Seven Days, December 30, 2020

VE RMO NT ’S INDE PEN DENT VO IC E DECEMBER 30, 2020-JANUARY 13, 2021 VOL.26 NO.14 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

Reporters on the stories behind the stories PAGE 12 / Arts news that shaped the year PAGE 26 Remembering Vermonters we lost in 2020 PAGE 32 / The year in food PAGE 42 / The best Vermont music of 2020 PAGE 52 / PLUS: Staytripper, Vermonters’ road map to winter fun

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The last year

COMPILED BY JOHN JAMES & ANDREA SUOZZO

TOPTWENTY MOST-READ 2020 STORIES ON SEVENDAYSVT.COM

2020

PAGE 19

GOOD

VE RMONT’ S I ND E P E ND E NT VOI C E JANUARY 15-22, 2020 VOL.25 NO.16 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

V E R M O N T’S I N D E PE N D E N T V O I C E JANUARY 8-15, 2020 VOL.25 NO.15 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

PAGE 18

NEIGHBORS François Clemmons remembers his years with Mister Rogers in advance of a new memoir B Y D A N B O L L E S , PA G E 3 2

KHAAAAAAAAAAN!

PAGE 38

William Shatner talks ‘Star Trek’

THE MAGICAL FRUIT In celebration of beans

TOONED IN

PAGE 46

PICTURES OF HEALTH

PAGE 78

FIGURE IT OUT

PAGE 30

Better care through graphic design

Rachel Lindsay returns

SPICY SOLUTION

PAGE 36

The meditative joys of skating

Gun advocates claim sanctuary PAGE 12

PAGE 38

GLASS ACTION A Burlington startup aims to turn recyclables into building material.

And it may have competition.

BY MOLLY WALSH PAGE 30

DEGREES OF

PANIC

THE YEAR IN COVERS

PAGE 40

The Yerbary reboots fire cider

TRIGGERED?

AT A LOSS

Processing grief through art

V ER MON T ’ S I N D EP EN D EN T V OI CE JANUARY 29-FEBRUARY 5, 2020 VOL.25 NO.18 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

Food insecurity at UVM

BTV group removes hateful stickers

V E RM O NT’S I NDE PE NDE NT V O I C E JANUARY 22-29, 2020 VOL.25 NO.17 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

HUNGER STRIKES

URGENT A-PEEL

LEGAL PRESCRIPTION

How Vermonters are responding to the climate crisis

BY CHEL SEA ED G A R , PA G E 3 0

HAPPY TRAILS

PAGE 16

Feds investigate Purdue Pharma

BLACKBIRD SINGIN’

PAGE 34

Poetic odes to x-country skiing

PAGE 44

Crafty cocktails in Craftsbury

SPRING 2020

BY PAUL HEINTZ , PA GE 28

PAGE 12

MAKING HISTORY

Inside the Monkton Wood Bank

SING-CERELY YOURS

PAGE 38

I DOOBIE

PAGE 36

Chorus delivers singing valentines

FEELIN’ THE LOVE

PAGE 38

On weed weddings

TAKE A HIKE?

PAGE 12

Bernie wins New Hampshire

ON THE MOVES

PAGE 13

Proposals would bump BTV taxes

CRIMSON QUEEN

Indie-rock superstar Caroline Rose returns

dark

After 40 years and five mayors, Doreen Kraft steers Burlington City Arts into the South End

BY MARGARET GRAYS O N, PAGE 28

Sanders Wraps ‘Super Tuesday’ at the Expo

VISUAL VOCABULARY

PAGE 18

A Town Meeting Day primer

SWEET, JESUS

PAGE 36

An illustrated Abenaki dictionary

Patsy Kelso

ELECTION

Dr. Erin Kurek

ON THE FLY

PAGE 12

Solar sector’s future is cloudy

CORE PHILOSOPHY

PAGE 17

BTV airport condos for sale

Erin Schifilliti

MaryEllen Mendl

Bidur Dahal

Gabrielle Stevens

Tara Cullinan

PAGE 40

Apple ace joins Champlain Orchards

MORE COVID-19 COVERAGE: Students, town grapple with Middlebury College closure PAGE 16 / News updates

from around the state PAGE 12 / Bernie presses on amid coronavirus crisis PAGE 12 / Performing arts venues confront closures PAGE 20 / Minding manners in a pandemic PAGE 31 / The music scene goes underground PAGE 40

PAGE 38

Church copes with climate crisis

MAY 2020 VOL.27 NO.4

BUDGET BUSTED

CRUEL AND UNUSUAL?

Virus sinks state finances PAGE 14

Vermont Humanities presses for change

HOUSE CALLS

KIDS VT MAY ISSUE INSIDE!

Home nurses face pandemic challenges PAGE 12

Amid pandemic, inmates want out

PAGE 26

Birth Contemplation

PAGE 12

The uncertainty of welcoming a baby during a pandemic

PAGE 44

BROUGHT TO YOU BY

BY PAUL HEINTZ, PAGE 32

Vignettes of Vermonters adjusting to life in a pandemic

Home

SICK

V E R M ONT ’S I ND E PE ND E NT V OI C E MAY 6-13, 2020 VOL.25 NO.32 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

Gov. Phil Scott leads Vermont through a historic crisis

VER M ONT ’S INDEPENDENT VOICE APRIL 29-MAY 6, 2020 VOL.25 NO.31 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

MONEY ISSUE

VERMONT ’ S INDEP ENDENT VOICE APRIL 22-29, 2020 VOL.25 NO.30 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

The Man Behind the Mask

VE R MO NT ’ S I ND E P E ND E NT VO I C E APRIL 15-22, 2020 VOL.25 NO.29 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

V ER MO NT’S I NDEPENDENT V O I CE APRIL 1-8, 2020 VOL.25 NO.27 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

V E R M ON T’S IN D E P E N D E N T V OIC E APRIL 8-15, 2020 VOL.25 NO.28 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

BY ALISON NOVAK, P. 26

VE RMON T’ S I N D E P E N D E N T VOI C E MARCH 25-APRIL 1, 2020 VOL.25 NO.26 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

Design star Billy Cotton on his Vermont values

2020

PAGE 16

SUN DOWN

NEW DIRECTION

Tips for live-streaming concerts

An early read on the 2020 housing market

These COVID-19 FIGHTERS wield information, medicine and disinfectant PA GE 2 6

VERMONT NURSERY AND LANDSCAPE ASSOCIATION/GREEN WORKS AWARD WINNERS ANNOUNCED!

SHOWS MUST GO ON

Midd kids build Habitat homes and architecture skills

PAGE 28

BY COURTNEY L AMDIN,

NEED TO KNOW

PAGE 41

Burst pipe hampers resto biz

home design real estate

ARTS AND KRAFT

V ER MON T’ S IN DEP EN DEN T V OICE MARCH 18-25, 2020 VOL.25 NO.25 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

PAGE 38

in the

MIDWAY OH, BOILINGTON

PAGE 22

Local dancers explore identity

Trent’s Bread honors a Vermont baking legend

PAGE 58

Public libraries adapt to the 21st century — with technology, tools and ukuleles — and uphold democracy

KINDLING COMMUNITY

PAGE 35

Online group explores BTV’s past

ON THE RISE AGAIN

keeps

18

16

14

10 Grunts Move Junk gives vets a new mission

The spring issue of Nest

the public

B Y D A N B O L L E S, MA RGA RE T GRAY SO N, SA L LY PO L L A K, PA ME L A PO L STO N & E L I ZA B E TH M. SE Y L E R, PA GE 2 8

HAVE YOU HERD?

6 Gardener Jen Kennedy nurtures soil and soul

INSIDE:

V E RM O N T ’ S IN D E P E N D E N T V O IC E MARCH 11-18, 2020 VOL.25 NO.24 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

B Y K E N P I C A R D , PA G E 3 0

PAGE 13

PAGE 34

City of Burlington

VOL.25 NO.23 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

Tribal chief Don Stevens represents a new era of Abenaki leadership in Vermont

Bernie Sanders leaves Iowa a front-runner.

