V ER MON T’S INDE P ENDE NT V O IC E JUNE 10-17, 2020 VOL.25 NO.37 SEVENDAYSVT.COM
How Can We Help You? During the pandemic, Vermont’s mutual aid groups lend a hand
JUNE 2020
VOL.27 NO.5
ling RolTO IN Summer HOMEMADE POPSICLES
FAMILY-STYLE PICNICS
HAMMOCK READS
SLOWING THE SUMMER SLIDE
EXPANDED “JUST FOR KIDS” SECTION BROUGHT TO YOU BY
BY C H E L S E A E D GA R PAGE 3 6
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June issue inside!
NO CANADA
PAGE 12
Closed border opens issues
NEW! VERMONTING
PAGE 32
An in-state travelogue series
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WEEK IN REVIEW JUNE 3-10, 2020 FILE: JAMES BUCK
COMPILED BY GILLIAN ENGLISH, SASHA GOLDSTEIN & MATTHEW ROY
Demonstrators in Burlington
emoji that
More than 250 people Zoomed into the Burlington Board of Finance meeting Monday night to demand that the city remove police officers from schools and cut the force’s ranks by nearly a third. The public comments lasted nearly six hours. “Our people have been struggling to be heard for hundreds of years, and tonight we’re going to take our goddamn time,” said Emiliano Void, who introduced himself as a black Burlington resident whose great-grandparents were slaves. “Please help us,” he said. The board, which is composed of Mayor Miro Weinberger and four city councilors, is considering next year’s budget. One after another, the activists stated their case. “The times are changing, and these demands will not go away; they will only get louder,” Holly Greenleaf said. “If you truly want to be leaders in this, we need to act now.” Most speakers quoted a list of demands published by the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance, a group led by people of color that advocates for policies to dismantle systemic racism. The group is also asking that the department fire three officers involved in violent encounters. The proposed budget for fiscal year 2021 includes $17.4 million for police — 22 percent of the general fund. “Those dollars compound and disproportionately exacerbate the violence, generational poverty and suffering
802nice
TARGET ACQUIRED
Burlington International Airport is asking the feds to fund an F-35 soundmonitoring system in surrounding cities. We hear that.
JOB CREATION
Gov. Phil Scott appointed interim Department of Labor leader Michael Harrington to serve as its commissioner. He’s got his work cut out for him.
YAWNING PIT
Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger set a July 30 deadline for the CityPlace Burlington owners to renegotiate a development agreement with the city. Wait for it…
TOPFIVE
MOST POPULAR ITEMS ON SEVENDAYSVT.COM
1. “New Burlington Police Commission Chair Warns of ‘Uncomfortable Conversations’ Ahead” by Derek Brouwer. Members of the commission chose Jabulani Gamache last week as the citizen board’s next chair. 2. “It’s in the Building: How COVID-19 Overwhelmed a Burlington Nursing Home” by Derek Brouwer & Colin Flanders. Seven Days interviewed dozens of people in order to detail the state’s largest coronavirus outbreak. 3. “Winooski Coronavirus Outbreak Widens With 34 New Cases” by Derek Brouwer. The recent cluster of cases in Winooski showed signs of a larger outbreak last Thursday. 4. “Vermont Loosens Restrictions for Restaurants, Tourists” by Kevin McCallum. Gov. Phil Scott eased restrictions on dining and tourism in Vermont. 5. “Sixty-Two Chittenden County COVID Cases Linked to Winooski Outbreak” by Paul Heintz. Health Commissioner Mark Levine said the latest case count included 48 Winooski residents, nine Burlingtonians and five other Chittenden County residents.
tweet of the week
Emily Ballou @_emilyballou At least 1,000 people in attendance on the Green in South Royalton, VT today for the Rally to End the Violence. #BlackLivesMatter
FOLLOW US ON TWITTER @SEVENDAYSVT OUR TWEEPLE: SEVENDAYSVT.COM/TWITTER
WHAT’S KIND IN VERMONT
TIDY TOMBSTONES
COURTESY OF JASON STUFFLE
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OUT?
of our citizens,” Catarina Campbell said. “Imagine what becomes possible with your vote to reallocate these funds and empower their efficacy in our communities.” The concept has picked up steam across the nation, including in Minneapolis, where George Floyd, a black man, died after a white cop knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes. Former sergeant Derek Chauvin has been charged with murder. Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George has spoken out about police reform. “Dont [sic] get outraged by the call to ‘defund police’ if you sat by & said nothing when decisions were made to defund education, mental health services, substance use services, healthcare, and affordable housing,” George tweeted on Monday. “Sufficiently funding all of the latter = defunding police.” Last week, interim Burlington Police Chief Jennifer Morrison said the department was already facing a 3 percent budget cut and warned that further staffing reductions could put Burlingtonians in danger. Monday night, the city’s police union issued a statement on Twitter that labeled the calls for cuts “radical and dangerous.” The board, which did not take any action, will meet again Wednesday, June 10. Read reporter Courtney Lamdin’s full story and watch the meeting at sevendaysvt.com.
That’s the Vermont State Police budget. The department hasn’t given all troopers bodycams because, it told VPR, it lacks funds to store images.
MISSING LINK
The bike ferry won’t reopen until September because of pandemicrelated Colchester Causeway construction delays. Deflating.
COPS
$74 million
A cleaned headstone dating back to 1800
A group of volunteers is cleaning up a Burlington cemetery to benefit the living. Jason Stuffle heads up the headstone cleanup crew in Greenmount Cemetery, a 15acre space tucked into a section of the city along Colchester Avenue that residents have taken to calling the Old East End neighborhood. Stuffle has lived across from the graveyard, the city’s oldest, for the last 15 years. The neighborhood association had planned to clean up the green space in April but had to cancel. With increased use during the pandemic, the task took on a new urgency, and the group got together last month.
“We’ve been trying to make it real nice for people that are coming to visit to be able to appreciate it and learn some history,” Stuffle said. While the aptly named Lakeview Cemetery on the Burlington waterfront gets the most ink, Stuffle said Greenmount has plenty to offer for history buffs and those in search of solitude. The space was set aside as a cemetery in 1763, the year Burlington was chartered, and is the final resting place of Revolutionary War hero Ethan Allen and some of his relatives; the Catlin brothers, who helped found the mills on the Winooski River; the philanthropist Mary Fletcher; and famed Vermont architect Frank Lyman Austin, who designed Burlington’s Memorial Auditorium and other historic buildings.
Stuffle, a research engineer for IBM, decided that cleaning the headstones would be one way to brighten up the place — and, given that the oldest one he’s found dates back to 1783, they’re in need of it. Armed with soft-bristle brushes and some water, Stuffle and the other volunteers have taken to scrubbing the tombstones, wiping away years of air pollution, dirt and lichen. To date, the team has cleaned about 55 headstones, and there are plenty yet to do. “Cemeteries used to be a place to go to have a social gathering, and people these days kind of view cemeteries as places you don’t go,” Stuffle said. But, he added, “This really is an amazing asset to the city.” SASHA GOLDSTEIN SEVEN DAYS JUNE 10-17, 2020
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ON THE STREETS. founders/Coeditors Pamela Polston, Paula Routly publisher Paula Routly deputy publisher Cathy Resmer AssoCiAte publishers
Don Eggert, Pamela Polston, Colby Roberts
DISH SWE The PIT
NEWS & POLITICS editor Matthew Roy deputy editor Sasha Goldstein Consulting editor Candace Page stAff writers Derek Brouwer, Colin Flanders,
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It’s the clean way to pay!
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READER REACTION TO RECENT ARTICLES
COME IN, WE’RE OPEN
In regard to the letter by Thomas Bisson [Feedback: “Not Rolling With It,” June 3], we have been open! Sorry if you have missed our large window sign at 100 Main Street in Burlington. It says “OPEN FOR BUSINESS!” Initially we did curbside, but on the first day retail was permitted to open, we did. We are not a new shop; we have been in business since 1985. Back in those days, I was one of the few females who started a bike shop. Today, I am proud to say that my son JP and husband, Jay, help run the shop, along with our dedicated employees. Mr. Bisson, we invite you to visit our local shop. We would be happy to try and help you. Patricia Miller
COLCHESTER
Miller owns North Star Sports in Burlington.
SALES & MARKETING direCtor of sAles Colby Roberts senior ACCount exeCutive Michael Bradshaw ACCount exeCutives Robyn Birgisson, MArketing & events direCtor Corey Grenier sAles & MArketing CoordinAtor Katie Hodges
Shop without getting your hands dirty.
FEEDback
©2020 Da Capo Publishing Inc. All rights reserved.
SPOKES WOMAN
[Re Feedback: “Not Rolling With It,” June 3]: Thomas Bisson and all other bike lovers: We understand your confusion around the current operations at Old Spokes Home as retailers begin to open up across the state Basically, it boils down to doing what we feel is safest for our staff and customers. One thing that differentiates us from other retail shops is that we have higher numbers of staff on-site — because we don’t just sell bikes, we also fix ’em. We have a team working hard on bike repairs in addition to our curbside test-ride team. Add customers to that mix, and the building gets pretty crowded pretty quickly. If you have ever been to our shop on a warm Saturday in June, you know exactly what we are talking about. As the situation plays out, we may change things — because we miss seeing customers in the shop and, honestly, this is no fun for us, either — but for now we feel like curbside by appointment is the safest way to go. Thanks for asking! Kelly Duggan
BURLINGTON
Duggan is marketing manager of Burlington’s Old Spokes Home.
WTF, INDEED
[Re WTF: “Why Is Federal Stimulus Money Being Sent to Dead Vermonters?” May 13]: Not only is it shocking — and disturbing
WEEK IN REVIEW
TIM NEWCOMB
or national parks.” Masks cannot be worn because they obstruct breathing when wet, and it will be impossible to keep children socially distant in this type of play area. The splash pad could be turned off initially, but it is unlikely coronavirus will disappear. I’m in favor of splash pads under regulations like in New York State, with sufficient restrooms, physical space and access control. City Hall Park is too small and designed for multiple uses. I recommend that the renovation plans eliminate the splash pad feature to reduce costs and enhance public health. Millicent Eidson
BURLINGTON
LONG, HARD ROAD
— that federal stimulus dollars are being misdirected to deceased individuals, but I know of at least one situation in which the dollars were definitely not needed and ought to have been used for someone who was really hurting financially. My cousins are happily retired out of state. While their income is within the parameters for stimulus eligibility, they definitely did not need the money. But they received $1,200 each while they were on an extended vacation out of the country. Is this fair? How do we get Congress to recognize that its income eligibility ceiling is too high and that the money is not going where it is needed? Perhaps they should lower the eligibility criteria and increase the stimulus amount. There are people who are hurting badly, and $1,200 is not going to be of much assistance to them! If someone with a louder voice than mine would say something, it might get heard. Marjorie London
FERRISBURGH
NO MORE FLYOVERS
How can we keep celebrating F-35 flyovers? How about using that money for purchasing much-needed supplies for essential workers? How does flying over help them, except to see how much
CORRECTIONS
Last week’s cover story, “‘It’s in the Building,’” contained two errors. The number of Birchwood Terrace Rehab and Healthcare employees diagnosed with COVID-19 was 30. And Donald Alter, who lived in the nursing home, was from Fayston.
noise and pollution they are creating? Why is there not an outrage about this? So wasteful, and Seven Days keeps glorifying it when you comment on how great it is [Last 7, May 20]. Sally Lincoln
NORTH FERRISBURGH
Editor’s note: Seven Days reported that the flyovers happened, without editorial comment. In April, the news team inquired and later verified that the number of F-35 test flights had increased.
SPLASH PAD IS A BAD IDEA
Our minds and hearts are justifiably full with recent reminders of rampant racism. But the COVID-19 cluster [Off Message: “Winooski Coronavirus Outbreak Widens With 34 New Cases,” June 4] is also a reminder of the ongoing coronavirus threat. As a part-time University of Vermont public health instructor, I’m concerned about the City Hall Park splash pad construction, which has restarted. In 2019, I shared evidence about potential health risks with the Board of Health. Using my training as a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and New York State epidemiologist, I reviewed disease outbreaks associated with spray parks, including one in New York State with more than a thousand parasitic infections. If there are fecal accidents, there may be insufficient contact time with disinfection or filtration before water is sprayed into the air again, with a risk of viral, bacterial or parasitic infections. Coronavirus is shed in the feces and has been found in sewage. The CDC says: “Do not use playgrounds, including water playgrounds, located within local, state
I enjoyed Colin Flanders’ article [Off Message: “Scott Condemns Police Brutality, Sympathizes With Demonstrators,” June 1]. Of particular import, to me, was how Gov. Phil Scott will be convening a Racial Equity Task Force. The group will have to do more than the typical study, delving into matters of the soul. Evil is an entity that, as a Howard Frank Mosher character puts it, is a part of us that we must guard against every minute of our lives. I would urge each member of the task force to read not only A Stranger in the Kingdom, about racism in Irasburg, but more importantly Disappearances, which is Mosher’s take on Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. The whale and Captain Ahab are one and the same, good and evil, as are we all. There are many who will argue that America’s problems are a product of 265 years of slavery. Actually, we are rather young to it. Egypt, Rome and the Songhai Empire had it at the core of their civilizations. England colonized nearly half the world in its quest for empire. Of course, we know about how the German regime, at one time, felt about the Jewish people. And we know about how China killed millions of its people for the simple “crime” of not accepting the precepts of Communism. FEEDBACK
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contents JUNE 10-17, 2020 VOL.25 NO.37
Now offering
Curbside Pickup and Mail Delivery
ON THE COVER
During the pandemic, Vermont’s mutual aid groups lend a hand BY C H E L S E A E D GAR , PAGE 3 6 COVER IMAGE JEB WALLACE-BRODEUR • COVER DESIGN REV. DIANE SULLIVAN
FOOD
Curbside Community 12 From the Publisher Oh, Canada
A closed border strains Vermonters’ personal and economic bonds
Waste Not
Curbside food scrap pickup services sprout ahead of July 1 landfill ban
Forward, March
ARTS NEWS 24
FEATURES 36
PAGE 44
Poet Didi Jackson on loss, recovery and her new book, Moon Jar
Book Review: This Brilliant Darkness: A Book of Strangers, Jeff Sharlet
Restaurant Revival
Reflections on Loss Time for Change
Local student puts anti-racism on the calendar
Out of Sight
Couch Cinema: Blindspotting
Thousands hit the streets in Montpelier, demanding an end to police violence
STUCK IN VERMONT
42 Snapshots From the Edge Talk It Out: Make It Better by Francesca Blanchard
A discussion on the Burlington singer-songwriter’s latest record
We are now offering safe and easy temporary curbside pickup and mail delivery for prescriptions. Please contact your pharmacy directly for more information about these options. Payment by credit card will be requested prior to pickup or mailing.
Keeping everyone safe as indoor dining begins
PAGE 46
Visit hannaford.com/pharmacy for more information and to find a Hannaford Pharmacy near you. Online Thursday
COLUMNS 28 30 32 45 53 73
WTF Bottom Line Vermonting Side Dishes Album Reviews Ask the Reverend
SECTIONS
Last week was the first-ever Black Birders SUPPORTED BY: Week, designed to raise visibility and connect bird lovers after the racist incident in Central Park involving birder Christian Cooper. Eva joined Audubon Vermont education program coordinator Debbie Archer for a bird walk and a discussion of birding while black.
20 44 50 53 55 68 72
Life Lines Food + Drink Music + Nightlife Classes Classifieds + Puzzles Fun Stuff Personals
We have
Get the NEW Hannaford Rx App!
Find a new job in the classifieds section on page 53 and online at sevendaysvt.com/jobs. VT SDW 2.30x11.25 6.3
NEWS & POLITICS 11
27
for prescriptions.
In Adamant, the state’s oldest food co-op adapts to the coronavirus era
Download now!
SEVEN DAYS JUNE 10-17, 2020 Untitled-14 1 2020_RX_Curbside_ROPs.indd 9
9 5/29/20 5/28/20 12:22 3:39 PM
Burlington Resource and Recovery Center (RRC) 802.755.7239
Supportive Quarantine Pilot Program
Calling all college students and other folks just back in Burlington from out of state please do your part to help save the lives of our most vulnerable community members - our seniors, people of color, those with underlying medical conditions. Thank you!
What City assistance includes: • Daily check-in call
• Grocery, prescription, or other deliveries • Move-in care package with local goods, two reusable cloth masks, hand sanitizer, information on local resources • Gift card to local restaurant for delivery (following 4 days of quarantine) • Fletcher Free Library card • Information about accessing testing services
Who Students returning to UVM and Champlain College, people
returning or moving to Burlington for other reasons, and residents asked to quarantine as part of a contact tracing effort
When
14 days, or potentially less with a negative result from a COVID-19 test taken after 7 days of quarantine
Why
To contribute to the physical and economic well-being of the entire Burlington community
Where Within Burlington; quarantine required throughout Vermont How Visit burlingtonvt.gov/quarantine or call 802.755.7239
The RRC is here to help in response to COVID-19 Volunteer services
Unemployment, small business, food, housing, childcare, and property tax information
recovery@burlingtonvt.gov 10
SEVEN DAYS JUNE 10-17, 2020
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Waxaan xalkaan u joognaa inaan caawinno COVID-19
19- ﻧﺤﻦ ھﻨﺎ ﻟﻠﻤﺴﺎﻋﺪة ﻓﻲ ﻣﻮاﺟﮭﮫ ﻛﻮﻓﯿﺪ، ﺑﺮﻟﯿﻨﺠﺘﻮن Burlington, tuko hapa kusaidia dhidi ya Covid-19
बर ्लि ङ्ट न, कोभि ड-१९ वि र ुद ्धको सहयोगको लागि हाम ी यहा ँ छौ ।ँ COVID-19 health guidance
802.755.7239
Assistance in completing the 2020 Census questionnaire (it’s more important than ever to be counted!)
burlingtonvt.gov/resources 6/9/20 1:21 PM
FROM THE PUBLISHER
The killing of George Floyd by a Minnesota cop has sparked demonstrations across the country and in our state. Seven Days news reporters have covered the repercussions as Vermonters in Burlington, Montpelier, Rutland, Bellows Falls, Manchester and other communities have taken to the streets, calling for police reform and an end to racial injustice. Less visible are those who are quietly taking action in their own lives. “I’m wondering if it might be a good idea for Seven Days to do an article or perhaps publish a list of black-owned businesses in Vermont,” reads an email we received from Huntington resident Cassandra Wilday, who wants to support them. “I’m ready to do way more than march, yell and hold up a sign.” A similar request came from University of Vermont Foundation employee Jamie O’Donnell: “I am reaching out with an inquiry regarding the Good To-Go Vermont digital directory,” she wrote in an email, referring to Seven Days’ statewide directory of takeout food and drink options. “First of all, it has been an amazing resource and thank you so much for creating it. I’m wondering if there might be an appropriate contact person at Seven Days to discuss the potential of creating another kind of digital directory related to BIPOC (Black, indigenous, people of color) businesses?” These are just two of numerous queries that prompted a round of questions among Seven Days staff: Is anyone else already providing this information? If not, why not? How would we gather it? Do business owners want it? Would creating this list endanger the business owners on it, making it easier for bad actors to target them? And how would we verify the ownership information provided? We posed these questions to local anti-racist groups, organizers and business owners. Several sources pointed to a newly created directory of BIPOC-owned businesses on Google Spreadsheets. Roxanne Vought, executive director of Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility, linked to it in her “Call for Racial Justice” on vbsr.org, which cites six recommended actions. “Patronize BIPOC-owned Vermont businesses” is No. 4. That directory lists BIPOC artists, hair stylists, health care providers, educators and restaurants, among others. Before viewing the lists, visitors are encouraged to read a set of “Community Agreements & Considerations.” They explain the project and encourage people to seek consent from business owners before suggesting they be added to the list. Initially created by an organizer named Dolan — a “Latinx/white queer nonbinary person who does not own a business” — the directory first featured BIPOC-owned restaurants offering takeout during the pandemic. But it has since become a crowdsourced community endeavor, as others have suggested new categories and entries. Reached by email, Dolan said the directory has support from the communities it represents. “BIPOC people in VT have shared this widely,” said Dolan. Peace & Justice Center executive director Rachel Siegel noted that her organization has a list of BIPOC-owned restaurants it uses for internal needs, such as special events and feeding volunteers, but doesn’t have the resources to create and maintain a public list. “We would have done that if we had the bandwidth,” she said. Maggie Hazard, the hair and makeup stylist Seven Days employs for photo shoots, told us that a directory could be useful — if businesses agree to be listed. A mixed-race Vermonter, she said she wants black and brown clients to know she exists for two reasons: so that they can “have hair and skin care from someone who has similar hair and skin color” and “to create a sense of community and belonging.” Ownership is all about “a sense of community and belonging” at Seven Days. Pamela Polston and I started the company. Now the owners are myself and 16 employees, all white, a mix of Vermonters and people who have put down roots here. Like local business owners everywhere, ours are personally invested in the company and in their communities. Seven Days promotes such enterprises in every way we can, most recently with the Register, a directory of local retailers. Spending money with these businesses keeps dollars circulating in our local economy. If Vermont entrepreneurs want our directories to reveal more about them, we want to help. Starting soon, Seven Days will invite black and Interested in becoming a Super Reader? indigenous business owners and people of color to Look for the “Give Now” buttons at the top of identify themselves — if they choose — in our online sevendaysvt.com. Or send a check with your business directories. And we’ll consider adding other address and contact info to: ownership filters, as well — for example, to identify SEVEN DAYS, C/O SUPER READERS P.O. BOX 1164 women-owned and LGBTQ-owned enterprises. BURLINGTON, VT 05402-1164 This won’t end racism and discrimination, For more information on making a financial but it may help inform consumers seeking to align contribution to Seven Days, please contact their spending with their values. And hopefully Corey Grenier: it’s another reminder to buy local. Every Vermont VOICEMAIL: 802-865-1020, EXT. 36 business can use the help. EMAIL: SUPERREADERS@SEVENDAYSVT.COM
Paula Routly
SEVEN DAYS JUNE 10-17, 2020
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news
MORE INSIDE
SENATE MOVES CORONA CASH PAGE 14
ELECTION 2020
POLICING THE POLICE? PAGE 15
LG Candidate Milne Made $1.7 Million Cryptocurrency Fortune
PEACEFUL ASSEMBLY PAGE 18
Oh, Canada
B Y PAU L H EIN T Z
A closed border strains Vermonters’ personal and economic bonds B Y C O LI N FL A N D ER S
SEAN METCALF
D
eb Howard had a choice to make. It was early March, and the coronavirus pandemic was about to thrust American society into an indefinite shutdown. Howard knew it was only a matter of time before the threat of the virus would force American and Canadian officials to clamp shut their border, a move that would prevent the 60-year-old South Burlington resident from seeing her longtime partner, Guy Langevin, who lives in Québec’s Eastern Townships. Wary of being isolated, Howard packed a bag and headed north, where she knew she would not have to wait out the pandemic alone. She made it just in time.
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On March 18, Canadian and U.S. officials agreed to close the border to all nonessential travel in an attempt to prevent the spread of the virus between the two countries. The policy, which remains in place, means that if Howard were to return to Vermont, she and Langevin, 61, would have to wait out the pandemic apart. “It’s the first time the border’s ever really been an issue for our relationship,” Howard told Seven Days on the phone from Eastman, the Canadian town where she’s remained for the last three months. Howa rd i s a m o n g t h e m a ny Vermonters who regularly head into Canada for reasons both personal and economic. Daytrippers from Québec and Vermont often hop over to visit
popular destinations in Montréal or Burlington. Families and friendships span the divide, as do many commutes. International grocery trips are common. Vermont businesses also benefit from the cultural exchange, with Canadians contributing to the state’s $2.8 billion tourism economy. The border closure is set to expire June 21, so hope remains that it may reopen in time for summer. But as cities in both countries continue grappling with outbreaks, those who have come to rely on a steady flow of visitors between the two allies know there’s no guarantee. “It’s very, very difficult to figure out how things will play out,” said Walt Blasberg, owner of the North Hero House, a waterfront restaurant and inn located in the Champlain Islands. “We just have to take it a day at a time.” The border closure has not prevented all international travel. Essential workers such as health care professionals and airline personnel can cross. So can goods such as food and medicine — and the weekly Seven Days edition, which is printed in Québec. But individuals account for the vast majority of border crossings. Data from the U.S. Department of Transportation show that traffic at Vermont’s two busiest checkpoints has plummeted. At Highgate Springs, only 6,700 personal vehicle passengers entered the U.S. this April, down from more than 71,300 in the same month last year. At Derby Line, only 1,350 personal vehicle passengers crossed, down from 57,600. Overall, personal vehicle traffic dropped a whopping 89 percent this April compared to last. Most years, 600,000 to 700,000 Canadian tourists descend on Vermont. They can be found strolling Burlington’s Church Street or zooming to destinations along Interstate 89. Others flock to Lake Champlain marinas, where they keep their boats docked. OH, CANADA
» P.14
The leading candidates for governor of Vermont earned between $190,000 and $400,000, according to their most recent tax returns — well in excess of the state’s average income of $60,000. But none came close to reeling in as much as lieutenant gubernatorial candidate Scott Milne, who reported earning more than $2 million in 2018. The Pomfret Republican made more than $256,000 in profits from Milne Travel and drew a salary close to $101,000, according to a tax return filed with the Secretary of State’s Office. Milne owns a 49 percent stake in the travel agency cofounded by his late parents and now majority-owned by ALTOUR. But the vast majority of the candidate’s 2018 income came not from plane tickets or cruise ship reservations but from the sale of cryptocurrency. Milne’s tax return shows capital gains of more than $1.7 million, most of which he said was attributable to sale of the Ethereum and Ethereum Classic digital currencies. “These investments are one of the cleanest ways of investing in the promise blockchain can bring to society, which I believe is immense and potentially transformational,” he said. Milne declined to discuss the details of his cryptocurrency transactions, but during his 2016 race for the U.S. Senate, he reported owning between $300,000 and $600,000 of the two currencies. The price of both spiked in early 2018 and has since retreated. Since the 2018 election, candidates for statewide office have been required to submit a financial disclosure form and a copy of their latest tax return when filing to get on the ballot. Because Tax Day was delayed until July this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, some candidates provided their 2018 returns, while others provided 2019 returns. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rebecca Holcombe, a former state education secretary from Norwich, reported that she and her spouse made nearly $403,000 in 2019. Republican Gov. Phil Scott and his spouse made close to $293,000 in 2018. Patrick Winburn, a Democratic gubernatorial candidate and Bennington lawyer, earned more than $235,000 with his spouse in 2018. And Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman, an organic farmer from Hinesburg who is also seeking the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, reported with his spouse more than $191,000 in income in 2019. Editor’s note: To read more details, visit sevendaysvt.com.
VERMONT
Waste Not
Curbside food scrap pickup services sprout ahead of July 1 landfill ban COURTNEY LAMDIN
BY C OURT NEY L AMDIN
Isaac Colby of Some Dude’s Composting Company
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saac Colby parked his battered silver pickup service, so boutique compost sedan outside a well-kept condo- businesses have sprung up to fill the minium in Essex Junction last week. gap. A white plastic bucket sat on the curb, “I started with no intent of [being] the filled nearly to the brim with a mishmash next Casella of composting,” said Colby, of food scraps — lettuce, eggshells, a slice referring to the state’s largest waste of pizza. Colby tucked the bucket into his hauler. “But it seemed like an opportutrunk and marched up the home’s steps to nity, and I went for it.” drop off a clean container. Then it was off For a $50 annual waste-hauling permit to the next house. and very little overhead, This was food anyone can open a curbscrap pickup day for side compost service. Some Dude’s Compost Colby doesn’t pay a cent to Company, the one-man dump food scraps at Green show that Colby, 29, runs Mountain Compost, a CAME RON SCOT T out of the Ford Focus he’s business operated by the owned since he was a Chittenden Solid Waste teenager. He started the business last District. The facility allows anyone to summer to supplement his earnings drop off up to 30 gallons of food waste from City Market, Onion River Co-op, daily for free. Anything more than that is where he works the afternoon shift. He charged based on volume, up to $60 per spends most weekday mornings collect- ton. ing food scraps around Chittenden More entrepreneurs have gotten County to drop off at Green Mountain into the game as the July 1 deadline Compost in Williston. Customers pay approaches, and regulators expect more Some Dude’s Compost $20 a month for to do so. Still, as of early June, Vermont weekly pickup or half that for once-a- had only two dozen state-registered food month collection. scrap haulers. Colby has just 40 customers, but he Vermont’s patchwork approach to hopes Some Dude’s Compost can become refuse removal encourages entreprehis full-time gig someday. neurship. Few municipalities offer A new law may help Colby achieve waste pickup, so most Vermonters his dream. Starting July 1, Vermont resi- contract with a hauler or take their dents must separate food scraps from trash to a transfer station themselves. the rest of their household trash. Most large waste haulers aren’t offering home WASTE NOT » P.16
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news STATEHOUSE
Contact: colin@sevendaysvt.com
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The Vermont Senate on Tuesday unanimously voted to spend more than $90 million of the state’s federal relief funds on a package of grants that would aid businesses and vulnerable individuals impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. The bill, S.350, now heads to the House, where lawmakers have been collaborating with the upper chamber in hopes of fast-tracking the legislation. “The phrase du jour, or for the month, I should say, has been, ‘We need to get the money out the door,’” said Sen. Michael Sirotkin (D-Chittenden), chair of the Senate’s Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs Committee, as he presented the bill during Tuesday’s virtual floor session. “That’s what this bill nimbly does,” he said. The legislation appropriates $93 million out of the $1.25 billion in federal relief funds the state received earlier this year. $70 million in grants would go to businesses impacted by the pandemic, while $23 million would go toward securing housing for people at risk of homelessness. The Scott administration would oversee the business program. The Department of Taxes would hand out $50 million to businesses that pay rooms and meals taxes, such as restaurants and hotels, and have either reopened or plan to do so. The Agency of Commerce and Community Development would distribute $20 million to all other businesses. Businesses would need to apply for the program. To be eligible, they must have experienced a 75 percent reduction in sales during any one-month period between March and September. The second piece of the relief legislation is a $23 million appropriation to transition roughly 2,000 homeless individuals who have been placed in motels during the pandemic into more permanent housing situations. The housing program, which has helped keep homeless people off the streets and out of shelters, where it’s virtually impossible to socially distance, has cost the state roughly $3.5 million a month since March, Sirotkin said. “Unfortunately, many of these folks will be displaced from the motels as soon as the economy reopens,” he said. “They can’t go back to rooms filled with bunk beds, in church basements, and should not go back to the encampments in many parts of the state.” m
CA
BY C O L I N F L A N D E R S
Canadians book hotel rooms and cabins, eat at restaurants, and shop at local stores — all of which adds up to a roughly $150 million annual injection into the state’s economy, according to Vermont’s Agency of Commerce and Community Development. North Hero’s population triples every summer, thanks in large part to this annual migration, Blasberg said. And while most people who stay at his inn are American, his restaurant benefits from heavy Canadian day traffic and the town’s robust population of second-home owners from north of the border. At 71, Blasberg has been thinking about retirement. He put the North Hero House on the market about a year ago and recently had found a possible purchaser. Once the pandemic hit, the buyer decided there was too much uncertainty to move forward, Blasberg said. “I imagine there’d be zero interest in buying properties like this right now,” he said. To be sure, much of Vermont’s tourism economy would have been stifled even if the border were open. Most tourism-dependent businesses have been closed since March, and those that have opened in recent weeks have struggled to overcome stringent mandates, such as a requirement that out-of-state arrivals quarantine for 14 days. The border closure has been “lumped in with everything else” hitting bottom lines, said Cathy Davis, executive vice president of the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce. “It’s a drop in the bucket,” she said. Gov. Phil Scott has recently eased some of those restrictions. After allowing lodging operations to reopen in a limited way in May, last Friday he removed quarantine requirements for travelers from areas in New York State and New England with 400 or fewer active COVID-19 cases per million people. At the time, about 55 counties in nearby states met that standard. But Scott cannot control whether the border reopens. Northern Vermont business owners already feel the summer slipping away — and, with it, the revenue that helps get them get through the rest of the year. “My busiest day in the summer can equal my worst week in the winter,” said Todd Keyworth, who owns Harborside
Her concern is somewhat softened by the fact that her Canadian excursion SE has turned out quite well. She had AN M initially traveled north because she thought that she and Langevin would be able to help each other if either got sick. What’s kept her there is that she has found she enjoys living with him. They go on daily walks. They cook for each other. “It’s been really great to be with another human being,” she said. “I think people who are alone are suffering.” Both run their own professional consulting businesses, and Langevin bought her an office chair and computer monitor so she can work from his house. He built her a rock garden to feed her green thumb. This has become perhaps one of the pandemic’s only silver linings for Howard. Though she and Langevin have typically seen each other at least twice a month since they met online seven years ago, the two had not planned to live together until they retired. Now, she knows that her long-distance relationship can withstand even a three-month global pandemic. “I feel much more comfortable about our future together because of how we’ve weathered this,” she said. At the same time, Howard can feel herself being drawn back to her old life in Vermont, especially as the days grow longer. The predominantly Frenchspeaking Canadian town she lives in has made it difficult to forge new relationships, though she has tried to learn the language over the years. She misses her friends and family, and she can’t help but think of all the small obligations awaiting her attention in South Burlington: doctor appointments, prescription pickups, a garden filled with weeds. Howard and Langevin have already had difficult conversations about what they would do if the border closure were extended. Much will depend on what her family in upstate New York does for the summer, she said; she hasn’t been able to see her 84-year-old mother in months. But she also knows that if she leaves, she would have no idea when she could see Langevin again. “To not be able to be together is frightening to me,” she said. “We’re just hoping that doesn’t happen.” m ET
Vermont Senate Approves Relief for Businesses and Housing
Oh, Canada « P.12
IT’S THE FIRST TIME THE BORDER’S EVER
REALLY BEEN AN ISSUE FOR OUR RELATIONSHIP. D E B H O WAR D
Harvest Market in North Hero, where many Canadian second-home owners shop. Each week the border remains closed, Keyworth said, means another prime week gone. “We’re all sitting here as the clock ticks,” he said. President Donald Trump has signaled he may be willing to loosen the border restrictions this month. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday moved to allow immediate family members of Canadian citizens to enter the country. But people in both nations are wary of an influx of outsider arrivals amid uncertainty about the possibility of a second pandemic wave. Even if the border does open June 21, Howard, the South Burlington visitor to Canada, isn’t convinced it will solve her problem. Now that the two countries have taken the “bold” move to restrict travel, she believes it will be much easier to prolong the arrangement or reinstate it if the pandemic flares up again. Plus, if the quarantine requirements stay in place, she and Langevin would only be trading one house arrest for another.
