Sep 11-17, 2019
Show and Tell: the 2019-20 Performing Arts Preview; Tracking Down Former Priests Accused of Abuse; Nutty Steph’s Rebrands as Rabble-Rouser, Opens New Location in Montpelier
Cover Story
Show and Tell: The 2019-20 Performing Arts Preview
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. We can imagine that the fine folks behind the Middlebury Performing Arts Series might have a frayed poster with that Vermonty maxim hanging somewhere in their offices. After all, the venerable Middlebury College program has presented world-renowned classical and chamber music — with a sprinkling of jazz, theater…
Obituary: Perry Nunn, 1962-2019
For years the Burlington musician played Friday nights at Ruben James
Comedian Tracie Spencer Debuts One-Woman Show, ’60 First Dates’
Five years ago, comedian Tracie Spencer found herself at a daunting life crossroads: freshly divorced, unemployed and about to turn 50. So she did what she does best: She joked about it. Over the next several years, the Burlington mother of two reentered not just the workforce but a dating world that, thanks to online…
Williston Teacher’s Project Explores Storytelling as Key to Resilience
Michael Kellogg remembers a nugget of knowledge he heard from a man he interviewed at the Champlain Senior Center: “Problems aren’t problems. Problems become your experience of the world.” Kellogg teaches third and fourth grades at Williston Central School. With support from the Vermont Folklife Center, he and former VFC staffer Mary Rizos have been…
Vermont Doesn’t Have One, But a Driving Curfew Could Curb Teen Pregnancy
Here’s some sex education: A newly released study by a Hunter College economics professor has found that nighttime driving curfews can decrease teen fertility by 3 to 4 percent. You won’t find that form of birth control in the Green Mountain State, though. Vermont is the only state without a nighttime driving curfew for teens.…
A Powerful HBO Doc Explores What Happened ‘In the Shadow of the Towers: Stuyvesant High on 9/11’
Many movies have been made about the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. Eighteen years after the atrocity, can there really be anything new of significance to say? As it happens, there can. And what’s poignantly significant about it is that the men and women saying it were just boys and girls that day. The…
‘It Chapter Two’ Takes Us on a Long, Strange Thrill Ride
There’s a reason many horror fans don’t love digital effects: Fear needs grounding. When a cheerful clown opens his mouth to reveal a second set of jaws that put the Alien xenomorph to shame — the signature effect of both It movies — that’s pretty damn scary. But when that clown monster continues to transform,…
Seven Days Tracks Down Ex-Priests Accused of Sex Abuse in Vermont
John “Jack” Kenney happened to be standing in his front yard when a reporter drove up the long dirt drive to his two-story home in West Glover last Thursday. The 91-year-old ex-priest is among those “credibly accused of sexual abuse” according to a recent report from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington. Kenney had little…
Eat This Week, September 11 to 17, 2019: Farm Birthday
A dinner to celebrate a century of farming at Parsons’ Farm in Richford will be held Saturday, September 14, at a historic inn in Montgomery. Parsons’ Farm was founded as a dairy farm in 1919; since 1985, it has run a livestock operation. The five-course menu includes lamb raised on the farm, with a vegetarian…
A VTDigger Legal Fight Reveals That Key EB-5 Docs Are Missing
A protracted legal battle between a Vermont news outlet and the state attorney general has revealed gaps in the public record of how the state oversaw a fraudulent development project. According to a tech company hired to track down the missing emails of a state official, many appear to have been deleted years before the…
Letters to the Editor (9/11/19)
No Empathy I’m so saddened by Mark Syzmanski’s letter, “Enough about Addiction” [Feedback, August 28]. He is apparently without any vice of his own. Two biblical passages come to mind: one says that he who is blameless can cast the first stone; the other cautions that we should be hesitant to point out the speck…
Soundbites: Big Heavy World’s Tiny Museum, Vampire Weekend and Grand Point North
Small Wonder Have you all ever noticed that sometimes I start this column with a friendly greeting and other times I just jump right into whatever’s going on? That’s because I can never make up my mind if I want a friendly greeting to be a permanent fixture of this column. Just about every week,…
Free Will Astrology (9/11/19)
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Novelist Wallace Stegner wrote, “Some are born in their place, some find it, some realize after long searching that the place they left is the one they have been searching for.” I hope that in the last nine months, Virgo, you have resolved which of those three options is true for…
What Are Those New ‘Trees’ Being Planted in Fields Across Vermont?
