Seven Days, April 10, 2024

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NorthCountry is proud to sponsor Lyric  Theatre’s production of Wizard of Oz April 11–14, 2024 Flynn Main Stage There’s no place

economy Find what you need and support Vermont stores by shopping Myti, a new online marketplace dedicated to our local community. Help fund social missions, support nonprofits, and strengthen local businesses. Your dollars make a di erence!

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Tesla is scheduled to hold a grand opening of its first Vermont dealership in South Burlington on April 11. Giddyup.

SWAPPING PARTNERS

22 million

That’s how many Americans su er from long COVID, according to U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who announced legislation to address the illness.

TOPFIVE

MOST POPULAR ITEMS ON SEVENDAYSVT.COM

1. “Police Search for Man Who Set Fire at Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Burlington Office” by Courtney Lamdin. See story on this page.

ILLEGAL BERN

A man who had been staying in a local motel was charged on Sunday with setting a fire at U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) office in downtown Burlington. Authorities charged Shant Michael Soghomonian, 35, previously of Northridge, Calif., with setting ablaze the door of Sanders’ third-floor office at 1 Church Street.

Federal court documents reveal that a camera in the hallway outside the senator’s office captured what happened last Friday: A man is seen leaving an elevator and walking to the door of the office. He sprays lighter fluid on the door and sparks it with a lighter, according to an affidavit from a special agent with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Sanders was not there, but seven staffers were, the affidavit says. Nobody was injured. e fire activated the sprinkler system, which largely extinguished the blaze but also caused significant water damage on the third and lower floors. Besides Sanders’ office, the building is also home to Chase Bank and other businesses.

Authorities released a photo captured by another surveillance camera that showed a suspect walking on

the Church Street Marketplace. Staff at the Quality Inn in Shelburne recognized their guest and called Burlington police to report he had been staying there for “several weeks.”

When officers knocked on Soghomonian’s door, he said he was getting dressed, court documents say. The officers heard what sounded like heavy objects being dragged to the door. Worried he was barricading himself in, they forced the door open and took him into custody.

e documents reveal nothing about what authorities believe may have prompted the arson.

If convicted, Soghomonian would face between five and 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.

In a statement on Sunday, Sanders thanked law enforcement for their “swift, professional, coordinated efforts.” He added, “I appreciate the outpouring of support and well-wishes for me and my staff. We are proud to be able to continue to serve Vermonters during these challenging times.”

Read Courtney Lamdin’s full story on sevendaysvt.com.

Burlington has entered into a sistercity agreement with Kuyalnick, Ukraine — two years after cutting ties with Yaroslavl, Russia.

TRY, TRY AGAIN

South Burlington voters rejected a second school budget proposal. A tough lesson in education spending.

CENTER STAGE

Gov. Phil Scott appeared as a dental patient in Mount Mansfield Union High School’s production of Little Shop of Horrors His next career?

2. “New Jersey Earthquake Is Felt in Vermont” by Colin Flanders. Much of the eastern U.S., including Vermont, shook as a result of a 4.8-magnitude quake.

3. “After 33 Years, Cheese & Wine Traders in South Burlington Shutters Abruptly” by Melissa Pasanen. e beloved Williston Road business shut its doors on March 30.

4. “In Vermont, the Total Solar Eclipse Will Turn Work Life Briefly Upside Down” by Anne Wallace Allen. Many businesses freed up their employees to see the rare event.

5. “Totality Towns: What to Do and See in the Path of the Eclipse” by Seven Days staff. We compiled a guide to viewing events.

@garlicksauce

Vermont having its first two perfect spring days when all the eclipse visitors are coming is big “put out the nice plates” for a dinner party energy.

GREEN MOUNTAIN QUEENS

wanted to become more confident. She stuck with it and credits the competitions with helping her improve her publicspeaking skills.

and Miss Congeniality at the March pageant, thinks her smalltown sensibility charmed the judges.

You’ve heard of short kings — guys of small stature with big personalities. Now meet Vermont’s short queens

Last month, Isabella Williams of Orwell claimed the title of Miss New England Petite, while Hannah Karki of Essex Junction won the teen division of the same competition. Miss Petite is for women who are five feet, six inches tall or under, a group that sometimes faces discrimination in the world of pageantry, according to Williams.

“I think this is a cool moment for Vermont,” said Williams, who is five feet, three inches tall. “Me and Hannah have been in this together since the beginning.”

At the regional pageant, Karki, who is an inch shorter than Williams, touted the nonprofit she started, Safespace Suicide Prevention, which connects students with mental health resources. e Miss Teen New England Petite competition was Karki’s first pageant win.   “ rough pageantry, I definitely have found myself as a person,” Karki said. “It just gives you so much confidence.”

Karki, 18, is a senior at Essex High School. She started competing when she was 15 because she

e seventh-generation Vermonter writes children’s books and works as a freelance social media manager. She recently toured schools in South Africa with her book, Strong Girls

Williams also cares deeply about sustainability and the impacts of the fashion industry on the climate. In 2023, she won Miss Vermont Earth — another regional pageant — while wearing a secondhand dress. At the national Miss Earth USA competition, she placed in the top 20.

Williams, 25, started competing in pageants in 2022. According to her, that’s later in life than most competitors.

“I’m just a small-town girl in Vermont,” Williams said. “But I’m, like, very Vermont.”

Williams, who also won Most Photogenic

Williams and Karki, who have become fast friends, said they’re excited to attend the upcoming competition together.

“We’ll help each other,” Williams said, “so it’ll definitely be fun.”

RACHEL HELLMAN

SASHA GOLDSTEIN & MATTHEW ROY

Hannah Karki

Isabella Williams COURTNEY LAMDIN

1 Church Street

PHOTOS: COURTESY OF ISABELLA WILLIAMS

Eva Sollberger MultiMediA journAlist James Buck Audio/Aloud production Jeff Baron 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

WHAT BURLINGTON NEEDS

[Re “Burlington Council Advances

South End, Memorial Auditorium Plans,” March 11, online]: I do hope everyone realizes that the Memorial Auditorium block plan was voted on: Unanimously, city councilors have approved the budget item with the amendments that allow Memorial Auditorium to be torn down. That is something a majority of residents do not want.

We had a citywide survey a few years ago, and then the mayor vetoed the idea that we must keep Memorial Auditorium (as a memorial)!

I know everything is justified by “affordable housing,” and I, too, believe in affordable housing, but every project mentioned would be 80 percent market rate and 20 percent affordable. All these things are pushed through with the word “affordable.” Unfortunately, all other considerations are lost.

We do not need a 100-room hotel; we do not need hundreds of expensive, often poorly built market-rate apartments. Yes, there is a housing shortage, but what we need are subsidized apartments that cost less than $1,000 a month.

ARTISTS

Luke Awtry, Daria Bishop, James Buck, Jeb Wallace-Brodeur

FOUNDERS

Pamela Polston, Paula Routly

CIRCULATION: 35,000

Seven Days is published by Da Capo Publishing Inc.

every Wednesday. It is distributed free of charge in

Housing for the homeless should be separate from housing for the disabled and elderly. If you read [“The Fight for Decker Towers,” February 14], then you know.

Well-insulated walls between apartments are also what we need. The latest press releases tell us that hundreds of apartments are being built. How many will be affordable for workers who have little money? Very few. One hundred? Two hundred?

This may turn out to be a bad decision. Please prove me wrong.

Charlie Messing BURLINGTON

CORRECTION

In our pre-eclipse coverage, Seven Days reported that 2106 is when the next total solar eclipse will be visible in Vermont. That’s true for the northern part of the state, but alert readers have pointed out that an eclipse will graze parts of southern Vermont in 2079. Apologies for the error.

CONSOLIDATION IS NECESSARY

[Re “The Deepest Cut,” March 27]: Small schools are an anachronism, a relic of the past that Vermont can no longer afford. If the parents of students in small schools were burdened by the full cost, they would close them immediately. Yet instead, the entire state is asked to support this luxury. Vermont’s school-age population is declining, and more schools will be operating well below capacity and at a high cost per student. The subsequent increase in taxes will accelerate the demographic decline as businesses flee and young families find taxes eroding more and more of their income. It’s time for a complete reassessment of school infrastructure. Consolidation isn’t a “nice to have”; it’s a necessity.

Robert Perry WARREN

UNEQUAL EDUCATION

“The Deepest Cut” [March 27] details the continuing long-term fallout from the Vermont Supreme Court’s well-intentioned but poorly implemented Brigham decision calling for “equal educational opportunities” across Vermont.

Act 127 has been a particularly egregious violation of the Brigham principle of equal education. Roughly 25 percent of Vermont school districts have average class sizes of 15 students or less. And yet, in order to support these smaller districts and their advantageous student-teacher ratios, Act 127 financially penalizes dozens of other school districts with much higher average class sizes — now approaching 23 children per class — including South Burlington, Colchester, Mount Mansfield Union and Lamoille South, amoung others. No wonder voters in many newly penalized

The U.S. Department of Labor regulation goes in only one direction: forcing true and happy independent contractors into W-2 work neither we nor our clients want.

Around 70 million people in the U.S. earn their living as freelancers. Think writers, editors, photographers, wedding vendors, small pet-sitting services, travel nurses and hundreds of other professionals. That’s why freelancers everywhere are fighting this regulation. Three lawsuits against the regulation have been filed by those fighting for the right to remain independent contractors, not to be employees with bosses, without control over working conditions or work content.

What can you do to protect us? Urge your U.S. representatives to vote yea on H.J.Res.116 and your U.S. senators to vote yea on S.J.Res.63, resolutions that aim to protect the careers of independent contractors by stopping this harmful regulation.

districts recently rejected so many school budgets.

If the standard under Brigham calls for an equal education, how can anyone consider Act 127’s support for unequal teacher-student ratios (and penalization of larger class-size districts) to be anything but a direct violation of Brigham? As Alison Novak examined, it’s even hurting some small schools like Roxbury.

It’s time to revisit Brigham altogether, end the opaque Montpelier-determined tax formula and return school financing to where it belongs — the local community. Let each community control more of its own destiny, including, if necessary, the hard choices around tax-base expansion and consolidation or closure of schools, instead of Montpelier forcing these actions via the current state-controlled education-financing regime.

Cory Cowles SHELBURNE

FIGHT FOR INDEPENDENTS

“Gig Deal” [March 27] failed to mention that the new U.S. Department of Labor rule would misclassify independent contractors as W-2 employees, potentially ending tens of millions of freelancers’ careers.

If the new rule takes effect, my copyediting business is done. The rule says that because my work is integral to the work of the publishers that hire me, I should be a W-2 employee. But my clients are unlikely to have the budget or need to hire freelancers as W-2 employees. I’d just lose them — and all that income, with nothing to replace it.

Freelancers agree the worker misclassification is wrong — in both directions.

Sheryl Rapée-Adams MONTPELIER

MEDIA MEMORIES

[Re From the Publisher: “Listen Up,” March 20]: When I was a kid, we used to come up to my Vermont grandparents’ home twice a year. There were two daily papers in Burlington then. One of them might have been the Burlington Daily Times. The Burlington Free Press, a daily since 1848, was the other. The beginning of the end was probably when Warren “Mac” McClure sold the paper to Gannett just before it published USA Today . It made him more money than he could give away in his long life of philanthropy. The steamboat Ticonderoga restoration, the Lois McClure canalboat project, the McClure wing of the hospital and many more community projects bear his name. Is the loss of a daily paper offset by these good works? Maybe not when the daily paper is 16 pages, including about six pages of content from USA Today. This amazing hot mess cost $2.50 a day the last time I looked.

The death of print media is not limited to daily papers. In Milton, the Milton Independent reported on town events and issues thoughtfully and thoroughly. It even published some of my fire scene photos. We had an amazing editor and reporter who investigated and broke important stories. She wrote about them in a crisp, concise style that was a delight to read. After she left, the paper went virtual and essentially disappeared. What happened to this wonderful writer? She was stolen by Seven Days. We miss you, Courtney Lamdin! Gregory Burbo MILTON

NEWS+POLITICS 14

Higher Ground

Recent catastrophes prompt new thinking about ways to manage Vermont’s flood-prone landscape

Goddard College to Close After Spring Term

Top of the Class?

Scott’s pick for education secretary, Zoie Saunders, faces questions about her qualifications

Mazza Steps Down From Vermont Senate Lawsuit Involving ‘Hooked’ Subject to Be Settled

ARTS+CULTURE 44

Shining On

Vermont poet Sydney Lea on his new collections of verse and prose

The VSO’s Jukebox

Quartet Explores the ‘Sound of Science’

A Life’s Work

eater review: I Am My Own Wife, Lost Nation eater

Grateful Thread

Catching up with the Champlain Valley Quilt Guild in advance of its biennial show

Vermont Book Awards

Announce a Competitive Field of Finalists

Darned Tough

At Studio Place Arts in Barre, a group exhibit highlights embroidery FOOD+ DRINK 38 For Noshers and Fressers

Montréal’s Jewish eateries serve classics from around the world

Taking

MAGNIFICENT

SATURDAY 13

CLIMATE EXCHANGE

At A Celebration of Earth at Next Stage Arts in Putney, composer-performer Ben Cosgrove’s landscape-inspired music sets the stage for New York Times best-selling authors Douglas Brinkley and Bill McKibben to talk about their research and writing on climate action. Film director Vanessa Vadim moderates the conversation; a live stream is available.

SEE CALENDAR LISTING ON PAGE 69

SATURDAY 13

Golden Gala

To mark more than 300 performances over five decades, Gov. Phil Scott declared March 14 to be Royall Tyler eatre Day in Vermont. Now the beloved University of Vermont arts space hosts two days of workshops and panels to kick off its next half century, culminating in 50 Years of Royall Tyler eatre: A Musical Revue. Alumni cast members from past productions collaborate with current students for an unforgettable one-night-only performance.

SEE CALENDAR LISTING ON PAGE 70

SATURDAY 13

Take a Bow

It may be difficult for audience members to remain in their seats at the Vermont Fiddle Orchestra Spring Concert at the Barre Opera House. Traditional jigs, reels, marches and waltzes from Québec and Europe get hearts racing and feet stamping. e plucky ensemble also plays a more modern tune to honor the late David Kaynor, its former director.

SEE CALENDAR LISTING ON PAGE 70

discusses his timely Prescription for Pain: How a Once-Promising Doctor Became the “Pill at the Norwich Bookstore. Eil’s harrowing debut chronicles the rise and fall of Paul Volkman, currently serving the longest sentence given to any physician convicted of drug-related charges during the opioid epidemic.

Mill Killer,” currently

SEE CALENDAR LISTING ON PAGE 68

TUESDAY 16

Feeding Friendly

Amid the uncertainty and darkness of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Vermont Everyone Eats! program provided an undeniable bright spot. In Ramen Day, Middlebury filmmaker Corey Hendrickson documents the grassroots effort to feed foodinsecure Vermonters using local ingredients, simultaneously extending a lifeline to struggling food producers and restaurants. e emotional film premieres at Montpelier’s Capitol Showplace.

SEE CALENDAR LISTING ON PAGE 72

WEDNESDAY 17

Flipping Amazing

Prepare to be blown away by Blizzard, a spellbinding spectacle from world-renowned circus arts

ensemble FLIP Fabrique. Vermont State UniversityLyndon’s Alumni Gym transforms into a winter wonderland as the Québec troupe brings audiences on a blustery, breathtaking acrobatic journey.

SEE CALENDAR LISTING ON PAGE 74

ONGOING

Great Expirations

Burlington’s Frog Hollow Vermont Craft Gallery presents “Expiry,” a solo exhibition by Jack Morris Using antique cameras and new and expired film, the Stowe native has developed a mosaic narrative approach challenging the idea that photographs reflect absolute reality — and adding new dimensions to the creative process.

SEE GALLERY LISTING AT SEVENDAYSVT.COM/ART

Philip Eil true-crime page-turner,

Ben Cosgrove

Seven Days won 18 first-place awards at the annual New England Newspaper & Press Association convention March 22-23 in Waltham, Mass. The awards presentation honored work published by the region’s daily and weekly newspapers, online news sites, and speciality publications between August 1, 2022, and July 31, 2023.

1ST PLACE AWARDS

BEST NICHE PUBLICATION + OVERALL DESIGN AND PRESENTATION OF A SPECIAL SECTION

All the Best: The Locals’ Guide to Vermont, 2022

BUSINESS/ECONOMIC REPORTING

Ken Picard, “Working on the Railroad: How Family-Owned Vermont Rail System Became the Little Economic Engine That Could”

COMBATING MISINFORMATION AND RESTORING TRUST*

Paula Routly and Cathy Resmer, “From the Publisher” and “From the Deputy Publisher” columns

ENTERTAINMENT VIDEO*

Read on for a list of our first-place finishers. In most cases, Seven Days competed against other large-circulation weeklies; the exceptions have been noted below. We’re very grateful to NENPA for the recognition — and to the advertisers and Super Readers who support our work!

Want to join them? Become a Super Reader by making a financial contribution at sevendaysvt.com/super-reader.

* 1st place across all NENPA members

LOCAL PERSONALITY PROFILE

Eva Sollberger, “Stuck in Vermont: Peter Harrigan Collected 600 Barbie Dolls in 30 Years, With Support From His Husband, Stan Baker, Who Collects Ken Dolls”

ENVIRONMENTAL REPORTING

Kevin McCallum, “Lake Advocates Say Vermont Has Botched Regulating Pollution on Dairy Farms”

FEATURE VIDEO

Eva Sollberger, “Stuck in Vermont: Meet Earl & Jackson Ransom and Amy Huy er of Stra ord Organic Creamery at Rockbottom Farm”

HEALTH REPORTING

Colin Flanders, “Vermont’s Relapse: E orts to Address Opioid Addiction Were Starting to Work. Then Potent New Street Drugs Arrived.”

HISTORY REPORTING

Steve Goldstein, “Decades After He Was Killed in World War II, a Hinesburg Soldier Is Restored to His Family”

HUMAN INTEREST FEATURE

Seven Days sta , “On the Road: What Route 100 Says About Vermont”

Chelsea Edgar, “The Conversation Artist: Podcaster Erica Heilman Seeks the Meaning of Life, One Interview at a Time”

NEWS VIDEO

Eva Sollberger, “Stuck in Vermont: Catastrophic Flooding in Vermont”

OBITUARIES

Colin Flanders, “End of an Era: Peter Miller, Who Photographed Vermont’s ‘Simple People Living Simple Lives,’ Dies at 89”

PHOTO SERIES*

+ SPOT NEWS STORY

Seven Days sta , “‘Historic and Catastrophic’: Unrelenting Rain Swamped Vermont’s Cities, Towns and Hamlets. The Recovery Is Just Beginning.”

OVERALL DESIGN AND PRESENTATION OF A PRINT NEWSPAPER

Seven Days sta , “The Quebéc Issue” and “‘Historic and Catastrophic’”

SPORTS FEATURE STORY

SPORTS STORY

Steve Goldstein, “Woman Wonder: The U.S. Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame Recognizes Stowe Adventurer Jan Reynolds”

Ken Picard, “True Grit: Gravel Biking in Vermont Is Gaining Traction and Building Community”

Team Effort

Shortly after I started writing for Seven Days in 2001, publisher Paula Routly took me out for lunch. I had asked for the meeting, hoping for some career advice. As a fledgling freelance writer, I wanted nothing more than a full-time job at Paula’s then-6-year-old newspaper.

There were no staff writers at Seven Days back then; Paula and her cofounder, Pamela Polston, wrote most of every issue, with help from a few freelancers like me — and must-read political columnist Peter Freyne.

Over vegetarian fare at Zabby & Elf’s Stone Soup in Burlington, Paula ruled out hiring me anytime soon but encouraged me to keep freelancing and honing my skills. I don’t remember much about our conversation, but I recall my answer when Paula asked what I wanted: “To be part of a team of award-winning writers,” I said.

The solitary act of writing has its charms, but I craved camaraderie, too, and the chance to learn from talented and experienced colleagues and to make an impact greater than I could on my own. Also: a steady paycheck. That thankfully arrived in 2005, when I became Seven Days staff writer No. 2.

recognition from our colleagues at NENPA. None of us who were involved in that issue of Seven Days will forget the way we scrambled and pivoted on a Monday to put a flood story on the cover of Wednesday’s paper.

Managing that tight turnaround inspired us to try it again for this week’s solar eclipse. We had a little more time to prepare, knowing the path of totality far in advance. Deputy news editor Sasha Goldstein dispatched four photographers and a dozen reporters — including his dad, Steve — to locations that seemed promising; Eva filmed from the banks of the Winooski River and crowdsourced videos from spectators.

Sr. Lois (left) and Sr. Christopher, Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm, drove from New York’s Hudson Valley to watch the eclipse at Perkins Pier in Burlington.

Fast-forward nearly 20 years and we employ more than a dozen full-time journalists. Now deputy publisher, I ventured to the Westin hotel in Waltham, Mass., as Seven Days’ sole representative at the 2024 New England Newspaper & Press Association conference. During the awards dinner — which recognized work published between August 1, 2022, and July 31, 2023 — our editorial and design teams scooped up 18 first-place prizes. Or, rather, I did, and I hauled them all back to the office, along with 13 certificates for second and third place. See the opposite page for a list of the first-place winners.

They include Colin Flanders, Kevin McCallum and Ken Picard. Some got more than one — Colin, Steve Goldstein and senior multimedia producer Eva Sollberger, the last of whom picked up awards for Best News Video, Best Feature Video and Best Entertainment Video.

Two of our group reporting projects received top honors: “On the Road: What Route 100 Says About Vermont,” a series of travelogues that won Best Human Interest Feature, and our July 12 package “‘Historic and Catastrophic,’” our first cover story about last summer’s flood. The latter won twice — for Best Spot News Story and Best Photo Series. There’s nothing to celebrate about a natural disaster, but it was gratifying to receive this

CATHY RESMER

Pulling it all together on deadline was a bit of a sprint. We had barely 24 hours after the main event to write, edit, design and proofread the pages.

But the timing turned out to be perfect: Totality exceeded all of our expectations, and everyone was jazzed about documenting it. Around 2:30 p.m., I wandered down to Perkins Pier on the Burlington waterfront, a block from our office.

I wasn’t on assignment, but I couldn’t help chatting up strangers, including an eclipse chaser and his wife who traveled here from the Philippines and a pair of habit-wearing Carmelite nuns — Sr. Lois and Sr. Christopher — who drove up from the Hudson Valley. I took their photos and typed their quotes into the notes app on my iPhone.

Seeing my photos in our eclipse slideshow was a thrill. I savored the coverage assembled by our skilled journalists, photographers and designers. Hope you do, too. Just having this record of it is worth more than any award.

Cathy Resmer

If you value our eclipse coverage, help pay for it by becoming a Super Reader!

Look for the “Give Now” button at the top of sevendaysvt.com. Or send a check with your address and contact info to:

SEVEN DAYS, C/O SUPER READERS P.O. BOX 1164

BURLINGTON, VT 05402-1164

For more information on making a financial contribution to Seven Days, please contact Gillian English:

VOICEMAIL: 802-865-1020, EXT. 115

EMAIL: SUPERREADERS@SEVENDAYSVT.COM

DEAN OF THE SENATE STEPS DOWN

SETTLEMENT IN DEATH OF BTV WOMAN

Higher Ground

Recent catastrophes prompt new thinking about ways to manage Vermont’s flood-prone landscape

BY KEVIN MCCALLUM • kevin@sevendaysvt.com

David Thurber, who manages the Vermont Agency of Transportation’s 650-vehicle fleet, has an emotional attachment to the sprawling Central Garage in Berlin. He got his start there 25 years ago as a young mechanic learning how to keep the state’s snowplows, dump trucks, police SUVs and game warden pickups on the road.

But after the complex was inundated twice last year, in July and December, he has come to realize that the garage is in the wrong place — wedged between Route 302 and the Stevens Branch of the Winooski River, which has spilled its banks time and again.

“There is no question that we shouldn’t be here,” he said last week from a maintenance bay now used for storage.

His agency is the latest public entity to decide to abandon a flood-prone property

instead of rebuilding on it. VTrans plans to relocate the garage and training center to higher ground about a mile away.

“We are not going back to this property. It would be foolish to do so,” VTrans

YOU CAN ENVISION SMALL PROJECTS LIKE THIS ALL ALONG THE WATERSHED. BEN DOYLE

Secretary Joe Flynn told lawmakers last month. “It would be risk beyond reward.”

Not far away, alongside the Winooski River, the City of Montpelier has decided to pull up stakes on a farm where it raises

Goddard College to Close After Spring Term

STORY & PHOTO BY ANNE WALLACE ALLEN anne@sevendaysvt.com

Goddard College, the progressive school founded in Plainfield in 1938, is closing at the end of the spring term and will sell its campus, trustees announced on Tuesday.

The move was prompted by low spring enrollment numbers at the struggling school, which said earlier this year that it was going fully virtual.

President Dan Hocoy blamed demographic changes that have reduced the number of college-age students nationwide and inflation that has raised the cost of living for potential students. He noted in an interview on Tuesday that Goddard has struggled financially for 50 years, since enrollment reached a high of around 1,900 in the early 1970s.

“We’ve come close to closing on several occasions,” Hocoy said.

Spring enrollment is about 220, he said — down from 340 in fall 2019.

Many of the alumni who reacted on social media said they were not surprised.

“I did all my crying and grieving for Goddard many moons ago,” wrote one, posting in the alumni Facebook group.

vegetables for people who are food insecure. The July 2023 flood destroyed crops and outbuildings at the Community Feast Farm and damaged a historic but dilapidated home on the same property. The home, long eyed for preservation, will be razed; the farm operation will move to cityowned land on a nearby hill.

The VTrans garage and the farm are being abandoned not only because they are likely to flood again but also so the land on which they sit can be converted to floodplain. The low-lying sites, upstream of Montpelier, could be managed to better hold floodwaters, thus helping to keep the Winooski from inundating the city’s downtown, as it did in 2023.

Although they will take years and millions of dollars to complete, the

Goddard offers self-designed learning programs in the arts and humanities. It’s on a 117-acre estate once known as Greatwood that was built around 1908 and includes 90 acres of forest.  e campus is for sale, but Hocoy declined to say for how much. A group called Cooperation Vermont has announced plans to purchase the property, with the interests of the region in mind.

About 90 people will lose their jobs, Hocoy said. Current students will be able to complete their degrees through Prescott College, a lowresidency school in Arizona, with aid from Goddard’s $1 million endowment.

Sociologist and author Nikhil Goyal, who graduated in 2016, said the progressive education offered by Goddard is needed now more than ever.

“At a time of rising authoritarianism, extreme inequality and needless suffering, it is imperative we have institutions of higher education that produce citizens who will help repair the world,” he said. “Goddard leaves a massive void.” ➆

Post-flood devastation at the Feast Farm in Montpelier

Top of the Class?

Gov. Scott’s pick for education secretary, Zoie Saunders, faces questions about her qualifications

BY ALISON NOVAK • alison@sevendaysvt.com

Late last month, Gov. Phil Scott held a press conference to introduce his long-awaited choice for Vermont education secretary: Zoie Saunders, a Florida school administrator.

“She’s a problem solver, leader and innovator who’s been laser-focused on improving outcomes for kids,” Scott told those assembled.

On the social media platform X later that day, the governor posted a photograph of himself, Saunders, her husband and two young sons, calling Saunders “an experienced public-school leader.”

But Scott’s choice has met forceful pushback. Residents, lawmakers, the state teachers’ union, the Vermont Principals’ and School Boards associations, and even the Democratic and Progressive parties have all raised concerns about Saunders’ qualifications for the $168,000-a-year leadership position. She has never worked as a teacher, principal or superintendent and has held her most recent job, as chief strategy and innovation officer in Broward County Public Schools, for just three months.

Saunders’ critics have zeroed in on her seven-year stint as a strategist for Charter Schools USA, a privately held, for-profit charter school management company that runs more than 90 schools in five states. They say those schools, which are not currently allowed in Vermont, circumvent public oversight, siphon off tax dollars and are antithetical to the system of education in the Green Mountain State.

At a press conference last week, Scott said the topic of charter schools didn’t come up in the interviews he conducted with candidates. The governor also said he doesn’t want to start charter schools in Vermont.

Myriad challenges — rising costs, declining enrollment, acute mental health needs, a persistent teacher shortage, lagging academic skills and aging infrastructure — make the appointment of a knowledgeable and capable secretary of education more important than ever, school leaders say. The Agency of Education, which has been without a permanent secretary for a year, is in dire need of a visionary chief executive capable of

boosting a demoralized workforce that lacks a clear sense of purpose, according to several agency employees Seven Days interviewed last week.

The backlash to Saunders’ selection has put the governor on the defensive. He issued a fiery press release in support of her one week after the introductory press conference. Last Thursday, five senior members of his administration released a commentary titled “We’re Moms. Our Kids Are in Public School. We Helped Select Zoie Saunders as Vermont’s Next Education Secretary.” The women, members of the interview team, said Saunders’ “strategic thinking” and experience working with schools in multiple states would be assets to Vermont.

Saunders is slated to start on April 15, but she must be confirmed by the state Senate. The body’s Education Committee is scheduled to hold hearings later this month. A majority of senators have to vote for her appointment.

Higher Ground

projects reflect one flood-prevention strategy — removing vulnerable structures from floodplains — that is gaining momentum. Communities are eager to protect themselves against a repeat of last year’s catastrophic flooding, which the climate crisis is expected to make more frequent.

More broadly, state and municipal leaders and environmental groups are also strategizing how to string together smaller, nature-based projects that could collectively lower flood risks.

While restoring floodplains and wetlands might seem modest compared to large man-made infrastructure such as dams, they can significantly protect a watershed, said Julie Moore, secretary of the Agency of Natural Resources.

After the Great Flood of 1927, the federal government built three huge flood-control dams in the Winooski River basin. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is taking a fresh look at that same area and could recommend modifying the way the existing dams operate — but is highly unlikely to propose new dams, Moore said. Regulatory hurdles and costs are obstacles. Further, the state would likely need to seize private property for new infrastructure.

“I frankly don’t believe Vermonters would find that palatable in 2024,” Moore said.

Dams can also be dangerous, said Lauren Oates, director of external affairs for the Nature Conservancy in Vermont. Models show that a failure of the Waterbury Dam, on a downstream tributary of the Winooski, would inundate Waterbury Village with 44 feet of water in 20 minutes — a deadly scenario.

“We don’t want to create solutions that have that potential,” she said.

Instead, her organization advocates for natural approaches, such as restoring floodplains, protecting forests and expanding wetlands, as far more costeffective ways to prevent flooding. Unlike dams, such measures don’t require ongoing maintenance.

Such projects need to move forward in conjunction with more robust regulations to prevent land-use practices that exacerbate flooding, she said.

She pointed to the proposed Flood Safety Act now making its way through the legislature. The bill, S.213, would require the Department of Environmental Conservation to regulate all development in river corridors. It would also consolidate regulation of dam safety and require developers to “restore, enhance or create” double the amount of wetlands they destroy.

The first step to improve flood resiliency is to stop making it worse, and the bill accomplishes that, said Oates, who previously worked for the state as a hazard mitigation officer.

“We are the bleeding patient that is not being triaged,” she said.

While that bill is being debated, projects under way to restore floodplains could prove very effective, she said. She pointed to a Vermont River Conservancy project on Whetstone Brook in Brattleboro. The work will breach a berm to allow the brook to inundate 12 acres formerly occupied by a sawmill and lumberyard. Allowing the brook’s waters to spread out over the floodplain will lower flood levels by an estimated three feet at the site.

FLOOD ME ONCE

Several factors played into the decision to abandon the Central Garage. The site has flooded more than half a dozen times since Tropical Storm Irene in 2011. The Federal Emergency Management Agency wasn’t keen to pay for rebuilding on such a vulnerable spot. The state’s insurer paid out only about half of the $4.2 million policy covering the garage. The value of the trucks and other equipment maintained there, meantime, exceeds $75 million.

“We need a facility, frankly, for the next 75 years or more that will ensure the proper operation of the fleet and protect the investment for the taxpayers of the state of Vermont,” Flynn told lawmakers.

The search for a new site was wideranging and initially focused on stateowned land. Candidates included the Knapp Airport in Berlin and a closed highway rest area in Randolph.

Ultimately, the agency selected a privately owned 20-acre parcel next to a Vermont State Police barracks near Interstate 89 in Berlin. The site is on the market for $2 million. Flynn asked lawmakers last month for permission to move forward.

The agency envisions an approximately $24 million building with 28 truck bays and room to expand, he said. Flynn called the decision to move an “inflection moment” in the state’s thinking about locating infrastructure in an era of climate change.

The moment is long overdue in the mind of Dave Potter. The former state representative from West Rutland served on the House Transportation Committee when Tropical Storm Irene struck in 2011. He warned VTrans officials at the time about the risk of rebuilding on the flood-prone property.

“I guess what happened this summer was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Potter said.

Montpelier officials made the same decision about the Feast Farm’s 18 acres: Growing produce on the bank of a floodprone river just isn’t worth the risk. The program of the Montpelier Community Services Department was on track to harvest $20,000 worth of food for seniors and schoolkids when floods wiped out the crops and destroyed its hoop houses and irrigation systems.

Hopes of finding an organization to rehabilitate the derelict Jacob Davis Farmstead have also been dashed. The 1836 Greek Revival house and barn on Route 2 was the former home of colonel Jacob Davis, a Revolutionary War veteran and a founder of the state capital.

Organizations including the Montpelier Historical Preservation Commission, the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, and Preservation Trust of Vermont hold conservation easements or have issued grants over the years to try to preserve the two-story building.

Preservation Trust of Vermont just won a $400,000 grant from Vermont Emergency Management to resolve outstanding debts and ownership issues on the property, tear down the buildings, and begin floodplain restoration engineering, according to Ben Doyle, president of the nonprofit.

“It’s an incredibly difficult decision,” Doyle said. “Here’s this historic home and site that ultimately is impacted by climate change, and there is not really a way to preserve it.”

The property was identified as far back as 2008 as a prime location for a smaller floodplain restoration project. A series

KEVIN MCCALLUM COURTESY OF VTRANS

Flooding inside the Central Garage

David Thurber pointing out river sediment on the Central Garage’s main electrical box

of swales, trees and walking trails were envisioned for a 3.5-acre portion of the farm closest to the river. Despite a modest cost of $200,000, the work was never undertaken.

Now that the farm is relocating, the entire site could be restored as a floodplain, possibly funded in part by FEMA. While the work wouldn’t be a “game changer,” it could help to protect the Capital City, Doyle said. He also serves as the chair of the city’s Commission for Recovery and Resilience.

“There are ways you can envision small projects like this all along the watershed,” he said.

THE COST OF RESILIENCE

While these initiatives are advancing, the proposed Flood Safety Act is encountering resistance from Gov. Phil Scott’s administration, in part because of its likely cost. The Department of Environmental Conservation would have to create 16 new positions to run a river corridor management program and enhance dam safety. The tab: an estimated $5 million a year.

Sen. Chris Bray (D-Addison) argues that the investment is a pittance compared to the $1 billion cost of the 2023 floods, not to mention the trauma suffered by citizens. “When you have tools in hand, like the ones proposed in the Flood Safety Act, and you fail to act to mitigate the risk, that to me really seems to fit the definition of negligence,” he told colleagues.

Supporters say the state needs to take over permitting for development in river corridors because most waterways run through more than one community. Riverside development in one town can exacerbate flooding in downstream cities and towns — but local governments make permitting decisions independently of one another. Only the state can provide

the holistic river-corridor management that’s needed, Bray said. There are 136 separate cities and towns in the Lake Champlain Basin alone, and they’re not able to coordinate permitting decisions, he said.

The bill would require hiring additional staff in the DEC’s five-person dam safety division. The plan calls for relieving the Public Utility Commission of responsibility for about 10 hydroelectric dams that predate 1920, which is when the federal government took oversight responsibility for all new hydro dams as they came online, Sen. Anne Watson (D/P-Washington) explained. The bill would allow the DEC to oversee the 10 hydro dams, along with the hundreds of non-hydro dams for which it already has responsibility, all under a single umbrella. It would also change the way dam repairs are prioritized, she said.

Moore, the ANR secretary, said she agrees in theory with lawmakers’ goals. Making sure new buildings aren’t erected in harm’s way “makes all the sense in the world,” she told Seven Days. And yet, changing the rules for development in river corridors would affect 45,000 parcels statewide. That represents a “really significant change in public policy” that would take time and significant public outreach to explain, she said, adding that the bill calls for moving too quickly.

While the DEC wouldn’t take over floodplain permitting until July 1, 2028, some milestones in the bill are overly aggressive, Moore said.

Oates, of the Nature Conservancy, dismissed such critiques and said the core goal “isn’t even controversial.” Polling indicates that seven out of 10 people in the state have been affected by floods and two-thirds support limiting development in flood corridors.

“People realize that we cannot afford to continue to develop in these areas,” Oates said. “Something’s got to give.” ➆

Jacob Davis Farmstead

Mazza Steps Down From Vermont Senate

BY KEVIN MCCALLUM kevin@sevendaysvt.com

Citing health reasons, Sen. Dick Mazza (D-Grand Isle) on Monday announced his retirement from the Vermont Senate, where he has served for 39 years.

The influential senator from Colchester was diagnosed with cancer last year and has been absent from Montpelier for much of this session, appearing gaunt when he has made brief appearances. In a letter to Gov. Phil Scott, the 84-year-old grocer said he made the decision “with great sadness” and to ensure his constituents are well served in the Statehouse.

“Having dedicated representation has always been one of my top priorities, and I believe the people I serve deserve someone who can provide their full attention to this critical position,” Mazza wrote.

Including a brief period in the House of Representatives in the 1970s, Mazza has served in Montpelier for 42 years.

“Each of those days I considered it to be an honor that Vermonters have trusted me with their stories and had faith that I would act on their behalf, regardless of party affiliations or politics,” he wrote.

In a statement, Scott praised Mazza as a “friend and mentor” who took him under his wing years ago when Scott served in the Senate.

“He knows when to speak up, and when to do so deliberately,” Scott wrote. “And when he does, everybody listens.”

He added, “Senator Mazza has had the unique ability to command the respect and attention of his fellow senators and beyond. He has often been described as the ‘Conscience of the Senate,’ a perfect summary of the man he is.”

Mazza has wielded considerable influence. Mazza’s close relationship with Scott and positions on the Transportation and Institutions committees, as well as the Committee on Committees, have provided him significant sway over key decisions.

But Mazza’s health has slowed him down recently. He resigned as chair of the Transportation Committee earlier this session.

Scott must now appoint a successor, a decision that could have significant implications on upcoming Senate business. ➆

Top of the Class?

In an interview with Seven Days last Friday, Saunders said she understands that Vermonters have a lot of questions about her. But with the skills acquired in previous jobs, she believes she can help create and realize a vision for Vermont schools. Saunders stressed the importance of using data to drive decisions while also working with individual communities. During the 40-minute interview, she was personable and open to answering questions but employed lots of educational jargon to make many of her points.

“I’m looking forward to being on the ground so I can have those open lines of communication and really listen and learn so I can be an effective leader for the state,” Saunders said.

To examine her work experience, Seven Days reviewed news articles and school board meeting recordings from Florida and interviewed national experts on charter schools.

One of those experts, Florida resident Bruce Baker, knows Vermont well. He grew up in Rutland and coauthored Vermont’s 2021 pupil weighting study — an analysis of Vermont’s funding formula that led to far-reaching state aid changes. He also authored a 2015 policy brief, “When Is Small Too Small?,” that examined the efficiency of Vermont’s schools.

Baker said he doesn’t see how Saunders’ experience is relevant to Vermont’s education system.

“I wouldn’t be surprised by [Saunders’ selection] in a number of other states,” said Baker, who chairs the department of teaching and learning at the University of Miami. “But Vermont making this choice, I just don’t understand it.”

‘Enhance Their Bottom Line’

When charter schools started in the 1990s, they were billed as places of learning that would allow teachers to innovate and experiment. They could be more flexible than traditional public schools, unfettered by requirements around such things as curriculum, transportation and the number of school days each year. Both Republicans and Democrats largely supported them.

Charter schools are privately run but funded with public dollars. They offer free tuition and cannot set special entrance requirements. To open, charter schools must be approved by an “authorizer” — typically a local or state school board or state education agency.

Roughly 8,000 charter schools now serve around 3.7 million American students, or 7.4 percent of all public-school pupils. Florida is among the states with the highest number, while Vermont is one of

only five states that do not allow charter schools. Proponents of charter schools say they give families more choice in how their children are educated.

Carol Burris, a former principal in Long Island, N.Y., and executive director of the Network for Public Education, said charter schools operate very differently than do public schools in Vermont. Her group advocates for strengthening public education and seeks legislative reform of charter schools.

“What charter schools lack is public governance,” Burris said. “Public schools are democratically governed by the public. People elect their neighbors to govern the schools.” Charter schools, in contrast, are governed by board members who are appointed, in most cases, by school leadership or the company that runs them.

a strategist from 2012 to 2019, is one of the largest EMOs in the country, responsible for more than 90 schools in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Louisiana.

Its CEO and founder, Jon Hage, also runs Red Apple Development, a real estate company that buys land and builds schools, then leases those facilities to charter schools. Charter Schools USA is then hired to operate them.

VERMONT MAKING THIS CHOICE, I JUST DON’T

Charter schools use public dollars to pay rent to Red Apple and management costs to Charter Schools USA. Hage also owns a variety of other businesses that receive taxpayer dollars and earn contracts from the Charter Schools USA network.

Charter schools have changed substantially in the decades since they were created. Some are now run by education management organizations — for-profit companies. Charter Schools USA, where Saunders worked as

During her interview with Seven Days , Saunders distanced herself from that aspect of the company. In her role, she said, she focused on helping schools support students to improve their performance, “not the broader corporate entities.” One of her proudest accomplishments at the company, she

Sen. Dick Mazza

FILE: JEB WALLACE-BRODEUR COURTESY OF GOV. SCOTT’S OFFICE

Gov. Phil Scott and the Saunders family

said, was developing a digital platform that helped teachers make data-driven decisions about students.

Saunders said she helped run schools in multiple states, which is relevant to Vermont’s ethos of local control. Communities “had different local priorities, and so it was imperative to respect and honor those local traditions while still establishing high-quality standards across all schools,” she said.

But Burris, the public-school advocate, said she was troubled by Saunders’ “choice to begin a career in education not as an educator of children but as a strategist for a privately run corporation that extracts profit by minimizing what they spend.”

Several Florida communities raised similar objections when Charter Schools USA came to town. In 2017, the Marion County School Board denied the company’s attempt to open a K-8 school. The district superintendent told board members that she believed Charter Schools USA officials did not “have the best interests of our students at heart” and that “they want to take advantage of our students to enhance their bottom line.”

In 2022, the Sarasota County School Board unanimously denied the company’s request to open a high school in the city. “This is not the caliber of school that belongs in our district,” a board member said at the time.

Looking for a Partner

In 2019, Saunders left Charter Schools USA to work as the City of Fort Lauderdale’s chief education officer, a newly created position.

Saunders said she was hired to partner with schools and other entities to create greater educational opportunities. One of her major accomplishments, she said, was in the aftermath of the pandemic, when she used federal funds to help develop a summer enrichment and afterschool program to address learning loss.

Saunders found herself in the middle of a heated debate in 2022 when the district considered a partnership with Bezos Academy, a network of Montessori-inspired private preschools started by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Bezos Academy wanted to offer tuition-free, full-year preschool in exchange for 10 years’ rent-free space in public school buildings.

At a Broward County Public Schools meeting, Saunders offered the city’s “strong support” for the plan.

Lawsuit Involving ‘Hooked’ Subject to Be Settled

BY COURTNEY LAMDIN courtney@sevendaysvt.com

The family of Madelyn Linsenmeir, whose viral 2018 obituary urged compassion for people addicted to drugs and led to the “Hooked” series in Seven Days, has reached a tentative settlement in a wrongful-death lawsuit against the City of Springfield, Mass.

Attorneys for Linsenmeir’s family notified the U.S. District Court in Springfield of the settlement on April 3. Linsenmeir’s sister, Maura O’Neill, declined to discuss terms with Seven Days before they are final. The Springfield City Council voted Monday night to transfer $900,000 to a legal settlement account to resolve the suit.

Linsenmeir, a Burlington native who suffered from opioid-use disorder, died in custody in Massachusetts after repeatedly asking for medical care. Her sister, Kate O’Neill, wrote her viral obituary and, later, the “Hooked” series, which featured Linsenmeir prominently.

Linsenmeir was arrested on a probation violation warrant in Springfield on September 29, 2018. During her booking interview, recorded on a surveillance camera, she repeatedly said she was sick and needed medical care.

“I have a really, really bad chest, like I don’t know what happened to it. It feels like it’s caving in,” Linsenmeir said. “I can’t breathe.”

The next day, Linsenmeir was transferred to the Hampden County Sheriff’s Department, which brought her to the Western Massachusetts Regional Women’s Correctional Center in Chicopee, Mass.