Next stop: New Hampshire

Last farmer-legislator selling off cows

‘The Crossword Show’ comes to ArtsRiot

How the

Elder Statesman

MICHI-CAN’T: BAD NIGHT FOR BERNIE

THAT’S PUZZLING

REDACTED

VE R M ONT’S I ND E PE ND E NT VOI C E MARCH 4-11, 2020

ONWARD TO

PAGES 12 & 13

VE RMON T’ S I N DE PE N DE N T VOI C E FEBRUARY 26-MARCH 4, 2020 VOL.25 NO.22 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

‘ VICTORY ’

BERN PILE

Sanders under and on the attack

PAGE 12

VE R M O N T ’S I N D E PE N D E N T VO I C E FEBRUARY 19-26, 2020 VOL.25 NO.21 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

VERMONT ’S IND EPEND ENT VOICE FEBRUARY 12-19, 2020 VOL.25 NO.20 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

V ERM ON T’S IN DEPEN DEN T V OICE FEBRUARY 5-12, 2020 VOL.25 NO.19 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

FIGHTING WORDS City council race heats up in SoBu

Coping with death in the age of a pandemic

BY C HE L S E A E DGAR, PAGE 3 2

Everyone in a Burlington duplex battled the coronavirus — and lived to tell the tale

BY C OUR TN EY L A M D I N , PA GE 32

PAG E 26

BLAME GAME

MEDICINE MAN

PAGE 17

Police shooting scrutinized

DISASTER PREP

PAGE 34

Vaccine researcher on COVID-19

FACTORY REFRESH

PAGE 38

PARENT TRAPPED

PAGE 12

Businesses shift to virus gear

Eateries pivot in a pandemic

HELTER SHELTER

PAGE 16

Adult kids return home to Vermont

INSIDE!

WAIT FOR IT

Kids VT April issue

PAGE 35

Animal rescues adapt in pandemic

MINDING MONEY

PAGE 18

Aid for self-employed is weeks off

CLOSING CURTAINS

PAGE 38

Therapists ease financial angst

PAGE 24

Summer theater season nixed

SHELTER IN PLAYS

ON THE RISE

PAGE 40

An actor’s online quarantine log

IN-TENTS FEELINGS

ON THE MOVE Students’ return raises concerns

PAGE 12

Vermont state colleges in crisis

NO-POMP CIRCUMSTANCE Seniors end high school in isolation

GROWTH INDUSTRY

PAGE 38

SOLE’S CALLING

PAGE 44

FULL SERVICE

PAGE 24

Local shoemaker pivots to PPE

The pandemic gardening boom

HEALTH FOOD

PAGE 44

Virtual programs for at-risk youth

PAGE 42

PRIMARY PUSH

INSIDE!

Candidates stump at a safe distance PAGE 12

Introducing Staytripper, a monthly road map to adventures around Vermont

Will aid boost broadband in VT? PAGE 13

PAGE 14

A pandemic literary journal (and coloring contest!) PAGE 29

PAGE 46

VT restaurants feed docs

CARES PACKAGE

MARKET RESEARCH How new regulations have changed farmers markets

Summer camps open for business

PAGE 12

HARD KNOCKS

PAGE 44

Isolation spurs baking boom

HAPPY TRAILS

After 23 years, Hackie says fare-well PAGE 28

LOSS

George Floyd’s death spurs Vermonters to call for police reform

BY KE N PICAR D , PAG E 36

SUMMER PREVIEW

Food insecurity grows in Vermont

FOLLOW THE MONEY

• An uncertain season for baseball in Vermont PAGE 34 • Hiking & human behavior in the summer of COVID-19 PAGE 38 • Vermont’s food trucks roll on PAGE 44

NEW! BOTTOM LINE

PAGE 11

How VT is spending $1.6 billion in aid

XX ALL FRESCO

PAGE 40

A weekly read on VT business

Xx

PAGE XX

How COVID-19 overwhelmed a Burlington nursing home

PAGE 42

COMPROMISED SITUATION

PAGE 34

Outdoor-only dining at restos

Living with chronic illness in the pandemic

CROWDED FIELD

COMPROMISED REPOSITION

Vermont businesses sweat out the pandemic PA G E 2 8

V E R M O N T’ S I NDE PE N DE N T V O IC E JULY 29-AUGUST 5, 2020 VOL.25 NO.44 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

BOTTOM LINES

RUNNING IN CIRCLES Can anybody defeat Gov. Phil Scott?

MASKED ROMANCE

PAGE 32

WHITHER WOODSIDE?

PAGE 36

Dating is tough during COVID-19

MOONRISE KINGDOM

PAGE 18

The latest on the troubled juvie center

POWER OF TWO

PAGE 24

“Drive-up” movies come to the NEK

MOORE IS MORE

PAGE 42

VOTERS’ GUIDE INSIDE!

PAGE 32

Blueberry Nights

A Goshen inn and the great outdoors

CARE PACKAGE

PAGE 17

More mural controversy on Church St.

RAMBLIN’ MAN

Far Afield

Five must-dos during Open Farm Week

LEVINE UNMASKED

BY K EN PICA RD , PA G E 3 6

WITH SUPPORT FROM

VERMONTERS Fleeing COVID-19, newcomers find temporary — or permanent — refuge in the Green Mountains

P. 10

Cast away on a fly-fishing tour in Stowe

INSIDE!

September Staytripper

POETIC JUSTICE

PAGE 24

Antidote Books highlights diversity

A

Zuckerman, Gray to top Dem ticket

MOOR MEMOIR

PAGE 14

VOTER RITES

Into the

PAGE 30

UNKNOWN

The 19th Amendment at 100

PICTURE BOOKS ABOUT WOMEN’S RIGHTS P. 14

NEW CURRICULUM FROM CLEMMONS FAMILY FARM P.20

Back to school amid a pandemic

B Y C H E L S E A E D G A R , C O U R T N E Y L A M D I N & S A S H A G O L D S T E I N , PA G E 2 4

LESSONS FROM AN ILL-FATED CAMPING TRIP P. 26

BROUGHT TO YOU BY

INSIDE!

Kids VT September issue

CLASS ACTION

PAGE 16

Cops-in-schools controversy

TAKEOUT TALES

IMPERFECT STORM

PAGE 48

SKINNY LOVE

PAGE 20

New poetry from Scudder Parker

A new series on foods to-go

SHOW STOPPER

ART HOP GUIDE

PAGE 40

VT resto fights food insecurity

HANDS ON

See what’s new inside

DISSENTING OPINION

PAGE 16

Pols ponder cops’ use of force

SUPER HERO

PAGE 24

Former U.S. diplomat pens new book

Vermont colleges laid testing plans to restart safely. Will they work?

BY DEREK BRO U W ER & A NDREA SU O Z Z O , PA GE 28

Marvel! at bird-saving cat

collars

PAGE 4

Delight! in Vermont’s pandemic pets PAGE 8

wonder! at the metamorphosis 14 of butterflies PAGE

ALSO...

Meet the amazing 6 horse lady! PAGE

the They came from 12 deep (South)! PAGE

INSIDE!

RIGHT ANGLE

All about animals

PAGE 22

Steve Benen book blasts GOP

High Spirits WITH SUPPORT FROM

How Black Lives Matter protesters occupied a park, captivated a city — and got some of what they wanted

PAGE 40

City decks South End skate park

A handy voters’ handbook

Autumn Is for Apples

BUMP AND RIND

Cheesemakers’ changing market

RAMPING DOWN?

ELECTION GUIDE INSIDE!

Grafton Getaway

PAGE 13

Has Phil Scott made Vermont more

BY PAU L HE I NT Z , PAG E 3 0

Molly Gray and Scott Milne compete for the lieutenant governor’s perch

BY DAN BOLLE S, PAGE 3 0

Southerner seeks solace in Vermont PA G E 3 2

PAGE 12

THE COVID SEMESTER

RE URE TUR ATU EEAT REA RE CR RE fEATU

PAGE 36

Parini recalls ride with Borges

Five ways to enjoy a fruitfall fall

The pandemic presents an uncertain future and long odds for Vermont’s performing arts

NORTHERN COMFORT

BY CO LIN FL ANDERS, PAGE 3 2 OCTOBER 2020

BY CHELSEA EDGAR, PAGE 26

CLIMATE CHANGES

PAGE 46

CLASS ACTION

PAGE 12

Scott’s erratic record on warming

Islands farmers market thrives

PAGE 38

Teachers, staff on return to school

MEATING DEMAND

Digging

IT!

READERS RESPOND

PAGE 40

PAGE 6

Charged feedback to “Battery Power”

Can Vermont producers keep up?