Contact: colin@sevendaysvt.com
M JA
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STATEHOUSE
After Protests, Lawmakers Give Police Bills a Second Look BY D E RE K B R O UW E R
Protests that have swept Vermont in the weeks since Minneapolis police killed George Floyd may be giving new life to stalled reform legislation in Montpelier. State lawmakers are scrambling before the session winds down to assemble a package of bills that could change how police use force, how agencies report race data and more. A key senator also said he plans to push for the use of body cameras by the Vermont State Police, calling that long overdue. “We must do it now,” Sen. Dick Sears (D-Bennington) said Monday from the virtual Senate floor, referring to the body cams. At the same time, Sears and some other legislative leaders said they might be constrained by the short time remaining before the legislature plans to adjourn later this month. House Speaker Mitzi Johnson (D-South Hero) said in an interview that some measures may need to be considered during a special budget session in August. “A big concern of mine is making sure that we are including communities of color
in the discussion,” Johnson said. “I want to make sure that this isn’t us as white leaders, white figures of authority, grabbing some ideas in the air and throwing them on the table and saying, ‘Let’s do this now.’” The Senate Judiciary Committee, which Sears chairs, will try to craft a policy restricting when police may use deadly force. The panel will also look at “immediate adoption” of a statewide ban on choke-hold restraints and requirements that officers intervene when they see a colleague using unnecessary force, he said. That appears to dovetail with H.808, a bill introduced in January by Rep. Anne Donahue (R-Northfield). The measure allows police to use lethal force only when “necessary,” similar to the higher standard adopted recently in California. The Rutland Area NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont both support H.808. Racial justice advocates have also pushed lawmakers to pass legislation proposed in both chambers that would require police
agencies to adopt a yet-to-be developed state model policy on police use of force, deescalation and cross-cultural awareness. The bills — S.119 and H.464 — would also require that agencies report data when officers use force during traffic stops. While many who attended a large protest in Montpelier over the weekend urged a dramatic dismantling of police agencies, a few also carried signs calling upon lawmakers to consider those bills. “When you live in a primarily white state, where people have the privilege to not have to confront these issues day to day, stuff like this isn’t something that your politicians prioritize,” Kimberly Chadwell, 27, said at Sunday’s event. Other bills haven’t attracted much attention but also appear to be in play. Last Friday, the Senate Appropriations Committee backed a bill, S.219, that would require law enforcement agencies to comply with race data reporting requirements in order to receive state grants. “There have been very few consequences for patchy follow-up,” Senate President Pro Tempore Tim Ashe (D/P-Chittenden) said in committee last week, explaining his support. “Some departments take it more seriously than others.” Another bill, S.124, includes tweaks to how police misconduct gets reported and allows the state’s police certification body, the Criminal Justice Training Council, to
sanction officers the first time they are found to have used excessive force. It also requires that police departments provide an analysis of a former employee’s job performance when called for a reference. The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Jeannette White (D-Windham), told fellow senators this week that the Senate Government Operations Committee she chairs will take testimony on the issues but will coordinate with others to assemble one legislative package. Citing the time crunch, Sears on Monday told senators that former Judiciary Committee intern Skyler Nash, who is black, had agreed to help craft the legislation. The comment prompted criticism from Sen. Debbie Ingram (D-Chittenden), who said Sears was “tokenizing” Nash instead of engaging with communities of color on the proposed reforms. “I think if you put out the call, you’ll find many other people will also be willing to help the committee,” she said. Sears apologized. “We’re going to hear from as many people as I can possibly hear from,” he said. m Disclosure: Tim Ashe is the domestic partner of Seven Days publisher and coeditor Paula Routly. Find our conflict-of-interest policy at sevendaysvt.com/disclosure. Margaret Grayson contributed reporting.
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news With big haulers largely sitting this one out, there’s more room for the little guys to grow. “That was intended by the law: to have choices,” said Cathy Jamieson, who runs the state’s Solid Waste Management Program. Vermonters discard an estimated 77,000 tons of food waste each year, and the state’s only landfill, in Coventry, is running out of room. When food waste decomposes in a landfill, it creates methane, a harmful greenhouse gas. Diverting all this waste would reduce those emissions as much as would taking 9,500 cars off the road a year, according to the state. Although Vermont has a menu of options to enforce the new ban, compliance with the law will be on the honor system, Jamieson said. Compost police won’t be ripping open trash bags to check for food scraps, nor will anyone ask haulers or transfers stations to do that dirty work. Rather, the state has tried to make composting cool by offering backyard workshops and discounted compost bins. Haulers are encouraged to educate customers on proper food waste disposal. The ban has been a long time coming. The Vermont legislature passed a universal recycling law in 2012 that phased in a series of mandates. In 2015, recyclables were banned from landfills, and haulers were required to collect them from customers for a bundled fee. The 100 transfer stations that have replaced Vermont’s town dumps had to start accepting food scraps in 2017. July 2020 will usher in the final chapter of the law. The recycling law originally required that larger haulers pick up food scraps from all residences, but they successfully lobbied to remove that requirement. Instead, they must offer compost pickup to nonresidential customers and to apartment complexes with four or more units that are already customers. The rules get trickier for new multiunit customers: If a property manager signs up for a trash and recycling service, that hauler must offer food scrap pickup. But the landlord has the option of hiring another company in the area, such as one of the smaller startups, according to Jamieson. Some larger companies are hauling food scraps, with limitations. Fairfaxbased Duffy’s Waste & Recycling will pick up compostable waste for customers in the more densely populated parts of Chittenden and Franklin counties, but it will only be free for Burlington residents. The decision came down to 16
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Waste Not « P.13
Trash day for Draft Trash
equipment: The City of Burlington picks up residents’ recycling, so when Duffy’s dual-compartment trucks come for the trash, they have an extra space for food waste. Other towns will require additional truck runs, so customers there will pay an extra $5 to $10 to cover that cost, company president Catherine Duffy said. She’s not sure how many will sign up, since many folks in the outer reaches already compost in their backyards. Casella Waste Systems, whose trucks collect trash and recycling across the state, picks up food scraps for residential customers only in Burlington. Households pay $7 to $15 per pickup on top of their trash and recycling bill, Casella vice president Joe Fusco said. The company has three dedicated trucks for food scrap pickup. Casella may start offering the service in Montpelier but otherwise has no plans to expand until the service becomes financially viable. “You’d rather run a vehicle down the street where there are 30 homes than [on] a six-mile stretch out in Peacham where there are two,” Fusco said. “You’d go out of business very quickly.” For smaller operations, however, business is booming. Cameron Scott, owner of Burlington-based No Waste Compost, said he has “hundreds” of clients signed up in anticipation of the ban. “I am prepared to be overwhelmed,” he said. No Waste Compost opened in 2017 after Scott and his former business partner realized they could make money hauling their neighbors’ compost to the transfer station. Scott never imagined his former job as a pizza delivery driver would prove more useful than his degree in computer science, but he said the gig imprinted an “internal map of the city” that helped him develop a business plan.
His fees start at $7 for once-a-month pickup, rising to about $15 a month for a weekly plan. For an additional charge, customers can get a clean bucket or compostable bucket liners after each pickup. Last month, No Waste Compost diverted 18,000 pounds of compost from the landfill. “We are moving everything by hand, dumping containers by hand,” Scott said. “It’s a dirty job.” Lori Mele subscribes to a curbside service for that very reason: She doesn’t want to deal with decomposing food. Mele had tried dropping off her compost at the local transfer station, a 10-minute drive from her condo in Essex. The line was long, and the smell was overpowering. This is for the birds, Mele thought, but she still wanted to reduce her carbon footprint. So, when a flyer for Some Dude’s Compost landed in her mailbox, she quickly signed up. She pays $15 for every-other-week collection. “The fact that this guy gets down and dirty and is happy to do it and brings me a clean bucket — that’s worth all the tea in China,” Mele said. She’s trying to get her entire condo association to sign up. She may face an uphill battle. A study released by the University of Vermont earlier this year found that, while 60 percent of respondents were interested in a curbside compost service, most wouldn’t want to pay for one. Nick Hammond added food scrap pickup to his Middlebury trash and recycling business in 2016. But it wasn’t until he cut his prices that demand for compost service doubled. Hammond previously charged $7 to chuck a 30-pound bag of trash and another $7 to take up to five gallons of food waste. The same customer now pays $10 to get rid of both.
His 250 customers also pay for the novelty: Hammond hauls the refuse in a 20-foot wagon pulled by a team of three draft horses. His business is aptly named Draft Trash. Hammond wakes up at 3:30 a.m. to get the horses ready and on the road by 7 a.m. After a 15-mile route, the wagon can weigh up to 9,500 pounds. When the law was being written, big haulers complained that they’d have to purchase trucks with multiple compartments to keep food waste separate, but Hammond found an easy solution: He strapped lidded garbage bins to the side of the wagon. “These bigger companies just don’t wanna deal with it,” Hammond said, adding that their reticence only opens the market for businesses such as his. “There’ll be other companies that spring up,” he said. “In the end, [compost is] actually a valuable product.” Jen Murphy opened Willow Tree Community Compost in her hometown of Wilder last summer to provide a neighborhood service. Every week, she hitches a trailer to her Subaru and picks up food scraps in the Upper Valley area; sometimes her two young children come along for the ride. She charges $24 a month for weekly pickup or half that for twice-monthly service. Customers can drop off scraps at Murphy’s home for $6 a month. She hauls the material to be composted at Sunrise Farm in White River Junction. Twice a year, Murphy gives her 50 customers a five-gallon bucket of topsoil created by their own food waste. She donates any leftovers to a community garden. “Closing that loop is the focus of what we’re doing,” she said. For fledgling Some Dude’s Compost, the Burlington area service, the focus is on growth. After picking up scraps in front of two houses last week, Colby motored down the dirt road leading to Green Mountain Compost. He unloaded gallons of rotting food into a squat dumpster on the site as seagulls circled overhead. The receptacle’s contents would be added later to the facility’s mountainous piles of steaming, decomposing scraps. That day’s run was a short one. Typically, Colby works 12-hour days between his grocery store job and the food scrap side hustle. It’s exhausting, but Colby said he doesn’t mind. He only hopes to get busier and thinks the impending landfill ban will help. “This is a very rare opportunity,” he said. “The creative side of me sees lots of potential.” m Contact: courtney@sevendaysvt.com
Candid Canines Photo Contest
WINNERS!
The Humane Society of Chittenden County’s first ever Candid Canines Photo Contest was a big success and a whole lot of fun! More than 200 participants helped raise nearly $6,000. Donations will support HSCC’s many community programs & services, and provide care for the more than 1,000 animals that come through our doors each year. Thanks to all who participated and congratulations to the winners!
Judges’ Pick
TIMON
“Timon is a shar-pei! Born in Florida, he moved up to Vermont when he was 1, where he discovered his love for hiking, running, and snow (his favorite winter snack)! His biggest fear is water, although you can still find him at the beach in the summer getting zoomies in the sand. After a long day of looking out the window watching birds, dogs, and people pass by, he loves nothing more than getting under the covers and snoring as loudly as possible to keep everyone else awake.”
Staff Pick
TESS
“Tess was adopted by my husband and I from HSCC in July of 2018. We did not know much else about her other than she needed a home and we needed to find an “active” shelter dog. We sure did get it with Tess and her love of walking and ball playing.”
Humane
Society
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of Chittenden County
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Forward, March
Thousands hit the streets in Montpelier, demanding an end to police violence S T O RY B Y MA R GA R ET GRAYSON • PHOT OS BY JAM E S BU C K
A
crowd of demonstrators filled Montpelier’s streets and the lawn in front of the Vermont Statehouse on Sunday to honor the memory of black Americans killed by police. When they marched down State Street, the crowd — estimated by Montpelier police to number 5,000 — stretched for blocks. University of Vermont student Noel Riby-Williams, 20, and recent Montpelier High School graduates MaryAnn Songhurst and Mandy Abu Aziz, both 18, organized the event. They set out to honor George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, who were both killed by police this year, along with others killed by law enforcement officers over the years. Floyd died after a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes during an arrest. Taylor was shot eight times by police who burst into her apartment in Louisville, Ky. Protests have sprung up across the country since Floyd’s death, including many in Vermont. On May 30, protesters gathered in front of the Burlington Police Department. This past week, events were held in Winooski, South Royalton, Newport, Milton, Springfield, St. Albans, Rutland, Essex Junction, Waitsfield, Bellows Falls, Morrisville, Colchester and other towns. In an interview last Friday, RibyWilliams said careful consideration was put into the framing of the event to ensure that the tone would be peaceful. She said she’d met with the Montpelier Police Department and the Capitol Police Department while planning the protest. “I went to the march in Burlington, and I was very proud of the community and how they came together to support the black community there,” Riby-Williams said. “I knew that my community [in Montpelier] would be supportive. I mean, I [raised] the Black Lives Matter flag in high school, and they showed up for that,” she said, referring to the flag-raising at Montpelier High School in 2018. “Black lives have always been overlooked,” Riby-Williams said. “I’m a black woman myself, and growing up in Vermont, I feel like I have a better relationship with the police than most people do. Black people have no trust in the police in other places. But I think a march will 18
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Max Barrows with his arm around his mother, Cathy
show police that we still need to do better. We’re not going to settle for anything less than equitable.” The gathering opened with the crowd kneeling silently for eight minutes and 46 seconds — the amount of time the Minneapolis sergeant knelt on Floyd’s neck. The only sounds were the clicking of camera shutters and distant traffic. Afterward, black attendees were invited to take the mic and address the community.
While some speakers said they felt Vermont was safer for black people than other places, many also noted the racism and discrimination they had experienced while living in the state, including in school and even in the Boy Scouts. They mentioned Vermont’s eugenics movement and brought up other issues beyond the realm of policing, including economic inequality, the disproportionate effect of the coronavirus on communities of color, and black maternal mortality
Ava Mirembe Bruce, 9, of Montpelier
rates. They read original poems and quoted James Baldwin and Langston Hughes. The protesters headed along State, Main and Elm streets; the line of marchers was so long that the leaders, carrying a colorful banner reading “Honor Black Lives,” circled back to State Street and met up with the tail end of the protest. Chants sprang up spontaneously: “Black lives matter,” “Say their names” and “No justice, no peace, abolish the police.”
Harmony Edosomwan (left) speaking to the crowd
The crowd remained peaceful, and police stationed on the street corners didn’t appear to engage directly with the protesters. Officers and vehicles from the Montpelier Police Department, the Capitol Police Department, the Berlin Police Department and the Washington County Sheriff’s Department could be seen around the city. Most marchers wore masks, as organizers requested, and attempted to stay physically distanced. Those who felt unsafe or
uncomfortable joining the event drove down the street honking and displaying signs out of their car windows. Natasha Eckart Baning, a black woman who recently returned to her home state after living in Baltimore, brought her family along. “I want to make sure that the community I brought my kids back to is a community that they are accepted in and feel safe in,” Eckart Baning said. “And I thought it was important for them to be here so they
can see that there are thousands of people who want to create a community that’s safe for them, as well.” Eckart Baning is a teacher and a member of the state Board of Education’s Ethnic and Social Equity Standards Advisory Working Group. She said she hopes for a more culturally sensitive education system in Vermont. “What we really need to work on is kind of getting out of our own way. I think Vermonters like to give themselves pats
on the back for being really progressive,” Eckart Baning said. “And they are, but the focus needs to be more on ‘What more change can we do?’ as opposed to ‘Look how good we’re doing already.’” When asked what she’d like attendees to do after the event, Riby-Williams, who studies health science at UVM, had one answer: “I would love people to quarantine, if they can.” m
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and the future is uncertain. There’s nothing to hold on to; everything is so ephemeral. It must be very difficult for the students now that the schools are closed down. Putting classes online is not a solution — it breeds loneliness and alienation. We cannot stay forever in virtual reality; we need to get back to reality. Young people need organized community centers where they can gather, share their experiences with one another, and talk to counselors and psychologists on the premises. We need to truly educate our young people and give them moral and spiritual support and hope for the future.
was preceded by an increase in the police budget and, arguably, the aggressiveness of police tactics. More money and more police have not resulted in a decrease in violent crime. In fact, we’ve seen the opposite. It’s a simplistic rationale, as was Mayor Miro’s reasoning against defunding police. But, using simple logic, his argument doesn’t hold up. It’s bullshit like this that impedes real change. As far as defunding the police, I don’t believe anyone actually wants policing efforts and crime prevention to be completely eradicated. But we’ve reached a point in this country when a large portion of the population has lost all trust in police to follow basic procedure and uphold the rights of all citizens. At this point, they would literally prefer to fend for themselves.
obscene. So he took a 10 percent pay cut during the pandemic. Big deal! How about a 90 percent pay cut? He could easily live for a while on what would still be more than half again as much as I make (and I consider that I live quite comfortably). It’s been refreshing that health care workers are the new heroes of society — they deserve it. But nobody who makes more than $100,000 a year needs that money. I’ll never forget when a friend of mine in family medicine told me that there aren’t enough family doctors because their average salary is only $200,000 a year. Why does America pay doctors so much? We should pay doctors and surgeons less and nurses and techs more. Better yet, we should pay grocery workers, mail carriers, bus drivers and janitors more, too. It’s not just health care. This same dynamic plays out at the other giant nonprofit in Burlington, where the president makes the same as Dr. Leffler. Yet the University of Vermont is trying to save money by cutting the salaries of its lecturers, the people who make the least money on the faculty. Why, why, why?!
What is it about us that has to dominate, to feel that we are better than other people? That is something the task force will have to investigate thoroughly if it is to arrive at solutions. James Robert Saunders
PLAINFIELD
HELP YOUNG PEOPLE
I always read Seven Days obituaries, not just to see if any of the people I know have passed away, but also to find out about other people’s lives and how their Earth journey ended. Sometimes those who died, whether known or unknown, inspire me to dedicate a poem to them. The recent obituary of Soren Wysockey-Johnson [Lifelines, May 12] has deeply moved me. He seemed to be extraordinarily talented, yet he took his life before he turned 16. Why is it that so many young people decide to take their own lives? Young people are vulnerable to all sorts of negativity that is going on in the world, especially since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. The present is so hard to bear,
Vesna Dye
BURLINGTON
STOP POLICE
[Re Off Message: “Activists Demand Burlington Defund Its Police Department,” June 4]: Shouldn’t it be pointed out that Mayor Miro Weinberger is arguing, in the current “intense period” in which violent crimes have risen, that defunding the police would be detrimental to policing efforts and stopping crime? Yet the rise in active shooters and homicides
Andrew Mangin
BURLINGTON
DOCTORS EARN TOO MUCH
Dr. Stephen Leffler sounds like a wonderful person and a great leader [“Doc Star,” May 27]. It’s truly heartening to know that he is in charge of Vermont’s major hospital. That doesn’t make his $600,000 salary any less
Contact: margaret@sevendaysvt.com
Sonia DeYoung
BURLINGTON
JUNE 10-17, 2020 SEVEN DAYS XXXX-XXXX, 20XX
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OBITUARIES, VOWS, CELEBRATIONS
OBITUARIES
Jane Denker on her 99th birthday, enjoying a visit to Shelburne Orchards
Jane Denker SEPTEMBER 5, 1918MAY 2, 2020 SHELBURNE, VT.
Jane Gurley Denker, age 101, died peacefully with her daughter by her side on Saturday, May 2, 2020, at her Wake Robin home in Shelburne, Vt. Born in Philadelphia on September 5, 1918, to Marion and Franklin Gurley, Jane Denker lived a life bookended by the Spanish flu and the coronavirus pandemics. Jane grew up in Buffalo, N.Y., where her father founded the W & F Manufacturing Co., still remembered for its production of wax novelties including wax lips and syrupfilled wax bottles called Nik-L-Nips. After graduating from Smith College in 1940,
Jane moved to New York City, where she worked at Current History magazine and for the New York Times. It was there that she met David Denker, whom she would later marry in 1943 when David was stationed at Camp Maxey in Paris, Texas. After the war, they moved to New Haven, Conn., where Jane taught English at a local community college while David took advantage of the GI Bill to earn his PhD from Yale. When David was hired at Rutgers University, the family moved to New Jersey. It was there that Jane and David raised their four children. Jane was forthright, independent, nonconformist and immensely curious. She valued education, lifelong learning, being informed and following one’s interests. She encouraged her children in their occasionally maverick pursuits. She had a strong moral sense of fairness and justice and believed that everyone should be treated equally and graciously. Jane was genuinely interested in everyone’s life — all of the children’s friends and their families, the cabdriver, the grocery clerk, the delivery person. When she had a doctor’s appointment, she had to be reminded not to spend all of the allotted time asking the doctor about his/her life. She was a good listener. She rarely talked about herself; she
wanted to know about you. Her grandchildren nicknamed her “the question lady.” Throughout her long life, Jane was an avid reader. When she lost her vision, she turned to listening instead, taking in at least 50 books a year. She always read to her children when they got home from school, and then later at bedtime. Webster’s Dictionary held an honored spot next to the dinner table and was regularly consulted when Jane wanted to confirm a definition or proper usage during a mealtime conversation. Jane was always up for an adventure. In 1937, she embarked on an eight-week bike trip with the Experiment in International Living. She returned to Europe in 1939 for another bike trip with a friend. Their travels were cut short when England declared war against Germany on September 3. Later, as a mother, Jane took her young children on numerous camping trips. She made a point to teach each child how to read a map. Advancing age didn’t stop her wanderlust, as evidenced by the numerous trips she took throughout her long life. In her eighties, Jane joined a friend and her dog driving from Vermont to Mexico in a small camper atop a pickup. Many more trips followed, including going West to follow
the route of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, a natural history trip to Alaska and a cultural tour of India. Jane loved music, theater and art, regularly dragging her children to see arts exhibitions, performances and concerts spanning Bizet’s opera Carmen to Country Joe and the Fish. Jane often volunteered to chaperone the school trips, whether it was to the Museum of Modern Art or to the local sewage facility. Everything fascinated her. She was passionate about animals. Jane rarely said no to acquiring a new pet. Growing up, the family had litters of dogs, cats and rabbits, as well as other creatures. As a child, she had a talkative pet crow named Oliver. Jane had a particularly soft spot for turtles. It was not unusual to find her on her hands and knees feeding hamburger or lettuce to a painted turtle on the living room floor. She adored fireflies and how their blinking light filled the meadow on summer evenings. When she no longer was able to see them, she’d be sure to ask in June if they’d made their reappearance. Although not a naturalist or a gardener, Jane savored her hikes and time outdoors. From fishing as a child in the Canadian wilderness to identifying woodland flowers, she was a keen observer of her surroundings. She adored lilies of the valley, peonies, black-eyed
Susans and sunflowers. It was common to discover the family bathtub filled with forsythia branches that Jane had submerged there to force the blooms. She never ceased to marvel at the beauty of a fresh snowfall on Mount Mansfield or the sunsets illuminating Lake Champlain. Jane did not want to waste time doing errands that could be spent doing something else that she really valued, like reading the newspaper or canoeing. On one occasion, instead of going to the DMV to renew her driving license, she determined that it would be so much better to simply change the date on her license and avoid waiting in the interminable lines. Jane shared her love of ginger, dark chocolate peppermints, sharp cheddar, lamb, popovers, crusty bread, baked potatoes, coffee ice cream, coconut cake and apple pie with family and friends. When strawberries were in season, she made shortcake for supper. When it was peach, cherry or corn season, the family feasted beyond a reasonable limit. Winter Sunday suppers often featured popcorn side by side with navel oranges or pomegranates. Jane’s last 26-plus years were spent at Wake Robin, a community she dearly loved. She often said that moving there was one of the best
decisions she ever made. As a result, the last quarter of her life was full and happy. She adored her adopted home in Vermont, reading everything she could lay her hands on about its politics, geography and cultural institutions. She explored widely. The first thing she did upon arriving to the state was get a library card, join Vermont Public Radio and sign up to volunteer at the Flynn Theater. Jane was predeceased by her brother Cornell Gurley; her husband, David Denker; and her son Michael Denker. She is survived by three children and their partners: Joel and Peggy Denker of Washington, D.C.; Dana and Guy Semmes of Potomac, Md.; Ellen Denker of Potomac, Md.; and Cornelia and Nick Emlen of Calais, Vt.; as well as her four grandchildren: Benedict Semmes of Houston, Texas; Charlotte Semmes of Truckee, Calif.; Nora Denker of San Francisco, Calif.; and Clara Emlen of Boston, Mass.; her greatgranddaughter Penelope McAlindin of Truckee, Calif.; and a large and loving family of nieces and nephews and their respective families. A memorial will be planned to celebrate Jane Denker’s life when the times allow. Donations in honor of Jane can be made to Vermont Public Radio, Shelburne Farms or Flynn Theater.
them and built the foundation for many more. By the time he left Staten Island, he
said he probably knew 10,000 people there. Dave had many lifelong friends. There was always a project on hand. Dave, with an affinity for airplanes, became a private pilot and avid flier as a young man. He owned, traded and rebuilt several aircrafts. He denied having any interest in helicopters for 77 years. In 2019, he learned how to fly one. The experience left him wanting more. His travels took him far and wide in the United States and abroad. Dave biked thousands of miles and crossed
the country numerous times by vehicle. In later years, he was accompanied by his wife, Brenda. Recently, two of his sons joined him for a boat trip down the Intercoastal to Florida. They faced a plethora of challenges, which did little to hinder their adventure. After a months of repair on their craft, the crew started out again and reached their final destination during a second trip a year later. They did not linger on the beach. Many were lucky enough to be taken on rides in his airplane, in the bucket of his
beloved backhoe, and in the Chris Craft. Dave was always on the move but would stop and talk a while with acquaintances and strangers. He was interested in what people had to say and how they lived. Dave had a love for learning. He studied German, was AP- and ASC-certified, and was a self-taught musician. He shared his love of music with those around him. Through it all, Dave remained deeply humble and generous. On May 31, 2020, David Winrock went into the portal. At the end of his life, he
made the choice to be home with his wife and family. He had enjoyed a good life. He is survived by his wife, Brenda (Bennett) Winrock; his three sons, Kevin, Thomas and Fred Winrock; his daughter, Kathy Winrock; his sister, Gloria Budgett; and several grandchildren, lifelong friends and the homes he built. In the end, he claimed one of his greatest life experiences was raising children. Dave will be remembered as a kind man with much to say who embraced life with all his might.
David Winrock FEBRUARY 20, 1942MAY 31, 2020 BURLINGTON, VT.
David J. Winrock was born February 20, 1942, on Staten Island, N.Y. He attended Curtis High School, where he joined the swim team. He continued his life in the water as a lifeguard and scuba diver. Dave went on to become a builder and excavating contractor on Staten Island. He left thousands of buildings and houses in better condition than he found
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Richard Hammond Michael Martello
DECEMBER 12, 1927MAY 28, 2020 SOUTH BURLINGTON & BURLINGTON, VT. Our father, Michael Martello, passed over into spirit on the morning of May 28, 2020, at home with family by his side. Born in Burlington, Vt., on Dec. 12, 1927, to the late Constance and Thomas Martello, he and his wife, Marion, raised four children together. All four and their spouses live in Vermont: the eldest, Pat and Jim Little of South Burlington; Tom and Gail Martello of Fairfield; Randy and Patty Martello of Richford; and Kelly and Randy Quenneville of Wolcott — all successful, happy and as individual as their parents. He lived close to three grandchildren, Jacob and Nathan Little and Thomas Martello; and five great-grandchildren, Haley Drown, Ethan and Tegan Little, and Skylar and Maddox Martello. He is survived by his sister Corona Shepherd, brother Tony Martello and sister Dorothy Corrigan. He and Marion lived with their eldest daughter and her husband for the last 20 years. Marion predeceased him in 2003. In this secure and loving environment, he happily lived to the ripe age of 92. With the care and attention he received from those he lived with, he remained not only active and driving but playing gigs until he turned 90. After his 90th birthday bash, he slowed down some but still enjoyed frequent lunches or dinners out with family and friends. He enjoyed a close friendship with two fellow musicians Jeff Wheel and Anthony Santor. Michael started his
musical journey as a young boy playing traditional Italian songs on mandolin for his Italian immigrant mother and uncles. His mother would hum the tunes, and he would play the notes. He became a well-known, gifted
jazz guitarist. Playing during the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival or anywhere else, he loved when family and friends would gather to watch and listen. You can read a wonderful Seven Days front-page article from
December 14, 2016, on his musical career. In the last several years, he was able to spend more time getting to know each of his kids. He enjoyed going to New York to the casinos with Pat and her husband, Jim. While he never did hit the jackpot, it never made him stop wanting to go, even if he “lost his shirt.” Kelly and Randy were able to have him up for long weekends on their small farm in Wolcott, Vt. While there, he loved to sit snuggled up in warm blankets on their screenedin porch, overlooking grassy meadows and watching his favorite cow, Springy. Most recently, he spent the first three weeks of the “Stay Home, Stay Safe” order with them. We feel so fortunate to have spent that quality time with him. The memories will last forever. When Randy and Patty moved back from Utah, Dad was able to spend some time at their home in Richford, overlooking wide fields full of deer while snug and cozy by the woodstove. Tom and Gail were able to have him up to their home in Fairfield to enjoy cookouts with them and his greatgrandchildren, along with family holiday gatherings. Dad was a huge part of our lives, and his passing has left a hole that will never be filled. Without even knowing it, he taught us all many lessons: Be kind, think of others, love, attention, patience, and time spent with those you care for. Father, grandfather, great-grandfather, brother, uncle, friend and mentor. We will see each other again, one day. There will be no calling hours. Arrangements are under the care of LaVigne Funeral Home and Cremation Service.
SEPTEMBER 23, 1957MAY 26, 2020 BURLINGTON, VT. Richard “Dickie” Hammond of Crowley Street in Burlington passed away on May 26 from complications related to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Born on September 23, 1957, to Richard and Georgette Hammond, Dickie lived in Burlington’s Old North End for his entire life. A few years after graduating from Burlington High School, Dickie went to work for the City of Burlington Street Department (later renamed Department of Public Works) in October 1979. Over the course of the next 37 years, he rose from a laborer position to foreman of the Street Division of DPW. He took great pride in building and fixing the streets and sidewalks all across Burlington. For nearly four decades, Dickie worked every winter around the clock to keep the streets and sidewalks safe for our community. A modest man who never sought attention, Dickie was proud that his work
made life better for other people. For years Dickie rose before dawn to meet his coworkers for breakfast at the Doughboys Diner on Pearl Street. When he finally retired in 2016, Dickie earned the distinction as one of the longest-serving city employees. As much as Dickie loved his work at DPW, his proudest accomplishment was raising his children as a single father. He often said that Travis and Chelsea were the best thing that ever happened to him. Every time he left the house, neighbors could hear Dickie call out to them from his truck that he loved them and to be good. He always made sure his children were safe, healthy and educated. Dickie was predeceased by his parents, Richard and Georgette Hammond, lifelong Burlington residents. Survivors include Travis Hammond and his daughter, Irelynn, of Burlington; and Chelsea Hammond and her partner, Raymond Laplante, of Burlington, and their children Sophia, Ray, Jayden and Jaelynn. Dickie is also survived by his brothers Randy (Priscilla), Robin (Jessica) and Robert, and his sisters Brenda and Linda. A memorial service is planned for Sunday, June 21, from noon to 4 p.m. at the upper picnic shelter at Oakledge Park. Due to COVID-19, bring a chair, wear a mask and practice physical distancing. We will be serving burgers and hot dogs. Please bring a dish if possible.
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Wendy Oppenheimer Joe Martin OCTOBER 4, 1965MAY 21, 2020 BURLINGTON, VT.
Joe died unexpectedly and tragically. He had struggled with drug and alcohol dependency and addictions for many decades. Joe was in and out of many rehabs and halfway houses in Vermont. He kept a positive attitude, saw the best in people, had a heart of gold and would help anybody. Joe graduated from Milton High School in 1984. He worked at Queen City Printers and the Offset House for many years. He loved Lake Champlain, fishing, a backpack full of brewskis, space, muscle cars, concerts, WIZN, his family, a Stephen King book, getting high and Jesus. He was also very proud to be Scottish. Most recently, he enjoyed the Brit Floyd concert at the Flynn and
reuniting with his “wizard best friends.” Over the years, a lot of Joe’s friends died from addiction. He often reminisced about them. Pink Floyd’s “Learning to Fly” was a favorite, and it seems appropriate now. Joey leaves his dad Joseph and Ila; brother Danny; sisters Lisa and Ann; nieces Tia and Jessica; and nephews Gage and Jade. He is predeceased by his mother, Sally Martin, of Milton; and younger sister Jennifer. There were a lot of good times and a lot of sad, heartbreaking times. Having addiction is a very hard thing for families, and we encourage anyone struggling to reach out for help. The family thanks the counselors, friends and anyone who helped Joe and encouraged him to get clean and sober. Joey, you will be always loved and greatly missed. Until we meet again.
AUGUST 23, 1946MAY 9, 2020 SHELBURNE, VT.
Wendy Dale (Werthamer) Oppenheimer passed away on May 9, 2020, just minutes before Mother’s Day in Bradenton, Fla. She was born the second of four daughters in Springfield, Mass., on August 23, 1946, to Norma (Bailey) Werthamer and Erwin “Dutch” Werthamer. She grew up and attended public schools in Agawam, Mass., where, in 1962, she met her high school sweetheart, Bob. Just after their marriage in 1968, Bob began his 20-year career as an Air Force doctor — and, in 1971, with the birth of their first child, Wendy settled into the role she was meant to play: wife and mother. Her love, wisdom, patience and good humor were an inspiration to her children, and she gave them the two things all parents should give their
children: the roots of family and home, and wings to fly away on their own. In 1986, with her family proudly looking on, she graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor of arts degree in art history from the University of Maryland’s overseas campus in Germany, where they were stationed from 1982 to 1988. This experience gave them a home base from which to launch their world travels, something Wendy always wanted to do and something she wanted her children to experience. They moved to Vermont in 1988 upon Bob’s retirement from the Air Force. In later years, she and Bob lived the “snowbird life” — spending half the year in Bradenton, Fla., and the other half in Shelburne, Vt. Wendy loved to read, garden and travel. She was an excellent cook and loved trying out new recipes. She had an unquenchable thirst for learning and experienced life to its fullest, always encouraging those around her to do the same. An attentive and compassionate listener, as well as a witty conversationalist, she had many lifelong and new friends, all of whom she valued deeply. Family and home were dear to Wendy. Her heart was large, and her capacity to love, limitless. Her smile could light up a room. Being a parent or grandparent was never a job to her — it was her life’s work and a calling she took very seriously.
