Sep 18-24, 2019
Plagued by Staffing Shortages, Vermont Restaurateurs Rethink Ways to Work; Namesake of Sara Holbrook Center Tied to Eugenics; A Scaredy-Cat Reporter Auditions for Nightmare Vermont
Cover Story
Facing Staff Shortages, Vermont Restaurants Rethink Ways to Work
The unemployment rate in Vermont is at a historic low. That’s a good thing, right? Not if you’re a restaurant owner. The Vermont Department of Labor reported a seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 2.1 percent in July, which happened to be the lowest in the country. One unfortunate outcome: The state’s restaurant kitchens have been…
The Cannabis Catch-Up: New Weed Political Action Committee in Town
A newly formed political action committee is pushing to get a recreational weed market bill passed into Vermont law early enough in the upcoming legislative session to allow communities to discuss the legislation at Town Meeting Day in March 2020. Founded by Geoffrey Pizzutillo and Jennifer Dye, the Vermont Growers Association wants state representatives to…
Seriously: Inconvenience Inequality
In this episode, Bryan discusses the distribution of inconveniences in Burlington. CREDITS Written, filmed and edited by: Bryan Parmelee Artwork/photography by: Diane Sullivan, Courtney Lamdin, Matthew Roy, Luke Eastman, Bryan Parmelee and Dreamstime Logo/art direction by: Don Eggert Audio by: Bryan Parmelee, Freesound Related Stories
In Memoriam: Hazel Cassinell, 1984-2019
Hazel, September 28 would have been your 35th birthday. You may be gone from this life, but you will live forever in my heart. Love, Uncle Lee
Obituary: Paul Alan Bruhn, 1947-2019
U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy’s first chief of staff devoted his life to preserving Vermont
Obituary: Casey Draper, 1971-2019
Lake Placid, N.Y. native had a ‘flair for fashion and all things beautiful’
A Scaredy-Cat Reporter Tries Out for Nightmare Vermont
There are many ways to die in a Nightmare Vermont event, including being killed by a zombie, table saw, alien horde or demonic lover. But a good Halloween death is about more than gore. The dying party must make the audience feel exactly how horrible that death is, a display of human emotion so raw…
I Want a Threesome With Two Sisters
Dear Reverend, I’m 34 years old and legally divorced. I felt very lonely until I found a distant relative’s daughter-in-law, who is married with two kids. I pushed her for sex after she initially denied me, as she is a devoted mother and wife. She eventually broke the shackles, and we started having raw sex.…
Vermont Symphony Brings Diversity and Surprises This Season
Quick, what comes to mind when you hear Star Wars and Kat Wright mentioned together? The unexpected answer: the Vermont Symphony Orchestra. A Flynn MainStage concert of John Williams music and a Higher Ground appearance by the singer, backed by a couple dozen musicians, are but two surprises of the VSO’s new season. It opens…
‘Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice’ Reveals the Pop Icon Was Also an Auteur
You get that we’re witnessing the birth of a new genre, right? Just a decade ago, a tsunami of music docs such as the one hitting theaters right now would have been inconceivable. But suddenly there’s David Crosby: Remember My Name; Roger Waters: Us + Them; Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story; David Bowie:…
Burlington Library Seeks More Authority to Handle Problem Patrons
Patrons checked out books, thumbed through periodicals and composed résumés on computers last Thursday at the Fletcher Free Library. But Burlington’s community living room wasn’t as tranquil as it looked. Like many urban libraries, it has become a haven for individuals who have nowhere else to go during the day: people who are homeless, mentally…
Theater Review: ‘Every Brilliant Thing,’ Middlebury Actors Workshop
It’s about depression, but it’s joyful. It’s a solo performance, but it’s not done alone. It’s one person’s story, but everyone in the audience can feel a connection to it. It follows a script, but it can’t be repeated. Every Brilliant Thing is brand new every time the solo performer and the audience combine to…
Sara Holbrook Community Center’s Namesake Linked to Eugenics Movement
The namesake of a Burlington community center had ties to the Vermont eugenics movement of the 1920s and ’30s. The executive director of the Sara Holbrook Community Center said leaders of the nonprofit organization learned of the connection about two years ago but decided it wasn’t egregious enough to warrant drastic action on their part.…
Pit Happens: How Readers Would Fill the Hole That Is CityPlace Burlington
This just in: CityPlace Burlington was supposed to be built by now. But, as you may have heard, instead of a gleaming 14-story complex loaded with shops, restaurants and housing, the three-acre lot along Cherry Street looks like the landing site of a meteorite. The development has, quite literally, cratered. A litany of issues, from…
Art Review: ‘reVision,’ Kent Museum
The annual Art at the Kent show is one of the state’s exceptional art events, drawing hundreds to its fall opening every year. The 2019 edition, titled “reVision,” grew from a core of playful work by collage and assemblage artists and loaned works by renowned collage artist Varujan Boghosian. Curators Nel Emlen, Allyson Evans and…
Frankie Cosmos’ Greta Kline on Songwriting, DIY Culture and HBO’s ‘Euphoria’
