Seven Days, December 2, 2020

STUDY BREAKS

Remote learning takes a toll on BHS students

V ERM ONT ’S INDEP E NDE NT V OIC E DECEMBER 2-9, 2020 VOL.26 NO.10 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

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Raj’s Revival?

WhistlePig founder Raj Bhakta’s purchase of Green Mountain College puts Poultney’s fate in his hands B Y D EREK BR OUWER, PA G E 3 0

ON REBRAND

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A redo for Helen Day Art Center

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BTV designer makes an imprint

THE JOY OF SNACKS A new series on local treats

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State health officials have said for months that rapid-result antigen tests for COVID-19 are not as accurate as the PCR tests that must be processed in a lab. In settings with a low prevalence of the virus, the state has cautioned, the rapid tests can provide false results.

That’s no longer the case in Vermont’s long-term-care facilities. As the virus surges in those settings, state officials are incorporating rapid tests into their monitoring strategy. The state will begin delivering Abbott BinaxNOW rapid tests to long-term-care homes, Human Services Secretary Mike Smith said at a press conference on Tuesday.

The federal government, which is providing Vermont with 180,000 of these tests, began delivering batches to the state in early October. State officials had yet to distribute any of them.

In the past week, though, two new outbreaks have been confirmed at long-term-care facilities: 25 cases at Elderwood at Burlington and 14 at St. Albans Healthcare & Rehabilitation Center. Since November 23, testing at six facilities with previously known outbreaks identified 27 additional infections.

Health Commissioner Mark Levine explained the policy change. When faced with an outbreak in a facility, he said, “You want to be able to make rapid decisions regarding triage of patients and staff … so that infections don’t spread.”

In fact, many of Vermont’s nursing homes have already

?? ? ?? ? ??

That’s how much Mark Valade, a Lyndon College alumnus and the CEO of Carhartt, gave to Northern Vermont University — the largest gift the Vermont State Colleges System has ever received.

been using these tests, having previously received a different kind of rapid testing equipment directly from the federal government. Despite the state health department’s advice as recently as October to use PCR testing whenever possible, 21 nursing homes in the state had collectively run more than 1,100 rapid tests as of November 15, according to reports the homes must submit each week.

Another development in the state’s approach to these tests: While health care providers have been required to report all positive rapid-test results to the health department, the state has not shared those numbers publicly to date. Only “confirmed cases” — detected with PCR laboratory tests — have been counted in the state’s statistics.

That will change starting on Wednesday, December 2, when Vermont will begin reporting presumptive cases in addition to confirmed ones, said Levine. Those cases will include people who got positive rapid-test results, as well as patients who were exposed to COVID-19 and have symptoms.

Smith said Wednesday’s data update will include 120 presumptive positives detected since September 6. The change in reporting will increase transparency, he said, and will bring Vermont’s reporting procedures in line with those in other states.

Read Andrea Suozzo’s complete story at sevendaysvt.com.

Public works departments statewide are worried about staffing snowplow crews during this winter of COVID-19.

Weather or not, here it comes.

CLOSED CABINET

President-elect Joe Biden said he’ll need Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in Congress, dampening Sanders’ hope for a top position in the administration.

Berned again.

1. “COVID-19 Cases Climb in Vermont’s LongTerm-Care Facilities” by Colin Flanders. State officials are increasing coronavirus testing in response to recent outbreaks in facilities across the state.

2. “Essay: Get Ready for the Flatlanders — or Maybe Not” by Josh A. Speert. A Vermontloving skier from New Jersey weighs in on the strange winter ahead.

3. “Master Sommelier David Keck Puts Down Roots in a Vermont Vineyard” by Kim MacQueen. Keck, a Vermont native, is one of just 269 people in the world who holds the master sommelier title.

4. “Family-Friendly Rockers Pizzeria Opens in Vergennes” by Jordan Barry. The new spot sold out of pizza in just an hour and a half after opening its doors.

5. “ZAFA Wines Ordered to Stop Raising Funds From Investors” by Sally Pollak. The state also barred the Burlington winemaker from manufacturing or selling alcoholic beverages.

tweet of the week

HOLIDAY ESSENTIALS Though most people can’t currently cross the Canadian border, the feds are allowing shipments of Christmas trees into the U.S. ’Tis the season.

@ScullyBully Going to get my sunscreen, sunglasses and tank top on for my December 1st walk in Vermont.

FOLLOW US ON TWITTER @SEVENDAYSVT OUR TWEEPLE: SEVENDAYSVT.COM/TWITTER

WHAT’S KIND IN VERMONT

TECH FOOD CHAIN Plenty of people and businesses helped feed those less fortunate during Thanksgiving last week. But the need remains.

Now there’s an app for that. The team behind Localvore Passport, a subscriberonly platform for restaurant deals, has teamed up with Vermont Everyone Eats, a hunger relief program, to put free meals into people’s hands easily.

Funded by federal CARES Act dollars and an additional appropriation from the Vermont legislature, Everyone Eats has provided thousands of meals during the pandemic, usually at food distribution

sites. But over the summer, the program hired Localvore to create a new, free portal that allows those looking for free meals to browse participating restaurants and order directly through an app.

In the months since the system launched in October, more than 1,000 people have signed up to order more than 10,000 meals from dozens of restaurants around the state, according to Localvore cofounders Dan White and Michael Nedell.

“It’s been really rewarding for us to see that kind of steady traction and usage,” White said. The company’s technology “doesn’t necessarily mean discounts. In this case, it’s free meals to help people that have been impacted by COVID.” Users visit localvorepassport.com/

everyone-eats and fill out a form to create an account and download the app. The program displays participating restaurants, and users can pick meals for themselves and other members of their households.

The restaurants generally prepare meals for the program each day according to nutritional guidelines. Another requirement: 10 percent of the ingredients must come from local producers. The restaurants get reimbursed $10 per meal they provide.

“The consumer gets free food and, essentially, financial assistance,” White said. “The restaurant gets revenue and cash flow that allows them to continue to operate and employ people. But they’re

also moving their inventory, which means farmers and producers and distributors are getting that continued economic support.”

The Everyone Eats program is only funded through the end of December.

But Nedell said the need isn’t going away.

During an interview on Monday, he noted that users had already ordered more than 100 meals just that morning. Other Everyone Eats distribution programs run daily at sites around the state, too.

“If someone has lost their job, they’ve been furloughed and they need free meals a couple times a week” and are able to get fed, White said, “that’s awesome, right?”

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FEEDback READER REACTION TO RECENT ARTICLES

WHY SHY

Vermont conservatives and especially Donald Trump supporters are indeed media shy [From the Publisher: “Talking Cure,” November 11]. At Trump rallies, attendees tell me they won’t talk to any reporters because they perceive bias. For example: • Online comments have been turned off: This decision by many media outlets — including Seven Days — gives the impression (true or not) that they don’t welcome conservative pushback. VTDigger.org in particular acknowledged that Black Lives Matter backlash influenced its decision to eliminate comments.

• Social media blackouts ignored: In October, Facebook blacked out some conservative activists and candidates, including Art Peterson, a House candidate from Rutland and outspoken BLM opponent. Had candidates been kicked off social media for supporting Joe Biden or BLM, one suspects the media would have taken notice.

• The rush to cry “racist”: Nothing reinforces conservatives’ negative media stereotypes more than watching news coverage of an event they attended being falsely portrayed as racist. They know they’re not racist. They know the event (say, the Support the Police rally in July) wasn’t racist. But coverage focused on one unknown person making one derogatory comment. Conclusion: The media came with an agenda.

• Columnists seeking retribution: On November 12, an Addison County Independent columnist likened some Trump supporters to abusers. He quotes Vermont-born journalist Garrett Graff: “America should watch closely this week and demand a heavy price for those who callously, and cowardly, cast doubt on the integrity of our election system.”

Such statements make Trump supporters who just want fair elections wonder if they’ll end up in a reeducation camp.

Guy Page

BERLIN

Page is the publisher of the online Vermont Daily Chronicle.

TESTING, TESTING

Reports of record COVID-19 cases, absent a proportional fatality spike, invite questions about testing [Off Message: “Vermont Records 109 New

COVID-19 Cases as Surge Continues,” November 12].

Is PCR, which amplifies viral RNA through a series of cycles, truly a “gold standard test”? In August, the New York Times reported that data from three states showed that “up to 90 percent of people testing positive carried barely any virus” and that the CDC’s “own calculations suggest that it is extremely difficult to detect any live virus in a sample above a threshold of 33 cycles.” Likewise, a study in France concluded that “patients with Ct values > 34 do not excrete infectious viral particles and thus may be discharged.”

In July, Dr. Anthony Fauci told the “This Week in Virology” podcast: “If you get a cycle threshold of 35 or more, the chances of [the virus] being replication competent are minuscule” — that samples above 35 cycles are “just dead nucleotides, period.”

Why does this matter? Because Vermont’s PCR test, manufactured by Thermo Fisher Scientific, sets a cutoff of 37 cycles. And since the Department of Health does not report Ct values with test results, we don’t know which positive tests show harmless viral debris from past infection and which signify live infectious virus. Are all “cases” created equal? Why is the health department treating positive results this way?

The COVID-19 PCR assay is not a pregnancy test. “Yes/no” isn’t good enough.

We need transparent reporting of Ct values with the test results. The implications for public health policy, given the hysteria of the moment, are obvious.

Jeff Euber

BURLINGTON

FLAG-LOVING LEFTIE

I am greatly offended by the comments of Matt Krauss of Stowe [Feedback: “How Many Conservatives?” November 18]. In what universe does he think that only conservatives serve in the armed forces, belong to the local fish and game club, fly an American flag, watch NASCAR, support local police, etc.? Since when do the conservatives own these entities?

Yes, perhaps only conservatives donate to Republican presidential candidates, but even this is not a total given. But, for sure, the conservatives do not own the American flag.

Lorna-Kay Peal

BURLINGTON

SIGNS EVERYWHERE

I was astonished to read of a traveler’s criticisms of Burlington International Airport’s COVID-19 response [Off Message: “A Traveler Says Quarantine

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Info Is in Short Supply at BTV,” November 19]. Director of Aviation Gene Richards and his team have been among the most proactive organizations I have seen regarding the protection of its customers.

They were very early to adopt handwashing stations at the very start of this crisis.

They continue to be leaders regarding innovative approaches to safety, including thermal scanning of passengers and the establishment of rapid-testing resources.

I find that the reminders are very prominent at the airport and am puzzled by the traveler’s contrary observation.

All I can say is that if there is a feeling that more should be done, then the state should copy what Gov. Andrew Cuomo did in New York by deploying Army National Guard personnel to be present and to ensure that those arriving understand compliance. I experienced that deployment at John F. Kennedy International Airport and found that the National Guard was professional, courteous and effective. Let the airport continue doing what it does best in running the airport, especially during these times that deplete operating revenues while at the same time increase costs. I just wish the state were more supportive of the airport instead of resisting the value of the safety innovations developed by the airport, such as rapid testing.

Gregory Maguire

WATERBURY

FOLLOW THE LAW

[Re “Coronavirus Rekindles,” November 18]: On Saturday, November 21, around 2.30 p.m., I went to Dunkin’ Donuts on Williston Road in South Burlington to get a coffee. It was pretty busy, but I decided

11/25/20 6:03 PM

to go in. Everyone was wearing a mask except a youngish man with blond hair, a black cap, and an elaborate black and gold jacket. While he was waiting for his order, he cheerfully and loudly chatted up one of the staff behind the counter, who chatted back. His defiance was palpable.

It is now the law that people wear masks, especially indoors. COVID-19 numbers are escalating every day in Vermont. None of the employees said a word. No one asked him to leave. I think the rest of us were too intimidated and uncomfortable to say anything. I left. If we cannot count on the people working in an establishment to enforce the rules that keep us safe, then it is no wonder the virus is leaping out of control.

Barbara Zucker

BURLINGTON

CORRECTION

Last week’s story “Race On” incorrectly stated that Miro Weinberger defeated former mayor Bob Kiss in 2012. Kiss chose not to run for reelection that year.

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INFORMATION

contents DECEMBER 2-9, 2020 VOL.26 NO.10

Raj’s Revival?

COLUMNS 52 Album Reviews 54 Movie Review 77 Ask the Reverend

SECTIONS 23 Life Lines 44 Food + Drink

50 Music + Nightlife 54 Movies 57 Classes 59 Classifieds + Puzzles 72 Fun Stuff 76 Personals

FOOD

Small Pleasures

Finding joy in delicious, locally made bites and sips

PAGE 44

Land Legacy Butterworks Farm cofounder Jack Lazor dies at 69

PAGE 45

Mama & Pop’s

WhistlePig founder Raj Bhakta’s purchase of Green Mountain College puts Poultney’s fate in his hands

Cafe Mamajuana and Poppy’s Café & Market bring new ideas to the Old North End

B Y D E RE K BROUWER, PAG E 30

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44

STUCK IN VERMONT

Online Now

COVER IMAGE MARC NADEL • COVER DESIGN REV. DIANE SULLIVAN

18

40

24

NEWS & POLITICS 11

ARTS NEWS 24

FEATURES 40

From the Publisher

The Mind’s Eye

Taking Shape

In his latest book of photographs, John Huddleston documents an ever-changing forest

Prog vs. Prog

Brian Pine and Max Tracy are vying to take on BTV Mayor Miro Weinberger

Time’s Up

When State Meets Church

In enforcing pandemic precautions, Vermont treads lightly in houses of worship Burlington High School students feel the impact of remote learning

Environment: Noise experts suggest that Vermont plan for the arrival of commercial drones

New Day Coming

Seasonal Impression

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Book review: No More Time, Greg Delanty Helen Day Art Center to rebrand in 2021

‘It’s Just Really Hard’

Art: From bananas to boobs, Beenanza Design creates eye-catching patterns

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To teach Nepali dance and culture to a SUPPORTED BY: generation of immigrants growing up in Vermont, Bishnu Khadka cofounded what’s now known as the Bhutanese Nepali Cultural Heritage Dance Group. His 12-year-old daughter, Bindhiya, performs virtually during this year’s Vermont International Festival, December 4 through 6.

We have

Music: Maxine Linehan’s new holiday album is intentionally unconventional

Find a new job in the classifieds section on page 64 and online at sevendaysvt.com/jobs.

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Burlington Resource and Recovery Center (RRC) 802.755.7239 Thank you Burlington community for your continued hard work to ensure the safety of your family, friends, and neighbors by:

- Social distancing - Wearing masks - Washing your hands - Following guidance from the City and State - Getting tested

We are more vulnerable to COVID-19 today than ever before. We’re all in this together!

LET’S STAY SAFE

For State and City guidance, please visit burlingtonvt.gov/covid-19/guidance

GET TESTED TODAY For testing information, please visit burlingtonvt.gov/covid-19/testing

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The RRC is here to help in response to COVID-19 recovery@burlingtonvt.gov 802.755.7239 burlingtonvt.gov/resources SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

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FROM THE PUBLISHER

Pressed for Time

“interference.”

Still, the end result — useful, accurate information — is a vast improvement over what passed for health reporting 100 years ago. If people take it to heart, that knowledge will save lives.

Paula Routly

© SATORI13 | DREAMSTIME.COM

Before the “China virus,” as the current president calls it, we had the “Spanish flu” — named for the only place in the world where journalists openly recorded its toll. So explained John M. Barry, author of The Great Influenza, on a recent episode of NPR’s “On the Media.” Countries still involved in World War I discouraged news coverage of the 1918 pandemic that killed 50 million people across the globe.

The U.S. went along with the media blackout. The government was promoting patriotism, and the 1918 Sedition Act outlawed publishing “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” that might reflect negatively upon the country. Even the U.S. Postal Service was in on the censorship, monitoring mailed newspapers that did not conform. As a result, there was scant coverage of the influenza virus that ended the lives of 675,000 Americans — roughly 28 percent of the citizenry at the time. Most of them were under age 45.

Despite contracting the disease, president Woodrow Wilson never spoke publicly of it. A New York Times story published on May 14 of this year asked, “Why Are There Almost No Memorials to the Flu of 1918?”

(The reporter found a rare exception in Barre’s Hope Cemetery: a marble bench, erected two years ago to commemorate the historic scourge and the 100th anniversary of the Wayside restaurant.) Mention of the deadly pandemic was also rare in literature and other art of the time.

Referencing scholars, the Times article suggested that “The mass amnesia helps explain the lack of preparation for the Covid-19 crisis.”

Vermonters won’t soon forget this global pandemic. From the start, every local media outlet has been on the story, availing themselves of the governor’s twice-weekly press conferences to question the state’s leaders in public health, safety and government. While the officials share a podium in an actual auditorium, most of the journalists call in, often on hard-to-hear phone lines. Chroniclers of all platforms and persuasions, they are exercising the rights of a free press to inform the public and uphold local democracy.

And, not surprisingly, the “briefings” are anything but. One lasted two and a half hours.

Rebecca Kelley, the governor’s communications director, has started to intervene around the 90-minute mark, noting how many reporters have yet to speak and suggesting they ask no more than two questions each. Her emails are more pointed. In advance of last Tuesday’s briefing, for which 26 reporters had signed up, she suggested participants listen to the whole press conference — so they wouldn’t repeat a question that had already been asked — and issued a warning: “If we continue to have to cut short those reporters at the end of the queue, we’re going to have to reconsider the format to ensure more equal time is given across outlets.”

The system is not perfect. On the Friday after Thanksgiving, Steve Merrill of the public access station NEK-TV called in with a dog yapping in the background — “a Jack Russell puppy,” he told an inquiring Gov. Phil Scott. “They bark for affirmation.” Merrill yelled at the dog to “shut up” as Health Commissioner Dr. Mark Levine was getting ready to answer Merrill’s question about mortality rates. Removing his mask, Support our COVID-19 coverage by Levine cracked a big, ill-timed smile. becoming a Super Reader.

At another press briefing, everyone could hear Look for the “Give Now” buttons at the top of U.S. Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) ordering a turkey sevendaysvt.com. Or send a check with your sandwich for lunch — an unmuted moment the address and contact info to: Islander’s Mike Donoghue graciously referred to as

Scenes from the 1918 pandemic

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COURTESY OF KAREN PIKE

Councilor Brian Pine

Prog vs. Prog

Brian Pine and Max Tracy are vying to take on Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger B Y COUR T NEY L A M DIN • courtney@sevendaysvt.com

A

viewer of the Vermont Progressive Party’s candidate forums last month would scarcely have been able to tell that City Councilors Brian Pine (Ward 3) and Max Tracy (Ward 2) are rivals to become the next mayor of Burlington.

Over the course of the three virtual events, Pine and Tracy’s talking points overlapped more than they differed.

The two men were congenial — even complimentary of one another — as they explained how they’d make Burlington a more equitable place: by addressing the climate crisis, increasing affordable housing and uplifting the voices of the most marginalized. Even the candidates recognized that they had said little to explain their differences, despite being in the midst of a weeks-long sprint to win their party’s nomination.

“One of the awkward things about running against Councilor Pine is that we work together really well on a lot of things,” Tracy, the city council president, said at a November 19 forum on economic justice.

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SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

“As we have found, there’s not a lot of daylight between us on these issues,” Pine later said.

But there are key differences between the candidates that may determine how Progressives vote during their party caucus this week. Pine’s years of public service and his willingness to break with the party line have won him support from the city’s more moderate Progressives.

Tracy’s hard-line stance and passionate activism have attracted the party’s more vocal, leftmost members.

Backers in both camps told Seven Days in recent interviews that those traits give their candidate the best shot of beating incumbent Mayor Miro Weinberger, a three-term Democrat whom they desperately want to vote out of office on March 2.

Neither candidate has had much time to carve out a distinctive niche in the run-up to the party caucus on Tuesday.

The nominating event is being held virtually due to the coronavirus. Ballots will be accepted until 7 p.m. on Thursday,

December 3. The party announced Pine and Tracy’s campaigns on November 9, giving them less than a month to hire campaign staff, launch websites and set up social media accounts. Each candidate has said he will get out of the race if he fails to secure the party nomination.

That would make for a slightly less crowded field. In addition to Weinberger, the Progressive nominee will face at least two independent candidates in fellow City Councilor Ali Dieng (Ward 7) and South End resident Patrick White. Still other candidates could emerge by the time Democrats caucus on December 6 or before the January 25 filing deadline.

Pine has made the most of his fleeting campaign time. He said he’s raised $10,000 since declaring his candidacy and hired eight paid staffers — including a top staffer for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) 2016 and

POLITICS

PROG VS. PROG

» P.14

Colchester Selectboard to Wear Masks Following Mix-Up B Y DE RE K B RO UW E R derek@sevendaysvt.com

Members of the Colchester Selectboard have been holding in-person meetings for months without wearing masks — but not because they object to the state’s COVID-19 rules.

Instead, town leaders believed Gov. Phil Scott’s mask mandate didn’t apply as long as selectboard members sat more than six feet apart.

In reality, the July order requires that masks be worn in all public venues, a state spokesperson said on Monday.

The Colchester misunderstanding apparently went unnoticed until Seven Days contacted Town Manager Aaron Frank about the issue on Tuesday.

In an interview, Frank was initially adamant that the town was on the right side of the mask mandate. “I believe we are in compliance, if you read the governor’s order and look at the facts,” he said.

After the interview, Frank contacted state officials, who clarified the rule.

Selectboard members will wear masks at future meetings, the town manager said.

While many Vermont cities and towns have continued to hold public meetings virtually, Colchester Selectboard members opted to return to in-person meetings over the summer. Frank reconfigured the board’s regular meeting space to allow social distancing, buying longer microphone cords, for instance, so members could sit farther apart.

Members of the public have continued to participate in person and remotely.

At the beginning of each recent meeting, the board chair has read the town’s COVID-19 meeting policy, which said that board members “may remain unmasked as they so choose, given that we are distanced” and other attendees “may unmask when they are speaking.”

The policy was created without consulting the state. “We’re quite conversant in reading the governor’s orders and determining what they mean,” Frank said.

Video from the first in-person meeting on August 4 shows everyone wearing masks until the end of the meeting, when then-chair Jeff Bartley removed his to announce his resignation from the selectboard. Mask usage diminished significantly at subsequent meetings, including the most recent one on November 10.

As coronavirus cases surged in recent weeks, Scott released an order on November 13 in which he “strongly discouraged” any in-person meetings, municipal governments included.

Colchester has since restricted in-person attendance at town meetings, but Frank said selectboard members were still planning to gather on Tuesday night for a budget work session.

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n Sunday, November 15, two days after Gov. Phil Scott banned social gatherings involving people from different households, Todd Callahan, the pastor of Ignite Church in Williston, reassured his congregation that the new order would not preclude them from gathering for worship.

“Someone reached out to see if we were still having church, based on what the governor said,” Callahan announced from his lectern on the stage, where the church’s music ministry had just finished an hourlong performance. The musicians — a keyboardist, an electric guitarist, a drummer and half a dozen vocalists — were all unmasked; so was Callahan.

“We’re still going to have church,” Callahan declared. “Come on.” A chorus of woos rippled through the audience.

“People say, ‘Jesus would have socialdistanced,’” Callahan continued. “No. He would have been praying over the sick and healing the lepers, is what he would have been doing.”

According to the governor’s latest executive order, in-person worship services can proceed, as long as participants observe social-distancing guidelines and wear masks. But the order lacks any formal enforcement mechanisms; to ensure compliance, the state relies on a patchwork system of citizen whistleblowers, local police departments and,

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in egregious cases, the state Attorney General’s Office.

4t-citymarket120220 1 In a pandemic, regulating houses of worship is an especially fraught task, given the protections of the First Amendment. Callahan has openly repudiated the state’s jurisdiction over matters of religious observance; recently, an Irasburg pastor refused to cooperate with a Department of Health investigation into a COVID-19 case within his congregation.

The government’s authority to impose targeted public health measures on religious communities has lately come under judicial scrutiny. On November 25, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that attendance restrictions in New York State’s so-called “red zones” — areas with high COVID-19 infection rates — were unconstitutional, the first case in which newly Spring 2021 courses have been published and confirmed Justice Amy Coney Barrett registration opens November 30th. Choose from cast the decisive vote. The Supreme Court hundreds of options, available on campus, online, determined that such restrictions were and in hybrid format and use this time as an UVM this summer and achieve something that’s important to a violation of the constitutional Head rightto to opportunity to earn credits toward your degree, career the free exercise of religion. Lawyers forto master a new you. Want skill? Study project or management or digital just for fun. Explore advancement, take a course the state had argued that the attendance courses about what’s marketing. Need to scratch a creativenow itch?and Take astart class indaydreaming photography possible in 2021. limits were necessary, given the history ofwriting – they’re or creative open to anyone.

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» P.16 SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

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paul@sevendaysvt.com

14

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

2020 presidential bids. His team rolled out a slick website featuring professionalgrade photos of a beaming Pine standing in the newly rebuilt City Hall Park.

Pine, 58, announced his run against the backdrop of Burlington’s Northgate Apartments, a low-income housing community he helped save from gentrification in the 1980s. He still serves on the complex’s board. In the mid-1990s, Pine became housing director for the city’s Community Economic Development Office, a post he held for 18 years. Pine now works as a self-employed consultant, helping organizations develop business plans and write grant applications.

Pine’s experience earned him an endorsement from New North End resident Mieko Ozeki. The outgoing director of the Burlington Farmers Market, Ozeki said she doesn’t normally participate in party caucuses but is voting for Pine after reviewing his extensive résumé. She thinks Tracy is a commendable council president but that the city needs a mayor with a longer track record.

“We need somebody who has strong administrative skills, who understands the inner workings of the government from the get-go,” she said.

Tracy, 33, recognizes that Pine has a couple of decades on him but argues that the elder Prog doesn’t have more experience — just different experience. Indeed, with nearly nine years on the council, Tracy is the longest-serving Progressive.

He prides himself on his in-the-trenches activism, such as the hunger strike for livable wages that he joined as a University of Vermont student and, more recently, a sit-in at Sen. Patrick Leahy’s (D-Vt.) office to protest the F-35 fighter jets’ arrival.

Tracy was previously an admissions officer at UVM but now works as a field organizer for the Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals.

Tracy’s campaign maintains a peoplepowered, grassroots feel. His staff are all volunteers, and his campaign website greets visitors with a folksy “Hey, neighbor. I’m Max.” He said he’s raised $1,666 in this election cycle and carried over close to $1,400 from his most recent council campaign. Tracy already has endorsements from high-profile figures such as Reps. Curt McCormack (D-Burlington) and Brian Cina (P/D-Burlington), racial justice advocate Mark Hughes, and Infinite Culcleasure, a community activist who himself challenged Weinberger in 2018.

Tracy also has a strong contingent of student backers, including UVM senior Chris Harrell, who cochairs the university’s Progressive club. Harrell, who

Councilor Max Tracy

COURTESY OF MATT BINGINOT

Members of the House Rules Committee voted last week for the chamber to meet remotely through January, and Senate leaders indicated on Tuesday that they would follow suit.

During a meeting of the legislature’s Joint Rules Committee, which includes leaders of both bodies, lawmakers also agreed on Tuesday to scale back some of the opening ceremonies that typically mark the start of the two-year biennium — including the swearing-in of constitutional officers and the governor’s inaugural address.

Though many details have yet to be worked out, the House currently plans to convene on January 6 at the Barre Municipal Auditorium. Legislators will be sworn in, elect a new speaker and clerk, and approve the rules of the House. The venue was chosen because it is among the largest in the state and can safely accommodate all 150 members of the House, even while social distancing.

Nevertheless, members will be given the opportunity to participate remotely, outgoing House Speaker Mitzi Johnson (D-South Hero) said at Tuesday’s meeting.

The 30-member Senate plans to meet in person at the Statehouse on the same day, according to outgoing Senate President Pro Tempore Tim Ashe (D/P-Chittenden). Members will cycle through the Senate chamber to be sworn in and to elect their own officers.

Members of the Joint Rules Committee agreed on Tuesday that the ceremonial activities scheduled to take place on January 7 could be conducted mostly remotely. Typically, members of both bodies — as well as dignitaries, cabinet members and the press — squeeze into the House chamber that day. Legislators formally elect and swear in statewide officeholders and listen to the governor’s inaugural address.

Rather than relocate those events to the Barre auditorium, committee members decided they could be held in the Statehouse with only key players present and the rest attending remotely.

“I really like the idea of keeping with as much tradition as possible, acknowledging that it’s not a great idea for 180 legislators, plus all the constitutional officers, to be in the Barre auditorium,” Johnson said.

After the second day of the session, both chambers would move to remote work at least through January. m

Prog vs. Prog « P.12

uses they/them pronouns, said they are inspired by Tracy’s student activism and how the councilor continues to show up, as he did at a recent climate strike in Burlington.

To Harrell, Tracy represents the polar opposite of Weinberger, who has taken more moderate approaches to police reform, supported the CityPlace Burlington project and advocated for the F-35s to come to Burlington. Tracy has embraced this contrast in his campaign messaging, while Pine has been less critical of the sitting mayor.

“Burlington has demonstrated, time and time again, that it is ready for radical change,” Harrell said, adding, “There is no room for another moderate.”

Harrell pointed to Tracy’s record on racial justice as a primary reason they’re not voting for Pine. The nation reckoned with race and policing this summer, but Tracy had supported a resolution to “defund the police” nearly a year earlier.

He was one of just three councilors who voted in June 2019 to shrink the police force and require that cops wear body cameras, among other accountability measures, after incidents of police violence in Burlington came to light.

Pine voted against the resolution, saying that the concept of cutting police was “objectionable.” He’s since joined the council’s other Progressives in adopting a resolution this summer to reduce the police force by attrition.

“All those demands had a very

different meaning as we moved into 2020,” Pine said. “The community consensus had shifted a bit over that one-year period.”

Harrell appreciates that Pine has evolved but says Tracy’s consistency makes him a more attractive candidate.

Tracy has “stood up when it has not been politically convenient to do so,” Harrell said.

Tracy said sticking to Progressive Party values is a selling point for his candidacy and creates trust among voters. “When we talk about this question of electability, I think that that consistent record is exciting for people on the left,” he said.

Others think Tracy’s ideology may be a tougher sell in a citywide race. Former council president Kurt Wright, a Republican, said that despite their near-identical voting records, Pine is more moderate than Tracy and would appeal to a wider electorate. Wright said he thinks Tracy will harness the youth vote to win the nomination but may not be able to beat Weinberger in the general election.

“He will have challenges, because he is viewed as very, very far left in almost every circumstance,” Wright said of Tracy.

“Anybody that’s to the right of center or in the center of the political equation would never consider Max.” UVM economics professor Stephanie Seguino said she’s supporting Pine because he can find common ground with political opposites. She thinks Pine can

unify a city divided over racial justice and development projects such as CityPlace.

“He is not dogmatic,” Seguino said.

“His ultimate concern is the well-being of this community, rather than political purity.”

One example, Seguino said, was Pine’s advocacy for reinvesting the city’s proceeds from its sale of Burlington Telecom to become a part-owner of the company and obtain a seat on its board. Pine joined Wright and former independent councilor Sharon Bushor in making a pitch that the proposal was a rare chance to increase city revenues without raising taxes. Tracy voted against the measure, which failed in an 8-3 vote.

The candidates’ stances have diverged a handful of other times. In 2016, before Pine was elected to the council, he filmed a promotional video urging Burlingtonians to approve the allocation of $21.8 million in tax increment financing funds to rebuild streets around the CityPlace project. “As a city, we have an opportunity

BURLINGTON HAS DEMONSTRATED, TIME AND TIME AGAIN,

THAT IT IS READY FOR RADICAL CHANGE. CH R I S HA RR EL L

that we need to seize now,” Pine said in the two-minute clip. “We have available a project that’s really gonna lay the groundwork for downtown Burlington for many years to come.”

