The Media Issue 2015
The Media Issue: Bernie’s Campaign Kickoff; the Crowd; and the Bro in Britain; Erica Heilman’s Path to Podcasting; Three Vermont Papers Making It Work; Tv Videographer Dave St. Pierre
Obituary: Linda Ann Vincelette
Linda Ann Vincelette, age 58, died in a tragic automobile accident Sunday evening, May 10, 2015, on Maquam Shore. Born in Branford, Connecticut on, December 14, 1956, she was the daughter of the late Nelson Mitchell and Mary Jane (Lapan) Vincelette. She attended nursing school in Wisconsin and for several years worked as a Registered…
Obituary: ALFRED “GUS” GAETANI, Burlington
Alfred Francis “Gus” Gaetani, died with his family present on Feb. 6, 2015, at age 92. A kind, gentle person with a dry wit, he loved nothing more than the “hullabaloo” that comes from being with family and friends. There’s a date change for the Vermont funeral and a Mass of Christian Burial will be…
Obituary: Sarah H. Crocker, 1953-2015, Colchester, Vt
Sarah Crocker passed away quietly at home surrounded by loved ones on May 22nd after a long and heroic battle with cancer. Sarah was happiest at home on her land with her hands in the dirt, the wind on her face and the sun warming her entire being. She will be remembered for a sense…
Obituary: Carole Martel Patton
Carole Martel Patton, 81, passed away peacefully at her home in South Burlington, Vermont on Wednesday, May 27, 2015 following a long illness. She was born on December 25, 1933 in South Hero, Vermont the daughter of the late Cifford and Marion (Merrihew) Martel. Carole married Darrell W. Patton on August 8, 1952 in Colchester,…
Obituary: Robert F. Brown, Sr.
Robert F. Brown Sr., 82, a longtime resident of Washington Ave. in Bennington died Sunday May 24, 2015 at the Southwestern Vermont Medical Center in Bennington, VT. following a brief illness He was born in Cambridge, New York August 20, 1932. He was the son of the late Carl and Alfrieda (Thurber) Brown. Mr. Brown…
![The Paper the Ps Built [SIV400]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/episode400.webp?resize=1200%2C900&ssl=1)
The Paper the Ps Built [SIV400]
5/9/15: In celebration of the 400th episode of Stuck in Vermont and the upcoming 20th anniversary of Seven Days (the newsweekly that makes SIV possible), Eva sat down with cofounders Pamela Polston and Paula Routly to find out how two performing artists created a multi-million dollar media company. This week is also the Seven Days’…
How Three Vermont Media Companies Keep the Presses Rolling
You’d have to be living under a rock to have missed the media news of the decade: Newspapers are struggling to survive in a world of readers who believe good journalism should be free — and delivered to their cellphones. When it comes to print, most of the arrows point downward in the Pew Research Center’s…
Free Will Astrology (5/27/15)
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Keith Moon played drums for the rock band the Who. He was once voted the second-greatest drummer in history. But his erratic behavior, often provoked by drugs or alcohol, sometimes interfered with his abilities. In 1973, the Who was doing a live concert near San Francisco when the horse tranquilizer that…
Vermont’s Northland Journal Focuses on the Past
Scott Wheeler and his buddy Joe Queenin tucked into a corner booth at a pizza joint an hour before the lunch rush on a recent Tuesday in downtown Derby. Queenin, a 91-year-old World War II veteran, ordered his usual Guinness. Wheeler, 50, asked the waitress, whom he knows by name, for an IPA. Then he…
Quick Lit: Read Between the Lines by Jo Knowles
The cover of Jo Knowles’ sixth novel sports a clever visual double entendre. A hand displays three fingers, the middle one’s nail emblazoned with a smiley sticker, while the title advises us to Read Between the Lines. As we’ll learn in the book’s final chapter (if we haven’t already figured it out), that particular combination…
Tomorrowland
This isn’t so much a movie as two hours-plus of product placement. The nerve of Disney to sell us tickets to an ad for a theme-park attraction to which it wants to sell us tickets. That’s not synergy. That’s corporate greed. At least Pirates of the Caribbean had Johnny Depp when he could still be…
Truckin’: Natural Gas Deliveries Fuel Industries — and Pipeline Foes
