Seven Days, December 25, 2024

BACKSTORIES

V E RMONT ’S IN DEPE NDEN T VO ICE DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025 VOL.30 NO.13 & 14 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

The stories behind the stories that shaped the year PAGE 14

SNAKE, RATTLE & ROLL... into the year of the serpent!

DOUBLE ISSUE!

Remembering Vermonters who died in 2024 PAGE 32 Our favorite bites and sips PAGE 50 / Photographic highlights PAGE 58 Hidden-gem art galleries PAGE 68 / The best Vermont music of 2024 PAGE 72

We don’t cut corners.

We explore them.

And that makes all the difference.

GARRETT PEMBROKE

Sugarmaker | Legacy Keeper EastRise Member

EASTRISE.COM

2

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

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OPEN HEARTS AND ENRICH LIVES

BY SUPPORTING THE Last season, we had the largest audience in Flynn history: 160,000 people, the equivalent of 1 out of every 4 Vermonters.

We also expanded our free programming for children and families. Highlights include: • 735 student jazz musicians from across Vermont played on Church Street during the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival • 13,000 students and families across 7 Vermont counties attended Playing Fields, which celebrates the start of the school year with free, joyful outdoor performances • 400 students joined us for Kickline, a day of dance and movement at the Burlington Waterfront In this season of giving, we hope you will consider supporting The Flynn with a membership or tax-deductible donation.

Your contribution will play a pivotal role in sustaining our mission and making the arts accessible for all.

BECOME A MEMBER:

MAKE A ONE-TIME GIFT:

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SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

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SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

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COMPILED BY MATTHEW ROY & JOHN JAMES

The last year

20

DIY ASAP

V E R M ONT ’S I ND E P E ND E NT V OI C E JANUARY 17-24, 2024 VOL.29 NO.15 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

V E R M ONT ’S I ND E P E ND E NT V OI C E JANUARY 10-17, 2024 VOL.29 NO.14 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

Winter issue inside!

MARKET VALUE

2024 : a wellness

Burlington’s remaining corner stores double down and evolve PA G E 3 1

WELLNESS ISSUE

STRONG BREW

ENSEMBLE PIECES

PAGE 46

Lost Nation finds its way

A COUNTRY SMILE

PAGE 54

A TURNmusic premiere bridges genres

PAGE 62

BOYS TO MEN

12

KIND ADVICE

PAGE 14

Masculinity classes in Montpelier

Montpelier rallies for singer Mark LeGrand

GOOD EATING

PAGE 24

Vermont’s Cannabis Nurse Hotline

PAGE 34

Vegan businesses promote health

TAXING SITUATION

˜°˜˛ CAMP 2024 CAMPGUIDE GUIDE

TALK of the TOWNS ICE ESCAPADES

CLUCK YEAH!

PAGE 34

Visiting Québec’s winter carnival

1.

NOAH’S ARC

Neighbors seek plumbers, lost pets and community on Front Porch Forum • PAGE 24

MEETING EXPECTATIONS

PAGE 38

A fried-chicken tour of ChittCo

B Y C H R I S FA R N S W O R T H , PA GE 26

GOOD SPORT

13

PAGE 48

Flynn forum on Vermont’s “at-risk” arts

SECOND COURSE

PAGE 34

VT man helps kids hit the slopes

STOKED FILM

PAGE 36

˜ ree Penny Taproom’s revival

PAGE 44

Mad River Glen doc debuts

CROSS HARES

AT THE POLLS

8

SPRING 2024

8 APRIL ECLIPSE ACTIVITIES

RECIPE:

BIRDING

SWEDISH CINNAMON ROLLS

TIPS FROM THE BIRD DIVA

SEVEN SPRING EVENTS

“Bunny huggers” take aim at Fish & Wildlife Dept.

Seven things to watch on Town Meeting Day

Lawmakers grapple with rising ed costs

INSIDE!

PAGE 14

Strafford songwriter NOAH KAHAN is Vermont’s biggest pop culture export in years.

How the hell did that happen?

THE YEAR IN COVERS

24

odyssey

With tax hikes looming, schools ask state for help

V E R M ONT ’S I ND E P E ND E NT V OI C E JANUARY 31-FEBRUARY 7, 2024 VOL.29 NO.17 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

Lawmakers tackle VT’s flood resilience

Seven Days cover stories that attracted the most online readers in 2024.

BUDGET BUSTERS

NO OFFENSE?

Prosecutor’s plan could reduce pending cases PAGE 14

V E R M ONT ’S I ND E P E ND E NT V OI C E JANUARY 24-31, 2024 VOL.29 NO.16 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

WHO’LL STOP THE RAIN? PAGE 15

TOPFIFTEEN

PAGE 14

PAGE 15

Lookin’ Up!

PAGE 14

Total Eclipse of the Heart

PAGE 24

Getting On An aging population is transforming Vermont’s schools, workplaces and communities BY COLIN FLANDERS, PAGE 24 PART OF “THIS OLD STATE,” A YEARLONG SERIES

B Y C O U R TNE Y L A M DI N, PA G E 2 6

TOO MANY COOKS?

PAGE 34

LeMays to host their last drag ball

PAGE 40

Commercial kitchens scarce in ChittCo

NERD ALERT

PAGE 46

New science wing at Fairbanks

FIX-IT MAN

2

PAGE 34

˜ e “angel” of BTV’s City Hardware

COMFORT ZONE

FLOWER POWER

PAGE 36

Richmond’s relaunched Kitchen Table

WELL AGED

THE BIG REVEAL

PAGE 32

Champlain Valley Creamery at 20

PAGE 50

Art show digs deep “In the Garden”

PAGE 38

Drag star Sasha Velour returns

STANNING PAT

SEVEN DAYS GUIDE TO THE 2024 SOLAR ECLIPSE!

VEGAS TRIP

PAGE 33

TOTALLY TRANSFIXED A rare eclipse on a bluebird day dazzled crowds in northern Vermont B Y SEV EN DAYS S TA F F, PA GE 24

Waitsfield’s Shaina Taub arrives in a big way, starring in her own musical, Suffs

UNSAFE BET?

PAGE 42

Author Bohjalian’s latest thrills

LESSEN PLANS

PAGE 14

A reporter’s descent into online gambling

SUCCESSION SCHISM

PAGE 20

Schools grapple with budget cuts

SANDERS SPEAKS

PAGE 40

PAGE 14

A Q&A on aging Vermont

Pending Isham farm sale rankles relatives

COSMIC CASH-IN

CHEWING THE SCENERY

PAGE 27

Locals hawk eclipse merch

PAGE 17

PASSING GRADE?

PAGE 32

MISSING THE BUS

ELECTORAL ENCORE?

PAGE 14

PAGE 15

CHALLAH BACK GIRL

PAGE 15

Scott’s ed secretary pick scrutinized

˜ e growth of edible landscaping in Vermont

Options limited for seniors who can’t drive

Scott, Senate spar over education secretary

PAGE 38

A Jewish food tour of Montréal

WELL VERSED

PAGE 44

Poet Sydney Lea on his new books

2024 QUÉBE C GUID E PRESENTED

WORKING THEORY

5

ART AND CRAFTS

PAGE 14

Seniors may help plug labor gap

PAGE 32

Local revives Japanese boatmaking

Mourning Run

Chip Piper aims to run 10 marathons in 10 days.

He’s driven by grief over the loss of his stepson to drug addiction and the hope of helping others.

BY HANNAH FE UE R , PAGE 2 8

BEYOND BELUGAS

PAGE 12

ROCK OF AGES

NIGHT MOVES

PAGE 18

PAINS How warmer, wetter, wilder weather is compelling Vermont farmers to adapt

BY MELISSA PASAN EN , PAG E 28 28

Meet BTV-born rugby star Ilona Maher PAGE 34

SUMMER

PREVIEW

MODEL CITIZENS

Penny Cluse reborn at Deep City

ONION ROCK CITY

PAGE 42

STRUT! fashion show returns

PICKIN’ & GRINNIN’

PAGE 54

What to see at Waking Windows

PAGE 15

Greening up with the Trash Tramps

4

THE BIG SHORTBREAD

PAGE 34

WELCOME TO VT

WORRY GAMES

PAGE 54

Indie rocker Christina Schneider

Douglas Sweets thrives in Shelburne

LIGHTS OUT

PAGE 40

Role-playing a new Trump presidency

TWINKLE, TWINKLE

PAGE 42

A refresh at Starry Night Café

FROM THE HEART

LAWSON’S LATEST

What’s brewing with its new CEO PAGE 38

A week inside Vermont’s busiest courthouse reveals a judicial system plagued by delays

TRIALS & B Y DER EK B R O U W ER & L I A M EL DER - C O N N O R S , PA GE 26

AS EWE LIKE IT

PAGE 32

PAGE 40

Tasty treats at the Sheep Shop Café

Meet VT’s ace horse-training family

6. “Reel Drama: As Vermont Movie Theaters Respond to a Changing Industry, Burlington May Lose Its Only Cinema” by Mary Ann Lickteig. Merrill Jarvis III warned in August that his movie theater was imperiled. A few months later, he pulled the plug.

All That

JAZZ Amid criticism, Burlington Discover Jazz Festival looks to the future PAGE 28

Take seven: Can’t-miss shows at BDJF PAGE 32 Burlington celebrates late local sax icon Joe Moore PAGE 34

SUMMER ISSUE

FOREST FOR THE TREES

of our parenting magazine inside!

FANCY’S PLANTS

PAGE 15

Developer riles Burlington residents

State settles with man arrested for fl flipping off cop PAGE 18

PAGE 36

Veggies star at new BTV resto

BIRD IN HAND

Stutterers speak out in viral campaign PAGE 14

7. “Buyout Blues: Many Vermont Flood Victims Want FEMA to Purchase Their Damaged Homes. But Some Towns Are Saying No.” by Kevin McCallum. FEMA purchases and demolishes homes that have flooded repeatedly. But some municipalities won’t sign off because housing is scarce and they want the buildings on the tax rolls.

Cécile McLorin Salvant transcends musical eras PAGE 31

TRIBULATIONS

Burlington’s Rock Point welcomes the public PAGE 15 | New rules for wake boats PAGE 18 | Kingdom Trails expands PAGE 20 Can’t-miss summer events PAGE 31 | ˜ ree to six hours in Greensboro PAGE 35 Vermont City Marathon offers cash prize to nonbinary runners PAGE 39 | First Bite: Frankie’s in Burlington PAGE 44 Vermont author Glenn Stout goes Hollywood PAGE 50

PAGE 58

Chatting with Big ˜ ief’s Buck Meek

LISTEN UP

iSun goes bust PAGE 20

ALL FOR SHOWS

PAGE 28

OLYMPIC DREAMS

PAGE 20

YAY, L’ÉTÉ!

V E R MO N T’ S I N D E P E N D E N T V O I C E MAY 29-JUNE 5, 2024 VOL.29 NO.34 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

The

CUDDLE PARTY

The pet photo contest returns

PAGE 15

PAGE 4

Québec summer guide inside!

V E R MO N T’ S I N D E P E N D E N T V O I C E MAY 22-29, 2024 VOL.29 NO.33 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

BY D E RE K BRO UW E R & A LI S O N NO VA K , PA G E 2 6

V E R MO N T’ S I N D E P E N D E N T V O I C E MAY 15-22, 2024 VOL.29 NO.32 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

V E R MO N T’ S I N D E P E N D E N T V O I C E MAY 8-15, 2024 VOL.29 NO.31 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

V E R MO N T’ S I N D E P E N D E N T V O I C E MAY 1-8, 2024 VOL.29 NO.30 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

We’re Leaving ’

MAKING SPACES Spring Nest inside!

Bernie becomes chief critic of Israeli gov’t

ON A ROLL

GROWING

Winooski’s bargain real estate attracted a diverse group of residents for years. Now they’re being squeezed out.

PAGE 36

5. “Totally Transfixed: A Rare Eclipse on a Bluebird Day Dazzled Crowds in Northern Vermont” by Seven Days staff. Our writers headed to farms, mountains, parks and even a prison to capture a stunning, once-in-a-lifetime event.

WARNING SHOTS

BY

Dean adds intrigue intrigue° to governor’s race SPONSORED BY

BUCKET-O-AWESOME

The animal issue

BY MARY ANN LICKTEIG, PAGE 26

SCHOOLYARD SCUFFLE

‘

4. “We’re Leaving’: Winooski’s Bargain Real Estate Attracted a Diverse Group of Residents for Years. Now They’re Being Squeezed Out.” by Derek Brouwer & Alison Novak.

The Onion City was once a cheaper alternative to Burlington.

Now, soaring housing costs are forcing some residents who love the city to leave.

PAGE 14

V E R M O N T ’ S I N D E P E N D E N T V O I C E APRIL 17-24, 2024 VOL.29 NO.28 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

V E R M O N T ’ S I N D E P E N D E N T V O I C E APRIL 3-10, 2024 VOL.29 NO.26 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

V E R M O N T ’ S I N D E P E N D E N T V O I C E MARCH 27-APRIL 3, 2024 VOL.29 NO.25 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

HERE COMES THE...

PAGE 32

A Swift House Inn chef’s winding career

A former MMA fighte rehabs wildlife in Cabot

V E R MO N T’ S I N D E P E N D E N T V O I C E JUNE 5-12, 2024 VOL.29 NO.35 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

ON THE CLOCK

A sundial for eclipse enthusiasts

PASTRY PERFECTION

PAGE 30

UVM Swimming and Diving wins big

ANIMAL INSTINCTS

Haven’

PAGE 14

STROKE OF PLUCK

PAGE 14

How Mulvaney-Stanak won in BTV˜

PAGE 14

PAGE 26

‘Safe

DEMS THE BREAKS

10

VT mulls floo strategy

Vermonters in the gig economy

Vermont is considering controversial overdose-prevention sites.

Seven Days went to New York City to see one. BY K E VI N MC C A LLUM, PA G E 2 6

Progressive Emma Mulvaney-Stanak captures Burlington's mayoral seat and will be the first woman to lead the Queen City PAGE 5

HOLDING WATER

YOU’RE THE BOSS

PAGE 36

MADAM MAYOR

PAGE 46

Leahy photo exhibit in Montpelier

INN TROUBLE Emergency housing program under fire

PORCH SEASON

PAGE 15

WRITTEN IN STONE

PAGE 15

THE INN CROWD

PAGE 36

Meet Vermont’s new poet laureate

BLAST FROM THE PAST

PAGE 38

Breakfast at Shelburne Farms

PAGE 34

3 to 6 hours in VT’s birthplace

THE WILD SIDE

PAGE 38

Foraging for summer edibles

THAT’S THE SUFFS

PAGE 45

TRIBE VIBES

3

PAGE 32

It’s powwow season in Québec

NEW WHEELS

AVIAN ANXIETY

PAGE 36

Pawlet dairy takes on prize cheeses

iSUN SCREEN

PAGE 14

VT dairy herds brace for bird flu

INSIDE!

LAKE LIVING

PAGE 15

Whistleblower claims fraud

NO RESERVATIONS

PAGE 38

Meet chef-comedian Mo AlDoukhi

Flooding hits the NEK

V E R MO N T’ S I N D E P E N D E N T V O I C E JULY 17-24, 2024 VOL.29 NO.41 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

FIGHTING SPIRITS

PAGE 26

Vermonter in the “Ghost Army” of WWII

VE RM ONT’ S INDE PE NDE NT VOI CE AUGUST 7-14, 2024 VOL.29 NO.44 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

THE LOCALS’ GUIDE TO VERMONT brought to you by

A SKIFF TEST

PAGE 26

Take a day trip to Manchester

JAILHOUSE ROCK

PAGE 30

New seafood spot scores big

FROM COW TO CONE

PAGE 18

Another year, another flood

PAGE 36

A concert at Springfield prison

THE MAIN DRAG

Late-night eats in Burlington

Marshfield’s Jules Rabin celebrates a century of intellectual curiosity, trailblazing bread and standing up for peace

PAGE 40

B Y M EL I S S A PA S A N EN , PA GE 28

100 A bakeR’s

Oliver Stone at Midd fi film fest

Downtown Dilemma

REEL

DRAMA

As Vermont movie theaters respond to a changing industry, Burlington may lose its only cinema

BY MA RY ANN LICKTEIG, PA GE 24

Plagued by homelessness, drugs and safety concerns, Burlington tries to adapt to a new normal B Y C O U R T N EY L A M DI N , PA GE 24

PAYING A PREMIUM

ON THE DOUBLE

PAGE 14

Flood insurance rates spike in VT

PAGE 32

Look-alike meets Rod Stewart

GOOD APPLE

ARTS PREVIEW

PAGE 30

GARDEN PARTY

PAGE 34

Switchback Brewing expands

CRITICAL CONDITIONS

1

PAGE 15

Hospital workers in medical debt

FERMENT TO BE

FALL ISSUE

PAGE 34

ART OF STONE

PAGE 60

Fall Nest inside!

Surging cyber scams leave older Vermonters destitute, frustrated and saddled with tax debt

BY ALI SO N NO VAK, PAGE 2 8

the

Ballad

VE R M ON T’ S IND EP END ENT VOI C E OCTOBER 2-9, 2024 VOL.30 NO.1 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

VER M ONT ’S I NDE PE NDE NT VOIC E SEPTEMBER 25-OCTOBER 2, 2024 VOL.29 NO.51 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

V E R M ON T ’S I N DE P E ND E NT V OI CE SEPTEMBER 18-25, 2024 VOL.29 NO.50 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

To limit distractions and encourage student interaction, more Vermont schools are restricting the use of digital devices

To secure its future, the University of Vermont builds its research muscle

Bilked and Bereft

Hundreds of Afghan evacuees are cobbling together new lives in Vermont.

But they can’t help looking homeward.

A WORLD

AWAY

BY COLIN FLANDERS, ALISON NOVAK AND KEN PICARD PAGE 28

Of

Tom

banjo Tom Azarian to cranky shows, From folk songs storyteller is Vermont’s “vagabond”

BY D E R E K BR OU WE R

BY AN N E WAL L ACE AL L EN , PAG E 24

BY DAN BOLLES,

PRIDE PREDICAMENT

PAGE 50

PAGE 14

Antisemitism claims roil LGBTQ org

THE BIG ROLLOUT

PAGE 38

Gallus Handcrafted Pasta opens

SELLING POINT A workforce housing solution in Woodstock

IT’S SHOWTIME!

GUIDE INSIDE!

PAGE 24

Highlights of the 2024-25 season

BACKSTAGE BARGAINS

PAGE 33

Lyric Theatres epic costume sale

VER MON T’S I NDE PE NDE NT VOI CE OCTOBER 16-23, 2024 VOL.30 NO.3 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

Buyout Blues

TOSTADA TOWN

DEMOCRACY NOW

PAGE 40

Catch dinner and a show in Essex

CALL FOR BACKUP

GROWTH INDUSTRY

PAGE 15

PAGE 14

Voters’ Guide inside!

PAGE 29

TASTING TOUR

PAGE 34

New eats in St. Johnsbury

HELLUVA TRIP

PAGE 52

Hadestown returns home

Why did Dylan Russell buy 15 guns in 18 months?

“THE STRAW MAN,” BY JOE SEXTON page 26

AMAZING STORIES

7

PAGE 35

Rare comics collection goes to auction

SOLID GOLD

PAGE 40

New Italian-ish eats in Burlington

COP, OUT

A STANDUP GUY

Inside the Unnecessary Inventions studio PAGE 26 / The Espo ts Dojo trains young gamers PAGE 33 Eat Vermont launches AI-powered app PAGE 36 / Vermont venues combat ticket scammers PAGE 42

the

BEWARE OF DOG

14

LOOMING TRANSITION

PAGE 15

Mutt riles Burlington hood

PAGE 37

FLAVOR TOWNSHIPS

PAGE 37

15

KAMALA! KAMALA! KAMALA!

IT’S SHOWTIME! NIGHTMARE ON STATE ST. Lieutenant governor’s race gets nasty

SAT 10/26 • GUIDE INSIDE!

PAGE 14

SPELLS TROUBLE

PAGE 26

The sto y of VT’s only witch trial

SUNK COSTS

holidaY shoPping HandbooK

Burlington water fixe would double bills

PAGE 20

SWEATING EQUITY

PAGE 40

A food-lover’s day trip to Québec

Marshfield School of Weaving moves

PAGE 15

Tyeastia Green’s $7.5 million demand

GRAPE EXPECTATIONS

PAGE 42

Lincoln Peak Vineyard’s harvest helpers

PAGE 28

SOUNDS FUNNY

PAGE 58

VTSU launches “Weird Al” class

BALANCING ACT

Beta Technologies builds out manufacturing line PAGE 15 / Schools grapple with AI PAGE 20 PAGE 46

Talking to comedian Sheng Wang

GIFT GUIDE

BTV chief to step down

WILD CREATURE

Catching up with VT’s Neko Case

Republican gains shift power at the Statehouse PAGE 15

GUIDE INSIDE

BY KE V I N M CCALLU M • PA G E 2 2

Getting out the youth vote

PAGE 14

NOVEMBER 8-17

Many Vermont flood victims want FEMA to purchase their damaged homes. But some towns are saying no.

THE COLLEGE TRY

SUB-DIVIDED

Williston Rd. real estate squabble

Precision ag boosts farm production, curbs waste

Police oversight on BTV ballot again

PAGE 14

VER M ONT ’S I NDEP E NDEN T VOI CE OCTOBER 9-16, 2024 VOL.30 NO.2 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

ART HOP

MADE WITH SCARE

˜ e price of health care plans in Vermont has doubled in six years. ˜The prognosis for cost containment is grim.

B Y C O L I N F L A N DER S , PA GE 28

WINTER PREVIEW VT’S OWN SQUEAKER

PAGE 40

Meet costume maker Sophie Hood

Lt. gov race too close to call

PAGE 5

STATE OF AFFAIRS

PAGE 34

Vermont seniors look for love

AWAITING GAME

OFFICER UNFRIENDLY

PAGE 14

PAGE 14

INSIDE! VOL.XX NO.XX

BROUGHT TO YOU BY

GOOD CITIZENS AT THE STATEHOUSE

BUTTERNUT SQUASH RISOTTO RECIPE

FREE

WINTER 2024-25

FEEDING A FINICKY TODDLER

SAVE THE DATE: 7 SEASONAL EVENTS

BuNdLe

uP!

BTV weatherization goals in peril PAGE 14 / Noah Dines broke the uphill skiing record PAGE 26 Wood4Good delivers free firewood to families PAGE 33 / A local’s guide to winter in Montréal PAGE 36 What’s new at restaurants near the slopes PAGE 40 / Top winter events brighten the season ahead PAGE 46

PAGE 38

On the hunt for wild turkey

HARD LESSONS Lawmakers mull education property tax fixe

PAGE 15

WHOA, CANADA

VE R M ON T’ S IND EP END ENT VOI C E NOVEMBER 13-20, 2024 VOL.30 NO.7 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

SOUND RESTORATION

A Phish fan finds respite at Mondegree

V ER M ONT ’S IN DEP EN DENT V OI C E NOVEMBER 6-13, 2024 VOL.30 NO.6 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

PAGE 15

Greensboro housing plan draws ire

VER M ONT ’S I NDE PE NDE NT VOIC E OCTOBER 30-NOVEMBER 6, 2024 VOL.30 NO.5 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

TOWN HALL DEBATE

PAGE 14

VER M ONT ’S I NDEP E NDEN T VOI CE OCTOBER 23-30, 2024 VOL.30 NO.4 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

HEADY START

Cannabis studies at VTSU

”Porcupine Drinking Cocoa”

by Carmen Williams Manrique MORE STUDENT ART INSIDE!

The stories behind the stories that shaped the year PAGE 14

Many isolated seniors struggle to care for themselves in Vermont, and resources to help them are scant

BY RACHEL HELLMAN, PAGE 26

VE R MO NT’S I NDE P EN DE NT VOI CE DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025 VOL.30 NO.13 & 14 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

BY HANNAH FE UE R , PAGE 2 6

Acts of the Apostles

VER M ONT ’S IN DEP E NDE NT VOIC E DECEMBER 18-25, 2024 VOL.30 NO.12 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

Hats Off

Skida CEO Corinne Prevot started making colorful ski hats in high school.

Now, her beanies are turning heads in Vermont and beyond.

V E RM O NT ’S IN DE P E ND E NT V OI C E DECEMBER 11-18, 2024 VOL.30 NO.11 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

Aging Alone

INSIDE!

VER M ONT ’S I NDEP E NDE NT VOI CE DECEMBER 4-11, 2024 VOL.30 NO.10 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

Authentic Middle Eastern fare at Zaytoona PAGE 38

VE R MON T’ S INDE P END ENT VOI C E NOVEMBER 27-DECEMBER 4, 2024 VOL.30 NO.9 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

VER M ONT ’S I NDEP E NDE NT VOI CE NOVEMBER 20-27, 2024 VOL.30 NO.8 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

MEZZE MUNCHIES

WRAPPERS’ DELIGHT

2024 Holiday Gift Guide

Donald Trump’s return to the presidency could disrupt the way many Vermonters live PAGE 2 6

In Barre, dozens of people have perished in the opioid crisis.

Can a church for the addicted stem the losses?

CHANGING LANES?

PAGE 15

FARM TO FOOD SHELF

PAGE 34

New project grows access to local food

HARD HISTORY

PAGE 40

Holocaust exhibit opens in Stowe

11

KEEP CALM AND CARILLON Meet Middlebury College’s bell ringer

PAGE 14

OH HENRY’S

PAGE 42

BTV diner still sizzles

YULE LOVE IT

PAGE 44

Can’t-miss holiday shows

SNAKE, RATTLE & ROLL... into the year of the serpent!

BY J O E SE XTO N, PAGE 2 4

Deaths spur Shelburne Road debate

DISHING THE GOODS

PAGE 40

Stocking stuffer ideas for foodies

HIGHWAY HILARITY

PAGE 46

Who’s behind those funny VTrans signs?

BLAST CHRISTMAS

PAGE 58

A new star-studded VT holiday album

NOVEL APPROACH

PAGE 28

Touring the local bookstore scene

REQUIRED READING

PAGE 32

Book picks from Vermont authors

A KISS BEFORE FRYING

12. “Market Value: Burlington’s Remaining Corner Stores Double Down and Evolve” by Seven Days staff. From Dot’s to the Shopping Bag, these independent stores reflect their Queen City neighborhoods.

13. “Talk of the Towns: Neighbors Seek Plumbers, Lost Pets and Community on Front Porch Forum” by Colin Flanders, Rachel Hellman & Mary Ann Lickteig. Vermont’s own social media platform is civil, funny and neighborly — kinda like the people using it.

14. “Bilked and Bereft: Surging Cyber Scams Leave Older Vermonters Destitute, Frustrated and Saddled With Tax Debt” by Derek Brouwer. Seniors are susceptible to scammers who know their vulnerabilities. Turns out you have to pay taxes on stolen retirement funds.

BACKSTORIES

Grand Isle cop berated citizens

Winter fun in Québec PAGE 32

10. “Getting On: An Aging Population Is Transforming Vermont’s Schools, Workplaces and Communities” by Colin Flanders. Vermont has one of the oldest populations in the country, which has profound implications for the state.

This story kicked off our ongoing “This Old State” series.

11. “Hats Off: Skida CEO Corinne Prevot Started Making Colorful Ski Hats in High School. Now, Her Beanies Are Turning Heads in Vermont and Beyond.” by Hannah Feuer. The fun, colorful, local lids are catching on all over.

VIBES CHECK BTV bars on edge after shooting

Cabot orchard grows community

VER M ONT ’S I NDE PE NDE NT VOIC E SEPTEMBER 11-18, 2024 VOL.29 NO.49 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

VE R M ON T’ S IND EP END ENT VOI C E SEPTEMBER 4-11, 2024 VOL.29 NO.48 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

VE R MO NT ’S I N DE P EN DE NT VOI CE AUGUST 28-SEPTEMBER 4, 2024 VOL.29 NO.47 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

NO PHONE ZONES

6

INSIDE

For parents — and kids!

New owners at Flack Family Farm

PAGE 40

Dollars

9. “Order Up: What Vermont’s Classic American Diners Tell Us About the Current State of Restaurants” by Jordan Barry & Melissa Pasanen. After eating their way through local diners, our food writers report on the restaurants’ post-pandemic survival strategies.

PAGE 40

PAGE 34

BEYOND PIZZA

PERFORMING

Roadwork hinders Winooski restos

for Scholars

PAGE 38

How creemees are made

MOVIE BUFFET

Québec’s lavish floating chalets

TOURIST TRACK

PAGE 52

BITTER TORRENT

PAGE 14

Woman travels to VT to die

PAGE 5

BOREAL BUNGALOWS

Restoring forgotten roadside art

LAST RIGHTS

PAGE 32

Vermont primary results

PAGE 14

SCULPTURE PARKWAY

FLOUR POWER

King Arthur Baker’s Hotline to the rescue

THAT’S THE TICKET

BTV youth center abruptly closes

PAGE 18

V ER MO NT ’S I ND EP E ND ENT V OI CE JULY 31-AUGUST 7, 2024 VOL.29 NO.43 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

V ER MO NT ’S I ND EP E ND ENT V OI CE JULY 24-31, 2024 VOL.29 NO.42 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

PAGE 14

Men’s ashes buried in wrong grave

HOLBROOK HULLABALOO

BY C O L I N F L A N DERS & K EVI N MC C A LLU M, PAG E 2 6

PAGE 34

VT’s Olympic rowers head to Paris

PLOT TWIST

9

FOOD • DRINK • CULTURE • SHOPPING • SERVICES • RECREATION

Vermont’s local news publishers are endangered. Can they be saved?

ABROAD STROKES

PAGE 36

Visiting Newport, VT’s north coast

PAGE 14

“It was eye-opening that we “It “Itwas waseye-opening eye-openingthat thatwe we could lose that much money.” could couldlose losethat thatmuch muchmoney.” money.”

“It was eye-opening that we “It was was eye-opening eye-opening that that we we “It could lose that much money.” could lose lose that that much much money.” money.” could “It was eye-opening that we “It “Itwas waseye-opening eye-openingthat thatwe we could lose that much money.” could couldlose losethat thatmuch muchmoney.” money.”

“It was eye-opening that we “It was was eye-opening eye-opening that that we we “It could lose that much money.” could lose lose that that much much money.” money.” could BREAKING NEWS

8. “Noah’s Arc: Noah Kahan Is Vermont’s Biggest Cultural Export in Years. How the Hell Did That Happen?”

by Chris Farnsworth. Move over, maple syrup. Vermont’s hottest commodity is a guy who made “stick season” famous around the world.

BY RACHEL HELLMAN & ANNE WALLACE ALLEN PAGE 28

BY C HR I S FAR NSWO R TH

DANGER IN THE KINGDOM

DAM IT ALL

TOWN

Moving on from its industrial past, St. Johnsbury is attracting young entrepreneurs and building a vibrant downtown ˜

B Y J O R DA N B A R RY & M EL I S S A PA S A N EN , PA GE 28 28

Burlington’s semipro soccer team is winning on and off the fi field

BY M ARY ANN LI C KTE I G, PAGE 2 6

Vermonter takes two Tonys

Farms reeling˜ from another˜ summer flood

TURNAROUND

What Vermont’s classic American diners tell us about the current state of restaurants

GREEN DREAM

With a run of concerts at Trapp Family Lodge, The Sound of Music comes home

V E R MO N T’ S I N D E P E N D E N T V O I C E JULY 10-17, 2024 VOL.29 NO.40 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

HILLS AreALIVE

V ER MO NT ’S I ND EP E ND ENT V OI CE AUGUST 14-21, 2024 VOL.29 NO.45 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

VT’S “WATER” GATE

State rep caught dousing rival’s bag

T he

VE RM ONT’ S INDE PE NDE NT VOI CE AUGUST 21-28, 2024 VOL.29 NO.46 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

& BOLDER PAGE 28

V E R MO N T’ S I N D E P E N D E N T V O I C E JULY 3-10, 2024 VOL.29 NO.39 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

Vermont’s seniors are hiking, raising crops redefining what and redefi it means to age well

V E R MO N T’ S I N D E P E N D E N T V O I C E JUNE 26-JULY 3, 2024 VOL.29 NO.38 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

OLDER

V E R MO N T’ S I N D E P E N D E N T V O I C E JUNE 19-26, 2024 VOL.29 NO.37 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

V E R MO N T’ S I N D E P E N D E N T V O I C E JUNE 12-19, 2024 VOL.29 NO.36 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

Summer Nest inside!

OORDE RDER UP

2. “The Fight for Decker Towers: Drug Users and Homeless People Have Overrun a Low-Income High-Rise. Residents Are Gearing Up to Evict Them.” by Derek Brouwer. Homeless people, some of them addicted to drugs, have sought shelter in this complex for low-income and disabled tenants.

3. “The Hills Are Alive: With a Run of Concerts at Trapp Family Lodge, ‘The Sound of Music’ Comes Home” by Mary Ann Lickteig. The hills around Stowe are alive with ... You guessed it. Lyric Theatre and the Vermont Symphony Orchestra played tribute to the musical on the land where the von Trapps settled.

B Y DA N B O L L ES , PA GE 24

V E R M O N T ’ S I N D E P E N D E N T V O I C E APRIL 24-MAY 1, 2024 VOL.29 NO.29 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

HAIL TO THE QUEENS

PAGE 38

Romance at Michael’s on the Hill

Baird Farm revels in maple open house

BURIED SECRETS

SOLAR POWERED

Kids VT Spring Issue inside!

As the solar eclipse approaches, Vermont astronomer and meteorologist Mark Breen is having his moment in the sun

BY DEREK BROUWER , PA G E 2 6

KEEPING IT CLASSY

PAGE 32

Crowdsourcing dating red flags

Searching for psych hospital graves

V E R M ONT ’S I ND E P E ND E NT V OI C E MARCH 13-20, 2024 VOL.29 NO.23 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

V E R M ONT ’S I ND E P E ND E NT V OI C E MARCH 6-13, 2024 VOL.29 NO.22 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

V E R M ONT ’S I ND E P E ND E NT V OI C E FEBRUARY 28-MARCH 6, 2024 VOL.29 NO.21 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

In Vermont and beyond, Green Mountain comedy has come of age

Eye on This Guy

In Burlington’s mayoral contest, Joan°Shannon˜andEmma Mulvaney-Stanak are mostly˜focused on one issue: public safety˜

SWEET TRADITION

V E R M O N T ’ S I N D E P E N D E N T V O I C E MARCH 20-27, 2024 VOL.29 NO.24 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

Key to the

Queen City

Shtick Season

V E R M O N T ’ S I N D E P E N D E N T V O I C E APRIL 10-17, 2024 VOL.29 NO.27 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

GOOD GOSSIP?

PAGE 15

The Fight for Decker Towers

Drug users and homeless people have overrun a low-income high-rise.

Residents are gearing up to evict them.

LOVE & MARRIAGE ISSUE

DEMON IN THE SHEETS

Anti-snoring device may save relationships

VERM ONT’S INDEP ENDENT VOICE FEBRUARY 21-28, 2024 VOL.29 NO.20 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

V E R M O N T ’ S I N DE P E N DE N T V O I C E FEBRUARY 14-21, 2024 VOL.29 NO.19 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

V E R M ONT ’S I ND E P E ND E NT V OI C E FEBRUARY 7-14, 2024 VOL.29 NO.18 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

BROUGHT TO YOU BY

“Downtown Dilemma: Plagued by Homelessness, Drugs and Safety Concerns, Burlington Tries to Adapt to a New Normal”

by Courtney Lamdin. While society’s ills are on display in Burlington’s core, life goes on in and around the city’s stores, churches and public spaces.

PAGE 40

Dig into a cookbook-inspired mystery

DOUBLE ISSUE!

Remembering Vermonters who died in 2024 PAGE 32 Our favorite bites and sips PAGE 50 / Photographic highlights PAGE 58 Hidden-gem art galleries PAGE 68 / The best Vermont music of 2024 PAGE 72

15. “The Straw Man: Over 18 Months, Dylan Russell Bought 15 Firearms in Vermont, Exposing the Intense Drugs-for-Guns Trade” by Joe Sexton. One man’s illegal purchases illustrate the relationship between the illicit drugs that flow into the state and the guns that are exported.

(Headlines on web versions of our stories may be slightly different than what appeared in the print newspaper.)

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D I G I TA L & V I D E O    Bryan Parmelee    Eva Sollberger   James Buck /  Jeff Baron DESIGN   Don Eggert   Rev. Diane Sullivan   John James  Jeff Baron SALES & MARKETING    Colby Roberts    Robyn Birgisson   Michelle Brown, Logan Pintka,

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SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

12/11/24 3:58 PM Seven Days | 1/3 page ad | for 12.18.24 + 12.26.24

3v-ChamplainHOusing(bay ridge)121824 1

C I R C U L AT I O N : 3 5 , 0 0 0 Seven Days is published by Da Capo Publishing Inc. every Wednesday. It is distributed free of charge in greater Burlington, Middlebury, Montpelier, the Northeast Kingdom, Stowe, the Mad River Valley, Rutland, St. Albans, St. Johnsbury and White River Junction.

Seven Days is printed at Quebecor Media Printing in Mirabel, Québec.

DELIVERY TECHNICIANS Harry Applegate, Joe Bouffard, Pat Bouffard, Colin Clary, Julie Copley, Elana Coppola-Dyer, Becky Gates, Matt Hagen, Russ Hagy, Nat Michael, Frankie Moberg, Liam Mulqueen-Duquette, Dan Nesbitt, Dan Oklan, Ezra Oklan, Matt Perry, Danielle Schneider, Andy Watts, Tracey Young With additional circulation support from PP&D. SUBSCRIPTIONS 6- 1 : $158. 1- 1 : $250.

Please call 802-865-1020, ext. 132 with your credit card, contact circ@sevendaysvt.com or mail your check to: Seven Days, c/o Subscriptions, 255 S. Champlain St., Ste. 5, Burlington, VT 05401 Seven Days shall not be held liable to any advertiser for any loss that results from the incorrect publication of its advertisement.

If a mistake is ours, and the advertising purpose has been rendered valueless, Seven Days may cancel the charges for the advertisement, or a portion thereof as deemed reasonable by the publisher. Seven Days reserves the right to refuse any advertising, including inserts, at the discretion of the publishers.

©2024 Da Capo Publishing Inc. All rights reserved.

A SPOONFUL OF HUMOR’

Here’s to Rachel Noyes of the Vermont Agency of Transportation, who clearly understands that a spoonful of humor helps the healthy driving guidance go down [“Signs of the Times: VTrans Makes the Season Bright — and Safe — With Funny Highway Slogans,” December 11]!

Nice to see another Vermont hero in the Seven Days spotlight. Thanks for reminding us of the pundamentals of traffic safety. Hope you can come up with something to calm some of the cowboys on I-89!

Bridget Ahrens

WINOOSKI

‘YOUR BIAS IS SHOWING’

“Hanging in the Balance” [December 11], regarding president-elect Donald Trump, is misleading, one-sided and filled with fearmongering.

First: You use words like Trump “could” and “may” to push fear and support your agenda and do not allow for any other viewpoints but your own.

If I were allowed more than a 250-word response to this large, multipage article, I would gladly break down each section, tell you why I voted for Trump, and share my viewpoints regarding migrants, LGBTQ+, drugs, pollution, schools, health care, tips and more. Your truths and opinions are not everyone’s.

Careful: Your journalistic bias is showing.

Bonnie Barrows

BRISTOL

UNITED STATES OF NEW ENGLAND?

I am stunned, as are many, that Donald Trump won the election to return to the White House. [“Hanging in the Balance,” December 11] does an excellent job of listing the concerns. I respect those who may have voted for him, but I cannot in my own mind reconcile a liar and convicted felon holding that position. The six New England states, with their Electoral College votes, agree.

Perhaps, rather than a wall along the Mexican border, we should erect one around New England to keep Trump and his loyalists (not already living in New England) out. (Did Trump ever pay the Flynn for the use of that venue in January 2016?) There are a lot of smart people in

medical care, and I urge UVM to find a way to keep this facility open, for the benefit of our family members, friends and community.

Danielle Kangas

MONTPELIER

‘RUINING A GREAT CITY’

New England who could figure out logistics, finances, protection and other factors so that New England would survive with such a border wall!

Roger Crouse

SHELBURNE

WEALTHY PAY PLENTY

The state legislature’s plan to alleviate the property tax crisis by shifting education funding from property taxes to income taxes is nothing more than a shell game [“Vermont Teachers’ Union Pitches Income Tax to Fund Education,” November 22]. VT-National Education Association political director Colin Robinson says this would result in the wealthy paying “their fair share,” but the plan would have enormous unintended consequences that would ultimately adversely affect all Vermonters.

The wealthiest 1 percent of Vermont taxpayers currently pay 26 percent of the state’s total income tax revenue, and the top 10 percent pay nearly 60 percent, or six times their proportional share. While few would disagree with a progressive tax structure, Vermont already has one of the highest state income tax and property tax rates in the country. So many wealthy-ish former Vermont taxpayers have fled to tax-free Florida that Naples, Fla., is now sometimes jokingly referred to as “southern Vermont.” Driving even more high-income taxpayers out of the state is not the answer.

In short, Vermont doesn’t have a revenue problem; it has a spending problem. We currently spend more per student than any other state in the nation except New York (56 percent more than

the national average), and yet our test scores have been falling steadily since 2013. Vermont needs to look hard at creating union schools, consolidating school boards, sharing administration and other resources, and generally making hard decisions that have been kicked down the road too long. Simply shifting the cost to “others” ignores the real work to be done.

Dan Morris

SHELBURNE

PSYCH UNIT IS CRUCIAL

[Re “UVM Health Network Announces Service Cuts, Blames Regulators,” November 14, online]: I am a new clinician working toward becoming a licensed clinical psychologist in the state of Vermont, and I oppose the closing of the Central Vermont Medical Center psychiatric unit as an underdeveloped response to the limits the Green Mountain Care Board placed on the University of Vermont Health Network revenue.

Inpatient psychiatric units are vital to our community and something that cannot be sufficiently replaced by any urgent care facility and, more obviously, a trip to an overloaded emergency department. I, and many of my fellow clinicians, have worked with clients that have been profoundly helped by a stay in an inpatient setting. Some of them are still alive today because of that stay. An inpatient stay provides stability, safety to themselves and others, and access to psychiatry, therapy and other resources while going through a mental health crisis or an increase in their symptomology.

Mental health care is just as vital as

Burlington Progs: Well, you’re well on your way to accomplishing a goal that some of you wished for: abolishing the police. Your votes, overemphasis on negative stories and lack of foresight have now caused an effective police chief to announce his resignation [“Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad to Resign Next Year,” November 19, online].

Chief Jon Murad tried, but you made his position and that of the department almost untenable.

The Burlington City Council Progressives, who seem beholden to a rigid ideology that doesn’t adapt to facts on the ground, are on their way to ruining a great city. A shame.

Nothing I can do about it other than sympathize with those who aren’t captive to your agenda and avoid going downtown after dark.

Cannabis Dispensary

Happy Holidays to One and All!

10 Railroad Street, Suite B, Morrisville

802-851-8735 Hours: Mon-Sat 11am-7pm Sunday 11am- 4pm Cannabis has not been analyzed or approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). For use by individuals 21 years of age and older or registered qualifying patient only. KEEP THIS PRODUCT AWAY FROM CHILDREN AND PETS. DO NOT USE IF PREGNANT OR BREASTFEEDING. Possession or use of cannabis may carry significant legal penalties in some jurisdictions and under federal law. It may not be transported outside of the state of Vermont. The effects of edible cannabis may be delayed by two hours or more. Cannabis may be habit forming and can impair concentration, coordination, and judgment. Persons 25 years and younger may be more likely to experience harm to the developing brain. It is against the law to drive or operate machinery when under the influence of this product. National Poison Control Center 1-800-222-1222.

Rob Mann

COLCHESTER

GG8v-wildlegacy112724.indd 1

11/13/24 12:37 PM

IS BURLINGTON ABOVE THE LAW?

On November 18, the Burlington City Council passed a resolution and an ordinance which would ban possession of firearms in any establishment that sells liquor [“Burlington Will Try Again to Ban Guns in Bars,” November 19, online]. By taking those two actions, the Burlington City Council broke Vermont law.

The law, 24 VSA § 2295, is clear: No city, town or village can pass an ordinance or resolution that regulates the possession or carrying of firearms.

In creating that statute, the legislature wisely decided that Vermont would not FEEDBACK

» P.28

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contents DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

VOL.30 NO.13 & 14

COLUMNS

SECTIONS

10 Magnificent 14 12 From the Publisher 101 Ask the Reverend

50 Food + Drink 58 Culture 66 On Screen 68 Art 72 Music + Nightlife 80 Calendar 86 Classes 87 Classifieds + Puzzles 97 Fun Stuff 100 Personals

101

FOOD+ DRINK 50 Simply the Best

Seven Days food writers share their favorite bites and sips of 2024

50

STUCK IN VERMONT

Online Now

COVER DESIGN REV. DIANE SULLIVAN • IMAGE ROB DONNELLY

14

58

NEWS+POLITICS 14

ARTS+CULTURE 58

Backstories

Starry Eyed

Seven Days writers show their work from a year of local storytelling

FEATURES 32 Life Stories

Remembering Vermonters who died in 2024

8H-VTBook122624 1

A surprisingly sentimental photographic review of 2024

Deux Ex Machina

The end of an era, too many sequels and more from the year in film

73

Best of 2024

The best Vermont albums, singles and music videos of 2024

SUPPORTED BY: Seven Days senior multimedia producer Eva Sollberger looks back on the highlights of the past year and is joined by her 90-year-old mom, Sophie Quest. Sollberger also remembers friends who have been featured in videos and died in 2024.

Happy holidays to everyone. Wishing you a wonderful New Year!

Intelligent Agitation

Gogol Bordello’s Eugene Hütz is ready for the revolution as he launches his new record label

Little Boxes

Six Vermont art venues to keep an eye on in 2025

12/12/24 10:49 AM

8h-Perrywinkles112024 1

We have

Find a new job in the classifieds section on page 92 and online at jobs.sevendaysvt.com.

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

9

11/18/24 5:55 PM

MAGNIFICENT

ONGOING

SIGHT-SPECIFIC The 2024-2025 Curated Program at the newly minted Mill in Westport, N.Y., brings museumquality contemporary art to the region. Curated

by Catherine Ross Haskins, the exhibition displays works by Amy Ellingson, Adam Frelin, Stephen Hendee, Jillian Mayer and Ann Toebbe throughout the building’s unique gallery spaces.

MUST SEE, MUST DO THIS WEEK COMPI L E D BY REBECCA DRISCOL L

SEE GALLERY LISTING AT SEVENDAYSVT.COM/ART

“Buisine” by Stephen Hendee

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Early Bird Special COURTESY OF STEPH CRAIG

The Montshire Museum of Science in Norwich offers New Year’s at Noon for wee ones who desire that celebratory ringing-in experience — a little bit early. The morning features hands-on family activities, plus New Year’s countdowns every hour, on the hour, until noon. Revelers are invited to dress creatively (jammies and glitter encouraged!) to usher in 2025 with style.

SEE CALENDAR LISTING ON PAGE 81

TUESDAY 31 TUESDAY 31

Once in a Lifetime Talking Heads tribute band Start Making Sense bring the funky new-wave vibes to Higher Ground in South Burlington for an epic New Year’s Eve show fit to burn down the house. The band, fronted by David Byrne doppelgänger Jon Braun, faithfully re-creates the group’s genius, expertly executing all of its most danceable, quirky hits of the ’80s and beyond.

SEE CLUB LISTING ON PAGE 77

Get Your Fixe Gastronomes buckle up for a New Year’s Eve Dinner at Barr Hill distillery in Montpelier. The prix fixe menu of five delectable courses — including a chef’skiss surprise course — serves up brown butter Tom Cat gougères, Maine crab cakes and seared yellowfin tuna. Paired with a cocktail or two, there’s no better way to kick-start 2025. Word to the wise: Wear stretchy pants!

SEE CALENDAR LISTING ON PAGE 82

TUESDAY 31

SEE CLUB LISTING ON PAGE 77

BROWSE THE FULL CALENDAR, ART SHOWS, AND MUSIC+NIGHTLIFE LISTINGS AT SEVENDAYSVT.COM.

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SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

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The Hunger Mountain Winter Bird Count allows Waterbury-area birders to contribute to the longest-running community science project in Vermont.

The count began in 1900 when an ornithologist posed an alternative to the traditional Christmas side hunt (no shotguns necessary). Now in its 125th season, volunteers continue to provide invaluable data on feathered friends.

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Bird’s the Word

Favorite local roots group Dave Keller Band play party tunes with enough energy to tear the roof off of Bent Nails Bistro in Montpelier. Folks don their dapper dancin’ shoes and boogie down while Keller belts out soulful blues and slings some fiery guitar. For a New Year’s Eve shindig to remember, look no farther than Langdon Street.

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LOOKING FORWARD

TUESDAY 31

FRIDAY 3 & SATURDAY 4

Ballin’ Out

It Takes a Village

New Year’s Eve With Joe’s Big Band at Middlebury’s Town Hall Theater includes a Champagne toast for those who imbibe and a swing dance lesson for those who jive. Founded in the ’80s by local legend Joe Levesque, the 17-piece jazz ensemble continues to dazzle listeners with a dynamic repertoire ranging from funk to the Great American Songbook.

All events are family-friendly and free at Cabot Village’s annual 12th Night Celebration.

The two-day festival marks the end of Christmas with an array of activities for all ages — from a Newfoundland ugly stickmaking workshop to a winter woods scavenger hunt. Don’t miss Saturday evening’s magical sunset lantern parade. (Bring those ugly sticks!)

SEE CALENDAR LISTING ON PAGE 82

SEE CALENDAR LISTING ON PAGE 83

TUESDAY 31

SATURDAY 4

Drop the Ball

Be Sharp

First Night North spreads New Year cheer all across St. Johnsbury, with shuttles running loops around town so that no one misses out. If your bedtime happens to be before midnight, don’t fret: Festivities begin before sundown and include vaudeville acts, circus performances, storytelling and magic. For you night owls, a midnight dance party awaits after the ball drop.

Marty Fogel’s Mixed Bag Quartet assume the spotlight at the Phoenix in Waterbury to play original jazz compositions from Fogel’s 2023 double album, Now and Then. The multi-instrumentalist — a deft saxophone, clarinet and flute player — has many claims to fame, including the fact that he spent several years taking a walk on the wild side with legendary rocker Lou Reed’s band.

SEE CALENDAR LISTING ON PAGE 82

SEE CALENDAR LISTING ON PAGE 84

WEDNESDAY 1

SATURDAY 4 & SUNDAY 5

Summit All Up

To the Pointe

Vermont State Parks’ First Day Hikes are a statewide effort to usher in the New Year on the right foot — outdoors! Park entry is free all winter long, but January 1 is a particularly good day to get outside on a guided hike. No matter where you live in the Green Mountain State, a park trailhead surely isn’t far. As Jack Kerouac would say, “Climb that goddamn mountain.”

Billings Farm & Museum presents Chelsea McMullan’s immersive 2023 documentary, Swan Song, as part of the Woodstock Vermont Film Series. The film affords audience members a behind-the-scenes look at the National Ballet of Canada’s new production of Swan Lake, while simultaneously challenging the outdated — yet seemingly dug-in — dance ideals of body type, class and race.

SEE CALENDAR LISTING ON PAGE 83

SEE CALENDAR LISTING ON PAGE 84

WEDNESDAY 1

Roll Over, Beethoven The Green Mountain Mahler Festival Orchestra & Chorus take the stage at Elley-Long Music Center in Colchester for a stirring performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Conductor Daniel Bruce and talented vocal soloists make this “Ode to Joy” a classical concert to remember all year long.

SEE CALENDAR LISTING ON PAGE 83

THROUGH JANUARY 7

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Edgewater Gallery at Middlebury Falls’ “Color Dance” group show is a juried art competition showcasing the work of fine artists carefully selected by Terry Norton-Wright. Through paint, mixed media, photography and other mediums, the artists interpret the theme of color in extraordinary and diverse ways.

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Behind the Backstories I don’t edit as many Seven Days articles as I used to. But one annual editorial project is still my baby: wrangling “Backstories” from our writing staff.

In 2017 I had the idea of asking our reporters to review their work from the past year with an eye toward personal parts that didn’t make it into the final version — for example, mishaps that might have occurred in the course of reporting.

It took some coaxing. A lot of reporters are shy, it turns out — unlike me.

But I think they’ve finally gotten the hang of it. This year — like the seven before it — I got to receive each backstory in my inbox, revel in its behind-the-scenes insights and watch the collective story grow into a compelling, almost 12,000-word read.

