Mar 1-7, 2017
Black Lives Matter-Vermont Rallies for Change; With Town Meeting Day Come Ballot Items Silly to Serious; Hen of the Wood a James Beard Semifinalist, Again
Cover Story
Black Lives Matter-Vermont Rallies for Change
Ebony Nyoni had a tough message for the large, mostly white crowd gathered at a Winooski bar six days after the presidential election: Distraught people looking for comfort as they contemplated a Donald Trump presidency would not find it from her. “Trump doesn’t scare me,” the founder of Black Lives Matter Vermont began, to thunderous…
In Referendum on Refugees, Rutland Mayor Loses Reelection Bid
Rutland Mayor Chris Louras, who endured months of withering criticism for his plan to bring Syrian refugees to the city, lost his reelection bid on Tuesday. In unofficial voting results, David Allaire, a city alderman and leading critic of the resettlement, trounced Louras, a 10-year mayoral incumbent, by a 776-vote margin, according to results cited…
Vermonters Find Jobs on Seven Days’ New and Improved Career Website
Seven Days is excited to announce the launch of its brand-new, mobile-friendly job board for Vermont job seekers and recruiters. The improved digital service helps candidates find current, local and vetted employment opportunities according to their interests and talents. Human Resource professionals can now manage job listings and track applicants throughout the hiring process. Job…
Obituary: Doris Haim, 1935-2017 Colchester
Doris Haim, age 82, passed away Thursday, February 23, 2017. She was born October 20, 1935 in Essex. She is survived by her family: Sean Cambell, her son; Lena, her daughter; and Mark Harrington, her grandson; as well as friends Ron and Terry of Ludlow. Doris and her family would like to thank the staff…
The Parmelee Post: Revolutionary Keyboard Turns Anger Into Energy
A Burlington tech startup has introduced a revolutionary new product that it claims has the potential to completely eradicate the use of fossil fuels for generating power. In what was billed as a once-in-a-lifetime event Friday night, the founders of Gandhi Tech Enterprises unveiled JuiceStrokes™, a computer keyboard that converts angry internet comments into a…
Wrestlemania: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Youth Wrestling
The Sunday before Valentine’s Day, I crouched at the edge of a padded mat on the floor of the gym at Lake Region Union High School in Barton. My son was getting ready for his first wrestling match of the season. Anxious and excited, I held up my smartphone to film it. Graham, 11, wore…
![Pulling with Bill Sinks, an Arm Wrestling Legend [SIV480]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/episode480.webp?resize=1200%2C900&ssl=1)
Pulling with Bill Sinks, an Arm Wrestling Legend [SIV480]
2/25/17: The World Armwrestling League Vermont Qualifier was held Saturday afternoon at the Village Tavern in North Ferrisburgh. Grimacing faces, flexed muscles and good natured competition marked the day for the dozens of competitors who travelled to Vermont from all over New England. We visited with Bill Sinks, an arm wrestling legend, at his home…
Do Stores in Burlington Town Center Have to Recycle?
Susan McMillan of Colchester had a WTF moment recently while trying on shoes at L.L.Bean in the Burlington Town Center mall. After removing two huge wads of paper from a pair of boots — why manufacturers stuff shoes with packing material is a mystery in itself — McMillan set aside the paper for the saleswoman…
Gibbs and the Gov: Is Scott’s Chief of Staff Running the Show?
