Seven Days, December 9, 2020 by Seven Days

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VE R MO NT ’S INDE PEN DENT VO IC E DECEMBER 9-16, 2020 VOL.26 NO.11 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

New Good Citizen Challenge scorecard

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Vermont’s vaccine distribution plans

FOR PETE’S SAKE

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A Christmas tree tradition in Waltham

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MERRY AND BRIGHT

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A local holiday events calendar

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FILE: JEB WALLACE-BRODEUR

“It’s not supposed to be like this.” That’s what my wife and I have said to our kids too many times in the past few years, referencing the impeachment hearings, the Coronavirus Task Force briefings, the mask wars, and the bitterly contested November presidential election and its aftermath. We’ve watched it all with Graham, 14, and Ivy, 12, explaining over and over again how our elected leaders are meant to behave. They’re expected to disagree — a divided government is good for democracy. But their debate is supposed to be civil. We expect them to be well informed, to be gracious whether they win or Good Citizen celebration at the Statehouse, May 2019 lose, to put the good of the people before personal gain, and to serve with honor and dignity. We want our elected leaders to rally us in difficult times, to lift us up with their words and actions: Think of Ronald Reagan after the Challenger explosion, George W. Bush speaking through a bullhorn at Ground Zero after 9/11, Barack Obama breaking into “Amazing Grace” during the funeral of a pastor shot in a church in Charleston, S.C. We’re not seeing that kind of leadership in Washington, D.C., right now. Fortunately, it’s evident in Vermont, and we happily point out examples to Ivy and Graham. They’re learning: You can’t do much about national politics, but there’s a lot you can do to improve things here at home. To help nurture these instincts in all of our kids and inspire them to grow into responsible adults, Seven Days and Kids VT created the Good Citizen Challenge. Launched in 2018 with support from the Vermont Community Foundation, the Challenge promotes civics education and provides activities K-12 students can do to have a positive impact on their communities. Everyone who participates gets a Good Citizen Challenge sticker, and those who complete it are eligible for other prizes. We publish the best work we receive. Hundreds of young Vermonters from all over the state have taken part in past Challenges. This week, we’re launching a new one specifically designed for this pandemic winter; it ends on the Friday after Town Meeting Day. Our At-Home Challenge, developed with a coalition of statewide partners, is filled with activities in four subject areas essential to a responsible citizenry: history, government, news literacy and community service. Most of the tasks — such as making cloth face masks, playing Virtual Vermont Trivia, reading a community newspaper — can be done from home. Find a list of them on the four-page scorecard at the center of this issue, as well as more at goodcitizenvt.com. Both individuals and teams are welcome to participate, and adult-child teams are encouraged. This is a fun project to do with your kids; I’ve tested many of the activities on mine! One is listening to “Vermont’s Great Flood,” an episode of the podcast “Before Your Time,” produced by the Vermont Historical Society and Vermont Humanities. It’s about Vermont’s worst natural disaster, the Flood of 1927, which killed 84 people and caused millions of dollars in damages. The catastrophe was also a turning point for Vermont: Recovery efforts improved the state’s transportation infrastructure. And that crisis gave rise to one of the most memorable descriptions of the Interested in becoming a Super Reader? Green Mountain State and its people. Look for the “Give Now” buttons at the top of In a speech delivered after touring the state sevendaysvt.com. Or send a check with your in 1928, Vermont-born Calvin Coolidge, the 30th address and contact info to: president, famously said: “If the spirit of liberty SEVEN DAYS, C/O SUPER READERS should vanish in other parts of the Union, and P.O. BOX 1164 support of our institutions should languish, it could BURLINGTON, VT 05402-1164 all be replenished from the generous store held by For more information on making a financial the people of this brave little state of Vermont.” contribution to Seven Days, please contact The Good Citizen Challenge speaks to that spirit Corey Grenier: by inviting young Vermonters to learn about and VOICEMAIL: 802-865-1020, EXT. 36 contribute to its resilience. SUPERREADERS@SEVENDAYSVT.COM

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 9-16, 2020

news

MORE INSIDE

UVM PLANS TO CUT CLASSES PAGE 14

CRIME

EXTENDED STAYS FOR THE HOMELESS PAGE 16

Firefighter Quits After Alleged On-Duty Assault

QUEEN CITY MAYORAL CANDIDATES PAGE 18

Locked Down and Broke

B Y S A S H A G O LDS TE I N sasha@sevendaysvt.com

Twenty thousand Vermonters could lose unemployment benefits at year’s end B Y CO L I N FL A ND ER S • colin@sevendaysvt.com

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 9-16, 2020

ECONOMY

TIM NEWCOMB

wenty thousand Vermonters will lose their unemployment benefits on December 26 if two federal programs that expanded the social safety net amid the pandemic are allowed to expire. Vermont cannot afford to extend the programs itself, and while federal lawmakers have said for months that they support renewing them in some way, negotiations in the partisan-paralyzed Congress appear no closer to a resolution. With the deadline approaching, each day without a deal nudges families closer to the edge. “Even a week without income is too much for most people,” said Stephanie Yu, deputy director of the progressiveleaning Vermont think tank Public Assets Institute. “Most people are living paycheck to paycheck.” They include people such as Stella Maher, who has been on unemployment since losing her bartending job in March. The Killington resident stashed away as much as she could when her benefit checks still included a $600 federal pandemic supplement that ended in the summer. Since then, her savings have dwindled as she tries to keep up with a list of monthly expenses that includes a $180 student loan payment and $1,400 in rent. Maher’s bank has sent her several notices that she’s dipped below $100 in her account, and she’s now racking up credit card debt as she wonders how much worse her situation might get next year. “It’s never a place you want to be,” she said. A growing sense of desperation is becoming evident during calls to the Vermont Department of Labor’s unemployment center. Employees there sometimes field calls from angry or distraught claimants: “people who have, at times, threatened to harm themselves or harm others,” Labor Commissioner Michael Harrington said last week. But while such calls were rare before the pandemic, the department is bracing for many more. The state has even brought in the Department of Mental Health to train call-takers on how to deal with Vermonters in crisis — “in recognition of what’s coming,” Harrington said. The two expiring unemployment

programs are part of a series of emergency stimulus measures Congress passed in the spring — spending that also included direct checks to most households and the $600 weekly supplement to existing unemployment benefits. The financial blitz helped many Americans withstand sudden job losses or unanticipated expenses. But much of that assistance dried up over the summer, and studies have found that millions more Americans have plunged into poverty as a result. According to a recent survey from the University of Vermont, nearly 30 percent

of Vermont households were food insecure at some point between the months of March and September. Households that suffered job losses or disruptions — about 46 percent — were more than twice as likely to report food insecurity. The demise of the unemployment programs could have even more dire impacts. Many families have already run through their savings. And while some are receiving unemployment benefits because they are working fewer hours than usual, LOCKED DOWN AND BROKE

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A Burlington firefighter who shoved a man to the ground outside the city police headquarters last month was cited for assault and has quit, city officials announced last Friday. Video of the incident captured by police department security cameras shows the victim’s head bounce off the sidewalk. The man lays there nearly motionless as four fire department employees surround him. A police officer is visible exiting the building at the end of the 35-second clip released by the city. Fire officials said the man was treated at a hospital and released. It happened around 10:45 p.m. on November 21. Kevan Mahoney was cited for simple assault around 10:35 a.m. the following day. Mahoney “was immediately placed on administrative leave while an internal investigation into the incident was conducted,” the fire department said in a press release announcing the news last Friday afternoon. He quit once the investigation was complete. The release does not detail what the investigation found about Mahoney’s conduct. Acting Police Chief Jon Murad described the victim as “a houseless individual known to the [police] department.” Murad said the man went to the police headquarters on North Avenue that night asking to be taken to ACT 1, a Howard Center program for people “who feel they are incapacitated due to alcohol or other drugs,” according to the treatment center’s website. “BPD officers spoke with the individual and advised him that they could not accommodate his request because ACT 1 was at capacity,” Murad said in the email. “The individual was not incapacitated.” Twenty minutes later, the man used the police department’s lobby phone to call dispatch and complain of chest pains, according to Murad. The video shows some of what happened next, though there is no audio. The man approaches Mahoney, who extends his arm toward the man. The man continues to approach until Mahoney gives him a slight push backward. The man then throws his hat to the ground and slowly approaches Mahoney, who again extends his hand and begins pointing at the man. Mahoney then steps forward and shoves the man with both hands. The man falls backward, and his head smacks the sidewalk. Mayor Miro Weinberger and Fire Chief Steven Locke both condemned the firefighter’s actions. “The video of this incident is very concerning and the actions taken by Firefighter Mahoney are not in line with the Department’s mission, vision or values,” Locke said in a statement.

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The Big Jab Vermont prepares for its first shipments of a COVID-19 vaccine BY D ERE K BROU WER • derek@sevendaysvt.com

ho goes first? Vermont officials have been pondering that question for months, when the prospect of a COVID-19 vaccine still seemed like wishful thinking. Now, with packages of Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine poised to reach the state in a matter of days, they’re racing to put their plan into action. Consistent with federal guidelines, the Vermont Department of Health has identified health care workers, first responders and residents of long-term-care homes as the highest priority for vaccination. But those nearly 60,000 individuals far outstrip the estimated 20,000 doses that Health Commissioner Mark Levine expects will arrive by New Year’s Day.

THERE IS SORT OF A LACK OF INFORMATION AROUND WHAT IT’S GOING TO LOOK LIKE

BEYOND THE FIRST INITIAL PHASE.

D E P U T Y HEA LT H COMMISSION E R K E L LY D OUGHERT Y

That’s left hospitals and other organizations in the so-called “Phase 1a” group to narrow their lists of highest-priority individuals, without yet knowing how much vaccine to expect, or when. It’s a complicated endeavor, said Jill Olson, executive director of the VNAs of Vermont, the group representing most home health agencies. Olson’s industry employs about 2,500 people, but she expects only a fraction will be vaccinated in the first few weeks. Agencies are attempting the imperfect science of prioritizing employees who are personally at risk and whose labor is most crucial. They’re comparing nurse managers with direct caregivers and identifying employees who work directly with the 38 COVID-19 patients in Vermont who were receiving home health services as of last week. “It’s a moving target,” Olson said. Such decisions would have been an academic exercise in Vermont just a couple of months ago, when daily case counts and hospitalizations were in the low single digits and the state went nearly 100 days without a death attributable to the disease.

COVID-19 has come raging back this fall, however, killing more than 25 people in the last month as daily infections spiked to their highest levels yet. The state is fighting outbreaks in at least eight longterm-care facilities, where the virus has proven devastating to elderly residents. Health care workers, who have made up 12 percent of diagnosed cases in Vermont, have also been infected at higher rates in recent weeks. To them, every day counts. A U.S. Food & Drug Administration advisory panel is scheduled to meet Thursday, December 10, to review clinical trial data for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which the companies say is 95 percent effective and does not have serious side effects. Once the FDA grants an emergency-use authorization — expected within days of the December 10 meeting — Pfizer has said it will begin shipping the vaccine immediately. Federal regulators will consider another promising vaccine manufactured by Moderna on December 17. Both vaccines require two doses administered a few weeks apart. The PfizerBioNTech formulation requires storage at minus-70 degrees Celsius, which makes mass distribution more complicated. The United Kingdom administered its first doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on Tuesday, marking an international milestone in the effort to end the pandemic. The United States has reportedly purchased enough doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines to inoculate 100 million people but has yet to secure doses for the remaining 228 million Americans. The federal government is rationing its supplies according to each state’s population. Vermont officials expect to receive about 5,850 doses in the first weekly shipments. The state plans to direct its share of vaccines to hospitals by way of a distribution depot, Vermont Emergency Management director Erica Bornemann said. She declined to disclose its location. To safeguard the Pfizer-BioNTech doses, the state has secured more ultra-cold freezer space by borrowing equipment from the University of Vermont Medical Center and purchasing an additional freezer, which

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news EDUCATION

UVM Announces Plan to Eliminate Some Academic Programs B Y CO L I N F L AN D E RS & C O U RT N E Y L AM D I N

The University of Vermont last week announced plans to eliminate academic programs with low enrollments, a controversial cost-cutting proposal that was met with swift pushback. Unveiled at a time when many students are finishing the semester from home, the dramatic restructuring plan would phase out 12 majors, 11 minors and four master’s programs. The impacted programs have graduated or enrolled an average of fewer than five students over the last three years, according to College of Arts and Sciences dean Bill Falls, who wrote in an email to faculty that the cuts were necessary in light of UVM’s unprecedented $8.6 million deficit in fiscal year 2021. “This decision has been extremely difficult. It has been informed by data and guided by a strategy to focus on the future success of our College,” Falls wrote. “There is no other way forward for [the college] to balance its budget.” Falls’ plan would terminate majors including Geology, Religion, Asian Studies and several language programs, such as Greek, Latin and German. Minors in many of these subject areas would also be cut, plus others in Theatre and Vermont Studies. Master’s programs to be cut include Greek and Latin, Teaching Latin, Geology, and Historic Preservation. The plan would wipe out the college’s Classics, Geology and Religion departments. Other departments would be consolidated. The 122 students enrolled in the 27 impacted programs would be able to complete their degrees, according to Falls. It’s unclear how much money the plan would ultimately save. In an interview, Falls said he wasn’t sure how many faculty members would lose their jobs, though he conceded that there was a “distinct possibility” some would. Falls said even if every impacted faculty member were laid off — which he stressed he is not proposing — it would still not be enough to close the gap. “So we need a bigger plan,” he said. “One that not only has the College of Arts and Sciences … pulling up its bootstraps to figure out how we solve this structural deficit, but one that also involves the broader university.” The news shocked many faculty and staff, said Julie Roberts, the faculty union president and a linguistics professor. “It is another example of a very top-down leadership that we’ve been seeing for a while now,” she said.

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 9-16, 2020

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others have no work whatsoever. Once the checks disappear, so too will their income. The threat of losing benefits comes as the coronavirus surges, raising fears of another crippling shutdown that would lead to another wave of massive layoffs. The first week of December spawned more virus cases in Vermont than did the months of June, July, August and September combined. Officials are hopeful that recent restrictions on travel and multi-household gatherings will slow the surge. But more restrictions could soon be necessary. “We’re still figuring out if we’ve seen the worst yet,” Yu said. As of last Friday, about 8,500 Vermonters were enrolled in the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, which Congress created in the spring to cover people left out of the traditional unemployment system: gig workers, part-timers, freelancers and the self-employed, as well as those unable to work because of pandemicrelated childcare or health issues. The program calculates payments based on past average wages and allows people to receive partial benefits even if they are still working, as long as they are taking in less money than they typically would. Another 9,000 people are receiving payments through the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, which offers an additional 13 weeks of benefits after 26 weeks of state jobless benefits. Some people currently qualify for yet another 13-week extension program unrelated to the pandemic. But Vermont’s reported unemployment rate has reached a low enough level that the state will likely not be eligible for that program by the end of the month. All told, the Department of Labor anticipates that up to 75 percent of roughly 28,000 people now on unemployment will lose benefits once the federal programs expire. Sarah Adams, 41, applied for the pandemic assistance program after she was forced to close her cleaning business in mid-March. The Bridgewater resident stopped claiming benefits once her business returned to full operation in July. But the business, which relies on second-home owners, took another hit after Gov. Phil Scott reimposed travel restrictions last month. Adams has started filing for unemployment again while she forgoes some pay from her business. She had hoped that claiming the partial benefits would allow

her to assign the few clients she has left to her employees and therefore save some jobs. But after learning in an interview with Seven Days last week that benefits for self-employed people would expire around Christmastime, Adams said she would likely have no choice but to let go of most of her employees — whom she considers family — “so that I personally can go out and clean homes and earn more money.” “It’s extremely stressful and depressing,” she said. Other self-employed people are making similar calculations. Jay Vos, a 72-year-old Burlington man who runs a dog-walking and -sitting business, said weekly unemployment payments, on top of Social Security and a pension from a previous job, have helped him stay afloat after his client list shrank dramatically. With his benefits set to expire, “It’s going to be a struggle paying my rent, paying my utilities, the upkeep of my car,” he said.

IT’S NEVER A PLACE

YOU WANT TO BE. S TE L L A MAH E R

Vermont leaders are well aware of the impending benefits cliff but say there’s nothing they can do. Though Vermont has roughly $250 million left in its unemployment fund — a little over half of what it was when the pandemic began — federal restrictions prevent the state from using that money to replace the federal benefits. Officials say it would be impossible for a state the size of Vermont to find an alternative funding source. “We don’t have the resources,” Scott said during a press conference last month. “We’re talking about tens of millions of dollars every single week.” Indeed, the Vermont Legislative Joint Fiscal Office reported last week that the federal government had pumped nearly $100 million into the state through the two expiring programs as of October 20, a total that is likely far higher now as more and more people exhaust their state benefits. That’s on top of the $600 million injection from the now-expired $600 weekly payments. Scott has expressed frustration at federal lawmakers’ inability to reach a

deal to extend the programs. On Monday, he and four other Republican governors released a letter demanding that Congress pass a relief bill by the end of the month. “It may not be everything they want,” Scott said in November. “But just as a stopgap measure, there’s a number of initiatives they should be working on right now to help.” “I’m pleading with them to get back to work,” he added. There is still a chance that Congress will extend the programs before they expire. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has called a new aid package one of the chamber’s top priorities, saying at a press conference on November 4 that he hoped the “partisan passions that prevented us from doing another rescue package will subside with the election.” “I think we need to do it, and I think we need to do it before the end of the year,” he said. Yet there remains no clear picture of what the new benefits package would look like. Last week, a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a $908 billion plan that would provide, among other assistance, four months of $300 a week in extended unemployment benefits. Some top Democratic leaders endorsed the plan. But others, including Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), oppose a provision intended to shield companies from coronavirus-related lawsuits. Sanders also criticized the proposal for lacking stimulus checks, saying in a statement that tens of millions of Americans “would receive absolutely no financial help from this proposal.” McConnell, meanwhile, instantly shot it down, implying that he thought it was something President Donald Trump may not sign. “We have no time to waste,” the Republican leader said. McConnell instead proposed another version of his slimmed-down stimulus package that has already failed twice to advance in the Senate. His $500 billion plan contained far less support for the expiring unemployment programs, extending the benefits only a month before phasing them out over a two-month period during which no new claimants could be accepted. As the partisan squabbles continue in Washington, D.C., more and more Vermonters are realizing their benefits will soon expire. People on unemployment must usually prove that they are actively searching for

ELECTION 2020

GIVE THE GIF T OF WELLNESS!

Caller Threatened Vermont Elections Officials BY PAUL HEIN TZ paul@sevendaysvt.com

jobs each week, but the state suspended that requirement early on in the pandemic. The Department of Labor has started urging Vermonters who are able to work to begin looking for new jobs, flooding social media with posts about job fairs and apprenticeship programs. For people with personal health concerns or those without childcare, however, finding a new job may not be an option right now, said Yu, of the Montpelier think tank. “There’s so many reasons why people might not be able to work,” she said. “They’re forced to make really difficult choices.” Some are now reaching out to a help hotline called COVID Support VT, which the state launched with Vermont Care Partners in October to provide counseling services to Vermonters in need. Alex Karambelas, one of the hotline’s counselors, said many recent callers have described severe financial distress due to the approaching deadline. Most say it is the first time they have experienced such upheaval. One woman in her late fifties was in crisis because she had been unable to find work since being furloughed from a job in the restaurant industry, where she has spent her career. “Her concern was that she’s currently left without the skills or the education to pivot,” Karambelas said. Karambelas understands her callers’ plight better than most: She herself lost a restaurant job in March and spent about five months receiving unemployment — payments that she used to cover expenses for both herself and her mother. She recalled the concern she felt when the $600 payments were set to expire this summer. And while her new job is to support people — to explain that even though they may feel powerless, there are ways to manage their stress — she cannot help but lament what is beyond her control. “There is a solution to this problem, and the solution lies with the federal government. It’s up to them to take the initiative to help people right now,” she said. Otherwise, “things are going to get dire.”

An unidentified caller has left at least three threatening and vulgar messages for members of Secretary of State Jim Condos’ staff in recent weeks, according to Condos. One of the messages, directed toward a top Vermont elections administrator last week, accused the office of unspecified cheating and suggested that its members face a firing squad. “If people want to take potshots at me, I get it. I’m elected,” Condos said last week. “But they shouldn’t take potshots at my staff or staff of elections officials across the state.” Condos’ office disclosed the threats on Twitter in a message amplifying remarks made by Georgia elections official Gabriel Sterling. At a press conference that quickly went viral, Sterling described the threats he and his colleagues had faced over their administration of the 2020 election and called on President Donald Trump and members of the U.S. Senate to tamp down their divisive rhetoric. “It has to stop,” Sterling said, adding, “Someone’s going to get killed.” Condos echoed those remarks on December 2. “It really has to stop,” he said, accusing Trump of spreading conspiracy theories related to the election and encouraging dangerous rhetoric. “It starts at the top.” Condos said his office had turned over the voicemail messages to the Vermont State Police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, both of whom he said were investigating. Adam Silverman, a spokesperson for the state police, said his agency was reviewing the messages. An FBI official declined to comment. According to Condos, the caller left messages for the elections administrator and another senior member of his office. The same caller, whose phone number includes Vermont’s area code, left a message with a receptionist on November 22, he said. Condos said the caller used multiple expletives and accused the office of being “crooked” and “cheating” but did not specifically mention the election. The caller referred to firing squads, poison gas and lethal injections in a manner that Condos and his staff interpreted as threatening. The secretary of state said his employees had previously received complaints about the election but had not received threats. He said the office had not yet taken additional safety measures.

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Shelter in Place The pandemic provides a path to housing for homeless Vermonters

BY PAUL H EI N T Z • paul@sevendaysvt.com

ames Pocock had been spending his nights huddled in a downtown Burlington ATM vestibule when the coronavirus arrived in Vermont. On March 18, an acquaintance told him that the state had agreed to temporarily house people experiencing homelessness in hotels and motels in order to keep them safe. “I said, ‘All right. I’ll get a night,’” Pocock recalled. “And I just never left.” That is, until last month, when the 50-year-old Ohio native moved out of the Quality Inn Colchester and into a onebedroom apartment in Essex. “It’s something I’ve been wanting for a long, long time,” said Pocock, who has been homeless on and off since 1989. “I’ve never signed my own lease before.” Pocock is one of hundreds of Vermonters likely to end up with more stable housing as a result of the pandemic, thanks to a $95 million infusion of federal coronavirus aid in the sector. By the end of the year, according to state officials and their nonprofit partners, the money will have funded the construction of 243 new housing units and the rehabilitation of 216 existing apartments. The aid is also going toward upgrades of 12 shelters, ensuring that they can safely serve clients even during a global pandemic. The largest of these projects is Champlain Housing Trust’s conversion of a Baymont Inn & Suites on Susie Wilson Road into a 68-unit affordable housing complex rechristened Susan’s Place, which Pocock now calls home. Last week, he admired the sprawling, baby blue building from a gazebo in the facility’s parking lot, sitting on his walker and puffing on a cigarette. “COVID is a horrible thing, but in some regards, it’s been a huge blessing for me,” Pocock said. Others haven’t been as fortunate. In recent weeks, the number of housinginsecure Vermonters receiving state vouchers for hotel and motel rooms has surged. According to the Department for Children and Families, which administers the program, a record 2,483 people — including 417 children — were living in 70 such facilities around the state as of early this week. The cost of the 1,770 rooms, according to DCF senior adviser Geoffrey Pippenger, was roughly $140,000 a night, or $4.2 million a month.

James Pocock

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 9-16, 2020

PHOTOS: JAMES BUCK

HEALTH

“It’s the exact right thing to do, but it’s not sustainable,” said Chris Donnelly, Champlain Housing Trust’s director of community relations. “I hope it leaves people with their eyes open — that we have a much bigger housing crisis than people thought.” Advocates have long feared what might happen to those living in hotels and motels once the December 30 deadline to spend federal coronavirus aid passes. But in recent weeks, state officials have quietly made clear that they will continue dispensing housing vouchers until the public health crisis subsides. At a press conference last Friday, Human Services Secretary Mike Smith suggested that the expanded program could continue until at least July 2021. According to Pippenger, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is expected to foot much of the bill, though the state will have to provide a 25 percent match. The program’s extension is a relief to those who believe it has kept housinginsecure Vermonters safe throughout the pandemic. According to the state Department of Health, only six people experiencing homelessness have been diagnosed

with COVID-19, and none has died from the virus. “The governor wants everyone to stay safe at home — and you need a home to stay safe,” said Erhard Mahnke, coordinator of the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition.

COVID IS A HORRIBLE THING, BUT IN SOME REGARDS,

IT’S BEEN A HUGE BLESSING FOR ME. JAME S P O C O C K

The state program, formally known as “General Assistance temporary housing,” long predates the pandemic. But before last spring, when the state waived many eligibility requirements, it rarely served more than 250 households a night, according to Pippenger. Though the program has been criticized over the years as a waste of state resources, Mahnke called it “a godsend” that it was already in place when COVID-19 arrived

in Vermont. “It may not be a solution to homelessness, but it’s certainly something that’s needed for our homeless and vulnerable Vermonters,” he said. Other state initiatives funded by federal coronavirus aid have kept Vermonters from losing their homes in the first place. The legislature earlier this year appropriated $25 million for rental housing assistance, $4 million for mortgage assistance and $8.5 million for utility arrearages, according to the Joint Fiscal Office. All three forms of aid are scheduled to expire later this month, as are some unemployment payments, raising the prospect of yet another wave of homelessness. That would likely be compounded when, a month after the state of emergency eventually ends, Vermont’s eviction moratorium lapses. “We’re trying to assist folks with some pretty severe challenges with short-term funding when what they’ll probably need is long-term assistance,” Mahnke said. According to Pippenger, “a constellation of factors” is driving the current rise in use of the hotel and motel program — including financial desperation, a resurgence of COVID-19 and the onset of

winter. “The super short answer to why things are increasing: It’s complicated,” he said. Those enrolled in the program are scattered around the state — in rural motor inns and crowded chain motels. The facility housing the most recipients is the Holiday Inn Burlington, just off Interstate 89 in South Burlington. It has closed for regular business to accommodate the new clientele, who numbered 134 last week. Since May, the state has contracted with the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity to provide wraparound services to the hotel’s residents. Case managers work to find them stable housing and jobs, while other nonprofits host medical clinics and needle exchanges. Hotel staff continue to run the front desk and clean the rooms once a week. “It’s just a lovely and respectful alternative to the shelter system,” CVOEO’s Holiday Inn program director, Dave Gunderson, said last week in his conference-room-turned-office near the hotel’s lobby, where residents dropped by to meet with his colleagues. “This seems to show that we can do better. It’s just a matter of whether we choose to.” Not everyone is enamored of the arrangement. Neighboring businesses have complained that the program has brought drugs, disorderly conduct, theft and plenty of sirens to the area. The South Burlington Police Department has responded to 380 incidents at the hotel since May, according to Chief Shawn Burke. In October, he said, a resident died of a suspected opioid overdose. “That’s not shocking from a public safety perspective when you think about the population that’s there,” Burke said, arguing that the same activity would likely take place elsewhere if the hotel’s residents were dispersed. Though responding to calls from the Holiday Inn has drained his department’s resources, Burke praised CVOEO for working collaboratively to address problems and providing its own clinicians and security. “I think this has been a good strategy,” he said. “I just know that, long term, it’s very, very expensive, and I don’t know what the endgame is going to be.” For Sara Carroll, the Holiday Inn has served as a life raft. Before moving in last May, the 42-year-old Burlington native had been couch-surfing and living on the streets for much of the previous three years. “I started experimenting with some drugs with my previous boyfriend, and I got in too deep,” she explained. “I lost custody of my child to her father, and I kind of went overboard: lost my car, lost

Susan’s Place

Hotel and Motel Rooms Used by Homeless Vermonters During COVID-19 2,000

December 3 1,748 rooms

June 11 1,550 rooms

1,000

August 3 871 rooms

Mar 1

May 1

Jul 1

Sep 1

Nov 1

SOURCE: VERMONT DEPARTMENT FOR CHILDREN AND FAMILIES

my apartment, lost my job, lost everything. Suffered a really bad overdose, which opened my eyes, and I’ve been clean since.” At the Holiday Inn, Carroll has worked with counselors to access group therapy and is attempting to sign up for federal disability assistance. “I hate asking for help, but it’s here,” she said. Most importantly, according to Carroll, the Holiday Inn has offered a safe and secure place to sleep. “It’s nice not to have to worry about where I’m going to lay my head at night,” she said. “It’s nice to have this place.” Carroll won’t be there much longer. She recently learned that she, too, had secured a room at Susan’s Place. “I’m pretty psyched,” she said. Even as residents move into one wing of the former Essex motel, named for the late Champlain Housing Trust social worker Susan Ainsworth-Daniels, remodeling continues on another. Last week, workers scurried around, noisily completing the renovation.

