Seven Days, March 15, 2023

SIDELINED

A religious school in Quechee that refused to play a girls’ basketball game against a team with a trans athlete has been barred from mainstream high school sports in the state. e Vermont Principals’ Association, which governs school sports, told Mid Vermont Christian School in a letter on Monday that the small private school is no longer eligible to compete in events, including state tournaments.

e VPA cited comments that head of school Vicky Fogg made to the Valley News following Mid Vermont Christian’s decision to forfeit a game in last month’s Division IV state tournament. Fogg wrote to the newspaper that competing “against an opponent with a biological male jeopardizes the fairness of the game and the safety of our players.”

On Tuesday, Fogg indicated that the school will appeal the decision. “Cancelling our membership is not a solution and does nothing to deal with the very real issue of safety and fairness facing women’s sports in our beloved state,” she wrote. e forfeiture and expressed rationale violated the VPA’s nondiscrimination policies, which it said are aligned with state law barring discrimination in public accommodations based on gender identity.

Mid Vermont Christian was created in 1987 by a group of parents who believed that God told them to start a school, according to its website. It espouses a “Christ-centered”

PLANE SCARY

Passengers aboard a flight from New Jersey sat on the tarmac at BTV for hours while the authorities investigated a threat. In the end: all clear.

UP IN SMOKE

For the third time, voters in Castleton rejected a measure that would allow cannabis stores to open in town. Just say no, no, no.

That’s the number of World Cup wins for skier Mikaela Shi rin, who set a new record on Saturday in Sweden.

TOPFIVE

MOST POPULAR ITEMS ON SEVENDAYSVT.COM

1. “Original Hen of the Wood to Make Waterbury Move; Former Space to Become FamilyFriendly Spot” by Melissa Pasanen. e restaurant will move about a half mile to brand-new digs.

2. “Four Newish Restaurants Bring World Flavors to Chittenden County” by Jordan Barry & Melissa Pasanen. Our writers sampled Indian-Nepali, Filipino, vegetarian Indian and Afghan eateries.

3. “Burlington Voters Reject Police Oversight Ballot Item” by Courtney Lamdin. A measure that would have allowed a citizen board to discipline police failed on Town Meeting Day.

4. “Bill Busier of Essex Junction, Survivor of German POW Camp, Turns 105” by Sally Pollak. Busier was captured by German soldiers at the Battle of the Bulge.

education with classes taught through its interpretation of a “biblical worldview.” e school publishes a “notice” professing not to discriminate based on gender “in administration of its educational, admissions, financial aid programs, and other school administered programs.”

But, as the Valley News also reported, Mid Vermont Christian is one of two religious schools testing a state law that requires private schools to follow the state’s antidiscrimination law in order to receive public money through Vermont’s tuitioning program. Fogg, in a January letter to the State Board of Education, declined to “affirm” aspects of Vermont law that “conflict with any of the school’s beliefs, including on marriage and sexuality,” according to the Valley News

e State Board of Education voted on February 1 to approve the school’s application for public tuition dollars on the condition that, by its March meeting, “the school comes into compliance” with the rule requiring affirmation of compliance with the Vermont Public Accommodations Act.

“If the school does not provide such an assurance by the deadline, the State Board would make a finding that the condition has not been met, and the school would not be approved,” draft meeting minutes state.

Read Derek Brouwer’s full story at sevendaysvt.com.

FRESH CARGO

As Community Harvest of Central Vermont approached a decade in operation this year, the nonprofit had one bigticket wish list item: a cargo van.

Since January 2014, the small staff and many volunteers at the Berlinbased organization have used their own vehicles to ferry hundreds of thousands of pounds of surplus food — much of it gleaned from central Vermont farms — to food shelves, senior and community meal programs, and other groups that assist those in need.

Longtime Community Harvest volunteer Cary Friberg of Moretown would

HOOP DREAMS

Both UVM basketball teams made the NCAA tournament, with the men tipping o on Friday and the women on Saturday. Good luck!

LONG SHOT

The Rotary Club of Stowe is running a pool for people to guess when the first truck gets stuck in Smugglers’ Notch this year. How about never?

5. “Local Actor Casey Metcalfe Appears in ‘Champions’ With Woody Harrelson” by Sally Pollak. To land the role, Metcalfe auditioned via video using a live chicken as a prop.

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often drive her car or truck to transport crates of greens or bushels of apples. Friberg’s truck could hold more but exposed food to the elements. “Sometimes they’d say, ‘Don’t bring your truck. It’s too hot out,’” she recalled.

Friberg was among almost 100 donors who pitched in recently for a brandnew Ford Transit 250 van to celebrate Community Harvest’s birthday. e $57,000 vehicle was delivered to the nonprofit in early February. e climate-controlled van can hold 4,500 pounds of food, making transportation far more efficient and increasing Community Harvest’s ability to “Help everyone eat local,” as its brightly painted side panels declare.

One of the vehicle’s first outings

would previously have taken “two or three Subarus or a couple pickup trucks,” said Community Harvest founding executive director Allison Levin. Plus, “We didn’t have to worry about vegetables freezing. We didn’t have to jam it in.”

Need remains high even as the pandemic recedes, said Karen Hoskey, director of the Worcester Community Kitchen and Food Shelf, which received 2,500 visits in 2022 — up from 750 in 2019. Community Harvest’s weekly deliveries “basically bring tears to our clients,” Hoskey said. “I stand back in complete awe as folks pick up salad greens [or] cooking greens, or ask how to use celeriac. Nothing replaces fresh food.”

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Presented by the University of Vermont’s Division of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, the 2023 Inclusive Excellence Symposium explores what it means to be in community with the University of Vermont’s Our Common Ground values with speakers Loretta Ross, Rabia Chaudry, D’Lo, and Maimouna Youssef.

GOING TO EXTREMES.

publisher & editor-in-chief

Paula Routly

deputy publisher Cathy Resmer

AssociAte publishers Don Eggert, Colby Roberts

NEWS & POLITICS

editor Matthew Roy

deputy editor Sasha Goldstein

consulting editors Ken Ellingwood, Candace Page

stAff writers Derek Brouwer, Colin Flanders, Rachel Hellman, Courtney Lamdin, Kevin McCallum, Alison Novak, Anne Wallace Allen

ARTS & CULTURE

coeditors Dan Bolles, Carolyn Fox

AssociAte editor Margot Harrison

Art editor Pamela Polston

consulting editor Mary Ann Lickteig

Music editor Chris Farnsworth

cAlendAr writer Emily Hamilton

stAff writers Jordan Barry, Melissa Pasanen, Ken Picard, Sally Pollak

proofreAders Carolyn Fox, Angela Simpson

AssistAnt proofreAders

Katherine Isaacs, Martie Majoros

DIGITAL & VIDEO

digitAl production speciAlist Bryan Parmelee

senior MultiMediA producer Eva Sollberger

MultiMediA journAlist James Buck

DESIGN

creAtive director Don Eggert

Art director Rev. Diane Sullivan

production MAnAger John James

designers Jeff Baron, Kirsten Thompson

SALES & MARKETING

director of sAles Colby Roberts

senior Account executives

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Account executives Michelle Brown, Logan Pintka

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legAls, life lines And super reAder coordinAtor

Kaitlin Montgomery

ADMINISTRATION

business MAnAger Marcy Stabile

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CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

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CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS

Luke Awtry, Daria Bishop, Caleb Kenna, Josh Kuckens, Tim Newcomb, Oliver Parini, Jeb Wallace-Brodeur

FOUNDERS

Pamela Polston, Paula Routly

CIRCULATION: 35,000

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TRUE ‘CHAMPION’

[Re “Local Actor Casey Metcalfe Appears in Champions With Woody Harrelson,” March 3]: Sally Pollak’s piece on the new Woody Harrelson movie costarring local actor Casey Metcalfe captured the love of life Casey demonstrates every day. It is infectious.

Casey and I have never actually met but somehow became Facebook friends a couple of years ago. His posts, on everything from his pet chicken to work to the joys of the Burlington waterfront, are a daily delight. No matter the topic, they exude fun and happiness and have a contagious positivity we could all emulate. I look forward to his posts popping up in my feed, and they never fail to put a smile on my face.

The same spirit came through in Pollak’s interview, filled with intelligence, humor and openness.

I saw Casey on the Burlington waterfront last summer and almost introduced myself to tell him how much I enjoy his posts. It appeared he was in the middle of an animated French lesson, so I demurred. Next time I’ll make the introduction and maybe ask for an autograph. Thanks for the great story.

Steve Costello RUTLAND

S.100 IS NOT THE ANSWER

According to Seven Days [“Site Work: Bills Would Chip Away at Rules Curbing Home Construction,” March 8], the solution to Vermont’s housing crisis is found in the S.100 bill pending in the Senate, and that solution is further environmental deregulation and reliance on the “invisible hand” of market forces. Much blame is placed on alleged Act 250 horror stories and delays. In fact, senators have acknowledged that this position is based largely on anecdotes unsubstantiated by actual case studies and available data. The Senate Committee on Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs had no time for testimony countervailing the anecdotes as it rammed S.100 through the process.

S.100 is now in the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Energy, which has at least accepted testimony from Thomas Weiss and myself providing demonstrable proof that Act 250 is not to blame and that there are other factors much more responsible for the

TOWN

Loretta Ross Rabia Chaudry

Maimouna Youssef

D’Lo

crisis that has been allowed to build over decades: the failure to ensure a workforce for construction of affordable housing; the effects of the Airbnb vampires on what used to be full-time residential housing; and the staggering vacancy rate of housing in Vermont — tied with Maine for No. 1 in the U.S. Anne Wallace Allen did not find it necessary to examine any of this in her article.

History shows that the neoliberal strategy of deregulation and market forces works, right? What about the North American Free Trade Agreement, unconstrained energy utilities, the savings and loan collapse, and internet platform monopolies? How tragic that Senate leadership is willing to throw Act 250 under the bus.

Ed Stanak BARRE CITY

CORRECTIONS

Last week’s story “Site Work: Bills Would Chip Away at Rules Curbing Home Construction” included an outdated name for a legislative committee. The committee’s name was changed in January to House Committee on Environment and Energy.

The story titled “Not Just a Job” also contained errors: Vermont Works for Women rents, but does not own, a home in Middlebury; the University of Vermont’s Liberal Arts in Prison Program provides enrichment opportunities, but not classes, for incarcerated people in Vermont.

VOLUNTEERING AN OPINION

Thank you so much for your reporting highlighting the challenges of first response agencies statewide [“On Life Support,” March 1]. This will help more people understand the real costs of providing emergency services. I hope many who haven’t thought about it will realize that they should not take these essential services for granted.

As a volunteer firefighter, I feel I must comment on a subtle but important use of words in Paula Routly’s column the same week [From the Publisher: “Call and Response”]. She points out how Burlington’s full-time first responders are all professional, which is 100 percent correct. A couple of paragraphs later, though, she draws a contrast between professional and volunteer emergency responders. This is not a fair comparison.

Across Vermont, volunteer emergency responders are part of the same training programs, are required to achieve the same certifications and are held to the same professional standards as career emergency providers. Whether responding thousands of times a year, as is the case in Burlington, or less than 100 times a year, as in many rural fire departments, all Vermont emergency responders bring professionalism to every incident. Whether volunteer or career, we are all professionals.

Nathan Goldman UNDERHILL

Editor’s note: The adjective “professional” was chosen to differentiate volunteer emergency personnel from those who are paid for their service. It was not a comment on the quality of the work.

MILK MEMORIES

Kudos to Peter Carreiro for keeping milk in glass bottles alive, as well as home deliveries. I enjoyed the article “Glass Act” by Rachel Mullis in the March 1 issue of Seven Days. It brought back fond memories of our family going to Connecticut from Massachusetts to visit my aunt, uncle and cousins who owned a family dairy farm, Drabik Farms. Uncle Fred and his brother did a similar thing as Carreiro, along with milking and bottling. Uncle Fred and Aunt Bertha lived well into their nineties, and I know that fresh milk, as well as eating their own fruits and veggies, contributed to this. Thanks for the uplifting article.

Casmera Tagliamonte COLCHESTER

MCCALLUM’S ‘BLIND SPOT’

Thanks for publishing my letter [Feedback: “Milk Money,” February 8] in which I observed that Kevin McCallum’s report on a proposed “over-order pricing” premium on milk handlers to subsidize all dairy farms had “an enormous blind spot.” He can’t bring himself to explain just who is paying for this scheme.

The answer is: Everyone who drinks milk and consumes dairy products will be made to pay for this and will likely never discover why the prices they pay are jacked up to support prosperous dairy farms as well as struggling ones.

Now comes Kevin with an enthusiastic account of the “clean heat standard” legislation, shamefully relabeled the Affordable Heat Act [“Senate Committee Advances the Latest Clean Heat Bill,” February 17, online]. Kevin tells us, correctly, that resistance to this multibillion-dollar scheme to drive out heating oil, propane and natural gas comes from fossil fuel dealers worried about going out of business. He does mention that “the conservative Ethan Allen Institute has called it a stealth carbon tax,” but he didn’t ask us for an explanation.

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24

NEWS+POLITICS 14

Worth Their While

An innovative drug-treatment program encourages sobriety with an incentive: cash

Beta to O er Fixed-Wing

Electric Plane

Unkept Promises

For victims of home improvement fraud, there’s no clear path to restitution

Man Dies Following Alleged Beating in Prison Cell

Burlington Council

Denounces Transphobia

Amid ‘Stickering’ Campaign

STUCK IN VERMONT

FEATURES 24

Galaxy Quest

A local astrophotographer shoots outof-this-world images from his home in St. George

‘Whatever Job She Was Doing, She Did It Well’

Life Story: Alice Goulet Smith, March 22, 1938-February 13, 2023

Online Now

FOOD+DRINK 38

Feeding Each Other

Northeast Kingdom high schoolers cook for their community

Wild About Wild Chocolate ree questions for food writer Rowan

Jacobsen

Sole Food

Starting the day with Sneakers Bistro’s chicken and waffles

SUPPORTED BY:

Don “Tip” Ruggles was in seventh grade when he started helping his dad at Somers Hardware in Montpelier. Somers went out of business in 2009, and Aubuchon Hardware expanded into the space. Since then, Tip has been helping Aubuchon shoppers find the right tool for the job; customers often ask for him by name. Eva visited the store to meet Tip.

MAGNIFICENT

THURSDAY 16

Cowboy Meets World

Cross at River, a musical by Harlem, N.Y., composer Allan Harris, dazzles audiences at Stowe Mountain Resort’s Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center with its energetic country-blues songbook and poignant storytelling. Inspired by true stories — a quarter of all cowboys in the 19th century were Black — the play follows Blue as he escapes slavery to find a new life in the Wild West.

SEE CALENDAR LISTING ON PAGE 64

THURSDAY 16

Taken to the Extreme

Award-winning journalist and Dartmouth College writing professor Jeff Sharlet launches his newest book at Norwich Bookstore. Drawing on Sharlet’s years of research into American religious extremism, e Undertow: Scenes From a Slow Civil War is an investigation into the Christian far right’s descent into conspiracy, bigotry and insurrection over the past decade.

SEE CALENDAR LISTING ON PAGE 64

FRIDAY 17-SUNDAY 19

Men in Tights

FRIDAY 17 & SATURDAY 18

LAUGH MARATHON

Beloved local sketch-comedy troupe Stealing From Work returns to Burlington’s Vermont Comedy Club with a brand-new revue, Gaslight at the End of the Tunnel. Fourteen original sketches featuring 75 characters offer a full evening of laughs for mature audiences who like immature jokes.

SEE CLUB LISTING ON PAGE 57

SUNDAY 19

How Sweet It Is

After a two-year pandemic hiatus, the Maple Festival returns to the Middletown Springs Historical Society for a day of sweet, sweet fun. On tap are a sugaring demonstration, plenty of vendors, live music, exhibits and talks on the history of this classic Vermont industry, and, of course, plenty of sticky treats. Proceeds benefit the historical society.

SEE CALENDAR LISTING ON PAGE 66

e Shelburne Players pull out all the stops for their 40th production, e Somewhat True Tale of Robin Hood, at Shelburne Town Hall. is sidesplitting satire stars Alex Nalbach as the titular hero, alongside a cast packed with local talent, and follows a swaggering, bumbling Robin Hood and his Merry Men in a funny, family-friendly retelling of the classic stories.

SEE CALENDAR LISTING ON PAGE 64

SATURDAY 18

No Irish Goodbye

Cabot-area music lovers celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with A Celtic Equinox at Willey Memorial Hall, featuring Irish Session on Main, a rotating crew that has been gathering to play Irish and Scottish tunes in Montpelier since 2011. is show marks one of the final performances of its featured guest, Scottish singer Norman Kennedy.

SEE CALENDAR LISTING ON PAGE 65

ONGOING

Where the Heart Is

Visitors at “House Portraits,” Queen City artist Ken Russack’s solo show at Burlington’s Frog Hollow Vermont Craft Gallery, feel right at home among the studio and plein air oil paintings of houses and buildings. e impressionist landscapes are full of light, movement, and a sense of place and passing time.

SEE GALLERY LISTING ON PAGE 52

Still Here

On March 20, 2020, during the initial terror of the pandemic, Francesca Aida Fortuna Villemaire turned 100 at Burlington’s Converse Home. The assisted living facility had banned all outside visitors on March 11, two days before Gov. Phil Scott declared a state of emergency in Vermont. Soon thereafter, Fran and the other residents were confined to their rooms for three months.

Seven Days readers might recall that I “covered” Fran’s birthday celebration by observing it from the outside looking in through the dining room windows. A former nurse who generally dislikes the spotlight, she wore a tiara and a sash that declared: “100 and Fabulous.”

I documented the occasion for a group-reported cover story in the first weeks of the pandemic, though I had an ulterior motive: The assignment allowed me to get a look at my mom, who at that point I hadn’t seen for 10 days. Since I moved Angie to Vermont from Maryland at the end of 2017, she and Fran had been tablemates. The third musketeer at that table by the window, Sue Haman, became my mother’s Burlington BFF.

Fran’s birthday turned out to be the last group gathering at the Converse Home before the pandemic lockdown. The facility’s strict protocols kept the coronavirus at bay until that winter, when there was an outbreak in the memory care unit. Five residents died.

Meanwhile, everyone worried about the impact of social isolation on the living — and with good reason. But Fran, holed up in her tiny room overlooking the garden, was content. Even before the pandemic, Converse staffers sometimes had to coax her to go to the dining room for meals. When I visited on Sunday, I found her in the easy chair she sleeps in, watching the Hallmark channel, feasting on a hot supper of fish, asparagus and a baked potato. Attached to the oxygen tank that eases her pulmonary fibrosis, she ate heartily without removing the nasal cannula.

“It’s nice to stay in,” she observed in her signature raspy alto, savoring every last bite of the food. “I’m a loner.” Not quite: Born to Italian immigrants, the St. Albans native has three children, seven grandkids and 10 great-grands.

On Monday, when Fran turns 103, her family will throw her a real

birthday party at the Converse Home. But neither Angie nor Sue will be there. My mom died on May 25, 2020, two and a half months into the pandemic. Sue followed on February 3, 2022. My last visits to Converse were to say goodbye.

Although Fran’s long life hasn’t changed that much in the past three years, it’s fair to say almost everyone else’s has. From the vantage point of March 2020, no one could have predicted how Vermont would look today — which people, businesses, organizations and institutions would make it and which would not. That’s true of any significant time period, of course, but the pandemic posed a threat of unknown proportions. Public health officials were preparing for dire scenarios.

Each of Vermont’s almost 1,000 COVID-19 deaths so far represents a personal tragedy. Societally, the lingering effects of this drawn-out public health crisis have been arguably more complicated and harder to imagine: long COVID, worker burnout, skepticism about science, misinformation. Problems that were bad before the pandemic are worse: a shortage of housing and childcare, rampant mental illness, overdose deaths, wealth inequality, political polarization.

My unscientific analysis, hatched during a recent road trip, suggests that while much of the country is moving on from COVID-19, Vermont still appears to be stuck. I see people in masks walking alone, driving solo. It’s as if a collective gloom has settled over us. I find myself explaining to people new to Burlington how this used to be a friendlier place. It seems people just aren’t out and about as much as they once were. In a small, sparsely populated, aging state, that makes a huge difference.

Lack of participation may explain, in part, why so many public-facing local businesses — restaurants, coffee shops, theaters — have not returned to pre-pandemic activity and hours of service. But also: Many of them can’t find workers to wait on the customers they have. There are “Help wanted” signs in shop windows all over the country, but here, with too few young people to draw on, a dearth of labor threatens our fragile economy. As of December, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Vermont had 20,000 open jobs and just 10,000 potential workers to fill them.

The coronavirus seems to have accelerated some negative trends that the state saw looming on the horizon. Now they’re here — sooner than expected.

PAULA ROUTLY

COURTESY OF BECKY BOUCHARD

Fran Villemaire a week before she turns

Fran on her 100th birthday in 2020

I’ve been thinking a lot about journalist Laurie Garrett, dubbed the “Coronavirus Cassandra” for her early pandemic prophesies. In May 2020, she told the New York Times: “My event horizon is about 36 months, and that’s my best-case scenario.” Nobody wanted to hear it at the time, but she was right. Similarly, Union Army general William Tecumseh Sherman was pronounced “crazy” and swiftly demoted when he predicted that the Civil War would drench the U.S. in blood and cost 200,000 lives. That turned out to be barely a third of the eventual toll, and Sherman eventually helped his side win the war.

Three years after we entered the pandemic, it’s hard to say for sure if it’s over — or if it was an anomaly, or the beginning of a new era of vulnerability to viral threats. Having survived so far, we have an opportunity to remake this place as we want it to be: lively, compassionate, ambitious. Seven Days is doing our part, keeping you informed about everything from public safety challenges to interesting art shows and new restaurants. We’re hanging on, thanks to financial support from readers and advertisers, though entire business sectors remain missing from our pages.

I’m challenging myself to make an individual effort every day toward the greater goal — a healthy community — even if it’s as simple as smiling at a stranger. Or visiting a friend.

The front door was open on Sunday at the Converse Home; as long as they’re masked, visitors are welcome again. In the lobby, I found a new resident waiting for her daughter to arrive so they could spend the day together. I felt a pang of loss and longing, maybe a twinge of jealousy. The woman, 95, lives in my mother’s old apartment.

With a little encouragement from the receptionist, I remembered the way to Fran’s. On a ledge outside her door is my 2020 write-up of her birthday. Inside, the walls are bedecked with family photos, religious images, professional plaques and the now-3-year-old “100 and Fabulous” sash.

I wished her an early happy 103rd with a card and a box of cookies from Mirabelles Bakery. “You look good,” I said over the audio from the Hallmark show, which included descriptions of the action for people with limited vision.

“...For an old lady,” quipped the centenarian, who can see just fine. After dessert — she had two — I asked if sleeping in a recliner could really be good for her health.

With an impish grin, Fran replied: “I’ll let you know in 10 years.”

Paula Routly

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ALTHOUGH FRAN’S LONG LIFE HASN’T CHANGED THAT MUCH IN THE PAST THREE YEARS, IT’S FAIR TO SAY ALMOST EVERYONE ELSE’S HAS.

Worth Their While

An innovative drug-treatment program encourages sobriety with an incentive: cash

BY COLIN FLANDERS • colin@sevendaysvt.com

Last fall, a South Burlington woman addicted to methamphetamine received a surprising o er: If she were willing to talk to a counselor and take weekly drug tests, she could get paid — even if she tested positive.

The woman, who requested anonymity because of her active drug use, has struggled with other treatment programs because each misstep felt like a debilitating failure. Instead of sticking with them, she said, “I’ll just run away.”

But recently out of prison and seeking stability, she gave it a shot, becoming the first participant in a new treatment program run by Burlington-based nonprofit Vermonters for Criminal Justice Reform. More than 60 people are now enrolled in the six-month program, and the nonprofit hopes to add at least 20 more in the coming weeks.

The program is based on an approach known as contingency management, which helps people overcome unwanted

behaviors by offering small rewards, usually money. It’s helped people quit smoking, lose weight and drink less. Many studies have also shown that paying participants is highly effective in treating cocaine and methamphetamine addictions.

Beta to Offer FixedWing Electric Plane

BY DEREK BROUWER derek@sevendaysvt.com

Beta Technologies plans to produce a more conventional version of its experimental electric aircraft that it can sell to customers sooner, the company announced on Tuesday.

e CX300 aircraft will use a very similar frame and battery system as Beta’s primary prototype, Alia, but without the extra rotors that allow for vertical takeoff and landing. e CX300 will fly like a fixed-wing plane that uses runways.

Much of the South Burlington-based company’s flight testing so far has been in fixed-wing mode. It has flown more than 22,000 miles in this configuration, Beta said in a press release.

Incentive-based treatment programs usually only reward negative drug tests. The Burlington experiment pays participants even if they test positive for the target drug, fentanyl. All they have to do is show up to the nonprofit’s downtown o ces once a week.

The protocol, believed to be the most tolerant in the nation, is an attempt to reach people who aren’t ready to stop

using but who could benefit from weekly check-ins with counselors. Such connections could one day help steer them into recovery.

“There’s not much out there for folks who are not ready to commit to abstinence,” said Rick Rawson, a renowned addiction expert at the University of Vermont who has consulted with the program. “They wander around like pingpong balls without anything that will pull them in.”

That’s a scary thought in the age of fentanyl. “In the old days, we used to talk about people hitting bottom,” Rawson said. “Now, people don’t hit bottom. They die.”

It’s not the first time Burlington has been a testing ground for a new incentive treatment program. A series of landmark studies conducted at UVM in the 1980s and early ’90s were the first

e company thinks it can get the CX300 aircraft certified and delivered to its initial customers in 2025, potentially a year earlier than Alia, for which the path to Federal Aviation Administration certification is more complicated.

A key commercial appeal of aircraft such as Alia is the ability to take off vertically, which can compensate for limited range by untethering planes from airports. Beta appears to also see a market for fixed-wing electric planes, as corporate customers seek to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

A Beta spokesperson declined to say how much the CX300 is expected to cost.

A few companies that have existing relationships with Beta plan to buy the CX300, including Air New Zealand, United erapeutics, and Bristow, a company that provides services to the oil and gas industries.

One of Beta’s CX300 prototypes recently flew 386 miles from Jamestown, N.Y., to Plattsburgh, N.Y., the company said. Alia is expected to have a range of about 250 miles.

Both versions of Beta’s aircraft will be manufactured at a new production plant under construction at the Burlington International Airport. e facility is on track for completion this summer, according to the company.

Beta is also expanding north of the Canadian border. e company announced last week that it had opened a satellite office in Montréal and hired 50 employees there, with new recruits expected in the months ahead. ➆

DARIA BISHOP

Beta’s CX300 prototype in flight

Unkept Promises

For victims of home improvement fraud,

BY ANNE WALLACE ALLEN • anne@sevendaysvt.com

Jen Lawrence felt lucky to find a house to buy in South Burlington during the pandemic, and she was prepared to spend some money updating the bathrooms and patching drywall.

Her real estate agent recommended a handyman she knew, and Lawrence, who moved to Vermont with her family from Houston in summer 2021, showed him what she needed done and paid a deposit for some materials last summer.

asks the contractor to complete the work or return the money. Though several towns have community justice centers, their budgets for restitution are small. South Burlington, for example, has just $2,500, less than the amount of Lawrence’s single claim.

Police also refer homeowners to small claims court, which hears cases of up to $5,000, but a judgment in favor of the homeowner — though binding — doesn’t always mean a contractor will pay up, since judges’ authority is limited to ordering payments.

But the handyman never did the work, Lawrence said, and now she’s out the $2,700 she gave him for supplies. She’s since hired someone else to do the work on her house.

Lawrence lodged a complaint with the South Burlington police and is working with the city’s Community Justice Center to help others avoid being defrauded. She also plans to file a suit in small claims court. She wants the contractor to repay her family and several other people who hired him last year and reported that they also lost money.

“There is a moral obligation to stop this guy from doing this to other people,” said Lawrence, a geologist who worked for more than 20 years at ExxonMobil. “I want to see him prosecuted, tried and make restitution, and I’d like to see a strengthening of the consumer protection laws for people in Vermont, because it’s a problem.”

Indeed, home improvement fraud is one of the most common complaints filed with the state Attorney General’s Office. Last year, Vermonters made 144 such complaints, representing total alleged losses of $903,000.

But the system for addressing contractor fraud claims can be frustrating to navigate and is largely toothless, leaving customers an uncertain path once someone has taken their money without doing the work. While there are plenty of ways to lodge a complaint, there’s no sure way for property owners to get their money back if they have been defrauded.

Sometimes, police arrest people on home improvement fraud charges. Other times, they advise property owners to file a report with the attorney general’s consumer protection unit, which then

“You have to show intent for a criminal charge,” Capt. Matt Daley of the Vermont State Police said. “There are a ton of different variables.”

Officials who deal with these cases hope that a recently enacted law, which created a contractor registry and a new position in the AG’s Office, can provide some solutions to what’s proved to be an intractable problem.

Josef Lavanway, director of the South Burlington Community Justice Center, said his office receives 20 to 30 home improvement fraud complaints annually, a number that has been stable for several years.

Offenders are referred to the South Burlington center by the police, the state’s attorney’s office, or the local Probation and Parole Office. A panel of community members works with them and those they scammed with the goal of making things right, Lavanway said.

“When folks go through a traditional court process, oftentimes the harmed party is not a part of the process,” Lavanway said. “[In creating restorative justice panels], folks in Vermont wanted what

there’s no clear path to restitution

Man Dies Following Alleged Beating in Prison Cell

BY DEREK BROUWER derek@sevendaysvt.com

A Vermont prisoner died last Friday, months after he was beaten by his cellmate, police said.

Jeffrey Hall, 55, was discovered bloody and unconscious on December 22 in the cell he shared with 21-year-old Mbyayenge Mafuta, according to the Vermont State Police.

Mafuta was arraigned last month for attempted murder, though state prosecutors in Franklin County could elect to amend the charge in light of Hall’s death.

Hall and Mafuta were each imprisoned at Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans pending trial, meaning they had not been convicted of a crime. Hall was reportedly detained for larceny, driving a motor vehicle without the owner’s consent and providing false information to police. Mafuta faced numerous charges, many tied to his alleged vandalism of more than 30 homes in Burlington’s South End.

They had been cellmates for only a couple of days, according to a police affidavit. Before that, Mafuta was held in a segregation unit on mental health watch. He’d reported hearing voices and having thoughts of harming himself or others, according to a clinician’s note in the court file.

But on December 20, an employee of the state’s prison health care contractor, VitalCore Health Strategies, emailed prison staff to say Mafuta was stable and could “come off full precautions.” Mafuta was no longer thinking of harming himself or others and indicated that being kept in solitary confinement was not helping his mental state.

“He was able to process what happened last night and create a plan” for being in the general population, the clinician’s email stated. Mafuta was then placed in a cell with Hall.

There were no witnesses to the alleged assault. Corrections officers heard yelling during cell checks. Hall was unconscious when they entered the cell; they reported seeing blood on Mafuta’s sweatshirt. Mafuta, who appeared uninjured, declined to speak to investigators.

Corrections staff interviewed 23 prisoners in the unit. Several of them described Mafuta as having psychiatric issues and making statements to them about hearing people’s thoughts and needing medication.

Hall suffered a serious brain injury that leaves most patients in a vegetative state, according to the police affidavit. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner will conduct an autopsy to determine Hall’s cause of death. ➆

to demonstrate how small, immediate rewards could help people addicted to cocaine achieve sobriety. Patients were offered payments that increased over time but were contingent on passing routine drug tests. If they failed, they went back to square one.

The method is now considered the gold standard for treating addictions to stimulants such as cocaine and meth, which, unlike opioid disorders, have no proven medications.

But it is still not offered widely. One reason, researchers say, has been the moral objection to rewarding someone for staying off drugs. And while many skeptics have come around in light of the nation’s alarming rise in overdose deaths, regulatory hurdles still remain: Clinics worry that using money to motivate patients could be interpreted as a violation of the federal anti-kickback statute, a law intended to prohibit providers from using money or gifts to drum up business paid for by federal health care plans.

President Joe Biden’s administration has considered relaxing those rules as part of a broad strategy to curb overdose deaths. In late 2021, federal regulators granted California permission to spend Medicaid funds on a pilot program. Two other states — Washington and Montana — followed suit.

These programs will use the proven method of paying people only when they test negative, in part because there’s so much riding on their success. “We’re trying to convince the federal government that they should allow this to be done everywhere,” said Michael McDonell, a professor at Washington State University, who’s working to launch a program in that state.

Back in Burlington, program coordinators Tom Dalton and Jess Kirby set out with a more fundamental goal: keeping people alive. That meant diverting from the traditional guidelines in some key ways.

They chose to focus the program on fentanyl instead of stimulants because the powerful painkiller is the common denominator in the overdose crisis, Kirby said. The drug has replaced heroin as the main opioid available on the streets, and it’s increasingly being mixed with other substances. While overdose deaths involving stimulants surged during the pandemic, almost all the victims also had fentanyl in their systems.

People in the program receive a $30 payment their first week and then earn an escalating participation reward — from $12 initially to $25 by week 12 — that

they can double if they test negative for fentanyl. A final $100 payment is meant to motivate people to stick it out until the end. Altogether, participants can earn up to $779 over the six-month period.

The money is deposited onto a reloadable debit card that people have used to pay for gas, groceries and veterinary care. Some are saving it for Christmas. “A lot of people don’t have a bank account,” Kirby said.

addiction to methamphetamine. “And because of the things that addiction causes — all the hardships — you don’t ever stop and take the time to really think about what you’re doing.”

Dalton and Kirby sought feedback from Rawson when building their unorthodox program. The expert initially wasn’t quite sure what to think. Research into contingency management has always held up abstinence as the only acceptable outcome. “There’s not really much in the literature for what to do when you’ve got a population where that’s not going to be realistic,” Rawson said.

But he was blown away by the program’s enrollment success. “I’m working with a bunch of different pilots around the country,” Rawson said. “None of them have recruited as fast as Tom and Jess did.”

They managed to do so without advertising. Instead, they signed up some people they were already working with, and word quickly spread.

Money isn’t the only benefit. Each visit also features a brief counseling session, during which people are asked about their drug use and whether they experienced or witnessed any overdoses that week.

It’s a time when counselors can raise awareness about the tainted supply and suggest safer ways to use: Always test for fentanyl; never use alone. And it’s a chance for people to step back and begin to process what they’re going through.

“It’s a chaotic lifestyle, being an addict,” said the South Burlington woman with an

To qualify, an applicant had to have been recently released from prison or be an active drug user. Once enrolled, there’s almost nothing they could do to get kicked out of the program. Those who go three weeks without showing up get put on pause, which is sometimes necessary when people land back in prison or find housing far from Burlington. But they’re welcome back any time, Dalton said. Of the 65 people who signed up initially, only six did not return after their first visit.

BEING STUCK IN ADDICTION, I CAN GET LOST SOMETIMES. IT HELPS HAVING TO COME IN HERE EVERY WEEK.

SOUTH BURLINGTON WOMAN

From left: Monika Rivero, client services coordinator; Tom Dalton, executive director; and Jess Kirby, director of client services for Vermonters for Criminal Justice Reform

Data collected during intake showed that almost 60 percent of the participants were unhoused, while the rest largely lived in temporary or unstable housing. Eighty percent had a history of overdosing, including four who had OD’d less than 24 hours earlier. About a third reported serious wounds indicative of using drugs contaminated with the animal tranquilizer xylazine. That drug, which has increasingly been detected during autopsies of people who died of an overdose, causes grisly skin infections that can lead to amputation if left untreated. It can also induce hours-long blackouts — and because it is a sedative, not an opioid, it resists overdose-reversal drugs such as naloxone.

Perhaps most notable: Almost everyone had tried some other form of treatment in the past.

“There are misconceptions that people don’t want to stop using,” Dalton said. “The reality is that most people really want to stop, but in a given moment, or a given day, they’re feeling tired and defeated.”

Seven Days spoke to some of the program’s participants, who asked to remain anonymous or be identified only by their first name.

Some are using the incentives to help maintain their sobriety. “It’s like a little bonus for myself,” said a man named T.J., who is in recovery but qualified for the program because he was recently incarcerated.

Roughly half of the participants, meanwhile, have managed to reduce their drug use during the program, data show. That includes Chancy, who signed up the day after an accidental overdose nearly killed him. He credits the rewards for giving him the extra boost he’s needed to stay sober. He’s now managed to string together two months in recovery, his longest drug-free stretch in years.

For the South Burlington woman, the program has provided a much-needed sense of structure. “Being stuck in addiction, I can get lost sometimes,” she said. “It helps having to come in here every week.”

The bonus for negative tests has helped motivate her to avoid using when she otherwise might. And the weekly check-ins have made her much more likely to test her drugs for fentanyl, she said, allowing her to make a conscious decision about whether to use that batch — and, if so, how. “Start small and go slow,” she said during an interview, echoing a common reminder shared by drug counselors.

“Good stuff!” a proud Kirby interjected.

Just as important, the program helped her confront her fear of failure, which she said has prevented her from trying to get

sober in the past. Though she has tested positive for fentanyl a dozen times during the first 19 weeks of the program, she’s stuck with it. The participation reward — and Kirby’s unwavering support — has played a big part. “The test result isn’t the sole focus here,” the woman said.

And while she no longer qualifies for the fentanyl-free bonus, that hasn’t made testing negative any less meaningful. During a visit last week, she leaned over a pending test, anxiously waiting to see what it said. She wasn’t quite sure what to expect; she’d used earlier in the week.

Finally, a faint line formed. Negative.

“A small win,” she said, a grin on her face.

A big question about incentive treatment programs is what happens when they end. Some studies have found that patients start using again when the incentives disappear, but a more recent analysis suggested that it still had better long-term effects than other approaches to treating stimulant disorders.

The Burlington program has room for about 25 more people, though spots are filling fast. The nonprofit has a regular presence at the new homeless shelter pods on Elmwood Avenue in Burlington, where staff have been enrolling people and conducting the weekly drug tests and counseling sessions.

Dalton and Kirby say they will need more money to expand further. A $44,000 grant from the UVM Medical Center’s Community Health Investment Fund currently pays for the incentives and drug-testing supplies. But the nonprofit has relied on its existing funding — which mainly comes from the City of Burlington — to cover the significant staff time needed to run the program.

More money could soon be available. The committee tasked with recommending how Vermont spends the more than $100 million in settlements with opioid companies is making contingency management one of its top initial priorities.

Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger has pushed for that, calling the Burlington program “exactly the kind of innovation we need right now.”

Others seem to agree. Last month, Rawson received a call from a nonprofit housing agency in West Virginia interested in setting up a program for its unhoused clients struggling with meth addictions. When the agency expressed concern that the traditional approach might not work well with the people they serve, Rawson replied, “Hold on. I’ve got something new you can try.”

The agency now plans to follow the Burlington nonprofit’s lead and pay people to participate in a program launching this summer. ➆

Unkept Promises « P.15

BURLINGTON

Burlington Council Denounces Transphobia Amid ‘Stickering’ Campaign

BY COURTNEY LAMDIN • courtney@sevendaysvt.com

Burlington city councilors passed a pair of resolutions on Monday that recognize and advocate for people on the margins.

The first resolution condemns anti-transgender rhetoric and says Burlington will find ways to “amplify the voices of the LGBTQIA+ community.” The second measure calls on lawmakers to support opening an overdose prevention site in the city. Both resolutions passed unanimously.

“The council will send a clear message that transphobia has no place in our community,” Councilor Joe Magee (P-Ward 3), the lead sponsor of both resolutions, said before the vote. “We have failed to address this hate in the past, and while we can’t undo the harm caused, we can commit to doing better going forward.”

The resolution denouncing transphobia is in response to a growing number of attacks against LGBTQ people around the country. The city has also seen “aggressive stickering” of street signs with anti-trans messages, the resolution says.

Emily Copeland, who spoke during the meeting’s public forum, said she and her children frequently remove stickers they find in the Arms Forest in the New North End. She said she came to the meeting to speak on behalf of trans people who may have been too afraid to attend.

“I’m here also trying to model to my two kiddos, who are here tonight, that this is what you do for people that you love,” she said. “You come and you stand up against things that are not right.”

Another speaker, Kevin Hurley, introduced himself as a coordinator of the stickering campaign and said he has no intention to stop.

“This resolution paints myself and my colleagues in Burlington as a hate group,” he said.

“Because you are!” someone in the crowd interjected.

“We will speak the truth, publicly and loudly,” Hurley pressed on. “We will continue to use public spaces to exercise our First Amendment rights.”

But speakers who supported the resolution far outnumbered those against it. Some members of the crowd donned rainbow clothing; others affixed transgender and nonbinary pride flags to the balcony in Burlington City Hall Auditorium.

Outgoing Councilor Perri Freeman (P-Central District), who uses they/them pronouns, described themself as a trans person who hasn’t medically transitioned. Through tears, Freeman thanked fellow councilors for affirming their identity by passing the resolution.

“I want to continue to be able to make choices about my body and about my life and to continue to experience what it looks like to feel seen,” Freeman said. “Thank you for the work we’re doing as a community on this.”

The measure asks a council subcommittee to study the city’s graffiti ordinance and “consider changes that address continued defacement of public property, and graffiti that spreads hateful and harmful messages.”

Councilor Magee’s other resolution recognizes the staff who worked at a low-barrier warming shelter in February when the windchill dropped temps to negative 40 degrees. The shelter, at the Robert Miller Community and Recreation Center in the New North End, housed nearly 60 people over four days. Two people accidentally overdosed, and staff revived them with the opioid reversal drug naloxone.

Councilors said the situation demonstrates the need for an overdose prevention site in Burlington. Two centers currently open in New York City have served more than 2,300 people and intervened in 700 overdoses, the resolution says.

Previous discussions about opening such a facility in Vermont have gone nowhere. Former U.S. attorney Christina Nolan, an appointee of former president Donald Trump, said she would prosecute any organization that opened an overdose prevention facility. And just last year, Gov. Phil Scott vetoed a bill that would have simply studied the sites. Vermont has a new U.S. attorney, Nikolas Kerest, but his position on the issue is unclear.

Meantime, more Vermonters are dying of opioid-related overdoses. Officials attribute the spike to fentanyl — a synthetic opioid 50 times stronger than heroin — and the animal tranquilizer xylazine, both of which have become more prevalent in street drugs.

Magee described how his late father, who suffered from alcoholism, began abusing opioids that were prescribed for a workplace injury.

“I often dream about what my dad’s life would have looked like if our society was free from stigma around mental health and drug use,” Magee said. “I dream about a world where we don’t lose another person because they’re driven into the shadows by an unforgiving system that criminalizes pain and despair.” ➆

was broken to be fixed and what was stolen to be repaid.”

Last year, the Vermont legislature passed a bill requiring contractors to register with the state if they are undertaking a job worth at least $10,000. Registrations are due by April 1 — though there is a grace period of a year — and contractors must show proof of liability insurance in order to register. The Secretary of State’s Office said 99 individual contractors and 190 contracting companies had registered as of March 6.

It’s unclear whether registration will deter fraud. The Vermont Builders & Remodelers Association has said the requirement will provide a measure of consumer protection and offer a way for the state to send advisories to builders about new regulations and educational opportunities.

“It’s another stop for people to check to see if the contractor is legitimate,” said Andrew Brewer, a lobbyist for the group. “Even though there are no teeth in it ... hopefully, if you’re not a good actor, you’re not going to be listed on this thing.”

Lawrence first showed Pete Henning her job in November 2021. She spoke to the Burlington handyman several times and even had tea in February 2022 with Henning and his mother, Kathleen Peden, who was working as his business manager. Lawrence eventually hired Henning in July.

Lawrence said she relied on her real estate agent’s recommendation, even though a neighbor who had used Henning’s services offered only lukewarm praise for his work.

“There’s a contractor shortage, so you give him the benefit of the doubt,” she said. “I was thinking, He’s a local guy. He’s trying to get his business growing. This’ll be great.”

Lawrence wishes she’d been more careful. Earlier this year, she helped Lavanway create a list of tips for people who are planning renovations, such as calling references and searching ratings sites online. The Attorney General’s Office also keeps a list of all contractors who have been criminally convicted or have resolved civil claims for committing home improvement fraud.

Henning, 41, acknowledged in an email to Seven Days that he had taken money from several customers but failed to do the work after his life fell into crisis.

Prudence Baird said she is one of the customers left in the lurch. Seeking someone to work on her Burlington duplex, Baird posted on Front Porch

Forum last year and heard back from Peden, Henning’s mother. Baird said she gave $12,000 — mostly for materials — and that Henning started the work and then disappeared.

“It’s not like I just hired him out of the blue,” Baird said. “I called three people, including one Realtor who gave him stellar reviews.”

Like Lawrence, Baird said she would like to see a better system for property owners to recoup their losses.

“I used that ridiculous service through the Attorney General’s Office,” Baird said. “They send a physical letter to the person, and then they reach out to you by mail and say, ‘Has this been resolved?’ You say no, and they send another letter. I had them send four letters.”

When the legislature passed the contractor registration bill last year, it included the creation of a new position in the Attorney General’s Office. On March 9, that office started advertising for a specialist who will serve as a sort of mediator, focusing on home improvement complaints.

“We hope if we have a designated person who specializes entirely in this area, we will be able to bring more resources to bear,” said Chris Curtis, chief of the public protection division at the

Students at a rally last year

FILE: CAT CUTILLO

Charlie and Jen Lawrence in the basement of their South Burlington home

OLIVER PARINI

AG’s Office. He added that the division recently helped someone get $20,000 back after she filed a home improvement complaint with his office.

Several of Henning’s disgruntled customers, including Lawrence and Baird, became acquainted last year after Baird complained on Yelp about him. She was the first to write a review; others who later wrote reviews got in touch with her. Baird, a writer and advocate for people with disabilities, had bought the duplex for her son, who has autism. (Baird’s son, Casey Metcalfe, was featured in a Seven Days story last week about a movie in which he acted.)

“We felt really stupid. The money we saved and saved and saved — gone,” she

said. “There was no room for this kind of error.”

None of the others who lost money was willing to comment for this story. One, Lawrence said, has forgiven Henning and doesn’t plan to pursue restitution. That’s not unusual, Lavanway said.

“There are a lot of folks who experience some sort of contractor fraud who just kind of suck it up, who don’t file a police report,” Lavanway said.

For his part, Henning vows to repay every penny. In a February 28 email to Seven Days , he said he always performed his work well until last year, when his life took a downturn, prompting him to enter rehabilitation for substance abuse.

“Now, I am not saying all this to gain pity because as far as I’m concerned I don’t deserve any,” he wrote. “Nothing I say or do from here on out will ever make up for the heartache, pain and anger I caused so many people.”

Baird agrees. She heard from Peden in December that Henning was headed to rehab, but that didn’t soften her feelings. She and her husband took out a loan to complete the work he left undone.

“Suddenly we’re supposed to forgive everything,” Baird said. “What did he do with all that money?” ➆

THE SYSTEM FOR ADDRESSING CONTRACTOR FRAUD CLAIMS CAN BE FRUSTRATING TO NAVIGATE AND IS LARGELY TOOTHLESS.

FEEDback

Once again, Kevin can’t overcome his blind spot. Who is going to be made to pay all this? The answer is: everyone who uses heating oil, propane and natural gas. You can’t get that crucial fact from Kevin. That’s left for perspicacious readers to figure out.

The “clean heat standard” is yet another example of an interest group capturing government to extract money from people who won’t know why the prices they pay are going up. Responsible journalism should help readers to understand this.

John McClaughry KIRBY

VERMONT LOVERS IN VEGAS

Just an amusing note regarding the “More About 251 Club” letter [Feedback, February 22]. Many years ago, my wife and I were on vacation in Las Vegas, waiting for a show to start. We were seated with a couple from California, who asked if we were members of the 251 Club. We had never heard of it. We learned of this great enterprise while in Nevada from a couple from California. Small world.

After we got back home to Vermont, we researched the club, joined, and started our quest to visit all 251 cities, towns and gores. It took 12 years. We have since been attending the club’s annual meetings in Montpelier and sharing stories.

Ron Alderman BENNINGTON

‘LEAVE. THOSE. BOOKS. ALONE!’

[Re “Battle of the Books,” February 22]: It is with extreme horror that I learned of the plan to turn the libraries of the Vermont State Colleges System into a digital-only system. Computers and the internet have their uses, but they cannot replace books. I learned a lot from the books I read, studied and enjoyed when I was attending Johnson State College. Books have, well, “bookonality”: the paper, the type, artwork and pictures. They can be read anywhere and anytime when there is light. Even if one falls asleep while reading, one can pick up again where one dozed off. Books don’t need recharging and cannot be hacked. They can be burned by book haters, but not hacked.

In sum, keep the books and libraries for current and future students to study, learn and enjoy. Leave. Those. Books. Alone!

Bryan Nepveu MORRISVILLE

Nepveu graduated from Johnson State College in 1996.

SUPPORT THE STATE COLLEGES

[Re “Battle of the Books,” February 22]: I was stunned by the news that books were going to be taken out of Vermont State Colleges System libraries and perhaps thrown in the river, like Hulagu Khan’s army reportedly did in Baghdad in 1258!

Vermonters need a decent library nearby with print and digital resources that offer the best access to information and the process of researching, as we have now in the state college libraries. We also have interlibrary loan, which is threatened by having no books.

Students have told me they don’t all work well digitally; it gives some people headaches. Students already spend many hours at school looking at screens in class. Working digitally is less personal and makes it harder to focus.

Working from print, the energy is different.

You are usually alone when working on a computer, whereas a library can be a place for collaborative learning; students can work around a table taking notes. How could you replace browsing in the bookshelves with a digital library? Mediocre access to the internet and cell service would limit home research in rural areas.

The legislature must give more money to the state colleges. Keep the liberal arts and history courses, the renowned fine arts department, drama, the athletics programs. Lower tuition would attract more students. Students must not end up with so much debt.

I fear that the proposed changes to the libraries and athletics could cause death from a thousand cuts. We don’t want the state colleges to fail!

Marjorie Kramer LOWELL

‘PRIVATE’ POLICE?

My first concern as I read [“Crime Pays,” January 24] was in paragraph two: off-duty Burlington police working a liability-waived side job, “in marked city cruisers, wearing their department-issued uniforms, badges and guns.”

Suppose they were hired instead by management to “police” a picket line and to detain/neutralize anyone who tries to stop nonunion workers, aka “scabs,” from crossing the line? How is it they get to wear their work clothes, badges and guns — and drive city cars — while paid handsomely to enforce private objectives?

Michael Billingsley PLAINFIELD

ANOTHER THEORY…

[Re “Money for Her Run: Court Filing Reveals How Crypto Moguls Tarnished a Historic Vermont Election,” March 1]:

What I am curious about is the fact that U.S. Rep. Becca Balint promoted the new abortion amendment to the Vermont Constitution while simultaneously receiving indirect funding from FTX, and FTX was involved with cryptocurrency, and the

abortion industry uses cryptocurrency for some of its transactions. So is that the real issue that no one in Vermont wants to talk about?

Maybe FTX gave its donation to the LGBTQ Victory Fund based on the agreement that it would go toward electing Balint because FTX really wanted the abortion amendment to pass, which would increase profits for the abortion industry, which thrives on donated fetuses for research that generates huge profits for pharmaceutical corporations inventing new medical prescriptions or vaccines, and the abortion industry often prefers to do business with cryptocurrency.

So was that the main goal — to have more cryptocurrency financial transactions for which FTX would expect a percentage of profit per each transaction?

Cris Ericson CHESTER

LYME LINE

[Re “Lyme Disease Vaccine Trial Ends Abruptly, Surprising Participants,” February 22, online]: Like Dan Tolle, I was surprised but have found out more about the circumstances. I traveled to Londonderry, N.H., since the two Vermont study sites were booked.

I qualified and was enrolled, receiving the first dose and an appointment for the second dose.

When I emailed to confirm my travel back to Londonderry, I was told the appointment was canceled. Later calls and emails have informed me that 1) my participation in the study was canceled; and 2) I would be scheduled for a final telephone appointment, and I would be told whether the dose I received was the study drug or placebo, which was my specific request, as I keep careful health records.

Moreover: I received an automated email thanking me for my interest in the study but saying that enrollment had closed. Then the data really crashed: I received postal mail to my address, addressed to another individual — the same letter I had received explaining there were potential violations of good clinical practice at the clinical trial sites operated by a third party, which caused Pfizer to reconsider the third party’s involvement.

Pfizer doesn’t name this third party, but my copy of the study agreement identifies it as Care Access. On the website, one can read a response to Pfizer’s decision to discontinue its involvement.

Final disclosure: I’ve participated in five previous clinical studies and can happily report this experience is the exception.

McClaughry is the founder and vice president of the Ethan Allen Institute.

