Marilyn Kelly’s health declined quickly during her eight months at an eldercare home. The 78-year-old entered Our House Too in Rutland a spirited woman who could cast a fishing rod. She soon began taking falls, and her visiting daughters often found their mother slumped in a stupor. They blamed her dementia at first. Then they…
‘One of Enosburg’s great characters’ farmed, logged, protested war and practiced yoga
On November 28, 2019, at Porter Medical Center, Sheerya (Shivers) Berg and James Berg welcomed a girl, Meira Hava Berg.
Today’s standard first-year college student was born in 2001. When the first smartphone came out, this person was 6 years old. Generation Z, as today’s teens and young adults are called, were the first to grow simultaneously with technology and, as a result, they often use the internet in ways that are foreign even to…
Any doubts that Jennifer Hannux had about the two pricey Tesla Powerwall batteries in her rural Hartland home drained away over the Halloween weekend. Strong winds and flooding knocked out power to more than 100,000 Green Mountain Power customers, including those in her neighborhood. But the Hannux family’s lights stayed on. So did their refrigerator.…
A new owner took over Tight Squeeze Coffee Shop at 125 College Street in Burlington last month. Palden Sangmo, who purchased the business from Mike Lucey, told Seven Days she wanted to own her own small business. She said she plans to make no changes at Tight Squeeze, which serves coffee, tea, espresso drinks and…
A new product arrived last week at Paul Kerin’s booze outlet, Vergennes Wine. This holiday season, anyone can put money on an 802 Spirits gift card for that special someone. It’s the anyone part that disturbs Kerin. Since he bought the store about a decade ago, Kerin has instructed his employees to card patrons and…
A Cause for a Clause It’s a little bit nuts to think that planning is well under way for next year’s Waking Windows music and arts festival, which spans Friday, May 1, through Sunday, May 3. Most civilians probably don’t start thinking about Winooski’s three-day indie-rock marathon until the initial lineup announcement, which usually comes…
Liam Griffin was pedaling his bike on South Winooski Avenue in front of Burlington’s Pure Pop Records when a bus stopped in front of him to pick up a passenger. Griffin started to pass the bus on the left, but when the motorized vehicle pulled back into traffic, it clipped Griffin’s front bike tire, sending…
There are only a handful of actors whom it’s impossible to imagine playing a movie superhero. Surely, Tom Hanks is foremost among these. He may have played Walt Disney in 2013’s Saving Mr. Banks, but the idea of him as a Marvel character is unthinkable. The funny thing is that the new film from Can…
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Sagittarian composer Ludwig van Beethoven was inclined to get deeply absorbed in his work. Even when he took time to attend to the details of daily necessity, he allowed himself to be spontaneously responsive to compelling musical inspirations that suddenly welled up in him. On more than a few occasions, he…
Dear Reverend, For the past few years, when I go home for the holidays, I wind up messing around with my father’s first cousin. Her aunt is my grandmother. We haven’t had sex yet, but it seems to be headed that way. She’s 56, and I’ve had a vasectomy, so the chances of us accidentally…
Atoning for colonialism. Promoting environmental stewardship. Being hip and self-aware. Inserting a whole new backstory. Making toes tap and hearts swell with catchy musical numbers. Not pissing off the multitudes who feel deeply invested in all things Frozen. Selling millions of dollars’ worth of Disney merchandise. These are some of the goals that Frozen II…
Plenty of writers have worked in food service. For more than 50 years, though, being a “waiter” on the mountain campus of Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English meant something more. It was the distinction handed to promising writers at one of the literary community’s best-known conferences. In November, Jennifer Grotz, director of the…
Some Shelburne Museum staff admitted they were worried about mounting a major exhibition of duck decoys. “They thought it wouldn’t be captivating,” chief curator Kory Rogers said. “But once they stepped into the gallery, they were completely enchanted by this fascinating character who took the decoy from a utilitarian object to a contemporary work of…
It was a frosty predawn morning when I pulled into Carrie Anne’s driveway in Charlotte. On fares to the airport like this one, I aim to arrive some 10 minutes early; from years of experience, I’ve gleaned that that’s about the time a typical customer starts anxiously glancing out the window. Traveling is inherently stressful…
