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The thermometer read 28 degrees as Max Tracy stripped off a fourth layer of clothing and hobbled barefoot toward the frigid waters of Lake Champlain. The 34-year-old Burlington City Council president had trekked to Oakledge Park on January 7 to mark a milestone in his quest to become the Queen City’s next mayor. Supporters had…
1. Bright Lights Winter is a Drag Ball is like a beacon in the night for Vermonters fatigued by the coldest, darkest season. Thankfully, the pandemic is no match for this 26th annual drag extravaganza hosted by Burlington’s own House of LeMay. This year, the party happens online with performances, dancing and two hours of…
Happy Valentine’s Day to my love, Danielle Marie Guerin. I love you with all my heart always and forever. I miss you so, so much. Love, Jamie Huard and family.
It might seem a bit incongruous that in the same week Vermont looks its most wintry, our parenting publication, Kids VT, is hosting a virtual “camp fair” promising fun in the sun six months hence. The timing makes perfect sense to those familiar with the summer salvation the event promotes. Especially this year, after 11…
Major Misunderstandings Faculty union leaders would have you believe that the humanities are going away at the University of Vermont [“Major Fallout,” January 27]. That’s not the case. The reality is that even after the College of Arts and Sciences’ plan is implemented, thousands of students will still be able to take classes in classical…
If there’s a vacant building in Chittenden County tagged with more graffiti than the former Pizza Hut at 764 Shelburne Road in South Burlington, we have yet to discover it. Following the restaurant’s demise about a decade ago, the New England Federal Credit Union used the building as a temporary branch until its new building…
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Aquarian author Alice Walker writes, “In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful.” In the coming weeks, I hope you’ll adopt that way of thinking and apply it to every aspect of your perfectly imperfect body and mind…
Time was when the most boring reporting assignment in Montpelier would have been to cover state auditor Alexander “Tino” Acebo, a Barre Republican who held the job from 1970 to early 1993. A classic green-eyeshade, no-news-is-good-news number cruncher, Acebo, who died in 2019, coasted from one reelection to the next without generating a headline. That all…
On a January 21 conference call with hospitals, the Vermont Department of Health announced an abrupt change to its coronavirus vaccination plan: It would stop allocating doses for frontline health care and emergency workers and instead reserve them for the elderly population. The decision to temporarily close the door on Vermont’s highest-priority group came as…
(Self-released, digital) I’ve been lucky to maintain most of my important childhood friendships. But I didn’t fully appreciate them until I realized that most adults didn’t have lifelong connections like I did. So, I have a soft spot for circles of grown-up friends who’ve been together since youth, including new Colorado-Vermont band Milk Weed. The…
(Self-released, CD, digital) A cardboard cutout of Gwen Stefani looks over my shoulder while I work in my home office. I frequently wear a No Doubt shirt to bed and sip coffee from a cup plastered with Gwen’s red-lipped mug. I’d love to know whether Burlington singer-songwriter Jesse Taylor stans Stefani and her band as…
Our streaming entertainment options are overwhelming — and not always easy to sort through. This week, I watched director-cowriter Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round, Denmark’s official submission to the Best International Feature Film category at the 2021 Academy Awards. Along with nine other potential Oscar contenders, it’s playing at the Vermont International Film Foundation’s Virtual Cinema…
As we approach the pandemic’s one-year anniversary, I’ve been thinking a lot about the final days of normalcy in early 2020. For instance, my last “regular” night out was spent spinning records with some Seven Days colleagues and DJ Disco Phantom at the Monkey House on March 11. That’s the date when, in a virtual press…
When Vermont lawmakers left the Statehouse last March amid the worsening pandemic, they weren’t the only ones evicted from their stately digs. The army of lobbyists who work to influence the legislative process was also driven from those corridors of power. Unable to buttonhole senators in the halls or grab lunch with committee chairs in…
Dear Reverend, I recently got a job that requires me to do a lot of driving. I try to do my business before I leave my house, but I must have the smallest bladder in the world because, no matter what, I always have to pee. I’m afraid to use public restrooms because of the…
Bianca Amira Zanella was nothing short of exuberant as she welcomed Zoom participants to Phoenix Books’ monthly poetry open mic in late January. In a warm, room-filling voice that defied the distorting qualities of video-call audio, she encouraged listeners to unmute themselves and “hoot and holler” for the reading poets. She wrapped up her introduction…
Some Vermont creations are so iconic that they forever changed how we experience winter: the first photographs of individual snow crystals, by Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley; the first ski tow in the United States, installed in Woodstock; the modern snowboard, made wildly popular by Jake Burton Carpenter. Add to that list the fleece neck warmer, conceived…
A notable Vermont writer is among the recipients of a $50,000 cash fellowship from United States Artists, a Chicago organization devoted to supporting working creatives. Its 2021 fellows were announced on Wednesday, February 3. Bradford resident Alexander Chee is an associate professor of English at Dartmouth College and the author of two novels, Edinburgh and…
Among many other losses, the pandemic resulted in darkened stages and empty theater seats. But that, of course, is not the whole story: Thespians, like other performing artists, have found ways to keep on acting out. Even in the dead of winter, we have much theater news to report. So let the virtual curtain rise……
In 2017, the Tipton family — Benjamin, Michelle and two teenage children — returned to Vermont after nearly a decade away to establish a family farm. They found and purchased a 20-acre former farmstead in Burke Hollow whose only remaining structure was a deteriorating barn. It had sunk a foot into the ground in places,…
Valued attorney had an unparalleled ability to make personal connections
What do restaurants have in common with bears, skunks, bumblebees, snakes, box turtles and snails? This winter, they’re hibernating. For animals, hibernation is a way to conserve energy and survive the winter, when resources are scarce. It’s the same for restaurants. Closing for a few months during the cold, harsh pandemic winter is a way…
When the world is ready for the simple pleasure of a table of friends sharing beer, Wunderkammer Biermanufaktur brewer Vasilios Gletsos will have just the drink. A wheat beer made with sumac he gathered last summer, it’s tentatively called Amidst and Among. The name is meant “to emphasize the benefits and detriments of being around…
The Swingin’ Pinwheel, a cowboy-themed restaurant at 11 Center Street in Burlington, announced on January 25 on social media that it will close at the end of March. The restaurant space is for sale, and the business will become a food truck, according to a Facebook post that reads, in part: “Moving forward, we are…
Few things go together better than sparkling wine and salty snacks. Those pairings — Champagne and fried chicken, pét-nat and popcorn, cava and charcuterie — inspired Salt & Bubbles, a new wine bar and market coming to the Essex Experience this summer. The wine won’t all be sparkling, owner-manager Kayla Silver noted, but the business…
