GRIM TALLY

Week In Review

MARCH 15-22, 2023

emoji that FINAL WIN

A terminally ill Connecticut woman can use Vermont’s aid-indying program after she successfully sued the state.

Class Dismissed

A developer plans to turn the former Southern Vermont College campus into a luxury resort. Just what we need!

That’s how many inches of snow were measured on Monday at Mount Mansfield’s summit — 12 inches more than the historical average.

Topfive

MOST POPULAR ITEMS ON SEVENDAYSVT.COM

1. “Seasonal Beer Garden the Pinery Coming to Burlington’s South End” by Jordan Barry. e popular Friday night food truck gathering will return, this time with an expanded block-party vibe and an outdoor beer garden.

2. “Woman Wonder: e U.S. Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame Recognizes Stowe Adventurer Jan Reynolds” by Steve Goldstein. Skier Reynolds, a “feat-seeking missile,” is finally getting her due.

3. “In Waterbury Center, Chef Jimmy Kennedy Takes Over Zenbarn Kitchen” by Melissa Pasanen. e Mississippi native will offer pulled pork, fried catfish and other favorites from his repertoire.

Fatal overdoses involving opioids rose again last year in Vermont, reaching their highest point since the state began tracking the untimely deaths more than a decade ago.

At least 237 people died from accidental opioid overdoses in 2022, data released on Monday show. at’s an increase of 20 over the previous year, which itself had nearly 60 more deaths than 2020. e tally could grow as the Vermont Department of Health reviews another two dozen pending death certificates.

Southern Vermont was hit particularly hard. Rutland, Windsor, Bennington and Windham counties all reported at least 45 deaths per 100,000 people — higher than the state average of 38. e death rate was highest among people in their thirties and forties.

In an interview on Tuesday, Health Commissioner Mark Levine described the growing death toll as a lingering symptom of the pandemic — “the social isolation involved, and the increase in using drugs alone.” e spike also reflects national trends and the increasingly dangerous drug supply. Powerful fentanyl is the primary opioid for sale, and new hazards are growing. Among them: xylazine, an animal tranquilizer that traffickers sometimes add to fentanyl in what’s thought to be an attempt to prolong its effect. e drug causes skin wounds that, if untreated, can lead to amputation. Postmortem testing shows that 68 people who died from fatal overdoses last year had xylazine in their systems. e data add urgency to the work of a study committee tasked with recommending how Vermont should spend more than $100 million headed its way in the coming years from legal settlements with major opioid manufacturers and distributors. e committee sent its first proposal to lawmakers earlier this month, recommending that the $7.5 million the state has already received be aimed at immediately curbing overdose deaths.

It recommends that $2 million be used to expand efforts to distribute the overdose-reversal drug naloxone, including through new vending machines and public boxes; $2 million would go to expanding access to opioidaddiction medication.

Another $2 million would fund the creation of roughly 25 new outreach positions across the state, and an estimated $850,000 would expand access to contingency management treatment — an approach that essentially involves offering people rewards such as prepaid debit cards when they meet certain treatment goals. A pilot program under way in Burlington has shown promising results.

Read Colin Flanders’ full story at sevendaysvt.com.

Warm Welcome

After a winter storm pummeled Vermont with a few feet of snow last week, leaving tens of thousands of homes without power, Rick Holloway’s first thought was: How can we help?

A facilities manager at Chroma Technology, Holloway knew his employer was better prepared than most to weather the storm.

e Bellows Falls manufacturing company has a generator strong enough to power its entire facility — including a 3,000-square-foot room used to host blood drives and other community events. So after making a few calls, Holloway an-

Breach Of Trust

A former Vermont State Police trooper was arrested for allegedly stealing more than $40,000 in seized property, including a Rolex watch. Stain on the badge.

Bears Watching

With the weather warming, wildlife o cials warn that hungry bears are emerging from hibernation. Secure your food, trash and birdseed.

4. “For Victims of Home Improvement Fraud, ere’s No Clear Path to Restitution” by Anne Wallace Allen. e system for addressing contractor fraud claims can be frustrating to navigate and is largely toothless.

5. “Burlington Council Denounces Transphobia

Amid ‘Stickering’ Campaign” by Courtney Lamdin. e council unanimously condemned anti-transgender rhetoric.

Tweet Of The Week

@VTStateParks

Hello from Vermont! #StillWinter nounced on March 14 that the company would open an emergency shelter for anyone who needed a place to warm up, use the bathroom, charge their devices or get some coffee. Employees and local firefighters volunteered for shifts over the next 48 hours to ensure that the space was available overnight. e effort caught the attention of Vermont Telephone Company CEO Michel Guite, who learned a thing or two during the power outage. “I hadn’t realized when the electric was off, you can lose water, as well, if you have a pump,” he said.

