Jun 27 – Jul 3, 2018
At 80, Peace Activist Robin Lloyd Is Still Crossing the Line; Give and Take: Special Report on Vermont Nonprofits, Week 2, The 2018 Weeders Survey Results Are In
Cover Story
At 80, Peace Activist Robin Lloyd Still Crosses the Line
As guests arrived at the Saturday afternoon party to celebrate the 80th birthday of Burlington activist, philanthropist and filmmaker Robin Lloyd, they were greeted at the garden gate by a wooden bowl filled with origami birds tied to strings. A handwritten sign suggested, “Hang a peace dove somewhere!” This small, symbolic gesture was just one…
Mad Taco Does Burgers in New Hostel Tevere Restaurant
In a small cooking community, what goes around comes around. This Thursday, July 5, chef Colby Miller is returning to Hostel Tevere in Warren, where he ran the kitchen until the in-house restaurant closed four years ago. Hostel owners Sarah Wright and Giles Smith continue to run the lodging’s bar. Miller has worked for the…
Obituary: Priscilla J. “Cilla” Kimberly, 1954-2018
Burlington Priscilla J. “Cilla” Kimberly, 64, died Sunday, June 24, in Burlington, Vt. Born and raised in Oshkosh, Wis., Cilla attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison, graduating with a bachelor of science degree in zoology. She moved to Essex Junction, Vt., in 1978, first working for the Green Mountain Club maintaining trails on Camel’s Hump. After…
Seriously: Blaze of Glory
In this episode, Bryan checks in with his good friend, Weed, as Vermont’s new recreational marijuana law goes into effect. CREDITS Written, filmed and edited by: Bryan Parmelee Featuring: Michael Frank as “Stoner 1” and Jenna Pacitto as “Stoner 2” Artwork/photography by: Taylor Dobbs, Oliver Parini, Bryan Parmelee, Dreamstime Backdrop mural by: Anthill Collective Logo/art…
The Cannabis Catch-Up: It’s the Final Countdown
Yup — it’s here. The weekend stretches before us and, with it, the realization of legalized weed. Our guess here at Seven Days? Not much will be different the first few weeks. But it’s a very significant milestone and could bring some interesting changes down the line. So — what have you got planned? Let…
Seven Days Releases Database Driving Its Series on Vermont’s Nonprofit Economy
Vermont has eight times as many nonprofits as it has dairy farms — and unlike the milk industry, the state’s charitable sector just keeps growing. For the past two weeks, Seven Days, Vermont’s free, independent newsweekly, has been shining a spotlight on Vermont’s 6,044 nonprofits, examining what these mostly tax-exempt organizations have in common, and…
Obituary: Patty Petersen, 1927-2018
Montpelier Patty Petersen died peacefully on June 24, 2018, surrounded by her family in a serene space at Mayo Continuing Care in Northfield, Vt. She was born Margaret Patricia McGovern on September 24, 1927, in Wayne, Pa. She married Dick Petersen in Woodstock, N.Y., in 1953, with whom she had three children: Sven, Jody and…
![Building Blocks 3 [SIV538]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/episode538.webp?resize=1200%2C900&ssl=1)
Building Blocks 3 [SIV538]
6/16/18: Last Saturday, Steve “Wish” Shannon organized an all ages, hip hop jam at the Swan Dojo in downtown Burlington. Dancers performed outside at the top of Church Street and Anthill Collective worked on graffiti art. Later in the evening, DJs spun records inside while dancers competed in the 2vs2 Breakin’ Battle. Eva talked to…
Director Paul Schrader Makes a Brilliantly Soul-Searching Return With ‘First Reformed’
I doubt the man who wrote Taxi Driver could engineer a more perfect career bookend. In writer-director Paul Schrader’s gloriously bleak First Reformed, a parish priest simultaneously undergoes crises of faith, bodily health, paternal guilt, substance abuse, depression and homicidal ideation. And, smack in the middle of his personal apocalypse, who do we encounter? Cedric…
A New Exhibit Considers Solzhenitsyn’s Exile in Vermont
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the world-renowned, Nobel Prize-winning Russian author and political dissident, lived a long life filled with hardship and contemplation. Seventeen of those years were spent in the tiny town of Cavendish, Vt. Now on view at the Vermont History Museum in Montpelier, the poster-and-photo exhibit “Solzhenitsyn in Vermont” aims to shed light on the…
Movie Review: The Dinosaur Franchise Takes Some Weird Turns in ‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’
When Steven Spielberg made Jurassic Park in 1993, he injected fear into the veins of the family-oriented blockbuster. The digital dinosaurs were cool and wondrous, but they were also scary, a matter less of technical wizardry than of old-fashioned tools such as haunted-house-movie pacing. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, the sequel to 2015’s Jurassic World, features…
The Barrage Brings Eclectic, DIY Concerts to the Northeast Kingdom
