From Oregon, With Love
This is not referencing a specific article, but I wanted to reach out to say thank you for sending your paper all the way to two Vermonters in Oregon. My partner and I left for a brief hiatus to the Pacific Northwest, and I found myself oddly missing Seven Days, maybe even more than Cabot Extra Sharp? Maybe.
I dutifully pick up the local weekly here, but despite their best efforts and my Vermont bias, it’s just not the same. Mostly, though, I just don’t think I realized how lucky we are to have such a robust weekly paper.
I ended up subscribing to the print version of the paper, and now the stack of unread Seven Days on the coffee table, taunting me to catch up on 3- to 4-week-old news, has me feeling right at home. The huge range of reporting, from silly to informative — plus a crossword puzzle I can actually get close to finishing — have my slow Saturday mornings feeling complete again. Thank you!
Tabitha Tice
Eugene, OR
What Two Women Created
Thirty years for Seven Days! The most noteworthy story is one that you have never published: that two women created another “alternative” startup that was supposed to fail but that has not only thrived but become a paper of record, supplanting the legacy newspapers such as the Burlington Free Press, the Rutland Herald and the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus.
Wowser.
John Franco
Burlington
When Rick Met Paula
Paula Routly mentioned the 1995 Highgate show as being her first — and only — Grateful Dead show [From the Publisher: “‘Ripple’ Effect,” August 6]. For me, it was my second — and last — show; San Francisco 1984 was the first. I was very slow to warm up to the band despite having heard it regularly since I was probably 10.
But something else happened that day in Highgate (other than Bob Dylan being there, which is why I went): I met Paula for the first time. I remember her standing in the parking lot, camera around her neck.
Two months later, as she said, Jerry Garcia was dead and Seven Days was born. The rest is history.
Rick Woods
Colchester
Editor’s note: Woods was our first sales manager at Seven Days. He managed to sell ads into the paper before it even existed — and enough of them so that we could afford to create a decent product. He stayed at the paper, as general manager, until 2009. Seven Days would not be here without him.
Life Jackets, Please!
In [“Different Strokes: In Historically Accurate Boats, Lake Champlain Maritime Museum Rowing Clubs Share a Niche Passion,” August 6], the heavy wooden boats shown were near the Palisade cliffs and 300-foot-deep water without life jackets on. With an approaching storm “not one of the rowers reached for the life jackets by their feet, knowing that their boats were built for even rougher seas.” Sounds like the Titanic.
Very fit dragon boat rowers use life jackets on short sprints in shallow waters.
The Lake Champlain Maritime Museum needs to promote safer nautical boating, as recommended by the U.S. Coast Guard.
Richard Ryder
Shelburne
Bring Back ‘WTF’ Column
I think you should revive the “WTF” column or maybe instead start “You Gotta Be Kidding Me!” So many stories have elicited this reaction from me, but I don’t get around to submit a timely feedback comment. Stories include the “progressive” mayor of Burlington terminating long-term employees, DOGE-like [“Burlington Lays Off 18 City Workers to Help Close Budget Gap,” May 9, online]; treating the obvious and major pollution of Lake Champlain by Panton farmers as a neighbor dispute and leading to a bill to protect farmers from so-called nuisance suits [“Flowing Downhill,” April 16]; and your recent excellent reporting by Hannah Bassett on the wasted time and resources on all these legislative studies [“Filed and Forgotten,” August 6]. Thanks, Seven Days!
Alan Quackenbush
North Duxbury
Editor’s note: See “Bygone Bylines” for our tribute to the retired “WTF” column
Required Reading
[“Tent City,” August 13] is a classic documentary that every Vermonter should read.
Peter Chilos
Rutland
Statue to Statue
Here’s an imagined eulogy for the statue of Chief Greylock by the statue of Major General William Wells [“Chief Concerns: The Debate Over Abenaki Authenticity Complicates Plans to Replace a Statue in Burlington’s Battery Park,” August 13]:
The moon is bright enough tonight
to turn the lake silver,
bright enough to make me remember.
You should be here.
The years we stood in this park together.
Wet August heat like now or February ice,
the time passed slowly through us both
Made of different materials
but we had the same job.
To clocklessly keep watch.
We didn’t talk much.
We just shared the nights.
Watched the lovers sneak
down to the water,
Watched the storms roll across the lake.
And on nights like this — full moon, calm air —
we’d just stand here and breathe in the quiet.
Now it’s just me.
They said you were rotting.
Said your wood couldn’t hold together anymore.
They came with their ladders and their ropes,
and one day you were gone.
An empty pedestal.
Like you’d never been here at all.
But you were here.
I remember.
The gulls still circle,
the lake still sparkles under the moon,
but it all feels thinner without you.
Thinner in spirit but heavier of heart,
in the weight of this new loneliness.
Michael Nedell
Burlington
Related
This article appears in 30th Birthday Issue.
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!