Sep 27 – Oct 2, 2017
Trump-Bashing Republican Strategist Stuart Spencer Repairs to Vermont; UVM King Scholar Coauthors Book on ‘The Shawshank Redemption; Ballet VT Makes Its Entrance
Cover Story
Trump-Bashing, Romney-Advising Political Operative Stuart Stevens Finds Himself in Vermont
Stuart Stevens was looking for a fight, and he’d come to the right place. In the basement of Stowe’s Phit Gym & Classes, the 64-year-old Vermont transplant nodded his head and clenched his fists as trainer Ernie Roick ran through the basics of Krav Maga, the cutthroat martial arts technique developed for the Israeli Defense…
Memoriam: Celebration of the Life of Kenneth I. Gross
The Celebration of the Life of Kenneth I. Gross will be held Sunday, October 15, 2017, 12:30p, University of Vermont Alumni House. For those who wish to speak, we invite you to prepare a one minute memory to share. Ken’s family is compiling a book of “Memories of Ken Gross” as a way for his…
Obituary: Michael Anthony Valente, 1949-2017
Michael A. Valente, 68, of Waterbury Center passed away peacefully at home on the morning of October 3, 2017. He was born on Valentine’s Day 1949 in Watervliet, N.Y., to Al and Anna Valente and was the youngest of four. He was predeceased by his parents and an older brother. Two sisters live in the…
Seriously: Stu’s Dudes; Sparks Dicks
In this episode, Bryan learns about the fascinating life of political strategist Stuart Stevens and takes aim at a controversial firing range in Ripton, VT. Featuring appearances by Michael Bradshaw, Corey Grenier, Paul Heintz, Sasha Golstein and Ricky McGinny. CREDITS Written, filmed and edited by: Bryan Parmelee Artwork/photography courtesy of: Jeb Wallace-Brodeur, AP Photo/Charles Dharapak,…
![Above the Radar [SIV505]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/episode505-scaled.webp?resize=1200%2C900&ssl=1)
Above the Radar [SIV505]
9/16/17: Above the Radar is a 3-day graffiti festival that brought more than 30 artists together to paint a 260’ wall at the King Street Ferry Dock in Burlington. Anthill Collective organized the event to help shine a light on aerosol art as an important global modern art form. The giant art project was sponsored…
Ask Athena: I’m in Love With a Guy Who Still Lives With His ‘Ex’
Dear Athena, I’m in love with a guy who has three children and who has had a live-in partner for five years. They broke up, but the family of the girl still doesn’t know that they are not in a relationship anymore, and so they still live together. This girl is still trying to work…
The Rough Cut BBQ to Open in Middlebury
The Rough Cut, a barbecue restaurant with a full bar, will open at 51 Main Street in Middlebury in November, owner Ben Wells said. The business will occupy the space that previously housed 51 Main at the Bridge, a restaurant and performance venue operated by Middlebury College for nine years. The space is under renovation,…
Letters to the Editor (9/27/17)
Cool Covers Kudos to your photographers and graphic artists! Two recent covers were spectacular: the mayor of Barre [“Playing to Win,” September 6] and “Stage Struck” [September 13]! Lisa Carlson Hinesburg Rescue Remedy Both articles pertaining to Saint Michael’s College in the September 20 issue [“Keeping the Faith” and “With Lights Flashing, St. Michael’s Students…
New Pro Company Ballet Vermont Makes an Entrance
Going to the ballet often conjures images of elegant theaters, dapperly dressed adults and thin young people dancing across a pristine stage. But what if ballet were more than that? What if parents in jeans and sandals brought their rambunctious children to a farm picnic to watch ballet lovers of all ages dance across a…
Theater Review: ‘A Doll’s House,’ Northern Stage
The good news is that a husband saying his wife has to obey him now gets a laugh. The bad news is that Henrik Ibsen’s groundbreaking play A Doll’s House can’t set off its shockwave unless the performers create an idyllic marriage to explode. In Northern Stage’s production, director Eric Bunge has allowed the play’s…
Movie Review: ‘Friend Request’ Fails to Milk Horror From the Prospect of Unpopularity
Fear and Loathing on Facebook might have made a spiffier title for this ridiculous Lifetime movie disguised as an exercise in social media-savvy horror. The latest from German director Simon Verhoeven (100 Pro) — no relation to Paul, who’s Dutch and competent — Friend Request achieves something I would have considered unimaginable: Replacing It as…
Justin Bourgeois, Banker to the (Food & Drink) Stars
