Jun 2-8, 2021
After a Lost Pandemic Year, the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival Is Back; Essex Becomes a Battlefield in the Public School Culture Wars; Vermont Farmer-Researchers Explore Potential of Low-Maintenance, Unfamiliar Vegetables
Cover Story
After a Lost Pandemic Year, the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival Is Back
The 2021 Burlington Discover Jazz Festival won’t be the biggest. And it probably won’t be the best. Considering the festival’s storied 38-year run, that’s a high bar to clear even in a normal year — which, this just in: 2021 is not. But the scaled-down version of the BDJF that kicks off this weekend on…
Obituary: Elise Macklaier McGregor, 1926-2020
Longtime Williston resident was active in church and the Green Mountain Club
Obituary: Ruth Cilley Worden, 1917-2021
Colchester woman retired at age 76 as ranger of Mount Ascutney State Park
Obituary: Rev. Taihaku Gretchen Priest
A founding abbot of Woodbury’s Shao Shan Temple embodied the Buddhist teachings of compassion and caring
Obituary: Daniel O Moran, 1958-2021
Longtime Charlotte resident battled cancer for 14 years, remaining hopeful to the very last day
Obituary: Raymond Keith Johnson Sr., 1939-2021
Texas-born Barre Town resident loved “God, country and fellow man”
Essex Becomes a Battlefield in the Public School Culture Wars
A little after 6 p.m. last Friday, people began streaming into Essex Center Grange Hall #155, an austere white clapboard building that shares a parking lot with Frank’s Motorcycle Sales & Service. In sweatshirts and flannel, sweater sets and blazers, the citizens gathered for a public forum focused on critical race theory. Printouts of articles from…
Vermont Group Has Distributed 1 Million Diapers for Families in Need
Hundreds of boxes of diapers lined the walls of a warehouse on Williston Road in South Burlington, stacked nearly to the ceiling. Tuesday morning, a crowd of around 40 — including Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) — gathered there to mark a milestone: The Junior League of Champlain Valley, a women’s volunteer organization that launched a…
From the Publisher: Planning Ahead
For six years, Kristen Ravin has compiled the calendar of events for Seven Days. Those listings, publicizing everything from poetry readings to protests, are the vertebrae of the paper, the central information system from which much of our arts and entertainment coverage flows. Wrangling the collection into a readable format requires myriad skills. There’s some…
Free Will Astrology (6/2/21)
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): “All I want to be is normally insane,” said actor Marlon Brando. Yikes! I have a different perspective. I would never want to be normally insane because that state often tends to be sullen and desperate and miserable. My preferred goal is to be quite abnormally insane: exuberantly, robustly, creatively free…
Art Review: ‘Cranbrook Connections,’ Studio Place Arts
Marc Awodey was a Burlington painter and former Seven Days art critic who died suddenly in 2012 at the age of 51. Ever since then, Sue Higby, executive director of Studio Place Arts in Barre, has been mulling over an exhibition that the two used to talk about presenting. Awodey and Higby connected over their…
Private Auction Of Storage Unit Contents
Grace Saint Francis, last known address of 108 Fairfield Street Saint Albans, VT 05478 has a past due balance of $648.00 owed to Champlain Valley Self Storage, LLC since 1/31/21. To cover this debt, per lease dated 6/6/20 the contents of unit #283 will be sold at private auction on, or after June 19, 2021.…
Headed to Work? A Lot Is Riding on the Future of the Office
Workers took just a few days to clear out of their offices when the pandemic arrived in Vermont, leaving leftovers to languish in the break room fridge and plants to wither on windowsills. But it could take years to figure out what workplaces — and the communities that rely on them — will look like as COVID-19…
Town of Richmond Development Review Board Agenda June 9, 2021
Due to precautions being taken during the COVID-19 pandemic, and in accordance with Act 92 this DRB meeting will be held online via Zoom. Join Zoom Meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81115438175?pwd=K1JOVjhRNWJlNkVOSTBMWnZWbitxZz09 Meeting ID: 811 1543 8175 Passcode: 376237 Call-in: +1 929 205 6099 US (New York) Application materials may be viewed at http://www.richmondvt.gov/boards-minutes/development-reviewboard/ one week before meeting. Please…
A Secretive Cryptocurrency Creator Could Hold Marlboro College’s Fate in His Hands
Seth Andrew arrived in Marlboro with a promise to remake the southern Vermont town’s college campus into a launching pad for a new form of higher education. A year later, Andrew is leaving under a cloud following his arrest for bank fraud. A man in line behind him for a chance to reuse the property,…
Bassist Tamara Nicolai and Vermont Photog Luke Awtry Uncover a Hollywood Treasure Trove
Tamara Nicolai didn’t think much of the old photo of firefighters. It was clearly from the 1960s and staged — perhaps a publicity photo of a controlled burn for a Los Angeles fire department, she thought. To Nicolai, who in 2014 was going through file cabinets full of photos in the LA home of her…
My Mom Lives Next Door to Drug Dealers, and I’m Worried About Her
Dear Reverend, Help! I’m worried about my mom. She has lived in the same house for more than 30 years. Unfortunately, my dad passed, and I just moved out. The problem is that the building next door is filled with drug dealers. We have found needles, lighters, cigarettes and half-empty beers in the shared driveway…