The first item Gov. Phil Scott’s chief of staff showed a visitor to his office last Tuesday morning was the hefty stack of papers on his desk. “This is my inbox — already,” Jason Gibbs said in a tone suggesting the pile was a source of satisfaction, not stress. All documents stop at his desk…
Two Wheelers Head to Three Brothers Pizza & Grill for Bike Night
When Donny’s New York Pizza in Winooski closed last fall, it wasn’t just a loss for those looking for pies. It also meant the end of the weekly Burlington Bike Nights that the restaurant had long hosted. But the gathering of motorcycle enthusiasts has risen again, now at Three Brothers Pizza & Grill in Colchester.…
Town Meeting Day Potluck — From Silly to Serious
Next Tuesday, Vermonters across the state will tromp into voting booths and congregate in school gyms and community auditoriums. Citizens of all stripes will vote to elect library commissioners and town moderators and hash out whether to replace the 30-year-old road grader. Vermonters know what to expect on Town Meeting Day, the state’s own version…
Got an Unwanted Tattoo? Call Don Baker
Name: Donald Baker Town: South Burlington Job: Laser tattoo removal Donald Baker clearly loves his work. Better known to his friends and clients as “Donny B,” he has an easy way with people, a skill he likely cultivated over years of selling insurance. It comes in handy in his new job: When you’re cooking people’s…
Y Close Winooski? Gym Was a Drag on YMCA’s $22 Million Fundraising Goal
Francine Bahati walked briskly toward the front doors of the YMCA in Winooski last Wednesday around 5:30 p.m., athletic bag in hand. The smile on her young face faded when she was asked about the pending closure of the gym at the O’Brien Community Center. “It makes no sense,” said Bahati, an after-school care provider…
Theater Review: Spring Awakening, UVM Department of Theatre
The two most extreme responses to sex — a puritanical no and a hell-yes yes — have one thing in common: They’re both as passionate as a teenager coming of age. Spring Awakening fuses rock music with Frank Wedekind’s 1891 play exploring teenage sexual stirrings in a repressive German bourgeois atmosphere. Victorian prudery collides with…
Soundbites: March Gladness
I am not a sports guy. But it’s March, and there’s some kind of special basketball thingamajig that happens this month, and people are excited. March Sadness, or something? I kid, I kid. While all y’all sportos are creaming your pants over the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament, I’d like to turn your attention…
Movie Review: Animation Doesn’t Get Better (or Stranger) Than ‘The Red Turtle’
If you see just one film this year about a desert island castaway who mates and raises a family with a giant crimson tortoise that mysteriously transmogrifies into a beautiful redhead, do yourself a favor and make it this one. Which, by the way, doesn’t contain a word of dialogue. What, after all, is someone…
Movie Review: ‘Get Out’ Finds the Scariness in Everyday Life
Writer-director Jordan Peele (of “Key and Peele”) has confirmed that a famous Eddie Murphy bit inspired the title of his directorial debut. In 1982, Murphy posited race as a reason why people — white people — in horror movies stick around waiting to be terrorized. Black people, he suggested, would grasp that it’s “very simple:…
One-Woman Show Revives Suffragette Legacy
Chances are, when you think of the suffragette movement, the name that comes to mind is Susan B. Anthony or Lucretia Mott. But this weekend Middlebury Actors Workshop celebrates another influential activist for women’s suffrage with its production of American Radical: A Play in Two Conversations With Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Kate Redway will perform the…
Not Just for Civil Servants: Montpelier’s ‘Tax Building’ Café
From the outside, 133 State Street in Montpelier has an imposing façade. Sparkling granite walls soar five stories high. On the upper floors, neoclassical columns shelter a recessed two-story balcony. Street signage says the building houses the Department of Information & Innovation and the Department of Taxes. Around town, it’s known as the “tax building”…
With Bluebird Fairies, Emily Anderson Inspires Reflection
On a recent Saturday afternoon, in a cozy Howard Street studio bedecked with twinkle lights and fresh flowers, six Burlington locals gathered with artist and educator Emily Anderson. Some made themselves tea before taking their seats at the big table, in the middle of which was splayed an oversize deck of cards. Anderson invited her…
Arts to Smarts Program Enhances Student Learning
VSA Vermont has a long history of bringing art and arts engagement to Vermonters with disabilities. In recent years, in particular, the success of the nonprofit’s arts integration model for students with severe emotional and behavioral challenges has fueled the growth of a new education initiative: Arts to Smarts. The initiative’s goal is to use…
Film and Fiddle Tunes Highlight Mill-Town Past
When filmmaker H. Lee Waters went to Kannapolis, N.C., in 1941, he probably didn’t guess that the footage he shot there would be screened more than 70 years later in Vermont. Waters, a photographer by trade, made ends meet during the Great Depression by making movies. He traveled around shooting footage of townspeople in Virginia,…
Free Will Astrology (3/1/17)
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Your immediate future is too good to be true. Or at least that’s what you, with your famous self-doubt, might be inclined to believe if I told you the truth about the favorable developments that are in the works. Therefore, I have come up with some fake anxieties to keep your…
Burlington-Area New Americans Find Gathering Spaces
On a nippy Sunday evening in mid-January, about 20 people filled the pews of St. Joseph’s Co-Cathedral lower chapel in Burlington as Reverend Lance Harlow performed mass in French. White fluorescent lights shone brightly from the low ceilings. Incense wafted through the air. “Hosanna, hosanna, hosanna.” Christelle Bakala’s voice rose above the clanging pipes. The…
Budget Surprises: Scott’s Proposal Harbors Some Gems
Much of the attention on Gov. Phil Scott’s budget has centered on his proposal to force public school districts across the state to level-fund their spending. In all the school-funding hoopla, some other items have flown under the radar. And, boy, have we got a couple of doozies to tell you about. The first is…
Why Won’t My Boyfriend Move Closer to Where I Live?