Frederick Pond BARRE CITY

Signs of support at Calvin Coolidge Library at Castleton University

U.S. Rep. Becca Balint

FILE: CALEB KENNA

FILE: JAMES BUCK

lifelines

lifelines

OBITUARIES

Phillips H. Kerr

DECEMBER 11, 1946-MARCH 11, 2023

HOLDEN, MASS.

Phillips H. Kerr of Holden, Mass., passed away after a fall on March 11, 2023, at the age of 76.

Phil was born on December 11, 1946, in Barre, Vt. He was the son of the Rt. Rev. Robert S. Kerr and Carolyn H. Kerr. He spent his childhood in Barre, Bellows Falls and Burlington, Vt. Phil graduated from Vermont Academy and earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Vermont and then a master of divinity from General eological Seminary. He decided not to be ordained and worked in hospital administration. He started his career at Roosevelt Hospital in New York City. He worked for over two decades at the Medical Center Hospital of Vermont (now UVM Medical Center) in Burlington, where he served as vice president of human resources for much of that time. He then spent the last decade of his career as director of compensation and benefits and served twice as interim associate vice-chancellor for human resources at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, Mass., during searches for a new vice-chancellor.

While in Vermont, he served on the boards of Champlain College, the Episcopal Diocese of Vermont and the Lund Family Center, as well as president of the Vermont Hospital Personnel Association.

Phil is survived by his loving and devoted wife of 53 years, Priscilla S. Kerr; two daughters, Katherine Hodges of Lexington, Mass., her husband, Matthew Hodges, and granddaughter Madeleine, and Emily Gangi of Newton, Mass., her husband, omas Gangi, and two grandsons, Tyler and Eoin; and his sister, Elizabeth K. St. James, and her husband, Paul St. James, and a nephew, Robert Benard, and his wife, Alyssa, and four girls.

In his spare time and retirement, Phil was an avid vegetable and flower gardener who enjoyed spending time outdoors and completing home improvement projects around the house. However, he especially cherished his time spent with his family and the cats in his life.

Services will be held on Friday, March 17, 10:30 a.m., at St. Francis Episcopal Church in Holden, Mass., followed by a coffee hour. ere will be no viewing hours, per his request.

In lieu of flowers, memorial gifts in his honor may be made to Rock Point Commons at Rock Point Commons, 5 Rock Point Rd., Burlington, VT 05408, or online at rockpointvt.org/giving. We ask that you note “Phillips Kerr Memorial Fund” in the memo so that your gift may be used for the maintenance of the Bishop’s House and cemetery. (Phil spent many summers of his youth maintaining the property at Rock Point and met his beloved wife there at the age of 15, and it is where his parents lived when his father was bishop from 1974 to 1986.)

OBITUARIES, VOWS, CELEBRATIONS

Jonathan Fisher

JUNE 11, 1948-OCTOBER 24, 2022 CHARLOTTE, VT.

Jonathan Waters Fisher died peacefully on October 24, 2022, at the University of Vermont Medical Center after a short, aggressive battle with acute myeloid leukemia. He was gentle, kind and generous and a devoted son, brother, father, grandfather and friend.

Jonathan was born to Sally and Ralph Fisher on June 11, 1948, in Washington, D.C. He lived in Korea, Ethiopia, Rhodesia, Nyasaland and Uganda while his family was stationed abroad with the foreign service.

Jonathan graduated from the Middlesex School in 1966, where he played soccer and rowed. He graduated from Pomona College in 1971 with a degree in anthropology, after studying primatology with Alan Walker at Makerere University in Uganda. Jonathan earned his master’s in public health at Yale University in 1979, after working on a countrywide nutrition survey in Lesotho.

Between his studies, Jonathan spent time motorcycling across Europe, working in the sugarcane fields of Kauai, summiting Mount Kilimanjaro, road-tripping across Africa in a VW Beetle, homesteading with his brothers in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, traveling to Central America by VW bus and working at Plantation Farm Camp in northern California.

In 1981, Jonathan began working at the University of Vermont on a USAID grant that brought him to Honduras, Haiti and Uganda. He

Pastorah Ina O’Connor

JULY 13, 1931-FEBRUARY 26, 2023 BURLINGTON, VT.

Pastorah Ina O’Connor died peacefully on February 26, 2023. Pat was born on July 13, 1931, in Leominster, Mass., the daughter of Francis “Ben” Bates and Evelyn MacMillian Bates. She graduated from Leominster High School in 1949 and attended Worcester School of Business Science, where she graduated in 1951. She worked for General Electric in Fitchburg, Mass.; St. Williams Church in Wilmington, Vt.; and the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception and the Catholic Diocese in Burlington, Vt. Her last — and most rewarding — position was at the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, Mass.

Pat married Daniel G. O’Connor on July 4, 1951, at St. Leo’s Church in Leominster, Mass. In

met his wife, Molly McClaskey, while working at UVM, and they married in 1984.

Jonathan became a father to his son, William, in 1987 and his daughter, Emily, in 1990.

Jonathan was an incredibly involved and supportive father and cheerleader, coaching soccer teams and attending mountain bike races, horse shows and ski races. At this time, he transitioned to working as a Realtor with Akin Associates in Charlotte, Vt. From 1990 to 2021, Jonathan served Charlotte as a volunteer zoning board member in various roles, including zoning administrator, chair and vice chair.

In 2014, Jonathan became a devoted “Baba” to his granddaughter, Sage, and grandson, August, in 2017. His third grandchild is expected to arrive in the coming weeks. Jonathan found great joy in his active role as a grandparent and was deeply dedicated to his family. He traveled to Kauai, Hawaii, every winter to reconnect with his extended family in Hanalei Bay.

Jonathan is survived by his son, William Fisher, and his wife, Lindsay Bloxham Fisher; grandchildren, Sage and August Fisher, of Burlington; daughter, Emily Fisher, and her husband, Dwyer Haney, of Starksboro; brothers Galen Fisher of Greensboro, Timothy Fisher of Cornwall, and Anthony Fisher of Philadelphia; and ex-wife, Molly McClaskey, of Charlotte.

A celebration of life will be held Monday, May 29, 2023, 2 p.m., at Kingsland Bay State Park in Ferrisburgh, Vt. All are welcome. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations please be made in Jonathan’s name to the Vermont Land Trust.

addition to her husband, she is survived by her sons, Mark H. O’Connor and his wife, Carolyn, of Wilmington, N.C., and Michael F. O’Connor and his wife, Nancy, of Scituate, Mass.; and a daughter, Joyce E. Hayden, and her husband, omas, of Milton, Vt. She has six grandchildren, Ryan, Michael, Meghan, Tarah, Shannon and Taryn. In addition, she has eight great-grandchildren. She is predeceased by her parents. A celebration of life will be private and at the convenience of the family.

e O’Connor family wishes to thank the staff at the McClure Miller Respite House of Colchester, Vt., and Mansfield Place of Essex, Vt., who were instrumental in her wellbeing and care. Donations in Pastorah’s name can be made to the McClure Miller Respite House, 3113 Roosevelt Hwy., Colchester, VT 05446. Please visit awrfh.com to share your memories and condolences.

Craig Hall

1951-2022

“You can judge the heart of a man by the treatment of his fellow animals.” —Paul McCartney e universe lost a kind and brilliant soul on March 17, 2022. Craig was passionate about his craft and an incredibly talented woodworker. He was also a lifetime advocate for animals and had a unique connection with horses. oughtful, caring, funny. Everything you could hope for in a husband and much more. ank you, Craig. You live on in our hearts.

Tom

Simone 1943-2022 March 19, 2022 Love endures, Susan

Woman Wonder

The U.S. Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame recognizes Stowe adventurer Jan Reynolds

BY STEVE GOLDSTEIN

Surely, Jan Reynolds is a myth. Or perhaps she’s a composite, bits of several people rolled into one. Worldclass biathlon competitor. Holder of the high-altitude skiing record for women. First woman to circumnavigate Mount Everest on skis. Part of the first attempt to fly over Everest in a hot-air balloon. Successful writer-photographer of children’s books about the lives of the world’s Indigenous peoples.

Maybe she’s a folk hero. You know, like Paula Bunyan.

Yet here she sits in a Winooski diner, all five feet, eight inches and 135 pounds of her. Janet

Louise Reynolds, known to other adventurers as “Janbo” and “Indiana Jan.” A feat-seeking missile of athleticism and achievement. One is tempted to ask her for ID — the card that says “legendary sports action figure.”

Some folks regard Reynolds, an eighthgeneration Vermonter, as larger than life. But she is life itself, with a done-that list too big for any bucket.

“She’s an original,” said Perry Bland, who was her Nordic skiing coach at the University of Vermont in the mid-1970s. “There’s no one like her.”

Later this month, on March 24, Reynolds will leave her Stowe aerie on Mountain Road and travel to Big Sky, Mont., to be inducted into the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame.

Her nomination, submitted by Hall of Fame member and extreme skier Kristen Ulmer reads, in part: “Jan became the first athlete to be hired as a professional by The North Face, as a skier and mountaineer. This not only shattered the glass ceiling, it set the stage for countless athletes for decades to come ... Current extreme mountain skiers, male and female, stand on Jan’s shoulders.”

I’M ALWAYS THROWING MYSELF INTO THE UNKNOWN TO SEE IF I’LL MEASURE UP.

JAN REYNOLDS

Others supporting her nomination include Vermont Olympic gold medalist Barbara Ann Cochran, TV journalist Dr. Bob Arnot and cross-country skier John Caldwell of Putney. Reynolds will join 20 other Vermonters in the national Hall of Fame, including Alpine skiing champions Suzy Cha ee and Marilyn Cochran Brown, cross-country skier Bill Koch, Mt. Mansfield Company founder Sepp Ruschp, and snowboard pioneer Jake Burton Carpenter.

Reynolds has traveled to the farthest reaches of the globe and authored 20 books (so far). And yet she is largely unrecognized by all but the cognoscenti, her accomplishments consigned to the attic of America’s memory. Why?

In her heyday, “Women just weren’t recognized as being important athletes compared to men,” said the North Face founder Kenneth “Hap” Klopp, who recognized Reynolds as extraordinary. “It

WOMAN WONDER » P.26

Jan Reynolds snowboarding the Rila Mountains in Bulgaria

Covers of Jan Reynolds’ books

JEB WALLACE-BRODEUR

PHOTOS: COURTESY OF JAN REYNOLDS

had to do with the chauvinistic attitude of people regarding sports.”

Reynolds still has the air — and appetite — of an antsy teenager. Working her way through eggs Benedict, toast and home fries, she talked nonstop, pausing occasionally to pull out a map or some other document. Our waiter stared; she looked familiar, but he couldn’t place her. “I’m a woodchuck,” she grinned, leaning back in her regulation flannel shirt and down vest.

Now nearly 67, Reynolds said she long ago decided to play the cards she was dealt. “In all my expeditions, I never really focused on the sexism,” she said. “I accepted that my male climbing partners never had to prove it again after doing it once. But every single time I’m on another expedition with men I’ve never climbed with before, I’ve got to prove it again.”

And so she did, again and again.

CURRENT EXTREME MOUNTAIN SKIERS, MALE AND FEMALE, STAND ON JAN’S SHOULDERS.

‘You Got Yourself a Racehorse”

Reynolds grew up on a dairy farm in Middlebury, the sixth child in a gaggle of seven. One day she rode with her dad to see a man who fixed farm vehicles.

“I was about 5 years old, and my dad and Leonard were talking and laughing, cracking beers, just having a great time,” she recalled. “When I went with my mom to visit other moms, they were always like, ‘Oh, God, I gotta do this, and I gotta do that.’

“I decided I wanted what my dad had,” she said. “I wanted to have fun.”

Reynolds’ role model was from children’s books: Pippi Longstocking, the fictional pigtailed Swedish 9-year-old with su-

perhuman powers for whom “everything was possible.” Among her siblings, Jan was the one who never put away her sneakers, never gave up outdoors play.

“She was the outlier,” said Ashley Wolff of Leicester, who has known Reynolds since fourth grade. “None of the other [siblings] had the wanderlust or striving for excellence in athletics.”

Wolff said Reynolds’ dad provided unintentional motivation: “He opposed almost everything Jan wanted to do, and he probably drove her to prove she could.”

At Middlebury Union High School, Reynolds was part of a team that won the state cross-country ski championships twice in the early ’70s. At the University of Vermont, her team won the NCAA championship in 1978.

While she was at UVM, women’s Nordic coach Bland took his talented team out to New Mexico to train and compete in a meet or two. Following one tough competition, Bland was driving the rental car when he heard panicked voices from the rear: “It’s

Jan, she’s not breathing!” Bland stopped the car, got out and looked in at Reynolds as she suddenly resumed normal respiration.

“It was scary,” the coach recalled. “She’d skied hard — she had the mental toughness to kill herself. I said to myself, You got yourself a racehorse here.”

Nancy Dickson Gaudreau, who was her teammate and friend in both high school and college, said Reynolds “was kind of fearless and adventurous ... confident and very strong and determined out in the racecourse. Other people had those qualities, but she really had them in spades.”

After graduating from UVM in 1978, Reynolds left sea-level activities behind and set out to climb and ski higher, faster, longer than anyone. She became the training and expedition partner of her boyfriend, adventurer Ned Gillette of Barre. Together they completed the first free-heel ski and climbing traverse of New Zealand’s Southern Alps — the beginning of many first-ever expeditions she and Gillette embarked on over the next decade. Between trips, Reynolds worked at the Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe as a ski instructor to support her high-peaks habit.

In 1980, Reynolds set the women’s world record for high-altitude skiing when she descended 24,757-foot Mount Muztagh Ata in China. The following year, Reynolds and Gillette spent 120 days skiing, climbing and hiking to complete

the first-ever 300-mile Everest Grand Circle circumnavigation.

“I don’t think anyone really realized if I had been a man doing all the things I was doing, there would be people tracking me — and sponsors,” Reynolds said.

Needing a break from mountaineering, Reynolds joined the U.S. Biathlon team, which took third place in the relay at the 1984 World Championships in Chamonix, France. It is the only Olympic Winter Games event that requires two different skills: skiing and marksmanship. One commentator likened it to running up 10 flights of stairs, then trying to thread a needle.

Above Everest, in a Balloon

That year, 1984, also saw the first in a bizarre series of events that led Reynolds to one of her wildest — and most dangerous — exploits. As she recounted in her 2019 book, The Glass Summit: One Woman’s Epic Journey Breaking Through, it came about like this.

Reynolds and Gillette had stopped in London so that he could pitch a film company on a plan to row a boat to Antarctica from the tip of South America. Reynolds was not interested, so she waited in an anteroom. A friendly secretary asked if Reynolds needed anything and was soon mesmerized by the visitor’s account of some of her exploits, particularly her circumnavigation of Mount Everest.

KRISTEN ULMER

Jan Reynolds shooting a .22 rifle in biathlon competition

COURTESY OF BRUCE

BENEDICT/JAN REYNOLDS

PHOTOS: COURTESY OF JAN REYNOLDS

The next day, executives from Orana Films, an Australian company specializing in adventure documentaries, met in the same offices to discuss filming an attempt to fly a hot-air balloon over Everest. The joint British-Australian project desperately needed the American market to get sufficient financing, and the only way to do that was to put a Yank in the basket — preferably a woman, since the rest of the crew were men.

“So,” one of the execs said ruefully, “all we need is an American woman skilled in high altitude climbing and familiar with the Everest region.” Better luck finding a yeti, in other words. The room echoed with laughter.

“Well, I met her the other day,” said the secretary who had chatted with Reynolds, as she entered the room to serve coffee. Heads swiveled, and soon the execs were picking their jaws up off the floor while the secretary recounted her meeting with Reynolds.

Not long after, the phone rang in Reynolds’ hotel room. “G’day mate,” an Aussie voice greeted her, “you wanna balloon over Everest?” Reynolds thought it was a climbing buddy pranking her and just said, yeah, sure. “Well, you’re certainly game,” the caller said. After he identified himself and described the project, she agreed to sign on.

No one cared to ask whether Reynolds

had any ballooning experience. She checked all the boxes they needed.

In late September 1985, Reynolds was aboard the Zanussi, a highaltitude balloon, as it launched slightly behind schedule toward Everest from Kathmandu. The late start proved fateful: An up-valley wind chased the balloon, making it hard to control.

The balloon ascended to 28,000 feet, a new altitude record, but the wind made it impossible to sail over the mountain, so the goal shifted to finding a shoulder of Everest where the crew could safely set down. The pilots, Brian Smith and Phil Kavanagh, briefly argued about when to begin deflation, but an updraft almost sent them crashing into a cliff. That took the decision out of their hands. The wind-wracked rig dropped quickly — and snagged on some trees. Before the crew could react, there was a loud CRACK. The basket hit the ground and rolled, trapping everyone underneath.

Reynolds knew her companions had little experience in these conditions; in fact, neither man had even camped out in the snow before. Reynolds had, of course, and knew this was no time to be scared.

“There is no room in your brain for that when things are going down,” she said.

“You have to stay focused and not hesitate.”

Flames from one of the balloon’s gas tanks shot up inside the overturned basket. The crackling of the fire was nearly deafening. Smith was tangled up in the rapid deflation cord, and Kavanagh was immobilized by a backpack. Reynolds could not move toward the flames without risking terrible facial burns. The pilots were screaming for her to put out the fire.

“I clawed and scratched my way from under the basket still encumbered with WOMAN WONDER » P.28

Jan Reynolds in a hot-air balloon approaching Mount Everest (right)

Jan Reynolds in an oxygen mask with a hanging camera, flying a hot-air balloon over Mount Everest

my chute and beat the flames out with my blistering hands,” she wrote in her book. The pain was muted by a rush of adrenaline, and the fire slowly gave way to her furious thrashing. All the while, Reynolds felt an almost irresistible urge to run, run far away, knowing that the balloon’s remaining gas tanks could blow up at any moment.

“If I had run there’s a good chance my pilots wouldn’t have survived the blow up,” Reynolds wrote. “To this day, Brian and Phil still think I was thrown from the basket.

WHAT MY DAD HAD.

WANTED TO HAVE FUN.

They said there was no way I could have made it out from under that fast. When I showed them the melted hood of my parka explaining that the flames under the basket were right by my head and I couldn’t turn my face they just shrugged. But I know that I too was trapped, and though it took effort, I managed to extract myself because I had that kind of burst of strength.”

The crew’s radio suddenly came alive with the voice of Chris Dewhirst, the expedition manager. Once assured that everyone was in reasonable shape, Dewhirst told the crew that, despite falling short of the ultimate goal, it had made “the highest bloody Alpine flight in history!”

For Reynolds, the doubt of her male crewmates was the price she paid for the opportunity to set records. A psychological tollbooth. She paid the fee and moved on.

A Change of Career

“I’m always the eternal beginner,” Reynolds said, referring to the number of new things, or “firsts,” she’s attempted. “I’m always throwing myself into the unknown to see if I’ll measure up to the task.”

In the late ’80s, Reynolds decided to cut back on altitude and concentrate on aptitude. A ruptured disc in her back aided that decision, as did her domestic circumstances. Her relationship with Gillette — who would be killed by bandits in Pakistan in 1998 — had ended. Subsequently, she married Javin Pierce, in a ceremony in the Himalayas under the looming shadow of Everest. Their relationship, which did not last, produced two sons: Briggs, now 28 and Story, 24.

At home in Stowe, Reynolds sharpened her skills as a photographer and began writing more frequently for outdoor interest publications and National Geographic , including one article about her solo crossing of the Himalayas from Nepal to Tibet and another about the ancient Silk Road trade route from eastern China to the Mediterranean Sea. This paved the way to a new career documenting the lives of Indigenous peoples around the world.

The people she encountered in her travels, Reynolds explained, “left such a deep impression on me, as I saw how

well they treated each other because they needed each other to survive.”

Her Vanishing Cultures children’s book series was born in 1991 as a way to share these travel experiences with kids. Reynolds has lived with and written about the Tuareg in the Sahara, the Tibetans in the Himalayas, the Sami reindeer herders in northern Finland, Aboriginal communities in Australia, Mongolian tribes and the Yanomamo people in the Amazon rain forest.

“By sharing an empathetic and unsentimental glimpse” of these peoples, the New York Times wrote of Reynolds’ Vanishing Cultures series in 1992, “she gives us all a great gift.”

Her 1996 book, Mother and Child: Visions of Parenting From Indigenous Cultures , is a photo-rich compendium of lessons learned from these tribes, in particular their communal sense of caring for one another.

Although her Vanishing Cultures series is complete, Reynolds continues to work with Indigenous peoples for other projects. Published in 2020, The Lion Queens of

India tells the story of endangered Asiatic lions and the Hindu and Muslim women rangers who protect them.

Reynolds’ ability to stay in the background has been helpful in gaining the trust of the tribes. “I’ve always flown under the radar, but I feel like that, in some ways, is a superpower,” she said. “It doesn’t help me get books into adults’ and children’s hands, but to garner my material overseas, it is great. As a woman alone, I’m nonthreatening. The Indigenous women come to like me all right; I bring gold and silver jewelry and wool and silk scarves to trade. I hang out with their kids, and the men aren’t threatened.”

Two Vermont philanthropies, the James E. Robison Foundation in Stowe and the Lintilhac Foundation in Shelburne, have supported Reynolds’ work with Indigenous groups.

Former Stowe neighbor and friend Stephen Plowman trekked with Reynolds in Mongolia. “It was the vision of introducing children to the beauties and depths of different cultures that guided her,” he wrote from New Zealand by email.

I DECIDED I WANTED

I

JAN REYNOLDS

Jan Reynolds skinning up the Rila Mountains in Bulgaria

“The personal connections she formed with these remote people created a magic that was inspiring to behold.”

Grounded in Vermont Reynolds puts on her ski bibs one leg at a time — just like mortal folk. When she’s not traveling, her days at home are routine by design. Her mother was a strong advocate of routine, arguing that it was the key to feeling secure and in control.

“As much as I like adventure and the unknown,” Reynolds explained, “it’s living in Vermont, and feeling very grounded, that allows me that freedom to go for it.”

off for fun and phys ed, as I call it — getting fit, or at least staying that way … skiing, kayaking, mountain biking.”

If Reynolds sees fresh powder out her window as she awakens, well, to hell with the routine.

“Forget it. I’m out ripping it up,” she said. “I don’t make a lot of money doing what I do, so I need to take advantage of organizing my own time. I’d be a fool if I didn’t.”

She doesn’t prefer one type of ride — she can go from skinny skis to snowboard depending on the snow and her mood. “I choose the tool based on the environment and the situation,” she explained.

Reynolds is no ascetic; her secret vice is typical of someone raised on a dairy farm: ice cream. Her training runs when she was attending UVM took her past the old gas station in Burlington where Ben & Jerry’s was starting up, and Reynolds got to know the team. She figured out how to time her run to show up just as the workers were pulling the paddles out of the ice cream makers.

“They would let me lick them clean before they washed them,” she said, “so I got to try everything new.”

Typically, Reynolds will plan overseas trips between November and April. Otherwise, she works and plays at home.

Some Vermonters know her name, but “most people don’t know the things I’ve done or been through,” Reynolds said.

On a typical day, she’s out of bed between 5 and 6 a.m. In the mornings, Reynolds works in a ground-floor office in her two-story house on Mountain Road. The house is earthy-looking, set back from the road, blending in with the surrounding woods. Natural light pierces large windows, illuminating artwork collected from her travels all over the world.

The project currently occupying Reynolds is a book about the Bajau people of Indonesia, a tribe also known as the “sea gypsies.” She visited last fall. The research demanded underwater photography, so she got certified in scuba at age 66.

Reynolds runs on coffee, and her refueling stops serve as interludes between stocking the woodstove and other homely tasks. She does not feel fully awake until she is doing three or more things at once — loading the stove, boiling water for tea, doing yoga. She bounces up and down a lot, using short bursts of activity to maintain concentration and stay fresh.

“If I want to put in the classic eight hours [of work], I can be done by early afternoon,” Reynolds said. “Then I take

“Imagine at a cocktail party if I started with, ‘Yeah, I took a hot-air balloon over Everest, and we crashed, but I put the fire out with my bare hands, but then I [went] hundreds of miles into the Amazon territory and a Yanomamo brave tried to make me his wife, but I escaped, and when I soloed over the Himalaya into Tibet, the Chinese army chased me down to shoot me, but I skied away...’ [People] would think I’m a psychopathic liar.”

At her Hall of Fame induction on March 24, Reynolds will have three minutes to thank everyone and perhaps dispel any thought that she spends time worrying about having received insufficient recognition during her era.

“You know, my climbing and skiing was the joy,” she told Seven Days, “and maybe it inspired people by showing what humans could do — or maybe showing women that we can do anything guys do.”

As she decided many years before, “I just loved being outside and going hard. Having fun.” ➆

Learn more about Reynolds’ books and adventures at janreynolds.com.

COURTESY OF DIMITAR DIMITROV/JAN REYNOLDS

Jan Reynolds on light backcountry skis with friend Liz Soper on top of Sterling Ridge in Stowe

COURTESY OF LEWIS

COTY/JAN REYNOLDS

Galaxy Quest

A local astrophotographer shoots out-of-this-world images from his home in St. George

BY KEN PICARD • ken@sevendaysvt.com

Perusing Richard Whitehead’s photographs of the night sky, one can be forgiven for mistaking them for professional images captured by the Hubble or James Webb space telescopes. Whitehead’s online astrophotography gallery includes celestial structures more commonly captured by orbiting telescopes and large mountaintop observatories.

Among them: the zoologically named Horsehead, Tadpole, Pelican and Elephant’s Trunk nebulae; the spirals of the Whirlpool, Pinwheel and Andromeda galaxies; and other cosmic structures that offer clues to the origins of stars and solar

systems, including the Wizard, Heart and Soul nebulae.

But all of Whitehead’s amateur photos were shot through comparably small, ground-based telescopes, sometimes in his front yard in St. George, other times in a New Mexico desert. And while Whitehead’s scopes are considerably more sophisticated — and expensive — than the kind children receive as holiday gifts, he noted that many of the heavenly bodies he’s photographed can be seen with a modest investment of time and money.

In fact, Whitehead’s passion for astrophotography is a relatively new hobby that he took up at the start of the pandemic. In

just three years, the 61-year-old has become a self-taught expert on space photography, producing stellar images that circulate widely among space enthusiasts and researchers alike. Whitehead often receives professional accolades for his photos, and amateur astrophotographers around the world now contact him for advice.

While Whitehead has a website where he sells his prints emblazoned on hats, mugs and T-shirts, he’s not in it for the money.

“I like to think of myself as a visual artist,” he said. “I like the creative aspect of it, though I’m fascinated by the science, too.”

Whitehead, who runs a Burlington software company that he cofounded 25 years ago, lives alone in St. George with Herschel, his exuberant 6-monthold Australian labradoodle puppy, who resembles a teddy bear you’d win at a county fair. Amid the ample collection of musical instruments in Whitehead’s home — guitars, basses and drums — are framed prints of his space photography.

Many of those prints are quite large. They include one of Whitehead’s best photos to date: a stunningly vivid, 3-by-4foot shot of the Jellyfish Nebula, captured in St. George during four virtually crystal clear nights. Last month, the National

The Jellyfish Nebula, a galactic supernova remnant approximately 5,000 light-years from Earth

Aeronautics and Space Administration chose the image as its “Astronomy Picture of the Day” and posted it to its Facebook page — considered high praise among amateur astrophotographers.

Another image of Whitehead’s, of the Siamese Twins galaxies, was similarly recognized by the Italian astronomical

society Gruppo Astrofili Galileo Galilei. Still other images have received accolades from the Amateur Astronomy Photo of the Day website, which receives thousands of submissions annually from photographers worldwide. Though few people get theirs posted, Whitehead has already had four of his photos featured on the site.

Astrophotography is more complicated than terrestrial photography and involves layering multiple frames to produce the final image. Whereas conventional photography typically entails shutter speeds of tenths, hundredths or thousandths of a second, astrophotography involves stacking

dozens of images, each created using 20- to 30- minute exposures, often shot over multiple nights.

Once Whitehead has gathered all that raw digital data, he processes it using various software, including Adobe Photoshop and PixInsight. The latter is an astrophotography program that aligns the stars in the overlapping images and eliminates unwanted “noise” created by thermal and atmospheric disturbances.

Whitehead has five telescopes. Usually, though, he shoots his Vermontbased images through a 106-millimeter (just over four inches) refractor scope mounted on a tripod on his front lawn. A refractor scope has a long optical tube with a convex glass lens at one end. Light from the sky enters through that lens, then exits through the eyepiece or camera shutter. (Whitehead does all of his viewing on a computer.)

In all, his Vermont-based kit, including the telescope, tripod, filters, motor, camera and computer link, cost him about $50,000. While he acknowledged that’s a lot of money, he added, “When I think I’m ridiculous, I look at the guy who spent half a million.”

Whitehead also rents space at a professional telescope hosting facility in a New Mexico desert. “They get about 300 clear nights a year, as opposed to Vermont, which gets about 20,” he said. “It can be good here, but it’s very hit or miss.” In New Mexico, he houses his reflecting telescope, which uses curved mirrors rather than lenses to capture and focus the light. Like Whitehead’s Vermont-based scope, he controls the reflector scope in New Mexico remotely via a laptop in Vermont.

Whitehead had no formal education in astronomy or astrophysics, but he grew up surrounded by high-tech gadgetry. He was born and raised in England, in a small rural town in the East Midlands. Whitehead’s father, a decorated military radio operator during World War II, ran a maritime radio station and was also a ham radio enthusiast.

“There were always wires and equipment around the house, which is a bit like me,” he said. “So I guess I inherited that.”

As a child, Whitehead had a small backyard telescope for stargazing, and his small rural hometown of about 5,000 people had very little light pollution. Whitehead was also a fan of Sir Patrick Moore, the famous British astronomer who for years had a BBC television show called “The Sky at Night.” Whitehead described him as a 1960s version of Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Whitehead attended university, where he received a degree in

The Andromeda Galaxy, the Milky Way’s nearest neighbor, approximately 2.5 million light-years from Earth

See more photos at sevendaysvt.com.

The Wizard Nebula

radiography, then spent three years working as a medical X-ray technician. Feeling limited by the job, he changed careers to sales and marketing for the pharmaceutical industry. Then, in the late 1990s, he cofounded an analytical software firm called CSL Software Solutions. With clients in the Northeast, and having enjoyed several previous visits to Vermont, Whitehead moved the company to Burlington in 2006.

Already an avid amateur photographer, Whitehead had a small telescope that he used only rarely for stargazing prior to 2020. When the pandemic hit, he started playing around with the telescope again, then bought himself a small star tracker that follows the movement of celestial objects across the night sky.

Bored one night during the lockdown, Whitehead aimed his telescope toward the Orion Nebula and shot some photos using 30-second to one-minute exposures. Though his first one was “a rubbish image,” Whitehead said, its colors inspired him to create better ones.

“And that was the start of the addiction,” he added.

Soon, Whitehead upgraded to an 11-inch reflector scope, which enabled him to shoot much sharper images of galaxies and nebulae. (He’s less interested in photographing planets but has some good images of the moon and comets.) Much of the processing software Whitehead needed was available online for free. Numerous catalogs for locating and identifying celestial objects are also available online. Whitehead integrated his expertise in databases, which he acquired as a software developer, into his newfound pastime.

How does artistry enter the cosmic picture? As Whitehead explained, some of the creativity is similar to that of conventional photography: framing the subject, deciding on the picture’s depth of field, and choosing the right shutter speeds and filters. Whitehead uses very narrow filters — a mere three nanometers wide — that enable his telescope to peer through clouds of dust in space.

In astrophotography, Whitehead explained, the photographer also has the ability to change the colors that appear in the final image. The so-called “Hubble Palette,” made famous by the Hubble Space Telescope, is merely a convention that NASA developed: blues represent the presence of oxygen, oranges and reds the presence of hydrogen, yellows for sulfur, and so on for other elements. However, as Whitehead pointed out, amateur astrophotographers can choose completely different colors to represent

those elements, rendering familiar objects in space in new ways.

Not all of Whitehead’s subjects have been photographed countless times before. He spent 30 hours photographing the Bear Claw Nebula, of which, he said, there’s only a handful of other images online, and “none of them particularly great.

“Scientific images aren’t necessarily pretty images,” he added.

Naturally, when photographing objects millions of light-years away, astrophotographers still encounter obstacles in their own neighborhood, from heavy cloud cover and light pollution to the proliferation of satellites, such as Starlink, which are highly reflective. While Whitehead can use software to eliminate some of the trails and reflections created by passing aircraft, satellites and meteors, often he has to throw away those images and take new ones.

Not all unexpected images are unwanted. In Whitehead’s Jellyfish Nebula, for example, he captured something he didn’t expect and couldn’t identify, which may be a planetary nebula, a region of cosmic dust and gas created by a dying star. And in 2021, while photographing Messier 78, a nebula in the constellation Orion, Whitehead caught Herbig-Haro objects, which form when gas ejected by young stars collides with clouds of other gas and dust at high speeds. In his photo, they appear as narrow red jets.

While Whitehead’s images have caught the attention of some professional astronomers and researchers, most of his fans are amateur space enthusiasts like himself, who enjoy pondering the vastness of the universe and our place in it.

“Whatever’s going on in the world,” he said, “you can look up at the sky and realize how small and insignificant we are.”

Learn more at richardwhitehead.photography.

WHATEVER’S GOING ON IN THE WORLD, YOU CAN LOOK UP AT THE SKY AND REALIZE HOW SMALL AND INSIGNIFICANT WE ARE.

RICHARD WHITEHEAD

The Pleiades, aka the Seven Sisters, a star cluster about 444 light-years from Earth and visible to the naked eye

‘Whatever Job She Was Doing, She Did It Well’

Alice

Goulet

Smith, March 22, 1938-February 13, 2023

BY SALLY POLLAK • sally@sevendaysvt.com

Alice Goulet found purpose in the small town of Washington, Vt. Her school, the post office and home were within walking distance of each other in the Orange County village where she grew up.

This made it convenient for her to stop at the post office and pick up the mail for some villagers — folks who entrusted her with the combinations to their post office boxes and wanted home delivery. She would deliver mail after school, earning 25 cents a week from each family and imagining her future: Alice wanted to be a postmaster.

As an adult, she married a Washington farm boy named Robert, aka “Bob,” and became Alice Smith. She did indeed become a postal clerk, mail sorter, letter carrier and, ultimately, postmaster, a position she held in East Barre for 14 years.

“She was a real people person, which served her well in postal work,” her daughter, Jackie Smith-Nielsen, said. “There were times she would joke that it was like being a bartender.”

A lifelong central Vermonter, Alice died at Central Vermont Medical Center in Berlin on February 13. She opted against life-saving measures after several months in and out of the hospital and rehab with multiple chronic conditions, her daughter said. She was 84.

“Her faith was such a big part of this [choice],” Jackie, 62, said. “She had cleared the deck with God, and she was ready.”

Alice was one of two children of Eustache and Anna Goulet, who were immigrants from Québec. Her father ran Goulet’s Garage, a gas station and mechanic shop on Route 110 in Washington. Alice attended the village school before going to Spaulding High School in Barre, from which she graduated in 1956. She and Robert (known as Bob) got together at the roller rink, where he literally picked her up after she fell. The couple were married for 61 years, until his death three years ago. The Smiths settled in East Montpelier, where they raised Jackie and her brother, Michael.

Following her childhood interest in postal service, Alice got a job as a part-time clerk at the East Montpelier post office. In the mid-1970s, she transferred to a position in Barre City, where she was a “part-time

flex” — or flexible worker — who could fill in on any shift as needed.

In that role, Alice was the coworker of Linda Clark of East Calais. The work was heavy and hard, Clark said, but it was a good job with good benefits. As early women employees in a male-dominated post office, she and Alice had to prove themselves, Clark said. Though the work environment was generally welcoming and congenial,

LIFE STORIES 2023

“Life Stories” is a series profiling Vermonters who have recently died. Know of someone we should write about? Email us at lifestories@ sevendaysvt.com.

a few coworkers suggested the women “should be at home,” Clark, 77, recalled.

Instead, they were up in darkness and leaving sleeping children to get to work by 4:30 in the morning. They unloaded trucks and sorted mail to ensure it was ready for delivery by 7 a.m., when the carriers started their shifts.

“I think of my mother and Linda as real groundbreakers,” Jackie said. “[Alice]

really had something she wanted to prove. She was powerful, with a purr.”

Alice routinely filled in on delivering the mail, carrying bags that weighed 40 pounds and walking seven or eight miles on Barre’s hilly streets. She sometimes worked a split shift, stopping at 9:30 a.m. before starting again in the afternoon. Between shifts, Alice and Clark occasionally went bowling. The coworkers roamed around and stopped for hamburgers at J.J. Newberry, a since-closed department store in Barre.

Clark acknowledged that she herself was initially concerned about Alice’s ability to do the job. Alice was a petite woman who weighed barely 100 pounds. “I thought, Oh, boy, this is going to be rough,” Clark said. “There wasn’t much to her. But she dug right in and did a good job. Alice was the kind of person, whatever job she was doing, she did it well. She was very conscientious.”

In 1984, Alice took the civil service exam to become a postmaster — the job

Alice Smith being sworn in as East Barre postmaster in 1984

Alice Smith (then Alice Goulet) pumping gas at Goulet’s Garage in Washington in 1956

she had wanted since childhood. Sorting and delivering mail was taking a toll on her body, Jackie said, and Alice wanted to move up in the ranks.

She became postmaster in East Barre in 1984, a position she held until her retirement in 1998. In charge of the post office, Alice oversaw its change from a quiet place to a busy mail center. The transformation occurred early in her tenure, when a bulk mail business opened in East Barre.

“That suddenly made this small, sleepy country post office into a bustling place that had a lot of mail going through

“Sometimes people didn’t hear her well enough,” Jackie said. “It took so much energy to explain things over and over again.”

For her part, Alice was patient and understanding with Bob, who suffered bouts of depression. Outside of work, she was active with the local chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness Vermont, a nonprofit that offers services and support for people with mental illness. Alice and her husband attended meetings, Jackie said, and Alice edited NAMI’s newsletter.

“My mother, on top of everything else, was [my father’s] caregiver,” Jackie said.

At the post office, Alice had a special visitor every year on July 14: her son. Michael, now 59, went to his mother’s workplace on his birthday to give her a dozen roses. When he gave her the flowers, Michael said to his mom: “If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be here,” he recalled.

“She was definitely touched by that.”

it,” Jackie said. “She really had to specialize.”

Alice also came to know community members, who respected her work ethic and customer service skills. “She was very people-focused and very serviceoriented, which is kind of a lost art,” Jackie said. “There was a lot of mutual love and respect in the interactions that she had with people.”

Customers were patient and understanding with Alice, who had a rare voice disorder that affected her ability to project her voice and communicate, Jackie said. Alice’s condition was undiagnosed for seven years; some doctors told her it was “in your head,” according to Jackie. One of her customers, a police officer, had a similar ailment. He talked with Alice about the condition, which led her to a specialist at Columbia University in New York City, according to Jackie. He diagnosed spasmodic dysphonia; for Alice, it caused involuntary spasms that affected her vocal cords.

In retirement, Alice gardened, traveled with Bob to all 251 towns in Vermont and organized exercise classes at the Montpelier Senior Activity Center. To get folks moving, Alice rewrote the words of well-known songs, crafting fun lyrics that inspired exercise. They included lines sung to the tune of “Let Me Call You Sweetheart”: “More endorphins are released / When we laugh and sing / So have some fun and don’t be shy / Don’t worry ’bout a thing.”

Though Alice’s voice wasn’t strong enough to sing the tunes, she joined in the exercises while other participants belted out her compositions.

“Now I understand why there are a number of women in the Montpelier area who have told me over the years, ‘We love your mother!’” Jackie wrote in an email.

A mass of Christian burial in celebration of Alice’s life will be held on Wednesday, March 22, 11 a.m., at St. Augustine Church in Montpelier. Alice would’ve turned 85 that day. ➆

SHE WAS POWERFUL, WITH A PURR.

JACKIE SMITH-NIELSEN

Alice Smith

School Meals for All Is a ‘Slam-Dunk’ Investment

When Harley Sterling was growing up, the mac and cheese he ate at school came from a can. Now the school nutrition director for Windham Northeast Supervisory Union, Sterling oversees food service programs serving seven schools and 1,200 students. He ensures that the meals those children eat are a bit more elaborate.

Mac and cheese, for example, is always made from scratch. The recipe Sterling’s kitchens use calls for starting with a carrot purée and making a “roux” — mixing butter with flour to create the base for the sauce. When the temperature is just right, the chef starts adding cheese.

“We have our staff, aka lunch ladies, using techniques you would see in the fanciest restaurant in the state,” he said. They’re cooking with fresh ingredients, including Vermont-made butter, milk and cheese. But instead of high-end dishes, they’re making approachable, kid-friendly foods like mac and cheese.

The best part of this mouthwatering meal? Every child in the cafeteria will be able to eat it for free thanks to Vermont’s universal school meals program. Schools started providing free meals for all during the pandemic using federal waivers

approved by Congress. Last spring, the Vermont legislature created a state universal school meals program and funded it for the 2022-2023 school year from the education fund.

Before meals were free, Sterling said, there were students who wanted the food but couldn’t afford it.

He’s seen this himself. A few years ago, he said, a young boy came through the breakfast line, loaded up his tray with fresh berries, grabbed a banana — and suddenly turned pale. “I asked him, ‘Hey, what’s up, bud?’ He said, ‘I just remembered that I’m not supposed to get this anymore because my mom is working.’”

In other words: Because his mom got a job, he no longer qualified for free meals and realized he couldn’t afford the food on his tray.

Gut-wrenching scenes like that were

once common in schools around the state, Sterling said. They caused what he calls a “moral injury” to food service professionals. Seeing hungry kids skip meals because they couldn’t pay “put us in a really tricky moral space.”

They’re not in that place anymore. Providing free meals to all students not only made lunchtime easier and less stressful for the kids who would qualify for free meals — about 50 percent of Sterling’s student population — it also gave relief to the families in the middle who don’t qualify but can’t necessarily afford to pay for school meals, either. “It’s those kids in the middle who suffer most,” he said.

This legislative session, Vermont lawmakers have a chance to make universal school meals a permanent part of the public school experience. The idea has broad support from nutrition professionals such as Sterling, as well as administrators, parents and farmers, who say it also reduces the administrative burden on school staff and helps kids develop healthy eating habits that will follow them through the rest of their lives.

Hunger Free Vermont has been campaigning for this change. Last year, the organization collected more than 1,500 comment cards from people who support making universal school meals permanent and this year organized testimony before House and Senate committees dealing with the issue. Sterling, who also serves as president of the School Nutrition Association of Vermont, was one of those who testified.

“My whole career in child nutrition, I believed this was the best slam-dunk investment we could make in our kids’ education,” he told members of the House Committee on Education. “Now that we’ve seen universal school meals in action for the last three years, I don’t just believe it, I know it.”

REDUCING BUREAUCRACY

Erika Dolan also testified in Montpelier. As the school food and nutrition codirector of the Harwood Unified Union School District, it used to be her job to collect the money for school meals.

Dolan, who grew up in Brazil, originally trained as an architect and spent most of her early career in an urban office setting. After the mortgage crisis in 2007, demand for architects plummeted.

When she and her husband moved to Vermont in 2008, she saw an ad for a

food service job at a school in Duxbury. She had worked in a kitchen for a former employer and had a couple years’ experience supervising kitchen staff, so she applied. She’s been in the field ever since.

One of the first things she did, early on, was change how families paid for meals. When she started there, students at the middle school would be given a red piece of paper to take home to their parents if they had a negative account balance.

The practice seemed cruel to her. The middle school lunchroom is stressful enough, she said. “That was just altogether wrong.”

So Dolan started sending bills home. For the first two years, she spent Wednesdays running reports, printing bills, folding them in three, stuffing them in envelopes and sending them off to parents — a timeconsuming process. In 2010, to save time and money, they started emailing parents and caregivers about unpaid balances.

Each Wednesday at 4 a.m., the school would send 400 emails to parents about students’ food accounts. As a result, “Wednesday became my email day,” Dolan explained.

Even if just 50 people responded, she’d have to answer each message. She’d do email triage, figuring out which ones she needed to deal with right away, which could wait a few hours, which she’d have to investigate.

Despite all of her work, there were still many people who didn’t pay their bills. Dolan’s district has a low percentage of kids who qualify for free or reduced lunch. But still there were families that owed hundreds of dollars and couldn’t or wouldn’t pay. Sometimes she had to involve school principals or a debt collection agency.

This experience is shared widely among school staff who deal with collecting meal account balances — not just in Vermont but also around the country. As pandemic relief funding has run out, schools in other states have returned to charging for food. The change comes at a particularly challenging time for families given the rising cost of food staples such as eggs.

The New York Times noted this in an article on January 22. The headline: “Families Struggle as Pandemic Program Offering Free School Meals Ends.” In it, Keri Rodrigues, cofounder and president of the National Parents Union network, argues that chasing down parents to pay the bills is stressful for parents, too.

Windham Northeast Supervisory Union school nutrition director Harley Sterling

“It’s just making things a hell of a lot harder at the most difficult moment that I think American families have seen in a generation,” Rodrigues said. “The effort it takes to make sure these resources actually hit those kids, for what that costs, it’s a hell of a lot easier to just say, listen, food is free.”

Dolan could not agree more. Though some districts still choose to sell items à la carte, hers decided to eliminate payments altogether. All the food is free to all students.

“There are no registers in our kitchen. Done. There are no negative balances. Done. Nobody gets a Wednesday email. Done,” she said.

Now Dolan spends her Wednesdays finding ways to improve food and nutrition services. This spring, she’s been spending an hour or more a day cooking alongside students from the school’s Junior Iron Chef program.

INCREASING CONNECTIONS TO LOCAL FARMERS

With less time needed for paperwork, Dolan is also able to spend more time building relationships with local growers and food producers. Vermont encourages school officials to cultivate these connections. Through Vermont’s local food incentive, if a district can use local food for 15 percent of its needs, it will get 15 cents back for every meal served. If a district uses 20 or 25 percent local food, it will get 20 or 25 cents per meal.

Connecting farmers and schools is good for Vermont’s economy and the local food ecosystem. It benefits students, too, giving them a chance to learn more about where their food comes from.

Ashley Fioretti runs Little Flower Farm in Middletown Springs — her last name means “little flower” in Italian. The nutrition director at Middletown Springs Elementary School cooks from scratch and buys produce from Fioretti to supplement the school’s supply, things such as onions, potatoes, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, cilantro, parsley and sage.

“She really loves to use the fresh herbs,” Fioretti said.

In addition to buying Fioretti’s produce, the school also got a grant through the Farm to School program to hire her to teach the kids about food and nutrition. Fioretti maintains 10 garden beds at the school, which students help plant, weed and harvest. She also comes in once a month to cook with them and introduce them to nutritious foods.

Her work with the school isn’t a huge part of her business, she said, “but it’s the most fulfilling part.”

Last month she made sweet potato biscuits with a group of students. The children helped, rolling and cutting the dough and waiting their turn to add ingredients.

Sometimes, at the beginning of a lesson, kids will refuse to eat something they’ve never tried before, such as beet chips; she taught them how to bake the beets with olive oil and seasoning salt. Fioretti always encourages students to at

want seconds of raw beets? That’s amazing!’” she said.

She also hears students say “Miss Ashley grew that? I know her!”

“There’s something really special knowing that I’m feeding the kids here,” she said — especially because her third-

Chromebooks, bus rides, soap and toilet paper, they said.

Sterling points out that, in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, having enough to eat is part of the base of the pyramid. Everything else rests on being well-fed. “You have to feed people before they’re going to understand anything,” he said.

He pointed out that the cost to the state is estimated to be at most 1.5 percent of the total education fund: “That’s just a

least lick what they’ve made. “To have a kid at the end ask for seconds, it is a big deal,” she said.

Some students’ enthusiasm for beets surprised her. “It was very funny, the number of kids who would take seconds of raw and pickled beets. It’s like, ‘You

grade son is currently a student at the school and her sixth-grade daughter went there for years. “As a parent, it’s important to me that my child is eating local foods as part of his lunch,” she said.

Fioretti is eager to see schools using more locally grown food, and she knows she’s not alone. “The momentum is there, for sure,” she said.

MAKING UNIVERSAL SCHOOL MEALS PERMANENT

Fioretti, Dolan and Sterling have all testified before the Vermont legislature to support universal school meals. Most importantly, right now, they want lawmakers and other Vermonters to understand that food is essential to learning.

Food is something that all schools should provide the same way they give kids textbooks,

drop in the bucket to make sure all the rest of what we spend on education isn’t wasted, because hungry kids can’t learn,” he said.

And it will help everyone involved in the school nutrition system — parents, students, administrators, food service staff, farmers. “It’s a win-win, even a triplewin,” he said. “You get so much value, so much benefit.”

Vermont has a national reputation for its local food scene, filled with farmers, cheesemakers, sugarmakers and specialty food producers. In a state that prizes agriculture so highly, making sure all K-12 students can eat nutritious and delicious food at school should be a point of pride for Vermonters.

“Vermont is so far ahead of neighboring states,” Sterling said. “Let’s keep going.” 

ARTICLE WAS COMMISSIONED BY HUNGER FREE VERMONT AND PAID FOR BY TUSK PHILANTHROPIES.

There are no registers in our kitchen. Done. There are no negative balances. Done. Nobody gets a Wednesday email. Done.

ERIKA DOLAN, HARWOOD UNIFIED UNION SCHOOL DISTRICT

Farmer Ashley Fioretti of Middletown Springs

Feeding Each Other

Northeast Kingdom high schoolers cook for their community

BY MELISSA PASANEN • pasanen@sevendaysvt.com

On October 17, Jared Cushing, athletic director of Hazen Union School in Hardwick, died by suicide. Two days later, numb with shock and grief, the community came together for the boys’ soccer Senior Night game. In the snack shack, students proffered free bowls of beef or vegetarian chili, chili dogs and chili-topped nachos. The food was cooked and served by participants in a class called A Recipe for Human Connection, now in its sixth semester.

As everyone rallied to maintain the Senior Night tradition for the student body of just under 300 middle and high schoolers, Hazen principal Jason Di Giulio was unsurprised to see the Recipe for Human Connection group show up with food.

“It just seemed natural and normal that they would come out and do something,” he said.

The hands-on high school course, Di Giulio explained, “is about exploring what it means to be human together through the lens of cooking and sharing a meal together.” Sitting down to eat as a family or in community is a “sacred experience” that is endangered in contemporary society, the educator opined.

Since 11 students enrolled in the initial fall 2020 hybrid o ering, the Recipe for Human Connection class has grown to 21 teens. They fill a former home economics kitchen classroom with laughter and mouthwatering smells two to three times a week, depending on the block schedule.

Every week, the students plan together what they will cook for a “family meal,” to which they all sit down at a long table. They also regularly make food to share throughout the school and with neighbors in and around Hardwick.

The students work with two co-facilitators, who are not Hazen teachers but are a liated with local nonprofits: Reeve Basom, place-based education coordinator for the Center for an Agricultural Economy; and Tara Reese, a cofounder of the Civic Standard, which is working to

support community connections in Hardwick. Their time and many ingredient costs are partly grant-supported.

Students have baked cookies for Town Meeting Day and made fresh vegetable soup kits to give away at Hazen’s fall open house. They have served spaghetti and local beef meatballs with from-scratch tomato sauce for a screening of the San Francisco Opera’s La Traviata at Hardwick’s American Legion. They have ladled up Thai curry soup made with roasted local tomatoes and squash for an audience of 50 who attended a talk about Vermont’s working landscape at the East Hardwick Grange.

The class has also gleaned excess produce from local farm fields, helped

plant seeds and harvest in the school’s on-site greenhouse, worked with a local videographer to shoot footage for a cooking show, and learned how to make cheese from principal Di Giulio, who has a herd of goats.

Much of what the class does is driven by the students. “It’s always a conversation,” Reese said.

That includes the idea of making chili for the October soccer game. “The class is always so boisterous. That day, it wasn’t,” Reese continued, describing the somber atmosphere after Cushing’s death. “The students just needed something; they just needed some joining together.”

In the darkness, the teens knew instinctively that sometimes cooking with and

EDUCATION

for people helps. “This is what this class is about,” Reese said. “Everybody gets closer when you make food for people.”

Fortunately, most of their cooking projects do not come in the wake of tragedy.

On February 16, roughly half the Recipe for Human Connection class plus a few other students arrived at the United Church of Hardwick around 8:30 a.m. to prepare a free community lunch of two soups, coleslaw, grilled cheese and cookies for about 80. Classmates back on campus were cooking for a local family with a new baby: herb salad with pickled onions, Thai basil chicken and spinach, panang curry meatballs with mango, and jasmine rice.

