Kelly Brigham has lived her entire life in Burlington’s only mobile home park. The resident-owned North Avenue Cooperative has 114 homes, including Brigham’s gray single-wide, purchased with an inheritance from her late mother in 2016. At the time, the city assessed the home for $69,300. Brigham, 54, has since paved her parking lot, installed a…
A loving mother is remembered for her compassion and fiery free spirit
Telecommunications expert remembered for his love of the outdoors and for bringing people together
Trey Anastasio Band bassist was a mainstay on the Burlington music scene for more than 45 years
Vermont’s music community is vast compared to the state’s small population. It’s also eclectic. That means Seven Days never runs out of interesting albums to review. In fact, we get more submissions than we know what to do with. This has never been truer than now. One of the only positive things to come out…
Thirty-six years ago, Peter and Elka Schumann started making calendars. The collaboration merges the artwork of Peter, founder of Bread and Puppet Theater, and the editorial direction of Elka, his longtime partner in marriage and art. Each calendar has a theme that the two discuss and arrive at together. This is not standard-issue calendar fare…
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Taurus poet Vera Pavlova writes, “Why is the word yes so brief? It should be the longest, the hardest, so that you could not decide in an instant to say it, so that upon reflection you could stop in the middle of saying it.” I suppose it makes sense for her…
Howard Ball is what’s known in Yiddish as a kochleffel — literally, a “pot stirrer.” He spent years fighting for civil rights and racial equality in the South and getting himself into what the late U.S. representative John Lewis called “good trouble.” Now 83, Ball has written 37 books, including several since his 2002 retirement…
Between Zoom fatigue and pandemic cabin fever, many of us have never wanted to get outside and exercise more than we do this spring. So it’s a propitious moment for the release of Bolton cartoonist Alison Bechdel’s third graphic memoir, the successor to 2006’s Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (which was adapted for a Tony…
In White River Junction, among a bevy of hulking metal machines, Amanda Kievet and Peggy Allen are making yarn. In April, the pair opened Junction Fiber Mill, a boutique mill to process fleece from Vermont’s small-scale sheep farmers. The industrial space houses half a dozen large machines, some 80 years old. There’s a machine to…
In a 2017 interview on the Violin Channel, renowned violinist and conductor Jaime Laredo was asked which side of him the public never sees. “I’m very cranky, and I’m very often in a terrible mood,” he answered with a laugh. “Nobody ever sees that of me.” Indeed. As Laredo’s 20-year tenure as music director of…
When Laura Hill bought a house in Burlington’s Old North End, she was warned about the lead. Until it was banned in the U.S. in 1978, lead paint was used in many homes. Lead remediation had been done inside the home, but Hill said there were likely still high levels of lead on and around…
Many Vermont lawmakers say they are ready to ban the “forever chemicals” that have contaminated drinking water in parts of the state. They have many reasons. In Vermont’s best-known case, the chemicals known as PFAS contaminated hundreds of wells in Bennington after two former textile factories in the town baked them onto their products for…
My kids have two moms, but only one of us gets gifts on Mother’s Day. My wife, Ann-Elise, laid claim to that holiday after giving birth to our son, Graham, 15 years ago. He and his sister, Ivy, call me Aimo, pronounced “eye-mo.” I chose that kind-of-random Scandinavian moniker, along with the date of Aimo’s…
A couple of years ago, Winooski City Manager Jessie Baker had a frustrating problem. A staffer was performing all the duties of a human resource director, but Baker could not give her the job title because it was not in the city’s charter. Winooski would need to update the document through a lengthy process that…
Our streaming entertainment options are overwhelming — and not always easy to sort through. Lately, everybody’s been talking about Best Summer Ever, a musical that was produced and shot in Vermont by Zeno Mountain Farm, a Lincoln nonprofit that runs retreats and camps for people with and without disabilities. Directed by Michael Parks Randa and…
