Sep 23-29, 2015
Harnessing the Healing Power of Horses; Sen. Sanders Preps for Democratic Debates; Seven New Beers for Fall
Cover Story
Tim Hayes Harnesses Equines’ Healing Touch
Tim Hayes first recognized horses’ power to heal when he saw a burly gang member from South Central Los Angeles come face-to-face with a wild mustang — and his own true nature. It was 1996, and Hayes, then a TV commercial producer in New York City and amateur horseman, had traveled to a federal super-max…
River Roost Brewery to Open in White River Junction
When Mark Babson started kegging beer at Magic Hat Brewing five or six years ago, he hoped the job would evolve into a career in beer. The Williston native had been homebrewing since his days at the University of Vermont. At Magic Hat, Babson progressed from kegging to cellar and lab work, then into brewing.…
Marlboro College Students Get on the Bus for Expedition Ed
Like many bus drivers prepping for the first day of school, 57-year-old Neal Taylor was getting his vehicle in order on an August afternoon. First he repaired one of the bench seats inside the 40-foot bus. Next, he inventoried the medical kits and tested the vehicle’s backcountry stoves. He pulled out three guitars to ascertain…
How to Avoid Helicopter Parenting
Some professors begin the first lecture of the year with a warning to their classes: “Don’t be the student whose parents contact me.” This is usually accompanied by a story of one such unfortunate student. The story itself is a secondary warning that, if your parents do contact your professor, you will be the subject…
Soundbites: After 10 Years, Honky Tonk Tuesday Nears the End … Maybe
Close Up the Honky Tonk? On Tuesday, September 15, Honky Tonk Tuesday celebrated its 10th anniversary. The weekly Radio Bean residency hosted by songwriter, singer and all- around countrypolitan gentleman Brett Hughes was a star-studded affair that featured ghosts of Honky Tonks past and present. These included Lowell Thompson, Mark Spencer, Mike Gordon, Marie Claire,…
Theater Review: The Hounds of Baskerville, Lost Nation Theater
Comedy and mystery both depend on surprise. If a detective story begs viewers to try to guess ahead, a comedy asks them to lean back and let the laughs happen, but both rely on the delight of the unexpected. In a stage adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, now running in…
South End Artists Hope to Stall the Champlain Parkway
Burlington artists against the proposed Champlain Parkway organized a tug-of-war at the South End Art Hop earlier this month. They invited supporters of the roadway designed to improve the city’s Pine Street corridor to meet up with opponents to pull for their respective points of view. A crowd assembled, but a problem arose. Plenty of…
Talking With Voice-Over Artist Brian Thon
Name: Brian Thon Town: Richmond Job: Voice-over artist We live in a world where machines tell us what to do, from when to board an airplane to how to administer an EpiPen. As one of the voices of that world, voice-over professional Brian Thon (pronounced “tone”) aims to bring humanity to his art. “I take…
Fightin’ Words: Bernie Sanders Readies for the Big Debate
Jim Rader remembers the first time Bernie Sanders hit the airwaves as a political candidate. It was 1971 and Sanders, the Liberty Union Party nominee for U.S. Senate, gave a radio interview. Afterward, Rader told Sanders that he’d done well but also asked him about an odd background sound — “a constant rumbling” — that could be…
WTF: What’s the Story With the Stairway to Nowhere at UVM?
