The Summer Preview 2021
Sleepy Burke Plans for Its (Busier) Future; Everything You Need to Know About the New Vermont Lake Monsters; A Local Skateboarder Tours America’s Small-Town Skateparks; Summer Reboot at Vermont Restos
Obituary: Georgette L. Thabault, 1953-2021
Chef, sailor and fiber artist “lived a life of adventure”
Obituary: Charles Allen, 1970-2021
Son of Joanne Flynn of Essex Junction remembered for his quiet nature, sense of humor and resilience
In Memoriam: Zander Ponzo, 1941-2021
A “Remembering Zander” ceremony for Zander Ponzo will be held at the bocce courts at Oakledge Park in Burlington on Sunday, June 20, at 10 a.m. Bring your own chair, if needed or wanted. In case of rain, it will be held in the pavilion directly across the way from the bocce courts. Related Stories
Seven Vermont Events for Your Summertime Calendar
Despite the challenges of the past 15 months, many Vermont performing arts and entertainment organizations are persisting. We daresay some are offering their most creative programming yet, swapping traditional venues for unconventional locales and offering particularly lighthearted entertainment. We’ve compiled a list of seven events and series that locals can look forward to in the…
Cornwall’s RAD-Innovations Leads the Way in Adaptive Cycling
Avenir Farms is much like hundreds of others in Vermont: a barn, horses grazing, a scatter of outbuildings, free-ranging dogs and chickens, a vista of broad fields. And a UPS truck unloading high-tech bikes from Europe? As I turned onto the winding drive off Route 125 in Cornwall, the juxtaposition was like seeing a satellite…
Book Review: ‘Museum of Islands: New and Selected Poems,’ Gary Margolis
Poet, psychologist and former Middlebury College professor Gary Margolis brings us his second volume of selected poems with Museum of Islands. (The first, Raking the Winter Leaves, was released in 2013, also by Bauhan Publishing.) This latest selection includes more than 100 pages of new work, forming a book within a book, along with poems…
Outdoors and Online, the White River Indie Films Fest Holds a Lens to a Shifting World
In the Upper Valley, movies are back. After COVID-19 forced a hiatus last year, the White River Indie Films fest returns May 21 through 30 with movies in the park and ample offerings online. The new hybrid model allows WRIF to showcase 10 feature films and three programs of shorts, along with filmmaker Q&As and…
Artist Crystal Stokes Wins Inaugural Diane Gabriel Award
Last Thursday, a small crowd assembled on the City Hall Park pavilion behind the BCA Center in Burlington. For many of the people in attendance, most of them masked, it may have been the first public gathering in many months. They came to witness the presentation of the Diane Gabriel Award to its inaugural recipient,…
Local Bike Businesses Want Burlington to Rein In New E-Bike Operation
Big Tech. Big Pharma. Big E-bike? The relaunch of the Burlington area’s pay-as-you-go bike rental program, Greenride Bikeshare, has reignited a debate over whether the city is placing the interests of a large out-of-state company ahead of local businesses. The dispute spans several years but has become sharper this spring after the bike-share’s Miami-based vendor…
Soundbites: A Word on Summer, Myra Flynn’s New Single and a Musical Tribute to Monique Ford
This is our Summer Preview Issue, but previewing summer music is a freakin’ crapshoot right now. There are some big concerts and event series, and a few festivals, on the books. But I think we all need to prepare for the possibility that, because of the potentially premature lifting of pandemic-era limits on capacities and…
Pingala Café to Launch Weekly Outdoor Vegan Food and Music Event
In June, Pingala Café will launch Vedge Out, a weekly outdoor vegan food and music event in the parking lot of its home in Burlington’s Chace Mill on the edge of the Winooski River. The Thursday evening series will start June 17. Pingala’s popular Broccoli Bar will serve as the anchor and possibly add a…
Climate Spending Emerges as Flash Point in State Budget Discussions
When the Vermont Senate passed its 2022 budget bill in late April, administration officials were less surprised by what was in the $7.1 billion bill than what wasn’t in it. Despite their heated rhetoric about the need to act urgently on the climate crisis, lawmakers had passed a bill that contained $28 million less in…
Skinny Pancake to Expand to Albany, N.Y.