While writing is a mostly solo venture, conducting the individual voices of our reporting staff into a polished package is satisfying, akin to listening to a good chorus.

Starting on the next page, you’ll hear Derek Brouwer’s clever excuses for missing deadlines and how procrastinating actually helped him find the subjects of his cover story on senior scams. Visual art editor Alice Dodge meditates on taking over for her predecessor, Seven Days cofounder Pamela Polston. And Colin Flanders reveals that, while working on his cover story about the alarming rise in health care costs in Vermont, he underwent surgery himself.

Ideally, the backstories remind readers of some of our most important work of the year. Absent from the group, though, is Derek’s exposé on the horrendous living conditions in Decker Towers, the 11-story Burlington high-rise that houses low-income seniors and disabled adults.

When Derek followed up on a tip last winter, he found that dozens of people who didn’t live in the building were entering daily to buy or use drugs, often passing out in the stairwells. Decker’s 160 residents pleaded with city officials and the housing authority that runs the building for more security. In desperation, a group of them began to arm themselves with knives and stun guns to patrol the hallways on their own.

When I asked Derek for an end-of-year backstory about it, he said he’d put everything into “The Fight for Decker Towers,” published on February 14. Whatever personal material was left — how he and photographer James Buck earned the trust of the residents and spent some very uncomfortable days and nights observing the place — he felt I had covered in this column at the time.

That’s an unfortunate effect of my weekly note to readers. But it’s worth cannibalizing year-end material to explain, every seven days, who we are and what it takes to publish this newspaper.

One thing we always need? Money: to pay the writers, editors, proofreaders, designers, sales staff, video journalist, digital team, health insurance, printer, landlord, etc. Most of it still comes from the businesses that advertise with us. I suspect that’s not just because we deliver results, but also because they understand how Seven Days connects our community. Our 2024 advertisers were listed in last week’s edition. Patronize them, please; we are all in this together.

Increasingly, too, we are counting on readers to pitch in to support

SEVEN DAYS, ONE YEAR 2024 BY THE NUMBERS *

10,754

Listings for concerts, art shows, talks and other events — each one painstakingly crafted by our writers

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Signed, verified, published letters to the editor written by Vermonters of all political persuasions

“Stuck in Vermont” episodes shot this year. The most popular, “Living Sustainably,” documents Eva Sollberger’s visit to the Jericho homestead of Birch Hill Sugarworks owners Ann Gnagey and Tom Baribault.

Her 723rd video story, it garnered 80,000+ views.

1,892

Super Reader donors FILE: JAMES BUCK

Residents of Decker Towers

them up around the office to remind us that people actually read what we write. These heartfelt messages inspire us to “Press On,” as our bumper stickers say. The accompanying “by-thenumbers” sidebar offers some offbeat measures of how we’re doing.

Enjoy this year-end double issue, which also contains a roundup of memorable images from the year and “Life Stories,” our annual collection of reported obituaries of some noteworthy Vermonters who died in 2024. The next Seven Days hits the streets on January 8, 2025.

the paper. The income from our generous Super Readers, whose names appear on page 30 of this issue, has almost doubled this year, supplying weekly revenue we can rely on to fund everything we do, from comprehensive event listings to enterprising journalism.

Major donors and foundations provided financial support in 2024 through our fiscal sponsors: Journalism Funding Partners and the GroundTruth Project, the administrative arm of the Report for America program. They’ve enabled our employee-owned business to qualify for philanthropic dollars to fund investigative journalism, Paula Routly rural reporting, arts and culture coverage, and our youth civics project, the If you like Seven Days and can help pay for it, Good Citizen Challenge. become a Super Reader!

If you’re interested in Look for the “Donate” button at the top of sevendaysvt.com. Or send a check with your making a tax-deductible address and contact info to: donation of $2,000 or more to any of these SEVEN DAYS, C/O SUPER READERS P.O. BOX 1164 causes, please get in touch BURLINGTON, VT 05402-1164 with deputy publisher Cathy Resmer at cathy@ For more information on making a financial contribution to Seven Days, please contact sevendaysvt.com.

Gillian English: Cathy also collects the kind notes people send in VOICEMAIL: 802-865-1020, EXT. 115 EMAIL: SUPERREADERS@SEVENDAYSVT.COM with their checks and puts

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Advertisers

Number of first-place awards Seven Days won in regional and national journalism contests

1,200+

Postings on Seven Days Jobs

70

Local gifts featured in Seven Days’ 2024 Holiday Gift Guide

1,315

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Activities completed by kids in Seven Days’ summer Good Citizen Challenge

Guest appearances by Seven Days writers and editors in local schools and colleges

228

Food features, reviews and news

119

Reviews of local albums

79

Visual art reviews and features

184

Comments on the New York Times article about Seven Days — before the moderators shut them off.

See “Dating App Fatigue?

In Vermont, Personal Ads Still Thrive,” published on November 25, 2024.

*And counting!

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

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FILE: LUKE AWTRY

BACKSTORIES

2024

Seven Days writers show their work from a year of local storytelling

BY SE VE N DAYS STAFF

S

o much of journalism is about the now and the what’s to come that we often race to the next story without stopping to honor the minor miracles and quiet heroics that produced the last one. But if you sift through a year of storytelling at Seven Days, it’s not hard to come up with a brimming trove of such narrative leftovers, glistening remnants from the jeweler’s worktable.

Each year, we gather up these lively bits and bundle them as “Backstories,” behindthe-scenes accounts of our published articles — the odd origins, sudden twists, mid-reporting freak-outs and affecting epilogues. Rummaging in the margins yields outtakes that are personal, self-effacing and often funny. They are also as revealing about our profession as the published stories themselves.

This year’s collection makes clear how far Seven Days writers will go to get the best story. Reporter Kevin McCallum ventured to New York City to visit a safe-injection site, as Vermont officials debated overdoseprevention strategies. Culture writer Hannah Feuer was pressed into service as a costumed extra when she arrived to cover the filming of a Christmas movie. Derek Brouwer showed an instinct for the unsung when he veered from the crowds at Burlington’s main eclipse-watching party to share totality with a traffic flagger. And there should be a separate

category for food editor Melissa Pasanen, who found an inventive way to extend her interview session with a 100-year-old activist and former baker: by joining him in a nap — in a separate room, of course.

If angst is more your thing, Mary Ann Lickteig conjures the jolts of panic produced by recording glitches and a fiercely protective publicist as she pursued a cover piece about Shaina Taub, the Vermont-girl-makes-goodon-Broadway creator of Suffs. Colin Flanders fought sleeplessness before publication on behalf of a former Afghan fighter he was profiling for a package of stories about recent Afghan evacuees in Vermont. Music editor Chris Farnsworth was vexed by a different problem: how to report a cover story on Noah Kahan when the über-popular folk singer wouldn’t be available to talk to him.

It’s not all stress and strain, however.

Read along as veteran writer Ken Picard gamely accepted a freshly rolled fatty while he talked on the air with the host of a cannabis podcast he was writing about. Ken does not mention a nap.

RUMMAGING IN THE MARGINS YIELDS OUTTAKES THAT ARE PERSONAL, SELF-EFFACING AND OFTEN FUNNY.

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K E N E L L I N G WO O D Ken Ellingwood, a Seven Days consulting editor, is a former Los Angeles Times correspondent and the author, most recently, of First to Fall: Elijah Lovejoy and the Fight for a Free Press in the Age of Slavery.

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

Noah Kahan

BIGGEST ‘HOLE’

“Noah’s Arc: Noah Kahan Is Vermont’s Biggest Cultural Export in Years.

How the Hell Did That Happen?”

There was one big problem with crafting a cover story about the meteoric rise of Vermont native Noah Kahan: He wasn’t likely to be in it.

I’d interviewed the folk singer from Strafford back in 2022, just as he was releasing his breakthrough album Stick Season, and it was a pretty simple affair.

We both hopped on a Zoom call and talked music, soccer and therapy for 45 minutes or so. I wrote about it in my column, and that was that.

Flash forward one year, and Kahan was coming off a wildly successful 2023 full of chart-topping hits and sold-out world tours. Landing an interview was no longer an easy prospect. His management politely let me know that Kahan wouldn’t be available to talk about his Grammy nomination for Best New Artist, or anything else, until later in the year, after his tour was finished.

To add to my torment, Kahan and his oeuvre had become omnipresent. At first, I thought it was just a Vermont thing — I’d hear “Hurt Somebody” at a restaurant in Waterbury, or I’d see someone wearing a Stick Season T-shirt on the trail while hiking. Soon, though, his songs were dogging my steps everywhere. At a rest stop in upstate New York, “Northern Attitude” played while I pumped gas. I recorded a podcast episode with a friend in Virginia, ostensibly to talk about the modern cost of being a touring musician, and I ended up answering Noah Kahan questions for most of an hour. Catching a few Zs in LaGuardia Airport after a missed connection, I was treated to a 2 a.m. “Dial Drunk.”

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Did I mention my editors were determined? Seven Days had to explain how this had happened. They proposed writing the cover story about Kahan … without Kahan.

The Kahan phenom. Talk to other people about him, they advised. As veteran journalist Joe Sexton told our team: “Write into the hole.”

I had never faced this specific reporting challenge, but I let myself be convinced. I talked to Kahan’s high school soccer coach, music therapists, die-hard fans known as Busyheads, venue owners, record shop clerks, DJs, even the head of the University of Vermont Children’s Hospital, which had hosted Kahan for a fundraiser earlier in the year. It was like creating a negativespace painting by using the experience and stories of others to produce a strange, slightly removed portrait of a native son turned rising rock star.

As I sifted through the testimonies, I began to understand that the story wasn’t so much about Kahan himself but the reaction to his ascension. Not since the Vermont band Phish made it big had the state seen such a cultural success story.

Although it’s not ideal, obviously, to have a Kahan-size void in a story about him, it put the focus on how his songs connect with fans, many of whom find solace in the way he sings about his own struggles with mental health. I found no shortage of Vermonters beaming with pride that one of their own had sold out Madison Square Garden.

Still, I hope he answers the phone next time!

C HRI S FARN S W O RT H

2024backstories Dem-controlled district. Ward 4 was next, with Shannon notching about 600 more votes than Mulvaney-Stanak.

That’s when I got the first prickle of doubt: In the last mayoral contest, Ward 4 voters gave Democrat incumbent Miro Weinberger just over 900 more votes than his Progressive competitor, Max Tracy.

Shannon would need to make up some ground, but she didn’t: The next three wards reporting — 1, 2 and 8 — all went to Mulvaney-Stanak. Our office’s election night Slack channel was blowing up. “Emma’s going to win,” one of my colleagues wrote.

From my perch at a counter, I could see Shannon supporters coming to the same conclusion. Animated discussions had turned to quiet confabs, and Shannon remained conspicuously absent. Bartenders were still slinging drinks, but the mood inside the pub was decidedly sober.

WORST CALL

“Emma Mulvaney-Stanak Wins Burlington Mayoral Race” I’m not in the business of predicting elections, but for Burlington’s mayoral race on Town Meeting Day, it was a job requirement. I had to choose which candidate was most likely to win so I could capture the moment when the city elected its first-ever woman mayor. It would be either Democrat Joan Shannon or Progressive Emma Mulvaney-Stanak.

After weeks of covering the campaigns, I thought Shannon had the edge. In a race defined by concerns about public safety, she had an endorsement from the police union, whereas Progs were still being lambasted for leading the 2020 vote to scale back the size of the force. Mulvaney-Stanak wasn’t on the council then, but even she had acknowledged that her party’s label could harm her at the polls.

I strode into Team Joan’s gathering at Halvorson’s Upstreet Café that night feeling fairly confident in my calculus. But as the night wore on, it became clear that I’d picked the wrong party.

Shannon hadn’t yet arrived by the time polls closed at 7 p.m., but her supporters were starting to pack the place.

Bartenders were serving up specialty drinks such as All Hands on Deck, a gin and tonic rebranded with Shannon’s campaign slogan. People were laughing and visiting with their neighbors. Vibes were good.

Just past 7:30, the first results came from Ward 6, showing Shannon with 1,019 votes to Mulvaney-Stanak’s 825. It was a lead, but not as strong a showing as I’d expected in a

MAR

HIGHEST-STAKES SWITCHEROO

“Emma Mulvaney-Stanak Wins Burlington Mayoral Race” As one of the more novice journalists at Seven Days, I’m always eager to help out with assignments outside my “small towns” beat.

The opportunities to learn about Vermont’s court system while covering for Derek Brouwer, or to sit in on a city council meeting while filling in for Courtney Lamdin, are invaluable.

So when I was asked to report on Burlington’s Town Meeting Day results from Zero Gravity brewery, the Progressive Party’s command post, I gladly agreed.

Lamdin, our adept Burlington reporter, would be at Halvorson’s Upstreet Café with the Dems. My editors assured me that they expected Joan Shannon, the democratic candidate for mayor, to win.

All I had to do was get a quote or two from mayoral candidate Emma Mulvaney-Stanak after she lost, interview Progressives who had run for city council and provide some “color” — journalism shorthand for the details that bring a story to life: a description of the crowd, say, or the music playing during an event.

Lamdin had been following the mayoral race for months and had penned a recent cover story about it.

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C O U RT N E Y L AMDI N

FILE: LUKE AWTRY

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The last results finally trickled in at 9:24 p.m., declaring Mulvaney-Stanak the winner with 51.2 percent of the vote. Back on Slack, my colleague Rachel Hellman — who typically covers small towns — was sending dispatches from the rapturous victory party at Zero Gravity brewery.

There were so many people in the room, Hellman said, that it was hard to move.

It was The Place to Be, and I wasn’t there.

At Halvorson’s, Shannon arrived and addressed her supporters, accepting the outcome with grace. I grabbed a few quotes and headed back to the office to type up the story I hadn’t expected to write.

In three years, there will be another mayor’s race. I’ll spend weeks covering it, telling readers what I learn about the candidates.

Just don’t ask me who’s going to win.

Emma Mulvaney-Stanak

Meanwhile, I had been busy reporting my annual Town Meeting Day roundup. The story requires my full attention for two weeks: I request and read the ballot warnings of almost all of Vermont’s 247 municipalities and choose seven to highlight. It’s a heavy lift.

Needless to say, Lamdin was meant to be in the room where Burlington history happened. I was just happy to help out. To prepare, I made a cheat sheet with pictures of all the Progressives running for city council.

On election night, I showed up early to Zero Gravity and noticed more, and more, and more people arriving.

Soon, I could barely navigate the huge crowd and had to elbow my way to sources as election results came in.

It was becoming clear that Shannon was not the shooin my editors thought she’d be. The energy was high at the brewery; cheers erupted as ward counts came in. Around 9 p.m., all results had been reported except those from Ward 5, Shannon’s neighborhood. Mulvaney-Stanak was barely ahead.

My phone buzzed. It was deputy news editor Sasha Goldstein. I would likely be reporting on MulvaneyStanak’s win, he told me nervously. I needed to be there when it happened, talk to her after — if I could — and capture the crowd’s reaction. This was a major moment: Mulvaney-Stanak would be Burlington’s first-ever woman

mayor, as well as the first openly queer person to hold the seat, and I would be the one to report it for Seven Days.

I fought my way through the crowd to a spot near a podium where Mulvaney-Stanak was expected to speak.

I was nervous. Could I deliver the goods? I kneeled on the ground — it was the only way to take in the full room and ensure I could record her speech. From this position I watched as the crowd exploded in cheers as MulvaneyStanak was declared mayor of Burlington. The energy was electric. A few people cried with joy.

I scribbled furiously in my notebook, wanting to do Lamdin, and my team, proud. After Mulvaney-Stanak’s speech, I successfully cornered her outside the brewery to ask a few questions, ensuring Seven Days got an exclusive quote. I took a deep breath. What a thrill!

Not bad for a rural reporter.

RAC HE L HE LLMAN

Rachel Hellman covers Vermont’s small towns for Seven Days. She is a corps member of Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms. Find out more at reportforamerica.org.

BACKSTORIES SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

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FILE: JOSÉ A. ALVARADO JR.

Backstories « P.15

LONGEST HAUL FOR A STORY

“‘Safe Haven’: Vermont Is Considering Controversial Overdose-Prevention Sites.

Seven Days Went to New York City to See One.” I didn’t really want to go to Harlem, to be honest.

I figured there must be an easier way to write about Vermont’s raging debate over overdoseprevention centers than to go all the way to New York City to visit one.

I could make a few calls to folks at OnPoint NYC to get them to describe the two centers — also known as safe-injection sites — that they run in the city. I could interview a few drug-reform advocates to understand why they felt one should be allowed to open in Vermont, as lawmakers were considering. I could throw in a skeptical quote or two from Gov. Phil Scott, add a dash of fearmongering from law-andorder lawmakers, and Bob’s your uncle!

I could have done that, but it would have been a journalistic cop-out.

There are just two legal safe-injection sites in the nation. The only way to

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understand and communicate what happens there was to visit one.

So I drove to Connecticut, hopped a Metro-North train to Harlem and spent the day visiting OnPoint’s center in an old brick building on East 126th Street.

It was an unsettling experience — but well worth the trek.

An overdose-prevention center is a place where people who are addicted to illegal, deadly drugs can use them in relative safety. Better to give them a clean, quiet, supportive place to use, the theory goes, than to leave them to smoke or shoot up alone and risk death by overdose.

That risk has soared as street heroin is increasingly mixed with fentanyl, a potent synthetic opioid, and xylazine, an animal tranquilizer. That’s why Greg Gordon, one of the guys I met at the center, vowed never to use alone again. Since losing the lower part of his left leg in a subway accident,

Greg Gordon

Gordon used drugs in part because he was haunted by the memory of that experience.

“I’m trying to do the impossible,” Gordon told me. “I want to forget about something I can’t forget about.”

The desperation of that addicted, fearful, wheelchair-bound man stuck with me.

If Gordon lived in Burlington, I thought to myself, what would he do? Would he get the treatment he needed from a place like Howard Center? Would he find his way into recovery housing and stay clean?

Or, with no other option, would he

continue to use alone? Would he eventually, after multiple efforts by first responders and ER staff to save him from overdosing, die on the street?

After my story ran, lawmakers passed H.72, then overrode the governor’s veto of it, allowing Burlington to open the state’s first overdose-prevention center as a pilot project.

Perhaps it will provide the kind of safe haven that the 236 Vermonters who died of overdoses in 2023 never found.

KE VI N MC C ALLU M

Colin Flanders with Sen. Bernie Sanders

WORTHIEST ETHICAL LAPSE “Senior Senator: Bernie Sanders Sits Down With Seven Days to Talk About Aging Vermont”

I have a confession: I took a photo with Bernie Sanders.

I know, I know. But before you grab your pitchforks, hear me out. There’s a good excuse, and it begins with an unexpected phone call in March from my grandfather.

“Colin, if you ever meet Bernie, could you take a picture with him for me? I’d like that.”

The request was unexpected not because of my grandfather’s politics; Tommy McTygue had been a proud Democrat his entire life and was fond of Vermont’s independent U.S. senator. His timing is what surprised me.

Unbeknownst to him, I had landed an interview with Sanders a few days earlier to talk about issues facing Vermont seniors as part of our yearlong “This Old State” series. It would be Seven Days’ first sit-down with the senator in seven years — and my first time meeting him.

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I promised to do my best. “Great, thanks,” my grandfather replied, hanging up before I could say goodbye.

I felt anxious as the interview drew near.

Journalists aren’t supposed to ask sources for favors, and it wasn’t hard to imagine the photo popping up somewhere later and potentially undermining my credibility.

On the other hand, a photo was a small gesture for a man who, in many ways, inspired my journalism career.

For more than three decades, my grandfather served on the city council in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. His political

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

career played into some of my fondest childhood memories: being towed in a wagon during the July 4 parade; racing around the historic Canfield Casino with my cousins during his annual St. Patrick’s Day fundraising parties.

My grandfather taught me that you do not have to hate people with whom you disagree and that politics can be a force for good, even if that is rarely reflected in the headlines. (Trust me, Tommy got his share of negative ink.) He also reminded me to stand up for the little guy, a lesson I’ve embraced in my own career.

And so, after I had exhausted my questions for Sanders, I mentioned the call from my grandfather and popped the awkward query: “A photo, please, Senator?”

Sanders, to his credit, took it in stride and resisted making any wisecracks about quid pro quos.

My mother framed the photo and displayed it in my grandparents’ living room, where Tommy loved to point it out to visitors. “How ’bout that?” he’d say with a smile.

In September, five months after I sat down with Sanders, my grandfather was hospitalized due to complications from a prolonged illness. He died shortly after, at home, surrounded by family.

Long before he passed, he had asked that I write his eulogy. When his time came, I put it off for as long as I could, then wrote it in a sprint one morning from a window seat at Burlington’s Kru Coffee, with a view of Sanders’ congressional office across the street.

After the funeral, friends and family gathered at my grandparents’ house. As we mingled around the living room, someone brought up my tribute and suggested that my grandfather would have approved. He was so proud of you, they said.

I glanced over at the photo and smiled.

“I know,” I said. “I know.”

C O LI N FL AN DE RS

2024backstories

LEAST SCENIC PLACE TO WATCH THE ECLIPSE

“Totally Transfixed: A Rare Eclipse on a Bluebird Day Dazzled Crowds in Northern Vermont” To mark the total solar eclipse, Seven Days dispatched reporters across the state to document the varied ways that Vermonters and tourists were observing this once-in-a-lifetime event.

News reporter Rachel Hellman joined Bread and Puppet Theater’s purification orchestra/snowball fight in Glover. Food editor Melissa Pasanen watched chickens do chicken things at a Shelburne farm.

Culture reporter Hannah Feuer boarded the Spirit of Ethan Allen, and music editor Chris Farnsworth tailgated at the Sunset

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FILE: DEREK BROUWER

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David Faske watching the eclipse

Drive-In Theatre. Others went to a prison, mountaintops and the Statehouse.

The editors, using their unassailable judgment, assigned me to stay put in Burlington and work with my colleague Courtney Lamdin to chronicle the city festival at the Lake Champlain waterfront. Their idea was for Lamdin and me to roam the city by bicycle, collecting quotes and anecdotes that we could compile in a concise introduction to the other reporters’ more adventurous vignettes. The eclipse took place on a

Monday afternoon, which meant we were all working under pressure to get our collective cover story filed, edited, designed and sent to the printer in time to appear in Wednesday’s paper.

I wasn’t thrilled with my assignment.

What was there to say about a waterfront watch party? “Thousands of people sat by the lake and looked up to the sky?” The purification orchestra, whatever that was, sounded more exciting.

I dutifully spent the morning interviewing waterfront visitors. Then I hopped on my bike to pursue something of a side quest. I had an idea that it might be interesting to watch the eclipse with someone who was helping make the festivities happen, for whom the eclipse was a hectic day at work.

I thought of the city’s decision to turn Route 127 into a massive parking lot — and of the parking attendants who would be watching tourists’ cars while they oohed and aahed near the water.

Out on the Burlington Beltline, I pedaled up to some flaggers who were directing traffic. I chatted with them for an hour or two and awkwardly asked one guy, David Faske, if I could watch totality with him.

Our viewing location — on the pavement, near a Porta-Potty, halfway down a hill — was far from ideal. As totality neared, the flow of tourists briefly stopped, and a bus driver and a couple of city employees came over. Our small, spontaneously assembled group watched the eclipse together. As soon as the sun reemerged, Faske got back to work.

I did, too. I pedaled back to the Seven Days office, feeling awestruck and also satisfied. I’d found just the sort of adventure I was looking for. And I still had a few hours left to put it into words.

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Backstories « P.17

BLUNTEST CONVERSATION

“Chewing the Phatty: ‘Cannasations’ Podcaster Kris Brown Aims to ‘Humanize’ Vermont’s Weed Culture”

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conversations about weed. By that, I mean, they smoke a blunt and chew the fat. Brown’s interviews with local growers, processors, dispensary owners and regulators often are less about weed itself than they are meandering conversations steered by weed’s intoxicating effects.

After I finished my interview, Brown turned the tables and asked if he could interview me for the podcast. Initially, I balked. Getting high during work hours is generally frowned upon, even at an altweekly. But the big man twisted my arm, and a fresh doobie, so I donned some headphones and parked myself in front of his mic. A sit-down with WCAX this was not.

With the smoke rising and Brown’s digital recorder running, I began with a clarification and a precondition. First, I emphasized that anything I said, especially while high, was strictly my own opinion

Kris Brown

and did not reflect the views of Seven Days or my employers. Second, Brown had to wait to air the interview until my story about him was published a week later — what journalists call an embargo.

But embargoing the podcast created a mind-altering dynamic: We started

talking about the story I had written about “Cannasations” before I had even written it.

“Seven Days just dropped with me in it,” Brown said. “It’s kinda cool to say, even though it hasn’t happened yet … Smoke weed, and you’ll understand.”

The rest of my interview was too cringey for me to listen to in its entirety.

Suffice it to say, in the future I’ll save my recreational consumption for after work and off the record.

KE N P I C ARD

NO.28 SEVENDAYSV T.COM

Journalism, by its very nature, requires reporters to immerse themselves in the environs they cover. War correspondents get shot at, disaster reporters choke on wildfire smoke, and sportscasters are doused with Gatorade.

And occasionally, cannabis reporters get too high for their own good.

Cannabis podcaster Kris Brown greeted me in his driveway in pajamas, then led me into a house filled with the pungent aroma of a freshly smoked joint. Six-foot-two, muscular and tattooed, Brown is a combat veteran and a convicted felon. He also has a friendly smile, a meaty handshake and a baritone voice that rumbles like a subwoofer.

I visited Brown’s home studio in Jeffersonville to interview him about his popular weekly podcast, “Cannasations w/Kris,” during which he sits down with members of Vermont’s cannabis industry for blunt

APR

VERMONT’S INDEPENDEN T

HIGHEST-DRAMA INTERVIEW

VOICE APRIL 17-24, 2024 VOL.29

she expected to be told about every interview I planned. I pled my case: “I can’t ask someone in New York to set up my interviews in Vermont.” I “Born for Broadway: Waitsfield’s followed with an email: This was a Shaina Taub Arrives in a Big Way, miscommunication. Please reconsider.

Starring in Her Own Musical, Suffs” Vermonters care about Taub. They’re Waitsfield’s Shaina Taub arrives in a big way, starring cheering for Taub. It would be nice if she in her own musical, Suffs Improvements in technology the interview to make sure the could be part of the article written for APR have made some things easier recorder was working, but there the people who “knew her when.” for reporters. Gone are the was no file. And I had a call schedThen I waited. Six days later, I got days when recording an uled with Taub later that day. a call. The interview, albeit 15 minutes interview meant hours of transcribing the Granted, it was a video call and shorter, was back on. After being resulting conversation, painstakingly I planned to record via Google rescheduled two more times, it was WORKING THEORY ART AND CRAFTS MAKING SPACES rewinding a cassette to get every word.

Meet, but I wanted backup finally set for April 2 at 5:15 p.m. My Now, you can upload an interview because I could not screw this up. recorder failed at 11 a.m. to Otter.ai and, minutes later, have the Getting this interview had Crowdsourcing advice from transcript. You can search it by keyword, taken me to hell and back. I had worked as a high school student running her own colleagues, I learned that Otter could click on it to hear a specific portion, fix through the show’s public relations firm, production and as a 16-year-old enrolled also record, so I set that up. But my faith the bits Otter got wrong and highlight the corresponding with one primary publicist at New York University’s Tisch School of in technology had been severely shaken. sections you know you’ll need. Recording who routinely cc’d two or three others. the Arts.

Just before 5:15, I clicked “record” on my is a breeze.

I had initially asked to shadow Taub, Two weeks before I was to interview phone, on my iPad, on Google Meet and on Until it fails. because the best stories about people show Taub, the publicist canceled. The reason? Otter. Taub appeared on my laptop screen Hours before I was to interview them in action. But Taub’s life — as writer, I had called Taub’s mother, she explained, from her dressing room, makeup free and Shaina Taub, the Waitsfield native who composer, lyricist and a lead actor — was without permission. Of course I called cocooned in a bulky scarf. She talked about created and stars in the Broadway musi- understandably hectic as the musical’s Taub’s mother. Who else would have seen using her work to advance equality and cal Suffs, I recorded an interview with April opening approached. The publicist the earliest signs that this child was born justice. She praised the arts education she her high school music teacher. When offered a 45-minute video call. for the stage? (Her dad? I tried to reach got in the Mad River Valley, sent her love I tried to upload it, a message appeared To prepare for the interview — and to him, too.) The same publicist had been to her former teachers and thanked Seven on my recorder screen: “Process Error.” flesh out the story of how a small-town helping me arrange interviews with the Days for featuring her.

I’d never seen that. I routinely erase files Vermont kid came to make a splash on show’s producers and other actors. She We had a perfectly lovely conversation, to make sure I have enough memory. I Broadway — I called as many people as I ended it all. and I captured every word — four times regularly check and replace the triple-A could who had known Taub through the I knew she was my access to everyone over.

MARY AN N LI C KT E I G battery. I had watched the device during years: as a child actor on the Flynn stage, involved with the show. I didn’t know

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BY MARY ANN LICKTEIG, PAGE

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2024backstories

After

Before

MOST INSCRUTABLE SOURCE FILE: LUKE AWTRY

“Cat’s Got Her Tongue: Animal Communicator Amy Wild Wants a Word With Your Pet” Amy Wild with Elvira

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His eyes, black as a shark’s, stared into mine, defying comprehension.

Like some magician having the worst day of his life performing at a Holiday Inn conference room, I reached Wilbur my hands toward the beast, trying my best to focus my mind on reading his.

Alas, nothing. He stared back at me, a ziggurat of secrecy as his tongue slipped out of his gaping maw to leave a long trail of saliva along my hand, still reaching out toward his head. My good friend, former roommate and designated dog nephew, Wilbur, had just received the results of his session with pet psychic Amy Wild.

The Starksboro animal and spirit medium had offered to perform a reading on the 80-plus pound pit bull for a story I was writing for our annual Animal Issue.

The tale generated strong opinions among my friends and coworkers. (I write about how the insurance industry is kneecapping live music across the country, and not a peep. I talk to someone who says she can tell if your cat is angry at you, and my inbox overflows. Figures.) Some were wary of writing about something as woo-woo as a pet psychic, who could be seen as taking advantage of people desperate to communicate with their furry loved ones. Others just wanted me to find out if it was all on the level, perhaps eager to surrender their own pets for closer examination.

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I already knew I wouldn’t find a concrete answer — I know, shocking, a music journalist failed to disprove telepathy — and was really just curious for any insight into Wilbur, one of the strangest, least logical creatures I’ve encountered. Why does he always bury himself in my dirty clothes hamper? What is he thinking when he stares off into space? Is he contemplating his own existence? Working up a fart? Both?

Wild’s insights on Wilbur didn’t necessarily solve the big boy’s mysteries, but they gave me plenty of food for thought.

According to her, he kept stealing my clothes to feel close to me. And though that didn’t explain why he’d, you know, eat said clothes, I took an old, very past-its-prime Joy Division T-shirt from my drawer and presented it to the dog as an offering.

“Here, Wilbs,” I told him as he watched, bemused. “This is yours now, OK? You don’t have to keep sneaking out of my room with socks.”

A lone line of drool fell on the shirt.

The next day, the shirt remained on the floor in that exact spot, unmolested or chewed. Wilbur laid nearby, helping himself to a black Nike sock, freshly fetched from the hamper.

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HARDEST-FOUGHT DISCLOSURE

“Lawmaker Releases Spy Cam Video of a Rival Dumping Water in His Bag”

“Order Up: What Vermont’s Classic American Diners Tell Us About the Current State of Restaurants” When new acquaintances find out I’m a food writer, their usual reaction is, “You get to eat for a living? Cool!”

Yes, technically, though the writing part of the title takes up most of my time.

My dining companions are the ones who really have it all figured out. For every restaurant review I file, there’s someone who sat across the table. If they’re willing to order what I tell them to, they eat for free.

It’s not always fun for those plus-ones, though. For assignments such as the cover story Melissa Pasanen and I cowrote this summer about classic American diners, the physical slog of back-to-back meals can be a little much.

Pasanen and I set out to visit diners from Bennington to the Northeast Kingdom. We hoped to find out how their no-frills business models were faring against challenges plaguing the restaurant

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“While the videos may reside on your personal property, they are clearly not personal in nature, such as pictures from a birthday party or a fishing trip. They document actions by a public official to the property of another public official in a public area of a public building,” I wrote.

Notice how I worked “public” into that last sentence four times?

I also urged Carroll to consider the public’s right to know about the conduct of public officers and the “corrosive effect that a denial of those rights” might have on public trust.

I added that I was cc’ing House Speaker Jill Krowinski (D-Burlington).

While waiting for Carroll and his counsel to do the right thing, we broke the news of the videos based on interviews we’d done with people who had seen them.

Six days later, Carroll cited the ongoing press coverage and “warnings of more litigation” for his decision to share them with the public, as he put it, “reluctantly.”

In a final twist, Carroll lost his legislative seat on Election Day while Morrissey, his tormentor, is heading back to the Statehouse.

KE VI N MC C ALLU M

industry, from rising costs to after a quick dip in Lake PORC H SEAS staffing shortages. While we Willoughby. I was still ON Summer Nest inside! were there, of course, we’d also digesting my first meal find giant pancakes, piles of when we sat in a booth corned-beef hash, bottomless at the stalwart — and coffee and so many pies. sadly now-closed — Miss Pasanen was headed to Lyndonville Diner. I hyped southwestern Vermont, so myself up enough to order she hit the Blue Benn and a tuna melt, but I skipped Castleton’s Birdseye. We split a shake and got my slice of the diners close to Chittenden chocolate-peanut butter pie County, and I took the other to go. Meanwhile, my friend four we were checking out, downed her whole veggie three of which ended up in burger with fries. the story.

My omnivorous husband For my first road trip, I didn’t fare so well on the picked up my friend Diane next reporting trip, which What Vermont’s classic took us to Chester and Corsones, a diner expert, in American diners tell us about Burlington. We’d been in North Springfield. I learned the current state of restaurants grad school together, where my lesson and ordered light, she researched the unchangbut I didn’t say anything ing cultural portrayal of diner when he chose a forearmwaitresses; before that, she size breakfast burrito at AVIAN ANXIE TY iSUN SCREEN VT dairy herds brace for bird flu LAKE LIVING Whistleblower claims fraud Visiting Newport, VT’s north coast covered immigration patterns the Country Girl Diner. A that led to so many Greek13-minute drive away at the owned diners in the U.S. I Springfield Diner, I sadistihounded her the whole way to Martha’s She’s vegan, so I was on my own tackling cally encouraged him to Diner in Coventry about the history of a massive mound of sausage gravy over order a patty melt. He ate it, but I could diner car manufacturers and why their biscuits — with a plate-size pancake slath- see the meat sweats starting. Back in the stools are bolted down. ered in butter on the side. car, he said he’d never been so completely, Like a true pro, Corsones had her order Corsones had the right idea. From uncomfortably stuffed. ready to go the second we sat at Martha’s Martha’s, we hopped down Route 5 to It was a long drive home.

JO RDAN BARRY counter: coffee, home fries, dry toast. our second stop, arriving an hour later

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

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I cast a wide net, asking him for videos of “unusual conduct by a fellow lawmaker.”

“Since these videos were taken in a public place documenting behavior by a public official and that behavior is of public interest, I’d like to request copies of these videos under the state Public Records Act,” my email read.

I asked to interview him once he sent them over so that Seven Days could “properly contextualize the circumstances” before we printed anything.

Seemed fair to me. But not to the legislature’s top lawyer, Mike O’Grady, who denied my request. O’Grady argued that the documents were exempt from disclosure because, among other

VERMONT ’S INDEPEND ENT

The videos that showed a B e n n i n g t o n l aw m a ke r surreptitiously soaking a colleague’s canvas bag in the Statehouse didn’t just emerge in June.

There was some arm-twisting involved in their disclosure that underscores the role of the media in holding elected officials accountable.

I had to persuade Rep. Jim Carroll (D-Bennington) to share the spy camera videos he shot of Rep. Mary Morrissey (R-Bennington) getting a little tipsy with her water cup.

I asked nicely, at first. After hearing from a Statehouse source that the videos existed, I emailed Carroll to inquire about them.

Since I wasn’t certain what they depicted,

JUN

Spy cam footage of Rep. Mary Morrissey

things, they were “personal documents relating to an individual,” a category that included medical and financial records.

If I wanted to appeal his decision, O’Grady said I would need to file my appeal to Carroll directly. This was because, as an “independent constitutional officer,” Carroll was the “head of the agency” in possession of the documents in question.

In essence, O’Grady was saying the videos were Carroll’s, so if I wanted them, I’d need to convince him to turn them over.

Challenge accepted!

My appeal letter to Carroll started out straightforward, but my annoyance grew as I wrote what amounted to a mini legal brief to convince a lawmaker and his attorney to turn over public documents. I told him I didn’t think the videos could “meet the high bar set for exemption from public disclosure” in the Public Records Act, including the instruction that the act “shall be liberally construed,” and that the burden of proof was on Carroll.

After a bunch of other statutory lingo about the need for government transparency, I sought to take the legs out from under any defense he or O’Grady might concoct to withhold the videos.

ORDER UP

BY JORDAN BARRY & MELISSA PAGE 28

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2024backstories Eli Barlow

BIGGEST HEARTBREAK

“Swamped and Shocked: Plainfield Reels After Latest Flood” It had rained all night in Marshfield, where I live, and I knew what that meant. At 5:30 a.m., a friend texted me a photo of Plainfield’s Heartbreak Hotel apartment building. Floodwaters had torn it in half. Route 2 was closed, so it took me 25 minutes to get there instead of 10.

Plainfield was foggy and quiet. A small crowd stood at the crumbling edge of the chasm where the Mill Street bridge used to be. Nearby, across the still-raging Great Brook, the Heartbreak’s quaintly formal Italianate façade looked untouched, but a side wall had been torn off by debris, exposing a stranger’s kitchen décor to the world. The rambling rear section had been swept away altogether.

My friend Lauren Geiger was standing outside her Hudson Avenue home, looking stunned. Her car was socked in by two feet of sandy mud, and her basement was flooded to the ceiling.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said repeatedly. The two of us saw Nancy Everhart of Marshfield approaching to help, pushing a wheelbarrow full of shovels. In a classic case of small-town Vermont, she’s married to Geiger’s ex-husband.

I was stunned myself. It had been exactly a year since a flood had devastated my town of Marshfield, and I’d been dreading the anniversary. Now it was happening again, only worse, one town away. I suppressed the feeling of guilt that I had a home to return to.

I felt relief that no one was harmed in the fall of the Heartbreak — but also disbelief and, well, heartbreak that a local institution was no more.

The ramshackle grandeur of the old apartment house embodied the

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11

freewheeling spirit of odd, irrepressible Plainfield. My kids’ dad, Eric Allen, lived in the Heartbreak as a newly arrived idealist in the 1990s. Later, the Heartbreak — so named because it was often a refuge from broken relationships — was home to a dear friend displaced by divorce.

Eli Barlow, who had lived in the Heartbreak, pulled a pair of lawn chairs out of his car and politely invited me to take a seat while I interviewed him about the events of the night before.

“It sounded less dramatic than a tree coming down — a couple of crashes,” said Barlow, who was on a neighbor’s lawn when his home fell into the brook.

As the morning went on, the village filled up with gawkers, journalists and scores of other helpers. I found myself playing all three roles. I talked to people who had been up all night, listening to the rocks crash in the Great Brook, wondering what they’d find when the sun came up. I met a trio of women caring for a trembling, injured dog.

Though the village smelled like sewage and gas, the residents who were counting terrible losses were friendly, and they wanted to tell their stories. I chatted with a woman who was salvaging items from her family’s wrecked house.

When she learned that I live next door to a family friend who had offered her daughter a place to stay, she asked if I could give the kid a ride.

Ten hours after my dawn departure, I returned to Marshfield with a cheerful and resilient 12-year-old — and I marveled at the spirit of can-do optimism that pervaded Plainfield that day.

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Backstories « P.21

MOST MEANINGFUL STORY

“Final Act: Rita Mannebach Traveled From Florida to Vermont to Choose How She Died” Seven Days gets interesting and provocative news tips regularly, but one that came in on July 7 stopped me in my tracks.

“My 84-year-old sister from Florida is in Burlington now participating in the death with dignity program due to her terminal lung disease. She will take the medication to end her life on July 11,” it read. “My sister is very articulate and knowledgeable about this program and now is a patient and beneficiary of it. I thought this might be a … story that many of your readers would find of interest.”

The topic was outside my regular beat.

But within hours of receiving the tip, I’d volunteered to look into it. I had a feeling that reporting the story would be a lifeexpanding experience.

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Rita Mannebach

Two days later, I pulled into the crowded driveway of a house in Burlington where Rita Mannebach, the woman at the center of the story, was staying with her family in preparation to die. I was greeted by her death doula, Meg Tipper, whom I interviewed on a covered sunporch. Then it was time to meet Mannebach. I tentatively entered the house, where I found a petite woman

“A Baker’s 100: Marshfield’s Jules Rabin Celebrates a Century of Intellectual Curiosity, Trailblazing Bread and Standing Up for Peace” AUG

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FILE: JEB WALLACE-BRODEUR

COZIEST INTERVIEW

The first time I drove into the Marshfield hills to interview Jules Rabin, it was early afternoon, after his usual postprandial nap. Although the centenarian activist and former baker still regularly drove himself to Montpelier’s Friday peace protest, he had admitted that he needed to rest several times a day.

“It’s a concession to old age and a confession of old age,” Jules told me.

I had long known of Jules and his wife, Helen, and their trailblazing Upland Bakers bread business, but I had never met them or, sadly, tasted the bread. The couple’s initial retirement in 2002 coincided with the start of my food-writing career, and I missed the bakery’s brief, hyperlocal comeback a few years later.

Over the decades, many of the serious Vermont bread bakers I’ve interviewed have cited the influence of the couple’s

tucked into one corner of a leather couch.

Despite an oxygen tube in her nose, she spoke clearly about what being able to come to Vermont to end her life meant to her and what she was thinking about as she approached death. Her brother, John Cummins, sat quietly in the corner, recording the interview.

At first, I was worried I would say the wrong thing or ask an inappropriate

Jules Rabin doing push-ups

wood-fired, naturally leavened loaves.

The late poet David Budbill wrote, “Their crusts are like nothing else; they make your teeth and jaws remember what they’re there for.”

My first conversation with Jules that May afternoon ran more than three hours, during which the 100-year-old displayed the recall, quick wit and stamina of someone far younger. His succinct response to my query about what he missed most as he aged?

“Grand sex,” he replied without missing a beat.

I, by contrast, missed quite a few beats

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

question. But Mannebach’s matter-of-fact attitude about dying allayed my nervousness. It was refreshing to talk about death in such an open, honest way. When we were finished, Cummins walked me out and reassured me that I’d done a good job.

It felt strange to craft an article about someone who wouldn’t be alive to read it.

As I wrote, I got news from Mannebach’s family that her passing, and the celebration of life that preceded it, had gone smoothly. Tipper emailed me a photograph of Mannebach’s wrinkled hand resting in the palm of a relative.

“The family would like you to have this photo taken today at the time of Rita’s death,” she wrote.

Mannebach and her family had been so open and gracious; I wanted to write a story that would honor her memory.

A text from Mannebach’s daughter-inlaw the day the story was published made me feel like I’d accomplished that goal.

“It was a perfect characterization of her and her decision. I could hear all of her quotations in her voice,” it read. “Rita would have been so proud to see how it turned out.”

Helen wash the lunch dishes before she showed me to a cozy guest room where I laid down for a catnap.

About 45 minutes later, we both emerged refreshed from our respective bedrooms and resumed the interview. I had been waiting to ask Jules to demonstrate the push-ups he reportedly still did from time to time. Bolstered by his nap, he happily dropped to the ground to show off his prowess.

Not only did he have good form, the centenarian kept answering questions while he did them.

Just five years prior, he could still do 50, while gathering Jules said. Now, “I’m myself for the next capable only of 10.”

Melissa Pasanen and Jules Rabin question.

A few months later, For my second visit, the Rabins and their daughters hosted my husband I invited myself for the midday meal, which Jules had and me for lunch. As the conversalisted among his remaining daily plea- tion swirled and eddied around the table, sures. Helen, Jules and I ate al fresco Jules did not seem to be missing his usual looking over their vegetable garden and post-meal nap. When I asked him if he then chatted for more than two hours until wanted to excuse himself for a short rest, I sensed he was flagging. That’s when I he demurred. said, mostly truthfully: “You know, I didn’t “Naps are gray,” Jules said. “This is lilac sleep well last night and could use a break. and orange.”

ME LI S S A PAS AN E N How about we both take a short rest?”

Jules headed upstairs, and I helped

FILE: JAMES BUCK

2024backstories

Pamela Polston with a portrait of herself as “St. Pamela” by Jesse Azarian at a Seven Days semiretirement party in 2021

BIGGEST SHOES TO FILL

“Kents Corner Is Lit: ‘Illuminated Worlds’ Features 24 Vermont Artists” “So you’re the new Pamela Polston?” That’s how state curator David Schutz posed the question as we discussed the art show he cocurates every year at the Kents Corner State Historic Site. I explained that Polston would still be writing for Seven Days, though stepping back.

“She’s a little like me,” he said. “I kind of want to move into a mode where I don’t have to work quite as hard, but I also don’t want to let go of my babies — and this is one of those babies.”

Polston is one of Seven Days’ founding mothers. Taking over from her as visual art editor has indeed felt like being handed a precious bundle I’d best not drop. Polston knows everyone in the Vermont art world. Over the past 30 years, she hasn’t just reported on that community; she’s been instrumental in strengthening it. Wherever I’ve gone in the past six months, from White River Junction to Middlebury, I have had some version of the same conversation: I introduce myself, and people respond with, “You’ve got big shoes to fill!”

The topic came up with Joseph Pensak of the Phoenix in Waterbury, when I went to see Ana Koehler’s show upstairs at the Hesterly Black gallery. With Richard Saunders, after Hunter Barnes’ artist talk at the Middlebury Museum of Art, and with Mary Admasian as we walked through her solo show at the T.W. Wood Gallery in Montpelier. With Theresa Harris at Edgewater Gallery in Middlebury. With Doreen Kraft at a sculpture unveiling in Burlington’s Dewey Park.

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I have tried to imagine exactly which “big shoes” I’m stepping into: elegant, editorial black suede pumps? Trusty Louvre-worthy hiking boots? Wheelies?

Surely, only my colleagues reporting from the Statehouse need hip-high muck waders? The reality is, Polston donned many a pair: We’re talking about an Imelda Marcos-level closetful.

Both as visual art editor and on the team of weekly proofreaders, I keep learning how much of the paper’s style, voice and focus have come from Polston. She started out as the scrappy punk rocker balancing cofounder Paula Routly’s strict ballet background, the two of them doing everything together.

Polston was the music editor, managed freelancers, came up with features and themes, envisioned the culture section, and also did the office dishes. Her decisions — as obscure as why we lowercase “the” in “the Phoenix” and as important as why we still write weekly reviews of visual art at all, when so many outlets no longer do — are written in Seven Days’ subtext, even when her byline is missing.

I am thrilled to be the new visual art editor at Seven Days, but I’m not the new Pamela Polston. Luckily, I don’t need to wear all of her shoes — I’m part of a whole team of folks. I am eager to see and learn and write about art every week; all I’ve got to do is lace up these punk shitkickers and start walking. I’m just glad they’re not toe shoes.

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“Bilked and Bereft: Surging Cyber Scams Leave Older Vermonters Destitute, Frustrated and Saddled With Tax Debt”

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muddy middle ground between I’m Not Very Excited About the Story and I’m Very Excited About the Story.

I found the cyber scam phenomenon immensely interesting, particularly the psychological dimension.

But I hadn’t managed to find someone who had been victimized to speak about their experience in a way that would make it real for readers. The story had to show the potentially devastating effects of digital deception.

Then, while I was on vacation, the paper received a news tip from a community nurse who was working with an elderly scam victim. “I have a story,” her email subject line read.

Talk about timing! I replied to the nurse while on vacation, then asked Roy to extend my new deadline. Roy, who knows a good story when he hears one, obliged.

MOST COURAGEOUS SOURCE

“A World Away: Hundreds of Afghan Evacuees Are Cobbling Together New Lives in Vermont.

But They Can’t Help Looking Homeward.”

Sleep can be elusive on the eve of a big story.

Did you double-check the data? Did you reflect all sides of the debate? Does it read like a fourthgrade essay, so bogged down in clichés and jargon that you will suffer career-tanking embarrassment and be forced to enter the witness protection program, move to Minnesota and become a sugar beet farmer?

My own 11th-hour anxieties typically involve my sources. I worry that I didn’t explain the story explicitly enough and that my subjects will be left reeling from the reality of seeing their innermost thoughts exposed in print for all to see.

That was my concern for Rafiqullah, a slim, soft-spoken 30-year-old whom I profiled as part of our cover story on Vermont’s Afghan community.

Rafiqullah was one of thousands of Afghan soldiers who worked on behalf of the U.S., which meant they had to flee their country after the Taliban reclaimed power. These men were told that the U.S.

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would help reunite them with their wives and children. But most have spent the past three years waiting to see whether those promises would ever be fulfilled.

Rafiqullah was unfortunately a good representation of this agonizing limbo. He had been building a new life in Vermont.

But his mind was often stuck in his native country, where his wife and their four children were in hiding.

I met Rafiqullah for the first time at the offices of the Vermont Afghan Alliance, then later at his Essex apartment, where he cooked me a traditional Afghan meal.

His place in my story solidified during this second conversation, so I asked him whether he’d be willing to have his photo taken. When, much to my surprise, he said yes, I explained that our newspaper gets published online for anyone, from anywhere in the world, to read. That includes the Taliban. There would be a risk, I said.

I understand, he replied. He wanted people to know what he and his countrymen had experienced.

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

BY DEREK BROUWER

Voters’ Guide inside!

PAGE 14

Williston Rd. real estate squabble

PAGE 37

Catching up with VT’s Neko Case

FILE: LUKE AWTRY

I blow a lot of deadlines, but my reasons are always very legitimate. They include, to name a few: Someone Hasn’t Called Me Back Yet; A Public Agency Is Dragging Its Feet on a Records Request; I’m Not Very Excited About the Story; I’m Very Excited About the Story; You Assigned Me Too Many Stories at Once; and Writing Is Hard.

This summer, I missed my deadline for a story about cyber scams targeting elderly Vermonters. It was assigned as a short trend piece by news editor Matthew Roy, who was managing a series on the state’s aging demographic.

We agreed that I would get it done in advance of a vacation I had planned — which of course became a convenient excuse for failing to. But the real reason I missed the deadline was that my relationship to this assignment was stuck in some

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Jeanette Voss had lost nearly $1 million in an elaborate, monthslong scam during the pandemic. She’d thought about contacting a reporter at the time, Voss told me, but she felt too overwhelmed. Three years later, she was in a better place emotionally. She sensed that speaking publicly about it could help others avoid similar anguish — and perhaps help her heal.

Surging cyber scams leave older Roy and I reimagined the Vermonters destitute, frustrated and saddled with tax debt story as a longer narrative that could recount the experiences of Pullen and Voss, blow by blow, in a way that brought the scams to life.

DEMOCRACY NOW SUB-DIVIDED WILD CREATURE We upgraded it to a cover story to ensure readers wouldn’t miss it.

With the extra time, I visited the nurse Just before we published, and the woman, Martha “Mickey” Pullen, Voss told me that she was planning at her home in Strafford. Next, I talked to to send the story to her loved ones to a Vermont Legal Aid attorney who was inform them, for the first time, about helping Pullen sort through a tax night- this harrowing chapter of her life. I mare as a result of being scammed. It had was shocked to learn that she had been sent her into a deep depression. holding in all that shame, guilt and anxiThe attorney mentioned that he’d ety for years. worked with one other woman who had But I could understand it, too. The hard been duped in a similar way. Maybe she stuff takes time.

DE RE K BRO U W E R would talk, too?

Rafiqullah

Photographer Luke Awtry captured Rafiqullah sitting in front of a large Afghan flag he and his three roommates had pinned against the wall behind their

couch. That photo ended up on the cover of Seven Days.

Rafiqullah asked that I text him a link to the story when it published in late September. I did, then waited for his thoughts.

Finally, in mid-October, Molly Gray, executive director of the Vermont Afghan Alliance, texted me a photo. There was Rafiqullah, holding up a copy of the paper, a smile on his face. He had translated the story, Gray wrote, and was very proud of it.

