Feb 3-9, 2016
Bernie Sanders’ Raucous Caucus in Iowa; Rare Shakespeare First Folio Comes to Middlebury; Japanese Ramen Meets Locavore Vermont
Cover Story
Bern-in’ Down the House: Iowa Results Fire Up the Sanders Campaign
As he took in his surroundings Monday night, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) allowed an unfamiliar expression to creep across his face: a wide, beaming smile. Standing at a podium in the middle of a Des Moines hotel ballroom, Sanders looked down, adjusted his glasses, looked up and then punched the air with his right fist.…
Obituary: Elizabeth Orr, 1927-2016
Elizabeth Orr passed away at age 88 on February 4, 2016, after a short illness. Born Elizabeth Margory Pedley in Hanley, Stoke on Trent, England, on June 12, 1927, Elizabeth grew up during the bombing and rationing of the Second World War. She was clever with what little schooling she received and landed a job as…
Obituary: Brianna Elizabeth Moore, 2000-2016, Burlington
Brianna Elizabeth Moore, 15, passed away on February 6, 2016. She was born to Robert Moore and Katherine Sylvia-Moore on April 5, 2000, in Burlington. She was a student from kindergarten through ninth grade in the Winooski schools and was a sophomore at Mount Mansfield High School in Jericho. Brianna had a beautiful heart and…
Obituary: Frederick (John) Ameche Wheeler, 1937-2016
On January 31st, 2016, Frederick (John) Ameche Wheeler, 78, passed away peacefully after an adventurous battle with life. He is survived by his brother, Skeet Wheeler, his sister, Loretta Josselyn, his children, nieces and nephews, and many other family and friends. John loved fast cars, vintage aircraft, guitars, building things, snowmobiling, chopping wood, and his…
Soundbites: On Alan Newman and Higher Ground
Higher Calling A little over a week ago, I received an intriguing, if bewildering, text. It read: “Did Higher Ground get sold to Magic Hat?” The question came from a reliable source, someone who has a pulse on the local music scene and has tipped me off to legit stories more than once. Still, the…
Old Fashioned? Some Say It’s Time to Update the Liquor Department
Vermont is a “control state” when it comes to liquor, meaning an arm of state government decides who sells which spirits — and even sets the prices. At Vergennes Wine, owner Paul Kerin is forced to rely on state-owned equipment that uses an antiquated dial-up modem for both credit card transactions and reporting sales data.…
Jane Got a Gun
The title of this western seems to promise proto-feminist lady-gunslinger action. What it actually delivers would be better described as “Jane gets a guy with guns to protect her” — not necessarily a bad story, but a far more familiar one. And “familiar” is the best word for director Gavin O’Connor’s serviceable but not stunning…
Letters to the Editor (2/3/16)
Missing Mental Health Thank you for the interesting articles on Medicaid expenses [“Mushrooming Medicaid Costs Create a State Budget Crisis,” January 13; [Off Message: “No Easy Remedy for Rate Cut for Group Therapy,” January 15]. However, the articles did not mention that in the effort to reduce the impact of the increasing Medicaid costs, cuts…
A New Major Crimes Unit Faces a Growing Caseload
By all accounts, Denise Hart was a devoted mother who called home daily whenever she was away from her 3-year-old son. But there was no word when she left East Hartford, Conn., on a trip to Vermont. On January 26, 2015, police found the charred remains of her abandoned Pontiac Grand Am at the entrance…
What Lies Beneath: Burlington’s Dirt Problem Isn’t Cheap
It changed the plan to redo Burlington’s downtown mall and delayed construction of the new bus station. It ratcheted up costs of renovating the bike path and has complicated the transformation of Burlington’s old Eagles Club into a Champlain College dorm. The culprit in all of these cases: dirt. Throughout the city, municipal departments and…
Ramen on the Rise: Where and When to Find It
Jay Peak looms nearly 3,000 feet over its namesake town. The mountain’s average annual snowfall tops 350 inches, besting most other local resorts by 100 inches or more. As ski areas go, Jay is modest — most of its 78 trails convene at a single base area with a few outfitters and restaurants. But, acre for…
Akae Beka’s Vaughn Benjamin (ex-Midnite) on Marley, Music and International Morality
Vaughn Benjamin is best known as the leader and cofounder of the acclaimed St. Croix roots reggae band Midnite. Formed in 1989, that band is widely credited as a torchbearer of roots reggae, bridging the gap between the seminal work of artists such as Peter Tosh, Burning Spear and Bob Marley and the current generation…
The Finest Hours
Just as medical professionals are guided by the mandate “First do no harm,” so filmmakers should follow the dictum “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The creators of The Finest Hours were charged with bringing to the screen a story that was anything but broke — one of the most miraculous true rescue sagas…
