Oct 26 – Nov 1, 2016
Could an Artist’s Suicide Have Been Prevented?; Making Pot Legalization an Issue Again; A One-Woman Lice Squad Picks Nits for Pay
Obituary: Ruth Wolf Page, 1921-2016
Ruth Wolf Page — writer, editor, radio commentator and student of the natural world — died Sunday, October 30, 2016, at Wake Robin in Shelburne two weeks after suffering a stroke. She was 95. Ruth was a leader in the generation of women who began to rethink their lives and pursue careers in what had…
The Parmelee Post: Fish & Wildlife Board Appoints Ted Nugent as Honorary Chair
When it comes to Vermont’s Fish & Wildlife Board, hunters and trappers have long enjoyed a “Stranglehold” on the regulatory group, occupying all 14 spots. Despite objections from critics who feel that non-hunters/trappers should also have a say in how the state regulates one of its oldest traditions, the recent appointment of a new honorary…
![Vermont Vaudeville [SIV464]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/episode464.webp?resize=1200%2C900&ssl=1)
Vermont Vaudeville [SIV464]
10/22/16: The rainy weather didn’t deter a large crowd from filling the Hardwick Town House Saturday night to enjoy an evening with their hometown favorites, Vermont Vaudeville. Created by four Vermonters in 2009, the troupe delights audiences with an eclectic mix of circus, comedy and music performances. You can catch Vermont Vaudeville in January, when…
Jewish Genesis: A New Congregation Is Born in Burlington
The rabbi wore a black miniskirt, leather boots and a hot pink sweater. Her thick, curly hair flowed down past her shoulders, and glittery earrings hung from each ear. Rabbi Jan Salzman is a hip 63-year-old grandmother. She’s also the leader of Burlington’s newest Jewish congregation, on a mission to modernize the faith. Salzman incorporates…
Theater Review: Macbeth, Middlebury Actors Workshop
Shakespeare created 25 characters to populate Macbeth, but it’s the story of two people. As Macbeth discovers his capacity to cast off scruples to seize Scotland’s crown, and Lady Macbeth craves greater power for her husband, both characters become windows into the human struggle between desire and conscience. In the Middlebury Actors Workshop’s production, the…
Music for Barns’ Concert Explores Visions of Rural America
The last time author M.T. Anderson organized an event that combined live classical music and a reading — of his book Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad — the venue was packed to overflowing. For his latest offering in this vein, Anderson and organizing sponsor Bear Pond…
Talking Art: Erika Senft Miller
On a recent Sunday, Erika Senft Miller rose from a bare plywood bench in the Karma Bird House Gallery to address 150 people packed into the small room. She thanked them for coming, then introduced the performance they were about to witness, saying something to the effect of, “Even I don’t know what’s about to…
Should I Wait for Him to Get Serious?
Dear Athena, I have been on and off with this guy, and every time the conversation gets to “Should we get serious and be exclusive?” he sort of shrugs it off and says the timing isn’t right. Then he’ll date or hook up with other guys, then get close to me again. I keep going…
Does Vermont Have Its Own Version of the Bermuda Triangle?