When their deal went down last week in Northfield, the banker and the brewers celebrated with glasses of a beer called Same Old, Same Old. In fact, there was nothing “same” or “old” about the beer the men drank that day at Good Measure Brewing. Same Old, Same Old is unique and new: a sour…
Movie Review: Slight But Amusing ‘Brigsby Bear’ Tells a Parable of Fandom
This decade’s crop of film comedies about arrested development offers plenty of fodder for a think piece on helicopter parenting, but Brigsby Bear takes both concepts to new levels. In this wispy indie comedy, Kyle Mooney of “Saturday Night Live” is so convincing as a twentysomething man-child, his performance so deadpan, vulnerable and free of…
Resonant Spaces Brings Auditory Art to Dartmouth College
Except to the profoundly deaf, sound is inescapable. Visual sensory information can be easily avoided by closing your eyes or looking away, but sonic stimuli is not so easily eluded, making it a rich artistic medium. Sound art is nebulous, transformative and time-based and often brings together disparate influences and disciplines in surprising ways. The…
Quick Lit: Lisa Kusel’s Memoir ‘Rash’
When American readers think of Bali, they tend to think of the tropical island where Elizabeth Gilbert discovered “balance” (and, yes, love) in her best-selling memoir Eat Pray Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia. But one person’s paradise can be another’s sweaty purgatory, as Burlington author Lisa Kusel reminds us…
Neighbors Are Fired Up About Target Shooting on National Forest Land
There’s no sign announcing that Sparks Pit is a firing range, but gun enthusiasts head to the scrubby clearing in the Green Mountain National Forest to shoot at paper targets and makeshift ones: beer cans, car doors and old televisions. Neighbors on the dirt road next to the former gravel pit in Ripton want a…
Dems Depleted: Vermont Democrats Facing Financial Woes
In recent years, the Vermont Democratic Party has enjoyed relative prosperity while state Republicans have struggled to keep the lights on. But now the Democrats are feeling the pinch. The party’s most recent payroll was delayed by four days due to a lack of funds. Worse, it has to raise at least $13,000 this week…
Eat This Week, September 27 to October 3, 2017: Harvest Fest
‘Tis the season for harvest festivals, but while plenty of events highlight apples, pumpkins and hayrides for chubby-cheeked cherubs, the celebration at Colchester’s Mead Hall has a rather different tone. There, patrons sip mead from horn tankards, gnaw on ox shoulder and sup on bottomless bowls of soup. There are table games, too. Harvest Fest:…
Burning Question: Was it a Neko Case of Mistaken Identity?
A fire that broke out September 18 in the Northeast Kingdom town of Barnet destroyed a barn and heavily damaged a nearby house, according to Vermont State Police. Not much about the blaze itself was especially noteworthy. But it was who may have lived in the house, Grammy-nominated songwriter Neko Case, that caught the attention…
Soundbites: No Chill ’til Chicago
Over the years, we here at Seven Days have noticed an amusing phenomenon: We profile an interesting person in Vermont’s arts community and, less than a year later, they announce they’re leaving town. I recently passed my one-year marker with the paper, and I can attest to some truth in it. Browsing the annals of…
steAmfest Brings Makers and Artists to Essex Junction
This weekend, Essex Junction is going to get steAmy. And no, that’s not a typo. A brand-new festival called steAmfest aims to transform a downtown best known for its five corners through a blend of art and STEM — that is, science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Friday night’s kickoff will offer live music and a…
Mysterious ‘White Rabbit Red Rabbit’ Debuts in Vermont
Getting onstage and forgetting all your lines is the stuff of bad dreams for actors. So imagine taking the stage, being handed an envelope with a script you’ve never seen before and having to perform a play on the spot. All by yourself. That, ladies and gentlemen, is where White Rabbit Red Rabbit begins. Iranian…
Phoenix Books Launches Writing Scholarship
We often hear pleas to support local independent booksellers. This week we learned that one of them is turning the tables, as it were, by supporting local writers. At last Saturday’s 2017 Vermont Book Award ceremony, Vermont College of Fine Arts president Thomas Christopher Greene announced that Phoenix Books has created a $10,000 annual scholarship…
What’s Up With Burlington’s Phallic Mushroom Sculpture?
