May 26 – Jun 1, 2021
Vermont’s Remaining World War II Survivors Bear Witness; The State Takes Vaccines to Church, the Streets and Even the Beach; Author Jennifer McMahon on Her New Horror Novel, ‘The Drowning Kind’
Cover Story
Alive to Tell the Tale: Vermont’s Remaining World War II Survivors Bear Witness
Memorial Day was conceived to honor the fallen. During World War II, 1,233 Vermonters gave their lives in service to their country. Can we understand their sacrifice without turning to living witnesses, a dwindling cohort that retains primal memories? Some 16.1 million Americans served in the armed forces as war raged nearly 80 years ago;…
New North End’s Chile Colorado Food Cart to Become Chile North Restaurant
Mara and Spencer Welton are teaming up with Carina Driscoll and her husband, Blake Ewoldsen, to turn the Weltons’ Chile Colorado food cart into a Burlington restaurant, café and bar called Chile North. It will open the first week of July in the former location of Smitty’s Pub at the Ethan Allen Shopping Center on North Avenue. Driscoll and Ewoldsen cofounded…
Obituary: Felicia Ann Carreon, 1937-2021
84-year-old woman leaves behind family and friends “who adored her to no end”
In Memoriam: Rose Elaine Mummert, 1950-2001
August 20, 1950-June 8, 2001 Gone from our sight but never from our memories. Gone from our touch but never from our hearts. Rose, you are forever loved. — Bob, Jon, Sarah, Kris, Sarah Rose and Patti
In Memoriam: Richard “Seth” Schneehagen, 1990-2021
June 20, 1990-February 24, 2021 Please join us for a celebration of life on June 13, 2021, at 1 p.m. at the St. John’s Club, Burlington, VT 05401. Related Stories
Goodbye Already: I Am Passing the Fair Game Baton in Order to Focus on My Health
I was fired from my previous job as a radio talk show host at WDEV because management thought I was too opinionated. That happened after I cited some stunning facts — not opinions — on the air: that by November 2019, people involved in then-president Donald Trump’s campaign or subsequent administration had been convicted on…
Local Lore Hits the Airwaves on ‘The Vermont Ver-Mystery Hour’
For the archivist and fabulist alike, historical records are seedbeds of wonder and fascination, and Vermont is absolutely fecund with weird history. In the Green Mountain State, human settlements have neighbored alongside the region’s primeval forests for nearly three centuries, but the two have often made strange bedfellows, and their proximity has begotten strange occurrences…
Soundbites: The Skinny on Backside 405 and Alfie’s Wild Ride
The apprehension I feel about summer has me all knotted up, and there’s only one cure. To quote Liz Lemon: “I need to dance this out.” Obviously, “this” refers to the pandemic-era tension and the uncertainty that still looms large over the live music and events sectors. Luckily, anyone who needs to shake it until…
Burlington Activists Want to Divert Champlain Parkway Traffic From Diverse Neighborhood
Mark Hughes delivered a clear message to city planners at a meeting last July about the Champlain Parkway, a 2.8-mile roadway planned to ease traffic between Burlington’s South End and its downtown. Hughes, coordinator of the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance, was concerned that because the parkway would end at Main Street, it would dump more…
Karen McFeeters, ‘Bonfire’
(Self-released, CD, digital) There’s something to be said for doing things the old-fashioned way. Though it’s more common in 2021 for local artists to send along their work digitally, Seven Days still gets a fair number of physical CD submissions. And sometimes these are accompanied by a handwritten greeting card with an adorable art print…
Pastiche Can’t Compensate for Weak Plot in ‘The Woman in the Window’
Our streaming entertainment options are overwhelming — and not always easy to sort through. The pandemic turned the film world topsy-turvy. When a star-studded movie that was scheduled for a major 2020 release ends up being dumped on a streaming platform with little fanfare, is that hard luck? Or poetic justice? I investigated the case…
Barbacoa, ‘Pharaoh’s Camaro’
(Self-released, digital) Last summer, thanks to an amateur assassin/really bad driver, I discovered the joy that is a morphine dream. For a few days of recovery following an accident, my circadian rhythms took me on some very strange trips. One dream stands out: I was driving my first car — a Peugeot station wagon, baby…
From the Publisher: Remember This
I’ll never forget my mom, and she made sure of it by dying last year on Memorial Day. Just a few hours after she took her last breath, a police officer murdered George Floyd in Minneapolis. Now May 25, 2020, is one of those dismal dates that “will live in infamy,” as president Franklin D.…
Art Review: ‘Deep Blue,’ Hall Art Foundation
The color blue has proved visually compelling at least since the Chinese began making blue-on-white-patterned ceramics during the Tang Dynasty (618-907) using cobalt ores from Persia. “Deep Blue,” the main exhibition at the Hall Art Foundation this year, is a testament to the color’s continued fascination for artists — in particular, painter Katherine Bradford, who…
Bottom Line: As COVID-19 Drove Vermonters Outdoors, Cleary Stone Started Rocking
G. Jean Brgant, owner of Cleary Stone in Richmond, likened her company’s pandemic year to the Cirque du Soleil show KÀ. Unlike traditional theatrical productions, the acrobatic performance has no fixed stage but unfolds on perpetually moving platforms that are meant to simulate ocean waves. “I don’t feel like we’ve had solid ground under us,”…
I Stayed With My Partner Because of the Pandemic, and Now I’m Not Sure How to Get Out of It
Dear Reverend, I started dating a guy around the end of 2019. The sex was great, but we didn’t really click in any other way. I was going to break up with him, but then COVID-19 happened. I stayed with him because I didn’t think I’d be able to meet another sexual partner during a…
New Law Could Empower More St. Joseph’s Orphanage Survivors to Sue, but Hurdles Remain
Former residents of St. Joseph’s Orphanage in Burlington achieved a historic victory earlier this month: the passage of S.99, a bill that lifts the statute of limitations on lawsuits arising from childhood physical abuse. The Vermont legislation, the first of its kind in the country, allows survivors to file claims years, even decades, after the…
WTF: What’s the Miniature Barn on Stilts at Fort Ethan Allen?
