Sep 10-16, 2014
The State’s Sole and Struggling Law School Makes a Case for Its Future; Comedian Hari Kondabolu in Vermont; Pinball League at Tilt; B.D.’s Hairitage Makes the Cut
Cover Story
The Trials of Vermont Law School
Empty offices and unoccupied desks — Brett Hubbard noticed both when she enrolled at Vermont Law School in South Royalton last year. Now a second-year student in an accelerated juris doctor program, she recalled her line of inquiry. “I’d ask because I’m nosy,” said Hubbard. What was up with the deserted desks? The answer: It…
Obituary: Alex Michael Williams, 1962-2014, Burlington
Alex Michael Williams passed away on September 11, 2014, in Burlington, Vermont. Alex was born on April 5, 1962, in West Lafayette, Indiana. He graduated from Westwood (MA) High School, in 1980. He attended the New England College and University of Vermont. Alex was a staff photographer for the student newspaper the Cynic at UVM…
Danica Josephine Moller
On August 20, 2014, at Fletcher Allen Health Care, Catherine (Wareham) Moller and William “Bill” Moller welcomed a daughter, Danica Josephine Moller.
Coherence
Movie critics like to throw around terms like “mind bending,” but few films are really so disorienting that they inspire and reward multiple viewings just to figure out what the hell happened. I would place Primer and Memento on that list. Coherence, the debut feature from writer-director James Ward Byrkit, earns a spot there, too.…
Trampled by Turtles Mandolinist Erik Berry Talks About Making Their New Album
Since their inception in 2003, Trampled by Turtles have existed in a unique stylistic limbo. The Duluth, Minn.-based quintet is, technically speaking, a string band. Its 2010 record, Palomino, spent 52 weeks in the top 10 of Billboard’s bluegrass chart. But the Turtles aren’t a bluegrass band, exactly — which helps explain why TBT’s 2012…
Lately, During Sex With My Boyfriend, I Just Can’t Focus
Dear Athena, My boyfriend and I have a good relationship, but, lately during sex, I can’t focus. Sometimes I just avoid it all together. I’ve been really stressed lately. I know that is probably playing into it, and I know he is starting to get really bothered by it. But I don’t know how to…
Letters to the Editor (9/10/14)
Unschool Choice Kathryn Flagg’s very fine article [“Back to School — or Not,” August 27] brought back memories from our family’s unscripted, “unschooling” experience for about six years in the 1990s. They were mostly good memories, a mix of relaxed home time and planned group activities with other home-schooling families in or near Burlington. Chittenden County…
Therapist and Theater Artist Steven Cadwell Performs for Pride
Viennese society is surely still grateful that Sigmund Freud never felt the urge to sing publicly about his therapeutic practice. Dour songs about wolfmen and cigars would never have captured the public fancy. But modern psychotherapy has moved further and further from Freud’s self-serious approach. And at least one modern psychotherapist has found that musical…
Soundbites: Local Bands at Grand Point North
Since its inception four years ago, or at least since it was divorced from the Lake Champlain Maritime Festival and became a singular entity, Grand Point North has served as Vermont’s unofficial end-of-summer blowout. This year’s fest, slated for Burlington’s Waterfront Park this Saturday and Sunday, September 13 and 14, will cap one of the…
Par for the Course: A Lobbyist-Turned-Legislator Goes for the Green
When veteran Vermont lobbyist Michael Sirotkin was appointed to the Senate last January, he pledged to sever ties with the profession that had defined him for three decades. He immediately resigned from Sirotkin & Necrason, the influential lobbying firm he cofounded in 1998, and sold his ownership stake to longtime partner Adam Necrason. Asked at…
WTF: Why are streets in two Vermont towns named Popple Dungeon Road?
Readers of a certain age may recall the Popples, a vaguely Care Bears-like line of toys whose characters appeared in a poorly animated Saturday morning TV show. These brightly colored, frolicsome critters were distinguished by the fact that all their names began with P, and by their ability to pull nearly any conceivable object from…
How a Barbershop Survived in Burlington’s South End
I can see my older brother and me, ages 10 and 4, sailing through Burlington’s South End in the back of the family pickup truck — no more secure than two bags of leaves. We’re on our way to get haircuts at Camile’s Barber Shop on Ferguson Avenue. It’s a short trip from our home…
Ausable Brewing Co. Opens in Keeseville, N.Y.
