The Magnificent 7: Must See, Must Do, April 15 to 21
1. Major Showcase Since 2008, the annual recital Dancing Uphill has featured University of Vermont student choreography and performance. This year, audience members watch for free as the show is livestreamed from UVM’s Michelle and Martin Cohen Hall for the Integrative Creative Arts on Friday, April 16, and Saturday, April 17. The program includes works…
Obituary: Jennifer Fuller, 1970-2021
Casualty of the opioid crisis remembered for her kindness, laugh and love of family
Obituary: Sylvia LeBourveau, 1944-2021
Registered nurse directed community health initiatives and traveled the world as a professional sword swallower
Obituary: Amy Blanchard Darley, 1954-2021
Dancer and loving mother and grandmother was a champion of women and children
Artist and Activist Jen Berger Presents Multidisciplinary Project ‘The Opposite of Hate Is Mending’
An outdoor performance on a spring afternoon is a welcome antidote to months of hibernation. But with “The Opposite of Hate Is Mending,” Jen Berger has more in mind than simply emerging from winter — or the clutches of a pandemic. Her title tacitly acknowledges a society grappling not just with a virus but with…
During a Discussion of Bias Against LGBT Victims, a Senator Invokes a Racist Trope
Two grim topics this week: One concerns sexual encounters that end in violence; the other involves racist comments by a Vermont lawmaker. First, the “gay/trans panic defense.” In one scenario, a cisgender man learns mid-seduction that his partner in a sexual encounter is transgender. In another, a man who is conflicted about his sexual orientation…
Ruby, ‘Marrow’
(Self-released, digital) Katy Hellman and Steven Lebel’s former band, “free-bleeding indie” outfit Julia Caesar, was a short-lived yet powerful force in Burlington music. The quintet seemed to satisfy a deep craving in the Queen City’s young, progressive circles and was synonymous with social justice. Legend has it a full-length Julia Caesar album sits unfinished, unreleased…
Letters to the Editor (4/14/21)
Whither UVM? [Re Off Message: “Amid Uproar Against Garimella, UVM Warns a Faculty Critic,” March 29]: The president, the provost and other leaders at the University of Vermont are asking us to imagine new possibilities and approaches for UVM. They are doing this because they want our university — and its students and graduates —…
boys cruise, ‘boys cruise’
(Self-released, digital) College rock, how I love thee. To be more specific: A small demographic exists among the college band set that strikes a chord deep in my heart. Beyond the urgent amateurs, devoted cover acts and meandering jammers, there’s a higher form of the genre to be found. Burlington’s boys cruise dwell solidly in…
The Cannabis Issue — 2021
Eleanor Abbot “contracted polio at age 36” and came up with the concept of a classic children’s board game “while convalescing in the hospital polio ward in 1947 with numerous children sufferers,” the San Diego Union-Tribune reported last year. The paper’s headline: “Another epidemic in another era gave birth to Candy Land.” Our cover this…
Vermont Professor Develops App to Help Cannabis Users ‘Quantify Their High’
Ari Kirshenbaum has never thought of himself as a “cool” professor, but a new smartphone app he helped develop is, well, pretty dope. Kirshenbaum, a psychology professor at Saint Michael’s College in Colchester, is the brains behind Indicator, a free mobile app that uses a series of games to show cannabis users how the drug…
A Veteran Cultivator Explains How to Grow Cannabis Yourself
After three decades as a cultivator and a horticulturist with a degree in plant and soil science, I’ve learned a lot about cannabis — sometimes the hard way. About 22 years ago, I was swept up in the war on drugs and earned a felony conviction for an Arizona pot bust. But I’ve always landed…
Ben Cohen’s New Pre-Rolled Joint Business Will Fund Black-Owned Cannabis Companies
By July, Ben Cohen will launch a cannabis business in Colorado. If it were a pot-infused ice cream company, the cofounder of Ben & Jerry’s could call it Stoned Cold. But Cohen’s venture will produce low-THC, high-terpene pre-rolled joints. In an interview with Seven Days, he wouldn’t reveal its name — despite the pun potential.…
As Recreational Cannabis Sales Loom, Doctors Worry About Teen Use
Every two years, thousands of Vermont teenagers are asked a series of questions about whether they are drinking alcohol, having sex, using drugs or engaging in other risky behaviors. In the most recent installment of the state survey, fewer teens reported drinking or cigarette smoking. On the rise, though, was cannabis use. The 2019 Vermont…
Budding Heads: Vermont Lawmakers Seek to Revise Last Year’s Retail Pot Bill
Now that Vermont has legalized the sale of cannabis for recreational use, growers and entrepreneurs can get on with the business of hawking weed, right? Not so fast. Six months after the passage of the legalization bill, lawmakers are still monkeying with the rules governing Vermont’s future ganja marketplace. Some of the proposed changes are…
From the Publisher: Cruel World
The weekend’s stretch of glorious, unseasonable weather reminded me of T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Waste Land,” which famously calls out April as “the cruellest month.” Like everyone, I can’t get enough of the sun on my skin, fresh air blowing in the windows and exposed toes. But I’ve learned from experience — specifically, too many…
Pot Seems to Make My Lady Parts Dry Up. How Do I Avoid This?