Bob and Wendy’s union was a 52-year fairy-tale romance and a marriage of lifelong devotion. Their love was a joy to witness and an inspiration for the rest of us. Besides her husband, Wendy leaves three children: Libby and her husband, Michael; Jess and his wife, Karen; and Elsa and her husband, Mark. Because all lived nearby, the family was able to spend much time together. She also leaves seven grandchildren: Grace and Willa Johnson; Miles, Emma and Delaney Bosma; and Miranda and Amelia Oppenheimer, all of whom orbited around her like she was their sun. In addition, Wendy leaves three devoted and loving sisters: Donna Modzelewski of Agawam, Mass.; Lisa Courtney of North Guildford, Conn.; and Lynn Werthamer of Goshen, Mass. The four were often separated by geography but were never far away in spirit. They spoke almost daily, vacationed together with their families and on sisters-only trips, and spent holidays together with their spouses, children and grandchildren. Wendy’s unexpected death has been a tremendously sad time for our family; however, it has brought us closer than ever, something that would have made her so happy. While we have shared many tears since her passing, we have also shared much laughter, reminiscing
about past experiences. Wendy always felt like home and motherhood, love, grace and beauty, all perfectly put together. Shortly after her death, the family chose to honor her life in a very personal and intimate way. On a pictureperfect Saturday morning, the kind Wendy adored, Bob and their three children waded into the warm, clear waters off their favorite beach on Anna Maria Island, Fla. Together they stood in a close circle and placed plumeria and gardenia blossoms, hand-picked by Bob, in the water. After sharing special words, they sprinkled some of her ashes within the circle and sang a playful lullaby that Wendy frequently sang to all her children and grandchildren: Swimming, swimming in my swimming hole, When days are hot and nights are cold in my swimming hole, Breaststroke, side stroke, fancy diving too, Don’t you wish you didn’t have anything else to do? The family is setting up a children’s book-nook at the Shelburne Pierson Library in her honor. In lieu of flowers, please consider making a donation in her name toward this space. Donations can be sent to the Pierson Library, c/o the Wendy Oppenheimer Book Nook, 5376 Shelburne Rd., Shelburne, VT 05482 or made online at piersonlibrary.org/ support-the-library.
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BURLINGTON BUSINESSES SUPPORT BLACK LIVES People are at the very heart of the Lake Champlain Chamber’s mission, goals, objectives, programs, initiatives and ideas. ALL PEOPLE. … We believe deeply in equal justice, safety, respect and opportunity for all people. We reject racism, bigotry and hatred and will continue to stand for equity and inclusion inAS everything that we do. VERMONTERS
SUPPORT LOCAL
WE KNOW TO From “We StandHOW Together: SUPPORT OUR COMMUNITY. A Message From our President” Tom Torti, Lake HOW Champlain WE KNOW TO WORK TOGETHER. Regional Chamber of Commerce WE KNOW WE’LL GET THROUGH THIS.
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$300 MILLION
a live virtual shopping event together on Saturday and donated 10 percent of our sales to Black Lives Matter. Jess and Expressions will be donating 10 percent of our online event proceeds each week to local charities aligned with the Black IN THE VERMONT ECONOMY CREATING SUPPORTING Lives Matter movement. WeJOBS, thought this was the FAMILY FARMS, most powerful way we could useAND ourMAKING platform to LOCAL FOOD ACCESSIBLE TO advocate for racial justice. MORE VERMONTERS. Erin Brennan, manager Jess Boutique and Expressions
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arts news Reflections on Loss Poet Didi Jackson on grief, recovery and her new book, Moon Jar B Y MA R GA R ET GR AYSON
COURTESY OF GABE CORTESE
BOOKS
D
Didi Jackson
book of poetry, Moon Jar, was released on April 21 — the day before her 50th birthday and during a global pandemic. The book contains several years’ worth of poems about Jackson’s late husband, who died by suicide in 2011. Though many of the poems had been published previously, Jackson said it was emotionally intense to see them emerge into the world in book form. “The whole day, I just cried,” Jackson said. “I cried for what we were going through in the country, all these deaths. Also one of the things I was really afraid 24
IDI JACKSON ’s
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of was, I didn’t want to add to the pain and suffering of the world. I didn’t want my book to add to that.” Jackson’s book lays bare, in precise and honest language, the anguish of unexpectedly losing her husband, her
I WANTED THE BOOK
TO HAVE THAT TURN TO HOPE. D ID I JAC K S O N
slow journey through grief, and the eventual blooming of her relationship with and marriage to fellow poet Major Jackson. Moon Jar’s opening finds the poet unable to eat or sleep, all but destroyed by her loss; the book closes with Jackson at peace with “that keyhole size of grief that remains crystalline,” as she writes in the book’s title poem. “I wanted the book to have that turn to hope,” Jackson said. “Life continues. And I’ve noticed that, even in the pandemic … we all have to get up, get dressed and get on with it, you know?”
Jackson grew up in Florida, where she lived for 40 years before moving to Vermont in 2016. The Rochester resident is a lecturer in the University of Vermont’s Department of English and just finished teaching a course on African American poetry. Pandemic restrictions kept her from seeing her son, Dylan, graduate from college in Florida, and she can’t gather with friends to process the recent turmoil and protests over police killings. But she’s still writing her way through difficult times, and shared with Seven Days how she does it. SEVEN DAYS: Do you feel any urgency or pressure to capture this particular moment? Or are you allowing yourself to write about whatever comes up? DIDI JACKSON: I don’t put that on myself. Poems can be political in so many different ways. There are political “now” poems, and then what I call “slow burn” poems. It’s dealing with and capturing that moment, but kind of quietly or slowly. One of the poems I wrote about the pandemic, funny enough, is about the spider that was on my desk and how alone the spider is, and it’s an environment that seems, I’m sure, completely unfamiliar to her. So that becomes an isolated, social-distance poem in its own self; it’s not that overt firecracker of a poem. There have been moments in my life that I’ve been so angry about and so infuriated, and Major gave me such great advice once. I was just railing — I think it was on something about the environment — and I was like, “What can we do? It’s hopeless.” I was spiraling. What he said to me was, “Write about it. Put it in your poems.” I can’t write an immediate poem. Even in dealing with my husband’s suicide, it took a very dear friend of mine, Michele Randall. She’s a poet who lives in Florida. She would come over, and we started writing. At first it wasn’t even writing. She would bring scissors and magazines, and it was like cutting therapy, almost like going back to preschool. That evolved into her bringing little pieces of art, and we’d write about that. Then, eventually, that led
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to me being able to write about what happened. But it took time when things were so traumatic. SD: All of these poems are intensely personal. I’m curious about the emotions surrounding putting them out into the world. When you were writing these poems, did you think you’d ever want to share and publish them? DJ: You write the poems, and you’re in your room by yourself, and you might share them with a friend or two, and then they might get published in a journal. And you’re like, “OK, take a deep breath,” and you move through it. But I was really concerned about my son. There’s not a lot that mentions him, but there’s a couple poems of him in there, and I was feeling very protective of him. The creating of the poem is one thing, and then, putting it out there, it’s no longer yours anymore. You don’t know how people are going to read it and what they’re going to read into it — whatever happened in their own lives that they’re going to bring to it. And it’s scary, but it’s also why I’m doing it. SD: Small details in the book really strike an emotional chord. I’m thinking of the line about grooves in your son’s piano reminding you of your late husband’s “practice cuts.” Was it hard to include those details? Has your son, who lost his stepfather, read it? Do you want him to read it? DJ: I don’t know. He has the book. He knows about the poems that he’s in. That one you mentioned was the hardest poem for me to put in the book. When Gary died, Dylan was 13. He didn’t know the details. It was advised for me by the therapist to not
reveal them. He doesn’t need to know the details. But it’s so interesting that the book, I felt, needed some of that. I can remember being, early on, as a widow, and when someone found out that my husband had killed himself, the first question they would ask was, “How did he do it?” Like, that is none of your business! I was so shocked by that. But then I worked through that, and I think it’s human nature. We have this idea of self-preservation, like if we know how that person did it, it guarantees us our own personal safety, in a way. Which is all fabricated, of course. But it’s this way in which we kind of navigate the absurdity of suicide, and the reality of it. So I felt like I was OK with, maybe, placing small details about how he took his life. I think the book is there more for the survivors, those who survived suicide loss. There have been a handful of people who’ve told me personally that they have attempted suicide or contemplated suicide, and that they really appreciate the book for the honesty and for showing that there’s movement toward something positive and new life, a new chance. When the book came out and I was doing Zoom readings, I was worried to read poems from it. I was trying to flip through it and find what I called my non-suicide poems, which are very few and far between. But now I don’t worry about that quite so much.
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HONOR YOUR SENIOR ON-AIR! PRESENTS...
STUDENT SENIOR
SPOTLIGHT Want to give your senior student a special shout out? Share your message with us and we’ll mention them live on the radio.
HERE'S HOW IT WORKS: Visit one of the Facebook pages for these stations
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length. Contact: margaret@sevendaysvt.com
INFO Moon Jar by Didi Jackson, Red Hen Press, 80 pages. $16.95. didijackson.com
• Record your message and upload the video to our page.
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arts news COURTESY OF TILLY KRISHNA
Anti-Racism Challenge calendar created by Tilly Krishna
Time for Change
Local student puts anti-racism on the calendar
CULTURE
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organizer of a social justice group at the school. At the tender age of 16, she is already fluent in activism. She has focused her considerable passion on gender discrimination, refugee and immigrant issues, and gun control, as well as racial justice. Though Krishna has taken part in local Black Lives Matter protests, her uniquely proactive response to events of the past couple of weeks was to create a 30-Day AntiRacism Challenge — literally on a calendar. It’s essentially a daily pedagogical to-do list for the month of June, but one could start on any date. The point is simply to do it. “You can’t just go to one protest and say your work is done,” Krishna says in a phone interview. “For a white or non-black person of color, the best thing you can do is get educated.” Day one starts off easy, with an instruction to follow Black Lives Matter on Instagram and sign up for the newsletter. Over the course of a month, “students” will watch videos, including speeches by Malcolm X and a talk by Ta-Nehisi Coates on entrenched racist myths; read a variety of texts; donate to mission-specific organizations; and engage in actions, such as contacting state legislators to discuss criminal justice initiatives. On day 30, Krishna suggests, “Research 5-10 things you can do for racial justice, and plan out July.” “One of the biggest things about being an ally is to acknowledge and understand white privilege,” Krishna says. She notes that her calendar exercise “doesn’t blame people for being white or having privilege.” Rather, she hopes that
Contact: pamela@sevendaysvt
INFO The 30-Day Anti-Racism Challenge can be downloaded on Instagram at tilly.krishna and in the web version of this story at sevendaysvt.com. COURTESY OF TILLY KRISHNA
the SLOW the LAKE CHAMPLAIN CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL, the Champlain Housing Trust and Planned Parenthood have in common? This past week, all of them — and many, many more, from cultural organizations to for-profit businesses — put out strongly worded statements in solidarity with black and brown Americans. Some directly address police brutality, white supremacy or racially motivated violence; others call more generally for social and economic justice. Cynical observers might dismiss these statements as ineffectual responses to yet another police killing — in this case the victim was George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American man in Minneapolis. But the sheer number of the messages, along with massive protests around the globe, bolsters the emergent view that this moment — this death, this reaction — is actually a tipping point in the harrowing history of race relations in America. But the harder work of actual systemic change lies ahead. To that end, recommendations for those who would be allies have been circulating on social media. They include ways to help financially, such as a fund covering the legal fees of cited protestors, a compendium of blackowned restaurants and other businesses to support, and lists of individuals seeking direct reparations. In the how-not-to-be-a-racist camp, however, few approaches surpass that of local teen TILLY KRISHNA. Krishna is a rising senior at Essex High School, a student representative on the school board and the 26
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people will go on a journey of discovery, trying to understand the realities of living while black. Krishna didn’t specifically draw her suggestions from other anti-racist guides; in fact, she observes that the “endless” resources online and in social media can be overwhelming. “I wanted to create a really concise way to begin,” she says. “The people who really need to hear this can be too lazy to do the research themselves,” she continues. “I researched all the articles with my sister … We need to understand why we are where we are right now. I tried to choose resources from black voices.” Krishna, who is also a competitive tennis player at Essex High, was born in Wisconsin but moved with her family to India when she was 4. Six years later, she says, her father, RAGHAVENDRA KRISHNA, was hired at Montpelier-based National Life Group, and the family relocated to Vermont. Krishna remembers being surprised by how different the state is from Wisconsin but says she quickly grew to love it. That said, she has experienced racism here, both nonspecific — such as swastikas painted on her school — and personal. “I haven’t experienced violent racism,” she clarifies, “but I see the stereotyping. “Vermont has a lot of racism, and we have work to do,” Krishna says. “The number of microaggressions is crazy.” And privileged white people, she points out, might not take racism seriously unless they feel some consequences in their own lives. “More recently there’s been more exposing of racism on social media,” she says, citing a Snapchat by an Essex student to another that said, “go back to the cotton fields.” The recipient took a screenshot of the message and shared it on Instagram. “The people being accused are getting really defensive: ‘No, I’m not racist!’” Krishna says. For her, overcoming racism starts with education. Last year, she was one of 900 high schoolers who attended the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Advocacy Institute in Washington, D.C., a weeklong learning experience she calls “life-changing.” Krishna cites ACLU deputy legal director Jeffery Robinson’s advice to arm oneself with facts. “When you have the facts, you will win the debate, and that will be effective,” Krishna says. “You can spark a change.”
Tilly Krishna (right) with a friend at the recent Burlington Black Lives Matter protest
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Out of Sight
Streaming video review: Blindspotting B Y M AR GO T HA R R I SON
W
COURTESY OF LIONSGATE
here do we find entertainment these days? On our laptops and in our living rooms. The streaming options are overwhelming — and not always easy to sort through. So, in this weekly feature, I review a movie or series that might otherwise be easy to overlook. THE MOVIE: Blindspotting (2018)
HBO Max, HBO Go; rentable on other services. THE DEAL: In this explosive indie film from first-time feature director Carlos López Estrada, Daveed Diggs (Tony Award winner for Hamilton) and Rafael Casal play Collin and Miles, best friends who grew up together in Oakland, Calif. They work for a moving company, reluctantly facilitating the influx of affluent hipsters who are reshaping their beloved city. Together they banter, talk shit and freestyle about their frustrations. But sometimes their concerns diverge. Collin is black; Miles is white. Collin is a convicted felon who is determined to stay out of trouble for the last three days of his year of probation. Miles is a fast-talking hothead who sometimes carries a gun. Alone at night, Collin sees a cop shoot down a fleeing African American man. Aware that stepping forward as a witness would threaten his own freedom, he says nothing. But the violence haunts him, and over the course of those crucial three days, growing tensions draw him and Miles toward a reckoning. WILL YOU LIKE IT? Big, bold and stylistically striking, with hot neon accents and occasional hyperreal touches, Blindspotting brings the energy of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing to today’s indie scene. While it’s not an ensemble piece, it’s strongly rooted in love for an ethnically diverse city, and it mixes comedy and tragedy with aplomb. If you watch Blindspotting expecting something heavy, you may be surprised to find yourself laughing at Miles and Collin’s clowning around and their pointed mockery of hipsters and tech bros. If you watch it expecting something light, the recurring motifs of violence and institutional racism will soon set you straight. Some scenes are funny until they take a dark turn, making us contemplate the thin line between the absurd and the awful. Others grapple so WHERE TO SEE IT:
Still from Blindspotting
directly with painful subjects that they’re tough — but rewarding — to watch. Written by Casal and Diggs, who are themselves lifetime friends, the screenplay could sometimes be accused of melodrama. But the characters feel real and lived in, like the setting; it’s not surprising that Starz has announced plans for a spinoff series.
Blindspotting is not a movie about injustices that are safely in the past, or wrongs that are righted before the credits roll. It’s an absorbing, powerful film about the joys and limits of interracial friendship in a contemporary setting where racism is still very much a given. IF YOU LIKE THIS, TRY...
•The Last Black Man in San Francisco (rentable on various services): While Blindspotting satirizes the gentrification
of the Bay Area, this winning indie elegizes all that was lost in the process. Jimmie Fails plays a young man obsessed with the childhood home he can no longer afford to own. • Sorry to Bother You (Hulu; rentable on various services): Like Blindspotting, Boots Riley’s anarchic comedy takes big risks as it tells the story of a young telemarketer (Lakeith Stanfield) who finds unheard-of success after he starts using his “white voice.” Both films feature discussionworthy scenes involving white guilt and the use of the N-word. • “When They See Us” (Netflix): This miniseries from director Ava DuVernay is a harrowing dramatization of the stories of the five defendants in the 1989 Central Park jogger case, whose convictions were later overturned. Detail by chilling, damning detail, DuVernay shows how far justice can go astray. As vital companion pieces, don’t miss DuVernay’s documentary 13th (Netflix) or her Martin Luther King Jr. biopic Selma. You’ll find the latter in a special Amazon Prime Video collection called “Black History, Hardship & Hope”; many of those films currently rent for free.
NOW PLAYING Sunset Drive-In Through Thursday, June 11 The Invisible Man & The Hunt Baby Driver & Knives Out Jumanji: The Next Level & Sonic the Hedgehog The Wretched & Bad Boys for Life Friday, June 12, through Thursday, June 18 The King of Staten Island & Jumanji: The Next Level Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone & Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Baby Driver & Knives Out The Invisible Man & The Hunt
Bethel Drive-In Friday, June 12, through Sunday, June 14 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
Fairlee Drive-In Friday, June 12, & Saturday, June 13 Jumanji: The Next Level & Bad Boys for Life Sunday, June 14 Bad Boys for Life
Contact: margot@sevendaysvt.com SEVEN DAYS JUNE 10-17, 2020
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WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT BY JORDAN ADAMS
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The “Dad mailbox” in Geprags Community Park
loving and thankful. Others are extremely painful and heartbreaking.” Indeed, many of the message writers champion their fathers. “Dad, you are the reason I know everything I know,” one note begins. “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, I miss your humor, kindness, laugh, scent, thoughtfulness, the list goes on,” another reads. Others convey more complicated relationships:
COURTESY OF KELLY TEAL GOYETTE
n a May excursion from quarantine life, Meredith Gordon, a Shelburne-based comedian, took her husband and two children to Geprags Community Park in Hinesburg for some muchneeded fresh air. It was their first visit to the green space. While exploring the trails, they came on a strange sight alongside a path near two benches: a white metal standard-size mailbox, fixed to a post and adorned with a flower and the word “Dad.” At first, they thought it was a geocaching station. But when they opened the box, they found a pen and three notebooks full of hundreds of notes to people’s fathers. Leafing through the pages, they felt as if they’d intruded on some kind of memorial. “Some of [the notes] were super intimate,” Gordon told Seven Days by phone after posting about the mysterious find on Facebook. “It seemed like a very sacred thing.” Who put the mailbox there, when and why? It’s not featured or mentioned on the park’s website. Calls to the Hinesburg town offices yielded no answers. “I’ve never heard of this before,” town administrator Renae Marshall said. “It’s news to me. I don’t think anyone in the town government would know.” She was right. Other staffers were stumped. A call Marshall placed to Kate Kelly of the Hinesburg Conservation Commission turned up nothing. But when Seven Days posted a query on Hinesburg’s Front Porch Forum, the mailbox’s postmaster general quickly came forward. It’s longtime Hinesburg resident Barry Lampke, who works as the community engagement and science communications manager at ECHO Leahy Center for Lake Champlain in Burlington. “I put it up a year after my dad passed away,” Lampke, 59, said by phone. Letters were the preferred method of communication between him and his father, George, who died in 2010. Lampke felt compelled to create a special space where he could continue to correspond with his father. The orange blossom painted on the mailbox is a re-creation of an illustration George put on every one of his letters to his son. Though Lampke did not obtain official permission to install the box, it has stood unbothered for nearly a decade. He’s kept his connection to it largely a secret, and he said he had no idea how profoundly the mailbox would resonate with passersby who have come across it — and added their own notes. Most of the messages currently in the box are in English, but other languages appear, including Spanish and German. Some appear to be written to fathers who are still living, while others reminisce about dads long passed. Some are clearly the words and pictures of young children just learning how to write and draw, such as a scrawled entry that reads, “Dear Dad, I love you so much because you take care of me and love me.” Lampke said he only supplied the first notebook and has no idea who added the others. “As I’ve gone back, I saw that there were more journals there,” he said. He returns to the spot often, he noted, sometimes to write more and sometimes to read what others have written. “Some of [the letters] are
JORDAN ADAMS
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What’s the Story With Hinesburg’s ‘Dad Mailbox’?
Dad, sorry when I was 12 or so & you wanted me to join you on our dump trip & I said no. You looked so sad. Now I know why. I hope mom is treating you better now that she is feeling better. Dear “Dad,” I hate you most of the time. You were never the father figure that I needed. As a young woman now, I catch myself wondering if these traits are yours, handed down to me through your genes, and I resent you even more. Dear dad, fuck off wiph [sic] ya. Gordon said she sees the installation as “a testament to how complex the word [‘dad’] is. [It] means so many things to so many people.” She’s considered returning to write a letter to her own father, Williston Central School teacher Al Myers, who died in 2009. “Because I lost my dad, I totally understand why
someone would [create this],” Gordon said. “It’s so much more intimate than going to visit somebody at a grave site.” Lampke sees the mailbox as a place where people can come to have a private conversation. “It’s opened up a new channel of communication between people and their dads,” Lampke said. “It’s [George’s] gift to all the dads. It provides an opportunity for reflection, forgiveness and appreciation. Years from now, I hope my kids will visit the mailbox.” Contact: jordan@sevendaysvt.com
INFO The “Dad mailbox” is a 10-minute walk from the Geprags Community Park parking lot. Learn more about conservation and stewardship of the park at protectgeprags.org. Got a Vermont head-scratcher that has you stumped? Ask us! wtf@sevendaysvt.com
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BOTTOM LINE BY DEREK BROUWER
Semi-Conducting
How Vermont’s largest manufacturer makes microchips during lockdown
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A GlobalFoundries employee working on the production floor in Essex Junction
scale. GlobalFoundries’ campus has 30 buildings, totaling 3.5 million square feet of clean rooms, labs and office space, plus several commercial tenants. The roundthe-clock operation uses more electricity than the City of Burlington and about as much water. “We always think of ourselves as a little city, in a way,” Miller said. The chipmaking process is highly automated, with robotic arms and monorails handling much of the precision work. As a result, GlobalFoundries has managed to keep production online with just 25 percent of employees on-site. Support technicians, such as process engineers, who don’t run tools but are sometimes needed on the floor, were split into teams A and B; they work on campus on different days. Employees who aren’t needed on the floor have been working from home. That still means hundreds of workers need to work in a socially distanced environment. GlobalFoundries restricted access to the entire complex to three entry points and began screening everyone who passed through, first using human temperature takers and then, more recently, automated devices. Self-serve stations in the cafeteria shut down. The intricate manufacturing process takes place in vast “clean rooms,” billed as some of the most immaculate spaces on the planet, that compose a combined 500,000 square feet in two of the larger buildings. Workers always don and doff cleanroom garments, nicknamed “bunny suits,” in a large changing room connected to the floor. The full-body veils help prevent dust particles from corrupting the silicon
wafers. The company initially added surgical masks to the uniforms, though it has since switched to the cloth kind. These changes, plus some socialdistancing guidelines, have allowed GlobalFoundries to continue apace — which was necessary, Miller said, to fulfill the relatively high number of orders placed for the first and second quarters. No one has contracted COVID-19 at work, he said. One of the company’s most difficult challenges has been maintaining its full manufacturing crew as workers try to navigate months without school or daycare for their kids. “Unless they had another family member, it required them to stay home,” Miller said. The childcare issue is another reason why GlobalFoundries is taking a slow, “phased” approach to bringing the other 75 percent of its employees back on-site. As state lockdowns have eased in recent weeks, some of those workers have returned, but Miller said he doesn’t expect to have everyone back until October at the earliest. Other Vermont manufacturers, particularly those that mothballed their factories during the first COVID-19 wave, are looking to GlobalFoundries’ adjustments to guide their own. Last month, the company’s environmental, health, safety and security director, Jim Mulligan, took part in a virtual panel arranged by the Vermont Manufacturing Extension Center to offer advice on safely restarting operations. GlobalFoundries’ executives are part of a manufacturing “subteam” of the state’s RestartVT economic task force. The
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ince March, entering this massive campus — bigger than most Vermont towns — has required a new kind of pass code. A skeleton crew of more than 1,000 masked workers lines up each day before one of three gatekeepers to have their temperatures read by an infrared thermometer. Once they pass the test, the employees put on head-to-toe protective garments. Then they walk onto the floor, a labyrinthine, controlled environment where they begin their “essential” day’s work that continues unabated through the coronavirus pandemic. This campus is not a hospital, and these employees are not nurses. They are engineers and technicians for semiconductor manufacturer GlobalFoundries in Essex Junction. The privately held, California-based multinational company is Vermont’s largest private employer, with 2,300 workers. Its “Fab 9” plant, as the local foundry is called, prints microchips that power consumer and commercial electronics. While COVID-19 has required quick adjustments and brought new uncertainty to an already complex, competitive global marketplace, Fab 9 continues to hum along. “We’ve been able to meet our production targets,” said Dale Miller, senior location executive and senior director of manufacturing operations. That’s no small feat, given that most of GlobalFoundries’ Vermont workforce hasn’t even been on-site. Unlike many other manufacturers, the chipmaker is considered essential during the state of emergency. Its microchips, printed on silicon wafers, are the building blocks of wireless technology and health care equipment such as ultrasound devices. The Vermont fabricator also holds “trusted foundry” status with the U.S. Department of Defense and produces chips for military applications. The Essex Junction plant, purchased from IBM in 2015, is one of 10 foundries the company owns around the world; its other locations are in New York State, Germany and Singapore. Because the coronavirus swept through Asia and Europe before it was discovered in New England, Miller said, the U.S. foundries had a blueprint for adapting the workplace so the production lines could stay moving without workers being exposed. They began planning in January and February, he said. The changes weren’t especially complicated, but they had to happen on a huge
company has also donated N95 respirators — used sparingly in its manufacturing process — and masks to first responders, as well as more than 800 “bunny suits” to aid in the pandemic response. While its adaptation serves as a model for others, the state’s largest private employer faces an unknown and likely volatile future. The semiconductor industry relies on complex international supply chains that outbreaks could disrupt. Demand for the high-tech electronics that use microchips is sure to shift during a global recession. An April analysis by consulting firm McKinsey & Company forecast that global semiconductor demand will drop between 5 and 15 percent in 2020, with the steepest declines in automotive and wireless applications. Mobile and wireless infrastructure makes up the biggest chunk of microchip production in Essex Junction. Miller said the company is anticipating “a little bit of a downturn,” but he struck an optimistic tone. “We are vital to a lot of key industries,” he said. “Demands can change pretty quickly.” Meanwhile, GlobalFoundries is among the U.S.-based semiconductor companies lobbying the Trump administration for federal backing to create new plants in the United States, the Albany, N.Y., Times Union reported, in order to reduce reliance on essential imported materials. The federal government reportedly struck a deal last month with Taiwan microchip producer TSMC, the world’s largest, to build a new plant in Arizona. The proposed plant would fabricate wafers of a different size from those created in Vermont. Still, GlobalFoundries, which is owned by investors in Abu Dhabi, questioned the wisdom of partnering with its foreign competitor. “Does that make sense?” Laurie Kelly, the company’s vice president of global communications, said to the New York Times. “There are so many other options.” Last year, the Vermont plant sold its application-specific integrated circuit, or ASIC, division to Santa Clara, Calif.-based Marvell, which in turn cut 78 jobs. Around that time, the company also sold its Essex Junction-based photomask operation to a Japan-owned company, Toppan, but reps told AnandTech magazine that the equipment deal did not include job cuts. Miller said GlobalFoundries hasn’t furloughed or laid off any employees since COVID-19 arrived, nor does it plan to in the months ahead. “We’ve been pretty adamant with our employee base,” he said. “Our CEO [Thomas Caulfield] said at the beginning of this, ‘We started this together, and we will finish this together.’” m Contact: derek@sevendaysvt.com
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VERMONTING BY PAMELA POLSTON
Gardens of Stone A day trip close to home: Barre
PHOTOS: PAMELA POLSTON
HELLO, VERMONTING Even as Vermont gradually opens up from the pandemic shutdown, Gov. Phil Scott still encourages residents to stay home as much as possible. And so this summer is a good time to explore our home state. Its diminutive size makes a multitude of short trips accessible, whether for a few hours, an overnight or a longer getaway. This series, running weekly through mid-October, presents curated excursions in every corner of Vermont, based on the experiences of Seven Days reporters. The idea is to patronize the state’s restaurants, retailers, attractions and outdoor adventures — after all, we want them to
Marsha Kincheloe, owner of Grakles
still be there when the pandemic is finally over. Happy traveling, and stay safe.
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“Culmination” by Sean Williams
“Youth Triumphant,” designed by C. Paul Jennewein
color and created a community uniquely devoted to visual arts. We headed first to Studio Place Arts, whose executive director, Sue Higby, is the project manager for the ongoing commissioning of streetscape sculpture. Though the gallery remains closed until June 16, she invited us in for a socially distanced tour of the exhibits on all three floors. They opened just a week before the pandemic shut everything down, Higby told us, and the exhibits will be extended through the summer. Recommending an impromptu visit to next-door neighbor Vermont Salumi, Higby called owner Pete Roscini Colman for the OK. Colman graciously took a break from the renovation of the building that once housed the Homer Fitts department store. The sausage making happens in the back, in a cavernous, lab-like room whose corrugated walls are blood red. Colman flipped on the lights in a walkin cooler so we could peer through its
COURTESY OF MAGGIE SHERMAN
pring in Vermont invites anthropomorphic description: The green is ebullient, the beauty fierce and proud. We’ve endured another long winter, it seems to say, and look at us now. Of course, we humans have also endured a pandemic, a quarantine, a smashing blow to the economy, and the alienation of social distancing and mask wearing. The entire country is in turmoil, marching in protest, demanding a longoverdue racial reckoning. It was therapeutic and, yes, a privilege to set all this aside, if only for a few hours on a sunny day. Vermont’s greenery felt like an embrace, a balm, even viewed from the car on Interstate 89. From our home base in Burlington, we made the easy 45-minute drive to Barre and parked on North Main Street, the central artery of downtown. The meter told us that parking was free. Our mission was to take the Art Stroll around town, check out some recently reopened shops, get a takeout lunch and picnic in the famous Hope Cemetery. It was no coincidence that our trip was bookended with granite sculptures; in its heyday, the Granite City was considered the granite capital of the world. The 19thand early 20th-century industry attracted thousands of immigrant stone carvers, primarily from Italy but also from Scotland, Greece, Lebanon, Canada and elsewhere. That influx made Barre Vermont’s most diverse city, injected its politics with
The author in “Daddy’s Chair” by Giuliano Cecchinelli II
window at dozens of sausages hanging from racks, deep in the invisible alchemy of curing. Out front, Colman showed off the space that will become a bodega selling his meats, plus essential groceries and some prepared foods. A back bar and tables near the tall street-side windows await the governor’s sanctioning of indoor
gatherings. During the pandemic, Colman has provided curbside pickup. Vermont Salumi’s hip-but-not-fancy aesthetic and multipurpose space reflect a national trend and represent a hopeful development in a downtown pocked with empty storefronts. “This is just what Barre needs,” Higby opined. Thanking Colman, we headed outside and consulted our Art Stroll map. The sculptures nearest to Studio Place Arts include the life-size granite “Daddy’s Chair,” by local legend Giuliano Cecchinelli II, which is surprisingly comfortable; “Unzipping the Earth,” by Chris Miller,
WE PACKED OUR MANGO CHICKEN AND BUTTER CHICKEN INTO THE BACK SEAT AND
HEADED TO HOPE CEMETERY.