According to Donnelly, the Champlain Housing Trust bought the building in October for $11.6 million and had just months to convert its 124 rooms into 68 apartments, at a cost of $900,000. “It’s amazing,” Donnelly said of the speed with which Susan’s Place came together. “To do this in three months is wacky — and that’s a technical term.” Throughout the state, affordable housing organizations have been rushing to finish similar projects by the end of the year. Though most such developments typically take two to three years to complete, those funded with federal coronavirus aid had just six months. “Some are going to be a race to the finish line,” said Vermont Housing & Conservation Board executive director Gus Seelig, whose organization was charged with distributing roughly $34 million for new housing and improved shelters. The projects include a 33-unit shelter operated by ANEW Place at Burlington’s

Champlain Inn and a 21-unit shelter in Colchester run by Steps to End Domestic Violence. South Burlington’s Ho Hum Motel will serve temporarily as a COVID19 isolation and quarantine center and will later become affordable housing. Elsewhere in the state, nonprofits have been working to create housing in a former John Deere store in Rutland, a mobile home park in Bradford and a German chalet-style lodge in Brattleboro. “It really took a lot of creativity to find those projects and make them happen,” said Jennifer Hollar, VHCB’s director of policy and special projects. Her organization required that affordable housing developers develop longterm funding plans for each of the new facilities. Though federal coronavirus aid can be used to purchase and remodel buildings, their new owners are on the hook for wraparound support services. Local and state housing authorities will help low-income residents access federal assistance, such as Section 8 vouchers, to help pay the rent. Pocock, who lost the use of his left foot after a surgery last year, applies a portion of his disability benefits as rent for his one-bedroom apartment at Susan’s Place. Though he worked for years as a cook at Chittenden County restaurants, he currently has no other form of income. Substance use contributed to Pocock’s slide into homelessness, but he said he hasn’t touched methamphetamine in 20 years, nor crack cocaine in 10. “And I’m keeping it that way,” he said. (Pocock does call himself “a BB guy: beer and bud” and wears a camouflage hat featuring a marijuana leaf and the word “Weed!”) During his stay at the Quality Inn Colchester, Pocock witnessed plenty of hard drug use, he said, but he doesn’t plan to tolerate it if he sees the same at Susan’s Place. “This is my neighborhood now. This is where I live,” he said as he led a reporter to his second-floor apartment. “I ain’t gonna allow that crap around here.” Pocock said he already feels at home, though he hasn’t yet slept in his new bed. After years of living in a tent in the woods and on the streets of Burlington, he feels more comfortable in his sleeping bag on the floor. “Old habits die hard,” he said. Inside his apartment, which he entered with a key card, were early signs of Christmas: multicolored lights on a window and tinsel on a door. Two stockings hung from a television. “Home, sweet home,” Pocock said with a grin on his face. m SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 9-16, 2020

news At Caucus, Burlington Democrats Offer Counter to Progressives’ ‘Extreme Ideologies’

“If you elect me as your city councilor, I’ll put the voice of the people ahead of extreme ideologies,” Durfee said during her nominating speech. Christianson works as an attorney at a Burlington law firm and serves on the city’s FILE Development Review Board. He ran an unsuc:C OU cessful bid for council in 2019 as an indepenRT dent with a Progressive endorsement. In an B Y C OURT N E Y L AM D I N email to Seven Days on Sunday, he said that courtney@sevendaysvt.com he’ll run as a Democrat/Progressive in March. “It’s clear that many of my neighbors want to see In a caucus stump speech on Sunday, more community input, engagement, and inclusiveDemocratic Burlington Mayor Miro Mayor Miro ness in city politics, and they want to see Democrats Weinberger railed against city Weinberger and Progressives working together,” Christianson Progressives for their “rigid” ideology, wrote. saying that he, in contrast, would continue Christianson will face independent candidate to lead by using data and expertise if Mark Barlow, a small-business owner and member reelected in March. of the city’s Parks & Recreation Commission. If elected, Weinberger, who is running for a fourth Christianson said, he would work to support New North term, was uncontested in seeking his party’s nominaEnd businesses and to find a solution for in-person learning tion at Sunday’s caucus. According to party results, 425 at Burlington High School, which has been closed since Burlingtonians cast votes in the virtual affair, which allowed September due to air quality concerns. for email and in-person voting between 2 and 5:15 p.m. “I want to listen clearly to all of you, engage each and every Weinberger focused much of his speech on his acone of you, and make sure that your voice is heard on council,” complishments, including the city’s pandemic-era face he said during the caucus. mask distribution program, an administration goal to make Democrats did not run a candidate in the East District, Burlington a net-zero city by 2030, a plan for the Moran meaning incumbent Progressive Councilor Jack Hanson will Plant, and upgrades to the Burlington bike path. He also run unopposed unless an independent candidate files by the pledged to reform policing and combat systemic racism, two January 25 deadline. issues that have come to the forefront during his current term. The mayor then took aim at the Progressives. “As the Democratic Party has been establishing itself both locally and nationally as a party committed to helping people through policy and progress that are based in science, data and expertise, today’s Burlington Progressive Party has been moving in a different, rigid, ideological direction,” Weinberger B Y CO U RTN EY L AM D IN • courtney@sevendaysvt.com said, adding that “small-p or even big-P Progressives are alarmed by this clear, multiyear trend.” Burlington Progressives have chosen City Weinberger warned that electing a Progressive could Council President Max Tracy (Ward 2) as their undo the city’s recovery from the Burlington Telecom debacle candidate for mayor in the March 2 election. a decade ago. Weinberger’s predecessor, former Prog mayor Tracy earned 787 votes, or about 55 Councilor Bob Kiss, diverted city funds to the failing utility, and the city’s percent, compared to 631 votes — about 45 Ali Dieng credit rating tanked. percent — for fellow Councilor Brian Pine (Ward Since then, Weinberger noted, his team has firmed up the 3), according to party caucus results released city’s financial standing and built up reserves, which have last Thursday. A record-breaking 1,420 people cast allowed Burlington, to date, to avoid laying off workers during ballots online and in person as this year’s event went the coronavirus crisis. virtual amid the coronavirus pandemic. “We know here in Burlington how dangerous devotion to “I’m absolutely ecstatic. This is such a big win and such ideology without attention to detail, data or expert opinion a big win for our party,” Tracy told Seven Days. “I am so can be,” Weinberger said. “To repeat the mistakes of the impressed with the turnout and the excitement CO UR TE past amidst the pandemic and deep recession would SY that we have going in to the general election.” be disastrous.” Tracy, 33, was first elected to the city The party’s Central District city council council in 2012, the same year sitting candidate was the embodiment of the Dems’ Mayor Miro Weinberger took city hall. The message that the Progs have strayed too far left. outspoken, hard-line Prog has branded Tiki Archambeau — a former Progressive Party himself as Weinberger’s political opposite chair — earned the Dems’ endorsement to try to and vowed to bring “dramatic, structural unseat incumbent Progressive Councilor Perri and transformational changes” to Freeman. Burlington if elected. Council President Archambeau said he’s “concerned about Max Tracy After the results were announced, Pine the direction of the current council,” in which said he was disappointed but thankful for his Progressives hold six of 12 seats. He chaired the hardworking team, his family and those who Prog Party from 2003 to 2005 and again from 2012 to supported his campaign. He said he felt “an outpouring 2014. He’s currently a member of Burlington’s Public Works of community support from all across the city.” Pine said the Commission and has previously served on the Wards 2 and loss has ended his bid for mayor, meaning he won’t run as an 3 Neighborhood Planning Assembly steering committee. independent. “‘Pragmatism,’ ‘coalition-building,’ ‘compromise’ “We brought people into the political process who have never and ‘courtesy’ are now dirty words,” Archambeau said. been included, and I felt really proud to be part of a political “Micromanagement is undermining the volunteerism put movement that did that,” he said. “I hope we can keep doing that.” forth by the city’s commissions. Open meeting laws are being Tracy said he’s excited for the general election and to take actively flouted.” on Weinberger. In the night’s only contested race, New North End resident “I’m really looking forward to being able to engage in the Kienan Christianson won the Democrats’ endorsement for the conversations to come,” Tracy said, “around where our city is North District seat over Kerin Durfee, 162 to 97. headed and our different visions, and draw a strong contrast Durfee, a self-proclaimed “proud Democrat,” had tried to Miro.” to contrast herself with Christianson, who also won the In a tweet after the results were announced, Weinberger Progressive nomination last week. She was endorsed by congratulated Tracy and said he looks “forward to a substanoutgoing Democratic Councilor Franklin Paulino. tive + spirited debate about the future” of the city. The mayor

TOWN MEETING DAY

Tracy Wins Progressive Nomination for Burlington Mayor’s Race

B Y C O URTNE Y L A MDI N • courtney@sevendaysvt.com

B IN

GI N O T

City Councilor Ali Dieng (I-Ward 7) formally announced his mayoral campaign on Monday by outlining a long list of initiatives he’d tackle if elected in March. CO URT Sitting in front of a wall of campaign signs bearing ESY OF OR the slogan “Transparency, Unity, Action,” Dieng A promised to be a collaborative leader who will address “the critical problems of our time.” “Our city needs a trustworthy leader with an inclusive vision geared toward bringing people together and transforming Vermont’s largest city into the best small city in North America,” he said. Though Dieng had quietly declared his candidacy a few weeks before, his official campaign kickoff came the day after incumbent Mayor Miro Weinberger won the Democrats’ endorsement for the fourth time. Dieng will also face Progressive City Council President Max Tracy (Ward 2) and Patrick White, a South End resident and political newcomer who is also running without a party label. As mayor, Dieng said, he would combat systemic racism, including by hiring a city workforce that “reflects the community that we serve.” He wants city budgeting to be more transparent and would form a “policy bank” where residents could submit policy ideas to be vetted by experts. Dieng said he also would create commissions on aging and accessibility, the latter of which would help physically disabled Burlingtonians access city amenities. He suggested that the city could eradicate homelessness by building a tiny home village where residents could receive services. “I am ready and willing to work with everyone, in all parties, and across all sectors to build a healthier, stronger, [more] inclusive city,” Dieng said. “We can do the hard and necessary work.” An immigrant from Mauritania, Dieng is the only nonwhite mayoral candidate in the field. He said he’d draw on his lived experience as a New American to unify the city, which, in his view, has been divided after nearly nine years under Weinberger. Dieng pointed to the stalled CityPlace Burlington project and tensions over police reform as examples of “hardships” created by the sitting mayor. “I do believe that the Burlingtonians are ready for change, and, [in] any calculation, we cannot see Miro winning this election again,” he said. Dieng said that people value the “voice of reason” he’s brought to city council deliberations over the last three years. “I am confident that on Town Meeting Day, they will give me a huge win that will move us to the next level,” he said. M

TT MA

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 9-16, 2020

Dieng Outlines Campaign Promises in Announcing Burlington Mayoral Bid

said that “voters will have a distinct choice” when they cast ballots on Town Meeting Day. Weinberger’s party, meanwhile, immediately attacked the Progressive candidate. In a statement, the Burlington Democratic Committee called Tracy “at best, badly out of touch.” “The Caucus results from tonight are further evidence the Burlington Progressive Party is increasingly becoming a party of dogmatic ideologues, rejecting the pragmatism that once defined it,” wrote Adam Roof, the committee chair and a former council colleague of Tracy’s. “This direction is dangerous in normal times, and even more so in the middle of a pandemic.” All races for the four city council district seats were uncontested at the Prog caucus. Newcomer Grace Ahmed will challenge longtime South District incumbent Councilor Joan Shannon, a Democrat. Kienan Christianson won the Prog endorsement in the open North District; Progressive incumbents Perri Freeman and Jack Hanson won nominations for the Central and East districts, respectively.

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Margaret Keenan, 90, on Tuesday became the first patient in the United Kingdom to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine

information on safety,” said Boyd, who has decided to get vaccinated herself. Vaccinated individuals may get some protection from the virus 10 days following the initial dose, according to PfizerBioNTech, but don’t attain long-term benefits until at least a week following the second dose. It remains to be seen whether immunized people could still transmit the virus to others. Long-term-care homes are enrolled in a federally managed vaccination program that will rely on private pharmacies to inoculate residents. Those doses will be shipped directly to participating pharmacies, bypassing the depot, but still count toward the state’s overall allocation, Dougherty said. There are more than 5,300 residents and 8,200 workers at Vermont’s long-term-care homes who appear to qualify for doses in Phase 1a, by the state’s count, which means the vaccination process could take several weeks. Levine said on Tuesday that roughly half of the state’s initial weekly allocations will be earmarked for the pharmacyadministered program. Further details of that process, announced months ago, were still being worked out this week. The CDC has indicated that vaccination clinics in long-term-care homes could start on December 21, said Alecia DiMario, executive director of Birchwood Terrace Rehab and Healthcare in Burlington. “However this is dependent on when the state receives the vaccination, the amount of vaccine allocated to [Vermont], and how it is prioritized for administration,” she wrote in an email. The initial vaccine rollout may be small, but it should have an outsize effect in the battle against the coronavirus, Lahey said. Protecting hot spots such as nursing homes would ease the toll and shore up the health care system while the state embarks on

the more daunting task of vaccinating the general public, Lahey said. Nursing home deaths have accounted for 61 percent of all COVID-19 fatalities in Vermont. The facilities have proven to be environments especially prone to outbreaks. The health department’s October vaccination plan divides the process into four general phases. Phase 1b includes people with health conditions that put them at “significantly higher risk” and older adults in other congregate or overcrowded settings. Phase 2 includes certain essential workers, including educators, as well as incarcerated individuals and prison staff, those at homeless shelters or group homes, and other older adults. Young adults, children and other adults in industries “important to the functioning of society” are next, followed by everyone else. An updated vaccination plan, with more detailed information, is forthcoming, according to Dougherty. The state has cautioned that it could take several months or longer to work through those phases. The health department plans to eventually host public vaccination clinics as the effort progresses, but many details are still being worked out — or are dependent upon how the vaccine supply chain develops. “There is sort of a lack of information around what it’s going to look like beyond the first initial phase,” Dougherty said. The vaccine’s landfall won’t change the day-to-day operations inside Vermont hospitals, as social-distancing and personal protective equipment regimens will need to remain in place. But many of those health care workers who receive the state’s early doses could be called upon in the months ahead to fight COVID-19 on a new, perhaps final front: helping to vaccinate everyone else. m

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my experience, enough tasting can still get you drunk. His brandy company is a strange way to promote a sober lifestyle. Plus, the $28,000 charge, from what “turned out” to be a bordello. What a confusing trip that must have been! If this was truly fraud, I feel for him, but if it wasn’t and he spent that much money (a year’s salary for some people!) on a company credit card for nonbusiness expenses, I would expect at least some remorse from him. And now he owns a college. A new neighbor claims that Bhakta is either a great actor or a really decent human being. I think he’s a complicated manchild who desperately seeks validation. Maybe this will lead him to do truly great things at Green Mountain College. Or maybe it won’t be long before he gets bored and moves on, seeking that validation from somewhere else.

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MONTPELIER

GIVE WEINBERGER CREDIT

[Re “Race On,” November 25]: Reporter Courtney Lamdin and Seven Days are entitled to an anti-Miro Weinberger platform, but not to an article with blatant factual inaccuracy. Lamdin brings up the “hole in the ground” multiple times without ever mentioning by far the most significant recent development: three local business owners taking over the project and building a shorter building with more housing and no hotel — just what our town needs. It’s as though the article were written before that was announced but nobody bothered to update it. It is particularly misleading when you consider the multipage advertising in the previous issues about CityPlace Burlington from those very developers. Never mentioned is that we got rid of a horrible indoor mall full of corporate brands that cut our city in half and snarled traffic, and that in place of it we will get reconnected streets. Just like the beautiful new City Hall Park, Weinberger should get credit for these improvements and patience that construction takes time. Beyond the omitted facts, there were spun ones: Black Lives Matter brought needed accountability nationally, and, rightfully, the Burlington Police Department and Weinberger weren’t spared of it. Can Lamdin — or anybody else, for that matter — think of an elected

leader who has taken more concrete action than this: hiring a director of racial equity, inclusion and belonging; declaring racism a public health emergency; forming a reparations task force; and hiring a director of police transformation? Seven Days is entitled to its opinion, but I wish you made more of an effort to report fairly and factually on local politics. Jonny Adler

BURLINGTON

DON’T PUBLISH FAKE NEWS

With all the fake news out there, please stop running those Pomerleau ads disguised as journalism. They are created by a marketing firm to look like news articles. They are fake news, and you are complicit in this deception. Furthermore, the Pomerleau ads are political, calculated to project a rosy aura around very controversial projects tied to the incumbent mayor’s reelection campaign: • an expensive City Hall Park renovation that changed a shady, green park into a concrete performance venue; and • the latest Pit plan, proposed now to be financed by working people’s union dues — to build housing and business space that many working people can’t afford, and to use federal Department of Housing and Urban Development and tax increment financing money designated to benefit low-income people. The housing in this project does not relieve the need in our community for subsidized housing, and there are 1,800 eligible families on the HUD voucher housing waiting list in Vermont. Pomerleau Real Estate buys space in your publication for these deceptive ads disguised as news articles that are nothing but political propaganda, and you sell it to them. Community trust in the honesty of news matters! Seven Days, you have betrayed our trust. Furthermore, you have put a once-a-month limit on individual residents’ letters to the editor, but Pomerleau can buy space in your paper for fake news week after week. Stop it! Lea Terhune

BURLINGTON

Editor’s note: We welcome advertising in Seven Days — it’s the primary way we fund our award-winning journalism. All paid content in Seven Days is clearly labeled as such, both in print and online. Staff writers do not produce paid content, and advertisers have no influence over what our reporters write.

W R I T T E N A N D PA I D F O R B Y T H E V E R M O N T A S S O C I AT I O N O F H O S P I TA L S A N D H E A LT H S Y S T E M S

GET CREATIVE THIS

Holiday Season

he Vermont Association of Hospitals and Health Systems is composed of all of the state’s nonprofit hospitals. Our role is to support these hospitals in their efforts to preserve access to care in our rural state and deliver the very best care every day. That mission is even more important as we continue to respond to

the global COVID-19 pandemic. With cases in Vermont on the rise, Gov. Phil Scott has ordered that we celebrate only with members of our own households this year. But that doesn’t mean we can’t make the 2020 holiday season special and fun. It just takes a little more creativity!

Here are some ways to connect safely with friends and family without being in person: If you miss the fun of cooking for others, drop a favorite holiday potluck dish to a friend or family member’s front porch. (Let them know it’s there, of course!)

extravagant like crab or too-challenging-forcompany international cuisine.

Bake your family’s favorite cookies and pop them in the mail. Or hold a virtual/ drive-by cookie swap. A few friends can each make a batch or two of goodies (maybe Zoom while you’re baking). Then mail or deliver cookies to the others.

Surprise family with a festive Zoom background or do a family photo booth, where each household is tasked with finding fun holiday props. Then screen-grab away!

Dress up for your Zoom. If your family likes to don your finest during the holidays, put on the glam. If you’re happier in jammies, by all means Zoom in them, especially if they’re silly matching pajamas! Rediscover the mail. Surprise someone you love with little gifts throughout the holidays — maybe without confessing who you are until after they receive them all. Do your usual gift exchange via the mail. And if you usually make it a rollicking Yankee swap, do it online! It will be just as funny. Plan a remote yet special story time. Have a grandparent, aunt or uncle read a holiday story to the children in your family.

Give back in a new way, maybe to your local food pantry or fire department. Drop a meal for an elderly or homebound neighbor. No gift is too small. Light your Hanukkah candles using a virtual platform. Rotate which household says the blessing each night, then end with a dreidel tournament. You can use an online tool or just keep track of who has what gelt. (Face it, you usually split it among all the kiddos at the end of the game anyway.) Watch the ball drop on New Year’s Eve on your TV with Zoom to loop others in, then raise a toast together. Do you usually travel during the holidays? Enjoy yourselves as if you were in the other place. Crank up the heat or make a fire and have a beach night, for example. Fruity drinks, beach chairs and beachy music can cheer you up even when it’s definitely Vermont outside!

So many December holidays involve light. Take a drive and check out the neighbors’ lights. Join the “Vermont Lights the Way” effort. Or challenge your family and friends to light up the area where they’ll chat online with you. Loop in people you normally don’t see during a typical holiday. This may be the year to reconnect with family across the country or around the world. Whatever way you find to keep up the cheer during the 2020 holiday season, be sure to be safe. If you must travel (which is not advised), quarantining is required when you return to keep your neighbors safe. And if you host people from other states (again, not consistent with the governor’s order), know guidelines for their quarantine in advance. To learn more about how we can all stick together and get through this safely, visit vahhs.org/safe-holidays. Be well. Be safe. But, by all means, connect with those you love! THIS ARTICLE WAS COMMISSIONED AND PAID FOR BY:

Embrace the fact that your holiday dinner is small. Enjoy dishes that don’t work as well for a larger crowd — something intimate like fondue, SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 9-16, 2020

arts news

Back to the Future Vermont institutions collect the drawings of two renowned local architects B Y A MY L IL LY • lilly@sevendaysvt.com COURTESY OF VERMONT HISTORICAL SOCIETY

ARCHITECTURE

Donald McKnight drawing for Capitol Stationers, 1974

he midcentury architects who brought a modern, Bauhausinfluenced aesthetic to Vermont can be counted on two hands. Perhaps not by accident, two came from Barre: MARCEL BEAUDIN (1929-) and Donald McKnight (1933-2020). Architectural drawings and other records of both of those architects’ long careers are or soon will be available to the public. McKnight’s drawings were recently archived at the VERMONT HISTORICAL SOCIETY, and Beaudin’s papers, once sorted, will be added to the Jack and Shirley Silver Special Collections Library at the University of Vermont. Beaudin, who is 91 and lives in Shelburne, and McKnight, who died in April, had separate and quite different careers; Beaudin mentioned in a recent phone call that he hadn’t seen McKnight in “more than 30 years.” But their origins are remarkably similar. As students, they overlapped at Spaulding High School, where Beaudin dated McKnight’s older sister. Both attended the town’s night school for art and design run by seasoned granite artisans, becoming skilled draftsmen in the process. And both began their careers in Barre’s monuments industry, where their fathers worked. Vermont state architectural historian 24

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 9-16, 2020

DEVIN COLMAN,

who initiated the preserva- architect Le Corbusier, who was then tion of the two architects’ papers and found at work on the United Nations building. repositories for them, attributed the men’s While at Pratt, he worked for a few weeks similar paths to the cultural moment of as a renderer for Marcel Breuer, one of the their youth. original Bauhaus “What a neat instructors who place Barre must immigrated to the have been when U.S. after the Nazis the monuments closed the German D E VIN C O L MAN industry was going school. And he gangbusters!” he mused during a phone call. spent a college summer working for Edward “It had all those artists and draftsmen and Larrabee Barnes, the modernist who would highly skilled artisans. It had an art school. later design the Cathedral of the Immaculate It seems like [it was] the Florence, Italy, of Conception in downtown Burlington. Vermont. Don and Marcel started in that Many of Beaudin’s works, particularly world. It got their creative juices flowing.” some 200 residences, reflect that immerMcKnight went on to become a self- sion in modern influences. This reporter’s taught, licensed architect in his hometown. own Burlington house, the Forgays ResiBeaudin earned an architecture degree at dence, is a boxy International-style doublePratt Institute before opening his office in decker completed in 1965 that’s often 1959; it was based in Chittenden County for mistaken for a motel. The 1959 Haywood most of its run. Residence down the street is a classier Beaudin, who said he “reluctantly” predecessor. closed his Shelburne office in 2018 and A few blocks away, Beaudin’s Rosenthal officially retired at 90, designed about 1,000 Residence, built in 1964, has an attached projects over his career. (His list for the carport and distinctly modern massing archive is 59 pages long.) His entrée into the oriented on a corner lot that overlooks a world of clean, stark, purposeful Bauhau- ravine in back. sian design was unexpectedly direct. TEAL and TYLER DOGGETT were living in As a junior monuments designer in New Barcelona in 2015 when they purchased the York City after high school, Beaudin had a Rosenthal Residence the “hour” it went on chance meeting with famed Swiss modern the market, Teal said in a phone interview. It

YOU SEE INSIDE

THE BRAIN OF THE ARCHITECT.

has remained largely unchanged except for two additions that Beaudin himself designed in 1987 and 1994. Inside, Teal said, there are “so many built-ins, it’s almost like living on a ship.” Beaudin was, in fact, a passionate sailor; he designed the net-zero Lake Champlain Community Sailing Center that was completed in 2019. Another career highlight was the Trinity College chapel (1958), which once had a stained-glass wall made in Chartres, France. (“The chapel was magnificent, I must say,” Beaudin recalled; the University of Vermont owns it now.) He also designed All Saints’ Episcopal Church in South Burlington (1963) and the Vermont Veterans Memorial Chapel in Randolph Center (1996). These and many more projects were featured in a 2005 retrospective at the BCA CENTER: “Decades of Design: Marcel Beaudin.” McKnight, by contrast, had no exposure to Bauhaus masters, yet his aesthetic leaned the same way. Colman suggested that McKnight gleaned his influences from magazines and “what FREEMAN FRENCH FREEMAN was doing at the time.” The Burlington firm, founded in 1937 by Ruth and Bill Freeman, was the first to bring the modern movement to Vermont. “Maybe it shows just how pervasive and strong that modernist influence was — and is — within the architecture profession,” Colman added. McKnight practiced from the early 1970s to 2009; the archive comprises 800 drawings from 270 projects, of which 110 are residences. While Beaudin had 10 employees at the height of his practice, McKnight had only one, for five years: architect JULES CHATOT, who joined him in 1980 after studying at McGill University. Chatot, who is 68 and lives in Danville, recalled his boss introducing him to Beaudin as someone who provided McKnight with his introduction to Burlington architects. The city was then the center of architectural practice in Vermont and “a very small club,” Chatot said. McKnight learned the profession informally from Eugene Alexander (of Alexander & Truex, which eventually became TRUEXCULLINS)

COURTESY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT

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Marcel Beaudin’s Trinity College chapel, dormitory and dining hall in Burlington

and FRED SENFTLEBER of Freeman French Freeman. As Beaudin recalled, McKnight “did an outstanding thing: He worked with an accredited architect for five or seven years, and then took the four-day architectural licensing exam. He passed it on the first round [in 1972]. Don was a really bright guy. I’ve never known anyone before or since who’s done that.” Calling McKnight’s drawings “really beautiful,” PAUL CARNAHAN, the Vermont Historical Society librarian, said the architect designed for “the movers and shakers of Barre and, to a lesser extent, Montpelier — people in granite and business.” McKnight’s more modern projects include the 1974 Capitol Stationers on Main Street and the 1980 North Barre Manor, a 120-unit HUD-funded high-rise with an innovative, non-orthogonal floor plan. But the most modern of McKnight’s projects was the Barre house and detached office he designed for himself, with Chatot, in 1981. Its two flat-roofed pavilions are joined by an elevated domed walkway and reached via a small bridge over a stream that McKnight redirected to form a trout pond. (He loved fishing and hunting.) The interior features beautiful built-ins, mirrors covering selected walls and the heavy dining table that McKnight designed with chrome-plated tubular legs that match a chrome support pole nearby. In pristine condition, the house went on the market in 2019. Broker MICHAEL CALCAGNI, a McKnight enthusiast whose father was friends with the architect, said he had “17 showings in a week,” offers from several architects and a winning bid that went “way over the asking price.” When Calcagni gave Colman a special showing, the broker mentioned drawings

stored in the house and office flat files, prompting the historian to arrange their transfer. McKnight’s other house designs aren’t nearly as Bauhausian; many are traditional colonials and capes. “I don’t think all of his clients necessarily appreciated his modernist bent,” Carnahan commented. Clients NANCY and BOB POPE wanted a two-story colonial, but McKnight “pushed us a little down the modernist path,” Bob said. Their residence is a 1990 contemporary structure with a slotwindowed cylinder on the façade that houses the stairs. The Popes made only one change to the design: childproofing a second-story overlook to the dining room below. McKnight, who never had children, insisted that keeping the children away was simply “a matter of discipline,” Nancy recalled. Colman noted that drawings like McKnight’s and Beaudin’s are increasingly rare. The papers of discontinued solo practices typically end up in the dumpster, and most architects have moved to digital renderings. Drawings, though, Colman said, show “the evolution of a design. You see inside the brain of the architect.” Those of Beaudin and McKnight, he added, are “a document of not only their careers but of architecture and design in Vermont and New England at a specific time: what they’re reading and seeing and how that shows up in the Vermont landscape.” m

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INFO The Donald McKnight papers can be viewed by appointment at the Vermont Historical Society, 60 Washington St., Barre, 479-8500. vermonthistory.org

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SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 9-16, 2020

12/7/20 3:10 PM

arts news

Banner Days

An outdoor art installation celebrates famous people from Middlebury’s past ARTWORK COURTESY OF DOUG LAZARUS

B Y DA N BOL L ES • dan@sevendaysvt.com

ART

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 9-16, 2020

COURTESY OF KATHERINE LAZARUS

f you stroll through College Park in Middlebury between now and the end of the year, you’ll meet some impressive figures from the college town’s past, including farm equipment icon John Deere, America’s first Black college graduate Alexander Twilight and former Vermont governor JIM DOUGLAS. Or rather, you’ll encounter lifelike portraits of those people — unless you bump into the real Douglas, who still lives in Middlebury. The seven 4-by-6-foot vinyl banners compose an installation by Middlebury painter DOUG LAZARUS called “Middlebury’s Own: Celebrating Seven Remarkable Individuals” — famous men and women with strong connections to the town. In addition to the aforementioned trio, the collection includes paintings of Emma Willard, who founded a girls’ school in Middlebury that eventually became the Emma Willard School in Troy, N.Y.; philanthropist Joseph Battell, who donated the 30,000 acres of land that led to the creation of the Green Mountain National Forest; Lillian Stroebe, who developed the immersion method of foreign-language learning and founded the German School at Middlebury College; and Martin H. Freeman, who became the first Black president of an American college.

