Jan 11-17, 2017
Can Gov. Phil Scott Make Vermont More Affordable?; Trump Election May Revitalize Secession Movement; Singer Steve Gunn Wants Us to Get Lost
Cover Story
Afford-Ability: Can Gov. Phil Scott Deliver a Bigger Slice of the Pie?
For Ellen Baier, “affordability” isn’t just a buzzword. The 34-year-old mother of one has a college degree and a steady job. “But I still feel broke a lot of the time,” she says. “I’m basically just keeping my head above water.” Every month, the Burlington resident spends $924 — close to half of her take-home…
Alpine Accents
Skiing brought Wendy and Colin McCreight together: The couple met in 2007, while standing on a ski-gear rental line at REI in Boston. Two years later, they were married. Today they live in Stowe with their two sons, 4-year-old Eli and 2-year-old Toby. A restored ski-lift chair with a sign announcing their house number sits…
The Return of Light: Swedish St. Lucia Rolls
Winter in Vermont means lots of darkness. In December, when the sun sets just after 4 p.m., it’s hard to believe we’ll ever return to bright summer days. Yet our descent into blackness is nothing compared to Sweden’s. I spent my junior year of high school there, living with my father’s cousin and his family.…
Making Tracks: Ten Spots for Family Cross-Country Skiing and Snowshoeing
When winter gives you cabin fever, head for a different cabin — one nestled in the woods, accessible only by cross-country skis or snowshoes. Gliding and clomping through the snow is the perfect activity for families who never caught the downhill-skiing bug. It’s also a total-body workout, burning as many as 1,000 calories per hour…
Explore and Soar: Birding to Change the World Gets Kids and Their College Mentors into the Woods
After classes end one Wednesday afternoon, a gaggle of students bolts across the playground at J.J. Flynn Elementary School and plunges into the woods, heading toward the Burlington Bike Path. Once a week for their after-school program, these fourth and fifth graders, accompanied by college-age mentors from the University of Vermont, walk a mile from…
Language Lessons: A Montréal-Born Mom Reflects on Learning — and Teaching Her Kids — French
Last year, my oldest daughter, Dahlia, dared me to take her to Paris, suggesting we leave her three younger sisters behind. After years of resisting, she’d developed an interest in learning French, which surprised me. It also got me thinking about my own conflicted feelings toward the French language. I was born and raised in…
Parting Ways: Navigating Family After Parents Separate
The decision to leave my partner didn’t come after one massive fight. And if our separation was waiting in the wings, I wasn’t aware of it. Just last year we were raising a then-2-year-old, all bubbly, inquisitive and joyful, and had entered the summer with ambitions of sharing our love of the outdoors with her.…
The Parmelee Post: Chittenden County to Become Sanctuary for F-35s
A Vermont judge has ruled in favor of designating Chittenden County as a sanctuary county for Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II fighter jets. The decision, which comes two years before the jets are scheduled to arrive at Burlington International Airport, is an effort to put protections in place for the beleaguered planes before the inauguration of…
Obituary: Philip James Pierce
MIDDLEBURY – Philip James Pierce, 19, died unexpectedly on January 9 while visiting Boston and intrepidly exploring its neighborhoods. Philip was the cherished son of Elizabeth Gander (Middlebury) and Dean L. Pierce (Shelburne) and the much-loved younger brother of Nellie Pierce. Philip graduated in 2015 from Middlebury Union High School, where he was a member…
![National Mentoring Month [SIV474]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/episode474.webp?resize=1200%2C900&ssl=1)
National Mentoring Month [SIV474]
1/5/17: January is National Mentoring Month and Mobius is raising awareness about the statewide need for mentors. Mobius estimates that about 15,000 Vermont youth are in strong need of a mentor. Studies show that youths with mentors are more likely to pursue higher education, volunteer in their communities and hold leadership positions. King Street Center…
Patriots Day
Filmmaker Peter Berg is not often accused of nuance. He does action (Lone Survivor), often in collaboration with Mark Wahlberg, an actor likewise not frequently charged with having that quality. That’s why Patriots Day is likely to surprise people. Both men do some of the finest, most measured work of their careers in the service…
Agricola Farm Introduces Meat-Processing Classes
