By the third week of each month, Rebecca Campbell’s bank account is usually overdrawn. She lives in a subsidized apartment next to Momo’s Market in Burlington’s Old North End; to stretch her monthly $1,500 disability check, she eats a lot of chicken-flavored ramen. Her driver’s license is expired, and she doesn’t own a car. She…
Didi Jackson’s book of poetry, Moon Jar, was released on April 21 — the day before her 50th birthday and during a global pandemic. The book contains several years’ worth of poems about Jackson’s late husband, who died by suicide in 2011. Though many of the poems had been published previously, Jackson said it was…
Isaac Colby parked his battered silver sedan outside a well-kept condominium in Essex Junction last week. A white plastic bucket sat on the curb, filled nearly to the brim with a mishmash of food scraps — lettuce, eggshells, a slice of pizza. Colby tucked the bucket into his trunk and marched up the home’s steps…
What do the Vermont Arts Council, the Slow Living Summit, the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival, the Champlain Housing Trust and Planned Parenthood have in common? This past week, all of them — and many, many more, from cultural organizations to for-profit businesses — put out strongly worded statements in solidarity with black and brown…
Dear Reverend, I’m still pretty young, but I’ve had a lot of sex. I mean, a lot. I’m worried that it has taken a toll on my vagina and I’m not as tight as I could be. Is there anything I can do? Loosey Goosey (woman, 31) Dear Loosey Goosey, Many people refer to everything…
Deb Howard had a choice to make. It was early March, and the coronavirus pandemic was about to thrust American society into an indefinite shutdown. Howard knew it was only a matter of time before the threat of the virus would force American and Canadian officials to clamp shut their border, a move that would…
On March 1, 2015, an unarmed man named Charly “Africa” Keunang was shot dead by police officers on Los Angeles’ Skid Row. Media reports described him as a homeless addict who had done time for bank robbery. Keunang was indeed those things, in journalist Jeff Sharlet’s account. But he was not just those things. Sharlet…
Spring in Vermont invites anthropomorphic description: The green is ebullient, the beauty fierce and proud. We’ve endured another long winter, it seems to say, and look at us now. Of course, we humans have also endured a pandemic, a quarantine, a smashing blow to the economy, and the alienation of social distancing and mask wearing.…
Come In, We’re Open In regard to the letter by Thomas Bisson [Feedback: “Not Rolling With It,” June 3], we have been open! Sorry if you have missed our large window sign at 100 Main Street in Burlington. It says “OPEN FOR BUSINESS!” Initially we did curbside, but on the first day retail was permitted…
(Color Study, digital) When Billboard debuted Burlington folk singer-songwriter Henry Jamison’s 2019 LP Gloria Duplex, writer Gary Graff noted that the release boasted “a more muscular impact” and “more pronounced dynamics” than Jamison’s previous output. If Graff found Gloria Duplex, a quietly contemplative album on which Jamison reexamines his boyhood and masculinity, to be muscular…
When Vermont’s Francesca Blanchard released her 2015 breakthrough album Deux Visions, much of the buzz centered on the fact that the record, released on the world-music label Cumbancha, was sung half in French, half in English. It was also largely a folk record. Neither is true of her new album, Make It Better, which comes…
On a May excursion from quarantine life, Meredith Gordon, a Shelburne-based comedian, took her husband and two children to Geprags Community Park in Hinesburg for some much-needed fresh air. It was their first visit to the green space. While exploring the trails, they came on a strange sight alongside a path near two benches: a…
(Ginger Beard House, CD, digital) In March, singer-songwriter Thomas Gunn co-organized one of Vermont’s first livestream music festivals. The Montpelier-based artist quickly responded to the cascade of venue closures caused by the coronavirus pandemic by rallying other local musicians, even some who weren’t particularly acquainted with Gunn or his music. His actions helped raise nearly…
Since March, entering this massive campus — bigger than most Vermont towns — has required a new kind of pass code. A skeleton crew of more than 1,000 masked workers lines up each day before one of three gatekeepers to have their temperatures read by an infrared thermometer. Once they pass the test, the employees…
A group of volunteers is cleaning up a Burlington cemetery to benefit the living. Jason Stuffle heads up the headstone cleanup crew in Greenmount Cemetery, a 15-acre space tucked into a section of the city along Colchester Avenue that residents have taken to calling the Old East End neighborhood. Stuffle has lived across from the…
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): According to novelist Octavia E. Butler, “Positive obsession is about not being able to stop just because you’re afraid and full of doubts.” That’s what I wish for you in the coming weeks, Gemini: positive obsession. It’s also what I expect! My analysis of the astrological omens suggests that you will…
When Andrea Serota talks about “the olden days,” the comanager of the Adamant Co-op is referring to the months and years before mid-March 2020. Back then, residents of the hamlet within Calais, along with other central Vermonters, would stop at the co-op for a bottle of wine, a dozen eggs, a loaf of bread and…
Last Thursday was a beautiful June evening to dine on the outdoor deck at Shanty on the Shore overlooking Burlington’s lakefront. Cyclists whirred by on the bike path below. Seagulls kited above the bright-blue umbrellas shading each table. The strawberry-basil Moscow mule came in a frosty copper mug; the panko-crusted haddock in the restaurant’s “famous…
