Olin Clyde Robison, a former president of both Middlebury College and the Salzburg Seminar, died Monday, October 22, at the age of 82. He had been in poor health for several years and was surrounded by family at the end. Born in Anacoco, La., on May 12, 1936, to AC and Ruby (Cantrell) Robison, he…
Fairfax Susan Missouri (Breidenbach) Wood passed away early Wednesday, October 17, after a long and courageous battle with cancer. She was born June 15, 1963, and lovingly adopted by George and Cathryn “Becky” Breidenbach in Prince’s Bay, Staten Island, N.Y. She attended Tottenville High School before moving to Vermont to attend Saint Michael’s College. She…
Essex It is with great sadness that the family of Paul H. Wanderlich, age 63, of Essex, Vt., announces his unexpected passing on Wednesday October 17, 2018. Paul was son of the late Casimier and Therese (Molek) Wonderlick and is survived by his four brothers, Frank, Carl, Steve and Mark, and sister Mary. He is…
With the flick of a Bic, Canada on Wednesday became the first major world economy with legal recreational cannabis. It’s a profound moment in the cannabis movement when a North American country of 37 million people legalizes the drug. Not to mention, the border is just about an hour north of Burlington. (Just don’t try bringing…
Visitors to Waitsfield’s Mad River Taste Place get to know the sweeter side of Vermont’s wine industry. Through a winemaker-guided tasting, guests will compare honey wines by Artesano Mead with ice ciders and berry-based pours from Boyden Valley Winery & Spirits, Windfall Orchard, Eden Specialty Ciders and Lincoln Peak Vineyard, among others. Between sips, curated…
University of Vermont drone pilot Emma Estabrook crouched over her aircraft in a newly cut Williston cornfield, preparing to launch the black-plastic-and-Styrofoam device on its latest research mission. At her side, senior Ben Greenberg rattled off the preflight checklist: Radio tracker? Camera? SD card? Ground sensor? Flight area? Greenberg and Estabrook were familiar with the…
It was a hot, dry summer in Vermont. According to the National Weather Service in Burlington, July was the hottest month ever recorded in the Queen City. The average temperature was 76 degrees, and the heat index — a measure of the combined effects of heat and humidity — regularly topped 100 degrees. To cope,…
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): “There are works which wait, and which one does not understand for a long time,” wrote Libran author Oscar Wilde. “The reason is that they bring answers to questions which have not yet been raised; for the question often arrives a long time after the answer.” That’s the weird news, Libra.…
With its tall steeple visible for miles around, the United Church of Westford has served as a beacon to residents and travelers for more than 150 years. But, as with so many rural New England churches, attendance on Sunday mornings has been in steep decline. The UCW congregation thinned so greatly that, in June, its…
Christine Hallquist, the Democratic candidate for governor, has a lot going against her. The former utility executive is a first-time candidate. She formally launched her campaign in April, which is very late in the game. She was little known outside her stomping grounds in northern Vermont. She’s challenging a popular incumbent, Republican Gov. Phil Scott,…
I’m a lousy surgeon. For starters, I accidentally shaved a few extra millimeters off Sue Gerry’s femur during a recent distal femoral resection. That’s a small step in a larger knee-replacement procedure and a relatively basic step at that — at least when sawbones other than myself are performing it. Also, I dropped some rather…
The former KFC building at 408 Shelburne Road in South Burlington will be reinvented once again, this time as a pizzeria, when Sorriso opens in early November. Sorriso, which means “smile” in Italian, will serve 12-inch pies on a shell that is “fluffy but crispy,” said owner Amir Jusufagic. It will be his first solo…
If there’s anything more annoying than getting old, it’s getting junk mail from AARP telling you how jolly it’ll be once you join. The young among you, on whom youth will always be wasted, may not know the organization or the benefits of membership. Among them: a discount at Denny’s, budgeting tips from Suze Orman,…
(Epact Music, CD, digital) Pete’s Posse have engaged their fan base quite well this year. On New Year’s Day, the folksy trio of Pete Sutherland, Tristan Henderson and Oliver Scanlon pledged to record a live performance every week and upload it to Facebook — and they’ve kept it up all year. No two videos have…
Dear Scarlett, My wife and I have been married for five years, and in the beginning our sex life was amazing. She was open to a lot of fetish fantasies, and life was good. When I told her about my fantasy to have a threesome and watch her have sex with another man, she was…
After her sophomore year, C. Jane Taylor dropped out of Champlain Valley Union High School. She started college the following fall at Simon’s Rock, then known as Simon’s Rock Early College, where she studied music and literature. In the three-plus decades since Taylor graduated from college, she’s held a wide variety of jobs — from…
Corey Bertrand’s home security camera caught an unexpected visitor poking around his Franklin property last November: Gov. Phil Scott. Earlier that fall, the governor had learned that state regulators were planning to force Bertrand to remove the 4,800-square-foot house he’d built in a protected wetland. Scott had asked his staff to look into the situation,…
The future of human flight is soaring in a clear direction: electric aviation. That’s the assertion of the experts at Beta Technologies, a South Burlington startup that’s built what could be one of the most innovative aircraft ever to take to New England skies. Beta’s eVTOL, or electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle, combines the…