Doug Lazarus

Lazarus conceived of “Getting an idea is the the project while walking in easy part,” Lazarus said. Middlebury in winter 2019, “After that, you’re up when its downtown was in against real life.” the midst of a disruptive Initially, that meant construction project. running the approval “It was so disheveled, gauntlet of a town selectD O UG L AZAR US and it was so bleak. I board. Middlebury’s was thought it would be nice to have something intrigued by Lazarus’ idea, he said, but upbeat,” he recalled. As he wandered, there were concerns about the scale of the Lazarus, who owned Middlebury’s Great project, violating Vermont’s billboard law Falls Gallery until it closed in 2009, began to and distracting drivers. imagine banners depicting famous residents “Everyone had something else that was adorning the buildings. He went to work. of concern,” Lazarus said. Still, he stuck

THERE WAS A LOT OF

ARTISTIC INVENTION ON MY PART.

with the idea until it was approved for installation in College Park. Then he set about fundraising, lining up sponsors that include Middlebury College, National Life of Vermont and college trustee emeritus WILL JACKSON. But real life struck again. “The funding showed up, and so did COVID,” Lazarus recalled. He was “about 98 percent” funded in March 2020. After that, “nobody wanted to talk about money,” he said, so “I went ahead with what I had.” He decided that the initial motivation for his project — finding inspiration amid chaos — was even more apropos. “It occurred to me that COVID is such a negative reality. Promoting heroic individuals that came out of Middlebury would be perfect,” Lazarus said. “Middlebury’s Own” was supposed to go up in September, but pandemic-related delays kept it from being unveiled until November. Lazarus’ favorite portrait is of Freeman, the 1849 Middlebury College graduate who became president of Allegheny College in Pennsylvania in 1850. With his hands placed behind his back, Freeman is tall and serious looking, but the pose is a Lazarus invention. “There was no picture like that,” conceded the artist, who had only headshots of Freeman to work from. So he found a picture of a Victorian-era man with his hands behind his back and put Freeman’s head on him, then added a top hat in Freeman’s hands as a stately flourish. “They all went like that,” Lazarus said of the portraits. “There was a lot of artistic invention on my part.” College officials gave Lazarus input on whom to feature, but ultimately he chose the subjects himself based on their achievements. He hopes to add a few more figures the next time the installation goes on display. Those will likely include recordbreaking Middlebury College swimmer Heidi George and another person whose absence is rather glaring, considering his place in Middlebury history: Robert Frost. “Who’s he, right?” Lazarus joked.

INFO “Middlebury’s Own: Celebrating Seven Remarkable Individuals” by Doug Lazarus, on view through December 31 at College Park in Middlebury. For more information, contact the artist at douglazarus@gmail.com.

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AO Glass Pop-Up Store Order at aoglass.com and pick up locally.

arts news COURTESY OF JON PORTMAN

(By appointment, with mask.)

Hand blown glasses, snowmen, ornaments & more. Pop-Up Open: Saturday 10-2 400 Pine St. (At ArtsRiot)

Still from "Malady of Mine"

FILM

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Award-Winning Animation Was Burlington Born When designer Jon Portman got inspired to make a short animated film, in 2018, he didn’t have to look far for collaborators. A 2013 Middlebury College graduate and cofounder of Oxbow Creative, Portman was among the first tenants of Burlington’s KARMA BIRD HOUSE, the Maple Street office, gallery and café space opened in 2013 by MICHAEL and GIOVANNA JAGER of JDK (now SOLIDARITY OF UNBRIDLED LABOUR). “It’s just this really cool breeding ground for talent,” Portman said by phone from San Francisco, where he currently lives. Among the fellow Karma Bird House inmates he enlisted for his project were animators JAMES KOWALSKI and Devin Renca and visual artist CHARLIE HUDSON,who provided some of the artwork seen in the film. Many “worked at low rates or donated time” to the self-funded project, Portman said. Fast-forward to 2020. Portman’s film, “Malady of Mine,” has made the rounds of festivals, virtual and in-person, from Santa Fe, N.M., to Prague. It screened at Animaze: Montréal International Animation Film Festival and received the Best Animation Short award at Los Angeles’ IndieX Film Fest. The 10-minute film has no dialogue. But the painterly visuals — a combination of oil painting and digital illustration, Portman said — join forces with the moody score by Canadian composer Sean William to tell a haunting story. A young artist named Javi lives in a vibrant rural landscape with his partner, a

high-powered lawyer who’s often absent for her work. As he goes about his daily tasks, Javi experiences a strange “malady” represented by a swirl of colors in his chest — now on the left side, now on the right. This visual analogue of his illness resembles the paintings he’s creating for a show, and Javi begins linking pain to creativity — with unsettling results. Portman, who wrote the film with ROB COLE and directed it, described it as a “cautionary tale” riffing on the “myth of the troubled artist. There’s a lot of truth to that narrative,” he said of the notion that angst births art, “but it’s also a dangerous narrative to believe and participate in.” “Malady of Mine” explores what happens “when you take that concept to the extreme.” When Portman made “Malady of Mine,” he was looking for a creative break from the sometimes “soul-sucking” world of marketing, he said. He hoped to take the “next step” into working in film. Portman is now doing just that in the Bay Area, where he moved for his fiancée’s pediatric residency. But he said he hopes the couple can return to Vermont, where he still owns a house and where his sisters, ABBY and EMILY PORTMAN, recently opened Poppy Café & Market in Burlington’s Old North End. Portman has fond memories of the creative community at Karma Bird House, which gets a nod in the film (Javi drinks “Birdhouse Ale”). The Jagers, he said, “have created something really special there. I owe a lot to what they’ve built.” MA RG O T H A RRI S O N

INFO

Learn more at jonportman.com; “Malady of Mine” can be streamed for free there or on Vimeo.

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ART

Field of Dreams

PAM EL A PO LS TO N

INFO Pick up a calendar at the Jericho Center Country Store or email jendudleygaillard@ gmail.com. Learn more about Friends of Wheeler Field at wheelerfield.org.

COURTESY OF JEN DUDLEY-GAILLARD

It’s not quite “The Men of Maple Corner” calendar — the famous fundraising venture that showcased some coyly nude Calais fellas and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars back in the early aughts. But “Our Semi-Neked Friends of Wheeler Field 2021 Calendar” took its inspiration from that national sensation, JEN DUDLEY-GAILLARD readily admitted. The West Bolton resident photographed intrepid — if more modest — townspeople for 11 of the months in the new calendar. For the 12th, her husband, ROB RICKETSON, captured her partially concealed behind garments on a clothesline. The calendar was created to generate funds for the Friends of Wheeler Field in West Bolton, a hamlet of Bolton whose name recognition for most locals might come from the nearby golf course. West Bolton doesn’t have a post office, a church or even a general store. But it does have a popular recreation field named for longtime residents. The property serves as a veritable town green, used for everything from ball games to bake sales, Dudley-Gaillard said. The “Friends” would like to buy it. JEFF BROWN, a descendant of the Wheelers, owns the field, as well as the West Bolton Golf Club. According to DudleyGaillard, Brown supports the Friends’ effort

to purchase the two-parcel property. So does CHUCK REISS, founder of Reiss Building & Renovation of Richmond, who is currently building net-zero homes on adjacent land also called Wheeler Field. If the Friends can’t raise sufficient funding to purchase their target property by December 2021, he’s likely to buy it and build more homes there. It may seem unusual for a developer to root for a small nonprofit that is effectively a competitor, but Dudley-Gaillard said both Brown and Reiss “would love to see the space maintained as a community [property].” That vow is reiterated on the project website Vermont Building Resources, which describes Reiss’ sustainable-housing mission. The Friends have a year to raise $125,000 for one parcel; the other will probably be assessed at the same amount, Dudley-Gaillard said. Meantime, the group hopes a lot of people buy the “semi-neked” calendar — for $20 plus $5 shipping — as one more step toward their goal. “We’ve sold 115 [calendars] as of last night,” Dudley-Gaillard said on Monday.

Tina Bucklin on the February page of “Our Semi-Neked Friends of Wheeler Field 2021 Calendar”

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SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 9-16, 2020

11/12/20 8:02 AM

WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT BY KEN PICARD

Why Did the U.S. Government Change Its Naturalization Test?

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 9-16, 2020

ost weeks, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot seeks to answer questions that befuddle or pique the curiosity of our readers and staff, such as: “Why are there suddenly so many rabbits around?” “What’s that golf ball-shaped dome overlooking St. Albans?” and “Why can’t Vermonters be composted when they die?” Other times, the column highlights outrageous, absurd or inexplicable observations. This week’s column falls into the last category. On December 1, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services changed the naturalization test it administers to foreignborn individuals who are applying for U.S. citizenship. The oral exam has two parts — English and civics — and only the civics portion was changed. But immigrant rights groups have expressed concerns about the revisions, including their timing, which were announced only weeks before taking effect. Here’s how it works: For the old test, applicants prepared for 100 possible questions, from which an examiner would choose 10 for them to answer. An applicant had to answer six correctly in order to pass. In fact, once the person answered six correctly, the test was over. With the new test, applicants must prepare for 128 questions, from which they’re asked 20. Test takers must still get 60 percent, or 12 answers, right. But, inexplicably, even if the applicant gets 12 correct, the examiner still asks all 20. Why? To earn extra credit? In its November announcement, USCIS officials explained that the test would be changed to ensure that new citizens have a more comprehensive understanding of the American system of governance. But some immigration advocates contend that the changes were done to make the test harder to pass, part of the Trump administration’s broader efforts to stanch the flow of legal immigration. Clearly, some questions are harder. For instance, applicants must now be able to name five of the original 13 states — previously, it was three — and the old test asked people to identify just one of the three branches of government; now they must identify all three. Incoming U.S. senatorelect Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) botched that one recently when he identified the three branches as “the House, the Senate and the executive.” Leslie Holman, an immigration lawyer

with the Burlington firm Holman Immigration Law and a past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said that some of the changes on the test seem politically or ideologically motivated. Among them is this question: “Who does a U.S. senator represent?” On the old test, the correct answer was “all people of their state.” On the new test, however, the correct answer is “all citizens of their state.” “That’s a very nuanced change,” said Holman, noting that if an applicant says, “all people,” the examiner will mark it wrong. This change, she said, reflects the Trump administration’s controversial efforts to exclude noncitizens from the 2020 U.S. Census count. Other questions seem aimed at whitewashing American history rather than evaluating applicants’ civic knowledge. Michele Jenness is legal services coordinator for the AALV. The Burlington nonprofit, which serves refugees and new

immigrants to Vermont, assisted on 223 naturalization applications in 2019. Jenness said she found several of the changes objectionable, including this new question: “When did all men get the right to vote?” The only acceptable answers are: “After the Civil War,” “During Reconstruction,” “(With the) 15th Amendment” or “1870.” But, as Jenness pointed out, those answers are not only disingenuous but historically inaccurate. Never mind that the question excludes women, who didn’t win the right to vote until 1920. The acceptable answers also ignore Native Americans, who were officially granted U.S. citizenship in 1924 but who didn’t secure their right to vote in all 50 states until the 1960s. Also overlooked is the Jim Crow era of poll taxes, literacy tests and other acts of voter suppression, which, some argue, continue to deny people of color their voting rights today. Jenness said that, for many of her clients, some of whom fled war-torn

countries, these changes are stressful. Some of her clients raced to file their applications before the December 1 deadline lest they face the more difficult exam. “People are getting very nervous, [asking] ‘What more do I have to learn?’” Jenness said. “It’s just making it much more difficult to become a citizen.” “Just another brick in the wall,” added Holman. She described the revised test as emblematic of an administration that, for four years, has tried to rewrite immigration laws through “executive orders and tweets” rather than through conventional rulemaking processes. “We’ve had [new] rules that have gone into effect the following day, so we’ve been living in lawsuits,” she said. “It’s nuts!” As USCIS Deputy Director for Policy Joseph Edlow explained in a November 13 press release about the new test, “Naturalization allows immigrants to become fully vested members of American society, with the same rights and responsibilities as citizens by birth…” By now, though, it’s clear that many “citizens by birth” couldn’t pass their own country’s citizenship exam. Jay Leno, former host of NBC’s “The Tonight Show,” regularly quizzed American citizens on these same questions and invariably revealed their head-slapping ignorance. Leno wasn’t the only one. In 2018, a survey of 1,000 Americans, commissioned by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, found that only one in three could pass the U.S. citizenship test, even if given as a multiple-choice exam. Among its more disturbing findings: Fifty-seven percent didn’t know how many justices serve on the U.S. Supreme Court; 60 percent didn’t know which countries the U.S. fought in World War II; and only 24 percent could say why the colonists fought the British. The majority of Americans surveyed knew what led to the Cold War, but 2 percent said “climate change,” which, even Leno would surely admit, is pretty funny. m A 20-question quiz based on the updated test is part of the new Good Citizen Challenge. Find a scorecard in the middle of the December/January Kids VT, inserted into this week’s Seven Days.

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Essential Soldiers Virus response showcases the versatility of the Vermont National Guard B Y K E V I N MCCAL L UM • kevin@sevendaysvt.com

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week after the coronavirus pandemic prompted Gov. Phil Scott to declare a state of emergency in late March, Lisa Kromer of Essex got an unexpected phone call. The 30-year-old special education teacher had been a part-time combat medic in the Vermont Army National Guard for seven years, but she’d yet to put her skills to the test. Now she was being asked to treat patients in a makeshift field hospital should the University of Vermont Medical Center be overrun with cases of the deadly virus. She didn’t hesitate. Kromer was one of the first of the 3,200-member-strong Vermont National Guard to volunteer for active duty in the state’s pandemic response. Eight months later, she’s still on the front lines. “This is probably the most important thing I’ve ever been called to do for the Guard,” Kromer said from the Winooski COVID-19 testing site she helped manage last month. Flying F-35 Lightning II jets is the Vermont Guard’s highest-profile mission. The next-generation fighter-bombers based at Burlington International Airport are a source of intense pride for the Guard but have prompted equally intense criticism from some in Chittenden County for the deafening roar they inflict on residential areas. But this year, the Guard’s boots-on-the-ground effort to combat an invisible enemy took center stage. The part-time soldiers’ multifaceted response has been on a scale not seen since the devastating floods of Tropical Storm Irene in 2011, when Guard members air-dropped supplies to inaccessible communities, moved mountains of debris, and rebuilt bridges and roads. COVID-19 has caused a very different kind of crisis, slower moving but more devastating, touching every corner of Vermont. From the Guard, the pandemic has demanded a greater variety of skills and responses. From many of its soldiers, it has required a longer, more personally disruptive commitment to helping Vermonters meet an emergency with no predictable end date. In March, when it appeared that hospitals might not be able to handle a surge of COVID-19 cases, Guard members built several temporary field hospitals, and the Guard’s medical specialists prepared to

BEAR CIERI

Guard members building a medical facility at the Champlain Valley Exposition in Essex Junction

staff them. When job losses struck and food insecurity soared, teams skilled in logistics loaded up trucks and distributed 3.2 million pounds of food around the state. Guard members established pop-up sites where thousands of Vermonters were tested for the coronavirus. They helped the state’s contact tracers call people who were potentially exposed to the virus, warning them to quarantine. And when hackers infiltrated the UVM Health Network’s computers, a sophisticated Guard geek squad, trained to combat cyberterrorism, helped the hospital system rebuild its sprawling network. These and many other tasks — often behind the scenes — have driven home for state officials just how indispensable its army of citizen soldiers can be in times of crisis. “From being a war-fighting force to providing really critical resources in a domestic response, their versatility really is unmatched,” said Erica Bornemann, director of Vermont Emergency Management. But the Guard is a finite force, and there are signs it may be getting stretched thin. So far, its leaders have not had to compel any part-time soldiers to serve in pandemic-related assignments. Every time

a call for volunteers has gone out, enough reservists have agreed to put their civilian jobs on hold and report for duty. Nearly nine months into the emergency, though, the number of volunteers is dwindling, raising the prospect of mandatory call-ups. Further, more than 1,000 Vermont Guard members — 950 soldiers and 85 Air National Guard members — are getting ready to deploy overseas in the coming months. That could come at a crucial time in the pandemic recovery, when the Guard’s help may be needed for mass distribution of vaccines. Guard leaders express optimism that their remaining force will be robust enough to respond to any foreseeable local need. Nearly 2,200 reservists will remain in Vermont as their fellow Guard members serve in Europe, Africa and Central Asia. But leaders acknowledge that the pandemic’s unpredictable nature — as evident in the recent spike in infections and fears that holiday travel may deepen the crisis — makes the pandemic response the Guard’s greatest challenge yet. “With Irene, you knew what you were going to rebuild,” said the Guard’s leader, Adj. Gen. Greg Knight. “You knew where your focus had to be. This one is different.”

NOT TRAINED IN VAIN

The Guard excels at responding to domestic emergencies because its soldiers are well prepared for foreseeable threats and skilled at figuring out the unforeseeable ones, said Maj. Joe Phelan, commander of an Army Guard combat medical unit. “One of the reasons we are so successful in these types of scenarios is because we are familiar with and train for operating in the unknown,” Phelan said from the Army National Guard Armory in Winooski shortly before Thanksgiving. The drab brick building in a quiet residential neighborhood had been transformed into a free COVID-19 testing station, one of two the Guard was operating in the state that day. As Phelan spoke, people waited in line for the tests. Guard members wearing masks, face shields and protective blue gowns over their fatigues entered arrivals’ information into laptops. Others on the team carefully inserted cotton swabs into people’s noses and prepared the samples for shipment to a lab. Since May, Task Force Coyote — two teams of about 15 members each — has operated pop-ups in 25 locations and collected more than 30,000 samples.

All team members have some medical training; the combat medical company to which most are assigned has a core wartime mission to treat ill or wounded soldiers in the field. Last year, many headed to Louisiana for training that included learning how to operate in contaminated environments, Phelan said. Such skills, including scrupulous donning of personal protective gear, have proven highly useful in their current assignment. Nevertheless, the length of the emergency has created significant challenges, Phelan said. Many Guard members never anticipated being on the front lines of a global pandemic, which takes a personal toll. “No, you’re not getting shot at, but you are getting exposed to COVID-19 every single day,” Phelan said. “This is foreign territory for all of us.” Some Guard members have found it difficult to serve because their children are attending school online, from home. Others are stressed out about the health of vulnerable family members. “A lot of these soldiers don’t want to go home at night,” Phelan said. “They stay in barracks because they don’t want to put their families at risk.” More than a dozen soldiers are living at Camp Johnson, the Guard’s Colchester headquarters, because of such concerns or because they can’t easily commute. Kromer is among them. She’s been living in the barracks for months because she hasn’t wanted to infect her boyfriend, a physician who lives in Essex, or drive back and forth to her mother’s home in upstate New York. She’s even had to leave her labradoodle, Atlas, with her mother during the pandemic. The switch to remote learning made the special ed teacher’s work with autistic teens impossible, so stepping away from her day job was not a hurdle. But other Guard members have struggled to balance their civilian jobs with their military service. Darwin Carozza, a 22-year-old Norwich University graduate from Merrimack, N.H., said he felt conflicted about temporarily leaving his job at an investment firm in September to help with the testing effort. A commitment of one month has turned into three and a half, but his employer is supportive. “The whole idea of the Guard is, you have these citizens who do military training and, when the time comes, we put down our pitchforks and come in from the fields and we serve the country when we need to,” Carozza said. “I love that.” With roots dating back to colonial militias, the Vermont Guard is a hybrid ESSENTIAL SOLDIERS SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 9-16, 2020

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fighting force composed of dozens of individual units. It has facilities such as armories and firing ranges in 26 communities around the state and is constructing a $27 million Army Mountain Warfare School in Jericho. The Green Mountain Boys, as the Guard members are known, conduct missions that include flying fighter jets and helicopters and fighting in mountainous terrain. Of the Guard’s 3,200-strong force, about 900 are full-time “active Guard,” including high-ranking officers and Air Guard members with specialized roles, such as F-35 pilots and ground crews. The majority are part-time reservists, so-called citizen soldiers, who commit to training one weekend a month and two weeks a year, as well as whenever they are ordered to active duty. The Pentagon might send them overseas, as it did when 1,500 Army Guard soldiers headed to Afghanistan in 2010. Or the governor can activate the Guard for domestic emergencies, such as Tropical Storm Irene. The Guard has 700 fewer members today than when its ranks peaked at 3,900 in 2001. When campaigning for the job of adjutant general in 2019 — state legislators elect the Guard’s commander — Knight stressed to lawmakers the need

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to improve recruitment and retention. Just last week, he and Vermont Education Secretary Dan French held an online, town hall-style event to highlight the Guard’s educational opportunities. “We’d like to have more people available,” Knight told Seven Days. With so many Guard members working in civilian jobs, recruiting volunteers can

the state experienced one of the lowest rates of infection in the nation. Since the Guard responded to the recent cyberattack on the UVM Health Network and bolstered the state’s contact-tracing ranks, that number has bumped back up to 114. A total of about 400 Guard members have been called to active duty at some point during the pandemic.

You’re not getting shot at, but you are getting exposed to COVID-19 every single day. M A J . J O E P H EL A N

be difficult. The Guard has the authority to require that members report for duty; when it does, by law civilian employers must allow them to go and to return to the same position. “We are getting a little bit tight in terms of how many people are able to assist on a volunteer basis without taking them away from their normal jobs,” Bornemann said. The number of reservists who volunteered for in-state assignments peaked in late April at 268, as the Guard raced to set up temporary surge sites. That number dropped over the summer to about 60 as

That response to date has cost about $8 million, according to the Guard. The federal government picked up 100 percent of the tab through August. Since then, the state has been responsible for 25 percent of the cost but has drawn the money from its $1.25 billion federal pandemic CARES Act grant. While the Guard has a “deep bench,” Phelan, the combat medical unit commander, said keeping the pop-up test sites fully staffed has required a regular rotation of new Guard members to replace those who need to get back to their civilian lives.

THE CAVALRY

Days after a cyberattack in late October crippled the UVM Health Network’s computer systems, Al Gobeille, executive vice president of operations at UVM Medical Center, was feeling frazzled. Gobeille, who formerly served as Gov. Scott’s secretary of human services, was at the end of his third consecutive 20-hour workday, and the network’s medical records system remained down. Appointments and procedures had been delayed or canceled. Thousands of computers and devices were infected with malware,

BEAR CIERI

A 33-year-old UVM biology major whose deployment to Afghanistan in 2010 led to a full-time job in the Guard, Phelan said he marvels at the selflessness Guard members show daily. Members of testing teams who were unable to return home spent the Thanksgiving holiday together to make the best of it. “I admire them, and I’m grateful for them,” Phelan said. Their diverse skills were evident at the Champlain Valley Exposition grounds in Essex Junction last month. About 35 members were rebuilding a makeshift 250-bed overflow hospital after having dismantled it over the summer when it looked like it wouldn’t be needed. With cases on the rise and an uncertain winter ahead, Guard members in all manner of civilian professions, from plumbers to surgeons, reassembled the structure in days. As Fred Bartle of South Hero, a software developer in civilian life, installed a junction box on a plywood wall, he said he wasn’t going to waste his breath complaining about having to rebuild the facility. “Despite how I feel about doing it again, it’s just as important as the first time,” Bartle said. “I’d much rather have it and not use it at all.” A 40-year-old father of two who plays the trumpet in the Guard band, Bartle is part of a team known as a quick reaction force that is ready to deploy anywhere in the state in a matter of hours. Knight refers to the team as his “Swiss Army knife” because of the wide variety of skills its members possess. They have private-sector experience in medicine, construction, trades and technology. There’s always a tension between serving one’s community and one’s employer, and Bartle said he feels that intensely. He goes home at night to his wife and daughters and works on software projects with looming deadlines. “I think my boss would rather I didn’t do this, but he doesn’t have much choice,” Bartle said.

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Shop Live With Us and the prospects of quickly restoring the system were bleak. “It was a rough time,” Gobeille recalled. Then he got a call from a top Guard official who explained how a team trained in combating cyberterrorism might be able to help. “To have someone call and say, ‘Hey, I’ve got folks that I can send that can help you’ — it was a pretty good moment,” Gobeille said. Some hospital officials initially expressed skepticism that the 10-member Guard unit could contribute much to the network’s information technology team of more than a hundred people, Gobeille said. After learning of the unit’s capabilities, however, UVM officials realized the asset they had at their disposal. “Everyone I talked to that has never had anything to do with the Guard was like, ‘They have a cyberterrorism team?’” said Gobeille, who served as a Guard ordnance officer himself decades ago. Its members have years of training in fortifying computer networks against hackers. Just weeks before the breach, the team participated in Cyber Shield 2020, an exercise designed to sharpen their defenses against cyberattacks, said Col. Chris Evans, the Guard’s IT director. Despite this training, the team had never been called up to deal with an actual cyberattack in Vermont. “After a while, you get a little discouraged and you’re saying, ‘God, are we ever going to be able to go in and help out?’” Evans said. Officials have been tight-lipped about the origin and nature of the October 28 attack, citing an ongoing Federal Bureau of Investigation probe. But the federal Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency ESSENTIAL SOLDIERS

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had been warning health care organizations of an increased threat of ransomware attacks in which cybercriminals take a network hostage and demand payment. The attacks were initiated through phishing — or fake email campaigns — with links to malicious websites that, when clicked, infect and disrupt a network. Despite “champing at the bit” to help fight the hackers, Guard members had to first fight red tape. “We didn’t have building passes, so at first we couldn’t even access the different facilities,” Evans said. “A lot of those little things hung us up at first.” Once they were in the buildings and IT managers understood their skills, the Guard helped in myriad ways, including

helping scan the network’s more than 8,000 linked devices and rebuilding infected servers. Ultimately, about 5,000 devices turned out to be infected, Gobeille said. The mission, which lasted about a month, was considered separate from the pandemic response, though it helped restore essential services at the region’s largest hospital as COVID-19 cases increased. It drove home to Evans the importance of building relationships with organizations responsible for critical infrastructure before a crisis hits. “Every exercise, every mission, makes us stronger, and this definitely falls in that category,” Evans said.