I slept a little easier that night. But in the weeks since, Rafiqullah has been on my mind.

His wife and children remain in hiding back in Afghanistan, and with president-elect Donald Trump vowing to reinstate his “Muslim travel ban” upon taking office, there is no telling when Rafiqullah may see his family again.

C O LI N FL AN DE RS

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Mark Utter in his 2013 film, I Am in Here

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“Mark Utter, Vermont Writer and Filmmaker With Autism, Dies” My first interview with Mark Utter, who died on October 28 at age 59, was unquestionably the slowest one I’ve ever conducted in my 25 years as a journalist.

Born with a form of nonverbal autism, Utter “spoke” using a communication method known as supported typing. His facilitator, Emily Anderson, would sit at his side and hold his elbow to focus his attention. Utter would then hunt and peck at a keyboard with one finger. His first sentence to me, “I am really happy to meet you,” took him five minutes to compose.

And yet, like those letters that Civil War soldiers penned to their loved ones back home, Utter’s slow and deliberate writing process could result in eloquent prose, the kind rarely found in most people’s mile-a-minute emails, texts and instant messages. Utter labored to produce his words, so he chose them carefully.

When I first met Utter, in 2012, he was largely unknown outside of Vermont’s disability community and was still getting accustomed to sharing his thoughts.

Deemed “mentally retarded” as a child, Utter couldn’t communicate with others for the first three decades of his life.

Though he understood everything people around him were saying, he existed mostly in his own mind — until supported typing freed him from his cage.

Once, I asked Utter, “You seem like such a happy person all the time, despite your disability. How do you stay so upbeat?”

“First, I don’t think of myself as disabled, which gives me a stronger foundation than those who have fallen into that trap,” he replied. “I am happy because, like

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Abraham Lincoln, I know ‘You are only as happy as you allow yourself to be.’”

Utter went on to write, produce and star in an award-winning 2013 movie called I Am in Here: A View of My Daily Life With Good Suggestions for Improvement by My Intelligent Mind.

While he was working on that project, I wrote an April 11, 2012, cover story about him headlined “Utterly Mark: A Vermonter With Autism Makes His Inner Voice Heard Through Film.” Utter was so delighted, he started a blog and called it “Utterly Mark.”

Because I’m friends with Anderson, his collaborator from 2006 to 2020, I maintained a connection with Utter over the years. I knew that when Anderson got engaged to Brian Merrill, Utter insisted he would officiate their wedding, announcing it on his blog before the couple OK’d it.

“I was going to be perpetually engaged,” Anderson recalled with bemusement. “That didn’t happen.”

Since Utter had never officiated a wedding before, I offered a blueprint to guide him: the script of a wedding ceremony I had written for friends a few years earlier. He tailored his remarks to the couple and, with his words projected on a screen, “read” them aloud using a voice generator.

Anderson and Merrill’s wedding in August 2018 was a stunning affair on a mountaintop in Barton, featuring kites, bubbles, and performers from Bread and Puppet Theater. And, in his own inimitable way, my former subject created a ceremony that was an Utter masterpiece.

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Backstories « P.25 “Urgent Scare: The Price of Health Care Plans in Vermont Has Doubled in Six Years.

The Prognosis for Cost Containment Is Grim.”

To breathe life into my reporting on Vermont hospitals, I did what any ambitious journalist would: I scheduled a surgery and had half of my thyroid removed.

I’m kidding. Sort of.

The reporting of my cover story about Vermont’s rising health care costs was interrupted by the removal of a benign growth in my neck and an overnight stay at the University of Vermont Medical Center.

My thyroid is indeed 50 percent smaller.

But nothing about my time under the knife ended up in the story. Nor was it necessary to convince me of the importance of a functioning health care system.

That’s a lesson I learned long ago.

In 2013, I experienced some worrisome changes. My appetite vanished, my weight plummeted and one day I started coughing up blood. An alarming X-ray landed me at Albany Medical Center. Three weeks of

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poking, prodding and transfusions later, I was diagnosed with cancer. A type of nonHodgkin’s lymphoma — diffuse mediastinal large B cell — had spawned a tumor in my chest the size of a cantaloupe, a fruit to which I am otherwise partial.

For the next five months I lived at the hospital for weeklong chemotherapy treatments, then recovered for two weeks at home. My bones ached, I was constantly nauseous, and over time the tumor shrank, never to return again (much like my hair).

I noticed during my treatments how hospitals have a rhythm to them — the shift changes, the daily resident rounds.

Painkillers lowered my inhibitions, and I interrogated the dozens of technicians, nurses and custodial staff who cycled through my room — about their jobs, their interests, even their kids. It was a way to pass the time and remind me of the world that existed beyond those sterile walls.

VERMONT’S INDEPENDENT VOICE NOVEMBER 6-13, 2024 VOL.30 NO.6 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

MOST PERSONAL STORY

had co-pays, but they were reasonable, and we never had NOVEMBER 8-17 to consider whether we could GUIDE INSIDE afford my next treatment.

Years later, signing up for health insurance through Seven Days, I selected a plan with a higher monthly premium. I knew it would cover almost anything I needed once I hit my $2,500 deductible, a good chunk of which the paper covers through a health reimbursement account. The bill on my recent surgery came The price of health care plans in Vermont has doubled in six years.

The prognosis for cost containment is grim. to more than $20,000; I was only on the hook for about $1,000 of that.

Nothing to sneeze at, sure.

But it was manageable. Many VT’S OWN SQUEAKER STATE OF AFFAIRS AWAITING GAME Vermont families are far worse off: saddled with huge medical debts or delaying care out of I came to appreciate the people who fear of what it might cost. are willing to do this difficult and draining Vermont faces numerous challenges, work. too many to list here. But above all, in my I also learned the importance of health mind, has to be this: Affordable health care insurance. is a life-or-death proposition.

I was 19 at the time and covered Here’s hoping 2025 brings some soluthrough my mother, who works for the tions — and a nicely healed neck scar.

C O LI N FL AN DE RS New York public school system. We

BY COLIN FL ANDERS, PAGE 28

Lt. gov race too close to call

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Vermont seniors look for love

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On the hunt for wild turkey

COURTESY OF KVIBE STUDIO/HORACIO MARTINEZ

MOST UNDERCOVER ASSIGNMENT

“Once Upon a Stable: Locally Filmed Christmas Cowboy Tips its Hat to Vermont” Last January, culture coeditor Carolyn Fox sent me on a mission to check out the filming of Christmas Cowboy at the Opera House at Enosburg Falls.

Ideally, I would write a quick story about the novelty of a holiday movie being shot in small-town Franklin County.

But then the casting director, Shayna Sherwood, informed me that the producers weren’t ready for the movie to receive press. I pushed, and she agreed to let me observe on the condition that I would write about the film closer to the time of its release.

Upon arriving on set, there was another catch: I could watch the filming, but only if I did so as an extra in the movie.

I wondered if appearing in the film posed some sort of conflict of interest. I called Fox, who gave me the green light, suggesting that my role could become part of the story and give me a front-row seat to the action.

But there was still one problem. The scene they were filming was a debutante

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ball. I looked down at my jeans and sneakers. Oops.

Not to worry, Sherwood said. She led me to the costume closet, where I ditched my outfit for a sleek black dress and heels. Then I took my seat at a table and did my best to fake realistic claps, gasps, and “oohs” and “aahs” as we repeated the same scene over and over again.

It took almost a year for my reporting to see the light of day. In November, Christmas Cowboy was finally released. I watched with anticipation, wondering if I’d made the final cut.

Sure enough, there I was: the back of my head, at least, clearly visible for a couple of seconds during the debutante ball. I was even noted in the credits. Well, sort of. My name appeared under “Additional Cast” — misspelled as “Hannah Fever.”

It may not have been the most glamorous movie debut, but it’s a story I’ll never forget.

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

HA N N A H F E U E R

Eliana Ghen and Armando Gutierrez in Christmas Cowboy

Happy Holidays

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FEED back « P.7

Chris Bradley

NORTHFIELD

Bradley is president and executive director of the Vermont Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs.

“Ghost bike” memorial at the site of the Shelburne Road crash that killed Sean Hayes

a local life.” Is it conceivable that Vermont could be Vermont without farms?

Support the Northeast Organic Farming Association lobbying efforts to create a Vermont farm disaster impact recovery fund. You can contact your state representative and voice support. You can help ensure Vermont’s farmers can recover from unanticipated natural disasters.

It is a tragedy whenever human lives are lost on the roads [“Crash Course: Activists Want to Reshape Shelburne Road After Another Cyclist Is Killed in South Burlington,” November 27; “Two Pedestrians Critically Injured in Shelburne Road Crash,” December 12, online]. But reconfiguring Shelburne Road because it is an especially dangerous road for reckless cyclists and jaywalkers is not the answer.

In fact, Erin Sisson, deputy chief engineer of the Vermont Agency of Transportation’s highway division, notes that since 2019, all but one of 10 crashes on Shelburne Road involved “unsafe or erratic behavior on the part of the pedestrian or the cyclist.”

The very notion of downsizing busy (30,000 drivers a day) Shelburne Road from five to three lanes is yet another example of a disproportionate reaction by well-meaning but naïve do-gooders to an emotionally charged issue.

A wiser way forward is to make sound decisions based on empirical studies and analysis, such as the Shelburne Road Corridor Study.

Jack Scully

Pete Serisky

LYNDONVILLE

‘NO FARMS NO FOOD’

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I CRASHED ON SHELBURNE ROAD

[Re “Crash Course: Activists Want to Reshape Shelburne Road After Another Cyclist Is Killed in South Burlington,” November 27; “Two Pedestrians Critically Injured in Shelburne Road Crash,” December 12, online]: It’s hard to believe that nothing has been or is about to be done to improve the current situation. In 2020 I was riding on Shelburne Road in the “bike lane” near Pauline’s Café in the exact spot where Joseph “Byrdman” Allen was later killed. I had front and rear lights, it was broad daylight on a clear and sunny day, and nobody involved had been drinking. Yet I got crowded by a tractor trailer that encroached into the “bike lane,” hit a sewer grate that takes up the right third of the “bike lane,” lost control and crashed. I ended up with a fractured scapula. It could have been worse; the last thing I recall was I was either going to hit the curb or land under the tractor trailer.

Living off of Shelburne Road — behind the soon-to-be “Crombach development,” which will only make things worse — my only way out is by getting onto Shelburne Road. Now when I want to ride my bicycle somewhere, my bike goes into my car, I drive up to Spear Street, and I start riding from there. Hardly ideal, but I think you can understand why.

There is a relatively easy solution: Take the existing sidewalk on either side, slightly widen it and put a layer of asphalt on top of it to create a bike lane that would be safely separated from traffic.

How many more people have to be killed before something is done here?

Chris Rice

[Re “Entrepreneur Paul Ralston Is Investing in Local Food Access,” November 27]: It is correct to say that a lot of us are more familiar with calamity than we wish.

The disastrous flooding of the past two summers damaged homes, schools, businesses, bridges, roads, forests and farms.

It was more than families, businesses, communities and the state could handle.

Damage to farm fields and crops was particularly severe, and many farmers were unable to get aid until long after their crops were lost. The lag between damage and assistance affects farmers doubly.

When a farm field is flooded, not only is the current crop lost, the next year’s crop is in jeopardy as well. Why should we all be concerned that farmers have the means to restore production in the face of natural disaster? The bumper sticker “No Farms No Food” says it all.

Farmers’ stewardship of the land produces our food. They are an iconic part of Vermont culture. Wendell Berry put it this way: “Farming itself, like life itself, is different from information or knowledge or anything else that can be verbally communicated. It is not just the local application of science; it is also the local practice of a local art and the living of

CARS KILL

FILE: DEREK BROUWER

become a patchwork of conflicting ordinances that change at town lines.

The creation of a “gun-free zone” — that is not enforced — is nothing more than a false sense of security to anyone who chooses to enter. Unless and until guards are present, along with expensive scanning machines and bag searches, passing a law that says “No guns allowed” does nothing more than to create a “zone of illusionary protection,” which is no protection at all. Beyond that, this is not just “guns in bars”; it is guns in any establishment that sells alcohol, which would also mean restaurants and other venues.

In a utopian world, there may not be any need for firearms, but in today’s world that is not the case. Innocent people are being horribly affected by violent crime across Vermont, especially in Burlington, and people have a right to defend themselves.

At this juncture, it would seem appropriate for the Vermont attorney general to inform the Burlington City Council that it has broken Vermont law.

‘A WISER WAY FORWARD’

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

COLCHESTER

SHELBURNE

I appreciate the words of the activists being shared in [“Crash Course: Activists Want to Reshape Shelburne Road After Another Cyclist Is Killed in South Burlington,” November 27], about how unsafe non-car commuting is in and around Burlington, but this article chooses to muddle the impact of this much-needed call for better infrastructure by insisting that changes would be a “complicated, yearslong process.” As several citizens gracefully stated before city council that night, this is an issue that could be solved tomorrow. Turn one of the driving lanes into a bike lane.

Citizens are being murdered by automobilists. Why have we become so numb to the lethality of cars?

The city has responded to pedestrians crying out in fear for their lives by saying it intends to change nothing about Shelburne Road’s dangerous design. This is expressing that there is a price in human life that our officials are willing to pay to avoid further traffic wait times. That disturbs me. I hope it disturbs you, too.

Griffin DeMatteo

BURLINGTON

Editor’s note: Look for five more letters on this topic online at sevendaysvt.com.

TEAR DOWN THAT CHURCH

The likely demolition of the former Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception this winter couldn’t happen soon enough [“Supreme Court Approves Demolition of Burlington Cathedral,” December 6, online]. In October the Burlington Police Department announced a large presence at the church for training. One can guess — active shooter, hostage rescue, mass shooting? Even surrounded by fence and chained gates, the grounds are still vandalized by intruder trash and graffiti. Graffiti almost reached the roof supporting the cross that proclaims it’s a church.

Preservationists chided the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington for exercising doctrine in deconsecrating the church.

They fuss over the honey locust trees on-site planted in straight rows 20 feet apart. These trees are no different from the ornamental trees lining the Church Street Marketplace.

The preservationists demanding the building, trees and open space be given over for another purpose is similar to strangers demanding the Cathedral Church of St. Paul one block away be torn down because its brutalist style of architecture is offensive. “The customer

FILE: JULIANNA BRAZILL

is always right” is invalid, because they are not customers or owners.

In their dreams, they see open space.

The abutting bus terminal street is notorious. The interpretive signs memorializing the loss of Burlington’s Little Italy to urban renewal within the three-block radius are defaced. If preservationists had pressed their credo in the ’60s and ’70s, there would be a neighborhood and parish alive there today.

Roger Donegan

HINESBURG

WHITHER WEATHERIZATION?

[Re “Cold Discomfort: Burlington’s Goal to Weatherize Hundreds of Apartments Is Imperiled by a Lack of Workers,” November 13]: The City of Burlington could use other strategies than relying 100 percent on a private-market solution, which has never worked in the energyefficiency sector.

Long ago, the city-owned Burlington Electric Department opted out of Vermont’s statewide energy-efficiency utility, Efficiency Vermont. Vermont ratepayers pay a small fee on our electric bills for energy-efficiency services.

In Burlington, ours goes to Burlington Electric. Vermonters without a municipal utility pay Efficiency Vermont. Efficiency Vermont’s value is an R&D arm that designs and delivers comprehensive programs with incentives to “transform the market” to net emissions. Efficiency Vermont coordinates the right hand working with customers and the left hand working with contractors and equipment vendors.

Burlington lacks this coordinated program design and delivery. Even worse, the city now has two energy-efficiency utilities, which bifurcates program design, delivery and incentives. Two entities with different cultures and missions

must trip over themselves to align their services and incentives while customers wait for good advice.

What would overcome our weatherization workforce shortage woes?

A single energy-efficiency utility that educates the market, mandates then pays for energy audits, completes 100 audits at a time, signs tariff-financing agreements with building owners, then puts 100 buildings out to bid to weatherization contractors in the region. A bulk bid under a single contract could incentivize contractors to staff up and train workers.

This proposal is not without challenges and is not the only solution, but right now we lack vision and leadership for a comprehensive approach at scale.

Happy New year from all of us at VT Tire!

Liz Curry

BURLINGTON

LET’S TALK ABOUT MILK

[Re “Vermont to Begin Testing Milk Supply for Bird Flu,” December 10, online]: Let’s start the conversation about milk. Real milk comes from mammals — in particular, female mammals. Soy milk is not milk! Almond milk is not milk! Rice milk is not milk! Oat milk is not milk!

Coconut milk is not milk!

Humans have been drinking milk for thousands of years prior to pasteurization. That meant they were drinking raw milk. There was no government interference. Local dairy herds were the primary source. The dairy farms were local and mostly small family operations. Today, this facet of dairy farming is disappearing. Large mega-industrialization of milk production is increasing. This increases the chances of problems in our food chain. Can you keep count of the number of food recalls on all types of processed food products? Too numerous to keep track of.

Forty-seven out of 50 states allow for the legal sale of raw milk, Vermont included. When milk testing takes place for bird flu, let’s be sure that it is accurate, using guidelines that fit and are not inflated to ensure that the outcome is in favor of big agriculture at the expense of the local dairy farmer.

Bart Hauser

NEWARK

Editor’s note: In recognition of the year’s end, we are clearing out the 2024 Feedback file. Look for more letters to the editor online at sevendaysvt.com.

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FREE PICKUP & DELIVERY HOURS: 658-1333 7:30-5 1800-639-1901 Mon-Fri. Not responsible for typographical errors 2v-VTTire122524 1

229-4941 1800-639-1900

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

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SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

31

‘Every Day Was About Art’

Life Stories

GREGG BLASDEL, January 14, 1941-June 6, 2024

BY AL IC E D O D G E • adodge@sevendaysvt.com

Remembering Vermonters who died in 2024 B Y SEVEN DAY S STAFF

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SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

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EVERYONE HAS A COMPELLING STORY TO BE TOLD.

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THROUGH THE YEARS, ONE UNDENIABLE TRUTH HAS EMERGED OVER AND OVER:

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whom to write about presents quite a conundrum.

To curate “Life Stories,” I track obituaries throughout the year, flagging those I think might make for good profiles. Seven Days editors and reporters also send me suggestions when someone dies on their respective beats. It amounts to hundreds of potential candidates. Most years we choose about eight.

If you pressed me, I couldn’t tell you precisely why one person makes the cut and another doesn’t.

Sometimes you know the moment you read an obit.

Others might require a second or third look. And occasionally it’s as simple and unscientific as a gut feeling.

I can tell you that I feel a tinge of remorse every time I narrow the field, like I’m passing some strange sort of final judgment on people whom I never met and never will. It would actually be easier if we limited our scope to notable or famous figures — “Vermont famous,” at least. But that would truly miss the point.

In the end, our hope is that the people you’ll read about in the following pages will inspire and move you. Not because they were necessarily the best at what they did or the most successful or overcame great odds. But because through the simple act of living, they charted out stories worth telling, as each of us do.

Thanks, as always, to the families and friends of the deceased for sharing those stories with us.

SO

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ince 2014, Seven Days has ended each year by recounting the lives of a handful of Vermonters who died in the previous 12 months. We call these profiles “Life Stories.” You’d think that after a decade of doing them, they’d get easier. But the opposite is true.

When deputy publisher Cathy Resmer conceived this project, her idea was to pay tribute to Vermonters of a wide range of backgrounds, ages, locations and renown. Some of the folks we’ve profiled have been household names, but we generally try to avoid people whose deaths made major headlines.

Instead, we seek to tell smaller stories that move us in one way or another. In the past 10 years, we’ve written about famous poets as well as musicians who rarely played outside their bedrooms; rabble-rousing counterculture heroes as well as straightlaced businesspeople; and centenarians with rich, full lives as well as children lost far too soon.

In producing these profiles for so long, we’ve learned a few things. One is that “Life Stories” are challenging and can intimidate even experienced journalists. Another is that they’re deeply rewarding to write — and read.

And, yeah, they’re also often sad.

Through the years, one undeniable truth has emerged over and over: Everyone has a compelling story to be told. Which also means that choosing

I

f asked about his accomplishments, “I probably walked by it a hundred times Gregg Blasdel might have said he’d — I took it for granted that it was always recently perfected a recipe for daikon going to be there,” Gregg recounted in a radish cakes, or that he had taught his 2021 panel discussion recorded by the cat, Tootone, to roll over.

Bennington Museum. When later asked He valued these small successes — feats why he had devoted so much of his life to requiring the creativity, persistence and documenting this kind of art, Gregg said, patience for which he was known — just “because I didn’t think it would be saved.” as much as his larger achievements. Gregg In 1968, soon after graduating from died in June at age 83, after a reoccurrence Cornell University with his MFA in 1967, of the esophageal cancer he had success- he published “The Grass-Roots Artist” in fully treated 30 years ago.

Art in America, a seminal article Since the 1960s, he had that introduced several such been instrumental in artists’ work to a larger defining and legitiaudience. He went on mizing the work of to publish, lecture self-taught artists and curate exhibiwithin the context tions on self-taught of art history, artists at major traveling around museums, chamthe country to pioning their work talk with them and that of other and document “outsider” artists, their expansive who were often constructions. marginalized within Gregg taught studio mainstream society.

Gregg Blasdel with a art and art history at Gregg received "Life and Death Rattle" Saint Michael’s College in research fellowships in 1967 Colchester, and he created his and in the 1970s from the Whitney own prints and sculptures up until his Museum of American Art in New York City death. and the National Endowment for the Arts Unlike the installations he studied, to document art environments all over the Gregg’s work was not obsessive or immer- country. In some cases, he created the only sive but clean and technically skillful; he remaining records of them. was experimental, always interested in Gregg’s daughter, Oakley, recalled learning new ways of doing things. One going with her dad to upstate New York recent black-and-white print shows a carp to visit the artist Clarence Schmidt and swimming in broad swipes of ink. Silhou- the rambling “House of Mirrors” he had ettes of actual plants and geometric forms created on his five-acre property. Its tarseem to float on its surface; Gregg exposed covered towers made of windows and the objects directly on the plate, using a sticks rose above a forest of doll heads nontoxic etching process. He rarely talked impaled on silver foil-wrapped trees. “It about the “why” of his work and simply didn’t occur to me what a weird thing that followed his artistic intuition. As his friend was,” Oakley recalled. “It was like, This is and colleague Will Mentor described it, just this guy’s kind of art.”

“He would just make something, and it’s In 1974, Gregg separated from his wife, that ineffable resonance — if it resonated, Ann, the mother of his kids Oakley and that was enough.”

Illinois. While working on a book about Gregg grew up in Belle Plaine, Kan., the Schmidt with his friend Bill Lipke, who second of four brothers. His mom, Erma, taught art history at the University of was an oil painter; his dad, Red, ran the Vermont, he fell in love with the Green local grain elevator. About a block away Mountain State. Gregg joined Bill on the from their house, a man named David art and art history faculty at UVM for Rousseau had built a whole world in his the next several years. He later met and front yard out of colored concrete — a married Sheryl Bellman, and their son, model city suspended over a fish pond. Max, was born in 1983. Until he and Sheryl

COURTESY OF JENNIFER KOCH

split up in 1989, they lived in a rambling farmhouse in Underhill which Gregg was always working on. He began teaching at Saint Michael’s College in 1982 and stayed for the next three decades.

As an artist and teacher, Gregg was soft-spoken and unassuming, focusing more on art practice than theory. Mentor, his colleague at St. Mike’s, described how, before his students arrived, Gregg would stand perpendicular to the blackboard, “and he would take a piece of chalk, and he would make his arm go in a circle from that position to try and draw a perfect circle.

He’d do it every morning. It was so quiet, and it was odd, in a kind of friendly, private way; I loved that about him.”

In 2005, Gregg married his partner of 32 years, Jennifer Koch, a former student at St. Mike’s and fellow artist. Over two decades, they made a series of 40-by-30inch collaborative prints called “Marriages of Reason.” Each one is made from two very different images. Where Jennifer carved her woodcut blocks, Gregg took an experimental approach, sometimes building his reliefs from thin strips of veneer, sometimes etching. Jennifer’s halves are usually detailed and intricate — a tulip, a twisted skein of yarn — while Gregg’s are bold: a woven geometry of lines, a foot, an ink splotch in silhouette.

“Every day was about art,” Jennifer said.

“The way he saw the world was creative.”

During the 2010s, Gregg managed the Burlington City Arts print studio at Memorial Auditorium, volunteering many hours to teach classes and keep the shop organized. BCA executive director Doreen Kraft remembered how he had systems for everything, so visitors could easily use the studio. He was equally welcoming as a teacher, with infinite patience.

“He had a brilliant way of bringing the ideas out of individuals … he wasn’t afraid to experiment with new ideas or to let people try things that he hadn’t tried before,” Kraft said. “He made himself both teacher and student — I think that’s a rare talent.”

Gregg and Jennifer traveled around the country, collecting artwork from and maintaining relationships with self-taught and folk artists, many of whom had mental health challenges. In particular, they grew to know Burlington artist Paul Humphrey, whose “Sleeping Beauties” series of xerox drawings numbered at least in the hundreds. Gregg helped the artist with everything from selling his work to making doctor’s appointments. Gregg valued these friendships and could talk to anyone: “He had a curiosity about the world and people and art,” Jennifer said, “and I think that he made people feel really listened to.”

Gregg’s perceptiveness and patience extended from people to objects to

HE WASN’T AFRAID TO EXPERIMENT WITH NEW IDEAS. D O R E E N K R AF T

Gregg with "Devil's House"

processes. He loved to cook and practiced recipes over and over until he got them right — and then would improvise and experiment with them. He spent hours discussing food with friends and family, and with Oakley in particular; they once spent a long, snowy New Mexico day learning to make tamales. On a trip through the Southeast, Gregg insisted on trying all the barbecue he could find and later concocted his own killer sauce.

He was meticulous in his art practice, and he could spend hours creating a specific cardboard form to hold up a plaster mold. He would often make his own tools for a one-time purpose — and then carve or paint them, turning them into art objects.

“Everything he used had this sense of value, and he would take the time and the attention to detail to honor it,” said artist Kevin Donegan, a close friend. “It wasn’t just people that he made feel special, but he imbued this sense of meaning on material as well.”

Gregg’s artwork was incredibly varied.

At Burlington City Arts in 2013, he showed “Bounty,” an installation of plaster-cast objects and body parts affixed to fence posts. His sculptures included a giant metallic catfish that seemed to hover and a miniature house frame brimming with tiny pieces of wood. On camping trips to Lake George, N.Y., Gregg would find sticks and turn them into painted snakes. He’d take dirt from his many travels (including all of the lower 48 states) and affix it in stripes to a bowling ball-size mud ball in the studio.

Despite his own tendency toward craftsmanship, he had a strong appreciation for what he called “make-dos.” He would swap photos of them with friends — a knife held together with twine, a creatively cobbled farm implement. One of Jennifer’s favorites is a small ceramic jug that broke; Gregg repaired it, aesthetically if not functionally, with a cardboard extension in the same folded geometric style.

Donegan and his partner, Susan Smereka, recounted how Donegan once gave Gregg a little plastic rabbit, spray-painted chrome. Soon after, they started finding plaster-cast versions of the same rabbit hidden in the house or studio. “Either he made something for you, or he found an image that he wanted to share,” Smereka said. “You always knew you were thought about.”

In 2023, Gregg presented “new works,” a solo show at Smereka and Donegan’s new new art studio in Burlington. It included his “Life and Death Rattles,” a series of intensely colored, joyful wooden constructions that make a cacophony when shaken — a noise that delighted him.

LIFE STORIES

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

» P.34 33

Life Stories «P.33

Barbara Nolfi (far right) with her family

THERE’S JUST SO MANY THINGS IN BURLINGTON

THAT BARBARA HAD HER FINGERS ON.

‘She Had This View of How Things Ought to Be’ BARBARA CATHERINE NOLFI July 28, 1942-September 29, 2024

I

Barbara and her son, Dylan

BY M ARY ANN LICKTEIG • maryann@sevendaysvt.com

n 1969, Barbara Nolfi drove from California to Vermont to start a commune. She was 27. She came with her husband, their young son and a dog named Sam. Two California friends who wanted in on the commune followed them a few weeks later. The four picked Vermont because Barbara’s husband, Jim, got a job teaching at the University of Vermont.

Two more couples soon signed on and the group, financed by a pair of Jungian psychologists in California, bought a farm in Franklin. In February 1970 they moved in and embarked on their political and social revolutions.

They ripped out the phone and the washing machine — despite having three kids in cloth diapers. They rejected their benefactors’ offer of snowmobiles because the machines polluted their ideal: living off the land collectively and simply. They would grow their food, farm partly with horses, and turn off their electricity periodically to use kerosene lamps and a 34

BR I AN PI N E

woodstove. If they needed to get around in the wintertime, they’d use snowshoes and skis.

They shed societal norms, and sometimes their clothes, as they pursued a new way of living. They planned to smash monogamy, wipe out the nuclear family with its patriarchal hierarchy and live as one big family.

It wasn’t Barbara’s idea. “I wasn’t so much into the social experiment,” she told an interviewer in 2015, “but I definitely was into the politics.” A child of Eisenhower Republicans, she was “relatively conservative” in the late ’60s, she told the Vermont Historical Society for an oral history project. News coverage of monks setting themselves on fire in the streets of Saigon turned her into a war protester.

Starting a commune, however, appealed more to Jim and their friends, she said: “I was just coming along.”

But Barbara, who rode into Vermont on somebody else’s dream, spent the rest of her life here building a better reality. Grounded

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

by a deep sense of self and driven to work for the common good — especially the good of women and poor people — Barbara helped start or shape organizations that grew into local institutions.

Believing health care was a right, she cofounded the People’s Free Clinic in Burlington’s Old North End. It’s now Community Health Centers, with nine locations. Empowering women who didn’t want to give birth sedated and in stirrups, she became a midwife and ushered 100 babies into the world in their own homes.

She cofounded the Charlotte Family Health Center and became a physician’s assistant, then a registered nurse.

A proponent of collective action, she participated in one of the food-buying clubs that dotted Chittenden County and grew into Burlington’s City Market, Onion River Co-op. Barbara served on its board.

Eventually, she entered city government.

She served on Burlington’s Youth Employment Program’s board of directors, on the city’s water resources commission, its parks

and recreation commission, and, for eight years, its city council, then called the board of aldermen. She helped change that, too.

“There’s just so many things in Burlington that Barbara had her fingers on,” said Brian Pine, a fellow Ward 3 Progressive councilor who served with her for four years. “But you wouldn’t have known it because Barbara Nolfi never stood up at the podium and took credit or got pats on the back.”

Finally, coming full circle in a way, Barbara helped start another, albeit less radical, intentional living community. In 2007, after working 18 years to create it, she and her longtime partner, Don Schramm, moved into Burlington Cohousing East Village.

They later lobbied its board to allow green burials: interments that forego embalming and vaults to allow natural decomposition.

Barbara’s became the first. She died of a stroke on September 29 at age 82.

Dozens of people, including U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), gathered at Main Street Landing Performing Arts Center’s Film House earlier this month to grieve their loss and celebrate Barbara’s life. “She had this view of how things ought to be, and she would move to learn new things so she could help make that happen,” said Helen Keith, a speaker at the event who once shared a house with Barbara.

Those who knew her use many of the same words to describe her: smart,

level-headed, practical, competent. Other women emulated her. She was the takecharge big sister.

Hippies had a DIY attitude, and Barbara personified it, said her son, Dylan Nolfi, a child of the commune. When it was time for him to attend school, Barbara and other parents started one in the basement of a Cambridge church. Barbara taught tai chi there. When Birth Book author Raven Lang came to the free clinic to teach midwifery Barbara thought, My gosh. That’s great. I could do that.

When she saw something that needed to be created or fixed, she approached it with similar zeal. She was straightforward. She could be blunt. Sitting in audiences where everyone struggled to hear the speaker, Barbara was the one who piped up: “Use the mic!” Not everyone liked her, and she was OK with that. Longtime friend Dan Albert called her “an acquired taste.”

“Honesty was really important to her,” said Don, her partner for the past 42 years.

He, too, bore its brunt. “Don, you talk too much,” she told him often. But that’s true, he said, and Barbara’s critiques didn’t trigger him: “I just loved the daylights out of her.”

The second of four children, Barbara Catherine Smith was born in 1942 in Texas to two chemistry PhDs who taught at Texas A&M University. The family moved to Oklahoma when she was 3 and to California when she was 13. An avid reader, she was assigned to advanced classes.

She studied English for two years at Pomona College, then transferred to University of California, Berkeley, switched her major to psychology and graduated with Phi Beta Kappa honors in 1964.

At a wedding her senior year, she met Jim Nolfi, a Stanford University grad working on a PhD in zoology at Berkeley.

They married, had a son, and named him for Dylan Thomas and Bob Dylan. He was born in a hospital. “I had my baby at 12:30 at night and didn’t get to see him until, like, seven in the morning,” Barbara told the historical society. “So sad.”

Dylan was almost 2 years old when his parents cofounded the Franklin commune, Earthworks, and he, like the other children there, symbolically came to belong to all the adults. Grown-ups took turns caring for the kids, an arrangement Barbara found empowering because it freed her up to learn new skills. She worked with horses, helped repair a manure spreader and pounded nails into the rafters of the shop the group was building. A thin woman who wore dungarees and brown braids, Barbara felt herself getting physically stronger.

For the two and a half years she lived at the commune (it dissolved a couple of years after she left), she played a pivotal role. “Barbara was ‘the one,’” said Louise

Andrews, one of the eight cofounders.

“Barbara was the one that found the farm.”

She was the one who planned the garden and coordinated canning. When the commune ballooned in the summer with runaways, draft dodgers and other itinerants, Barbara ordered the chaos and divvied up the chores.

Amid the sex, drugs, and rock and roll, Barbara remained pragmatic. “She didn’t smoke dope, for example,” Earthworks cofounder Bruce Taub said. (She didn’t like marijuana, she told the historical society — “I did like psychedelics.”)

A 1971 summer weekend proved to be a seminal catalyst for Barbara and others.

Earthworks members invited residents of other communes to Franklin for a “gathering of the tribes.” As many as 200 people

ice storm and labor took a bad turn, that’s what you wanted. “She would be the person who would keep her cool,” Stambolian said.

As a parent herself, Barbara instilled in her son an understanding that he mattered to her more than all others. She and Jim split up when Dylan was 2, and Jim died when Dylan was 13.

Barbara read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Treasure Island to Dylan when he was 7 years old and Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea trilogy when he was 10. She took him to all the Akira Kurosawa movies.

She indulged his obsession with fishing and let him take risks. “I had a butane torch — like a plumbing torch — in my bedroom when I was, like, 13,” he said. “I was into blowing things up.”

“turned on by their lives,” as Barbara put it, discussed the changes they wanted to make in society.

Three main ideas emerged: affordable health care; banding together to buy food; and using newspapers to spread their messages.

Barbara pursued health care. She and about a dozen other volunteers launched the People’s Free Clinic. They recruited doctors to train them as paramedics and to donate a day every week or two to provide care. They set up exam rooms and a lab and began diagnosing and treating colds, coughs and sexually transmitted infections.

Barbara became one of two lead midwives in the clinic’s “birth group.”

She exuded competence and support while attending births, but not necessarily warmth, assistant midwife Phyllis Stambolian said: The assistants tended to emotions; Barbara tended to business. And when you were out in Bristol or Charlotte during an

Dylan was 14 in 1982 when Barbara and Don met through Single Vermonters, a newspaper where each had placed an ad. Don noticed Barbara’s: “37, divorced, 5’6”, 125 lbs, beautiful, unique, intelligent woman, dark-haired with blue eyes, shy.

Seeks companionship for fun, humor, love.”

She listed her interests, mentioned her work in health care and said she preferred a man who likes kids.

He showed the personal ads to his friends. “I even sat down with my mom, and we went through the list, and we all ranked them,” Don said. “Barbara always came out on top.”

For their first date, he took Barbara and Dylan to dinner at Tortilla Flat. (He learned that Barbara was actually 40, not 37, perhaps the only thing she ever lied about.) Barbara and Don shared a love of nature and movies and probably 100 friends. They discovered that they had even attended some of the same parties and meetings. “Holy Toledo,”

he said. “It was a perfect match.” To this day, he can’t believe that Barbara, “this gem,” had stayed single for 12 years.

She was halfway through nursing school when they met. After graduation, she worked on the pediatrics ward in what is now the University of Vermont Medical Center.

In 1988, campaigning on tenants’ rights, property tax relief, affordable childcare, and improvements to streets and sidewalks, Barbara won a seat on Burlington’s board of aldermen. When she considered policies, councilor Pine said, she thought of the people who would feel their impact — the people not likely to be in the forefront of other policy makers’ minds: women, children, people of color and those with disabilities. Cut lifeguards from city beaches to save money? No, Barbara argued; single moms depend on summer camps that use those beaches.

She played prominent roles in developing Burlington’s publicly owned Waterfront Park and in the voters’ rejection of a longterm contract extension to buy electricity from Hydro-Québec, whose practice of flooding land displaced Indigenous people and harmed wildlife.

Illness gradually impeded Barbara’s ability to multitask and, eventually, her mobility.

She started showing signs of Parkinson’s disease around 2011, though it wasn’t diagnosed until 2023. She also had multiple myeloma, which responded well to treatment, Don said. Her health declined rapidly in her last months, but she remained curious and continued to read. She and Don did their customary crossword puzzle together the day before she died.

The day after, Don, Dylan, friends and relatives dug Barbara’s grave. “Also DIY,” Dylan noted. Barbara and Don had picked the spot, right behind the barn, next to her beehives and overlooking a pond and gardens. Don will be buried next to her.

He’d like to see a small marker noting the coordinates, their names, and their birth and death dates, he said, but otherwise, cohousing residents can do what they want with the area. “The community can have a garden on top of this. They can plant a tree. They could put a chicken coop here, whatever,” he said.

In a short October ceremony, about 50 people gathered near Barbara’s grave. Dylan, his wife and longtime friends carried her body on a pine board, down a stone path to the barn. Don spoke. Dylan read some of Barbara’s writing. They focused on Barbara’s love of nature.

Then the pallbearers lowered her body into the clay soil, where her four grandchildren had dropped flowers, and Barbara Nolfi went back to the land.

LIFE STORIES

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» P.36 35

Life Stories «P.35

S

now swirled on a blustery, bitterly cold Saturday in January as more than 900 people packed the University of Vermont’s Ira Allen Chapel to celebrate the life of Jarlath O’Neil-Dunne. Several of Jarlath’s friends and relatives remarked that he would have loved the miserable weather and might have even stripped off his shirt and bicycled through the snow in Lycra shorts.

An extreme athlete whose idea of fun was pushing himself to the edge of his physical endurance — in triathlons, Spartan races, even family outings — Jarlath embraced suffering; it only drove him harder.

He did nothing half-heartedly. His younger daughter, Maeve, 13, remembers hiking with her father to the summit of Mount Mansfield, descending the other side, then climbing back to the top and returning halfway down before camping for the night. She was 6 at the time.

After Jarlath died unexpectedly on January 6, his son, Gus, 18, tried to envision his father relaxing in heaven. “But for some reason I was never really able to picture it,” he said. Instead, Gus imagined his father as Sisyphus, the mythological Greek character who angered the gods and was doomed to roll a boulder uphill for eternity. “My dad, he would love that.”

Jarlath, 49, was a beloved, larger-thanlife figure at UVM. A retired U.S. Marine Corps combat veteran who served in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, he ran the university’s Spatial Analysis Lab for 12 years and founded the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Team, UVM’s nationally renowned drone program. The aircraft carry high-resolution cameras and infrared equipment for creating maps, videos and 3D landscape models used by researchers, engineers and landuse planners.

Despite qualities that could make him seem intimidating at first — his Herculean build, his reputation as a challenging professor, his professional achievements and extreme athleticism — Jarlath was widely admired for his humility, integrity, playfulness and commitment to helping others succeed.

“Jarlath directly inspired thousands of people to be better human beings,” fellow UVM professor and close friend Chris Danforth said. “He did impossibly hard things, not to show us how strong he was, but how strong we could be.”

Jarlath Patrick Macbeth O’NeilDunne was born in Somerset, England, then raised in Mahwah, N.J. The oldest of four siblings, he was bullied as a child and struggled to make friends. His brother Aengus described him as “an asthmatic, pudgy kid” who was terrible at sports and “atrocious” at running well into his teens.

Then Jarlath developed an astonishing work ethic. Inspired by the story of 36

Jarlath O’Neil-Dunne in a Spartan race

‘A Purple-Lycra’d Superhero’ JARLATH O’NEIL-DUNNE September 15, 1974-January 6, 2024

BY K E N P IC AR D • ken@sevendaysvt.com

long-distance runner Steve Prefontaine, he started running every morning before school and on weekends. He became obsessed with fitness and nutrition. By his senior year of high school, he was a stateranked runner. Aengus suspects that Jarlath trained so hard because their father died in his forties when they were just teenagers.

Jarlath studied forestry at the University of New Hampshire, where he took up rowing. Jason Blackburn, who met him during their first year, remembers their first season of rowing together. It ended with an abysmal record, capped by a humiliating defeat when their boat zigzagged down the Connecticut River in a race against Dartmouth College.

“Jarlath would joke that we would have won if we’d only remembered to row straight,” Blackburn said. By their second season, however, “A hero emerged, a purple-Lycra’ed superhero.”

“Make no mistake. We were still terrible,” Blackburn continued. “But we

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

were finally a team.” The esprit de corps that Jarlath inspired became a theme throughout his life.

He met Julie Hathaway, his future wife of 24 years, in their final months at UNH. Among her earliest memories of him was his hard-to-place British accent. Though he left England as a baby, she said, “Jarlath would joke that he used [the accent] when he met me, so he had to keep it up for the rest of his life.”

Jarlath had already committed to joining the U.S. Marines when the couple started dating. After college, Hathaway moved to Boston while he attended USMC Officer Candidates School, in Quantico, Va. It was there that Jarlath met Capt. Michael Ferrito.

“Jarlath definitely stood out,” Ferrito recalled. “On weekends, when we were stuffing our faces with doughnuts and beer, he’d be doing pull-ups, push-ups and sit-ups.”

Ferrito remembers one grueling, eightmile training march, which required their

company to haul artillery on foot. As the temperature rose into the 90s and the humidity went “through the roof,” he said, several Marines collapsed from heat exhaustion.

“I felt myself being overcome. Then I saw Jarlath blast by me, not only with his 68 pounds of individual gear and weapons but an entire 100-pound mortar system strapped on his back,” Ferrito said. “I knew at that moment he wasn’t just a stud but an absolute beast.”

Jarlath loved endurance sports and frequently tried to convince others to join him, with mixed results. His brother St. John remembers visiting Jarlath at Camp Pendleton, near Oceanside, Calif.

There, Jarlath thought it would be fun for his brother, a self-described “non-fit, awkward teen,” to sea kayak in rough surf, “a new sport Jarlath had taken up, because the Marine training didn’t seem challenging enough,” St. John recalled. “I immediately got knocked over, because I wasn’t an adult Marine.

“Everything he did always seemed to exceed the norm of whatever was achievable or possible,” he added.

In 2000, Jarlath and Julie moved to Burlington to attend graduate school at UVM. They married the same year, settled in the New North End and started a family.

By then a reservist, Jarlath was called up for several military deployments. Because of his training in the use of drones and advanced spatial imagery, Jarlath was sent to Kuwait in 2002 to codirect the Marines’ intelligence assets during Operation Iraqi Freedom, a prestigious assignment for a junior officer.

Essentially, his job was to search for weapons of mass destruction.

“It was pretty scary,” Julie said. “Were there chemical weapons? Biological weapons? Nobody really knew.”

Upon his return, in 2004, Jarlath became a geospatial analyst in UVM’s Spatial Analysis Lab. There, he gathered, compiled and analyzed data and aerial imagery that enabled city planners to assess their urban tree canopies, wildlife biologists to measure habitat loss, and structural engineers to document riverbank erosion and bridge damage.

He became the lab’s director in 2012.

The following year, in the aftermath of Tropical Storm Irene, Jarlath applied his military know-how to creating UVM’s drones program. The drone-assisted research has played a critical role in helping communities recover from natural disasters, including Vermont’s recent floods.

“We didn’t know what drones were in 2013 or how to use them,” said Adam Zylka, team leader at the spatial analysis lab. Jarlath grew the program to its current level of 15 full-time employees and 50 students and recent graduates.

Let it snow!

Let it snow!

Jarlath and wife Julie Hathaway

Jarlath also focused on making the team racially and ethnically diverse, offering opportunities to people from groups traditionally underrepresented in the field. As Zylka put it, “We don’t look like other teams in the drone industry.”

“Jarlath truly understood the value of investing in people and treating them well,” Ernest Buford, a research specialist at the lab, said. Once, after receiving what he considered a disproportionately large pay raise, Ja r l a t h m a i l e d checks to his entire staff so that they could share in his good fortune.

“He might have been the best supervisor at UVM,” Buford said. “His spirit of openness permeated the lab.”

As did Jarlath’s sense of humor. To honor his colleague and friend at January’s memorial service, Buford donned a neon yellow bike helmet and red and white Lycra as a “fellow MAMIL,” an acronym Jarlath coined for “middle-aged men in Lycra.”

Jarlath loved making people laugh, be it with groan-worthy dad jokes or his terrible dance moves, for which he never felt embarrassment. Aengus said Jarlath’s sense of humor often served a higher purpose, either to remind himself and others to not take themselves too seriously, or to challenge institutional groupthink.

While deployed in Kuwait, Jarlath started an underground weekly newspaper on the base called A Surrealist Look at Camp Commando. Posted inside the Marines’ portable toilets, Jarlath’s newspaper offered humorous commentary on military life.

Another time, he mail-ordered a flowery outfit, including tiny shorts and tank top, which he wore in the desert during his deployment. “His commanding officer called him in and asked him about his

sexual orientation,” Aengus said. Jarlath’s reply: “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”

While many people have described Jarlath as a superhero, “He was also very human and had his weaknesses, like all of us,” longtime family friend Meredith Breiland said. He could be extremely competitive, for example, though his kids pointed out that he was his own favorite competition.

“As long as we went out and did our best, he was always proud of us,” Maeve said.

And when they failed, she said, her father often told them, “Find the laugh in something you failed at.”

One summer, Julie recalled, Jarlath visited his mother to help powerwash her house. He immediately leaped into the job without researching how it’s done.

“Shingles started flying off, and the ones that stayed on were etched so badly that they had to re-side the house,” she said. “As Jarlath would say, ‘Good initiative, bad judgment.’”

Jarlath had another weakness: an undiagnosed heart defect. While Nordic skiing with friends on January 6, he collapsed and died from a heart attack.

He is survived by his mother, Mairi O’Neil-Dunne; siblings, Aengus, Iona Munjal and St. John; wife, Julie Hathaway; and their three children, Ailsa, Gus and Maeve.

“He could be stubborn. He could be obsessive at times. He had a difficult time acknowledging social norms about spontaneous yoga,” Blackburn said about his friend’s propensity for doing stretching exercises in public. “In the grand scheme of things, however, his idiosyncrasies were a small price to pay for the full Jarlath show.”

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SHE WAS A SINGULAR FIGURE BUT BURNED VERY BRIGHTLY

AND THEN DISAPPEARED. HECT OR SAL D AÑA

Melinda Arceneaux-Swearingen at Willie Nelson's Fourth of July Picnic in 1976 Melinda with Allan Nicholls and sons John and Andrew

‘The Annie Leibovitz of Outlaw Country’ MELINDA ARCENEAUX-SWEARINGEN May 28, 1947-March 18, 2024

I

BY CHR IS FARNSWORTH • farnsworth@sevendaysvt.com

n the black-and-white photo, she’s perched in front of the stage, the crowd behind her out of focus. The young woman’s face radiates confidence, the visage of an artist at work. Her trusty 35mm camera hangs around her neck. It’s July 4, 1976, the U.S. bicentennial, and she’s photographing the celebratory picnic thrown by Willie Nelson in Gonzales, Texas. She peers into the camera aimed at her. For once, she is the subject of the photo. Her eyes are ablaze.

It’s one of the most enduring images of Melinda Arceneaux-Swearingen, taken during her years photographing some of the biggest names of rock and country music. She kept it by the side of her bed until she died after ongoing health problems on March 18, 38

at age 76, at her home in Montgomery Center.

A much larger print of the photo also hangs in her home state in the gallery of the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University in San Marcos, where an exhibition of her work is running until July 2025.

“She told me that when she looked at the picture, she was reconnecting with the young woman that she had let go a long time ago,” said Hector Saldaña, the music curator at the Wittliff Collections.

Born in Dallas in 1947, Melinda Arceneaux began her photography career while working at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library archives at the University of Texas. She shot various political events and candidates, with her work appearing in Time

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

and Newsweek. She was living in Austin at the time, after marrying Rick Lee Wickman in 1968.

Her passion, however, was photographing musicians, not politicians. She quickly established herself as a force within the Austin music scene in the late 1960s, taking pictures of the likes of Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan and Marcia Ball. She shot many of the photos in Jan Reid’s seminal book The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock, as well as album covers for artists such as Waylon Jennings and Nelson. She later shot stills for classic films including The Blues Brothers, Popeye and Coal Miner’s Daughter.

Melinda gave up professional photography during the last 30 years of her life.

Instead, she took on what her son John Nicholls described as her third career and became a librarian — like her mother, Reba, before her — in her adopted home of Montgomery Center. She worked at the Bellows Free Academy in St. Albans before moving to Enosburg Falls High School.

“I definitely grew up with parents who had a lot of creative accomplishments,” said John, a voice actor who lives in St. Albans and played in area rock band Near North.

John’s father and Melinda’s second husband, Allan Nicholls, is an actor, musician, writer and film director whose work includes films such as Dead Ringer, Nashville and Slap Shot.

Many of Melinda’s photos were hung on the walls of the family home, but her son failed to notice until he was older just who was in them.

“One day, I realized that Bob Dylan is in one of the pictures, and I’m like, ‘Hey, I have that guy’s poster on my bedroom wall,’” John recalled. “It was strange; she wasn’t embarrassed or trying to hide anything, but I’m certain that she believed she would never have an audience.”

Melinda met Allan on the set of the Robert Altman film Health in the late ’70s, after she had moved on from music photography to shooting stills for films, a more lucrative gig. They eventually bought a house in Allan’s home city of Montréal, raising their two sons, John and Andrew, there.

One day, while driving to Jay Peak Resort, Melinda noticed an old Victorian house off Route 242 in Montgomery Center. The place had a long history, including as a boardinghouse and art gallery.

“She saw it from the road and knew it was the one,” John said. “It was one of her visions: She just knew this was going to be her home, and she loved that house.”

The family soon moved to Vermont.

Allan and Melinda divorced in 1991 but remained friends. Over the years, he tried to get her to exhibit her photography, but she would always decline. “I think she was nervous about showing her work, but she really deserves the recognition,” he said.

She married Edward Bruce Swearingen on the Fourth of July in 1993, celebrating with a jazz band on the porch. She settled into a new phase of family life, breaking out the camera sparingly to take nature shots or family portraits. She also worked on her art projects, notably illustration and calligraphy, two of her passions. (Edward died in 2010.)

She stored her extensive collection of photographs and negatives from her Austin days in the basement of the house. A flash flood in 1997 destroyed much of her work, which so broke her heart that she couldn’t even look at what remained. She had the detritus moved into boxes in the loft of her barn and refused to so much as go near them for the better part of 20 years.

“She was sure all of her work was lost and would be forgotten,” John said. “She’d say things like, ‘No one cares, and no one will ever know.’”

Back in her home state, however, the music curator at the Wittliff Collections was helping to ensure that Melinda’s fears would not be realized.

“Part of the beauty of what I do is

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The Melinda Wickman Swearingen exhibition at the Wittliff Collections

discovering something like Melinda’s “It’s wonderful seeing her finally story,” Saldaña said in a phone call from his acknowledged in this way,” her son John office at Texas State University. “I mean, said of the collection. “It brought her a how can it be that the Annie Leibovitz of lot of happiness to know her work wasn’t outlaw country could almost be lost to forgotten.” history? It’s unbelievable — her work John hopes the exhibition helps highwas seminal. When she took light the quality and heart in his those photos of Waylon and mother’s photos.

Willie, people don’t real“She was so interested ize that these weren’t in finding beauty in the mundane,” he recalled. household names yet.

