Nov 11-17, 2015
Courting Youth, and the South, for Bernie Sanders; Trash Talk With the Suitcase Junket; Will Eating Crickets Save the World?
Cover Story
Luis Calderin Aims to Deliver Young Voters for Bernie Sanders
If Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wants to become the 45th president of the United States — or even win the Democratic primary next July — he’ll need to score big in several key voter demographics. He’ll need support from women. He’ll need to rally minority voters. And, perhaps most critically, he’ll need to win the…
Obituary: Paul Gary Brosseau, 1949-2015, Colchester
Paul Gary Brosseau, 66, went to the Lord peacefully on Nov., 13, from heart failure. Gary was born in Burlington, VT, on February 28, 1949 to Lucien and Lauretta (Verchereau) Brosseau. He attended Burlington schools, and graduated from Milton High School in 1967. Gary was employed most of his life as a truck driver, starting…
Contest: Sanders Sound Off
We asked you for your best Bernie Sanders impersonations and man, did you guys deliver. The Seven Days editorial team picked the top 1 percent from the submissions and now it’s your time to vote, America. You can only vote once, so make it count. The contestant with the most votes will get two tickets…
Obituary: Carol Blackmer, Modesto, CA
Carol Blackmer, 62, died on Friday, Oct. 30, in Modesto, California, following a brief illness. She was born in Modesto, and attended Grace Davis High School, as well as the Athenian School in Danville, CA. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Mills College in Oakland with a Master’s Degree in Early Childhood Education. Carol will…
Who’s Got Game? An Early Read on the Gubernatorial Candidates
Late last month, five candidates for governor of Vermont stepped onto a stage, stood in front of a microphone and tried to persuade audiences that they should lead the state. Within four weeks, most of the candidates had repeated the electoral exercise four times. What’s unusual about that? These events are happening more than a…
Art Review: ‘Feather & Fur: Portraits in Field, Forest and Farm’
The Great Hall in Springfield embraces its purpose as a public art space with “Feather & Fur: Portraits of Field, Forest & Farm.” The exhibition by nine regional artists includes representational works depicting birds of prey, domestic fowl, farm animals and the wildness that remains in even the most domesticated beasts. As exhibitions director Nina…
Till Kingdom Come
“So, do you get into Burlington much?” “Rarely lately, but all the time in the ’60s when I was in nursing school and commuting to UVM. And Jacob and I would go to Burlington clubs in the early years of our marriage, to listen to bands.” I was conversing with Gail Shipley, who sat beside…
My Girlfriend Had 41 Lovers Before Me, and I Can’t Deal
Dear Athena, I’ve got this girlfriend. She’s my second serious relationship, and I think I love her. At least, I can see a future with her, and there is something between us. Recently I asked her how many sexual partners she has had, and she told me 42. I was completely blown away, and it…
Spectre
Ironically, the three kinds of movies that have always interested me the least are the three about which other filmgoers get worked up the most: comic-book adventures, the Star Wars series and James Bond films. That is, until Daniel Craig entered the picture. For a brief, shining moment — which may already be over —…
Free Will Astrology (11/11/15)
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Elsie de Wolfe (1859-1950) was a pioneer in the art of interior design. She described herself as “a rebel in an ugly world.” Early in her career she vowed, “I’m going to make everything around me beautiful,” and she often did just that. In part through her influence, the dark, cluttered…
Suffragette
The problem with historical “issue” movies is that everyone already knows who won, which can promote a certain retrospective smugness. (“Silly Edwardians! How could they really think that granting women the vote would be a disaster?”) To create a compelling story instead of an opportunity for self-congratulation, the filmmakers need to immerse us in the…
Theater Review: Marat/Sade, UVM Department of Theatre
The name Marquis de Sade probably possesses, at least in the popular imagination, more associations with sex than with revolution. Even a solid film like 2000’s Quills, set in the tumultuous post-French Revolution era, emphasizes de Sade’s sexually explicit literary output and the unabashed opinions and proclivities that informed it. Not so in German playwright…
In Burlington, Rarely Heard Music: Pärt, Hensel and Spiritual Bach
Three upcoming Burlington-area concerts are presenting rarities, each of a different order. The University of Vermont Symphony Orchestra will offer a little-known work by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, a rare 19th-century female composer whose work rivaled that of her younger brother, Felix Mendelssohn. The Burlington Choral Society will give a concert of 20th- and 21st-century Estonian music,…
New Top Cop Brandon del Pozo Looks for ‘Breathing Room’ on the Beat
A racially charged incident moved people to gather outside Burlington City Hall on two separate occasions last week. Last Thursday night, more than 200 formed a tight semicircle in front of the building, and speakers focused their ire on two primary targets: whoever left Ku Klux Klan fliers at the homes of two African American…
Funding Loss Undercuts a Popular Family Program
Linda Alderman put on a brave smile as she greeted parents and children last Thursday morning, her final day at the Janet S. Munt Family Room in Burlington’s Old North End. After the 54-year-old Milton resident had given each of them a long hug, the kids took off to play in the Big Room while…
Letters to the Editor (11/11/15)
Offending Practice I am heartbroken and furious to learn that my taxpayer dollars are being spent to incarcerate a first-time drug offender in an out-of-state, for-profit prison [“A First-Time Drug Offender Gets 10 Years. Is it Racism?” November 4]. Drugs are no reason to lock people up. I wish the State of Vermont would refuse…
![Eating Roadkill at Hotel Vermont [419]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/episode419-2-scaled.webp?resize=1200%2C900&ssl=1)
Eating Roadkill at Hotel Vermont [419]
11/7/15: Hotel Vermont hosted a sold out “Wild About Vermont” game dinner Saturday night in collaboration with Vermont Fish and Wildlife and Lake Champlain International. On the menu were meats provided by game wardens, hunters, anglers and yes, some roadkill too. The deer, moose, fish and beaver were prepared artfully by Chef Doug Paine. A…
The Suitcase Junket Makes Treasure From Trash
Matt Lorenz began experimenting with junk when he was a kid. Growing up in rural Cavendish, Vt., he started with dismantling random electronics gleaned from his family’s weekly trips to the local dump. Back then, the only instruments Lorenz played were his violin and the free piano his family received from the public library —…
Best Friendsters?
