The Tech Issue October 2014 (Theme Issue)
The Tech Issue: Paul Heintz on the IBM Deal; Seven Top Techies Talk Shop; A Facebook Addict Tries Vermont’s Alternatives
Obituary: James Daniel Bianca III
James Daniel Bianca III, age 54, a resident of this area since 1998, died Monday afternoon October 27, 2014, at his home on the Robert Newton Road with loving family and friends at his side. Born in Burlington, Vermont on February 17, 1960, he was the son of James D. Bianca Jr. and the late…
Obituary: Roger J. Benjamin
Roger J. Benjamin, age 84 years, a resident of Meadow Lane died Wednesday afternoon October 22, 2014, in the Northwestern Medical Center with loving family at his side. Born in Dunham, Quebec Canada on October 19, 1930, he was the son of the late, Joseph Alton Benjamin and Melvina Benjamin Merchant. He was married to…
Obituary: Peter Devigne Caldwell, 1934-2014, Washington, D.C.
Peter Devigne Caldwell, 80, of Washington, D.C., died October 5, 2014, in New York City, surrounded by love, family, and music. He was preceded in death by his beloved boxer, Jenny, a French farm dog. Peter was born March 12, 1934, in Paris, France, to Blanche Campbell Devigne Caldwell and Nelson Forsyth Caldwell. He grew…
Obituary: Brenda Lee Maki, 1960-2014, St. Albans
Brenda Lee Maki, 53 beloved daughter and sister passed away unexpectedly on Saturday October 18, 2014 Brenda was born November 16, 1960 in Leominister Massachussetts. A 1978 graduate of Fitchburg High School. Brenda then elisted in the Army from 1981 to 1987, a member of the 8th Infantry Division. She was employed during the years…
Obituary: Luella Barbara Viens, 1931-2014, Burlington
Luella Barbara Viens, 83, of Burlington passed away October 16th, 2014, at Birchwood Terrace. Luella was born on July 21st, 1931, in Shelburne, VT, to the late Eugene Joseph and Agnes Viens. Luella grew up on her father’s farm in Shelburne where she had a horse named Ginger who sparked her lifelong love for horses…
Should I Be Happy Alone?
Dear Athena, I have had a series of events happen in my life over the last few years that have drained most of my self-confidence and self-esteem. I struggle each day to find ways to stay positive and work my way back to feeling good about myself, but I keep finding myself back at square…
Film Highlights the Plight of Chinese Web Junkies
A teenage boy sits on a dormitory mattress in a dim room on the outskirts of Beijing, his body shaking with uncontrollable sobs. “What did you do?” a man asks him. “I used the internet,” the boy replies. That’s a scene from Web Junkie, a 2013 documentary film that takes viewers inside Daxing Boot Camp,…
Free Will Astrology (10/22/14)
ARIES (March 21-April 19): The driest place on the planet is the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. It gets about a half inch of rain per year. And yet in 2011, archaeologists discovered that it’s also home to a site containing the fossilized skeletons of numerous whales and other ancient sea creatures. I’m detecting a…
Vermont Gets Its Own Comic Con
Hey, Vermont geeks: Ever wanted to meet a zombie from “The Walking Dead”? What about Mr. McFeely, the mailman from “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood”? Or maybe you’ve been looking for an excuse to rub elbows with James Kochalka, the state’s first cartoonist laureate. You’re in luck. The first annual Vermont Comic Con happens this weekend, October…
WTF: The Internet of Things?
Many of us are still getting used to the idea of being connected to the internet through our smartphones. But just as we’re coming to accept that it may be impossible to ever truly get away from the web, a bizarre new term seems to suggest even more ways to be plugged in. The “internet…
New Local Horror Short Inspired by Vermont’s ‘Haunted’ Places
One of Vermont’s most enduring legends is the haunting of a 19th-century covered bridge in Stowe. It’s said that a young woman named Emily, distraught after her lover failed to meet her for their elopement, hanged herself from the bridge’s rafters. Her vengeful spirit, it’s said, has haunted “Emily’s Bridge” ever since, moaning eerily and…
News Quirks (10/22/14)
Curses, Foiled Again Police got a good look at a burglary suspect who made off with $3,700 in Coral Gables, Fla., even though the man tried to hide his identity by repositioning surveillance cameras toward the office building’s elevators. A large mirror located next to the elevators reflected the man’s image and actions, which the…
VT Kids’ Author Tanya Stone Celebrates Her 100th Book
Young adult and children’s-book author Tanya Lee Stone is a hard woman to get hold of. The 48-year-old South Burlington resident, who recently signed a contract for her 100th book, frequently travels for author visits, book signings, conferences and other events. This week, though, Stone will be in town. On Saturday, October 25, she’ll celebrate…
Fall Cocktail Recipes From Burlington’s Burgeoning Scene
In New York City, nary a bar opens without a serious cocktail list — whether the tipples are new twists on classics like the Negroni or the Old Fashioned, or original concoctions with ingredient lists a mile long. Here in Vermont, drinkers have been slower to warm up to cocktail culture. Maybe the beer is…
Irene’s Silicon Lining: Has wiring Bethel changed it for good?
