The Money Issue April 2015 (Theme Issue)
The Money Issue: Budget Buster Sen. Jane Kitchel on the Record; A Food-Biz Pitch Competition; Vermont’s “Numbers Racket”
Obituary: Virginia Mae Colt, 1918-2015, Burlington
Virginia Mae Colt, 97, a longtime resident of Burlington and Sarasota, FL, passed away April 10, 2015 at the University of Vermont Medical Center. She was born February 4, 1918 in Burlington, VT to Walter and Alice (Senna) Burke and graduated from Cathedral High School. She operated beauty salons in downtown Burlington for many years.…
’71
The most remarkable thing about Yann Demange’s directorial debut isn’t that Roadside Attractions decided to dump it in the post-Oscars landfill. Nor is it that, just when you’re sure you’d be fine to never see Unbroken’s Jack O’Connell play a brutalized soldier again, you suddenly find yourself riveted by that very sight. The most remarkable…
Taverna Khione and Noonie’s Deli Open in Chittenden County
Taverna Khione opened at the former Café Shelburne space at 5573 Shelburne Road on Tuesday, April 7. As owner Marc Provencher recently told Seven Days in these pages, Greek American staples gyros and moussaka were not on the menu. However, lovers of Greek comfort food were treated to a cinnamon-imbued pastitsio. Other familiar dishes that…
Furious 7
The Fast & Furious franchise plays fast and loose with whole categories of laws that real people live by — those of physics, for one. Those of geopolitical logic, for another. But let it not be said that these increasingly wacked-out action movies don’t have laws of their own. For instance: Anything you can do…
Work: Bank Teller Nick Darrow
Nick Darrow graduated from Middlebury Union High School and headed to an arts college in Colorado to pursue his dream: becoming an animator. He finished his freshman year with a 4.0 grade point average, but financial problems forced him to drop out before his sophomore year, he says. So Darrow found himself back home in…
Fair Share? Officials Struggle to Regulate Vermont’s ‘Sharing Economy’
In early March, Vermont’s Department of Financial Regulation issued a consumer alert cautioning people that a “revolution” was brewing in the Green Mountain State. It was referring to the “sharing economy,” in which people use online platforms to rent their homes, cars — even their pets — to strangers. Titled “Be aware before you share,”…
Art Review: ‘The Waskomium: Where the Art Stops’
Burlington’s Amy E. Tarrant Gallery is hosting something of a coming-out party for the world’s largest collection of contemporary Vermont art. “The Waskowmium: Where the Art Stops” presents a tantalizing selection of works from a trove that many have heard about but few have seen. Judging by the turnout for avid collector Mark Waskow’s talk…
As Canadian Dollar Sinks, Border Communities Tread Water
For more than a decade, Canadian customers at the Newport Natural Market and Café could buy their baguettes and organic milk with their own cash, as if they were paying with American greenbacks. Not anymore. A bright yellow sign went up at the cash register two weeks ago announcing that the store in this border…
![Danforth Pewter Turns 40 [SIV394]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/episode394.webp?resize=1200%2C900&ssl=1)
Danforth Pewter Turns 40 [SIV394]
2/26/15: For the past 40 years, Judi and Fred Danforth have been making art together and building one of Vermont’s most well-known and successful businesses. Eva meets the Danforths and watches them create some of their hand made pieces in their Middlebury workshop. Music: The Flying Romanos, “Fine Companion,” The Cush, New Appreciation for Sunshine,…
Soundbites: Full BDJF Lineup Announced; Buch Spieler Sold
Remember last Friday when it was, like, 65 degrees and sunny? And then Saturday happened, and we awoke to find snow on the ground. Even for Vermont’s bipolar weather patterns, that was a serious kick in the pants. Despite that soul-crushing cruelty, Friday’s glimmer of spring was at least a reminder that warmer days do…
Letters to the Editor (4/8/15)
Take Back Junior’s I agree with Hannah Palmer Egan [Taste Test: Junior’s Rustico, March 18]. Junior’s has lost its way, and I hope it finds the way back to its original quality heritage and N.Y.-style American Italian food. Prior to opening, they made statements saying that it was going to be high-quality handmade fare. But from…
AWOL Pols: Vermont GOPers Take a Walk on Indiana Resolution
When the Vermont House voted overwhelmingly last Friday for a resolution opposing Indiana’s controversial religious freedom law, just one legislator uttered the word “nay.” In a written statement he provided reporters, Rep. Warren Van Wyck (R-Ferrisburgh) explained that he was “not interested in passing judgments” on the actions of other states, “unless they directly affect…
Vermont’s Budget Cuts Meet the Great Pushback
Reps. Mike Marcotte and Butch Shaw have spent years advocating for greater government efficiency. So the two Republicans acknowledge the irony in their fight to save two emergency dispatch centers. In January, Gov. Peter Shumlin proposed closing Vermont State Police call centers in Derby and Rutland. He said the plan would save $1.7 million by…
At a Pitch Competition, Emerging Food Businesses Develop Their Wares
The Vermont Tortilla Company is brand-new, but its products are made with a technique that’s thousands of years old. Nixtamalization, explains cofounder April Moulaert, is the labor-intensive process in which corn kernels are dried, then cooked in an alkaline solution, hulled and ground into flour. What would otherwise be bland old cornmeal gains flavor and…
The Red Telephone, Places You Return