On Labor Day weekend, brothers Dan and Dylan Badger quietly threw open the doors to Ausable Brewing Company in Keeseville, N.Y. Situated a quick, four-mile bike ride from the Port Kent Ferry, the brewery shares a stretch of road with a dairy farm and creamery, an organic grass-fed meat operation, and a vegetable farm. The…
On Tap: A Conversation With Lost Nation Brewing
It’s been a little more than a year since Allen Van Anda and Jamie Griffith opened Lost Nation Brewing in an industrial corner of Morrisville. They were on a mission to create sessionable (read: low alcohol), Old World-style brews grounded in and inspired by Vermont’s landscape and culture. From the outset, locals knew to expect…
Opinion: Bernard Baran, RIP
On September 1, Bernard “Bee” Baran died of an apparent aneurysm while sitting on his couch with his niece Crystal Squires and his partner, David Colarusso. Baran was the first American falsely convicted in the daycare sexual-abuse panics of the 1980s and ’90s. He was 19 when he walked into Massachusetts’ Walpole State Prison. He…
Art Review: Sculpturefest 2014, Woodstock
The postcard-perfect setting of Woodstock makes Sculpturefest an exceptional opportunity to experience both Vermont’s beauty and the creativity of some of the state’s artists. Now in its 24th year, Sculpturefest exhibits the work of more than 30 sculptors daily, dawn to dusk, through foliage season. The annual outdoor exhibit is curated and organized by local…
News Quirks (9/10/14)
Curses, Foiled Again Shantoria Valentine, 23, robbed a bank in Omaha, Neb., but while fleeing, she collapsed after only a few blocks, according to police. One witness noticed the suspect would “shuffle a little bit, run a little bit, walk a little bit, shuffle a little bit.” After she ran up a hill, “she was…
Free Will Astrology (9/10/14)
Virgo (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): In 1786, Jacques Balmat and Michel Paccard were the first explorers to reach the top of 15,781-foot Mont Blanc on the French-Italian border. They were hailed as heroes. One observer wrote that the ascent was “an astounding achievement of courage and determination, one of the greatest in the annals of mountaineering.…
![Thea’s Arch at St Mike’s [SIV368]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/episode368.webp?resize=1200%2C900&ssl=1)
Thea’s Arch at St Mike’s [SIV368]
9/5/14: Vermonter Thea Alvin has been working with stone for the past 30 years. You may have seen her work on Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday or read about her recently in the New York Times. Thea spent the last few weeks building an arch in the Teaching Gardens at Saint Michael’s College in Colchester. She…
Calvary
Once in a great while, a film proves so profound, funny, devastating, dreamlike and utterly unlike anything else that it leaves you dumbstruck. Which is wonderful, unless you happen to be a reviewer. You’re kind of expected to come up with something to say. Calvary is such a film. It’s so good in so many…
What Stops a Suicidal Vermonter From Buying a Gun? Not Much
On Friday, she was in a hospital receiving treatment for depression. On Saturday, she walked into a gun store and bought a pistol. On Sunday, she fatally shot herself. No laws were broken nor protocols ignored in the events leading up to the July suicide of Vermont Law School professor Cheryl Hanna. But experts say…
Competitive Pinball Takes the Plunge at Tilt
Arm-extension exercises — check. Deep knee bends — check. Game face — oh, it was on. Mat Barewicz leaned in for position and confidently walloped the very first ball down the alley along the right side of the playfield. Within seconds, boisterous music enveloped him and his many onlookers, and hundreds of blinking lights flashed…
Burlington Seeks Alternative to Clinic Buffer Zone
Amy Cochran, 61, is a retired Franklin County farmer and science teacher who lives in a church rectory with her chihuahua. Agnes Clift of South Burlington, 59, drives people with visual impairments to appointments and favors bright-colored sparkly shirts. Dealing with these women — and a handful of other pro-life activists — has been a…
Matt Townsend and the Wonder of the World, Matt Townsend and the Wonder of the World
(Chakra 5, CD, digital download) As we learned from Huey Lewis, sometimes it’s hip to be square. On their self-titled debut LP, Matt Townsend and the Wonder of the World follow the simple path that Townsend first trod on his 2012 solo EP, What Light Shall Be. The album is built on a tried-and-true folky…
‘Burlington on Burlington’ Series Addresses Issues for Artists
If you’re a young artist in Vermont aiming to succeed financially, Steve Conant has some advice for you: Move away. A pioneering figure in the South End creative scene, Conant offered that blunt recommendation at a panel discussion last week at Hotel Vermont called “Burlington on Burlington — the Art Scene.” The second of a…
Binger, Roots in the Rabbit Hole
(Self-released, digital download) Like many a band before them, Burlington’s Binger emerged from of the primordial ooze (think stale Natty Light and bong water) of the college basement scene — in this case the University of Vermont. Given the trio’s improvisational groove tendencies, the “self-styled couch-surf prog band” initially comes off like just another jammy,…
Comedian Hari Kondabolu Stands Up for the Will Miller Series
Comedian Hari Kondabolu once joked — after turning down an acting job as an Indian bodega clerk — that his ideal Hollywood film role would be “a young sociology professor at a small liberal arts school in Vermont who is desperately trying to stay hip.” “Hey, you don’t have to cite your sources in this…
Burlington Songwriter Caroline Rose Blooms
Caroline Rose has to run out to feed the meter, lest she risk another parking ticket and a likely tow. Or, perhaps more accurately, an eviction. The small Ford sprinter van parked across the street from Muddy Waters coffee shop in Burlington is not just the vehicle the songwriter uses to travel to gigs —…
People Affected by Suicide Show Their Colors
Under a sky of dense gray clouds, nearly 200 people gathered in Gardner Park — many with brightly colored Mardi Gras beads around their necks. Each color had a distinct purpose: to indicate their relationship to someone lost to suicide. Red for a spouse or partner; white for a child, gold for a parent. Green…
Taste Test: Junction at Essex Culinary Resort & Spa
The single rare lamb chop, topped with a spicy harissa aioli, was surrounded by a fantasia in red. A pile of beet tartare bathed in a wide brushstroke of beet purée. Nearby, drizzles of homemade beet vinegar made the plate look like the only thing missing was the message “Helter Skelter.” On the other side…
Citizen Cider Welcomes a New Chef
This fall, Citizen Cider will get a culinary face-lift. In late August, Lo Garry-McGrath left the Daily Planet and took the reins in the cidery kitchen. Before working at the Planet, Garry-McGrath graduated from the New England Culinary Institute and spent time at American Flatbread Burlington Hearth and El Gato Cantina. The cidery opened its…
Reservoir Owners to Expand to Stowe
The last names of owners Chad Fry and Mark Frier might suggest a particular style of cooking at their new restaurant. But when the Bench opens in Stowe at the end of September, the medium of choice will be wood, not oil. The pair behind Waterbury’s Reservoir Restaurant & Tap Room have already built a…