On October 4, 2018, prison staff summoned an ambulance after finding Linsenmeir in her cell “in severe distress,” the lawsuit says. Hospital staff diagnosed her with endocarditis — a heart infection common in people who use intravenous drugs. She died on October 7, leaving behind a 3-year-old son. She was 30.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts, and Boston law firm Goulston & Storrs filed the suit on behalf of the family in 2020. It alleges that endocarditis is “generally treatable” if given timely attention. ➆

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“The Bezos Academy partnership accelerates and expands our capabilities together to address the need and prepare more children for success in schools,” Saunders said, noting that it would improve the low kindergarten readiness in public schools.

Teachers’ union leaders vociferously objected, calling the plan “Outsourcing 101.” They expressed concerns about transparency and oversight, as well as fears that the Bezos schools could negatively affect the public schools that housed them. School board members, too, were skeptical about supporting a private initiative within the public school system.

“I think that we need to cue the wild clown car if we support this item because every door is going to be knocked [down], and it’s not going to be a very pretty thing for public education,” one board member said.

The partnership did not go forward.

Last December, Saunders was on the move again, taking an $180,000 job as chief strategy and innovation officer in Broward County Public Schools. Saunders said the role built on work she had already been doing in Fort Lauderdale.

Saunders’ main focus was to lead Redefining BCPS, an initiative to close or repurpose schools amid declining enrollment. During her brief tenure, Saunders helped organize three “community conversations” meant to collect ideas and feedback from residents about potential school closures.

“bizarre” and did not allow for “deep, raw conversations.”

Saunders said she is proud of the “participatory process” she helped develop to engage community members. It’s critical to use “a mixed methodology” when doing this type of work, she said.

“I think it’s really important to offer a lot of different ways for people to engage in the discussion,” she said, including

Broward County Public Schools’ facilities task force, said she didn’t think Saunders had enough experience for the complex job for which she’d been hired in Broward County. She noted that her district has faced a rocky few years: A superintendent was arrested, four school board members were removed from their posts by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and, just last month, the state ordered the district to pay $80 million to charter schools to settle

TO GET CONFIRMED, SAUNDERS NEEDS TO CONVINCE A MAJORITY OF SENATORS THAT SHE’S THE RIGHT PERSON FOR THE JOB.

through surveys, focus groups and grassroots efforts.

But Narnike Pierre Grant, chair of the Broward County Public Schools’ diversity committee, said she wasn’t impressed by the process. In an interview with Seven Days , Pierre Grant said she felt Saunders was pretending to listen when the district had already decided which schools were on the chopping block. While Pierre Grant found Saunders to be pleasant in their interactions, she said she felt the school exec was disingenuous about the purpose of her role with the district.

a lawsuit. Among those who sued the county: Charter Schools USA, Saunders’ former employer.

Lynch-Walsh said it was hard to assess how Saunders did in the Broward County job because “she wasn’t here long enough to even get her toes wet.”

Committed to Public Education?

Saunders said she knows Vermont’s education system is facing big challenges but believes she’s well suited to tackle them.

important for these conversations to be data-driven and also incorporate local input,” she said.

Asked about the thorny issue of public money going to private and religious schools through Vermont’s tuitioning program, Saunders said, “The state has to follow the federal law.” She acknowledged that she has much to learn about the “role that both the public and independent schools play” in Vermont’s education ecosystem. But she believes the state is taking the right approach by making sure all schools have strong antidiscrimination policies “so that students are all feeling supported, loved and valued.”

Saunders’ two sisters and aunt live in Vermont, and her mom just bought a house in the state and plans to retire here. The opportunity to be closer to family is “personally meaningful,” she said.

But to get confirmed, Saunders needs to convince a majority of senators that she’s the right person for the job. Sen. Becca White (D-Windsor) is one of them.

Pierre Grant said she was also upset that Saunders came into Broward County, initiated a contentious process and is abruptly departing.

On rising education costs, Saunders said she has experience working with cash-strapped schools to come up with processes to cut expenses “in ways that are going to have the best outcomes for students.”

White said she’s been surprised by how much feedback she’s received from educators and parents who are concerned about Saunders’ former employment with a for-profit charter school company. Constituents rarely reach out to her about the governor’s picks for secretaries, commissioners or judges, White said, but she’s been getting roughly 10 emails a day. People want assurance, she said, that Vermont’s next secretary of education is committed to safeguarding public education.

At the first, attendees answered questions posed by the district about school closures using an artificial intelligencepowered platform called ThoughtExchange. Then “they got to up-vote or down-vote other attendees’ ideas,” the Miami Herald reported. One teacher told the Herald that the process was

As for consolidating or closing schools to bring down costs, Saunders said her work in Broward County prepared her for those discussions.

Still, White added, she will approach the confirmation process with an open Top

“She doesn’t have to deal with the aftermath,” Pierre Grant said. “It’s really a kick in the teeth to know she’s come here, set some things in motion … and she leaves in the middle.”

Nathalie Lynch-Walsh, chair of the

“What I have learned is, it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution, and it’s very

“When I look at the résumé we have for Ms. Saunders, I have concerns because the public education part … is the shortest and most recent part of her experience,” she said.

lifelines OBITUARIES,

VOWS, CELEBRATIONS

OBITUARIES

Alan Boissy

NOVEMBER 8, 1966-

MARCH 15, 2024

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.

It is with great sorrow that we announce the untimely passing of Alan Christopher Boissy, 57, of Albuquerque, N.M., and formerly of Winooski, Vt., on Friday, March 15, 2024. e husband of Karen Sullivan Boissy and son of Blanche Boissy and the late Clayton Boissy, he was born in Burlington, Vt., on November 8, 1966.

Alan grew up in Winooski, Vt., and later moved to Albuquerque, N.M. He was a graduate of Rice Memorial High School, Champlain College and Bellevue University. He also served in the U.S. Army for many years and was a combat veteran of Operation Desert Shield. He was a longtime employee of Nikon Precision until his retirement in 2023.

He held many interests, including gold prospecting, real estate investing, classic car collecting, and traveling with friends and family. Alan was loved by his family and friends. While he wasn’t the easiest person to live or get along with, he always wanted the best for those he loved

and was always very protective of them.

His loss will be felt deeply by his surviving family members, including his wife, Karen Boissy; mother, Blanche Boissy; parents-in-law, Daniel and Bonnie Sullivan; brother Aaron Boissy; sisters, Angela Sevigny and Anne Boissy; brother and sister-in-law, Rod and Betsy Desroche; nephews, Branden Urbanek, Nathanyel Connelly, Anthony Connelly, Joshua Desroche and Rod Desroche Jr.; and nieces, Alyssa and Kaylee Borchert.

A mass will be held on May 16, 2024, 11 a.m., at St. Francis Xavier Church and a celebration of life will be held on May 18, 2024, 1 p.m., at the VFW in Winooski, Vt.

Flora Holley Whitmore

FEBRUARY 18, 1986-MARCH 20, 2024 BAKERSFIELD, VT.

Flora Holley Whitmore, born in St. Johnsbury, Vt., in the year of Halley’s Comet, commemorated in her name, died a month and two days after her 38th birthday, more than seven years after being belatedly diagnosed with inoperable neuroendocrine cancer in December 2017.

A musician, poet, music therapist, and health care and self-care advocate, especially for those living with invisible chronic diseases, she brought joy into any and every gathering and activity in which she took part. Her laugh could galvanize a room as much as her unmatched socks and eclectic style, despite the necessary poisons and potions that became her daily fare.

A musician from her toddler days growing up in St. Johnsbury, matching pitch with a vacuum cleaner and dancing to music in her crib, she played violin and piano and sang before she could read books or music. Despite a brief foray into musical theater throughout primary school (a brief period as stage manager for the Green Mountain Cabaret in Burlington, Vt., wouldn’t come until she returned from Canada), despite the recommendations from public school personnel to give up her musical activities to improve her academics instead of receiving accommodations for learning disabilities, and despite the encouragement of a college that she pursue a career in writing instead, she pursued music studies in university. As a member of the middle school orchestra in Essex Junction, Vt., and an alumna of Essex High School and the Vermont Youth Orchestra, Flora continued to play violin, finally traveling to Montréal for violin lessons. She studied piano on weekends with Mary Anthony Cox in East Craftsbury, Vt., who also taught at the Juilliard School during

the week and founded the Craftsbury Chamber Players. She formally studied singing with Evelyn Kwanza during high school and was able to able to recover the lost final consonants of her undetected Vermont accent. e addition of percussion and guitar through her music therapy program further enlarged her musical tool kit. Canadian music programs were a better fit than a U.S. liberal education and the math requirements. Flora was an undergraduate for three years in music performance (violin) at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, followed by two years at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. While in Wolfville, she became a student gardener in the Harriet Irving Botanical Garden. Following the completion of the bachelor of music therapy degree and despite a bow arm shattered in a motor vehicle accident, she moved to Toronto and Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital for a clinical music therapy internship. A work visa allowed her to build experience in music therapy work, as well as barista skills, but not enough to qualify for permanent residency. She returned to Vermont and qualified as a board-certified music therapist. She became a music clinician and K though 12 music teacher at the Soar Learning Center in St. Albans, part of Northwest Counseling & Support Services. at was followed by work as a music therapist in Chittenden and Grand Isle counties, as well as freelance musical gigs. After her diagnosis and treatments, she cut back on working in the schools to make room for medical appointments, COVID-19 and Cushing’s disease. Somehow, in between, she managed to become a youth librarian in the St. Albans Free Library, doing music with kids, completing special projects and falling in love with library work.

COVID-19 took her out of the library and into her attic, from which she donned a green wig and goggles and produced a weekly music program,

Miss Flora’s Polka Dot Playground, for kids on Facebook. is was featured in an article by the Neuroendocrine Tumor Research Foundation on April 8, 2020, titled “Miss Flora to the Rescue.”

Always and still writing poems, sometimes on scraps of any kind of paper, “Wait a minute,” Flora would say in the middle of a conversation. “I have to write something down.” Her writing continued throughout all of this; some of her poems are now posted online as F White on Hello Poetry, the latest in a succession of poetry websites. ( ey were finally collected in a small book published by her mother but ignored by Flora.)

By now an expert in medical advocacy, both from personal necessity and because she had become a magnet for friends and friends of friends with serious health problems, she took to cyberspace to develop, edit and produce the Invisible Voices Project, a website aimed at those living with chronic illness who appeared perfectly well, as she did for much of her illness. At the time of her death, she had been working on a book that was the outgrowth of her previous online chronicle of her experience with stage IV neuroendocrine cancer of the pancreas with liver mets and was to include Flora’s wisdom and experience in self-advocacy and being heard.

Flora’s interests included manga and anime; reading recipes; trying unusual foods; dressing up; collecting and writing songs; growing lavender; planting and transplanting in two countries; advocacy for patients with invisible diseases; transposing songs by ear on musical instruments; intentionally singing just off-key to drive her mother crazy; doing improv; playing gigs on violin and guitar; plumbing and making music with her dad; being a caregiver, music teacher and role model; making friends; and hanging out with her brother.

Spunky, with a laugh that just invited you in and embraced you, Flora made any room brighter, livelier, joyous and magical. And as one of her Canadian friends said, she has left Flora-shaped holes in many hearts, especially those of her parents, Lois and David Whitmore; her older-by12-years brother, Luke; her partner, John Chittick; and his daughter, Opal.

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OBITUARIES

Janet VanWoert Cole

APRIL 15, 1936-MARCH 26, 2024 FERRISBURGH, VT.

Janet VanWoert Cole, 87, of Ferrisburgh passed away early on the morning of March 26, 2024, at the Helen Porter Rehabilitation Center in Middlebury, Vt., with her husband, Carl, at her side. She was born on April 15, 1936, in Oneonta, N.Y., the daughter of John VanWoert and Harriet Byard VanWoert. She grew up in Oneonta, attending the Bugbee Elementary School, which was a part of New York State Teachers College (now SUNY Oneonta), and Oneonta High School.

Janet came to Vermont in the summers of 1948 and 1949, attending Camp Ecole Champlain, a Frenchlanguage camp located where Kingsland Bay State Park is now, in Ferrisburgh. She returned to Vermont in 1954 to visit Middlebury College, graduating from Middlebury in 1958. It was during her visit in 1954 that she met Carl Cole; the two were married in 1962.

OBITUARIES, VOWS, CELEBRATIONS

strong advocate for children, no matter what their background was. She spent the next 24 years teaching in the South Burlington and Addison Northwest school districts, specializing in special education and receiving a fifth-year certificate in the field from the University of Vermont before retiring from public education after 30 years.

While in South Burlington, she met Dr. Patricia Stone, clinical psychologist, with whom she would work for the next 27 years. Together they performed testing and evaluating services, both educational and psychological, with Janet being responsible for the educational aspect. Dr. Stone’s clients came from all over the U.S. and a few foreign countries and ranged in age from small children to adults. In addition, they worked with the Vermont court system, determining the competency of those accused to ensure they received a fair judgment.

enough to compete. She played a large administrative role, scheduling home meets and away invitationals, as well as writing the highlights of every event for the local newspaper.

She was a voracious reader, consuming book after book on a variety of subjects in a short time. Geography, history, historical fiction and the Adirondacks were of particular interest. She was always very inquisitive. An Amish friend once told her that she knew more about the Amish than he did. Coupled with her reading was a mind that seldom forgot. ose who knew her will remember, and miss, her sometimes lengthy discussions on any number of subjects.

Janet is survived by her husband of 62 years, Carl; son Roderick “Doc” Cole of Ferrisburgh, his partner, Heidi, and her sons, Hayden and Cyron; and son John and his wife, Tricia, of Ferrisburgh. She was the proud grandmother of Shannon Cole of Asheville, N.C., and stepgranddaughters Marissa Ouellette of Vergennes and Amanda Brigan of Ferrisburgh. She was predeceased by her parents and brothers, David and Peter.

After graduating college, Janet wanted to make Vermont her home and began her teaching career at the Weeks School in Vergennes. At the time it was the Vermont reform school for delinquent and socially dependent children. She taught an ungraded classroom for six years, with students ranging from 10 to 20 years old. Janet hated the term “reform school,” as she was always a

Allen Manley Martin

JULY 26, 1934-MARCH 24, 2024

SHELBURNE, VT.

Allen Manley Martin has sailed on to calmer seas, departing on March 24, 2024. Allen lived a very active life, living in the Burlington area for 89 years.

Allen launched his career with his first business, Almartin Motors. His second business was Point Bay Marina; he owned it for 38 years after bringing it back from bankruptcy.

Allen met his wife of 69 years on a blind date. Together they raised three children, Kathryn, Karin and Peter.

Allen experienced much joy giving the senior citizens of Charlotte rides on his boat, the Nancy Ann

Janet served on the boards of Addison County Home Health & Hospice and the Addison County Fair & Field Days. While on the Field Days board, she was in charge of the horse area, where she organized and supervised the various horse shows. She was a true horsewoman, having a lifelong love of horses, both riding and driving.

She was also instrumental in the organization and development of the Addison Otters Swim Team when her sons were old

Smooth sailing, Poppy – you will be lovingly missed.

Per Janet’s wishes, there will not be any formal services. A gathering in her memory will be held at Kingsland Bay State Park this summer.

Her family wishes to express their gratitude to the staff of Helen Porter Rehabilitation for the exceptional care they gave Janet in the last few weeks of her life. With great patience, they showed her dignity and gave her comfort.

For those wishing to do so, please consider a donation to Addison County Home Health & Hospice in her memory.

IN MEMORIAM

Natalie Frankowski 1978-2023

Donations can be made in Allen’s honor to the Charlotte Senior Center.

Allen leaves his wife, Nancy; daughters, Karin Small and Kathryn Martin (deceased); son, Peter Martin (deceased); grandsons, Matthew Small, Justin Small and Brennan Martin (deceased); and great-granddaughters, Sadie Small and Mercy Small.

Natalie, our amazing, kind, funny and wise daughter, mother, sister, auntie and friend, passed away last August in Texas, as a result of a heart attack. Please join her mother, Barb, and daughter, Tashiana, for a celebration of life and birthday party on April 20, 2024, at the Miller Center, 130 Gosse Ct., Burlington. Stop by anytime from 1 to 4 p.m. to share memories and birthday treats!

Karen Marie Paquette

AUGUST 3, 1955-APRIL 2, 2024

BURLINGTON, VT.

Karen Marie Paquette (Williams) entered into eternal peace on April 2, 2024. Karen passed peacefully at home, surrounded by family and friends, after a courageous three-year battle with pancreatic cancer.

Karen was born on August 3, 1955, in Lindenhurst, Long Island, the daughter of Walter Williams and Jeanne Virginia Remsen. Karen was the oldest of six children and, later in life, three stepsiblings. She grew up on Sherbrooke Road and made many close friends there, as well as through Lindenhurst High School, which she graduated in 1973. Karen made her initial journey to Vermont, a place she would call home for the next 49 years, in 1973, when she moved to Enosburgh to live on a farm — the true “Vermont life.” She returned to Long Island in the mid-’70s to help take care of her family after the death of her mother, Jeanne, and worked with her father at Con Edison. In the late ’70s Karen made the final move back to Vermont and never looked back.

them to the New North End, where they spread their roots throughout the Burlington community. Their family grew with the birth of Rochelle (“Shelly”), followed by Maurice (“Moe”) Paquette II. Their family would spend the next 31 years together, laughing, living and loving.

Karen was dedicated to her job and work family. She started at the University of Vermont Medical Center (then Fletcher Allen) on “Shep 3” in 1980, where she worked as unit clerk. She would go on to dedicate nearly 40 years of her life to working at UVM, the majority of those years as “payroll Karen,” in the payroll office as a coordinator. While at UVM, she made lifelong friends who meant the world to her and her family: Maggie Hebert, Julie Turpin, Lucie Paquette, Darla Ayer, Vicki Pelkey and Jamie Libby, as well as innumerable close friends she considered family. She was months away from retirement when she was initially diagnosed in 2021, truly a UVM “lifer.”

(Randy) and Chris Hotelling (Michael); sisters-in-law, Lucie Paquette and Carol Myjak-Paquette (Bill); and brothers-inlaw Mark Paquette (Penny) and Keith Dunbar; as well as numerous nieces and nephews. She is also survived by parishioners of Saint Mark’s Church, where she was a devout member, as well as the loyal patrons of Papa Frank’s.

Karen was predeceased by her parents, Walter Williams, Jeanne Remsen and Jean Carney; as well as her siblings, Robert Williams, Stephanie Dunbar and Nancy Hespeler; and brother-in-law David Ugalde.

The Paquette family would like to thank the Oncology Clinic at UVM, specifically Drs. Anker and Greenblatt, as well as all the “chemo girls,” who made Karen smile during the darkest days of treatment, and the hospice team, who allowed Karen to spend her final days at home, surrounded by family, friends and love.

From Dad to Mom: The battle ended, but she won the fight. “I’d trade all of my tomorrows for one single yesterday.” —Kris Kristofferson

Vernon Konczal

MAY 8, 1935-

DECEMBER 27, 2023 JERICHO, VT.

Vernon “Vern” Richard Konczal passed away peacefully at his home with his son, Michael, at his side. Vern was born on May 8, 1935, to Stanley and Lillian Konczal and lived in Detroit, Mich., with his elder brother, Norman, and younger sister, Elaine.

Shortly after journeying to Vermont, she met the love of her life and future husband, Maurice (“Moe”) Paquette. They got married in Craftsbury on October 9, 1982, and celebrated each day over the next 42 years. Their journey eventually took

David Werle

JULY 13, 1943-MARCH 27, 2024

MIDDLEBURY, VT.

David Werle, 80, of Middlebury, Vt., passed away peacefully on Wednesday, March 27, 2024, at the Helen Porter Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center in Middlebury, after a courageous battle with cancer.

David was born on July 13, 1943, in Pittsburgh, Pa., but his formative childhood years were spent on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay in Annapolis, Md., where he learned to pick blue crabs and guitars. He then made his way to New Wilmington, Pa., where he attended Westminster College. He spent much of his time before graduation playing bluegrass music and joining in student protests.

Karen was the proud co-owner of Papa Frank’s Italian Restaurant, which she and Moe purchased in 2004 from lifelong friends Frank and Gail Sciara. She deeply loved and cared for all the employees and “Papa Frank’s babies.” She was even prouder to be “Mima” to Clementine, who brightened her days during the last 18 months of her life.

She is survived by her husband, Moe; children, Shelly (Josh Shamoon) and Moe (Emily Laughlin); granddaughter, Clementine; sisters Micki Martin

Calling hours will be on Wednesday April 10, 2024, 5 to 8 p.m., at the LaVigne Funeral Home and Cremation Service, 132 Main St., Winooski, VT. A mass of Christian burial will be celebrated on Thursday, April 11, 1 p.m., at St. Mark’s Catholic Church, 1251 North Ave., Burlington. A reception will follow at the Elks Lodge, 925 North Ave., Burlington, VT 05408.

A celebration of life will be held this summer in Craftsbury, Vt., to honor Karen. Online condolences can be shared with the family at vtfuneral homes.com. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Stephanie Dunbar Memorial Scholarship Fund, Craftsbury Town Clerk, P.O. Box 55, Craftsbury, VT 05826.

With the seeds of activism sown, he

made his way to the hippie scene in Manhattan, where he taught elementary school in Harlem. He introduced his students to film and photography, which would become a lifelong passion and, ultimately, his profession. Speaking of lifelong passion, he also met Susan, the woman who would become his wife and partner. The two decided to settle down in Vermont, where they bought a farm, a bull and a rooster. David then established himself as a small business owner and opened the Middlebury Darkroom at 64 Main Street. That would soon be followed by a number of other Middlebury fixtures, including the Kitchen Shop, True Confections and Lightning Photo. David and Susan also established themselves as parents, as they welcomed their children, Jillian and Jonathan, into the world.

David was a warm and thoughtful host who loved to entertain and was famous for his homemade pâtés, smoked fish and barbecue ribs – and the man could pour a mean martini. When he wasn’t cooking, he could often be found on the golf course, playing music with family, watching the Sox, throwing Maryland-style crab feasts or fishing on Lake Champlain with the Frostbite Fleet. With a quick wit and a generous laugh, he was always ready to have a good time with his family and friends. He was a warm and loving husband, father and grandfather.

David is survived by his wife, Susan; his children, Jillian and Jonathan, and their spouses, Ryan Torres and Anya Hoffman; and his grandchildren, Benjamin, Sama, Ruby and Tema.

A celebration of his life will be held on June 15, 1 p.m., at Champlain Valley Unitarian Universalist Society in Middlebury.

Donations in his memory can be made to the Lois McClure-Bee Tabakin Hope Lodge in Burlington, Vt.

Vern attended high school and college at the University of Detroit and graduated from dental college in 1959. During these years, he was responsible for the distribution and sales of the Detroit Free Press at the Packard Motor Complex, which allowed him to proudly pay his own way and buy a car. He loved telling stories from those days — scraping by, working through freezing conditions and having fun exploits with his friends.

Vern joined the U.S. Army and served as the post dental surgeon at Fort Greely in Alaska. While in Alaska, he met JoAnn Bobian, a teacher from Essex Junction, Vt., and they were married in Massena, N.Y., in 1962. After settling in Lathrup Village, Mich., Vern and JoAnn raised their three children, Michael, Steven and Marilee, and he practiced dentistry in Redford, Mich., for 35 years. He had a strong sense of responsibility toward others and often bartered with his patients.

Having played American Legion and high school baseball, Vern always listened to Tigers baseball, but he was also a devoted fan of other Detroit sports and held seasons tickets to the Red Wings, Lions and Michigan football. He was also a superfan of his children’s activities and coached their Little League and recreational sports teams.

Vern was a man of very strong faith and was deeply devoted to service, public and professional alike. He served on the board of directors at the University of Detroit Mercy, was a charter member of the Association of Professions of the Knights of Columbus, a life member of the Association of Military Surgeons, president of St. Bede Christian Services, University of Detroit Mercy and a member of American Legion Post 91. His half days of work on Wednesdays found him serving at his favorite soup kitchen in downtown Detroit. Vern had a dry sense of

humor and a pragmatic view on life. His catch phrase was “Keep it simple.” He found pleasure in his homegrown tomatoes, fishing, golfing, Stroh’s beer, cookies baked from his mother’s recipes and tinkering on all sorts of projects. He also was keen on staying on top of investment and the latest health-related tips.

Later in life, Vern proved that you can teach an old dog new tricks, when he left his hometown and joined his wife in her dream of living in Vermont. Not one to loll away his days, retirement found Vern helping out at the Burlington Free Press and the Jericho post office. Both of these jobs offered him the opportunity to be engaged and to become minutely intimate with his new environment.

As JoAnn’s health declined, Vern took on the role of caretaker with great love and devotion. It was his few hours every Friday at the Hornets’ Nest, embraced by a lovely group of fans and led by his very special friend and dedicated caretaker over many years, Debbie Lang, that sustained him week after week, when he could no longer spend time with his buddies on the links at the Catamount Club or Essex Country Club.

Vern is predeceased by JoAnn and his daughter-inlaw, Janet (Cook) Konczal. He is survived by his brother, Norman, and sister, Elaine; his children, Mike, Steven (Julianna Doherty) and Marilee (Burt Willey); numerous cousins, nephews and nieces; and nine grandchildren.

A celebration-of-life happy hour will be held on Tuesday, May 7, 5 p.m., at the Hornets’ Nest in Essex Junction. A graveside ceremony will be held on Wednesday, May 8, 10 a.m., at St. Thomas Cemetery, Range Rd., in Underhill, followed by a gathering at noon at the Catamount Club in Williston.

TOTALLY TRANSFIXED

A rare eclipse on a bluebird day dazzled crowds in northern Vermont

BY SEVEN DAYS STAFF

The total solar eclipse that passed over Vermont on Monday shrouded the upper half of the state in several minutes of otherworldly, midafternoon darkness as thousands of visitors from around the world looked skyward in wonder.

Vermonters had hoped for clear skies but braced for disappointment, given that the so-called “Great American Eclipse” was to take place during the state’s notoriously cloudy mud season. In the end, the Green Mountains proved to be one of the best places in the country to watch the moon cross in front of the sun.

Just days earlier, a late-season nor’easter had dumped more than a foot of snow across much of the state. Yet eclipse viewers awoke on Monday morning to blue skies; temperatures would exceed 60 degrees in Burlington. Bands of wispy clouds did creep above Lake Champlain as the day wore on. But for most Vermont viewers, the high, thin cloud cover didn’t obscure the sun’s unforgettable appearance as a pearly, ethereal corona.

Communities as small as Alburgh and as large as Burlington staged days of celebrations designed to attract residents and tourists. While many viewers sought such communal experiences, others chose quieter settings — open fields, mountaintops and backyards — to witness the threeplus minutes of totality.

Hundreds of private planes descended on airports around the state. Nearly 100 touched down at the Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport on Monday — the most in a single day in the airport’s history. Hot-air balloons hovered in the skies, and four thrill seekers managed to book a precisely timed skydiving trip over Addison.

Vehicles from up and down the Eastern Seaboard clogged interstates and two-lane byways as people chased what’s typically a once-in-a-lifetime event. Many came to Vermont just for the day, then endured bumper-to-bumper traffic to head home. Others took a mini-vacation, packing guest homes, hotels, parking lots and eateries over the preceding weekend.

Colleen Hill and her friend Sarah Monroe drove to Burlington from Connecticut on Sunday, paid $40 to park in a downtown lot and slept in the back of Hill’s hatchback. At dawn, they carried a

The day amounted to a citywide festival in Burlington.

comforter, extra socks and a cooler with two Modelo beers over to Waterfront Park, where they claimed one of the eight swinging benches along the lakeshore. They ordered coffee to be delivered by DoorDash to ensure no one could steal their prime viewing spot.

Hill picked Burlington because it was relatively close to her home and she wanted to visit a new state. Her mother, a science teacher, encouraged her.

“She’s been the one who is like, ‘You gotta go, you gotta go!’” Hill said.

As the day drew near, weather forecasts identified New England as a likely location for unimpeded views. Committed eclipse chasers canceled plans to visit other states along the path of totality and instead scrambled to get to Vermont.

Brian Sniffen of Lexington, Mass., canceled reservations to Dallas that he’d made more than a year ago. Just four days before the eclipse, Sniffen managed to rent a home in Underhill that he planned to share with 14 people, many of whom came prepared with high-end cameras and telescopes. They spent about $7,000 for a three-night stay.

Self-described eclipse chaser Nor Montalbo flew halfway around the world from his home in the Philippines to Houston before deciding Burlington appeared to be the better bet. Montalbo and his wife had tried to see a total eclipse near Jakarta, Indonesia, in 2017, but cloudy skies blocked their view. Hoping to avoid another letdown, the pair booked a lastminute flight to New York City, then rented a car at 4 a.m. on Monday and drove to Burlington. They arrived at Perkins Pier before 3 p.m.

PHOTOS: LUKE AWTRY

Eclipse viewers on the Moran FRAME in Burlington

In the minutes leading up to the total eclipse, Montalbo looked skyward and sounded a note of relief. “I think we’re lucking out,” he said.

Burlington o cials planned for the 45,000-person city to more than double in population on eclipse day. They set up viewing parties at many of the city’s lakefront public parks, with activities, food trucks, live music and row after row of portable toilets. The preparations cost nearly a quarter-million dollars, but as of Monday afternoon, the city had reportedly sold $70,000 in commemorative Obscura BTV sweatshirts, posters and yo-yos.

Newly elected Mayor Emma MulvaneyStanak sported an Obscura BTV T-shirt and black blazer for a morning press briefing on the waterfront.

“I was on MSNBC after Bill Nye [the Science Guy]!” she said with nerdy delight. “I’ve made it now.”

City o cials shut down several thoroughfares, including Battery Street, so Green Mountain Transit and charter buses could shuttle visitors to and from downtown. The city converted Route 127, known as the Burlington Beltline, into a miles-long parking lot able to accommodate 1,000 vehicles.

At the airport, nearly 900 people squeezed onto a slice of the tarmac, noshing on tacos and playing cornhole. Tickets were $100 a head, but the million-dollar view went to the passengers on a commercial airliner that landed in the midst of totality.

The day amounted to a citywide festival in Burlington. Crowds wrapped around the sidewalk outside Handy’s Lunch on Maple Street. One woman sold eclipse glasses from her bicycle for $3 apiece, while a Pittsford couple hawked them for $10 from a card table. Someone sold hot dogs from a sidewalk grill in the Old North End, and Girl Scouts offered Thin Mints near the bike path. A group of young people belted out the lyrics to Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” as they walked along a downtown sidewalk.

As totality neared, visitors spilled out of tour buses toting lawn chairs. Families staked out spots with blankets, and sky watchers pointed telescopes to

the heavens. Dogs wore eclipse glasses alongside their humans.

The flow of traffic ended about 15 minutes before totality, but the flaggers held their solitary positions in case any more drivers came through.

Faske lit a cigarette and waited near a Porta-Potty. A few crumpled beer cans lay strewn in the shaggy grass. The Winooski River flowed silently behind him and, next to it, an open field was empty but for a few teenagers who practiced handstands. From across the road, over a hill, came the faint music from a New North End house party.

A shuttle bus pulled up, and its driver stepped out: There were no more tourists to chau eur.

Faske and the driver waited together when, in an instant, day turned into dusk and the sun’s warmth gave way to a slight chill.

Faske removed his eclipse glasses and watched as the sun turned from an orange disk to a desaturated ring. Its eerie light seemed to dance around the moon’s rim, wild and alive.

The moon overtook the sun until it was just a sliver. Gulls took flight over Lake Champlain, cawing against the backdrop of a surreal sunset. At 3:26 p.m., thousands of people whooped and hollered as a brilliant corona shone overhead.

Residents opened the windows as the city erupted with joy after totality ended. Hearing the crowds below, David Foss thought of the millions of people across the continent who had all shared in the sublime, uplifting experience.

“It felt like some weight was taken o my shoulders,” Foss said.

Scores of locals still had jobs to do. For service industry, municipal and emergency workers, the experience was as fleeting as the few minutes of totality.

“Whoa,” Faske said.

He kept his eyes fixed upward, looking away only to snap a picture with his cellphone. He was still looking up when, after the 195th second passed, the period of perfect astronomical alignment ended. Human cheers erupted from the neighborhood beyond the hill. A few fireworks boomed. Birds clamored in their secret tongues.

“Wow, wow, wow,” was all one man could manage. Others cried.

The low-income seniors and people with disabilities who live at Decker Towers, the city’s tallest building, gathered in a glassshielded observatory on the 11th floor that boasts one of the best lake views in Burlington.

Out on the beltline, David Faske, a supervisor with Green Mountain Flagging, helped direct the crush of drivers into makeshift parking spaces. “It’s just another normal workday for me,” he said.

Still, he thought to tuck three pairs of eclipse glasses into the pocket of his fluorescent safety vest. He gave one pair to a bus driver and another to a forgetful tourist who’d arrived an hour before totality. Faske kept the third pair for himself.

Five minutes later, the first departing car buzzed by, and Faske went back to his work.

Seven Days reporters headed to mountaintops, a prison and public gatherings to watch the eclipse. Here’s what they witnessed.

DEREK BROUWER & COURTNEY LAMDIN

brilliant

Revelers on Church Street

PHOTOS: DARIA BISHOP

Crowd on the Burlington waterfront

QUINTESSENTIALLY ‘GORGEOUS’ SETTING

Mount Philo State Park, Charlotte

By the time Vermont State Parks regional operations manager Quentin McKinley arrived at 7 a.m., the parking lot at Charlotte’s Mount Philo was half full. By 8 a.m., it had reached capacity. That didn’t deter scores of hiking boot-clad visitors, eager to watch the eclipse play out over bucolic farm fields, Lake Champlain and the Adirondacks. More than 100 cars flanked the roads outside the park.

Some visitors, including Cat Bryars, opted to set up at the base of the modest mountain. Bryars, her husband, 1-year-old and 4-year-old — the latter wearing a glowin-the-dark moon shirt — had left their Bennington home at 5 a.m. They’d hiked up and down the mountain before noon, then nabbed a picnic table. It brimmed with provisions and gear: clementines, water bottles, infant formula, binoculars. When you travel with a baby, Bryars said, you come prepared. They planned to hang out all day, cook dinner on a camp stove and head south once the crowds had thinned.

started discussing an eclipse field trip a year ago; 35 students signed up. Many wore eclipse-themed T-shirts they’d made by laying a plate in the center and spraying bleach around the edges. One student baked sugar cookies shaped like sunglasses and the sun.

Eleventh grader Brendan McLoughlin said he’d missed out on the partial eclipse in 2017. Further, he noted, he only had a half day of school on Monday. “So what else would I do?” he asked.

Alain Baburam, a graphic designer from New Jersey, had a clearer sense of purpose. An avid landscape photographer, Baburam had been planning his eclipse trip for six years. He chose Mount Philo because of the quintessentially “gorgeous” setting.  Baburam arrived in Charlotte at 6:30 a.m. after driving all night from Brooklyn. He’d slept in his car for a few hours, hiked up to scout an ideal spot to set up his Hasselblad camera, then hiked back down, grabbed his equipment and ascended again.

At 12:30 p.m., six teenage boys — members of Boy Scout Troop 252 from Springfield — walked briskly up the paved road, accompanied by several adults. They carried camp chairs and lunches and dinners, anticipating a long drive home. At the summit, they convened an impromptu football game with students from Otter Valley Union High School in Brandon.

COWS CHEWED, CHICKENS FORAGED

Killeen Crossroads Farm, Shelburne It was hard to judge who on Shelburne’s Killeen Crossroads Farm was less impressed by the eclipse: the 200 chickens, the small herd of beef cows or the 3-yearold human twins, who had to be woken from an afternoon nap to witness the historic event.

The 20-acre vegetable and livestock farm at Dorset Street and Cheesefactory Road belongs to the twins’ parents, Breana Lai Killeen and her husband, Kieran. The Killeens also have off-farm jobs as a national food magazine editor and associate dean at the University of Vermont, respectively. They employ a small crew led by farm manager Kara Winslow.

Before the eclipse, the Killeens and Winslow speculated about how the livestock might react to a gradual darkening of the skies and temperature drop in the middle of a sunny spring afternoon. The laying hens normally retreat into their mobile coop or barn around sunset,

Otter Valley science teacher Rachel Valcour said she and several colleagues

seeking safety from predators. “The chickens have the most to lose,” Kieran said.

The beef cattle were still in a winter paddock near the barn to protect muddy fields. “If the cows were on pasture and it got very dark, they might herd up for protection,” Kieran said.

His diligence was rewarded with a striking photograph captured during the three and a half minutes of totality: an inky circle surrounded by a glowing halo. As the crowd dispersed, a small group of admirers clustered around Baburam’s camera. They oohed and aahed at the image — a fleeting event rendered permanent.

ALISON NOVAK

The toddlers’ response was more unpredictable — especially their willingness to wear safety glasses. Post-nap grouchiness was a wild card.

As the moon advanced on the sun, the animals did not seem to notice. Cows chewed their cud, and chickens foraged for seeds and insects.

Breana emerged from the farmhouse with the twins. Abram would have none of it, but Maeve gradually warmed to the idea of putting on eclipse glasses with her dad’s help.

“Did you see the sun?” Kieran asked her.

“No, I see the moon,” she replied.

When a fellow farmer texted Kieran to ask how the animals were doing, he dictated his response: “The cows are totally unimpressed.” Many of the chickens did eventually cluster under the mobile coop, appearing confused.

The sky glowed pink and gold to the southeast and north, but both kids, feeling the chill in the air, begged persistently to go back into the house.

“You are eclipse wreckers,” their dad joked.

MELISSA PASANEN

PHOTOS: MELISSA PASANAN

Otter Valley students

Alain Baburam

Kieran Killeen and his daughter, Maeve

PHOTOS: ALISON NOVAK

Chickens at Killeen Crossroads Farm a few minutes before totality

CAPTIVE AUDIENCE

Northwest State Correctional Facility, St. Albans

“Science is like God’s signature,” Jimmy said as the last fingernail of the sun slipped away. “Some things are just beyond explanation.”

Then an audible gasp bridged disbelief and wonder as the world went dark.

“Fucking epic,” someone said.

These men, after all, are usually deprived of lengthy observation of the sun and the moon — much less the two together, stacked like hotcakes. A dozen or so residents of the Northwest State Correctional Facility watched as a burst of light and warmth returned to a small field near Unit J, the education building and the inmates’ garden at this minimumsecurity detention facility, located in a swath of lakeside farmland between St. Albans and Swanton.

Thanks to superintendent Greg Hale and Corrections Commissioner Nick Deml, the inmate population was invited to view the oncein-a-generation event. Days was allowed in as well but had to agree not to fully identify inmates.

of Burlington, had been a starstruck astronomy geek as a child and feared he’d miss out on the eclipse because he’s locked up. “I couldn’t believe it when I saw the sign-up sheet,” he said.

A 36-year veteran of the Department of Corrections, Hale turned the occasion into a kind of party. There were eclipse cookies and other snacks, a relaxed vibe, and a keen focus on a celestial show most detainees said they never imagined witnessing. As the moon took its first bite out of the sun, the awe quotient grew exponentially.

“That is wild.”

“So cool.”

“Total badass!”

“I read when it gets dark, turtles start mating.”

The sudden curtain drop into darkness, accompanied by a sharp plunge in temperature, seemed almost shocking to the men. They were fascinated as well by a flock of birds that swooped frenetically and then treed themselves, calling it a night.

“I’m very fortunate to have a chance to see this,” said Jamie, 40, from Milton. “Total eclipses are hard to see anyway, much less when you’re locked up.”

Hale takes pride in the institution he’s run for almost 15 years. There’s an active education program, and the inmates’ garden is large and bountiful. He noted in an interview weeks ago that he was worried about a shortfall of eclipse glasses. “I don’t want anyone to go blind,” he explained.

For once, these men, deprived of freedom of movement, had seats on the 50-yard-line of the Solar Super Bowl. The centerline of the path of totality ran right through the prison, resulting in the state’s longest blackout period — just over three minutes, 32 seconds.

Hale posted a signup sheet for the nearly 200 inmates. Jimmy, 32,

Seven Days arranged for the Charlotte and Shelburne libraries to donate 40 pairs to the prison.

Bellows Falls

As the afternoon wound down and guards escorted inmates back to their units, 29-yearold Forrest from Bellows Falls stopped to chat with this reporter. “It was beautiful,” he said, and added, with a shake of his head: “If I wasn’t in jail, I wouldn’t have seen it.”

STEVE GOLDSTEIN

Inmates and guards watching the eclipse Corrections Commissioner Nick Demi PHOTOS: STEVE GOLDSTEIN

TOTALLY TRANSFIXED

TOP OF THE WORLD

Jay Peak Resort

Ted Ehrlich of Denver had planned to view the eclipse in Houston. But he changed his mind when forecasters predicted that the weather would be clearer over northern Vermont. On Monday, he hiked for an hour and a half to Jay Peak’s snowy summit, where he enjoyed a 360-degree view.

About 150 people had trekked to the mountaintop, he said, including a few wearing sneakers. They were talking as darkness gathered and Jupiter appeared in the sky. “Then it kind of got quiet midway as people were just trying to absorb it,” Ehrlich said.

“You could see Lake Champlain disappear into the darkness,” he recounted. “And then it got dark here, and then you could start seeing sunset colors. And then you could see the Adirondacks getting brighter and brighter and brighter. That’s why I hiked to the peak.”

Ehrlich was one of dozens of people who camped the night before on the side

THE IMMOLATION OF EVIL

Bread and Puppet eater, Glover

The stated intention behind Bread and Puppet’s eclipse gathering was simple: Banish all evil. The iconic Vermont theater group, known for larger-than-life papiermâché puppets and conceptual anti-war skits, had barely advertised the ceremony. Yet hundreds of Bread and Puppet devotees sporting flower crowns, metallic overalls and eclipse glasses descended on the troupe’s Glover property.

At the center of it all was Peter Schumann, the troupe’s iconoclastic founder and director, who is nearing 90.

Atop a snow-capped hill, rehearsal began for hymns to the sun, a series of simple songs to be chanted in a circle before the eclipse. Schumann’s daughter, Maria, taught participants a simple Polish hymn, which translated to: “The sun is rising early over the mountain.”

Eager ritualgoers joined the circle to sing. Some squinted against the glare of the sun. Children sat on sleds.

Six middle-aged Boston artists talked together, a number of whom had only just met. They agreed to reconnect back in the city.

“We’re really clicking,” Danielle Hanrahan, a curator at the Harvard Art Museums, said excitedly. “We’re all lefties, if you can’t tell.”

Two volunteers — Vasilios and Emily Gletsos — were dressed as the moon and the sun. Emily wore a cardboard

of the road near the trailhead. Hundreds more converged on Jay Peak Resort’s Tram Haus Lodge for a more raucous viewing experience.

Chris Newell, also from Denver, snagged one of the prized deck chairs on the lodge patio. He stayed put for hours, rubbing sunscreen on his bare head as the patio filled up.

Newell, who was staying at a Jay Peak condo, traveled to Wyoming to see a total eclipse in 2017. That viewing, he said, was quiet and low-key. This one, with a cover band blaring Pink Floyd’s 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon , was loud, sociable and good-natured. Strangers made room for more and more people on the patio. Revelers swapped tales of past

eclipses and long, early-morning drives to Vermont.

The smell of grilling hamburgers mixed with the aroma of cannabis. Children splashed in puddles at the patio’s edge.

“It’s di erent to be in a party atmosphere,” said Newell, who owns a bar in Denver. “You definitely feed o the energy of the group of people.”

Thanks to two recent snowstorms, Jay was still open for business. The resort halted its ski lifts at lunchtime, and the crowd at the base of the mountain swelled with skiers and snowboarders. A few wispy clouds drifted high above the mountaintops, and a drone buzzed overhead. As the air cooled and the sky darkened, people whistled and cheered. One skier stood on a hill with his arms outstretched, back to the sun.

Benedetto Ferrandi, who had come from Newton, N.H., described the event as “magical.”

“It almost seemed like the Earth stopped for a moment,” he said.

ANNE WALLACE ALLEN

crown, symbolizing the moon, while Vasilios donned a halo of yellow caution tape to become the sun. Both had helped Schumann organize the event.

“We’re not sure what Peter is going to do during the ceremony,” Vasilios admitted. “We know it’s an exorcism, but that’s all.”

A dozen or so performers wearing white lined up in front of the crowd of roughly 300. Schumann, in a thick German accent, explained what was in store: incantations, magical rites, a purification orchestra, a snowball fight and lastly, the burning of all evil. Phones were not allowed, he explained, and the eclipse should be viewed in total silence. Cheers erupted.

The performers launched into an incantation, which included a chant about evil, punctuated by Schumann blowing a large horn. For magical rites, the crowd screamed “Abracadabra!” in every direction. Participants were instructed to make snowballs and target two large signs that read “freedom” and “democracy,” symbolizing the wars fought in their names. Finally, attendees plastered three cardboard effigies of military-like figures with notes describing the evils of the world — then burned the shapes. The 50 or so people who had practiced the hymns chanted in a circle leading up to totality.

Excitement grew as the sky darkened. The crowd fell silent, except for a few who cried out in joy.

As with all Bread and Puppet performances, this one concluded with free rye bread and garlic aioli.

Holding an IPA in one hand and a handrolled cigar in the other, Schumann stood near the bread line.

“This is our everyday experience,” he said to no one in particular. “The eclipse is our everyday experience, except it is collapsed into a very short period of time today.”