From left: Teacher Josh Fox and students Ella Considine, Lily Castle and Maverick Murphy packing to-go meals at the United Church of Hardwick

JOSH KUCKENS

SIDEdishes

Seasonal Beer Garden the Pinery Coming to Burlington’s South End

The popular Friday night food truck gathering formerly known as Truck Stop will return this year to COAL COLLECTIVE at 377 Pine Street in Burlington’s South End. In addition to a new name, the SOUTH END GET DOWN , it will have an expanded block-party vibe and an outdoor beer garden, the PINERY , in the southwest corner of its spacious lot.

Last summer, Truck Stop moved across the street from its original ArtsRiot location under the new leadership of LOUIE and MAX ORLEANS

Now, with their longtime friend TYSON RINGEY, the Orleans brothers plan to operate the Pinery starting Memorial Day weekend. Like the South End Get Down, it will run through Labor Day weekend.

Adjacent to the Barge Canal, the beer garden will make the most of sunset views over Lake Champlain while providing a laid-back atmosphere. The organizers said they expect to sell local beer in cans and on tap, creative kegged cocktails, wine by the glass, and nonalcoholic o erings, including kid-friendly drinks.

“We grew up in the area and always found it shocking that, for a city nestled up against this massive lake, there are so few outdoor waterfront places to get a bite to eat and drink and enjoy those fleeting summer days,” Ringey said.

Open during the South End Get Down, the Pinery will take over bar service for the Friday event, which was run by ArtsRiot last year. The beer garden will also be open Saturdays and Sundays to start, including daytime hours coinciding with the Burlington Farmers Market next door. On those days, the Pinery will host a rotation of food purveyors, one at a time.

“We want to have vendors people know and love,” Louie said, “but also give new businesses who maybe couldn’t handle the volume of Truck Stop a chance to get their start.”

Jordan Barry

CONNECT

Follow us for the

“Cooking for others is always fun,” sophomore Aiden Fletcher said as he helped grate donated local cheddar for the grilled cheese at the church. “When I cook for myself, I never know if it’s good.”

Sally Anstey of Hardwick was organizing paper grocery bags marked with names of to-go meal recipients. The longtime community meal volunteer said she looks forward to the high school’s monthly turn cooking. “It’s wonderful to see students in the kitchen,” Anstey said. “The energy is so much more energetic.”

A Recipe for Human Connection’s regular involvement in the church’s community meal program grew from student interest, said Jen Olson, Hazen’s work-based learning coordinator, who helps with the class and contributed to its start.

The idea for the course was born in the first year of the pandemic. During lockdown, Olson noted, “a lot of students in this community went AWOL” and food insecurity leapt. Olson and Basom, who had collaborated previously, took part in a virtual summer workshop held by the Montpelier-based Community Engagement Lab. The lab’s mission is to help build and strengthen communities and forge connections between schools and towns through creative projects, Olson explained.

The two brainstormed how to use food and cooking to soften the isolation and help connect people, Olson recalled. During fall 2020, they made cookie kits and soup kits to deliver to student homes, “to have contact, to let them know we cared about them,” Olson said.

A Recipe for Human Connection has continued to evolve with entwined threads of care and cooking.

The course falls under Hazen’s Pathways Program, which empowers students to set their own learning goals and determine how they will achieve them. That can be especially valuable for those who struggle with traditional academic structure, according to special education teacher Josh Fox.

Fox spends a lot of time in the Recipe for Human Connection class, which includes several of the students on his caseload. “You get them in an environment like this, and they shine,” he said.

Within the often stratified social networks of high school, the class stands out for the diversity of students it attracts — a value the teens clearly recognize.

On February 7, the week before the church lunch, the kitchen classroom was buzzing with cooking prep for a taco family meal.

Senior Lily Castle chopped tomatoes, scallions, jalapeño and cilantro for salsa.

She said she signed up for a breather from a schedule full of advanced placement courses. “I love it,” she enthused. “It’s a nice place to just cook [and] nice to build a community around a shared interest.”

Evan Riethe, another senior, was pressing tortillas out of masa dough. He appreciates the “interesting mix of people,” he noted.

“The community and the environment in here are really great,” sophomore Rebecca Fulford said while making guacamole.

Reese loves watching students build confidence and also “their willingness to talk to students in the class unlike themselves.”

Beating together a double chocolate cookie dough in a corner of the room, junior Jade Bosley said she likes getting

to know new people through the class, and those relationships don’t stop at the classroom door.

Bosley and sophomore Preston Williams explained that they choose to bake cookies partly because they’re easy to share. “We like handing them out,” Williams said.

“Being able to give something — it’s a way to connect with your peers,” Olson noted, underscoring a fundamental class objective. “It’s really about how sharing food helps us connect to community,” Basom said.

At the church on February 16, ninth grader Harmoney Peets said she has fun cooking for the community meals. “I know everyone I am working with,” she said. “We always get along, and it isn’t overwhelming, surprisingly.”

Peets was in charge of the kitchen music, which caused a little debate among the students, but nothing insurmountable. She moved from grilled cheese prep to whisk slaw dressing. “I’m a professional coleslaw maker,” she said proudly.

While a crew of four started to put together takeout orders, Ginger Bowley

and Noelle Ditzler, both in ninth grade, juggled their final batches of 200 chocolate chip cookies into the oven between pans of grilled cheese.

The first few lunch guests from the Hardwick Senior Center arrived and sat at the nicely set table. Judy Bolio said she retired from working in the cafeteria at Hardwick Elementary School and sometimes recognizes students. “It’s a good learning experience for the kids,” Bolio said.

Her friend, Wanda Reen from Walden, was looking forward to tomato soup and grilled cheese. “That’s comfort food,” she said.

The cookie bakers moved out to the serving line to ladle steaming soup for a crowd of about 30. Basom offered them the floor to welcome the lunch guests and thank the local farms and food producers for ingredient donations, but the pair dissolved into nervous giggles.

Bowley and Ditzler had finally gotten a chance to sit for their lunch when guest Orise Ainsworth came over to thank them. She told the young cooks that she moderates Hardwick’s town meeting and had to get over the jitters when she first spoke in front of a crowd.

“I remember how you feel,” Ainsworth commiserated. “We don’t bite. You just have to imagine that we’re all your friends.”

Thanks to the Recipe for Human Connection, it’s easier to imagine everwidening circles of friends. ➆

EVERYBODY GETS CLOSER WHEN YOU MAKE FOOD FOR PEOPLE.

TARA REESE

Student Ben Gomo dishing up soup for to-go meals

Student Ginger Bowley serving community meal guests

PODCASTS

Wild About Wild Chocolate ree questions for food writer Rowan Jacobsen

BY SUZANNE PODHAIZER

In his new podcast, “Obsessions: Wild Chocolate,” award-winning food and nature writer Rowan Jacobsen of Calais takes listeners into the depths of the rain forest in search of culinary gold: cacao.

Jacobsen follows bean hunters as they experience ecstatic dance, financial ruination and the bliss of tasting chocolate made from the seeds (also called beans) of wild cacao trees.

It’s a wild ride, so we asked Jacobsen to tell us more about his experience making the podcast.

SEVEN DAYS: In “Wild Chocolate,” you refer to some of what you taste as “godlevel” chocolate, which can cost up to $50 for a small bar. What makes this chocolate rare and special?

ROWAN JACOBSEN: It’s a lot like wine. It’s easy to make basic wine out of grapes that grow abundantly, but certain varieties of grapes, grown on less productive hillsides and carefully harvested and fermented, can produce wine with much more complex flavors.

With chocolate, certain varieties of cacao trees produce beans with much more interesting floral and fruity flavors, but the industry abandoned them for higher-yielding varieties a century ago. But these heirlooms are still out there in the Americas. And now there is a kind of treasure hunt to find them before they go extinct. (And there is a new wave of small “bean-to-bar” chocolate makers who are happy to pay more for better-tasting beans.)

Eating this new chocolate can be thrilling, because it has all kinds of flavors that people don’t even associate with chocolate.

SD: Many probably think of “food journalist” as a fairly safe profession, but this podcast touches on killer ants, ayahuasca ceremonies and being forced to land on an airstrip used by cocaine smugglers. Was this the most risky reporting you’ve ever done?

RJ: ere have been some hairy moments, for sure, but doom never felt like it was around the corner. But, yes, a lot of wet, muddy nights and ticks and low-grade tropical yuck.

I did some war reporting in Myanmar a decade ago that was more dangerous,

but even then, as long as you didn’t freak out and do something stupid, it would all be fine.

Plus, we tend to amplify the unfamiliar risks and ignore the familiar ones. I’m certain that the biggest risk I’ve taken was simply driving down the road in India. And probably skating on ponds in Vermont is No. 2!

SD: Your books are often deep dives into the history and lore of specific foods: oysters, apples, truffles. What food are you most excited about right now?

RJ: While working on a piece, I often discover some new food passion that has nothing to do with my main topic. For instance, while in Brazil writing about chocolate, I discovered cupuaçu, a fruit that is related to cacao. It has big brown pods with whitish pulp inside that is just ridiculously fragrant. It’s kind of like a mix of passion fruit and banana, but that doesn’t really capture it, because it has these unique aromatics that we have no words for. And it’s incredibly addictive. The weird thing is that it’s super common in Brazil but completely unknown here.

We have this sense that all the good stuff has been found and popularized, but the larger takeaway is that the food we eat is the stuff that industrializes well, not necessarily the stuff that’s the most interesting/fun/healthful. ➆

is interview was edited and condensed for clarity and length.

“Obsessions: Wild Chocolate” is available on all major podcast channels. Learn more about Jacobsen at rowanjacobsen.com.

Rowan Jacobsen standing by an ancient cacao tree in Bolivia

Chef Jimmy Kennedy Takes Over Zenbarn Kitchen

Fans of the long-closed River Run Restaurant in Plainfield will rejoice that its chef and cofounder, JIMMY KENNEDY, has returned to offer a familiar menu of fried catfish and pulled pork at ZENBARN in Waterbury Center. The venue at 179 Guptil Road offers counter service Wednesday through Saturday evenings, with an abbreviated weeknight menu.

Kennedy, a Mississippi native, sold the nationally acclaimed River Run in 2009 after 18 years of serving what he described as “southern comfort food with a little bit of barbecue on the side.” That restaurant space at 65 Main Street is now part of a branch of POSITIVE PIE. Kennedy, who is also a competitive bass angler, continued to cook for his JDK BBQ catering business.

Zenbarn co-owner ARI FISHMAN said he’s happy to focus on hosting live music, comedy, private parties and other events. Running a restaurant, he admitted, “stresses me out.”

When the most recent chef left last summer, staff pulled together a basic taco menu. But after six months, Fishman said, “We realized we need a little more menu here.”

He ran into Kennedy cooking at an event and, following some conversation, Fishman said, “He’s our kitchen now.”

Kennedy promised that the baked mac and cheese (often finished in the smoker), vinegary coleslaw, and fried dill pickles are “the exact same recipes” he made at River Run. He has added salads topped with fried or grilled catfish or chicken. The chef said he expects his much-loved hush puppies to make a reappearance, too. Zenbarn closes sometimes for private events, so check the website calendar before heading over to sample Kennedy’s fare.

Melissa Pasanen

New menu items at Zenbarn

Chef Jimmy Kennedy (left) and Zenbarn co-owner Ari Fishman

Sole Food

Starting the day with Sneakers

Bistro’s chicken and waffles

BY JORDAN BARRY • jbarry@sevendaysvt.com

Sneakers Bistro’s eggs Benedict is legendary. The combo of Canadian bacon, artichoke pesto, poached eggs, hollandaise and housemade English muffins even has “famous” in its name.

The Winooski breakfast and lunch spot, which opened in 1980, has been churning out the dish for as long as anyone can remember; it makes up roughly 30 percent of sales. (Sneakers is also undefeated in the Seven Daysies’ “best eggs Benedict” category.)

I thought I’d finally try the famous Benedict ($14) for our monthlong series revisiting enduring local restaurants — our “forever faves” — one dish at a time. But when it comes to my order at Sneakers, there’s no waffling. Only chicken and waffling.

I’ve been stuck on Sneakers’ chicken and waffles ($16) since 2012, two years after the restaurant moved down the block to its current location at 28 Main Street. When my now-husband took me there for brunch on one of our first dates, I followed his advice to give the dish a try. I haven’t looked at the menu since.

Sneakers didn’t invent chicken and waffles. It’s a soul food standard with origins linked to both 17th-century Pennsylvania Dutch country and enslaved people in the South, popularized by Black-owned restaurants in 1930s Harlem and 1970s Los Angeles. But it was an unusual menu item around here in the early 2010s, and Sneakers was among the first to turn it from a special into a staple.

The Sneakers version is straightforward: buttermilkmarinated chicken breast, pounded thin, dredged and fried; a big, classic Belgian waffle; rich sausage gravy; and two fried eggs, topped with a smattering of scallions for color. It’s not the kind of brunch dish you should plan to do things after.

“It’s my favorite, too,” general manager Garret Jacobs said. Controversially, we both like it with a hefty drizzle of Vermont maple syrup. “That weirds a lot of people out,” he continued. “But the combination of savory and sweet is the thing that makes it what it is.”

Jacobs has worked at Sneakers for seven years. When he moved to the Winooski area from Brattleboro, he was looking for a restaurant job and heard that Sneakers was busy, even on weekdays.

“It seemed like good job security if they had a line out the door all the time,” Jacobs recalled.

That line is less common these days, thanks to a 100-plus-seat expansion into a former apartment upstairs in 2019. Sneakers used to host waiting crowds next door at the Monkey House in the winter, but now a first-come, firstserved online waitlist helps keep things running.

I felt like I’d gamed the system when I joined the 20- to 30-minute queue virtually from Route 7 in Charlotte. It was a Saturday at prime brunch time, but my upstairs table was ready right when I checked in with the host.

It’s a tip regulars probably already know, and, as with most longtime restaurants, Sneakers has plenty of them.

“I’ve seen the same faces every week — or every day — for seven years,” Jacobs said. “It’s comforting. Seeing these people is an expected part of my day, like clocking in or ordering the liquor.”

Like me, many stick to their usual order. Maybe I’ll quit waffling next time. ➆

“One Dish” is a series that samples a single menu item — new, classic or fleeting — at a Vermont restaurant or other food venue. Know of a great plate we should feature? Drop us a line: food@sevendaysvt.com.

INFO

Sneakers Bistro, 28 Main St., Winooski, 655-9081, sneakersbistrovt.com

Chicken and waffles with a mimosa

DARIA BISHOP

The Roman poet Ovid lived from 43 BC to 17 or 18 AD, during the reign of Caesar Augustus. His works, along with those of his contemporaries Virgil and Horace, are among the most enduring and influential of classical Latin poetry.

In his early fifties, Ovid o ended the emperor and was banished from Rome to a remote town on the Black Sea. Many historians think Augustus condemned Ovid for the purported obscenity of his Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love), a poetic guide to seduction.

In exile, Ovid wrote his most famous work, Metamorphoses. Beloved to Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare and Bob Dylan alike, this is a multilayered verse epic melding the natural and supernatural. In Ovid’s volatile cosmos, things — magically, erotically, sometimes violently — transform into other things. Gods and people mingle, and a human might suddenly change into a plant or animal.

In her new book Black Metamorphoses , Vermont poet Shanta Lee has opened what she calls “a 2,000+ year-old phone line to Ovid.” In “Blessed Black,” she describes herself as “Applying Ovid’s / Pythagorean theory: / Black bodies shapeshift.”

Lee, who lives near Brattleboro, is the author of a previous book of poems, Ghettoclaustrophobia: Dreamin of Mama While Trying to Speak Woman in Woke Tongues , winner of the 2021 Vermont Book Award for Poetry. Lee’s creative endeavors go in multiple directions; she is also a visual artist, performer, filmmaker, journalist and curator. Her exhibit “Dark Goddess: An Exploration of the Sacred Feminine,” featuring photos and video, is on view at the University of Vermont’s Fleming Museum of Art through May 20.

Lee has an undergraduate degree in women, gender and sexuality studies from Trinity College, an MFA in creative nonfiction and poetry from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, and an MBA from the University of Hartford. She teaches media studies at the Putney School, and she’s a Vermont Public reporterproducer and regular contributor to Ms. magazine In 2020 she was appointed by Gov. Phil

All Things Change

Book review: Black Metamorphoses, Shanta Lee

BY JIM SCHLEY • schley@sevendaysvt.com

Scott to the Vermont Humanities board of directors.

The Ovidian idea of continual metamorphosis meshes with modern views of change in

also in minuscule: genetic, microbial and molecular. All life’s in transition.

In her new book, Lee creates a synthesis of mythology with history. She finds parallels in Greek myths and

She juxtaposes the Greco-Roman fable of Daedalus’ labyrinth with “this maze / called America.”

In Ovid’s Metamorphoses , the artist Pygmalion renders in ivory a female form so lifelike he falls in love with her. The goddess Venus turns the sculpture into a living woman, whom her “creator” impregnates. In Black Metamorphoses , Pygmalion’s studio dais is a slave trader’s auction block: “The sculptor molded and sculpted, // blind to the way sun and moon took turns / to witness audacity of a selfstyled Zeus.”

In “Flight From Pygmalion’s Pedestal,” Lee renovates and reinvigorates the story: That sculpted woman isn’t a conquest but suddenly frees herself, as “Warmth gave way to blood, // gave way to adrenaline that enlivened feet to flight.”

In her poem “The Witness Tree,” Lee infuses another classical motif with fresh life. Echoing Ovid’s story of Daphne turning into a laurel tree just before Apollo grabbed her, Lee makes the assaulter no mythic deity but an American plantation owner presuming a claim on the bodies of his female property. Yet, as in Ovid, a might-have-been victim escapes by transformation:

I heard first crack, nothin felt pon my hardening back. Started at my toes, crawled the length of

arms turned wooded limb, body ripened into widening trunk. Fingers now branches twisting signs toward sky

My naked bark, kissed by sun My shadows, my fissures of rage

In recent years, feminist scholars have challenged modern readers to think carefully about how dozens of rapes in Metamorphoses are portrayed. Does the revered poet valorize male brutality? Actually, Ovid’s scenes of violence against women pivot on his female characters’ points of view. In the New Yorker in 2018, Katy Waldman observed, “Ovid’s epic positions female pain as the beginning or the hinge of the story, not the end; victims are transfigured, their suffering made new and strange.”

Consider Philomela, assaulted by a brother-in-law who cuts out

Metamor-

Project in the 1930s.

BOOKS

Shanta Lee

COURTESY OF MACLEAN CHARLES GANDER

THE VERMONT AUTHOR HAS OPENED WHAT SHE CALLS A “2,000+ YEAR-OLD PHONE LINE” TO THE ROMAN POET OVID.

her tongue to ensure silence; like Ovid, Lee gives Philomela a tapestry to weave, where the truth is visible beyond words: “Read between time, appear the missing / Read unwanted, bargained // Follow the loops over and under / Age 220 years // Take me out of the archive. Place me in the open / Let your tongue go missing.”

Reading Black Metamorphoses is hard work. These poems don’t veer from the violence in their literary and historical sources. Lee’s prosody is often jagged, the phrasing interrupted from what’s anticipated in ordinary prose syntax. Her stanzas jump across the page, with darting indents and divided columns of type. Recognizable personages from myths appear here — Persephone, Hermaphroditus, Medusa and the Minotaur — yet for Lee they’re not just allusions but beings of ferocious vitality and passion. This is also how she approaches language, as very old and ever new.

FROM BLACK METAMORPHOSES

Changing Places With the Devil

I allowed this stroll. My stop, his stop Footfall matched footfall, the moon that night? Mindin its business, drunk off itself

His skin lit, a bold white like a Magnolia against corpse quartz threads, a derby hat, and fresh plucked feather

On the seventh night, he spoke

For your time, your never mind, what’s your want? Gimme, I demand, your gift of shapeshifting, wily wit to trick the world. Make me invincible in this land of spirits, and gimme...

Mama and Papa warned when want is spoke, it must be true. Hunger must match crave Wishin ain’t it, but askin will learn ya good Askin’ ain’t nothing to play wit

Corpse quartz threads line my closet, A fresh feather plucked for full moon

I’ve followed a soul for two nights, weighed the footfalls

It’s been found wanting

She lauds a poet’s ability to serve as “the throat that be the ferry between // Shadowlands and Land of Sunshine.” Ovid’s Metamorphoses still exists because readers keep finding connec tions between those poems and our lives now. As a 21st-century multimedia artist, in print and in practice, Lee is creating fresh relationships with an archaic text.

What matters most isn’t just the survival of that old book but the relation ships we can discover with it — and what new art can be made of ancient ingredi ents. ➆

INFO

Black Metamorphoses by Shanta Lee, with brush-and-ink illustrations by Alan Blackwell, Etruscan Press, 102 pages. $17. Lee will give a reading on Wednesday, March 22, 5:30 p.m., at the Fleming Museum of Art, University of Vermont, in Burlington. uvm.edu/fleming

Permission to include “Changing Places With the Devil” from Black Metamorphoses (copyright 2021 by Shanta Lee) provided by Etruscan Press.

THEATER

with a cape James Brown would have been proud to swirl.

Cannibal Queen’s leather crop top and lace cutout pants radiate the character’s hard-won strength, onstage and off. For Shreddy Eddie, Lidz layers musical history itself in a Sex Pistols T-shirt, Kurt Cobainesque flannel shirt with a Jimi Hendrix homage on the back, and folkie rebel boots.

D Vicious has raided Keith Richards’ closet down to the skull ring and sports some crotch bling to seal the rock god deal. Nina’s outfits are bold thrift store mashups, forging coolness from the uncool by wacky juxtaposition. Onstage, she’s a punk ballerina; offstage, she’s a punk web developer. Somehow fishnet stockings suit both lives.

Air Lifted

Theater review: Airness, Vermont Stage

BY ALEX BROWN • alex@sevendaysvt.com

If it’s risky to care too much about something easy to mock, it can also be the best way to make friends when you finally find your clan. In Airness, Chelsea Marcantel’s popular 2017 play, air guitar enthusiasts compete to become national champion, supporting each other all the way. Only a misfit can love imaginary guitar, but when six of them get together, united by head banging, a sparkling comedy emerges.

The Vermont Stage production gives all due attention to the music that inspires airthrashing displays of rock majesty, but the play is about a little community that takes in a newcomer, supports a struggler and resolves a love triangle. Sharp humor lets archetypal characters distinguish themselves with wit instead of depth.

The big theme is being true to yourself, and Marcantel sharpens this tired trope with outsize personalities who’ve shed the loser label by finding a commitment to musical exuberance and each other.

Competitive air guitar started in the late 1970s, and since 1996 a world champion has been crowned in Finland. In the U.S., a circuit of qualifying rounds sends competitors to bars around the country. An air guitar routine is set to a 60-second snippet of a song, designed to display pure emotion.

Airness begins in a Staten Island bar and hops across the country as our characters strive to reach the finals and inch forward in quest of human connections. The show features rock of many genres, but it offers more than nostalgia. It’s the playful but heartfelt story of finding the

elation that great musicians experience. Experiencing the spark of “airness” can give life purpose.

Nina (Dara Pohl Feldman) is the outsider crashing the party. She’s an actual guitarist, certain that miming musicianship will be a snap. But she lacks a stage persona and misses the point of performing to reveal a song’s essence until the established competitors kindly teach her.

Shreddy Eddie (Stephen Shore) becomes her mentor and not-so-secret admirer, while sweetly philosophical Golden Thunder (Kingsley Nwaogu) and vulnerable hippie throwback Facebender (Jon van Luling) encourage her.

A past-present love triangle emerges, involving Nina, last year’s champion and all-around bad boy D Vicious (Quinn Post Rol), and the steely, intense Cannibal Queen (Grace Experience). An MC (Andrew Cassel) hammily hosts each competition.

Everyone wants to be loved, and all of them have had reason to doubt they ever would be. But put Joe Satriani’s slick licks over a stomping bass drum in “Crowd Chant,” and everyone has a reason to hope again.

Air guitar is a secret pleasure, born behind closed doors when the power of music compels physical exuberance. Admit it — you, too, have channeled music with a grimace and some busy fretwork with your empty hands. This play relies on that impulse surviving in an audience ready to exult in rock music animated by performers gripped with joy.

Audience members can sit at club-style tables and bring their own nonalcoholic drinks or buy Switchback brews on Saturdays. Conventional seating is open to those seeking a less immersive dive bar experience. The actors glow with energy, and toe-tapping is hard to resist. Once Joan Jett and Quiet Riot get your head bobbing, it’s impossible not to root for the characters channeling them.

Costume designer Sarah Sophia Lidz contributes the very tools of the performances. Facebender wails with emotion, and his hippie patchwork includes scarves at his sleeves that droop with his sorrows. Golden Thunder wears an outfit that shines at peak glam rock brightness and tops it

Director Laura Roald has catalyzed engaging camaraderie from the cast. The actors all have impressive comic timing and the vibrance to keep the sentimental edges of the script fresh while portraying earnest souls.

Air guitar is more dance than music, and choreographer Sue Bailey makes each performance distinct. From the slinky turns of Guns N’ Roses to the punk power of Billy Idol, Bailey helps familiar songs surprise by showing performers transformed by the music and throwing in big, celebratory moves.

The set design, by Chuck Padula, puts us within the brick walls of an unpretentious bar. It’s too stripped-down to have a soul, and the wrong backdrop for characters yearning to gather, but it conveys life on the road. An elevated stage framed with a lighting grid gives performers three levels to shred, windmill and drop to the floor in ecstasy.

Projections designed by Jess Wilson are beamed as underwhelming backdrops for the air guitar numbers and as prosaic bar décor to signal each new location of the competitions. Lighting designer Dan Gallagher mimics big rock act effects.

As the show opens, Golden Thunder asserts that the whole point of air guitar is world peace. The play just about proves that thesis: In an art form with no commercial potential, happiness is the end product. Anyone with winter blues to shake off will find plenty of laughs in the dialogue — and downright delight in watching these characters trying to impress a set of judges grading them on nothing more than their ability to be moved by music. ➆

INFO

Airness, by Chelsea Marcantel, directed by Laura Roald, produced by Vermont Stage. Through March 26: Wednesdays through Saturdays, 7:30 p.m., and Sundays, 2 p.m., at Black Box Theater, Main Street Landing Performing Arts Center, in Burlington. $31.0538.50. vermontstage.org

Stephen Shore in Airness

Dara Pohl Feldman in Airness

PHOTOS COURTESY OF LINDSAY RAYMONDJACK PHOTOGRAPHY

Shelf Awareness

Don Ruggles is not sure why people started calling him “Tip,” but the name stuck at a young age. So did his afterschool job at Somers Hardware in Montpelier, where he started working in seventh grade. Tip’s father, Donald H. Ruggles, bought the beloved old-fashioned shop in the 1970s; the store dated back to the early 1900s. By 10th grade, Tip was leaving school early to go work at the hardware store with his dad. He liked learning new things and helping customers find what they needed. Tip eventually took over Somers from his father and worked with a variety of family members.

Aubuchon Hardware moved next door to Somers on Main Street in 1982. The community rallied around Somers, but in 2009 Tip closed the business due to a lack of suppliers. Aubuchon expanded into Somers’ space; there’s still an old sign for Somers Hardware in its paint department. Tip immediately began working at Aubuchon. He knows which parts are right for the job and where to fi nd them. Customers often ask for him by name.

Seven Days senior multimedia producer Eva Sollberger paid Tip a visit at Aubuchon and watched him in action. She also met Almond and Joy, the store cats whom Tip adores. At age 62, Tip has been working in hardware stores for almost 50 years now. He feels a change in the air, so get your tips from Tip while you still can.

SEVEN DAYS: How did you hear about Tip?

EVA SOLLBERGER: I got a truly lovely email from Montpelier resident Emily Barrett with the subject line “A tip about Tip.” Emily grew up shopping at Somers Hardware and recently moved back to Montpelier and started visiting Tip at Aubuchon Hardware. She sang Tip’s praises and thanked me for featuring unsung everyday heroes who work tirelessly behind the scenes, often without accolades or attention. Needless to say, Emily got my attention. Plus, I love hardware stores, so spending time in one sounded like my cup of tea.

This was back in September of last year. It took me some time to reach Tip by calling him at work multiple times. He was not very excited

about the video idea and asked for some time to think it over. He did eventually agree to being featured, but the holidays turned my schedule upside down, and I was not able to get to Montpelier until February. Thanks for your patience, Emily and Tip!

SD: Why were there two hardware stores side by side for years?

ES: Good question! I am still trying to figure that one out. I spent a lot of time trying to find out what year Aubuchon Hardware moved to its current location on Main Street. Tip was hazy on some of the dates, so I called around to his old buddies who used to manage Aubuchon. Gary Law thought it was in the late 1980s. Gary put me in touch with Dick Harlow, who was sure it was 1982. I verified this date in an old newspaper article.

That means Somers and Aubuchon were side by side for almost three decades. This odd fact was mentioned in a 1995 New York Times piece about Montpelier. There was some controversy when Somers’ lease was threatened that year, but after the community protested, it stayed put. Tip wanted me to be clear in the video that he did not sell out to Aubuchon. Both are family-run businesses that date back to the early 1900s.

Dick worked at Aubuchon for over 50 years and recalls when Tip started at Somers as a high school student. That sort of longevity at a job is incredibly rare these days. Most of my jobs lasted two years or less until I got “Stuck in Vermont” for 16 years. And that’s why people seek out Tip: He knows what he is talking about.

SD: Tip had some nice old photos of Somers. ES: Tip brought in a box with old photos and newspaper

clippings that were very helpful. I was hoping to find some photos of the store’s interior and also an image of the two hardware stores side by side. So I posted on Facebook asking if anyone had this. Corinne Cooper, the president of the Berlin Historical Society and a board member of the Montpelier Historical Society, shared my post on numerous pages. The responses were overwhelming, with people sharing dozens of memories about Somers and Tip. Although I didn’t find the exact images I was searching for, that gave me a much fuller picture of what the place was like: the creaky floors, packed shelves and knowledgeable sta . It was really touching to hear all these memories, and I am printing them out to mail to Tip with this article.

SD: Almond and Joy were so cute.

ES: If you follow Aubuchon Hardware on TikTok, you will see lots of adorable videos of their store cats. I posted a TikTok about Almond and Joy, who live at the Montpelier store and are mini celebrities. Joy is a tortoiseshell cat, and Almond is a tuxedo cat. Tip’s coworker Carl Witke told me that they were adopted from the Central Vermont Humane Society. He emailed me later to make sure I knew how much Tip loves those cats. Despite Almond’s sock-theft tendencies and the occasional ripped bags of catnip, Tip is obviously one of their biggest fans.

SD: Any tips about Tip?

ES: First o , don’t call him Tippy. He prefers Tip. Most importantly, go visit him soon to say hello and ask all of your pressing hardware questions. And make sure to thank him for almost five decades of service in the Montpelier community. The world needs more Tips. ➆

Don “Tip” Ruggles has been working in Montpelier hardware stores for almost 50 years

THAT’S WHY PEOPLE SEEK OUT TIP: HE KNOWS WHAT HE IS TALKING ABOUT.

Seven Days senior multimedia producer Eva Sollberger has been making her award-winning video series, “Stuck in Vermont,” since 2007. New episodes appear on the Seven Days website every other ursday and air the following night on the WCAX evening news. Sign up at sevendaysvt.com to receive an email alert each time a new one drops. And check these pages every other week for insights on the episodes.

Episode 685: Don “Tip” Ruggles

Don “Tip” Ruggles

EVA SOLLBERGER

art

Ties That Bind

Sarah

Stefana Smith addresses interconnectivity in knotty artworks

BY PAMELA POLSTON • ppolston@sevendaysvt.com

Sarah Stefana Smith is an associate professor of gender studies at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass., with a PhD in social justice education. In that milieu, she delves into cerebral concepts and communicates in the often obfuscating jargon of academia. But in Smith’s interdisciplinary artwork, one thing is perfectly clear: her proficient hand.

“Willful Matters,” Smith’s current exhibition at the BCA Center in Burlington, comprises several large textile assemblages hung on metal dowels, as well as framed collages under glass. Using a variety of hardware store materials, Smith invents an eloquent vocabulary of twists and turns.

The large suspended works, from her “Flag to the Abyss” series, are marvels of entanglements. At first glance they might suggest a child’s loom project gone awry, but Smith’s convolutions are intentional and wildly creative. They are the result of assiduous knotting — including macramé — weaving, tying, attaching and detaching.

The artist primarily employs various kinds of netting. In her talk last week at BCA, Smith said she buys bird netting “from Home Depot or Lowe’s” and has branched out into volleyball nets and the like. She merges the deconstructed nets with rope, paracord, plastic, fiberglass screening, thread and sometimes acrylic paint. Smith’s assemblages are material collisions in which disparate factions literally hang in there — ragged but united.

All the works in “Willful Matters” are white or black or both. “Flag to the Abyss No. 3” (71 by 52 by 5 inches) is the only freestanding piece and is mostly white, but it’s one of two “flags” in the exhibit to include elements of kelly green. The other, “Flag to the Abyss No. 4” (66 by 46 by 6.6 inches), is predominantly black. In both works, Smith knotted green paracord around a hoop shape and teased out sections of the nylon to create a kudzu-like fuzz.

“I’m interested in materials and how they shift in purpose,” Smith said last week. To be sure, she has utterly transformed and abstracted materials from their utilitarian uses, and the results are both visually appealing and conceptually enigmatic. Smith suggested that “pieces of netting are in conversation with other pieces of netting.”

In other words, the art is networking.

In contrast, the smaller pieces under glass are relatively constrained, at least in dimension. Two 8.5-by-11-inch collages — “Untitled” (numbered 10 and 11) — are abstract compositions on white paper that combine slices of archival photographs, graphite, ink, plastic, fiberglass screen, netting and adhesive.

In her talk, Smith noted that she photographs her installations and then cuts up the photos to use in other works. “It reflects a circular conversation I’m having with myself,” she said. “It’s kind of a personal archive: negotiating what happens in making the work, sharing it and then having conversations with people about it.”

A similar mix of materials appears in Smith’s “Symmetries/Asymmetries” series — 22-by-30-inch collages on black or white Stonehenge paper. In the black-on-black work “Asymmetries No. 5,” two separate abstract forms are flattened beyond recognition, but reflective crenellations in the acrylic-covered material dazzle the eye. If seen as an aerial view, the forms

USING A VARIETY TWISTS AND TURNS.

OF HARDWARE STORE MATERIALS, SMITH INVENTS VOCABULARY OF

“Flag to the Abyss No. 1”

forms might be two islands in immutable relation to the other. But, as one is small and the other larger, the mind also leaps to a parent/child or superior/subordinate dynamic. That association, in turn, produces a psychological rabbit hole.

Since our brains are wired to recognize patterns, relationships or some kind of meaning in our visual environment, abstract artwork invariably provokes idiosyncratic — sometimes anthropomorphic — interpretations. In “Willful Matters,” a viewer might simply appreciate Smith’s ingenious constructions; other textile artists might like to know how she made some of those knots. The linguistically curious may wonder about the connotations of Smith’s titles.

And, in the context of social, racial and other divides, is there significance in her use of black and white?

Smith wisely does not impose a mandatory translation on gallerygoers’ imaginations and emotional responses. But in her online artist statement, she expresses a “deep investment in the contributions of black diaspora ideas.” Smith’s scholarly work investigates, in part, Black art and culture, while her creative work, she writes, “explores the intersection of repair and disrepair, aesthetics and visuality in difference (e.g., race, gender, sexuality).”

Through Smith’s lens, viewers might focus di erently — willfully — on tangled matters. ➆ INFO

“Sarah Stefana Smith: Willful Matters,” on view through May 6 at BCA Center in Burlington. burlingtoncityarts.org, sarahstefanasmith.com

NEW THIS WEEK

barre/montpelier

‘BEACON OF LIGHT’: A group exhibit exploring current topics with installations, constructions and more. Main-floor gallery. ‘MUD SEASON IN FIBER & PHOTOS’: Artworks by Nancy Banks and Roz Daniels. Second-floor gallery. ‘QUEER VISIONS’: Work by LGBTQ+ artists. ird-floor gallery. March 15-April 29. Info, 479-7069. Studio Place Arts in Barre.

stowe/smuggs

KELLY HOLT: “Black / Blur,” new mixed-media photography by the Vermont artist. Reception: Wednesday, March 22, 3 p.m. March 21-April 14. Info, 634-1469. Julian Scott Memorial Gallery, Northern Vermont University in Johnson.

mad river valley/waterbury

‘REFLECTING ON REFLECTIONS’: An exhibition of photography by members of the collective f/7. Reception: ursday, March 23, 5-7 p.m., with artist talk at 5:30 p.m. March 22-April 27. Info, 496-6682. e Gallery at Mad River Valley Arts in Waitsfield.

middlebury area

HANNAH SESSIONS: “Collective Vision: Beauty in Transitions,” land- and farmscape paintings by the Vermont artist. Reception: Friday, March 24, 5-7 p.m., with an artist talk and live music by Lowell ompson. March 15-April 30. Info, 877-2173. Northern Daughters in Vergennes.

northeast kingdom

MARDI MCGREGOR: “Angel Dances: An Ancestry of Art,” paintings and collages inspired by the artist’s grandparents and travels around the world. Reception: Saturday, March 18, 2-4 p.m. March 16-April 29. Info, 748-0158. Northeast Kingdom Artisans Guild Backroom Gallery in St. Johnsbury.

brattleboro/okemo valley

THE SPRING SALON: Artwork in a variety of mediums by 35 area artists. Reception: Friday, March 17, 5-7 p.m. March 17-June 3. Info, 289-0104. Canal Street Art Gallery in Bellows Falls.

manchester/bennington

ART FROM THE SCHOOLS PRE-K-12: Hundreds of drawings, paintings and sculptures created by students from more than 20 area schools and homeschools. Reception: Saturday, March 18, 2–4 p.m. March 18-April 23. Info, 367-1311. Elizabeth de C. Wilson Museum, Southern Vermont Arts Center in Manchester.

randolph/royalton

JASON MILLS: “Digestive,” a retrospective of abstract paintings by the Vermont artist. Reception: Sunday, March 26, 1-3 p.m. March 19-May 19. Info, 889-9404. Tunbridge Public Library in Tunbridge Village.

ART EVENTS

ART SOCIAL: A celebration of new exhibitions, with live music by cellist Michael Close. Masks required. Studio Place Arts, Barre, Saturday, March 18, 4:30-6 p.m. Free. Info, 479-7069.

ARTIST TALK: ELIZABETH NELSON: e artist discusses the paintings in her exhibition, “North,” which explore the colder climate and landscapes of Vermont, Iceland and Norway. e Front, Montpelier, ursday, March 16, 5-6 p.m. Free. Info, lizinvermont@gmail.com.

ARTIST TALK: TARA GOREAU: For the Arts & Culture Series, the artist talks about her exhibit in Athenaeum Hall featuring her mural for the Caledonia Food Co-op. A reception follows the presentation. St. Johnsbury Athenaeum, Wednesday, March 15, 7 p.m. Free. Info, 745-1393.

OPEN STUDIO: Draw, collage, paint, move, write and explore the expressive arts however you please during this drop-in period. Available in studio and via Zoom. Most materials are available in the studio. All are welcome, no art experience necessary. Expressive Arts Burlington, ursday, March 16, 12:30-2:30 p.m. Donations. Info, info@ expressiveartsburlington.com.

OPEN STUDIO: Make art alongside other artists, socialize, get feedback and try out new mediums. No experience required; art supplies provided. Hosted by the Howard Center Arts Collective, whose members have experience with mental health and/or substance-use challenges. ONE Arts Center, Burlington, Monday, March 20, 12:30-2:30 p.m. Free. Info, artscollective@ howardcenter.org.

TALK: ‘SUBWAY AS STUDIO’: In conjunction with a current exhibition at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, art historian Amy Raffel presents a Zoom discussion about Keith Haring’s artistic development in the early 1980s downtown New York art scene. Optional registration at brattleboromuseum.org. Online, ursday, March 16, 7 p.m. Free. Info, 257-0124.

VIRTUAL ART AUCTION: A curated selection of works from internationally renowned artists, local favorites and emerging talent; sales benefit art-learning programs at Burlington City Arts. Online, March 17-26. Info, 865-7166.

VISITING ARTIST TALK: STANYA KAHN: Kahn is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily in video with a practice that includes drawing, sound, writing, performance and sculpture/installation. Red Mill Gallery, Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, ursday, March 16, 7-8 p.m. Free. Info, 635-2727.

ONGOING SHOWS burlington

‘ALL THE FEELS’: A group exhibition of works that project joy, angst and/or humor by local artists. rough March 25. Info, 578-2512. e S.P.A.C.E. Gallery in Burlington.

ART AT THE HOSPITAL: Acrylic paintings by Matt Larson and Julio Desmont (Main Street Connector, ACC 3); photographic giclées by Jeffrey Pascoe (McClure 4 & EP2 Healing Garden); photographs by Sharon Radtke (EP2); and oil paintings by Judy Hawkins (BCC). Curated by Burlington City Arts. rough May 31. Info, 865-7296. University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington.

ART AT THE MALTEX: Paintings by Pievy Polyte, Shannon O’Connell, Nancy Chapman and Ashley MacWalters and photography by Brian Drourr and Robert Fahey. rough April 8. Info, 865-7296. e Maltex Building in Burlington.

‘ART/TEXT/CONTEXT’: An exhibition of art objects that prominently feature words, images, symbols, and gestural or abstract marks, and that considers their power to prompt critical reflection or spur social action. JOSEF ALBERS:

“Formulation: Articulation,” featuring studies by the late German American artist (1888-1976) that show how perception of color is affected by the environments in which it is viewed. SHANTA

LEE: “Dark Goddess: An Exploration of the Sacred Feminine,” large-scale black-and-white photographs that encouraging inquiry beyond the limited roles to which society assigns women. rough May 20. Info, 656-0750. Fleming Museum of Art, University of Vermont, in Burlington.

‘BLACK FREEDOM, BLACK MADONNA & THE BLACK CHILD OF HOPE’: Designed by Raphaella Brice and created by Brice and Josie Bunnell, this mural installed for Burlington’s 2022 Juneteenth celebration features a Haitian-inspired image of liberation. rough June 18. Info, 865-7166. ‘LET’S

"Asymmetries No. 6"

"Untitled (No. 10)"

"Flag to the Abyss No. 3"

BUILD A ROOF OVER THE WORLD’: Original paintings and drawings by children and young adults, ages 6 to 22, from Ukraine, Moldova and the Republic of Georgia, curated by the Fermata Arts Foundation. Through March 30. Info, 540-7214. Fletcher Free Library in Burlington.

CHARLIE HUDSON: “A Place I Go,” new landscapes in oil and acrylic. Through April 22. Info, 324-0014. Soapbox Arts in Burlington.

‘CO-CREATED: THE ARTIST IN THE AGE OF INTELLIGENT MACHINES’: Interactive projects that examine how artists are engaging with the rapidly changing field of artificial intelligence and its uniquely collaborative character. JULIA PURINTON: Nature-inspired abstract oil paintings, in the LBG Room. SARAH STEFANA SMITH: “Willful Matters,” photographic and sculptural black-and-white abstractions that explore ideas of Blackness and boundlessness by the contemporary artist and scholar. Through May 6. Info, 865-7166. BCA Center in Burlington.

‘CONNECTIONS’: Howard Center Arts Collective presents an art installation of painted mailboxes and mosaics, inviting viewers to reflect on the benefits of old-fashioned mail delivery and to consider whether mailboxes have become relics of the past. Through July 31. Info, artscollective@howardcenter.org. Howard Center in Burlington.

HOWARD CENTER ARTS COLLECTIVE: A spring show features work in a variety of mediums by more than 20 artists. Through April 28. Info, artscollective@ howardcenter.org. City Market, Onion River Co-op in Burlington (South End).

KEN RUSSACK: “House Portraits,” recent studio and plein air oil paintings by the Burlington artist. Through March 30. Info, 863-6458. Frog Hollow Vermont Craft Gallery in Burlington.

‘RIP: RELATIONSHIPS IN PROGRESS’: An exhibit in a variety of mediums by 14 area artists. Through March 26. Info, hello@thekarmabirdhouse.com. Karma Bird House Gallery in Burlington.

chittenden county

‘ABENAKI CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE VERMONT COMMUNITY’: A series of murals designed by Scott Silverstein in consultation with Abenaki artists Lisa Ainsworth Plourde and Vera Longtoe Sheehan and members of Richmond Racial Equity; the 10 panels celebrate the Abenaki origins of practices still important to Vermont culture. Through May 31. Info, radiate.art.space@gmail.com. Richmond Town Hall.

ART AT THE AIRPORT: Oil paintings of cows by Stephanie Bush and hand-cut paper scenes from the natural world by Adrienne Ginter. Skywalk corridor.

Through March 15. ELIZABETH NELSON & MICHELLE

TURBIDE: Acrylic paintings of Iceland and pastoral landscapes, respectively. Curated by Burlington City Arts. Through April 13. Info, 865-7296. Burlington International Airport in South Burlington.

CHRISTINE SELIN & ALISON SAUNDERS: Sculptures in wood and clay and acrylic landscape paintings, respectively. Through March 26. Info, 899-3211. Emile A. Gruppe Gallery in Jericho.

GREG NICOLAI: Black-and-white and color photographs. Curated by Burlington City Arts. Through June 23. Info, 865-7296. Pierson Library in Shelburne.

barre/montpelier

CAMERON DAVIS: “Poetic Ecologies,” paintings based on an ecological, scientific and spiritual narrative to reveal relationships that transform life. Through March 31. Info, 279-5558. Vermont Supreme Court Gallery in Montpelier.

DMITRI BELIAKOV: “On the Margins of Europe: A War

Before the War,” a retrospective of 55 photographs from war in Ukraine, 2014 to 2019, by the Russian

CALL TO ARTISTS

2023 CORNISH CCS RESIDENCY FELLOWSHIP: Applications are now open for the fall residency in Cornish, N.H., and the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction. Dates are October 17 to November 17. For details and application, visit cartoonstudies.org. Online. Info, 295-3319.

2024 SOLO EXHIBITION PROPOSALS: AVA’s exhibition committee of artists, art curators and art professionals seek proposals for solo shows from artists with strong connections to New Hampshire, Vermont and the greater New England region. Details at avagallery.org. Deadline: March 31. AVA Gallery and Art Center, Lebanon N.H. $50. Info, 603-448-3117.

ART IN THE GARDEN: Horsford Gardens & Nursery in Charlotte invites artists to apply to teach in its gardens this summer. The nursery is free of charge to use and artists receive all portions of their class cost. An application is at horsfordnursery.com. Deadline: March 26. Online. Info, 425-2811.

ART IN THE PARK: The Chaffee Art Center in Rutland invites applications for the 2023 festivals featuring fine artists, craft persons and specialty foods. Show dates are August 12 and 13 and October 7 and 8 in Main Street Park. Application at chaffeeartcenter.org. Online. Through April 1. Info, artinthepark@chaffeeartcenter.org.

ARTISTS NEEDED: Musical and visual artists are invited to perform and exhibit at the University Mall space. Email for details. Arts So Wonderful Gallery, South Burlington. Through March 31. Info, artssowonderful2@gmail.com.

‘AN ASSEMBLAGE OF BREATHS’: AVA Gallery and Art Center is seeking submissions that convey healing, comfort, togetherness and community, as well as works that encourage us to pause, reflect and breathe. An upcoming exhibition is in collaboration with West Central Behavioral Health. Application at avagallery.org. Deadline: April 17. Online. $15. Info, 603-448-3117.

BTV MARKET: Applications are open to artists, makers and vendors for the 2023 market in Burlington City Hall Park, Saturdays from June 3 to September 30. Details at btv-market.mymarket.org. Deadline: March 27. Online.

CASAN ARTS FOR ASYLUM SEEKERS: Would you like to receive a poem or visual art in your inbox every day in April? Local creatives are helping to support asylum-seeking families through the Chittenden Asylum Seekers Assistance Network. By sponsoring an artist’s participation in our fundraiser, your donation helps pay for asylum seekers’ rent, food, legal representation and other living expenses. See the list of participating creatives and sign up to sponsor at casanvermont.org. Deadline: April 5. Online.

CREATION GRANTS AVAILABLE: The Vermont Arts Council is accepting applications for this annual grant, which supports artists in creating new work. Grant funds may be used to compensate artists for time spent creating new work, to purchase materials, or to rent equipment or space for the process. New this year: the People’s Choice Creation Grant. Find info and application form for both at vermontartscouncil.org. Deadline: April 3. Online. Info, 402-4614.

DIANE GABRIEL VISUAL ARTIST AWARD: Burlington City Arts announces the opening of the application period for this annual award provided by the family of the late Burlington artist (1947-2017). The awardee receives a prize valued at $2,500, with their work showcased via BCA promotion and social media. Details and application at burlingtoncityarts.org.

Deadline: March 17. Online. Info, jobrien@burlingtoncityarts.org.

FUNGUS ARTWORK: The nature center is seeking mushroom/fungus-related artwork for a fall exhibition; any medium and artists of all levels are welcome. If interested, email chelsea@northbranchnaturecenter.org. Deadline: June 1. North Branch Nature Center, Montpelier. Info, 229-6206.

‘LITTLE LANDSCAPES’: We’re looking for framed 2D artwork that captures big spaces in little images — 3 by 6 inches or smaller — for an upcoming exhibit.

photojournalist now based in Vermont. Through April 3. Info, 485-2000. Kreitzberg Library, Norwich University, in Northfield.

ELIZABETH NELSON: “North,” paintings that explore the climate and landscapes of Vermont, Iceland and Norway. Through March 31. Info, 552-0877. The Front in Montpelier.

GAAL SHEPHERD: “Over Time,” nature-inspired paintings by the Vermont artist. Through April 19. Info, moetown128@gmail.com. Central Vermont Medical Center in Berlin.

GABRIELLE DIETZEL & HOWARD NORMAN: “Beyond the Plovers, Flat Clouds,” 3D collages and shadow boxes created by Dietzel as a visual response to literature about birds; and poems, historic and

Email an image of your artwork, title, medium and unframed dimensions to artworksvt@gmail.com. Details at artworksvt.com. Deadline: April 7. Art Works Frame Shop & Gallery, South Burlington. Free. Info, 660-4999.

MURALIST NEEDED: Arts So Wonderful seeks a volunteer artist to recreate four downtown Burlington murals. If interested, or for more info, contact artssowonderful2@gmail.com. Arts So Wonderful Gallery, South Burlington. Through May 8. Info, artssowonderful2@gmail.com.

‘ONE + ONE IS MORE THAN TWO’: This show is about multiple artworks by an artist that relate to each other as a group, in some cases using repetition of pattern, form, shape, color and comparative imagery. Show dates: May 10 to June 24. Deadline: March 25. Details at studioplacearts.com. Studio Place Arts, Barre. $10; free for SPA members. Info, submissions.studioplacearts@gmail. com.

PAINT-BY-NUMBER COW: Purchase a paint-by-number cow kit and submit your version to the museum for an upcoming exhibition. Instructions at mainstreetmuseum.org. Deadline: April 15. Main Street Museum, White River Junction. Info, info@mainstreetmuseum.org.

POETRY DOWNTOWN RUTLAND: Phoenix Books Rutland and the Paper Poet are soliciting original poetry from poets of all ages for display in a downtown business front window during National Poetry Month (April). Submit up to three poems, each 30 lines or fewer, via forms.gle/wb2KZpUGBRBYdfq17. Deadline: March 21. Online. Free. Info, 342-5774.

RFQ FOR STOWE STREET ALLEY: Revitalizing Waterbury and a host of volunteers have been working for more than a year to reclaim and transform an alley that is central to Waterbury’s historic downtown district. The committee is looking for artists to create a medallion and a gateway to the alley; deadlines are April 1 and March 15, respectively. Details at revitalizingwaterbury.org. Online. Free. Info, karen@revitalizingwaterbury.org.

SAPPY ART SHOW: An exhibition with the theme “Maple, the Heart of Vermont” is open to Vermont artists working in any 2D or 3D medium and will be displayed during the Vermont Maple Festival. More info and instructions for application at vtframeshop.com/sappy. Village Frame Shoppe & Gallery, St. Albans. Through April 15. Info, 524-3699.

‘SPARK!’: The Birds of Vermont Museum’s 2023 art show seeks works that tell the story of your spark as it relates to birds, birding, conservation, science, art, love or something else. Up to three works of art in almost any media, by new or returning artists of any age, may be submitted. Details at birdsofvermont.org. Deadline: March 20. Online. Info, museum@ birdsofvermont.org.

SYLVIA BARRY ART CONTEST: The annual competition for students is designed to encourage the artistic endeavors of local youth. Open to permanent residents of Grand Isle County in grades K-8 attending GISU or home schools. Details at islandarts.org. Deadline: May 19. Online. Free. Info, islandartscontest@gmail.com.

VERMONT STUDENT WILDLIFE ART CONTEST: The second annual contest and exhibition is open to all Vermont students in grades 7-12. The top 40 entries will be exhibited at the Highland Center for the Arts in Greensboro; 10 of those will be awarded cash prizes. Details and application at vtwildlifeeducationfund.org. Deadline: March 17. Online.