You’ve heard of the Bermuda Triangle, and perhaps the Michigan Triangle and British Columbia’s Highway 16. These locations and many more throughout the world are famous — or rather, infamous — for unexplained disappearances that seem to occur with outsize frequency, scale or both. Planes evaporate from radar, never to be seen again. The sea…
A Local Book Benefit for Baton Rouge Kids
This past August, flooding in southern Louisiana damaged 55,000 homes, reviving bitter memories of Hurricane Katrina. Now, two Vermont authors who wrote about that earlier disaster have teamed up for a local benefit to support some of the flood’s youngest victims. Tamara Ellis Smith of Richmond is the author of Another Kind of Hurricane, a…
Joseph A. Citro Gets Real With New Book on Vermont Ghosts
Joseph A. Citro has written reams on paranormal phenomena in the Green Mountains — some 11 nonfiction books on that subject and related terrain. As befits Vermont’s “Ghost-master General,” his new book, The Vermont Ghost Experience, is chock-full of spine-tingling spook stories, ranging from a classic haunted house tale in Richford to a Lovecraftian monster…
Soundfrights: A Halloween Monster Mashup
Season’s bleedings, boils and ghouls! Welcome to the Halloween edition of Soundfrights, hosted, as always, by your friendly neighborhood music scribe/crypt keeper, Dan Disembolles. Halloween truly brings out the beast in the local music scene. And as our favorite howliday falls on a Moanday this year, we’re tricked and treated to an entire weekend-plus of…
A Writer Finds That Graveyards Make Good Neighbors
For more than 20 years, I lived among the dead. The Mount Calvary Cemetery was next to and across from our house on Burlington’s Pomeroy Street. I could see headstones from almost every window. Graveyards have never spooked me, and I love to visit a good one: Mount Auburn in Cambridge, Père Lachaise in Paris,…
Buy Local: Wealthy Vermonters Go Big on State Elections
Charlotte entrepreneur David Blittersdorf has a pretty simple strategy when it comes to making political donations. “Whenever someone’s coming out against wind power or solar or renewables in general — if they’re even hinting at it — I’m gonna go and do everything I can to make sure that doesn’t happen,” he says. In next…
Local Film and Multimedia Project Illuminate the Collinwood Fire
On March 4, 1908, the Lake View School in Collinwood, Ohio, went up in flames. Of the approximately 370 people inside, 172 children and one teacher were killed. That story forms the core of the animated film “The Collinwood Fire,” which screened last Friday as part of the Vermont Filmmakers’ Showcase at the Vermont International…
Return Signals: Greg Davis’ Avant-Garde Music Series is Back
Get ready to step out of your comfort zone, folks. Unless, of course, your comfort zone is inhabited by abstract, experimental musicians performing challenging works — in which case, stay put. Beginning this weekend and continuing over the next year, experimental electronic musician Greg Davis is curating Signals, a series of unique live performances hosted…
Letters to Editor (10/26/16)
What Leahy Has Done Election-year process stories have their place, but [“Forty-Two Years a Senator,” October 12] didn’t explain what Sen. Patrick Leahy has done for Vermont with all his experience and clout. The list includes his crucial role in securing Tropical Storm Irene recovery investments; funding for Lake Champlain cleanup and research; championing clean…
LG Candidate David Zuckerman Vexes Voters With Vax Stance
When Sen. David Zuckerman (P/D-Chittenden) was a 13-year-old boy growing up in Massachusetts, his father, a thoracic surgeon, died of stomach cancer. The son attributes his father’s death to the radiation he was exposed to while deploying a new medical procedure to treat cancer patients. Without protection from a now-standard lead vest, at least four…
A ‘Witch-In’ Targets Trump
In June of this year, shortly after the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Indianapolis-based artist Nathaniel Russell used social media to share one of his signature “fake fliers.” It read: “Witches: We need you. Hex on NRA, curse for Trump, love potion for all Earth peoples.” Russell encouraged anyone and everyone to freely distribute the…
Legal Pot in Massachusetts Could Spark Legislative Action in Vermont
Election Day ballot initiatives to legalize marijuana in Massachusetts and Maine could light a fire under Vermont lawmakers. Observers say that if voters in those states say yes to pot, as polls suggest they will, it could spur the Vermont legislature to take up the issue — again. Just eight months ago, the Green Mountain State…
SnakeFoot, American Dream
(Self-released, digital download) Given that it’s election season, it’s timely that Burlington’s Ross Travis, aka SnakeFoot, has titled his new four-song EP American Dream. The concept invariably comes up in speeches and debates, but what exactly is the American dream in 2016? It’s a subject of heated discussion, and many believe that it no longer…
Too Soon: Could the Suicide of a Burlington Artist Have Been Prevented?