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ferrojewelers.com/stowe â&#x20AC;˘ stowe@ferrojewelers.com deployment. Burlington City Councilor Jack Hanson (P-East District) also said heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d like to see12V-BrilliantMassage120920.indd 1 12/8/20GG12v-ferro112520.indd 5:04 PM 1 11/18/20 4:36 PM the Guard â&#x20AC;&#x153;double downâ&#x20AC;? on its pandemic response. The contrast between what he views as the wastefulness of the F-35 training flights and the beneficial work of the Guardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pandemic response is stark, he said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;They are doing great work, but clearly the problem of Vermonters struggling during this pandemic isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t solved,â&#x20AC;? Hanson said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;There is no way you can tell me that doing more of that critical work wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be beneficial to our community.â&#x20AC;? Tension between the federal and state missions is nothing new. Even as U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) showered the Guard op u shop and sh with praise for its response to Tropical Party while yo ty... at home. their Storm Irene, he called it â&#x20AC;&#x153;regrettableâ&#x20AC;? that while you par â&#x20AC;˘ Gift cards to urants so many of the Guardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Black Hawk helifavorite resta copters, which would have proven useful, from our were in Iraq at the time. â&#x20AC;˘ Special gifts AY stores After Irene, the Vermont Guard had unique retail TUAL HOLID 20 IR V 0 le 2 P help from units in other states. That hasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t oďŹ&#x20AC;ee, bott POP UP SHO â&#x20AC;˘ Pound of c et e sw happened this time, since every part of f o x o b s and makers of wine or siness Featuring local artisan u b the country is coping with the COVID-19 l a c lo a ts and oďŹ&#x20AC;ers treats from pandemic. Special discoun f spices ber 1-13 â&#x20AC;&#x153;In the time of COVID, no governor â&#x20AC;˘ Selection o nline Decem opup2020 o rocers n g e y p lt ia O c e wants to give up their medical expertise, sp from inooski.org/p DowntownW so what we have is what we have,â&#x20AC;? said Lt. ices rv se r fo te a cal pick up â&#x20AC;˘ CertiďŹ c Col. Randy Gates, the Guardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s director of shipping or lo spa se r o o n ho C lo sa l a at a loc military support. However, the total number of Guard members available for domestic assignment NOW MORE THAN EVER, WHERE YOU SHOP MATTERS. can be misleading, Gates said: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve got SUPPORT YOUR WINOOSKI FAVORITES THIS HOLIDAY SEASON. people on rosters, but that doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t necessarily mean that theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re the best match for a particular mission.â&#x20AC;? Knight advised the governor earlier this year that the Guard could still perform both its federal mission to fly the F-35s and its state mission to help with the pandemic. Scott agreed and declined to stop the flights. The Guardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ability to fight on multiple fronts is what makes it so valuable, but its primary mission will always be to serve Vermonters, Knight said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We were built for this.â&#x20AC;? m

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SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 9-16, 2020

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he signs start appearing along Route 7 just outside Vergennes about a week before Thanksgiving. They’re crudely made and kind of cryptic. “Trees!” reads one made of cardboard, with an arrow hand-drawn in black marker pointing left as you head south. Another, pointing south and visible from the northbound lane as you travel from New Haven, tests the limits of Vermont’s anti-billboard laws. A large sheet of weathered plywood assures travelers with a spray-painted message: “Yes I will be open the day after Thanksgiving!” For folks in this part of Addison County, these primitive placards are welcome signs of the holiday season. They mean that Pete’s Pines and Needles Tree Farm is open again, bringing with it a unique Christmas tree-buying experience. (Where else can you buy a Christmas tree with a root ball so you can plant it after the holiday?) When you pull into the driveway from Plank Road in Waltham, Pete’s Pines and Needles initially resembles the Island of Misfit Toys more than a winter wonderland. Beyond the narrow, muddy parking area, along the way to the choose-and-cut trees, sit the crumbling remnants of a horse-drawn sleigh. An army of old, faded Christmas decorations leans against a ramshackle warming hut. Beyond that, strings of ancient Christmas lights climb to the top of a rickety pole some 20 feet above rows of precut trees, each of which rests in a water-filled plastic jug. In the middle of this scene, decked in red and holding court with an electric chain saw and a big ball of twine, is the man himself. “Christmas in Vergennes is never complete without the annual pilgrimage to see Pete,” Vergennes resident Doug Hartwell wrote in an email. “Pete” is owner Pete Guendel. For regulars, he’s as much of an attraction as his trees or the free homemade ornaments he gives out with each one. “Some people call me ‘Pine Needle Pete,’” Guendel, 60, revealed on a recent Thursday afternoon at his tree farm. That’s not his only nickname. Hartwell and his daughter, Bella, who have been getting their Christmas trees at Pete’s for a decade, affectionately refer to him as “Crazy Pete the Christmas Tree Guy.” “Everybody knows me, but I don’t know everybody,” Guendel said with a chuckle.

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‘PINE NEEDLE PETE.’ P ET E G U EN D EL

It’s not clear that’s true. On the two occasions this reporter visited Pete’s lot last week — including once to buy a tree — Guendel seemed to know most of his customers by name, chatting as he loaded trees onto their cars and tied them down. Those he didn’t know, he joked with as though he did. Pine Needle Pete is a whirling force of personality. “Pete definitely leaves an impression,” Lori Towle of Vergennes said. She became a regular two years ago, when her daughter demanded she buy a real tree instead of putting up a fake one. Towle was about to buy a tree at a hardware store when she remembered seeing Pete’s signs on Route 7. “I thought we should go for the experience,” Towle said. She chatted up Guendel about his love of old Volkswagens and came away with an experience, a tree and a tree stand. “We didn’t have one, so he gave one to us,” Towle said. Hartwell reported having a similar experience 10 years ago. “The first year I confided in him that we didn’t have a stand yet, he gave us one,” he wrote, “along with extra branches to make a wreath.” Guendel has been a holiday fixture in the area for 25 years. In 1987, he bought 13

acres on Plank Road, across from Woodman Hill Orchard, for $17,000. “Before I even started building my home, I started planting Christmas trees,” he recalled. He’s been selling those trees since 1995, with help from his partner, Fran O’Connell, on the weekends. “Without her, it wouldn’t be a success,” Guendel said. Owning a Christmas tree farm was a childhood dream, Guendel said. But actually growing the trees involved some trial and error for the self-taught tree farmer. Early on, he joined a couple of Christmas tree associations in Vermont and asked members for advice. “But it was more like a powwow drinkin’ session than an informational session,” Guendel said. Helpful tips from local competitors were hard to come by, so he joined an association in New Hampshire. “When they realized I was 100 miles away, they were like my best friends,” Guendel said. “They’d tell you everything you did wrong and how to do it right. It was a really cool thing.” Guendel’s choose-and-cut trees tend not to be as manicured as those at other farms, which both is and isn’t by design. He admitted he should probably shear his trees more often, but not doing so serves

a devoted clientele who prefer their trees more natural — including, he said, a handful of buyers who light their trees with candles. “We loved Pete’s trees since they were more natural-looking than trees you would find at other places,” Rodney Olsen of Vergennes wrote in an email. He was a Pete’s regular until he bought forested land from which he can harvest his own trees. “Since we like trees that you can easily hang an ornament on, rather than others that are too thick and fake/unnatural looking,” Olsen added, “Pete’s was the place to go.” He has another reason to admire Guendel. Some years ago, Olsen was teaching students at the Hannaford Career Center in Middlebury about migratory birds of prey; they operated an owl-banding station on Snake Mountain. “The kids wanted to enhance the forest surrounding our banding station so that migrating birds would have a place to roost,” Olsen wrote. “The owls prefer pine trees, so off we went to Pete’s.” Guendel offered a dozen trees for the project. “Not only that, he made a day of it,” Olsen recalled. “He provided shovels for the kids, a tractor to haul them, and he

E AV

VI DA

Will Werner at Werner Tree Farm

SPRUCED UP: TREE SALES SOAR IN VERMONT

See What’S PoSSible

If you’re one of those wait-untilChristmas Eve tree buyers, you might want to rethink that strategy this year — unless a Charlie Brown tree is your thing. Christmas tree farms and lots around the state are reporting a dramatic early-season surge in sales in 2020, and inventory is already running low. “It’s been a bit crazy,” said Amanda Werner of Werner Tree Farm in Middlebury. By December 3, that farm had completely sold out Spring 2021 courses have been published and of choose-and-cut trees; it’s currently selling only precut registration opens November 30th. Choose from trees. Several other tree farms in the area have closed or limited hundreds of options, available on campus, online, access to their choose-and-cut fields. Some, such as Meadow Ridge Farm, have closed and in hybrid format and use this time as an altogether. The Middlesex tree farm ended its season on December 5 after selling out of Head to UVM this summer and achieve something that’s important to opportunity to earn credits toward your degree, career both choose-and-cut and precut trees. you. Want to master a new skill? Study project management or digital advancement, or take a course just for fun. Explore While it’s not unusual for Werner Tree Farm to close its choose-and-cut fields, doing so a week after Thanksgiving is unprecedented, Werner said. courses about what’s marketing. Need to scratch a creativenow itch?and Take astart class indaydreaming photography “And we’re quite sad about it,” she added. “It’s hard telling people they can’t go cut their possible in 2021. or creative writing – they’re open to anyone. Whatever you want to own tree when they’ve done it with us for 25 years. accomplish, UVM is the place to go. “Some of that is [due to] more people than normal cutting their own trees, and some of it Spring courses start February 1, 2021 is that a lot of people are decorating early,” Werner surmised. She said that wreath sales are “way up,” suggesting that “people are decorating way more than normal.” Could Gov. Phil Scott’s “Vermont Lights the Way” initiative, aimed at getting people in the holiday spirit, be inspiring a Christmas miracle? Or maybe the pandemic-fatigued masses are just looking for anything shiny and bright to fend off the coming bleak midwinter. “People say they’re doing it because they need to do something to make themselves feel better,” Tom Paine of Paine’s Christmas Trees said. He estimates that sales at his Morristown tree farm are up 10 percent. A post on the business’ Facebook page urges shoppers to consider precut trees, as the farm’s cut-your-own stock has thinned. “A lot of people started buying early,” Paine said, though he cautioned that the early spike doesn’t necessarily indicate a bigger season overall. “A lot of it is people we see normally, but we see them later in the season,” he explained, “so it’s hard to say if the numbers will be way up.” Paine added that other tree sellers in his area haven’t opened at all this year, which has driven additional business to him. So it could be that Vermont’s $2.6 million Christmas tree industry has simply contracted to fewer sellers in a shorter time frame. Thanks to his position on the board of the Vermont Christmas Tree Association, however, Paine can corroborate reports of a nationwide run on trees. He said that the state’s wholesalers, many of whom sell out of state, are selling more trees than they can cut. “And everyone keeps calling looking for more trees,” he said. “The price of wholesale trees is way up, and next year it’s gonna be even higher.” Paine estimated that, between increased demand and swiftly rising labor costs, a six- to eight-foot Fraser fir will run about $46 to $48 wholesale in 2021, up from about $32 this year. That means buyers can expect to pay between $70 and $80 at retail next year. Merry Christmas?

In a year defined by challenges, UVM can help clear the pathway to a brighter future.

go.uvm.edu/SeewhatSpoSSible

even paid a visit to the banding station. He was generous and genuinely interested.” At his peak a few years ago, Guendel said, he was selling about 300 trees per season. Though sales have been brisk this year, he expects to sell about half that. Once he sells out, which may be soon, he’ll close for the year rather than restock precut trees. “It’ll disappoint some people,” he admitted. Guendel said he plans to keep selling trees on Plank Road for “at least one more big year,” but then he’ll replant his field, sell the business and retire. “I’m not broke, so I don’t need the money,” he said. “It’s a full-time job and part-time pay. It’s just a lot of effort and time.” But he won’t go full Grinch in his retirement. Guendel said he could envision running a smaller operation, perhaps

weekends only or by appointment, from his home on his second farm in Bridport. “I’ll probably always sell trees, because it’s in my blood,” he said. As long he does, it’s a good bet his fans will keep buying them. Like many of Pete’s customers, Vergennes’ Jory Raphael was initially lured by the hand-painted signs. “But we’ve remained loyal customers for the better part of a decade,” he wrote via email, because Guendel is so helpful. “We live in an old house with incredibly short ceilings, so getting a tree that fits is pretty key for us,” Raphael explained. “As Pete often says, ‘I can always cut the tree shorter, but I can’t make it taller.’” m

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Pete’s Pines and Needles Tree Farm is located at 226 Plank Road in Waltham. Untitled-16 1

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 9-16, 2020

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Holiday Happenings

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Vermonters make merry with these festive events CO M P IL ED BY KRI STE N RAVIN • calendar@sevendaysvt.com

HOLIDAY MUSIC FESTIVAL: To replace traditional

in-person recitals, Upper Valley Music Center in Lebanon, N.H., offers online concerts, caroling, a Messiah sing and more. Online, through Tuesday, December 15. Free. Info, 603-4481642, uvmusic.org. VIRTUAL FESTIVAL OF TREES BENEFIT AUCTION:

A CHRISTMAS CAROL:

Spirits of Christmas past, present and future visit the miserly Mr. Scrooge in online theatrical retellings of Charles Dickens’ classic tale. Presented by Vermont Stage and TBD Pictures, through Sunday, January 3. $50 per household. Info, vtstage@vtstage. org, vermontstage. org. Presented by the Valley Players, Thursday, December 17, through Saturday, December 19. Donations. Info, valleyplayers@madriver.com, valleyplayers.com. Presented by Lost Nation Theater, Friday, December 18, 7 p.m. Donations. Info, 229-0492, lostnationtheater.org.

CHRISTMAS AT THE FARM: Families celebrate

the holidays 19th-century-style with cooking demos, warm cider doughnuts and snowshoe rambles in farm fields. Billings Farm & Museum in Woodstock, select dates through Sunday, January 3, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. $4-16; free for members and kids under 3. Info, 457-2355, billingsfarm.org. WINTER TALES: Folk singers Patti Casey

and Pete Sutherland join Kathryn Blume, Marianne DiMascio and other raconteurs in Burlington-based Vermont Stage’s annual seasonal celebration of stories and songs. Online, Wednesday, December 9, through Wednesday, December 16. $25; free for kids. Info, vtstage@ vtstage.org, vermontstage.org.

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 9-16, 2020

WASSAIL WEEKEND: An authentically decorated Victorian farmhouse parlor sets a merry mood for holiday stories, candle dipping and gingerbread ornament demos. Hitch a ride on a tractor-drawn wagon between 11 a.m.-3 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Billings Farm & Museum in Woodstock, Friday, December 11, through Sunday, December 13, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. $4-16; free for members and kids under 3. Info, 457-2355, billingsfarm.org.

NATALIE MACMASTER & DONNELL LEAHY: ‘A CELTIC FAMILY CHRISTMAS AT HOME’: The First Family

Home chefs learn to make a festive meal of peas, schnitzel and rustic mashed potatoes. Online, Sunday, December 13, 3-4 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, programming@ bethjacobvt.org, bethjacobvt.org.

TAYLOR MAC: In Holiday Sauce…Pandemic!, the award-winning drag performer combines music, film, burlesque and random acts of fabulousness to reframe holiday traditions. Presented by the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. Online, Saturday, December 12, 7 p.m. Pick your price. Info, 603-646-2422, hop.dartmouth.edu.

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE: A RADIO PLAY: A guardian angel saves a hopeless man from despair in Frank Capra’s 1946 Christmas classic, reimagined as a 1940s radio broadcast. Presented by Northern Stage of White River Junction for on-demand streaming. Online, through Sunday, January 3. $13.75-23.75. Info, 296-7000, northernstage.org.

lighting enliven a statewide Zoom party put on by the Jewish Community of Greater Stowe. Online, Saturday, December 12, 7-8:30 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 253-1800, jcogs.org.

HANUKKAH COOKING CLASS WITH CHEF NADAV:

‘THE CHRISTMAS REVELS: ALL SHALL BE WELL AGAIN’: An animated short film provides an

entertaining and safe alternative to Hanover, N.H.-based Revels North’s annual live spectacular highlighting holiday customs from around the world. Online, through Saturday, January 2. $2.99-9.99. Info, info@revelsnorth.org, revelsnorth.org.

VERMONT JEWISH COMMUNITY HANUKKAH CELEBRATION: Music, performances and candle

of Celtic Music invites audience members into their home for a pretaped revamping of their annual yuletide concert. Online, presented by Chandler Center for the Arts, Saturday, December 12, 7:30 p.m. $20. Info, 728-9878, chandler-arts.org. Presented by KCP Presents, Saturday, December 12, 7 p.m. $20. Info, 7482600, catamountarts.org. Presented by the Flynn, Saturday, December 12, 8 p.m. $20. Info, 863-5966, flynnvt.org.

WASSAIL 2020: Holiday cheer warms Woodstock hearts during this annual fête adapted for COVID-19. Expect snowshoeing, shopping, Santa sightings and a virtual parade. Various Woodstock locations, Saturday, December 12, 10 a.m.-6:30 p.m. Prices vary. Info, 457-3555, woodstockvt.com.

COURTESY OF LITTLE FANG PHOTOGRAPHY

Electronics, gift certificates, home furnishings and other prizes find new owners during 12 days of bidding benefiting Rutland’s Paramount Theatre. Online, through Thursday, December 17. Free; preregister. Info, 775-0903, paramountvt.org.

COURTESY OF TBD THEATRICALS

r. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas! taught us all that the holiday spirit comes not from fancy parties and grand feasts, but from the bonds between loved ones. (What it didn’t teach us: WTF is roast beast?) This season, Vermonters are adapting to challenging circumstances and finding novel ways to share good cheer. We’ve compiled a sampling of holiday events presented by area organizations, from a drive-in menorah lighting to virtual productions of A Christmas Carol to an ugly sweater-making meetup. This list is not comprehensive; visit sevendaysvt.com for more festivities or to list your own event in our free online calendar.

MENORAH CAR PARADE: Vehicles adorned with LED window menorahs and other embellishments spread light, music and Hanukkah cheer through Queen City streets. Chabad of Vermont, Burlington, Sunday, December 13, 3:30 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, draizy@chabadvt.org. DRIVE-IN HANUKKAH CANDLE LIGHTING: Families

celebrate the Festival of Lights from the comfort of their cars. Ohavi Zedek Synagogue, Burlington, Sunday, December 13, 4:45 p.m. Free; preregister; limited space. Info, 8640218, ohavizedek.org. DAN + CLAUDIA ZANES HOLIDAY SING ALONG:

Christmas and Hanukkah classics sung in English, Hebrew and Ladino, as well as holiday songs from Korea, Tunisia and Haiti, ring out on guitar, mandolin, flute and trombone, courtesy of the Baltimore-based musical couple and Lebanon Opera House in New Hampshire. Online, Tuesday, December 15, 6 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 603-448-0400, lebanonoperahouse.org. LIVESTREAM: LATKES & THE FOODS OF HANUKKAH:

An introduction to the Jewish Festival of Lights sets the table for Richard Witting’s demonstration of fried potato pancake preparation. Offered by City Market, Onion River Co-op. Online, Thursday, December 17, 5:30-7 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 861-9700, citymarket.coop. UGLY HOLIDAY SWEATER-MAKING PARTY: The

uglier the better! Adults design ironically unattractive holiday tops. Pick up materials from Fairfax Community Library on Thursday, December 17, between 3-7 p.m. Online, Friday, December 18, 7 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, libraryfairfax@gmail.com, fairfaxvtlibrary.org.

On the Nice List Z Botanicals Luce Farm Vermont Select Phasey tretap Lizzie Post Big Picture Farm Cannabotanicals HEMPVET AroMed

SHINE A LIGHT FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE: On each of the eight nights of Hanukkah, members

of the Beth Jacob Synagogue in Montpelier community light a menorah to illuminate urgent issues such as food security and LGBTQ rights. Online, Thursday, December 10, through Thursday, December 17. Free; preregister. Info, programming@bethjacobvt.org, bethjacobvt.org.

VERMONT’S OWN (VIRTUAL) NUTCRACKER: Two

casts of Vermont Ballet Theater dancers leap and twirl across the screen in selected pieces from The Nutcracker, including “Waltz of the Flowers” and “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.” Online, Saturday, December 19, noon. Donations; preregister. Info, info@vbts.org, vbts.org. ITALIAN HOLIDAY TAKEOUT: Hearty sides ac-

company the traditional Italian New Year’s dish cotechino con lenticchie. Vegetarian and gluten-free options are available. BYO bag to this Vermont Performing Arts League to-go event. O’Brien Community Center, Winooski, Saturday, December 19, 4-6 p.m. $18-43; preregister. Info, info@northendstudios.org, sevendaystickets.com. CHRISTMAS BIRD COUNT: Birders leave no feath-

ered flier unseen during this annual avian census organized by the National Audubon Society. Plainfield area: Saturday, December 19, 7 a.m.-5 p.m. Hunger Mountain area: Sunday, December 20, 7 a.m.-5 p.m. Free. Info, sean@northbranchnaturecenter.org, northbranchnaturecenter.org.

MIRACLE ON GREEN TREE DRIVE: A LYRIC FAMILY CHRISTMAS SPECIAL: Lyric Theatre shares

its take on a 1960s variety show, serving up songs, sketches, costumes and special effects. Sunday, December 20, through Wednesday, January 20. $20-45. Info, office@lyrictheatrevt.org, lyrictheatrevt.org. HOLIDAY DINNER FOR SENIORS: Hot plates

of ham dinner or vegetarian lasagna find their place on Vermonters’ tables, thanks to Helping and Nurturing Diverse Seniors and other area organizations. For delivery only. Friday, December 25. Free; preregister. Info, 864-7528 or 865-0360, handsvt.org.

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HOLIDAY TREES

12/8/20 12:19 PM

A HOLIDAY CONCERT WITH CÒIG:

Streaming from Prince Edward Island, the JUNO Award-winning quartet performs holiday favorites with a fiery Celtic twist as part of the University of Vermont Lane Series. Online, Friday, December 18, 7:30 p.m. $20. Info, 656-4455, uvm.edu/laneseries.

Burlington, Williston & Lebanon, NH (802)660-3500 • www.gardeners.com/store Space is limited and pre-registration is required.

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SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 9-16, 2020

11/25/20 11/30/20 12:45 9:36 AM PM

In Season

Murphy Robinson

The pandemic brings fresh faces to Vermont’s hunting scene B Y M ARG A RET G RAYSON • margaret@sevendaysvt.com

urphy Robinson wasn’t always a hunter. In fact, the Worcester-based wilderness skills educator grew up vegetarian. “Guns were not an acceptable thing in [my family’s] world. I really grew up thinking hunters were evil,” Robinson said. “That began to change because I became a wilderness guide and a ecological educator, and the more that I learned about predator biology.” In Robinson’s view, when wolves were driven out of many parts of North America, they left a gap in the food chain. Human hunters now fill that ecological niche. “Humans are a part of the ecosystem,” said Robinson, who uses gender-neutral pronouns. The educator has lived in Vermont since 2010 but learned to hunt over seven days on a farm in North Carolina under the tutelage of a hunter they met on the Appalachian Trail. Robinson

CULTURE

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 9-16, 2020

bagged their first deer that season. “I definitely had sort of a charmed entry into hunting, and it would’ve been so hard for me to do without a mentor,” they said. Robinson started teaching hunting workshops, originally with the help of their North Carolina mentor, because friends had been pestering them to learn. Those workshops quickly became one of the most popular offerings of Mountainsong Expeditions, Robinson’s outdoor education business founded in 2013, where many of the classes are specifically geared toward women and gender nonbinary people. “A lot of people have been through my programs now, and I’ve been able to create an accessible, supportive, demystifying environment for these skills that have traditionally been held in a certain class and gender category,” they said. The face of hunting is changing, according to Nicole Meier, a hunter education and outreach specialist at the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department. In a September

interview, she noted that hunting might once have conjured up an image of “an older white guy, probably with a beard, probably in a truck, probably wearing buffalo check plaid flannel … Now, we’re seeing a lot more folks who are getting into hunting who are millennial age or even younger.” Still, Vermont saw a steady decline in the sales of hunting licenses until a sudden increase in 2020, Meier said. The Associated Press reported a similar spike in the number of hunting licenses around the country. Some of these new license holders may have been responding to the shortages on grocery shelves across the nation during the spring. Others may simply have lacked the time to hunt until the pandemic canceled their other obligations. “A lot of folks are coming to it from the local food motivation,” Meier said. “Folks want to know where their food is coming from, for the same reasons that you shop at a farmers market or have a garden in your backyard … It’s not that far of a leap from

growing zucchini in your garden to going to hunt a turkey.” Some environmentalists promote vegetarian diets as a way to ease humanity’s strain on the environment, and brands such as Impossible and Beyond Meat have cashed in by creating plant-based meat substitutes. Hunting advocates counter that argument by pointing out that harvesting meat from wild animals reduces the need for factory farming and helps control animal populations. A federal tax on the sale of firearms and ammunition also contributes to funding nongame wildlife conservation. In Vermont, wildlife officials say the deer population poses an ongoing concern. In 2018, Seven Days reported that a combination of milder winters, fewer hunters and increased posting of land as private has allowed that population to balloon, potentially threatening other parts of the ecosystem. A typical hunting program with Robinson involves weekends out in Worcester or even a trip to Virginia to hunt deer. This year, after canceling their in-person workshops, Robinson decided to offer an online Huntress Mentorship for women and nonbinary people. They knew it would be a very different experience from their normal workshops. “Hunting’s a very in-person, embodied activity,” they said. But the virtual format allowed students to join from as far away as Alaska, and 40 percent of the mentees were people of color. “It was really cool how this opened up access for students that can’t normally participate when I teach,” Robinson said. For Willow Kraken of Randolph, a big part of the appeal of Robinson’s program was the opportunity to learn and build community with other queer and nonbinary people. They were also drawn to Robinson’s attention to the spiritual and ethical aspects of hunting. “Gaining a kind of consent from your prey and setting an intention around the hunt in a spiritual way was really what kind of sold me on the workshop,” Kraken said. While they weren’t able to hunt this year, they plan to try next season. Robinson said many students are particularly interested in learning about what happens after they shoot a deer — how to haul it out of the woods and process it. In a video shared with students, Robinson guts a deer, going over which organs are edible and other post-kill logistics. Another student was state Rep. Mari Cordes (D-Lincoln), who hunted this

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season on the 10 acres she owns with her husband. She saw one deer but didn’t shoot anything. “I still loved it,” she said. “It was just a beautiful experience to be in the nonhuman world, even just for that short bit.” Like Robinson, Cordes is a former vegetarian who values her connection to her food and knowledge of how it was produced. “By intention, I am not separate from the source of my sustenance, as much as possible,” Cordes said. She gardens, raises animals and is an avid fisherwoman. “I wouldn’t call myself a survivalist, but I like knowing that I could take care of myself and my family,” she said. On the eastern edge of Vermont, in Bradford, another wilderness-skills RE P. MARI educator has noticed an increased interest in self-sufficiency during the pandemic. Brad Salon, who has taught primitive skills at Roots School with his wife, Sarah Corrigan, since 2007, said he hasn’t seen such a boom since the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. “The biggest upticks have been certainly in hunting and foraging, and then basic survival skills,” Salon said. He tries to help his students understand that these abilities aren’t acquired in a single season but nurtured over a lifetime. “I wish it didn’t have to come from a place of fear, because the skills are so fulfilling,” he said.

