It’s peaceful at the Rokeby Museum these days. The small, seasonal museum in Ferrisburgh has been closed all winter — as have most Vermont museums, seasonal or not. You can’t go inside the education center, any of the former sheep farm’s eight agricultural outbuildings, or the 18th-century farmhouse where, in the 1830s and ’40s, Rowland…
1. Hard Work Visitors at Hildene, the Lincoln Family Home in Manchester can explore the exhibit “Many Voices,” the southernmost site on the Vermont African American Heritage Trail. The display highlights the Black railway attendants — known as porters — who worked for the Pullman Company, of which Abraham Lincoln’s son Robert was president from…
Children’s book author was a voice for racial and social justice
Former Army captain and banker loved woodworking and keeping connected with loved ones
Middlebury-born woman was a postal worker, animal lover and avid writer
Vermont audiences might know Allan Nicholls best now as a member of the vaudeville-inspired Americana comedy band the Hokum Brothers, but he’s had a long and storied career. A close friend and colleague of the late Robert Altman, the part-time Vermonter acted in and composed music for the acclaimed filmmaker’s 1975 film Nashville and others.…
Released in late summer 2020, Christopher Shaw’s The Power Line escaped our attention until recently, but the book is an uncommon accomplishment that merits a belated review. Shaw, who lives in Bristol and has retired after 20 years of teaching creative writing at Middlebury College, preceded that career with a long stint in northern New…
In 2011, John and Jen Kimmich, owners of the Alchemist, began building a production brewery to package their beers for retail sale. And they made a decision that some in the craft beer industry thought was strange: They built a canning line. At the time, John Kimmich recalled in a recent interview, craft beer came…
Matthew Mitchell and his boyfriend, Rodraco Ealey, were headed to their jobs at the Capitol Plaza in Montpelier last July when their car broke down. They called their boss, who offered to pick them up. But they declined, wanting to deal with their car situation first. The two sides dispute what happened next: Their boss…
Xusana Davis would love to lose her job. Vermont’s first executive director of racial equity says nothing would please her more than if state leaders told her they no longer needed someone working to eradicate systemic racism in state government. “I have a bottle of Champagne waiting for that day,” Davis told lawmakers recently. “Because…
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): For you Pisceans, March is Love Yourself Bigger and Better and Bolder Month. To prepare you for this festival, I’m providing two inspirational quotes. 1. “If you aren’t good at loving yourself, you will have a difficult time loving anyone, since you’ll resent the time and energy you give another person…
Our streaming entertainment options are overwhelming — and not always easy to sort through. This week, I watched a new film from one of Japan’s best working directors that you can stream via Montpelier’s Savoy Theater. (The theater is open both physically and virtually, with two different slates of movies; see savoytheater.com for info.) Writer-director…
Die-hard sports fans are often dismissed as lazy, ignorant and male — “hard-drinking, hard-eating, jersey-wearing” guys, in Larry Olmsted’s words — and he’s not having it. Olmsted’s new book, Fans: How Watching Sports Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Understanding, offers a vigorous and heavily researched defense of fandom as a popular and mind-sharpening activity.…
Help for Hummingbird I’m a lifelong backyard birder, and my question was not so much “WTF: How Do You Help a Rescued Hummingbird in Winter?” [February 17] and more “WTF is a rufous hummingbird doing in Vermont?” The rufous hummingbird is a western bird, which summers in the Pacific Northwest and migrates to Mexico for…
For Duncan Macdonald, co-owner of Play It Again Sports in South Burlington, his experience with the pandemic last spring typified the immortal words of baseball legend Yogi Berra: “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.” For nearly three decades, Macdonald and his wife, Julia, have owned and operated the Vermont franchise of the national retail chain…
The 23 reporters and editors employed at Seven Days write dozens of stories each week — about local news, food, arts, businesses and people. But not all of their articles wind up in the weekly print edition. Between our web-only stories and supplements such as Staytripper, Nest and Kids VT, you have to make an…
