Seven Days, May 12, 2021

TOXIC TOPIC PCBs a statewide issue in schools

V ER MON T’S INDE P ENDE NT VO IC E MAY 12-19, 2021 VOL.26 NO.32 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

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WEEK IN REVIEW MAY 5-12, 2021 COMPILED BY SASHA GOLDSTEIN & MATTHEW ROY

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SPEED DEMON

MILKING IT? Vermont has spent $285 million to support its struggling dairy industry in the last decade, according to a new report from the state auditor’s office.

The tax breaks, reduced fees, grants and technical assistance received by a dwindling number of dairy farms between 2010 and 2019 illustrate just how dependent the industry has become on state assistance for its survival.

Unlike other reports from State Auditor Doug Hoffer’s office that attempt to ferret out fraud or waste in state spending, the “investigative report” neither finds fault with the funding nor recommends any changes.

“This report is intended to serve as a resource for State policymakers, program managers, and the public as they consider the future of dairy in Vermont and what role public funds should play,” the report states.

Even so, the document is likely to provide ammunition to critics who say that, despite dairy farming’s deep roots, the subsidies are not justified. The broad trends outlined — low milk prices, a shrinking number of farms, larger herds, increasing reliance on migrant labor, and harm to water quality — are not new.

But the aggregation of the total state spending across

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multiple departments and programs over time is illuminating. The $285 million went to a wide variety of programs, including tax breaks and grants to reduce runoff that pollutes waterways. The report highlights the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s 2016 findings that 41 percent of the phosphorus in Lake Champlain originates from agricultural sources — not just dairy — and that 139 miles of rivers and streams were polluted by nutrient-rich runoff from farms.

Given the consolidation trends in the industry, the generous support is being spread among fewer and fewer farms. While there were 4,170 dairy farms in the state in 1969, by 2020 that number had dwindled to just 636 as low milk prices and competition from other beverages made it harder for small farms, in particular, to survive. Average herd size grew from 46 cows in 1969 to 180 in 2017.

In addition to direct grants and subsidies, the report noted that agricultural operations are exempt from a range of permits, including for stormwater, groundwater and wetlands.

Read Kevin McCallum’s complete story at sevendaysvt.com

COURTESY OF TIM MATHEWSON

That’s how much Vermont will receive in federal COVID-19 relief funds for substance-use disorder programs.

Vermont native Elle Purrier won the 1,500-meter race at the USA Track & Field Golden Games in California. Next up: the Olympics?

MOST POPULAR ITEMS ON SEVENDAYSVT.COM

CASE CLOSED

1. “In Wake of Koffee Kup’s Closure, Massachusetts Company Eyes Vermont Expansion” by Colin Flanders. Massachusettsbased East Baking got approval to participate in a Vermont program that promises payments in exchange for job creation.

Gov. Phil Scott signed into law a bill that bans the “panic defense” of using someone’s sexual orientation or gender to justify a criminal act. Bravo.

STUDY, BUDDY

An investigation into cheating at Dartmouth College’s medical school may have relied on faulty data that wrongly ensnared some students. Redo?

HISTORY LESSONS

Some Woodstock Elementary School students are attending class at the Billings Farm & Museum to abide by social-distancing guidelines. A field trip every day.

TOPFIVE

2. “Burlington’s Property Reassessment Has Set Record-High Values. What’s the Cost to Residents?” by Sasha Goldstein and Courtney Lamdin. Seven Days’ data analysis shows which neighborhoods got hit hardest and explains the impact to homeowners and renters.

3. “Fairlee Native Matt Walker to Open Broken Hearts Burger This Summer” by Jordan Barry.

Walker’s modern take on a classic midcentury burger stand will open at 192 Main Street in Fairlee this July.

4. “Burlington School Board Votes to Abandon PCB-Contaminated High School” by Alison Novak. Board members decided to ditch a $70 million renovation project for the shuttered high school and will rebuild instead.

5. “Burlington Harbor Commission Will Consider Plan to Sink Ferry in Lake Champlain,” by Kevin McCallum. The commission was to discuss the since-abandoned proposal to sink the Adirondack.

tweet of the week @mqfinny The best maple creemee in Vermont exists outside of Chittenden County but BTVers aren’t ready to have that conversation FOLLOW US ON TWITTER @SEVENDAYSVT OUR TWEEPLE: SEVENDAYSVT.COM/TWITTER

WHAT’S KIND IN VERMONT

BIKE PARADE

Tim Mathewson

$12 million

Tim Mathewson has a life mantra.

“Every time you ride a bike,” he said, “you feel better.”

That might seem like something Mathewson, owner of Little City Cycles in Vergennes, would and should say, considering that his livelihood depends on selling bicycles. But it’s more than just talk.

About five years ago, Mathewson and Tanya Bashaw started Green Mountain Foster Bikes, a nonprofit that works with the state Department for Children and Families to get bikes to kids in foster care. The org has fixed up and given away more than 100 bikes. Each kid gets a helmet, an air pump and some

chain oil to keep their two-wheeler serviceable for years to come.

“They have this relationship with a bike, and they can have those memories and experiences that kids have,” Mathewson said. “Plus, you know, they can get on a bike and just go.”

He sometimes gives bikes to people who aren’t in foster care, such as a young man in Middlebury who he’d heard had to walk five miles to work.

Mathewson has plenty of inventory at this point, and the bikes are piling up in a field behind his North Main Street shop. He’s on the hunt for a bigger location and found what he thought was a perfect place: a couple of buildings that are for sale just across the street, where he could run both his business and the nonprofit.

But the deal hit a roadblock. The state owns the land, which abuts train tracks, and leases it to the Vermont Rail System.

Mathewson would need a sublease from the railroad, which, per its deal with the state, is only allowed to lease to businesses that would use the rail line, according to the rail system’s general counsel, Peter Young.

Mathewson is still hoping for a positive resolution. In the meantime, he’s planning to bring bikes to different locations this summer in the hopes of giving away several at a time.

It’s in keeping with another one of Mathewson’s adages: “There’s no such thing as a bad bike, only a sad one that’s not ridden.”

SASHA GOLDSTEIN SEVEN DAYS MAY 12-19, 2021

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ON A DIFFERENT PLANE. founders/Coeditors Pamela Polston, Paula Routly publisher Paula Routly

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deputy editor Sasha Goldstein

FEEDback READER REACTION TO RECENT ARTICLES

Consulting editor Candace Page

stAff writers Derek Brouwer, Chelsea Edgar,

• • • • • • •

Colin Flanders, Courtney Lamdin, Kevin McCallum, Alison Novak, Anne Wallace Allen politiCAl Columnist Dave Gram

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ARTS & LIFE editor Pamela Polston

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QUALITY CAR CARE, DELIVERED WITH RESPECT.

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PONDERING PENSIONS

[Re Off Message: “Pension Task Force Bill Advances Despite Unions’ Objections,” April 14]: I hope the committee looks around to the benefits and reductions our neighboring states have done over the years. I know New York used to pay 100 percent of health insurance, but over the years it has been shared! In Massachusetts, the contribution to the pension fund was 5 percent; today it is 11 percent, and they raised the retirement age, too!

Ken Swierad

BENNINGTON

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‘EXEMPLARY COURAGE’

Kudos to the Van Tuinen family for their exemplary courage in publicly sharing their personal story of heartache, alongside the (still) novel modality used by Rory and Ryan in their healing journeys [“Psychedelic Solution,” April 21].

As a health care professional employed in the field of addiction medicine, I support using plant-based psychedelics, within safe and supportive settings, as an adjuvant to treatment-resistant PTSD, depression, anxiety and addiction.

For those who doubt: Please spend some time on maps.org and carefully review the clinical trials (fully supported by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration and Drug Enforcement Administration) currently in process in the U.S. (and many other countries) focused on using these medicines for the conditions mentioned above.

Finally, a shout-out to (pioneer) Rep. Brian Cina (P/D-Burlington) for sticking his neck out and being willing to endure the ridicule of his colleagues. When this area of medicine (which today seems so voodoo to so many) eventually becomes mainstream, you will receive the honor and gratitude that should be afforded to you now.

Rebecca Hill

MONTPELIER

‘LONG-TERM DAMAGE’

Your article on endangered trees [“The Forest and the Trees,” April 21] reminded me of a row of 60-foot locusts at the edge of our property. They were destroyed over a year ago.

This was part of a Middlebury sidewalk project near the Pulp Mill Covered Bridge. Two of the three replacement trees are dead.

WEEK IN REVIEW

TIM NEWCOMB

“Why the hell not?” Taking that money today means society’s children will have to pay it back when they become adults.

Seven Days should have a contest: What adjective or phrase best describes adults who leave a $39 trillion debt legacy to society’s children — and do so with no shame whatsoever?

Gerry Silverstein

SOUTH BURLINGTON

ALL THAT GLITTERS

Also destroyed was the foundation of possibly the oldest house in the area.

Weybridge tried to repair it.

The destruction of nature trees is as important to their neighbors as lost forest trees. Regional plans may sound decent, but the destruction phase can inflict longterm damage.

Geoffrey Cobden

WEYBRIDGE

FOUNDERS FAIL

Regarding “What’s Happening to Founders Hall at Saint Michael’s College?”

[WTF, April 28], I pursued this action in hopes of being considered an interested party under Act 250, which allowed a hearing to explore whether this great building might be saved. Founders Hall could have been secured and fundraising to rescue it carried out.

Attorney Matthew Byrne states that, had I succeeded, “everyone could sue” the college and “no building would ever come down.” While the distinction may be lost on him, my focus was on this essential building. No self-respecting college would demolish its foundational building.

Morally, I don’t believe the administration has any right to. The disgraceful argument was made that to save Founders Hall, faculty and students must suffer.

Presented in this zero-sum manner, how could any “interested party” arise from within the college?

My legal question, never answered, was: If I am not an interested party, who is? State preservation authorities did not consider it within their powers to forbid demolition.

College president Lorraine Sterritt

may call it “our beloved Founders Hall,” but she doesn’t share any long-standing attachment. Attorney Byrne made light of such sentiments — but without human attachment to historic buildings, what basis is there for including historic preservation in the statute?

In the end, there was no “interested party” to protect Founders Hall. I tried.

With those who would have cared most deeply about its history dead and gone, I tried my best.

This will be remembered as a callous act of architectural vandalism.

Sara Dillon

LEXINGTON, MA

Dillon is a member of the Saint Michael’s College class of 1977.

FREE MONEY?

Dave Gram’s Fair Game [“In the Black,” April 28] offers the reader the following perspective on the American way of life: “You can’t really blame businesses or nonprofits for taking free money when the government is handing it out.”

Every dollar of the $2.2 trillion CARES Act and every dollar of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 is borrowed money.

In the year 2000, aggregate federal debt was $5.7 trillion. Today it has exploded to $28.2 trillion — a 395 percent increase — and, according to the Congressional Budget Office projections, it will reach at least $39 trillion in 2030, a 584 percent increase over 30 years.

So when the suggestion is made that businesses and nonprofits should not be criticized for taking free government money, the response should clearly be,

Many thanks to Sasha Goldstein and Courtney Lamdin for their “Gilded Age” article [May 5]. I was scheduled to give a talk to a Realtors’ association on fair housing issues during Fair Housing Month.

But, quite frankly, I didn’t know what to say. So the talk was postponed.

“Gilded Age” helped me put things in perspective. My talk was to be about Charlottesville, Va., and how, as the city exploded into a cultural mecca — university and all — nurses, maids, cooks, teachers, administrative assistants, bank tellers, sales clerks, janitors, small-business people and others could no longer afford to live in the very city that they, with all their grinding effort, helped turn into a mecca.

The Church Street Marketplace in Burlington and Charlottesville’s pedestrian mall are crown jewels for their respective cities. A few years ago, a fiftysomething white man, greeting me on the Burlington mall, proudly professed that Burlington’s and Charlottesville’s respective malls were the only two successful such malls in the country.

I did not know how to take his comment, considering that a relatively poor Black neighborhood had been razed to make way for the Charlottesville mall, which now has limited diversity. “Gilded Age” made me wonder what will be lost as Burlington becomes more and more a “gilded” community. What will become of Vermont in general as the gap between the haves and the have-nots widens astronomically?

James Robert Saunders

PLAINFIELD

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A Growing Business: Sunset Lake CBD Relies on Mascoma Bank

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ooking for the next generation of Vermont farmers? You’ll find some of them at Sunset Lake CBD. Launched from a Grand Isle County dairy farm in 2018, this ag startup grows and sells pesticide-free, artisan hemp products: Think CBD tinctures, gummies, coffee, salve and dog treats. “And we ship them right to your door,” explains Cy Kupersmith, director of sales and sustainability.

The CBD, or cannabidiol, is derived from hemp plants the Sunset Lake crew now grows on 32 acres of leased land in South Hero.

It all started when the U.S. Farm Bill legalized hemp farming in 2018. Sunset Lake founder and executive director Sam Bellavance grew a hemp grain crop on his dad’s dairy farm in Alburgh as an experiment in revenue diversification. He quickly discovered there wasn’t much capacity in Vermont to dry hemp and sell it.

And the guy who was supposed to harvest it bailed at the last minute.

Sensing an opportunity, Bellavance teamed up with Alex Frei, a recent transplant from northern California with experience cultivating medical cannabis on the West Coast, and Kupersmith, who grew up next door to Bellavance in South Burlington and was finishing up University of Vermont’s Sustainable Innovation MBA program.

The trio decided to grow resinous hemp for CBD, and developed a directto-consumer business model that proved perfectly suited to the pandemic.

To make it work, they needed a reliable financial institution, a bank that “wouldn’t rip the rug out from under us,” says Kupersmith.

They struggled at first to find the right fit. Then they connected with values-driven Mascoma Bank.

Through Mascoma, Sunset Lake CBD set up a business checking account, with a competitive interest rate, that integrated with Square and Quickbooks — modern financial tools that are “so, so essential” to their business, notes Kupersmith.

Working with a trusted banking partner enabled Sunset Lake to grow from four fulltime employees in early 2020 to nine fulltime and additional part time employees by the end of the year. Kupersmith expects Sunset Lake to double its 2020 revenue this year. “We have more plans for hiring and expansion in 2021 and 2022,” he says.

That growth will help make farming in Vermont more sustainable, which is part Sunset Lake’s social mission. Kupersmith points out that Mascoma, a Certified B Corporation, supports that, too.

“We wouldn’t bank with anyone else,” he says.

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contents MAY 12-19, 2021 VOL.26 NO.32

START HERE GO PLACES Enjoy a Career Bursting With Opportunities

FLIGHT PATH

MASTER OF ACCOUNTANCY PROGRAM AT UVM

BTV’s Beta Technologies is on the cusp of a breakthrough for electric aviation B Y D EREK B RO U WER, PAGE 3 2

COVER IMAGE COURTESY OF BRIAN JENKINS • COVER DESIGN DIANE SULLIVAN

16

NEWS & POLITICS 13 From the Publisher Chemical Reaction

Burlington’s PCB problem could have ramifications for other schools across the state

Help Really Wanted

As full reopening nears, Vermont employers say labor market is tighter than ever

Outcry Torpedoes Scuttling State, company drop plan to sink an old ferry in Burlington Harbor

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44

FEATURES 32

CULTURE 50

Mow Electric! helps Vermonters ditch gas-powered lawn care equipment to reduce CO2 emissions

In Endpapers, Alexander Wolff unearths a captivating family history

Greener Pastures

Audience of No One

FOOD 44

With “Empty Stages,” the Champlain Trio illustrates performance in a pandemic

Two Chittenden County entrepreneurs launch Cuban-inspired takeout dinners

Page 32

Tastes of Home

Roses Are Red, Violets Are Tasty

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ART 56 A for...?

Short takes on five Vermont books

Artist’s “graffiti” painting ignites political controversy in Northfield

Foraging flowers for a sweet taste of spring

STUCK IN VERMONT

In her new graphic novel, The Secret to SUPPORTED BY: Superhuman Strength, Vermont cartoonist Alison Bechdel documents her lifelong obsession with fitness. Eva visited Alison at her home near Bolton to hear about the book and see some of her cartoon panels come to life.

Online now

Earn a degree that leads to success in the CPA exam and an exciting career in accounting & finance!

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Find a new job in the classifieds section on page 74 and online at sevendaysvt.com/jobs.

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Life Lines Food + Drink Culture Art Music + Nightlife Movies Classes Classifieds + Puzzles Fun Stuff Personals SEVEN DAYS MAY 12-19, 2021

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LOOKING FORWARD

SATURDAY 15

Farm Fresh If cooking became part of your routine during lockdown, perhaps you’re ready to up your culinary game by incorporating fresh, local ingredients. Browse the Burlington Farmers Market from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. every Saturday through October for seasonal produce from area growers.

Vendors also offer flowers, artisan wares and prepared foods at the market’s summer location at 345 Pine Street.

MUST SEE, MUST DO THIS WEEK

LEARN MORE AT BURLINGTONFARMERSMARKET.ORG.

COMPI L E D BY K RI ST E N RAVIN

SATURDAY 15

Think Tank What does it mean to reimagine one’s world? For 2020 Dartmouth College graduate Jessica Campanile, it meant founding Access Dartmouth, the school’s first organization dedicated to disability advocacy and accessibility activism. Campanile is one of six speakers at TEDxDartmouth to share ideas, innovations and experiences related to the theme “Reimagine.” Watch this thought-provoking conference online.

THURSDAY 13

IN FLIGHT What’s the status of bald eagles in Vermont?

Audubon Vermont conservation biologist Margaret Fowle gives an update on the onceendangered species in her talk “All About Eagles.”

Hosted online by the Friends of the Missisquoi National Wildlife Refuge, Fowle swoops in with facts about this stately bird of prey.

LEARN MORE AT HOP.DARTMOUTH.EDU.

WEDNESDAY 19

Back to the Land “By 1970, approximately 35,800 hippies were estimated to be living in Vermont,” wrote author Yvonne Daley in her 2018 book Going Up the Country: When the Hippies, Dreamers, Freaks and Radicals Moved to Vermont.

Montpelier’s Lost Nation Theater brings Daley’s examination of 1960s and ’70s counterculture to the stage with a reading of Going Up the Country, a new musical based on the book. LNT president Kim Allen Bent directs a cast of readers and singers in this donation-based online performance.

LEARN MORE AT FRIENDSOFMISSISQUOI.ORG.

LEARN MORE AT LOSTNATIONTHEATER.ORG.

THURSDAY 13

Family History As a former longtime writer for Sports Illustrated, Alexander Wolff covered elite-level soccer, baseball, tennis and cycling. The Vermont writer switches gears for his latest book. Endpapers: A Family Story of Books, War, Escape and Home delves into the lives of Wolff’s German-born father and grandfather — the latter was renowned publisher Kurt Wolff, who founded Pantheon in 1941. Alexander Wolff discusses Endpapers in an online conversation hosted by Woodstock’s Norman Williams Public Library.

COURTESY OF SOAPBOX ARTS

Submit your upcoming events at sevendaysvt.com/postevent.

ONGOING

Paint by Numbers

“Chime Cannon” by Scott André Campbell

LEARN MORE AT NORMANWILLIAMS.ORG AND ON PAGE 50.

For Burlington artist Scott André Campbell, digital and analog techniques go hand in hand.

When creating mixed-media works for his exhibition “Resist” at Soapbox Arts in Burlington, Campbell used a system he built that draws mathematically programmed information. “My intent was to open my access to numerically derived marks to expand the vocabulary of my visual conversations,” he writes in his artist’s statement. See Campbell’s graphic paper-onpanel pieces through May 29.

WEDNESDAY 12-SUNDAY 16

LEARN MORE AT SOAPBOXARTS.COM.

LEARN MORE AT OLDSTONEHOUSEMUSEUM.ORG.

Show and Tell The art of collecting has many faces. People of all backgrounds and ages have contributed their beloved items to the Virtual Collectors’ Fair hosted by Brownington’s Old Stone House Museum & Historic Village. Over five days, members of the public can view submitted collections of coins, folk art, memorabilia and historical artifacts — and swap stories with fellow hobbyists. There’s even special programming for kids who collect.

THIS IS A SAMPLING OF VERMONT’S IN-PERSON AND VIRTUAL EVENTS. BROWSE THE FULL CALENDAR, ART SHOWS, AND MUSIC+NIGHTLIFE LISTINGS AT SEVENDAYSVT.COM/EVENTS. SEVEN DAYS MAY 12-19, 2021

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FROM THE PUBLISHER

Up in the Air

Paula Routly

OLIVER PARINI

I love to travel but really wish it didn’t involve hurtling through space in an aluminum tube. I will fly — reluctantly — with my face pressed up against the airplane window, monitoring weather, altitude, signs of mechanical failure and, of course, the geography below.

This anxiety has worsened over time and proven immune to logic, Xanax and hypnosis. Off-duty pilots have tried to talk me out of it with back-of-the-napkin lessons in aerodynamics. One, who is a friend, took me up in his vintage biplane in hopes that it would help me overcome my fear. On that occasion, at least I could see where we were going — one of my complaints about being cooped up on a commercial plane. It was just the two of us in an open cockpit, and he was behind me, explaining every bump, twist and turn. Beautiful as it was, I couldn’t stop thinking about how The English Patient ended.

Right before the pandemic, I got a tour of Beta Technologies, the cuttingedge aviation company that’s the subject of this week’s cover story (see page 32). It included a chance to fly the experimental plane the company is building via a state-of-the-art flight Beta Technologies CEO Kyle Clark simulator. The training device allows operating the company’s flight simulator pilots to learn the aircraft on terra firma with reporter Derek Brouwer without leaving Beta HQ at the south end of Burlington International Airport.

For that reason, the idea appealed to me, at least until I was on the flight deck with my hand on the controls. They were so sensitive, the slightest touch pitched us wildly forward or sideways as we rose over the BTV runway and surveyed the surrounding landscape: The city of Burlington, Lake Champlain, Mount Mansfield and the Plattsburgh Air Force Base were all exactly where they should be.

In fact, the experience was so realistic, I had a physiological reaction — first sweating, then nausea.

Engineer Manon Belzile noticed immediately and reassured me: Lots of people get motion sickness in the sim.

Thankfully, she got me out of there before I hurled. It took 24 hours to regain my land legs.

That was the last time I “flew” — until two weeks ago, when I boarded a United Airlines flight to Chicago with the final destination of San Diego. Fully vaccinated and desperate for a little R&R, I decided to take the risk. I was not alone. All four flights were packed. After socially distancing for 14 months, it felt weird and somewhat counterintuitive to be shoulder to shoulder with people again. As instructed, everyone kept their masks on — unless eating or drinking. Which, let’s face it, happens a lot on planes in the U.S. United offered beverage service on both westbound flights. On the return trip, along the same route, American Airlines did not. Nothing else seemed dramatically different, including, unfortunately, policies and fees that continue to discourage passengers from checking their bags.

If you like what we do and can afford to help What had changed, I noticed, was my pay for it, become a Seven Days Super Reader! own attitude about flying. Despite the added Look for the “Give Now” buttons at the top of claustrophobia of having to wear a mask for seven sevendaysvt.com. Or send a check with your hours straight, I felt almost relaxed. Thanks to good address and contact info to: weather, the flights were smooth and I had a clear

SEVEN DAYS, C/O SUPER READERS view of our almost post-pandemic country, from the

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BURLINGTON, VT 05402-1164 the still-snowcapped Rockies to the vast expanse of For more information on making a financial the Pacific Ocean. contribution to Seven Days, please contact I didn’t realize how much I’d missed the place.

Corey Grenier: VOICEMAIL: 802-865-1020, EXT. 36 EMAIL: SUPERREADERS@SEVENDAYSVT.COM

SEVEN DAYS MAY 12-19, 2021

13

FAIR GAME

OPEN SEASON ON VERMONT POLITICS BY DAVE GRAM

Howard’s Upend

Former Vermont governor Dean fights waiving vaccine patents for developing nations

W

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SEVEN DAYS MAY 12-19, 2021

I DON’T THINK THIS WILL DO ANY GOOD

OR MAKE ANY ADDITIONAL DOSES AVAILABLE. H O WAR D D EA N

TIM NEWCOMB

hen President JOE BIDEN’s administration announced last week that it would drop U.S. opposition to generic drug makers in developing countries getting recipes for COVID-19 vaccines, the change in policy resonated loudly in Vermont.

It drew praise from Sen. BERNIE SANDERS (I-Vt.). “Our vaccination efforts here at home will only be successful if vaccination efforts in the developing world happen simultaneously,” he said in a statement.

“Supporting this [patent-protection] waiver, and putting people over profits, will help us to do that by speeding up the production and availability of vaccines.”

But at least one Vermonter was grumpy: HOWARD DEAN. Dean? The former governor and former physician who signed civil unions into law? The man best remembered nationally as a progressive iconoclast in the race for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination? That guy is now joining big drug companies to defend patents and profits while poor countries around the world go begging for COVID19 vaccines?

“I don’t think this will do any good or make any additional doses available,” Dean said. “I would have preferred to see a larger effort by Western countries to set up functional distribution centers in the developing countries.”

Dean always has been something of a political chameleon. When he sought the presidential nomination, many Vermonters were shocked to see him running up the left side of the field and claiming to represent “the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.” After all, as governor he had famously claimed that more liberal and free-spending members of his own party in the legislature were in “la-la land.”

He’d also adopted the pro-business mantra “jobs, jobs, jobs,” lowered income taxes twice, and generally sided with police and prosecutors in matters of criminal law.

But, in one respect, it made sense for a newcomer on the national political stage to run where there was room. Democratic moderates like then-Connecticut senator JOE LIEBERMAN and Missouri U.S. representative DICK GEPHARDT were occupying the middle of the field; senator JOHN KERRY, the eventual nominee, was defending his vote to support going to war in Iraq.

That sojourn on the left ended with a scream in Iowa. Dean, who let his Vermont medical license lapse in 2006, found

a new way to use a physician’s natural talents for the technical and the practical. He served as chair of the Democratic National Committee from 2005 to 2009.

In that role, he brought to bear some of the internet-based organizing and fundraising techniques developed by his campaign, as well as a “50-state strategy” declaring that Democrats could win anywhere. He’s widely credited with contributing to the party’s successes in 2006 and 2008.

Since departing the political limelight,

Dean, 72, has been serving on the board of the National Democratic Institute, a democracy-building organization chaired by former secretary of state MADELEINE ALBRIGHT. He’s been teaching a course on global affairs at his alma mater, Yale University. He’s also been working as a senior adviser at Dentons, the most influential global entity you’ve probably never heard of. When I say the world’s largest law and lobbying firm is global, I mean that it has offices not only in Washington, D.C.,

London and Beijing, but also in places like Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea.

It’s in this last role that Dean has been making a splash and making cash lately, arguing on behalf of the pharmaceutical industry against letting manufacturers in developing nations have access to the vaccine recipes.

“This is a BS issue,” the famously blunt Dean told Fair Game, although he did, at least, use just the initials. “The truth is, if you got rid of all the intellectual property, you’d do harm and you wouldn’t do any good. The intellectual property problem has nothing to do with the shortage of vaccines.”

Waiving the vaccine patents “would have dire long-term implications,” Dean wrote in an op-ed published by the business-oriented publication Barron’s in March. “The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines were developed using mRNA, an approach that holds enormous potential for other diseases. But if the [intellectual property] behind those vaccines is suddenly exposed for all, it could dramatically lower the value of these platforms — and thus discourage further investments into these revolutionary technologies.”

And vaccine patent waivers are not necessarily a panacea. The Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines require extremely cold refrigeration, something not widely available in Africa and other parts of the developing world. Dr. ALEJANDRO CRAVIOTO, chair of the World Health Organization’s advisory panel on immunizations and former CEO of the South Korea-based International Vaccine Institute, brought up another hurdle in an email exchange with Fair Game.

“Making vaccines is not baking,” he wrote. “You need more than the recipe to produce a vaccine and [must] have access to many products in the supply chain that have independent patents apart from the final product ... Getting these permits would take a long time and would make the transfer of the technology a very long process.”

But where there’s a will, there’s a way, and in the face of a pandemic, there ought to be plenty of will. The alternative is to apply Dean’s logic — that the patent waivers would “discourage further investments into these revolutionary technologies.”

This reasoning, of course, describes a capitalist race to the moral bottom: Our profits are more important than beating COVID-19. If you don’t let us maximize them, we’re going to take our ball and go

GOT A TIP FOR DAVE? DAVE@SEVENDAYSVT.COM

home. Well, here’s an excellent chance for the pharmaceutical companies to show they’re not just in it for the money.

Standing at the top of Burlington’s Church Street before a throng of his supporters at his campaign kickoff in June 2003, Dean shouted, “You have the power” to bring about a better world.

Many of those in the crowd were ready to hitch their hopes and dreams to this guy.

Dean says he’s still just trying to find the best path forward. “If I thought lives would be saved by getting rid of intellectual property laws, I’d be happy to sign on,” he said.

Is he sincere, or has Dean, a product of Park Avenue and Yale, merely swum back to his native stream, sold out and taken on work advising the rich on how to get richer?

Maybe it’s both. But he’s working for pay for a system that says if brown bodies pile up in the Global South, that’s just a cost of doing business. It doesn’t look good.

experience. Graduating senior JEN LANNOM said she spent her first two years at UVM as a chemistry major, then switched to political science, got connected to CNS and now is shooting for a career in journalism. Working with CNS “clarified for me that this is what I really have a passion for,” she said.

Lannom and fellow student JOHN ELY said they didn’t anticipate the thirst for local coverage. “The most surprising thing to me was how grateful residents were for covering their stories and getting news out to the towns,” Ely said. “[That] made us all work diligently to put out the best pieces we could.”

The editors of local papers say they love the help. “COVID-19 severely depleted the ranks of our correspondents; there were towns we simply could not cover,” said RAY SMALL, editor of the Hardwick Gazette. “The CNS stepped in to help. The writing and adherence to the basics of journalism in the final product were first-rate.”

JESSIE FORAND, managing editor of five papers including the Shelburne News and the Stowe Reporter, said the experience better prepares the students to join those depleted ranks after graduation.

Student reporters get to build a clip file — a portfolio of samples of their work to show hiring editors when they venture out into the job market. Forand called this “priceless.”

As an example of the value of CNS, she pointed to the work of student LILLY YOUNG, who has been covering Shelburne. “With her contributions, we’ve been able to deeply examine the contentious conversations surrounding a local ham radio enthusiast whose application for radio towers has had neighbors buzzing at the thought of losing their idyllic landscape,” Forand said.

Many of the students may not end up working as professional journalists.

But as TIM CALABRO, editor and publisher of the White River Valley Herald, noted, the UVM program may be building something equally important: newspaper readers. “It’s the most satisfying thing in the world to be able to help grow an appreciation for community news,” he said. “That part, I think, is vital for the industry’s future and for all of society.”

Despite all the talk of gloom and doom for the news media and journalism, I’m taking the energy being channeled by CNS as a sign of hope for the future. m

POLITICS

Watts’ Happening?

Here’s a shout-out to an endeavor seeded a couple years ago by the University of Vermont. The school’s Community News Service has grown and thrived despite — or perhaps aided by — the pandemic.

CNS, as it is known, is a team of student journalists who have been reporting stories desperately needed by Vermont’s struggling community newspapers and online news sites. The young reporters are led by a group of teacher-editors assembled by RICHARD WATTS, director of the Center for Research on Vermont.

UVM doesn’t have a journalism program. Instead, CNS is an offshoot of its 2-year-old program in Reporting and Documentary Storytelling, a minor managed by Watts’ center in the College of Arts and Sciences. It’s grown from a startup of five students in the summer of 2019 to about 50 at UVM today, plus more at the state colleges.

Students are assigned to cover specific communities; they are coached, and their stories edited, by professional journalists, among them CNS’ top editor CORY DAWSON, Seven Days’ reporter ANNE WALLACE ALLEN and former VTDigger.org managing editor COLIN MEYN. The program offers the stories at no cost — a boon to community newspapers that were struggling before the pandemic hit.

The student reporters seem to love the

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MORE INSIDE

VAX TO SCHOOL PAGE 18

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EDUCATION

VPAL TO DISBAND

STATEHOUSE

A sign at Burlington High School

B Y C O L I N F L A N D ER S colin@sevendaysvt.com

LUKE AWTRY

Chemical Reaction

Burlington’s PCB problem could have ramifications for other schools across the state B Y A L ISON NOVAK • alison@sevendaysvt.com

S

hortly after Burlington High School closed last September because of high levels of airborne toxic chemicals in its tech center building, district Superintendent Tom Flanagan got what he thought was encouraging news.

Further testing in the other five high school buildings found polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) levels between one and 300 nanograms per cubic meter, with an average of 98 nanograms — still above Vermont’s screening level of 15 nanograms per cubic meter but significantly below the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s guidelines of 500 to 600 nanograms for high school-age students and staff.

“I thought, OK, we’re going to be able to get back in here,” Flanagan said. He even made what he called the “rookie superintendent move” of telling the girls’ soccer team that things looked good for a return to campus.

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SEVEN DAYS MAY 12-19, 2021

Vermont Senate Backs $100 Million Broadband Bill

PAGE 23

But the Vermont Department of Health quashed that optimism. “They said, ‘No, these are above our screening values ... Our screening values are our screening values for a reason. We are concerned about these numbers. We’re concerned about this building,’” Flanagan said. The EPA and the district’s consultants concurred.

Eight months later, Burlington High School students still haven’t returned to the Institute Road campus — and they likely never will. Last week, the school board voted unanimously to abandon a $70 million renovation project and switch gears to a total rebuild of the school at an as-yet-unknown location.

“I have very little confidence that we’d be able to get back into a safe building,” Flanagan said in an interview with Seven Days the day after the school board’s vote.

Remediating the chemicals would have had a price tag of about $12 million and would

not have guaranteed a PCB air concentration below the state’s recommendation.

“That was too big of a risk,” Flanagan said.

But some experts who spoke with Seven Days think that the district’s approach is overly aggressive. Furthermore, Vermont’s stringent PCB air-screening levels — the lowest in the country — could complicate a future statewide testing initiative.

“As a toxicologist, I worry about lead and other heavy metals with regard to children’s health,” Laura Green, president and senior toxicologist of Green Toxicology in Brookline, Mass., told Seven Days in an email. “I do not worry about PCBs, and I would never recommend demolishing the school at issue.”

Last fall, a group of vocal parents, too, thought the risk of PCBs was overblown.

CHEMICAL REACTION

» P.18

The Vermont Senate on Tuesday voted unanimously in favor of a bill that would dedicate $100 million toward the expansion of broadband access in the state.

The bill, H.360, would funnel a portion of the $1 billion in federal relief aid Vermont is receiving from the American Rescue Plan Act toward the goal of improving broadband access in underserved rural areas.

The money would be sent directly to local communications districts and small private providers, while a new three-member board — similar to the now-defunct Vermont Telecommunications Authority — would manage the funding and provide financial, technical and administrative support.

Supporters of the bill say it would help Vermont achieve substantial progress on the long-promised goal of making high-speed internet available to all. An estimated 60,000 homes still lack broadband access.

The bill previously passed the House and was scheduled for a final reading in the Senate on Wednesday, May 12. The chambers would then need to consider the differences between their versions before they could send a final bill to Gov. Phil Scott’s desk.

The two bills, for example, propose to spend different amounts — at least initially. The House bill calls on the state to spend $150 million from the most recent federal COVID-19 relief package, while the Senate version offers $100 million. Lawmakers in that chamber, however, wrote in their budget bill that they intend to spend another $50 million in the coming years.

Both proposals fall short of a plan Scott proposed last month that would have spent $250 million in federal aid on broadband expansion over three years.

At one of his twice-weekly press conferences on Tuesday, Scott reiterated his belief that the most recent federal windfall poses a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to tackle long-standing issues such as a lack of universal broadband access.

He suggested the state would need to spend twice the amount proposed by the legislature and said he hoped lawmakers recognized that more needs to be done.

“I don’t want to wake up three or four years from now and look back and ask ourselves, ‘Where did all the money go?’” he said. m

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ive new hires at Dirt Tech, a Colchester construction company, have filled out hiring paperwork in recent weeks, been given start dates, and left with company hard hats and safety vests. Three of them haven’t been seen at Dirt Tech since.

“Two didn’t call us at all,” said manager Lauren Weir. “One said there was a personal reason. It has baffled us to figure out why somebody would fill out all their intake paperwork and just not show up. If they wanted a hard hat, they could just ask.”

For years, Vermont employers have reported difficulty in finding workers, particularly in the service and construction industries. But as businesses gear up for this summer, they say their hiring

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problems have worsened. A workforce shortage is being reported around the country. Thousands of people remain on unemployment as a result of COVID-19 shutdowns, fueling some of the theories for why applicants are staying away.

Mickey Wiles, who founded the Working Fields employment agency in South Burlington four years ago, thinks the federal government’s enhanced unemployment benefit, which now adds $300 a week to the state benefit, is keeping people out of the workforce. For a time in 2020, that enhanced benefit was $600 a week, meaning that some unemployed people were taking home more than $1,100 a week.

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just opt to stay at home, he said: “As much as we would like to believe that people don’t do that, there is a certain amount of the population that is.”

An estimated 30,000 people are collecting unemployment benefits each week in Vermont, up from the typical 5,000 or so at this time of year. On May 9, the state Department of Labor reinstated its requirement that claimants look for work. They must show three job-seeking contacts every time they file a weekly claim, and they aren’t permitted to turn down suitable job offers while remaining on unemployment benefits.

Employers are waiting to see whether those requirements change anything, but nobody thinks they will turn the situation around completely.

Domenic Mangano owns the Jamaica Cottage Shop, a shed and tiny-home construction company in South Londonderry. Along with the enhanced unemployment benefits, he blames the opioid crisis for keeping some workingage people at home. He also noted that the number of U.S. immigrants — authorized and not — has fallen in recent years.

“That’s why I feel we are struggling to find people to drive the economy forward,” Mangano said.

Some reasons aren’t new, however.

Policy makers cite Vermont’s high housing costs, which can make it difficult for people to live near workplaces, as well as childcare and eldercare obligations.

“The reality is that this is an issue that predated COVID and will be around after COVID,” said David Mickenberg, a lobbyist for Working Vermont, a coalition of public- and private-sector unions. Working Vermont supported the Democratbacked paid family leave legislation that Gov. Phil Scott vetoed last year.

“COVID has exposed the basic fragility of our labor situation,” Mickenberg said.

At Dirt Tech, Weir said the crisisdriven break from work that many people faced has caused workers to rethink their

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EDUCATION

Vermont Colleges and Universities Announce Vaccine Requirements B Y CHEL SEA ED G AR chelsea@sevendaysvt.com As Vermont colleges and universities weigh reopening procedures for next fall, some institutions have already issued guidance on COVID-19 vaccinations for students and employees.

Last Thursday, Champlain College in Burlington announced that it would require all students to be fully vaccinated before the start of the fall semester, pending U.S. Food & Drug Administration approval of the vaccines.

Under the current emergency authorization order, some experts contend that vaccine mandates exist on shaky legal ground. But full approval would make such requirements “a little more feasible,” John Grabenstein, a former executive director of medical affairs for vaccines at Merck and a former U.S. Department of Defense immunologist, told NBC News.

Pfizer filed a request last Friday for FDA approval for its COVID-19 vaccine, a process that public health officials estimate could take up to six months.

Saint Michael’s College, a private Catholic college in Colchester, will also require that students get vaccinated before returning to campus in the fall, according to spokesperson Alex Bertoni.

Employees, Bertoni said, will be “strongly encouraged” to get shots.

Norwich University, a private military academy in Northfield, will reopen with the “expectation” that all students, faculty and staff be vaccinated no later than August 1, said Daphne Larkin, director of media relations and community affairs.

St. Michael’s, Champlain and Norwich will all grant exemptions for documented medical and religious reasons.

Middlebury College plans to announce vaccine guidance in the coming days, according to spokesperson Sarah Ray. University of Vermont spokesperson Enrique Corredera told Seven Days that the administration has not yet determined vaccination protocols for next year.

Across the country, the Chronicle of Higher Education has identified 228 colleges and universities, both public and private, that will mandate vaccines for students or employees. m

18

SEVEN DAYS MAY 12-19, 2021

Safety tape at Burlington High School

Chemical Reaction « P.16 They pushed the district to reopen the school, citing the wide differences between the federal PCB standards and Vermont’s.

Some of those parents, fed up with remote learning and a lack of progress, transferred their students to other schools.

One parent, data scientist Greg Fanslow, previously worked as a water-quality regulator in California. Environmental regulation has to be a thoughtful process that weighs the human and economic costs against the theoretical benefits of reducing exposure to toxins, he told Seven Days recently. Vermont’s PCB screening guidance is so low “that it creates huge other consequences for the economy and society.”

Vermont adopted its PCB screening level in 2013. According to the EPA and other experts in the field, it’s the only state in the country with a level different from the federal standards. Sarah Vose, the state toxicologist, said the low level is meant to lessen exposure to the chemicals by using worst-case scenarios.

The EPA, for instance, calculates its screening level by considering the average time students and staff would be in school and exposed to PCBs — between six and eight hours a day for 180 to 185 days, roughly corresponding to the school year.

Vermont, on the other hand, bases its risk assessment on the maximum time students and staff could be in such a building, which the state says is 11 hours per day for 250 days — much longer than the school day and the school year. The EPA considers an excess cancer risk of one in 10,000 to

be negligible; Vermont sets the negligible level more stringently: one in 1,000,000.

The Vermont Department of Health also took into account the noncancerous health effects of PCBs, Vose said.

PCBs were widely used in construction materials until 1979, meaning dozens, maybe hundreds, of Vermont school buildings could have high airborne levels of the chemicals. State Sen. Phil Baruth (D/PChittenden) acknowledged as much in March, when he attended the grand opening of Burlington’s temporary high school, inside a former Macy’s building downtown.

Burlington, he said, is “a canary in the coal mine for the state of Vermont.” The legislature’s budget proposal — which has not yet been approved — would allocate $4.5 million toward a voluntary airborne PCB testing program for all public and independent schools.

During the 2013-14 school year, Vermont tested for airborne PCBs at four schools, including Champlain Elementary in Burlington. The tests found PCBs ranging from 27 to 65 nanograms per cubic meter in four locations at Champlain. The health department issued a series of recommendations, including replacing older or leaking light ballasts and wet-washing the walls and other hard surfaces.

“No further action was needed at these schools because the levels of PCBs detected are not expected to contribute very much to an individual’s exposure,” a 2014 health department memo to school administrators stated. The memo explained how schools could go about deciding whether PCB testing was warranted, but added,

“Unfortunately, there is no state or federal funding available at this time to assist with sampling and/or remediation.”

If Vermont does begin a broader PCB testing initiative, it will want a plan for what to do when it finds high levels, said Jim Okun, an environmental toxicologist at Massachusetts-based firm O’Reilly, Talbot & Okun Engineering. For the last five years, he’s worked as a consultant for Worcester Public Schools, the second-largest district in the Bay State, helping to remediate PCBs in its buildings. Rather than tear down buildings, the district has taken measures to mitigate or remove the PCB-laden materials and improve air-filtration systems. It’s come at a cost: Worcester has spent more than $50 million on the project.

Vermont’s 15 nanogram screening number is “an extremely low level, and I think it’s going to be a very hard level to hit,” Okun said. “I think the EPA goal is actually a pretty aggressive goal already.”

University of Iowa professor Keri Hornbuckle has researched PCBs for decades and thinks any exposure to the chemical is bad for kids. The EPA calls them a probable human carcinogen, while the World Health Organization goes further, classifying them as a known carcinogen.

They can cause other detrimental effects to the immune, endocrine, reproductive and neurological systems.

But, Hornbuckle said, PCBs were used in “such tremendous quantities,” especially in many schools built between the 1950s and late 1970s, that it is difficult to support tearing down a building because of PCB contamination.

AT-HOME TIRE & CAR SERVICE “The magnitude of the problem is not just about the toxicology, unfortunately,” Hornbuckle said. “It’s about the practical steps that we can take to get our exposures down or eliminate the exposures.”

Hornbuckle said that Burlington High School’s PCB levels “are probably rather typical” for schools built in the middle part of the 20th century.

“The situation in Burlington is so alarming because it’s not an unreasonable decision, but it’s completely unaffordable,” she said. “The whole country can’t replace all of our schools that were built during that time, can we?”

Some of Hornbuckle’s research involves finding affordable and effective ways to remediate airborne exposure to PCBs in schools. She thinks Vermont’s PCB screening levels are “a reasonable goal” but suggests thinking about the 15 nanograms per cubic meter as a target, rather than the criterion.

“The state’s definitely going to be thinking hard about this if [Burlington tears down its high school] because, indeed, what are you going to do with

THE SITUATION IN BURLINGTON IS SO ALARMING BECAUSE IT’S NOT AN UNREASONABLE DECISION,

BUT IT’S COMPLETELY UNAFFORDABLE. K E R I HOR NBUCKL E

the other schools?” she asked. “But the answer is not changing the guidance. The answer is, ‘How do you deal with that information?’”

Burlington has already made its decision.

Extensive testing has found even more contamination, including in more building materials and a few inches deep into the soil on campus. Some school board members speculated that soil contamination could complicate building anew there, but Flanagan said the district hasn’t ruled out using the current site. Regardless of where the school goes, he’s convinced that a new building is the best option.

“I feel more and more comfortable with the decision, and I’m less questioning the difference between the Department of Health’s screening values and the EPA’s screening values,” Flanagan said. “But I also feel a responsibility to make sure that our staff and our students feel safe. And if Vermont Department of Health is telling

us it’s not safe, and they’ve shepherded us through a pandemic to keep us safe … there’s no way that we’re going against that.”