Instead, the project has been stalled for years, and the city has sued the developers for failing to build it on time.

Tracy has voted against CityPlace from the start.

Pine and Tracy also differed on a proposal to reduce parking spaces on North and South Winooski avenues to make room for dual-direction bike lanes. Tracy, who doesn’t own a car and commutes by bike, was in favor.

“We have to make the hard choices if we want to become a world-class city for walking and biking,” Tracy said in a recent interview.

Pine opposed the plan after several Old North End entities — including restaurants, the Feeding Chittenden food shelf and Muwahi African Market — complained that their clientele relies on street parking. In the end, the council green-lighted bike lanes for South Winooski Avenue but agreed to study

parking needs on North Winooski before building them there. Bike transportation is important, Pine said, but many elderly and physically disabled people rely on a vehicle to get around.

“I didn’t feel like that process was as inclusive as it needed to be,” he said.

But perhaps Pine’s clearest departure from the modern-day Progressive party was in 2019, when he nominated former council president Jane Knodell for the Central District seat over newcomer Perri Freeman. In his pitch, he hailed Knodell’s pragmatism, moderation and willingness to compromise — principles that he himself espouses — as reasons she should continue to serve.

Freeman’s victory ushered in the new class of Progs that make up the council’s majority today.

Pine said he welcomes the party’s newest members and added that the younger pols bring a sense of urgency “that’s long overdue.” He credited them for pushing the council to take on bigger issues, such as racism and the climate crisis, and said even though he doesn’t always align with their positions, he believes “there’s certainly way more that unites us than divides us.”

Tracy said the party has tried to move past the “old Prog, new Prog” divide and instead focus on growing the party.

At the same time, Tracy pointed out that he’s “much closer” to the newer Progs, including Freeman and Councilors Jack Hanson (East District), Jane Stromberg (Ward 8) and Zoraya Hightower (Ward 1), who is serving as his campaign treasurer. “The entire Progressive caucus is backing me because I’ve supported them,” Tracy said.

If Hanson and Freeman are with Tracy, they’re not saying. They both served on a party committee that agreed not to endorse a candidate before the caucus, Hanson said.

Stromberg, meanwhile, has endorsed Tracy. She said Tracy has been a calm and collected leader through both the coronavirus pandemic and the summer’s racial justice protests, during which Tracy moderated the longest public forum in city council history.

Tracy has shown that he values hearing directly from the people, Stromberg said.

“That’s something I want to see in a mayor,” she said.

Stromberg said she respects Pine and Tracy and that the competition between the candidates will only strengthen their party’s position come March.

“I’m hoping that no matter what happens … that things are civil,” Stromberg said. “Of all people, Brian, Max and Miro are going to keep that in mind.” m

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news businesses, meaning they can operate at 50 percent of their capacity.

“We believe the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision on New York’s treatment of places of worship in its executive order does not adversely impact Vermont’s executive order,” said Charity Clark, chief of staff for Attorney General T.J. Donovan.

“Churches aren’t treated more stringently than any other institution.” When it comes to enforcing the executive order, state officials have chosen not to lead with penalties, Clark said: “Our first step is always to provide outreach and education.”

Since late October, the state’s Department of Public Safety has received two complaints about Ignite Church. One, submitted by someone who attended a service with several family members, stated that an unmasked greeter asked them to crowd into a waiting room before he let them into the worship space. The person who filed the complaint asked the greeter why he wouldn’t put on a mask; the greeter ignored the question. Another complaint, in November, cited social media posts from several Ignite members proclaiming that their church “doesn’t do masks.”

The state police forwarded these complaints to Bart Chamberlain, a detective sergeant in the Williston Police Department. On November 17, Chamberlain spoke with Callahan on the phone.

Based on their conversation, Chamberlain explained, he felt reasonably confident that there was no need for further intervention.

“Sounds like what they’re doing is pretty comprehensive,” he said. “They have some sort of UV light thing that they do before and after every service. They have a special spray that they’re using in there, and they have someone wipe all of the public door handles multiple times throughout the service.”

According to Chamberlain, Callahan said that people are required to wear masks while walking to and from their seats; once they’re sitting with members of their household, they can take their masks off.

“Todd’s belief is that people who are watching the online broadcast see people in the pews without masks on, so they assume that they’re just not wearing masks,” Chamberlain said. He added that he hadn’t attended a service himself, but he thought Ignite was operating under the same general principles as the restaurant industry. If he received additional complaints, he said, he would follow up with Callahan in a similar fashion. “We’ve been told to do education four or five times,” he said. “It’s going to 16

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

YOUTUBE SCREENSHOT

When State Meets Church « P.13

Pastor Todd Callahan

take a business or a company that’s really blatantly violating the rules before the Attorney General’s Office will take action.”

In theory, the AG’s office could impose a fine of up to $1,000 for persistent noncompliance with public health mandates. The state has only taken legal action once, in May, when it filed a cease-and-desist order against a Rutland gym owner for reopen-

THE WORD OF GOD SAYS THAT WHEN THERE ARE SICK,

THAT WE NEED TO LAY HANDS ON THE SICK. TODD CAL L AH AN

ing before Gov. Scott permitted fitness centers to resume operations.

Most of the time, said Clark, a lighter touch suffices. Just before Easter, AG Donovan called the pastor of a church in Bennington County who had been planning to hold in-person services for the holiday, despite the stay-at-home order in effect at the time. According to Clark, the pastor agreed not to hold the service.

“I think everyone really hears what these guys are saying when they say spiritual nourishment is incredibly important, especially during these times,” said Clark.

“So trying to strike a healthy balance of keeping everybody safe while honoring that is a real challenge.”

On Sunday, November 22, roughly 120 people attended a service at New Hope Bible Church in Irasburg. A few days later, pastor George Lawson received a call from the health department to advise him that someone who had been present that Sunday had tested positive for COVID-19.

Lawson told Seven Days that he contacted the person in question, who denied testing positive. Given the conflicting accounts, Lawson explained, he decided not to inform his congregation. “I wasn’t trying to be noncompliant. But I want the truth,” he said. “I don’t want to put out something for no reason.”

Contrary to the state’s directives, Lawson said that people are not required to wear masks in his church: “I’m not an enforcement person.” When the health department asked Lawson for the names of all the people who had been present that Sunday, he told them he didn’t keep a list. Last Friday, the health department issued a press release urging anyone who had attended the New Hope Bible Church service to get tested, an action Lawson deemed “out of bounds of any authority [the department] should have.”

The Sunday after Callahan, the Ignite pastor, spoke with Williston police, he told his congregation the only true authority rested with God. “There are people that watch online and just want to stir things up and do everything that they can to prevent us from doing what we’re doing this morning,” he said during his sermon.

He emphasized that he, personally, was not opposed to masks, but he believed people should be able to choose for themselves whether they wore one in church.

“I’ve got pastors saying to me how horrible we are for doing what we’re doing,” he said. “Those are the same pastors who will be shocked when they’re standing in hell. They’ll say, ‘It was culturally expected. We were told we had to do this.’ The state’s suggesting that we shouldn’t sing or play music, because it would require people to talk loudly — it’s all about trying to change the sound in the earth,” he continued. “But we are God’s people. We make a different sound.”

Some people, he said, would never understand the need to assemble before God. “But we know the word of God, which says do not forsake the assembling of saints, as is the habit of some. The word of God says that when there are sick, that we need to lay hands on the sick. We have to lay hands on the sick,” he repeated. “We are to lay hands on the sick.” Ignite posted a video of the sermon on its website; several days later, the video disappeared without explanation.

Callahan did not respond to multiple interview requests. On Sunday, November 29, I attended a service at Ignite. Two unmasked greeters approached me as soon as I walked in; when I mentioned that it was my first time at Ignite, one of them touched my elbow and instructed me to fill out a visitor card. Inside the dark, high-ceilinged worship space, awash with the sound of live Christian contemporary rock, were two laminated signs — one advertising a COVID-19 liability waiver and another stating that the surfaces in the building had been disinfected with VitalOxide, recognized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a coronavirus-killing agent.

Some 60 people, all unmasked, were standing in front of their chairs, bobbing and singing along to the music. Every other row of seats was occupied; the rows between were empty. As the worshippers trickled in, they occasionally brushed against each other to get to their seats; several elderly people squeezed through the aisles with their walkers. I lingered by the doors and watched at least a dozen people enter and exit without masks. At one point, an unmasked woman walked up to me, leaned in close and asked if I wanted to take a seat. Onstage, the keyboardist shouted into his microphone, “Praise the Lord! Let’s get vocal about it!”

A man standing a few feet away from me whooped. Shortly after that, I left.

In his sermon that morning, which was later posted online, Callahan extended a welcome to “members of the local media.”

He then proceeded to accuse the media of “stirring up all kinds of gossip online” and ignoring Christians “when you’re giving backpacks and school supplies away to those in need.”

“I rebuke every spirit that seeks to tear down the kingdom of God,” he continued.

“And we’ll repeat, right now, in Jesus’ name, you have no power. You have no influence. You have no ground to move here.”

“I’m telling you,” he urged his congregation, his voice hoarse from shouting, “that no matter what any governor says, the king of kings and lord of lords says that you can sing all you want!” m Colin Flanders contributed reporting.

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LUKE EASTMAN

B

urlington High School senior Parker Ballard misses high-fiving his friends in the hallway and doing hands-on chemistry experiments. Firstyear student Myriam Huener longs for the time when it was a given that she’d leave her house every day. And sophomore David Mutar wishes he were able to casually ask his math teacher questions when he doesn’t understand something.

Ballard, Huener and Mutar are three of the roughly 970 teens at BHS who are navigating the impacts of many months of remote schooling. While about 84 percent of Vermont public high school students have resumed at least some in-person instruction this fall, BHS students haven’t returned to their building.

The pandemic is not to blame: The day before in-person classes were to begin in September, the school closed indefinitely because elevated levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), a cancer-causing chemical, had been discovered on the North Avenue campus.

Mental health professionals, parents and the kids themselves say the prolonged period of virtual instruction has been bad for students’ psychological well-being.

And while Vermont Education Secretary Dan French has characterized elementary school kids as “more vulnerable” to academic and developmental harm when they’re not in school, national data show that adolescents are suffering, too. The big kids, it seems, aren’t all right.

“School was a place to just get away from all the distractions and focus on one thing,” Mutar said. At home, he said, he’s surrounded by electronics and his short attention span sometimes leads him to abandon his mountains of schoolwork to play video games. And it’s difficult to get 18

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

individualized help in a remote-learning format. Consequently, his grades are suffering, especially in math.

“It’s not working out,” he said. “It’s just really hard.”

Ballard, the senior student, said he was really looking forward to the September start of his final year. Because he and his classmates hadn’t been in school for so long, “It was going to be the best first day times three,” he said.

SCHOOL WAS A PLACE TO JUST GET AWAY

FROM ALL THE DISTRACTIONS AND FOCUS ON ONE THING. D AVID MUTAR

There are glimmers of hope. Last week, BHS students started a half day of in-person learning at Edmunds elementary and middle schools in downtown Burlington while plans are in the works to transform the former Macy’s store into a temporary school. Those renovations will take until at least the end of February, Burlington School District superintendent Tom Flanagan said.

Some families aren’t waiting around.

About 25 students have transferred out of BHS since the beginning of the school year, according to district spokesperson Russ Elek. Around a dozen of them — including Ballard’s ninth-grade sister — have enrolled at Rice Memorial High School, a private Catholic school in South Burlington that offers four days a week of in-person learning.

The other departing students have

moved away, used school choice to transfer to another public school or switched to homeschooling, Elek said.

The students who remain have been left to slog their way through the semester on district-supplied Chromebooks.

That has underscored “the importance of social and emotional learning that happens in person,” said Flanagan, who started on the job in July. Though he says the district has developed a strong model for online learning, data show that “virtual learning programs across the country don’t have a great engagement and success rate.”

Unhappy with the situation, some parents formed Open BHS, a group that’s pushed the district to restart in-person learning at the North Avenue campus. Suzy Garrity, a member whose daughter is a BHS first-year student, said she’s received “desperate emails” from parents whose children are struggling psychologically.

Pre-pandemic, some of these students were outgoing, athletic and academically successful and hadn’t experienced mental health problems, she added.

Garrity and the 130 members of her group argue that the state has overblown the health risks posed by PCBs, especially when compared to the damage social isolation can inflict on students.

The effects of that isolation have been documented nationally. A study released in June by America’s Promise Alliance, an organization geared to improving the lives of young people, found that 30 percent of 13- to 19-year-olds reported feeling unhappy or depressed more often than usual this spring, when remote learning was in full swing. And data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in November show that between

April and October of this year, mental health-related emergency room visits for 12- to 17-year-olds were approximately 31 percent higher than in the same period in 2019.

The local picture reflects these national trends. Maggie Weintraub, a school counselor at BHS, said she’s seeing “a pretty wide range” of reactions in students, including increased anxiety and depression, screen fatigue, and difficulty learning at home and staying engaged. “Mostly, we see kids just missing other kids,” Weintraub said. “The socialization piece is really big.”

“It’s difficult to be motivated and happy and emotionally well when you don’t have that outdoor time or time with friends,” said Huener, the first-year student. Because she’s just started high school and half the kids in her classes are from a different middle school, “It’s hard to connect with students and teachers and feel comfortable,” she said. Most kids turn their cameras off during virtual classes, exacerbating that feeling, she added.

Sophomore Damascene Niyongere says her online learning is often interrupted by members of her household playing music or her younger brother coming into the room where she’s working. Sometimes, with 20 students in an online class, it’s difficult to find a way to ask questions.

Earlier in the fall, her Chromebook would sometimes crash or load slowly, which made it difficult to access her work.

Annalisa MacDonald is assistant director of school services at the Howard Center, which contracts with the Burlington School District to provide mental health services to students. Since the pandemic started, she’s seen an increase in stress, anxiety, depression, and feelings of hopelessness, helplessness and isolation in the kids she works with — feelings their caregivers experience, too.

These conditions can be magnified in students who are learning entirely online, especially if their home lives are unstable, MacDonald added. Students of color, English language learners and those with learning challenges are especially vulnerable.

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news ‘It’s Just Really Hard’ « P.18 That’s what one mother of a BHS student has found. The parent, who asked to remain anonymous to protect the identity of her child, said that when school went remote in the spring, things quickly went downhill for her son, then a junior with learning differences. He has never loved “the ‘school’ part of school, but he loves the social part,” she said.

When the pandemic took that away from him, he lost all motivation to engage in schoolwork.

In the spring, she said, he logged on to his online classes so that his attendance would be counted, but then he tuned out or went back to sleep. As a result, he failed three classes.

She credits his teachers and counselors with working hard to get him back on track. They let him make up missing work this fall, and he turned his spring failing grades into passes. His special educator began coming to his house to check in, bringing him little treats like homemade cookies or something called “Thinking Putty” to help him concentrate while studying. His college counselor has also stopped by.

“Instead of giving up and letting go, they are showing up at our doorstep,” his mother said.

LeVar Barrino, the student achievement adviser at BHS, uses bags of gummy bears and messages scrawled on sticky notes as secret weapons. He leaves them on students’ doors to let them know there’s a caring adult to provide help if they need it.

Barrino, a member of a team that helps students engage in school and resolve conflicts, said he and his colleagues have been “boots on the ground” since COVID19 hit, helping to distribute food and Chromebooks and checking in on kids who are struggling or disengaged. He also helps run weekly afterschool programs for students of color — My Brother’s Keeper and My Sister’s Keeper — out of the O.N.E. Community Center so they can connect in person. A three-day-a-week afterschool homework club also operates from that space.

Team sports, which 275 BHS students participated in this fall, have also allowed students to connect face-to-face.

Huener said playing field hockey this fall “helped me stay in a good head space.”

Mutar put it more bluntly: “If I didn’t have soccer, I probably would have gone insane.”

Winter sport athletes won’t necessarily have the same outlet: Given the recent surge in coronavirus cases, Gov. Phil Scott postponed the season until further notice.

BHS students have had other opportunities for in-person interaction, including some physical education and music classes, as well as pop-up choir performances, Elek said. School counselors also offer drop-in office hours, in-person or through Google Meet, for students who need support. Recently, the district rented a 14,000-squarefoot space above L.L.Bean on Cherry Street to create the Seahorse Center, an office space for teachers and staff to use for one-on-one and small-group meetings. It’s just down the street from the future downtown home of BHS. Some students have looked beyond school to meet their needs. In June, Ballard got a part-time job as a fry cook at the Farmhouse Tap & Grill, which allows him to work with his hands and be around other people; he calls it “a refuge.”

INSTEAD OF GIVING UP AND LETTING GO, THEY ARE SHOWING UP AT OUR DOORSTEP.

PA R EN T O F A B U R L I N G T O N HI G H S C H O O L S T U D EN T

This spring, he also joined the Vermont 251 Club, an organization that encourages members to visit the state’s 251 towns and cities. He recently checked the last one off his list.

In November, the school board approved a three-and-a-half-year lease agreement with the owners of the Macy’s building. If all goes smoothly, Flanagan anticipates that the space would be ready to welcome students for two days a week of in-person learning by the end of February. In the interim, high schoolers will receive half a day of in-person learning at Edmunds on Wednesdays, the day the younger students learn remotely.

One thing is clear: Students seem eager to turn the page on fully electronic learning.

“I have high hopes,” Mutar said of returning to school in the Macy’s space.

“I can’t wait to get to school.”

Ballard said that learning at home wasn’t bad in the spring, but he’s hopeful he can spend the last semester of his high school career in school, at least part time. He compared the situation to winter in Vermont: The first snow of the season is pretty nice, but by midFebruary it’s just gray and cold and everyone is over it.

“There was a little novelty before,” he said, “but now, it’s just sludge.” m

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READ, POST, SHARE + COMMENT: SEVENDAYSVT.COM/LIFELINES

lifelines

OBITUARIES, VOWS, CELEBRATIONS

OBITUARIES Margery Gessford MacLeod Glass

NOVEMBER 26, 1923-NOVEMBER 25, 2020 BURLINGTON, VT. Margery Glass died on November 25, 2020, in Burlington, Vt. Born in Washington, D.C., on November 26, 1923, and descended from a long line of Washingtonians on both sides — including her parents, Ruth and Rodger Gessford — Margery was a graduate of George Washington University. President of her Pi Beta Phi sorority chapter, she made lifelong friends and dined with Pi Phi “sister” Margaret Truman at the White House. After World War II, Margery married John (Jack) MacLeod, whom she had met in kindergarten. There had been significant competition for her hand; one suitor came to the Gessfords’ home the morning of the wedding to try to convince Margery to marry him instead.

Margery and Jack had three daughters — Sally, Anne and Lauren — while Jack’s advertising career thrived in downtown Washington. In 1960, with Jack suffering from heart disease, they settled in Burlington in search of a quieter life. They were warmly welcomed by Jack’s boyhood friend Bob Adsit and his wife, Mary Lou, as well as several other couples who formed a close-knit circle.

Margery and Jack restored a house and barn/ studio on South Union Street. Jack became

a partner in the firm Wheeler, Wood and MacLeod, which produced the state marketing campaign “Vermont, the Beckoning Country”; it changed the face of Vermont forever. In 1965, Margery and Jack designed and built a house in Williston. Jack died, age 42, within months of their move.

A year later, introduced by Eve Shakespeare, Margery and Eve’s brother David Glass married. Margery gained three stepchildren — Gordon, Nancy and Dickson Glass — who were mostly grown but with whom she established lasting close connections.

Margery was an effortless hostess, supporting David’s career while also volunteering for numerous organizations, including the Lane Series, Mary Fletcher Hospital and Girl Scouts of America. Margery also took classes at the Shelburne Craft School to learn pottery making and went on to have a pottery studio of her own for several years. She also worked at Eve’s shop, Kado Gifts. Her family will never forget Margery’s excitement about special occasions, including birthdays. She had to be

talked out of bringing a very special fourlegged gift to Lauren inside to her through the house; the horse was undoubtedly as relieved as David was when she relented.

Margery and David retired to Washington, N.C., and were delighted when Sally and her husband, Marcus, also moved to town.

Volunteer activities included the Red Cross, the local library and teaching literacy skills.

In 2007, she and David returned to Vermont and lived in South Burlington until his death in 2008. They had traveled repeatedly to their beloved Bermuda and to Hawaii and Europe; Margery made two solo trips to Jerusalem to visit Anne and her family. She also traveled to Greece; she was thrilled to tour the Parthenon, which she had drawn in grade school.

An “it’s just a game” golf and tennis player, lifelong gardener, gifted and adventurous cook, seamstress, and antiques and animal lover, Margery was an innovator, the first in her group of friends to paint a room “Chinese red” or serve quiche. She read widely and questioned broadly. A child of the MasonDixon line, she was ecstatic to see President Barack Obama at close range in Burlington.

Late in life and twice widowed, Margery met Martin Levitt, a former art teacher and painter from the New York City area. They became devoted companions, savoring the beauty of Vermont, enjoying sunsets until the last cloud faded and petting many a passing dog down by the lake.

Margery’s warmth and easygoing nature came to the fore in her final years. She became unusually easy to please, inclined toward delight while sensitive to the needs of others. Margery’s unselfconscious beauty

and talents, wry humor, graciousness, and personal style are unforgettable.

Margery leaves behind daughters Sally MacLeod Reichert (husband Marcus) of St. Hippolyte-du-Fort, France; Anne MacLeod, of Vergennes; and Lauren MacLeod of Rutland, Mass.; grandson Luke Brownell (a graphic designer like his grandfather Jack) (wife Cierra) and great-grandson Logan Brownell of West Boylston, Mass.; stepsons Gordon Glass of West Falmouth, Mass.; Dickson Glass (wife Mary) of South Burlington; stepdaughter Nancy Glass Angelopoulos (husband Spyros) of North Haven, Conn.; and their families including Ben Glass, Jill Campos, Hilary Glass, Matt Glass, Margo Angelopoulos and Saki Angelopoulos. She also leaves her devoted and beloved friend Emily Rossheim of Starksboro.

Margery’s family is deeply indebted to the entire staff of the Converse Home; Ellen Watson, APRN; Amelia Gerlin; Bayada Hospice; and the incomparable Emily Rossheim, for their tender, expert care. Special thanks also to Lisa Simon and Diane Foulds for their love and support. In her final days, Margery was “in a zone of gratitude,” strewing “thank yous” in every direction. She was deeply thankful for her life. We, too, are profoundly grateful.

A celebration of Margery’s life will be held when the COVID-19 risk has passed.

Contributions to nonprofit the Converse Home in her memory would support their remarkable care for our elders. The Converse Home, 272 Church Street, Burlington, VT 05401.

Arrangements are in care of Stephen Gregory and Son.

Edwin Skolnick FEBRUARY 15, 1938NOVEMBER 27, 2020 SOUTH BURLINGTON, VT.

Edwin Skolnick died at home, in South Burlington, Vt., on Friday, November 27, 2020, surrounded by his family. He was born in the Bronx, N.Y., in 1938, to Sarah and Abe (Avrum) Skolnick and lived for most of his life in New York City. He taught in the New York City public schools for 36 years. Most of that time, he was teaching social studies to middle school students. Ed was passionately active in the United Federation of Teachers, both as a member and chapter leader and, after retirement, working in the UFT office, helping other retirees with health and insurance questions. He was a lifelong activist for the voiceless and, most especially, for workers’ rights.

Ed was married to Susan Skolnick for more than 56 years. In their life together they enjoyed going to concerts, theater and traveling all over the world. He greatly enjoyed history, Yiddish culture (his first language), chess and all types of music. In his later years, Ed also greatly enjoyed drawing. He was a charming curmudgeon with exceedingly dry wit, often

telling one-liners or bad puns with a twinkle in his eye. Ed’s greatest joy was his family.

His generous heart and his smile that could light up a room will be deeply missed by all of his family including his wife, Sue; daughter Nora (Braintree, Vt.); son Josh (Harwich, Mass.); daughter-in-laws Laura Davidson and Judy Skolnick; and grandchildren, Becky and Alex. Ed was preceded in death by his sister and her husband, Bianca and Meyer Zola.

When it is safe to gather, a celebration of his life will be held. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in his name to the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont or the South Burlington Food Shelf.

Mark your family’s milestones in lifelines.

sevendaysvt.com/lifelines SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

23

PHOTOS COURTESY OF JOHN HUDDLESTON

arts news

A

lmost every day for the better part of a decade, photographer JOHN HUDDLESTON took his camera into the woods around his home in Weybridge and tried to capture the subtle transformation of the forest. He would return to one spot over and over to chronicle the same view through different seasons; sometimes, he trained his lens on the ground, mesmerized by the chaotic accumulation of debris.

Huddleston, who taught visual art at Middlebury College from 1987 to 2017, has memorialized this slow documentary in his latest book of photography, At Home in the Northern Forest: Photographs of the Changing Vermont Landscape, a hefty 12-by-9inch hardcover published in February.

“My vision is really sort of ordinary vision,” he said. “It’s not about looking for that culminating moment — like Ansel Adams and his grand landscapes, where God is in the landscape, or shining down upon the landscape, or something like that. Mine are much more matter-of-fact daily pictures, but there’s something special about them, too, if you have the patience to look for it.”

For Huddleston, ordinary does not mean uncomplicated. His images of stick-season hillsides look like a sea of barbed-wire brambles; his extreme close-ups of beech tree bark resemble weathered human skin. Seven Days spoke with Huddleston about seeing the world clearly, capturing the passage of time, and the difference between the mind and the brain.

BOOKS

SEVEN DAYS: You spent all these years walking in the woods around your house, taking pictures of a landscape that must be so familiar to you that you can mentally re-create it. What are the challenges of photographing a place you know so well? How did you know when you’d managed to capture what you set out to capture?

JOHN HUDDLESTON: That’s on my mind all the time — how I might be misinterpreting or mislabeling things, or constricting things or solidifying things that really aren’t solid at all, because everything is moving and changing all the time. That particularly comes to bear with trying to capture the sense of constant change in photographs of the forest.

I think one of the very positive things about photography is that it teaches you to really look each time, to quiet your mind and perceive. If you don’t, your photographs 24

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

The Mind’s Eye In his latest book of photographs, John Huddleston documents an ever-changing forest

BY C H E L S E A E D GAR • chelsea@sevendaysvt.com

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are going to be totally disillusioning, because when you go back to them, you’ll realize that you were trying to capture what you were thinking as opposed to what you were actually seeing. This is a big life lesson that applies to lots of things, but photography can point it out pretty quickly.

As far as knowing when you’ve gotten the image, I think the success

WE’VE GOT SOMETHING

SO BEAUTIFUL AROUND US. J O H N HUD D L EST ON

rate is pretty low. I took hundreds and hundreds of pictures to make this book.

Most of them did not work out — I didn’t get the right visual relationships, or it just wasn’t compelling in the way that I wanted it to be. As a photographer, you’re constantly reminded of how you’re not seeing things accurately.

SD: In his introduction to your book, BILL MCKIBBEN writes that the “unintentional and mostly unnoticed renewal of the rural and mountainous East represents the great environmental story of the United States and, in some ways, the whole world.” What role do you think art can play in shaping our response to the climate crisis?

JH: I hope my book can show people the value of the forest through the beauty that I find in it. In 1870, a little over 20 percent of the state was forested. The rest was cleared for farmland, which devastated a lot of species. Now, that balance has been reversed — today, 80 percent of the state is covered in forest. That regrowth happened largely because of human negligence.

We’ve got something so beautiful around us, and it’s come back from this state of devastation not too long ago. And that same destruction could happen again.

So I think we have to really value what we have, to slow down and see our connection to other entities on the planet.

STEPHANIE KAZA, one of the writers I quote in the book, talks about the inequality of the human voice over everything else. We don’t hear the animals or the trees talk, but they have a right to exist as much as we do. It’s our job to try to listen, to imagine what their needs might be.

SD: In your foreword to the book, you refer to the philosopher Gaston Bachelard, who thought of the forest as an infinite space within the mind.

You wrote: “This immensity is within us.” What does that mean to you?

JH: Our minds are much bigger than our brains. In part from working on this book, I’ve come to think that we are so intimately interconnected with everything — and we’re changing, too, like everything else is changing. So to think that there’s this little concrete entity of “John” is kind of foolish, in a way. My mind is big, but it’s not exactly John that’s big: It’s my connection to everything that’s big. m

11/11/20 3:11 PM

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This interview has been edited for clarity and length. A longer version is online at sevendaysvt.com.

INFO At Home in the Northern Forest: Photographs of the Changing Vermont Landscape by John Huddleston, George F. Thompson Publishing, 168 pages. $45.

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SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

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11/23/20 10:42 AM

arts news

Time’s Up Book review: No More Time, Greg Delanty B Y B E NJA M I N AL ESHIRE • aleshire@sevendaysvt.com

T

BOOKS

more time no more time no more time no more time no more time no more time no more time…

And so on. While this might seem at first like a repetitive act of copypasta, it happens also to be a double acrostic. Look closely and you’ll see the title also repeats vertically, on both the left and right sides of the poem. Acrostics have a close association with abecedarians, going all the way back to the Book of Lamentations in the Hebrew Bible. Not simply a nod to tradition, Delanty’s book is a lamentation, as well, one that seems calculated specifically to provoke readers into urgent awareness.

The final poem, “Envoy: Zayante,” holds true to the multiple senses of its title. An envoy is a farewell, a postscript poem; it also casts the poet in the role of diplomat for humanity. After all, as Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote in an 1821 essay, poets are “the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”

“Envoy: Zayante” closes with “Enough Gregorian cant and rant. We’re done. Adelante.” That last word, Spanish for onward, fits the rhyme scheme like a glove. It’s also a sly homophone for the author’s name: both a signature and a call to action.

THE RED EYE A middle-aged woman weeps down the aisle, rests her head against the windowpane.

Her dyed loam-brown hair is out of style, gray creeps back at the roots. I rack my brain.

Who knows why in the world she cries, what pain or hurt? I want to ask her if I can help, if she’s okay. Perhaps she’d not be embarrassed, welcome concern.

LLEGE

HAEL’S CO

INT MIC

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

No more time no more time no more time no

She reminds me of someone I can’t put a finger on.

Y OF SA

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to needless fear” he writes in “Aye-Aye.” Rather than the singsong gallop of Shakespearean sonnets readers may remember from English class, the terza rima structure allows Delanty’s deft rhymes and wordplay to permeate the poems while simultaneously feeling conversational.

Divided into three parts, the alpha-bestiary comprises the first and third sections, slyly titled “A Field Guide to People.” The middle section, “Breaking News,” provides a respite from both the formal sonnet structure and the animals, and it allows the poet to stretch out and more clearly articulate the political project of the book.

In “The Great Ship,” an evening song of cicadas and crickets transforms into a Titanic serenade: “…the quartet / that comes out on deck and plays away // as the great ship goes down. We listen quietly / from our deck’s lifeboat. Nearer, my God, to thee. // Nearer to thee. Play on, brave, noble souls. Play on.”

Is this melodramatic? Science says no: According to a chorus of recent studies, the Earth has entered a sixth extinction, with 30 percent of North American birds already gone, in addition to, as the New York Times put it in 2017, the “insect Armageddon.” Many of the animals Delanty enumerates are on the brink of disappearing; some are already gone, as he

COURTES

he latest collection of poems from Saint Michael’s College professor Greg Delanty, No More Time, is many things: a bestiary, an abecedarius, a glittering display of formal craftsmanship. And the book is a fist shaking in the face of humanity’s failure to take meaningful action against mass extinction and eco-collapse.