Robert Burns monument
“Unzipping the Earth” by Chris Miller
a giant stone zipper that snakes along a pocket park; and the 8-foot-tall “Culmination,” by Sean Williams, a cityscape that seems to rise from a quarry. “Culmination” honors the stone carvers who immigrated to Barre, Williams told Seven Days when his piece was installed last fall. Continuing down North Main, we stopped to admire the rude-faced gargoyles on either end of a metal coil. Another work by Miller, it’s one of several granite-anchored bike racks scattered around downtown. At the intersection with South Main and Washington streets, a massive monument titled “Youth Triumphant”
Gravestone at Hope Cemetery
dominates one end of City Hall Park. Designed by noted New York artist C. Paul Jennewein and installed in 1924, the work both commemorates armed forces in World War I and makes a plea for world peace. The young warrior’s kneeling posture has a different resonance these days. The plaza surrounding “Youth Triumphant” offers another attraction: an odd acoustic phenomenon extolled by many a travel writer. When two people sit at either end of the semicircular granite bench and speak at a low volume, they can hear each other perfectly, 20 feet apart. We verified that it works, even above the din of street construction. The final sculpture on our stroll was a memorial to poet Robert Burns, erected by Scottish immigrants to Barre in 1899. Sited on the sloping lawn of the Vermont History Center and soaring 22 feet from the base, the monument is a stunning accomplishment in granite carving. Particularly impressive are the high-relief panels on the pedestal that feature delicate text and scenes from Burns’ poems. Their carver, Elia Corti, was mortally wounded in 1903 following an altercation between anarchists and socialists outside what’s now called the Old Labor Hall. After marveling at all this statuary and history, a shopping break was in order. Our first stop was an antique store called Grakles, where a number of black birds (not real) perch here and there. Owner Marsha
Kincheloe, who gamely answered questions from behind her face mask, told us she’s been in business for 18 years and was able to reopen at the end of April — earlier than other retail stores — because of her “light manufacturing.” She manufactures — that is, sews — colorful pot holders, aprons, bags and the like, examples of which are clustered on racks near the front door. The rest of Kincheloe’s inventory, from 60 consignors, is neatly but tightly arranged. Social distancing hasn’t been a problem, because “only a couple people at a time” have entered the store, she said. “Business is only about 30 percent of what it was this time last year,” Kincheloe added. But she didn’t seem too worried. A sole proprietor with no employees, Kincheloe noted that people are still downsizing and casting off extra stuff, while other people still like to buy old things. Proving that point, we relieved her of an antique rolling pin, some books and a tiny wooden tiger. The smell of leather lured us into Boisvert’s Shoe Repair, which not only fixes footwear but also sells leather goods, from briefcases to motorcycle jackets. A fluffy little moppet greeted us with pretendscary barks before deciding to leap around excitedly instead. “She’s been cooped up too long,” Megan Boisvert said of the pooch, Ella, apologizing as she emerged from the back. “Haven’t we all?” we said. Boisvert is a third-generation cobbler in the shop that her grandfather, Ernest Boisvert, founded in 1950. There were five cobblers in Barre at that time, she said; now she believes Boisvert’s is one of three in the whole state. We admired a spangled leather jacket, purchased a tomato-red wallet and gave Ella an extra pat before heading out. It was time for lunch. Three biker dudes were just finishing theirs at the Quarry Kitchen + Spirits as we passed by the outside tables. “Hey, did you guys know about the leather shop around the corner?” we ventured. They did not. “You might want to check it out.” To our delight, they did. We had decided on takeout from Rickie’s Indian Restaurant in South Barre. Though the Punjabi food is authentic and rave-worthy, “restaurant” is a bit misleading. Rickie’s occupies the back of a Shell gas-station convenience store, alongside conventional deli offerings. Gary and Kelly Singh and their adult children operate the place — Rickie is the youngest. Kelly is the primary cook, as we learned when asking a daughter about ghee in one of the dishes. “I don’t know, ask my mom,” she said, pointing to a lovely woman at the cash register. After a short wait, we packed our mango chicken and butter chicken into the
back seat and headed to Hope Cemetery. The route took us back through downtown Barre, where the Delicate Decadence cake boutique issued a siren song. We pulled over, as one will often do for chocolate. Finally, with a bag of fudgy decadence and Indian takeout, we entered the cemetery drive, which is flanked by two classical sculptures by Carlo Abate, and found a place to plop down. Picnicking under a lilac tree, we gazed at row after row of granite sculptures and tried to imagine the lives of immigrant artists in Vermont more than a century ago. Here in the New World they met their deaths, often from silicosis. A veritable outdoor museum, Hope covers 65 acres and holds more than 10,000 gravestones. They have the pale gray of granite in common, but their final-restingplace styles vary dramatically: stolid rectangles with elegantly chiseled names, a miniature biplane, a grand mausoleum with a facsimile Pietà, a soccer ball, a race car, a celestial choir’s worth of angels. Before heading home, we prowled the winding lanes of the cemetery, reading scores of Italian surnames out loud. One kept appearing: Calcagni. As we wondered why all the Calcagnis weren’t buried in one place, we came upon a couple placing geraniums at a tombstone marked … Calcagni. We stopped to inquire about the name. The gentleman pronounced it Calcanny; his wife said it was her aunt’s family. The gentleman asked where we were from; he seemed astonished that visitors with no dead kin here would drive all the way from Burlington. His wife explained that no one else brought flowers to this grave, so she did. “That’s very kind of you,” we said. “Thank you for stopping,” she called as we drove slowly away. “You take care.” m Contact: pamela@sevendaysvt.com
MORE IN BARRE When they reopen to the public, we also recommend the following: Barre Opera House, 6 N. Main St., 476-8188, barreoperahouse.org. Millstone Trails Association, 44 Brook St., Websterville, millstonetrails.org. Open; check website for guidelines. Overnight: Reynolds House, 102 S. Main St., 622-0201, reynoldshouse1892.com. Open. Socialist Labor Party Hall, aka Old Labor Hall, 46 Granite St., 331-0013, oldlaborhall.org. -Thunder Road Speedbowl, 61 Fisher Rd., 2446963, thunderroadvt.com. Vermont History Center, 60 Washington St., 479-8500, vermonthistory.org. Exhibits closed through September 1 or later; Leahy Library open by appointment on June 16. Vermont Granite Museum, 7 Jones Brothers Way, 476-4605, vtgranitemuseum.org. SEVEN DAYS JUNE 10-17, 2020
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PAID LEGAL ADVERTISEMENT
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE Rural Development Winooski School District: Notice of Availability of an Environmental Assessment AGENCY: Rural Development, USDA ACTION: Notice of Availability of an Environmental Assessment SUMMARY: Notice is hereby given that the USDA Rural Development Community Facilities Loan and Grant Program, as required by the National Environmental Policy Act, is issuing an environmental assessment (EA) in connection with possible impacts related to a project proposed by Winooski School District, of Winooski, Vermont. The proposal is for additions and renovations to the existing K-12 school on Normand Street in Winooski, related site work, and upgrading athletic fields. Winooski School District has submitted an application to USDA Rural Development for funding of the proposal. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: To obtain copies of the EA, or for further information, contact: USDA Rural Development, Rebecca Schrader, Community Program Specialist, 87 State Street, Montpelier, VT 05601; rebecca.schrader@usda.gov or at (802) 424-3151. The EA is also available for public review at USDA Rural Development, 87 State Street, Montpelier, VT 05601. Due to current conditions, public review is by appointment only. Contact Rebecca Schrader to schedule an appointment. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Winooski School District proposes to construct additions and complete renovations to the existing K-12 school on Normand Street in Winooski. Planned additions total 71,643 square feet. Renovations include new roofing, windows, lighting, plumbing, HVAC, and flooring. Additionally, there will be renovations and upgrades in parking areas, including stormwater management, and renovations to athletic fields. Civil and Structural Engineers Engineering Ventures, an environmental consultant, prepared an environmental assessment for USDA Rural Development that describes the project, assesses the proposed project’s environmental impacts, and summarizes as applicable any mitigation measures used to minimize environmental effects. USDA Rural Development has conducted an independent evaluation of the environmental assessment and believes that it accurately assesses the impacts of the proposed project. No significant impacts are expected as a result of the construction of the project. 34
SEVEN DAYS JUNE 10-17, 2020
A a a E
A
D
PAID LEGAL ADVERTISEMENT
Any final action by USDA Rural Development related to the proposed project will be subject to and contingent upon, compliance with all relevant Federal environmental laws and regulations Questions and comments should be sent to USDA Rural Development at the address provided. USDA and completion of environmental review procedures as prescribed by 7 CFR Part 1970, Rural Development will accept questions and comments on the environmental assessment for 14 days Environmental Policies and Procedures. from the date of publication of this notice.
A
Any final action by USDA Rural Development related to the proposed project will be subject to, and general location map of the proposal is Federal shownenvironmental below. contingent upon, compliance with all relevant laws and regulations and completion of environmental review procedures as prescribed by 7 CFR Part 1970, Environmental Policies and Procedures. A general location map of the proposal is shown below.
Dated: June 1, 2020
Dated: June 1, 2020
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How Can We Help You? During the pandemic, Vermont’s mutual aid groups lend a hand BY CHE LSE A EDGAR
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JAMES BUCK
B
y the third week of each month, Rebecca Campbell’s bank account is usually overdrawn. She lives in a subsidized apartment next to Momo’s Market in Burlington’s Old North End; to stretch her monthly $1,500 disability check, she eats a lot of chicken-flavored ramen. Her driver’s license is expired, and she doesn’t own a car. She suffers from chronic health problems, including asthma, which makes her especially vulnerable to respiratory illness. In early March, Campbell, a single mother, had just submitted paperwork to renew her food stamp eligibility when the coronavirus pandemic struck, seizing the gears of the social service apparatus. With a compromised immune system, no food stamps and no car, Campbell couldn’t go to a food shelf, much less buy groceries. Her 12-year-old daughter lives with her part time, and Campbell feared she wouldn’t be able to give her enough to eat. Then she saw a post on the Old North End Facebook page from someone named Matt Gardner, who was offering food assistance, cleaning supplies, childcare, and mental and emotional support. Tentatively, Campbell messaged him: “I hate to ask,” she wrote, “but I’m in desperate need of help.” Within an hour, Gardner had replied: “We don’t have any financial support, but I’ll see what I can do about getting you food.” He asked for her shopping list. Campbell sent him her usual low-cost inventory — whole milk, creamy peanut butter, bread, grape jelly, chicken-flavored ramen, lemon yogurt and coffee. Gardner wrote back that someone would be in touch. Campbell’s expectations of having any request promptly fulfilled had been blunted by years of navigating the welfare system; she figured she might hear from him again in a week.
Rebecca Campbell and daughter Sam
That evening, Rachel Hawkins, a volunteer to whom Gardner had relayed Campbell’s request, brought a bundle of free groceries to her apartment. Campbell was overwhelmed. “It was like Christmas morning,” she said. “I’m so used to having to prove that I’m deserving of help, and here was this huge bag of food on my doorstep, everything I needed, the day I needed it, with no questions asked.” Gardner and Hawkins are both part of Burlington ONE Mutual Aid, a self-organized group that sprang up in the early days of the pandemic to meet the immediate needs of neighborhood residents. As widespread closures and stay-at-home orders cut people off from their support systems, dozens of similar groups emerged across the state, from Brattleboro to the Northeast Kingdom. These groups consist of volunteer crews willing to deliver groceries, pick up prescriptions, check on
Here was this huge bag of food on my doorstep … no questions asked. R E BE C C A C AMP BEL L
seniors, sew masks and perform emergency home repairs; sometimes, they triage mundane predicaments made exponentially more complicated by a public health crisis. In Randolph, a volunteer group found a place for someone to take a shower; in Burlington, ONE Mutual Aid helped an elderly woman find a mechanic to pump up her flat tire. These spontaneous, non-monetized acts of person-to-person assistance have taken a multitude of forms. When Middlebury College canceled classes
for the rest of the spring semester, forcing students to leave campus with four days’ notice, a group of seniors created a Google spreadsheet for anyone in the college community to request logistical and emotional support. Within hours, the form had nearly 100 responses. Town residents invited students to leave cars in their driveways; students offered each other rides home as far away as Tennessee. For-profit businesses offered Vermonters free goods and services. In late March, the Skinny Pancake
‘This Isn’t So Terrifying’
In late March, the pandemic’s potential worst-case scenarios began to reveal themselves: a shortage of intensive care beds and protective equipment, a rising infection curve that could be months from flattening. And people across rural Vermont convened — virtually or in socially distanced town hall meetings — to figure out how to manage the crisis in their midst. They started Facebook groups, developed videoconferencing apps hosted on local servers, and added information on COVID-19 to their town websites. In Peacham, a village of fewer than 750 people on the western edge of the Northeast Kingdom, there is no cell service; the closest grocery store is a 15-minute drive away. At least a third of the population is older than 65. When the pandemic struck, the Peacham Selectboard moved to activate the town’s emergency management plan, a formal status required by the State of Vermont in order for communities to receive disaster-relief funds.
JEB WALLACE-BRODEUR
Group launched ShiftMeals to provide food, at no charge, to laid-off restaurant industry workers, musicians, artists and anyone else facing economic hardship. Pete’s Greens, a farm in Craftsbury, donated produce to town residents. In Shelburne, Vermont Teddy Bear pivoted from making bears to sewing thousands of masks to donate to essential workers. Since the start of the pandemic, community-specific networks have arisen in more than 150 towns across the state. Some choose to operate outside of any formal civic structure; others have mobilized existing municipal resources and emergency response teams. Many of these coalitions call themselves “mutual aid” groups, a phrase most readily understood as the unspoken pact to band together in the face of a common threat. The instinct is so deeply rooted in evolutionary consciousness that it hardly needs a name. But to others, including Gardner of ONE Mutual Aid, the concept also connotes a political philosophy grounded in anti-capitalist ideals, a system of sharing resources outside the channels of government or commerce. Regardless of ideology, all of these groups have managed to do something that, four months ago, might have seemed unimaginable. They have succeeded in helping people, without setting conditions or prerequisites for the recipients, and they have made asking for help feel OK.
From left: Mel Reis, Neil Monteith and Andrea Kane of Peacham
The plan, according to Neil Monteith, the town’s emergency management coordinator, contained no specific provisions for a pandemic. “The thing was written as if we were expecting a flood,” he said. “This was nothing like we’d ever envisioned.” Monteith, 65, a retired state forester who serves in the town’s volunteer fire department, has held the coordinator role for eight years. Within 72 hours, he had assembled a team to oversee the town response, following the Federal Emergency Management Agency incident command system, which outlines official duties for each team member. But the protocols don’t delineate how to respond to any particular crisis, much less a pandemic. Andrea Kane, a wilderness first aid instructor and a volunteer EMT in the fire department, agreed to serve as the chief operations officer, not knowing what her role would entail. In an email to the selectboard explaining the challenges of organizing the town response, she wrote: “We had to find people in town
willing, able and qualified to take on the various roles. Which is like trying to find and hire a minimum of six or seven people in three days — except they aren’t likely to understand what you’re asking of them and you can’t pay them.” For Kane, those first few weeks were an adrenaline blur. “Every night, I would go to bed vibrating with anxiety,” she recalled. “We have a lot of elderly, homebound residents, so our efforts were focused on bringing aid to them.” Kane set up an online mutual aid request form and created an exhaustive database of every Peacham resident. If someone lived on a road that was prone to washouts, she noted it in the spreadsheet. The crisis response team drew up a plan for emergency briefings on the green in front of the town hall, accounting for every conceivable mishap. (An excerpt: “If the internet goes down AND for some reason you cannot get through via phone, AND you cannot walk or drive to the Town Green AND you need help, please put
a large red or orange flag or drape of sorts at the end of your driveway. That will alert neighbors, as well as making it easier to spot your residence while looking. We do NOT expect you to need to take this measure!”) Susan Smolinsky, the town library director, delivered puzzles and games to people’s houses and volunteered to read poems over the phone to anyone who wanted to hear one. Judith Markey, a clinical psychologist, offered pro bono mental health consultations. In the cold days of early spring, a handful of residents chopped and delivered firewood. Thirty people signed up to give help through the mutual aid form. In total, there were seven requests, mostly for fuel assistance and deliveries of personal hygiene products, like toothpaste, toilet paper and laundry detergent. But the low number of requests didn’t necessarily reflect a lack of need; because so many people were preemptively offering help, there was less reason to ask. HOW CAN WE HELP YOU?
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In the early days of the crisis, Mel Reis, a marketing consultant who took on the role of logistics coordinator, was consumed with the task of getting food to people. “I was waking up at the crack of dawn every day,” she said. “It was unreal, madness.” Reis organized biweekly installments of shelf-stable produce and cheese through Green Mountain Farm Direct in Newport, which sources food from farms in the region and sells it in bulk at wholesale prices. Every two weeks, selectboard chair Mike Heath picked up the food from Newport and brought it to Peacham Elementary School, where a team of volunteers divided the produce into sanitized bins and delivered them to people’s houses. Each bin cost about $30; several families subsidized bins for those who couldn’t afford them. Josette Lyders, 77, and her husband, Richard, 86, were among the 27 households who signed up for the food service, which continued for six weeks. The Lyders received other forms of help, too: A volunteer took their trash to the dump so they wouldn’t have to leave their house. Since the crisis began, they’ve received daily phone calls — sometimes several per day — from concerned neighbors, checking in to see if they need anything. “This whole situation created a lot of fear for an awful lot of people,” Josette said. “But the fact that this response happened so quickly in our little town made us all feel like, Hey, maybe this isn’t so terrifying. We can imagine how we might get through this together.” Peacham has always been a tight-knit community, said Josette. She and Richard have lived there since the mid-’90s, after they retired from their careers as librarians in Houston, Texas. But this crisis has created a deeper sense of interdependence in the village, a way of knowing other residents beyond superficial familiarity. “People are always happy to see one another at the annual town meeting, and it’s always a friendly wave and a ‘Hi, how are you?’” Josette said. “But it does feel different now. It’s another level of being in this town.”
‘Solidarity, Not Charity’
Though the Peacham community response team directed aid to residents through a formal chain of command, other citizens stepped forward to help in any way they could. In rural Vermont, that practice of mutual aid happens constantly and informally, without ideology or group affiliation. It’s a necessary adaptation in a place with long, dark winters and Class 4 roads. 38
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Food Not Bombs volunteers distributing food at the Marketplace Garage in Burlington
Alex Olsen picking up food and supplies
From left: Matt Gardner, Jack Goldman and Ali O’Brien of Burlington ONE Mutual Aid
The roles, official and unofficial, matter less than the sense of collective duty. In University of Illinois economist Ernest Ludlow Bogart’s 1948 history Peacham: The Story of a Vermont Hill Town, he notes that civic participation and private life were inextricably linked for the town’s residents. Seventy-two years later, another observer might have expressed the same thing. “It seemed as if the cooperative spirit which found democratic expression in the town meeting permeated every aspect of life,” Bogart writes. “No hard and fast line, therefore, divided those activities that were carried on by the town, acting in its corporate capacity, and those which were undertaken by groups of individuals acting in their own private capacity.” Another school of thought holds that the purpose of mutual aid is to resist the activities of government. When
Gardner helped launch the ONE Mutual Aid network in March, he was working in the philosophical tradition of Peter Kropotkin, a Russian intellectual, anarcho-communist and writer. Instead of a world where state-run institutions determined the allocation of resources, Kropotkin envisioned a social structure rooted in the kind of reciprocity he observed in nature. In his 1902 essay collection Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, Kropotkin defines this instinct toward solidarity as “a feeling infinitely wider than love or personal sympathy,” a recognition of “the close dependency of every one’s happiness upon the happiness of all.” In contrast to most charities and federal crisis management systems, which operate with top-down governance, mutual aid networks in the
Kropotkin mold are often intentionally ad hoc and nonhierarchical. Many exist deliberately under the radar, particularly in communities that have been historically overlooked by the government, ravaged by disaster, or both. The standard refrain among Kropotkininflected mutual aid groups is “solidarity, not charity,” a summation of the contrast between acts of traditional charity — which imply a power imbalance between the giver and the receiver — and the direct, personto-person connections upon which mutual aid networks are based. “Charity signifies ‘people not like us,” said Linus Owens, an associate professor of sociology at Middlebury College who has studied anarchist movements. “The ‘solidarity’ in mutual aid is the idea that we all benefit from living in a world where no one is desperate.”
Mutual aid efforts in this vein have existed in Vermont for years. The Green Mountain John Brown Gun Club, the Vermont chapter of a rural, working-class movement that began in Lawrence, Kan., in 2004, aligns itself with antifascist, antiracist and pro-Second Amendment values. Food Not Bombs, an international network focused on recovering and distributing food that otherwise would have gone to waste, has been active in Burlington for at least a decade. Many other groups have no publicfacing presence; some don’t even have names, according to Mike Todd. He’s an organizer with Mutual Aid and Defense Vermont, a loose-knit association of mutual aid networks across the state. Todd, who lives in Burlington, has ties to Food Not Bombs, which has been distributing free meals and supplies at the Church Street Marketplace parking garage every day since the pandemic began. He believes the recent proliferation of grassroots networks is a direct response to the shortcomings of government agencies and nonprofits. “The fact that mutual aid networks can pop up spontaneously makes them the most efficient and inevitable solution to meeting a community’s needs,” Todd said. “People need food, they need rent subsidies, they need direct help on a day-to-day basis, and the state- and nonprofit-industrial complex isn’t set up to respond quickly.”
‘It’s an Ethical Choice’
In the early weeks of the pandemic, Gardner and a handful of other Old North End residents began circulating volunteer sign-up forms on social media. Within a few days, close to 200 people had offered to pick up groceries, deliver prescriptions and do whatever else was needed to help their neighbors. Gardner and six others took charge of the volunteer group, which became ONE Mutual Aid. The 33-year-old former volunteer for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) presidential campaign had used the webbased chat app Slack with his fellow Sanders organizers, so the ONE Mutual Aid coordinators adopted the platform as their primary communication channel. “That might have precluded anyone who wasn’t tech-savvy, but time was of the essence,” Gardner said. None of the coordinators previously knew each other, according to Gardner, but their volunteer list was a cross-section of the Burlington activist community — people who were also involved in Food Not Bombs, the Burlington Tenants Union, BTV CopWatch, Black Lives Matter, the climate justice movement, or all of the above. Gardner, a water resource engineer by day, is fairly steeped in the world of social activism and underground movements.
A Food Not Bombs volunteer sorting through donations
We can imagine how we might get through this together. J OSE T TE LYD E R S
After Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico, he said, he helped his sister and her partner raise nearly $12,000 to purchase portable water filters and solar-powered lights for people without access to drinking water or electricity. For a time, he was a guitarist in a rural punk band called Black Axe. No single person has ownership of ONE Mutual Aid, a strategy from the anarchist playbook. “You want to be flexible and you want to be fast and, to my mind, the way to accomplish that is to have as little formal structure as possible,” Gardner said. The group spread the word that help was available through social media and flyers around downtown Burlington. Each flyer displays a QR code that links to the ONE Mutual Aid request form; there, seekers can choose from among 16 types of assistance, including grocery and
medication pickup; pet- and kid-related needs; car, bike or home repair; money; and shelter. The form asks recipients to indicate how and whether they could pay for the support and to identify any risk factors, such as age or health conditions. Whenever someone fills out the form, their responses automatically feed into a Google spreadsheet, which the coordinators take turns monitoring seven days a week. So far, said Gardner, they’ve been able to connect a volunteer to a person in need within 24 hours of getting a request. Since the system went up in late March, ONE Mutual Aid has received more than 50 requests, roughly a quarter of which have been for ongoing needs. Between the form responses and other channels, Gardner estimates that the group has helped close to 100 people in the neighborhood. At the beginning, most of the requests were for grocery delivery or financial assistance — typically within a couple hundred dollars, which the group could usually cover through fundraising. As Gov. Phil Scott has eased restrictions on going out, the request volume has dropped from several per day to several per week, but the needs tend to be more complicated. “We’re hearing from people who weren’t in stable positions before this thing started,” Gardner said. “We’ve been helping people who are active drug users, people who might need Narcan, which
some of our volunteers can deliver and show people how to use safely.” For Gardner, the real point of mutual aid is building relationships with people, which then become self-sustaining. “It’s an ethical choice, a way to make organic connections, not commercialized connections,” he said. Recently, he talked to a woman in the neighborhood who, because of a disability, can’t shop for herself. “She told me, ‘I don’t really have anything to contribute, except I’m a master gardener,’” he said. He plans to pick up a few plant starts from her and get some gardening tips.
‘We’re Not Going Anywhere’
For both radical groups and governmentcoordinated crisis response teams, the barriers to reaching the least enfranchised can be precipitously high. That’s particularly true for Vermont’s estimated 1,500 undocumented workers, many of whom work on dairy farms. The crisis has amplified the conditions that made these workers vulnerable in the first place: language obstacles, access to health care and, as milk co-ops are tightening their belts, an industry-wide contraction that imperils their livelihoods. Migrant Justice, a Burlington-based nonprofit, has been acting as an intermediary between farmworkers and local mutual aid organizations. Marita Canedo, a HOW CAN WE HELP YOU? SEVEN DAYS JUNE 10-17, 2020
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PHOTOS: JAMES BUCK
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spokesperson for Migrant Justice, translates the help request forms into Spanish, then relays the workers’ needs to the appropriate mutual aid group. Over the past few months, volunteers from Food Not Bombs have been delivering meals and groceries to workers on farms throughout Franklin County. In communities where town officials are leading the response, Gardner said, he worries that those who are already in precarious positions — because of immigration status, drug use or other circumstances — will be less likely to seek help. As mutual aid groups mobilized around the state, the Vermont Council on Rural Development began hosting Zoom calls every Friday for organizers to share strategies and resources. In one of the weekly Zoom calls, in late March, a coordinator from Hyde Park, a village of fewer than 500 people, mentioned that Lamoille County Sheriff Roger Marcoux Jr. was interested in delivering groceries. Gardner, who was on the call, messaged the rest of the group: “Everyone should think long and hard about utilizing law enforcement in a mutual aid network. Potentially will exclude vulnerable populations who are not comfortable with law enforcement.” According to Gardner, a discussion ensued about whether the Hyde Park approach was, in the Kropotkin sense of the phrase, “mutual aid.” The Hyde Park volunteer responded that it probably wasn’t. (According to the town’s police log, it appears that the police department did, in fact, deliver groceries.) Gardner recognizes that anti-statist ideals don’t graft easily onto the social fabric of small-town Vermont, where a sheriff is as much a private citizen as an agent of the law. “I think there’s room and necessity for both of these approaches in our society, and it’s not surprising that small towns tend to blend the two,” he said. “The issue I have with it is that if you’re moving through official channels, and an undocumented worker needs help, you’re disqualifying that person, and that’s who we want to help.” Owens, the Middlebury College sociology associate professor, believes that the theoretical framework ultimately matters less than the intention behind the practice. “This is always going to be the tension between rural and urban, radical and nonradical,” he said. “But part of mutual aid is having these difficult conversations and assuming that people are acting in good faith. Not everyone went to a liberal arts college and spent a year in a squat.” As Gardner sees it, the role of mutual aid organizations is to create an alternative 40
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From left: Austin Kahn, Sam Bliss and Emma Schoenberg of Food Not Bombs
infrastructure, one that can endure beyond the current moment. “The COVID crisis has exposed the limitations of what we conceive of as a very progressive state,” he said. “I don’t think ideas drive change; I think material conditions do. And material conditions have degraded to the point where the state has been unable to provide for people.” To him, the outpouring of volunteer support reflects a critical shift in the way people understand their responsibilities to one another, a growing recognition that institutional safety nets cannot replace the work of neighbors. For Gardner,
acting upon this realization falls under the domain of radicalism. Bogart, the economist who wrote about Peacham, might have framed it as the intersection of private morals and civic duty. In a crisis, the distinction between public and private tends to collapse; people want to feel useful. “This has been drawing in people who wouldn’t have had connections with the activist community, people who might have been inclined to allow professionalized services to do their part, or donate money to other organizations rather than digging in themselves,” Gardner said.
Food Not Bombs receiving donations in Burlington
The longevity of the mutual aid movement will depend upon whether it can sustain the level of participation it has so far attracted — not just among the so-called “radical left,” but the broader, non-activist population. The long-term economic impacts, Gardner noted, are only just beginning to show up. When the second wave of the pandemic comes, as many epidemiologists believe it will, he wants ONE Mutual Aid to be ready. “Even as our work slows down, we’re not going to stop checking our spreadsheet anytime soon,” Gardner said. “We’re not going anywhere.”
‘We’re Handing Out Cash’
Before the pandemic, BTV CopWatch, the Burlington node of a national network that started in 1990 in Berkeley, Calif., was mainly focused on filming police to hold them accountable for misconduct and brutality. But in the last few months, the group has redirected its efforts toward helping the homeless. On an uncomfortably warm Friday afternoon in mid-May, 27-year-old Jaz Mojica, five feet tall in flip-flops, stood in the alley between the Marketplace parking garage and the vintage boutique Old Gold. She held an envelope containing $880 in $10 bills. In front of her was a throng of people; when she spoke, they immediately fell silent.
We all benefit from living in a world where no one is desperate. L I N U S OW ENS
“This is the last week we’re handing out cash, because we’re running low,” she shouted over the traffic noise on Cherry Street. “If anyone has requests for specific items, let me know after.” “Socks!” yelled a tall, lanky man with flaming red hair. “Thank you so much! You’re the best!” Then Mojica passed out the bills, one for each person. Within five minutes, the money was gone. “Fridays are my least favorite day,” she said once the rush had ended. “It gets crazy busy, because so many people come out for the cash distribution, and I don’t really get a chance to talk with anyone.” In March, Mojica set up a mutual aid fund to purchase food, tents, sleeping bags, backpacks and first-aid kits. Through GoFundMe, social media and word of mouth, Mojica said, she raised more than $10,000 between March and May, enough to distribute cash every Friday for two months. ONE Mutual Aid, whose volunteers overlap with BTV CopWatch, used some of those funds to cover purchases for people who requested financial help. Among the recipients was Campbell, the single mother who asked for groceries. That day, Mojica and other members of CopWatch, along with volunteers from
Food Not Bombs, had brought crates of miscellaneous items to distribute. Along a ledge on the ground floor of the garage, they arranged sandwiches from Kountry Kart Deli, bananas, oranges, hand sanitizer, umbrellas, brown paper bags containing tampons and pads, and a box of Plan B contraceptive pills. For the next half hour, people kept coming up to Mojica to ask if there was any money left. She told them there wasn’t but that she’d be happy to pick up something for them at the Walgreens across the street. A girl with neon pink hair asked if Mojica could get her some conditioner. A man on a bike asked her for pants, size 32 by 32. Mojica remembered him. “You like cargo pockets, right?” she asked. Then, the red-haired man came over and introduced himself as Gingy. He thanked Mojica again for the cash. “If you ever need anything, you let me know,” he told her. “Just ask anyone on the street. They’ll know how to find me.”
Racism has no place on our Streetor on any street. Today and every day we stand together with the entire Black community. We stand with our Black colleagues, partners, collaborators and the entire Black community. We stand with our friends around the globe to speak out against racism, to promote understanding, and create a world that is smarter, stronger and kinder.
‘She Made Me Feel Human’
The coronavirus pandemic has contracted our worlds, forcing us to re-create civic and social infrastructure on the smallest possible scale. Our neighbors have become first responders; grocery store employees are now essential workers. Owens thinks the practice of mutual aid in this crisis has the power to permanently reshape our values. “People feel like they’ve lost a lot of power right now, and mutual aid gives us something to do and a common source of meaning,” he said. “It develops relationships of dependence and support, and that feeling of connectedness is hard to forget.” In the face of a threat to which no one is immune, and a federal response that has mostly left states and communities to fend for themselves, the rise of mutual aid seems to be an acknowledgment of our individual and collective vulnerability. Campbell finds solace in this sudden transparency. “This whole situation has brought everyone’s reality out,” she said. “There was a stigma attached to being broken, but now people are less afraid to say, ‘I’m struggling.’” When Hawkins, the ONE Mutual Aid volunteer, delivered her food, she told Campbell that she was glad to have her as a neighbor, that she was setting a good example for her daughter. For Campbell, those words meant more than the groceries. “She took the time to validate me and express gratitude for the things that I will be able to do, and I was empowered,” she said. “She made me feel human.” m
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Snapshots From the Edge Book review: This Brilliant Darkness: A Book of Strangers, Jeff Sharlet B Y M ARG OT HAR RI S ON
COURTESY OF JULIA RABIG
O
n March 1, 2015, an unarmed man named Charly “Africa” Keunang was shot dead by police officers on Los Angeles’ Skid Row. Media reports described him as a homeless addict who had done time for bank robbery. Keunang was indeed those things, in journalist Jeff Sharlet’s account. But he was not just those things. Sharlet is a Dartmouth College associate professor of English and National Magazine Award winner. In a piece that first appeared in GQ and forms the centerpiece of his new book, he tells a much longer story about Keunang, an immigrant from Cameroon who read Shakespeare, posted philosophical tweets and dreamed of being in the movies. Sharlet talked to Keunang’s sister, his friends, his partners in crime. He examined bodycam footage and interviewed police officers. He spent nights at Miss Mecca’s store, a Skid Row gathering place. What emerges is an irreducible portrait of “One black life that mattered, no more or less than any other,” Sharlet writes. While the piece is rarely openly didactic, it’s also a dark portrait of the authorities who killed Keunang, when they weren’t doing things like attempting to restrict access to public bathrooms used by street denizens. Sharlet writes:
BOOKS
Such is the state of policing in America: funny because it’s sad, sad because it’s funny, unless you’re black or poor or both, in which case it’s as often as not simply an accusation. Of what does not really matter. This Brilliant Darkness: A Book of Strangers isn’t solely about police violence. It’s a book about many things, chiefly photography, empathy and what it means to tell strangers’ stories at all. But the story of Keunang exemplifies Sharlet’s immersive, free-form mode of journalism. Illustrated liberally with photos, including the author’s own, it alternates between traditional reporting and novelistic moments, such as an extended second-person account of the morning of Keunang’s death from Keunang’s point of view: “Darkness. Silence. Earplugs: You don’t hear the street begin to breathe.” Is Sharlet, who is white, qualified to present that perspective? It’s certainly a point worthy of debate. And This Brilliant Darkness doesn’t gloss over questions about the role of the storyteller and the ethics of storytelling. Many of the “strangers” in this book live on the margins: low-wage night-shift workers, addicts and dealers, a homeless woman eking out her food stamps, gay 42
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MY FIRST WORDS
WERE PICTURES. J E F F S H AR L E T
people in Russia under increasingly oppressive laws. As he tells these people’s stories, Sharlet also tells the stories of how he came to tell them: a chance meeting on a night drive; a circuitous route to a hidden gay club; a conversation with a man who confronted Sharlet for snapping a photo of his home. The book’s organizing principle is the captioned Instagram post — or “fragment” or “snapshot,” as Sharlet calls this format in the book’s opening section. There the author describes how, driving from Vermont to Schenectady, N.Y., to visit his father after the latter’s heart attack, he found himself “tired” of the weighty journalistic narratives he’d been writing. (Perhaps the best known of these is Sharlet’s 2009 exposé The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, which became a 2019 Netflix docuseries.) Instead of doing his assignments, Sharlet began snapping pictures of people he met on the road and sharing
them on Instagram. The result was a creative rebirth: “As if I were only now, in the long night between my father’s home and mine, becoming a writer,” Sharlet writes. “My first words were pictures.” The story doesn’t end on that triumphant note. As Sharlet finished a draft of This Brilliant Darkness, he suffered a heart attack, which then became part of the narrative. Despite all these first-person revelations, the book never quite becomes a memoir. Nor is it one of those blustering narratives of the journalist-as-hero in which a writer evokes his personal struggles to make his achievements seem more impressive. What we see here are relevant fragments of Sharlet’s life — snapshots, nothing more. The phrase he uses repeatedly to shield the identities of his Russian subjects — “not his/her real name” — appears again when he quotes his own children, giving them a playful flurry of pseudonyms that calls attention to how little we really know about him. If Sharlet and his reader remain strangers, so, in a sense, do he and his subjects. Where the author of an exposé purports to unearth a monolithic hidden truth, this book presents itself as a collection of provisional shards of truth, each tied to a particular place, time and witnessing. For instance, the wrenching story of Mary Mazur, a mentally ill woman who lives in a Schenectady motel and loves horror movies and takes her plant everywhere she goes, is also the story of the journalist, who holds a door for her and drives her to Walmart and eventually leaves her there to shop all night, experiencing a freedom she feels nowhere else. “Bright lights, warm air, nobody making decisions for her.” It’s an unforgettable snapshot. In his prologue, Sharlet asks us not to read the word “snapshot” as a minimization or “disclaimer … to me it has come to represent something more ambitious, or maybe just more hopeful.” What is hopeful about a snapshot? It might be Sharlet’s image of a Dunkin’ Donuts night baker in a T-shirt adorned with an elaborate skull. It might be the shot of a poster of Keunang reading “REST IN POWER AFRICA!” that Sharlet reposted on Instagram in the wake of the killing of George Floyd. (Both of these images also appear in the book.) Or it might be the innumerable on-the-ground images from protests that we now see on social media, learning for ourselves how much power shared and annotated images can have. This is a timely and riveting book about what it means to see, just for a moment, through someone else’s eyes. In Sharlet’s words, snapshots express “the deeply democratic, or even religious, notion that what I see — one person’s vision — could matter to you so much that we could see together.” Contact: margot@sevendaysvt.com
INFO This Brilliant Darkness: A Book of Strangers by Jeff Sharlet, W.W. Norton & Company, 336 pages. $25.
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JEB WALLACE-BRODEUR
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Curbside Community
In Adamant, the state’s oldest food co-op adapts to the coronavirus era
Andrea Serota and Regina Thompson outside the Adamant Co-op
B Y SA L LY POL L AK
W
hen Andrea Serota talks about “the olden days,” the comanager of the Adamant Co-op is referring to the months and years before mid-March 2020. Back then, residents of the hamlet within Calais, along with other central Vermonters, would stop at the co-op for a bottle of wine, a dozen eggs, a loaf of bread and a little chitchat. Folks with the Adamant zip code, 05640, could retrieve their mail maskless from the little post office in the store. They might stick around for “benevolent gossip,” as Serota put it. Eva Gumprecht, who’s cooked and baked for the co-op, would show up with a pot roast or a batch of cupcakes. In her studio above the co-op, artist Janet MacLeod could feel the energy of people coming and going as she painted. Taking a break from her work, MacLeod would come downstairs for coffee and a scone. “That’s very important,” the 75-year-old artist said. The olden days, in fact, span many decades at the Adamant Co-op, which was founded in 1935 and is the oldest food co-op in Vermont. MacLeod’s grandparents, Chester and Lucy Anderson, were founding members (for a $5 share) of the cooperatively owned store that today has about 100 member households.