TEST FLIGHT

WEATHER REPORT

PAGE 12

COVID-19 screening at BTV

PAGE 44

Jonathan Safran Foer on food, climate

TIPS FOR A FUN AND ECO-FRIENDLY HALLOWEEN PAGE 8

SONGS FOR A SPOOKY PLAYLIST PAGE 14

EASY APPLE CAKE RECIPE PAGE 15

HEAD START SHIFTS TO VIRTUAL VISITS PAGE 18

BROUGHT TO YOU BY

INSIDE!

OUT WITH THE ART

October issue of Kids VT

PAGE 28

‘20/20 Hindsight’ at Kent Museum

FRENCH ACCENT

PAGE 44

Trés bon takeout from C’est Ça

B

HIDDEN AGENDA

SCOTT’S LOCK

Cyberattack stymies UVM Health Network

PAGE 14

PAGE 13

B Y DEREK B RO U WER, PA GE 3 4

BY KEVIN MCCALLUM & KEN PICARD , PA GE 28

NOVEMBER 2020 YOUTH SOCCER IN WINOOSKI

FULL STREAM AHEAD

PAGE 24

DEMOCRACY NOW

BUDGET BITES

PAGE 40

An early voting photo essay

TALES FROM THE CRYPT

PAGE 44

The legend of folklorist Joe Citro

Cheap eats around Vermont

PAGE 34

HOUSE HAUNTERS

PAGE 44

Living with ghosts in Hinesburg

FAMILY MOVIE NIGHT PICKS

SMALL

INSIDE!

The road map to rediscovering VT

TEACHING MUSIC DURING A PANDEMIC

BROUGHT TO YOU BY

INSIDE!

Kids VT November issue

DEVELOPING STORY

PAGE 12

New life for CityPlace Burlington?

WORTH A SHOT?

Winter Preview SLIPPERY SLOPES

PAGE 40

The bar scene à la pandemic

PAGE 32

Ski areas prep for the pandemic

STUDY BREAKS

DOUBLE

THAT’S CHILLAXING

PAGE 36

Winter swimmers in Charlotte

SNOW RESERVATIONS

WILD AND CRAZY GUYS

PAGE 44

Vermont restos brace for the cold

PAGE 35

Harry Bliss and Steve Martin’s new book

THE SCENIC ROUTE

PAGE 42

Artist hikes, paints the Long Trail

FARM TO FRONT DOOR

HOW TO SKI SAFELY THIS WINTER

MUSIC FOR MOOD-BOOSTING AND RELAXATION

NATURE FILMS FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY

COMFORT FOOD RECIPES

Vermonter can’t shake NXIVM

Home, design and real estate quarterly

INSIDE!

Essential Soldiers Virus response showcases the versatility of the Vermont National Guard

ON REBRAND

PAGE 27

A redo for Helen Day Art Center

GOLD BEENANZA

PAGE 40

BTV designer makes an imprint

THE JOY OF SNACKS A new series on local treats

PAGE 44

ANTSY VAXXERS

PAGE 13

Vermont’s vaccine distribution plans

FOR PETE’S SAKE

PAGE 38

A Christmas tree tradition in Waltham

V ER MON T’ S IN DE PEN D EN T VO ICE DECEMBER 30, 2020-JANUARY 13, 2021 VOL.26 NO.14 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

BY DE R E K BR OU WER , PA GE 30

BROUGHT TO YOU BY

VE R MO N T’ S IN D E P E ND E N T VO IC E DECEMBER 16-23, 2020 VOL.26 NO.12 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

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

INSIDE!

PAGE 15

Good Citizen At-Home Challenge Scorecard

VERM ONT’S I NDEP ENDE NT VOIC E DECEMBER 9-16, 2020 VOL.26 NO.11 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

Raj’s Revival?

PAGE 13

New History, Civics, Service Challenge!

SCORECARD INSIDE

VER MON T’S INDEPENDENT VOIC E DECEMBER 23-30, 2020 VOL.26 NO.13 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

Blazing

TRAILS

Bright Lights Good news, positive trends and stories of resilience from an awful year B Y SEVEN D AYS STAFF, PAGE 42

B Y KE V I N M C C AL L U M , PAGE 32

MERRY AND BRIGHT

PAGE 40

A local holiday events calendar

MIRO KNEW

PAGE 16

Del Pozo scandal reignites

MYRRH-ACLE WORKERS

PAGE 35

A fair-trade biz resin-ates in Vermont

HOME GOODIES

PAGE 52

Bakeries sell direct to customers

DETECTIVE COMICS

PAGE 38

Howard Norman writes graphic series

PEPPERY PAEANS

38

BY CHELSEA EDGAR, PAGE

PAGE 42

Stephen Cramer’s hot sauce poetry

COZY CUISINE

PAGE 48

Classic comfort food recipes

PAGE 44

The rise of locavore food delivery

CULT FOLLOWING

DEC 2020 / JAN 2021

ISSUE

Remote learning takes a toll on BHS students PAGE 18

Separation Anxiety

How Vermonters are coping with being apart

Unwrapping Vermont’s shop-local options in a complicated year

B

V ER MO NT ’ S IN D EP E ND EN T V OI CE DECEMBER 2-9, 2020 VOL.26 NO.10 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

FOLD BACK SO “A” MEETS “B”

Vermont film fest goes virtual

MAKING THANKSGIVING FEEL SPECIAL

V ERMONT ’S INDEPEN DENT V OICE NOVEMBER 18-25, 2020 VOL.26 NO.8 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

The state trusts that travel rules can keep COVID-19 out.

But who’s guarding the gates?

V ERMONT ’S INDEPENDEN T VOICE NOVEMBER 25-DECEMBER 2, 2020 VOL.26 NO.9 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

The climate crisis brings both deluges and droughts to Vermont

VE RM ONT’ S IND EPE NDE NT V OIC E NOVEMBER 11-18, 2020 VOL.26 NO.7 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

TORRENT

V ERMO NT ’S I N DE PE ND E NT VO ICE NOVEMBER 4-11, 2020 VOL.26 NO.6 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

VER MONT’S I NDEPENDENT VOI CE OCTOBER 28-NOVEMBER 4, 2020 VOL.26 NO.5 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

VE RM ONT ’S IN DEPE NDEN T VOIC E OCTOBER 21-28, 2020 VOL.26 NO.4 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

V E R M ON T’ S I N D E PE ND E NT V O IC E OCTOBER 14-21, 2020 VOL.26 NO.3 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

Trickle to

peril! pe r i l ! GRIEF! G RI E F !

D EST RUCTI ON! DISTRESS! DI S TRE S S !

DESTRUCTION! PAGE 32

DECEMBER 2020

COVID-19 surges in Vermont

PAGE 15

PAGE 13

Coping with sky-high anxiety in 2020

INSIDE!

DANGEROUS CURVES

UNDER SIEGE

Third term for governor

City council chicanery in BTV

A

BROUGHT TO YOU BY

B Y CHE LS E A E DGAR, PAGE 3 8

THRILLA IN MONTPELIER

PAGE 12

Retail pot legislation has new life

An iconic inn with a storied porch 10

V ER MON T ’S I N DE PE N D EN T V OI CE SEPTEMBER 23-30, 2020 VOL.25 NO.52 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

How COVID-19 is changing the places where Vermonters work, shop and live

SIMPLE

Go Fish

EMERGENT FIELD

HELPING DADS CONNECT AND SHARE

Montpelier endurance athlete and advocate Mirna Valerio is taking up space

OCTOBER 2020

6

Fall issue

VERM ONT’S IND EPE ND EN T VOI CE SEPTEMBER 16-23, 2020 VOL.25 NO.51 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

VERMONT’S INDEPENDENT VOICE SEPTEMBER 9-16, 2020 VOL.25 NO.50 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

V ER MONT ’S IN D EP E ND E NT V OIC E SEPTEMBER 2-9, 2020 VOL.25 NO.49 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

VE RMO NT’S IN DEP EN DENT VOIC E AUGUST 26-SEPTEMBER 2, 2020 VOL.25 NO.48 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

REAL ESTATE of Affairs SELF-CARE FOR PARENTS

How to host an outdoor Adventure Dinner

SONGS TO INSPIRE CONVERSATIONS ABOUT RACE

OUTDOOR VOICE PUFF PUFF PASS?