Retro-Style Stowe Bowl Opens With Lanes, Brews and Food
The Sun & Ski Inn and Suites hotel in Stowe opened its much-anticipated bowling alley, Stowe Bowl, this week. The eight-lane venue has its own entrance next to the hotel’s. When co-owners Mark and Rachel Vandenberg renovated in 2015, they decided that besides expanding from 15 rooms to 39, they wanted to provide an indoor…
Plans for a Railroad’s Freight Facility Outrage Shelburne
The town of Shelburne is feeling railroaded. Literally. Vermont Railway has been chugging full speed ahead to build a freight storage and distribution yard on the west side of Route 7, a mile north of the village center. The facility — two 50,000-square-foot road-salt sheds, a fuel island and tanks, a rail spur, and parking…
A New Café for Norwich
Norwich Square Café opened on January 11 and has been serving locals breakfast and lunch Monday through Friday, courtesy of co-owners Brent and Fausta Gosselin, and Brent’s mother, Priscilla Gosselin. Brent Gosselin returns to the Windsor County area from Rome, where until recently he had been living with Fausta, who hails from the region of…
‘The Librarian and the Banjo’ Screens in Burlington
In the opening voice-over of The Librarian and the Banjo, banjo legend Béla Fleck says, “The truth of the banjo’s history is that it’s a really big story; it’s a really big American story — as American as they get.” That story, however, may not be the one that many Americans expect. So suggests a…
Rogue Artisans Café Brings Brunch to Morrisville
Seven months ago, woodworker Jon Mogor started serving food at his Rogue Artisans gallery space on Portland Street in Morrisville. The menu at Rogue Artisans Café is simple but handcrafted: house-roasted meats stuffed into panini; French-toast sandwiches; pastries, cakes and cookies; soups and salads; and a handful of cocktails, beers and wines. Coffees come from…
Shakespeare’s First Folio Exhibit and Festival in Middlebury
Worldwide, there are just 233 known surviving copies of the First Folio — the first collection of William Shakespeare’s plays, which two actors published in 1623, shortly after the author’s death. Of these copies, the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., owns 82. For this we may thank Big Oil and Gilded Age industrialist Henry…
Vegan Eatery Pingala Café Adds Beer and Wine
Pingala Café & Eatery, the vegan eatery in Burlington’s Chace Mill, announced on its Facebook page on January 28 that it has begun serving beer, wine and cider. Right now, the menu is simple: one beer on draft (Zero Gravity Craft Brewery’s Conehead IPA), one cider (Citizen Cider’s Dirty Mayor), one red wine, one white…
‘Once in a Lifetime’
Whatever else you were planning to do next Tuesday, February 9, you might think about this instead: The internationally renowned violinist Mark Steinberg will be at Saint Michael’s College playing a program of Dvoák, Mozart and Prokofiev with Shelburne pianist Paul Orgel. Steinberg is the first violinist of the Brentano String Quartet, which he cofounded…
Waitsfield’s Phantom Closes, Promises to Rise Again
In Waitsfield, Phantom closed its doors last week. The eclectic locavore restaurant opened last winter in the Mad River Green, building on the success of a pop-up dinner and music series by the same name. (The like-named food truck has also been sold.) Chef-co-owner Matt Sargent announced the closure in a lengthy Facebook post. “With…
Page 32: Seven Mini Book Reviews
Seven Days’ writers can’t possibly read, much less review, the number of books that arrive in a steady stream by post, email and, in one memorable case, a flock of trained parrots. So this monthly feature, Page 32, is our way of introducing you to seven books by Vermont authors. To do that, we’ll contextualize…
Theater Review: Mothers and Sons, Vermont Stage
Vermont Stage’s first production of 2016 is Mothers and Sons, in which playwright Terrence McNally presents two survivors of the first onslaught of AIDS. Seen 20 years after one lost a son and the other a lover, they show us how the world has changed for middle-class gay men. They also show how it hasn’t,…
Theater Review: Mad Love, Northern Stage
Romantic love rests on the delusion that one’s true beloved is a rarity, never mind how many sexual partners are available. How does such a premise survive a surplus of hookups? In Mad Love, now in a world-premiere production at Northern Stage, Hanover, N.H.-based playwright Marisa Smith answers that question with abundant wit and endearing…
Dean’s Bubble Bursts
Originally published on January 21, 2004. “It was a sad night,” said former gubernatorial press secretary Sue Allen as she described her boss’ third-place finish in Monday’s Iowa caucuses. As everyone knows by now, Sen. John Kerry won. Sen. John Edwards finished second. Howard Dean was a distant, disappointing third. “I’m surprised they went to…
WTF: Why Is That House by the Winooski Bridge Jacked Up?