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“It’s the center of the universe for us,” said Tom MacKenzie, a musician who’s lived in Calais since 1980. The shingle-and-clapboard building that houses the co-op is shrouded these days by bushy lilacs and marked by a faded green sign that announces “Adamant Cooperative / General Merchandise.” A newer sign by the front door states: “No In Store Shopping.” The co-op stands at a dirt crossroads by Sodom Pond, a body of water that still bears the name it once shared with the hamlet. (Early in the 20th century, residents requested a name change for the dry-land portion of Sodom, adamantly and successfully, according to The Adamant Co-op Cookbook.) For MacLeod, memories of the co-op include seeing the paneled delivery truck parked in her family driveway, her mother painting lettering on its side. She also recalls childhood trips to Bliss Pond in Calais with a stop for popsicles at the co-op. “It was a very different community then,” MacLeod said. “It was rougher socially, and rougher in terms of the landscape.” Still, the custom of popping into the small co-op for a snack and a “Hey, what’s going on?” persisted for decades. It came to an end in March, when winter gave way to a
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cold spring and the coronavirus forced businesses around the state to reexamine their practices. “Those of us working in the store in the olden days were face-to-face,” Serota, 72, said. “Suddenly, we began to feel extremely vulnerable.” The co-op board, in collaboration with the staff, decided to close the doors to the public and offer curbside pickup of preordered provisions. Customers place their orders by telephone, talking with a staffer or a volunteer who effectively serves as a personal shopper and places the order on the porch for pickup. On June 8, partly to serve kids riding around on their bikes, the co-op started accepting orders of up to five items from people at the door. But only postal customers may enter. The co-op is stocked with the domestic essentials: beer, rice, vegetables, frozen fish, toothpaste, lemons, lemon drops, greeting cards, organic coconut milk, refried beans, coffee beans, granola bars. Management found a new and reliable source for toilet paper but has had trouble procuring instant tapioca. The staff tries to keep the in-store limit to three people, including workers, which can be a challenge if CURBSIDE COMMUNITY
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BY SALLY POL L AK
Neighborly Fare LITTLE FREE PANTRIES POP UP IN BURLINGTON
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SALLY POLLAK
On upper Loomis Street in Burlington, in front of a big, pink-flowering rhododendron, stands a little food pantry stocked with spaghetti sauce, soup, pasta, canned chili, baby food, peanut butter, chocolate almond milk and other nonperishable items. A sign on the frontyard food stand reads: “Little Free Pantry / Take what you need. Share when you can.” Installed in May at the home of Sharon Panitch, the pantry is the first of several recently erected in Burlington. It’s part of a project spearheaded by the ONE Good Deed Fund, a nonprofit in Burlington’s Old North End. “We absolutely adore it,” Panitch said of her mini pantry. When she learned about the pantry project on Front Porch Forum, she realized it dovetailed with her own concerns when the coronavirus pandemic emerged. “My first thought was [about] all the kids who wouldn’t be getting their food through school,” said Panitch, a communications and development consultant. (While Vermont school districts do currently provide meals to students, not all students are reached by that effort.) “I thought, Oh, my God. All these families are going to have hungry children.” Panitch organizes and monitors the pantry,
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A little free pantry on Loomis Street in Burlington
rotating inventory when there’s an overload of mac and cheese and generally keeping items fresh. She posts reminders on Front Porch Forum, encouraging its use, noting what’s in stock and announcing, “Your neighbors have got your back.” The pantry is stocked by Panitch on her family shopping trips, with help from neighbors, she said. Recently, when students moved out of the neighborhood, they dropped off boxes of food. “I think people want to find a simple and concrete way to help,” Panitch said. “There’s nothing more simple and concrete than food.” Working with the ONE Good Deed Fund, Panitch paid $240 for the pantry, or half the costs of its construction and installation by carpenter Nick Carr. The nonprofit covered the remaining cost and will pay in full for pantries located in the Old North End, according to Laura Hale, the fund’s founder and president of its board. The ONE Good Deed Fund can fund seven little free pantries in Burlington, Hale said.
Three are already built and in use — one each on Loomis Street, James Avenue and South Winooski Avenue — and a fourth is soon to be installed on Elmwood Avenue. The pantries are made of Vermont white cedar and topped with tin roofs. Maintenance is low, Carr said; all you have to do is keep the pantry stocked. “It’s been a ton of fun,” he said of the project. In the months since the pandemic struck, Vermont has seen a significant rise in food insecurity — a roughly 50 percent increase among adults and 60 percent among kids, according to hunger-relief organizations. Various efforts have mobilized to address this crisis, from large-scale institutional and government assistance to neighbors helping neighbors. Panitch said she’s been asked how she can be certain that people who use the pantry are in need of food. “I’m not here to judge why people take it or not,” she said. “Obviously, we want to try to get the food to people who really need it.” m
CONNECT Follow us for the latest food gossip! On Twitter: Sally Pollak: @vtpollak. On Instagram: Seven Days: @7deatsvt; Jordan Barry: @jordankbarry.
1967: Loving versus Virginia, a
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Waitstaff member Dana Nelson at Shanty on the Shore
Restaurant Revival Keeping everyone safe as indoor dining begins B Y M E L I SSA PASANEN
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Hospitality Group, which owns the Shanty and Burlington Bay Market & Café. Elmore works with two general managers to supervise operations at both locations. He had been staying busy at Burlington Bay, where the market and Vermont state liquor outlet remained open. Elmore had also been planning with his boss, Kim Gobeille, in anticipation of a gradual reopening.
On June 5, Scott announced that Vermont restaurants could open 25 percent of their indoor seating capacity, and the Shanty will be among them. The state has updated social-distancing and other safety guidelines based on those from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That guidance includes maintaining six feet between guest tables, no bar seating, Caroline Thomas with patrons Bill and Cheryl Storey
PHOTOS: LUKE AWTRY
ast Thursday was a beautiful June evening to dine on the outdoor deck at Shanty on the Shore overlooking Burlington’s lakefront. Cyclists whirred by on the bike path below. Seagulls kited above the brightblue umbrellas shading each table. The strawberry-basil Moscow mule came in a frosty copper mug; the panko-crusted haddock in the restaurant’s “famous fish and chips” flaked apart nicely. It felt almost normal for early summer. But as soon as a server approached, gingerly maintaining a distance several feet from the table, eyes indicating a smile behind her face mask, we were reminded that this year is far from normal. The Shanty, a longtime waterfront seafood destination, was closed for more than two months after Gov. Phil Scott ordered a halt to all on-site dining on March 17. When the state gave restaurants two days’ notice that they could open outdoor dining with social-distancing and other safety precautions starting May 22, the Shanty team rushed to open its spacious wraparound deck. “That was a long 48 hours,” said Tony Elmore, a nine-year employee of Gobeille
and required reservations or call-ahead seating. Often-touched surfaces, such as door handles, tables and chairs, must be sanitized frequently. Disposable or electronic menus are required, and multiuse condiments, such as ketchup bottles, must be sanitized between guests. In addition, masks must be worn by all employees and are encouraged for guests when not eating or drinking. “Having to implement all the guidelines, it’s hard. Every day is kind of another challenge,” Elmore acknowledged. Despite the extra work, he added, “It’s been so great to see our regulars again … Overall, people are just excited to be out.” During our recent visit, the Shanty frontof-house team seemed to be on top of the protocol. Tables and chairs were carefully wiped down between parties, and signs on every other table on the deck explained that they could not be used in order to maintain social distance. Every employee we saw wore a mask, and all servers wore gloves, though the latter practice is not required by the state. “We’ve spent a lot of time on training with staff,” Elmore said. “Masks are hard for people to get used to when working long shifts. They can get very hot and are hard to speak in. Being a server is a very personal situation. You want to get close to your tables, and that mask is another barrier.” Behind the scenes, Elmore explained that the restaurant had pared down its extensive menu to enable kitchen staff to meet social-distancing guidelines and to make the operation more efficient at its reduced seating capacity. On a typical busy summer night, he said, the Shanty would have seven people in the kitchen. Now it’s running with four. “We are checking in with staff constantly,” Elmore said. “We just want to keep everyone safe: customers and staff.” Restaurant-specific guidelines for reducing transmission of COVID-19 are a subset of Vermont’s “Be Smart, Stay Safe” requirements for all businesses. The additional rules have been incorporated into the health department’s Food & Lodging Program restaurant-inspection operation. However, according to health department spokesperson Ben Truman, on-premise inspections have been suspended in order to protect businesses and staff during the pandemic, except for emergencies and foodborne outbreak investigations. To approve new licenses, inspectors have employed what Truman called “virtual inspection tools.” Food & Lodging Program staff have continued to provide guidance to businesses upon request and are conducting “food safety check outreach calls” to discuss changes in operations, ensure they
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have updated information and address questions, Truman wrote in an email. He acknowledged that, especially in many small restaurant kitchens, social distancing is difficult. “We have been advising establishments to do the best they can to implement this requirement by adjusting workspaces and how tasks are completed where available, evaluating staff needed, and implementing other creative controls to implement social distancing,” Truman wrote. As of June 4, the health department had received seven consumer complaints since the restart of on-site dining. They have mostly cited employees not wearing face coverings in a variety of retail food settings. When reaching out to those establishments, Truman
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wrote that the team acknowledges that covering the face in hot kitchens can be a challenge. Nonetheless, mask-wearing is still considered critical to prevent additional cases of COVID-19. So far, Truman noted, the health department’s education and outreach has successfully addressed the issues. If further action were needed, the Attorney General’s Office would be called upon to enforce Scott’s executive order. Speaking with Seven Days two days before outdoor dining opened, Tim Lahey, an infectious disease physician at the University of Vermont Medical Center, noted that restaurants are “going to need to figure how to do physicaldistancing measures, both for staff and customers.” He said that could include “reengineering of the flow in restaurants: paying attention to how closely spaced tables are, paying attention to how many kitchen workers [are] in the kitchen space at one time. And wearing masks is probably going to be the new normal.” Lahey suggested that restaurant customers will need to determine whether they’re comfortable dining on-site. “We’re going to have to make our own decisions about what level of risk we’re willing to accept,” he said. “If you’re at higher risk, it probably makes sense to lean more on takeout and not eat there in person; whereas, if you have lower risk, you can tolerate being within several feet of another diner.” Sitting at a table on the Shanty’s RESTAURANT REVIVAL
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while her son attended a nearby birthday party. The woodstove was lit, and the place felt wonderful and inviting, she recalled. The following summer, when a position opened up at the store, she applied and was hired. Today, Thompson is the co-op’s comanager. Before the pandemic, the vibe at the co-op was more laissez-faire and laid-back, she said, with time for talking to people. “You’re working, but you weren’t coming in at eight and running around like crazy until one,” she said. “We feel more like counselors than store clerks.” She misses that camaraderie, the palpable sense of being a community hub, but she recognizes the value of the co-op’s current “utilitarian” work. “We cram everything into the cooler,” Thompson said. “It’s no longer the ‘cute store.’ We are serving the public, making sure we have food for the public.” While service remains curbside, Thompson’s starting to see more people out and about. When she asks members if they’d like the shop to reopen for regular service, most people say, “No, we like it this way,” she recounted. Even with public service as its driving force, the co-op has held on to the identity that Gumprecht, 70, recognized and appreciated when she moved to Adamant from Boston in 2005. “It’s the triumph of the human need to connect over efficiency,” she said. m JEB WALLACE-BRODEUR
the farmer who delivers eggs arrives as a co-op member shows up to retrieve mail from a post office box. “There’s a lot of choreography involved,” Serota said. Yet the post-olden-days arrangement, from volunteer help to stocking the store, is working. “I am a total atheist and cynic,” Serota said, “and I feel like this is a miracle.” She and her husband, Rick Winston, are longtime Adamant residents (he moved there in 1970) and former owners of the Savoy Theater in Montpelier. Like other Adamanters, Serota can’t or won’t say how many people live in the hamlet. The common refrain is that living in Adamant is a state of mind. “Like any state of mind, it has many qualities,” Serota said. “There’s a strong Comanager Regina Thompson checking element of playfulness … and a strong orders at the Adamant Co-op sense of camaraderie.” The shift from face-to-face hangouts to curbside community coincided with increased need for the co-op. Vermonters were sticking closer to home in compliance with the governor’s March 24 order to “Stay Home, Stay Safe.” Some people, especially elderly and otherwise high-risk Vermonters, were TO M MAC K E NZIE steering clear of bigger markets. As a result, the co-op’s business boomed during Jane Wass, 69, a retired nurse who’s lived in Adamant what’s typically a slow time of year: mud season in for 21 years, volunteered at the co-op before the the sticks. Last year, from mid-March to mid-May, the pandemic. She helped with summer cookouts and stuffAdamant Co-op lost about $4,000. This year, in the same ing empanadas in the upstairs kitchen. Now she’s on period, the member-owned store earned a profit of more phone-shopping duty. than $2,000, according to MacLeod, who is copresident “People want to contribute,” Wass said. “For me, of the board. it’s been absolutely joyful. I look forward to coming Staff and volunteers say that some days business is in every day.” nonstop, with orders ranging from $20 to $200. Other days Regina Thompson, 50, lived in Calais for a couple of are slower, allowing staff to have longer phone conversa- years before she discovered the co-op. Originally from tions with customers and do administrative work. Vienna, Thompson stopped in one winter day in 2009
Contact: sally@sevendaysvt.com
INFO Adamant Co-op, 1313 Haggett Road, Adamant, 223-5760, adamantcoop.org.
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Restaurant Revival « P.47 deck last week, the Shackfords — a family of three from Colchester — were enjoying their third meal out since May 22. Erin Shackford said they had no concerns about the safety of eating at restaurants. “As soon as [the ban on dining on-site] was lifted, we were figuring out where to go out,” said Michael Shackford, pausing between bites of his fish tacos. His wife was happily indulging in her first Shanty lobster roll of the season. “We love it here,” she said, gesturing toward
the lake, “especially the view and the coleslaw.” m Sally Pollak contributed reporting. Contact: pasanen@sevendaysvt.com
INFO Shanty on the Shore, 181 Battery Street, Burlington, 864-0238, shantyontheshore.com. Find the latest guidelines for food businesses at accd.vermont.gov.
LUKE AWTRY
Waitstaff member Tyana Cheney with patrons
WORKING TOWARD BUSINESS HEALTH Restaurants are working overtime to juggle pandemic safety guidelines with the need to get their businesses back on solid footing. When customers call Shanty on the Shore for a reservation or call-ahead seating, as required by current state regulations, they are advised that tables are theirs for one hour for lunch and 90 minutes for dinner. “We would love to give people the chance to hang out, especially after being closed for so long,” said Tony Elmore, a supervisor for Gobeille Hospitality Group, which owns the Shanty, “but we want to accommodate as many customers as possible and, naturally, we are running a business.” On June 9, the Vermont and Plattsburgh, N.Y.-area chapter of SCORE, a business mentoring program, hosted a live webinar titled “Restaurant Survival Strategies Post-COVID.” John Parmelee, an industry veteran and department coordinator for the hospitality management program at the State University of New York, Plattsburgh, led the session. Speaking on the phone last week, Parmelee said the webinar covers how restaurant operators can meet new safety requirements, as well as reengineer menus and analyze the revenue per seat needed for financial sustainability, as seat numbers
will likely be restricted for the foreseeable future. “For the restaurant industry, [the pandemic] has been blunt-force trauma, compared with the impact on many other industries,” he said. “The industry average profit margin is 10 cents on the dollar. That speaks to the fragility.” Parmelee estimated that sales for most independent restaurants could be as low as 25 to 30 percent of last year’s. The federal Paycheck Protection Program helps, especially with a recently extended period to qualify for loan forgiveness. But, he said, “It’s only a temporary solution, and one could seriously question if that Band-Aid is big enough for the wound.” One huge unknown beyond restaurateurs’ control is the public’s interest in dining out. “We just don’t know what’s going to happen with demand,” Parmelee said. “My own opinion is that it’s going to be a long time before things are normal again.” Those who do dine out will likely find that the experience is a little different. “Customers might have to wait for tables. Things might not be as fluid as in the past,” Parmelee said. “Patience is really important right now. Restaurants have to adapt to a whole new business model.”
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INFO A recording of the live webinar, “Restaurant Survival Strategies Post-COVID,” will be posted at champlainvalley.score.org.
P L E A S E E N J OY R E S P O N S I B LY. P R O D U C E D A N D B OT T L E D B Y G R A I N G E R ’ S D E L U X E . B O S TO N , M A . © 2 0 2 0 .
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TALK IT OUT:
Make It Better by Francesca Blanchard
BY J O R D A N A D A M S , C H R I S FA R N S WO R T H & K R I S T EN R AV I N Francesca Blanchard
W
hen Vermont’s Francesca Blanchard released her 2015 breakthrough album Deux Visions, much of the buzz centered on the fact that the record, released on the world-music label Cumbancha, was sung half in French, half in English. It was also largely a folk record. Neither is true of her new album, Make It Better, which comes out on Friday, June 12. The French American songwriter leans into English and trades folk for indie-pop and R&B influences. Seven Days music writers shared their thoughts about Blanchard’s crossover into pop-rock in a free-flowing conversation, as follows. JORDAN ADAMS: A general question to get the ball rolling: After absorbing Make It Better, how does it compare to Deux Visions? 50
SEVEN DAYS JUNE 10-17, 2020
KRISTEN RAVIN: Wow. Where do I start? I had such a rush of thoughts and feelings listening to Make It Better that I’m sitting on 1,000 words of notes. What stands out to me in contrast to Deux Visions is that Francesca’s new album sounds like it’s driven by a woman in her twenties rather than the older adults around her. There’s some overlap in subject matter, but the sound is more hip, current and, frankly, age-appropriate. Francesca’s stylistic shift from folk to an indie-pop- and R&B-driven sound reminds me of a formerly local singersongwriter with an album out this year. (Hint: Her name starts with a C and ends in “-aroline Rose.”) I don’t necessarily think it’s productive to compare women artists to each other, but these two have followed a similar folk-to-pop path. Whereas Caroline’s newer songs remind me of Neon Indian’s neo-disco
style, Francesca’s emphasis seems to be on emotion and creating a full-on mood. CHRIS FARNSWORTH: Make It Better legit made me sad. Multiple times. And I have the emotional range of a turnip. So that right there has to mean something, right? I’m right onto Kristen’s point here, but I really do think the main difference between the records is, well, life! Francesca has lived more of hers, listened to more music, loved and lost, and experienced all those things that scab your heart over and make us more interesting and dangerous to love as we grow older. To me, this is a record that sounds like the soundtrack of a young woman recovering her ability to love but knowing she’ll never look at it the same way again. JA: I think a lot of that is right there in the album’s first song, “Free,” which was
first released as a single two and a half years ago. The song is about breaking out, wandering and not necessarily knowing the destination. That sums up my twenties pretty perfectly. Even in 2017, when “Free” first emerged, the writing was on the wall for her shift into a more dynamic, contemporary sound. Deux Visions is gorgeous in its own right, but there’s something about the production that I find much less evocative than Make It Better. Deux Visions seems like it was made in Francesca’s comfort zone, while Make It Better is her stepping out of it. I think we hear that experimentation throughout, whether it’s electronic flourishes, bolder guitars or more transparent lyrics. And I don’t mean transparent in a pejorative way, I mean that I hear a more confident, more direct person — like in the opening lyrics of “Ex-Girlfriend”: “I just
COURTESY OF PATRICK MCCORMACK
A discussion on the Burlington singer-songwriter’s latest record
GOT MUSIC NEWS? JORDAN@SEVENDAYSVT.COM
spent an hour stalking your ex-girlfriend on the internet.” KR: If we’re talking about the album’s bold and evocative qualities, we have to talk about the visuals. Kayhl Cooper’s videos for these songs are gorgeous in a way that makes my heart hurt. “Make It Better” reminded me of Tori Amos’ “Pretty Good Year” video with the closeups of the singer’s face and the surprise appearance of dancers. If I had to choose a favorite, I’d pick the “Did It to Myself ” video. Francesca looks like a cloud in her vintage dress floating through a dark, angular urban landscape. I love that she’s dancing around New York City wearing earbuds like Lorde in her clip for “Green Light,” another beautiful pop song imbued with breakup pain. I will say that in the era of social distancing, I cringed watching Francesca touch subway poles and walk shoulder to shoulder with strangers! (I assume this was filmed before the coronavirus pandemic made such activities worthy of the puke-face emoji.) In his 2014 profile of Francesca, Dan Bolles described her as an “endearingly shy” performer. Based on these videos, it seems like she’s overcome that timidness. It’s tough to take your eyes off her when she’s on-screen — she is a trained actor, after all, and has a dazzling presence. Like, she actually sparkles. JA: One thing that catches my eye about the art for the string of singles leading up to Make It Better is how she poses her arms and hands. Now, this could be a Kayhl Cooper thing. His work often incorporates twitchy, awkward, thrashing bodies. But the way Francesca’s arms are posed in some of Make It Better’s art — including the image accompanying her non-album cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Philadelphia” — seems to imply an antigrace. It’s like she’s physically manifesting any number of jarring, uncomfortable feelings. It’s really powerful. CF: It’s not just her new record or the (admittedly badass) art that she’s used to promote it. In all aspects of her music, Francesca’s been building momentum and confidence over the last few years. Maybe seeing other artists find success by taking their initial folk leanings and then pulling them into different shapes struck a chord? Or maybe it’s just the
THERE’S NO MISTAKING MAKE IT BETTER FOR EXACTLY WHAT IT IS:
A STATEMENT OF INTENT FROM A SONGWRITER ENTERING HER PRIME. CH R IS FAR NS W O R TH
changing times pushing a young artist toward musical maturity? Either way, there’s no mistaking Make It Better for exactly what it is: a statement of intent from a songwriter entering her prime. And speaking of this fucked-up day and age, where a pandemic has rendered the music industry all but moribund and protests and riot cops stalk the land: What does it even mean to make such a transformative record at this moment in one’s career? Francesca put out a statement the other day saying that, while she was initially hesitant to promote anything during the movement, she chose to go ahead and release the album on June 12 as originally planned. I think that’s a good choice, and not just because it gives us an excuse to write about music. Her reasoning is that to plan a later release date and assume things will either die back down or magically just get better might be a little naïve. I look at it like this: Who the fuck wants a revolution without music? Unless the record is called All Lives Matter or something, make that music, people! JA: It’s certainly an understandable conundrum for white artists who had planned to release new music right now,
particularly with regard to the myth of this “better, quieter time … down the line,” as she phrased it. There won’t be one. All socio-geopolitical crises reach a breaking point, whether it’s ICE detaining and separating families, the dismantling of rape culture, mass shootings, wealth redistribution, land rights for indigenous people, police divestment, climate crises, the inevitable transhumanist wars, etc. It’s not about silence and waiting your turn; it’s about being aware, alert and involved. And I think an album that makes me want to look inward and ponder how I’ve evolved as I’ve lived more is a good thing to have in this world. KR: Make It Better strikes a tone that feels appropriate for what Chris called “this fucked-up day and age” — an apt description. Even if the lyrics aren’t all pandemic and revolution, the sadness and restlessness in some of these songs is in line with the way I imagine some Americans are feeling right now, and it ends on an optimistic note. As Francesca put it in her statement, “This album is about Untitled-17 healing heartbreak, and I hope it can serve its purpose in the midst of this revolution.” CF: The record does have a sort of healing, balm-type quality. There’s warmth to the songwriting and production — props to Christopher Hawthorne on the board, who coproduced the record with Francesca. And having Matthew Mercury’s Ezra Oklan on drums and Zack DuPont all over the record doesn’t hurt. I love it when the city’s leading lights use all the incredible talents they have access to. It’s easily one of my favorite things about Burlington’s music scene. Make It Better successfully captures that quintessential “I just got battered a bit, but I’m coming back” feel, which is just such a sweet spot for an artist. To be so human, so open and raw while flexing such songwriting muscle is a beautiful paradox.
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Thomas Gunn, Swimming With Fire (GINGER BEARD HOUSE, CD, DIGITAL)
In March, singer-songwriter Thomas Gunn co-organized one of Vermont’s first livestream music festivals. The Montpelier-based artist quickly responded to the cascade of venue closures caused by the coronavirus pandemic by rallying other local musicians, even some who weren’t particularly acquainted with Gunn or his music. His actions helped raise nearly $2,500 for the Vermont Foodbank at a time when the organization needed it desperately. Two months prior, Gunn released his first album, Swimming With Fire. Since then, the title of his seven-track debut has become bizarrely relevant, even if it wasn’t meant to describe what simply existing feels like in 2020. The album’s cover image — an illustration of a head engulfed in a swirling mass of flames —
Henry Jamison, Tourism (COLOR STUDY, DIGITAL)
When Billboard debuted Burlington folk singer-songwriter Henry Jamison’s 2019 LP Gloria Duplex, writer Gary Graff noted that the release boasted “a more muscular impact” and “more pronounced dynamics” than Jamison’s previous output. If Graff found Gloria Duplex, a quietly contemplative album on which Jamison reexamines his boyhood and masculinity, to be muscular and varied, the musician’s new EP, Tourism, might make his head explode. The amped-up sound of these five songs is partly due to an impressive lineup of guest vocalists and players, including Joseph, Fenne Lily, Lady Lamb and Grizzly Bear’s Ed Droste. Boston indie-folk band Darlingside serve as Jamison’s backing band throughout.
is prescient, too, as if Gunn somehow knew what the year had in store. Gunn shape-shifts throughout the 30-minute album, transforming from old-timey bard (“Ceres”) to adult contemporary rocker (“Rain Clouds”) to something akin to a modern Broadway star on the title track. As he switches back and forth between piano and acoustic guitar as his lead instrument, he shows mastery over each — particularly the keys. He even steps out of frame completely, allowing poet Toussaint St. Negritude the full spotlight on spokenword piece “This Room.” Atop field recordings of open nature, Gunn kicks off his record with what sounds like an old traditional, “Ceres.” Sung a cappella, the song pays tribute to the noted statue atop the Vermont Statehouse. Gunn ruminates on taking head-clearing walks that end with him gazing up at the Roman goddess of agriculture, singing, “It’s good to have a routine when you feel no one else can see you.” As the opener wraps up, a jangly
toy piano bridges the gap into the next track, “Lipstick Ghost.” The song has a jaunty, madcap flair, like it should be emanating from a low-rent dive during the vaudeville era. It’s difficult to say whether Gunn, as a lover scorned, misses his ex or is glad to be rid of them. “Rain Clouds” and “Virginia” find the artist tapping into ’90s rock sounds, particularly “Virginia,” which could pass for an Incubus B-side. Though they’re Gunn’s least compelling tunes, he gives them everything he’s got. The title track, a stately piano ballad, finds Gunn channeling Ben Platt in Dear Evan Hansen. Sweeping and grand, the moving centerpiece showcases the songwriter’s lyrical pinnacle as he belts heart-stabbing lines such as, “So I lay my head / On a pillow next to yours / Am I dead / Or are there problems I’ve ignored? / How can I live my life / When someone else is living it with you?” Gunn’s most successful work happens when he surrenders to the weird, wild and theatrical. As it burns, the world will need more of that energy. Swimming With Fire is available at thomasgunnmusic.com.
“Still Life” opens the EP with a burst of sound, bolstered by harmonies from sibling trio Joseph. The sound is bigger and fuller than longtime Jamison listeners might expect but still features his familiar instrumentation of banjo, guitar and piano. Lady Lamb steals the show on “Orchardist” with her impassioned background vocals that ring out in welcome contrast to Jamison’s overly restrained singing. “Orchardist” is the EP’s final and standout track, and it spotlights some of Jamison’s most memorable lyrics: “It’s not just growing trees, it’s husbandry, and knowing what the seasons mean.” Jamison described the five-song collection in a press release as a breakup record written on and off the road. The aptly titled tune “Tourism” chronicles the ennui-inducing aspects of traveling from club to club for a living in a way that, unfortunately, borders on whiny. “The club bars can really gin me up /
Hendrick’s or Tanqueray, I’ll pick my poison / Back in the van to the Super 8 when we had enough / Time’s got me swimming in it.” I’m hard-pressed to think of another profession in which one can be paid to complain about their job. As a music fan, it strikes me as a backhanded way of entertaining one’s ticket-purchasing audience. The evolution of Jamison’s indie-folk sound from sparse to more robust is on trend with the likes of national acts such as Noah Gundersen and Burlington expat Caroline Rose, or local Francesca Blanchard. But Jamison’s voice and delivery fail to match the intensity of the bold production. I relate to the songs on Tourism the way I do to songs by Bob Dylan or Carole King: The songs are special, but I’d prefer to hear them sung by somebody else — in this case, someone like Irish indie-folk singer Dermot Kennedy, red-faced, veins bulging as he projects his feelings to the whole world. Tourism is available on Apple Music, Spotify and other streaming services.
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drumming DJEMBE & TAIKO: JOIN US!: Digital classes! (No classes on-site for now.) Taiko: Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Djembe: Wednesday. Kids and Parents: Tuesday and Wednesday. Private digital conga lessons by appointment. Let’s prepare for a future drum gathering outdoors! Schedule/register online. Location: Taiko Space, 208 Flynn Ave., Suite 3G, Burlington. Info: 999-4255, burlingtontaiko.org.
language ALLIANCE FRANÇAISE ONLINE CLASSES: Join us for adult online French classes this summer! Our eight-week session starts on June 15 and offers classes for participants at all levels. Whether you are a true beginner or are
comfortable conversing in French, you will find a class for you! Please go to our website at aflcr.org to read all about our offerings, or contact Micheline at education@ aflcr.org. Info: Micheline Tremblay, 881-8826, education@aflcr.org, aflcr.org.
WANT TO LEARN RUSSIAN?: Experienced foreign language tutor Nina Wechsler is now accepting new students. Offering online Russian language lessons for beginners, intermediate and advanced students, Nina provides one-on-one tuition for high school students, college students and adult learners. Fluent in English, Nina holds a degree from Moscow State
LEARN SPANISH LIVE & ONLINE: Broaden your world. Learn Spanish online via live video conferencing. High-quality affordable instruction in the Spanish language for adults, students and children. Travelers lesson package. Our 14th year. Personal small group and individual instruction from a native speaker. See our website for complete information or contact us for details. Location: Spanish in Waterbury Center, Waterbury Center. Info: 585-1025, spanishparavos@gmail.com, spanishwaterburycenter.com.
JUNIOR ATHLETIC
University, majored in English, and minored in the history of European and American literature. Individually scheduled. Cost: $50/ TBD. Location: online, online. Info: Nina Wechsler, 592-0634, ninawechsler1967@gmail.com.
Accept no Iimitations! Location: Vermont Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, 55 Leroy Rd., Williston. Info: 598-2839, julio@bjjusa.com, vermontbjj.com.
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ASIAN BODYWORK THERAPY PROGRAM: This program teaches two forms of massage: amma and shiatsu. We will explore oriental medicine theory and diagnosis, as well as the body’s meridian system, acupressure points, and yin-yang and five-element theory. Additionally, Western anatomy and physiology are taught. VSAC nondegree grants are available. FSMTB-approved program. Starts Sep. 2020. Cost: $6,000/625-hour program. Location: Elements of Healing, 21 Essex Way, Suite 109, Essex Jct.. Info: Scott Moylan, 2888160, scott@elementsofhealing. net, elementsofhealing.net.
VERMONT BRAZILIAN JIU-JITSU: Brazilian jiujitsu is a martial arts combat style based entirely on leverage and technique. Brazilian jiujitsu self-defense curriculum is taught to Navy SEALs, CIA, FBI, military police and special forces. No training experience required. Easy-to-learn techniques that could save your life! Classes for men, women and children. Students will learn realistic bully-proofing and self-defense life skills to avoid becoming victims and help them feel safe and secure. Our sole purpose is to help empower people by giving them realistic martial arts training practices they can carry with them throughout life. IBJJF and CBJJ certified black belt sixth-degree instructor under Carlson Gracie Sr.: teaching in Vermont, born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. A five-time Brazilian National Champion; International World Masters Champion and IBJJF World Masters Champion.
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This half day program is an extended version of our Junior Athletic Performance Class. Our goal is to relieve working families to pursue their vocation while offering a means to have children learn about and use their bodies in a way that will improve confidence, self esteem and a genuine interest in active endeavors. We will use our expertise to train our campers in body mechanics and strength & conditioning through circuits and games, and mix them into a fun, educational and motivating program that will help campers grow in |fitness, energy and attitude!
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massage
yoga EVOLUTION YOGA: Now offering live online and recorded classes. Practice yoga with some of the most experienced teachers and therapeutic professionals in Burlington, from the comfort of your home. Sign up on our website and receive a link to join a live class; a class recording will be sent after class. Pay as you go or support us by becoming
an unlimited member. Join us outside this summer for Yoga on the Lake and Yoga in the Park. Registration is open for our 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training for Health and Wellness Professionals. Now offering flexible pricing based on your financial needs. Contact yoga@evolutionvt. com. Single class: $0-15. 10-class pass: $100. $55 student unlimited membership. Summer unlimited pass Jun.-Aug.: $195-275. Scholarships avail. for all pricing options. Location: Evolution Yoga, 20 Kilburn St., Burlington. Info: 864-9642, evolutionvt.com. LAUGHING RIVER YOGA: Increase confidence and decrease stress. Enjoy inspirational teachings, intelligent alignment and focused workshops through daily livestream and on-demand yoga classes. Check out our virtual library and practice with us live at the Burlington Surf Club starting June 15. All bodies and abilities welcome. Daily classes, workshops, 200- & 300-hour yoga teacher training. Cost: $10/single class; $39 unlimited livestream; $49 unlimited livestream and on-demand classes; a portion of proceeds benefits the Vermont Foodbank. Location: Laughing River Yoga, Chace Mill, Suite 126, Burlington. Info: 343-8119, laughingriveryoga.com.
ow n WHAT?