The mint-green concrete steps behind the University of Vermont’s stately Williams Hall are akin to bad plastic surgery on a beautiful person: They aren’t pretty. The larger question is why they exist. The nine steps on the backside of the ornate 1896 building lead to an empty landing facing a brick wall with no doors…
Manure Storage Wars: In Ferrisburgh, Flower Power Fights Big Dairy
It’s no secret Vermont dairy farms are major contributors to the phosphorus runoff that is polluting Lake Champlain. In particular, the way they dispose of copious amounts of cow manure has come under increasing scrutiny. That’s why the State of Vermont gave Allan Brisson, the 61-year-old proprietor of Allandra Farm, a $65,000 grant to construct…
The Internet’s Matt Martian Talks Ego Death
If you google “the internet,” the first result that pops up is not a Wikipedia entry for the humanity-altering global communications network through which you may be reading this article. Somewhat incredibly, it’s a Wiki entry for a soul band called the Internet. To borrow a notion from John Lennon, the Internet are bigger than…
Playwright John Milton Oliver Asks a Lot of Questions
Don’t go to The Question looking for answers. The new play by Burlington writer John Milton Oliver, which will have three more performances this week at Off Center for the Dramatic Arts, mostly does the asking. If the characters in this so-called “wordplay” answer anything, they also insert doubt or a failure to commit, leaving…
From Prison to Gallery: Talking Art With Jeremy Lee MacKenzie
The eight large-scale scrollwork scenes on the walls at the Flynn Center for the Perfoming Arts’ Amy E. Tarrant Gallery in Burlington are intricate, fantastical and richly layered, both in their construction and in the story behind their creation. Artist and writer Jeremy Lee MacKenzie surreptitiously sketched plans for the detailed carvings while serving time…
How to Navigate Burlington Book Fest 2015
For the 11th year, one weekend in late September brings scribblers of all sorts to Burlington for a slate of readings, talks, panels and more. The big news is that most of the Burlington Book Festival’s events this year from Friday, September 25, through Sunday, September 27, will take place on the University of Vermont…
Reviewing Poets David Cavanagh and Chard deNiord
In “Adam’s Curse,” W.B. Yeats describes a paradox in the practice of making poems: “A line will take us hours maybe; / Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought, / Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.” I was reminded of this back-and-forth between formal eloquence and the illusion of expressive ease as…
A New Film Follows the Survivors of a School Shooting
Three years before the Columbine High School massacre, in February 1996, a Washington State teenager shot his algebra teacher and two students. Jessi Shuttleworth, a Washington native and Saint Michael’s College alumna, will never forget the incident — her then-13-year-old brother was in a nearby classroom during the shooting. “Although 18 years have passed, he,…
Rue Mevlana, Pop Corn
(Prog Shock Productions, CD, digital download) Burlington dance-pop outfit Rue Mevlana have been relatively quiet on the recording scene since releasing Synthetic Emotion in 2012. Save for some remixes, “The Rue Crew” — Nathan Jarvis, Marya Vallejos, Hannah Wall, Rebecca Wallace, Shelby Ferland and Allison Bannister — have largely left fans waiting. The wait is…
The Education of Matt Dunne: Schooling Shumlin and Smith
Last spring, former senator Matt Dunne seemed to be one of the few Democrats ready and willing to challenge Gov. Peter Shumlin for the state’s top office. The Hartland resident and Google exec spent months courting political insiders over coffee and showed up at the Statehouse conspicuously often for a guy who hadn’t served in…
Christine Malcolm, Crickets, Coyotes & the Big Yellow Moon
(Self-released, CD, digital download) One moment on Crickets, Coyotes & the Big Yellow Moon, the debut recording from Elmore’s Christine Malcolm, not only characterizes the entire record but helps explain Malcolm as a songwriter and artist. It comes on the album’s third cut, the well-titled “True Hearted Girl.” Malcolm coos a breathy melody while rippling…
Black Mass
Johnny Depp ditches the flouncy flourishes, silly accents and funny hats and gets back down to the business of acting in Black Mass, easily his finest film in a decade. He disappears behind a science project of prosthetics, lenses and wigs to play the almost mythical Boston mob boss James “Whitey” Bulger. Bulger is a…
Grandma
