Nov 5-11, 2014
Pressing for Growth in the Apple Industry; Apple Growers, Makers and Scientists Unite; Cider Making at Home; the Hunt for 19th-Century Apples; Fentanyl Is a Hidden Killer
Cover Story
Vermonters Sow Seeds for the ‘Napa Valley of Hard Cider’
Terry Bradshaw tinkers with a stainless-steel apple press that’s slightly larger than a beer keg. He’s been making cider in his garage for years but has never used this new press, whose perforated sides spit juice and pulp all over the floor. Suddenly, a pink geyser erupts from the metal cylinder, spraying everyone in the…
Obituary: Ronald R. Lambert Sr.
Ronald R. Lambert, Sr., 76 passed away on Wed. Nov. 5,2014 at Fletcher-Allen Healthcare. He was born in Burlington on July 16, 1938 the son of Arthur J. and Anna (Hance) Lambert. After attending Burlington Schools, he went on to serve in the U.S. Army. He married the former Charlene M. Rose in 1961 and…
Obituary: Raymond A. Viens, 1924-2014, Winooski
Raymond A. Viens, 90, passed away on November 8, 2014, surrounded by his loving family. He was born in St. Albans Bay on January 24, 1924, to Phillippe and Amanda (Loisell) Viens. He worked for McKenzie’s Packing and Burlington High School. He married the love of his life, Claire Thibault, on June 3, 1950. He was a member…
Obituary: James Clarence Quebec
James Clarence Quebec, age 72 years passed away Tuesday November 4, 2014, after a short illness. He was born in Saint Albans on June 20,1942, the son of the late Clarence and Mildred (Mitchell) Quebec. A lifelong parishioner of the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary he received his formal education at…
Obituary: Garth David Viens
Garth David Viens, 55 passed away at his home in Silverhill, AL on Sunday Nov. 2, 2014, following a courageous battle with cancer. He was born in Burlington, VT Sept. 27, 1959 to his parents Janice and Lyman Viens, who predeceased him. He graduated from Colchester High School in 1977 before beginning his career in…
Obituary: Marie D. Bailey
Marie D. Bailey, 77, of Island Pond, VT, passed away from natural causes during the early morning hours on October 22, 2014, at the home of her daughter, Jennifer Hanlon, where she had lived with her son-in-law Thomas and granddaughter May, since 2011. Though she moved to Vermont late in her life, she always said…
Obituary: James R. Gates
Peacefully surrounded by his family, James R. Gates, passed away on November 4, 2014 after a courageous and strong willed two plus year battle with leukemia. He was born on April 24, 1946 in Hardwick, VT. He proudly served his country in the Vermont Army National Guard. He was predeceased by his parents Ed and…
Dear White People
There’s a throwaway joke in Justin Simien’s race-relations satire that some viewers will find offensive and others will find revelatory of what the movie is really about. Members of the Black Student Union at a historically white college meet to discuss an ongoing campus outrage. One regular attendee, who happens to be Asian American, suggests…
Guitarist and Singer Howard Fishman Talks About ‘The Basement Tapes Project’
In 1967, in the lower level of a little pink house in West Saugerties, N.Y., half a dozen young men rewrote the history of American popular music. Nearly half a century later, just as the complete version of their epochal recordings is finally seeing the light of day, Brooklyn musician Howard Fishman will visit Burlington…
Book Review: The Autobiography of Miss Huckleberry Finn by Gina Logan
I don’t think many of us read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for fun. Most likely we were made to read it in high school. Or maybe CliffsNotes did the reading for us. As for those of us who found ourselves enjoying that trip down the Mississippi on a raft with two escapees — a…
![Oscar Reaches for the Stars [SIV375]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/episode375-4-e1755131513237.webp?resize=1200%2C900&ssl=1)
Oscar Reaches for the Stars [SIV375]
10/29/14: At the age of 11, Oscar Williams is already well on his way to achieving his dream of becoming a professional actor. Between the ages of 7-11, he has performed in 20 shows, local ads and auditioned in NYC. Eva caught up with the busy kid at Salon Cruz getting his bangs cut in…