“It’s a devastating decision,” said School Commissioner Martine Gulick, who cochairs the board’s facilities committee, “but at the same time, it felt like it was 100 percent the right thing to do because we don’t see that there are a lot of options to move forward, to be perfectly honest.”

“We have to go by the guidelines that are set by the state,” she added.

The health department and the Vermont Agency of Education have both expressed support for Burlington’s decision.

“We have confidence that the district’s thoughtful deliberations drew upon our science-based information,” health department spokesperson Ben Truman said in an email. “Our concern, and our guidance for the school district, is rooted in the health risks associated with exposure of students and staff to PCBs in the high school’s indoor air.”

At an unrelated press conference last Friday, state Education Secretary Dan French praised the leadership of Superintendent Flanagan — who only started last July — during a very difficult year.

“It kind of boils down to some practical decision making on the part of the district,” French said. “More information kept coming in that pointed to new construction probably being the better approach.”

Where the new high school will go and how the school district will pay for it are two looming questions. Flanagan said the district might consider selling property or buildings — including the high school’s Institute Road campus — to offset the costs of both a new build and the PCB cleanup, which the district will be responsible for whether or not the school stays on the land. The district would likely seek state and federal money, as well.

“I would say we’re definitely all concerned,” Gulick said of funding the project. “A new high school is expensive, so, yes, it’s a very daunting task … but, as Tom has been saying, this is an opportunity for us.”

Flanagan said the district would assess various sites to decide where to build.

Extending the lease at the Macy’s building during construction is a possibility, but Flanagan hopes it isn’t necessary. He does like the idea of building a downtown school to capitalize on “the opportunities for deeper learning that exist when you have a school that’s embedded in the heart of the city.”

“We have to figure out what site can deliver the best school for our community,” he said, “and what site can do that at the lowest cost and at the fastest rate.” m

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news careers. “I think the pandemic caused a lot of people to reevaluate what they want to do and how they want to go about their life,” she said.

To attract and retain workers, Vermont employers have raised wages and benefits and lowered some of the barriers to getting a job.

“We’re starting with no experience necessary,” said Mangano, who has 90 employees. “Someone straight off the street can earn $17.50 an hour. All they have to do is show us they can get to work every day.” If those people work a full 40 hours per week, Mangano added, they get a dollar-per-hour attendance bonus.

Lilian Tacovici owns the Vermont Employment Agency in South Burlington, which helps connect many New Americans with employers. He said offering flexible hours is key these days, because many are facing pandemic-related childcare issues.

Pay and perks help, too. Ben & Jerry’s is offering custodial positions in Waterbury at $16 an hour. Doc Ponds restaurant in Stowe promises a $600 bonus after six months on the job. Brown Ledge Camp on Malletts Bay is hiring horse stable attendants and offering free room and board for successful candidates — and for their horses, too.

Chris Karr, who owns four restaurants in Killington, has hired a full-time recruiter to fill 19 positions. He’s advertising nationally and has heard from applicants as far west as Colorado.

Karr doesn’t try to compete on wages.

Instead, he said, he relies on more flexible hours and the appeal of living in Vermont.

Most of his positions offer a starting pay of $13.50 an hour, Karr said. With profit margins of 5 to 7 percent and food prices rising, he’s had to come up with inducements such as ski passes.

“We have found over the years it’s not as much driven by this wage as it is in terms of flexibility and ‘What are my perks?’” he said.

Big Fatty’s BBQ is offering $16 to $19 per hour at its restaurant and catering business in White River Junction — a dollar more than last summer — and has added a $501 bonus to those who stick around for three months, said owner Brandon Fox. He chose $501 because it’s “a weird number, so people would look at it more.”

Despite that, Fox said, a lot of applicants don’t show up for scheduled interviews. Big Fatty’s typically employs 20 people; he had a staff of 10 when he spoke to Seven Days. He’s paying gas money for a chef who commutes from Montpelier.

Employers in Vermont and other states have been saying for years that a worker 20

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Help Really Wanted « P.17

Lilian Tacovici

shortage is suppressing economic growth.

Workers, and their advocates, have responded by pointing to pay.

“In good times and bad, there is always a chorus of employers who claim they can’t find the employees they need,” wrote Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist at the

THIS IS AN ISSUE THAT PREDATED COVID AND WILL BE AROUND AFTER COVID. DAVID MIC K E NBE R G

Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. “One reason is that in a system as large and complex as the U.S. labor market, there will always be pockets of bona fide labor shortages at any given time. But a

more common reason is, employers simply don’t want to raise wages high enough to attract workers.”

Labor advocates have fought for years in Vermont to raise the minimum wage — now $11.75 an hour — to a minimum of $15.

In Chittenden County these days, most jobs start at $15 or higher, Wiles noted.

But employers say paying more isn’t easy. Payroll is the largest expense at many companies, said Bram Kleppner, CEO of Danforth Pewter in Middlebury.

“As a business manager, my goal is to have the total payroll expense go down.

As a Danforth employee and leader of a team of great people, my goal is for each individual’s pay to go up,” he said. “So, contradictory impulses.”

International Paper’s Ticonderoga mill, just across Lake Champlain in New York, has put up “help wanted” signs in Vermont that offer a starting pay of more than $18 an hour. That’s not unusual.

“There is pressure on us to raise pay,

but that’s not to attract people — it’s to not lose the people we have,” Kleppner added.

“We’re working hard to get everyone in our plant and in our stores to $15 an hour, but we’re not even there yet, much less $18 an hour.”

And raising pay won’t solve the problem by itself, Mickenberg believes.

“We should be looking at pursuing policies that encourage younger people to come to Vermont, and for those in Vermont to be able to work and balance the pressures of children and aging parents,” he said.

With their summer on the line, employers are getting creative. When Koffee Kup Bakery closed down, neighboring employers quickly papered the door of its Burlington plant with notices of job openings at their own establishments.

Mangano’s marketing staff designed a campaign to attract people looking for an entry-level carpentry job. Mangano also advertised on TikTok for the first time.

John Schultz, who owns Super Thin Saws in Waterbury, has tried advertising in local papers, Front Porch Forum and recruiting websites. Local ads work best, he said — even if it’s a sandwich board set up in front of the manufacturing company or a sign on a grocery store’s bulletin board.

Attempts to find long-term solutions to labor shortages started long before the pandemic. Weir is hopeful that promoting construction careers starting in elementary school will help steer more people toward technical degrees.

“People can make a wonderful living doing a trade,” Weir said. “You don’t have to have $200,000 in college debt to still have a good job.”

The workers are there, say economists — though, in many cases, their skills don’t match the job openings.

Federal Reserve Bank chair Jerome Powell noted at an April 28 press conference that although employers reported labor shortages during the last period of economic expansion, they found workers.

“My guess would be that you will see people coming back into the labor force, the labor market will reach equilibrium, maybe pay will go up,” he said.

Powell noted that the federal unemployment supplement ends in September.

“To the extent that’s a factor, which is not clear, it will no longer be a factor fairly soon,” he said.

Shierholz, the Washington economist, sees a simple solution.

“Employers post their too-low wages, can’t find workers to fill jobs at that pay level, and claim they’re facing a labor shortage,” she wrote. “I often suggest that whenever anyone says, ‘I can’t find the workers I need,’ she should really add, ‘at the wages I want to pay.’” m

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B Y COL I N FL A ND ERS • colin@sevendaysvt.com Koffee Kup employed about 500 people total in its two Vermont bakeries and a third in Connecticut. Its April 26 closure came just weeks after it was purchased by a private-equity firm, American Industrial Acquisition Corporation.

A Vermont-based adviser to that firm wrote to the Vermont Department of Labor late last month that the company had been losing money for years and that its main lender, KeyBank, had declined to float additional cash or extend a forbearance agreement.

“Koffee Kup no longer has sufficient capital to continue operations,” read the April 26 letter.

The company was in the middle of negotiations that involved KeyBank and potential buyers when it closed, a former company executive told Seven Days last week. The executive asked that his name be withheld over concerns about potential legal action associated with the closure.

Three days after the closure, KeyBank sued Koffee Kup for breach of contract, writing in court filings that the company still owes $3.2 million on a term loan and $4 million on revolving credit.

Those agreements, according to the suit, require that the company repay its debt in the event of a change in ownership. A week after learning that most of Koffee Kup’s stock had been sold on April 1, KeyBank demanded to be repaid. It is now asking a judge to place Koffee Kup into receivership and has requested compensatory damages.

Koffee Kup’s troubles don’t end there. It also owes a little over half of the $477,254 loan it received from the Vermont Economic Development Authority. And it faces a federal class-action lawsuit from a former employee who says the company violated federal rules by failing to provide 60-day notice of the mass layoff as required under the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, or WARN Act. m

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In Wake of Koffee Kup’s Closure, Massachusetts Company Eyes Vermont Expansion A Massachusetts baking company appears to be interested in filling the void left by Koffee Kup Bakery’s sudden closure late last month, having received approval last week to participate in a state program that promises payments in exchange for job creation.

East Baking Company, which is headquartered in Holyoke, Mass., could receive more than $2 million in grants through the Vermont Employment Growth Incentive program should it create and maintain an unspecified number of jobs in the state.

The company manufactures and distributes bakery products nationwide and is a frequent government contractor, serving a customer list that includes hospitals, schools and federal prisons.

And while it is unclear exactly how its plans involve its now-shuttered competitor, East Baking Company is staking out familiar terrain. Among the scarce details made public about the company’s applications is that they involve locations in Burlington and Brattleboro — where Koffee Kup once operated bakeries.

Dan Serra, owner of East Baking Company, declined comment when reached last Friday. So did Megan Sullivan, executive director of the Vermont Economic Progress Council, which oversees the Employment Growth Incentive program. She explained that applications are confidential because they contain proprietary information.

The council went into executive session last Thursday to discuss the applications with an East Baking representative.

Council members later unanimously approved the requests, saying in a pair of motions that they had determined the “proposed economic activity would not occur in Vermont — or would occur in a significantly different, less desirable manner” — were it not for the grants. The state Department of Taxes will still need to confirm East Baking’s compliance with the terms of the agreement before the payments begin.

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4/6/21 6:42 PM

SEVEN DAYS MAY 12-19, 2021

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4/22/21 11:14 AM

news ROB FOUNTAIN

The Adirondack in Port Kent, N.Y.

ENVIRONMENT

Outcry Torpedoes Scuttling State, company drop plan to sink an old ferry in Burlington Harbor B Y K E V I N MCCAL L UM • kevin@sevendaysvt.com

T

he Lake Champlain Transportation Company’s plan to sink one of its retired car ferries in Burlington Bay foundered this week in the face of rising opposition.

Despite winning approval from state environmental regulators, the proposal to scuttle the 108-year-old Adirondack stirred up fears that the sunken vessel could further pollute the lake.

The company and state officials on Tuesday withdrew their joint application for a permit that the state Department of Environmental Conservation had already approved in March. Environmental groups had appealed, raising the prospect of a lengthy legal battle over something the company viewed as a philanthropic endeavor.

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SEVEN DAYS MAY 12-19, 2021

“We’ve concluded, in consultation with the transit company, that in light of the rising tide of public opposition, the cost of the project due to the appeal of the lake encroachment permit, and the pending review by the City of Burlington, that it is best not to move forward,” Laura Trieschmann, the state’s historic preservation officer, said.

The state Division of Historic Preservation was a co-applicant for the state permit because the sunken Adirondack would have become the property of the state. Proponents argued that the vessel would have become a draw as a dive site while preserving the historic ferry.

Instead, the Addy, as she is known, will be scrapped, Trieschmann said. John

Paul, port engineer for Lake Champlain Transportation, declined to comment Tuesday.

The ferry operated for 65 years on the lake, mostly as a summer shuttle between Burlington and Port Kent, N.Y., where she now sits awaiting her fate.

In Montpelier, lawmakers who were powerless to retroactively block the permit nevertheless lambasted it. They are now considering a three-year moratorium on such sinkings.

The proposal had faced further review by the City of Burlington, whose Harbor Commission held a hearing on the plan earlier this month and had another one scheduled for June. The city was still determining whether it had jurisdiction over the sinking, which was to take place in 70

feet of water about a mile off Burlington’s shoreline.

Trieschmann, however, said a city ordinance against abandoning vessels in the bay made it clear the project would have required a waiver from Burlington’s harbormaster.

“As people learned more and more about it, the opposition was increasing,” Trieschmann said. “As we’ve said from the start, if there is strong opposition to this, we will not go forward.”

The Vermont Natural Resources Council and the Lake Champlain Committee appealed the DEC permit, citing concern about potential contaminants. The company had already begun removing engines, oil tanks and other potential contaminants from the ferry. Trace amounts of lead paint and PCBs were still expected to remain in the 150-foot-long vessel, however.

Jon Groveman, VNRC’s policy and water program director, said the contamination risk wasn’t worth the benefit to “a small community of passionate recreationist” divers.

“It just never made any sense to us to use the lake to sink anything, let alone anything of this size,” Groveman said Tuesday. “This never seemed to serve the greater public good.”

The project’s backers initially claimed it enjoyed wide support but in recent weeks seemed to realize the tide was turning.

“It’s still a 50-50 proposition at best at this point,” Paul acknowledged to skeptical lawmakers.

Jonathan Eddy, co-owner of Waterfront Diving Center in Burlington and the project’s chief booster, said he was frustrated that the permit was appealed at the “11th hour” following what he considered a robust public outreach effort. He decried what he called misinformation about the project being spread in the press and on social media.

While people were right to worry about potential contamination, regulators concluded there was no significant risk to the environment, Eddy said.

“I get it. We’re spending $2 billion, or whatever the figure is, to try to clean up the lake, and then some jamoke wants to go sink a greasy old boat in it,” Eddy said.

“But that’s not what’s happening.”

The Adirondack was built in Jacksonville, Fla., in 1913. Lake Champlain Transportation purchased it from a Philadelphia company in 1954. A decline in demand on the Burlington-Port Kent crossing, combined with mounting maintenance needs, caused the company to retire the double-decker car ferry in 2019.

“The traffic in Burlington has dwindled over the last 10 or 15 years, and it’s gotten to the point where it cannot support three

boats anymore,” Paul said during the sole public meeting on the project.

The company, which was founded in 1826 and purchased by the Pecor family in 1976, has two higher-volume, year-round ferry crossings at narrower points in the lake at South Hero and Charlotte. The company hasn’t run the Port Kent crossing since retiring the Addy and doesn’t know whether the route will ever resume, Paul previously told Seven Days.

In 2017 the company began exploring options for repurposing the aging vessel.

The most expensive — at $1.3 million — was to pull it from the water for public display.

Converting it into a floating restaurant was another possibility, but a slip would likely have cost $100,000 per year.

“You’d have to have a pretty good business model to make that work, and that doesn’t seem to be there for the Addy,” Paul told lawmakers.

The vessel doesn’t quite have the “panache” of the 1906 paddle-wheel steamer Ticonderoga, on display at the Shelburne Museum just a few miles south, he noted.

Selling the ferry for use elsewhere would carry significant transportation costs, estimated at $158,000. The ferry would have to be cut in half to fit through the 60-mile Champlain Canal connecting the lake to the Hudson River, the company estimated.

That really left only two options — selling it for scrap for $70,000 or doing the work needed to sink it for $170,000.

Some assumed, erroneously, that the company sought the scuttling to save money, Eddy said. “This is a true gift from LCT to the people of Vermont and the Champlain Valley,” he said of the plan to create a dive destination.

Once cleaned, filled with cement, towed offshore and sunk south of Lone Rock Point, the ferry was to become part of the Lake Champlain Underwater Historic Preserves, a network of protected shipwrecks.

It would have joined 10 wrecks — nine in Vermont and one in New York — managed as dive sites by the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum. The Vermont Division of Historic Preservation, which maintains and markets historic sites including the Ethan Allen Homestead and the Bennington Battle Monument, had actively promoted the project. Trieschmann has said the state is exploring adding existing wrecks to the preserve system.

The DEC had concluded that public benefits outweighed any negatives, noting that virtually all contaminants would be removed from the vessel. Staff agreed the project would “take diving pressure off more fragile wrecks” and preserve “maritime cultural resources.”

The permit would have required that the company follow the EPA’s ship-scuttling guidelines, including removing oil and diesel fuel tanks, asbestos, and loose paint. Test results showed some lead in paint samples, as well as trace amounts of PCBs below the 50-parts-per-million limit in the 2006 federal guidelines.

The VNRC and the Lake Champlain Committee argued the DEC’s analysis downplayed the contamination risks and overstated the benefits to a small group of people with the resources to dive.

“We understand they are meeting best practices in terms of removing toxins and other pollutants from the vessel, but we don’t think they’re going to get all of it,” Groveman told lawmakers.

Lori Fisher, executive director of the Lake Champlain Committee, took issue not only with the proposal itself, but with the public process. The sole public meeting was one organized by the company on March 5, 2020, at the Burlington Police Department. Fisher noted that it took

IT JUST NEVER MADE ANY SENSE TO US TO USE THE LAKE TO SINK ANYTHING,

LET ALONE ANYTHING OF THIS SIZE. J O N GR O VE MAN

place on the cusp of the pandemic and most attendees were from the diving community. A video from the hearing shows the vast majority of the 60 or so attendees raising hands in support of the project.

“That is not a public outreach effort.

That was an exclusive group,” Fisher said.

A DEC environmental analyst, Misha Cetner, stressed during the session that since the 30-day comment period for the permit hadn’t yet started, he would also be “scheduling a public information meeting on the draft permit itself” in Burlington in the future.

A few days later, Gov. Phil Scott declared a state of emergency due to the pandemic, and the project was paused. The DEC never held a public meeting.

Asked to explain why not, Commissioner Peter Walke referred to a document listing news coverage from 2018 and 2020, a Division of Historic Preservation web page about the proposal, and other public outreach. Fischer said her organization, which is dedicated to the lake’s health, didn’t ask for another public meeting because it didn’t learn of the comment period in time.

Some lawmakers lamented that they didn’t know about the proposed sinking until the permit had been issued. Rep. Jim McCullough (D-Williston) said he was frustrated that the legislature was “late to the dance” on the issue “all because of a very willing administration to take care of certain companies.” Ray Pecor Jr., who used to run the company, and his son and current owner, Trey Pecor, have both donated to Scott’s campaigns. Trey Pecor gave the aspiring governor $4,000 in 2016 and $2,000 for his 2018 reelection. He could not be reached for comment.

McCullough’s commentary didn’t sit well with Walke, who said he was taken aback by what “felt like slanderous comments” aimed at his staff, who had “faithfully applied the law and science to make those permitting decisions.”

McCullough later said he was neither impugning staff nor accusing the administration of showing favoritism toward political donors. He meant only that the Scott administration was siding with business interests over “the public trust of waters,” he said.

The exchange highlights how polarizing the debate had become over a project that seems to have hidden in plain sight for years. Lawmakers made plain their displeasure with the plan.

Rep. Seth Bongartz (D-Manchester), who has dived to three of the lake’s historic wrecks, said making a contemporary vessel part of the historic preserve struck him as fake. “I feel like this is insulting to the notion of Lake Champlain wrecks as being part of a true historical museum in their own right,” Bongartz said.

Susan Evans McClure, executive director of the Vergennes-based Maritime Museum, said scuttling vessels was common until the mid-20th century, when awareness of the environmental impacts led to regulations. Many of the 100 or more wrecks in the lake, including the preserved tugboat U.S. La Vallee, sunk in 1931, were scuttled, she said.

The Addy is clearly a historic vessel even if “being a continuously used double-ended car ferry isn’t something that gets everyone excited,” she said.

The Pecor Family Foundation is one of the museum’s chief benefactors, having donated about $70,000 to its capital campaign over the last decade, according to its tax filings. Evans McClure said the museum does not discuss individual donors.

While disappointed in the project’s demise, Trieschmann said she chose to focus on what could still be a positive outcome.

“We didn’t get to sink the ferry for a new preserve,” she said, “but we’ve got the potential to open up new sites that we hadn’t thought about.” m

NEWS

Vermont Performing Arts League to Dissolve, Board Says B Y C O L I N F L A N D ER S colin@sevendaysvt.com The Vermont Performing Arts League, which manages the operations and assets of North End Studios, plans to dissolve as a nonprofit in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations against cofounder Ben Bergstein.

The move comes shortly after landlords of the North End Studios’ two primary locations, in Winooski and Burlington, said that they were terminating their leases with the organization.

Most of the nonprofit’s board of directors and staff had also resigned.

In a press release, an interim board of directors said that it has formed with the sole purpose of dissolving the organization and consulting the community on how to “best allocate its resources and continue the essential work that VPAL has performed.”

“VPAL is in crisis and we have decided that, while the work that VPAL has done is valuable and essential to the community, it has lost credibility as an organization and can no longer function under its present name and structure,” the release says.

Bergstein, who cofounded the performing arts league in 1978 with his wife and business partner, April Werner, has been accused of forcibly kissing, sexually harassing and groping numerous women over the last decade. He was also the subject of a criminal investigation in 2016 following an allegation that he brought an underage girl to a bar and then back to his home where he “sexually penetrated her,” but he was never charged.

VTDigger.org revealed the extensive allegations in a story published last month. Four of the eight alleged victims who spoke to the news outlet said Werner knew about her husband’s behavior but “brushed it off.” Both Bergstein and Werner have denied any wrongdoing.

Bergstein resigned from his role as president of the arts league in early April, before the story broke, at the request of the nonprofit’s board of directors. Werner stepped down from the board late last month but had planned to continue serving as the league’s executive director until a replacement could be found. She has since resigned.

David Schein, one of the interim board members, said the group met for the first time last Thursday and determined that the organization’s credibility issues were too grave to overcome.

“We’re not going to design something without a whole lot of input,” Schein said.

“It’s time to blow this thing up and put it to the community: What do you want?” m SEVEN DAYS MAY 12-19, 2021

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lifelines

OBITUARIES, VOWS, CELEBRATIONS

OBITUARIES Tony Markellis SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. SEPTEMBER 10, 1952APRIL 29, 2021

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COURTESY OF JOSEPH DEUEL

Tony Markellis, one of our community’s most talented, respected and beloved musicians, passed away in his sleep on April 29, at the alltoo-early age of 68. Tony’s talent on the bass was eclipsed only by his heart, wry wit, soulfulness and generosity of spirit, which deeply touched everyone who was lucky enough to have him as a part of their lives.

In addition to being a mainstay on the Burlington music scene for more than 45 years, Tony was omnipresent and equally beloved in his adopted hometown of Saratoga Springs, N.Y. For the past 18 years, Tony also gained national prominence playing bass in Phish front man Trey Anastasio’s eponymous sideline band.

Tony was born on September 10, 1952, in Helena, Mont., the first child of Dr. Victoria C. and Constantine A. Markellis. His mother was a physician and his father a civil engineer who designed and built bridges.

Tony’s younger brother, Greg, describes their parents as bighearted folks who believed everybody had value and who promoted childhood independence. Tony adored his mom and dad and made no secret of it. Tony’s family moved to Ann Arbor, Mich., in 1963, while both of his parents completed their master’s degrees in public health, and then to western New York, outside of Buffalo, the year after.

Tony started playing the upright bass in the third grade and, with a full beard at the tender age of 15, he had no problem securing gigs with bands in bars throughout his high school years. In 1968, when the family was on vacation in New York City, his parents allowed Tony, just shy of 16, to take his 11-yearold brother to Singer Stadium in Queens, on the grounds of the ’64/’65 World’s Fair, to see Jimi Hendrix, Janis

Joplin and Big Brother & the Holding Company, and the Chambers Brothers. Thanks to a generous cop who hawked them some already used ticket stubs through a fence, the pair managed to witness Hendrix split his tight white pants from front to back. Somehow Tony got close enough to the stage to end up with the strings off Hendrix’s busted guitar.

After graduating from Warsaw Central High School in 1969, Tony enrolled at the University of Michigan a month before he turned 17. He majored in anthropology and art. While going to college and living in Ann Arbor, Tony connected and played with a number of then relatively unknown singersongwriters, including John Prine, Steve Goodman and a blueswoman named Bonnie Raitt. For a time, he worked as a roadie for the Grateful Dead. He was still a few courses short of the credits required for graduation in 1972 when Bonnie suggested

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Tony head to the East Coast.

He started performing with the David Bromberg Band the following year.

It was Tony’s work with a wide range of singer-songwriters who were recording albums at Philo Records’ Earth Audio Studio, located in a converted dairy barn in Ferrisburgh, that started bringing him to Vermont with increasing frequency.

His brother recalls that, on occasion, Tony was called into service to play an instrument other than bass, but he insisted those forays not be credited to him, modestly believing his playing wasn’t worthy enough to note.

Look instead for Al Bondigas instrumental credits on some Philo albums from the ’70s. (If Al Bondigas were the clue on “Jeopardy!”, one of Tony’s favorite shows, the answer would be, “What is the Spanish word for ‘meatballs’?”)

It was at Philo’s studios that Tony began to forge an indelible and enduring

musical partnership with guitarist Paul Asbell and keyboardist Chuck Eller, who was working at Philo as a recording engineer. The three, along with drummer Bill Kinzie, formed the legendary jazz-fusion band Kilimanjaro, which toured nationally, including appearances at the Montreux and Kool jazz festivals, in support of two albums.

In the late ’70s and early ’80s, Kilimanjaro were a fixture for a once-a-month, three-night weekend gig at Hunt’s, the 200-seat nightclub that was the center of Burlington’s burgeoning music scene. Looking for a fourth payday without having to tear down and move the equipment, the band hooked up with guitarist and singer Martin Grosswendt and transformed itself into the Unknown Blues Band. Early on in that band’s incarnation, Big Joe Burrell — a largerthan-life sax player who had toured with B.B. King — sat in with Tony and the boys, and the unrehearsed three sets of music began a musical partnership that was pure magic.

It was at Hunt’s that Trey Anastasio, as a prospective University of Vermont student, first heard Tony play the bass. “I went into this bar,” he recalled. “I had just gotten off the plane. I was 18 years old. Hunt’s — this used to be a great club — and I went in and I saw this band that, to this day, I would say is my favorite band of all time.

I was completely floored by the musicianship and the coolness, and that was the moment that I wanted to move to Burlington, when I saw those guys.”

Paul remembers that, early in the Unknown Blues Band’s 25-plus-year run, each of them made “audition attempts” at being the band’s MC. “One night, Tony said, ‘Let me take a crack at it…’ and within minutes, it became obvious that Tony was the perfect guy for the job. Occasionally, Big Joe would announce the band.

But when it came time to

announce Tony, Joe didn’t use Tony’s decades-old stage name, ‘the Meat Man.’ He would simply say, ‘Tony Markellis ... I call him ‘the Rock.’ A perfect name for the man — both musically and personally.”

The “pre-set-break/band intro” riff was one of the signature high-energy moments in every Unknown Blues Band performance, highlighted by Tony calling out the names of his bandmates — Piano Whitey, Little Big-Time PeeWee Jr., Bucky Kincaid and, of course, the extended intro of the King of the Buzzard Strut, the Port Huron Pressure Cooker … MR. BIG JOE BURRELL! “Tony had a brilliant sense of humor and impeccable timing as an MC,” Chuck recalled. “He would often have us laughing so hard onstage that we couldn’t kick off the next tune.”

“Tony’s sense of musical time and groove — and his sense of emotional support and friendship — were as immovable and solid as his physical build,” Paul recalls.

“The friends he made — and there were thousands of ’em, all over the country — were friends for life. One of his biggest pleasures was introducing people to one another. If I had a buck for the number of times he said to me, ‘I’d like you to meet someone ... You’d really like each other,’ I’d be a very rich man, indeed.”

Chuck recalled, “When Kilimanjaro began touring in the mid-’80s, which included a national tour backing Paul Butterfield, Tony completely came into his own, in a way that I hadn’t seen when we played on our home turf. It was as if the guy was born to be a road warrior, and he embraced the role of being the band’s ‘ambassador.’

Tony’s uncanny ability to connect with people and make friends, whether we were performing in Switzerland, Denmark, Holland, Mexico or the Soviet Union, was enhanced by his dedication to learning enough of the language to be able to fulfill his role as MC bilingually. He didn’t just learn a couple of

words in each language but studied them to the point where he could make most of the usual announcements in their home language, making sure his pronunciation was perfect.”

Chuck attributed much of Tony’s ability to connect with people to his photographic memory: “We were playing a club in Seattle, where we had appeared six months earlier, and Tony walked into the club ahead of me and proceeded to say hello to the entire staff, addressing each person by their first name and often inquiring about some detail in their life that they may have mentioned to him the last time that we were through there. His ability to do that stunned me, since we had traveled tens of thousands of miles and met hundreds, if not thousands, of people since the last time we saw them. Tony’s ability to make friends, and his knack for remembering details about them, wasn’t just a superficial show of magic — and he would frequently stay in touch with the folks we met throughout our travels.”

Like a man with a second, surreptitious wife in another city, Tony had an equally rich and fulfilling connection to the music scene in the Capital District of New York. He was a fixture at Caffé Lena, the legendary Saratoga Springs folk venue, and in recent years, he maintained a weekly residency at the Mouzon House restaurant, collaborating with artists of every musical genre. Michael Jerling, who worked with Tony on more than 10 albums and toured extensively with him, told the Albany Times Union, “Tony was very entertaining — as long as you didn’t wake him up too early — and he always had suggestions on where to stop for a meal, even if it took us miles off the most direct route to the next show.” Kilimanjaro once drove 300 miles out of their way because Tony had read that there was an Indian reservation in New Mexico that had the hottest chile verde in the Southwest. Food

had always played a big part in Tony’s life, starting with the great home-cooked meals his mom made for their family.

According to his brother, Greg, Tony never met a food group he didn’t thoroughly enjoy, except alfalfa sprouts, for which he had no use. A friend, Mark Rubin, described Tony as a “two-fisted epicurean.”

The breadth and depth of the love so many fellow musicians and fans had for Tony come through in the hundreds of social media messages that have been posted since his passing. While they herald his musicianship, many are focused on the special bond of friendship he forged with so many people throughout every walk of life.

A common thread that runs through many of the posts was captured in this short excerpt taken from a lengthy but beautiful remembrance

by Andy Campolieto of the Boston-based roots-rock band Jo Henley.

“I could tell you about that great, packed, well-paying gig we played with him, and also about that dead dive bar that paid us in burgers, and how the same great, greasy Tony Markellis bass lines showed up for both — he never mailed it in, never half-assed it, never looked down on you for not being Trey or Santana or Prine or Big Joe Burrell …

Tony, for many of us, was the link between the coffeehouse gig and Bonnaroo. He worked with our idols, and for those of us fortunate enough to work with him on our own offBroadway projects, he made us feel as though we were worthy of the same care and attention and worth.”

Of course, it was as a founding member of Trey Anastasio’s solo band, starting in 1999, that Tony received the most significant recognition of his already storied career. After telling the audience during the TAB performance at the Grand

Point North festival in 2017 how he had first come to hear Tony play, Trey said, “I fell in love with this man back here, Tony Markellis.

And I remember thinking, I gotta be in a band with him someday, so my dream came true.” Tony’s songwriting co-credits include “First Tube,” “Gotta Jibboo,” “Sand,” “Sweet Dreams Melinda,” “Mozambique,” “Ether Sunday” and “Burlap Sack & Pumps,” among several others. Tony was also largely responsible for recruiting drummer Russ Lawton into Trey’s band. “There was so much chemistry. The way his bass and my bass drum landed together was pure magic,” Russ recalled.

“Thinking today about all the memorable shows we played and, of course, just sitting back and hanging after was a wonderful part of it, too.”

In an online post, Trey wrote, “He was a truly remarkable human being. He was kind and had a sweetness to his personality, and he was the baddest bass player I’ve ever heard. I loved Tony, and I always will.”

In addition to music, Tony was also an accomplished artist and writer. In 2020, his first book of short stories, Life … Real & Imagined, was published by Vermont’s Shires Press. You can order it via this link: northshire.com/ book/9781605715032.

Tony is survived by his brother, Greg; sister-in-law, Linda; and their children, Cory and Krista, all of whom adored and loved Tony dearly. When Linda was first introduced to Tony by Greg after a Kilimanjaro show at Chico State University, Tony asked her if she liked jazz, to which Linda responded that she loved Kenny G. Tony replied, “That’s all right. He doesn’t use his last name, so he doesn’t embarrass his parents.” Tony is also survived by Robin Haine, a longtime and dear friend. He

was predeceased by Spot, his beloved golden retriever who accompanied him on many sojourns between Saratoga and Burlington.

Like the infectious pulse of his bass, that big heart of Tony’s will stay with us forever. With all our love and affection, and with the deepest appreciation for everything you meant to all of us … rest in peace, dear friend.

In compiling this memoriam, we referenced and excerpted a number of copywritten articles posted online, including one in the Albany Times Union (timesunion.com/news/article/ masterful-spa-city-bass-player-tony-markellis-16144170. php) and two on Jambands. com (jambands.com/features/2021/05/01/twentyyears-later-tony-markellistalks-tab and jambands. com/news/2021/04/30/ripbassist-tony-markellis). We also encourage you to visit Tony’s Facebook page to see Andy Campolieto’s complete tribute to Tony and the other beautiful posts so many have written.

Anyone who followed Tony on Facebook can attest that he was a stickler for details, and he often railed against spoken and written abuse of the English language. After considerable debate at a band meeting in the green room at 101 Main Street that lasted until 3 a.m., it was ultimately decided not to hire a professional proofreader to review our work, so we can only hope that we have immortalized our friend without glaring grammatical errors. If you do find anything amiss, please immediately bring it to the attention of Al Bondigas.

Their you have it.

Celebrations of Tony, planned and spontaneous, will most certainly happen in more than one location sometime this summer or fall and will be widely announced as they come to fruition.

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OBITUARIES, VOWS, CELEBRATIONS

OBITUARIES Lee William Doyle

Rebecca “Becki” Baca (Willis-Eaton, Cooley)

JUNE 1, 1961-APRIL 28, 2021 MONTPELIER, VT., & WELLESLEY, MASS. Lee William Doyle of Montpelier, Vt., and Wellesley, Mass., passed away after experiencing sudden cardiac arrest following a kayaking accident on Wednesday, April 28, 2021.

He was 59 years old.

A beloved husband, tremendous friend and respected colleague, Lee will be remembered for his love of the outdoors, brilliant intellect, insatiable curiosity and boundless passion for life.

Born in Montpelier, Lee was the son of Bill and Olene (Ottaway) Doyle. He graduated from Montpelier High School, where he was a valedictorian of his class, and from Williams College, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor’s degree in economics.

After college, Lee moved to Boston and began a career as a telecommunications analyst at IDC in Natick. During his 28 years with the company, he established himself as an authority in the networking and communications spaces and became a trusted resource to the New England and Silicon Valley technology communities. He ultimately rose to the level of group vice president, providing guidance to teams of analysts and multinational clients. In 2012, he launched his own consultancy, Doyle Research, where he delivered his expertise to a dynamic group of established and startup company clients who appreciated his depth of analytical experience. This is the work he loved to do, and he was thriving.

Back when he was in his twenties, Lee met the love of his life and his partner in adventure, Kim Dougher Doyle.

They would have celebrated 25 years of marriage this September. Both Kim and Lee shared a deep interest in travel, and they spent

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NOVEMBER 7, 1957-MAY 6, 2021 JERICHO, VT., & HULL, MASS.

their leisure time exploring the U.S., Europe, Asia, South America and New Zealand. They really enjoyed visiting U.S. national parks.

Lee’s business travel also provided opportunities for adventure. His friends recall that he was a master of the “workcation,” as he always found a way to explore the places that he visited for business.

Lee’s childhood in the heart of the Green Mountains kindled his lifelong love of the outdoors and active adventure.

Always in motion, he was a passionate skier, mountain biker, hiker, paddler and Ultimate Frisbee player. He was a member of the group of athletes who invented Mountain Bike Ultimate (also known as MBU) and in this sport he holds the record as the player with the most tournament wins.

Lee was a master of worklife balance, pursuing the responsibilities of advising clients and producing authoritative white papers and articles while also making time each day to get outdoors in any type of weather.

Some of his happiest moments were spent backcountry or heli-skiing with friends, cross-country skiing in Vermont, camping in the Utah desert, trekking hut to hut in the Alps, or paddling on his beloved Caspian Lake.

He also enjoyed watching sports, and while he loved all of his Boston sports teams, he had a particular fondness

SEVEN DAYS MAY 12-19, 2021

for European football and was a Liverpool fan.

Lee was a wonderful cook.

He didn’t need a recipe and was happiest when cooking from what was at hand. He refused to eat store-bought salad dressing and has taught countless people to make their own vinaigrette.

Lee leaves his parents and wife; his brother, Keith, and his wife, Julie; his sister, Kelly, and her husband, Matt; his in-laws, Gerry and Hilde; his sister-in-law, Kathy; his brother-in-law Kevin and his wife, Michelle; his brother-in-law Chris and his wife, Erin; and his brother-in-law Dan. He leaves 13 nieces and nephews; countless friends, teammates and colleagues; and Gemma, his beloved feline companion.

Lee was a giver, a connector, and an incredible advocate for his friends and colleagues. He was always reaching out to others to make things happen. To best honor Lee, reach out often and get outside, regardless of the weather.

Lee would be honored if gifts in his name supported the good work of the Vermont chapter of the Nature Conservancy.

Donations may be mailed to the Nature Conservancy, 575 Stone Cutters Way, Montpelier, VT 05602, or the chapter can be reached at vermont@tnc.org.

Celebration of life services will be held in Massachusetts and Vermont at a later date.

Becki, our mom, friend, entrepreneur, teacher, writer, wife, grandmother and free spirit, set out on a new journey on May 6, 2021, after a brave year of confronting a rare cancer.

She will be remembered closely in Vermont and Massachusetts for her work as a teacher, chef and tutor, as well as for her compassion, tenacity, spiritual beliefs and fiery free spirit.

She will also be remembered and truly missed for her amazing cooking, for being a loving mother, and for her willingness to learn and grow. She was a seeker, an intuitive and sensitive being, a true individual. She pursued and aimed to be a loving person. She believed that life cannot “aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence.” —A Course in Miracles She will be deeply missed.

Becki is survived by her husband, Luis; her three children, Jess, Elizabeth and Nathan; her granddaughter, Grace, and her mother and lifelong friend, Shawn.

Special gratitude and thanks for those who showed up and supported Becki on her journey with cancer. This last year has been

so hard, but there was also so much healing, support, love and learning. A sincere thankyou to Luis for his dedication and caring for his wife.

Mom, we will miss you, but we will never be apart. You are loved, and you are Love.

IN MEMORIAM

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WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT BY KEN PICARD

What’s Happening With the Granite City Grocery in Barre?

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Over the last eight years, Granite City Grocery, as the co-op was named, sold 723 memberships — each for a household of one to four people — at a onetime fee of $200. Since then, however, the co-op hasn’t sold a single carrot, loaf of bread or gallon of milk.

There are several large, modern supermarkets in the Barre area, including a Hannaford, a Shaw’s and a Price Chopper, all within a short drive from downtown.

But many city residents don’t own a vehicle. More than a quarter of Barre residents live below the poverty line, and affordable grocery options within walking distance of downtown are limited.

“There are still a significant number of people who [food] shop at Dollar General,” said Nick Landry, president of the co-op’s board of directors. “I know some people who go to Cumberland Farms to buy their groceries.”

Landry is a Barre native who left for 10 years to serve in the U.S. Marine Corps before earning a business degree and moving back in 2013. A week after coming home, he enlisted in the effort to launch the food

Members of Granite City Grocery will vote online to either elect a new board of directors or to dissolve entirely

co-op and has been involved as a volunteer ever since. (Landry also works a full-time job as an IT specialist at Aldrich Public Library.)

Downtown Barre’s status as a food desert hasn’t changed much since then, although in 2019 Vermont Salumi, which produces and sells cured meats and sausages, opened AR Market, a high-end grocery store on Main Street.

But Landry noted that the business realities of the supermarket industry have shifted since 2013. Back then, the co-op planned that at least half its food items would be conventional and sold at lowerthan-average price points; its higherpriced organic products would have offset them. But in the last eight years, wholesale prices for groceries have gone up much faster than inflation, Landry explained, “which changes the co-op’s entire financial picture.”

IMAGES COURTESY OF NICK LANDRY

n February, a Seven Days reader asked us about yard signs that had popped up on lawns throughout Barre that read, “We own it!” The reader was aware that the signs were posted by members of the Granite City Grocery, a proposed food cooperative that’s been in the works for years. But her questions were, “What do they own?” and “What happened to the money that people invested in it?”

Both are legitimate questions. Seven Days first reported on the plans to found a member-owned grocery store back in August 2012. Since the old Grand Union pulled up stakes three decades ago, Barre’s downtown hasn’t had a full-fledged supermarket. As Barre resident Emily Kaminsky told reporter Kathryn Flagg in 2012, “We’re tired of waiting for someone to come along and meet our needs.”

That wait has continued, though not for lack of interest or effort. In 2013, more than 100 Barre residents attended a community meeting to talk about the dearth of downtown food shopping options and to discuss opening a brick-and-mortar food co-op, which would be owned and democratically governed by its members and employees.

Then there’s the human factor of keeping people active and engaged in the cooperative effort. Because Granite City Grocery has yet to come to fruition, new memberships have flagged, falling shy of the 1,500 goal.

The co-op has also struggled to recruit new board members. The original board of 13 has dwindled to four, and two of the four — Landry and his partner, Heather Runk — plan to step down in June after having served for several years. The remaining two board members agreed to stay on for one more year to train new members, provided that at least five people step up to serve. (A board of at least five is required by state law.)

At Granite City Grocery’s next annual meeting on June 10, co-op members will be asked to vote on new board members.

They will also be asked a more fundamental question: Should Granite City Grocery dissolve entirely? If members vote to do so, the funds remaining in the co-op’s bank account, which amount to less than $7 per member, would be donated to the Vermont Foodbank rather than returned to members.

So what happened to all the money that members invested?

The Granite City Grocery has maintained a website and member database, Landry explained, both of which cost money. It also paid for market studies over the years, which cost about $10,000 apiece.

Though most of those studies were funded by state and federal grants, he said, the most recent one was underwritten with membership equity. In addition, the co-op must maintain a state-mandated indemnity insurance plan for its board’s officers.

“That was the biggest chunk, paying the insurance bill every year,” Landry added.

Have co-op members been understanding about this existential crisis or frustrated by it?

“It’s been a little bit of both,” Landry said. “We’ve had some people email and say, ‘I want my $200 back.’ And we say, ‘I’m sorry, but we can’t. It’s not there to give.’”

In the end, Granite City Grocery’s members may only own the dream of a supermarket in downtown Barre. But according to some, including Landry, there’s still a chance the dream could become a reality. m

INFO Learn more at granitegrocery.coop. Got a Vermont mystery that has you flummoxed?

Ask us! wtf@sevendaysvt.com.

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ADVERTISEMENT PAID FOR BY

National Foster Care Month Celebrates Those Who Nurture Youth

BY MARY L. COLLINS OF DCF’S FAMILY SERVICES DIVISION

B

arbara Bruno runs a tight ship. As a foster care provider who feels she can best support teens and young adults, Bruno understands that for many teens in foster care, guidance and stability are key to addressing their trauma.

With steady guidance and care, Bruno sees teens blossom into more confident, secure and resilient people.

“They want guidelines,” she asserts.

“For many of these kids, they’ve not had a lot of that. Guidelines give them security and stability they crave — even if they sometimes rebel against it. I’m glad I can be here for them,” she said.

For Bruno, a retired teacher, fostering is something she passionately advocates.

“I’ve been around kids my entire life. I feel like I can make a difference.”

Bruno has remained connected to many of the youth who have lived with her. She shared a poignant story about a teen with whom she has stayed in touch for many years. “It was very sad.

He got into trouble, ended up in jail, but always kept in touch. He called me to tell me he’d received his GED. ‘I knew how proud you would be of me,’ he said, ‘and I couldn’t wait to tell you.’”

Bruno emphasized that “It meant a lot to him to know that I would be proud of him. It meant a lot to me that he called to let me know. I told him, ‘I want a copy of your diploma,’ and to this day, the copy of his GED hangs above my desk.”

Fostering teens matters to Bruno and has had lasting effects on her and the young adults in her life. “There’s nothing you can hear [that’s] better than someone who wants to keep in touch with you years after they’ve been in foster care with you.”

National Foster Care Month May is National Foster Care Month.

Started in 1988, this annual proclamation recognizes and shows appreciation and gratitude to foster parents across the nation. Foster care is not a substitute for parents. Rather, it provides a safe environment for children and youth who temporarily cannot live with their families or with an adoptive family.

There are nearly 424,000 children in foster care in the United States. In

How can you help?

Learn more at dcf.vermont.gov/foster and complete the Foster Care Inquiry Form if you’re interested in providing foster care or helping children in other ways.

Vermont, there are more than 1,100 children and youth living in foster, kin care or specialized residential care. On average, children throughout the country remain in state custody for more than a year and a half. Five percent of children in foster care have remained there for five or more years. And, in Vermont, more than 120 children remain in foster care while the Family Services Division of the Vermont Department for Children and Families seeks an adoptive family for them. Some have been eligible for adoption for more than two years.

Vermont aims to change these statistics.

Family Services Deputy Commissioner Aryka Radke is quick to acknowledge what she believes is a dynamic and vibrant team of care providers. “This is such a rare group of individuals, who, in times of crisis or trouble, instead of

ignoring a problem do the opposite: They lean in,” she said. “They provide help, support and care for children and families in vulnerable situations. For this, I am so thankful, because without our foster care families, DCF would not be able to complete its mission of providing for juvenile justice, child safety and child welfare for the people of Vermont.”

Why Foster Care?

The most-cited reasons for the need for foster care are abuse, neglect, substance abuse, mental health and incarceration.

