The Winter Preview Issue 2015
Hot Shots From Winter Sports Photographers; Where to Ice Skate Outdoors in Vermont; Can Alburgh Lease Its Missile Silo?
The ‘Adamant Co-op Cookbook’ Celebrates 80 Years of Small-Town Feasts
Five dirt roads converge in Adamant, which is neither town nor incorporated village but a cluster of houses at the head of a pond whiskered with cattails. Years ago, the hamlet went by Sodom (the pond still bears that name), and though it has its own zip code — 05640 — Adamant is in Calais,…
Say Goodbye to Two Beloved Burlington Restaurants
The signature chef’s-choice tasting menu is no longer an option. On Sunday night, the sweet braised pork known as kakuni had all been sold. So goes San Sai Japanese Restaurant’s march into eternity. A pair of signs posted on the host stand let diners know that this would probably be their final meal at Burlington’s…
Obituary: Melanie Campbell Menagh, 1959-2015, Calais
Thursday, Oct. 8 – Melanie Menagh, writer, teacher, and resident of Maple Corner in Calais, died in the morning of complications from heart arrhythmia. She turned 56 on May 27th. Melanie, who has lived in Maple Corner since 1996, was born in The Bronx, New York City, and was adopted by Charles and Betty-Jane Menagh,…
Final Tour of St. Joseph’s Orphanage Spurs Haunting Memories
Five former residents of St. Joseph’s Orphanage chatted nervously in the Burlington College lounge on Friday afternoon, waiting for a tour of what was once their home. Debi Gevry-Ellsworth, 57, lived in the orphanage run by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington from 1964 to 1974. She drove from Connecticut to see the building one…
Sicario
Québécois director Denis Villeneuve likes dark places. His 2013 thriller Prisoners was full of cellars and hidden passages. His latest, Sicario, starts in an Arizona ranch house whose boarded-up rooms hold terrible secrets — stacked corpses executed by a drug cartel — and builds toward the discovery of a tunnel used by that same cartel…
Art Review: “Eyes on the Land,” Shelburne Museum
The funniest and one of the most affecting artworks in “Eyes on the Land,” a show inspired by Vermont’s conserved farms and forests, isn’t at all earthbound. Suspended from the ceiling, Brian Collier’s “Goat Boat” seems to float over the heads of viewers in the Shelburne Museum’s Pizzagalli Center for Art and Education. This milk-jug-supported,…
![Kiteboarding on Lake Champlain [SIV415]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/episode415.webp?resize=1200%2C900&ssl=1)
Kiteboarding on Lake Champlain [SIV415]
9/27/15: In the past 5 years, kiteboarding has grown steadily more popular in the Greater Burlington area. October is ideal weather for the sport and on a windy day, Delta Park in Colchester is dotted with kites and their riders, navigating the lake at incredible speeds. Eva met up with Jerri Benjamin on a breezy…
I Want My Boyfriend to Say, ‘I Love You’
Dear Athena, My boyfriend and I have been together for more than two years, and he has yet to say “I love you.” He is sweet and caring and he does a lot of nice things for me. He buys me gifts; we have vacationed together. He is supportive and I feel like I can…
Vermont Opera Hits a High Note
Vermont’s opera scene is moving steadily onward and upward, to borrow a New Yorker phrase. Diva Renée Fleming will appear just over the border at Dartmouth’s Hopkins Center for the Arts on October 27 in a solo performance that’s long been sold out. In Burlington, two non-opera groups — Theatre Kavanah and In Tandem Arts…
Solar Farm Might Launch at Alburgh Missile Site
Small towns across Vermont are accustomed to looking after parks, libraries, old meeting halls and fire stations. But at the northwestern tip of the state, officials in Alburgh have been struggling to find a use for a peculiar piece of infrastructure. For decades, the town has owned an underground missile silo that is 17 stories…
Opinion: What Has Owen Labrie’s Trial Accomplished?