PAGE 28

Vermonters’ guide to exploring Vermont

SEPTEMBER 2020

A Moveable Feast

THE BENEFITS OF LEARNING OUTSIDE

August issue of Kids VT

Halloween sites and frights

2020 SEPTEMBER SEPTEMBER 2020

Rustic recreation at Quimby Country resort

AUGUST 2020 PARENTS FACE TOUGH CHOICES

South End arts fest is on, partly

23

B Y MARG O T HA RRI S O N, PA G E 32

Off the Grid

Are We There Yet?

INSIDE!

Vermonters are going back to the movies — under the stars

17

Local snacks to pack for the drive

INSIDE!

ART HOP 2020

PAGE 16

Vitriol on Vergennes council

INSIDE!

Teachers prep for a strange year

Outdoor Picture Show

12

LITTLE CITY BLUES

PAGE 13

Zuck’s record on vaccines

PAGE 13

10

JUST THE VAX

PAGE 32

Vermont health commish opens up

LESSON PLANS

State mulls aid for migrant workers PAGE 13

To-Go Go-Tos

An activity page for little travelers

A posthumous anthology album celebrates the music of troubled banjo great Gordon Stone

BY J OR DAN BAR RY, M E L I S S A PAS ANE N & S AL LY P OL L AK , PAGE 34

PAGE 26

Offbeat attractions around the state

ONE STEP at a TIME

legacy edition

As traditional dining falters, Vermont eateries struggle to survive

Folkie Rik Palieri pens new book

Kitschy Cool

Boosting women candidates in VT

Sail away with Whistling Man

WHAT LIES BENEATH

A pandemic primary primer

Sightseeing in Barre, Shelburne and Hubbardton

B Y MEL ISSA PASAN EN , PAG E 28

B Y D A N B O L L ES , PA GE 3 6

Arts meets civics at Helen Day

Clemmons, ZAFA farms team up

Hit the Road

Rising Stars

VE RMO N T’S I ND E PE NDE N T V O IC E OCTOBER 7-14, 2020 VOL.26 NO.2 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

LET’S BE FRANK

The Hot Dog Lady’s cart lives on

WITH SUPPORT FROM

PAGE 6

BY PAU L HEIN TZ, PAGE 34

July issue of Kids VT

Hit the Road Sightseeing in Barre, Shelburne and Hubbardton

A Green Mountain getaway to Highland Lodge

SOUNDING OFF

Rock the Boat

Restaurants,

12

Paddle Pushers

Readers share election thoughts

PAGE XX

Staytripper, a monthly road map to adventures around Vermont

VER MO NT’S INDEPEN DENT VOICE JULY 22-29, 2020 VOL.25 NO.43 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

V ER MO N T’ S I N DE P EN D EN T V OI C E JULY 15-22, 2020 VOL.25 NO.42 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

V ER MON T ’S I N DE PE N D EN T V OI CE JULY 8-15, 2020 VOL.25 NO.41 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

Controversy over drive-in concert

Xx

PAGE 12

PAGE 13

INSIDE!

SUMMER ISSUE INSIDE!

PAGE 42

XX INSIDE:

Chittenden County Senate race heats up

Del Pozo a voice for cop reform?

THE WRIGHT CHOICE

PAGE 34

Remote R&R A Green Mountain getaway to Highland Lodge

Remote R&R

V E RM O NT’ S IN D EPE NDE NT V O IC E AUGUST 12-19, 2020 VOL.25 NO.46 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

109-year-old recalls 1918 pandemic

PAGE 50

8

Vermont Canoe & Kayak dips into the Lamoille River

VERMON T’S IND EP END EN T VOI C E SEPTEMBER 30-OCTOBER 7, 2020 VOL.26 NO.1 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

Booze sales up amid quarantine

HUNGER STRIKES

PAGE 45

VE RMON T ’S I N DE PE ND EN T VOI C E AUGUST 5-12, 2020 VOL.25 NO.45 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

ONE FOR THE AGES

PAGE 18

Paddle Pushers Vermont Canoe & Kayak dips into the Lamoille River

How the pandemic propelled a Vermont baking company into the national spotlight

PAGE 10

GLASS HALF FULL

6

VERMONT’S INDEPENDENT VOICE JULY 1-8, 2020 VOL.25 NO.40 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

OUTRAGE ON TOP OF

V ERM ONT’ S IN DEPE NDE NT VO ICE AUGUST 19-26, 2020 VOL.25 NO.47 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

UVM Medical Center president Stephen Leffler confronts COVID-19 and its aftermath

VERMONT ’S INDEPENDENT VOICE JUNE 24-JULY 1, 2020 VOL.25 NO.39 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

BY PAUL HEINTZ, PAGE 32

VERM ONT’S INDEPENDENT VOICE JUNE 17-24, 2020 VOL.25 NO.38 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

Envisioning Vermont’s post-pandemic future

VERMONT’ S INDEPENDENT VOICE JUNE 3-10, 2020 VOL.25 NO.36 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

VERMON T’S IN DEPEN DEN T VOICE MAY 27-JUNE 3, 2020 VOL.25 NO.35 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

VE R M O N T’S I N D E P E N D E N T VO I C E MAY 20-27, 2020 VOL.25 NO.34 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

V E R M O NT ’ S I ND E P E ND E NT V O I C E MAY 13-20, 2020 VOL.25 NO.33 SEVENDAYSVT.COM

JULY 2020

Reporters on the stories behind the stories PAGE 12 / Arts news that shaped the year PAGE 26 Remembering Vermonters we lost in 2020 PAGE 32 / The year in food PAGE 42 / The best Vermont music of 2020 PAGE 52 / PLUS: Staytripper, Vermonters’ road map to winter fun

4

From the Art

Stay in Norman Rockwell’s studio

10

Bright Lights, Big City Holiday shopping in Burlington

16

Across the Universe Finding hope in the starry night

WITH SUPPORT FROM

MAYOR MAY NOT Is Miro vulnerable in Burlington?

PAGE 12

1. “Coronavirus Numbers in Vermont: A Seven Days Tracker, Updated Daily,” by Andrea Suozzo. The tracker shows current case counts in the state.

2. “I’m in a Polyamorous Triad With My Husband and His Girlfriend,” by the Reverend, August 5. A reader asks about pandemic-related economic pressures on her relationship.

3. “UVM Announces Plan to Eliminate More Than Two Dozen Academic Programs,” by Colin Flanders & Courtney Lamdin, December 2. In response to a budget deficit, the university announced cuts to the College of Arts and Sciences.

4. “Magic Hat Leaves Behind a Transformed Craft Beer Industry in Vermont,” by Dan Bolles, July 1. The conglomerate that owns the Vermont-born brewery announced it was moving operations to Rochester, N.Y. 5. “Vermont Has 12 Coronavirus Cases, With Signs of Community Spread,” by Colin Flanders, March 16. State officials identified the first infections that did not appear to be travel-related.

6. “Burlington Resident’s Zoom Meeting Meme Goes Viral,” by Margaret Grayson, April 7. As Zoom became a household verb, a Burlington resident’s meme took off on social media.

7. “Vermont’s Last Dairy Farmer-Lawmaker Is Selling His Cows,” by Kevin McCallum, February 5. Rep. Rodney Graham (R-Williamstown) sold off the small herd of Holsteins and Jerseys on his organic dairy farm in early 2020, citing economic pressures.

8. “Another 28 Coronavirus Cases Confirmed in Vermont,” by Kevin McCallum, March 28. Daily cases jumped during the state’s first surge.

9. “Burlington Protest Leads to Confrontation With Police Brass,” by Matthew Roy, May 31. An activist challenged the city’s police chief about alleged officer misconduct.

10. “Burlington Police to Ticket People Who Violate Stayat-Home Order,” by Derek Brouwer, April 3. City officials said officers would begin enforcing the statewide emergency order with tickets.

11. “UVM Sex Educator Jenna Emerson Releases New Comedy Music Video,” by Jordan Adams, September 18. “I Want to Be a Sex Educator,” filmed at Oakledge Park in Burlington, parodies a Little Mermaid song.

12. “Media Note: Two Vermont Reporters Announce Departures,” by Colin Flanders, February 20. WCAXTV anchor Galen Ettlin and Burlington Free Press multimedia journalist Ryan Mercer announced they were leaving their jobs.

