The Money & Retirement Issue 2018
Where Are Vermont’s Retirees Going to Live?; New CSA Monetary Models; Plattsburgh Unplugs Cryptocurrency Mining
The Parmelee Post: Vermont Gun Heartbroken to Learn He’s Not Being Taken Away From Owner
A day after Gov. Phil Scott signed three historic gun reform bills into law, one Vermont gun was devastated to learn he’ll be still stuck living with the same owner. “He told me this was it — this was the time they take me away from him for good,” said Vermont-based AR-15 rifle Shootygo Pew-Pew,…
The Cannabis Catch-Up: Study Finds More Medical Weed = Fewer Opioids
A groundbreaking new report found that the number of opioid prescriptions dropped in states that implemented medical cannabis programs. “Medical cannabis policies may be one mechanism that can encourage lower prescription opioid use and serve as a harm abatement tool in the opioid crisis,” the medical journal JAMA concluded. The study found that Medicare prescriptions…
Family Foundations in Vermont Quietly Manage Vast Holdings
They have addresses near unassuming town squares or off dirt roads in quiet corners of Vermont. Charitable family foundations with millions of dollars in assets are often based where few neighbors even know they exist. “In a place like Vermont, there are many people who do not want to be known in their communities as…
Movie Review: Nostalgia Becomes a High-Stakes Game in Spielberg’s Overcrowded ‘Ready Player One’
Steven Spielberg parlayed nostalgia for the pop culture of his youth into blockbusters that won over a new generation. Ernest Cline parlayed nostalgia for the pop culture of his youth into the best-selling 2011 novel Ready Player One. So it’s not hard to see why the celebrated filmmaker chose to adapt the novel, which chronicles…
Album Review: Deep River Saints, ‘For Posterity’
(Self-released, CD, digital download) I had a music teacher once tell me that nostalgia was a double-edged sword for an artist. While looking wistfully to the past could easily send a musician down a rich vein of inspiration, it could also become a highway straight to stagnation and repetition — two of a songwriter’s main…
A Vermont-Made Film Documents the Grange
For nearly three decades, Charlotte Barrett dreamed of somehow documenting the essence of the Grange. The once-robust agricultural advocacy group has seen flagging membership as the number of small farms in America has steadily declined. The kernel of Barrett’s idea sprang from an article she wrote for the Valley News in the late 1980s about…
Quick Lit: ‘Lords of St. Thomas’ by Jackson Ellis
Reading Lords of St. Thomas, one might be forgiven for imagining that Burlington author Jackson Ellis is in his seventh or eighth decade. Narrated by a native Nevadan born in 1926, the novel has a distinctly memoiristic feel, like a piece of vintage Americana. A little research reveals that Ellis, founder and copublisher of the…
Eat This Week, April 4 to 10, 2018: Rounds Around
Abracadabra, brunch! Chef Peter Varkonyi pops up at Woodstock’s town beanery for a magical bagel party, where everything’s naturally leavened and handmade from scratch. On the menu? Everything bagels with smoked-salmon cream cheese and pickled onion; jalapeño rounds, crispy with cheddar and cradling ham; and blueberry bagels with sweet cream cheese. Also: fudge babka and…
Hackie: The Pipes Are Calling
“So, are you a born-and-bred Vermonter?” I asked James MacNeil, the burly man with a formidable white beard sitting in the back of my taxi. He had come up to Burlington for some medical tests, and I was driving him back to his home, located in a small town south of Rutland. “I am not,”…
Banking on the Future: Winooski Teacher Primes Students for Financial Success
When it comes to teaching kids personal finance, Vermont gets a D. The 2017 National Report Card on State Efforts to Improve Financial Literacy in High Schools — put out by Champlain College’s Center for Financial Literacy — dings the state for setting “modest levels” of personal finance education in state academic standards, providing no…
Robot Dog Studio’s Ryan Cohen Gets the Job Done Right
Cutting a record can be a stressful process, especially in a professional recording studio. Most bands in the Burlington area work on shoestring budgets, and the ticking clock of a studio’s hourly rate can be menacing. But one local joint has a leg up on calming and soothing its clients — four legs, actually. Williston’s Robot…
Where is Vermont’s Burgeoning Population of Seniors Going to Live?
