Jan 9-15, 2019
Remembering Photographer Matthew Thorsen, 1967-2018; What to Watch This Legislative Session; Subaru Rally Team Races Under the Radar — in Vermont
Cover Story
Remembering Seven Days Photographer Matthew Thorsen
On New Year’s Day 2019, cancer ushered longtime Seven Days photographer Matthew Thorsen, 51, into his next great adventure. His wife, Diane Sullivan, said he passed peacefully at home; she and one of the couple’s cats, Darkness, were by his side. Since then, an avalanche of sweet, sad, funny and loving remembrances on social media…
Seven Days Hires Kate O’Neill for a New Reporting Project on the Opioid Epidemic
Burlington-based weekly Seven Days has launched a yearlong reporting project chronicling the opioid epidemic in Vermont and efforts to address it. The designated writer of “Hooked: Stories and Solutions From Vermont’s Opioid Crisis” is Kate O’Neill, who has personal experience with the crisis: Her sister, Burlington mom Madelyn Linsenmeir, died last October after years battling…
Obituary: Elizabeth Hampel, 1927-2018
Elizabeth (Betty) Cornell Doolittle Hampel passed away on October 8, 2018, in Burlington, Vt. She was born in 1927 and grew up in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. As a child, she seemed to be so emotionally and physically challenged that she was taken to Vassar College for evaluation. At that time, myasthenia gravis, the underlying neurological cause…
The Parmelee Post: Scott Administration Considers Merging Educators Into Single, Unified Teacher
The administration of Gov. Phil Scott is considering a drastic reshaping of Vermont educators, according to a planning memo acquired by the Parmelee Post. The memo, the second in a week, calls for the formation of a single, unified teacher to handle the education needs of Vermont public schools. “It’s more of a thought experiment…
Soundbites: Musicians Unite for Talent Skatepark
Ch-Ch-Changes Howdy, folks, and happy 2019! If you’re anything like me, this is how your year has gone so far: Make a New Year’s resolution; reconsider the arbitrary nature of New Year’s resolutions; declare New Year’s resolutions dumb; reevaluate your constant need to be a contrarian; suck it up and recommit to your resolution; ultimately…
The Skinny Pancake Opens 10th Restaurant, in Quechee
The Skinny Pancake will open its 10th location next month with a restaurant in Quechee adjacent to Jake’s Quechee Market at 7161 Woodstock Road. The 2,000-square-foot café, furnished with banquettes and a couch, will be a “comfortable and functional” space that suits the fast-casual, order-at-the counter crêperie, founder-owner Benjy Adler said. “All the years doing…
Movie Review: Adam McKay Offers No Fresh Insights With the Dick Cheney Bio ‘Vice’
“Between the idea and the reality … falls the shadow,” T.S. Eliot wrote in his 1925 poem “The Hollow Men.” Scholars have variously conjectured that he was talking about the Treaty of Versailles, modern man’s crisis of faith, even his wife’s extra-marital high jinks with Bertrand Russell. There is consensus that he wasn’t talking about…
Scarlett Letters: I Think My Daughter and Stepson Are Dating
Dear Scarlett, My husband and I have been married for 10 years. It is a second marriage for both of us. I had a 6-year-old daughter when we got married, and my husband had an 8-year-old son. Our kids have grown up together, and we are a nice family. Now my daughter is 16 and…
Right to Fight: Paco DeFrancis Is Burlington’s Sole Republican City Council Candidate
Paco DeFrancis wants to eliminate on-street parking in Burlington — he calls it “free personal property storage” — in favor of bike lanes. He believes a microloan program for refugees and New Americans would stimulate local economic development. And he’s hard at work on a plan to decrease Burlington’s property tax from 83 to 73 cents per…
Berned Bridges? Sanders Dogged by 2016 Charges
Even as U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) mulls a second run for president in 2020, he faces allegations of sexism and sexual misconduct within his 2016 campaign. As has often been the case when Sanders is asked tough questions, particularly about issues of race or gender, his response has been, well, a little tone-deaf. The…
Free Will Astrology (1/9/19)
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): In 1984, singer-songwriter John Fogerty released a new album whose lead single was “The Old Man Down the Road.” It sold well. But trouble arose soon afterward when Fogerty’s former record company sued him in court, claiming he stole the idea for “The Old Man Down the Road” from “Run Through…
Tapped In: To Grow, Hinesburg Village Center Needs Water
Last week in Hinesburg, light snow fell on a hayfield where town officials are collaborating with private developer BlackRock Construction on a potential new municipal well. If the project comes to fruition, it would expand local water capacity and possibly open the floodgates to construction of some 420 homes, duplexes and apartments. Early results suggest…
Seven Issues to Watch in the Vermont Legislature
When the Vermont legislature reconvenes this week, it will feature plenty of fresh faces. Nearly 40 of the House’s 150 members will take office for the first time — or after a hiatus — and at least seven House and Senate committees will have new leadership. But don’t expect that turnover to result in a fresh…
Artist Susan Calza Opens a New Montpelier Gallery With a Bang
A single gunshot sounds amid the forest of red ribbons and shiny brass bullet shells hanging from the ceiling of Montpelier’s newly opened Susan Calza Gallery. “That’s Yo-Yo Ma and gunshots,” Calza explained calmly. The disconcerting combination of tracks — Yo-Yo Ma’s “Six Evolutions — Bach: Cello Suites” and a gunshot recording — scores the…
Eat This Week, January 9 to 15, 2019: Sip and Spin
