Mar 4-10, 2015
What’s Gained and Lost As Shelburne Museum Evolves Into a Year-Round Arrts Center?; Meet the Chief of Health Care Reform; A Vermont Swimmer Hits High Sea; Taste Test: Waterworks Food + Drink; The Weeders Survey
Cover Story
The Evolution of the Shelburne Museum
Months before her death in 1960, Electra Havemeyer Webb began drafting a list she titled simply “Moderns I Like.” The wealthy founder of the Shelburne Museum had devoted much of her life as an art collector to acquiring American folk art. The daughter of a sugar refinery baron, she’d stockpiled porcelain and pewter, antique quilts…
Obituary: Frank Ray Keyser, Jr., 1927-2015, Proctor/Chelsea
Frank Ray Keyser, Jr. passed away on Saturday, March 7, 2015, surrounded by the family he loved and inspired. Ray was born in Chelsea, Vermont, on August 17, 1927. A passionate father, civic leader, fisherman, and hunter, he was devoted to his home state of Vermont. Ray was the 72nd governor of Vermont from 1961…
Soundbites: About That Paste List; A New Signal Kitchen Venture
Last week, the local music scene was abuzz when national online media outlet Paste published a list of “10 Vermont Bands You Should Listen to Now.” The post, written by a Boston and New York-based freelance writer named Chris Leo Palermino, was part of an ongoing series highlighting lesser-known musical acts in all 50 states.…
You’ve Got Voicemail: Will a New Web App Make Constituent Voices Heard?
Last week, state Sen. Phil Baruth’s inbox was brimming with emails from Vermonters telling him how to vote on various bills. Sen. Diane Snelling estimates that she sometimes receives 100 emails and a dozen phone messages in a day. Thanks to technology, it’s never been easier for Vermonters to send messages to their legislators. But…
The Lazarus Effect
There’s no way to enjoy this derivative riff on reanimation as a horror movie. It’s far too laughable, which is why it’s been rotting on a shelf since 2013. But here’s a trick you might find handy now that The Lazarus Effect is rotting in theaters: If you squint and view it as a Fatal…
Jan’s Farmhouse Crisps: Not Just for Vermonters Anymore
Jan Gorham is not the first Vermonter to note that Canadians do a few things better — including crackers. But she was tired of spending $8 a box on her favorite imports, so in 2011 she started making her own. Gorham’s friends raved about her crisps, and one suggested that she sell them. In fact,…
Ink Your Hackie
“Hey, it’s Lance,” the caller announced. “How long for a ride to the bar?” Lance has been a customer long enough that he needn’t specify which bar. His gin mill of choice started out life as a private “social club” before transforming into a regular bar. (It was a switch, truth be told, hardly worthy…
In Vermont Towns, Video Stores Leverage Nostalgia for Their Survival
Inside the front door of Gagnon’s Video in Hardwick, DVDs pile up in a cardboard box. These are the day’s rental returns, slipped through the mail slot. Later, co-owner Alan Gagnon will add the discs to several wobbly towers of DVDs that grow like stalagmites on a plastic folding table. They’ll eventually get reinserted into…
Focus
Toward the beginning of Focus, seasoned con artist Nicky (Will Smith) explains the essentials of his trade to admiring wannabe Jess (Margot Robbie). To deceive people, he says, you must control their focus, grabbing their attention with smoke and mirrors as you reach craftily for your true goal. That’s also a pretty good explanation of…
Free Will Astrology (3/4/15)
ARIES (March 21-April 19): To depict what lay beyond the limits of the known world, medieval mapmakers sometimes drew pictures of dragons and sea serpents. Their images conveyed the sense that these territories were uncharted and perhaps risky to explore. There were no actual beasties out there, of course. I think it’s possible you’re facing…
A Vermont-Made App That Could Save Kids’ Lives
When pediatrician Barry Finette treated sick kids in some of the world’s poorest countries, he knew his patients had already defied incredible odds: They were seeing a physician. That’s something most children in the developing world never experience. The low- and middle-income countries in Africa, Asia and South America where Finette worked for years with…
