Feb 19-25, 2014
How Officials in Rutland Are Combining Forces to Fight Drug Abuse; Burlington Considers School Budget Increase; Chefs Wield Spirits in the Kitchen; Glass Sculptor Ethan Bond-Watts
Cover Story
How Officials in Rutland are Combining Forces to Fight Drug Abuse
The house at 50 Chestnut Avenue has sheets of plywood where the windows and doors once were. Its green paint has faded, one of its two chimneys has started to crumble and the screen on a second-floor porch flaps in the wind. A sign nailed to the front door warns that no one is allowed…
Obituary: Linda Boudreau Jewell
Linda Boudreau Jewell who was a resident of this area for most of her life, went to live with her Lord Jesus Christ on Sunday morning Feb. 23, 2014. Linda was surrounded by her loving family at the home of her daughter Angela in Highgate Springs. She was born in Highgate, VT on 5/30/47 the…
Obituary: Ronald A. Hemingway
Ronald A. Hemingway, 56, a lifelong resident of this area, passed away Wednesday night, February 19, 2014 at the Northwestern Medical Center surrounded by his loving sisters. Born in St. Albans, the son of the late Elmer and Odna (Gauthier) Hemingway he attended area schools and went on to enjoy carpentry, woodworking and furniture refinishing.…
At Holzer Book Bindery, Repairing Old Volumes Is a Labor of Love
Any author who gets a publishing deal these days knows the importance of e-books: Many readers now opt for pixels over ink. At Holzer Book Bindery in Hinesburg, though, the book’s the thing. Owner Marianna Holzer, a third-generation bookbinder, appreciates books as objects. Her love for beautiful volumes and the increasingly rare craft of making…
Local Film Explores the Strength of Mobile Home Park Residents After Irene
Sandy Gaffney knew that August 28, 2011, would be a bad day for her and other residents of Weston’s Mobile Home Park in Berlin. Tropical Storm Irene was pummeling Vermont, and water was approaching her home across the flood plain. “I called up my sister and said, ‘We’re coming over,'” Gaffney recalls in Strength of…
Letters to the Editor
Married Couples Only? It would have been nice if a few non-legally-married couples were included in the article “The Start of Something Good” [February 5]. It’s a tad annoying that legal marriage is still so often held up as the high-water mark of commitment. My partner and I have been together for 10 years, have…
Democrat Ryan Emerson Withdraws from Race for Ward 2 City Council Seat
This article was originally posted on the Off Message blog. Click here to read the full story.
Daily Strips
Dakota McFadzean draws comics every day. His first book, Other Stories and the Horse You Rode in On, is available from Conundrum Press. He also coedits an anthology called Irene with Andy Warner and dw. dakotamcfadzean.com, irenecomics.tumblr.com
Chicky Stoltz, ‘Camp Recording #2 the Roebuck’
(Self-released, digital download) Chicky Stoltz is a transplant from Portland, Maine, who landed in Vermont a few years back armed with a kick drum, a hi-hat and a guitar. Stoltz recently released his second record, Camp Recording #2 the Roebuck, which he produced by himself in his “ski chalet home” in Warren. But unlike some…
![George & Brahma [SIV343]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/stuck-george-4-e1755139098687.webp?resize=400%2C300&ssl=1)
George & Brahma [SIV343]
2/4/14: WPTZ anchor George Mallet has a passion for horses and one in particular, Brahma Fear. He first met the grandson of famous racehorse Secretariat as a colt in Pennsylvania while filming a story. Years later, when Brahma came off the race track, George bought his first horse and the two have been tight ever…
Carol Ann Jones, ‘Supercharged!’