Originally published September 17, 2003 Howard Dean is my friend…ster. We’re not exactlyfriends, really. I mean, we’ve only met once, and I don’t think he got my name. But when I search the Friendster database for everyone in my “personal network” within a 25-mile radius, the ubiquitous presidential candidate’s photo and personal profile appear on…
Soundbites: Everything I Needed to Know I Learned at the Radio Bean Birthday Bash
Last Saturday’s daylong Radio Bean birthday party was, as always, a blast. From eight in the morning until last call, it was jam-packed with great music, free coffee and general merrymaking. But it was also an enlightening day in which I found out some interesting tidbits about our cozy little local scene. So, in no…
Hogback Mountain Brewing Debuts in Bristol
Friends and family have been enjoying Kevin Hanson’s beer since the 1990s. But the sixtysomething Bristol native waited until retirement to toss his bottles into the local beer market. “I’m at the point in my life when I can do something less stressful than my previous job,” he tells Seven Days. Given his longtime interest…
A Vermont Farm Has Big Goals and Small Livestock: Crickets
The first clue that Williston’s Tomorrow’s Harvest is an unconventional protein farm is that only one animal appears to reside there — the family dog, Luna, who hangs out under a tree in the front yard. Far more numerous, but hidden from the casual observer, are the critters that inspired the farm’s name. Inside an…
Parent University Empowers New Americans — at School
One early November day, Ali Dieng pulled the van he was driving into the Burlington High School parking lot to drop off Khin Aye Lwin.* Though the school day was over for the high schoolers, it was just starting for Khin Aye Lwin. Carrying a floral pink-and-black knapsack, the pint-size 33-year-old, Burmese woman entered the…
Gone to Carolina: Can Sanders Win Over the South?
Standing in the foyer of the funeral home she owns in Greenwood, S.C., Anne Parks tried last Friday morning to wrap up a phone call with a relative of a prospective client. “Why don’t you come on in here and we can set and talk about it,” she said, offering to pick up the deceased…
7 Questions for Former White House Pastry Chef Bill Yosses
Last week, scores of teachers, nonprofits, government officials and farmers convened at Sterling College’s Craftsbury Common campus for the second annual Northeast Kingdom Farm-to-School Conference. There were workshops on garden-based teaching, locavore lunches, ag-based after-school programming, and ways to fund any and all of the above. After lunch, Bill Yosses delivered the keynote address. As…
Planned Parenthood Faces Hostility in N.H., and Vermont Solidifies Defenses
The secretly filmed videos provoked a national furor. Although none of the footage of Planned Parenthood employees discussing the price of fetal tissue came from New England, the backlash was especially swift in New Hampshire, where the Republican-controlled Executive Council, which shares authority with the governor, quickly terminated a $640,000 state grant to the organization.…
Book Review: The Devil in the Valley, by Castle Freeman Jr.
More than one reviewer has compared Newfane novelist Castle Freeman Jr. to Cormac McCarthy. That weighty association may have helped inspire the new film based on Freeman’s 2008 novel Go With Me — starring and produced by Anthony Hopkins — that recently premiered at the Venice Film Festival. But it isn’t a very good description…
Translator David Hinton Takes on the I Ching
“Ask anything you want, and we’ll see what happens,” says David Hinton on his sunny porch in East Calais. He rolls three quarters and writes down their corresponding values: three for heads, two for tails. The much-lauded translator, essayist and poet recently translated I Ching: The Book of Change, the classical Chinese book of wisdom,…
Harder They Come, The Freak EP
(Self-released, digital download) House music has had a home in Burlington at least since the godfather, Craig Mitchell, arrived in Vermont to attend Saint Michael’s College. Innovative electronic sounds have been bubbling somewhere on Church Street for two decades now, and the genre has grown hugely popular. In the past decade, the event promotion team…
Humanities Conference Considers the Power of Storytelling
At this weekend’s Vermont Humanities Council conference at the University of Vermont, the doctor is in — the fairy tale doctor. Harvard University professor Maria Tatar is one of three academically distinguished guests scheduled to speak on the conference theme, “Why Do Stories Matter?” Officially a professor of Germanic languages and literatures, and former chair…
Harvey Bigman and Sci-Fi, Transparency
(Como Tapes, cassette, digital download) Some things that went through my mind as I listened to Transparency, the recently released split record from Burlington-based experimental composers Harvey Bigman and Sci-Fi: I’m scared. Is that a … duck call? I need to change my laundry over, but I’m not sure I should go to the basement…
Bee’s Knees Closes in Morrisville; Archie’s Grill Returns to Shelburne
Running a restaurant and raising a family was more than Sharon Deitz Caroli bargained for when she opened the Bee’s Knees in Morrisville 12 years ago. She put the locavore restaurant, café and community space up for sale last year, but, until now, she had no success in cementing a replacement. The timing couldn’t be…
Hen of the Wood Pastry Chef Opens ‘Fine Diner’ in Burlington
Andrew LeStourgeon, known to many as Little Sweets, left his pastry chef gig at Hen of the Wood on August 1. He flew the coop to begin a hush-hush new project, slated to open at Burlington’s 111 St. Paul Street “before Valentine’s Day,” he says. Now LeStourgeon can announce his collaboration with Rob Downey, CEO…