News Quirks (3/4/15)
Curses, Foiled Again Gregory Dike, 38, received 11 years in jail for robbing 10 banks across England. Police arrested him after he booked a taxi for his getaway but the driver realized what was happening and refused to wait. “He was undoubtedly a beginner,” Detective Constable Darren Brown said. “We found robbery ‘self-help’ downloads on…
Theater Review: Proof, Essex Community Players
The elegant structure of Proof lures the audience into a series of small misconceptions and then shatters each of them to great effect. The Essex Community Players have mounted this smart, funny contemporary drama about four people exploring their ability to trust each other. David Auburn won a Pulitzer Prize for the play in 2001.…
Talking With Long-Distance Swimmer Charlotte Brynne
When Charlotte Brynn dipped a toe into the water, she winced — but not because it was too cold. The indoor whirlpool was actually a wee bit warm for the Stowe-based athlete and executive director of the Swimming Hole pool and fitness facility. She typically swims an average of 30 miles a week — yes,…
Middlebury Town Hall Theater Brings Back Pop-Up Plays
Haley Rice compares a pop-up play to a unicorn — in fact, to a “unicorn playing a banjo: unique, rare and really interesting. You don’t see that very often.” For the second time, the operations manager at Middlebury’s Town Hall Theater is producing a half dozen 10-minute plays that will be written, cast, rehearsed and…
Vultures of Cult, Bitter Gloom on a Golden Dawn
(Self-released, digital download) In recent years, many underground genres have sneaked into the charts and found a comfortable place in pop culture. Metal, for one, has gone for the ride. Yet Burlington’s fuzz kings, Vultures of Cult, have stayed back and built their own vehicle with their latest release, Bitter Gloom on a Golden Dawn.…
$2 Million Baby: Calculating the Cost of Shumlin’s Single-Payer ‘Exercise’
It took Gov. Peter Shumlin nearly four years in office to determine that his signature policy proposal — universal health insurance — was “just not affordable.” But how much did it cost to reach a conclusion his conservative critics say was obvious all along? The day after Shumlin’s surprise announcement last December, chief of health…
The Woedoggies, Sorrytown
(Self released, CD and digital download) If you like a little twang in your tunes, finding contemporary bands that play old-school country isn’t easy. With pop- and rock-influenced country owning the airwaves, today’s country music tends to prioritize trucks, tailgates and tan lines. Gone is the distinctive, acoustic sound and honest writing of past country…
I Think My Boyfriend Is Emotionally Abusive
Dear Athena, I’ve been dating my boyfriend for two years. In the past year I’ve noticed that he is more possessive than I originally thought. I have also noticed that sometimes when I express a negative emotion — annoyance or anger — toward him, he will somehow turn it on me. For example, he was once…
Vermont Towns Make National List for ‘Arts Vibrancy’
When the Texas-based National Center for Arts Research set out to find the country’s most creatively vibrant communities, it didn’t have to research for long. The center has just released its first annual Arts Vibrancy Index, and among its findings is the following: Three of the top 20 “Hotbeds of America’s Arts and Culture” (in…
![Vermont Flower Show [SIV390]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/episode390.webp?resize=1200%2C900&ssl=1)
Vermont Flower Show [SIV390]
2/27/15: Three days of spring transformed the Champlain Valley Expo in Essex Junction last weekend for the 2015 Vermont Flower Show organized by Green Works. Winter weary visitors were greeted by the scents, sounds and sights of warmer months. Eva joined them for this colorful flower extravaganza. Music: La Strada, “Grow, Grow, Grow” This episode…
Windsor Romance Writer Heats Up Vermont Fiction
“That was the trouble with small towns. When your naked exploits ended badly, there was nowhere to hide.” So muses the heroine of Sarina Bowen’s romance novel Falling From the Sky, which the Ludlow writer self-published as an e-book in February. (It was originally published by a now-discontinued Harlequin imprint.) Bowen, 43, who says she…