13. “Phil Scott, Vermont’s GOP Governor, Says He Voted for Joe Biden,” by Paul Heintz, November 3. As he left the polls on Election Day, Scott said he had voted for the Democratic presidential nominee.

14. “Vermont Couple’s Primitive Hockey Stick Valued at $3.5 Million,” by Sasha Goldstein, April 17. A stick that Germaine and Gary Morse had kept in their umbrella stand for decades turned out to be a historic object.

15. “Flake News: Vermont Site Features Coronavirus Conspiracy Theorist,” by Matthew Roy, April 2.

Conservative website True North Reports ran a video purporting to debunk the pandemic.

16. “Sharp Increase in Reported Poisonings From Ramp Look-Alike,” by Melissa Pasanen, May 15. At least 22 people experienced serious illnesses after eating the poisonous false hellebore.

17. “Vermont Senate Approves $60 Million in Hazard Pay Grants,” by Kevin McCallum, May 1. The Senate approved a program that would offer additional pay to essential workers making less than $25 per hour.

18. “Officials: VT’s Virus Projections Show ‘Glimmer of Hope’ as Peak Approaches,” by Courtney Lamdin, April 2. Officials said Vermonters had succeeded in avoiding a scenario in which hospitals could be overwhelmed.

19. “Vermont Vet Excoriates Trump as a ‘Coward’ in Viral Lincoln Project Ad,” by Colin Flanders, June 30.

“Betrayed” featured a presidential takedown by Dan Barkhuff, an emergency room doctor at the University of Vermont Medical Center.

20. “Those Mittens Bernie Sanders Wears Campaigning Are Made in Vermont,” by Sasha Goldstein, January 21. After Sanders wore oversize mittens to a rally in Portsmouth, N.H., the photos went viral. They were a gift from an Essex Junction teacher.

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 30, 2020-JANUARY 13, 2021

5

IT’S BEEN A YEAR.

GIVE THE GIF T OF WELLNESS!

/ Pamela Polston, Paula Routly  Paula Routly   Cathy Resmer  

Don Eggert, Pamela Polston, Colby Roberts

NEWS & POLITICS  Matthew Roy   Sasha Goldstein   Candace Page   Derek Brouwer, Colin Flanders,

Paul Heintz, Courtney Lamdin, Kevin McCallum

ARTS & LIFE  Pamela Polston   Margot Harrison   Dan Bolles, Elizabeth M. Seyler   Jordan Adams   Kristen Ravin    Carolyn Fox   Jordan Barry, Chelsea Edgar,

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FEEDback READER REACTION TO RECENT ARTICLES

WONDERS OF WESTFORD

Thanks so much for spotlighting Bree Drapa and the Westford Public Library [“Bright Lights,” December 16]. You captured her, the library, the town office and the town green perfectly.

She is a rock star, but here’s the thing: So many people in Westford are rock stars. There’s the guy who grooms the cross-country ski trails behind the school every winter. There’s the woman who runs the cold-weather coat and hat drive, and the people who get up ridiculously early some Saturdays to run the food shelf, and the guy who organizes the

DESIGN   Don Eggert   Rev. Diane Sullivan   John James  Jeff Baron, Kirsten Thompson

Michelle Brown, Logan Pintka

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Home, design and real estate quarterly

Bright Lights Good news, positive trends

and stories of resilience from

an awful year

PAGE 42

BY SEVEN DAYS STAFF,

MIRO KNEW

PAGE 16

Del Pozo scandal reignites

MYRRH-ACLE WORKERS A fair-trade biz resin-ates

PAGE 35

in Vermont

HOME GOODIES

PAGE 52

Bakeries sell direct to customers

summer concert series, and the parents who put in hours of time to help the eighth grade pull off its annual Halloween Haunted Forest and Spring Spaghetti Dinner (in non-pandemic times, anyway), and the families who started the annual East-West Flag Football Challenge every October, and so much more.

They’re all amazing, and it makes me so happy to live in this town. Every summer when I’m sitting on the green listening to music and watching kids play and neighbors talk to each other, I think: Norman Rockwell is from bygone times, but those times still exist in Westford.

Not to mention we are the home of that giant wooden middle finger and the giant boat lawn ornament that’s painted like a shark. I mean, what else could you ask for, really?

Nancy Volkers

WESTFORD

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©2020 Da Capo Publishing Inc. All rights reserved.

WEEK IN REVIEW

emits it more slowly. Our house is almost always a perfect 67 to 70 degrees — no huge temperature swings — and, to me, that’s the best thing about it. I recognize that Ken Matesz also describes heaters this way, too, and otherwise his book is excellent and always on our coffee table for curious guests who want to learn more.

Thanks for pointing the spotlight on an underused and underappreciated form of wood heat!

TIM NEWCOMB

Kevin Stevenson

MORRISVILLE

‘INTELLIGENT DEFENSE’

‘NO-BRAINER’ FOR UVM

Max Levine

BROOKLYN, NY

THE HEAT IS ON

I was thrilled to see your article about discovering and falling in love with a masonry heater [Nest: “Feeling the Heat,” December 16]! I, too, have been an owner

Masonry heater

FILE: KEILANI LIME

[Re Off Message: “UVM Announces Plan to Eliminate More Than Two Dozen Academic Programs,” December 2]: This is absurd: a university without a religion or classics program? I would not have stayed at the University of Vermont without the courses I took in the classics department, nor would I have graduated if I hadn’t discovered professors Brian Walsh and Jacques Bailly.

It’s hilarious to think the university has used Bailly’s spelling bee connections and fame as some sort of advertisement for the school, and now it pulls this. I think the obvious has already been said, but I’ll say it again here: When making decisions, the school needs to be transparent and seek input from faculty, staff and students and actually consider alternative proposals.

Pay the administration less, and stop giving them higher salaries than educators. Develop underdeveloped programs.

Sell the president’s house and cover the deficit costs with that. Stop building.

I think there has been a $50,000 salary increase for the president since 2013.

Why? Universities are academic, not athletic, institutions. Cut funding of nonacademic programs first. Yeesh, I feel like that’s a no-brainer.

for eight years, and it is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Still cannot explain why they are not more commonly seen in New England.

Unfortunately, I have to take issue with your description of a masonry heater as a “radiator” and a woodstove

[Re “Essential Soldiers,” December 9]: I found it strange that National Guardsmen are described as “champing at the bit” when something isn’t going wrong and there’s no one to help — that their hope is that they won’t have been “trained in vain.” Sounds a bit backward! And also brings to mind the image of rabid war dogs held back in restraint by their masters, hoping for the worst so they can be needed — a degrading description at best.

I seriously wonder how Col. Chris Evans can get “discouraged” when nothing is going wrong? How does that work, exactly? Isn’t the hope to not need to defend? And if the National Guard is also so in need of people, then why wasn’t it sensible for the F-35 flights to at least be halted during the pandemic, freeing up the 1,000 airmen and also reducing the impact of chemical by-product by the aircraft, projected to be a 127 to 205 percent increase in sulfur oxides that irritate respiration and produce acid rain? Our current political climate calls for intelligent defense that cares equally about social and environmental impact, even when defense is not needed.

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FEEDBACK

» P.25

SAY SOMETHING! as a “convector.” Both masonry heaters and woodstoves transfer heat to their surroundings primarily via radiation.

(There are woodstoves that emphasize convection, but they aren’t that common.)

The difference is that a masonry heater radiates to a much smaller and more comfortable degree because the outer surface doesn’t get as hot. I like to think of it as a big battery, and we charge this big thermal mass that absorbs the heat and

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O

We chose

Mascoma.

Owen Milne EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, LAKE CHAMPLAIN COMMUNITY SAILING CENTER

888.627.2662 mascomabank.com

8

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 30, 2020-JANUARY 13, 2021

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wen Milne had never helmed a boat before becoming the fourth executive director of the Lake Champlain Community Sailing Center, in June 2017. The nonprofit’s new headquarters was under construction, but he was working in the old one, which lacked a bathroom that could accommodate his wheelchair. Worse, the 41-year-old quickly learned that the organization he had been hired to lead was facing an event that could leave them “staring down the barrel of a potential bankruptcy.”

Milne and his colleagues believed the financing was solid for the $5.75 million building — until they got the bad news that the sailing center did not qualify for tax credits slated to fund the final construction payment of $1.7 million. Milne either had to raise that sum or, per the builder’s contract, start paying 12 percent interest on it in two months, when the project was completed.