Ever eat a sausage and wonder how it was made? In Panton, Agricola Farm owner Alessandra Rellini began cutting her own pigs after apprenticing with a master butcher in Italy. Whenever she sells a whole or half pig, she invites customers who are interested in learning to break down a carcass to cut it up…
Soundbites: The Fourth Awakens; Mark Daly Solo Residency
Hello! Wow, only one word into this introduction and already I feel awkward. It’s probably because I’ve never addressed an audience in this way. But I had better get used to it because, as you might have heard, I am the new music editor Seven Days. Nice to meet you. I’m the fourth person in…
Hidden Figures
A film that isn’t cinematically adventurous can still surprise and satisfy us, if the story it tells is rare enough on screen. Stylistically, Hidden Figures is Inspirational Biopic 101. Director Theodore Melfi (St. Vincent) brings everything we expect to this story of three African American women working at NASA in the early 1960s. There are…
Hungarian Play About Surveillance Is Eerily Prescient
The setting: a Budapest dance hall in the early 1980s, when young Hungarians were reviving their folk dance traditions. One day, one of the dance-hall musicians, István Balla Bán, confesses to his therapist a dark, transgressive secret: He’s sexually attracted to his 7-year-old stepdaughter. Unbeknownst to István, the secret police has been recording his every…
1881, Action
(self-released, CD, digital download) Burlington’s 1881 pulled off an impressive feat in 2016: They released three EPs in nine months. And they saved the best for last. First came Lights, followed by Camera. Last came the predictably titled Action, which the band managed to squeak out just under the wire on Christmas Day. How’s that…
Ben Slotnick, For Mother
(Self-released, CD, digital download) “Honest” is a loaded term to apply to music. The tag gets thrown around often, suggesting a distrust of modern genres and their studio sheen. However, as reductive as that thinking can be, a certain quality inherent to bluegrass indeed feels, if not more honest than other music, more intrinsic. Bluegrass…
Glynnis Fawkes Comic to Be Published in RESIST!
The evening of November 8, 2016, Burlington artist and illustrator Glynnis Fawkes had a dream about living in a different Burlington — one where, during a President Donald Trump administration, women alone in public had more to fear. Her nightmare sparked memories of a particularly tough female role model, Miriam Bshesh, who knew how to…
Top Prog: Can Lt. Gov. Zuckerman Influence Policy?
Last Wednesday, the day before taking office as Vermont’s first Progressive lieutenant governor, organic farmer David Zuckerman showed off his new Statehouse office — and the agrarian imagery now covering its walls. The paintings of barns and silos replaced the construction-themed works favored by his predecessor, Phil Scott, an excavation executive who was moving on…
Vermont Symphony Releases Guest Conductor, Charts Future
Anthony Princiotti, the Vermont Symphony Orchestra’s guest conductor for the past 16 years, is known to be musically exacting and fearless in his programming. He elicited precise performances of the most challenging work the VSO has lately performed, including works by Stravinsky and Mahler. So it was a surprise for many in the audience attending…
For Winter Watching, a Festival and a Film Series
As Hollywood makes its annual shift from fall “prestige season” to the post-Oscars winter doldrums, the quality of cinematic fare inevitably dips in concert with the thermometer. But Vermont audiences will have multiple opportunities this winter to escape the cold and watch acclaimed films in a theatrical setting. On Friday, January 13, the 14th annual…
Start Your Engines: Phil Scott Sets a Slow Pace
At the start of an auto race, all the cars get in line and circle the track behind a pace car. As they approach the starting line, the drivers close ranks, revving their engines and jockeying for position. (Obligatory racing analogy, in honor of our new governor’s favorite pastime.) That’s where we are right now in…
Talking Art With Shelburne Museum’s Carolyn Bauer
Over the past decade, the Shelburne Museum has strived to present shows that create a contemporary dialogue within an institution long focused on Americana and folk arts. Along with curator Kory Rogers and associate curator Katie Wood Kirchhoff, assistant curator Carolyn Bauer, 27, is contributing her vision to that effort. Bauer’s current exhibition, “Hard-Edge Cool:…
Book Review: Not a Place on Any Map by Alexis Paige