She had a lot to do with “Yeah, she knew how to that happening.” put together a picture, When Melinda but she also wanted first took photos of to find out who was Nelson, Saldaña noted, behind the photo, what the legendary country was bubbling underMelinda with John and Allan Nicholls singer had just signed up neath the surface.” for an open mic. “That’s how What John remembers far back she went with the Austin most about Melinda is her dediscene back then. She was a singular figure cation to making sure people were heard. but burned very brightly and then disap“I didn’t really put that together until peared; she left and started working on near her death,” he said. “But it’s a through movies.” line for her entire life, whether it was While preparing a Jan Reid exhibition making sure I was heard as a child, which at the Wittliff Collections, Saldaña came she always did for my children as well, or across four of Melinda’s pictures from photographing these musicians that, at Reid’s book and started to wonder what the time, were not being taken seriously had become of the photographer who took as artists.” such formative images.

In her later years, he said, Melinda “There was a lot of mystique around started leading group meditations and Melinda down here,” Saldaña said. “It would always dedicate them to “the forgotwas her photos that really put a face to the ten ones.” music coming out of Texas, but we only had “She was a wonderful, soulful, humble four of them. So I knew I had to find her.” and very, very sharp woman,” Saldaña Eventually, Saldaña connected with recalled. “Her death hit me quite hard Melinda, flying to Vermont in 2022 to meet because I was so hoping she would get to her and try to procure more photos from see her exhibition.” her catalog. That’s when she told him about Melinda did take a virtual tour of the the flood. show before she passed. Seeing her work “That flood had just utterly broken preserved and presented with the honor it her heart. It was traumatic and very, very deserves moved her to tears, particularly emotional for her,” Saldaña said. He coaxed the massive shot of her at Nelson’s Fourth her into investigating what had been of July picnic. recovered from the flooded basement.

“Melinda epitomizes the mission state“Lo and behold, not all was lost,” he said. ment of the Wittliff Collections or any Together with Melinda, Saldaña curated institution like the Smithsonian or Rock 19 never-before-published photographs & Roll Hall of Fame,” Saldaña said. “This from her surviving negatives and put is history, and we can’t afford to let it slip together her show at the Wittliff — the through the cracks.” first-ever collected exhibition of her work.

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Life Stories «P.39 World War II. He recalls moved to Bethesda, Md., a suburb of the fleeing Paris at age 14 nation’s capital, with his family in a memoir that he began where budding before his death. Just foreign service as he and his mother officers had to learn stepped out of the hot languages. Henri car for a break, they taught French heard the scream of to students at a approaching Nazi private boys’ school, the University of warplanes. “My Maryland and the mother shoved me into Pentagon. The couple the ditch. She dove in and threw herself on top of me had three children, Kitty, as the planes came over Philip and Loretta, and with guns blazing,” Henri moved to the upscale wrote. suburb of Potomac, Md. The attack over, they But Henri had an itch; were shocked to see he was a DIY guy with nearby the dead bodies of a jones for engineering. a mother and daughter.

In 1957, driving on River “A couple inches to the Road to work one day, he left and my mother and I noticed a home renovation would have suffered the business for sale — a L O R ET TA D E M A R N E same fate,” Henri wrote. perfect way to scratch Staying fed was a that itch, he thought. He challenge, given that so much food was renamed the business de Marne & Day commandeered by the German army. Henri and specialized in home construction and was living with his grandparents, lusting the three Rs: restoration, remodeling and after cantaloupes in a nearby farmer’s field. renovation.

What the Nazis didn’t take had to go to But a fourth R, renaissance, beckoned. market. Henri vowed to have a cantaloupe Henri had developed a passion for downhill all to himself when the war ended. skiing. During the 1970s, he sold the At 17, Henri volunteered for the French business — it retained his name for many Red Cross and, a year later, joined the years — and moved to Vermont. He quickly French 2nd Armored Division, eventually became proficient and got a job as a ski serving alongside U.S. general George instructor at Bromley Resort in Peru, Vt. Patton’s Third Army. At war’s end, Henri “It’s amazing that he started skiing so decided he would immigrate to America. late,” Loretta said. She explained that he That decision led him to the U.S. Embassy, learned at Bromley using the graduated where he obtained both a visa and a wife. length method, in which beginners start on South Carolina-born Muriel Mann, a three-foot-long skis, then move to four- and consular employee, was charmed by the five-foot-long skis. “They had you skiing in young Frenchman. They married and a week,” she said.

HE AGED SO BEAUTIFULLY,

PHOTOS: SUSAN DONNIS

LIKE A FRENCH CHEESE AND WINE.

Henri de Marne in the 1970s

‘He Reinvented Himself Many Times’ HENRI DE MARNE, December 20, 1925-October 15, 2024

I

BY ST EVE GOLDSTE IN • sgoldstein@sevendaysvt.com

n a long life well lived, Henri de Marne was, at various times, a teenage volunteer for the French Red Cross in World War II; a postwar émigré to the U.S., where he became a French teacher; the owner of a home remodeling business; a ski instructor; and the author of a nationally syndicated newspaper column on home improvement.

Henri left France — but France never left him. A Gallic tang suffused his speaking voice. He was a gourmand, of sorts; when a dish pleased him, he would compare its delectability to “the baby Jesus sliding down my throat in velvet pajamas.” Yet his perfect lunch was gazpacho, grilled cheese and a brownie at the Garden of Eatin’ Café inside Gardener’s Supply in Williston.

“He just loved French cheeses,” said Loretta de Marne, the younger of his two daughters. “I think of him as he aged so beautifully, like a French cheese and wine.

40

But we always laugh because he had terrible taste in wine.”

During his near-century on Earth, Henri had more lives than a litter of kittens. “He was constantly reinventing himself,” said Kitty Werner, his older daughter.

“Henri was unique, a descriptive word that is the same in both French and English, his principal languages,” said Matthys Levy, a close friend and fellow Frenchman. The two of them wound up as neighbors at Wake Robin retirement community in Shelburne.

“Renaissance” means “rebirth” and is another word shared by both languages.

Surviving his war-struck youth seemed to grant Henri the will to pursue any endeavor.

“My father [learned] to ski when he was 40,” Loretta said. “So whatever he put his mind to, he was going to learn it in every detail.”

Henri was born in Paris in 1925 and schooled at the famous Sorbonne University.

His youth was scarred by the devastation of

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

Henri (center) in the 1960s

Henri canoeing in the 1950s

After skiing Mad River Glen in Fayston, Henri’s allegiance shifted. He began teaching at Mad River and built his fantasy home on a Waitsfield hill with a commanding view of the valley.

However, man — or Henri, anyway — could not live on schuss alone. He’d kept up with building design and science. He’d even been called as an expert witness in some related civil litigation and was frustrated by the advice on home repairs that he’d seen in the newspapers. Thus was born “About the House With Henri de Marne,” a newspaper column that began in the Burlington Free Press, became syndicated in 1980 and eventually grew to appear in more than 100 newspapers during its 42-year run.

As detailed in his column, Henri had his favorite products for keeping things in good order. He was a big fan of Nok-Out for eliminating foul odors, such as skunk spray and cat urine. Shopping at Hannaford one day, Henri was approached by a woman who asked if he was the columnist. The woman gasped when the stranger nodded yes. “Wait right here. Don’t move!” the woman admonished and quickly strode away. She proceeded to run up and down the grocery store aisles trying to locate her husband, all the while yelling, “Fred!

Fred! The Nok-Out Man is here! He’s here!

You’ve got to come meet him!”

Henri’s other outdoor passion was canoeing. He loved the whitewater runs near Great Falls in Potomac. After moving to Vermont, he mostly stuck with a kayak

on the Saranac Lakes in New York or Lake Iroquois closer to home. Kitty said her dad fancied himself an inventor or an innovator, and he had a big idea to clean up Lake Iroquois, which was being overrun by water milfoil, an invasive submerged aquatic weed.

“So he invented this machine that would be pulled behind a motorboat,” Kitty explained. The MacGyvered device used a comblike metal board and part of a tennis net to dredge the weed. “He was like a kid in the candy store,” she continued.

“He had a great time inventing this, but it bombed,” Kitty said with a laugh. “He never took into account all the rocks on the lake bottom.”

Henri and Muriel divorced in the 1980s, and he busied himself with skiing and consulting on building projects. Then came a second go-round at the altar, and it was clear that Henri was going to marry up — his first meeting with the wife-to-be, in 1993, was on a roof.

The roof was on a house in Essex owned by Susan Donnis, a psychologist, and it was leaking. “I was very angry,” she said. “I found out that this Henri de Marne had installed the roof two years before I bought it, so I called him and demanded a meeting.”

The pair met on the roof; Henri determined that the shingles he’d used were defective. He filed the warranty claim and oversaw the installation of the new roof.

Henri did not send a bill. After almost

a year had passed, “I decided the decent thing to do was to take him out to dinner, as a thank-you,” Susan recalled.

The thank-you dinner turned into a relationship, but it took the younger Susan almost a decade to agree to marry Henri due to her reservations about their 22-year age difference. (He was in his late sixties when they met.) Still, these were happy years, with Henri continuing his column and occasionally consulting on home remodeling.

In 2006, the winter after their wedding, Susan and Henri had a terrible car accident while driving home from skiing. Both suffered injuries, but Henri’s were far more serious — he’d sustained a break in the spine at his neck. “It took me six months to stop worrying about him being paralyzed,” Susan said. “This was when I first began to think about Wake Robin.”

Loretta recalled that her dad was angry after the accident.

“He was probably 80 at that time, and he never looked or acted his age,” she said.

“This really changed his life. I mean, he aged 20 years overnight.”

Henri was able to continue writing his column, but the pain from his injury prohibited many outdoor pursuits. In 2015, the couple moved to Wake Robin.

“Henri quickly adapted to his new surroundings, offering advice to the 8v-IntegrativeAcu122524 1 12/16/24 9:59 AM management concerning construction issues,” his friend Levy said. A longtime opera lover, Henri ran weekly listening sessions at the retirement home, providing his own CDs and DVDs, as well as commentary. When he praised Wake Robin’s cooks for a particular dish in his customary manner, the staff referred to it as “a baby Jesus moment.”

Henri also began writing a memoir that included his traumatic life in France during wartime.

“He was gutsy,” Susan said. “I guess when one comes of age in wartime, it can feel that life is short. One can adopt a fearful approach and timidly live life — or somehow be insulated from fear and rush headlong into risk-taking. Henri was the latter.”

Henri died after a lengthy illness on October 15, two months shy of his 99th birthday. As he was wheeled out to a waiting hearse, his body covered in a Quilt of Valor honoring his military service, friends and staff lined the corridor of Wake Shop online or Robin’s Linden wing to see him off. visit us at the store!

Perhaps the most poignant tribute came from a close friend of Henri and Susan’s who knew of the trauma endured by the Use code 7Days10 for 10% off* young French boy. “We eat cantaloupe,” 52 Main St, she declared, “and for us it is an occasion Middlebury VT of gratitude and thoughts of Henri.”

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Life Stories «P.41

‘She Was Like the Sinews That Held Us Together’ SARAH DOPP, November 21, 1946-March 7, 2024

BY MELISSA PASANEN • pasanen@sevendaysvt.com

W

hen Sarah Dopp unexpectedly missed choir practice on March 7, friends and fellow congregants at Burlington’s First Baptist Church were worried. She was not one to skip commitments.

Sarah stopped by the church almost daily and had done so the day before, recalled pastor Karen Mendes. On top of singing soprano in the choir, Sarah served as church moderator — essentially, the congregation’s lay leader. She would drop in to sign or proofread something, help with a community project, or attend book group, Bible study or the monthly racial justice vigil she championed. Mendes recalled that Sarah never blindly accepted the Bible’s teachings: “Her question always was, ‘But what does it mean for us today?’”

Sarah was more than the congregation’s heart, the pastor said, “she was like the sinews that kept us all together.”

Sarah’s devotion to First Baptist was one of many substantial commitments through which the 77-year-old “Energizer bunny” made a difference with her determined yet gentle approach, according to longtime friend Joe Perron.

She treasured the past, serving as First Baptist’s historian, and had been president of the board for both the Chittenden County and Vermont historical societies.

But the South Burlington native looked to the future, too, founding the city land trust, which has saved 758 acres from development since 2003. That does not include Sarah’s own 40 acres off Cheese Factory Road, which she donated to be conserved last year.

“South Burlington would look a lot different were it not for Sarah Dopp,” land trust member Michael Mittag said.

Her land conservation and historic preservation accomplishments earned her the 2014 Hildene Award, which she shared with Paul Bruhn, the late cofounder of Preservation Trust of Vermont. During the ceremony, Sarah called herself a “small player,” and accepted the award as one of many “across Vermont, making important contributions to our communal quality of life and the future of our state.”

Until 2020, Sarah juggled all of her volunteer activities with shifts as a medical 42

technologist at the University of Vermont Medical Center. Though she retired in 2003, she kept working part-time, logging 52 total years of service, according to Ellie Russell, who hired Sarah in 1968 and became a close friend.

Sarah’s calendar was so packed, Russell said, “I used to complain I had to make an appointment with her.”

On the evening of March 6, the Sarah circa 1958 friends had a longplanned visit. It was raining, and different world back then,” she Sarah Dopp in her South Sarah hadn’t yet said.

Burlington woods in 201 9 had time to eat, Sharon Bushor and Sarah Russell recalled, met as first-year students in but she drove to the UVM swimming pool after Shelburne anyway. “If she said she’d do both failed the mandatory swim something, she did it,” her friend said. test. They were also in the same The old pals chatted over food. Sarah rigorous, science-heavy medical appeared normal but tired, Russell said. technology program.

By the morning of March 8, Sarah’s Bushor said Sarah adored friends had become very concerned. She English literature as much as lived alone and her landline was ringing science but chose a medical busy. A church friend and a neighbor career, inspired by her mother’s went to check on her and called 911. close friend, a woman who was a pathologist — unusual for the The certifying physician concluded she had likely died the day before of a time. When Sarah graduated in heart attack.

1968 and landed her first blood Sarah in 1987 Sarah’s heart, steadfastly put into bank position at what was then the Medical Center Hospital of so many worthy causes, had given out.

Vermont, Bushor recalled, “She At the memorial service, Mendes said Katharine, an tribute after tribute made it seem like Sarah accomplished musician, was the First was so proud to have been born had cloned herself. “Each of us felt like we Baptist organist for decades and, after there, been a candy striper there and [then had all of her,” the pastor said. she died in 1999, was the namesake for to] work in the laboratory there.”

But amid all the bustle, Donna Harley an annual recital on the 1864 pipe organ.

Sarah rose through the ranks to supersaid her friend and neighbor of almost four Sarah, of course, had raised the money to vise blood compatibility testing for transdecades savored her downtime and loved restore the instrument. She financially fusions and organ transplants. Working nothing more than sitting with a good book supported the recital, which will continue quickly and meticulously was sometimes and her cat in her lap. “She was such a big in honor of mother and daughter. a matter of life or death: “Somebody could part of things, but she liked the small things According to her friends and cousin, be bleeding out,” Russell explained. Sarah the best,” Harley said. “She’d call me when Sarah had a happy childhood and was very became known for efficient but scrupulous the first asparagus came up.” close to her parents, who both worked attention to detail — as anyone whose meetBooks and music filled the Mayfair for UVM Extension. In a 2023 interview ing minutes she ever reviewed would later Park home in which Sarah grew up, the with Seven Days, Sarah recalled walking note with a mix of chagrin and respect. only child of Leroy and Katharine Dopp. with her father to Al’s French Frys. South Her volunteer work may have overHer first cousin Katrina Van Dopp recalled Burlington was still dotted with farms, shadowed her career, but Sarah prized “floor-to-ceiling books” spilling far beyond and she biked to school and to the grocery both. South Burlington City Council chair the library. Also: a piano. store without traffic worries. “It was a very Tim Barritt recalled their many respectful,

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

thoughtful interactions regarding conservation, but he was especially touched when she wrote thanking him for an article he penned about platelet donation.

A job exchange allowed Sarah to live for a year in the early 1970s in England, a place she had long loved for its literature and history. “That was one of her happiest times,” Bushor said. “She felt like she was born in the wrong century and, actually, in the wrong country.”

Sarah returned to England regularly, bringing back gravestone rubbings and a taste for warm beer. She earned a master’s in English literature, named cats Crumpet and Peggotty (after the housekeeper in Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield), hosted tea parties and post-Christmas Boxing Day gatherings.

No one recalls Sarah seriously dating or lamenting the lack of a mate or offspring.

She remained, by all accounts, contentedly single, though she cultivated close relationships with her neighbors’ children. One, Corie Pierce, said she can still picture Sarah tossing balls gamely but “awkwardly” to Pierce’s baseball-obsessed son.

Sarah had moved to the cluster of three households on a gravel drive off Cheese Factory Road in 1986, where she rented a

converted barn owned by her friend and former UVM professor Betty Bandel.

Over the years, Sarah took over property maintenance and eventually coordinated in-home care for her older, single friend until Bandel’s 2008 death, upon which she bequeathed the barn home, her brick farmhouse and land to Sarah.

Sarah’s neighbors and tenants, Pierce and her partner, Chris Dorman, had pledged to take care of Sarah the same way.

Pierce is the farmer and owner of Bread & Butter Farm, which she and a former business partner established in 2009 on 143 acres of conserved dairy land across Cheese Factory Road. When the farmers won the competitive bid process to buy the parcel near Sarah’s recently inherited property, they had not yet met the woman who had been working quietly for years to persuade the landowners not to sell to developers. Sarah hoped it could stay open for the benefit of all “critters,” as she called them, humans and others.

“I feel really strongly that all communities ought to have some green lungs around them,” Sarah said later in a Seven Days article about a proposed Sarah in high school South Burlington zoning change that would have, literally, paved the way to development on some previously protected land.

As the threat of climate change loomed and Lake Champlain water quality worsened, it pained Sarah to see more asphalt poured. She did recognize the need for more affordable housing, though, and, in the case of Pierce’s family, she could do something about that.

In 2009, Pierce, Dorman and their young son moved temporarily into a mobile home on the farm with no prospects for a permanent home nearby. To their immense relief, almost as soon as she biked over to introduce herself, Sarah offered to rent them Bandel’s brick farmhouse.

The couple said Sarah kept the rent stable and encouraged them to request payment extensions if needed. She was a

stalwart supporter of the farm through the years, from her earliest visits to buy greens when Bread & Butter was raising little else.

Without an affordable, stable home for her family near the farm, Pierce said she’d very likely have given up her dream, which is now a thriving, diversified, organic operation and community hub.

“Not only did she give us a house, but she gave us a sense of home,” Dorman said.

Even as they grew close, Sarah was careful never to impose. A longtime board member of the Craftsbury Chamber Players, she hosted pandemic-era concerts in her field and would ask Bread & Butter to mow the space in advance. When music director Fran Rowell called in 2021 about a last-minute date, she recalled Sarah hesitating. Rowell later discovered that, rather than bothering her neighbors, Sarah jumped on her riding mower to clear one acre herself.

Sarah’s renovated barn home lacked a washing machine, so for 14 years, she did laundry at Pierce and Dorman’s farmhouse.

Never once, Dorman said, did Sarah arrive without calling first and leaving a note of thanks if no one was home.

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Life Stories «P.43

Donald at around 12 years old

‘The Poster Child for Resilience’ DONALD PLEASANT, September 12, 1951-February 9, 2024 B Y H A N NAH FEUER • hfeuer@sevendaysvt.com

I

n his 44 years as a custodian at the Federal Building and Post Office in Burlington, Donald Pleasant only ever took a few days off. Every morning, he would bike the two blocks from his house to work, where he took out the trash and recycling, cleaned the floors, and handled landscaping and snow removal.

Around the office, he gained a reputation for his punctuality and work ethic.

Joe Perella, a retired assistant U.S. attorney, said Donald was the first person he talked to every day, and the custodian’s calm demeanor was a steadying influence in what could be a stressful work environment. When Perella came in on Monday mornings, he recalled, Donald would offer encouragement: “We can do it.” And when Perella left on Friday afternoons, the custodian would say, “We did it.”

Donald’s workday officially began at 6 a.m., but he insisted on arriving even earlier — a habit that sometimes resulted in accidentally setting off the building’s alarm, according to his boss, June Snyder.

Donald biked to work no matter the weather. Twice, his bike was stolen. Each 44

time, the office pooled money to buy him a new one.

“Everybody in the building just loved him,” Snyder said. “Because he was so focused on his job, he might not have even realized how many people cared about him and considered him a friend.”

Coworkers described Donald as an intensely focused person who was there to do a job, though he was sociable when others initiated. He took pride in being someone others could count on. If something was even slightly off schedule — say, someone was delayed in letting him into a secure area of the building — Donald would let everyone know.

“It gives me a purpose,” Donald said of his job in a 2021 video after winning Goodwill Northern New England’s Client of the Year Award in Cleaning. “If I didn’t have a job, I’d be like everybody else: out on the street, trying to make ends meet.”

Donald continued to work until about a week before he died of natural causes at the University of Vermont Medical Center on February 9. He was 72.

Routine was a lifeline for Donald,

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

whose childhood was characterized by instability. Born in a rough Philadelphia neighborhood, he spent his earliest years raised by his single mother in a household with nine siblings from three different fathers. Perhaps as much for the structure it gave him as for the money, Donald always seemed to have a job, from shining shoes on the streets of Philly to shoveling snow, according to his brother Michael Hernandez.

Making ends meet was a constant struggle for the family. When Donald was in elementary school, he, Michael and their brother Harold Pleasant started spending time at the home of neighbor Richard DeNaples-Hiler, a Quaker who worked for the American Friends Service Committee. He also became a surrogate parent to the three boys. Through that religious humanitarian group, Richard organized frequent trips to the Soviet Union.

One summer he asked Heide Bredfeldt, a student at Hunter College in New York City whom he had met at a conference on racial discrimination, to care for them in Philadelphia while he was traveling.

A few months after Richard returned, he and Heide married and moved to the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh.

They brought Donald and his brothers with them and had two children of their own.

The arrangement was informal; the boys were never officially adopted or placed in a foster care system.

Moving from a Black community in the inner city to a predominantly white, affluent suburb was a culture shock for Donald and his siblings, who were Black and Latino.

Heide, who is white, said their multiracial family stood out in the 1960s and recalled how the boys were once refused entry to a public restroom.

School was also difficult for Donald.

Heide said she realized the boy didn’t know how to read when he was in the third grade, so she hired a private tutor.

While Donald continued to struggle with academics, he developed a knack for hands-on tasks. He once built a scooter out of a crate and a roller skate, and he buried himself in magazines about mechanical systems.

Still he had trouble adapting to his new life. Donald often ran away, attempting to return to Philadelphia, but each time, his mother sent him back.

“He did what he had to do to cope,” Michael said. “He was someone who was going to survive and just keep going.”

Only 10 years older than Donald, Heide said she felt ill-equipped to care for the boys. So she and Richard sent Donald from household to household, hoping for a better fit. He spent a summer with a family in Syracuse, N.Y., and stayed in Atlanta with a relative of the far-left activist Angela Davis, who had attended one of Richard’s trips to the Soviet Union.

He briefly attended the Arthur Morgan School, a Quaker boarding school in Burnsville, N.C. “We tried very hard to find a match for Donald,” Heide told Seven Days. “But somehow, it didn’t click.”

The details of Donald’s early adulthood are largely unknown. He began drinking too much, and after Heide and Richard moved to Putney in 1968, they lost regular

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Cuban American Friendship Society could say how he ended up in Burlington.

“I just kind of sat with him, took him for Culinary Experience OFFERING QUALITY-PRECISION HAIRCUTS In 1977, at age 26, Donald had a daugh- a walk for a bit, and he says, ‘Well, I’ll be in Transportation in Cuba ter, Amber Pleasant, with Rose Stautzen- [to work],’” Snyder recalled. “I’m like, ‘No, Festival Pass bach, a Barre nurse. Amber, who now lives Don, you will definitely not be in.’” in Austin, Texas, described Donald as a The office pooled money to cover Fun Explorations Ahead BOOK ONLINE: loving, if imperfect, Wendy’s funeral Book an father who tried his expenses, and 802-355-4968 vagaro.com/jlcuts BOOK NOW appointment rsvpcafs@gmail.com best — though his Snyder started help802-557-8968 802-863-3969 alcoholism often ing Donald with prevented him from tasks that Wendy had 86 Lake St., being present for his always taken care Burlington daughter. of, such as paying FREE PARKING Donald didn’t bills and grocery have a car, so when he shopping. did visit Amber and “When my wife her mom in Barre, passed, it was really, JESSIE LAVIGNE he would hitchhike really bad. But then J U NE SNY DER from Burlington. the people [were] “I remember asking him about that pouring in,” Donald said in the 2021 video.

6h-JLcuts122624.indd 1 12/18/24 10:32 AM not too long ago: ‘Why did you do that?’” “You don’t know how many people care Amber recalled. “He was like, ‘No one was until something like that happens.” gonna stop me from seeing you if I wanted Amid the grief, something changed in to see you.’”

Donald. With Snyder’s encouragement, In 1980, Donald began working at the he quit drinking, a decision that amazed Federal Building and Post Office, where he his family.

Keep your bike running smoothly all winter found a sense of stability. He settled down “It just astounds me,” Amber said. “He long with a commuter punch card! and, in 1997, married Wendy Jones Pleas- had that dependency for so long, and then, in the middle of the pandemic, [after] ant of Burlington.

In his fifties, Donald suffered a serious losing his wife, he just quit.” injury while working. Attempting to unjam With his newfound sobriety, he recona snowblower, he put his hand inside the nected with family members and built auger housing and lost three of his fingers. up a small nest egg with the money he no But Donald wasn’t one to complain, and he longer spent on liquor. He even took a bus returned to work shortly thereafter. to see his siblings in Philadelphia, where “This was a guy who was always Steady he proudly treated his family to Chinese Eddie,” Michael said. “I think he would be food. the poster child for resilience.”

Despite his hardships, Donald was • $100* for four visits In 2020 that resilience would be tested never one for self-pity.

• Each visit includes a drivetrain cleaning and frame wipe down by tragedy when Wendy died suddenly in “Up and down, up and down, but pretty • Must be used by March 29th 2025 their Burlington home. Snyder, Donald’s much up,” he said in the 2021 video. “I’m *$60 for Everybody Bikes customers boss at the Federal Building, remembers happy.”

Info@oldspokeshome.com oldspokeshome.com (802) 863 4475 getting a call from him at 4 a.m. about LIFE STORIES » P.46

HE MIGHT NOT HAVE EVEN REALIZED HOW MANY PEOPLE CARED ABOUT HIM

TODAY

AND CONSIDERED HIM A FRIEND.

r Commuter Punch Card e t n s!

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Life Stories «P.45

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COURTESY OF JAY GILBERT - VERMONT DRONE SERVICE

A

‘He Had a Vision’ MARCEL BEAUDIN, March 18, 1929-March 29, 2024

BY AMY L IL LY • lilly@sevendaysvt.com

Lake Champlain Community Sailing Center

FILE: MATTHEW THORSEN

rchitect Marcel Beaudin’s beloved Community Sailing Center was a small operation on the Burlington waterfront when in 2002 it acquired an expensive floating contraption to protect boats along a section of shoreline particularly vulnerable to wind.

As a big storm blew in across Lake Champlain, Kate Neubauer, then the center’s executive director, watched in amazement as 72-year-old Marcel took a boat out on the water to check how the new wave attenuator was faring.

“We were standing on the shore because it was unsafe — large swells were coming in. And there was Marcel going out in the worst conditions ever, trying to minimize the damage,” Neubauer recalled with a chuckle.

Those qualities of dogged determination and comfort with risk helped Marcel, who died on March 29 at the age of 95, leave behind a remarkable legacy. During his almost 70-year career, he completed roughly 1,000 modern and contemporary architectural projects and put his stamp on the Burlington waterfront, where he designed the city’s iconic boathouse and the Community Sailing Center.

An ardent fan of sailing, Marcel dedicated much of the last three decades of his life to the sailing center — cofounding it, creating its board, advocating for and designing its permanent home. He was determined that members of the community, no matter their resources or abilities, have an opportunity to enjoy the lake as he did.

Neubauer and her successor, Mark Naud, researched Marcel’s archive for an August 2 memorial service at the sailing center. “I pulled out a sketch that’s 20 years old. It doesn’t look a whole lot different than what’s there today,” Naud said. “He had a vision, and he quietly and calmly persevered until it was realized.”

Just weeks before his death — while in the hospital after suffering a stroke — Marcel was working on drawings for an improved boat hoist, according to his daughter, Rebecca. “He used to say he had an active mind,” she said. “He had a hard time sleeping because he’d be awake trying to solve design problems.”

A lifelong Vermonter who left only for college, Marcel was born into a family that had quarried and fabricated granite in Québec for generations until his parents came to Barre in 1927 to explore new granite-industry technology. They stayed, and Marcel was born in 1929.

He attended Spaulding High School and the Barre Evening Drawing School, where he learned drafting skills from seasoned artisans. In 1949, he and his first wife, Vera Fine, also of Barre, married at ages 20 and 19, respectively. By then, Marcel had moved to New York City to take a job as a

TO HAVE A MARCEL HOUSE WAS

junior designer and Philip Johnof tombstones son. The faculty and mausoleums. included Edward He was intendLarrabee Barnes, ing to become a designer of BurlPAUL BE AUD IN sculptor. ington’s demoliInstead, at an art gallery one day he struck tion-bound Cathedral of the Immaculate up a conversation with the sculptor Peter Conception. Marcel worked for Barnes Grippe, who offered to show him the studio one college summer. in Long Island City where he worked. That Even in New York, Marcel’s mind was studio belonged to Le Corbusier, the famous on Vermont. For his senior thesis in 1955, Swiss-French modern architect who was he created a master plan for Burlington’s then designing the United Nations complex. waterfront. Such a plan, he wrote, “would Marcel was captivated. thwart misuses of the city’s lakefront and “He never looked back,” said Rebecca, trees. It would not only anticipate the the middle of Marcel and Vera’s five chil- immediate needs for beaches and parks dren and their only daughter. but also its future needs.” After he moved Marcel enrolled at the School of Archi- back to Vermont in 1956, the Burlington tecture at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, Free Press reprinted excerpts of his thesis absorbing the lectures of visiting modern- in a four-part series. architect icons including Walter Gropius, Marcel worked with Vermont archiMarcel Breuer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe tect Julian Goodrich for two years before

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

A VERY BIG DEAL.

founding his solo practice in 1959. He designed his family’s first house, on Morgan Drive on Shelburne Point, in the spare International Style he was trained in.

It was a three-bedroom house for a seven-person family. “There was a lot of sharing,” Rebecca said. Sited on a 40-foot cliff with no fence, the elongated box had a flat roof and a glass curtain wall. A secondstory balcony spanning the length of the house had no railing, but “no one ever fell off,” Rebecca recalled wryly.

Marcel would go on to design some 200 houses, many in Vermont. Devin Colman, now head of the University of Vermont’s graduate program in historic preservation, researched a number of the homes for his 2006 master’s thesis on modernist residential structures in Chittenden County.

In 2020, as state architectural historian, Colman helped Marcel find a place for his archive at UVM’s Special Collections Library.

“He wasn’t necessarily rooted in one style his whole career,” Colman said. “His early works in the Mad River Valley are very International Style, but there was an evolution of his design vocabulary throughout his career.” A catalog from a 2005 retrospective exhibition of Marcel’s architecture at Burlington City Arts shows houses with windowed corner turrets, gabled roofs and thick entry columns, all defined by elegantly clean lines.

The clients Colman interviewed were “without fail all just so enamored with him,” he said. “His approach was really getting to know the client and what they needed, not trying to impose what he thought they needed.”

Marcel’s son Paul recalled, “We were constantly surrounded by Dad’s friends that totally idolized him. To have a Marcel house was a very big deal to these people.”

And yet, “He was very humble and understated about his work,” Paul said.

“He’s got a legacy here in Vermont for

some of the best houses in the state,” said architect Alex Halpern, president of the Burlington firm Freeman French Freeman.

Halpern worked briefly with Marcel just out of graduate school in 1995, assisting him on the Vermont Veterans Memorial Chapel in Randolph, a building Halpern said impresses for its “simple, monumental design and its flexibility.”

Marcel became a career mentor for the younger architect; Halpern, a scuba diver, in turn helped Marcel set moorings and clean hulls at the sailing center.

Rebecca guessed that her father learned to sail as a child, on the lakes of his father’s native Québec, but he didn’t

Marcel (second from left) and his sons and grandsons at the 2017 Lake Champlain Yacht Club Ladies’ Cup

acquire his own first boat, Fireball, until 1973. He became a lifelong member of the Lake Champlain Yacht Club in Shelburne, where he recruited many supporters for the Community Sailing Center. In a poetic twist, he designed the floating 1988 Burlington Boathouse to evoke the original 1888 Lake Champlain Yacht Club boathouse, which floated on the same downtown waterfront site.

Marcel was divorced in 1977 and didn’t remarry until 1998, to Ruth Binch. Also in 1977, he bought an early J-24 sailing boat, a 24-footer that he thought would be the perfect size for his children. He and sons Paul, Jeb and Adam began competing in races around the country; Paul became a professional sailor.

Marcel’s eldest son, Marc, developed paranoid schizophrenia around the age of 20, but his father always made sure he was taken care of. “So many people with Marc’s illness get lost to their families and end up on the street. Marc never did,” Rebecca said.

His father secured an apartment for Marc on lower Church Street and visited him weekly until the son’s death in 2017.

With his other sons, Marcel set his sights on winning the yacht club’s annual Ladies’ Cup five times, intending to break a club record that had stood for 120 years. He won his fifth at age 88 with three generations on board, including his two grandsons.

Paul said his father’s idea for a public sailing center arose after Paul opened a sail-making shop on Pine Street in 1990.

For the regattas it hosted, the company had to rent a crane to get boats in the water at Perkins Pier. The two men walked the then-undeveloped waterfront looking for a site and spotted the abandoned Moran power plant’s sluiceway to the lake — a perfect place for a boat hoist.

His father “whipped out a piece of paper and a pencil from his shirt pocket” and began planning, Paul recalled. After learning about Boston’s Community Boating, the country’s oldest public sailing center, “he totally got the bug,” Paul said. “Once he started that, that became a bigger deal than his work.”

Marcel continued to draw architectural plans and build models after other architects had moved on to computer-aided design. But in 2010, he learned SketchUp, a 3D-modeling program, from his friend and fellow architect Fritz Horton in order to turn his sailing center designs into construction documents.

Horton met Marcel at the yacht club in the mid-1980s during a race when their boats passed so closely that their mast tops touched. It was a tense moment, Horton recalled, but “the wonderful characteristic about him was that he would approach any sort of adversity, mistake [or] brokenwhatever that he was working on, and his immediate response was a chuckle. And it would absolutely reset the conversation.”

Horton, 80, a retired commercial and industrial architect, didn’t realize the extent of Marcel’s architectural work at first. “He was so quiet; he never boasted about himself. So he was not like most architects that I’ve met over the years,” he said.

But Marcel was assertive when it came to the sailing center, persisting through three mayors and attending every waterfront commission and city council meeting for years until his vision of a purpose-built home for the group became a reality in 2018.

“Marcel would constantly call [the city] every time he heard a whiff of a new plan,” Neubauer, the center’s former executive director, recalled. “The hours that man spent on the phone advocating was insane.”

Others might have become jaded, but, Rebecca said, “My dad always thought the best of people and their motivations. He wasn’t naïve, but he tended to be forgiving.”

“He disarmed,” Horton added, “and he had a wonderful smile. He just sparkled right until his last days.” ➆

I think without hope, we don’t move forward.

— SHEILA WATT-CLOUTIER

POLITICAL REPRESENTATIVE FOR INUIT, ACTIVIST

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food+drink

Simply the Best

Seven Days food writers share their favorite bites and sips of 2024

FILE PHOTOS: BEAR CIERI

BY J O R D AN BAR RY & ME L IS S A PAS ANE N jbarry@sevendaysvt.com, pasanen@sevendaysvt.com

Agnolotti, scallop crudo and littleneck clams at Frankie’s

I

t can be tough to recall a year’s worth of meals. If you stick to three a day, which food writers rarely do, there are 1,095 to sort through — or 1,098 in a leap year like this one.

Scrolling through photos on my phone — my preferred method of memory jogging — reveals hints of this year’s highlights: my garden’s first asparagus crop, a semi-absurd number of diner meals and a sunny Super Lemonova shared with Adeline Druart, the new CEO of Lawson’s Finest Liquids.

My fellow food writer Melissa Pasanen’s camera roll was full of Québécois food and drink from several trips north for work and pleasure. She also found a surprising number of pics of doughnuts, sweet and savory, including a screenshot of the summer special Lobster Doughie

50

at Morse Block Deli & Taps in Barre, which she sadly never tasted herself — though one of our stellar interns did. There’s always next year.

For both of us, 2024 brought farmers market mornings, food truck afternoons and so many restaurant openings that we could barely keep up. As we assembled our favorite bites and sips of the year, we found that most came from new places to eat and drink.

We’re happy for the injection of fresh energy, and we feel its positive repercussions in the local food scene.

In Seven Days style, here are this year’s seven favorites from each of us, in no particular order. As you’ll see, it was a good year for biscuits. But also for pawpaws, fancy carrot mochi and vermouth-based cocktails.

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

J.B.

Happy as a Clam

restaurant’s proclivity for seafood is a welcome addition to the scene, and the Frankie’s, 169 Cherry St., Burlington, 264-7094, frankiesvt.com clams are probably as close as its menu gets to a staple. At If you’ve been paying attention my first group dinner in the to Vermont’s food scene this year, you won’t be surprised upstairs private dining room, that Melissa and I both had the clams came with crème Frankie’s on our favorites fraîche, pickled carrots and list. Why? Melissa summed wild leek focaccia; a month it up simply: “So many of later, with spring onions and their dishes.” green garlic; and in August, with sweet corn, charred jalaI share the sentiment, citing Jordan Ware the pork croquettes with a pickpeños and pickled zucchini. Consenled rhubarb sauce that I’d like sus, from the first meal on, is that to drink, electric-green scal“they slap.” lop crudo with cucumCindi Kozak, Jordan Ware bers and fermented fennel, and their team have already sweet corn tortelli, hearty received national press as one sides of pommes purée of Eater’s Best New Restaurants in America. I have no and creamed corn, epically savory cabbage, and houseinsider info or sway, but here’s made creemees. a prediction: We’ll be writing a Cindi Kozak What I ordered most often at story about their James Beard Award Frankie’s, in some form or another, were nomination in 2025. the littleneck clams. The swanky-cool J.B.

Planning a luncheon for your office or business meeting?

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Doughnut Double-Down Twisted Halo Café, 31 Cottonwood Dr., Suite 106, Williston, and 40 Bridge St., Waitsfield, twistedhalocafe.com

In 2024, we continued our food section tradition of kicking off the New Year with doughnuts rather than diets. I drew the short — or was that the long? — straw. The 4:30 a.m. alarm required by the assignment was richly rewarded with Emma Slater’s freshly fried Twisted Halo doughnuts.

In particular, her signature featherlight, crisply crenellated doughnut with a custardy interior is well worth an early wake-up call. Slater calls it a churro, though some might recognize it as an egg-rich, French-style cruller. I prefer it simply dusted with cinnamon sugar, but she dips some in dark chocolate glaze, if that’s your thing.

Extra good news is that this year has brought more days and locations for Twisted Halo. When I wrote about her, Slater was sharing the kitchen at Champion Comics and Coffee in Williston, but as of this month, she and business partner Taylan Hagen have officially assumed the lease and renamed it Twisted Halo Café. Comics are still on offer along with the fresh doughnuts, Tuesday through Sunday.

The Mad River Valley also got lucky. Since late summer, Slater has been operating a Twisted Halo Café in the former Sweet Spot in Waitsfield. In addition to doughnuts, pastries and coffee, that location launched a full breakfast menu in mid-December, with French toast, eggs, and breakfast sandwiches on house-baked brioches, croissants or English muffins.

A doughnut breakfast sandwich isn’t on the menu yet, but so many people have asked about one that “It’s a sign it has to happen,” Slater said.

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M.P. Dipping a churro in chocolate glaze SIMPLY THE BEST

» P.52 SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025 6V-lostlantern120424 1

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FILE: DARIA BISHOP

Simply the Best « P.51

A Beautiful Beverage Specs, 7 W. Canal St., Winooski, specs-cafe-bar.com

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SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

M.P.

Do the Jerk Thingz From Yaad, opening by the end of December at 2026 Williston Rd., South Burlington, thingzfromyaadvt.com

OP

I recently realized that I’m no longer allergic to coconut, and not a moment too soon.

In the gray days of March, Shaneall Ferron’s coconut-crusted jerk corn was just the tropical jolt I needed.

Slathered in her signature jerk sauce and rolled in toasted coconut flakes, the skewered cobs were slightly sweet, slightly spicy and, as I wrote in April, “fantastically fun.” They’re a little messy, but that’s what the sticks are for.

At the time, Ferron operated her Jamaican food biz, Thingz From Yaad, in a former dining hall in Colchester. This month, she plans to open a brick-and-mortar spot in South Burlington. I’ll happily gobble her traditional takes on oxtails or ackee and saltfish, while also looking forward to her new whimsical — and maybe skewered — creations.

SH

They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, and that does hold true for the dish of carrot mochi I adored on my first visit to Fancy’s, the cozy restaurant that opened in the Old North End in April. The mochi then vanished from the menu, but there was always plenty else frickin’ delicious to eat.

I’ve loved every vegetable-forward dish (and the few with meat or fish) that has sprung from the imagination and kitchen of talented chef-owner Paul Trombly. He is a magician of flavor and texture, as demonstrated by his slender charred eggplants with coconut and South India sambar, as well as his chewy, caramelized halloumi with spiced seeds, date, mint and lemon.

Fancy’s smashed cucumber salad is an

edible symphony: zippy with lime and soy; crunchy with puffed, curry-dusted rice and candied cashews; and sweetspicy with mango and house-pickled hot peppers.

Trombly’s small menu changes regularly based on what local farms supply, and it would be selfish to expect faves to stick around. Still, every time I returned to Fancy’s, I hoped for another bowl of the earthy, intensely carroty “mochi” dumplings, which glutinous rice flour rendered delightfully and unexpectedly bouncy.

Back in the summer, Trombly told me that the moisture-sensitive dumplings were too difficult to make in humid weather. On recent visits, I would not-so-subtly hint that summer was long over. In mid-December, I blinked twice when they finally reappeared on the menu. Each herb-and-cheese-strewn, springy bite was as delicious as my taste memory. Comfort me with carrot mochi.

BI

Fancy’s, 88 Oak St., Burlington, 448-2106, fancysbtv.com, now taking reservations

Jerk corn (top) with oxtails and jerk chicken

RI

A

No Passing Fancy

Assorted dishes and drinks at Fancy’s Assorted dishes at Fancy’s

JORDAN BARRY

J.B.

Sam Nelis pouring an Adonis cocktail with Contratto

FILE: DARIA BISHOP

I’ve found myself drinking less booze over the past year, partly because the local nonalcoholic options are so good and partly because my toddler wakes me up by 6 a.m. most days. When I have a cocktail or two, I tend to choose lower-ABV options. My favorite is the dry vermouthand-sherry Bamboo, which I’ve had mixed success ordering off-menu around town.

Cue my excitement when Sam Nelis of Specs stirred up an Adonis, the Bamboo’s sweeter counterpart, for me to taste.

I’d asked Nelis, in a sort of cheeky way, to share three drinks that sum up his Winooski café-bar-beverage mart. Based on the astonishing array of fortified wines stocked in his shop, I shouldn’t have been surprised that his mind went to the Adonis.

(I also shouldn’t have been surprised that we tasted more like 10 drinks, between old-school frothy cappuccinos and his favorite Belgian beer.)

True to his business’ name, Nelis also presented his specs for the drink. A stirred cocktail that originated in late-1800s New York City, the Adonis contains 1.5 ounces of Contratto vermouth rosso, 1.5 ounces of dry fino sherry, two dashes orange bitters and one dash Angostura bitters. Stir, serve in a coupe and garnish with an orange twist.

I’ve been following his recipe ever since, swapping out the Contratto for whichever fun fortified wine I spot among the 70 options on Specs’ shelves. When Nelis launches the full cocktail bar in spring 2025, I’ll be sure to order one there.

F IL

E:

DA

SHANEALL FERRON’S COCONUT-CRUSTED JERK CORN

WAS JUST THE TROPICAL JOLT I NEEDED.

J.B.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

FILE: JEB WALLACE-BRODEUR

food+drink

Come on in for our exciting new January jewelry making workshop series, ear-piercing, kids after-school programs, and new product launches!

Thanks to our wonderful community of makers!

Open Daily 41 IDX Dr. Ste #150, South Burlington elliparr.com • info@elliparr.com Clockwise from left: Cappellacci, lasagna and gnocco fritto with mortadella at Gallus Handcrafted Pasta

My Bologna Has a First Name Gallus Handcrafted Pasta, 92 Stowe St., Waterbury, 882-8206, gallushandcrafted.com

When our boys were little and their dad occasionally took charge of supper, sometimes he’d buy soft white sandwich bread and bologna and make fried bologna sandwiches. Much as I wrinkled my nose, I have to admit there’s something compelling about the combination of soft, buttery, fried bread and smooth, salty meat with tangy-sweet mayo.

It probably won’t make the chefs at Gallus Handcrafted Pasta in Waterbury happy to know those fried bologna sandwiches came to mind when I first tasted what I’d call a sleeper on their menu.

Gallus, a new venture of chef Eric

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Warnstedt’s Heirloom Hospitality, opened on June 26 in the historic Waterbury gristmill previously occupied by Warnstedt’s first restaurant, Hen of the Wood. (The latter relocated half a mile away.) Pasta is king there, and I wrote at length about the care with which the pasta team, led by executive chef and co-owner Antonio Rentas, crafts it in yolk-bright, silken sheets.

You’re going to order pasta, of course, but please don’t miss the gnocco fritto, which sit quietly in the menu’s “Share” section with little explanation. The pillowy, savory, fried dough diamonds come topped with wide ribbons of excellent freshly made mortadella (bologna’s relative) from Waitsfield’s 5th Quarter and a just-right drizzle of honey. They are everything that makes a fried bologna sandwich so good — and much more.

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M.P.

It’s All Gravy Deep City, 112 Lake St., Burlington, 800-1454, deepcityvt.com

Deep City had this spot in the BAG. Reflecting on the multitude of meals I ate this year, I didn’t find many repeats outside my Addison County takeout staples. But since this spring, when Charles Reeves took over the kitchen at Foam Brewers’ attached restaurant near the Burlington waterfront, I’ve gone out of my way for his iconic buttermilk biscuits slathered in green-tinted, herb-flecked cream gravy. Heck, my husband and I even chose Deep City brunch instead of a fancy dinner for our anniversary this year. I didn’t share.

Part of the dish’s appeal is the 24 years of nostalgia baked into every bite: Reeves was the longtime co-owner of the universally beloved Penny Cluse Café with his wife, Holly Cluse. When I covered his early plans to team up with the Foam folks, Reeves said Deep City wouldn’t be Penny 2.0. I’m not the only one who’s glad he changed his mind.

Menu items may have new names — look for the House of Spudology FILE: DARIA instead of a Bucket-o-Spuds — but the hits BISHOP are there, including the deeply comforting biscuits and gravy. The starter-size version, called the BAG, is just right if, like me, you also Deep City’s BAG want to get a little choked up over a chile relleno.

J.B. SIMPLY THE BEST

» P.54

Join us in January as we celebrate 10 years of Waterworks!

Daily specials, giveaways, limited-edition t-shirts, fun surprises and memories to last a lifetime!

Follow us on social media for more details!

Book online or give us a call! |waterworksvt.com | 802.497.3525 Located in the Champlain Mill, Winooski — 1 mile from Downtown Burlington!

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Simply the Best « P.53

Thirsty Like the Wolf Wolf Tree, 40 Currier St., White River Junction, 698-8409, wolftreevt.com

M.P.

Jamie Cohen holding a ripe pawpaw MELISSA PASANEN

Pawpaw Patrol Sugarsnap Farm pawpaws will not be available until October 2025. To grow your own from locally propagated plants, try Perfect Circle Farm in Berlin (perfectcircle. farm) or East Hill Tree Farm in Plainfield (easthilltreefarm.com).

COURTESY OF NICK KEATING

Ever since Wolf Tree opened in White River Junction in 2019, Jordan and I have had it on our list of destinations for its promising menu of creatively conceived drinks and classy, intimate setting. Unfortunately, it’s a 90-minute drive from Burlington — and, well, cocktails.

I was thrilled for many reasons when a dear friend moved to White River Junction, a town I have long crushed on for its idiosyncratic arts culture and vibrant food and drink scene.

For our “Three to Six Hours” series, my friend and I finished up a full day of exploring WRJ at Wolf Tree, which met all my long-held expectations. I had a hard time choosing from the large menu of intriguing cocktails, which includes a low-alcohol section — helpful for those who lack a designated driver or a local friend on whose floor they can crash.

The Goldilocks, made with pineapple brandy, lemon, sesame orgeat and orange bitters, was just as the menu promised: “not too sweet, not too tart — juuuust right.” I’m planning another sleepover soon.

The Victory Lap cocktail at Wolf Tree

Butter My Butt and Call Me a Biscuit Queen City Café, 377 Pine St., Burlington, 489-6412, queencitycafebtv.com

Sean Richards

I USUALLY COMPLAIN ABOUT NEW WOOD-FIRED RESTAURANTS,

BUT THIS ONE I’LL ALLOW. J.B.

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Queen City Café chicken and biscuits

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

FILE: DARIA BISHOP

More biscuits! I know, I know. But Queen City Café’s biscuits are the biscuits.

Whether they’re holding together a bacon-laden breakfast sandwich with surprising ease or floating in a gussied-up chicken stew, these flaky, wood-fired biscuits are so good that they had me regularly braving the mess that was Pine Street for much of the year. The vegan one’s no slouch, either.

Chef-owner Sean Richards’ menu reflects both his early cooking career in Tennessee and food memories from his upbringing in Fair Haven — Vermont church lady food, as he put it. If the chef’s fare seems simple, that’s only because of how well he wields his fine-dining chops — and masters the former Myer’s Bagels wood oven. I usually complain about new wood-fired restaurants, given how many we have, but this one I’ll allow.

Another year, another round of devastating floods. In the midst of this depressing new normal, an email from business owner and state legislator Abbey Duke landed in my inbox.

Duke has a small Intervale farm that grows some ingredients for her South Burlington-based Sugarsnap Catering.

Like all the farms in the river floodplain, it boasts rich soil but now routinely floods during peak growing season. One bright spot, Duke wrote, has been pawpaws. A few trees she planted in 2010 had thrived despite repeated inundations, and her farm was expecting a bumper crop this year.

Say what?

I had barely heard of pawpaws when Duke wrote to me, let alone tasted one, though I knew that some regions of the country have a taste for this cold-tolerant distant relation of soursop and cherimoya.

Botanists believe the pawpaw was most likely carried north in the digestive tracts of fruit-loving mastodons.

In October, at peak harvest — the only time one can buy the delicate fresh fruit, which does not ship well — I headed down to the Intervale to see and taste what looked like small mangoes. The Sugarsnap farming team selected a perfectly ripe specimen for me to try. It was really good and shockingly tropical tasting for a locally grown fruit, with notes of coconut and frangipani flower.

Pawpaws won’t save Vermont farms, but they remind us that adaptation has been a constant since the mastodons migrated north.

M.P.

JORDAN BARRY

food+drink

Rogue Rabbit’s espresso tonic with an assortment of slices

Tonic Key Rogue Rabbit, 9 Center St., Burlington, roguerabbitvt.com

I love a chunky pizza slice: Sicilian, Detroit-style and, thanks to Rogue Rabbit, Roman-style pizza al taglio. Abby Temeles and Jacob Shane’s thick square slices easily entered my Burlington lunch rotation this year.

Their casual café’s drink list, though, is what really got me. I loved it so much that I rewrote a Sound of Music classic around their menu: “Espresso with tonic and bitter Negronis / House wine, Vivid Coffee and lots of Peronis / NA Spaghett-i, all kinds of spritz / These are a few of my favorite things.”

Soup Season Leo & Co., 21 Essex Way, Suite 418, Essex, 857-5386, weareleoand.co

My Jewish grandmothers and mother would have appreciated the deep-dive story I wrote on Montréal’s Jewish food in April. My mum, especially, would have plotzed over the savory chicken liver spread I gobbled down at Snowdon Deli.

I similarly plotzed over the unexpectedly delicious matzo ball soup I discovered at the new Leo & Co., much closer to home in Essex.

The counter-service café and market opened in July in the large space that was previously home to Sweet Clover Market.