Frankie Cosmos is both the moniker of singer-songwriter Greta Kline and the name of her band. The New York City artist came of age in the metropolis’ all-ages DIY music scene, one that’s been largely erased from the Five Boroughs in recent years. Before settling on the name Frankie Cosmos and starting the full band…
Letters to the Editor (9/18/19)
Blind Crossing [Re “Curb Sides,” September 11]: Another important factor to consider in the design of bump-outs is the level of complexity they add to the blind and visually impaired traveler’s ability to make a safe, independent street crossing. Typically, a white-cane traveler, when arriving at a corner crossing, will line up perpendicularly to their…
Free Will Astrology (9/18/19)
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): In 1959, scandal erupted among Americans who loved to eat peanut butter. Studies revealed that manufacturers had added so much hydrogenated vegetable oil and glycerin to their product that only 75 percent of it could truly be called peanut butter. So began a long legal process to restore high standards. Finally…
Soundbites: Brett Johnson’s ‘Poly-Theist’ and a PSA About Centre Bell
Bell of the Ball? Since I moved back to Vermont in 2014, I’ve made a concerted effort to visit Montréal whenever I can. Before heading out west in the mid-2000s, I’d mostly traveled across the border for school field trips and a yearly pilgrimage to amusement park La Ronde with my church youth group. Sure,…
Christine Malcolm, ‘I Like You’
(Self-released, CD, digital) Christine Malcolm’s sophomore record, I Like You, is perhaps the most aptly named Vermont release of the year. Beginning with the opening title track, the Elmore-based singer-songwriter showers the listener with unfiltered good vibes. She even teams up with human cotton-candy pop-rocker Chad Hollister on the tune, a surefire way to steep…
A Quest for Revenge Leads Elsewhere in Searing Frontier Drama ‘The Nightingale’
Perhaps one of the earliest rape-revenge tales is the Greek legend of Philomela. Her attacker cuts out her tongue to ensure her silence, but she gets her own back (gruesomely) and is transformed into a nightingale, the bird renowned for its voice. In the new film from Australian writer-director Jennifer Kent (The Babadook), Aisling Franciosi…
Vermont Task Force Favors Monitoring Social Media to Prevent School Shootings
A group of experts convened by Gov. Phil Scott after last year’s Fair Haven school-shooting scare affirmed an “ironclad link” between mass shootings and easy access to firearms. But its new proposals to prevent more violence mostly avoid gun control. Instead, the governor’s Community Violence Prevention Task Force emphasizes school security upgrades and better ways…
Abby Sherman, ‘So It Goes’
(Self-released, digital download) A desire to escape Burlington seized me last week, so I fled to the mountains for a few hours. Speeding down the interstate, I saw a flock of birds hightailing it, all but flipping me off with their murmuration. Summer is over, human. Head south, they seemed to say, even as I…
Middlebury College Astrophysicist Eilat Glikman Sparks Curiosity With Quasars
Eilat Glikman was a teenager in the 1990s when a Harvard University professor visited her New Jersey high school physics class to talk about the Hubble Space Telescope. At the time, astronauts had just repaired the orbiting observatory, which was sending back astonishing images of previously unseen objects in the universe. “I couldn’t believe that…
Quick Lit: ‘Five Midnights,’ by Ann Dávila Cardinal
American horror fiction tends to be conservative in its settings, with small heartland towns a perennial favorite. As for its protagonists, they tend to be white. Even the recent film The Curse of La Llorona, with its boogeywoman based on Mexican legend, depicts her tormenting a Californian Anglo family with her deadly lamentations. Ann Dávila…
Hackie: The Door
When you’re a child, every birthday is a big event, a milestone. For most adults, the only birthdays that carry a similar weight are the 10-year markers: 30, 40, 50, etc. But there’s one non-decennial adult birthday of equal significance: 65, your official graduation from middle to old age. Party time, right? Keenan had made…
You’re Recused! Vermont Supreme Court Justices to Sit One Out
The sitting justices of the Vermont Supreme Court have all recused themselves from an upcoming case because of their professional relationship with one of the litigants. On Thursday, September 19, Patricia Gabel is scheduled to appear before the court for a civil case involving her former partner. Since 2013, Gabel has served as the Vermont…
Zero Gravity Craft Brewery Expands Food Menu
Regulars at Zero Gravity Craft Brewery have watched its food menu expand from popcorn to hot dogs to bar snacks such as cheese curds and eggplant bao. Now the brewery that opened four years ago at 716 Pine Street in Burlington is offering more substantial fare, including a cheeseburger served with fries and a salad;…
St. Albans’ Catalyst Coffee Bar Moves Around the Corner
Catalyst Coffee Bar has moved to 10 Lake Street in St. Albans City, 331 feet around the corner from its original location at 22 North Main Street. The multi-roaster coffee lab, which opened in 2016, is known for siphon brewing and sourcing high-quality coffee from local roasters such as Vivid Coffee Roasters and Brio Coffeeworks.…
Obituary: Brent Graves, Sr.
Brent Graves Sr., age 47, died at 5:30pm on September 12, 2019 in his favorite park located in New Smyrna, Florida. Brent was born to Betty Plante in 1971, he grew up in Barre, VT, where he received his High school diploma in 1991. He married Lisa A. Westcott in 1992 in Montpelier, VT. After…