Nightcrawler
This is a movie about a man learning the power of the recorded image made by a man learning the power of the recorded image. Screenwriter Dan Gilroy has never directed a film before. Yet, watching his feature debut, one gets the uncanny sense of a natural auteur figuring it all out, instinctively deducing how…
Quick Lit: Dog Beach by John Fusco
Morrisville resident John Fusco opens his novel Dog Beach with an almost-literal cliffhanger. Veteran Hong Kong stuntman Louie Mo “is running, eight stories up on a rusted crossbeam, when he feels it, that thing entering his bloodstream, the rush he secretly calls the Creature.” This could be a flashback or a flash-forward relative to the…
News Quirks (11/05/14)
Curses, Foiled Again After police seeking Monica Hargrove, 34, for aggravated robbery in Columbus, Ohio, posted her photo on the department’s Facebook page, the suspect called and demanded the photo be removed because she considered it unflattering. “Come on in and we’ll talk about it,” the detective she spoke with told her. She did, public…
Opinion: Infectious Dis-Ease: Ebola Scare Tactics
Staring angry and forlorn from an isolation tent in New Jersey’s University Hospital, Kaci Hickox looked like a prisoner. She was one. The Maine nurse, returning from treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone, was taken from the airport to the hospital against her will. Like a cell, the tent outside the hospital in which she…
Theater Review: Clybourne Park, Northern Stage
Winner of the 2011 Pulitzer and 2012 Tony for Best Play, Clybourne Park is a clever time capsule, satirizing the polite bigotry of the ’60s by contrasting it with today’s earnest avoidance of the political and psychological force of race and class. The well-acted production at Northern Stage is not a depressing analysis of the…
Good Vibrations: Dartmouth Presents In the Next Room
Playwright Sarah Ruhl has said of her 2009 play In the Next Room, “Things that seem impossibly strange within the play — such as the Chattanooga vibrator and the vagaries of wet nursing — are all true. Things that seem commonplace are all my own invention.” Set against the backdrop of “a preposterous spa town”…
Soundbites: The Cush Return
Absence, as the saying goes, makes the heart grow fonder. That particular quirk of human emotional machinery, longing for something we’ve lost or not fully appreciating something until we no longer have it, has been the cornerstone of rom-coms and torch songs since time immemorial. In the sage words of 1980s hair metal cheese merchants…
Cartoon Exhibit Recalls a Late Local Artist’s Political Punditry
Friends of the late Jane Clark Brown describe her as a terrific artist but a terrible self-promoter. Best known for her children’s-book illustrations but equally proficient in sculpture and watercolors, Brown “never sold anything,” says her friend Marty Leech. “She gave things away.” Joan Curtis tells Seven Days via email, “Jane couldn’t have been more…
Art Review: W. David Powell, Vermont Supreme Court Lobby
W. David Powell’s exhibition at the Vermont Supreme Court Lobby, titled “Everything Must Go 3.0: Artworks From the New Millenium,” consists of about two dozen paintings, prints, mixed media and woven pieces, all completed since 2000. The gallery’s L-configuration divides the space in two, and Powell uses that to his advantage by showing work from…
Ugly Polygons, Sky-pointing
(Self-released, digital download) In the past decade, the field of ambient musicians seems to have reached a saturation point. With the advent of various user-friendly software programs, as well as countless ambient-music-based blogs to host DIY projects, it’s become easier than ever for almost anybody to run some drones through a couple of effects pedals and…
I Thought I’d Struck Gold When I Found a Sexy Trans Woman
Dear Athena, I am a trans man. I thought I had struck gold when I found a sexy, talented-in-the-bedroom trans woman. But she held from me the fact that she had a partner early on, and then underplayed the nature of their relationship. She thinks she can stand me up on engagements. We had sex…
Who Was Susie Wilson, and Why Is a Road Named After Her?
