May 13-19, 2015
Curator and Director Janie Cohen Brings National Acclaim to the Fleming Museum; A Vermont Senator Is Charged With Sex Offenses; The Pixie’s David Lovering Tells All; How to Make Dandelion Wine;
Cover Story
Picasso Scholar Janie Cohen Brings Acclaim to Fleming Museum
Pablo Picasso’s 1907 painting “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” is considered one of the most revolutionary artworks of the 20th century. So radical was it that some critics accused the Spanish artist of having gone crazy or staged “an audacious hoax.” For Picasso himself, the work that ushered in cubism was also a fierce rebuke to the…
Birth Announcement: Jasper Elliot Fabian
On April 7, 2015, at The University of Vermont Health Care Center, Kyla Sener & Jose Antonio Fabian welcomed a son, Jasper Elliot Fabian.
Inaugural Beer Week Coming in September
A few months ago, Bethany Baker and Eric Lussier were flipping through an index of beer events at a bottle-share get-together. “I didn’t really realize what that index was for,” Baker says. “But I noticed that Vermont was not listed.” The flyer was a list of local beer weeks — weeklong or 10-day series of beer-centric…
News Quirks (5/13/15)
Curses, Foiled Again Police were able to link Christopher Furay, 33, to six bank robberies in Pittsburgh, Pa., by his distinctive red beard. After media coverage of the first four robberies, he wore a fake red beard over his real one for the next two. He was arrested anyway after the sixth robbery when a…
My Older Boyfriend Wants Sex More Than I Do
Dear Athena, I’m a young guy with an older boyfriend, and this may sound funny, but he wants sex more than I do. I like sex — don’t get me wrong — but I just don’t want to do it as much as he does. I usually give in, but then I’m annoyed after and…
Startup Grind Brings ‘Co-Thinking’ Space to Burlington
Michael Jager and Giovanna Di Paola Jager have spent much of their professional careers thinking about and designing successful brands. So when the creative minds behind such names as Burton, Seventh Generation, Nike, Pepsi and Patagonia say that Vermont has reached a “defining moment” in the ongoing evolution of its brand, it’s worth paying attention.…
TURNmusic Presents Turkish Composer in Concert
In a YouTube video, seven chamber orchestra players sit on a stage adorned with white columns and red velvet drapes, looking as if they’re about to play Bach. But what they do play is surprisingly far from Western classical music: a rhythmically thrilling work characterized by sinuous, Persian-sounding quarter-tones, unusually wide vibrato in the solo…
Readsboro, Writing and ‘Rithmetic: Fears Grow Over the Future of Small Schools
Readsboro is a tiny town on the Massachusetts border, about as far from the Statehouse as you can get and still be in Vermont. Yet its residents are making their voices heard in Montpelier. Fearful that an advancing education bill would rip the heart out of their community, townspeople mobilized at the Readsboro Central School…
Getting to the Point
A recent Friday evening found me idling at the nearly block-long taxi stand on lower Church Street, the nighttime go-to spot for snagging a cab in downtown Burlington. On weekend nights, the queue of waiting cabs can reach a dozen or more, but the line usually moves quickly enough to make it worthwhile for the…
The D Train
The D Train, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last January, is a good idea in search of a better movie — specifically, a better script. It falls into the category often called “comedy of discomfort”; fans of HBO’s “Enlightened” won’t be at all surprised to spot Mike White in the cast (he also…
Percussionist Brian Johnson Retires With a Bang
If you’ve ever been to Burlington’s FlynnSpace, you’ve probably encountered Brian Johnson. The manager of the subterranean venue is often behind the bar, serving up drinks and snacks. He cuts a memorable figure: tall with shoulder-length graying hair and eyebrows that have a life of their own. But Johnson offsets his physical stature with a…
Talking Art With DJ Barry
It’s a rare guy who wants to celebrate his coworkers and the work they do — and suggests he paint their portraits for an exhibition doing just that. That guy is Doug Barry, aka DJ Barry. And he’s giving the artwork away: His coworkers get to keep their own portraits when the show closes. Barry…
Free Will Astrology (5/6/15)
ARIES (March 21-April 19): The danger of resisting a temptation too strenuously is that the temptation might depart. I suggest that you prevent that from happening. Without throwing yourself at the mercy of the temptation, see if you can coax it to stick around for a while longer. Why? In my view, it’s playing a…
Talking Ice Cream With Scout & Co.’s Andrew Burke
Andrew Burke starts whipping up a batch of ice cream the old-fashioned way — with dozens of egg yolks, gallons of milk and a kilo of sugar to make a sweet base. From there, he diverges. Cocoa is roasted with a blowtorch into charred chocolate bitterness. Citrusy lime melds with peanut butter in a Thai-inspired…
Quick Lit: Complex TV by Jason Mittell
Pop quiz: Why was the ending of “The Sopranos” controversial? Who said, “I am the one who knocks”? Which show made its fans obsessed with a briefly glimpsed map painted on a blast door? If your answer to all of the above is “No idea” or “I don’t even own a TV,” then you’re not…
Letters to the Editor (5/13/15)
No BS! Way to go, Fair Game columnist Paul Heintz! I love reading his articles because it’s clear that he has no patience for BS It’s telling how incredulous the politicians get when you won’t let them off the hook. Either they give you a straight answer or come across like they’ve got something to…