I run into Adam on the subway. I know him distantly — he is my best friend’s sister’s boyfriend’s brother. I’ve heard he graduated Harvard and became a social worker or teacher — something compassionate and politically laudable. He is bearded and lean, smiling warmly. I am almost 17, recently broken up with my first…
Theater Review: The 39 Steps, UVM Department of Theatre
What’s so funny about being on the run from the cops, handcuffed to someone who’s not so sure of your innocence? Everything, in Patrick Barlow’s adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps. In the University of Vermont Department of Theatre production of the popular comedy, six actors race through more than 30 interior and exterior…
Big Stink: New Law Leads to Huge Composting Challenges
The smell coming off the brownish mounds is so foul, it makes your eyes water. If it abides, that stench could become the most distinctive feature of the Green Mountain Compost facility in Williston and potentially disrupt the state’s ambitious plan to reduce the amount of food waste going to Vermont landfills. The stink at…
Where, and How, to Ice Skate Outdoors in Vermont
Skiers know that hitting outdoor slopes easily beats ducking indoors to an artificial hill with fluorescent lights and fake snow. Still, so many recreational skaters rely on indoor rinks without realizing the plethora of open-air venues. From rinks at city parks to the numerous spots on Lake Champlain, the Queen City alone wears a crown…
Frozen Assets: Waxing poetic about the white stuff
Originally published November 12, 2003 The first measurable snow of the fall collected in our field this morning. Always a signal day, the unofficial beginning of what seems to me the proper part of the year. Depend on snow for a whistling kind of clean. Lushness has its pleasures, but nothing to match the stinging…
Ski Patrollers Keep the Slopes Safe
Multicolored leaves are pretty, but many Vermonters are more interested in the monochromatic color scheme that comes after the next seasonal shift. For them, when the Green Mountains turn white it means just one thing: sliding down them on skis or snowboards. Autumn, though crisp and pleasant, must be endured until the slopes open up.…
Cruise Control: D.C. Lobbyists Pay Up for a Weekend with Patrick Leahy
Two by two, Sen. Patrick Leahy’s (D-Vt.) out-of-town guests strolled down Burlington’s King Street Dock last Friday evening, walked a gangplank and boarded the Northern Lights. Within the mahogany-finished lounge of the Lake Champlain cruise boat, Washington, D.C., uber-fundraiser Tina Stoll signed them in for Leahy’s Fall Foliage Weekend. For a “suggested donation” of $5,000…
WTF: What’s Up With the Vermont Lottery Zombies?
October marks the official start of zombie season. It’s the one month of the year when it’s socially acceptable to dress in shredded, blood-streaked rags, limp around as a flesh-gnawing corpse, and moan threateningly at friends and strangers alike. This close to Halloween, most folks laugh it off as a seasonal shtick — provided the…
Power Struggle: Vermont Utilities Don’t Want New Wind Energy
Travis Belisle faces what has become predictable opposition as he plans to build as many as seven wind turbines atop a ridge near his Swanton home: Critics say the project will harm wetlands, disturb wildlife and bother neighbors with noise. But his Swanton Wind project is encountering unexpected headwinds that its predecessors haven’t. Some of…
Famed Songbook “Rise Up Singing” Gets a Sequel, “Rise Again”
If you happened to join in a campfire sing-along at any point over the last 30 years, there’s a good chance you’re familiar with Rise Up Singing. Since it was published in 1988, the songbook has been a staple of camp counselors, musical ministers, traveling folk singers and anyone else who might lead group renditions…
Dave Kleh, It Becomes a Hassle to Be a Genius When You’ve Run Out of Limes
(Self-Released, CD, digital download, vinyl) It’s hard to imagine the kind of person who would be a casual fan of Dave Kleh’s music. The local songwriter’s latest, It Becomes a Hassle to Be a Genius When You’ve Run Out of Limes, is not an album you’d feel inclined to start — or end — your…
The Skinny Pancake Opens Crêperie at UVM
Later this week, Burlington-based crêperie the Skinny Pancake will open a new location at the University of Vermont. With a menu grounded in ingredients grown nearby, it replaces Alice’s Café at the Living/Learning Center in the heart of the campus. Along with the new locavore Green Roof Deli, which opened in the Dudley H. Davis…
The Sweet Remains, Night Songs
(Self-released, CD, digital download) Despite what the prevailing youth culture might have you believe, there’s something to be said for getting older. The trick is to do so with equal measures of grace, humility and wisdom — and, in the case of the Sweet Remains, borderline-obnoxious sunny optimism. To refresh your perhaps fading memory —…
Winter Adventure Photographers’ Extreme Exposure
Expert ice climber and professional photographer Alden Pellett describes one of his adventures during a trip to Newfoundland last winter. He ascended 2,000 feet of ice, without ropes, buffeted by 50-mph winds. Near the top, Pellett, his red beard encrusted in ice, paused to drink a cup of hot tea and take photos. Normally he…