Owner Kayla Silver named her second Essex Experience business for her great-uncle Leo Keiles, who survived the Holocaust. It’s by no means a Jewish deli, but the top-notch matzo ball soup will help me manage until someone opens one of those.

The kitchen team roasts chicken

Since I’m usually at Rogue Rabbit on a workday, the espresso tonic ended up topping that silly list for most consumed.

There are quite a few good espresso tonics around Burlington, but whether it’s the pizza pairing or the spot-on proportions of espresso to tonic in the kinda bitter drink, Rogue Rabbit’s is the one I keep going back to.

Now I’ve got a new song to rewrite, with apologies to Sabrina Carpenter: “Thinkin’ ’bout that drink every day, oh / Is it that bitter? I guess so. / I’ll have one for lunch, baby, I know / That’s that tonic espresso.”

J.B.

bones for the rich broth loaded with veggies. The pair of tender, springy matzo balls in every serving are textbook-perfect and, surprisingly, gluten-free, thanks to Manischewitz gluten-free matzo ball mix.

Leo & Co. also uses a trick that I learned from my New York City grandma.

“Always,” she told me with emphasis, “always put seltzer in your matzo balls.”

M.P. Matzo ball soup at Leo & Co.

SIMPLY THE BEST

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Spicy dan dan noodles

Flour and Flowers The Bake Shop at Red Wagon Plants, 2408 Shelburne Falls Rd., Hinesburg, 482-4060, redwagonplants.com

COURTESY OF MADISON HAYES

Noodling Around Scrag & Roe, 40 Bridge St., Waitsfield, 496-3911, scragandroe.com

When chef Nathan Davis and his former business partner opened Scrag & Roe by the covered bridge in Waitsfield a year ago, the menu was global. The restaurant is still a perfect spot to witness the idiocy of drivers who think their truck will magically clear the bridge’s roof. But, as of September, diners can view such shenanigans while eating from an all-Asian roster.

Davis, now solo owner, makes recipes he fell in love with and learned to cook during six years of living and traveling in Asia. Those include umami-rich, dry-fried shiitake mushrooms with bacon, as well as smashed cucumbers with soy, chile and a slick of sesame oil. They’re all really good, but the standout is his dan dan noodles.

The bowl of bouncy noodles comes liberally dressed with ground beef in a tongue-tingling sauce that sings with chiles, Sichuan peppercorns, garlic, sesame, black cardamom, orange peel and fermented mustard root. Toasted peanuts add a satisfying crunch. My dining companion and I both deemed the complex, electric blend of flavors and textures craveable.

It’s a bit of a drive, but we’ll be back.

Not in a truck.

COURTESY OF CAREY NERSHI

As accidental bakeries go, the Bake Shop at Red Wagon Plants takes the cake. It also takes the cake for pretty much every other kind of bakery.

Through a series of very fortunate-for-us events, bakers Amy Vogler and Carey Nershi teamed up with Julie Rubaud and her Red Wagon Plants team to open an incredible little bakeshop in the nursery’s new herb-processing building. All growing season long, they stocked their glass pastry case with rustic yet refined chiveand-cheddar focaccia, chocolate sourdough, coconut buns, glutenfree brownies, jam pinwheels, banana-chocolate chip cookies, and other sweet and savory delights.

Red Wagon was already one of my favorite places. The new shop — with its window framing Camel’s Hump, sit-with-a-stranger-size table, abundant patio garden and meticulously crafted treats — made it practically perfect. It’s hard to choose a favorite item from Vogler and Nershi’s repertoire, so I’ll go with the lighter-than-air orange and golden raisin hot cross bun from the Bake Shop’s first hurrah on March 30.

The bakers are currently taking a break along with the nursery, but they plan to open for the season on April 11 and will pop up before that, on February 15 and March 29. Like the first blooms of spring, their return will be a bright spot to look forward to on winter’s bleakest days.

Above: Assorted bake shop treats Right: Orange and golden raisin hot cross bun

J.B.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Snack on the BITE-CLUB NEWSLETTER for a taste of this week’s flavorful food coverage.

TO ALL OUR CUSTOMERS!

THANK YOU

FOR YOUR PATRONAGE IN THE YEAR 2024.

?

CLOSED

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802.985.8482 | miniofburlington.com SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

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culture

T

STARRY

his year we thought we’d give ourselves — and you, our dear, tired readers — a holiday break and fill a few pages of the paper with photos recapping the past 12 months.

We soon found that playing curator was a tall task.

Compiling a visual retrospective first required diving deep into the memory hole of what the A surprisingly sentimental heck happened in photographic review of 2024 2024 — arguably too much. As we painstakingly reviewed 51 weeks of fabulous photography, one thing became clear: It wasn’t all good memories. There were elections and floods and sad downturns in our downtowns, not to mention so much roadwork. Then we remembered how depressed we are.

But we refused to wallow. And so a theme finally emerged for our first (and maybe last) year-end photo essay. The snapshots presented here take us back to cultural occasions, big and small, that collectively moved us and filled us with wonder. From a rare total solar eclipse to the playful dance of the northern lights — the heavens were frisky this year — to Vermonters heading off to the Paris Olympics, these photos are a reminder of bright moments, even in a dark time. We actually found ourselves feeling a little nostalgic. There’s a lesson in there somewhere, right?

Many thanks to our talented photographer friends for capturing the scenes.

EYED CARO LY N FO X

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Good Heavens P H OT O BY ADAM S I LVER MAN The northern lights dancing over the Lake Champlain Bridge between Addison and Crown Point, N.Y., a little after 3:30 a.m. on October 11. 2024 saw multiple outstanding appearances of aurora borealis in Vermont; this particularly potent geomagnetic storm sent the photographer on a five-hour odyssey to find a break in the clouds.

After Glow P HOTO BY JEB WALL ACE- BR ODEUR

For the first time, Montpelier illuminated seven of its historic bridges with thousands of bulbs. Hundreds paraded with lanterns over the Winooski River and its North Branch for a November 16 lighting ceremony, a sparkling sign of community spirit and strength after the heartbreaking floods of 2023.

CHEERS TO A HAPPY NEW YEAR

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A Progressive Party PH O TO BY D ARIA BISHOP The crowd cheering at Zero Gravity beer hall on March 5 as Progressive Emma Mulvaney-Stanak was elected mayor of Burlington. It was a historic win: As well as Burlington’s first-ever woman mayor, she became the first openly queer person to hold the seat.

STARRY EYED

say you saw it in

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culture

STARRY

EYED A surprisingly sentimental photographic review of 2024

« CONTINUED FROM P.59

Rocking the Boat PH OT O BY JOS H KUCKENS

Jacob Plihal training at Craftsbury Outdoor Center in late June, ahead of the Paris Olympics. Vermont sent seven world-class rowers to the Games — one native and six who spent years training in the state — along with track-andfield star Elle Purrier St. Pierre of Montgomery and social media sensation Ilona Maher of Burlington, whose rugby team won a historic bronze medal.

Come What LeMay PH O TO B Y JAM E S BU C K Bob Bolyard (third from right) as Amber LeMay, surrounded by Amber alter egos, at the Winter Is a Drag Ball: Apocalypstick, held on February 17 at Higher Ground in South Burlington. It was the House of LeMay drag troupe’s final year hosting the winter party, which it had been producing since 2003.

All Fired Up PHOT O BY EVA S OLLBER GER Fire spinner Kayla “Maple” Steen performing with the Burlington Burn Club at Battery Park on July 17. The collective has been lighting up the night and sparking a scene since 2019 with outdoor burns at the band shell. Members share props and fuel and aim to inspire newcomers.

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SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

SNOWLIGHTS SNOWLIGHTS Shadow Play

Revel in whimsical light displays and dance the night away with the electrifying Latin dance band Mal Maiz. Rejoice in winter’s magic at this unique event where winter and art collide for a breathtaking celebration of snow and light!

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Grand Total PH O TO B Y JA ME S B U C K A time-lapse composite of a once-in-a-lifetime total solar eclipse, taken from Oakledge Park in Burlington on April 8. The eclipse shrouded northern Vermont in several minutes of otherworldly midafternoon darkness as locals and visitors from around the globe looked skyward in wonder.

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TO OUR CUSTOMERS & FRIENDS Thank you all for another busy and fun holiday season!

Every year at this time we're filled with gratitude from the support we feel from our community. Wishing you all

View From the Top P H O TO B Y LU K E AWTRY

a happy & healthy holiday

Eclipse viewers on the Moran FRAME in Burlington on April 8, a rare bluebird spring day. The city hosted viewing parties at many of its lakefront public parks, which amounted to a sprawling outdoor festival.

Across the state, Vermont saw an influx of some 175,000 visitors who made an estimated total economic impact of $54 million.

STARRY EYED

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season and the best for 2025.

Sincerely, Your Friends at Kiss the Cook KissTheCook.net • 102 Church Street • Burlington • 863-4226 6H-KTC122524.indd 1

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culture

STARRY

EYED A surprisingly sentimental photographic review of 2024

« CONTINUED FROM P.61

Dancing in the Street PHOT O B Y L U K E AW TRY

Young attendees of the South End Art Hop playing with bubbles on Burlington’s Pine Street on September 6. The art festival, which annually encompasses more than 100 venues and 30 events, celebrated its 32nd year with a theme of surrealism.

Feeling the Bern P HOTO BY LU K E AWTRY

Lips Service PH O TO B Y LU K E AW T RY

At the end of the Flaming Lips concert at the Grand Point North festival in Burlington’s Waterfront Park on July 26, the band passed a giant inflatable to the sold-out crowd while Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” played. From the 20-foot-tall robots to the stage-wide rainbow, this was a major show of the year.

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SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

Austin Grant, one of eight U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders look-alikes who gathered in Burlington’s City Hall Park for a contest on December 14. Grant snagged second place with his white wig, bushy eyebrows, blue medical mask, mittens and “Tax the billionaires” sign — a nod to Sanders’ iconic, memeworthy outfit at the 2021 presidential inauguration.

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SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

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Foam Brewers Food and Drinks are available

Waterfront Park

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Food and Drinks are available

1:30 - 3pm: NYE Run/Walk to Highlight 2 - 10pm: The Fluffy Bus 2 - 2:30pm: Two Sev 2 - 6pm: Highlight EastRise Gamezone 2:30 - 3:30pm: Ryan Montbleau (Solo) 3:30 - 4pm: Two Sev 4 - 5pm: Florry 5 - 5:30pm: Disco Phantom 5:30 - 6:30pm: THUS LOVE 6:30 - 7pm: Disco Phantom 7 - 8pm: Kalbells 8 - 8:10pm: Fireworks!

8:10 - 8:30pm: Cirque De Fuego 8:30 - 10pm: Skeleton Krewe

VTIFF

1 – 4pm: Inkling*

Skinny Pancake Food and Drinks are available

3:30 - 4:30pm: Will and Jeremy Write a Song* 4:30 - 5:30pm: Will and Jeremy Write a Song* 9 - 9:30pm: DJ Rice Pilaf 9:30 - 10:15pm: Willverine 10:30pm - 12am: Acqua Mossa 12 - 12:30am: DJ Rice Pilaf

ECHO Center

College Street (Free trolley ru

12:30 - 3:30pm: The Many Voices of Water Exhibit* 1:30 - 2:30pm: The Many Voices of Water Performance* 5 - 8pm: Caribbean Fête* 9:30pm - 12:30am: Midnight Rodeo with Queer Country Line Dance*

Union Station

3 – 7:30pm: Connectivity: An Interactive Sound and Light Exhibition*

Lake Street

Food and Drinks are available after 5pm

New Year’s Eve

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SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

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Church Street

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VT Comedy Club Food and Drinks are available

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SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

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on screen Deux Ex Machina

The end of an era, too many sequels and more from the year in film

BY MARGOT HARRISON • margot@sevendaysvt.com

W

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Breakout performance

REVIEWS

When it comes to acting awards, smart money right now is on two relative newcomers: Mikey Madison, who plays a sex worker of many faces in Anora, and Karla Sofía Gascón of Jacques Audiard’s musical melodrama Emilia Pérez (Netflix), the first transgender actor to win Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival.

Both give memorable, larger-than-life performances.

But I’d like to draw your attention to Kani Kusruti, star of the Indian film All We Imagine as Light, which snagged the Grand Prix at Cannes and two Golden Globe Award nominations. In this naturalistic story of three working women’s lives in Mumbai, she brings revelatory nuance to her portrayal of a tired nurse with an absentee husband, who isn’t sure how to react to a doctor’s timid courtship.

Best film with a Vermont connection

COURTESY OF ORION PICTURES

66

year. I’ve parenthetically noted which are on streaming services; look for the others in theaters or on VOD.

COURTESY OF PARISA TAGHIZADEH/WARNER BROS.

ell, folks, this is the year Burlington lost its downtown movie theater — and the area’s only art house cinema.

Merrill’s Roxy Cinemas closed in November, ending an era that dawned when I was still young enough to sneak into R-rated movies.

That’s actually one of my first memories of the theater at 220 College Street, then known as the Nickelodeon Cinemas 6.

According to Cinema Treasures, the Nickelodeon opened in 1981 under independent ownership. (It would later belong to a couple of large chains before Merrill Jarvis II bought it in 2003.) In 1982, 14-year-old me brazenly purchased a ticket for An Officer and a Gentleman, which features full-frontal nudity. I guess it’s safe to admit that now?

Like the Roxy to come, the Nickelodeon showed a mix of mainstream and art house fare, but it also screened classic and cult movies. Every month, I carefully perused the flyer detailing its program, which gave me an education in cinema history.

In 1983, my family stood in a line that stretched down the Nick’s brick façade on South Winooski Avenue to see Return of the Jedi. In 1985, I got nauseated during the early scenes of A Room With a View (from my lunch, not the movie), threw up in the tiny restroom and went right back and enjoyed the rest of the period piece.

Good Will Hunting, Boogie Nights, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Being John Malkovich, Notting Hill, The Blair Witch Project, American Psycho, The Ice Storm, Titanic, Capote, Sideways, The Royal Tenenbaums — all movies I first saw at the Nick/Roxy. Any local movie lover who’s been around long enough has a similar list.

Where will we see our indie films now?

Perhaps at the Essex Cinemas or Majestic 10, if a movie has enough buzz to get on the program; perhaps at Vermont’s surviving art houses, such as Montpelier’s Savoy Theater and St. Johnsbury’s Catamount Arts; perhaps at a Vermont International Film Foundation screening. But not at Waitsfield’s Big Picture Theater, another casualty of the nationwide post-pandemic trend of theater closings.

Or maybe we’ll wait and catch those films

Nickel Boys

streaming — because it’s hard to ignore the elephant in the living room: The audience for foreign and indie films skews older, and older people are more likely to stay home.

No wonder original material is increasingly rare in multiplexes. So far this year, all but three of the 20 top-grossing theatrical releases have been sequels to previous hits — and one of those three, Wicked, could easily be mistaken for an Oz sequel.

We can only hope someone (or someones) steps up to fill greater Burlington’s art house gap. Meanwhile, a glance outside Vermont offers some encouraging signs.

In September, Variety reported that the

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

nation’s eight biggest theater chains will collectively spend $2.2 billion on upgrades.

The latest National Audience Survey from the independent theater coalition Art House Convergence showed an uptick in attendance, with the average new attendee being comparatively young at 38. And, according to a recent Associated Press story, young people are driving a renaissance of Los Angeles’ indie cinemas. Maybe that trend will make its way east.

In other good news, 2024 had no shortage of excellent theatrically released films, including many that weren’t sequels. Here are some movies that stood out for me this

Among the sequels that made bank this year was Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (Max, YouTube Primetime, rentable). For me, the fact that it was partially shot in East Corinth was the most interesting thing about it. (Second most interesting: the creative lengths to which Tim Burton went to include Jeffrey Jones’ character in the story without giving work to a convicted sex offender.)

For actual homegrown films, catch a screening of Bess O’Brien’s Just Getting By, a powerful documentary about unhoused Vermonters. Far Out: Life on and After the Commune continues to screen around the state to enthusiastic audiences. And Tommy Hyde’s Underdog, about a struggling Vermont dairy farmer who enters a dog-mushing competition in Alaska, is now streaming on Apple TV, Prime Video and Slamdance Channel.

Best first film

India Donaldson and Annie Baker rightly made waves this year with their debut features, Good One (rentable) and Janet

Planet (Max, rentable), respectively. Both are quietly provocative stories about girls coming of age in the woods and exploring the limits of their worlds.

RaMell Ross already had an acclaimed lyrical documentary (Hale County This Morning, This Evening) under his belt, but his stunning narrative debut, Nickel Boys, should take his career to another level.

Based on Colson Whitehead’s novel about a Black teen (Ethan Herisse) who takes a ride in the wrong car and lands in a brutal reform school in 1960s Florida, the movie uses first-person perspective — a rare and risky choice — to bring us into the past with extraordinary intimacy. Look for it in theaters in January.

What is it that gives wordless animated films the potential to be so gut-wrenchingly sad? We Live in Time was a perfectly fine live-action weepie. But if you really want to cry over the pathos of human transience, watch Flow, a postapocalyptic animal adventure sans people, or Robot Dreams (Disney+, Hulu, rentable), the gentle friendmance of a dog and a robot in 1980s New York. You’ll never again be able to hear Earth, Wind & Fire’s “September” without misting up.

I’m glad a movie about so-called “women’s issues” (which should be everyone’s issues) made so much money, but I can’t get behind the weirdly muted and gauzy treatment of domestic violence in It Ends With Us (Netflix, rentable).

Blake Lively’s outfits shouldn’t be the focus here.

Best scenery chewing

COURTESY OF MUBI

Most heart-rending animation

Most old-school in a bad way

The Substance

Movies that might be honored here if I’d actually seen them

COURTESY OF KIMBERLEY FRENCH/A24

Most necessary sequel

The trippy complexity of the mythos behind Dune: Part Two (Max, rentable) justifies multiple films in my mind, but I still find it tough to care about Timothée Chalamet’s Paul Atreides as much as I do about the world around him.

As for the surprise hit Terrifier 3 (rentable), well, surely we can all agree that this year called for a blood-soaked killer clown Christmas movie.

Heretic

Least necessary sequel

This is a crowded field, but for me, Glen Powell’s squinty charm and Marlboro man swagger failed to justify the existence of Twisters (Peacock, rentable).

Most effective bait-and-switch

COURTESY OF MGM

Definitely not Joker: Folie à Deux (Max, rentable). To me, Todd Phillips’ musical sequel to his superhero-adjacent hit seemed perfectly consistent with its predecessor in its dour characterization and themes. But many fans of the original expected Arthur Fleck to rise from the ashes of Joker as, well, the Joker, and they certainly didn’t expect him to sing. The movie bombed with critics and audiences.

More successful at the box office (relative to its budget) was Alex Garland’s Civil War (Max, rentable), which left many moviegoers angry when it turned out to be about the ethics of wartime photojournalism and not about whom to root for if a civil

There are good ways to chew the scenery!

Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo both deliver big, big performances in Wicked while incorporating subtle touches that lend complexity to their archetypal characters. They deserve all the accolades they’re getting. Playing a faded star, Demi Moore goes big in The Substance (MUBI, rentable) and gives the best performance of her career.

Equally toothsome is Hugh Grant’s comic turn as a doddery, sweater-clad Heretic who can’t possibly have bad intentions when he invites two missionaries inside for a theological discussion … or can he?

Challengers

war happened in the U.S. today. Personally, I don’t blame Garland for not sticking his hand in that hornets’ nest, and his images of a devastated heartland gave us all something to chew on.

Most old-school in a good way

If you skipped Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers (MGM+, Prime, rentable)

because you don’t like tennis, give it a chance! This is the kind of movie Hollywood used to make all the time: a “grown-up” drama about smart, attractive professionals vying with each other for dominance in their field (and, yes, sometimes in the bedroom). It’s cleverly written, well acted, zippy and entertaining.

I have no excuse for missing Conclave, Sing Sing and A Different Man. But a bunch of other award contenders — including The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Nosferatu, Queer, Babygirl and I’m Still Here — haven’t screened in Vermont as of this writing. So take with this caveat my current choice of…

Best films

Nickel Boys is one of those movies that you sink deeper into with each successive viewing. While the first-person approach is bound to have detractors, the film has the heft of an experimental literary epic — an absorbing, adventurous reflection on how we relate to our personal and collective pasts.

Other movies bowl you over and leave you gasping, like The Substance.

Is Coralie Fargeat’s Hollywood horror tale for everyone? No! Does it have a ground-breaking message? No! But the unsubtle, comic maximalism of this movie captures the self-scrutiny and self-hatred at the core of a culture of images better than anything else I’ve seen. And that culture is where we live now, whether we like it or not.

The Substance is just one of the movies I’ll always be grateful to have seen on a big screen, with other people laughing, cringing and gasping around me. Happy New Year, and let’s celebrate the holidays by giving our local theaters some business. ➆

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

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art

Little Boxes Six Vermont art venues to keep an eye on in 2025

BY AL ICE D OD GE adodge@sevendaysvt.com

G

68

SEVEN DAYS

DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

HEXUM GALLERY MONTPELIER

16 State St., Montpelier. Open Friday, 4 to 8 p.m., and Saturday, noon to 5 p.m. hexumgallery.com

It’s surprising to come across a central Vermont artist who doesn’t yet know about Hexum. True, the gallery hours are limited, and the location — above Capital Kitchen on State Street in Montpelier — doesn’t lend itself to foot traffic. That said, it’s where you’ll see some of the best shows in the state.

John Zaso opened the gallery in spring 2023 with “Wild Things,” a selection of works from his own collection. The curator started out as an artist and clearly became a collector out of love; his aesthetic is very particular.

Zaso has a soft spot for black-andwhite artwork that is anything but simple.

“Black & Bloom,” currently on view, shows works on a grayscale botanical theme by 12 artists; the show’s concept was inspired by a still life in Zaso’s collection by Casey Top: “Still Life With Flowers 53” by Casey Gray; above: John Zaso at Hexum Gallery Gray. Last year’s “Righty Tighty, Black & Whitey” brought together monochrome graphite and charcoal drawings, and Zaso is planning a follow-up to that show for 2025.

One of Hexum’s hallmarks is work that you could indeed call “tighty” — precise, with accomplished technique and visible control of the medium, as in Elizabeth Powell’s “Bound in Abstractions,” which Hexum presented this fall. The human body, specifically through a queer lens, also, um, pops up often at Hexum; stay tuned for an LGBTQ-themed show next year.

Zaso and his husband, Richard Davis, are great hosts at Montpelier’s bimonthly Art Walk, and that’s the best time to stop by — the music is bumping, and artists are happy to chat. It’s like a little slice of Brooklyn in the Capital City.

FILE: JEB WALLACE-BRODEUR

ood things come in little boxes. I “unwrapped” quite a few in my first year as Seven Days’ visual art editor — and now I’d like to share them with you.

I’m referring, of course, to small galleries across the state doing big things. Despite the occasional art review, venues such as these still escape notice, especially when they have odd hours or steep stairs.

Each of these hidden gems is well worth a visit in the coming year — and sure to contain something sparkly. ➆

FIND ALL ART SHOWS + EVENTS AT SEVENDAYSVT.COM/ART

K. GRANT FINE ART

SAFE AND SOUND GALLERY

2 Church St., #2M, Burlington. Open by appointment. safeandsound.gallery

I’m always thrilled to learn of a new gallery, especially when it’s right under my nose. I hadn’t been to Safe and Sound before last summer, even though it’s right at the top of Church Street in Burlington.

Marin Horikawa opened the gallery almost six years ago. A former creative director at JDK Design, he spent his time finding artists and graphics to grace Burton snowboards. When he started his own design firm, Moderate Breeze, Horikawa decided his office would double as an exhibition space.

Safe and Sound’s sensibility is design-adjacent.

Both Chris Colbourn’s “Primarily Flowers” (2024) and Clark Derbes’ “Skateboarding Is Performance Art” (2022) focused on the ties between art and skateboarding — Colbourn, aka “Cookie,” is a pro skater — and “Crew Neck” (2019) featured artist-created T-shirts. The overall vibe is friendly, international and very cool.

“I love art that has depth to it,” Horikawa said by email; the way that depth manifests is different for each artist. “It could be their incredible painting/ drawing skill or just simply their personal story.”

Shows at Safe and Sound are sporadic — Horikawa is hoping to do four annually. He used to put out a sandwich board when the gallery was open, but last year, prompted by safety concerns, his landlord installed a new door that restricts access to the Richardson Building’s second floor. That means the gallery is now appointment-only.

My suggestion? Subscribe to Safe and Sound’s email list; whenever there’s a show, it’s worth skating on over.

LITTLE BOXES

» P.70

Clockwise from left: “Third Uncomformity” by Lydia Musco; “2024-17”

by Megan Bogonovich; Kristen Grant with a portfolio of works by Cameron Davis

FILE: PAMELA POLSTON

It was more than toasty at Vergennes’ newest gallery when I visited in August. The former carriage house was like a little oven full of brightly colored confections — all part of “Soft Openings,” K. Grant Fine Art’s inaugural show. The gallerist, Kristen Grant, had moved back from New Orleans a year earlier, planning to start an art consulting business; when the little house where sculptor Ross Sheehan had run his studio became available, it was too good of an opportunity to pass up.

VERGENNES The space is adorable, with wonky floors, a vaulted ceiling and exposed beams. Sunny and bright, it offers just enough space for the small group shows Grant has produced so far: In addition to “Soft Openings,” which featured six women artists and a loose botanical theme, Grant showed works by Neil Berger, Clark Derbes and Lydia Jenkins in “Eternal Harvest” this fall. “Process & Presence,” her winter show up through January 31, highlights Burlington artists Jasmine Parsia and Viscaya Wagner, straddling the line between art and design.

Grant has a knack for finding talented artists and an unusual eye for balancing a group presentation. Without a great deal of physical space, she has so far been able to present enough from each artist to give a sense of their overall project without any redundancy. I’m excited to see more of K. Grant’s concise, poetic exhibitions in the year to come.

ALICE DODGE

37 Green St., Vergennes. Open Wednesday to Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. kgrantfineart.com

BURLINGTON

Clockwise from top: Marin Horikawa at Safe and Sound Gallery; “3 x 4 heads”

by Chris Colbourn; “Headband” by Chris Colbourn

SEVEN DAYS

DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

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art DEC. 25-JAN. 8 Little Boxes « P.69 ALICE DODGE

OPENINGS + RECEPTIONS THOMAS STRUTH: “Winterthur Landscapes,” large-scale color landscapes taken in Switzerland during the 1990s by the internationally acclaimed German artist. See website for winter hours. Hall Art Foundation, Reading, January 4-February 23. Info, vermont@hallartfoundation.org.

ART EVENTS OPEN STUDIO: A guided meditation followed by an hour of art making in any medium and concluding with a share-and-witness process. Many art materials available. In-person and online.

Expressive Arts Burlington, Thursday, December 26, 12:30-2:30 p.m., and Tuesday, January 7, 6:30-8:30 p.m. By donation. Info, 343-8172.

SOCIAL SUNDAY: An opportunity for children and caregivers to stop in and complete a 15- to 30-minute activity during the two-hour workshop.

Milton Artists’ Guild Art Center & Gallery, Sunday, December 29, and Sunday, January 5, 1-3 p.m. Free.

Info, 891-2014.

ESSEX ART LEAGUE MONTHLY MEETING: Artist presentations, art making and camaraderie. Essex Art League, Essex Junction, Thursday, January 2, 9-11 a.m. Free for two meetings, then $25 annually. Info, 318-5220, howekit0@gmail.com.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT WORKSHOPS FOR ARTISTS: A selection of free online and in-person workshops addressing the most urgent needs, challenges and opportunities facing artists in New England, presented by Assets for Artists in partnership with the Vermont Arts Council.

Register online at assetsforartists.org. Vermont Arts Council, Montpelier, through January 28. Info, assetsforartists@massmoca.org. ➆

additional art listings are on view at sevendaysvt.com/art.

Find all the calls to artists, ongoing art shows and future events online.

VISUAL ART IN SEVEN DAYS:

ART LISTINGS ARE WRITTEN BY ALICE DODGE. LISTINGS ARE RESTRICTED TO ART SHOWS IN TRULY PUBLIC PLACES.

GET YOUR ART SHOW LISTED HERE AND ONLINE!

PROMOTING AN ART EXHIBIT? SUBMIT THE INFO AND IMAGES BY THURSDAY AT NOON AT SEVENDAYSVT.COM/ POSTEVENT OR ART@SEVENDAYSVT.COM.

= ONLINE EVENT OR EXHIBIT 70

SEVEN DAYS

DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

83 Gates St., White River Junction. Open Thursday to Saturday, noon to 6 p.m., and by appointment. kishka.org

The Upper Valley’s art spaces come in all varieties, from Dartmouth College’s staid Hood Museum to the wacky Main Street Museum. Among them, Kishka Gallery & Library in White River Junction stands out. A little spot on Gates Street with bright vintage linoleum floors and a wall full of art books, it’s a cozy gem.

Owners Ben Finer and Bevan Dunbar put a great deal of thought and effort into their curation, and it’s obvious they care deeply for artists.

WHITE Kishka shows artists from RIVER JUNCTION everywhere and represents just a handful: Lakea Shepard, Megan Bogonovich, June Gutman and Denver Ferguson. Finer met Ferguson when the latter was working at the Upper Valley Food Co-op, drawing on the backs of shredded receipts when he wasn’t helping customers. A self-taught artist, Ferguson had moved to the area from the U.S. Virgin Islands after Hurricane Maria devastated his home in 2017. In January, Kishka will bring his drawings to the Outsider Art Fair in New York City, along with works

by Gutman and Jessy Park, one of three artists in “Winter Color,” up through February 15.

Going to fairs is a serious investment of time and energy; it’s unusual for a Vermont gallery but can make a big difference for artists.

Kishka hopes to present several longer Top: Bevan Dunbar with an installation by shows in 2025, including one featuring Elodie Blanchard at Kishka Gallery & Library; comics artist Richard Blake and a new above: “Shell Game #3” by Edie Fake solo presentation from Shepard. When looking for people to exhibit, Finer said that although they do show a few self-taught artists, that’s not Kishka’s focus.

He and Dunbar select artists, he said, because, “something strikes us about what they’re doing, whether it’s a dedication to craft or a dedication to an idea.”

ALICE DODGE

109

KISHKA GALLERY & LIBRARY

FIND ALL ART SHOWS + EVENTS AT SEVENDAYSVT.COM/ART

ALICE DODGE

THE HESTERLY BLACK

7 Stowe St., Waterbury. Open during the Phoenix’s regular hours, Tuesday to Friday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Sunday, noon to 6 p.m. thephoenixvt.com

Since opening in June 2023, the Phoenix has become a Waterbury mainstay for expansive art shows, such as this fall’s “Collage/Uncollage,” as well as music and events.

But not everyone notices that there’s another gallery upstairs, nestled between the building’s art studios.

The Hesterly Black is named for longtime Stowe resident Hesterly Fearing Black, whose granddaughter Anna Black co-owns the Phoenix with curator Joseph Pensak. Hesterly, who died in 2023 at age 90, was described as “feisty, beautiful and intelligent,” and that spirit permeates the gallery.

WATERBURY It’s a quieter space than the one downstairs, with elegant curved walls. Shows overflow into the lounge next door, where visitors can hang out on couches and read art magazines. Each exhibition I’ve seen there has felt intimate and secret, like the work is there only for a single viewer.

In early summer, Ana Koehler presented “Revealed/ Revered,” a series of luscious and provocative collaged drawings in the space. More recently, Erika Lawlor Schmidt’s collages, prints and assemblages complemented “Collage/Uncollage” downstairs. The shows gave each artist the perfect amount of room to present a cohesive, complex body of work.

In the coming year, look for exhibitions by Mary Admasian and Anna Black. Black’s show, opening in January and titled “Be Radical?,” is sure to follow in her feisty family footsteps.

From left: “It’s Alright, I’m Out Of My Mind (For Ida Applebroog)” by Ana Koehler; work by Ana Koehler at the Hesterly Black

ALICE DODGE

CANAL STREET ART GALLERY

23 Canal St., Bellows Falls. Open Tuesday to Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.; and 3rd Fridays, 5 to 7 p.m. canalstreetartgallery.com

ALICE DODGE

Canal Street Art Gallery is tucked next to the river in Bellows Falls on the Exner Block, which primarily offers studios and affordable housing for artists. It’s got a scrappy, art-for-all vibe, and cofounder Mike Noyes has lots of ideas. He has run the gallery since it opened in 2017, and he’s changing things up going into 2025.

Canal Street is shifting from themed group shows to shorter, mini solo ones: six artists at a time, each with their own wall. Joshua Aaron Gray, Theresa Karpinski, Kathleen Kemp, Amy Raab and Sandy Sherman are currently on view. It’s not a lot of room, but it’s enough for a series or small body of work.

The gallery also has six slots for its Working Artist Program — cubiclestyle studios open to the public where artists can create work and display it when they’re not there. While not for everyone, it’s an intriguing model that Noyes hopes will offer more ways for artists to support themselves.

He’s most excited about another initiative: “Free Self Expression” events during Bellows Falls’ monthly 3rd Friday art strolls. The gallery will be a forum where anyone can perform, speak or leave free artwork for others to take.

“Gathering together creatively” is going to be increasingly important in the coming years, Noyes said. “We’re going to have to be louder than ever.” ➆

BELLOWS FALLS

From left: Works by Mindy Fisher; works by Kathleen Kemp and Joshua Aron Gray at Canal Street Art Gallery SEVEN DAYS

DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

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music+nightlife

From left: Lutalo, Lily Seabird, McAsh, Robber Robber, Caleb Lodish

Y

ou guys remember a few years ago when I tried to do away with the end-of-year lists and top-10 stuff ? Yeah, you hated that. Let it be known that I am a trainable music editor!

To be fair to, um, me, when I started as your friendly neighborhood music editor, we were coming out of the pandemic and I wasn’t exactly spoiled for choices with releases. That is definitely not a problem in 2024’s local music scene. This year featured not only more releases than I’ve ever received but also — just maybe — the best crop of Vermont albums that have come along in a long while. How do I know? Compiling the lists you’re about to read was harder than ever.

Some disclaimers before we get started: No, there’s no NOAH KAHAN or PHISH on this list. Phish did put out a pretty good album this year with Evolve, but I think we can all agree that while the Phab Phour are from Vermont, they’ve long 72

since transcended its scene. And thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster that I don’t have to wade into the “Is Kahan part of the Vermont music scene?” debate, because he didn’t release a record in 2024. I’m actually slightly worried about the mental state of his local fans if he drops another love letter to the Green Mountains; we could reach real “BEATLES at Shea Stadium”-level mania. Free suggestion to Kahan: Title the new record Don’t Jersey Vermont and start a feud with BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN. It’ll be like KENDRICK LAMAR versus DRAKE for the Subarudriving set!

I also disqualified the excellent new OF MONTREAL album, Lady on the Cusp. While KEVIN BARNES, the mastermind behind the project, moved to Marlboro in 2024, this was his final album recorded while still living in Athens, Ga. I don’t think we get to call dibs on this one.

OK! Now that we’ve gotten all that out of the way, let’s get to the best of 2024 in Vermont music.

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE ARTISTS, CONNOR TURQUE

BEST OF 2024

The best Vermont albums, singles and music videos of 2024 B Y C H R I S FA R N S WO R T H farnsworth@sevendaysvt.com

Best Albums of 2024 1. Robber Robber, Wild Guess

The local indie-rock scene is as robust as it has been since the glory days of the ’90s in Burlington. With acts such as GREG FREEMAN, GREASEFACE, the DEAD SHAKERS and LILY SEABIRD, there’s been a resurgence of top-shelf bands and artists making wildly original rock. And no band delivered better than Burlington’s ROBBER ROBBER, who released the scintillating Wild Guess in July.

Caught somewhere between the quirky indie stylings of SONIC YOUTH and harder-edged post-punk, the foursome created a record suffused with equal parts airy detachment and captivating tension.

2. Astral Underground, Sunsets Are Sacred Enosburgh cosmic-jazz trio ASTRAL UNDERGROUND might have the most unorthodox origin of any Vermont act. Local mainstays BEN MADDOX (the MOUNTAIN SAYS NO) and JOHN NOTARO (MUSHROOM TEETH) joined forces with influential flutist MARGAUX SIMMONS, who formed the avant-garde African jazz band the PYRAMIDS in the 1970s. Together, their debut record, Sunsets Are Sacred, is a blast of free jazz blended with pulsing electronic music and flashes of shoegaze and post-punk. It’s a startlingly unique sound that delivers from start to finish.

BEST OF 2024

» P.74

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efore launching the revolution- how music responds to political adversity ary punk-rock collective Gogol and what he sees as the dawn of a new Bordello, starring in films such golden age of DIY. 8v-true802-070523.indd 1 7/3/238v-nectars122624 5:21 PM 1 12/16/24 10:57 AM as Everything Is Illuminated and popping up in Madonna videos, Eugene Welcome back! It’s been a few years Hütz was a Burlington kid, hanging since there’s been a Gogol Bordello around the all-ages punk club 242 Main. show in town.

A Ukrainian immigrant who says he Yeah, but I come up all the time. I was up “didn’t know a word of English, except for for the Agnostic Front show at Higher Dead Kennedys and Sex Pistols lyrics,” Ground [in 2023], and the old hardcore Hütz found a welcomcrew from 242 Main came ing community in the out. It was fucking magic, man. local hardcore scene and formed one of the most influential Vermont punk You’ve often spoken TWO CONVENIENT LOCATIONS: bands of the late ’90s, the in interviews about 100 CHURCH ST, 3RD FLOOR 1 MARKET PL. #16, ESSEX JCT. EU GE NE HÜ TZ @SOULSHINEDOWNTOWN @SOULSHINEVT Fags. how important 242 and that scene was to Hütz left the Queen LEARN MORE & SIGN UP: WWW.SOULSHINEPOWERYOGA.COM City for the bright lights of New York you growing up. What made it such a City around the turn of the century, sanctuary for you?

8h-SoulshineYoga122524 1 12/16/24 2:30 PM though his family still lives in the area Well, I had my tiny group of friends who and he returns regularly. This week, were trying to do our own thing. The he’s home for Christmas and bringing town was an oasis for creative people Gogol Bordello with him as part of the when I got there. You had a DIY punk Casa Gogol Holiday Tour. The sprawling scene, and you also had musicians from nine-piece band plays a sold-out show New York and Boston and people like at the Higher Ground Ballroom in South [ jazz musician] James Harvey, who Burlington on Friday, December 27. would talk about Sonic Youth and Béla The tour is a celebration of Hütz’s new Bartók in the same sentence. label, Casa Gogol, that he launched in These cross-pollinating characters March. One of its first signees is another were around. And luckily Bernie and band with Burlington ties, Pons, who Jane Sanders went to Germany and the emerged from the University of Vermont Netherlands and saw how the youth indie scene. They’ll join the show as an centers were run there, and they came opening act. back and made 242. Because, and I don’t Ahead of his homecoming, he phoned FIND EVENTS AND CLASSES AT SEVENDAYSTICKETS.COM Seven Days to chat about the new label, INTELLIGENT AGITATION » P.75

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3/30/21 2:49 PM

Best of 2024 « P.72

BEST SINGLES

3. Caleb Lodish, An Evening Into Sweet Despair

1. rivan, “Deep Blue” 2. The Mountain Says No, “Side by Side” 3. THUS LOVE, “On the Floor” 4. Night Protocol, “Mindkiller” 5. The Wormdogs, “Done Workin’” 6. Lutalo, Claud, “Running” 7. Sarah King, “When It All Goes Down” 8. Topia, “THISMYFATE” 9. McAsh, “Healthcare” 10. Cady Ternity, “Who’s D’Boss?”

A product of the Burlington Technical Center’s Digital Media Lab program, producer CALEB LODISH put out one of the year’s best albums with his sophomore effort, An Evening Into Sweet Despair.

Stuffed full of smooth R&B, glitchedout jazz and sleek, modern hip-hop, the record offers new insights into Lodish’s songcraft and beat-making at every turn.

It also spotlights some of the best up-andcoming talent in the 802 hip-hop scene, including verses from RSIEH RAXAN, RIVAN, CHARLIE MAYNE, TYLER SERRANI and FLYWLKR.

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music+nightlife

rivan

6. Lily Seabird, Alas,

BEST MUSIC VIDEOS 1. Hunter Paye, “The Piper and the Prey” 2. The Butterfields, “Alberta Bound” 3. THUS LOVE, “All Pleasure” 4. Robber Robber, “Sea or War” 5. Spencer Lewis, “The Grower” 6. Robscure, “NEON SIGNS” 7. Rik Palieri, “Hands of Time” 8. The Dead Shakers, “My Garlic and Me” 9. VT Union feat. R.A. the Rugged Man, “Rockstar” 10. Moira Smiley feat. Merrill Garbus, “Go Dig My Grave”

4. THUS LOVE, All Pleasure Brattleboro post-punk and indie-rock outfit THUS LOVE continued evolving in 2024, adding two new members and taking the new wave-leaning sound of their 2022 debut, Memorial, and pushing it closer to ’90s-era grunge and collegeradio indie rock for All Pleasure. Even as the group caught fire in Europe, playing big festivals such as Reading, its members have never forsaken their Vermont roots, staying put in their small but artistically vital Brattleboro scene. The album reveals a group unafraid to tweak its sound despite the buzz around it. We all reap the benefits of that bravery.

Hunter Paye

One of the cornerstone bands of the WHAT DOTH LIFE collective out of Windsor, the PILGRIMS took a long time between their 2017 album, No Focus, and their 2024 follow-up, Joking but Serious. It’s a perfect title, as the hard-charging punk act’s dark sense of humor only slightly dulls the record’s themes of insecurity and isolation. ➆

Listening In COURTESY OF SHERVIN LAINEZ

KEVIN BLOOM doesn’t fuck around when

74

Burlington singer-songwriter LILY SEABIRD dropped one of the best local debuts I’ve ever heard with Beside Myself in 2021. Her full-length followup, Alas, is an emotionally raw and gripping piece of music, often vacillating between crushing sorrow and peaceful acceptance. It’s a record about loss, grief and how to live with absence — or, as freelance writer NINA SABLAN put it in her review, “Alas, shows us Seabird digging into her psyche until she grasps something vulnerable, raw and ultimately healing.”

7. The Pilgrims, Joking but Serious

5. The Dead Shakers, So I Guess I Keep Making Albums Until I Die? it comes to making LPs. The talismanic front man for Burlington psych-rock outfit the DEAD SHAKERS released the 20-track double album So I Guess I Keep Making Albums Until I Die? in September, an opus chock-full of fuzz; ambience; acid jazz; sometimes

inscrutable, sometimes hilarious lyrics; and, most of all, Bloom’s skewed brilliance.

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

THUS LOVE

Find an endof-the-year playlist of all the best Vermont music in 2024 at sevendaysvt. com/playlist

SCAN TO LISTEN

Intelligent Agitation « P.73 know anything about running a city, man ... but without a place like that, I’m not sure what a lot of us would have got up to if we couldn’t display our energy and camaraderie there.

COURTESY OF ALISON CLARKE

The whole DIY movement was so important to the hardcore scene you came up in. Does that still inform what you do? Is that why you’ve launched a record label?

Fuck yeah. DIY is so important. I think maybe more now! People are fed up with this uncertain state of affairs with music.

Whether you’re a fan of Ronald Reagan or not, that era gave definition to people’s efforts and accelerated the DIY network.

It crystallized it. There was a network of powerful efforts like the SST and Dischord labels, but those are all somewhat archaic now. We need a new emergence of portals to do that.

Eugene Hütz

Do you think the return of Donald Trump to the White House in January might set off something similar in DIY music to what the Reagan administration inspired?

I think hope is kind of lazy. I think it’s in the Tao where they say if you have an intention and it is distilled, hope is not necessary. We don’t have to hope; it’s just the way it will go.

And I can already see it bubbling to the surface in New York. There’s never been a time in the music business where people are as confused and out of touch with fucking reality as they are now, but there are clusters of thriving and extremely chargedup new bands — kids who just discovered My Bloody Valentine and Television and Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Fugazi. They have

their own kaleidoscopic supercollider.

Just the way they play their instruments — I watch it closely. It has a certain agitation that was not characteristic in 2013.

The music is getting more aggressive?

I don’t know if it’s aggression; it’s more agitated intelligence. They way they approach things is another spin on postmodernism, but there’s an attachment to emotion, which wasn’t really present with postmodernism. These younger bands seem to have overcome the necessity to be ironic, which was kind of plaguing youth for a while. Not being able to commit to a cause has run its course.

Are those the qualities you look for when you sign bands to your new label? You’re bringing two of the new signees with you to Higher Ground: Pons and Puzzled Panther.

Oh, man, these are the children of no wave, my all-time inspiration — I love it. I didn’t know Pons had a Burlington connection when I signed them; they told me after I put them on the bill for the Burlington show.

It felt like it was only natural to start this label precisely now. There was a time where everything around Gogol, we were surrounded by lethargic people, you know?

We were relentless and felt like a crazy

horse, surrounded by all these sedated people. But it’s not sedated anymore, and things are shifting. ➆ This interview was edited and condensed for clarity and length.

INFO Gogol Bordello, Puzzled Panther, Pons, Friday, December 27, 8:30 p.m., at Higher Ground Ballroom in South Burlington. $39-150. AA. Sold out.

Learn more at gogolbordello.com.

Follow Casa Gogol Records on Instagram: @casagogolrecords.

Eye on the Scene Recent live music highlights from photographer Luke Awtry THE HOLIDAY EXTRAVAGANZA, FOAM BREWERS, BURLINGTON, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 14: It’s that time of the year when we find ourselves knee-deep in the annual storm of ho-hoHoliday Extravaganza shows. Few deliver like Foam Brewers’, where local musicians come together for short sets of holiday tunes in their own style — or better yet, completely outside of it. DAVID KARL ROBERTS, the MIDDLE AGES, RANGUS, FRANKIE WHITE and SAVAGE HEN were among the 13 acts on the bill. Between performances, the house band — MATT DOLLIVER on saxophone/keys, MARSHALL DOMINGUEZ on guitar, JIMMY MARTUCCI on drums and KAI PASCIAK on bass — absolutely sleighed classic tunes, including a personal favorite of mine, Vince Guaraldi Trio’s “Christmas Time Is Here” from the 1965 TV special A Charlie Brown Christmas. Even better were the surprise mashups. Did you know that “Deck the Halls” fits perfectly over Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs”? It’s totally bananas. Hope you had a rockin’ 2024!

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

75

Seven Days is one of 12 “Bright Spots” for local news across the country, according to Medill’s State of Local News 2024 report. Help us illuminate Vermont news, food, arts and culture — make a contribution and become a Super Reader. The best way to give is through a monthly recurring donation that will power our reporting all year long.

Go with the glow and donate at:

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Contact Gillian English at 865-1020, ext. 115 or superreaders@sevendaysvt.com.

76

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

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12/3/24 4:34 PM

music+nightlife

CLUB DATES

Find the most up-to-date info on live music, DJs, comedy and more at sevendaysvt.com/music. If you’re a talent booker or artist planning live entertainment at a bar, nightclub, café, restaurant, brewery or coffee shop, send event details to music@sevendaysvt.com or submit the info using our form at sevendaysvt.com/postevent.

live music

Blues Without Borders (blues) at Red Square, Burlington, 7 p.m.

Free.

Dave Keller Band NYE Early Show (blues) at Bent Nails Bistro, Montpelier, 7 p.m. $25.

THU.26

Jason Corbiere’s Blue Christmas (blues) at Nectar’s, Burlington, 7 p.m. $10/$15.

Dave Mitchell & the Great Friends Group (blues) at Red Square, Burlington, 2 p.m. Free.

Jazz with Alex Stewart and Friends (jazz) at the 126, Burlington, 8:30 p.m. Free.

Mykal Rose, Sed One, I Rhymes (reggae) at Zenbarn, Waterbury Center, 8 p.m. $25.

McMaple (covers) at On Tap Bar & Grill, Essex Junction, 6 p.m. Free.

Milton Busker & the Grim Work (Americana) at Black Flannel Brewing & Distilling, Essex, 6 p.m.

Free.

Shanty Rats (sea shanties) at Bent Nails Bistro, Montpelier, 8 p.m. Free.

The Soda Plant Bluegrass Jam (bluegrass) at Venetian Cocktail & Soda Lounge, Burlington, 7 p.m.

Free.

SAT.28 // TYLER DANIEL BEAN [INDIE]

FRI.27

A2VT (dance, hip-hop) at Light Club Lamp Shop, Burlington, 10 p.m. $10/$15.

Blues Without Borders (blues) at Charlie-O’s World Famous, Montpelier, 9:30 p.m. Free.

The Bressetts (acoustic) at Gusto’s, Barre, 6 p.m. Free.

Cady Ternity, Andriana & the Bananas, Luminous Crush (indie) at Monkey House, Winooski, 7 p.m. $5.

Dave Mitchell’s Blues Revue (blues) at Red Square, Burlington, 2 p.m. Free.

The Devon McGarry Band (folk rock) at the Old Post, South Burlington, 8 p.m. Free.

Duncan MacLeod Trio (blues, rock) at On Tap Bar & Grill, Essex Junction, 5 p.m. Free.

FYSPOT (covers) at On Tap Bar & Grill, Essex Junction, 9 p.m. Free.

Gogol Bordello, Puzzled Panther Pons - SOLD OUT (punk) at Higher Ground Ballroom, South Burlington, 8 p.m. $39/$45.

The Grift (rock) at Zenbarn, Waterbury Center, 7 p.m. $12/$15.

Ira Friedman (jazz) at Bleu Northeast Kitchen, Burlington, 7:30 p.m. Free.

The Jeff Salisbury Band (blues, swing) at Jericho Café & Tavern, 7 p.m. Free.

Jess O’Brien & Paul Miller (folk) at Bent Nails Bistro, Montpelier, 7 p.m. Free.

Morse, Bjella & Shper (jazz) at Hugo’s, Montpelier, 7:30 p.m. Free.

North Beach Dub All-stars (Sublime tribute) at Light Club Lamp Shop, Burlington, 8:30 p.m. $10/$15.

Rainbow Full of Sound Presents: Dylan and the Dead (Bob Dylan, Grateful Dead tribute) at the Double E Lounge at Essex Experience, 8:30 p.m. $15/$20.

All in the Family It’s been almost six years since Burlington’s

TYLER

DANIEL BEAN brought their brand of emo-influenced indie rock to a Vermont stage. What

began as a solo project turned into a full band bearing Bean’s name that played hundreds of shows in its heyday. The group released 11 records before going on hiatus in 2018, after Bean (the man, not the band) opened Willow’s Bagels in Burlington. He’s getting the band back together for one night only this Saturday, December 28, at the Higher Ground Showcase Lounge in South Burlington in what Bean describes as a “family reunion.” The show features groups that either count his former bandmates as members or bands he himself was in, including BELLY UP, THE PATH, GEEKED OUT and DOOMFUCK. Rap Night Burlington (hip-hop) at Drink, Burlington, 9 p.m. $5.

Ray’s Used Cars (roots, Americana, country) at Two Heroes Brewery Public House, South Hero, 6 p.m. Free.

Mike Wheeler (acoustic) at Two Heroes Brewery Public House, South Hero, 7 p.m. Free.

Mirage (rock) at Gusto’s, Barre, 9 p.m. Free.

SUN.29

Sunday Brunch Tunes (singersongwriter) at Hotel Vermont, Burlington, 10 a.m.

Waiting on Mongo (funk) at Zenbarn, Waterbury Center, 7 p.m. $12/$15.

The Returnables (rock) at Bent Nails Bistro, Montpelier, 9 p.m.

Free.

Organized Dead (Grateful Dead organ tribute) at the Den at Harry’s Hardware, Cabot, 7 p.m.

Free.

Seth Yacovone Band (rock, blues) at Nectar’s, Burlington, 8 p.m. $12.

Sabouyouma (Afro-funk) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 8 p.m. $10/$15.

SAT.28

Sarah Bell (singer-songwriter) at Whammy Bar, Calais, 7:30 p.m.

Free.

Beatson, Pitman, Starkweather & Hill (covers) at On Tap Bar & Grill, Essex Junction, 5 p.m. Free.

Switchel (folk) at Jericho Café & Tavern, 7 p.m. Free.

TUE.31

Consider the Source (prog rock) at Nectar’s, Burlington, 8 p.m. $15.

D Davis & Marc Gwinn (jazz) at Hugo’s, Montpelier, 7:30 p.m. Free.

Dan Parks (covers) at On Tap Bar & Grill, Essex Junction, 5 p.m.

Free.