St. Paul Street Gastrogrub Opens in Burlington
After a lengthy incubation, the “Open” sign flew over St. Paul Street Gastro Grub in Burlington late last week. Located at the corner of Maple and St. Paul streets, the tiny pub is the latest effort from Liza O’Brien and Adam Raftery, the sibling team behind South Burlington’s Wooden Spoon Bistro, which operates a popular…
Historical Society Hosts ’70s Counterculture Forums
Vermont’s transformation in the 1970s — from deep-red Republicanism to rainbow radicalism — will be the discussion topic at a series of community forums this month and next. Organized by the Vermont Historical Society, the sessions will culminate next year in an exhibition featuring memorabilia and testimonials related to the decade when traditional Vermont started…
Letters to the Editor (3/4/15)
Design Flawed In my opinion, the location of the proposed bus station is one of the dumbest ideas of all time [“Back to the Landscape: A Solution for Burlington Bus Hub,” February 11]. While it may be convenient to downtown, it is poorly positioned. My major objection is the pollution, both noise and odor, generated…
Talking Art With Bill Ramage
William T. Ramage, an emeritus professor of art at Castleton State College, came to Vermont in 1971 as a “hippie refugee,” as he puts it. He’d been teaching at Ohio State University in Columbus when riots broke out there and National Guardsmen killed four students at Kent State University during an antiwar demonstration. The events…
King Arthur’s Sift Magazine; Cabot Creamery’s New Cookbook
Foodies shopping at bookstores and Price Chopper supermarkets in the past week may have spotted a new kid on the magazine rack. Norwich’s King Arthur Flour released 97,000 copies of the premiere issue of Sift magazine on February 24. The glossy, nationally distributed publication specializes in glistening “food porn” photos of baked goods ranging from…
Turning the Longtime Homeless Population Into Tenants
Last October, dozens of volunteers wearing bright green shirts surveyed homeless people in Burlington. They were participating in the 100,000 Homes Campaign — a national effort to identify and house the most vulnerable members of the homeless population. Despite the lofty name, organizers made a point to temper expectations: Volunteers were instructed to make it…
Guitarist John Jorgenson Pays Homage to Django Reinhardt
Guitarist John Jorgenson has contributed licks to nearly every genre of popular music, from country to pop to opera. But one style keeps calling to him. Now usually referred to as gypsy jazz, it’s the percussive, joyful, utterly swingin’ music pioneered by Django Reinhardt’s Quintet of the Hot Club of France in the 1930s. The…
Miller Time: The Beer Czar Behind Shumlin’s Health Care Reforms
Lawrence Miller looked on attentively last Thursday as his fiancée, Helen Labun Jordan, described the English delicacies gracing their kitchen table, from Bedfordshire clanger to the exotically named bubble and squeak. “It sounds more interesting than it is, right?” Labun Jordan said of the starchy mush. “It’s like hash.” Crowded around the table in their…
Obituary: Robert “Bob” Piche, 1934-2015, Winooski
Robert “Bob” Piche, age 80, passed away peacefully after a brief illness on March 2, 2015 at UVM Medical Center. Bob was born in Winooski on October 16, 1934 to Ruth (Packard) and Isadore Piche. Bob married Pauline Leclerc on May 3, 1958 in Winooski. Bob graduated from Winooski High School and served two years…
Taste Test: Waterworks Food + Drink
Guests may feel a rush of emotions as they enter Waterworks Food + Drink in Winooski. Granted, one of those sensations might be relief at finally finding their way inside a restaurant that opened in one of the coldest winters on record. No longer can diners descend to Waterworks through the main entrance of the…
Sauce Brings Italian Take-out to Stowe
Sharon Herbert has always been a food lover, but until now, her career path has involved mountains more than marinara. She worked full-time in Burton’s bags and luggage department while completing her degree at the New England Culinary Institute, from which she graduated last spring. Now, Herbert is working toward an early-April opening of Sauce…