Sound complicated? It’s actually not at all. While the poems adhere to a rhyming structure with which few poets dare to experiment, they’re also remarkably straightforward and easy to read. “…The honeybees / are more waning than waxing, warns apiology: / queens, drones, nurses, guards, whole communities. // Protect them, the amber labor force of ecology. / Already, this word-comb is a fossilized apology,” Delanty writes in “Honeybee.”

A bestiary is exactly what it sounds like: a compendium of animals. Popular since ancient times, the form has been constantly revived over the years by writers and artists, including Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Jorge Luis Borges and, most recently, Brattleboro author GennaRose Nethercott,, whose collection of stories 50 Beasts to Break Your Heart is forthcoming from Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

But because No More Time’s bestiary is also an abecedarius — that is, it proceeds in the order of the alphabet (golden toad, honeybee, ibex, and so on) — Delanty’s book bears closer resemblance to University of Vermont professor Antonello Borra’s 2011 AlphaBetaBestiario, a bilingual (Italian and English) poetry collection by Burlington’s Fomite Press and illustrated by Delia Robinson.

Borra’s book endows the animal kingdom with speech, letting every creature from l’albatro (the albatross) to la zanzara (the mosquito) ruminate on their place in the family of things.

How is Delanty’s alphabet-bestiary different? Well, it’s composed in formal sonnets, for one thing.

As if that rigid structure weren’t enough, Delanty writes them in flawless terza rima — the three-line chain of rhymes that Dante Alighieri invented for the Divine Comedy.. Such is his control of the form that Delanty often employs a few internal rhymes, too: “Your extraterrestrial, wide-eyed dread / and manicured long nails scare, / magnify into nightmare. Folks are misled // by their imaginations

observes in “Golden Toad”: “Scary / to read frogs and toads are our coal miners’ canary.” The sonnet is an almost comical understatement of the frightening news of widespread species loss.

And what about the fate of our own species facing the climate crisis? The worst-case scenarios might still be avoided if humanity takes drastic action now. Still, the late physicist Stephen Hawking once called for humanity to colonize Mars within the next century in order to save ourselves from extinction.

Delanty confronts these sobering facts with honesty instead of shrugging cynicism. One poem from the book’s middle section, “Any Way You Look at It,” is an unpunctuated fugue of the book’s title:

While I shilly-shally, she closes her eyes, nowhere else now to go but sleep. The angle of her head on the pane reminds me of the tilt of the earth. Bingo, I knew she looked familiar: Gaia, leaning on the window.

Greg Delanty

INFO No More Time, by Greg Delanty, LSU Press, 84 pages. $17.95.

GOT AN ARTS TIP? ARTNEWS@SEVENDAYSVT.COM

New Day Coming Helen Day Art Center to rebrand in 2021

FILE: JEB WALLACE-BRODEUR

BY SALLY POLL AK • sally@sevendaysvt.com

Rachel Moore

T

he HELEN DAY ART CENTER in Stowe will turn 40 next year. Just in time for middle age, the center will acquire a new name and a new identity. Or at least a “rebrand.”

The new name and accompanying rebrand are intended to better convey the work and mission of the center, said RACHEL MOORE, executive director and director of exhibitions. These include the center’s focus as a presenter of contemporary art, a gallery that’s working with international artists, and a community organization that’s welcoming and inclusive, she said. Changing the name of the center is also a reckoning with its past: Helen Day, for whom the center is named, engaged in anti-Semitic business practices.

“We really do want to complete a name change to reflect the values of our organization,” Moore said. “We have thought about this for a long time.

ART

We really want people to be able to see what we are in our name.”

Founded in 1981, the nonprofit art center shares a building with the library on Pond Street in the middle of town.

Helen Day houses a gallery, classrooms and an “art lounge” equipped with coffee, Wi-Fi, materials related to the exhibits, and space to hang out and think about art (or something else, or nothing at all).

The center is named for Helen Day, also known as Helen Day Montanari, a onetime Stowe resident. She left a bequest to the Town of Stowe for the establishment of a library and art center, according to Town Manager CHARLES SAFFORD. The $200,000 was used to help cover the cost of renovating the former Stowe High School to house both institutions, he said.

In recent years, center officials determined that its name doesn’t fully reflect the organization, Moore said.

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“He really didn’t have a choice,” Heyer said. “He used every cent he had to build the inn. He needed the business.”

According to Heyer, her father was told: “‘If you want to be part of this town, don’t rock the boat. Say ‘gentiles only’ on your listing.’ He wasn’t antiJewish. He wanted to get business.”

Given the historical context, the art center is “standing up to a bigoted history and turning a new chapter for Stowe and Vermont,” Fainsilber said.

“This is a moment of remembering and education, a moment of reflection, hopefully on the ways in which Stowe has not always been a welcoming place, and how we all can do better and continue to grow.”

Moore concurred that changing the name of Helen Day Art Center presents a time for reflection. She emphasized that the full story of the center, including its founding, will continue to be told. “I think that it’s important to be as knowledgeable as you can about MOORE history,” Moore said.

“This isn’t a political move,” she went on. “We’re not trying to smear anyone’s reputation or cancel history. It’s acknowledging it and moving forward and reflecting on who we are.”

LANCE VIOLETTE , a former board member, runs a brand strategy/design/ marketing agency in Stowe, the VIOLETTE STUDIO, with his wife, VANESSA VIOLETTE. The studio will work on the rebrand with the art center. The process involves identifying the center’s core, its “north star,” Lance Violette said, and building from that.

The rebrand needs to reflect how the center has evolved, especially in recent years, he said, and it should convey its role in the region: a presenter of contemporary art, an education center, a place that supports the community, a space that challenges people.

He lived in Stowe for seven or eight years before visiting Helen Day Art Center, Violette said, noting that he had no idea the gallery exhibited contemporary art. Rather, he thought it displayed paintings that would perhaps cater to tourists.

“I remember distinctly setting foot in there, seeing the [art] and thinking, This is the reason that we take our kids to the city,” Violette said. “And here it is, right in our town.” m

In 2012, the art center undertook a “rebranding and renaming exercise,” she said. “It didn’t amount to anything at the time. We didn’t proceed with it.”

This time, the name change and rebrand are part of a broader strategic plan the center is calling “Seizing the Future.” The initiative includes expanding the educational component of the center, building a ceramics studio with two kilns and 10 wheels, and creating spaces for making glass art and printmaking.

“I’d love to see this building filled with people,” Moore said.

She became executive director of the center in 2016. The Stowe resident is an artist herself who works in several mediums, including installation, drawing and sculpture.

“I really feel strongly that art can be a catalyst for change,” Moore said, adding that art can be used as a tool to examine topics R A C HEL such as equity and inclusivity.

“I want to be sure that art is presented in a safe place, where everyone feels welcome, where there’s humanity and understanding,” Moore said.

The discussion of inclusivity and equity is relevant to the rebrand because a factor in changing the name concerns a business practice of Helen Day and her partner, Marguerite Lichtenthaeler.

The latter was a physician in Stowe.

The women owned a lodging facility called Attic & Barn. As was the practice of the time — the late 1930s and ’40s — they advertised that their inn, which accommodated 50 guests, served a “restricted” clientele.

The words were “code for Jews not allowed,” said DAVID FAINSILBER, rabbi of the Jewish Community of Greater Stowe. “It was a prolific practice. The supermajority of lodging places in Stowe had this practice. Jews weren’t welcome in the area.”

In a brochure from the late 1930s that lists Stowe inns and lodges, nine of 11 businesses advertise as “restricted,” including Attic & Barn.

LYNDALL HEYER of Stowe, whose father, Larry Heyer, built a lodge on the Mountain Road in 1941, said the town fathers “seriously encouraged” him to run a gentiles-only business. (The inn was originally called the Larry Heyer’s, and INFO later Ski Inn.) Learn more at helenday.com.

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Love Art?

L

Mary Lacy’s “Small Figure II,” made out of dishes, grout and cement on board

EVENTS

‘Bundle Up’ Makers Market: Thursday, December 3, various Merchants Row locations in Middlebury, 3-7 p.m., experiencemiddlebury.com Chandler Artisans Holiday Market, through December 24, in person & online at Chandler Center for the Arts, 71 N. Main St., Randolph. chandlerartisansmarket.org Expanded Artisan Gift Sale: Saturday & Sunday, December 5 & 6, 10 a.m.-2 p.m., at River Arts, 74 Pleasant St., Morrisville, riverartsvt.org

Now’s the Time to Buy It

ooking for a one-of-a-kind gift? Want to spruce up your Zoom background? Consider patronizing a local artist. In-person artist markets are rare this holiday season, but finding and buying work

by Vermont artists online is easier than ever. And there are many options.

“You don’t have to spend a lot of money to support a local artist,” says Patricia Trafton, owner of Burlington’s Soapbox Arts. “There’s a price point for everyone.”

For example, a 5-by-7-inch hand-embroidered wildflower garden from Jennifer Carusone of Burlington-based Pixie Twine, a vendor at this year’s Women’s Festival of Crafts, sells for $35. At the other end of the spectrum, artist Mary Lacy’s largescale self-portrait — a mosaic made of broken dishes — is listed at Soapbox for $16,000.

That may be steep for many of us. But Trafton points out that people routinely spend $2,000 on a couch but “stop short of doing the same with a great piece of art.” Why? “It can feel really self-indulgent,” she suggests. But it’s actually “a beautiful thing” to support local art and the people who create it.

The presence of so many local artists is “one of the reasons we all love Burlington and Vermont,” Trafton adds. “This is a place that has so much culture for its size.”

Indeed. Vermont’s creative sector, including artists and arts organizations, accounts for more than 9 percent of jobs in the state — a higher than average percentage. But it’s been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. In July, the Vermont Arts Council revealed that the 200 arts organizations and 400 individual artists who had applied for support grants collectively projected losses of $38.6 million.

Holiday Artist Market: Saturday & Sunday, December 5 & 6, 10 a.m.-3 p.m., outdoors in Burlington, City Hall Park, burlingtoncityarts.org Moretown Artisans’ Sale, online, moretownartisan.com Women’s Festival of Crafts, through December 18, online, womensfestivalofcrafts.com

IN PERSON AND ONLINE:

Artisans Hand 89 Main St., Suite 8, Montpelier, artisanshand.com

A thriving arts and culture scene “is not a given,” warns Trafton. “It doesn’t just come with a place. It has to be supported to survive.”

Supporting the art scene during the pandemic often means shopping online.

Many local artists and galleries have opened digital storefronts for the first time. The Milton Artists’ The Milton Artists’ Gui ld Guild is one of them. Its art classes and professional development workshops for artists have moved online, too.

Still, its website includes just a fraction of the 135 artists on exhibit in its gallery. Fortunately, the organization is housed in a 6,200 square-foot space formerly occupied by a Hannaford. “It’s really easy to socially distance, for sure,” says executive director Caitlyn Kenney.

The gallery has expanded holiday hours, she says. There are lots of items to brighten up the home office where you’ll be working this winter.

“If it’s just four white walls and a laptop,” she says, “it gets to be pretty dreary pretty fast.” Happy shopping! 

THIS ARTICLE WAS COMMISSIONED AND PAID FOR BY:

Artist In Residence Gallery 10 S. Main St., St. Albans, artistinresidencecoop.com Edgewater Gallery 6 Merchants Row & 1 Mill St., Middlebury, edgewatergallery.co Frog Hollow Vermont Craft Gallery 85 Church St., Burlington, froghollow.org Furchgott Sourdiffe Gallery 86 Falls Rd., Shelburne, fsgallery.com

Golden Hour Gift Co. 32 ½ Church St., Burlington; 17 E. Allen St., Winooski; & 2567 Waterbury-Stowe Rd., Waterbury Center, goldenhourgiftco.com Milton Artists’ Guild Art Center & Gallery 199 Route 7, Milton, miltonartistsguild.org Soapbox Arts 266 Pine St., Suite 119, Burlington, soapboxarts.com Studio Place Arts 201 N. Main St., Barre, studioplacearts.com

Embroidery, art on canvas by Jennifer Carusone of Burlingtonbased Pixie Twine

Thirty-odd 270 Pine St., Burlington, thirtyodd.com

ONLINE OR BY APPOINTMENT:

Common Deer 210 College St., Burlington, commondeer.com Essex Art League essexartleague.com South End Arts and Business Association seaba.com/shop

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

29

Raj’s Revival?

WhistlePig founder Raj Bhakta’s purchase of Green Mountain College places Poultney’s fate in his hands B Y D EREK BR OUWE R • derek@sevendaysvt.com

T

here’s no mistaking who owns Raj Bhakta’s farm. The roof of the tallest barn on his Shoreham property broadcasts his surname in enormous red letters. Last year, the WhistlePig Whiskey founder purchased these remnants of a merino sheep farm, which sit behind a 220-year-old, honey-hued farmhouse along North Orwell Road that a previous owner rebuilt. This year, Bhakta set about renovating the barns, as well. “Poultney slate,” he noted of the new roof.

It was a sunny Tuesday afternoon in September, but Bhakta, who turns 45 this week, was dressed for the weekend. His blue NASA T-shirt, peppermint-striped shorts and Nike sneakers projected the laid-back look of someone who wouldn’t be coming home streaked with dirt or grass stains. He was walking and talking along a large swath of sod that he had laid over the summer in time to host his annual Fourth of July party, complete with professional fireworks, a New York choir and inflatable bounce houses for the kids.

This year’s festivity doubled as a product launch. BHAKTA 50 — all caps, like the roof — is an aged brandy that Bhakta purchased from southwest France, then blends, finishes and bottles in his barns.

The $300-per-bottle liquor is the first he’s released since leaving WhistlePig last year.

He’s marketing limited batches directly to consumers, pitching his bottles as “appreciating assets” that will be worth tens of thousands of dollars over time.

Each one comes with a hardbound booklet that tells the liquor’s story — and his own.

When Bhakta started WhistlePig in 2010, he was a fading reality TV goof who’d flirted with Donald Trump’s assistant as a contestant on “The Apprentice,” and then tried to exploit his marginal notoriety for a congressional run in a

MARC NADEL

30

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

A few Main Street businesses shuttered soon after the announcement, adding to a list of casualties in recent years. Poultney also lost a theater, shop space, and the renewable supply of ingenuity that college students and faculty lent the community.

While residents were relieved that the campus sold and ecstatic about the prospect of its revival as a college, some feared Bhakta’s outsize persona might loom over town.

Poultney Rotary Club president Mandy Mitnik worried that the hard-charging new owner might be “a Great Gatsby kind of a guy,” referring to the opulent, irrepressible figure from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s tragic novel whose desire becomes destructive.

In other words: Is this guy for real?

Bhakta says he is driven by noble inten-

That’s when he learned about the auction.

“I decided, Well, what the hell, let’s take a look at it.”

‘SEE RAJ RUN’

The son of an Indian father and Irish mother, Bhakta grew up in an affluent Philadelphia suburb. His family ran car dealerships and hotels, enabling him to attend the elite Hill School as a teenager, where Donald Trump Jr. was his younger schoolmate.

Bhakta then studied history and economics at Boston College, graduating in 1998 before starting a tech company focused on valuing used cars. It didn’t go

cast for the second season. Bhakta, Harper told Vail Daily, could recite Napoleon’s speeches by age 16 and sported bow ties and a walking cane. “One of the most fascinating, distinctive things that Raj has is his paradoxical nature,” he said. “He’s very old-fashioned in terms of traditional constructs, but at the same time he’s a guy who will ride his Harley-Davidson 130 miles per hour through Wyoming, will ride wild horses with me in Colombia in the jungle…”

A restaurant manager in the Bhaktas’ hotel was more to the point: “Raj is a pretty boy born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but he’s very intelligent,” he told Vail Daily.

Bhakta thrived on the reality show, his personality a caricature of the preppy

CALEB KENNA

district outside of Philadelphia. During his campaign, he put on his then-signature bow tie and rode a circus elephant into the Rio Grande, a mariachi band playing alongside him, ostensibly to highlight a need for more border security. His BHAKTA 50 booklet says the escapade was inspired by “an entire bottle of tequila.”

Bhakta carried his eccentric, at times reckless, behavior with him to WhistlePig. There, though, he found success. The company created and cornered a high-end market for aged rye whiskey, initially by blending Canadian liquors at a farm four miles north of the new Bhakta property.

His clever approach established the brand while he simultaneously embarked on the more ambitious process of planting Vermont rye and distilling and aging the whiskey. Just as the business took off, WhistlePig’s investors sought to oust Bhakta, alleging shady financial practices and drunken misdeeds. A no-holds-barred power struggle ensued, and Bhakta eventually left the company with an undisclosed fortune in hand.

The payday allowed him to start his new spirits enterprise unbeholden to investors. Across the street from the barns, a small vineyard is already rooted, surrounded by acres of dirt that Bhakta has cleared of thick brush.

Bhakta said the company is an expression of his long-held passion for restoration, which to him is also a social imperative to return to the land. Long a fan of largerthan-life historic figures Winston Churchill and Napoleon Bonaparte, Bhakta waxes philosophical about Thomas Jefferson’s ideal of the yeoman farmer and the virtues of honest work.

“Deep in my bones,” he said, “I love the idea of taking things that were failing and broken and bringing them back.”

In July, with his barns finished and his new brandy ready to ship, Bhakta became intrigued by a different sort of fixer-upper.

His best friend and longtime personal lawyer, Leo Gibson, sent him an advisory for a live auction of Green Mountain College, which closed in 2019 under financial pressure from declining enrollment.

The 155-acre campus, the economic and cultural center of Poultney for nearly two centuries, had become a ghost town.

Bhakta went to the auction in August and bested two others with his $4.55 million bid. Shortly thereafter, he floated vague plans to reopen the campus as an agriculturally focused work college where students could graduate with little debt.

He’s aiming to have some students back on campus next year.

The future of Poultney, population 3,300, is riding on it. Green Mountain College’s closure cost the town more than 150 jobs and hundreds of students.

I decided, Well, what the hell, let’s take a look at it.

R A J B HA K TA

The Green Mountain College campus in Poultney

tions and has put his drunken escapades behind him. One of his uncles died in January, and in April, Bhakta said, he felt chest pains and feared he might be having a heart attack. He wasn’t, but the reminders of mortality left him contemplating what his personal “highest and best use” might be.

“I thought, You might drop dead, so what are you doing with your life? You’re just going to go create a couple spirits companies and make a billion dollars or $10 billion and join the other ranks of the graveyards of the world that are full of rich and indispensable men?”

anywhere, and he fell into the family business as a partner in a Holiday Inn project in West Vail, Colo.

Bhakta didn’t particularly enjoy working with his dad, he’s said in media interviews over the years. In Bhakta’s tellings, his boarding school friend and college roommate Henry Harper — now of high-end Tata Harper Skincare, based in Whiting — suggested he audition for “The Apprentice,” the elder Donald Trump’s entrepreneurial reality show, which debuted in early 2004, as a way to move on.

Harper talked up his peculiar friend to the ski town newspaper after he was

businessman who drops a pickup line during a job interview. Trump fired him on the ninth episode, in front of roughly 16 million viewers; Bhakta asked for his assistant’s phone number on the way out.

In the following months, Bhakta ventured into Republican politics, beginning with an advocacy group he dubbed the Coalition for Advancement of the Republic. Wearing a bow tie and a banker stripe shirt, he moderated a panel on Social Security reform at the Young Republicans National Convention in 2005.

RAJ’S REVIVAL? SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

» P.32 31

The following year he decided to run for U.S. Congress in the suburban district where he grew up. Against a strong Democratic incumbent, former representative Allyson Schwartz, Bhakta put together a platform that hit the same notes that Trump would ride to an insurgent victory 10 years later, with slogans like “Save the Northeast” and an emphasis on crime and border security.

Most observers didn’t take his campaign seriously, especially after it came to light that the 30-year-old candidate had twice been arrested for DUI, in Massachusetts and Colorado. The shoestring campaign operated out of a conference room in a Best Western hotel his family owned.

Bhakta’s craving for the spotlight seemed to overshadow his policy convictions. Bhakta hired a crew to film his every move — “See Raj Run” videos are still on YouTube — and reportedly promised to host an “Apprentice”-style contest to determine which intern he’d hire as a congressional staffer.

Raymond Smalley was 23 when he worked for the campaign. Smalley’s job, he recalled, was to generate buzz for Bhakta online, especially through the bubbling political blogosphere, the midaughts predecessor to today’s online fever swamps.

On most days, Smalley said, the campaign seemed to be shooting from the hip. When then-senator Joe Biden said on camera that you couldn’t go into a Dunkin’ Donuts or a 7-Eleven in Delaware “unless you have a slight Indian accent,” Smalley managed to score Bhakta an appearance on the conservative pundit Hugh Hewitt’s syndicated radio show to react to Biden’s comment.

The next day, Bhakta dropped by the conference room. “Raj came in, sat down on the edge of my desk, and he’s like, ‘How do we do more with this?’” Smalley recalled.

The “7-Eleven challenge” was born.

Bhakta stood in front of a convenience store and filmed an ad seeking $7.11 donations to commemorate Biden’s “silly” comment.

Bhakta drew even more attention for his elephantine stunt on the Texas-Mexico border, which would become a canonical episode in his personal mythology. That stunt’s aggrandizing absurdity obscured an earlier moment on the trip when Bhakta and his cameraman tried to confront two men whom they’d witnessed wading across the Rio Grande and into the United States.

“Señor! Señor!” the sunglasses and polo-wearing candidate called out to the shirtless men, who kept walking as Bhakta’s staffer pointed his camera at their faces.

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SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

CALEB KENNA

Raj’s Revival? « P.31

Deep in my bones, I love the idea of taking things that were failing and broken and bringing them back.

R AJ BH AK TA

In the homestretch of the losing campaign, Bhakta bombarded voters with robocalls featuring a sobbing, unnamed woman who claimed she had had an unwanted abortion at a clinic his opponent once headed. Schwartz’s staff condemned the calls, saying Bhakta’s campaign had “no decency and no shame.”

Asked about that assessment, Smalley, who no longer works in politics, let out a long laugh. “Sounds about right,” he said.

Bhakta got trounced, earning just 34 percent of the vote, but he continued to look for a political platform. In 2008 he started a blog — Go America Go! — that called itself “an organization dedicated to educating today’s youth about American exceptionalism.”

The long-defunct site, accessible through an internet archive, featured Bhakta’s screeds about the “socialist” threat to the country, which would lead only to “managed decline and pathetic emasculation.” He called upon the words of Jefferson to promote the “tempestuous sea of liberty” and praised Trump’s protectionist policy prescriptions at a time when the reality TV host was better known for promoting the false “birther” conspiracy about thenpresident Barack Obama’s citizenship.

Though Bhakta was unable to transform his own blend of showmanship and populism into a political career, he found in them the seeds of a different, more lucrative, sort of brand.

‘BOSS HOG’

Down on his luck after his failed congressional bid, Bhakta again took the advice of his longtime friend Harper, who by 2007 was living in the Champlain Valley. Harper, who did not respond to an interview request for this story, suggested the Green Mountains would help ground him, Bhakta later told Worth magazine.

Bhakta bought farmland in Shoreham and figured out what to do next. He also reconnected with a friend, Wilco Faessen, from an early-career stint at a New York City investment banking firm.

Bhakta and Faessen created a series of entities under the name GoAmericaGo to explore business opportunities in alcohol, an industry in which Faessen had experience.

They looked at beer, vodka and a shooter drink they called Petro, but scrapped each pursuit. By late 2009, Bhakta was out of money and getting desperate. He needed a concept that could generate profit quickly. Aided by $375,000 in loans from the Vermont Economic Development Authority, Bhakta purchased barrels of aged rye whiskey, then an obscure niche, from Canada, to bottle it, he later said in a deposition, with a “cool name and a great package.”

It worked. By the end of 2010, WhistlePig’s high-priced rye was moving off shelves in New York City and Chicago,

allowing the company to “effectively break even” during its first six months, the company reported.

WhistlePig, actually a term for a groundhog, embraced a brash, porcine persona, with releases such as Boss Hog. The company kept two Kunekune hog mascots, Mauve and Mortimer, who joined Bhakta at public events in New York City.

WhistlePig won some local admirers, including Magic Hat Brewing cofounder Alan Newman, who credits Bhakta with recognizing and capitalizing on an overlooked opportunity. Bhakta also projected WhistlePig as a craft distillery, with plans to create a farm-to-bottle product from rye grown on the company farms and aged in barrels made with Vermont lumber. “The whole story about building the farmhouse distillery was engaging,” Newman said, “and, I thought, was a great way to build that brand.”

But Bhakta’s farm-to-bottle product didn’t become reality for years, held up in part by a protracted regulatory dispute with his neighbors. Bhakta built out WhistlePig without seeking an Act 250 permit, and neighboring farmers George Gross and Barbara Wilson worried that mold spores from aging whiskey barrels would spoil their berry crops. Gross and Wilson accused WhistlePig of “egregiously dodging” the state’s landmark land-use RAJ’S REVIVAL?

» P.34

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assistant in 2011. The two soon became romantically involved and later married, continuing to work together. WhistlePig’s investors accused Bhakta of secretly granting Danhee a stake in the company when he hired her.

They also accused him of intermingling the company with his personal property and misallocating funds. They accused him of spending $28,000 at a European bordello on a company credit card, and

employee as being “extremely intoxicated” at the time and said employees talked him into going home.

Bhakta denies he was drunk, saying he showed up to invite former coworkers to a bonfire. “It was all in good Vermont country farm-life fun,” he said.

The company did not respond to a request for comment, but Bhakta acknowledged that WhistlePig banned him from the property.

CALEB KENNA

rules while building a multimillion-dollar “whiskey importing” company. Bhakta contended that the business should fall under the state’s agriculture exemption.

He lost: WhistlePig paid a $19,000 fine and agreed to limits on its storage capacity.

Bhakta’s presence proved divisive in small-town Vermont. While many respected the economic activity he brought to Addison County, others didn’t trust him.

To Steve Belanus, the owner of Cornwall Auto Body, his onetime customer carried himself like a “king.” Several years ago, the two got into a dispute over the agreed-upon price for restoration work on Bhakta’s vintage black Cadillac.

“We tried to discuss it politely,” Belanus said. Bhakta “was so arrogant, I told him if he didn’t leave, he’d have to pick himself off the floor and leave.”

Bhakta recalled “being charged more than the agreed price for a job.”

An elderly couple sued Bhakta in 2015, alleging that he had bulldozed a road through woods that they refused to sell him. Jeanne and Jon Whitaker alleged in court filings that they’d rejected his request twice — first when he stopped by their house, and again the next day when they went to WhistlePig headquarters to reiterate their position because Bhakta had appeared drunk during the first encounter.

Bhakta testified that he’d never asked to purchase their land because he believed he owned it. He also countersued them.

“The credibility of Mr. Bhakta is the central issue that the jury will decide,” the Whitakers’ attorneys wrote in an August 2016 filing. The parties settled later that month. Bhakta told Seven Days he had “nothing to do” with the bulldozing.

In one bizarre episode, Bhakta reported being kidnapped by two men he was only trying to help. The men knocked on Bhakta’s door in the middle of a cold winter night in 2013 and asked for a hand retrieving a stuck vehicle. On the way, the men accused him of making a sexual advance on one of their ex-girlfriends during a job interview, a claim the woman later told police was untrue.

Sensing a setup, Bhakta jumped out of the moving truck in his “Vermont flannel pajamas” before a confrontation in a field, a police report detailed.

“Maybe 3 minutes after the point that I realized I had been kidnapped, I attempted to strike a meaningful blow on my assailant, but his accomplice shows up on my flank,” Bhakta said in a statement to police. “Not knowing if he was armed, I pulled back into a purely defensive position. The accomplice asked his thug friend to ‘fucking flatten him (being me).’”

The men, Bhakta alleged, called him a “rich mother fucker”who thinks he “owns this town.” One of the men was convicted of felony unlawful restraint and was sentenced to prison time.

Drinking has fueled some of Bhakta’s misadventures. While running WhistlePig, Bhakta racked up at least two more DUI charges and one boating while intoxicated charge between 2012 and 2015.

Yet Bhakta has never been convicted

Raj and Danhee Bhakta on campus

of drunk driving, only of lesser misdemeanors. Following the two more recent DUI arrests, including a wreck where he flipped his car and broke his hip, he denied the DUI charges and declined to submit to blood-alcohol tests. Today he admits to excessive drinking only in general terms.

“I have drank too much at times in my life, and it’s gotten me into trouble,” he said. Bhakta said he removed alcohol from his daily life a couple years ago: “I taste, but I don’t drink.”

By 2016, however, Bhakta’s investors, including Faessen, wanted Bhakta out of the way. The board orchestrated his ouster, but Bhakta refused to step aside.

He sued them, which spilled the dispute into public view. Bhakta saw himself as being in a “state of war,” he later said in a deposition.

Bhakta had hired a Columbia University grad named Danhee Kim as his

then lying about the trip. Bhakta, who declined to comment on other aspects of the case, insisted in a joint interview with his wife last month that he was merely a victim of fraud.

“I didn’t approve those charges,” he said. “I was there; it turned out to be a bordello. And they got my credit card and started running it like hotcakes.”

Bhakta eventually stepped down as a managing member of the company as part of the litigation settlement. He continued to own 30 percent of its shares, Bhakta testified in 2017, and worked for a time as “chief steward of the brand.” By early 2019, he had sold his stake and no longer had any association with WhistlePig. Later that year, Bhakta acknowledges, he showed up at his former company with a shotgun and fired a shell into the air.

A redacted police report matching the incident describes a gun-toting former

RAJ RESURRECTED

As things worsened at WhistlePig, Bhakta, his wife and their children moved to Florida, where they have family connections, to escape the bitterness that had consumed their life in Vermont. “It was very emotional for us,” he said. “We built that company together from the farm.

Our kids were raised on that farm.”

Shortly after cashing out of WhistlePig last year, Bhakta bought a 1,000-acre ranch in Vero Beach, Fla. The property is in a designated “opportunity zone,” an impoverished area where wealthy individuals can get tax incentives for reinvesting capital gains.

At the same time, Bhakta went looking for a new project. The search took him to French spirits company Maison RAJ’S REVIVAL?

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each barrel he releases — one to taste and one to save.

In a recent interview conducted with one of his children on his lap, Bhakta claimed the bottles will be worth at least $10,000 in time and that he purchased 10 for his mother as an investment. (RystDupeyron’s 1868 vintage Armagnac currently ships online in Europe for the equivalent of about $5,300.)

Just before the July launch, Bhakta made an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s primetime Fox News program to expound on his message of rural rejuvenation. The segment began with Carlson speaking over video of a New York City Police Department cruiser that protesters had set ablaze.

“You may be dreaming about moving out of the city to somewhere pastoral, to rural America. Raj Peter Bhakta did that,” Carlson said.

Bhakta appeared by teleconference, a bottle of his soon-to-be-released brandy featured in the camera frame.

the most distinctive. The brick, federalstyle Ames Hall stands elegantly at the head of Poultney’s Main Street, and on the greens around it, students learned in unconventional ways. They turned lawns into organic gardens, invested in sustainable energy and sang Welsh language hymns in a renowned college choir. Commencements were a town-wide affair, as tasseled students walked through Main Street to the college green.

On a recent November afternoon, the campus was empty and eerily preserved.

Banners on light posts still touted the former school’s ranking, and ethos, as “first in sustainability.” Leaves were piled in neat rings around the trees that dot the quads; the grass was freshly mowed.

Raj and Danhee were standing around a couple of red barns in a far corner of campus watching their children ride horses in a small pen. They took their youngest to one of the barns and called out to an assistant for a diaper change, and

The whole story about building the farmhouse distillery was engaging and, I thought, was a great way to build that brand.

AL AN NE W MAN

we’re going to tick off the neighbors,” but Saville said he appreciates the renewed activity and investment down the road.

“He likes the term ‘revivalist,’ and I feel like that fits him to a T,” Saville said.