A Seven Days reader recently asked about what she called the “mini-barn-on-stilts structure” that’s adjacent to the Vermont Public Radio studios at Fort Ethan Allen in Colchester. Located behind a chain-link fence and alongside a pond and some woods, the structure resembles a red monitor barn with a green metallic roof. It sits atop four…
Vermont Author Jennifer McMahon on Her New Horror Novel, ‘The Drowning Kind’
The first story Jennifer McMahon wrote was about a haunted meatball. She was in third grade in Connecticut. Her teacher liked it, so McMahon wrote another story about a mud monster. Then one about a kid who found a body in the wall of his house. Despite being a person who was and is easily…
Letters to the Editor (5/26/21)
Moving Target [Re “Rolling With It,” May 19]: As an almost daily rider of a recumbent trike on the Burlington bike path, I am concerned for my safety as a result of the recent proliferation of e-bikes. Officially welcomed on Burlington’s recreation path, these vehicles are much heavier than an average bicycle and usually moving…
Book Review: ‘Red Kite, Blue Sky,’ Madeleine May Kunin
Politics and poetry may seem at first to be strange bedfellows. Yet governance and versification have a long tradition of being intimately linked. Queen Elizabeth I wrote poetry and translated ancient texts from Latin and Greek. One of few women in England at the time to receive a complete education in the classics, she dared…
Burlington Nonprofit Takes People With Cancer Sailing on Lake Champlain
For several years, Burlington-based nonprofit Healing Winds Vermont has taken people with cancer, along with their family and friends, for free sailing expeditions on Lake Champlain. The pandemic changed some things for the org. Last July, the group invited “health care heroes” aboard its 40-foot sailboat. “We took out this nurse, and she brought her…
Shot Strategy: Vermont Takes Vaccines to Church, the Streets and Even the Beach
Kristin Galipeau arrived at North Beach in Burlington last Thursday afternoon wearing a bathing suit and a rainbow face mask. She and her friends had only planned on a relaxing day at the lake. “Then we were like, ‘Oh, shit, we can get vaccinated here,'” she said. Galipeau had stumbled upon a pop-up vaccination clinic,…
Free Will Astrology (5/26/21)
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): A blogger named Valentine Cassius reports, “A tiny old woman came into the deli where I work and ordered a ‘wonderful turkey sandwich.’ When asked what she wanted on the sandwich other than turkey, she said ‘all of your most wonderful toppings.'” Here’s my response to that: The tiny old woman’s…
In Memoriam: Janet Bonneau, 1954-2020
Janet Cressy Stensrud Bonneau of Richmond, Vt,. passed away unexpectedly on December 3, 2020. Born in Beverly, Mass., to Gordon and Elizabeth Stensrud, Janet attended Richmond schools and graduated from Mount Mansfield Union High School in 1972. She traveled throughout Europe after graduation and returned to be with the love of her life, Richard Bonneau.…
Bugging the Bartender: Ali Nagle on Tending Bar During a Pandemic
A chalkboard that hangs above a high-top table at the Monkey House in Winooski bears a message in faded white printing: “Fuck U Covid & Trump.” Those words have remained in place since a customer wrote them last summer. Nearly everything else at the bar has been in a swirl of change and disruption. Since…
Dining on a Dime at Fry Daze of Vermont in Colchester
As a food writer, I spend a lot of time offering restaurant recommendations. Readers and friends have emailed me to ask about everything from where to eat during a Pine Street brewery crawl to the best pit stop in White River Junction. I’ve even helped a couple sort out which restaurants might have pleasant, reservable…
Chef Michael Werneke to Serve Mexican Street Food in New Stowe Music Venue
When Alfie’s Wild Ride, a new bar and music spot, opens on Stowe’s Mountain Road this summer, chef Michael Werneke will be in the kitchen making Mexican-style tacos. Currently in his 30th year as a professional chef, Werneke moved to Vermont in 2009 and had various jobs that included being executive chef at Prohibition Pig…
The Alchemist to Open Beer Garden in Stowe This Summer
Heady Topper fans, rejoice! The Alchemist Brewery and Visitors’ Center at 100 Cottage Club Road in Stowe will open its first-ever beer garden on July 1, serving full cans of its popular brews for on-site, outdoor consumption. The beer garden’s large roped-off area will accommodate about 100 people at a time at a dozen picnic…
The Magnificent 7: Must See, Must Do, May 26 to June 1
Buzzworthy Ballet Sunday 30 Camp Meade in Middlesex is abuzz with fireflies, ladybugs and bumblebees during an outdoor performance of Ballet Vermont’s Bees & Friends. Dancers in this seasonal spectacular move to The Four Seasons by Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi while portraying various insects. Doors open early for a screen-printing activity and a mini dance…