RACHEL HELLMAN

RACHEL HELLMAN ANNE WALLACE ALLEN

Bread and Puppet eater performers and ritual attendees

‘WE’VE GOT CONTACT!’

Vermont Astronomical Society, Hinesburg

On a day widely celebrated with bacchanalian-like revelry, the Vermont Astronomical Society’s invite-only eclipse party wasn’t all business. Someone was grilling Italian sausages on a smoky barbecue, and a few folks enjoyed soft drinks and sandwiches. Mostly, though, the two dozen or so amateur astronomers were doing what they normally do in their spare time — gazing at the sky through impressive optical equipment, albeit at a strange time of day.

Pat Nealy, who has dabbled in stargazing for 20 years, admitted that he was “never much impressed by the sun.” He used to think “astronomy happens at night.”

But Nealy’s outlook changed in August 2017 when he and his wife, Bernadine, experienced a total eclipse in Tennessee. That’s what led them to the Vermont Astronomical Society’s hilltop observatory in Hinesburg, a quarteracre, town-owned property adjacent to an industrial solar farm and a capped landfill. There, he joined members of the group who set up telescopes, binoculars, tripods and cameras for enhanced viewing.

This was the first total eclipse for most. Geoff Lay, a 60-year-old retired Brit, was already heading to the U.S. so he could run in next week’s Boston Marathon. Someone at the UK’s Guildford Astronomical Society put Lay in touch with Paul Walker, the Vermont Astronomical Society’s secretary for the past 29 years. Lay scored an invite.

None of the attendees seemed fussy about who looked through, or even fiddled with, their telescopes. Of the 10 aimed skyward, two were Walker’s. He also had two tripod-mounted cameras shooting images automatically.

“We’ve got contact!” Nealy announced at 2:14 p.m., when the moon first began obscuring the sun’s face.

“If you look closely, you can see the mountains of the moon,” said Russ Jolly, 74, of Jacksonville, Vt. His five-inch refracting telescope provided views of lunar summits and a smattering of sunspots behind them. “That’s why we bring out the big toys,” he added with a grin.

But it wasn’t all high-tech optics and gadgetry. Yvette Feig of Middlebury brought along a decidedly low-tech viewing device: a spaghetti colander. Based on the same principle as a pinhole viewer, the colander’s multiple holes cast Pac-Manlike crescents on a sheet spread on the ground.

At precisely 3:26 p.m., Walker announced that totality had begun. Through Nealy’s scope, a pinkish bulge was visible. It was a prominence, or solar filament, ordinarily invisible with the naked eye, Walker said.

Later, Nealy explained that this telescope was neither his biggest nor priciest. Back home in Maryland, he has a 20-inch scope that requires a stepladder to look through it. Once, while tracking a nebula, he fell off it. He was unfazed.

“I’m not sure that I want to be involved in a hobby where I don’t get so mesmerized that I fall off a ladder,” Nealy said.

KEN PICARD

Paul Walker

Red prominences, or plasma flares

KEN PICARD

COURTESY OF PAUL WALKER

TOTALLY TRANSFIXED

‘NEEDED TO SEE THIS’

Sunset Drive-In eatre, Colchester

Early Monday, the sounds of R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)” echoed o the massive screens at the Sunset Drive-In Theatre.

For five bucks per vehicle, the Colchester establishment — a large, open field with four screens — welcomed carloads of people who parked, set up camp chairs and broke out snacks. Throw in some mini golf, a playground, yard games and a DJ, and the drive-in had strong music-festival energy.

As the parking spots began to fill up hours before the eclipse, the DJ, Rob Jones from Top Hat Entertainment, was clearly enjoying himself. He welcomed people over the PA system to “the 2024 apocalypse,” before queueing up “Black Hole Sun” by Soundgarden.

“I had to lighten the playlist up the closer it got to the eclipse,” Jones said. “I wasn’t sure if this was going to be sort of a big-party kind of a situation or more a kid-friendly kind of thing.”

It was the latter, as Jones discovered when a group of children implored him to play Taylor Swift. He obliged with a smile, interrupting his meticulously planned eclipse playlist to bump “Shake It O .”

Cars sported plates from states as distant as Utah.

“We left New Jersey at around 3 a.m.,” Millie Miller said. She was eager to see her second eclipse after witnessing one in 2017. “It’s impossible to describe it until you really see it,” she said. “The way the light comes back ... There’s just nothing like it.”

Miller, her daughter Dawn Cassimore and great-granddaughter Lily Cassimore wore matching black T-shirts that read “Hello Darkness My Old Friend.”

A nearby family snacked on cheese, meticulously placed on plates to represent the phases of the moon.

As the sky began to darken, the music stopped and the field took on an anxious silence, though a few dogs howled and barked. The movie screens lit up with live feeds from NASA of eclipse footage around the world. But nothing could top the sight above.

Once the eclipse was over, Miller and her family members planned to head straight back home.

“It’s a bit of a drive, but Lily has to be back in school tomorrow,” Miller explained. “It’s worth it; she needed to see this.”

CHRIS FARNSWORTH

A screen showing the eclipse at the drive-in

DJ Rob Jones

From left: Dawn and Lily Cassimore with Millie Miller

CRUISING THROUGH TOTALITY

Aboard the Spirit of Ethan Allen, Lake Champlain

As throngs of people crowded along Burlington’s shoreline, about 300 passengers boarded a ship to watch the eclipse from the middle of Lake Champlain.

It was “the thing to do,” said Wendy Pierro, a San Diego resident aboard the Spirit of Ethan Allen with her sister Nancy, who is from Connecticut. “To be on the water, away from all these people.”

Priced at $149.99 per person, the four-hour cruise promised unobstructed, panoramic views of the sky and included hors d’oeuvres, soft drinks and eclipse glasses, plus a cash bar. The ship headed out of Burlington Bay toward Grand Isle — the centerline of the eclipse, where totality would last the longest.

Passengers munched on cheese and crackers and danced to Ryan Broshear’s “Mama Shoulda Named You Moonshine” and other celestial-adjacent tunes. One group of friends passed the time with a game of cards.

As the sun slowly disappeared, passengers crowded onto the south-facing side of the ship to watch the eclipse. People stood shoulder to shoulder on deck, angling to get a glimpse of the partially covered sun.

Spike McClure, a 64-yearold from Brooklyn, peered through a pair of Minolta binoculars with eclipse glasses that he had taped onto the lenses. “You get a much bigger view of it,” he said with pride. “It’s gorgeous.”

wide-eyed wonder and couples put their arms around one another. When the sun poked through again, a DJ played the Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun.”

Karl Lindström made the trip from Stockholm, Sweden. He said the journey was worth it. “It’s just so visceral,” Lindström said. “There’s no way to capture it in pictures … You’ve got to be there.”

Around 3:20 p.m., the captain announced over the loudspeaker that totality was nigh. The DJ paused the music, and the engines quieted. Passengers grabbed extra layers as the temperature began to drop.

When the moment arrived, people cheered and removed their eclipse glasses, revealing the sun’s corona and what looked like a sunset on the horizon. Oohs and aahs filled the crowd as passengers looked around in

Marie Roy left Utica, N.Y., at 1:30 a.m. on Monday to avoid tra c and guarantee herself a parking spot. The sleep deprivation was worth it, she said.

“That moment where you really realize how small you are in the universe and yet a part of all the forces around you,” she said, “it’s not an everyday feeling.”

HANNAH FEUER

PHOTOS: HANNAH FEUER

Ben Bethalon and Julian Ramirez from California

Spike McClure e crowd aboard the Spirit of Ethan Allen

TOTALLY TRANSFIXED

‘SEE WITH THEIR EARS’

Vermont Statehouse, Montpelier

Thousands of people gathered under the golden dome of the Vermont Statehouse in Montpelier to witness Monday’s historic eclipse. Food trucks lined State Street, a block of which was closed to traffic.

Behind the DJ on the building’s marble steps was a device designed by a team at Harvard University that translates a visual event into a soundscape.

As the sunlight faded, the piercing notes of a piccolo emanating from a small pink box and speaker were replaced by the softer tones of something like a clarinet. With the darkness of totality came the deep, almost guttural sound of a bassoon.

“Wow. It’s actually getting kind of creepy, like ‘The Twilight Zone,’” said Sam Gougher, a development assistant with the Vermont Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired. Her organization, which serves hundreds of state residents, deployed the LightSound devices at four Vermont locations on Monday as a public service and to raise awareness of those with different abilities.

“We’re making space for people to enjoy things that sighted people can,” Gougher said as Bonnie Tyler’s hit “Total Eclipse of the Heart” blared.

“That’s pretty cool,” said Montpelier resident Cedar Eldridge, 10. He and his brother, Wyatt, 8, can see just fine, but curiosity drew them in. When the moon’s shadow fully cloaked Montpelier in darkness, the speaker lit up and issued faint insect sounds.

No visually impaired residents used the device in Montpelier on Monday. But sighted visitors peppered Gougher with questions.

Rodney DuPlessis, an artist from Worcester, Mass., said that just as data can be presented visually, the auditory

equivalent, “data sonification,” is gaining traction.

“It allows people to see with their ears,” DuPlessis explained.

Sen. Dick McCormack (D-Windsor) drove to Montpelier from his home in Bethel to experience the eclipse on the steps of the Statehouse. To witness the sun and the moon, which he called “old friends,” come together in such a stunning way was deeply moving, the longtime lawmaker said.

“It was a spiritual moment,” McCormack said.

KEVIN MCCALLUM

Cathy Resmer, Colin Flanders and Sasha Goldstein contributed reporting to this package.

Cedar Eldridge (left) and his brother, Wyatt, listening to a LightSound device Eclipse viewers on the Statehouse steps

Children sitting on a cannon for eclipse viewing

Xavier Jimenez Traffic on Interstate 89 KEVIN MCCALLUM JEB WALLACE-BRODEUR JEB

Paid leave will make Vermont stronger

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Right now, about 70% of Vermont workers do not have access to paid family and medical leave. This leaves them one emergency away from losing their pay — and for some, even their job.

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‘He Was Just a Good Ol’ Country Boy’

Rev. Nathan Strong, March 18, 1953-January 6, 2024

BY SALLY POLLAK

Nathan Strong had chosen the hymns for the church service he was to lead on Sunday, January 7. He had prepared the church bulletin, selected scripture readings and started to write his sermon, which he titled “Dodging Bullets.” The service at Albany United Methodist Church was held that Sunday morning, but the pastor who had served the congregation for 31 years wasn’t there: Strong died of a heart attack at his home on Saturday evening, January 6. He was 70.

The congregants who gathered in Nathan’s absence sang the hymns he had picked and read the psalms he’d chosen. Some parishioners stood and talked, recalling a pastor who was always there for them. A few older church members said they were upset Nathan wouldn’t be there to preside at their funerals.

LIFE STORIES 2024

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

“Nate grew up in Craftsbury, so he was just a good ol’ country boy,” said Amanda Harper, 52, a lifelong congregant of the Northeast Kingdom church. “Us good ol’ country Albany people could relate to him well.”

Nathan was the second of five children born to Horace and Ruth Strong. The family lived on Craftsbury Common, near the dairy farm run by Nathan’s grandparents, called Stronghold. The Strongs kept a small herd of Guernseys that Nathan and his two brothers fed and milked every morning before school.

“Chores!” Horace would call out at 5 a.m., rousing his sons.

Matt Strong, Nathan’s brother, could expect a corresponding nudge from the bottom bunk of his bunk bed. It was Nathan, kicking his mattress and pushing his youngest sibling to the ceiling.

“Nate was kind of like a rock to me,” said Matt, 66, a carpenter and wood-carver who lives in Stowe. “The one thing that made him a great pastor was the same thing that made him a great brother: You

could talk to him about anything, and he would just listen.”

On Sundays, the seven Strongs would dress for church and walk from their house to the Craftsbury Common Congregational Church (now called the United Church of Craftsbury). The white clapboard church stands across the common from Craftsbury Academy, which Nathan attended from kindergarten through 12th grade. Horace taught industrial arts at the school his kids attended and was a canoe maker.

In high school, Nathan played three sports for the Craftsbury Academy Barons (now Chargers), including goalkeeper for the soccer team and pitcher for the baseball squad. He threw to his brother Russell, who was the catcher. As an adult, Nathan demonstrated his athleticism (and resourcefulness) by using only a putter to play golf at Stowe Country Club. “He’d tee it up and … send it over a pond if there was a water hole,” Matt said.

After Nathan’s 1971 graduation from Craftsbury Academy, he attended LeTourneau University, a Christian college in Longview, Texas. His plan was to become an aviation missionary, obtaining his pilot’s license and flying to places for short-term pastoral work. But he felt called to come home to the Kingdom and serve as a minister in Orleans County.

Nathan met his future wife, Vicki, when she was a student at Craftsbury’s Sterling College, then called the Grassroots Project. She and her classmates went on a field trip to a nearby farm, the Strongs’ place, where Nathan was milking cows.

The two were married on July 7, 1977 — 7/7/77, a date Nathan chose — in the church on the common. Soon their first child was born, a son named Matthew. He was followed by Jesse and then Heather — three kids in four years.

Nathan preached in several small towns — Irasburg, North Troy, Newport Center and Orleans — on an interim basis before becoming the minister in Albany. From the pulpit and in personal

From left: Jesse, Matt, Heather, Nathan and Vicki Strong

Nathan and Vicki Strong PHOTOS COURTESY OF VICKI STRONG

Free Face Painting

Maple Donuts

Antique Show

“He didn’t have to say anything — just show up.”

interactions, Vicki said, he had a way of making a connection with God simple, yet also profound, for people.

Harper, the lifelong parishioner, first attended Albany United Methodist Church as a baby with her grandmother. These days, she attends with her young grandchildren, who are the fifth generation of her family to worship at the church.

The Strongs homeschooled their three children and spent family time on Great Hosmer Pond. Heather Strong Moore, 41, who works in campus ministry in Memphis, Tenn., said she valued her father’s keen and devoted presence as a parent.

“My dad had quite a bit of emotional intelligence,” she said. “He would cry in front of us. He would cry in front of the

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“Every week, he would say something in his sermon, and you would think he knew what was going on in your life,” Harper said. “You would think he had specifically written his sermon for you. But I think everybody else felt the same way.”

Sunday worship was only a portion of his pastoral work. Nathan married people and conducted funeral services for churchgoers and nonchurchgoers alike. He counseled couples whose marriages were faltering. Nathan was there in times of hardship and loss, arriving at a house fire in the middle of the night and appearing at the NICU to comfort the parents of a newborn who needed medical care.

When a tragedy occurred, “instantly people would want Nathan there,” said Vicki, 67, a former state representative.

congregation. He wasn’t afraid to grieve in front of other people.”

Nathan supplemented his ministry with other work. He was a carpenter and he made dulcimers; he also wrote books. Nathan performed concerts with Vicki; she played guitar, he played dulcimer. He worked on a roofing crew with his brother Matt, calling himself the “official flower fluffer.” That’s because Nathan made sure the flowers by the foundation of a house, covered by a tarp during the work, were in fine shape when the job was complete.

“Nate was just happy being who he was,” Matt said. “He never needed to prove himself.”

On January 26, 2005, the Strongs suffered an unfathomable loss when their middle child, Jesse, was killed in the Iraq War. Jesse and three other U.S. Marines

Life Stories « P.35

Nathan Strong baptizing Kristen Harper COURTESY OF AMANDA HARPER

died when a rocket-propelled grenade struck their Humvee. He was 24.

“I personally think Jesse’s death took a huge hit on Nate’s health,” Vicki said. “It took the sparkle out of him. But he persevered.”

Jesse’s death imparted to Nathan a “deeper understanding of eternal life,” Vicki said.

Nathan wrote a book inspired by Jesse, who had asked his father to write a book explaining his theology. Before he went to Iraq, Jesse had outlined a series of topics he hoped Nathan would address in a handwritten list he titled “Dad’s Random Theology Topics.” These included “Prayer – purpose of, approach to, methods” and “Pastoral care – visiting, dealing w/tragedies, etc.”

Thoughts for Jesse: A Father’s Tribute was published in 2010 and reprinted in Nathan’s recently published volume, Meanderings: Collected Writings From an Eclectic Life.

In the new book, Nathan wrote about “characters” he had known — using his mother’s word for an unusual person — and playing baseball on the town common. The day he died, Nathan told Vicki he wanted to sell 1,000 copies of Meanderings.

At one time, there were seven churches in Albany. Today, the United Methodist Church, with about 50 members, is the only active congregation in town. The 1842 building on Main Street wasn’t big enough to hold the funeral of its longtime minister. So Nathan’s service, attended by about 300 people, took place at Albany Community School.

“They were there because Nate touched their lives in some way,” Vicki said. ➆

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food+drink For Noshers and Fressers

Montréal’s Jewish eateries serve classics from around the world

Let’s get this out of the way: I drove to Montréal to spend a day eating Jewish food but skipped the smoked meat.

Don’t get me wrong: I love a heap of hand-sliced, fat-laced, dry-rubbed and lightly smoked brisket, sandwiched between rye with a slick of sharp mustard, as much as the next carnivore. But I’ve indulged before, and the hefty dish does not wedge easily into a packed itinerary.

That said, I do regret missing the smoked meat at Snowdon Deli, the sixth stop on my mid-March gastronomic expedition.

I was digging happily into a plate of chopped liver when a neighboring table received the “perfect” smoked meat order — in the words of my guide, Montréal Jewish food expert Kat Romanow. The 39-year-old former restaurant owner and cofounder of the nonprofit the Wandering Chew created the Beyond the Bagel food tour in 2015 for the Museum of Jewish Montréal, where she was then director of food programming.

The sandwich sprawled open on the plate, exposing pink slices of meat that looked so tender they were almost indecent. It was accompanied by a pickle, a heap of bronzed fries and a Cott black cherry soda. Along with those sides, the meat should be ordered hot and medium fat — “never lean,” Romanow cautioned.

The order belonged to Geo rey Boyer, 63, who said he comes to Snowdon about

once a month for smoked meat. “I can taste it before I even get here,” he said. “I’m Jewish. It’s our soul food.”

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When Boyer learned that I was on a Jewish food tour of his native city, he listed some favorites, including Beauty’s and Arthur’s Nosh Bar, which he was pleased to hear we had already visited.

The Museum of Jewish Montréal’s food walking tours resume on April 19. Ahead of that date, Romanow drove me to a broader selection of destinations. They included multigenerational landmarks serving recipes that immigrants from Eastern

Europe and Germany popularized in North America, along with a couple where we sampled cuisine favored by Jews with Moroccan or Israeli roots.

Culinary traditions are fluid over time and geography, especially when there is a history of migration. While some foods, such as bagels and babka, are identified closely with Jewish culinary traditions, others we ate — schnitzel and falafel, for instance — are associated equally with non-Jews from the same parts of the world.

All of my grandparents were bagel-

and-brisket New York City Jews whose families fled brutal pogroms in the western Russian empire at the turn of the 20th century. My maternal grandmother always kept beet borscht in her fridge for a quick nosh — Yiddish for a snack or light meal.

I’m more of a nosher than a fresser (big eater). But Montréal’s Jewish food abundance might change that.

Note: All prices are listed in Canadian dollars. Passover (sundown on April 22 to sundown on April 30) may a ect hours and o erings.

A smoked meat sandwich at Snowdon Deli

We began in...

Le Plateau-Mont-Royal neighborhood at BEAUTY’S LUNCHEONETTE (93 avenue MontRoyal Ouest, 514-849-8883, Beautys Luncheonette on Facebook), where we found co-owner Julie Sckolnick, 50, perched on a counter stool.

Sckolnick runs the business with her sister, Elana. Their grandparents, Hymie and Freda, met at 14 while working in the Ideal Dress factory around the corner. In 1942, the second-generation Eastern European Jews bought a snack bar at their current location and named it for Hymie’s bowling prowess. “He bowled a beauty of a ball,” Sckolnick explained.

Hymie worked at Beauty’s until his death at age 96. Sckolnick described him as “everyone’s zaide” (Yiddish for grandfather).

We ordered the signature Mish-Mash omelette ($20), a well-browned scramble loaded with sliced hot dogs, salami, green pepper and onions. Served with a side of home fries, the dish is attributed to Freda, who “invented everything and worked like a maniac,” Sckolnick said.

Romanow also recommended the Beauty’s special ($17), a sesame bagel with cream cheese, smoked salmon, tomato and red onion. It was good but didn’t strike me as special until Romanow explained that Montréal bagels are rarely eaten as sandwiches.

As a chaser, we couldn’t resist the challah dog ($7), a hot dog encased in sesame-speckled dough. My boys would’ve loved it when they were kids.

Men with sidelocks in long black coats and black hats signaled we had arrived in Mile End, home to many Hasidic Jews

and to ST-VIATEUR BAGEL and FAIRMOUNT

BAGEL. Seven Days covered the two iconic Jewish-founded bagel bakeries last year (see “Open Sésame,” June 21, 2023).

We were headed to CHESKIE’S KOSHER

BAKERY (359 rue Bernard Ouest, 514-2712253, closed Fridays at 3 p.m. and Saturdays), which Cheskie Lebowitz opened in 2002 after moving from Brooklyn to marry. The bakery replicates his family’s in Borough Park, N.Y., but “has become a part of Montréal Jewish food culture,” Romanow said.

As I snapped a phone shot of tricornered hamantaschen cookies (12 for $10.78), a customer joked, “Better to eat them than take photos of them.”

Cheskie’s is known for its Russian babka and kokosh, two yeasted, filled breads. The latter, like Lebowitz, is of Hungarian origin. Our piece of chocolate babka ($2.30) and small slice of poppy seed kokosh ($3.90) were so sweet and rich that a few bites sufficed, though I found myself nibbling kokosh throughout the day.

Cheese crowns, another Cheskie’s signature, come in two sizes of bunched pastry cradling lightly sweetened

Special bagel sandwich, Mish-Mash omelette and challah dog at Beauty’s Luncheonette

Cheese crowns at Cheskie’s Kosher Bakery

farmer’s cheese. I made short work of a small ($1.50), appreciating its flaky bite.

A few blocks away, still in Mile End, we stepped back in time into WILENSKY’S LIGHT LUNCH (34 avenue Fairmount Ouest, 514-271-0247, wilenskys.com). From the pressed-tin ceiling to butt-burnished wooden stools, little has changed since 1952, when the Russian Jewish immigrant family moved their 20-year-old cigar store, barbershop and no-frills lunch counter to its current spot.

Sharon Wilensky, 65, is the third generation in charge. Or, as she put it dryly, “I’m the ‘tag, you’re it’ person.”

Almost every customer orders the Wilensky special invented by Sharon’s father, Moe. For $4.57, a hamburger bun is griddled around slices of beef bologna and beef salami laced with yellow mustard. Soft, salty bites paired well with a sour pickle (87 cents) and a cherry soda made with housemade syrup ($1.45).

“They’re less sweet and less carbonated than regular [sodas],” Sharon said. “That’s all I’m gonna tell you.”

Our next stop, in the St. Henri neighborhood, felt like the antithesis of Wilensky’s. The hip ARTHUR’S NOSH BAR (4621 rue Notre-Dame Ouest, 514-757-5190, arthursmtl.com) bills its menu as “reimagined Jewish fare” and almost always has a wait. Married chefs and co-owners Raegan Steinberg and Alex Cohen have cooked at some of Montréal’s top restaurants, including Joe Beef and Liverpool House. Steinberg’s family originated in Eastern Europe, Cohen’s in Morocco.

Their breakfast and lunch restaurant, named for Steinberg’s late father, significantly ups the nosh bar (sorry). We ordered the McArthur ($22), an impossibly crisp slab of chicken schnitzel sandwiched between buttery griddled challah and slathered with a Middle Eastern-influenced chile-and-herb skhug mayo.

I had to try the cottage cheese pancakes ($18), a childhood touchstone. They were incredible in a different way from my mother’s: supremely flu y and thick, with a browned, salt-flecked crust. She never served them with maple syrup, either.

We ate with our eyes at LA MARGUERITE in the Côte-St.-Luc area (6630 rue Côte St. Luc, 514-488-4111, lamarguerite.ca) but picked up plenty for later. The retail arm of a kosher catering company is run by a second generation of Canadians with Moroccan Jewish heritage.

Romanow wrote her college thesis on Montréal’s Moroccan Jewish community, who represent about 20 percent of the

city’s roughly 93,000 Jews. Most of them arrived during the late 1950s and early ’60s, driven from their homeland by antisemitism and drawn by the promise of “the North American dream but in French,” she said.

Two of La Marguerite’s trio of sibling owners, Moshe, 49, and Maggy Chetrit, 45, said their family initially immigrated to Israel before coming to Montréal in 1977, where they opened the now-shuttered El Morocco restaurant.

Beautifully arranged cases held sweet and savory pastries, breads, and prepared

foods, from couscous to fish with peppers and olives. Romanow bought her family dinner. I selected several salads and dips to bring home, including a tangy and intensely fruity tomato-and-bell pepper spread called taktouka, matboucha or salade cuite; and zaalouk, a cuminaccented eggplant, tomato and red pepper blend (both $6 per eight ounces).

A 10-minute drive back toward the city center brought us to the previously mentioned SNOWDON DELI (5265 boulevard Décarie, 514-488-9129, snowdondeli.com). The old-school spot is in the

Côtes-des-Neiges neighborhood near the 110-year-old Jewish Public Library, which claims North America’s largest circulating collection of Judaica.

Founded in 1946, the deli is now owned by a grandson of one of the original Jewish owners, along with the daughter of their longtime Greek Canadian business partner and her husband.

The large menu, ranging from whitefish salad to knishes, will feel familiar to fans of New York Jewish delis. In honor of my mother, I ordered the chopped liver ($11). An ice cream scoop-size ball of liver

Wilensky's Light Lunch Prepared foods at La Marguerite

Cottage cheese pancakes and McArthur chicken schnitzel at Arthur’s Nosh Bar

spread came with a pile of caramelized onions, soft rye bread, and a beside-the-point iceberg lettuce and tomato salad. The savory, iron-y chicken liver, lightened with hard-cooked egg and fried onions, pulled me into a memory vortex, as did the well-made borscht ($5), which evoked my grandmother.

New to me was karnatzel ($3.25), a soft Hungarian-style pepperoni stick served with a slice of rye in which to wrap it with yellow mustard. But next time: smoked meat.

A short walk away, we popped into FRESSER’S (5737 boulevard Décarie, 514-739-4034) for a cheese bagel. Romanow described it as a uniquely Montréal Jewish food with a name no one can explain, since it neither looks nor tastes like a bagel.

The horseshoe-shaped pastry is sometimes made with strudel or phyllo dough, she said, but always filled with lightly sweetened farmer’s cheese. The Fresser’s version ($3.25) recalled the Cheskie’s cheese crown, but with a

flakier dough studded with chunky sugar crystals.

As the day wound down, we headed west to FALAFEL ST. JACQUES in Lachine (345 rue St. Jacques, 514-595-7482, falafelst jacques.ca). The small store was as overstu ed as its falafel pitas, crowded with cans of Israeli olives, rows of salads, and fresh-baked challah and apple cake. Manager Saleh Seh told us that he is Arab Israeli and was hired many years ago by owner Ronen Baruch, also from Israel but Jewish.

Too overstu ed ourselves to eat a meal, we nibbled on cumin-forward, herby falafel balls and watched several customers tuck into falafel pitas ($15.50) overflowing with pickled turnips, fermented mango amba sauce and tahini.

For falafel, Romanow also recommends two more Jewish-owned spots: FALAFEL YONI (falafelyoni.com), with locations in Le Plateau-Mont-Royal, Verdun and (seasonally) Atwater Market; and SUMAC RESTAURANT (3618 Notre Dame Ouest, 514-935-1444, sumacrestaurant.com) in the St. Henri neighborhood near Atwater.

Since a previous visit to Sumac, I have dreamed of its sabich pita ($14), featuring fried eggplant, hard-cooked egg and pickles. Romanow especially likes the restaurant’s salade cuite and carrots with preserved lemon (both $8/$12).

Such foods may not reflect my particular Jewish culinary roots, but they definitely feed my soul. ➆

INFO

Learn more about Kat Romanow at wanderingchew.ca and about the Museum of Jewish Montréal’s Beyond the Bagel tours at museemontrealjuif.ca.

Taking Flight

Standing Stone Wines pours affordable vino in Winooski

STORY & PHOTOS BY JORDAN BARRY jbarry@sevendaysvt.com

I don’t make a habit of drinking a flight of wine on a weekday afternoon. But when the universe throws you an April snowstorm, swarming eclipse crowds and an earthquake all at once, what else can you do?

ankfully, Winooski’s Standing Stone Wines opens at noon. I arrived last Friday with a friend — who was also having a deeply Mercury-in-retrograde kind of day — promptly at 12:15.

Lil Sickles opened Standing Stone on the east — and historically quieter — side of the rotary in November. At the time, she focused on selling bottles of wine alongside products made by BIPOC and LGBTQ artists and craftspeople, donating a percentage of each month’s sales to different Indigenous causes. She planned to open a small tasting bar this year, mostly to let customers try wines before committing to a whole bottle.

All that has changed. “I was planning on being a wine store with a little wine bar, and now I’m a wine bar with a little wine store,” Sickles said.

Financially, she explained, the shift made sense. She’d have to sell a lot of $10 to $20 bottles of wine — in which the shop specializes — to make ends meet. With decades of experience running bars and restaurant wine programs in New York City, Boston and Burlington, she knows the bar business best.

In January, she went all in. In addition to wine, beer and nonalcoholic options, Standing Stone now has a full liquor license and offers batched cocktails such as Negronis, martinis and Manhattans. On weekends, mimosas and Bloody Marys join the mix, along with pastries from Burlington bakery Getty Goods & Services.

e rest of the food menu — which Sickles calls “Girl Dinner,” referencing the recent meme — consists of chips, nuts, hummus and a cheese plate. is summer, when the Winooski Farmers Market is in full swing nearby, she hopes to add bagels with whitefish salad or smoked salmon.

“I’m trying to make a place that’s a wine bar mixed with a coffee shop mixed with a lounge mixed with a dive bar,” Sickles said.

e homey décor nails that place-for-all-occasions vibe: plush furniture, a healthy dose of animal prints, one rather large lava lamp and vintage McDonald’s collectible water

SIDEdishes

SERVING UP FOOD NEWS

BY JORDAN BARRY

glasses. Standing Stone already hosts wine classes, private parties, trivia, pop-up dinners and music — soon to include live-band karaoke, Sickles said. In our case, the occasion was the feeling of impending doom.

We’d each chosen four different wines, ranging from a sustainable, native yeast-fermented, “super fun” German silvaner to a biodynamic chilled Italian red blend that the menu said “tastes expensive.” (Flights are $15 for four pours, and wines are also available by the glass or bottle, starting at $8 and $28, respectively.)

I opted for two sparkling wines: an organic lambrusco — because I can never resist a glass of the dry, red bubbles — and a frizzante rosé from Austria, because of its description.

e wine shop and bar

“We call this wine Dolly Parton,” the menu said. “It looks a little cheap on the outside, but it’s full of taste and class!” Instantly, I was sold.

Beyond the flight offerings, the wine list also offers pours of more expensive bottles (served using a Coravin, which keeps the cork in place to preserve the wine’s freshness). But Standing Stone’s biggest selling point is its affordability. On Wednesdays, customers can get a glass for as little as $5. Apocalypse or not, that sounds like a great occasion for a drink. ➆

INFO

Standing Stone Wines, 33 Main St., Winooski, standingstonewinesvt.com

Middlebury’s Haymaker Bun to Open Second Location in Burlington’s Soda Plant

The Burlington location recently vacated by Tomgirl Kitchen will soon be home to another popular, woman-owned local business. Middlebury-based HAYMAKER BUN will open a second location and move wholesale production of its four-packs of frozen brioche sticky buns to the SODA PLANT at 266 Pine Street. Owner

CAROLINE CORRENTE is targeting a July opening, she told Seven Days Haymaker’s Burlington outpost will serve the bakery’s full lineup of buns and pastries, along with its signature breakfast sandwiches on savory buns. The café’s lunch menu will be a condensed version of the Middlebury restaurant’s, with grab-and-go salads, grain bowls, wraps and sandwiches, Corrente said.

“I was immediately interested,” Corrente said. “I know the location and think it’s a pretty prime spot.” She and general manager CHLOE SPEYERS “fell in love with the space,” she continued. “It really fit our aesthetic, and we love the company in the Soda Plant. There are so many cool makers and artisans.” Haymaker will serve Brio drip and iced coffee, along with tea and other beverages.

Soda Plant neighbors MAGDA and NATE VAN DUSEN of BRIO COFFEEWORKS alerted Corrente, who serves their co ee at her Middlebury business, to the open space not long after Tomgirl closed in mid-February.

Corrente and her husband, MATT CORRENTE , opened Haymaker and an Italian restaurant, the Arcadian, on Middlebury’s Bakery Lane in 2018. (The latter is now closed.) Haymaker was a James Beard Award semifinalist in 2023, the inaugural year of the awards’ nationwide Outstanding Bakery category.

“I’m shocked when people in Burlington know who we are,” Corrente said. “But it’s always felt like a natural expansion point.”

Flight of wine

Lil Sickles behind the bar

A savory bun at Haymaker Bun

JORDAN BARRY

Crumbs: Vermont’s James Beard Finalists; Winery Tasting Room Updates; Chittenden County Restaurant Closures

Two of Vermont’s semifinalists in the James Beard Foundation Restaurant and Chef Awards have moved on to the final round. CARA CHIGAZOLA TOBIN, executive chef and co-owner of Burlington’s HONEY ROAD and the GREY JAY, is nominated in the Best Chef: Northeast category, while the cocktail bar at BARR HILL’s distillery on Montpelier’s Gin Lane is a finalist in the nationwide Outstanding Bar category.

Winners of the prestigious awards will be announced at a ceremony in Chicago on Monday, June 10. It’s one in, one out for the state’s winery tasting rooms. STELLA14 WINES will close its Je ersonville tasting space later this month, after hosting its remaining scheduled classes and a party on Saturday, April 27. In a social media post, owners DAVID KECK and LAUREN DROEGE noted that last spring’s late frost wiped out 90 percent of their crop and left them “facing a long year of unknown business and very little of our wine to get us through.”

But the winery itself will continue, and Keck and Droege are “planting more vines everywhere we can,” the post said.

In Stowe, ELLISON ESTATE VINEYARD has opened a tasting space at 57 Mountain Road. Wines from KENDRA and ROB KNAPIK’s regenerative farm in Grand Isle are available by the glass or for tastings in the elegant space tucked unobtrusively behind Once Upon a Time Toys.

The Knapiks hope to “educate and connect people with the concept of Vermont terroir through our wine and what we consider exceptional cheese and charcuterie brands in the state,” Kendra told Seven Days

Two Chittenden County restaurants closed permanently in March. Cody’s Irish Pub & Grille in Essex Junction ended its 25-year-plus run after a final service on St. Patrick’s Day; owner KEVIN CODY cited “personal circumstances” in a social media announcement.

On March 26, the children of Pho K&K co-owner KHANH LE posted that the Vietnamese restaurant in Williston’s Maple Tree Place had permanently closed. Le, who owned the 10-year-old business with his wife, KHANH PHAM, su ered a stroke at the restaurant on March 19. An update to the family’s GoFundMe on April 3 noted that Le was awake and in stable condition. ➆

Cha giò at Pho K&K

Lauren Droege and David Keck of Stella14 Wines with their dogs, Leaf and Pesto

Sydney Lea has been busy. The prolific writer, peripatetic teacher, influential editor and literacy activist has also long been a hunter, fisherman and ardent conservationist. Already the author of 15 poetry collections and eight books of essays, Lea, 81, recently published two new collections, one of poetry (What Shines) and another of meditative essays (Such Dancing as We Can). His second novel will be published this year.

Lea cofounded the New England Review in 1977 and edited it until 1989. He has taught at Yale University, Dartmouth College, Vermont College, Middlebury College and Wesleyan University.

In 2012, Lea was named a Field & Stream Conservation Hero for his leadership role with the Downeast Lakes Land Trust in Maine and other conservation e orts. As Vermont poet laureate from 2011 to 2015, he visited most of the state’s town libraries. In 2021, he received the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts from the Vermont Arts Council.

Lea’s writings explore the experience of humans in a jeopardized but still vital, ever-replenishing natural world. In the poems of What Shines and the essays of Such Dancing as We Can, he demonstrates a give-and-take, back-and-forth rapport between his poetry and prose, both thematically and formally. Some of the pieces in the two books resemble one another like siblings.

With three of his five children and all seven of his grandchildren also residing in Vermont, Lea lives with his wife, Robin Barone, in Newbury.

He responded to questions from Seven Days by email.

You’ve written many books of both prose and poetry. Are there differences in how a given piece begins and develops?

I don’t mean to sound mystical, but my genres seem to choose me. I once shared a house with two friends, both architecture students who were protégés of the famous Louis Kahn; he had told them that the secret to good design was uncovering “what the building wanted to be.” With regard to writing, that resonated 60 years ago and still does.

The new essay collection Such Dancing as We Can had its genesis in some “translations” of certain poems that I just hadn’t gotten to where I wanted them. They seemed permanently stalled. Noodling around in the Augean stables of

Shining On

Vermont poet Sydney Lea on his new collections of verse and prose

BY JIM SCHLEY • schley@sevendaysvt.com

my computer files, something eventually told me these wanted the suppleness of prose.

I feel a greater call to make a poem a self-contained unit. Although I hope my poems remain open-ended, I do want the reader to feel that each has unfolded a recognizable drama, inner or outer.

A reader who knows their work will hear intonations of Robert Frost and William Wordsworth in your writing. Who else has continued to be a wellspring for you?

Well, there’s the tendency in Robert Penn Warren to tell a story, which I share even when I don’t want to. His Audubon: A Vision is, to me, a monument in American

literary history — a masterful narrative. The ambiguous and intriguing relations of Emily Dickinson to the natural world have been important to me since I read “A Narrow Fellow in the Grass” in high school.

But I suspect most of my profounder influences aren’t literary in the strictest sense. The storytelling abilities of those old New Englanders I’ve known have been a beacon for me from the start. This is what launched me into imaginative writing. I heard and still hear those voices every day, and I wanted to get something of their cadences onto the page without imitating, because to use dialect might be confused as a sign of condescension.

What about music? You’ve written about well-loved forebears such as Bill Monroe, Merle Haggard, Etta James, Ray Charles...

Music has had an important impact on me, though I’m hard put to describe it. Especially jazz, and especially the hard bop era: Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Max Roach … I almost always have some album playing as I compose. Having a given musical structure — within which to improvise, without losing sight of that structure — is something I often attempt in poetry.

In the recent poem “1949,” you quote from a psalm: “We live our lives as a tale that is told.” How do you see the connection between an author’s lived experience and the crafting of a tale?

I find myself most confident, even ambitious, when the “facts” of a given poem are true, when the story is not invented. If I say, sadly, that I had a brother who died at 34, I better have had one. I feel especially beholden to a sort of nonfictional stance when I speak of misfortune or tragedy in the lives of other people.

Yet the act of shaping one’s experience to articulate what feels most important is obviously a kind of editing. I sometimes alter chronological details, in the interest of whatever drama I’m striving to complete. As the great Dickinson urged us, “Tell all the truth but tell it slant.”

ere’s a vigorous physicality to your remembrances, for instance in “No Way Out,” “My Body Remembers a Day” and “Mere Humans.” Have you ever kept journals, or do you work from memory and imagination?

In my first 10 or 15 years of writing, I kept a journal and then somehow just stopped. After publishing a few books, I may have felt I could start writing the poem directly. I have a journal entry from the early 1970s, for instance, in which I notice my uncanny physical recollection of my dad’s death on its anniversary every year. By the time I wrote the poem “My Body Remembers a Day,” I didn’t need a jog to my recall; I just sat down and wrote a draft.

You conclude the essay “Army Specialized Depot #829, 1942,” which is about your father, by wondering if you’re “the last” who can “recall the very scent of this good man’s sweat.”

Well, my father was gone, to my devastation,

COURTESY OF M. ROBIN BARONE

Sydney Lea

Scientists can measure the rate at which glaciers melt by making underwater audio recordings of them shifting and calving, then reducing those sounds to predictive formulas. But what if, in addition to providing useful data, the sounds of melting glaciers became music?

Montréal composer Sophie Kastner’s “Terminus” does just that, incorporating those underwater recordings into a composition for string quartet. The piece is one of the works inspired by and derived from science and data on the program of the Vermont Symphony Orchestra’s Jukebox Quartet concerts this weekend, titled “The Sound of Science.”

Music, with its unique relationship to emotion, might seem at odds with the dispassionate realm of data. But using data to create music is just “a new and different way to tell a story,” said Matt LaRocca, the VSO’s artistic adviser and project conductor, who curates the Jukebox series.

“Data can underscore a concept, but numbers are hard to digest sometimes,” LaRocca said. “Being able to channel it through music can tell a more relatable story.”

The Jukebox Quartet — violinists Brooke Quiggins Saulnier and Jane Kittredge, violist Stefanie Taylor, and cellist John Dunlop — generally performs on miked instruments outside the traditional concert hall. This weekend’s venues are a draw in themselves: the Roots Studio Space in Rutland; Beta Technologies in South Burlington, where some of the world’s first electric airplanes are in development; and the Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium in St. Johnsbury.

That last venue is where LaRocca obtained records of Vermont’s temperatures between 1970 and 2019 for his piece “Bullseye,” which is on the weekend program. Named for the circular rash associated with Lyme disease, the work combines the meteorological data with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s record of Lyme cases in the state during the same 50-year span. LaRocca fed spreadsheets of both trends into an online web application that

“sonifies” data, tweaking the program to create acoustic music for the quartet.

The piece, covering a year every two measures, features only viola and cello until 1988, when the first case of Lyme is detected in Vermont. From there, the work is like “a rolling ball that gathers energy and pace and sonic material until the end,” LaRocca said.

Retired Middlebury College professor Peter Hamlin created his own methodology to compose “Lake Champlain — 11 hours, July 18, 2023,” also on the program. The piece is derived from 11 hours of wind data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather station on Diamond Island, off Ferrisburgh. He checks its data regularly before taking his 22-foot sloop out on the lake.

“I wanted to capture in sound the way I feel on the water,” he said.

The piece begins gently and builds as the wind picks up, then calms down again. “It’s like a little musical moment on the lake,” Hamlin said. The quartet will improvise over an electronic score; both scores were determined by wind speeds and direction. Hamlin mapped the NOAA data onto the musical circle of fifths to create the eight-minute piece.

Audiences will be able to make music from their own data sets in preperformance workshops, using a free version of the program LaRocca used to compose his piece. He recommends that participants bring their own computers and any data sets that interest them.

A Nordic skier’s heart rate monitor readings? A runner’s mileage and pace? It can all be music. ➆

INFO

Vermont Symphony Orchestra’s Jukebox Quartet: “The Sound of Science,” Friday, April 12, 7 p.m., at Roots Studio Space in Rutland, $15-35 or pay what you can; Saturday, April 13, 5 and 7:30 p.m., at Beta Technologies in South Burlington, $15-35; and Sunday, April 14, 6 p.m., at Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium in St. Johnsbury, $15-35. vso.org

A Life’s Work

Theater review: I Am My Own Wife, Lost Nation Theater

BY ALEX BROWN • alex@sevendaysvt.com

Now at Lost Nation Theater, the one-person show I Am My Own Wife presents the life of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf (1928-2002), a Berliner who turned her home into a museum of cultural artifacts and her life into a beacon. She opens the play speaking directly to the audience, sure of her taste, herself and our interest. That exemplary certainty also gave her the courage to dress as a woman under the repressive Nazi and East German Communist regimes.

Her power is knowing who she is. Born Lothar Berfelde, at 15 she became Charlotte and began wearing women’s clothes, at the height of World War II. She proudly identifies herself with the term of her times, a transvestite, but she’d be described as transgender today.

In a magnificent performance, Stoph Scheer, herself a trans woman, embodies Charlotte with an elegant tone and soft German accent, the first of many voices we’ll hear. She also plays 35 other people in Charlotte’s life.

“For 50 years, I have been turning this crank,” Charlotte says as she starts an antique phonograph, beginning a stream of recollections that playwright Doug Wright fashions into tiny scenes, some of them brief exchanges between two characters and others little snips of narrative summary. It’s a crisp way of turning a full lifetime into a cascade of experiences. It’s also an astounding challenge for Scheer,

who makes all the characters distinct, using vocal and physical characteristics to pinpoint them.

Some transitions happen with the speed of a raised of eyebrow. Others utilize Scheer’s extraordinary vocal gamut and

WHAT WE SEE ONSTAGE IS AN INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCING THE HUMAN RIGHT TO BE WHOLE.

command of accents. All the characters are rooted in defined physicality as well. The loud guy with an unapologetic American accent seems large because of the way he leans with his shoulders stiffened. Charlotte’s aunt has the strong, straight posture of a horsewoman. Scheer’s virtuoso vocal work deserves appreciation, but she is using it to make characters, not to bowl us over. Scheer’s craft gives us a play rich with people.

Most one-person shows carry the limitation that little can happen in front of our eyes when it’s all recollection, dramatically

puts his own disappointment in Charlotte’s betrayal into the play, as if that’s apology enough for skirting serious investigation of her role and its ramifications.