Salon and Corrigan have amped up their online offerings this year, with a Patreon page and video classes on building a bow drill fire, tanning a hide and more. Salon emphasized that learning these skills isn’t just practical — it’s fun, especially for the younger crowd. “I’ve never met kids who don’t like starting fires, sneaking up on things, throwing sticks, getting muddy,” he said. Cheryl Frank Sullivan, a University of Vermont doctoral candidate who lives in Underhill and has been hunting with a bow for nearly 20 years, said she’s happy to see increased interest, though she’s not sure how many of the new hunters will stick around once the pandemic wanes. After all, it took years CORDE S of trying before she harvested her first animal. But putting courses online certainly makes hunter education more accessible, she said. “There was never a time where I was more proud to be a hunter than when the pandemic hit, and I was in a grocery store … and there was nothing left on the shelves,” Sullivan said. “I just couldn’t believe the mass chaos that I was witnessing. All I could think of was, I’m so glad that I have two deer in my freezer right now.” m

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Write to Santa Santa is social distancing this year, but you can still share your wish list! Mail your letter to Santa via the magical North Pole Mail Boxes in front of the holiday tree and City Hall.

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SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 9-16, 2020

12/1/20 11:42 AM

food+drink

A Mushrooming Business An urban farmer grows specialty fungi in St. Albans B Y A L ISON NOVAK • alison@kidsvt.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF KEVIN MELMAN

“

n the U.S., there’s this fear of mushrooms,” Kevin Melman told me one morning last month. “Like, if it’s not the one that’s on pizza, it’s probably going to kill you.” Melman is trying to put an end to mycophobia, one mushroom at a time. In August 2019, the 24-year-old University of Vermont graduate founded Funj. Shrooming (pronounced “fuhnj”), which grows and sells a variety of mushrooms from a barn in St. Albans. Despite his humble headquarters, Melman has built up an impressive operation that yields up to 150 pounds of specialty fungi a week. They are mainly lion’s mane and blue, pink and phoenix oyster, along with some rarer types such as chestnut, black king and golden enoki to keep things interesting. He sells the fungi to local restaurants and grocery stores and, this fall, started a 15-week communitysupported agriculture program that runs from November through early February. Melman cultivates his mushrooms on “logs” that he makes by stuffing biodegradable plastic bags with a 50-50 mixture of sawdust and organic soybean hulls. The 10-pound logs are then sterilized and inoculated with mycelium, the vegetative part of the fungi that produces mushrooms. “Mushroom farming is at the core of what I value,” Melman said. That is, he takes waste products — sawdust from mills and soybean hulls that would otherwise become livestock feed — and turns them into human food. Then he passes his own waste to gardeners and farmers in the form of compost. “I believe I’m part of the circular economy,” he said. I first met Melman in September at the Champlain Islands Farmers Market in Grand Isle. He was selling boxes of oyster mushrooms at his booth fortuitously sandwiched between Snow Farm Vineyard and Grand Isle Pasta. I bought a box and also ordered a mushroom-growing kit, which I figured would be an entertaining diversion

A box of pink oyster mushrooms

Funj. Shrooming at the Champlain Islands Farmers Market over the summer

Kevin Melman with blue oyster mushrooms in the fruiting chamber

during my family’s largely housebound existence. A few weeks later, Melman delivered an inoculated 10-pound log to our doorstep, along with a single page of directions. I’m not very good at growing things, so I anticipated the project might be a bust. But I was wrong. After slashing the plastic casing of the log — which enables carbon dioxide to escape and oxygen to get in, essentially shocking the mushrooms into growing — and misting it with water three to five times a day, little peachy-orange “pins” formed. From there, the mushrooms began sprouting. Every morning, my kids raced down to our basement to check the fungi’s progress, amazed by how much growth happened each day. After four or five days, we had a beautiful shock of pink oyster mushrooms. I prepared them simply, sautéed in butter and a little salt. Because mushrooms are about 90 percent water, cooking them shrank our large harvest considerably. When we ate them as a dinner side dish,

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MON-SAT 10AM-5PM • SUN 12PM-4PM Customers at the Northfield Farmers Market in summer 2020

Market Shift NORTHFIELD FARMERS MARKET GOES VIRTUAL FOR THE WINTER

Customers of the NORTHFIELD FARMERS MARKET

won’t be able to wander from vendor to vendor this winter, but they will be able to browse the wares on their phones. Because its usual cold-weather location, the Plumley Armory at Norwich University, is closed to outside visitors during the COVID-19 pandemic, the market has set up a one-stop shop online. The web store, which will launch on Sunday, December 13, gives customers a single site on which to place weekly orders from each of the small-town market’s vendors, market manager CASSIE MORSE told Seven Days. The market will aggregate the orders and have them ready for

pickup at gallery ART, ETC. on the town common from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. each Thursday; home delivery is also available in Northfield for a $5 fee. “After looking at all the options, we decided that going 100 percent online with preorder and pickup is the safest way,” Morse said. “This will let us maintain access to fresh, local goods while keeping interactions to a minimum.” The store will feature at least a dozen of the winter market’s usual 18 to 20 vendors. Customers can shop by category or vendor and choose from multiple payment options, including using 3SquaresVT benefits. The online store is operated through Eat From Farms,

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a platform developed specifically for farms and farmers markets by upstate New York-based George Duggan. With support from a VERMONT COVID-19 AGRICULTURE ASSISTANCE PROGRAM grant, the

market has been able to set up the new website while keeping the fullseason vendor fee at $60. “It’s not the mellow winter season we were expecting, but it’s exciting,” Morse said. She asked customers to be patient as things get rolling. “It may look like a fancy-schmancy online store, but it’s a learning experience. We’re not coders; we’re farmers. But COVID-19 has dragged farmers markets into the 21st century.” m

CONNECT Follow us for the latest food gossip! On Twitter: Sally Pollak: @vtpollak. On Instagram: Seven Days: @7deatsvt; Jordan Barry: @jordankbarry.

Happy Holidays! Join us for take out. Online ordering now available. Open Thursday-Saturday, including Christmas Eve!

Call to order holiday cakes and pies! (802) 448-3657 • revolutionkitchen.com 9 Center Street, Burlington 4t-revolutionkitchen120920.indd 1

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 9-16, 2020

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Earl Handy

Destination Diner It’s a quiet 75th anniversary for Handy’s Lunch in Burlington B Y M E L I SSA PASANEN • pasanen@sevendaysvt.com

arl Handy closed up his small Burlington diner for the day at about 2:30 p.m. on December 3. On the way out, he paused to offer commentary on some of the pieces of memorabilia that hung in the entryway of the third-generation restaurant. A framed flyer describes the “new charcoal steak room” at Handy’s Lunch, featuring T-bone steaks for $1.89. It dates back to the early 1960s, when the family briefly served up steak dinners in a room beside the existing diner. Another frame holds a December 1995 proclamation signed by then-mayor of Burlington Peter Clavelle in honor of the landmark eatery’s 50th anniversary. “Whereas, Handy’s Lunch serves great eggs & bacon, hot hamburg sandwiches, and just about the best plain home cookin’ type food for the price in the entire City of Burlington,” the proclamation reads. “Whereas, if you ever want to know what’s going on in Burlington, go to Handy’s Lunch,” it continues. “My dad was so proud of that,” Handy said. Then he added offhandedly, “We turn 75 next week, December 7.” In any other year, that anniversary might have involved a big celebration, but in 2020, Handy, 46, has other things on his mind. 46

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 9-16, 2020

Texas chili dogs and burgers on the grill

Like many other small-business owners, he’s doing everything he can to navigate through the challenges of a pandemic year. And he’s fighting not just for a business but for a family legacy, a community hub and a long-standing tradition. Handy’s paternal grandparents, Earl and Flora Handy, emigrated from Lebanon and opened Handy’s Lunch in 1945. In the winter of 1958, the couple left their son, Robert, in charge of the family

grocery store and five-stool diner while they wintered in Georgia. They returned to find that the grocery store had been replaced by an expanded diner with the now-signature horseshoe counter. “My grandfather was furious,” Handy said. “He fired my dad, but my grandmother smoothed it over.” Robert Handy never encouraged his own son to take over the family business, though Earl started helping out when he

was very young. “As soon as I could reach the bottom of the sink, I had a job,” he recalled with a laugh. “My dad said, ‘Go get health insurance. Go get weekends off. Go get paid vacations. Go do something more than this.’” Earl was a 21-year-old college graduate working as a car salesman in the summer of 1996 when his dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer; Robert died soon after. The young man stepped in to help his mother keep the diner running. He never intended to stay, but gradually, he recalled, “It started to feel right. People were glad I was here.” His mom, Janet, stayed involved with the diner by making brownies, cookies and potato salad until she retired in 2018. “She turned 80 and said, ‘I’m done,’” Handy said. Handy believes the diner is the oldest restaurant in Burlington still owned by the founding family. “When I was a teenager, I had to be here. Now I have to be here, but it’s different,” he said. “My mission is to keep it going.” In mid-March 2020, Handy quickly transformed his business into a takeoutonly joint. He posted a video of his son, Nicholas, picking up an order dressed in his Saint Patrick’s Day finest with the slightest hint of “Dad, I can’t believe you’re making me do this” attitude. Early on in the pandemic, local businesses donated more than $10,000 to pay for Handy’s Lunch to prepare 1,000 meals and deliver them to the Boys & Girls Club of Burlington, the King Street Center, and staff and patient families at the University of Vermont Medical Center’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. “That money allowed me to keep paying my bills and let me keep doing what I do,” Handy said. “It was just a blessing.” As 2020 ground on, Handy continued to serve up takeout orders of his signature McHandy breakfast sandwiches, Texas chili dogs and over-the-top creations, such as the Macho Man, a patty melt stacked on top of a pastrami Reuben. On October 3, Handy reopened the neat clapboard building with red trim on the corner of Maple and South Champlain streets to a carefully managed, reduced number of diners. Customers could once again sit around the horseshoe counter, banter with Handy and one another about sports, and see the latest photos of his 12-year-old twins. (An unabashed Yankees fan and huge supporter of UVM sports teams, Handy has filled the diner walls with photos of past Catamount greats, such as National Hockey League all-stars Martin St. Louis and Tim Thomas.) But these days, patrons come at a trickle for indoor dining. Breakfast, especially, is markedly slower, Handy said. “We lost the

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college kids and the offices, and then the Mama — a Reuben made with pastrami, as tourists,” he lamented. “People just aren’t Handy’s wife prefers it, instead of corned going out to eat as much.” beef. A scattering of other patrons, mostly 13 West Center St., Winooski Takeout now comprises more than longtime regulars, sat at the counter chatMon-Sat 11am-9pm, Sunday, Noon-8 three quarters of his business, flipping ting with Handy and one another as they For delivery please visit delivery.com. the pre-pandemic ratio. Catered office ate. lunches, which used to generate signifNeil Brodeur of Milton had ordered HAPPY HOLIDAYS! icant income, have all but his usual, no matter the disappeared. Overall, busitime of day: the egg, Let us cater In-Store ness is down by 40 to 45 sausage and cheese sandyour holidays! & Online percent, Handy said. wich on French toast, Pizza • Baked Ziti • Salads A personal conversanamed the SST for an old tion with U.S. Rep. Peter friend of Handy’s. Pasta Dishes & More! Welch (D-Vt.) convinced “This is the family of 8 SO. MAIN STREET, him to apply for a federal Handy’s,” Brodeur said, ST. ALBANS 802-655-2423 Paycheck Protection E ARL HAN DY looking around the horse524-3769 papa-franks.com Program loan. “It helped us shoe. The Rice Memorial get through the summer. But now, with High School athletic director, now 53, has @papafranksvt SH OPR AI LCI TY.COM winter coming…” Handy said, trailing off. been coming to the diner since he was Cash-flow challenges aside, Handy a teenager working for the Burlington just plain misses hanging out with his Electric Department. Back in those days,12v-papafranks120920.indd 1 12/3/20 12v-railcitymarket120920.indd 8:49 AM 1 12/7/20 12:23 PM customers, many of whom are friends. Brodeur joined coworkers to eat the Line“It’s hard because I’m such a social people man’s Special, a cheeseburger omelette person,” he said. named in their honor. Handy stays connected as much as he Among those linemen was Sean can. He doesn’t offer online ordering or Quinn, now 66, who happened to be STOP IN TO SHOP FOR THE HOLIDAYS, ORDER FOOD AND CIDER TO-GO use food-delivery services. When he and painting my house last week. He’s been OR SHOP OUR LOCAL VERMONT GOODIES! his customers don’t interact, “You lose the a devoted Handy’s customer since 1976, personal touch,” he said. when the diner was the go-to break spot That personal touch was evident for the city’s electrical and street mainteduring a couple of recent visits to nance crews. “It’s a family business. You Handy’s. always felt welcome there,” Quinn said. On December 1, I paused for a few “Tom Brennan used to joke on the fresh-off-the-flat-top bites of a Texas radio, ‘What’s big and orange, parks in hot dog before taking my order to go. front of Handy’s, and sleeps three? A

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As I relished mouthfuls of buttery, griddled potato bun and juicy all-beef hot dog dressed with tangy, secret-recipe chili sauce, lightly pungent raw onion and just the right touch of sharp yellow mustard, I heard Handy gently admonishing a customer on the phone: “No, no, no. You don’t put mayonnaise on a Texas cheeseburger.” A couple of days later, I sat at the counter enjoying a thickly stacked Hot

Burlington Electric line truck,’” Quinn told me, referring to the beloved UVM basketball coach who also cohosted a radio show for many years. Quinn has decades of Texas-dog fandom on me. “Nothing like starting the day with a couple of Texas dogs, then climbing a 50-foot pole,” he said with a chuckle. DESTINATION DINER

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ALISON NOVAK

A Mushrooming Business « P.44

my vegetarian husband declared, “They taste like filet mignon!” He wasn’t wrong. “Whenever I crave meat, mushrooms are the only thing that can really satisfy it,” said Melman, a vegan since college, during a tour of his growing operation in November. Housed in a garage built off of a 120-year-old barn, the space is partitioned into areas that serve different purposes. Near the entrance stands an 85-gallon tubular metal sterilizer, which heats the prepared logs to 204 degrees for 16 hours so that mold spores don’t form during the growing process. Next, Melman — wearing a face mask, gloves and shoe covers — transfers the logs into a sterile incubation room, outfitted with a flow hood that filters out air impurities. He scoops the mushroom spawn — mycelium on grain that he gets from a supplier in Maine — into the bags, and then closes them with an impulse sealer. In seven to 10 days, the inoculation process is complete. Finally, the bags are slashed and transferred to a 10-by-10-foot zip-up tent known as the fruiting chamber. Melman keeps the chamber’s temperature in the upper fifties, and he runs a fog machine to increase the humidity and a fan to circulate air. Shelves along the sides of the tent are lined with inoculated logs — up to 200 at a time — that Melman harvests in phases. Each log yields two or three flushes, or batches, of mushrooms. The ’shrooms aren’t just delicious, they’re good for you, too, Melman said. Research has shown that the fluffy lion’s mane has positive neurological benefits. And fungi left on a sunny kitchen counter can actually soak up vitamin D, passing it along to the human who eats it. Because their cell walls are made out of chitin — the same material in an insect’s exoskeleton — mushrooms are also a good source of dietary fiber.

Mira and Theo Novak with a mushroom “log”

Melman has been fascinated with mushrooms since he was a teenager. He developed an appreciation for foraging them while hiking at Dallenbach Lake and Rutgers Gardens in his home state of New Jersey. “I remember the excitement and danger of my first time eating something I found in the woods,” Melman recalled. “I was like, ‘No, Mom. Trust me. I swear you can eat this.’” He moved to Burlington to attend UVM, where he earned a BS in wildlife and fisheries biology and continued to forage. Postcollege, Melman worked at Fiddlehead Brewing in Shelburne for a year — cleaning, packaging, doing quality control and saving money. “I really liked it but felt like I was

missing something, coming from a more hard-science background,” he said. So, “like a dumbass,” Melman recalled with a laugh, he threw his savings into the mushroom venture. At first, he planned to sell his goods exclusively to restaurants. “I was like, ‘Chefs are going to be the ones to show that mushrooms are amazing, and it’s going to trickle down, and people are going to get this amazing mushroom dish, and they’re going to be like, How do I cook this?’” he said. But then the pandemic hit, prompting him to change his strategy. Starting in the spring, Melman made home deliveries for a few months, then he hooked up with smaller grocery stores, including Jericho Market, Village Market of Waterbury and Johnson’s Sterling Market. “It might be easy in Burlington to get

fancy mushrooms, but further out in Vermont, I was kind of the first guy to bring specialty mushrooms into some of these stores,” Melman said. “I’m glad that I’m spreading the word.” He has still managed to forge relationships with some local restaurants, including American Flatbread, Bistro de Margot and Sweetwaters in Burlington. Sweetwaters chef Jessee Lawyer said that Melman’s mushrooms are delicious, with much more flavor and freshness than what you’d find on supermarket shelves. Lawyer started purchasing blue oyster mushrooms from Melman in the late summer and uses them in a risotto dish on his menu. During this tough time for the food industry, Lawyer said, “I wanted to give as much love as I could to local farmers.”

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Plus, he said, Melman is a great guy who’s easy to work with. David Morales Quintana, a vegan chef who co-owns the Dos Feos food truck, initially connected with Melman via Instagram in late 2019. Then, Quintana recalled, Melman showed up at his doorstep one day and started explaining the different ways mushrooms could be prepared. Though a fungi skeptic, he said that Melman’s enthusiasm motivated him to incorporate them into his food. Quintana began offering a mushroom taco special at his Tuesday night foodtruck gig at Foam Brewery. “I’m a believer now,” he said. Melman and Quintana are collaborating on a new product — lion’s mane mushrooms pressed into thin cutlets,

Mushroom “logs” in the inoculation room

then marinated in a smoky sauce. The BBQ Sh’Ribs, which will initially be sold through online food market Local Maverick, are gluten free, vegan and, unlike many meat substitutes, totally unprocessed, Melman noted. He also plans to sell dried mushrooms soon and is hoping to expand his grow-kit sales. Melman makes the kits in both 5and 10-pound bags that cost between $16 and $28, and he can ship them nationally. On top of everything, Melman and his fiancée are planning a wedding, tentatively scheduled for next summer. And yes, there will be mushrooms in the bride’s bouquet, he assured. m

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Destination Diner « P.47 He remembers Earl Handy as a kid; Handy recalls watching “The Magilla Gorilla Show” on the diner TV with Quinn and other linemen on their afternoon coffee break. On December 3, after Brodeur and the few other customers left, Handy sat down for his own lunch: a pair of Texas dogs wrapped in foil as if to go. He almost always has his that way, even when he’s eating them at his own counter. “It takes me back. It reminds me of when my dad used to bring them home from work,” he explained. Handy knows the months ahead will be tough. He’s taking heart in the diner’s long history and its most recent accolades, including being named best diner in the state by the Food Network and the

source of the best Vermont hot dog in People magazine. “In 1981, my dad watched GE across the street pick up and leave. He survived,” Handy said. “Three years ago, I went from April to October with the street looking like the Grand Canyon when they put in the new water main. We survived.” He is planning to survive this, too. “I don’t have ‘give up’ in my vocabulary,” he said. “Any day I can unlock the door is a good day. If I only make $50, it’s more than if I hadn’t opened at all.” m

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A still from Francesca Blanchard’s “Did It to Myself” video by Nate Sonenfeld

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Joshua Glass

News and views on the local music + nightlife scene BY J O R D A N A D A MS

Yes, They Know It’s Christmas

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The holidays are upon us, and that means seasonally festive music is almost certainly pouring out of every ceilingembedded loudspeaker you’re likely to pass under. A little recommendation for Burlington’s independent businesses planning to blast their customers with some holiday selections: Keep it local by playing JOSHUA GLASS AND FRIENDS’ new album Merry Christmas From Burlington. The 12-track compilation features a slew of Vermont artists at their jolliest. (Another great local pick is MAXINE LINEHAN’s This Time of Year. Read our Q&A with the Manchester-based artist in last week’s paper.) In a recent phone call with Glass, the singer-songwriter explained that Merry Christmas From Burlington is a reimagined and reproduced version of a similar album, also called Merry Christmas From Burlington, that came out in 2011. “It was really my first exercise in trying to arrange, compose, produce, mix and all that kind of stuff,” he said of the 9-year-old record. “I had very minimal experience at the time.” Glass, who during the call referred to himself as a “Jew-y jingler,” a nod to

his Jewish heritage and love of Christmas, also said the 2011 attempt was arranged somewhat haphazardly, only eight days before the big holiday. “We had this shoddy, kind of amateurish recording,” Glass explained. “I always wanted to do it over again. Also, the fact that I’m bored as hell, I thought it was the perfect time.” The new recording is as shiny and sparkly as a string of twinkle lights dripping with tinsel. It features unique impressions of tried-and-true classics, such as Glass’ nimble version of “Winter Wonderland” and frequent collaborator ANDRIANA CHOBOT’s powerful, solo piano recording of “Auld Lang Syne.” Also included is one brand-new track, “(It’s Alright to Feel) Sad at Xmas.” The original acoustic pop song comes from the LEATHERBOUND BOOKS, who are fresh off the release of their long-awaited 2020 album, These Were the Days. Independently of Glass’ compilation, they recently released another emotionally

GOT MUSIC NEWS? JORDAN@SEVENDAYSVT.COM

complex Christmas tune, “Hopeless for the Holidays,” which is available at theleatherboundbooks.bandcamp.com. Glass recorded most of the music for Merry Christmas From Burlington by himself at home and had the “friends” send along their vocals to be mixed in. One song that he didn’t play on is Vermont expat TERRI CONTI’s whimsical, fast-finger accordion version of “The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don’t Be Late),” which is instrumental and, thankfully, doesn’t feature any heliumvoiced rodents. Other standouts include SAMARA LARK BROWN’s indelibly saucy take on “Santa Baby,” JULIA BEERWORTH’s heartfelt cover of SARA BAREILLES and INGRID MICHAELSON’s original tune “Winter Song,” and LINDA BASSICK’s soulful rendition of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Perhaps the wildest entry is expat MILDRED MOODY’s incredibly creepy, TOM WAITS-esque subversion of the childhood favorite “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town.” In place of the song’s typically cheery vibe, slithering strings and foreboding piano underscore the palpable dread hidden in the song’s lyrics: “He sees you when you’re sleeping…” Merry Christmas From Burlington is available to stream and download at joshuaglassmusic.bandcamp.com.

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Earlier this year, singer-songwriter FRANCESCA BLANCHARD released her longawaited LP, Make It Better. Recently, she and the album’s coproducer, CHRISTOPHER HAWTHORN, teamed up again to make Redux, an EP that reimagines three songs from that album: “Did It to Myself,” “Baby” and “Free.” Drastically stripped down and electro-fied, the tunes find new life as quiet storms. Additionally, artist NATE SONENFELD brings the new “Did It to Myself” to life in a stunning animated video. The anime-style clip perfectly captures the original tune’s melancholy, as well as the Redux version’s sleek futurism. Watch the video on YouTube, and stream the Redux EP on all major platforms. Bassist ALEX BUDNEY — aka DJ STEAL WOOL — recently released a new holiday mixtape on DJ platform Mixcloud. For anyone looking to shake off the doldrums of standard holiday music with a blast of funky, fresh and seasonally appropriate jams, search out the DJ on the Mixcloud site. Or, if you wanna get old-school with it, contact Budney via Instagram (@djstealwool) and he’ll burn you a CD

of the continuous mix. It’s tailored to the standard CD-R 80-minute limit. In understandable yet still disappointing news, the Flynn’s upcoming socially distanced live performance series, “The Window on Main,” has been postponed to a later date. It was meant to commence this weekend, with performances taking place in the Flynn’s Chase Dance Studio every day from Friday, December 11, through Sunday, December 13. Onlookers were meant to enjoy the eclectic shows from the sidewalk through the studio’s large windows. The series was announced just prior to Vermont’s most recent and ongoing spike in positive COVID-19 cases, which prompted some new restrictions about events and gathering sizes. KEVIN TITTERTON, the Flynn’s director of marketing and communications, said in an email that the Flynn received dozens of applications to perform in the series “and plan[s] to select a lineup when we’re able to safely proceed.”

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BREAKS) and DJ CRAIG MITCHELL, recently unveiled its first track and video, “Can’t Get Enough.” Recorded in Puerto Rico, the sensual-as-hell R&B song is the perfect antidote for plummeting temperatures this winter. A harbinger of a complete album, the track is the first of many that the band plans to trickle out in the coming weeks and months. Mitchell confirmed in a recent call that a second, as-yet-unnamed single is currently being mixed and will arrive sooner rather than later. “Can’t Get Enough” is available on YouTube and major streaming sites.

Listening In If I were a superhero, my superpower would be the ability to get songs stuck in other people’s heads. Here are five songs that have been stuck in my head this week. May they also get stuck in yours. JAMES TAYLOR, “Millworker” JONATHAN RICHMAN, “I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar” KING PRINCESS, “Pain” THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS, “Which Describes How You’re Feeling” FM BELFAST, “Lotus”

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GOT MUSIC NEWS? JORDAN@SEVENDAYSVT.COM

REVIEW this Wren Kitz, Early Worm

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Wren Kitz’s musical evolution during the past several years has been a stimulating and fascinating ride. He’s a truly experimental artist, and not just because the music he makes is often unconventional. The descriptor applies wholly to his modus operandi, especially as a live musician. Kitz frequently experiments with how he presents his work to audiences. Whether equipped with a reel-to-reel tape recorder and sound-manipulating wrench, a simple acoustic guitar, or a full rock band, Kitz constantly pushes his own boundaries. Case in point: his new album, Early Worm. It’s the singer-songwriter’s true

KingZeek, While We Can (ASTROLOGY DAY RECORDS, CD, DIGITAL)

Nine times out of 10, when artists dub their new work “experimental,” you know you’re in for some borderline unlistenable content. To be clear: It isn’t that experimental music, per se, is unlistenable — on the contrary, the genre is filled with absorbing work. It’s that artists crossing over from less-edgy terrains and attempting to break their boundaries creatively more often than not fall flat. All of which makes the new KingZeek record While We Can even more captivating. The project is the latest iteration of songwriter Patrick “Pappy” Biondo, formerly the banjo player in the Pennsylvania jamgrass outfit Cabinet. Biondo was also the protégé and friend of banjo legend Gordon Stone, who died in July. Weeks later, Biondo

rock album, though it does occasionally meander into an abstract abyss. It encapsulates the live show he perfected pre-pandemic. Kitz eases off of the soundscape-y folk mud puddles on his 2017 album, Dancing on Soda Lake, and the even muddier abstractions of his 2018 LP, Lovebird. But both records planted conceptual seeds that are now ready for harvest. The new album applies Soda Lake’s impressionism and Lovebird’s inhibition and is clearly influenced by the rugged inclinations of local rock auteur Rob Voland. Kitz plays in Voland’s band, and vice versa. Voland’s manic drumming on Early Worm ties everything together.

