In the mid-1980s, two decades before social media began fattening us with its empty-calorie buffet of human connection, a small cohort of lesbians settled a 50-acre parcel of wooded farmland on the edge of Camel’s Hump State Park in Vermont. Known as Huntington Open Women’s Land, or simply HOWL, this community followed in the footsteps…
On November 23, 2019, at Porter Medical Center, Kaitlyn (Bedell) Rooney and Patrick Rooney welcomed a girl, Alice Yvette Rooney.
It was a case of mistaken canna-dentity. The Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office says it will drop felony drug charges filed against a New York City man who was busted earlier this month when he picked up a shipment of dank Vermont — hemp. Ronen Levy had faced up to 20 years in prison if he’d…
Dear Reverend, My wife and I have been together for eight years. She’s suddenly become obsessed with having anal sex. The idea has always kind of grossed me out, so I’ve never tried it. I’m willing to give it a shot, but I’m worried that I’ll hurt her. Any tips? Anally Anxious (male, 35) Dear…
(Cold Cowboy Songs, CD, digital) I should probably recuse myself from future writings about Michael Roberts. It’s not that we’re friends or anything. We’ve met once, several years ago for a story, and while I liked the southern Vermont songwriter just fine, I don’t believe we’ve physically crossed paths since. But I’ll confess that I’m…
(Equal Eyes Records, digital) Omega Jade, a West Coast transplant, has been making huge waves in the Vermont hip-hop scene the past two years as a rapper, comedian and ambitious promoter of both. Her work, whether musical or comedic, is bluntly honest and cheerfully offensive in equal measure. Curiously, on her debut album as a…
Another awards season, another Dick pic. Who would’ve guessed Cheney would join Rudolph, Charlie Brown and Frosty in the pantheon of recurring holiday characters? Last year he slithered back into the popular consciousness via Adam McKay’s black comedy Vice. Now he’s the driving force behind the wrongdoing chronicled in the directorial debut of screenwriter Scott…
You don’t cast Helen Mirren as a patsy. Call it stereotyping, but the actor who has played so many queens and the like has a regal alertness that makes her hard to buy as an unsuspecting victim. For that reason alone, viewers will quickly guess that The Good Liar is a story with cards up…
The Dubois Farm has a big footprint in Addison County with 3,100 acres and roughly 2,700 cows. It also carries a large price tag — $23 million. After nearly a year on the market, however, the farm hasn’t found a buyer. The “for sale” sign at the property near the intersection of routes 17 and…
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Sagittarian performance artist Marina Abramovi observes that Muhammad, Buddha, Jesus and Moses “all went to the desert as nobodies and came back as somebodies.” She herself spent a year in Australia’s Great Sandy Desert near Lake Disappointment, leading her to exclaim that the desert is “the most incredible place, because there…
Residents in one Burlington neighborhood are organizing and beautifying their streets to increase recognition of their unique spot in the city — and to make the area safer for pedestrians and bicyclists. The Old East End Neighborhood Coalition formed in 2018 to address traffic issues in the Queen City close to the Winooski Bridge. According…
Dale Boca Café, an Argentinian restaurant in Winooski, has moved from 215 Main Street to 25 Winooski Falls Way, according to general manager Javier Zirko. The move is due to a planned development project that would demolish the Main Street building, he said. At its new location, Dale Boca shares space with Sweet Babu, where…
‘I Know What It Feels Like’ Props to Seven Days for the “Hooked” series. Some people don’t know much about opioid addiction. Some of us know way too much; I know way more than anyone should. I know all about the Vermont corrections enterprise. How doctors from the University of Vermont Medical Center way overprescribed…
In Japan in the early 1990s, researchers developed a material that completely upended the field of fine metal work. Called precious metal clay, it was powdered metal, often pure silver or gold, mixed with water and a binding agent. PMC looked and acted like clay — it was malleable and beige colored. But during firing,…
Heart and Soul: Remembering Ellen Powell On Saturday, November 16, about 100 people gathered at the LaVigne Funeral Home in Winooski to remember an influential player in Vermont’s music community, bassist Ellen Powell. According to Powell’s niece, Kelly Powell, the stories people shared of the late musician and educator were “funny, heartbreaking and heartening.” Ellen…