“What’s up with all the trees that have suddenly been planted in the town of Charlotte in unused farm fields along Route 7?” asked one Burlington reader in a recent email. “At first I thought it was a bunch of new vineyards. Are they to capture carbon? New Christmas tree farms? WTF?” Those lush, verdant…
Theater Review: ‘Shakespeare’s Will,’ Lost Nation Theater
Last Thursday night’s preview audience at Lost Nation Theater laughed as Shakespeare’s wife, Anne Hathaway, described the lovers she’d had while her husband was in London making his name as a playwright. Vern Thiessen’s play Shakespeare’s Will takes a few historical facts, ignores others, and invents enough story to fill a one-woman show about Shakespeare’s…
The Commotion and Community of Henry Finch & the Capacity Ensemble
When watching Henry Finch & the Capacity Ensemble play for the first time, it’s not immediately evident which member is Henry Finch. It wouldn’t be outrageous to think that maybe there is no Henry Finch. Edward Sharpe, Hootie and Steely Dan aren’t real people, after all. Onstage, something in the ever-evolving cluster of Burlington-area players’…
Art Review: ‘East to West: A Ceramic Dialogue,’ BigTown Gallery
In an article called “Art Escapes: Four Galleries Worth the Trip,” Art New England recently named BigTown Gallery in Rochester the must-see gallery in Vermont. The decidedly small-town gallery, bordering the edge of the Green Mountain National Forest along Vermont Route 100, is indeed a trip from local population centers: an hour from Dartmouth College,…
Greaseface, ‘You Fucked Up My Car’
(Self-released, digital) Greaseface have a reputation. Most folks familiar with the Burlington punk rockers will expound some variation of “Dude, they’re sick”; or “They rock”; or “They’re fucking crazy, man.” And it’s true. The college-age crew of Champlain Valley Union High School grads — guitarist Liam Thomas, bassist/vocalist Jackson Glover and drummer Brenden Provost —…
Quick Lit Review: ‘Made Holy,’ Essays by Emily Casey
By the end of Made Holy, an essay collection by Emily Arnason Casey, readers may feel as if they’ve visited the lakeside cabin where she spent her childhood summers and where “[s]ilence opened up around me like a secret kingdom…” (“The Cabin”). We may imagine we’ve been in her grandmother’s house in Minnesota, where a…
Fossa, ‘Bones’
(Self-released, digital) Some people put a lot of faith in astrology. I’m not knocking it, just observing that it isn’t uncommon for people to tell me about Mercury in retrograde or make a remark such as “You’re such a Gemini” after I order a beer I forgot that I hated. My understanding of astrology is…
Burlington’s St. Paul Street Makeover Confounds Drivers
Elaine Russell was trying to avoid Pine Street. She and her husband were driving from Burlington home to Vergennes, and road construction was the last thing they wanted to wrangle on Labor Day Weekend. So she motored east on Maple Street past Pine to the four-way stop with St. Paul Street, with plans to turn…
A Friend of a Friend Gets Aggressively Sexual When Drunk
Dear Reverend, A female friend of a friend of mine gets aggressively sexual when she gets drunk. She tries to make out with everyone in the room — male, female, partnered or single — all are fair game in her mind. I’ve repeatedly had to grab her hands to stop her from shoving them down…
Work: Chittenden County Forester Ethan Tapper
Name: Ethan Tapper, 30 Town: Burlington Job: Chittenden County forester In the 1800s, approximately 80 percent of Vermont forests were cleared for pasture-based agriculture. That land use remained dominant for more than a century. The practice may have been good for commerce, but it was a “catastrophic disturbance” for forests, said Chittenden County forester Ethan…
Nutty Steph’s Becomes Rabble-Rouser, Opens New Location
A brand-new spot in Montpelier is the subject at hand, but first: a quick vocabulary lesson. The word is “rabble.” Its 13th-century meaning is “pack of animals,” according to the etymology dictionary etymonline.com. It could be related to the Middle English word “rablen,” which means “to gabble, speak in a rapid, confused manner.” Similar words…
A Vermonter Brings V Smiley Preserves Back Home to New Haven
“Growing up, it was our job to fill the pantry,” V Smiley said on a recent tour of her childhood home in New Haven. A wall held glass jars of pantry staples, while a woodstove burned against the misty chill of a late-summer morning. It all evoked a bygone era, perhaps the early 1800s, when…
With Food, Drink and Live Music, Moog’s Joint Brings Nightlife to Johnson
In the former Long Trail Tavern building, which most recently held Hogback Snacks, Moog’s Joint was hopping on its second evening open in late August. Owner and Johnson resident Tom Moog, who also owns 8-year-old Moog’s Place in Morrisville, buzzed around the restaurant, bar and live-music venue chatting up customers. A mix of Lamoille County…
