The Money Issue April 2014 (Theme Issue)
Does the Gov.’s Lake Clean-Up plan Float?; A Textile Collective Forms in Winooski; A Pair of Reporters Goes Thrifting
Burlington Writers Workshop Releases New Anthology
A young man bets on a boxing bout and finds himself rooting for the wrong fighter. A hotshot ad man fuels his creativity with cocaine. A woman has “mastectomy blues.” A white man in a Louisiana jail in 1962 learns about defiance from watching his African American counterparts. An old woman ekes out an existence…
Troubled Waters: On Champlain Cleanup, Environmentalists Doubt Shumlin’s Resolve
Since returning to state politics in 2007, Peter Shumlin has spoken clearly, compellingly and often about the perils of climate change. Back in 2010, when he ran the Vermont Senate, he led the charge to shut down the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. As governor, he’s been a tireless champion of the renewable energy industry.…
A New Textile Industry Takes Shape in Winooski
At one point in the early 20th century, Vermont’s largest employer was the American Woolen Company. Factories beside the Winooski Falls, powered by rushing water and a workforce of young women and children, churned out cotton and wool fabrics that fueled Winooski’s booming textile industry. The massive flood of 1927 crippled the mills, and they…
Art Review: “Stations of the Cross,” Cathedral Church of St. Paul
If a non-churchgoer can produce a set of charcoal drawings of the Stations of the Cross, then an agnostic former altar boy can sure as heaven review those works. Besides, depictions of Christ’s agony and death are a core component of Western art history. And Easter is coming, so the show at the Cathedral Church…
Seven Days Takes a Bite Out of Vermont’s New Chocolates
At first, it was a trickle — then a flood. After a few months of hearing about new chocolatiers and seeing their products on the shelves, we realized that Vermont is experiencing a chocolate renaissance. The state is inundated with innovative chocolate artisans, from makers of single-origin bars to shapers of truffles to bold souls…
Farmers Need Seeds to Cultivate New Hemp Crop
Last year, activists pushing for the legal cultivation of hemp scored a big victory in Vermont: In June, Gov. Peter Shumlin signed into law a bill that legalizes the cultivation of cannabis sativa, a relative of marijuana that proponents say could be a lucrative value-added crop for Vermont farmers. The only trouble? State law doesn’t…
Two Seven Days Bargain-Hunters Scour Area Thrift Shops
Ethan de Seife: “Hey, Ethan, you wanna go buy some rectangles?” So my friend Tom would periodically ask, back in grad school. “Rectangles,” in our nerdy secret code, was a catchall term that referred to books, DVDs, CDs, LPs — the media objects that both of us loved to accumulate (yes, some of them are…
Obituary: Lucienne (Roy) Pare, 1916-2014
Lucienne (Roy) Pare, 97, died peacefully Tuesday, April 8, 2014, in Starr Farm Nursing Center. Born in Winooski on Nov. 20, 1916, she was the daughter of the late Arthur and Bernadette (Beaudoin) Roy. Lucienne was a lady with a keen mind and an astounding memory who truly enjoyed people of all ages. This was…
Artists Draw Conclusions About Creativity and Financial Savvy
The expression “starving artist” may be hyperbole, but it has some basis in truth. Creative types are not the only ones who have a problem making and managing money, of course. But the two sides of the brain — for current purposes, let’s call them the arty and the financial — don’t always have an…
Early-Morning Helicopter Raid: A Wake-up Call for Winooski?