Depending on where you’re coming from, you’re likely to spend a good while in the car to get to the Barrage in Holland, Vt. But for those whose greatest prize at the end of a journey is a memorable concert experience, the off-the-grid concert venue in the Northeast Kingdom is a worthy road trip. Along…
Album Review: smalltalker, ‘Talk Small’
(Self-released, digital download) The titles of R&B ensemble smalltalker’s twin EPs — 2017’s Walk Tall and the recently released Talk Small — sound like a mantra when lumped together: walk tall, talk small; walk tall, talk small. Repeat ad infinitum. The complete phrase implies confidence and humility, two qualities the band exhibits across the new…
Tradin’ Paint: Days and Nights of Budget Brinksmanship
Sometimes you need a really strong thunderstorm to clear the air. So it seems, now that last Friday’s episode of Disasterpiece Theatre has been followed by the end of Vermont’s long budget stalemate — quickly, quietly and with a complete absence of drama. The House and Senate agreed Monday on their third budget bill, and…
A Summer Cocktail Comp Shakes Things Up at Waterworks
Last Wednesday, eight bartenders filed into Winooski’s Waterworks Food + Drink for the fifth annual Great Shakes competition. Light streamed through the tall windows overlooking the river as DJ Craig Mitchell warmed up the crowd with casual dance numbers. The barkeeps fretted, prepping garnishes and ingredients so everything would be primed and ready once they…
Why Vermont Nonprofits Lobby the Legislature That Funds Them
After struggling for a decade with rising costs and stagnant state funding, Vermont’s 15 nonprofit parent-child centers came to a conclusion: It was time to hire a lobbyist to fight for more money. “We decided we didn’t have a choice,” said Scott Johnson, who until recently led the Lamoille Family Center. “We needed to have…
Soundbites: Missing Pieces; Book Worms
Did y’all get a chance to read about Northeast Kingdom DIY venue the Barrage? You can find all the details here. Everything you absolutely need to know is included — but there’s always more to a story than what can fit on the page. That’s the beauty of having this column: I can always sneak in…
Album Review: Bag of Panties, ‘Half in the Bag’
(Icebox Records, digital download, vinyl) Some two decades afterward, the Burlington rock scene of the 1990s has become the stuff of legend. From the Pants to Envy to Rocketsled to Guppyboy, the bands of that alt-rock heyday are approaching sanctity, their names etched in the marbled pantheon of Queen City greats. Bag of Panties are…
Exiting the Flynn Center, John Killacky Looks to the Future
It’s a warm Father’s Day morning, and John Killacky is at Windswept Farm in Williston tending to Pacific Raindrop, his Shetland pony. Eight years ago, Seven Days met him and Raindrop at this very spot, shortly after Killacky was hired as the executive director of the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts. Coming full circle,…
The 2018 Weeders Survey Results Are In
Green Mountain staters have a saying: “I’m from Vermont, I do what I want.” Nothing embodies that rhyming chestnut quite as well as the generally relaxed attitude toward cannabis here. Technically, recreational marijuana becomes legal when Act 86 goes into effect on Sunday, July 1. But Vermonters have long had a spot in their hearts…
Too Big to Measure? Inside Vermont’s Nonprofit Shadow Government
Over the last 50 years government in the Green Mountains has withdrawn from providing many direct services to Vermonters in need. Instead, the state has outsourced that job — and hundreds of millions of dollars — to an ad hoc network of dozens of private nonprofit groups. They feed the hungry, house the homeless, care…
The Olde Northender Isn’t Just a Pub — It’s a Nonprofit, Too
Bob Beauvais operates his nonprofit from behind the bar of the Olde Northender Pub, his dimly lit neighborhood watering hole on lower North Street in Burlington. The 501c3, called Old North End Charities, is the entity through which Beauvais collects and distributes proceeds from the break-open tickets sold at his tavern. Most bars that offer…
Scarlett Letters: My Boyfriend Sucks at Oral
Dear Scarlett, My current boyfriend claims that he loves to go down on me, and tries to often, but most of time I don’t feel amazing or super good, and I have never come, even though I love clitoral stimulation. I’ve tried to talk to him, and maybe I didn’t say the right things. He’s…
Some Vermont Towns Just Say No to Cannabis Legalization Parties
Willow Crossing Farm in Johnson is a remote 30-acre property nestled between rolling hills and the Lamoille River. The tree farm, which has a greenhouse full of hemp, will soon host 2,000 marijuana enthusiasts who are gearing up for Heady Vermont’s Legalization Celebration. The plans for mass marijuana merriment on July 1, the very day…
Theater Review: ‘Our Town,’ Weston Playhouse