Though Kitz’s speaking voice isn’t particularly high, his singing voice tends to be throughout Early Worm. Altered by filters and effects, his vocals sound as if delivered through a corrugated tube, only reaching the listener’s ear after a vibratile journey. Recalling New York City alt-rocker Steve Gunn’s work, the tracks on Early Worm shoot straight ahead rather than taking more conventional, circuitous routes that loop back to choruses. Kitz’s choruses are radical bursts of rock fury that sometimes erupt as interstitial pieces inserted between his proper songs. The gnarled feedback bramble of “Sophie” juts in between the psychedelic “Shrouds,” itself subsequent

to glistening drone opener “Early Worm, Part 1.” “Early Worm, Part 2,” an eerie, abstract tramp that kicks off the vinyl version’s B side, precedes standout cut “Georgie.” Kitz’s vocals drip out slowly over an increasingly intense, atmospheric arrangement. His guitar cries out with emotive licks. The song eventually reaches a denouement, leaving only his voice eking out syllables over what sounds like a windy valley. “It could get worse / Before it gets better,” he repeats. Early Worm makes perfect sense in terms of Kitz’s artistic evolution. It’s not so much an excursion as it is a culmination — and a damn fine one at that. Early Worm will be available at sophomorelounge.bandcamp.com on Friday, December 11.

released The Music of Gordon Stone: A Retrospective Anthology through Astrology Days Records, his label with John Morgan Kimock. In short, Biondo has the pedigree, chops and back catalog to be at the vanguard of modern bluegrass. On While We Can, he shows scant interest in such a thing. Starting with opening track “Blue Covid,” Biondo ushers the listener into an almostambient type of broken-down folk music. There’s jazz in the mix, even some flashes of indie rock. But more than anything, the rudderless energy of the music renders it dreamlike. Unclear direction can hamper a record, but Biondo uses aimlessness as an instrument. The feeling of being unmoored, of ambivalence and cosmic confusion,

features so strongly in the compositions that the record’s overall tone is “I have no idea how to feel, and neither do you.” On his Bandcamp page, Biondo describes his newest release as a musical diary chronicling his experiences and emotions during lockdown. Rather than approach those feelings with traditional strong structures, he presents what he calls a “musical collage of feelings and thoughts while navigating through an unfamiliar world.” He adds that the songs have helped him sleep at night. Indeed, a strong thread of emotional relief runs through these 12 instrumental tracks. Biondo plays just about every sound on While We Can, with the exception of a guest drum track from Rough Francis’ Urian Hackney on

“America’s Best Music.” And Justin Mazer contributes guitar to “Essence of Art (Itself ).” The former, more than any other track on the record, shows a bold direction Biondo may elect to take in the future. Over Hackney’s trancelike beat, Biondo layers a tapestry of sounds that approaches the style of German progressive masters Can. What truly impresses about the latest KingZeek release is how effortlessly it wades into the experimental. It does not suffer or sacrifice by going that route; rather, it finds new sonic footing for an artist who has already established a respected sound. For listeners who prefer a more traditional take on folk and bluegrass — and some banjo fireworks — check out Biondo’s work as Pappy. His KingZeek persona is here to get weird, and I’m here for it all day. Check out While We Can at kingzeek. bandcamp.com.

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ur streaming entertainment options are overwhelming — and not always easy to sort through. This week, I watched the Romanian documentary Collective, which has racked up a string of accolades and could be an Oscar contender. It’s avail7:53 AM able to stream through the Vermont International Film Foundation’s Virtual Cinema portal (vtiff.org), now through December 17 and from December 28 to January 21. (In the interim, VTIFF will offer four classics set in Vermont as part of the ongoing Split/ Screen series.)

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In 2015, a fire at the Colectiv nightclub in Bucharest killed 27 people and injured 180. The club had been allowed to operate without fire exits, and the resulting outrage brought down the nation’s ruling political party. But the grieving wasn’t over, nor was the exposure of government malfeasance. During the months after the fire, 37 more 2:48 PM victims died in state hospitals, many of seemingly treatable burns. Tipped off by a doctor who reported rampant bacterial infections in burn units, journalists from the Sports Gazette newspaper investigated the pharmaceutical company that supplied disinfectants to hospitals across Romania. They discovered that the company was diluting those disinfectants, some to just 10 percent of their recommended strength. During the ensuing scandal, the health minister resigned, and the company’s head died in a mysterious car crash. And the revelations kept coming.

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REVIEW

Will you like it?

For an illustration of how private grifting eats away at public institutions and trust, you couldn’t do much better than Collective. The movie demands active viewership, though, because director Alexander Nanau belongs to the “You can use Google, so why should I explain it to you?” school of documentary filmmaking. There are no talking heads and almost no on-screen titles; we know the names of key players such as everyman reporter Catalin Tolontan only from glimpses of their bylines. We don’t get a primer on Romania’s turbulent history or its Communist-era legacy of corruption. If you blink, you might miss the casual revelation that

COLLECTIVE ACTION Journalists from a sports newspaper track down the story of a lifetime in Nanau’s acclaimed documentary.

Romanian patients routinely bribe their doctors for better treatment. (The New York Times’ ongoing coverage of Romania is helpful here, especially a 2017 piece called “In Romania, Corruption’s Tentacles Grip Daily Life.”) But why should the director spoon-feed us facts that we can find elsewhere when he can use that screen time to put us right in the room with the journalists and a whistleblower, or in their car during a stakeout, or inside the burning nightclub itself? Cellphone footage of the fire, which opens the film, is harrowing but necessary — it shows how quickly something can escalate from a weird night out to a national tragedy. Nanau’s level of access makes the film immersive, whether his camera is stalking an official with possible mob connections or simply witnessing the maddeningly complicated efforts to reform a corrupt bureaucracy. About halfway through the film, newly appointed health minister Vlad Voiculescu becomes the de facto protagonist. A young patient advocate brought in to cleanse the rot from the system, he encounters resistance at every turn in a real-life scenario reminiscent of “The Wire.” Given the specificity and intricacy of the institutional breakdown unveiled in Collective, some may ask why American viewers should care. Consider, though, how easy it is to take public institutions for granted until an unforeseen disaster puts them to the test. A few burn victims dying here or there didn’t suffice to expose horrifying neglect in the Romanian health

care system. Thirty-seven victims dying in a short time frame did. Right now, the pandemic is putting many of our institutions under enormous strain, exposing cracks we did our best to ignore. Nanau’s uncompromising doc forces us to wonder whether those institutions will emerge better, worse or at all.

If you like this, try...

• 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007; Criterion Channel, IFC Films Unlimited, AMC+, Sling, rentable): A landmark of Romanian cinema, Cristian Mungiu’s drama follows two women seeking an illegal abortion at the end of the Nicolae Ceausescu era. Its chilling portrait of Communist Romania offers historical context for the corruption we see in Collective. • City Hall (2020): The labyrinthine workings of civil institutions may not always be gripping, but, as Collective reminds us, our lives could depend on them. In another current offering of VTIFF’s Virtual Cinema, documentary doyen Fred Wiseman takes us inside Boston’s municipal government to examine the health of those institutions in the U.S. • Spotlight (2015; Netflix, rentable): For a Hollywood take on journalists rooting out institutional corruption, it doesn’t get much better than this fact-based drama about the Boston Globe reporters who exposed a cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. MARGO T HARRI S O N

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NEW IN THEATERS I’M YOUR WOMAN: In this crime drama set in the 1970s from director Julia Hart (Fast Color), Rachel Brosnahan plays a woman on the run with her baby. With Marsha Stephanie Blake and Arinzé Kene. (120 min, R; Essex Cinemas) WILD MOUNTAIN THYME: Emily Blunt plays an Irish farmer with a big crush on her neighbor (Jamie Dornan) in this romantic drama from writer-director John Patrick Shanley (“Moonstruck”), also starring Christopher Walken and Jon Hamm. (102 min, PG-13; Essex Cinemas)

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THE GRINCH★★1/2 Dr. Seuss’ tale of a green grouch determined to ruin Christmas gets a new animated rendition with the voices of Benedict Cumberbatch, Rashida Jones, Angela Lansbury and Pharrell Williams. Yarrow Cheney (The Secret Life of Pets) and Scott Mosier directed. (90 min, PG; Sunset Drive-In) HALF BROTHERS★1/2 Two long-lost siblings with little in common, one American and one Mexican, find themselves on a road trip that retraces their dad’s immigration path. Luke Greenfield (The Girl Next Door) directed the comedy, starring Luis Gerardo Méndez, José Zúñiga and Connor Del Rio. (96 min, PG-13. Essex Cinemas)

THE LAST VERMEER★★★ Guy Pearce plays an artist accused of collaborating with the Nazis, and Claes Bang is the officer investigating him in this postwar period drama from director Dan Friedkin. (117 min, R; Essex Cinemas)

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SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 9-16, 2020

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THU., DEC. 10 VIRTUAL EVENT

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SAT., DEC. 12 NORTH END STUDIOS AT THE O’BRIEN COMMUNITY CENTER, WINOOSKI

Blue Holiday Workshop and Ritual MON., DEC. 14 VIRTUAL EVENT

TUE., DEC. 15 VIRTUAL EVENT

VCET Lunch & Learn: Unearth Your Personal Brand WED., DEC. 16 VIRTUAL EVENT

Finding Hope: Healing from Trauma THU., DEC. 17 VIRTUAL EVENT

LIFE LESSONS HARVESTED FROM MY GARDEN: How have you bloomed from where life has rooted you this year? What life lessons have you harvested from your garden? Join Julie Rubaud (Red Wagon Plants) and Ferene Paris Meyer (All Heart Inspirations) for this storytelling workshop sharing life lessons learned from personal gardens and beyond. Register online: shop.redwagonplants.com/ shop/events/35. Sat., Dec. 5, noon. Cost: $25/Subsidized fees avail. Contact Ferene at allheartinspirations@gmail.com. Location: Online via Zoom. Info: Red Wagon Plants, 482-4060, info@redwagonplants.com, redwagonplants.com.

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ONLINE MUSIC CLASSES FOR TODDLERS & PRESCHOOLERS: Join Musical Munchkins for 10 weeks of interactive, familycentered fun at home this winter. Go for a sleigh ride, dance with a bear, drum with a snow mouse! Embark on make-believe adventures like these while your kids sing, dance, drum and play with instruments and puppets. Agespecific for toddlers, preschoolers. Beginning Jan. 8, Fri., Sat., & Sun. Cost: $125/10-weeks ($100 before 12/20). Free demo classes avail. Location: Online. Info: 845-2311, musicalmunchkinswithandrea@ gmail.com, musicalmunchkins. net.

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ALLIANCE FRANÇAISE WINTER SESSION: Our six-week winter session starts on January 11, offering online French classes for adults. We also offer private lessons for those who are more comfortable with one-on-one instruction. We serve the entire range of students, from true beginners to those who are already comfortable conversing in French. Six weeks beginning Mon., Jan. 11. Location: Online. Info: Alliance Française of the Lake Champlain Region, Micheline Tremblay, 881-8826, education@aflcr.org, aflcr.org. EXPERIENCED NATIVE PROFESSOR OFFERING ONLINE SPANISH CLASSES: Premier native-speaking Spanish professor Maigualida Rak is giving fun, interactive online lessons

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. Accept no Iimitations! Location: Vermont Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, 55 Leroy Rd., Williston. Info: 598-2839, julio@ bjjusa.com, vermontbjj.com.

to improve comprehension and pronunciation and to achieve fluency. Audio-visual material is used. “I feel proud to say that my students have significantly improved their Spanish with my teaching approach.” -Maigualida Rak. Read reviews on Facebook at facebook.com/spanishonlinevt. Location: Maigualida Rak, Online. Info: Maigualida Rak, spanishtutor.vtfla@gmail.com, facebook. com/spanishonlinevt. SPANISH CLASSES LIVE & ONLINE: Join us for adult Spanish classes this winter, using online video conferencing. Learn from a native speaker via small group classes, individual instruction or student tutoring. You’ll always be participating and speaking. Lesson packages for travelers, lessons for children. Our 15th year. See our website or contact us for details. Beginning week of Jan. 4, 10 weeks. Cost: $270/10 weekly classes of 90+ min. each. Location: Spanish in Waterbury Center, Waterbury Center. Info: 585-1025, spanish paravos@gmail.com, spanish waterburycenter.com.

BLUE HOLIDAY WORKSHOP & RITUAL: Not everyone is cheery for the holidays, especially this year. Some experience illness, isolation, economic uncertainty, hidden grief or loss. This workshop is a safe space of acknowledgment and acceptance. We will include time for conversation, meditation, ritual and sharing coping strategies for getting through the season. All are welcome. Sun., Dec. 6, & Mon., Dec. 14, 7 p.m. Cost: $8/, $12, $16, sliding scale. Location: online. Info: Rites of Passage, LLC, Kristabeth Atwood, 825-8141, ritesofpassage vt@gmail.com, sevendays tickets.com/organizations/ rites-of-passage-llc.

yoga EVOLUTION YOGA: Come as you are and open your heart! Whether you’re new or have practiced for years, find support you need to awaken your practice. Offering livestream and recorded classes. Give the gift of yoga with a gift card on our website. Flexible pricing based on your needs; scholarships avail. Contact yoga@evolutionvt.com. Single class: $0-15. Weekly membership: $10-25. 10-class pass: $140. New student special: $20 for 3 classes. Location: Evolution Yoga, 20 Kilburn St., Burlington. Info: 864-9642, evolutionvt.com.

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2020 TALENT SHOW FOR The Kids VT Spectacular Spectacular is happening virtually this year — on WCAX Channel 3 — now through December 18 during the 4 p.m. newscast. Tune in every day to see kids, between the ages of 5 and 16, from all over the state showcase their talents!

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Sam AGE/SEX: 12-year-old neutered male ARRIVAL DATE: November 2, 2020 REASON HERE: His owner could no longer care for him. SUMMARY: Have you been searching for a sweet senior companion to add a little something special to your home? Look no further than the amazing Sam! When he’s not lounging in an office or casually roaming around our lobby, Sam is all about cuddle time. It’s important for Sam to get his daily steps in, as he is in the process of gradually losing weight to help alleviate some of his health issues. One such issue is significant arthritis in his legs, so he will do best in a home without slippery floors or too many stairs. Sam promises to make up for the extra TLC he needs by giving lots of love! If Sam sounds like he could be a match for you, schedule a visit at hsccvt.org/cats!

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While we all love a good “chonky” cat, it’s important for our pets to stay within a healthy weight range. Excess weight can worsen normal age-related health changes, such as arthritis, and increase the chances of more serious issues, such as diabetes. Speak with your veterinarian about what a healthy weight is for your furry friend, and remember that, just like for their humans, slow and steady wins the weight race! Sponsored by:

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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

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. BURLINGTON Single room, Hill Section, on bus line. No cooking. Linens furnished. 862-2389. No pets. FLEXIBLE 3- OR 4-BR APT. Apt. w/ living area. Upstairs has kitchen, BA + additional room. Gas HW & heat, HDWD floors. $1,700/mo. + utils. Call 864-0341. KEEN’S CROSSING IS NOW LEASING! 1-BR, $1,054/mo.; 2-BR, $1,266/mo.; 3-BR, $1,397/mo. Spacious interiors, fully applianced kitchen, fi tness center, heat & HW incl. Income restrictions apply. 802-655-1810, keenscrossing.com. PINECREST AT ESSEX Joshua Way, Essex Jct. Independent senior living for those 55+ years. 1-BR avail. now, $1,240/mo. incl. utils. & parking garage. NS/ pets. 802-872-9197 or rae@fullcirclevt.com.

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 DECEMBER 9-16, 2020

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

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TAFT FARM SENIOR LIVING COMMUNITY 10 Tyler Way, Williston, independent senior living. Newly remodeled 1-BR unit on the ground floor, w/ restricted view avail., $1,095/mo. incl. utils. & cable. NS/pets. Must be 55+ years of age. cintry@fullcirclevt. com, 802-879-3333. 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 or 802-879-3333. TAFT FARM SENIOR LIVING COMMUNITY 10 Tyler Way, Williston, independent senior living. Newly remodeled 1-BR unit on the main floor avail., $1,185/ mo. incl. utils. & cable. NS/pets. Must be 55+ years of age. cintry@ fullcirclevt.com or 802-879-3333. WINOOSKI 2-BR 2-BR, 2nd-floor apt. in Winooski. Gas stove, full BA, LR. No pets. Offstreet parking. $1,200/ mo. Call 864-0341.

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Calcoku SEVENDAYSVT.COM/CLASSIFIEDS »

Using the enclosed math operations as a guide, fill the grid using the numbers 1 - 6 only once in each row and column.

11+

60x

numbers 1-9 only once in each row, column and 3 x 3 box.

2÷

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1 2

3 9

CALCOKU

5 9 9 4 6 7 7 5 1 4

13x

Open 24/7/365.

View and post up to Post & browse ads Complete the following puzzle by using the 6 photos per ad online. at your convenience.

Show and tell. Sudoku

Difficulty - Medium

BY JOSH REYNOLDS

4 8 2 5

2 6

No. 666

SUDOKU

Difficulty: Hard

BY JOSH REYNOLDS

DIFFICULTY THIS WEEK: HH

DIFFICULTY THIS WEEK: HHH

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.

ANSWERS 9 8ON P.662 4 2 3 7 5 1 H = MODERATE HH = CHALLENGING HHH = HOO, BOY!

1 5 2 3 FILM CLASSES 5 2 ANSWERS ON P. 62 » 8 6 7 4 3 9 6 7 4 1

crossword 3 5 1 6 4 2

4 7 9 3 1 5 8 2

6 8 1 7 3 2 9 5

7 1 4 9 5 6 3 8

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3 4 7 1 9 8 2 6

2 6 3 4 8 7 5 9

Extra! Extra! There’s no limit to ad length online.

Fresh. Filtered. Free. What’s that

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 DECEMBER 9-16, 2020

1/13/14 1:45 PM

By: /s/Rachel Lomonaco Rachel Lomonaco, District Coordinator 111 West Street Essex Junction, VT 05452 802-879-5658 rachel.lomonaco@ vermont.gov

AUCTION – MOBILE HOME Sale Date and Location: Monday, 12/14/2020 at 11:00 a.m. – Milton Mobile Home Cooperative, Inc., Lot #2, 13 Pecor Avenue in Milton, Vermont.

NOTICE OF APPLICATION TO BROWNFIELDS REUSE AND ENVIRONMENTAL LIABILITY LIMITATION ACT PROGRAM Please take notice that Spear Street Associates, LLC whose mailing address is One National Life Drive, M230, Montpelier, VT, 05604, is applying to the Vermont Brownfields Reuse and Environmental Liability Limitation Program (10 V.S.A. §6641 et seq.) in connection with the redevelopment of property known as 600 Spear Street in the City of South Burlington, Vermont. A copy of the application, which contains a preliminary environmental assessment and a description of the proposed redevelopment project is available for public review at the City of South Burlington Clerk’s Office and at the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation offices in Montpelier. Comments concerning the application and/or the above referenced documents may be directed to

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Using the enclosed math operations as a guide, fill the grid using the numbers 1 - 6 only once in each row and column.

Calcoku

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 9-16, 2020

Dated at Essex Junction, Vermont this 1st day of December, 2020.

NOTICE OF LEGAL SALE View Date 12/17/2020

Parties entitled to participate are the Municipality, the Municipal Planning

FROM P.61

1 62

Shawn Donovan at 802522-5683 or at Shawn. Donovan@vermont.gov. Comments may also be submitted by mail to the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation, Waste Management Division, 1 National Life Drive – Davis 1, Montpelier, VT 05620; attention: Shawn Donovan.

For more info. call (802) 860-9536.

FROM P.61

PUZZLE ANSWERS

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).

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.

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ACT 250 NOTICE MINOR APPLICATION #4C13301 10 V.S.A. §§ 6001 - 6093 On October 12, 2020, Ninety Nine Swift Street Associates, LLC filed application number 4C1330- 1 for the construction of a 3-story, 20-unit residential building, consisting of 18 one-bedroom units and 2 studio units; and the construction of an access

No hearing will be held and a permit may be issued unless, on or before December 23, 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

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 December 23, 2020.

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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.

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 “4C1330-1.”

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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.

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drive, parking areas, stormwater infrastructure and other associated site improvements. The project is located at 99 and 105 Swift Street in South Burlington, Vermont. The application was deemed complete on November 24, 2020 after the receipt of supplemental information.

233-7731, pasbell@ paulasbell.com.

1982 Skyline, Model Custom Villa, Min. bid $11,347.02. Must be moved 5 days after sale. Auctioneer: Uriah Wallace – Lic. #057-0002460

Sale Date 12/18/2020 Heather Sullivan Unit #211 Easy Self Storage, 46 Swift St., South Burlington, VT 05403 (802) 863-8300

NOTICE OF TAX SALE TOWN OF COLCHESTER The resident and non-resident owners, lien holders and mortgagees of lands in the Town of Colchester in the County of Chittenden are hereby notified that the taxes or delinquencies assessed by such Town remain, either in whole or in part, unpaid on the following described lands in such Town, to wit: Property Owner: Tonya Gabert (Love) with interest of Ditech Financial, LLC Property Address: 102 Canyon Estates Drive, Parcel ID # 22-0480030000000. All and the same lands and premises conveyed to the said Tonya Gabert by Quitclaim Deed of Brian Gabert dated August 14, 2007 and recorded at Volume 594, Page 346, and by Warranty Deed of Benjamin C. Martin, II and Gail E. Martin to Brian Gabert and Tonya Gabert dated March 27, 2001 and recorded at Volume 346, Page 213. Ditech Financial, LLC’s interest is by Complaint for Foreclosure in the matter Ditech Financial, LLC f/k/s Green Tree Servicing LLC v. Tonya L. Gabert and Citibank (South Dakota) N.A., Occupants of 102 Canyon Estates Drive, Colchester VT dated June 6, 2018 and recorded at Volume 837, Page 673, Judgment and Decree of Foreclosure

by Judicial Sale dated January 17, 2019 and recorded at Volume 861, Page 202, and Certificate of Non- Redemption dated August 26, 2019 and recorded at Volume 861, Page 201 of the Land Records of the Town of Colchester, Vermont. Amount of delinquency, interest, cost and penalties: $106,639.15 Reference may be made to said deeds for a more particular description of said lands and premises, as the same appear in the Town Clerk’s Office of the Town of Colchester. So much of such lands will be sold at public auction at the Town of Colchester, 781 Blakely Road, Colchester, Vermont 05478, on the 14th day of January, 2021 at 10:30 a.m., as shall be requisite to discharge such taxes with interest, costs and penalties, unless previously paid. Property owners, mortgagees, and lien holders may pay such taxes, interest, costs and penalties in full by cash or certified check made payable to the Town of Colchester. At tax sale, successful bidders must pay in full by cash or certified check. No other payments accepted. Any questions or inquiries regarding the abovereferenced sale should be directed to the following address: Kristen E. Shamis, Esq., Monaghan Safar Ducham PLLC, 156 Battery Street Burlington, VT 05401, kshamis@msdvt.com, (802) 660-4735 Monaghan Safar Ducham PLLC, and the Town of Colchester give no opinion or certification as to the marketability of title to the above-referenced properties as held by the current owner/taxpayer. Dated at Colchester, Vermont, this 19th day of November, 2020. Julie Graeter, Collector of Delinquent Taxes Town of Colchester

NOTICE TO CREDITORS STATE OF VERMONT DISTRICT OF CHITTENDEN SS. PROBATE COURT

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DOCKET NO. 20-PR-01143 In re the Estate of Elizabeth L. Gadue Late of Burlington, Vermont NOTICE TO CREDITORS To the creditors of the estate of Elizabeth L. Gadue late of Burlington, Vermont: We have been appointed personal representatives of the above-named estate. All creditors having claims against the estate must present their claims in writing within four (4) months of the date of publication of this Notice. The claim must be presented to us at the address listed below with a copy filed with the register of the Probate Court. The claim will be forever barred if it is not presented as described above within the four (4) month deadline. Dated December 1, 2020 Signed /s/ A. Mark Gadue, /s/ Anne G. Biafore A. Mark Gadue and Anne G. Biafore, c/o Little & Cicchetti, P.C., P.O. Box 907, Burlington, VT 05402-0907 802-862-6511

c mmercialworks ATTENTION REALTORS: LIST YOUR PROPERTIES HERE FOR ONLY $35 (INCLUDE 40 WORDS + PHOTO). SUBMIT TO: KATIE@SEVENDAYSVT.COM BY MONDAYS AT NOON.

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Well-appointed home on 5 acres with views, many upgrades, great location, and potential in-law apartment. Large commercial outbuilding is site of Middlebury Boarding & Day Kennel: retain current use or repurpose for other business. Current owners will provide kennel consulting! Residential MLS #4835836, Commerical MLS #4838212 $449,000

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Name of Publication: Seven Days Publication Dates: That all persons are autonomy is central to 12/9/20 and 12/16/20 born equally free and the liberty and dignity Commercial Works-AcreVT120920.indd 1 independent, and have to determine one’s own Address of Probate certain natural, inherent, life course and shall not Court: Chittenden and unalienable rights, be denied or infringed District Court amongst which are the unless justified by a PO Box 511 enjoying and defending compelling State interest Burlington, VT life and liberty, acquiring, achieved by the least 05402-0511 possessing and restrictive means. PROPOSED AMENDMENTS TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE OF VERMONT. The 2019-2020 General Assembly proposed two amendments to the Constitution of the State of Vermont, and the upcoming 2021-2022 General Assembly must concur with each proposed amendment in order for it to be submitted to the voters for final approval. The proposed amendments are described as follows:

protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety; therefore no person born in this country, or brought from over sea, ought to be holden by law, to serve any person as a servant, slave or apprentice, after arriving to the age of twenty-one years, unless bound by the person’s own consent, after arriving to such age, or bound by law for the payment of debts, damages, fines, costs, or the like slavery and indentured servitude in any form are prohibited.

Proposal 2 would amend the Vermont Constitution to clarify that slavery and indentured servitude in any form are prohibited.

Proposal 5 would amend the Vermont Constitution to ensure that every Vermonter is afforded personal reproductive liberty.

Article 1 of Chapter I of the Vermont Constitution would be amended to read:

Article 22 of Chapter I of the Vermont Constitution would be added to read:

Article 1. [All persons born free; their natural rights; slavery and indentured servitude prohibited]

Article 22. [Personal reproductive liberty] That an individual’s right to personal reproductive

PUBLIC HEARING NOTICE - CITY OF BURLINGTON ANNUAL REPORT TO HUD The City of Burlington is submitting its Consolidated Annual Performance and Evaluation Report on the expenditure of Community Development Block Grant and HOME Investment Partnership Act funds for the program year ending June 30, 2020 to the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development. A draft Report will be available on December 9, 2020, at the Community & Economic Development Office, 149 Church Street, Room 32, City Hall, Burlington, and online at www. burlingtonvt.gov/cedo. The public is encouraged to review the Report and to comment through December 23, 2020. A Public Hearing on the Report will be held

at the City Council meeting of Monday, 12/8/20 12:14 PM December 21, 2020, at 7PM. Comments will be heard at the Hearing on the Report and on housing and community development needs. Written comments can also be submitted directly to the Community & Economic Development Office at the above address or by e-mail to kkinstedt@ burlingtonvt.gov. For more information, or information on alternative access, contact Katie Kinstedt, Community & Economic Development Office, at (802) 557-4058.

THE CONTENTS OF STORAGE UNIT 0103676 LOCATED AT 28 ADAMS DRIVE, WILLISTON VT, 05495 WILL BE SOLD ON OR ABOUT THE 30TH OF DECEMBER 2020 TO SATISFY THE DEBT OF NAOMI SHAW. Any person claiming a right to the goods may pay the amount claimed due and reasonable expenses before the sale, in which case the sale may not occur.

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SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 9-16, 2020

10/20/15 4:32 PM

Seasons Change… But Vermont’s appetite for local food and drink is still hearty.

As the days get colder and Vermonters go back inside, let Good To-Go Vermont be your guide. This digital directory, compiled by Seven Days, lists local eateries by region, offering takeout, delivery, curbside pickup and on-site dining options during the coronavirus pandemic.

SPONSORED BY

Visit GoodToGoVermont.com to see what your favorite local restaurants are serving. They need your support. TA K E O U T • D E L I V E RY • S E AT I N G O P T I O N S • G O O D T O G O V E R M O N T. C O M 64

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 9-16, 2020 1T-GoodToGo090220.indd 3

10/13/20 6:29 PM

65 DECEMBER 9-16, 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

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CARING PEOPLE WANTED Burlington Area

ACCOUNTANT The Vermont State Colleges is seeking a Staff Accountant to join our team in the Chancellor's Office. This position will be responsible for all daily central cash management tasks , provide central accounting and administrative support for billing and student receivable processes and perform general accounting and administrative functions for the VSC system offices and services. Bachelor’s degree in accounting or other appropriate discipline, plus 2-4 years’ of relevant accounting experience, or a combination of education and experience from which comparable knowledge and skills are acquired. For more information or to apply, please visit vsc.edu.