When a parent cannot provide safety for their children, Family Services steps in.

Foster care is not the preferred solution, but sometimes it is the best decision for the child at that time.

Jim Holway, president of Vermont Kin as Parents (VKAP), knows well how foster care is often the best solution

during times of stress within families. “I am a foster and adoptive parent. My wife and I have cared for hundreds of children over the years,” Holway said. “What few people know is that I was also a foster child. Growing up in an abusive household, I understand the trauma these children deal with, and so I feel equipped in a way that hopefully helps.”

This year, the U.S. Children’s Bureau recognizes National Foster Care Month as “a support to families, not a substitute for parents.” The importance of family well-being, partnerships among birth and foster and kin parents, collaborations with local communities, and parent engagement in the selection of services are key factors in strengthening families.

Holway sees it this way: “In many cases, parents of the children are broken.

A grandparent or aunt or uncle may jump in just because they care about their family. It’s a unique and challenging perspective to take in a child because of neglect or abuse when the person who caused the harm is your own child.”

Relationships That Help Children and Youth Thrive Family Services acknowledges the potentially long road from foster care to reunification and, in some cases, the journey to independence for older youth.

“Ideally, the best foster care system would be one that is not needed,” Deputy Commissioner Radke asserts. “However, when that is not possible, it’s our job to assure safe and stable placement for children and youth, [offer] support for their birth and foster families, and provide systems that can help restore a healthy balance for children and youth so that they might thrive.”

Holway concurs: “Our work involves all the ways we can help those relationships flourish over time, providing a sense of family to young people leaving care.” For Bruno, the work includes providing continuity throughout a young person’s life “so that they know there will always be someone there to assure they are loved, supported and connected to what may be the most stable family they’ve ever had.” n SEVEN DAYS MAY 12-19, 2021

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BOTTOM LINE BY KEN PICARD

Stowe and Go

After enduring a rough pandemic storm, Stowe Mercantile sees sunnier days ahead

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PHOTOS: JEB WALLACE-BRODEUR

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n the first week of June 2020, Marc Sherman wasn’t sure whether his business, Stowe Mercantile, would survive until the Fourth of July. The country store on Main Street in downtown Stowe, which sells mostly locally produced foods, candies, apparel, jewelry and souvenirs, was facing the worst crisis in its 32-year history. Revenues had plummeted to 30 percent of normal.

Much of Stowe Mercantile’s inventory is specialty food items, which had been purchased the previous December and January but couldn’t be sold while the store was shuttered for 10 weeks.

Eventually, most passed their expiration dates; even the local food pantries couldn’t accept them. The boutique’s line of women’s spring apparel, also purchased during the winter, had a longer shelf life, but even that sat unsold through its intended season.

A federal Paycheck Protection Program loan covered some losses, Sherman said, but the business continued to hemorrhage cash.

“We need action very quickly,” he announced at a press conference on June 2, when a coalition of Vermont business owners urged state lawmakers to release much-needed economic aid. “I can save 15 jobs supporting 15 families … For my business, it’s a matter of weeks, not months.”

What a difference a year makes.

“We bounced back pretty well and had a fairly strong winter,” Sherman said in an interview last week. “It’s still off, and there are fewer people in town. But the average [number of ] transactions is up, and the people who are here are spending more.”

Sherman knows something about economic ups and downs. Prior to opening Stowe Mercantile in the late 1980s, which he now co-owns with his partner, Trudy Trombley, he was a dairy farmer in upstate New York near Utica. Then, after three years of managing a ranch in Colorado, Sherman got a degree in dairy management before ultimately giving up on farming and moving to Vermont.

Today, Stowe Mercantile is a family-run business in the true sense of the phrase.

Trombley, who joined the company in 1999, has three daughters working there: Denise, a jewelry designer who manages Stowe Mercantile and its clothing boutique, as well as the company’s website and marketing; Erin, who oversees merchandising and purchasing;

Marc Sherman and Trudy Trombley (front) with (from left) Abby Sherman, Denise Earley, Erin Welch and Angela Peterson

Stowe Mercantile

and Angela, who handles graphic art for garments, souvenir mugs and other memorabilia.

Sherman’s youngest daughter, Abby, a locally renowned Americana musician and songwriter, develops specialty food items in the Stowe Mercantile Kitchen, the company’s commercial food production facility. She’s created ready-to-eat crackers and tortilla chips, as well as 25 different mixes for DIY muffins, popovers, crêpes and griddle cakes. According to Sherman, Abby’s products have been selling like, well, hotcakes.

But this time last year, he recalled, a recovery seemed anything but readymade. Having closed the store even before

EVERYONE CHIPPED IN A LITTLE BIT, AND IT ALLOWED A LOT OF BUSINESSES LIKE OURS TO REMAIN VIABLE. M A R C SHER M AN

the governor issued his “Stay Home, Stay Safe” order last March, Sherman wasn’t sure how soon visitors would return.

“Would anyone be traveling? Would anyone be in town? Would we have to close down and liquidate our inventory, or what?” he remembered thinking. “We just didn’t know.”

For a time, Sherman said, it looked like the company might go under. He financed the payroll and overhead out of his own pocket, though he emphasized that it was far from a solo effort.

A number of his vendors and suppliers worked with him on extending invoice dates, cutting freight costs and defraying other expenses.

“Everyone chipped in a little bit, and it allowed a lot of businesses like ours to remain viable,” he said.

By mid-July, normally the store’s busiest season, customers began trickling in and sales picked up. In the fall, Stowe Mercantile secured its second PPP loan — Sherman declined to reveal how much he received — and by the winter holiday shopping season, he rehired two employees who’d been laid off.

Though 2020 ended better than Sherman had initially expected, things remained tenuous heading into the normally slow winter season.

“For a while, it wasn’t about making money. It was just trying to keep turning inventory and keep the cash flow going,” he said.

If the pandemic had any silver lining, Sherman added, it was in the lessons they learned as a business. For one, he said, “We’ll forever be conscious of our inventory levels and our perishables.”

Ditto for staffing levels, which they watch more closely. And like many businesses, Stowe Mercantile used COVID-19 as an opportunity to reach out to customers via email and significantly expand online sales.

By most measures, the return of visitors this summer looks promising compared to last year, but it’s still off from 2019 levels.

According to lodging survey data from the Stowe Area Association, the town’s business marketing organization, room occupancies for May are down 59 percent compared to 2019; bookings for June through August are also off 42 percent from two years earlier. But by any measure, visitations are way ahead of last year.

Rachel Vandenberg, co-owner of the 39-room Sun & Ski Inn and Suites, Stowe Bowl and the Stowe Golf Park, saw her businesses pummeled by the pandemic, with revenues down as much as 75 percent last summer. About the only bright spot, she noted, was the miniature golf course, as Vermonters sought safe and socially distanced outdoor activities.

This year, the golf park opened a month earlier than usual.

But as spring and summer bookings inch up, Vandenberg said that she’s looking forward to sending guests down the road to Stowe Mercantile — and shopping there herself.

“The store has a lot of great gifts,” she said. “Whenever we’re going to buy a birthday gift or something, that’s always one of the places I think of going.”

For his part, Sherman is cautiously optimistic about the coming months.

“All signs point to a strong summer,” he said. “We’re breathing a sigh of relief that we got through it all.” m

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FLIGHT PATH BTV’s Beta Technologies is on the cusp of a breakthrough for electric aviation

BY D E R E K BR O UW E R • derek@sevendaysvt.com

COURTESY OF BRIAN JENKINS/BETA TECHNOLOGIES

The Alia aircraft

You can’t not see the planes.

Beta Technologies’ two prized prototypes take up the center of its bustling headquarters inside a hangar at Burlington International Airport. Around the upper rim of the airy space, employee workstations overlook the lustrous white machines through long walls of glass.

During a recent tour, a group of engineers studied aircraft designs on a projection screen 32

SEVEN DAYS MAY 12-19, 2021

in one conference room. Next door, two others played Ping-Pong.

The open office layout isn’t to imitate Silicon Valley, or even to show off Beta’s aircraft, founder and CEO Kyle Clark insisted. He thinks the glass helps get engineers talking to each other, which leads to a better plane. And Clark is obsessed with building a better plane.

The prototypes parked in the hangar are the first two iterations of Beta’s latest, most promising design. With a 50-foot wingspan and a tall V-shaped tail, the aircraft dubbed Alia uses four propellers to lift like a drone and a fifth to fly forward like a plane. It’s designed to carry six people or three pallets of cargo up to 250 miles, powered entirely by rechargeable electric batteries.

Alia represents an aviation breakthroughin-waiting, physical evidence of how the

airplane vibration modal spectrum,” Clark said. In separate containers on airport grounds, Beta’s electric motors spin on 13 testing devices called dynamometers to gauge their durability.

“We just beat the shit out of motors continuously,” Clark said.

The company’s first-things-first approach is beginning to pay off. Since its unveiling last June, Alia has undertaken some of the most advanced flight testing in the industry and now regularly flies 100-mile practice routes over Chittenden County. Last week, the U.S. Air Force granted Alia approval to fly on behalf of the

can successfully compete in a new global market. Clark and his wife, Katie, met in middle school in Essex and dream of their community becoming a “green aviation stronghold.” But the startup is far from alone in its quest, and its flurry of achievements comes as competitors have raked in gobs of investor cash — more than $4 billion in 2021 so far.

Beta raised $143 million in new private capital in March and was in the process of raising $190 million more, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission disclosure filed April 1 but unreported until now. Some industry analysts believe

on a motorcycle chassis that could more intuitively match the roll and pitch pilots experience while flying. “I have every intention of taking this project through to completion,” he told the university’s newswire, the Harvard Gazette.

By “completion,” Clark meant producing a functional aircraft that the pilot can roll a sport bike into, use it to pilot the plane, and upon landing ride it out — in other words, a flying motorcycle. “The feasibility study is complete, and the concept is indeed realistic,” he was quoted as saying.

The project didn’t materialize, nor did

OLIVER PARINI

far-off vision of flight without fossil fuel has become tantalizingly close.

For many, the nascent electric aviation field is synonymous with a fascination for flying cars. A new class of experimental aircraft called electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL), which includes Alia, promises quiet, efficient propulsion and the nimbleness of a helicopter. Add in advances toward pilotless operation, and the aircraft could usher in radically different skyscapes and personal transportation networks, the thinking goes. Accordingly, Silicon Valley has jumped in to fuel a race to create the first big electric air taxi company.

Beta, homegrown in the less-vaunted Champlain Valley, has leapt toward the front of the pack by charting a different flight path. Since founding the startup in 2017, Clark has been focused not on the Jetsons but on the planet. The quickest way to begin moving air travel away from fossil fuels, Clark said at a recent

The mission of the business is to create a sustainable aviation future.

K Y L E CL AR K

conference, is to build “insanely reliable” aircraft that are capable of more straightforward uses, such as transporting cargo.

Much of the work to achieve that goal takes place in labs on the South Burlington hangar’s first floor, where there’s considerably less glass than the trendy office space above. Here, Beta’s engineers continue to refine the cutting-edge electric motors and control systems they’ve been developing quietly for the last few years.

Between an electronics lab and the 3D printing shop is a pair of rooms that Clark — a slightly scruffy, six-foot-six engineer, serial entrepreneur and former pro hockey draft pick — introduces with a mechanic’s charm as the “torture chambers.”

In these tiny thunderdomes, Beta’s most precious components get stuffed into cages and pushed toward their breaking point. They’re cooked and frozen and shocked with the same voltage as a lightning strike. They’re also strapped to a vibration table and rattled according to computer-programmed frequencies, “maybe a Metallica song, or maybe an

Kyle Clark

military, only the second electric aircraft authorized to do so.

In April, Beta signed a deal to sell at least 10 of its roughly $4 million aircraft to United Parcel Service by 2024; UPS says it will use them on some of its regional express delivery routes, flying packages between warehouses instead of airports.

Beta’s also committed to delivering up to 20 planes to Blade, a company that currently offers $800 helicopter rides from Manhattan to the Hamptons. Beta’s workforce has grown from 75 employees a year ago to more than 230 and counting, as the company plans a big push toward flight certification and production.

On the cusp of pioneering commercial electric aviation, Beta could quickly become one of Vermont’s largest companies if it

the cost to bring a new plane to market is even greater, but they nonetheless consider Beta a top contender because of its tangible progress in a speculative industry.

“It’s a program that’s more likely to make it than others,” said Brian Foley, a longtime aerospace consultant, offering a levelheaded assessment. “But it’s still, like many of them, somewhat precarious.”

‘YOU’RE ON’

Clark, 41, has been imagining different ways of flying for a long time. As a senior at Harvard University in 2004, he exuded confidence when his thesis project was named best in his engineering class.

The young airplane and motorcycle enthusiast built a flight simulator based

his other ambition, professional hockey.

The Washington Capitals drafted the Harvard winger in 1999. He played a couple of seasons on its minor league affiliates but proved a better enforcer than goal scorer.

The Clarks moved back to Vermont, where Kyle cofounded iTherm Technologies, a maker of induction heating power supplies, in Colchester. He sold the company to Dynapower in South Burlington and became that company’s director of engineering, working on power electronics and battery systems. He and another Dynapower alum later started Designbook, now Venture.co, as a social networking and investment-seeking FLIGHT PATH SEVEN DAYS MAY 12-19, 2021

» P.34 33

PHOTOS: OLIVER PARINI

Flight Path « P.33 platform for tech entrepreneurs. Kyle’s collegiate “cycleplane” concept resurfaced as the example he liked to use of a business venture that could benefit from Designbook.

In March 2017, Clark was giving a presentation on batteries for an aviation company in Philadelphia when someone in the audience stopped him. “Who are you, and why are you here?” Clark recalled being asked.

His interrogator was Martine Rothblatt, the author, entrepreneur and futurist who is one of the more interesting rich people in the world. Rothblatt, who has a home in Vermont, founded Sirius Satellite Radio and, after her daughter was diagnosed with pulmonary arterial hypertension, started the now-publicly traded biotechnology company United Therapeutics to cure her disease. As a trans woman, Rothblatt has advocated for the rights of trans and gender-nonconforming people.

She and her wife, Bina Aspen, launched the Terasem Movement, a group of educational and religious organizations that seek to transplant human consciousness through technology and that operate out of Lincoln. One of Terasem’s projects involved replicating Bina as an artificial intelligence robot named Bina48.

Rothblatt took note of Clark’s enthusiasm and their shared Vermont ties and invited him for coffee the next time she was around. She wanted to know how he would go about developing an electric aircraft, Clark said.

Electric aviation was having a moment.

In October 2016, the ride-hailing giant Uber issued a white paper that laid out a vision for a network of on-demand, pilotless electric air taxis within a decade. The small aircraft would be able to take off from and land on helipads atop buildings, shortening urban commutes.

Rothblatt, a helicopter pilot, was exploring electric flight, as well, but for her own reasons. She wanted a fleet of carbon-neutral aircraft that could transport the human organs that United Therapeutics hopes to manufacture before 2030.

She’d worked with a team of California engineers in 2016 to test fly a conventional helicopter retrofitted with a rechargeable battery. That same year, United Therapeutics subsidiary Lung Biotechnology invested $10 million in a Chinese startup, EHang, that is developing eVTOL planes.

But Rothblatt was still looking to place another bet. She was in Philadelphia that day, she told Seven Days, to hear from another company that was looking into the technology; Clark was there as one of its potential contractors.

34

SEVEN DAYS MAY 12-19, 2021

The hangar at Beta Technologies

Andrew Giroux working on air-cooled inverters

Benjamin Colbourn making scaled models of the Alia aircraft with a 3D printer

“It’s kind of my nature as a technologist to always have multiple shots on goal,” she said.

Clark struck Rothblatt as having the “perfect mixture” of the skills she was looking for: “somebody who completely understands how to build and execute businesses for electric power,” she recalled, “and somebody who is also a pilot and completely understands flying.”

Their coffee date turned into a daylong visit and a request that Clark put some ideas in writing, he recalled. He returned to his Underhill home and drew up a business proposal, accenting it with

watercolors to make it pop. The document, which he sent her at 4 a.m. the next day, asked United Therapeutics to put up $1.5 million in initial funding while Clark would contribute an equivalent value toward a rather conceptual goal: “elicit critical thinking in electric aviation.”

Later that morning, he recalled, Rothblatt texted him: “You’re on.”

Rothblatt’s backing helped Beta bring other investors and advisers aboard, including Dean Kamen, the New Hampshirebased creator of the Segway; Stone Point Capital CEO and Vermont native Charles Davis; and Boston Scientific cofounder and

Shelburne resident John Abele. Clark was able to recruit top Vermont talent, including Steve Arms, founder of Williston sensor maker MicroStrain, who joined Beta in its first year. Clark also tapped locals, such as Ben Colbourn, who said he was working in Burlington’s Generator maker space when Clark called looking for anyone knowledgeable about drones. Colbourn now oversees Beta’s 3D printers, making sophisticated shapes from specialty materials at a rapid pace.

Early on, Clark approached Burlington International Airport in search of space for his startup. Airport director of aviation

SAFE NO CONTACT Gene Richards agreed to lease an aging hangar used by maintenance staff in exchange for repairs and improvements.

To run flight tests, Beta also leased space across Lake Champlain at Plattsburgh International Airport, site of a former U.S. Air Force base.

Within 10 months, Beta’s small team had designed, built and hovered its first eVTOL prototype in virtual secrecy. Ava, a somewhat spindly craft that wielded eight tilting propellers, served as a demonstration project. Its successful hover testing reeled in a $48 million contract from Rothblatt’s company.

Once Ava was aloft, Clark said, he sent his first investor and potential customer sketches of what would become Alia. More importantly, Clark said, he pitched Rothblatt on his approach to making an aircraft that would have real-world use.

“It is focusing really deep into the motors, batteries, inverters, and being relatively conventional on the stuff that doesn’t deserve innovation quite yet,” he said late last month. “The materials science, the interiors, the BRIAN avionics, the flight controls — those things are not going to take us from guzzling fuel in a jet engine to a new form of aviation. But the electric propulsion is.”

been before, and the amount of power you need is less than it has been before,” said Nicholas Roy, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “So if the question is, ‘Well, why now?,’ it’s the convergence of those two things. Do I think it has converged enough to really make this viable? That I don’t know.”

Beta has designed its electric propulsion system from the ground up. Alia uses powerful and efficient permanent magnet motors, the same family of motors used in today’s electric cars.

Clark said the company’s 400-horsepower motors, which are air-cooled and don’t require a gearbox, are capable of converting about 95 percent of electric energy into thrust.

“This is our core technology internally,” Clark said as he showed off the motor’s components.

Circuit boards for the inverters that control the motors are also designed in-house, while employees assemble massive battery packs from lithium-ion cells in a series of shipping containers next to the hangar.

Beta’s decision to FOLEY develop its own propulsion components distinguishes it from many of its competitors, who have partnered with legacy aviation firms such as Rolls-Royce and Safran, said Foley, the aviation analyst.

Alia’s design takes advantage of Beta’s in-house propulsion expertise.

Whereas Ava, like many of the air taxis in development, used tiltable propellers to lift vertically and move forward, Alia has separate systems for lift and cruise that use motors specifically designed for each function. The design reflects Clark’s emphasis on pragmatic thinking. “Real innovation happens as you say, ‘How do I get that performance without increasing complexity?’” he said.

Alia is one of the largest, heaviest and most aerodynamic eVTOL designs to be built, said Mike Hirschberg, executive director of the Vertical Flight Society, a nonprofit industry educational group.

Simplicity isn’t typically a marker of strong performance in aviation, Hirschberg said, “but I think Beta has a nice balance.” He considers the company one of the leading eVTOL developers, out

SALES & SERVICE MA Y IS H ERE

!

It’s a program that’s more likely to make it than others.

But it’s still, like many of them, somewhat precarious.

LIFT AND CRUISE

Commercial air travel accounts for roughly 3 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The relatively small figure is expected to grow, and unlike the auto industry, aviation hasn’t had a clear path to renewable alternatives.

Electric flight is limited by both the amount of energy today’s batteries can store relative to their weight — far less than jet fuel — and the immense power that aircraft need their propulsion systems to deliver to stay in the air.

Advancements in battery technology and the efficiency of electric motors in recent years have made electric-powered flight more plausible for small aircraft capable of carrying light loads for relatively short distances.

“The amount of power density you can get at any one time is better than it has

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Flight Path « P.35 of more than 200 who have put forward designs.

Last year, Beta got permission from the Federal Aviation Administration to begin initial test flights for Alia within a designated patch of airspace around the Plattsburgh airport.

Clark, who also serves as one of Beta’s four test pilots, flew the prototype off airport property for the first time on New Year’s Day this year. By March, the company had done enough successful testing that the FAA allowed Alia to fly beyond the initial flight area. Another pilot flew the aircraft across Lake Champlain back to BTV, where testing continues almost daily.

Most of the flight testing so far has been in fixed-wing mode, with the lift propellers detached and wheels installed under the fuselage. Alia had completed its 101st fixed-wing flight on the day that Clark took Seven Days for a tour of the hangar.

Publicly available flight data from FlightAware tracked the aircraft flying more than 90 miles back and forth over Essex at a peak altitude of 5,900 feet and a top speed of 150 miles per hour.

Beta is one of the first companies working with the U.S. Air Force through an unusual public-private program intended to accelerate eVTOL development. Launched in 2020, Agility Prime makes Department of Defense funding and resources available to eVTOL developers and helps the Air Force evaluate whether the new forms of aircraft may have military applications. Knowing a homegrown company was working in the field, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) helped funnel an extra $25 million into Agility Prime last year, his office said. The Air Force conducted ground tests on Alia last year to help establish its airworthiness, while Beta installed immersive flight simulators in Springfield, Ohio, and Washington, D.C., so officials can explore scenarios in which the aircraft might be useful.

With the military airworthiness authorization granted to Alia last month, the company can now conduct flight tests on the Air Force’s dime as part of a contract that will pay Beta up to $44 million, Clark said. In a press release, Air Force Col. Nathan Diller said Beta’s progress “shows the high level of maturity” of the company and emerging eVTOL technology.

GOING TO MARKET

Not everyone is sold. Richard Aboulafia, vice president of analysis at Virginiabased aerospace and defense analyst Teal Group, isn’t necessarily skeptical about the progress in electric-aviation 36

SEVEN DAYS MAY 12-19, 2021

The Alia flying over Burlington

Beta has a very bright future, and I want that future to be based right here in Vermont.

S E N. PATR IC K L E AH Y

technology. He just thinks the notion that today’s electric aircraft developers are revolutionizing travel is absurd.

Aboulafia is amused by what he considers an increasingly collective amnesia about the lessons of aviation’s past. At the turn of the millennium, Eclipse Aviation, a dot-com-era darling, attracted hundreds of millions in investment to develop superlight, inexpensive personal jets that promised to democratize flight.

The jets, it turned out, were not so cheap to make, and the company collapsed with $1 billion in debt.

To Aboulafia, today’s ventures seem awfully familiar. Electric air taxi proponents, he argues, are overstating the market for a product that’s still incredibly expensive to build. Helicopters are a niche industry, and it’s hard to see electric equivalents — even though they are quieter and cheaper to maintain — expanding the

market as dramatically as tech futurists and the people who give them money imagine.

“This is a recipe for carnage,” he said.

“Absolute carnage.”

The last few months have seen a massive acceleration in funding for flying car startups, according to Robin Riedel, a more bullish analyst for McKinsey & Company. The consulting firm has tracked more than $4 billion in eVTOL investment so far in 2021, far more than last year or the $1 billion that was publicly disclosed in 2019.

Most of the recent capital has been provided through Wall Street’s latest craze: special-purpose acquisition companies. SPACs, sometimes called blank-check companies, are publicly traded shells that exist solely to find a private company with which to merge. In the last couple of years they’ve become attractive as shortcuts to a

COURTESY OF BRIAN JENKINS/BETA TECHNOLOGIES

traditional public offering. Three eVTOL makers have used the tool since February to raise as much as $1.6 billion each.

McKinsey projects that the global market for passenger eVTOL flights could be at least $300 billion annually. Others have estimated even larger revenue potential. “The investments that are going into this are reasonable,” Riedel said, “if that is actually the market.”

All that cash is crucial for startups to get a new kind of aircraft certified by the FAA and into production for commercial flight, which likely would cost more than $750 million, several analysts told Seven Days. Some eVTOL makers have said they can get it done within the next two to three years.

Clark asserts that Beta doesn’t need as much money as the other companies because it has a clearer, quicker path to regulatory approval and a more

straightforward business model. Unlike some other companies, Beta isn’t trying to also establish a new passenger airline — it’s just selling aircraft.

Asked during an interview in late April whether he was considering taking the company public to raise more money, Clark said that doing so would bring a “whole boatload of disadvantages,” namely the requirement to communicate with public investors.

“We have the fortunate advantage of only having to convince our customers and the FAA that we have a safe, reliable aircraft that serves our mission,” he said. “Not only do you get deposits and down payments from the customers, but you get credibility with alternative sources of funds.”

Though Alia can be outfitted for pilotless urban travel, Beta is working primarily with UPS and United Therapeutics for regional piloted flights. Clark expects that the barriers to using the aircraft for cargo will be significantly lower. Its contract with UPS has an option to expand to 150 aircraft; Rothblatt said her company is seeking to deploy 60 aircraft in 2026. eVTOL developers focusing on cargo uses have yet to attract investors to the same degree as those working on passenger applications, Riedel noted. Part of the reason is that planes are currently a small part of logistics and shipping businesses; the time they save usually isn’t worth the cost.

“The cargo case really requires much more of a shift that is unknown,” he said.

United Therapeutics is looking for planes that can fulfill organ delivery missions, but Rothblatt said the company’s primary interest in eVTOL designs stems from its commitment to sustainability.

“It’s no sense for us to be saving people’s lives with organ transplants if we’re trashing the whole world environment,” she said.

Of her several bets on eVTOL, Rothblatt said Beta is poised to offer the longest flight range with a feasible route to certification.

“Kyle has designed a path for Beta which is challenging to get the FAA certification but definitely doable,” she said.

“And when he gets it, his aircraft will have the best performance characteristics, in my opinion, of any of the others.”

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BUILDING OUT

Rothblatt’s backing, Clark said, has allowed him to design the company according to his own vision, with a culture to reflect it.

Some aspects of Beta’s organizational ethos can seem like tech startup FLIGHT PATH

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OLIVER PARINI

Flight Path « P.37 gimmicks. Beta’s many job postings seek engineers and technicians but also “gurus” and “ninjas.” Yet once they join the company, employees refer to their job titles almost universally as “teammate.”

Clark insists there’s merit to the idea. For example, taking time off doesn’t hinge on supervisor approval but on teammates’ agreement that the absence of a fellow worker won’t leave them in the lurch.

The result is a cadre of entrepreneurial employees who, Clark said, “just care a whole hell of a lot about what they’re doing, as opposed to a bunch of people that are trying to follow instructions or conform to something or climb the corporate ladder.”

Since the beginning, Beta has encouraged all of its “teammates” to attain a pilot’s license on company time under the tutelage of its several certified instructors.

More than 30 have licenses, and 100 more are in training. The program has helped instill broader affection for and understanding of aviation, which leads, Clark believes, to smarter design.

Katie Clark oversees marketing, though she recently refashioned the marketing meetings as “band practice” to avoid boxing in their thinking. She hired a local chef to make lunch each day for the growing staff, who on a recent Wednesday stood in the rain for lunch at the company food truck. Katie and Kyle’s four children, whom they homeschool, spend a lot of time at the office, too. Their 18-year-old daughter, Willa, has been working at Beta since she was 16. She said she started flying planes before she learned to drive.

As flight testing continues, the company is also gearing up to attain FAA certification and to manufacture Alia. Last fall Beta hired Matt Cherouny, a 35-year-old manufacturing engineer, to assess how to bring Alia into production. Cherouny grew up in South Burlington, attended the University of Vermont and worked for Green Mountain Coffee Roasters before going to work for Tesla in California several years ago. He’s one of many Beta engineers who earned their degrees in Vermont.

“Visiting Beta made me realize I can move back to Vermont and I don’t have to sacrifice my career and my personal beliefs” about sustainability, Cherouny said. He piloted his first solo flight last month, which was celebrated according to aviation tradition: by cutting off a piece of the shirt he was wearing.

Beta has not yet decided where to set up manufacturing operations, though it may well be at BTV. Vermont Business Magazine recently quoted a local contractor who said the company was eyeing a manufacturing facility there. Airport 38

SEVEN DAYS MAY 12-19, 2021

Kyle Clark (left) operating the flight simulator as reporter Derek Brouwer watches

Kyle has designed a path for Beta which is challenging … but definitely doable.

MAR TINE R O TH BL AT T

director Richards said Beta has an option to expand onto an open, nearly 40-acre parcel at the south end of the property. He confirmed “informal negotiations” with Beta about using it.

Clark’s goal, he said, is to continue growing the business in Vermont, the home state of both his family and more than half of Beta’s employees. He sees advantages to locating manufacturing operations near the engineering, so long as it also makes business sense. “Obviously, that requires everything from local community support to political support to financial reasons to make all that happen,” he said.

Public officials are eager to help. Beta was approved over the winter for a Vermont Employment Growth Incentive payment of up to $2.8 million, according to state records.

Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger said in an interview that Beta is on track to have a “very significant economic impact” in the region doing work that dovetails with the

city’s climate priorities. “We will work hard to make the opportunity right when Beta is ready to make that decision,” he said.

After Leahy visited Beta last week, a spokesperson said he will urge Congress to consider boosting the country’s electric aircraft industry through President Joe Biden’s proposed infrastructure bill.

“Beta has a very bright future,” Leahy said in a statement, “and I want that future to be based right here in Vermont.”

In the meantime, Beta is laying the literal groundwork to support its vision of electric flight. Like electric cars, an electric air network requires places to charge.

The company has devised an all-in-one landing and recharging system that can be installed at airports, warehouses and other locations. The units can charge any kind of electric vehicle and use battery banks to limit how much energy is pulled from the grid at any given time. Alia can be recharged in less than an hour, Beta says.

The company has already built out a network of recharging stations from Burlington to Springfield, Ohio, through small airports in western New York State that will enable Alia to make a longer trek.

Clark plans to expand the network up and down the East and West coasts and eventually establish landing and recharging infrastructure nationwide.

A Beta-funded project to electrify Rutland’s airport was under way last month, state aviation manager Dan Delabruere said. Some regional governments are already considering pursuing federal funds to add infrastructure to support electric aircraft.

The recharging stations, constructed in Williston, feature a landing deck perched above four containers that provide resting quarters, battery supply and a repair shop. The interior spaces are created from recycled shipping containers — a characteristically resourceful touch.

The station at BTV is visible along Airport Drive to motorists heading to the airport terminal. It looks cool, if a little provisional. Most people probably didn’t imagine flying cars would be parked atop salvaged steel boxes. But Beta’s clunky pads could be where that future finally gets off the ground. m

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P R O D U C E D B Y 7 D B R A N D S T U D I O — PA I D F O R B Y P O M E R L E A U R E A L E S TAT E

From Making Memes to Banning Menthol

UVM Cancer Center Researchers Target Tobacco Use

BY 7D BRAND STUDIO

top 1 percent of all scholars whose work has been cited over the past decade.

A Vermonter who grew up in South Burlington, Villanti left the state to get her bachelor’s degree, and a master’s of public health, from Columbia University. She earned her doctorate from Johns Hopkins University and spent five years at the Truth Initiative, a public-health nonprofit that aims to end nicotine addiction. In 2017, she returned to her home state, where she works with the Vermont Center on Behavior and Health and codirects the Cancer Center’s Control and Population Health Sciences Research Program.

She’s just one of the many physicians, clinicians and researchers who work together to fight cancer through UVM’s Cancer Center.

Founded in 1974, the Cancer Center is part of the Larner College of Medicine. It helps attract top-notch professionals to the state — it includes more than 210 members from five UVM colleges and the UVM Medical Center and Health Network, according to Richard Galbraith, interim codirector.

“They collaborate to treat cancer patients with cuttingedge treatments, develop and test new treatments, and ultimately try to eradicate and prevent cancer,” he says. The Cancer Center gives Vemonters numerous opportunities to benefit from their work.

Y

ou probably don’t think of Instagram as the front lines of the fight against lung cancer, but researchers affiliated with the University of Vermont Cancer Center do.

UVM researcher Andrea Villanti and her team were part of a group that measured the effectiveness of messages, designed to be spread via social media, that discourage young adults from vaping.

They tested 32 images and 33 messages on a group of tobacco users ages 18 to 24, all of whom were recruited and compensated through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service.

Participants viewed a series of memes and rated them based on which were most likely to persuade them to quit.

One of the highest-rated reads: “Sleek design hides a deadly truth.

Vapes contain ingredients that can cause cancer.” The backdrop? An empty hospital bed just waiting for an occupant.

Another shows a young man who seems to be waving away a cloud of smoke. “Influencers may make vaping look cool…,” it warns. “But the coughing caused by lung damage? Not a good look.”

The group published a paper on the study in December 2020 called “Identifying message content to reduce vaping: Results from online message testing trials in young adult tobacco users.”

Villanti’s name is also on more than 150 other papers. An associate professor of psychiatry at the UVM Larner College of Medicine, Villanti is a nationally known voice in tobacco policy circles; she’s always working on multiple projects, often behind the scenes. Last November, she was included on the annual Highly Cited Researchers list from Clarivate Analytics, which compiles the 40

SEVEN DAYS MAY 12-19, 2021

‘THE LEADING CAUSE OF PREVENTABLE DEATH’ Left: UVM Cancer Center researcher Andrea Villanti; above: Memes created as part of a vaping messaging study

Lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer death in the country, as well as here in Vermont.

Breast cancer is more common in women, and prostate cancer is more common in men, but lung cancer is more lethal.

Roughly 90 percent of lung cancer deaths are caused by smoking.

ABOUT THIS SERIES: The University of Vermont Cancer Center in Burlington brings together research, medical education and state-of-the-art patient care, giving patients their best possible chance for survival. This 7D Brand Studio series, commissioned and paid for by Pomerleau Real Estate, explores some of the ways in which this extraordinary local resource benefits our community. For information about donating to the UVM Cancer Center, contact Lindsay Longe at Lindsay.Longe@uvmhealth.org.

Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It kills 480,000 people a year.

There are lots of ways to address prevention. Some are more effective than others. Researchers like those at the UVM Cancer Center help determine which ones work.

You may have heard that the Food & Drug Administration is now moving to ban the sale of menthol, or mint-flavored, cigarettes and flavored cigars. In an April 29 press release, acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock presented the bans as “powerful, science-based approaches.”

Researchers like Villanti help deliver the science.

Villanti has taken part in numerous menthol-related studies over the years. She’s currently part of one out of Ohio State University testing whether adult menthol cigarette smokers would be likely to switch to other types of tobacco products if menthol cigarettes were banned.

She points out that, while nonmenthol cigarette use has decreased at the population level, menthol

cigarette use has not; first use of menthol cigarettes or flavored tobacco products or vaping products is linked to later tobacco use; and menthol cigarette smokers are more likely to try to quit, though less likely to succeed — the menthol habit is harder to break.

“The science is compelling, and it’s mounting,” she says.

Villanti is confident that, if a ban became law, it would be likely to withstand a legal challenge. She coauthored a 2019 paper entitled “Why an FDA Ban on Menthol Is Likely to Survive a Tobacco Industry Lawsuit.”

The Vermont legislature is also considering such a ban; Villanti presented a PowerPoint presentation about it to the Senate Health and Welfare Committee in February via Zoom. She argues that state action is vital to supporting federal policy and likely to be implemented before the FDA’s regulation of menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars.

‘NOT IVORY TOWER RESEARCH’ In a video interview on the FDA’s YouTube channel, Villanti explains what drew her to tobacco policy

The joint UVM/Vermont Department of Health 2019 PACE Vermont pilot study team.

Left to right, seated: Kathleen Horton (VDH), Erin Singer (VDH), Nancy Erickson (VDH), Megan Trutor (VDH). Left to right, standing: Jennifer Hicks (VDH), Christie Vallencourt (VDH), Rhonda Williams (VDH), Andrea Villanti (UVM), Julia West (UVM), Kate Peasley-Miklus (UVM)

research: her grandmother’s lung cancer.

But what’s kept her engaged is the opportunity to make a difference in health outcomes. “I love that the work I do has immediate application to the questions at hand, that it’s not ivory tower research,” she says in the video.

Indeed, Villanti has helped connect the UVM Cancer Center to the Vermont Department of Health through an ongoing joint project called the PACE Vermont study — the acronym stands for Policy and Communication Evaluation.

It owes its existence to a chance encounter at the Burlington International Airport. Villanti was there waiting for a flight and struck up a conversation with Christie Vallencourt, a chronic disease information director at the health department’s Division of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, who was booked on the same flight. It ended up being canceled, but the two quickly realized there was an opportunity to work together.

‘A REAL VALUE FOR US’ Launched in 2019, the PACE Vermont study seeks to understand how the state’s policies and communication campaigns around substance use are affecting young Vermonters’ beliefs and behaviors. It targets two groups — teens ages 12 to 17 and young adults ages 18 to 25. Participants complete three online surveys over

the course of six months. For their effort, they earn $50 in online gift cards.

Rhonda Williams — a colleague of Vallencourt’s who works in the same division and oversees tobacco prevention, respiratory health and healthy aging — helps to manage the study for the department while Vallencourt is involved in the state’s pandemic response. “Having an academic partner is key,” she says.

She notes that PACE participant responses help measure the effectiveness of the department’s prevention campaigns and regulatory actions.

Previously, the department gathered that kind of data just once every two years through its Youth Risk Behavior Survey. PACE offers a much quicker turnaround.

“That’s been a real value for us,” she says. For example, PACE data showed that, as awareness of a vaping prevention campaign called “Unhyped” increased, so did youth and young adult perceptions of the harms of vaping. In other words, it was working. As a result, the tobacco program sought additional funds to extend it.

Villanti notes that the PACE study has received funding from the National Institutes of Health to continue this work. “The first grant focused on ‘Perceptions and Problems Associated with Vaping in Youth and Young Adults,’ and we have supplemental funding to examine ‘Impacts of COVID-19 on mental health and substance use in youth and young adults,’” she says.

PACE data have also been used in the state’s COVID-19 press conferences, tracking rising depressive and anxiety symptoms during the pandemic among Vermont teens.

She adds that the study is actively recruiting new participants, ages 12 to 25, through May 31.

In the FDA YouTube video, Villanti says that “one of the things that I find most exciting about this work is that it is mission driven and really collaborative.”

For young Vermonters who want to help improve health outcomes in their state, taking part in the PACE study is a chance for them to collaborate in this important work, too. Find out more at pacevt.org.  COMMISSIONED AND PAID FOR BY:

SEVEN DAYS MAY 12-19, 2021

41

Greener Pastures

Mow Electric! helps Vermonters ditch gas-powered lawn equipment to reduce CO2 emissions B Y M ARG A RET G RAYSON • margaret@sevendaysvt.com CALEB KENNA

Gabe Lourie-Wisbaum (left) and Steven Wisbaum

S

teven Wisbaum wasn’t always obsessed with electric lawn mowers. Since 1996, he’s been the founding owner of Charlottebased CV Compost, which provides custom products to home gardeners, farmers and landscape contractors. But around 2009, spurred by concerns about the climate crisis and needing to replace his cohousing community’s shared lawn mower, Wisbaum sought to reduce his fossil fuel use. He experimented with using biodiesel in company equipment and in the mower, but it caused mechanical problems. So he went looking for electric alternatives.

By 2017, Wisbaum was the Vermont sales rep for Mean Green Mowers, an Ohio-based electric mower manufacturer. Aiming to convince people who were skeptical that these more expensive 42

SEVEN DAYS MAY 12-19, 2021

mowers could perform as well as gas ones, he became an electric lawn care evangelist, giving demonstrations, attending fairs and working with electric utilities to establish incentive programs.

“I just became an advocate, not so much selling mowers but selling the idea,” Wisbaum said. “It became, I guess, an obsession. I became laser-focused on making this happen.”

When Mean Green sold in 2020, ending Wisbaum’s work as a rep, he was determined to continue the momentum. In April of this year, Wisbaum launched Mow Electric!, a campaign to help Vermonters switch to electric lawn care equipment with the aim of reducing carbon dioxide emissions and improving quality of life.

The Mow Electric! website has the skinny on financial incentives for purchasing electric equipment, ranging from $25

for a small leaf blower to $3,500 for a commercial ride-on lawn mower. It also has interactive calculators that compare electric and gas-powered mowers in terms of long-term savings and CO2 reductions.

The cheapest electric riding mower reviewed on Wisbaum’s site costs approximately $500 more than a low-end gas option. But, the calculator reveals, someone using an electric riding mower in twohour stretches once a week for 23 weeks per year would save $106 in fuel costs and avoid emitting 880 pounds of CO2.

The site also offers user testimonials and reviews, comparisons of different equipment models, and a directory of lawn care businesses that use electric equipment. Wisbaum hopes to foster a neighbor-to-neighbor demo network of people who want to try out someone else’s mower before buying their own.

Emissions reduction isn’t the only incentive for going electric. Wisbaum said electric mowers require less maintenance and fewer repairs. They’re also much quieter, and though the buzz of gas mowers might be synonymous with summer Saturdays, he doesn’t miss it.

“When you get on an electric mower, it’s actually much more enjoyable,” Wisbaum said.

He may have been a few years ahead of the trend, but public interest is catching up. In April, Burlington banned the use of all gas-powered leaf blowers to reduce noise and pollution; the ordinance takes effect for city employees on August 1, for large businesses on September 6 and for smaller ones on January 1, 2022. Town energy committees around the state have organized demonstrations to encourage the use of electric tools.

Why all the concern?

Renewable Energy Standard, which was Gas engines in lawn mowers, trimmers and established in 2015 and leaf blowers are particurequires that utilities larly polluting and invest in renewable noxious due to lax emisenergy. Burlington aims sions controls. In 2019, to become a Net Zero according to the U.S. Energy city by 2030.

Department of TransSpringer was an portation, Vermonters early adopter of elecburned 5.5 million gallons of gasoline in tric mowing. His first model, purchased lawn and garden care, and Americans around 2008, ran on a long extension overall burned nearly 3 billion gallons. cord. Others at the time ran on rechargeLawns bring other ecological concerns, able batteries. The technology has including compromised soil health and improved since then, and new models the harmful effects of pesticides. Various have more power and longer battery life. movements have encouraged mowing Springer described the lawn care differently and replacing lawns with more rebates as one of Burlington Electric’s varied, native landscaping. most popular incentive programs, a good In 2015, several local organizations entry point for people who might not be formed the Lawn to Lake program, which ready to invest in an electric car. encourages landowners to “Raise the “It’s a great gateway opportunity for Blade” — to mow grass no folks who may be interested shorter than three inches. in trying electric technologies,” Springer said.

Researchers have found that longer grass maintains Generally, commercial longer roots and is healthier, lawn care companies have creating soil that’s better been a tough sell on elecable to sequester carbon tric equipment. “There is and reduce stormwater a culture around internal runoff. Eschewing lawns combustion engines, no quesfor trees, shrubs and other tion,” Wisbaum said. “Look at perennials captures more the popularity of NASCAR.” carbon and provides wildMore than that, he said, life habitat, and flowers and groundskeepers take pride native grasses encourage in their work and need to be STEVEN WISB AU M pollinators. convinced that an electric But the American appemower can perform and stay tite for turf persists, to the tune of some powered for a full day. Several lawn care 40 million acres of grass. The U.S. Bureau companies have made the switch, includof Labor Statistics predicts that the ing ones in the Burlington area, Addison groundskeeping industry will add more County, Windsor County and the Upper than 130,000 jobs by 2029, well above the Valley. average rate of growth of other industries.

For Wisbaum, the Mow Electric!

Wisbaum estimates that the switch to an campaign is a labor of love. He funds it electric mower at his cohousing commu- himself and hired his college-age son, Gabe, nity has reduced its annual greenhouse gas to make the website. emissions from lawn care by 97 percent.

Next, Wisbaum plans to distribute Because he believes that financial incen- signs with information about the utility tives will help other Vermonters follow suit, rebates to stores that sell lawn equiphe has pushed state electric utilities to offer ment. Many buyers, he believes, don’t them. His advocacy has helped encourage even know those rebates exist. The more all 17 of Vermont’s electric utilities to offer people take advantage of the incentives, rebates on electric lawn care equipment. the more data they’ll generate on the “It felt like the most tangible contri- quantity of electric mowers purchased bution that I ever made to addressing and emissions averted.

Electric mowers probably remain climate change,” Wisbaum said of his campaign. “I was very gratified by that.” “a fraction” of the total mowers sold, According to Darren Springer, general Wisbaum said. But he’s optimistic about manager of the Burlington Electric the future of this electric revolution.

Department, 263 residential customers “My goal is to help facilitate making have taken advantage of Burlington’s gas-powered lawn equipment the excepelectric lawn equipment incentive since tion rather than the rule within five years,” 2019, along with a handful of commercial he said. “And it’s completely doable.” m customers. Offering incentives that reduce customer fossil fuel consumption is one INFO way for utilities to meet the Vermont Learn more at mowelectric.org.

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4/30/21 4:44 PM

food+drink

Tastes of Home

Two Chittenden County entrepreneurs launch Cuban-inspired takeout dinners B Y M E L I SSA PASANEN • pasanen@sevendaysvt.com

JAMES BUCK

Miami Mami’s ropa vieja con mofongo

O

n a Monday afternoon in a back room of Zachary’s Pizza in South Burlington, Oscar Arencibia was making his grandmother’s recipe for flan. Plush animals (arcade prizes stacked on nearby shelves) and a reporter bore witness.

