Jan 23-29, 2019
Charlie Morrow’s Sound Environments Keep It Real; Burlington Group Seeks Advisory Question on Ballot About Park Renovation; Trying One of Everything at Taco Gordo
Cover Story
Charlie Morrow Creates Soundscapes That Mimic How We Hear
Where are you reading this story right now? Perhaps you’re in a bustling coffee shop or cozied up on the couch by a woodstove with a warm cup of tea. Wherever you are, stop reading and close your eyes. Take a few deep, relaxing breaths and just listen. What do you hear? At a coffee…
Maya’s Kitchen and Bar Brings Asian Fusion to Burlington’s New North End
Maya’s Kitchen & Bar opened on January 24 at 1130 North Avenue in Burlington, taking over the space where Nepali Kitchen & Bar – Burlington operated for about seven months. The new restaurant is owned by Maya Gurung-Subba, who was chef at Nepali Kitchen, and her husband, Suk Subba. Their Asian-fusion menu includes cuisine from…
Obituary: Louis Chiriatti, 1940-2019
Lou Chiriatti, 78, of South Burlington passed away January 22, 2019. Lou, son of Katherine and Lawrence Chiriatti, was born and raised in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. After graduating from high school, he attended Pratt University, majoring in electrical engineering. Lou worked for NASA in Cleveland and then IBM in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. He moved with the company…
Obituary: Enid Wonnacott, 1961-2019
Enid Wonnacott passed away peacefully from breast cancer, surrounded by her family at their home in Huntington on Saturday, January 19, 2019. She was 57 years old. Enid lived a life filled with family, friends, horses, sheep, chickens, ducks, dogs, gardens, sports, outdoor adventures and a long career in organic agriculture. Enid was born on…
The Parmelee Post: Vermont Offers $5K to Anyone Who Can Find the State on a Map
The state of Vermont is once again expanding its efforts to attract new residents. State officials on Monday unveiled a plan to offer out-of-staters a cool $5,000 if they can simply point to Vermont on a map. “We realized we may have set the bar a bit too high with the whole ‘remote worker’ thing,”…
Obituary: Sanders Milens, 1938-2019
A life well lived ended peacefully for Sanders H. Milens, who passed away on January 20 at his home in Burlington, Vt., with his wife by his side. Sandy is survived by his beloved wife of nearly 48 years, Muffie Milens; their daughter, Hillary Milens, and her wife, Lauren Baker, of Amherst, Mass.; and many…
Movie Review: Netflix’s New Doc Chronicles How a Highly Promoted Music Festival Became a Trash ‘Fyre’
Woodstock tickets go on sale soon. That’s Woodstock 50, the anniversary festival scheduled for August and currently being planned by Michael Lang, an organizer of the original. In a recent Rolling Stone interview, Lang wouldn’t reveal the lineup but did announce he’ll be bringing NGOs to educate attendees about getting involved with political causes. “Woodstock,”…
Album Review: Yestrogen, ‘SHE/EP’
(self-released, CD, digital) We hear the word “revolution” on the reg in President Donald Trump’s America. Whether referring to blue waves or rainbow waves or any number of impassioned sociopolitical causes, the word rumbles with urgency and righteous indignation. So when a band uses the word “revolution” to describe itself, listeners can’t be blamed for…
Vermont Pride Theater Presents Reading of ‘The Laramie Project’
In October 1998, a young gay man named Matthew Shepard was brutally beaten and left for dead in Laramie, Wyo. The event and its aftermath captured the national spotlight, as jurors and the public grappled with whether the crime was motivated by bigotry. The case spurred subsequent hate-crime legislation including the Matthew Shepard Act, passed…
Movie Review: M. Night Shyamalan Returns to the World of Comic Books With the Uneven ‘Glass’
When M. Night Shyamalan followed his breakout hit The Sixth Sense with Unbreakable (2000), the reaction was bemused. Why would a filmmaker who found fame with a supernatural suspense drama want to make a movie about superheroes? But, viewed from the vantage of nearly 20 years later, Unbreakable seems like a natural development of Shyamalan’s…
Vacationer’s Kenny Vasoli Talks Cannabis, Samples and His Chameleonic Career
Depending on when listeners first discovered Kenny Vasoli, they might think of the Philadelphia-based artist either in terms of punk music or hip-hop-inspired electro-pop. That’s because the 34-year-old found success with not one but two projects: the emo-adjacent early-2000s outfit the Starting Line, and the spaced-out, groove-heavy pop of Vacationer, which debuted in the early…
