the essex
March 29, 2018 • The Essex Reporter • 1
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FREE Vol. 17, No. 13 essexreporter.com
{ Thursday, March 29, 2018 }
13-year-old boy hit by school bus Police say they don't expect to file charges By COLIN FLANDERS
PHOTOS BY KYLE ST. PETER
Sugarhouses across the state opened their doors for the annual Maple Open House Weekend, including here at Bixby Hill Sugarhouse in Essex, where attendees were treated to an inside look at how the good stuff is made. ABOVE: Laurie Jordan, co-owner of the sugarhouse, talks to some attendees last Saturday. BELOW: A collection of taps hang in the sugarhouse on Bixby Hill Road.
HOW SWEET IT IS
A 13-year-old boy was in “critical but stable condition” after being hit by a school bus last week, police said last Friday. Emergency personnel were dispatched to Sand Hill Road near Tanglewood Drive around 3:30 p.m. on March 22 for the reported crash. The boy was then transported to the University of Vermont Medical Center for “unspecific injuries,” police said. Police now say they don’t plan to release the boy’s name given his age, nor do they plan to provide any further updates to his condition. Last week, police named the Mountain Transit bus driver as 57-year-old Muriel Ramos of Fairfax and said both he and the children on the bus were uninjured. Based on statements from Ramos and other witnesses, police said there was no indication Ramos was speeding or engaging in any other improper driving. On Monday, Sgt. Rob Hall said the investigation should soon be complete, and he didn’t expect any charges to be filed.
Vermont Systems plans expansion after earning Army contract By COLIN FLANDERS
Finishing near the middle of the pack was 13-year-old Noah Sanderson, a seventh-grader at the Albert D. Lawton School in Essex Jct. He earned a spot on the stage in Colchester after beating out his classmates at a spelling bee open to the entire student body. “I just like spelling words,” Noah said in an interview on Monday. His mom helped him prepare for the school’s bee by quizzing him on words each day. Still, he said he got lucky — one student Noah thought was a shoo-in was dealt a particularly difficult word in an early round and eliminated. The win at ADL also offered sweet redemption for Noah. He tried out for the school’s spelling team in fifth grade but didn’t get a
An Essex-based software company is planning a hiring spree after earning a U.S. Army contract earlier this month worth millions of dollars. Vermont Systems Inc. secured a contract to upgrade its current software system that manages recreational activities on U.S. military bases. The software, known as RecTrac, registers families for recreational programs, tracks concession sales at venues, signs up for fitness center memberships and reserves tee times for the dozens of base golf courses, among other services. Though the military has used RecTrac since the early ’90s, VSI’s database has until now been managed by each garrison. “What they found is what they were lacking is standardization,” said Giles Willey, VSI’s president and CEO. “They’re finally figuring out they can’t do it themselves.” Under the new contract, VSI will expand its operation to provide full data management and analysis to help the Army’s headquarters better understand the performance of its recreational services. VSI will also be ramping its software support to a 24/7 model. Eventually, VSI will end up with a single enterprise database
See BEE, page 2
See VSI, page 3
Kids s-p-e-l-l way through state bee By MICHAELA HALNON Twenty-eight spellers sat in neat rows on the stage at the St. Michael’s College McCarthy Performing Arts Center last Wednesday afternoon, each hoping to s-p-e-l-l their way to victory. Raghav Dhandi, a student at Main Street Middle School in Montpelier, took home the top prize in the Vermont Scripps Spelling Bee after correctly spelling “slavering” — letting saliva run from the mouth, according to the judges’ definition. He’ll head to Washington, D.C. in May for the national spelling bee and face off against spellers from across the country. Scripps is expecting a record number of attendees, according to their website.
PHOTO BY MICHAELA HALNON
ADL student Noah Sanderson, 13, waits for his turn to spell a word at the Vermont Scripps Spelling Bee last Wednesday.
With a little help, DIY print studio looks to be one-stop-shop for local indie publishers By COLIN FLANDERS Like so many artists, Stephanie Zuppo takes “do it yourself ” less as a Pinterest board and more of a life motto. To date, the 27-year-old Philadelphia transplant has personally marketed self-published comic books, ran a convention database for comic cons and zinefests and founded the first (and only) allfemme comic newspaper in Vermont, “The Ladybroad Ledger.” Now, with the help of the Essex Hub for Women in Business, Zuppo is taking on a whole new challenge: A DIY print media studio to support small-scale opera-
tions with almost anything an indie publisher — from bookbinders to writers to printer makers and zinesters — could want, all on a budget they can afford. If that’s the mission statement for Words & Pictures, its leader is smack dab in the execution phase: drumming up members and outfitting the studio. But staying affordable means keeping costs low overall. And that means getting creative. “Everything is kind of cobbled together,” Zuppo said last week in the studio, which overlooks Main Street from above Martone’s. “Total bootstrap operation,” chimed Kristin
Humbargar, founder of the Essex Hub, the parent company of the Main Street Studio and its new companion. “Exactly,” Zuppo said. “Which I think fits the theme of the DIY, zinester lifestyle.” Indeed, much the mish-mash of furniture and equipment was either donated, like the sink from the sandwich shop downstairs, or nabbed on the low off Craigslist. The studio currently boasts an embroidery machine, light table, sewing machine, color printer, laminator and a slew of other equipment. Zuppo has put to work some skills acquired at previous comSee STUDIO, page 3
PHOTO BY COLIN FLANDERS
A sign hangs outside the entrance to Words & Pictures, a new DIY print studio in Essex Jct. that hopes to become a onestop-shop for indie publishers.