Using a stand mixer, Arencibia combined eggs with three kinds of milk — evaporated, whole and sweetened condensed — along with vanilla extract and a pinch of salt. “This recipe goes back four generations,” he said.

The caramel-drenched baked custard was a trial batch for the Sunday takeout dinners Arencibia started in April under the name Santiago’s. He rents kitchen

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SEVEN DAYS MAY 12-19, 2021

ALL I WANT IS TO MAKE GOOD FOOD AND TO

SHARE OUR CULTURE HERE. O S C AR AR E NC IBIA

space from Zachary’s to test the local appetite for a small restaurant he hopes to open.

Arencibia, 45, grew up in West New York, N.J., across the Hudson River from Manhattan. His parents and grandparents arrived there in 1970, part of what Arencibia called “the second great Cuban migration” following the Cuban Revolution.

His hometown and neighboring Union

City became the second-largest Cuban community in the U.S., after Miami. “I grew up speaking Cuban,” Arencibia said, acknowledging with a laugh that the language is, of course, Spanish — with a twist.

Two days later, in her inspected home kitchen in Colchester, Holly Anagnos was also making flan — for her new takeout business, Miami Mami. Most weekends since mid-March, Anagnos has offered

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a menu of Cuban dishes with some Dominican, Puerto Rican and south Florida touches that she calls “Floribbean” cuisine.

Before Anagnos, 42, moved to Vermont in 2012, she had lived in Miami most of her life. Her heritage is Greek and Italian, but she grew up steeped in the city’s Cuban culture, eating in the homes of Cuban friends and at landmark restaurants such as La Carreta.

“When was a kid, I always either got a skirt steak, like a churrasco with chimichurri, or I would get lechón with boiled yuca. And I would always get a materva,” she said. These flavors — skewered beef with a cilantro and garlic sauce, roast pork and cassava crowned with green sauce, and a Miami-born yerba mate soda, respectively — “are things that bring me back to my childhood,” Anagnos said.

The two entrepreneurs bring distinct backgrounds to their new food ventures, but they also have some things in common.

Arencibia and Anagnos were each laid off in 2020 from non-food jobs due to the pandemic. They love to cook but admitted, during separate interviews, that they find the numbers side of business challenging. The two cooks also share frustration at not being able to reliably find essential ingredients for Cuban fare, including sour orange juice, ripe plantains and certain kinds of peppers.

After relocating to Vermont, Arencibia and Anagnos missed the food they had eaten growing up. So, in early 2021, both jumped on the opportunity to make those dishes more available via low-overhead, online-ordering takeout models.

In Colchester, Anagnos prepared the base for her flan at a small table in what she calls “the little kitchen that could.”

The key to a smooth flan is gentle whisking, she explained: “You don’t want to get a lot of air in it.” She also likes to add a

GOOD TO-GO VERMONT:

TASTES OF HOME

» P.46

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SIDEdishes SERVING UP FOOD NEWS

BY M EL I SSA PASAN E N

Free Tea VINTAGE SHOP OWNER TO OPEN IN-STORE BURLINGTON CAFÉ PHINNEUS SONIN will

soon open a café called

JUNKS TEA HOUSE in his

Sonin in the outdoor seating area of Junks Tea House

tented outdoor shopping area behind the store where people can enjoy their drinks, food and each other, he said. He plans to host community events, such as puppet shows and poetry readings; a clothing swap is already in the works. “My goal is for people to congregate here,” Sonin said.

Junks Tea House will officially open in the next few weeks, Sonin said, with hours starting at 2 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday. m

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

PHOTOS: MELISSA PASANEN

Junktiques Collective vintage store at 324 North Winooski Avenue in Burlington. The menu will include tea, espresso and chai; juices, smoothies and housemade, fruitsyrup-soaked shaved ice; and thin, freshly pressed waffles folded around savory or sweet fillings.

All food and drink items will be priced with a suggested donation range, and shoppers will be offered a free drink when they enter the store.

Sonin doesn’t believe in apostrophes, he said, in reference to the lack of one in his new teahouse’s name. Nor does he believe in capitalism.

“Instead of supporting capitalism, it’s based in catapultism,” Sonin said with a grin. “We’re sending it.”

Known for his work with the now-defunct Burlington theater company Spielpalast, Sonin

said he was inspired by trips across the border to “an amazing thrift store” in Montréal called Boutique Eva B. “When you enter, you’d always get offered a cup of tea or cider,” he said.

Junks Tea House will operate out of a new, small kitchen in a section of the shop that previously housed pots and pans.

Customers can order inside the store or through a takeout window.

Sonin has set up chairs, tables and games in the

Phinneus Sonin at the takeout window of Junks Tea House

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4/23/21 9:40 AM

Santiago’s ajiaco stew

Tastes of Home « P.44 touch of orange extract and passes the custard through a sieve at least once.

In South Burlington, Arencibia peered into his mixing bowl to check for streaks of yellow yolk. “The secret is to mix it up until everything is well incorporated, then let it rest,” he said. “While it’s resting, we make the caramel.”

If Anagnos and Arencibia have different ways of perfecting their flan, the equally delicious results mean that Vermonters now have more ways to enjoy the rich, silken dessert. The same could be said for caramelized ripe plantains and ropa vieja made with tender stewed steak, peppers and onions.

Almost every dish on Santiago’s menu Holly Anagnos preparing Miami Mami meals out of her home in Colchester

46

SEVEN DAYS MAY 12-19, 2021

so far has been based on the recipes of Arencibia’s maternal grandmother, with a few nods to his wife’s Puerto Rican heritage. “I’m trying to bring in the totally traditional, old-school way of cooking,” he said.

For Mother’s Day, Arencibia made ajiaco, a meat stew with root vegetables, corn, pumpkin and peppers that he said dates back 500 years to the Taíno, the Indigenous people of the Caribbean. He also honored his grandmother by making

I JUST MAKE WHAT’S

IN MY HEART TO MAKE.

H O L LY ANAGNO S

her favorite rice pudding infused with cinnamon and lemon zest.

His abuela’s name was Asunción, “but everyone called her Nancy,” Arencibia said. She worked long shifts in a New Jersey plastics factory, then lost her job when the plant moved to Mexico; she later died of pulmonary fibrosis due to workrelated environmental exposure.

“My grandparents came here for the right to earn a living that provided a decent life for their family,” Arencibia said. “I feel like I’m doing this for them.”

At 19, Arencibia started as a restaurant fry cook, then worked his way up to the grill and sauté stations. In 2011, he shifted his career to renewable energy, driven by the desire to address the climate crisis for Miami Mami’s mofongo con camarones

coming generations, including his now16-year-old son. Arencibia had no trouble finding a good solar job when he moved to Vermont in 2015, but he was laid off in May 2020. “It’s been tough,” he said.

Arencibia had dreamed of starting his own food business. “All I really want is a small hole-in-the-wall,” he said, “like the cafeterías I grew up with, or ventanitas.”

The former are casual spots with just a counter and stools; the latter are takeout windows serving café con leche, crisp ham croquetas, and sandwiches. “You don’t even know they’re there, but the food is amazing,” he said.

When Arencibia cooks, his family is always with him in spirit. As he stirred sugar to make caramel for the flan, he

PHOTOS: JAMES BUCK

Oscar Arencibia preparing a Santiago’s meal

food+drink watched the saucepan carefully. “Abuela always said, ‘Keep stirring. Don’t let it burn,’” he said. “There’s a fine line between a good caramel and a burnt caramel. It happens super quick.”

For his inaugural April 9 Santiago’s menu, Arencibia prepared lechón — roasted pork shoulder marinated in garlic, cumin, oregano and sour orange. Making his first huge pot of rice and beans, he channeled his great-aunt, who took charge of that staple every birthday and holiday.

“She had a caldero almost the size of this table,’ Arencibia said, gesturing at a compact table for four to indicate the size of her pot.

Like many Latin American dishes, the rice starts with a sofrito of onion, peppers and garlic. Arencibia’s recipe calls for tomato paste and roasted red peppers. His great-aunt Romelia would cut the onion holding it in her hand, and she never needed to measure the water, he remembered.

Unlike his tía, Arencibia cooks his beans from scratch. She had divulged to him, “‘I’m not going to all that trouble when I can get beans already cooked!’” he recalled. “Oh man, my childhood was completely blown,” he said.

for its natural beauty, cool climate and creative community, but she immediately missed Miami’s vibrant food scenes. “I remember one day I saw yuca at the grocery store [here], and I was so excited,” she said.

She worked for many years in marketing, business communications and technical writing but was laid off from her job in April 2020. Miami Mami allows Anagnos to share the foods she loves and earn some income. And, she added, “I just really like cooking for other people.”

Her weekend menus offer several different entrées, sides and desserts. Ropa vieja and a fried chicken dish called chicharrón de pollo are among the most popular.

Crunchy nuggets of marinated chicken come with a tangy, creamy sauce that includes mayonnaise, curry powder and lime juice. It is similar to a sauce served throughout south Florida, a prime example of what Anagnos called “the Miami-ness of what I’m doing.”

She makes the pan-Latin favorite tres leches cake, as well as American-style coconut cream and key lime pies. Anagnos recently riffed on tostones, using the flattened, fried plantain rounds as a base for nachos, a trend she’d read about.

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Miami Mami’s picadillo con yuca frita

Home cooks of that generation rarely wrote down recipes, so Arencibia depends on memory and a lot of tasting. When he would ask his grandmother how much of an ingredient to use, her reply was often “‘a handful,’” he said. “And I’d say, ‘Well, my hands are bigger than yours!’”

Arencibia described Santiago’s as a passion project. It’s covering the costs and, for now, that’s OK. “All I want is to make good food and to share our culture here,” he said.

With Miami Mami, Anagnos shares foods that were essential in her childhood, but she also blends in flavors and ideas from other Caribbean cultures. “I don’t do just Miami-style Cuban,” she explained. “It gives me a lot of creative liberty.”

Anagnos originally moved to Vermont

“I make what inspires me,” Anagnos said. “I just make what’s in my heart to make.”

Many of her customers are transplants, too, and say that her dishes remind them of home. Referring to a woman who drove up from Middlebury, Anagnos said, “Her parents are Cuban, but they hadn’t had their food in many, many years.”

A couple of weeks ago, unable to source Cuban bread, Anagnos resorted to baking some herself, using pork fat saved from a previous dish. “I made enough for 50 sandwiches,” she said, “and I sold all 50 sandwiches.” m

INFO Learn more at miamimamivt.com and santiagosvt.com.

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5/11/21 5:31 PM

Roses Are Red, Violets Are Tasty Foraging flowers for a sweet taste of spring

S TO RY & PHOT OS BY J ORDAN BARRY • jbarry@sevendaysvt.com

’

T

is the season for ramps and fiddleheads. After the (hopefully) last snowstorm of the year in late April, both of those popular wild foods began popping up on restaurant menus, at farmers markets and on social media around Vermont.

There’s growing concern, however, about the sustainability of gathering these green signs of spring. Ramps are especially susceptible to overharvesting, and picking the entire plant — or plucking too many from a patch — can prevent them from returning the following year.

Foragers have long protected the locations of their favorite woodland patches of the garlicky wild leeks and fiddlehead ferns. Now, some are forgoing them altogether. Instead, they’re turning their attention to the bright, plentiful flowers such as dandelions and violets scattered throughout fields, lawns and forest edges.

“They’re wild, they’re weedy and they’re abundant,” said herbalist and former chef Rachael Keener. She’s the owner of ALKAME CO, a Burlington-based elixir and herbal tonic company — and is one of those foragers who’s stopped seeking out ramps and fiddleheads.

“I love both of those plants, but I worry about them being over-foraged,” Keener explained. “Most of the time, when you pick a flower, that plant really wants to reproduce, so it’s going to send out more flowers.”

Violets are a particular favorite for Keener; she used them to craft crème de violet popsicles for her previous business, Joy Ride Pops.

“All plants kind of have their energies or their folklore about them,” Keener said.

“You don’t even have to be that woo-woo to look at violets and see that they have this sprightly, sweet energy. They’re fairy flowers.”

Wild violets are easy to identify, even for beginning foragers. The purplishblue blooms — there are also white and yellow varieties — grow low to the ground, surrounded by heart-shaped leaves.

Folk herbalism’s doctrine of signatures says that a plant’s appearance is a clue to its effect on the body. Keener takes that 48

SEVEN DAYS MAY 12-19, 2021

with a grain of salt, but she considers it a fun way to relate to plants. In the case of violets, the clue is in the heart-shaped leaves.

“One of the first things I think of when I think about violets is what they do for the heart — the emotional heart,” Keener said. “They bring sweetness, and they’re soothing. That makes them good for grief, worry and anxiety.”

Besides their playful appearance, the flowers have cooling properties and are demulcent, or slimy, which makes them useful for treating inflammation and heat topically.

“Think about that emotionally,” Keener

Foraging violets

said. “Anxiety, stress — that’s a manifestation of heat in our nervous system, in our heart.”

Violets like to grow on the edge of wooded areas and in the woods themselves, but they also pop up in fields and backyards. Keener advises wouldbe flower foragers to harvest only from places that aren’t treated or sprayed with chemical pesticides or herbicides; to test backyard soil for lead; and to avoid trailside patches, where flowers might be contaminated with dog urine.

Rachael Keener of ALKAME CO at the Burlington Farmers Market

It’s a good rule of thumb to pick only 25 percent of the flowers from each plant.

In early spring, it’s best to leave the flowers as a food source for bees and other pollinators. But as trees, dandelions and other flowers start to bloom, pollinators mostly move on from the violets. The flowers typically continue blooming through early June.

Violet leaves are edible and make a nice addition to a spring salad. The flowers themselves have many culinary uses: Violet jam and treats topped with violet sugar are classic springtime delights.

Candying violets is time-consuming, but the finished product makes for an especially whimsical cake decoration.

The easiest way to embrace violets’ fairylike magic is to make violet syrup.

(Find the recipe in the latest Home on the Range post at sevendaysvt.com.)

Pouring hot water over the petals and letting them steep for 24 hours results in a vibrant blue liquid. Combined with sugar or honey, it makes a nectarous, floral syrup that can be used in cocktails and sweets. And if you add a squeeze of lemon juice, the color transforms to a bright magenta. Keener likes to add it to seltzer with a splash of cream for a seasonal cream soda.

If foraging flowers and making syrups doesn’t appeal, don’t worry. Several local businesses are selling violet products this

food+drink spring, including doughnuts from Miss Weinerz and flower-coated, dairy-free fudgesicles from Curly Girl Pops. But for those who dare to DIY, foraging for flowers is a great way to connect with the natural world — and to slow down and enjoy the season.

“It’s easy to be extractive,” Keener

Come in to see and taste why.

SINCE 1974

said. “So I love the things in the process that actually take a lot of time and attention and intention. It puts the brakes on a little bit.” m

INFO Learn more at alkameco.com, or stop by the booth at the Burlington Farmers Market.

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Violet syrup (left) and violet syrup with lemon juice added

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BEER IN BLOOM Kraemer & Kin’s Sour Flower series brews with buds

COURTESY OF KRAEMER & KIN

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Find, fix and feather with Nest Notes — an e-newsletter filled with home design, Vermont real estate tips and DIY decorating inspirations.

Flowers are unconventional beer ingredients. But at Grand Isle’s Kraemer & Kin, magnolias and dandelions are as likely as hops and malt to show up in the brew kettle.

“We try to bring our love of naturalism and fascination with the forest and flora to our brewing,” co-owner Heather Kraemer said. “We use flowers, stuff from our gardens and things that we’re purchasing from local farmers.”

Kraemer & Kin released its magnolia sour the second weekend in May, and a dandelion sour is in the works. Both are part of the brewery’s annual summerlong Sour Flower series.

Brewing with flowers is a delicate process, Kraemer explained, as immersing buds and blooms in hot liquid for too long can overwhelm their flavor. The payoff, though, is a floral, earthy, sometimes citrusy aroma and flavor.

“Even the mouthfeel is delicate,” she said.

When brewing with magnolias earlier this spring, the brewery used the entire flower bud, keeping them whole and immersing them gently using a large steeping bag.

“We found that when the magnolia buds are masticated or crushed, the bitterness really comes out,” Kraemer noted. “So it was a very light process, trying to capture the sweet and floral parts without imparting bitterness.”

Kraemer & Kin also brewed a sour with dandelions last year, picking more than 1,000 flowers from unsprayed, carefully selected growing environments.

After harvesting the dandelions, they Kraemer & Kin's Magnolia Sour separated the petals from the green base of the flower head; the base has vegetal characteristics that they don’t want to carry through into the beer.

This year’s batch is currently in progress — after brewing, the kettle sour rests a few days before the flowers are harvested and added. Kraemer estimated that the batch will be released sometime in the next few weeks, depending on how the beer matures.

Each Sour Flower batch from the brewery’s 3.5-barrel brew system is roughly 100 gallons. Bloom-seeking drinkers can try the beers on draft at Kraemer & Kin’s tasting room at GreenTARA Space in North Hero Friday through Sunday or look for cans at local retail outlets.

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culture

Paper Trail

In Endpapers, Alexander Wolff unearths a captivating family history B Y DA N B O LLES • dan@sevendaysvt.com

I

n the epilogue of his latest book, Endpapers: A Family Story of Books, War, Escape and Home, Vermont author Alexander Wolff offers a provocative assessment of global affairs: “…for the moment, Germany is doing a better job of being American than America is.”

Wolff, a Sports Illustrated writer for 36 years and the author or editor of nine books, is musing on his newly realized dual citizenship. He believes that holding a passport to both Germany and America is “a symbolic way of urging the best of each to regard the other as an example.”

For Wolff, that’s a hardearned revelation.

In 2017, he spent a year in Berlin with his wife and two children to research his family history. In doing so, he unraveled family mysteries spanning two continents, three generations and several decades of world history.

Wolff’s grandfather was Kurt Wolff, an influential German book publisher who backed works by Franz Kafka, Franz Werfel, Karl Kraus and many others whose books would be banned and burned by the Nazis.

Kurt fled Germany in 1933, a day after the Reichstag fire, first for France and Italy and then for New York City. There, with his second wife, Helen, he founded the celebrated Pantheon Books, most famous for publishing Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago.

But Kurt’s son Niko, Wolff’s dad, stayed with his mother, Elisabeth Merck, in Germany, where he was reluctantly conscripted to fight for the Nazis in World War II before immigrating to America. While Wolff knew some of his father’s history, it wasn’t until he went to Berlin that a fuller picture began to emerge.

In Endpapers, Wolff explores a complicated family history, including sometimes-shocking revelations about certain German relatives’ roles in World War II. But the book is also an often-moving portrait of his own relationship with his father and grandfather. And it’s a snapshot of two countries grappling with the rise of disturbing ideologies that hark back to a dark, shared past: Four days after Wolff and his family landed in Berlin, white supremacists, many sporting Nazi paraphernalia, marched on Charlottesville, Va., chanting, “Jews will not replace us.”

In a phone conversation with Seven Days from his home in Addison County, Wolff said about the book, “It’s not really history, it’s not really a memoir, and it’s not really journalism. It’s a mishmash of them all.”

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SEVEN DAYS: You moved your family to Berlin for a year, so you obviously knew there was a lot to uncover about your family. But were you prepared for the depth of what you found?

ALEXANDER WOLFF: I really had no idea. I knew that my grandparents, being literary people, wrote letters and kept diaries, and a lot of that stuff had been preserved. But what I wasn’t prepared for was how much was in archives.

My dad was not a literary person. But he was a faithful son, and he wrote almost every week back to his mother in Munich during World War II while he was deployed. My grandmother saved every one of those letters, returned each to their envelopes.

My dad, in turn, saved them and translated them from German to English for my sisters and me. So that was a real window into what his life was like during that time.

I read a lot of histories and memoirs of the period to try to get context. And I rummaged through the family stuff. And the other piece, because I’m a journalist and figured I should try to play to whatever strengths I might have, was to record and reflect on what was going on in the world while I was uncovering this stuff.

— I’m very cautious [about] drawing parallels with Nazi Germany to anything.

It was also this sort of reversal of roles.

You had German Chancellor Angela Merkel playing a role that you would recognize in virtually any other American president of either party: leading the world to attack these common crises.

In the case of Merkel, it was welcoming all these immigrants, which the U.S. not only has a history of but had this specific history of not only welcoming as an expat my grandfather, but then allowing my dad — who couldn’t even get a passport in 1948 — welcoming him as a student to come to the U.S. to study.

BOOKS

SD: Such as the rise of nationalism and neo-Nazism in America and Germany. That certainly lends the book an urgency it might not otherwise have had.

AW: The irony weighed pretty heavily.

When Charlottesville happened four days after we arrived in Berlin, I felt like that was a message to me. I also felt that what was going on in the States put me on more honest footing with Germans, because I had come from a place that was essentially a glass house, so who was I to throw stones?

It wasn’t just that there might be parallels between the two countries

SD: Your dad wouldn’t let you join the Boy Scouts because he saw shades of Hitler Youth. Did your son ever want to join the Boy Scouts?

AW: It never came up. And I would probably have wanted to read up on where the Boy Scouts stand on a few things if it had.

In the moment, I didn’t entirely understand why my dad was so adamant about that, though over the years I could kind of fill in the blanks. But there were moments like that growing up in the 1960s where his past kind of rose up and loomed over us. And very quickly it would recede and everything went back to the idyllic ’60s suburban life.

But if moments like that didn’t occur, I would have been puzzled. Because my dad went through an awful lot, and the idea that you can simply sever all that because you’ve emigrated and assimilated — and he did a great job of that — human beings aren’t made that way.

SD: Your dad was captivated by Watergate. What do you think he would have made of the Trump impeachments?

AW: The greatest sin to anybody in my family was to be vulgar. And, surely, even his supporters would concede that Trump had vulgarian tendencies. My dad

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MY DAD IS A KIND OF NORTH STAR FOR ME

IN THE TELLING OF THE STORY. A L E X A ND ER W OL FF

would have seen the demagoguery, the vulgarity, and would have cried for the country, he so believed in democracy. And even more than the four years of Trump, the January 6 endgame would have left him bereft. In many ways, I’m glad he didn’t live long enough to see it.

He would bring up often with me, and sometimes in letters he’d write to the local papers, how democracy is something you have to be vigilant in protecting.

And that was hard-won. He was only 12 when Hitler came to power, so he had no agency in trying to stop it. He was someone who was really caught up in the events of history.

SD: There were other family members who did have a choice, though.

AW: I tried to write the book through as nonjudgmental a lens as I could when it came to my dad. Because there were certainly other family members who did have agency and did things for which they deserve to be called to account.

My dad is a kind of North Star for me in the telling of the story. His dad had gray areas in his personality and the way he behaved — and certainly we all do. But for the most part, my dad was very honorable.

SD: You include a quote from your grandfather early in the book about why he wasn’t interested in memoirs: “What one can write is not interesting; and what is interesting, one cannot write.” If he had written

or email: a memoir, how do you think your project would have been different? info@acornenergycoop.com AW: I did feel there was this sort of vacuum telling his story, which is such a THURSDAYS > 7:00 P.M. poignant one. It wasn’t just that he built this publishing house, then the horrible ACORN ENERGY CO-OP Weimar hyperinflation, and then the MIDDLEBURY, VT rise of the Nazis. It’s that he then comes to the U.S. and does the same thing, but he’s publishing books in a language in which he was never fluent. And then he’s essentially chased into exile again. He’s a 16t-vcam-weekly2021.indd 1 5/10/21 16t-vcam-weekly.indd 1 11/2/20 8V-AcornEnergyCoop051221.indd 1 5/11/21 11:56 AM double exile who just kept getting up off the carpet.

I don’t know that if he’d written a memoir he would have gone into all that. He was stoic. And he was raised to see stories in others and to midwife the stories others wanted to tell.

RESILIENT BURLINGTON

SD: What would he have made of Endpapers?

AW: If you go to that comment he made, “What one can write…,” he may not be totally approving of what I wrote. But I would hope that if he read it, he would find it interesting, engaging and compelling, moving in parts, as a document about his extraordinary life. The double exiles thing again is something that, until I dug into the story, hadn’t really occurred to me.

But it’s the tragedy of the immigrant, really, that you have to hoist yourself by those bootstraps multiple times. That he was able to do it again a second and third time, it’s a story of triumph. I hope he would recognize that, if he were to slog through it. m This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

INFO Endpapers: A Family Story of Books, War, Escape and Home by Alexander Wolff, Atlantic Monthly Press, 336 pages, $28.

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4/9/21 2:01 PM

Audience of No One With “Empty Stages,” the Champlain Trio illustrates performance in a pandemic B Y AMY LI LLY • lilly@sevendaysvt.com

S

ix pandemic-endangered performance venues are the settings for “Empty Stages: Performances and Stories of Resilience,” a minidocumentary series created earlier this year by Vermont filmmaker Jay Craven.

The riveting performers on those stages are the members of the Champlain Trio, a year-old Vermont chamber group.

In one moment that occurs in the final episode, pianist Hiromi Fukuda, seen in profile, cuts a glance toward cellist Emily Taubl and violinist Letitia Quante.

They’re playing the second movement of Felix Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio No. 1 in D Minor. As the music slows, all three musicians, absorbed in the emotion of the piece, move in unison toward the next phrase.

The camera captures their communication so intimately, it almost feels live.

“Empty Stages,” the trio’s pandemic project, was filmed at six very different venues around the state. Vermont audiences can access all six 15-minute episodes by purchasing a ticket to the Champlain Trio’s livestreamed concert on Saturday, May 22.

That concert takes place at the Highland Center for the Arts in Greensboro — featured in the first episode of “Empty Stages” — and opens with a discussion with Craven.

The unusual program will feature music by two composers born in the 1880s: Spaniard Joaquín Turina’s Piano Trio No. 2 in B Minor and Croatian composer Dora Pejačević’s Piano Trio in C Major.

Classical music fans have had to settle for a lot of virtual performances over the past year. “Empty Stages” is much more than that. At each venue, ranging from South Congregational Church in St. Johnsbury to the Flynn in Burlington, trio members talk with the directors, organizers and other behind-the-scenes workers about the impact of the pandemic or the importance of the arts in Vermont.

Then, without much formality, each episode segues into the unmasked trio performing a single movement of a piece

in formal concert dress on the stage.

No indication of what they’re playing interrupts the camera work, which intersperses close-ups of finger work, facial expressions and communicative gestures with sweeping shots of the room’s empty seats. The sound is almost studio quality.

The members of the Champlain Trio began playing together just before the pandemic arrived, so the group became the musicians’ “safety music bubble,” as Quante put it during a Zoom call with all three members.

After the cancellation of their inaugural concert, scheduled for March 2020 at a retirement community in Hanover, N.H., they self-produced four video concerts for the Wake Robin retirement community in Shelburne. That experience

CLASSICAL MUSIC

52

SEVEN DAYS MAY 12-19, 2021

cemented their desire to formalize the collaboration, and they had adopted their trio name by the end.

When the Wake Robin project wrapped, Taubl said, “we were trying to think of ways to help with the impact of COVID on the arts. [We thought of ] visiting venues that normally welcome us several times every year and discovering how they’re coping.”

The series name came from Quante, Taubl noted, who wondered, “What about all these empty stages?”

While some of the venues began offering online programming, Quante said, “gathering people together wasn’t happening. They weren’t getting that joy.

I was worried about how they were feeling internally.”

The women knew they wanted the project to be more than just a video performance series. Taubl looked online for a professional filmmaker, found Craven and emailed him out of the blue.

“We don’t know anything about film; we just really hit a gold mine,” Fukuda said.

Craven has been making films professionally since 1973, he told Seven Days during a phone call. Best known for his narrative films based on novels by the late Vermont author Howard Frank Mosher — including A Stranger in the Kingdom, Disappearances and Where the Rivers Flow North — he has also made half a dozen documentaries.

The Champlain Trio, from left: Letitia Quante, Emily Taubl and Hiromi Fukuda

culture

Craven receives about 20 unsolicited pitches per year, he said. “My family said, ‘Don’t do it,’ because of the COVID risk,” he recalled of Taubl’s proposal. “But I felt we could manage it.”

The limited size of the project — “Empty Stages” took just three months from conception to completion — allowed Craven to experiment with a crew of five rather than the 28 professionals and 35 students he normally has on set.

Also a classical music fan, Craven has presented many an ensemble as founding director of Catamount Arts in St. Johnsbury from 1975 to 1991 and through Kingdom County Presents since 2009. Classical musicians appear in several of his feature films, including Wetware, which flashes back to its main character’s past as a classical pianist.

The filmmaker’s sense of drama is evident in “Empty Stages”: The series succeeds in the difficult task of making seated classical performers interesting to watch. Craven said he pushed his “fairly young crew ... to get closer to the finger work on keys, on cello. The idea was to try to bring it alive through getting inside the circle of performance.”

The team did five takes of each performance and spliced them into one, led by cinematographer and editor Patrick Kennedy.

Some of the episodes focus on the musicians’ training. All three studied at the Juilliard School in New York City.

Beginning in 1998, Quante and Taubl — then ages 11 and 12, respectively — attended Juilliard’s precollege program every Saturday for four years. They slightly overlapped with Fukuda, who is from a suburb of Tokyo. The pianist left Japan to earn her master’s and doctor of musical arts degrees at Juilliard from 2001 to 2008.

All three women normally pursue busy careers involving lots of travel. Taubl, who lives in Burlington, teaches at the University of Vermont as an affiliate artist and is principal cellist of the Springfield Symphony Orchestra in Massachusetts.

She also directs the Burlington-based Conservatory Audition Workshop, which

prepares string students for auditions at elite music schools.

Fukuda, also a Burlington resident, is a faculty artist with the summertime Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival, teaches at Amherst College in Massachusetts and is a staff pianist at Juilliard.

Quante, a Vermont Symphony Orchestra violinist who lives in Underhill, appears with classical, opera and singing groups around the state and in New Hampshire.

Taubl pointed out that the pandemic’s kibosh on out-of-state travel helped the ensemble coalesce. “This trio wouldn’t exist if not for COVID, because we never would have been home enough to form it,” she said.

Craven declared the trio “fabulous” — and perfectionists, he added.

“In one episode,” the filmmaker recalled, “Hiromi believed that two notes played far apart from each other were wrong. Editing out a single note and replacing it ultimately proved to be impossible for us, but we spent 10 hours trying. They sent it out to a specialist. I came away with a greater appreciation for the degree of perfectionism in classical musicians.”

The venues that showcase those musicians, and presenters such as Craven, face an unknown future.

During the pandemic, Kingdom County Productions (the umbrella organization for filmmaking and performing arts series) received four times the amount of federal and state funding it typically gets, he said. But, Craven added, “We see the empty seats; how many people will come back, and when, and under what conditions?”

As Fukuda declared, “These organizations need feeding. We want them to be there for the next many, many years.” m

THE CAMERA CAPTURES THEIR COMMUNICATION SO INTIMATELY,

IT ALMOST FEELS LIVE.

INFO “Empty Stages: Performances and Stories of Resilience” documentary film series, available with purchase of tickets to Champlain Trio concert, Saturday, May 22, 7:30 p.m., livestreamed from Highland Center for the Arts in Greensboro. $25. champlaintrio.com, kingdomcounty.org

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culture

PAGE32 The Vermont Ghost Guide: A Second Conjuring Joseph A. Citro, illustrations by Robert W. Brunelle Jr., Eerie Lights Publishing, 212 pages. $19.95.

Supposedly her corpse was stolen by medical students and partially dissected.

With many a spooky novel and folklore collection to his name — including a previous Ghost Guide with drawings by Stephen R. Bissette — Joe Citro is the state’s preeminent purveyor of all things mysterious. Artist Robert W. Brunelle Jr. illustrates this iteration, and, given the colorful tales, one wishes the drawings weren’t limited to black-and-white.

Citro’s “gazetteer of Vermont’s haunts” is presented alphabetically by town, from Albany to Woodstock.

We learn about the unruly “guests” at an Alburgh inn, a basketball that dribbles itself in the Brigham Academy gym, a glowing orb in Fairfield that seems “intelligent,” the “projection” of an old man at the Welden Theatre in St. Albans, an Indigenous caretaker spirit at the old Swanton fish hatchery, decidedly unpleasant goings-on at Whitingham’s Sawyer Mansion, and more. Anyone who attends or works at the University of Vermont might appreciate the appendix listing 24 ghostly sites around campus. Or not.

PAMELA POLSTON

Short Takes on Five Vermont Books Seven Days writers can’t possibly read, much less review, all the books that arrive in a steady stream by post, email and, in one memorable case, a blush of spring robins. So this monthly feature is our way

Gray Candy

The House That Holds

Jason Price Everett, Ra Press, 144 pages. $12.

Buff Lindau, Onion River Press, 188 pages. $13.99.

As a solitary ant / Crawled up / And around / And around it. // Never stopping / In its passage.

And now this one’s green eyes, / leaving too.

Jason Price Everett’s poetry begs to be read aloud. It’s no surprise to see the Burlington resident, whose neo-beat verse has appeared in numerous collections and journals, showing up in a 2019 Seven Days story about the open mic at Burlington’s Light Club Lamp Shop.

Writer Bridget Higdon described him as reading “with the strong voice of a seasoned poet.”

That seasoning is also apparent in Gray Candy, a collection published by South Burlington’s Ra Press. Everett’s short, punchy lines use meter and intermittent rhyme with assurance. Grouped in sections that are titled only with typographical symbols, his streamof-consciousness verse suggests the monologue of a jaded street huckster having an existential crisis.

Goddesses and gutter wenches flit through surreal landscapes, occasioning erudite references and wordplay (“Thanks for the / Mammaries”). At one point, Everett reflects: “And if both life / And art have fled / … / What then?” He offers no answers, only an infectious rhythm.

MARGOT HARRISON

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Buff Lindau’s collection of poetry, The House That Holds, is like a photo album, each poem serving to immortalize a moment of what she calls “the twists of family life.” In our page 32 quote, it’s a son leaving the nest. Other poems chronicle bear encounters, colicky babies, wisteria blooms and Red Sox games. There’s even a piece about the Northeast Kingdom’s Bread and Puppet Theater.

In a later section of the book called “Poems for Our Climate,” Lindau contemplates “the disappearance of the world / we lucky oldsters have enjoyed / while wreaking a legacy of damage / on our singular planet Earth.” She draws contrasts between the beauty of her Vermont garden and the horror of global climate catastrophes, acknowledging the tension and guilt caused by these disparities.

Whether the subject is serious or lighthearted, Lindau’s writing is always approachable. Now retired after a long career as the spokesperson for Saint Michael’s College, she provides a collection full of nostalgia, celebration and love.

MARGARET GRAYSON

of introducing you to a handful of books by Vermont authors. To do that, we contextualize each book just a little and quote a single representative sentence from, yes, page 32. m

The Authors of This Dream: Edge of the Known: Book I

A Red Dress: Murder in the Green Mountain State

Seth Mullins, Books Fluent, 360 pages. $12.

G.L Taylor, BookBaby, 122 pages. $13.95.

Then we entered what we came to call “the Catacombs.”

Life has taught me that sometimes bad things happen to good people.

Brandon Chane is a talented musician and poet. But he’s as quick to anger as he is with a riff or couplet. One night, a fight outside a club leaves him on the edge of death and searching for ways to stop his life from spiraling. Throwing himself into his music and poetry is not enough. So with the aid of a shamanistic mentor, crisis counselor Saul Mason, Chane begins a journey of self-discovery and awakening in The Authors of This Dream, the first installment of Sean Mullins’ Edge of the Known series.

Like his main character, Mullins is a musician and poet, though he is not a pugilistic hothead. And his latest book sings with hard-earned authenticity. The Vermont writer leans on his own artistic experiences and spiritual odyssey, as well as on the biographies of rock luminaries from Jim Morrison to Kurt Cobain, to craft a redemptive tale with a metaphysical soul and a rock-androll heart.

The photo of a vacant swing set on the cover of A Red Dress: Murder in the Green Mountain State is reminiscent of the grainy blackand-white stills in the “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” intro.

What readers find inside is just as gruesome and gripping as a case assigned to Detectives Benson and Stabler. Penned by former detective G.L Taylor, A Red Dress is a work of historical fiction based on an actual crime committed in 1981 that led Vermont lawmakers to pass new and tougher juvenile crime laws.

The self-published novel follows ambitious Detective Ben Fields — a fictional stand-in for the author — as he investigates a brutal attack on two 12-year-old girls in a rural park.

One victim is left dead, the other severely injured.

Taylor’s writing is more straightforward than elegant, perhaps from decades of drafting police reports. True-crime junkies looking for their next binge may be in luck with this short and easy read.

DAN BOLLES

KRISTEN RAVIN

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7/21/20 2:38 PM

COURTESY OF MARK ROSALBO

“Graffiti Art” by Mark Rosalbo

A for…?

Artist’s “graffiti” painting ignites political controversy in Northfield

B Y PA M EL A POL ST O N • pamela@sevendaysvt.com

W

hen the pandemic drove us indoors last year, many Vermonters turned to baking or movie bingeing. Mark Rosalbo turned to house paint. Lots of it.

Suddenly working at home and sharing the broadband with his wife, Cindy, and four kids, the Randolph resident said his household was “insanely busy.” So he found himself puttering in the basement and painting — on cardboard, scraps of wood, whatever.

An insurance broker by day, Rosalbo is also a musician and composer who studied theater arts in college. But before COVID-19 arrived, he said, he’d never made visual art.

Little did Rosalbo know that, within a year, he would be exhibiting his pandemic paintings in a gallery. He would also inadvertently be involved in a bit of a ruckus, one fueled by this country’s deep political divide and the disinformation that widens it.

Rosalbo’s largest painting, the 4-by-8-foot “Graffiti Art,” is currently displayed in the window of ART, etc. in Northfield. Gallery owner Andrea Melville said she couldn’t fit the piece with the rest of Rosalbo’s work in the venue’s back room.

The painting’s prominent placement led some local 56

SEVEN DAYS MAY 12-19, 2021

business owners to take notice — and offense. They claim Rosalbo’s work contains “antifa symbolism.”

Specifically, explained barber Randy Peace, whose shop is downstairs from the gallery, he saw in the painting “a big letter A with a circle around it, and it’s over what resembles stripes on a flag.”

Peace said he was aware that a capital A inside a circle is a traditional symbol for anarchy. But, he insisted, “If you google that symbol, it has been used by antifa. That’s my view on it.”

For the record: Antifa is a loosely structured left-wing political movement whose name is short for “anti-fascist.”

While it has no official symbol in the U.S., two frequently used ones depict overlapping black and red flags in a circle or three arrows in a circle, both derived from German anti-fascist movements. According to a 2017 Washington Post story on the movement’s roots, anarchism and antifa “are often lumped together, although not all antifascists identify as anarchists.”

Peace isn’t the only one upset about the painting, he said. He alleged that members of the “military community” were also put off. (Military academy Norwich University is nearby.) Peace cuts the hair of conservatives and liberals alike, he pointed out, and he thinks that business owners in the small town should remain “neutral” about politics.

Regardless of anyone’s thoughts about antifa, Rosalbo said he had no intention of alluding to it in “Graffiti Art.” In abstract art particularly, he surmised, people will see different things. They certainly do in the brushstrokes of this painting.

Rosalbo said he found out about the backlash late last month when he got a call from Melville while picking up his kids from school. Her landlord was in the gallery and

“pressuring her that the work was antifa,” Rosalbo said.

“Andrea was upset.”

If she was shaken at the time, Melville — a former public television producer and Emmy Award winner — wasn’t about to be intimidated. Later, she candidly described the landlord encounter in a letter to her email list, without mentioning his name: I told my landlord a short explanation about the painting … and then it began. He stated he had received complaints from the “military” community in town. We love America so why is there an Antifa logo & symbol represented in the painting in the window?

I said that was ridiculous and absurd, it’s Abstract Art and nothing else.

He then went off on a long, nauseating rant about Antifa being a domestic terrorist organization responsible for all of the protests, riots and deaths in this country. It’s all over the news, he said. I suggested he begin reading, listening to and watching legitimate news sources.

Melville also noted that the landlord said he might not renew her lease. “When I asked if he was threatening me, he just shrugged and left,” she wrote.

After this experience, Melville registered a complaint with the local police chief, who assured her of her First Amendment rights and that there was “nothing these accusers could do.” She also contacted the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont, the Vermont Attorney General’s Office and the Vermont Human Rights Commission.

art

The window of ART, etc. and the Northfield Barber Shop pole

ONE OF THE POINTS WAS TO TRY TO UNDERSTAND

THE INCREASING DIVISIONS IN THIS COUNTRY. MA RK R O SA LB O

MORE ART ONLINE!

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Hoping to get a response from Melville’s landlord, David Fernandez, Seven Days called him at the family’s longtime business, Fernandez Hardware, down the block from the gallery on Depot Square. When told the reason for the call, he said, “I have no further comment on that” and hung up.

Melville said another member of the Fernandez family came over a few days later with a “sort of apology.”

Melville is aware that some of her previous signage has rankled certain community members. In response to the current brouhaha, she lashed out by displaying a strongly worded, hand-printed message in her window: “To all racists and Fox News-loving bigots: This painting is not what you claim it to be. It is art. Period.”

A few locals told Melville they found the sign insulting, describing themselves as Republicans who watch Fox News but did not vote for Donald Trump. “After a very civil discussion” with one of these individuals, Melville said, “I decided to take the sign down.” Not, however, before VTDigger.org published a photo of it in an article about the art controversy.

Melville is new at being a gallerist — and a business owner. She launched ART, etc. in 2019 after taking the Women’s Small Business Program at Burlington-based Mercy Connections. She credits local artist and teacher Carolyn Zuaro with helping her set up the shop.

Raised by an artist mother, Melville said she loves art; she also appears to relish defending freedom of expression. She has plastered the gallery window with so many messages from supporters that they nearly eclipse the artwork at the center of the kerfuffle. Some of those supporters, Melville observed, are retired military personnel.

The messages greeted visitors who turned out for a reception last Friday. But controversy was less evident inside the gallery, where, along with an array of pottery, jewelry, candles, soaps and textiles, they found floral paintings by Montpelier artist Katie O’Rourke. Pretty, feminine and meditative, her close-up studies of

Andrea Melville

INFO “Art From the Shutdown,” with Mark Rosalbo and Katie O’Rourke, on view through May 29 at ART, etc. in Northfield. artetcvt.com

hydrangea blossoms rendered in pastel hues seem a blissful world away from human conflict.

Rosalbo’s paintings are hung salon-style in the gallery’s back room. He made these and many more, he explained, in response to events and trends of the past year: the pandemic, Zoom communications, the Black Lives Matter

movement, even the weather and a personal pastime, running. Most of the paintings are nonrepresentational, although one is recognizably an American flag spattered with “blood,” and a few include text.

“One of the points was to try to understand the increasing divisions in this country,” Rosalbo said of his art making.

The nascent painter has experimented with styles and techniques: sharp geometric arrangements, Mark Rothko-esque abstractions, calligraphic strokes that resemble Japanese sumi-e ink works.

Rosalbo also wrote George Winston-inspired piano compositions to accompany each of three groups of paintings. Visitors can listen to the melodies, just a few minutes long, via a QR code and a smartphone.

“The entire idea of putting the music together,” he said, “was to enhance the experience of looking at the artwork.”

Minimal and calming, these snippets of sound seem to extend an aural link to O’Rourke’s botanical beauty in the adjacent room.

Prior to the reception, a patron purchased Rosalbo’s “Graffiti Art” for $800. On Friday, red “sold” dots appeared beside other paintings. The masked attendees seemed happy to be out, socializing and talking art.

For his part, Peace said he hopes that when the exhibit closes, the conflict will be laid to rest. “I’m pro-business, and I’m pro-ART, etc.,” he said. “Nobody needs any more hassles and hard times.”

For 21 years in the U.S. Air Force, Peace added, he defended the Constitution — and whoever held the office of the presidency.

He could have been echoing Gen. Mark Milley, current chair of the U.S. Department of Defense Joint Chiefs of Staff, who on May 1 delivered the commencement address at Norwich Katie O’Rourke University.

“You know, there’s over 190 countries in the world that are in the United Nations, but we, the United States of America, we’re the only one to have a military that swears an oath to a document. Not to a person, a tribe, a religion, but to an idea…,” Milley told the graduating cadets. “[T]he idea that’s in that Constitution, the idea that my parents fought for in World War II, the idea that has propelled us through our darkest days as a nation, affirms that every single one of us is created equal in the eyes of the law.” m

Find exhibits, events, talks and call-to-artist listings at sevendaysvt.com/art. If you’re planning a virtual or IRL event or exhibition, submit the details for a free listing using the form at sevendaysvt.com/postevent. You may also email information to galleries@sevendaysvt.com. Accompanied, identified and credited photographs are encouraged where applicable.

SEVEN DAYS MAY 12-19, 2021

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music+nightlife

JACK Quartet

News and views on the local music + nightlife scene

BY J O R D A N ADAMS

Take Me to Church …

Street

REMEMBER LIVE SHOWS? 58

SEVEN DAYS MAY 12-19. 2021

technically no longer accurate. In this case, that’s a good thing.

Also exciting is the final event of this year’s BDJF: On Sunday, June 13, Middlebury composer MATTHEW EVAN TAYLOR and New York City’s JACK QUARTET team up to premiere renowned trumpeter WADADA LEO SMITH’s new work, String Quartet No. 13. The show will be presented Hurly Burly-style at Smalley Park — that is, on a stage wheeled in on the back of a flatbed truck, as was done last summer

COURTESY OF LUKE AWTRY PHOTOGRAPHY

Around these parts, the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival is known as the gateway to summer. Normally, the annual 10-day event reaches nearly every square inch of downtown, with scores of nightclubs, bars and restaurants hosting music under the BDJF banner, not to mention venues such as the Flynn, Flynn Space, Waterfront Park and Church Street Marketplace. The jazz fest took a pandemic-induced hiatus last year and was replaced by a fully online alternative, the Burlington ReDiscover Jazz Festival.