(Self-released, CD, digital download) Carol Ann Jones came to songwriting later in life than most. In fact, she didn’t even own a guitar until 2006, when she purchased one at her husband’s urging. Then there was the pesky matter of actually learning to play it. Jones has been a singer her entire life. But songwriting…
Israeli and Palestinian Youths Offer Hope for Peace Through Music
According to Neil Young, “Just playing a song won’t change the world.” With all apologies to the godfather of grunge, the kids from Heartbeat respectfully disagree. Heartbeat is an organization based in Israel that formed in 2007 to connect Israeli and Palestinian youths through music. For these kids, “just” playing songs has become a genuinely…
Chefs Talk About Cooking With Spirits
In 1895, when a young French waiter named Henri Charpentier splashed brandy into a pan of crêpes intended for future king of England Edward VII, the pan erupted in flames — and Charpentier inadvertently introduced flambé into modern cooking. Or so goes the story, which may be apocryphal. Either way, for most of us, cooking…
Benefit for Aaron Burroughs; Waking Windows 4 Headliners Announced
As we reported a couple of weeks ago, Funkwagon front man Aaron Burroughs’ Old North End apartment was recently destroyed by fire. Thankfully, Burroughs was able to get out safe and sound. Well, safe, at least. Sadly, all of the keyboardist and vocalist’s sound equipment was ruined. But because Burlington is Burlington and we tend…
Dance Company of Middlebury Reinterprets the Meaning of Masks
To a Western audience, mask wearing generally means concealing one’s identity. This weekend, a riveting three-piece contemporary dance performance at Middlebury College’s Mahaney Center for the Arts presents an alternative interpretation. In the words of the show’s artistic director, dance professor Christal Brown, it suggests that donning a mask is a process of becoming, not…
Eyewitness: Glass Sculptor Ethan Bond-Watts
It’s a blindingly bright winter afternoon when glass artist Ethan Bond-Watts greets a visitor at his childhood home in Charlotte. The room’s west-facing windows look out over a frozen Lake Champlain. Metal sculptures protrude from snowbanks in the yard, reflecting the light. Inside, Bond-Watts sets down two glasses of water on a table. Even in…
Burlington Ensemble Founder ‘Moves On’
After three and a half years, Burlington Ensemble is no longer. Cofounded by violinists Michael Dabroski and Sofia Hirsch and pianist Samantha Angstman in the fall of 2010, the protean chamber group offered a new financial and cultural approach to classical music performances. (Angstman quickly moved on to focus on her studies at the New…
Book Review: ‘The Headmaster’s Wife,’ Thomas Christopher Greene
The most moving part of Thomas Christopher Greene’s novel The Headmaster’s Wife comes after it ends. In his acknowledgments, placed last, Greene writes that the book is dedicated to his daughter Jane, who in 2009 was born “far too early,” weighing two pounds, without functioning lungs. She lived six months. Greene considered his daughter’s brief…
A Vermonter’s Original Play Takes On Age, Memory and Love
In a culture that celebrates youth, a play that explores aging is risky, but it’s a topic that touches us all. Margot Lasher’s Intake looks at growing old as a journey with uncertainties, made both frightening and fascinating by the fact that perceptions are subject to doubt. Questions about what’s real may only grow tougher…
South End to Gain Brewery and a Cidery
The lower end of Pine Street is inching closer to becoming pub-crawl territory as two beverage-based businesses prepare for opening this spring. Behind 703 Pine Street, the partners in Queen City Brewery have gleaming Minnetonka Brewing tanks in place; they recently used a forklift to hoist a 1951 International Harvester truck called Ethyl onto a…
Conflict Resolution: Should Vermont Legislators Go to Work for Those Who Lobby Them?