Travelers who frequent the bridge between Burlington and Winooski have likely noticed the yellow brick house at the southeast corner of Colchester Avenue and Mill Street on the Burlington side. Though the house is small and nondescript, lately it’s been hard to miss. Since December, it’s been perched on iron beams 20 feet in the…
![Ice Fishing with Chefs [SIV430]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/episode430-2.webp?resize=1200%2C900&ssl=1)
Ice Fishing with Chefs [SIV430]
1/31/16: Eva spent a sunny Sunday morning ice fishing on the Waterbury Reservoir with a crew of local foodies, some of Vermont’s finest chefs and a visiting winemaker. Never content to serve a simple wine dinner, Hen of the Wood co-owners Eric Warnstedt and William McNeil set out to plan an entire day around the…
I Want More Sex, My Boyfriend Prefers Porn
Dear Athena, My boyfriend and I have been seeing each other on and off for three years in a long-distance relationship. When we get together, I like to be intimate daily, if not twice a day. My boyfriend does not. However, he loves porn. I’m OK with that, but not when he’s more into porn…
Gallery Profile: Encounterworks Productions Salon
New galleries and other creative venues are generally considered a sign of health in an art scene, so Burlington has cause to celebrate: Newcomer Encounterworks Productions Salon will officially open its doors on Friday, February 12. The space at 180 Flynn Avenue is a gallery and creative headquarters dreamed up by Vermont artist, curator and…
A Case for Cash: Zuckerman’s Public Financing Quandary
Last week, Sen. David Zuckerman (P/D-Chittenden), a Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, sent out a fundraising email urging supporters to “Click here to help me qualify for public financing.” It was notable that the appeal came on January 28. State law clearly states that candidates won’t be eligible for public financing if they announce their…
Vultures of Cult, Pastoral
(Self-released, digital download) Burlington’s Vultures of Cult have made a name for themselves picking stringy flesh from the discarded carcass of post-rock. In 2010 the band offered a gnarly “stoner rock opera,” Cold Hum. They followed with the blistering sludge of Fathoms in 2012, an album noted as much for its lengthy stretches of bleak…
Books: M. Dickey Drysdale Revisits a Writing Life
A year ago, when M. Dickey Drysdale was thinking of selling his newspaper, the Herald of Randolph, he dug into a leather satchel that he’d had since childhood and pulled out a batch of typewritten stories. They were pieces he’d saved over the years, ones of which he was most proud: features, editorials, obituaries and…
Bar None the Best, Green Mountain Sound
(Self-released, CD, digital download) Bar None the Best are a hip-hop duo from Barre who’ve been creating local buzz through high-energy live shows and the video for their single “Welcome to VT (Kick the H),” an observational track about the ongoing opiate epidemic in the 802. Green Mountain Sound is their debut project, an EP…
Books: Karen Newman on Anorexia, Cancer and Recovery
Angels still grace the bookshelves in Karen Newman’s home in South Burlington. The decorations are not just remnants of Christmas; they provide a cheerful contrast with the dark spirit that Newman has lived with since middle school. In her new book, Just Three Words: Athlete, Mother, Survivor, Newman recounts her struggle with a “taskmaster” that…
Free Will Astrology (2/3/16)
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): You may sometimes be drawn to people or places or ideas long before they can give you their gifts. Although you sense their potential value, you might have to ripen before you’ll be ready to receive their full bounty. Here’s how author Elias Canetti expressed it: “There are books, that one…
Taste Test: Pub Faring Well at Idletyme Brewing
The building that Idletyme Brewing occupies on Stowe’s Mountain Road has a long history of offering sustenance to locals. A cider house early in the 20th century, it later became the well-loved Shed Restaurant & Brewery for nearly half a century, from the mid-1960s to 2011. After about three years as Crop Bistro & Brewery,…
Lazy Farmer Food Truck Opens BBQ in Essex Junction
Some lazy farmers quit the business. Others, apparently, open a food truck, then a restaurant. In March, vegetable grower, food trucker and caterer Chris Simard will open Pork & Pickles BBQ in the former Hungry Dutchman space at 34 Park Street in Essex Junction. Over the past several years, Simard’s Lazy Farmer camper-cum-food truck has…