Book Review: And Kings Shall Be Thy Nursing Fathers by Marc Estrin
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky lived from 1840 to 1893 and died in circumstances still murky with controversy and the taint of scandal. Burlington musician and writer Marc Estrin’s new book ventures to evoke the consciousness of Tchaikovsky’s corpse — yes, his corpse. Lying in state, it receives visits from a procession of admirers whom the deceased…
‘Super’ Man? Following the Next Leader of Burlington’s Schools
Shortly before 9 a.m. on a Tuesday, Burlington’s incoming superintendent of schools was chatting amiably with a sleepy-looking teenager in Milton — not the Chittenden County town, but the fast-growing suburb of Toronto, Canada. In a crisp charcoal suit with a lavender shirt and matching silk tie, Yaw Obeng flashed an oversize smile as the T-shirted…
End Times: The Strange Conclusion to a Dismal Legislative Session
Is it over yet? That’s the question most Vermonters are surely asking about the state’s dismal 2015 legislative session. What began with farce — the second-place finisher in the 2014 election asking the legislature to name him governor — is ending in tragedy: sex-crime allegations against a longtime legislator that led to his arrest at…
Tar Iguana, Tympanum
(Self-released, CD, digital download) Even if you’re a casual music fan, you could likely name a bazillion different genres of rock. Stick the word to the end of a noun or adjective and you’re in the ballgame: hard rock, punk rock, surf rock, psychedelic rock, glam rock, two-skinny-bros-in-their-mom’s-basement rock, etc. Here’s one to add to…
Burn Notice: Even in Vermont, a ‘Prescribed’ Fire Requires Perfect Timing
A fire wheezed and radiated heat shimmers the morning of May 5 near the Robert Frost Interpretative Trail in Ripton. One group of U.S. Forest Service firefighters sprayed water at the edge of the angry orange flames while another, wielding a long-nose drip torch dispensing a mix of gas and diesel, deliberately spread the blaze.…
Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars, Libation
(Cumbancha, CD, digital download) Full disclosure: I’m in a foul mood when I first pop on Libation, the latest record from Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars. Bills are piling up. My car needs work. There’s a sink full of dishes. The Sox lost. Again. It’s raining. (Again.) Traffic sucked. In other words: wah. But ‘long…
‘Radical Empathy’ Exhibit Addresses Race
Stephanie Seguino’s exhibition of large-scale color photographs, on view at the Flynndog in Burlington, would be visually powerful even if it weren’t so painfully relevant. For “Radical Empathy,” she has used her camera like a pickax: to chip away at white Americans’ stereotypes of black men. And she has undertaken that task at a time…
The Pixies’ David Lovering on Music and Magic
Here’s an interesting factoid about the Pixies. The band reunited in 2004, following an 11-year hiatus, and has been active ever since. That means that the Pixies, who formed in Boston in 1986 and broke up in 1993, have now been back together longer than they were initially a band. What does that mean? We’re…
Soundbites: Heavyfest; WTF is Baskeda?
A Heavy Load As noted in last week’s column, we have entered festival season in Vermont. And with apologies to Christmas, it’s the most wonderful time of the year. That’s obviously in large part due to the wealth of bigger fests throughout the summer, such as the upcoming Green Mountain Comedy Festival, the Burlington Discover…
Hot Pursuit
Here’s how moronic, lazily conceived and thoroughly Razzie-ready this comedy is. For the title, its creators came up with a juvenile double entendre that might at least have made sense had the film presented the women being pursued as, you know, “hot.” But the movie doesn’t even get its own joke. One of its running…
A Burlington Music Vet Goes Into the Vinyl Business
Over the past few years, new businesses have popped up in Burlington’s South End neighborhood like morel mushrooms in early May. Several entrepreneurs are seizing Vermont’s gastronomic moment with gusto, such as the folks behind Citizen Cider, South End Kitchen and the soon-to-open Zero Gravity Craft Brewery. But a new operation harkens back to the…
Obituary: Alice E. LeBlanc, 1934-2015, Essex Jct.
Alice E. LeBlanc, 81, of Essex Junction, passed away on Tuesday, May 12, 2015 surrounded by her loving family, who would like to thank the staff of St. Joseph’s Residential Care Home in Burlington, Vermont for the amazing and loving care she received during the last six months. We could not have gone through this…
How to Make Dandelion Wine — and Eat the Greens
Warm weather is officially here, and all the foodies have ramp fever. In recent weeks, eager foragers have flooded my Instagram feed with images of the leafy wild leeks, pulled from secret stashes statewide. In all their virile green glory, ramps are one of the most coveted early-season wild edibles. But Vermont’s fields and forests…
The Juice Bar Pops Up at City Market
When the Juice Bar left the Burlington Town Center in November 2013, lunch-hour juicers had to look elsewhere for their fix. Since then, owners Steph Steeves and Mike Winters have become farmers market regulars and planted 4.1 acres of juiceable vegetables in the Intervale. They now supply many of Burlington’s other juice companies with farm-fresh…
A Dinner to Benefit Nepali Earthquake Survivors
Burlington is home to more than its fair share of Himalayan food. In the past few months, Yangser Dorjee’s Himalaya Restaurant and Dharshan Namaste Asian Deli have joined Sherpa Kitchen in bringing high-altitude Asian flavor to Burlington. Every one of those businesses owners felt the impact of the earthquake that hit Nepal in late April.…