“It was a gut punch,” said Milne who raised $400,000 in short order. Another $400,000 came in the form of pledges, but the organization still needed a $1.3 million loan.

Despite its 23-year history, and generous backers such as the late Tony Pomerleau and Jim Crook, the sailing center wasn’t in a strong borrowing position.

Two banks and a credit union turned Milne down before he approached Mascoma Bank.

The board convened for an on-site meeting, during which Milne explained the goals of the sailing center, including its commitment to accessibility. “The Bank helped us with a commercial mortgage on the building at a rate that would bring the sailing center’s annual debt service from a potential $200,000 to a manageable $34,000,” said Milne.

They didn’t see it as “the dollars and cents of a loan,” Milne said of the 121-year old mutual savings bank that was in the process of becoming a “Certified B” Corporation at the time. “It was about saving important, critical parts of a community.”

Then another problem arose. The appraisal on the beautiful new building came in at zero, because of the public trust doctrine on the Burlington’s waterfront.

Milne had to scramble — again — to prove the center could have another potential use.

Mascoma was patient. “They said: If you can get this appraisal reversed or turned around, the deal is still good. We’re still interested in this project,” Milne said. “They really got it. They knew how to use banking as a tool for helping organizations keep going.”

Since then, the relocated Lake Champlain Community Sailing Center has enjoyed pretty smooth sailing. Although the pandemic put an end to some programs, many initiatives have continued without interruption. Two weeks ago, Milne organized a flotilla concert that raised $57,000 for the center’s waterfront docking system. Boats came from all around to hear the music of local bands on a warm summer night. Mascoma was one of the event’s dozen-plus sponsors.

Milne has been learning to sail since he took the executive director job; it was a condition of his hiring.

He said getting out on the water, where you are focused on “the wind, the waves and the sail,” eased the stress of those first months. “It’s right there, in our back yard,” Milne said of Lake Champlain.

Now, so too is Mascoma Bank.

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WORKERS FIRST S The journalism we produce at Seven Days wins awards. In 2020, we earned a number of them, farmers ER RESPOND PHARMACY including a national Edward R. Murrow prize for Investigative Reporting, an Innovation Award ALISTS WORKERS JOURN RS E K R O from the Association of Alternative Newsmedia, and a commendation from the New England YW FACTOR farmers MAIL non-profit Newspaper & Press Association naming us a New England Newspaper of the Year.

S ORKER CARRIERS workers CERY W O R G This year, we also saw a dramatic surge in the number of readers willing to pay us to UTILITY truckers WORKERS produce this work — we listed more than 2,000 of them in last week’s issue. We deeply EVERYONE appreciate their support.

MILITARNYEL WHO IS WORKING TO KEEP THINGS PERSON But the largest portion of Seven Days’ revenue still comes from advertising; like every GOING IN THESE TRYING TIMES other media outlet in the state, we rely on support from advertisers to fund our reporting.

That’s not a bad thing. The paid content in Seven Days reveals a lot about the community we serve — who’s got a sale on, who’s hiring, who’s celebrating an important milestone, who’s seeking donations, who’s auctioning off the contents of a storage unit, who’s seeking renters, who’s mourning a loss. In fact, we’ve heard for years that our readers pick up Seven Days for the ads and the stories.

Now More In 2020, the ads in Seven Days reflected both the unique challenges Than Ever and opportunities the year presented. Crucial public health information about the coronavirus began appearing in the March 18 issue, which included a two-page spread paid for by the Vermont Department of Health and designed by Seven Days. It urged Vermonters to help #FlattenTheCurve and explained the then-unfamiliar concept of “social distancing.”

Since then, clients such as the University of Vermont Health Network, the City of Burlington, and the Vermont Association of Hospitals and Health Systems have distributed public health messaging in Seven Days. Our legal ads included information about municipal meetings being conducted on Zoom. Retail ads touted efforts by local businesses to keep customers safe.

Amazingly, a number of advertisers paid to run ads simply to support Seven Days and affirm the importance of local journalism, or to benefit other local businesses or community initiatives. This includes companies such as the Automaster, Ben & Jerry’s, Seventh Generation, Pomerleau Real Estate, Sweeney Design Build, Main Street Landing, and many others.

You can find a list of all the businesses that value what we do on pages 50 and 51 of this issue. Most of them are local enterprises like us, whose owners live here and care deeply about this state and its people. They may not always agree with our coverage — we don’t allow advertising, underwriting or Super Reader donations to influence what we publish — but they’ve supported it when we needed them to, and for that we are grateful. If you are, too, let Looking to the future. them know that you’ve seen their ads and appreciate their support for Seven Days.

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Backstories,

“Burlington Deputy Chief Wright Resigns Following Firestorm Over Social Media”

SIDEBARS and Follow-Ups 2020

12

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 30, 2020-JANUARY 13, 2021

Konstanty Piekarski

Matthew Picard

COURTESY OF AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU STATE MUSEUM

T

he year started typically enough for Seven Days writers. One reporter gave advice to a Wyoming woman who suspected a cop there had created a fake social media account, because we’ve apparently become reputed experts on that. Another learned about an Auschwitz survivor and member of the Polish resistance who shared his family name — and a strong resemblance to his father.

You know, the usual stuff.

But then, 2020 brought us COVID-19, and things got, well, very weird.

Our writers, trained to witness and record the sensory details that bring stories to life, faced new obstacles. Yes, Gov. Phil Scott decided that journalists were essential employees, enabling us to continue going places. But how do you describe what’s occurring at a nursing home ravaged by COVID-19 when you can’t set foot inside? What’s the best way to interview an 81-year-old woman who can’t speak?

Reporters also had to take the necessary precautions to keep themselves and their families safe. After interacting with too many legislators in the Statehouse, Kevin McCallum quarantined himself for weeks in a Winnebago parked outside his family’s home. Possible exposure to the virus sent Dan Bolles to his family’s remote camp in New Hampshire for a chilly week of self-isolation. Ironically, he spent his time there managing the stories in our October 14 “De-Stress Signals” issue.

Covering the pandemic has been like running a marathon we didn’t train for … that turned into an Ironman Triathlon. The coronavirus shaped almost everything Seven Days published in 2020. Each issue is a helping of history.

Despite lockdowns, self-quarantines, social distancing, masks and an empty newsroom, our journalists uncovered important stories of which we’re rightfully proud. For this year-end issue, Seven Days writers reveal how they did it, what they learned along the way and, in the case of the first account here, what happened afterward. m

Colling had a checkered past in law enforcement. In 2009, he shot and killed a 15-year-old boy who was brandishing a knife; two years later, he beat and arrested a videographer who was filming police from his own property. After a recording of that encounter went viral, Colling lost his job.

He went to work for his present employer in 2012.

In his posts, “Seward” seemed oddly familiar with Colling’s past and used a similar writing style as Hime’s brother, she said. Others agreed and reported the profile to Facebook, which prohibits fake accounts.

Hime wanted to know how I had been able to reveal that former Burlington police chief Brandon del Pozo was behind his online alias and how she might do the same to Colling. I told her del Pozo had lied when I first asked him about the

10

Seven Days writers reveal what it took to report on a most unusual, kinda awful, isolating, historic year B Y SEV EN D AYS S TAFF

I wrote a couple of stories last year about police using fake social media accounts to engage citizens — anonymously. After the practice brought down two top law enforcement officials in Burlington, I got an email from Kati Hime of Laramie, Wyo. “I have a strong suspicion that we are in a similar situation … regarding an officer here,” Hime wrote to me on March 8. “I’m trying to learn what my options are.”

When I spoke to Hime the following day, she told me the cop in question was her estranged brother, a deputy in Wyoming named Derek Colling. She suspected that Colling was using a Facebook profile under the name “Michael Seward” to defend his fatal shooting of Robbie Ramirez during a November 2018 traffic stop.

FEB

EERIEST CONNECTION

“From the Ashes: Vermonter’s book about Auschwitz infiltrator tapped for the big screen” I’m a descendant of Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants from Poland, with distant relatives who died in the Nazi extermination camps. I’ve written several stories related to the Holocaust.

In the process of reporting the most recent one, I was surprised to discover a

MAR

11

photo of a concentration camp inmate with a familiar surname — and a strong resemblance to members of my own family.