The virtual fest was a valiant effort under dismal circumstances, but there’s nothing like the real thing. So Tuesday’s announcement of the BDJF’s return has us all doing the Snoopy dance.

From Friday, June 4, through Sunday, June 13, the BDJF lives — as a somewhat scaled-down but nonetheless exciting version of its usual self.

I think it goes without saying that all shows will allow for social distancing and adhere to the latest guidelines from the Vermont Department of Health, and yet here I am saying it nonetheless. But the biggest change from past years is that, aside from a few ticketed shows (such as guitarist MARC RIBOT’s trio CERAMIC DOG at

Nectar’s on Sunday, June 5), everything this year is free and outdoors, with most of the action taking place in and around the Church Street Marketplace.

The BDJF kicks off with a raucous start, a show called “50 Saxophones” on the Burlington waterfront. Led by local funk icon DAVE GRIPPO, the communitysourced group of players is set to rock your world with an en masse explosion of sax. Fun fact: 60 saxophonists have already signed up, so the name is

COURTESY OF BEOWULF SHEEHAN

S UNDbites

during the Flynn’s pioneering pop-up concert series.

There’s a ton of great stuff to see and hear between these bookending shows.

Though there won’t be a boozy block party at the top of Church Street this year, there is one planned for Saturday, June 12, right smack-dab in the middle of Main Street under the Flynn marquee.

Also presented Hurly Burly-style, the penultimate party features trumpeter RAY VEGA and his LATIN JAZZ SEXTET, psychfusion outfit BARIKA, and a beer garden across the street in City Hall Park.

Throughout the festival’s run, disparate local artists who have never worked together are teaming up for some collaborative performances.

Included in these unique partnerships, which were arranged and curated by guitarist and Saint Michael’s College associate professor of fine arts/ music BILL ELLIS, are saxophonist BRIAN MCCARTHY and rapper EDWIN OWUSU (fka S.I.N.SIZZLE), pianist TOM CLEARY and Afrojazz duo KERUBO, violinist DANIEL BERNARD ROUMAIN and percussionist GOPAL NIROULA, guitarists PAUL ASBELL and MIKAHELY, and pianist AMBER DELAURENTIS and cumbia bandleader MAÏZ SANDOVAL. “What does it sound like when they sit there and try to find some commonality?” asked the Flynn’s artistic director, STEVE MACQUEEN, of the collaborations in a recent call with Seven Days. I bet a lot of local music fans can’t wait to find out.

See the full BDJF lineup on our Live Culture blog at sevendaysvt.com, and visit discoverjazz.com for additional info. And stay tuned to these pages in the coming weeks for more in-depth looks at this year’s festival.

Into the Unknown

Matthew Evan Taylor

The Vermont music community recently said goodbye to bassist TONY MARKELLIS, who died unexpectedly at age 68 on April 29. A longtime scene fixture, he was known for his work in the UNKNOWN BLUES BAND and jazz group KILIMANJARO and as a player in the TREY ANASTASIO BAND. Though he was technically a resident of Saratoga Springs, N.Y., Markellis had a commanding presence in Burlington, particularly in the 1970s and ’80s.

Read his extensive obituary, penned by erstwhile Queen City nightclub Hunt’s co-owner FRED “CHICO” LAGER, on page 24 and at sevendaysvt.com.

“Whenever someone dies, they live on through the people who loved them,” wrote Unknown Blues Band

Well, they’re starting up again, and we're here to help. Find live music, DJs, comedy and more at sevendaysvt.com/music.

If you're a talent booker or artist planning live entertainment at a bar, nightclub, café, restaurant, brewery or coffee shop, send event details to jordan@sevendaysvt.com or submit the info using our form at sevendaysvt.com/postevent.

COURTESY OF JOSEPH DEUEL

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Tony Markellis

and Kilimanjaro bandmate PAUL ASBELL in an email to Seven Days and in the obituary. “Tony’s sense of musical time and groove — and his sense of emotional support and friendship — were as immovable and solid as his physical build.”

Markellis will be sorely missed, evident by a flood of social media tributes after news of his passing.

“It’s a huge loss, obviously, on a personal level, but we have 45 years of having developed a musical language,” said CHUCK ELLER, who also played in the Unknown Blues Band and Kilimanjaro, by phone. “That language is the ability to mind-read what the other person is going to do. After 45 years, you kind of get the kinks worked out, and you have this dialogue with your other players and a communication that only time allows. It’s not something that you can do a cram course in.”

Asbell and Eller told Seven Days that they plan to celebrate Markellis’ life with a live music event later this year, though no details have yet been confirmed. We’ll be sure to let you know when they are.

Waking Windows show ever. Viewable at wakingwindows.com/poster-zones, the page features a complete list of every show the production company has put on, as well as a ton of art posters.

“I’ve always been one to archive emails or any attachments, anything anybody sent me,” Mavadones said by phone. “It’s weird to think back about the actual timeline of how these things came along.”

The archive traces back the company’s lineage to the pre-Waking Windows era, when upstart groups such as Angioplasty Media and MSR Presents, which eventually fused to become Waking Windows, were setting up shows all over town.

Aside from being an obvious nostalgia trip, the archive is the ultimate argument settler. You can look at the list and know with confidence which bands played with which other bands at which venue on which particular date.

On a hopeful note: Soon enough, shows that haven’t happened yet will need to be added to this living document.

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Cattle Call

Seven Days is looking to bring on some new freelance music contributors who can tackle the perennial task of album reviewing. Ideal candidates are Vermont-based, have extensive music knowledge and are comfortable reviewing albums in a range of genres.

A familiarity with Vermont artists is a huge plus.

If you’re interested, send me an email at music@sevendaysvt.com introducing yourself, along with three diverse, concise writing samples that highlight your music chops and show off your voice. Think 500 words or fewer. m

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Ethiopian/Eritrean Takeout SAT., JUN. 5 O’BRIEN COMMUNITY CENTER, WINOOSKI

History Channel

Sigh. For two Mays in a row, we’ve had to endure a world with no Waking Windows Music & Arts Festival. Usually occurring the first weekend in May, the three-day indie music celebration in Winooski was one of the first major local events to be canceled because of the pandemic. Currently, the fest is scheduled to resume on Friday, May 6, through Sunday, May 8, 2022.

But you gotta stay busy, right? As a fun quarantine project, Waking Windows cofounder NICK MAVADONES spearheaded the Waking Windows Archive, a listing and gallery of every

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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.

YEARS & YEARS, “Starstruck” AURORA SHIELDS, “Only You Can Make Me Blue” THE 1975, “She’s American” EMPRESS OF, “U Give It Up” GORILLAZ, “Clint Eastwood”

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music+nightlife

REVIEW this Page McConnell, Maybe We’re the Visitors

to craft a record completely with synthesizer. It’s a tool McConnell had largely avoided in his career before now.

“I always imagined that I would have synths,” McConnell reveals in the album notes, written by Rolling Stone senior editor David Fricke. Unlike artists such as David Bowie, who famously would buy gear and immediately throw away the instructions, McConnell didn’t

want to use synthesizers until he truly understood both their complexities and their possibilities.

“I had to understand the gear, and it had to work with me,” he told Fricke. “It was always my goal to get to this point — where the synths inspire me and the melodies.”

McConnell has clearly reached that point. Over nine tracks of blissfully ambient electronic music, the Goddard College alum crafts an eerie world as beautiful as it is alien. The record itself is a lesson in sparseness; on each track McConnell shows incredible restraint and patience in his playing.

On “Terra Incognita,” he lets a little light shine through. A beat processed to the point where it sounds like an idling engine runs steadily through the song, laying a foundation for McConnell’s acute melodic sensibilities. With a deft hand, he fills spaces with care and precision. Maybe We’re the Visitors plays like a puzzle solved slowly.

McConnell began work on the album

following a vacation to Iceland just before the pandemic. The primal nature of the volcanic island nation — the wild beauty and panoramic landscapes — inspired him to turn to his synths. He even recorded some songs at a geothermal spa in a lava field, including the haunting “Moss Suite, Pt.1.” The track would be right at home on the Blade Runner score.

The record marks a fascinating turn from a member of the institution that is Phish. Die-hard fans will insist this sort of eclecticism is part of the band’s appeal, but it’s safe to say there is nothing even remotely close to Visitors in Phish’s catalog.

It’s refreshing to see something new from a musician of McConnell’s caliber and renown. But the quality and strangeness of Maybe We’re the Visitors is such that it stands on its own, wholly apart from its creator’s past.

Stream Maybe We’re the Visitors on all major streaming services, or preorder the vinyl at drygoods.phish.com.

Coquette formed at Sharon Academy and celebrated graduation by recording their 2013 debut, The Mandrill EP. It was a brash, exciting ride, rough around the edges but still undeniable. After a whirlwind run of shows, festivals and increasingly complex compositions, Coquette called it quits with the release of their third and final EP, Three, at the end of 2016.

But with the world on hold amid the pandemic, the trio has gathered again

in Vermont and seized the opportunity for a project it had always wanted to pursue: recording its entire catalog live, complete with a film crew to document every track. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, of course, there’s no crowd. The first release in the series, NOAUDIENCE: The Mandrill, is a fullcircle moment in which the band revisits its debut.

As you might expect, the trio’s chops have gotten more ferocious with time. This is especially evident in the vocal work. Coquette have always incorporated big harmonies into their music, but, early on, ambition often exceeded their intonation. Those days are long gone. These are muscular, dynamic performances that sound even better than the originals.

Opener “Rabbit Season” is a knockout punch. Surf-thrash workout “IN/Side” cooks hotter than ever. Closing cut “Homo Inferior” is a whole new animal, with more bottom to the funk and a heavy metal edge.

Overall, the crew hews closely to the original EP and does it in order. Yet

there’s a lot to delight those familiar with the recording. The subtle reworkings of tracks such as “Zenith” and “Copernicus the Capricorn” reflect both musical maturity and restless creativity. Coquette are still exploring, still searching.

I know I’m not alone in wondering whether having all this time together will result in new Coquette material. In the meantime, the NOAUDIENCE series is powerful stuff — another edition, NOAUDIENCE: Separatio, was released in April. Also check out the full live experience on YouTube, because these young men absolutely hurl themselves into every track.

For longtime fans, these new recordings are a rare treat, and for new listeners they’re an ideal introduction.

Lean and clean, NOAUDIENCE: The Mandrill shows Coquette stripped down to their essence. The album is a victory lap for one of the tightest trios Vermont has ever produced.

NOAUDIENCE: The Mandrill is available at bandnamedcoquette. bandcamp.com.

(KEYED RECORDS, VINYL, DIGITAL)

From an obsidian void of silence, blips of light come to life. A sort of acid-trip take on tubular bells drifts out of the dark like an alarm clock going off in a dream, followed soon by the soft wash of synthesizers. I release a breath I didn’t realize I was holding as “Radio Silence,” the first track on Page McConnell’s new record, drifts by with all the austere loneliness of the last glacier slipping into the sea.

A haunting exploration of solitude, Maybe We’re the Visitors is something of a sonic departure for McConnell, who is best known as one-fourth of Vermont’s most famous band, Phish. With the jamband titans, McConnell’s dexterous piano, organ and clavinet work is a key element in the group’s sound. He abandons all of that on his latest LP, instead opting

Coquette, NOAUDIENCE: The Mandrill (SELF-RELEASED, DIGITAL)

Some bands you hear about because they delight audiences. Some you hear about because they terrify the hell out of other musicians. For me, in the case of central Vermont’s Coquette, it was both. I’d heard about the young local rock trio’s dynamite live shows and supernatural talent for a full year before I finally saw the group at Nectar’s in Burlington and got my face duly melted. At the time, its members were just out of high school and already one of the tightest, wildest bands in the state.

Brothers Cobalt (guitar) and Titien (drums) Tolbert and bassist Angus Davis comprised a force of nature, producing the kind of raw magic that makes rock and roll great. Their sound was complex, too, as much prog as punk. This was a band comfortable in many genres and happy to cram several of them into the same song.

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CHRIS FARNSWORTH

JUSTIN BOLAND

ARE YOU A VT ARTIST OR BAND? SEND US YOUR MUSIC! DIGITAL: MUSIC@SEVENDAYSVT.COM; SNAIL MAIL: MUSIC C/O SEVEN DAYS, 255 S. CHAMPLAIN ST., SUITE 5, BURLINGTON, VT 05401

READY TO SEND IT?

Send us a photo of you hitting the trails and you’ll be entered to win day passes to

The Killington Bike Park.

With over 30 miles of trails and terrain suitable for everyone, this trail system is great for beginners to experts.

Submit your photo by May 16 at staytrippervt.com.

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COURTESY OF ANNA KOORIS/NETFLIX

WEST NILE VIRUS DENGUE FEVER • ZIKA

movies

YOUR GLOBAL COMMUNITY NEEDS YOU!

Screen for future research to develop vaccines against mosquito-borne viruses MALICE DOMESTIC Norton and Seyfried play a couple whose marriage deteriorates in their creepy new home in this attempt at an arty scare flick.

Healthy volunteers ages 18 to 50 Determine your eligibility Email UVMVTC@UVM.EDU or visit UVMVTC.ORG COMPENSATION POSSIBLE IF ENROLLED IN FUTURE RESEARCH

Contact the Vaccine Testing Center at 802-656-0013 for more info and to schedule a screening. Leave your name, number and a good time to call back.

Things Heard & Seen HH

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ur streaming entertainment options are overwhelming — and not always easy to sort through. Certain people have a bottomless appetite for haunted-house stories, and Netflix knows I’m one of them. But what really convinced me to watch the streaming service’s latest glossy gothic was that its opening credits feature a slideshow of Hudson River School paintings, including Thomas Cole’s fourpart allegory The Voyage of Life.

I saw Cole’s haunting series when I was a child at the Munson-WilliamsProctor Arts Institute in Utica, N.Y., and it shaped my view of life and death alike.

At the time, my family were Manhattan transplants living in a remote, ramshackle farmhouse in upstate New York — much like the family in this movie, based on Elizabeth Brundage’s novel All Things Cease to Appear.

The deal

Snack on the BITE-CLUB NEWSLETTER for a taste of this week’s flavorful food coverage. It’ll hold you over until Wednesday.

SUBSCRIBE AT

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In 1980, George and Catherine Claire (James Norton and Amanda Seyfried) are an arty couple living happily in New York City with their young daughter, Franny (Ana Sophia Heger). Then George takes a job teaching at a liberal arts college upstate and persuades Catherine to leave her art restoration job. He finds his family the perfect historic house, complete with an adjacent dairy.

But Catherine is listless in the sticks,

George is increasingly distant, and things happen at night that terrify Franny. Catherine researches the house’s dark history and finds a strange ring that appears to be linked to supernatural manifestations, both benign and terrifying. She seeks guidance in the work of 18th-century mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, a favorite of spiritualists for his theories about the presence of ghosts in the material world, and joins some of George’s campus colleagues in a séance. But what she learns about her house — and her husband — could be more than she bargained for.

Shining this is not. Things Heard & Seen isn’t especially scary; the main recipient of the house’s “horror” is poor Franny, who has almost no dialogue or screen time. She stays docilely in the background while her parents act out a psychodrama that feels increasingly like a Lifetime thriller.

The further we get into the film’s 121 minutes, the clearer it is that these characters have no hidden depths. Catherine is passive and childlike, only fitfully trying to take her fate into her own hands. (Even Rosemary in Rosemary’s Baby showed a lot more gumption.) As for George, whose dishonest twitchiness is initially amusing, he turns out to be the most boilerplate kind of sociopath.

Rather than the story of a haunted marriage, the movie becomes a lurid tale of spousal malfeasance and gaslighting with some ghosts mixed in. Subplots feel underdeveloped; supporting actors (including F. Murray Abraham, Karen Allen and Rhea Seehorn) feel wasted. As for the art and literary references — what are they even doing there?

If nothing else, at least now I’ve seen a movie featuring a climactic re-creation of Cole’s “Manhood” painting, which has always riveted me with its depiction of maturity as a guy sailing a boat over a foaming cascade with his hands clasped in desperate prayer. (As George points

REVIEW

Will you like it?

For the first 40 minutes or so, I had high hopes for Things Heard & Seen. Directed

by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, the team behind American Splendor, the movie has a prestige-film feel. The production design of the Claires’ house is compellingly vintage and grubby.

Norton and Seyfried are convincing as a “perfect” couple whose relationship is actually rife with lies. (Catherine hides an eating disorder from George; he hides an affair.) And, perhaps most importantly, the period details encourage us to make subliminal connections with that other movie about an unhappy couple holed up in the country: Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.

That’s a bad idea, though, because The

SUPPORT TODAY

THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD: Taylor Sheridan (Wind River) directed this thriller in which Angelina Jolie plays a fire warden protecting a teen murder witness from assassins in the Montana wilderness.

(100 min, R. Essex Cinemas, Sunset Drive-In) US KIDS: The “kids” are Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students speaking out against gun violence in this acclaimed documentary from director Kim A. Snyder. (98 min, NR. Savoy Theater)

NOW PLAYING DEMON SLAYER THE MOVIE: MUGEN TRAINHHHH A team of demon slayers embarks on a new mission as the popular manga/anime series jumps to the big screen. Haruo Sotozaki directed. (117 min, R. Essex Cinemas [dubbed and subtitled])

RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGONHHHH A young warrior seeks the help of the last living dragon in this Disney animated fantasy. Don Hall and Carlos López Estrada directed. (114 min, PG. Essex Cinemas, Sunset Drive-In) THE RESORT: When you hear that a ghost called “Half-Faced Girl” haunts an abandoned Hawaiian resort, you should (a) steer clear; (b) be like the folks in this horror movie, written and directed by Taylor Chien. (75 min, NR. Sunset Drive-In) THE TRUFFLE HUNTERSHHHH1/2 This acclaimed documentary examines the work of a group of elderly Italians who carry on an ancient tradition.

Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw directed. (84 min, PG-13. Savoy Theater)

OLDER FILMS

GODZILLA VS. KONGHHH Ready to go back to the theater and see giant monsters smash each other in a would-be blockbuster directed by indie horror filmmaker Adam Wingard? (113 min, PG-13. Stowe Cinema, Sunset Drive-In)

THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT (Essex Cinemas, Sat & Sun only)

GUNDAHHHH1/2 Calling farm fans! Viktor Kosakovskiy’s festival fave documentary takes a black-and-white deep dive into the daily life of a sow, her piglets, two cows and a one-legged chicken. (93 min, G. Savoy Theater, Sat only)

OPEN THEATERS

HERE TODAYHH Billy Crystal directed and stars in this comedy about the friendship between a comedy writer and a street singer (Tiffany Haddish), also starring Sharon Stone. (117 min, PG-13. Essex Cinemas)

out to his students, analyzing the painting, it’s never wise to take your hands off the tiller.) Things Heard & Seen almost redeems itself with its pop-surrealist ending, but it’s too little, too late. There are better things to hear and see.

If you like this, try...

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 25TH ANNIVERSARY (Essex Cinemas, Sun only)

ESSEX CINEMAS & T-REX THEATER: 21 Essex Way, Suite 300, Essex, 879-6543, essexcinemas.com THE SAVOY THEATER: 26 Main St., Montpelier, 229-0598, savoytheater.com STOWE CINEMA 3PLEX: 454 Mountain Rd., Stowe, 253-4678, stowecinema.com SUNSET DRIVE-IN: 155 Porters Point Rd., Colchester, 862-1800, sunsetdrivein.com

70 HOURS

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is a riff on “The Turn of the Screw” set in the 1980s. It’s a mixed bag and overlong, but a few episodes are brilliant — and don’t miss the epilogue set in Vermont!

• The Hare (2021 novel by Melanie Finn): Yes, a book, and not even a horror book. But there’s a lot of gothic in this novel by a Vermonter, in which a patrician wastrel transplants his naïve young girlfriend and their child to an isolated farmhouse in the Northeast Kingdom. He weaves a web of lies; she’s all too willing to believe, until she isn’t. Finn digs deep into the feminist themes that Things Heard & Seen uses as window dressing.

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• We Are Still Here (2015; Tubi, Vudu, Amazon Prime Video, rentable): Hoping to heal from a loss, a couple relocates to a historic New England home in this under-seen indie horror film, which makes more original (and scary) use of the theme of a dwelling with a legacy of evil.

• “The Haunting of Bly Manor” (nine episodes, 2020; Netflix): The latest in Netflix’s popular “Haunting” series

JUNE 4-13, 2021

WRATH OF MANHHH Jason Statham works for an LA cash truck company in the latest action thriller from director Guy Ritchie, also starring Holt McCallany and Josh Hartnett. (118 min, R. Essex Cinemas, Sunset Drive-In)

photography

SPIRAL: Samuel L. Jackson and Chris Rock play detectives working a disturbingly familiar gruesome murder case in this new chapter “from the book of Saw,” directed by Darren Lynn Bousman.

(93 min, R. Essex Cinemas, Sunset Drive-In)

NOMADLANDHHHHH Frances McDormand plays a woman set adrift by the Great Recession to travel the country in her beat-up van in this Oscar front-runner directed by Chloé Zhao. (108 min, R. Sunset Drive-In)

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PROFILE: A British journalist (Valene Kane) infiltrates the Islamic State’s social media recruitment networks in this thriller from Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted). (105 min, R. Essex Cinemas)

MORTAL KOMBATHH An MMA fighter competes in a high-stakes intergalactic martial-arts battle in the latest adaptation of the classic video game.

Lewis Tan stars. Simon McQuoid directed. (110 min, R. Essex Cinemas, Stowe Cinema)

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FINDING YOU: An uptight violinist falls for a movie star on her college semester abroad in this romance from director Brian Baugh, starring Katherine McNamara and Jedidiah Goodacre. (115 min, PG. Essex Cinemas)

@FlynnVT

luk e

THE DJINN: Asking a monster to grant his wish doesn’t work out so well for a boy in this horror flick from directors David Charbonier and Justin Powell.

(82 min, R. Sunset Drive-In)

LIMBOHHHH A group of refugees wait on a Scottish island for the results of their asylum claims in this drama from writer-director Ben Sharrock.

(103 min, R. Savoy Theater)

raphy tog ho

NEW IN THEATERS

IN ASSOCIATION WITH

M A R G O T HA R R I S O N

margot@sevendaysvt.com 2V-jazzfest051221 1

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classes THE FOLLOWING CLASS LISTINGS ARE PAID ADVERTISEMENTS. ANNOUNCE YOUR CLASS FOR AS LITTLE AS $16.75/WEEK (INCLUDES SIX PHOTOS AND UNLIMITED DESCRIPTION ONLINE). SUBMIT YOUR CLASS AD AT SEVENDAYSVT.COM/POSTCLASS.

BCA Studios

Burlington City Arts spring class registration is now open! Find these classes and many more at burlingtoncityarts.org.

HAND-STAMPED JEWELRY: Local jeweler Bren Prescott instructs students on creating simple but satisfying fine metal jewelry via Zoom. Learn the basics of metal stamping to create your own unique pieces to keep or give as gifts. Class includes one hour of instruction plus all the materials you will need, in a kit. Wed., May

18, 6-7 p.m. Cost: $20. Location: BCA Studios, online. Info: Kiersten Wlliams, 865-7157, kwilliams@ burlingtoncityarts.org, burlingtoncityarts.org.

WIRE EARRINGS: Local jeweler Bren Prescott instructs students on creating simple but satisfying metal wire jewelry. Learn the basics of wirework and beading to create your own unique pieces to keep or give as gifts. Class includes two hours of instruction plus all the materials you will need, in a kit. Wed., May 25, 6-8 p.m. Cost: $40. Location: BCA Studios, Zoom class. Info: Kiersten Williams, 865-7157, kwilliams@burlingtoncityarts.org, burlingtoncityarts.org.

drumming

martial arts

well-being

DJEMBE & TAIKO DRUMMING: JOIN US!: New hybrid classes (Zoom and in-person) starting!

Taiko: Tuesday and Wednesday.

Djembe: Wednesday. Kids and Parents: Tuesday and Wednesday.

COVID-19-free rental instruments; curbside pickup, too. Private Hybrid Conga lessons by appointment. Let’s prepare for future drumming outdoors. Schedule/ register online. Location: Online and in-person at Taiko Space, 208 Flynn Ave., Suite 3G, Burlington. Info: 999-4255, burlingtontaiko.org.

VERMONT BRAZILIAN JIU-JITSU: This school was developed to communicate the importance of proper, legitimate and complete Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu instruction. We cover fundamentals of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu with a realistic approach to self-defense training skills in a friendly, safe and positive environment. All are welcome; no experience required. Develop confidence, strength and endurance.

Julio Cesar “Foca” Fernandez Nunes was born and raised on the shores of Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Earning his black belt and representing the Carlson Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Team, Julio “Foca” went on to become a five-time Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu National Champion, three-time Rio de Janeiro State Champion and two-time IBJJF World JiuJitsu Champion! Julio “Foca” is the only CBJJP, USBJJF and IBJJF-certified seventh-degree coral belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and self-defense instructor under late grand master Carlson Gracie Sr. currently teaching in the USA. Accept no Iimitations!

Location: Vermont Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, 55 Leroy Rd., Williston.

Info: 598-2839, julio@bjjusa.com, vermontbjj.com.

FUNCTIONAL NUTRITION & HEALTH: This class will have five modules that will allow students to pick the subjects they want to study, or they can take the entire five modules for the practitioner training. The modules are Anatomy & Physiology, Essential Oils, Nutrition, Qi Gong, and SelfCare/Lifestyle. Mon., starts Sep. 13, 9 a.m.-noon. Cost: $2,500/120 hours; individual modules are less.

Location: Elements of Healing, 21 Essex Way, Suite 109, Essex Junction. Info: Scott Moylan, 2888160, scott@elementsofhealing. net, elementsofhealing.net.

language ADULT LIVE SPANISH E-CLASSES: Join us for adult Spanish classes this summer using Zoom online video conferencing. Our 15th year.

Learn from a native speaker via small group classes and individual instruction. You’ll always be participating and speaking. Four different levels. Note: Classes fill up quickly. See our website or contact us for details. Beginning week of June 7. Cost: $270/10 weekly classes of 90+ min. each.

Location: Spanish in Waterbury Center, Waterbury Center. Info: 585-1025, spanishparavos@ gmail.com, spanishwaterbury center.com.

ONLINE SPANISH CLASSES FOR ALL AGES: Premier native-speaking Spanish professor Maigualida Rak is giving fun, interactive online lessons to improve comprehension and pronunciation and to achieve fluency. Audiovisual 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 our website: spanishclassesvt. com. Location: Maigualida Rak, online. Info: Maigualida Rak, info@spanishclassesvt.com, spanishclassesvt.com.

yoga EVOLUTION YOGA: Whether you are new to yoga or have been at it for years, you’ll find the support you need to awaken your practice. Now offering outdoor in-person classes overlooking Lake Champlain! Livestream and recorded classes continue.

Flexible pricing based on your needs, scholarships avail. 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: 8649642, evolutionvt.com.

104.7 FM Montpelier | Burlington | Plattsburgh 93.7 FM Middlebury | Burlington | Shelburne 95.7 FM Northeast Kingdom: Essex | Orleans | Caledonia

Vermont Independent Radio pointfm.com 64

SEVEN DAYS MAY 12-19, 2021

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PAULA ROUTLY

Readers help pay for the production of this awardwinning weekly newspaper. More than 2,000 have made one-time or recurring donations to sustain Seven Days during the pandemic. Their support — along with advertisers’ — has allowed us to deliver breaking news and thoughtful long-form journalism throughout the crisis.

Support local journalism — make a contribution today!

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Join the Super Readers at sevendaysvt.com/super-readers.

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Contact Corey Grenier at 865-1020, ext. 36 or superreaders@sevendaysvt.com.

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Seven Days on the press in Mirabel, Québec

3/16/21 7:06 PM

Humane

Society of Chittenden County

housing »

Mo AGE/SEX: 5-year-old neutered male ARRIVAL DATE: March 25, 2021

COURTESY OF KELLY SCHULZE/MOUNTAIN DOG PHOTOGRAPHY

REASON HERE: He was transferred from Good Karma Pet Rescue in Florida.

SUMMARY: This handsome guy is a little introverted, takes a minute to warm up to new people and loves food — hmm, sound relatable? Mo made the long journey from Florida to Vermont to find a laid-back home where he can be himself and be a companion to a family willing to give him a little space until he’s comfortable. A little shake of the treat bag sure helps things along! If you can’t wait to see more of Mo, stop by HSCC today.

DID YOU KNOW?

Mo is what we call a “spirit cat,” which is a term for very shy cats who are independent and often thrive with other cats — but may never warm up to being a lap cat with humans. They are a great choice for people with a quiet home who may not have time to devote to an attention-seeking pet.

Sponsored by:

CATS/DOGS: Mo has lived with cats in foster care and did well.

He has no known history with dogs.

Visit the Humane Society of Chittenden County at 142 Kindness Court, South Burlington, Tuesday through Friday from 1 to 6 p.m., or Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Call 862-0135 or visit hsccvt.org for more info.

NEW STUFF ONLINE EVERY DAY! PLACE YOUR ADS 24-7 AT SEVENDAYSVT.COM.

APARTMENTS, CONDOS & HOMES

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CARS, TRUCKS, MOTORCYCLES

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CHILDCARE, HEALTH/ WELLNESS, PAINTING

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APPLIANCES, KID STUFF, ELECTRONICS, FURNITURE

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NO SCAMS, ALL LOCAL, POSTINGS DAILY

SEVEN DAYS MAY 12-19, 2021

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CLASSIFIEDS on the road

housing

housing ads: $25 (25 words) legals: 52¢/word buy this stuff: free online services: $12 (25 words)

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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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CLASSIFIEDS KEY appt. appointment apt. apartment BA bathroom BR bedroom DR dining room DW dishwasher HDWD hardwood HW hot water LR living room NS no smoking OBO or best offer refs. references sec. dep. security deposit W/D washer & dryer

EQUAL HOUSING OPPORTUNITY All real estate advertising in this newspaper is subject to the Federal Fair Housing Act of 1968 and similar Vermont statutes which make it illegal to advertise any preference, limitations, or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, handicap, presence of minor children in the family or receipt of public assistance, or an intention to make any such preference, limitation or a discrimination. The newspaper will not knowingly accept any advertising for real estate, which is in violation of the law. Our

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3842 Dorset Ln., Williston

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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

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print deadline: Mondays at 4:30 p.m. post ads online 24/7 at: sevendaysvt.com/classifieds questions? classifieds@sevendaysvt.com 865-1020 x10

HOME/GARDEN

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MISCELLANEOUS

Antiques, Decor, Highline Furnishings (3) Online Auctions Ending May 17, 19, & 24 (Rutland)

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5/6/21 5:21 PM

Homeshares SHOREHAM

Share home with senior in his late 80s who enjoys card games and time with his family.

Minimal rent in exchange for evening meal prep 5-7 days/week, companionship & help with housekeeping/laundry. Furnished bdrm, private BA.

WATERBURY Quiet professional and his dog seek housemate to share large home w/mother-in-law suite.

Occasional pet care helpful. Close to I-89. $600/mo. all inc. No smoking. Pet considered.

GRAND ISLE Share lovely home near lake with woman in her 70s who enjoys reading, gardening and staying active outdoors. Furnished bdrm, private BA, and bonus room available for $550/ month plus utilities.

Finding you just the right housemate for over 35 years!

Call 863-5625 or visit HomeShareVermont.org for an application. Interview, refs, bg check req. EHO Homeshare-temp2.indd 1

5/10/21 10:35 AM

Show and tell.

Sudoku

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.

9+

3÷

8+

6x

1 7 8

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BY JOSH REYNOLDS

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BY JOSH REYNOLDS

DIFFICULTY THIS WEEK: HH

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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.

4 1 5 6 3 9 8 7 2 7 8 3 1 2 5 4 6 9 ANSWERS ON P.70 6 2 HH9= CHALLENGING 7 8 4 H1HH =3HOO,5BOY! H = MODERATE 1 6 8 9 7 3 5 2 4 2 3 4 8 5 6 7 9 1 REPEATED NOTES 9 5 7 4 1 2 6 8 3 ANSWERS ON P.70 » 5 9 1 3 6 8 2 4 7 3 7 6 2 4 1 9 5 8 8 4 2 5 9 7 3 1 6

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DIFFICULTY THIS WEEK: HH

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by Seven Days.

SEVENDAYSVT.COM/DAILY7 8v-daily7-coffee.indd 1

SEVEN DAYS MAY 12-19, 2021

1/13/14 1:45 PM

69

Legal Notices

(2) Leaf blowers must bear an affixed

FROM P.69

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SEVEN DAYS MAY 12-19, 2021

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No. 687

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SPORTS EQUIPMENT

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PUZZLE ANSWERS

(1) Leaf blowers must be manufactured after January 1, 2005 for EPA Class 4 engines and after January 1, 2008 for EPA Class 5 engines;

3

Plans may be viewed upon request by contacting the Department of Permitting & Inspections between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 4:30 p.m.

Participation in the DRB proceeding is a prerequisite to the right to take any subsequent appeal.

Please note that ANYTHING submitted to the Zoning office is considered public and cannot be kept confidential. This may not be the final order in

(c) Labor Day to Memorial Day: Between Labor Day of one year and Memorial Day of the next, only leaf blowers meeting the following criteria are permitted for use:

1

2. 21-0799CA; 157-159 South Champlain Street (FD5, Ward 3C) Nathan Dagesse New five-story building with 32 new residential units.

(2) Only one leaf blower may be used at a time in any lot less than 5000 square feet.

2

1. 21-0927CA; 77 Pine Street (FD6, Ward 3C) Nedde Real Estate 49-unit residential apartment building.

(1) Electric or battery-powered leaf blowers on which is affixed a manufacturer’s label indicating the model number and a noise level not in excess of 65dBA per residential lot may be used subject to the other provisions of this section;

2

Telephone: US: +1 312 626 6799 or +1 929 205 6099 or +1 301 715 8592 or +1 346 248 7799 or +1 669 900 6833 or +1 253 215 8782

6

Password: 053341

(b) Memorial Day to Labor Day. No person shall use a leaf blower within the City from Memorial Day to Labor Day in each year, except as follows:

6

Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85024138316 ?pwd=VHdubEFMLzRXQjNQKzd0cEs1Y05zUT09 Webinar ID: 850 2413 8316

5

BURLINGTON DEVELOPMENT REVIEW BOARD TUESDAY, JUNE 1, 2021, 5:00 PM PUBLIC HEARING NOTICE REMOTE MEETING

It is hereby Ordained by the City Council of the City of Burlington as follows: That Chapter 21, Offenses and Miscellaneous Provisions, of the Code of Ordinances of the City of Burlington be and hereby is amended by adding a new section, Sec. 21-14, Leaf blowers, thereto to read as follows: Sec. 21-14. Leaf blowers. (a) Purposes. To further the well-being of the City by reducing noise, reducing carbon emissions, and eliminating nuisances caused by leaf blowers.

2

2. 21-0799CA; 157-159 South Champlain Street (FD5, Ward 3C) Nathan Dagesse New five-story building with 32 new residential units.

4

1. 21-0927CA; 77 Pine Street (FD6, Ward 3C) Nedde Real Estate 49-unit residential apartment building.

5

Telephone: US: +1 312 626 6799 or +1 929 205 6099 or +1 301 715 8592 or +1 346 248 7799 or +1 669 900 6833 or +1 253 215 8782

6

Password: 053341

3

Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85024138316?p wd=VHdubEFMLzRXQjNQKzd0cEs1Y05zUT09 Webinar ID: 850 2413 8316

1

PETS

CITY OF BURLINGTON IN THE YEAR TWO THOUSAND TWENTY-ONE AN ORDINANCE IN RELATION TO B.C.O. - OFFENSES AND MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS — EXPRESS PROHIBITIONS SEC. 21-14 LEAF BLOWERS ORDINANCE 6.03 Sponsor: Councilor Paul, Ordinance Committee Public Hearing Dates: __ First reading: 01/21/20 Referred to: Ordinance C Rules suspended and placed in all stages of passage: _ Second reading: 04/12/21 Action: adopted Date: 04/12/21 Signed by Mayor: 05/03/21 Published: 05/12/21 Effective: 06/02/21

5

INSTRUCTION

BURLINGTON DEVELOPMENT REVIEW BOARD TUESDAY JUNE 2, 2021, 5PM PUBLIC HEARING NOTICE

REMOTE MEETING

3

music

which items will be heard. Please view final Agenda, at www.burlingtonvt.gov/dpi/drb/agendas or the office notice board, one week before the hearing for the order in which items will be heard.

6

WANT TO BUY

Rachel Lomonaco, District Coordinator 111 West Street Essex Junction, VT 05452 802-879-5658 Rachel.Lomonaco@vermont.gov

4

ACT 250 NOTICE MINOR APPLICATION #4C032921C 10 V.S.A. §§ 6001 - 6093 On May 3, 2021, Allen Brook Development Inc., 31 Commerce Avenue, South Burlington, VT 05403 and Glavel Inc., 110 Main Street, Suite 2G, ATTENTION, VIAGRA & Burlington, VT 05401 filed application number Serious inquiries only, CIALIS USERS! 4C0329-21C for a project that includes: (1) merging please!

A cheaper alternativeSmClassyDisplay-roberts042121.indd to 4/19/21 11:151 AM Lots #4 and #5 to create a single 14.67 acre lot; (2) high drugstore prices! a change-in-use to Suite #1 for use as a facility to 50-pill special: $99 + manufacture foam glass aggregate; (3) construcfree shipping! 100% tion of a 45ft x 60ft covered canopy for glass guaranteed. Call now: storage; (4) construction of two 14ft diameter, 58ft WE BUY LEVIS & USA 888-531-1192. (AAN tall silos for raw glass storage; (5) construction DENIM CAN) of two concrete bunkers for temporary storage We buy your used Levis of foam glass aggregate; (6) construction of a & USA-made denim at CABLE PRICE INCREASE new paved truck pull-off for loading material; (7) Downtown Threads in AGAIN? construction of a new 4ft x 15ft covered canopy Burlington & Camille’s Switch to DirecTV & over the entrance to Suite #1; (8) construction of a Experienced Clothing save + get a $100 visa new transformer pad on the north side of Suite #1; in Rutland. james@ gift card! Get more (9) construction of a 10ft x 20ft building addition channels for less money. downtownthreads.net to house mechanical equipment on the north side or 802-773-0971.

Restrictions apply. Call of Suite #1; (10) construction of a 2-acre gravel now. 877-693-0625 yard for storage, bagging, and handling of finished (AAN CAN). product; and (11) amend condition #16 of Land Use Permit #4C0329-21A to allow manufacturing use DONATE YOUR CAR TO in the existing commercial building on Lot #5. The KIDS project is located at 131 Red Pine Circle in Essex, Your donation helps Vermont. fund the search for missing children.

The District 4 Environmental Commission is Accepting trucks, reviewing this application under Act 250 Rule motorcycles & RVs, 51— Minor Applications. A copy of the application too! Fast, free pickup. and proposed permit are available for review at Running or not. 24-hour the office listed below. The application and a response. Maximum tax draft permit may also be viewed on the Natural donation. Call 877-266Resources Board’s web site (http://nrb.vermont.

0681. (AAN CAN). gov) by clicking on “Act 250 Database” and enterBASS, GUITAR, DRUMS, ing the project number “4C0329-21C.” HUGHESNET SATELLITE VOICE LESSONS & INTERNET MORE No hearing will be held and a permit may be issued Finally, no hard data Remote music lessons unless, on or before June 7, 2021, a person notifies limits! Call today for are an amazing way the Commission of an issue or issues requiring speeds up to 25mbps as to spend time at the presentation of evidence at a hearing, or the low as $59.99/mo! $75 home! Learn guitar, Commission sets the matter for a hearing on its gift card, terms apply. bass, piano, voice, own motion. Any person as defined in 10 V.S.A. 1-844-416-7147. (AAN violin, drums, flute, sax, § 6085(c)(1) may request a hearing. Any hearing CAN) trumpet, production request must be in writing to the address below, & beyond w/ pro local must state the criteria or sub-criteria at issue, why STILL PAYING TOO instructors from the a hearing is required and what additional evidence MUCH Burlington Music Dojo will be presented at the hearing. Any hearing for your medication? on Pine St. All levels & request by an adjoining property owner or other Save up to 90% on Rx styles are welcome, incl. person eligible for party status under 10 V.S.A. § refill! Order today & absolute beginners.

6085(c)(1)(E) must include a petition for party receive free shipping on Come share in the status under the Act 250 Rules. Prior to submitting 1st order. Prescription music! burlington a request for a hearing, please contact the district req. Call 1-855-750-1612. musicdojo.com, info@ coordinator at the telephone number listed below (AAN CAN) burlingtonmusicdojo. for more information. Prior to convening a hearing, com. the Commission must determine that substantive issues requiring a hearing have been raised.

GUITAR INSTRUCTION Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law may not Berklee graduate w/ 30 be prepared unless the Commission holds a public GOLDENDOODLE years’ teaching experihearing.

PUPPIES ence offers lessons in 6 male & 5 guitar, music theory, If you feel that any of the District Commission female 2nd-generation music technology, ear members listed on the attached Certificate of goldendoodle puppies. training. Individualized, Service under “For Your Information” may have a Hypoallergenic, low step-by-step approach. conflict of interest, or if there is any other reason a shedding, great family All ages, styles, levels. member should be disqualified from sitting on this dogs! $3,000. 8 weeks Rick Belford, 864-7195, case, please contact the District Coordinator as old on Jun. 2. 503-803rickb@rickbelford.com. soon as possible, and by no later than June 7, 2021.

3375 or lauracmoe@ gmail.com.

SAXOPHONE LESSONS If you have a disability for which you need accomNew England modation in order to participate in this process Conservatory graduate (including participating in a public hearing, if one is and band director w/ held), please notify us as soon as possible, in order 15 years’ experience. to allow us as much time as possible to accomBeginner to advanced modate your needs. instruction, all styles, all ages. Clayton Hamilton.

SERIOUS CAMPING Parties entitled to participate are the Municipality, 978-289-2429, HAMMOCK the Municipal Planning Commission, the Regional mr.claytonhamilton@ Sierra Madre’s Ninox Planning Commission, affected state agencies, and gmail.com. hammock. Asking $275 adjoining property owners and other persons to ($450 new). Bought the extent that they have a particularized interest new. Only owner. Used that may be affected by the proposed project on sleeping porch for 1 under the Act 250 criteria. Non-party participants season. Lay-flat style. may also be allowed under 10 V.S.A. Section Never used outdoors.

6085(c)(5).

Photos: ted-albers. net/2020/07/25/nonoxDated at Essex Junction, Vermont this 7th day of hammock-for-sale.

May, 2021.

By: /s/Rachel Lomonaco

PLACE AN AFFORDABLE NOTICE AT: SEVENDAYSVT.COM/LEGAL-NOTICES OR CALL 802-865-1020, EXT. 10.

1

buy this stuff [CONTINUED]

TEENAGE DRUMMER for ROCK 'N' ROLL BAND call 802-777-1900

2

Wanted

SEVENDAYSVT.COM/CLASSIFIEDS manufacturer’s label indicating the model number of the leaf blower; (3) Leaf blowers must bear an affixed manufacturer’s label documenting a noise rating of 65 dB(A) or less; and

(3) No person may blow or deposit debris onto a public street, sidewalk, or right-of-way.

(4) No person may operate a leaf blower so as to cause dust or debris to be blown into a resident’s windows or doors.

Elks Lodge

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- Excerpt of Base Zoning Districts Map, Burlington Comprehensive Development Ordinance, Map 4.3.1-1, Map for Proposed #ZA-21-03 dated January 22, 2021;

Arms Park

- Excerpt of Residential Districts Map, Burlington Comprehensive Development Ordinance, Map 4.4.5-1, Map for Proposed #ZA-21-03 dated January 22, 2021;

- Excerpt Design Review Overlay Districts Map, Burlington Comprehensive Development Ordinance, Map 4.5.1-1, Map for Proposed #ZA-2103 dated January 22, 2021.

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(2) No person may blow or deposit debris onto a neighbor’s property.

5. Parking Garage Lighting

**See attached map excerpts identified as:

- Excerpt of Recreation, Conservation, Open Space Districts Map, Burlington Comprehensive Development Ordinance, Map 4.4.6-1, Map for Proposed #ZA-21-03 dated January 22, 2021; and

RCO Districts DISTRICT RCO - Conservation RCO - Recreation/Greenspace Change RCO to RL

CITY OF BURLINGTON

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(g) As written. * Material stricken out deleted. ** Material underlined added.

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RCO-C

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RL Arms Park Elks Lodge

Arms Park

Design Review Overlay Districts

RL-W

DESIGN REVIEW APPLICABLE NOT APPLICABLE Change DR to NA

RCO-C

CITY OF BURLINGTON

RCO-RG

Base Zoning Districts Neighborhood Activity Center (NAC)

(f) Penalties

Residential - Low Density (RL) Waterfront Residential - Low Density (RL-W) RCO - Recreation/Greenspace (RCO-RG RCO - Conservation (RCO-C) Change RCO to RL

CITY OF BURLINGTON

´

Excerpt of Base Zoning Districts Map Burlington Comprehensive Development Ordinance, Map 4.3.1-1 Proposed Map for ZA-21-03, January 22, 2021

(2) Any other violation of this section may be enforced under Section 1-9 of this Code of Ordinances, except that the minimum fine shall be a penalty of one hundred dollars ($100.00). * Material underlined added.