Vermont-based crêperie the Skinny Pancake will open a branch in Albany, N.Y., late this summer, according to co-owner Benjy Adler. The restaurant will occupy 3,200 square feet in the former Kenmore Hotel and have a large outdoor dining area. The menu will resemble that of its Vermont counterparts: burgers, crêpes, salads and beverages, including coffee…
Leo From Vermont, ‘Somnium’
(Nighterrands, vinyl, digital) Is there such a thing as “health music”? If such a term hasn’t already been coined, I’d like to take credit for it now, please and thanks. Health music, as I define it, is music created for and relating to humanity’s physical and mental well-being. I suppose all music could be categorized…
Burlington Church Will Host a Benefit Dinner for Myanmar
A Burlington church with New American members from Myanmar, aka Burma, is holding a benefit takeout dinner to help those in the Southeast Asian country. The nation has been in turmoil since a military coup overthrew the democratic government of Aung San Suu Kyi earlier this year. Hundreds of protesting civilians have been killed during…
Isabel Pless, ‘Too Big for the Playground, Too Small for the Big Leagues’
(Self-released, digital) I often think back to a memory from my youth, a strange moment in time when I watched “60 Minutes” with my parents as a teen. Kurt Cobain had recently committed suicide, and there was footage everywhere of people, mostly my age, mourning. As if called on by some predatory instinct to be…
Playing a Round With 11-Year-Old Disc Golf Champ Finn Etter
The boy stares across a long, sloping field of grass beneath late-afternoon sun, tugging absently at a sweatband on his wrist. With an orange plastic disc in hand, he begins his throwing motion, his body winding up like a spring. Lightning fast, he uncoils and snaps his arm into a well-trained throw, unleashing the disc…
Everything You Need to Know About the New Vermont Lake Monsters
The final out of the Vermont Lake Monsters season was recorded at Burlington’s Centennial Field in September 2019. In its wake, a cloud of uncertainty hung over the franchise like infield dust after a play at the plate. As winter rolled in, whispers that the team might not be long for the world became full-on…
Free Will Astrology (5/19/21)
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Here’s a public service announcement for you Geminis from the planet and god Mercury: You’re under no obligation to be the same person you were three years ago, or six months ago, or last week — or even five minutes ago, for that matter. Mercury furthermore wants you to know that…
A Rival Developer Is Challenging the CityPlace Burlington Project in Court
After years of delays, it seemed in February that the CityPlace Burlington project was finally back on track. Mayor Miro Weinberger announced that he’d brokered a deal to settle a lawsuit the city had filed against the developers. The agreement set new deadlines for construction and ensured that city streets lost to the former mall…
Letters to the Editor (5/19/21)
Clueless! Not for the first time, or even the second, you cut off clues for the crossword puzzle in the May 12 issue. One line, if not two, is totally missing. Please, please double check this before the paper goes to print. Thank you very much. Nan Moses St. Johnsbury Missing ‘Income Sensitivity’ Thanks for…
Summer Preview — 2021
Everyone has had one magical summer that exists in their memory above all the others. Mine was the summer when I was 22 and working on Block Island, a summer paradise 13 miles off the southern coast of Rhode Island. I had a crappy job renting bikes and mopeds to idiot tourists by day and…
My Neighbors Leave Their Pandemic Puppy Outside and It Barks All the Time
Dear Reverend, My neighbors got a pandemic puppy, now a full-grown dog, that they leave in the backyard for long periods of time. The dog barks at anything that moves for hours on end or whimpers and whines to be let back inside. On a recent Monday, it had been outside and barking long enough…
From the Publisher: Summer, Uncovered
My backyard looks down on the Burlington bike path — a stretch I walk almost every day. It takes about 45 minutes to stroll from my house on Lakeview Terrace up North Avenue, past the high school and back along the waterfront via the sailing center, skatepark and Depot Street. Throughout the pandemic, this ritual…