In 2019, I interviewed Jack Fairweather, the Welsh author of The Volunteer: One Man, An Underground Army, and the Secret Mission to Destroy Auschwitz.

His book tells the harrowing, true story of

FILE: LUKE AWTRY

2020backstories

Jan Wright

account and that the truth only emerged months later when I confronted the mayor about it.

I suggested that Hime reach out to

Andrew Graham, a Vermont native on staff at the nonprofit news organization Wyofile; Seven Days reporter Derek Brouwer had worked with him in Montana. I encouraged Hime to make public records requests and see what she could find.

Months later, I got an email from Graham, who had published Hime’s story. He wasn’t able to prove Colling was behind the account — the deputy denied it — but his inquiries convinced Facebook to shut down the Seward profile and two other suspected fakes.

The story even gave a shout-out to Seven Days’ coverage.

Graham’s public records requests also turned up emails from Colling’s boss, the county sheriff. In a message to another official, the sheriff described Hime as “difficult to listen to” and suggested that she needed “professional help,” Wyofile reported.

The email wasn’t the smoking gun that Hime had been seeking, but it confirmed her suspicions: Local cops often have a lot to say when they think no one is listening.

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Witold Pilecki, a Polish resistance fighter who, in 1940, volunteered to be imprisoned in Auschwitz in order to report to Allied Forces on what was happening inside. Pilecki later escaped and joined the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.

Fairweather is a former war correspondent for the London Daily Telegraph and the Washington Post. Now a resident of Charlotte, he spent years working with Polish researchers retracing Pilecki’s travels, digging through concentration camp records, Polish government files and written testimonies from thousands of Auschwitz survivors.

In January, The Volunteer won the 2019 Costa Book of the Year award, one of the United Kingdom’s most prestigious literary honors. A month later, Fairweather sold the movie rights to London-based House Productions and producer Tessa Ross, whose Oscar-winning film credits include Slumdog Millionaire, 12 Years a Slave and Ex Machina.

Before interviewing Fairweather, I tore through The Volunteer in a weekend, not bothering to look closely at its historic photographs. In March, however, while flipping through its pages again for a follow-up piece, one picture stopped me in my tracks. It was a black-and-white prison camp photo of Konstanty Piekarski, a Polish army lieutenant who was captured by the Gestapo, tortured and

sent to Auschwitz in 1940. It was there he met Pilecki and joined the camp’s underground resistance movement.

Piekarski looked just like my father, Matthew Picard.

My grandfather, Murray Picard, was born Morris Piekarski in Tykocin, Poland, and immigrated to the U.S. as a child. He later became a successful New York-based international accountant and businessman. Aware of increasing antiSemitism in Europe in the early decades of the 20th century, he took a Catholic surname that wouldn’t get noticed by his Parisian clients: Picard.

Though The Volunteer doesn’t delve deeply into the life of resistance fighter Kon Piekarski, his story is compelling.

Piekarski survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald, escaping the latter. After the war, he moved to England, where he earned a degree at the University of London before immigrating to Canada in 1951. He taught at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, for more 30 years before his death in 1990.

I haven’t determined whether I’m actually related to Kon Piekarski. But his autobiography, Escaping Hell: The Story of a Polish Underground Officer in Auschwitz and Buchenwald, is on my winter reading list.

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Backstories « P.13

MOST JUSTIFIABLE PARKING VIOLATION

“Scott Declares State of Emergency in Vermont” I hurried out of Gov. Phil Scott’s March 13 press conference with many questions, but none so pressing as: Where the hell am I going to write this?

The governor had announced moments earlier that he was declaring a state of emergency in Vermont in response to the growing threat of the coronavirus, which had just begun to spread across the United States. Now, after lockdowns and restrictions, that day stands out in my mind as the official start of the pandemic, a specific moment that differentiated before and after. At the time, though, it was just a busy Friday that I needed to get through.

I had spent the day prowling the

MAR

13

Health Commissioner Mark Levine (left) and Gov. Phil Scott

Statehouse, where I could normally find a spot to complete a late-night writing assignment. But the building was shuttering that evening due to the pandemic. The few coffee shops within walking distance were also closed, and my third option — driving back to my Winooski apartment while every other media outlet published their stories — was out of the question.

I trudged up a hill to retrieve my car and

drove to a nearby Dunkin’, where I ordered an iced tea, loosened my tie and made painfully slow progress on one of the most consequential stories I had ever written.

An employee eventually walked over and, looking at my untouched drink, announced that the place was closing. I headed out to work in my car, and the same young woman rapped on my window 20 minutes later to say I couldn’t stay in the

parking lot, either. The reason America runs on Dunkin’, I realized, is because they keep you moving.

I sped back to the Statehouse and pulled into a spot as close to the Golden Dome as I could find, one that just so happened to be reserved for Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman. I spent the next hour on the State of Vermont’s internet until I finally filed the first of many COVID-19 stories.

Exhausted and ready for a beer, I flicked off my car’s overhead light and turned the key, only to hear a click-click-click-click-click-click.

Yes, dear readers. My battery was dead.

I was unsure of the punishment for appropriating the parking spot of a topranking state government official, but I didn’t want to find out. As I cursed myself for not renewing my AAA membership, I sent up some digital flares. My girlfriend’s mother, who lives nearby, agreed to give me a jump. Thirty minutes and one righteously bruised ego later, I was on my way.

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“Fear, Confusion Swirl Inside Nursing Home Stricken by Virus” I had just eaten my weight in chicken fajitas and was looking forward to a Saturday night with Netflix, hoping to find a selection to quell my anxiety about the pandemic raging outside my protective bubble. The state’s case count was growing, and Seven Days’ coverage that week had focused on Burlington Health & Rehabilitation Center, a long-term-care facility where a dozen patients had become infected. The Pearl Street facility was effectively the state’s COVID-19 epicenter at the time.

Despite statements from the corporate owner and state health officials, the situation inside the building remained unclear.

At 9 p.m. that night, I got a text message.

“Has Albert Petrarca reached out to you?” the source asked. “He is a resident at Burl H&R.” For the uninitiated, Petrarca is a Burlington activist who tirelessly campaigned against Burlington’s “Everyone Loves a Parade!” mural, located just off Church Street. He believed its rendition of Vermont history gave short shrift to the state’s original Indigenous residents.

Petrarca called the mural racist and even vandalized it once with spray paint. The artwork has since been removed.

MAR

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Albert Petrarca by the “Everyone Loves a Parade!” mural

If anyone would rail against the Powers That Be, it was Petrarca. He had already told my source that conditions at the center were much worse than officials were letting on. “This discrepancy alarms me and raises a lot of flags,” my source said in a text.

I emailed Petrarca and asked if we could talk in the morning. He responded immediately. “You can even call tonight,” he wrote. “I think I have breaking news.”

Saturday night, be damned! I had me a story.

I called my colleague, Derek Brouwer, who had done extensive reporting for

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 30, 2020-JANUARY 13, 2021

our “Worse for Care” series on eldercare homes. He was already tracking the outbreak. By 10 p.m., we were on a conference call with Petrarca.

The 70-year-old retired nurse was in the home to recuperate from foot surgery.

He told us that officials weren’t being transparent; he’d only learned about the facility’s first COVID-19 case from a friend who saw it on the news. He said he went two days without getting his temperature taken while officials were saying publicly that they were performing the checks twice a day. Some staffers on his floor

weren’t wearing protective gear, Petrarca said. After some additional reporting on Sunday, we had a solid story.

We published an article online that day, and my colleague turned our late-night interview into a longer-form story for the next print edition. These stories revealed the chaos, confusion and anxiety in the home.

And there was a happy ending, at least for Petrarca: The facility eventually evacuated him, COVID-19-free, to a local hotel.

C O U RT N E Y L AMDI N

2020backstories FILE: KEVIN MCCALLUM

LONGEST QUARANTINE

“Vermont House Passes Emergency Coronavirus Bills After Procedural Delay” When I walked out of my Waterbury home on the morning of March 25 to cover a story at the Statehouse, I thought I’d be home in time for dinner with my wife and two kids.

Instead, I didn’t set foot back inside my house for two months.

My wife had been a little anxious when I told her about the assignment, to cover several lawmakers passing some emergency legislation. Fear was spreading faster than the virus at the time, and there was no consensus on the best methods to tamp down transmission. I tried to reassure her that a handful of people staying at least six feet from one another in the cavernous House chamber presented an infinitesimal infection risk.