The noontime rush at Cockadoodle Pizza Café in Bethel is more like a steady trickle. Two construction workers in reflective neon vests wait in line for pizza slices behind a gaggle of office workers from the GW Plastics plant a quarter mile north on Route 12. Near them, a teenager sits with his head down…
Gallery Profile: ArtisTree Community Arts Center & Gallery
After four years in the Mount Tom Building in Woodstock, ArtisTree Community Arts Center & Gallery has moved to new digs just two miles up the road in South Pomfret. The distance is short, but its impact is great, maybe even transformative. When Kathleen Dolan, founder and executive director of ArtisTree Community Arts, brought on…
Meet the People Who Power Vermont’s Growing Tech Sector
Vermont’s tech economy is growing. It isn’t Silicon Valley — yet — but anecdotal evidence suggests an increasing number of local tech companies are calling Vermont home. Ditto techie events, from hackathons to code camps, business pitch competitions to mini maker faires. Advances in technology are playing a role in this shift — it’s easier than…
Letters to the Editor (10/22/14)
Born Addicted While Mark Szymanski’s letter [Feedback, “DCF’s Problem,” October 8] was grossly insensitive, he does raise a deeply troubling societal problem that needs more public conversation. Lately I’ve been brought together with high-risk, neglected babies who have repeatedly been removed from their parents. Consequently, I have given much thought to this very disturbing tragedy…
An A-Z Guide to Vermont’s Tech Ecosystem
Can’t tell the difference between a coder and a maker? Don’t know the first thing about FIRST robotics? Then this A to Z guide is for you. It’s not comprehensive, but it’ll help you get a handle on Vermont’s evolving innovation ecosystem. A is for Access Access to the internet varies widely in Vermont. The…
Libertarian Dan Feliciano Makes a Bid for Vermont’s Highest Office
As a political neophyte with scant name recognition, Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Dan Feliciano exceeded expectations when he collected 14 percent of the vote as a late-starting write-in candidate in the Republican primary. In a Vermont Public Radio debate the following month, the 51-year-old business-efficiency expert struck some listeners as better-informed and more articulate than Scott…
Tech Issue: Vermont’s Scene Bigger Than Big Blue
The biggest tech story in Vermont this week is that IBM, one of the state’s largest private employers, is selling its microelectronics facility in Essex Junction. After 56 years, the tech giant plans to leave Vermont and get out of the chip-manufacturing biz. If federal regulators sign off on the deal, the plant’s new owners…
Neighbors Clash Over Apartments, Day Station for Homeless
Nobody was mincing words at a neighborhood meeting last week at the Burlington police station. Lakeview Terrace resident Mannie Lionni told fellow architect Bob Duncan that the latter’s design plans to expand a nearby building represented “an old-fashioned, from my point of view, discredited model of development.” Roughly 40 people came out to discuss the…
Probing Questions Assess Burlington’s Homeless Population
Last Monday, Wayne Latulippe took a break from sawing and stacking wood to greet five strangers who showed up unannounced at his home. After they had admired his panoramic lake view, Latulippe invited the group inside. Then he patiently answered 50 questions, which ranged from, “Do you have a kidney disease?” to “Is there anyone…
Tight Squeeze Coffee Shop to Open in Burlington
About three weeks ago, just before Burlington’s Daily News coffee shop closed its doors for good, business and life partners Lisa Osornio and Matt Gress bought the tiny 125 College Street café. They plan to reopen it later this fall as Tight Squeeze Coffee Shop, where they’ll serve espresso, brewed coffee, and baked goods and…
Feasting at the Au Pied de Cochon Sugar Shack
Envy the pleasingly plump feral cats who haunt the woodpiles and puddles around Cabane à Sucre au Pied de Cochon in Mirabel, Québec. They don’t have to wait months for a reservation at the small-town spin-off of chef Martin Picard’s celebrated Montréal restaurant. They live there. I, by contrast, had to watch Twitter assiduously to…
Vermont Native Sam Amidon Talks About Deconstructing Folk