VERMONT STUDIO CENTER FELLOWSHIPS AND GRANTS: Two studio fellowships for yearlong rentals are open to a visual artist and a writer from Lamoille County, based on merit. Rental grants subsidize a portion of the cost of studio rentals for residents of Vermont with financial need. Visual artists working in all mediums and writers in all genres are eligible to apply. Application at vermontstudiocenter.org. Deadline: March 19. Online. Free. Info, admissions@vermontstudiocenter.org.

‘WHEELS!’: The Museum of Everyday Life invites wheel-related contributions to an upcoming exhibition: personal artifacts accompanied by a narrative, raw ideas for displays, fully realized art objects, theoretical writings and more. To contribute, or for more info, contact Clare Dolan via the “contact us” form at museumofeverydaylife.org. Online. Through May 12.

scientific documents, memoirs, and quotes collected by Norman for an anthology. Through March 27. Info, 229-6206. North Branch Nature Center in Montpelier.

JAY HUDSON: “Winter in the Northeast Kingdom,” oil and acrylic paintings of landscapes and inhabitants of the region by the Glover artist. Through March 31. Info, 223-2328. Vermont Natural Resources Council in Montpelier.

‘LET’S COLLAGE ABOUT IT!’: An exhibition of works in varied mediums by Kris Bierfelt, Liz Buchanan, Anne Cummings, Holly Hauser and Cariah Rosberg. Through April 8. Info, 207-373-8099. Center for Arts and Learning in Montpelier.

NITYA BRIGHENTI: “Side Streams in Art,” portraits, landscapes and cityscapes by the Italian painter

living in Barre. Through March 27. Info, 479-0896. Espresso Bueno in Barre.

PATTY CORCORAN & MASON YOUNG: “Shared Spaces,” multimedia landscape paintings and abstract wood sculptures, respectively. VERMONT PASTEL SOCIETY: “Let It Snow,” a group exhibition by central region members of the art organization. Champagne reception: Saturday, March 25, noon-3 p.m. Through March 25. Info, 262-6035. T.W. Wood Gallery in Montpelier.

SUSAN CALZA: “Our Demons Are Translucent,” large-scale, mixed-media drawings created over 10 years, influenced by the artist’s travels in Nepal, and assemblages. Through March 25. Info, 224-6827. Susan Calza Gallery in Montpelier.

BURLINGTON SHOWS « P.49

VERMONT ART EDUCATORS ASSOCIATION: “Vermont Voices,” the first-ever member exhibition, featuring one work of art by each participant in a range of styles and mediums. Through March 31. Info, dpeeples@vermontartscouncil.org. Spotlight Gallery in Montpelier.

stowe/smuggs

DEB PEATE: “Whimsical Heads,” featuring William Morris textile designs and vintage jewelry. Through May 7. Info, dpeate@yahoo.com. LEGACY COLLECTION: A showcase exhibition of paintings by gallery regulars as well as some newcomers. Through December 23. Info, 644-5100. SMALL MEMBERS’ GROUP SHOW: An exhibition of works by 16 member artists, curated by the artists themselves. Through May 7. Info, 644-5100. Bryan Memorial Gallery in Jeffersonville.

ESPERANZA CORTÉS: Sculptures, paintings and installations by the Colombian-born artist, whose work considers social and historical narratives, colonialism, and the politics of erasure and exclusion. Through April 8. Info, 253-8358. The Current in Stowe.

HARLAN MACK: “A Constellation of Friendships,” wall-hung artworks utilizing interconnecting pieces made from reclaimed boards to reference imagery and bonds of longtime friends. Reception: Friday, March 17, 6-7:30 p.m. Through April 16. Info, 635-2727. Red Mill Gallery, Vermont Studio Center, in Johnson. ‘HOME AND HOW WE MAKE IT’: An exhibition of 30 miniature rooms, as well as woodworking, textiles and paintings that define visually and conceptually what home means. Through June 1. Info, 888-1261. River Arts in Morrisville.

MARY ZOMPETTI: “Time and Again: Psychogeographic Meditations on Place,” new photographs. Closing reception and artist talk: Thursday, March 16, 3 p.m. Through March 16. Info, 635-1469. Julian Scott Memorial Gallery, Northern Vermont University, in Johnson.

SCOTT LENHARDT: An exhibition of graphic designs for Burton Snowboards created since 1994 by the Vermont native. Through October 31. Info, 253-9911. Vermont Ski and Snowboard Museum in Stowe.

mad river valley/waterbury

GREGG BLASDEL & JENNIFER KOCH: “Side by Side,” collaborative woodcut prints by the married artists. By appointment on Sundays. Through June 10. Info, joseph@waterburystudios.com. Waterbury Studios.

KIMBERLY HARGIS: “Close to Home: Photography From a 30-Mile Radius,” images from the natural world and human community around Thetford. Through March 31. Info, 244-7801. Axel’s Frame Shop & Gallery in Waterbury.

MIREILLE CLAPP: A retrospective of artworks by the late artist and mechanical/industrial engineer, featuring mixed-media wall sculptures and freestanding abstract pieces of welded metals. Through March 25. Info, 496-6682. Mad River Valley Arts Gallery in Waitsfield.

middlebury area

KEILANI LIME: An exhibition of recent and new abstract paintings by the Vermont artist, who lives with Classical Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. One hundred percent of sales will go toward her medical debt incurred from multiple surgeries. Through March 31. Info, keilani.lime@gmail.com. Ilsley Public Library in Middlebury.

LYNN JOHNSON: “As I See It,” large-scale still life works on canvas and paper. Through March 22. Info, 989-7419. Edgewater Gallery on the Green in Middlebury.

MEG MADDEN: “The Art of Mycology,” photographs of mushrooms by the Vermont naturalist. Through March 19. Info, 382-9222. Jackson Gallery, Town Hall Theater, in Middlebury.

MEL REA: “Just Minding My Business Picking Your Flowers,” paintings that feature deconstructed botanical forms. Through April 18. Info, 458-0098. Edgewater Gallery at the Falls in Middlebury.

‘PARENTHOOD’: A group exhibition of photographs that addresses the constantly changing state of mind in parent and child. Through March 24. Info, photos@photoplacegallery.com. PhotoPlace Gallery in Middlebury.

‘URBAN CADENCE’: Photographs of street scenes from Lagos and Johannesburg that represent the complex issues facing these cities. Through April 23. Info, 443-5007. Middlebury College Museum of Art.

rutland/killington

LARGE WORKS: A pop-up exhibition of members’ works in a variety of mediums that express magnified perspectives. Through April 30. Info, 247-4956. Brandon Artists Guild.

upper valley

ABRAHAM DUNNE: “Finds on a Hartland Farm,” relics compiled by the Sharon Academy first-year student. Through March 31. Info, info@mainstreetmuseum. org. Main Street Museum in White River Junction.

northeast kingdom

CHUCK TROTSKY: “Vocabulary,” paintings by the Vermont artist. Through May 9. Info, 525-3366. Parker Pie in West Glover.

‘COMING CLEAN’: An exhibition that considers bathing practices throughout time and across cultures, including religious immersion and ritual purification, bathing as health cure, methods of washing in extreme environments, and much more. All kinds of bathing and scrubbing implements are on display. Through April 30. Info, 626-4409. The Museum of Everyday Life in Glover.

OPEN AIR GALLERY: Outdoor sculptures by 14 area artists line a 1.8-mile trail open to cross-country skiers and snowshoers. Through March 26. Free. Info, 533-2000. Highland Center for the Arts in Greensboro.

‘STORY-BOARD’: Mixed-media works that address how narrative and memory alter over time; and sculptural assemblages made of found and repurposed objects, respectively. Through March 31. Info, 229-8317. The Satellite Gallery in Lyndonville.

brattleboro/okemo valley

APRIL M. FRAZIER: “Frame of Reference,” a pictorial representation of familial influences and experiences that shaped the photographer’s life and provide an alternate narrative of the African American experience in Texas and beyond. Through April 30. Info, 251-6051. Vermont Center for Photography in Brattleboro.

‘KEITH HARING: SUBWAY DRAWINGS’: Samples from the more than 5,000 chalk drawings the New York City artist made from 1980 to 1985 in subway stations. Through April 16. CATHY CONE: “Portals and Portraits,” modified tintypes and mixed media by the Vermont photographer that speak to the power and limitations of memory.

Through June 11. DANIEL CALLAHAN: “En-MassQ,” works from two series in which the Boston-based artist painted his own face and the faces of others and detailed the performances with photographs, writing, and audio and visual vignettes. Through June 11. JUAN HINOJOSA: “Paradise City,” collaged figures made from found objects that reflect on the challenges of immigrants creating a new home in a new place. Through June 11. MITSUKO BROOKS: “Letters Mingle Souls,” mail art that incorporates imaginary letters addressed by survivors to their deceased loved ones and explores the impacts of mental illness and suicide . Through June 11. OASA DUVERNEY: “Black Power Wave,” a window installation of drawings by the Brooklyn artist, inspired by images of Chinese Fu dogs, the cross and the Yoruba deity Èsù. Through May 6. Info, 257-0124. Brattleboro Museum & Art Center.

JOHN R. KILLACKY: “Flux,” an exhibition of objects from a wordless, process-based video inspired by scores, propositions and performative actions

‘All the Feels’

A whopping 86 artists contributed 138 pieces of art to “All the Feels,” an annual exhibit (minus a pandemic interruption) at the S.P.A.C.E. Gallery in Burlington. e open call for participation asked artists to “exude” emotion. It prodded: “How do you feel during the creation process? Does the content of your work bring joy, angst, humor? What emotions does the viewer go through when experiencing the art?”

e diversity of artworks — paintings, drawings, photographs, collage, sculpture — keeps pace with the range of human emotions. Many artists took the assignment to heart and just let it all out.

A terrifically striking entry is the large vulva with a fluffy pink exterior and inner folds studded with screws — business ends pointed out. Artist J. Kalisz gave her wall-hung piece a title that dispels any ambiguity: “Yup! It’s a big fucking pussy. Don’t like it? Go FUCK OFF!”

e clever-but-off-putting camp includes Django Hulphers’ collection of handmade objects laid out on a narrow pedestal and collectively titled “Mother.” Made of wood and found materials, the assortment suggests items on a vanity table, but these defy function. A “mirror” is not reflective but murky, its surface resembling leaves lodged beneath ice. Instead of useful bristles, spiky wads of dried botanicals snarl from tooth- and hairbrushes. Hulphers’ craftiness is subversive.

With an adroit cartoon-style pencil drawing titled “Artistic Inspirations,” Robert Waldo Brunelle Jr. chronicles despair. e first of eight panels reveals: “My melancholia is the result of a myriad of maladies, including chronic migraine, digestive complaints, and an arthritic spine. And now I am going deaf.” But he is fortified by the stories of six other artists who endured physical misfortunes, including Frida Kahlo, Claude Monet and Francisco Goya. In the final panel, Brunelle finds his own silver lining: “When I am creating, I am able to forget all my pains.”

Many of the artworks in “All the Feels” leave interpretation up to the viewer. eaWH anthropomorphizes foodstuffs in jokey color photographs, such as “EggLashes” — an over-easy egg whose orange yolk sports a pair of absurdly long false eyelashes.

Energetic abstract paintings by Linda Blackerby and Eric Eickmann disclose only that these artists were feeling ... energized.

Jenny Rossi’s wallhung creations are just plain cute: a quartet of vintage dishes holding food items made of polymer clay. “Sunday Brunch,” for instance, comprises a pair of tiny saucers holding even tinier pastries.

Some artworks prompt feelings of joy, hope or at least enticing promise. Alyssa DeBella’s watercolor “Summer Sunflowers” offers a field full of red, yellow and white blossoms, with a footpath right up the middle. Who knows where it might lead?

“All the Feels” is on view through March 25.

PAMELA POLSTON

"Yup! It's a big fucking pussy. Don't like it? Go FUCK OFF!" by J. Kalisz

"Mother" (detail) by Django Hulphers

"Summer Sunflowers" by Alyssa DeBella

"Zenity 2" by Linda Blackerby

"Sunday Brunch" (detail) by Jenny Rossi

of Fluxus-era artists; cinematography by Justin Bunnell, editing by C. Alec Kozlowski and sound composition by Sean Clute. Through August 30. Info, 257-7898. CX Silver Gallery in Brattleboro.

SIMI BERMAN: “Other Worlds,” paintings in mixed media. Through May 14. Info, 387-0102. Next Stage Arts Project in Putney.

manchester/bennington

SPRING SOLO EXHIBITIONS: Artworks by Domenica Brockman, Janet Cathey, Priscilla Heine, Rose Klebes, Lorna Ritz, Elise Robinson, Angela Sillars, Courtney Stock, Gregg Wapner, Susan Wilson and Chloe Wilwerding. Through May 7. Info, 362-1405. Southern Vermont Arts Center in Manchester.

randolph/royalton

AMY SCHACHTER & THE RANDOLPH RUGGERS: Abstract paintings, tile work and sculpture; and hooked rugs, wall hangings and handbags,

respectively. Through March 26. Info, artetcvt@ gmail.com. ART, etc. in Randolph.

‘CREATIVE COLLABORATION: THE ART OF DEBORAH AND MICHAEL SACKS’: Printmaking and photography by the married artists. Through March 19. Info, 8899404. Tunbridge Public Library in Tunbridge Village.

online

‘ACTION FIGURES: OBJECTS IN MOTION’: A virtual exhibition from the Shelburne Museum that explores the theme of movement and action in art. Through April 30. Free. ‘RIGHT UNDER YOUR NOSE’: The Shelburne Museum presents children’s printed textiles from the collection of J.J. Murphy and Nancy Mladenoff, featuring 21 playful, colorful handkerchiefs with motifs including insects, alphabets, circus clowns, shadow puppets, the solar system and a lumberjack beaver. Through May 13. Info, 985-3346. Online.

outside vermont

‘CHIAROSCURO’: A group exhibition featuring artwork in a range of mediums depicting light and shadow, both formally and allegorically, by Janet Van Fleet, Leslie Fry, Henry Isaacs and other artists from New Hampshire and Vermont. Through April 1. ‘FROM THE HEART’: Artworks by Sachiko Akiyama, Chris Chou and Kayla Mohammadi, curated by John R. Stomberg, director of the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College.

Through March 31. LYNDA BRYAN: “Deeper Than Blue,” photographs by the Vermont artist. Members Gallery. Through April 28. TOM FELS: Cyanotypes, drawings and watercolors, curated by John R. Stomberg, director of the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College.

Through March 31. Info, 603-448-3117. AVA Gallery and Art Center in Lebanon, N.H.

NELSON HENRICKS: Immersive video installations by the Montréal artist in which visual and sound editing create a musical dynamic, and which explore subjects from the history of art and culture. Through April 10. Info, 514-847-6226. Montréal Museum of Contemporary Art.

‘PARALL(ELLES): A HISTORY OF WOMEN IN DESIGN’: A major exhibition celebrating the instrumental role that women have played in the world of design, featuring artworks and objects dating from the mid-19th century onward. Through May 28. Info, 514-285-2000. ‘VIEWS OF WITHIN: PICTURING THE SPACES WE INHABIT’: More than 60 paintings, photographs, prints, installations and textile works from the museum’s collection that present one or more evocations of interior space. Through June 30. Info, 514-235-2044. Montréal Museum of Fine Arts. ‘¡PRINTING THE REVOLUTION! THE RISE AND IMPACT OF CHICANO GRAPHICS, 1965 TO NOW’: A Smithsonian American Art Museum traveling exhibition featuring 119 artworks by more than 74 artists of Mexican descent and allied artists active in Chicanx networks. Through June 11. Info, 603-6462808. PARK DAE SUNG: “Ink Reimagined,” 23 ink paintings, some on view for the first time in the U.S., by the renowned Korean artist; curated by Sunglim Kim, Dartmouth College associate professor of art history. Through March 19. Info, 603-646-3661. Hood Museum, Dartmouth College, in Hanover, N.H. ➆

music+nightlife

S UNDbites

News and views on the local music + nightlife scene

BY CHRIS FARNSWORTH

Closing Time

I was never a punk. I never had a studded belt or haunted the steps of 242 Main, the late, lamented city-run all-ages venue that used to reside in the bowels of Memorial Auditorium. I never felt the pull of the punk scene, which meant I tended to avoid the local DIY venues, most of which catered to punk, hardcore and metal acts.

So when I made it to my first show at Jim’s Basement, back in 2018, I stood out like a sore thumb. Located in the basement of BIG HEAVY WORLD cofounder and executive director JIM LOCKRIDGE in Burlington’s South End, the venue had become the town’s DIY flagship and one of the only all-ages, substance-free places to catch a show.

I passed through a crowd of blackclad youths huddled in Lockridge’s backyard on my way to the basement, which emitted sounds of pounding drums, distorted guitars and shrieking. I caught plenty of looks for the long hair and beard I was rocking at the time — I think the kids were afraid I was in a jam band. But otherwise, no one seemed to mind the older dude at the outskirts

of the forming mosh pit. I gave way and pressed against the wall as young men began throwing their bodies into one another and the band roared through incredibly short songs.

As intrigued as I was, I felt a little out of place, so I made my way back to the stairs, where I found Lockridge standing by himself and taking in the music. I smiled and waved, but he was completely focused on the band. I made a mental note to tell him how cool I thought it was of him to provide a venue for a scene that was having an increasingly di cult time finding one.

I never did get around to giving Lockridge that message, at least not while the basement was still active.

Which is a shame, because now Jim’s Basement the venue is no more.

The beloved spot’s final gig took place over the weekend: a five-band rager headlined by Burlington hardcore act the PATH. Later this month, Lockridge will pull up stakes and move to Arizona, where he will be closer to his family.

Lockridge assured me in a phone call that he’ll continue his work with Big Heavy World. “It’s no big deal, really,” he said. “I work remotely anyway, so everything I’m doing with Big Heavy World is going to keep trucking like nothing has changed.”

While it’s comforting to know that Lockridge feels confident of the Burlington team that will help him run the nonprofit music organization, the loss of his basement shows creates an undeniable void. Since 242 Main closed in 2016, the city’s underage population has faced a dearth of venues at which to play or even attend shows.

Lockridge opened up his basement to

help address that problem. Now, he said, others may have to step up, since the city isn’t taking action.

“For years and years, our city has been marginalizing the kids who would benefit from a safe, all-ages cultural venue of their own,” he told me. “When 242 was closed, it was done without a single reflection from the city’s leadership to the city’s youth.”

While he maintains a petition to reinstate 242 Main as an all-ages venue, Lockridge knows that temporary solutions are needed. He said he’s confident that other o -the-beaten-path venues will appear to host DIY shows now that Jim’s Basement has closed.

“At the end of the day, the basement was a community resource,” Lockridge mused. “Anything anyone experienced there, it was a community event. I was just the guy who pointed out where the door was and cleaned up the cans of Coke afterwards.”

If you know Lockridge, you know he’s being humble. His involvement in local music over the years has been unparalleled. He leaves the Green Mountains with a reputation as someone who dedicated his life to creating a music scene for Vermont’s youths.

“Until our civic leaders pick back up that responsibility, it’s really on the scene itself to do something if we care about having all-ages spaces for our youth,” he said. “This was only one tiny, dim hole in the ground. Other spaces are waiting for you to support them — or start them.”

THIS WAS ONLY ONE TINY, DIM HOLE IN THE GROUND. OTHER SPACES ARE WAITING FOR YOU TO SUPPORT THEM — OR START THEM.

JIM LOCKRIDGE

Jim’s Basement at the home of Jim Lockridge in Burlington

On the Beat

New band and new singles alert! Burlington’s latest alt-rock outfit is EMBERS

IN UMBRA. Consisting of singer BRI LUCAS, guitarist MATTHEW SICARD and drummer ANTHONY

GIRELLI, the trio released its first single, “Ladders,” last week, followed by a second single, “Scratch the Surface.”

The two hard-rocking tunes are on the band’s forthcoming debut album, according to Sicard, who previously manned the drum kit for JESSE TAYLOR BAND. You can stream the two new tracks at reverbnation.com/ embersinumbra.

Singer-songwriter

ANDRIANA CHOBOT will premiere a video for a

single from her 2022 LP

Return to Sincere, “Galaxy Eyes,” on Friday, March 17, at the Venetian Soda Lounge in Burlington. To celebrate, Chobot is bringing along singersongwriter JESSE TAYLOR — who, after playing an opening slot, will do tarot readings — and a special guest, pedal-steel wiz

COSMIC THE COWBOY.

Chobot promises a “trippy, visualizer-like” video for a song about “exploring the themes of perception and being perceived,” she wrote. The video will be shown twice, at 8 and 9 p.m. Any and all “spacey” outfits are highly encouraged, so go ahead and dust o those moon boots. ➆

Listening In

(Spotify mix of local jams)

1. “Elevator” by Rivan C.

2. “Packin’ My Bag” by Derek and the Demons

3. “Pour Dampness Down in the Stream” by Ryley Walker and Kikagaku Moyo

4. “Be at

5.

6.

Eye on the Scene

Last week’s live music highlights from photographer Luke Awtry

NEEDLE IN THE HAY: A BENEFIT CONCERT CELEBRATING ELLIOTT SMITH AT RADIO BEAN, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 8: If you needed a good public cry, Burlington’s Radio Bean was the place to be last Wednesday, as 11 different acts paid tribute to the incomparable Elliott Smith. e show featured Cosmic the Cowboy, Lily Seabird, Josh Glass, the Leatherbound Books and others, and all proceeds benefited the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. In a week with so many notable Queen City shows, such as country gunslinger Daniel Donato at Nectar’s and Screaming Headless Torsos at Foam Brewers, there was just something special about the tribute at the Bean. e night culminated in everyone coming together onstage to play Smith’s “Happiness,” and you could see through the tears that the room was all smiles.

On the Air

Where to tune in to Vermont music this week:

“Wave Cave Radio Show,” Wednesday, March 15, 2 p.m., on 105.9 the Radiator: DJs Flywlkr and Gingervitus spin the best of local (and nonlocal) hip-hop.

“Rocket Shop Radio Hour,” Wednesday, March 15, 8 p.m., on 105.9 the Radiator: Psych-rock five-piece LACES play live in studio.

“ e Sounds of Burlington,” ursday, March 16, 9 p.m., at wbkm.org: Host Tim Lewis plays the best of local music.

“Cultural Bunker,” Friday, March 17, 6 p.m., on 90.1 WRUV: Host Melo Grant plays local and nonlocal hip-hop selections.

“All the Traditions,” Sunday, March 19, 7 p.m., on Vermont Public: Host Robert Resnik plays an assortment of folk music with a focus on Vermont artists.

UPCOMING 2023

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7-10PM FUNK-FUSION-R&B CASH BAR AND FOOD TRUCK BY PHOENIX HOUSE EMERGING ARTIST WALKS

July 28 | Golf tournament GET YOUR SPOTS EARLY

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Way Again” by Maryse Smith

“Riddlin’” by Xander Naylor

“My Days (feat. Wombaticus Rex)” by D.French

7. “Brothers on the Rise” by the Beerworth Sisters

CLUB DATES music+nightlife

live music

WED.15

Bluegrass & BBQ (bluegrass) at Four Quarters Brewing, Winooski, 6:30 p.m. Free.

Double You (rock) at Nectar’s, Burlington, 8 p.m. Free.

Fresh-Pressed Wednesday (indie) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 9 p.m. $5/$10.

Jazz Night with Ray Vega (jazz) at Hotel Vermont, Burlington, 8:30 p.m. Free.

Les Dead Ringers (bluegrass) at Bent Nails Bistro, Montpelier, 7:30 p.m. Free.

Live Jazz (jazz) at Leunig’s Bistro & Café, Burlington, 6:30 p.m. Free.

Queer Pop Up with Rangus and the New Erotics (rock) at CharlieO’s World Famous, Montpelier, 8 p.m. Free.

Songs of the Grateful Dead (tribute) at Orlando’s Bar & Lounge, Burlington, 8 p.m. Free.

Troy Millette Presents: Sample Sets (singer-songwriter) at 14th Star Brewing, St. Albans, 6 p.m. Free.

Wednesday Night Dead (Grateful Dead covers) at Zenbarn, Waterbury Center, 7 p.m. $5.

THU.16

Alice Grace, Cam Gilmour Band (singer-songwriter) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 9 p.m. $5/$10.

Cooie & Aldai (covers) at Folino’s, Williston, 6 p.m. Free.

Good Gravy (bluegrass) at Bent Nails Bistro, Montpelier, 7:30 p.m.

Free.

Grace Palmer and Socializing for Introverts (rock) at Red Square, Burlington, 6 p.m. Free.

Hagen’s Classy Boss (jazz) at Foam Brewers, Burlington, 7 p.m.

Free.

Joshua Glass and Anna Pepin (singer-songwriter) at Filling Station, Middlesex, 6 p.m. Free.

Lincoln Sprague (jazz) at the Venetian Soda Lounge, Burlington, 5 p.m. Free.

McMaple (folk) at 1st Republic Brewing, Essex Junction, 6 p.m.

Free.

The Owl Stars (folk) at Black Flannel Brewing & Distilling, Essex, 6 p.m. Free.

Shane Murley Band (covers) at On Tap Bar & Grill, Essex Junction, 6 p.m. Free.

Singer-Songwriter Series: Jesse Taylor (singer-songwriter) at the Skinny Pancake, Burlington, 6 p.m. Free.

Young Dubliners (Celtic rock) at Pickle Barrel Nightclub, Killington, 8 p.m. $20/$25.

FRI.17

90 Proof (covers) at On Tap Bar & Grill, Essex Junction, 9 p.m. Free.

Space Race

Burlington’s reigning kings of psychedelic rock, the DEAD SHAKERS, love an ode to the stranger things in life. On last year’s Some Shapes Reappear, the band and its erstwhile leader, songwriter and front person Kevin Bloom, presented a record that was equal parts hallucinogenic flights of fancy and a collection of darker, deeper elements. The Dead Shakers turn their full attention to the cosmos for a special showcase of local indie rock dubbed “Alien Night,” including NIGHT PROTOCOL, NO SHOWERS ON VACATION and ORANGEPEELMYSTIC. It all goes down at Radio Bean in Burlington on Friday, March 17. Oh, and you’ll get $5 off at the door by wearing a space-related costume.

Alien Night with the Dead Shakers, No Showers on Vacations, Night Protocol, OrangePeelMystic (psych rock) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 7:30 p.m. $10/$15.

Aversed, No Soul, Embers, Keepsake, Melkor (metal) at Monkey House, Winooski, 8 p.m. $10/$15.

Barbie-N-Bones (rock) at the Depot, St. Albans, 7 p.m. $5. Blues for Breakfast (blues) at Nectar’s, Burlington, 9 p.m. $15.

Brewer Dan (singer-songwriter) at the Tap Room at Switchback Brewing, Burlington, 5 p.m. Free.

Bruce Sklar (jazz) at Bleu Northeast Kitchen, Burlington, 7:30 p.m. Free.

Canopy (jam) at Orlando’s Bar & Lounge, Burlington, 9 p.m. Free. The Cobras (rock) at the Old Post, South Burlington, 8 p.m. Free. Dad?!, Everybody’s Favorite Irish Drinking Songs Band (rock) at Charlie-O’s World Famous, Montpelier, 9:30 p.m. Free.

John Murray & Friends (Celtic) at Hotel Vermont, Burlington, 4 p.m. Free.

Keanen Stark and Orion Kribs (folk) at Taps Tavern, Poultney, 7 p.m. Free.

Marcus Rezak (jam) at Zenbarn, Waterbury Center, 7 p.m. $15/$18.

Nancy Smith & Tanya Macgrath, the Nailers (singer-songwriter) at Bent Nails Bistro, Montpelier, 7:30 p.m. Free.

Nico Suave & the Mothership (Led Zeppelin tribute) at Foam Brewers, Burlington, 8 p.m. $5. The Royals (covers) at Pickle Barrel Nightclub, Killington, 8 p.m. Free.

Ryan Sweezey (singer-songwriter) at 1st Republic Brewing, Essex Junction, 6 p.m. Free.

Scott Campbell (acoustic) at Gusto’s, Barre, 6 p.m. Free.

Smokey Newfield Project (folk) at Jericho Café & Tavern, 7:30 p.m. Free.

Soul & Soda (Celtic) at Red Square, Burlington, 10 a.m. Free.

Third Shift (covers) at On Tap Bar & Grill, Essex Junction, 5 p.m. Free.

Ursa and the Major Key, the Chops (rock) at Monopole, Plattsburgh, N.Y., 10 p.m. Free.

SAT.18

Abby Jenne (roots) at Charlie-O’s World Famous, Montpelier, 9 p.m. Free.

Be-er, Stölk (rock) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 7 p.m. $5/$10.

Bearly Dead (Grateful Dead tribute) at Zenbarn, Waterbury Center, 8 p.m. $15/$18.

CFI (jazz, funk) at Foam Brewers, Burlington, 8 p.m. Free.

Chance Murphy, Swank, Malik Elijah, Will Keeper (hip-hop, indie) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 9 p.m. $10/$15.

Folk Talk Trio (folk) at Whammy Bar, Calais, 7 p.m. Free.

Grippo Funk Band (funk) at Nectar’s, Burlington, 8 p.m. $15. Hawktail, Carling & Will (folk) at Higher Ground Showcase Lounge, South Burlington, 7:30 p.m. $20/$23.

Jason Baker (singer-songwriter) at the Den at Harry’s Hardware, Cabot, 6 p.m. Free.

The Rough Suspects (blues) at Red Square, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

The Royals (covers) at Pickle Barrel Nightclub, Killington, 9 p.m. Free.

She Was Right (covers) at On Tap Bar & Grill, Essex Junction, 5 p.m. Free.

Shiny Rats, Unruly Allies (rock) at Bent Nails Bistro, Montpelier, 7 p.m. Free.

Speak of the Witch, Astrocat (rock) at Despacito, Burlington, 7:30 p.m. Free.

Sputoola, Tiger Strike (funk rock) at the Underground, Randolph, 7:30 p.m. $15/$17.

Steve Blair (jazz) at Bleu Northeast Kitchen, Burlington, 7:30 p.m. Free.

Thaya Z Jazz Trio (jazz) at the Venetian Soda Lounge, Burlington, 7:30 p.m. Free. Tinyus Smallus (rock) at Monopole, Plattsburgh, N.Y., 10 p.m. Free.

SUN.19

David Karl Roberts (singersongwriter) at Foam Brewers, Burlington, 1 p.m. Free.

One Time Weekend (funk, rock) at Pickle Barrel Nightclub, Killington, 7 p.m. $10/$15.

R.A.P. Ferreira, Brightboy, ELDON (hip-hop) at Monkey House, Winooski, 7:30 p.m. $18/$22.

Sunday Brunch Tunes (singersongwriter) at Hotel Vermont, Burlington, 10 a.m.

MON.20

jxdn, Beauty School Dropout (pop punk) at Higher Ground Ballroom, South Burlington, 7 p.m. $29/$34.

TUE.21

Addie Herbert, Vega (singer-songwriter) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 6:30 p.m. $5/$10. Bluegrass Jam (bluegrass) at Taps Tavern, Poultney, 7 p.m. Free. Grateful Tuesdays (tribute) at Nectar’s, Burlington, 6:30 p.m. $20.

Honky Tonk Tuesday with Queen City Cut-Ups (country) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 9 p.m. $10/$15. Red Admiral (alt rock) at Lawson’s Finest Liquids, Waitsfield, 5 p.m. Free.

Dave Keller Band (blues) at Red Square, Burlington, 6 p.m. Free.

Dave Mitchell’s Blues Revue (blues) at Red Square, Burlington, 2 p.m. Free.

The Dirty Looks Band (rock) at Gusto’s, Barre, 9 p.m. Free.

Everybody’s Favorite Irish Drinking Songs Band (Irish songs) at Red Square, Burlington, 3 p.m. Free.

‘Galaxy Eyes’ Music Video Premiere with Jesse Taylor, Andriana & the Bananas (indie) at the Venetian Soda Lounge, Burlington, 7:30 p.m. $5.

Jerborn & Axe (acoustic) at 1st Republic Brewing, Essex Junction, 6 p.m. Free.

Last Kid Picked (covers) at On Tap Bar & Grill, Essex Junction, 9 p.m. Free.

Left Eye Jump (blues) at Red Square, Burlington, 2 p.m. Free.

The Lloyd Tyler Band (covers) at Jericho Café & Tavern, 7:30 p.m. Free.

Multibeast: A Tribute to Phish (tribute) at Orlando’s Bar & Lounge, Burlington, 9 p.m. Free.

WED.22

Bluegrass & BBQ (bluegrass) at Four Quarters Brewing, Winooski, 6:30 p.m. Free.

Double You (rock) at Nectar’s, Burlington, 8 p.m. Free. Elderbrook, ford., EREZ (electronic) at Higher Ground Ballroom, South Burlington, 7:30 p.m. $20/$25.

Jazz Night with Ray Vega (jazz) at Hotel Vermont, Burlington, 8:30 p.m. Free.

FRI.17 // DEAD SHAKERS [PSYCH ROCK]

Live Jazz (jazz) at Leunig’s Bistro & Café, Burlington, 6:30 p.m. Free.

Troy Millette Presents: Sample Sets (singer-songwriter) at 14th Star Brewing, St. Albans, 6 p.m. Free.

Wednesday Night Dead (Grateful Dead covers) at Zenbarn, Waterbury Center, 7 p.m. $5.

djs

THU.16

DJ Chaston (DJ) at Red Square Blue Room, Burlington, 11 p.m. Free.

DJ Two Sev (DJ) at Red Square, Burlington, midnight. Free.

Mi Yard Reggae Night with DJ Big Dog (reggae and dancehall) at Nectar’s, Burlington, 9:30 p.m. Free.

Molly Mood (DJ) at Red Square, Burlington, 10 p.m. Free.

Unhappy Hour with David & Bobby (DJ) at Paradiso Hi-Fi, Burlington, 8 p.m. Free.

Vinyl Night with Ken (DJ) at Taps Tavern, Poultney, 6 p.m. Free.

FRI.17

Craig Mitchell (DJ) at Red Square Blue Room, Burlington, 10 p.m. Free.

DJ Chaston (DJ) at Red Square Blue Room, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

DJ Kata (DJ) at Red Square, Burlington, 10 p.m. Free.

DJ Taka (DJ) at Light Club Lamp Shop, Burlington, 11 p.m. $10/$15.

Welcome to St. Paddy’s House with DJ Cre8 (DJ) at Club Metronome, Burlington, 10 p.m. $5.

SAT.18

Aquatic Underground (DJ) at Club Metronome, Burlington, 10 p.m. $5.

DJ A-Ra$ (DJ) at Red Square, Burlington, midnight. Free.

DJ Kaos (DJ) at Gusto’s, Barre, 9 p.m. Free.

DJ Raul (DJ) at Red Square Blue Room, Burlington, 6 p.m. Free.

DJ Taka (DJ) at Light Club Lamp Shop, Burlington, 11 p.m. $10/$15.

Matt Payne (DJ) at Red Square Blue Room, Burlington, 10 p.m. Free.

Molly Mood (DJ) at Red Square, Burlington, 10 p.m. Free.

Saturday Selections with DJ Rice Pilaf (DJ) at Foam Brewers, Burlington, noon. Free.

TUE.21

Local Dork (DJ) at Foam Brewers, Burlington, 6 p.m. Free.

open mics & jams

WED.15

Irish Sessions (Celtic, open mic) at Light Club Lamp Shop, Burlington, 6 p.m. Free.

Lit Club (poetry open mic) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 6:30 p.m. Free.

Open Mic (open mic) at Monopole, Plattsburgh, N.Y., 10 p.m. Free.

Open Mic with JD Tolstoi (open mic) at Taps Tavern, Poultney, 7 p.m. Free.

THU.16

Open Mic (open mic) at Whammy Bar, Calais, 6:30 p.m. Free.

Open Mic (open mic) at Orlando’s Bar & Lounge, Burlington, 8:30 p.m. Free.

SUN.19

Open Mic Night with Justin at Charlie-O’s World Famous, Montpelier, 7:30 p.m.

TUE.21

Open Mic Night (open mic) at 1st Republic Brewing, Essex Junction, 6 p.m. Free.

Venetian Soda Open Mic (open mic) at the Venetian Soda Lounge, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

WED.22

Irish Sessions (Celtic, open mic) at Light Club Lamp Shop, Burlington, 6 p.m. Free.

Open Mic (open mic) at Monopole, Plattsburgh, N.Y., 10 p.m. Free.

Open Mic with JD Tolstoi (open mic) at Taps Tavern, Poultney, 7 p.m. Free.

comedy

WED.15

March Madness: Two-Prov Tournament (Prelims B) (comedy) at Vermont Comedy Club, Burlington, 6:30 p.m. $5.

Standup Comedy Open Mic (comedy open mic) at Vermont Comedy Club, Burlington, 8:30 p.m.

Whale Tales: An Evening of Comedic Storytelling (comedy) at Club Metronome, Burlington, 6:30 p.m. Free.

THU.16

Comedy Night (comedy) at Bent Nails Bistro, Montpelier, 6 p.m. Free.

Kevin Costner Can Really

Dance: A Night of Standup

Comedy (comedy) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

Mothra! A Storytelling/ Improv Comedy Show (comedy) at Vermont Comedy Club, Burlington, 8 p.m. Free.

FRI.17

Stealing From Work: Gaslight at the End of the Tunnel (comedy) at Vermont Comedy Club, Burlington, 6 & 8 p.m. $25.

SAT.18

Brian Glowacki and Matthew P. Brown (comedy) at Catamount ArtPort, St. Johnsbury, 7 p.m. $25.

Stealing From Work: Gaslight at the End of the Tunnel (comedy) at Vermont Comedy Club, Burlington, 6 & 8 p.m. $25.

WED.22

March Madness: Two-Prov (Quarterfinals) (comedy) at Vermont Comedy Club, Burlington, 6:30 p.m. $5.

Standup Comedy Open Mic (comedy open mic) at Vermont Comedy Club, Burlington, 8:30 p.m.

Whales Tales (comedy) at Club Metronome, Burlington, 6:30 p.m. Free.

trivia, karaoke, etc.

WED.15

Nerd Nite Trivia (trivia) at Citizen Cider, Burlington, 6:30-9 p.m. Free.

Trivia Night (trivia) at Stone Corral, Richmond, 7 p.m. Free.

THU.16

Karaoke Night (karaoke) at Zenbarn, Waterbury Center, 7 p.m. Free.

Trivia (trivia) at Jericho Café & Tavern, 6 p.m. Free.

Trivia Night (trivia) at McGillicuddy’s Five Corners, Essex Junction, 6:30 p.m. Free. Trivia Thursday (trivia) at Spanked Puppy Pub, Colchester, 7 p.m. Free.

SUN.19

Venetian Karaoke (karaoke) at the Venetian Soda Lounge, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

MON.20

Trivia with Craig Mitchell (trivia) at Monkey House, Winooski, 7 p.m. Free.

TUE.21

Karaoke with DJ Party Bear (karaoke) at Charlie-O’s World Famous, Montpelier, 9:30 p.m. Free.

Lip Synch Battle (lip synch) at Bent Nails Bistro, Montpelier, 7 p.m. Free.

Trivia Night (trivia) at 14th Star Brewing, St. Albans, 6:30 p.m. Free.

Trivia Night (trivia) at the Depot, St. Albans, 7 p.m. Free.

Trivia Tuesday (trivia) at On Tap Bar & Grill, Essex Junction, 7 p.m. Free.

Tuesday Night Trivia (trivia) at Vermont Comedy Club, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

WED.22

Barrel Room Trivia (trivia) at Black Flannel Brewing & Distilling, Essex, 5:30 p.m. Free.

Nerd Nite Trivia (trivia) at Citizen Cider, Burlington, 6:30-9 p.m. Free.

Trivia Night (trivia) at Stone Corral, Richmond, 7 p.m. Free.

REVIEW this music+nightlife

Purcy Peaks, 2 Boot Goofin’

(SELF-RELEASED, DIGITAL)

Anyone with a shred of imagination and a penchant for dark thoughts has planned out their end-times scenario. Some fantasize about an o -grid compound, stocked with guns and toilet paper and canned soup — totally sensible, if boring. But what’s the point of growing up on pop culture that has long fetishized the end of civilization if you can’t think of something cool to do during the apocalypse?

Purcy Peaks has some pretty chill plans for the end of the world, at least judging by the soundtrack the

Dutch Experts, Bound by This

(SELF-RELEASED, DIGITAL, VINYL)

Townshend-based musician and producer has put together. 2 Boot Goofin’ is a 10-track, shiny-as-fuck instrumental record/manual for making the best of what’s still around when the world is running down.

Starting with the full-on synthwave jam “Whoopsies,” Peaks — real name John Henry Purcell — wastes no time establishing a fully realized world of spacey, surging synths and heavily processed beats. The aesthetic is so perfectly captured, it’s hard not to envision a neon-streaked road stretching out into a futuristic horizon, cutting across an irradiated wasteland as the listener speeds through, bumping 2 Boot Goofin’ to scare o the mutants.

“Hunk in the Trunk,” takes a turn

toward ’70s funk, with little hints of jazz thrown in for good measure. The album makes clear that Purcell has plenty of tools in his songwriting bag; one of his strengths is his ability to dip in and out of a variety of styles and modes judiciously. A hallmark of a good self-producer is careful curation of an album’s tonal shifts, which Purcell manages to navigate with taste. When he leans into space-age funk, such as on “Masters of Yearn,” the results are particularly e ective.

According to his Bandcamp page, Purcell spends eight to 12 hours a day writing and recording music at his home studio. Considering the songs on the record are so densely layered with flashes of progressive rock, Giorgio Moroder-style synth disco and even bits of sweeping, new-age colors, it’s hardly surprising to learn that Purcell treats the studio like a mad scientist’s laboratory. Occasionally, he’ll cram all those disparate pieces together, as on tracks

such as “Frisky Firsts” and the computer funk of “Steaming,” yet the songs never feel bloated or confused. Rather, he blends everything into strangely exultant pieces of music.

Things take a turn for the strange with the penultimate track, “Enemies: A Terrible Concept.” Over a bubbling rhythm of synth horns and a shu ing, glitched-out beat, Purcell takes an aural freak-out of a song and flips it into a gentle, classical piece. Perhaps it’s meant to signal the end of the postapocalyptic road trip the album has been scoring, but there’s still one last epitaph in the form of “Punchbowl Frogs.” Though something of a sonic potpourri, as is much of the rest of the record, the final song carries a hint of melancholy in its string arrangement and collection of blips and beeps, like an abandoned computer terminal signing o . 2 Boot Goofin’ is streaming now at purcypeaks.bandcamp.com.

CHRIS FARNSWORTH

sonic comfort and uneasy emotional possibility to the same songs.

So far, the 2020s have been good for synth-pop. First there was the pandemic, which made the idea of creating vast soundscapes from small machines more appealing than ever. In early 2022, Harry Styles launched his Grammy-winning streak with the headspinning synths on the single “As It Was.” On his heels came the revival of Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill,” a 1985 hit that topped charts again after featuring prominently in the Netflix series “Stranger Things.”

Closer to home, the pandemic era has delivered a new solo synth-pop project from Brattleboro-based singersongwriter Hannah Ho man. As Dutch Experts, she released an EP titled Bound by This

In the EP’s liner notes, Ho man cites isolation and long COVID symptoms as influences. Bound by This o ers a glimpse into a dark and dreamy world, where the dizzying instrumentation is anchored by Ho man’s confident and evocative vocals. The recording also features guitar and bass by Graham Brooks; drums by

Bruce Black; and production by Ho man, Brooks and Mikey Allred.

Through some synesthetic trick, these four songs bring to my mind a visual of playing the computer game Marble Madness, in which the player directs a virtual marble through an abstract tiled course, running the constant risk of rolling o the edge of the course and into the yawn of empty digital space. Ho man is world-building, and the atmosphere she’s cultivated is at once retro and speculative, bringing

The title track opens with a funky bass line, and the layered vocals create a gorgeous chorus e ect. Listening is like walking upward on an escalator going down, which to me is the trick of a good synth ri : It feels as though the song is ascending, even if the notes remain the same.

“Your Heart” further demonstrates how well produced and well mixed the EP is. The synths draw pulsing circles in the background but do not overpower Ho man’s singing. The bridge devolves appealingly into a chaos of layers before Ho man reins it all back in.

The opening bars of “Soon” tickled the same part of my brain that, at a tender age, was blown away by Van Halen’s “Jump.” Now that I (allegedly) have a fully developed frontal cortex, I’m enchanted by the way Ho man takes an upbeat synth ri and layers it with darker emotions. Her voice is self-assured and prophetic as she repeats the phrase, “Soon you’ll realize.” The song brims with potential energy before we are snapped back to reality with the final line, the realization: “This was all in vain.”

I hope not, because this EP makes me feel as if I’m on the cusp of a vast universe, and as the Vermont music scene reemerges post-pandemic, I’m excited to see Ho man making a fresh home within it.

Bound by This is available on all major streaming services, and the vinyl is for sale at dutchexperts. bandcamp.com. Dutch Experts plays at the Stone Church in Brattleboro on Sunday, March 19.

MARGARET GRAYSON

Hannah Hoffman of Dutch Experts

Now hear this!

Seven Days is recording select stories from the weekly newspaper for your listening pleasure.

Art

Vermont’s EMS System Is Struggling to Survive. Can It Be Saved? 30 MINS.

Andrew Tripp Is an All-Star Union Organizer — and a KickAss X-Country Coach, Too 25 MINS.

What Does Matt Rogers’ Hiring as Director of Programming Mean at the Flynn? 9 MINS.

Northfield’s Police Chief Takes Flak for His Provocative Public Stances 12 MINS.

Essay: I Do’s and I Don’ts From a Semiprofessional Wedding Guest 10 MINS.

Amid a School Bus Driver Shortage, Jackie Terry Rolls Along 10 MINS.

Earth + Salt Brings Sex Toys and Positivity to Burlington 10 MINS.

251: Skiing On the Cheap at Cochran’s in Richmond 8 MINS.

Three Ways to Brunch at the Grey Jay in Burlington 10 MINS.

After a Chaotic Start, Becca Balint, Vermont’s First Congresswoman, Finally Gets to Work 19 MINS.

How does it work?

1 2 3

Go to sevendaysvt.com/aloud and click on the article you want to hear.

When the article loads, scroll down past the first photo and find the prompt to “Hear this article read aloud.”

Press play! You can pause at any time, skip ahead, rewind and change the speaking speed to suit your needs.

Start listening at: sevendaysvt.com/aloud

Then, tell us what you think: aloud@sevendaysvt.com

on screen

Are you ready to dress in your “best starperson outfit”? Next week’s White River Indie Film Festival, at Junction Arts & Media in White River Junction, will feature a Saturday, March 25, screening of the David Bowie documentary Moonage Daydream. While the 2022 film has already screened elsewhere in the state and can be streamed for a rental fee, WRIF has found the perfect way to celebrate it: by pairing the showing with a runway costume contest. The upcoming event inspired me to check out this hallucinatory ode to Bowie from director Brett Morgen (Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck ). Find more specs on the fest at uvjam.org/wrif.

The deal

Moonage Daydream throws the standard recipe for music documentaries out the window. It opens with Bowie’s voice intoning about how Friedrich Nietzsche announced the death of God and humanity spent the 20th century seeking a replacement.

Moonage Daydream ★★★★★ REVIEW

We witness a psychedelic scene apparently set on another planet, followed by a frenetic montage of clips from a century of avant-garde art and historical horrors. Among them is news footage of a young Bowie fan contorted in anguish because she failed to catch her idol at the stage door. And finally we reach a temporary still point: the young Bowie onstage, sleek and androgynous and authoritative and anguished in his own way, performing “All the Young Dudes.”

Moonage Daydream has no on-screen text to ground us in space or time, no talking-head interviews to interpret the footage for us. The closest thing it has to a narrator is Bowie himself. With full access to the artist’s music and personal archives, Morgen has assembled an elaborate tribute to Bowie in visual and aural collage form — a full-immersion experience.

Will you like it?

The first time I watched MTV, in 1983, it might as well have been Bowie TV. Adults and teens alike gathered around the set for “Let’s Dance” and “Modern Love.” We were all mesmerized by Bowie’s cool, new-wave persona of the era, but it wasn’t just a matter of aesthetics. Everything about him felt like a perfect match for the fractured, postmodern nature of the

music video itself — a then-new format that would soon become inescapable.

Later on, I would learn that those ’80s dance hits were just the most accessible edge of the Bowie catalog. But watching Moonage Daydream, which pairs some of his greatest songs with trippy montages in the style of early MTV, I felt that old rush again. As the kids say, this movie is a vibe, and a powerful one — an exploration of the future past from the perspective of a rock icon who understood his place in a long lineage of avant-garde artists.

If that description makes Bowie sound grandiose, he doesn’t come o that way. Many rock stars have envisioned themselves as secular deities, but Bowie knew enough about the history of his century to be wary of such pretensions. In one particularly revelatory sound bite, he suggests that the rock stars of his era, himself included, are “false prophets,” glittering masks hiding profound emptiness.

Bowie speaks candidly in the archival footage about using performance for disguise, trickery and play — a shape-shifting mutability that makes him as relevant now as he was in the glam era. But he also speaks of the authentic joy of art making, a search for meaning that has inherent

value to him even if the only truth that ever emerges is “chaos and fragmentation.”

Morgen shows us a dazzling array of Bowie’s creative efforts: music, dance, paintings, sculpture, film and theatrical performances. We see him cashing in on his persona, too, selling out stadiums and plugging Pepsi in that famous TV spot with Tina Turner. The documentary doesn’t explore the contradiction between these two faces of Bowie, if there is one. Morgen simply leaves us with an unshakable sense that, while Bowie may not have exemplified artistic purity, his was a life of constant, restless, fruitful creation.

I’ve been avoiding Moonage Daydream because I felt like too casual a Bowie fan to review it with any acumen. By virtue of its format, the documentary leaves out vast swaths of biographical and contextual information, and all I can do is hand-wave you toward other sources that provide more of the story.

But now, having seen the film, I can say that it’s hard to come away feeling like a casual anything. Morgen’s maelstrom of sounds and images captures something essential about Bowie’s mystique; by the end, we understand why the sobbing fan at the stage door called him “magical.” And

if it’s all smoke and mirrors? Well, maybe that’s the point.

MARGOT HARRISON margot@sevendaysvt.com

IF YOU LIKE THIS, TRY...

DAVID BOWIE: THE LAST FIVE YEARS (2017; HBO Max): Francis Whately’s BBC documentary explores Bowie’s creative output toward the end of his life; it’s part of a trilogy that also delves into his early work.

BESIDE BOWIE: THE MICK RONSON STORY (2017; tubi, Vudu, rentable): Bowie’s backing band has no real screen time in Moonage Daydream, but this documentary will get you up to speed on the guitarist who helped define his early glam sound.

STARDUST (2020; AMC+, Hulu, IFC Films Unlimited, rentable): e artist’s estate didn’t like this drama in which Johnny Flynn plays a young Bowie in the process of crafting the Ziggy Stardust persona, so it features zero Bowie songs. Will we see a better Bowie biopic down the road, or does Moonage Daydream fill that gap just fine?

Morgen’s documentary is a trippy, transporting homage to a late rock icon.