The character has become too fascinating and too lovable by that point in the story for the audience to want much of a reckoning. But no one should mistake this play for a deep look into Charlotte’s inner life.

Instead, Charlotte is an indomitable wonder, preserving artifacts of the Gründerzeit (the Gay Nineties) and living life as she pleases. Her strength to be who she is, inside and out, is her life’s work as much as the museum is. Scheer gives her that very German combination of a gimlet eye and a life-affirming smile.

THEATER

told. But Wright’s play is built from scenes, and Charlotte lives bits of her life before us. She engages with people, not memories. The play premiered off-Broadway and won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play.

When Charlotte reenacts what it first felt like to wear the clothes she belonged in, joy and certainty overcome her. The transformation is personal and vivid, which puts it a world away from the generalized rhetoric, however well intentioned, about trans rights. What we see onstage is an individual experiencing the human right to be whole.

Director Joanne Greenberg lets the comedy rise just high enough and the dark events simmer just low enough. Greenberg’s attention to stage movement and pace gives Scheer’s expressive performance a foundation.

I Am My Own Wife is not a political statement but a human one, and the person we meet is both fascinating and uplifting. But it’s also fair to say we learn more of her luck than her losses. We get only one scene of her in danger of Nazi scrutiny. It’s potent and well played, but the script never builds on the scars from this or other harrowing events.

In a loose, bold structure, the playwright himself appears in interviews with 65-yearold Charlotte to develop the script. Wright’s presence adds some wonderful humor but also allows him to dodge the messy matter of Charlotte’s possible collaboration with the German secret police. The playwright

Wright is stuck with an awkward ending because real people rarely have stories that conclude as neatly and powerfully as fictional characters do. He zooms out to close the play, and it’s a fine way to stake out an ending, but it leaves the actor a bit of a bystander for the conclusion. After Scheer supplied all the fuel that burned for the past two hours, shrinking Charlotte to archival photos moves the attention away from a stunning performance.

Mark Evancho’s set design evokes an idiosyncratic museum assembled with love. The stage is dotted with furniture artfully arranged to create places for events in Charlotte’s life to unfold. The gramophones and antiques are lit with period lamps, establishing the warmth with which they’re treasured.

Effective lighting design by Julia Grace Kelley and musically rich sound design by Eric Love create Charlotte’s world. Costume designer Cora Fauser developed a black dress that suits the vast range of movement needed for Charlotte and all the other characters. In a single dress, Scheer can appear delicate and feminine, manspread to command a chair, or dance like a TV host.

Charlotte’s pride becomes the armor that protects her. The playwright admits Charlotte may have embellished her tales. Indeed, I Am My Own Wife is the story of a person who had to invent herself. She created a museum to collect artifacts, preserving them from the casual destruction of falling out of fashion. That zeal infuses her life as an outlier, and Scheer converts our curiosity about her into a connection. ➆

INFO

I Am My Own Wife, by Doug Wright, directed by Joanne Greenberg, produced by Lost Nation Theater. Through April 21: Thursdays through Saturdays, 7:30 p.m.; and Sundays, 2 p.m., at Lost Nation Theater, Montpelier City Hall. $1036. lostnationtheater.org

Stoph Scheer in I Am My Own Wife

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Grateful Thread

Catching up with the Champlain Valley Quilt Guild in advance of its biennial show

Since 1979, the Champlain Valley Quilt Guild has been promoting quilting and connecting crafters in Chittenden County. The nearly 100-member group — one of about 20 quilt guilds across the state — gathers monthly and has made hundreds of quilts for various charities over the years.

The guild’s biennial show, “Seams Like Spring,” will be held April 26 through 28 at the Holy Family Parish Center in Essex Junction. More than 100 quilts will be displayed, and a lucky ra e winner will take home a quilt.

Seven Days senior multimedia producer Eva Sollberger met up with guild members when they gathered at a Burlington home ahead of the show. A longarm quilting machine took up much of the room, and Sollberger was allowed to give it a whirl. The quilters worked on next year’s ra e quilt and shared their passion for the craft.

What drew you to the quilt guild?

I’ve covered lots of crafters over the past 17 years, but I’ve never covered quilters. So when I heard about the guild’s upcoming show from a member, I wanted to know more. I inherited a lot of colorful quilts that were handmade by my grandmother Margaret and great-grandmother Louise. I was never able to learn about quilting from them, so this seamed (forgive the pun!) like the next best thing.

It’s interesting that quilts are signed like works of art.

Many modern quilters sign their works and also include the date, who it was made for and where it was made. I really wish my family members had done that on the quilts I inherited. But it’s not too late. Guild members advised me to add origin info to the quilts, as much as I can, ahem, piece together. (Sorry!)

because the stitches are larger. It is a happy pattern with colorful butterflies edged in black thread. My grandmother did the more intricate hand-stitching; I can’t believe how small and tidy her stitches are. I treasure this quilt, even though it needs some TLC.

What surprised you about quilting?

was a stigma against using machines, but the guild members told me that is pretty much gone now. I bet my granny would have loved these new gadgets!

Some lucky person will win a quilt in this year’s raffle.

Yes, the quilt being ra ed o is called “Geese and the Lilies.” You can see two guild members holding it up in the first minute of the video. I also got to see a preview of next year’s ra e quilt, called “Sunset Serenity.” Guild members work on these projects together and use the proceeds from the ra e to pay for speakers and workshops. They also post photos of the happy winners on the guild’s Facebook page.

Tell us how these quilts come together.

I learned that quilts generally have three layers: The top layer is the pattern, soft batting fills the center, and all three layers are held together by lines of stitching. Finally, you sew binding along the edges of the quilt to make it look neater. The guild members showed me many steps of quilt making during my visit. Catherine Symchych, Joann Frymire and Nancy Suarez were piecing together next year’s ra e quilt and sewing the top layer using a pattern. Marti DelNevo was free-motion quilting a charity blanket using the longarm machine. She even let me take a turn, which was a lot of fun. Luckily, there was no pressure because they removed the thread for my joyride. Sue McGuire was hand-stitching the binding of another quilt. Karen Abrahamovich was ripping out the stitches on her quilt of America so she could make some changes.

What do you think is the enduring appeal of this craft?

Sollberger spoke with Seven about filming the episode.

My favorite quilt was made by my grandmother and her mother when she was in her seventies. You can see the sections that my great-grandmother did

Modern quilting is surprisingly high tech! My family members did much of their sewing by hand. My great-grandmother worked by the light of oil lamps. It was tedious and time-consuming. These days, many quilters use machines, like the longarm quilting machine, that enable them to be e cient and fast. Initially, there

There is something very comforting about being with a group of women who are crafting. I think of my family members who were quilters but also of all the women throughout history who gathered to work on projects like this. Quilting started as a way for women to use leftover fabric pieces to create something beautiful in their homes. Then it fell out of favor as consumer goods became easier to purchase. I think, in this age of technology, we see the value in these old art forms and appreciate the time spent together. ➆

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 712: Quilters Gonna Quilt

EVA SOLLBERGER

Catherine Symchych

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BOOKS

Vermont Book Awards Announce a Competitive Field of Finalists

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The finalists for this year’s Vermont Book Awards were announced last Friday and include works published in 2023 by an impressive field of writers — from stories about the immigrant experience to reporting on the far right to graphic nonfiction about water, electricity and the internet. Vying for the state’s most prestigious literary honor are several National Book Award winners and finalists, Pulitzer Prize finalists, Vermont poet laureates past and present, several best-selling authors, and a few newcomers.

DISPOSSESSION AND EXPULSION FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA:

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Created in 2015 by the Vermont College of Fine Arts, the Vermont Book Awards are bestowed in a collaborative effort with Vermont Humanities and the Vermont Department of Libraries. They recognize works in four categories: creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry and children’s literature.

nominated is Vievee Francis’ The Shared World, the fourth book by the White River Junction poet. Francis’ third collection, Forest Primeval, won the $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Leslie Sainz’s Have You Been Long Enough at Table explores the personal and historical tragedies of the Cuban American experience through a feminist lens. And Ellen Bryant Voigt, a former Vermont poet laureate and MacArthur Fellowship “Genius Grant” recipient, is nominated for Collected Poems, which brings together five decades of her work.

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The Israel-Palestine “conflict” is typically misunderstood to be a clash between two ethnic groups – Arabs and Jews – inhabiting the same land. In his book, Palestine Hijacked, Suárez exposes a starkly different history: The violent takeover of Palestine by a European racist-nationalist settler movement, Zionism, using terror to assert a land claim that has no legal or moral basis. The book proves that Israel’s expropriation and apartheid against Palestinians are the intended goal of Zionism since its beginning in the late 1800s.

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Finalists for creative nonfiction include Brad Kessler’s Deep North: Stories of Somali Resettlement in Vermont Kessler is the author of two critically acclaimed novels, Lick Creek and Birds in Fall, the latter of which won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize in Fiction. The Book, by Mary Ruefle, is a compendium of prose poems on an array of topics. The Bennington poet, essayist and poet laureate was a 2020 Pulitzer finalist for her book Dunce Seven Days Jim Schley described her work as “commonsensical and wily, mournful and comic, friendly and roguish — all within the same poem.”

Best-selling author Jeff Sharlet’s The Undertow: Scenes From a Slow Civil War documents what the Dartmouth College writing professor sees as the rise of fascism in America. The Undertow was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist for nonfiction and one of the New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2023. Seven Days Chelsea Edgar profiled Sharlet in a June 7, 2023, cover story.

Finalists in the fiction category include Genevieve Plunkett’s In the Lobby of the Dream Hotel. The Bennington author’s second book is a nonlinear tale about protagonist Portia Elby’s bipolar disorder.

The children’s literature finalists include two books about boys and their dogs: Elf Dog and Owl Head, by National Book Award winner M.T. Anderson, and Kenneth M. Cadow’s debut novel, Gather, a Michael L. Printz Honor Book. Cadow, who was featured in a Seven Days cover story by Alison Novak in November, is coprincipal of Oxbow High School in Bradford. He wrote much of the novel in a tiny cabin he built behind his Norwich home.

The young adult novel finalist, The Minus-One Club, was written by Montpelier’s Kekla Magoon. The author of more than 20 fiction and nonfiction books for children and teens has been a finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Vermont Book Award, as well as a recipient of the Michael L. Printz Honor.

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Assia, the debut novel of poet Sandra Simonds, is loosely based on the life of Assia Wevill, a German Jew who escaped Nazi Germany and had an affair with Ted Hughes that broke up his marriage to Sylvia Plath.

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Rounding out the fiction category is Lush Lives by Bennington College art history professor J. Vanessa Lyon, who began writing fiction at the start of the pandemic. Her website press page reads simply, “We shall see.” Indeed.

The only graphic book named as a finalist is Hidden Systems: Water, Electricity, the Internet, and the Secrets Behind the Systems We Use Every Day, by artist, cartoonist and educator Dan Nott, whose award-winning illustrations have appeared in Seven Days Winners will be announced on Saturday, May 4, in an awards ceremony at Montpelier’s Vermont College of Fine Arts. Each will receive a $1,000 prize. ➆ INFO

Finalists for the poetry award include another Bennington College instructor: Michael Dumanis, for Creature. Also

Learn more at vcfa.edu/vermont-bookawards.

Vermont Book Award finalist Jeff Sharlet

the stories attached to them. I was often surprised.

58 years ago, and my mother 24 years ago. As the first of five children, I’ve become the oldest member of our immediate clan, the one possessed of the most folk family history, so to speak. As I rocket into my ninth decade on our imperiled planet, and as the number of our grandchildren burgeons, I find myself irresistibly inclined to consider milestones in my and my relatives’ lifespans.

From the outset, I’ve led a privileged life, unburdened by financial worries, surrounded by friends and kin I love deeply, but due to the ravages of addiction, there’s been plenty to grieve for and regret: a good lot of unhappiness, of sad endings. But I’ve tried not only to reconcile myself to all that — I mean, I have no way of changing it, obviously — but also to look back and to salvage, well, “what shines.”

How did your series of poems

“Animate Objects” come about — an oblique chronicle of COVID-19, which you’ve called “a time of plague”?

One day I simply decided to look around the house in search of writing potential and found myself meditating on objects — an antique duck decoy, a model boat, a very old child’s toy, a phoebe’s nest we had picked up from the ground. That model boat had belonged to my beloved motherin-law. I decided to animate these things by recalling, or in most cases guessing at,

The words “wonder” and “marvel” recur like refrains in these new books. Given some of my past abuses, I hope I never forget how fortunate I am to be here at all. I have been blessed by the long-term recovery that evaded many of my family members for generations. Though I’m a highly antinomian Christian, I choose to believe in grace, in what Jews calls chesed — that is, unmerited favor.

There’s no rational way to explain that a beloved cousin of mine drank himself dead at 31, or that my good-hearted, generous, social-crusading younger brother died a cocaine addict at a just slightly older age. I can’t rightly account, no, for why I dodged such misfortune. It’s a wonder. It’s a marvel. So even when least obviously, I’m writing about my undeserved miracle, because I’m a writer. Writing’s what I do. ➆

This interview was edited and condensed for clarity and length.

Disclosure: Jim Schley was an editor at the New England Review in the 1980s during Lea’s tenure. INFO

What Shines by Sydney Lea, Four Way Books, 192 pages. $17.95. Such Dancing As We Can, the Humble Essayist Press, 304 pages. $15.

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on screen

Scoop ★★★★

While we were all preparing for an eclipse of the sun, Netflix brought us a rippedfrom-the-headlines drama about the eclipse of a son — specifically, a royal one. Released on April 5, Scoop is a dramatized version of the story behind the 2019 BBC “Newsnight” interview that would eventually result in Prince Andrew’s withdrawal from public life. It was directed by Philip Martin (“The Crown”) and based on the book Scoops: Behind the Scenes of the BBC’s Most Shocking Interviews by Sam McAlister, the booker who made that interview happen.

The deal

It all starts with a determined paparazzo (Connor Swindells) catching a fateful shot of Je rey Epstein (Colin Wells) with Prince Andrew (Rufus Sewell) in Central Park, thereby establishing the two men’s friendship. He also snaps shots of a very young woman leaving Epstein’s nearby apartment.

Nine years later, while trying to fill an interview slot, McAlister (Billie Piper) stumbles on a press release for one of Andrew’s projects, a pitch fest at Buckingham Palace. This is the sort of lightweight a air that “Newsnight,” with its formidably prepared host, Emily Maitlis (Gillian Anderson), doesn’t usually cover. McAlister’s colleagues side-eye her taste for celebrity stories and even call her the worst insult of all: “a little bit Daily Mail.”

But McAlister has been reading up on Andrew’s link to Epstein, who already has a record as a sex o ender. She forges a relationship with the prince’s private secretary, Amanda Thirsk (Keeley Hawes), and tries to convince her that a BBC interview could help clear Andrew’s name. After Epstein is jailed again — and dies in custody — McAlister is in a prime position to swoop in and snag that interview. No longer a pu piece, it’s now a major scoop.

Will you like it?

Perhaps Charlie Proctor, a pundit on what was then called Twitter, summed up the Prince Andrew “Newsnight” interview best: “I expected a train wreck. That was a plane crashing into an oil tanker, causing a tsunami, triggering a nuclear explosion level bad.” With his bizarre and contradictory excuses, his fusty talk of “conduct unbecoming,” and his failure to show empathy for Epstein’s victims, the

REVIEW

prince dealt a grave blow to his own — and the monarchy’s — reputation.

Andrew’s disastrous showing is one of those real events that merit the label of “stranger than fiction.” It would be no mean feat to make a dramatized backstory of the interview as riveting as the actual footage, but the makers of Scoop don’t shoot that high. What they have done — with success — is craft a story fast-paced and compelling enough to bring legions of new watchers to the real interview, as its growing comment section on YouTube can attest.

Two deliciously mannered performances anchor the film. Wearing prosthetics, Sewell keeps his portrayal of the prince teetering on the edge of parody. We see his many facets: the aging playboy who still tries to coast by on charm, the outof-touch blowhard, the etiquette-bound aristocrat. Andrew maintains his dignity even when issuing orders to the sta about the arrangement of the plushies on his bed.

Watching the actual interview, one wonders at Maitlis’ superhuman restraint as she allows her subject to incriminate himself. Here we see how calculated — and inspired — her approach was. Anderson plays Maitlis as a snappy, confrontational newswoman who wouldn’t be out of place in a screwball comedy; she’s whippet-thin

and literally has a whippet. This performance, too, verges on caricature, but when the interview finally occurs, we feel the real anger beneath her composure.

McAlister, the film’s nominal protagonist, isn’t fleshed out beyond some conventionally “likable” qualities: She’s a loving single mom, she sticks out from her staid colleagues like Elle in Legally Blonde, and she wants to do journalism that makes a di erence (though what that means to her isn’t explored). The mousy Thirsk, who is the gatekeeper of Prince Andrew and the target of McAlister’s wiles, also remains underdeveloped as a character. Still, these two contrasting women have a palpable rapport. There’s an irreverent kick to their first scene together, when McAlister shows up to the palace plastered with Chanel logos and takes a selfie, and Thirsk isn’t a whit scandalized by this crassness — she’s seen it all.

Scoop raises still-relevant questions about the role of a monarchy in a modern democracy — its performative aspects, its commodification, its sheer silliness. As an institution, the old-school journalism represented by the BBC is itself far from untouchable. ( Scoop unfolds against a background of mass layo s.) In 2019, these two lumbering dinosaurs faced o , and the press won the day. But the fact that Twitter

wits delivered the verdict was, perhaps, a dark foreshadowing of things to come.

MARGOT HARRISON

margot@sevendaysvt.com

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“SURVIVING JEFFREY EPSTEIN” (2020; Freevee, Lifetime, Philo, rentable): is docuseries prominently features Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who made the allegations that Prince Andrew faced in the “Newsnight” interview, along with the testimonies of other victims.

“A VERY ENGLISH SCANDAL” (2018; Prime): If you liked the borderline absurdism of Sewell’s performance, you’ll also enjoy Hugh Grant’s turn as a closeted member of Parliament who was tried in the ’70s for allegedly plotting to murder his ex-lover. e makers of the series are now producing “A Very Royal Scandal,” which covers the same terrain as Scoop from Maitlis’ point of view.

SHE SAID (2022; Peacock, rentable): is drama focuses on the other most notorious case of the #MeToo era — Harvey Weinstein — and details how New York Times reporters convinced reluctant survivors to tell their stories on the record.

Gillian Anderson is tough as nails as British anchor Emily Maitlis in this drama about a disastrous royal interview.

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NEW IN THEATERS

ARCADIAN: Nicolas Cage plays a dude fighting monsters with his teen sons in a postapocalyptic landscape in this horror thriller from director Benjamin Brewer. (92 min, R. Majestic)

BADE MIYAN CHOTE MIYAN: Special operatives must overcome their differences to face an apocalyptic threat in this Hindi action thriller. (164 min, NR. Majestic)

CIVIL WAR: Journalists race toward a Washington, D.C., threatened by rebels in this dystopian action thriller from Alex Garland (Men), starring Nick Offerman as the president, Kirsten Dunst and Wagner Moura. (109 min, R. Essex, Majestic, Savoy, Star, Sunset)

MAIDAAN: Ajay Devgn stars in a biopic of Indian national football team coach and manager Syed Abdul Rahim. (181 min, NR. Majestic)

CURRENTLY PLAYING

ARTHUR THE KINGHH1/2 A stray dog inspires an athlete (Mark Wahlberg) to fight the odds in an endurance race. (90 min, PG-13. Majestic, Welden)

DUNE: PART TWOHHH1/2 The saga of Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) and the spice planet Arrakis continues in Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi series. (166 min, PG-13. Capitol, Essex, Majestic, Roxy; reviewed 3/6)

EPIC TAILS: An ancient Greek mouse is determined to save her city from Poseidon in this animated family adventure. (95 min, PG. Essex, Majestic)

THE FIRST OMENHHH1/2 In this prequel to The Omen horror series, an American woman (Nell Tiger Free) in Rome discovers a plot to arrange the birth of the Antichrist. Arkasha Stevenson directed. (120 min, R. Essex, Majestic, Sunset)

FOOD, INC. 2: Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser feature in this sequel to the documentary critiquing Big Ag, directed by Robert Kenner and Melissa Robledo. (94 min, NR. Essex)

GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIREHH1/2 A new generation of ghostbusters joins the old one to fight an evil force that threatens Earth with a new ice age.

With Mckenna Grace and Annie Potts. (115 min, PG-13. Big Picture, Bijou, Capitol, Essex, Majestic, Marquis, Paramount, Playhouse, Roxy, Star, Stowe, Sunset, Welden)

GODZILLA X KONG: THE NEW EMPIREHH1/2 The two legendary monsters square off again in this action adventure from Adam Wingard (Godzilla vs. Kong). (115 min, PG-13. Big Picture, Bijou, Capitol, Essex, Majestic, Marquis, Paramount, Star, Stowe, Sunset, Welden)

IT’S ONLY LIFE AFTER ALL: Alexandria Bombach’s documentary traces the career of the Indigo Girls. (123 min, NR. Roxy)

KUNG FU PANDA 4HHH Po (voice of Jack Black) must train his warrior successor in this animated adventure. With Awkwafina and Viola Davis. (94 min, PG. Bijou, Capitol, Essex, Majestic, Star, Stowe, Welden)

LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVILHHH1/2 In 1977, a live TV interview with a parapsychologist goes very wrong in this found-footage horror film, starring David Dastmalchian and Laura Gordon. (93 min, R. Roxy)

LOVE LIES BLEEDINGHHHH Kristen Stewart and Katy O’Brian play a gym manager and a bodybuilder who fall in love, but criminal entanglements threaten their dreams. Rose Glass (Saint Maud) directed. (104 min, R. Roxy, Sunset; reviewed 4/3)

MONKEY MANHHH1/2 In this action thriller set in Mumbai, Dev Patel (who also directed and cowrote) plays a young man who goes on a revenge crusade against the oppressors of the powerless. (121 min, R. Essex, Majestic)

PROBLEMISTAHHH1/2 An aspiring toy designer from El Salvador takes a job with an eccentric New York artist in this comedy. (104 min, R. Roxy)

THE TEACHERS’ LOUNGEHHHH An idealistic teacher (Leonie Benesch) goes up against the school system when she tries to clear a student of the suspicion of theft in this Oscar-nominated drama from Germany, directed by Ilker Çatak. (98 min, PG-13. Savoy)

WICKED LITTLE LETTERSHHH The women of a small town investigate to see who has been sending profane missives in this comic period piece from director Thea Sharrock. (100 min, R. Capitol, Roxy)

THE ZONE OF INTERESTHHHHH This Oscar-winning drama from Jonathan Glazer chronicles the daily life of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) and his wife (Sandra Hüller). (105 min, PG-13; Savoy; reviewed 2/7)

OLDER FILMS AND SPECIAL SCREENINGS

THE BOY AND THE HERON (Roxy)

JUST GETTING BY (Savoy, Thu & Fri only)

MADAME WEB (Sunset)

POOR THINGS (Sunset)

RETURN OF THE SECAUCUS 7 (Savoy, Mon only)

SHREK 2 20TH ANNIVERSARY (Essex, Majestic, Fri-Wed 17)

WONKA (Sunset)

OPEN THEATERS

Catamount Arts’ theater is currently closed until further notice. (* = 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 (closed for renovation April 8 to 22)

*MERRILL’S ROXY CINEMAS: 222 College St., Burlington, 864-3456, merrilltheatres.net

*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

SUNSET DRIVE-IN: 155 Porters Point Rd., Colchester, 862-1800, sunsetdrivein.com

*WELDEN THEATRE: 104 N. Main St., St. Albans, 527-7888, weldentheatre.com

When you’re busy going the extra mile for those you serve, you shouldn’t have to go out of your way to bank. At NSB, you don’t have to.

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art

Darned Tough

At Studio Place Arts in Barre, a group exhibit highlights embroidery

BY PAMELA POLSTON • ppolston@sevendaysvt.com

Recent and upcoming museum exhibitions in the U.S. and London suggest that fiber arts are having a moment — again. Artworks employing, based on or mimicking textiles have appeared throughout recorded history. Consider the woven-gold thread used in royal clothing and jewelry in ancient Egypt. Or the 11th-century Bayeux Tapestry. Who would not declare that a fine piece of art? But in recent centuries, art critics and historians have been judgier — let’s just call it misogynistic — about the implementation of needle and thread in artwork.

REVIEW

Well, enough of that. Just as collecting institutions are reckoning with colonialist views and practices, the patriarchal adjudication of what may be considered art has frayed. What was once dismissed as craft, decoration or just homey women’s work has been elevated. Moreover, a younger generation of artists has embraced both a DIY/maker aesthetic and the eco-conscious mantra of “reuse, reduce, recycle.”

With this backdrop, Barre’s Studio Place Arts has mounted “Up and Down, In and Out: Embroidery and Its Kin.” The first part of that title might reflect not only the action of stitching but its uneven reception in the art world. The curators — Cabot artist Janet Van Fleet and SPA executive director Sue Higby — have compiled an impressive variety of works by 34 artists from Vermont and beyond. All but one of the artists are women, and their ages span decades.

Among the works that feature traditional embroidery, a framed rectangle of cloth near the gallery’s front door immediately catches the eye. But its subject is unexpected. Kimberly O’Haver, who lives in New York City, stitched “Woody Guthrie Dyslexia Piece” for Dyslexia Awareness Month, according to an accompanying description. “It is a rendering of the first time that my son, Tivadar, who has a reading and writing learning di erence, willingly put pencil to paper and wrote his version of the words to his favorite song,” O’Haver explains.

That song was “This Land Is Your Land.” She stitched Tivadar’s singular spelling in black thread, along with an acoustic guitar, a bee and a flowering plant. “For me, this is a beautiful keepsake of his educational journey,” O’Haver concludes.

Two small embroidery “drawings” on unframed linen, by Claudia Renfro of Pound Ridge, N.Y., are hilariously twisted. In “Courtship,” a pair of cartoony figures could be a comment on a frightful dating scene. Both are clad in saucy lingerie and chunky high heels. One has a dog face and exposed breasts; the other is vaguely avian

but holds a cigarette between thick lips. Oh, and both are armless. Renfro’s website is populated by a menagerie of bizarre characters that, she writes, “may showcase the good, the bad, the ugly and the absurd.”

Her stitching, however, is precise.

On her website, Elizabeth Fram of Waterbury Center declares, “I stitch and I draw, each practice informing the other.”

Her pieces in the SPA exhibit demonstrate just that. Fram’s four watercolor-andgraphite portraits are enhanced with hash-mark stitches; the thread, which she carefully calibrated to the hues of

the painting beneath it, adds texture and subtle sheen. In “The Alchemist,” the background is augmented with tiny buttons in a range of greens (The subject of this portrait is Van Fleet, who sometimes uses vintage buttons in her work.)

Fram pierced the paper so delicately that no holes are evident, which is easier said than done. The eloquent images themselves — each the face of an elder female Vermont artist — are both somber and soulful.

New York City-based Delaney Conner, trained in architecture and interior design,

"Weather Any Storm" by Elizabeth Fram

COURTESY OF ATHENA TASIOPOULOS

THE VERY WORDS ASSOCIATED WITH TEXTILE ARTS CAN SERVE AS METAPHORS FOR THINGS THAT NEED FIXING OR HEALING.

takes a modern, angular approach to what she dubs “painting with textiles.” Using punch-needle embroidery, Conner creates faces and figures from geometric shapes, each of which is a plane of solid color. Her sole piece in “Up and Down” is a woman’s face in blues and purples titled “Ur

Joking.” Casting a sidelong glance over her shoulder at the viewer, the woman looks seductive even if she does suggest a puzzle.

Conner’s reductive compositions somehow call to mind contemporary works by the renowned Gee’s Bend quilters of Alabama; piecing together abstract shapes in vibrant colors, both deliver a visual punch.

Quilting is one fabric-based art form not represented in the SPA exhibition, but Leslie Pearson’s banners are nearly as large as blankets. The multimedia artist, who lives in Fayetteville, N.C., sent three works from her series “Vignettes of a Family.” Pearson writes in her artist statement that she is “drawn to things that have layers of history.” Her wall hangings combine vintage photographs printed on fabric with elements of stitching: lines, cursive text and blossoms. The sepia tone and early 20th-century images instantly convey a uniquely American narrative.

Shirley Ritter references history, too — that is, women’s art history. In a pair of wall hangings titled simply “Women Artists,” the Southern California textile and book artist borrows quilting techniques — appliqué, machine stitching and hand embroidery — to create 24 vivacious portraits of wellknown artists. Compiling them in square blocks like a group Zoom call, Ritter added dimensional details including fake fur, neck scarves and jewelry and bordered each image in Barbie pink.

She also added name tags, though artists such as Yayoi Kusama, Frida Kahlo and Louise Nevelson are easily recognizable. A viewer could spend a lot of time taking in all the nuances that help identify these women and their oeuvres.

Sharon Webster’s visual storytelling is more graphic and immediate: Over three X-rays of her own body parts — spine, right hand and right foot — she sewed zigzags of colored thread. For the Burlington artist, the concept of stitching is literal. “‘My Stitched Spine’ is a meditation on both the vulnerability and the durability of the human body,” she writes in a statement. “I imagined the threads as a way to apply healing and agency.”

The very words associated with textile arts — weaving, sewing, mending, repairing, stitching — can serve as metaphors for things that need fixing or healing. But sometimes, they might embed a caution. Two examples: White threads dangle from Cabot-based Rosalind Daniels’ black-andwhite photograph, “Democracy, Hanging by a Thread.” The machine-embroidered felt piece “homesafe,” by Boston artist Charlie Dov Schön, depicts house keys hanging from a thong, revealed by a pulledback skirt. “This work is equal parts humor

From top: "Pants 2" and "Well Traveled Flannel" by Mackenzie Kovaka; “Women Artists” by Shirley Ritter

and horror,” she writes, “holding both the absurdity and the reality of what it means to get home safe.” By which she means for women

Barre-based maker Mackenzie Kovaka could be considered a fabric activist, if you see her “Pants 2” and “Well Traveled Flannel” as a response to the climate crisis. In the middle of the gallery, a makeshift mannequin strikes a pose in Kovaka’s thrifted, cleverly patched and embroidered jeans and plaid shirt. The artist makes a convincing argument for slow fashion.

Sewing is just one of myriad techniques in Susan Smereka’s mixed-media collages. The Burlington artist has an unerring aptitude for cutting, rearranging and stitching together her monotypes, as

well as vintage manufactured materials, in abstract compositions. “Jean,” one of Smereka’s two entries in the SPA show, combines shapes in shades of rust and purple that are printed with distinctive looping patterns. Though asymmetrical, the piece looks like a shield, which in turn calls to mind a certain 15th-century French heroine.

Stitching alone won’t save the world, but the collective creatives in “Up and Down” may needle viewers to get out the sewing basket. ➆

INFO

“Up and Down, In and Out: Embroidery and Its Kin” is on view through April 20 at Studio Place Arts in Barre. studioplacearts.com

2024 JURIED EXHIBITION: AVA Gallery & Art Center in Lebanon, N.H., invites artists to submit work for its biannual show, juried this year by Rachel Moore. Details at avagallery.org. Online, through April 29. $50. Info, 603-448-3117.

ART & WRITING SHARE GROUP FOR JEWS: Secular, spiritual, religious or atheist, all adult Jewish creatives are invited to join a new, monthly virtual group focused on giving positive feedback on your art, short videos, reading or singing. Email for Zoom link and more information. Online, through April 14. Free. Info, alison@jcvt.org.

CHAMPLAIN VALLEY QUILT GUILD OF VERMONT QUILT SHOW: e guild is seeking quilters to exhibit at its 36th annual show April 26 to 28. More info about judging and registration at cvqgvt.org. Online, through April 15. $25. Info, 734-4784.

COMMUNITY GRANT FUNDS: Burlington City Arts opens the application period for the 2024 fund, which awards $5,000 grants to individual artists, artist groups and arts organizations to support Burlington-based projects that promote a vibrant creative community and contribute to the greater public good. Deadline: May 28. Online. Info, burlingtoncityarts.org.

‘WHAT’S COOKING?’: Studio Place Arts in Barre invites artists to submit work for an upcoming exhibition “that examine or elevate our lives at the kitchen counter, the stove or in the dining room.” More info at studioplacearts.com. Online, through April 27. Info, 479-7069.

ARTHUR GRAHAM RESCH: “Everyday I Live and I Live Every Day,” a solo art exhibit as part of a senior capstone project. Reception: ursday, April 18, 6-7 p.m. McCarthy Art Gallery, Saint Michael’s College, Colchester, April 16-20. Info, bcollier@smcvt.edu.

BFA EXHIBIT: An exhibition featuring drawing, painting, photography, ceramics and mixed media

art by Victoria Alinovi, Owen Whitney and Kate Vogan. Reception: ursday, April 18, 3 p.m. Julian Scott Memorial Gallery, Vermont State UniversityJohnson, April 16-May 3. Info, 635-1469.

CONOR LAHIFF: “Photography From a Meteorologist’s Point of View,” images by the local artist. Artist talk: Sunday, April 14, 1 p.m., on Lahiff’s process and inspirations and best spots to photograph the northern lights. Emile A. Gruppe Gallery, Jericho, through April 28. Info, 899-3211.

‘CYCLES’: A touring exhibition of works on the theme of cycles in nature, body, mind and spirit by 25 artists with disabilities. Reception: ursday, April 18. 4:30-6:30 p.m. Vermont Statehouse Cafeteria, Montpelier, through April 29. Info, info@ inclusiveartsvermont.org.

‘EYE CANDY’: A group exhibition of works befitting the theme by member artists. Reception: Friday, April 12, 5-7 p.m. Chaffee Art Center, Rutland, April 12-May 31. Info, 775-0356.

‘FEMMES VOLCANS FORÊTS TORRENTS’: A group exhibition by Québec artists asinnajaq, Jacynthe Carrier, Maria Ezcurra, Caroline Gagné, Anahita Norouzi, Nelly-Eve Rajotte, Sabrina Ratté, Sonia Robertson and Malena Szlam, who investigate their natural ecosystems. Reception: Wednesday, April 10, 5:30-8 p.m. Montréal Museum of Contemporary Art, April 11-August 18. Info, 514-847-6226.

LEIGH HARDER: “ e Blue Between Day and Night,” alcohol ink paintings by the East Middlebury artist.

Reception: Friday, April 12, 5-7 p.m. Jackson Gallery, Town Hall eater, Middlebury, April 12-June 8. Info, 388-1436.

NANA-FRANCISCA SCHOTTLÄNDER: “Heavy Kinship Vol. 9,” based on research residencies by the Danish multimedia artist, an exhibition that explores the co-creative potentials of encounters between rocks and humans. Reception and artist talk: Wednesday, April 10, 5 p.m. Amy E. Tarrant Gallery, Burlington, through June 22. Info, 652-4500.

ROCKY GAGNE: “Fool’s Arcana,” a mixed-media exhibition of autobiographical images and selfportraits, as part of a senior capstone project.

Reception: Friday, April 12, 6-7 p.m. McCarthy Art Gallery, Saint Michael’s College, Colchester, through April 13. Info, bcollier@smcvt.edu.

SUSAN CALZA: “About Face: Votives and Video,” an exhibition of 71 hand-drawn votive candles and a selection of current and past video works. Susan Calza Gallery, Montpelier, through June 30. Info, 224-6827.

TONI BASANTA: “Toni’s Excursions,” an exhibition of posters, photographs and video from music festivals in Burlington, Montréal and New Orleans.

Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, through April 28. Info, tonibasanta@yahoo.com.

WANDA KOOP: “Who Owns the Moon,” an exhibition of new works with a lunar theme by the Manitobabased painter. Montréal Museum of Fine Arts, April 11-August 4. Info, 514-285-2000.

ART EVENTS

DANCE, PAINT, WRITE!: Explore the intersection of modalities in a meditative flow that weaves together movement, painting and writing. Accessible to adults and teen regardless of mobility. No experience required. Offered in person and via Zoom. Expressive Arts Burlington, ursday, April 11, noon-2:30 p.m., and Tuesday, April 16, 6:30-9 p.m. $25 per session. Info, 343-8172.

ART CLUB DISCUSSION: ‘DERRICK ADAMS: SANCTUARY’: Art Club, organized by Friends of the Art Museum, hosts a discussion of the exhibition on its final day. RSVP by April 10. Middlebury College Museum of Art, Sunday, April 14, 1 p.m. Free. Info, anndemong@gmail.com.

ARTIST TALK: SUSAN WILSON: A conversation with the sculptor closes her exhibition, “Voices Rising.” Axel’s Frame Shop & Gallery, Waterbury, Sunday, April 14, 2 p.m. Free. Info, 244-7801.

BIPOC MAKER NIGHTS: WOODWORKING: Hosted in partnership with the Root Social Justice Center, affinity spaces for anyone who identifies as Black, Indigenous or a person of color to create community around woodworking. Bring a woodworking project to repair or make. HatchSpace, Brattleboro, Mondays, 5:30-8:30 p.m., through May 19. Free. Info, 552-8202.

FIGURE DRAWING WEBINARS: Session 4 is all about the details: adding distinctive elements to a figure including hands, feet, hair texture, facial features and clothing. All ages and abilities welcome. Online, Tuesday, April 16, noon-1 p.m. Free with registration. Info, education@ shelburnemuseum.org.

PAINT AND SIP: Visual artist jen berger, from At the Root, teaches the basics of carving and printing with linoleum. Materials provided. Participants will leave with six or more handmade prints that are spring-themed. Standing Stone Wines, Winooski, Tuesday, April 16, 6-8 p.m. $45.

VISTING ARTIST TALK: REBECCA WELZ: e New York City-based sculptor discusses her mixed-media works. Red Mill Gallery, Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, Wednesday, April 17, 8 p.m. Free. Info, 635-2727. ➆

From left: “Ur Joking” by Delaney Conner; “Jean” by Susan Smereka

Come Together: A Local Supergroup Confronts Aging and Mortality

“As I walk through this wicked world, / searchin’ for light in the darkness of insanity, / I ask myself, ‘Is all hope lost? / Is there only pain and hatred and misery?’”

So go the opening lines of “(What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding,” written by English songwriter NICK LOWE in 1974 and made famous in 1979 by ELVIS COSTELLO & THE ATTRACTIONS. I’ve been attuned to this song lately as I’ve been experiencing debilitating bouts of empathy. Maybe it’s all the dire news abroad. Maybe it’s the election year filling me with anxiety. Or maybe I shouldn’t have rewatched Koyaanisqatsi the other night.

Anyway, throw in a little Vermont earthquake just before a total solar eclipse, and I’m, as they say, really feeling it all right now.

Music and empathy are close bedfellows. Sure, some sociopaths say things like “I don’t like music” — back away from those people slowly, then immediately delete their number. But one of the most powerful things music can do for most of us is to activate, well, peace, love and understanding. Researchers at Southern Methodist University in Texas even discovered that people with higher levels of empathy enjoy music more than

SUNDbites

News and views on the local music + nightlife scene

BY CHRIS FARNSWORTH

do those with lower levels, according to the 2018 study “Neurophysiological E ects of Trait Empathy in Music Listening.”

“When we listen to music or engage in music, it’s essentially social engagement,” lead researcher ZACHARY WALLMARK told Greater Good Magazine. “Higherempathy people, who are more sensitive to social stimulus, hear music as if in the virtual presence of another person.”

Maybe that’s why people turn to music in times of trouble: It doesn’t just remind us of better times, it makes us feel less alone.

You don’t need to tell that to JIMMY SHELDON-DEAN. Lately, the 73-year-old Charlotte resident has been pondering music’s role in weathering hard times, from political turmoil to more personal concerns such as aging and the loss of friends.

“I’m sure there’s a more eloquent way to put it, but, well ... things are fucked up out there,” Sheldon-Dean said by phone. “We have to come together and do better. And one of the best ways I know how to engage with people on that level is w through song.”

Sheldon-Dean has pulled together a brand-new band featuring some of the best Vermont musicians of his generation, including guitarist PAUL ASBELL, drummer JEFF SALISBURY and keyboardist CHUCK ELLER Called JIMMY’S PARTY OF NINE, it performs a two-night stand at the Flynn Space in downtown Burlington this Friday and Saturday, April 12 and 13.

For Sheldon-Dean, the group realizes a long-held goal. Though he grew up playing in high school bands, he put away his bass guitar once he started a family. That changed after his wife, ABBY SHELDON-DEAN, took a singing course at the Flynn about 20 years ago. She needed accompaniment while she practiced, so Sheldon-Dean dusted o his trusted 1963 Fender Jazz bass and they launched ABBY’S AGENDA, a husband-and-wife duo with Salisbury on drums.

“After that, I got really inspired to get my game squared away on the bass,” Sheldon-Dean said. He attended workshops and bass camps, where he met Asbell and Eller, longtime giants of the local jazz scene who served as instructors at the Vermont Blues Retreat.

“Those guys got to hear me play,

and they liked what they heard enough that when I wanted to put on my own show, they agreed to play with me,” Sheldon-Dean recalled. He and his crew of faculty-turned-bandmates gathered periodically, and a smaller version of the band played at the Flynn Space in 2010. But Sheldon-Dean, a retired software development consultant, dreamed of assembling a larger band to play a very specific repertoire.

“I really wanted to put together a set of my influences, the songs on my permanent playlist,” he explained. “It’s the music of the ’60s and ’70s, yes. But there’s no Beatles or [Rolling] Stones — these are deeper cuts than that.”

He dubbed the show “Trouble and Together” as a nod to the songs’ thematic bond. JEFF BECK, FRANK ZAPPA, the YOUNGBLOODS, TOM WAITS and JONI MITCHELL feature heavily in a set that Sheldon-Dean envisions as a message of hope during dark times.

“When I give people the elevator speech on this show, that it’s about the troubles we all face and coming together to overcome them — unity over division — the reaction I’m getting is ‘Hell, yes,’” Sheldon-Dean said.

If a sense of mortality comes through in some of the selected tracks, SheldonDean said that’s deliberate. Vermont has lost several musicians from the generation that defined the local scene in the 1970s and ’80s, including BRUCE MCKENZIE, JIM MCGINNISS and MARK RANSOM, in the past several years. Saxophonist JOE

From left: Phoebe, Abby and Hannah Sheldon-Dean; Michael Manring; Brian Johnson; and Bob Butterfield

From left: Jeff Salisbury, Jimmy Sheldon-Dean, Paul Asbell and Chuck Eller

MOORE had planned to be part of Jimmy’s Party of Nine, but he had to pull out for health reasons and died last month.

“Joe’s passing was a tremendous shock, and we all miss him beyond words,” Sheldon-Dean said. “I was already looking forward to having another reason to work with him down the road, but no more.”

As he ages, Sheldon-Dean said, he has grown accustomed to seeing his friends and fellow musicians exit the stage.

When the group plays the PAUL BUTTERFIELD BLUES BAND’s “Born in Chicago,” Sheldon-Dean alters the lyrics to include the names of high school friends who have died.

“Hopefully I don’t have to add any more names before the shows,” he said with a wry laugh. “But that’s the thing: You o set the loss with community, with music.”

The band is a family a air for Sheldon-Dean, with his wife and their daughters, PHOEBE and HANNAH, singing on many songs. Percussionist BRIAN JOHNSON and a special guest, Grammy-nominated bassist MICHAEL MANRING, round out the band.

“It’s pretty crazy for a guy like me to have this amazing band behind him,” Sheldon-Dean said. “But this is the

On the Beat

Local indie-pop singer-songwriter JUSTIN LEVINSON has released a new single, but there’s a twist. The Berklee College of Music-trained musician is trying his hand at composing classical music for piano.

first time the band has ever existed, and it’s not like we’re going to go on tour or anything. We’re a bunch of septuagenarians — that’s not happening, man.”

Levinson wrote “Go and Catch That Dream” with fellow local composer BEN PATTON. Burlington-based pianist and University of Vermont professor TOM CLEARY performs the song — a nice full-circle moment for Levinson, as Cleary was his piano teacher when he was a child.

I’ll leave the proper classical reviews to our expert, AMY LILLY, but “Go and Catch That Dream” is a lovely piece of music, which is good, as Levinson plans to “lean into it heavily in the future,” he wrote in an email to Seven Days. The piece drops on streaming services on Monday, April 15.

Speaking of tickling the ol’ ivories, New York City-based musician and composer ADAM TENDLER will play a handful of big shows in his native Vermont in the next few weeks.

Tendler, a 2022 recipient of the Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists and one of the most buzzed-about up-andcoming figures in contemporary classical music, will perform a brand-new piano concerto composed

He noted with a laugh that even rehearsing for the shows has had its share of challenges. “We’re not spring chickens, obviously.”

Lining up rehearsals with band members in far-flung locales such as Brooklyn and Texas complicated matters. “We’ve had to schedule around doctor’s appointments and family vacations, all that kind of stu , to find time to rehearse what is some pretty tricky material,” Sheldon-Dean said. Knowing this particular ensemble might never have an encore, he made sure the shows would be free and open to the public.

Sheldon-Dean admits that one big reason he put his dream band together was simply to play in it, surrounded by talent he’d admired for decades. But the opportunity to get a message across was equally important.