From her perch on the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Linda Waite-Simpson (D-Essex) distinguished herself last year as a passionate proponent of legislation allowing doctors to prescribe lethal drugs for the terminally ill. When the bill reached the House floor, it was she who defended it on behalf of her committee. So perhaps it shouldn’t come…
My Boyfriend Wants to ‘Take a Break’ for the Summer
Dear Athena, I’m a junior in college, and my boyfriend and I have been together since freshman year. We each lost our virginity to each other. This summer he’s planning a big trip with friends to New Zealand. He wants to take a break while he goes away so he can explore everything — including…
The Past
“I see screenwriting as a bit like a math equation which I have to solve,” Asghar Farhadi has explained. Because he’s an Iranian filmmaker — the first to win an Oscar (for 2011’s A Separation) — he’s under tremendous pressure to get that solution right, artistically and politically. If you screw up here, you get…
Numbers Game: Drug-Treatment Waiting Lists in Vermont Aren’t as Long as Previously Stated
Shortly before Gov. Peter Shumlin’s State of the State speech, with its unique focus on Vermont’s opiate abuse problem, his health department said that nearly 1,200 addicts were stuck on waiting lists at treatment centers. That list is dramatically shorter today; officials say there are currently about 767 awaiting drug treatment, including 640 for opiate…
RoboCop
Back when Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop (1987) hit theater screens, ads described its robot enforcer as a “stainless steel unstoppable Clint Eastwood.” But the action flick wasn’t just Dirty Harry with a robot. Rather, as original cowriter Edward Neumeier noted in a recent interview, it was a “stealth satire.” The filmmakers used comic-book hyperbole to depict…
Misery Loves Company Bakeshop Opens; Vets Bake Bread
Winooski is in the doughnuts. MLC Bakeshop opened last Friday at 25 Winooski Falls Way, fully stocked with loaves of bread, croissants, Stumptown Coffee and five different doughnut varieties. Co-owner Laura Wade says that, while the bakery currently stays open daily until 3 p.m., those hours will soon expand to 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.…
News Quirks
Curses, Foiled Again A man entered the garage at a home in northwest Chicago and demanded that the resident hand over the keys to her 2012 Honda MDX. She complied, but then fled the garage and closed the door behind her, trapping the man inside. She called the police, who arrived to find Andre Bacon,…
Hack-to-the-Landers? Farmers and Coders Cultivate Connections
Stereotype has it that computer hackers are hermits who wreak dystopian mayhem from the comfort of their dark apartments. Organic farmers, on the other hand, are ruddy-cheeked, Carhartt-clad citizens of the land. Really, though, the farming and hacking communities aren’t such strange bedfellows. That much was clear last weekend, as hundreds of farmers, gardeners, policy…
Free Will Astrology
Aries (March 21-April 19): A woman from New Mexico wrote to tell me that after reading my horoscopes for three years in the Santa Fe Reporter, she had decided to stop. “I changed my beliefs,” she said. “I no longer resonate with your philosophy.” On the one hand, I was sad that I had lost…
Pass or Fail? Burlington Could Say No to a 9.9 Percent School Tax Increase
Will this be the year Burlington voters rise in revolt against a nearly 10 percent increase in the amount of money they pay to educate the city’s kids? It’s been a dozen years since the Queen City defeated a school-tax increase on Town Meeting Day. But some candidates for local office are now reporting rumblings…
Skipping the Super Bowl
Good riddance, I thought as I patrolled the city streets in my taxicab. We had made it through January, the cruelest month for us cabdrivers. Year in and year out, my revenues always dip during the post-holiday doldrums. For most of the month, the college students are still on break, and that never helps, but…
Remembering ‘Out of Vermont Kitchens’ Cookbook
In 1939, Burlington’s Cathedral Church of St. Paul solicited recipes from its female parishioners for a cookbook. Among those who responded was Marion Brown, who accompanied her handwritten recipe for orange cake with an illustration of an orange slice. Her family recipe called for baking a plain cake, then pouring orange juice over it for…
‘The Punk Singer’ Screens in Burlington
Grunge wasn’t the only radical music movement to come out of the Pacific Northwest in the ’90s. Just ask Kathleen Hanna, frontwoman of Bikini Kill and cofounder of the riot grrl movement, who brought punk and in-your-face feminism together. When her band released its album Pussy Whipped in 1993, the mainstream media was enthralled by…
Slideshow: Winter is a Drag Ball 2014, Sailors & Mermaids
The House of LeMay presents “Sailors & Mermaids” the 19th Winter is a Drag Ball benefitting the Vermont People with AIDS Coalition on Saturday, February 15, 2014. “Whew! Every year I wonder if the crowd will be there, will they like the theme, will they have fun? And the night arrives and answers are yes,…
New Restaurant Planned for Winooski’s Waterworks Space
Before Winooski’s Main Street became a sophisticated restaurant row, Waterworks Restaurant was the crown jewel in the town’s culinary scene. The huge menu of simple American fare was beside the point. Diners flocked to the two-floor restaurant in the Champlain Mill for its soaring ceilings and tables feet away from the rapids of the Winooski…
Phoenix Table & Bar to Open in Stowe
According to Frida’s Taqueria & Grill co-owner Jack Pickett, it was “a legal situation” with the building’s owners that forced him and Josh Bard to close the popular restaurant last September. But the Frida’s team had a trick up its sleeve: Pickett and Bard were already renovating 1652 Mountain Road, former home to Whiskers and…