For Sam Amidon, folk music is a malleable art form, despite the genre’s outwardly rigid traditions. On his new album, Lily-O, the Brattleboro native deconstructs traditional folk music, stripping songs to their core and reimagining them through a kaleidoscopic prism of free jazz, rock and experimental sounds. The result is haunting and beautiful: thorough remakings…
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Driving Mr. Killacky [SIV373]
10/16/14: John Killacky first fell in love with a pony named Raindrop at the tender age of 8. Years later, as the Executive Director of the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, Killacky rediscovered his equine passion with a Shetland pony named Pacific Raindrop. A former dancer and marathon runner who was disabled in 1996,…
Smooth Antics, Smooth Antics
(Self-released, digital download) At the moment, Kat Wright is Burlington’s reigning soul diva. But increasingly the Indomitable Soul Band front woman has challengers to her crown in the Queen City and surrounds. Chief among these would-be usurpers is Stephanie Heaghney, the smoky-voiced siren who fronts Burlington soul-hop outfit Smooth Antics. If that band’s recently released…
Chip Flip: IBM’s Departure is Shumlin’s October Surprise
It ain’t Ebola or the Islamic State, but even Vermont’s sleepy gubernatorial race got an “October surprise” this week. After 56 years in the state, IBM announced Monday that it would offload its semiconductor business — and its Essex plant, which employs 4,000-plus Vermonters — to California-based GlobalFoundries. It was the day every Vermont governor…
Jeremy Gilchrist, Causality
(Self-released, CD, digital download) Jeremy Gilchrist has an unusual way with words. At his best, the Winooski-by-way-of-North-Carolina songwriter leaves room for the listener to contemplate his meaning. Gilchrist bills himself as a “thought-provoking” songwriter. And at times on his new album, Causality, he is, crafting hazily poetic suites that invite introspection and interpretation. But his…
Fury
Some artists spend entire careers recycling and reshaping a defining experience from their youth. Charles Bukowski wrote into old age about the couple of years he bummed around the country in his twenties. Richard Yates rarely wrote a novel or story that didn’t revolve around a delusional mother. What made them great is that the…
Crumbs: NECI Grad Wins Pastry Prize; Renee Erickson Coming to Burlington
On October 13, New England Culinary Institute COO and executive chef Jean-Louis Gerin brought NECI grad Sam Benson to represent the United States in Paris at L’Académie Culinaire de France’s Trophée Passion. The Trophée, notes Gerin, hosts its contest on even years, while the Bocuse d’Or falls on odd years. Gerin, president of the American…
Men, Women & Children
ZOMG, the internet, right? It’s changing the way humanity thinks, loves, lives! It’s connecting strangers and terrifying middle-class white suburban parents everywhere. In fact, the internet is apparently so world-changing that, when director Jason Reitman set out to make a drama about its effects on the aforementioned middle-class white suburbanites, he framed the story with…
Soundbites: Spark Arts to Bring Burlington a Comedy Club
Have you ever been told something, like, a really big something, and then immediately been sworn to secrecy for an indeterminate amount of time? It’s the worst. OK, illness, war, famine. Those things are worse. But holding on to a really cool secret, when all you want to do is tell everyone you know, is…
Can Electronic Monitoring Reduce Vermont’s Prison Population?
Tammie LaClair should be in prison. In September, she was arrested and charged with her fourth DUI. Because she was unwilling to post the $2,500 bail, the 47-year-old South Newfane resident was ushered to one of Vermont’s scarce inmate beds. But rather than live in prison, at the cost of $180 taxpayers’ dollars a day,…
Middlebury’s Marquis Theater Adds a Southwestern Restaurant
In a Netflix-streaming world, it’s a challenge to keep a vintage movie house going. But Bill Shafer and Ben Wells of Middlebury’s Marquis Theatre have taken a novel tack. They closed their digitally equipped triplex — built in 1939 as a vaudeville house — on August 25. It will reopen on or around October 29…