Jen Ellis has received emails from people in Russia, Israel, Norway, Ireland, France, Australia, Germany and across the U.S. The thousands of notes are mostly from folks who want to buy mittens — often numerous pairs — like the ones she made for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). He wore them at the chilly inauguration…
What’s all this talk we hear about systemic racism? In progressive, chill Vermont, such a thing couldn’t be a problem. Well, OK, maybe racial bigotry pops up occasionally in web comments or the remarks of unenlightened people. But in a professional health care setting where you’re talking with doctors and nurses, you’d never see or…
Dear Reverend, My boyfriend of eight years has a serious dilemma. Fred and his ex-wife, Sarah, had a son 40 years ago. Fred believes the boy, now a grown man I’ll call “Charlie,” is not biologically his. Fred and Sarah had been split up for a bit before she got pregnant. Fred really wants to…
A colorful display on Burlington’s Church Street caused passersby to pause, pull out their smartphones and take photos on Monday. Orange roses and fuchsia phalaenopsis orchids had been placed on the bricks in the shape of a heart. Dozens more roses surrounded the heart and extended down the pedestrian walkway. Each represented one of the…
(Self-released, digital) Roost.World’s Cheapbabyy27 instantly evokes visions of an alien spacecraft descending to Earth. The ship’s titanium-alloy entrance ramp extends downward into billows of vanilla vapor. The Burlington band’s front person, synthist, songwriter and likely alien explorer, Zack Schuster, glides out of the craft as if floating. LEDs trim their iridescent spacesuit. Gigantic speakers pop…
Townshend farmer and author Lucas Farrell has won the inaugural Sundog Poetry Book Award for the blue-collar sun. Vermont poet laureate Mary Ruefle judged the competition. “His is a mind that never stops moving,” Ruefle noted in her moving citation. Hadestown creator Anaïs Mitchell put it another way in a blurb: “[These poems] are both…
(Equal Eyes Records, digital download) The pairing of Drive and ILLu was perhaps inevitable. Drive is a talented young rapper representing Lamoille County, and ILLu is a founding member of Burlington’s foremost hip-hop label, Equal Eyes Records. Both are busy collaborators with an affinity for ’90s underground rap, so the artists are a superb fit.…
Black, Indigenous and other people of color historically have struggled to overcome institutional and cultural barriers, and careers in STEAM — science, technology, engineering, the arts and mathematics — are no exception. But now, Generator, the nonprofit maker space in Burlington’s South End, has launched the new BIPOC Scholarship program, aimed at bridging that divide…
This winter, in the tiny town of Tunbridge, librarian Mariah Lawrence organized a virtual book club with a specific goal: connecting people of different ages through a shared love of stories. The Tunbridge Public Library provided copies of a book, discussion prompts and art supplies to make a painting inspired by the story; participants were…
Last week was a big one in national fried chicken sandwich news. On February 24, McDonald’s rolled out its new crispy chicken sandwich, becoming the latest chain to scratch its way into the chicken sandwich pecking order. A taste test in Business Insider declared the new offering “almost identical” to Chick-fil-A’s version, which is generally…
On the afternoon of February 15 at St. Mark Catholic Church in Burlington’s New North End, three Burlington School District employees were juggling laptops, video cameras — and root vegetables. The church has provided a temporary home to the Burlington Technical Center’s culinary arts program and the district’s afterschool cooking activities while the high school…
Jean-Luc Matecat started washing dishes at the Common Man restaurant in Warren when he was 11 and has worked in restaurant kitchens ever since. Next month, he will open his first restaurant. The 39-year-old chef and his wife, Lindsay Matecat, plan to launch Pioneer Lakeshore Café at 824 West Lakeshore Drive in Colchester in mid-April.…
On March 8, Dara and Ric Lavallee will celebrate the grand opening of Nourish Deli & Bakery at 15 Center Street in St. Albans. The store builds on the online plant-based food business they launched in December 2020. The married couple, who moved to St. Albans in 2015, have many years of experience in the…