Burlington artist Darshana Bolt spent most of the hot, humid day of July 13 at the Howard Center’s crisis center on Pine Street. The 31-year-old woman had threatened to kill herself, which landed her in the six-bed ASSIST Program in the city’s south end. Despite being under supervision, shortly before 7 p.m. she informed staff…
Recipes to Make the Most of Vermont’s Squash Harvest
Drive by almost any roadside farm these days, and you’ll see orange pumpkins curing in the fields or harvested and piled in rustic wooden bins. Eager children paw through them, searching for the perfect one to carve. Pumpkins may make ideal Halloween décor and delicious pies, but for many serious cooks, the ubiquitous fall squashes…
Henry Jamison, The Rains
(Akira Records, digital download) Henry Jamison has been charming local audiences since he was a teenager. His first album, Here’s Hoping, released in 2006 under the pseudonym the Milkman’s Union, suggested that the then-17-year-old had emerged from the nest as a nearly fully formed bard. Jamison left Vermont for school in Maine, where he built…
McGillicuddy’s Expands to Essex Junction
In 1996, David Nelson opened McGillicuddy’s Irish Pub on Langdon Street in Montpelier. He followed that up with Mulligan’s Irish Pub in Barre and two more ‘Cuddy’s locations, in Williston and Colchester. In mid-November, a fifth location — in a newly constructed building at 4 Pearl Street in Essex Junction — will join the family.…
A Professional Nitpicker Talks About Getting (and Keeping) Them Out of Your Hair
When it comes to eradicating lice, there’s only one guarantee: The moment you start talking or reading about them, your scalp will itch. “Suzanne the Hair Fairy” feels it, too. After five years as a professional nitpicker — paid manually to remove lice and nits (lice eggs) from clients’ hair — the 54-year-old Charlotte resident…
Windsor Mansion Inn’s New Bar Will Spotlight Wine
The late Juniper Hill Inn in Windsor — once visited by TV celeb Gordon Ramsay in an episode of “Hotel Hell” — sold last fall to Kenneth Lucci, who also owns the Sumner Mansion Inn in Hartland. He opened the doors of the renovated and newly named Windsor Mansion Inn this past June 10. Come…
Keeping Up With the Joneses
Here’s something I’ve never understood: Bands don’t make great recordings and then inexplicably release an album with instruments out of tune and lyrics reduced to gibberish. Comics don’t tour for years building a fan base, then unveil a new act composed of racist rants. Why, then, is it so common for directors of fabulous, even…
NOFA-VT Rallies for Soil; Local Food TV Series; Shortbread in Shelburne
In November, the National Organic Standards Board will vote on whether to continue allowing hydroponic produce — grown sans soil and nourished with liquid nutrients — to be certified organic. Many organic farmers don’t dig the idea of dirt-free organics, and this Sunday, October 30, the Northeast Organic Farming Association will rally farmers and others…
American Honey
For the young people in this indie flick, who roam the heartland and live on the margins, music is the closest thing to a religious experience. Their official job is selling magazine subscriptions door-to-door; their unofficial one is making a dead-end way of life into a party. When 18-year-old Star (Sasha Lane) first encounters the…
Free Will Astrology (10/26/16)
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): During this Halloween season, you have cosmic permission to be a bigger, bolder and extra-beguiling version of yourself. I trust you will express your deep beauty with precise brilliance and imagine your future with superb panache and wander wherever the hell you feel like wandering. It’s time to be stronger than…
Talking Tough Health-Care Topics in New American Communities
When does drinking or drug taking become an “at-risk” behavior? It can be hard to know when one is on a dangerous path, still harder to reach out for help. And that situation is particularly difficult for members of immigrant and refugee communities, who may grapple with fear, cultural disapproval or a lack of awareness…
Vermont Creamery’s Non-GMO Cheese Hits the Market
Two cheeses sat on the table at Vermont Creamery in Websterville last week, warming to room temperature. To a casual observer, they appeared mostly identical. Both were packaged in shallow terra-cotta crocks, the curds encased in wrinkly skin, matte with powdery fuzz. Both were samples of the creamery’s brand-new St. Albans cheese. The company’s first…
Havana 802 Brings Cuban Food to Hardwick
When Monica and John Montero moved from Miami to Vermont last year, they brought Cuban home cooking with them. Earlier this month, they began sharing it with their adopted community when they opened Havana 802 at 41 South Main Street in Hardwick. The opening menu offers about 70 dishes, ranging from tamales and empanadas ($4-6)…