From her podium in front of the Me2/Burlington orchestra, Kim Diehnelt cuts a striking figure. She’s tall and lean, and the needle-like baton she wields to guide a recent rehearsal of the community ensemble seems like a natural extension of her six-foot wingspan — the same as that of a great blue heron. Evoking the…
As is typical of the heroes of epics, Tom Pearo began his latest journey at an intense low point. A 10-year relationship had just unraveled, and the stress and anxiety pushed his body into the red. The Essex-based guitarist and songwriter became bedridden for days. The world outside held little joy for him, and the…
An upcoming group show at Furchgott Sourdiffe Gallery is titled “Transitions,” and not just because New Year’s Eve is around the corner. A more significant turn of the page at the 28-year-old Shelburne gallery and frame shop is that founders Brad Sourdiffe and Joan Furchgott are selling the business. Effective January 2, employee Lara Maloy…
A Seven Days reader from central Vermont who identified himself only as “Mike D.” emailed us recently to ask if we knew the story behind the bevy of boulders that mysteriously appeared a few months ago outside a long-defunct restaurant in downtown Barre. Each standing three or four feet high, the three dozen or so…
One Vermont business has a new best friend — and it ain’t Fido. Spot the Dog, a company founded by outgoing Green Mountain Power president and CEO Mary Powell and run by her husband, Mark Brooks, has landed on Oprah Winfrey’s Favorite Things gift list. The designation means the South Hero-based company, which makes reflective…
When New York City developer Don Sinex waltzed onto the Burlington scene in 2014, he had cosmopolitan dreams for Vermont’s largest city. At an event inside the suburban-style Burlington Town Center mall that November, Sinex unveiled a $200 million proposal for a downtown redevelopment project that included hundreds of apartments, a convention center, office and…
During a recent panel discussion at the Vermont History Museum in Montpelier, an audience member asked, “How do we make [Vermont] less racist,” as well as “more livable” and “sustainable”? The panel featured five of the 27 artists whose work appears in “I AM…: Exploring What It Means to Be a Vermont Artist,” on view…
On July 31, 1991, Vermonters Billy Greer and Steve Hutchins were arrested, along with eight other Americans and 15 Canadians, for smuggling 120 tons of Pakistani hashish into Canada. At the time, it was the largest marijuana bust in Vermont and Canada’s history. Four days earlier, the crew had run into rough seas while unloading…
The first poem in Sydney Lea’s latest collection, Here, begins with an image of a dying season: “That birds have largely quieted may distress us, / and like neglected mail, the garden’s lettuce / went yellow weeks back, then simply dissolved.” Two months after Here’s release in September, 11,000 climate scientists from around the world…
They hail from sprawling, Canadian-border congressional districts on either side of Lake Champlain and represent similarly rural, white and aging constituencies. They sit just four seats away from one another on the 22-member House Intelligence Committee. But when it comes to the impeachment of President Donald Trump, Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and Peter Welch (D-Vt.)…
This fall had its ups and downs for Beth Whiting and Bruce Hennessey of Maple Wind Farm. On October 11, the couple celebrated their 20th farming anniversary with a party at the Richmond location of their agricultural operation, which also has sites in Bolton and Huntington. About 200 friends, neighbors, customers and other supporters gathered…
It takes guts to open a specialty coffee shop in a small town in Vermont — and it takes serious coffee evangelism and a whole lot of hard work to open two in the same year. In May, Alessandra and Matthew Delia-Lôbo opened Royal Oak Coffee in a former hair salon on Seymour Street in…
Kris Nelson, cofounder and co-owner of Citizen Cider, left his job at the Pine Street cidery last week to collaborate with Zero Gravity Craft Brewery on a new product: alcohol-free beer. The beverage, still under development, represents a new brand for Zero Gravity. It will be produced at the brewery on Pine Street, where removal…
India House Restaurant, which opened in the 1980s at 207 Colchester Avenue in Burlington, closed last month, confirmed Peter Yee, president of Yellow Sign Commercial, the company handling the sale of the business. The restaurant served local diners Indian food — tandoori chicken, vegetable pakoras, keema mattar — before cuisines from Vietnam, Nepal and Tibet…
Vermont’s breweries rely on clean water to make beer, and the Vermont Natural Resources Council has launched a new initiative to work with them directly to protect that resource. The founding of the Vermont Brewshed Alliance was announced on November 13 at Lawson’s Finest Liquids in Waitsfield. Lawson’s is a founding member of the alliance,…