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Excerpt Design Review Overlay Districts Map

Map for Proposed ZA-21-03, January 22, 2021 Burlington Comprehensive Development Ordinance, Map 4.5.1-1

CITY OF BURLINGTON IN THE YEAR TWO THOUSAND TWENTY-ONE: AN ORDINANCE IN RELATION TO COMPREHENSIVE DEVELOPMENT ORDINANCE - PARKING GARAGE ILLUMINATION ZA #21-05 ORDINANCE 5.12 Sponsor: Office of City Planning, Planning Commission, Ordinance Committee Public Hearing Dates: 04/26/21 First reading: 03/08/21 Referred to: Ordinance C Rules suspended and placed in all stages of passage: _____ Second reading: 04/26/21 Action: adopted Date: 04/26/21 Signed by Mayor: 05/03/21 Published: 05/12/21 Effective: 06/02/21

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It is hereby Ordained by the City Council of the City of Burlington as follows:That Appendix A,

6. – 9. As written.

Elks Lodge NAC

Rock Point

CITY OF BURLINGTON IN THE YEAR TWO THOUSAND TWENTY-ONE AN ORDINANCE IN RELATION TO COMPREHENSIVE DEVELOPMENT ORDINANCE – R-L BOUNDARY AT 925 NORTH AVENUE ZA #21-03 ORDINANCE 5.11 Sponsor: Office of City Planning, Planning Commission, Ordinance Committee Public Hearing Dates: 04/26/21 First reading: 02/08/21 Referred to: Ordinance Committee_______ Rules suspended and placed in all stages of passage: _____ Second reading: 04/26/21 Action: adopted Date: 04/26/21 Signed by Mayor: 05/03/21

B. Any fixture visible from the exterior of the garage facility shall be a full cutoff or cut-off fixture or shall be constructed in a manner that prevents glare to be visible from the exterior of the parking garage (see examples pictured below).

RCO-RG

(4) Every other person or entity within the City shall abide by this ordinance commencing May 31, 2022.

(1) Any leaf blower operated at more than 65 decibels at any time will be considered a violation of the City’s noise ordinance, Section 21-13 of this Code of Ordinances.

A. Light levels shall not exceed minimums currently recommended in by IESNA document RP-20-98 or current edition.

Burlington Comprehensive Development Ordinance, Map 4.4.6-1 Map for Proposed ZA-21-03, January 22, 2021

Changes as indicated in each corresponding legend, consistent with the map excerpt.

(2) Businesses that use leaf blowers in their business (e.g., landscaping or gardening businesses) and provide such service to 10 properties or more or property owners with 10 or more properties within the City shall abide by this ordinance commencing September 6, 2021.

(3) Businesses that use leaf blowers in their business (e.g., landscaping or gardening businesses) and provide such service to fewer than 10 properties or property owners with more than one and up to 9 properties within the City shall abide by this ordinance commencing December 31, 2021.

Recommended illumination levels for parking garages are generally higher and more uniform that that of exterior parking lots. Non-cut-off, up-light and in-direct light is often used to create a uniform lighting environment and an added feeling of security.

Excerpt of Recreation, Conservation, Open Space Districts Map

(e) Effective Dates (1) City departments that employ the use of leaf blowers shall abide by this ordinance commencing August 1, 2021.

There’s no limit to ad length online.

1. – 4. As written.

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Monday – Friday: 7:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m., except in an emergency to prevent flooding or other serious damage on an emergency basis.

Saturday: 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Sundays and legal holidays: prohibited except for operation by a resident of the property on which the leaf blower is operated between 9:30 a.m. and 5:00 p.m.

Extra! Extra!

In addition to the general standards above, the following specific lighting standards shall apply to each of the following outdoor lighting applications:

Comprehensive Development Ordinance, of the Code of Ordinances of the City of Burlington be and hereby is amended to move the RCO and R-L zoning districts boundary line at 925 North Avenue to the west by amending Map 4.3.1-1 Base Zoning Districts, Map 4.4.5-1 Residential Zoning Districts, Map 4.4.6-1 Recreation, Conservation, Open Space Districts; and 4.5.1-1 Design Review Overlay, to read as follows:

LLEN PW ET HAN A

(1) Permitted hours of use. Leaf blowers may be operated only during the following times:

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(d) General Rules of Operation

Open 24/7/365.

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(4) Leaf blowers may only be used with any muffler, full extension tube and sound attenuating devices supplied by the manufacturer of the leaf blower.

Non-factory modifications are not permitted.

Show and tell.

»

It is hereby Ordained by the City Council of the City of Burlington as follows:

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Arms Park

That Appendix A, Comprehensive Development Ordinance, of the Code of Ordinances of the City of Burlington be and hereby is amended by amending Section 5.5.2(f)5, Parking Garage Lighting, thereof to read as follows: Sec. 5.5.2 Outdoor Lighting

Residential Districts

As written.

Residential - Medium Density (RM) Residential - Low Density (RL) Waterfront Residential - Low Density (RL-W) Change RCO to RL

CITY OF BURLINGTON

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Excerpt of Residential Districts Map Burlington Comprehensive Development Ordinance, Map 4.4.5-1 Map for Proposed ZA-21-03, January 22, 2021

(a) – (e) As written.

CITY OF BURLINGTON IN THE YEAR TWO THOUSAND TWENTY-ONE: AN ORDINANCE IN RELATION TO COMPREHENSIVE DEVELOPMENT ORDINANCE - SHORELINE PROPERTY SETBACKS & BUFFER ZA #21-06 ORDINANCE 5.13 Sponsor: Office of City Planning, Planning Commission, Ordinance Committee Public Hearing Dates: 04/26/21 First reading: 03/08/21 Referred to: Ordinance Committee Rules suspended and placed in all Stages of passage: Second reading: 04/26/21 Action: adopted Date: 04/26/21 Signed by Mayor: 05/03/21 It is hereby Ordained by the City Council of the City of Burlington as follows: That Appendix A, Comprehensive Development Ordinance, of the Code of Ordinances of the City of Burlington be and hereby is amended by amending Table 4.4.5-3, Residential District Dimensional Standards, and Section 4.5.4, Natural Resource Protection Overlay (NR) District, to read as follows: Sec. 4.4.5 Residential Districts (a) Purpose: As written. (b) Dimensional Standards and Density The density and intensity of development, dimensions of building lots, the heights of buildings and their setbacks from property boundary lines, and the limits on lot coverage shall be governed by the following standards: Table 4.4.5-1 Minimum Lot Size and Frontage: RL, RL-W, RM and RM-W As written.

Table 4.4.5-2: Base Residential Density As written.

(f) Specific Outdoor Lighting Standards

LEGALS » SEVEN DAYS MAY 12-19, 2021

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Referred to: Ordinance Committee Rules suspended and placed in all stages of passage: ______________ Second reading: 04/26/21 Action: adopted Date: 04/26/21 Signed by Mayor: 05/03/21 Published: 05/12/21 Effective: 06/02/21

An Ordinance in Relation to

Legal Notices

It is hereby Ordained by the City Council of the City of Burlington as follows:

That Appendix A, Comprehensive Development Ordinance, of the Code of Ordinances of the City of Burlington be and hereby is amended by amending Table 4.4.5-3, Residential District Dimensional

Standards, and Section 4.5.4, Natural Resource Protection Overlay (NR) District, to read as follows: Sec. 4.4.5 Residential Districts (a) Purpose:

PLACE AN AFFORDABLE NOTICE AT: SEVENDAYSVT.COM/LEGAL-NOTICES OR CALL 802-865-1020, EXT. 10.

As written.

Dimensional Standards and Density The density and intensity of development, dimensions of building lots, the heights of buildings and their setbacks from property boundary lines, and the limits on lot coverage shall be governed by the following standards:

[CONTINUED]

(b)

Table 4.4.5-1 Minimum Lot Size and Frontage: RL, RL-W, RM and RM-W

(c) Permitted and Conditional Uses: As written.

- Manage all flood hazard areas designated pursuant to 10 V.S.A. § 753; and

Table 4.4.5-2: Base Residential Density

As written.

As written.

Table 4.4.5-3: Residential District Dimensional Standards Zoning PageDistrict

Max. Lot Coverage1

An Ordinance in Relation to RL; 35% WRL

RM

WRM

RH

40%

60%

80%

Setbacks1, 3, 4, 5, 6

Max. Height1

2 27 Front Side3DEVELOPMENT Rear Waterfront – COMPREHENSIVE ORDINANCE Shoreline Property Setbacks & Min: Buffer Min/Max: Min: Min: 35-feet ZA #21-06 Ave. of 2 10% of lot 25% of lot 75’ feet adjacent lots on width Or depth but from the ave. of side in no ordinary both sides +/yard setback event less high water of 2 adjacent than 20’ mark of 5-feet lots on both Lake sides Max Champlain Max required: and the 75-feet required: Winooski 20-feet River Min/Max: Ave of 2 adjacent lots on both sides +/5-feet

Min: 10% of lot width Or ave. of side yard setback of 2 adjacent lots on both sides

Min/Max: Ave of 2 adjacent lots on both sides +/5-feet

Max required: 20-feet Min: 10% of lot width Or ave. of side yard setback of 2 adjacent lots on both sides

Min/Max: Ave of 2 adjacent lots on both sides +/5-feet

Max required: 20-feet Min: 10% of lot width Or ave. of side yard setback of 2 adjacent lots on both sides Max required: 20-feet

Min: 25% of lot depth but in no event less than 20’

NA

Max required: 75-feet Min: 25% of lot depth but in no event less than 20’

As written. (c) District Specific Regulations: Riparian and Littoral Conservation Zone: 1. Permitted Uses:

Min: 75’ feet from the ordinary high water mark of Lake Champlain and the Winooski River NA

35-feet (60-feet under Sec. 4.4.5(d)2 A)

35-feet

Max required: 75-feet

(d) District Specific Regulations: As written.

Sec. 4.5.4 Natural Resource Protection Overlay (NR) District (a) Purpose and Authority: The Natural Resource Protection Overlay District is intended to: - Protect surface waters and wetlands from encroachment by development, and from sources of non-point pollution; - Preserve natural lakeshore vegetative cover where reasonably possible consistent with the Vermont Shoreland Protection Act, and the protection of native plants and vegetative cover that provide lake shoreland wildlife habitat, to the greatest extent possible; - Protect the functions and values of Burlington’s wetlands; - Protect and enhance water quality near public beaches and other water-based recreation areas from sources of non-point pollution; - Preserve natural features and communities, geologic features and cultural sites for education and research.

- Provide opportunities for public access where feasible and appropriate; - Facilitate connections and corridors for wildlife between areas of publicly protected sites.

- Ensure that development that occurs within a Flood Hazard Area conforms to the requirements of the National Flood Insurance Program.

- Minimize and prevent the loss of life and property, the disruption of commerce, the impairment of the tax base, and the extraordinary public expenditures and demands on public services that result from flooding and other flood related hazards; and - Ensure that the design and construction of development in flood and other hazard areas are accomplished in a manner that minimizes or eliminates the potential for flood and loss or damage to life and property; and

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(b) Areas Affected

35-feet

Max required: 75-feet Min: 25% of lot depth but in no event less than 20’

- Make the City of Burlington and its residents eligible for federal flood insurance and other federal disaster recovery and hazard mitigation funds as may be available.

SEVEN DAYS MAY 12-19, 2021

Except where otherwise noted herein, only the following uses are permitted within the Riparian and Littoral Conservation Zone and its associated buffer subject to the requirements and limitations set forth below under subpart 4.

has been removed, or the landscape has been graded or filled resulting in bare soil surfaces) shall include a stormwater management, erosion prevention and sediment control plan pursuant to the requirements of Sec 5.5.3 to be reviewed by the conservation board and approved by the city engineer.

In making determinations and decisions required herein, the city engineer shall consider the requirements of the most recent State of Vermont Stormwater Management Rules and Guidance document. The city engineer shall require the best practicable means be used to manage stormwater, prevent erosion, and control sedimentation. The city engineer is hereby authorized to develop performance standards to ensure conformance with these state stormwater management rules;.

C. Normal maintenance of constructed wetlands and stormwater systems, provided that naturally occurring wetlands are not disturbed in conjunction with the maintenance;

For properties with frontage along Lake Champlain or the Winooski River, development that includes 400 square feet or more of new or redeveloped lot coverage shall establish a low-mow zone along the shoreline. A low-mow zone is a new or existing vegetated area that is not mowed more than once per year and allows vegetation to grow and mature. (Refer to Shoreland Best Management Practices established by Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation.). A low-mow zone shall be at least 15 ft. wide as measured inland from the 100 ft. elevation and shall be of a size equivalent to, or greater than, the new or redeveloped lot coverage, except that in no event shall a low-mow zone be required to extend more than 50 ft. wide as measured inland from the 100 ft. elevation or extend along more than 80% of a property’s shoreline frontage.

D. Normal maintenance of existing docks, roads, rail lines, bridges, and culverts provided that disturbance to any shoreland is minimized in conjunction with such maintenance;

For properties with frontage along Lake Champlain or the Winooski River, development shall be located no closer to the shoreline than existing development wherever reasonably possible.

E. Selective cutting of less than 25 percent of the trees six inches or more in diameter at breast height over any 10 year cycle; and,

2. Agricultural and silvicultural activities shall follow Best Management Practices for the Protection of Water Quality;

F. Recreational and educational activities such as hiking, walking, fishing, nature study, and bird watching and associated boardwalks and unimproved trails.

3. Installation of any seawalls, rip-rap or other shoreland retention structures shall be submitted for review by the conservation board who shall consult with the city engineer prior to issuance of a recommendation to the DRB; and,

A. Normal maintenance of existing lawns and maintained grounds including mowing, trimming of vegetation and the removal of dead or diseased vegetation around a residence, decorative landscaping and planting, vegetable and flower gardens, and the repair of existing private landscaping structures such as walkways and walls; B. “Accepted agricultural and silvicultural practices” as defined under 24 VSA Ch 117;

2. Prohibited Uses: Except where noted herein, the following uses shall be prohibited within the Riparian and Littoral Conservation Zone and its associated buffer.

A. The deposition or introduction of organic and inorganic chemicals, including herbicides and pesticides, except when the application of pesticides is reviewed and approved by the BCB and DRB, and performed by an applicator certified by the Vermont Department of Agriculture for the sole purpose of controlling invasive species and subject to the requirements of the City’s pesticide application ordinance (Burlington Code of Ordinances, Chapter 17, Section 9); and, B. The off-road use of any motorized vehicles including ATVs or dirt bikes (the temporary use of motorized vehicles used to construct and maintain permitted or regulated activities are specifically exempted from this prohibition 3. Regulated Uses: Except where otherwise noted herein, all uses permitted or conditionally permitted in the respective underlying zoning district, including any construction of buildings or other structures, and roads, parking areas or any other impervious surface, may be approved only within the Riparian and Littoral Conservation Zone and its associated buffer after review and approval pursuant to the requirements and limitations below under Subpart 4.

4. Requirements: 1. Any land disturbing activities (i.e., vegetation

4. No new stormwater outfall shall directly discharge into any surface water without approval and implementation of a stormwater management plan approved by the city engineer. (d)-(f) As written. * Material stricken out deleted. ** Material underlined added.

NOTICE OF APPLICATION TO BROWNFIELDS REUSE AND ENVIRONMENTAL LIABILITY LIMITATION ACT PROGRAM Please take notice that Nedde Pine LLC whose mailing address is 747 Pine St., Suite 501, Burlington VT 05401, 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 79 Pine Street in the City of Burlington, VT. 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 Burlington’s Clerk-Treasurer’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 Douglas Nedde at 802.651.6888 or at info@ neddere.com. 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: Douglas Nedde, Owner, Nedde Pine LLC.

NOTICE OF SALE Notice is given that the following lots shall be sold, to satisfy lien of owner, at public sale by sealed bid, on Friday Jun 4, 2021 at the Access Mini-Storage/ McLure Moving & Storage, Inc. complex on 167 Colchester Road, Route 2A Essex Jct., VT. Start time for the sale shall be 10:00 am.

Access Mini-Storage lots (name & unit #) offered for sale for non-payment: Barbour, Bill #007 Barbour, Chantele #004 Brock, Chloe #537 Grout, Frederick #228 Hall, Randy #527 Langdon, Jonathan #433 Mason, Larry #532 Mathieu, Shawn #330 McCray, Lashaya #043 Morgan, Melissa #328 Richards, Ashley #450 Stetson, Joseph #325 Thon, Chris #544C Vincent, Charlotte #109 Wo, Peibin #550N McLure Moving & Storage warehouse lots offered for sale: Simons, Bryan Attendees will be required to wear a mask and viewing will be conducted to allow for proper social distancing.

Sealed bids will be submitted for the entire contents of each self storage unit. All sales are final and must be paid for at the time of sale. All items must be removed from the unit within 3 days of purchase. A $25.00 deposit will be collected on all units sold. This deposit will be refunded when all items are removed and the unit has been broom cleaned. The owners of Access Mini-Storage, Inc. and McLure Moving & Storage, Inc. reserve the right to reject any and all bids.

5/12 & 5/19

PRIVATE AUCTION OF STORAGE UNIT CONTENTS Courtney Richard, last known address of 38 Grove St. Essex Junction, VT 05452 has a past due balance of $1282.00 owed to Champlain Valley Self Storage, LLC since 10/31/20. To cover this debt, per lease dated 4/26/20 the contents of unit #530 will be sold at private auction on, or after June 5, 2021.

William Himan, last known address of 7 Ruth St. South Burlington, VT 05403 has a past due balance of $1,168.00 owed to Champlain Valley Self Storage, LLC since 11/30/20. To cover this debt, per lease dated 7/22/20 the contents of unit #1011 will be sold at private auction on, or after June 5, 2021.

Sabrina Johnson, last known address of 26 E. Spring Street Winooski, VT 05404 has a past due balance of $452.00 owed to Champlain Valley Self Storage, LLC since 3/31/21. To cover this debt, per lease dated 10/05/20 the contents of unit #583 will be sold at private auction on, or after June 5, 2021.

Auction pre-registration is required, email info@ champlainvalleyselfstorage.com to register.

STATE OF VERMONT PROBATE COURT DISTRICT OF CHITTENDEN SS, DOCKET NO.: 21-PR-01797 In re ESTATE of James E. Little, Late of Burlington, Vermont.

NOTICE TO CREDITORS To the creditors of the estate of James E. Little, late of Burlington, Vermont: I have been appointed personal representative of this estate. All creditors having claims against the estate must present their claims in writing within four (4) months of the date of the first publication of this Notice. The claim must be presented to me at the address listed below with a copy 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 period.

Dated: April 28, 2021 Signed: /s/ Thomas A. Little Print name: Thomas A. Little Address: c/o Little & Cicchetti, P.C. P.O. Box 907, Burlington, VT 05402-0907 802-862-6511

purchase price must be paid by a certified check, bank treasurer’s or cashier’s check at the time and place of the sale by the purchaser. The balance of the purchase price shall be paid by a certified check, bank treasurer’s or cashier’s check within sixty (60) days after the date of sale.

COMMERCIAL SUBLET

BURLINGTON | 187 SOUTH WINOOSKI AVE.

Name of Publication: Seven Days First Publication Date: 5/5/21 Second Publication Date: 5/12/21

The mortgagor is entitled to redeem the premises at any time prior to the sale by paying the full amount due under the mortgage, including the costs and expenses of the sale.

Address of Probate Court: Chittenden District Court, 175 Main Street, PO Box 511, Burlington, VT 05401

Other terms to be announced at the sale.

STATE OF VERMONT SUPERIOR COURT PROBATE DIVISION CHITTENDEN UNIT DOCKET NO.: 21-PR-01038 In re ESTATE of Carol A. Sehlinger NOTICE TO CREDITORS To the creditors of: Carol A. Sehlinger late of South Burlington.

The Shambhala Buddhist Center seeks a health/wellness organization or individual/s to sublet all or part of our spacious, attractive multi-room space, on the top floor, 187 South Winooski Ave, Monday-Friday, during regular business hours. Evenings possible. Utilities, kitchenette, bathrooms, stair lift, air purifiers, Wi-Fi. Price negotiable.

DATED: April 19, 2021 By: /s/ Loraine L. Hite Loraine L. Hite, Esq. Bendett and McHugh, PC 270 Farmington Ave., Ste. 151 Farmington, CT 06032

THE CONTENTS OF STORAGE UNIT 00-004402 LOCATED AT 28 ADAMS I have been appointed administer this DRIVE , WILLISTON VT, 05495 WILL BE estate. All creditors having claims SOLD ON OR ABOUT THE OF MAY 17TH against the decedent or the estate must 2021 TO SATISFY THE DEBT OF MARK present their claims in writing within Scott Perry, 802-238-7656, raymondsperry@gmail.com MILLINGTON. four (4) months of the date of the first publication of this notice. The claim must Any person claiming a right to the goods be presented to me at the address listed may pay the amount claimed due and below with a copy sent to the Court. The reasonable expenses before the sale, in WAS CONVEYED TO RUSSELL W. BRECHIN AND claim may be barred forever if it is not presented which case the sale may not occur.

ALBERTINE M. BRECH1N BY THE WARRANTY DEED CommercialWorks-Perry051221.indd 1 5/10/21 4:36 PM within the four (4) month period.

OF JEANETTE HOOKER DATED SEPTEMBER 13, 1968 Dated: May 6, 2021 Signature of Fiduciary: /s/ Launa L. Slater Executor/Adminstrator: Sara Teller c/o Launa L. Slater, Jarrett & Luitjens, PLC 1795 Williston Rd., Suite 125 South Burlington, VT 05403 802-864-5951 launa@vtelaw.com Name of Publication: Seven Days Publication Date: 05/12/21 Name of Probate Court: Chittenden Probate Court Address of Probate Court: PO Box 511, Burlington, VT 05402-0511 STATE OF VERMONT VERMONT SUPERIOR COURT WASHINGTON UNIT, CIVIL DIVISION DOCKET NO: 379-7-19 WNCV REVERSE MORTGAGE FUNDING, LLC v.

LAWRENCE J. MILLER, RANDALL G. MILLER, STEVEN A. MILLER, PAMELA J. MARTIN, SUSAN L. MILLER AND SECRETARY OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT OCCUPANTS OF: 16 North Parkside Terrace, Barre VT MORTGAGEE’S NOTICE OF FORECLOSURE SALE OF REAL PROPERTY UNDER 12 V.S.A. sec 4952 et seq.

In accordance with the Judgment Order and Decree of Foreclosure entered January 25, 2021 in the above captioned action brought to foreclose that certain mortgage given by Sylvia D. Miller to Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. as nominee for Reverse Mortgage Funding LLC, dated June 8, 2015 and recorded in Book 289 Page 154 of the land records of the City of Barre, of which mortgage the Plaintiff is the present holder, by virtue of an Assignment of Mortgage from Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. as nominee for Reverse Mortgage Funding LLC to Reverse Mortgage Funding, LLC dated May 8, 2019 and recorded in Book 351 Page330 of the land records of the City of Barre for breach of the conditions of said mortgage and for the purpose of foreclosing the same will be sold at Public Auction at 16 North Parkside Terrace, Barre, Vermont on May 28, 2021 at 9:30 AM all and singular the premises described in said mortgage, To wit:

AND RECORDED IN BOOK 82, PAGES 503-505 OF THE LAND RECORDS OF THE CITY OF BARRE, AND FURTHER DESCRIBED AS FOLLOWS:

COMMENCING AT THE INTERSECTION OF THE WESTERLY SIDE OF NORTH PARKSIDE TERRACE, SO-CALLED, WITH THE BOUNDARY LINE BETWEEN LOT NO. 47 AND LOT NO. 48, AS SHOWN IN A CERTAIN PLAN OF LOTS ENTITLED: “SUB-DIVISION OF PROPERTY, LAGUE, INC. JUNE 1960, WHITE & MARTIN, SURVEYORS: THENCE RUNNING IN A GENERAL WESTERLY DIRECTION IN A STRAIGHT LINE A DISTANCE OF 81.9 FEET TO A POINT; THENCE TURNING TO THE LEFT AND RUNNING IN A GENERAL SOUTHERLY DIRECTION 1000 FEET TO THE GENERAL NORTHERLY SIDE OF A PROPOSED STREET; THENCE TURNING AN ANGLE TO THE LEFT AND RUNNING ALONG THE NORTHERLY SIDE OF SAID PROPOSED STREET IN AN EASTERLY DIRECTION A DISTANCE OF 56.9 FEET: THENCE TURNING AND RUNNING GENERALLY NORTHERLY AND EASTERLY A DISTANCE OF 56.9 FEET; THENCE TURNING AND RUNNING GENERALLY NORTHERLY AND EASTERLY IN A CIRCULAR DIRECTION AT THE INTERSECTION OF SAID PROPOSED STREET AND NORTH PARKSIDE TERRACE TO THE WESTERLY EDGE OF NORTH PARKSIDE TERRACE; THENCE RUNNING IN A STRAIGHT LINE ALONG THE WESTERLY EDGE OF NORTH PARKSIDE TERRACE IN A GENERAL NORTHERLY DIRECTION A DISTANCE OF 75 FOOT TO THE POINT OF BEGINNING. MEANING HEREBY TO CONVEY ALL OF LOT NO. 48 AS SHOWN ON THE AFOREMENTIONED PLAN, TOGETHER WITH THE BUILDINGS THEREON STANDING. PARCEL ID # 1100-0016.0000 THIS BEING THE SAME PROPERTY CONVEYED TO GEORGE W. MILLER AND SYLVIA MILLER FROM RUSSELL W. BRECHIN AND ALBERTINE BRECHIN IN A DEED DATED JANUARY 7, 1978 AND RECORDED JANUARY 7, 1978 IN BOOK 87 PAGE 230. GEORGE W. MILLER LEFT THIS LIFE ON JULY 19, 1989 IN THE TOWN OF BERLIN, VT. TITLE NOW VESTS SOLELY IN SYLVIA MILLER. Property Commonly Known As: 16 North Parkside Terrace, Barre, VT 05641 Reference is hereby made to the above instruments and to the records and references contained therein in further aid of this description.

THE LAND REFERRED TO HEREIN BELOW IS SITUATED IN THE COUNTY OF WASHINGTON, CITY OF BARRE STATE OF VERMONT, AND IS DESCRIBED AS FOLLOWS:

Terms of sale: Said premises will be sold and conveyed subject to all liens, encumbrances, unpaid taxes, tax titles, municipal liens and assessments, if any, which take precedence over the said mortgage above described.

IT BEING THE SAME LAND AND PREMISES AS

TEN THOUSAND ($10,000.00) Dollars of the

THE CONTENTS OF STORAGE UNIT 02-00225 LOCATED AT 48 INDUSTRIAL AVE, WILLISTON VT, 05495 WILL BE SOLD ON OR ABOUT THE OF MAY 17TH 2021 TO SATISFY THE DEBT OF EDWARD BROWN. 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.

TOWN OF BOLTON, VERMONT: NOTICE TO VENDORS: INVITATION TO BID: QUICK RESPONSE RESCUE TRUCK The Town of Bolton,Vermont requests sealed bids from qualified manufacturers for a Quick Response Rescue Truck that meets town specifications. Bids are due by 4 p.m. on June 3, 2021 at the Bolton Town Office, and will be opened by the Fire Chief during a regularly scheduled virtual Select Board meeting on June 7, 2021. The bid will be awarded on June 7, 2021. The full bid notice and attached specifications are available on the town website www.boltonvt.com, or by contacting the Town Clerk at 802-434-5075 x 222. The Town of Bolton reserves the right to reject any and all bids, in whole or in part.

to 24 VSA § 4464 and § 4471, participation in this local proceeding, by written or oral comment, is a prerequisite to the right to take any subsequent appeal. If you cannot attend the hearing, comments may be made in writing prior to May 28 and mailed to: Zoning Administrator, 3045 Theodore Roosevelt Highway, Bolton, VT 05676 or via email to: zoningbolton@gmavt.net.

TOWN OF WESTFORD DEVELOPMENT REVIEW BOARD NOTICE OF PUBLIC HEARING Pursuant to 24 V.S.A. Chapter 117 and the Westford Land Use & Development Regulations, the Development Review Board will hold a public hearing at 7:15 p.m. via ZOOM on Monday, June 14, 2021 in reference to the following: Final Plat Public Hearing for 5 Lot, 4 Unit Planned Unit Development & Subdivision – Owner: Upper 23 LLC (21.85 acres) on Sanctuary Road in the Rural 3, Rural 10 & Water Resource Overlay Zoning Districts.

This is a proposal to re-subdivide a deferred development lot (Lot 1B) into 4 single-family dwelling lots and a designated open space lot.

Join the Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82436344201?pwd=U 1NTQW5sa3FxNWUzNG5hYVNiQWN4QT09 Or dial: +1 646 558 8656 US (New York) Meeting ID: 824 3634 4201 Passcode: 0614 For information call the Town Offices at 878-4587 Monday–Friday or email planner@westfordvt.us.

Matt Wamsganz, Chairman Dated May 12, 2021 CITY OF BURLINGTON IN THE YEAR TWO THOUSAND TWENTY-ONE AN ORDINANCE IN RELATION TO B.C.O. - OFFENSES AND MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS — EXPRESS PROHIBITIONS. SEC. 21-14 LEAF BLOWERS (AMENDMENT) ORDINANCE 4.17 Sponsor: Councilor Paul Public Hearing Dates: _ First reading: Referred to: Rules suspended and placed in all stages of passage: 04/26/21 Second reading: __ Action: adopted Date: 04/26/21 Signed by Mayor: 05/03/21 Published: 05/12/21 Effective: 06/02/21 It is hereby Ordained by the City Council of the City of Burlington as follows:

TOWN OF BOLTON: NOTICE OF PUBLIC HEARING The DRB will hold a virtual public hearing on Thursday, May 27, 2021, starting at 6:30 pm, to consider the following applications: Application 2021-24-DRB: Applicant: Kyle and Amanda Guyette, Property Owner: (same) – Appealing Zoning Administrator’s denial of application #2021-23-ZP to build a 30’ x 30’ garage at 175 Champ Ln. Applicants are requesting a setback waiver to reduce 35 ft. minimum setbacks for north and east property lines. The property is located in the Rural I District. (Tax Map #15A-4060175).

Application 2021-25-DRB: Applicant: Kyle and Amanda Guyette, Property Owner: (same) – Request a Variance Hearing to build a 30’ x 30’ garage 17’ away from eastern property line. The property is located in the Rural I District at 175 Champ Ln. (Tax Map #15A-4060175).

This will only be a virtual hearing, accessible by computer or phone. To participate by computer (GoToMeeting), use the following link: https:// global.gotomeeting.com/join/506904749 To participate by phone, call +1 (872) 240-3212. The access code is 506-904-749.

Additional information can be obtained by contact the Zoning Administrator at 802-434-5075 x225, or by email at zoningbolton@gmavt.net. Pursuant

That Chapter 21, Offenses and Miscellaneous Provisions, of the Code of Ordinances of the City of Burlington be and hereby is amended by amending Sec. 21-14, Leaf blowers, to read as follows: Sec. 21-14. Leaf blowers. (a) Purposes. As written. (b) Memorial Day to Labor Day. No person shall use a leaf blower within the City from Memorial Day to Labor Day in each year, except as follows: (1) Electric or battery-powered leaf blowers, on which is affixed a manufacturer’s label indicating the model number, and that have a noise level not in excess of 65dBA per residential lot may be used subject to the other provisions of this section; (2) As written (3) Leaf blowers must bear an affixed manufacturer’s label documenting have a noise rating of 65 dbA or less; and (4) As written.

Balance of Sec. 21-14 as written. * Material underlined added. ** Material stricken out deleted.

SEVEN DAYS MAY 12-19, 2021

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ATTENTION RECRUITERS: POST YOUR JOBS AT: JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM/POST-A-JOB PRINT DEADLINE: NOON ON MONDAYS (INCLUDING HOLIDAYS) FOR RATES & INFO: MICHELLE BROWN, 802-865-1020 X21, MICHELLE@SEVENDAYSVT.COM

YOUR TRUSTED LOCAL SOURCE. JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM s, Zero Landscaper s tor Turn Opera BUSSERS & COOKS NEEDED Please Apply in Person at Papa Frank’s: 13 West Center St., Winooski (802) 655-2423

Bee’s Wrap shapes intentional habits without compromise for people, our core purpose, and the planet. We thrive in a fast-paced, collaborative environment and employ a growing workforce in Middlebury. We are currently hiring for the following positions:1t-PapaFranks081419.indd • Production Staff • Staff Accountant • Customer Experience Manager • Purchasing & Supply Chain Specialist Visit our website to apply! beeswrap.com/pages/careers

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ason.

For 2021 se ark Please call M at Pleasant Valley, Inc. 820 802-343-4

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4/23/21 2h-CampDowner051221.indd 10:26 AM 1

• PRODUCTION TECHNICIANS $1000 sign-on bonus!

Final Assembly, Test, Sheet Metal, and More!

• ELECTRICAL AND MECHANICAL ENGINEERS • KEY ACCOUNT MANAGERS Our Benefits Include

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR

• Health/Dental/Vision • 401k with Company Match • Short/Long-Term Disability & Life

SUMMER CAMP STAFF

(Counselors and Kitchen Aides) We are looking for camp counselors (at least 18 years old) that have experience and love working with kids. We are also looking for kitchen aide positions (at least 17 years old). Staff are required to live at camp (in Sharon, VT) from 21 June - 21 Aug (Weekends off).

Apply: director@campdowner.com

• Paid Time Off, plus 10 Paid Holidays • Tuition Assistance up to $3500 • Flexible Schedule

Development Services Coordinator

5/10/21 11:15 AM

If you have a passion for Vermont Public Radio, consider becoming a new VPR Development Services Coordinator, providing supporters with an excellent donation & stewardship experience.

Apply steadfast accuracy and responsiveness to process and acknowledge financial contributions and update donor accounts. Exercise superb interpersonal skills to resolve inquiries and strengthen donor relationships. Fulfill responsibilities for fundraising campaigns and large-scale written communications throughout the year. Bring initiative and a positive attitude to daily work and unexpected challenges, and respectful candor to all interactions.

Behind every child and Apply online at dynapower.com/about/dynapower-careers.

Learn more at VPR.org/Careers. VPR is an E.O.E. young person who believes For more information email recruiter@dynapower.com in themselves and knows their worth is an adult who believed and knew first. Are you one of 4t-Dynapower050521.indd 1 4/30/214t-VPR042821.indd 5:49 PM 1 4/23/21 those people? Sara Holbrook Community Center is in search of an Associate Director who will be responsible for leading and managing a comprehensive array of child and youth programs working We have part time, full time, closely with the Executive and key leadership roles available Director and a strong team throughout our stores in Vermont. of Program Directors. This is an outstanding opportunity to lead a highly effective program team in the midst of exciting expansion and transition.

Meat Cutter SIGN-ON Bonus is available in most Vermont stores.

To read the full job

10:49 AM

HIRING IN ALL DEPARTMENTS!

description or to apply, go to saraholbrookcc. org/employmentopportunities.

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Apply online

Hannaford.com/Careers

or contact your local Hannaford and ask to speak to a hiring manager.

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5/3/21 9:36 AM

FOLLOW US ON TWITTER @SEVENDAYSJOBS, SUBSCRIBE TO RSS, OR BROWSE POSTS ON YOUR PHONE AT JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM

SENIOR ADULT PROGRAM AND RECREATIONAL SPECIALIST

The City of South Burlington is looking for dynamic professionals to develop and implement a broad spectrum of programs for our newly constructed Community Senior Center. The ideal candidate will enthusiastically embrace the opportunity to infuse engaging programs, activities and events into this space while providing meaningly connections to this unique population.

CUSTODIAL SUPPORT SPECIALIST

To help support and coordinate the daily cleaning of day-to-day maintenance and operation of City Hall and City Library at 180 Market Street. A custodian is responsible for maintaining the cleanliness of a building and the surrounding grounds.

For further information and job descriptions please use our website: southburlingtonvt.gov. To apply, please submit a cover letter, resume and three references by Friday, May 28, 2021 to Jaimie Held, Human Resource Manager at jheld@sburl.com.

CARPENTERS & CARPENTERS’ HELPERS

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NEW JOBS POSTED DAILY!

FOOD PROGRAMS COORDINATOR

Performance Foodservice, a division of Performance Food Group, is located in Essex, VT.

Full job descriptions: www.pfgc.com/Careers Apply at: jobs.performancefoodservice.com Or Call 802-288-5006.

5/4/21 11:01 AM

Unitarian Church - Montpelier

If you would like to become part of one of Northern New England’s most dynamic construction companies and a named best place to work for 3 years in a row, please e-mail us a resume. Please also complete an application, which can be found: dewconstruction.com/about/careers/.

• A SIGNING BONUS IS OFFERED • Job Type: FULL-TIME Pay: $18.00 - $28.00 per hour COVID-19 considerations: We have a COVID-19 Safety Plan in place for all job sites and follow all federal and state guidelines. Employee safety is our primary concern. We are an Equal Opportunity Employer.

HOPE, a poverty relief organization serving the Addison County area, is looking for a team member who is passionate about healthy food and food justice.

We are currently hiring for Experienced Class A delivery drivers and 3rd shift order selectors in our warehouse. We also have an Associate Driving Program for people looking to pursue a career as a professional driver. Offering sign on bonuses; Class A Delivery Drivers $3000.00. Order Selectors $1500.00.

Acting Director of Music

DEW offers an excellent benefit package including: health and dental insurance, 401(k) with a company contribution, life insurance, short and long term disability, paid holidays, vacation and sick time.

MAY 12-19, 2021

POSITIONS OPEN

5/7/21 4t-PerformanceFoodService050521.indd 11:27 AM 1

DEW Construction Corporation is seeking reliable and self-motivated Carpenters and Carpenters’ Helpers to work in the Chittenden County/Northern, VT area. Commercial construction experience is a must and an exceptional safety record is required.

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JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM

The Acting Director of Music creates and directs a program of inspiring and diverse music for the church worship services, in alignment with Unitarian Universalist principles and the church’s mission, vision, and goals.

The Director also leads the Church Choir. During the upcoming church year, we anticipate that we will pivot from entirely virtual Sunday services to a dual-platform approach. The Church Choir will move towards in person or hybrid rehearsals as circumstances allow and will need to maintain connection in adapted ways.

Responsibilities include oversight of a large, thriving Food Shelf, farm pickups, leading volunteer groups in farm gleans, distribution of produce to other charitable food sites, implementation of pop-up food distribution events, planning and coordinating food education events, and more. If you are detail-oriented, comfortable working with diverse groups, able to foster successful working relationships and love local food, we want to meet you!

receptionist@hope-vt.org

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Plans may change in response to the circumstances of Covid-19 in our local community and the reopening protocols determined by Church leadership. The Director will need to work with the Minister and Worship Team to creatively develop a music program and lead the Choir during this period of continued transition and opportunity.

4/30/21 3:51 PM

Community Engagement Coordinator

Hunger Free Vermont is looking to bring on a Community Engagement Coordinator though the SerVermont VISTA program. The Community 1 5/11/21 11:09 AM Engagement Coordinator will 4t-DEW050521.indd 1 4/30/214t-UnitarianChurchMontpelier051221.indd 1:26 PM DIRECTOR OF COMMUNITY support Hunger Free Vermont’s COORDINATION work to develop and implement The College of Education and Social Services a robust community engagement at the University of Vermont seeks a Director and education program. This of Community Coordination exempt-level DRVT seeks an Office Manager position will support community staff member to provide management oversight, leadership, and ultimate engagement activities for Disability Rights Vermont, our state’s non-profit Protection & responsibility for all placement and field-site coordination for PreK-16 enhancing food security in Vermont Advocacy system, is seeking a skilled, responsible Office Manager. coursework including practicum and student teaching, may include some through the coordination of the The position includes providing assistance to the Executive Director service learning placement coordination and collaboration. Responsibilities Hunger Councils of Vermont and in a variety of tasks and logistical support to Advocates, Attorneys, for the PreK-16 Field Site Placements include collaborative work in strategic other education activities.

Business Manager and the Board of Directors.

Applicant must have excellent communication and computer skills and be organized and detail-oriented. Light bookkeeping, general office management, IT support skills, web and graphic design experience preferred. College graduate preferred. DRVT is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

Please send a letter of interest, résumé, and three references to: A.J. Ruben DRVT, 141 Main St., Suite 7, Montpelier, VT 05602 or email to AJ@DisabilityRightsVt.org

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Job posting at: tinyurl.com/UCM-Acting-Music-Director.

planning, budget, recruitment, management, training, data management and data dissemination for accreditation reporting and outreach to outside constituents. Administrative supervision of clinical supervisors in the Department of Education (DOE) related to selection, training, and evaluation.

Administrative work related to selection, training, and evaluation of fieldbased mentors/cooperating teachers and the business support generalist.

Liaison with the all DOE certification programs, Director of Licensure, and Chair/Faculty of the Department of Education. Reports to the Department Chair Department of Education.

For more information and to apply: uvmjobs.com/postings/44300.

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For more information and the application process, please visit hungerfreevt.org/employment.

All applications (including resume and cover letter) must be completed through the AmeriCorps Portal: my.americorps.gov/ mp/listing/viewListing. do?id=81013.

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ATTENTION RECRUITERS:

76 MAY 12-19, 2021

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POST YOUR JOBS AT JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM FOR FAST RESULTS, OR CONTACT MICHELLE BROWN: MICHELLE@SEVENDAYSVT.COM 2:15 PM

Accounting Clerk

Duties include generating customer invoices, posting customer payments and creating bank deposits, paying vendor invoices, reviewing weekly time cards for submission to payroll company, taking customer phone orders, filing various documents and other duties as assigned. Knowledge of general accounting and Microsoft Office required and experience with Quickbooks a plus. Competitive salary and benefits.

Warehouse Package Handler Duties include palletizing customer orders and delivering to local trucking companies, other duties as assigned. Must be able to lift 75 pounds. Forklift and crane experience a must.

Competitive salary and benefits.

Apply at: granitecitytoolco @myfairpoint.net.

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5/7/21

Work at Summer Camp!!

June-August, 2021

READY TO HIRE FULL-TIME HELP FOR YOUNG MAN

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Positions available to work as a team with a young adult autistic man in the community and at his home. The successful candidate will be a responsible person who enjoys helping others, has good athletic skills, and has a musical repertoire.

Highly skilled training will accompany this job. A college degree is required. This is a 8:30 am - 4:00 pm Monday - Friday schedule with great summer hours. However, the job is year11:49 AMround. Pay is very competitive. This is a full-time position and one that will allow you to grow professionally.

RESALE STORE MATERIALS HANDLER

Please send your resume, cover letter and 3 references with their contact information to nbgteamvt@gmail.com.

Resumes submitted without cover letters or reference contacts will not be considered. It will be necessary that you are fully COVID-19 vaccinated at the time of employment.

4/26/21 5:31 PM

Camp Kiniya is a beautiful summer camp for girls located on Lake Champlain in Colchester,VT. We are seeking summer staff who enjoy working with campers 9-14 years old, are team oriented, and like being in a community dedicated to fun, service and leadership development. Room-and-Board and competitive pay.

Tennis Instructor This role includes beginner instruction of tennis, as well as being on a team of athletics staff helping with a variety of activities. Instruction experience with youth is a plus!

Waterfront Staff Spend the summer lifeguarding, paddling, SUPing or sailing while supervising kids and teaching basic skills.

Sailing instruction experience is a plus!

Interested? Please Contact: Thank you for your interest, NBG Team.

Mollie Farnham-Stratton | Mollie@Campdudley.org HOPE seeks a team member for our resale store warehouse.

Duties include assisting people donating goods for resale, 4t-NBGTeam051221.indd 1 5/11/214t-CampDudley@Kiniya050521.indd 9:42 AM 1 5/4/21 10:54 AM cleaning and preparing items for the sales floor, loading and Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital has a unloading our box truck, general variety of open positions including: maintenance, and more.

Applicants should have solid RNs, LNAs, communication skills, be able to work independently and as MT or MLT, part of a team, lift up to 25 lbs.

Administrative, on a regular basis and up to The Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission seeks an Information Services adaptable, self-motivated Bookkeeper. Apply to join our team if 40 lbs. occasionally, and stand and more! you enjoy leveraging the power of people working together to help for periods of time. Forklift other achieve their goals! This is a permanent position at 24-30 experience and mechanical hours per week. Compensation commensurate with demonstrated Full-time, part-time and per diem schedules available. ability helpful. Store profits ability within a salary range of $37,440-$60,000 (annualized for benefit our poverty relief Shift differentials and per diem rates offered. full-time status). Benefits apply. Flexible and collaborative work programs. If you want a job environment. The successful candidate will have an Associate’s degree FT and PT employees are eligible for excellent where you can pitch in, work in bookkeeping, accounting or related discipline and three to five years benefits including student loan repayment, generhard, and know that your work in a similar position; a bachelor’s degree in accounting, business or ous paid time off, wellness reimbursement, low cost is making a difference in the financial management preferred. Knowledge of state and federal grant lives of others, we’d like to health insurance and 401k with company match! management and contract administration highly desirable.

Information at centralvtplanning.org. Position open until filled; talk with you!

MULTIPLE POSITIONS OPEN

CENTRAL VERMONT REGIONAL PLANNING COMMISSION

BOOKKEEPER

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APPLY TODAY AT NVRH.ORG/CAREERS.

1 5/4/214t-NVRH032421.indd 2:23 PM

applications review begins May 17, 2021. EOE

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5/7/21 2:38 PM

FOLLOW US ON TWITTER @SEVENDAYSJOBS, SUBSCRIBE TO RSS, OR BROWSE POSTS ON YOUR PHONE AT JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM

HOSPITAL MEDICAL BILLING REPRESENTATIVE Now offering sign on bonuses for select roles!

