Oct 14-20, 2015
A Rabbi Reflects on a Controversial Career; A Guide to the Vermont International Film Festival; Bernie Sanders in Nicaragua
Cover Story
Retiring Rabbi Joshua Chasan Reflects on a Controversy-Courting Career
Night fell as the lonesome moan of a cello filled the sanctuary of Burlington’s Ohavi Zedek Synagogue with the haunting refrain of “Kol Nidre.” The ancient Aramaic prayer announced the eve of Yom Kippur or “Day of Atonement.” The holiest day on the Jewish calendar, it’s a time when observant Jews cease their normal activities…
Obituary: Helen Dudley Brownell, 1923-2015, Burlington
Helen Dudley Brownell, 91, passed away October 20, 2015. She was born December 26, 1923, to the late John and Clara (Valliere) Dudley. During World War II she worked in the factories as a “Rosie the Riveter” and then went to work for GE, retiring as a tool inspector. She volunteered at University of Vermont Medical Center. Helen…
Fattie B On His New Memoir
Kyle Thompson, better known to Vermonters as Fattie B, stays busy. Very busy. As an artist, rapper, DJ and, as local hip-hop’s elder statesman, an enthusiastic mentor, he’s a vital part of the connective tissue of Burlington’s music scene. For 17 years, he’s hosted Retronome, a hugely popular dance party at Club Metronome that goes…
O’Maddi’s Deli & Cafe Brings Dinner Service to Northfield
When the Knotty Shamrock shut down in August, it was Northfield’s third restaurant to close this year. JT’s Fries & Pies shuttered midsummer after less than a year in business, and Northfield Village Pizza served its final pie last winter. The spate of closures left the town’s 6,200 full-time residents — and Norwich University’s 2,500 students…
Capital City Concerts Prepares for Apocalyptic Performance
It’s not often the apocalypse comes to Vermont, but come it will when Capital City Concerts opens its season with two performances of Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. Inspired by the angel in the book of Revelation who announces that “time shall be no longer,” the French composer wrote the work in…
Department of (Memorable) Corrections
We at Seven Days work hard to ensure that the information in these pages is accurate. Everything we print has been edited, copyedited and fact checked by two editors and two proofreaders. But we’re only human, after all, and we make our share of mistakes. When necessary, we correct them on the Feedback page; columnists…
Awaiting Sex-Assault Trial, Norm McAllister Says He’s the ‘Victim’
State Sen. Norm McAllister leaned against a railing on the decaying front porch of his Highgate home, surveyed his 400-acre farm and acknowledged the obvious: It’s been a trying year for him. The Franklin County Republican was arrested at the Statehouse in May on highly publicized sex-assault charges. His constituents have circulated a petition calling…
One Architect Aims to Save Bove’s
Patrons of Bove’s Café have lined up outside plenty of nights since news broke that the retro restaurant would close at the end of the year. They’re making last-supper pilgrimages, according to Mark Bove, whose grandparents started the Italian eatery nearly 74 years ago on Pearl Street in Burlington. Louis Mannie Lionni isn’t waiting around.…
I’m Falling in Love With Someone Who Has a Child
Dear Athena, I think I’m falling in love with someone, but he has a child. I don’t mind children, and maybe I’d like to have them one day, but I don’t know how involved I should get when I don’t know if this guy is who I want to settle for. I never expected I’d…
Sanders Siempre: What Bernie Learned in Nicaragua
That he was mayor of Burlington, Vermont, didn’t stop Bernie Sanders from accepting an invitation to visit Nicaragua in July 1985. Sanders arrived at Managua’s Carlos Fonseca Plaza in a car provided by his hosts — the Sandinista National Liberation Front — as thousands of Nicaraguans trudged to an anniversary celebration of the political revolution…
Billy Sharff, Carry Me Home
(Self-released, digital download) Singer-songwriter Billy Sharff has a knack for balancing acts. As vocalist, fiddler and guitarist of the Upper Valley roots band Pariah Beat, he is comfortable playing a rollicking, boisterous interpretation of Americana. Yet he is also content to strip his music to the barest of bones, as he did on his 2014…
Art Review: ‘In Grain: Contemporary Work in Wood’ at Fleming Museum
Wood is a familiar material, something everyone grows up handling. So, in a museum setting, it’s a fantastic medium for bringing disparate types together — from woodworking fans who don’t normally care about art to art enthusiasts who secretly suspect wood is an outmoded material. The current exhibit at the University of Vermont’s Fleming Museum…
Soundbites: For Evelyn, Forever Ago
For Evelyn, Forever Ago I’ve been sitting on For Evelyn, the latest record from Burlington songwriter Wren Kitz, for a while now. For too long, really. The album was released over the summer on local imprint Section Sign Records, and it even caught a bit of buzz, locally and beyond. Stereogum premiered a track, “Hall…
The New Economistas, Making Money Out of Air: Songs for a New Economy
(Self-released, CD, digital download) This just in: Not everyone is happy with the current state of the American economy. For the sake of argument, let’s just put that number of economically dissatisfied Americans at, oh, 99 percent. While the majority of that majority has little recourse when it comes to affecting economic change beyond the…
Little City
Glancing over at my customer, Trudy McLaren, as she calmly worked on her needlepoint, I thought, This used to be known as one of the “feminine arts.” The term probably carries a condescending connotation now, I postulated to myself, because you hear it less frequently these days. In any event, as a pastime, her needlework…
Free Will Astrology (10/14/2015)