Bhakta said he settled on the concept while putting together promotional material for his brandy. The 52-page booklet says the BHAKTA brand is about “reviving farming in America,” beginning with his own properties. The liquor, with its blends of history-spanning vintages, imparts the same spirit, Bhakta writes.

“This bottle is a monument to Revival,” he continues. “These spirits herein were born, lived and were forgotten. Long have they lain in the cave … Now they are risen.”

He’s pitching BHAKTA 50 as a mindset in a bottle, enticing prospective customers with promises of an “exquisite” product.

Customers can join Bhakta’s Revivalist Society, or a recently introduced “stockholder” program, which costs $19,000 and guarantees the buyer two bottles from CALEB KENNA

Ryst-Dupeyron, whose portfolio includes cellars full of vintage Armagnac, a regional brandy, dating as far back as 1868. He bought the company’s Armagnac division and started shipping barrels across the Atlantic.

The entrepreneur launched BHAKTA 50 on the Fourth of July with his typical flair, pandemic notwithstanding. Bhakta, who is Catholic, invited the head of the Vermont diocese, Bishop Christopher Coyne, to bless his new business venture and the Shoreham barns that house it.

After Coyne completed the ritual, the bishop told Seven Days, Bhakta asked him to sit in on a performance. Coyne, who was dressed in liturgical vestments, complete with a cross hanging on his chest, said he didn’t quite know what he was getting into.

What the bishop was getting into was a raucous online ad for Bhakta’s reemergence as an irreverent spirits maven. The nearly four-minute skit features eight men in white robes and parliamentary wigs (plus Coyne and one of Bhakta’s four children) debating the relative merits of whiskey versus brandy.

Brandy, of course, wins the day. Coyne is shown raising an arm to proclaim something before the shot cuts to BHAKTA 50 being bottled. The message “Buy now and decide for yourself” flashes across the screen.

In a brief interview, Coyne was quick to say he didn’t intend to promote Bhakta’s brandy, or even drinking. “I just thought it was a harmless bit of fun,” he said.

The celebration spilled over into an Independence Day barbecue, though Coyne said he ducked out. “Some people weren’t being careful about wearing masks and stuff, so I said, OK, it’s time for me to leave,” he recalled. The bishop drove home with a souvenir bottle of brandy.

A party under an enormous tent followed, with about 70 friends, neighbors and spirits promoters from around the

country. Francesca Scorsese, the 21-yearold actress and daughter of director Martin Scorsese, posted photos with the hashtag #bhaktafarms.

One neighbor, Matt Saville, said the outdoor celebration featured a choir and bounce houses for kids, as well as fireworks. “He sure knows how to throw a party,” he said of Bhakta.

Saville said their families have hit it off since the Bhaktas introduced themselves.

They have children of similar ages, and Bhakta sometimes invites Saville to join him on walks along their properties.

He describes the businessman as energetic and exciting.

The website for B h a k t a ’s n e w farms quips that it’s “likely that

“People have got a conception that moving out to the country reduces opportunity,” he said, “but if you’ve got an optimistic, revival, positive mentality, you can find a niche, like I did.”

Besides the new vineyards in Shoreham, Bhakta plans to grow sugarcane in Vero Beach to use one day for a rum product, and he recently bought an apple orchard in the Champlain Valley for use in apple brandy. Bhakta seems to be finding opportunity everywhere he looks.

In mid-August, after the notion of restarting a college had percolated for a few weeks, Bhakta walked outside the Withey Hall dining room, where the Green Mountain College auction was held, as the historic campus’ soon-to-be owner. His winning bid was less than a quarter of the site’s $20 million appraised value.

Wearing white pants and a green T-shirt that read “BOOKNERD” in the form of a Vermont license plate, he flashed a big smile at a WCAX-TV camera crew and promised “to do great things in Poultney and Vermont and in America.”

COLLEGE TRY

Green Mountain College is one of a handful of small Vermont colleges to close in the last two years, but it was perhaps

then led a Seven Days reporter through a darkened building to his second-floor office. Portraits of former college figureheads hung from one wall, and against another stood a beautiful display hutch lined with old books and BHAKTA 50 bottles.

Bhakta has introduced his plans as a rough idea for a “work college,” where students perform practical labor as part of their studies. Some higher education institutions, including Sterling College in Craftsbury, incorporate such a model.

Bhakta’s vision is much more ambitious and very experimental, even communelike. He imagines transforming the 22-building campus into an intergenerational learning community for preschoolers to seniors.

Someday, at least. With the help of a local teacher, Danhee has started a small homeschool for the family’s kids, which she hopes will serve as the germ for a forward-thinking community school. Raj has talked about turning one of the old dorms into housing for “active seniors” but said plans aren’t certain.

Next year’s offering, if there is one, would be modest, Bhakta said. He intends to launch with a short, perhaps “one-year RAJ’S REVIVAL?

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postgraduate program” that trains enrollees about the ins and outs of the alcohol business as he knows it.

“There’s nothing dedicated to the business of beverage alcohol, which is booming, which has its particularities and which we’re masters of,” he said. “And if I can impart that knowledge to young people who can be part of the revival, the regeneration of this campus and surrounding areas in beverage alcohol, that would be an amazing first step.”

Bhakta doesn’t sound particularly interested in seeking accreditation for his new school, saying the people he’s spoken with “in the accredited world” have urged him to focus instead “on the education itself and giving your students all the tools to kick ass.”

Bhakta thinks of the program as a “fellowship” in which students complete internships at companies across Vermont’s bustling craft distilling and brewing scene, including at Bhakta Farms, while also pursuing some liberal arts studies. He plans to teach some of the courses himself.

Interns have figured prominently over the course of Bhakta’s careers, beginning in his days as a congressional candidate. He once told Yankee magazine that WhistlePig’s first bottling line took place on two picnic tables in a barn with the help of “four Middlebury students who liked weed.” Interns who’ve excelled have gained spots in Bhakta’s inner orbit.

Johnathan Page started out as a WhistlePig intern in 2017, during which time he got WhistlePig’s “WP” logo tattooed on his middle finger. Today his job title is Bhakta’s aide-de-camp, a French military term for a general’s assistant. This year, Bhakta Farms employed interns in viniculture and marketing, drawing them with job postings such as “Spirits Baron Seeks Historian.”

Bhakta is keeping the Green Mountain College name for now and plans to structure it as a nonprofit. He doesn’t yet have any board members lined up.

Linked to the college, he said, will be an array of Green Mountain College brands — for-profit companies, including Bhakta Spirits — that he’ll eventually run as B Corporations, a designation for socially conscious businesses. Those companies will in turn pump some profit back into the college.

As with Bhakta’s liquor brands, the college’s initial entry into the industry won’t quite reflect his longer-term vision.

But Bhakta also knows the power of a good story.

“I think what the novel piece is,” he said, “is that the actual sales component and the marketing component is going to 38

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DEREK BROUWER

Raj’s Revival? « P.36

He’s either one heck of an actor, or he’s one really decent human being.

CHU CK C O LVIN

be deeply interwoven into the education of the students. Because that’s the biggest problem.

“I’m not telling you it’s easy to be a farmer,” he continued. “I’m not telling you it’s easy to grow great produce, but the much tougher thing is finding a market and being able to serve it.”

GREATEST SHOW IN POULTNEY

The college’s shuttering “changed the complexion of the town completely,” said longtime resident Chuck Colvin. Some staff and faculty have moved away. The longer-term livelihoods of many who remain are pinned to renewed activity on campus.

“That’s their only hope, frankly,” Colvin said.

Colvin and his wife, Kate, have owned the three-story Journal Press building on Main Street for decades; it long housed the family printing business. They sold the business, and it eventually shut down. The Colvins have since converted the building into a small business center, which also houses artist studios and educational space.

Theirs is but one of the ways Poultney residents have adapted to economic and social change. Public and private benefactors get things done in Poultney, whether that’s lighting sidewalks or starting the community arts center, Stone Valley Arts.

Hundreds turned out for a series of brainstorming sessions convened last year by the Vermont Council on Rural Development in response to the closure. They came up with an action plan to help “revitalize” the community, based on priorities such as wooing a bank and expanding the bikes and trails network.

In September, a couple of recent Green Mountain College graduates opened a nonprofit maker space, REclaimED, just off Main Street in a long-vacant metalworks facility. The name pays homage to the college’s Renewable Energy & Ecological Design program, of which cofounders Carl Diethelm and Danny Lang are alumni.

On a recent tour of the partially developed space, Lang, 26, eyed potential — for textiles, ceramics, metalworks, yoga — in every unfinished corner. He sees the budding maker space as a community hub that will help keep his alma mater’s spirit alive.

Bhakta’s purchase of the campus received a mixed response from alumni.

The individualist businessman may not have fit in at the community-oriented former college, but Lang says he’s personally willing to give him a chance. “We don’t have the luxury to pick and choose what happens there,” he noted.

Lang said he’s watching to see whether Bhakta will treat the new Green Mountain College as a community endeavor or a personal enterprise. Ben Doyle, the new president of Preservation Trust of Vermont, contends that Bhakta’s revival mission can only succeed as the former.

“Revitalizing a community,” he said, “takes everyone working together.”

Some locals have already sent letters to Bhakta about their ideas. Retired art professor Richard Weis said he emphasized the public value of the college’s arts amenities. Educator and Green Mountain College grad Kyle Callahan published an open letter urging Bhakta to pursue an educational model that “puts the campus at the center of the community.”

The Bhaktas say they’re committed.

“This isn’t some vanity project,” Danhee said of her primary school concept. “I want to work with people that ... can really

stand by what I’m trying to do and work in partnership.”

Their family recently moved into the former college president’s house on Main Street and patronizes the diner down the block. Their new residence is temporary, however. They may “eventually” relocate to a larger property nearby, called the Meeting House, that currently serves as a free community meeting center and as office space for the Nature Conservancy. With four kids, they’ll need extra bedrooms, the couple said.

Included in the campus purchase, the impressive Queen Anne-Colonial Revival house was restored in 2014 using a reported $750,000 in public and private donations. In exchange, the college agreed to maintain part of the home as a public venue.

College trustees returned the Preservation Trust’s $100,000 contribution as part of the campus sale, Doyle said. The organization hopes to put the money to future projects, “ideally in Poultney,” he said.

Early in the fall, Bhakta hosted a small, invitation-only barbecue outside Withey Hall. Colvin made the guest list — he wasn’t sure how — as did Poultney Selectboard chair Jeff King. Poultney’s newest resident lubricated the meet and greet with samples of BHAKTA 50, which a server poured directly into guests’ personal cups. The specialty spirit registered a rave review from the selectboard chair, who seemed hopeful that the drink would prove a harbinger of bigger things to come.

“Oh, my goodness, it has such a flavor!”

King said later. “Yeah, that was very good.

That was very smooth. I’ll be buying some of that when that comes out.”

In late October, Bhakta accepted an invitation to speak to the Poultney Rotary Club. He had been the “universal answer” to a member survey about their preferred guest speakers, club president Mitnik said.

Members easily filled the building to its 18-person, COVID-19-compliant capacity, rapt as Bhakta gave an overview of his vision. Colvin, a rotary member, said he was as impressed by Bhakta’s casual comportment as by his ambitious plans. Bhakta’s young daughter sat in his lap, playing with her father’s tie as he made small talk with the crowd. “He’s either one heck of an actor, or he’s one really decent human being,” Colvin concluded.

For Mitnik, who had been somewhat skeptical of the mysterious new owner, the event was reassuring.

“It was nice to see he was not The Great Gatsby kind of a guy,” she said. “He didn’t come across like that at all.” m

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Taking Shape

Bethany Andrews-Nichols

From bananas to boobs, Beenanza Design creates eye-catching patterns B Y M ARG A RET G RAYSON • margaret@sevendaysvt.com

B

ethany Andrews-Nichols has dedicated her life to patterns.

Through her Burlington-based business Beenanza Design, she specializes in colorful, graphic motifs and even offers monthly downloads of funky laptop wallpaper. But her very first design job, in Minneapolis, wasn’t quite so artistically oriented.

“I did Betty Crocker press kits when they were releasing a new type of stovetop potato,” she recalled in a recent phone interview. “Being 22 and actually doing work for what I went to college for, I was like, ‘I’m feeling successful, even though I’m designing these potato boxes.’”

Potato boxes are a far cry from Andrews-Nichols’ work today. She creates print, package and pattern design, including fabrics. She also teaches workshops and even prints large murals at local businesses.

While her patterns are contemporary, with simple repeated shapes and lively, contrasting colors, the designer’s favorite medium is an ancient one: a method of block printing — dyeing fabric or paper using carved wooden blocks — that developed in northern India.

Andrews-Nichols, who lives in Burlington, said she couldn’t remember a time when she wasn’t awed by beautiful prints.

40

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

“I remember the wallpaper in my house when I was 5 years old,” she said.

Growing up in Ohio and upstate New York, Andrews-Nichols took up art to entertain herself when her older siblings were out of the house. She started working at Magic Hat Brewing in 2008, when she and her partner moved to Burlington. There, she found the freedom to be creative, experimenting with projects such as designing a beer label out of felt.

“The experience I had while I was [at Magic Hat] was unlike any other,” she said. “I can’t think of a better place to have developed as a designer. Because it was constantly like, ‘Make it weirder’

… If I had worked for eight years at a bank, I would’ve been a very different designer.”

In 2017, Andrews-Nichols, now 36, was laid off from Magic Hat. She was ready, she said. She’d had two kids by that point and didn’t want to manage employees anymore. She’d already reduced her hours to work just four days a week and found that having a day to pursue her own projects was a boon to her creativity.

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“It just opened the floodgates, that one day a week,” she said. “When I was finished at Magic Hat, I was like, ‘That’s what I want my other four days to be.’”

So she launched Beenanza — after a nickname a friend gave her — and went about building a freelance career. She also cofounded Vermont Womenpreneurs, a network for female business owners, with Mieko Ozeki, who’s the market director of Burlington Farmers Market.

In 2017, Andrews-Nichols visited Jaipur, capital of the state of Rajasthan in northern India, to learn about block printing, which emphasizes repeated patterns and layers of color. Printers typically stamp patterns with handheld wooden blocks that are carved by artisans who specialize in the task. Though the carvers can make the blocks incredibly accurate — a perfect circle, for example — Andrews-Nichols likes the fact that the wood and the process create prints with imperfect texture.

“I prefer there to be flaws,” she said, “because then you can see that someone touched it and loved it.”

In Jaipur, everything clicked for Andrews-Nichols. “All of this design work that I’ve been doing my entire adult life, now it makes sense,” she explained. “I started block printing obsessively.”

She had an exhibition at Burlington’s Foam Brewers, and then designed a line of beer labels for the company. She hosted her first block-printing workshop at Foam alongside Jeremy Fritzhand, the owner of Studio Bagru, a block-printing facility in India.

Foam is also where Andrews-Nichols created her first mural. It’s impossible to use wood for block printing murals, so she had to find another material. She wandered around Lowe’s, “touching the bottom of all the rugs and floor mats,” she said, and eventually found a mat that would work. Since then, Andrews-Nichols has completed a banana-print mural at Momo’s Market in the Old North End and two murals in an Airbnb in Underhill.

“I totally want to do more murals,” she said. “It’s so satisfying.”

Walls aren’t the only unique surfaces Andrews-Nichols has block printed. She’s been collaborating with Flatlander Supply in Vershire to produce patterned leather goods, including a clutch printed with red and blue repetitions of the word “vote.”

Andrews-Nichols sends her designs for woodblocks to the artisans at Studio Bagru, who carve them for her. She has also designed — and sold out of — backpacks that were printed at the India studio.

“Some of the fabrics I do print myself, here, but a lot of my fabrics were printed in India by this group of amazing printers and carvers,” she said. “That is their wheelhouse. These prints are so beautiful,

I PREFER THERE TO BE FLAWS, BECAUSE THEN

YOU CAN SEE THAT SOMEONE TOUCHED IT AND LOVED IT. B E THANY AND R E W S - NIC H O L S

and I’m so lucky to be able to work with this group.”

Most recently, Andrews-Nichols has sold posters and stickers of her design called “One of a Kind,” which features interlocking breast illustrations in a variety of shades.

She’s donated a portion of the proceeds to Burlington’s Hope Lodge, which provides support for cancer patients and their families, and plans to donate to the Black Mamas Matter Alliance, which advocates for Black maternal health.

The print, Andrews-Nichols said, has held a lot of meaning for mothers, cancer survivors and others. She wants to give back to those whose causes she aims to represent.

When she first began freelancing, Andrews-Nichols said, about 70 percent of her work was creating traditional design projects; the rest was pattern work. Now, those proportions have flipped, and she’s started to become known for her patterns.

She wants to introduce her colorful aesthetic to organizations and corporations that may

be tired of using stock imagery and traditional design.

The patterns, Andrews-Nichols said, come to her instinctually, after years of practice. But she also believes pattern designing is for everyone, even those who think they aren’t artistic. She’ll bring woodblocks in familiar shapes to workshops and be completely surprised by students’ creative uses of them.

“The beautiful thing about making prints and patterns is that it’s so accessible,” Andrews-Nichols said. “Anybody can do it.

That’s why I love doing workshops and sharing my blocks and letting people explore.” m

INFO Learn more at beenanzadesign.com.

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All the Buzz

ENVIRONMENT

Noise experts suggest that Vermont plan for the arrival of commercial drones B Y K E N PI CA RD • ken@sevendaysvt.com

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SEAN METCALF

S

ometime in the not-too-distant future — think years, not decades — the skies above Vermont will likely hum with swarms of commercial drones completing their appointed rounds. Small, unmanned copters could deliver holiday gifts from Amazon, groceries from Walmart, and medications from CVS Pharmacy and Walgreens. They would be left at people’s doorsteps, much the way the U.S. Postal Service, UPS and FedEx deliver today.

Though the above description may sound far-fetched and even dystopian to some, Eddie Duncan suggests that Vermonters get ready for it. Duncan is a noise control engineer and director of acoustics at Resources Systems Group, a Vermont-based research and analytics firm. He said the seemingly sci-fi drone scenario has already become a reality in a small but growing number of communities around the United States, where some of the nation’s largest national retailers have launched drone delivery services, or plan to shortly.

According to Duncan, the sooner Vermont lays the groundwork for managing the environmental impacts of commercial drones — notably, noise pollution — the better it will be prepared when the tiny aircraft finally take off in the Green Mountain State.

Three Dartmouth College professors founded RSG in 1986. The firm has since worked in all 50 states and more than 30 foreign countries on a variety of projects, many involving transportation, energy and land-use planning. The employee-owned company, with offices in Burlington and White River Junction, has also made a name for itself in recent years by helping to mitigate noise from wind turbines. As Duncan put it, “We’ve had our hand in, in one form or another, virtually every wind farm in Vermont.”

RSG is one of the few American companies that has studied the community-wide impacts of commercial drones — those used for business, nonprofit or educational use, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. (Drones used by amateur photographers and backyard hobbyists fall in a different category.) In September, RSG released a self-funded white paper: “Three Considerations Around Drone Noise and Strategies for Mitigation.” As the paper noted, research by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has determined that people find the “distinctive

and irregular buzzing sound of drones” incredibly irritating.

That pronouncement may seem as groundbreaking as declaring that water is wet. But Duncan explained that, in order to limit drone noise pollution, it’s important to first understand the specific acoustical properties that get under people’s skin.

Several factors make some sounds more irksome than others, he said. Residents who live in the flight path of Burlington International Airport may find the roar of F-35 fighter jets more aggravating than the buzz of a single-engine propeller plane, but that doesn’t necessarily mean louder noises are more annoying than quieter ones. Many

people find the rumble of a passing freight train calming, though the sound of someone chewing gum or the buzz of a mosquito can be maddening.

As the white paper notes, “Think of nails on a chalkboard. This noise is not louder than a neighbor’s lawnmower, but it produces a much stronger and visceral reaction among listeners.”

Indeed, drones generally aren’t louder than other transportation sounds, such as vehicles on highways, Duncan explained, but several factors make them more bothersome, including their tonality. Vehicle traffic sounds tend to be more broadband and atonal, he said, akin to white noise.

In contrast, a drone’s whine is more like

the hum of an electrical transformer, and people can find it as distracting as a buzzing insect.

Another reason for drones’ sonic irritation, Duncan continued, is that its tones aren’t consistent. Commercial drones may have as many as 15 propellers, each of which can spin at different speeds. Duncan likened those sound variations to a slide whistle, making their combined noise less like the buzz of a single bee and more like an entire swarm.

Understanding those and other acoustical properties can help planners figure out how best to mask or mitigate drone noise, including planning routes that affect the fewest number of people on the ground.

Why did RSG undertake months of research on this topic without a client to foot the bill? As Duncan explained, he and white paper coauthors Erica Wygonik and Kenneth Kaliski found the topic an interesting acoustical challenge. Though drone technology has existed for years, he noted, currently there’s no regulatory framework governing drone noise the way there is for conventional aircraft.

They also took on the research because COVID-19 has accelerated the adoption of commercial drone technology for consumer use. In October 2019, Wing, a subsidiary of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, launched the nation’s first drone delivery service in Christiansburg, Va. According to a Walgreens press release, Wing partnered with Walgreens and FedEx to enable Virginia-based pharmacy customers to get drone deliveries of more than 100 over-thecounter medications, wellness products, foods and beverages.

That market took off once the pandemic began.

As RSG’s white paper noted, “Wing representatives cited a 350 percent monthly increase in signups from February to April 2020 as the pandemic began and stay-at-home orders were issued.”

In April, UPS announced a similar partnership with CVS in Florida to deliver prescription meds and other consumer items to the Villages, that state’s largest retirement community, home to more than 135,000 residents.

As the pandemic and stay-at-home orders forced people indoors and shuttered many businesses, drone-delivered items such as coffee and toilet paper became among the most sought-after items — and new applications are being identified all the time. In mid-June, Wing began delivering library books to homebound Virginia schoolchildren for their summer reading.

Though Vermont is typically a year or more behind such cutting-edge trends — think of its slower adoption of ride-share services such as Uber and Lyft — new technologies arrive eventually. But Duncan advised that new commercial drone operators will need to avoid many of the pitfalls that have hampered test projects elsewhere.

In October, Duncan presented a more technical version of RSG’s white paper at the Quiet Drones 2020 international symposium, originally scheduled to be held in Paris but moved online due to the pandemic. While the symposium included many highly technical presentations on the science of building quieter drones, Duncan said, he was surprised by the dearth of

information on community-wide planning for drone noise management.

In Vermont, RSG used existing noise maps of the Burlington area to plot potential flight paths that commercial drones could follow, either to mask their noise or to minimize the number of people who could hear them.

For example, Duncan theorized that commercial drones could be required to follow Vermont’s existing roadways before heading off to their final destinations. Other routes could take them over less-populated areas, where they wouldn’t pose much of a nuisance to humans. He envisions that some Burlington-based drones heading north and south might be routed over Lake Champlain to minimize their impact on local neighborhoods.

Of course, any such decisions likely will need to consider the impacts on nonhuman ears, too, which Duncan acknowledged could be much more challenging to evaluate.

“For protected species, we might have some values we can use,” he said, “but for unprotected species” — cows, sparrows, dogs, bears — “there’s just not enough research to know what levels impact certain animals.”

Another critical issue to consider, he emphasized, is social equity, especially if Vermont establishes flight paths only through areas that already have high ambient noise levels. Duncan pointed out that lower-income people, through no fault of their own, tend to live in areas with more noise pollution.

“So we want to be careful about strictly flying over those areas,” he added, “especially if they’re flying to a more advantaged community, where Joe, Becky and Sally are all ordering their coffees at 8 a.m. and having them delivered.”

No operator has yet proposed commercial drone deliveries in Vermont, so one might assume that it’s too soon for state lawmakers and local municipalities to begin planning their regulation. But given that the commercial drone market is projected to climb to more than $63 billion by 2025, Duncan advises differently.

“If we frame it like that, we don’t start thinking about [drones] until there’s a developer at the doorstep,” he said. “At that point, I think there’s a question of whether or not the regulation is being developed for the people or for the developer.

“We know they’re coming,” he added.

“We just can’t say exactly when.” m

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MELISSA PASANEN

food+drink

Chicken Liver Mousse (With the Works) Dedalus Wine Shop, Market & Wine Bar, 1031 Mountain Rd., Stowe, 585-7717, and 388 Pine St., Burlington, 865-2368; dedaluswine.com

I’ll drive 76 miles round trip for an olive and an anchovy, but I won’t do it two days in a row. So when Dedalus Wine Shop, Market & Bar in Stowe was out of its skewer that stabs a briny green olive, a salty and slimy slick of anchovy, and a pickle-y pepper, I was bummed. But I wasn’t going to return the next day, when the deli case would hold a new load of this $2 treat.

My spirits picked up when I spotted a jar of chicken liver mousse. I know this item from Dedalus in Burlington, where I’m a superfan of the brandy-and-cognaclaced mousse. (Dedalus has a wine club; if they started a chicken liver mousse club, I’d be a charter member.) The mousse is

SA

P LLY

OLL

AK

A trio of Vermont cheeses from the odds-andends bin at Healthy Living Market & Cafe

Small Pleasures Finding joy in delicious, locally made bites and sips B Y J O R D AN BAR RY, MELISSA PASAN E N & SALLY P O L L AK

W

inter in Vermont can be full of joy: catching snowflakes, bluebird days, the twinkling candles and lights of beloved traditions.

It also brings challenges: truncated daylight hours, holiday stress, a whole lot of cold and gray. And this year, we’re approaching a season that likely will present extra trials.

In the face of all of this, the Seven Days food and drink team is aiming to bolster the joy factor while supporting local food and beverage makers, farmers, restaurants, bakeries, and food retailers.

A reader email about a unique and affordable pastry prompted us to consider how a small, unexpected treat can perk up a day. It inspired us to launch a new column we’re calling Small Pleasures.

Each column will feature a delicious

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SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

and distinctive Vermont-made snack or drink that packs a punch. We’ll share them one at a time going forward, but here are five to get the ball rolling, including the original inspiration from Graeme Hutcheon of Essex Junction.

We’d love to hear from you, too! Send us your edible and quaffable small pleasures at food@sevendaysvt.com.

Let’s spread joy.

M.P.

Cheese, Please Healthy Living Market & Café, 222 Dorset St., South Burlington, 863-2569, and 129 Market St., Williston, 879-2020; healthylivingmarket.com

I’ve been known to stand paralyzed by indecision for many minutes in front of local cheese counters. I love cheese more

than chocolate, and I want them all: wedges of washed-rind funk, chunks of sweet cream-kissed nuttiness and rounds of spreadable, buttery velvet.

Small farmstead cheeses require a big investment of time and labor, so they are not inexpensive. I’d argue they are well worth the money, but I can’t always justify the cost of buying all the cheese, especially if it’s just for me.

The odds-and-ends cheese bin at Healthy Living Market solves my problem handily. Tidy, trim pieces from their impressive cheese array, which features many Vermont cheeses, are wrapped in small morsels. I can easily build a mini cheese plate of three selections for about $10 and justify returning for another set very soon.

FOOD NEWS SERVED TO YOUR INBOX

FOR A SNEAK PEEK AT THE WEEK’S FOOD COVERAGE, RECIPES AND OTHER DELICIOUS TIDBITS, SIGN UP FOR THE BITE CLUB NEWSLETTER: SEVENDAYSVT.COM/ENEWS.

Chicken liver mousse from Dedalus Wine Shop, Market & Bar

best at room temperature, when the slab of fat atop it melts, and the puréed liver and smear of fat go together like PB&J. I bought a jar of chicken liver mousse in Stowe as a kind of compensation for my olive/anchovy/piparra loss. At the cash register, I thought I’d gotten the wrong order when the $8 jar came with baguette slices, grainy mustard and cornichons. (In Burlington, the mousse stands alone.) Nope, I was told, this is how Dedalus does it in Stowe.

“Tell your friends!” the cashier said.

M.P.

GOOD TO-GO VERMONT:

S.P. SMALL PLEASURES

» P.48

VERMONT RESTAURANTS ARE STILL MAKING DELICIOUS FOOD FOR TAKEOUT, DELIVERY OR CURBSIDE PICKUP. FIND OUT WHAT YOUR FAVORITE EATERIES ARE SERVING UP AT GOODTOGOVERMONT.COM. #GOODTOGOVT

Land Legacy

Butterworks Farm cofounder Jack Lazor dies at 69 JACK LAZOR, a pioneer of

organic agriculture and cofounder of BUTTERWORKS FARM in Westfield with his wife, ANNE, died at home around midnight on Saturday, according to their daughter, CHRISTINE LAZOR. Jack, who was 69, was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2010 and had been on dialysis for seven years for cancer-related kidney failure.

Christine described her father as “just an amazing presence and contributor to Vermont” who “meant lots of different things to lots of different people.”

On the home farm, his daughter reflected with a chuckle, Jack “could be great and super-helpful with his thoughts and opinions, as well as a huge pain in the butt.” Until a few days before his death, she said, he continued to advocate for his priorities: “He wanted to make sure we made cottage cheese out of the skim milk so it wouldn’t get wasted.”

Butterworks Farm’s flagship yogurt is made from the milk of its small, grass-fed herd of Jersey cows and sold throughout the Northeast.

The farm also produces cream, buttermilk and kefir.

Gross sales in 2019 were $1.2 million, Christine said. As detailed in a 2017 Seven Days cover story, the elder Lazors have been gradually shifting ownership of the business to Christine and her husband, COLLIN MAHONEY. Jack and Anne were honored in 2019 with a VERMONT AGRICULTURAL HALL OF

FAME Lifetime Achievement award. The couple always worked closely as a team, but Jack was the primary face and voice of Butterworks Farm, building a network of knowledge and mentorship that had an impact far beyond the farm’s products.

FILE: JAMES BUCK

B Y M E L I SSA PASANEN

let us set your Holiday Table

Jack and Anne Lazor in 2017

In 2013, Chelsea Green Publishing put out Jack’s comprehensive The Organic Grain Grower: Small-Scale, Holistic Grain Production for the Home and Market Producer, which provided even broader access to his expertise.

He was also one of 24 organic farming pioneers invited to California’s Esalen Institute for a gathering of “agrarian elders.” A 2014 New York Times article about the group quoted Jack as saying, “We went out of our way to give everything to the earth, and the earth gives back to us.”

Fellow “agrarian elder” Eliot Coleman of Maine has known Jack for decades. In an email, he called Jack “a friend and … pioneer” whose “granary and processing plant were miracles of ingenuity.”

Even Stonyfield Farm founder Gary Hirshberg, a competitor in the organic yogurt business, called Jack his hero in an Atlantic article.

Jack grew up in Springfield, Mass., where his father was a chemist for agrochemical giant Monsanto. Young Jack filled a wagon with backyard vegetables and peddled them to neighbors. He went on to earn a self-designed degree in the history of agriculture from Tufts University.

Part of the wave of backto-the-landers, Jack and Anne

and he wanted to offer it,” Darby said.

When she cold-called Jack as a brand-new Extension agent, Darby recalled, she was nervous. But “it was like he was just waiting for me to call,” she said. “That’s how he made every single person feel.”

Local farmers of every generation have similar stories.

When MARJORIE SUSMAN and MARIAN POLLACK of ORB WEAVER FARM in Monkton arrived in Vermont in 1980, they read about the Lazors in a farming publication and wrote them a letter to which they received an immediate response.

Whenever she spoke with Jack, Susman said, “You got the feeling you were the only person in the room. He was so giving with his information, Call A Single Pebble to cater your with the young people he next event and order your gift cards mentored, sharing his love of the land and his cows.”

