May 20-26, 2020
The Summer Preview Issue: The Pandemic Complicates Summer Camp Plans; From Little League to the Lake Monsters, Vermont Baseball Faces an Uncertain Season; Hiking, Social Distancing and Human Behavior in the Summer of COVID-19
Obituary: Ruth M. Sprague, 1928-2020
Barre native became the first female electron-microscopist in the Western hemisphere
Obituary: Daniel J. O’Brien, 1933-2020
A 2018 Vermont Citizen of the Year worked tireless on behalf of his community and state
How Am I Supposed to Meet People If We Can’t Meet Up?
Dear Reverend, Being solo in quarantine has made me realize I want to get back into the dating game. I want to restart my dating apps, but is anybody actually dating right now? How do you meet people when you’re not supposed to meet up with them? Hannah Solo (female, 27) Dear Hannah Solo, Since…
Virtual Birding Communities Are All Atwitter
Trish O’Kane couldn’t see the eastern phoebe — not even close, given that the bird in question was in Connecticut and she was in Burlington. But she could hear it through the speakers of a student who had taken his laptop outside during one of O’Kane’s Zoom classes at the University of Vermont. The experienced…
Online Art Review: Wylie Garcia at Soapbox Arts
It goes without saying that viewing art online is not like seeing it in person. On a screen, the art appears flat, the color is almost certainly not true, and detail and depth can be suppressed. Without being told, we have no sense of the scale of the artworks. The virtual experience cannot evoke the…
Vermont Arts Organizations Face Economic Fallout in the Pandemic
For months it’s been apparent that the pandemic will have a huge financial impact on Vermont’s arts and culture landscape; most organizations have shut their doors and canceled in-person events and exhibitions for the foreseeable future. But the scale of that devastation has been difficult to estimate — until May 7, when the Vermont Arts…
Free Will Astrology (5/20/20)
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): To generate an ounce of pure cocaine, you must collect 52 pounds of raw coca leaf and work hard to transform it. But please don’t do that. Fate won’t be on your side if you do. However, I will suggest that you consider undertaking a metaphorically comparable process — by gathering a…
Camp Conundrum: COVID-19 Complicates a Rite of Summer
Preparation for summer art camp at Teresa Davis’ studio in South Burlington has gone a little differently this year. Instead of packing the four classrooms with workstations, Davis removed about half of them and pushed the remaining tables against the wall to create more open space. Her staff pasted strips of masking tape on each…
Letters to the Editor (5/20/20)
Clearer View As I finished reading last week’s “After the Fire” testimonials from Vermonters, I shook my head in disbelief. Not one mention of the positive affect the pandemic has had on the environment? Disappointing. We are supposed to be the Green Mountain State, and that green isn’t all about money. The envisioning of our…
Summer Businesses Weigh Foreign Labor in Light of Pandemic
The return of the Spirit of Ethan Allen’s blaring foghorn last weekend made clear that operator Mike Shea won’t let the coronavirus sink his Lake Champlain summer cruise business. Shea’s company performed logistical contortions so it could begin offering shoreline tours from Burlington on Saturday. The boat’s crew took passengers’ temperatures as they boarded, and…
Vermont Teddy Bear Wants to Make 125,000 Free Masks
Face masks are this summer’s hottest fashion trend. They’re inexpensive, come in all kinds of colors and designs, and are recommended for people to wear while they’re out and about. Most importantly: They help protect others from a deadly virus. Très cool! They’re also widely available, in part because of a mask-making initiative spearheaded by…
Seven Vermont Authors Recommend Summer Reads
For lovers of the written word, is summer really complete without a stack of must-read books to devour by pools, at picnic tables or in the warm evening air amid a symphony of crickets and cicadas? Under normal circumstances (whatever that means in an ever-changing world), we might call a pile of page-turners “beach reads.”…
Our Work Changed
into the sound of paper being torn to shreds our new work commences with windows thrown open while scraps fly about we try but can’t catch them our faces muffled and concealed our work now is to translate a smile into something we can do with our gloved hands our paper shreds wilt with the…
Local Musicians Recall Their First Concert Experiences
As Vermont eases its social-distancing requirements bit by bit, a small chance exists that we could see some type of safe, outdoor live music before the leaves start to change colors — but that’s all speculative. Just as likely is the grim reality that the summer of 2020 will forever be known as the Summer…
Rough Francis, ‘Urgent Care’
(Self-released, digital) Look, if you don’t know the story of Rough Francis — and by extension their progenitors, the famous punk outliers Death — I’m not wasting my precious word count catching you up. Go watch Jeff Howlett and Mark Christopher Covino’s 2012 documentary A Band Called Death about brothers Dannis, David and Bobby Hackney,…
Cordless, ‘EP’
(Self-released, digital) Atmosphere is a huge part of an album’s compositional makeup, and it’s sometimes taken for granted. Who knows what some of the moodiest, most evocative records would sound like if their songs were extricated and plopped down in a stagnant mud field of production? Perhaps they wouldn’t be the albums we hold so…
Hackie: The Kindness of Strangers
My mission was simple and straightforward: Move Sonata Gustafson from her temporary home at a Shelburne Road motel to her new temporary quarters — a trailer located at the North Beach Campground. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy, right? When I pulled up to the motel for the pickup, I saw that it might be anything but.…
Hiking, Social Distancing and Human Behavior in the Summer of COVID-19
The Jerusalem Trail in Starksboro ascends from a dirt road, climbing for 2.4 miles through hardwood forest and an expanse of maples, connected by a cat’s cradle of sap lines, until it intersects with the Long Trail two miles north of the summit of Mount Ellen. A wooden post announcing the trailhead bears a laminated…
Retail Therapy: Seven Items for Outdoor Fun and Where to Find Them Locally
The coronavirus pandemic has produced plenty of uncertainty, but one thing is for sure: Summer is coming. Though the season this year will look a little different, the sunshine, warmth and relaxed restrictions may offer some relief to those who’ve been feeling cooped up. As Vermonters get ready to spend the green season in the…
From Little League to the Lake Monsters, Vermont Baseball Faces an Uncertain Season
In his 1982 novel Shoeless Joe, W.P. Kinsella wrote, “America has been erased like a blackboard, only to be rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked time while America has rolled by like a procession of steamrollers.” A version of that line, resonantly delivered by James Earl Jones, is one of the more moving…
Obituary: Estelle Deane, 1930-2020
VNA staffer and cofounder of the Madison-Deane Initiative focused on end-of-life care
Travel Local: Can Vermont Save Its Own Tourism Industry?
Vermont tourism officials would normally pull out all the stops in late May to lure visitors to the Green Mountain State. Ads featuring covered bridges, craft beer and Lake Champlain boating would pop up in the media markets and social media feeds of the 80 million people living within a few hours’ drive. But plans…
Seven Vermont Food Trucks to Check Out — for Takeout
Food trucks are the restaurant version of dandelions; as soon as the snow melts, they start popping up, heralding the beginning of summer. By mid-May, they’re everywhere. Amid a global pandemic, the trucks remain ubiquitous, slinging to-go fare: burgers and fries, kebabs, and even martinis, thanks to the current relaxation of Vermont’s alcohol ordinances. While…