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Here’s actor Bill Murray’s advice about relationships: “If you have someone that you think is the One, don’t just say, ‘OK, let’s pick a date. Let’s get married.’ Take that person and travel around the world. Buy a plane ticket for the two of you to go to places that are…
Theater Review: ‘Our Town,’ Northern Stage
Hang a spotlight to represent the moon, and focus it on a young girl’s face. Add the soft and distant sound of a church choir. Clear the stage of everything but two ladders to depict the bedroom windows of two high school kids. Make the dialogue so unremarkable that the audience can pour all their…
Folklorist Jane Beck Wrote the Book on Freed Slaves in Vermont
Jane Beck has spent most of her 74 years telling other people’s stories. The founder of the Vermont Folklife Center has recorded the oral histories of local quarry workers, quilters, farmers, legislators and apple-doll makers. “Our understanding of history in Vermont is much richer because of all these stories that have been collected,” said Paul…
Cash Dash: No Money’s Off-Limits for Gov Candidates
Vermont’s five declared gubernatorial candidates have been taking great pains to distinguish themselves from the unpopular incumbent they’re hoping to succeed. But when it comes to raising money from special interests — a specialty of Gov. Peter Shumlin’s — they’re each promising more of the same. Seven Days surveyed all five to find out whether…
Getting on Track at a Little Bellas Mountain-Biking Clinic for Women
It was not yet 9:30 a.m. on a sparkling autumn Sunday in Craftsbury Common — an hour when most women in my demographic are indulging in cider doughnuts with their cup of coffee. Instead, I was doing doughnuts around a parking lot, gleefully following 15 other women as we lapped circle after circle. “Kitty, you…
Woodstock Digital Media Festival Probes Public Uses of New Tech
In our daily lives, formerly “analog” activities such as hailing a cab, making a phone call and buying groceries are now conducted atop a digital architecture. Even more exciting, nearly every means of human artistic expression now contains a digital component. To find a writer, musician or filmmaker who doesn’t use digital tools is, in…
The Walk
Steven Spielberg has described Jaws as a film containing two distinct movies: First, the land-based story of a town stalked by a great white. And second, the saga of three mismatched hunters who take to the sea in pursuit of the monster. The latest from Robert Zemeckis (Flight) features a similar bifurcation. The Walk is…
![Jeremy Lee MacKenzie’s “Hidden Blueprints” [SIV416]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/episode416-3.webp?resize=1200%2C900&ssl=1)
Jeremy Lee MacKenzie’s “Hidden Blueprints” [SIV416]
10/10/15: Artist and filmmaker Jeremy Lee MacKenzie spoke to a crowd gathered at the Amy E. Tarrant Gallery at the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts on Saturday about his show, “Hidden Blueprints.” The exhibit consists of sizable pieces of intricately carved wood scrollwork which were designed while Jeremy was in the prison system serving…
School Daze: Consolidation Confounds Craftsbury
Last Thursday morning, a horse-drawn buggy passed in front of Craftsbury Academy — a white-clapboard, cupola-topped building that sits across the street from the town commons. For a moment, it seemed like 1880. But inside the school these days, students walk the halls with laptops, take advanced-placement courses on-site and online, and draw crowds for…
Gore Society Screenings Bring Horror Back to Halloween
Halloween, as most of the country celebrates it, shed its connections to deathly matters long ago — unless you count the cardiac trauma caused by those “sexy nurse” costumes. Brightly colored candies and a parade of Frozen-inspired costumes do not exactly call ghoulishness to mind. Leave it, then, to Burlington’s Green Mountain Gore Society to recover…
Letters to the Editor (10/14/15)
Smear Job on Sorrell [Fair Game: “Bye-Bye Billy,” September 30] is a fine example of yellow journalism. “It’s clear nobody knows what the law is,” Chittenden County State’s Attorney T.J. Donovan confirmed. The only people who appear to disagree are Brady Toensing, the Vermont Republican Party vice chair, and Seven Days political columnist Paul Heintz.…
Theater Review: ‘Tribes,’ Vermont Stage
Being accepted isn’t the same as being understood. The six characters in Tribes who are striving for both use a torrent of words, but that’s only part of how they communicate. In the remarkable new play from English playwright Nina Raine that opens the Vermont Stage season, a whip-smart family adept at verbal sparring connects…
The Simulacrum Project Brings Artistic Mashups and Mayhem to the South End
Described on its website as “an experiment in rapid performance development,” the Simulacrum Project is certainly nothing if not an experiment. Since September, an eclectic lineup of artists and bands has been electrifying the space at 339 Pine Street, an offshoot of Burlington City Arts, every Wednesday and Saturday night. The series kicked off during…
Pan
One source of the odd poignancy — and oddness, period — of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan series is the ordinariness of the magical title character’s origin. In Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (1906), readers learn that Peter Pan was once a regular London boy who flew out the window (OK, that part’s odd). He returned…
At Westview Meadows at Montpelier, a Chef Serves Elders Gourmet Grub
At a BYOB hot spot in Montpelier, the bacon, ham and pastrami are all cured and smoked in-house. Whole local animals are butchered on-site. Chef Bill Koucky wildcrafts fiddleheads, wild leeks and chanterelles himself. With attractions like that, it’s no surprise the spot is exclusive. In fact, Koucky (pronounced KOOSE-kee) serves only 60 people daily.…
