Burlington entrepreneur Rob Conboy has high hopes for the object in the palm of his hand. The gray nugget he held on a recent afternoon looked like a stone but weighed no more than a sponge. The pseudo rock, which resembles pumice, was foam-glass aggregate, made from recycled glass that had been ground to powder,…
Devoted mother and grandmother was ‘an invaluable part of the school community’
The bill that would legalize a retail cannabis market in Vermont is on the move. After a few days of review, the 11 members of the House Government Operations Committee voted unanimously on Friday to move the measure back to the Ways and Means Committee. The tally was significant in one respect: Rep. Jim Harrison…
Burlington native served the community for more than 20 years in retirement
A couple of things are going on in writer-director Chinonye Chukwu’s sophomore feature effort. One is an intermittently riveting evocation of how it might feel to be a prisoner awaiting execution on death row. The other — and this facet of the film receives considerably more time and attention — is an evocation of how…
“Once you come to a show, you are one of the friends,” Sammy Rae tells Seven Days by phone. Born Samantha Bowers, the 26-year-old singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist leads the eight-piece, New York City-based ensemble the Friends. On its website, the band offers a sentiment similar to that of its leader: “Our shows are safe spaces…
The complex of medical buildings on Tilley Drive in South Burlington houses numerous specialists. If you’re a local facing a significant health issue, the odds are good that, at some point, you’ve been referred there. As I approached one of those buildings on a frosty, single-digit January afternoon, my taxi customer, Elizabeth Bird, stepped outside…
Gov. Phil Scott asked lawmakers last week to raise at least $4 million next fiscal year by legalizing sports betting and keno gambling. But while his proposal would give Vermonters more ways to play the odds, leading Democratic lawmakers say the real roll of the dice is proposing to balance the budget with a concept…
(Self-released, digital) I have always wanted to be a fiddle player. I grew up in a town that would semi-regularly shut down Main Avenue, invite a bluegrass band and throw a street dance. So, in my mind, that music became permanently wedded to the rebellious, joyful feeling of occupying a space usually reserved for cars.…
Wonderful Writing I want to give a shout-out to a number of Seven Days writers whose quality of writing and reporting I appreciate. Just recently, Dan Bolles was delightful in his use of a Mister Rogers-like voice for the initial part of an engaging profile of François Clemmons [“Good Neighbors,” January 8]. I’ve appreciated the…
In a 2012 New Yorker piece, Brad Leithauser called Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw “a modest monument to the bold pursuit of ambiguity.” Is the 1898 novella a ghost story, or is it a tale of madness and murder with a delusional narrator? Generations of critics have debated the question — demonstrating, in…
On January 21, Brian Montminy II walked into the town offices in Barton, a place where firearms are ubiquitous enough that the Lake House Saloon across the street posts its “no guns” rule out front. He took a seat in the cramped room where local officials gather twice a month. “I have never been to…
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Please don’t imitate or repeat yourself in the coming weeks. Refrain from relying on formulas that have worked for you before. Resolve to either ignore or rebel against your past as you dream up fresh gambits and adventures. Treat your whole life like an improvisatory game that has just one purpose:…
Dear Reverend, Less than a year ago, I went through a nasty breakup with a man I was living with. He was emotionally and verbally abusive and made me feel like nothing I did was good enough. I’m finally in a stable place mentally, and he’s been texting me a lot. Part of me knows…
Seven Days writers can’t possibly read, much less review, all the books that arrive in a steady stream by post, email and, in one memorable case, a squabble of seagulls. So this monthly feature is our way of introducing you to a handful of books by Vermont authors. To do that, we contextualize each book…
(Self-released, digital) In a September 2019 episode of the New York Times podcast “Popcast,” host and pop music critic Jon Caramanica weighed in on Post Malone and Rae Sremmurd’s success in the streaming ecosystem. “The entire point of streaming is, you press play and hopefully never press stop,” he said. He argued that the ideal…
I’m an avid cross-country skier — not a racer in spandex cranking laps on some perfectly groomed course, but a guy breaking his own random trail through meadows and forests, pausing to check on buried boulders and swerving animal tracks, noting the tones and textures and timbres of the season. For me, the goal of…
A professional dog trainer from Huntington and her four-legged pal Moto will appear on TV this week in a national competition. Jill Viggiani and her 6-year-old boxer made it onto A&E’s “America’s Top Dog,” which puts pups through their paces on a variety of skills challenges. The dogs must make it through a massive obstacle…
Much Music Every so often, a slow news week comes along in the world of local music and nightlife. And that week usually arrives sometime in the dead of winter. Makes sense. When was the last time you left your house for something other than work or some kind of obligation? Were there leaves on…
In the Northern Stage production of King Lear, sound tells the story of armies clashing, and light makes a storm feel like the world’s end. Those immense theatrical effects are no more powerful than William Shakespeare’s words performed by an exceptional group of actors. Director Stephen Brown-Fried uses a few physical surprises but makes the…
With Relativity, Vermont Stage offers a three-character comedy that quotes Albert Einstein’s wit while inventing a confrontation for him about a true and little-known skeleton in his closet. Mark St. Germain builds his play around the biographical tidbit that Einstein and his first wife had a daughter in 1902 but never publicly acknowledged her. The…
Artist Axel Stohlberg finds endless inspiration in the standard shape of a house — a square or rectangle with a sloping roof. There’s no need to read a deep philosophy into that choice, he said; in his work, the house represents what many might expect: a nest, a shelter, security. The house shape is so…
Republican Gov. Phil Scott has broken with the Trump administration to support climate goals set in the international Paris Agreement. In his January 22 budget address, he proposed dedicating 25 percent of future budget surpluses to climate action. He has called for speeding the transition to electric vehicles, weatherizing more homes and modernizing the state’s…
The world of new classical music is a busy and vibrant one, but not all participants have gained widespread recognition. Among those who have is Roomful of Teeth, a small group of singers and singer-composers who have mastered vocal techniques used around the world, including Tuvan throat singing and Korean P’ansori. Similarly, Vermont-born composer Nico…
Greenland’s ice sheet lost 3.8 trillion tons of ice between 1992 and 2018, according to a satellite-based study by NASA and the European Space Agency. When Hawaii-based director Dan Lin was filming on a remote Greenlandic glacier during the summer of 2018, he could literally hear it melting beneath his feet. “Early in the morning…
Chefs work long shifts, often on evenings, weekends and holidays. Farmer hours are not much better; they must make hay (or plant corn, or pick strawberries) while the sun shines, as the saying goes. Both careers are physically and mentally demanding, operating within thin margins subject to uncontrollable factors such as weather and the broader…
It’s common enough for carpenters to discover surprises when they respond to a client’s call — rotted support beams, perhaps, or a family of raccoons in the crawl space. But when she went to work on a friend’s property, carpenter-bartender Lee Kinsey found something less common: a home for the restaurant she had dreamed of.…
A trio of business partners has bought and undertaken significant renovations of 39 Bridge Street in Richmond. Two of them will launch a new restaurant there this summer. Gabriel Firman, Lars Whitman and Jan Zolten purchased the building in September 2019. The 1870 structure was most recently occupied by Toscano Café and Bistro but is…
