May 14-20, 2014
In the Battle Over Natural Gas, Vermont Gas May Be Its Own Worst Enemy; Sandor Katz Talks Fermentation; Myra Flynn Phones Home
Cover Story
In Pipeline Battle, Vermont Gas May Be Its Own Worst Enemy
Melanie Peyser was a teenager when her father, Fred, insisted she work a booth at the Addison County Fair and Field Days. Her job? Handing out leaflets and playing a VHS tape on a loop portraying footage of gas pipeline explosions. “It was mortifying,” recalled Peyser, now 46; she just wanted to hit the midway.…
Obituary: Brenda Starr Leahy
Brenda Starr Leahy, 59, a native of Swanton, a resident of Florida for many years and most recently of Alabama, passed away Thursday, May 15, 2014 at a hospice center in Panama City, FL, following a lingering illness. Born in St. Albans, September 14, 1954, the daughter of Wesley Parizo and Marjorie Lucille Lafountain, Brenda…
Obituary: Donna Lee (Navin) Beaudoin, 1958-2014, Rutland
Donna Lee (Navin) Beaudoin, 55, passed suddenly on Friday, May 9th, 2014 from complications of a brain tumor. She was born on December 2, 1958 in Patterson, New Jersey to Robert J. and Ruth Navin. In 1985, she relocated to Vermont with her family. She had a passion for baking and cooking and possessed a…
Obituary: Jessica Lynn Brunelle, 1975-2014, Winooski
Jessica Lynn Brunelle, 38 of Winooski and Oklahoma City, died unexpectedly in her sleep at her home in Oklahoma on May 4, 2014 due to complications from diabetes. Jessica was born in Burlington on May 10, 1975, the daughter of Raymond and Cecile (Leclerc). She was a graduate of Winooski High School, Class of 1993.…
The Bumping Jones, Playgrounds
(Self-released, CD, digital download) After performing at the Otis Mountain Get Down in Elizabethtown, N.Y., last September, holding a residency at Manhattan Pizza & Pub this April, and regular gigs at Nectar’s and Club Metronome, Burlington favorites the Bumping Jones have had plenty of exposure in the lead up to their debut full-length record. The…
A War Photographer and Part-Time Vermonter Gets the Shot
Famed American combat photojournalist Robert Capa, killed in Southeast Asia in 1954, once offered a much-quoted piece of advice to his colleagues and successors: “If your photographs aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.” Robert Nickelsberg, who regards Capa as one of his heroes, does get close enough. In a recently published book that chronicles…
Caledonia Spirits Debuts New Corn Whiskey, Honors Jack Lazor
The message on the back of Caledonia Spirits’ latest product comes from Jack Lazor of Butterworks Farm. “For the past 40 years, our family has been putting the care of the Earth first and foremost in our lives. We have taught countless other organic farmers the ethic of giving back more than we take,” Lazor…
Can Bob Rusten Solve the Burlington School Budget Problem?
Burlington City Hall was locked and dark last Friday at 7 a.m., except for one corner office. Under shelves of plastic binders toiled a tall, lean man in a short-sleeved lavender dress shirt. On his desk, a bowl of pistachios suggested that this early-rising bureaucrat has a soft spot for snacks. Bob Rusten, 63, is…
News Quirks (5/14/14)
Curses, Foiled Again Before three men who broke into a lingerie store in Houston, Texas, could steal anything, one with a revolver backed into another holding a rifle. Surveillance video showed the jolt caused the rifle to fire, “which then spooked the suspects,” police Officer Jeff Brieden said. Believing they were being fired upon, both…
Vermont Has More Addicts Than It Can Treat, So Why Are Inpatient Facilities Losing Revenue?