STAY SAFE, STAY ACTIVE The Seven Days team has reenvisioned our weekly Notes On the Weekend newsletter to include creative, constructive and fun ways to spend your time from a safe social distance. From virtual yoga classes to delicious recipes, movie suggestions to crafting ideas, there is something for everyone asking, “NOW what?” S U B S C R IB E AT S EV EN DAYS V T.C OM 4t-Now0520.indd 1
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“Local businesses support our communities on so many levels. We are big employers; we donate to local charities and school fundraisers and have a face in the community. Amazon, for example, does not. This is my community, and I want to support everyone in it.” MELISSA DESAUTELS
OWNER, WHIM BOUTIQUE & DEAR LUCY
Take a break from the big guys and support local first. Vermont merchants have faced mandatory store closures and other challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. Even as some open back up, others operate online only. All need your support. Visit the Register for all the info on area shopkeepers who are selling their products online for local delivery or curbside pickup. Browse by categories ranging from jewelry to electronics, outdoor gear to apparel. Whether you need something for yourself or that perfect gift for a loved one, shop savvy and keep Vermont strong. PICTURED: WHIM BOUTIQUE, 62 CHURCH ST., BURLINGTON, WHIMBOUTIQUE.COM (JAMES BUCK)
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SEVEN DAYS JUNE 10-17, 2020
1t-TheRegister052720.indd 1
SHOP T HE R EGIS T E R .C OM
5/26/20 1:23 PM
Humane
Society of Chittenden County
Whiskahs AGE/SEX: 6-year-old spayed female ARRIVAL DATE: March 10, 2020 REASON HERE: Previous housing wouldn’t allow. SUMMARY: A quintessential cat with a capital C, Whiskahs is all about living her best life on her terms. Friendly and loving when she’s in the mood, but independent and aloof when she wants space, this chonky lady won’t leave you guessing on how she feels! Whiskahs has made progress on her weight-loss goals and would love some more help getting to a healthy size. If you’re a true “cat person” who can give Whiskahs the time and patience she needs, visit hsccvt.org/cats for more info and to schedule a virtual meeting with an adoption counselor.
housing »
DID YOU KNOW?
Pets can feel stressed during times of transition and change just like their humans do. Unwanted behaviors can crop up in pets, and these may be accidentally reinforced by the way their owner responds to the situation. HSCC can help you and your pet work through behavioral challenges to help everyone in your home feel happier! Give us a call at 802-8620135 ext. 29, or email helpline@hsccvt.org and a staff member will respond within 24 hours.
Sponsored by:
DOGS/CATS: Whiskahs lived with a cat and a dog in her previous home and might do well with others with a slow and proper introduction.
APARTMENTS, CONDOS & HOMES
on the road »
CARS, TRUCKS, MOTORCYCLES
pro services »
CHILDCARE, HEALTH/ WELLNESS, PAINTING
buy this stuff »
APPLIANCES, KID STUFF, ELECTRONICS, FURNITURE
music »
INSTRUCTION, CASTING, INSTRUMENTS FOR SALE
jobs »
NO SCAMS, ALL LOCAL, POSTINGS DAILY
NEW STUFF ONLINE EVERY DAY! PLACE YOUR ADS 24-7 AT SEVENDAYSVT.COM.
SEVEN DAYS JUNE 10-17, 2020
55
CLASSIFIEDS on the road
CASH FOR CARS! We buy all cars! Junk, high-end, totaled: It doesn’t matter. Get free towing & same-day cash. Newer models, too. Call 1-866-5359689. (AAN CAN)
Route 15, Hardwick 3842 Dorset Ln., Williston
802-793-9133
GUIDEBOAT FISHING DORY 14-foot Adirondack Guideboat Fishing Dory. Made in Ferrisburgh. Kevlar hull, cherry gunnels, spruce oars. 80 lbs. Very stable. Comes w/ extras. $2,800. Email grzzlebear@gmail.com or leave message at 802-827-6674.
CARS/TRUCKS 1994 FIREBIRD W/ NEW ENGINE Green V6 T-top. 126K miles, 6 years/25K miles on new block. Minimal rust. Needs attention & a new pilot for next stage of life. kdootz@ gmail.
display service ads: $25/$45 homeworks: $45 (40 words, photos, logo) fsbos: $45 (2 weeks, 30 words, photo) jobs: michelle@sevendaysvt.com, 865-1020 x21
Some restrictions apply. 1-855-380-2501. (AAN CAN)
We Pick Up & Pay For Junk Automobiles!
802-472-5100
BOATS
applianced kitchen, fi t-
FINANCIAL/LEGAL services
BIZ OPPS BECOME A PUBLISHED AUTHOR! We edit, print & distribute your work internationally. We do the work; you reap the rewards! Call for a free Author’s Submission Kit: 844-511-1836. (AAN CAN)
sm-allmetals060811.indd 7/20/15 1 & HW5:02 PM ness center, heat
housing
FOR RENT AFFORDABLE 2-BR APT. AVAIL. At Keen’s Crossing. 2-BR: $1,266/mo., heat & HW incl. Open floor plan, fully applianced kitchen, fi tness center, pet friendly, garage parking. Income restrictions apply. 802-655-1810, keenscrossing.com. KEEN’S CROSSING IS NOW LEASING! 1-BR, $1,054/mo.; 2-BR, $1,266/mo.; 3-BR, $1,397/mo. Spacious interiors, fully
CLASSIFIEDS KEY appt. appointment apt. apartment BA bathroom BR bedroom DR dining room DW dishwasher HDWD hardwood HW hot water LR living room NS no smoking OBO or best offer refs. references sec. dep. security deposit W/D washer & dryer
EQUAL HOUSING OPPORTUNITY All real estate advertising in this newspaper is subject to the Federal Fair Housing Act of 1968 and similar Vermont statutes which make it illegal to advertise any preference, limitations, or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, handicap, presence of minor children in the family or receipt of public assistance, or an intention to make any such preference, limitation or a discrimination. The newspaper will not knowingly accept any advertising for real estate, which is in violation of the law. Our
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housing ads: $25 (25 words) legals: 52¢/word buy this stuff: free online services: $12 (25 words)
incl. Income restrictions apply. 802-655-1810, keenscrossing.com.
PINECREST AT ESSEX 9 Joshua Way, Essex Jct. Independent senior living for those 55+ years. 1-BR avail. Jun. 15, $1,240/mo. incl. utils. & parking garage. NS/ pets. 802-872-9197 or rae@fullcirclevt.com. TAFT FARM SENIOR LIVING COMMUNITY 10 Tyler Way, Williston, independent senior living. Newly remodeled 2-BR unit on 2nd floor avail., $1,390/mo. incl. utils. & cable. NS/pets. Must be 55+ years of age. cintry@fullcirclevt. com, 802-879-3333.
HOUSEMATES NEED A ROOMMATE? Roommates.com will help you find your perfect match today! (AAN CAN)
OFFICE/ COMMERCIAL OFFICE/RETAIL SPACE AT MAIN STREET LANDING on Burlington’s waterfront. Beautiful, healthy, affordable spaces for your business. Visit mainstreetlanding.com & click on space avail. Melinda, 864-7999.
readers are hereby informed that all dwellings advertised in this newspaper are available on an equal opportunity basis. Any home seeker who feels he or she has encountered discrimination should contact: HUD Office of Fair Housing 10 Causeway St., Boston, MA 02222-1092 (617) 565-5309 — OR — Vermont Human Rights Commission 14-16 Baldwin St. Montpelier, VT 05633-0633 1-800-416-2010 hrc@vermont.gov
SEVEN DAYS JUNE 10-17, 2020
CHILDCARE SEEKING FULL-TIME NANNY Seeking full-time childcare for our boys (ages 3 & 1) starting in Sep. Must be CPR/First Aid-certified & have experience w/ children. Call 802-377-2979.
AUTO INSURANCE Starting at $49/mo.! Call for your fee rate comparison to see how much you can save. Call 855-569-1909. (AAN CAN) BOY SCOUT COMPENSATION FUND Anyone who was inappropriately touched by a Scout leader deserves justice & financial compensation! Victims may be eligible for a significant cash settlement. Time to file is limited. Call now. 844-896-8216. (AAN CAN) NEED HELP W/ FAMILY LAW? Can’t afford a $5,000 retainer? Low-cost legal services: Pay as you go, as low as $750-1,500.
ENTERTAINMENT
HEALTH/ WELLNESS GENTLE TOUCH MASSAGE Specializing in deep tissue, reflexology, sports massage, Swedish & relaxation massage for men. Practicing massage therapy for over 14 years. Gregg, gentletouchvt.com, motman@ymail.com,
Bidding Ends June 15 @ 12PM 298 J Brown Dr., Williston, VT
PREVIEW Mon.-Fri. from 8AM-4PM
BUY OR SELL!
802-234-8000 (call or text). 1-STOP SHOP For all your catheter needs. We accept Medicaid, Medicare & insurance. Try before you buy. Quick & easy. Give us a call: 866-2822506. (AAN CAN) PSYCHIC COUNSELING Psychic counseling, channeling w/ Bernice Kelman, Underhill. 30+ years’ experience. Also energy healing, chakra balancing, Reiki, rebirthing, other lives, classes, more. 802-899-3542, kelman.b@juno.com.
HOME/GARDEN SAVE YOUR ASH TREES! Do you have ash trees that are an asset in your landscape? Treat then now! They do not have to be removed. Call or text: MJ Cullen, 802-752-5596, mcullen883@gmail. com, ashtreemedic.com.
buy this stuff
GARAGE/ESTATE SALES ESTATE/GARAGE SALE Antique dressers, king bed w/ headboard, Craftmatic king bed, cedar chest, antique hutch, loveseat, end tables, desks, lamps, books, CDs, videos, records, jewelry, tools, glassware, dishes, battery-powered wheelchair w/ ramps & platform, & so much more. Come check it out. 21 Richard Ter., S. Burlington. 10 a.m.-3 p.m. daily.
MISCELLANEOUS
PETADVERTISING INSERTION ORDER
ATTENTION, VIAGRA & CIALIS USERS! A cheaper alternative to FUR Thomas BABY DOGGY Hirchak Company DAYCARE high drugstore prices! FROM: Lisa Rowell Exclusively small-breed 50-pill special: $99 + daycare/boarding in free shipping! 100% Phone: 800-634-7653 our Essex home. Dogs guaranteed. Call now: Advertising@THCAuction.com enjoy socialization, 888-531-1192. (AAN walks, treats & cozy CAN) beds. Daycare $20/day, TO: Logan overnight $35. Please email furbabyvt@gmail. COMPANY: Seven Days com. Thank you.
PHONE: 802-865-1020 x22
MUSIC »
1/16= 1C: 2.30 x 1C: 2.72; 1/12= 1C: 2.3 x 2C: 3. 1/8= 1C: 2.30 x 3C: it 5.56; 1/6= 1C: 2.3 x 4C: 7.46 Say you saw in... THCAuction.com • 800-474-6132
COMPUTER ISSUES? Geeks On Site provides free diagnosis remotely 24-7 service during Untitled-14 1 COVID-19. No home visit necessary. $40 off w/ coupon 86407! Restrictions apply. 866-939-0093. (AAN CAN)
TRAIN ONLINE TO DO MEDICAL BILLING! Become a medical office professional online at CTI! Get trained, certified & ready to work in months. Call 866-243-5931. Mon.-Fri., 8 a.m.-6 p.m. EST. (AAN CAN)
STRUGGLING W/ YOUR PRIVATE STUDENT LOAN PAYMENT? New relief programs can reduce your payments. Learn your options. Good credit not necessary. Call the Helpline: 888-670-5631. Mon.-Fri., 9 a.m.-5 p.m. EST. (AAN CAN)
Online Public Auto Auction
THE TAILOR SHOP REOPENS Thu. & Fri., 10 a.m.-6 p.m., 707 S. Main St., Stowe. Check out our lined, washable face masks: hydrophobic & 100% breathable. For purchase on-site or online, tailorshopstowe. com, 802-585-9422.
EDUCATION
Get legal help now! Call 1-844-821-8249, Mon.-Fri., 7 a.m.-4 p.m. PCT. familycourtdirect. com/?network=1. (AAN CAN)
EMAILED ADVERTISEMENT
CLOTHING ALTERATIONS
COMPUTER
print deadline: Mondays at 4:30 p.m. post ads online 24/7 at: sevendaysvt.com/classifieds questions? classifieds@sevendaysvt.com 865-1020 x10
TODAY’S DATE: 06/05/2020 NAME OF FILE: Vehicles_SD sevendaysvt.com DATE(S) TO RUN: 06/10/2020
Homeshares
SIZE OF AD: 1/16 Vertical 11/24/09 1:32:18 PM EMAILED TO: logan@sevendaysvt.com; Robyn@sevendaysvt.com
mini-sawit-white.indd 1 6/8/20 11:06 AM
SECTION: Class Auctions
BURLINGTON
Share apartment with avid sports and music fan in his 50s. No rent in exchange for errands, occas. transportation & flexible evening help w/ meals, etc. Shared BA. No smoking.
ESSEX JUNCTION Professional in her 50s & son in his 20s who enjoy their gardens, painting & birding, seeking pet-friendly housemate. $500/mo. (all inc). Shared BA. No add’l pets.
EAST MONTPELIER Artist in her 50s who enjoys gardening, nature & music, seeking pet-friendly housemate for occas. help with dog-walking. $500/mo. Shared BA.
DISH TV $59.99 for 190 channels + $14.95 high-speed internet. Free installation, smart HD DVR incl., free voice remote.
Finding you just the right housemate for over 35 years! Call 863-5625 or visit HomeShareVermont.org for an application. Interview, refs, bg check req. EHO Homeshare-temp2.indd 1
6/5/20 3:40 PM
Calcoku
Using the enclosed math operations as a guide, fill the grid using the numbers 1 - 6 only once in each row and column.
27+
19+
3-
3 3÷
2÷
13÷
6+
48x
90x
3-
22-
CALCOKU
Sudoku
Complete the following puzzle by using the numbers 1-9 only once in each row, column and 3 x 3 box.
4 Difficulty - Hard
BY JOSH REYNOLDS
DIFFICULTY THIS WEEK: HHH
8 4 4 2 7 1 8 2 1 3 6 7 5 6 8 2 3 5 6 8 3 7 9 No. 640
SUDOKU
Difficulty: Medium
BY JOSH REYNOLDS
DIFFICULTY THIS WEEK: HH
1
3
4
6
5
2
3
6
5
4
2
1
4
5
6
2
1
3
5
2
1
3
6
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1
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6
Fill the grid using the numbers 1-6, only once in each row and column. The numbers in each heavily outlined “cage” must combine to produce the target number in the top corner, using the mathematical operation indicated. A onebox 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.
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. The same numbers cannot be repeated in a row or column.
9 4 3 1 7 6 5 8 2 ANSWERS ON5 P.59 7 2 9 8 3 6 4 1 H = MODERATE HH = CHALLENGING HHH = HOO, BOY! 1 6 8 5 4 2 7 3 9 2 9 4 7 5 1 3 6 8 “HOW ABOUT HAT!” 8 3 5 2 6 9 4 1 7 ANSWERS ON P.59 » 7 1 6 8 3 4 2 9 5 3 5 1 4 9 7 8 2 6 6 8 9 3 2 5 1 7 4 4 2 7 6 1 8 9 5 3
crossword 6 4 2 1 3 5
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buzz?
Find out what’s percolating today. Sign up to receive our house blend of local news headlines served up in one convenient email by Seven Days.
SEVENDAYSVT.COM/DAILY7 8v-daily7-coffee.indd 1
SEVEN DAYS JUNE 10-17, 2020
1/13/14 1:45 PM
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Rick Belford, 864-7195, rickb@rickbelford.com.
music
FOR SALE 5-STRING GOLD STAR BANJO 2018 Gold Star 5-string banjo, w/ HSC, in mint condition. Mahogany neck/resonator, rosewood fingerboard, no-hole tone ring, 3-ply maple rim. Pro-level instrument; $1,350. 802-658-2462, guitboy75@hotmail. com. MUSIC EQUIPMENT FOR SALE Mackie 1640, 16 inputs w/ pre amps, EQs & routing. Good for studio & live applications; $500. Dangerous D-Box, 8-channel summing amp; $600. RME Fireface 800 audio interface, 56-channel 192hz 24bit. firewire 800/400; $500. Yamaha WX7 woodwind Midi controller; $300. Call Peter: 496-3166.
INSTRUCTION ANDY’S MOUNTAIN MUSIC Online lessons! Affordable, accessible, no-stress instruction in banjo, guitar, mandolin, more. All ages/skill levels/interests welcome! Dedicated teacher; references, convenience. Andy Greene, 802-658-2462, guitboy75@hotmail. com, andysmountain music.com. BASS, GUITAR, DRUMS, VOICE LESSONS & MORE Remote music lessons are an amazing way to spend time at home! Learn guitar, bass, piano, voice, violin, drums, flute, sax, trumpet, production & beyond w/ pro local instructors from the Burlington Music Dojo on Pine St. All levels & styles are welcome, incl. absolute beginners. Come share in the music! burlington musicdojo.com, info@ burlingtonmusicdojo. com. GUITAR INSTRUCTION Berklee graduate w/ 30 years’ teaching experience offers lessons in guitar, music theory, music technology, ear training. Individualized, step-by-step approach. All ages, styles, levels.
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HARMONICA LESSONS W/ ARI Online harmonica lessons for your quarantine! All ages & skill levels welcome. First lesson just $20! Avail. for workshops, too. Pocketmusic. musicteachershelper. com, 201-565-4793, ari.erlbaum@gmail.com.
STUDIO/ REHEARSAL
REAL ESTATE PROFESSIONALS: List your properties here and online for only $45/week. Submit your listings by Mondays at noon to homeworks@sevendaysvt.com or 802-865-1020, ext.10.
JUST ADD YOUR STYLE!
BURLINGTON | 40 COLLEGE ST UNIT 209 | #4805426
The District 4 Environmental Commission is reviewing this application under Act 250 Rule 51-Minor Applications. A copy of the application and proposed permit are available for review at the office listed below. The application and a draft permit may also be viewed on the Natural Resources Board’s web site (http://nrb. vermont.gov) by clicking on “Act 250 Database” and entering the project number “4C1187-8.”
REHEARSAL SPACE Safe & sanitary music/ creative spaces avail. by the hour in the heart of the South End art district. Monthly arrangements avail., as well. Tailored for music but can be multipurpose. info@ burlingtonmusicdojo. com, 802-540-0321.
art
AUDITIONS/ CASTING ‘ENDGAME’ IN PARKING LOT, AUG. Audition for Beckett’s ‘Endgame’ in O.N.E. parking lot. Aug. Audience in/on cars, lawn chairs, safely spaced. Set: garbage cans/dumpster, wheelchair. Call/text David Schein: 716-6404639, dafschein@gmail. com.
ACT 250 NOTICE MINOR APPLICATION #4C033134 10 V.S.A. §§ 6001 - 6093 On June 1, 2020, City of Burlington, 149 Church Street, Burlington, VT 05401 and Burlington International Airport, 1200 Airport Drive, South Burlington, VT 05403 filed application number 4C0331-34 for a project generally described as construction of a 14,000 square yard overnight aircraft parking apron at Burlington International
SEVEN DAYS JUNE 10-17, 2020
Relax and enjoy all BTV has to offer in this bright & cheerful, freshly painted, and move-in-ready 1 bedroom, 1 bath Condo just steps from the waterfront and Church Street Marketplace. A prime location in the heart of Burlington! Views from your own covered patio. Deeded parking spot! $359,500
Airport. The Project is located at 1200 Airport Drive in South Burlington, Vermont. The District 4 Environmental Commission is reviewing this application under Act 250 Rule 51—Minor Applications. A copy of the application and proposed permit are available for review at the office listed below. The application and a draft permit may also be viewed on the Natural Resources Board’s web site (http://nrb. vermont.gov) by clicking on “Act 250 Database” and entering the project number “4C0331-34.” No hearing will be held and a permit may be issued unless, on or before June 29, 2020, a person notifies the Commission of an issue or issues requiring the presentation of evidence at 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 to the address below, must state the criteria or sub-criteria at issue, why a hearing is required and what
ACT 250 NOTICE MINOR APPLICATION #4C11878 10 V.S.A. §§ 6001 - 6093 On February 28, 2020, Cochran’s Ski Area and Cochran Family, LLC filed application number 4C1187-8 for a project generally described as construction of a beginner ski trail. The project is located at 910 Cochran Road in Richmond, Vermont. The project was deemed complete on June 3, 2020 after the receipt of additional evidence.
Krista Lacroix 802-846-9551 Krista802RealEstate.com
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. Prior to submitting a request for a hearing, please contact the district coordinator at the telephone number listed below for more information. Prior to convening a hearing, the Commission must determine that substantive issues requiring a hearing have been raised. Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law may not be prepared unless the Commission holds a public hearing. If you feel that any of the District Commission members listed on the attached Certificate of Service under “For Your Information” may have a conflict of interest, or if there is any other reason a member should be disqualified from sitting on this case, please contact the District Coordinator as soon as possible, and by no later than June 29, 2020.
If you have a disability for which you need accommodation in order to participate in this process (including participating in a public hearing, if one is held), please notify us as soon as possible, in order to allow us as much time as possible to accommodate your needs. Parties entitled to participate are the Municipality, the Municipal Planning Commission, the Regional Planning Commission, affected state agencies, and adjoining property owners and other persons to the extent that they have a particularized interest that may be affected by the proposed project under the Act 250 criteria. Non-party participants may also be allowed under 10 V.S.A. Section 6085(c)(5). Dated at Essex Junction, Vermont this 5th day of June, 2020. By: /s/_Stephanie H. Monaghan, Stephanie H. Monaghan, District Coordinator, 111 West Street, Essex Junction, VT 05452 802-8795662 stephanie. monaghan@vermont. gov
No hearing will be held and a permit may be issued unless, on or before June 26, 2020, a person notifies the Commission of an issue or issues requiring the presentation of evidence at 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 to the address below, must state the criteria or sub-criteria at issue, why a hearing is required and what additional evidence will be presented at the hearing. Any hearing request by an adjoining property owner or other person eligible for party status under 10 V.S.A. § 6085(c)(1)(E) must include a petition for party status under the Act 250 Rules. Prior to submitting a request for a hearing, please contact the district coordinator at the telephone number listed below for more information. Prior to convening a hearing, the Commission must determine that substantive issues requiring a hearing have been raised. Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law may not be prepared unless the Commission holds a public hearing. If you feel that any of the District Commission members listed on the attached Certificate of
Service under “For Your Information” may have a conflict of interest, or if there is any other reason a member should be disqualified from sitting on this case, please contact the District Coordinator as soon as possible, and by no later than June 26, 2020. If you have a disability for which you need accommodation in order to participate in this process (including participating in a public hearing, if one is held), please notify us as soon as possible, in order to allow us as much time as possible to accommodate your needs. Parties entitled to participate are the Municipality, the Municipal Planning Commission, the Regional Planning Commission, affected state agencies, and adjoining property owners and other persons to the extent that they have a particularized interest that may be affected by the proposed project under the Act 250 criteria. Non-party participants may also be allowed under 10 V.S.A. Section 6085(c)(5). Dated at Essex Junction, Vermont this 4th day of June, 2020. By: /s/Rachel Lomonaco, Rachel Lomonaco, District Coordinator, 111 West Street, Essex Junction, VT 05452 802-879-5658 rachel. lomonaco@vermont.gov
ADVERTISEMENT FOR BIDS TOWN OF BOLTON NOTCH ROAD IMPROVEMENTS General Notice: The Town of Bolton (Owner) is requesting Bids for the construction of the following Project: NOTCH ROAD IMPROVEMENTS. Bids for the construction of the Project will be received at the Town Municipal Offices located at 3045 Route 2, Bolton, VT 05676, until June 26, 2020 at 10:00 a.m. local time. At that time the Bids received will be publicly opened and read. The Project includes the following Work: Roadway improvements including drainage/ ditching, culvert installation, earthwork, slope reconstruction and armoring, traffic control, and associated improvements.
The Engineer’s construction cost estimate range is $200,000 - $300,000. The Project has a contractual duration of 45 days. Obtaining the Bidding Documents. The Issuing Office for the Bidding Documents is: East Engineering, PLC 10523 Route 116, Hinesburg, VT 05461 Prospective Bidders may obtain or examine or purchase the Bidding Documents at the Issuing Office on Monday through Friday, by appointment only. Partial sets of Bidding Documents will not be available from the Issuing Office. Neither Owner nor Engineer will be responsible for full or partial sets of Bidding Documents, including addenda, if any, obtained from sources other than the Issuing Office. Printed copies of the Bidding Documents may be obtained from the Issuing Office by paying $100 for each set (non-refundable). PDF sets of the Bidding Documents are available free of charge. Pre-bid Conference A mandatory pre-bid conference for the Project will be held on June 12, 2020 at 10:00 a.m. at the Project Site on the east side of Notch Road approximately 0.25 miles south of the Notch Road/ Stage Road intersection (closest 911 Address is 4181 Notch Road, Bolton VT and coordinates are 44.43819, -72.89584). Bids will not be accepted from Bidders that do not attend the mandatory pre-bid conference. Instructions to Bidders. For all further requirements regarding bid submittal, qualifications, procedures, and contract award, refer to the Instructions to Bidders that are included in the Bidding Documents. This Advertisement is issued by: Owner: Town of Bolton Engineer: East Engineering, PLC
STATE OF VERMONT PROBATE DIVISION CHITTENDEN UNIT DOCKET NO.: 562-5-20 CNPR In re ESTATE of Marc R. Kamhi NOTICE TO CREDITORS
fsb
FOR SALE BY OWNER
List your property here for 2 weeks for only $45! Contact Katie, 865-1020, ext. 10, fsbo@sevendaysvt.com. HINESBURG - INVESTMENT PROPERTY 2036 Bunker Hill Hardwick, VT. Private 3-bedroom, 2 full bath home acres with views of Mt. Mansfield and the Worcester Mountain Range. Zillow, For sale by owner. $258,000 802-472-6374
FROM P.57
4
6
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3
1
4 3 17 2 6 8 9 4 3 5 1 6 5 1 8 9 2 7
9 7+ 5 1 2 48x 8 37 3 6 4
FROM P.57
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1 2 6 5 4 1 9 35÷ 7 2 8 4 23 6
3 1 2 4 6 7 6 8 3 4 6+2 5 1 6 9 3 4 9 7 2 5 1 8
19+
6 3 1 2 5
4 5 3 1 2
5 8 2 2÷ 3÷ 6 4 1 7 3 9 3 6 8 90x 4 1 7 2 9 2- 5 84 2 6 1 7 4 Difficulty - Hard 9 5 3
CONTACT KATIE, 865-1020, EXT. 10 FSBO@SEVENDAYSVT.COM
4. YOU MUST RESPOND TO EACH CLAIM. The Answer is your written response to the Plaintiffs’ Complaint. In your Answer, you must state whether you agree or disagree with each paragraph of the Complaint. If you believe the Plaintiffs should not be given everything asked for in the Complaint, you must say say in your Answer. 5. YOU WILL LOSE YOUR CASE IF YOU DO NOT GIVE YOUR WRITTEN ANSWER TO THE COURT. If you do not send the Plaintiffs your Answer within 42 days after the date on which this Summons was first published and file it with the Court, you will lose this case. You will not get to tell your story, and the Court may decide against you and award the Plaintiffs everything asked for in the Complaint.
3-
Using the enclosed math operations as a guide, fill the grid using the numbers 1 - 6 only once in each row and column.
6. YOU MUST MAKE ANY CLAIMS AGAINST THE PLAINTIFFS IN YOUR REPLY. Your Answer must state any related legal claims you have against the Plaintiffs. Your claims against the Plaintiffs are called counterclaims. If you do not make your Counterclaims in writing in your Answer, you may not be able to bring them up at all. Even if you have insurance and the insurance company will defend you, you must still file any Counterclaims you have. 7. LEGAL ASSISTANCE. You may wish to get legal help from a lawyer. If you cannot afford a lawyer, you should ask the Court Clerk for information about places where you can get free legal help. Even if you cannot get legal help, you must still give the Court a written Answer to protect your rights or you may lose the case. ORDER. The affidavit of Plaintiff’s counsel filed in this action shows that service cannot be made with due diligence by any of the methods provided in Rule 4(d-(f), (k), or (l) of the Vermont Rules of Civil Procedure. Accordingly, it is ORDERED that service of the Summons set forth above shall be made upon Defendants, Heirs, Successors, Administrators and Assigns of Arthur Elsom, Estate of Arthur Elsom, Laura J. Elsom, Estate of Laura J. Elsom, Gladys Elsom White, Myrtle Elsom Meola, and Arthur Claude Elsom, and John Doe I-IX and Jane Doe I-IX, by publication as provided in Rule 4(g) of those Rules.
published once a week for three weeks beginning on June 3, 2020, in Seven Days, a newspaper of general circulation in Chittenden County, and a copy of this Summons and Order shall be mailed to the Defendants, if an address is known. DATED at Burlington, Vermont, this 29th day of May, 2020. /s/ Helen M. Toor Hon. Helen M. Toor Superior Court Judge
STATE OF VERMONT SUPERIOR COURT PROBATE DIVISION CHITTENDEN UNIT DOCKET NO.: 335-3-20 CNPR In re ESTATE of: Bernie R. Tolmie, Jr. NOTICE TO CREDITORS To the Creditors of Bernie R. Tolmie, Jr., late of South Burlington. I have been appointed executor of this estate. All creditors having claims against the decedent or the estate must present their claims in writing within four (4) months 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: 6/7/20 Signature of Fiduciary: /s/ Michele Kimpton Executor/Administrator: Michele Kimpton, 46 Fells Rd, Winchester, MA 01890 415-845-7588 mbkimpton@me.com Name of Publication: Seven Days Publication
This Order shall be SEVEN DAYS JUNE 10-17, 2020
Calcoku
No. 640
Difficulty: Medium
PUZZLE ANSWERS
5
STATE OF VERMONT SUPERIOR COURT CIVIL DIVISION CHITTENDEN UNIT DOCKET NO. 1472-20 CNCV SOUTH BURLINGTON FIRE DISTRICT NO. 2 and CITY OF SOUTH BURLINGTON, Plaintiffs v. HEIRS, SUCCESSORS, ADMINISTRATORS and ASSIGNS of ARTHUR ELSOM, ESTATE OF ARTHUR ELSOM, LAURA
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Probate Court: Vermont Superior Court-Probate Division-Chittenden Unit, PO Box 511, Burlington, VT 05402
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Publication Date: 6/10/20
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Dated: 6/2/20 Signature of Fiduciary: /s/_Joanna R. Kamhi Executor/ Administrator: Joanna R. Kamhi, c/o Unsworth LaPlante, PLLC, 26 Railroad Ave., Essex Jct., VT 05452
Name of Publication: Seven Days
List your property here for 2 weeks for only $45!
plant and for any this Summons was first 5:03 PM which is June other purpose that may3/16/20 published, benefi t said Fire District, 3, 2020. You must send such as a playground a copy of your Answer or public park, and to the Plaintiffs or the that said land shall not Plaintiffs’ attorneys be sold for any other located at: J purpose to any succesohn T. Leddy, Esq., sor or assign of the Fire McNeil, Leddy & District, but may be Sheahan, P.C., 271 conveyed to the Town South Union Street, of South Burlington, its Burlington, VT 05401, successors or assigns in Attorney for So. event of discontinuance Burlington Fire District of the Fire District. No. 2. The Complaint seeks a decree from the Court Andrew M. Bolduc, Esq., to declare and adjudge City Attorney, City of that these restrictions South Burlington, 575 shall be deemed null Dorset Street, South and void. Burlington, VT 05403, Attorney for City of 3. YOU MUST REPLY South Burlington. WITHIN 42 DAYS TO PROTECT YOUR RIGHTS. You must also give or You must give or mail mail your Answer to the the Plaintiffs a written Court located at: response called an Answer within 42 days Vermont Superior Court, after the date on which Civil Division, 175 Main Street, P.O. Box 187, Burlington, VT 05402.
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I have been appointed executor of this estate. All creditors having claims against the decedent or the estate must present their claims in writing within four (4) months 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.
J. ELSOM, ESTATE Complaint is on file and 6/4/20 fsbo-muroski031820.indd 1:17 PM 1 obtained at the OF LAURA J. ELSOM, may be GLADYS ELSOM WHITE, office of the Clerk of this MYRTLE ELSOM MEOLA, Court, Vermont Superior and ARTHUR CLAUDE Court, Civil Division, 175 ELSOM, and JOHN DOE Main Street Burlington, I-IX and JANE DOE I-IX, Vermont. Do not throw Defendants this paper away. It is an official paper that SUMMONS AND ORDER affects your rights. OF PUBLICATION 2. PLAINTIFFS’ CLAIM. THIS SUMMONS Plaintiffs’ claim is IS DIRECTED TO: for Quiet Title and HEIRS, SUCCESSORS, Declaratory Judgment, ADMINISTRATORS AND relating to deed ASSIGNS OF ARTHUR restrictions contained ELSOM, ESTATE OF in a certain Warranty ARTHUR ELSOM, LAURA Deed of Arthur Elsom J. ELSOM, ESTATE to the South Burlington OF LAURA J. ELSOM, Fire District No. 2, dated GLADYS ELSOM WHITE, March 14, 1947, and MYRTLE ELSOM MEOLA, recorded in Volume 20 and ARTHUR CLAUDE at Page 480 of the Land ELSOM, and JOHN DOE Records of the Town of I-IX AND JANE DOE I-IX South Burlington, to wit: restricting the property 1. YOU ARE BEING SUED. to be used by the Fire Plaintiffs have started District for the purpose a lawsuit against you. of a sewage treatment A copy of Plaintiff’s
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Jct., Vermont.
802-879-7133 Carisa@ unsworthlaplante.com
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To the Creditors of Marc
FSBO-Rogerson061020.indd 1 R. Kamhi, late of Essex
Duplex: Two large adjacent apartments, upstairs and down. Four bedroom unit 1,600 sq -ft . Three bedroom unit 1,269 sq-ft. Separate utilities. Strong rental history. Many upgrades. $307,000. Photos: bit.ly/hinesburgduplex Call 802.482.4659
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HOUSE 10 ACRES
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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.