Vermont is preparing for a demographic shift that has been described with all manner of ominous-sounding metaphors: the elder earthquake, the geriatric time bomb, the demographic cliff, the silver tsunami. Call it what you will, the numbers are sobering: According to U.S. Census figures, Vermont’s population is the second oldest in the nation and on…
Bitcoin Miners Seek Fortune — and Cheap Electricity — in Plattsburgh
The doings in Plattsburgh City Hall rarely grab the international spotlight. But last Thursday, the mayor of the sleepy upstate New York burg across the lake from Burlington explained that he’d just gotten an email from a person in Sweden complaining about the city’s moratorium on electricity-hogging cryptocurrency companies. That’s how far news has traveled…
Who Is Watching Vermont’s Legal Guardians?
Bruce Thomas and two of his siblings waged a costly court battle for eight years, alleging that their brother Paul abused his legal power as their elderly mother’s court-appointed guardian and bled her holdings of $1.1 million. Paul paid himself for work that wasn’t necessary or wasn’t done, his siblings alleged in court filings. They…
What I Learned From ‘Meet the Frugalwoods’
Elizabeth and Nate Thames were 32 years old when they threw it all away and moved to Vermont. The couple, each of whom worked for nonprofits, scrimped and saved for a few years in preparation for their escape from Cambridge, Mass. The couple’s plan is described in supreme detail in Elizabeth’s recently published book, Meet…
Letters to the Editor (4/4/18)
Real Leadership [Re “Unlikely Allies Open a Homeless Shelter in Lamoille County,” March 21]: Did you hear the one about the rabbi, the minister and the sheriff who skipped the red tape and opened a homeless shelter in Hyde Park? So rarely do we see real leadership like this. It’s the best story I’ve read…
At Pica-Pica, St. Johnsbury Goes Filipino
In a Scholastic Aptitude Test analogy, pica pica would be to the Philippines what tapas are to Spain. The term — which describes small plates made for sharing, most often in groups, and for eating alongside beverages — is also the name of newish St. Johnsbury restaurant Pica-Pica Filipino Cuisine, which opened last September on…
The Money & Retirement Issue — 2018
“Follow the money.” That famous, if fictitious, Watergate-era quote is a journalistic commandment. So, for this annual theme issue, we followed it. The paper (bill) trail led us to a range of retirement homes to see how the state is prepping for the aging baby boom generation. Across the lake, Plattsburgh is the first city…
Scarlett Letters: My Boyfriend Talks Dirty and It’s Annoying
Dear Scarlett, My boyfriend talks dirty while we’re having sex. I know it turns him on, but I find it annoying. Sometimes I have trouble coming because of it. What should I do? Signed, Silence Is Golden (female, age 28) Dear Silence, For a lot of people, talking dirty is a form of foreplay. During…
Free Will Astrology (4/4/18)
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Eighty-three-year-old author Harlan Ellison has had a long and successful career. In the course of publishing hundreds of literary works in seven different genres, he has won numerous awards. But when he was in his 30s, there was an interruption in the upward arc of his career. The film production company…
Soundbites: Commander in Queef
I think we can all agree that farts are funny. Flatulence-based humor doesn’t even need to be embedded in a well-crafted, nuanced joke. Farts are hilarious just the way they are. I’m not ashamed to admit that my friends and I have an ongoing joke about farts. You ask someone, “Hey, did you hear the…
Champlain Parkway Opponents Threaten to Derail Burlington Project
When officials first dreamed up Burlington’s Champlain Parkway in 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson was president, no man had set foot on the moon and Bernie Sanders was living in New York City. The 2.3-mile stretch of road through the city’s South End is finally scheduled for construction in 2019, but a group of activists wants…
Sipping at the Salon: O’Briens Opens a Bar
A Burlington hair salon will soon offer more than coffee and tea to customers stopping in for a cut or color. O’Briens Salon at 247 Main Street is adding a small bar to its business. The Back Bar is expected to open by mid-May for salon customers, said Michael O’Brien, a partner in the business.…
