Jun 10-16, 2015
Vermont Mulls the Pros and Cons of Privatizing State Liquor Sales; Ethan de Seife Goes Off Trail; The Gospel According to Mavis Staples; Agricola Farm’s Dinner Club; Heintz on the Might-Wannabes
Cover Story
Vermont Mulls Pros and Cons of Privatizing Liquor Sales
The Vermont Department of Liquor Control warehouse in Montpelier buzzed with activity as beeping forklifts hauled cases of liquor into the back of a large truck on the Wednesday before Memorial Day weekend. Workers were busily restocking Vermont’s 80 state-controlled liquor stores in anticipation of the unofficial start of summer, which historically coincides with a…
Vermont 2016 Candidate Generator
Having trouble tracking who’s considering a run for Vermont’s top offices next year? You’re not the only one! Since Gov. Peter Shumlin announced Monday that he won’t seek a fourth term, more than a dozen politicos have expressed interest in replacing him. If two of the top prospects seek that seat — Congressman Peter Welch…
Obituary: Leona (Granger) DeForge, Winooski, Vt
Leona (Granger) DeForge, 90, daughter of LeoPold and Yvonne (Merchant) Granger, of Winooski passed away on June 11th at Starr Farm Nursing Home after a long illness. She will be extremely missed by her daughter and primary care provider for the past several years, Catherine Eddy, and her husband Gerald of Winooski, her son, Richard…
Time to Grow Up? Burlington Considers New Building Heights
Imagine that a building suddenly grows taller, offering a better view of the surrounding scenery from its higher vantage. It would also cast a longer shadow and stand out more. The consequences for its neighbors could be hard to predict in advance. That’s Burlington’s dilemma. The city is considering zoning changes that could alter its…
Power Broker: Under Neale Lunderville, Little Burlington Electric Plans Big
Last fall the Burlington Electric Department made national news when it announced that 100 percent of its power was coming from renewable energy sources. The municipal-owned utility started running energy efficiency programs more than two decades ago, and the city now consumes less electricity than it did in 1989. The small local utility has still-greater…
![Montpelier Senior Activity Center Senior Prom [SIV402]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/stuck-toc.webp?resize=800%2C600&ssl=1)
Montpelier Senior Activity Center Senior Prom [SIV402]
5/30/15: The Montpelier Senior Activity Center held its first “Senior Prom” last Saturday at the National Life Building. Eva talked to party goers at this multigenerational event about their prom memories. Music: Barbacoa, “Bikini Island” This episode of Stuck in Vermont was made possible by Hotel Vermont and Vermont Tourism
Decision Time: Does Phil Scott Have the Drive for a Gubernatorial Run?
Since November 2014, Vermont Lt. Gov. Phil Scott has hardly been able to get through a day without some friend, colleague or stranger urging him to run for governor. On Monday afternoon, those entreaties intensified. Shortly after Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin made the surprising announcement that he will not seek reelection next year, the 56-year-old…
Map: Vermont’s Best-Selling Liquor, Store by Store
When you buy your Jack Daniels, WhistlePig or Kahlua in Vermont, you’re actually buying it from the state’s Department of Liquor Control. The department licenses 80 agents across the state to sell its liquor, in exchange for a commission on each sale. Ken Picard’s story dives into the byzantine business of liquor control and explores…
Mavis Staples Talks Pops, Grammys and Dylan
As iconic gospel divas go, Mavis Staples is one humble lady. In a recent 25-minute interview with Seven Days, she repeatedly returned to one theme in particular: how grateful she is for, well, pretty much everything, including her memory, her music, her friends, her time with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and, most of all,…
Hungrytown, Further West
(Listen Here! Records, CD, digital download) Further West, the newly released third album from West Townshend’s Hungrytown, evokes the ages-old call of the open road. This is obviously true in the album’s title, and is made equally clear in the record’s cover art: the band name and album title are superimposed on a highway sign.…
Introducing Off Trail: Exploring the State’s Natural Niches
“Excuse me. I’ve got a fly in my mouth.” Kent McFarland, conservation biologist at the Vermont Center for Ecostudies, politely pauses to expectorate one of the countless black flies that besiege him as he stands on the boardwalk at Mollie Beattie Bog. Though probably the most numerous and noisome of all the organisms that dwell…
The Movies, Wanna
(Self-released, digital download) So long, Will Cuneo. We hardly knew ya. Cuneo is a Middlebury College grad whose band, the Movies, were fairly popular among the Midd Kid set. Up north in Burlington, we never heard much from that trio while they were active, and it’s unlikely that we will in the future. Degree in…
Bernie Sanders’ Brooklyn Beginnings
In Brooklyn, a 40-minute subway ride separates Hillary Clinton’s Brooklyn Heights presidential campaign headquarters from the Midwood apartment house where Bernie Sanders grew up in the 1940s and ’50s. Culturally, however, the distance is vast. The respective locations say a lot about the values and politics of the two candidates — particularly those of Sanders,…
Sneakers Jazz Band Reunite
Vermont’s venerable Sneakers Jazz Band are currently having a moment. They are rereleasing their one and only album, Live at White Crow, originally issued on cassette in 1989. And the musicians are reuniting to perform two shows at Club Metronome this Sunday, June 14, the last night of the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival. Not bad…
Spy
