The Pollinator Issue

Jun 23-29, 2021 / Vol. 26 / No. 38
The Vermont Wild Bee Survey Finds and Identifies Hundreds of Species; Beekeeper Chas Mraz Talks Pollinators, Pesticides and Connectedness; With Bee the Change, Weybridge Couple Fills Solar Fields With Insect-Friendly Habitat

In Memoriam: Robert W. Cochran, 1926-2020

In remembrance of Bob Cochran, the family is holding a memorial service on Friday, July 2, at 1 p.m., on what would have been his 95th birthday, at the Jericho Center Congregational Church, 3 Jericho Center Circle in Jericho Center. A reception will follow in the church’s lower level Fellowship Hall. A private family funeral…

Essay: Why Do Honeybees Get All the Attention?

Here at Seven Days, we pride ourselves on going straight to the source, whether it’s a musician, a poet or the governor. Back in the ’90s, when an invasion of zebra mussels was threatening to choke Lake Champlain, we were the only publication to interview one of the arrogant little mollusks. Recently, we tried something…

Norwich Bookstore Welcomes its New Owners

On November 3, Sam Kaas and Emma Nichols were visiting Vermont for the very first time. They were following up on an independent bookstore recently listed for sale. While the couple was meeting with Penny McConnel and Liza Bernard, the founders and owners of Norwich Bookstore, the presidential election was called in favor of Joe…

Beekeeper Chas Mraz Talks Pollinators, Pesticides and Connectedness

The phrase “We are all interconnected” is not New Age woo-woo. Skeptics need only ask a physicist. Or, if the very word “quantum” makes your eyes glaze over, ask a beekeeper instead. That’s what we did. Chas Mraz, 55, is a third-generation beekeeper at Champlain Valley Apiaries in Middlebury — the namesake of Charles Mraz,…

Letters to the Editor (6/23/21)

‘I Expected Better’ I was very disappointed in your cover story, “Kicked to the Curb,” about the situation of homeless individuals and families throughout the pandemic. Reporter Chelsea Edgar happens to encounter a disgruntled Committee on Temporary Shelter employee and overhears an unpleasant exchange between a Champlain Housing Trust employee and one of the individuals…

Scandal Tests a Small Town’s Tolerance in the Québécois Drama ‘Les Nôtres’

Our streaming entertainment options are overwhelming — and not always easy to sort through. This Friday, Vermont International Film Foundation’s Virtual Cinema opens three new films, including the 2020 Québécois drama Les Nôtres (“our own”). The province has a thriving film industry, and director-cowriter Jeanne Leblanc has worked as an assistant director on productions ranging…

From the Publisher: Beeing There

For the last two years of the 1980s, I lived in the West Nile region of Uganda, where its famous former dictator, Idi Amin, was born. My ex-husband was helping to repatriate people who were forced to leave the country after Amin’s ouster; they’d been refugees for a decade. There was no organized law enforcement…

Hope Johnson’s Apian-Inspired Works are Abuzz with Color

The life of a bee is similar to that of a Vermonter, according to quiltmaker Hope Johnson. A worker bee will undertake several tasks in succession: cleaning, gathering food, guarding the hive. Vermonters, too, are keen on multitasking. To underscore her point, she repeated a Green Mountain State mantra: “Moonlight in Vermont or starve.” Johnson,…

Burlington City Council: Openings, Burlington City Commissions/Board

Board of Assessors Term Expires 3/31/24 One Opening Chittenden County Regional Planning Comm.-alt Term Expires 6/30/23 One Opening Development Review Board – alternate Term Expires 6/30/24 One Opening Fence Viewers Term Expires 6/30/22 Two Openings Vehicle for Hire Licensing Board Term Expires 6/30/24 Three Openings Applications may be submitted to the Clerk/Treasurer’s Office, 149 Church…

WTF: Why Do Honeybees Swarm?

To the uninitiated, a honeybee swarm can resemble a scene from a horror movie: Hundreds, sometimes thousands of insects swirl through the air like an angry tornado or clump together like a buzzing beach ball on a tree limb or fence post. Swarms appear seemingly out of nowhere, then disappear within hours or linger for…

Team of Rivals? Burlington’s Democratic Mayor Picks a Prog to Run CEDO

Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger, a Democrat, raised eyebrows last month when he named Progressive Brian Pine as the next director of the city’s Community and Economic Development Office, a powerful post. Not only are the mayor and the Progressives frequently at odds over city policies, but Pine was a candidate to unseat Weinberger in the most…

How a Two-Year Push to Rename Vermont’s Negro Brook Failed

Most everyone in the Zoom room for the Vermont Board of Libraries meeting agreed it was a good idea to change the name of Negro Brook in Townshend. Days earlier, Texas — Texas — had successfully replaced more than a dozen place names containing “Negro” with ones that honor notable Black figures. Yet an hours-long…

Free Will Astrology (6/23/21)

CANCER (June 21-July 22): “I was so flooded with yearning I thought it would drown me,” wrote Cancerian author Denis Johnson. I don’t expect that will be a problem for you anytime soon. You’re not in danger of getting swept away by a tsunami of insatiable desire. However, you may get caught in a current…

Patrick J Crowley, ‘All Was Set Fair’

(Self-released, digital) It may have been written and recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic, but don’t call Patrick J Crowley’s new release a quarantine album. By his estimation, few of us truly lived through quarantine but, rather, a period of isolation. And that, Crowley says, is what All Was Set Fair is — an isolation album.…

David Fainsilber, Arielle Lekach-Rosenberg & Micah Shapiro, ‘Hashkiveinu’

(Self-released, digital) Three rabbis walked into a recording studio… No joke. Rabbis David Fainsilber of the Jewish Community of Greater Stowe, Arielle Lekach-Rosenberg of Minneapolis and Micah Shapiro of Philadelphia have been collaborating since their days at rabbinical school. And it shows. Just before the pandemic, the trio’s enduring partnership in music, friendship and shared…

Soundbites: Introducing New Music Editor Chris Farnsworth

Hey! It’s me, Farnsworth — aka Chris, aka the guy whose parents gave him a Winnie-the-Pooh middle name that we’ll worry about later. I’m the music editor now. I know, it’s wild, right? We don’t need to get crazy with this intro, because you know me. If you’ve read Seven Days music coverage over the…

Book Review: ‘Lesson in Red’ by Maria Hummel

A young woman carries a loaded gun on her person nonstop for a week — not as open-carry propaganda, but as an art project. Viewers of the short film in which she documents her experience, “Packing,” watch in dread and fascination as she uses the gun barrel to eat her cornflakes. “Milk dribbled down her…

Vermont Brewers Use Honey to Make Sweet Beer

You can’t make beer without sugar. The yeast needs something to eat in order to work its fermentation magic and transform a mixture of grain, hops and water into a double IPA, pilsner, stout or sour. That sugar is usually hidden in malted grains. The first step of the brewing process is to mash those…

Grazers to Add Third Location in Winooski

The Winooski circle will have a new spot for burgers, fries, shakes and cocktails when Grazers opens its third brick-and-mortar branch at 24 Main Street this coming fall. The newest Grazers takes over the longtime home of Tiny Thai Restaurant, which moved up to 293 Main Street in April. It joins the original Grazers location…

The Magnificent 7: Must See, Must Do, June 23 to 29

Happy Anniversary Thursday 24-Sunday 27 Contemporary dance troupe Pilobolus have a long history with Dartmouth College: A group of Dartmouth students formed the company in 1971, despite their lack of dance training. To mark its 50th anniversary, Pilobolus present four favorite works from their expansive repertoire. See the program Four@Play at the college’s Bema Outdoor…


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