Pokéworks Opens in Burlington
After months of renovations, Pokéworks opened earlier this month at 40 Church Street in Burlington. The fish bowl and burrito spot is the latest location in a ballooning New York-based franchise that includes more than 30 outposts throughout North America. As at other fast-service restaurants, guests build custom protein bowls, burritos or salads by choosing…
The Friendly Toast Offers Free Meals to Federal Employees
The Friendly Toast, a five-restaurant chain based in Portsmouth, N.H., is offering free meals to federal employees and a guest during the federal government shutdown. The Burlington branch of the business, which opened last summer at 86 St. Paul Street, has served 50 to 60 meals to federal employees since the program launched on January…
Dedalus Chef Michael Judy Has an Appetite for Feeding People
Chef Michael Judy Position: Executive chef, Dedalus Wine Shop, Market & Wine Bar Location: Burlington Age: 26 Cuisine type: European-inspired, wine-focused food Education: BA in physics from Middlebury College Experience: Highlights include working at Tom Gray’s Bistro Aix in Jacksonville, Fla.; Dolci, the student-run restaurant at Middlebury College; and Tawlet restaurant and its sister market,…
Burlington’s Esperanza Restaurant Closes Its Doors
Esperanza Restaurante, which opened in December 2016 at 180 Battery Street in Burlington, has closed after two years in business. A sign on the door says the restaurant, which served cuisine from El Salvador and the Philippines, will not reopen. A recorded message on the restaurant’s telephone line thanks customers for their support, apologizes for…
My Husband Has Gained Weight and I’m Less Attracted
Dear Scarlett, My husband has gained quite a bit of weight over the last few years, and I find myself less attracted to him. I’ve tried to be supportive and help him lose weight, but it’s always the same. He diets for a week or so, then goes back to eating like crap. I stay…
The ‘Jon Stewart of Egypt,’ Bassem Youssef, Comes to the Flynn
Bassem Youssef was having a bad day. “It’s a mess here. We have a teachers’ strike, and I’m running around because of my daughter,” explained Youssef, reached by cellphone last week while stuck in traffic on a Los Angeles freeway. “For us, public school is our cheap babysitting option. It’s hell, it’s horrible and it’s…
Art Review: Ann Young’s ‘Fellow Travelers’ at VT Supreme Court Gallery
If you stand at a distance and squint, Ann Young’s paintings might appear to consist of gemstones. Her pigments are jewellike, rich and earthy. But the merit of these works does not reside in sensuous color alone, because, of course, content cannot be ignored. Nor can technique. Young has a mastery of her medium —…
Minimal Disclosure: Lawmakers’ Financial Filings Reveal Little
Less than a week after taking office, Rep. Kari Dolan (D-Waitsfield) found herself staring down her former bosses in a House committee hearing. The first-time lawmaker had just stepped down as director of the state’s Clean Water Initiative Program and stepped onto the House Natural Resources, Fish and Wildlife Committee. In one of the panel’s…
Free Will Astrology (1/23/19)
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Motivational speaker and author Nick Vujicic was born without arms or legs, although he has two small, unusually shaped feet. These facts didn’t stop him from getting married, raising a family of four children and writing eight books. One book is entitled Life Without Limits: Inspiration for a Ridiculously Good Life.…
A Trailer Matchup for Two VT Films: ‘Axcellerator’ and ‘The Silver Screen Roadshow’
If you can’t tell a book by its cover, can you tell a movie by its trailer? Just for fun, we did a side-by-side comparison of the trailers for two very different Vermont films that will premiere locally in the next couple of weeks. Then we asked the filmmakers — who, coincidentally, are both named…
Eat This Week, January 22 to 28, 2019: Meet, Then Eat
Acclaimed chef Matt Jennings teams up with the Essex Culinary Resort & Spa for a two-part cooking demonstration and supper. During the chef’s afternoon workshop, Jennings — a four-time James Beard Award nominee and New England Culinary Institute grad — will walk students through recipes from his recent book, Homegrown: Cooking From My New England…
Book Review: ‘Black Is the Body’ by Emily Bernard