802.865.5200 The first cows at BREAD asinglepebble.com & BUTTER FARM in Shelburne 1 3 3 B a n k S t re e t • B u r l i n g t o n , V T and South Burlington came from the Lazors back in 2009. Later, farmer-owner CORIE PIERCE recounted how 11/13/20 a colleague called Jack “out 8V-SinglePebble112520 1 of the blue to ask for advice growing grain for pigs. Jack talked to him for two hours straight. It felt like he would drop anything to talk to you.”

Jack thrived on the giveand-take, but sometimes even he needed a break. When he Dinner Pickup wanted “to chill,” as Jack put it in 2008, he climbed into Wednesdays-Saturdays! the observation tower of his Call Lara to place your order. granary to relish the view of lush fields, grazing cows and “beautiful compost piles.”

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Aside from watching his Feed your soul. daughter and her family kitchentablebistro.com settle on the farm, little seemed to give him more satisfaction than seeing the rewards of his decades of investment in the soil.

Christine said the family planned to throw a big 70th birthday party for her father in May 2021 and still hopes to celebrate his life at that time.

Donations in Jack’s memory can be made to a Northern Flint Corn Consortium and Nulhegan Abenaki Tribe food Closed Sunday - Tuesday sovereignty partnership at northerngraingrowers.org/ @kitchentablebistro remembering-jack-lazor.

started Butterworks Farm on a Northeast Kingdom hilltop in 1976. They bought their first 60 acres with $20,000 earmarked for sending Anne to graduate school. Christine, their only child, was born in 1979.

They never planned to build a million-dollar business.

But, as Jack told Seven Days in 2017, “We gradually realized we needed to make a living.”

The couple made yogurt on their stove and sold it to friends and neighbors. “Jack’s such a born marketer. We would make stuff, and he would just go door-to-door,” Anne told this reporter during a 2008 interview.

Jack relished the variety of challenges in farming. “It’s like going to Las Vegas, but it’s more exhilarating because it’s more direct,” he joked in 2008. “There’s no chance of getting bored.”

University of Vermont Extension agronomist HEATHER DARBY partnered with Jack for 17 years on research and education, traveling with him all over North America and even to Denmark. Darby said that whatever Jack did — whether growing animal forage, developing seed stock for cold climate-hardy corn or teaching an organic graingrowing course at UVM — it always came back to taking care of the land.

“He had so much to offer,

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PHOTOS: JAMES BUCK

Mama & Pop’s Café Mamajuana and Poppy Café & Market bring new ideas to the Old North End B Y J OR D AN BAR RY • jbarry@sevendaysvt.com

A

Good To-Go is a series featuring well-made takeout meals that highlights how restaurants and other food establishments VERMONT are adapting during the COVID-19 era. Check out GOODTOGOVERMONT.COM to see what your favorite eateries are serving up via takeout, delivery and curbside pickup.

ny business opening is a cause for celebration this year. But when the doors at 88 Oak Street in Burlington opened for not just one but two new hotly anticipated restaurants in early November, it seemed like the universe was throwing a party for all the holiday gatherings we’ve missed.

Café Mamajuana and Poppy Café & Market had each built up a loyal following with pop-ups, filling holes in the local food scene and frequently selling out. Residents of the Old North End and beyond were ready for both to open something permanent.

The two restaurants share one space in a cooperatively owned building. That business model was planned before the pandemic but seems uniquely suited to the challenges many restaurants now face. Poppy operates during the day, serving souped-up sandwiches from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. At 4 p.m., Café Mamajuana starts slinging Dominican-fusion dishes such as empanadas and whole-roasted fish for dinner.

Sisters Abby and Emily Portman own and operate Poppy. Café Mamajuana owner-operator Maria Lara-Bregatta is “third-wheeling on their sisterhood,” she said with a laugh. For an hour or so each day, as Poppy cleans up and Café Mamajuana revs up, they fully embrace that sense of sorority. The three women 46

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

A stuffed canoa and empanadas at Café Mamajuana

GOOD TO-GO

GOOD TO-GO

— all originally from New Jersey — listen VERMONT to upbeat playlists of oldies and millennial faves while shuffling from one staff, cuisine and enterprise to the other.

They weren’t sure people would get the two-in-one concept at first. But now that they’re open, Lara-Bregatta said, the model is setting a precedent — and it’s working.

The building most recently housed the Chubby Muffin and a commissary kitchen as part of the Skinny Pancake restaurant group. It was purchased in late June by the Oak Street Cooperative, an effort led by founding members Emily Portman, LaraBregatta and Matt Cropp, co-executive director of the Vermont Employee Ownership Center. Café Mamajuana and Poppy lease the building from the cooperative, and they also sublease production space to All Souls Tortilleria.

“The three businesses are for-profit businesses,” Emily said. “But we’re guided by some of the founding co-op principles: sharing access to space and resources.”

The pandemic delayed the sale of the building and has slightly adjusted both

From left: Abby Portman, Maria Lara-Bregatta and Emily Portman

restaurants’ business plans. Poppy didn’t serve just sandwiches initially, but their practicality for takeout appealed to the sisters. Now the duo is carving out a niche with the most surprising veggie-forward sandwiches in town.

“I’m happy that we’re opening now and we’re able to build this business around this crazy obstacle, rather than having to really quickly adapt to it,” Abby said.

The menu at Poppy changes frequently, with one new sandwich a week rotating onto the five-sandwich list. When I first visited, I ordered what I later learned was Abby’s favorite: the Liza Fennelli ($10). I’d never considered the prospect of a fennel sandwich, let alone one with fennel five ways: roasted, salad’ed, pesto’ed, pickled and aioli’ed. The layers of flavor were an exploration of fennel’s adaptability, hugged by perfect slices of housemade focaccia. The only bad news?

It’s a seasonal offering that’s no longer on the menu.

Another fleeting favorite is the Carmela ($14), which left the menu last week. The sandwich is Poppy’s take on a classic Italian sandwich. The combination of spicy eggplant, soppressata, prosciutto, arugula, radicchio, basil, ricotta salata, pickled red onions and an artichoke-Parmesan aioli on crusty Trent’s Bread is a fitting homage to my second-favorite character from “The Sopranos.”

Other recent offerings include the Ramen Guy, a ramen-influenced sandwich with soy egg, miso-roasted mushrooms and nori aioli; and the vegetarian (or vegan) First Date, with tahini, dates, spiced cauliflower and preserved lemon.

Poppy is not your classic deli, but if you go in with an open mind about what a sandwich can be, you won’t be disappointed. I placed my orders online at prime lunchtime during a workday, and both times they were ready to be picked up in less than 20 minutes.

The takeout-only model has also benefited Café Mamajuana as the popular pop-up switches to its permanent home. Lara-Bregatta has been outspoken about her difficulties in securing traditional investment, noting that “white old men” had been wary of supporting her in the early stages of developing her business plan. “It’s funny, because all of their commentary is kind of useless nonsense now,” she said in mid-November. “They wanted me to turn the dining room 15 times in one night. It’s obsolete. I can do that through takeout.”

Thanks to crowdfunding and community support, Café Mamajuana is now flying through takeout orders. I got lucky on opening night, placing an order at about 6 p.m. Online ordering opens at 4 p.m., and getting your order in early is the best way to ensure you get the pick of the whole menu. The second time I ordered, a couple weeks later, things were starting to sell out by 5.

If your first choice is 86’ed for the evening, though, you get to try something new. Having tasted Café Mamajuana’s Dominican-fusion dishes several times before, I’d been hoping for a canoa de pernil the first night: caramelized plantain sliced down the center and stuffed with rice, beans, slow-roasted pork and pickled red onions. Instead, I opted for two plantain-based sides — fried sweet maduros and fried salty tostones — along with a smattering of empanadas. I also ordered the Sicilian salad, a pleasant bright and citrus-filled surprise and a nod to the Italian side of Lara-Bregatta’s DNA (another thing she shares with the Portmans).

Lara-Bregatta said she and her team will soon add traditional Dominican holiday foods to the menu, such as sancocho,

food+drink the national dish of the Dominican Republic; tortilla española sandwiches on crusty bread; root-vegetable-filled pasteles; and a few seasonal beverages, such as the

American upbringing in New Jersey.

Among those nostalgic treats are tadals, a crunchy Italian snack made by Racioppi’s Taralles. “It’s a tiny little Italian bakery

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eggnog-like coquito. “These festive, native dishes will bring nostalgia to Latinx folks in the community,” she said.

Both businesses are sticking with takeout for the foreseeable future. Maple Hill Construction impeccably renovated the bright, welcoming space, but it’s small.

Following the current 50 percent capacity guidelines, only eight customers are allowed inside at a time; a takeout window also offers pickup.

“There are multiple businesses and multiple people working in here, so introducing added risk to the space just seems unnecessary right now,” Emily said. “It’ll be another exciting thing when we can fully open and invite people in here and have this be a filled, bustling space.”

The venue also features a grab-andgo market. “This had been a butcher and a little corner store, so we’re trying to bring it back to that old-school glory,” Lara-Bregatta explained. For now, market items stocked by each restaurant are only available during its operating hours.

The Portmans see the market space as a sort of incubator that small local producers can use to test their wares.

The shelves also hold items that go well with sandwiches — Zapp’s potato chips, pickles, Savouré soda — as well as items that remind the sisters of their Italian

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in Bloomfield that our mom had always gotten them from,” Abby noted.

Lara-Bregatta hopes to stock her section of the market with Latin ingredients but said it’s been time-consuming to get distributors to ship those items to Vermont. In the meantime, she’s focusing on local products made by women, including women of color. “I’m trying to support other women who are in the same position as me, working from home to grow their businesses and trying to succeed in a time where it’s hard,” Lara-Bregatta explained.

“That’s my goal: to uplift and bring more people into the industry.”

The restaurant owners say they’re already seeing repeat customers — including some who frequent both establishments in the same day. “People have been so vocal about that,” Abby said.

Their cuisines may be different, but Poppy and Café Mamajuana have fresh energy and innovation in common.

“They’re not just a sandwich shop, and I’m not just a Latin place,” Lara-Bregatta said. “There’s nothing like it in town, for either of us.” m

Find, fix and feather with Nest Notes — an e-newsletter filled with home design, Vermont real estate tips and DIY decorating inspirations.

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Reader Graeme Hutcheon wrote us in October about his wife Carol’s discovery of canelés in the bakery section of City Market, Onion River Co-op. She knew her husband loved all custard-based French pastries. At 99 cents per deeply bronzed pastry, “These have to be the best dollar spent ever,” Hutcheon gushed.

The distinctively shaped, darkly caramelized traditional pastry from France’s Bordeaux region delivers a one-two punch of crunchy exterior and an alluringly tender custardy heart. Hutcheon said he’s enjoyed the canelés hot, cold, with ice cream and with a morning coffee. Extra-dark ones, he added, “remind me of a crême brûlée.”

City Market executive chef Michael Clauss said the pastries have been baked in-house daily for close to a decade, thanks to a former assistant manager from Montréal. They require special copper pans coated with beeswax, and the batter must rest overnight. “They are tedious to make,” Clauss admitted, “but we have a lot of people who come specifically for them.”

(Pandemic-era precautions require that each pastry be individually wrapped, which softens the crunchy exterior; they can be re-crisped for a minute or so in a very hot oven.)

Butternut Mountain Farm/The Vermont Maple Sugar Company; available at Marvin’s Country Store, 31 S. Main St., Johnson, 635-7483, marvinscountrystore.com, and from other Vermont gift and specialty stores

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food+drink I’m a sucker for anything caramel, especially if it involves maple and a touch of salt, like this confection does. You can certainly eat it straight, but my preference is to pop up a big bowl of plain, salted popcorn and toss in one bag of the candied popcorn ($2.99 to $3.75 per 4-ounce bag, depending on the retailer) for the perfect salty-sweet mix.

Emma Marvin, Butternut Mountain’s second-generation co-owner, said the company has offered the popcorn, which is made for them by another small Vermont food producer, as far back as she can remember. Now 40, Marvin has vivid memories of walking over after school to the family’s store in Johnson. “We had one of those big wooden barrels filled to the brim with maple popcorn bags,” she recalled. Every so often, Marvin said that her mom, who happened to be the store manager, would let her and her brother have some as an afterschool treat.

Luckily, you don’t need anyone’s permission to treat yourself.

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As COVID -19 cases climbed in early November — and as I made my millionth pot of chili this fall, sick of cooking and lacking any sort of creativity in the kitchen — I cracked a tallboy of Zero Gravity Craft Brewery’s Adventure Pants. I took my first sip, imagining I was sitting at a restaurant bar, chatting with strangers and tasting the newly released beer for the first time.

Adventure Pants was brewed with those serendipitous restaurant experiences in mind. The special IPA is being sold “to support the vibrant community that gives our beer a home,” the Burlington brewery explained. Profits from the beer’s sale benefit the Vermont Independent Restaurants group, which is working to support restaurants during the pandemic. The benefit had already raised more than $6,000 when I checked with Zero Gravity’s director of Vermont sales, Laina Grant, on November 24. “And funds are still increasing!” she said.

I paid $11.99 for my four-pack to-go from the brewery on Pine Street, but

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Because it’s only a splash, I get to drink the rest while I’m cooking. Win-win!

it’s available at more than 60 restaurants all over the state. Adventure Pants is a straightforward, easy-drinking IPA, a blend of Simcoe, Talus, Ekuanot and Sabro hops. It fits my chili specifications perfectly — citrusy and bright — and beyond tasting good, it does good.

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music+nightlife

Maxine Linehan

Seasonal Impression COURTESY OF CELIA KELLY

Maxine Linehan’s new holiday album is intentionally unconventional

BY JOR D AN A DAMS • jordan@sevendaysvt.com

M

axine Linehan knows the holidays can be hard. On her new holiday album, This Time of Year, the Irishborn, Vermont-based performer seeks to acknowledge the emotional struggles that often coincide with the arrival of twinkle lights and Advent calendars. The record simultaneously longs for the past and strives for contentment in the now.

That nostalgic state of being is perfectly encapsulated in the title track, a sparkling piano ballad laced with evocative strings and a mild country vibe.

In an effort to circumvent the confining traditions typical of seasonal records, Linehan selected a diverse mix of contemporary, classic, religious and secular songs.

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SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

She also included some explicitly nonholiday material that dwells on related themes, among them covers of pop heavy hitters Maroon 5 and Kelly Clarkson and a new version of the perennial classic (and geographically appropriate) “Moonlight in Vermont.”

A successful musical theater performer, Linehan has drawn international acclaim for her dramatic interpretations of the songbooks of artists such as U2, Petula Clark and Barbra Streisand. In 2016, she and her producer/husband Andrew Koss left New York City and settled in Manchester, Vt., where they write and record at their state-of-the-art Studio at Strawberry Fields Lane. Seven Days recently caught up with Linehan there by phone.

SEVEN DAYS: Since there are so many holiday albums out there, I imagine there’s quite a bit of nuance to putting one together. How did you strike a good balance in your selection?

MAXINE LINEHAN: People have asked me to do a holiday record for many years.

I never wanted to do one, because a lot of them are very tired. People churn out a holiday album as an effort to fill a record deal with their label or just to throw something out quickly. And it’s full of covers and never feels cohesive to me.

They’re not telling you something that hasn’t been said a million times. If you want to hear Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” listen to Mariah Carey singing it.

But this year was just different to me.

I’m a very emotive performer. I don’t do a lot of fluff in my work. This year I realized we could make a serious Christmas record that was not about sleigh bells and Santa Claus, that could actually be about something very deep and emotional around this time of year. It’s not happy for a lot of people, and more people than ever are feeling that this year. It’s a much more universal feeling. It’s not all Champagne and joy for everyone at this time of year.

SD: You wrote the title track independently of that context, correct?

ML: Yes. We wrote the title track last year, thinking we would just record it as a single.

And then it was gaining a lot of attention

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in Nashville for other artists. So it was on hold for a long time for some pretty huge country stars but never got picked up.

This year, I said, “That song can’t sit here gathering dust.” This was the year we were going to release it, and I would sing it myself. And then we started thinking about what that song meant and started expanding on the themes of nostalgia and loss and hope, but still cloaked in this melancholy feeling. That song gave me the hook for the album.

SD: Why did you rework your tune “I Think of You” into a holiday song?

How does the original’s sentiment lend itself to the concepts you’re describing?

ML: My husband wrote “I Think of You” as a surprise for me for my birthday. We still were living in New York at the time, and it was just the whole idea of the hustle and bustle of the city. We had both lived there for many years. Finding your sanity in New York is often linked to a person.

And then, four or five years ago, he wrote the holiday version of it. It takes on a whole new meaning in the holidays with what MAX INE New York City becomes at Christmastime. We thought it was a perfect opportunity, given the world we live in today and all of the things we all relate to — and the album needed some levity, too. There’s a lot of weight in a lot of the tracks, and we really needed a moment or two for people to take a break from the Kleenex box and have a little fun.

Someone wrote to me the other day and said, “I’ll listen to this all year round.

There are tracks on it that I won’t stop listening to just because Christmas is over.” And that was part of the plan.

SD: Which track was the most challenging to complete?

ML: It would be interesting to hear what my husband — or my music director, or the mix engineer — says about this.

As a vocalist, there are two that were equally challenging for me. One was “Underneath the Tree,” because it’s a famous Kelly Clarkson song, and I don’t sound anything like her. And I have such deep admiration for her. So I really struggled with finding my version of that song. I kept listening to it and going, “No, hers is better. I don’t bring anything to this song.” Right up until the last second, I wanted to cut it. But I was convinced otherwise and gave in to democracy, because everybody else wanted to keep it.

The other was “This Perfect Year.” It’s a big Broadway tune, and it’s the 11 o’clock number in Sunset Boulevard. I wanted it to be its own identity so that Broadway people weren’t LINEHAN thinking about the show when they listened to it. So we ended up restructuring the song and putting the chorus at the beginning to let people hear the hook and making it sound more like a pop tune.

IT’S NOT ALL CHAMPAGNE AND JOY

FOR EVERYONE AT THIS TIME OF YEAR.

SD: How do the non-holiday songs fit into the album’s vibe?

ML: Again, I didn’t want an album where you looked at the track list and went, “Ugh.” They’re not all necessarily Christmas songs — but they are if you treat them right. They really lend themselves to what we feel around, I keep saying it, this time of year.

You look at Maroon 5’s “Memories.”

It’s based on Pachelbel’s “Canon in D,” and it’s a song where you’re toasting, you’re celebrating, but you’re also remembering the people who are not with you. It’s a sentiment we’re all feeling right now.

And “Moonlight in Vermont” — I really wanted a Vermont track on the album because Vermont is quintessential Christmas. I mean, they make movies about it.

This is the place, the winter wonderland.

SD: What holiday albums do you associate with your childhood?

ML: Growing up, it was always really traditional. Bing Crosby and Judy Garland, that was the soundtrack. And I really do gravitate to that still, as a grown-up. I do want to hear those classic voices on a lot of the Christmas records.

But there’s some good contemporary Christmas music — I won’t say there’s a lot. I feel like a lot of contemporary Christmas music is not that groundbreaking. So I definitely tend to lean toward the oldschool Christmas music. m This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

INFO

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Natural Gas Safety: Detecting Leaks & Winter Safety Tips Detecting Leaks: Smell Natural gas is normally odorless. A distinctive, pungent odor, similar to rotten eggs, is added so that you will recognize it quickly. Sight You may see a white cloud, mist, fog, bubbles in standing water or blowing dust. You may also see vegetation that appears to be dead or dying for no apparent reason.

Sound You may hear an unusual noise like a roaring, hissing, or whistling.

If You Suspect a Leak: Move immediately to a safe location. Call VGS at 1-800-639-8081, or call 911, with the exact location. Do not smoke or operate electrical switches or appliances. These items may produce a spark that might ignite the gas or cause an explosion. Do not assume someone else will report the condition.

Protect Meters & Vents from Ice and Snow: Don’t push or pile deep snow around meters and ensure whoever removes snow from your property knows meter and appliance vent locations. Use extreme care when clearing snow surrounding, or large icicles above, meters and vents. If your meter gets encased in thick ice, please call us.

Wishing you a safe a nd healt hy holiday season, from yo ur friend s at VGS!

This Time of Year is available at maxinelinehan.com and all major streaming platforms. Look for a deluxe vinyl version in late 2021.

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music+nightlife

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Vermont bluesman Dave Keller has made a career of playing a historically and culturally Black genre. Keller, who is white, acknowledges 7:53 AM this up front in his new album, You Get What You Give. The album’s liner notes thank a slew of Black mentors, such as Mighty Sam McClain and Fontella Bass, who helped him learn the genre and grow as an artist.

But beyond these recognitions, Keller turned his new album into a showcase not just for himself and his band but for Black voices from across the continent’s blues community.

(I say “continent” instead of “country” to acknowledge Canadian Dawn Tyler Watson. The Juno Award-winning singer

appears on the track “God Is Love/Love Is Everything.”) Keller celebrates how and why he’s able to do what he does by sharing the spotlight. Additionally, all proceeds from the album will be donated to racial equity nonprofits.

You Get What You Give calls on the effervescent Stax Records influence heard on Keller’s other albums. As always, his horn arrangements are the lifeblood of his work, flavoring the tunes with gusto and grace.

Conceptually, the album dabbles in topics related to the tumult of 2020 but is generally a reflection of the biggest concepts anyone ever wrote (or gave a damn) about: love, loss, heartache and belonging.

Opening track “One More Tear” and follow-up “That Thing We Do” are thematically linked. The former, a duet with Houston-based singer Annika Chambers, wallows in a breakup. The

latter, on which Keller pairs up with Washington, D.C., vocalist Carly Harvey, celebrates finding love. Whether or not it was Keller’s intention, placing the songs in that order implies hopefulness about romance and contentment.

Stark piano ballad “The Evil That Men Do” is the album’s emotional core.

That it’s a group effort, vocally speaking, makes perfect sense. Keller, Chambers, Minnesota-based Annie Mack, Houston’s Trudy Lynn and the acclaimed bluesman Johnny Rawls take turns lamenting the ultimate horror of Black life, naming George Floyd in the process.

Keller takes a fairly guileless approach to his songcraft, which may jar listeners who favor a more subtle or impressionistic approach to songwriting. But You Get What You Give isn’t meant to be subtle or artsy; it’s a heart-splosion of emotion and deep gratitude, not to mention a showcase for a heap of talented musicians and singers.

You Get What You Give is available at davekeller.bandcamp.com.

That package comprises heavy, funky, hip-hop-influenced R&B, as heard on album opener “Clearing a Path.” It’s a Zappstyle liftoff that sets the tone for the LP: a house party at the end of the world where everyone’s on mushrooms. “Here’s a sticky situation,” Scott sings, “when we’re facing enemies we don’t even see.”

Scott writes timely and topical stuff, but it’s always rooted in the personal, even spiritual, dimensions of our claustrophobic era. As he observes on “Meaning” a few songs later: “Someone’s always trying to change your mind / So how do you create meaning? / How do you create your love?” He knows better than to give prescriptive answers.

And he doesn’t go it alone. Remote collaboration has always been possible, but a global pandemic has made it necessary.

Scott tags in some of his longtime coconspirators, such as Adam Turner and Mike Sutton (drums), JJ Beck (piano), and fellow Nektone Alex Wolston on trumpet.

Scott also brings along some surprising guest vocalists, including Philadelphia

microphone assassin Curly Castro and BTV’s own rap strongman Mavstar.

The rap tracks are a solid fit here and also suggest that Elder Orange could make a monster hip-hop LP in the vein of Portishead producer Geoff Barrow’s massive Quakers project.

For now, Scott has much broader ambitions. Bricks in the Bathwater is a throwback to when “trip-hop” was wide open, weird and guided by live instruments. It’s also a carefully composed journey, presented as a single, 33-minute track. Many artists insist they make albums, not singles, but seldom do you see that kind of conviction.

As on Elder Orange’s 2018 debut, the sound quality is perfect. Once again, that’s due to Scott’s ongoing collaboration with 802 engineer Walter Westinghouse, who outdoes himself with the depth and detail here. Scott draws from King Crimson and Just Blaze in more or less equal measure.

The result is one hell of a unique synthesis. Bricks in the Bathwater is an unpredictable and genuinely exciting experience, one of the most distinctive local albums of the year.

Bricks in the Bathwater is available at elderorange.bandcamp.com.

JORDAN ADAMS

11/30/20 10:55 AM

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2020 has been a cruel year for the music business, but if anyone was prepared to weather this apocalypse, it was the home-studio auteurs of the world.

Vermont is full of such hermit wizards, including Bennington-area resident Elder Orange, aka Matthew Scott of the Nektones. His latest offering, Bricks in the Bathwater, is a knockout mashup of a half dozen genres and the culmination of years of work.

With his band on indefinite hiatus, Scott has been channeling his energies into side gigs and developing his new solo persona. His 2018 Elder Orange debut, All My Friends Believe in Ghosts, was very much a “beat tape,” with generous helpings of progressive rock and dub influences. Bricks in the Bathwater offers plenty of wild instrumentals but marks the first time Scott’s talents cohere into a total singer-songwriter package.

GET YOUR MUSIC REVIEWED: SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

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2020 Church Street Holiday Experience Free Hot Chocolate

Enjoy free hot chocolate when you spend $25 or more at participating Church Street stores.

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

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11/23/20

GIFT A BOOK THIS SEASON! Offering online ordering and quick pick-up as well as gift-wrapping, shipping, and complimentary home delivery within a 10-mile radius!

We'll make it as easy for you as we can and contribute to a healthy and economically viable community.

54

REVIEW

Will you like it?

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

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The deal

J.D. Vance (played as a kid by Owen Asztalos) is the offspring of a fiercely loyal Appalachian hill clan. His grandparents moved to the industrial town of Middletown, Ohio, in search of opportunity, but as the decades passed, the factories closed. Now J.D.’s Mamaw (Glenn Close) struggles to make ends meet, while his single mom, Bev (Amy Adams), hops from one job and boyfriend to the next, developing an opioid addiction along 4:29 PM the way.

Years later, the adult J.D. (Gabriel Basso) attends Yale Law School and has a girlfriend (Freida Pinto) who makes awkward concern-faces when he tells her about his family’s troubles. Paying his tuition for the coming year depends on a single interview, but back in Ohio, his mom has just OD’d. Rushing to her side, J.D. must decide whether his future is worth putting on the line for a loved one who appears to be her own worst enemy.

38 Main Street | Middlebury, VT (802) 388-2061 | vermontbookshop.com

11/2/20 3:52 PM

LACEY TERRELL/NETFLIX

ur streaming entertainment options are overwhelming — and not always easy to sort through. This week, I watched Ron Howard’s star-studded adaptation of J.D. Vance’s best-selling 2016 book Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. Released last week on Netflix, it’s currently in the streamer’s top 10.

Pretty much every review of Hillbilly Elegy mentions that when Vance’s memoir was published in 2016, media commentators seized on it as the key to “explaining” Donald Trump voters. But the resulting debates are tangential to the movie, which doesn’t come across as timely or provocative or, really, as anything much besides syrupy Oscar bait.

In Howard’s hands, this is a standard take on the time-honored story of a poor boy made good who must come to terms with the people he left behind. Its main distinction is the novelty of A-list stars playing the kind of women who generally pore over celebrity rags in the checkout line rather than appear in their pages.

Close and Adams are indeed convincingly de-glammed, and they act up a storm — some would say a perfect storm

DOLLAR-STORE DIVAS Close and Adams play the family J.D. Vance left behind in Howard’s adaptation of his memoir.

of camp — as the tough-talkin’, cigarettechompin’ Mamaw and the scene-making, self-destructive Bev, respectively. The rest of the film serves as a tasteful frame for these over-the-top performances — including the whole character of J.D. He seems to function partly as viewer surrogate, wincing primly at his family’s bad behavior.

Neither J.D.’s own brief bad-boy stage nor his supposed deep, dysfunctional connection to his mom come across as organic aspects of his character. Perhaps that’s because of the film’s unwieldy dual-narrative structure, which alternates between scenes of J.D.’s childhood and adolescence and ones of his adulthood. The parallels never clearly emerge.

Or perhaps the problem is Vanessa Taylor’s screenplay, which keeps the characters at the level of stereotype. Bev can’t seem to go anywhere or do anything without lurching off into the realm of chaos, but why is she so full of rage? A single flashback to violence in her childhood, played for lurid thrills, doesn’t do much to illuminate the character. No one in the movie ever mentions mental illness, as if “hillbillies” had no acquaintance with such concepts.

Watching the movie, you might also think that no one in the audience is expected to have an everyday acquaintance with people who look or talk like Bev and Mamaw.

They’re presented to us like figures in a museum diorama, unsung Americans to be elegized for their pride and toughness

and pitied for their failure to adapt to modern life.

To this resident of a rural state, that kidgloves approach just seems weird. If movies are going to depict the reality of class in America — and they should! — then they need to acknowledge that “hillbillies” live in the same dynamic, ever-changing world as so-called “elites,” and that there are plenty of gradations in between.

If you like this, try...

• Frozen River (2008, rentable): Shot in the Plattsburgh, N.Y., area, Courtney Hunt’s indie drama about a low-income mom who turns to cross-border smuggling to make ends meet gave Melissa Leo the role of a lifetime. Unlike Adams’ Bev, her angry character feels lived-in and real.

• Winter’s Bone (2010; Kanopy, Cinemax, rentable): Jennifer Lawrence was arguably at her best as an Ozarks teenager supporting her younger siblings and searching for her disreputable dad in this drama that doesn’t condescend to its “hillbilly” characters.

• The Florida Project (2017; Netflix, rentable): Sean Baker’s drama about a 6-year-old girl and her unstable mom living in a seedy Orlando motel dares viewers to condemn its characters as the “undeserving” poor. Whether you judge them or not, their vitality comes through loud and clear.

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WE’VE GOT THE GOODS! Come and check out all the fun gift ideas.

Sheldon Black and Keith Haring Glass Collection, Hitman and MAV! Luis Gerardo Méndez and Connor Del Rio in Half Brothers

NEW IN THEATERS HALF BROTHERS: Two long-lost siblings with little in common, one American and one Mexican, find themselves on a road trip that retraces their dad’s immigration path. Luke Greenfield (The Girl Next Door) directed the comedy, starring Luis Gerardo Méndez, José Zúñiga and Connor Del Rio. (96 min, PG-13. Essex Cinemas)

NOW PLAYING THE CROODS: A NEW AGEHHH In this sequel to the animated comedy hit, a prehistoric family finds itself forced to cohabit with its more evolved neighbors.

With the voice talents of Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone and Ryan Reynolds; Joel Crawford directed. (95 min, PG; Essex Cinemas, Sunset Drive-In) FREAKYHHH1/2 A high schooler (Kathryn Newton) gets body-swapped with a serial killer (Vince Vaughn), and … hilarity ensues? Christopher Landon (Happy Death Day) directed the horror comedy.

(101 min, R; Essex Cinemas) THE GRINCHHH1/2 Dr. Seuss’ tale of a green grouch determined to ruin Christmas gets a new animated rendition with the voices of Benedict Cumberbatch, Rashida Jones, Angela Lansbury and Pharrell Williams. Yarrow Cheney (The Secret Life of Pets) and Scott Mosier directed. (90 min, PG; Sunset Drive-In) THE LAST VERMEERHHH Guy Pearce plays an artist accused of collaborating with the Nazis and Claes Bang is the officer investigating him in this postwar period drama from director Dan Friedkin.