Jack Duffy’s friends assume his business is booming. After all, he runs Vermont’s largest inpatient addiction treatment facility — Valley Vista in Bradford — at a time when the state has garnered national headlines for its commitment to fighting opiate addiction. But after three decades, Duffy’s business has never been on shakier ground. He recently…
My Boyfriend Sucks at Oral Sex
Dear Athena, My boyfriend sucks at oral sex. He says he loves going down on me, but he is so bad at it, and I don’t have the heart to tell him. I really like him, but I dread going to bed with him. I end up rushing to the sex part, and sometimes I’m…
Winners and Losers of the 2014 Legislative Session
Every now and then, Seven Days takes stock of who’s ahead and who’s behind in Vermont politics. Now that the legislature has adjourned, it’s time to tally the session’s biggest winners and losers. Here’s how it looks: Winners: Gov. Peter Shumlin — After a tough summer and fall reckoning with an unhappy neighbor and a…
Free Will Astrology (5/14/14)
ARIES (March 21-April 19): When the path ahead divides in two, Aries, I am hoping you can work some magic that will allow you to take both ways at once. If you do master this riddle, if you can creatively figure out how to split yourself without doing any harm, I have a strong suspicion…
Soundbites: Waking Windows Presents, Heavyfest, Punk Comes to the Waterfront
Brand New Heavies Given last week’s mea culpa over my misrepresentation of Bow Thayer’s live album Eden: Live at the Chandler in a recent review, a few items planned for that column had to be shelved. The biggest casualty was a chance to fully debrief on the spectacle that was Waking Windows 4, two weekends…
Letters to the Editor (5/14/14)
VCV Is Not VNRC In an article by Paul Heintz about the Shumlin administration’s weak commitment to cleaning up Lake Champlain, he states that Vermont Conservation Voters is an “affiliate” of the Vermont Natural Resources Council [Fair Game: “Troubled Waters,” April 9]. While VCV works closely with VNRC and concurs with many of its positions…
Neighbors
When movie comedies rely on characters rather than on shtik, the laughs should be spread around. As a general rule, the more straight men, stereotypes and stock figures a character-based comedy has, the less funny it is. The more characters exhibit specific, believable absurdities, the more the audience laughs. It’s a simple principle, but one…
Row VT Rides a Fitness Trend
I’ve never been a big fan of the Police, but on a recent surprisingly sultry evening in Burlington’s South End, the final strains of “Message in a Bottle” seemed especially appropriate to the workout I was enduring. Just as Sting was “sending out an SOS,” I wanted to send out my own — for someone…
Jodorowsky’s Dune
I think we can agree the best Dunes are the ones that don’t get made. Frank Herbert’s opus has had the hell adapted out of it since the first book’s 1965 release. Iterations include a 1992 video game, at least two TV miniseries — Dune (2000) and Children of Dune (2003) — and an eight-hour…
Theater review: Ozma of Oz: A Tale of Time
Movie buffs old enough to remember 1978’s The Wiz can be forgiven a certain wariness about a production of playwright Suzan Zeder’s Ozma of Oz. Her play premiered in Seattle just a year following the release of The Wiz, a film event that provided show biz with a cautionary tale about messing with the children’s…
Books: Biologist Bernd Heinrich Traces The Homing Instinct
It’s easy to get from point A to point B these days, as many of us carry digital maps of the entire world in our pockets. It’s a remarkable convenience for which Ferdinand Magellan would have given his last piece of salt cod. But what would we do if we didn’t have maps, digital or…
The Scent of Menace
“Holiday Inn, please. The one up by the interstate, not Route 7. I know there’s two of ’em.” And with that, the affable, thirtysomething fellow hopped into the backseat of my taxi. It was 2:30 in the morning, the heart of Burlington’s Saturday night, taxi rush hour. At two, the bars shut down and all…
Seven Days Introduces Three New Cartoonists
Maybe the comics in Seven Days provide your appetizer sampler: a bunch of tasty tidbits designed to whet your appetite for the main course. Or maybe you save the funny pages for last, as a colorful, enjoyable dessert. Whatever your method, chances are that you check them out. Who doesn’t love comics? Seven Days loves…
Spielpalast’s Music Director Mixes It Up
Spielpalast Cabaret occupies a unique place in Vermont’s arts firmament. No other entertainment entity can boast of a similar slate of influences — Weimar-era cabaret, vaudeville and “legitimate” theater — or of a sensibility that so spiritedly embraces equal parts professionalism and sauciness. Spielpalast has attained “institution” status in Burlington: This year’s production is the…
From the Llewellyn Collection, Champlain College Scores a Concert
Since 2010, Champlain College has been quietly mounting three exhibits a year in Perry Hall that highlight its fascinating Llewellyn Collection. Donated by Burlington resident and Vermontiana enthusiast Lance Llewellyn, the assortment of vintage Vermont postcards, maps and memorabilia includes 80 scores of sheet music — songs by Vermont composers published between the 1850s and…
In the City of Angels, Myra Flynn Takes a Big Step Forward
As Myra Flynn describes it over the phone, her search for a producer for her next record sounds a little bit like speed dating. “I’ve been working with one to two producers a day, doing some recording to get a feel for whether or not I have chemistry with them,” Flynn says. But it may…
Not So Scheuer: With Heidi Out, Who’s In?
