Jan 16-22, 2019
Wellness Issue: Introducing Hooked—Stories and solutions from Vermont’s opioid crisis; A Vermont Brain Bank Aids in PTSD Research; Blissing Out at a NEK Nordic Spa; Herbs for Wintertime SAD
Migrant LGBTQ Leader Faces Deportation After ICE Arrest at Courthouse
A Mexican dairy worker and leader in the immigrant LGBTQ community faces deportation after immigration agents arrested him on New Year’s Eve inside a Middlebury courthouse. Cruz Alberto Sanchez-Perez, known as Beto, had just pleaded not guilty to a charge of driving under the influence when he was scooped up by U.S. Immigration and Customs…
Seriously: Eye Screening
In this episode, Ivan the Eyeball talks about dry eye syndrome and what we can do to prevent it. Featuring Carl Sonnefeld as “Ivan the Eyeball.” CREDITS Written by: Bryan Parmelee and Carl Sonnefeld Filmed and edited by: Bryan Parmelee Artwork/photography by: Susan Norton, Bryan Parmelee, Dreamstime Logo/art direction by: Don Eggert Audio by: Bryan…
Album Review: Katie Trautz, ‘Passage’
(Self-released, CD, digital) Have you seen the meme everyone’s been posting on Facebook this week? For some reason, users have been posting diptychs of themselves using photos from 2008 and 2019. No explanation seems to accompany the 11-years-apart pairing of images. It seems to simply denote, “Hey, look at me then. And look at me…
Soundbites: Nominations, Compilations and Titillation
Given that it’s awards season in the film industry, I thought I’d start this week by tipping my cap to a couple of local artists who’ve been recognized by national organizations. Congratulations are in order to Rick & the All-Star Ramblers for sweeping the Will Rogers Awards nominations! Given annually by the Academy of Western…
Passhole or Persecuted? Snowboarder Decries Lifetime Ban From Stowe Mountain
On a snowy November day in 2018, snowboarder Georges Dionne headed to Stowe Mountain Resort and ripped four or five runs. Then the fun stopped. Several managers approached and ordered him out of a lift line. “You know you’re not supposed to be here,” one told Dionne, he recalled. So Dionne, who’d had his season…
Album Review: The Jobz, ‘DIE’
(What Doth Life, digital download) The Jobz identify as an 802 “supergroup.” Although that description is intended as a self-deprecating joke, there’s also something to it. The band is assembled from members of various acts on the What Doth Life imprint, a dangerous, controversial rock-and-roll death cult. Or they might be a bunch of great…
Soaking Up the Hygge at WilloBurke Boutique Inn + Nordic Spa
I carry a lot of stress in my shoulders. I probably didn’t need a massage therapist to tell me that. But, as he kneaded the knotted muscles of my upper back — which, somewhat disconcertingly, crackled like bubble wrap under his probing fingers — Ron Burke confirmed my all-too-common malady. “Especially if you work at…
Housing Advocates Say State Back-Rent Payments Could Halve Eviction Rate
Just before Christmas, Tracy heard a sharp knock on the door of the Chittenden County home she shares with her two young boys. A sheriff’s deputy handed the 28-year-old nursing assistant a legal notice indicating that she was being evicted from her apartment for nonpayment of rent and needed to be out by January 3.…
At a Vermont Brain Bank, Researchers Wrap Their Heads Around PTSD
When Dr. Matthew Friedman finished his residency in psychiatry at Dartmouth-Hitchcock medical center, the only job he could find was as a staff psychiatrist at the White River Junction VA Medical Center. “I told everyone I’d do this for a year and then find something interesting to do,” recalled Friedman. “That was 1973, and here…
VYOA Concert Inspired by Spirituals and MLK
A year ago, Vermont Youth Orchestra Association music director Benjamin Klemme decided that the group’s winter concert, scheduled for January 20, would honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He programmed Duke Ellington’s 1973 Three Black Kings, the last movement of which is a triumphantly jazzy, walking-pace homage to King and the civil rights marches he…
A Reporter Tries Future Fit and Lives to Write About It