[CONTINUED] Date: 6/10/20 Probate Court: Vermont Superior Court Chittenden Unit, 175 Main St, Burlington, VT
STATE OF VERMONT SUPERIOR COURT PROBATE DIVISION CHITTENDEN UNIT DOCKET NO.: 439-320 CNPR In re ESTATE of Mary S. Bassett
Dated: 6/2/20 Signature of Fiduciary /s/Michael D. Bassett Executor/Administrator Michael Bassett, Co-Executor, David Bassett, Co-Executor, c/o Geraldine E. Stewart, Esq., Jarrett & Luitjeans, PLC, 1795 Williston Rd., Suite 125, South Burlington, VT 05403 802-864-5951 Name of Publication: Seven Days. Publication Date: 6/10/20. Probate Court: Chittenden Probate Court, P.O. Box 511, Burlington, VT 05402-0511
NOTICE TO CREDITORS To the Creditors of Mary S. Bassett, late of South Burlington. I have been appointed executor of this estate. All creditors having claims against the decedent or the estate must present their claims in writing within four (4) months of the first publication of
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STATE OF VERMONT SUPERIOR COURT PROBATE DIVISION CHITTENDEN UNIT DOCKET NO.: 440-320 CNPR In re ESTATE of: Mary L. Pughe aka Mary M. Pughe NOTICE TO CREDITORS To the Creditors of
SEVEN DAYS JUNE 10-17, 2020
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Mary L. Pughe aka Mary M. Pughe, late of Shelburne. I have been appointed executor of this estate. All creditors having claims against the decedent or the estate must present their claims in writing within four (4) months 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: 6/5/2020 Signature of Fiduciary: /s/ Charles W. Pughe, Executor. Executor/ Administrator: Charles W. Pughe, c/o Geraldine E. Stewart, Esq. Jarrett & Luitjeans, PLC, 1795 Williston Rd., Suite 125, South Burlington, VT 05403 802-864-5951 Name of Publication: Seven Days Publication Date: 6/10/20 Probate Court: Chittenden Probate Court, P.O. Box 511, Burlington, VT 05402-0511
STATE OF VERMONT SUPERIOR COURT PROBATE DIVISION CHITTENDEN UNIT DOCKET NO.: 602-520 CNPR In re ESTATE of: Shaun Robert Superneau. NOTICE TO CREDITORS. To the Creditors of Shaun Robert Superneau, late of Jericho. I have been appointed executor of this estate. All creditors having claims against the decedent or the estate must present their claims in writing within four (4) months 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: 6/5/2020 Signature of Fiduciary: /s/ Sarah Dattilio. Executor/ Administrator: Sarah Dattilio, 80 Liberty Ln, Colchester, VT 05446 802-598-3194 Name of Publication: Seven Days Publication
Date: 6/10/20 Probate Court: Chittenden Probate Court, 175 Main St, Burlington, VT 05401
THE BURLINGTON SCHOOL DISTRICT, IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE FOOD SERVICE DIRECTORS ASSOCIATION OF VERMONT (FDA), WILL RECEIVE SEALED BIDS FOR PERSONAL PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT (PPE) FROM FULL SERVICE SUPPLY DISTRIBUTION COMPANIES. Bids are due on or before, but no later than 10:00 AM, Monday, June 22nd at Burlington High School, 52 Institute Road, Burlington, VT 05408. Attention Doug Davis, Burlington School Food Project. The sealed proposals will be opened at the same time and address. Notification of the award, if any, will be made no later than 60 days from the date of opening. Please address proposals to the attention of Doug Davis and follow the submission
directions in the Bid Packet. Anyone interested in receiving a full bid packet or more information, contact Doug Davis, Director of Food Service at 802 864 8416 or vermontfda@gmail.com or ddavis@bsdvt.org
TOWN OF ESSEX PLANNING COMMISSION AGENDA / PUBLIC HEARING JUNE 25, 2020 -6:30 P.M. COVID-19 UPDATE: Due to the COVID-19 / coronavirus pandemic, this meeting will be held remotely and recorded via Microsoft Stream. Available options to watch or join the meeting: Join via Microsoft Teams at https:// tinyurl.com/ESSEXPC. Depending on your browser, you may need to call in for audio (below). Join via conference call (audio only): (802) 377-3784 | Conference ID: 590 879 654 #. Watch the live stream video on Town Meeting TV’s YouTube Channel. Town Meeting TV, formally Channel 17,
will be moving to on Comcast channel 1087.
Town Hall to consider the following:
1. Public Comments 2. CONSENT AGENDA: Minor Site Plan: Joseph Bissonette & Chad Riley: Proposal to operate a food truck located at 217 Sand Hill Road in the Medium Density Residential (R2) district. Tax Map 50, Parcel 42. 3. SKETCH/SITE PLANPUBLIC HEARING: Renee & Brad LaFountain: Proposal for a 3 lot PUD-R located at 109 Brigham Hill Rd in the AR Zone. Tax Map 14, Parcel 15-602. 4. Ongoing ETC|NEXT Discussion 5. Minutes: June 11, 2020 6. Other Business Note: Please visit our website at www.essex. org to view agendas, application materials, and minutes.
1) A request to the DRB by Cumming Contracting for a conditional use review. This property is located at 53 Plains Road which is in the Low-Density Residential Zoning District.
TOWN OF JERICHODEVELOPMENT REVIEW BOARD NOTICE OF PUBLIC HEARING The Jericho Development Review Board will hold a public hearing at 7:00 pm on WEDNESDAY June 24, 2020 at the Jericho
2) A request to the DRB From Robert & Mary Martelle for a preliminary and final plat review for a 4- lot major subdivision. This property is located at 22 Park Street which is in the Village Center Zoning District and the CD 3 of the Character Based Zoning District. All interested persons may appear and be heard. Additional information related to this application may be viewed at the Jericho Planning and Zoning Office during regular business hours. Chris Flinn, Zoning Administrator cflinn@ jerichovt.gov
10/29/19 3:50 PM
61 JUNE 10-17, 2020
ATTENTION RECRUITERS: POST YOUR JOBS AT: PRINT DEADLINE: FOR RATES & INFO:
JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM/POST-A-JOB NOON ON MONDAYS (INCLUDING HOLIDAYS) MICHELLE BROWN, 802-865-1020 X21, MICHELLE@SEVENDAYSVT.COM
YOUR TRUSTED LOCAL SOURCE. JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM ai15904173167_4t-MiddNaturalCoop052720.pdf
LIVE-IN CARETAKER POSITION
WE’RE HIRING!
North Stamford, Connecticut (4 hours from Montpelier)
5/25/20
10:35 AM
CARING PEOPLE WANTED
CAREER
Produce Assistant Manager
Responsibilities include: maintaining yard throughout the year— mowing, leaf blowing, gutter cleaning, weeding, leaf removal, mulching, pruning, snow removal, pool maintenance—maintaining organic vegetable garden, caring for farm animals, housekeeping, laundry, linens, and miscellaneous tasks from caring for seasonal furniture, to Christmas lighting, to various repairs as needed. Must also be able to schedule outside vendors and oversee their work on the property. For full job description go to: bit.ly/2zfIYtk.
Burlington Area
S
APPLY TODAY AT MIDDLEBURY.COOP
Apply online at: homeinstead.com/483 Or call: 802.860.4663
APPLICATION SUPPORT SPECIALIST
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WE ARE HIRING FACILITIES TECHNICIANS! Technicians work on the continuous operation and maintenance of the following systems: high-temperature hot water, chilled water and glycol chilled water, centralcompressed air, high-pressure compressed air, ultra-pure water, ultrapure gas, and other systems that support manufacturing operations. Candidates must have a High School diploma and at least one year of relevant experience. Associate’s degree in Electrical or Mechanical Engineering strongly preferred. Eligible for Benefits on Day 1! https://gfoundries. taleo.net/careersection/ gf_ext/jobdetail. ftl?job=20001022&tz= GMT-04%3A00&tzname= Questions? Email: Melinda.Antonucci@ globalfoundries.com
Home Instead Senior Care, a provider of personal care services to seniors in their homes, is seeking friendly and dependable people. CAREGivers assist seniors with daily living activities. P/T & F/T positions available. 12 hours/week minimum, flexible scheduling, currently available. $13-$17.50/hour depending on experience. No heavy lifting.
Seeking experienced team leader to: Motivate and supervise Produce team Work closely with Manager to achieve fiscal goals Be passionate about local produce!
For information, please email mayapplecenterfarm@gmail.com with a letter of interest and background skills; serious inquiries only; please list 2-3 references; July start date possible. Please mention willingness to shelter-inplace as necessary throughout the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
HIRING EXPERIENCED CARPENTER Red House Building is looking to expand their team of craftspeople with a skilled carpenter. Applicants must have: » At least 5 years of full-time homebuilding/renovation experience » Maintain a valid driver’s license. Our ideal candidate would possess the following qualities: » Good communication and sense of teamwork » Professionalism » Attention to detail » Strong organizational skills.
Having the demonstrated ability to successfully provide end user support is a critical component of this role. Qualifications include: Associate’s or bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, MIS, Business, or other related discipline required; 2+ years of experience in a related role or position; excellent oral and written communication skills required, must have high degree of reliability and follow through. Apply online at eastviewexpressions.wordpress.com.
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t This is a FT in-house position. t Turn PSD designs into fully functional responsive websites. t Knowledge of PHP, Drupal, WP, jQuery, GIT on the LAMP stack. t Attention to detail is a must. t Enthusiam about building next level web experiences even more so! t Benefits, yup.
Please visit our website to learn more about our team at redhousebuilding.com and send resumes to jeremy@redhousebuilding.com
6/1/20 8:43 PM
Learn More -> hark.bz/careers
6/8/20Untitled-3 2:07 PM 1
Looking for a Sweet Job?
2/24/20 1:02 PM
t WEB DEVELOPER s
EastView at Middlebury is an E.O.E. - eastviewmiddlebury.com
Hourly wage will depend upon the applicant’s skill level/experience. Generous benefits package.
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EastView at Middlebury is a 9-year-old senior living facility located in Middlebury, Vermont. As we advance our vision to be a hub of vitality for our region’s seniors, we are expanding our team. We are seeking an experienced Application Support Specialist to help scope, deploy and manage the growing number of software applications in EV’s environment.
1/15/19 12:26 PM
Our mobile-friendly job board is buzzing with excitement.
Start applying at jobs.sevendaysvt.com 3h_JobFiller_Bee.indd 1
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6/9/20 3:27 PM
ATTENTION RECRUITERS:
62
POST YOUR JOBS AT JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM FOR FAST RESULTS, OR CONTACT MICHELLE BROWN: MICHELLE@SEVENDAYSVT.COM
JUNE 10-17, 2020
PART-TIME OFFICE ASSISTANT The Vermont Natural Resources Council (VNRC), a nonprofit environmental advocacy organization founded in 1963, is seeking a part-time Office Assistant to join our team in Montpelier. This half-time position will provide general support with broad duties that include copying and filing, errands, assisting with membership appeals, and other assignments as needed. We are looking for someone who is highly organized, enjoys working in a collaborative nonprofit environment, possesses excellent verbal and written skills, has an attention to detail and basic computer skills, and is reliable and adaptable. This position can grow into a full-time position with the right candidate subsequent to the repeal of public and workplace gathering restrictions. The qualified candidate will have at least two years’ experience in office administration. Email resume and cover letter in confidence to Nancy Davila: ndavila@vnrc.org.
United States Magistrate Judge
www.vtd.uscourts.gov/position-announcements An EOE
1 6/8/204t-USDistrictCourtVT060320.indd 9:06 AM
Responsible for the cleaning of all areas of the facility with the exception of the OR. Must know how to handle cleaning issues or know the appropriate resources available to solve the specific problem.
LEARN MORE & APPLY: uvmmed.hn/evs
5 years of experience is highly suggested. Must be X-ray certified. Apply today with a resume directly to Contemporary Dental Arts, P.C., 75 Talcott Road Suite 60, Williston, VT 05495 For additional information and to schedule an interview, call 802-878-9888.
5/29/202v-ContemporaryDentalArts060320.indd 2:21 PM 1
6/1/20 8:33 PM
BASIC FUNCTION: The Staff Accountant is responsible for all accounting functions as assigned by the Controller. This may include accounts payable, non-student accounts receivable and serving as back up for payroll, as well as supplementing all aspects of the Business Office and accounting function. For further information please visit goddard.edu/about-goddard/employment-opportunities Goddard College is committed to creating a college representative of a diverse global community and capable of creating change. To that end, we are actively seeking applications from qualified candidates from groups currently underrepresented in our institution for this position. This institution is an E.O.E. 5h-GoddardCollege061020.indd 1
6/8/20 11:43 AM
The Vermont Farm & Forest Viability Program Coordinator supports grant-making, data collection and evaluation for this VHCB program, which provides business planning and technical assistance to agricultural and forest-products entrepreneurs. We are seeking a self-directed person with strong communication, writing, organizational, and administrative skills. Data management experience and attention to detail are required; experience with spreadsheet and database tools is preferred. Knowledge of Vermont agricultural and/or forestry practices and related institutions is a plus. Full-time position with comprehensive benefits. Some in-state travel required. Applications will be reviewed beginning 6/30; the position is open until filled. EOE. Read the job description at www.vhcb.org/ about-us/jobs.Please respond with letter of interest and résumé by email to Laurie Graves: laurie@vhcb.org
LIVE-IN AND IN-HOME SUPPORT
6/8/20 3:08 PM
6/8/20 2:14 PM
Seeking both Live-in and In-Home Supports for a very independent 30-year-old man with an intellectual disability and mental health diagnosis. Responsibilities include: providing compassionate companionship, some assistance with meal planning/preparation, grocery shopping, providing reminders (medications, showering), some support with household chores as needed, and creating a weekly activity schedule to keep this individual engaged and on track. Live-in: position offers free rent and utilities in Burlington, VT. The live-in-aide has their own room and bathroom. There is parking and laundry onsite. The live-in-aide position is supported by the Burlington Housing Authority. In-Home Support: 10-15 hours of home support each week. The available shifts are Monday through Friday from 8:00am-10:00am as well as evening shifts from 5:00pm-8:00pm. We are seeking someone who can do mornings or evening or someone who can do both. The supports would take place in the client’s home. The payment is $15 per hour. Please contact Hannah Sprague at 802-324-7730 if interested in either position. 5h-KatherineConnolly061020.indd 1
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This is a full-time position, for the right person, with great hours and benefits.
FULL TIME; BENEFITS ELIGIBLE; $18/HR; UNION
Sign On Bonus - Up to $2,000 with a starting salary of $14 an hour.
PROGRAM COORDINATOR
Immediate opening
STAFF ACCOUNTANT
ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICE WORKER
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ASSISTANT
The Judicial Conference of the United States has authorized the appointment of a full-time United States Magistrate Judge for the United States District Court for the District of Vermont upon the retirement of the incumbent in February of 2021. The duty station for the magistrate judge position is located in Burlington. The Public Notice of Vacancy for the Appointment of a United States Magistrate Judge and the application form are available on the court’s website at:
Please submit applications by Friday, June 19.
4t-VNRC061020.indd 1
DENTAL
6/9/20 1:40 PM
FOLLOW US ON TWITTER @SEVENDAYSJOBS, SUBSCRIBE TO RSS, OR BROWSE POSTS ON YOUR PHONE AT JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM
Find jobs on
NEW JOBS POSTED DAILY! JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM
63 JUNE 10-17, 2020
Is currently seeking:
Finance Associate Part Time
https://bit.ly/2yyGXrW 2h-Spectrum052020.indd 1
!
follow us for the newest: twitter.com/ SevenDaysJobs
5/19/20
Love to Garden? Join Our Team! We have an immediate opening at our Williston Garden Center. We’re looking for a reliable and quick learner who is enthusiastic, outgoing, upbeat (no matter what!), flexible, team-oriented and thrive in a busy and dynamic environment! Ability to work weekends is a must. This position is year-round, benefit eligible, and full-time.
INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGNER (iDesigner) The iDesigner supports faculty through pedagogical consultation, instructional design support, and professional development needed to develop successful and effective face-to-face, hybrid/blended, 11:00 AM online, and technology-enhanced teaching, learning and research. This position provides course design and development services to faculty, subject matter experts and course developers using best practices and quality standards, effective instructional strategies and innovative e-learning tools to deliver high quality online learning opportunities that promote student engagement and success.
APPLICATIONS SYSTEMS ANALYST The Application Systems Analyst provides implementation/maintenance, operational oversight, troubleshooting, testing, documentation, training and support on a variety of Enterprise and specialized software applications. The Application Systems Analyst is also responsible for analyzing current and future application needs and working closely with management to ensure that all application systems are being properly utilized. For further information & to apply for these & other great jobs:
norwich.interviewexchange.com STORE MANAGER (Williston Garden Center) The Williston Store Manager (SM) is responsible for all operations at our Williston facility. The SM will 5v-NorwichUniversity061020.indd 1 6/8/20 ensure a dynamic and unique experience for our customers with exceptional service, merchandising and ambiance. As part of the leadership team for the retail division, the SM will participate in strategic planning sessions and assist the Retail General REGISTERED NURSE/LICENSED PRACTICAL NURSE Manager in setting the strategic direction for the Valley Vista is seeking full-time, part-time, & per diem nurses (LPN or RN) for all shifts, to join our team and support our 19 bed women's retail division. Our ideal candidate will have a unit in Vergennes, VT, as they move toward a life in recovery. demonstrated record of success leading a multiJob Duties: departmental or multi- unit retail organization of • Provide appropriate nursing services and education to clients. similar scale/volume; a min of 5 yrs experience in • Observe, record, and report to the appropriate person any leadership/management; and 4 yrs direct customer symptoms, reactions and changes in a client’s condition. service experience. This person will have a proven • Receives and transcribes physician order to client charts. record of creating, managing budgets & achieving • Chart nursing notes in an informative and descriptive manner reflecting the care provided and the response to that care. financial goals and have excellent communication • Participate in report at shift change. skills. Garden Center/Nursery experience strongly • Administer Mantoux upon admission. preferred and ability to stay organized, focused and • Complete scheduled weekly updates. calm in a busy and dynamic environment is a must!
2:00 PM
• Complete scheduled chart audits.
We are a 100% employee-owned and a Certified B Corporation. We offer strong cultural values, competitive wages and outstanding benefits (including a tremendous discount!). Please go to our careers page at www.gardeners.com/careers and apply online! LongSkinnyTwitter.indd 1
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Job Requirements: • LPN or RN License • Interest in Behavioral Health and Chemical Dependency Welcome New Grads! $23 to $32 dependent on licensure & experience, with shift differentials. Possible sign-on bonus available. Job Type: Full-time, Salary: $23.00 to $32.00/hr. Send resumes to: jenny.gilman@vvista.net
5/26/20 6/9/205v-ValleyVista061020.indd 1:34 5:34 PM 8:31 AM 1
6/9/20 3:18 PM
ATTENTION RECRUITERS:
64
POST YOUR JOBS AT JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM FOR FAST RESULTS, OR CONTACT MICHELLE BROWN: MICHELLE@SEVENDAYSVT.COM
JUNE 10-17, 2020
Dental Hygienist
T OW N O F D U X B U RY
Four day position, with an optional 5th day in the future. This person will play a very key role in the health of our amazing patients. Must be fun and have a super positive outlook. Focus is on total quality care. Must be a highly-skilled clinician and comfortable managing perio patients. Must have a local anesthetic certification, and be willing to work under new CDC/Vermont guidelines. This is an extremely safe practice for your profession.
Please apply now. envisionyourperfectteam @gmail.com
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Analyst or Senior Analyst Passionate about transforming the way we use and produce energy, promoting social justice, and enjoy hard-working and collaborative teammates? Join our team working remotely until we can return to our dog-friendly, green workplace! Requires a BS/BA degree and 1 to 5 years’ experience in related field, or equivalent experience/education.
6/1/20 8:30 PM
AMERICORPS VISTA POSITIONS: SNAP Outreach Systems Specialist
EFG is committed to diversity, equity & inclusion and welcomes candidates who can contribute to our efforts to strengthen our workplace culture and service to clients. energyfuturesgroup.com/ careers
Network Capacity Specialist
Want to make a lasting difference through work that matters? Come join a dedicated team working to ensure that everyone in Vermont has enough healthy food to eat, every day. The Vermont Foodbank is the largest hungerrelief organization in Vermont, providing 12 million pounds of food to 153,000 Vermonters each year through partnerships and innovative programs. For more details & to apply, visit:
vtfoodbank.org/employment/ current-openings
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The Town of Duxbury is looking for a Truck Driver/Laborer for its 2020 construction season.
Full Time; Benefits Eligible; $65K Annually BASIC FUNCTION:
Candidates must have Class B CDL with manual endorsement. Must be able to operate manual tandem truck, loader, and hand tools. Must be a team player. Main duties are, but not limited to, hauling all materials for town projects, helping with any manual labor task.
The Director of IT Infrastructure and User Support of manages day-to-day IT infrastructure operations, monitors performance of networks (LAN, SAN, wireless, etc), and works with the Chief Information Technology Officer on portions of the Strategic IT Plan and Security Policy relating to network improvements. The Director of IT Infrastructure and User Support also schedules and manages end-user support personnel.
Job runs from June 2020 to October 2, 2020. Position hours are 30 to 40 hours per week.
For further information please visit: goddard.edu/about-goddard/employmentopportunities.
Applications can be picked up and returned to: Duxbury Town Office 5421 Vermont Route 100 Duxbury, Vermont 05676
Goddard College is committed to creating a college representative of a diverse global community and capable of creating change. To that end, we are actively seeking applications from qualified candidates from groups currently underrepresented in our institution for this position. This institution is an equal opportunity provider, and employer.
Questions call Ben Andrews, Interim Road Foreman at 244-6135. Position is open until filled.
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6/1/20 5v-GoddardCollege052720.indd 10:13 AM 1
5/22/20 11:19 AM
WellBeing RN Nurse Manager
The successful candidate will: • Manage a growing peer-run recovery center with a style of motivation and empowerment • Play a leadership role with the center’s ongoing fundraising efforts • Offer firm, compassionate leadership for people in recovery from alcohol and/or drug addiction from all walks of life and all backgrounds • Nurture partnerships with state and local entities to assist those in recovery Full job description at: turningpointcentervt.org. Qualified applicants should reply with cover letter & resume by July 3 to:
The Manor has an immediate opening for an RN NURSE MANAGER This position entails a unique blend of clinical management and hands on clinical care, managing the needs of short and long term care residents. Strong background in long term care and teaching desired. Be part of the nursing management team dedicated to excellent nursing care. The Manor, not-for-profit corporation, is recognized by the State of Vermont and nationally for quality care. Excellent wages and benefits!
Gary De Carolis, Executive Director, Turning Point Center of Chittenden County, 179 South Winooski Avenue, Suite 301, Burlington, VT 05401 or to garyd@turningpointcentervt.org. The Turning Point Center of Chittenden County is a safe, substance-free environment, providing recovery support, social and educational opportunities, and fellowship to anyone actively interested in recovery from alcohol and/or drug addiction.
Are You Ready For a Career Change?
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6/8/20
ATTENTION RECRUITERS: POST YOUR JOBS AT: PRINT DEADLINE: FOR RATES & INFO:
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DIRECTOR OF IT INFRASTRUCTURE AND USER SUPPORT
Seasonal Opening
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR (Full Time)
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We are seeking two AmeriCorps VISTA members to join the Community Impact Team at the VT Foodbank.
TRUCK DRIVER/ LABORER
SEVENDAYSVT.COM/POSTMYJOB NOON ON MONDAYS (INCLUDING HOLIDAYS) MICHELLE BROWN, 802-865-1020 X21, MICHELLE@SEVENDAYSVT.COM
Find yourself here! Work in one of Vermont’s most beautiful settings, 2:11 PMand just a short drive to the slopes (Stowe, Jay Peak, Smugglers Notch), minutes from hiking, biking, kayaking, and other outdoor recreation. Plus, The Manor is just a short drive away from Burlington, where there’s plenty for a young professional to do. Quality of life and a great career. You’ll find that at The Manor! 577 Washington Hwy Morrisville, VT 05661 Tel: 802-888-8706 contact:.HR@themanorvt.org www.themanorvt.org/careers
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6/9/20 9:42 AM
NEW JOBS POSTED DAILY!
FOLLOW US ON TWITTER @SEVENDAYSJOBS, SUBSCRIBE TO RSS, OR BROWSE POSTS ON YOUR PHONE AT JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM
JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM
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COOK - Full Time Vermont’s premier continuing care retirement community is adding members to its team! Wake Robin provides a fine dining experience with a focus on farm to plate freshness, and a work environment that is hard to find in the restaurant industry. • We work from scratch, not from a box • 40% of our produce is local/organic • Innovative on-site protein butchering and smoking • Manageable schedule ending in early evening • Superb kitchen facilities with excellent benefits
$17.83 - $30.51 per hour
Our cook will have experience producing high quality soups, sauces and entrees from scratch, demonstrate experience in all aspects of cooking from grilling to sautéing, and pay strong attention to the quality of food consistency & delivery. Wake Robin offers an excellent compensation and benefits package and an opportunity to build strong relationships with staff and residents in a dynamic community setting. Interested candidates can send their resumes to hr@wakerobin.com or fill out an application at wakerobin.com. Wake Robin is an E.O.E.
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Pharmacy Technicians 1, 2, 3 & 4
6/8/20 3:36 PM
“
My career at DH has never stopped evolving and kept me learning something new every day. Pharmacy Technicians get to pick from a variety of roles here at DH and everyone can find areas to excel in.”
You will be impressed by all that D-H has to offer including: • Work-life Balance Culture • Tuition Assistance: $3,000 per year • Earned Time Off • 8,000 square foot, stateof-the-art Patient Safety Training Center
• Health, Life, Dental, and Short-Term and Long-Term Disability Insurance • Outstanding Retirement Plan • Flexible Spending Accounts • On-Campus Child Care • Free Continuing Education Opportunities On-Site
Interested in a Pharmacy Technician Career? Please come to one of our training program information sessions. dhwri.org/pharm-tech-apprenticeship-program
The Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health Pharmacy System has Pharmacy Technician openings that will advance your Pharmacy Technician career with the support of an academic medical center. We are located in Lebanon, New Hampshire in the Upper Connecticut River Valley on the NH and VT border. Questions or concerns? Please reach out to: Patricia A. McDermott, Senior Talent Acquisition Specialist Patricia.A.McDermott@hitchcock.org
To apply, please visit
OFFICE MANAGER
careers.dartmouth-hitchcock.org
Aldrich + Elliott, PC (A+E) is a 20-person engineering firm in Essex Junction, VT specializing in water resource engineering for municipalities in Vermont and New Hampshire. A+E offers a competitive salary and benefits package. This career will provide an opportunity to work with the A+E team, providing support to the engineering staff to serve municipalities in Vermont and New Hampshire with innovative solutions to their water resources engineering challenges. A+E is an E.O.E. Position Summary A+E is seeking an office manager to take responsibility for the smooth running of our office where your professionalism, initiative and office skills will be welcomed. Your full-time role will include providing a full range of office management duties. This is an autonomous role which requires comfort with being independent and making decisions. This position is best suited if you have good interpersonal and organizational skills, and prior office management experience. Self-direction and problem-solving skills are required. This is a full-time, benefit-eligible position. Preferred (but not required) Skills and Experience • Perform accounting functions including: Data entry of accounts payables, cash receipts, project billing terms, posting of such data, employee timesheet processing, monthly progress reports, journal entries, draft invoices, and final invoices. Required Education and Experience • Associate’s degree required • 2-5 years’ experience in office management How to Apply: Please send your resume to Aldrich + Elliott via email to jrouille@aeengineers.com.
dhpharmacycareers.org
Dartmouth-Hitchcock is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Untitled-8 1
6/8/20 8:28 AM
LANDSCAPER
FULL & PART-TIME, YEAR-ROUND
POSITIONS
For full job description and to apply go to: topdoglandscaping.com Publication
Kearsarge Shopper
Run Date Section
Careers
Size
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Price
New, local, scam-free jobs posted every day!
To get a glimpse at what we do, please visit our website at AEengineers.com.
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Certified and Pharmacy Technician positions exist in: Specialty, Inpatient, Retail, and Hematology/Oncology. Under the supervision of a licensed Pharmacist, the Technician performs routine and specialized technical and clerical duties for drug distribution to patients.
Ad#
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Head Teacher/ School Director Need a blend of knowledge and understanding of early education and state licensing requirements for Act 166 schooling. Applicants should hold a minimum of a Bachelors in ECE or a related field, and and a ECE Certificate.This is a salaried position, compensation based on experience. Please send letter of interest and resume to accounting@ woodstocknurseryschool.org
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ATTENTION RECRUITERS:
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POST YOUR JOBS AT JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM FOR FAST RESULTS, OR CONTACT MICHELLE BROWN: MICHELLE@SEVENDAYSVT.COM
JUNE 10-17, 2020
Experienced Carpenters Vermont Construction is seeking experienced carpenters. We are offering great pay, and a fun work environment. If you are skilled and tooled, we may have a job for you.
Commercial Roofers & Laborers
Hiring immediately. Call 802-922-6357 or email office@vermontconstructioncompany.com
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Do you want to work for an Agency that positively impacts the lives of over 20,000 individuals?
The Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity (CVOEO) addresses fundamental issues of economic, social, and racial justice and works with people to achieve economic independence by “bridging gaps and building futures” Our Administration programs seek motivated professionals with a passion for our mission to fill the following positions:
ACCOUNTS PAYABLE SPECIALIST
6/24/19 6:28 PM
MULTIPLE POSITIONS VERMONT JUDICIARY The Vermont Judiciary is now hiring 6 month positions at locations across Vermont. These full-time, limited service positions are funded through 12/31/20. They offer full benefits including healthcare, sick leave, holidays and paid time off.
If you have an Associate’s degree in Accounting or two to three years’ related work experience or training in accounting/ bookkeeping, or a combination of education and experience from which comparable knowledge and skills are acquired; experience with accounting and payroll systems; and proficient in the use of Microsoft Office we’d like to hear from you! This is a 40 hours/ week position. To apply, please submit a cover letter and resume by e-mail to: acctspayable2020@cvoeo.org.
HUMAN RESOURCES COORDINATOR Working as a member of Administration, the Human Resources Coordinator will provide support in a variety of areas including: employee recruitment, hiring and onboarding, bill processing, maintaining confidential Human Resource files and systems, answering employee questions, and other administrative duties as required. This position works closely with the Human Resource Director and Deputy Director to address agency needs in regards to Human Resources. If you have an Associate’s degree in Business, Human Services, or a related field (Bachelor’s degree preferred) and three years of office administrative experience, with at least one year in human resources highly desired; excellent verbal and written communication skills required, bilingual abilities are a plus, we’d like to hear from you! This is a 35 hours/week position. To apply, please submit a cover letter and resume by e-mail to: hrcoord2020@cvoeo.org. Interested in working with us? We offer a great working environment and an excellent benefit package including medical, dental and vision insurance, paid holidays, generous vacation and sick leave, a retirement plan and discounted gym membership. To learn more please visit www.cvoeo.org/careers Review of applications begins immediately and will continue until suitable applicants are found. No phone calls, please.
This position works at an advanced professional level accounting work in the maintenance, review and reconciliation of financial records to ensure compliance with accepted accounting principles and standards. Work may involve performing a wide variety of accounting and bookkeeping tasks in multiple complex fiscal programs. Work location likely in Montpelier. High School Degree and 3 years of accounting experience or college work required. Starting pay at $21.16 per hour.
CLERICAL/ADMINISTRATIVE (#20015)
Approximately 10 Docket Clerk B positions, which will specialize in customer service, records keeping and data entry involving one or more docket areas. Work locations to be determined later but will likely include Burlington, Rutland, Brattleboro, St. Albans, Bennington, St. Johnsbury, White River Junction and Montpelier. High school degree and 2 or more years of clerical work required. Starting pay at $17.11 per hour.
OPERATIONS ASSISTANT (#20014)
Approximately 20 positions to coordinate the use of audio/ video technology to deliver court hearings over online meeting tools such as Webex, Zoom and YouTube livestreaming. Working in either our IT Department (RIS) or the Planning and Court Services unit, this position exercises independent judgment and quick thinking. Extensive interaction with members of the legal community, judicial officers, court staff and the public. Work locations to be determined later but will likely include Burlington, Rutland, Brattleboro, St. Albans, Bennington, St. Johnsbury, White River Junction and Montpelier. High school and 4 years’ experience (will substitute 4 year degree for experience) with office systems required. Starting rate is $23.67 per hour. Go to vermontjudiciary.org/employment-opportunities/staffopenings for more details and to complete application. These positions are open until filled. The Vermont Judiciary is an E.O.E.
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New, local, scamfree jobs posted every day!
FINANCIAL SPECIALIST III (#20016)
Under the direct supervision of the Fiscal Director, the Accounts Payable Specialist will assist the Finance Department by processing incoming invoices; disbursing payments and performing accounting tasks.
CVOEO is an Equal Opportunity Employer
Year round, full time positions. Good wages & benefits. $16.50 per hour minimum; Pay negotiable with experience. EOE/M/F/VET/Disability Employer Apply in person at: A.C. Hathorne Co. 252 Avenue C Williston, VT 802-862-6473
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jobs.sevendaysvt.com
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6/18/19 1:24 PM
PHOTO: JEB WALLACE-BRODEUR
When Spruce Peak Arts’ finance manager decided to retire, we definitely entered the search with some trepidation. It’s such a strange time for individuals and businesses that I just didn’t know what to expect. I wasn’t sure what the landscape would be for job hunters right now. We started advertising just with Seven Days, where we’d had success before, and never expanded the search beyond that. Previously, we’ve used a ton of sites, including Indeed.com. With those big, national sites, I just haven’t found the quality of candidates we were hoping for. We were just hopeful that, even in this strange time, we’d be able to find the right person. And luckily we did. We had an immediate flood of inquiries from some very, very qualified candidates. Within two weeks I was able to make an offer to someone whom I think will be an amazing addition to the team. Seven Days and Michelle made it super easy, super efficient. I was so pleasantly surprised by the caliber of people who responded — and the quantity, as well. It was really terrific for us. HOPE SULLIVAN Executive Director Spruce Peak Arts, Stowe
…it works.
CALL MICHELLE: 865-1020, EXT.21 OR VISIT JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM 1T-JobsTesti-Spruce Peak Arts0601020.indd 1
SEVEN DAYS JUNE 10-17, 2020
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fun stuff
FRAN KRAUSE
Have a deep, dark fear of your own? Submit it to cartoonist Fran Krause at deep-dark-fears.tumblr.com, and you may see your neurosis illustrated in these pages.
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SEVEN DAYS JUNE 10-17, 2020
CALCOKU & SUDOKU (P.57) CROSSWORD (P.57)
RYAN RIDDLE
GIVE TODAY! With your financial support, we’ll keep delivering and making sense of the news. S E V E N DAY S V T. C O M / S U P E R - R E A D E R S Or call Corey Grenier at 865-1020, ext. 36 6h-countonyou-SR.indd 2
4/28/20 4:23 PM
Technology that brings people together in an SUV that that standsbrings apart. people together Technology Introducing the all-new 2020 Mercedes-Benz GLC. The more time you spend in it, the more it gets to know you and your passenger’s preferences. Its intelligent voice controlled Mercedes-Benz User Experience (MBUX) allows for superior interaction with the world around it, and a closer connection to those inside. All the while, its sporty physique and Introducing the all-new 2020 Mercedes-Benz GLC. The more time seductive interior place it in a class all by itself. Learn more at MBUSA.com/GLC
in an SUV that stands apart.
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2020 GLC 300 shown in Iridium Silver metallic paint with optional equipment shown and described. *MSRP excludes all options, taxes, title, registration, transportation charge and dealer prep. Options, model availability and actual dealer price may vary. See dealer for details. ©2019 Authorized Mercedes-Benz Dealers For more information, call 1-800-FOR-MERCEDES, or visit MBUSA.com.
3328 Shelburne Rd. | Shelburne, Vermont 05482-6849
802.985.8482 | TheAutomasterMercedesBenz.com 2020 GLC 300 shown in Iridium Silver metallic paint with optional equipment shown and described. *MSRP excludes all options, taxes, title, registration, transportation charge and dealer prep. Options, model availability and actual dealer price may vary. See dealer for details. ©2019 Authorized Mercedes-Benz Dealers For more information, call 1-800-FOR-MERCEDES, or visit MBUSA.com.