With Election Day less than six months away, the Vermont GOP appears to be a party without a plan. On Tuesday, one of its brightest prospects, Rep. Heidi Scheuermann (R-Stowe), announced that after six weeks of consideration, she’d decided against challenging Gov. Peter Shumlin, a two-term Democrat. The decision, she said, “was a very difficult…
Sorry Mom, Spaghetti
(Green Mountain Records, CD, digital download) When metalcore caught fire from the hardcore-punk scene in the 1990s, it took off like a bottle rocket. While staying true to the simplistic, get-you-to-mosh song structures of hardcore, many bands started integrating more technical and melodic aspects of metal. It boomed almost overnight. When the smoke cleared, the…
Bella Voce Celebrates 10 Years, a New CD and a Collaboration With Robert DeCormier
Since choral director Dawn Willis founded Bella Voce 10 years ago, the 40-woman auditioned chorus has gained quite a following. Its two concerts a year generally draw full houses. The group has recorded three CDs, and a fourth is due out at its next concert — a 10th-anniversary gala, with performances in Burlington and Stowe…
Art Review: “Under 30,” Chaffee Downtown
In previous years, the Chaffee Art Center’s annual juried exhibition “Under 30” consisted of 30 artists not yet 30 and was held in the Rutland establishment’s historic mansion, whose many rooms accommodated a large, salon-style show. This year, ongoing renovations at the Chaffee main site required both a move to its alternate downtown space and…
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The Dancer & The Filmmaker [SIV352]
5/12/14: Internationally known dancer Ernest “E-Knock” Phillips has called Vermont home for the past 2 years. Perhaps best recognized from his TV appearances on So You Think You Can Dance and MTV’s America’s Best Dance Crew, E-Knock has found an artistic collaborator in the Green Mountains, award-winning Vermont filmmaker Michael Fisher. Together, the pair are…
Author Sandor Katz Talks Fermentation
This will be the summer of Sandor in Vermont. Sandor Katz, author of the books Wild Fermentation, The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved and James Beard Foundation award-winning The Art of Fermentation, will spend the month of July teaching and talking all over the state. The Tennessee writer also known as “Sandorkraut” (both in real…
From a New Home, Artist Tad Spurgeon Talks About His Legacy in Vermont
Tad Spurgeon says he never thought he’d leave Vermont “in a million years.” But, despite his profound affinity for the area and the significant artistic inroads he’s made since his arrival in 1982, Spurgeon packed up his Middlebury studio this spring to follow a longtime love back to his hometown. “I didn’t want to sacrifice…
Swingin’ Pinwheel Café Comes to Burlington
Wendy Piotrowski didn’t have to go far to find the perfect spot for her new business. The former owner of Patra Café at 9 Center Street in Burlington and her partner, Andrew Machanic, will open Swingin’ Pinwheel Café & Bakery just next door at 11 Center Street, in the former Ken’s Golf Shop. The pair…
First Bite: Plate, in Stowe
In one way or another, restaurants in Stowe often are descended from the town’s resorts. Chefs move downtown from the mountains, and former hotel managers try out their own independent dining concepts, all bringing a bit of the slick sheen of big business with them. Plate, which opened on Stowe’s Main Street on March 12,…
Locavore Deli Little Red Kitchen to Open on Riverside Avenue
A few years ago, Cheryl Strenio left Vermont for the first time to attend Le Cordon Bleu Institute of Culinary Arts in Pittsburgh, Penn. Now, two years after graduating, the Burlington native is opening a restaurant of her own. Strenio is the new owner of 505 Riverside Avenue, former home of Sugarsnap, which served salads…