Burlington’s Future Fit isn’t a gym in the traditional sense. It more closely resembles my mental picture of Elon Musk’s home fitness studio: a sleek concrete box echoing with the insistently chill beat of electro-pop, outfitted with equipment that seems to have been designed by aliens to study human weakness. If you’re not familiar with…
Short Takes: Community Engagement Lab Grants; Contemporary Art at Rokeby Museum; New Podcast ‘VT Untapped’
Sometimes a herd of Vermont art news comes in a rush, like so many rambunctious calves, and we just have to wrangle what we can in one place. Like this: Money for Artists! Montpelier’s Community Engagement Lab announced last Thursday that grants of up to $10,000 are available to teaching artists in Vermont to create…
Vermonter Lynn Steyaart Supplies Local ‘CSF’ With Alaskan Salmon
The other night, as Sue Gage of Brandon fulfilled her civic duty at a meeting of the town library board, her husband was home cooking a salmon filet. “He’s frying up a piece right now,” Gage, the Brandon town clerk, told Seven Days. “He puts it in a pan with butter, as simple as you…
The Committee Shuffle: What the House’s New Lineup Reveals About Its Priorities
Democratic leaders of the Vermont legislature unveiled new committee lineups last week, revealing some major clues about their priorities for the new biennium. New chairs and new members, in many cases, set the stage for new agendas. House Speaker Mitzi Johnson (D-South Hero) made a lot of changes, mostly by necessity. She had to find…
Nomad Coffee to Offer Weekend Brunch
Nomad Coffee — South End Station, which opened last fall at 208 Flynn Avenue in Burlington, is adding weekend brunch to its service starting on Saturday, January 19, at 10 a.m. The menu will include a breakfast sandwich, spiced pumpkin pancakes, soup, salads and sandwiches. Related Stories
Smartphone Use Is Causing Dry Eyes. Should We Be Worried?
Our collective fear about what smartphone and tablet screens might be doing to children is nothing new; it has increased with every dopamine hit from the latest addictive app. Obesity, poor sleep, behavioral problems, violence and loss of social skills are all on the Mayo Clinic’s list of horrors linked to kids’ excessive screen time.…
In Montpelier, the Hippie Chickpea Brings on the Breakfast
In Montpelier, the Hippie Chickpea, a Middle Eastern café at 41 Elm Street, has expanded its hours to include breakfast. Since January 7, chef-owner Vince Muraco has been serving the morning meal Monday through Friday, 7 to 10:30 a.m., with a menu that includes a breakfast pita with housemade chorizo and local eggs; a vegan…
‘The Intrepid Couple’ Samples Jack and Lydia Clemmons’ African Collection
At the beginning of the 2018 box office hit Black Panther, a young African man stands before a glass case of West African masks and weapons in the (fictional) Museum of Great Britain. “How do you think your ancestors got these?” he asks the prim white curator. “Do you think they paid a fair price,…
Little Morocco Café Is Open in Burlington
Little Morocco Café opened in late December at 294 North Winooski Avenue in Burlington. Specializing in traditional Moroccan meals such as tagines, couscous dishes and kebabs, the café serves lunch and dinner seven days a week. Lamb-shank tagine is a spiced and marinated slab of meat topped with toasted almonds and served with stewed prunes,…
Free Will Astrology (1/16/19)
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Writing at the Pudding, pop culture commentator Colin Morris reveals the conclusions he drew after analyzing 15,000 pop songs. First, the lyrics of today’s tunes have significantly more repetitiveness than the lyrics of songs in the 1960s. Second, the most popular songs, both then and now, have more repetitive lyrics than…
Hooked: Kate O’Neill to Cover the Vermont Opioid Crisis for Seven Days
Burlington native Madelyn “Maddie” Linsenmeir popped her first OxyContin in 2004, a full decade before then-governor Peter Shumlin warned about a “rising tide of drug addiction and drug-related crime spreading across Vermont.” Maddie was 16 and living in Florida. Her 32-year-old half sister, Kate O’Neill, was in Washington, D.C., earning a master’s degree in creative…
Scarlett Letters: I’m Straight; Why Do Female Sexual Fantasies Turn Me On?