Starting next week, some 14 to 20 trucks will make a daily hour-and-45-minute trip from Milton to Ticonderoga, N.Y. They’ll be hauling compressed natural gas to fuel the International Paper mill, in lieu of a proposed pipeline nixed earlier this year. “We’re feeling like this is a good option for us,” said Donna Wadsworth, spokeswoman…
The Media Issue
At first glance, our media issue might seem a little like navel-gazing; we’re a newspaper, after all, solidly part of the fourth estate — or, you could argue, the “fifth estate,” a contemporary sociocultural reference to nonmainstream media outlets. But how you get information matters, and someone has to cover it. Who else is going to…
Heat on the Beat: Former Cynic Editor on How to Win a Pulitzer
In April, University of Vermont alum Eric Lipton won the Pulitzer Prize for the second time. The New York Times reporter and one-time editor of UVM’s the Vermont Cynic student newspaper took the prize for investigative reporting for “Courting Favor,” a series on the lobbying of state attorneys general by corporate interests. Seven Days interviewed…
Far From the Madding Crowd
Sometimes the casting of a literary adaptation serves its box office better than its source material. Early in this new version of Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd, independent-minded Bathsheba Everdene (Carey Mulligan) refuses a marriage proposal from soft-spoken sheep farmer Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts). After all, she barely knows him — and besides,…
Listeners Who Veer From Tired Stories Hit ‘Rumble Strip Vermont’
In the May 4 episode of Erica Heilman’s podcast “Rumble Strip Vermont,” St. Johnsbury salon owner Vaughn Hood recounted his experiences in the Vietnam War with brutal candor. “I sold anything that I owned; I wrote my fiancée a ‘Dear Mary’ letter, broke off with her, because I didn’t want to have the responsibility of trying…
Previewing Vermont’s Summer Music Festivals
Waking Windows is in the books and the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival takes to its many stages next week. And that means Vermont’s music festival season is about to kick into high gear. Practically every weekend from now until the end of September, fests of all shapes and sizes will disturb the peace — in…
Bernie Begins: Sanders Launches His ‘Political Revolution’
Burlington’s favorite son promised a “political revolution” Tuesday as he kicked off an improbable campaign for the nation’s highest office. Judging by the 5,000 supporters who packed the Queen City’s sun-soaked Waterfront Park, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will not fight that revolution alone. “This is an emotional day for me,” the 73-year-old senator said, his…
News Quirks (5/27/15)
Curses, Foiled Again Police said they received their “strongest investigative lead” in the case of 80 frozen pizzas stolen from a warehouse in Gambell, Alaska, when John Koozaata, 29, and Lewis Oozeva, 21, called the police station and tried to sell the pizzas to on-duty officers. (Anchorage’s Alaska Dispatch) Better World Without People Nevada granted permission…
Bernie’s Bro: Working-Class Brooklyn Roots Shaped My Brother
Bernie Sanders wears his leftist politics as comfortably as the rumpled suit jackets he used to favor. The progressive principles he has consistently advocated throughout a half-century in politics grew organically from the heavily Jewish and staunchly liberal-Democratic section of Brooklyn where the Sanders family lived. That’s what his older brother, Larry, recounted last week…
Off Center Revives Playwright Stephen Goldberg’s Screwed
If Burlington is enjoying a boom in original theater, it’s easy to pinpoint the catalyst. Since opening in 2010, Off Center for the Dramatic Arts has become that long-sought space where thespians can develop and present new — sometimes daring, experimental and just plain out-there — work without breaking the bank. Playwright and Off Center cofounder…
Vermont Playwright’s Icon Gets a German Makeover
Playwright, director, actor, slam poet — Seth Jarvis has racked up a number of accomplishments in his onstage career so far. In fall 2013, Jarvis launched a theater series called Playmakers, in which local writers and performers read works-in-progress. This spring, he directed O, Caligula! for Saints & Poets Production Company. He does outreach work…
Soundbites: And the Winner Is