“One of the last songs we’re going to play is ‘(What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding,’” he revealed. “Everything that song is about is still relevant today. Hell, all of these songs are relevant to what’s happening in the world — things haven’t changed too much in that regard.”

Reserve seats for the show at flynnvt.org. ➆

by Vermont-born NICO MUHLY at the Flynn in Burlington with the Vermont Symphony Orchestra on Saturday, May 4. But you can get an earlier, more intimate listen to Tendler this Thursday, April 11, and Sunday, April 14, at the Phoenix in Waterbury as part of a two-show residency. Performing on the venue’s 1929 Steinway & Sons Model M piano, Tendler plans to showcase other works by Muhly, his longtime friend and colleague, who dedicated his new concerto to Tendler.

Visit flynnvt.org to purchase tickets to the May 4 concert and thephoenixvt.com for more information on Tendler’s Waterbury residency.

The JESSE TAYLOR BAND are back with a new single. “Thinking of You” is the band’s hardest-hitting song to date, featuring snarling, distorted guitars and hard-charging drums behind Taylor’s vocals. The edgier, more punkleaning tone is no surprise, as ROUGH FRANCIS and IGGY POP drummer URIAN HACKNEY recorded the track at his Burlington studio. A song celebrating the infatuation at the start of a relationship, “Thinking of You” shows o Taylor’s anthemic vocals and the band’s garage-rock-meets-power-pop dynamics. Check it out now at jessetaylor.bandcamp.com. Scan

Grateful Tuesdays Sponsored by Fiddlehead, Upstate Elevator, Stowe Cider

Dobbs’ Dead Apr. Residency (w/ guests) TUESDAYS WED 4.10

Nectar’s Comedy Jam

Hush Club, No Fun Haus

Bearly Dead

Wheatus WED 5.1 w/ Troy Millette Strange Machines w/ Muscle Tough FRI 5.10

Satsang w/ Tim Snider THUR 5.16

TUE 6.4

Jazz Is Dead: w/ Steve kimock

Alphonso Johnson, Bob Rodgers

Pete Lavezzoli

SAT 4.13

DJ Chia

COOKED, TORN w/ Skud, Blossom, Commitment in Pain THUR 4.18

FRI 4.19

Emo Night w/ Malachi

THUR 5.9 FULL MELT THURSDAY

Distinct Motive w/ LYQD, Empti, Oddpace b2b Mvlleus & Kazm b2b Ryan Darling

SUN 5.26

Sunday Night Mass w/ Magda

DARCIIDARKA , Harder They Come ANXIOCIDE, Justin RE

CLUB DATES

live music

WED.10

Bob Gagnon (jazz) at Two Heroes Brewery Public House, South Hero, 6 p.m. Free.

Jazz Night with Ray Vega (jazz) at Hotel Vermont, Burlington, 8:30 p.m. Free.

Jazz Sessions (jazz) at the 126, Burlington, 9 p.m. Free.

Libby Quinn, Greaseface, rabbitfoot (indie rock) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 9 p.m. $10.

Live Jazz (jazz) at Leunig’s Bistro & Café, Burlington, 6:30 p.m. Free.

Marcus Rezak’s Dead vs Phish (tribute) at Zenbarn, Waterbury Center, 7 p.m. $15.

Queen City Rounders (singersongwriter) at Foam Brewers, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

Willverine (electronic) at the Wallflower Collective, Burlington, 7:30 p.m. Free.

THU.11

Adam Tendler (classical) at the Phoenix, Waterbury, 7:30 p.m. $25-40.

AliT (indie pop) at the Filling Station, White River Junction, 6 p.m. Free.

All Night Boogie Band, Forest Station (blues, bluegrass) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 8 p.m. $10.

Anachronist (rock) at Bent Nails Bistro, Montpelier, 7 p.m. Free.

Frankie & the Fuse (rock) at Red Square, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

The Jacob Jolliff Band, Evan Jennison (bluegrass) at Zenbarn, Waterbury Center, 7 p.m. $20.

John Stowell, Monachino Trio (jazz) at Hugo’s, Montpelier, 7:30 p.m. Free.

Kind Bud (acoustic) at Ladder 1 Grill, Barre, 6-8:30 p.m. Free.

Lincoln Sprague (jazz) at Venetian Cocktail & Soda Lounge, Burlington, 5 p.m. Free.

Matt Dolliver (jazz) at Foam Brewers, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

Orange Peel Mystic, SHID, Red King, Burial Woods (indie) at Despacito, Burlington, 8 p.m. $5-10 suggested donation.

Ryan Sweezey (singersongwriter) at On Tap Bar & Grill, Essex Junction, 6 p.m. Free.

Slap Happy Jack (country) at Bent Nails Bistro, Montpelier, 9 p.m. Free.

VT Bluegrass Pioneers (bluegrass) at Black Flannel Brewing & Distilling, Essex, 6 p.m. Free.

FRI.12

Bella’s Bartok (folk) at Nectar’s, Burlington, 8 p.m. $17/$20.

The Bressetts (acoustic) at Gusto’s, Barre, 6 p.m. Free.

Chris Lyon (acoustic) at Whammy Bar, Calais, 7 p.m. Free.

FRI.12 // COMMUNITY GARDEN [INDIE ROCK]

Find the most up-to-date info on live music, DJs, comedy and more at sevendaysvt.com/music. If you’re a talent booker or artist planning live entertainment at a bar, nightclub, café, restaurant, brewery or coffee shop, send event details to music@sevendaysvt.com or submit the info using our form at sevendaysvt.com/postevent.

Night Flowers

Burlington’s COMMUNITY GARDEN have established themselves as the local masters of modern new wave, post-punk and indie rock. Twin brothers Evan and Alex Raine, along with Remi Russin, have been at it since they were playing Green Day covers in seventh grade. They went on to form the band Entrance to Trains in college before adopting their new moniker and releasing the 2020 LP Don’t Sweat It. The record was a perfect study in jangly, echo-laden guitars, driving rhythms and pulsing bass lines. Four years later, the trio is finally releasing a follow-up record, Me vs Me. To celebrate, the band plays Radio Bean in Burlington on Friday, April 12, with openers TIBERIUS and YOUNG LAIDY

Chris Peterman (jazz) at Bleu Northeast Kitchen, Burlington, 7:30 p.m. Free.

Community Garden, Tiberius, Young Laidy (indie rock) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 8:30 p.m. $10.

D.A.D. Trio (jazz) at Foam Brewers, Burlington, 8 p.m. Free.

Dan Bishop (singer-songwriter) at Stone’s Throw, Richmond, 6 p.m. Free.

Dave Mitchell’s Blues Revue (blues) at Red Square, Burlington, 2 p.m. Free.

The Dorado Collective (Latin) at Bent Nails Bistro, Montpelier, 9 p.m. Free.

Earthworm, Armanodillo, Super Blue (rock, folk) at Higher Ground Showcase Lounge, South Burlington, 7 p.m. $15/$18.

The Hitmen (covers) at the Old Post, South Burlington, 8 p.m. Free.

Jenny Porter (singer-songwriter) at Taps Tavern, Poultney, 6 p.m. Free.

John Lackard Blues Band (blues) at Moogs Place, Morrisville, 8 p.m. Free.

Kiel Love (singer-songwriter) at Olive Ridley’s, Plattsburgh, N.Y., 6 p.m. Free.

King Me (covers) at Jericho Café & Tavern, 7 p.m. Free.

Marc Gwinn & D.Davis (jazz) at Hugo’s, Montpelier, 7:30 p.m. Free.

Mike Pedersen Band (rock) at Monopole, Plattsburgh, N.Y., 10 p.m. Free.

The Natural Selection (covers) at On Tap Bar & Grill, Essex Junction, 5 p.m. Free.

Night Protocol (synth rock) at Zenbarn, Waterbury Center, 7 p.m. $10.

Quadra (covers) at On Tap Bar & Grill, Essex Junction, 8 p.m. Free.

Rap Night Burlington (hip-hop) at Drink, Burlington, 9 p.m. $5.

Reed Foehl (singer-songwriter) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 7 p.m. $15.

The Rustics (folk) at Two Heroes Brewery Public House, South Hero, 6 p.m. Free.

Sarah Bell (singer-songwriter) at Bent Nails Bistro, Montpelier, 7 p.m. Free.

Tinyus Smallus (rock) at Red Square, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

Troy Millette (Americana) at Venetian Cocktail & Soda Lounge, Burlington, 8 p.m. $10.

Two for Flinching (acoustic) at 1st Republic Brewing, Essex, 6 p.m. Free.

VSO Jukebox: ‘The Sound of Science’ (classical) at Roots Studio Space, Rutland, 7 p.m. $15-35.

SAT.13

Acoustik Ruckus (folk, bluegrass) at the Den at Harry’s Hardware, Cabot, 7 p.m. Free.

Cleary/Gagnon/Saulnier Jazz Trio with Amber Delaurentis (jazz) at the Phoenix, Waterbury, 7:30 p.m. $15-30.

Comatose Kids (jam) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 11:59 p.m. $10.

D.i.P., Rekkon, Transplante, Sekhmet (drum and bass) at Despacito, Burlington, 8 p.m. Free.

Dirty Looks Band (covers) at On Tap Bar & Grill, Essex Junction, 9 p.m. Free.

Freddi Shihadi (R&B) at Foam Brewers, Burlington, 8 p.m. Free.

Jerborn (acoustic) at 1st Republic Brewing, Essex, 6 p.m. Free.

Jim Yeager (singer-songwriter) at Whammy Bar, Calais, 7 p.m. Free.

Joe Capps (jazz) at Bleu Northeast Kitchen, Burlington, 7:30 p.m. Free.

Jon Wagar & Friends (rock) at Monopole, Plattsburgh, N.Y., 10 p.m. Free.

Josh Panda and Peter Day (Americana) at On Tap Bar & Grill, Essex Junction, 5 p.m. Free.

Lawless (rock) at Gusto’s, Barre, 9 p.m. Free.

Left Eye Jump (blues) at Red Square, Burlington, 2 p.m. Free.

Liam Bauman (singer-songwriter) at Bent Nails Bistro, Montpelier, 7 p.m. Free.

Live Music Saturdays (live music series) at Dumb Luck Pub & Grill, Hinesburg, 7 p.m. Free.

Lucky Number 30 Punk-Rock Fest (punk) at Braintree Town Hall, 3 p.m. $20.

Lunch, Soap (indie) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 6:30 p.m. $10.

Remember Jones (funk) at Pickle Barrel Nightclub, Killington, 7 p.m. $18/$25.

The Seapods (jam) at Nectar’s, Burlington, 8 p.m. $15.

Shell House (folk) at Jericho Café & Tavern, 7 p.m. Free.

Soul Porpoise (funk) at Bent Nails Bistro, Montpelier, 9 p.m. Free.

Spaniol, DJ Broosha (DJ) at Light Club Lamp Shop, Burlington, 10 p.m. $10.

Tonberry Cherry Release Party with members of lespecial (jam, DJ) at Stowe Cider, 8 p.m. $25.

TopHouse, Elias Hix (folk rock) at Higher Ground Ballroom, South Burlington, 7 p.m. $15/$20.

The Wind-Ups, Blowtorch, Cherry Valley (punk) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 9 p.m. $10.

SUN.14

Bluegrass Brunch (bluegrass) at the Skinny Pancake, Burlington, noon. Free.

Devin Gray, Jo Bled, Glenn Weyant (experimental) at Community of Sound, Burlington, 7 p.m. Donation.

Kung Fu (funk) at Nectar’s, Burlington, 7 p.m. $20/$25.

NYChillarmonic (jazz orchestra) at Zenbarn, Waterbury Center, 7 p.m. $15/$20.

Remember Jones (funk) at Foam Brewers, Burlington, 7 p.m. $13/$15.

Rock and Roll Playhouse Plays the Music of the Beatles for Kids (tribute, kids) at Higher Ground Ballroom, South Burlington, 11 a.m. $16/$18.

Sunday Brunch Tunes (singersongwriter) at Hotel Vermont, Burlington, 10 a.m.

MON.15

Caroline Davis & Wendy Eisenberg, Dani Dobkin, Matt Sargent (indie, experimental) at the Phoenix, Waterbury, 7:30 p.m. $15-30.

TUE.16

Big Easy Tuesdays with Jon McBride (jazz) at the 126, Burlington, 8 p.m. Free.

Bluegrass Jam (bluegrass) at Taps Tavern, Poultney, 7 p.m. Free.

Cooie’s Trio (jazz) at Lawson’s Finest Liquids, Waitsfield, 5 p.m. Free.

Dobbs’ Dead (Grateful Dead tribute) at Nectar’s, Burlington, 9 p.m. $10/$20.

Honky Tonk Tuesday with Wild Leek River (country) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 9 p.m. $10.

TUE.16 CONTINUED FROM P.61

Jeffrey Martin, Tommy Alexander (singer-songwriter) at Higher Ground Showcase Lounge, South Burlington, 7 p.m. $18/$20.

Otter Creek (bluegrass) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 7:30 p.m. $5.

Tom Hamilton (singer-songwriter) at Nectar’s, Burlington, 7 p.m. $20/$25.

WED.17

Bent Nails House Band (rock, blues) at Bent Nails Bistro, Montpelier, 8 p.m. Free.

Evan Alsop (singer-songwriter) at Two Heroes Brewery Public House, South Hero, 6 p.m. Free.

Jazz Night with Ray Vega (jazz) at Hotel Vermont, Burlington, 8:30 p.m. Free.

Jazz Sessions (jazz) at the 126, Burlington, 9 p.m. Free.

John R. Miller, the Deslondes (roots) at Higher Ground Showcase Lounge, South Burlington, 7 p.m. $18/$22.

Live Jazz (jazz) at Leunig’s Bistro & Café, Burlington, 6:30 p.m. Free.

Queen City Rounders (singersongwriter) at Foam Brewers, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

Trae Sheehan, Nick Granelle (folk) at Despacito, Burlington, 7:30 p.m. $10.

Wednesday Night Dead (Grateful Dead covers) at Zenbarn, Waterbury Center, 7 p.m. $5.

Willverine (electronic) at the Wallflower Collective, Burlington, 7:30 p.m. Free.

djs

WED.10

Local Dork (DJ) at Foam Brewers, Burlington, 6 p.m. Free.

THU.11

DJ Chaston (DJ) at Red Square Blue Room, Burlington, 11 p.m. Free.

DJ Two Sev (DJ) at Red Square, Burlington, 11 p.m. Free.

DJ Two Sev (DJ) at Red Square, Burlington, 11 p.m. Free.

LTJ Bukem, Prosper, Kanganade, Tricky Pat (EDM) at Club Metronome, Burlington, 8 p.m. $25-$35.

Vinyl Night with Ken (DJ) at Taps Tavern, Poultney, 6 p.m. Free.

FRI.12

DJ Chaston (DJ) at Einstein’s Tap House, Burlington, 10 p.m. Free.

DJ Craig Mitchell (DJ) at Red Square Blue Room, Burlington, 10 p.m. Free.

DJ Kata (DJ) at Red Square, Burlington, 10 p.m. Free.

DJ Skippy (DJ) at Olive Ridley’s, Plattsburgh, N.Y., 9 p.m. Free.

DJ Taka (DJ) at Light Club Lamp Shop, Burlington, 11 p.m. $10/$15.

John’s Jukebox (DJ) at Gusto’s, Barre, 9 p.m. Free.

Born to Do It

Some people know what they want to do in life from the get-go. Oregon native JACOB JOLLIFF started on the mandolin when he was just 7, playing bluegrass and gospel with his father’s band. He went from prodigy to Berklee College of Music student to a member of jamgrass giants Yonder Mountain String Band by 2014. After a stint playing with Béla Fleck in 2022, Jolliff now fronts his own band. He’s set to release his latest album, Instrumentals, Vol 2: Mandolin Mysteries, in May. He stops by Zenbarn in Waterbury Center on Thursday, April 11. Vermont singer-songwriter EVAN JENNISON opens.

THU.11 // THE JACOB JOLLIFF BAND [BLUEGRASS]

SAT.13

Blanchface (DJ) at Manhattan Pizza & Pub, Burlington, 10 p.m. Free.

DJ A-Ra$ (DJ) at Red Square, Burlington, midnight. Free.

DJ Chia (DJ) at Club Metronome, Burlington, 10 p.m. $5.

DJ Raul (DJ) at Red Square Blue Room, Burlington, 6 p.m. Free. Emo Night Brooklyn (DJ) at Higher Ground Showcase Lounge, South Burlington, 8:30 p.m. $20/$23.

Malcolm Miller (DJ) at Einstein’s Tap House, Burlington, 10 p.m. Free.

Matt Payne (DJ) at Red Square Blue Room, Burlington, 10 p.m. Free.

Molly Mood (DJ) at Red Square, Burlington, 10 p.m. Free. Radu, Hexalice, Genderdeath, Starduzt, Fourleafclover (DJ) at Light Club Lamp Shop, Burlington, 7:30 p.m. $10.

SUN.14

Mi Yard Reggae Night with DJ Big Dog (reggae, dancehall) at Nectar’s, Burlington, 9 p.m. Free.

TUE.16

The Vanguard: Jazz on Vinyl (DJ) at Paradiso Hi-Fi, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

WED.17

Local Dork (DJ) at Foam Brewers, Burlington, 6 p.m. Free.

open mics & jams

WED.10

Irish Sessions (Celtic, open mic) at Burlington St. John’s Club, 6:30 p.m. Free.

Open Mic (open mic) at Monopole, Plattsburgh, N.Y., 10 p.m. Free.

Open Mic with Danny Lang (open mic) at Taps Tavern, Poultney, 7 p.m. Free.

THU.11

Old-Time Jam (open jam) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 6 p.m. Free.

Open Mic (open mic) at Whammy Bar, Calais, 7 p.m. Free.

Open Stage Night (open mic) at Orlando’s Bar & Lounge, Burlington, 8 p.m. Free.

SUN.14

Old-Time Jam Session (open jam) at the Den at Harry’s Hardware, Cabot, noon. Free.

MON.15

Open Mic (open mic) at Despacito, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

TUE.16

Open Mic Night (open mic) at Drink, Burlington, 8 p.m. Free. Venetian Soda Open Mic (open mic) 7 p.m. Free.

WED.17

Irish Sessions (Celtic, open mic) at Burlington St. John’s Club, 6:30 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 Danny Lang (open mic) at Taps Tavern, Poultney, 7 p.m. Free.

comedy

WED.10

Comedy Jam (comedy) at Club Metronome, Burlington, 5 p.m. Free.

Standup Comedy Open Mic (comedy open mic) at Vermont Comedy Club, Burlington, 8:30 p.m.

Stef Dag (comedy) at Vermont Comedy Club, Burlington, 6:30 p.m. $15.

THU.11

Distracted Sets (comedy) at Vermont Comedy Club, Burlington, 9 p.m. $5.

Randy Feltface (comedy) at Vermont Comedy Club, Burlington, 7 p.m. $30.

FRI.12

Joe List (comedy) at Higher Ground Ballroom, South Burlington, 6:30 p.m. $30/$35.

Randy Feltface (comedy) at Vermont Comedy Club, Burlington, 7 & 9 p.m. $30.

Wit and Wine (comedy) at Shelburne Vineyard, 7 p.m. $10.

SAT.13

Ari Shaffir (comedy) at Paramount Theatre, Rutland, 7 p.m. $35.

Randy Feltface (comedy) at Vermont Comedy Club, Burlington, 7 & 9 p.m. $30.

SUN.14

Sahib Singh (comedy) at Vermont Comedy Club, Burlington, 6:30 p.m. $25.

TUE.16

Free Stuff! (comedy) at Lincolns, Burlington, 9:30 p.m. Free.

Trivia Thursday (trivia) at Spanked Puppy Pub, Colchester, 7 p.m. Free.

FRI.12

Freak Fest! with Content Clown and Tub Time (dance party) at Light Club Lamp Shop, Burlington, 8 p.m. $10/$15.

Karaoke (karaoke) at McKee’s Pub & Grill, Winooski, 9 p.m. Free. Karaoke Friday Night (karaoke) at Park Place Tavern & Grill, Essex Junction, 8 p.m. Free.

SAT.13

Rabble-Rouser Trivia Night! (trivia) at Rabble-Rouser Chocolate & Craft, Montpelier, 7 p.m. $5.

SUN.14

Sunday Funday (games) at 1st Republic Brewing, Essex, noon. Free.

Sunday Funday Karaoke (karaoke) at Pearl Street Pub, Essex Junction, 3 p.m. Free. Venetian Karaoke (karaoke) at Venetian Cocktail & Soda Lounge, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

MON.15

Trivia (trivia) at the Filling Station, White River Junction, 6 p.m. Free.

Standup Class Performance (comedy) at Vermont Comedy Club, Burlington, 6:30 p.m. Free.

WED.17

Standup Comedy Open Mic (comedy open mic) at Vermont Comedy Club, Burlington, 8:30 p.m.

trivia, karaoke, etc.

WED.10

Karaoke (karaoke) at Bent Nails

Bistro, Montpelier, 8 p.m. Free.

Karaoke Night (karaoke) at Drink, Burlington, 8 p.m. Free.

Trivia Night (trivia) at Stone Corral, Richmond, 7 p.m. Free.

Venetian Trivia Night (trivia) at Venetian Cocktail & Soda Lounge, Burlington, 6 p.m. Free.

Wednesday Team Trivia (trivia) at Einstein’s Tap House, Burlington, 9 p.m. Free.

THU.11

Family-Friendly Karaoke (karaoke) at North Hero House Inn & Restaurant, 6 p.m. Free.

Karaoke Night (karaoke) at Zenbarn, Waterbury Center, 7 p.m. Free.

Trivia (trivia) at Highland Lodge, Greensboro, 7 p.m. Free.

Trivia Night (trivia) at Four Quarters Brewing, Winooski, 6 p.m. Free.

Trivia Night (trivia) at McGillicuddy’s Five Corners, Essex Junction, 6:30 p.m. Free.

Trivia Night (trivia) at Nectar’s, Burlington, 6:30 p.m. Free.

Trivia (trivia) at North Hero House Inn & Restaurant, 7 p.m. Free.

Trivia with Craig Mitchell (trivia) at Monkey House, Winooski, 7 p.m. Free.

TUE.16

Godfather Karaoke (karaoke) at the Other Half, Burlington, 10 p.m. Free.

Karaoke Tuesdays (karaoke) at Vermont Comedy Club, Burlington, 9 p.m. Free.

Karaoke with DJ Party Bear (karaoke) at Charlie-O’s World Famous, Montpelier, 9:30 p.m. Free.

Karaoke with Motorcade (karaoke) at Manhattan Pizza & Pub, Burlington, 9 p.m. Free.

Music Bingo (music bingo) at Stone Corral, Richmond, 7 p.m. Free.

Taproom Trivia (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 Trivia (trivia) at Vermont Comedy Club, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

WED.17

Karaoke Night (karaoke) at Drink, Burlington, 8 p.m. Free.

Trivia Night (trivia) at Stone Corral, Richmond, 7 p.m. Free.

Venetian Trivia Night (trivia) at Venetian Cocktail & Soda Lounge, Burlington, 6 p.m. Free.

Wednesday Team Trivia (trivia) at Einstein’s Tap House, Burlington, 9 p.m. Free. ➆

COURTESY OF AIDAN GRANT

REVIEW this music+nightlife

River City Rebels, Pop Culture Baby

(SCREAMING COW RECORDS, DIGITAL, VINYL)

River City Rebels have dropped their first recording in a decade, Pop Culture Baby, a brisk yet powerful four-song EP that proves they’ve still got their fingers on the pulse of punk.

Between their 1999 formation in White River Junction and their 2014 separation, River City Rebels released seven albums and numerous singles, making Vermont proud by becoming one of the state’s most successful rock bands of the early 2000s. Since their heartbreaking hiatus, founding member Dan “Bopper” O’Day has transformed

the Rebels into a new entity with fresh members Marc Conti, Izzy DeSimone, Kody Sanborn and Adam Allard. While the band’s lineup is new, its sounds still encompass the influences of vintage New York City punk legends such as the New York Dolls. Sylvain Sylvain, that band’s late guitarist, even produced the Rebels’ 2004 album, Hate to Be Loved.  Sylvain’s lasting impact is most obvious on the new EP’s punchy title track. In the glitzy chorus, the melodious gang lyrics — “You don’t fuck with art” — pack a wallop. They are followed by O’Day repeating, “You’re a pop culture baby,” a line as infectious as a pop song chorus but with more depth. He goes on to criticize people who present well but are empty shells, demanding “substance,

Sarah King, When It All Goes Down

(RINGLEADER RECORDS, CD, DIGITAL, VINYL)

Rather than succumb to anguish in the wake of tragedy, one local musician funnels daunting hardship into her debut studio album to o er an impassioned and boozedrenched batch of songs.

When It All Goes

Down is Sarah King’s counterpunch to an unthinkable series of woes. Its dozen tracks — including 10 originals — firmly establish the New England-born-and-raised singer-songwriter and guitarist as a talent on the rise, even against the odds.

Green Mountains, where she currently lives in a remote log cabin, King not only reconciled herself to the troubling experiences but crafted them into riveting and provocative songs that convey her struggles.

Released in late March, the album was produced, engineered and arranged by Woodstock, N.Y.-based David Baron, who’s worked with Noah Kahan and Lana Del Rey.

King lost three loved ones in rapid succession: her dog, her first husband and her mother. The crushing sequence of death left her with debilitating sorrow. But with counseling, therapy, and the time and space a orded by the

He’s previously worked with King, too.

In 2021, Baron and Simone Felice of the Felice Brothers invited her to record at Sun Mountain Studios in the Catskills for a session that yielded her award-winning EP The Hour. King returned for sessions in 2022 and 2023 to work on the new record, assisted by Baron and skilled studio musicians.

Across each resonant track on When It All Goes Down, King stuns with her vocal abilities and hones her own brand

not headlines.” The song, which checks in at just under two minutes, breezes by with its manic guitar ri s. “Rock a Cross,” which lasts two minutes and change, is another highpowered blip of a song, this one equating organized religion with substance abuse. “Heroin to Jesus, both got you on your knees,” O’Day sings before denouncing people for living in fear and banning books. While the lyrics of some aging punk groups feel like desperate attempts to maintain relevance, O’Day’s come o as authentic as they do snappy, continuing the Rebels’ legacy of combining political ideals and cutting social commentary.

Kicking o the EP’s B-side is “Unless You’re White,” another ultra-catchy track that calls out “bigots from Georgia, bigots from Maine” and all the bigots in between.

“You say you’re color-blind, but all you see is white,” O’Day sings with

of “gothic Americana.” She blends rock, folk, blues, country and southern soul — a testament to her time in Georgia performing with a rock band before returning north.

“Lord Take My Soul,” the repentancethemed opening track, features the 46-year-old in raw demo form, gently plucking an acoustic guitar before giving way to the thunderous instrumentation that powers much of the recording. King sets the tone, howling her intentions with a hell-raiser’s slant: “I’d like to rest my bones, but I can’t change my ways / Oh, Lord, I’m bound to su er for my sins.”

Throughout the album, King steps in and out of the shadows; her songs are defined by deep reflection and revelations of her own fortitude. In “Always an Almost,” she recognizes the shortcomings of her former self, builds her confidence and sees the path to greater strength.

In the menacing title track that follows, King admits, “there’s only so much one soul can take,” vowing to “stand up to the devil when it all goes down.”

A triumphant and spirited number,

lip-curling fury. “If you’re looking for answers, let me be clear,” he cautions, “it ain’t here.” That is, “unless you’re white,” the band counters in the commanding call-and-response earworm — with O’Day shouting “Xenophobe!” — that closes the song.

Barely more than a minute long, “Abuse Myself” is a nihilistic song about substance abuse that fittingly ends almost before it begins. Produced by Dave Minehan of punk and alternative rock pioneers the Replacements, the entire EP is less than eight minutes long. But in that brief time span, River City Rebels remind us that they possess decades of punk wisdom worth listening to.

Pop Culture Baby is available on all major streaming platforms and on vinyl at screamingcrow.com. River City Rebels perform at Main Street Museum in White River Junction on Saturday, June 1, to celebrate their 25th anniversary.

GINA TRON

“Stronger Than You Ever Knew” is King’s full realization of what she’s been through and what it will take to survive. It’s balanced by the bittersweet but merited blues-rock enthusiasm of “You Were Wrong About Me.”

Strong drink is a theme King has mixed into her previous singles. Though she’s living a healthier lifestyle and drinking less these days, When It All Goes Down adds “Blame It on the Booze” and “Whiskey Thinking” to her barroom playlist.

With a feisty cover of Led Zeppelin’s liquor-swilling classic “Hey, Hey, What Can I Do,” the first song she taught herself to play on guitar, King shows o her dynamic range as a singer, emulating Robert Plant.

With an uncommon style and a perspective that’s even harder to come by, King is in a position to thrive as a songwriter and storyteller in her own right.

When It All Goes Down is available on all streaming platforms and can be purchased at sarahkingsings.com.

calendar

APRIL 10-17, 2024

WED.10

agriculture

SEED STARTING AND

BEGINNER GARDENING: Home growers get a head start on the season, courtesy of the Vermont Garden Network. ADA accessible. South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 4:306:30 p.m. Free. Info, 846-4140.

business

QUEEN CITY BUSINESS

NETWORKING INTERNATIONAL

GROUP: Savvy businesspeople make crucial contacts at a weekly chapter meeting. Burlington City Arts, 11:15 a.m.-1 p.m. Free. Info, 829-5066.

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.

crafts

GREEN MOUNTAIN CHAPTER OF THE EMBROIDERERS’ GUILD OF AMERICA: Anyone with an interest in the needle arts is welcome to bring a project to this monthly meeting. Holy Family Parish Hall, Essex Junction, 9:30 a.m.-1 p.m. Free. Info, gmc.vt.ega@gmail.com.

YARN CRAFTERS GROUP: A drop-in meetup welcomes knitters, crocheters, spinners, weavers and beyond. BYO snacks and drinks. Must Love Yarn, Shelburne, 5-7 p.m. Free. Info, 448-3780.

dance

WEST COAST SWING DANCING: People pair up for a partner dance and move to every genre of music. Bring clean shoes. North Star Community Hall, Burlington, lessons, 7 p.m.; dance, 8-9:30 p.m. Donations. Info, team@802westiecollective. org.

film

See what’s playing at local theaters in the On Screen section.

‘FUNGI: THE WEB OF LIFE 3D’: Sparkling graphics take viewers on a journey into the weird, wide world of mushrooms, which we are only just beginning to understand.

Northfield Savings Bank 3D eater: A National Geographic Experience, 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.

‘GREAT WHITE SHARK 3D’: Viewers learn the true story behind one of our most

These community event listings are sponsored by the WaterWheel Foundation, a project of the Vermont band Phish.

iconic — and misunderstood — predators. Northfield Savings Bank 3D eater: 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.

MADE HERE FILM FESTIVAL:

Award-winning movies shot in New England and Québec hit the screen. See vtiff.org for full schedule. Burlington Beer, 5-11 p.m. Pay what you can. Info, 660-2600.

‘OCEANS: OUR BLUE PLANET

3D’: Scientists dive into the planet’s least-explored habitat, from its sunny shallows to its alien depths. Northfield Savings

Bank 3D eater: A National Geographic Experience, ECHO Leahy Center for Lake Champlain, Burlington, 11:30 a.m., 1:30 & 3:30 p.m. $3-5 plus regular admission, $14.50-18; admission free for members and kids 2 and under. Info, 864-1848.

‘TINY GIANTS 3D’: rough the power of special cameras, audiences are transported into the world of the teeniest animals on Earth. Northfield Savings

Bank 3D eater: 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

WHAT’S THAT WINE

WEDNESDAYS: Aspiring sommeliers blind-taste four wines from Vermont and beyond. Shelburne Vineyard, noon-6 p.m. $15. Info, 985-8222.

games

BOARD GAME NIGHT: Lovers of tabletop fun play classic games

and new designer offerings. Waterbury Public Library, 6-8 p.m. Free. Info, 244-7036.

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.

language

BEGINNER IRISH LANGUAGE CLASS: Celtic-curious students learn to speak an Ghaeilge in a supportive group. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, noon-1 p.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

ELL CLASSES: ENGLISH FOR BEGINNERS AND 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.

INTERMEDIATE IRISH LANGUAGE CONVERSATION AND MUSIC: Speakers with some experience increase their fluency through conversation and song. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 10:30 a.m.-noon. Free. Info, 863-3403.

lgbtq

QUEER WRITER’S GROUP: LGBTQ authors meet monthly to discuss their work, write from prompts, and give each other advice and feedback. Rainbow Bridge Community Center, Barre, 5:30-7 p.m. Free. Info, 622-0692.

music

FARMERS NIGHT: ‘SPRINGTIME SERENADE’: Solaris Vocal Ensemble marks its 10th season with a program of classical, spiritual and folk favorites. House Chamber, Vermont Statehouse, Montpelier, 7:30 p.m. Free. Info, 828-0749.

JOHN SEABROOK: e acclaimed New Yorker writer answers questions about his recent piece “Inside the Music Industry’s HighStakes AI Experiments.” Livak Ballroom, Dudley H. Davis Center, University of Vermont, Burlington, 4:30 p.m. Free. Info, 656-3040.

québec

‘FIFTEEN DOGS’: Hermes and Apollo make a drunken bet that grants 15 pups the power of human consciousness in this modern-day fable. Sylvan Adams eatre, Segal Centre for Performing Arts, Montréal, 1 & 8 p.m. $25-68. Info, 514-739-7944.

seminars

ECOGATHERINGS: Sterling College hosts online learning sessions digging into big ideas such as joy, rage, climate change, mutual aid, food and art. See ce.sterlingcollege. edu for upcoming topics. 6-7:30 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, ecogather@sterlingcollege.edu.

doubles matches. Rutland Area Christian School, 7-9 p.m. Free for first two sessions; $30 annual membership. Info, 247-5913.

talks

DONNA TOUFEXIS: A professor of experimental psychology unfolds the emerging evidence of links between sex hormones and some mental illnesses. Memorial Lounge, Waterman Building, University of Vermont, Burlington, 4:30-6 p.m. Free. Info, 656-3166.

MAC ROOD: An architect and school instructor presents a case study of an affordable-housing project. Live stream available. Yestermorrow Design/Build School, Waitsfield, 6:30-8 p.m. Free. Info, 496-5545.

NANCY MARIE BROWN: e author of, most recently, Looking for the Hidden Folk: How Iceland’s Elves Can Save the Earth digs into the archaeological evidence that a Viking woman named Gudrid encountered the New World 500 years before Columbus. Cambridge Historical Society, Jeffersonville, 7 p.m. Free. Info, rgtle@stoweaccess.com.

theater

‘THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG’: A play within a play goes horribly awry in this award-winning comedy, presented by Northern Stage. Barrette Center for the Arts, White River Junction, 7:30 p.m. $19-69. Info, 296-7000.

words

AFTER HOURS BOOK CLUB: Readers discuss Our Woman in Moscow by Beatriz Williams. Dorothy Alling Memorial Library, Williston, 6:30-7:30 p.m. Free. Info, 878-4918.

FFL BOOK CLUB: Fletcher Free Library patrons break down e Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett. 6:30-8 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, bshatara@ burlingtonvt.gov.

INQUISITIVE READERS BOOK

CLUB: Readers discuss Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass St. Johnsbury Athenaeum, 6 p.m. Free. Info, 748-8291.

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.

POEMCITY 2024: e beloved local festival of words, hosted by Kellogg-Hubbard Library, fills National Poetry Month with readings, workshops and talks. See kellogghubbard.org for full schedule. Various Montpelier locations. Free; some activities require preregistration. Info, 223-3338.

Roasters, Burlington, 10-11 a.m. Free. Info, info@vtwomenprepeurs. com.

crafts

KNIT FOR YOUR NEIGHBORS: Fiber artists of all abilities make hats and scarves to keep their neighbors warm. South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 2-5 p.m. Free. Info, 846-4140.

KNITTING GROUP: Knitters of all experience levels get together to spin yarns. Latham Library, etford, 7 p.m. Free. Info, 785-4361.

dance

‘THINK MOVE DISCOVER’:

FACULTY DANCE CONCERT: Dance department faculty and staff and special guests show off their moves. Dance eatre, Mahaney Arts Center, Middlebury College, 7:30-9 p.m. $5-15. Info, 443-6433.

film

See what’s playing at local theaters in the On Screen section.

‘FUNGI: THE WEB OF LIFE 3D’: See WED.10.

‘GREAT WHITE SHARK 3D’: See WED.10.

MADE HERE FILM FESTIVAL: See WED.10, 11 a.m.-9 p.m.

‘OCEANS: OUR BLUE PLANET 3D’: See WED.10.

‘TINY GIANTS 3D’: See WED.10.

food & drink

FREE WINE TASTING: emed wine tastings take oenophiles on an adventure through a region, grape variety, style of wine or producer’s offerings. Dedalus Wine Shop, Market & Wine Bar, Burlington, 4-7 p.m. Free. Info, 865-2368.

OLD NORTH END COMMUNITY

DINNER: A vegetarian meal precedes the Neighborhood Planning Assembly meeting. O.N.E. Community Center, Burlington, 5:30-6:30 p.m. Free; donations accepted. Info, 598-3139.

games

DUPLICATE BRIDGE: A lively group plays a classic, tricky game with an extra wrinkle. Waterbury Public Library, 12:30-4:30 p.m. Free. Info, 244-7223.

WEEKLY CHESS FOR FUN: Players of all ability levels face off and learn new strategies. United Community Church, St. Johnsbury, 5:30-9 p.m. Donations. Info, lafferty1949@ gmail.com.

language

FRENCH SOCIAL HOUR:

ITALIAN CONVERSATION GROUP: Semi-fluent speakers practice their skills during a conversazione with others. Best for those who can speak at least basic sentences. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, noon-1 p.m. Free. Info, 863-3403. LIST

Learn more about highlighted listings in the Magnificent 7 on page 11. = ONLINE EVENT

sports

GREEN MOUNTAIN TABLE TENNIS CLUB: Ping-Pong players swing their paddles in singles and

THU.11 business

BURLINGTON BIZ BUZZ: Local female business owners meet and chat over coffee. Kestrel Coffee

Francophones at all proficiency levels gather to speak the language. Blackback Pub, Waterbury, 6-7:30 p.m. Free. Info, info@aflcr.org.

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.10

burlington

DIY FROG RINGS: Teens mark National Frog Month by making beaded jewelry. Ages 11 through 18. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 3:30-4:30 p.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

STEAM SPACE: Kids in kindergarten through fifth grade explore science, technology, engineering, art and math activities. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 5:30-6:30 p.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

TODDLER TIME: Librarians bring out books, rhymes and songs specially selected for young ones 12 through 24 months. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 11-11:30 a.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

chittenden county

‘CHICKEN RUN’: In this G-rated comedy, a plucky group of fowl try to escape from a farm. Brownell Library, Essex Junction, 3-4:30 p.m. Free. Info, 878-6956.

BABYTIME: e youngest patrons at the library enjoy slow story time with songs, rhymes and lap play. South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 10:30-11 a.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.

READ TO A DOG: Kids practice their literary skills and share stories with Emma the therapy dog. South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 3:30-4:30 p.m. Free. Info, 846-4140.

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 6 through 8. Waterbury Public Library, 3-4 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 244-7036.

THU.11

burlington

BABYTIME: Pre-walking little ones experience a story time catered to their infant interests. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 11-11:30 a.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

FALLOUT PARTY: Teen gamers celebrate the release of the Fallout TV series with games, snacks and crafts. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 3:30-5 p.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

GROW PRESCHOOL YOGA: Colleen from Grow Prenatal and Family Yoga leads little ones in songs, movement and other fun activities. Ages 2 through 5.

Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 11-11:30 a.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

chittenden county

ALBERT GAY: An expert in alcohol-industry targeting shows selections from the documentary film Screenagers: Under the Influence remotely, followed by a discussion. Winooski School District Library, 3:30-4:45 p.m. Free. Info, mabdullahi@winooskiprevention.org.

MIDDLE SCHOOL MAKERS: Teens in grades 5 through 8 master homemade waffles. South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 4-5 p.m. Free. Info, 846-4140.

PRESCHOOL MUSIC WITH LINDA BASSICK: e 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.

STORY TIME: Little ones from birth through age 5 learn from songs, crafts and picture books. Brownell Library, Essex Junction, 10-10:30 a.m. Free. Info, 878-6956.

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 STORY TIME: Games, activities, stories and songs engage

3- through 5-year-olds. Waterbury Public Library, 10:30 a.m. Free. Info, 244-7036.

northeast kingdom

‘LAST NIGHT AT THE TELEGRAPH CLUB’: rough discussion and activities, teens explore the themes of Malinda Lo’s book, selected as the Vermont Reads book of the year. St. Johnsbury Athenaeum, 5:30 p.m. Free. Info, 748-8291.

FRI.12

burlington

STORIES WITH MISS NORTHERN VERMONT: Emily Benz reads aloud in honor of Let’s Read Vermont Day. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 11-11:30 a.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

chittenden county

‘A COUNTRY STORE OPERA’: Teen vocalists from 10 local schools tell a very Vermont tale through works from the Italian bel canto tradition. Faith United Methodist Church, South Burlington, 6-7:30 p.m. $10-20 suggested donation. Info, 382-9222.

‘THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD’: Teen thespians bring the bandit king of Sherwood Forest to life. Colchester High School, 7-9 p.m. $10. Info, 233-4828. CVU STUDENT-DIRECTED ONE-ACTS: Seniors direct short theater pieces on subjects from Antigone to Alice in Wonderland. Champlain Valley Union High School, Hinesburg, 7:30-9 p.m. $710. Info, 482-7100.

upper valley

STORY TIME: Preschoolers take part in tales, tunes and playtime. Latham Library, etford, 11 a.m. Free. Info, 785-4361.

SAT.13 burlington

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.

PANCAKE BREAKFAST & SILENT

AUCTION: Friends and neighbors dine on pancakes and local treats while shopping an array of art and treasures.

Sustainability Academy, Lawrence Barnes School, Burlington, 8:30-11:30 a.m. $6-20; free for kids 2 and under. Info, 864-8480.

STORIES WITH GEOFF: Little patrons of the library’s new location enjoy a morning of stories and songs. Fletcher Free Library New North End Branch, Burlington, 11:15-11:45 a.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

WEE ENGINEER: Little ones ages 3 through 5 learn problem-solving skills at this hands-on STEAM series. Fletcher Free Library New North End Branch, Burlington, 10:30-11:15 a.m. Free; preregister; limited space. Info, 863-3403.

chittenden county

‘THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD’: See FRI.12.

‘THE IMPOSSIBLE, A TELLING OF CINDERELLA’S STORY’: Vermont Youth Dancers tweak a classic tale with a blend of hip-hop and lyrical choreography. Mt. Mansfield Union High School, Jericho, 1:30 & 6:30 p.m. $15. Info, 373-6157.

‘THE TRUMAN SHOW’: Teens screen the 1998 hit in which the eponymous character is the unwitting star of a reality show chronicling his life. Brownell Library, Essex Junction, 2-4 p.m. Free. Info, 878-6956.

Give a Hoot

e Vermont Institute of Natural Science’s nocturnal neighbors take over for a day at the Quechee nature center’s annual Owl Festival. Bird lovers of all ages enjoy up-close encounters with owls of all kinds, from VINS’ resident raptors to visitors from across New England. e packed schedule includes story times, crafts and dancing for owlets under 5 years old; lessons about owl myths throughout history; educational presentations by the naturalists of Squam Lakes Natural Science Center in New Hampshire; and demonstrations of owls in flight.

OWL FESTIVAL

Saturday, April 13, 9 a.m.-5 p.m., at Vermont Institute of Natural Science in Quechee. Regular admission, $16.50-19.50; free for children 3 & under. Info, 3595000, vinsweb.org.

CVU STUDENT-DIRECTED ONE-ACTS: See FRI.12.

FRENCH STORY TIME: Kids of all ages listen and learn to native speaker

Romain Feuillette raconte une histoire. Dorothy Alling Memorial Library, Williston, 10:15-10:45 a.m. Free. Info, 878-4918.

LEARN ABOUT OWLS WITH AUDUBON VERMONT: Kids dissect pellets, feel real wings and get crafty to learn about great hunters of the night. Winooski Memorial Library, 10-11 a.m. Free. Info, 434-3068.

LEGO FUN: Amateur toy architects build creatively. Brownell Library, Essex Junction, 10 a.m.-noon. Free. Info, 878-6956.

middlebury area

‘A COUNTRY STORE OPERA’: See FRI.12. Champlain Valley Unitarian Universalist Society, Middlebury, 2-3:30 p.m.

upper valley

CRAZY FOR COARSE WOODY DEBRIS: Kids learn about the wildlife that inhabit a specific part of the forest with activities and a hike. Marsh-BillingsRockefeller National Historical Park, Woodstock, 10-11:30 a.m. Free. Info, savannah_spannaus@partner.nps.gov.