NEW IN THEATERS

MOVING ON: Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin play estranged friends who team up to get revenge on the man who wronged them (Malcolm McDowell) in this comedy from Paul Weitz (Grandma). (85 min, R. Essex, Majestic, Palace, Savoy)

SHAZAM! FURY OF THE GODS: Foster kid Billy Batson must assume his superhero alter-ego (Zachary Levi) to foil a trio of rogue gods as the DC Comics saga continues. With Grace Caroline Currey and Helen Mirren. David F. Sandberg directed. (130 min, PG-13. Essex, Majestic, Marquis, Palace, Paramount, Star, Welden)

CURRENTLY PLAYING

2023 OSCAR NOMINATED SHORT FILMS: Three separate programs: Live Action, Animation and Documentary. (Savoy)

65HH An astronaut (Adam Driver) crash lands on a strangely familiar planet full of prehistoric monsters in this action adventure directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods. (93 min, PG-13. Capitol, Essex, Majestic, Palace, Roxy)

80 FOR BRADYHH1/2 Sally Field, Jane Fonda, Rita Moreno and Lily Tomlin play four friends determined to meet Tom Brady. (98 min, PG-13. Majestic, Playhouse)

ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIAHH1/2

The titular Marvel superheroes (Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly) get tangled up in the Quantum Realm. (125 min, PG-13. Essex, Majestic, Palace)

CHAMPIONSHH1/2 Woody Harrelson plays a washed-up basketball coach who is court ordered to manage a team of players with intellectual disabilities in this comedy from Bobby Farrelly, featuring Vermonter Casey Metcalfe. (123 min, PG-13, Bijou, Capitol, Essex, Majestic, Palace, Star)

CLOSEHHHH In this Belgian Oscar nominee, two 13-year-old boys feel the strain when classmates begin to question the nature of their close friendship. (104 min, PG-13. Roxy)

COCAINE BEARHH1/2 Elizabeth Banks directed this comedy-thriller about a bear that terrorizes the countryside after going on a coke binge. (95 min, R. Big Picture, Bijou, Capitol, Essex, Majestic, Palace, Roxy, Stowe, Welden; reviewed 3/8)

CREED IIIHHH1/2 In this sequel directed by star Michael B. Jordan, the boxing champion faces a new rival. Tessa Thompson and Jonathan Majors also star. (116 min, PG-13. Big Picture, Bijou, Capitol, Essex, Majestic, Palace, Roxy, Star, Stowe, Welden)

JESUS REVOLUTIONHH1/2 Hippies in the 1970s spread the gospel in this inspirational period piece from the team behind I Can Only Imagine. (120 min, PG-13. Capitol)

ONE FINE MORNINGHHHH1/2 A single mom (Léa Seydoux) juggles an aging dad and a new affair in the latest award-winning drama from Mia HansenLøve. (112 min, R. Savoy)

THE QUIET GIRLHHHH1/2 A shy 9-year-old (Catherine Clinch) blossoms when she’s sent to spend the summer with relatives in Colm Bairéad’s Oscar-nominated drama. (95 min, PG-13. Catamount, Roxy, Savoy; reviewed 2/15)

SCREAM VIHHH Can a move to New York save the survivors of the Ghostface killings in this horror sequel? Melissa Barrera, Courteney Cox and Jenna Ortega star. (123 min, R. Bijou, Essex, Majestic, Marquis, Palace, Paramount, Roxy, Star, Stowe, Welden)

TO LESLIEHHHH Andrea Riseborough received a controversial Oscar nomination for her performance as a struggling Texas single mom. (119 min, R. Savoy)

TU JHOOTHI MAIN MAKKAAR: A player meets his match in this Hindi romantic comedy starring Ranbir Kapoor and Shraddha Kapoor. (150 min, NR. Majestic)

OLDER FILMS AND SPECIAL SCREENINGS

AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER (Majestic)

THE BUTTERFLY QUEEN (Savoy, Sat only)

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCEHHHHH (Majestic, Roxy, Savoy)

METROPOLITAN OPERA: LOHENGRIN (Essex, Sat only)

MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO (Catamount, Wed 15 only)

PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH (Capitol, Majestic, Palace)

OPEN THEATERS

(* = upcoming schedule for theater was not available at press time)

BIG PICTURE THEATER: 48 Carroll Rd., Waitsfield, 496-8994, bigpicturetheater.info

*BIJOU CINEPLEX 4: 107 Portland St., Morrisville, 888-3293, bijou4.com

CAPITOL SHOWPLACE: 93 State St., Montpelier, 229-0343, fgbtheaters.com

CATAMOUNT ARTS: 115 Eastern Ave., St. Johnsbury, 748-2600, catamountarts.org

ESSEX CINEMAS & T-REX THEATER: 21 Essex Way, Suite 300, Essex, 879-6543, essexcinemas.com

MAJESTIC 10: 190 Boxwood St., Williston, 878-2010, majestic10.com

MARQUIS THEATER: 65 Main St., Middlebury, 388-4841, middleburymarquis.com

*MERRILL’S ROXY CINEMAS: 222 College St., Burlington, 864-3456, merrilltheatres.net

PALACE 9 CINEMAS: 10 Fayette Dr., South Burlington, 864-5610, palace9.com

PARAMOUNT TWIN CINEMA: 241 N. Main St., Barre, 479-9621, fgbtheaters.com

*PLAYHOUSE MOVIE THEATRE: 11 S. Main St., Randolph, 728-4012, playhouseflicks.com

*SAVOY THEATER: 26 Main St., Montpelier, 229-0598, savoytheater.com

STAR THEATRE: 17 Eastern Ave., St. Johnsbury, 748-9511, stjaytheatre.com

*STOWE CINEMA 3PLEX: 454 Mountain Rd., Stowe, 253-4678, stowecinema.com

WELDEN THEATRE: 104 N. Main St., St. Albans, 527-7888, weldentheatre.com

Note: These capsule descriptions are not intended as reviews. Star ratings come from Metacritic unless we reviewed the film (noted at the end of the description). Find reviews written by Seven Days critic Margot Harrison at sevendaysvt.com/ onscreen-reviews.

Go The Extra Mile

holidays

seminars

MARCH 15-22, 2023

WED.15 business

MASTERING YOUR CREDIBILITY: Danielle Bass from the Better Business Bureau teaches entrepreneurs how a profile can enhance their reputation. Presented by Women Business Owners Network Vermont. 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 503-0219.

PROTECT FOR THE UNEXPECTED:

Business owners learn how to prepare for illness, disability and other unforeseen challenges in this workshop presented by Mercy Connections. Noon-1 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 846-7081.

QUEEN CITY BNI VISITOR’S

DAY: Over 70 Vermont professionals of all industries introduce interested parties to the local chapter of Business Network International. Burlington City Hall, 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, queencitybni@gmail.com.

QUEEN CITY BUSINESS

NETWORKING

INTERNATIONAL GROUP: Local professionals make crucial contacts at a weekly chapter meeting. Burlington City Arts, 11:15 a.m.-1 p.m. Free. Info, 829-5066.

community

SPRING MENTOR TRAINING: Community members prepare to be matched with incarcerated and court-involved women in order to coach them in transitioning to life in northwest Vermont and Chittenden County. Mercy Connections, Burlington, 5:307:30 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 846-7164.

film

See what’s playing at local theaters in the On Screen section.

ARCHITECTURE + DESIGN FILM SERIES: ‘LOUIS SULLIVAN: THE STRUGGLE FOR AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE’: Guest speaker Mark Richard Smith introduces a documentary about the father of the skyscraper. Virtual option available. Burlington City Hall Auditorium, 6-7:30 p.m. Free. Info, 865-7166.

EDITING WITH DAVINCI RESOLVE: Attendees learn how to perfect film footage in a popular program. RETN & VCAM Media Factory, Burlington, 1-3 p.m. Free; donations accepted; preregister. Info, 651-9692.

‘MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO’:

A beloved 1988 Japanese animated film follows two girls on their adventures with wondrous forest spirits. Catamount Arts Center, St. Johnsbury, 6 p.m. Free. Info, 748-2600.

‘SEA MONSTERS 3D’: An adventurous dolichorhynchops travels through the most dangerous oceans in history, encountering plesiosaurs, giant turtles and the deadly mosasaur along the way. Northfield Savings Bank 3D Theater: A National Geographic Experience, ECHO Leahy Center for Lake Champlain, Burlington, noon, 2 & 4 p.m. $3-5 plus regular admission, $14.50-18; admission free for members and kids 2 and under. Info, 864-1848.

‘WILD AFRICA 3D’: Viewers are plunged into the magical vistas of the continent’s deserts, jungles and savannahs. Northfield Savings Bank 3D Theater: A National Geographic Experience,

LIST YOUR UPCOMING EVENT HERE FOR FREE!

All submissions must be received by Thursday at noon for consideration in the following Wednesday’s newspaper. Find our convenient form and guidelines at sevendaysvt.com/postevent

Listings and spotlights are written by Emily Hamilton Seven Days edits for space and style. Depending on cost and other factors, classes and workshops may be listed in either the calendar or the classes section. Class organizers may be asked to purchase a class listing.

Learn more about highlighted listings in the Magnificent 7 on page 11.

ECHO Leahy Center for Lake Champlain, Burlington, 10:30 a.m., 12:30, 2:30 & 4:30 p.m. $3-5 plus regular admission, $14.50-18; admission free for members and kids 2 and under. Info, 864-1848.

‘WINGS OVER WATER 3D’: Sandhill cranes, yellow warblers and mallard ducks make their lives along rivers, lakes and wetlands. Northfield Savings Bank 3D Theater: A National Geographic Experience, ECHO Leahy Center for Lake Champlain, Burlington, 11 a.m., 1 & 3 p.m. $3-5 plus regular admission, $14.50-18; admission free for members and kids 2 and under. Info, 864-1848.

food & drink

COOK THE BOOK: Home chefs make a recipe from Catalan Food: Culture and Flavors

From the Mediterranean by Daniel Olivella and share the dish at a potluck. Dorothy Alling Memorial Library, Williston, noon-1 p.m. Free. Info, 878-4918.

games

PUZZLE SWAP: Folks of all ages looking for a new challenge trade their old puzzles, accompanied by a picture and stored in a resealable bag. ADA accessible. South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 2:30-5 p.m. Free. Info, 846-4140.

health & fitness

CHAIR YOGA: Waterbury Public Library instructor Diana Whitney leads at-home participants in gentle stretches supported by seats. 10 a.m. Free. Info, 244-7036.

FIND MORE LOCAL EVENTS IN THIS ISSUE AND ONLINE:

art

Find visual art exhibits and events in the Art section and at sevendaysvt.com/art.

film

See what’s playing at theaters in the On Screen section.

music + nightlife

Find club dates at local venues in the Music + Nightlife section online at sevendaysvt.com/music.

= ONLINE EVENT

CELTIC MUSIC FOR ST. PATRICK’S DAY: Samantha Moffatt and friends call forth the springtime with cheerful reels from Scotland, Ireland and beyond. George Peabody Library, Post Mills, 7-8 p.m. Free. Info, 333-9724.

language

BURLINGTON IRISH HERITAGE FESTIVAL: BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO THE IRISH LANGUAGE: Chris Branagan leads an informal lesson for newcomers to Gaelic. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 7-8 p.m. Free; donations accepted. Info, 363-6330.

ELL CLASSES: ENGLISH FOR BEGINNERS & INTERMEDIATE STUDENTS: Learners of all abilities practice written and spoken English with trained instructors. Presented by Fletcher Free Library. 6:30-8 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, bshatara@ burlingtonvt.gov.

IRISH LANGUAGE CLASS: Celticcurious students learn to speak an Ghaeilge in a supportive group. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

SPANISH CONVERSATION: Fluent and beginner speakers brush up on their español with a discussion led by a Spanish teacher. Presented by Dorothy Alling Memorial Library. 5-6 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, programs@damlvt.org.

lgbtq

THRIVE QTPOC MOVIE NIGHT: Each month, Pride Center of Vermont virtually screens a movie centered on queer and trans people of color. 6:30 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, thrive@pridecentervt.org.

music

DARK STAR ORCHESTRA: The seven-member band takes Grateful Dead fans young and old on a trip with a concert experience to remember. Paramount Theatre, Rutland, 7:30 p.m. $4555. Info, 775-0903.

FARMERS NIGHT: VERMONT

NATIONAL GUARD’S 40TH

ARMY BAND: This iconic, storied group plays traditional patriotic tunes, as well as classical and contemporary selections. House Chamber, Vermont Statehouse, Montpelier, 7:30 p.m. Free. Info, 828-2228.

WALLINGFORD TOWN HALL

CONCERT SERIES: EXTRA STOUT: The local favorite ensemble plays Irish ballads, reels, jigs and drinking songs. Bake sale benefits Empire State Ride to End Cancer. Wallingford Town Hall, 7-9 p.m. $10-15 suggested donation. Info, 446-2872.

outdoors

SMUGGS 55+ SKI CLUB: Seniors who love to ski, snowboard and snowshoe hit the slopes after coffee and pastries. Smugglers’ Notch Resort, Jeffersonville, 9 a.m.-noon. $30 for annual membership. Info, president@ smuggs55plus.com.

BETHEL UNIVERSITY: Every day in March, locals take free outdoor and online classes on everything from thermodynamics to glassblowing to ice skating. Various Bethel locations. Free; preregister. Info, betheluniversityvt@ gmail.com.

sports

GREEN MOUNTAIN TABLE

TENNIS CLUB: Ping-Pong players swing their paddles in singles and doubles matches. Rutland Area Christian School, 7-9 p.m. Free for first two sessions; $30 annual membership. Info, 247-5913.

MICHELOB ULTRA SKI BUM RACE

SERIES: Teams of amateur skiers and snowboarders test their skills and speed at one of 10 downhill bouts. Killington Resort, 10 a.m.-2 p.m. $60; $250 per team. Info, events@killington.com.

talks

NATURALIST JOURNEYS 2023:

SAMANTHA FORD: A landscape historian digs into the past generations that made their home on the land the NBNC sits on. North Branch Nature Center, Montpelier, 6:30-8 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 229-6206.

WINTER SPEAKER SERIES:

TOM ANDERSONMONTEROSSO: A University of Vermont graduate student tells the story of Genieve Lamson, the first woman to address the Vermont Historical Society. Noon-1 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 479-8500.

theater

‘SWEAT’: A decline in the manufacturing industry unravels decades-old ties in a Pennsylvania factory town in the Pulitzer Prize-winning play presented by Northern Stage. Barrette Center for the Arts, White River Junction, 7:30 p.m. $5-69. Info, 296-7000. ‘AIRNESS’: A 1980s-inspired feel-good comedy, presented by Vermont Stage, follows a woman who finds community in the air-guitar competition circuit. Black Box Theater, Main Street Landing Performing Arts Center, Burlington, 7:30 p.m. $31.0538.50. Info, 862-1497.

words

FFL BOOK CLUB: ‘SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE’: Fletcher Free Library patrons break down Claire Keegan’s affecting story of a small Irish town at Christmas in 1985. 6:30-8 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, bshatara@burlingtonvt.gov.

TRACY K. SMITH: The Pulitzer Prize winner, former U.S. poet laureate and author of Life on Mars and Such Color discusses history and reads from her work. Wilson Hall, McCullough Student Center, Middlebury College, 4:30-6 p.m. Free. Info, 443-2443.

THU.16 business

HIRING2DAYVT VIRTUAL

JOB FAIR: The Vermont Department of Labor gives job seekers a chance to meet with employers from around the state. 11 a.m.-noon. Free. Info, 828-4000.

MARKETING ESSENTIALS FOR YOUR BUSINESS: A SCORE Vermont presentation explains to business owners how brand identity and effective messaging can help them stand out in a crowded marketplace. 5:30-7 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 764-5899.

crafts

KNIT FOR YOUR NEIGHBORS: Yarnsmiths create hats and scarves to be donated to the South Burlington Food Shelf. All supplies provided. ADA accessible. South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 3-6 p.m. Free. Info, 846-4140.

KNITTING GROUP: Knitters of all experience levels get together to spin yarns. Latham Library, Thetford, 7 p.m. Free. Info, 785-4361.

film

See what’s playing at local theaters in the On Screen section.

RED BENCH SPEAKER SERIES: FERNANDO

VILLENA, BEN BRYAN & MIKE

COX: Three filmmakers discuss the making of their 2021 documentary Dear Rider – The Jake Burton Story. Presented by the Vermont Ski & Snowboard Museum. 7-8:30 p.m. $10 suggested donation; preregister. Info, 253-9911.

‘SEA MONSTERS 3D’: See WED.15. ‘WILD AFRICA 3D’: See WED.15. ‘WINGS OVER WATER 3D’: See WED.15.

music

DARK STAR ORCHESTRA: See WED.15.

THE FOREIGN LANDERS: Drawing on the musical traditions of North Carolina and Northern Ireland, this transatlantic foursome brings down the house with its bluegrass strains. Next Stage Arts Project, Putney, 7 p.m. $18-22. Info, 387-0102.

JAZZ AT THE LANTERN:

Saxophonist Bill Pierce, keyboardist Bruce Sklar, bassist Jeremy Hill and drummer Gabe Jarrett kick off a new monthly music series. Donations benefit the Stowe Land Trust. The Brass Lantern Inn, Stowe, 6:30-8 p.m. $10 suggested donation; cash bar. Info, 253-2229.

outdoors

AUDUBON WEST RUTLAND

MARSH BIRD WALK: Enthusiastic ornithologists go on a gentle hike and help out with the monthly marsh monitoring. Meet at the boardwalk on Marble Street. West

FAMI LY FU N

Check out these family-friendly events for parents, caregivers and kids of all ages.

• Plan ahead at sevendaysvt.com/family-fun Post your event at sevendaysvt.com/postevent.

WED.15 burlington

‘BLUEY’S BIG PLAY’: Beloved kids’ TV characters Bluey and Bingo get up to all sorts of highjinks in this musical, puppet-filled show. The Flynn, Burlington, 6 p.m. $32-154. Info, 863-5966.

BABYTIME: Librarians bring out books, rhymes and songs specially selected for young ones. Pre-walkers and younger. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 11-11:30 a.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

CRAFTERNOON: Crafts take over the Teen Space, from origami to stickers to fireworks in a jar. Ages 11 through 18. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 4-5 p.m. Free. Info, 540-2546.

STEAM SPACE: Kids explore science, technology, engineering, art and math activities. Ages 5 through 11. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 5-6:30 p.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

chittenden county

AFTERSCHOOL MOVIE: ‘LIGHTYEAR’: Buzz from Toy Story gets an origin story in this recent animated interstellar adventure. Dorothy Alling Memorial Library, Williston, 2 p.m. Free. Info, 878-4918.

BABYTIME: Teeny-tiny library patrons enjoy a gentle, slow story time featuring songs, rhymes and lap play. South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 10:30 a.m. Free. Info, 846-4140.

COMICS CLUB!: Graphic novel and manga fans in third through sixth grades meet to discuss current reads and do fun activities together. Hosted by Brownell Library. Essex Teen Center, Essex Junction, 2:30-3:30 p.m. Free. Info, 878-6956.

LEGO BUILDERS: Elementary-age imagineers explore, create and participate in challenges. Ages 8 and up, or ages 6 and up with an adult helper. ADA accessible. South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 3-4:30 p.m. Free. Info, 846-4140.

PLAY TIME: Little ones build with blocks and read together. Ages 1 through 4. Brownell Library, Essex Junction, 1010:45 a.m. Free. Info, 878-6956.

barre/montpelier

CHESS CLUB: Kids of all skill levels get one-on-one lessons and play each other in between. Ages 6 and up. KelloggHubbard Library, Montpelier, 3:30-5 p.m. Free. Info, 223-3338.

CRAFTERNOON — ST. PATRICK’S DAY

THEME: Creative crafters of all ages make something green and lucky. Bethany United Church of Christ, Montpelier, noon-4 p.m. Free; donations accepted. Info, 223-2424.

northeast kingdom

ACORN CLUB STORY TIME: Kids 5 and under play, sing, hear stories and take home a fun activity. St. Johnsbury Athenaeum, 10-11 a.m. Free; preregister; limited space. Info, 745-1391.

SAT.18 burlington

BURLINGTON IRISH HERITAGE

FESTIVAL: CHILDREN’S CRAFTS & INSTRUMENT PETTING ZOO: Culture gets passed down to the next generation with a bevy of Irish projects and plenty of harps and fiddles to test drive. All ages. Fletcher Room, Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 12:15-2 p.m. Free; donations accepted. Info, 363-6330. FAMILY PLAYSHOP: Kids from birth through age 5 learn and play at this school readiness program. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 10-11:30 a.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

LEGO TIME AT NEW NORTH END

A Star Is Born

Vermont Philharmonic presents its annual family concert alongside the up-and-coming instrumentalists of Green Mountain Youth Symphony. This year’s program highlights works that famous composers developed when they were around the age of the GMYS players: a selection from George Frideric Handel’s first opera, Almira, which he composed at 19; the “Minuetto” from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Symphony No. 8, composed at 12; and the “Andante” from Felix Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 1, composed at 15, among other works. The orchestras also perform pieces by Callum Robechek and Chase Ehrlich, two young composers from Montpelier High School.

‘AWAKENINGS: MUSIC OF YOUNG COMPOSERS’ Sunday, March 19, 2 p.m., at Barre Opera House. $5-20. Info, 476-8188, barreoperahouse.org.

mad river valley/ waterbury

TEEN ART CLUB: Crafty young’uns ages 12 through 18 construct paper jellyfish lanterns to bring underwater ambience to their bedrooms. Waterbury Public Library, 6-7:30 p.m. Free. Info, 244-7036.

upper valley

PEABODY AFTERSCHOOL FUN FOR GRADES 1-4: Students make friends over crafts and story time. George Peabody Library, Post Mills, 3:30-4:30 p.m. Free. Info, 333-9724.

THU.16 burlington

PRESCHOOL YOGA: Colleen from Grow Prenatal and Family Yoga leads little ones in songs, movement and other fun activities. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 11-11:30 a.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

SAT PREP WITH WALKER TUTORING: Tutors Addison and Jacob help high school students get ready for the big exam at monthly sessions. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 4-6 p.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

chittenden county

PRESCHOOL MUSIC WITH LINDA BASSICK: The singer and storyteller extraordinaire leads little ones in indoor music and movement. Birth through age 5. Dorothy Alling Memorial Library,

Williston, 10:30-11 a.m. Free. Info, 878-4918.

PRESCHOOL PLAYTIME: Pre-K patrons play and socialize after music time. Dorothy Alling Memorial Library, Williston, 11-11:30 a.m. Free. Info, 878-4918.

PRESCHOOL STORY TIME: Books, songs, rhymes, sign language lessons and math activities make for well-educated youngsters. Brownell Library, Essex Junction, 10-10:30 a.m. Free. Info, 878-6956.

TEEN NIGHT: T-SHIRT DESIGNS: Youngsters bring a T-shirt of any color to iron vinyl patches of their favorite book quotes onto. Ages 12 and up. Dorothy Alling Memorial Library, Williston, 5-6 p.m. Free; preregister; limited space. Info, 878-4918.

barre/montpelier

CRAFTERNOON — ST. PATRICK’S DAY

THEME: See WED.15.

FUSE BEAD CRAFTERNOONS: Youngsters make pictures out of colorful, meltable doodads. Ages 8 and up. Kellogg-Hubbard Library, Montpelier, 3:30-5 p.m. Free. Info, 223-3338.

PRESCHOOL STORY TIME: Energetic youngsters join Miss Meliss for stories, songs and lots of silliness. KelloggHubbard Library, Montpelier, 10:30 a.m. Free. Info, 223-3338.

stowe/smuggs

WEE ONES PLAY TIME: Caregivers bring kiddos 3 and younger to a new sensory learning experience each

week. Morristown Centennial Library, Morrisville, 10 a.m. Free. Info, 888-3853.

mad river valley/ waterbury

PRESCHOOL PLAY & READ: Outdoor activities, stories and songs get 3- and 4-year-olds engaged. Waterbury Public Library, 10:30 a.m. Free. Info, 244-7036.

ST. PATRICK’S DAY SING-ALONG: Babies, toddlers and preschoolers dance along to Irish jigs played by Judi Byron on her harp. Waterbury Public Library, 10:30 a.m. Free. Info, 244-7036.

FRI.17 barre/montpelier

SUGAR ON SNOW: Families make cold candy with maple syrup straight from the sugarhouse, alongside old-fashioned doughnuts and pickles. Morse Farm Maple Sugarworks, Montpelier, noon-4 p.m. $8.95. Info, 223-2740.

WINTER STORY TIME & PLAYGROUP: Participants ages 6 and under hear stories, sing songs and eat tasty treats between outdoor activities. Jaquith Public Library, Marshfield, 10:30 a.m. Free. Info, 426-3581.

upper valley

STORY TIME: Preschoolers take part in stories, songs and silliness. Latham Library, Thetford, 11 a.m. Free. Info, 785-4361.

BRANCH: Kids ages 4 through 11 build blocky creations at the library’s new location. Fletcher Free Library New North End Branch, Burlington, 11 a.m.-noon. Free. Info, 863-3403.

MUSIC WITH MIKAHELY: The Malagasy musician plays family-friendly tunes on the guitar and the bamboo valiha. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 3:30-4 p.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

chittenden county

LEGO FUN: Wee builders of all ages construct creations to be displayed in the library. Children under 8 must bring a caregiver. Brownell Library, Essex Junction, 1-3 p.m. Free. Info, 878-6956.

barre/montpelier

SUGAR ON SNOW: See FRI.17.

stowe/smuggs

MUSICAL STORY TIME: Song, dance and other tuneful activities supplement picture books for kids 2 through 5. Morristown Centennial Library, Morrisville, 11 a.m. Free. Info, 888-3853.

mad river valley/ waterbury

MEET THE SLED DOGS: Families meet a crew of arctic huskies for a photo shoot. Waterbury Public Library, 10 a.m. Free. Info, 244-7036.

MONTHLY PLAYGROUP: Parents and caregivers connect while their young kids explore collaborative play. Waterbury Public Library, 10-11:30 a.m. Free. Info, 244-7036.

northeast kingdom

SATURDAY CREATIVE FAMILIES

INITIATIVE: ‘TIME OUT’: The Rural Arts

Collaborative leads artsy activities for creative kids ages 6 through 12 while parents socialize over tea and coffee on the second floor. Grass Roots Art and Community Effort, Hardwick, 10-11:30 a.m. Free. Info, info@ruralartsvt.org.

SUN.19

barre/montpelier

‘AWAKENINGS: MUSIC OF YOUNG

COMPOSERS’: Vermont Philharmonic

Rutland Marsh, 8-11 a.m. Free. Info, birding@rutlandcountyaudubon. org.

RANDY GATES: A slideshow tells the story of this Appalachian Trail thru-hiker’s adventures. Q&A follows. Ferrisburgh Town Office & Community Center, 7-8:30 p.m. Free. Info, 373-3340.

politics

THOUGHT CLUB: Artists and activists convene to engage with Burlington‘s rich tradition of radical thought and envision its future. Democracy Creative, Burlington, 6-7:30 p.m. Free. Info, tevan@democracycreative.com.

seminars

BETHEL UNIVERSITY: See WED.15.

tech

TECH TUTOR: Techies answer questions about computers and devices during one-on-one help sessions. Dorothy Alling Memorial Library, Williston, 4-6 p.m. Free; preregister; limited space. Info, 878-4918.

theater

‘SWEAT’: See WED.15.

‘AIRNESS’: See WED.15.

‘CROSS THAT RIVER’: Inspired by true stories, this staging of a musical by Harlem composer Allan Harris follows Blue as he escapes slavery to become a cowboy in the Wild West. Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center, Stowe Mountain Resort, 7 p.m. $25-35. Info, 760-4634.

‘MURDER BY MEMBERSHIP

ONLY’: When a successful mystery writer is found dead, her colleagues must determine which of them is the killer in this madcap mystery from the Valley Players. Valley Players eater, Waitsfield, 7-9 p.m. $10-18. Info, 583-1674.

words

BOOK DISCUSSION

GROUP: ‘THE MOST

COSTLY JOURNEY’: Migrant Justice and Vermont Humanities lead a riveting conversation about the 2022 Vermont Reads pick. Hosted by Kellogg-Hubbard Library. 6:30 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 223-3338.

INQUISITIVE READERS BOOK

CLUB: Bookworms discuss a new horizon-expanding tome each month. St. Johnsbury Athenaeum, 6-7 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, henningsmh@ yahoo.com.

JEFF SHARLET: e awardwinning journalist launches his book e Undertow: Scenes From a Slow Civil War, an investigation into the past decade of the religious far-right. Norwich Bookstore, 7 p.m. Free. Info, 649-1114.

FRI.17 dance

ENGLISH COUNTRY DANCE: Locals get their Jane Austen on at a British ball where all the dances are run through beforehand. Wear casual, comfortable clothes. ElleyLong Music Center, Saint Michael’s College, Colchester, newcomers’ lesson, 6:30 p.m.; dance, 7-9:30 p.m. $10-15; preregister. Info, val.medve@gmail.com.

fairs & festivals

CURE FOR CABIN FEVER

WEEKEND: Townsfolk embrace the beginning of spring with three days of store discounts, tours, open houses, yoga classes, readings, fundraising galas and beyond. See montpelieralive.com for full schedule. See calendar spotlight. Downtown Montpelier, 9 a.m.-7 p.m. Free. Info, 223-9604.

film

See what’s playing at local theaters in the On Screen section.

‘SEA MONSTERS 3D’: See WED.15. ‘WILD AFRICA 3D’: See WED.15.

‘WINGS OVER WATER 3D’: See WED.15.

food & drink

ANNUAL LENTEN FISH FRY: Community members anticipate Easter over all-you-can-eat haddock, fries, coleslaw and dessert. Bristol St. Ambrose Parish, 5-7 p.m. $7-15; $40 for family of 5. Info, 453-2488.

CALCUTTA NIGHT FUNDRAISER: St. omas Parish of Underhill Center holds a fundraising soirée and prize drawing. Catamount Country Club, Williston, 5-9:30 p.m. $130; preregister. Info, stthomasvtcalcutta@gmail.com.

games

MAH-JONGG: Tile traders of all experience levels gather for a game session. Dorothy Alling Memorial Library, Williston, 1-3 p.m. Free. Info, 878-4918.

health & fitness

ARTHRITIS FOUNDATION

EXERCISE PROGRAM: ose in need of an easy-on-the-joints workout experience an hour of calming, low-impact movement. Waterbury Public Library, 10:3011:30 a.m. Free; preregister. Info, 244-7036.

EMERGENCE SOUND BATH: Singing bowl and gong player Stephen Scuderi delivers a unique sensory experience. Heart Song Aerial Healing Arts, Burlington, 6-7:30 p.m. $32. Info, 518-350-8344.

GUIDED MEDITATION

ONLINE: Dorothy Alling Memorial Library invites attendees to relax on their lunch breaks and reconnect with their bodies. Noon-12:30 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, programs@ damlvt.org.

Springtime in the City

Spring comes faster if we throw it a party, right? Vermont’s capital city gives it a shot during Cure for Cabin Fever Weekend, a three-day shindig that aims to usher in warm weather with a packed schedule of talks, demos, tours and store discounts. ere’s the March for Meals Gala at the Montpelier Senior Center, which raises funds for the FEAST Senior Meals Program; a reading overflowing with local authors, hosted at Kellogg-Hubbard Library by Rootstock Publishing; and a Sangha Studio yoga class at Caledonia Spirits, followed by a tour of the distillery. And shoppers encounter sales everywhere they go, from Bear Pond Books to Woodbury Mountain Toys.

CURE FOR CABIN FEVER WEEKEND

Friday, March 17, and Saturday, March 18, 9 a.m.-7 p.m., and Sunday, March 19, 9 a.m.-5 p.m., in downtown Montpelier. Free. Info, 223-9604, montpelieralive.com.

at Jupiter, Mars and various nebulae. Event takes place on the first clear night from March 17 through 19 or March 24 through 26; check waterburypubliclibrary.com for confirmation. Waterbury Public Library, 7:30-9:30 p.m. Free. Info, 244-7036.

seminars

BETHEL UNIVERSITY: See WED.15.

theater

‘SWEAT’: See WED.15, 7:30 p.m. ‘AIRNESS’: See WED.15.

‘THE GOOD DOCTOR’: Chekhov’s stories are brought to charmingly absurd life in this intimate BarnArts production. Woodstock Town Hall eatre, 7:30-9:30 p.m. $15-20. Info, info@barnarts.org.

‘MURDER BY MEMBERSHIP ONLY’: See THU.16.

‘THE SOMEWHAT TRUE TALE OF ROBIN HOOD’: e Shelburne Players’ 40th production follows a bumbling Robin Hood in a funny, family-friendly retelling of the classic stories. Shelburne Town Hall, 7-9 p.m. $20. Info, 343-2602.

words

JAMES ALLEN HALL, CARLIE HOFFMAN, RIGOBERTO GONZÁLEZ & JEN

LEVITT: New York City nonprofit publisher Four Way Books presents a quadruple book launch. Hosted by Norwich Bookstore. 7 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 649-1114.

SAT.18 dance

MONTPELIER CONTRA DANCE: To live tunes and gender-neutral calling, dancers balance, shadow and do-si-do the night away. N95, KN94, KN95 or 3-ply surgical masks required. Capital City Grange, Berlin, beginners’ lesson, 7:40 p.m.; dance, 8-11 p.m. $5-20. Info, 225-8921.

FOMO?

Find even more local events in this newspaper and online: art

Find visual art exhibits and events in the Art section and at sevendaysvt.com/art.

holidays

ST. PATRICK’S DAY CELEBRATION

HONORING MARK TATRO: e Central Vermont Chamber of Commerce honors the owner of Tatro’s Appliances over a buffet breakfast. Barre Elks Lodge, 8-9:30 a.m. $25; preregister. Info, 229-5711.

language

ADVANCED INTERMEDIATE

ITALIAN CONVERSATION: Semifluent speakers practice their

skills during a slow conversazione about the news. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, noon-1:30 p.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

music

THE DOUGHBOYS: e Middlebury eleven-piece plays its signature blend of vintageinflected rock and pop. Town Hall eater, Middlebury, 7:30 p.m. $17-22. Info, 382-9222.

outdoors

EEE LECTURES: BRIDGET

BUTLER: e Education & Enrichment for Everyone series continues with the Bird Diva’s address, “ e Lost Legacy of Women in Ornithology.” Virtual option available. Faith United Methodist Church, South Burlington, 2-3 p.m. Free. Info, info@eeevermont. org.

NIGHT SKY VIEWING: e Vermont Astronomical Society offers peeks through telescopes

See what’s playing at theaters in the On Screen section.

music + nightlife

Find club dates at local venues in the Music + Nightlife section online at sevendaysvt.com/ music.

Learn more about highlighted listings in the Magnificent 7 on page 11. = ONLINE EVENT

COURTESY OF PAUL RICHARDSON

education

COLLEGE & CAREER PATHWAYS: High school students and their parents learn about all the postgrad options available to them during a morning of workshops and networking. Virtual options available. Livak Ballroom, Dudley H. Davis Center, University of Vermont, Burlington, 8:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Free. Info, 877-961-4369.

INSPIRED PLAY: EXPLORING

ART AND CHILDREN’S

LITERATURE: Artist and educator Jude Bond shows teachers how to incorporate story-inspired projects in their lessons for kids 4 through 8. South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 9:15 a.m.-2 p.m. Free; preregister; limited space. Info, nliuzzi@ southburlingtonvt.gov.

fairs & festivals

CURE FOR CABIN FEVER

WEEKEND: See FRI.17.

film

See what’s playing at local theaters in the On Screen section.

BURLINGTON IRISH HERITAGE

FESTIVAL: ‘DEAR DUBLIN’: Burlington filmmaker Evelyn Gustafson presents and discusses her short film set in a beloved green space in South Dublin. Pickering Room, Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 11:40 a.m.-noon. Free; donations accepted. Info, 363-6330.

BURLINGTON IRISH HERITAGE

FESTIVAL: ‘ONDINE’: Colin Farrell plays a fisherman whose luck changes for the better when he rescues a woman who may be a selkie in this 2009 romance. Pickering Room, Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, noon-2 p.m. Free; donations accepted. Info, 363-6330.

BURLINGTON IRISH HERITAGE

FESTIVAL: ‘SONG OF THE SEA’: A young Irish boy discovers that his sister is a selkie in this folklore-rich animated film.

Pickering Room, Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 10-11:40 a.m. Free; donations accepted. Info, 363-6330.

‘LOHENGRIN’: Wagner’s dramatic masterpiece is brought to atmospheric life in this live streamed Metropolitan Opera production. Catamount Arts Center, St. Johnsbury, noon. $16-25. Info, 748-2600. Town Hall Theater, Middlebury. $12-26. Info, 382-9222.

MEDIA FACTORY ORIENTATION: Once aspiring filmmakers have taken this virtual tour of the Media Factory studio, they have access to the full suite of gear and facilities. 1-2 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 651-9692.

‘SEA MONSTERS 3D’: See WED.15.

‘SUSPENSE!’ & ‘BLACKMAIL!’: Pioneering director Lois Weber’s short film and Alfred Hitchcock’s final silent film, respectively, are brought to terrifying life with a live score played on the historic pipe organ. Epsilon Spires,

Brattleboro, 8-10 p.m. $5-20. Info, 401-261-6271.

‘WILD AFRICA 3D’: See WED.15.

‘WINGS OVER WATER 3D’: See WED.15.

food & drink

9TH ANNIVERSARY PARTY:

Locals raise a glass at an all-day shindig featuring live music, contests, prizes and plenty of fun.

Four Quarters Brewing, Winooski, noon-10 p.m. Free. Info, 391-9120.

ADVENTURE DINNER MAPLE

CELEBRATION

NIGHT:

Sugarhouse tours and scavenger hunts punctuate a meal of sticky-sweet barbecue and syrup flights. Werner Tree Farm, Middlebury, 5-8 p.m. $79; preregister; limited space. Info, 248-224-7539.

CAPITAL CITY WINTER FARMERS

MARKET: Root veggies, honey, maple syrup and more change hands at an off-season celebration of locally grown food.

Caledonia Spirits, Montpelier, 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Free. Info, manager@ montpelierfarmersmarket.com.

FREE CHOCOLATE TASTING: Chocolatier Kevin Toohey and French chef Patrick Duroeulx answer questions and offer sweet treats. NU Chocolat, Burlington, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Free. Info, 540-8378.

games BEGINNER DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: Waterbury Public Library game master Evan Hoffman gathers novices and veterans alike for an afternoon of virtual adventuring. Teens and adults welcome. Noon-4 p.m. Free. Info, 244-7036.

BOARD GAME BRUNCH: The Friendly Tabletop Gamers of Essex and Beyond host a morning game-play session for teens and adults. ADA accessible. South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 9:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Free. Info, 846-4140.

BURLINGTON IRISH HERITAGE

FESTIVAL: ‘IRISH MYTHS AND LEGENDS’: Tabletop gaming fans get an early peek at a new game developed by Vermonter Mairead Shields, where players select a legendary hero and meet historical and mythical Irish characters. Fletcher Room, Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 12:15-2 p.m. Free; donations accepted. Info, 363-6330.

CHESS CLUB: Players of all ages and abilities face off and learn new strategies. ADA accessible. South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Free. Info, 846-4140.

MARCH MAPLE MADNESS

BINGO: Locals beat the mud season blues with familyfriendly bingo, snacks and prizes. Proceeds benefit the Reading Historical Society Building Maintenance Fund. Reading Town Hall, 6:30-9 p.m. $20 for 10 games. Info, 384-2100.

VINTAGE VIDEO GAMES: Classic consoles let adults flash back to their childhoods and teens experience what their parents played at their age. Ages 12 and

up. Milton Public Library, 10 a.m.noon. Free. Info, 893-4644.

health & fitness

SLOW FLOW FLANNEL YOGA: Yogis of all experience levels enjoy a cozy session wrapped in flannel blankets. BYO mat. Vermont Flannel, Manchester, 8:30-9:30 a.m. $10 suggested donation. Info, 800-232-7820.

holidays

‘A CELTIC EQUINOX’: Irish Session on Main mark St. Patrick’s day with a bevy of Celtic tunes. Willey Memorial Hall, Cabot, 7-9 p.m. $17-20. Info, 793-3016.

lgbtq

SINFUL SATURDAYS DRAG

SHOW: Luci-Furr-Matrix and Amy Leigh Celestial host a hellish good time. 21 and up. The Reynolds House, Barre, 6-9 p.m. $25. Info, turnthepartyvt@gmail. com.

VACCINE POP-UP & SEX CHAT

GROUP: Walk-in guests get their MPOX, COVID-19 or flu shots, followed by a discussion group for queer and trans men on sexual health and hookup culture. Discussion, 1 p.m. Fox Market and Bar, East Montpelier, 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Free. Info, 860-7812.

music

‘ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER’: Taking its title from Pedro Almodóvar’s 1999 film, this Sarasa Ensemble program reflects on the many facets of motherhood, with works for string quartet and soprano by Dvořák, Mahler and others. Brattleboro Music Center, 7-9 p.m. $25. Info, 257-4523.

BROOKS HUBBARD: The local singer-songwriter plays to raise funds for Good Neighbor Health Clinic and the Red Dental Clinic. Briggs Opera House, White River Junction, 7:30-9:30 p.m. $25-30. Info, 603-391-4703.

CHURCH OF CASH: Audiences may think the Man in Black himself is in the building during this toe-tapping show. Chandler Center for the Arts, Randolph, 7-9:30 p.m. $10-45. Info, 728-9878.

GOOD GRAVY: The Burlington bluegrass trio pays homage to legends such as Tony Rice, Norman Blake and Doc Watson. Shelburne Vineyard, 6-8:30 p.m. Free. Info, 985-8222.

outdoors

24 HOURS OF STRATTON:

Winter enthusiasts from across New England ski the slopes day and night to raise funds for the Stratton Community Foundation. 8 a.m. Saturday through 4 p.m. Sunday. Stratton Mountain Resort. $300 minimum donations raised; preregister. Info, 688-8888.

NIGHT SKY VIEWING: See FRI.17.

seminars

BETHEL UNIVERSITY: See WED.15.

talks

BURLINGTON IRISH HERITAGE

FESTIVAL: LIAM MCKONE: e author and historian discusses the life of John Lonergan, a Tipperaryborn immigrant who led the 13th Vermont Infantry Regiment in the battle of Gettysburg.

Vermont Genealogy Library, Essex Junction, 10:30 a.m.-noon. Fletcher Room, Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 2-3 p.m. Free; donations accepted. Info, 363-6330.

theater

‘SWEAT’: See WED.15, 2 & 7:30 p.m.

‘AIRNESS’: See WED.15, 2 & 7:30 p.m.

‘THE GOOD DOCTOR’: See FRI.17.

THE KICK-OFF CABARET!: Beloved LNT artists gather for an evening of tales and tunes to celebrate the start of the theater’s 35th season. Live stream available. Lost Nation eater, Montpelier City Hall, 7:30-9:30 p.m. $10-20. Info, 229-0492.

‘MENOPAUSE THE MUSICAL’: Four women meet in a lingerie shop and share stories of hot flashes and memory loss in this touring jukebox musical set to classic songs. Paramount eatre, Rutland, 2 & 7 p.m. $39. Info, 775-0903.

‘MURDER BY MEMBERSHIP

ONLY’: See THU.16.

‘THE SOMEWHAT TRUE TALE OF ROBIN HOOD’: See FRI.17.

words

BAKE & BOOK SALE: Sales of snacks and stories benefit the church’s mission work. United Church of Fairfax, 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Free. Info, 849-6313.

WRITE TIME WITH MARY ANN

FULLER YOUNG: A trained instructor leads a supportive workshop for anyone looking to explore the craft of writing. Dorothy Alling Memorial Library, Williston, noon-1 p.m. Free. Info, 878-4918.

WRITERS’ WERTFREI: Authors both fledgling and published gather to share their work in a judgment-free environment. Virtual option available. Waterbury Public Library, 10 a.m.noon. Free; preregister. Info, judi@ waterburypubliclibrary.com.

SUN.19

dance

BURLINGTON IRISH HERITAGE

FESTIVAL CEILI: Young Tradition

Vermont and the McFadden Academy of Irish Dance present step dancing, traditional tunes and an open jam. Burlington City Hall Auditorium, 1-3 p.m. Free; donations accepted. Info, 363-6330.

etc.

2023 VWA MIDDLEBURY BRIDAL

SHOW: Local matrimony professionals put their wares and services on display for engaged couples and their wedding parties. Middlebury Inn, 11:30 a.m.2:30 p.m. $7-8. Info, 459-2897.

fairs & festivals

CURE FOR CABIN FEVER

WEEKEND: See FRI.17, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.

MAPLE FESTIVAL: From sap to syrup, Vermont’s liquid gold steals the show at this annual familyfriendly fête. Middletown Springs Historical Society, 1-4 p.m. Free. Info, 235-2561.

film

See what’s playing at local theaters in the On Screen section.

‘THE CRUCIBLE’: National eatre’s production of Arthur Miller’s drama about the Salem witch trials streams live from the London stage. Town Hall eater, Middlebury, 2 p.m. $15. Info, 382-9222.

‘LOHENGRIN’: See SAT.18. Paramount eatre, Rutland, noon. $23. Info, 775-0903.

‘LOHENGRIN’: See SAT.18.

‘SEA MONSTERS 3D’: See WED.15.

‘WILD AFRICA 3D’: See WED.15.

‘WINGS OVER WATER 3D’: See WED.15.

food & drink

WINTER FARMERS MARKET:

Shoppers sip a local beer while browsing local bites at this wintertime hub for local growers, bakers and crafters. Four Quarters Brewing, Winooski, noon-3 p.m. Free. Info, 391-9120.

True Crimes

Vermonters familiar with the story of St. Joseph’s Orphanage get a global perspective on the issue when journalist Christine Kenneally launches her new book, Ghosts of the Orphanage: A Story of Mysterious Deaths, a Conspiracy of Silence and a Search for Justice

Kenneally, who wrote a viral BuzzFeed piece on St. Joseph’s in 2018, takes a deep dive not only into the lives of the survivors of the infamous Burlington institution but also into the abuses suffered by children in similar orphanages across the country and around the world throughout the 20th century.

CHRISTINE KENNEALLY

Wednesday, March 22, 7 p.m., at Phoenix Books in Burlington. Free; preregister. Info, 448-3350, phoenixbooks.biz.

health & fitness

KARUNA COMMUNITY

MEDITATION: A YEAR TO LIVE

(FULLY): Participants practice keeping joy, generosity and gratitude at the forefront of their minds. Jenna’s House, Johnson, 10-11:15 a.m. Free; donations accepted. Info, mollyzapp@live.com.

holidays

SPRING IS COMING! OPEN HOUSE AND CEREMONY: e druids celebrate the spring equinox with rituals and a snowshoe tour of the sanctuary’s temples and trails. Dreamland, Worcester, 3-6 p.m. Free. Info, gmdodreamland@ gmail.com.

FOMO?

Find even more local events in this newspaper and online: art

Find visual art exhibits and events in the Art section and at sevendaysvt.com/art. film

See what’s playing at theaters in the On Screen section.

music + nightlife

Find club dates at local venues in the Music + Nightlife section online at sevendaysvt.com/ music.

Learn more about highlighted listings in the Magnificent 7 on page 11.

= ONLINE EVENT

MON.20 crafts

FIBER ARTS FREE-FOR-ALL: Makers make friends while working on their knitting, sewing, felting and beyond. Artistree Community Arts Center eatre & Gallery, South Pomfret, 6-8 p.m. Free. Info, theknittinkittenvt@ gmail.com.

HAND-STITCHING GROUP: Embroiderers, cross-stitchers and other needlework aficionados chat over their latest projects. Waterbury Public Library, 6-8 p.m. Free. Info, 720-984-3083.

KNIT FOR YOUR NEIGHBORS: See THU.16.

film

See what’s playing at local theaters in the On Screen section.

‘SEA MONSTERS 3D’: See WED.15. ‘WILD AFRICA 3D’: See WED.15. ‘WINGS OVER WATER 3D’: See WED.15.

health & fitness

ST. PATRICK’S CELEBRATION AND FUNDRAISER: An afternoon of fun, live Irish music and potluck dining benefits local Roman Catholic churches St. Patrick’s, St. Andrews and Our Lady of the Snows. St. Leo’s Hall, Waterbury, 3-6 p.m. $10. Info, bcafweeb@ gmail.com.

lgbtq

QUEER CRAFTERNOON: Glow welcomes queer women and nonbinary crafters to work on their knitting, drawing and sewing in a cozy greenhouse. Red Wagon Plants, Hinesburg, 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Free. Info, glow@pridecentervt. org.

SEXUAL HEALTH FOCUS GROUP: UVM medical students gather confidential information from members of the LGBTQ community for use in a research project. Participants are entered in a raffle for an Earth + Salt gift card. Pride Center of Vermont, Burlington, 4:30-5:30 p.m. Free; preregister; limited space. Info, 860-7812.

montréal

‘ENGLISH’: For four Iranian students, an English class devolves into a quagmire of questions about language, identity and assimilation in this coproduction with Soulpepper eatre. Sylvan Adams eatre, Segal Centre for Performing Arts, Montréal, 1:30 p.m. $25-67. Info, 514-739-7944.

outdoors

24 HOURS OF STRATTON: See SAT.18.

CHILL TAKEOVER: BOLTON

VALLEY: e Chill Foundation commands the slopes for an incredible night of snowy fun, including demos, drinks, food and raffles. Bolton Valley Resort, 5:3010 p.m. $60. Info, 383-6929.

NIGHT SKY VIEWING: See FRI.17.

seminars

BETHEL UNIVERSITY: See WED.15.

talks

ELISE GUYETTE: Listeners learn about the Black Vermonters who helped establish the city of Burlington between 1790 and 1860. Ethan Allen Homestead Museum, Burlington, 2-3:15 p.m. Free. Info, 865-4556.

JESS ROBINSON: Vermont’s state archaeologist speaks about the Indigenous people of Chittenden County and what their lives looked like before European contact. Q&A follows. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 2 p.m. Free. Info, cchsvt@gmail.com.

theater

‘SWEAT’: See WED.15, 5 p.m. ‘AIRNESS’: See WED.15, 2 p.m.

‘THE GOOD DOCTOR’: See FRI.17, 2-4 p.m.

‘MURDER BY MEMBERSHIP

ONLY’: See THU.16, 2-4 p.m.

‘THE SOMEWHAT TRUE TALE OF ROBIN HOOD’: See FRI.17, 2-4 p.m.

words

MARY ELDER JACOBSEN AND RAYMOND HUDSON: Sundog Poetry hosts a virtual reading with the coordinator of Words Out Loud and the runner-up to the 2022 Sundog Poetry Book Award, respectively. 7-8 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 585-8502.

ADVANCED TAI CHI: Experienced movers build strength, improve balance and reduce stress. Holley Hall, Bristol, 11 a.m.-noon. Free; donations accepted. Info, jerry@ skyrivertaichi.com.

LAUGHTER YOGA: Spontaneous, joyful movement and breath promote physical and emotional health. Pathways Vermont, Burlington, 2-3 p.m. Free. Info, chrisn@pathwaysvermont.org.

LONG-FORM SUN 73: Beginners and experienced practitioners learn how tai chi can help with arthritis, mental clarity and range of motion. Holley Hall, Bristol, 11 a.m.-noon. Free; donations accepted. Info, wirlselizabeth@ gmail.com.

YANG 24: is simplified tai chi method is perfect for beginners looking to build strength and balance. Congregational Church of Middlebury, 3:30-5:30 p.m. Free; donations accepted. Info, wirlselizabeth@gmail.com.

lgbtq

GLOW GAME NIGHT: LGBTQ+ women and nonbinary folks enjoy an evening of board and card games. Pride Center of Vermont, Burlington, 5-7 p.m. Free. Info, 860-7812.

montréal

‘ENGLISH’: See SUN.19, 8 p.m. seminars

BETHEL UNIVERSITY: See WED.15.

words

ADDISON COUNTY WRITERS COMPANY: Poets, playwrights, novelists and memoirists of every experience level meet weekly for an MFA-style workshop. Swift House Inn, Middlebury, 6-8 p.m. Free. Info, jay@zigzaglitmag.org.

TUE.21 community

CURRENT EVENTS

DISCUSSION GROUP: Brownell Library hosts a virtual roundtable for neighbors to pause and reflect on the news cycle. 10-11:30 a.m. Free. Info, 878-6955.

dance

SWING DANCING: Local Lindy hoppers and jitterbuggers convene at Vermont Swings’ weekly boogie-down. Bring clean shoes. Beginner lessons, 6:30 p.m. Champlain Club, Burlington, 7:309 p.m. $5. Info, 864-8382.

film

See what’s playing at local theaters in the On Screen section.

‘EATING UP EASTER’: Sustainable Woodstock virtually screens this documentary on the impact of tourism on Easter Island’s Indigenous culture and environment. Free. Info, 457-2911.

‘SEA MONSTERS 3D’: See WED.15. ‘SOME LIKE IT HOT’: Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon get laughs in this gender-bending 1959 comedy. Film House, Main Street Landing Performing Arts Center, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free. Info, mariah@mainstreetlanding.com.

‘WILD AFRICA 3D’: See WED.15. ‘WINGS OVER WATER 3D’: See WED.15.

montréal

‘ENGLISH’: See SUN.19, 8 p.m.

politics

MARCH BREAKFAST CLUB:

Let’s Grow Kids representatives discuss upcoming childcare legislation proposals over a catered morning meal. Central Vermont Chamber of Commerce, Berlin, 8-9 a.m. $11; free for members; preregister. Info, 229-5711.

seminars

BETHEL UNIVERSITY: See WED.15. HOME BUYING WORKSHOP: A New England Federal Credit Union loan officer guides overwhelmed buyers through the process of finding their dream home. Noon-1 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 764-6940.

words

BOOK CLUB BUFFET

ONLINE: Readers dig into David Baldacci’s Memory Man over lunch. Presented by Dorothy Alling Memorial Library. 12:30-1:30 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, programs@damlvt.org.

VIRGINIA WOOLF BOOK

DISCUSSION: The Burlington Literature Group reads and analyzes the foundational author’s novels Mrs. Dalloway To the Lighthouse and The Waves over nine weeks. 6:30-8 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, info@ nereadersandwriters.com.