Dear Scarlett, I have a boyfriend and have always dated guys. I have girl friends, but I’m not sexually attracted to them at all, and I have never seen a good-looking woman on the street, like a stranger, and been turned on. So why is it that when I am having sex with my boyfriend…
Eat This Week, January 16 to 22, 2019: Natural Women
Eden Specialty Ciders’ Eleanor Leger teams up with Barnard-based author and vigneron Deirdre Heekin of La Garagista Farm + Winery for an afternoon of spirited chatter and educational sipping. With bottles in hand, Leger and Heekin will guide taproom visitors through the basics of biodynamic agriculture, punctuating their points with pours of homegrown, wild-fermented wines…
Letters to the Editor (1/16/19)
Eye-Opening Edition I read Seven Days every week, but I am usually far behind in the editions. The “Our Towns” one [December 5] took me much longer to read than most because I read every single article. I just finished and was thrilled with it. Thanks for doing it. It was eye-opening to me. I…
Movie Review: ‘If Beale Street Could Talk’ Brings James Baldwin Beautifully to the Screen
How is it possible that Barry Jenkins (Moonlight) is the only director ever to have brought a work of fiction by the great James Baldwin to the big screen? The oversight feels particularly confounding given the author and social critic’s ties to Hollywood elites. Sidney Poitier, Charlton Heston and Harry Belafonte were friends of Baldwin’s.…
The Seven Days Wellness Issue, 2019
We’re three weeks into 2019, and you’ve already punted on most of your resolutions to get healthier. Don’t despair! Wellness is a long game, not a quick fix. So dry your eyes — though not so much as to incur dry eye syndrome — and get back on that bike. Specifically, the bikes for oxygen…
Quick Lit: ‘The Perfect Liar’ by Thomas Christopher Greene
Susannah is #blessed. Her husband, Max, a sexy and wildly successful performance artist, has a teaching gig at the University of Vermont that comes with a house in Burlington’s Hill Section. With her teenage son at school all day, Susannah seems to spend most of her time jogging by the lake, shopping at the farmers…
WTF: Why Does the U.S. Export Blood Despite Vermont’s Shortages?
Perhaps you’ve noticed sandwich-board signs posted near Burlington’s American Red Cross blood donation center announcing that Vermont is in the midst of a critical blood shortage. The signs, which tug at our heartstrings and lure us with free doughnuts and movie tickets, beckon the unsqueamish among us to open a vein and donate a pint…
What’s Left? Young Burlington Progs Forge Ahead Without Jane Knodell
Voters at the Progressive Party caucus had a clear choice, City Councilor Brian Pine (P-Ward 3) told the crowd during the January 6 event in Burlington’s Old North End. To endorse Central District incumbent City Councilor Jane Knodell was to support someone who understood the principles upon which the party was founded: pragmatism, moderation and…
Four New Albums from Formerly Local Artists
In 2018, Seven Days reviewed more than 100 albums from local bands and musicians. Given our mission of hyper-local coverage, we frequently have to pass on reviewing albums that come to us from nonlocal creators. Besides, we have more music coming our way from within Vermont than we can keep up with. However, we do…
Movie Review: ‘On the Basis of Sex’ Offers an Educational — But Not Exciting — Portrait of RBG’s Early Career
If we learned one thing from last year’s documentary RBG, it’s that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg works her ass off. But a lifelong habit of toiling over briefs into the wee hours is difficult to dramatize. Certainly, most people don’t look as dewy at their desks as actor Felicity Jones does in…
If You’re Feeling Blue, There’s an Herb for That
Nick Cavanaugh can’t get enough lemon balm. During a recent class on winter mood-boosting herbs at Burlington’s Railyard Apothecary, he explained why: “One winter, I had all this dried lemon balm in my cupboard that I didn’t know what to do with. So I started using it to brew tea and drinking two or three…
North Country Cakes Moves Bakery to Morrisville
In the Morrisville storefront that housed Thompson’s Flour Shop for two decades, a new bakery is rising. Thompson’s moved across the road to 7 Main Street last summer. When its owners announced the move in early 2018, North Country Cakes owner Nicole Maddox jumped at the opportunity to move her home-based bakery to 73 Lower…