SIGN INSTALLER SB Signs is growing, and looking for a sign installer to join our team. Sign installation is a constantly varied job, so we're looking for someone who can think on their feet to respond to different expectations at on-site jobs.

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. Apply online at: homeinstead.com/483 Or call: 802.860.4663

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Customer service oriented team player to deliver Lawson’s Finest beer to retail accounts throughout Vermont. CDL preferred but willing to train the right candidate.

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MULTIPLE POSITIONS OPEN

Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital (NVRH) has a variety of openings available, including RNs, LNAs, Ultrasound Technologist, Radiologic Technologist, Sr. Multi-Modality Technologist and Medical Lab Technician or Medical Technologist. NVRH also has Administrative Positions, Food 1:02 PM Service and Environmental Services openings. Shift differentials and per diem rates offered! Full-time, part-time and per diem positions available. Excellent benefits including student loan repayment, wellness reimbursement, low cost health plan choice and more! For information to apply, visit nvrh.org/careers.

Seeking a motivated individual who is enthusiastic about local artisan crafts. Must work well4t-NVHR112520.indd 1 3v-VTStateColleges120920.indd 1 12/4/203v-SBSigns120920.indd 1:26 PM 1 12/4/20 12:30 PM 11/24/20 with others and accommodate a wide variety of personalities as they relate to both customStatewide affordable housing provider/ ers and artists. Duties include manager needs an individual to perform point of sales, keeping the professional accounting & technical work gallery clean and tidy and any related to nonprofits & limited partnerships. other task related to the runKnowledge of GAAP & its application is essential. Howard Center is seeking a Shared Living Provider to provide a fullning of a small local business. Bachelor’s degree with major work in accounting, business time home to a social 16-year-old girl who likes animals and dancing. administration plus two years’ experience with emphasis on Computer skills would be Ideal provider would be an excellent collaborator and have strong accounting & financial management. Additional experience great. Must be able to work at observation, interpersonal, and communication skills. This role may be substituted for education. $19.54/hour plus benefits. least one day on the weekends requires a provider who is able to be engaging and compassionate Full time position located in Montpelier, VT. and some holidays. Employee while being able to establish routine/structure, provide consistent should have reliable transsupervision, and follow a detailed support plan. Ideal applicant Send cover letter, completed application & resume to: portation as we are open no would have knowledge or experience related to mental health, HR, VSHA, One Prospect St., Montpelier, Vt. 05602. matter the weather! developmental disabilities, and/or supporting teens. contact@vsha.org. Send resume & cover letter to: Compensation: $35,000 tax-free annual stipend and access to a Visit vsha.org for application & full position details. info.northwoodgallery@ generous respite budget. Interested applicants contact gmail.com patfraser@howardcenter.org or call (802)871-2902. VSHA is an equal opportunity employer.

ACCOUNTANT

11:51 AM

SHARED LIVING PROVIDER

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ATTENTION RECRUITERS:

POST YOUR JOBS AT JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM FOR FAST RESULTS, OR CONTACT MICHELLE BROWN: MICHELLE@SEVENDAYSVT.COM

DECEMBER 9-16, 2020

Invest in Yourself.

Executive Director The United Way of Rutland County seeks an energetic and outgoing Executive Director with a passion for fundraising. The Executive Director is responsible for the strategic direction, business development, and financial performance of the UWRC in support of achieving and advancing its mission. The successful candidate will be familiar with not-for-profit accounting and grant writing, budget creation and management, event planning and seek opportunities for public speaking. This full-time opportunity offers competitive pay and benefits, an engaging work environment and reports to a dynamic Board of Directors. Fluency with Microsoft Office desktop applications and donor databases are a must. A Bachelor’s degree in a related field and 5 years of experience in non-profit human services agency leadership including fundraising, grant cycles, financial, public relations and personnel management required.

Train for your career in healthcare today!

Full Time, Part Time and Per Diem Opportunities Available

Food Service Workers play a critical role in providing fresh, local, high quality meals to patients, families, and staff members throughout the hospital.

LEARN MORE & APPLY: uvmmed.hn/sevendays

FIELD REPRESENTATIVE

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Visit vsha.org for application & full position details.

30-32 hours/week (including one evening) to serve the uninsured and under-insured. Responsibilities include clinic & case management, triage, and ability to work with volunteers. Excellent nursing, communication, and computer skills, with attention to detail. Spanish speaking skills highly desired. Please submit resume, current license and 3 references by 12/31/20 to ODC’s Executive Director, Heidi Sulis: hsulis@opendoormidd.org.

➢ Starting wage of $15.46 with potential to earn $16.25 after one year

TRAIN TO BE A PHLEBOTOMIST GUARANTEED JOB IN 8 WEEKS* Work for Vermont’s Largest Employer!

3Enrollment in a Registered Apprenticeship 3Up to 8 full-time positions available 3Guaranteed starting wages with shift differential (where applicable) 3 Performance-based increases 3Full benefits, including health, dental, paid vacation, 401k, and more 3No cost for qualified VT residents * Employment guaranteed upon successful completion of the 8-week program. The ITAR Program (Information Technology Apprenticeship Readiness) is a partnership of:

➢ Performance-based salary increases ➢ National Certification as a Phlebotomy Technician JOB FEATURES: ➢ Work for Vermont’s largest employer ➢ Direct patient care ➢ Team environment

Wood’s Agency12/8/20 Inc. 2:48 PM Insurance

➢ Rewarding work

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➢ High-growth occupation ➢ Day shifts available

LEARN MORE APPLY ONLINE

vthitec.org DEADLINE FOR WINTER 2021 SESSION: JANUARY 10, 2021

1 12/7/20 6t-VTHiTec120920.indd 12:05 PM

Customer Service Representative Licensed Seeking a CSR for full-time position in a Property and Casualty ofﬁce. Duties at this independent agency cover all aspects of working with clients and companies. Great opportunities in a mid-size ofﬁce located in Western Rutland County. You should have experience with an automated agency management system. This position includes salary, health insurance, and retirement plan. All inquires will be answered. Send resume: dacwoodsagency@comcast.net.

12/8/20 2v-WoodsAgency120920.indd 12:49 PM 1

12/8/20 1:50 PM

OPENINGS FOR CLINICIANS Counseling Service of Addison County is seeing clinicians in several departments within the agency. Work with a creative approach to crisis work in homes, communities and schools with children, adolescents and families with emotional and behavioral challenges and developmental disorders or with adults to treat, understand and alleviate symptoms related to improvement of mental health, substance use, behavioral, and relationship distress. We believe in a team of supportive colleagues and the importance of high-quality supervision. Master’s degree required, licensed preferred and/or license eligible after rostering. Full time positions with comprehensive benefits or part time available. Send resumes to: hcamara@csac-vt.org Equal opportunity employer

VSHA is an equal opportunity employer. 4t-VSHAfieldrep120920.indd 1

EXPERIENCED RN CASE MANAGER

The ITAR Program is funded in part by a grant from the Vermont and U.S. Dept. of Labor. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment with regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disablity, genetics political affiliation or belief.

Make a difference by helping individuals & families with their housing needs. Vermont State Housing Authority, a statewide affordable housing provider, has an exciting opportunity for a professional individual to join their dedicated team. Responsibilities include field operations for Section 8 funded housing rental programs in Addison & parts of Chittenden counties. Work with clients, landlords, community organizations; mediate issues; administer & enforce contracts with property owners; perform annual reexaminations of tenants & inspections of units under the program. Individual will be home-based & must reside in Addison or Chittenden County. Extensive driving required. Send cover letter, completed application & resume to: HR, VSHA, One Prospect St., Montpelier, Vt. 05602. contact@vsha.org.

➢ Dedicated student support ➢ Guaranteed employment *

Over the past twenty years, Vermont HITEC educated and employed over 1,600 individuals To apply please forward a cover letter and resume to Caprice Hover at in the healthcare, information technology, caprice@uwrutlandcounty.org. The UWRC is an equal opportunity advanced manufacturing, and business services fields. We are accepting applications employer. Salary range is 60,000-70,000. for our latest healthcare program. The program offers eight weeks of Phlebotomy training at no cost and immediate employment and 4t-UnitedWayRutlandCounty120920.indd 1 12/7/20 4:03 PM apprenticeship as a Phlebotomist with the UVM Medical Center (up to 8 positions) upon successful completion.

FOOD SERVICE WORKER

PROGRAM FEATURES:

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Looking for a Sweet Job? Our mobile-friendly job board is buzzing with excitement.

Start applying at jobs.sevendaysvt.com

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6/23/20 12:31 PM

NEW JOBS POSTED DAILY! JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM

67 DECEMBER 9-16, 2020

Request for Proposals

Regional Child & Youth Advocacy Project Coordination

Is currently seeking:

The Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence seeks a contractor to provide leadership and coordination for a regional project that provides supportive services to promote healing and increase safety and well-being for children and adults impacted by sexual harm or/and intimate partner violence in northeastern Vermont, as well as education and prevention. Find more information and instructions for how to submit a proposal at vtnetwork.org/employment-opportunities.

Drop-In Center Youth Coach St Albans, VT

https://bit.ly/2I0wvy4

Priority will be given to proposals from individuals or consulting entities owned by individuals who identify as a person of color. BIPOC applicants are encouraged to identify as such in their proposal. We seek a contractor with a demonstrated commitment to anti-oppression work and ending violence, especially in the lives of children and youth.

https://bit.ly/3bsF6DX

12/7/20 12:03 PM

WE’RE HIRING! WCMHS Offers a Broad Range of Job Opportunities. For more information, visit wcmhs.org/ careers.

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(FULL-TIME)

Digital Coordinator/Graphic Designer April Cornell is seeking a highly organized designer with an ability to perform a variety of digital marketing and eCommerce related tasks. From email design, to digital asset management, to print design, social publishing and content management - April Cornell provides a challenging, entrepreneurial work environment that will test your design capabilities and grow your skill set. Specifically, we are looking for someone who is able to coordinate multiple calendars and move adeptly between projects. All candidates must be proficient in graphic design software with experience in Photoshop, InDesign, and the Adobe Creative Suite. Additionally, it’s important to us to find someone with the desire and ability to drive marketing results through their hard work and to help the company identify opportunities.

Wake Robin seeks a Maintenance person to join our staff. Our maintenance team utilizes a variety of technical skills to repair and maintain electrical, plumbing, security, and air quality systems throughout the facility and in resident homes. Qualified candidate will have well rounded maintenance skills and must have specific experience and/or training in HVAC systems, as well as a strong aptitude for computer-based operational systems. This is an opportunity to join a stable and talented team of individuals dedicated to doing good work, for great people, in a beautiful setting.

HOUSEKEEPER (FULL-TIME)

Housekeepers support residents who live independently by providing contactless housekeeping services in their homes while they are away. Housekeepers are critical to the wellbeing of residents in a setting that utilizes best practices to maintain our Covid Free environment. Candidates must have housekeeping and/or industrial cleaning or industrial laundry experience.

UTILITY

(FULL-TIME)

Our Needs

11/30/20 12:04 PM

Youth Outreach Specialist

an AmeriCorps position Our AmeriCorps Outreach Specialist will use their passion for young people, learning and social justice to help give all bright Vermont students access to life-changing GIV programs. Organized, articulate and a great writer? Read more at giv.org/jobs!

• Project management

• Web auditing, QA

• Content planning

• Print design

• Email design & scheduling (Bronto ESP)

• Cross functional team project management

• Social content design

• Working HTML knowledge

• Product merchandising • Digital asset coordination

• Web design

Our Perfect Fit 1. Highly organized, meets deadlines 2. Entrepreneurial mindset 3. Ability to work in a growth environment Visit our website ~ aprilcornell.com Facebook ~ @aprilcornellpage, IG ~april.cornell Email resumes to careers@aprilcornell.net.

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MAINTENANCE

Special Consideration

Supported Housing Respite Staff 2v-Spectrum120920.indd 1

Vermont’s premier continuing Care Retirement Community seeks members to join our Environmental Services Team!

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This service position performs a variety of custodial, floor maintenance, light maintenance and repair duties under general supervision throughout the Wake Robin campus, common areas, independent living units, and health center. A minimum of one year of hands-on experience as custodian/housekeeper or an equivalent combination of education and experience is required. 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 please send resume and cover letter to HR@wakerobin.com or visit our website, wakerobin.com, to complete an application. Wake Robin is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

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12/7/20 1:55 PM

ATTENTION RECRUITERS:

POST YOUR JOBS AT JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM FOR FAST RESULTS, OR CONTACT MICHELLE BROWN: MICHELLE@SEVENDAYSVT.COM

DECEMBER 9-16, 2020

PROGRAM SPECIALIST Exciting full time career opportunity for someone with a passion for working with healthcare, education and community providers, and across sectors, to plan and carry out programmatic initiatives related to mental health promotion, suicide and substance misuse prevention. You will work in a team-based environment to manage projects, provide technical assistance, develop resources, and plan and offer professional development to support state and local health initiatives. This is a 1.0 FTE position offering a competitive salary with benefits. Vermont-based or regional candidates highly preferred. We strongly encourage applicants from diverse communities to apply. Apply here: healthandlearning.org/program-specialist

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12/1/20 11:32 AM

GO HIRE.

MARKETING AND OUTREACH COORDINATOR

Job Seekers:

Interested in helping co-create a world where both nature and people thrive? We are looking for an organized, detail-oriented, and solutions focused individual to support our marketing initiatives that help build support for conservation science, on the ground projects, and policy initiatives that address our 21st century environmental challenges.

Job Recruiters:

The position is two-fold. The successful candidate will be responsible for managing multiple digital marketing platform and helping to develop content for the channels. S/he will also coordinate all online and public events, including webinars, community forums, and field trips, to better connect communities to conservation initiatives while building relationships with various stakeholders.

• Accept applications and manage the hiring process via our applicant tracking tool.

• Post jobs using a form that includes key info about your company and open positions (location, application deadlines, video, images, etc.).

• Search for jobs by keyword, location, category and job type. • Set up job alert emails using custom search criteria. • Save jobs to a custom list with your own notes on the positions. • Apply for jobs directly through the site.

• Easily manage your open job listings from your recruiter dashboard.

Minimum Qualifications • A Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Journalism, Public Relations, or Environmental Science with proven communications expertise • 2-3 years' experience in the field may be advantageous. • Strong writing, public speaking, and interpersonal skills. • Excellent organizational and management skills. • Some experience with digital marketing platforms and a willingness to learn new programs. The Nature Conservancy is a global non-profit that works in all 50 states and in over 70 countries. We offer a competitive salary with a comprehensive benefits package and professional development opportunities. For a complete position description and to apply, visit tinyurl.com/y6nch7sr. The application deadline is Midnight EST January 3, 2021.

Get a quote when you post online or contact Michelle Brown: 865-1020, ext. 21, michelle@sevendaysvt.com.

jobs.sevendaysvt.com

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11/30/20 3:19 PM

11/10/20 12:54 PM

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Fair Housing Project Community Organizer As part of CVOEO’s Housing Advocacy Programs team, the Fair Housing Project Community Organizer will coordinate a statewide effort to support local housing committees and assist with outreach and education projects, including a new statewide library partnership and data collection initiative. This is a one-year, grantfunded position. Full job description and application details at cvoeo.org/careers.

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12/7/20

Medical Assistant

NEW JOBS POSTED DAILY! JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM

COMMUNITY DEVELOPER This position contributes to housing development activities of Cathedral Square (CSC), a highly innovative, successful non-profit housing organization. CSC is a leader in affordable senior housing & the architect of SASH – Support and Services at Home. The Community Developer works to develop new high quality, affordable, accessible and energy efficient housing, and preserve/ rehabilitate existing affordable housing. This position works as part of a small team on a range of projects & has an opportunity to make a positive difference in the lives of older adults. This position represents CSC’s mission & must be committed to providing housing for low and moderate income households.

Qualifications: Bachelor’s Degree required; post graduate work or professional training in relevant field preferred. Excellent communication, problem solving & analytical skills required. 11:56 AM Computer and technology skills, writing skills, attention to detail, organizational and planning skills, time management and the ability to manage multiple projects & priorities in a changing environment a must. Full time, based in South Burlington. Competitive salary, great benefits and a friendly environment. CSC is a welcoming and inclusive organization, embracing diversity in all its forms. EOE. Please submit a cover letter & resume: jobs@cathedralsquare.org.

8/21/20

2:47 PM

69 DECEMBER 9-16, 2020

DESIGNER Bread Loaf Corporation, Vermont’s integrated company of architects, planners and builders, is excited to add a Designer to its highly successful and diversified Architecture department. We are looking for Designers with strong design portfolios, excellent communication skills and the ability to think on their feet and solve problems. We want people who enjoy working in a team environment and are interested in an integrated design/build approach. Ideal candidates will have a professional degree from an accredited school of architecture and a minimum of three years of experience doing commercial, industrial and institutional work. He or she must be proficient in Revit, InDesign, Enscape, Photoshop and Illustrator. At Bread Loaf, Designers are critical members of a project team - developing proposals; answering RFQs; and creating project designs, technical solutions, drawings, specifications, and project documents.

Visit our website, www.breadloaf.com, for information about our company. Send your resume to resumes@breadloaf.com. E.O.E.

Seeking full time experienced medical assistant to join our busy OB/GYN practice clinical team. Experience in5v-CathedralSquare120920.indd 1 12/7/205v-BreadLoaf120920.indd 3:44 PM 1 12/8/20 11:19 AM Strategic Account Manager women’s health is preferred Providing Innovative Mental Health and Educational but not required. Looking Services to Vermont’s Children & Families. for someone that can work Select is looking for an experienced Strategic accurately and efficiently in Account Manager to own key client relationships a fast paced environment. Burlington Partnership for a Healthy Community and deliver creative outcomes within our growing The position requires base of iconic global consumer brand partners. We are looking for an organized, enthusiastic person with vision, competency in taking vitals, compassion, and an eye toward the possibilities that support our phlebotomy, immunization Responsibilities: foster client relationships by mission of addressing the causes and consequences of substance administration, assisting understanding and defining the outcomes they misuse in Burlington. with medical procedures and seek, collaborate and communicate with internal medical intake. Candidate We want someone with attention to detail, who has experience stakeholders, and engage clients using Select’s should also be comfortable leading with integrity in a non-profit, as well as demonstrated growing suite of marketing technology products. with EMR systems, medical community engagement skills. This position is responsible for terminology, and general project management and supporting the leadership with strategic Qualifications: 3-5 years experience in a consumer computer skills. planning, and sustainability. Other duties include grant writing and brand marketing agency or inside a consumer management, fundraising, and the day-to-day operations of a small brand firm, a strong understanding of the consumLooking for an individual non-profit. We are looking for a strong advocate for public health er brand space, modern marketing practices and with good interpersonal and who understands the role that local policy and practice play in today's omni-channel landscape, and experience communication skills, who health outcomes. Prior experience working in the substance misuse managing relationships with multiple complex understands the importance prevention field or with healthy community design is beneficial. deliverables on budget and within deadline. of providing quality Bachelor degree preferred. This is a full-time benefited position with a flexible schedule. If customer service and has interested please apply online, including a cover letter and resume, a willingness to be flexible Apply: at nfivermont.org/careers. with duties in order to meet careers@selectdesign.com BPHC is a coalition of people and partners that recognize that the the needs of the patients Full Listing: misuse of drugs, alcohol, and tobacco affect us all and we work and the clinic. Interested www.selectdesign.com/careers together to create a healthier environment in Burlington. candidates should send a Learn more at: burlingtonpartnership.org. cover letter and resume to 208 Flynn Ave., Burlington, VT (802) 864.9075 jobs@maitriobgyn.com. We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and celebrate the diversity of our clients and staff.

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR

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12/7/20 11:13 AM

ATTENTION RECRUITERS:

POST YOUR JOBS AT JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM FOR FAST RESULTS, OR CONTACT MICHELLE BROWN: MICHELLE@SEVENDAYSVT.COM

DECEMBER 9-16, 2020

Full Time Receptionist Seeking a full time receptionist to join our beautiful Naturopathic Care Clinic in South Burlington. 32 to 40 hours a week. Salary depends on experience. Paid Vacation, retirement and heath care benefits offered. Send inquiries, resume and cover letter to: kk@mountainviewnaturalmedicine.com.

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11/23/20 10:21 AM

EXPERIENCED DIESEL TECHS WANTED

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12/4/20 10:18 AM

• RATE OF PAY: $23-$33/HR • 2+ years of experience as Diesel Tech, with CDL License • Diagnosing & repairing medium and heavy duty vehicles • Writing up accurate & descriptive work performed details • Verifying vehicle performance by conducting test-drives Competitive hourly wages and benefits including PTO and Kenworth sponsored training. Email resume, cover letter and salary requirements to: resume@newenglandkw.com or call 802.985.2521 and ask for Parker Shenk.

Estateand andTrust Trust Administrator/Paralegal Administrator/Paralegal Estate Estate and Trust Administrator/Paralegal Estate and Trust Administrator/Paralegal Burlington Office Estate and TrustBurlington Administrator/Paralegal Office Burlington Office Burlington Office

Prestigious law firm seeks individual with relevant education, life and Prestigious lawfirm firmseeks seeks individual relevant education, lifelife andand administrative experience to support with state-wide estate and trust Prestigious law individual with relevant education, Burlington Office Prestigious law firm seeks individual with relevant education, life administrative experience to support state-wide estate and trust practice. Position involves intensive, ongoing client support and administrative experience to support state-wide estate and trust and administrative experience to supportof state-wide estate andfinancial trust practice. Position involves intensive, ongoing client support and management, including coordination documentation with practice. Position involves intensive, ongoing client support and Prestigious law firm seeks individual with relevant education, life management, including coordination of documentation with financial practice. Position involves intensive, ongoing client support and institutions, preparation of financial reports, probate court filings andand management, including coordination of documentation withtrust financial administrative experience to support state-wide estate and institutions, preparation of financial reports, court filings and communications, and follow up on estate andprobate trust planning management, including coordination of documentation with financial institutions, preparation of intensive, financial reports, probate court filings and practice. Position involves ongoing client support and communications, and follow up on estate and trust planning administration matters. institutions, preparation of financial reports, probate court filings and communications, and follow up on estate and trust planning management, including coordination of documentation with financial administration matters. communications, and follow up on estate and trust planning administration matters. Candidatespreparation must have initiative, a proven ability to workcourt with filings and institutions, of financial reports, probate administration matters. Candidates have initiative, a proven to work with numbers, bemust detail oriented, organized andability computer literate. communications, and follow up on estate and trust planning Candidates must have initiative, a proven ability to work with numbers, be detail oriented, organized and computer literate. administration matters. Candidates have initiative, a proven to work with numbers, bemust detail organized andability computer literate. This position will oriented, support attorneys in the firm’s Burlington and numbers, be detail oriented, organized and computer literate. Middlebury offices, though will be based inability the Burlington This position will support attorneys in the firm’s Burlington and Candidates must have initiative, a proven to workoffice. with Middlebury offices, thoughattorneys will be based in firm’s the Burlington office. This position will support in the Burlington and numbers, be detail oriented, organized andfirm’s computer literate. This position will support attorneys in the Burlington and More information on the firm’s estate and trust practice can be found Middlebury offices, though will be based in the Burlington office. Middlebury offices, though will be based in the Burlington office. on the firm’s website at http://www.langrock.com/ourMore information on the firm’s estate and trust practice can be found This position support attorneys in the firm’s Burlington and services/individuals/estate-planning-and-probate/ on the firm’swill website at http://www.langrock.com/ourMore information onthough the firm’s andintrust practice can be found Middlebury offices, will estate be based the Burlington office. More on the firm’s estate and trust practice can be found on services/individuals/estate-planning-and-probate/ theinformation firm’s website at http://www.langrock.com/ourCompetitive salary; hours flexible/negotiable. on the firm’s website at http://www.langrock.com/ourservices/individuals/estate-planning-and-probate/ More information on hours the firm’s estate and trust practice can be found Competitive salary; flexible/negotiable. services/individuals/estate-planning-and-probate/

on the firm’s website at http://www.langrock.com/ourCompetitive salary; flexible/negotiable. services/individuals/estate-planning-and-probate/ Please replyhours via email with cover letter and resume to: Competitive salary; hours flexible/negotiable. Please reply via email with cover letter and resume to: Competitive salary; hours flexible/negotiable. Hobart F. Popick, Partner Please reply via email with cover letter and resume to: Langrock Sperry & Wool, LLP Hobart F. Popick, Please reply viahpopick@langrock.com email with coverPartner letter and resume to: Langrock Sperry & Wool, LLP Hobart Popick, hpopick@langrock.com Please reply via email F. with coverPartner letter and resume to:

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Hobart F. Popick, Partner Langrock Sperry & Wool, LLP Langrock Sperry & Wool, LLP hpopick@langrock.com Hobart F. Popick, Partner

YOU WILL FIND

SUCCESS CRACK OPEN YOUR FUTURE... with our mobile-friendly job board. Job seekers can: • Browse hundreds of current, local positions from Vermont companies. • Search for jobs by keyword, location, category and job type. • Set up job alerts. • Apply for jobs directly through the site. START APPLYING AT JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM

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12/8/20 1:24 PM

ai160624835155_1T-GiftGuide112520.pdf

11/24/20

3:05 PM

Making a Holiday Shopping List? CHECK IT TWICE — FOR OPPORTUNITIES TO GIFT LOCAL! We need to support and sustain our local economy, our friends and neighbors. Gifting local keeps folks here in business. So many small businesses have been impacted by COVID-19, I feel that there has never been a better time to buy as local as you can whenever possible! Kat Patterson

For every dollar you spend at a local business,

67¢

stays in the local community.

When you gift local, you are supporting your community in more ways than one, and you are purchasing gifts that are thoughtful, unique and well made. Erin Bombard

(SoUrCe: BuSiNeSsWiRe)

Shop smart and shop small — your choices will impact us all. Vermont merchants have faced many challenges this year and need your support — especially this holiday season. Visit shoptheregister.com for all the info on 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. Remember, when you buy a gift locally, the recipient isn’t the only one who benefits. The entire community does!

ThE ReGiStEr Is GeNeRoUsLy SuPpOrTeD By:

Check out our...

Holiday Gift Guide for a curated roundup of local gift ideas for your friends and family. sevendaysvt.com/gift-guide-2020

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 9-16, 2020

fun stuff

RACHEL LINDSAY

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 9-16, 2020

CALCOKU & SUDOKU (P.61) CROSSWORD (P.61)

HARRY BLISS

JEN SORENSEN

Start exploring at staytrippervt.com 2V-Staytripper120920.indd 1

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 9-16, 2020

PHOTO BY CHADWICK ESTEY

This monthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Staytripper is a road map to continued safe exploration and enjoyment of Vermont. When your smartest option is to stay close to home, why not take the opportunity to see your state with fresh eyes?

12/8/20 5:11 PM

fun stuff RYAN RIDDLE

Making it is not :( Keep this newspaper free for all. Join the Seven Days Super Readers at sevendaysvt.com/super-readers or call us at 802-864-5684.

74SR-Comics-filler071520.indd SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 9-16, 2020 1

7/14/20 3:32 PM

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.

FREE WILL ASTROLOGY BY ROB BREZSNY REAL DECEMBER 10-16

other sign of the zodiac, have the greatest potential to cultivate an intuitive sense of how to align yourselves vigorously with the Tao. And you’re in prime time to do just that.