Is it possible to tell a life in vignettes — prose “snapshots” no longer than a few pages? The ultra-short form is certainly friendly to a culture that encourages us to shorten our thoughts to 140 characters. But Not a Place on Any Map, the first book from Vermont author Alexis Paige, reminds us that…
A Refugee’s Journey From Disability to Independence
Three months after he arrived in Vermont from Nepal in the summer of 2015, Bidur Rai couldn’t help thinking it would be better if he were dead. While his family members were adjusting to their new environment, the Bhutanese man felt trapped in their two-bedroom apartment in Burlington’s Old North End. At the time, Rai…
Letters to the Editor (1/11/17)
More on Martello Mike Martello was a high-demand studio musician, too [“One for the Ages,” December 14]! As a teenager I listened as he recorded back tracks for radio commercials, etc., here in Vermont. In the early ’70s, he continuously reminded the burgeoning Eric Clapton- and Jimi Hendrix-driven guitarists in Burlington, such as myself, that…
Free Will Astrology (1/11/17)
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): I recently discovered Tree of Jesse, a painting by renowned 20th-century artist Marc Chagall. I wanted to get a copy to hang on my wall. But as I scoured the internet, I couldn’t find a single business that sells prints of it. Thankfully, I did locate an artist in Vietnam who said…
Mistress of the Musical Saw, Johnnie Day Durand
The music of Silver Bridget is both eerie and familiar. The latter descriptor applies because the Burlington-based instrumental trio primarily trades in covers of popular songs. With a repertoire ranging from the Beach Boys to Radiohead to Henry Mancini, the group winks at enough pop-music touchstones that you’re bound to recognize at least a few…
High and Dry: Malletts Bay Cottagers Must Vacate Their Homes
A Vermont Supreme Court decision is forcing the owners of 28 lakeside cottages in Colchester to leave their homes, some of which have been in the same families for generations. The en masse eviction of the members of the Malletts Bay Homeowners Association is likely the final chapter of a long, rancorous dispute between the…
If at First You Don’t Secede: Trump Could Revitalize Vermont Movement
Vermont got a taste of independence between 1777 and 1791, when it was out of the British Empire but not yet one of the United States. It declared itself a sovereign republic 240 years ago this month and soon adopted the first constitution in North America that prohibited slavery. A few Vermonters are hoping the…
Burlington International
The couple looked confused, but so do most folks as they come through the door. Unlike at the main terminal, the signage in this space is poor to nonexistent, and there’s nobody official to ask. “Are we in the right spot for the Porter arrival?” the man tentatively asked the group of us collected in…
One Dish: Swooning Over Bouillabaisse at 506 Bistro & Bar
Many American cooks and diners ages 50 or older will recall bouillabaisse from decades past. The Provençal fish stew was an upscale menu stalwart in the 1960s and ’70s, as culinary tastemakers including Julia Child, James Beard and M. F. K. Fisher composed veritable odes to French country cookery. At Woodstock’s 506 On the River…
My Boyfriend Has No Interest in My Son
Dear Athena, I have a boyfriend whom I have been with for a bit over six months. And I have a toddler from my last relationship. I really, really like this guy, and I want to be with him in a totally committed relationship. He and I are sort of serious at this point. But…
Elmore Baker Takes Helm at Fire Tower Pizza
For two years, Elmore’s Fire Tower Pizza, located at the Elmore Store on Route 12, has turned out classic pies with a focus on quality that is rare among small-town pizzerias. The long-fermented sourdough crust is a particular point of pride. It’s crafted by Blair Marvin and Andrew Heyn of Elmore Mountain Bread, a grain…
Steve Gunn Wants You to Get Lost
Steve Gunn is exceedingly humble, despite the fact that he’s one of the most critically acclaimed singer-songwriters of the moment. After releasing a handful of albums on a few smaller indie labels, he joined Matador Records in 2016 with his latest album, Eyes on the Lines. Originally from Philadelphia, Gunn currently resides in Brooklyn. He…
Three Recipes for Vermont Winter Cooking
We’re teetering on the brink of deep winter, which means that green things are becoming sparse, and storage crops are piled high on grocery store shelves. This can be a tough time of year for seasonal cooking, because the limited produce selection challenges our culinary creativity. But the good news is that these humble roots,…