WED.22 business

QUEEN CITY BUSINESS NETWORKING INTERNATIONAL

GROUP: See WED.15.

community

CURRENT EVENTS: Neighbors have an informal discussion about what’s in the news. Dorothy Alling Memorial Library, Williston, 10:30 a.m.-noon. Free. Info, 878-4918.

SPRING MENTOR TRAINING: See WED.15.

etc.

LIFE STORIES WE LOVE TO

TELL: Prompts from group leader Maryellen Crangle inspire true tales, told either off the cuff or read from prewritten scripts. Presented by Dorothy Alling Memorial Library. 2-3:30 p.m. Free; preregister; limited space. Info, 878-4918.

film

See what’s playing at local theaters in the On Screen section.

BOOK FLICKS: Bibliophiles enjoy the beloved 1990s film Clueless alongside its inspiration, Jane Austen’s Emma. Dorothy Alling Memorial Library, Williston, 6-8 p.m. Free. Info, 878-4918. COLOR CORRECTION WITH DAVINCI RESOLVE: Aspiring editors learn how to use lighting and color adjustments to make their

reading time. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 11-11:30 a.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

chittenden county

and Green Mountain Youth Symphony present works by famous composers when they were still young alongside pieces by two local teenage composers. See calendar spotlight. Barre Opera House, 2 p.m. $5-20. Info, 476-8188.

SUGAR ON SNOW: See FRI.17.

mad river valley/ waterbury

SUGAR AND SCHMOOZE: A SPRING

EQUINOX CELEBRATION: Families celebrate Mother Earth in the sugar bush with a drum brigade, bird songs and other activities. Costumes encouraged and available to borrow. Living Tree Alliance, Moretown, 11 a.m.-1 p.m. $8-54. Info, 503-9774.

MON.20

burlington

DIY FLOWER CROWNS: Flower children celebrate the spring equinox with a lovely craft. Ages 11 through 18. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 4:305:30 p.m. Free. Info, 540-2546.

STORIES WITH SHANNON: Bookworms ages 2 through 5 enjoy fun-filled

TEEN NIGHT: DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: Local wizards and warlocks ages 12 and up play a collaborative game of magic and monsters. Dorothy Alling Memorial Library, Williston, 5-6 p.m. Free; preregister; limited space. Info, 878-4918.

northeast kingdom

ACORN CLUB STORY TIME: See FRI.17, 2-2:30 p.m.

DANCE PARTY MONDAYS: Little ones 5 and under get groovy together. Siblings welcome. St. Johnsbury Athenaeum, 10-10:30 a.m. Free. Info, 745-1391.

TUE.21 burlington

LEGO ROBOTICS: Building and programming with the UVM STEM Ambassadors keep youngsters ages 8 through 14 engaged. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 5-6 p.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

SING-ALONG WITH LINDA BASSICK: Babies, toddlers and preschoolers sing, dance and wiggle along with Linda. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 1111:30 a.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

footage pop. RETN & VCAM Media Factory, Burlington, 1-3 p.m. Free; donations accepted; preregister. Info, 651-9692.

‘THE CRUCIBLE’: See SUN.19, 11 a.m.

‘EATING UP EASTER’: See TUE.21.

‘SEA MONSTERS 3D’: See WED.15.

‘TEA WITH THE DAMES’: A 2018 documentary invites viewers to join acting legends Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Eileen Atkins and Joan Plowright on their weekend in the country. Catamount Arts Center, St. Johnsbury, 6 p.m. Free. Info, 748-2600.

‘WILD AFRICA 3D’: See WED.15.

‘WINGS OVER WATER 3D’: See WED.15.

food & drink

FRENCH WINE PAIRING DINNER: A five-course seasonal menu pairs perfectly with libations sure to satisfy any Francophile foodie. Edson Hill, Stowe, 6 p.m. $195; preregister. Info, 253-7371.

health & fitness

CHAIR YOGA: See WED.15.

language

ELL CLASSES: ENGLISH FOR BEGINNERS & INTERMEDIATE STUDENTS: See WED.15.

IRISH LANGUAGE CLASS: See WED.15.

lgbtq

TIMOTHY LAHEY: A UVM Medical Center doctor answers questions about HIV

chittenden county

CRAFTYTOWN!: From painting and printmaking to collage and sculpture, creative kids explore different projects and mediums. Ages 8 and up, or ages 6 and up with an adult helper. ADA accessible. South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 3-4:30 p.m. Free. Info, 846-4140.

GMBA BOOK GROUP: High school-age readers discuss thoughts and themes regarding The Dire Days of Willowweep Manor by Shaenon K. Garrity and vote on award nominees. Brownell Library, Essex Junction, 1:30-2:30 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 878-6956.

GOLDEN DOME BOOK AWARD GROUP: Readers in grades 4 through 8 discuss An Occasionally Happy Family by Cliff Burke and vote on their favorite books of the year together. Brownell Library, Essex Junction, 1:30-2:30 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 878-6956.

PLAYGROUP & FAMILY SUPPORT: Families with children under age 5 play and connect with others in the community. Winooski Memorial Library, 10-11 a.m. Free. Info, 655-6424.

PRESCHOOL STORY TIME: Little ones enjoy a cozy session of reading, rhyming and singing. Birth through age 5. Dorothy Alling Memorial Library, Williston, 10:30-11 a.m. Free. Info, 878-4918.

RED CLOVER AWARD BOOK GROUP: A book club for grades K through 4 votes on the year’s nominated books.

medication PREP. Presented by Pride Center of Vermont. 3-4 p.m. Free. Info, 860-7812.

montréal

‘ENGLISH’: See SUN.19, 1 & 8 p.m.

music

FARMERS NIGHT: ALNÔBAIWI: Indigenous artists offer up traditional song and dance to mark the coming end of winter. House Chamber, Vermont Statehouse, Montpelier, 7:30 p.m. Free. Info, 828-2228.

MUSIC OF ANOTHER WORLD:

MUSIC IN TEREZIN: This third in a series of presentations on the music made under the constraints of the Third Reich focuses on pieces composed by the Austrian inmates at the Terezin concentration camp. ADA accessible. South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 1:15-2:30 p.m. Free. Info, 846-4140.

outdoors

AMPHIBIAN ROAD

CROSSING PROGRAM: North Branch Nature Center specialists teach concerned citizens how they can help Vermont’s frogs and salamanders cross roads safely during their annual spring migrations. 7-8 p.m. Free. Info, 229-6206.

SMUGGS 55+ SKI CLUB: See WED.15.

seminars

BETHEL UNIVERSITY: See WED.15.

Brownell Library, Essex Junction, 1:30-2:30 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 878-6956.

TODDLERTIME: Kids ages 1 through 3 and their caregivers join Miss Alyssa for a lively session of stories, singing and wiggling. South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 9:15 & 10:30 a.m. Free. Info, 846-4140.

barre/montpelier

PRESCHOOL STORY TIME: See THU.16.

ROBIN’S NEST NATURE PLAYGROUP: Outdoor pursuits through fields and forests captivate little ones up to age 5 and their parents. North Branch Nature Center, Montpelier, 10 a.m.-noon. Free; donations accepted. Info, 229-6206.

mad river valley/ waterbury

POKÉMON CLUB: I choose you, Pikachu! Fans of the franchise discuss their favorite cards, games and TV episodes in this monthly activity group. Ages 6 and up. Waterbury Public Library, 3-4 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 244-7036.

northeast kingdom

RED CLOVER BOOK CLUB: Readers ages 6 through 10 discuss a book and do an art activity each week. Siblings welcome. St. Johnsbury Athenaeum, 1:30 p.m. Free. Info, 745-1391.

PURCHASING YOUR FIRST ELECTRIC VEHICLE: New England Federal Credit Union financial experts teach drivers about the costs and benefits of going gas-free. Noon-1 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 764-6940.

sports

GREEN MOUNTAIN TABLE

TENNIS CLUB: See WED.15. theater

‘SWEAT’: See WED.15, 11 a.m. & 7:30 p.m.

‘AIRNESS’: See WED.15. words

CHRISTINE KENNEALLY: The journalist behind a viral 2018 BuzzFeed article on St. Joseph’s Orphanage launches her book, Ghosts of the Orphanage: A Story of Mysterious Deaths, a Conspiracy of Silence and a Search for Justice. See calendar spotlight. Phoenix Books, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 448-3350.

MATTHEW OLZMANN: The acclaimed author of Constellation Route reads from his poems. Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, 7-8 p.m. Free. Info, 635-2727.

SHANTA LEE: In conjunction with her exhibits “Dark Goddess” and “Object-Defied,” the poet, artist and curator reads from her latest collection, Black Metamorphoses Fleming Museum of Art, University of Vermont, Burlington, 5:30 p.m. Free. Info, 656-0750. ➆

WED.22 burlington

BABYTIME: See WED.15.

CRAFTERNOON: See WED.15.

STEAM SPACE: See WED.15.

chittenden county

BABYTIME: See WED.15.

GET YOUR GAME ON: Countless board games are on the menu at this drop-in meetup for players in grades 6 through 12. Brownell Library, Essex Junction, 2:30-4 p.m. Free. Info, 878-6956.

LEGO BUILDERS: See WED.15.

PLAY TIME: See WED.15.

barre/montpelier

CHESS CLUB: See WED.15.

mad river valley/ waterbury

LEGO CHALLENGE CLUB: Kids engage in a fun-filled hour of building, then leave their creations on display in the library all month long. Ages 9 through 11. Waterbury Public Library, 3-4 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 244-7036.

upper valley

PEABODY AFTERSCHOOL FUN FOR GRADES 1-4: See WED.15. K

classes

THE FOLLOWING CLASS LISTINGS ARE PAID ADVERTISEMENTS. ANNOUNCE YOUR CLASS FOR AS LITTLE AS $16.75/WEEK (INCLUDES SIX PHOTOS AND UNLIMITED DESCRIPTION ONLINE). SUBMIT YOUR CLASS AD AT SEVENDAYSVT.COM/POSTCLASS.

art

DAVIS STUDIO ART CLASSES:

Discover your happy place in one of our weekly classes. Making art boosts emotional well-being and brings joy to your life, especially when you connect with other art enthusiasts. Select the ongoing program that’s right for you. Now enrolling youths and adults for classes in drawing, painting and fused glass. Location: Davis Studio, 916 Shelburne Rd., S. Burlington. Info: 425-2700, davisstudiovt.com.

LIFE DRAWING: Two-hour drawing class with a clothed model. Instruction is self-led. We focus on shorter poses ranging from one to 20 minutes. Super fun; very casual. Beginners encouraged to join. Every Tue., 6-8 p.m. Cost: $10/2-hour class. Location: Karma Birdhouse Gallery, 47 Maple St., Burlington. Info: Kirsten Hurley, 503-8773, kirsten. hurley@gmail.com, kirstenhurley. com.

craft

CHAIR MAKING, SPOONS, BASKETS!: Learn the fundamentals of Windsor or ladder-back chair making in a weeklong workshop! A variety of workshops are on the schedule from Mar. to Oct., many featuring guest instructors coming in to teach related skills such as spoon carving and basket weaving. Open to all skill levels. All tools & materials provided. Location: Chairmaker’s Workshop, Charlotte. Info: Eric Cannizzaro, 360-5281952, ericcannizzaro.com.

culinary

MEAL PREP FOR THE WEEK: Come join us to prepare lots of ready-made food for the week! We will be cooking many different dishes to divide and take home. Bring your own containers and leave with lots of mix and match meal options for you and your family that should last several days! Mon., Mar. 20, 2-5 p.m. Cost: $150 for 3-hour club, incl. cooking instruction & all food w/ many dishes & meals to take home Location: Common Ground Center, 473 Tatro Rd., Starksboro. Info: Tessa Holmes, 802-3432315, tessa@blossomholmes.com, blossomholmes.com.

Generator GENERATOR is a combination of artist studios, classroom, and business incubator at the intersection of art, science, and technology. We provide tools, expertise, education, and opportunity – to enable all members of our community to create, collaborate, and make their ideas a reality.

LASER-ENGRAVED HARDWOOD

WALL CLOCK WORKSHOP:

In this workshop, you will make your own laser-engraved, hardwood wall clock by making your own router template using a laser machine. You’ll then move to the woodshop and use the template

to shape your hardwood piece, returning to the laser machine to engrave your clockface with your design. Sat., Mar. 25, 1-6 p.m.

Location: Generator Makerspace, 40 Sears Ln., Burlington.

Info: 540-0761, education@ generatorvt.com, generatorvt. com/calendar#!event/2023/3/25/ laser-engraved-hardwood-wallclock-workshop.

language

ADULT LIVE SPANISH E-CLASSES: Join us for adult Spanish classes this spring, using Zoom online videoconferencing. Our 17th year. Learn from a native speaker via small group classes or individual instruction. You’ll always be participating and speaking. Four different levels. Note: Classes fill up fast. See our website or contact us for details. Beginning week of Apr. 3. 10 classes of 90+ min. each week, 1/week. Location: Spanish in Waterbury Center, online. Info: 585-1025, spanishparavos@ gmail.com, spanishwaterbury center.com.

SPANISH CLASSES FOR ALL

AGES: Premier native-speaking Spanish professor Maigualida Rak is giving fun, interactive online lessons to improve comprehension and pronunciation and to achieve fluency. Audiovisual material is used. “I feel proud to say that my students have significantly improved their Spanish with my teaching approach.”

—Maigualida Rak. Info: 881-0931, spanishtutor.vtfla@gmail.com, facebook.com/spanishonlinevt.

SPANISH IMMERSION WEEKEND:

e New England Language Academy is proud to announce its first Spanish Immersion Weekend for adults, from scratch! How many times have you said: “Donde está la biblioteca?” Do you want to get past that? Well, here is your chance to jump that barrier. “ e gift of a second language.” Mar. 1719. Cost: $285/12 hours. Location: online. Info: Carlos Reyes, 202-549-7955, spanish@ nelacademy.com, newengland languageacademy.com.

martial arts

AIKIDO: THE POWER OF HARMONY: Discover the dynamic, flowing martial art of aikido. Relax under pressure and cultivate core power, aerobic fitness and resiliency. Aikido emphasizes throws, joint locks and internal power. Circular movements teach how to blend with the attack. We offer inclusive classes and a safe space for all. Visitors should watch a class before joining. Beginners’ classes 5 days/week. Membership rates incl. unlimited classes. Contact us for info about membership rates for adults, youths & families. Location: Aikido of Champlain Valley, 257 Pine St., Burlington. Info: Benjamin Pincus, 951-8900, bpincus@burlington aikido.org, burlingtonaikido.org.

VERMONT BRAZILIAN JIU-JITSU: We offer a legitimate Brazilian jiu-jitsu training program for men, women and children in a friendly, safe and positive environment.

Julio Cesar “Foca” Fernandez Nunes; CBJJP and IBJJF seventhdegree Carlson Gracie Sr. Coral Belt-certified instructor; teaching in Vermont, born and raised in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil! A two-time world masters champion, five-time Brazilian jiu-jitsu national champion, three-time Rio de Janeiro state champion and Gracie Challenge champion. Accept no limitations! 1st class is free. Location: Vermont Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, 55 Leroy Rd., Williston. Info: 598-2839, julio@bjjusa.com, vermontbjj.com.

music

SUMMIT SCHOOL TRAD BAND WORKSHOP WITH NICHOLAS

WILLIAMS: Intermediate and advanced youth and adult musicians are invited to an afternoon intensive trad band workshop of music in the northern traditions, led by multi-instrumentalist and talented teacher Nicholas Williams from Waterville, Québec. All instruments invited, both melody players and accompanists. Sat., Apr. 1, 1-4:30 p.m. Cost: $2535 sliding scale. Location: Bethany Church, 115 Main St., Montpelier. Info: summit-school.org.

yoga

AYURVEDIC INTEGRATION

PROGRAM: Learn to integrate Ayurveda as lifestyle medicine that can prevent or reverse chronic disease; increase energy; promote longevity; and reduce stress, anxiety and depression. Specialized seasonal and daily Ayurvedic routines, holistic nutrition, stress-reduction techniques, and self-care will be taught. Sat. & Sun. 9 a.m.-4 p.m. 2023: Oct. 14-15, Nov. 4-5, Dec. 2-3; 2024: Jan. 6-7, Feb. 3-4, Mar. 9-10, Apr. 6-7, May 4-5, Jun. 8-9, Jul. 13-14. Cost: $2,895/200-hour program. Location: e Ayurvedic Center of Vermont, 34 Oak Hill Rd., Williston. Info: Allison Morse, 8728898, info@ayurvedavermont. com, ayurvedavermont.com.

POSTPARTUM DOULA TRAINING: Serve women and families in your community during a time of huge transition and growth by becoming an Ayurveda postpartum doula. You will learn about pregnancy, birth and postpartum through the lens and language of Ayurveda while receiving training in traditional postpartum care practices, balanced with practical understanding for modern women. Apr. 3-7, 9 a.m.-3:30 p.m.

Cost: $995/weeklong workshop w/ VSAC grants avail. Location: e Ayurvedic Center of Vermont, 34 Oak Hill Rd., Williston. Info: Allison Morse, 872-8898, info@ ayurvedavermont.com, ayurvedavermont.com.

Olivia

AGE/SEX: 5-year-old spayed female

ARRIVAL DATE: February 7, 2023

SUMMARY: Olivia is a fun-loving pup with a big personality and an even bigger heart! She’s a friendly, bouncy gal who tends to greet new friends with wiggles and kisses. Whatever you’re up to, she wants to be part of the fun. Cuddles on the couch, rides in the car, walks around the neighborhood — you name it, and she’s happy to be included! Your day is sure to be brighter with Olivia and her big, goofy smile in it! Stop by HSCC to meet her and see if she could be your new best friend.

DOGS/CATS/KIDS: Olivia has lived with dogs, cats and children in her previous home and did well with them.

Visit the Humane Society of Chittenden County at 142 Kindness Court, South Burlington, Tuesday through Friday from 1 to 5 p.m. or Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Call 862-0135 or visit hsccvt. org for more info.

DID YOU KNOW?

Slow introductions are the key to success! When bringing a new pet home, it’s always best to introduce new people and pets gradually (and with lots of treats!) to make sure everyone is comfortable. Looking for tips or advice? Email our Pet Helpline: helpline@hsccvt.org

Sponsored by:

NO SCAMS, ALL LOCAL, POSTINGS DAILY

Humane Society of Chittenden County

CLASSIFIEDS

furnished. Utils. incl. Call 862-2389.

HOUSEMATES

on the road

CARS/TRUCKS

DONATE YOUR CAR FOR KIDS

Fast, free pickup. Running or not. 24-hour response. Maximum tax donation. Help fi nd missing kids! Call 1-855-504-1540. (AAN CAN)

housing FOR RENT

BURLINGTON

Burlington Hill Section, furnished, single room, on bus line. No cooking. No pets. Linens

CHARLOTTE SHARE W/ VIEWS

Picturesque views in Charlotte! Host in his 60s enjoys music, writing & art. $650/ mo. + utils. Seeking tidy vegetarian willing to lend a hand w/ snow & yard duties. Must be dog-friendly! Private BA, BR & sitting room. 863-5625 or home share vermont.org for application. Interview, refs., background check req. EHO.

ESSEX ARTIST HOME TO SHARE

Essex: Educated artist in her 80s looking for upbeat guest willing to cook a few meals each week. Private BA. Must be cat-friendly! Familiarity w/ memory loss is a plus. No rent. 863-5625 or home share vermont.org for application. Interview, refs., background check req. EHO.

housing ads: $25 (25 words) legals: 52¢/word buy this stuff: free online

OFFICE/ COMMERCIAL

OFFICE SPACE TO LEASE

Great offi ce space avail. 10x14’ w/ high ceilings, exposed beams, brick walls & large window. Located in a spacious suite in Winooski’s historic Woolen Mill.

Suite is welcoming w/ a beautifully appointed waiting room, kitchen/ staff room, group meeting rooms & 5 offi ces, each occupied by women practitioners (counseling, massage, coaching). On CCTA bus line, free parking, wheelchair accessible, internet. $314/mo., incl. utils. Avail. April 1. Call or text Katherine Penberthy at 802-3187886 or Dianne Coffey at 802-654-7600.

OFFICE/RETAIL SPACE AT MAIN STREET

LANDING on Burlington’s waterfront. Beautiful, healthy, affordable spaces for your business. Visit mainstreetlanding.com & click on space avail. Melinda, 864-7999.

ser vices

EDUCATION

BILLING TRAINING FROM HOME

Career training in medical billing. CTI Career Training allows students to earn a degree from home & be ready to work in mos. Call 866-2435931. (AAN CAN)

COMPUTER CAREER

TRAINING

Career training in computer IT. CTI Career Training allows students to earn a degree from home & be ready to work

EQUAL HOUSING OPPORTUNITY

All real estate advertising in this newspaper is subject to the Federal Fair Housing Act of 1968 and similar Vermont statutes which make it illegal to advertise any preference, limitations, or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, handicap, presence of minor children in the family or receipt of public assistance, or an intention to make any such preference, limitation or a discrimination. The newspaper will not knowingly accept any advertising for real estate, which is in violation of the law. Our

services: $12 (25 words) fsbos: $45 (2 weeks, 30 words, photo) jobs: michelle@sevendaysvt.com, 865-1020 x121

print deadline: Mondays at 3:30 p.m. post ads online 24/7 at: sevendaysvt.com/classifieds questions? classifieds@sevendaysvt.com

865-1020 x115

HOME/GARDEN

BEAUTIFY YOUR HOME

Bid Online or In Person

MOVING/HAULING

MOVING OUT OF STATE?

Get energy-effi cient windows. ey will increase your home’s value & decrease your energy bills. Replace all or a few! Call 844-3352217 now to get your free, no-obligation quote. (AAN CAN)

COVERED HOME REPAIRS

Never pay for covered home repairs again! Our home warranty covers all systems & appliances. 30-day risk-free. $200 off & 1st 2 months free. Call 1-877-4344845. (AAN CAN)

GUTTER GUARD INSTALLATIONS

Seeking Consignments

Consign your Firearms! We’re looking for firearms, edged weapons, militaria, decoys, sporting equipment & more for a simulcast auction on Saturday, May 13! Email FFL@THCAuction.com

PETS

SMALL DOGS FOR SALE

readers are hereby informed that all dwellings advertised in this newspaper are available on an equal opportunity basis. Any home seeker who feels he or she has encountered discrimination should contact:

HUD Office of Fair Housing 10 Causeway St., Boston, MA 02222-1092

(617) 565-5309

— OR —

Vermont Human Rights Commission 14-16 Baldwin St. Montpelier, VT 05633-0633

1-800-416-2010 hrc@vermont.gov

in mos. Call 888-2811442. (AAN CAN)

FINANCIAL/LEGAL

BEHIND ON YOUR TAXES?

Are you behind $10,000 or more on your taxes?

Stop wage & bank levies, liens & audits, unfiled tax returns, & payroll issues, & resolve tax debt fast. Call 844-836-9861. Hours: Mon.-Fri. 7 a.m.-5 p.m. PST. (AAN CAN)

HEALTH/ WELLNESS

CASH FOR CANCER PATIENTS

Diagnosed w/ lung cancer? You may qualify for a substantial cash award, even w/ smoking history. Call 1-888-3760595. (AAN CAN)

MASSAGE THERAPY

Relaxing, healing, invigorating. Outcalls only. For more info, see the online ad. Info, pete_bellini@pm.me.

PART-TIME PERSONAL CARE AIDES

Quirky LGBTQ+ wheelchair user seeks help in Essex. Duties incl. bowel & catheter care, meal prep, etc. No experience necessary, training provided. Pay $25/hour. Due to allergy, nonsmokers or vapers preferred. Background check req. & must mask. Shifts open: Mon., Tue. & u. mornings & Sat. evening. 1 person need not cover all shifts. Open to all genders, races, orientations. More shifts opening in May/Jun. Interviewing now. Email: allenjillm@ gmail.com.

PSYCHIC COUNSELING

Psychic counseling, channeling w/ Bernice Kelman, Underhill. 40+ years’ experience. Also energy healing, chakra balancing, Reiki, rebirthing, other lives, classes & more. 802-899-3542, kelman.b@juno.com.

Licensed & insured, full-service nationwide movers. Call now to get a free, instant price quote on your next move. 1-866-590-6549. (AAN CAN)

buy this stuff

Gutter guards & replacement gutters. Never clean your gutters again! Affordable, professionally installed gutter guards protect your gutters & home from debris & leaves forever. For a quote, call 844-499-0277. (AAN CAN)

HOME ORGANIZER/ DECLUTTERER

Refresh for spring w/ Declutter Vermont!

Experienced & professional. Clients recommend! Services: organizing by room/ home, downsizing for moves, selling/donating items, etc. For free consultation, email decluttervermont@ gmail.com.

NATIONAL PEST CONTROL

Are you a homeowner in need of a pest control service for your home? Call 866-616-0233. (AAN CAN)

REPAIRS FOR HOMEOWNERS

If you have water damage to your home & need cleanup services, call us! We’ll get in & work w/ your insurance agency to get your home repaired & your life back to normal ASAP. Call 833-664-1530. (AAN CAN)

BATH & SHOWER UPDATES

In as little as 1 day! Affordable prices. No payments for 18 mos. Lifetime warranty & professional installs. Senior & military discounts avail. Call 1-866-370-2939. (AAN CAN)

APPLIANCES/ TOOLS/PARTS

BCI WALK-IN TUBS

BCI walk-in tubs are now on sale. Be 1 of the 1st 50 callers & save $1,500. Call 844-514-0123 for a free in-home consultation.

MISCELLANEOUS

4G LTE HOME INTERNET

Get GotW3 w/ lightningfast speeds + take your service w/ you when you travel! As low as $109.99/mo. 1-866-5711325. (AAN CAN)

DISH TV $64.99

$64.99 for 190 channels + $14.95 high-speed internet. Free installation, Smart HD DVR incl., free voice remote. Some restrictions apply.

1-866-566-1815. (AAN CAN)

MALE ENHANCEMENT PILLS

Bundled network of Viagra, Cialis & Levitra alternative products for a 50-pills-for-$99 promotion. Call 888531-1192. (AAN CAN)

SPECTRUM INTERNET

AS LOW AS $29.99

Call to see if you qualify for ACP & free internet. No credit check. Call now! 833-955-0905.

(AAN CAN)

SWITCH TO DIRECTV

By switching to DIRECTV, you can receive a $100 Visa gift card! Get more channels for less money. Restrictions apply. Call now! 877-693-0625.

(AAN CAN)

Born in March 2022, had all shots & dewormed. 12-14 lbs. Jack Russell/ terrier mix. Males, not neutered. In Milton. Text or call 802-735-4474. Serious inquiries only, please. $200. Prefer no cats.

WANT TO BUY

MEN’S WATCHES WANTED

Men’s sport watches wanted. Rolex, Breitling, Omega, Patek Philippe, Here, Daytona, GMT, Submariner & Speedmaster. Paying cash for qualifi ed watches. Call 888-3201052. (AAN CAN)

WE’LL BUY YOUR CAR Cash for cars. We buy all cars. Junk, high-end, totaled: It doesn’t matter! Get free towing & same-day cash. Newer models, too. 1-866-5359689. (AAN CAN)

ar t

CALL TO ARTISTS

MURAL ARTISTS WANTED e Waterbury Area Anti-Racism Coalition is seeking experienced mural artists. Send applications to waarcpublicartproject@ gmail.com by Sun., Apr. 16. More info at waterburyantiracism. com/events.

music INSTRUCTION

GUITAR INSTRUCTION

Berklee graduate w/30 years’ teaching experience offers lessons in guitar, music theory, music technology, ear training. Individualized, step-by-step approach. All ages, styles, levels. Rick Belford, 864-7195, rickbelford.com.

14+144x11+ 2-3 4 4x11+12+ 25+ 12x3-5-

CALCOKU BY JOSH REYNOLDS

DIFFICULTY THIS WEEK: ★★★

Fill the grid using the numbers 1-6, only once in each row and column. e numbers in each heavily outlined “cage” must combine to produce the target number in the top corner, using the mathematical operation indicated. A one-box cage should be filled in with the target number in the top corner. A number can be repeated within a cage as long as it is not the same row or column.

WANT MORE PUZZLES?

Try these online news games from Seven Days at sevendaysvt.com/games.

Put

SUDOKU BY JOSH REYNOLDS

DIFFICULTY THIS WEEK: ★★★

Place a number in the empty boxes in such a way that each row across, each column down and each 9-box square contains all of the numbers one to nine. e same numbers cannot be repeated in a row or column.

ANSWERS ON P.72

★ = MODERATE ★ ★ = CHALLENGING ★ ★ ★ = HOO, BOY!

ANSWERS ON P. 72 »

NEW

Guess today’s 5-letter word. Hint: It’s in the news!

Legal Notices

ACT 250 NOTICE MINOR APPLICATION 4C1149-2B 10 V.S.A. §§ 6001 - 6111

Application 4C1149-2B from Champlain School Apartments Partnership, Attn: Joe Larkin, 410 Shelburne Road, Burlington, VT 05401 was received on March 1, 2023 and deemed complete on March 8, 2023. The project is generally described as the demolition and removal of the existing Holiday Inn building due to structural integrity issues. No construction is approved at this time. The project is located at 1068 Williston Road in South Burlington, Vermont. This application can be viewed online by visiting the Act 250 Database: (https://anrweb.vt.gov/ANR/Act250/Details. aspx?Num=4C1149-2B).

No hearing will be held and a permit will be issued unless, on or before March 28, 2023, a party notifies the District 4 Commission in writing of an issue requiring a hearing, or the Commission sets the matter for a hearing on its own motion. Any person as defined in 10 V.S.A. § 6085(c)(1) may request a hearing. Any hearing request must be in writing, must state the criteria or sub- criteria at issue, why a hearing is required, and what additional evidence will be presented at the hearing. Any hearing request by an adjoining property owner or other person eligible for party status under 10 V.S.A. § 6085(c)(1)(E) must include a petition for party status under the Act 250 Rules. To request party status and a hearing, fill out the Party Status Petition Form on the Board’s website: https://nrb. vermont.gov/documents/party-status-petitionform, and email it to the District 4 Office at: NRB. Act250Essex@vermont.gov. Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law may not be prepared unless the Commission holds a public hearing.

For more information contact Stephanie H. Monaghan at the address or telephone number below.

Dated this March 8, 2023.

By:/s/ Stephanie H. Monaghan

Stephanie H. Monaghan District Coordinator

111 West Street Essex Junction, VT 05452

PUZZLE ANSWERS

802-261-1944

Stephanie.Monaghan@vermont.gov

ANNUAL FINANCIAL AUDIT SERVICES REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL (RFP)

Lamoille North Supervisory Union is seeking proposals for annual financial audit services for the Supervisory union and its school districts.

Lamoille North Supervisory Union invites qualified, independent Certified Public Accountants, licensed to practice in the State of Vermont, to submit proposals to conduct annual audits of the financial accounts for Lamoille North Supervisory Union, Lamoille North Modified Unified Union School District and Cambridge Town School District. Proposals will be due at the Lamoille North Supervisory Union, 96 Cricket Hill Rd, Hyde Park, VT by April 7, 2023, at 3:00 PM.

The full RFP can be obtained by contacting Deb Clark 802-851-1161 (dclark@lnsd.org), or Lynda Brochu (802) 851-1163 (lbrochu@lnsd.org).

BURLINGTON DEVELOPMENT REVIEW BOARD

TUESDAY, APRIL 4, 2023, 5:00 PM

PUBLIC HEARING NOTICE IN PERSON (AT 645 PINE STREET) MEETING

1. ZP-22-640; 294-296 North Winooski Avenue (NMU, Ward 2C) Irene Hinsdale / Samuel Nelis Change of use from mixed-use restaurant to bar.

Plans may be viewed upon request by contacting the Department of Permitting & Inspections between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 4:30 p.m.

Participation in the DRB proceeding is a prerequisite to the right to take any subsequent appeal. Please note that ANYTHING submitted to the Zoning office is considered public and cannot be kept confidential. This may not be the final order in which items will be heard. Please view final Agenda, at www.burlingtonvt.gov/dpi/drb/agendas or the office notice board, one week before the hearing for the order in which items will be heard.

The City of Burlington will not tolerate unlawful

harassment or discrimination on the basis of political or religious affiliation, race, color, national origin, place of birth, ancestry, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, veteran status, disability, HIV positive status, crime victim status or genetic information. The City is also committed to providing proper access to services, facilities, and employment opportunities. For accessibility information or alternative formats, please contact Human Resources Department at (802) 540-2505.Public Hearing Notice

The programs and services of the City of Burlington are accessible to people with disabilities. Individuals who require special arrangements to participate are encouraged to contact the Zoning Division at least 72 hours in advance so that proper accommodations can be arranged. For information call 865-7188 (TTY users: 865-7142).

NOTICE OF AMENDMENT TO THE ESSEX JUNCTION MUNICIPAL CODE

In accordance with the Essex Junction City Charter and V.S.A. Title 24, Sec. 1972, notice is hereby given to the residents and those interested in lands in the City of Essex Junction that on March 8, 2023, the City Council replaced the existing Chapter 5: Regulation of Dogs in its entirety with a proposed Chapter 5: Regulation of Dogs.

The full text with the changes to this ordinance can be found at the City Clerk’s office at 81 Main St. Essex Vt. 05452 during regular business hours, 7:30 am – 4:30 pm.

This ordinance shall become effective on passage unless 5 percent of the City’s qualified voters, by a written petition filed with the City Clerk no later than April 21, 2023, request that the voters of the City disapprove the amendment at a duly warned annual meeting or special meeting.

Questions about this amendment may be addressed to Regina Mahony, City Manager, 2 Lincoln Street, Essex Junction, VT, by calling 802-8786944 or emailing admin@essexjunction.org.

Dated at Essex Junction, Vermont, on March 8, 2023.

NOTICE OF SELF STORAGE LIEN SALE EXIT 16 SELF STORAGE 295 RATHE RD COLCHESTER, VT. 05446

Notice Is Hereby Given That the Contents of the Self Storage Units Listed Below Will Be Sold at Auction

NAME of OCCUPANT - UNIT SIZE

LeClaire, Robert 10 X 10

Andersen, Jenn 10 X 10

HAYES, MIKE 5 X 10

Wolfe, Robert 10 X 25

Le, Dat 10 X 10

PARKER, ALISON 5 X 10

Banks, Clinton 10 X 20

BLANFORD, RONALD 5 X 10

Bostock, Nathan 5 X 10 MONTGOMERY, MAURICE 10 X 15 MCCLURE, KRIS 10 X 5

MAYO, SARA 5 X 10

Eley, Ben 10 X 10

Xie, Bingyi 5 X 10

AUCTION WILL TAKE PLACE: SATURDAY APRIL 1ST at 9:00 AM at EXIT 16 SELF STORAGE 295 RATHE RD COLCHESTER, VT. 05446

Units Will Be Opened for Viewing Immediately Prior to the auction.sale Shall Be by Live Auction to the Highest Bidder.

Contents of the Entire Storage Unit Will Be Sold as One Lot.

All Winning Bidders Will Be Required to Pay a $50.00 Deposit Which Will Be Refunded Once Unit Is Left Empty and Broom Swept clean. The Winning Bid Must Remove All Contents From the Facility Within 72 Hours of Bid Acceptance at No Cost to Exit 16 Self storage. Exit 16 Self Storage Reserves the Right to Reject Any Bid Lower Than the Amount Owed by the occupant. Exit 16 Self Storage Reserves the Right to Remove Any Unit From the Auction Should Current Tenant Bring His or Her Account Current With Full Payment Prior to the Start of the Auction.

PROPOSED STATE RULES

=================================

By law, public notice of proposed rules must be given by publication in newspapers of record. The purpose of these notices is to give the public a chance to respond to the proposals. The public notices for administrative rules are now also available online at https://secure.vermont.gov/ SOS/rules/ . The law requires an agency to hold a public hearing on a proposed rule, if requested to do so in writing by 25 persons or an association having at least 25 members.

To make special arrangements for individuals with disabilities or special needs please call or write the contact person listed below as soon as possible.

To obtain further information concerning any scheduled hearing(s), obtain copies of proposed rule(s) or submit comments regarding proposed rule(s), please call or write the contact person listed below. You may also submit comments in writing to the Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules, State House, Montpelier, Vermont 05602 (802-828-2231).

Inflation Adjustment for Private Non-Medical Institutions.

Vermont Proposed Rule: 23P005

AGENCY: Agency of Human Services

CONCISE SUMMARY: Private non-medical institutions (PNMIs) provide residential treatment to Vermont children, who are placed at PNMI providers by state agencies. These agencies primarily include the Department for Mental Health and the Department for Children and Families. The Division has rules to set per diem Medicaid rates for each provider to reimburse them for the cost of providing room and board, treatment, education, and other services to these children. The Division’s current rules reimburse PNMI providers based on

PLACE AN AFFORDABLE NOTICE AT: SEVENDAYSVT.COM/LEGAL-NOTICES OR CALL 802-865-1020, EXT. 142.

historical costs, but do not adjust those historical costs for inflation. This causes financial burdens for providers, particularly during periods of high inflation. This rule adds an inflation adjustment to Vermont’s PNMI Medicaid rates.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, CONTACT: James LaRock, Department of Vermont Health Access, NOB 1 South, 280 State Drive, Waterbury, VT 056711010 Tel: 802-241-0251 Fax: 802-241-0260 Email: james.larock@vermont.gov URL: https://dvha. vermont.gov/providers/division-rate-setting/ private- nonmedical-institutions-residential-childcare-pnmi.

FOR COPIES: Lindsay Gillette, Department of Vermont Health Access, NOB 1 South, 280 State Drive, Waterbury, VT 05671-1010 Tel: 802-241-0979 Fax: 802-241-0260 Email: lindsay.gillette@ vermont.gov.

PUBLIC HEARING (IN-PERSON AND ELECTRONIC)

The State of Vermont’s Department of Housing and Community Development will be holding a public hearing to get input from Vermont residents before finalizing the state’s HUD Consolidated Plan Annual Action Plan for 2023.

The hearing will be held on Monday, April 3, 2023, from 1:30 - 2:00 p.m. The in-person location will be in the Calvin Coolidge room at DHCD, 1 National Life Drive, Davis Building, 6th floor, Montpelier. To participate electronically, go to: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/ meetup- join/19%3ameeting_OWVlOTUyNzY tMzA3Ni00MDQ3LThiYmQtMjVhNDM0NTc4Y TBk%40thread.v2/0?c ontext=%7b%22Tid% 22%3a%2220b4933b-baad-433c-9c02- 70ed cc7559c6%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22c7bef8 ee-5aed-420b-9d94-3ef05024d84f%22%7d

Meeting ID: 277 803 031 43

Passcode: KBQ3ZC

The draft Plan outlines priorities for the use of approximately $11 million in federal funds provided to the State for the Community Development Block Grant, HOME Investment Partnership Program, and Emergency Solutions Grant program, and $3 million awarded to the State from the National Housing Trust Fund to develop housing that is affordable to extremely low- and very low- income households. The Plan also serves as Vermont’s application to HUD for these funds.

HUD’s goals for the Plan are to provide decent affordable housing, assure a suitable living environment, and expand economic opportunity for Vermont’s citizens. The Department, along with the Consolidated Plan Advisory Board, and the other State agencies and partners that receive HUD funding under the Plan, developed the draft based on input received about the state’s housing, homelessness, public facility and service, and non-housing community development needs, as well as ideas for grant activities the State should consider funding for the next year.

Accommodations for persons with disabilities and interpreters to meet the needs of non-English speaking persons will be made available upon request. Requests for accommodations should be directed to Arthur Hamlin at (802) 828-3749 or emailed to arthur.hamlin@vermont.gov by March 27, 2023. For the hearing impaired please call (TTY#) 1-800-253-0191.

More information on the plan and process is available on the Department’s website at https://accd. vermont.gov/housing/plans-data-rules/hud/how

REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL FOR SERVICES

CONTRACT SERVICES FOR THE DESIGN AND PLAN FOR BIKE/PEDESTRIAN IMPROVEMENTS IN THE TOWN OF SOUTH HERO, VT

ISSUE DATE: March 10, 2023

DUE DATE: April 20, 2023

ADDRESS FOR BID SUBMISSION:

Email: donna@champlainislands.com OR LCIEDC, P.O. Box 213, North Hero, VT 05474 ATTN: S.H.O.R.E. Project Coordinator

All interested firms are hereby notified that proposals may be submitted electronically to donna@champlainislands.com subject: S.H.O.R.E. Project by the close of business (4:00PM) on Thursday, April 20, 2023 OR mailed to: Lake Champlain Islands Economic Development Corporation, P.O. Box 213, North Hero, VT 05474. ATTN: S.H.O.R.E. Project Coordinator which must be received by 4:00PM on Thursday, April 20, 2023. Those interested are cautioned that it is their responsibility to start and complete the process of sending proposals to ensure that their proposal is received by the due date. Late or incomplete proposals will not be considered.

A. Introduction

The Lake Champlain Islands Economic Development Corporation (hereinafter “LCIEDC”) seeks a Recreation Consultant/Planner for consulting and design services for the S.H.O.R.E. (South Hero Overland Route Exploration) Project to Create a Cyclist & Pedestrian Friendly South Hero, a Model for Vermont Communities funded by a Vermont Outdoor Recreation Economic Collaboration (VOREC) Grant. An essential part of this Project is ensuring that local recreation assets are accessible to residents and improving the bike/walkability of the community for everyday use.

B. Contact

All communications regarding this Request for Proposal for Services are to be addressed in writing or email to the attention of:

S.H.O.R.E. Project Coordinator, Donna Boumil

LCIEDC PO Box 213, North Hero, Vt 05474 Phone: (802) 372-8400, Email: donna@champlainislands.com

The total State funding (VOREC Grant) anticipated for the requested services is equal to or less than $20,000. LCIEDC intends to sign a contract that begins with the date of acceptance and runs through October 2023.

Bid documents are available at: shore.champlainislands.com or via email: donna@champlainislands.com

STATE OF VERMONT SUPERIOR COURT CIVIL DIVISION CHITTENDEN UNIT DOCKET # 22-CV-02338

SPECIALIZED LOAN SERVICING LLC

Plaintiff v.

DAVID E. DAUER AND VERMONT DEPARTMENT OF TAXES

OCCUPANTS OF: 124 Wildwood Drive, Burlington VT

Defendants

SUMMONS & ORDER FOR PUBLICATION

THIS SUMMONS IS DIRECTED TO: David E. Dauer

1. YOU ARE BEING SUED. The Plaintiff has started a lawsuit against you. A copy of the Plaintiff’s Complaint against you is on file and may be obtained at the office of the clerk of this court, Chittenden, Civil Division, Vermont Superior Court, 175 Main Street, Burlington, Vermont. Do not throw this paper away. It is an official paper that affects your rights.

2. PLAINTIFF’S CLAIM. Plaintiff’s claim is a Complaint in Foreclosure which alleges that you have breached the terms of a Promissory Note and Mortgage Deed dated September 18, 2002. Plaintiff’s action may affect your interest in the property described in the Land Records of the Town of Burlington at Volume 752, Page 375. The Complaint also seeks relief on the Promissory Note executed by you. A copy of the Complaint is on file and may be obtained at the Office of the Clerk of the Superior Court for the County of Chittenden, State of Vermont.

3. YOU MUST REPLY WITHIN 41 DAYS TO PROTECT YOUR RIGHTS. You must give or mail the Plaintiff a written response called an Answer within 41

days after the date on which this Summons was first published, which is March 15, 2023. You must send a copy of your answer to the Plaintiff or the Plaintiff’s attorney, LORAINE L. HITE, Esq. of Bendett & McHugh, PC, located at 270 Farmington Avenue, Ste. 151, Farmington, CT 06032. You must also give or mail your Answer to the Court located at Chittenden, Civil Division, Vermont Superior Court, 175 Main Street, Burlington, Vermont 05402.

4. YOU MUST RESPOND TO EACH CLAIM. The Answer is your written response to the Plaintiff’s Complaint. In your Answer you must state whether you agree or disagree with each paragraph of the Complaint. If you believe the Plaintiff should not be given everything asked for in the Complaint, you must say so in your Answer.

5. YOU WILL LOSE YOUR CASE IF YOU DO NOT GIVE YOUR WRITTEN ANSWER TO THE COURT. If you do not Answer within 41 days after the date on which this Summons was first published and file it with the Court, you will lose this case. You will not get to tell your side of the story, and the Court may decide against you and award the Plaintiff everything asked for in the complaint.

6. YOU MUST MAKE ANY CLAIMS AGAINST THE PLAINTIFF IN YOUR REPLY. Your Answer must state any related legal claims you have against the Plaintiff. Your claims against the Plaintiff are called Counterclaims. If you do not make your Counterclaims in writing in your answer you may not be able to bring them up at all. Even if you have insurance and the insurance company will defend you, you must still file any Counterclaims you may have.

7. LEGAL ASSISTANCE. You may wish to get legal help from a lawyer. If you cannot afford a lawyer, you should ask the court clerk for information about places where you can get free legal help. Even if you cannot get legal help, you must still give the court a written Answer to protect your rights or you may lose the case.

ORDER

The Affidavit duly filed in this action shows that service cannot be made with due diligence by any of the method provided in Rules 4(d)-(f), (k), or (l) of the Vermont Rules of Civil Procedure. Accordingly, it is ORDERED that service of the Summons set forth above shall be made upon the defendant, David E. Dauer, by publication as provided in Rule[s] [4(d)(l) and] 4 (g) of those Rules. This order shall be published once a week for 3 weeks beginning on or before March 15, 2023 in the Seven Days, a newspaper of the general circulation in Chittenden County, and a copy of this summons and order as published shall be mailed to the defendant, David E. Dauer, at 124 Wildwood Drive, Burlington, VT 05408.

Dated at Burlington, Vermont this 3rd day of March, 2023

/s/ Helen M. Toor Hon. Helen M. Toor Presiding Judge Chittenden Unit, Civil Division

STATE OF VERMONT SUPERIOR COURT ENVIRONMENTAL DIVISION DOCKET NO. 23-ENV-00017

In re. Allen & Nadia Dacres and Sabrina Parton, Final Plat and Site Plan Applications // FP-23-15 SP-23-22

NOTICE OF APPEAL

NOW COME Applicants Allen and Nadia Dacres, Jasmin Saric, Sabrina Parton and Lakeshore Construction, LLC (“Applicants”), by and through their counsel, MSK Attorneys, and hereby appeals, pursuant to 24 V.S.A. §4471 and 10 V.S.A. Ch. 220 to the Vermont Superior Court, Environmental Division, the Town of Colchester Development Review Board’s February 13 th , 2023 decision, denying the Final Plat and Site Plan applications for a minor four-unit Planned Unit Development

to construct 2 one- bedroom dwelling units above the existing two-story detached garage on a lot occupied by an existing duplex dwelling unit. A copy of the DRB’s decision is attached hereto. Applicants have a right to appeal pursuant to 10 V.S.A chapter 220 as the applicants and owners of the subject property.

TO ALL INTERESTED PERSONS: In order to participate in this appeal, you must enter an appearance in the Vermont Environmental Court within twenty-one (21) days of receiving this Notice of Appeal. Notices of Appearance should be mailed to Jennifer Teske, Court Office Manager, Vermont Superior Court—Environmental Division, 32 Cherry Street, Suite 303, Burlington, VT 05401. DATED at Burlington, Vermont this 8th day of March, 2023

Respectfully submitted,

MSK ATTORNEYS

By: /s/ Alexander LaRosa

Alexander LaRosa, ERN 5814 275 College Street, P.O. Box 4485 Burlington, VT 05406-4485

Phone: 802-861-7000 (x119)

Fax: 802-861-7007

Email: ajlarosa@mskvt.com

Attorneys for Applicants

State of Vermont Superior Court

Family Division Chittenden Unit

Docket NO. 21-JV-01066

In Re: M.C.

NOTICE OF HEARING

TO: Bradley Mahoney and any other Male who may be the biological Father of M.C., born on 7/29/2021, to Caitlin Dimas, you are hereby notified that a hearing to establish parentage and a hearing to terminate parental rights to M.C. will be held on April 4, 2023 at 2:00 p.m. at the Vermont Superior Court, Chittenden Family Division, at 32 Cherry Street, Suite 200, Burlington, Vermont 05401. You may appear remotely by contacting the Clerk’s office at 802- 651-1709. You are notified to appear in connection with this case. Failure to appear at this hearing may result in a determination of parentage and termination of your parental rights to M.C. The State is represented by the Attorney General’s Office, HC 2 North, 280 State Drive, Waterbury, VT 05671-2080.

/s/ Kirstin K. Schoonover 2/28/2023 Superior Court Judge Date

STATE OF VERMONT SUPERIOR COURT PROBATE DIVISION CHITTENDEN UNIT DOCKET NO.: 23-PR-00323

In re ESTATE of Patrick Buffet

NOTICE TO CREDITORS

To the creditors of: Patrick Buffet, late of Shelburne, Vermont

I have been appointed to administer this estate. All creditors having claims against the decedent or the estate must present their claims in writing within four (4) months of the date of the first publication of this notice. The claim must be presented to me at the address listed below with a copy sent to the Court. The claim may be barred forever if it is not presented within the four (4) month period.

Dated: March 8, 2023

Signature of Fiduciary: /s/ Judy Joly d/b/a Trust Company of Vermont

Executor/Administrator: Trust Company of Vermont, Attn: Judy Joly, 286 College Street, Burlington, VT 05401, 802-231-2787, judy@tcvermont.com

Name of Publication: Seven Days Publication Date: 3/15/2023

Name of Probate Court: Vermont Superior Court, Chittenden Unit, Probate Division Address of Probate Court: PO BOX 511 , Burlington VT 05402

Legal Notices [CONTINUED]

STATE OF VERMONT SUPERIOR COURT PROBATE DIVISION CHITTENDEN UNIT DOCKET NO.:22-PR-07636

In re ESTATE of: MARK RENKERT

NOTICE TO CREDITORS

To the creditors of: MARK RENKERT, late of South Burlington, Vermont

I have been appointed to administer this estate. All creditors having claims against the decedent or the estate must present their claims in writing within four (4) months of the date of the first publication of this notice. The claim must be presented to me at the address listed below with a copy sent to the Court. The claim may be barred forever if it is not presented within the four (4) month period.

Dated: March 9, 2023

Signature of Fiduciary: /s/ STEVEN C. ROBERGE

Executor/Administrator: STEVEN C. ROBERGE , c/o

Paul R. Morwood, Esq., 333 Dorset Street South Burlington, VT 05403, morwood.paul@gmail.com, 802-862-2135

Name of Publication: Seven Days

Publication Date: 3/15/2023

Name of Probate Court: Vermont Superior Court, Chittenden Unit, Probate Division

Address of Probate Court: PO BOX 511 , Burlington VT 05402

STATE OF VERMONT SUPERIOR COURT PROBATE DIVISION CHITTENDEN UNIT DOCKET NO.:23-PR-00368

In re ESTATE of RUTH A. CLIFFORD

NOTICE TO CREDITORS

To the creditors of: RUTH A. CLIFFORD, late of Essex Junction, Vermont

I have been appointed to administer this estate. All creditors having claims against the decedent or the estate must present their claims in writing within four (4) months of the date of the first publication of this notice. The claim must be presented to me at the address listed below with a copy sent to the Court. The claim may be barred forever if it is not presented within the four (4) month period.

Dated: March 13, 2023

Signature of Fiduciary: /s/ Launa L. Slater

Executor/Administrator: Lauren Starkey , c/o Launa L. Slater, Wiener & Slater, PLLC, 110 Main Street, Suite 4F, Burlington, VT 05401 (802) 863-1836 launa@wsvtlaw.com

Name of Publication: Seven Days

Publication Date: 3/15/2023

Name of Probate Court: Vermont Superior Court, Chittenden Unit, Probate Division

Address of Probate Court: PO BOX 511 , Burlington VT 05402-0511

TOWN OF ESSEX ZONING BOARD OF ADJUSTMENT

PUBLIC HEARING APRIL 6, 2023 - 6:00 PM

• Meeting held at 81 Main Street Conference Room.

• Join via Microsoft Teams at https://www.essexvt. org/870/5481/Join-ZBA-Meeting

• Join via conference call (audio only): (802)

377-3784 | Conference ID: 480 347 627#

• Public wifi is available at the Essex municipal offices, libraries, and hotspots listed here: https://publicservice.vermont.gov/content/ public-wifi-hotspots-vermont

CONDITIONAL USE: Ryan Nolan & Sam Bellavance: Proposed Light Manufacturing for storage, formulation & packaging of THC products, located at 5(F) David Dr. in the Retail-Business (B1) Zone.

Tax Map 47, Parcel 3, Lot 5.

VARIANCE: Jeff Davis: Proposed variance to return an existing commercial structure back to a singlefamily house located at 6 Carmichael Street, in the MXD-C & B-DC Districts. Tax Map 91, Parcel 3. Visit our website at www.essexvt.org if you have questions or call 802-878-1343.