Luckily, he lived within walking distance of his generator-powered office. But he wondered how other families were faring. Inspired by Chroma, Guite called

FOLLOW US ON TWITTER @SEVENDAYSVT OUR TWEEPLE: SEVENDAYSVT.COM/TWITTER the Springfield Fire Department and asked about setting up his own warming shelter. Firefighters swung by the next morning and approved VTel to host up to 10 people at a time at its Springfield office. e company offered use of its small kitchen, as well. e two shelters ultimately had only a handful of visitors — a testament, Guite said, to the resourcefulness of Vermonters. But both companies have vowed to offer similar services in the future.

In fact, Chroma is now coming up with a new emergency plan that will help it respond even more quickly next time. “We’ll then reach out to the town and work with them so that they know what we can do in the future,” he said. COLIN FLANDERS

BUNNY HAIR CLIPS, SURPRISE CARROTS EASTER NESTING DOLLS, RABBIT STUFFIES, RABBIT EARS, EASTER BUBBLES, PANDA EASTER EGGS, EASTER SQUISHMALLOWS, FLOWER PENS AND MORE!

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No Easy Save

[Re “On Life Support,” March 1]: Your excellent article on the plight of rescue squads and EMTs highlights another crisis point in our crumbling health care system, and any solution will, necessarily, be complex. We must be realistic about what we need and how much we’re willing to pay in both dollars and time. It will require hard choices and, likely, unpopular regulations to change our overall trajectory.

The challenges facing ambulance services speak volumes about our eldercare, self-care, challenges of scattered family units, volunteerism, earning power and inequities in access, to name just a few.

The remedy will be slow and require a seismic shift in attitudes, behaviors, and the collective will to make the change and endure the bumpy road of transformation. We need to begin yesterday and do more than just throw dollars at the problem(s).

Monique Hayden WILLIAMSTOWN

REYNOLDS ‘VERY DESERVING’

I mentioned to my friend Mike from Cornwall that my cousin many times removed, Jan Reynolds, was in Seven Days [“Woman Wonder,” March 15]. He remembered her as “a great skier and adventuresome” at Middlebury Union High School!

Congrats to Jan on a diverse group of accomplishments. She’s a very brave lady with an incredible legacy. Very deserving!

Stephen Halnon WEST LINCOLN

Counting Trees

[Re “Burlington Considers Kicking Fossil Fuels to the Curb,” March 1]: The Burlington Electric Department’s claim — that over the past two decades, 20 million tons of carbon have been added to the forests from which the McNeil Generating Station gets the wood it burns — is meaningless without context. Let me give it some.

1) BED does not say how many trees were cut down and when they were harvested to achieve the 20 million tons. It has been harvesting for 37 years, not 20. It is also claiming credit for the regrowth of trees that were not used to fuel McNeil.

2) Trees take 80 to 100 years to reach maturity. The first trees harvested for McNeil in 1985 have not even regrown to half their mature size.

3) Burlington says it will be carbonneutral by 2050. All the trees harvested from today through 2050, around 27 years, will have a net regrowth of less than 15 percent over that time span.

4) The forests that have regrown over the past 37 years since McNeil started up have a net regrowth of about 20 to 25 percent. That is what the 20 million figure represents.

5) The loss of mature forest carbon absorption capabilities, as well as the slow regrowth of harvested forests, also needs to be accounted for.

6) Taken in context, burning wood on an industrial scale to generate electricity is not a renewable activity in any time frame that is relevant to the efforts to address CO2 production and slow down climate change.

Steve Goodkind BURLINGTON

First Step To Carbon Neutrality

In [“Burlington Considers Kicking Fossil Fuels to the Curb,” March 1], Burlington resident Nick Persampieri claims that the carbon fee is a false climate solution because the electricity used for the buildings would be generated by biomass. While I agree that biomass is a nonideal electric source, he misses the point that electrification as a climate solution is inherently a two-step process. You need to electrify the buildings, cars, etc. that currently use fossil fuels, and you need to ensure that the electricity is generated cleanly.

Expressing opposition to a measure that would very explicitly solve one part of the problem is just kicking the can down the road to some hypothetical future. It is a tactic widely used by fossil fuel-backed entities to delay climate action. Furthermore, even if all the electricity were generated via natural gas or biomass, it would still be more efficient and climate-friendly than burning the equivalent fuels in individual buildings.

Griffith Keating HINESBURG

‘READ YOUR BIBLE AGAIN’

“Love your neighbor as yourself” has been warped so that Mid Vermont Christian School can refuse to recognize the trans athlete of another school as legitimate [“Religious School Booted From Sporting Events for Refusing to Play Trans Athlete,” March 14, online].

Bravo to the Vermont Principals’ Association for banning this school from competing.

Read your Bible again. You are getting a giant F.