Letters to the Editor (10/7/15)
Green-light Parkway Molly Walsh’s article [“South End Artists Hope to Stall the Champlain Parkway,” September 23] opens with a tug-of-war at the South End Art Hop, during which no one showed up to pull in favor of building the Champlain Parkway. I was one of those who did not show up, even though I have…
Free Will Astrology (10/7/2015)
ARIES (March 21-April 19): If I warned you not to trust anyone, I hope you would reject my simplistic fear-mongering. If I suggested that you trust everyone unconditionally, I hope you would dismiss my delusional naiveté. But it’s important to acknowledge that the smart approach is far more difficult than those two extremes. You’ve got…
High-Wire Walker Jade Kindar-Martin Talks About The Walk
On a spring day in 1997, Jade Kindar-Martin went for a stroll across Burlington’s Main Street. Not on Main Street — above it. Kindar-Martin is a high-wire walker, and his rooftop-level perambulation took him back and forth between the Nectar’s and Chittenden Superior Court buildings. His daring, without-a-net walk took place in a smaller city…
Sugar Mountain Farm Adds On-Site Butchering
April 21, 2008, began like any other Monday for Walter and Holly Jeffries. The swineherd owners of Topsham’s Sugar Mountain Farm loaded live pigs into their van and headed to their local butcher, as they did every week. They planned to return three days later to pick up hundreds of pounds of sausage, roasts and…
Soundbites: Vermont Public Television Debuts Jazz Fest Series
Jazz Fest … in HD! Remember the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival? That was pretty cool, right? I mean, even if you’re not the most ardent, bebopping hepcat around — that would be Vermont Public Radio’s Reuben Jackson, of course — there’s just something special about the jazz fest. And as we sit on the threshold…
Nest House Hunt Update: The Farrens Find a Home
Nest House Hunt follows first-time home buyers on the search for their dream homes. In our fall issue of Nest, we introduced you to the Farren family. Ashley and Dan Farren, both 29, were looking for a $200,000 starter house in Chittenden County, a fixer-upper with a nice yard for their 4-year-old dog, Lucy, and…
Otter Creek Expands, Cuban Sandwiches in Shelburne, Think Pink … Pumpkins
On Monday, October 5, Middlebury’s Otter Creek Brewing broke ground on a massive new project adjacent to its current Exchange Street location. Rolling out in three phases, which won’t wrap until at least 2018, the project will incorporate a German-built 120-barrel brewhouse, new fermenters, a new bottling line, cold storage, lab space, an expanded pub…
Burlington Artists Roll Out a Downtown Mural
Recently, a colorful mural of cartoonish race cars by Mitchell Schorr appeared on the west-facing wall of Simon’s Downtown Mobil in Burlington — and lasted less than a month. The work was part of the New York artist’s nationwide series “Da Race”; other examples of his work can still be seen outside Pearl Street Beverage…
Snowkiters Catch Big Air on Frozen Lakes
Whitecaps buffet my head and back as I stand chest deep in Lake Champlain off Burlington’s North Beach. Above me, a blue, comma-shaped, inflatable kite, which is tethered to my waist harness, shudders in a variable westerly breeze. With two hands on a control bar, I practice maneuvering the kite left and right, raising and…
‘Of Land & Local’ Exhibit Contemplates Place
A very, very long time ago, some early human had the idea of representing the natural world, rather than just being in it. Whether that first gesture was stick figure or symbol, we can’t know for sure, but it was surely evolutionary. The artwork of ensuing civilizations suggests that the desire — perhaps need —…
From Mountains to Masthead: Pat Bridges of Snowboarder Magazine
Pat Bridges is a self-described working-class kid who grew up on a dirt road in a Vermont town that no longer exists. So how did he land atop the masthead of a California media empire? First he hopped on a skateboard, which he rode around the lost Rutland County town of Sherburne, now Killington. Next…
The Martian
Matt Damon may play the marooned astronaut who fights to make it home in this feel-good sci-fi epic, but the big news is that director Ridley Scott is back. After a string of misfires (Robin Hood? Prometheus?), the 77-year-old filmmaker returns to form with a deep-space drama that stands with his finest. Which is saying…
Good Deals, Great Food at Stowe’s Doc Ponds
At both the Waterbury and Burlington locations of upscale Hen of the Wood, the $29 hanger steak is a major attraction. At Doc Ponds, the beer bar that Hen of the Wood’s owners opened in August, the bavette steak is blanketed in garlicky chimichurri and cooked to an ideal medium rare. There’s little difference between…
Scout & Co. Bring Savory Snacks to South End
The third location of Scout & Co. opened Monday, October 5, at the Innovation Center of Vermont at 128 Lakeside Avenue in Burlington. Locals will note that it has a few key differences from the Scouts already purveying coffee drinks and ice cream on North Avenue and in Winooski. Co-owner Andrew Burke says he’ll wait…