TOWN OF MIDDLEBURY 77 MAIN STREET, MIDDLEBURY, VT 05753

Invitation for Bids / Instructions to Bidders

You are hereby invited to submit a bid proposal for the implementation of TOWN OF MIDDLEBURY TEEN CENTER ECM UPGRADES. The building is located between the tennis courts and the baseball diamond in The Town of Middlebury Recreation Park, 77 Mary Hogan Drive, Middlebury VT 05753.

Bid Proposal Forms

Your complete and inclusive bid will be received BY 1:00 p.m. on Friday, April 17, 2023.

1) via mail to Bill Kernan at Middlebury Department of Public Works, 1020 Route 7 South, Middlebury VT 05753 - OR -

2) Via email to bkernan@townofmiddlebury.org Cc to judith@harrisandharrisvt.com

All technical questions are to be addressed to the designated Bid Document Contact:

Judith B. Harris Harris & Harris Consulting, Inc.

Phone: 802.922.1321

156 Beaver Meadow Brook Lincoln, VT 05443-8701 judith@harrisandharrisvt.com

All proposals shall stand available for acceptance for a period of sixty (60) days from the date received. Submit all bids only on the forms provided herein, in accordance with bid packages as issued. Voluntary alternates for value engineering and cost and/or time savings are welcomed. Please list these alternates, separately on your letterhead.

PROJECT NAME: Middlebury Teen Center ECM

Upgrades

SUBMITTER’s INFO: NAME & ADDRESS of BIDDER

NAME, TELEPHONE NUMBER, EMAIL ADDRESS OF APPROPRIATE CONTACT

Bids will be opened publicly and read aloud. Final

selection will be made by the Owner’s project team. The project team reserves the right to accept or reject any or all bids, to waive any informalities and irregularities in the bids or bidding, and to accept the one responsive and responsible Bid that in its judgment will be best for the project.

Information for Bidders, Specifications and Bid Forms may be obtained free of charge at the Municipal Building at 77 Main Street, the Department of Public Works at 1020 Route 7 South or on the Town’s webpage at http://www. townofmiddlebury.org/town_notices/. Questions may be addressed to Patti Kirby via email at pkirby@townofmiddlebury.org or by phone at (802) 388-4045.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA FEDERAL ENERGY REGULATORY COMMISSION

Green Mountain Power Corporation Project No. 2513-091

Notice of Application Tendered for Filing With the Commission and Establishing Procedural Schedule for Licensing and Deadline for Submission of Final Amendments (March 6, 2023)

Take notice that the following hydroelectric application has been filed with the Commission and is available for public inspection.

a. Type of Application: New Major License

b. Project No.: 2513-091

c. Date Filed: February 28, 2023

d. Applicant: Green Mountain Power Corporation (GMP)

e. Name of Project: Essex No. 19 Hydroelectric Project f. Location: On the Winooski River in Chittenden County, Vermont. The project does not affect federal lands.

g. Filed Pursuant to: Federal Power Act, 16 U.S.C. §§ 791 (a)-825(r)

h. Applicant Contact: Mr. John Tedesco, Green Mountain Power Corporation, 163 Acorn Lane, Colchester, Vermont 05446; phone: (802) 655-8753 or email at John.Tedesco@greenmountainpower.com.

i. FERC Contact: Michael Tust at (202) 502-6522 or e-mail at michael.tust@ferc.gov. j. This application is not ready for environmental analysis at this time.

k. Project Description: The existing project consists of: (1) a 494-foot-long concrete gravity dam consisting of a 61-foot-high non-overflow concrete abutment section and three overflow spillway sections 46-foot-high and each topped by a 5-foot-high inflatable rubber dam; (2) a 268-acre impoundment; (3) a 78-foot-wide, 36-foot-high concrete intake structure with two concrete wing walls, a steel trashrack with one-inch bar spacing, and an embedded downstream fishway; 4) two 3-foot-diameter steel penstocks and four 9-footdiameter steel penstocks each running parallel to each other and extending underground from the dam to the powerhouse with lengths ranging from 382.9 to 389.3 feet; (5) a 154.6-foot-long, 93.5-foot-wide, and 55.7-foot-high, reinforcedconcrete and brick powerhouse located 400 feet downstream of the intake housing four horizontal Francis-type turbines with an installed capacity of 2,223 kilowatts (kW) each and four horizontal shaft generators rated at 1,800 kilowatts each as well as a double horizontal Francis-type turbine (i.e., minimum flow unit) with an installed capacity of 874 kW connected to a generator rated at 850 kW; (6) a 300-foot-long, 34.5-kilovolt overhead transmission line; and (7) appurtenant facilities. Green Mountain Power Corporation also owns and maintains the following recreation facilities: Overlook Park, an access site to the impoundment,

an access site to the powerhouse tailrace area, and a canoe portage.

The downstream fish passage facility consists of two entrance gates each 3-feet- wide and 7.5-feet long located at the west end of the spillway. One entrance is located near the north end of the intake trashracks and the other is located closer to the center of the intake trashracks. The two entrances feed into a collection chamber behind the trashracks. The two collection chambers are connected via a 54-inch-diameter, 67-foot- long steel pipe which transports fish to an open channel sluice down the adjacent spillway and into a plunge pool. The plunge pool water level is controlled by a concrete weir with a bell-mouthed vertical slot with a 1-foot-wide opening which discharges flow into the bypassed reach.

GMP currently operates the project in a modified daily peaking mode while raising and lowering the impoundment level a maximum of 3 feet but now proposes to operate the project in run-of-river mode year-round while maintaining the impoundment at an elevation of 274.7 feet (under normal flow conditions). GMP would continue to provide minimum flows of 100 cubic feet per second (cfs) or inflow, if less, through the fish passage facility into the bypassed reach from April 15 through June 30 and from September 15 through December 15 and 50 cfs or inflow, if less, into the bypassed reach the remainder the year. The project has an average annual generation of 35,498 megawatt-hours.

l. Location of the Application: In addition to publishing the full text of this notice in the Federal Register, the Commission provides all interested persons an opportunity to view and/or print the contents of this notice, as well as other documents in the proceeding (e.g., license application) via the Internet through the Commission’s Home Page (http://www.ferc.gov) using the “eLibrary” link. Enter the docket number excluding the last three digits in the docket number field to access the document (P-2513). For assistance, contact FERC at FERCOnlineSupport@ferc.gov or call toll-free, (866) 208- 3676 or (202) 502-8659 (TTY).

m. You may also register online at https://ferconline.ferc.gov/FERCOnline.aspx to be notified via email of new filings and issuances related to this or other pending projects.

For assistance, contact FERC Online Support.

n. Procedural Schedule:

The application will be processed according to the following preliminary Hydro Licensing Schedule. Revisions to the schedule may be made as appropriate.

MILESTONE TARGET DATE

Issue Deficiency Letter (if necessary) March 2023

Issue Additional Information Request (if necessary) April 2023

Notice of Acceptance / Notice of Ready for Environmental Analysis August 2023 Filing of recommendations, preliminary terms and conditions, and fishway prescriptions October 2023

o. Final amendments to the application must be filed with the Commission no later than 30 days from the issuance date of the notice of ready for environmental analysis.

Kimberly D. Bose, Secretary.

ATTENTION RECRUITERS:

POST YOUR JOBS AT: JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM/POST-A-JOB

PRINT DEADLINE: NOON ON MONDAYS (INCLUDING HOLIDAYS) FOR RATES & INFO: MICHELLE BROWN, 802-865-1020 X121, MICHELLE@SEVENDAYSVT.COM

YOUR TRUSTED LOCAL SOURCE. JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM

FLORAL MERCHANDISER

Burlington, Milton

PT, 3 mornings per week, approximately 15-20 hours. Fun and flexible job perfect for a creative person who likes to work independently

Please contact Nathalie at the number below: 518-420-3786

2h-SimplyReady071421.indd

Join

VERMONT PUBLIC IS HIRING!

We are Vermont’s unified public media organization (formerly VPR and Vermont PBS), serving the community with trusted journalism, quality entertainment, and diverse educational programming.

Current openings include:

• News Producer, Morning Edition

• Data Journalist

• Digital Producer

• Event Producer

• Production Technician

We believe a strong organization includes employees from a range of backgrounds with different skills, experience, and passions.

To see more openings & apply: vermontpublic.org/careers

Must be able to show proof of COVID-19 vaccination. Vermont

Public is a proud equal opportunity employer.

SEASONAL SOUS CHEF

The Tyler Place Resort in Highgate Springs, Vermont is seeking a creative and energetic Sous Chef passionate about great food and experienced in buffet presentation who can further enhance the Tyler Place’s reputation for fresh, simple, delicious, Vermont-inspired meals. Position begins mid-May through mid-September. Must be able to supervise staff and work one weekend day. Great working conditions, exciting environment and competitive salary. Housing provided, if needed. Please submit cover letter and resume to tasney@tylerplace.com. For more information contact chefdave@tylerplace.com. Or visit tylerplace.com and submit the online application.

Medical Lab Scientists:

Consider Copley’s Alternative Lab Schedule

Spend more time doing what you love:

WORKFLOW AMBASSADOR

Provide administrative support to the Executive Director and act as communications liaison for the Board of Trustees. Candidates must have excellent communication skills, the ability to multi-task, and outstanding problem-solving skills. Along with the ability to manage calendars, processes, and meetings within the organization, the Workflow Ambassador will keep our ED prepared, on time, and up to date. Visit our website for more details:

flynnvt.org/About-Us/ Employment-and-Internship-Opportunities

Email materials to: HResources@flynnvt.org No phone calls, please. EOE

STEWARDSHIP AND DONOR RELATIONS OFFICER

The Institutional Advancement department at Saint Michael’s College invites applications for the Stewardship and Donor Relations Officer position. This role will help strengthen the development program at SMC by cultivating existing relationships and supporting the establishment, retention, and growth of new ones. The Stewardship and Donor Relations Officer will lead and manage initiatives aimed to elevate the SMC donor experience through custom stewardship opportunities such as personalized acknowledgment, scholarship and financial impact reports, and donor events. The successful candidate will facilitate stewardship activities that will educate, engage, inspire, and thank donors for their generosity, in addition to managing stewardship and donor reporting practices that will further the goals of the College and the Institutional Advancement department.

For a complete job description, benefits information, and to apply online, please visit bit.ly/SMCSDRO.

• Work in our lab for two 12-hour weekend shifts and get paid for 36 hours

• Full-time benefits!

• Spend the rest of your time skiing, hiking, bicycling, mountain climbing or dining out in our beautiful region—one of the most beloved in New England Call

WHY NOT HAVE A JOB YOU LOVE?

Plus, have a benefit package that includes 29 paid days off in the first year, a comprehensive health insurance plan with your premium as low as $13 per month, up to $6,000 to go towards medical deductibles and copays, a retirement match, and so much more.

And that’s on top of working at one of the “Best Places to Work in Vermont” for four years running.

Become a Direct Support Professional ($19-$20 per hour) at an award-winning agency serving Vermonters with intellectual disabilities and make a career making a difference.

Apply today at ccs-vt.org/current-openings/.

ATTENTION RECRUITERS:

5th/6th Grade Teacher

Explore opportunities like: Director of Student Accounts

champlain.edu/careers

View opportunities here

REGIONAL MANAGER

HireAbility Vermont is seeking a Regional Manager that will supervise exceptional teams in both the Barre and Morrisville districts. This management position is responsible for day-to-day collaborative supervision and support, staff development, personnel management, and fiscal oversight of a regional budget. The Regional Manager coordinates closely with the HireAbility central office staff, other community-based public and private human services programs as well as local business. Ongoing collaboration with local high schools, training providers and higher education centers is expected.

HireAbility Vermont is committed to a diverse and equitable workforce. We highly encourage people from historically underrepresented groups to apply, including persons with disabilities, LGBTQ+, Black, Indigenous and People of Color. For more information, contact Hib Doe at hibbard.doe@vermont.gov

Location: Barre. Status: Classified, Full Time. Job Id: 46606. Application Deadline: 3/27/2023.

Paid Search Strategists & Software Developers

Are you...

• Looking to join a dynamic and growing team that values a true work-life balance?

• Looking for a job that offers 100% employer-paid health insurance, competitive salary + sign-on bonus, flexible paid vacation, 401k and employer match, gym membership, & more?

If so, check us out!

We are looking to hire Paid Search Strategists as well as Software Developers APPLY NOW! www.instrumart.com/jobs

Waitsfield Elementary School seeks a 5th/6th grade teacher beginning in the 2023-2024 school year. We seek someone empathetic, flexible and resourceful in helping each child to succeed, as well as with solid content knowledge. Successful candidates will demonstrate commitment to studentcentered, inquiry-based teaching, a capacity to differentiate instruction and strong classroom culture-building skills. Experience with Responsive Classroom and/or PBIS is a plus; a joy in working with children is a must.

Waitsfield School is committed to a culture of excellence and inclusivity. We take our work, and our students, but not always ourselves, very seriously.

To apply, send resume, letter of interest, three references, teaching license and transcripts to Principal Kaiya Korb at kkorb@huusd.org

Human Resources Coordinator

Tetra Tech International Development Services is accepting applications for a full-time Human Resources Coordinator. The HR Coordinator supports the Human Resources department by assisting with day-to day operations as well as special projects. This position will be based in our Burlington, VT office location. The position can be hybrid/ remote or fully remote within a commutable distance to the office.

To apply: bit.ly/HRCoordinator2023

Tetra Tech is an equal opportunity employer.

Housing Stewardship Coordinator

Support the long-term sustainability of affordable housing developments across the state as the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board’s Housing Stewardship Coordinator. VHCB offers a competitive salary and generous benefit package. We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and candidates from diverse backgrounds are strongly encouraged to apply. To learn more, visit vhcb.org/about-us/jobs. To apply, reply to jobs@vhcb.org with your cover letter and resume.

CLEANER (3 positions)

ADMISSIONS ASSISTANT

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF FACILITIES

For position details and application process, visit jobs. plattsburgh.edu and select “View Current Openings”

SUNY College at Plattsburgh is a fully compliant employer committed to excellence through diversity.

Highway Foreperson

The Town of Hinesburg is seeking an individual to serve as the Highway Foreperson. This is a supervisory position that is responsible for overseeing the maintenance of the town’s highway infrastructure. A valid VT issued CDL Class A license is required. Required skills include proficient operation of a road grader, excavator, front-end loader, backhoe, and tandem plow truck. The pay is competitive and dependent on qualifications. Benefits include: health, dental and disability insurance; paid time off; pension plan; and 13 paid holidays. To learn more about this opportunity, please contact the Town Manager at todit@ hinesburg.org or 482-4206 For job description and highway employment application, visit: hinesburg.org. The position is open until filled and applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.

Sales Associate

Looking for motivated, reliable, hardworking individuals. Neat and clean appearance. Must be able to communicate well with customers. Must be able to lift at least 50lbs.

Duties include assisting customers, filling phone orders, checking-in and putting away freight, mixing paint, deliveries. 40 hours per week, paid vacations, health insurance.

Send resumes to: vtpaintw@gmail.com 2v-VTPaintCompany031523.indd

4th/5th grade Elementary Educator

Do you...

... value deep thinking?

... welcome creativity?

... advocate for social and environmental justice?

The Schoolhouse Learning Center in S. Burlington has an opening for a teacher in our 4th-5th grade multiage classroom. The ideal candidate enjoys teaching children to be independent, understands child development and is passionate about student-centered education. You should have experience with or a willingness to learn progressive approaches to learning and teaching, and embrace our interdisciplinary, nature-based philosophy. This is an unusual and exciting opportunity to join a team of creative, skilled educators in a progressive school with a 50-year track record of success.

Find out more and apply: www.theschoolhousevt.org/ employment

802-658-4164

MATERIAL HANDLERS

$5,000 Sign On Bonus for Qualified Candidates!

The University of Vermont Medical Center is seeking full-time Material Handlers in Burlington.

RESPONSIBILITIES FOR DISTRIBUTION INCLUDE: Taking orders, delivery, and stocking of supplies for nursing units, and clinics. Responsibilities for Linen include: Taking orders, delivery, and pick up of linen in nursing units, and clinics.

QUALIFICATIONS: High school graduate or equivalent; Must be willing to learn & perform varied tasks & have the flexibility to work various shifts/schedules.

uvmhealthnetworkcareers.org/material-handler

FOOD SERVICE WORKER

Full-time, Part-time and Per-Diem Opportunities available for Food Service Workers. We’re happy to o er a new hourly wage starting at $16.30/ hour. Shift di erentials up to $6.15 per hour.

Learn More & Apply: uvmhealthnetworkcareers.org/ food-service_sevendays

Hot Job Opening

With a 44 year tradition of time-tested craftsmanship in Morrisville, VT, Hearthstone is a worldwide leading manufacturer of home heating stoves and outdoor products. We’re looking for a Production Planner to join our Supply Chain Team. Hearthstone provides competitive pay, great benefits, and a supportive culture. Visit hearthstonestoves.com and/or call 802-851-4238 for details. Resumes welcomed at: jobs@hearthstonestoves.com

LINE COOK

(Full-time opportunities. Come grow with us!)

The Line Cook is responsible for the preparation of nutritious, high quality meals in a high volume environment. External candidates are eligible for a one-time signing bonus of $4,000.

How we support our team: Preferred schedule; evening shifts end by 8:30pm; every other weekend o ; higher pay for evening/weekend shifts (option to work all weekends to earn more); tuition reimbursement to support education and advancement; great benefits — including health insurance, retirement savings, counseling services and wellness; opportunities for career advancement within the organization; paid sick time, holidays and vacation.

Learn more and apply: uvmhealthnetworkcareers.org/linecook_sevendays

CHIEF OF FIELD SERVICES

The City of Burlington Department of Burlington Electric is hiring for a Chief of Field Services! The Chief of Field Services coordinates all BED Right of Way (ROW) and Line Extension activities. This position is also responsible for coordinating and providing directions to metering, troubleshooters, underground cable locators, field inspectors, and outside electrical contractors. The ideal candidate will have extensive experience managing teams, working with customers, and developing and implementing e cient and e ective processes. The position requires e ective collaboration with community members, external partners and stakeholders, and other BED sta . This is a unioned, non-exempt position, and we are o ering $28.74-$52.04 hourly and a generous benefits package. Apply today! Women and minorities are encouraged to apply.

To learn more & apply for this position, please visit: governmentjobs.com/careers/burlingtonvt

WOMEN, MINORITIES AND PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES ARE HIGHLY ENCOURAGED TO APPLY. EOE.

PRINT DEADLINE: NOON ON MONDAYS (INCLUDING HOLIDAYS)

FOR RATES & INFO: MICHELLE BROWN, 802-865-1020 X121, MICHELLE@SEVENDAYSVT.COM

Business Support Generalist

Perform routine to moderately complex and specialized financial and HR activities in support of the Department of Molecular Physiology & Biophysics. Administer accounting practices of all budgets and financial records in support of University financial systems. Review, analyze, and reconcile all department and grant budgets. Perform finance and budget transactions (across all funds). Ensure compliance with University and regulatory provisions. Prepare monthly financial reports. Maintain confidentiality in financial and HR matters and use judgement in determining individual work tasks, methods and priorities.

Qualifications: Proficiency in word-processing and electronic spreadsheets for generating accounting reports (Microsoft Office). Effective interpersonal communication, attention to details, and organizational skills required. Ability to manage multiple tasks and set priorities.

Apply online: uvmjobs.com/postings/61199

JOIN THE TEAM AT GARDENER’S SUPPLY!

Through gardening, our customers control their access to safe and a ordable food, and grow food to share with their neighbors. At Gardener’s Supply, we are committed to doing everything we can to help our customers keep gardening, but we need your help.

We’re hiring for SEASONAL POSITIONS AT ALL LOCATIONS:

•Pick/Pack customer orders at our DISTRIBUTION CENTER IN MILTON

•Provide exceptional customer service in our CALL CENTER - Remote options available

• Help customers with their gardening needs at our WILLISTON & BURLINGTON, VT GARDEN CENTERS

We are 100% employee-owned and a Certi ed B Corporation. We o er strong cultural values, competitive wages and outstanding bene ts (including a tremendous discount!). Please go to our careers page at www.gardeners.com/careers and apply online!

Are you looking for an innovative, dynamic and collaborative place to work?

Join us to offer a holistic and developmentally-aligned education to meet the students of today.

Open Positions:

• First Grade Teacher

• Kindergarten Assistant

• Education Support Specialist

• School Counselor

lakechamplainwaldorfschool.org

Development Coordinator

30-40 hours per week

Yestermorrow Design/Build School is seeking a talented, selfmotivated individual to bring our development e orts to the next level. This person will work closely with the Executive Director to cultivate existing donor relationships and to provide insight, direction and leadership to our school’s fundraising initiatives, which include special events, major gifts, grant writing and more.  Prior fundraising experience, especially at a nonprofit, is required. Experience organizing events and coordinating volunteers is preferred. Some remote work available.

Base Pay Starting at $23/hour plus generous benefit package. For a more detailed job description visit our website at yestermorrow.org/jobs

Manufacturer of custom truck bodies is looking for career minded, talented individuals

to grow along with the company.

Open Positions: Monday-Friday 7am-3:30pm (40 hours)

IMMEDIATE HIRE!

MIG WELDERS: Experienced, to join our production line. Accurately read work orders, ability to read and interpret drawings from customers and salespeople. Lay out, position, align, and secure parts prior to assembly. Solid math skills, ability to lift 75 lbs.

MECHANIC: To upfit cab & chassis with various truck body types. Hydraulic experience desirable. Install wiring for lights & equipment per specifications. Fit and weld replacement parts into place, using wrenches and welding equipment, and other tools. High school diploma or equivalent required.

PAINT TECHNICIAN: To assist lead painter. Auto body paint experience a big plus.

PREP WORKERS: Prepping truck bodies for painting which includes sandblasting/sanding as part of the prep work. Experience preferred but will train the right candidate.

HANDYMAN/JANITOR: Looking for someone to perform janitorial cleaning work in shop and office, general small repairs and light groundskeeping. Knowledge of chemicals & solvents. Driver's license required.

ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT: This position will support the activities of the accounting, receiving and sales departments. Responsibilities include, not limited to; answer multiple phone lines, greet customers, data entry, filing, purchase order receiving, and other various office duties as assigned. Previous office experience required. Monday-Friday 8:00am to 4:30pm (40 hours)

Company Benefits Include: Health Insurance w/company contribution, 401K w/company match to 5%, Paid Vacation, Paid Holidays, Paid Life Insurance/AD&D, Short Term, Long Term Disability Paid Sick Time

Forward resume to: joannef@iroquoismfg.com, or apply in person: Iroquois Mfg. Co., 695 Richmond Rd. Hinesburg, VT

MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN YOUR COMMUNITY!

Open positions around the state serving with non-profit organizations

land stewardship

environmental education

homelessness + housing assistance

homebuyer education

Apply now!

3-month and 6-month positions available!

vhcb.org/americorps

During your service term, you’ll receive:

• Living Allowance

• Education Award

• Health Insurance

• Training Opportunities

• Leadership Development

Hey! Are you fast, focused, and FUN and want to work with other like-minded highly creative people?

Come work with us!

FOOD PREP COOK

Details and to apply: bit.ly/3YbgWox

GUEST SERVICES

CREW MEMBER

Details and to apply: bit.ly/3IsE9g0

ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATORS

The Keewaydin Environmental Education Center (KEEC) is seeking environmental educators for our spring session beginning April 16th running through June 2nd.

RESPONSIBILITIES: Teach & work with small groups of 5th & 6th grade students Monday through Friday, in 5-day, 4 night, residential program focusing on human, plant and animal communities. Lead intensive field investigations & evening programs in natural science, local history, human impact, and land-use. Other responsibilities include daily dining hall meals and bi-weekly overnights in student cabins.

COMPENSATION: $500/week plus room & board. Staff housing is in simplistic wood cabins close to the lake.

Email Tim Tadlock via tim@keewaydin.org for more information or to apply.

MANUFACTURING TEAM MEMBER

Super Thin Saws, of Waterbury, VT, manufactures precision circular sawblades and similar tooling, primarily for the woodworking industry. We are seeking highly motivated individuals to work and grow in our manufacturing operation.

Candidates must be mechanically inclined. Previous experience with measuring tools such as micrometers, calipers, and dial indicators is desired. We will provide training to successful candidates.

Super Thin Saws provides excellent benefits, including medical, good pay, and flexible work hours.

To apply: please send your resume to bookkeeping@ superthinsaws.com or call 802-244-8101

OPERATIONS SUPPORT

True North Wilderness Program is seeking Operations Support people. The ideal candidate is an adaptable team player with a positive attitude who is willing to work both indoors and outdoors performing a variety of tasks associated with the logistics of running our program. Tasks including food packing and rationing, gear outfitting, transportation and facilities maintenance. Candidates must be willing to work weekends and occasional evenings.

A clean and valid driver’s license is required. Competitive salary and comprehensive benefits offered. Benefits include health, dental, vision and accident insurance, an employee assistance program, a Wellness Fund, student loan repayment reimbursement, and a SIMPLE IRA.

Please apply at: truenorthwilderness.com

PRODUCTION TECHNICIAN

Imio is looking for a Production Technician to increase the output of our novel microbial inoculants that we have developed to increase sustainability and reduce environmental harm in the agriculture industry.

On an average day, you’ll...

• Propagate, culture, and harvest microbes, working closely with the Senior Production Manager

• Prepare and ship products to customers

• Document each production run

• Wash and sterilize glassware and microbial media

• Collaborate & communicate with the scientific & business teams

Requirements:

• B.S. in a scientific field

• Experience with sterile technique, 5S/Lean Manufacturing, microbes, and/or brewing is a bonus

• Currently living in or willing to relocate to the Burlington, VT area

View full job description: linkedin.com/jobs/view/3521893342

To learn more about our values, mission & team, visit us at imio.co

Imio is an equal opportunity employer and includes “Diversity is Excellence” as a core value. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

BEHAVIORAL HEALTH PROGRAM MANAGER

Are you an experienced LICSW or LCMHC interested in advancing your career? Are you motivated by mission-minded work supporting quality healthcare for all? Community Health Centers is seeking a Behavioral Health Program Manager to join our team at Riverside Health Center in Burlington, VT! This position provides administrative and clinical oversight to a tight-knit team of Licensed Social Workers. This role operates in partnership with CHC’s Director of Mental Health and Substance Use Services and ensures our community of patients receives high quality care. Compensation is commensurate with experience within the range of $76,948-$98,651 annually.

Learn more and apply online at: chcb.org/careers

We are an equal employment opportunity employer, and are especially interested in candidates who can contribute to the diversity and excellence of the organization.

ATTENTION RECRUITERS:

Mobile Home Program

ENERGY SERVICES ENGINEER

The City of Burlington Department of Burlington Electric is hiring for an Energy Services Engineer! The Net Zero Energy Services Engineer works to advance the City of Burlington’s Net Zero Energy (NZE) goals by helping customers identify opportunities to further energy efficiency and fossil fuel reductions in buildings. This position is responsible for working with Burlington’s residential and small commercial customers, and with the Burlington energy professional community, in delivering BED’s Net Zero Energy (NZE) programs, including energy efficiency, beneficial electrification of space heating and domestic hot water systems, energy codes and City ordinances that help to advance NZE goals. The position requires effective collaboration with community members, external partners and stakeholders & other BED staff.

We encourage applicants who can contribute to our growing diversity. We offer a comprehensive benefits package & the salary range for this position is $76,085.60 - $84,908.54 annually.

To learn more & apply for this position, please visit: bit.ly/BTVElectricESE

We are an equal opportunity employer and we encourage applicants who can contribute to our growing diversity.

Join the team at the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board (VHCB), an innovative and award-winning organization working to ensure affordable housing, farmland, jobs, and recreational assets for every generation of Vermonters. Several

Housing Stewardship Coordinator

Clean Water Program Director

Communications Director

Housing and Community Development Specialist

Conservation Stewardship Assistant

Excellent comprehensive benefits package including health care plan, dental coverage, life insurance, long- and short-term disability insurance, retirement plan, generous paid time off, employee assistance program, and more.

VHCB is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Candidates from diverse backgrounds are strongly encouraged to apply. To read position descriptions and apply, visit vhcb.org/about-us/jobs

Resident Organizer

CVOEO’s Mobile Home Program is seeking an experienced, energetic, and committed individual with a high degree of initiative to join our team.

We are looking for a motivated, problem-solver to provide education, support and outreach to residents of Vermont’s mobile home parks. Our ideal candidate will have the ability to work closely with our clients and community demonstrating strong communication & facilitation skills as well as learning & maintaining a working knowledge of related statutes & regulations.

Please visit cvoeo.org/ careers to submit cover letter, resume, and three work references.

Landscape Gardener

FINANCIAL SERVICES – AP LEAD AND PAYROLL SPECIALIST

The Green Mountain Higher Education Consortium (GMHEC) located in Shelburne, Vt. provides strategic human resource and financial services to three outstanding Vermont institutions, Champlain College, Middlebury College, and Saint Michael's College. The consortium is hiring for two positions: a Financial Services–Accounts Payable (FS-AP) Lead and a Payroll Specialist.

The AP Lead coordinates and prioritizes the work of the AP Team and ensures the team is providing a consistently high level of customer service to our member institutions.

The Lead is also responsible for ensuring strong communication and coordination, and a high level of service with vendors.

The Lead reports to the GMHEC Chief Operating O cer.

The Payroll Specialist serves as a member of the GMHEC Payroll Team working collaboratively with our member institutions to run regular bi-weekly payroll processes. This includes data analytics, payroll validation, overall payroll preparation and processing. The Payroll Specialist reports to the Payroll Shared Services Leader. Come visit gmhec.org to learn more about these two positions and the Green Mountain Higher Education Consortium, or submit a cover letter and resume to careers@gmhec.org.

We look forward to meeting you and sharing our story.

DIGITAL PRINT TECHNICIAN

Full Time

Light-Works, a locally owned visual communications production company in our 46th year, is looking for a detail oriented, full-time Digital Print Technician to join our team of highly skilled imaging professionals. Please email a resume to scott@lightworksvt.com

The ideal candidate will be a trouble-shooting expert who can take our client’s artwork and print accurately with our well-known photographic quality to various wide format devices. You will be operating and maintaining state-of-theart wide format flatbed and roll-to-roll printing equipment.

As a Digital Print Technician at Light-Works, you will be using the latest printing technology to help our clients effectively create and produce high-quality exhibit and display graphics, panels, and much more. There are new and different project challenges every day.

For a full job description, go to jobs.sevendaysvt.com

Light-Works, Inc.

1 Tigan St, Winooski, VT 05404 www.lightworksvt.com

Mama’s Gardens is a garden maintenance and installation company working in Grand Isle County at homes both large and small. We have full-time and part-time openings for gardeners/ laborers for the 2023 season beginning April 3 and ending approximately November 3.

Duties include: Mulching, weeding, pruning, edging, digging, planting, watering and general garden maintenance. Prior experience working in the horticultural field is highly desirable. Knowledge of plant id, weeding and deadheading practices is a plus.

Applicants must be able to lift 50 lbs. Applicants must have reliable transportation. The ability to work independently as well as with others is key. Send resumes to: mamasgardens@gmail.com

Lead Software Engineer – positions offered by Cox Automotive Corporate Services, LLC (Burlington, VT). Mnge prjcts & prjct teams to desgn, devlp, maintain, test, & docmnt complex & tech challenging web-based apps across major prgram/product areas to enhance the performnce & reliability of current apps. Defne prdct reqs, incld’g capabilities & feats, to ensure tech constncy & quality across the company’s funcl apps. Position reports to office in Burlington, VT. Position may work from home, but must live within commuting distance of stated office. Please apply via email at: GM_ Recruiting@coxautoinc.com Reference job code CAI-0234. EOE.

Multiple Positions Now Open!

Hayward Tyler, a leading manufacturer of industrial pumps & motors in Colchester, is seeking candidates to fill the following positions:

PROJECT

MANAGER

haywardtyler.com/job_listing/project-manager/

MECHANICAL DESIGN & SUPPORT ENGINEER

haywardtyler.com/job_listing/ mechanical-design-support-engineer/

TECHNICAL SERVICES ENGINEER

haywardtyler.com/job_listing/ technical-services-engineer/

MECHANICAL DESIGNER

haywardtyler.com/job_listing/mechanical-designer/

ELECTRO-MECHANICAL ENGINEER

haywardtyler.com/job_listing/ electro-mechanical-engineer/

LEAD AFTERMARKET DESIGN ENGINEER

haywardtyler.com/job_listing/ lead-aftermarket-design-engineer/

We offer a competitive salary and excellent benefits package. If you meet our requirements and are interested in an exciting opportunity, please forward your resume & salary requirements to:

Hayward Tyler, Inc. – Attn: HR Department

480 Roosevelt Highway PO Box 680, Colchester, VT 05446

Email: Careers@haywardtyler.com

Equal Opportunity Employer

Operations Manager

Seeking Sales Representative

Front Porch Forum is seeking an experienced operations lead to join our growing mission-driven team of two dozen Vermont staff. Full-time and remote + Burlington office hybrid. Help us fulfill our community-building mission.

Learn more and apply:

Front Porch Forum is growing and we’re hiring a full-time person to meet the increased demand for our advertising space. Work directly with a professional, supportive sales team and Vermont businesses. Help FPF in fulfilling its community-building mission. Primarily remote with an office in Burlington. Deadline to apply is March 19, 2023.

Learn more and apply at: bit.ly/FPFsalesRep

https://frontporchforum.com/ about-us/careers-at-fpf

COMMUNITY BANKERS: CHITTENDEN COUNTY BUILDERS | MAKERS | DOERS

There is no better time to join NSB’s team!

Northfield Savings Bank, founded in 1867, is the largest banking institution headquartered in Vermont. We are committed to providing a welcoming work environment for all. Are you looking to start or continue a career in the finance industry? Consider joining our team as a Community Banker!

JOB

RESPONSIBILITIES & REQUIREMENTS:

This frontline position is crucial in creating a positive, welcoming and inclusive experience for NSB customers. The successful candidate will have exceptional customer service and communication skills. The Community Banker will be responsible for receiving and processing customers’ financial transactions as well as opening and maintaining customer accounts and services. We are looking for someone who can develop and maintain relationships with our valued customers, protect bank and customer information, and uphold customer confidentiality.

A high school diploma, general education degree (GED), or equivalent is required. If you have customer service, previous cash handling, or banking experience we encourage you to apply!

OPPORTUNITY FOR GROWTH:

NSB has training opportunities to engage employees and assist with professional development within our company. The average years of service for an NSB employee is 9! If you’re looking for a career in an environment that promotes growth, join our team!

WHAT NSB CAN OFFER YOU:

Competitive compensation based on experience. Well-rounded benefits package. Profit-Sharing opportunity. Excellent 401(k) matching retirement program. Commitment to professional development. Opportunities to volunteer and support our communities. Work-Life balance! We understand the importance of having evenings and weekends with our friends, families, and our community.

Please send your application with resume in confidence to: Careers@nsbvt.com

Or by Mail: Northfield Savings Bank Human Resources

P.O. Box 7180, Barre, VT 05641-7180

Equal Opportunity Employer / Member FDIC

Complete Our Team!

Be part of the team for an engaging autistic young adult man who is athletic, mobile, and sings like a charm. Community activities, home support, personal care and communication partner with educational goals is the arena of which you will be working in. A great schedule that works for you and the team.

The monthly schedule provides plenty of time off yet is most productive for this individual.

The work week rotates in this manner Tuesday through Friday 8:30 am to 4:00 pm (4 day week). Week 2 is two full days with one overnight, arriving at 8:00 am and ending the following day at 5:00 pm. So it is 2 days (33 hours) with 5 days off . The weeks would rotate in this manner. Plenty of time for your other interests while contributing to a very important job. We especially value people with experience in human services or like-minded fields with a high moral compass. Must be COVID vaccinated and boosted, and have an excellent driving record. A van to transport the client is provided. Pay is $35/hour. Note: more hours are available if desired. College degree preferred. Both your resume and a cover letter are required. Excellent training and support provided. In the cover letter indicate what prompted you to apply for this job and detail any personal experiences that bolster your qualifications. nbgteamvt@gmail.com

Isle La Motte Vineyards FOOD TRUCKS

All food trucks, and/or licensed caterers. Isle La Motte Vineyard is interested in partnering with a food service business for various events on our vineyard. We're hosting two concerts and two artisan markets this summer and would love to feature your food business as part of our festivities.

Please see the following dates and times:

June 24th, 5-8:00 pm;

July 22nd, 1-5:00 pm;

August 19th, 5-8:00 pm

September 2nd, 1-5:00 pm. We'd love to hear from you: 503-317-4419 islelamottevineyard@gmail.com

Visitor Services Coordinator

Henry Sheldon Museum, Middlebury, VT

The Henry Sheldon Museum seeks a hands-on Visitor Services Coordinator to join its dynamic team. Reporting to the Business Operations Manager, the Visitor Services Coordinator ensures the delivery of high-quality visitor services, manages the store, coordinates events, ensuring an exceptional visitor experience in accordance with the mission of a small active cultural community museum in the vibrant college town of Middlebury, Vermont. henrysheldonmuseum.org

We Did It Again!

We Did It Again!

Business Manager

Vermont Natural Resources Council (VNRC) has an exciting opportunity for a motivated and detail-oriented individual to manage and strengthen the accounting, record keeping, financial reporting and operations of VNRC and its sibling organization Vermont Conservation Voters (VCV). The Business Manager assists the Executive Director in overseeing all financial, administrative, human resource and operations functions of the organization. The position also serves as secretary to the Board of Directors and provides administrative support to other staff as needed.

Interested candidates should send a letter of interest, resume, and three references to jobs@ henrysheldonmuseum.org

We are committed to cultivating an inclusive work and learning environment and look for future team members who share that same value. The Henry Sheldon Museum is an equal opportunity employer.

Join Our Auction Team

We offer competitive wages & a full benefits package for full time employees. No auction experience necessary.

OPEN POSITIONS:

CCS is thrilled to be voted as one of the “Best Places to Work in Vermont” for the fifth year in a row and we would love to have you as part of our team.

CCS is thrilled to be voted as one of the “Best Places to Work in Vermont” for the fifth year in a row and we would love to have you as part of our team.

Join Us!

The successful candidate is able to work collaboratively in a busy work-environment; knowledgeable about nonprofit and government accounting and operations, including Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP); proficient in QuickBooks, Microsoft Office and Google Workspace; able to plan, organize and prioritize tasks in order to complete assignments and meet deadlines; possesses excellent communication and relationship-building skills and a demonstrated ability to work with a variety of internal and external stakeholders; has a passion for protecting the environment and Vermont’s people and communities; and shares a belief that individuals working together can effect positive change. Experience with grants management and employee benefits is a plus. Find the full job description, salary and benefits at vnrc.org/join-our- team.

Join Us!

Work at CCS and support our mission to build a community where everyone participates and belongs.

Apply today at www.ccs-vt.org

Work at CCS and support our mission to build a community where everyone participates and belongs.

Apply today at www.ccs-vt.org

Champlain Community Services, Inc.

VNRC is an Equal Opportunity Employer and strongly encourages applications from candidates whose identities have been historically underrepresented in the environmental movement, including people who identify as Black, Indigenous, Hispanic or Latino, Asian or Pacific Islander, or people of color; people from marginalized economic backgrounds; and people living with disabilities. We invite candidates with any combination of academic, professional, and life experience who can demonstrate outstanding ability and commitment to financial and administrative management.

This is a full-time position based in our Montpelier, Vermont office. To apply, email a letter of interest, resume and three references to aconnizzo@vnrc.org by Friday, April 14, 2023. Letters should be addressed to Brian Shupe, Executive Director.

• Sales & Marketing Director: Develop, grow, & sustain our forty-fouryear brand reputation of providing amazing results for our commercial, auto, and real estate clients. Have experience in email, print, & digital marketing? Adobe Creative Cloud & Microsoft Office skills are essential, web & SEO knowledge a huge plus. Bring your knowledge and passion, you’ll find something to explore - we sell it all!

Thomas Hirchak Company is an at will employer. See details at: THCAuction.com

Email Us: Info@THCAuction.com

GLOBALFOUNDRIES, a semiconductor manuf & tech co. seeks the following in Essex Junction, VT: SMTS Customer Engineering #JR-2201641: Build strong relationships with customer technical teams and establish a channel for effective communication. Work within a cross-functional team to execute on customer’s product requirements and deliver functional silicon that meets the customer’s requirements. Apply at http://www.globalfoundries.com/, US Careers, & search by requisition #.

Help Vermonters pursue their education goals!

Senior Web Developer

The Senior web developer’s role is to lead in the defining, development, testing, analysis, deployment and maintenance of new and existing software applications in support of the achievement of business goals.

Responsibilities include:

• Perform high level analysis, design, and programming for various corporate systems, including system needs analysis and process automation.

• Collaborate and lead business users and other team members throughout the software development lifecycle.

• Research emerging application development products, languages, and standards, and present recommendations and findings to key stakeholders.

Ideal candidate will have:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Web development, software engineering or related field, and a proven track record of technical proficiency and collaborating with technical personnel and end-users alike. Nondegree certificate with commensurate business experience may be considered in lieu of a formalized education.

• 3+ years of related work experience, such as in web development, software engineering or programming

Educational Opportunities Counselor

VSAC is searching for an experienced full-time Educational Opportunity Counselors that will primarily serve the towns of Montpelier, Barre, and Morrisville.

Educational Opportunity Counselors are an essential part of our mission driven team at VSAC. This role assists adults with educational, career, and financial aid information and counseling to aid them in their pursuit of post-secondary education.

The ideal candidate will have excellent communication and organizational skills; knowledge of adult and career development; awareness of postsecondary options and financial aid; an understanding of the needs of first-generation college going adults with financial barriers served through VSAC’s Outreach Programs; and ability to work with groups, develop presentations, and collaborate with college and agency personnel.

Qualified candidate will have a combination of education and experience such as a Master’s degree in counseling, education, or related field or commensurate professional experience and education.

Apply: asp1.humanic.com/pls/vsac/hapss_index.apss

LITIGATION PARALEGAL

Sheehey Furlong & Behm, an established, growing law firm located near the Burlington waterfront, is accepting applications for an experienced litigation paralegal.  The successful candidate will be detailoriented, possess strong written, verbal and research skills as well as the ability to work in a fast-paced environment. Proficiency in MS Office applications is required. 1-3 years of legal experience is preferred. Competitive pay and comprehensive benefits package offered.

Forward cover letter and resume to hiring@ sheeheyvt.com, subject “Litigation Paralegal.”

DIRECTOR OF FINANCIAL OPERATIONS

The City of Burlington Department of Clerk/Treasurer is hiring for a Director of Financial Operations! The Director of Financial Operations (DFO) shall be responsible for budgeting, accounting, purchasing, payroll, capital projects, and grants management for the City, as well as supervising all financial staff and supporting all governing bodies. This is a highly responsible professional and administrative position involving planning, organizing, conducting, and directing the activities of the financial operations of the Office of the Clerk/Treasurer within the City.

The position requires effective collaboration, strategic thinking, strong communication, team management, analytical skills, financial expertise, risk management, change management, and relationship-building skills. This is a non-union exempt position, and we are offering $112,934.00 - $140,162.00 annually and a generous benefits package. Apply today! Women and minorities are encouraged to apply.

The City of Burlington is an E.O.E.

To learn more and apply for this position, please visit: https://bit.ly/BTVclerkDFO

STAFF ATTORNEYS

Vermont Legal Aid seeks full-time Staff Attorneys for our Elder Law Project, Medical-Legal Partnership, Mental Health Law Project, and Victims’ Rights Project

We encourage applicants from a broad range of backgrounds, and welcome information about how your experience can contribute to serving our diverse client communities. Applicants are encouraged to share in their cover letter how they can further our goals of social justice and individual rights. We are an equal opportunity employer committed to a discrimination-and-harassment-free workplace. Please see our Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion: vtlegalaid.org/commitment-diversity-inclusion

General responsibilities: interview prospective clients, assess legal problems, and identify legal advice; individual and systems advocacy in a variety of forums on behalf of clients; conduct factual investigations and analysis; legal research; prepare briefs and argue appeals; become proficient in law handled by the specific law project.

See vtlegalaid.org/work-at-vla for job description details and vtlegalaid.org/our-projects for specific project information.

Starting salary is $59,800+, with additional salary credit given for relevant prior work experience. Four weeks paid vacation and retirement, as well as excellent health benefits. Attorney applicants must be licensed to practice law in Vermont, eligible for admission by waiver, or have passed the UBE with a Vermont passing score. In-state travel in a personal vehicle required.

Application deadline is March 28, 2023. Positions open until filled. Your application should include a cover letter and resume, bar status, writing sample, and at least three professional references with contact information, sent as a single PDF.

Send your application by e-mail to hiring@vtlegalaid.org, include in the subject line your name, which project(s) you are applying for, and April 2023. Please let us know how you heard about this position.

JOB TRAINING. WELL DONE.

Join the Community Kitchen Academy!

Community Kitchen Academy (CKA) is a 9-week job training program featuring: Hands on learning, national ServSafe certification, job placement support and meaningful connections to community. Plus... the tuition is FREE and weekly stipends are provided for income eligible students!

At CKA you’ll learn from professional chefs in modern commercial kitchens and graduate with the skills and knowledge to build a career in food service, food systems and other related fields. Throughout the 9-week course, you’ll develop and apply new skills by preparing food that would otherwise be wasted. The food you cook is then distributed through food shelves and meal sites throughout the community. CKA is a program of the Vermont Foodbank, operated in partnership with Capstone Community Action in Barre and Feeding Chittenden in Burlington. Next sessions start April 3rd in Barre and July 17th in Burlington.

APPLY ONLINE: vtfoodbank.org/cka

FOOD SERVICE MANAGER

Meals on Wheels of Lamoille County is looking for an individual to manage their nutrition program. We are willing to train a motivated individual with 3 character references and some food service experience. This may be the perfect job for someone newly retired with food service experience.

We have an eight-week cycle menu that meets nutrition requirements. On average, we prepare approximately 200 meals daily, Monday through Friday. The job includes maintaining a budget, placing food orders, working with local gleaners and farms, helping to develop standardized recipe practices and menu development, implementing and following food safety procedures, overseeing the activities of workers, including volunteers, and most importantly, having a hands-on approach with daily activities including cooking, packaging, and cleaning.

Physical Requirements: Close vision, distance vision, peripheral vision, depth perception, and the ability to adjust focus, with or without corrective lenses. Ability to reach, bend, stoop, push and/or pull, and frequently lift to 35 pounds and occasionally lift/move 50 pounds. Significant walking or other means of mobility. Ability to work in a standing position for long periods of time (up to 8 hours).

Benefits: 401(k) match, paid time off, flexible spending account, competitive salary based on experience, slip-resistant shoes, 1 shift meal, health reimbursement, no weekends or holidays. Application Email: meals@mowlc.org

• MED TECH/RESIDENT ASSISTANT

11pm – 7am

Monday, Tuesday, Friday & Saturday (32 hours a week)

• RESIDENT ASSISTANT

7am – 10am & 6pm – 9pm every other Saturday & Sunday

To apply, please send resume to: hr@thegaryresidence.com

Or download our application: bit.ly/ApplicationWVMGH and mail it to:

Human Resources

The Gary Residence 149 Main St., Montpelier, VT 05602

Program Support Generalist

UVM AHEC Educational Loan Repayment Programs For Healthcare Professionals

Provide administrative support for the Office of Primary Care and Area Health Education Centers (AHEC) Program and its Vermont Educational Loan Repayment Programs for Healthcare Professionals. Provide exceptional internal and external customer service. This position requires attention to detail and ability to work within deadlines. Ability to exercise discretion when working with confidential or sensitive information is required. Apply online: uvmjobs.com/ postings/59015

DIRECTOR OF PROPERTY MANAGEMENT

ACCT, Addison County’s leading nonprofi t affordable housing developer and manager, is seeking a Director of Property Management (DPM) to lead our portfolio of over 750 units of permanently affordable housing, including apartments, mobile home parks, and shared equity homes. The DPM is responsible for overseeing all aspects of property operations, including leasing and compliance, maintenance and capital needs, capital planning, mobile home park management, cost controls, lease enforcement, and monitoring the financial performance of the portfolio. Bachelor’s degree required, property management experience preferred. Strong management, supervisory, and technology skills are musts. Send cover letter and resume to elise@addisontrust.org.

STAFF ACCOUNTANT

Immediate opening for a full-time Staff Accountant. Reporting to the Finance Director, the Staff Accountant is a critical member of the Finance Team supporting ACCT’s organizational finances as well as financial management for approx. two dozen affordable housing entities including apartments and mobile home parks. The Staff Accountant is responsible for ACCT’s internal financial reporting which includes cash disbursements, cash receipts, general ledger entries, and bank reconciliations. At least 2-4 years of accounting experience required; a Bachelor’s degree in Accounting is strongly preferred. Must be detail oriented, self-directed and capable of working independently and efficiently in a fast-paced team setting. The position may be required to work extra hours from time to time to meet financial statement and audit deadlines. Email resume with cover letter to jobs@addisontrust.org

ACCT is an equal opportunity employer and committed to advancing Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in housing opportunities and within our organization. Learn more about our job openings, including our competitive salary and benefi ts package, at www.addisontrust.org/careers

Rewarding Job Openings

Personal Care Attendants

Active group of disabled individuals is seeking Personal Care Attendants. We each have our own apartments in one South Burlington building. Responsibilities include transferring, assistance with toileting, bathing, dressing, meal prep and light housekeeping. Must be able to lift 50 pounds, have reliable transportation, and have a background check. Care giving experience is helpful but not necessary. We will train the right candidate. Full- and Part-time positions for daytime and evening shifts. Starting hourly rate is $20. We share employees by careful scheduling to support our ability to remain active in our community.

If interested, please respond to Jeff Rhodes, 802-338-1522

DEVELOPMENT & COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR

South Hero Land Trust seeks 32 hr/week Development & Communications Director to lead coordinated fundraising strategy and implement multi-platform strategic communications plan to increase giving and community engagement. Collaborative, creative story-teller and passionate fundraiser? Apply today at shlt.org/jobs. EOE. We invite people of all backgrounds and life experiences to apply. Starting salary $44,000. Open until filled, interviews begin 3/20.

HQS INSPECTIONS TEAM LEAD

Are you interested in a job that helps your community and makes a difference in people’s lives every day? Consider joining Burlington Housing Authority in Burlington, VT. We’re seeking candidates to continue BHA’s success in promoting innovative solutions that address housing instability challenges facing our diverse population of low-income families and individuals.

We’re looking for a HQS Inspections Team Lead to work as a liaison with landlords and participants to resolve ongoing HQS challenges, provide oversight to all aspects of HQS inspections activities, and coordinate inspections in accordance with HUD regulations. The HQS Team Leader also provides day-to-day supervision and support to HQS Inspectors, ensuring that they have the training and supplies needed to complete their tasks. This is a full time (40 hours per week) position.

The ideal candidate will have an Associate’s Degree in business, public administration, or other related fields. Formal education may be substituted for extensive previous, relevant program administrative experience. Three years of direct supervisory experience is preferred. Candidates should have considerable knowledge of building construction systems, including structure, wiring, plumbing, heating, fire safety and equipment, and energy efficiency measures, including lighting, insulation, air sealing, indoor air quality, maintenance, repair and upgrading of buildings and systems.

Exceptional communication and customer service skills, attention to details, and an ability to work independently is also required. Sensitivity to the needs of elderly, disabled and low-income housing is a must.

This position requires a valid state motor vehicle operator license, a reliable vehicle, as well as the ability to meet the physical requirements of the position, including continual standing, twisting, squatting, and climbing stairs. Candidates must be able to work well in all environments, including exposure to outside weather conditions, unsanitary apartments, attics, basements, cramped areas, and other adverse conditions.

Burlington Housing Authority serves a diverse population of tenants and partners with a variety of community agencies. To most effectively carry out our vision of delivering safe and affordable housing to all, we are committed to cultivating a staff that reflects varied lived experiences, viewpoints, and educational histories. Therefore, we strongly encourage candidates from diverse racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds, persons with disabilities, LGBTQ individuals, and women to apply. Multilingualism is a plus!

BHA offers a competitive salary, commensurate with qualifications and experience. Our robust benefit package includes premium medical insurance with a health reimbursement account, dental, vision, short and long term disability, 10% employer funded retirement plan, 457 retirement plan, accident insurance, life insurance, cancer and critical illness insurance.

We provide a generous time off policy including 12 days of paid time off and 12 days of sick time in the first year. In addition to the paid time off, Burlington Housing Authority recognizes 13 (paid) holidays. Interested in this career opportunity?

Send a cover letter and resume to: humanresources@burlingtonhousing.org

BHA is an Equal Opportunity Employer

Right People. Right Business. RIGHT JOB FOR YOU!

