actual hatter) on the same weekend Fifty Shades of Grey hits screens. Except for its literally cheeky final scene, I doubt it overlaps in any way with the adaptation of…
Roger That
“Hey, Jernigan — could you pick me up in Winooski and take me to my girlfriend’s condo in Essex? I’m at McKee’s.” “Roger, Roger,” I replied. “I should be there in about 10.” Roger was a new regular customer of mine, and I can’t tell you how much pleasure I took from assenting to his…
Budget Ax Fells Vermont’s Office of the Creative Economy
Technically speaking, Vermont’s Office of the Creative Economy isn’t going away. It just won’t be staffed anymore. That’s the word from Lisa Gosselin, commissioner of the Vermont Department of Economic Development, who confirms that the one-person office — “It’s really just a cubicle,” she notes — will remain unoccupied owing to state budget constraints. The…
Ethics 101: A New Panel Prepares to Police Legislative Conflicts
In recent weeks, ethics scandals have engulfed the governor of Oregon, the attorney general of Pennsylvania and the speaker of the New York State Assembly. Here in quaint old Vermont, of course, nobody would dare act against the public interest (except, perhaps, for all those embezzling town treasurers). If they did, we might never know…
Why Won’t My Ex Let Me Go?
Dear Athena, After two and a half years of dating, my girlfriend broke up with me six months ago. We tried the friend thing for a little; however, I ended up explaining to her that I could not be her friend and needed space to get over her. She is not happy with my decision…
Books: What One Vermonter Found When Her Husband Lost His Memory
Vermont psychologist Polly Young-Eisendrath remembers all the questions she aimed at her husband: Why had he racked up some $70,000 in unexplained credit card bills; written another $57,000 in checks to himself from their joint account; and, most disturbingly, anxiously defied her repeated call for answers? “The bottom has dropped out of everything that promised…
Quick Lit: Hysterical: Anna Freud’s Story by Rebecca Coffey
Rebecca Coffey of Putney has written a novel of psychological drama (quite literally) from the perspective of Anna Freud, the youngest daughter of the father of psychoanalysis. Hysterical: Anna Freud’s Story is fiction framed as a memoir that Anna has passed down to her maid of 57 years, asking her not to unveil it until…
Vermont Writer John Fusco Talks ‘Marco Polo’
Screenwriter John Fusco’s surname is an anagram of “focus” — an apt coincidence for someone who’s been in the movie business for more than 30 years. Back in the 1980s, while still a New York University screenwriting student, Fusco twice won the now-defunct FOCUS (Films of College and University Students) Award. At the 1984 ceremony,…
‘Outside In’ Brings Street Art Inside at Middlebury College
On a subfreezing afternoon in early February, Ben Eine stepped down from a tall ladder inside Middlebury College’s Mahaney Center for the Arts, where he’d been painting the indoor entrance to the school’s art museum with his signature colorful typography. A UK native who currently resides in San Francisco, Eine is “one of the street…
Theater Review: Blithe Spirit at Northern Stage
Noël Coward wrote Blithe Spirit in six days while on holiday, calling it an “improbable farce.” It is that, but its underlying elegance requires the characters to stay poised as the farcical elements attempt to derail them. Armed only with good posture and ready wit, they must withstand the haunting of a house and the…
Doughnut Dilemma Shop Coming to Burlington
Since Michelle Cunningham started her home bakery Doughnut Dilemma last January, she’s been hoping to open a bricks-and-mortar store. “It is obviously a lot scarier to go all out [at first],” she says. “The home bakery made it a whole lot easier to gain some awareness and let people know we’re there.” Now, having developed…
Vermont’s Cider Boom Includes a Sweet Treat: Ice Cider
Among Vermont’s new wave of ciders, many are trending toward desert dryness, dialing the sweetness down to nearly zero. But one subset of the local cider revolution is embracing the apple’s natural sugar. Ice cider, made with juice concentrated through an elaborate process of freezing and melting, is created, packaged, priced and sold as a…
In Pittsfield, Tiny Backroom Restaurant Opens
In 2011, chef Kevin Lasko made international news when he prepared a deceptively simple dish of venison in tahini and date syrup. Topped with pine nuts and pomegranate seeds, his creation had an air of luxury enhanced by the dishes on which it was served: gold-plated china looted from Saddam Hussein’s palace. Lasko whipped up…
Obituary: Mrs. Ina “Joyce” (Hoy) MacGregor
Mrs. Ina “Joyce” (Hoy) MacGregor, age 87 years, died Friday, February 13, 2015, in Redstone Villa with loving family at her side. Born in Saint Albans on February 20, 1927, she was the daughter of the late John Samuel and Ina Julia (Luce) Hoy. She graduated from Bellows Free Academy-Saint Albans and on April 18,…
Obituary: Eli Joseph St. Francis
Eli Joseph St. Francis, age 64 years, a lifelong Franklin County resident died late Saturday evening February 14, 2015, at his Pine Street residence with his girls. Born in Saint Albans on May 25, 1950, he was the son of the late Eli Joseph and Marjory Alice (Young) St. Francis. He attended Saint Albans schools…