(117 min, R; Essex Cinemas)

LET HIM GOHHH Diane Lane and Kevin Costner play a retired sheriff and his wife who are determined to find their missing grandson after their son’s death in this crime drama from director Thomas Bezucha (The Family Stone). (114 min, R; Essex Cinemas)

PIPES, BUBBLES, WATERPIPES, CIGARS, HOLIDAY CARDS, LOCAL & CUSTOM CLOTHING, ART, CBD, HANDHELD & TABLETOP VAPORIZERS, HUGE DISPOSABLE SELECTION. FOLLOW US ON P @SWEETGSMOKESHOP

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THE WAR WITH GRANDPAHH Forced to share a room with his grandfather (Robert De Niro), a kid (Oakes Fegley) goes on the offensive to get his space back in this family comedy directed by Tim Hill (Hop). With Uma Thurman and Rob Riggle.

(94 min, PG; Essex Cinemas)

OLDER FILMS CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON (Fathom Events; Essex Cinemas, Sun only) DIE HARD (Essex Cinemas, Sunset Drive-In) ELF (Sunset Drive-In) ELVIS: THAT’S THE WAY IT IS (SPECIAL EDITION) (Sunset Drive-In) KRAMPUS (Sunset Drive-In) NATIONAL LAMPOON’S CHRISTMAS VACATION (Essex Cinemas, Sunset Drive-In)

OPEN THEATERS ESSEX CINEMAS & T-REX THEATER: 21 Essex Way, Suite 300, Essex, 879-6543, essexcinemas.com SUNSET DRIVE-IN: 155 Porters Point Rd., Colchester, 862-1800, sunsetdrivein.com

C el

e! k ebra a te with Ice Cream C

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MODERN DESIGN

AUCTION FRIDAY, DECEMBER 4th MERRILL’S DECEMBER MODERN DESIGN AUCTION will include Vermont paintings from the Rohr Foundation, including several large scale works

by Rhett Sturman, as well as pieces

by Thomas Moser. Additionally, numerous fine cultural items from Africa, Asia, Oceania and South America will be included.

top news stories

Chinese Tang Dynasty Qilin Figure

QUALIT Y COLLEC TIBLES FOR E VERYONE, WITH ITEMS FROM $50 TO $50,000!

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Creative Community

days a week

12/1/20 10:50 AM

Imagine enjoying the company of your neighbors who are writers, musicians, professors, environmentalists, and artists.

These are just some of the people who live at Wake Robin. Join a community that dances, debates, writes and publishes, works with computers, practices carpentry, and makes music.

convenient email

We would love to share with you all the new and exciting changes that are happening throughout the community!

To learn more about our vibrant lifeplan community, please visit wakerobin.com or call to schedule a virtual tour.

802.264.5100 / wakerobin.com

Sign up to keep up: sevendaysvt.com/daily7

200 WAKE ROBIN DRIVE SHELBURNE, VT 56

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

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CLASS PHOTOS + MORE INFO ONLINE SEVENDAYSVT.COM/CLASSES

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.

drumming DJEMBE & TAIKO: JOIN US!: Digital classes! (No classes on-site for now.) Taiko: Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Djembe: Wednesday.

Kids and Parents: Tuesday and Wednesday. Private digital conga lessons by appointment. Let’s prepare for a future drum gathering outdoors! Schedule/register online.

Location: Taiko Space, 208 Flynn Ave., Suite 3G, Burlington. Info: 802-999-4255, burlingtontaiko.org.

gardening LIFE LESSONS HARVESTED FROM MY GARDEN: How have you bloomed from where life has rooted you this year? What life lessons have you harvested from your garden? Join Julie Rubaud (Red Wagon Plants) and Ferene Paris Meyer (All Heart

my students have significantly improved their Spanish with my teaching approach.” -Maigualida Rak. Read reviews on Facebook at facebook.com/spanishonlinevt. Location: Online. Info: Maigualida Rak, spanishtutor. vtfla@gmail.com, facebook.com/ spanishonlinevt.

Inspirations) for this storytelling workshop sharing life lessons learned from personal gardens and beyond. Register online: shop.redwagonplants.com/shop/ events/35. Sat., Dec. 5, noon. Cost: $25, subsidized fees avail. Contact Ferene at allheartinspirations@ gmail.com. Location: Online via Zoom. Info: Red Wagon Plants, 802-482-4060, info@redwagonplants.com, redwagonplants.com.

language EXPERIENCED NATIVE PROFESSOR OFFERING ONLINE SPANISH CLASSES: Premier native-speaking Spanish professor Maigualida Rak is giving fun, interactive online lessons to improve comprehension and pronunciation and to achieve fluency. Audio-visual material is used. “I feel proud to say that

martial arts VERMONT BRAZILIAN JIU-JITSU: Brazilian jiujitsu is a martial arts combat style based entirely on leverage and technique. Brazilian jiujitsu self-defense curriculum is taught to Navy SEALs, CIA, FBI, military police and special forces.

No training experience required.

Easy-to-learn techniques that could save your life! Classes for men, women and children.

Students will learn realistic bully-proofing and self-defense life skills to avoid becoming victims and help them feel safe and secure. Our sole purpose is to help empower people by giving them realistic martial arts training practices they can carry with them throughout life. IBJJF and CBJJ certified black belt sixthdegree instructor under Carlson Gracie Sr.: teaching in Vermont, born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. A five-time Brazilian National Champion; International World Masters Champion and IBJJF World Masters Champion.

Accept no Iimitations! Location: Vermont Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, 55 Leroy Rd., Williston. Info: 802598-2839, julio@bjjusa.com, vermontbjj.com.

space of acknowledgment and acceptance. We will include time for conversation, meditation, ritual and sharing coping strategies for getting through the season. All are welcome. Sun., Dec. 6, & Mon., Dec. 14, 7 p.m. Cost: $8, $12, $16, sliding scale. Location: online. Info: Rites of Passage, LLC, Kristabeth Atwood, 802-825-8141, ritesofpassagevt@ gmail.com, sevendays tickets.com/organizations/ rites-of-passage-llc.

yoga

spirituality BLUE HOLIDAY WORKSHOP & RITUAL: Not everyone is cheery for the holidays, especially this year.

Some experience illness, isolation, economic uncertainty, hidden grief or loss. This workshop is a safe

EVOLUTION YOGA: Come as you are and open your heart! Whether you’re new or have practiced for years, find support you need to awaken your practice. Offering livestream and recorded classes.

Give the gift of yoga with a gift card on our website. Flexible pricing based on your needs; scholarships avail. Contact yoga@ evolutionvt.com. Single class: $0-15. Weekly membership: $10-25. 10-class pass: $140. New student special: $20 for 3 classes.

Location: Evolution Yoga, 20 Kilburn St., Burlington. Info: 802864-9642, evolutionvt.com.

DID YOU KNOW

VT INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL 4T

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11/30/20 9:46 AM

EV E N T S O N SA L E N OW BUY ONLINE AT SEVENDAYSTICKETS.COM

Social Media Marketing for Business in 2020 WED., DEC. 2 VIRTUAL EVENT

Just Ask Over Dinner Series: Taking Stock & Resetting the Table for Your Business THU., DEC. 3 VIRTUAL EVENT

Life and Loss THU., DEC. 3 VIRTUAL EVENT

“Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”

— RUTH BADER GINSBURG

Illusions in Art and the Art of Optical Illusions THU., DEC. 3 VIRTUAL EVENT

Vermont International Festival’s Congolese Takeout

FRI., DEC. 4 NORTH END STUDIOS AT THE O’BRIEN COMMUNITY CENTER, WINOOSKI

Vermont International Festival’s Argentinian Takeout

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SAT., DEC. 5 NORTH END STUDIOS AT THE O’BRIEN COMMUNITY CENTER, WINOOSKI

Vermont International Festival’s Filipino Takeout

SUN., DEC. 6 NORTH END STUDIOS AT THE O’BRIEN COMMUNITY CENTER, WINOOSKI

Blue Holiday Workshop and Ritual SUN., DEC. 6 VIRTUAL EVENT

o FPF and ers. t s k n a h t y n Ma irit it fost an p s y it n u m m o the c lly owe my Handym I basica s to its existence. busines

Share Your Thoughts on the Future of Vermont TUE., DEC. 8 VIRTUAL EVENT

OT

- R. IN CAB

Zero Waste 101: Holiday Cheer

It starts local.

THU., DEC. 10 VIRTUAL EVENT

Facing Change: Life’s Transitions and Transformations

Vermont small businesses need your support more than ever.

THU., DEC. 10 VIRTUAL EVENT

MORE EVENTS ONLINE AT SEVENDAYSTICKETS.COM SELLING TICKETS?

WE CAN HELP!

• • • •

• • • •

58

Fundraisers Festivals Plays & Concerts Sports

No cost to you Local support Built-in promotion Custom options

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

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SELL TIX WITH US!

Shop locally this holiday season!

Stay connected at frontporchforum.com.

Contact: 865-1020, ext. 10 getstarted@sevendaystickets.com

12/1/20 4:07 PM

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COURTESY OF KELLY SCHULZE/MOUNTAIN DOG PHOTOGRAPHY

Humane

Nala

AGE/SEX: 2-year-old spayed female ARRIVAL DATE: October 5, 2020 REASON HERE: Her owner could no longer care for her.

SUMMARY: My, what big eyes you have! Nala is a beautiful, slightly quirky girl who’s looking for a family that gets her.

Not one for the hustle and bustle of the big city, Nala would prefer a more peaceful place to settle in and call home.

She really enjoys the company of her favorite people and loves being outside, so she could be a great companion for someone who likes to get out and explore nature. Nala also really enjoys treats — she’s not picky, anything will do — so training will be that much easier for this goofy girl. We don’t know a lot about Nala’s previous life, but we’re betting there’s lots of fun & adventure in her future! Call 862-0135 or visit hsccvt.org for more info.

Society of Chittenden County

housing »

APARTMENTS, CONDOS & HOMES

DID YOU KNOW? A slow introduction goes a long way with helping dogs and cats be peaceful housemates. Keep your dog leashed initially, ensure your cat has a safe place to escape to, utilize baby gates and other barriers, and provide plenty of treats to reward and enforce good behavior. Visit hsccvt.org/Resources for a full step-by-step guide on proper pet introductions!

Sponsored by:

CATS/DOGS: Nala has lived with another dog and a child.

She has no known experience with cats.

NEW STUFF ONLINE EVERY DAY! PLACE YOUR ADS 24-7 AT SEVENDAYSVT.COM.

on the road »

CARS, TRUCKS, MOTORCYCLES

pro services »

CHILDCARE, HEALTH/ WELLNESS, PAINTING

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APPLIANCES, KID STUFF, ELECTRONICS, FURNITURE

music »

INSTRUCTION, CASTING, INSTRUMENTS FOR SALE

jobs »

NO SCAMS, ALL LOCAL, POSTINGS DAILY

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 2-9 2020

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CLASSIFIEDS

housing ads: $25 (25 words) legals: 52¢/word buy this stuff: free online services: $12 (25 words)

CARS/TRUCKS

Route 15, Hardwick

802-472-5100

3842 Dorset Ln., Williston

802-793-9133

housing

FOR RENT

AFFORDABLE 2010 TOYOTA PRIUS 2-BR APT. AVAIL. Just inspected, great 2012 MINI COOPER At Keen’s Crossing. snow tires, brand-new sm-allmetals060811.indd 7/20/15 1 5:02 PM COUPE 2-BR: $1,266/mo., heat & brakes, new oil change, Black, 83,803 miles.

HW incl. Open floor plan, clean & well maintained, 6-speed transmission. fully applianced kitchen, WeatherTec floor mats, 38-41 MPG. 2 sets of fi tness center, pet 130,000 miles. $7,500. factory rims, snow tires friendly, garage parking.

Call 802-989-9254. already mounted for Income restrictions winter. $6,500/OBO. apply. 802-655-1810, 2012 KIA FORTE, 802-291-4056. keenscrossing.com.

HATCHBACK Clean, 1 owner. Auto., 4-door, 4 cylinders, bronze color. 113,500 miles. Asking $5,500/ OBO. Call Doris at 802-999-9844 or email sageconnection@gmail. com.

m

2012 TOYOTA CAMRY, LOW MILEAGE Black, 63,500 miles, excellent condition.

Incl. snow tires. Contact Noah at 802-881-4924.

BURLINGTON Single room, Hill Section, on bus line.

No cooking. Linens furnished. 862-2389.

No pets.

CASH FOR CARS! We buy all cars! Junk, high-end, totaled: It doesn’t matter. Get free towing & same-day cash. Newer models, too. Call 1-866-5359689. (AAN CAN)

FLEXIBLE 3- OR 4-BR APT. Apt. w/ living area.

Upstairs has kitchen, BA + additional room.

Gas HW & heat, HDWD floors. $1,700/mo. + utils. Call 864-0341.

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

OFFICE/ COMMERCIAL

age. cintry@fullcirclevt. com, 802-879-3333.

We Pick Up & Pay For Junk Automobiles!

on the road

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

KEEN’S CROSSING IS NOW LEASING! 1-BR, $1,054/mo.; 2-BR, $1,266/mo.; 3-BR, $1,397/mo. Spacious interiors, fully applianced kitchen, fi tness center, heat & HW incl.

Income restrictions apply. 802-655-1810, keenscrossing.com.

PINECREST AT ESSEX Joshua Way, Essex Jct. Independent senior living for those 55+ years. 1-BR avail. now, $1,240/mo. incl. utils. & parking garage. NS/ pets. 802-872-9197 or rae@fullcirclevt.com.

TAFT FARM SENIOR LIVING COMMUNITY 10 Tyler Way, Williston, independent senior living. Newly remodeled 1-BR unit on the ground floor, w/ restricted view avail., $1,095/mo. incl. utils. & cable. NS/pets.

Must be 55+ years of

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

TAFT FARM SENIOR LIVING COMMUNITY 10 Tyler Way, Williston, independent senior living. Newly remodeled 1-BR unit on the main floor avail., $1,185/ mo. incl. utils. & cable.

NS/pets. Must be 55+ years of age. cintry@ fullcirclevt.com or 802-879-3333.

OFFICE/RETAIL SPACE AT MAIN STREET LANDING on Burlington’s waterfront. Beautiful, healthy, affordable spaces for your business. Visit mainstreetlanding.com & click on space avail.

Melinda, 864-7999.

WINOOSKI 2-BR 2-BR, 2nd-floor apt. in Winooski. Gas stove, full BA, LR. No pets. Offstreet parking. $1,200/ mo. Call 864-0341.

HOUSEMATES

services

NEED A ROOMMATE? Roommates.com will help you find your perfect match today!

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AUTO DONATE YOUR CAR TO CHARITY Receive maximum value of write off for your taxes. Running or not! All conditions accepted. Free pickup.

Call for details. 855-9780215. (AAN CAN)

SMALL ROOM DOWNTOWN, NOW In stylishly Clorox-clean, remodeled house.

Respectful living w/ others in this new normal (wash hands prior to entering building; disinfect BA, kitchen & common areas after use). WiFi, cable, W/D on-site, back porch, garden. Tobacco outside only. Inside: 420-friendly. Mo.-tomo., $600/mo. + $100 dep. Incl. all utils. Don Shall: 802-233-1334.

CAREGIVING COUPLE HOPING TO ADOPT Kind & fun-loving VT couple can provide a safe & loving home for your baby. If you are pregnant & considering adoption, we would welcome hearing from you. jonandtessa.weebly. com, 802-272-7759.

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

EDUCATION

8 a.m.-8 p.m. Central.

(AAN CAN)

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To learn more, call 855-541-6634. (AAN CAN)

SAVE YOUR HOME! Are you behind paying your mortgage? Denied a loan modification? Is the bank threatening foreclosure? Call Homeowners Relief Line now for help: 1-855-4395853. Mon.-Fri., 8 a.m.-8 p.m.; Sat: 8 a.m.-1 p.m.

All times Pacific. (AAN CAN)

FINANCIAL/LEGAL AUTO INSURANCE Starting at $49/mo.!

Call for your fee rate comparison to see how much you can save. Call 855-569-1909. (AAN CAN) BOY SCOUT COMPENSATION FUND Anyone who was inappropriately touched by a Scout leader deserves justice & financial compensation!

Victims may be eligible for a significant cash settlement. Time to file is limited. Call now.

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STRUGGLING W/ YOUR PRIVATE STUDENT LOAN PAYMENT? New relief programs can reduce your payments. Learn your options. Good credit not necessary. Call the Helpline: 888-670-5631.

Mon.-Fri., 9 a.m.-5 p.m.

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HEALTH/ WELLNESS GENTLE TOUCH MASSAGE Specializing in deep tissue, reflexology, sports massage, Swedish & relaxation massage for men. Practicing massage therapy for over 14 years. Gregg, gentletouchvt.com, motman@ymail.com, 802-234-8000 (call/ text). Milton.

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Homeshares BURLINGTON

Share apartment with avid sports & music fan in his 50s. No rent in exchange for errands, occas. transportation & evening help w/ meals, etc. Shared BA. No smoking.

BURLINGTON Share home w/ lively woman in her 80s who enjoys the arts & long walks. Seeking housemate to share some meals, conversation & help around the house. $250/mo.

Familiarity with memory loss ideal. Private BA.

JOHNSON Share a newer home w/ active, professional couple. $550/mo. plus occas. help with pets. Private BA.

PSYCHIC COUNSELING Psychic counseling, channeling w/ Bernice Kelman, Underhill. 30+ years’ experience. Also energy healing, chakra balancing, Reiki, rebirthing, other lives, classes, more. 802-899-3542, kelman.b@juno.com.

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As low as $109.99/mo.!

1-888-519-0171. (AAN CAN) ATTENTION, VIAGRA & CIALIS USERS! A cheaper alternative to high drugstore prices!

50-pill special: $99 + free shipping! 100% guaranteed. Call now: 888-531-1192. (AAN CAN) BAKEOFFBRAZILIANVT Brazilian cheese bread roll (gluten free). Pao de queijo. For more information, please contact me at 802-324-7176.

HUGHESNET SATELLITE INTERNET Finally, no hard data limits! Call today for speeds up to 25mbps as low as $59.99/mo! $75 gift card, terms apply.

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PETS SIAMESE KITTENS Purebred Siamese kittens. They will be 8 weeks old at Christmas.

Email for more info at mmadrona@aol.com.

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

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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

11/20/20 3:33 PM

MUSIC »

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.

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CALCOKU

3Difficulty - Medium

BY JOSH REYNOLDS

3 5 2

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5 7 Difficulty: Hard

BY JOSH REYNOLDS

DIFFICULTY THIS WEEK: HH

DIFFICULTY THIS WEEK: HH

Fill the grid using the numbers 1-6, only once in each row and column. The numbers in each heavily outlined “cage” must combine to produce the target number in the top corner, using the mathematical operation indicated. A onebox cage should be filled in with the target number in the top corner. A number can be repeated within a cage as long as it is not the same row or column.

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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.

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ANSWERS ON P. 62 7 1 8HHH 3 = HOO, BOY! 2 6 H 5H =4CHALLENGING H9= MODERATE

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7 4 3 8 PUZZLING-LY 1 6 ANSWERS ON P. 62 » 2 7 8 5 4 9 6 1

crossword 5 2 3 1 6 4

1 9 4 5 7 2 3

8 2 3 9 6 7 4

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No. 665

SUDOKU

Extra! Extra!

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Open 24/7/365.

View and post up to Postthe & browse ads Complete the following puzzle by using 6 photos per ad online. at your convenience. numbers 1-9 only once in each row, column and 3 x 3 box.

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Show and tell.

Sudoku

3 4 8 6 9 1 5

5 6 9 8 2 3 7

2 1 7 3 4 5 9

9 5 2 4 1 6 8

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SEVENDAYSVT.COM/DAILY7 8v-daily7-coffee.indd 1

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

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If you have a disability for which you need accommodation in order to participate in this process (including participating in a public

ACT 250 NOTICE MINOR APPLICATION #4C11064 10 V.S.A. §§ 6001 - 6093 On November 16, 2020, O’Brien Family Limited Liability Company; O’Brien Home Farm LLC; and O’Brien Brothers, LLC, 1855 Williston Road, South Burlington, VT 05403

FROM P.61

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4 6 7 1 8 3 5 28+ 9 6 1 5 9 7 2 8 3 4 3-2 4 1 3Difficulty5- Medium 6 7 9 8 12x

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

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

Calcoku

No. 665

Difficulty: Hard

62

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

6

PUZZLE ANSWERS

No hearing will be held and a permit may be issued unless, on or before December 18, 2020, a person notifies the Commission of an issue or issues requiring the presentation of evidence at a hearing, or the Commission sets the matter for a hearing on its own motion. Any person as defined in 10 V.S.A. § 6085(c)(1) may request a hearing. Any hearing request must be in writing to the address

If you feel that any of the District Commission members listed on the attached Certificate of Service under “For Your Information” may have a conflict of interest, or if there is any other reason a member should be disqualified from sitting on this case, please contact the District Coordinator as soon as possible, and by no later than December 18, 2020.

Dated at Essex Junction, Vermont this 24th day of November, 2020.

5

ACT 250 NOTICE MINOR APPLICATION #300021-9 10 V.S.A. §§ 6001 - 6093 On August 21, 2020, Falcon Property Management Partners, L.P., 239 South Union Street, Burlington, VT 05401 filed application number 300021-9 for

The District 4 Environmental Commission is reviewing this application under Act 250 Rule 51— Minor Applications. A copy of the application and proposed permit are available for review at the office listed below.

The application and a draft permit may also be viewed on the Natural Resources Board’s web site (http://nrb. vermont.gov) by clicking on “Act 250 Database” and entering the project number “300021-9.”

Parties entitled to participate are the Municipality, the Municipal Planning Commission, the Regional Planning Commission, affected state agencies, and adjoining property owners and other persons to the extent that they have a particularized interest that may be affected by the proposed project under the Act 250 criteria. Non-party participants may also be allowed under 10 V.S.A. Section 6085(c)(5).

2

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hearing, if one is held), please notify us as soon as possible, in order to allow us as much time as possible to accommodate your needs.

1

INSTRUCTION

below, must state the criteria or sub-criteria at issue, why a hearing is required and what additional evidence will be presented at the hearing. Any hearing request by an adjoining property owner or other person eligible for party status under 10 V.S.A. § 6085(c)(1)(E) must include a petition for party status under the Act 250 Rules. Prior to submitting a request for a hearing, please contact the district coordinator at the telephone number listed below for more information. Prior to convening a hearing, the Commission must determine that substantive issues requiring a hearing have been raised. Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law may not be prepared unless the Commission holds a public hearing.

4

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a project generally described as relocation of three mobile home units in the Riverview Mobile Home Park to along Meadow Lane and the extension of existing water and wastewater service to the relocated units. The project is located on River Road in Richmond and Jericho, Vermont.

The application was deemed complete on November 16, 2020 after the receipt of supplemental evidence.

6

UVM & Middlebury College faculty, Daysies).

233-7731, pasbell@ paulasbell.com.

filed application number 4C1106-4 for a project generally described as (a) the subdivision of existing Lot 16 (7.23 acres) into new Lot 16 (6.72 acres) and new Lot 18 (0.51 acres) and (b) the subdivision of existing Lot 1 (8.20 acres), existing Lot 2 (5.50 acres) and existing Lot 3 (64.51 acres) into new Lot 1 (8.61 acres), new Lot 2 (6.19 acres), new Lot 3 (13.96 acres), new Lot 4 (12.16 acres) and new Lot 5 (37.29 acres). The project is located to the east and west of Old Farm Road in South Burlington, Vermont.

The District 4 Environmental Commission is reviewing this application under Act 250 Rule 51— Minor Applications. A copy of the application and proposed permit are available for review at the office listed below.

The application and a draft permit may also be viewed on the Natural Resources Board’s web site (http://nrb. vermont.gov) by clicking on “Act 250 Database” and entering the project number “4C1106-4.”

No hearing will be held and a permit may be issued unless, on or before December 16, 2020, a person notifies the Commission of an issue or issues requiring the presentation of evidence at a hearing, or the Commission sets the matter for a hearing on its own motion. Any person as defined in 10 V.S.A. § 6085(c)(1) may request a hearing. Any hearing request must be in writing to the address below, must state the criteria or sub-criteria at issue, why a hearing is required and what additional evidence will be presented at the hearing. Any hearing request by an adjoining property owner or other person eligible for party status under 10 V.S.A. § 6085(c)(1)(E) must include a petition for party status under the Act 250 Rules. Prior to submitting a request for a hearing, please contact the district coordinator at the telephone number listed below for more information. Prior to convening a hearing, the Commission must determine that substantive issues requiring a hearing have been raised. Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law may not be prepared unless the Commission holds a public hearing.

If you feel that any of

the District Commission members listed on the attached Certificate of Service under “For Your Information” may have a conflict of interest, or if there is any other reason a member should be disqualified from sitting on this case, please contact the District Coordinator as soon as possible, and by no later than December 16, 2020.

If you have a disability for which you need accommodation in order to participate in this process (including participating in a public hearing, if one is held), please notify us as soon as possible, in order to allow us as much time as possible to accommodate your needs.

Parties entitled to participate are the Municipality, the Municipal Planning Commission, the Regional Planning Commission, affected state agencies, and adjoining property owners and other persons to the extent that they have a particularized interest that may be affected by the proposed project under the Act 250 criteria. Non-party participants may also be allowed under 10 V.S.A. Section 6085(c)(5).

Dated at Essex Junction, Vermont this 23rd day of November, 2020.

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

ACT 250 NOTICE MINOR APPLICATION #4C1331 10 V.S.A. §§ 6001 - 6093 On September 17, 2020, Underhill Rod and Gun Club, PO Box 23, Westford, VT 05494 filed application number 4C1331 for a project generally described as after-the-fact construction and renovation of a clubhouse. The project is located at 37 Buchanan Lane in Westford, Vermont.

The application was deemed complete on November 19, 2020 after the submission of supplemental evidence.

The District 4 Environmental Commission is reviewing this application under Act 250 Rule 51—Minor Applications. A copy of the application and proposed permit are

available for review at the office listed below.

The application and a draft permit may also be viewed on the Natural Resources Board’s web site (http://nrb. vermont.gov) by clicking on “Act 250 Database” and entering the project number “4C1331.”

No hearing will be held and a permit may be issued unless, on or before December 18, 2020, a person notifies the Commission of an issue or issues requiring the presentation of evidence at a hearing, or the Commission sets the matter for a hearing on its own motion. Any person as defined in 10 V.S.A. § 6085(c)(1) may request a hearing. Any hearing request must be in writing to the address below, must state the criteria or sub-criteria at issue, why a hearing is required and what additional evidence will be presented at the hearing. Any hearing request by an adjoining property owner or other person eligible for party status under 10 V.S.A. § 6085(c)(1)(E) must include a petition for party status under the Act 250 Rules. Prior to submitting a request for a hearing, please contact the district coordinator at the telephone number listed below for more information. Prior to convening a hearing, the Commission must determine that substantive issues requiring a hearing have been raised. Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law may not be prepared unless the Commission holds a public hearing.

If you feel that any of the District Commission members listed on the attached Certificate of Service under “For Your Information” may have a conflict of interest, or if there is any other reason a member should be disqualified from sitting on this case, please contact the District Coordinator as soon as possible, and by no later than December 18, 2020.

If you have a disability for which you need accommodation in order to participate in this process (including participating in a public hearing, if one is held), please notify us as soon as possible, in order to allow us as much time as possible to accommodate your needs.

Parties entitled to participate are the

SEVENDAYSVT.COM/CLASSIFIEDS Municipality, the Municipal Planning Commission, the Regional Planning Commission, affected state agencies, and adjoining property owners and other persons to the extent that they have a particularized interest that may be affected by the proposed project under the Act 250 criteria. Non-party participants may also be allowed under 10 V.S.A. Section 6085(c)(5).

»

Show and tell.

View and post up to 6 photos per ad online. indentured servitude prohibited]

REAL ESTATE PROFESSIONALS: List your properties here and online for only $45/week.

Submit your listings by Mondays at noon to homeworks@sevendaysvt.com or 802-865-1020, x10.

ELEGANT VICTORIAN WITH VINEYARD ISLE LA MOTTE | 320 NEW ROAD | #4839713

Dated at Essex Junction, Vermont this 20th day of November, 2020.

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

NOTICE OF LEGAL SALE View Date 12/17/2020 Sale Date 12/18/2020 Heather Sullivan Unit #211 Easy Self Storage, 46 Swift St., South Burlington, VT 05403 (802) 863-8300

NOTICE OF TAX SALE TOWN OF COLCHESTER The resident and nonresident owners, lien holders and mortgagees of lands in the Town of Colchester in the County of Chittenden are hereby notified that the taxes or delinquencies assessed by such Town remain, either in whole or in part, unpaid on the following described lands in such Town, to wit: Property Owner: Tonya Gabert (Love) with interest of Ditech Financial, LLC Property Address: 102 Canyon Estates Drive, Parcel ID # 22-048003-0000000.

All and the same lands and premises conveyed to the said Tonya Gabert

by Quitclaim Deed of Brian Gabert dated August 14, 2007 and recorded at Volume 594, Page 346, and

by Warranty Deed of Benjamin C. Martin, II and Gail E. Martin to Brian Gabert and Tonya Gabert dated March 27, 2001 and recorded at Volume 346, Page 213.

Ditech Financial, LLC’s interest is by Complaint for Foreclosure in the matter Ditech

Sited on 73 acres with a 5-acre vineyard, this custom-built home features luxurious details throughout. Open concept floor plan includes a kitchen with vaulted ceilings, and a 1st-floor bedroom & office. Lake views from the 2nd-floor with 2 bedrooms, a full bath, large bonus room & stunning owner’s suite. Finished basement with a game room & wet bar. $479,900

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

Krista Lacroix 802-846-9551 Krista802RealEstate.com

Financial, LLC f/k/s Green Tree Servicing LLC v. Tonya L. Gabert and Citibank (South Dakota) N.A., Occupants of 102 Canyon Estates Drive, Colchester VT dated June 6, 2018 and recorded at Volume 837, Page 673, Judgment and Decree of Foreclosure by Judicial Sale dated January 17, 2019 and recorded at Volume 861, Page 202, and Certificate of Non- Redemption dated August 26, 2019 and recorded at Volume 861, Page 201 of the Land Records of the Town of Colchester, Vermont.

as shall be requisite to discharge such taxes with interest, costs and penalties, unless previously paid.

Property owners, mortgagees, and lien holders may pay such taxes, interest, costs and penalties in full by cash or certified check made payable to the Town of Colchester. At tax sale, successful bidders must pay in full by cash or certified check.

No other payments accepted. Any questions or inquiries regarding the above-referenced sale should be directed to the following address:

Amount of delinquency, interest, cost and penalties: $106,639.15

Kristen E. Shamis, Esq., Monaghan Safar Ducham PLLC, 156 Battery Street Burlington, VT 05401, kshamis@msdvt.com, (802) 660-4735

Reference may be made to said deeds for a more particular description of said lands and premises, as the same appear in the Town Clerk’s Office of the Town of Colchester.

So much of such lands will be sold at public auction at the Town of Colchester, 781 Blakely Road, Colchester, Vermont 05478, on the 14th day of January, 2021 at 10:30 a.m.,

That all persons are born equally free and independent, and have certain natural, inherent, and unalienable rights, amongst which are the enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety; therefore no person born in this country, or brought from over sea, ought to be holden by law, to serve any person as a servant, slave or apprentice, after arriving to the age of twenty-one years, unless bound by the person’s own consent, after arriving to such age, or bound by law for the payment of debts, damages, fines, costs, or the like slavery and indentured servitude in any form are prohibited.

Monaghan Safar Ducham PLLC, and the Town of Colchester give no opinion or certification as to the marketability of title to the above-referenced properties as held by the current owner/ taxpayer.

Dated at Colchester,

Vermont, this 19th day of November, 2020.