OWL FESTIVAL: e nature center’s nocturnal neighbors take over for a hootenanny featuring meet and greets, story times, and other science activities. See calendar spotlight. Vermont Institute of Natural Science, Quechee, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Regular admission, $16.50-19.50; free for children 3 & under. Info, 359-5000.

northeast kingdom

WEEE!! DANCE PARTY: Little ones and their caregivers express themselves through movement at this free-wheeling DJ bash. Highland Center for the Arts, Greensboro, 2-3 p.m. $5 suggested donation; preregister. Info, 533-2000.

SUN.14 burlington

DAD GUILD: Fathers (and parents of all genders) and their kids ages 5 and under drop in for playtime and connection. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 3:30-5 p.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS: Dungeon Master Andrew hosts a night of fantasy roleplaying for upper elementary and teens. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, noon-4 p.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

SENSORY-FRIENDLY SUNDAY: Folks of all ages with sensory processing differences have the museum to themselves, with adjusted lights and sounds and trusty sensory backpacks. ECHO Leahy Center for Lake Champlain, Burlington, 9-10 a.m. Free; preregister. Info, kvonderlinn@echovermont.org.

chittenden county

‘THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD’: See FRI.12, 2-4 p.m.

‘THE IMPOSSIBLE, A TELLING OF CINDERELLA’S STORY’: See SAT.13, 1:30 p.m.

CVU STUDENT-DIRECTED ONE-ACTS: See FRI.12, 1-3 p.m.

calendar

music

BRITTANY ANN TRANBAUGH, BLAIR BORAX AND AVERY

LAVOIE: Touring artists from Philadelphia, Pa., and Portland, Ore., play queer Americana and indie folk. Firefolk Arts, Waitsfield, 6:30-9:30 p.m. $15. Info, firefolkarts@gmail.com.

ERIC WHITACRE: The Grammy Award-winning composer and conductor joins remotely to explore how music and architecture overlap as art forms. Memorial Chapel, Middlebury College, 4:30-6 p.m. Free. Info, ballred@ middlebury.edu.

JOSH TURNER: THE GREATEST

HITS TOUR: The platinum-selling country music star performs timeless hits such as “Long Black Train” and “Why Don’t We Just Dance.” Paramount Theatre, Rutland, 7:30 p.m. $75-95. Info, 282-7130.

québec

‘FIFTEEN DOGS’: See WED.10, 8 p.m. talks

ADAM KERSCH: An anthropologist gives a talk titled “Inoculating Whiteness: Settler Colonialism, Whiteness & Infectious Diseases in Sheet’ka.”

Presented by Vermont Abenaki Artists Association. 6:30-8 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 557-7202.

WORLD PARKINSON’S

AWARENESS DAY: The Movement for Parkinson’s Program hosts a morning of information and demonstrations culminating in the fourth annual flash mob on Church Street. Burlington City Hall Auditorium, 10 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Free. Info, movementfor parkinsons@gmail.com.

tech

NEW DIGITAL SERVICES

INTRODUCTION: Curious patrons learn about the library’s latest capabilities from technology librarian Kyle Creason. Live stream available. Waterbury Public Library, 3-4 p.m. Free. Info, 244-7036.

theater

‘FIDDLER ON THE ROOF’: A Russian Jewish family reckons with tradition, love and oppression in this beloved musical, presented by the Wild Goose Players. Bellows Falls Opera House, 7:30 p.m. $10-40. Info, 376-4761.

‘I AM MY OWN WIFE’: Stoph Scheer plays every character of every gender in this solo show about Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, a real-life trans woman who survived Nazi Germany. Lost Nation Theater, Montpelier City Hall, 7:30-9 p.m. $10-30. Info, 229-0492.

‘THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG’: See WED.10, 2 & 7:30 p.m.

‘THE WIZARD OF OZ’: Lyric Theatre celebrates its 50th anniversary with a lavish adaptation of this beloved trip down the yellow brick road. See calendar spotlight. The Flynn, Burlington, 7:30 p.m. $20-49. Info, 863-5966.

words

FROM POLISH TO PUBLISH: AN OVERVIEW OF THE PUBLISHING

PROCESS: Rachel Fisher and Rachel Carter share editorial and print expertise from their combined 20 years of experience in publishing. Phoenix Books, Rutland, 6 p.m. Free. Info, 855-8078.

MORNING BOOK GROUP: ‘WEST WITH GIRAFFES’: Readers stick their necks out to discuss West With Giraffes by Lynda Rutledge. South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 10:30-11:30 a.m. Free. Info, 846-4140.

PHILIP EIL: An investigative journalist discusses his truecrime book, Prescription for Pain: How a Once-Promising Doctor Became the “Pill Mill Killer,” about the man currently serving the longest sentence of any physician convicted of drug-related crimes during the opioid epidemic. Norwich Bookstore, 7 p.m. Free. Info, 649-1114.

POEMTOWN: Readings from local wordsmiths and open mics punctuate National Poetry Month. See poemtown.org for full schedule. Various Randolph locations, 7 p.m. Free. Info, 728-5073.

POEMCITY 2024: See WED.10.

FRI.12 crafts

FIBER ARTS FRIDAY: Knitters, crocheters, weavers and felters chat over their projects of the day at this weekly meetup. Waterbury Public Library, noon-2 p.m. Free. Info, 244-7036.

etc.

MAKE THE MAGIC: CAMP KESEM

AT UVM: A gala and silent auction raise funds for Camp Kesem, a nonprofit supporting children coping with a parent’s cancer

No Place Like Home

APR. 11-14 | THEATER

Theatergoers journey over the rainbow and down the yellow brick road with Lyric Theatre at the beloved local troupe’s production of The Wizard of Oz. Continuing Lyric’s 50th anniversary season, the show brings the classic story to life, including the score of the 1939 film. Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion journey to ask a renowned sorcerer to grant them their hearts’ desires — and face off with the vindictive Wicked Witch of the West — in this fantastical adventure for the whole family. Lavish costumes, spectacular sets, jaw-dropping musical numbers and plenty of magic make this a trip to Oz unlike any other.

‘THE WIZARD OF OZ’

Thursday, April 11, and Friday, April 12, 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, April 13, 1 & 7:30 p.m.; and Sunday, April 14, 1 & 6 p.m., at the Flynn in Burlington. $20-49. Info, 863-5966, flynnvt.org.

diagnosis. Delta Hotels Burlington, South Burlington, 6-9:30 p.m. $60. Info, vermont.mtm@kesem.org.

film

See what’s playing at local theaters in the On Screen section.

‘FUNGI: THE WEB OF LIFE 3D’: See WED.10.

‘GREAT WHITE SHARK 3D’: See WED.10.

MADE HERE FILM FESTIVAL: See WED.10, 11 a.m.-9:15 p.m.

‘OCEANS: OUR BLUE PLANET 3D’: See WED.10.

RICK CLARK: A producer speaks about integrating music into television and film. McCarthy Arts Center, Saint Michael’s College, Colchester, 7 p.m. Free. Info, 310-9399.

‘TINY GIANTS 3D’: See WED.10.

health & fitness

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.

lgbtq

FREAK FEST: Drag, burlesque and a clown dance party unleash everyone’s inner weirdo. Costumes/ freakish attire encouraged. Light Club Lamp Shop, Burlington, 8-11 p.m. $10-15; cash tips encouraged. Info, 412-295-9333.

GLENNDA & FRIENDS: QUEER

VIDEOS FROM THE ‘90S!: Filmmaker Glenn Belverio (aka drag activist Glennda Orgasm) hosts a Q&A following screenings from ’90s drag talk shows “The Brenda and Glennda Show” and “Glennda and Friends.” See calendar spotlight. Epsilon Spires, Brattleboro, 8 p.m. $15. Info, jamie.mohr78@gmail.com.

RPG NIGHT: Members of the LGBTQ community gather weekly

theater

‘FIDDLER ON THE ROOF’: See THU.11.

to play games such as Dungeons & Dragons and Everway. Rainbow Bridge Community Center, Barre, 5:30-8:30 p.m. Free. Info, 622-0692.

music

BRITAIN’S FINEST: ‘THE COMPLETE BEATLES

EXPERIENCE’: A band of Beatles tribute all-stars bring the look and sound of the English rock band back to life. Barre Opera House, 8-10 p.m. $28-37. Info, 476-8188.

CONCERT BAND: A wind ensemble performs work by composers Julie Giroux, Arturo Márquez, Omar Thomas and Eric Whitacre. University of Vermont Recital Hall, Burlington, 7:30 p.m. Free. Info, 656-3040.

FRIDAY NIGHT PIANO: A performance of piano rolls from the 1900s through the present — and from ABBA to Led Zeppelin — entertains as audiences eat snacks around the firepit. Main Street Museum, White River Junction, 5-10 p.m. Free. Info, info@mainstreetmuseum.org.

MOKOOMBA: The acclaimed Zimbabwean troupe performs a medley of pan-African pop, including soukous, funk and reggae.

Chandler Center for the Arts, Randolph, 7 p.m. $10-45. Info, 728-9878.

ORDINARY ELEPHANT AND

EARLY RISERS: Two duos serenade listeners with an evening of acoustic folk music. Next Stage Arts Project, Putney, 7:30 p.m. $20-25. Info, 451-0053.

tech

USING MYCHART: Participants learn how to use an online portal that connects patients to their doctor and hospital network.

Fletcher Free Library New North End Branch, Burlington, noon-1:30 p.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

‘I AM MY OWN WIFE’: See THU.11.

‘KODACHROME’: Love, grief and change are documented through the lens of a small-town photographer in this heartwarming new production from the Shelburne Players. Shelburne Town Hall, 7 p.m. $20. Info, 343-2602.

‘THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG’: See WED.10.

ROYALL TYLER THEATRE 50TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION: The arts space celebrates its golden anniversary with a day of workshops and panels featuring current faculty and staff and returning alumni. Royall Tyler Theatre, University of Vermont, Burlington, 10 a.m.-9:30 p.m. Free. Info, 656-2010.

‘SOMETHING ROTTEN!’: Two playwright brothers attempt to outsell Shakespeare in this Tony Award-nominated Elizabethan farce, presented by We the People Theatre. Briggs Opera House, White River Junction, 7:30 p.m. $15-30. Info, 727-0781.

‘THE WIZARD OF OZ’: See THU.11.

words

FRIENDS OF THE RUTLAND

FREE LIBRARY BOOK SALES:

Thousands of gently used books, CDs, DVDs and puzzles enthrall bibliophiles. Rutland Free Library, 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Free; donations accepted. Info, 773-1860.

FRIENDS OF THE SOUTH

BURLINGTON LIBRARY BOOK

SALE: The library sells used books, CDs, DVDs and collectibles in great condition at low prices. South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 2 p.m. Free. Info, 846-4140.

GOOD LIVING BOOK CLUB: Seniors discuss P.D. James’ riveting mystery A Mind to Murder. 10:30 a.m. Free. Info, 745-1392.

POEMCITY 2024: See WED.10.

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 ©

SAT.13

climate crisis

CLIMATE FRESK WORKSHOP: Concerned citizens ages 17 and up learn how to take action against climate change. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 2:30-5:30 p.m. Free; preregister; limited space. Info, 863-3403.

community

‘A CELEBRATION OF SHOWING

UP’: Gareth Higgins hosts a storytelling slam celebrating the teachers, doctors, nurses, social workers, reporters and other local heroes who help and heal Vermonters. Zenbarn, Waterbury Center, 7:30-9:30 p.m. $17.50. Info, tickets@solavida.org.

crafts

HAVE FUN WITH WATERCOLORS: Artist Florence McCloud leads newbies in the fundamentals of watercolor. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 863-3403.

dance

SWING DANCE: All-star DJs back a night of dancing with big-band bops. Bring clean shoes. Champlain Club, Burlington, beginners’ lesson, 7:30 p.m.; dance, 8 p.m. $5. Info, 864-8382.

environment

A CELEBRATION OF EARTH: Ben Cosgrove’s landscape-inspired music sets the stage for authors Douglas Brinkley and Bill McKibben to discuss their writings on climate action. Live

stream available. Next Stage Arts Project, Putney, 7:30 p.m. $10-15. Info, 387-0102.

SPRUCE UP DAY: Volunteers help get the park ready for spring and summer. Bombardier Park West, Milton, 9 a.m.-noon. Free. Info, 893-4922.

WATERBURY LEAP ENERGY

FAIR: Experts talk heat pumps, weatherization, solar power, energy audits, electric vehicles, electric lawn tools, financing and subsidies at the largest energy fair in Vermont. Crossett Brook Middle School, Duxbury, 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Free. Info, alaynahoward@ gmail.com.

etc.

SHAMBHALA MORNING:

Readings and reflections follow half an hour of mindfulness.

Refreshments served. Shambhala Meditation Center, Burlington, 9:30-11 a.m. Free. Info, 777-4414. film

See what’s playing at local theaters in the On Screen section.

BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL FILM

SERIES: ‘RUSTIN’: Rajnii

Eddins hosts a screening of the biographical film about Bayard Rustin, a civil rights leader who faced racism and homophobia as he helped orchestrate the 1963 March on Washington. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 3-5 p.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

FIRST DAY ON THE SET: WHAT TO KNOW WHEN YOU’RE GETTING

STARTED IN THE FILM INDUSTRY: Aspiring filmmakers learn the best practices for becoming a production assistant. The Media

Factory, Burlington, 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Donations accepted. Info, gin@ mediafactory.org.

FLY-FISHING FILM TOUR: Anglers view a series of short films featuring locations across the U.S. and around the world. Big Picture Theater and Café, Waitsfield, 6:309:30 p.m. $20. Info, 233-9984.

‘FUNGI: THE WEB OF LIFE 3D’: See WED.10.

‘GREAT WHITE SHARK 3D’: See WED.10.

‘JUST GETTING BY’: A new documentary takes an incisive look at the lives of Vermonters struggling with food and housing insecurity. Grange Hall Cultural Center, Waterbury Center, 7-8:30 p.m. $5-30 suggested donation. Info, 244-4168.

MADE HERE FILM FESTIVAL: See WED.10, 11 a.m.-8:45 p.m.

‘OCEANS: OUR BLUE PLANET 3D’: See WED.10.

‘TINY GIANTS 3D’: See WED.10. food & drink

CAPITAL CITY WINTER FARMERS

MARKET: Root veggies, honey, maple syrup and more change hands at an off-season celebration of locally grown food. Barr Hill, Montpelier, 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Free. Info, nicole.zarrillo@ caledoniaspirits.com.

THE MIDNIGHT GARDEN: An annual gala features a cocktail reception, silent and live auctions, a seated dinner and dessert, dancing, and late-night snacks. Black-tie attire optional. The Lodge at Spruce Peak, Stowe, 5-11 p.m. $250. Info, 253-8358.

MOMO EATING CONTEST: Momo lovers chow down on as many as possible to benefit the South Burlington Food Shelf. Himalayan D’Lite, South Burlington, 5 p.m. $30. Info, sherpafoodsusa@gmail. com.

games

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.

LEARN TO PLAY MAH-JONGG: Pauline Nolte teaches a seven-week course on the American and Chinese styles of this ancient game. Waterbury Public Library, 10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, judi@waterburypubliclibrary. com.

health & fitness

COMMUNITY YOGA CLASS: An all-levels session offers a weekly opportunity to relax the mind and rejuvenate the body. Wise Pines, Woodstock, 10-11 a.m. Free; donations accepted. Info, 432-3126.

GMC HIKE: PETER A. KRUSCH

NATURE PRESERVE TO CAMBRIDGE PINES STATE FOREST: A two-mile spring nature walk with the Green Mountain Club invigorates outdoorsfolk. Peter A. Krusch Nature Preserve, Jeffersonville, 10 a.m. Free. Info, 558-9177.

language

CROISSANTS ET CONVERSATION: Novice French speakers meet up over refreshments and games. Alliance Française of the Lake Champlain Region, Burlington, 10-11:30 p.m. Free. Info, info@ aflcr.org.

FRENCH CONVERSATION FOR ALL: Native French speaker

Romain Feuillette guides an informal discussion group. All ages and abilities welcome. Dorothy Alling Memorial Library, Williston, 10:30-11:30 a.m. Free; preregister; limited space. Info, 878-4918.

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.

music

JOE CAPPS AND RAY VEGA: Music lovers enjoy an evening of jazz courtesy of two masters of guitar and trumpet. Courtyard Marriott Burlington Harbor, 7:30-9:30 p.m. Free. Info, 864-4700.

JOSH GLASS: A Burlington singersongwriter and pianist rocks out with pop tunes. Shelburne Vineyard, 6-8 p.m. Free. Info, 985-8222.

SEVEN WONDERS: The Rochester Fleetwood Mac tribute players go their own way. War Cannon Spirits, Crown Point, N.Y., 6-10 p.m. $44.99. Info, 518-597-4040.

SOCIAL BAND: ‘YE BOUNDLESS

REALMS OF JOY’: Succeeding the total solar eclipse, the a cappella ensemble performs songs celebrating the cosmos. United Church of Hinesburg, 6:30 a.m.-9 p.m. $18 suggested donation. Info, 355-4216.

SPRING SING: Composers from Vermont and New Hampshire share some sing-along favorites at a night of audience participation. First Congregational Church Lebanon, N.H., 7 p.m. $25. Info, 603-558-7894.

‘FROM EARTH TO STARS’: The student symphony orchestra’s stellar musical voyage takes listeners through harmonies and concertos. University of Vermont Recital Hall, Burlington, 7:30-8:30 p.m. Free. Info, 656-2014.

‘THE SOUND OF SCIENCE’: Classical music, astronomical data and science fiction collide in the newest VSO Jukebox Quartet concert. BETA Technologies Maintenance & Training Facility, South Burlington, 5 & 7:30 p.m. $15-35. Info, 864-5741.

Queen Mother

APR. 12 | LGBTQ

In the 1990s, Glenn Belverio — better known to some as the drag queen Glennda Orgasm — took drag to the streets and the small screen years before “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” The public-access television shows “Glennda & Friends” and “The Brenda and Glennda Show” addressed queer and feminist issues with a funny, campy bent. Belverio himself attends a screening of three recently digitized episodes, in which Glennda goes to a riot grrrl conference; crashes a New York City summer solstice with the Radical Faeries; and meets up with Joan Jett Blakk, the first drag queen to run for president, outside the 1992 Democratic National Convention. A Q&A with Belverio follows.

GLENNDA & FRIENDS: QUEER VIDEOS FROM THE ’90S!

Friday, April 12, 8 p.m., at Epsilon Spires in Brattleboro. $5-15 suggested donation. Info, jamie.mohr78@gmail.com, epsilonspires.org.

VERMONT FIDDLE ORCHESTRA

SPRING CONCERT: Traditional jigs, reels, marches and waltzes from all over Europe and Québec get hearts racing and feet stamping. Barre Opera House, 7 p.m. Donations accepted. Info, 476-8188.

VERMONT YOUTH STRINGS: Plucky young musicians premiere “Cairn Dances” by local composer and educator Michael Hakim. Elley-Long Music Center, Saint Michael’s College, Colchester, 1 p.m. $5. Info, 655-5030.

québec

FESTIVAL DE LA VOIX: The human voice gets its time in the spotlight at several astounding concerts. See festivaldelavoix. com for full schedule. Various Québec locations, 8 p.m. Prices vary; preregister. Info, 514-758-3641.

‘FIFTEEN DOGS’: See WED.10, 8 p.m.

talks

MAPLE SUGARING WITH THE RIPPLED PAN MAN: The local syrup producer explains the process of making sweetener. Milton Public Library, 10:30 a.m.-noon. Free. Info, 893-4644. tech

CELLPHONE EDUCATION FOR SENIORS: Elders work through issues with their cellphones or computers. 12-22 North Street, Burlington, 3-6 p.m. $35-50. Info, 915-267-5166.

theater

‘50 YEARS OF ROYALL TYLER THEATRE: A MUSICAL REVUE’: The arts space toasts more than 300 performances with a one-night-only bash featuring alumni cast members performing with current theater program students. Royall Tyler Theatre, University of Vermont, Burlington, 4-6:30 p.m. Free. Info, 656-3414.

‘FIDDLER ON THE ROOF’: See THU.11, 2 & 7:30 p.m.

month. Memphremagog Arts Collaborative, Newport, 1-3:30 p.m. Free. Info, 334-1966.

MAD RIVER STORY SLAM:

Responding to the theme “Misadventures,” eight storytellers share true tales about things not going as planned. Valley Players Theater, Waitsfield, 7:30 p.m. $10. Info, 583-1674.

POEMCITY 2024: See WED.10.

THE POETRY EXPERIENCE: Local wordsmith Rajnii Eddins hosts a supportive writing and sharing circle for poets of all ages. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 1-3 p.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

ROBERT BRODER: The local children’s book author celebrates the release of his newest book, Reading Together: A Heartwarming Story About Bonding With Your Child Through the Love of Reading. Pierson Library, Shelburne, 10:30 a.m. Info, bailey@bluestarpress.com.

TIM BROOKES: The author of Writing Beyond Writing: Lessons From Endangered Alphabets speaks about what the digital age means for the future of the written word. Poultney Public Library, 1 p.m. Free. Info, 287-5252.

SUN.14 community

HUMAN CONNECTION CIRCLE: Neighbors share stories from their lives and forge deep connections. Pickering Room, Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 3-4:30 p.m. Free; preregister; limited space. Info, humanconnectioncircle@ gmail.com. crafts

FIBER ARTS CRAFT CIRCLE: Fabric and yarn aficionados gather for an afternoon of creativity. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 1-3 p.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

YARN CRAFTERS GROUP: See WED.10, 1-3 p.m. film

‘I AM MY OWN WIFE’: See THU.11.

‘KODACHROME’: See FRI.12, 2 & 7 p.m.

‘THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG’: See WED.10, 2 & 7:30 p.m.

‘SOMETHING ROTTEN!’: See FRI.12.

‘THE WIZARD OF OZ’: See THU.11, 1 & 7:30 p.m.

words

FRIENDS OF THE FLETCHER

FREE LIBRARY BOOK SALE: An overflowing selection of books, CDs, audiobooks and DVDs benefits the library’s programming. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

FRIENDS OF THE RUTLAND FREE LIBRARY BOOK SALES: See FRI.12.

FRIENDS OF THE SOUTH BURLINGTON LIBRARY BOOK SALE: See FRI.12, 10 a.m.

MAC’S ANNUAL POETRY

READING: Poets and poetry

lovers gather to share their own works or favorite poems in celebration of National Poetry

See what’s playing at local theaters in the On Screen section.

‘FUNGI: THE WEB OF LIFE 3D’: See WED.10.

‘GREAT WHITE SHARK 3D’: See WED.10.

‘JUST GETTING BY’: See SAT.13, 3-4:30 p.m.

MADE HERE FILM FESTIVAL: See WED.10, 11:45 a.m.-8 p.m.

‘OCEANS: OUR BLUE PLANET 3D’: See WED.10.

‘TINY GIANTS 3D’: See WED.10.

food & drink

FOOD FOR TALK COOKBOOK

CIRCLE: ‘TENDERHEART’: Home chefs make a recipe from Tenderheart by Hetty Lui McKinnon and meet to compare results. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 3-5 p.m. Free. Info, bshatara@burlingtonvt.gov.

JORDANIAN FOOD FOR FUNDS: A pop-up dinner of eggplant chicken, lentil soup and hummus raises money for Syrian refugees in Jordan. Ethan Allen Homestead,

Glennda Orgasm and Joan Jett Blakk

Burlington, 5-8 p.m. $25 suggested donation; preregister. Info, team@rootsforrefugees.org.

WINOOSKI WINTER FARMERS

MARKET: Families shop for meat pies, honey, kimchi, bread and prepared foods from more local vendors at an indoor marketplace. O’Brien Community Center, Winooski, 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Free. Info, farmersmarket@downtown winooski.org.

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.

LAMOILLE VALLEY RAIL TRAIL

BIKE RIDE: Cyclists pedal along a 40-mile route at a relaxed to moderate pace. Lamoille Valley Rail Trail, St. Johnsbury to St. Albans. Free; preregister; limited space. Info, 899-9982.

lgbtq

BOARD GAME DAY: LGBTQ tabletop fans bring their own favorite games to the party. Rainbow Bridge Community Center, Barre, 1-6 p.m. Free. Info, 622-0692.

CRAFT CLUB: Crafty queer folks work on their knitting, crocheting and sewing projects. Rainbow Bridge Community Center, Barre, 10 a.m.-noon. Free. Info, 622-0692.

music

MILK ST., RUN DON’T WALK, A DAY WITHOUT LOVE: Three bands delight listeners at an all-ages show. Derby Line Village Hall, 7:30-11:30 p.m. $10. Info, 307-2287.

MADELEINE ROGER: A Canadian singer-songwriter plays acoustic tunes. Richmond Congregational Church, 4-6 p.m. $17.50-27.50. Info, 557-7589.

SPRING CONCERT: Green Mountain Youth Symphony plays familiar tunes from Hamilton, Les Misérables and Wicked. Barre Opera House, 2-4 p.m. $5-15; free for children under 5. Info, 888-4470.

THE SOUND OF SCIENCE: See. SAT.13. Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium, St. Johnsbury, 6-7:15 p.m. $15-35.

UMASS PERCUSSION ENSEMBLE

PERFORMANCE: The University of Massachusetts Amherst percussion ensemble presents works by Bach, Cage, Stravinsky and others. Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, 7 p.m. Regular admission, $10; free for members. Info, 2570124 ext. 113.

VERMONT WIND ENSEMBLE: Christina Toner conducts a show that includes three movements from the Lord of the Rings score. University of Vermont Recital Hall, Burlington, 3 p.m. Free. Info, 656-3040.

VERMONT YOUTH

PHILHARMONIA: Talented young musicians offer up the world premiere of Cerulean PaynePassmore’s “Mizu.” Elley-Long Music Center, Saint Michael’s

College, Colchester, 5:30 p.m. $5. Info, 655-5030.

SOCIAL BAND: ‘YE BOUNDLESS

REALMS OF JOY’: See SAT.13. Richmond Free Library, 3-4:30 p.m.

québec

‘FIFTEEN DOGS’: See WED.10, 2 & 7 p.m.

sports

MAD RIVER TRIATHLON: Triathletes compete in a five-mile run, six-mile paddle, 10-mile bike ride — then skin up and ski down

Mount Ellen to the finish line.

Mad River, Warren, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. $5-240. Info, 496-7284.

talks

PUBLIC PHILOSOPHY WEEK: Philosophy enthusiasts ponder

topics including AI, books, cats and death. Various locations statewide, noon-9 p.m. Free. Info, publicphilosophyweek@gmail. com.

theater

‘I AM MY OWN WIFE’: See THU.11, 2-3:30 p.m.

‘THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG’: See WED.10, 5 p.m.

‘SOMETHING ROTTEN!’: See FRI.12, 3 p.m.

‘THE WIZARD OF OZ’: See THU.11, 1 & 6 p.m.

words

FRIENDS OF FFL BOOK SALE: See SAT.13, noon-5 p.m.

APR 12 APR 13 APR 14

Tickets & in f ormation at vs o.o r g /events

We’re exploring the intersection of music, science, and data from Radiohead to Bach, with compositions inspired and informed by scientific principles.

BETA Technologies concert sponsored by:Fairbanks Museum concert sponsored by:

GREG DELANTY: An acclaimed Irish poet reads from his latest SUN.14 » P.72

calendar

SUN.14 « P.71

collection, The Professor of Forgetting. The Burlington Whiskey Room, 4-6 p.m. Free. Info, 448-3350.

OPEN MIC POETRY: Poet Jackie Proulx hosts an afternoon of poetic experiences. Phoenix Books, Rutland, 2 p.m. Free. Info, 855-8078.

POEMCITY 2024: See WED.10.

MON.15

film

See what’s playing at local theaters in the On Screen section.

‘STEWARDS OF THE LAND – SERÁN LAS DUEÑAS DE

LA TIERRA’: In this 2022 documentary by JuanMa Pagán Teitelbaum, landless ecological farmers strive to produce healthy food in Puerto Rico. Online screening option available. Stafford Hall 101, University of Vermont, Burlington, 7:30-10 p.m. Free. Info, ifa@uvm.edu.

‘FUNGI: THE WEB OF LIFE 3D’: See WED.10.

‘GREAT WHITE SHARK 3D’: See WED.10.

‘OCEANS: OUR BLUE PLANET 3D’: See WED.10.

‘THE RETURN OF THE SECAUCUS SEVEN’: Bruce MacDonald and Gordon Clapp join viewers for a screening of the 1980 film in which they star. Savoy Theater, Montpelier, 7 p.m. Info, 229-0598.

‘TINY GIANTS 3D’: See WED.10.

games

MONDAY NIGHT GAMES: Discounted wine by the glass fuels an evening of friendly competition featuring new and classic board games, card games, and cribbage. Shelburne Vineyard, 4-7 p.m. Free. Info, 985-8222.

music

DROP-IN KOREAN DRUMMING: Participants learn samulnori percussion techniques. No experience needed. Freeman International Center, Middlebury College, 6:307:30 p.m. Free. Info, 443-5832.

FAMI LY FU N

barre/montpelier

DANCE, SING AND JUMP AROUND: Movers and shakers of all ages learn line dances and singing games set to joyful live music. Capital City Grange, Berlin, 3-4:30 p.m. $5 suggested donation; free for kids. Info, 223-1509.

GENDER CREATIVE KIDS: Trans and gender-nonconforming kiddos under 13 and their families build community and make new friends at this joyful monthly gathering. Locations vary; contact organizer for info. Various locations statewide, 2-4 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 865-9677.

mad river valley/ waterbury

‘A COUNTRY STORE OPERA’: See FRI.12. Waterbury Congregational Church, 2-3:30 p.m.

MON.15 burlington

STUDENT RECITAL: University of Vermont music students prove their chops in a variety of genres. University of Vermont Recital Hall, Burlington, 7:30 p.m. Free. Info, 656-3040.

VERMONT VIRTUOSI: The local chamber ensemble presents a program of works for flute and strings. First Congregational Church Essex, Essex Junction, 3-4:30 p.m. $20; free for kids under 18. Info, 878-5745.

québec

‘FIFTEEN DOGS’: See WED.10, 7 p.m.

talks

PUBLIC PHILOSOPHY WEEK: See SUN.14, noon-9 p.m.

words

POEMCITY 2024: See WED.10.

VERMONT READS BOOK

DISCUSSION: Readers discuss the themes of Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo. Virtual option available by request. Dorothy Alling Memorial

COOKIES AND CANVASES: Teens celebrate World Art Day by painting mini masterpieces and enjoying snacks. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 3:30-5 p.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

PRESCHOOL STORY TIME: Bookworms ages 2 through 5 enjoy fun-filled reading time. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 11-11:30 a.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

barre/montpelier

HOMESCHOOL ALL-AGES POETRY

READING: All ages gather to recite with original or published material. KelloggHubbard Library, Montpelier, 1:30 p.m. Free. Info, 223-3338.

upper valley

STORY TIME WITH BETH: A bookseller and librarian extraordinaire reads two picture books on a different theme each week. Norwich Bookstore, 10 a.m. Free. Info, 649-1114.

TUE.16

burlington

Library, Williston, 5:30-6:30 p.m. Free. Info, 878-4918.

TUE.16 business

GLOBAL CAREERS PANEL: A panel for high school and college students explores diverse career paths in international relations and foreign affairs. Vermont Council on World Affairs, Burlington, 4:30-5:30 p.m. $25; free for members; preregister. Info, 557-0018.

community

CURRENT EVENTS

DISCUSSION GROUP: Brownell Library holds a virtual roundtable for neighbors to pause and reflect on the news cycle. 10-11:30 a.m. Free. Info, 878-6955.

crafts

LEARN TO CROCHET AND KNIT: Novices of all ages pick up a new skill. Brownell Library, Essex Junction, 5-6 p.m. Free. Info, 878-6955.

SING-ALONG WITH LINDA BASSICK: Babies, toddlers and preschoolers sing, dance and wiggle along with Linda. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 11-11:30 a.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

WORLD OF WEATHER: The Burlington office of the National Weather Surface lifts the clouds on how forecasting works. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 6-7:30 p.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

chittenden county

BUILD A KINETIC SCULPTURE FOR THE BIKE PATH: Middle and high school students take part in a community project to create a permanent installation through painting, assembling and decorating. South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 4-5:30 p.m. Free. Info, 846-4140.

CRAFTYTOWN: Kids create clothespin people during an afternoon of creativity. South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 3-4 p.m. Free. Info, 846-4140.

dance

SWING DANCING: Local Lindy hoppers and jitterbuggers convene at Vermont Swings’ weekly boogie-down. Bring clean shoes. North Star Community Hall, Burlington, beginner lessons, 6:30 p.m.; dance, 7:30-9 p.m. $5. Info, 864-8382.

film

See what’s playing at local theaters in the On Screen section.

‘FUNGI: THE WEB OF LIFE 3D’: See WED.10.

‘GREAT WHITE SHARK 3D’: See WED.10.

‘OCEANS: OUR BLUE PLANET 3D’: See WED.10.

‘RAMEN DAY’: Filmmaker Corey Hendrickson premieres his documentary about Vermont Everyone Eats!, the grassroots effort to feed food-insecure Vermonters during the pandemic. Capitol Showplace, Montpelier, 5 p.m. $8.75-12. Info, 229-0343.

‘TINY GIANTS 3D’: See WED.10.

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.

TODDLERTIME: Lively tykes gather for short stories and familiar songs, rhymes and fingerplays. South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 10:30-11 a.m. Free. Info, 846-4140.

barre/montpelier

HOMESCHOOL FAMILY MEET-UP: Kids who learn at home and their caregivers bond over crafts and games. KelloggHubbard Library, Montpelier, noon-2 p.m. Free. Info, info@kellogghubbard.org.

WED.17

burlington

FAM JAM: Vermont Folklife hosts a tuneful get-together for musicians of all ages and skill levels. BYO instruments. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 6:307:30 p.m. Free. Info, ytv@vtfolklife.org.

food & drink

WINE & STORY: Oenophiles join for a night of drinks and storytelling. Shelburne Vineyard, 6:45 p.m. $5. Info, 985-8222.

language

MANDARIN CONVERSATION

CIRCLE: Volunteers from Vermont Chinese School help students learn or improve their fluency. ADA accessible. South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 11 a.m.noon. Free. Info, 846-4140.

PAUSE-CAFÉ FRENCH

CONVERSATION: Francophones and French-language learners meet pour parler la belle langue Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 5-6:30 p.m. Free. Info, 343-5493.

music

VERMONT HIGH SCHOOL TOURING

CHOIR: Choirs from three area high schools present a collaborative performance. Cathedral Church of St. Paul, Burlington, noon. Free. Info, 864-0471.

LEGO TIME AT THE NNE BRANCH: Creative kids ages 4 through 11 construct their very own creations. Fletcher Free Library New North End Branch, Burlington, 11 a.m.-noon. Free. Info, 863-3403.

STEAM SPACE: See WED.10.

TODDLER TIME: See WED.10.

chittenden county

BABYTIME: See WED.10.

BABYTIME: See WED.10.

PLAY TIME: See WED.10.

READ TO A DOG: See WED.10.

TINKER TIME: SNAP CIRCUITS: Kids use circuits to ring a bell or switch on a light. Brownell Library, Essex Junction, 3-4 p.m. Free. Info, 878-6956.

mad river valley/ waterbury

TEEN HANGOUT: Middle and high schoolers make friends at a no-pressure meetup. Waterbury Public Library, 3-6 p.m. Free. Info, 244-7036. K

talks

PUBLIC PHILOSOPHY WEEK: See SUN.14, noon-9 p.m.

LUIS VIVANCO: Cyclists and history buffs find common ground during a University of Vermont professor’s lecture on the fascinating story of how the bicycle came to Vermont. Bootlegger Bikes, St Albans, 6-8 p.m. Free. Info, 782-8747. words

BURLINGTON LITERATURE GROUP: LÁSZLÓ KRASZNAHORKAI: Readers analyze the Man Booker International Prize-winning novel Seiobo There Below over seven weeks. 6:30-8 p.m. Free. Info, info@nereadersandwriters.com.

COMMUNITY BOOK

DISCUSSION: Vermont

Humanities scholar Dr. Alan Berolzheimer leads a discussion of Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo, the Vermont Reads book of the year. St. Johnsbury Athenaeum, 5:30 p.m. Free. Info, awestfisher@ stjathenaeum.org.

ERIKA NICHOLS-FRAZER: A reading and discussion with the Waitsfield poet honors National Poetry Month. Waterbury Public Library, 6:30 p.m. Free. Info, 244-7036.

GLENN REED: A local author celebrates the release of his latest book, Searching for Wild Asparagus an homage to his parents’ former home in a small Vemont town. Phoenix Books, Rutland, 6:30 p.m. Free. Info, 855-8078.

POEMCITY 2024: See WED.10.

POETRY GAMES WORKSHOP: Poet Holly Painter hosts an evening of word games and puzzles. South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 6-8 p.m. Free. Info, 846-4140.

dance

WEST COAST SWING DANCING: See WED.10.

etc.

STORIES OF LIFE AND WORK IN WINOOSKI: A LISTENING PARTY: Recorded interviews from Vermont Folklife tell the oral history of the Onion City. Heritage Winooski Mill Museum, 6:30-8 p.m. Free. Info, 355-9937.

fairs & festivals

ANNUAL FUNDRAISING FEST:

The Caroline Fund raises fund to support their mission of helping women in crisis. Burlington St. John’s Club, 5-7 p.m. Free. Info, 864-7218.

film

See what’s playing at local theaters in the On Screen section.

ARCHITECTURE + DESIGN FILM

SERIES: ‘THE COLOUR OF INK’: A 2022 documentary follows a Toronto inkmaker as he harvests pigments from berries, bark, flowers, rocks and rust. Burlington City Hall Auditorium, 6-8 p.m. Free. Info, 865-7166.

‘FUNGI: THE WEB OF LIFE 3D’: See WED.10.

‘GREAT WHITE SHARK 3D’: See WED.10.

‘OCEANS: OUR BLUE PLANET 3D’: See WED.10.

‘TINY GIANTS 3D’: See WED.10.

food & drink

WHAT’S THAT WINE

WEDNESDAYS: See WED.10.

games

PUZZLE SWAP: Participants bring completed puzzles in a ziplock bag with an image of the puzzle and swap for a new one. South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 2:30-5 p.m. Free. Info, 846-4140.

health & fitness

CHAIR YOGA: See WED.10.

language

québec

‘FIFTEEN DOGS’: See WED.10.

sports

GREEN MOUNTAIN TABLE

TENNIS CLUB: See WED.10.

talks

HENDRIK VAN

GIJSEGHEM: An archaeologist explains the unlikely events that led to the burning of Canada’s first Parliament building. Presented by Alliance Française of the Lake Champlain Region. Noon-1 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, info@aflcr.org.

JOE SEXTON: The Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist joins Seven Days publisher Paula Routly to discuss how he reported one of his most acclaimed stories. George D. Aiken Center, Burlington, 4-6 p.m. Free. Info, 864-5684.

KAZIAH HAVILAND: A Vermont designer shares ideas for expanding affordable housing options in the Mad River Valley. Live stream available. Yestermorrow Design/Build School, Waitsfield, 6:30-8 p.m. Free. Info, 496-5545.

PUBLIC PHILOSOPHY WEEK: See SUN.14, noon-9 p.m.

SPACE CAFE: Space enthusiasts from the Vermont Astronomical Society host a conversation with light refreshments. Dorothy Alling Memorial Library, Williston, 5:306:30 p.m. Free. Info, 878-4918.

theater

‘BLIZZARD’: World-class Québec circus-arts act FLIP Fabrique takes the stage by storm with a show about wintry wonder. Vermont State University-Lyndon, Lyndonville, 7 p.m. $16-56; free for students. Info, 748-2600.

words

POEMCITY 2024: See WED.10.

PORSHA OLAYIWOLA: The Boston-based writer, performer and futurist reads from her collection I Shimmer Sometimes Too. Unitarian Church, Montpelier, 7-8:30 p.m. Free. Info, 262-2626. ➆

BEGINNER IRISH LANGUAGE

What’s next for your career?

Work it out with Seven Days Jobs. Find 100+ new job postings weekly from trusted, local employers in Seven Days newspaper and online. See who’s hiring at jobs.sevendaysvt.com.

WED.17 agriculture

HONEYBEES AND HUMAN CULTURES: Local honeybee enthusiast Jean-Jacques Maury teaches gardeners about the world of these pollinators. Jaquith Public Library, Marshfield, 7 p.m. Free. Info, 426-3581. business

2024 QUEEN CITY BUSINESS BUILDER: Professionals gather for an afternoon of networking. Delta Hotels Burlington, South Burlington, 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Free. Info, 829-5066.

QUEEN CITY BUSINESS

NETWORKING INTERNATIONAL GROUP: See WED.10. crafts

YARN CRAFTERS GROUP: See WED.10.

CLASS: See WED.10.

ELL CLASSES: ENGLISH FOR BEGINNERS AND INTERMEDIATE

STUDENTS: See WED.10.

INTERMEDIATE IRISH

LANGUAGE CONVERSATION AND MUSIC: See WED.10.

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.

music

U.S. ARMY FIELD BAND: Two ensembles join forces to perform works ranging from orchestral masterworks and operatic arias to Sousa marches, jazz classics, and Broadway musicals. The Flynn, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free. Info, 863-5966.

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.

e Adam Tendler Residency presented by TURNmusic in partnership with the VSO

THU., APRI. 11

THE PHOENIX, WATERBURY

Capital City

Winter Farmers Market

SAT., APR. 13

CALEDONIA SPIRITS, MONTPELIER

French Macarons 101

SAT., APR. 13

RICHMOND COMMUNITY KITCHEN

Lucky Number 30 Punk-Rock Fest

SAT., APR. 13

BRAINTREE TOWN HALL

Jukebox: e Sound of Science

SAT., APR. 13

BETA TECHNOLOGIES, SOUTH BURLINGTON

‘Just Getting By’

SAT., APR. 13 & SUN., APR. 14

GRANGE HALL CULTURAL CENTER, WATERBURY

A Celebration of Showing Up

SAT., APR. 13

ZENBARN, WATERBURY CENTER

Cleary/Gagnon/Saulnier Jazz Trio in Residence, feat. Amber Delaurentis

SAT., APR. 13

THE PHOENIX, WATERBURY

Vermont

Virtuosi

SUN., APR. 14

FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH. ESSEX JUNCTION

e Adam Tendler Residency with the VSO

SUN., APR. 14

THE PHOENIX, WATERBURY

VSO Jukebox: e Sound of Science

SUN., APR. 14

• Fundraisers

•

• Festivals

•

•

•

•

FAIRBANKS MUSEUM & PLANETARIUM, ST. JOHNSBURY

Caroline Davis & Wendy Eisenberg + Dani Dobkin & Matt Sargent

MON., APR. 15

THE PHOENIX, WATERBURY

Mandarin Conversation Circle

TUE., APR. 16

SOUTH BURLINGTON LIBRARY

‘Flour’ by Joanne Chang - Cookbook Workshop with Bridgeside Books

TUE., APR. 16

RED POPPY CAKERY, WATERBURY

Print & Sip

TUE., APR. 16

STANDING STONE WINES, WINOOSKI

Facing Change: Life’s Transitions and Transformations

WED., APR. 17 ONLINE

Joe Sexton: How I Got e Story

WED., APR. 17

GEORGE D. AIKEN CENTER, UVM, BURLINGTON

Eco-resiliency Gathering: Fall in Love with a Climate Denier

WED., APR. 17 ONLINE

Kevin Burt and His Band

Big Medicine

THU., APR. 18

GEORGE D. AIKEN CENTER, UVM, BURLINGTON

Vermont Pro Wrestling Entertainment presents World of Hurt Wrestling

THU., APR. 18

O.N.E. COMMUNITY CENTER, BURLINGTON

HOW’S THE RIDE FEELIN’?

Let us keep the wheels rolling along with your mojo! Call for an appointment today!

• diagnostics

• alignments

• tire repair

• brake service

• oil changes

• exhaust systems

• inspections

QUALITY CAR CARE, DELIVERED WITH RESPECT.

girlingtongarage.com

Eclipsing the challenges and illuminating the joys of parenthood.

Strengthening families so that children can thrive.

Learn more at lundvt.org

BOH PRESENTS

barreoperahouse.org BARRE OPERA HOUSE BRITAIN’S FINEST

FRIDAY APRIL 12

8 PM

802-476-8188

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. classes

culinary

BERRY GALETTE WORKSHOP: Join us for an in-person workshop in downtown Waterbury! Learn to make an extra-flaky homemade pie crust and delicious berry or other fruit filling. Enjoy a slice during the class, then take home your custom galette and the recipe. Recipe can be vegan or vegetarian but not gluten-free. Please disclose allergies when you register. Tue., May 14, 6-7:30 p.m. Cost: $85. Location: Red Poppy Cakery, 1 Elm St., Waterbury Village Historic District. Info: 203-4000700, sevendaystickets.com.

SABOR BORICUA IN EVERY

BITE: Experience Puerto Rican empanadillas and coquito in our culinary adventure! Learn to craft savory pastries with traditional fillings, guided by La Isla De Encanto Kitchen. Enjoy cooking, storytelling and a taste of Puerto Rico. Maximum 12 students, BYOB. Tickets are refundable up to 7 days before. Sat., Jul. 13, 11 a.m.-1:30 p.m.