Lamoille North Supervisory Union
The Board of School Directors of the Lamoille North Modified Unified Union School District invites sealed requests for proposals for the service of providing Contacted Transportation Services for the towns of Belvidere, Cambridge, Eden, Hyde Park, Johnson, and Waterville. This proposal will be for a three-year contract with the District. For more information and to…
Private Auction Of Storage Unit Contents
Courtney Richard, last known address of 38 Grove St. Essex Junction, VT 05452 has a past due balance of $1282.00 owed to Champlain Valley Self Storage, LLC since 10/31/20. To cover this debt, per lease dated 4/26/20 the contents of unit #530 will be sold at private auction on, or after June 5, 2021. William…
Sleepy Burke, Home to Kingdom Trails, Plans for Its (Busier) Future
For a Northeast Kingdom hamlet with just 1,700 residents and two stores, East Burke is a busy place these days. Burke’s small ski area, Burke Mountain Resort, has welcomed visitors for half a century. But now the town’s Kingdom Trails bike trail network is gaining renown; it attracted about 135,000 visitors in 2019. The rural…
Blue Ledge Farm’s Hannah Sessions on Life as a Farmer and Painter
Hannah Sessions and Greg Bernhardt, the founders and owners of Salisbury’s Blue Ledge Farm, met as undergrads at Bates College in Maine. During a semester studying art and culture in Florence, Italy, the couple began dreaming of farming, as well as making and selling artisan cheese. “Food is really one of our greatest expressions,” Sessions…
Skateboarder Clint Carrick Tours America’s Small-Town Skateparks to See How They Roll
In the summer of 2018, Clint Carrick set out on a solo cross-country journey to regain his bearings — on a skateboard and in his life. Years after putting aside his wheeled childhood love and obsession, and facing what he called his “quarter-life identity crisis,” the then-27-year-old spent a month zigzagging the United States in…
Teens Start Literally Exploding in the Dark Comedy ‘Spontaneous’
Our streaming entertainment options are overwhelming — and not always easy to sort through. We talk a lot about the intense pressures on today’s teenagers. But what if they started literally exploding? That’s the premise of Spontaneous, a horror comedy based on the 2016 young-adult novel of the same name by Vermont author Aaron Starmer.…
Obituary: Sharron DeRosia, 1958-2021
Bakersfield woman and educator enjoyed life’s simple pleasures
Fourteen Months After Shutdown, Vermont Restaurants Navigate a Summer Reboot
It’s been well over a year since diners sat at Misery Love Co.’s open kitchen counter amid the sizzle of meat hitting hot pans and aromas of fresh herbs showered over whole fish. The Winooski restaurant is one of many in Vermont that have offered no inside dining for the past 14 months. In downtown…
Three Small Pleasures to Pack in Your Picnic Basket
Picnics are my favorite pastime on a summer day. Whether sprawling in the dappled shade of a backyard tree, tossing a blanket in an open field or lingering lakeside, there’s something really satisfying about slowly snacking through a random assortment of food and drink over a leisurely afternoon. Eating outside comes with its own challenges,…
Longtime Area Restaurateurs Make Charlotte Pop-Up Permanent With Backyard Bistro
After 26 years of running La Villa Bistro, Jill and Adam Spell closed their Shelburne restaurant on May 9 and jumped immediately into a new venture in their hometown of Charlotte. The Spells hope to open Backyard Bistro in early June at Charlotte Crossings on Route 7. The restaurant grew out of weekend pop-ups by…
Bartender Mike Dunn Takes the Helm of Burlington’s T. Rugg’s Tavern
Mike Dunn has been a regular at T. Rugg’s Tavern in Burlington’s Old North End since he was 21 and was a bartender there for three years. Now the 35-year-old Burlington man owns the bar at 149 Elmwood Avenue. Dunn purchased the business from Tom Rugg, its owner of 41 years, on May 1 and…
The Magnificent 7: Must See, Must Do, May 19 to 25
Survivor Story Wednesday 26 In a 2017 review for the Atlantic, Anna Diamond called Angie Thomas’ debut novel The Hate U Give “a vital new contribution to the white-dominated publishing industry.” The YA book, which was the Vermont Reads 2020 pick, centers on a Black teen who sees her friend being shot by a police…