Around 4 a.m. on March 27, a bright light shone into the homes on Lafountain and Leclair streets in Winooski, sending residents scrambling from their beds to their windows. Looking out, they saw a helicopter whirring overhead. Like something out of a Hollywood thriller, it illuminated a nearby three-story home that was swarming with police.…
Work: Franny Bastian, VPR’s Pledge Drive Guru
Franny Bastian wasn’t exactly a bookworm when she studied at the University of Vermont in the early 1970s. In fact, she admits her grades were terrible. “I dropped out of school because I spent all my time at the student radio station,” she says, referring to WRUV, which in those years broadcast on the AM…
Letters to the Editor (4/9/14)
Our Mis-take [Re “Next Act,” March 26]: In the sidebar entitled “Les Misérables by the Numbers,” it incorrectly says that the original Broadway production began in 1983. Les Misérables opened on Broadway on March 12, 1987. Also, under info it says “Les Misérables by Claude-Michel Shönberg.” It should read “… by Alain Boubil and Claude-Michel…
Free Will Astrology (4/9/14)
Aries (March 21-April 19) Freedom is the most important kind of joy you can seek right now. It’s also the most important subject to study and think about, as well as the most important skill to hone. I advise you to make sure that freedom is flowing through your brain and welling up in your…
Feeding Families from Afar: Accounting for Vermont’s Remittances
It can be argued that Vermont’s most life-altering financial transactions aren’t happening in its banks and credit unions but over the counters of Rite Aids, Price Choppers, Kinney Drugs and Hannafords across the state. New Americans who may be earning the minimum wage here collectively transfer thousands of dollars each week to Africa, Asia and…
![8th LEAP Energy Fair [SIV348]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/episode348-4-e1755139611274.webp?resize=1200%2C900&ssl=1)
8th LEAP Energy Fair [SIV348]
4/5/14: The 8th Annual LEAP Energy Fair was held on Saturday at Crossett Brook Middle School in Duxbury. Eva talked to students who have been participating in the school’s new Sustainability Program. With the recent addition of two solar arrays, Crossett Brook has the largest solar capacity of any school in the state. Waterbury LEAP,…
Nymphomaniac: Vol. 1
Perhaps the most surprising thing about Lars von Trier is that he still can surprise us. There isn’t a filmmaker alive more controversial, indifferent to giving offense or aggressively provocative. And yet, just when you’re sure there can’t possibly be one more artistic envelope for the Danish auteur to push, he pulls one out of…
News Quirks (4/9/14)
Curses, Foiled Again Yafait Tadesse went to prison for stealing the names and Social Security numbers of a dozen people and using the stolen identities to claim tax refunds. The bogus returns instructed the IRS to load the refunds onto debit cards and mail them to the same address in Georgia that led authorities to…
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
I have a confession: I’m bored of superhero movies. I’ve never been a big comics reader or a fan of guys zipping around in tights. But earlier in the decade, the one-two punch of Iron Man and The Dark Knight — one witty, the other gritty — won me over. Since then, I haven’t hated…
WTF: Did Vermont ever have a state bank? Or its own currency?
Last month on Town Meeting Day, voters in 18 communities approved nonbinding resolutions calling on the Vermont legislature to create a state-run bank similar to North Dakota’s. Why create a Vermont bank? According to a December 2013 study by the University of Vermont’s Gund Institute of Ecological Economics and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst,…
Leland Kinsey Issues Seventh Volume of Poems, ‘Winter Ready’
Green Writers Press is a new Vermont-owned and -operated publishing company with a mission to spoil the reader and spare the tree by printing ecologically minded books on 100 percent postconsumer paper. Following on the heels of its anthology So Little Time, poems by Vermont writers addressing climate change and sustainability, the Brattleboro press released…
Theater Review: The Spitfire Grill
If spring has put you in the mood for a musical, Northern Stage has a cheerful, polished production of The Spitfire Grill for you. The staging is fine, though the story is piffle — expect only the whipped cream of dessert, not a full meal. Still, these empty calories go down easy. Though it’s intended…