Cost: $75. Location: Richmond

Community Kitchen, 13 Jolina Ct.

Info: 802-434-3445, info@ richmondcommunitykitchen. com, sevendaystickets.com.

SIZZLE & SIMMER: EVERYDAY

COOKING SUMMER CAMP FOR KIDS!: Join Sizzle & Simmer for a summer of culinary fun! Learn practical skills, try new foods and build confidence with Elizabeth King, a licensed educator. From homemade pasta to savory pies, explore the joy of cooking! Limited spots available. Aug. 12-16, 9:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Cost: $350. Location: Richmond Community Kitchen, 13 Jolina Ct. Info: 802-434-3445, kinggirlskitchen.com; sevendaystickets.com.

WHISK & WONDERS: BAKING FUN SUMMER CAMP FOR KIDS!: Join King Girls Kitchen’s Whisk & Wonders summer camp! Kids explore ingredients and create treats such as cookies, muffins and cupcakes. Taught by licensed educator Elizabeth

King, the camp focuses on fun, confidence-building and practical kitchen skills. Limited spots available. Refundable tickets. Jul. 8-12, 9:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Cost: $350. Location: Richmond Community Kitchen, 13 Jolina Ct. Info: 802434-3445, kinggirlskitchen.com; sevendaystickets.com.

fitness

FIRST STRIDES VERMONT: Women beginning or returning to running and/or walking are invited to join us in this 12-week program based on mentoring, peer support and lifestyle habits. Every Wed. beginning May 1, 5:45 p.m. Cost: $45 for 12-week program. Location: Williston Village Community Park, 250 Library La. Info: Kasie Enman, 802-2380820, firststridesvermont@gmail. com, firststridesvermont.com.

martial arts

AIKIDO: THE WAY OF HARMONY: Cultivate core power, aerobic fitness and resiliency. e dynamic, circular movements emphasize throws, joint locks and the development of internal energy. Inclusive training and a safe space for all. Friendlier than Cobra Kai: Visitors are always welcome! Adult basic 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, 802-9518900, bpincus@burlingtonaikido. org, burlingtonaikido.org.

meditation

MEDITATION IN THE SALT CAVE: Celeste Hartwell leads a transformative meditation and healing class in the serene Purple Sage Salt Cave, fostering abundance and release. Experience halotherapy’s benefits while immersed in Himalayan salt ambience. Arrive by 6:45 p.m. Cost includes session and halotherapy. No electronics; bring clean socks. Wed., May 8, 7-8 p.m. Cost:

Find and purchase tickets for these and other classes at sevendaystickets.com. = TICKETED CLASS

CLASS PHOTOS + MORE

$70. Location: Purple Sage, 21 Essex Way, Ste. 224, Essex. Info: celeste@divinefeminineleaders. com, sevendaystickets.com.

outdoors

BREAK ADJUSTMENT

WORKSHOP: Master bicycle brakes in our workshop! Gain insights on brake types, maintenance and adjustments. From novices to pros, all skill levels welcome. Scholarships offered. u., May 9, 6-8 p.m. Cost: $40. Location: Old Spokes Home, 331 N. Winooski Ave., Burlington. Info: 802-8634475, sevendaystickets.com.

SHIFTING ADJUSTMENT

WORKSHOP: Unravel the mysteries of drivetrains and derailleurs in our workshop! Discover how to adjust shifting systems, chains and gears. Learn about their functions, troubleshooting and maintenance. Scholarships available. u., May 16, 6-8 p.m. Cost: $40. Location: Old Spokes Home, 331 N. Winooski Ave., Burlington. Info: 802-8634475, sevendaystickets.com.

well-being

FACING CHANGE: LIFE’S TRANSITIONS AND TRANSFORMATIONS: Facing Change is a small group experience focusing on embracing the transformative power of change. Together, we offer support and care for each other, share tools for navigating life’s changes, practice meditation and ritual, and grow in our ability to approach change with curiosity rather than anxiety. Wed., Apr. 17, or Wed., May 15, 4-5:15 p.m. Cost: $25. Location: Online. Info: 802-825-8141, sevendaystickets. com.

yoga

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. May 13-17, 9 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Cost: $1,195 for weeklong workshop w/ VSAC grants avail. Location: e Ayurvedic Center of Vermont, 34 Oak Hill Rd., Williston. Info: Allison Morse, 802-872-8898, info@ayurvedavermont.com, ayurvedavermont.com.

DOGGONE ADORABLE (dog photos)

PURRFECT POSER (cat photos)

WILD CARD (exotic pets)

BEST DRESSED (pets in costume)

(best pals)

APARTMENTS, CONDOS & HOMES on the road »

CARS, TRUCKS, MOTORCYCLES pro services »

CHILDCARE, HEALTH/ WELLNESS, PAINTING

APPLIANCES, KID STUFF, ELECTRONICS, FURNITURE music »

INSTRUCTION, CASTING, INSTRUMENTS FOR SALE jobs

NO SCAMS, ALL LOCAL, POSTINGS DAILY

Spot

AGE/SEX: 8-month-old neutered male

ARRIVAL DATE: January 29, 2024

SUMMARY: Affectionate, playful and silly — watching Spot discover the world will leave you smiling! Spot missed out on some socialization in his early life, but since coming into our care, he has learned so much and has continued to grow and shine. A slow, patient approach is the best way to win his heart and see his silly side! If you’re ready to give Spot a little patience and TLC while introducing him to home life, visit him at HSCC and see if he could be the one for you!

DOGS/CATS/KIDS: Spot has lived with other dogs and may benefit from dog friends — he should meet any potential new dog companions before going home with them. Spot has no known history living with cats. He would be most successful in a home without young children.

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?

All HSCC dogs are available for foster-to-adopt! When you foster-to-adopt a dog, you can bring a dog home for a week and get to know them before committing to adoption.

Sponsored by:

Must be cat-friendly! Call 802-863-5625 or visit homesharevermont. org for application.

Interview, refs. & background checks req. EHO.

tax deduction. Support Patriotic Hearts. Your car donation helps veterans! 1-866-5599123. (AAN CAN)

CAREGIVERS AVAIL.! Looking to age in your home but need a little assistance? We have avail. trained caregivers to provide that extra support. Call 802-9233434 today.

CHASE CLEANING SERVICES You know what would make cleaning more

EQUAL HOUSING OPPORTUNITY

— OR — Vermont Human Rights Commission 14-16 Baldwin St. Montpelier, VT 05633-0633 1-800-416-2010 hrc@vermont.gov CLASSIFIEDS

housing ads: $25 (25 words) legals: 52¢/word buy this stuff: free online

fun? A maid! I can offer you personal & quality service. I have competitive rates w/ over 10 years’ experience. Reliable & trustworthy. Great refs.! Come home from work knowing that your house has been thoroughly cleaned. Just relax: Your housework has been taken care of! Currently servicing Chittenden County. Call 802-355-6929 or email rd8chase@gmail.com.

FINANCIAL/LEGAL

$10K+ IN DEBT?

Be debt-free in 24-48 mos. Pay a fraction of your debt. Call National Debt Relief at 844-9773935. (AAN CAN)

DISABILITY BENEFITS

You may qualify for disability benefi ts if you are between 52-63 years old & under a doctor’s care for a health condition that prevents you from working for a year or more. Call now! 1-877-247-6750. (AAN CAN)

FREE AUTO INSURANCE QUOTES

For uninsured & insured drivers. Let us show you

how much you can save! Call 855-569-1909. (AAN CAN)

HEART-CENTERED FINANCE

Whether you contact Oak Maple w/ a financial plan already in place & simply want to have a sounding board or hammer out details, or whether you show up w/ a shoebox full of receipts & a heart full of anxiety, once you connect w/ the team at Oak Maple, you are not alone. We aim to provide that deep peace of mind that comes from being organized & feeling understood. We will work w/ you until your plan feels right for you. To find out more, go to oakmaple.com.

HEALTH/ WELLNESS

SUPPORT FOR PARENTS New private practice for parents of children of any age. Clinical psychologist Dr. Aubrey Carpenter seeks to provide consultation & short-term psychotherapy for caregivers. For details, visit ittakesa villagevermont.com.

HOME/GARDEN

AGING ROOF? NEW HOMEOWNER? STORM DAMAGE?

You need a local expert provider that proudly stands behind its work. Fast, free estimate. Financing avail. Call 1-888-292-8225. Have the zip code of the property ready when calling! (AAN CAN)

BATH & SHOWER UPDATES

In as little as 1 day! Affordable prices. No payments for 18 mo. Lifetime warranty & professional installs. Senior & military discounts avail. Call 1-866-370-2939. (AAN CAN)

LOCKSMITH 24-7

We are there when you need us for home & car lockouts. We’ll get you back up & running quickly! Also, key reproductions, lock installs & repairs, vehicle fobs. Call us for your home, commercial & auto locksmith needs! 1-833-237-1233. (AAN CAN)

NEED NEW WINDOWS?

Drafty rooms? Chipped or damaged frames? Need outside noise reduction? New, energyeffi cient windows may be the answer! Call for a consultation & free quote today. 1-877248-9944. You will be asked for the zip code of the property when connecting. (AAN CAN)

PEST CONTROL

Protect your home from pests safely & affordably. Roaches, bedbugs, rodents, termites, spiders & other pests. Locally owned & affordable. Call for service or an inspection today! 1-833-237-1199. (AAN CAN)

WATER DAMAGE CLEANUP & RESTORATION

A small amount of water can lead to major damage & mold growth in your home. Our trusted professionals

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 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

do complete repairs to protect your family & your home’s value! Call 24-7: 1-888-290-2264. Have zip code of service location ready when you call! (AAN CAN)

DYNAMIC CARPENTER

DUO

Looking for help you w/ your next project? We offer a range of experience on interior & exterior projects. Call/ text 413-230-1461 to set up an estimate today!

buy this stuff

APPLIANCES/ TOOLS/PARTS

NEW MAKITA CHAIN

SAW Full batteries & dual charger. $375. Contact 802-798-2015.

MISCELLANEOUS

DIRECTV SATELLITE TV Service starting at $74.99/mo.! Free install. 160+ channels avail. Call now to get the most sports & entertainment on TV. 877-310-2472. (AAN CAN)

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)

TOP CASH FOR OLD GUITARS

1920-1980 Gibson, Martin, Fender, Gretsch, Epiphone, Guild, Mosrite, Rickenbacker, Prairie State, D’Angelico & Stromberg + Gibson mandolins & banjos. Call 877-589-0747. (AAN CAN)

PETS

GERMAN SHEPHERD PUPPIES 5-mo.-old East German shepherd puppies looking for a home. 1 male,

CALCOKU

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.

SUDOKU

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. WANT MORE PUZZLES?

ANSWERS ON P.82

Try these online news games from Seven Days at sevendaysvt.com/games.

Put your knowledge of Vermont news to the test.

See how fast you can solve this weekly 10-word puzzle.

Guess today’s 5-letter word. Hint: It’s in the news! NEW EVERY DAY:

BY JOSH REYNOLDS

★★★

BY JOSH REYNOLDS

★★★

TOWN OF RICHMOND

NOTICE OF PUBLIC HEARING

Pursuant To 24 V.S.A. §§4441 (d) AND §4444 (a)(b), The Town of Richmond Selectboard will be Holding a Public Hearing on Monday, May 6, 2024 AT 7:00 PM, in the Richmond Town Center Meeting Room at 203 Bridge Street to Receive Comment Regarding a Proposed Zoning Amendment:

PURPOSE: to amend the Richmond Zoning Regulations, Section 3.7, Industrial Commercial District; Section 5.12, Planned Unit Development and Residential PUD; and Section 7, Definitions. The purpose is to align and clarify the language of the PUD section, 5.12, with that of the Industrial/ Commercial Zoning District, Section 3.7, regarding residential uses as part of a PUD or Residential PUD.

GEOGRAPHIC AREA AFFECTED: All parcels within the Town of Richmond proposing a Planned Unit Development and the following Specific Industrial/ Commercial District residential parcels: RG0090, RG0140, RG0226 and RG0300

SECTION HEADINGS: §3.7 Industrial/Commercial District, §5.12 Planned Unit Development (PUD) and Residential PUD, §7 Definitions. The full text and maps of the proposed zoning amendment are available for inspection at the Rchmond Town Center Offices at 203 Bridge Street between the hours of 8:00am and 4:00pm, Monday through Thursday starting 4/1/2024.

For more information, please contact the Richmond Planning/Zoning Office at 802-336-2289 or koborne@richmondvt.gov

NOTICE OF ENACTMENT OF AMENDMENTS TO SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT ORDINANCE

The Chittenden Solid Waste District (CSWD), acting by and through its Board of Commissioners pursuant to the District’s Charter, 10 VSA Chapter 159 and 24 VSA Chapter 59, enacted amendments to the Solid Waste Management Ordinance (SWMO) on March 27, 2024.

Purpose of Solid Waste Management Ordinance

The SWMO is enacted for the purpose of promoting the health, safety, and general welfare of the District, its member municipalities and their

inhabitants, and the general community; to regulate the management of solid waste within the District; to require separation of certain materials from solid waste destined for disposal; to facilitate the adequate provision of solid waste services such that the generators of solid waste pay costs that reflect the real costs to society of the management of solid waste; to establish fees for services provided by the District to manage solid waste; to regulate waste disposal practices that pose a concern to the public health and welfare and the environment; to fulfill the District’s responsibilities under 24 VSA § 2202a; to implement and further the District’s Solid Waste Implementation Plan and the State’s Solid Waste Management Plan; and to provide for the efficient, economical, and environmentally sound management of solid waste.

List of Section Headings

The section headings of the SWMO are as follows: Purpose and Title, Definitions, Regulation of Solid Waste, Licensing, Public Safety, Illegal Disposal, Open Fires and Incinerators, Solid Waste Management Fee, Payment of Fees Due the District, Recordkeeping and Inspections, Penalties, Enforcement and Remedies, Powers of the District General Manager, and Miscellaneous.

Amendments Summary

• Section 8.2 – Amount of Fee – amend the amount of the Solid Waste Management Fee from $27/ton to $30/ton.

Right to Petition for Special Vote

Under 24 VSA §1973, the qualified voters of the District have the right to petition for a vote on the question of disapproving the amendments to the SWMO. A petition for a vote must be signed by not less than 5% of the qualified voters of CSWD and presented to CSWD’s Board of Commissioners within 44 days of the date of the adoption of the amendment (by May 10, 2024). Unless a petition is filed, the amendments will become effective July 1, 2024.

For More Information

To obtain more information, contact Josh Estey 802.872.8100 x241 or at jestey@cswd.net, or at the link/address below.

A copy of the SWMO is available for inspection

at CSWD, 19 Gregory Drive, Suite 204, South Burlington, VT 05403 and at https://cswd.net/ forms-publications/

PUBLIC HEARING NOTICE

AMENDMENTS TO THE CITY OF WINOOSKI UNIFIED LAND USE AND DEVELOPMENT REGULATIONS

In accordance with 24 V.S.A § 4415 and § 4444, the Winooski City Council will hold a public hearing on Monday, May 06, 2024 beginning at 6:00 p.m. Members of the public interested in participating in this hearing can do so by attending in person at Winooski City Hall, 27 West Allen Street, Winooski, VT; or electronically by visiting https://us06web. zoom.us/j/84364849328; or by calling (646) 558 8656 and using Webinar ID: 843 6484 9328. Toll charges may apply.

Amendments to the Unified Land Use and Development Regulations

• Article X – Map 1 – Zoning Map

• Article X – Map 2 – Gateway Zoning District Regulating Plan

• Appendix B – Section 803 – Use Categories

• Appendix B – Section 901 – Defined Terms

Statement of Purpose: The purpose of these amendments are as follows:

Article X – Map 1 – Zoning Map – Rezones property at 21 Hickok Street from Residential C to Gateway.

Article X – Map 2 – Gateway Zoning District Regulating Plan – Relocates a neighborhood manners boundary from a common boundary between 21 Hickok Street and 32 Malletts Bay Avenue to the common boundary between 21 Hickok Street and 25 Hickok Street. Also classifies the O’Brien Community Center as a Civic Building/Structure.

Appendix B – Section 803 – Use Categories –Provides introductory language to provide more detail on the purpose of the section. Amends Section 803.C.

Appendix B – Section 901 – Defined Terms –Clarifies several definitions and includes new definitions for terms that were not currently defined.

Geographic Area Affected: The proposed amendments in Article X will only apply to 21 Hickok Street

and 32 Malletts Bay Avenue. Other amendments will apply to all properties in the Gateway Zoning District which includes properties along Main Street, East Allen Street, and Malletts Bay Avenue.

Section Headings Impacted: The following specific updates are included with these amendments:

Article X – Map 1 – Zoning Map – This involves a map amendment for property addressed as 21 Hickok Street. The property is currently zoned Residential C. The property is owned by the City of Winooski and is currently used as community gardens. This map amendment would change the zoning of the property to Gateway, which is consistent with the adjacent property at 32 Malletts Bay Avenue. The intent of this change would be to support a proposed expansion of the O’Brien Community Center which is located at 32 Malletts Bay Avenue.

City Council Public Hearing Proposed ULUDR Amendments

May 06, 2024

Article X – Map 2 – Gateway Zoning District Regulating Plan – The Gateway Zoning District Regulating Plan, as included in Article X as Map 2 would be amended to remove and relocate a neighborhood manners boundary from the common property boundary between 21 Hickok Street and 32 Malletts Bay Avenue, to the common property boundary between 21 Hickok Street and 25 Hickok Street. No buildings are permitted within any neighborhood manners boundary. This amendment is being proposed in conjunction with the rezoning of 21 Hickok Street and is needed to accommodate future expansion of the O’Brien Community Center. This map would also be amended to identify the O’Brien Community Center as a Civic Building to accommodate future expansion. The O’Brien Community Center is currently a pre-existing non-conforming structure and cannot be modified without compliance with the standards of the Gateway Zoning District, which is not possible without the designation as a Civic Building.

Appendix B – Section 803 – Use Categories – Adds new text as an introductory statement for this section of the land use regulations. Amendments to this section also include an updated introduction to the “Civic Use Category” heading by adding a reference to the definition of “Use, Civic”; and “Civic Use” as included in Part 9 – Definitions. This section is also amended to delete the list of uses included under this heading.

Appendix B – Section 901 – Defined Terms –Amends the introduction to this section for clarity. Also amends the definition of “Accessory Unit” for consistency with state statute, and includes a cross reference to the standards for Accessory Dwelling Units as outlined in Section 5.1. Amends the definition of “Civic Use Building” for clarity and consistency with other sections of these regulations. Adds a new definition for “Green Roof” to provide specific detail on this standard. Finally, amends the definition of “Use, Civic” to include a more compressive list of uses that could be considered civic in nature.

The full text of these amendments is available at the Winooski City Hall, 27 West Allen Street, during normal business hours or by contacting Eric Vorwald, AICP, Director of City Planning by calling 802.655.6410 or evorwald@winooskivt.gov ACT 250 NOTICE MINOR APPLICATION 4C0937-2 10 V.S.A. §§ 6001 - 6111

Application 4C0937-2

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 subcriteria 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 April 3, 2024.

By: Stephanie H. Monaghan

District Coordinator

111 West Street Essex Junction, VT 05452 802-261-1944

stephanie.monaghan@vermont.gov

THE CONTENTS OF STORAGE UNIT 01-4255

Located at 28 Adams Drive Williston, VT , 05495 Will be sold on or about the 25th of April 2024 to satisfy the debt of Justin Hudson-Sabens. Any person claiming a right to the goods may pay the amount claimed due and reasonable expenses before the sale, in which case the sale may not occur.

NOTICE OF SELF STORAGE INTENT TO DISPOSE

Malletts Bay Self Storage, LLC

115 Heineberg Drive, Colchester, VT 05446. Notice is hereby given that the contents of the self- storage unit listed below will be disposed of at facilities discretion. Name of Occupant Michael S. Merrill, Storage Unit #49. Said disposal will take place on 4/11/24 at Malletts Bay Self Storage, LLC, (MBSS, LLC)115 Heineberg Dr., Colchester, VT 05446.

NOTICE OF SELF STORAGE INTENT TO DISPOSE

Malletts Bay Self Storage, LLC

115 Heineberg Drive, Colchester, VT 05446. Notice is hereby given that the contents of the self- storage unit listed below will be disposed of at facilities discretion. Name of Occupant Maranda Begins, Storage Unit #198. Said disposal will take place on 4/11/24 at Malletts Bay Self Storage, LLC, (MBSS, LLC) 115 Heineberg Dr., Colchester, VT 05446.

EZ ACCESS SELF STORAGE — PUBLIC NOTICE OF AUCTION BY SEALED BID

Pursuant to the Vermont Self-Storage Facility Act Sec. 2.9 V.S.A Chapter 98 Units will sold by sealed bid.

Viewing by appointment. Call us at 802-891-9374 to schedule.

Appts for viewing and sealed bidding will be 4/25 9:00 AM-4:30 PM Bid will be opened on 4/25 at 4:45 PM. Winning bidder will be notified by phone.

5x10 – Lillian Joseph, David Markwell, Tim Parrow, Serina Shows 10x10 – Connor Towne, Justin Hall-Stasiuk 10x20 – Melissa Bouffard, Steve Bergman, Laura Blair

Storage unit will be sold as one lot. All winning bidders will be required to pay a $100.00 deposit which will be refunded once unit is left empty and broom swept clean. The winning bid must remove all contents from the facility by the end of the weekend corresponding with date of bid acceptance at no cost to EZ Access Self Storage. We reserve the right to reject any bid lower than the amount owed by the occupant. We reserve 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.

10

Application 4C0465-8A from Keenan Family Revocable Trust, Attn: Joseph & Martha Keenan, 750 North Pasture Lane, Charlotte, VT 05445 was received on March 28, 2024 and deemed complete on April 1, 2024. The project is generally described as construction of a two-bedroom accessory dwelling unit on a +/-48.3 acre parcel, which is presently improved with a fourbedroom single-family residence served by an on-site wastewater disposal system and an onsite drilled well. The project is located at 750 North Pasture Lane in Charlotte, Vermont. This application can be viewed online by visiting the Act 250 Database: (https://anrweb.vt.gov/ANR/Act250/Details. aspx?Num=4C0465-8A).

No hearing will be held, and a permit will be issued unless, on or before April 26, 2024, 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 subcriteria 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 April 3, 2024.

By: Stephanie H. Monaghan

District Coordinator

111 West Street Essex Junction, VT 05452 802-261-1944

stephanie.monaghan@vermont.gov

STATE OF VERMONT SUPERIOR COURT

PROBATE DIVISION LAMOILLE UNIT

DOCKET NO.: 24-PR-00972

In re ESTATE of Deborah Godin

NOTICE TO CREDITORS

To the creditors of: Deborah L Godin, late of Eden Mills

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: Wednesday, April 3, 2024

Signature of Fiduciary: /s/ Kris Godin

Executor/Administrator:

Northstar Self Storage will be having

Senecal) is requesting a review of a 6-lot subdivision of Parcel B within the Saxon Hill Industrial Park. Access will be provided via a new 30’ wide curbed road off River Road (currently Kimo Drive). The property is located at 75 Thompson Drive, Parcel ID 2-072-008-000, located in the Industrial (I) Zoning District.

Application materials may be viewed before the meeting at https://www.essexvt.org/182/ Current-Development-Applications. Please call 802-878-1343 or email COMMUNITYDEVELOPMENT@ESSEX.ORG with any questions. This may not be the final order in which items will be heard. Please view the complete Agenda, at https://essexvt.portal.civicclerk.com or the office notice board before the hearing for the order in which items will be heard and other agenda items.

TOWN OF JERICHO, VT

NEW HIGHWAY GARAGE

REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL (RFP)

MUNICIPAL PROJECT MANAGER (MPM) SERVICES

PHASE-1 3/18/24

1. Background

To the creditors of: Carolyn Brown, late of Grand Isle. 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

Applications may be submitted to the Clerk/ Treasurer’s Office, 149 Church Street, Burlington, VT 05401 Attn: Lori NO later than Wednesday, May 1, 2024, by 4:30 pm. If you have any questions, please contact Lori at (802) 865-7136 or via email lolberg@burlingtonvt.gov.

City Council President Traverse will plan for appointments to take place at the May 6, 2024 City Council Meeting/City Council With Mayor Presiding Meeting.

TOWN OF ESSEX PLANNING COMMISSION

NOTICE OF PUBLIC HEARING

APRIL 25, 2024, 6:00 PM

Hybrid & In Person (Municipal Conference Room, 81 Main St., Essex Jct.) Meeting. Anyone may attend this meeting in person at the above address or remotely through the following options: Zoom link: https://www.essexvt.org/1043/ Join-Zoom-Meeting-Essex-PC Call (audio only): 1-888-788-0099 | Meeting ID: 923 7777 6158 # | Passcode: 426269 | Public wifi is available at the Essex municipal offices, libraries, and hotspots listed here: https://publicservice.vermont.gov/ content/public-wifi-hotspots-vermont

1. Sketch Plan – Allen Brook Development (c/o Al

On March 5, 2024, the residents of Town of Jericho voted to approve a bond of $4.15 million for the construction of a new town maintenance facility. Following this approval, the Town is seeking the services of a Municipal Project Manager (MPM) to assist with permitting, design and construction of the facility. MPM services will be split into two phases. Phase-1 Preconstruction and Phase-2 Construction. In advance of the bond vote, the Town completed a feasibility study prepared by Ascent Consulting LLC. To review the study, follow this link: https://jerichovt. org/Highway-Department/news_feed/townmaintenance-facility-2 The Town reserves the right to negotiate Phase-2 Construction Services with the successful Phase-1 Preconstruction Services provider. All questions related to this project should be directed to John Abbott, Town Administrator jabbott@jerichovt.gov and Paula Carrier, Asst. Town Administrator pcarrier@ jerichovt.gov.

2. Schedule

The following dates will drive the anticipated schedule for Phase 1 planning.

a. 4/10/24: Post & Publicize Phase 1 MPM Services via RFP

b. 4/26/24: RFP Response Due, 5PM EDT

c. 5/2/24: SB Selection of MPM Services

d. May 2024-April 2025: Duration of Phase-1 Services

e. May 2025: Construction Starts

3. Scope of Services

The MPM will provide services and guidance to the Town and its municipal interest. The town requires the following services for the Phase-1 Preconstruction. The purpose of Phase-1 Preconstruction is to assist the town with the design, permitting and preparation for the bid package. It is anticipated that the design will be at 100% by end of January 2025 for February 2025 bidding.

a. Duration of Phase-1 Preconstruction Services is from May 2024 through April 2025.

b. Prepare RFP for design services for civil, architectural, structural, MEP/FP, special inspections. Respond to design services RFIs and document. Assist the Town with posting and advertising the RFP.

c. Analyze design service proposals and make recommendations to the Town.

d. Prepare design services contracts, review pay requests for Town approval.

e. Attending design meetings, ensure design is aligned with schedule and budget.

f. Assist with State and local permitting requirements.

g. Facilitate a design kick-off meeting outlining schedules and goals of the project to the design team.

h. Document updates to design and permitting status. Report to the Selectboard at meeting on the first Thursday of each month.

i. Provide cost estimates as the design progresses to ensure the project design aligns with budget.

j. Assist and provide Value Management services as

Legal Notices

[CONTINUED]

needed. Provide guidance to design team regarding lessons learned from previous maintenance facility projects. k. Prepare prequalification RFP for general contractor bidders. Post, review and background check qualifications, make recommendations to the Town.

l. Prepare bid package, send to prequalified bidders, respond to RFIs, assist the Town with bidding process, prepare bid analysis, perform descoping and make recommendations to the Town. m. MPM is to include in their cost computer, cell phone, vehicle, business and vehicle insurance and personal protective equipment. Reimbursable costs are to be included in the cost of services. n. Clearly dentify any services that will be performed by a sub-consultant.

4. Submission requirements To be considered responsive to this RFP, each response to the RFP must include the following requirements. The Town reserves the right to reject all proposals result from this RFP to: 1. negotiate with any or all qualified proposers 2. to waive any formality and technicalities 3. to solicit new proposals or 4. to cancel in part or in entirety this RFP if found to be in the best interest of the Town. Solicitation of this RFP in no way obligates the Town to award a contract. Each respondent is responsible for their own cost in preparation of this RFP. Late proposals will not be accepted. Only electronic submissions will be accepted. It will be the responsibility of the respondent to confirm proposals have been received by the Town.

Electronic submissions are due no later than 5PM EDT on 4/15/24 to John Abbott and Paula Carrier. There will not be a public bid opening. Complete RFP will include:

a. Cover letter

b. Overall Consultant Description: provide primary contact information, location of office, any and all staff or sub-consultant who will be involved in the project.

c. Resume of each staff member

Waitsfield and Champlain Valley Telecom Look

Waitsfield and Champlain Valley Telecom is the designated “Eligible Telecommunications Carrier” for universal service purposes in its service area. The goal of universal service is to provide all citizens access to essential telecommunications services.

Waitsfield and Champlain Valley Telecom provides single-party residence and business service at rates which range from $24.95 to $31.75 per month per line (excluding all taxes and additional fees that are required by state and federal government agencies) This includes:

• Voice grade access to the public switched network

• Unlimited minutes of local usage

• Access to emergency services (E911)

• Toll limitation services to qualifying low-income customers

• Complying with applicable service quality standards and consumer protection rules.

Waitsfield and Champlain Valley Telecom offers qualified customers a monthly telephone discount through the Lifeline Program If your household income is less than $20,331 for a single person household, or less than $27,594 for a two-person household, (add $7,263 for each additional person in your household), you may be eligible.

For more information on these services and benefits, please contact Waitsfield and Champlain Valley Telecom at 800-496-3391 or visit www.wcvt.com

d. Project experience with references

6h-Waitsfield&ChamplainValleyTelecom041024 1

e. Proof of business insurance

f. Cost Proposal

5. Evaluation and Selection

The Town of Jericho Selectboard will evaluate the proposals. Selection criteria will be based on maintenance facility project experience, estimating capabilities, staff experience and cost proposal. The Town reserves the right to request additional information and or require a onsite interview of party submitting.

TOWN OF RICHMOND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW BOARD AGENDA

APRIL 24TH, 2024, AT 7:00 PM

Location: 3rd floor meeting room Richmond Town Offices, 203 Bridge Street Richmond VT, 05477

location of the previously approved driveway.

This is intended to address ACT 250 concerns. Aside from the relocation of the driveway no other changes are proposed.

IN ACCORDANCE WITH VT TITLE 9

Commerce and Trade Chapter 098: Storage Units 3905. Enforcement of Lien, Champlain Valley Self Storage, LLC shall host an auction of the following units on or after 4/20/24:

Location: 2211 Main St. Colchester, VT

Contents: household goods

Mike Thompson: #674

Location: 78 Lincoln St. Essex Jct., VT

Contents: household goods

Paula Jarrett: #067

Auction pre-registration is required, email info@ champlainvalleyselfstorage.com to register.

NOTICE OF SALE

Notice is given that the following lots shall be sold, to satisfy lien of owner, at public sale by sealed bid, on Friday Apr 26, 2024 at the Access Mini-Storage/ McLure Moving & Storage, Inc. complex on 167 Colchester Road, Route 2A Essex Jct., VT. Start time for the sale shall be 10:00 am.

Access Mini-Storage lots (name & unit #) offered for sale for non-payment:

Brock, Chloe #537

Cardinal, Eric #346

Dezotelle, Christopher #214

Guilmette, John #341

Join Zoom Meeting: https://us02web.zoom. us/j/89057870483

Meeting ID: 890 5787 0483

Call-in: +1 929 205 6099 US (New York)

Application materials may be viewed at http:// www.richmondvt.gov/boards-minutes/ developmentreview-board/ before the meeting. Please call Tyler Machia, Zoning Administrator, at 802-434-2430 or email tmachia@richmondvt.gov with any questions.

Public Hearing

SUB2024-01 Bradley and Karen LaRose Parcel ID#WO-0156

Project Location: 156 Wortheim Lane

Project Description: The Applicants, Bradley and Karen LaRose, are seeking to amend their approved subdivision in order to relocate the

4/4/24 9:01 AM And

Hathaway, Dylen #013

Hayden, Clark #402

Loyer, David #311 & 529

Morgan, Melissa #328

Romprey, Stephen #448

Stevens, Farah #048

Szewcyzk, Mike #550A

Sealed bids will be submitted for the entire contents of each self storage unit. All sales are final and must be paid for at the time of sale. All items must be removed from the unit within 3 days of purchase. A deposit will be collected on all units sold. This deposit will be refunded when all items are removed and the unit has been broom cleaned. The owners of Access Mini-Storage, Inc. and McLure Moving & Storage, Inc. reserve the right to reject any and all bids.

Clean Water/Environmental Stewardship/Conservation

Are you concerned about the environment and consumption of finite resources? Would you like a job addressing all of these issues? The Town of Middlebury, Vermont has openings in both Water and Wastewater departments for hands-on technicians. Mechanical aptitude, construction and trade experience, along with work in the industry, are all positives.

Find out more at townofmiddlebury.com or email cgrant@townofmiddlebury.org.

THE GRIND GOT YOU DOWN?

MU LTIPLE POSITIONS OPEN!

Are you our next Guest Services Representative? Buyer? Produce Associate? Scan to see all open positions!

Perk up!

Trusted, local employers are hiring in Seven Days newspaper and online.

Browse 100+ new job postings each week.

See who’s hiring at jobs.sevendaysvt.com Follow @SevenDaysJobs on Twitter for the latest job opportunities

Circulation Specialist – Evening Supervisor

The Library at Saint Michael’s College invites applications for the Senior Circulation Specialist – Evening Supervisor position. The Senior Circulation Specialist – Evening Supervisor position is responsible for managing all library circulation operations during evening hours (generally 4:00 pm –12:00 am Sunday – Thursday, during the academic year). In addition to the

Vehicle Maintenance Manager, Human Resources Manager, Common Area Cleaner/Janitorial *$500 sign-on bonus

PTO/benefits package, 401k, ski & bike passes and resort perks available Apply at boltonvalley.com/jobs

including circulation, information retrieval, and technology; processing and maintaining the print periodicals collection; and coordinating and organizing the course reserve materials collection. For job description, benefits and to apply, please visit: bit.ly/SMCSCSES

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

ATTENTION RECRUITERS:

Director of Finance

VPQHC is looking for a dynamic individual to join our team as Director of Finance! As the Director of Finance, you’ll play a pivotal role in ensuring the financial health and sustainability of VPQHC, a leading nonprofit organization dedicated to improving healthcare quality in Vermont. This is your chance to make a real impact in the healthcare sector while utilizing your expertise in finance. This is a senior level position. Excellent benefits, hybrid work option.

Read full job descriptions and apply at vpqhc.org/ employment

Optician or Optician Trainee

Busy primary care optometry office looking to hire a licensed optician (or trainee) either full time or part time. We are open M-F 8am- 6pm. Choose between Four 10 hour days or Five 8 hour days. We are looking to hire for personality first. Must be good with people. We are happy to train the right candidate.

Job Type: Full-time

Salary: $20.00-$25.00/hour

Approx. hours: 32-40/week

Benefits: Flexible schedule, Health Insurance ,HSA, 401K, Professional development assistance, Vision/ eyeglass benefit

Send resumes to: mleipert@oeberlin.com

Champlain Community Services has been voted one of the Best Places to Work in Vermont for the sixth year in a row and we would love to have you as part of our team. JOIN US!

Work at CCS and support our mission to build a community where everyone participates and belongs. E.O.E.

Visit ccs-vt.org and apply today!

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 15th in Burlington and May 7th in Barre. APPLY: vtfoodbank.org/cka

Innkeeper & Operations

The Wilson House

The ideal innkeeper will be welcoming, diligent, and possess the ability to juggle many tasks and priorities. Must be hands-on in all aspects of the day-to-day operations with a focus on providing an exceptional guest experience for a small bed & breakfast. The schedule is flexible but includes evenings, weekends, and holidays. The innkeeper is an important team member who will nurture and help to grow the organization.

Preference will be given to people in recovery, particularly those with hospitality experience. Compensation includes competitive salary, housing + utilities, health insurance and retirement benefits. Apply by May 1st, expected start date July 1st.

•

•

•

CUSTODIAN

Summer Employment

Send resumes to: kim@wilsonhouse.org

The Facilities Department at Saint Michael’s College is inviting applications for a seasonal Custodian from May 6th through August 30th. This position supports the department to ensure all residence halls are cleaned to provide a safe and clean environment for the incoming class of students. Responsibilities include, but are not limited to all around general cleaning of various surfaces to include walls, floors, furniture (hard & soft), kitchen cabinets and appliances, windows, light fixtures, etc.; cleaning residential style bathrooms; and floor cleaning/maintaining of different surfaces using different methods and equipment. This position will require regular work hours with overtime (if desired). For job description, benefits and to apply, please visit: bit.ly/SMCCSu24

Full-Time

Program Coordinator

Full Description & Application Info: generatorvt.com/employment

High School Language

Arts & Literature Teacher

Join our small creative alternative school! Pacem School is hiring a part-time high school language arts and literature teacher for Mondays and Wednesdays this fall. Experience working with students ages 14 to 18 and a passion for teaching literature and writing is required.

Apply online: pacemschool. org/about/employment

Experienced, Skilled Carpenter

RED HOUSE BUILDING is currently seeking an experienced, skilled carpenter to join our wood shop team. This is a full-time position with flexible scheduling, benefits, and hourly pay based on skill level. The ideal candidate will have a minimum of 5 years experience with milling, cabinet construction, shop safety, and comprehensive use of machinery. This position is primarily based at our wood shop in Colchester, but job site installations are also included in the responsibilities.

If you are a reliable, motivated, and skilled person who is interested in being a part of unique, custom home building then please submit your resume to info@ redhousebuilding.com

Part-time Chef

Yestermorrow Design/Build School is seeking an experienced chef for our busy summer season. Our kitchen focuses on serving a nutritious menu of local, seasonal and organic foods, including vegan and vegetarian options, at each meal to 20-40 students and sta . The kitchen team works in an open kitchen environment with lots of daily interaction with students, and is responsible for providing a professional, welcoming, courteous presence to the public. Experience cooking and serving food for large groups is a must. This is a part-time position scheduled at between 28-32 hours per week. Flexible schedule including some weekends, BUT NO LATE NIGHTS. Pay $20/hour.

To learn more and apply: yestermorrow.org/connect/jobs

Vermont Housing & Conser vation Board

Housing Programs Coordinator

The Housing Programs Coordinator is a central role of the VHCB Housing team, providing administrative support to a breadth of housing programs that help ensure adequate housing and a safe place to live for all Vermonters.

VHCB is an Equal Opportunity Employer and we strongly encourage candidates from diverse backgrounds to apply. This position is open until filled.

To learn more, visit vhcb.org/about-us/jobs. To apply, send a cover letter and resume to: jobs@vhcb.org

Highway Foreperson

This is a supervisory position that is responsible for overseeing and participating in 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 starting pay rage is $33.00-$36.00/hr and is dependent on qualifications and experience.

Responsibilities include but are not limited to: snowplowing, heavy equipment operation, scheduling and oversight of contractors, heavy equipment maintenance.

This position provides health, dental, vision and disability insurance; paid time off; pension plan; and 13 paid holidays. For more information visit hinesburg.org/home/town-manager/ pages/employment-opportunities or contact Todd Odit, Town Manager at todit@hinesburg.org or 482-4206.

Look no further! We’re hiring!

Route Service Representatives

RSR’s drive a delivery truck along an established route, and will service, deliver, and pick up a variety of linen, uniforms, floor matting, and other rental products within an existing customer base. RSRs are the face of our company to our customers.

Foley Services fosters a workplace built on respect, hard work, and achievement.

Scan QR code for more information about our open position! Visit foleylinen.com/employment-opportunities for more information or to apply!

Foley Services is an equal opportunity employer.

ATTENTION RECRUITERS:

Full-time Housekeeper

Work-Life Balance

Work 4 Days & Get Paid for 5

Wake Robin, Vermont’s premier senior living community, is seeking a full-time Housekeeper and offers you a better work/life balance with a 4-day work week. Our work day is 8.5 hours with a paid half hour for lunch, and we make up the difference so you get paid for a full 40 hours.

In this community, appreciation and respect are very important. You’re not just cleaning a space; your work is helping to care for people who know you by name and say thank you regularly. In addition to our great benefits program, Wake Robin also helps you meet the challenges outside of work for life balance. Wake Robin is invested in a better life for its residents, staff and the community at large. Come see why this community is for you!

Compensation: Starts at $18.25/hour, increases depending on experience. Wake Robin offers competitive benefits. Schedule: Let’s talk

*Due to our vulnerable resident population, the COVID vaccine is encouraged but not required.

Visit wakerobin.com/contact-us/employment and apply today to join a team & caring community where your work truly makes a difference in the lives of others!

Rutland County Solid Waste District is seeking an energetic professional who doesn't mind wearing multiple hats. Must be a team player experienced in handling a wide range of operational and administrative duties that support related tasks and able to work independently with little or no supervision.

Is responsible for the operations of the recycling programs at the regional transfer station. This includes accepting many waste streams and filling in at all positions including HHW.

Please download application, see full job description, and view our fantastic benefits package at rcswd.com

Please send a completed job application to: Mark S. Shea, District Manager - 2 Greens Hill Lane, Rutland, VT 05701 (802) 775-7209 ext. 202 or email: mshea@rswd.com

RCSWD is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

Lead & Assistant Teachers

VIP’s onsite daycare is seeking Lead Teachers as well as full and part-time Center Assistants to join our team of passionate child care  providers. For over 30 years the Roots Child Development Center has been nurturing infants, toddlers and preschoolers in Colchester, VT.

Housed within the headquarters of Vermont Information Processing, Roots is attended by 50+ children of VIP employees. Roots employees enjoy exceptional benefits and a fun, collaborative work environment with a great team! Positions range from $18-$21.50/hour depending on qualifications.

Primary Job Responsibilities:

• Develop age-appropriate lessons and activities that promote and support the building of social skills, practical capabilities and self-esteem

• Collaborate with lead teachers to supervise, guide and encourage child’s learning and development

• Organize nap and snack hours and supervise children to ensure their safety at all times

• Communicate with parents regularly on their child’s day to day progress

• Maintain a clean and tidy classroom consistent with health and safety standards

Job Requirements:

• High School Diploma or GED

• 1-2 years of relevant childcare experience with groups of children from grade 3 or younger

• Ability to lift 25-30 lbs, squat/kneel/sit on the floor and speak with children and families to ensure the health and safety of each child

Must meet at least one (1) of the following qualifications as a Lead:

• 21 college credits in early childhood education or related field OR

• Associate’s Degree from an accredited college in early childhood education or related field OR

• Completed certification in one of the following: Registered Child Care Apprenticeship Program, Child Care Certificate from the Community College of Vermont, or Vermont Early Childhood Career Ladder Level 3 Certificate

Benefits you’ll enjoy:

• BlueCross BlueShield health insurance

• 3 weeks of paid time off

• 6 paid holidays and 4 paid floating holidays

• Paid Parental Leave

• ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Program)

• 401k and Profit Sharing

• Health Savings and Flexible Spending accounts

• Life and Disability Insurance

• Vision and Dental expense reimbursement

• Paid Professional Development training hours

• Onsite fitness center and heavily discounted gym membership to the Edge

• Onsite cafe serving breakfast, lunch and snacks

• Onsite health clinic for employees & families Apply here: public.vtinfo.com/careers or reach out to careers@vtinfo.com

Director of Development

We’re hiring a Director of Development who will champion the community-centric fundraising strategies and vision that sustain the resources needed to build a Vermont where all LGBTQ+ youth have hope, equity, and power. FT, salaried, 35-hour per week position, with comprehensive benefits. Full information & application details at outrightvt.org/jobs-andinternships.

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.

• Managing Editor & Senior Producer,

Vermont Edition

•

SVP People & Culture

We believe a strong organization includes employees from a range of backgrounds with different skills, experience & 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.

Ready For A Career Change?

Teachers are in demand

Get licensed in only eight months!

REGISTER FOR A VIRTUAL INFO SESSION

March 27 & April 15 | 4:00p.m. tap.champlain.edu

OFFICE COORDINATOR

The position is responsible for providing comprehensive administrative support to the CEO and Board of Directors, as well as assisting the Accounting Manager with day-to-day accounting and human resource tasks. In addition, the Office Coordinator supports the leadership team with administrative needs. This dynamic position requires the ability to creatively manage schedules, prioritize tasks, anticipate needs, think critically, and offer solutions to problems with professionalism and confidentiality. The Office Coordinator manages the organization’s office operations and is often a liaison to ensure coordination and communication across the organization. They report directly to the Chief Financial Officer (CFO). The ideal candidate will live within commuting distance to the Chittenden County area. For more information go to vitl.net/office-coordinator.

Customer Care/ Fulfillment Associate

Are you a creature of habit, conscientious and good with details? Do you like to get up early and finish work by 3:30-4pm? This might be the job for you. We are looking for honest, hardworking individuals to join our team. This is a fun and unique job for the right person. We are a family-owned distributorship. We have a loyal clientele of 1000+ Holistic Veterinarians across the US who are fun and interesting. You’d come in early to pick/pack orders and then process them for USPS and UPS pickups in the afternoon. Afternoons are spent restocking shelves, reordering, and checking in inventory. Work in a recently renovated building with huge windows and lots of natural light. We share the building with Qi Vet Clinic (qivet.com) & have four-legged employees in our midst.