Life Stories: Anne Bemis ‘Knew Everything About Everything’
In 1960, Anne Nalbandian (March 3, 1933-March 30, 2021) had a cocker spaniel named Christopher (after playwright Christopher Marlowe), and Ed Bemis owned a whippet named Snoopy. The New York City residents were at Washington Square Park one evening walking their dogs when they struck up a conversation. An hour later, they were still talking.…
Vermont Compost Operations That Also Raise Poultry Can Keep Using Food Scraps
Rebecca Sheppard of Montpelier pulled her Volvo sedan into the driveway of Vermont Compost last week and popped the trunk. Inside were several five-gallon plastic buckets filled with rotting food scraps that Sheppard had dutifully separated from her trash, as the state has required since July 1, 2020. She’d been storing the dregs in the…
Opera Company of Middlebury Films Leonard Bernstein’s Comic Operetta ‘Candide’
While much of the opera world was reeling from the pandemic, the Opera Company of Middlebury was exploring the world of opera as video entertainment. Eight months ago, it released a 10-minute, professionally produced video of the contemporary micro-opera “Completing the Picture” by Michael Ching. The absorbing story of Chinese workers who helped build the…
Soundbites: There’s a New Music Editor in Town
As Vermont’s vaccination rate climbs, we’re nearing Gov. Phil Scott’s 80 percent threshold for lifting pandemic-era restrictions. And that means we’re on the precipice of huge change in local music and nightlife — or at least an undoing of changes made last year. Similarly, I’m heading into a pretty big change myself: I’m stepping down…
Soule Monde, ‘Mimi Digs It’
(Self-released, digital) In some ways, Soule Monde’s new LP, Mimi Digs It, is a miracle. Just a little over three years ago, the duo’s keyboardist, Ray Paczkowski, went into surgery when a tumor was discovered on his brain. The operation was successful, and Paczkowski was soon able to return to his gig in the Trey…
Patrick Leahy Must Decide Whether to Run Next Year for a Ninth Six-Year Term in Congress
Poor Pat Leahy. All anyone wants to talk about is how old he is — and whether he’s too old to run again next year. In just the last two weeks, Politico and the Atlantic have written stories about whether 81-year-old Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) will retire or seek an almost unheard-of ninth term. In…
Jack O’ the Clock, ‘Leaving California’
(Cuneiform Records, CD, digital) Two themes run throughout Jack O’ the Clock’s newest LP, Leaving California; one is conceptual, the other structural. The story of the record — or at least the feel of it — is one of exodus, of a song cycle doubling as a farewell. The album’s architecture is more complex, featuring…
Barry Jenkins’ ‘The Underground Railroad’ Is an Epic Tribute to Resilience and Resistance
Our streaming entertainment options are overwhelming — and not always easy to sort through. This week, I watched “The Underground Railroad,” a 10-episode adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. Set in the antebellum South, it’s an alternative history with the premise that the Underground Railroad that helped bring enslaved people…
Letters to the Editor (6/2/21)
‘Positives of Patriotism’ A heartfelt big thank-you for publishing over Memorial Day weekend the heroic stories of World War II Vermont veterans [“Alive to Tell the Tale,” May 26]! Can’t resist honorable mentions to my father, Dominic, in the U.S. Army, who served in the brutal Aleutian Islands, and my mother, Audrey, then single as…
Plunging Into Post-Pandemic Exercise With Aerial Dance
When I was in my twenties, exercise typically meant going out for a run. But as I, ahem, matured, pounding the pavement took its toll on my body. Plus, it got boring. So, in my thirties, I began to explore new options. Name an exercise trend, and I’ve probably tried it. Sweating it out in…
Obituary: Alex Wilson, 1984-2021
Faith and family were cornerstones of Westford man’s life
Obituary: Susan Jo Parmer, 1952-2021
Longtime Burlington resident worked at the American Red Cross for 29 years
The Magnificent 7: Must See, Must Do, June 2 to 8
In Tune Friday 4 A 2015 YouTube video of Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem performing “Will Your House Be Blessed” highlights the band’s four-part harmonies, fluid playing and all-around chemistry. The New England-based folk quartet brings all this and more to an al fresco concert at Cooper Field in Putney, presented as part of Next…
Vermont Farmer-Researchers Explore the Potential of Perennial Vegetables
Most of the vegetables we eat are annuals. Examples include carrots, lettuce and broccoli, which are planted year after year from seed or as seedlings. Perennial vegetables, on the other hand, are planted only once. They might take a few years to yield a full harvest, but then, as their name indicates, they keep producing…
St. Johnsbury’s Whirligig Brewing Keeps It Light
Geoffrey Sewake, CEO of St. Johnsbury’s Whirligig Brewing, said he doesn’t brew like most brewers. While they typically strive to build name recognition with a flagship drink — think Hill Farmstead’s Edward or the Alchemist’s Heady Topper — Sewake has no flagship beer, or even consistent offerings of the same beers. Instead, he approaches brewing…
Cajun-Creole Restaurant Bourbon Street Opens for Takeout in Burlington
The restaurant at 11 Center Street in Burlington wasn’t empty long. Just two months after the Swingin’ Pinwheel Café and Bakery closed, Bourbon Street has opened for takeout, filling the air — and to-go boxes — with the aromas and flavors of New Orleans. Chef-owner Richard Lockwood opened his Cajun-Creole-inspired restaurant on May 25. “Despite…