The Hospital Medical Billing Representative functions independently within a payer team environment to appropriately resolve patient accounts by performing billing and follow-up activities to effectively collect balances due on assigned accounts.

LEARN MORE & APPLY: bit.ly/3ljbDBy

WE HAVE OPPORTUNITIES IN OUR KITCHEN AND BAKERY

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NEW JOBS POSTED DAILY!

77

JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM

MAY 12-19, 2021

COOKS & WAITSTAFF

IT Administrative Assistant • Year round position • Lamoille North Modified Unified Union School District • Information Technology (IT) Lamoille North School District proudly serving the towns of Hyde Park, Eden, Johnson, Waterville, Belvidere, and Cambridge VT is seeking an Administrative Assistant to join our Information Technology team. The ideal candidate for this position has great organizational, computer, clerical, time management, collaboration, and inter-personal communication skills and attention detail. The Administrative Assistant will be responsible for providing administrative support to ensure efficient operation of the deparment. Supports the Director of IT and IT employees through a variety of tasks related to organization and communication. Responsible for confidential and time sensitive material. Familiar with a variety of the field's concepts, practices and procedures is a plus.

Looking for experienced, motivated individuals seeking full time and part time employment. Experience not required but enthusiasm and motivation to improve one’s craft is necessary. Explore this beautiful state through catering while creating some of Vermont's best cuisine that is powered by local and seasonal produce.

We strive to create a sustainable culture inside of our company with great pay, flexible hours, and an educational setting.

If interested, please email

CHRISTINECLOUD9VT@GMAIL.COM.

3/19/21 1:34 PM Salary

is commensurate with experience and we offer an excellent 2v-Cloud9Catering051221.indd benefits package. This is a grant funded 2-year full-time year round position beginning July 1, 2021.

1

5/7/21 4:44 PM

#administrative assistant

If you care about food and you take To submit your application online, please visit SchoolSpring.com to INTEGRATED pride in your work, we want to talk apply. Applications will be attention: Brian Pena, IT Systems Manager, EDUCATION to you! Red Hen has a long history and will include a cover letter and three current reference letters. & TRAINING (IET) of valuing everyone’s talents and Equal Opportunity Employer PROJECT input and we take pride in keeping our staff motivated and challenged. We strive to create positions that make you proud COORDINATOR of what you do. Red Hen offers competitive pay and benefits, Full-time position available with benefits in Rutland, VT including health coverage, paid vacation and more.

5h-LamoilleNorthSU050521.indd 1 4/30/21 12:46 PM We have a new Executive Chef, are creating a new menu and have two new opportunities in our kitchen:

SOUS CHEF We are hiring for a Sous Chef to work closely under our veteran Chef to assist with the construction and execution of our new vision. We are looking for someone with a passion for food and for whom this is a career choice. You would work alongside our Chef, making great food and running a joyful, tight kitchen.

Send resumes and inquiries to cassy@redhenbaking.com.

LINE COOKS We're also hiring for great line cooks that are focused and detail-oriented as well as being great communicators. One year of professional kitchen experience is preferred, but we are willing to teach anyone. Most importantly, we are looking for a good work ethic and an excitement for learning. Send resumes and inquiries to cassy@redhenbaking.com.

PART-TIME PASTRY BAKER If pastry baking is your passion, we’re hiring for a part-time pastry baker. Our pastries include a variety of laminated products, pies, scones, cookies and many things in between. We opened in 1999 and remain dedicated to the integrity of the baking processes and creating an environment for our bakers to thrive.

Professional baking or cooking experience is required. You must enjoy working independently and with a team. Schedule includes early mornings and weekends.

Send resumes and inquiries to jeremy@redhenbaking.com.

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MARKETING ADMISSIONS PLANNER Wake Robin, Vermont’s premier Life Plan Community, seeks a Marketing Admissions Planner to attract and cultivate long term relationships with prospective Wake Robin residents. Utilizing our strategic marketing plan and public relations techniques to tell the Wake Robin story, this individual enhances our visibility within the senior living market and engages those who have expressed interest in the senior living lifestyle.

The successful candidate is an experienced long-term relationship builder and demonstrates the subtleties of prospect cultivation. S/he is the face of Wake Robin, representing the culture of the community which distinguishes us as an extraordinary choice among options in senior living.

Qualified candidates will have a Bachelor’s degree in Admissions, Marketing, Public Relations or a related field with a minimum of two years of professional experience. Those with experience with senior living communities and/or non-profit marketing or development are encouraged to apply.

The Project Coordinator will develop and oversee Energy Works. As an IET program, Energy Works will be a collaborative effort involving many community partners to provide a combination of technical, soft skills, and academic training. The Project Coordinator will be responsible for recruiting community partners and coordinating their efforts to create a series of 6 12 week training sessions for weatherization, solar installation and heat pump installation.

Send a cover letter, resume and three professional references (preferably supervisor or manager level) to: rcampbell@vtadultlearning.org EOE

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5/7/21 4:43 PM

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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10/29/19 12:12 PM

NA TRAINING PROGRAM 78 ATTENTION RECRUITERS:

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

MAY 12-19, 2021

ke Robin is happy to announce our next LNA training program. Wake Robin ks among the top 100 nursing homes in the country; an award reflecting NAEYC accredited excellent staff and facility.

Our student employees with us while Marywork Johnson early childhood ng classes. Get paid while you train, and begin your new career, all at the Children’s Center e time! program seeking: ady an LNA?Early We have an opportunityIndividual for you!

Childhood Assistant Seeking an energetic, creative individual assistant to help facilitate the e opening on our day or overnight shifts! With generous wages and successful integration of a child into the classroom. Approximately 20 hour erentials, experienced avg. $17.00hours p/h.subbing.

Flex schedules, per week, withLNA’s potential additional The positiontuition involves working as part of team, and the applicant should have experience and mbursement and loan programs, great benefits, amazing community training in early childhood education. ing, all at a pace where you can be your best.

Full Time rested candidates please Teachers email a cover letter and resume to hr@ Established early childhood program seeking dynamic committed teachers to erobin.comjoin or our complete application onlineinclude at www.wakerobin.com. program.an Position responsibilities curriculum development, Go working with families and other agencies, and general classroom Wakerobin.com for more information. EEOC responsibilities. Full time with a benefit package. BA/BS in Early Childhood or related field with an Early Education teaching certificate preferred.

Please send resume and 3 references, or letter of interest to Mary Johnson Children's Center, 81 Water St., Middlebury, VT 05753. E.O.E.

LNA TRAINING Wake Robin is happy to announce our next LNA training program. Wake Robin ranks among the top 100 nursing homes in the country, an award reflecting our excellent staff and facility.

Our student employees work with us while taking classes. Get paid while you train, and begin your new career, all at the same time!

Already an LNA? We have an opportunity for you!

Rare opening on our day or overnight shifts! With generous wages and differentials, experienced LNAs average $17.00 per hour. Flex schedules, tuition reimbursement and loan programs, great benefits, amazing community setting, all at a pace where you can be your best.

Interested candidates can apply online at Wakerobin.com or email a resume with cover letter to: HR@wakerobin.com. Wake Robin is an equal opportunity employer.

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5/11/21 10:23 AM

5/3/21 4:17 PM

Sign Maker

Design Signs is seeking a highly skilled Sign Fabrication Professional to join our team. Duties include sign manufacturing from start to finish, cutting on a CNC router, painting, installation and applying vinyl. Benefits include competetive pay, paid holidays & time Off, health insurance and a fun working atmosphere. Technically minded vermont.orgpeople are encouraged to apply.

Reach out to nicole@ designsignsvt.com for more information or to submit resume.

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4/26/21 2:05 PM

Administrative Assistant Part-time, 20 hours/week General administrative support as part of a small collaborative office team in a pleasant work environment at Rock Point in Burlington. Must have good people skills, be attentive to detail, and have strong technical skills in all areas of administrative support including use of the Microsoft Suite and FileMaker Pro, and Apple products. Compensation based on experience and skills.

Send resumes to:

OPERATIONS ANALYST VEDA is looking to hire a full-time Operations Analyst to join our team. Due to COVID-19, this position is expected to be remote-based for a period of time, with the permanent work location flexible between our four offices.

VEDA provides financing to businesses and farms across Vermont, often in partnership with private financial institutions and government agencies. This position’s primary responsibilities will be to support VEDA’s loan servicing functions and to develop solutions that drive optimal operating efficiencies.

The position requires a solid understanding of VEDA’s programs and services, information technology, loan systems and processes.

Other responsibilities include inputting and analyzing loan data; processing loan payments; preparing reports, reconciliations, and information dashboards; synthesizing data for, and responding to, inquiries from varied audiences.

VEDA’s Operations Analyst will be a member of VEDA’s Operations team, working under the supervision of the Director of Servicing. This job has a wide variety of responsibilities and will reward the right candidate with a breadth of experience within a non-profit, mission-oriented workplace.

VEDA offers a competitive salary and excellent health and retirement benefits packages. Other perks include a flexible work environment, opportunities for professional development and access to networking opportunities around Vermont. VEDA is an Equal Opportunity Provider and Employer and is interested in increasing staff diversity.

We welcome job applications from all qualified candidates.

To apply, please email resume and cover letter to Cheryl Houchens: chouchens@veda.org

pvandegraaf@diovermont.org

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CALL CENTER REPRESENTATIVES & SUMMER COMMUNITY BANKERS There is no better time to join NSB’s growing team!

Northfield Savings Bank, founded in 1867, is the largest banking institution headquartered in Vermont. We are adding to our teams! We are looking for professionals to join our Direct Banking department as Call Center Representatives. Additionally, we are looking for Temporary Summer Community Banker professionals to join our team in both Chittenden County and Central Vermont. Each position will require a high school diploma or equivalent, excellent customer service skills, and strong written and verbal communication.

CALL CENTER REPRESENTATIVE The successful candidate will be comfortable with digital and online banking systems and will be eager to provide prompt, accurate, and confidential information to our customers.

SUMMER (TEMPORARY) COMMUNITY BANKER The Summer Community Banker will consistently provide outstanding customer service, processes customers’ financial transactions, and maintain customer confidentiality.

OPPORTUNITY FOR GROWTH NSB encourages career development and has a variety of training platforms available. The average years of service for an NSB employee is 9! If you’re looking for a career in the banking industry, this is a great place to start!

WHAT NSB CAN OFFER YOU Competitive compensation based on experience. Well-rounded benefits package. Profit-Sharing opportunity. 401(k) matching retirement program. Professional development. Positive work environment supported by a team culture. Weekends off!

Send an NSB Application & resume in confidence to: Careers@nsbvt.com, or Northfield Savings Bank, Equal Opportunity Employer Human Resources | PO Box 7180, Barre, VT 05641

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5/3/21 12:22 PM

FOLLOW US ON TWITTER @SEVENDAYSJOBS, SUBSCRIBE TO RSS, OR BROWSE POSTS ON YOUR PHONE AT JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM

NEW JOBS POSTED DAILY! JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM

79 MAY 12-19, 2021

Facilities Supervisor SUMMER PROGRAMS & CAMPS ARE HIRING! Love working with children and youth? Summer programs and camps across Vermont are hiring for full and part-time positions.

Help youth reconnect, recharge, and have fun!

The Vermont Foodbank is searching for a Facilities Supervisor. Our ideal candidate is an experienced facilities professional who is ready to lead a small team and will be responsible for professional development of their staff including training, goal setting, and regular check-ins.

Developmental Disability Services Director

Requirements include: 3-5 years’ experience in maintaining buildings, grounds, and equipment, preferably in a food-related industry; knowledge of HVAC or refrigeration systems preferred.

Must be proficient in MS Office Suite and be able to quickly learn new programs and systems.

Vermont Care Partners is recruiting for the Director of Developmental Disability Services to provide statewide leadership to designated and specialized service agencies on Full job description: vtfoodbank.org/employment/current-openings developmental disability services and fill out an application with a resume and cover letter attached. and public policy including • Camp counselor • Specialized tutor We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer and seek to bring service delivery and payment • Enrichment activity leader • Certified lifeguard reform. Duties include advocacy, our values of diversity and inclusion to our hiring process. Beyond our • Outdoor educator • And more! development of trainings, commitment to non-discrimination, we encourage applications from research, technical assistance candidates who can contribute to the diversity of our organization Visit VermontAfterschool.org/Recruit to easily indicate your and analysis of best practices, and who have lived experience of inequity. interest in applying for an open position near you. program trends, regulation, policy, law and legislation.

Preferred qualifications: 4t-VTAfterschool042821.indd 1 4/23/21 4t-VTFoodbank050521.indd 11:02 AM 1 4/30/21 3:35 PM MA human services, public administration, or related field; Experience in community-based disability services; managing workgroups, programs, policy initiatives; government relations and advocacy. Application due Local (Adirondacks) premier builder seeking experienced May 28, 2021. E.O.E.

Teens, college students, experiential educators, and anyone seeking a seasonal job are welcome to apply. Programs are especially keen to hire energetic, responsible, creative people who have diverse skills to share. Most jobs are in-person, and employers carefully follow COVID-19 safety protocols and health guidance. Types of roles include:

COORDINATED ENTRY ADMINISTRATOR

craftsmen to join our team. Our team is growing and we’re seeking:

CABINET SHOP, CARPENTERS & FOREMEN We are fortunate enough to build the unique collaborations of our architects and customers – making their projects come to life. Our projects are anything but ordinary – and have earned us placement on the cover of Architectural Digest. We are seeking experienced shop members with a combination of cabinetry shop, custom milling and furniture building experience to join our team. We are also looking to add skilled carpenters & foremen to our field team.

PROJECT MANAGER The Project Manager is responsible for the daily management of current projects. Duties include financial, schedule and quality management, construction operations - including hands-on field work, as well as the oversight of the project team. They engage day-to-day with Owners, Architects, Engineers, Designers, Subcontractors and work alongside and closely with the company President. You will contribute to the overall operations of our company and to the future direction of our organization.

Project Manager Experience:

5-10 years’ high-end residential construction and/or project management experience, Proficiency in MS Office Suite, PlanSwift, AutoCAD, Engineering, Architecture, or Construction Management degree a bonus.

We have a great team, company, benefits, above average compensation for our region and trade. If you are interested in RELOCATING to the area, we would be happy to help you do so!! Our region is an outdoor lover’s paradise!

Please contact us to learn more! email: info@adirondackclassicdesigns.com office: 518-359-0073

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Julie@vermontcarepartners.org

The Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity (CVOEO) seeks a Coordinated Entry (CE) Administrator who 3v-VTCarePartners050521.indd 1 5/3/21 will work to ensure that persons experiencing homelessness in our area receive consistent, appropriate, and equal access to local housing and services. This role serves as a liaison between service users, outreach staff, shelters, case management/housing navigation services, and MANAGEMENT & housing providers as they strive for seamless and efficient DIRECT SUPPORT coordination of services. The CE Administrator will analyze and present data, prepare applications and grant reports, Work at CCS and be a part maintain the housing prioritization list, and supervise at least of our mission to build a one other staff person.

Successful applicants will have a Bachelor’s degree and 2-4 years’ relevant experience; a commitment to diversity; effective verbal and written communication skills – bilingual abilities are a plus; the ability to communicate respectfully and with compassion; knowledge of Housing First approaches, familiarity with case management principles and procedures, program management skills, database skills, staff supervision, and meeting facilitation/presentation. A clean driving record and access to reliable transportation are required.

We offer an excellent benefit package, generous time off, a retirement plan and discounted gym membership. To apply, please submit your resume and cover letter via email to: CEAdmin2021@cvoeo.org. CVOEO is interested in candidates who can contribute to our diversity and excellence.

Applicants are encouraged to include in their cover letter information about how they will further this goal. To learn more about this position, please visit cvoeo.org/careers.

CVOEO is an Equal Opportunity Employer

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12:51 PM

community where everyone participates and belongs.

Champlain Community Services, named one of the “Best Places to Work in Vermont” for the third year in a row, wants you as part of the team! Our current openings for management and direct support offer opportunities to make a positive impact on someone’s life, and in yours.

Find the job of your dreams at ccs-vt. org/currentopenings/

ccs-vt.org E.O.E.

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ATTENTION RECRUITERS:

80

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

MAY 12-19, 2021

ORDERLY

Patient Support Services Department The Patient Support Orderly provides assistance to all nursing and testing units and other hospital areas for patient related activities including but not limited to: transportation of patients, patient items and clinical equipment, lifting/boosting of patients, setting up traction and other direct care activities as trained.

Learn more and apply: uvmmed.hn/sevendays 4t-UVMMedCenter051221.indd 1

4/9/21 10:36 AM

100% EMPLOYEE-OWNED 7t-NRGfacilities051221.indd 1

Join the team at Gardener’s Supply Company!

We are a 100% employee-owned company and an award winning and nationally recognized socially responsible business. We work hard AND offer a fun place to work including BBQs, staff parties, employee garden plots and much more! We also offer strong cultural values, competitive wages and outstanding benefits!

Director of Logistics and Distribution Center This individual will be responsible for efficiently running all parts of our Distribution Center(s) while hitting service level goals. This person will create a strong employee culture and implement best practices through systems, processes and employee involvement. Our ideal candidate will have 10+ years of experience in ERP functionality, Warehouse Management Systems, payroll processing and MS Office Suite; 3-5 years of Direct/Ecommerce business distribution experience in a $75+ million company; and excellent problem-solving and management skills equivalent to those usually acquired in achieving a bachelor’s level of study with 10 years of warehousing experience preferably in the Direct/Ecommerce/Retail environment.

Interested? Please go to our careers page at www.gardeners.com/careers and apply online!

The

5/10/21 11:09 AM

Assistant Federal Defender

Federal Public Defender for the District of Vermont is accepting applications for an Assistant Federal Defender position. The federal defender organization operates under authority of the Criminal Justice Act (CJA), 18 U.S.C. §3006A, to provide defense services to indigent persons in federal criminal cases and related matters upon appointment by the U.S. District Court. The office location is Burlington, Vermont.

Requirements: The successful candidate will be an attorney with at least five years of trial experience, with significant experience in federal court, able to write well and to perform legal research using computer research programs. Being a member of, or eligible for immediate admission to, the bar of the United States District Court for the District of Vermont, is preferred. (See Local Rules, District of Vermont, 83.1(a)).

Selection Criteria: The successful candidate will have clearly demonstrated an aptitude for excellence in criminal defense practice, a commitment to the representation of indigent accused persons, a reputation for personal integrity, and the ability to work cooperatively in a team environment. Experience in federal appeals work is a plus.

Salary and Benefits: Salary commensurate with experience and qualifications within the guidelines set by the judiciary salary scale for Assistant Federal Defenders, at a scale equivalent to that of Assistant United States Attorneys. The position is in the excepted service and does not carry the tenure rights of the competitive Civil Service. The private practice of law is prohibited. The position includes regular U.S. Government employment benefits, including annual leave, sick leave, health and life insurance, and a retirement system. Salary is payable only by Electronic Funds Transfer (direct deposit). The successful candidate will be subject to an FBI background check as a condition of employment.

How to Apply: Qualified attorneys are invited to apply by emailing a cover letter, a resume with a summary of trial and appellate experience, and three professional references, to Stephanie Baer, Administrative Officer, at Stephanie_Baer@fd.org.

Application submissions must be received no later than May 31, 2021.

THE FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER FOR THE DISTRICT OF VERMONT IS AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER

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5/5/21 9:04 5/6/21 4:02 AM PM

5/7/21 2:04 PM

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NEW JOBS POSTED DAILY! JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM

81 MAY 12-19, 2021

Woodworker/Cabinet-maker & Cabinet finisher/Painter Small shop specializing in custom cabinetry and furniture looking to add a full-time woodworker (should be comfortable with basic shop tools such as table saw, miter saw, jointer, planer, routers, sanders, etc.) and a full-time finisher (should be comfortable with spray finishing equipment). Flexible schedule, pay dependent on experience. ben@woodenhammer.net

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5/3/21 3:37 PM

Hayward Tyler, a leading manufacturer of industrial pumps and motors in Colchester, is seeking candidates to fill the roles of Inside Sales Representative, Assembly Technician, and Quality Assurance Engineer.

Inside Sales Representative

This candidate provides daily customer communication and is the main point of contact for activities such as preparing and maintaining accurate and complete quotes, lead times and pricing.

Reviews customer requests, technical specifications, terms and conditions and works with stakeholders in collaboration to identify any exceptions or deviations. Close attention to detail and excellent communication skills are essential.

INFORMATION SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATOR NSB’s Team is Growing!

Northfield Savings Bank, founded in 1867, is the largest banking institution headquartered in Vermont; we strive to serve our employees as well as our communities. Our IT Team is growing, and we are looking for a professional to join our IT department as an Information Systems Administrator in a hybrid capacity, with a flexible working schedule available. This position will train and periodically work in our Berlin Operations Center as well as have remote capabilities.

JOB RESPONSIBILITIES & REQUIREMENTS

• The Information Systems Administrator develops, optimizes, and maintains the bank’s client/server environment.

• We are looking for someone who is a great team player that can also work well independently.

• Effective communication skills and offer a high level of customer service to both internal and external customers.

• An associate degree plus five or more years of service in a technical field is required.

This is an entry level assembly team member who should possess the ability to follow work instructions from his/her supervisor and experienced team members. The candidate must be able to work in all areas of assembly (DCI, Build and Wind) with the ability to understand drawings and work instructions.

Quality Assurance Engineer

This position is responsible for providing a high level of quality assurance engineering work. Qualified candidates are able to plan, complete, and direct quality engineering work associated with the HTI Quality Program. Must be able to establish priorities for work assigned and Work co-operatively with all departments and suppliers to exceed customer expectations.

For complete job descriptions, please visit: haywardtyler.com.

• NSB offers a competitive compensation based on experience.

• Benefits package including medical, dental, combined time off, 10 paid holidays, a wellness program and more!

• Profit sharing opportunity and an outstanding employer-matching 401(K) retirement program.

• NSB offers professional development opportunities, and a positive work environment supported by a team culture.

• Hours of operation are Monday – Friday, generally 8:00am to 5:00pm.

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Equal Opportunity Employer.

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FOR RATES & INFO: MICHELLE BROWN, 802-865-1020 X21, MICHELLE@SEVENDAYSVT.COM

5/10/21 2:42 PM

VACATION RENTAL PROPERTY MANAGERS

Northfield Savings Bank H.R. P.O. Box 7180, Barre, VT 05641-7180 Equal Opportunity Employer

PRINT DEADLINE: NOON ON MONDAYS (INCLUDING HOLIDAYS)

Seeking reliable, hardworking individuals to add to our existing gardening team. We do not use chemicals or power tools. We work weekdays and weekends through November, but schedules are flexible. Part time is OK. Pay commensurate with experience. lazydogs2@comcast.net

Please send an NSB Application + your resume in confidence to: Careers@nsbvt.com, or mail to:

Hayward Tyler, Inc - Attn: HR Department 480 Roosevelt Highway - PO Box 680, Colchester, VT 05446 Email: Careers@haywardtyler.com

9:39 AM

Seasonal Garden Worker

• NSB has training opportunities to engage employees and assist with personal development within our company.

• Average Years of Service at Northfield Savings Bank is above 9! If you’d like to settle down in your career, join our team!

We offer a competitive salary and excellent benefits package. 8t-NorthfieldSavingsBank042121.indd ATTENTION RECRUITERS: 1 If you meet our requirements and are interested in an exciting POST YOUR JOBS AT: SEVENDAYSVT.COM/POSTMYJOB opportunity, please forward your resume & salary requirements to:

Contact Lee Randlett at lee@keewaydin.org.

MacDun 4/13/21 Garden Care

OPPORTUNITY FOR GROWTH

We understand the importance of having evenings and weekends with our friends, families, and our community.

Looking for someone to help with maintenance at our two summer camps on Lake Dunmore, April-October. Work includes repairs, mowing, painting, cleaning and firewood. Great work environment and competitive pay.

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WHAT NSB CAN OFFER YOU

Assembly Technician

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Maintenance Work at Camp Keewaydin

Warren/Ludlow

5/3/21

Fast-growing Vacation Rental business! Independently owned by a VT native. Looking for a Leader 9:46 AMto grow with us. Duties include managing rental schedule, guest services online, and in-person coordination with cleaning, maintenance, and inspection. The job will also include housekeeping.

Pay based on experience. Hourly $20-25 plus bonus structure.

Please email rachel@skyrun.com with your resume.

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5/4/21 10:49 AM

for more than 50 years.

ATTENTION RECRUITERS:

82

We’ve been Shaping Possibility POST YOURfor more JOBS AT JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM FOR FAST RESULTS, OR than 50 years.

Will you join us?

CONTACT MICHELLE BROWN: MICHELLE@SEVENDAYSVT.COM Explore job openings Will youat:join www. hypertherm.jobs

MAY 12-19, 2021

Explore jobsign-on openings at:bonus $1,000

Exterior Painters

www. hypertherm.jobs

for manufacturing positions (Assembly, Warehouse, Machine Operator)

Please fill out application at vtpainters.com/jobs 2h-GreenMountainPainters040616.indd 1

4/1/16

We are hiring positions

We are hiring positions across all shifts and taking every precaution to across all shifts. keep our Associates safe and providing job security through our over • Consistently rated one of the 50‑year history of no layoffs.

W A N T E D

Green Mountain Painters is looking for talented individuals to join our growing team. Earn excellent pay working a great summer job. Plenty of room to grow and advance your career.

us?

Howard Center is seeking a Shared Living Provider (SLP) for a young • man who enjoys watching basketball• and football, music, and cooking. • The ideal provider will be a single man over the age of 30 who lives •

We are hiring positions across all shifts and every to besttaking places to precaution work in New keep our Associates safe and providing Hampshire job security through our over Consistently rated one of the best places to work in New Hampshire 50‑year history of no layoffs.

• 100% Associate-owned

100% Associate‑owned

• Antoessential business Consistently rated one of the best places work in New Hampshire An• essential business • 100% Associate‑owned

• Career opportunities including

Career development opportunities including several USDOL registered several USDOL registered • An essentialprograms business apprenticeship We’ve been Shaping Possibility

alone (a pet at home may be okay) apprenticeship programs.

• for more Career development opportunities including several USDOL registered than 50 years. and is able to set strong limits and • Strong commitment to the wellbeing of our Associates, our communities, apprenticeship programs • Commitment to the wellbeing 3:01 PM boundaries. The provider will be join us? and Will theyou environment • Strong commitment to the wellbeing of our Associates, our communities, of our Associates, communities assisted by living support staff.

Explore job openings at: and the environment www. hypertherm.jobs and the environment.

Compensation includes an annual Hypertherm is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer and we welcome all applications. All employment decisions stipend of $42,000 and are based on business need, jobanrequirements, andEmployer our values Hypertherm is proud to be Equal Opportunity as an Associate-owned without regard to race, and we welcome allcompany applications.

All employment decisions a generous respite budget.

We are hiring positions across all shifts and taking every precaution to keep our Associates safe and providing job security through our over 50‑year history of no layoffs.

For more information or to request an application, contact Patrick Fraser at patfraser@howardcenter.org

Associate Housing Director

VHCB is seeking an experienced and collaborative housing professional to join our team, supporting the development of affordable housing in Vermont. Work with the housing staff on2v-HowardCenter051221.indd policy and program development, new initiatives, and delivering support and funding to VHCB’s housing partners. Coordinate training and technical assistance programs; evaluate affordable housing applications and make recommendations for action; and support the overall effectiveness of VHCB housing programs. Qualifications: demonstrated commitment to affordable housing, prior experience and training in housing development, financial analysis, and project underwriting, strong communication skills, and a commitment to collaborative problem solving. Experience working with non-profit organizations, municipalities, housing development groups, and state agencies is important. Experience with project management and coordination of housing programs is preferred. For the full job description visit: vhcb.org/about-us/jobs.

are based on one business need, job requirements, and our values color,• religion, gender, orientation, gender identity, Consistently rated ofsexual the best places to work in New Hampshire as anAssociate‑owned Associate-owned without regard to race, age, •national origin, disability,company or veteran status, or any other 100% color, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, • An essential businessgender, characteristic protected by federal, state, or local laws. age, development national origin, disability, or several veteran status, or any other • Career opportunities including USDOL registered apprenticeship programs characteristic protected by federal, state, or local laws.

• Strong commitment to the wellbeing of our Associates, our communities, and the environment

PLASMA | LASER | WATERJET | AUTOMATION | SOFTWARE | CONSUMABLES

Hypertherm is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer and we welcome all applications. All employment decisions are based on business need, job requirements, and our values as an Associate-owned company without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, national origin, disability, or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local laws.

PLASMA | LASER | WATERJET | AUTOMATION | SOFTWARE | CONSUMABLES

NOW HIRING PLASMA | LASER | WATERJET | AUTOMATION | SOFTWARE | CONSUMABLES

1

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5/3/21 11:18 AM

PART TIME SECURITY GUARDS

$200 Hiring Bonus

Housing Program Assistant We're looking for an experienced administrative professional to provide support for our state and federal housing programs, including the HOME Program, National Housing Trust Fund (HTF), and Housing Opportunities for People With AIDS. Duties include tracking and updating project information, compliance monitoring, database entry and reporting, and document management. Work in collaboration with VHCB housing staff to monitor and ensure regulatory compliance for various housing programs.

Flexible Scheduling Great Starting Pay No Experience Necessary

Supportive Team

Qualifications: Proficiency with Microsoft Office software, good communication skills, strong attention to detail, ability to learn and utilize data and file management systems. Experience with federal housing programs a plus.

For the full job description visit: vhcb.org/about-us/jobs. __________________________________________________

Since 1994 GMCS has been keeping Vermont safe. Now is your chance to join our team!

Please reply with letter of interest and résumé to: Laurie Graves, VHCB, 58 E. State Street, Montpelier, Vt. 05602 or jobs@vhcb. org. Position open until filled. Full-time positions with competitive salary and comprehensive benefits package. EOE.

APPLY ONLINE ANYTIME

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5/3/21 3:52 PM

5/11/21 10:33 AM

FOLLOW US ON TWITTER @SEVENDAYSJOBS, SUBSCRIBE TO RSS, OR BROWSE POSTS ON YOUR PHONE AT JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM

NEW JOBS POSTED DAILY! JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM

Senior Account Manager

THE CITY OF WINOOSKI IS HIRING!

JOIN OUR TEAM. Now Hiring

We currently have both seasonal/temporary positions and full time regular positions available in the following departments:

• MYERS MEMORIAL POOL • Pool Attendants: $17.60/hr • Pool Operations Supervisor: $17.65+/hr • COMMUNITY SERVICES • LIBRARY • RECREATION AND PARKS

PUBLIC WORKS • Equipment Operator II $19.71+/hr • Seasonal Laborer - $17/hr • CITY LEADERSHIP • FIRE DEPARTMENT • SUMMER TEEN EMPLOYMENT

The City of Winooski offers great benefits for full time, regular staff and an excellent work environment for all.

View more information and apply online at WWW.WINOOSKIVT.GOV/JOBS

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THE CITY OF WINOOSKI IS AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER.

83 MAY 12-19, 2021

Packer/Labeler •Ω

Responsibilities: foster client relationships by understanding and defining the outcomes they seek, collaborate and communicate with internal stakeholders, and engage clients using Select’s growing suite of marketing technology products.

• Starting Pay $16-$20 Call or Email:

(802) 728-9901 Royalbutchervt@ gmail.com

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Select is looking for an experienced Senior Account Manager to own key client relationships and deliver creative outcomes within our growing base of iconic global consumer brand partners.

Qualifications: 3-5 years' experience in a consumer brand marketing agency or inside a consumer brand firm, a strong understanding of the consumer brand space, modern marketing practices and today's omni-channel landscape, and experience managing relationships with multiple complex deliverables on budget and within deadline.

Bachelor degree preferred.

5/10/21 1:50 PM

Apply: careers@selectdesign.com Engaging minds that change the world

Full Listing:

Seeking a position with a quality employer? Consider The University of Vermont, a stimulating and diverse workplace. We offer www.selectdesign.com/careers a comprehensive benefit package including tuition remission for on-going, full-time positions.

Dairy Herd Management Educator - Ext. - Programming & Fac. Sup. - #S2806PO - The position will deliver 208 Flynn Ave., Burlington, VT (802) 864.9075 dairy management outreach education and manage complex technical assistance projects as a member of our Dairy Business Innovation Center. The Dairy Herd Management Educator will work directly with dairy farm business owners to deliver outreach education to farm managers in the areas of milk quality, dairy nutrition, animal husbandry, animal housing and facilities, and personnel management. This position will deliver individualized dairy herd management advising and preparing solutions based management reports. This position will initiate and oversee dairy management teams to identify, evaluate and recommend 5v-SelectDesign051221.indd 1 5/10/21 implementation plans related to solving operational problems. Minimum qualifications include Bachelor’s degree in agriculture, dairy science or related field, and one to three years related experience required, as well as having basic knowledge of a wide range of dairy herd management practices, challenges, and benefits. Applicants must have the ability to travel from one location to another and perform travel as needed within the state of Vermont.

The University is especially interested in candidates who can contribute to the diversity and excellence of the institution.

Applicants are required to include in their cover letter information about how they will further this goal. Applicants must submit an application, cover letter, and resume to be considered for the position.

The Prevention Team seeks to fill the position of Executive Coordinator of Strategic Retention - VP of Enrollment Mgmt. - #S2802PO - The Coordinator of Strategic Retention will provide oversight and coordination of Undergraduate Retention efforts for the University. Collaborating with academic Director. The agency has served families, schools and communities colleges and schools and a variety of campus stakeholders, they will work to develop and implement student retention strategies in Essex County, N.Y. with innovative, collaborative substance as well as monitor and analyze undergraduate retention data to develop a University Retention Plan with an actionable set of abuse prevention and youth development services since 1986. retention measures.

As part of the leadership team for the Division of Enrollment Management, they will report to the Vice Provost of Enrollment The ideal candidate will possess a demonstrated history of Management and will supervise a professional position, which provides retention-related strategy implementation and support. strong leadership, grant writing, business astuteness, strategic They will also work in coordination and collaboration with Orientation Program Manager on orientation, move-in, and opening weekend programs viewing Orientation as the first phase of anti-melt and retention efforts for the University. planning, networking, and developing an organizational culture that Qualifications: Bachelor’s degree in a related field and two to four years of experience in a higher education environment welcomes diversity and change, promotes learning, and encourages required. Demonstrated analytical and project management skills required. Familiarity with best practices in higher education the use of initiative, responsibility, and open communication. student retention and re-enrollment required. Experience working with diverse populations required. Demonstrated ability to build collaborations and manage competing priorities required. Effective interpersonal, written and verbal communication Bachelor’s degree in relevant field is required, graduate degree skills required. Proficiency with word processing, spreadsheet, database applications and student information systems required. or equivalent work experience preferred, and at least five years’ Demonstrated ability to exercise discretion in disclosure of sensitive and confidential information required. management experience.

Applications from people from diverse racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds are encouraged. The search will continue until the position is filled; the start date is estimated as July 2021.

Full-time, mainly following the school calendar. Regionally Program Support Generalist - Consumer Assistance Program (CAP) - #S2812PO - A partnership between the competitive salary, commensurate with experience, and generous Attorney General’s Office and the University of Vermont, CAP provides a consumer helpline and letter mediation service to help consumers and businesses resolve complaints in the marketplace. As a member of the CAP team, the Program Support Generalist benefit package. will provide information and assistance to Vermonters on a wide variety of consumer inquiries. Responsibilities include staffing the helpline, reviewing and processing written complaints, and database management. In addition to providing direct service to Vermont consumers, the Program Generalist will assist in the supervision of undergraduate students and temporary employees.

Opportunity to assist in presenting community outreach or education projects. Associate’s degree with one to three years related experience required. Working knowledge of software applications used to support office functions and familiarity with internet resources required. Ability to communicate effectively with team members and work together toward common goals.

The University is especially interested in candidates who can contribute to the diversity and excellence of the institution.

Forward cover letter and resume to Scott McDonald by Applicants are encouraged to include in their cover letter information about how they will further this goal.

5/30/21 to transition@preventionteam.org or For further information on these positions and others currently available, or to apply online, please visit www.uvmjobs.

173 Lord Howe St., Ticonderoga, NY 12883. EOE com. Applicants must apply for positions electronically. Paper resumes are not accepted. Open positions are updated daily. Please call 802-656-3150 or email employment@uvm.edu for technical support with the online application.

3:41 PM

E X E C U T I V E D I R E C TO R

Find full position description at PREVENTIONTEAM.ORG.

www.facebook.com/PreventionTeamEssexCountyNY

The University of Vermont is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer.

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5/11/21 10:27 AM

ATTENTION RECRUITERS:

84

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

MAY 12-19, 2021

OUTREACH ADVOCATE Full time position to provide direct services to survivors & outreach to underserved populations. Strong advocacy & organizational skills required.

Bilingual (Spanish/English) skills desired. Applicants are encouraged to include in their letter how they will contribute to the diversity and excellence of the organization.

Letter of interest and resume to: cg@womensafe.net or Hiring Committee, WomenSafe, PO Box 67, Middlebury, VT 05753

Public & Government Affairs Officer

VILLAGE OF ESSEX JUNCTION

Seasonal Public Works

LABORER

The Village of Essex Junction Public Works Department is receiving applications for summer seasonal employees to assist in public works related activities.

Applicants must be at least 18 years old, have a valid VT Driver’s License and a good work ethic. Contact the HR department at 857-0113 or tsabataso@essex.org. Applications can be submitted online at essexvt.bamboohr.com/jobs.

THE VILLAGE OF ESSEX JUNCTION IS AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER.

The Vermont Foodbank seeks an experienced policy and advocacy professional to optimize visibility of the Vermont Foodbank, impact public policy, raise awareness about the issue of hunger, and challenge the stigma around hunger and charitable food. This position is responsible for leading the Vermont Foodbank’s advocacy efforts to promote anti-hunger and anti-poverty policy at the state, regional, and federal levels, and leads the Foodbank’s efforts to set and implement an advocacy agenda that incorporates diverse perspectives and addresses issues related to hunger and poverty (managing a PR consultant as needed).

To apply for this position, please visit vtfoodbank.org/employment and submit an employment application with a resume and cover letter attached. Anticipated salary range starting at $60-70K. We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer and seek to bring our values of diversity and inclusion to our hiring process. Beyond our commitment to non-discrimination, we encourage applications from candidates who can contribute to the diversity of our organization and who have lived experience of inequity.

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FACILITIES SERVICES CREW Saint Michael’s College is seeking applications from dependable and efficient workers from May 17-August 27. Employment is full-time with tasks that include but are not limited to landscaping, furniture moving, event setups, and supporting other trades within Facilities.

For a full job description and to apply online click here: bit.ly/SMCsummerJOBS

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Athens Diner, Colchester VT is now hiring.

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF ADMISSIONS

Waitress We are looking for PT or FT waitress, M-T-W and/or Sat-Sun 8am-3pm

Dishwasher/Line Prep Cook We are looking for experienced dishwasher(s) and line prep cook(s), willing to train the right candidate.

Apply: shawn.malone@ dairbhre.com

5/10/212va-AthensDiner051221.indd 4:29 PM 1

5/10/21 4:43 PM

Vermont College of Fine Arts welcomes applications for an Associate Director of Admissions position. The Associate Director is a FT, administrative recruitment position reporting to the Vice President for Student Services.

Responsibilities include: representing VCFA to prospective students and organizations, and working to engage, communicate with, and manage inquiries into VCFA graduate arts programs. The AD exhibits superior customer service and sales skills and professionalism throughout daily interactions and communications with prospective students. The AD creates and implements recruitment strategies to reach prospective students and must demonstrate an ability to work independently as well as collaboratively with admissions team members, faculty, students, alumni, administrators and staff.

Successful candidates will have: • • • • • •

Vermont Tent Company is currently accepting applications for immediate employment as well as future summer/fall employment starting in May. We have full time, part time, after school and weekend hours available for each position. Pay rates vary by position with minimum starting wage ranging from $15$20/hour depending on job skills and experience.

Opportunities include: • Tent Installation/Delivery Team • Driver/Warehouse Team – Event Division • Drivers/Delivery • Linen Team • Inventory Maintenance Team – Wash Bay & Warehouse • Load Crew Team Members

• •

Demonstrated aptitude for exceptional customer service and sales work Bachelor’s degree or comparable experience and experience in higher education, admissions, or sales An appreciation for, interest in, and curiosity about the arts and arts education Strong written and verbal communication abilities, organizational skills, and a capacity for self-starting and working independently Ability to perform complex or technical office practices and procedures; record keeping practices Strong technology orientation; experience with Google Apps, MS Office Suite, social media as well as the ability to learn and effectively use database systems Ability to engage in thoughtful and high-volume email exchange, phone calls, as well as online events and other virtual engagement The position may include limited travel during the year and have the possibility of a hybrid (remote/in-person) work arrangement

Candidates are encouraged to consult VCFA’s website to acquaint themselves with our programs, distinctive academic schedule, learning processes, and educational philosophy. To apply, please send the following to vcfajobs@vcfa.edu: • Cover Letter, CV/Resume • Statement on Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion, outlining your professional skills, accomplishments, experience, and willingness to engage in activities to enhance diversity, equity, and inclusion.

For job descriptions and application. vttent.com/employment

For full consideration, submit an application by May 21, 2021.

Position will remain open until filled.

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5/11/21 10:17 AM

5/7/21 1:33 PM

3/15/21 4:30 PM

5/11/21 10:41 AM

FOLLOW US ON TWITTER @SEVENDAYSJOBS, SUBSCRIBE TO RSS, OR BROWSE POSTS ON YOUR PHONE AT JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM

NEW JOBS POSTED DAILY!

85

JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM

MAY 12-19, 2021

COALITION DIRECTOR Coordinates policy development, advocacy, outreach, fundraising & administration for statewide membership organization.

Town Administrator The Town of Jericho, Vermont seeks a collaborative and dynamic full-time Town Administrator. Jericho (pop, 5,000) has a $4.0 million budget and nine full-time employees. The community features a rural area and lifestyle, scenic beauty and natural resources, as well as a quality school system.

The Town Administrator is responsible for supervising and coordinating the overall operations of the town and is responsible for managing the day-to-day affairs as specifically assigned by the three-member selectboard. A detailed job description is available at jerichovt.org/town-departments/ news_feed/town-administrator-job-posting.

The successful candidate will have a minimum of a bachelor’s degree from an accredited college in business administration or public administration, plus at least four years’ experience in an administrative or managerial capacity in municipal government, business, another public sector position, or an equivalent combination of experience and training.

Salary range is $65,000 to $85,000, commensurate with experience and training. Excellent benefits are offered.

Please email a cover letter, resume, and contact information for 3 references as PDF file attachments, in confidence, to municipal.recruitment@vlct.org with Jericho as the subject.

Preferred deadline for applications is Friday, June 4, 2021.

Full job description: vtaffordablehousing.org/jobs.

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RETAIL SALES ASSOCIATE A fierce commitment to customer service, knowledge of and passion for Apple products, an understanding of the digital lifestyle, keen attention to detail. Our retail store is currently open Monday - Friday from 10-6.

This position includes a full benefits package. Please send resumes: jobs@smalldog.com.

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5/10/21

KITCHEN LINE AND KITCHEN MANAGER

FULL-TIME

WHERE YOU AND YOUR WORK MATTER...

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BOOKKEEPER

F/T, flexible schedule, salary range $60,000-$70,000 with benefits. Equal Opportunity Employer.

Colchester School District is seeking a qualified Bookkeeper.

This position is responsible for a variety of interpersonal, bookkeeping and organizational responsibilities, which 9:09 AM contribute to the efficient management and coordination of assigned school-based tasks.

This is a full-time, full-year position with a generous benefits package.

Vespa’s is a family owned and operated pizzeria. We are Interested candidates must apply looking for an eager candidate online at SchoolSpring.com who can help to grow and Job #3520516. expand our business. We have a high volume kitchen with a large but simple menu featuring creative house made pizza 2v-ColchesterSchoolDistrict051221.indd 1 5/11/21 12:49 PM toppings and from scratch cooking. We are food lovers, using only fresh ingredients to create the best product possible. We are looking to expand and are searching for candidates interested in long term employment and growth.

Apply: steve@vespaspizza.com

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10/29/19 12:12 PM

When you work for the State of Vermont, you and your work matter. A career with the State puts you on a rich and rewarding professional path. You’ll find jobs in dozens of fields – not to mention an outstanding total compensation package.

TRANSPOR TATION PLANNING COORDIN ATOR – BARRE

VT Agency of Transportation (VTrans) has an exciting opportunity for an experienced transportation planner to work in a fast-paced innovative environment. Work collaboratively with VTrans colleagues, state, regional and municipal agencies to evaluate policies, and prepare planning documents that inform Agency investments and legislation. Candidates must demonstrate knowledge of transportation planning principles, practices, and theory, work collaboratively, and communicate effectively. For more information, contact Amy Bell at amy.bell@vermont.gov or (802) 279-0783.

Department: Transportation Agency. Status: Full Time. Job ID #15045. Application Deadline: May 25, 2021.

VR PROGRAM TECHNICIAN II – BARRE

VocRehab VT provides vocational counseling and employment support to Vermonters with disabilities.

The Barre office of VocRehab is recruiting for a highly skilled administrative assistant (Program Tech). The Program Tech provides front line and technical administrative support for our consumers and staff in a very busy office environment. Excellent customer service, computer and financial skills are required. For more information, contact Holli Vidal at holli.vidal@vermont.gov or 802-798-2670. Department: Disabilities Aging & independent Living. Location Barre. Status: Full Time. Job ID #15051. Application Deadline: May 13, 2021.