We pay well & o er great benefits, including healthy, homemade meals cooked onsite. Check us out at: atimetohealherbs.com

Contact: Therese Fafard: tfafard@comcast.net. Please, take the time to write a personalized cover letter along with your resume.

CVSWMD IS Hiring!

Finance and Human Resources Administrator

We are seeking a qualified candidate to join our team as a Finance and Human Resources Administrator. Duties include processing payroll; managing accounts payable and receivable, maintaining and reporting on financial records; assisting with budgets and annual audits; licensing waste haulers; recruiting, onboarding, and orientation; administering benefits programs; and keeping personnel records.

40 hours/week, $22.48 to $32.10 per hour plus generous benefits package

For full job description and application instructions, please visit cvswmd.org

At CVSWMD, we help residents and organizations in our 19 member towns reduce, reuse, recycle, and rethink waste for a more sustainable future. CVSWMD is an equal opportunity employer. Positions will remain open until filled.

JOIN OUR TEAM!

Shared Living Provider

Seeking a gentle/thoughtful Shared Living Provider willing to provide complete personal care for a man over 40 years of age. An accessible home will best meet his needs. He enjoys going for car rides, watching his favorite shows, music, and male companionship. Annual stipend of $60,000 plus room and board and a generous respite budget.

Call (802)355-6094 or e-mail sdonohue@ howardcenter.org with interest.

howardcenter.org

• 802-488-6500

Head of Rescue Services

The Town of Shelburne is seeking candidates for a full-time, exempt leadership role for their Rescue Department (Shelburne Rescue). This position is Shelburne Rescue’s first full-time non-volunteer Head of Rescue Services. Shelburne Rescue is a municipal, combination (paid/ volunteer) ambulance service providing 911 emergency medical services to the Town and its neighboring communities. The Head of Service has the primary responsibility for executive oversight for Shelburne Rescue. The Department Head serves as the chief executive of the squad and represents both the Town of Shelburne as well as the Department and its providers to the public, the district and the state. The Department Head is expected to participate in emergency responses and is responsible for the leadership, management, and administration of the Department. This is to be accomplished through departmental planning, strategic visioning, and the development of long-term and short-term goals for the Department and its providers. Through the supervision of the Training Officer and lead providers (“Crew Chiefs”), the Department Head ensures the professional and efficient conduct of the Department operations.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS:

• National Registry of EMTs Paramedic Level Certification

• 5+ years’ experience in EMS with increasing levels of responsibility

• Emergency Vehicle Operations Certification or similar

DESIRED QUALIFICATIONS:

• Supervisory/leadership experience

• VT EMS District 3 Credentialing / Paramedic Experience

• Firefighting experience (FFI or above)

• Interest in supporting the Town of Shelburne Fire Department emergency responses

• Bachelor’s Degree in EMS/Paramedicine/Emergency Management or similar

APPLICATION PROCESS:

Please submit your resume and complete the employment application, or contact Adam Backus, Town of Shelburne HR Assistant, at (802) 985-5121, abackus@shelburnevt.org. Equal Opportunity Employer

GO HIRE.

Job Recruiters:

• Post jobs using a form that includes key info about your company and open positions (location, application deadlines, video, images, etc.).

• Accept applications and manage the hiring process via our applicant tracking tool.

• Easily manage your open job listings from your recruiter dashboard.

Job Seekers:

• Search for jobs by keyword, location, category and job type.

• Set up job alert emails using custom search criteria.

• Save jobs to a custom list with your own notes on the positions.

• Apply for jobs directly through the site.

Get a quote when you post online or contact Michelle Brown: 865-1020, ext. 121, michelle@sevendaysvt.com.

Line Cook

The Bobcat Cafe and Brewery is looking for a full time experienced line cook who loves the challenge of serving high quality food in a fast paced kitchen. Must be available nights and weekends.

Pay ranges from $27-$31 per hour depending on tips. Not a bad place to trade hours of your life for money. salty.evc@gmail.com

Production Staff

If you want to JUMP START your career & get your foot in the door at one of the BEST Vermont based companies, THIS JOB IS FOR YOU! WE NEED YOU to help with waxing and cutting our reusable food storage product. If you can handle anything with a smile, have a self-starting attitude, and want to enjoy your job and have free weekends, apply:

VTJobs2024@ gmail.com

Transfer Station Lead Generalist II

Rutland County Solid Waste District is seeking an energetic professional who doesn’t mind wearing multiple hats. Experienced in handling a wide range of operational and administrative duties that support related tasks and able to work independently with little or no supervision.

Experienced in handling a wide range of operational and administrative tasks that support related tasks and able to work independently. The Transfer Station Lead Generalist II will work alongside the Waste Reduction Program Manager to assist in the implementation of waste programs and be an effective leader and supervisor for daily transfer station operations.

The Transfer Station Lead Generalist II is responsible for overseeing and ensuring safe daily operations and maintenance of the Regional Transfer Station while developing consistent site housekeeping and compliance with all District, local, state, and federal rules, regulations, and laws. Is responsible for the operations of the programs at the regional transfer station. This includes accepting many wastes steams. This position will be able to work and fill in at all positions including HHW. The individual will also serve in a positive public relations role for the District with the public in answering inquiries and providing information, consistent with district policy and state law. The individual will work closely with the Waste Reduction Program Manager to ensure all waste programs are managed properly.

Please download application, full job description, and view our fantastic benefits package at www.rcswd.com. Please send a completed job application to: Mark S. Shea, District Manager2 Greens Hill Lane Rutland, VT 05701 (802) 775-7209 ext. 202 or email: mshea@rswd.com

RCSWD is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

Montpelier, the capital city of Vermont, is seeking a Fire Chief. The current Chief is retiring on 7/1/24 after 13 years as Chief, 5 years as Deputy Chief and 44 total years with the department. This is a Department Head position which answers directly to the City Manager. Combination Fire/EMS/Paramedic department with 17.5 FTE and $2.575 million budget.

The Fire Chief is responsible for all fire suppression and prevention activities within the City and as part of regional mutual aid. Responsible for EMS and Paramedic service in Montpelier and three neighboring towns (by contract). The Department has a record of excellent service and response to the public. Emphasis is placed on fire prevention, education, and training. The Chief may be part of the direct response team on emergency calls from time to time.

The ideal candidate should have demonstrated experience with all aspects of fire suppression including incident command, EMS and Paramedic service delivery -including billing and collections, active fire prevention efforts, supervision in a unionized environment, and other aspects of departmental operation including public engagement, budgeting, purchasing, strategic planning, equipment management, and personnel management.

The successful candidate will have strong communication and public presentation skills, demonstrated ability to track multiple priorities

FIRE CHIEF

(City of Montpelier, Vermont -population 8,000)

and activities, the ability to work with tight budgets for the best public value, and effective leadership skills. The applicant must have an Associate’s Degree (or higher), preferably in Fire Safety or Public Administration. Completion of Executive Fire Officer program at the National Fire Academy is preferred but not required.

Experience as Chief Officer or Deputy Chief Officer, or supervisory position for a comparable department required. Formal education requirements may be waived based on sufficient work experience. Must have or be eligible to obtain valid certifications in firefighting and EMS. Familiarity with building codes/inspections and health requirements a plus since the Chief may play a support role with those functions. Must have, or be able to obtain, a valid State of Vermont Driver's License. The Chief is expected to reside in or near Montpelier.

The City of Montpelier offers a comprehensive benefit package. Compensation is negotiable based on qualifications and experience, current budgeted annual salary is $113,900.

Letters of interest, resume and list of references should be sent to Tanya Chambers, HR Director, 39 Main Street, Montpelier, Vermont 05602, or tchambers@montpelier-vt.org on or before May 3, 2024. The City encourages applications from minority and female candidates.

ATTENTION RECRUITERS:

New GRAD RN program helps ensure success!

Kick-start your nursing career at Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital (NVRH) with our innovative Nurse Residency Program. Designed for passionate new grads, the program offers wrap-a-round support for long-term career excellence. Beginning in summer 2024, full-time positions will be available in departments such as Med Surg, Emergency and more. Applicants need a Vermont or multi-state RN licenses, BLS certification, and to be a graduate of an accredited nursing program. Program pillars include Leadership, Patient Outcomes, and Professional Roles. New grads are provided daily support and collaborative guidance. Join NVRH for competitive compensation, benefits, and a supportive environment where patients, community and employees thrive.

St. Johnsbury, Vermont.

Apply now at www.nvrh.org/careers.

Multiple Positions Open

PCC is hiring for multiple positions, including a Chief Financial Officer, Technical Implementation Specialist, and an experienced Web Developer to join our team.

Check out our careers page at pcc.com/careers for more details regarding each position. We offer unique benefits, including: AAA, cellphone, internet, 401(k), low-cost health insurance premiums, and more.

To apply, please email a cover letter and resume to jobs@pcc.com with the specific job title in the subject line.

WHERE YOU AND YOUR WORK MATTER

When you work for the State of Vermont, you and your work matter. A career with the State puts you on a rich and rewarding professional path. You’ll find jobs in dozens of fields – not to mention an outstanding total compensation package.

GRANTS PROGRAM MANAGER – MONTPELIER

The Vermont Department of Economic Development is seeking a grants program manager who will help us to assist Vermont-based organizations that are recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic and the recent bout of flooding. The successful candidate will manage the day-to-day operational aspects of a number of our existing grant programs, these are expected to include the Capital Investment Program, the Capital Recovery and Revitalization Program, and the Business Emergency Gap Assistance Program. For more information, contact Brett Long at brett. long@vermont.gov. Location: Montpelier. Status: Full Time, Limited Service.

Department: Commerce & Community Development. Job ID #49268.

Application Deadline: April 18, 2024.

PUBLIC HEALTH MARKETING STRATEGIST – WATERBURY

Join the Health Department’s team of public health communicators and help all people and communities in Vermont have a fair and equitable chance to be healthy! We are looking for an experienced marketing strategist to influence marketing and design across all channels. This position will lead marketing strategy, graphic design and brand identity, and will be part of our crisis and emergency risk communication team. For more information, contact Nancy Erickson at nancy.erickson@vermont.gov.

Location: Waterbury. Department: Health. Status: Full Time. Job ID #49802.

Application Deadline: April 16, 2024.

GRANTS MANAGEMENT SPECIALIST – MONTPELIER

The Vermont Department of Economic Development is seeking a Grants Management Specialist to help originate, administer, monitor, and close out awards in a range of our grant programs. The position’s duties are expected to include on-site compliance monitoring and audit management. Day-to-day work will include scheduling and attending virtual and in-person meetings to evaluate grantees’ compliance with federal, state, and local laws and regulations as well as compliance with grant requirements. For more information, contact Brett Long at brett. long@vermont.gov. Location: Montpelier. Status: Full Time, Limited Service. Department: Commerce & Community Development. Job ID #49828.

Application Deadline: April 16, 2024.

Learn more at : careers.vermont.gov

Dental Hygienist

A rare opportunity for a dental hygienist has come available at Associates in Dentistry in Burlington. We offer an outstanding compensation package, a great work environment, fantastic patients and a good work/ life balance. We are a well established and growing office that can be flexible with hours/ schedule for the right person.

Please send resume to  drjoe@kropfdental.com or call 802-863-5552 for more information. 10 Alfred St. near Shelburne Rd./Rte. 7

Community Bankers

BUILDERS | MAKERS | DOERS®

There is no better time to join our Team!

Northfield Savings Bank, founded in 1867, is the largest LOCAL BANK in Vermont. We are committed to providing a welcoming work environment for all. Consider joining our team as a Community Banker at our Marketplace or Richmond location!

Relevant Skills:

• Customer Service, Cash Handling (we’ll train you!)

• Even better… if you have prior banking experience, we encourage you to apply!

• If you are 18 or older and have a high school diploma, general education (GED) degree, or equivalent, consider joining the NSB Team!

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!

Please send an NSB Application & your resume in confidence to: Careers@nsbvt.com

E.O.E. / Member FDIC

Head Cook

Looking for someone with a passion for craft beer and great food to join our team at Good Water Brewery in Williston.

By bringing your culinary skills, creativity and experience working as a chef or line cook, a positive attitude, and a Team First approach, you could fit into the great dynamic we have here at Good Water Brewery.

Utilize your ideas and personal flare to compliment the wide variety of outstanding house made beers people have come to expect in our establishment. Apply at: marty@goodwaterbreweryvt.com

Independent, Nonprofit Community News for Central Vermont

Digital Ad Sales Rep.

√

Earn money part-time and help support local journalism

Set your own hours and work from where you like. The right candidate will be sales oriented, self-motivated and digitally savvy—ideally comfortable with Google Ad Manager, WordPress, and Google Suite.

Contracted position with base pay plus commission and room for future growth. Details at: montpelierbridge. org/job-opportunities

Director of Program & Fund Development for International NGO

PH International (Project Harmony, Inc.) is an international non-profit with 40 years of experience focusing on civic engagement, cross cultural learning, and increased opportunities in the digital age. The U.S. headquarters is located in Waitsfield, VT with field offices in Armenia, Republic of Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine with projects implemented in additional countries.

PH International is seeking a full-time Director of Program and Fund Development based in the Vermont office. This is a senior management position leading the design and development of new programs and the funding and proposals that support them. The DPFD will be a dynamic and creative individual with excellent technical writing and communication skills. A solid understanding of program development, implementation, and cross-cultural considerations is essential. Experience with USG funding, compliance, OMB requirements, and budget development are required. Working in a fast-paced, deadline-oriented environment, the DPFD will have opportunities to lead and learn about new technologies and best practices at the cutting edge of citizen engagement, exchange programming, civic education, youthoriented programs, cross-border initiatives, legal education, and educational reform.

For job description and to apply: ph-int.org/vacancies. Application deadline: April 24, 2024.

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ARIES

(MAR. 21-APR. 19)

Now is a favorable time to make initial inquiries, ask for free samples and enjoy window-shopping. But it’s not an opportune time to seal final decisions or sign binding contracts. Have fun haggling and exploring, even as you avoid making permanent promises. Follow the inklings of your heart more than the speculations of your head, but refrain from pledging your heart until lots of evidence is available. You are in a prime position to attract and consider an array of possibilities, and for best results you should remain noncommittal for the foreseeable future.

TAURUS (Apr. 20-May 20): Author Betty Bender said, “Anything I’ve ever done that ultimately was worthwhile initially scared me to death.” Painter Georgia O’Keeffe confessed she always harbored chronic anxiety — yet that never stopped her from doing what she loved. Philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Anyone who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.” I hope these testimonials inspire you to bolster your grit, Taurus. In the coming days, you may not have any more or less fear than usual. But you will be able to summon extra courage and willpower as you render the fear at least semi-irrelevant.

GEMINI (May 21-Jun. 20): Richard the Lionheart (1157-1199) was a medieval king of England. How did he get his nickname? Scholars say it was because of his skill as a military leader. But legend tells an additional story. As a young man, Richard was imprisoned by an enemy who arranged for a hungry lion to be brought into his cell. As the beast opened its maw to maul the future king, Richard thrust his arm down its throat and tore out its heart, killing it. What does this tale have to do with you, Gemini? I predict you will soon encounter a test that’s less extreme than Richard’s but equally solvable by bursts of creative ingenuity. Though there will be no physical danger, you will be wise to call on similar boldness. Drawing on the element of surprise may also serve you well.

CANCER (Jun. 21-Jul. 22): Will the adventures heading your way be unusual, amusing and even unprecedented? I bet they will have at least some of those elements. You could encounter plot twists you’ve never witnessed or imagined. You may be inspired to dream up creative adjustments unlike any you’ve tried. These would be very positive developments. They suggest you’re becoming more comfortable with expressing your authentic self and less susceptible to the influence of people’s expectations. Every one of us is a unique genius in some ways, and you’re getting closer to inhabiting the fullness of yours.

LEO (Jul. 23-Aug. 22): At least for now, help may not be available from the usual sources. Is the doctor sick? Does Mommy need mothering? Is the therapist feeling depressed? My advice is not to worry about the deficiencies but rather shift your attention to skillful surrogates and substitutes. They may give you what you need — and even more. I’m reminded of The Crystal Cave, a novel about the Arthurian legend. The king, Ambrosius Aurelianus, advises the magician Merlin, “Take power where it is offered.” In other words: not where you think or wish power would be but from sources that are unexpected or outside your customary parameters.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sep. 22): The rest of the story is not yet ready to emerge, but it will be

soon. Be patient just a while longer. When full disclosure arrives, you will no longer have to guess about hidden agendas and simmering subtexts. Adventures in the underworld will move aboveground. Missing links will finally appear, and perplexing ambiguities will be clarified. Here’s how you can expedite these developments: Make sure you are thoroughly receptive to knowing the rest of the story. Assert your strong desire to dissolve ignorance.

LIBRA (Sep. 23-Oct. 22): In the coming weeks, you can ask for and receive more blessings than usual. So please be aggressive and imaginative about asking! Here are suggestions about what gifts to seek out: 1) vigorous support as you transform two oppositional forces into complementary influences; 2) extra money, time and spaciousness as you convert a drawback into an asset; 3) kindness and understanding as you ripen an unripe aspect of yourself; 4) inspiration and advice as you make new connections that will serve your future goals.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Read the two help-wanted ads below. Meditate on which appeals to you more, and treat this choice as a metaphor for a personal decision you face. 1) “Pedestrian, predictable organization seeks humdrum people with low-grade ambitions for tasks that perform marginally useful services. Interested in exploring mild passions and learning more about the art of spiritual bypassing?” 2) “Our high-octane conclave values the arts of playing while you work and working while you play. Are you ready and able to provide your creative input? Are you interested in exploring the privilege and responsibility of forever reinventing yourself? We love restless seekers who are never bored.”

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): What is a gourmet bargain? What is a discount marvel? How about an inspiring breakthrough that incurs no debt? Themes like those are weaving their way into your destiny. So be alert for the likelihood that cheap thrills will be superior to the expensive kind. Search for elegance and beauty in earthy locations that aren’t sleek and polished. Be receptive to the possibility that splendor and awe may be

available to you at a low cost. Now may be one of those rare times when imperfect things are more sublime than the so-called perfect stuff.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): “There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in,” wrote novelist Graham Greene. For me, it was three days near the end of third grade when I wrote a fairy tale about the unruly adventures of a fictional kid named Polly. Her wildness was infused with kindness. Her rebellions were assertive but friendly. For the first time, as I told Polly’s story, I realized I wanted to be an unconventional writer when I grew up. What about you, Capricorn? When you were young, was there a comparable opening to your future? If so, now is a good phase to revisit it, commune with your memories of it and invite it to inspire the next stage of its evolution in you.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Even when you are your regular, ordinary self, you have a knack and fondness for irregularity and originality. And these days, your affinity for what’s unprecedented and uncommon is even higher than usual. I am happy about that. I am cheering you on. So please enjoy yourself profoundly as you experiment with nonstandard approaches. Be as idiosyncratic as you dare! Even downright weird! But also try to avoid direct conflicts with the Guardians of How Things Have Always Been Done. Don’t allow Change Haters to interfere with your fun or obstruct the enhancements you want to instigate. Be a slippery innovator. Be an irrepressible instigator.

PISCES (Feb. 19-Mar. 20): Below are truths I hope you will ripen and deepen in the coming months. 1) Negative feelings are not necessarily truer and more profound than positive ones. 2) Cynical opinions are not automatically more intelligent or well-founded than optimistic opinions. 3) Criticizing and berating yourself is not a more robust sign of selfawareness than praising and appreciating yourself. 4) Any paranoia you feel may be a stunted emotion resulting from psychic skills you have neglected to develop. 5) Agitation and anxiety can almost always be converted into creative energy.

WOMEN seeking...

GENUINELY HAPPY, SEEKING SAME

Easygoing, life-loving sixtysomething in search of a man comfortable in his own skin who loves deep conversations. All the usuals apply: Must love dogs. It’s the way to my heart, for sure. Must also love the outdoors and not in a fanatic way. Enjoy being in nature. And finally, for now anyway, must love a good belly laugh. Joyful 64 seeking: M, l

GENUINE, THOUGHTFUL, PASSIONATE

Solo tiny-farming in the hills is sublime, but this unscripted homesteading comedy could use more characters: a partner in permaculture, a paddling companion, cross-country/backcountry ski buddy, Scrabble challenger. Some other favored pastimes: sailing, reading, Champlain Islands camping in fall, vegetarian cookery, making you laugh. Life is good. Just missing someone special to share the journey. nordicbette242, 53, seeking: M, l

CUTE OLD CHICK!

I am compassionate, still a thrill seeker (I just zip-lined in Costa Rica), curious about the world and using the Google machine to search for answers. My bucket list is long. Get your passport out and let’s go! 70 years young, originally from Vermont, retired, enjoy long walks, gardening, biking, anything on water, eating sushi. ExoldVermonter 70 seeking: M, l

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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

LIVING THE NEXT CHAPTER

Hello. I am looking for someone to spend this next chapter of life with. I enjoy taking walks, going for rides on the back roads with no destination in mind. I love the ocean. It’s my happy place. I enjoy going out for a meal now and then but am just as content to stay in. My grandchildren are my joy. Ajb 60, seeking: M, l

CARING, STRONG, NEVER LATE

Hello. I first want to start with that I am a breast cancer survivor. Absolutely nobody in this world is perfect. I have been through many different things, which has made me to be a very strong woman. If you cannot handle someone who is strong and independent, I am not the person for you. I speak my mind. Msviclynn, 62, seeking: M, l

A FRESH START

I’m smart, work hard and want someone who can help me play hard. I’m not looking to meet “soon,” nor do I want an instant relationship (I just got out of one), but I am open to it if the right person comes along. I feel like I just woke up from a long nap — entertain me! Freshstart, 57, seeking: M, l

CREATIVE WOMAN

SEEKS LIBERATED MALE

I want a guy who was raised by a liberated mother. I am creative, witty, talented, graceful and devilish. Someone once said I think out of both sides of my brain — organized and artistic. I once auditioned for and was selected to sing backup for the Shirelles. People think I’m fun to be with. Maybe you will, too. San2Lus, 74 seeking: M, l

HARDWORKING, INDEPENDENT TEACHER, GARDENER

Recently divorced after 25 years. Looking to rediscover fun! I am a hardworking, independent and very active person. Big gardener. Like to be outside, hanging with friends and family. Enjoy going out for dinner/ drinks/dancing or hanging out at home. Pretty easygoing. La, 54, seeking: M, l

BIODYNAMIC, SAGACIOUS ARTIST

Desire meaningful conversation, companionship, laughter and love. I am family- and community-minded with philanthropic tendencies; broadly studied in history, art, science and spirituality; well traveled and influenced by world cultures. I lead a conscientious, healthy lifestyle and keep a clean home, hands and heart. Retired, actively pursuing my passions and enjoying my grandchildren. Are you similarly inclined? Eruditee, 60, seeking: M, l

INTROVERTED EXTROVERT TO DANCE

Are you a grown-up and still curious, playful, inquisitive, ever learning? I thrive outdoors in every season and relish reflective company, solitude and togetherness, sharing ideas and inspiration, and desires to love in a way that we feel free. I see that many of us here wonder how to describe themselves. Aren’t we all more than we can say? esmeflying 60 seeking: M, l

NATURE GIRL

New to the area and looking for friends and dates for the first time in my life. I feel weird even doing this (does everyone say that?). I’m in my 50s but slim and fit and honestly look younger than I am. Prefer slim, tall men but honestly don’t care much as long as you’re open-minded, fun and a good conversationalist.

Highmeadows 58, seeking: M, W, NC

SMART, SELF-AWARE, KIND SEEKS SAME

Smart, self-aware and kind seeking same. AnneShirley, 47, seeking: M

HONEST, EASYGOING, STRAIGHTFORWARD

Vermonter retired from dairy farming, looking for a friend to share lunch, to get to know each other — what likes and dislikes we have in common, and what type of relationship we are looking for together. retired70, 76 seeking: M

THIS COULD BE GREAT, RIGHT?

Calm, peaceful woman hoping to connect with a kind, smart, liberal, dog-loving guy. I work in a medical practice and also have a small business and live in northern New York. I am a widow but so ready for a great second chapter!

Julie2085, 66 seeking: M, l

NO-DRAMA RIVER LOVER

Seeking conversations, hikes and walks, sharing a meal. Compatibility with where we each are in life. Hanging out with friends, watching a movie, just talking. Love learning about science, metaphysics, new music but also appreciate dad jokes to send to my grandkids, watching podcasts and reading mystery books. greentara 65, seeking: M, l

LOYAL, DEPENDABLE, DIFFERENT, LOVING

I am a mature, single woman of color who is open-minded, real and comfortable in my uniqueness. I am looking for white mature man for companionship and friendship. I value peace, joy and am not interested in any drama. Mami8, 40, seeking: M

MEN seeking...

SINGLE CAT OWNER

Longing for someone to spend time with, eating amazing lunches or dinners and maybe having long car or camping trips. melvin4503, 72, seeking: W, l

KARAOKE SINGER

Single, new in Vermont. Seem female. Enjoy karaoke, comedy, poetry. 30 to young 60 y/o, please reply. Albert1 70, seeking: W, l

NATIVE VERMONTER LOOKING FOR FUN

I’m 48, 250 pounds, working on it. Just a laid-back Vermonter looking for fun. I am in a complicated relationship, but I will send a picture if you would like — just ask. I’m fun, adventurous and enjoy nature. I’ve been told that I’m kind and friendly, but that is subjective and something you would have to determine for yourself. jjay1120 48, seeking: W

PASSIONATE YET KINKY 61-y/o male who wants to meet someone to become FWB who is open-minded, not afraid of trying new things sexually. I am looking for a trans woman, female or trans male. Looking4sez 61, seeking: W, TM, TW

OLD-SCHOOL, EDUCATED LIBERAL Friendly, engaging, talkative. I love real people. I tend to care for people, do things for them, hoping for a slice of shared love and enjoyment of life. Environmentalism is awesome, but humans are part of the environment, so it is not a choice or a movement; it is a requirement. I always deeply enjoy a meaningful hug and smile. BiggerBrother 70, seeking: M, l

STONER DEADHEAD LIVING HIS LIFE

Been on this mountain for 25 years. Empathetic, compassionate, generous egoist. Creative tool-using lover of science, magic and humanity. Maker of music, pizza, tie-dyes and other creative oddities. Seeking a fun distraction. A muse. Growth. A dinner companion. A break from solitude. If magic happens, I am not likely to run away. MountainAnarchist 58, seeking: W, l

FIT, EMOTIONALLY AVAILABLE, DEEP CONVERSATIONALIST

Seeking an intellectually aware woman with a tender heart who enjoys both serious and goofy conversations and who values emotional and physical intimacy in a LTR with a man who has far less body hair than many on the dating sites! I’m a light hiker, travel, enjoy going out, do light yoga and pickleball. Into personal growth and moderate outdoor activities. SometimesPoetVT 56, seeking: W, l

CHARMING AND HUMBLE

I am an open-minded man. I think it is important to practice loving kindness and authenticity in relationships. I enjoy watching comedies, documentaries, true crime and music videos. I am a funny guy. Almost as funny as Brad Pitt. I am looking for a compatible woman. Are you (dear reader) compatible? sunshinelollipopsandrainbows 54, seeking: W

SHY, GENTLE, HONEST, CAUTIOUS

I am a single male, 40 y/o, and I live in Springfield. Looking for a long-term relationship with the potential of marriage. Moonbeam32, 40, seeking: W, l

FINDING PEACE IN VERMONT

Oh, boy. I love summer. March to the end of November I find the most appealing, though hiking and hockey do help me cope with winter. But there is nothing better than a meal off the grill, IMHO. I am not a fan of TV. I like to be busy. We live but once. So let’s live! Exploring_Vermont 60 seeking: W, l

LIFE IS POETRY

I like to believe my heart is in the right place. I work on being aware and open-minded, considerate and a good listener. I’m artsy and eclectic. Music, art and literature are the simple things that make me happy. I’m looking for someone to share life with and write our own poetry. Someone who is kind and self-aware. DogberryTouchstone 60, seeking: W, l

LOVING, LOYAL, CARING

I’m a kind, loving, caring, honest man who will open a door for you in public and spank you in private. I like physical touch, holding hands, walking arm in arm, hand on your thigh, snuggling, caressing and kissing. For now, I’m looking for a woman who would like to have casual sex with the possibility of a growing relationship. Ahhmtns, 61 seeking: W, Cp, l

HELLO, BEAUTIFUL

If you are looking for perfect, well, sorry to say, but that isn’t me. If you want someone who is loving, caring, happy, funny, down-to-earth, fun-loving, who will adore you and cherish you, is openminded, loyal, trustworthy, that would be me! nhpoohdot 55, seeking: W, l

HELLO FROM SOUTH BURLINGTON

I am a human services worker and a college graduate. Have traveled to 47 states. I am definitely an outdoors person and also like to attend a wide variety of events. I recently ended a 23-year relationship and am ready to move on. Looking for a sincere woman, preferably in Chittenden County, for dating and a long-term relationship. kevinvermont 63, seeking: W, l

TRANS WOMEN seeking...

RECENTLY RELOCATED, ADVENTUROUS, FREE SPIRIT

I’m a gorgeous, white, 100 percent passable trans lady who is 57 and could pass as 30 — yes, 30! I long for love, laughter and romance, along with loving nature. I want a man who’s all man, rugged, handsome, well built but prefers a woman like myself. It’s as simple as that. We meet, fall in love and live happily ever after. Sammijo 58, seeking: M, l

FABULOUSLY FUTCH

Tall, smart trans woman looking for my people. I live in Middlebury. Any background in punk or politics is a plus — let’s make some noise! sashamarx, 54 seeking: M, W, TM, TW, Q, NC, NBP, Cp, l

GENDERQUEER PEOPLE seeking...

BABY BUTCH SEEKS GUIDANCE

(Not sexual or romantic.) If you’re queer, an activist or anything of the like, I would love to connect! I’m a genderweird (truly) babydyke butch, and I desperately want to learn from older queers. As much research as I’ve done on gay history, I always want to learn more and connect. If there are any other butches out there, please reach out! antweed 18, seeking: TM, TW, Q, NC, NBP, l

LET ME WRITE YOUR STORY

Truly just here to explore everyone else. Dating weirds me out, and sex is so intimidating, so just let me be your friend. I promise I’m actually kinda cool. orion_nebula, 28, seeking: M, W, TM, TW, Q, NC, NBP, l

COUPLES seeking...

LOOKING FOR FUN PEEPS

Fun, open-minded couple seeking playmates. Shoot us a note if interested so we can share details and desires. Jackrabbits, 60, seeking: W, Cp

FUN COUPLE LOOKING FOR EXPLORATION

We are a secure couple who enjoy the outdoors, good wine, great food, playing with each other, exploring our boundaries and trying new things. We are 47 and 50, looking for a fun couple or bi man to play and explore with us. We are easygoing, and we’d love to meet you and see where our mutual adventures take us. vthappycouple 50, seeking: M, Cp, Gp

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, 43 seeking: M, W, Q, Cp

If you’ve been spied, go online to contact your admirer!

dating.sevendaysvt.com

FATHER AND DAUGHTER AT AL’S

You were tall and potentially handsome (too far away to tell) standing outside, in line for a creemee. For some reason, you were facing the road. I was headed home on a bus and wearing a navy bandanna. We glanced at each other before the light changed. I wonder what was on your mind. Hope you enjoyed your day together. When: Friday, April 5, 2024. Where: outside Al’s, the weekend of the eclipse. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915980

MILTON HANNAFORD CHECKOUT LINE

We were standing next to each other in different lanes. I made a comment that it was as busy as I had ever seen it, and you said it must be the solar eclipse. You got through your lane a cart ahead of mine. If you see this message, I would like to get together sometime and chat some more. When: Saturday, April 6, 2024. Where: Milton Hannaford checkout line. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915979

ARE YOU THE QUEUE?

You laughed. You liked the word “queue,” found it quaint. Asked me, “Do you come here often?” You kept brushing your hands all over me! Long-bearded man, rough-handed construction man. Foxy Market was so busy that night. We had to fly, my friend and I, to Barre. You have my number? ose breeze-block dogs, give me a call! When: Friday, April 5, 2024. Where: East Montpelier. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915978

YOU SANG ‘COME OUT TO PLAY’

How did you know my true wild name? Clever, bravo! You see my beauty! I’ll play on this brand-new day. e sun is up, with an eclipse. Time to make a move. I’m wearing that daisy chain, eyes wide open. Looking up, as the light goes to dark. Sing to me. I want to hear your heart’s desire sung. When: ursday, April 4, 2024. Where: central Vermont. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915977

GOOD MEASURE CONNECTION

You came to my show. We made lots of eye contact throughout and chatted afterward. I loved your dance moves and long hair. You were tall, named Austin and originally from the Carolinas. You commented on my eye shadow and left before I could ask for your number. Let’s go dancing together sometime? When: Saturday, April 6, 2024. Where: Good Measure Brewery.

You: Man. Me: Woman. #915976

HEALTHY LIVING BARISTA

You served me a latte with almond milk. You: beautiful smile, jeans and black top. Would love to chat. Sigh. When: Saturday, April 6, 2024. Where: Healthy Living, Williston. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915975

FOUR OF MY FAVORITE KIDS

About 20 years ago, I had the honor and privilege of loving and caring for four wonderful children. I left my whole heart with them when that job ended. I’ve missed them every day since. I love you, Anthony, Rowie, Xanny and Princess Liah. If you ever need anything, I’ll help you in whatever ways I am able. Love, Seerah. When: ursday, August 1, 2019. Where: Cabot Ct., Burlington (many years ago). You: Group. Me: Woman. #915974

KEVIN FROM 20 YEARS AGO

Kev, thank you for “ e Office.” It’s brilliant and amazing. I was way too burdened by life to realize exactly what you had done for me. A few years ago, the dust settled and it became clear. at show will always belong to us. One day I hope we get credit for it. Take good care of yourself. Sarah. When: ursday, August 1, 2019. Where: Cabot Ct., Burlington (many years ago). You: Man. Me: Woman. #915973

REVEREND Ask

De Rev end,

My sister, who is in her thirties, always wanted this particular American Girl doll when she was a kid. She never got it back then, so my mom and I bought one for her as a gift last Christmas. She has become obsessed with collecting the clothes and accessories for it. She’s already spent $50 this month. How do I get her to rein it in?

Dolly P don (WOMAN, 37)

LOVELY CUSTOMER AT DELI

You were waiting for your sandwich beside the table where I was eating, and you left an impression on me. You were wearing a long, dark green coat, a light olive-green dress and dark stockings. You had a winter hat on with a pom-pom on top. I think I overheard the deli staff call you “Caroline.” I’d love a chance to introduce myself over a cup of coffee. When: Wednesday, April 3, 2024. Where: Top of the Block Sandwich Shop. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915972

HANDSOME HANDYMAN

I spy a tall, dark-haired hunk often fixing up the house next door. Wondering if you wanted to grab a Caprese sandwich at City Market sometime soon? When: Tuesday, March 12, 2024. Where: N. Prospect St., Burlington. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915971

SNACKY CLUSTERS

GOT YOUR ATTENTION?

Handsome guy. Your gorgeous eyes definitely got my attention. I’d really like to know if there’s a chance I could meet you for dinner, lunch, breakfast, bag your groceries, carry your bags to the car? Don’t be shy; your eyes weren’t. When: Monday, March 25, 2024. Where: Trader Joe’s. You: Man. Me: Man. #915970

EVERYTHING SHE DOES IS MAGIC

Were you singing to me? You were fingering those bass strings expertly at open mic night. I raised my glass in your honor, a salute to your bravery. Later you were standing beside me, waiting to seal your instrument back into its large case! You radiated heat, a tantalizing “come hither” vibration. You could ask for my number. Why not? When: ursday, March 21, 2024. Where: the Whammy Bar. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915969

WILD SATURDAY NIGHT, ESSEX HANNAFORD

6:45 p.m. You: orange jacket, brown hair, shopping with a single grocery bag, sporting the only mustache I’ve ever found attractive in my life. Me: purple jacket, messy ponytail, shopping with my mom. We made eye contact in the produce section, and I smiled at you by the Mexican food. You looked like a deer in headlights. When: Saturday, March 9, 2024. Where: Hannaford, Essex. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915965

Dolly P don,

FULL MOON, SPICY MERMAID

I see your soul under the full moon. It peers into mine when you look into my eyes. Our beings intertwined in such a beautiful way. e way life flickers against our beings like flames from a fire. We have traveled across time and space to be where we are together. You are loved unconditionally, beautiful woman! Many adventures ahead. When: Friday, March 22, 2024. Where: Calais. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915968

TRUE NORTH

I spy, out of the corner of my eye, someone driving by. It feels like we’re strangers passing like ships in the night. I give way when all I want is to be overtaken. When: Saturday, March 16, 2024. Where: central Vermont. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915967

UPSTAIRS NEIGHBOR

To the petite college girl who lives above me: I wouldn’t mind if you wanted to come downstairs to say hi. I’m sure we’d click. If things get heated, we can call the fire department and they’ll be here in seconds flat. When: Sunday, March 17, 2024. Where: Burlington. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915966

RICHMOND, SATURDAY MORNING, JOGGING HELLO

Just before 11 a.m. Me: M, tall, graying hair, glasses. You: F, petite, black hair in a bun, jogging up Bridge Street as I walked from home to the post office. en you turned left by the dentist. We’ve waved hello before as you’ve jogged by. Wondering if you’d like to talk sometime over coffee/ tea/whatever? When: Saturday, March 9, 2024. Where: Richmond village. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915964

NEWSBOY CAP CUTIE!

I first saw you in line at Trials of Cato and Talisk. Was a bop, eh? You looked at me several times and had the cutest cap. Just wanted to inform you that you look like some 1920s dreamboat. Sigh! When: Saturday, January 27, 2024. Where: Higher Ground. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915961

VIOLET VEST VOTER

I was waiting in line to vote, you were on your way out, and our eyes locked for much more than a mere moment. Buy a lady lunch at Leunig’s? When: Tuesday, March 5, 2024. Where: Ward 3 polls.

You: Man. Me: Trans woman. #915963

THREE IS BETTER THAN TWO

e secretary of state’s website says only three people in the entire state voted “Ceasefire” in the primary. Just so happens I’m one and I work with the second person. Who’s our third? Kind and curious to meet a like-minded voter! Free Palestine! When: Tuesday, March 5, 2024. Where: somewhere in a Green Mountain State polling center. You: Group. Me: Woman. #915962

RE: LOOKING FOR A COMPANION

at’s what I’m talking about! Glad you found someone who respects you. Dating is hard. As the folks from America said, “Don’t give up until you drink from the silver cup.” When: Saturday, March 2, 2024. Where: Seven Days I Spy. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915960

LOVE YOU

I feel like I’m getting onto a boat for a long journey, but all I want is to go back to the shore to live with you. I believe firmly that my heart, mind and soul always were and still are with you. When: ursday, February 29, 2024. Where: life. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915958

PAULA ON MATCH

Seen your ad on Match. St. Albans, early 60s, woman. Like your photo, nicelooking gal. Wanted to write and say hi, but your ad was gone. Miss seeing you. Looking for long-term friendship. Are you coming back to Match? We could chat or have a date. I sent you a like. Your secret admirer. When: ursday, January 25, 2024. Where: Match.com. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915957

CONDUCTOR BUMBLE

Hi, Conductor Bumble! anks for a nice ride to NYC — or maybe you got off in Albany with the “crew changes.” Your smile and overall pleasant demeanor made the trip more delightful. Just stay out of the maple-flavored “goodies.”

When: Saturday, February 24, 2024.

Where: Amtrak, Ethan Allen Line.

You: Man. Me: Woman. #915956

SAW YOU AT TRADER JOE’S

We crossed paths by the vegetables, where we made eye contact. You had glasses, as did I, and you were wearing a black coat. I was in blue. Instead of approaching you, I froze after the smile exchange. Would love to meet again. When: Friday, February 23, 2024. Where: Trader Joe’s. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915955

I wasn’t very aware of the American Girl doll phenomenon, so thanks for sending me down that rabbit hole (@hellicity_merriman on Instagram can really suck you in, by the by).

For people like me who missed the craze, here’s a brief recap: American Girl dolls have been around since 1986 and, according to Wikipedia, “portray eight- to fourteen-year-old girls of various ethnicities, faiths, nationalities, and social classes throughout different time periods throughout history.”

e dolls are still made today, and they come with, among other things,

a name and a book about their backstory. ey were extremely popular in the mid- to early 2000s (for oldsters like me, think Cabbage Patch Kids), so it’s no wonder your sister caught the fever. Since she never had a doll when she was young, it sounds like she’s now living out a childhood dream.

ere are millions of people who collect toys from their younger years: Star Wars figurines, Transformers, Hot Wheels cars, My Little Pony, Smurfs — the list goes on. Some see these collections as an investment, but they’re also a reminder of a simpler time. Nostalgic items can really be a comfort in a crazy world.

If your sister were buying doll clothes rather than paying her utility bills, that would certainly be cause for alarm. As long as she can afford to spend a little extra money on this newfound pastime, what’s the harm?

Good luck and God bless, The Rev end

What’s your problem? Send it to asktherev@sevendaysvt.com.

Woman, 63. NEK, single, work full time. Healthy, adventurous, curious, kind. Seek male friend to hang out with, explore, share conversation, meals. Not into divisive politics. Definitely into nature/our beautiful surroundings. If romance happens, that would be wonderful. #L1744

70, young-looking, good shape. Enjoy karaoke, singing, comedy. Seek female, 45 to young 70s. I am 5’9, hazel eyes, 163 pounds, black hair. #L1743

Fun, adventurous GM, early 60s, looking for a buddy to please. Would like it to be on a regular basis. Call/text. #L1736

I’m a 73-y/o male desiring a woman in her 70s or 80s to experience together the joys of a sensuous relationship. Phone number, please. #L1741

I’m a SWM seeking a bi male and bi female for fun times. Clean, nonsmoking, drink ok. Any age, race. Nudist, movies, porn. Send phone number. #L1739

NEK prince, 74, seeks princess. I’m very attentive, sweet and good-looking, seeking the same in a woman, 60 to 74. Writer a plus. Don’t need a maid; want a partner to love and be loved by. Nice home on romantic property. No Trumpers. #L1737

I’m a SWM, early 60s, island dweller seeking a SF. Do you like shots of tequila and getting caught in the rain? Do you like walks in the islands and the taste of Champagne? Do you like making love at midnight in a sweet summer sweat? Do you like any of these items? Come with me and escape. Active. Athletic. Adventurous. #L1742

Very active, elderly gent who lives alone seeks a lady with similar interests to share his lovely home. Splendid views, huge deck, paved highway, free TV and Wi-Fi. I enjoy four-wheeling, snowmobiling, antiques, classic cars, parades, long rides, eating out often, plants, flowers and community involvement. Seeking a woman who enjoys the same. #L1738

Not a romantic/sexual request! Young, handsome woman seeking butch mentor (25 to 45) for guidance in self-expression, strength and intersocietal relations. #L1735

I’m a 67-y/o woman seeking a 55- to 76-y/o man. I am looking for a man to enjoy inside and outside — one who finds time to be a companion, is not a couch potato, and enjoys the outdoors, traveling, golf, fishing, etc. Leave your cell number. #L1733

I am a 25-y/o male forager, tinkerer and dumpster diver seeking like-minded empathetic woman of a similar age. #L1729

I’m a woman, 80 y/o, seeking a man, 70 to 80 y/o. I want friendship as well as a companion. Also like the outdoors in the summer. Swimming, boating and just reading at home. Like going out to eat once in a while. #L1734

Let’s do some things — coffee at Black Cap Coffee, dinner, the Green Mountain Film Festival, music at Hugo’s or Bent Nails Bistro. Woman, early 70s, seeking man of similar age to explore common interests. #L1732

I’m a 62-y/o female who wants a male companion to have fun with, maybe go for some drinks or smoke a bowl. Young in spirit, but I’m not into the romantic part of relationships anymore. Simply looking for a goofy friend to take me out on the town. #L1730

56-y/o single, sincere gentleman looking for one female partner for fun/experiences in St. J. Healthy, fit, humorous, not bad looking. Honest, tolerant, respectful. Open mind/heart. Just a tad lonely, and that is a good thing for us. #L1727

Kind, loving and sincere 72y/o woman looking for a male companion/friend to spend time with and get to know. #L1726

I’m a lifelong good-looking senior Vermonter. BA at Saint Michael’s College. Had a 750 Honda for 10 years to explore Arizona and Vermont. Live with my cat. Regular gardening indoor and out. Seeking a companion who is caring and honest for love and sexual experiences. #L1725

I’m a man, 34, seeking a woman, 20s to 30s. Make something out of me. I am full of potential. I work and was born in Vermont. Looking for a partner in life. #L1724

I’m 47, seeking a male. I’m 5’6, 206 pounds, looking for someone to marry me and who is very wealthy. Please respond. #L1728

I am a 25-y/o female looking for a sugar-daddy male (50 to 70). Not for a sexual relationship; more of a companionship. #L1723