Julie Graeter, Collector of Delinquent Taxes Town of Colchester

PROPOSED AMENDMENTS TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE OF VERMONT. The 2019-2020 General Assembly proposed two amendments to the Constitution of the State of Vermont, and the upcoming 20212022 General Assembly must concur with each proposed amendment in order for it to be submitted to the voters for final approval. The proposed amendments are described as follows: Proposal 2 would amend the Vermont Constitution to clarify that slavery and indentured servitude in any form are prohibited.

Article 1 of Chapter I of the Vermont Constitution would be amended to read: Article 1. [All persons born free; their natural rights; slavery and

Article 22 of Chapter I of the Vermont Constitution would be added to read: Article 22. [Personal reproductive liberty] That an individual’s right to personal reproductive autonomy is central to the liberty and dignity to determine one’s own life course and shall not be denied or infringed unless justified by a compelling State interest achieved by the least restrictive means.

STATE OF VERMONT PROBATE COURT DISTRICT OF CHITTENDEN SS. DOCKET NO.: 20-PR-00928 In re the Estate of Richard C. Adams Late of Hinesburg, Vermont NOTICE TO CREDITORS To the creditors of the estate of Richard C. Adams late of Hinesburg, Vermont: I have been appointed personal representative of the above-named estate. All creditors having claims against the estate must present their claims in writing within four (4) months of the date of publication of this Notice. The claim must be presented to me at the address listed

Open 24/7/365.

Post & browse ads at your convenience. below with a copy filed with the register of the Probate Court. The claim will be forever barred if it is not presented as described above within the four (4) month deadline.

Dated November 18, 2020 Signed /s/ David Hamilton Print name: David Hamilton Address: c/o Little & Cicchetti, P.C. P.O. Box 907, Burlington, VT 05402-0907 802-8626511

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Name of Publication: Seven Days Publication Date: 11/25/2020 and 12/2/20 Address of Probate Court: Chittenden District Court, PO Box16t-robbihandyholmes082620.indd 1 511, Burlington, VT 05402-0511

8/20/20 10:21 AM

Cargo Vans, Audio/Visual Equip.

Ends Tue., December 8 @ 10AM

STATE OF VERMONT PROBATE COURT DISTRICT OF CHITTENDEN SS. DOCKET NO.: 952-8-20 CNPR In re the Estate of Richard T. Jeroloman Late of Burlington, Vermont

310 Hurricane Ln., Suite 1, Williston, VT

Preview: Friday, Dec. 4 from 10AM-1PM

NOTICE TO CREDITORS To the creditors of the estate of Richard T. Jeroloman late of Burlington, Vermont: I have been appointed personal representative of the above-named estate. All creditors having claims against the estate must present their claims in writing within four (4) months of the date of publication of this Notice. The claim must be presented to 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 deadline.

Ford E-150 Vans & T-250 Cargo Van; Amplifiers; Audio Mixers; Projectors; Lighting; Microphones; Monitors & More!

Single Owner Sports Car Collection Ends Mon., December 14 @ 6PM 298 J. Brown Drive, Williston, VT

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’08 Aston Martin DB9 ’07 Jaguar XK Coupe ’94 Jaguar XJS ’85 Porsche 928S Convertible ’91 Jaguar XJS Coupe

Dated November 18, 2020 Signed /s/ Albert A. Cicchetti, Exec.

Print name: Albert A. Cicchetti Address: c/o Little & Cicchetti, P.C. P.O. Box 907, Burlington, 8v-hirchakbrothers120220 1 VT 05402-0907 802-862-6511 Name of Publication: Seven Days Publication Date: 11/25/2020 and 12/2/20 Address of Probate Court: Chittenden District Court, PO Box 511, Burlington, VT 05402-0511

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sevendaysvt.com SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

63

64 DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

ATTENTION RECRUITERS: POST YOUR JOBS AT: PRINT DEADLINE: FOR RATES & INFO:

JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM/POST-A-JOB NOON ON MONDAYS (INCLUDING HOLIDAYS) MICHELLE BROWN, 802-865-1020 X21, MICHELLE@SEVENDAYSVT.COM

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NG I R HI

Youth Outreach Specialist

an AmeriCorps position

Read more at giv.org/jobs!

Respite Staff

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

Seeking a full time receptionist to join our beautiful Naturopathic Care Clinic in South Burlington.

32 to 40 hours a week.

Marketing Communications Specialist

Salary depends on experience. Paid Vacation, retirement and heath care benefits offered.

Contributes to existing marketing programs while assisting with the development of new deliverables and initiatives.

Send inquiries, resume and cover letter to: kk@mountainviewnaturalmedicine.com.

Our AmeriCorps Outreach Specialist will use their passion for young people, learning and social justice to help give all bright Vermont students access2h-MountainViewNaturalMedicine112520.indd to life-changing GIV programs.

Organized, articulate and a great writer?

2v-GovernorsInstituteVT010919-2.indd 1

Craft Beer Delivery Driver

Full Time Receptionist

1

Marketing & Sales Professional

1/6/20 11:07 AM

Seeking a local, mature, and self-motivated marketing and sales professional to increase social media and online presence for established Stowe Jeweler. Jewelry knowledge is a plus.

Apply here: lawsonsfinest.com/about-us/join-our-team.

11/23/20 10:21 AM

WE’RE HIRING!

CLINICAL PATIENT SAFETY ATTENDANT

WCMHS Offers a Broad Range of Job Opportunities.

For more information, visit wcmhs.org/ careers.

The Clinical Patient Safety Attendant (CPSA) is responsible for specific aspects of direct patient care and monitoring focused on safety, under the direct supervision of a Registered Nurse.

Respite Staff are covering LEARN MORE & APPLY: shifts for full-time Supported Please submit emails to Housing Staff and assume the uvmmed.hn/sevendays Stephanie@Ferrojewlers.com. same overall responsibilities.

Respite Staff are responsible for the overall safety of 11/30/20 3:23 PM 1 11/1/19 2v-WCMHS120220.indd 1 11/30/20 4t-UVMMedicalCenter110619.indd 12:04 PM program residents and 2v-FerroJewelers120220.indd 1 management of the supported housing facility. Staff is expected to support residents to achieve the goals outlined The role of the Executive Director is to strengthen the organization’s long-term vision, Regional Child & Youth Advocacy Project Coordination in their service plan while create innovative strategies, facilitate teamwork, and unite diverse constituencies holding them accountable for The Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence around shared solutions. Team leadership, fundraising, and communication are core program expectations. seeks a contractor to provide leadership and coordination for responsibilities. The ED must have a strong understanding of economic and racial a regional project that provides supportive services to promote Staff is expected to be an justice issues, particularly institutional racism, white privilege, classism, in addition to healing and increase safety and well-being for children and adults active part of a team and knowledge of issues related to peace, human rights, and globalization. impacted by sexual harm or/and intimate partner violence in model effective, appropriate, northeastern Vermont, as well as education and prevention. Find and timely communication Projected salary range $50,000 to $60,000, generous combined time off more information and instructions for how to submit a proposal at with others regarding client benefit, PJC does not currently offer a health plan. vtnetwork.org/employment-opportunities. updates. This position has TO APPLY: Applications must be submitted through pjcvt.org/jobs website. an immediate start date for Special Consideration Submit a cover letter, resume, professional writing sample (3-5 pages), and training however, is on an as Priority will be given to proposals from individuals or consulting entities three references, with contact information. Use pdf only. needed basis once trained. owned by individuals who identify as a person of color. BIPOC applicants

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Please visit: bit.ly/3bsF6DX to apply for this position.

FOR QUESTIONS, please contact Chuck Brewer at PJCVT@pjcvt.org.

APPLICATION DEADLINE: December 11, 2020

Request for Proposals

are encouraged to identify as such in their proposal. We seek a contractor with a demonstrated commitment to anti-oppression work and ending violence, especially in the lives of children and youth.

3:43 PM

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65 DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

MAINTENANCE Full-Time

SHARED LIVING PROVIDER

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

Howard Center is seeking a Shared Living Provider (SLP) for overnight support (8 pm - 8 am M-F, 4:30pm-8:30am weekends) of a creative adult with Autism Spectrum Disorders, Intellectual Disabilities and co-occurring issues. The provider will serve as a role model and support in the areas of: independent living, social skills, and personal care. Provider will be expected to: exhibit positive and healthy social role modeling, provide oversight of residence, comply with program safety and medication protocols and guidelines, respond to client needs and utilize emergency services as necessary, and collaborate with teammates to design, implement and maintain individual client plans. Provider will live rent-free in a house in downtown Burlington.

Interested candidates can apply online at Wakerobin.com or email a resume with cover letter to: HR@wakerobin.com.

Compensation includes annual tax-free stipend of $30,000/year and a generous respite budget. For more information or to request an application, contact Patrick Fraser at patfraser@howardcenter.org or 802-871-2902.

MULTIPLE POSITIONS OPEN

Wake Robin is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

4t-WakeRobin120220.indd 1

Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital (NVRH) has a variety of openings available, including RNs, LNAs, Ultrasound Technologist, Radiologic Technologist, Sr. Multi-Modality Technologist and Medical Lab Technician or Medical Technologist. NVRH also has Administrative Positions, Food Service and Environmental Services openings.

Shift differentials and per diem rates offered!

PROGRAM MANAGER Part Time

Our retreat center has a dual mission: by providing organizations with a spectacular residential conference center and giving families a place to have memorable special occasions, we are able to also fund free retreat space for individuals and groups doing essential community healing and organizing. The person in this job will help us run the retreat center and facilitate all the social mission work that goes on at the farm.

Full-time, part-time and per diem positions available. Excellent benefits including student loan repayment, wellness reimbursement, low cost health plan choice and more! For information to apply, visit nvrh.org/careers.

4t-NVHR112520.indd 1

11/30/20 2:19 PM

Read more about this job and all our seasonal positions: knollfarm.org/work-with-us.

11/24/20 11:51 AM

EXPERIENCED DIESEL TECHS WANTED • RATE OF PAY: $23-$33/HR • 2+ years of experience as Diesel Tech, with CDL License • Diagnosing & repairing medium and heavy duty vehicles • Writing up accurate & descriptive work performed details • Verifying vehicle performance by conducting test-drives

jobs.sevendaysvt.com

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Competitive hourly wages and benefits including PTO and Kenworth sponsored training. Email resume, cover letter and salary requirements to: resume@newenglandkw.com or call 802.985.2521 and ask for Parker Shenk.

6/18/19 1:24 PM

Legal Assistant Busy Burlington Law Firm seeks a full-time Legal Assistant to provide support in both transactional and litigation practice areas. A minimum of two years’ experience in a law firm setting is required. The ideal candidate will be professional and service-oriented, with strong computer and organizational skills. MSK focuses its practice on real estate, commercial transactions, and related litigation.

We offer a competitive salary and benefits package, and a family friendly work environment. Please email your resume to Deborah Sabourin, Business Manager at dsabourin@mskvt.com.

ATTENTION RECRUITERS:

66

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

DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

HUMAN RESOURCE DIRECTOR TOWN OF COLCHESTER, VERMONT

The Town of Colchester is seeking a Human Resource Director to provide the overall administration, coordination, evaluation and compliance of the Human Resource Department. The ideal candidate will act as a liaison for employee/employer issues and is a resource of all levels of employment, including staff and management.

The ideal candidate will also have excellent communication skills and have the ability to provide sound advice on business and policy matters to the Town Manager.

SHARED LIVING PROVIDER Howard Center is seeking a Shared Living Provider for a woman in her 50s who enjoys crocheting, reading, writing, and watching TV. The ideal provider(s) will be female, or a couple with no children in the house. Pets are welcome. The provider needs to be able to provide 24-hour support in the home, as this individual has significant behavioral needs and cannot be left alone. The provider will work with a team of clinical staff to provide support.

Requirements: Bachelor’s degree in Human Resources, Business Administration, or related field desired, or nine years of experience in the HR field. Hiring range is $68,265 -$78,770 depending on qualifications and experience, plus a competitive benefit package.

Compensation includes a tax-free annual stipend of $75,000, room and board payments, and a generous respite budget. For more information or to request an application, please contact Patrick Fraser at patfraser@howardcenter.org or 802-871-2902.

Submit application, cover letter, resume, and references to Sherry LaBarge, Human Resource Director at: slabarge@colchestervt.gov. For full job description visit: colchestervt.gov/321/ Human-Resources. Application deadline is 12/17/20. E.O.E.

Vermont Economic Development Authority JOB OPPORTUNITY:

MARKETING AND OUTREACH COORDINATOR

OPERATIONS ANALYST VEDA is looking to hire a full-time Operations Analyst based out of our Montpelier office (location is flexible). Due to COVID-19, this position is expected to be remote-based until sometime in 2021.

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

This new position’s primary responsibilities are to support all loan servicing functions and work with management to develop and implement procedures and workflow solutions that result in 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.

Minimum Education/Experience • Bachelor’s Degree and 3-5 years’ related experience • Loan operations experience highly preferred

Minimum Qualifications

Knowledge/Skills/Abilities Required

• A Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Journalism, Public Relations, or Environmental Science with proven communications expertise

• Ability to manage multiple projects and initiatives at once • Ability to learn and adapt to new software, both front- and back-end • Excellent time management and organizational skills • Strong proficiency in Microsoft Office suite, well versed in SQL, Access and Excel Query • Strong analytical and detail-oriented aptitude; a high degree of accuracy • Experience with Nortridge loan servicing software preferred. Working knowledge of Ventures+ and/or Lending Cloud loan management software a plus

• 2-3 years' experience in the field may be advantageous.

• Strong writing, public speaking, and interpersonal skills.

• Excellent organizational and management skills.

• Some experience with digital marketing platforms and a willingness to learn new programs.

The Nature Conservancy is a global non-profit that works in all 50 states and in over 70 countries. We offer a competitive salary with a comprehensive benefits package and professional development opportunities. For a complete position description and to apply, visit tinyurl.com/y6nch7sr. The application deadline is Midnight EST January 3, 2021.

VEDA offers a competitive salary and benefits package and is an E.O.E. We are interested in increasing staff diversity and welcome job applications from all qualified candidates. Visit veda.org to see a complete job description. Please email resume with cover letter to: Cheryl Houchens, Chief Risk and Resource Officer, Vermont Economic Development Authority: chouchens@veda.org 9t-VEDA120220.indd 1

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

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11/30/20 3:19 PM

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NEW JOBS POSTED DAILY! JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM

67 DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

WHERE YOU AND YOUR WORK MATTER...

When you work for the State of Vermont, you and your work matter. A career with the State puts you on a rich and rewarding professional path. You’ll find jobs in dozens of fields – not to mention an outstanding total compensation package.

PROJECT MANAGER, GLOBAL WARMING SOLUTION – MONTPELIER Lead the way in implementing Vermont’s Global Warming Solutions Act (GWSA)! We are seeking a Project Manager to support the Vermont Climate Council and manage the crossagency work needed to implement the GWSA. Candidates should have an advanced degree in an environmental, natural resources, economics, energy or public policy discipline with a minimum of 8 years of relevant experience, or an equivalent combination of education, certification, and experience. For more information, contact Jane Modica at Jane.Modica@ vermont.gov. Department: Agency of Natural Resources. Location: Montpelier. Status: Full Time.

Job ID #10560. Application Deadline: Open until filled.

Learn more at: careers.vermont.gov

The State of Vermont is an Equal Opportunity Employer

SHARED LIVING PROVIDER Howard Center is seeking a Shared Living Provider to provide a fulltime home to a social 16-year-old girl who likes animals and dancing.

Ideal provider would be an excellent collaborator and have strong observation, interpersonal, and communication skills. This role requires a provider who is able to be engaging and compassionate while being able to establish routine/structure, provide consistent supervision, and follow a detailed support plan. Ideal applicant would have knowledge or experience related to mental health, developmental disabilities, and/or supporting teens.

Compensation: $35,000 tax-free annual stipend and access to a generous respite budget. Interested applicants contact patfraser@howardcenter.org or call (802)871-2902.

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HELP DESK OPERATOR Union Bank, headquartered in Morrisville, Vermont and with offices throughout northern Vermont and New Hampshire, is seeking a Help Desk Operator for our Information Technology department.

The Help Desk Operator is a key member of our IT team whose primary responsibility is to provide technical support for approximately 200 end-users. Essential tasks include excellent communication skills, a keen ability to troubleshoot and resolve technical problems, and providing software support in a LAN/WAN environment. Additional responsibilities include maintaining the help desk ticket system, knowledgebase creation, computer training, and assisting with ongoing network administration and other Information Technology operations as needed.

Position requirements include proficiency in Windows, MS Office, and a basic understanding of computer networks and the ability to learn additional software and hardware is required.

Experience with IBM iSeries operating systems is a plus. Computer certification and/or one to three years of related experience is preferred. Excellent written and oral communication skills, the ability to work independently, and a high degree of trust and integrity is essential.

This position is located at our Morrisville corporate office.

Salary will be commensurate with experience. Union Bank offers a comprehensive benefits program including 3 medical plan and 2 dental plan options, 401(k) retirement plan with a generous company match, fully paid life and disability insurance, paid vacation and sick leave, and technology education opportunities.

To be considered for this position, please submit a cover letter, resume, references and salary requirements to:

Human Resources-Union Bank P.O. Box 667 Morrisville, Vermont 05661 – 0667 careers@unionbanknh.com

11/24/20 12:04 PM

100% EMPLOYEE-OWNED

GARDENER’S IS GROWING! Our Williston Garden Center is thriving, and we need YOUR help to continue to spread the joy and rewards of gardening! We have two regular, year-round opportunities.

Become an employee-owner and join our award-winning, nationally recognized company!

All positions are benefit eligible and based out of our Williston Garden Center.

Administrative Assistant – manage inbound phone calls and e-mail, employee schedules, supply ordering, system reporting, and invoice processing.

Customer Service Lead – responsible for ensuring customers are engaged and receive the best service possible and will act as the store expert on front end operations.

We are 100% employee-owned and a certified B Corporation. We offer strong cultural values, competitive wages and outstanding benefits (including a tremendous discount on plants and product!).

Interested? Please go to our careers page at www.gardeners.com/careers and apply online!

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11/30/20 4:22 3:57 PM

ATTENTION RECRUITERS:

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

DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

Hotel Housing Advocates

Town Administrator/Manager

CVOEO has an exciting opportunity to help individuals who are most in need. We are currently running one of the largest homeless shelters in the State of Vermont at the Holiday Inn in South Burlington. Currently we have 136 guests and an amazing team of people working with them to find housing, employment and other social and health supports. Hotel Housing Advocates will assist individuals who are experiencing homelessness and who have low income to find or maintain suitable housing, including advocating for clients with local social service agencies organizations, landlords, and funding sources.

Overnight week and weekend hours may be required.

Successful applicants will have a Bachelor’s degree and 2 years’ relevant experience, the ability to work with diverse populations, and excellent verbal and communication skills. Bilingual abilities are a plus. Hotel Housing Advocates are temporary, 40 hour/week positions slated to run through June 30, 2021. Pay starts at $33.66/ hour. To learn more, please visit cvoeo.org/careers.

To apply please submit a cover letter and resume by e-mail to: HIHousing@cvoeo.org. The review of applications begins immediately and will continue until qualified candidates are found.

The Town of Hinesburg, Vermont (population 4,600) is seeking candidates for the position of its first town manager pending a vote by Hinesburg voters in March of 2021. If the vote does not support a town manager, the position will remain a Town Administrator. Hinesburg currently has a Town Selectboard/strong Town Administrator form of government, and has a municipal budget of $4.2 million with 23 FT and PT municipal employees.

Known for its engaged community, rural character, recreation opportunities, working landscape and green space, waterways (Lake Iroquois, etc.), vibrant village and a mix of industry and commerce, the town has the largest union high school enrollment in Vermont. With a great location in the Green Mountain foothills near Lake Champlain and access to Vermont’s largest city (Burlington, Chittenden County), Hinesburg is poised to grow significantly.

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

Start applying at jobs.sevendaysvt.com

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6/23/20

The Selectboard is seeking an individual who is a collaborative team player with strong budget and financial management skills, experience developing and managing a team, and general knowledge of HR and collective bargaining, public works and emergency response operations. Candidates should also possess excellent communication, community engagement, 12:31 PM organizational and problem-solving skills and have demonstrated leadership ability. Municipal management experience and a degree in public administration or related field are preferred, but candidates with comparable work experience are encouraged to apply. The successful candidate will receive an attractive compensation package including health and retirement plans and a competitive annual salary DOQ. Hinesburg is an EOE and values diversity and inclusiveness in the community and workplace. Email resumes to dfrancis@hinesburg.org by January 19, 2021 and position will be open until filled or pending March vote.

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11/23/20 4:03 PM

Engaging minds that change the world

Seeking a position with a quality employer? Consider The University of Vermont, a stimulating and diverse workplace. We offer a comprehensive benefit package including tuition remission for on-going, full-time positions.

Lab Research Technician - Animal & Veterinary Sciences #S2626PO - The University of Vermont is seeking a Research Technician to provide technical and laboratory management, and perform standard laboratory activities for a research laboratory studying mammary biology and lactation physiology with supervision from a designated supervisor.

Activities would include: maintain, culture, and treat mammalian cells, maintain experimental animals and perform animal treatments, assistance with design, develop lab analysis methods and perform experiments, compile and analyze research data, and write reports and grant proposals.

Responsible for maintaining research records, equipment and supplies and assist with supervision of support staff and student researchers. Act as a liaison between project personnel and outside individuals/organizations as necessary and appropriate.

Requirements: Bachelor’s Degree in animal science, or biology related fields and minimum two years of related experience. Must have the ability to travel to worksites.

The University is especially interested in candidates who can contribute to the diversity and excellence of the institution. Applicants are encouraged to include in their cover letter information about how they will further this goal.

For further information on this position and others currently available, or to apply online, please visit www.uvmjobs.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.

The University of Vermont is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer.

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11/30/20 11:54 AM

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

Prestigious law firm seeks individual with relevant education, life and

Prestigious lawfirm firmseeks seeks individual relevant education, lifelife andand administrative experience to support with state-wide estate and trust Prestigious law individual with relevant education, Burlington Office Prestigious law firm seeks individual with relevant education, life administrative experience to support state-wide estate and trust practice.

Position involves intensive, ongoing client support and administrative experience to support state-wide estate and trust and administrative experience to supportof state-wide estate andfinancial trust practice.

Position involves intensive, ongoing client support and management, including coordination documentation with practice.

Position involves intensive, ongoing client support and Prestigious law firm seeks individual with relevant education, life management, including coordination of documentation with financial practice.

Position involves intensive, ongoing client support and institutions, preparation of financial reports, probate court filings andand management, including coordination of documentation withtrust financial administrative experience to support state-wide estate and institutions, preparation of financial reports, court filings and communications, and follow up on estate andprobate trust planning management, including coordination of documentation with financial institutions, preparation of intensive, financial reports, probate court filings and practice.

Position involves ongoing client support and communications, and follow up on estate and trust planning administration matters. institutions, preparation of financial reports, probate court filings and communications, and follow up on estate and trust planning management, including coordination of documentation with financial administration matters. communications, and follow up on estate and trust planning administration matters.

Candidatespreparation must have initiative, a proven ability to workcourt with filings and institutions, of financial reports, probate administration matters.

Candidates have initiative, a proven to work with numbers, bemust detail oriented, organized andability computer literate. communications, and follow up on estate and trust planning Candidates must have initiative, a proven ability to work with numbers, be detail oriented, organized and computer literate. administration matters.

Candidates must have initiative, a proven ability to work with numbers, be detail organized andfirm’s computer literate.

This position will oriented, support attorneys in the Burlington and numbers, be detail oriented, organized and computer literate.

Middlebury offices, though will be based in the Burlington office.

This position will support attorneys in the ability firm’s Burlington and Candidates must have initiative, a proven to work with Middlebury offices, thoughattorneys will be based in firm’s the Burlington office.

This position will support in the Burlington and numbers, be detail oriented, organized andfirm’s computer literate.

This position will support attorneys in the Burlington and More information on the firm’s estate and trust practice can be found Middlebury offices, though will be based in the Burlington office.

Middlebury offices, though will be based thepractice Burlington office. on theinformation firm’s website at http://www.langrock.com/ourMore on the firm’s estate andin trust can be found This position will support attorneys in the firm’s Burlington and services/individuals/estate-planning-and-probate/ on the firm’s website at http://www.langrock.com/ourMore information the firm’s andintrust practice can be found Middlebury offices,on though will estate be based the Burlington office. services/individuals/estate-planning-and-probate/ More information on the firm’s estate and trust practice can be found on the firm’s website at http://www.langrock.com/ourCompetitive salary; hours flexible/negotiable. on the firm’s website at http://www.langrock.com/ourservices/individuals/estate-planning-and-probate/ More information on hours the firm’s estate and trust practice can be found Competitive salary; flexible/negotiable. services/individuals/estate-planning-and-probate/ on the firm’s website at http://www.langrock.com/ourCompetitive salary; flexible/negotiable. services/individuals/estate-planning-and-probate/ Please replyhours via email with cover letter and resume to: Competitive salary; hours flexible/negotiable.

Please reply via email with cover letter and resume to: Competitive salary; hours flexible/negotiable.

Hobart F. Popick, Partner Please reply via email with cover letter and resume to: Langrock F. Sperry & Wool, LLP Popick, Partner Please reply viaHobart email with cover letter and resume to: hpopick@langrock.com Langrock Sperry & Wool, LLP Hobart Popick, hpopick@langrock.com Please reply via email F. with coverPartner letter and resume to:

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

11/30/20 1:57 PM

New, local, scam-free jobs posted every day! jobs@sevendaysvt.com

69 DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

CUSTODIAL SUPERVISOR Accepting applications for a Custodial Supervisor who will manage all custodial services activities, including job and safety training, and technical expertise in custodial areas specific to cleaning techniques and floor finishing. In addition, provides supervision of approximately 40 custodial staff, which includes work allocation, training, performance evaluations, and problem resolution.

USER SUPPORT SPECIALIST With a focus on customer service, User Support Specialists are responsible for many technological functions, including answering questions directed to the Help Desk; and installing, deploying, maintaining, supporting and repairing computer hardware, peripherals, printers, data storage devices and specialty equipment.

For further information & to apply for these & other great jobs:

norwich.interviewexchange.com

General Manager The Central Vermont Solid Waste Management District – a nineteen-member union municipality located in Montpelier, Vermont -- is hiring a General Manager.

The General Manager oversees nine full-time and five part-time employees, manages an annual budget of $1 million and is responsible for the performance of the District. The primary role includes staff assistance to the Board of Supervisors in formulating and implementing policies, managing personnel and financial resources, and representing the District with municipalities, members of the public and solid waste partners. The General Manager’s duties include coordination of solid waste planning and implementing projects; budget and capital plan preparation and monitoring; human resources administration; oversight of ongoing programming and operations; personnel management; grant administration; compliance with federal and state laws; technical assistance to the Board of Supervisors, local officials, and persons requesting to communicate with the District.

This is an exempt full-time position. Salary range of $62,000 to $82,000 (negotiated rate), plus generous benefits package.

For full details please visit cvswmd.org.

To apply, send resume, cover letter, writing sample and 3 references no later than December 11, 2020 to: administration@cvswmd.org. Or: General Manager Search, CVSWMD, 137 Barre Street, Montpelier, VT 05602.

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ATTENTION RECRUITERS:

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

DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

DENTAL ASSISTANT Middlebury Pediatric Dentistry is looking for a dental assistant to join our friendly, close-knit team. Help us take care of Vermont kids’ oral health! Full time. Health insurance. Paid vacation. Please contact us by email and include your resume:

frontdesk@middleburypediatricdentistry.com

PROGRAM SPECIALIST

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10/12/20 11:19 AM

Exciting full time career opportunity for someone with a passion for working with healthcare, education and community providers, and across sectors, to plan and carry out programmatic initiatives related to mental health promotion, suicide and substance misuse prevention. You will work in a team-based environment to manage projects, provide technical assistance, develop resources, and plan and offer professional development to support state and local health initiatives.

This is a 1.0 FTE position offering a competitive salary with benefits. Vermont-based or regional candidates highly preferred. We strongly encourage applicants from diverse communities to apply.

GO HIRE.

Apply here: healthandlearning.org/program-specialist

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12/1/20 11:32 AM

Train with Vermont MedED - Premier Educators of PCAs and LNAs in Vermont! VME inspires confidence and creates great careers!

• Vermont MedED offers a hybrid learning experience with BOTH in-person and online learning: • Lower tuition than vocational schools with a full range of State of Vermont grant and funding options • Shorter class times - only 4 1/2 scheduled hours per week designed to respect your work and personal time • Program coursework is completed in only 4 or 6 weeks • Free and unlimited access to caregiving refresher skills sessions for all graduates!

• Most knowledgeable and experienced instructors in Vermont - we have official LNA state testing experience!

• Free access to all textbooks and study guides through Vermont MedED's website • In-person hands-on learning by expert instructors to give you full confidence to start your new healthcare career • Unlike other programs, VME graduates who test can get a permanent LNA license without additional work experience or employment commitments

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

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

• Search for jobs by keyword, location, category and job type.

• Set up job alert emails using custom search criteria.

• Save jobs to a custom list with your own notes on the positions.

• Apply for jobs directly through the site.

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

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

jobs.sevendaysvt.com

Why would you want to learn professional caregiving skills anywhere else? COVID-19 has not stopped us!

Call us at 802-349-8635 or 303-552-8258, or apply online at vermontmeded.com to become a proud VME graduate!

January classes are filling quickly so enroll soon!

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11/10/20 12:54 PM

2020 TALENT SHOW FOR The Kids VT Spectacular Spectacular is happening virtually this year — on WCAX Channel 3 — now through December 18 during the 4 p.m. newscast.

Tune in every day to see kids, between the ages of 5 and 16, from all over the state showcase their talents!

VERMONT’S RISING STARS COMING UP: DEC 2 : Eliora Raiche DEC 3: Lily James DEC 4: Judah Kol DEC 7: Wilson & Rowan Goldblatt DEC 8: Sabrina Cyphers

Visit kidsvt.com/talentshow for the full schedule SPONSORED BY:

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MEDIA SPONSOR:

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

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fun stuff

RACHEL LINDSAY

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SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

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

'tis the season

HARRY BLISS

TO SPREAD JOY

Santa is making house calls!

WITH THE HELP OF OL' ST. NICK, RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CHARITIES OF BURLINGTON IS ABLE TO OFFER PERSONALIZED VIDEOS, PHONE CALLS & VIDEO CALLS WITH SANTA TO CHILDREN ACROSS THE GLOBE.

Donate today to sign up WWW.RMHCVT.ORG

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11/12/20 9:47 AM

“Haha, very funny, fellas. Now where is the meeting?”

JEN SORENSEN

South Burlington, VT | umallvt.com Untitled-16 1

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

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11/30/20 5:41 PM

fun stuff RYAN RIDDLE

is

Making it is not :( Keep this newspaper free for all.

Join the Seven Days Super Readers at sevendaysvt.com/super-readers or call us at 802-864-5684.

74SR-Comics-filler071520.indd SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 2-9, 2020 1

7/14/20 3:32 PM

Have a deep, dark fear of your own? Submit it to cartoonist Fran Krause at deep-dark-fears.tumblr.com, and you may see your neurosis illustrated in these pages.

FREE WILL ASTROLOGY BY ROB BREZSNY REAL DECEMBER 3-9

ies. More than any other sign of the zodiac, you Rams want to be yourself, to inhabit your experience purely and completely — not see yourself from the perspective of outside observers.

Now is a good time to emphasize this specialty.