John Quinney is on a quiet mission. Every so often, he drives from his home in Charlotte to Burlington, where he might go to two dozen restaurants or more in one evening. But Quinney’s visits are fast and foodless. He goes to restaurants to measure the decibel level in the dining room or at the…
Adam Weiner is one of the most charismatic bandleaders you’ll encounter. Fronting the Philadelphia rock-and-roll outfit Low Cut Connie, he riles up the crowd with cheeky banter, fevered piano work and cartoonish stage antics. He climbs onto his bench, hunches over to bang out his notes, drops to the floor, continues playing, then leaps to…
Bond for BHS [Re Off Message: “Burlington Voters Will Consider $100 Million in School, Wastewater Bonds,” September 24]: Please vote yes on November 6 for the renovation bond to revitalize Burlington High School. As former principal, I intimately know the many building issues that limit teaching and learning at BHS. Opened in 1963, the high…
Spectacular images of Vermont’s fall colors have been filling my social media feeds these past few weeks. Many of the stunning aerial photos came from cameras on drones. Those battery-powered flying machines are everywhere, it seems; photographer James Buck used one to shoot this year’s Seven Days staff photo. The proliferation of drones is yet…
“Hey, Jernigan — how are you tonight?” It was Roseanna Kinnear on the line. Even absent my cellphone’s caller ID, her voice was immediately familiar to me. “Good as gold, Roseanna. How you doing, dear?” For 20 years, I’ve been the designated cabdriver for Roseanna and her husband, James. And they go out a lot.…
The U.S. Department of Labor counts 70 “music directors and composers” in Vermont, which is probably an underestimate. One benefit? Locals are often the first to hear their new music. Among recent premieres was Waterbury composer Matt LaRocca’s score for New York City-based filmmaker Robin Starbuck’s short film “How We See Water.” The Vermont Symphony…
Vermont’s homegrown tech firm MyWebGrocer has a new out-of-state owner. An official from the landmark Winooski company put a positive spin on Monday’s news that it had been purchased by Miami-based Mi9 Retail. While acknowledging that “four or five” employees had recently been let go, president of retail solutions Barry Clogan claimed that none of…
(Catfood Records, CD, digital) Dave Keller wants to give you a hug. (Musically, of course! Don’t just walk up to the dude and hug him because I said so. I don’t want that on me.) Though Keller often uses his brand of blues-rock as a tool of melancholy, on his latest album, Every Soul’s a…
It’s no surprise that Damien Chazelle’s First Man was released in award season; it is, after all, the biography of an American hero (Neil Armstrong) from an Oscar-winning director (for La La Land). But the October release is appropriate for another reason: At its best moments, this biopic feels like a horror movie. No, Chazelle…
David Macaulay is renowned for his intricate drawings demystifying everything from how castles were built (Castle, 1977) to the inner workings of the brain (The Amazing Brain, 1984). But he may be best known for the comprehensive The Way Things Work, first published in 1988. A 1991 Caldecott Medal winner and 2006 MacArthur Fellow, the…
Vermont’s first-ever blockchain-based LLC has gone to pot — literally. Joshua Decatur and Paul Lintilhac have created an app called Trace, intended to allow those in the cannabis industry to track plants from seed to sale. It relies on blockchain, a decentralized computer ledger that cannot be altered, to provide its users with “immutable product…
The late novelist Howard Frank Mosher, a resident of Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, set all his books in that hardscrabble region. Disappearances, his first book, was published in 1977. Vermont filmmaker Jay Craven turned the story into a 2006 movie starring Kris Kristofferson. Now, with permission from Mosher’s estate, Lost Nation Theater’s Kim Allen Bent has…
Walking on the Moon Brooklyn’s Lady Moon & the Eclipse have achieved honorary Vermonter status. At this point, they’ve played all of the big rock venues, as well as some more unconventional locations. After making approximately 10 VT appearances in the last 18 months, plus a few music-writing retreats, they’ve solidified their standing as unofficial…
On the path to getting her green card, a young Romanian mother finds her resilience tested when an immigration officer shows less than professional intentions. That’s the timely premise of Lemonade, the first feature from Middlebury College assistant professor Ioana Uricaru, who shot much of the film in Québec. Produced by leading Romanian director Cristian…
Not all tech ventures are about making millions and dominating the world. For every Facebook or Amazon, countless researchers, makers, entrepreneurs and artists are using technology to work toward more practical or altruistic aims. For example, Dave Porcello, who founded and later sold the cybersecurity company Pwnie Express, has created a real-time internet privacy-leakage display.…
The day was hot — unseasonably so. Temperatures edged into the eighties as October leaves skittered into the curbs around the Winooski traffic circle, where the trees were bright with autumn color. At the base of the circle, a sign on the outside wall of Mandarin advertised red lotus cosmopolitans. I don’t usually drink pinkish…
The move from food truck to restaurant came about a year ahead of schedule for Mark BBQ, said its owner, Darrell Langworthy. The Texas-style barbecue restaurant, which grew out of a mobile food business at Five Corners in Essex Junction, celebrated its grand opening on October 13 at 34 Park Street in the same town.…