Vermont has no dearth of unusual place names. There’s Mosquitoville in Barnet, Skunks Misery Road in Franklin, Ticklenaked Pond in Ryegate and Terrible Mountain in Andover. One more commonplace but equally mysterious moniker is Susie Wilson Road, a thoroughfare that traverses Essex Junction. Essex residents and those simply passing through — including some Seven Days…
New Vermont Cider Makers Rediscover Long-Lost Apples
At a tasting in Boston this summer, a Vermont hard cider inspired a special, $85-per-person dinner at L’Espalier, one of that city’s finest restaurants. The same day, another Beantown buyer rushed to grab as much of the cider as he could, never mind the steep price. Created by Shoreham’s Shacksbury Cider and dubbed “the 1840,”…
Waiting Game: Election Results Will Reverberate
As Seven Days went to press Tuesday night, the message from Vermont voters was anything but clear. A number of top incumbents cruised to reelection: An hour and a half after the polls closed, the Associated Press called the hotly contested lieutenant governor’s race for two-term Republican Phil Scott over Progressive/Democratic challenger Dean Corren. By…
Hermit Thrush Brewery to Open in Brattleboro
On November 22, Hermit Thrush Brewery will host its grand opening party in Brattleboro. Joining brewpubs Whetstone Station Restaurant & Brewery and McNeill’s Brewery, it’s the third such establishment in the town. According to co-owner Avery Schwenk, Hermit Thrush will specialize in barrel-aged Belgian-style beers. “We really want to introduce people to the more subtle…
Our Holy Orgasmic Cosmic Rays, Phase One
(Drone Witch, digital download) Some weird shit is going on across the lake in Plattsburgh. This, of course, ain’t exactly breaking news — at least as it relates to music. Thanks to the often indefinable and unhinged ramblings of Christopher Rigsbee and his band/alter-ego/collective/we’re-still-not-sure-what-it-is, Adrian Aardvark, local audiences have been peripherally aware of the strange…
Letters to the Editor (11/05/14)
Lay Off the Freep While it’s fun to read about the Freep gossip [Fair Game, October 15; Off Message: “Free Press Reporter Laid Off After Refusing to Reapply for Job,” October 27; Off Message: “Updated: Higher Ed Reporter Responds to Free Press Layoff,” October 30] it’s weird that your paper spends so much time and…
A Bennington College Exhibit Highlights Modern Dance History
Dance, like all performing arts, is ephemeral. In the words of Dana Reitz, a celebrated contemporary performer, choreographer and longtime dance faculty member at Bennington College, “You move through it and then it’s gone.” Of course, live performances have been captured in photography and film since the advent of the camera. Nowadays, professional theater and…
Chatting Up Comedian Steven Wright
A good Steven Wright joke has exquisite efficiency. Coupled with the standup comedian’s sleepy, deadpan delivery, the delicious irony of lines such as, “You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?” and “I have a seashell collection. I keep it scattered on beaches all over the world” have a way of sneaking up on…
Free Will Astrology (11/05/14)
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Shape-shifting is a common theme in fairy tales, says cultural historian Marina Warner in her book From the Beast to the Blonde. “A rusty lamp turns into an all-powerful talisman,” for example. “A humble pestle and mortar become the winged vehicle of the fairy enchantress,” or a slovenly beggar wearing a…
Who Will Get the Land Around Burlington College?
A group of Burlington College students met last week to brainstorm ways to keep their lakefront campus from being transformed into what would be one of the largest housing developments in Queen City history. Any day now, interim college president Mike Smith intends to sign an agreement to sell 25 acres to developer Eric Farrell.…
A Newbie Cider Maker Takes on Apples and Yeast at Home
I never really had a drink until my mid-thirties. Soured by the blandness of brews I chugged as a teenager and appalled by the vomitous antics of my pickled pals, I swore off drink until just a few years ago. When my wife and I moved to Vermont about a year and a half ago,…
Bells Over Burlington: A Church’s Chimes Get Mixed Reviews
Residents in Burlington’s Five Sisters neighborhood are wringing their hands over a neighborhood controversy — and chiming in, too: to their local city councilors, code enforcement officers and police. Most recently, they’ve filed multiple letters with the city attorney. What’s causing the commotion? Church bells. Or, to be specific, a loudspeaker system that plays the…
Another Wave of Fentanyl Overdoses Hits Vermont
In mid-October, a handful of heroin users overdosed in Hartford. Then, like dominoes, it happened in neighboring Hartland, then to the south in Windsor, and then in towns across the Connecticut River in New Hampshire. Two people died and seven others survived; many were revived from the brink of death. Reports from a crime lab…
A New Book Uncovers a Same-Sex ‘Marriage’ in Early Vermont
It’s safe to say that same-sex marriage is an idea whose time has come. Recent years have seen one state after another legalize it or remove obstacles to its passage; the U.S. Supreme Court has opted not to hear appeals from states seeking to uphold gay-marriage bans. The matter is far from settled in the…
How Do Burlington’s Food Truckers Survive the Cold Months?
Last spring’s Jon Favreau film Chef, about a restaurant chef-turned-food-truck-owner, was uncommonly adored by critics. Seven Days’ own tough-to-please reviewer, Rick Kisonak, awarded it four-and-a-half out of five stars. Brian Stefan of real-life Burlington food truck Southern Smoke has a different view. He walked out of the “Disneyfied” flick before its feel-good narrative was over.…
ArtsRiot Debuts New Restaurant Concept
“You can guess at what a community needs, but there’s never been anything like this before. It’s hard to put your finger on something that didn’t exist before,” says PJ McHenry, co-owner of Burlington’s ArtsRiot with Felix Wai. He’s explaining why, after a year in business, the Pine Street event facility is entering version 3.0…