Sean Moran SHELBURNE

DON’T PERSECUTE CHRISTIANS

[Re “Religious School Booted From Sporting Events for Refusing to Play Trans Athlete,” March 14, online]: Hooray for the Mid Vermont Christian School for standing up to the insanity that comes from the LGBTQ movement — and being persecuted for it! Not to mention for believing that God simply made us all male and female.

The so-called “transgender” player is simply a male who is so sexually confused by this invasion of our culture that he thinks it’s OK to pretend he’s just another girl out on the court. Do you think the real female athletes like this new arrangement, and would it matter to the school boards if they don’t?

There is still freedom of speech in America (until somebody is offended)! If you want to hear hateful words, then just speak up against the LGBTQ folks. They invented words like “homophobic” and “transphobic” and use words like “bigot” to make you back down, hoping you’ll publicly confess the sin of thinking for yourself.

So, instead of persecuting us Christians, join up! If you don’t eventually do so, you are forfeiting not merely a game or a season, but your forever! Jesus Christ paid the death penalty for our sins, and no one is excluded! (Is that considered inclusion?)

Chris Leicht COLCHESTER

LEFT DOCTOR-LESS

As a person with UnitedHealthcare and now no doctors in network in the University of Vermont Health Network, I was surprised to learn about the rate contract falling through. I was not notified by UnitedHealthcare or the UVM Medical Center. I read it in Seven Days [“UnitedHealthcare, UVM Health Network Fail to Come to Terms on New Contract,” February 21, online].

The resulting hours of phone calls between UVM and UnitedHealthcare, spent trying to find a doctor who is in network, were ridiculous. I’ve been wait-listed for six months to a year to see a primary doctor, or I will need to travel over two hours to New Hampshire. When insurance companies and health care networks break contracts, the patients pay the price and their health is compromised.

What sort of monsters are these decision makers who leave people without care?

Jennifer Barr MONTPELIER

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NEWS+POLITICS 14

No Return

Vermont Lawmakers Are Preparing to Double Their Salaries

Stuck In Vermont

SUPPORTED BY: more than 30 local writers, most readings and meet and greets. A cash bar keeps the party going all afternoon.

Pepperoni is a 21-year-old miniature horse who used to entertain audiences during equestrian events at Plainfield’s Breckenridge Farm. Two years ago, he lost an eye and stopped performing, but he’s since found new purpose as a painter. He used to pick up roses in his mouth; now he picks up paintbrushes. His nickname? PoNeigh (rhymes with Monet).

SATURDAY 25

Glass Waffle Houses

Burlington’s AO Glass throws an unmissable party for Swedish Waffle Day — Våffeldagen to those in the know — featuring the eponymous breakfast food courtesy of the Waffle Wagon food truck and a sampling of Runamok’s infused maple syrups. Attendees can even press their own glass waffle after watching the expert glassblowers at work.

SEE CALENDAR LISTING ON PAGE 66

THURSDAY 23 & FRIDAY 24

Happily Everest After

Pasang: In the Shadow of Everest is one of the films traveling the state during Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival’s MNFF Vermont Tour this week. Stopping at Rutland’s Paramount eatre and Burlington’s Main Street Landing Performing Arts Center Film House, this 2022 documentary tells the story of Pasang Lhamu Sherpa, the first known Indigenous Nepali woman to summit the world’s highest mountain.

SEE CALENDAR LISTING ON PAGE 65

FRIDAY 24 & SUNDAY 26

Living in Harmony

Toronto-based acoustic duo Basset takes audiences at Randolph’s Chandler Center for the Arts and Richmond Congregational Church on tuneful journeys through forests, prairies and silent cities after dark. Songs from the pair’s debut album, In the Clay, are deeply inspired by nature in all its diverse and ever-changing forms.

SEE CALENDAR LISTING ON PAGE 66

SATURDAY 25 & SUNDAY 26

Two in the Sugar Bush

During the first of two Maple Open House Weekends, sugar makers across the state open their doors to visitors interested in the tapping, making and tasting of all things sweet and sticky. From sugar bush tours to sugar on snow to sap boiling demonstrations, there’s something everywhere and for everyone.

SEE CALENDAR LISTING ON PAGE 66

WEDNESDAY 29 Short

Stories

Vermont Symphony Orchestra presents A Night at the Movies at Castleton University, the first of three performances celebrating animated and documentary short films made or scored by Vermonters. Matt LaRocca conducts a chamber orchestra in the soundtracks to stories ranging from a reimagining of “Hansel and Gretel” to a child’s perspective on her undocumented farmworker family.

SEE CALENDAR LISTING ON PAGE 69

0ngoing

Great White North

Northern Vermont artist Elizabeth Nelson presents a solo show, “NORTH,” at the Front in Montpelier. Nelson’s paintings ruminate on the harsh, wintry landscapes of the Green Mountain State, Iceland and Norway, harnessing light and texture to evoke the beauty and fragility of these locations.

SEE GALLERY LISTING ON PAGE 54