Grandma is a small movie that marks the return of a huge talent: Lily Tomlin. The comedian hasn’t had much of a feature showcase since the 1990s, which means a whole generation lacks significant exposure to her gimlet eyes and sardonic aplomb. Tomlin is like Bill Murray: She will never not be slyly subversive. So…
Four to Tango: the Piazzolla Project
Vermont is far from the geographical origins of tango music, in Argentina and Uruguay. But last year, two sets of musical spouses living in the Green Mountains discovered they loved the form. As it happened, both duos’ repertoires already included works by the pioneering tango composer Ástor Piazzolla. So, from the “bordellos” of Burlington and…
A Fig Farm Grows in Vermont
D.H. Lawrence, never one to shrink from the erotic, wrote a poem called “Figs.” Oddly, it chides “overripe” women of his day for their “self-assertion” while comparing female genitalia to the title fruit. This is described as “folded upon itself, and secret unutterable / And milky-sapped, sap that curdles milk and makes ricotta / Sap…
Free Will Astrology (9/23/2015)
ARIES (March 21-April 19): You are destined to become a master of fire. It’s your birthright to become skilled in the arts of kindling and warming and illuminating and energizing. Eventually you will develop a fine knack for knowing when it’s appropriate to turn the heat up high and when it’s right to simmer with…
Vermont Brewers Pour New Beers for Fall
When the leaves start to crisp, the mornings cool and tourists begin their annual leaf-peeping pilgrimage down Route 100, many Vermonters transform from sleek, summer humans into gnomish Shire clichés in flannel-lined Carhartts, knit socks and Johnson woolens. Suddenly we’re picking apples and pressing cider in long-john layers and homespun sweaters. At day’s end, we…
Letters to the Editor (9/23/15)
Good Visit In [Movie Review: The Visit, September 16] Rick Kisonak writes, “I’ve watched loved ones suffer the indignities of dementia and can’t help but find the filmmaker’s decision to use them for comic fodder and cheap shocks in deplorable taste. To my knowledge, no previous movie has ever equated mental and physical deterioration with…
![Jamie’s List [SIV413]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/episode413-4-e1755136073787.webp?resize=640%2C360&ssl=1)
Jamie’s List [SIV413]
8/25/15: When Jamie Perron of Jeffersonville was 19 years old, she was hit head on by another car and became a quadriplegic, paralyzed from the neck down. Now at age 33, Jamie is an artist and a co-captain of The Vermont Chargers Power Soccer Club. This summer Jamie learned to kayak with some help from…
Vermont Hackers, Artists and Inventors are Sharing Ideas — and Solving Problems
Originally published July 3, 2012 Excerpt: Vermont’s “makers” — a term that originated in the early 2000s, meaning any amateur or professional inventor of physical objects — are farmers, programmers, artists, educators and kids. Thanks to the formation of Vermont Makers; the unveiling of the University of Vermont’s new fabrication laboratory, or “fab lab”; and…
My Boyfriend Is Close to His Ex and I’m Jealous
Dear Athena, My boyfriend is really close with one of his ex-girlfriends, and it’s starting to really bother me. I’m feeling jealous. They were together many years ago, but it was serious and they are still really good friends. They hang out a lot and talk on the phone and go out to bars sometimes.…
Even in Vermont, Sanders Trails Clinton in the Race for Superdelegates
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has had little trouble talking rank-and-file Democrats into supporting his surging presidential campaign. He’s now the — wait for it — front-runner in Iowa and New Hampshire, and he’s holding his own in national polls. But, no surprise, the guy who penned a memoir called Outsider in the House is having…
Bistro de Margot Opens in Burlington; Spice Traders Kitchen Brings Exotic Flavors to Winooski
This past summer, L’Amante fans were devastated to learn that the downtown Burlington Italian restaurant would close in August after 12 years in business. But when owners Kevin and Kathi Cleary passed the torch to Herve Mahe, the French chef kept most of the L’Amante staff family together to open Bistro de Margot in its…
Food for Fairfax: Erica’s American Diner
It’s been a long rough patch for Fairfax’s 951 Main Street. After more than 20 years in business, town hub the Country Pantry Diner closed in 2009. Since then, a number of owners have operated the restaurant for brief stints under that name and others, culminating in a lengthy closure that started last June. Now…