Mass. Illusion So glad to see the “consumers” happy with the Lee, Mass., weed shop [“The Grass Is Greener,” April 14] and the testimony from Luis Foster saying, “The shit on the street? You don’t know where it’s from … Here you can trust it.” OK, then! This from the state that “regulated” a compounding…
Dear Reverend, The other day, my mother came into my bedroom without knocking and caught me masturbating. I don’t think she really saw anything because I was under the covers, but I’m pretty sure she knew what I was doing. She said something about dinner, left the room quickly and closed the door behind her.…
The daffodils are blooming along the driveway to Horsford Gardens & Nursery in Charlotte. At the edge of the greenhouses, tulips that two weeks ago were bent and obscured by spring snow have rebounded in vibrant colors. The black locust trees by the garden shop, growing side by side for a century, will soon leaf…
Jenny and Dave Rooke have operated Rookie’s Root Beer from their home in Burlington’s New North End since 2005. They sell soda almost exclusively on draft at restaurants and at the Burlington Farmers Market. After the pandemic torpedoed sales, the Rookes didn’t have the capacity to revamp their distribution model to sell cans to stores…
(Self-released, digital) “It feels strange to fit most of my creative output of the pandemic into this 5×5.5″ book,” wrote Burlington singer-songwriter Eric George in a March Instagram post promoting his new album, Valley of the Heart. Is the prolific folk troubadour doing something unusual by releasing a pandemic album? Probably not. My reviewer’s instinct…
(Self-released, digital) I wonder how many records were made because someone went west to find better fishing? I’m going to go out on a limb and say one. There’s an album that happened specifically because a fisherman, who is also an indie-rock musician, felt like hunting the icy waters off the Alaskan coast. (Note to…
While shopping along Burlington’s Church Street Marketplace last week, Haley Moriarty spotted the perfect graduation dress on a rack at Ecco Clothes. The high school senior from Connecticut, who plans to attend the University of Vermont in the fall, fell in love with the creamy white mini with spaghetti straps and a bow across the…
When Vermont Senate Minority Leader Randy Brock (R-Franklin), who is Black, spoke last Thursday to fellow senators, his words may have been music to some people’s ears, but he appeared to be out of tune with the majority of his fellow lawmakers. Brock and colleagues had just heard a speech by Sen. Ruth Hardy (D-Addison)…
Adding to the recent proliferation of Himalayan and Nepali restaurants in Chittenden County, Rup Mizar and Neema Tamang have opened Himalayan Kitchen and Bar at 3182 Shelburne Road in Shelburne. Most recently occupied by Bella Luna, the space is best known as the longtime home of Italian restaurant Buono Appetito. The co-owners are originally from…
The Upper Valley will have a new destination for summer fun when Fairlee native and cocktail pro Matt Walker starts serving at Broken Hearts Burger. The modern take on a classic midcentury burger stand will open at 192 Main Street in July. In March 2020, Walker, 42, was negotiating a lease on a waterfront space…
“First of all, don’t fear.” That was Brian Stefan’s solid — if easier-said-than-done — advice for tackling the takeout box full of tiny, alien-like crustaceans I picked up on a recent Saturday evening. Diving into a pound of crawfish is a sloppy, visceral experience. And for those of us who didn’t grow up in Louisiana…
The “got milk?” slogan is emblazoned in big white letters across a red barn in Waterford, easily visible from Interstate 93. It was painted there in the late 1990s when Gingue Family Farm was producing plenty of milk. But by 2015, the family had sold its milking herd, joining hundreds of Vermont farmers who quit…
Garden Variety Saturday 8 Cacti and veggies and rosemary, oh my! Folks looking to spruce up indoor and outdoor spaces find a wide variety of horticultural offerings at the Pride Center of VT’s TransPlants Plant Sale. Shoppers browse houseplants, vegetable and herb starts, and seed packets as the Champlain Shoregasms and Ronnie Russell provide live…