Dear Reverend, I smoke pot nearly every day. Occasionally it gives me dry mouth. And sometimes when I have sex after smoking, it seems to make my lady parts dry up. How do I avoid this? Cotton Crotch (female, 34) Dear Cotton Crotch, I’m pretty sure that anybody who has used marijuana has had a…
‘This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection’ in a Haunting Drama From Lesotho
Our streaming entertainment options are overwhelming — and not always easy to sort through. This week, the Vermont International Film Foundation starts a new installment of its Split/Screen series, running April 16 through 25. As befits the week of Earth Day, the focus is on the intersection of environmental and human rights. I watched This…
Riding High: In Colorado, Cannabis License Plate Auction Goes to Good Cause
Got “BONG?” Colorado is auctioning off weed-themed license plates to the highest bidders. The “4/20” auction is selling the rights to more than a dozen cannabis-related plates, such as “GOTWAX,” “STASH” and “SATIVA.” The online auction began April 1 and ends, naturally, at 4:20 p.m. on April 20. The auction will raise money for the…
Before Banking on Marijuana, Growers Can Learn From the Recent Hemp Boom-to-Bust
Just two years ago, hemp looked like a crop that could inject some life into Vermont’s flagging agricultural economy. At Statehouse meetings, entrepreneurs, lawmakers and regulators who were giddy with optimism talked of harnessing the profits of the fast-growing industry for societal good. One of them was Carl Christianson, who had just set up a…
Free Will Astrology (4/14/21)
ARIES (March 21-April 19): “Today I feel the whole world is a door,” wrote poet Dennis Silk. In a similar spirit, 13th-century Zen master Wumen Huikai observed, “The whole world is a door of liberation, but people are unwilling to enter it.” Now I’m here to tell you, Aries, that there will be times in…
In Massachusetts, a Marijuana Outlet Rings Up Sales — and Generates Taxes
A white-haired woman from Pittsfield, Mass., disappeared into a building and soon returned holding a paper bag. Sliding into the passenger seat of her sister’s car, she described what she had bought — or, more accurately, what a sales associate had told her she had bought. “She said it has everything: It relaxes you, it…
Bottom Line: vTerra Farms Adopts a Pharmaceutical Approach to Creating CBD Products
When Kevin Kennedy’s sister, Taryn, was dying from an aggressive form of cancer a few years ago, she used cannabis — both THC- and CBD-infused products — to manage her pain, help her sleep and treat the nausea brought on by chemotherapy. At the time, Kennedy said, Taryn was on a very strict diet that…
Who Speaks for Medical Cannabis Patients in an Adult-Use Market?
These are heady times for cannabis legalization advocates, many of whom have fought for decades to end prohibition. Vermont now stands on the threshold of implementing a taxed and regulated adult-use market, which will allow anyone 21 or older to purchase marijuana and other THC-containing products at state-licensed dispensaries. Regulation and oversight of Vermont’s nascent…
Book Review: ‘The Disintegration Loops’ by Stephen Cramer
Stephen Cramer’s The Disintegration Loops comes at the reader in leaps and bounds. Author of six previous books of poems and a volume of translations, and editor of the anthology Turn It Up! Music in Poetry From Jazz to Hip-Hop, Cramer teaches literature and writing at the University of Vermont and lives in Burlington. For…
Soundbites: The Slow but Steady Return of Live Music
Let’s start this week’s column off with a short rant, shall we? I recently received an email from someone who told me they had some “very concerning” news regarding an artist whose music I once reviewed. Without going into detail, I’ll simply say that this troubled citizen informed me that the artist in question is…
Gardener’s Supply Founder Will Raap on How to Cultivate the Cannabis Market
Will Raap moved to Burlington in 1980 to work for Garden Way. Just three years later, he started his own business, Gardener’s Supply, in a former carpet factory in Winooski. In 1986, Raap relocated Gardener’s Supply to the Burlington side of the river, on a piece of land in the Intervale. Raap built his business…
Vermonter Tracey Medeiros Explores ‘The Art of Cooking With Cannabis’ in New Cookbook
Alice B. Toklas gets misplaced credit for spreading the gospel of pot brownies. That’s thanks largely to the 1968 movie I Love You, Alice B. Toklas, in which a young woman bakes up brownies liberally laced with an extra leafy ingredient. In fact, The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book does include a Haschich Fudge recipe,…
Magic Mann Serves Up CBD-Infused Takeout and Education in Essex
A few years ago, my go-to café updated its menu with an option to add CBD to its coffee drinks. Wow, you can put CBD in anything these days, huh? I thought to myself, politely declining the legal version of a hipster speedball. Since then, the variety of cannabidiol tinctures, oils, capsules, topical salves and…
Fox Market and Bar Coming to East Montpelier
After years of working for local co-ops, Doni Cain will get a market of his own when he opens Fox Market and Bar in East Montpelier in early June. Cain, who most recently helped open Barre’s AR Market in September 2020, has some rehab work to do on the building at 3070 Route 2. It…