ONE Pepper Grill Closes; A Social Drinking Site Grows
The Old North End has lost a craft-beer drinking locale — but its owner is staying solidly rooted in the beer world. Last Monday, ONE Pepper Grill owner Toby Dion closed his 3-year-old hot-dogs-and-brews eatery to devote his efforts to WhatIsPouring.com, a social drinking website that connects drinkers with the tap list at their local…
Vermont Supper Club to Open in Former Claire’s Restaurant
Hardwick locavore pioneer Claire’s Restaurant & Bar closed on March 4. But hungry residents won’t have long to mourn. On May 9, a new restaurant will debut at Claire’s 41 South Main Street location. Vermont Supper Club is the restaurant that Peter and Jean Marie McLyman have long dreamed of opening. Peter, who was most…
Dave Kleh, Me & My Friends
(Self-released, CD, digital download) To my recollection, I’ve never met Dave Kleh. But based on my limited knowledge of him, I suspect he’s an interesting fellow. Kleh has been an active musician locally dating back to the late 1970s. For the last seven-ish years, he’s been the leader of a band called the Fizz. Originally…
Phantom Truck Joins the Mobile Food Scene
Eaters who never made it to one of chef Matt Sargent’s pop-up Phantom Dinners will soon have another opportunity to try his eclectic locavore dishes — at a food-truck window. The 28-foot, midnight-blue Phantom Truck will hit Vermont in late May or early June, said Sargent, who spoke to Seven Days while driving his newly…
Squimley and the Woolens, 10,000 Fire Jellyfish
(Self-released, digital download) In the age of Pitchfork-wielding hipsters, the word “jam” has become something of a four-letter word, carrying with it a confining, maybe even damaging, stigma. It is also, much like indie, alternative and any number of other catchall labels, often misleading and inaccurate. So how do you know when a jam band…
A Clockwork Orange Chimes in Middlebury
British author Anthony Burgess wrote his ultraviolent dystopian novella A Clockwork Orange in just a few weeks. Published in Britain in 1962, in the midst of a national hysteria over youth delinquency, A Clockwork Orange has since been hailed as one of the best English-language books of the 20th century. In 1971, Stanley Kubrick’s film…
Four More Vermont-Made Albums You Haven’t Heard
So many records, so little time. Seven Days gets more album submissions than we know what to do with. And, given the ease of record making these days, it’s difficult to keep up. Still, we try to get to every local release that comes across the music desk, no matter how obscure or far out.…
Pop-Up Plays Come to Middlebury’s Town Hall Theater
Deadline Drama What to do when a theater has a rare dark night? Why, throw together some pop-up plays, of course. That’s what Haley Rice figured. The “brand-spankin’-new” operations manager at Middlebury’s Town Hall Theater is already putting her reputation on the line by producing this “leap into the unknown,” as a recent THT press…
Soundbites: Charlie O’s Reopens, More Concerts on the Green and Country Comes to the Monkey House
Thank God! After being closed for 10 spring-cleaning days, Charlie O’s World Famous in Montpelier reopens this week. And the capital city rejoices. Normally, a dive bar closing and reopening would not be breaking news. But Charlie O’s merits mention here for two reasons. One, as I’ve often stated in this column, it’s the greatest…
Vermonters Aim to Break Guinness World Record for Longest Contra-Dance Line
What does it take to break a Guinness World Record? First, a big idea. Second, perseverance. Just ask Eric Smith. The 52-year-old Cuttingsville resident aims to break the world record for longest contra-dance line — one currently held by 2,208 people in Riga, Latvia. Smith and fellow contra enthusiasts are beating the bushes to attract…
How Soon After Childbirth Should I Feel Like Having Sex Again?
Dear Athena, Before we had children, my husband and I had a very active and intimate sex life. After the birth of our first child, let’s just say that finding the time to get it on became more difficult. He was ready, but it took me more time to feel sexy — about a year.…
Obituary: George Shumlin, 1925-2014, Westminster West
George Shumlin died April 10 at his home after a short illness, surrounded by his wife and children, who loved him. Born in May, 1925, in Newark, New Jersey, the son of Elliott and Betty Shumlin, he graduated from Plainfield High School in 1942. His college education was interrupted by World War II in which, after…