SAGITTARIUS (NOV. 22-DEC. 21):

I’m envisioning a scene in which you’re sitting on a chair at a kitchen table. At the center of the table is a white vase holding 18 longstemmed red roses. The rest of the table’s surface is filled with piles of money, which you have just unloaded from five mysterious suitcases you found at your front door. All of that cash is yours, having been given to you no-strings-attached by an anonymous donor. You’re in joyful shock as you contemplate the implications of this miraculous gift. Your imagination floods with fantasies about how different your life can become. Now, Sagittarius, I invite you to dream up at least three further wonderfully positive fantasies involving good financial luck. That’s the medicine you need right now.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): According to Tao-

ist scholar Chad Hansen, “Western philosophers have endlessly analyzed and dissected a cluster of terms thought to be central to our thinking,” such as truth, beauty, reason, knowledge, belief, mind and goodness. But he reports that they’ve never turned their attention to a central concept of Chinese philosophy: the Tao, which might be defined as the natural, unpredictable flow of life’s ever-changing rhythms. I think that you Aries people, more than any

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): What’s the cause of the rumbling at the core of your soul? How do we explain the smoke and steam that are rising from the lower depths? From what I can discern, the fire down below and the water down below are interacting to produce an almost supernatural state of volatile yet numinous grace. This is a good thing! You may soon begin having visions of eerie loveliness and Earth-shaking peace. The clarity that will eventually emerge may at first seem dark, but if you maintain your poise it will bloom like a thousand moons. GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Author and stu-

dent Raquel Isabelle de Alderete writes wittily about her paradoxical desires and contradictory qualities. In accordance with current astrological omens, I encourage you to ruminate about your own. For inspiration, read her testimony: “I want to be untouchably beautiful but I also don’t want to care about how I look. I want to be at the top of my class but I also just want to do as best as I can without driving myself to the edge. I want to be a mystery that’s open to everybody. A romantic that never falls in love. Both the bird and the cat.”

CANCER (June 21-July 22): What would it take for you to muster just a bit more courage so as to change what needs to be changed? How could you summon the extra excitement and willpower necessary to finally make progress on a dilemma that has stumped you? I’m happy to inform you that cosmic rhythms will soon be shifting in such a way as to make these breakthroughs more possible. For best results, shed any tendencies you might have to feel sorry for yourself or to believe you’re powerless. LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Novelist Tom Robbins says you have the power to change how you perceive the world. You can change reality — and how reality responds to you — by the way you look at and interpret it. This counsel is especially useful for you right now, Leo. You have an un-

paralleled opportunity to reconfigure the way you apprehend things and thereby transform the world you live in. So I suggest you set your intention. Vow that for the next two weeks, every experience will bring you a fresh invitation to find out something you didn’t know before.

power objects in the coming months. Why? Because I suspect that you will regularly deal with potencies and energies that could potentially be either problematic or regenerative. You’ll have to be alert to ensure that they express primarily as healing agents.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi was reelected in 2019. During his campaign, the Virgo-born politician arranged to be photographed while wearing the saffron robes of a Hindu priest and meditating in an austere Himalayan cave. Why did he do it? To appeal to religious voters. But later it was revealed that the “cave” was in a cozy retreat center that provides regular meals, electricity, phone service and attentive attendants. It will be crucial for you to shun this type of fakery in 2021, Virgo. Your success will depend on you being as authentic, genuine and honest as you can possibly be. Now is an excellent time to set your intention and start getting yourself in that pure frame of mind.

CAPRICORN

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): When author Er-

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): In the French

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Mistletoe is a parasite that grows on trees, weakening them. On the other hand, it has been a sacred plant in European tradition. People once thought it conferred magical protection. It was called “all-heal” and regarded as a medicine that could cure numerous illnesses. Even today, it’s used in Europe as a remedy for colon cancer. And of course mistletoe is also an icon meant to encourage kissing. After studying your astrological potentials, I’m proposing that mistletoe serve as one of your symbolic

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): There are too many authorities, experts, know-it-alls and arrogant ideologues trying to tell us all what to do and how to do it. Fortunately, the cosmic rhythms are now aligned in such a way as to help you free yourself from those despots and bullies. Here’s more good news: Cosmic rhythms are also aligned to free you from the nagging voices in your own head that harass you with fearful fantasies and threaten you with punishment if you aren’t perfect.

nest Hemingway was working on the manuscript for his novel A Farewell to Arms, he asked his colleague F. Scott Fitzgerald to offer critique. Fitzgerald obliged with a 10page analysis that advised a different ending, among other suggestions. Hemingway wasn’t pleased. “Kiss my ass,” he wrote back to Fitzgerald. I suggest a different approach for you, Libra. In my view, now is a good time to solicit feedback and mirroring from trusted allies. What do they think and how do they feel about the current state of your life and work? If they do respond, take at least some of it to heart.

(Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Boisterous Capricorn novelist Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995) once made the following New Year’s Eve toast: “To all the devils, lusts, passions, greeds, envies, loves, hates, strange desires, enemies ghostly and real, the army of memories, with which I do battle — may they never give me peace.” Right now I suspect you may be tempted to make a similar toast. As crazy-making as your current challenges are, they are entertaining and growth-inducing. You may even have become a bit addicted to them. But in the interests of your long-term sanity, I will ask you to cut back on your “enjoyment” of all this uproar. Please consider a retreat into an intense self-nurturing phase.

city of Strasbourg, there’s a wine cellar built in the year 1395. Among its treasures is a barrel filled with 450 liters of wine that was originally produced in 1472. According to legend, this ancient beverage has been tasted on just three occasions. The last time was to celebrate the French army’s liberation of Strasbourg from German occupation in 1944. If I had the power, I would propose serving it to you Aquarians in honor of your tribe’s heroic efforts to survive — and even thrive — during the ordeals of 2020. I’m predicting that life in 2021 will have more grace and progress because of how you have dealt with this year’s challenges.

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Respond to these people online: dating.sevendaysvt.com WOMEN seeking... FABULOUS, FUN AND FIT! Looking for a companion who can keep up with me. I love the outdoors, being close to nature, and staying active and fit. Looking for a someone, not a something. VTcoco, 51, seeking: M, l LET’S PRETEND Let’s pretend the world is healing, and we can celebrate together. I love comedy improv, swimming, my family and great food, reading and being read to, travel and adventures. Looking for a healthy, funny, intelligent guy who likes jazz and world music, cooking, travel, and the outdoors. Are you comfortable with yourself and with me, a strong and independent gal? Mangosmom, 60, seeking: M, l JOYFUL Looking for a funny person ‘cause I’m funny, too! Creative type! I love going to galleries and museums. Kind, compassionate, like to travel, go boating and be on beaches. I see life through optimistic eyes. Scout, 67, seeking: M, l ADORABLE, WITTY AND UNIQUE! Ah, the beginning of another season in Vermont. The one made for playing in the snow, hot chocolate, popcorn and movies, a warm fire. The one I seek is mellow yet full of life. Stories to share, being silly and looking at life positively. Arms to hold me, kisses at a whim. Meet and see where it goes? Pollyanna, 59, seeking: M, l

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OPTIMIST RETIREE SEEKS COMPANY A bit crazy even thinking of trying to get together with someone right now, but why not? Hope to travel as soon as humanly possible to a warm place in the spring. Spring training? Golf? Beach? I feel we are all in a transformative time now. It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine! ihappy2, 67, seeking: M, l COUNTRY GIRL LOVES MOTORCYCLE RIDES Affectionate country girl looking for a man who knows how to treat a lady. I have a great sense of humor, and you should, too! Love to horseback ride, take walks, bike ride, hike and enjoy each other’s company. I can also make a mean cheesecake! CURIOSITY22, 62, seeking: M, l FLAVORFUL, SPIRITED. I CONTAIN MULTITUDES. It’s virtually impossible to condense a personality into such a small container. I happily contradict myself, if the spirit moves me. I say “yes” to life while remaining grounded. I value connection, honesty and personal insight. I’m looking for someone courageous enough to also say “yes” to life. katya, 54, seeking: M, l DREAMER Are you into conscious living? Spirituality? Nature? Honesty? Compassion? Maybe you’re a hopeless romantic? I am seeking a lasting relationship with a like-minded man. Looking for my best friend to share adventures, love and life’s ups and downs. I like to hike, ski, relax, talk, ponder and spend lots of time with you. naturgirl, 64, seeking: M, l LOYAL, KIND AND HONEST I’m a very gentle person, drama free. I love to cook, and I keep myself busy doing all kinds of art. I like to walk (with a partner will be better). I’m living my dream, and I want to share it with my partner. Pepita13, 69, seeking: M, l STRONG, INDEPENDENT, INTELLECTUAL Ski? Dinner? Speak any foreign languages? No rednecks or men who will break under heavy use. Must be well educated, well traveled and cultured. 420-friendly, and no man-babies looking for a mama! pip, 56, seeking: M, l FUNNY, ACTIVE ACTIVIST AND ADVENTURIST Recently moved to Vermont from D.C. Would like to meet people for social/ political activism, hiking, hanging out and socializing. Always up for new adventures, like discussing world events. Am compassionate, enjoy outdoor activities. I’m nonjudgmental and appreciate the same in others. I’ve been involved in activism around racial equity, health care and disability rights ... but don’t take myself too seriously! AnnieCA, 67, seeking: M, l INTUITIVE, CREATIVE, A GOOD LISTENER! I’m a good person who enjoys good food to eat, good wine to drink, good books to read, good stories to share and good friends to spend time with. I have been called the “Quick of Wit.” My friends say that I am funny, caring, creative, sometimes edgy, and that I not only tell good stories, I write them! Sentient, 66, seeking: M, l

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 9-16, 2020

SUNNY, HAPPY AND FUN I love sharing fun things with a partner. I love sailing and the beach in the summer and skiing and skating in the winter. I love playing almost all sports except hunting. I also love theater, dance and music. Looking for someone who enjoys the same and is laid-back and not too serious. snowflake123, 49, seeking: M, l OUTDOORSY AND ACTIVE I enjoy being active in all of Vermont’s seasons, adventurous and spontaneous travel, gardening, home projects, outdoor recreation, good food, and small concerts. Am also content with museums or the New Yorker and a front porch. Raise animals for my freezer. Am a loyal friend. NEK. I am looking for a close companion and am open to all that entails. NEK026, 59, seeking: M, l CUCKOO ABOUT ADVENTURES I’m just looking for a new friend. I’m somewhat new to the area and would like to find someone who likes to talk, hike, or do anything that doesn’t involve going to the bar or lots of drinking! NDrootsNYbuds, 38, seeking: M, l HERE’S TO SECOND CHANCES Widowed, fit, fun, financially secure WF with serious BDSM/kinky fantasies that I want/need to explore. Looking to find 50- to 60-y/o male with experience in the much less vanilla side of sex for dating and/or LTR. bestisyettobe, 53, seeking: M, l INTERESTED Still standing after all these years! WayToGo, 68, seeking: M 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, 68, seeking: M, l

MEN seeking... LOOKING FOR HER Looking for her with a flashlight in the daytime. Is it you? Kinglondon, 36, seeking: W, l HAPPY AND EASYGOING Looking for friends to hang out with and share common interests. I really like going to live music and dancing. Especially Grateful Dead-related music, groove bands and jam bands. I’m a hard worker and extremely motivated by honesty, loyalty and sharing real emotion. But I’m also easygoing and like laughing often. I enjoy intellectual conversation and goofiness. lookin2see22, 52, seeking: W, l SEEKING COMPANIONSHIP Would like to find someone to hang out with. Matthew5618, 43, seeking: W, l

NEED SOMEONE IN THE EVENING? Male, 70s, Mad River Valley, recently widowed, wishes to have Zoom meetings with women 55 and up. Hopefully we want to meet in person after the vaccine becomes available. Looking for someone to relax with, talk in the afternoon, or the evening, get to know each other. I want someone to know me and remember who I am, don’t you? jemd, 77, seeking: W, l THE SIXTH EXTINCTION I have been arrested twice, closing down Vermont Yankee and organized a counter-recruiting group to go into school and convince the youth that maybe going to another country and killing folks is not something they want to do. We are now in a pandemic. Lost my girlfriend to it, so maybe talk and write for now. Memyselfandi, 73, seeking: W, l GRATEFUL, HUMBLE AND HAPPY I’m not gonna bore you here; I’ll keep it short. I’m first and foremost a skier; I could ski every day of the year and not get tired of it. Also am really into biking and now running, along with hiking. Looking for someone I can share a few similar interests mentioned above. Jbvt, 32, seeking: W, l LIFE IS TOO COMPLICATED Nature is the path to peace and salvation. I am tired of game players. If you are one, don’t waste my time. I am kind, and you will find me to be fair and fun to be with. I like adventures, road trips, Maine seacoast. thoreau1, 64, seeking: W ADVENTUROUS, RELIABLE AND CONSIDERATE Average. DoubleNickelVT, 55, seeking: W LIFE IS A BANQUET Hello, world. I’m a father, engineer, musician, handyman, Vermonter. I’m a far better conversationalist than writer. MusicAndPancakes, 45, seeking: W, l NEW TO THIS I have a poetic nature and an adventurous spirit. I’m seeking a woman to share conversation and take walks with. Let’s get together for a cup of tea. Chapter2, 67, seeking: W, l CHAOSFACTORINCARNATE I’m just looking for anything. Strength: making funny. Wekness: spelin. CollyRog, 21, seeking: W ALL STARTS WITH HELLO I count myself as an easygoing person, very lucky to have what eyesight I have. Losing your sight is one thing, but losing your vision is a whole different thing. Looking forward to hearing from you. Justmemacjr, 57, seeking: W, l BOND ... JAMES BOND Man of mystery, ethically polyamorous, creative. Nerdy scientist, but not usually the smartest guy in the room. My quietude belies my depth. 1109sm, 58, seeking: W, Cp, l THOUGHTFUL, EVOLVING MAN I am the quintessential optimist, a realist and young at heart. My interests include listening to music, traveling both near and far, reading fiction and nonfiction, cooking, various forms of working out, spending time with a few close friends. I would like to meet someone who enjoys good conversation, who is passionate, playful, sensual and curious. not2complicated, 64, seeking: W, l FRIENDLY, INTELLECTUAL, EASYGOING I would not stand out in a crowd. I can be a little boring until we get on the right subject. Mechanic, 67, seeking: W

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COUPLES seeking... COUPLE LOOKING FOR FUN! Adventurous, silly, easygoing, freespirited. Agd09090, 26, seeking: Cp, l HELP US BRANCH OUT We are a couple of over 30 years. We love to spend time together, enjoying good food, good beer/wine and good company. We enjoy the outdoors, camping, hiking, skiing. Looking for other couples to become friends with that can help us explore and branch out. We love each other very deeply and want to share that love with others. CentralVTCpl, 54, seeking: Cp, Gp COUPLE SEEKING WOMAN We are very open and honest. Clean, safe and totally discreet. We are looking for a woman who wants to try new adult things with a couple. We want to role-play and try some kink. Newboytoyvt, 50, seeking: W, l 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 bicurious. VTroleplaying, 47, seeking: W

i SPY

If you’ve been spied, go online to contact your admirer!

dating.sevendaysvt.com

SILVER FOX IN SILVER YARIS I saw you pulling out of the skate park in your silver two-door Yaris. Driving all slow. So laid-back you don’t even use your blinkers. I just thought to myself, Damn, he’s fine. Let’s grab a taco? And fries? When: Saturday, December 5, 2020. Where: A_Dog Skatepark. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915200

KELLEE ON OKCUPID It’s been a while since we chatted on OKCupid. We corresponded about winter and a new snow blower you bought. I hope you’re well. —Chris. When: Friday, February 5, 2016. Where: OKCupid. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915194

‘DO I DARE?’ A question on your plate; time for you and time for me? And time yet for a hundred indecisions, and for a hundred visions and revisions before the taking of a toast and tea. In the room the women come and go talking of Michelangelo. And indeed there will be time to wonder... When: Saturday, November 2, 2019. Where: on our feet. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915199 PUMPING GAS AT VALERO You: black hair wearing a mask in your zippy Nissan Titan. Me: sitting in my tastefully stickered Kia while my gas pumped. Shot in the dark, but you look fun; meet up over a drink? When: Wednesday, December 2, 2020. Where: Barre-Montpelier Rd. Valero station. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915198 HEY, SMOKING IN THE RAIN It was Center Rd., not Hardwick St. I should have said something while we were moving that tree out of the road in the rain. Your dark eyes struck me. Still thinking about them. We did wave to one another as I drove past you in your truck. Wanted to say hello. Curious. When: Monday, November 30, 2020. Where: Greensboro. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915197 SHAMWOW Not a moment passes that I don’t think of you. —Scoots. When: Friday, May 18, 2018. Where: in my dreams. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915195

LISA ON BURROWS TRAIL SUNDAY We leapfrogged and stumbled down the Burrows Trail. I’m still feeling your warmth. Wondering all sorts of things. Walk in beauty, dear one. When: Sunday, November 22, 2020. Where: Camel’s Hump. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915193 THANKS FOR THE SMILE Thanks to the Goodwill worker in Williston who appreciated my mother’s antique lantern. Even small interactions can turn a bad day right around. I really appreciate it! You asked for my name and said it was great meeting me. I wish I had asked for yours. I’ll have to find more things to donate. When: Saturday, November 21, 2020. Where: Goodwill. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915192 MISSING BEAN-DIP DAYS To the woman who needs fancy leggings and cozy at-home leggings: I miss the carefree days of 2019 when we could sit and laugh right next to each other, even high-five if compelled. Hopefully soon we can study and make an epic bean dip, just like old times; until then, wash your hands, wear your mask and stay home. When: Wednesday, November 20, 2019. Where: buck hunter at Akes. You: Woman. Me: Woman. #915190 GREG, WE MATCHED ON MATCH Not sure how to connect with you. We have a lot in common, and you seem very fun! When: Friday, November 20, 2020. Where: Match. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915189

AskREVEREND 

Irreverent counsel on life’s conundrums

Dear Reverend,

My best friend, whom I’ve known since high school, is transitioning from male to female. I think that’s fantastic, but I keep making mistakes by using the wrong pronoun and calling her by her old name. She says it doesn’t bother her, but it bothers me. How do I train myself to get it right?

Flummoxed Friend (MALE, 29)

TO MY MARILYN MONROE To my forever love, MM. Every lifetime we are drawn to each other. I am so grateful to keep finding you. Our connection is everlasting and worth everything to me. This life and the next, I love you always. Your James Dean. When: Sunday, October 9, 2016. Where: Jericho barn. You: Woman. Me: Nonbinary person. #915191 NORTHFIELD SEPTUM RING GIRL You complimented my septum ring, and I think yours is perfect. Maybe we can do the coffee thing outside of me buying it from you? When: Friday, November 20, 2020. Where: Northfield. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915188 COLCHESTER AVE. Kelly, I am sorry. Please forgive me. —David. When: Thursday, November 19, 2020. Where: Burlington. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915187 MIKE B. OF NYC/BUMBLE MISS? Perhaps you were home for a short time, or COVID restrictions made you leave? I saw your match, but my right swipes are rare and can be painstakingly slow. When I finally decided, alas, you were gone. If you return to Colchester sometime soon, try again! Or reach out here. Me: 53, happily independent and active. When: Tuesday, November 10, 2020. Where: Bumble. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915186 HANNAFORD-UPON-ESSEX You were shopping with your daughter, and we made eye contact a couple times. Was it a coincidence or something more? If you would be up for meeting from a distance, I would, too! When: Monday, November 16, 2020. Where: Hannaford, Essex. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915185 SUSAN Saw your profile on Match.com. I found it quite intriguing, to say the least. You are around 70. Let’s chat. Oh, you live in the Burlington area. When: Thursday, November 12, 2020. Where: Match. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915184 STRAWBERRY BREAD BAKER Sorry to have missed you at the flu clinic; it was the highlight of my 2019. Hope that you are doing well, staying healthy and continuing to make your indelible mark on the world. As always, missing you terribly. Happy birthday. When: Wednesday, November 6, 2019. Where: downtown BTV. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915182

Dear Flummoxed,

It’s great that you understand the importance of respecting your friend’s transition by learning to transition your own language — because not everybody does. You two have been pals for a long time, and it’s obvious that you’re supportive of her journey, so you shouldn’t get too stressed out about the occasional slipup — especially since she’s told you that it doesn’t worry her all that much. Lord knows, I have friends who changed their last names when they got married, and I still goof up years later. When something changes with an old friend, be it as simple as a hairstyle or a new

KINNEY DRUGS, BARREMONTPELIER ROAD We chatted while waiting. You liked my dreads, and I liked your black T shirt that said something about “good people on earth.” We spoke again, but I should have asked for your name. Care to chat again, maybe exchange names? When: Wednesday, November 11, 2020. Where: Kinney Drugs, Barre-Montpelier Road. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915183 BERLIN POND I thought I’d lost my keys (but didn’t). You offered to lend us your car. I appreciate your very kind gesture. It’s people like you who bring light into the world, and it’s my hope our paths will converge again soon. Thank you. When: Monday, November 9, 2020. Where: near Berlin Pond. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915181 CITY MARKET, TWO BEEF STICKS In front of the prepared food cooler, the woman in the silver puffy jacket gesticulated in our direction. At the checkout, I asked, “That’s it?” looking at the two Vermont beef sticks in your hand. I just wanted a snack. You said good night to everyone before driving off in your Bolt, your kindness unmasked. When: Sunday, November 8, 2020. Where: City Market, downtown Burlington. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915180

COLLIN AT COSTCO Saw you this morning in passing while running errands. Curious what’s under the mask. Caught a glimpse of your name badge as you passed by me a second time: Collin. Figured I’d take a shot in the dark here. When: Saturday, October 31, 2020. Where: Costco. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915175 BLUE TOYOTA TACOMA To the Blue Toyota Tacoma: Almost every morning I’m heading south and you are heading north. Would be nice to catch up sometime. You have been spied back. When: Saturday, October 31, 2020. Where: Route ???. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915174 CUTE BIKE PATH DOG DAD You and your cute shepherd passed me, my roommate and our dogs in front of the sailing center. Your pup walked over to say hello, and I wish you had, too. Your smile was to die for. Meet at the dog park one day? When: Tuesday, October 27, 2020. Where: Burlington bike path. You: Man. Me: Man. #915173 BIRTHDAY GIRL AT GUILTY PLATE 1:45 p.m. Birthday girl with an amazing smile. You were with a friend with black hair. You smiled when I walked in, and we waved to each other as you drove away in your white Subaru. I would love to see you again. Maybe meet for a coffee? Me: black down jacket. When: Wednesday, October 28, 2020. Where: Guilty Plate restaurant, Colchester. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915171

BREAK LIGHTS, BREAK LIGHTS Break lights near the barn you have spied. It’s too bad it’s still dark out. Be nice to see your smile. When: Friday, November 6, 2020. Where: ???. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915179 HOPEFULHEART You have been spied! Tag, you’re it! When: Tuesday, November 3, 2020. Where: Seven Days. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915178

AMAZING OPTIMIST ON MATCH I like all of your lessons from this year. I’m proud to vote blue. And I think you have an amazing smile. I’m not on Match, but maybe we could start our connection here. Have a great day. When: Monday, October 26, 2020. Where: on Match.com. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915170

LOOKING GOOD IN THOSE JEANS. Looking right. Hella tight. Would love to take you out for a night. As long as you wear those jeans, anything is possible. K, if you’re waiting for a sign, this is it. Just give me the signal, and I will send her to the airport with a one-way ticket to Santa Fe. With us, we could be magic. When: Wednesday, November 4, 2020. Where: Main St. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915177

GORGEOUS BLONDE AT M32 You changed my life 12 years ago, and I am so grateful. I couldn’t ask for a better woman to spend my life with. I may have lost sight of what I’ve had, but I never will again. You’re my best friend and the love of my life. I’m more in love with you today than ever. I love you always. When: Sunday, October 25, 2020. Where: Market 32. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915168

spouse, or as complicated as a gender transition, it’s going to take some time to adjust. Such is life. When you make a mistake, don’t freak out; just quickly correct yourself. There’s no need to issue a big apology every time and make it all the more awkward, and you

don’t want your friend to have to keep consoling you for your mistake. Just keep the flow moving forward. Who knows how many more times you’re going to mess up, but the proper pronoun will become second nature sooner or later. The most important thing is that she knows you’re there for her no matter what, and it sounds like that’s the case. Transitioning is no easy road, but having a solid best friend along the way makes it a little less bumpy. Good luck and God bless,

The Reverend What’s your problem?

Send it to asktherev@sevendaysvt.com. SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 9-16, 2020

I’m a 34-y/o male seeking 18to 45-y/o female. I’m smart, artistic, funny and openminded. Love music, books, movies and looking at the cosmos. A cat guy, but like all animals. Looking for love and friendship. #L1456 I’m a male (65) seeking a female (50 to 65). Fit, friendly, frolicsome fella favors fanciful female for fabulous fall friendship. I’m vegetarian, healthy, humorous, reflective and highly educated. Interests are hiking, gardening, dogs, creativity, Scrabble and pillowtalk. #L1455

I am a 68-y/o male seeking an advanced lady skier between 45 and 58. Jay and Smuggs pass. 19 countries + ALK. Five years Beirut. Zero Druidic. Last reads: Candide, How Fascism Works, Story of O. Adventures best shared. #L1463 I’m a mid-aged male seeking a male or female in these reclusive, masked times. I’m a long-distance runner, walker and aerobic distance-goer looking to share runs in the spirit of Joy Johnstone, Ed Whitlock, Larry Legend, George Sheehan — connecting to that endorphined tranquility and making sense of our lives. Any age. #L1462

I’m a 71-and-a-half-y/o male from Rutland County seeking a female. Netflix, cable junkie. Hope to dine again post-COVID. Love the Maine coast a couple times a year. Sedate lifestyle. Retired law enforcement. #L1461 I’m here now, and you knew me as Yourdaddy921, etc. and Boomer2012, etc. Contact me via mail, please. #L1458

SWM, 60s, seeking woman around 58 to 68. Handyman. Enjoy skiing, cooking, weekend getaways. Tired of quarantine. Are you? NEK. #L1453

49-y/o SWM seeking female for friendship with benefits. I am feminine, fit, mostly vegan. I enjoy yoga, hiking and biking, books, some cooking, and cuddling to a good movie. Seeking romantic lady for friendship. #L1457

53-y/o discreet SWM, 5’10, 156 pounds. Brown and blue. Seeking any guys 18 to 60 who like to receive oral and who are a good top. Well hung guys a plus. Chittenden County and around. No computer. Phone only, but can text or call. #L1451

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I don’t live in Vermont anymore, but I’m here semiregularly. I’m a 39-y/o lady friend seeking men, but anyone for friends to write to, maybe more. Hike, ski, lounge, eat, drink, converse. It’s COVID; I’m bored/lonely. What about you? #L1454

Submit your FREE message at sevendaysvt.com/loveletters or use the handy form at right.

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Interested readers will send you letters in the mail. No internet required! SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 9-16, 2020

Internet-Free Dating!

Reply to these messages with real, honest-to-goodness letters. DETAILS BELOW. SF, 42, living in Chittenden County seeks SM for potential LTR. I’m a nerdy gamer, morning person, coffee drinker, nonsmoker. Kind, industrious. Seeking similar. The world is our opportunity! #L1452 SWF seeks conservative male age 62 to 72, Addison/ Burlington area only. Turnons: har cut, shave, outdoorsy, hunter, camper. Turn-offs: smoker, drugs, tattoos. Me: 5’8, average build, blue/brown, glasses, enjoy nature, have a Shelty, birds, old Jeep, farm raised. Need phone number, please. #L1450 I’m a bicurious 41-y/o male seeking bicurious married or single men, 18 to 45, for some very discreet fun. Good hygiene, hung and H&W proportional a must. Let’s text discreetly and have some DL NSA fun. #L1449 Attractive SWM, 51, living around the Burlington area. Seeking a curvaceous female for some casual fun with no strings attached. All it takes is some good chemistry... #L1447

I’m a mid-aged male seeking a M or F any age or gender. Wonderful youth, caring person. Male, 5’9, 147. Older mid-aged loves long-distance running, writing, literature, poetry, drawing, folk and jazz. Looking for a great friendship for hikes, walks, talks. Best to all. #L1446 I’m a single female, mid60s, seeking a male for companionship and adventure. Retired educator who loves kayaking, swimming, skiing and travel. Well read. Life is short; let’s have fun. #L1445 Staff researcher at UVM on biostatistics. 29-y/o Chinese male. INFJ personality. Seeking a female of similar age for longterm relationship. Love is kind. Love is patient. May we all stay healthy and be happy. #L1444 SWF, 37, seeking M for some casual fun, no strings attached. I just got out of an LTR, and I’ve forgotten how it feels to be physically and sexually alive. Can you remind me? Creative meetups and play a must. #L1443

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