SAGITTARIUS (NOV. 22-DEC. 21):

“Pictures of perfection, as you know, make me sick and wicked,” observed Sagittarian author Jane Austen. She wrote this confession in a letter to her niece, Fanny, whose boyfriend thought that the women characters in Jane’s novels were too naughty. In the coming weeks, I encourage you Sagittarians to regard pictures of perfection with a similar disdain. To accomplish all the brisk innovations you have a mandate to generate, you must cultivate a deep respect for the messiness of creativity; you must understand that your dynamic imagination needs room to experiment with possibilities that may at first appear disorderly. For inspiration, keep in mind this quote from Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich: “Well-behaved women seldom make history.”

ARIES

(March 21-April 19): An anonymous blogger on Tumblr writes the following: “What I’d really like is for someone to objectively watch me for a week and then sit down with me for a few hours and explain to me what I am like and how I look to others and what my personality is in detail and how I need to improve. Where do I sign up for that?” I can assure you that the person who composed this message is not an Ar-

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): “Humans like to be scared,” declares author Cathy Bell. “We love the wicked witch’s cackle, the wolf’s hot breath, and the old lady who eats children, because sometimes, when the scary is over, all we remember is the magic.” I suppose that what she says is a tiny bit true. But there are also many ways to access the magic that don’t require encounters with dread. And that’s exactly what I predict for you in the coming weeks, Taurus: marvelous experiences — including catharses, epiphanies and breakthroughs — that are neither spurred by fear nor infused with it.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): In 1994, the ani-

mated movie The Lion King told the story of the difficult journey made by a young lion as he struggled to claim his destiny as rightful king. A remake of the film appeared in 2019.

During the intervening 25 years, the number of real lions living in nature declined dramatically. There are now just 20,000. Why am I telling you such bad news? I hope to inspire you to make 2021 a year when you will resist trends like this. Your assignment is to nurture and foster wildness in every way that’s meaningful for you — whether that means helping to preserve habitats of animals in danger of extinction or feeding and championing the wildness inside you and those you care about. Get started!

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Is there anyone whose forgiveness you would like to have? Is there anyone to whom you should make atonement? Now is a favorable phase to initiate such actions. In a related subject, would you benefit from forgiving a certain person whom you feel wronged you? Might there be healing for you in asking that person to make amends? The coming weeks will provide the best opportunity you have had in a long time to seek these changes.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Scientists know that the Earth’s rotation is gradually slowing down — but at the very slow rate of two milliseconds

every 100 years. What that means is that 200 million years from now, one day will last 25 hours. Think of how much more we humans will be able to get done with an extra hour every day! I suspect you may get a preview of this effect in the coming weeks, Leo. You’ll be extra efficient. You’ll be focused and intense in a relaxing way. Not only that: You will also be extra appreciative of the monumental privilege of being alive. As a result, you will seem to have more of the precious luxury of time.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Adventurer Tim Peck says there are three kinds of fun. The first is pure pleasure, enjoyed in full as it’s happening. The second kind of fun feels challenging when it’s under way but interesting and meaningful in retrospect. Examples are giving birth to a baby or taking an arduous hike uphill through deep snow. The third variety is no fun at all. It’s irksome while you’re doing it and equally disagreeable as you think about it later. Now I’ll propose a fourth type of fun, which I suspect you’ll specialize in during the coming weeks. It’s rather boring or tedious or nondescript while it’s going on, but in retrospect you are very glad you did it.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): “I made the wrong mistakes,” said Libran composer and jazz pianist Thelonious Monk. He had just completed an improvisatory performance he wasn’t satisfied with. On countless other occasions, however, he made the right mistakes. The unexpected notes and tempo shifts he tried often resulted in music that pleased him. I hope that in the coming weeks you make a clear demarcation between wrong mistakes and right mistakes, dear Libra. The latter could help bring about just the transformations you need.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): “Home is not where you were born,” writes Naguib Mahfouz.

“Home is where all your attempts to escape cease.” I propose we make that one of your mottoes for the next 12 months, Scorpio. According to my astrological analysis, you will receive all the inspiration and support you need as you strive to be at peace with exactly who you are.

You’ll feel an ever-diminishing urge to wish you were doing something else besides what you’re

actually doing. You’ll be less and less tempted to believe your destiny lies elsewhere, with different companions and different adventures.

To your growing satisfaction, you will refrain from trying to flee from the gifts that have been given you, and you will instead accept the gifts just as they are. And it all starts now.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Capricorn novelist Anne Brontë (1820-1849) said, “Smiles and tears are so alike with me, they are neither of them confined to any particular feelings: I often cry when I am happy, and smile when I am sad.” I suspect you could have experiences like hers in the coming weeks. I bet you’ll feel a welter of unique and unfamiliar emotions. Some of them may seem paradoxical or mysterious, although I think they’ll all be interesting and catalytic. I suggest you welcome them and allow them to teach you new secrets about your deep self and the mysterious nature of your life.

AQUARIUS

(Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Aquarian philosopher Simone Weil formulated resolutions so as to avoid undermining herself. First, she vowed she would only deal with difficulties that actually confronted her, not far-off or hypothetical problems. Second, she would allow herself to feel only those feelings that were needed to inspire her and make her take effective action. All other feelings were to be shed, including imaginary feelings — that is, those not rooted in any real, objective situation.

Third, she vowed, she would “never react to evil in such a way as to augment it.” Dear Aquarius, I think all of these resolutions would be very useful for you to adopt in the coming weeks.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): In June 2019, the young Piscean singer Justin Bieber addressed a tweet to 56-year-old actor Tom Cruise, challenging him to a mixed martial arts cage fight. “If you don’t take this fight,” said Bieber, “you will never live it down.” A few days later, Bieber retracted his dare, confessing that Cruise “would probably whoop my ass in a fight.” If Bieber had waited until December 2020 to make his proposal, he might have had more confidence to follow through — and he might also have been better able to whoop Cruise’s ass. You Pisceans are currently at the peak of your power and prowess.

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December 4 SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

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12/1/20 2:32 PM

LIFE IS TOO COMPLICATED Nature is the path to peace and salvation.

I am tired of game players. If you are one, don’t waste my time. I am kind, and you will find me to be fair and fun to be with. I like adventures, road trips, Maine seacoast. thoreau1, 64, seeking: W

Respond to these people online: dating.sevendaysvt.com WOMEN seeking...

ADORABLE, WITTY AND UNIQUE! Ah, the beginning of another season in Vermont. The one made for playing in the snow, hot chocolate, popcorn and movies, a warm fire. The one I seek is mellow yet full of life. Stories to share, being silly and looking at life positively. Arms to hold me, kisses at a whim. Meet and see where it goes? Pollyanna, 59, seeking: M, l OPTIMIST RETIREE SEEKS COMPANY A bit crazy even thinking of trying to get together with someone right now, but why not? Hope to travel as soon as humanly possible to a warm place in the spring. Spring training? Golf? Beach? I feel we are all in a transformative time now.

It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine! ihappy2, 67, seeking: M, l COUNTRY GIRL LOVES MOTORCYCLE RIDES Affectionate country girl looking for a man who knows how to treat a lady.

I have a great sense of humor, and you should, too! Love to horseback ride, take walks, bike ride, hike and enjoy each other’s company. I can also make a mean cheesecake!

CURIOSITY22, 62, seeking: M, l LOYAL, KIND AND HONEST I’m a very gentle person, drama free.

I love to cook, and I keep myself busy doing all kinds of art. I like to walk (with a partner will be better). I’m living my dream, and I want to share it with my partner. Pepita13, 69, seeking: M, l

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FLAVORFUL, SPIRITED. I CONTAIN MULTITUDES. It’s virtually impossible to condense a personality into such a small container.

I happily contradict myself, if the spirit moves me. I say “yes” to life while remaining grounded. I value connection, honesty and personal insight. I’m looking for someone courageous enough to also say “yes” to life. katya, 54, seeking: M, l DREAMER Are you into conscious living? Spirituality?

Nature? Honesty? Compassion? Maybe you’re a hopeless romantic? I am seeking a lasting relationship with a like-minded man. Looking for my best friend to share adventures, love and life’s ups and downs. I like to hike, ski, relax, talk, ponder and spend lots of time with you. naturgirl, 64, seeking: M, l FREE SPIRIT Love the outdoors, especially with water.

I have traveled to about 70 countries and still want to travel some. Health and fitness are very important to me. I have done many sports over the years and continue to be active. I am a very curious person and enjoy learning. Waiting to hear from you. Tapbel, 62, seeking: M, l STRONG, INDEPENDENT, INTELLECTUAL Ski? Dinner? Speak any foreign languages? No rednecks or men who will break under heavy use. Must be well educated, well traveled and cultured.

420-friendly, and no man-babies looking for a mama! pip, 56, seeking: M, l FUNNY, ACTIVE ACTIVIST AND ADVENTURIST Recently moved to Vermont from D.C. Would like to meet people for social/ political activism, hiking, hanging out and socializing. Always up for new adventures, like discussing world events. Am compassionate, enjoy outdoor activities.

I’m nonjudgmental and appreciate the same in others. I’ve been involved in activism around racial equity, health care and disability rights ... but don’t take myself too seriously! AnnieCA, 67, seeking: M, l INTUITIVE, CREATIVE, A GOOD LISTENER! I’m a good person who enjoys good food to eat, good wine to drink, good books to read, good stories to share and good friends to spend time with. I have been called the “Quick of Wit.” My friends say that I am funny, caring, creative, sometimes edgy, and that I not only tell good stories, I write them! Sentient, 66, seeking: M, l SUNNY, HAPPY AND FUN I love sharing fun things with a partner. I love sailing and the beach in the summer and skiing and skating in the winter. I love playing almost all sports except hunting. I also love theater, dance and music. Looking for someone who enjoys the same and is laid-back and not too serious. snowflake123, 49, seeking: M, l CUCKOO ABOUT ADVENTURES I’m just looking for a new friend. I’m somewhat new to the area and would like to find someone who likes to talk, hike, or do anything that doesn’t involve going to the bar or lots of drinking!

NDrootsNYbuds, 38, seeking: M, l

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

HERE’S TO SECOND CHANCES Widowed, fit, fun, financially secure WF with serious BDSM/kinky fantasies that I want/need to explore. Looking to find 50- to 60-y/o male with experience in the much less vanilla side of sex for dating and/or LTR. bestisyettobe, 53, seeking: M, l INTERESTED Still standing after all these years!

WayToGo, 67, seeking: M CURIOUS OF LIFE AND HUMOR Sometimes I want to be among a lot of people, and sometimes I just want to be alone with my own company. Have always been curious about people and the world around me. Love learning new things, and currently working on how to play music. I have a great sense of humor and enjoy being outdoors all spring, summer and fall. daffodil19, 64, seeking: M, l INSIGHTFUL, CREATIVE, ADVENTUROUS Outdoorsy, attractive brunette. Poet, explorer of spirituality and personal growth, lover of nature. I love hiking, paddling, exploring new mountains, towns and ideas with others ... feeling what we’re drawn to along the way, sharing thoughts and impressions.

Fairly flexible and easygoing. Healthy minded; not big into alcohol, not into drugs. Waterpoet, 58, seeking: M, l PREFER BEING OUTDOORS AND ACTIVE Genuine, honest and an active listener.

I like to cook and eat real food that is locally produced/raised. Gardening (veggies, not so much flowers), hiking, biking, running, snowshoeing, eradicating invasive plants — most anything outdoors will do. VTu4ia, 45, seeking: M, l READY FOR THE NEXT ADVENTURE Warm, affectionate, professional lady ready to date. Working in a library has taught me never to judge a book by its cover. Let’s get together for coffee or an adult beverage and see where it leads. Redcutie, 52, seeking: M, l

MEN seeking...

HELLO, IT’S ME I’ve thought about us for a long, long time. Well, maybe not that long. But when I do, I see us on a beach waiting for the next wave; taking a hike and spotting a hawk; at the stove (not at the same time) making a great meal; I’m not good at talking myself up, but I’m funny, compassionate, a good listener. How ‘bout you?

Napoli62, 62, seeking: W, l GRATEFUL, HUMBLE AND HAPPY I’m not gonna bore you here; I’ll keep it short. I’m first and foremost a skier; I could ski every day of the year and not get tired of it. Also am really into biking and now running, along with hiking. Looking for someone I can share a few similar interests mentioned above. Jbvt, 32, seeking: W, l ADVENTUROUS, RELIABLE AND CONSIDERATE Average. DoubleNickelVT, 55, seeking: W

LIFE IS A BANQUET Hello, world. I’m a father, engineer, musician, handyman, Vermonter. I’m a far better conversationalist than writer.

MusicAndPancakes, 45, seeking: W, l NEW TO THIS I have a poetic nature and an adventurous spirit. I’m seeking a woman to share conversation and take walks with. Let’s get together for a cup of tea. Chapter2, 67, seeking: W, l CHAOSFACTORINCARNATE I’m just looking for anything.

Strength: making funny. Wekness: spelin. CollyRog, 21, seeking: W ALL STARTS WITH HELLO I count myself as an easygoing person, very lucky to have what eyesight I have.

Losing your sight is one thing, but losing your vision is a whole different thing. Looking forward to hearing from you. Justmemacjr, 57, seeking: W, l BOND ... JAMES BOND Man of mystery, ethically polyamorous, creative. Nerdy scientist, but not usually the smartest guy in the room. My quietude belies my depth.

1109sm, 58, seeking: W, Cp, l THOUGHTFUL, EVOLVING MAN I am the quintessential optimist, a realist and young at heart. My interests include listening to music, traveling both near and far, reading fiction and nonfiction, cooking, various forms of working out, spending time with a few close friends. I would like to meet someone who enjoys good conversation, who is passionate, playful, sensual and curious. not2complicated, 64, seeking: W, l CUTE, SMART A LOT Looking for a casual relationship that could evolve. Looking for an attractive woman with similar interests and disposition. I’m not too particular on what you do for work, but I would prefer it if you had a job that you were genuinely interested in, though I know things happen.

New in town. Really just looking for some interesting experiences!

ProgrammingHigh, 29, seeking: W

UNITED STATES Sexy country. I am not shy. Funny, outgoing woman. I am looking for a single man of 40 years old or around 50s or 60. Good-looking and want to have fun. Looking for someone to be with in bed and looking to have a relationship, too. redthree, 48, seeking: M LOOKING FOR A PARTNER ... especially one who plays golf.

Object: a mutually rewarding merger and possible mixed couples contender. I am retired and financially secure. I’m in the NEK but open to relocating. I love banter and gardening. Books, desserts and witty women. Skinny-dipping and wordplay.

Combining unconnected words in sentences. Please see my online ad, where I go on at greater length.

BogeysAreGood, 67, seeking: W, l

GENDERQUEER PEOPLE seeking...

LONELY AND WAITING FOR YOU Lonely Carolina immigrant looking for an amazing woman. I love to cook, clean and generally make my partner as happy as possible. I’m comfortable both with my full beard and burly coat, or with my pretty pink lacy dresses and blond curls, whichever makes you happiest. I value trust above all else. Oh, and I give killer foot rubs! Neneveh, 24, seeking: W, l

COUPLES seeking...

COUPLE LOOKING FOR FUN! Adventurous, silly, easygoing, freespirited. Agd09090, 26, seeking: Cp, l CUTE COUPLE LOOKING FOR FUN 33-y/o couple looking for female friend or couple. Mojovt, 33, seeking: W, Cp, l HELP US BRANCH OUT We are a couple of over 30 years. We love to spend time together, enjoying good food, good beer/wine and good company. We enjoy the outdoors, camping, hiking, skiing. Looking for other couples to become friends with that can help us explore and branch out. We love each other very deeply and want to share that love with others.

CentralVTCpl, 54, seeking: Cp, Gp

FRIENDLY, INTELLECTUAL, EASYGOING I would not stand out in a crowd. I can be a little boring until we get on the right subject. Mechanic, 67, seeking: W

COUPLE SEEKING WOMAN We are very open and honest. Clean, safe and totally discreet. We are looking for a woman who wants to try new adult things with a couple. We want to role-play and try some kink.

Newboytoyvt, 50, seeking: W, l

FUN-LOVING, ROMANTIC, AFFECTIONATE MAN Honest businessman now flipping houses. Missing that someone special — last and only love. lovetocuddle, 63, seeking: W, l

OPEN-MINDED ROLE-PLAY We are an open-minded couple looking for others. Must be discreet. Please let us know your interests. If you are a male replying, you must be bi or bicurious. VTroleplaying, 47, seeking: W

OUTDOORSY, FUNNY I’m kind, funny, caring, honest, respectful, easygoing, hardworking. I have a high sex drive. I like outdoor activities — kayaking, camping, fishing — and watching a movie.

Looking for someone like-minded who enjoys spending time together. Maybe go for a drive to nowhere, go for a moonlit walk or to a beach, cooking a meal together. funoutdoors, 54, seeking: W, l

ATTRACTIVE MARRIED COUPLE Attractive, caring and honest married couple looking to meet a female for fun times both in and out of the bedroom.

She is bi-curious; he is straight. We are very easygoing and fun to be around. Will share a photo once we communicate. Let’s see what happens.

VTcouple4fun, 49, seeking: W

OPEN-MINDED, FRIENDLY BI MAN Moved to Grand Isle this summer.

Looking to meet individuals or couples for FWB relationships or more. Open to many scenarios when comfortable. chance2, 55, seeking: M, TW, Cp

ACTIVE AND INTERESTING COUPLE! Hi, we’re a professional couple in our early 50s living a healthier life. We’re in love but have limited friends, and that’s why we’re here! trekkingcouple, 51, seeking: M, l

i SPY

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

dating.sevendaysvt.com

SHAMWOW Not a moment passes that I don’t think of you. —Scoots. When: Friday, May 18, 2018. Where: in my dreams.

You: Woman. Me: Man. #915195

MISSING BEAN-DIP DAYS To the woman who needs fancy leggings and cozy at-home leggings: I miss the carefree days of 2019 when we could sit and laugh right next to each other, even high-five if compelled. Hopefully soon we can study and make an epic bean dip, just like old times; until then, wash your hands, wear your mask and stay home. When: Wednesday, November 20, 2019. Where: buck hunter at Akes.

You: Woman. Me: Woman. #915190

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

You: Woman. Me: Man. #915194

NORTHFIELD SEPTUM RING GIRL You complimented my septum ring, and I think yours is perfect. Maybe we can do the coffee thing outside of me buying it from you? When: Friday, November 20, 2020. Where: Northfield.

You: Woman. Me: Man. #915188

LISA ON BURROWS TRAIL SUNDAY We leapfrogged and stumbled down the Burrows Trail. I’m still feeling your warmth. Wondering all sorts of things.

Walk in beauty, dear one. When: Sunday, November 22, 2020. Where: Camel’s Hump. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915193 THANKS FOR THE SMILE Thanks to the Goodwill worker in Williston who appreciated my mother’s antique lantern. Even small interactions can turn a bad day right around. I really appreciate it! You asked for my name and said it was great meeting me. I wish I had asked for yours. I’ll have to find more things to donate. When: Saturday, November 21, 2020. Where: Goodwill.

You: Man. Me: Woman. #915192 TO MY MARILYN MONROE To my forever love, MM. Every lifetime we are drawn to each other. I am so grateful to keep finding you. Our connection is everlasting and worth everything to me.

This life and the next, I love you always.

Your James Dean. When: Sunday, October 9, 2016. Where: Jericho barn. You: Woman. Me: Nonbinary person. #915191 GREG, WE MATCHED ON MATCH Not sure how to connect with you. We have a lot in common, and you seem very fun!

When: Friday, November 20, 2020. Where: Match. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915189

COLCHESTER AVE. Kelly, I am sorry. Please forgive me.

—David. When: Thursday, November 19, 2020. Where: Burlington. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915187 MIKE B. OF NYC/BUMBLE MISS? Perhaps you were home for a short time, or COVID restrictions made you leave?

I saw your match, but my right swipes are rare and can be painstakingly slow. When I finally decided, alas, you were gone. If you return to Colchester sometime soon, try again! Or reach out here. Me: 53, happily independent and active. When: Tuesday, November 10, 2020. Where: Bumble. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915186 HANNAFORD-UPON-ESSEX You were shopping with your daughter, and we made eye contact a couple times. Was it a coincidence or something more? If you would be up for meeting from a distance, I would, too! When: Monday, November 16, 2020. Where: Hannaford, Essex.

You: Woman. Me: Man. #915185

Ask REVEREND 

Irreverent counsel on life’s conundrums

Dear Reverend,

Spending so much time at home during lockdown has caused me to go on a decluttering kick.

I came across a big box full of photo albums that belonged to my deceased parents — mostly scenic photographs from trips they took. I don’t really want to keep them, but I can’t bring myself to throw them away. What should I do with them?

Shutterbugged (FEMALE, 51)

SUSAN Saw your profile on Match.com. I found it quite intriguing, to say the least. You are around 70. Let’s chat. Oh, you live in the Burlington area. When: Thursday, November 12, 2020. Where: Match.

You: Woman. Me: Man. #915184 KINNEY DRUGS, BARRE-MONTPELIER ROAD We chatted while waiting. You liked my dreads, and I liked your black T shirt that said something about “good people on earth.” We spoke again, but I should have asked for your name. Care to chat again, maybe exchange names? When: Wednesday, November 11, 2020. Where: Kinney Drugs, Barre-Montpelier Road.

You: Woman. Me: Man. #915183 STRAWBERRY BREAD BAKER Sorry to have missed you at the flu clinic; it was the highlight of my 2019. Hope that you are doing well, staying healthy and continuing to make your indelible mark on the world. As always, missing you terribly.

Happy birthday. When: Wednesday, November 6, 2019. Where: downtown BTV. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915182 BERLIN POND I thought I’d lost my keys (but didn’t).

You offered to lend us your car. I appreciate your very kind gesture.

It’s people like you who bring light into the world, and it’s my hope our paths will converge again soon. Thank you. When: Monday, November 9, 2020. Where: near Berlin Pond.

You: Woman. Me: Man. #915181 CITY MARKET, TWO BEEF STICKS In front of the prepared food cooler, the woman in the silver puffy jacket gesticulated in our direction. At the checkout, I asked, “That’s it?” looking at the two Vermont beef sticks in your hand. I just wanted a snack.

You said good night to everyone before driving off in your Bolt, your kindness unmasked. When: Sunday, November 8, 2020. Where: City Market, downtown Burlington.

You: Man. Me: Woman. #915180 BREAK LIGHTS, BREAK LIGHTS Break lights near the barn you have spied. It’s too bad it’s still dark out.

Be nice to see your smile. When: Friday, November 6, 2020. Where: ???. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915179

Dear Shutterbugged,

I’m ridiculously sentimental, so I feel your pain.

Here’s what I would do.

Look through the albums and take out any photos of your parents that you want to keep. Take another fast pass through them and pull out anything that grabs your heart. Don’t think about it too hard, or you’ll get bogged down. Put everything into one album as documentation of your parents’ adventures.

As for the remaining photos, is there anyone in your family who might be interested in them? Know anybody who does collage? If not, send those albums on

HOPEFULHEART You have been spied! Tag, you’re it! When: Tuesday, November 3, 2020. Where: Seven Days. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915178 LOOKING GOOD IN THOSE JEANS. Looking right. Hella tight. Would love to take you out for a night. As long as you wear those jeans, anything is possible. K, if you’re waiting for a sign, this is it. Just give me the signal, and I will send her to the airport with a one-way ticket to Santa Fe. With us, we could be magic. When: Wednesday, November 4, 2020. Where: Main St. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915177 COLLIN AT COSTCO Saw you this morning in passing while running errands. Curious what’s under the mask. Caught a glimpse of your name badge as you passed by me a second time: Collin. Figured I’d take a shot in the dark here. When: Saturday, October 31, 2020. Where: Costco.

You: Man. Me: Woman. #915175

GORGEOUS BLONDE AT M32 You changed my life 12 years ago, and I am so grateful. I couldn’t ask for a better woman to spend my life with. I may have lost sight of what I’ve had, but I never will again. You’re my best friend and the love of my life. I’m more in love with you today than ever. I love you always. When: Sunday, October 25, 2020. Where: Market 32. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915168 ADVENTURE AT SALLY’S I walked in with my good friend. He was carrying Andrew Jr. Upon entering Sally’s, we went toward the hair dye. You came out from behind the scenes. We were discussing which shade of red to get.

We were flipping through the options. I said I liked blood; you said you did, too.

Would you like to talk sometime? When: Thursday, October 22, 2020. Where: Dorset St. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915167 HNGRMTNCOOPQT You: cute human with rad hair and red-buckle Dr. Martens. First noticed you stocking in produce. You complimented my cherry blossom Docs in the tea aisle. Me: fellow Doc-wearing human complete with a dragonfly mask perusing the co-op on a gray day in October. Maybe we’ll meet again? When: Wednesday, October 21, 2020. Where: Hunger Mountain Co-op. You: Woman.

Me: Nonbinary person. #915166

BLUE TOYOTA TACOMA To the Blue Toyota Tacoma: Almost every morning I’m heading south and you are heading north. Would be nice to catch up sometime. You have been spied back. When: Saturday, October 31, 2020. Where: Route ???.

You: Man. Me: Woman. #915174 BOBBIE I found your profile very interesting, and I am looking for a way to communicate with you. Here works for me. When: Thursday, October 29, 2020. Where: Match. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915172 BIRTHDAY GIRL AT GUILTY PLATE 1:45 p.m. Birthday girl with an amazing smile. You were with a friend with black hair. You smiled when I walked in, and we waved to each other as you drove away in your white Subaru. I would love to see you again. Maybe meet for a coffee? Me: black down jacket. When: Wednesday, October 28, 2020. Where: Guilty Plate restaurant, Colchester.

You: Woman. Me: Man. #915171 AMAZING OPTIMIST ON MATCH I like all of your lessons from this year. I’m proud to vote blue. And I think you have an amazing smile. I’m not on Match, but maybe we could start our connection here. Have a great day. When: Monday, October 26, 2020. Where: on Match. com. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915170

WHITE ACURA To the white Acura almost every morning I’m heading north and you are heading south: Would be nice to catch up sometime. You have been spied. When: Monday, October 19, 2020. Where: Route ???. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915165 HARDWICK GAS STATION, SUNDAY 10/11 You were a lovely blond woman. I asked you if I had cut in front of you in line. You were nice and said “no,” and we smiled outside again outside.

I wish I had said more but would like a rain check. You drove off in your Subaru while I leaned up against my car. When: Sunday, October 11, 2020.

Where: Hardwick convenience store.

You: Woman. Me: Man. #915164 LADY153 ISPYW/MYLTLI We seem to have a lot in common. Please let me know what your thoughts are. I have a few thoughts and ideas. Would love to discuss them with you. When: Sunday, October 4, 2020. Where: Seven Days. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915158

their own adventure and donate them to a thrift store. They might just turn into the treasure someone didn’t know they were looking for.

I’m fairly certain those who have gone on to the other side are no longer concerned with the worldly goods they’ve left behind. They’ve got more important things to do. Hang on to anything that holds special memories for you. If the only reason you’re keeping something is because it belonged to someone who passed, it’s time for it to go. You won’t be hurting their feelings.

Good luck and God bless,

The Reverend

What’s your problem?

Send it to asktherev@sevendaysvt.com.

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

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I’m a male (65) seeking a female (50 to 65). Fit, friendly, frolicsome fella favors fanciful female for fabulous fall friendship. I’m vegetarian, healthy, humorous, reflective and highly educated. Interests are hiking, gardening, dogs, creativity, Scrabble and pillow talk. #L1455 I don’t live in Vermont anymore, but I’m here semiregularly. I’m a 39-y/o lady friend seeking men, but anyone for friends to write to, maybe more. Hike, ski, lounge, eat, drink, converse. It’s COVID; I’m bored/lonely. What about you? #L1454

I’m a mid-aged male seeking a male or female in these reclusive, masked times. I’m a long-distance runner, walker and aerobic distance-goer looking to share runs in the spirit of Joy Johnstone, Ed Whitlock, Larry Legend, George Sheehan — connecting to that endorphined tranquility and making sense of our lives.

Any age. #L1462 I’m a 71-and-a-half-y/o male from Rutland County seeking a female. Netflix, cable junkie. Hope to dine again post-COVID. Love the Maine coast a couple times a year.

Sedate lifestyle. Retired law enforcement. #L1461

I’m here now, and you knew me as Yourdaddy921, etc. and Boomer2012, etc. Contact me via mail, please. #L1458 49-y/o SWM seeking female for friendship with benefits.

I am feminine, fit, mostly vegan. I enjoy yoga, hiking and biking, books, some cooking, and cuddling to a good movie.

Seeking romantic lady for friendship. #L1457 I’m a 34-y/o male seeking 18to 45-y/o female. I’m smart, artistic, funny and open-minded.

Love music, books, movies and looking at the cosmos. A cat guy, but like all animals. Looking for love and friendship. #L1456

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Interested readers will send you letters in the mail. No internet required!

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

SWM, 60s, seeking woman around 58 to 68. Handyman.

Enjoy skiing, cooking, weekend getaways. Tired of quarantine.

Are you? NEK. #L1453 SF, 42, living in Chittenden County seeks SM for potential LTR. I’m a nerdy gamer, morning person, coffee drinker, nonsmoker. Kind, industrious.

Seeking similar. The world is our opportunity! #L1452 53-y/o discreet SWM, 5’10, 156 pounds. Brown and blue.

Seeking any guys 18 to 60 who like to receive oral and who are a good top. Well hung guys a plus. Chittenden County and around. No computer. Phone only, but can text or call. #L1451

Internet-Free Dating!

Reply to these messages with real, honest-to-goodness letters. DETAILS BELOW. SWF seeks conservative male age 62 to 72, Addison/ Burlington area only. Turnons: har cut, shave, outdoorsy, hunter, camper. Turn-offs: smoker, drugs, tattoos. Me: 5’8, average build, blue/brown, glasses, enjoy nature, have a Shelty, birds, old Jeep, farm raised. Need phone number, please. #L1450 I’m a bicurious 41-y/o male seeking bicurious married or single men, 18 to 45, for some very discreet fun. Good hygiene, hung and H&W proportional a must. Let’s text discreetly and have some DL NSA fun. #L1449 Attractive SWM, 51, living around the Burlington area.

Seeking a curvaceous female for some casual fun with no strings attached. All it takes is some good chemistry... #L1447 I’m a single female, mid60s, seeking a male for companionship and adventure.

Retired educator who loves kayaking, swimming, skiing and travel. Well read. Life is short; let’s have fun. #L1445

I’m a mid-aged male seeking a M or F any age or gender.

Wonderful youth, caring person. Male, 5’9, 147. Older mid-aged loves long-distance running, writing, literature, poetry, drawing, folk and jazz.

Looking for a great friendship for hikes, walks, talks. Best to all. #L1446 Staff researcher at UVM on biostatistics. 29-y/o Chinese male. INFJ personality.

Seeking a female of similar age for long-term relationship.

Love is kind. Love is patient.

May we all stay healthy and be happy. #L1444 Very unique lady in early 70s seeks male. I’m a people person and very active. Love to cook, garden, read and watch good movies. Very friendly with a lot of empathy. I love to walk and the outdoors.

Looking for someone who enjoys the same. #L1442 I’m a GM looking for guys seeking fun and adventure in mid-Vermont. No text/email.

Hope to hear from you. #L1441

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THIS FORM IS FOR LOVE LETTERS ONLY. Messages for the Personals and I-Spy sections must be submitted online at dating.sevendaysvt.com.

Knowledge is a gift.

Support local journalism this holiday season.

The economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic present an existential challenge for Seven Days.

Operating with a fraction of the advertising revenue, we have been scrambling since March to continue to produce and distribute the award-winning newspaper you have come to rely on.

Fortunately, more than 2,000 loyal readers have helped us get through this challenging time by joining our Seven Days Super Reader program. Their donations have created a new revenue stream that we can count on into the future.

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1t-HolidaySR20.indd 1

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 2-9, 2020

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