Duncan MacLeod (jazz) at Bleu Northeast Kitchen, Burlington, 7:30 p.m. Free.

Jason Corbiere’s Blue Christmas (blues) at 14th Star Brewing, St. Albans, 6 p.m. Free.

Left Eye Jump (blues) at Red Square, Burlington, 2 p.m. Free.

Live Music Saturdays (live music series) at Dumb Luck Pub & Grill, Hinesburg, 7 p.m. Free.

Long Gone John (folk) at Monkey House, Winooski, 7 p.m. $5.

Toast (covers) at On Tap Bar & Grill, Essex Junction, 9 p.m. Free.

Tyler Daniel Bean, Belly Up, the Path, Geeked Out, Doomfuck (indie) at Higher Ground Showcase Lounge, South Burlington, 7 p.m. $12/$15.

Big Easy Tuesdays with Jon McBride (jazz) at the 126, Burlington, 9 p.m. Free.

Zach Nugent’s Dead Set (Grateful Dead tribute) at ArtsRiot, Burlington, 8:30 p.m. $20.

NYE Highlight: Robber Robber, Carinae, Greaseface (indie) at Foam Brewers, Burlington, 8:30 p.m. $18.

Paul Webb (jazz piano) at Venetian Cocktail & Soda Lounge, Burlington, 6 p.m. $5.

NYE with DJ Taka (DJ) at Light Club Lamp Shop, Burlington, 10 p.m. $10/$15.

Bird Mountain String Band, the Poultney Bluegrass Society (bluegrass) at Poultney Pub, 6 p.m. Free.

Wild Leek River, Van Vreeland, Prewn (bluegrass, folk) at Monkey House, Winooski, 8 p.m. $10.

SUN.5

Sunday Brunch Tunes (singersongwriter) at Hotel Vermont, Burlington, 10 a.m.

NYE with Gay4Disco (disco tribute) at Monkey House, Winooski, 9 p.m. $10.

Wine & Jazz Sundays (jazz) at Shelburne Vineyard, 5 p.m. Free.

Quadra (covers) at the Old Post, South Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

Bluegrass Jam (bluegrass) at Poultney Pub, 7 p.m. Free.

Ryan Sweezey (singersongwriter) at 14th Star Brewing, St. Albans, 6 p.m. Free.

Start Making Sense, Evn Jennison (Talking Heads tribute) at Higher Ground Ballroom, South Burlington, 8:30 p.m. $29.50/$35.

Sticks & Stones (covers) at On Tap Bar & Grill, Essex Junction, 9 p.m. Free.

Vermont Jazz Trio (jazz) at Hugo’s, Montpelier, 7:30 p.m. Free.

Willverine (electronic) at the Skinny Pancake, Burlington, 9:30 p.m. $18.

WED.1

Jazz Sessions (jazz) at the 126, Burlington, 9 p.m. Free.

Barbacoa (surf rock) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 7 p.m. $10.

Left Eye Jump (blues) at Red Square, Burlington, 2 p.m. Free.

Lost in Paris (covers) at Pickle Barrel Nightclub, Killington, 9 p.m. $10.

MON.30

All Night Boogie Band (blues) at Nectar’s, Burlington, 8 p.m. $12.

SAT.4

NYE Bash with Jerborn (acoustic) at 1st Republic Brewing, Essex, 1 p.m. Free.

BBQ and Bluegrass (bluegrass) at Four Quarters Brewing, Winooski, 6:30 p.m. Free.

Troy Millette & the Fire Below, the Owl Stars (Americana) at Foam Brewers, Burlington, 8 p.m.

Free.

Rap Night Burlington (hip-hop) at Drink, Burlington, 9 p.m. $5.

Live Music Saturdays (live music series) at Dumb Luck Pub & Grill, Hinesburg, 7 p.m. Free.

Wine & Jazz Sundays (jazz) at Shelburne Vineyard, 5 p.m. Free.

Acqua Mossa, DJ Rice Pilaf (soul, DJ) at the Skinny Pancake, Burlington, 10:30 p.m. $18.

Paul Webb (jazz piano) at Venetian Cocktail & Soda Lounge, Burlington, 6 p.m. $5.

The Nailers (rock) at Bent Nails Bistro, Montpelier, 9 p.m. Free.

NYE Honky Tonk with Wild Leek River & Friends (country) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 9:30 p.m. $10.

Vermont Jazz Trio (jazz) at Hugo’s, Montpelier, 7:30 p.m. Free.

Mean Waltons (bluegrass) at Poultney Pub, 6 p.m. Free.

Wednesday Night Dead (Grateful Dead tribute) at Zenbarn, Waterbury Center, 7 p.m. $10.

THU.2

12/OC (country) at Pickle Barrel Nightclub, Killington, 7 p.m. $15/$20.

Jazz with Alex Stewart and Friends (jazz) at the 126, Burlington, 8:30 p.m. Free.

FRI.3

TUE.7

Honky Tonk Tuesday with John Abair and His Good Pals (country) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 9 p.m. $10.

Jay Southgate (vibraphone) at Bent Nails Bistro, Montpelier, 5 p.m. Free.

WED.8

BBQ and Bluegrass (bluegrass) at Four Quarters Brewing, Winooski, 6:30 p.m. Free.

Irish Trad Jam (Celtic) at ArtsRiot, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

Jazz Night with Ray Vega (jazz) at Hotel Vermont, Burlington, 8:30 p.m. Free.

djs THU.26

DJ JP Black (DJ) at Red Square, Burlington, 8 p.m. Free.

DJ Two Sev (DJ) at Red Square, Burlington, 11 p.m. Free.

Vinyl Night with Ken (DJ) at Poultney Pub, 6 p.m. Free.

FRI.27

DJ LaFountaine (DJ) at Gusto’s, Barre, 9 p.m. Free.

DJ Taka (DJ) at Light Club Lamp Shop, Burlington, 11 p.m. $10/$15.

Dave Mitchell’s Blues Revue (blues) at Red Square, Burlington, 2 p.m. Free.

Latin Night with DJ JP Black (DJ) at Einstein’s Tap House, Burlington, 8 p.m. Free.

Joe Agnello’s Birthday Jam (jam) at Nectar’s, Burlington, 7 p.m.

Free.

SAT.28

Lost in Paris (covers) at Pickle Barrel Nightclub, Killington, 8 p.m. $10.

Crypt Goth Night (DJ) at Bent Nails Bistro, Montpelier, 8 p.m.

Free.

DJS SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

» P.78 77

music+nightlife djs

THU.26

Old Time Jam (open string jam) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 6 p.m.

Free.

DJ A-Ra$ (DJ) at Red Square, Burlington, midnight. Free.

Open Mic with Artie (open mic) at Whammy Bar, Calais, 7 p.m. Free.

DJ Chaston (DJ) at Einstein’s Tap House, Burlington, 10 p.m. Free.

SUN.29

DJ Raul (DJ) at Red Square Blue Room, Burlington, 6 p.m. Free.

Matt Payne (DJ) at Red Square Blue Room, Burlington, 10 p.m.

Free.

Molly Mood (DJ) at Red Square, Burlington, 10 p.m. Free.

Winter Dance Party with DJ Party Bear (DJ) at Charlie-O’s World Famous, Montpelier, 9:30 p.m. Free.

SUN.29

Mi Yard Reggae Night with DJ Big Dog (reggae, dancehall) at Nectar’s, Burlington, 9 p.m. Free.

TUE.31

Blanchface (DJ) at Einstein’s Tap House, Burlington, 10 p.m. Free.

DJ Ara$ and DJ Chaston (DJ) at Red Square Blue Room, Burlington, 8 p.m. Free.

DJ CRE8 (DJ) at Red Square, Burlington, 10 p.m. Free.

DJ Malcom Miller (DJ) at the Lounge at Nectar’s, Burlington, 10 p.m. $10.

Mr. Cheng (DJ) at Red Square, Burlington, 11:59 p.m. Free.

NYE Dance Party with DJ LaFountain (DJ) at Gusto’s, Barre, 8 p.m. Free.

Olde Time Jam Session (open jam) at the Den at Harry’s Hardware, Cabot, noon. Free.

MON.30

Bluegrass Etc. Jam (bluegrass jam) at Ottauquechee Yacht Club, Woodstock, 6:30 p.m. Free.

Open Mic (open mic) at Despacito, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

WED.1

Open Mic (open mic) at Monopole, Plattsburgh, N.Y., 10 p.m. Free.

Open Mic with Danny Lang (open mic) at Poultney Pub, 7 p.m. Free.

The Ribbit Review Open Mic & Jam (open mic) at Lily’s Pad, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

THU.2

Open Mic with Artie (open mic) at Whammy Bar, Calais, 7 p.m. Free.

FRI.3

Red Brick Coffee House (open mic) at Red Brick Meeting House, Westford, 7 p.m. Free.

SUN.5

Olde Time Jam Session (open jam) at the Den at Harry’s Hardware, Cabot, noon. Free.

MON.6

NYE Daytime Disco (DJ) at Foam Brewers, Burlington, 2 p.m. Free.

Open Mic (open mic) at Despacito, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

WED.1

TUE.7

Local Dork (DJ) at Foam Brewers, Burlington, 6 p.m. Free.

THU.2

Venetian Soda Open Mic (open mic) at Venetian Cocktail & Soda Lounge, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

Vinyl Night with Ken (DJ) at Poultney Pub, 6 p.m. Free.

WED.8

FRI.3

Open Mic with Danny Lang (open mic) at Poultney Pub, 7 p.m. Free.

DJ four-d (DJ) at Monkey House, Winooski, 9 p.m. Free.

Open Mic (open mic) at Monopole, Plattsburgh, N.Y., 10 p.m. Free.

DJ Taka (DJ) at Light Club Lamp Shop, Burlington, 11 p.m. $10/$15.

comedy

SAT.4

FRI.27

DJ A-Ra$ (DJ) at Red Square, Burlington, midnight. Free.

DJ Raul (DJ) at Red Square Blue Room, Burlington, 6 p.m. Free.

HAVEN (DJ) at MothershipVT, Burlington, 10 p.m. Free.

Matt Payne (DJ) at Red Square Blue Room, Burlington, 10 p.m.

Free.

Molly Mood (DJ) at Red Square, Burlington, 10 p.m. Free.

SUN.5

Mi Yard Reggae Night with DJ Big Dog (reggae, dancehall) at Nectar’s, Burlington, 9 p.m. Free.

open mics & jams WED.25

Open Mic (open mic) at Monopole, Plattsburgh, N.Y., 10 p.m. Free.

78

FRI.27 // A2VT [DANCE, HIP-HOP]

Improv: Home for the Holidays (comedy) at Vermont Comedy Club, Burlington, 7 p.m. $5/$10.

SAT.28

Standup: Home for the Holidays (comedy) at Vermont Comedy Club, Burlington, 7 & 9 p.m. $5/$10.

TUE.31

NYE: Joyelle Nicole Johnson: (comedy) at Vermont Comedy Club, Burlington, 8 & 10:30 p.m. $40/$60.

Open Mic Comedy with Levi Silverstein (comedy open mic) at the 126, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

THU.2

Brian Posehn (comedy) at Vermont Comedy Club, Burlington, 7 p.m. $30.

Live, Laugh, Lava: A Comedy Showcase (comedy) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

FILE: BEAR CIERI

CONTINUED FROM P.77

Wave Your Flag When

A2VT unleashed “Winooski, My Town” in 2012, the hip-hop and dance pop

crew not only gave the Onion City a much-needed anthem, but introduced a cultural synthesis to the music scene unlike anything it had witnessed before. With roots in Somalia, Congo and Tanzania, the group sings and raps in eight different languages, blending traditional African rhythms with Western club bangers. Now into their second decade, A2VT feature a rotating cast of singers, dancers, rappers and DJs performing alongside founder Jilib, aka Said Bulle, and show no signs of slowing. They dropped the speaker-shaking single “Dance With Me” in October. Catch them live at Burlington’s Light Club Lamp Shop on Friday, December 27.

FRI.3

Brian Posehn (comedy) at Vermont Comedy Club, Burlington, 7 & 9 p.m. $30.

SAT.4

Brian Posehn (comedy) at Vermont Comedy Club, Burlington, 7 & 9 p.m. $30.

WED.8

New Year, New Jokes (comedy) at Vermont Comedy Club, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

trivia, karaoke, etc.

THU.26

Trivia (trivia) at Four Quarters Brewing, Winooski, 6 p.m. Free.

Trivia Night (trivia) at Nectar’s, Burlington, 6:30 p.m. Free.

FRI.27

Karaoke Friday Night (karaoke) at Park Place Tavern & Grill, Essex Junction, 8 p.m. Free.

Karaoke with DJ Big T (karaoke) at McKee’s Original, Winooski, 9 p.m. Free.

New Queers Eve (drag) at Higher Ground Showcase Lounge, South Burlington, 8:30 p.m. $30/$35.

Venetian Karaoke (karaoke) at Venetian Cocktail & Soda Lounge, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

SUN.29

NYE Karaoke (karaoke) at CharlieO’s World Famous, Montpelier, 9 p.m. Free.

MON.6

Karaoke with DJ Coco Entertainment (karaoke) at Old Soul Design Shop, Plattsburgh, N.Y., 5 p.m. Free.

Sunday Funday (games) at 1st Republic Brewing, Essex, noon.

Free.

Venetian Karaoke (karaoke) at Venetian Cocktail & Soda Lounge, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

MON.30

Trivia Monday with Top Hat Entertainment (trivia) at McKee’s Original, Winooski, 7 p.m. Free.

Trivia with Brain (trivia) at Charlie-O’s World Famous, Montpelier, 8 p.m. Free.

Trivia with Craig Mitchell (trivia) at Monkey House, Winooski, 7 p.m. Free.

TUE.31

Karaoke with DJ Party Bear (karaoke) at Charlie-O’s World Famous, Montpelier, 9:30 p.m.

Free.

Trivia Tuesday (trivia) at On Tap Bar & Grill, Essex Junction, 7 p.m.

Free.

Trivia Monday with Top Hat Entertainment (trivia) at McKee’s Original, Winooski, 7 p.m. Free.

WED.1

Trivia with Brain (trivia) at Charlie-O’s World Famous, Montpelier, 8 p.m. Free.

Trivia Night (trivia) at Dumb Luck Pub and Grill Winooski, 7 p.m.

Free.

Trivia with Craig Mitchell (trivia) at Monkey House, Winooski, 7 p.m. Free.

THU.2

TUE.7

Radio Bean Karaoke (karaoke) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 9 p.m.

Free.

Trivia (trivia) at Four Quarters Brewing, Winooski, 6 p.m. Free.

Trivia Night (trivia) at Nectar’s, Burlington, 6:30 p.m. Free.

SUN.5

Karaoke with DJ Coco Entertainment (karaoke) at Old Soul Design Shop, Plattsburgh, N.Y., 5 p.m. Free.

Sunday Funday (games) at 1st Republic Brewing, Essex, noon.

Free.

Karaoke with DJ Party Bear (karaoke) at Charlie-O’s World Famous, Montpelier, 9:30 p.m.

Free.

Trivia Tuesday (trivia) at On Tap Bar & Grill, Essex Junction, 7 p.m.

Free.

Tuesday Trivia (trivia) at Vermont Comedy Club, Burlington, 7 p.m.

Free.

WED.8

Trivia Night (trivia) at Dumb Luck Pub and Grill Winooski, 7 p.m.

Free. ➆

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SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

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calendar

DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

THU.26

‘ANTARCTICA 3D’: Neverbefore-seen footage brings audience members to the farthest reaches of the coldest, driest, windiest continent on Earth.

Northfield Savings Bank 3D Theater: A National Geographic Experience, ECHO Leahy Center for Lake Champlain, Burlington, 10:30 a.m., 12:30, 2:30 & 4:30 p.m. $3-5 plus regular admission, $16.50-20; admission free for members and kids 2 and under. Info, 864-1848.

business

GROW YOUR BUSINESS: Shelburne BNI hosts a weekly meeting for local professionals to exchange referrals and build meaningful connections.

Connect Church, Shelburne, 8:30-10 a.m. Free. Info, 377-3422.

crafts

KNIT FOR YOUR NEIGHBOR: All ages and abilities knit or crochet hats and scarves for the South Burlington Food Shelf. Materials provided.

South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 2-5 p.m. Free. Info, 846-4140.

KNITTING GROUP: Knitters of all experience levels get together to spin yarns. Latham Library, Thetford, 7 p.m. Free.

Info, 785-4361.

WOODWORKING LAB: Visionaries create a project or learn a new skill with the help of mentors and access to tools and equipment in the makerspace. Hannaford Career Center, Middlebury, 5-8 p.m. $7.50. Info, 382-1012.

film

See what’s playing at local theaters in the On Screen section.

‘BLUE WHALES: RETURN OF THE GIANTS 3D’: Andy Serkis narrates the journey of a lifetime into the realm of the world’s largest mammals and the scientists who study them.

Northfield Savings Bank 3D Theater: A National Geographic Experience, ECHO Leahy Center for Lake Champlain, Burlington, 11:30 a.m., 1:30 & 3:30 p.m. $3-5 plus regular admission, $16.50-20; admission free for members and kids 2 and under.

Info, 864-1848.

‘FUNGI: THE WEB OF LIFE 3D’: Sparkling graphics take viewers on a journey into the weird, wide world of mushrooms, which we are only just beginning to understand.

Northfield Savings Bank 3D Theater: A National Geographic Experience, ECHO Leahy Center for Lake Champlain, Burlington, noon, 2 & 4 p.m. $3-5 plus regular admission, $16.50-20; admission free for members

These community event listings are sponsored by the WaterWheel Foundation, a project of the Vermont band Phish.

and kids 2 and under. Info, 864-1848.

‘T. REX: GREATEST OF ALL TYRANTS 3D’: Incredible CGI and revelations in tyrannosaur paleontology help to chronicle a remarkable discovery in the badlands of Hell Creek.

Northfield Savings Bank 3D Theater: A National Geographic Experience, ECHO Leahy Center for Lake Champlain, Burlington, 11 a.m., 1 & 3 p.m. $3-5 plus regular admission, $16.50-20; admission free for members and kids 2 and under. Info, 864-1848.

games

DUPLICATE BRIDGE GAMES: Snacks and coffee fuel bouts of a classic card game. Burlington Bridge Club, Williston, 12:30-4 p.m. $6. Info, 872-5722.

WEEKLY CHESS FOR FUN: Players of all ability levels face off and learn new strategies.

United Community Church, St. Johnsbury, 5:30-9 p.m.

Free; donations accepted. Info, lafferty1949@gmail.com.

holidays

CHRISTMAS AT THE FARM: Festive folks step back in time for a Victorian holiday experience featuring traditional 19th-century decorations, candle dipping, pie crust making and snow sports. Billings Farm & Museum, Woodstock, 10 a.m.4 p.m. $12-19. Info, 457-2355.

A FOREST OF LIGHTS: Folks stroll through a magical landscape filled with enchanting displays, including a snow shower tower and a whimsical woodland. Vermont Institute of Natural Science, Quechee, 4:30-7 p.m. $8-13; free for kids 3 and under. Info, 359-5000.

MERRY & BRIGHT ART MARKET: Holiday gift hunters discover unique handmade items crafted by more than 35

Vermont artists. Brandon Artists Guild, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Free. Info, 247-4956.

WINTER LIGHTS: Buildings and gardens glow with multicolored bulbs in a spectacular display for the holiday season. Shelburne Museum, 4:30-8 p.m. $10-30; free for kids 3 and under. Info, 985-3346.

language

ITALIAN CONVERSATION GROUP: Semi-fluent speakers practice their skills during a conversazione with others. Best for those who can speak at least basic sentences. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, noon-1 p.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

theater

‘BEAUTY AND THE BEAST’: Northern Stage mounts the classic Disney tale as old as time about learning to look beyond appearances. Byrne Theater, Barrette Center for the Arts, White River Junction, 2 & 7:30 p.m. $24-94. Info, 296-7000.

FRI.27 etc.

ALPHA FILM SERIES: Community members enjoy a meal, watch a brief video and share their perspectives on faith in an informal, friendly environment. St. John Vianney Parish Hall, South Burlington, 6:15-8:30 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 864-4166.

film

See what’s playing at local theaters in the On Screen section.

‘ANTARCTICA 3D’: See THU.26.

‘BEYOND THE FANTASY’: Teton Gravity Research presents a riveting snow sports film celebrating the transformation of improbable ideas into breathtaking feats of athleticism and creativity. See calendar spotlight. Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center, Stowe Mountain Resort, 7 p.m. $20. Info, 760-4634.

‘BLUE WHALES: RETURN OF THE GIANTS 3D’: See THU.26.

‘FUNGI: THE WEB OF LIFE 3D’: See THU.26.

‘T. REX: GREATEST OF ALL TYRANTS 3D’: See THU.26.

LIST YOUR UPCOMING EVENT HERE FOR FREE! All submissions must be received by Thursday at noon for consideration in the following Wednesday’s newspaper.

Find our convenient form and guidelines at sevendaysvt.com/postevent.

Listings and spotlights are written by Rebecca Driscoll. Seven Days edits for space and style. Depending on cost and other factors, classes and workshops may be listed in either the calendar or the classes section. Class organizers may be asked to purchase a class listing.

Learn more about highlighted listings in the Magnificent 14 on page 10.

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FIND MORE LOCAL EVENTS IN THIS ISSUE AND ONLINE: art Find visual art exhibits and events in the Art section and at sevendaysvt.com/art.

film See what’s playing in the On Screen section.

music + nightlife Find club dates at local venues in the Music + Nightlife section online at sevendaysvt.com/music.

= ONLINE EVENT

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

= GET TICKETS ON SEVENDAYSTICKETS.COM

food & drink

GIN-TER WONDERLAND: Libation lovers revel in a special cocktail menu filled with holiday cheer, including gingerbread old-fashioneds and Euro-style hot chocolate. Barr Hill, Montpelier, 2-8 p.m.

Free. Info, 472-8000.

games

DUPLICATE BRIDGE GAMES: See THU.26, 10 a.m.-1:30 p.m.

health & fitness

GUIDED MEDITATION ONLINE: Dorothy Alling Memorial Library invites attendees to relax on their lunch breaks and reconnect with their bodies. Noon-12:30 p.m. Free;

preregister. Info, programs@ damlvt.org.

holidays

CHRISTMAS AT THE FARM: See THU.26.

A FOREST OF LIGHTS: See THU.26.

MERRY & BRIGHT ART MARKET: See THU.26.

WINTER LIGHTS: See THU.26.

language

FRENCH SOCIAL HOUR: The Alliance Française of the Lake Champlain Region hosts a rendez-vous over cocktails. Hilton Garden Inn Burlington Downtown, 5:30-7 p.m. Free; cash bar. Info, bbrodie@aflcr.org.

lgbtq

RPG NIGHT: Members of the LGBTQ community get together weekly for role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons and Everway. Rainbow Bridge Community Center, Barre, 5:308:30 p.m. Free. Info, 622-0692.

outdoors

HUNGER MOUNTAIN WINTER BIRD COUNT: Locals join bird-watchers around the world in logging all the feathered friends they can find around town. Various Waterbury locations, 5 a.m.-5 p.m. Free. Info, zcotaweaver@gmail.com.

tech

PHONE & TECH SUPPORT: Perplexed patrons receive aid from library staff on a first come, first served basis. Fletcher Free Library New North End Branch, Burlington, 10 a.m.-noon. Free.

Info, 863-3403.

theater

‘BEAUTY AND THE BEAST’: See THU.26, 7:30 p.m.

SAT.28 crafts

WINTER LUMINARIES: People of all ages and abilities add a warm glow to their winter evenings with a recycled materials lantern-making workshop. Brownell Library, Essex Junction, 2-3:30 p.m. Free.

Info, 878-6956.

dance

LIVE BAND SWING DANCE: EMILY DAY & FRIENDS: Local Lindy hoppers and jitterbuggers boogie down to lively music from the jazz, big-band and contemporary eras. Bring clean shoes. North Star Community Hall, Burlington, 8-10:30 p.m. $10-20 sliding scale.

Info, 864-8382.

etc.

SISTERHOOD CAMPFIRE: Women and genderqueer folks gather in a safe and inclusive space to build community through journaling, storytelling, gentle music and stargazing. Leddy Park, Burlington, 7-9 p.m. Free. Info, sisterhoodcampfire@gmail.com.

film

See what’s playing at local theaters in the On Screen section.

‘ANTARCTICA 3D’: See THU.26.

‘BEYOND THE FANTASY’: See FRI.27.

‘BLUE WHALES: RETURN OF THE GIANTS 3D’: See THU.26.

‘FUNGI: THE WEB OF LIFE 3D’: See THU.26.

‘T. REX: GREATEST OF ALL TYRANTS 3D’: See THU.26.

food & drink

GIN-TER WONDERLAND: See FRI.27, noon-8 p.m.

games

CHESS CLUB: All ages and abilities face off and learn new strategies. South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Free. Info, 846-4140.

D&D & TTRPG GROUP: Fans of Dungeons & Dragons and other tabletop role-playing games embark on a new adventure with a rotating cast of game masters. Virtual option available. Waterbury Public Library, 1-5 p.m. Free. Info, judi@ waterburypubliclibrary.com.

holidays

CHRISTMAS AT THE FARM: See THU.26.

A FOREST OF LIGHTS: See THU.26.

MERRY & BRIGHT ART MARKET: See THU.26.

WINTER LIGHTS: See THU.26.

tech

PHONE & TECH SUPPORT: See FRI.27. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington.

theater

‘BEAUTY AND THE BEAST’: See THU.26.

words

THE POETRY EXPERIENCE: Local wordsmith Rajnii Eddins hosts a supportive writing and sharing circle for poets of all ages.

Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 1-3 p.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

WRITE NOW!: Lit lovers of all experience levels hone their craft in a supportive and critique-free environment. Kellogg-Hubbard Library, Montpelier, 10 a.m.-noon.

Free. Info, 223-3338.

SUN.29 bazaars

WINOOSKI WINTER FARMERS MARKET: Locavores peruse a variety of vendors’ delicious produce, fine art and other homemade goods. Winooski Senior Center, 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Free. Info, farmers market@downtownwinooski.org.

community

HUMAN CONNECTION CIRCLE: Neighbors share stories from their lives and forge deep bonds.

SUN.29

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LIST YOUR EVENT FOR FREE AT SEVENDAYSVT.COM/POSTEVENT

South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 10:30-11 a.m. Free. Info, 846-4140.

FAMILY DEC. 31 | HOLIDAYS FUN

STORY TIME: Youngsters ages birth to 5 enjoy a session of reading, rhyming and singing. Dorothy Alling Memorial Library, Williston, 10:30-11 a.m. Free. Info, 878-4918.

Check out these family-friendly events for parents, caregivers and kids of all ages.

• Plan ahead at sevendaysvt.com/family-fun.

• Post your event at sevendaysvt.com/postevent.

barre/montpelier STORY TIME: See THU.26.

upper valley

NEW YEAR’S AT NOON: Families usher in the New Year without staying up late at a holiday fête featuring hands-on activities and celebratory countdowns every hour, on the hour. Montshire Museum of Science, Norwich, 9:30 a.m.-noon. $11-20; free for kids 2 and under. Info, 649-2200.

THU.26

burlington

chittenden county

LEGO FUN: Crafty kiddos build creations with colored blocks for display at the library. Children 9 and under must be accompanied by a caregiver. Brownell Library, Essex Junction, 4-6 p.m. Free.

Info, 878-6956.

SCHOOL VACATION CRAFTYTOWN: Creative kids make festive designs with Perler Beads. Ages 8 and up, or ages 6 and up with an adult helper. South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 1-2 p.m. Free. Info, 846-4140.

barre/montpelier

POKÉMON CLUB: I choose you, Pikachu!

Elementary and teenage fans of the franchise — and beginners, too — trade cards and play games. Kellogg-Hubbard Library, Montpelier, 3:30-5 p.m. Free.

Info, 223-3338.

STORY TIME: Kids and their caregivers meet for stories, songs and bubbles.

Kellogg-Hubbard Library, Montpelier, 10:30-11 a.m. Free. Info, 223-3338.

northeast kingdom

ACORN CLUB STORY TIME: Youngsters 5 and under play, sing, hear stories and color. St. Johnsbury Athenaeum, 10:1510:45 a.m. Free. Info, 745-1391.

FRI.27

chittenden county

‘ALICE IN WONDERLAND’: Robbie Coltrane and Whoopi Goldberg star in this 1999 film adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s beloved books. South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 1-2:30 p.m. Free. Info, 846-4140.

LEGO BUILDERS: Mini makers explore and create new worlds with stackable blocks. Recommended for ages 6 and up.

South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 3-4:30 p.m. Free. Info, 846-4140.

SWITCH: Newcomers and pros alike take turns playing multiplayer games on the library’s Nintendo system.

Recommended for students in grades 3 to 8. Brownell Library, Essex Junction, 4-5 p.m. Free. Info, 878-6956.

barre/montpelier

LEGO CLUB: Budding builders create geometric structures with snap-together blocks. Kellogg-Hubbard

THU.2

burlington

COURTESY OF LUKE AWTRY

BABY & ME CLASS: Parents and their infants ages birth to 1 explore massage, lullabies and gentle movements while discussing the struggles and joys of parenthood. Greater Burlington YMCA, 9:45-10:45 a.m. $10; free for members.

Info, 862-9622.

BABY & ME CLASS: See THU.26.

BABY TIME: Pre-walking little ones experience a story time catered to their infant interests. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 11-11:30 a.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

Hindsight Is 2024 Highlight, formerly known as First Night, is a citywide kiss goodbye to 2024, orchestrated by Burlington City Arts. The all-day, all-night New Year’s Eve bash brings magic, laughter, fireworks and family fun to Queen City venues — including eagerly awaited performances by Circus Smirkus, Cirque de Fuego and Vermont Comedy Club’s in-house troupe. The vibrant programming also loops in local institutions of note, such as ECHO Leahy Center for Lake Champlain. If live music is more your jam, Waterfront Park mounts top Vermont artists Florry, THUS LOVE and Skeleton Krewe. While you’re there, catch the fiery Champ Burn. In so many ways, it’s gonna be lit.

HIGHLIGHT Tuesday, December 31, noon-midnight, at various Burlington locations. $18-40; free for kids 5 and under; preregister. Info, 865-7166, highlight.community.

Library, Montpelier, 3:30-5 p.m. Free.

Info, 223-3338.

Milton Artists’ Guild Art Center & Gallery, 1-3 p.m. Free. Info, 891-2014.

STORY TIME & PLAYGROUP: Participants ages 5 and under enjoy themed science, art and nature activities. Jaquith Public Library, Marshfield, 10:30 a.m. Free. Info, 426-3581.

MON.30

upper valley

STORY TIME: Preschoolers take part in tales, tunes and playtime. Latham Library, Thetford, 11 a.m. Free. Info, 785-4361.

SAT.28

burlington

REINDEER LIVE: Vermont Reindeer Farm brings its antlered charges along for an up-close visit. ECHO Leahy Center for Lake Champlain, Burlington, 11 a.m.-2:30 p.m. $16.50-20; free for members and kids 2 and under. Info, 864-1848.

SUN.29

chittenden county

SOCIAL SUNDAYS: Families participate in fun and educational art activities with diverse mediums and themes.

All supplies and instruction provided.

burlington

upper valley

STORY TIME WITH BETH: A bookseller and librarian extraordinaire reads two picture books on a different theme each week. Norwich Bookstore, 10 a.m. Free.

Info, 649-1114.

TUE.31

SLED DOGS LIVE: Kiddos get up close and personal with the amazing huskies of Vermont’s own October Siberians.

ECHO Leahy Center for Lake Champlain, Burlington, 10 a.m.-3 p.m. $16.50-20; free for kids 2 and under. Info, 864-1848.

CIRCUS SMIRKUS: Families fly high with magical big top performances including acrobatics, juggling and clowning.

Burlington City Hall Auditorium, noon, 2 & 4 p.m. $18-40. Info, 533-2423.

TEEN CRAFT NIGHT: Teens hang out and make easy DIY scented bookmarks from tea bags. Snacks provided. KelloggHubbard Library, Montpelier, 6-7 p.m.

Free. Info, 223-3338.

mad river valley/ waterbury

TODDLER TIME: Little tykes ages 5 and under have a blast with songs, stories, rhymes and dancing. Waterbury Public Library, 10:30 a.m. Free. Info, 244-7036.

chittenden county

PRESCHOOL MUSIC WITH LINDA BASSICK: The singer and storyteller extraordinaire guides little ones ages birth to 5 in indoor music and movement. Dorothy Alling Memorial Library, Williston, 10:30-11 a.m. Free. Info, 878-4918.

PRESCHOOL PLAY TIME: Pre-K patrons play and socialize after music time.

Dorothy Alling Memorial Library, Williston, 11-11:30 a.m. Free. Info, 878-4918.

STORY TIME: Little ones ages birth to 5 learn from songs, crafts and picture books. Brownell Library, Essex Junction, 10-10:30 a.m. Free. Info, 878-6956.

barre/montpelier POKÉMON CLUB: See THU.26.

PRESCHOOL STORY TIME: Bookworms ages 2 to 5 enjoy a fun-filled reading time. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 11-11:30 a.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

barre/montpelier

GROW PRESCHOOL YOGA: Colleen from Grow Prenatal and Family Yoga leads little ones ages 2 to 5 in songs, movement and other fun activities. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 11-11:30 a.m. Free.

Info, 863-3403.

STORY TIME: See THU.26.

northeast kingdom

burlington

chittenden county

COLOR & CHILL: Kiddos pick their favorite medium and create a winter scene or cityscape in a calming atmosphere.

Brownell Library, Essex Junction, 2-3 p.m. Free. Info, 878-6956.

SCHOOL VACATION CRAFTYTOWN: Creative kids decorate crowns, stars and sunglasses with sparkles. Ages 8 and up, or ages 6 and up with an adult helper.

South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 1-2 p.m. Free. Info, 846-4140.

ACORN CLUB STORY TIME: See THU.26.

FRI.3

chittenden county LEGO BUILDERS: See FRI.27.

barre/montpelier LEGO CLUB: See FRI.27.

STORY TIME & PLAYGROUP: See FRI.27.

upper valley

STORY TIME: See FRI.27.

STORY TIME: Wee ones ages 5 and under start their day off right with familiar stories, songs, rhymes and finger plays.

FRI.3 SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

» P.85

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calendar SUN.29

« P.80

Pickering Room, Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 3-4:30 p.m.

Free; preregister; limited space.

Info, humanconnectioncircle@ gmail.com.

Defying Gravity

‘ANTARCTICA 3D’: See THU.26.

What would winter look like without a little high-risk snow sports fandom? Pretty bleak, if you ask Teton Gravity Research. The Wyoming multimedia and apparel company presents its 29th annual ski and snowboard flick, Beyond the Fantasy, at Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center in Stowe. The mesmerizing film focuses on the transformation of seemingly impossible athletic feats — such as jumping from a helicopter into the white abyss with skis on — into stunning realities. Jaw-dropping aerial cinematography and close-up action shots highlight these incredible undertakings of athleticism, leaving viewers breathless and inspired to get outside and ride. (Perhaps without the harrowing chopper plunge.)

‘BLUE WHALES: RETURN OF THE GIANTS 3D’: See THU.26.

‘BEYOND THE FANTASY’

crafts

YARN CRAFTERS GROUP: A dropin meetup welcomes knitters, crocheters, spinners, weavers and other fiber artists. BYO snacks and drinks. Must Love Yarn, Shelburne, 1-3 p.m. Free. Info, 448-3780.

film

See what’s playing at local theaters in the On Screen section.

Friday, December 27, and Saturday, December 28, 7 p.m., at Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center in Stowe. $20. Info, 7604634, sprucepeakarts.org.

‘T. REX: GREATEST OF ALL TYRANTS 3D’: See THU.26.

food & drink

GIN-TER WONDERLAND: See FRI.27, noon-7 p.m.

games

DUPLICATE BRIDGE GAMES: See THU.26, 1-4:30 p.m.

health & fitness

KARUNA COMMUNITY MEDITATION: A YEAR TO LIVE (FULLY): Participants practice keeping joy, generosity and gratitude at the forefront of their minds. Jenna’s House, Johnson, 10-11:15 a.m. Free; donations accepted. Info, mollyzapp@live.com.

NEW LEAF SANGHA MINDFULNESS PRACTICE: Newcomers and experienced meditators alike stretch their skills in the Plum Village tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh. Hot Yoga Burlington, 6:30-8:15 p.m. Free.

Info, newleafsangha@gmail.com.

holidays

COURTESY OF TETON GRAVITY RESEARCH

‘FUNGI: THE WEB OF LIFE 3D’: See THU.26.

DEC. 27 & 28 | FILM theater

‘BEAUTY AND THE BEAST’: See THU.26, 2 p.m.

MON.30 crafts

FUSE BEADS CLUB: Aspiring artisans bring ideas or borrow patterns to make beaded creations. Kellogg-Hubbard Library, Montpelier, 3:30-5 p.m. Free. Info, 223-3338.

film

CHRISTMAS AT THE FARM: See THU.26.

See what’s playing at local theaters in the On Screen section.

A FOREST OF LIGHTS: See THU.26.

‘ANTARCTICA 3D’: See THU.26.

‘BLUE WHALES: RETURN OF THE GIANTS 3D’: See THU.26.

words

SCRIPTWRITERS’ GROUP: Got a story to tell? Talented local writers swap techniques and constructive critiques. Junction Arts & Media, White River Junction, 5:30-7 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 295-6688.

TUE.31

community

CURRENT EVENTS DISCUSSION GROUP: Brownell Library holds a virtual roundtable for neighbors to pause and reflect on the news cycle.

10-11:30 a.m. Free. Info, 878-6955.

dance

WINTER LIGHTS: See THU.26.

‘FUNGI: THE WEB OF LIFE 3D’: See THU.26.

lgbtq

‘T. REX: GREATEST OF ALL TYRANTS 3D’: See THU.26.

NEW YEAR’S EVE SHINDIG: Merrymakers keep the energy up at a dynamic dance party to close out the year. BYOB. Tunbridge Town Hall, 9 p.m.-1 a.m. $25. Info, 324-9842.

holidays

film

MERRY & BRIGHT ART MARKET: See THU.26.

QUEER READS BOOK CLUB: Folks gather to chat about Becky Chambers’ 2021 solarpunk novella, A Psalm for the Wild-Built.

Pickering Room, Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 1:30-2:30 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, mborsykowsky@burlingtonvt.gov.

music

BLUEGRASS BRUNCH: Longtime local legends Brett Hughes, Pat Melvin, Caleb Elder and Beau Stapleton perform upbeat toe-tappers on the deck. Madbush Falls, Waitsfield, noon-2:30 p.m.

Free. Info, 496-7575.

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CHRISTMAS AT THE FARM: See THU.26.

A FOREST OF LIGHTS: See THU.26.

See what’s playing at local theaters in the On Screen section.

‘ANTARCTICA 3D’: See THU.26.

MERRY & BRIGHT ART MARKET: See THU.26.

‘BLUE WHALES: RETURN OF THE GIANTS 3D’: See THU.26.

WINTER LIGHTS: See THU.26.

‘FUNGI: THE WEB OF LIFE 3D’: See THU.26.

language

GERMAN LANGUAGE LUNCH: Willkommen! Speakers of all experience levels brush up on conversational skills over bagged lunches. Kellogg-Hubbard Library, Montpelier, noon-1 p.m. Free. Info, 223-3338.

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

‘T. REX: GREATEST OF ALL TYRANTS 3D’: See THU.26.

games

BOARD GAMES FOR ADULTS: Locals ages 18 and up enjoy the library’s collection or bring their own to share with the group.

health & fitness

NEW YEAR’S EVE DINNER: Foodies delight in a celebratory prix fixe menu of five delicious courses paired with cocktails of their choosing. Barr Hill, Montpelier, 5 & 7 p.m. $75; additional price for cocktails; preregister. Info, 472-8000.

holidays

NEW YEAR’S EVE WITH JOE’S BIG BAND: Merrymakers ring in 2025 with lively swing, jazz and funk classics performed by a 17-piece ensemble. Town Hall Theater, Middlebury, 8:30 p.m.-midnight. $40; champagne toast and optional dance lesson included. Info, 382-9222.

Light refreshments provided.

Essex Free Library, 3-4:30 p.m.

Free. Info, 879-0313.

DUPLICATE BRIDGE GAMES: See THU.26.

COMMUNITY MEDITATION: All levels and ages engage in the ancient Buddhist practice of clearing the mind to achieve a state of calm. First Unitarian Universalist Society of Burlington, 5:15-6 p.m.

Free; donations accepted. Info, 862-5630.

CHRISTMAS AT THE FARM: See THU.26.

FIRST NIGHT NORTH: The whole community celebrates at a New Year’s Eve party packed with music, comedy, fireworks and more.

See website for full schedule.

Various St. Johnsbury locations, 4 p.m.-midnight. $15-50; free for preschoolers. Info, 748-2600.

A FOREST OF LIGHTS: See THU.26.

HIGHLIGHT: The Queen City’s allday and all-night New Year’s Eve festival features music, magic, fireworks and family fun. See website for full schedule. See calendar spotlight. Burlington City Arts, noon-midnight. $18-40; free for kids 5 and under; preregister. Info, 865-7166.

MENORAH LIGHTING: Neighbors unite in the spirit of joyful tradition to observe the beautiful 9-foot candelabra’s illumination.

Church Street Marketplace, Burlington, 4 p.m. Free. Info, 863-1648.

MERRY & BRIGHT ART MARKET: See THU.26.

NEW YEAR’S EVE DRAG SHOW: Merrymakers usher in the New Year with a joyful and inclusive night of award-winning music performed by shame-slaying drag queen Flamy Grant.

First Congregational Church, Burlington, 7 p.m. $5-50 sliding scale. Info, 862-5010.

NEW YEAR’S EVE OPERA CONCERT: Local and national artists sing in the New Year with a festive opus. McCarthy Arts Center, Saint Michael’s College, Colchester, 3-5pm. $15-30. Info, 654-2000.

NOON YEAR’S EVE: Families ring in 2025 a little early with singalongs, live music and a joyful kiddo countdown. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 11:30 a.m.12:30 p.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

WINTER LIGHTS: See THU.26.

language

FRENCH CONVERSATION GROUP: Francophones and language learners meet pour parler la belle langue. Fletcher Free Library,

Burlington, 5-7:30 p.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

ITALIAN LANGUAGE LUNCH: Speakers hone their skills in the Romance language over bagged lunches. Kellogg-Hubbard Library, Montpelier, noon-1 p.m. Free. Info, 223-3338.

theater

‘BEAUTY AND THE BEAST’: See THU.26, noon & 5 p.m.

WED.1 activism

DISABLED ACCESS & ADVOCACY OF THE RUTLAND AREA MONTHLY ZOOM MEETING: Community members gather online to advocate for accessibility and other disability-rights measures. 11:30 a.m.-noon. Free. Info, 779-9021.

etc.

CHAMP MASTERS TOASTMASTERS CLUB: Those looking to strengthen their speaking and leadership skills gain new tools. Virtual option available. Dealer.com, Burlington, 6-7:30 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, champmasterstm@gmail.com.

holidays

CHRISTMAS AT THE FARM: See THU.26.

A FOREST OF LIGHTS: See THU.26.

WINTER LIGHTS: See THU.26.

LIST YOUR EVENT FOR FREE AT SEVENDAYSVT.COM/POSTEVENT

music

GREEN MOUNTAIN MAHLER FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA & CHORUS: Daniel Bruce conducts the ensemble in an annual performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, featuring vocal soloists Annalise Shelmandine, Nessa Rabin, Adam Hall and Erik Kroncke.

Proceeds benefit the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity. Elley-Long Music Center, Saint Michael’s College, Colchester, 3 p.m. $20-30. Info, 800-762-8000.

outdoors

ANNUAL POLAR BEAR SWIM: Brave locals take the plunge to raise funds for deaf and blind Vermonters. Oakledge Park, Burlington, 10:45 a.m.-noon. $10.

Info, 858-4069.

FIRST DAY HIKES: Vermont State Parks open their gates to adventurers who kick off the New Year with family-friendly treks.

See website for details. Various locations statewide, 9 a.m. Free; preregister. Info, 888-409-7579.

sports

GREEN MOUNTAIN TABLE TENNIS CLUB: Ping-Pong players swing their paddles in singles and doubles matches. Rutland Area Christian School, 7-9 p.m.

Free for first two sessions; $30 annual membership. Info, 247-5913.

theater

‘BEAUTY AND THE BEAST’: See THU.26.

THU.2 business

GROW YOUR BUSINESS: See THU.26.

crafts

KNIT FOR YOUR NEIGHBOR: See THU.26.

KNITTING GROUP: See THU.26.

WOODWORKING LAB: See THU.26.

etc.

NIGHT OWL CLUB: Astronomers and space exploration experts discuss the latest in extraterrestrial news with curious attendees.

Presented by Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium. 7 p.m. Free. Info, 748-2372.

film

See what’s playing at local theaters in the On Screen section.

‘ANTARCTICA 3D’: See THU.26.

‘BLUE WHALES: RETURN OF THE GIANTS 3D’: See THU.26.

‘FUNGI: THE WEB OF LIFE 3D’: See THU.26.

‘T. REX: GREATEST OF ALL TYRANTS 3D’: See THU.26.

games

film

WEEKLY CHESS FOR FUN: See THU.26.

‘ANTARCTICA 3D’: See THU.26.

DUPLICATE BRIDGE GAMES: See THU.26.

holidays

See what’s playing at local theaters in the On Screen section.

‘BLUE WHALES: RETURN OF THE GIANTS 3D’: See THU.26.

CHRISTMAS AT THE FARM: See THU.26.

‘FUNGI: THE WEB OF LIFE 3D’: See THU.26.

A FOREST OF LIGHTS: See THU.26.

‘T. REX: GREATEST OF ALL TYRANTS 3D’: See THU.26.

MERRY & BRIGHT ART MARKET: See THU.26.

food & drink

language

ITALIAN CONVERSATION GROUP: See THU.26.

lgbtq

POP-UP HAPPY HOUR: Locals connect over drinks at a speakeasy-style bar, hosted

by OUT in the 802. Lincolns, Burlington, 5:30-7 p.m. Free. Info, 860-7812.

words

ART & WRITING SHARE GROUP FOR JEWS OF ALL STRIPES: Secular, spiritual or religious, all adult Jewish artists, writers and creators are invited to a monthly virtual meetup, presented by Jewish Communities of Vermont. 7-8:30 p.m. Free; preregister for Zoom link. Info, alison@jcvt.org.

FRI.3 crafts

FIRST FRIDAY FIBER GROUP: Fiber-arts fans make progress on projects while chatting over snacks. GRACE, Hardwick, 10:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Free; donations accepted. Info, info@ ruralartsvt.org.

etc.

ALPHA FILM SERIES: See FRI.27.

FOMO? Find even more local events in this newspaper and online:

art Find visual art exhibits and events in the Art section and at sevendaysvt.com/art.

film See what’s playing at theaters in the On Screen section.

music + nightlife Find club dates at local venues in the Music + Nightlife section online at sevendaysvt.com/ music.

Learn more about highlighted listings in the Magnificent 14 on page 10.

= ONLINE EVENT = GET TICKETS ON SEVENDAYSTICKETS.COM

GIN-TER WONDERLAND: See FRI.27.

games

DUPLICATE BRIDGE GAMES: See THU.26, 10 a.m.-1:30 p.m.

19

22

MAH-JONGG: Tile traders of all experience levels gather for a game. Dorothy Alling Memorial Library, Williston, 1-3 p.m. Free.

Info, 878-4918.

20

health & fitness

GUIDED MEDITATION ONLINE: See FRI.27.

holidays

CABOT VILLAGE 12TH NIGHT CELEBRATION: Cabot Arts presents an annual festival of performing arts activities for all ages, including dance, storytelling, theater, crafts and a sunset parade. Willey Memorial Hall, Cabot, 7-9 p.m. Free. Info, 793-3016.

1

CHRISTMAS AT THE FARM: See THU.26.

A FOREST OF LIGHTS: See THU.26.

MERRY & BRIGHT ART MARKET: See THU.26.

lgbtq

RPG NIGHT: See FRI.27.

tech

MORNING TECH HELP: Experts answer questions about phones, laptops, e-readers and other devices in one-on-one sessions.

South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 846-4140.

PHONE & TECH SUPPORT: See FRI.27.

SAT.4 dance

CONTRA DANCE: Dancers of all ages and abilities learn at a gathering that encourages joy, laughter and friendship. Bring clean, soft-soled shoes. See website for callers and bands. Capital City Grange, Berlin, 8-11 p.m. $5-20 sliding scale. Info, 225-8921.

INSTINCT EXPERIMENTAL DANCE FESTIVAL: ANIMAL Dance presents an immersive week of movement workshops and showcases focused on the creative process. See calendar spotlight.

Main Street Landing Performing Arts Center, Burlington, 7 p.m. $25-150; preregister for SAT.4

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19. St. Johnsbury Winter Farmers Market | 10:00 AM - 1:00 PM 20.

21.

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calendar SAT.4

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workshops. Info, instinctdancefest@gmail.com.

etc.

STARTS JAN. 4 | DANCE

Rise to Your Feet The INSTINCT Experimental Dance Festival returns to Main Street Landing Performing Arts Center in Burlington to unite interdisciplinary makers and dancers of all backgrounds. The weeklong honing and honoring of movement kicks off with premieres by ANIMAL Dance on Saturday and Sunday, then continues with workshops, showcases, and opportunities for artists to collaborate and exchange — all while maintaining the spirit of expression. Using dance as a vehicle for investigating the human experience, participants tap into their wild and weird core with offerings such as Countertechnique and Butoh Awakening. The Creation Track workshop culminates in a public performance at week’s end.

SISTERHOOD CAMPFIRE: See SAT.28.

film

See what’s playing at local theaters in the On Screen section.

‘ANTARCTICA 3D’: See THU.26.

‘BILLS LUMBER’: Neighbors gather for the premiere of a documentary outlining the last days of a beloved antique sawmill in Wardsboro. Williamsville Hall, Newfane, 7-8 p.m. Free. Info, info@theresamaggio.com.

‘BLUE WHALES: RETURN OF THE GIANTS 3D’: See THU.26.

‘FUNGI: THE WEB OF LIFE 3D’: See THU.26.

INSTINCT EXPERIMENTAL DANCE FESTIVAL Saturday, January 4, 7 p.m.; Sunday, January 5, 2 p.m.; Monday, January 6, 10 a.m.-7:30 p.m.; and Tuesday, January 7, and Wednesday, January 8, 10 a.m.-8 p.m., at Main Street Landing Performing Arts Center in Burlington. See website for future dates. $25-150; preregister for workshops. Info, instinctdancefest@gmail.com, instinctdancefest.com.

‘T. REX: GREATEST OF ALL TYRANTS 3D’: See THU.26.

WOODSTOCK VERMONT FILM SERIES: ‘SWAN SONG’: Chelsea McMullan’s 2023 documentary offers an immersive, behindthe-scenes look at the National Ballet of Canada’s new production of Swan Lake. Billings Farm & Museum, Woodstock, 3 p.m. $1215. Info, 457-2355.

food & drink

GIN-TER WONDERLAND: See FRI.27, noon-8 p.m.

CAPITAL CITY WINTER FARMERS MARKET: Locavores sip cocktails while perusing root veggies, honey, crafts and maple syrup at an off-season showcase of locally grown food. Barr Hill, Montpelier, 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Free.

Info, 472-8000.

games

CEMETERY COMMITTEE BINGO: Players vie for cash prizes at this weekly event to support cemetery

improvements. St. Peter’s Catholic Church, Vergennes, 5-9 p.m. $5 per 10 games. Info, 877-2367.

CHESS CLUB: See SAT.28.

D&D & TTRPG GROUP: See SAT.28.

holidays CABOT VILLAGE 12TH NIGHT CELEBRATION: See FRI.3, noon-9 p.m.

CHRISTMAS AT THE FARM: See THU.26.

A FOREST OF LIGHTS: See THU.26.

MERRY & BRIGHT ART MARKET: See THU.26.

FOMO? Find even more local events in this newspaper and online:

art Find visual art exhibits and events in the Art section and at sevendaysvt.com/art.

film See what’s playing at theaters in the On Screen section.

music + nightlife Find club dates at local venues in the Music + Nightlife section online at sevendaysvt.com/ music.

Learn more about highlighted listings in the Magnificent 14 on page 10.