(Raise Giant Frogs Records, CD, digital download) Once upon a time in Burlington, there was a band called Envy. This was during the alt-rock era of the mid to late 1990s, a generation of local music widely and nostalgically regarded as a high-water mark in local rock. Led by vocalist/guitarist Matt Hutton and guitarist Sean…
Free Will Astrology (4/8/15)
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Uitwaaien is a Dutch word that means to go out for a stroll in windy weather simply because it’s exhilarating. I don’t know any language that has parallel terms for running in the rain for the dizzy joy of it, or dancing through a meadow in the dark because it’s such…
Session Americana Eye the Next Level
If you’ve ever experienced Session Americana live in a small club, you’ve likely been there when the band blasts through fan favorite “Beer Town” as crazed fans roar out the chorus. And you might find it hard to believe that the group has taken such a long time to move on to bigger venues. In…
News Quirks (4/8/15)
Curses, Foiled Again Joey Patterson, 22, eluded Idaho authorities for several months, but then he posted his whereabouts on Facebook. He invited friends to play softball at Armory Softball Field in Caldwell. That’s where police found him. Monitoring social media has led officers to suspects before, Sgt. Joey Hoadley noted, explaining, “Surprisingly, even fugitives can’t…
Dick FaceBat, Space Hearse
(Beautiful Music CDs, CD, digital download) Dick FaceBat is the alias of Burlington’s Richard Wright — not to be confused with the famed Native Son author. The former Wright, however, does have his own claim to fame, particularly among Phish-heads. A Vermonter since the 1980s, he once produced music as Nancy. Under that sobriquet, Wright…
A Lottery Player Wants Vermont to Shake the Habit
Cole Ward is one of the top-ranked master butchers in the United States. He’s taught his trade to college students and farmers, been featured in culinary books and articles, and produced his own book, CD and instructional video on raising, butchering and marketing gourmet meats. In short, Ward knows exactly how lambs are led to…
Theater Review: ‘Almost, Maine,’ Parish Players
With winter barely in the rearview mirror, the Parish Players’ production of Almost, Maine stirs knowing laughter in audiences all too familiar with winter’s short days and cold nights. The small-town tales woven by playwright John Cariani might feel familiar to many Vermonters, too. Told as nine interlinked stories, or scenes, over two acts, the…
Film Series Highlights Architecture on Fogo Island
Andrew Chardain first saw Fogo Island, off the fractured coast of Newfoundland, on a motorcycling trip with friends in fall 2011. Traversing the island’s long expanses of barren rock between small fishing villages, as rain poured down, the group came upon an isolated “little black cube” of a building that caught this architect-in-the-making’s eye. Chardain,…
I Admitted to a Friend That I’m Interested in Him
Dear Athena, I have this friend I’ve liked for years. I finally admitted it to him. The reply I got was that he can only offer something casual. I’m disappointed in myself for missing my chance years ago when we were both single. Now he is supporting his ex-girlfriend (who is a stay-at-home mom) and their…
Vermont’s Opera Fan Clubs Keep Area Arias Alive
Good news for those rare souls pinging around the Green Mountains who like opera: You can now find one another. Vermont hosts two opera fan groups, and joining both is as easy as sending an email to their organizers. Chittenden County Opera Lovers was founded last summer by Dorothea Penar of Shelburne and five other…
Jenn Karson’s Sonic Mapping Workshop Explores Burlington
Sound has always been Jenn Karson’s medium. The 45-year-old first became known around Burlington in her twenties as the lead singer of the all-female alternative pop band Zola Turn, one of the best-known acts to come out of the Queen City in the 1990s. Now she’s a lecturer at the University of Vermont’s College of…
Jane Kitchel Writes the Budget — and Brings the Sandwiches
Jane Kitchel, the six-term senator from Caledonia County, seemed a little preoccupied last Thursday afternoon. As she took her seat in the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Statehouse meeting room, she confessed to her colleagues that she’d struggled to sleep the night before. Who could blame her? In the next month, the committee she chairs is expected…
WTF: Why Don’t All Vermont ATMs Offer French?
Among the 14 language options on the ATM at TD Bank’s downtown Burlington branch is one that few customers are likely to recognize: Shqip. That’s the Albanian word for the national language, which is spoken by some seven million people, most of them in Albania. Yet of the eight banks and credit unions in the…
Seasoned Traveler: Himalayan Nepali Cuisine
Raymond Dewan doesn’t remember ever serving a fellow Nepali at his Morrisville take-out restaurant, Nepali Cuisine. “Our customers are all locals,” he says. What about the sizable enclave of his countrymen in Burlington? Dewan suspects they’re happy to stay at home and cook — and, in any case, his cuisine wouldn’t give them a taste…
Pierogi Café Opens in Quechee
In November 2013, native Pole Viktor Witkowski began selling homemade pierogi at the Woodstock Winter Farmers Market as Pierogi Me! Since then, the business has expanded to include vending at several other Vermont and New Hampshire markets and stores as far afield as Cambridge, Mass. The pierogi trade is so brisk that, last month, Witkowski…
Montréal’s Tripes & Caviar Pops Up in Vermont
When Jean-Michel Leblond, the chef behind Montréal’s Tripes & Caviar, ventures stateside, the destination is always the same. “We’re super good friends with the guys from Hen of the Wood,” he says of the Waterbury restaurant. “It’s my hideout. It’s my man cave.” Five years ago, Leblond founded Tripes & Caviar as a small pop-up,…