AHS INTERN AL AUDITOR – WATERBURY

We are currently seeking an Internal Auditor to contribute to the fulfillment of the Team’s mission in promoting efficient and effective operations across the Agency. An ideal candidate will be a “people person” coupled with strong skills in business process analytics, root cause and risk analysis.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this position will work remotely from home. However, it is expected a combination of remote and in-person office work will begin in 2021. For more information, contact Peter Moino at peter.moino@vermont.gov. Department: Agency of Human Services. Location Waterbury. Status: Full Time. Job ID # 14661. Application Deadline: May 19, 2021.

Learn more at: careers.vermont.gov 10h-VTDeptHumanResources051221 1

P U B L I C H E A LT H N U R S E I O R I I – N E W P O R T

The Vermont Department of Health has a dynamic opportunity for an enthusiastic and experienced nurse who wants to join a dedicated interdisciplinary team that will make differences in the health of communities in the Northeast Kingdom. We are seeking a well-organized and energetic nurse with great communication skills to complete our team of public health professionals in the Newport District Office. Please Note: This position is being recruited at multiple levels. If you would like to be considered for more than one level, you MUST apply to the specific Job Requisition. For more information, contact Justin Barton-Caplin at Justin.Barton-Caplin@vermont.gov or 802.334-4393. Location: Newport, Department: Health. Status: Full Time. Job ID # 10161 Or 10103. Application Deadline: Open Until Filled.

COMMUNIT Y DEVELOPMENT SPECIALIST II – MONTPELIER SEEKING candidates with strong project and financial management skills to assist the Dept’s Housing Division in coordinating the Emergency Rental Assistance Program. Requires a high level of organization and the ability to communicate w/partners and an ability to direct recipients to assistance orgs. Oversight of partner activities and review reports. Ensures compliance with requirements of the US Treasury and ensures effective program accessibility. The position requires attention to detail, work with the public, strong communication skills. For more information, contact shaun.gilpin@vermont. gov. Department: Commerce & Community Development. Reference Job ID #14927 Location: Montpelier/ (Remote) Status: Limited Service, Full-Time (end date Sept. 2022). Application Deadline: May 13, 2021.

Nowhere in Vermont will you find so many opportunities with one employer.

Whether you are looking for “a stepping stone” to launch your professional life, growing a long-term career or changing career paths, you’ll find jobs in dozens of fields.

The State of Vermont is an Equal Opportunity Employer 5/10/21 9:42 AM

ATTENTION RECRUITERS:

86

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

MAY 12-19, 2021

FINANCE PROFESSIONAL

The Vermont Judiciary in now hiring several categories of limited status positions at locations across the state.

The Town of Starksboro seeks an experienced finance professional to join its team for a part-time position (10-20 hours/week). The professional in this position will be responsible for maintaining the town’s cash accounts, investing town money, approving accounts payable and payroll, and collecting and recording tax payments and fees. This position plays a critical fiduciary role in the financial operation of the town and recordkeeping required under state law and may be also be appointed as Town Treasurer.

The finance professional works with the Town Auditors and the Town Clerk under the supervision of the Selectboard.

Position to assist with other tasks required by the Selectboard, to assist the Town Clerk with counter service and phone coverage when necessary.

Successful applicants will have 3-5 years of financial administrative oversight experience, or a comparable knowledge base and skill set. Position requires knowledge of fund accounting, excellent independent judgement and decision-making skills, and the ability to work with members of the public and outside agencies. Occasional weeknight or weekend hours may be required. Experience with NEMRC software is strongly preferred. Hourly rate of $20-23 based on experience; partial prorated benefits.

Please submit a resume and cover letter to Selectboard Assistant Rebecca Elder at rebecca@starksborovt.org.

Applications accepted until position is filled. EOE.

AGRICULTURAL LOAN OFFICER

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VEDA is looking for an experienced Agricultural Loan Officer to join our team located in our new building on Exchange Street in Middlebury, Vermont. Due to COVID-19, this position is expected to be remote based for a period of time.

VEDA has a strong commitment to the Addison County agricultural community and this position will work with farm and forestry applicants and borrowers in Addison County as well as throughout the state.

Responsibilities include analyzing loan requests, preparing loan writeups, servicing a diverse loan portfolio and performing annual financial analyses. In addition, the successful applicant for this position will be able and willing to mentor and teach co-workers with less experience.

A high level of agricultural and/or forest industry knowledge; strong written, verbal, and computer skills; excellent customer service; and a proven team approach are required. The preferred, successful applicant will have at least 3-7 years of agricultural lending experience, a bachelor’s degree in a related field, and leadership experience. This position requires travel within the State of Vermont.

VEDA offers a very competitive salary and benefits package and is an Equal Opportunity Provider and Employer. We are interested in increasing staff diversity and welcome job applications from all qualified candidates.

To apply, please email resume and cover letter to Cheryl Houchens: chouchens@veda.org

These full-time, limited-service positions offer full benefits including healthcare, sick leave, holidays and paid time off.

FINANCIAL SPECIALIST III (#20016) This position works at an advanced professional level accounting work in the maintenance, review and reconciliation of financial records to ensure compliance with accepted accounting principles and standards. Work may involve performing a wide variety of accounting and bookkeeping tasks in multiple complex fiscal programs. Work location likely in Montpelier. High School Degree and 3 years of accounting experience or college work required.

Starting pay at $21.16 per hour.

CLERICAL/ADMINISTRATIVE (#20015) Approximately 12 Docket Clerk B positions, which will specialize in customer service, records keeping and data entry involving one or more docket areas.

Work locations include Newport, Burlington, Barre, Rutland, Brattleboro, St. Albans, St. Johnsbury, White River Junction, Chelsea and Hyde Park. High school degree and 2 or more years of clerical work required. Starting pay at $17.11 per hour.

OPERATIONS ASSISTANT (#20014) Approximately 3-5 positions to coordinate the use of audio/video technology to deliver court hearings over online meeting tools such as Webex, Zoom and YouTube livestreaming. Working in either our IT Department (RIS) or the Planning and Court Services unit, this position exercises independent judgment and quick thinking. Extensive interaction with members of the legal community, judicial officers, court staff and the public. Work will be completed remotely. High school and 4 years’ experience (will substitute 4 year degree for experience) with office systems required. Starting rate is $23.67 per hour.

Go to vermontjudiciary.org/employment-opportunities/staffopenings for more details and to complete application.

These positions are open until filled. The Vermont Judiciary is an equal opportunity employer.

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87 MAY 12-19, 2021

THE CITY OF WINOOSKI IS HIRING!

CITY MANAGER

JOIN THE TEAM AT GARDENER’S SUPPLY! Through gardening, our customers control their access to safe and affordable food, and grow food to share with their neighbors. At Gardener’s Supply, we are committed to doing everything we can to help our customers keep gardening, but we need your help.

POSITION CLOSES: May 27, 2021 HOW TO APPLY: Interested applicants should submit a resume, cover letter, and three professional references to Human Resources via email at hr@winooskivt.gov or apply at winooskivt.gov/jobs.

COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS: The City of Winooski offers competitive compensation and a comprehensive benefits package for the City Manager position.

We’re hiring for SEASONAL POSITIONS AT THREE OF OUR LOCATIONS:

ABOUT THE CITY OF WINOOSKI, VERMONT’S OPPORTUNITY CITY: The City of Winooski is a vibrant city with the most diverse population in the northern New England states and a growing economic base. Winooski boasts the highest population density in Vermont, making the compact 1.5 square mile city a model of urban convenience and walkability, with a neighborhood feel. With just over 7,000 residents, Winooski is a community of people who know their neighbors, feel a strong sense of community pride and ownership, and actively engage in continuously building the high quality of life found in the City. Winooski is becoming a more diverse city each year, with residents hailing from over 20 different countries of origin with the four largest groups from Nepal, India, Iraq, and Somalia.

A community-driven Strategic Vision and Master Plan set goals for smart growth as the city seeks to be sustainable and to retain access and affordability for residents across the income spectrum and from diverse backgrounds.

• Pick/Pack customer orders at our DISTRIBUTION CENTER IN MILTON • Provide exceptional customer service to our customers over email at our CONTACT CENTER • Help customers with their gardening needs at our WILLISTON GARDEN CENTER We are 100% employee-owned and a Certified B Corporation. We offer strong cultural values, competitive wages and outstanding benefits (including a tremendous discount!). Please go to our careers page at www.gardeners.com/careers and apply online!

ABOUT THE POSITION OF CITY MANAGER:

The City Manager has the ability to make decisions based on collective community values and needs that support Winooski’s Strategic Vision and Master Plan. The successful candidate for the Winooski City Manager will be a champion of equity and inclusion who is able to bring all voices, especially those who are traditionally excluded or underrepresented, into the decision5v-GardenersSupplySEASONAL05122 1 1 5/11/21 5/11/21 10:08 9:17 AM making process. The City Manager effectively advises department and division heads on a full 7DPrint_alllocations_seasonals42621.indd range of organizational, management, administrative, budget, and financial policies and related HYBRID CASE issues. The City Manager directs, supervises, mentors, and evaluates the work performance MANAGER/OPTIONS of department heads and ensures the planning and retention of a diverse workforce with a focus on inclusive practices. The City Manager routinely applies equitable program practices to COUNSELOR diverse and complex city services and operates with integrity, abiding by the highest standards 40 hours/week, Barre, VT of ethical behavior as identified in the ICMA Code of Ethics. The City Manager is appointed by and reports to the City Council (composed of a mayor and four at-large city councilors) and provides administrative direction and leadership to all city departments and operations, Based in our Barre Office and currently working most hours including 10 Leadership Team members and 100 staff members.

QUALIFICATIONS: • A minimum of seven (7) years of public sector management experience, experience in municipal government or an organization of comparable complexity, and five (5) years of leadership experience.

• Demonstrated experience working effectively with an elected governing body.

• A bachelor’s degree with major course work in public or business administration, political science, public policy, finance, or a related field, or designation as an ICMA-Credentialed Manager is required.

• Demonstrated experience in racial equity and inclusion, community engagement, and sustainable development.

• Experience with capital project management, economic development/redevelopment, housing affordability, and intergovernmental and nonprofit partnerships.

• Experience working in a similar full-service city with community relations, financial management, public works functions, human resources management, community planning, economic development, police, housing/landlord/tenant, library, transportation planning, recreation management, senior and youth issues, and emergency management departments.

The City is an Equal Opportunity Employer and will consider any combination of education and experience that allows for successfulperformance in this role. The City’s goals include hiring the candidate who is best able to meet the objectives of the position. We, therefore, encourage persons with non-traditional skill sets and experiences to apply, even if candidates believe they do not meet 100% of the qualifications and hiring criteria described.

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remotely, the Hybrid Case Manager/Options Counselor will work with older persons to remain in their homes through creative connections with state and community resources. The successful applicant will have a bachelor’s degree or equivalent combination of education and experience, social service and/ or non-profit experience with vulnerable populations, ability to work independently and as part of a team, reliable transportation, experience with data entry and a working knowledge of MS Office, Excel, Word and Outlook. Experience with senior populations and public benefits programs is preferred. To apply, please send resume and cover letter to jobs@cvcoa.org by May 23.

Central Vermont Council on Aging is an innovative agency dedicated to quality services for older persons living in Central Vermont. We provide a generous benefits package. Salary is based on experience.

Central Vermont Council on Aging is an Equal Opportunity/ Affirmative Action Employer. Applications from veterans, mature workers, individuals with disabilities, LGBTQ individuals, and people from diverse racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds are encouraged.

For more information about this position, visit our website: cvcoa.org.

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4/30/21 5:26 PM

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88

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MAY 12-19, 2021

HARBOR VILLAGE SENIOR COMMUNITIES

ARE GROWING! Career Fair, Wednesday, May 19, 2021.

Harbor Village Senior Communities, 90 Allen Road, South Burlington, VT. Times: 7am-9am, 12pm-2pm and 5pm-7pm. COVID Precautions observed.

NURSING DEPARTMENT POSITIONS: Competitive Rate of Pay - RN $34/hour, LPN $31/hour, Medication Technician $19.50/hour, LNA $18.25/hour and Care Partner $18/hour.

Generous Sign on Bonus for full time positions: $5,000 RN/ LPN and $3,000 Medication Technician/Care Partner/ LNA. Generous Shift Differential.

Are you ready to become part of a dedicated, caring healthcare team? Are you looking to belong to a warm and loving work family who appreciates your dedication and hard work?

Our mission is to make a difference in the changing lives of seniors by providing a safe, homelike community with a compassionate and caring staff.

CHARGE NURSE/RN/LPN Harbor Village Senior Communities are looking for full time, part time and per diem charge nurses (RN or LPN) to join our outstanding team. Duties include but are not limited to: Oversight of the day-to-day functions to ensure appropriate nursing services are provided to each resident. Direct nursing care to our residents with a variety of conditions. Assess, observe and evaluate resident condition, communicate directly with physician, implement physician’s orders and communicate changes in orders with staff. Identify any restorative or rehabilitation needs for residents. Update resident information. Answer resident calls and address emergency situations. Assist with charting and monthly summaries as assigned. Supervise medication technicians and care staff. Candidates should work effectively with other personnel, residents, family members, visitors and the general public. Experience working in a residential care community a plus. Dependability is a must!

LPN/RN NURSE SUPERVISOR Harbor Village Senior Communities are looking for a full time, RN or LPN, Nurse Supervisor to join our outstanding team. The Nurse Supervisor coordinates and supervises personal care, medication services, staff training and supervision completed on a day-to-day basis. The RN/ LPN Nurse Supervisor works closely with, and under the direction of, the Director of Nursing. Responsible for supervising, assigning significant overall duties and tasks and responsibly directing the work of care employees with full accountability for the performance. Duties include but are not limited to: Oversight of the day-today functions to ensure appropriate nursing services are provided to each resident. Direct nursing care to our residents with a variety of conditions. Assess, observe and evaluate resident condition, communicate directly with physician, implement physician’s orders and communicate changes in orders with staff. Identify any restorative or rehabilitation needs for residents. Update resident information. Answer resident calls and address emergency situations. Assist with charting and monthly summaries as assigned. Supervise medication technicians and care staff.

Candidates should work effectively with other personnel,

residents, family members, visitors and the general public.

Experience working in a residential care community a plus.

Dependability is a must!

CARE PROVIDERS/LNA Harbor Village Senior Communities are looking for full time, part time and per diem Care Partners/LNAs. As a Care Partner/LNA you will deliver direct resident care. Assist residents with activities of daily living; bathing, dressing, grooming, positioning, transfer and mobility. Keep supervisor informed throughout shift of resident’s status and of any changes in resident’s condition. Answer call lights and address residents’ needs in a timely manner; chart accurate and pertinent information on all required forms. Provide comfort and companionship to seniors. Assist in the dining room during resident meal times as needed. *A license is not required to work in our Community, experienced preferred but we are willing to train the right applicant.

MEDICATION TECHNICIAN Harbor Village Senior Communities are looking for full time, part time and per diem medication technicians. A Medication Technician provides medication assistance and administration for residents in accordance with training, scope of practice and regulatory requirements. A Medication Technician observes residents for changes of condition, communicate observations to the wellness nurse or Director of Nursing.

Assist in maintaining the medication cart and storage room in a neat and orderly manner. Accept responsibility for accurate medication counts and for security of the medication cart and medication storage room for assigned shifts. May be called upon to assist residents with activities of daily living, including bathing, dressing, grooming, toileting, eating, transferring and mobility as needed. Complete all documentation such as medication administration records, incident reports, change of condition reports and behavior documentation as requested and in a timely manner. Assist in the dining room during resident meal times as needed. Minimum of one-year previous experience as a Medication Technician. Experience as a caregiver/resident assistant caring for the elderly in an assisted living or long term care setting is preferred.

DIRECTOR OF ACTIVITIES As the Director of Activities, you will: develop, modify, evaluate and implement an activity program for the Community that embraces and fulfills the social needs and interests of the senior population living and visiting the Community. Responsible for the daily life enrichment program schedule for all levels of ability seven (7) days a week. Prepare monthly newsletter for distribution to all residents and families. Educate, train and encourage team members on life enrichment opportunities to make meaningful connections. Develop and pursue a varied program of meaningful activities and events that is balanced in the physical, spiritual, intellectual, social, emotional, vocational and cognitive elements. Arrange for community groups to come into the Community. Decorate the common areas for special events and holidays.

ACTIVITIES ASSISTANT/ TRANSPORTATION AIDE As an Activities Assistant/Transportation Aide you will: support the Director of Activities in achieving high quality programming for the Community by executing daily activities with Community members as a group or on an individual basis. Activities Assistant will help design and execute plans, programs and events that meet the required needs of the Community members such as socially, mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. Generate enthusiasm to encourage and motivate participation. Drive Community residents to outings including doctor’s appointment, banking and other activities. Assist residents with boarding and exiting the bus/ van. Secure wheelchair clamps or safety belts as is required.

Prepare the bus/van for operation by performing pre-trip safety inspection. Monitor the ongoing condition of the bus during operation. Prepare required paperwork and submit timely as required by the Community.

WEEKEND CONCIERGE (SATURDAY AND SUNDAY) Greets all guests in a friendly, warm and welcoming manner, in person or telephonically. Create a welcoming environment as the first contact guests have when they enter the Community.

Serves as Concierge to Residents. Must be able to communicate effectively with residents, families, staff and general public.

Must have compassion for and desire to work with the elderly. Must demonstrate the ability to work responsibly as a team member as well as an individual. Must be honest, fair, dependable, respect confidentiality and the rights and privacy of others. Answer the telephone, transfer calls, take and deliver accurate messages. Greet guests who come in the door to tour, assist or direct as needed. Distribute all resident mail. Maintain the lobby area in a clean and uncluttered manner. Be the Customer Service Ambassador to families, guests, residents.

Meet & greet new residents – let them know you will assist them with their transition and you are their concierge.

HOUSEKEEPER Harbor Village Senior Communities are looking for a full time Housekeeping Attendant/Laundry Worker. Responsible for maintaining a clean, safe, sanitary and comfortable environment in all areas of our Community including resident room, common and office space. Cleaning residents’ apartments on a set weekly schedule and as needed following established procedures including vacuuming, mopping, dusting, disinfecting and sanitizing bathrooms, cleaning mirrors and pictures. Maintaining assigned areas in an orderly and attractive manner. Submitting work orders to the maintenance team as needed concerning equipment, resident rooms, common areas, etc. Taking initiative to ensure resident safety and satisfaction are a priority. Interacting with residents, visitors, and team members in a friendly and courteous manner. Providing assistance and directions as requested. Follow established safety precautions when performing tasks and when using equipment and supplies.

Competitive salary and a friendly work environment. EOE. Willingness to undergo a background check, in accordance with local laws and regulations.

Send Cover Letter and Resume with job title included to: VTMS.HR@MERIDIANSENIOR.COM 15t-HarborVillage051221.indd 1

5/11/21 10:51 AM

CALCOKU & SUDOKU (P.69) CROSSWORD (P.69)

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Have a deep, dark fear of your own?

Submit it to cartoonist Fran Krause at deep-dark-fears.tumblr.com, nd you may see your neurosis illustrated in these pages.

FREE WILL ASTROLOGY BY ROB BREZSNY REAL MAY 13 -19

in people’s eyes when they realize they’re in love. I love the way people look when they first wake up and they’ve forgotten their surroundings. I love when people close their eyes and drift to somewhere in the clouds.” In the coming days, Gemini, I encourage you to specialize in moments like those: when you and the people you’re interested in are candid, unguarded, raw, vulnerable and primed to go deeper. In my opinion, your soul needs the surprising healing that will come from these experiences.

TAURUS (APRIL 20-MAY 20):

A fan once asked composer Johann Sebastian Bach about his creative process. He was so prolific! How did he dream up such a constant flow of new music? Bach told his admirer that the tunes came to him unbidden. When he woke up each morning, they were already announcing themselves in his head. According to my analysis of the astrological omens, Taurus, a comparable phenomenon may very well visit you in the coming weeks — not in the form of music, but as intuitions and insights about your life and your future. Your main job is to be receptive to them and make sure you remember them.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): In one of her poems, Emily Dickinson tells us, “The pedigree of honey / Does not concern the bee; / A clover, any time, to him / Is aristocracy.” I suggest you be like Dickinson’s bee in the coming weeks, my dear Aries. Take pleasure and power where they are offered. Be receptive to just about any resource that satisfies your raw need. Consider the possibility that substitutes and stand-ins may be just as good as the supposed original. OK? Don’t be too fussy about how pure or prestigious anything is.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): “I love unmade

beds,” writes Gemini poet Shane Koyczan. “I love when people are drunk and crying and cannot be anything but honest. I love the look

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Trailblazing psychologist C.G. Jung said his loneliness wasn’t about a lack of people around him. Rather, it came from the fact that he knew things that most people didn’t know and didn’t want to know. He had no possibility of communicating many of the interesting truths that were important to him! But I’m guessing that won’t be much of a problem for you in the coming months. According to my astrological analysis, you’re more likely to be well listened to and understood than you have been in quite some time. For best results, ask to be listened to and understood. And think about how you might express yourself in ways that are likely to be interesting and useful to others.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): The French government regularly gives the Legion of Honor award to people deemed to have provided exceptional service to the world. Most recipients are deserving, but a few have been decidedly unworthy. In the latter category are Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega and Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, as well as drug-cheating athlete Lance Armstrong, sexual predator Harvey Weinstein and Nazi collaborator Marshal Pétain. I bring this to your attention, Leo, because the coming weeks will be a favorable time to reward people who have helped and supported you. But I also suggest that you pointedly exclude those who have too many negatives mixed in with their positives.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): In 2010, an American engineer named Edward Pimentel went to Moscow to compete in the World Karaoke Championship. He won by singing Usher’s “DJ Got Us Falling in Love.” His award: 1 mil-

lion dumplings, enough to last him 27 years.

I have a good feeling about the possibility of you, too, collecting a new prize or perk or privilege sometime soon. I just hope it’s a healthier boon than dumplings. For best results, take some time now to clearly define the nature of the prize or perk or privilege that you really want — and that will be truly useful.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): I will love it if sometime soon you find or create an opportunity to speak words similar to what novelist D.H. Lawrence once wrote to a lover: “You seem to have knit all things in a piece for me.

Things are not separate; they are all in a symphony.” In other words, Libra, I’ll be ecstatic if you experience being in such synergistic communion with an empathic ally that the two of you weave a vision of life that’s vaster and richer than either of you could have summoned by yourself. The astrological omens suggest this possibility is now more likely than usual.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Sometimes people don’t like the provocative posts I publish on Facebook. They leave comments like, “You stupid idiot!” or “I hope you commit suicide!” and far worse. When I delete their messages, they become even more enraged, accusing me of censorship. “So you don’t believe in free speech, you jerk?” they complain. I don’t try to reason with them. They don’t deserve any of my time or energy. But if I did communicate with them, I might say, “My Facebook page is my sanctuary, where I welcome cordial conversation. If you came into my house and called me an idiot, would it be ‘censorship’ if I told you to leave?” I hope these thoughts inspire you to clarify and refine your own personal boundaries, Scorpio. It’s a good time to get precise and definite about what’s acceptable and unacceptable from the people with whom you engage.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Have you

ever kissed a monster in your nightly dreams?

Have you won a chess match with a demon or signed a beneficial contract with a ghost or received a useful blessing from a pest? I highly recommend activities like those in the coming weeks — while you’re asleep and awake. Now is a good time to at least make peace with challeng-

ing influences and, at best, come into a new relationship with them that serves you better. I dare you to ask for a gift from an apparent adversary.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): What does it mean to “follow the path with heart”? I invite you to meditate on that question. Here are my ideas. To follow the path with heart means choosing a destiny that appeals to your feelings as well as to your ambitions and ideas and habits. To follow a path with heart means living a life that fosters your capacity to give and receive love. To follow the path with heart means honoring your deepest intuitions rather than the expectations other people have about you. To follow the path with heart means never comparing your progress with that of anyone else’s but rather simply focusing on being faithful to your soul’s code.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): “It’s a good

thing when people are different from your images of them,” wrote Aquarian author Boris Pasternak. “It shows they are not merely a type. If you can’t place them in a category, it means that at least a part of them is what a human being ought to be. They have risen above themselves, they have a grain of immortality.” I love that perspective! I’m offering it to you because right now is a favorable time to show that you are indeed different from the images people have of you, that you transcend all stereotyping, that you are uncategorizable.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): You have personal possession of the universe’s most monumental creation: consciousness. This mercurial flash and dazzle whirling around inside you is outlandishly spectacular. You can think thoughts any time you want to — soaring, luminescent, flamboyant thoughts or shriveled, rusty, burrowing thoughts; thoughts that can invent or destroy, corrupt or redeem, bless or curse. There’s more. You can revel and wallow in great oceans of emotion. Whether they are poignant or intoxicating or somewhere in between, you relish the fact that you can harbor so much intensity.

You cherish the privilege of commanding such extravagant life force. I bring these thoughts to your attention because the time is right for a holiday I call Celebrate Your Greatest Gifts.

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I’m a man who always has projects and plans. Fungardener, 61, seeking: W, l

TATTOOS, MUSIC, WORK I am a hardworking man who has been to hell and back and is rebuilding successfully. I would like a woman who works hard and wants to build a future with someone. No games. newlife2021, 46, seeking: W, l

BREAKING OUT OF LOCKDOWN Somewhat of a homebody, though I do like an outside adventure. Ready to break out of lockdown and go traveling, or rummage through a few thrift stores in Lebanon or Estrie Aide in Sherbrooke.

This follows my complete Moderna vaccination schedule. The COVID scare has kept me isolated beyond belief and devoid of a relationship. greytail2020, 65, seeking: W, Cp, Gp, l

SILVER FOX ARTIST I’m creative, passionate, a problem solver, an adventurist, a respected business owner (30 years), well traveled, educated, secure. Now open to a fit, energetic, passionate female to share adventures and intimacy with. Must love animals, laughing, affection. I’m an artist who has spent the past 30 years creating custom artwork for thousands of clients around the world. Pleasant surprises in many ways! hawaiiartistinvt, 62, seeking: W, l

FREE SPIRIT WHO ENJOYS LIFE I enjoy skydiving, hiking, biking, photography, printing, cooking and much more. Looking for someone to share some of this life in a positive manner — friendship or more. Just turned 50 years young. jayspring, 50, seeking: W, l LET’S PLAY Submissive male looking for dominant individuals or couples. Obedient, responsive and open-minded. Into humiliation, light bondage and oral worship. Be safe and sane, and get in touch. subplay, 53, seeking: M, W, Cp, Gp GEEKY MAKER DAD, SUPER POSITIVE I’ve always pushed myself. Sometimes I do stop to reflect on why, and then, refreshed, I move forward some more.

Built my own house. Adding to it now.

But not married to it. Almost done with my master’s degree. I love travel and have been waiting out this pandemic to visit places again. Go visit places with me. Descanso, 53, seeking: W, l WHERE ARE YOU? I like to think of myself as kind and smart, curious and adventurous, athletic and musical, and much more. A “renaissance person” is what I’ve always considered the ideal. Many years ago, I through-hiked the Appalachian Trail, and that experience, and my many adventures since, have shaped my life and my values in profound ways. somethingdifferent, 61, seeking: W, l LONELY. COVID SUCKS. SUNBATHING NAKED. Looking for fun in the sun. Enjoy being nude. Fires outside. Cut, trimmed and shaving. Woman or a couple.

Good times and laughter and sex.

Toohorny11, 53, seeking: W, Cp, l TRYING TO PAY ATTENTION Moved to Vermont on a whim many years ago. Appreciate nature and animals. I am on a lifelong learning curve. NPR and live music (once upon a time). Find me at the ocean in Wellfleet, driving on Highway 1 in California or in a Chinese restaurant in NYC. I listen more than speak.

Hoping to meet a kind, compatible soul. Mindfully, 67, seeking: W PIN ME ... EROTIC WRESTLING? Hi all, I’m a discreet, masculine submissive who wants to be dominated, pinned down, tied up, used, played with, you name it. I’m very kinky with few limits, DD-free and play clean. I always have good 420 to share, too.

You must host. Hit me up, and let’s party and have some kinky fun. Hlplss, 56, seeking: M, TM, TW, Q, Cp, Gp, l

SWEET, SALTY AND SPICY I consider myself fun, charming, creative and an interestingly varied individual. BKind, 29, seeking: W, Cp, l

BACKCOUNTRY SKIER, HIKER, LEFT ACTIVIST Looking to share recreation, deep friendship and love. About myself: cerebral, intense and passionate.

Crave touching, sharing affection.

Enjoy sharing hiking, backcountry skiing, mountain biking with peers or a lover. Enjoy the company of big dogs, most music and love to dance.

Active for my age. “Retired” into an engaged life doing progressive-socialist organizing, a radio show and outdoor activities. SkiDog, 74, seeking: W, l

TRANS WOMEN seeking...

FOREVER SEARCHING Still looking for love. Would love to run into a beautiful dominatrix who will, through her grace, help me find the inspiration I need to flourish as a woman. I love to cook, I design board games and Lego sets, and give the best foot and back massages in the world!

If this is heaven for you, come claim me! Neneveh, 24, seeking: W, l GENEROUS, OPEN, EASYGOING Active, healthy trans woman with partner seeks ecstatic connection for playtimes, connections, copulations, exploration and generally wonderful occasional times together. You should be fit, in good health and available (not down low).

Ideal is another couple for a foursome.

But possibilities are wide-ranging: three, four, explorations and adventure.

DoubleUp, 64, seeking: M, Cp, l

COUPLES seeking...

HAPPY, RELAXED, OPEN TO POSSIBILITIES We’re a couple looking for safe, sexy adventures with likeminded individuals or couples.

Bluebird, 38, seeking: M, W, Cp I WANT TO WATCH I’m looking for a guy who’s willing to let my guy go down on him while I watch.

I will not be joining, just watching.

Please be between 25 and 45 years of age. BJ2021, 46, seeking: W COUPLE LOOKING FOR FUN! Adventurous, silly, easygoing, freespirited. Agd09090, 27, seeking: Cp 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, 51, seeking: W, l

i SPY

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

dating.sevendaysvt.com

GOODBYE FOR NOW I’ll see you in our next life. When: Saturday, May 8, 2021. Where: Vermont.

You: Man. Me: Woman. #915276 L’AMOROSO PENSIERO She said, “You look like the silent type” / Then she opened a book of poems and handed it to me / Written by an Italian poet from the 13th century / Every one of them words rang true, / glowed like burning coal, pouring off of every page / Like it was written in my soul from me to you / Tangled up in blue. When: Friday, April 24, 2020. Where: on the fridge. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915275 DITTO Every moment between our meetings feels like a lifetime. A day will come when I never have to say “See you later” ever again. When: Sunday, April 11, 2021. Where: produce.

You: Woman. Me: Man. #915274 BLONDE AT HEALTHY LIVING You: blonde, white top, dark shorts in line across the smoothie bar, where I was. Looked as if you came from a run or workout with friends?

Wearing the hell out of those shorts. ;) Wish I had stopped to talk, but wasn’t able to. Maybe we can go for a run together sometime? Me: tall, dark hair, black jacket. When: Friday, April 30, 2021. Where: Healthy Living, South Burlington.

You: Woman. Me: Man. #915273 HEY 19 You: wearing purple in the sun by a dogwood in full bloom. Me: wearing a gray suit and sunglasses. Him: a cute but young interloper. We made a pledge to love each other (and him) forever. It worked! See you in the pink room. When: Tuesday, May 4, 2021. Where: a wedding.

You: Woman. Me: Man. #915272

TABLE AT EL GATO WEDNESDAY To the five absolute legends that I served: You left me (Jamie) a phat tip and a nice handwritten note. I would love to buy you guys a drink to thank you! Will I ever see you five again? Made my night DIALED! You left a Seven Days mag on the table, so crossin’ my fingers and toes you’ll see this. When: Wednesday, April 28, 2021.

Where: El Gato Cantina, Church Street.

You: Group. Me: Woman. #915270 BURLINGTON BAY LIQUOR BOY You played with your hair when I got my creemee. Found an excuse to go inside while “sheltering from the rain.”

I’m older, but you’re 18+. So, if it melted the creemee off your spoon the way it did mine, next time I wander in on a perfectly nice, warm day, don’t blame it on the weather. Melt my creemee. When: Friday, April 30, 2021. Where: Burlington Bay. You: Man. Me: Man. #915269 BLUE TOYOTA TACOMA Oops, is that what is meant by brake lights, brake lights: “STOP, let’s meet”? LOL! Seven Days email sent in inbox or spam folder.

When: Friday, April 30, 2021. Where: Route ?. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915268 STOWE SHAW’S CHECKOUT LINE You smiled through your mask while behind me in the grocery line. You were tall, shaven-headed (friendly?) and seemed to have a proclivity for oranges. I had shortish curly hair, greenish/colorful glasses and an issue with a rotten carrot.

If you’re single, wanna make me some OJ? Or at least go for a hike. When: Thursday, April 29, 2021. Where: Stowe Shaw’s. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915266 WHITE ACURA It would be nice to meet up in person one of these days instead of passing by each other on the road. When: Tuesday, April 27, 2021. Where: on the road.

You: Woman. Me: Man. #915265

WHOOKNEW I’m not certain if you’re trying to communicate with me or not? You’ve blocked me and then reached out. If the roles were reversed, how would you feel?

When: Thursday, April 29, 2021. Where: here. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915267 DENTAL DREAMS I was your 9 a.m. dental cleaning. You told me about your shark dreams.

We share the same name. Were you feelin’ the vibe? I’d love hear more about your dreams. :) When: Monday, April 26, 2021. Where: dentist office.

You: Woman. Me: Woman. #915264 PUFFY JACKET SPORTY SPICE Spotted you slinking through the cheese section. You said I smelled divine as I swooned for your Aubrey Plaza eyes. Care for a date? I’ll bring orange tulips if you bring Earthshaking poetry. When: Friday, April 23, 2021. Where: City Market. You: Woman. Me: Woman. #915263 WITCH AT PINGALA First time at the café and was served by an incredibly kind and amazing-looking woman in a witch-inspired getup. I was carrying a giant bamboo walking stick and ordered a coffee while we smalltalked about gothic dresses. Would love to be able to talk about other cool things over a picnic lunch, if the concept isn’t too terrible! When: Saturday, April 24, 2021. Where: Pingala Café. You: Woman. Me: Trans woman. #915262 CANNONDALE SPEED DEMON ON ROUTE 2 Fast biker wearing a neon vest, green fast goggles, riding a Cannondale. I’m positive you had a mustache; I just knew even though you were moving too quickly to tell. You seem like the kind of guy to cook me a gourmet meal and chat about golf? Only reply if you’re willing to earn my respect. When: Saturday, April 3, 2021. Where: Route 2 in Bolton.

You: Man. Me: Woman. #915261 BEHIND THE COUNTER AT WALGREENS You: behind the counter. Me: not. I think I could see you every day if you let me. You took care of my photos, and I appreciate it more than you know. You’re K—s-al, and I’m not.

Thank you for the wonderful customer service. When: Tuesday, April 20, 2021. Where: Walgreens, Milton.

You: Woman. Me: Man. #915260

Ask REVEREND Dear Dan D. Lion, the

Irreverent counsel on life’s conundrums

Dear Reverend,

My neighbor has their lawn treated by one of those companies that sprays chemicals, and I hate it. After a treatment, there are small signs posted telling people to keep pets and children off the lawn. Why would anybody do that? I’ve never actually met them, and I don’t know how to get them to stop.

Dan D. Lion

(MALE, 52)

You neighbor has fallen victim to the suburban myth that they need a lush green carpet of grass around their house.

I say, if that’s what you’re looking for, get some dang Astroturf and call it a day.

Some of the chemicals used in those sprays are nonspecific biocides, meaning they don’t just kill weeds and insects.

Squirrels, chipmunks, birds, butterflies, bees, you, your kids and your pets all can suffer ill effects from that crap. Not to mention that it causes harm to the air and water.

But nobody likes a nosy neighbor, so you need to play your cards carefully.

You could go analog and pamphlet the neighborhood

HONKING LADY I saw you on the corner at a red light. You were honking your horn for an unknown reason. I pulled up next to you. We had a brief conversation, and I joined you in blaring our car horns together. I would like to see you again sometime. When: Tuesday, April 20, 2021. Where: St. Paul and Main streets in Burlington.

You: Woman. Me: Man. #915259 RANDOMDORKY NAME Curious if you are actually interested or not, with our age differences. I am very serious in my post and what I want and am looking for on here. Are you? Not sure where you are located, but distance would never be an issue with me. Give me a clue about what the next move will be. When: Sunday, April 18, 2021. Where: Seven Days. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915258 AN EDELWEISS IN BLOOM The brunette behind the counter. We talked about the I-Spy, and you said you’ve never been spied. I’ve never spied before and thought it would be fun to send a shout-out to the awesome personality at Edelweiss in Stowe.

You have a warm, welcoming and contagious “eye” smile (unfortunately a rarity these days)! So, thanks for that — and the cookies! When: Tuesday, April 13, 2021. Where: Edelweiss. You: Woman. Me: Woman. #915257

CO-OP DELI GUY This has been the subject of much discussion, as nearly all the kitchen/ deli guys wear black shirts and green hats at one point. Some with partners are already in trouble for giving eyes.

Can you be more specific? We do all wear name tags. Just saying. When: Thursday, March 18, 2021. Where: Hunger Mountain Coop. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915254

with flyers outlining the dangers of pesticides. Since it’s illegal to put such things in mailboxes, you might find it easier to take your plea to the internet.

Your town probably has a Front Porch Forum or a community Facebook page where you could post some information.

Have you considered starting a

YOU ARE MY SUNSHINE Missing my sunshine. MSG needs his ray of light. When: Saturday, April 3, 2021. Where: Montpelier.

You: Woman. Me: Man. #915252 MAN AT MEHURON’S You had on a Joe’s Pond hat in the liquor department. Your basket was scantily clad with North Country smoked hot dogs, cheese puffs and Cabot Salsa Grande Dip. Your shining silver hair didn’t distract me from the six-pack of Heineken bottles you picked up. Call me Debbie, ‘cause I won’t be late for dinner. When: Monday, March 29, 2021. Where: Mehuron’s.

You: Man. Me: Woman. #915251 GREEN CAP GUY, ESSEX HANNAFORD I saw you loading groceries in your gray Nissan Altima in the Essex Hannaford parking lot. Super cute guy with a green baseball cap. Caught your gaze for a moment. I think we should meet up! Maybe in EJ on Hawthorn?

AFsDay! When: Thursday, March 18, 2021. Where: Essex Hannaford.

You: Man. Me: Woman. #915250

ARCHITECT ENJOYING LAKE CHAMPLAIN I read your profile elsewhere but hope this connection will take. I won’t use your name but will respond only to you. M is closed: perhaps Leunig’s in May, a mid-Saturday afternoon? A relationship by design. When: Tuesday, April 13, 2021. Where: in his writing.

You: Man. Me: Woman. #915256

SHAMWOW And maybe when the time is right, we can meet again as strangers who know each other a little far too well. When: Sunday, April 4, 2021. Where: in my dreams. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915253

CO-OP KITCHEN GUY The secret is out and the deli person knows who they are, as I confessed about the ad today. I never intended to cause any trouble for partnered people, and I likely read into it too much — sorry, folks! Awkwardness of the situation aside, you seem like a cool person, and I’d enjoy a friendly hangout if you’re interested. When: Thursday, April 8, 2021. Where: Hunger Mountain Coop.

You: Man. Me: Woman. #915255

TATTOOED HOTTIE WORKING AT COSTCO I commented on your gorgeous tattoos.

You told me your artist was out of Waterbury. I should have given you my number. I also have lots of ink, but I forgot your artist’s name; let’s grab a coffee and talk tattoos. When: Sunday, March 28, 2021. Where: Costco, Colchester.

You: Man. Me: Woman. #915249 RUNNER BABE WITH DOG I was with six friends walking up from the bike path. You were running with your dog, and we passed you right at the bottom of Maple. You were turning onto the bike path. You have a very nice face. Email me; let’s take a walk with your dog. :) When: Sunday, March 28, 2021. Where: Maple St., Burlington.

You: Man. Me: Woman. #915248

campaign to have toxic lawn care chemicals banned in your town? The website beyondpesticides.org might be a good place to start researching the steps involved in taking such action.

Or, here’s a really crazy idea: How about talking to your neighbor? It may be awkward at first, but say hello whenever you catch them outside. Bring over a plant. After you get to know them a little, strike up a friendly conversation about lawn care. They may never have realized the harm they’ve been causing.

You might be able to help them see the light and possibly make a new pal in the process.

Good luck and God bless,

The Reverend

What’s your problem?

Send it to asktherev@sevendaysvt.com.

SEVEN DAYS MAY 12-19, 2021

93

Mid-60s, tall, strong SWF in NEK with gardening skills seeks cultivating a relationship with similar SM or platonic friend.

Crafts, common sense, Carhartt, nudist Buddhist, bicycling, kayaking, woodworking, science, hammocks. Be true to who you are, perhaps not always clothed in ego. I will dress the same, alongside my faux pas. #L1502 I live in Rutland. I truly believe in honesty. Caring, understanding, independent, generous, easygoing, active, fit, fun, flexible. I’ve traveled the world extensively. Allergic to cats. I like to believe I’m a family man.

Friends tell me I’m a clean-cut guy. #L1501 64-y/o SWF seeking SM, 50 to 75 y/o, for companionship.

Must be Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox, clean, COVID-free.

Interests: the arts, teaching, cooking, watching shows, Hallmark movies. I love animals, walks, coffee, tea, sunrises, sunsets. Consider a man’s heart more important. Phone number, please. #L1494 Old woman (70s) wants to meet old or young man for only interesting conversation and coffee. Old woman is well educated and well traveled.

Would like old or young man to be smart and funny. Phone number, please. #L1504

I’m a SWM top guy seeking steady lover. Passionate gay or bi. Young, old fem. Must be into women’s clothes. Phone, please. #L1505

Discreet oral bottom. 54y/o SWM, 5’8, slim, dark hair, blue eyes. Seeking any well-hung guys, 18 to 55 y/o, who are a good top and last a long time for more than one around. Phone only, but text. Champlain Valley. #L1500

Widower man looking for woman for FWB, possible LTR and more. Send me your name and number; I’ll return your calls. Looking forward to meeting you! Please be over 18. Race is not an issue.

Thank you! #L1503

38-y/o SWM seeking male for LTR. Must live near the Plattsburgh, N.Y., area. I am average but cute-looking. I enjoy reading, videos and time with friends. Talking a must. Your age: 35-plus. Nonsmoker. Stability required. #L1499

I’m a man seeking new friends for adventure. I hike Mount Philo almost every day and love to cross-country ski. #L1478

This week’s ancient as the great Madonna! Hollywood movie extra of the year. Community college art school dropout. Stop making sense. Where’s my music man? #L1497

HOW TO REPLY TO THESE LOVE LETTERS: Seal your reply — including your preferred contact info — inside an envelope. Write your penpal’s box number on the outside of that envelope and place it inside another envelope with payment. Responses for Love Letters must begin with the #L box number.

MAIL TO: Seven Days Love Letters

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PUBLISH YOUR MESSAGE ON THIS PAGE!

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SEVEN DAYS MAY 12-19, 2021

Internet-Free Dating!

Reply to these messages with real, honest-to-goodness letters. DETAILS BELOW. GWM, mid-60s, 5’11, slim build.

Blue eyes, decent looking. Like walking, hiking, swimming.

Enjoy music, movies, gardening.

Mindful and kind. Looking for LTR. 420-friendly. Southwest Vermont. Seeking GM, 55 to 70, tall, intelligent, humorous, energetic with integrity.

Nonsmoker who enjoys nature. #L1498 I’m a man who’s served our country honorably, looking for a tenderhearted woman, 56 to 67, with grit. I like to travel, go out to eat, go to the movies, play golf and listen to live music. I own a home in Burlington and a camp in the mountains. I’m financially secure. I have a grateful and humble attitude for everything in my life. #L1496 56-y/o SW. Humbled, thoughtful.

Hoping for a safe, kind, honest relationship with a man. Calm in nature, love for nature. Morning coffees, long walks, talks, sunsets, art, music, dance, friends, family, laughs! Willing to see and resolve suffering. Unconditional love and support find me at home. Phone number, please. #L1486

GWM looking for springtime hookups or longer if all goes well.

Easygoing, nice guy in Rutland County. I like to play and like everything. Respond with phone number. #L1493 Older yet still younger person seeking any age to bring back that lovin’ feeling. Long-distance runner, speed walker, hiker. 5’9, 160 pounds. Biker, aerobics lover, looking for a fine friendship or more. I love music, drawing, poetry, guitar, literature, yoga, philosophy. Mostly vegetarian looking for values, humility, kindness, smiles, even magic. #L1492 Bi male, slightly older. Live in New York but can travel. Clean, COVID-free. Slim but in good shape. 6’1, 180 pounds. Mostly a bottom; looking for a nice guy who’s a top. #L1491 I’m a 39-y/o male seeking a female 18 to 45. Looking for a friend and pen pal first. I’m an honest, loyal, loving and determined person. I’m a Pagan (Asatru). I’m also a dork. I look forward to writing you. #L1488

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4/23/21 12:38 PM

PLANT OF THE WEEK BUY ONE, GET ONE FREE!* Each week through the end of July Gardener’s Supply Garden Centers will be offering a special deal on our plant of the week. This week’s plant is Lavandula ang. Munstead Strain. Visit one of our Garden Center locations to shop our selection of plants and to meet our gardening experts! Visit gardeners.com/store for our store locations and hours plus details on the plant of the week!

*offer valid while supplies last

1t-gardenerssupply051221 1

5/10/21 10:16 AM