= ONLINE EVENT = GET TICKETS ON SEVENDAYSTICKETS.COM

84

music

MARTY FOGEL’S MIXED BAG QUARTET: A jazz ensemble plays lively original compositions from Fogel’s Now and Then album. The Phoenix, Waterbury, 7:30 p.m. $0-40 sliding scale. Info, 3555440.

outdoors

COLCHESTER POND LOOP: Adventurers join up with the Green Mountain Club for an easy 3.2-mile hike around the pond. Microspikes required. Call for start time. Colchester Pond.

Free; preregister by Jan. 1. Info, 413-884-5932.

MONTHLY BIRDING OUTING: Bird lovers of all interest and experience levels flock to this casual monthly gathering to enjoy Vermont’s resident wild avians.

North Branch Nature Center, Montpelier, 8-9:30 a.m. Free. Info, 229-6206.

québec

‘THE SECRET CHORD: A LEONARD COHEN EXPERIENCE’: Audience SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

members delight in a tribute to the Canadian artist’s extraordinary life, music and poetry. Sylvan Adams Theatre, Segal Centre for Performing Arts, Montréal, 7:30 p.m. $33-80. Info, 514-739-7944.

tech

PHONE & TECH SUPPORT: See SAT.28.

words

CAPTURING MEMOIR MOMENTS: Author Patty Oliver-Smith leads budding writers in a workshop focused on penning short personal stories based on memories.

MAC Center for the Arts, Newport, 1-3:30 p.m. $5. Info, 755-6772.

film

film

‘ANTARCTICA 3D’: See THU.26.

‘ANTARCTICA 3D’: See THU.26.

‘BLUE WHALES: RETURN OF THE GIANTS 3D’: See THU.26.

‘BLUE WHALES: RETURN OF THE GIANTS 3D’: See THU.26.

‘FUNGI: THE WEB OF LIFE 3D’: See THU.26.

‘FUNGI: THE WEB OF LIFE 3D’: See THU.26.

GIN-TER WONDERLAND: See FRI.27, noon-7 p.m.

‘T. REX: GREATEST OF ALL TYRANTS 3D’: See THU.26.

‘T. REX: GREATEST OF ALL TYRANTS 3D’: See THU.26.

games

holidays

MERRY & BRIGHT ART MARKET: See THU.26.

games

DUPLICATE BRIDGE GAMES: See THU.26, 1-4:30 p.m.

health & fitness

language

GAMES GALORE: Library patrons of all ages gather for bouts of board and card games. Brownell Library, Essex Junction, 3:30-4:30 p.m. Free. Info, 878-6955.

documentaries from recent years, The Nakba and Tantura. Savoy Theater, Montpelier, 4-6 p.m. $8.50-10.50. Info, 229-0598.

‘T. REX: GREATEST OF ALL TYRANTS 3D’: See THU.26.

WOODSTOCK VERMONT FILM SERIES: ‘SWAN SONG’: See SAT.4.

food & drink

WRITE NOW!: See SAT.28.

KARUNA COMMUNITY MEDITATION: A YEAR TO LIVE (FULLY): See SUN.29.

SUN.5

NEW LEAF SANGHA MINDFULNESS PRACTICE: See SUN.29.

community

HUMAN CONNECTION CIRCLE: See SUN.29.

crafts

YARN CRAFTERS GROUP: See SUN.29.

dance

INSTINCT EXPERIMENTAL DANCE FESTIVAL: See SAT.4, 2 p.m.

film

See what’s playing at local theaters in the On Screen section.

‘ANTARCTICA 3D’: See THU.26.

‘BLUE WHALES: RETURN OF THE GIANTS 3D’: See THU.26.

‘FUNGI: THE WEB OF LIFE 3D’: See THU.26.

PALESTINE ISRAEL FILM FESTIVAL: Jewish Voice for Peace presents two riveting

holidays

CHRISTMAS AT THE FARM: See THU.26.

MERRY & BRIGHT ART MARKET: See THU.26.

québec

‘THE SECRET CHORD: A LEONARD COHEN EXPERIENCE’: See SAT.4, 2 & 7:30 p.m.

MON.6 crafts

FUSE BEADS CLUB: See MON.30.

dance

INSTINCT EXPERIMENTAL DANCE FESTIVAL: See SAT.4, 10 a.m.-7:30 p.m.

See what’s playing at local theaters in the On Screen section.

GERMAN LANGUAGE LUNCH: See MON.30.

lgbtq

BOARD GAME NIGHT: LGBTQ tabletop fans bring their own favorite games to the party.

Rainbow Bridge Community Center, Barre, 5:30-8:30 p.m. Free.

Info, 622-0692.

québec

‘THE SECRET CHORD: A LEONARD COHEN EXPERIENCE’: See SAT.4.

TUE.7

community

CURRENT EVENTS DISCUSSION GROUP: See TUE.31.

dance

INSTINCT EXPERIMENTAL DANCE FESTIVAL: See SAT.4, 10 a.m.-8 p.m.

SWING DANCE PRACTICE SESSION: See TUE.31.

See what’s playing at local theaters in the On Screen section.

DUPLICATE BRIDGE GAMES: See THU.26.

health & fitness

COMMUNITY MEDITATION: See TUE.31.

holidays

MERRY & BRIGHT ART MARKET: See THU.26.

language

FRENCH CONVERSATION GROUP: See TUE.31.

ITALIAN LANGUAGE LUNCH: See TUE.31.

MANDARIN CONVERSATION CIRCLE: Volunteers from Vermont Chinese School help students learn or improve their fluency.

South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 11 a.m.-noon. Free. Info, 846-4140.

music

ALAN CHIANG: An accomplished pianist from South Burlington plays rousing works. Cathedral Church of St. Paul, Burlington,

LIST YOUR EVENT FOR FREE AT SEVENDAYSVT.COM/POSTEVENT

noon. Free; donations accepted.

Info, 864-0471.

FLOW SINGING: Singers both new and seasoned intertwine music and mindfulness while learning a sequence of five to six songs by ear. Heineberg Senior Center, Burlington, 11:15 a.m.12:45 p.m. Free. Info, patricia@ juneberrymusic.com.

québec

‘THE SECRET CHORD: A LEONARD COHEN EXPERIENCE’: See SAT.4.

words

BURLINGTON LITERATURE GROUP: Bookworms analyze Colum McCann’s 2009 National Book Award winner, Let the Great World Spin, over the course of five

weeks. 6:30-8 p.m. Free. Info, info@nereadersandwriters.com.

WED.8 business

QUEEN CITY BUSINESS NETWORKING INTERNATIONAL GROUP: Savvy businesspeople make crucial contacts at a weekly chapter meeting. BCA Center, Burlington, 11:15 a.m.1 p.m. Free. Info, 829-5066.

VERMONT WOMENPRENEURS BIZ BUZZ ZOOM: A monthly virtual networking meetup provides a space for female business owners to connect. 10-11 a.m. Free; preregister. Info, 870-0903.

community

CURRENT EVENTS: Neighbors have an informal discussion about what’s in the news. Dorothy Alling Memorial Library, Williston, 10:30 a.m.-noon. Free. Info, 878-4918.

crafts

« P.81

burlington

FAMILY PLAYSHOP: See SAT.28.

LEGO TIME: Mini makers ages 4 to 11 design and build original, colorful creations. Fletcher Free Library New North End Branch, Burlington, 11 a.m.-noon.

Free. Info, 863-3403.

mad river valley/ waterbury

SATURDAY STORY TIME: Stories and songs help young children develop social and literacy skills. Waterbury Public Library, 10:30 a.m. Free. Info, 244-7036.

film

See what’s playing at local theaters in the On Screen section.

NXT ROCKUMENTARY FILM SERIES: ‘AMY’: This 2015 documentary uses archival footage and never-before-heard tracks to bring the life and death of Amy Winehouse into focus. Next Stage Arts, Putney, 7-9:15 p.m. $10. Info, 387-0102.

YARN CRAFTERS GROUP: See SUN.29, 5-7 p.m.

games

FAMILY burlington FUN

SAT.4

INSTINCT EXPERIMENTAL DANCE FESTIVAL: See SAT.4, 10 a.m.8 p.m.

GREEN MOUNTAIN CHAPTER OF THE EMBROIDERERS’ GUILD OF AMERICA: Anyone with an interest in the needle arts can bring a project to this monthly meeting.

Holy Family Parish Hall, Essex Junction, 9:30 a.m.-1 p.m. Free.

Info, gmc.vt.ega@gmail.com.

SUN.5

FRI.3

dance

MASKS ON! SUNDAYS: Elderly, disabled and immunocompromised folks get the museum to themselves at a masks-mandatory morning. ECHO Leahy Center for Lake Champlain, Burlington, 9-10 a.m. Free; preregister.

Info, 864-1848.

chittenden county

SOCIAL SUNDAYS: See SUN.29.

MON.6

burlington

PRESCHOOL STORY TIME: See MON.30.

chittenden county

READ WITH SAMMY: The Therapy Dogs of Vermont emissary listens to kiddos of all ages practice their reading. Brownell

CHESS CLUB: Players of all ages and abilities test their skills with instructor Robert and

Library, Essex Junction, 3:30-4:30 p.m.

Free. Info, 878-6956.

mad river valley/ waterbury TODDLER TIME: See MON.30.

upper valley

STORY TIME WITH BETH: See MON.30.

TUE.7

burlington

SING-ALONG WITH LINDA BASSICK: Babies, toddlers and preschoolers sing, dance and wiggle along with Linda.

Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 1111:30 a.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

peers. Kellogg-Hubbard Library, Montpelier, 3:30-5 p.m. Free. Info, 223-3338.

health & fitness

sports

lgbtq

NOONTIME POETRY READING SOCIETY: Verse lovers link up to share their work, reflect and write creatively. Pierson Library, Shelburne, noon-1 p.m. Free. Info, 985-5124. ➆

QUEER WRITERS’ GROUP: LGBTQ authors meet monthly to discuss their work, write from prompts, and give each other advice and feedback. Rainbow Bridge Community Center, Barre, 5:30-7 p.m. Free. Info, 622-0692.

northeast kingdom

LAPSIT STORY TIME: Babies 2 and under learn to love reading, singing and playing with their caregivers. Siblings welcome. St. Johnsbury Athenaeum, 10:15-10:45 a.m. Free. Info, 745-1391.

WED.8

burlington

STEAM SPACE: Kiddos in grades K to 5 explore science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics with fun and engaging activities. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 5:30-6:30 p.m. Free.

Info, 863-3403.

STORY TIME: See TUE.31.

barre/montpelier

chittenden county

STORY TIME: See THU.26.

‘THE SECRET CHORD: A LEONARD COHEN EXPERIENCE’: See SAT.4, 1 & 7:30 p.m.

CHAIR YOGA: Waterbury Public Library instructor Diana Whitney leads at-home participants in gentle stretches supported by seats. 10 a.m. Free. Info, 244-7036.

TODDLER TIME: Librarians bring out books, rhymes and songs specially selected for young ones 12 to 24 months.

Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 1111:30 a.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

chittenden county

québec

PLAYGROUP & STORY TIME: Little ones and their caregivers listen to stories,

GREEN MOUNTAIN TABLE TENNIS CLUB: See WED.1.

words

sing songs and share toys with new friends. Richmond Free Library, 10 a.m.noon. Free. Info, 434-3036.

barre/montpelier

HOMESCHOOL BOOK GROUP: Kids ages 10 to 15 who learn at home bond over books. Kellogg-Hubbard Library, Montpelier, 1-2 p.m. Free. Info, 223-3338.

upper valley

PRE-K STORY TIME: Little ones ages 3 to 5 hear a different farm-themed tale every week. Snacks included. Billings Farm & Museum, Woodstock, 9:30-11 a.m. $10-12; preregister. Info, 457-2355.

SENSORY STORY TIME: STRANGER IN THE WOODS: Little tykes ages 3 to 5 and their caregivers explore animal tracks through tactile play, create their own Play-doh tracks and enjoy a snack.

Bring outdoor clothing. Billings Farm & Museum, Woodstock, 9:30-11 a.m. $1012; preregister. Info, 457-2355. K

Want to memorialize a loved one?

We’re here to help. Our obituary and in memoriam services are affordable, accessible and handled with personal care.

Share your loved one’s story with the local community in Life Lines.

lifelines

Post your obituary or in memoriam online and in print at sevendaysvt.com/lifelines.

Or contact us at lifelines@sevendaysvt.com or 865-1020 ext. 121.

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

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classes FIBER IS SUPERIOR!

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aromatherapy

kids

PERFUME-MAKING EVENT WITH BLOOM LAB: Discover the art of botanical perfumery while creating your own unique scent that is blended with intention to reflect your individual personality and style. For anyone interested in perfumery or simply enjoying good company while trying something new! You’ll leave with one 1.7-ounce bottle of custom eau de parfum. Sun., Jan. 12, noon-2 p.m. Cost: $95.

Location: Stowe Cider, 17 Town Farm Ln., Stowe. Info: 355-3336, sevendaystickets.com.

SWIM LESSONS: The Vermont Swim School offers both youth and adult swimmers the opportunity to learn and develop aquatic skills in a nurturing and friendly environment. Lessons take place in the UVM athletic/ rec complex, in the Forbush Natatorium. Group, private and semiprivate lessons offered.

Sundays. Cost varies. Location: Forbush Natatorium, 97 Spear St., Burlington. Info: University of Vermont, Campus Recreation, 656-4483, campus.recreation@ uvm.edu, uvmcampusrec.com/ sports/2017/7/5/lesson-types. aspx.

art

4T-CVS020724.indd 1

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.

2/6/24 11:26 AM

IT’S SNOW JOKE!

ART CLASSES-WINGSPAN STUDIO: Join Wingspan for creative art classes in drawing and painting. Learn with others in an inspiring working art studio in the South End. A drawing class that goes deep into the art of seeing and a painting class with an emphasis on color mixing are sure to warm you this winter!

Classes start Jan. 6. Cost: $265.

Location: Wingspan Studio, 4A Howard St., Burlington.

Info: Wingspan Studio School, Maggie Standley, 233-7676, maggiestandley@gmail.com, wingspanstudioeduc.com.

craft 2025 CRAFT WORKSHOPS: In addition to the regular chairmaking and jewelry workshops, this year we are hosting guest instructors who teach dry stone walling, natural dyes, broom making, Shaker boxes, plant pressing, basket weaving, bowl carving and more. Gift certificates available. The 2025 schedule is now live at ericcannizzaro.com/classes. Location: Handmade Charlotte. Info: Eric Cannizzaro, 360-528-1952, ericcannizzaro.com.

is on Vacation!

Look for our first issue of 2025 on January 8!

Want to reserve advertising space? Contact sales@sevendaysvt.com.

HIRING? Promote your job openings with us throughout the holidays and into 2025 by contacting Michelle Brown at michelle@sevendaysvt.com or sevendaysvt.com/postmyjob.

864t-onvacay24.indd SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025 1

10/28/24 6:18 PM

culinary FOCACCIA ART WORKSHOP: We will tackle making focaccia bread dough and decorate it your own way with various herbs and veggies. You’ll go home with your own eight-inch square pan of focaccia art and the recipe to make it again on your own. Thu., Jan. 9, 6-7:30 p.m. Cost: $65. Location: Red Poppy Cakery, 1 Elm St., Waterbury Village Historic District. Info: 203-400-0700, sevendaystickets.com.

Pronunciation, comprehension, cultural tips shared. Options for kids and adults. Allons-y!

Learning has never been this fun or great for the brain! Classes start Jan. 6. Cost: $180. Location: Wingspan Studio, 4A Howard St., Burlington. Info: Wingspan Studio School, Maggie Standley, 2337676, maggiestandley@gmail. com, wingspanstudioeduc.com.

martial arts AIKIDO: THE WAY OF RESILIENCY: Cultivate core power, aerobic fitness and resiliency. The dynamic, circular movements emphasize throws, joint locks and the development of internal energy. Join our community and find resiliency, power and grace. Inclusive training, gender-neutral dressing room/ bathrooms and a safe space for all. Visitors are always welcome to watch a class! Vermont’s only intensive aikido programs. Basic classes 5 days/week; introductory classes begin Jan. 7.

Membership rates incl. unlimited classes 6 days/week. Contact us for info about membership rates for adults, youths & families.

Location: Aikido of Champlain Valley, 257 Pine St., Burlington.

Info: Benjamin Pincus, 951-8900, bpincus@burlingtonaikido.org, burlingtonaikido.org.

language ADULT LIVE SPANISH E-CLASSES: Join us for adult Spanish classes this winter, using Zoom online video conferencing.

This is our 19th year! Learn from a native speaker via small group classes or individual instruction.

You’ll always be participating and speaking. Beginning to advanced levels. Classes fill up fast. See our website or contact us for details. Group classes begin week of Jan. 13; private instruction avail. anytime. Cost: $325/10 classes, 90+ mins. each, 1/week.

Location: online. Info: 585-1025, spanishparavos@gmail.com, spanishwaterburycenter.com.

ALLIANCE FRANÇAISE WINTER SESSION: The Alliance Française of the Lake Champlain Region offers French classes for adults from beginner through advanced levels. Visit website for class listings. Classes begin Jan. 13, online or in person. Location: Alliance Francaise, 43 King St., Burlington.

Info: Marc Juneau, education@ aflcr.org, aflcr.org.

FRENCH CLASSES: Join us in small, dynamic group classes held in a cozy art studio/small school in Burlington and jump-start your French journey this winter.

Learn with experienced and licensed educator Mme. Maggie.

music TAIKO TUESDAYS, DJEMBE WEDNESDAYS!: Learn to drum with Stuart Paton! Drop-ins welcome. Taiko on Tue.: Kids & Parents Taiko, Tue., 4-5:30 p.m.; Adult Intro Taiko, 5:30-7 p.m.; Accelerated Taiko, 7-8:30 p.m.

Djembe on Wed.: Intermediate Djembe, 5:30-7 p.m.; Beginner Djembe, 7-8:30 p.m. Drums provided. Cost: $92/4 weeks; 90min. classes; $72 per person for Kids & Parents class. Classes begin Jan 7. Location: Taiko Studio, 208 Flynn Ave., Burlington. Info: Stuart, 999-4255, classes@ burlingtontaiko.org.

Find and purchase tickets for these and other classes at sevendaystickets.com.

= TICKETED CLASS

COURTESY OF KELLY SCHULZE/MOUNTAIN DOG PHOTOGRAPHY

Humane

Society of Chittenden County

HAPPY TAIL

Sailor is living out his puppy dreams! He is my soul dog — we have so many personality similarities.

I do not know what I have done without him!

housing »

APARTMENTS, CONDOS & HOMES

on the road »

We recently celebrated his first birthday with all of his doggie best friends ­— he was the happiest guy in the world. He is the happiest version of himself when he is with other dogs. He loves to play, swim, play fetch, cuddle, and especially loves to eat. He puts himself to bed at 9 p.m. almost every night; my roommates and I joke that he gets sick of us and needs his solitude.

CHILDCARE, HEALTH/ WELLNESS, PAINTING

He loves to learn and has made huge strides in his training.

There’s still so much training to work through. He can get wrapped up in his triggers, but we are working on staying in his threshold. In December he will be going to “dog camp” (as I’ve been calling it and telling him) for four weeks of training, and I am very excited for him.

APPLIANCES, KID STUFF, ELECTRONICS, FURNITURE

He is the reason I get up in the morning and for the smile that never leaves my face. I’m so lucky to have him.

And I owe that all to HSCC!

CARS, TRUCKS, MOTORCYCLES

pro services » buy this stuff » music »

INSTRUCTION, CASTING, INSTRUMENTS FOR SALE

jobs »

NO SCAMS, ALL LOCAL, POSTINGS DAILY

— Sailor’s Person

Sponsored by:

Visit the Humane Society of Chittenden County at 142 Kindness Court, South Burlington, Tuesday through Friday from 1 to 5 p.m. or Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Call 862-0135 or visit hsccvt.org for more info.

NEW STUFF ONLINE EVERY DAY! PLACE YOUR ADS 24-7 AT SEVENDAYSVT.COM. SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

87

CLASSIFIEDS on the road

CARS/TRUCKS 2012 TOYOTA RAV4 Selling my mom’s 2012 Toyota RAV4. New tires, ready for winter. 95K miles, minor dings on the body, 4WD. $10,000/ OBO. Call 917-494-6263.

housing

FOR RENT VERY NICE 2-BR Very nice 2-BR town house avail. Feb. 1. $1,600 incl. all utils. On bus route & bike path near Burlington High School. No-charge W/D in building. Pets considered.

Priced below market!

Landlords living on premises. NS. Off-street parking. Call Morton Bostock at 802-8627602 or email morton. bostock@gmail.com.

HOUSEMATES LIVE CLOSE TO MONTPELIER Share spacious, country-style home in Middlesex, 9.4 miles from Montpelier, near Mount Hunger. Share large kitchen, laundry room, BA. 1 older resident cat, other pets considered.

Looking for assistance w/ light cleaning & outdoor chores. $650/mo. + $100 for plowing, heat, electricity, internet. Visit homesharevermont.org for details.

WELL-APPOINTED HOMESHARE Share attractive townhouse in S. Burlington w/ active professional in her 50s.

Enjoys podcasts, cooking shows, meditation.

Spacious BR, 2 shared BA. NS/no pets. W/D. $650 + utils. share. Call 802-863-5625 or visit homesharevermont.org for application. Interview, refs., background checks req. EHO.

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

88

housing ads: $25 (25 words) legals: 52¢/word buy this stuff: free online

services

CREATIVE PIERCED & PURIFIED SALE Offering body-piercing services w/ 24 years of experience. Body jewelry, gems & minerals, hand-crafted items, metaphysical healing, & more. 59 Clinton St., Plattburgh, N.Y. Call 518-565-9341.

FINANCIAL/LEGAL DISABILITY BENEFITS You may qualify for disability benefits if you are between 52-63 y/o & under a doctor’s care for a health condition that prevents you from working for a year or more. Call now! 1-877247-6750. (AAN CAN)

HEALTH/WELLNESS PERFECT MASSAGE FOR MEN! Men, I’m Mr. G. It’s all about you relaxing. Very private, 1-on-1 moment. If you feel good, I’m happy.

The massage is flawless; the sessions are tailored to your needs! Located in central Vermont just off exit 7. Text only now to 802-522-3932 or email motman@ymail.com.

HOME/GARDEN 24-7 LOCKSMITH We are there when you need us for home & car lockouts. We’ll get you back up & running quickly! Also, key reproductions, lock installs & repairs, & vehicle fobs. Call us for your home, commercial & auto locksmith needs!

1-833-237-1233 (AAN CAN)

readers are hereby informed that all dwellings advertised in this newspaper are available on an equal opportunity basis. Any home seeker who feels he or she has encountered discrimination should contact: HUD Office of Fair Housing 10 Causeway St., Boston, MA 02222-1092 (617) 565-5309 — OR — Vermont Human Rights Commission 14-16 Baldwin St. Montpelier, VT 05633-0633 1-800-416-2010 hrc@vermont.gov

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

services: $12 (25 words) fsbos: $45 (2 weeks, 30 words, photo) jobs: michelle@sevendaysvt.com, 865-1020 x121

AGING ROOF? NEW HOMEOWNER? STORM DAMAGE? You need a local expert provider that proudly stands behind its work.

Fast, free estimate.

Financing avail. Call 1-888-292-8225. Have the zip code of the property ready when calling! (AAN CAN) BATH & SHOWER UPDATES In as little as 1 day!

Affordable prices. No payments for 18 mos.

Lifetime warranty & professional installs. Senior & military discounts avail.

Call 1-866-370-2939.

(AAN CAN) NEED NEW WINDOWS? Drafty rooms? Chipped or damaged frames?

Need outside noise reduction? New, energyefficient windows may be the answer! Call for a consultation & free quote today. 1-877-248-9944.

You will be asked for the zip code of the property when connecting. (AAN CAN) PEST CONTROL Protect your home from pests safely & affordably.

Roaches, bedbugs, rodents, termites, spiders & other pests. Locally owned & affordable.

Call for service or an inspection today! 1-833237-1199. (AAN CAN)

Penske-maintained trucks, best in pricing & service. Call Kasey at 802-223-5434 or 24-7 at central: 802-479-7257.

buy this stuff

ANTIQUES/ COLLECTIBLES TOP CASH PAID FOR OLD GUITARS 1920-1980 Gibson, Martin, Fender, Gretsch, Epiphone, Guild, Mosrite, Rickenbacker, Prairie State, D’A ngelico, Stromber, & Gibson mandolins/banjos.

877-589-0747. (AAN CAN)

MISCELLANEOUS ACORN STAIRLIFT Acorn Stairlift. Latest model. New condition, used only once.

Asking $1200. Call 802-229-0205

print deadline: Mondays at 3:30 p.m. post ads online 24/7 at: sevendaysvt.com/classifieds questions? classifieds@sevendaysvt.com 865-1020 x115

PETS

CONSIGNMENTS WANTED

TOY YORKIE PUPPY Female toy Yorkie.

Registered, loyal, smart, social, easily trained.

Asking $500. Text 315-824-4058.

WINTER FIREARMS ONLINE AUCTION

WANT TO BUY

TUESDAY, FEB. 11, 2025

PAYING TOP CASH FOR MEN’S SPORT WATCHES Breitling, Omega, Patek Philippe, Heuer, Daytona, GMT, Submariner & Speedmaster. Call 888-320-1052. (AAN CAN)

SHIPPING AVAILABLE

FIREARMS, MILITARIA, SPORTING GOODS

WANTED FOR AUCTION!

SPORTING RELATED AUCTION ONLINE AUCTION CLOSES: WEDNESDAY, FEB. 12 @10AM

NOW SEEKING CONSIGNMENTS EMAIL US: FFL@THCAuction.com or Call: 802-888-4662

music

BANDS/ MUSICIANS

THCAuction.com  800-634-SOLD conferences & social oc-

casions across northern 12v-hirchakbrothers2-122624 1

QUARTET FOR SPECIAL OCCASIONS The Hildegard String Quartet adds ambience to weddings, receptions,

& central Vermont.

Booking 2025 weddings today; reserve us now!

7spot.indd 1

WATER DAMAGE CLEANUP & RESTORATION A small amount of water can lead to major damage & mold growth in your home. Our trusted professionals do complete repairs to protect your family & your home’s value! Call 24-7: 1-888-290-2264.

Have zip code of service location ready when you call! (AAN CAN)

12/13/24 7:12 PM

10/29/19 12:12 PM

And on the seventh day, we do not rest.

Instead we bring you...

MOVING/HAULING MARKOSKI’S MOVE & HAUL Markoski’s has established a local reputation for being a team of friendly professionals who treat their customers like family. Based out of Chittenden County, we go across Vermont & out of state. Contact Rick at rickmarkoski@gmail. com, & please browse our reviews & jobs on Facebook & Front Porch Forum.

PENSKE TRUCK RENTALS Clark’s Rentals is your locally owned Penske truck rental agent, located in central VT at 3122 Airport Rd. in Berlin. Offering local & 1-way rentals. Personal & commercial. We provide

Get the newsletter featuring notable news, arts and food stories handpicked by our editors. Sit back, relax and read up on what you may have missed.

SUBSCRIBE TODAY: SEVENDAYSVT.COM/ENEWS

4t-sundaybest-dog.indd 1

3/2/21 6:43 PM

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.

6+

18x

2÷

4

3-

4-

1-

512+

30x

2

8

5-

9

Difficulty - Medium

CALCOKU

3

5 3

6

2-

9 1 9 6 7

35+

7 4 3

2 9 5 8 4 2 7

No. 873

BY JOSH REYNOLDS

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 one-box cage should be filled in with the target number in the top corner. A number can be repeated within a cage as long as it is not the same row or column.

Place a number in the empty boxes in such a way that each 9 2row across, 8 3 each 5 column 4 6 1 down and each 9-box square contains all of the numbers 6 one5to nine.

1 The 8 same 7 9numbers 2 4 cannot be repeated in a row or column.

2

6

1

4

4

1

3

6

5

2

6

5

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1

1

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2

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6

7 3 3 4 7 6 2 1 9 5 8 ANSWERS ON 4 P.90 8 9 5 6 7 1 3 2 H = MODERATE HH = CHALLENGING HHH = HOO, BOY! 2 3 6 1 4 8 7 9 5 1 7 5 9 3 2 8 6 4 JANUARY 1 FUN 8 6 3 7 9 5 4 2 1 ANSWERS ON P. 90 » 5 1 4 2 8 6 3 7 9 7 9 2 4 1 3 5 8 6

5

There’s no limit to ad length online.

WANT MORE PUZZLES? Try these online news games from Seven Days at sevendaysvt.com/games.

NEW ON FRIDAYS:

Put your knowledge of Vermont news to the test.

Difficulty: Hard

DIFFICULTY THIS WEEK: HHH

3

Extra! Extra!

Post & browse ads at your convenience.

4

SUDOKU

BY JOSH REYNOLDS

Open 24/7/365.

Complete the following puzzle by using the 6 photos per ad online. numbers 1-9 only once in each row, column and 3 x 3 box.

9 2 6

111+

Show and tell.

Sudoku View and post up to

See how fast you can solve this weekly 10-word puzzle.

say you saw it in

2 4

crossword 6 5 1 4 2 3

mini-sawit-white2024.indd 1

7/31/24 4:41 PM

6 1

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

89

Legal Notices NORTHSTAR SELF STORAGE WILL BE HAVING A PUBLIC AND ONLINE SALE/AUCTION FOR THE FOLLOWING STORAGE UNITS ON JANUARY 2, 2025 AT 9:00 AM Northstar Self Storage will be having a public and online sale/auction on January 2, 2025 at 9am EST at 205 Route 4A West, Castleton, VT 05735 (C140) and online at www.storagetreasures.com at 9:00 am in accordance with VT Title 9 Commerce and Trade Chapter 098: Storage Units 3905.

Enforcement of Lien Unit # C140

Name Contents Christopher Washburn Household Goods

TOWN OF ESSEX MUNICIPAL BUILDING CLEANING CONTRACT The Town of Essex invites qualified contractors to prepare a bid for the cleaning of 5 municipal

PLACE AN AFFORDABLE NOTICE AT: SEVENDAYSVT.COM/LEGAL-NOTICES OR CALL 802-865-1020, EXT. 121.

buildings. Bid packets will be made available electronically by contacting Shawn McNamara, Buildings Manager via email at smcnamara@essex. org. Sealed Bids will be received at the Essex Town Public Works Office at 5 Jericho Road or mailed to the Town of Essex Public Works Department, 81 Main Street, Essex Junction, VT 05452, until 10:00 AM on Friday, January 10, 2025. Questions can be directed to Shawn McNamara at (802) 585-5883.

PROPOSED STATE RULES By law, public notice of proposed rules must be given by publication in newspapers of record. The purpose of these notices is to give the public a chance to respond to the proposals. The public notices for administrative rules are now also available online at https://secure.vermont.gov/ SOS/rules/ . The law requires an agency to hold a public hearing on a proposed rule, if requested to

do so in writing by 25 persons or an association having at least 25 members.

To make special arrangements for individuals with disabilities or special needs please call or write the contact person listed below as soon as possible.

To obtain further information concerning any scheduled hearing(s), obtain copies of proposed rule(s) or submit comments regarding proposed rule(s), please call or write the contact person listed below. You may also submit comments in writing to the Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules, State House, Montpelier, Vermont 05602 (802-828-2231).

----Guidelines for Distinguishing Between Primary and Specialty Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services.

Vermont Proposed Rule: 24P050

Support Groups A CIRCLE OF PARENTS FOR MOTHERS OF COLOR Please join our parent-led online support group designed to share our questions, concerns & struggles, as well as our resources & successes!

Contribute to our discussion of the unique but shared experience of parenting. We will be meeting weekly on Wed., 10-11 a.m. For more info or to register, please contact Heather at hniquette@pcavt.org, 802-498-0607, pcavt.org. family-support-programs.

A CIRCLE OF PARENTS FOR SINGLE MOTHERS Please join our parent-led online support group designed to share our questions, concerns & struggles, as well as our resources & successes!

Contribute to our discussion of the unique but shared experience of parenting. We will be meeting weekly on Fri., 10-11 a.m. For more

blog are avail. online at the Al-Anon website. For meeting info, go to vermontalanonalateen.org or call 866-972-5266.

A CIRCLE OF PARENTS W/ LGBTQ+ CHILDREN Please join our parent-led online support group designed to share our questions, concerns & struggles, as well as our resources & successes!

Contribute to our discussion of the unique but shared experience of parenting. We will be meeting weekly on Mon., 10-11 a.m. For more info or to register, please contact Heather at hniquette@pcavt.org, 802-498-0607, pcavt.org/ family-support-programs.

ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS Do you have a drinking problem? AA meeting sites are now open, & online meetings are also avail. Call our hotline at 802-864-1212 or check for in-person or online meetings at burlingtonaa. org.

AMPUTEE SUPPORT GROUP VT Active Amputees is a new support group open to all amputees for connection, community & support. The group meets on the 1st Wed. of the mo. in S. Burlington, 5:30-6:30 p.m. Let’s get together & be active: running, pickleball & ultimate Frisbee. Email vtactiveamputees@

PUZZLE ANSWERS FROM P.89

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, CONTACT: E. Sebastian Arduengo, Department of Financial Regulation, 89 Main St, Montpelier, VT 05620 Tel: 802-828-4846 Fax: 802-828-5593 E-Mail: Sebastian.Arduengo@vermont.gov URL: https:// dfr.vermont.gov/about-us/legal-general-counsel/ proposed-rules-and-public-comment.

FOR COPIES: Anna Van Fleet, Department of Financial Regulation, 89 Main St, Montpelier, VT 05620 Tel: 802-828-4843 Email: anna.vanfleet@ vermont.gov

gmail.com or call Sue at 802-582-6750 for more info & location.

BABY BUMPS SUPPORT GROUP FOR MOTHERS & PREGNANT WOMEN Pregnancy can be a wonderful time of your life. But it can also be a time of stress often compounded by hormonal swings. If you are a pregnant woman, or have recently given birth & feel you need some help w/ managing emotional bumps in the road that can come w/ motherhood, please come to this free support group led by an experienced pediatric registered nurse. Held on the 2nd & 4th Tue. of every mo., 5:30-6:30 p.m. at the Birthing Center, Northwestern Medical Center, St. Albans. Info: Rhonda Desrochers, Franklin County Home Health Agency, 527-7531.

ANXIETY RELIEF GROUP Wednesdays 4pm-5:30pm. Anxiety Relief Group is a safe setting for relaxing and exploring your feelings with others through gentle socialization and self expression. Building up what makes you centered and strong. Wednesdays 4pm-5:30pm.

Both in-person and Zoom options available.

In-person meetings are held at the Pathways Vermont Community Center at 279 N. Winooski Ave in Burlington. Email us for the Zoom link and more information: pvcc@pathwaysvermont.org BETTER BREATHERS CLUB American Lung Association support group for people w/ breathing issues, their loved ones or caregivers. Meets on the 1st Mon. of every mo., 11 a.m.-noon at the Godnick Center, 1 Deer St., Rutland. For more info, call 802-776-5508.

BRAIN INJURY SUPPORT GROUP Vermont Center for Independent Living offers virtual monthly meetings, held on the 3rd Wed. of every mo., 1-2:30 p.m. The support group will offer valuable resources & info about brain injury.

It will be a place to share experiences in a safe, secure & confidential environment. To join, email Linda Meleady at lindam@vcil.org & ask to be put on the TBI mailing list. Info: 800-639-1522.

5-

BREAST CANCER SURVIVOR DRAGON BOAT TEAM Looking for a fun way to do something active & health-giving? Want to connect w/ other breast cancer survivors? Come join Dragonheart Vermont. We are a breast cancer survivor & supporter dragon boat team who paddle together in Burlington. Please contact us at info@dragonheartvermont.org for info.

BURLINGTON MEN’S PEER GROUP Tue. nights, 7-9 p.m. in Burlington. Free of charge, 30 years running. Call Neils 802-877-3742 or email neils@myfairpoint.net.

2÷ 6+

3 4

1

4 2

5

6

1

6

2

1

4

2

3

8 3 1- 5 1 8 1- 7 47 6 2 9 5 6 30x 6 1 4 5 9 3 23 7 9 4 2 8 2 4 1

9 2 6 11+5 3 4 4 8 2 12+3 1 7 8 6 5 1 7 9

5 3 6

2 5 4 3 6 1

18x

6

1

3

6

2

3

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4

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4 6 1 7 9 2 4 3 31 9 5 8 5+ 7 1 3 2 8 76 9 5 2 8 6 4 55 4 2 1 Difficulty - Medium 6 3 7 9 3 5 8 6 4

3-

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

No. 873

Calcoku

Difficulty: Hard

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

5

90

CONCISE SUMMARY: The rule prescribes guidelines for distinguishing between “primary” and “specialty” mental health and substance abuse services. This revision designates interprofessional consulting and peer support services as “primary” mental health and substance abuse services and makes technical and stylistic changes to the rule.

CONTACT CLASSIFIEDS@SEVENDAYSVT.COM OR 802-865-1020 EXT. 115 TO UPDATE YOUR SUPPORT GROUP

info or to register, please contact Heather at hniquette@pcavt.org, 802-498-0607, pcavt.org/ family-support-programs.

AL-ANON For families & friends of alcoholics. Phone meetings, electronic meetings (Zoom) & an Al-Anon

AGENCY: Department of Financial Regulation

PROSTATE CANCER SUPPORT GROUP The Champlain Valley Prostate Cancer Support Group meets online on the 2nd Tue. of the mo., 6-7:30 p.m., via Zoom. Whether you are newly diagnosed, dealing w/ a reoccurrence or trying to manage the side effects of treatment, you are welcome here! More info: Andy Hatch, group leader, ahatch63@gmail.com.

CENTRAL VERMONT CELIAC SUPPORT GROUP Last Thu. of every mo., 7:30 p.m. in Montpelier.

Please contact Lisa Masé for location: lisa@ harmonizecookery.com.

CEREBRAL PALSY GUIDANCE Cerebral Palsy Guidance is a very comprehensive informational website broadly covering the topic of cerebral palsy & associated medical conditions. Its mission is to provide the best possible info to parents of children living w/ the complex condition of cerebral palsy. Visit cerebralpalsyguidance.com/cerebral-palsy.

THE COMPASSIONATE FRIENDS SUPPORT GROUP The Compassionate Friends international support group for parents, siblings & families grieving the loss of a child meets every 4th Tue. of the mo., 7-9 p.m., at St. John Vianney Catholic Church, 160 Hinesburg Rd, S. Burlington. Call/ email Alan at 802-233-0544 alanday88@gmail. com or Claire at 802-448-3569.

CONVERSATIONS ABOUT SUICIDE Conversations About Suicide is a judgment-free and open space to talk about personal experiences of suicidal ideation. The group is facilitated by peer support staff with lived experience of suicidality. Thursdays 4 pm-5 pm at Pathways Vermont Community Center, located at 279 N. Winooski Ave in Burlington. Email us for more information: pvcc@pathwaysvermont.org DISABILITY SUPPORT GROUP Our group is a space for mutual support, open to anybody who identifies as disabled, differently abled, or having a disability. Whether your disability is visible, invisible, physical, or cognitive, this group is for you! The group meets every 1st and 3rd Monday of the month from 1:15-2:15pm at 279 N. Winooski Ave, Burlington, VT and online on Zoom. Email us for the Zoom link and more information: pvcc@pathwaysvermont.org.

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE SUPPORT Steps to End Domestic Violence offers a weekly drop-in support group for female-identified survivors of intimate partner violence, including individuals who are experiencing or have been affected by domestic violence. The support group offers a safe, confidential place for survivors to connect w/ others, to heal & to recover. In support group, participants talk through their experiences & hear stories from others who have experienced abuse in their relationships. Support group is also a resource for those who are unsure of their next step, even if it involves remaining in their current relationship. Tue., 6:30-8 p.m.

Childcare is provided. Info: 658-1996.

FAMILY & FRIENDS OF THOSE EXPERIENCING MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS This support group is a dedicated meeting for family, friends & community members who are supporting a loved one through a mental health crisis. Mental health crisis might include extreme states, psychosis, depression, anxiety & other types of distress. The group is a confidential space where family & friends can discuss shared experiences & receive support in an environment free of judgment & stigma w/ a trained facilitator.

Wed., 7-8:30 p.m. Downtown Burlington. Info: Jess Horner, LICSW, 866-218-8586.

FAMILY RESTORED: SUPPORT GROUP FOR FRIENDS & FAMILIES OF ADDICTS & ALCOHOLICS Tue., 6-7 p.m., the Turning Point Center, 179 S. Winooski Ave., Burlington. For further info, please visit thefamilyrestored.org or contact 207-387-0015.

FCA FAMILY SUPPORT GROUP Families Coping w/ Addiction (FCA) is an open community peer support group for adults (18+) struggling w/ the drug or alcohol addiction of a

loved one. FCA is not 12-step-based but provides a forum for those living the family experience, in which to develop personal coping skills & to draw strength from one another. Our group meets every Wed., 5:30-6:30 p.m., live in person in the conference room at the Turning Point Center of Chittenden County (179 S. Winooski Ave., Burlington), &/or via our parallel Zoom session to accommodate those who cannot attend in person. The Zoom link can be found on the Turning Point Center website (turningpointcentervt.org) using the “Family Support” tab (click on “What We Offer”). Any questions, please send by email to thdaub1@gmail.com.

FIERCELY FLAT VT A breast cancer support group for those who’ve had mastectomies. We are a casual online meeting group found on Facebook at Fiercely Flat VT. Info: stacy.m.burnett@gmail.com.

FOOD ADDICTS IN RECOVERY ANONYMOUS (FA) Are you having trouble controlling the way you eat? FA is a free 12-step recovery program for anyone suffering from food obsession, overeating, under-eating or bulimia. Local meetings are held twice a week: Mon., 4-5:30 p.m., at the Unitarian Universalist Church, Norwich, Vt.; & Wed., 6:30-8 p.m., at Hanover Friends Meeting House, Hanover, N.H. For more info & a list of additional meetings throughout the U.S. & the world, call 603-6301495 or visit foodaddicts.org.

G.R.A.S.P. (GRIEF RECOVERY AFTER A SUBSTANCE PASSING) Are you a family member who has lost a loved one to addiction? Find support, peer-led support group. Meets once a mo. on Mon. in Burlington.

Please call for date & location. RSVP to mkeasler3@gmail.com or call 310-3301 (message says Optimum Health, but this is a private number).

GRIEF & LOSS SUPPORT GROUP Sharing your sadness, finding your joy. Please join us as we learn more about our own grief & explore the things that can help us to heal. There is great power in sharing our experiences w/ others who know the pain of the loss of a loved one & healing is possible through the sharing. BAYADA Hospice’s local bereavement support coordinator will facilitate our weekly group through discussion & activities. Everyone from the community is welcome. 1st & last Wed. of every mo. at 4 p.m. via Zoom. To register, please contact bereavement program coordinator Max Crystal, mcrystal@ bayada.com or 802-448-1610.

GRIEF SUPPORT GROUPS Meet every 2nd Mon., 6-7:30 p.m., & every 3rd Wed. from 10-11:30 a.m., at Central Vermont Home Health & Hospice in Berlin. The group is open to the public & free of charge. More info: Diana Moore, 224-2241.

GRIEVING A LOSS SUPPORT GROUP A retired psychotherapist & an experienced life coach host a free meeting for those grieving the loss of a loved one. The group meets upstairs at All Souls Interfaith Gathering in Shelburne. There is no fee for attending, but donations are gladly accepted. Meetings are held twice a mo., the 1st & 3rd Sat. of every mo. from 10-11:30 a.m. If you are interested in attending, please register at allsoulsinterfaith.org. More information about the group leader at pamblairbooks.com.

INTERSTITIAL CYSTITIS/PAINFUL BLADDER SUPPORT GROUP Interstitial cystitis (IC) & painful bladder syndrome can result in recurring pelvic pain, pressure or discomfort in the bladder/pelvic region & urinary frequency/urgency. These are often misdiagnosed & mistreated as a chronic bladder infection. If you have been diagnosed or have these symptoms, you are not alone. For Vermontbased support group, email bladderpainvt@gmail. com or call 899-4151 for more info.

INTUITIVE EATING SUPPORT GROUP Free weekly peer-led support group for anyone struggling w/ eating &/or body image. The only requirement is a desire to make peace w/ food & your body. Meeting format is: a short reading from Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole & Elyse Resch, 4th edition, followed by open sharing &

discussion. Come find community through sharing struggles, experience, strength & hope. Located at the Pickering Room, Fletcher Free Library, Sun. 1-2:30 p.m. Contact 202-553-8953 w/ any questions.

KINDRED CONNECTIONS PROGRAM OFFERED FOR CHITTENDEN COUNTY CANCER SURVIVORS The Kindred Connections program provides peer support for all those touched by cancer. Cancer patients, as well as caregivers, are provided w/ a mentor who has been through the cancer experience & knows what it’s like to go through it. In addition to sensitive listening, Kindred Connections provides practical help such as rides to doctors’ offices & meal deliveries. The program has people who have experienced a wide variety of cancers. For further info, please contact info@ vcsn.net.

LAUGHTER YOGA Spontaneous, genuine laughter & gentle breathing for physical & emotional benefit. No yoga mat needed! This group is held every Mon., 2-3 p.m., at Pathways Vermont Community Center, 279 North Winooski Ave., Burlington. Contact Chris Nial for any questions: chrisn@pathwaysvermont.org.

LGBTQ SURVIVORS OF VIOLENCE The SafeSpace Anti-Violence Program at Pride Center of Vermont offers peer-led support groups for survivors of relationship, dating, emotional &/ or hate-violence. These groups give survivors a safe & supportive environment to tell their stories, share info, & offer & receive support. Support groups also provide survivors an opportunity to gain info on how to better cope w/ feelings & experiences that surface because of the trauma they have experienced. Please call SafeSpace at 863-0003 if you are interested in joining.

LGBTQ VETERANS Share the struggles & celebrate the joys of being a service member & LGBTQIA+ in this peer-led discussion group. Meetings are at the Rainbow Bridge Community Center in Barre on the 2nd & 4th Tue. of each mo. Visit rbccvt.org for more info.

LIVING THROUGH LOSS Gifford Medical Center is announcing the restart of its grief support group, Living Through Loss.

The program is sponsored by the Gifford Volunteer Chaplaincy Program & will meet weekly on Fri., 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m., in Gifford’s Chun Chapel. Meetings will be facilitated by the Rev. Timothy Eberhardt, spiritual care coordinator, & Emily Pizzale MSW, LICSW, a Gifford social worker. Anyone who has experienced a significant loss over the last year or so is warmly invited to attend & should enter through the hospital’s main entrance wearing a mask on the way to the chapel. Meetings will be based on the belief that, while each of us is on a unique journey in life, we all need a safe place to pause, to tell our stories &, especially as we grieve, to receive the support & strength we need to continue along the way.

MARIJUANA ANONYMOUS Do you have a problem w/ marijuana? MA is a free 12-step program where addicts help other addicts get & stay clean. Ongoing Mon., 7 p.m. at First United Methodist Church of Burlington (Red Door Church) 21 Buell St., Burlington. Contact: jointsession@newenglandma.org.

MYELOMA SUPPORT GROUP Area myeloma survivors, families & caregivers have come together to form a Multiple Myeloma Support Group. We provide emotional support, resources about treatment options, coping strategies & a support network by participating in the group experience w/ people who have been through similar situations. 3rd Tue. of every mo., 5-6 p.m., at the New Hope Lodge on East Ave. in Burlington. Info: Kay Cromie, 655-9136, kgcromey@aol.com.

NAMI CONNECTION PEER SUPPORT GROUP MEETINGS Weekly virtual meetings. If you have questions about a group in your area, please contact the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Vermont, program@namivt.org or 800-639-6480.

Connection groups are peer recovery support

group programs for adults living w/ mental health challenges.

NAMI FAMILY SUPPORT GROUP Weekly virtual & in-person meetings. ASL interpreters avail. upon request. Family Support Group meetings are for family & friends of individuals living w/ mental illness. If you have questions about a group in your area, please contact the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Vermont, info@namivt.org or 800-639-6480.

NARCONON SUNCOAST DRUG & ALCOHOL REHABILITATION & EDUCATION Narconon reminds families that overdoses due to an elephant tranquilizer known as Carfentanil have been on the rise in nearly every community nationwide. Carfentanil is a synthetic opioid painkiller 100 times more powerful than fentanyl & 1,000 times stronger than heroin. A tiny grain of it is enough to be fatal. To learn more about carfentanil abuse & how to help your loved one, visit narconon-suncoast.org/drug-abuse/ parents-get-help.html. Addiction screenings: Narconon can help you take steps to overcome addiction in your family. Call today for a no-cost screening or referral: 1-877-841-5509.

NARCOTICS ANONYMOUS is a group of recovering addicts who live without the use of drugs. It costs nothing to join. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop using. Held in Burlington, Barre & St. Johnsbury.

Info, 862-4516 or cvana.org.

NARCANON BURLINGTON GROUP Group meets every Mon. at 7 p.m., at the Turning Point Center, 179 S. Winooski Ave., Suite 301, Burlington. The only requirement for membership is that there be a problem of addiction in a relative or friend. Info: Amanda H., 338-8106.

NEW (& EXPECTING) MAMAS & PAPAS! EVERY PRIMARY CAREGIVER TO A BABY! The Children’s Room invites you to join our weekly drop-in support group. Come unwind & discuss your experiences & questions around infant care & development, self-care & postpartum healing, & community resources for families w/ babies.

Tea & snacks provided. Thu., 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m.

Bring your babies! (Newborn through crawling stage.) Located in Thatcher Brook Primary School, 47 Stowe St., childrensroomonline.org. Contact childrensroom@wwsu.org or 244-5605.

NORTHWEST VERMONT CANCER PRAYER & SUPPORT NETWORK A meeting of cancer patients, survivors & family members intended to comfort & support those who are currently suffering from the disease.

2nd Thu. of every mo., 6-7:30 p.m., St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, 11 Church St., St. Albans. Info: stpaulum@myfairpoint.net. 2nd Wed. of every mo., 6-7:30 p.m., Winooski United Methodist Church, 24 W. Allen St., Winooski. Info: hovermann4@comcast.net.

OVEREATERS ANONYMOUS (OA) A 12-step program for people who identify as overeaters, compulsive eaters, food addicts, anorexics, bulimics, etc. No matter what your problem w/ food, we have a solution! All are welcome, meetings are open, & there are no dues or fees. See oavermont.org/meeting-list for the current meeting list, meeting format & more; or call 802-863-2655 anytime!

PONDERING GENDER & SEXUALITY Pondering Gender & Sexuality is a twice-monthly facilitated mutual support group for folks of any identity (whether fully formed or a work in progress) who want to engage in meaningful conversations about gender, sexuality & sexual orientation, &/or the coming-out process.

Discussions can range from the personal to the philosophical & beyond as we work together to create a compassionate, safe & courageous space to explore our experiences. The group will be held on the 2nd Sun. & 4th Tue. of every mo., 1-2:30 p.m., either virtually or at Pride Center of Vermont.

Email pgs@pridecentervt.org for more info or w/ questions!

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

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92 DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

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 X121, MICHELLE@SEVENDAYSVT.COM

YOUR TRUSTED LOCAL SOURCE. JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM NOW HIRING: EMERGENCY MEDICINE

• MANDARIN • We’re seeking to hire servers and bartenders to join our hardworking and energetic team. If you’re interested in the opportunity, drop off a resume in person, or email to: lawrence@mandarinvt.com

Caregiver for 6/14/24 2:45 PM Senior Male Veteran

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Director of Residential Facilities

• Physician Medical Director • Physician • Registered Nurse • Unit Coordinator (LNA/EMT)

Job Summary:

Part-Time

Work at one of the Top 100 Critical Access Hospitals in the U.S. located in Morrisville - just outside Stowe.

There are full-time, part-time, and per diem options available. Emergency Medicine experience preferred.

gmail.com.

IT MANAGER - FULL-TIME

The Director of Residential Facilities is responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of the residential property portfolio. The role supports critical property management operations, overseeing all planned, preventive, corrective, routine, and emergency maintenance performed at residential properties managed by Redstone, including:

• Develops and oversees annual preventive maintenance programs and determines long- and short-range capital improvement and Part-time caregiver needed maintenance repair needs. for a senior male in South • Oversees work control processes, including work order management For more information visit copleyvt.org/careers or Burlington, VT. Flexible and control systems, ensuring efficiency in estimating, planning, contact Kaitlyn Shannon, Recruiter, hours (10-15/week), $25/ scheduling, and organizing work. at 802-888-8144 or kshannon@chsi.org. hour. Responsibilities • Acts as project manager for various items including renovations, include assisting with tenant improvements, and all other planned and unplanned capital and ADLs, transportation, 4t-CopleyEMEMGENCY122524 1 12/12/24 3:31 PM operation projects. housekeeping, laundry, • Supervises Residential Asset Manager and Residential Maintenance meal prep, medication Manager, providing guidance and technical and managerial assistance.