Emily Bernard’s new collection of essays opens by confiding abruptly, “This book was conceived in a hospital. It was 2001, and I was recovering from surgery on my lower bowel, which had been damaged in a stabbing.” The event to which Bernard alludes — a random attack in a New Haven, Conn., coffee shop where…
New Brewery the Church of Beer Planned for Essex
A new brewery, tentatively called the Church of Beer, is planned as part of the rebranding and redevelopment of the Essex Shoppes & Cinema into a destination called Essex Experience, according to Peter Edelmann, owner of the outlet center. Edelmann told Seven Days on Monday that he plans to develop a brewery and distillery in…
Letters to the Editor (1/23/19)
Thorsen Inspired Thank you for the cover article about Matthew Thorsen [“Thorever and Ever,” January 9]. He is a masterful example of how each one of us makes a difference in the world. Even though I never had the privilege to meet him in person, his creativity, individualism, sense of humor, determination, compassion and talent…
Hackie: Tammy and Becky
“Oh, my lord — that was one crazy New Year’s party,” Tammy Naughton said to me as she settled into the shotgun seat. I was booked to drive her from Burlington back to her home in Colton, a small town just south of Potsdam, N.Y. Her unshod right foot was wrapped in thick gauze —…
Rules Would Put a Premium on Hemp Products Made in Vermont
The skunky aroma of cannabis greeted a visitor at the door of Kria Botanicals’ small South Burlington lab last week. Inside, a shiny silver machine hummed away, using high pressure and liquid carbon dioxide to separate commercially valuable aromatic compounds known as terpenes from finely ground hemp plants. Past the oven and refrigerators, in a…
Martial Lawmakers: Should the Legislature Elect the Leader of the Vermont National Guard?
Rep. Tom Stevens (D-Waterbury) remembers feeling confused and uncomfortable the first time candidates for Vermont adjutant general lobbied for his vote, in 2013. “I was approached by a military officer as I came out of the bathroom near the [Statehouse] cafeteria,” he told his colleagues last week. “It kind of freaked me out.” Stevens, now…
Pin-nacle Achievement: Vermonter Bowls a Perfect 900 Series
A North Clarendon man rolled his way to bowling immortality last week by throwing a perfect 900 series while playing in a local league. All 32 lanes at Rutland Bowlerama went quiet on January 14 as Jon Wilbur, 36, stepped forward to attempt a feat no Vermonter had yet achieved: bowling a perfect three-game set…
Album Review: David Feurzeig, ‘Lingua Franca’
(American Modern Recordings, CD, digital) David Feurzeig’s works on Lingua Franca — about equally distributed among solo cello, cello-and-double-bass duo, solo piano and solo viola — show a composer who deals in hilarity as easily as poignancy. An associate professor of music theory and composition at the University of Vermont, Feurzeig exudes a sense of…
Soundbites: Spice on Snow Returns to Montpelier
Montpelier is the place to be this weekend as the Summit School of Traditional Music and Culture kicks off its annual Spice on Snow Winter Music Festival. Sprawling into practically every nook and cranny of the city’s downtown area, the four-day festival brings a plethora of folk, Americana, old-time, Cajun and other traditional genres to…
North End Studios to Expand Into Winooski’s O’Brien Community Center
This summer, North End Studios will start to transition into new digs at the O’Brien Community Center in Winooski. By June 2022, the Old North End institution plans to shift the majority of operations from its current headquarters at 294 North Winooski Avenue to the Onion City, per an agreement with Hinsdale Properties, which owns…
Will of the People? Advisory Questions Offer High Hopes but Get Few Results
Burlington resident Donna Walters stood outside city hall on January 16, holding a stack of petitions above her head like a trophy. She was there to announce that her group, Keep the Park Green, had gathered the required 2,000 signatures — or 5 percent of the Burlington electorate — to put an advisory question on the Town…
First Bite: Sampling All the Fare at Taco Gordo
Taco Gordo stands at a key juncture in Burlington’s Old North End: where North Union Street angles into North Winooski Avenue. Two neighborhoods merge here — a residential one that is among the most diverse in the city, and a commercial zone also notable for its diversity. Nearby are a yoga studio and nonprofit theater,…