Vermonters Increasingly Turn to Crowdfunding for Health Care Help
As a marketing and public relations specialist, Rachel Carter is an expert at crafting narratives that put big ideas into digestible forms. Working independently and for nonprofit organizations such as the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund, she’s spent two decades helping others realize their dreams. Lately, though, Carter’s own life has become a waking nightmare. In…
Moxie Productions Presents Play on Hedy Lamarr
Hedy Lamarr, a 1950s starlet during the Golden Age of Hollywood, is perhaps best remembered for her striking looks. Her legacy as a scientist is less known — and yet her work in that field lives on beyond the popularity of her films. Have you used a smartphone or Wi-Fi today? If so, you’ve used…
The Next Showdown: Gun Rights Supporters Vow Counteroffensive
Last Friday afternoon the Vermont Senate gave final approval to S.55, a bill that includes four measures designed to prevent gun violence: mandatory universal background checks for gun purchases, raising the legal purchasing age to 21, and bans on bump stocks and high-capacity magazines. Within 24 hours, gun-rights advocacy groups mustered more than 1,000 supporters…
Southern Smoke to Sell Bottled BBQ Sauce
Brian Stefan, owner of the Southern Smoke food truck, has made a living slathering barbecue sauce on local meats for years. Now he’s looking to the bottle for an additional income stream. Later this month, Stefan will begin selling a line of bottled sauces, all sweetened with Vermont maple syrup, under the brand Vermont Maple…
Movie Review: Darkness and Humor Don’t Mix Well in ‘The Death of Stalin’
Armando Iannucci is arguably the world’s greatest living political satirist. Making fun of the pompous and powerful has been his life’s calling, and anyone who’s seen In the Loop (2009) or “Veep” is grateful the writer-director took that call. Iannucci kicked things off in 1998 with “Clinton: His Struggle With Dirt,” a penetrating meditation on…
Album Review: Clever Girls, ‘Luck’
(Self-released, CD, LP, cassette, digital download) When Burlington’s Clever Girls burst onto the scene in 2017 with their debut EP, Loose Tooth, the release came with the promise of a quick turnaround for a subsequent full-length. One year later, their debut LP, Luck, fulfills that promise and heralds a new age for the group. Think…
Are Vermonters Paying the State’s Mandatory Use Tax? (Spoiler: Nope.)
Ben Franklin famously quipped, “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” But that was 229 years ago. Nowadays, Vermonters might not be so sure when it comes to one particular tariff. The one in question is the use tax, which only 10 percent of state residents paid last…
Artists and Money: Three DIY Ways to Make It
Shortly after the birth of Wylie Sofia Garcia’s son in 2008, her washing machine broke. At the time, she and her husband, Clark Derbes — both working artists — lived in an apartment in Burlington’s South End. For new parents with plenty of dirty diapers to wash, the appliance was essential — but there was…
![Joe’s Pond Ice Out [SIV527]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/episode527.webp?resize=1200%2C900&ssl=1)
Joe’s Pond Ice Out [SIV527]
3/31/18: What started as a bet between friends has become a popular contest in the Northeast Kingdom called Joe’s Pond Ice Out. Since 1988, people have been placing $1 bets as to when a cement block will fall through the ice on Joe’s Pond. If they guess the correct date and time, they win a…
Farmers Expand CSAs With New Monetary Options
Last summer at the Burlington Farmers Market, Carolyn Moore and her young daughter shopped together. The toddler would help her mother choose food at the Full Moon Farm vendor stand. Then they’d settle on the grass and sometimes listen to music. “She would dig right into the bag and pull out tomatoes,” said Moore, who…
Black Krim Owner Opens New Café in Randolph
A wise person once said, “When God closes a coffee shop, she opens a taco joint.” Well, maybe not, but that’s what’s happening in Randolph, where Black Krim Tavern owner Sarah Natvig plans to open Café Salud in the old Three Bean Café space at 22 Pleasant Street. When the shop starts flying the “welcome”…