Dear Athena, My boyfriend lives two and a half hours away but has wanted to live where I live since before we met. He lives near his parents, and they want him even closer. His job can be anywhere. He is crazy about me, but shouldn’t a mature man of 57 be independent and go…
Loupo, Good Company
(MelodySoul, digital download, vinyl) For years now, young producer Loupo has been the best pinch hitter in Burlington’s hip-hop scene. Give him some room to get set up, and he can bathe any venue in lush beats that feel like a chakra massage. His latest album, Good Company, represents a new artistic leap from making…
A Backyard Evaporator for DIY Maple Sugaring
Kate Whelley McCabe and Justin McCabe met in a warehouse in Ohio in 2000. They were recent college graduates with hard hats and management jobs, working for a big supply company. Now, two children, two law careers and countless pancakes later, the couple has returned to their warehouse roots. These days, the McCabes spend time…
The Pilgrims, No Focus
(What Doth Life, digital download) I don’t know what makes a record feel “American.” Perhaps it’s an aesthetics thing — though I’ve always associated it with a populist tinge to songwriting. It’s an illusion, of course; American rock can be anything from Kiss to Fishbone. But, for better or worse, when I put on the…
Letters to the Editor (3/1/17)
Cover ‘Bum’ A little history about the cover photo for the story “Lucky Bums” [February 22]: The skier is Alan Schoenberger, World Freestyle Ballet Ski Champion in the mid-’70s and an overall silver medalist in the days when the sport was called “hot dogging.” I worked with Alan when Mount Mansfield Company/Stowe sponsored him in…
The Griswolds’ Chris Whitehall on Nonstop Touring, Hitting Rock Bottom and Moving to the United States
Australian pop band the Griswolds — who take their name from the Griswold family of the cult-classic film National Lampoon’s Vacation — were still in their infancy when they won a slot at the 2012 Parklife Festival in their hometown of Sydney. Riding that momentum, the quartet garnered more exposure as a featured artist on…
Vermont Creamery Expands to Make Even More Cheese
In 2014, when Vermont Creamery built an aged-cheese facility at its Websterville HQ, the company left room for “future expansion,” said community and education coordinator Kara Herlihy. Just three years later, plans to construct an additional aging room, drying room and cooler are already under way. The impetus for the new expansion is the company’s…
Baptiste Devallé’s French Class Is Cooking
It’s a gray Sunday morning when Baptiste Delvallé and I arrive at the home of Pamela Moreau and Tom Buck in Burlington. A wiry, jovial man in his late twenties, Delvallé is a French teacher, and he’s there to guide the couple’s two sons in a French immersion class. I’m there to watch … and…
Hen of the Wood Lands Another James Beard Nomination. How Do They Do It?
A cast-iron skillet sits on red-hot coals pulled from the nearby wood-fired oven. Chef Jordan Ware, sandy haired with cheeks rosy from the heat, is about to cook an unusually large, locally farmed trout. The fish rests on a sheet pan, silver skin gleaming like chain mail. Ware tucks his thumb inside its gills to…
The Butchery Adds Second Location, in Stowe
In 2015, Bridge Street Butchery moved from Waitsfield village to the Mad River Green Shops on Route 100 and dropped “Bridge Street” from its name. Now the Butchery is expanding to a second storefront in Stowe, owner Jeff Lynn told Seven Days earlier this week. While Lynn said he’s still in negotiations for a space,…
Eat This Week, March 1 to 7, 2017: Moonrise Cocktails
Stonecutter Spirits teams up with Mary’s Restaurant chef-owner Doug Mack and host Laura Mack to regale visitors with a quirky, film-inspired fête. Start with chicken-and-apple dumplings and a tree-fruit gin fizz, courtesy of Fantastic Mr. Fox. Then take a red-capped seafaring adventure featuring ceviche and tropical, tiki-like tipples inspired by The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. In…