Join the Flynn & be part of a team striving to make the community reminders & companionship.

• Serves as a role model, advocate, and mentor to staff, creating and better through the arts. All backgrounds encouraged to apply.

Previous caregiving sustaining an environment that reflects Redstone’s customer service standards. experience preferred.

SECURITY MANAGER Full-time, Exempt, Benefits Eligible • Oversee the move-out inspection and turnover process, leading Contact: kpodkpod2024@ vendors and maintenance team.

Exempt, Benefits Eligible

We’re Hiring!

We offer competitive wages & a full benefits package for full time employees.

CAREER OPPORTUNITY AUTO AUCTION ASSISTANT (Williston, Vermont)

PRODUCTION MANAGER Full-time, Exempt, Benefits Eligible

CUSTOMER SERVICE BOX OFFICE Part-time, Union, Benefits

For complete job descriptions and to apply, visit: flynnvt.org/ About-Us/Employment-and-Internship-Opportunities.

Email materials to: HResources@flynnvt.org No phone calls, please. E.O.E.

THE GRIND GOT YOU DOWN?

Looking for a responsible,4t-Flynn121124.indd 1 motivated, self-starter for busy Williston auto auction facility.

Position works with the general manager and the office manager completing tasks both inside/ outdoors. Rate is $17-$20/Hour Email: info@thcauction.com Thomas Hirchak Company is an at will employer. See more jobs at:

THCAuction.com

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12/12/24 3:28 PM

Redstone seeks a candidate who consistently exhibits a professional communication style and positive attitude. Exemplary customer service skills are critical. Our preferred candidate will be able to adapt to the changing needs of projects, be a team player, and exhibit self-direction.

See who’s hiring at jobs.sevendaysvt.com

12/9/24 11:19 AM

Redstone offers a competitive benefits package that includes: medical, vision, and dental insurance plan; 401K match; 3 weeks paid vacation to start (can earn up to 5 weeks); paid sick leave; paternity and maternity leave; twelve paid holidays and a paid day off on your birthday. The position is eligible for discretionary bonuses.

Visit www.redstonevt.com for a full job description and to apply.

Perk up!

Trusted, local employers are hiring in Seven Days newspaper and online.

Browse 100+ new job postings each week.

Follow @SevenDaysJobs on Twitter for the latest job opportunities

FOLLOW US ON TWITTER @SEVENDAYSJOBS, SUBSCRIBE TO RSS, OR BROWSE POSTS ON YOUR PHONE AT JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM

Executive Director

NEW JOBS POSTED DAILY! JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM

Are y you ou an experienced development devel lopment leader looking to make e a lasting impact?

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DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGER Hunger Mountain Co-op in Montpelier, Vermont, is seeking an experienced HR Manager for our customer-focused team providing natural, organic, and local products in a member-owned cooperative food store. Our co-op offers the opportunity to join an outstanding, mission-driven management team and enjoy competitive pay and benefits.

Are you a strong and visionary Our collaborative team is growing! leader with a track record We are seeking a Director of Leadership Giving of success, who happens who is passionate about strengthening Vermont to love animals? We are communities. seeking a leader to provide Hunger Mountain Co-op is for everyone. Diversity, inclusion, and Key Responsibilities: administrative, operational, a culture where everybody can contribute matters to us. We aim Leadership and Strategy L and fiscal oversight at Addison to create a welcoming environment for all. The Co-op does not Fundraising Development F County's only humane society. discriminate based on race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual Donor Management and Stewardship D orientation, gender identity, ancestry, place of birth, The successful candidate Partnership and Outreach P age, crime victim status, physical or mental condition. will have budget and staff management experience, Join us in creating positive change across Vermont TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THIS OPPORTUNITY excellent communication skills, AND APPLY, PLEASE SCAN THE QR CODE Visit vermontcf.org/careers to learn more. and a talent for developing strategies that support nonprofit success. An interest and understanding of animal 4t-VTCommunityFoundation121124 1 12/9/244t-HungerMtCoOp1218and1225.indd 5:48 PM 1 12/16/24 10:41 AM welfare and non-profit administration is preferred. See full job description at: bit.ly/ HomewardBoundED. The Clerk’s Office for the

Case Administrator/ Courtroom Deputy Clerk Intake Clerk

To apply, please send your resume and cover letter to: director@homeward boundanimals.org.

Director of Major Gifts

United StatesCourt District Court is U.S. District

seeking a qualified individual with excellent analytical, The United States District Court is organizational and interpersonal seeking a qualified individual with skills capable of functioning excellent analytical, clerical, operational and in a dynamic, team-oriented computer skills capable of functioning in environment.

The dutyenvironment. station is Burlington, a dynamic, teamoriewnted The duty station is Vermont.

Full federal benefi ts apply.

Complete job Burlington, Vermont. Full federal benefi ts apply.

Complete job description and formal application requirements description and formal application requirements are found in the cial Position Announcement from court areoffi found in the offi cial Positionavailable Announcement locations in Burlington Rutland andCourt the court’s available from anyand U.S. District officeweb site: (Burlington and Rutland) or the court’s website.

WWW.VTD.USCOURTS.GOV EOE WWW.VTD.USCOURTS.GOV

EOE

Program Manager: Energy and Forest Business Accelerators

Join our team to support sustainable economic development by managing DeltaClimeVT, our energy business accelerator and a new forest business accelerator. Both programs provide startup support, business planning, mentorship, and access to capital for climate economy and forest economy entrepreneurs.

FT salary between $70-75k, great benefits, casual but professional hybrid work environment, and an organizational culture where people feel valued, are energized, and can support forward-thinking solutions to our food system and climate challenges.

VSJF is an E.O.E. committed to diversity, equity, inclusion and a strong sense of belonging in the workplace.

PLEASE READ full job description here: vsjf.org/about-vsjfvermont/job-openings.

Age Well is seeking a Director Send cover letter & resume to jobs@vsjf.org by 5pm 1/13/25. of Major Gifts to strengthen and expand its fundraising efforts in support of new 4t-VTSustainableJobsFund121124 1 12/9/24 2:51 PM 12/13/24 2:40 PM strategic priorities and in 4t-USDistCourtofVT1218and2524.indd 1 preparation for a multimilliondollar comprehensive campaign. Reporting to the Join our team to help support UVM Center on Rural Addiction’s (CORA) mission to expand Chief Advancement Officer, substance use disorder treatment capacity in rural communities by providing consultation, Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital the Director will develop a resources, training, and evidence-based technical assistance.

(NVRH) in St. Johnsbury is looking for a Central strategic plan for major and Clinical Educator (CCE) to help us elevate our As a CORA Outreach Specialist, you will facilitate outreach efforts to engage clinicians and planned giving programs nursing education. We want to hear from you if you’re passionate partners in rural communities. Support planning and implementation of CORA's Clinical & to maximize philanthropic about mentoring and supporting healthcare professionals.

Translational Core community services, educational projects, and community enrichment potential to engage and inspire initiatives. Develop and adapt evidence-based informational resources and curriculum donors to invest in Age Well What You’ll Do: Manage our mandatory education programs and components. Administer evaluations of clinical educational offerings. Promote UVM CORA and deepen their commitment nursing orientation. Ensure compliance with training requirements.

Continuing Medical Education (CME) credits. to our aging community. Key What We’re Looking For: An RN graduate (BSN required/MSN Familiarity and/or experience with evidence-based treatments for substance use disorders to success in this role will be preferred) with at least 3 years of nursing experience. We offer or other chronic health conditions desirable. Experience in research and/or working with building relationships with new competitive pay and excellent benefits, such as student loan multiple and diverse providers and partners (e.g., substance use disorder treatment, mental prospects and strengthening repayment, and generous paid time off. If you’re ready to make a health services) and experience planning and/or supporting academic or educational relationships with existing meaningful impact in your community, apply today! We can’t wait events is highly desirable. donors to maximize to welcome you to our team! philanthropic support.

CORA Outreach Specialist

Send resumes to: hr@agewellvt.org

Learn more about us at www.uvmcora.org

APPLY HERE: University of Vermont Employment Opportunities | CORA Outreach Specialist www.uvmjobs.com | Job Posting: S5354PO

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Central Clinical Educator (CCE)

Apply now at www.nvrh.org/careers.

1 12/6/24 4t-NVRH103024.indd 12:57 PM

10/25/24 11:17 AM

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

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12/16/24 9:43 AM

GO HIRE.

Director of Nursing Are you a nurse looking for a position that brings joy and fulfillment both personally and professionally? The Converse Home, a nonprofit Assisted Living Community located in downtown Burlington, is seeking a Director of Nursing (DON). As the longest-running assisted living community in Vermont, The Converse Home is renowned for its warm, welcoming, and home-like atmosphere.

This is a rare opportunity to join a compassionate and supportive team in an exceptional community.

Qualifications: • Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) required; Master of Science in Nursing (MSN) preferred.

• Valid Vermont Registered Nurse (RN) license and a valid driver’s license.

• Strong background in Med-Surg and chronic long term care nursing, healthcare operations management, with a solid understanding of skilled nursing standards of care and Vermont state assisted living regulations.

• Exceptional communication, organizational, and leadership skills, with a compassionate approach to the nursing team, department staff, residents, and families.

• Flexibility to travel occasionally and adapt to occasional weekend or after-hours needs.

Salary and Benefits: • Salary range: $95,000–$115,000.

• Competitive benefits package, including medical, dental, eye, life insurance, retirement, and paid vacation.

Job Seekers: 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. 121, michelle@sevendaysvt.com.

jobs.sevendaysvt.com

To learn more and apply, visit www.conversehome.com or send your resume and letter of interest to kristen@ conversehome.com.

The Converse Home is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

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12/13/24 2:45 PM

11/30/21 12:37 PM

FOLLOW US ON TWITTER @SEVENDAYSJOBS, SUBSCRIBE TO RSS, OR BROWSE POSTS ON YOUR PHONE AT JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM

NEW JOBS POSTED DAILY! JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM

Burlington City Arts (BCA) is seeking an experienced development director to join our dynamic arts leadership team. This position is responsible for managing and coordinating development activities for BCA programs that serve the greater Burlington cultural community. In addition to designing and implementing the annual development plan, the Development Director works closely with the Executive Director to advance BCA’s major gift, capital and planned giving programs. The position is directly supported by an Assistant Development Director and Development and Administrative Coordinator.

Development Director

Director of Communications The Vermont Center for Ecostudies seeks a Director of Communications to lead a purposeful and creative communications program. The successful applicant will collaborate with conservation biologists and development professionals to foster science-based stewardship of biodiversity in the Northeast.

Key qualifications include outstanding writing and editing skills, ability to co-create and execute strategy, and knowledge of best practices in science communications and fundraising.

The ideal candidate will be passionate about the arts and BCA’s mission, a fast learner, have a track record of success in multiple fundraising categories, have experience managing staff to meet development goals, enjoy creating new community relationships, have excellent written and oral skills, and be experienced using donor database systems.

Knowledge and background in the arts is a plus, but the most important characteristic of a successful candidate is desire to build a healthy, vibrant community through BCA’s mission.

VCE also seeks an Annual Fund Manager to strengthen a growing and effective annual giving program. The successful applicant will help develop fundraising strategy and stewardship programs for annual fund donors. Key qualifications include strong communication skills, ability to collaborate and work independently, and recent experience in nonprofit development.

Go to burlingtoncityarts.org/join-bca to apply 12/16/24 10:47 AM

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Phlebotomy

Are you dedicated to supporting young people in achieving their dreams?

Do you want to work for an organization that values your work-life balance and wellbeing? How about summers off? Consider joining the VSAC team! You’ll join a team of highly committed, collaborative, and supportive colleagues who are dedicated to student success.

INVEST IN YOURSELF Our apprenticeship program is a paid opportunity to become a phlebotomist with no experience required.

APPLY NOW

www.iaahitec.org/phlebotomy REGISTRATION DEADLINE Wednesday, January 8th, 2025

We are currently recruiting for a GEAR UP Outreach Counselor in Richford Middle and High Schools: This position works with middle through first year after high school students and their families to provide education, career, and financial aid information and counseling in support of postsecondary education goals. This position will also support students through the transition process from high school into and through their first year of postsecondary education.

Visit VSAC.org/Careers for full job description and to apply today.

12/10/24 5:36 PM

North Country Hospital Wants YOU!

• Guaranteed paid employment on day one of training • Direct patient care • Team environment • Full Benefits • Dedicated support during the 5-week program • Paid Certified Phlebotomy Technician Exam

Are you a skilled PACU nurse, OR nurse, or Surgical Tech looking to make a difference while surrounded by the breathtaking beauty of Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom? Look no further!

$2,000 SIGN ON BONUS External candidates are eligible for a one-time sign on bonus paid over 3 installments. Amounts reflect gross pay, prior to applicable tax withholdings and deductions required by law. Current University of Vermont Health Network employees are excluded and additional terms and conditions apply.

What’s In It for You? •A rewarding career where your skills truly shine.

Questions?

Call or Email 802-872-0660 lida.hope@vthitec.org

•A supportive team that’s all about collaboration (and maybe a little coffee-fueled humor).

The University of Vermont Medical Center (“UVMMC”) will not discriminate against apprenticeship applicants or apprentices based upon their age (40 and older), ancestry, color, disability, gender identity, marital status, national origin, place of birth, race, religion, genetic information, sex, and sexual orientation. UVMMC will take affirmative action to provide equal opportunity in apprenticeship and will operate the apprenticeship program as required by Title 29 of the Code of Federal Regulations, part 30, Title 21 Vermont Statutes Annotated, Labor, Ch. 13, Labor, and the Vermont State EEO Plan.

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Calling All

More details:

SURGICAL SUPERSTARS!

Apprenticeship Program

GEAR UP Outreach Counselor

More details:

Annual Fund Manager

The position offers excellent benefits and the opportunity to join a committed and collaborative team in a supportive work environment.

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DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

•Competitive pay and benefits— because you deserve it!

•The chance to work where mountains meet small-town magic.

Whether you’re fresh out of scrubs school or a seasoned pro, we want your passion, talent, and dedication.

Apply Today! Don’t just dream about work-life balance—live it at North Country Hospital!

northcountryhospital.org/careers Email: tcole@nchsi.org 189 PROUTY DRIVE |NEWPORT, VERMONT

12/13/24 11:06 AM

Equal Opportunity Employer

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

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DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

Climate Action Coordinator VNRC is seeking a Climate Action Coordinator to help inspire and advance individual, community, program and policy solutions to climate change – including efforts around efficiency, conservation, renewable energy, transportation, and smart land use practices – as informed by Vermont’s Climate Action Plan.

The position also helps manage the Vermont Energy and Climate Action Network (VECAN) – an informal network of all-volunteer community energy committees and partners – and assists our partner organization – Vermont Conservation Voters – to elect climate leaders during election years.

Preferred qualifications include: • Commitment to protecting Vermont’s environment and making clean energy solutions available to all.

• Interest or experience in building coalitions, including supporting grassroots engagement and working with diverse stakeholders to identify and accomplish shared goals.

• Attention to detail and proven communication, coordination and collaboration skills.

• Self-motivation and an ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously.

• Social media, event planning, graphic design, and media relations experience is a plus • Applicants should share our commitment to centering equity, environmental justice, diversity, and inclusion in our work The Climate Action Coordinator is a full-time, hybrid (remote & in-person) position based at our Montpelier office. Starting salary is commensurate with experience, with a salary range of $45,000-$52,000 plus a $20,000 benefits stipend.

To apply, email a letter of interest, resume and three references to aconnizzo@vnrc.org. We will begin reviewing applications on January 6, 2025, and will accept new applications on a rolling basis until the position is filled. Find out more and apply at vnrc.org/join-our-team.

LOOKING FOR A COOLER OPPORTUNITY?

Burlington Housing Authority (BHA) Are you interested in a job that helps your community and makes a difference in people’s lives every day? Consider joining Burlington Housing Authority (BHA) in Burlington, VT to continue BHA’s success in promoting innovative solutions that address housing instability challenges facing our diverse population of low-income families and individuals.

We are currently hiring for the following positions: Building Operations Technician: Performs general maintenance work in BHA owned and managed properties.

This includes building exteriors, common areas, apartments, building systems, fixtures, and grounds. Our Building Operations Techs are required to participate in the on-call rotation, which covers night and weekend emergencies.

and affordable housing to all, we are committed to cultivating a staff that reflects varied lived experiences, viewpoints, and educational histories.

Therefore, we strongly encourage candidates from diverse racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds, persons with disabilities, LGBTQ individuals, and women to apply. Multilingualism is a plus!

Offender Re-entry Housing Specialist: Provides support to men and women under the VT Department of Corrections supervision from prison back to Chittenden County. The ORHS focuses on high-risk men and women who are being released from jail and graduating transitional housing programs and in need of permanent housing. The ORHS provides intensive retention and eviction prevention services and works collaboratively with the Burlington Probation and Parole Office. Additionally, the ORHS works with various case workers, Re-Entry staff and the Administrative Staff from the VT Department of Corrections and the broad network of COSA staff as necessary throughout Chittenden County.

Find more about these career opportunities: burlingtonhousing.org.

Find 100+ new job postings from trusted, local employers in Seven Days newspaper and online.

Resident Manager at South Square: Attends to various resident requests, assisting with emergency service, and light cleaning duties. The Resident Manager is required to live on property. The Resident Manager is provided with an apartment and along with free utilities in exchange for being on call after BHA business hours and on weekends.

See who’s hiring at jobs.sevendaysvt.com

*BHA serves a diverse population of tenants and partners with a variety of community agencies. To most effectively carry out our vision of delivering safe

Follow us on @SevenDaysvt for the latest job opportunities

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Our robust benefit package includes premium medical insurance with a health reimbursement account, dental, vision, short & long term disability, 10% employer funded retirement plan, 457 retirement plan, accident insurance, life insurance, cancer & critical illness insurance.

We provide a generous time off policy including 12 days of paid time off and 12 days of sick time in the first year.

In addition to the paid time off, BHA recognizes 13 (paid) holidays and 2 (paid) floating cultural holidays.

Interested in this opportunity?

Send cover letter/resume to: humanresources@ burlingtonhousing.org.

Human Resources Burlington Housing Authority 65 Main Street, Suite 101 Burlington, VT 05401 BHA is an Equal Opportunity Employer

11/18/24 1:19 PM

CALCOKU & SUDOKU (P.89) CROSSWORD (P.89)

fun stuff HARRY BLISS

JEN SORENSEN

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

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fun stuff TIM SNIFFEN

KYLE BRAVO

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SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

JULIANNA BRAZILL

FREE WILL ASTROLOGY BY ROB BREZSNY REAL DECEMBER 26-JANUARY 1 TAURUS (Apr. 20-May 20): “Confidence

is 10 percent hard work and 90 percent delusion,” declared Taurus comedian Tina Fey. But I believe you will disprove that assessment in the coming months. The work you do will be unusually replete with grace and dynamism. It will be focused and diligent work, yes, but more importantly, it will be smart work that’s largely free of delusion.

That’s why I’m inclined to revise Fey’s formula for your sake. In 2025, your brimming levels of confidence will be primarily due to your fine, conscientious, effective work.

CAPRICORN (DEC. 22-JAN. 19)

Since 1985, musician David Gilmour has led Pink Floyd. The band has sold over 250 million records. He’s in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in both the UK and the U.S. But my favorite thing about Gilmour is that he’s a passionate activist who has crusaded for animal rights, environmentalism, poverty and human rights. A few years ago, he auctioned off 120 of his guitars, raising more than $21 million for an environmentalist charity. In accordance with astrological omens, I propose we make him one of your inspirational role models in 2025, Capricorn. May he mobilize you to use your stature and clout to perform an array of good works that are of service to your world.

ARIES (Mar. 21-Apr. 19): In 2025, I would

love for you to specialize in making new connections and deepening your existing connections. I hope you will summon extra creativity and panache as you regularly blend your beautiful energies with others’ beautiful energies. I predict you will thrive on linking elements that should be linked but have never been before. What do you think, Aries? Does it sound fun to become a playful master of mixing and combining? Would you enjoy generating splashy unifications that serve your dreams?

GEMINI (May 21-Jun. 20): In the 1960s, a Swedish journalist tried an experiment. He wanted to see if art critics could distinguish between abstract paintings made by skilled artists and those created by a four-year-old chimpanzee whose pseudonym was Pierre Brassau. Surprise! Many of the critics treated all the paintings with equal respect. One even gave special praise to Pierre Brassau, describing his strokes of color as having “the delicacy of a ballet dancer.” I’m authorizing you to unleash your inner Pierre Brassau in the coming months, Gemini. Be an innocent rookie, a newcomer with great instincts, an exuberant amateur who specializes in fun experiments. Do you know what beginner’s mind is? You approach every experience with zero assumptions or expectations, as if you were seeing everything for the first time. For more, read this: wikipedia.org/wiki/shoshin.

CANCER (Jun. 21-Jul. 22): Ohio’s

Cuyahoga River used to catch on fire regularly. The cause was pollution. For 100 years, industries had poured their wastes into the waterway. The surface was often dotted with oil slicks. But after a notorious river fire in 1969, the locals decided to remedy the situation, aided by the newly established Environmental Protection Agency. Today, the Cuyahoga still isn’t 100 percent clean, but it’s far better. It hosts kayaking, fishing and paddleboarding. I propose we use its rehabilitation as a symbol for you in 2025. You will have welcome opportunities to clean up messes that have lingered for far too long. Please take full advantage of these cosmic invitations to sweep karmic debris out of your life.

LEO (Jul. 23-Aug. 22): Steve Jobs, founder

of Apple computers, said, “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.” I propose that you make this one of your mottoes in 2025. More than ever before, you will have exceptional power to transform the environments you share with others. You will have an enhanced ability to revise and reinvigorate the systems and rules you use. Don’t underestimate your influence during the coming months, Leo. Assume that people will be listening especially closely to your ideas and extra receptive to being affected by you.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sep. 22): I will give you four related terms to describe your key motif in 2025: 1) Your Soul’s Code. 2) Your Master Plan.

3) Your Destiny’s Blueprint. 4) Your Mission Statement. All four are rooted in this epic question: What is your overarching purpose here on earth, and how are you fulfilling it? The coming months will be a time when you can make dramatic progress in formulating vivid, detailed visions of the life you want to live.

You can also undertake robust action steps to make those visions more of a practical reality.

I encourage you to write your big-picture, longrange dreams in a special notebook or a file on your tech device. Keep adding to the text throughout the coming months.

LIBRA (Sep. 23-Oct. 22): People in India were the first to discover diamonds buried in the earth. Most historians believe it happened in the 4th century BC. For the next two millennia, India remained the only source of diamonds. Finally, new stashes were found in Brazil in 1725 and in South Africa in the 1870s.

Let’s use this 2,000-year gap as a metaphor for your life. I suspect that far too many months have passed since you have located a fresh source of a certain treasure or bounty you crave. That will change in 2025. Here come long-delayed blessings!

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): In my vision of

your life in 2025, you will dramatically enhance how togetherness works for you. Below are four questions to help guide your explorations and breakthroughs. 1) Is it feasible to change yourself in ways that enable you to have a more satisfying relationship with romantic love? 2)

Will you include your intimate relationships as an essential part of your spiritual path — and vice versa? 3) What work on yourself can you do to heal your old wounds and thereby make yourself a better partner and collaborator?

4) Can you help your best allies to heal their wounds and thereby become better partners and collaborators?

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): In

Japanese, the word for “frog” sounds similar to the word meaning “to return.” That’s one reason frogs have been lucky in some circles of Japanese culture. They symbolize the blessing that occurs when travelers return home safely, or when health is restored, or when spent money is replenished. I bring this to your attention, Sagittarius, because I suspect 2025 will be a time when satisfying and enjoyable returns will be a key theme.

Consider keeping the likeness of a lovable frog in your living space.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Aquarian author Virginia Woolf extolled the virtues of cultivating a supple soul that thrives on change. She pledged to be relentless in her commitment to be authentically herself and not succumb to groupthink. I recommend you make these two of your featured themes in 2025. To inspire your efforts, I will quote her radical perspective at length: “Movement and change are the essence of our being; rigidity is death; conformity is death: let us say what comes into our heads, repeat ourselves, contradict ourselves, fling out the wildest nonsense, and follow the most fantastic fancies without caring what the world does or thinks or says.”

PISCES (Feb. 19-Mar. 20): In 1992, two friends promised each other that if either of them ever won the lottery, they would share it with the other. Twenty-eight years later, that’s exactly what happened. In 2020, Thomas Cook bought a ticket that turned out to be the winner of the Powerball jackpot in Wisconsin. He called Joseph Feeney with the good news. After paying taxes, both men were $5.7 million richer.

I am not predicting the exact same sequence for your future, Pisces. But like Cook and Feeney, I expect you will glean pleasing rewards generated from seeds planted in the past.

CHECK OUT ROB BREZSNY’S EXPANDED WEEKLY AUDIO HOROSCOPES & DAILY TEXT MESSAGE HOROSCOPES: REALASTROLOGY.COM OR 1-877-873-4888

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WATCH HER LATEST VIDEO! Seven Days senior multimedia producer Eva Sollberger looks back on the highlights of the past year and is joined by her 90-year-old mom, Sophie Quest. Sollberger also remembers friends who have been featured in videos and died in 2024. Happy holidays to everyone. Wishing you a wonderful New Year!

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

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12/16/24 12:36 PM

Respond to these people online: dating.sevendaysvt.com WOMEN seeking...

INTERESTING, LIVELY, THOUGHTFUL I’m smart, considerate, generous and with-it, in good shape and not oldfashioned. I’m looking for a man who is smart, kind, attentive, affectionate and well-groomed, for companionship and closeness. Ellie, 73, seeking: M, l ACTIVE HANDY LEFTY DREAMER Active person who enjoys travel, hiking, skiing, mountain biking, pickleball.

Most often found outdoors being active or caring for animals. The past couple years have been spent renovating a historic home. I have most enjoyed building on the home’s character and transitioning it into a functional, warm, cozy space. Interested in meeting people with similar interests and values.

Built_For_Adventure, 52, seeking: W, l HEART, SOUL, WATER AND EARTH Settled, strong, self-sufficient woman seeks life partner. I enjoy my job and also love being outside playing in the dirt. I’m looking for someone who enjoys rambling conversations and long walks, is emotionally intelligent with a good sense of humor and willing to build a solid relationship. Active interests in regenerative agriculture, critters, playing music and chess a plus.

Greener, 62, seeking: W, TM, TW, NBP, l

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W = Women M = Men TW = Trans women TM = Trans men Q = Genderqueer people NBP = Nonbinary people NC = Gender nonconformists Cp = Couples Gp = Groups

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KINDHEARTED AND TRULY HAPPY I am new to the area and looking for male companionship. Someone to laugh with, go to the movies with, hang out with. I am funny, happy and for the most part quite content with my life. But I am lonely and want to find someone with whom I can connect. Chemistry is more important than looks. Sharilynn, 66, seeking: M, l INDEPENDENT BUT LOYAL Friendly, sociable. Love solitude and nature but equally enjoy people. Needing balance in a relationship: independence, but seeking companionship. Is finding both a friend and a lover too much to ask? I’m a romantic but don’t require traditional gestures: A note with an offer of late-night cuddles is as good as a bejeweled offering. Seeking the unexpected. Naturewoman, 61, seeking: M SOFT-SPOKEN, ENJOYS WIT & PUNS Caring, observant and thoughtful, I enjoy reading, live theater, community events, walking and dining out.

Sunshine brightens my day. Seeking a gentlemanly companion to share activities and travel. As a Leo, I bring warmth and loyalty to relationships. Let’s savor life’s simple pleasures together.

Pretty_In_Pink, 71, seeking: M, l KIND, CREATIVE, CURIOUS Active, humorous, intelligent, respectful woman seeking companionship, emotional connection and intimacy.

I enjoy nature, deep conversation, community events. I’m a music lover and social justice is important to me. I like to balance spontaneity and routine, create and explore old and new hobbies and places. Calendula, 36, seeking: M, l RESOURCEFUL, ATHLETIC FEMINIST I’m a girl who likes tools. Sarcastic take on life. I enjoy repairing and repurposing used goods. I keep busy with mountain biking, rowing, cycling, hiking. I keep sane by meditating and gardening. I’m always modifying recipes for baked goods. I’m a fan of baroque music and historical fiction. Looking for other sporty women to share conversation and adventures.

Must be grounded, bright, artistic, kind.

SharpSunshine, 52, seeking: W, l

CASTING CALL: WHIMSICAL PLAYMATE Ex-professor-cum-higher-ed administrator by day, community theater nerd by night. Petite woman looking for a costar who is kind, open to new experiences, adventurous, curious, thoughtful, funny and witty. I’ll cook you some amazing Indian food and destroy you in board game competition before we jet off to snorkel the shores of the Big Island. daybor, 44, seeking: M, W, TM, l HONEST, CARING AND FUN I enjoy experiencing different things and exploring new places, whether in my backyard or across the country. I am honest, caring, like to laugh, and like to spend time with family and friends. I am socially active and enjoy volunteering and helping others. Would like to laugh and share the joys of life with someone.

LaughandEnjoy, 62, seeking: M, l HAPPY AND LAID-BACK I am hardworking, loving, caring, sensitive and observant. A Christian seeking truth within the spiritual side of life. I am impressed by nature; being outdoors in natural environments restores me. I love meeting people. And I enjoy live music. I am blessed with good health and would like to share my life with the right person.

Quietromantic, 67, seeking: M, l READY TO PLAY FOR KEEPS? Are you ready for adventure? Broadway show, hiking in Sedona, wine in Portugal? And then home to stack wood for winter and stir minestrone soup? Generous, spirited, joyfully feisty, this (previously) redheaded woman will make your life worth living to the fullest. You will never be bored. Seeking kind, intelligent man-friend 55 to 70 with belly laugh who is ready to play for keeps. springpeeper, 64, seeking: M, l

MEN seeking...

HEAVY METAL DAD Security officer at two locations. Busy single full-time dad. Looking for someone with whom to spend what little free time I have. bthibodeau, 45, seeking: W, l

POSITIVE, DOWN-TO-EARTH, STABLE, COMPASSIONATE Hey! Just a girl looking for an honest, fellow compassionate person who loves nature and life in Vermont. I’m looking for a connection that evolves into a long-term relationship. Let’s go hiking together, go on spontaneous day adventures, explore new towns, cook delicious dinners together, and go paddleboarding or Nordic skiing. Let’s sit by a fire under starlight.

Silenceandstarlight, 54, seeking: M, l

CREATIVE ANALOG OUTDOORSY ANIMAL LOVER “Passionate and creative” describes me. I love my friends. I love animals.

Happy being by myself, but a perfect day would be with friends for a day on the water — stopping for coffee, stopping to pet dogs. Paddling, lunch on shore, campfire, guitars and singing.

Appreciate women who are kind and confident in their beautiful curviness.

Makeup, weight over-consciousness and shaving not required. Be yourself.

LeftTheMatrix, 64, seeking: W, l

ADVENTUROUS OPTIMIST WHO LOVES LIFE I am looking for a man who can make me laugh, enjoys life’s adventures, and values kindness and stability. Someone whose life complements mine, and I theirs. If you’re interested in good conversations, spontaneous adventure and sharing simple moments, let’s connect!

GirlFromtheNorthCountry, 59, seeking: M

NERDY SOUTHERNER KEEPIN’ WARM A recent transplant from the South and now that things have settled down, I’m looking to meet people and explore this beautiful state. I enjoy finding new places to eat and seeing live music. Even though I don’t drink, I don’t care if you do. wtfitscoldhere, 42, seeking: W, l

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

FIT AND SINGLE Lawyer, cook, oenophile, climber, skier, kayaker, gourmand. Passionate about representing battered/trafficked women for free. I have what I need in life, all I lack is someone — the one other — to share it with. Carnegie Hall followed by the Russian Tea Room or Tyree. Eating ramen in our extreme four-season tent, snorkeling or just sharing that first cup of coffee in the morning. 70yearsYoung, 70, seeking: W, l LIFELONG LEARNER These are a few of my favorite things: learning, reading, humor, bicycling, deep conversation, humor, building things, fixing things, and last — but not least — humor.

Any day I learn something new is a good day. In conversation, my default mode is listening. Listening to someone and truly hearing them is such a simple gift we can give. Kendallrnh, 61, seeking: W, l SEEKING AUTHENTICITY AND CONNECTION I thrive on collaboration, creativity and making things work. I’m a beginner viola player exploring music’s emotional power and love sailing for balance. When not practicing or on the water, I’m coding and solving problems. Recently out of a long relationship. I’m looking for someone who values deep connections and authenticity, and understands that my kids come first. learningviola, 46, seeking: W, l BUILDING BLOCKS Searching for chemistry and attraction, true friendship and companionship, laughter, and love (not necessarily in that order). Tiberius, 61, seeking: W YOGI, PLANT LOVER, SEEKING Seeking a connection. I never realized that I have been working my whole life on being the weird uncle with good stories.

I am very Instagrammable. Into all the current trends. Chef, baker, former roadie and expert houseplanter. Daily yogi.

Looking for something real. Old enough to know better, not old enough to have it all figured out. Seanfoleyr, 42, seeking: W, l CURIOUS, SOCIAL, LAID-BACK Divorced seven years and ready to move on. I am a 50+ male who passes for early 40s (or so I’m told). I am at a point in my life where I want someone to share experiences of all kinds together.

I am curious about life in general but history and nature in particular.

Looking for a woman who wants to go out and adventure or stay in and cuddle, depending on the mood. Man_ Seeking_Contact, 59, seeking: W, l CARING, COMPASSIONATE, ENERGETIC, PEACEFUL, STABLE Hey there. I hope to find a person who is mindful, present in the moment, happy being herself, radiates wholesomeness, has her own personal future plans, is affectionate, expressive, caring, gentle, kind, realizes the joy of living with someone who truly cares, is lifenourishing and priceless. Just ask a child: They know! CEF, 77, seeking: W, l NOTHING TO SEE HERE Hi, and thanks for checking me out.

I’m a happy, balanced, self-reflecting man. Recently relocated to Vermont from New York. I’m seeking a physically active, kind and positive young-atheart woman to do fun things with! rickfreeze, 59, seeking: W, l OPEN-MINDED, COULD BE FUN I am polite, considerate, caring and am an easy communicator. I am fun to be with, either at dinner or on the ski slopes. I like to please, and am interested in friends with benefits.

SilverKnightFun, 72, seeking: W, Cp

IT’S AN INTERESTING BUCKET LIST Hello. Open-minded guy looking for FWB. Emphasize friends. Not necessarily long-term, but you’ve got to be sure there is a spark if you expect to light a fire. An open-minded couple where everyone gets to play? My pegging queen? A sexy T-girl who wants a daddy? Hit me up!

RavensDream58, 27, seeking: W, TW, Cp

TRANS WOMEN seeking...

COMMUNITY-MINDED AND INDEFENSIBLY JOYFUL I love writing, dancing, making music and meaningful action. My favorite conversations are about people’s passions.

I like hiking, biking and paddling, but I spend a lot of time happily indoors being social or creative or productive. I’m interested in people of all genders and am seeking a connection that generates joy every day for us both. Sylph, 56, seeking: M, W, TM, TW, Q, NC, NBP, l

TRANS MEN seeking...

INDUSTRIOUS, NERDY, PURSUING KNOWLEDGE Student and professional artist constantly pursuing new hobbies and studies.

Looking for friends to tinker and hang with or a partner for more or less the same. Friendly and open-minded but shy to start. Still wears a mask in crowds. grimblegromble, 23, seeking: W, TW, l

GENDERQUEER PEOPLE seeking...

GENDERQUEER, SINGER-SONGWRITER, INTERFAITH MINISTER It’s me, from the “Cherie & Yolanda” show in the ‘90s. Moved to NYC in 2001; met my husband, Glen; together 20 years; now in Vermont after his death. I am a transfemme genderqueer singersongwriter and interfaith minister.

Youthful looks and attitude, long gray hair, stocky build, funny, compassionate.

Looking for a cisgender man who appreciates the femininity and spirituality in me. RevYolanda, 28, seeking: M, l

NONBINARY PEOPLE seeking...

LOOKING FOR OUTDOORSY I’m very creative and open-minded.

Spend my days foraging in the forest and gardening, working at a greenhouse days in the summer. I’m intersex, born with both male and female genitalia.

Looking for a man interested in connecting with my female side to date and form a long-term relationship with. Dajag181, 29, seeking: M, l

COUPLES seeking...

KINKY COUPLE SEEKS ADVENTUROUS PLAYMATE We have explored each other’s boundaries and fulfilled many fantasies along the way. We are looking for new friends to bring into our sexual circle with new possibilities. Help us fulfill our desires for exploration, and we will all learn together through mutual satisfaction. kinkyvermonters, 48, seeking: M, W, Cp FUN COUPLE LOOKING FOR EXPLORATION We are a secure couple who enjoy the outdoors, good wine, great food, playing with each other, exploring our boundaries and trying new things. We are 47 and 50, looking for a fun couple or bi man to play and explore with us. We are easygoing, and we’d love to meet you and see where our mutual adventures take us. vthappycouple, 51, seeking: M, Cp, Gp

i SPY

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

dating.sevendaysvt.com

ELIZA THE COLD PLUNGE HOTTIE We chatted briefly after both emerging from the frigid lake at sunset. You had a big smile that warmed me right up. Want to meet for another dip? When: Thursday, October 31, 2024. Where: Texaco Beach. You: Woman. Me: Man. #916211 STANDING IN THE SNACK AISLE I was standing in the snack aisle holding a coffee. You approached me and said I have a great vibe. I thought you had a great vibe too, but my mind was too slow to say it! Very kind of you to say, and I’d love to chat more. I promise I’ll be more talkative. When: Saturday, December 14, 2024. Where: City Market.

You: Woman. Me: Man. #916210 SLAP AND TICKLE Trying to teach someone a lesson when you have yet to learn yours is entertaining. Domination and manipulation were always the wrong way to go about things. The only way, it seems, to find peace is to first cause chaos. Only after the dust settles will we see who truly led with love and who led with lust and lost. When: Friday, December 6, 2024. Where: everywhere I go. You: Group. Me: Woman. #916209 EXITING THE INDIGO GIRLS CONCERT Green cargo jumpsuit, leather jacket, white Docs. Hair’s dark, curly, Mohawked.

While exiting you overheard me talking.

We laughed and carried on. Then you bumped into another stranger.

I exclaimed “Hey, you’re supposed to bump into me!” and you playfully did.

Then it ended — lost in the crowd.

I’m tall, queer, short brown hair, large glasses, in black jeans and gray coat.

When: Monday, December 9, 2024.

Where: Flynn Theater. You: Nonbinary person. Me: Woman. #916207

DESMOND DAN I saw you in the Desmond Cheese aisle at the Steely Dan store. Hot! When: Tuesday, December 10, 2024. Where: Gnarnia. You: Group. Me: Man. #916208 OLD FRIENDS, ENOSBURG TO SALISBURY Thinking of some friends from some years back, whose company I enjoyed very much (about 15 years ago!). I believe the feeling was mutual. I’ve reconnected with one of you and I’d love to get back in touch with the female half of the couple. Ja*na, how are you? Last we talked, I told you I’m up in Montgomery these days. When: Tuesday, December 10, 2024. Where: Enosburg. You: Couple. Me: Man. #916206 KING AT LADY LAMB You melt me like a bashful puddle. I was working. You, tall with feathery hair, unbuttoned flannel by the right column with your friend(?). Still with that sweetie who was wearing the suit this summer? Your quick, smiley hello made me a swooning schoolboy. Eight years, I’m still wanting to kiss your rosy cheeks and listen to you read me the book about blue. When: Thursday, December 5, 2024. Where: Lady Lamb show, Higher Ground. You: Nonbinary person. Me: Genderqueer. #916204 MY HEART BEATS FOR KAZAKHSTAN Me: a new patient. You: took my blood pressure. It was high for the first time in my life, but I think I know why: I was completely smitten by you! Your face was covered by a mask, but Moses only saw part of God’s face on the mountain, and that didn’t stop him from recognizing something divine, either. When: Tuesday, November 26, 2024. Where: Burlington. You: Woman. Me: Man. #916203

JERICHO COUNTRY STORE We were buying sandwiches and noticed how kind you were with the gentleman who was with you. We talked about the Jericho museum and Norwich. Might you have any interest in a walk and/or lunch? When: Wednesday, November 13, 2024. Where: Jericho Country Store.

You: Woman. Me: Man. #916205 BE HONEST Seeing you hanging off another man’s arm made me realize how manipulative you are. I showed you the flaws in my armor, just for you to leave me the second I had a bad day. You never respected or cared about me, if you moved on that fast. You are a liar. Be honest and apologize so we can try again. When: Saturday, November 30, 2024. Where: South Hero. You: Woman. Me: Man. #916202 MYTHICAL BIRD? You’re a vegan, I’m pretty sure.

You’re a big fan of the barter system.

You drive an orange Subaru, and I think you’re from New York. Maybe you play bass? We’ve never had the chance to really meet. Though we’ve hung out a couple times, I never caught your name. When: Thursday, August 15, 2024. Where: Rumney.

You: Man. Me: Man. #916200 BOHEMIAN WEDNESDAY Just a note of appreciation for the two people I met briefly at Bohemian on Wednesday. I was wearing an obnoxious orange hunting jacket and a sweatshirt reading “I love hot moms.”

I just wanted to let you know that chatting with the two of you made my day — thanks for your humanity!

When: Wednesday, December 4, 2024.

Where: Bohemian Bakery, Montpelier.

You: Couple. Me: Woman. #916199 GRATITUDE BEGETS GRATITUDE I let you into traffic, and you did a rare thing, these days: You gave a wave of thanks. Now will you let me treat you to a luscious libation or decadent dessert of your choosing, within reason (living on a budget)? Gratitude is a wonderful attitude. When: Tuesday, December 3, 2024. Where: Turning left onto E. Allen St. toward Winooski (leaving gas station) around 5 p.m.

You: Woman. Me: Man. #916198

Ask REVEREND Dear Auddie Lansine,

TEAL COAT, WHITE PURSE You: woman in a dark teal coat with a white purse walking up Church Street.

Me: guy driving up College Street.

You probably didn’t see me because I was in my car, but I thought you were stunning. Coffee sometime?

When: Monday, December 2, 2024.

Where: Corner of Church and College.

You: Woman. Me: Man. #916197 MYER’S BAGELS We (couple) saw you (woman) coming out the door. We greeted you by holding the door. Your smile was contagious, and you looked like a Hallmark actress (lol). Happy Thanksgiving, and hope you have a joyful Christmas.

In today’s world, it’s always a joy to see people smiling. Meet for coffee someday? When: Tuesday, December 3, 2024. Where: Myer’s Bagels. You: Woman. Me: Woman. #916196 THE LADY AND THE SAUSAGE I first spied you many years ago — whether it was on a playground or at a turkey luncheon is still up for debate.

Either way, I have been head over heels in love with you pretty much ever since.

I am the luckiest lady in the world to be with you. Happy birthday, Sausage!

Yours forever, AG When: Tuesday, December 3, 2024. Where: Mad River Valley. You: Man. Me: Woman. #916195 BAD NIGHT; KIND PERSON You: checking IDs at JP’s after 10:30ish on Saturday. Asked me if I was OK. Me: entered and exited several times, paced all around downtown, went and sat in City Hall Park, left the bar for good having clearly been crying. I said I probably would be OK, and thanks.

Your kindness meant a lot. I’m mostly OK now. When: Saturday, November 9, 2024. Where: JP’s. You: Trans woman. Me: Trans man. #916194 WHAT’S A SOLARA? These are the only words I could think to shout at you from across the gas pumps.

Thank you for educating me on classic Toyota coupes — did you know you’re a handsome devil with an outrageously good-looking smile, and charming banter to boot? How do you sleep at night? I’d sleep better with you next to me! Coffee sometime? When: Thursday, November 28, 2024. Where: Orleans Maplefields.

You: Man. Me: Woman. #916193



Irreverent counsel on life’s conundrums

Dear Reverend,

I’m going to a New Year’s Eve party with a bunch of friends.

I’ve had a secret crush on one of them for a while, but I’ve been too shy to do anything about it. Would it be ridiculous if I tried to give them a kiss at midnight?

Auddie Lansine

(WOMAN, 22)

There are all sorts of New Year’s Eve superstitions and traditions, but the midnight kiss is one of my favorites. I’ve always believed it brings good luck in the New Year, but I never really considered where that idea originated.

Apparently, the custom can be traced back to the ancient Roman festivals of Saturnalia and Lupercalia.

During these celebrations — which were held around the time that we now consider the end of one year and the beginning of another — people exchanged kisses to cleanse the spirit and ensure good fortune.

Interesting? Sure. Helpful in your situation? Not really.

Since you’re already friends with this person, it doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch to think that you might share a little smooch at a party. To ensure that you don’t drop the ball when the ball drops, keep an eye on the time. Be near your crush when

THE PRETTY LOBSTER MAN He was a seafood clerk. I spotted him across the aisle, standing there, getting a lobster from the tank. He said, “Do you like my happy lobsters in their shiny tank?” I did! When: Wednesday, December 4, 2024. Where: Shaw’s.

You: Man. Me: Man. #916201 BPS I wish I had talked to you more. I’ll marry you in my dreams. Good luck in your new adventure. Maybe I’ll see you again. If I do, I’ll ask you out. I’ll miss seeing you every day. Hopefully our paths will cross again. When: Friday, November 22, 2024. Where: Breakroom.

You: Man. Me: Woman. #916192 MISSED TWO CHANCES Saw you this summer at the Norwich Bookstore; you bought a book about the NYC music scene in the ‘70s. We ran into each other again a couple hours later, on your way back home. I was driving, you were walking, and I realized later I should have offered to drop you off.

How was that book? When: Monday, July 15, 2024. Where: Norwich. You: Woman. Me: Woman. #916190 TOSCA AT THE PARAMOUNT A rainy Tuesday afternoon. Tosca at the Paramount had just ended. I rushed out to get the car for my mom; you were there to pick up yours. “Is it over?” you asked. “All but the curtain calls,” I replied, putting on my raincoat. By the time I got back, you were gone. When: Tuesday, November 26, 2024. Where: The Paramount Theater, Rutland.

You: Woman. Me: Man. #916189 TURKEY TROT IN WESTFORD We chatted a bit after finishing the 10K. I liked talking with you. Afterward I regretted I did not suggest we exchange phone numbers so we could enter a race together. When: Saturday, November 23, 2024.

Where: Turkey Trot in Westford.

You: Woman. Me: Man. #916187 HEALTHY BOUNDARIES To the home-wrecker from Gardenside — you can have the narcissistic liar, but stay out of my house and off of my turf. When: Saturday, November 16, 2024. Where: my house. You: Man. Me: Man. #916186

the countdown starts and give them a saucy smile. If they seem into it, when the clock strikes 12, go for it.

Here’s the sticky wicket: I don’t think a peck on the cheek will be enough to tip your pal off to the fact that you like-like them. But unless the stars align and the moment is right, you probably shouldn’t go straight in for a juicy lip lock without warning, either.

Being at a party, where there’s a good chance of intoxication of some kind or another, maybe isn’t the best time to come clean about having a crush on someone.

So here’s a wild idea: How about you make it your New Year’s resolution to finally let your crush know how you feel? You could even give yourself a deadline by the end of January.

Just be sure to eat some black-eyed peas and collard greens on New Year’s Day so you’ll have good luck in your endeavors.

Good luck and God bless,

The Reverend

What’s your problem?

Send it to asktherev@sevendaysvt.com.

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

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GM looking for a man or men for mutual pleasure. Maybe develop into LTR or FWB. Would like regular or semiregular visits. Fun and adventurous. #L1812 I miss the touch, the flirting, the taste, the smell of a woman. I’m 69, retired and disabled. I also have many facets that make me up. NEK please, thanks. #L1811 I’m an 80-y/o woman seeking a man for companionship and friendship. I am a widow living in Burlington. Love to go out to dinner and movies and have good conversation. #L1809

I’m a 60-y/o SWF seeking a 55-70-y/o SM. Retired, healthy, fit and outdoorsy. ISO a kindred spirit with whom to share Vermont’s trails. I enjoy mountain and gravel biking, cross-country skiing and yearround hiking as well as a good Vermont brew, current events, reading and eating as locally as possible. Self-deprecating sense of humor a plus! #L1816 I’m a SWF, 71 y/o, seeking a white or Black man 50-70 y/o.

I want companionship/sex, movies, warmth; I love music.

Phone calls only. #L1815 CD into fetish? Tight and shiny clothing? #L1814

Single woman, 59. Wise, mindful. Seeking tight unit with man, friend, love.

Country living, gardens, land to play on. Emotionally, intellectually engaged. Lasting chats. Appreciation for past experience. Please be kind, stable and well established.

Phone number, please. #L1813 I’m an 80-y/o man in good health. I own a ranch house on Route 110 in Tunbridge, south of fairgrounds. Never married.

No children, retired. Like going out to eat and riding around.

Looking for a nice lady for a long-term relationship. #L1810

HOW TO REPLY TO THESE LOVE LETTERS: Seal your reply — including your preferred contact info — inside an envelope. Write your pen pal’s box number on the outside of that envelope and place it inside another envelope with payment. Responses for Love Letters must begin with the #L box number.

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(made out to “Seven Days”) in the outer envelope. To send unlimited replies for only $15/month, call us at 802-865-1020, ext. 161 for a membership (credit accepted).

PUBLISH YOUR MESSAGE ON THIS PAGE!

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Interested readers will send you letters in the mail. No internet required!

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SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 25, 2024-JANUARY 8, 2025

SWM, bi, seeking guys for fun.

Any race. I’m 6’1, 175 pounds.

Clean, safe and discreet. Love being a bottom. Respond with a phone number. #L1804 58-y/o enjoys the simple things: walks with my dogs, candlelit evenings, window shopping. I don’t have to have someone to complete me but would love to share the beauty of life with a man who also is ready to dance like nobody’s watching. #L1808 76-y/o male seeking a female.

Widower, Burlington resident, gardener, fisherman and writer wants to meet you for dinner, movies, events and conversation. You: old, kind, no issues. Possible friendship, LTR. I don’t watch football. #L1807

Internet-Free Dating!

Reply to these messages with real, honest-to-goodness letters. DETAILS BELOW. T-girl? Transgender? CD? Gay? I’m a dom, so looking for subs.

Thanks. #L1799 I’m a sweet, fit, busy 48y/o DILF type seeking a 28- to 68-y/o-ish woman who wants some more affection in her life. Let’s have a great evening together every month and share good memories and joyful anticipation in between. #L1806 I’m a SWM seeking a Black couple, both bi. I’m clean, a nonsmoker and don’t drink.

Would like a weekly meet, on weekends. My place is private.

I only date Black men and women. Age no problem. Phone.

Serious. #L1802 Handsome SWM, young-looking 60, yearning for a woman’s connection and intimacy.

Seeking friendly relations with slim-average 45- to 60-y/o, kind, smart, respectful, humorous, playful. Activities indoors and outdoors — dinners, talks, walks, nature, TV, entertainment, day trips, overnights, spontaneity, hobbies, more. #L1803

Mid-60s, SWM, 6’, 175 pounds.

Looking for a forever romance but just meeting with new friends can work, too! Extremely romantic and passionate! I stay active as I run, hike, bike; play golf, tennis and pickleball; and work out at the Edge. Full of spontaneity and love dancing, travel. I will love you snuggling in my arms always as I shower you with love and romance! #L1801 I’m a 54-y/o male seeking a 50- to 60-y/o female. Looking for an honest person. Sex is less important. I enjoy taking walks, soft rock and movies, in or out.

Love to go out to eat. No drugs, no smoking. #L1800 SWM, 69, seeking a SF. I am warm, friendly, clean and respectful, seeking a LTR. Just an ordinary guy looking for same.

Phone number, please. #L1798 SWM, 55, seeking Barbie with brains. FWB/NSA relationship and open to a LTR. Younger or older, for fun play. Please send a picture and contact info. I’m looking for one woman for a special time together. #L1797

Describe yourself and who you’re looking for in 40 words below:

Required confidential info:

(OR, ATTACH A SEPARATE PIECE OF PAPER.)

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I’m a _________________________________________________ __ ____

NAME

AGE + GENDER (OPTIONAL)

seeking a____________________________________________ ___________ AGE + GENDER (OPTIONAL)

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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.

PAULA ROUTLY

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