Rhino is hiring like crazy to meet the summer demand for all our delicious products and we need you to join us!

If you are hired in an hourly role for our Production, Distribution, Maintenance and Sanitation Teams, Rhino will pay YOU $2,000 on your 6-month anniversary!

Check out our website for all job listings, which include:

Production 3rd shift, $18.50/hr.

Maintenance Techs 1st & 3rd shifts, $20-$35/hr DOE

Earn some “Dough” at Rhino Foods!

Please see more on these openings on our career page at rhinofoods.com/about-rhino-foods/jobs-and-careers

*Rhino Foods does run sex offender checks on all employees

Engaging minds that change the world

Seeking a position with a quality employer? Consider The University of Vermont, a stimulating and diverse workplace. We offer a comprehensive benefit package including tuition remission for on-going, full-time positions.

Boiler/Chiller Plant Operator - Physical Plant Dept - #S3486POThe University of Vermont (UVM) is seeking a Boiler/Chiller Plant Operator to join our team. This is a full-time position with great benefits and a consistent schedule. Our Central Utility Plant includes five high pressure steam boilers, and four large tonnage centrifugal chillers located in the center of UVM’s vibrant 400-acre campus. Our utilities team directly supports the academic and research mission of the University by providing reliable 24/7 heating and cooling service to all campus buildings.

Plant Operators are responsible for performing highly skilled operation, repair, and maintenance of the Plant and its associated equipment in a safe and efficient manner using their comprehensive understanding of system interdependencies and operations. Operators analyze system data and monitor and manage Building Automation Control Systems (Honeywell and Johnson) to anticipate system needs, problem-solve, and adjust set points.

High School Diploma, vocational building trades training and four years of experience in heating and/or cooling plant operations and maintenance and Building Automation Management Systems experience required. VT Natural Gas Certification: VT Fuel Oil Burning Equipment Installer (Limited) Certification, or ability to obtain within one year required.

For further information on this position and others currently available, or to apply online, please visit www.uvmjobs.com Applicants must apply for positions electronically. Paper resumes are not accepted. Open positions are updated daily. Please call 802-656-3150 or email employment@uvm.edu for technical support with the online application. The University of Vermont is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer.

APPLICATION EMAIL: EMILY@SHLT.ORG •YOUR ONLINE APPLICATION: WWW.SHLT.ORG/JOBS

RAPID REHOUSING SPECIALIST

Are you interested in a job that helps your community and makes a difference in people’s lives every day? Consider joining Burlington Housing Authority (BHA) in Burlington, VT. We’re seeking candidates to continue BHA’s success in promoting innovative solutions that address housing instability challenges facing our diverse population of low-income families and individuals.

Currently, we’re looking for a full time (40 hours per week) Rapid Rehousing Specialist in our Housing Retention and Services department. This position provides assistance to community members who are without housing and have barriers to locating and securing housing in the community. This grant funded position works closely with our Rental Assistance department and Chittenden County Coordinated Entry and is a part of a skilled team that focuses on assessment, intervention, and service coordination of at-risk households.

Bachelor’s degree in Human Services or related field and three years of experience working with home-based service provision to diverse populations is required. The ideal candidate should be highly organized with strong written and verbal communication skills and positively contribute to a collaborative team. A valid driver’s license and reliable transportation is preferred.

BHA serves a diverse population of tenants and partners with a variety of community agencies. To most effectively carry out our vision of delivering safe and affordable housing to all, we are committed to cultivating a staff that reflects varied lived experiences, viewpoints, and educational histories. Therefore, we strongly encourage candidates from diverse racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds, persons with disabilities, LGBTQ individuals, and women to apply. Multilingualism is a plus!

BHA offers a competitive salary, commensurate with qualifications and experience, and a sign on bonus of $2,000!

Our robust benefit package includes premium medical insurance with a health reimbursement account, dental, vision, short and long term disability, 10% employer funded retirement plan, 457 retirement plan, accident insurance, life insurance, cancer and critical illness insurance.

We provide a generous time off policy including 12 days of paid time off and 12 days of sick time in the first year. In addition to the paid time off, BHA recognizes 13 (paid) holidays. Interested in this career opportunity? Send a cover letter and resume to: humanresources@burlingtonhousing.org

Human Resources - Burlington Housing Authority 65 Main Street, Suite 101 Burlington, VT 05401 burlingtonhousing.org, BHA is an Equal Opportunity Employer

Community Connections Coordinator

The Town of Essex Community Justice Center (ECJC) is recruiting for a full time, benefited Community Connections Coordinator. The primary responsibilities of this position include:

• Providing support to people reentering their communities from incarceration in Chittenden County

• Co-coordination & staffing of the Circles of Support & Accountability Program (CoSA) in Chittenden County

• Recruiting, training, and supporting volunteers for the CoSA program

• Coordinate a Community Conflict Assistance Program collaboratively with the Burlington CJC

• Provide outreach, information and support to victims of crime

The Community Connections Coordinator position requires a flexible schedule allowing for some evening/weekend hours. Training, education, course work and/or lived experience in the areas of substance abuse, mental health, domestic and sexual violence, trauma, poverty, crime, and other challenges is desirable, as well as knowledge of local resources. The ideal candidate will be interested in restorative approaches to crime and conflict. Strong computer, data tracking, communication, and phone skills are desired.

The Essex Community Justice Center is committed to equity, and inclusion, recognizing and respecting that diverse perspectives and experiences are valuable to our team and essential to our public service. BIPOC, individuals with disabilities, LGBTQ+ applicants, and people from other underrepresented groups, are encouraged to apply. Applicants with a criminal record need to be at least one year past the completion of their supervision/sentence in order to be considered.

The minimum starting salary for this position will be $23.50 per hour. Deadline for application is 3/24/23.

Applications can be submitted online at: essexvt.bamboohr.com/ careers/100. An application will not be considered unless it is accompanied by a cover letter outlining why you are a good candidate for the position and three references.

Full job description: docs.google.com/document/d/1e4EVWU7rRB5jzjM37gAwKQALddqq5eo/edit

The Town of Essex is an equal opportunity employer.

Public Works Director

For details and to apply: bit.ly/3HwzIS7

ARVIN A BROWN Library Director

The public library in Richford VT is a cornerstone of the community, and we’re looking for our next director! This is an exciting opportunity to build relationships, create programs for a diverse group of patrons, work with the Trustees to create the strategic plan, and purchase materials that are of interest to Richford’s community.

If you are a civic-minded, publiclibrary-loving individual with appropriate experience, please review the full job description here: aabrown.org/job-opening/

Email your cover letter & resume to: richfordlibrarydirector@gmail.com by April 14th!

We are hiring for the summer season!

We have several openings beginning in May:

• TEAM MEMBERS & LEADS

For the Trailside Center

Bike Rentals in Burlington

• CAPTAIN, DECKHAND, & DOCKSIDE AMBASSADOR

At the Bike Ferry in Colchester

• TEAM MEMBER

For Valet Bike Parking

Be a part of making it safe, accessible, and fun for everyone to bike, walk, and roll in Vermont!

Visit our website for more details: localmotion.org/ join_our_team

O ce Administrator

We are looking for a person to provide general office support, including assistance with rental properties and tenant services, purchasing of supplies, as well as providing administrative support for an international non-profit, which includes processing donations, managing mailings, etc. Knowledge of Word and Excel is very helpful. Must be detail-oriented and a good problem solver. 20-25 hrs/week. Competitive compensation.

Send resume to carol@wellsmountain.com or call 802-453-4017.

The Town of Hinesburg, Vermont is seeking qualified applicants for the position of Public Works Director. The Town of Hinesburg has a population of approximately 4,700 residents and encompasses approximately 40 square miles. Hinesburg is a growing community, located 10-miles from downtown Burlington, the University of Vermont and Lake Champlain.

The Town of Hinesburg maintains 55 miles of road, 870 water connections, and 650 wastewater connections. Nearly 500 new housing units are expected within the next 8-10 years. Construction of a new sequential batch reactor wastewater plant is slated to begin in 2023. The addition of a well to the town’s drinking water system is in the preliminary engineering phase. The Town Hall has a structurally compromised roof and the Fire Station is inadequate for future needs so replacement of both structures is currently in the early planning phase. A new highway garage was completed in 2018.

The Town offers a comprehensive benefits package and a starting salary of $80,000 - $90,000 depending upon qualifications and experience. For full job description visit: Hinesburg.org. To be considered for the position, submit a resume and cover letter to Todd Odit, Town Manager via email to todit@hinesburg.org. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until the position is filled.

The Town will consider applicants who are interested in this position on a part-time or full-time basis. The Town of Hinesburg is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer and is committed to diversity, equity and inclusion hiring goals to create a diverse workforce within the community.

PROFESSIONALIZED TRADES OPPORTUNITY

We Are Hiring.

But we're not "just hiring painters"... we're looking for really good people who are interested in pursuing a professional, gainful, sustainable, and rewarding career in the trades.

No experience necessary. We provide the training, support and mentorship you'll need to succeed, and a clear path to follow for advancement. If you want to work with your hands, build skills, and feel the satisfaction of seeing the tangible results of your work, while still having the opportunity to earn professional-level pay & benefits, consider this opportunity! You just need to bring the grit, determination, and dedication to make the trades your career.

Or, bring your valuable accumulated experience! You'll be joining an environment that will allow you to take your skills to the next-level, and put them to work on some of the most prestigious projects in the area. We provide a sustainable career path, near infinite room for advancement, access to top-of-the line tools and equipment, professional-level pay & benefits, and a team of people who share your passion for the trades.

This is a professional-level opportunity with professional-level pay, benefits & expectations.

-$20-$30+ per hour base wage. Raises. Overtime. Promotion bonuses. Profit Share at higher levels.

-Unprecedented, high-quality health care benefit - up to 100% paid for by company

-Up to 3.5% company-matched 401K plan

-Up to $1,000 annual stipend for reimbursable purchases (work clothes, shoes, etc.)

-Loads of paid time o - up to 6 weeks! Plus flexible scheduling and/or time o during o -season.

-Expectation of, and opportunity for: professional development, specialization, management, excellence.

APPLY TODAY!

Customer Service Representative

• GROUNDSKEEPER/ GARDENER ASSISTANT:

Full-time – Seasonal

May 1st – September 1st

• UTILITY WORKER:

PM Shift, Noon – 8pm; Tuesday through Sunday, Full Time

• RESIDENT ASSISTANT: 7am – 10am & 5pm – 8pm every other Saturday & Sunday

• LPN: 32 hours a week (every other weekend required)

To apply, please send your resume to hr@westviewmeadows.com

Or download our application bit.ly/ApplicationWVMGH and mail it to: Human Resources Westview Meadows, 171 Westview Meadows Rd. Montpelier, VT 05602

You can also drop it off at: 171 Westview Meadows Road Montpelier, VT 05602.

Williston Recreation & Parks

Seasonal Job Opportunities

PARKS MAINTENANCE WORKER

30 hours per week, April-October

Monday-Friday, starts at 7:00am

Hourly Rate: $18.50

DAY CAMP STAFF

Jr. Counselors, Counselors & Head Counselors

40 hours per week

June 19- August 18

Hourly Range: $13.25-$15.00 (dependent on position)

For detailed info and to apply: town.williston.vt.us/employment

Delivery Driver/Sales Non-CDL

We are looking for a part time delivery driver for a small family business specializing in fresh fish and shellfish.

Tuesday/Thursday (Adding Fridays late Spring). Hours are typically 10-7 with option for 1-7 shi . Excellent job for people with part time schedules. Fun job, good pay, good people.  Check us out at: WoodMountainFish.Com for more information!

WHERE YOU AND YOUR WORK MATTER

SENIOR ASBESTOS AND LEAD ENGINEER – BURLINGTON

This position educates, advises and enforces Vermont asbestos and lead control regulations to ensure safe work practices in buildings. This is a dynamic position that includes both desk and field work and collaborates with state and local building professionals. Inspects worksites, provides compliance assistance to contractors about health-protective work practices, investigates non-compliance, builds enforcement cases, and audits training courses. Training provided to the right candidate. For more information, contact Amy Danielson at amy.danielson@vermont. gov. Department: Health. Location: Burlington. Status: Full Time, Limited - Service. Job Id #46435. Application Deadline: April 3, 2023.

ENERGY & UTILITIES ANALYST – MONTPELIER

Put your analytical skills to work to help develop and implement policies that decarbonize Vermont’s electric, transportation, and building energy sectors. The Public Service Department seeks candidates with skills in Excel and similar tools to do economic and environmental analysis, rate design, utility rate and siting cases, energy planning, regulatory compliance, testimony before the Public Utility Commission and legislature, and related initiatives. Hybrid telework arrangements considered. For more information, contact Anne Margolis at anne.margolis@vermont. gov. Department: Public Service. Location: Montpelier. Status: Full Time. Job Id #45793. Application Deadline: March 28, 2023.

INTERNAL AUDITOR – WATERBURY

General Manager

The Upper Valley Food Co-op (UVFC) of White River Jct, VT is a community-supported natural foods market which supports the local economy, is committed to sustainability, and enriches lives through education.

The General Manager is responsible for the oversight of operations to maintain the financial solvency and community centeredness that our Co-op is known for, while expanding our impact and resilience into the future. $7585K plus benefits.

Full description at: uppervalleyfood.coop/ employment. Desired start 6/15/23.

Submit resume & cover letter to UVFCsearch23@gmail.com

E.O.E.

DELIVERY DRIVER

Responsible for accurate and timely delivery of customer’s purchases, while ensuring total customer satisfaction.

EDUCATION:

• Minimum: High School Diploma (or currently enrolled in) or GED

JOB REQUIREMENTS:

• Must be 21 years of age or older

• Must possess a valid Drivers License in good standing

• Registered with the State of Vermont as a Pharmacy Technician

EXPERIENCE:

• Preferred: 0-2 years previous experience in related position

SPECIAL CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT:

• Drug test

• Initial and continuous exclusion and sanction/disciplinary monitoring

• Any & all additional eligibility requirements based on the specific position

Apply online: https://bit.ly/KinneyDrugDELIVERY

SHIFT SUPERVISOR FULL-TIME

• Ability to fulfill all Cashier duties

• May carry out all opening and closing procedures in the absences of store management

• May supervise store’s crew through assigning, directing and following up of activities, in the absence of store management

• May represent management in resolving customer service issues

• Responsible for completing all mandatory & regulatory training programs

EDUCATION:

Looking for a new challenge in your career as a professional auditor? How about being part of an internal audit team in the largest agency in state government? If so, our Agency of Human Services may have a great role for you! We are seeking an Internal Auditor to contribute to the Team’s mission in promoting efficient and effective operations across the Agency. Ideal candidate will be a “people person” coupled with strong skills in business process analytics, root cause and risk analysis. This position is in a hybrid work environment, that is, a combination of remote from home and in-person office work. For more information, contact Peter Moino at peter. moino@vermont.gov. Department: Human Services Agency. Location: Waterbury. Status: Full Time. Job Id #46523. Application Deadline: March 23, 2023.

HEALTH SYSTEMS PROGRAM ADMINISTRATOR - LOCAL HEALTH –BURLINGTON

The Health Systems Program Administrator manages and oversees workforce development and health equity activities within the Division of Local Health. We are committed to building and maintaining a multicultural and diverse workforce, and strive to offer a supportive, professionally challenging, and healthy workplace to our employees. Key responsibilities include promoting and integrating health equity strategies, developing training for staff, monitoring and reviewing grant opportunities. For more information, contact Jessica Robinson at jessica.a.robinson@ vermont.gov. Department: Health. Location: Burlington. Status: Full Time. Job Id #46434. Application Deadline: March 23, 2023.

AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT SPECIALIST III – WILLISTON

Join the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets to support Vermont’s produce, meat, and maple industries through education, grantmaking, and strategic collaboration. The Agricultural Development Specialist III will manage federal awards, develop new programs, facilitate outreach, strengthen partnerships, and enhance technical assistance. For more information, contact Julia Scheier at julia. scheier@vermont.gov. Department: Agriculture, Food & Markets. Location: Williston.

Status: Full Time, Limited-Service. Job Id #46583. Application Deadline: March 23, 2023.

• Minimum: High School Diploma (or currently enrolled) or GED

• Preferred: AS Degree or Higher

EXPERIENCE:

• Preferred: 2 or more years previous experience in related position

SPECIAL CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT:

• Drug test

• Initial and continuous exclusion and sanction/disciplinary monitoring

• Any & all additional eligibility requirements based on the specific position

Apply online: https://bit.ly/KinneyShiftSuper

fun stuff

“You’re right — it really does.”

CALCOKU & SUDOKU (P.71) CROSSWORD (P.71)

JEN SORENSEN

HARRY BLISS

PISCES

(FEB. 19-MAR. 20)

In describing her process, Piscean sculptor Anne Truitt wrote, “The most demanding part of living a lifetime as an artist is the strict discipline of forcing oneself to work steadfastly along the nerve of one’s own most intimate sensitivity.” I propose that many Pisceans, both artists and nonartists, can thrive from living like that. The coming weeks will be an excellent time to give yourself to such an approach with eagerness and devotion. I urge you to think hard and feel deeply as you ruminate on the question of how to work steadfastly along the nerve of your own most intimate sensitivity.

ARIES (Mar. 21-Apr. 19): I highly recommend the following experiences: 1) ruminating about what you learned in a relationship that ended — and how those lessons might be useful now; 2) ruminating about a beloved place you once regarded as home — and how the lessons you learned while there might be inspiring now; 3) ruminating about a riddle that has long mystified you — and how clarifying insights you receive in the coming weeks could help you finally understand it.

TAURUS (Apr. 20-May 20): For “those who escape hell,” wrote Charles Bukowksi, “nothing much bothers them after that.” Believe

it or not, Taurus, I think that in the coming weeks, you can permanently escape your own personal version of hell — and never, ever have to return. I offer you my congratulations in advance. One strategy that will be useful in your escape is this idea from Bukowski: “Stop insisting on clearing your head — clear your f*cking heart instead.”

GEMINI (May 21-Jun. 20): Gemini paleontologist Louis Agassiz (1807-1883) was a foundational contributor to the scientific tradition. Among his specialties was his handson research into the mysteries of fossilized fish. Though he was meticulously logical, he once called on his nightly dreams to solve a problem he faced. Here’s the story: A potentially crucial specimen was largely concealed inside a stone. He wanted to chisel away the stone to get at the fossil but was hesitant to proceed for fear of damaging the treasure inside. On three successive nights, his dreams revealed to him how he should approach the work. This information proved perfectly useful. Agassiz hammered away at the slab exactly as his dreams suggested and freed the fossilized fish. I bring this marvel to your attention, Gemini, because I suspect that you, too, need to carve or cut away an obstruction that is hiding something valuable. Can you get help from your dreams? Yes, or else in deep reverie or meditation.

CANCER (Jun. 21-Jul. 22): Will you flicker and sputter in the coming weeks, Cancerian? Or will you spout and surge? That is, will you be enfeebled by barren doubts, or will you embolden yourself with hearty oaths? Will you take nervous sips or audacious guzzles? Will you hide and equivocate or else reveal and pounce? Dabble gingerly or pursue the joy of mastery? I’m here to tell you that which fork you take will depend on your intention and your willpower, not on the caprices of fate. So, which will it be: Will you mope and fritter or untangle and illuminate?

LEO (Jul. 23-Aug. 22): I applaud psychologists who tell us how important it is to feel safe. One of the most crucial human rights is the confidence that we won’t be physically or emotionally abused. But there’s another meaning of safety that applies to those of us

who yearn to express ourselves creatively. Singer-songwriter David Bowie articulated the truth: “If you feel safe in the area you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you’re capable of being in. Go a bit out of your depth, and when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re in the right place to do something exciting.” I think this is a wise strategy for most of us, even those who don’t identify as artists. Almost everyone benefits from being imaginative and inventive and even a bit daring in their own particular sphere. And this will be especially applicable to you in the coming weeks, Leo.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sep. 22): You are in the sweet, deep phase of the Receiving Season. And so you have a right and a duty to show the world you are ready and available to be blessed with what you need and want. I urge you to do everything necessary to become a welcoming beacon that attracts a wealth of invigorating and healing influences. For inspiration, read this quote by author John Steinbeck: “It is so easy to give, so exquisitely rewarding. Receiving, on the other hand, if it be well done, requires a fine balance of selfknowledge and kindness. It requires humility and tact and great understanding of relationships … It requires a self-esteem to receive — a pleasant acquaintance and liking for oneself.”

LIBRA (Sep. 23-Oct. 22): Libran poet E.E. Cummings wrote that daffodils “know the goal of living is to grow.” Is his sweet sentiment true? I would argue it’s only partially accurate. I believe that if we want to shape our destinies with courage and creativity, we need to periodically go through phases of decay and decline. They make periods of growth possible. So I would say, “The goal of life is to grow and wither and grow and wither and grow.” Is it more fun to grow than to wither? Maybe. But sometimes withering is educational and necessary. Anyway, Libra, I suspect you are finishing a time of withering and will soon embark on a series of germinations and blossoms.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): All of us have elements of genius. Every person on the planet possesses at least one special talent or

knack that is a gift to others. It could be subtle or unostentatious, such as a skill for communicating with animals or for seeing what’s best in people. Or maybe it’s more spectacular, such as composing beautiful music or raising children to be strong and compassionate. I mention this, Scorpio, because the coming weeks will be an excellent time to identify your unique genius in great detail — and then nurture it and celebrate it in every way you can imagine.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): The emblem associated with Sagittarius is an archer holding a bow with the arrow pointed upward. This figure represents your tribe’s natural ambition to always aim higher. I bring this to your attention because your symbolic quiver is now full of arrows. But what about your bow? Is it in tip-top condition? I suggest you do some maintenance. Is the bow string in perfect shape? Are there any tiny frays? Has it been waxed recently? And what about the grip? Are there any small cracks or wobbles? Is it as steady and stable as it needs to be? I have one further suggestion as you prepare for the target-shooting season. Choose one or, at most, two targets to aim at rather than four or five.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): It’s prime time to feel liberated from the urge to prove yourself to anyone. It’s a phase when your self-approval should be the only kind of approval you need, a period when you have the right to remove yourself from any situation that is weighed down with gloomy confusion or apathetic passivity. This is exciting news! You have an unprecedented opportunity to recharge your psychic batteries and replenish your physical vitality.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): I suspect you can now accomplish healthy corrections without getting tangled up in messy karma. Here are my recommendations: 1) As you strive to improve situations that are awry or askew, act primarily out of love rather than guilt or pity. 2) Fight tenderly on behalf of beautiful justice, but don’t fight harshly for ugly justice. 3) Ask yourself how you might serve as a kind of divine intervention in the lives of those you care about — and then carry out those divine interventions.

Eva Sollberger’s

Don "Tip" Ruggles was in seventh grade when he started helping his dad at Somers Hardware in Montpelier. Somers went out of business in 2009, and Aubuchon Hardware expanded into the space. Since then, Tip has been helping Aubuchon shoppers find the right tool for the job; customers often ask for him by name. Eva visited the store to meet Tip.

supported by:

CHECK OUT ROB BREZSNY’S EXPANDED WEEKLY AUDIO HOROSCOPES & DAILY TEXT MESSAGE HOROSCOPES: REALASTROLOGY.COM OR 1-877-873-4888.

WOMEN seeking...

REAL LOOKING FOR REAL

I love to laugh, love music and am attracted to intelligent, strong men who can get things accomplished. I love the stillness of the morning hours, nature, and traveling and learning about different cultures. Hoping to meet a gentleman who enjoys the same. daylily, 62, seeking: M, l

KINDNESS

I enjoy warm, creative people. A sense of humor and radical politics are necessary. Do you love music and have a curious, open mind? Let’s be friends. ComicMellow 45, seeking: M, W, TM, TW, Q, NC, NBP, Cp, Gp, l

CLEAN AND SIMPLE CRAFTER

Hello, gentlemen. I am a creative maker looking for a good friendship. I don’t imbibe nor inhale smoke. I enjoy clean, quiet, thoughtful conversation. I’m happy with my life and hope to find a pal to share short hikes or a relaxed cup of tea. If we enjoy each other’s company, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it! Quiet_quality 55, seeking: M, l

OLD-SCHOOL R&B LOVER

COVID-19 has left me feeling alone — hoping to get my groove back. Building a friendship is at the top of my list. Love R&B, dancing and music. Clean up well. Very independent and social. Artistic and crafty. Looking for someone to go on walks and bike rides, a hike in the woods, movies and dinners out. RareBean13 71, seeking: M, l

WANT TO RESPOND?

You read Seven Days, these people read Seven Days — you already have at least one thing in common!

All the action is online. Create an account or login to browse hundreds of singles with profiles including photos, habits, desires, views and more. It’s free to place your own profile online.

l See photos of this person online.

W = Women

M = Men

TW = Trans women

TM = Trans men

Q = Genderqueer people

NBP = Nonbinary people

NC = Gender nonconformists

Cp = Couples

Gp = Groups

HOPE, LIGHT, LOVE

Am looking for that special man — the one who understands that love is unconditional yet has healthy boundaries. That it’s sometimes inconvenient and equally timeless. If you’re that guy, let’s talk. Prospect 57 seeking: M, l

IT ALL BEGINS WITH HELLO

Hi! Thanks for stopping by. Now to tell you a bit about myself: I’m a kind (treat people the way I’d like to be treated), happy, hardworking, financially self-sufficient, inquisitive, romantic, humble, drama-free, non-helicopter parent, makeup or not, pull-yourselfup-by-your-bootstraps kind of girl. Oh, and I’m searching for “the one.”

Daisies36, 53, seeking: M, l

READY, SET, GO

Honestly, after 68 years of life and a major upheaval, I am learning about who I am now. The things I know are: I am honest, sincere, thoughtful, flexible and hardworking. I seek justice and truth in this jumbled-up world. I love to travel but also love my home in Vermont. dontknowaboutthis 68, seeking: M, l

IS LOVE A FAIRY TALE?

I am a very kindhearted person. Been called the world’s biggest cheerleader. Love loud muscle cars and even louder bikes. I will fish all day with you as long as you take the fish off my hook. I promise you’ll either laugh at me once a day or question whether my mom brought me to Houston for the follow-up appointment.

CaptainCupcake 43, seeking: M, l

NEK, ADVENTUROUS, INTELLIGENT, WELL-ROUNDED

Looking for a kind, self-confident guy with whom to explore our worlds. A nice mix of homebody and adventurous spirit would be ideal. Travel near and far, time spent on the water, a social life. Traveling into Québec is always interesting. French speakers welcome. Call now for a free set of Ginsu knives!

Stemtostern, 74, seeking: M, l

FIRST, LET’S TALK

A devoted VPR listener. Love gardening, almost all music, museums, movies, theater, flea markets, trips to nowhere and travel. I don’t need someone to “complete” me or support me, just someone to talk to, hold hands, share adventures. I am short and round — not sloppy fat, but definitely plump. I love to laugh and sing, preferably with others — hence this endeavor.

ZanninVT 73, seeking: M, l

EYE-TO-EYE IN ALL

Love to cook, garden, travel, write, photograph, cross-country ski, hike, bike, watch movies, read, walk my dogs. Wish to share all that with a kind, grounded, warm and selfreflective man who can communicate — key to a strong relationship. I’m still working part time in private practice. I’m looking for a healthy, long-term, monogamous relationship.

RumiLove 73, seeking: M, l

HAPPILY MARRIED, HAVING SOME FUN

I’m just looking for low-drama physical fun, and my husband is delighted to watch, participate or just know that I’m out having a good time. The_Lemon_

Song 41, seeking: M, TM, Q, NC, NBP, l FUN, FUNNY AND FIT

Attractive, athletic woman interested in casual dating/connections. Kids are getting older, and work is winding down. Looking for new adventures. Love to travel, see new places, experience new things. Never bored or boring. I enjoy music, dancing, yoga, weight lifting and soccer. Not a fan of drama. If you are healthy, fit, nice, funny and easy on the eyes, reach out. Yolo50, 50, seeking: M

FUN, KIND AND LOVING

Recently I relocated to Vermont and am looking for someone to enjoy Vermont life with. I’ve been divorced/single long enough to know myself and enjoy my own company. I would like to be in a longterm, healthy, monogamous relationship. So let’s be friends first and see where it goes! CoachKaty7 53, seeking: M, l

HOPEFULLY YOURS?

Charismatic, adventuresome woman seeks man for friendship, LTR, shared and mutual interests! I am kind and fun, seeking the same to enjoy and share life! HopeVT 63, seeking: M, l

MONTRÉAL WIFE

IN OPEN RELATIONSHIP

Longtime married, very attractive, in open relationship. Desire playmate in Burlington area. I like confident, experienced, athletic, smart, welleducated, charming men. I am not looking to develop a relationship. Would like a regular playmate who is very discreet. My wonderful husband may be around for first meet, so need to be comfortable with that. He does not participate. MontrealWife, 54, seeking: M, l

MEN seeking...

SINCERE

New in town, looking to expand social network. AfricanAmericanMan

37, seeking: W, l

BALD AND FUNNY, LOOKING

A catch, even for non-fisherman. Educated, broadly open-minded, practitioner of many hobbies including reading, playing and listening to music, singing, writing, farming, fishing, hiking, camping, weeding, exercising, working, blah-blahing, performing arts, and poetry, ah, poetry. Seeking friends with probable benefits to make me a better person and interest me considerably.

P.S. I love good food and beautiful people.

1Tenor1971 51 seeking: W, l

HONEST, LOYAL, AFFECTIONATE AND CARING

I like to think I’m a very honest and loyal person who cares a little too much at times. I’m looking for a best friend to fall in love with who can be honest even when it hurts or doesn’t look pretty.

Zaileaopollo 39, seeking: W, l

GREAT GUY SEEKING

A solid, confident, stable guy here looking for the same in a lady. I love a mutual relationship filled with compassion, love and care. I am very outgoing and have great manners. I highly respect women’s rights and appreciate women’s success in life. Are you that woman, too? Would love to hear from you. Just_a_good_guy, 55 seeking: W, l

SILLY, POSITIVE AND GOOD LISTENER

I have completed some college. I’m going to get a job in the tech industry, and I am a very caring and honest person. I always strive to do my best and am OK with imperfections. I’m looking for friends or more! Feel free to contact me! Meeting on here would be a good story. Serotonin 23, seeking: W, l

LAID-BACK COUNTRY MAN

I’m a widower trying to enjoy my life. I work hard, play hard. Like car shows; fishing; swimming; tubing; being on the beach under an umbrella on a hot, sunny day; taking the motorcycle out for the weekend; road trips; and a good movie at home. Sand1959 63 seeking: W, l

CREATIVE SONGWRITING MUSICIAN

Looking to connect with somebody who shares the same interests, such as cosmology, other sciences in general and being on the fringe of these philosophically. artfun 59, seeking: W

HSV2

I’m trying something different. Tired of traditional dating sites, where you always have to have a talk, which is very uncomfortable, and most times does not go well. I’m here with HSV2 — not because I want to be but because I trusted someone to do the right thing. I was not given a choice, so here I am. MIGHTBU 66, seeking: W

OLDER, WISER, FUN

Still hot, still horny, still 420-friendly, still striving for self-sufficiency in a pastoral setting next to a river in the mountains. Sugaring with 400 taps right now, large garden, berries, fruit trees, commercial garlic and flower operation in the summer. Looking for an intelligent, attractive cohort in crime to help enjoy and get it all done. Give me a shot. You won’t regret it! StillHot, 73 seeking: W, l

OLD-FASHIONED, HARDWORKING, HONEST MAN

Honest man looking for a partner to enjoy life’s simple joys with. Five-foot-sixinches tall, looking for nice lady to share the ups and downs of life. Animal and nature lover. Love to cook and garden. Vermontgardener 65 seeking: W, l

MELLOW, EASYGOING AND FRIENDLY

My eyes don’t smile? My warmth comes from talking with me. I love to have a good time, and it shows wherever I go. I enjoy working on my house (quite the project), creating models in motion and learning the piano. I’ve been told I look like Carmine from “Laverne & Shirley,” Buddy Holly and Elvis Costello.

Vinijackson, 59, seeking: W, l

PROUDLY NEURODIVERGENT, LAID-BACK POET

Proudly neurodivergent, laid-back poet who appreciates the quirky and wondrous. Inhabit a 54-y/o, cis male (he/him) body of pan-Celtic, English, German and a trace of Penobscot heritage. Enjoy writing, making art, music of all kinds, gardening, camping, cooking/baking, reading and cats. Seeking friendship or romantic relationship with 25- to 45-y/o hetero or bisexual woman — or friendship with anyone who respects the dignity of every human being and can deal with unconventionality. Dan_o_Shanter, 54, seeking: W, l

GO WITH THE FLOW

I’m looking for someone just like me — someone who works hard, cares about others and the world we live in but is missing something in their life and/or partnership and wants to find that spark of excitement. I also live a busy life, so spontaneity is desired but oh so challenging. Anybody out there that fits the mold? my_fungi_ username 45, seeking: W, l

FUN LOVER SEEKING

MEANINGFUL CONNECTION

Young-at-heart (and looks), fun-loving hopeless romantic looking for physical and spiritual connection with a woman. I enjoy getting together with friends and family, traveling, seeing live shows and movies, and being active. What I’m looking for in a lady is someone who is kind, curious, caring and playful (frisky?). If this sound like you, reach out! Pictures available upon request. Batterout, 50 seeking: W

LOOKING TO CONNECT WITH YOU

Looking for males and couples to satisfy high sexual passion. Same and discreet. Rootvet 66, seeking: M, W, Cp

TRANS WOMEN seeking...

ILLUSTRIOUS, FILLED WITH LONGING, CHRONICALLY OFFLINE

My little booklet is my little prayer / Poured gold into a cast of well wishes / And forgotten pasts / The ones that beckon to be remembered / For you to be a one and the one / To be me and not mine / The eyes that saw when no one looked / My knees, turned to sea / My mind, mine, my heart, yours. Transient 25 seeking: M, l

GENDER NONCONFORMISTS seeking...

SEEKING WOMAN OR COUPLE

Mature man seeks relationship to share my fem side. Seeking married or committed couple in a long-term relationship, or a single woman, to visit periodically perhaps once a month, to share friendship and explore a service role. Sincerity, discretion, a sense of humor, a twinkle in the eye and maturity are desired attributes. Mellow_Fellow, 72 seeking: W, TW, Q, NC, NBP, Cp

COUPLES seeking...

SNOW AND SUN EQUAL FUN

Borders and boundaries are sexy. We’re pretty cute. We like to have fun, and we bet you do, too. Happily married couple (W, 35; M, 45), open-minded and looking to explore. Love playing outdoors. Looking to meet a couple, man or woman for fun and adventure. Ideal meetup is a cottage in the mountains with great food and lots of great wine. SnownSun 46, seeking: Cp, l

LOVERS OF LIFE

We are a 40s couple, M/F, looking for adventurous encounters with openminded, respectful M/F or couples. Looking to enjoy sexy encounters, FWBs, short term or long term. sunshines, 42, seeking: M, W, Q, Cp

LOOKING FOR OUR MAN!

Ideally hoping for a throuple/FWB situation. Us: established M/F couple. DD-free. (She: 44, straight BBW; he: 46, bi MWM). Drinks, 420-friendly, fires, get outside, music, Netflix and chill, always horny. You: DD-free, clean, masculine bi male (30ish to 50ish) who works and knows how to enjoy life! A little rough/hard (top, real man, etc.) with a compassionate heart and a bit of a snuggler. Connection is key. Let’s chat and get to know each other, then play! ginganddaddy 46, seeking: M

If you’ve been spied, go online to contact your admirer!

dating.sevendaysvt.com

KALEIDOSCOPE OF BUTTERFLIES

When we walk in nature, the animals show themselves to us. I feel in love with the moss before you. Now it has grown thick, dripping with pleasure. You are a treat in the morning when the sun hits your body. A dream to wrap myself around in the evening. e days are rich when we share them together. XOXO. When: Monday, December 31, 2018. Where: in everything. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915723

SKI-WITH-ME ON MATCH

Hi. I saw your profile, but I’m not a member. I am also looking for someone to ski with. And kayak, and hike, and all kinds of fun outdoor activities. Say hello? And what ski area do you prefer? Maybe we can meet there. When: Monday, February 27, 2023. Where: Match. com. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915721

JUMP-STARTING YOUR MOM’S VAN

I brought the jumper cables and noticed the tires on your Volvo were bald. Was too shy to ask you out in front of your mother. You seemed nice. Would like to get to know you. Meet me for a coffee sometime? Would be happy to show you the sights in the Capital City. When: Saturday, February 18, 2023. Where: Montpelier City Hall parking lot. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915720

BOLD AND SILKY

You: rich amber-haired City Market clerk. Me: chatty customer, green-and-red plaid shirt, gray jacket, beret. When: 3:42 p.m. You were working the right-hand 15-items-or-less checkout; I bought dinner and then the “bold and silky” chocolate bar, and we chatted. You are intriguing in many ways, and I’d like to get to know you. If you’re a 4/20 kind of woman or like quirky poets, get in touch and we’ll see what flowers. When: Monday, February 20, 2023. Where: City Market checkout lane. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915718

PAID FOR MY MCDONALD’S

I spy a very kind man who paid for my order at about 8:15. at was very kind and generous. As a single woman, I don’t get a lot of special things in my life. You made my day and made me feel special. ank you. When: Tuesday, February 21, 2023. Where: McDonald’s, Barre. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915719

IF YOU’RE DUE NORTH

I know discretion is important, so I’ll keep it brief. We chatted for a bit, tried to make plans but I had something come up, and you called me a phony and seemingly disappeared. I’m still utterly devoted to the idea of getting together with you, so let’s reconnect and I’ll prove I’m no phony yet. When: Sunday, February 19, 2023. Where: chatting on an app. You: Man. Me: Man. #915717

I LOOK LIKE JIMMY FALLON?

Your eyes, warm and curious, catch mine twice. You ask me if anyone’s told me I look like Jimmy Fallon. I’m shocked at a compliment out of the blue and answer that, yes, in fact they have. Uninspired response, for sure. Maybe you’ll see this, and we’ll find a time to meet when I’m not in a rush?

When: Sunday, February 19, 2023.

Where: City Market hot bar downtown.

You: Woman. Me: Man. #915716

KRIS KRISTOFFERSON

I saw you over cocktails a few months back in Winooski in a black beanie. I am more curious if this is the first iSpy you have seen for you. Hope you have booked the flight to Italy and have a copilot ready for the ride. Hope this made you smile. When: Wednesday, December 14, 2022. Where: celebrating the holiday.

You: Man. Me: Woman. #915714

REVEREND Ask

Irreverent counsel on life’s conundrums

De Rev end,

I’m a seventh grader who’s just trying to get a decent grade in math. People say I have to focus and take notes, but even when I do that, my grades are still plummeting. I love studying, but my studying techniques don’t seem to work. Is there any hope of getting a decent grade in math?

Study G l (GIRL, 12)

FIDIUM GUY AT THE LOCAL

I had you in my peripherals the entire time I was wine tasting. You walked by and gave me the brows and smile. I was too chicken to talk to you. Wanna meet for a drink? I was the only girl in the room wearing sparkles. When: ursday, February 16, 2023. Where: the Local. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915715

OGE/WALGREENS MEET-CUTE

We were leaving OGE at the same time, skis in tow. It was raining — we both groaned and smiled. A minute later, we saw each other again in the Walgreen’s lot, which we agreed is the best place to park for a quick run into OGE. Want to go skiing and show me the best runs? When: Tuesday, February 7, 2023. Where: OGE/Walgreen’s lot. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915712

RE: MISSING MY TWINFLAME

I needed time and space to become the best version of myself and to attend to matters I could never explain. Where I went, you could not follow. I tried to tell you tête-à-tête, but it wasn’t in the cards. I still keep that Jack close, and I keep warm with the thought of being in your arms. Soon. When: Wednesday, April 29, 2020. Where: the astral plane. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915711

LIFE DRAWING AT KARMA BIRD HOUSE

You were drawing, super focused. IDK if you even noticed me, but I love how seriously you take your craft, and you’re sooooo cute! You: blue hair and septum piercing. Me: 30-y/o woman, overalls, backward cap. Sometime in the beginning of January on a Tuesday night. Come back to class! I go most weeks. We could draw each other. When: Tuesday, January 3, 2023. Where: Karma Bird House.

You: Man. Me: Woman. #915709

UNTAPPED, TOO NERVOUS TO SPEAK

Hi! I was too shy surrounded by my friends at Friday’s Untapped show to strike up a conversation. You kept checking people into the show, and my friends hung out at the bar. But you seemed like a lovely person and also someone who may possibly enjoy grabbing a beverage and conversation sometime? When: Saturday, February 11, 2023. Where: Winooski circle. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915708

DeStudy G l,

ere’s always hope! However, neither math nor studying were my strong suits when I was in school, so I reached out to some people for advice to pass along. (Applicable lesson here: Don’t be shy about asking for help.)

Alexa Litchfield, a seventh and eighth grade math teacher at Leland & Gray Union Middle and High School in Townshend, suggested asking the teacher for feedback on your work. If you compare how they solve a problem with how you do it, you should be able to figure out together where you go off track. She said: “If you follow every problem to the end, you will build bulletproof armor in math.”

My friend Mary Goderwis shared some sage wisdom she once got from an algebra teacher: “You don’t read or

VTHOMESTEADER

ank you for the iSpy! I’m still interested in checking out the paradise you have created in Hardwick, and I would like it if we can finish our novel we have started. If all goes well, perhaps I can be your Papa Ganoush! When: Tuesday, February 7, 2023. Where: un-Hinge. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915710

REDHEADED WONDER, TAKE TWO

I saw you having lunch with two other women. I think I also saw you at Shanty on the Shore a few weeks earlier. If you are the same woman from the airport a few months ago with the white Mercedes, maybe we could have lunch together sometime. You name the place, and I’ll be there. When: Wednesday, February 8, 2023. Where: Grazers. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915707

BRIGHT-EYED, ENERGETIC SUNFLOWER

You give me the goosebumps. Your eyes are light like water, but your mind is strong and driven — like a freight train. I can’t see myself anywhere else but with you. Why don’t we share some red grenadine? Down by the black, muddy river, perhaps. I hope you see me here, and I hope you see me today. When: Saturday, January 28, 2023. Where: close by, but I’d love to say “in my arms.” You: Woman. Me: Man. #915702

MUDDY WATERS SMILE

I saw you when I walked in around 4:30. You were sitting by the window in a multicolored crocheted hat. I had my hair in two pigtails, and you smiled at me on your way to the bathroom. You look really thoughtful and introspective. I’d love to get to know you more. When: Friday, February 3, 2023. Where: Muddy Waters. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915705

OLD POST BLONDE, BAD BAND

We spoke briefly as you and your friend were about to leave. I asked you about talking in a place more conducive to conversation. Here’s another invite to talk. Interested? I could try and catch up with you again at Old Post but would rather see you elsewhere — dinner or drinks? I know your name; it starts with an M. When: Monday, January 30, 2023. Where: the Old Post. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915704

BEAUTIFUL BROWN EYES

Dear woman, I miss you. ough you are just three houses down the street, it seems you are 1,000 miles away. I miss you and would love to move beyond the past to a brighter future with you. Always! When: 2014 to present. When: Monday, January 30, 2023. Where: central Vermont. You: Woman. Me: Woman. #915706

CROSS-COUNTRY SKIER IN HUBBARD PARK

We crossed paths while skiing and chatted for a bit while I was waiting for my friend to catch up to me. I enjoyed talking with you! Care to meet up for a ski together? When: Friday, January 27, 2023. Where: Hubbard Park. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915701

DENNY’S BEAUTY

You were our server this morning and told me to eat a pancake bite for you. When I offered you one, you said you couldn’t because you’re watching your figure. You don’t need to. I tipped you personally before I left. Would love to hear from you!

When: Wednesday, January 25, 2023. Where: Denny’s, South Burlington. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915700

TRADER JOE’S CASHIER QUEER

You: working at Trader Joe’s, shaggy haircut with brown, blond and purple. Me: buying almond butter, pink hair, wearing post-dance class sweats. You rang up my groceries and asked about my pink dye. I tried to play it cool, but when you said I had a nice laugh, I couldn’t meet your eye. Let’s bleach each other’s hair sometime? When: Tuesday, January 24, 2023. Where: Trader Joe’s. You: Genderqueer. Me: Woman. #915698

BELLA’S BARTOK AT ZENBARN

You wore a jean jacket. I wore a derby and the eye. We chatted after the show around the fire, and on our way to leave you told me your name. I regret not giving you my phone number. I’d love to reconnect sometime. When: ursday, December 29, 2022. Where: Zenbarn, Waterbury. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915697

study math; you do math — over and over and over again. In other words, practice makes perfect.” Try viewing math as a game or sport. e more problems you work on — and the more mistakes you make and learn from along the way — the stronger your math muscles will get.

Everyone learns differently. Maybe taking notes in class isn’t the best way for you to wrap your mind around math. Arrange a time when you can talk with your teacher (and your parents, if possible) to come up with a plan more suited to your learning style. Meantime, if you have friends who excel at math, ask them for tips.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and you obviously have the desire to succeed. at’s more than half the battle. Even if your efforts don’t add up to the best grade, don’t beat yourself up. In the long run, giving it your best shot is what really counts.

Good luck and God bless, The Rev end

54-y/o full-figured woman who wants love. I am pretty, confident and ready to be loved! In search of a male, 49 to 60, who will treat me well. Should like to travel, camp and make love in all places. Please write me! #L1647

You are a man in his 60s who’s tired of online dating but still believes there is someone out there who will strike a chord deep within you. Someone expansive, alluring, interesting, reverent and irreverent. Reach out and find me. #L1646

I’m a 74-y/o male looking for a female to wine and dine. I have money and compassion. #L1641

58-y/o male seeking a fullfigured woman. You can be yourself and not worry. I love the company of full-figured women. I’m the guy who loves bigger women. Let’s see what happens. Write to me with a phone or text number. #L1645

Mature male searching for mature female for company and creativity. is will not be all flowers and fun, more like hard work and effort. In the end, we will have our hearts’ desires. Activities centered on gardening, art and music. I’m a white Indigenous person who appreciates all colors and shapes. ese are only words; I have so much to show you. #L1640

HOW TO REPLY TO THESE LOVE LE ERS:

Seal your reply — including your preferred contact info — inside an envelope. Write your pen pal’s box number on the outside of that envelope and place it inside another envelope with payment. Responses for Love Letters must begin with the #L box number.

MAIL TO: Seven Days Love Letters

P.O. Box 1164, Burlington, VT 05402

PAYMENT: $5/response. Include cash or check (made out to “Seven Days”) in the outer envelope. To send unlimited replies for only $15/month, call us at 802-865-1020, ext. 161 for a membership (credit accepted).

PUBLISH YOUR MESSAGE ON THIS PAGE!

1 Submit your FREE message at sevendaysvt.com/loveletters or use the handy form at right.

We’ll publish as many messages as we can in the Love Letters section above. 2

Interested readers will send you letters in the mail. No internet required! 3

I’m a 71-y/o W male seeking a very mature woman in her 70s or 80s desiring a sensual relationship with a passionate man. Maturity is your beauty and allure. Please give me a try, and maybe sparks will fly. Phone number, please. #L1644

I’m a GWM seeking others for NSA fun. Looking for tops. I’m fun and adventurous. 40 to 60ish is preferred. Call or text. #L1643

We are three guys: two gay and one bi; one in his 40s and two in their 60s. We get together about once a week at my place in Burlington for men-to-men fun. Looking for another male to join us. If interested, leave a contact number. #L1642

I’m a male, 60s, bi, seeking another male. Any race, any age. I’m fit, clean, disease/ drug-free. Fun guy, open to everything, but mostly a bottom. Reply with phone and time to call. #L1639

Man of letters/amateur artist seeks companionship of thoughtful, considerate woman, mid-50s to low 70s. Share fine cinema, literature, classical music and discussions concerning spiritual/ metaphysical subjects. I’m healthy, 71, creative, curious, a good listener, appreciate the feminine soul and mysteries of existence. #L1638

Int net-Free Dating!

Young-looking, attractive, principled woman, 66, seeks man, 50 to 78, for companionship. Treat man with empathy, kindness, love and respect, and expect the same in return. Enjoy the arts (except dance), cooking, reading, quiet chats, walks, television. Phone number, please. #L1636

ISO “gingandaddy, 46, seeking M.” Did you find your man? Nontech-connected guy would like to discuss possible connection.

#L1635

I’m a 70-y/o GWM seeking a 60-plus male for some fun.

I’m fit and drug- and diseasefree, looking for the same. Discreet fun only. Send stats and contact number. I’m in the Barre/Montpelier area. #L1637

I’m a young-looking, 65-y/o male seeking a female over 45 who likes cattle ranching, working together, auctions and gardening. Must be active, fit, good-looking, financially secure, healthy and a good cook. No smokers or drugs.

#L1632

Describe yourself and who you’re looking for in 40 words below: (OR, ATTACH A SEPARATE PIECE OF PAPER.)

I’m a AGE + GENDER

seeking a

Gentle, affable, fit, humorous, principled, educated man (67) seeks tender alluring woman (52 to 66) who relishes a life of organic gardening, animals, hiking, biking, Scrabble and pillow talk. Land conservation and off-grid living are also interests of mine. #L1630

60s bi white male seeks older guys for relaxing, M-to-M fun in the NEK. Regular guys being yourself. Soft or hard is less important than attitude. #L1631

I’m a 47-y/o male seeking a male for some fun. I’m attractive, fit and drug/disease-free; have perfect hygiene; and am looking for the same. Discreet fun only. Let’s watch each other cum and help each other out. Send stats with contact number. #L1629

72-y/o male seeks similar qualities as my own in a woman. Kind, tender, loving, empathetic, fun, homebody, somewhat liberal, intelligent. I’m healthy, fit, thin and considered attractive. Cozy home in the country. Financially secure. Phone or email, please. #L1627

ADDRESS

ADDRESS (MORE)

CITY/STATE

MAIL TO: SEVEN DAYS LOVE LETTERS • PO BOX 1164, BURLINGTON, VT 05402

OPTIONAL WEB FORM: SEVENDAYSVT.COM/LOVELETTERS HELP: 802-865-1020, EXT. 161, LOVELETTERS@SEVENDAYSVT.COM

THIS FORM IS FOR LOVE LETTERS ONLY. Messages for the Personals and I-Spy sections must be submitted online at dating.sevendaysvt.com.

Eco-resiliency Gathering

WED., MAR. 15

ONLINE

Sputoola with Tiger Strike

SAT., MAR. 18

THE UNDERGROUND, RANDOLPH

After School Drawing Club with Rachel Mirus

MON., MAR. 20

GRANGE HALL CULTURAL CENTER, WATERBURY

Facing Change:

Life’s Transitions and Transformations

WED., MAR. 22; WED., APR. 19 ONLINE

Young Tree

Pruning and Care

SAT., MAR. 25

HORSFORD GARDENS & NURSERY, CHARLOTTE

Ethiopian and Eritrean Cuisine Takeout

SAT., MAR. 25

O.N.E. COMMUNITY CENTER, BURLINGTON

Swing Time! @ the Grange Hall

SAT., MAR. 25

GRANGE HALL CULTURAL CENTER, WATERBURY CENTER

Mega March Birthday Bash - Suburban Samurai, NRVS, What Makes Sense

SAT., MAR. 25

THE UNDERGROUND, RANDOLPH

David Feurzeig

Play Every Town VT

SUN., MAR. 26

FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, ESSEX

Virtual Cooking Workshop

Sweet Potato Gnocchi Bolognese

SUN., MAR. 26

ONLINE

Female Founders Speakers Series:

Vermont’s New Manufacturers

MON., MAR. 27

HOTEL VERMONT, BURLINGTON

Vermont Gatherings

Spring Market

SAT.,-SUN., APR 1-2

CHAMPLAIN VALLEY EXPOSITION, ESSEX JUNCTION

Living with Loss: A Gathering for the Grieving

WED., APR. 5 ONLINE

Vermont Pro Wrestling Entertainment presents World of Hurt Wrestling

FRI., APR. 14

DELTA HOTEL, SOUTH BURLINGTON

Berry Galette

Workshop

FRI., APR. 14

RED POPPY CAKERY, WATERBURY

Open Memorial: Remembering in Community

FRI., APR. 14 ONLINE

Paul Asbell Plays & Sings

Steel-String Americana

SUN., APR. 30

FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, ESSEX

Focaccia Art Workshop

THU., MAY 4

RED POPPY CAKERY, WATERBURY

Deep River - A Spiritual Journey

Solaris Vocal Ensemble

FRI., APR. 14; SAT., APR. 15

BETHANY UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST, MONTPELIER

Burlington Choral Society & Onion River

Chorus: DEEP IN SONG

SAT., APR. 15; SUN., APR. 16

ELLEY-LONG MUSIC CENTER, COLCHESTER

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