(Self-released, digital) Seven Days rarely receives an album submission quite like Nodrums’ W81 and W82. The two collections of music, 16 and 18 tracks long, respectively, are essentially creator Brayden Baird’s home-recording scrapbook. The tracks are a mix of demos, sketches, outtakes and even a few pieces that sound truly complete. The twin albums comprise…
Cellist Emily Taubl moved to Vermont in 2014 just after completing her graduate diploma in cello performance at the New England Conservatory in Boston. One of the first invitations she received was to perform in the Resident Ensemble Program in that summer’s Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival, whose co-artistic directors are renowned musicians Soovin Kim,…
Cota’s Hospitality Home looked just as you might picture a mom-and-pop eldercare residence in rural Vermont. Residents of the modest farmhouse outside Barre could sit on the porch under a rusty metal awning to watch cars pass by. The owners lived and worked there. But inside the residential care home, regulators found chronic problems. Beginning…
By all historical accounts, it was a miserable day for sailing, let alone for crossing Lake Champlain in an old wooden vessel laden with stone. “The day was cold, the wind high, the spray dashing over the schooner and covering her with ice, the ropes all stiffened and unmanageable,” read a December 28, 1860, article…
(Self-released, digital) One of the most tired clichés in music is the whole “making an album is like having a baby” thing. For starters, unless you’re a Scandinavian black metal band, the process of making a record shouldn’t involve literal blood. That said, there is an interesting subgenre of music that blurs the line between…
Ch-Ch-Changes Thanks to Chelsea Edgar for her excellent piece on Huntington Open Women’s Land [“HOWLing at the Moon,” November 20]. With her trademark insight, humor and deep research, she gave a substantive and respectful overview of how things are evolving for HOWL in particular, and women’s spaces in general, as ideas about gender and identity…
Everyone has a song that makes their blood boil. Maybe it’s an inescapable, ubiquitous hit single that inspires a white-hot rage deep within. Maybe it’s a tune with vapid lyrics or a juvenile melody that just won’t leave your head. Most of us go out of our way to avoid such bedeviling ditties. So why…
Seven Days writers can’t possibly read, much less review, all the books that arrive in a steady stream by post, email and, in one memorable case, a skulk of arctic foxes. So this monthly feature is our way of introducing you to a handful of books by Vermont authors. To do that, we contextualize each…
Pleased by evidence that shows fewer undergraduates are meandering through the University of Vermont on the “five-year plan,” the school’s new president has begun taking steps to help even more students finish in four years. Graduating on time “directly and truly affects affordability,” Suresh Garimella told school trustees on October 25. “I think if students…
Maria Lara-Bregatta should give lessons on how to run a pop-up. Somehow, while slinging empanadas out of a makeshift kitchen, she manages to greet customers — with hugs for her regulars — take orders, make change, and have in-depth conversations about colonialism and authenticity. No big deal. Lara-Bregatta, 26, is the chef-owner (and prep cook,…
Our table at the Boardroom Café the other night held an unusual setting. It consisted of a bottle of hand sanitizer and two board games: Masterpiece, a favorite of mine from childhood for its combination of artwork and intrigue, and Mastermind, a one-on-one “code-breaking” contest. I drank a Fiddlehead beer and considered which one to…
The Capital City Farmers Market will have a new home this winter at Caledonia Spirits’ Montpelier distillery at 116 Gin Lane. Known for its Barr Hill Gin, Caledonia will host the popular winter market beginning on Saturday, December 7. “The market has struggled for a long time to find an adequate space with a more…
As a cook at Prohibition Pig in Waterbury, Will Durst can remark on a phenomenon about which most of us can only surmise. “There’s so many hungry people in Waterbury!” he said. Durst and his wife, Ashley Wolf, plan to help feed that crowd next spring when they launch their Waterbury-based food truck, Petite Forest.…
Williston will soon have its very own location of the Farmhouse Tap & Grill, Farmhouse Group owner Jed Davis told Seven Days. Projected to open in fall or winter of 2020, the restaurant will share a space with Healthy Living Market & Café in the Finney Crossing development. It will be slightly smaller than the…
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