This week’s WTF column answers two readers’ seemingly unrelated questions: First, what’s up with the mushroom-and-napping-gnome sculpture on Burlington’s Battery Street? Second, why is a rest area on Interstate 89 north in Waterbury surrounded by a chain-link fence? Surprisingly, the answers share a common thread. Let’s begin with the story behind the stone ‘shroom and…
Free Will Astrology (9/27/17)
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Be realistic, Libra: Demand the impossible; expect inspiration; visualize yourself being able to express yourself more completely and vividly than you ever have before. Believe me when I tell you that you now have extra power to develop your sleeping potentials and are capable of accomplishing feats that might seem like…
Album Review: Dave Kleh, ‘It’ll Be Alright’
(Self-released, CD, digital download) On his 2016 record, Laugh: A Collection of Drinking Songs From the 802, eccentric and somewhat enigmatic singer-songwriter/producer/real estate agent Dave Kleh took a lighthearted approach. The title said it all. He recently dropped his fourth LP in as many years, the much more serious It’ll Be Alright. Don’t get me…
Tony Magistrale Coauthors Book on ‘The Shawshank Redemption’
As anyone who has seen the recent Hollywood megaflop The Dark Tower can attest, translating the works of Stephen King to the silver screen is a difficult task. For every classic film adaptation, such as Carrie (1976 version, thank you), Stand by Me or Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining — the last of which King openly…
Art Review: ‘SculptFest2017,’ Carving Studio & Sculpture Center
The Carving Studio & Sculpture Center in West Rutland is a fortuitous collision of history and the present. Located amid inactive quarries and the former manufacturing facilities of the Vermont Marble Company, CSSC has a history written in stone. The former workers’ presence is felt everywhere, in the quiet of rusting machinery, water-filled quarries and…
Album Review: Devon McGarry, ‘Echo Chamber’
(Self-released, CD, digital download) I’ve often heard a theory of a time vortex that keeps Vermont stuck in the 1990s. If such a vortex exists, I’m cool with that. The ’90s were a fairly comfortable time — or at least felt like it, because of the baggy pants trend. Burlington’s Devon McGarry seems to be…
After a Hiker’s Death, Vermont Finds Ways to Improve Search and Rescue
Six rescue squad members ventured into the woods at Pico Mountain on a warm September afternoon to practice searching for a lost person. The scenario: A fictional “grandpa” with dementia had walked away from a slope-side condo. The searchers’ job was to sweep through the forest a few dozen yards apart from each other. They…
Royal Frog Ballet Throws a Rural Cabaret
A rhizome is a type of root that spreads horizontally, sending out fresh tendrils and stems from its network of nodes. It’s an apt metaphor for the roving Royal Frog Ballet, a loose group of friends and artists who have gathered annually since 2008 to perform their “Surrealist Cabaret” against bucolic backdrops. For the second…
Down to the Wire: Accusations Fly in Burlington Telecom Negotiations
Mayor Miro Weinberger touted September 20 as a celebratory day in Burlington. The city was to publicly reveal the finalists of the bidders for Burlington Telecom, and Weinberger stood poised to wrap up an eight-year saga involving the cable and internet provider. The mayor characterized the revelation as a fulfillment of his campaign promises from five…
Filipino Cuisine Comes to St. Johnsbury
Before he opened his restaurant, Pica-pica Filipino Cuisine in St. Johnsbury, George Sales was an independent consultant and project manager. Now Sales, who was born and raised in the Philippines, spends his time cooking stir-fries, crispy egg rolls known as lumpiang, and kare-kare, a stew with oxtail, eggplant and long beans. “I’ve always loved entertaining;…
Subterranean Booze at Moruzzi’s in Barre
At Moruzzi’s in Barre, the drinks are named after mobsters, and the kitchen turns out “light Italian fare” such as tiramisu, meatballs and cheese boards. Located at 8 South Main Street, downstairs from Ladder 1 Grill, the spot is owned by Valerie White Beaudet, who named it after her mother. For years, Beaudet said, she…
How to Mix Up Autumn Cocktails
I didn’t realize I didn’t know how to shake and serve cocktails until I saw 109 thirsty guests lined up in front of me, polished shoes planted on a hillside in the late summer sun, sweltering in jackets and long dresses. They were thirsty. I was out of my element. I’d agreed to invent a…