In 1937, Thornton Wilder was writing Our Town at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, N.H. About an hour away, the Weston Playhouse marked its first year as a professional theater. The play that uses a small town to reveal large ideas was last performed at Weston in 1973 with Sam Lloyd Sr. playing the Stage…
In Morrisville, Swami’s Kitchen & Lounge Opens for Lunch
People have long used literature to share stories and ideas across cultures. On July 2, when Swami’s Kitchen & Lounge opens for weekday lunch service at 34 Pleasant Street in Morrisville, owner Dov Michael Schiller hopes to harness the unifying power of food in a similar fashion. The new Mediterranean café shares a roof with…
Free Will Astrology (6/27/18)
CANCER (June 21-July 22): In the coming weeks, you will have an excellent chance to dramatically decrease your Wimp Quotient. As the perilously passive parts of your niceness toughen up, I bet you will encounter brisk possibilities that were previously off-limits or invisible to you. To ensure you remain in top shape for this delightful development, I think you…
Eat This Week, June 27 to July 3, 2018: Cider-Day, Sunday
For the first installation of their summer Sunday event series, Shacksbury cofounders Colin Davis and David Dolginow have matched their apple-y pours with savory snacks from the Pioneer Food Truck & Catering Co., as well as sweets, treats and caffeine pick-me-ups by Miss Weinerz, Lu•Lu ice cream, and Brio Coffeeworks — with patio games to boot. What are you…
Burlington Boosts Funding for Social-Service Nonprofits
Five gray-haired women headed to Burlington City Hall last month to advocate for the Heineberg Community Senior Center, which hadn’t received an anticipated grant from the United Way of Northwest Vermont. Altana Bullard, who goes to the New North End center regularly to socialize, play bridge and get her blood pressure checked, asked the city…
The Great Race Rolls Into Burlington With Vintage Cars
Some Church Street-goers got an unexpected show Monday evening when 114 collector cars rolled through Burlington’s downtown pedestrian mall. The 2018 Great Race, an annual competitive road rally for model years 1972 and older, made an overnight stop in the Queen City amid a nine-day journey from Buffalo, N.Y., to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Gov. Phil…
Vermont Charities Take a Chance on Break-Open Tickets
The beer taps were flowing on a recent Thursday night at the Spanked Puppy in Colchester. Although the sports-bar crowd didn’t seem interested in the Red Sox game on TV, the room came alive when the jukebox played a ’70s hit about unrequited love, “Living Next Door to Alice.” “Alice!” people called out in unison.…
Art Review: ‘Reclamation,’ Helen Day Art Center
The place of modern-realist portraiture in contemporary art is generally considered neither major nor radical. But the 25 portraits of women that comprise the exhibit “Reclamation” at Helen Day Art Center in Stowe are arguably both. The show’s importance lies at the nexus of the paintings’ authorship, content and historical moment. Female artists painted all…
Letters to the Editor (6/27/18)
Imitating Escher Last week’s cover art will look familiar to anyone who has seen M.C. Escher’s reality-bending artwork, but I don’t see any credit offered to Escher. Instead the graphic is credited to Thomas James, who has clearly plagiarized Escher’s 1953 lithograph “Relativity.” It also is not clear that the graphic has anything to do…
Quick Lit Book Review: ‘Going Up the Country’ by Yvonne Daley
Imagine that Vermont’s gambit to pay out-of-state telecommuters up to $10,000 to settle here catches fire. It’s not much more than a marketing stunt, but suspend disbelief for a moment: What if e-workers did come in droves? Would the hordes of pajama-clad work-from-homers unite and seize power? If the idea of Vermont as a mobile-professional…
Hackie: An Englishman in New York
“Go ahead, then — how old do you think I am?” Reggie Alcock, my customer, asked me that question as we sat parked in the queue for the ferry to Plattsburgh. I was taken aback at this sudden invitation to converse. All I’d gleaned from his phone call to book my services was that he’d…
Seasonal Greetings From the Kitchen at Wild Roots
Even at 7 p.m., the solstice sun hung high over the hills above the White River Valley. Seated in Adirondack chairs on the lawn behind Wild Roots restaurant, my friend and I dug our bare toes into the high grass, chattering about work and neighborhood gossip at the end of a long day. She sipped…
Pizza 44 to Serve Up Pies in Burlington’s South End
People looking for a restaurant meal in the South End of Burlington have plenty of options: burgers, raw fish, gnocchi, salads, curry, bratwurst, pasta, poutine, soups. But if they want pizza, they’re out of luck. That will change in about a month, when Pizza 44 opens at 703 Pine Street, in the front of the…