The mission of this movie is not a secret. It’s the film Melissa McCarthy finally gets to headline as an acknowledgment of the comic creativity she’s displayed since the moment we fell in love with her in Bridesmaids. The budget is big. The supporting cast is A-list. It’s a Valentine from Hollywood to the funniest…
Free Will Astrology (6/10/15)
ARIES (March 21-April 19): “To look at a thing hard and straight and seriously — to fix it.” Aries author Henry James said he wanted to do that on a regular basis. He didn’t want to be “arbitrary” or “mechanical” in his efforts. I invite you to make this perspective one of your specialties in…
Insidious: Chapter 3
The second sequel to the 2010 horror hit Insidious is actually a prequel, but it’s a stretch to call it a freestanding scare story — or a “story” at all. Structurally, this movie has less in common with a classic haunted-house film than with a high-tech theme-park scarehouse. The shocks and jolts keep coming, and some…
Key Enthusiasts Gather at a Burlington Type-In
Last Saturday afternoon, Burlington’s Maglianero Café filled with a sound eerily familiar to people of a certain age: the tapping of manual typewriters. The typists, ranging from grade-schoolers to boomers, came from around the state. What they had in common was a fascination with the ingenious, durable machines that once represented state-of-the-art personal communications technology.…
Gone Gov: Pols Prepare for a Post-Shumlin Vermont
Twenty-five years ago, governor Madeleine Kunin plucked a young businessman from the Putney Selectboard and appointed him to a vacant seat in the Vermont House. On Monday, the now 59-year-old Peter Shumlin followed his mentor’s lead by agreeing to relinquish the governor’s office after just three two-year terms. Just as Kunin did in April 1990,…
Letters to the Editor (6/10/15)
Wrong Instrument [Re Album Review: Audrey Bernstein, Alright, OK, You Win, June 3]: Dear Seven Days music reviewer Ted Kammerer: What qualifies you to critique a jazz recording?Your use of clever verbiage is far from a qualification. You mentioned my solo on a particular track. Ted, I play the trumpet. The solo in question was…
Hilton Garden Party
It was my first pickup at Burlington’s newest hotel — the Hilton Garden Inn. Though it’s been in operation for months, I’m surprised how few locals know of its existence. I think that’s because the bulk of the property is not on street level but tucked into the interior of the block behind existing buildings.…
Farm to Ballet Project Celebrates Vermont Agriculture
Farm to table. Farm to school. Farm to fork. And farm to ballet? Yes, Vermont is now the birthplace of a unique ag-inspired art movement that’s taking root this summer. Conceived by Vermont native Chatch Pregger, the Farm to Ballet Project is a full-length production with 18 dancers that tells the story of a farm…
Soundbites: Local Highlights at the BDJF
In thinking about the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival as it reaches its grand finale this weekend, it occurs to me that the fest is kinda like that old wedding adage, “Something old, something new. Something borrowed, something blue.” (Raise your hand if you smell a contrived column gimmick coming on! Bear with me.) For something…
Gallery Profile: Collective — the art of craft
If artists agree on one thing, it’s that making a living as an artist isn’t easy. But they may differ on how to go about it. One artisan relies heavily on juried shows around the country; another hopes that regional fairs and open studio weekends will add up. Others go the gallery-consignment route, or bank…
I Want to Pursue My Best Friend’s Ex Girlfriend
Dear Athena, My best friend just broke up with his girlfriend of a few months. They had this on-and-off thing for a while. He and I have been friends for more than 10 years, and we’re really close, but I am so into this woman. We’ve both known her for a long time, and he’s…
A Summer Exhibit Brings “America’s Michelangelo” Into View in Vermont
Constantino Brumidi (1805-1880), the creator of some of the greatest artworks in the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., moldered in an unmarked grave for 70-some years before his reputation was gradually resurrected in the mid-20th century. Brumidi’s achievement was finally accorded formal honors in 2008 when he was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.…
News Quirks (6/10/15)
Curses, Foiled Again Police in Virginia Beach, Va., identified Dominyk Antonio Alfonseca, 23, as their bank-robbery suspect after he posted video on social media showing the teller stuffing money into a bag and a picture of a note asking for $150,000 (but adding “please”). Alfonseca insisted that posting the video proves it wasn’t robbery. “I…
A Sunday Night Supper at Agricola Farm
In the sheer drizzle of an unseasonably cool late-May evening, Alessandra Rellini stood amid her hogs. A massive sow sauntered over, pushing her nose through the gate. Of the dozen or so people crowded into the open-air barn, most skittered away from the beast, but one man reached down and gave her pink nose a…
Chef Matecat Will Helm New La Puerta Negra
After going dark in January 2013, the space at 44 Main Street in Montpelier formerly known as the Black Door will rise again as La Puerta Negra (Spanish for “the black door”) later this summer. Though owned by restaurateur Carlo Rovetto, the new restaurant and night spot is not under the umbrella of Rovetto Brothers…
Sauce Italian Specialties Comes to Stowe
When Sharon Herbert first told Seven Days about her plans for Sauce Italian Specialties, back in March, she described a homey take-out joint dishing quality Italian food just like Grandma used to make it. Now, after a few last-minute delays — Herbert debuted briefly over Memorial Day weekend, then closed to work out a few…