Wine-bar patrons bop and jive to soul tunes, jazz and hip-hop, courtesy of Autumn Records’ Greg Davis. Bartenders pour their favorite natural and small-batch wines and pop some rare bottles to celebrate the occasion. Second Saturdays: DJ Set in the Wine Bar: Saturday, January 12, 9 p.m.-midnight, Dedalus Wine Shop, Market & Wine Bar, Burlington.…
Move Review: Hirokazu Koreeda’s Cannes Winner ‘Shoplifters’ Puts the Social Margins Front and Center
On the way back from a shoplifting expedition, a man and a boy encounter a small neighbor girl outside in the cold. They bring her home for dinner and fussing-over by their resident “Grandma” (Kirin Kiki), then prepare to return her where she belongs. Bruises on the child’s body and an overheard yelling match between…
Hackie: Buddhist Heaven
Who knew that tony Connecticut — aka the Nutmeg State, for crying out loud — has a section populated by self-identified rednecks? And that the denizens call themselves “raggies”? Not me, and I’ve lived in New England all my life. On Christmas day, a customer, Ray Wolf, hipped me to the reality of redneck Connecticut.…
Bloodshot Bill Keeps ’50s-Style Rockabilly en Vogue
Back in the ’50s, pompadours, beehives, two-toned shoes and swing skirts were all the rage. And blaring from the AM dial were the savage strains of artists like Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison and Link Wray. Those artists and others pioneered the rockabilly genre, an early rock-and-roll style that fused country, Western swing, and rhythm and…
Subaru’s Champion Team Races Under the Radar — in Vermont
It’s not unusual to find a Vermont parking lot full of Subarus. Less usual is to find a Subaru parked in an office lobby, especially a Subaru sporting racing stripes, a roll cage, a 340-horsepower engine and a suspension beefy enough to withstand 90-foot jumps at 80 miles per hour. That particular race car, on…
Matthew Taylor’s Concert Series Focuses on Women and People of Color
The classical world’s new-music scene is fast filling with women composers and composers of color — at least in chamber music, if not yet in orchestral programming. Now Vermont is about to get a significant window into the national scene. Middlebury College assistant professor of music Matthew Evan Taylor, a 38-year-old African American composer, is…
Letters to the Editor (1/9/19)
Nothing ‘Sidetracked’ About It On Monday, December 17, the Burlington City Council voted 10-2 to place a plan to reform Burlington’s permitting system on the Town Meeting Day ballot in March. The plan would create a new, unified Permitting and Inspections Department to better coordinate functions that currently are split among three different agencies, and…
Album Review: 99 Neighbors, ‘Television’
(99 Neighbors, digital) 99 Neighbors are an explosive Vermont hip-hop success story. Formed around the power trio of rapper/singer Sam., rapper HANKNATIVE and producer Somba, they’ve evolved into an extended crew that dominated the local scene in 2018. The group’s debut, Television, will likely make noise far beyond our Green Mountains. On July 27 of…
Sunniva Dutcher Brings the Murals to Burlington Beer
If you’ve visited Burlington Beer in Williston within the last month, you might have noticed the new 30-foot-tall mural depicting a pair of hands, partially obscured by a canning apparatus, rising up toward the ceiling. Depending on your perspective, they’re either about to catch, or have just released, a bee the size of a dishwasher.…
Whooo Is Visiting from the Arctic?
A snowy owl has been hanging around the Burlington waterfront since late December, to the delight of birders eager to view the visitor from the Arctic. They’ve trained their binoculars on the fluffy white bird at several spots including Perkins Pier, the Burlington breakwater, Blodgett Beach and the U.S. Coast Guard Station. The raptor has…
All Hail the Cider-Steamed Mussels at Kitchen Table Bistro
Steamed mussels have a secure place in my culinary heart. I treasure childhood memories of competing with my siblings and cousins to build the tallest pile of empty shells during beachside vacations in Brittany. Then we’d each use our biggest shell to slurp up all the sea-salty white wine and shallot broth. During my teenage…
Album Review: Kelly Ravin, ‘Ditches’
(Self-released, digital download) Contrary to that old cliché about death and taxes, not all of life’s constants are unpleasant. For example, either Vermont alt-country mainstay Kelly Ravin has made it a mission to release a full-length LP every year or his natural creative proclivity just works out that way. While so many modern artists worry…
At Burlington’s Flynndog Gallery, a Project and Incubator Space Opens
Burlington’s Flynndog gallery is actually a long, high-ceilinged hallway in a labyrinthine converted industrial building at 208 Flynn Avenue. And it recently got a new lease on life: In October, Margaret Coleman took over a 1,000-square-foot vacant office adjacent to the hallway and transformed it into the Flynndog Project Space, an incubator for up-and-coming artists.…
Two Vermonters Make Pies and Friends at Stone’s Throw Pizza
The plates at the new pizzeria in Fairfax are nine-inch pizza pans that cost 70 cents apiece. The silverware is left over from a Stowe wedding. The base of the table by the front door, a low wooden pedestal, was found in the woods by chef and co-owner Silas Pollitt when he was foraging for…
NU Chocolat to Open in Burlington This Month
New year, new chocolate. By the end of this month, NU Chocolat will open at 180 Battery Street in Burlington, co-owner Kevin Toohey told Seven Days earlier this week. Local sweets connoisseurs may remember Toohey, along with his wife, Laura, and their adult children, Virginia and Rowan Toohey, as the makers of Shelburne’s Bijou Fine…