2/25/20 4:00 PM
SEVEN DAYS JUNE 10-17, 2020
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2020 GLC 300 shown in Iridium Silver metallic paint with optional equipment shown and described. *MSRP excludes all options, taxes, title, registration, transportation charge and dealer prep. Options, model availability and actual dealer price may vary. See dealer for details. ©2019 Authorized Mercedes-Benz Dealers For more information, call 1-800-FOR-MERCEDES, or visit MBUSA.com.
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1/30/20 AM 6/8/20 11:01 2:00 PM
2020 GLC 300 shown in Iridium Silver metallic paint with optional equipment shown and described. *MSRP excludes all options, taxes, title, registration, transportation charge and dealer pr and actual dealer price may vary. See dealer for details. ©2019 Authorized Mercedes-Benz Dealers For more information, call 1-800-FOR-MERC
fun stuff JEN SORENSEN
HARRY BLISS
“Professor, this changes everything.” RACHEL LINDSAY
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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY BY ROB BREZSNY REAL JUNE 11-17
it is our business to keep our eyes peeled for it.” In alignment with current astrological potentials, Taurus, I’ll name that as your key theme. More than usual, breakthroughs and revelations and catalysts are likely to be available to you in the midst of the daily slog — even when you’re feeling bored. Make it your business to be on high alert for them.
GEMINI (MAY 21-JUNE 20):
According to novelist Octavia E. Butler, “Positive obsession is about not being able to stop just because you’re afraid and full of doubts.” That’s what I wish for you in the coming weeks, Gemini: positive obsession. It’s also what I expect! My analysis of the astrological omens suggests that you will have the pluck and craftiness necessary to veer away from murky, disturbing versions of obsession. Instead, you’ll embrace the exhilarating kind of obsession that buoys your spirit in moments of uncertainty. I foresee you making progress on your most important labor of love.
ARIES
(March 21-April 19): During her 90 years on the planet, actor and singer Marlene Dietrich reinvented herself numerous times. She had superb insight into the nature of shifting rhythms and a knack for gauging the right moment to adapt and transform. Good timing, she said, came naturally to people like her, as well as for “aerialists, jugglers, diplomats, publicists, generals, prize-fighters, revolutionists, financiers, and lovers.” I would add one further category to her list: the Aries tribe. Make maximal use of your talent in the coming weeks.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Author and theologian Frederick Buechner writes, “There is treasure buried in the field of every one of our days, even the bleakest or dullest, and
CANCER (June 21-July 22): William Thomson, also known as Lord Kelvin (1824-1907), was a Cancerian physicist and mathematician who contributed to the understanding of thermodynamics and other areas of scientific and engineering knowledge. Despite his considerable intelligence, however, he was myopic about the possibility that humans might one day fly through the air while seated inside of machines. In a 1902 interview — a year before the Wright Brothers’ breakthrough experiment — he declared, “No aeroplane will ever be successful.” I suspect you could be on the verge of passing through a Lord Kelvin phase, Cancerian. You may at times be highly insightful and at other times curiously mistaken. So I urge you to be humbly confident and confidently humble! LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Author Marianne Wil-
liamson tells us, “Spiritual growth involves giving up the stories of your past so the universe can write a new one.” And what exactly does it mean to “give up the stories of your past”? Here’s what I think: 1. Don’t assume that experiences you’ve had before will be repeated in the future. 2. Don’t assume that your ideas about the nature of your destiny will always be true. 3. Even good things that have happened before may be small and limited compared to the good things that could happen for you in the years to come. 4. Fully embrace the truth that the inherent nature of existence is endless transformation — which is why it’s right and natural for you to ceaselessly outgrow the old plot lines of your life story and embrace new ones.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Philosopher and astrologer Marsilio Ficino wrote, “Mortals ask God for good things every day, but they never pray that they may make good use of them.” I hope that in the coming weeks you Virgos will disprove that cynical view of human beings.
As I see it, you will be more likely than usual to actually receive the blessings you ask for. And I hope — in fact, I predict — that when you receive the blessings, you will then aggressively seek the help of God or Life or your deepest wisdom to make good use of them.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): I was hiking under a blue sky in a favorite natural location: the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, just north of San Francisco, where sublime vistas provide views of ocean and mountain. Although I was in a good mood, at one point I spied empty Budweiser cans amidst the wild jewelflowers. “What kind of nature-hater was so careless as to despoil this wonderland”? I fumed. For a few moments I was consumed with rage and forgot where I was. By the time I recovered my bearings, the bobcat and redtailed hawk I’d previously been observing had disappeared. That made me sad. My anger was justified but wasteful, irrelevant and distracting. It caused me to lose touch with some glorious beauty. Don’t be like me in the coming days, Libra. Keep your eyes on the prize. SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): “I have more memories than if I were a thousand years old,” wrote poet Charles Baudelaire. Was he bragging or complaining? Did the weight of his past feel like a burden, or did it exhilarate him and dynamize his creative powers? I’m hoping that in the coming weeks your explorations of your past will feel far more like the latter — a gift and blessing that helps you understand aspects of your history that have always been mysterious or murky. SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Accord-
ing to my analysis of the astrological omens, you’re primed to navigate your way through a sweetly gritty, tenderly transformative, epically meaningful turning point in the history of your relationship with your favorite collaborator or collaborators. If that sounds too intense, you could at least accomplish an interesting, stimulating, educational shift in the way you fit together with your best ally or allies. It’s up to you, Sagittarius. How much love and intimacy and synergy can you handle? I won’t judge you harshly if you’d prefer to seek the milder version
of deepening right now. Besides, you’ll probably get a chance to go further later this year.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Actor Emma Thompson tells us, “I wish I wouldn’t have to say this, but I really like human beings who have suffered. They’re kinder.” Adding to what she observes, I’ll say that, for many people, their suffering has also made them smarter and more soulful and more compassionate. Not always, but often, it’s the pain they’ve suffered that has helped turn them into thoughtful companions who know how to nourish others. I urge you to make a special point to converse with people like this in the near future. In my estimation, you will benefit from intense doses of empathetic nurturing. AQUARIUS
(Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Lake Elsinore is a city in southwestern California. Last spring, torrential rains there caused a superbloom of poppies. Millions of the golden-orange wildflowers covered many acres of Walker Canyon. They attracted another outbreak of beauty: thousands of painted lady butterflies, which came to visit. The magnificent explosion was so vast, it was visible from a satellite high above the earth. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re experiencing a metaphorical superbloom of your own right now, Aquarius. I hope you will find constructive ways to channel that gorgeous fertility.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Lucumi is an Afro-American religion with Yoruban roots. Its practitioners worship their ancestors and seek regular contact and communion with them. According to Lucumi priestess Luisah Teish, “Sometimes the ancestors deem certain information so important that they send it to the subconscious mind without being consciously asked.” It’s my belief that all of us, whether or not we’re members of the Lucumi religion, can be in touch with the spirits of our ancestors if we would like to be — and receive useful guidance and insight from them. The coming weeks will be a time when you Pisceans are especially likely to enjoy this breakthrough. It’s more likely to happen if you have an intention to instigate it, but it may come to pass even if you don’t seek it.
CHECK OUT ROB BREZSNY’S EXPANDED WEEKLY AUDIO HOROSCOPES & DAILY TEXT MESSAGE HOROSCOPES: REALASTROLOGY.COM OR 1-877-873-4888
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Respond to these people online: dating.sevendaysvt.com WOMEN seeking... ALTRUISTIC, ARTSY, ACERBIC As a newcomer to Vermont, I find that meeting folks is a challenge. Compounded by pandemic distancing, face masks and stay-at-home orders, my social life extends to my dog, two cats and a bunch of Zoom meetings. I enjoy nearly all sports and performing arts. I love nature in all its forms, hiking, biking, birding and good conversation. Chevie, 66, seeking: M, l NERDY SNOWBOARDER SEEKS REAL LOVE I’m loving life in Vermont and looking for that someone special to share it with. Not really interested in casual dating, because I find it to be a waste of time. A secure, committed relationship is what I’m dreaming of. I also need someone who will tolerate my nerdy side and be willing to play a board game with me. ShredBetty, 32, seeking: W, l HAPPY IN THE COUNTRY Upbeat, fit, energetic, educated, liberalleaning woman looking for male friend or maybe partner. Prefer rural lifestyle, farming, livestock, outdoors, exploring, living in a small town. Like live music, cooking, microbrews, maybe dogs and a cat, also chickens. I can do hard labor, gardening, light carpentry. Willing to learn more. Goshengal, 64, seeking: M, l FAERY QUEEN Tender heart, sensual lover of earth and water, leader in life looking for strong, grounded, passionate love. FaeryQueen, 50, seeking: M, l
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SEVEN DAYS JUNE 10-17, 2020
THINKING ABOUT IT... Probably everyone thinks they’re smart, funny, and reasonably good-looking, so no news there. So, what I hope to find: a reader, thinker — someone who likes movies, theater, museums, travel, music, conversation, and the Oxford comma. Three years into widowhood, I realize I could really use someone to share experiences with. The range of those experiences would have to be explored. ZanninVT, 63, seeking: M, l SLIGHTLY STIR-CRAZY QUARANTINED WOMAN HERE! You: Zoom, dogs, cats, coffee, politics, companionship, early morning walks, sometimes hilarious, well-read, sexy, love good food, good books, outdoors and good women. Me: artist, Zoom, dogs, cats, critters, flowers, herbs, veggies, politics, good conversation, sometimes quiet, sometimes raucous, funny, sexy, love good food, good books, outdoors, mountains, conversation, hiking, skiing, touching. Looking for you. Lisarezz, 63, seeking: M, l REALLY? ME? THANKS! I love to make people laugh, and squirm, and wonder! I carry a six-foot stick to make people wonder ... and squirm. I’m overly fond of punctuation. Widowhood and viruses stink. 2020 was meant to be a year of new beginnings. Wanna suck some coffee through a cotton mask and give it a try? Boodles, 69, seeking: M CREATIVE, FUNNY, GREAT FRIEND Just looking to meet new friends. I am honest and creative and funny. Enjoy cooking, dancing, hiking, music and museums. Looking for friendship and a fun someone to explore this life with. Artiste, 67, seeking: M COUNTRY GIRL ON THE WATER I’m passionate about being outside. Walking, hiking, snowshoeing, paddling, horseback riding. I love food, going out or staying in. Wood fires on a snowy night. Family time. Conversation about anything interesting. I’m enjoying renovating my house. I love Vermont but enjoy traveling. Woodburygirl, 56, seeking: M, l LUCKY IN LOVE AND NICARAGUA I loved being married. Sadly, he died young. I own gorgeous land in Nicaragua and want a partner to develop it with me as an artist/surfer retreat (as soon as we get rid of the small problem of a dictator killing his own people). A perfect life is Vermont in summer and Nica in winter,but only with a terrific man.You? W, 72, seeking: M, l MOUNTAINS, SUNSHINE, COFFEE, CONNECTION I am a fit, caring, down-to-earth person looking to share adventures. I hope to have honest and interesting conversations and maybe learn something in the process. I am also innately curious and will want to learn all about you. I have no interest in small talk — I’m looking for authenticity. I’m happy to chat and would like to meet in person. lovemountains, 55, seeking: M, l
ARE YOU SEARCHING, TOO? Seeking kind, adventurous 60ish man who likes camping, fishing, walks, sunsets and Maine. I would like a partner who can surprise me with “Let’s go...” and off we go. I’m a true Vermont gal who needs adventure. Let’s have fun. BoredCat, 57, seeking: M, l ENJOY LIFE TO THE FULLEST I enjoy gardening, animals and reading, and I split my own wood (electric splitter). I love cooking and contra dancing, and I have a new hobby: shape note singing. countrygirl1, 77, seeking: M, l INSIGHTFUL, CREATIVE, ADVENTUROUS Outdoorsy, attractive brunette. Poet, explorer of spirituality and personal growth, lover of nature. I love hiking, paddling, exploring new mountains, towns and ideas with others ... feeling what we’re drawn to along the way, sharing thoughts and impressions. Fairly flexible and easygoing. Healthy minded; not big into alcohol, not into drugs. Waterpoet, 57, seeking: M, l PREFER BEING OUTDOORS AND ACTIVE Genuine, honest and an active listener. I like to cook and eat real food that is locally produced/raised. Gardening (veggies, not so much flowers), hiking, biking, running, snowshoeing, eradicating invasive plants — most anything outdoors will do. VTu4ia, 44, seeking: M, l
MEN seeking... FOUR SEASONS MAN LOOKING FOR FUN Hello. I consider myself to be a very open-minded, nonjudgmental, easygoing guy. I’m very well-rounded, a citizen of the world. I’ve been fortunate to travel and experience life. I want to keep experiencing life. What am I looking for: like-minded people, women or couples who want to enjoy life. Let’s start off meeting and see where time takes us. Fourseasonsman, 53, seeking: W, Cp, l HANDSOME I am looking for someone who can make me happy and who loves to have fun. I am a loving, caring person. My hobby is woodcrafting. I love to listen to music and sing. Fun things I like to do are camping, fishing, going for walks. I like to listen to classic country music. StarmanJohnny67, 52, seeking: W, l IT’S BEEN YEARS... And I still don’t find a connection! nickdoobs20, 30, seeking: W, TW, l LOOKING FOR UNDERSTANDING Recently affected by sudden tragedy. Looking for compassion and total release. Not interested in more talk. I need a compassionate vessel. Mor, 45, seeking: W LET’S HAVE FUN Let’s think about this: We meet up, have a good time, get married and have two children. Five years down the road, we begin to fight, get a divorce and kids are unhappy. Or we meet up, have a good time and hook up. I wear a condom, and one of us does the walk of shame ... Just think about the kids. Hiprocket69, 49, seeking: W, Gp, l
ACTIVE, AWARE, SMART, SUCCESSFUL, THOUGHTFUL Native Vermonter who lived and worked in NYC for many years, now back in the Green Mountains. Well traveled, curious. Enjoy good food and interesting conversation. Often listen to music (mainly adult alternative). I have a good sense of humor (Young Frankenstein and Airplane and so on). Avid skier. Enjoy hiking, biking. Active every day. Also handy; working on my house. DPfromVT, 61, seeking: W, l PURE ADVENTURE Young for my age in so many ways. Let’s enjoy each other’s company and “live this beautiful life.” Sailon, 56, seeking: W, l MELLOW GUY Healthy, safe, sane, drug-free nonsmoker looking for discreet relationship. Rings, 59, seeking: W NUDIST LOOKING FOR NUDIST FRIENDS I’ve been a social nudist for a few years now. I enjoy being naked outdoors in the warm months here in Vermont. I belong to a great club/resort, and I’m looking for other like-minded friends to join me for sunning and funning of the naked “bunnings.” Let’s have a nudist adventure! Jkaye802, 57, seeking: W, l OPEN-MINDED, WITTY AND CHARMING Bisexual male looking for a couple to play with. Would be more interested in a longish-term relationship. Want to get with fun, open people and explore everything in a comfortable and fun environment. I enjoy the look, feel, smell and responsiveness of the human body. If you are looking for a switch-hitter to complete the set, ping me. nnuunn, 45, seeking: Cp, l THE LONG VIEW There are people, passages in books and landscapes that speak to my heart. I can find two out of three by myself. I love to cook and eat and garden and read and travel. I am warm and reserved, complicated, honest ... and might just stop it here, lest I overthink. I’m not sure quite how to do all this... LongView, 61, seeking: W, l WANT TO MEET FUN FRIENDS I’m in a committed (sexless) relationship. I’m not looking to change that, just want to explore new friends. I’ve had a couple threesomes before (fun) but would like to try with a bi couple. So drop a line. Thanks. Tryme143, 57, seeking: Cp GENTLE, HUMOROUS, SENSUAL, MUSICAL Seeking a partner who delights in laughter, helping others and living with a curious mind. I am not into drama, drinking or smoking. You know, a nice person, wishing to share myself with another soul. Me, I enjoy going for walks and I consider myself a nature lover; love being outdoors, making fires, sharing life stories, making more together. otterlove63, 63, seeking: W, l
TRANS WOMEN seeking... IS THERE ANY HOPE? I’ve been a closeted trans ever since childhood, but just six months into transition now, at 64. So many regrets. Life has not been kind. Wondering if there’s anyone out there who can love me for who I am, and let me love them for who they are. I’m legally female now, and never going back. Are you interested? LaydeeBird, 64, seeking: M, l SUBMISSIVE SEEKING... Looking to expand my experiences. I am open to many different scenes and roles. tina1966, 54, seeking: W, TW, Q, NC, NBP, Cp, Gp GENEROUS, OPEN, EASYGOING Warm, giving trans female with an abundance of yum to share (and already sharing it with lovers) seeks ecstatic connection for playtimes, connections, copulations, exploration and generally wonderful occasional times together. Clear communication, a willingness to venture into the whole self of you is wanted. Possibilities are wide-ranging: three, four, explorations, dreaming up an adventure are on the list! DoubleUp, 63, seeking: Cp, l
GENDERQUEER PEOPLE seeking... FEISTY FAUN SEEKS FUN I am a fun-loving critter looking for men to play with. I am a transsexual femaleto-male person and love my gendermuddled body. I am looking for some regular playmates, more than a one-time thing. I am passionate, very sexual and know what I like. You should be a hungry giver. Tiger77, 42, seeking: M, l
COUPLES seeking... ONE NIGHT We are a really fun couple looking for a man to join us for a threesome. No sex, just oral, but will make it worth your while. Photos available if you’re interested, and will ask the same from you. WEX, 45, seeking: M EXPERIENCE SOMETHING NEW We are a loving couple of over five years. Love to play and try new things. Spend free time at the ledges. Looking for people to play with. Perhaps dinner, night out and maybe breakfast in the morning. Looking for open-minded men, women or couples who enjoy fun times and new experiences. 2newAdventurers, 52, seeking: M, W, Cp, Gp OPEN-MINDED ROLE-PLAY We are an open-minded couple looking for others. Must be discreet. Please let us know your interests. If you are a male replying, you must be bi or bi-curious. VTroleplaying, 47, seeking: M, W, Cp
JUST TESTING THE WATERS Ask, and I shall tell. Kidd43, 43, seeking: W, Cp, l
ATTRACTIVE MARRIED COUPLE Attractive, caring and honest married couple looking to meet a female for fun times both in and out of the bedroom. She is bi-curious; he is straight. We are very easygoing and fun to be around. Will share a photo once we communicate. Let’s see what happens. VTcouple4fun, 49, seeking: W
LIVING ALONE IN A PANDEMIC Kind, thoughtful, honest and empathetic but comfortable in my own skin. Eccentric and deep thinking. Love travel and music, from the Flamingos to G Flip. Hopeless romantic but with mileage. Definitely a long shot but a very good person. Steady and no drama. Fill my days with biking, long walks, daily visits to the gym, beaches and following/researching my interests. wdw72557, 62, seeking: W
SEASONED, REASONED, FRIENDSHIP AND CONVERSATION Older couple seeks new friends to enjoy honest conversation. Couples, women, or men. We are not seeking benefits though we are open to discussion if all are inspired. We’d love to meet and converse over a nice meal. We love warmth and open people. Our place has a hot tub for cold winters, and we have a massage table. Seasoned, 69, seeking: M, W, Cp, Gp, l
i SPY
If you’ve been spied, go online to contact your admirer!
dating.sevendaysvt.com
OUTBACK BARTENDER You waited on us this past winter. You were so nice and helpful. You had a black Dickies shirt on that held pens. We never got your name. We just heard Outback is not reopening and thought you might be a perfect fit for an admin job we had. Let us know if you are interested. When: Friday, January 3, 2020. Where: Outback Steakhouse. You: Woman. Me: Woman. #915060 MR. POST OFFICE VACUUMER You were vacuuming the post office lobby early Monday morning while I was mailing a few letters. We joked that we startled each other. You seemed very friendly and kind. Could we meet again for coffee and conversation? When: Monday, June 1, 2020. Where: North Burlington Post Office. You: Man. Me: Man. #915059 YOU LOVE TO GARDEN… I like cooking it. Waiting in line to get into Middlebury Aubuchon. You showed me pictures of your garden and gave me your address. I forgot it. You are very interesting. Would like to talk again. When: Friday, May 29, 2020. Where: Middlebury. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915058 AUTOMASTER SERVICE BENCH, NOON, THURSDAY You: black Nike hat, white T-shirt, black shorts, tall, killer smile. Liked my silver sports car parked next to your bench while you waited for a ride. Amanda? We chatted about mask protocols, cars, your Civic. You asked where I lived (across the pond) and what my name was. Escape the virus on an ADK convertible tour? Dogs in the park? When: Thursday, May 28, 2020. Where: Automaster service/parts outside waiting area. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915057
CITY MARKET CRUSH I’m far too shy to ask you out, it seems, so my best bet might just be writing to you instead. I know you’ve seen me in person in line at CM, at Battery Park during sunset and occasionally on the city streets. You’re just too cute for me to ignore. Look for me next wearing a sequined floral hat. When: Tuesday, May 26, 2020. Where: City Market/Battery Park. You: Woman. Me: Non-binary person. #915056 CUTE GUY, CM PARKING LOT To the guy who locked eyes with me in the parking lot and then said “Cute dog”: I froze in the moment and said thank you, but I wanted to say that you were cute. Grab a coffee from a distance sometime? I had the brown Tacoma; you had a white Silverado. When: Sunday, May 24, 2020. Where: South End City Market. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915055 BERLIN POND DOG CROSSING 7ish. You: blue canoe, fishing pole, Rottweiler, rib tat. I was on my knees on my paddleboard so my dog wouldn’t tip me in the water. You commented that it looked like I had a good companion. I fumbled. Can’t remember the last time someone captivated me like you did. I stood for the rest of the paddle — eff it. When: Thursday, May 21, 2020. Where: Berlin Pond. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915054 JOJO, MONTPELIER RITE-AID It’s been quite a while. A little bird told me you might be looking. I’ve thought of you often. Haven’t met anyone who compares to you. I loved you at first sight and have never stopped loving you. Why don’t we meet up and chat, maybe around the Montpelier Rite-Aid? Drop me a line, please. When: Friday, August 21, 2015. Where: Rite-Aid. You: Man. Me: Man. #915053
RE: AMOR If I told you that a flower bloomed in a dark room, would you trust it? I mean, you need to hear this: Love is not just a verb, it’s you looking in the mirror; love is not just a verb, it’s you looking for it, maybe. Call me crazy. When: Friday, March 20, 2020. Where: across the stars. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915052 PRICE CHOPPER/WALGREENS, HINESBURG RD. You: pretty brunette braids and an even more beautiful soul. Me: sitting in my Jeep in the parking lot. You made my day, week — oh hell! — my 2020 just by your simple act of kindness the other day. Thank you for taking the brief moment you took to tell me I was beautiful! I’m still smiling over it. You rock! When: Thursday, May 14, 2020. Where: Price Chopper parking lot in front of Walgreens. You: Woman. Me: Woman. #915051 RICHMOND MARKET THIRD TRIP IN We were at Richmond Market and crossed paths a few times. I had to go back twice — the third time for beer for my little sister. You parked two away from me and mentioned it when I came out. I grabbed some cans from Stone Corral instead. Let’s go for a hike or a mountain bike ride. When: Wednesday, May 13, 2020. Where: Richmond Market. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915050 MATTY Matty, I met you last summer while I was walking with my son on Rose Street. Are you still interested? I am single now and would love to see your big smile again. When: Saturday, June 1, 2019. Where: Rose Street. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915049 HOLD HANDS... You left ... My heart is broken. Best, what happened?! I’m so sorry. No closure. It hurts. I thought that This Must Be the Place. Now I don’t get you, or a job, or a place to live, or a chance. I hope that you love yourself. I’ll never forget you — the Waffles to my Applesauce. Please come back. —Fresh. When: Monday, March 19, 2018. Where: Higher Ground. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915046 RE: AMOR A hint, please. So many injured hearts out there. When: Tuesday, March 10, 2020. Where: central Vermont. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915034
Ask REVEREND Dear Loosey Goosey,
Irreverent counsel on life’s conundrums
Dear Reverend,
I’m still pretty young, but I’ve had a lot of sex. I mean, a lot. I’m worried that it has taken a toll on my vagina and I’m not as tight as I could be. Is there anything I can do?
Loosey Goosey
(WOMAN, 31)
Many people refer to everything between a woman’s legs as the vagina, but the word technically refers to the narrow canal that runs inside your body from the visible vulva to the cervix. That a vagina gets loose with use is a myth created to shame women for having active sex lives. The vagina is incredibly elastic and accommodates all shapes and sizes. The only thing that can really stretch it out is having a baby, but vaginas are designed to do that without too much damage. Unless you have a tear or an episiotomy, a 10-pound human can pass through it, and it will bounce back to close to its old self.
EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES You were by the river skipping stones and cursing Disney damsels. I counted one, two, three ... eight cats! I must know more. Fortune favors the bold? When: Sunday, May 3, 2020. Where: Winooski. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915045 W4W LOVE YOUR SHAVED HEAD You were far away from me, but it felt like you were close. I last saw you in a peach fur trench coat. I was the Chubby Muffin in a black jumpsuit. You always hold my attention, but I want you to hold more. Even if you don’t write me back, I hope you hang this ad on your fridge. When: Friday, April 24, 2020. Where: on Hood Street in Winooski. You: Gender non-conformist. Me: Woman. #915044 FORD MAN, CUMBIES IN RICHMOND Your truck was dead and blocking me in. You had long beautiful hair and the kindest eyes. The two dogs in the front seat were adorable, and you being able to fix your truck in two seconds flat was almost better. You melted my heart. I hope I run into you again soon. When: Sunday, May 3, 2020. Where: Richmond, Vt. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915043
‘OH, YOU GOTTA LOVE IT’ Some nights I wish I could go back in life. Not to change it, just to feel a couple things twice. 28 at midnight; wonder what’s next for me? Longevity. Wonder how long to check for me? Probably forever if I stay in my zone. We speak on this generation but can’t change it alone. When: Friday, May 1, 2015. Where: in the city. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915040 RE: AMOR Sad to know there’s others out there with crushed hearts. Probably a stretch on my part to hope the one who once briefly owned my heart but then went silent could still have feelings. (I still think about her every day.) She’s a raven-haired beauty with a wolf spirit. When: Sunday, April 19, 2020. Where: in the night sky. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915036 DO YOU KNOW I just love when I’m with you. Yeah, this thing is on 10. We used to be friends, girl, and even back then you would look at me with no hesitation, and you’d tell me, “Baby, it’s yours. Nobody else’s.” That’s for sure. When: Monday, October 22, 2018. Where: 9 a.m. in Dallas. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915033
RUNNER WITH DOG To the runner I met today: I am an animal painter. You asked me if I was going to skateboard down Camel’s Hump. I would like to meet you again sometime. When: Saturday, May 2, 2020. Where: Battery Park. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915042
RE: AMOR You will never know how much I’ve missed you and how much I want to hold you in my arms. If you really miss me, you know how to find me to let me know. When: Friday, March 20, 2020. Where: in the night sky. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915032
BIKE PATH ROLLERBLADERS This is a letter of appreciation for all the bike path rollerbladers. Thank you for keeping it funky and adding zest to the lakefront experience. I’m particularly talking about the mustard-yellow sweater wearer who glanced back and then nonchalantly spit as I passed you under the old train tracks with my silly bike horn around 5:30 on Saturday, headed south. When: Saturday, May 2, 2020. Where: bike path, Burlington. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915041
RE: CO-OP CUTIE I’d love to meet up sometime! You looked so sexy in your green overalls and Darn Tough socks with sandals. I see you are a Bernie Sanders supporter with your Feel the Bern shirt. I’d love to feel the burn. Maybe we can stare into each other’s eyes from six feet away... No Rona. When: Monday, April 13, 2020. Where: Hunger Mountain Co-op. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915030
RE: AMOR Your post could apply to so many with squeezed hearts. Can you give a hint that only this person would know? When: Friday, March 20, 2020. Where: central Vermont. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915035
There are exercises you can do to strengthen your pelvic floor muscles, the best known being the Kegel exercise. Contract your pelvic floor muscles (imagine stopping yourself midstream while peeing) for three to five seconds. Relax for three to five seconds. Repeat 10 times. Gradually increase the time of the
SHAKESPEARE IN THE PARK Grim-visaged war hath smooth’d his wrinkled front; / And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds / To fright the souls of fearful adversaries, / He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber / To the lascivious pleasing of a lute. When: Thursday, September 24, 2015. Where: Calahan. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915025
contraction and relaxation up to 10 seconds. Do this a few times a day — in your car, at your desk, waiting in line at the grocery store. After you get good at it, you can do it during intercourse, which is fun for everyone involved. Unfortunately, our messed-up society has conditioned women to think there’s always something wrong with our genitals. Can you imagine if men believed their penises got smaller every time they had sex? Just know that your vagina is perfectly perfect the way it is, and keep on keepin’ on. Good luck and God bless,
The Reverend
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I’m a 31-y/o woman seeking a fun and energetic 31- to 38y/o man. I’m seeking a Godbelieving, Christian faith-based man. I don’t drink or smoke. I like to go dancing, listen to music, travel. #L1408 I’m a 59-y/o male seeking a male or female age 40 to 80 who is a nudist. Want company in the woods in northern Vermont. #L1407
Gay white male looking for hookups, maybe more; see where it goes. 5’10 and a half, dark brown hair, good looking, brown eyes, slender. I clean and do windows for a living and run a rescue for animals and give them a forever home, so you have to be an animal lover. If you replied already, please contact me again. #L1412 I’m a 34-y/o simple guy seeking a 30- to 45-y/o male. Good-looking with a good job. Looking for my partner in crime. Must love pets, going out, chilling at home. But have your life in order. Masculine guys preferred. #L1411
I’m a 38-y/o male seeking a 30to 40-y/o female. I’m looking for love before I turn 40 years. Could you be the one? I’m into poetry, music, trying new food and drink, deep conversation, and walks by the lake. I hope you’ll give me the chance to be your man. #1410 I’m a 58-y/o SWM seeking female 50 to 60 years old for companionship and fun! I enjoy hiking, biking, skiing, art and photography, good food and drink. Ideal F would be intelligent, compassionate, able to communicate. #L1409 59-y/o submissive GM. Looking for someone to enjoy times with. #L1403
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I’m a 61-y/o woman. Aquarian INFJ Reiki master looking to be part of or create a spiritual, artistic, self-sufficient community further south. Seeks kind, open-minded, gentle kindred spirits, lightworkers, starseeds to explore life’s mysteries and help each other. Cat lovers very welcome! #L1406 I’m a GWM seeking GWM. Into everything except anal. Many interests including railroading and astrology. #L1405 Dirty old man seeks dirty old lady. Watching dirty movies. Dirty in bed. Dirty minded. Love kissing and oral. Alone and single. Age/race, no problem. #1404 I’m a 79-y/o retired teacher seeking a mature lady who can help operate a guesthouse together and enjoys gardening, nature walks and traveling. Nonsmoker. #L1402
Reply to these messages with real, honest-to-goodness letters. DETAILS BELOW. I’m a 58-y/o woman seeking a mature 30- to 45-y/o male who likes a no-nonsense, worldly life “off the grid” and outside the lower 48. Fast and furious or slow and easy. Nothing in between. Only honest, fun-loving, industrious and adventurous men need apply. #L1401 Spring has sprung. Looking for guys to enjoy the change of season. I’m fun and intelligent, with varied interests. I like everything; mostly sub, but not always. No text/email. I want to talk with you. Central Vermont. Bears are a plus. #L1400 GWM in late 60s, very friendly, honest, caring and understanding. I’m retired, home alone, and it is very lonesome. It’s been a long winter. Looking for a friend who can help me out once in a while. I don’t look or act my age at all. I have been recouping from surgery. I can tell you more later if you write. Should have a car. Live in central Vermont. #L1398
A lady in jeans / prefers meat to beans / in the fall of life / not anyone’s wife / locally organic / not into panic / cooks on fire / Computer’s on a wire / well trained in art / a generous heart / spiritually deep / easy to keep. I’m a W, 52, seeking M. #L1399 I am divorced of 34 years. I am 5’11 and 230 pounds. I am a very positive person, happy, thoughtful. Like good conversation and caring, honest people. I like the outdoors. I work and would enjoy good company. #L1397 I’m a 47-y/o male seeking a woman 33 to 47. I am looking for a long-term relationship leading to marriage. I’m a gentleman, honest, loyal, looking for one woman to spend my life with. #L1395 I’m a 37-y/o man seeking a man. Pretty low-key guy. Good-looking for my age. Want to find the man who will complete me. Hope to hear from you! #L1394
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ai159172970339_1t-hireup061020.pdf
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6/9/20
3:08 PM
LOOKING FOR WORK? Meet the area’s top employers at:
Hire Up!
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Considering new career path? REGISTERINGaONLINE AT UVMHEALTH.ORG/MEDCENTERHEALTHSOURCE. Want to get back into the field love? — How We Can All Help Autism Spectrum Disorders in our you Community These sessions willH.help you explore your Presented by Stephen Contompasis, MD, Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrician andaProfessor, University of Vermont College of Medicine; Daniel options from safe social distance. Kula, Medical Student – Class of 2018, University of Vermont College of Medicine; Nicole Leblanc, Advocacy Director, Green Mountain Self-Advocates
During each 40-minute session recruiters This presentation will increase community awareness and understanding of will explain what jobs they have available Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Dr. Contompasis will provide an overview of and what they’re looking in an current understandings of ASD. for Mr. Kula will applicant. highlight the UVM College of Medicine efforts to increase or medical awareness and skills supporting You can ask questions juststudents’ listen in. individuals autism spectrum and their families. Most importantly, Attend onewith session or all —disorder, for free! Ms. LeBlanc will share her expertise as an individual with ASD, her work as a self-advocate and provide specific information on how to support people with ASD in our communities capitalizing on their special skills and abilities.
WED., JUNE 24: HEALTH CARE JOBS
WHEN Thursday, October 15, 6 – 7:30 pm WHERE UVM Medical Center, Main Campus, Davis Auditorium
noon
Wake Robin
HealthSource education programs healthy lifestyle classes are offered by 1 p.m. UVM Medical Centerand EVS Community Health Improvement at The University of Vermont Medical Center. 2 p.m. UVM Homeare Health Hospice Many of these programs FREE,& unless otherwise noted. Please note that directions provided upon registration. FREE parking is available onsite for 3 p.m. are Community Health Center of Burlington all classes. Vermont Army National Guard Medical 4 p.m.
UVMHealth.org/MedCenterHealthsource
Future Hire Up! days will be added soon. See the website below for info.
Register for the free live video sessions at:
jobs.sevendaysvt.com/hire-up SEVEN DAYS JUNE 10-17, 2020
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Jumpstart your future with in-demand degrees & certificates. What if you dared to expect more for yourself, from your education, and for your future? What is the career move you’d make, and the life you might live? We’re the place that can help you get there.
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Champlain College Online. Dare to Expect More.
champlain.edu/expectmore | 866.637.1102
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