If you’re just joining us, for the past few weeks we here at your friendly neighborhood alt-weekly newspaper have been running the annual Grand Point North Local Band Contest. Seven Days readers vote to decide which Vermont band gets to open the festivities at the Grand Point North music festival in September. Not to toot…
Art Review: Erika Lawlor Schmidt, Castleton Downtown Gallery
The surreal and the playful find common currency in Erika Lawlor Schmidt’s new exhibition, “Blame It on My Youth,” at the Castleton Downtown Gallery in Rutland. All the works on view can be described as “collage,” but a few could easily be called sculpture, while others owe more to printmaking. Many of the 35 pieces…
On the Restaurant Real Estate Hunt With Peter Yee
On a recent Friday, Peter Yee of Yellow Sign Commercial brings a local bar owner to look at the former Istanbul Kebab House in Essex Junction, still decorated in the teal and grape hues that appealed to the previous operators. “It’s funny, but they loved this purple color,” says Yee, the real estate agent who…
Cantare Con Spirito Brings Unusual Program to Woodstock
Earlier this year, ArtisTree Community Arts Center & Gallery in Woodstock inaugurated its new theater arts program, with 33-year-old Jarvis Green as director. In a phone call, Green waxes enthusiastic about the events he’s organizing for the remainder of his first year with the nonprofit, including plays by Neil Simon and Shakespeare. But the entertainment…
I Hate Giving Blow Jobs
Dear Athena, One of my best friends recently told me the reason I can’t keep a boyfriend is that I hate giving blow jobs. She said it would save all my relationships if I would just give them, because men appreciate it so much. Is that true? How can I go from hating blow jobs…
Y Naught, Initial Conditions
(Self-released, CD, digital download) Y Naught are a Burlington trio of former UVM physics and music students. Composed of lead vocalist and guitarist Wallace Kenyon, drummer Evan Laird and bassist Pat Markley, the band seems to approach its music as it might a physics experiment. On their debut album, Initial Conditions, Y Naught test the…
Friends to the End
When I pulled into the graveled driveway in Shelburne, two men were stepping out the side door of the house. One of them, clearly the elder, was reedy and wan. Though he managed a smile, he looked positively worn out, like he’d run one too many marathons. The other guy, carrying a luggage bag, was…
Chasing the Images That Make the News
When police, fire and emergency medical personnel in northwestern Vermont roll up to the scene of a house fire, bank robbery or serious car accident, they can expect to see a scruffy-bearded man with a video camera on his right shoulder. He’s freelance videographer Dave St. Pierre, and he often gets to the scene before…
Letters to the Editor (5/27/15)
Pot Problem I would simply like to note that the long prohibition on marijuana and more recent war on drugs have destroyed many poor and working-class families — particularly black families and young black men. Yet now we lift up a small group of wealthy white people who are admittedly looking to profit from a prohibition…
Ghost Weapons, Collapse Songs
(Self-released, digital download) Gary Peters is a sad bastard. No, really. He applies the tag himself on his Bandcamp page, so we feel pretty confident using the term. And his music, written and recorded under the pseudonym Ghost Weapons, bears out that label. Ghost Weapons’ debut EP, Collapse Songs, was composed in the throes of…
Two Brews Podcasts Hosts Are Unlikely Connoisseurs
Kris Jarrett and Matt Gadouas — cohosts of Two Brews podcast, the beer-tasting web-radio show that aired its first episode last December — are not authorities. “We are not experts,” Jarrett says, cradling a dark, malty brew at Winooski’s Mule Bar. “From day one we’ve said we’re not industry insiders. We can’t pronounce half the hops to…
New Thai, Doughnuts, Breweries; Charlmont Returns to Morrisville
Formerly the home of Stacks Sandwiches, the corner lot at the intersection of Burlington’s Pearl Street and North Winooski Avenue will soon house authentic Thai cuisine. Later this summer, married business owners Brett Richland and Samran Kaewkoet plan to open East West Café in the erstwhile sandwich spot. Kaewkoet, who will run East West’s kitchen,…