Against her better judgment, I headed to Montpelier, notebook and camera in hand, mask-free and not terribly concerned. I thought I’d be watching from a balcony as 20 or so lawmakers briefly debated and passed a new set of rules.

House rules generally call for a quorum, at least 76 representatives, to be present for any vote. But if nobody protests, lawmakers can still get stuff done without a quorum. For safety’s sake, Speaker Mitzi Johnson (D-South Hero) planned to use that loophole to alter rules to allow remote meetings and votes.

MAR

25

Rep. Cynthia Browning addressing reporters

But the plan was soon upended.

Rep. Cynthia Browning (D-Arlington) called for a quorum to make the point: Rules exist for a reason. The speaker and her leadership team were forced to summon more than 60 additional lawmakers to Montpelier from all over the state to ensure that the measure would pass.

It took a while. After filing my story, I called my wife and told her that things hadn’t gone according to plan. I acknowledged that I had been reporting in an enclosed space with nearly 100 other people, the majority of whom weren’t wearing masks.

We agreed — her steadfastly, me begrudgingly — that I should quarantine for two weeks.

Luckily, I had a place to go: The family RV, a 29-foot motor home that sleeps four, had been sitting in my driveway since we moved to Vermont from California in 2018.

For an isolation pod, it was pretty posh, with a queen-size bed, a shower

Kevin McCallum in the RV

and a bathroom, and I was able to tap the Wi-Fi from the house. I even drove it to Montpelier for Molly Gray’s first in-person presser when she was running for lieutenant governor. On my way home, I swung by the city’s wastewater treatment plant to empty the holding tanks.

My two-week sentence was almost up when I got another assignment: reporting on the “ghost” planes flying in and out of Burlington International Airport. This time I wore a mask to interview the only two passengers on a flight from Detroit, but I still had to go inside the terminal to do it.

That got me another two weeks in the tin can.

I got used to conducting phone and Zoom interviews in the RV, and it was easier, in some ways, because it didn’t disrupt the rest of my family.

At least once, my “background” aroused suspicion. As I prepared for an interview with WCAX-TV anchor Céline McArthur, she asked what kind of crime scene I was hiding. To her delight, I pulled aside a curtain to reveal the swiveling captain’s chairs of my sweet COVID-19 chariot.

Though amusing at times, it was also painful to be separated for so long from my family.

In late spring, Vermont’s COVID-19 rate was the envy of the nation. I’d gone nowhere but the RV and the grocery store for weeks. It became pretty clear that I was no longer an infection risk.

I moved back into our little old farmhouse, which I have come to love despite its peeling wallpaper, leaky basement, ice-cold bathroom floors and yellowing vinyl siding.

I also love our “little” RV. It kept my family safe during a cross-country adventure and, in an unexpected way, helped us stay safe during a pandemic. But it was good to be home.

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Backstories « P.15 FILE PHOTOS: JAMES BUCK

Kermit and Felix Downes

Sharon Downes

VOICE APRIL 22-29, 2020 VOL.25 NO.30 SEVEN DAYSV T.COM

HARDEST-TO-GET INTERVIEW

I’d never interviewed someone who couldn’t speak, but that was the challenge before me when I wrote about a household of six people who had contracted the coronavirus.

The family matriarch, Sharon Downes, had lost her voice box to throat cancer and communicates by writing notes on paper; her roommate makes phone calls for her.

But I needed to include Sharon’s “voice” somehow, because the piece was to be composed of vignettes of each person’s experience with the illness. Sharon’s point of view was vital to telling the whole story.

When the 81-year-old, four-time cancer survivor caught COVID-19, her family worried. “Old persons don’t usually beat it,” Felix, one of Sharon’s 5-year-old twin grandsons, told me. Her son, Keith, said his mom hadn’t taken the pandemic seriously.

If nothing else, I needed to give Sharon a chance to rebut her son’s narrative.

Keith suggested that I email a list of questions and he’d send back her responses. But I wanted Sharon unfiltered.

VERMO NT’S INDEP ENDEN T

“Home Sick: Six people in a Burlington duplex battled the coronavirus — and lived to tell the tale” APR

SICK

Everyone in a Burli ngton duplex battled the coron aviru and lived to tell the s — tale

22

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Home

BY COURT NEY L AMDIN , PAGE 32

HARD KNOCKS

Vermont state colleg PAGE 12 es in crisis

NO-POMP CIRCUMSTANCE

Seniors end high

school in isolation

PAGE 38

GROWTH INDUSTRY

The pandemic garde

PAGE 44

ning boom

Keith Downes

So we agreed to meet via Zoom. I’d ask questions, and she’d reply in writing.

When we logged on, Sharon jotted her responses on a notepad, which she held up to the camera for me to read. Sharon’s answers were terse, but her face was expressive.

When I asked her why Keith would say she hadn’t been cautious, a smirk played across Sharon’s lips as she put her pen to

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 30, 2020-JANUARY 13, 2021

paper. “I don’t know,” she wrote. Asked about how she got to spend time with her grandkids once they were all sick, Sharon smiled and wrote, “Yes, love having the twins. We draw play games, etc.”

The interview lasted nearly 40 minutes. Sharon’s reactions gave me the color I needed, details I would never have captured over email. There was only one awkward moment in the entire exchange,

when I asked about Sharon’s roommate, who had been hospitalized with the virus.

“Have you talked to him?” I asked, and immediately realized my mistake. Of course she hasn’t spoken to him, you fool! I thought. The woman doesn’t speak!

Sharon took my blunder in stride. She pointed to her throat, shook her head and smiled.

C O U RT N E Y L AMDI N

2020backstories FILE: JEB WALLACE-BRODEUR

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11/9/20 10:35 AM

“A Small Lockdown Protest Features Sweeping Conspiracy Theories” I had misgivings about covering the “excessive quarantine” protest in Montpelier in April, not least because I figured many participants wouldn’t be wearing masks. It was also snowing and windy, and I hadn’t yet figured out how to prevent my mask from fogging up my glasses whenever I breathed.

But mostly I was conflicted about the merits of the story. The event was bound to make for interesting copy, but was it really responsible for Seven Days to highlight a small number of fringe, even potentially dangerous, viewpoints during the early days of a pandemic? I wondered, Aren’t there more important things to be covering?

My reservations mounted once I made it to the Statehouse lawn. The protest was a circus — a media circus, with local television, print and online reporters outnumbering the protesters themselves.

The loudest individual among the latter group had arrived carrying a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag signed by the founder of Infowars, one of the most prominent platforms for conspiracy theories. His off-the-cuff speech was crass, seemingly divorced from reality and at points incomprehensible. A man wearing a QAnon shirt egged him on.

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As I stood around in the cold, I overheard one member of the media who seemed to have a special rapport with his subjects. I recognized him as Michael Bielawski, a reporter for right-wing website True North Reports.

Event organizer Debbie Regimbald, who refused my entreaties by telling me to “go piss up a rope,” was happy to tell Bielawski that she believed public officials were inflating the coronavirus death toll. While interviewing the “Don’t Tread on Me” guy, Bielawski showed him the Infowars sticker on the back of his phone.

Here was the answer to my reporting dilemma: This wasn’t a protest story. It was a media story, a window to an informational environment that was incubating alternate realities.

I quietly eyed Bielawski, taking notes on the questions he asked and the answers he received. He evidently didn’t appreciate the approach. After the story ran, he tweeted, “These were private interactions I had with individuals in our own space, these were not on the record conversations for reporting.”

The Statehouse lawn is a public space — at least, in the real world.

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D E R E K B R O U WE R BACKSTORIES »P.18

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FILE: DEREK BROUWER

MOST ETHICAL INTERACTION

“Isolation Generation: For Vermont’s elders, the hardest phase is still to come” A basic principle of journalism ethics requires that reporters don’t accept gifts from sources, nor do we perform favors for them. The mere appearance of a conflict of interest is enough to undermine credibility, which is all any reporter is worth.

Every news organization interprets this stricture in its own way. The Wall Street Journal, for instance, tells its reporters to refuse any gesture worth at least $25, or any food that can’t “be eaten by one person in one seating.” Seven Days takes a harder line. We can’t exchange any object

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or service with sources, according to our employee handbook.

So I was a little surprised last May when my editor, Matthew Roy, suggested I make a small exception to the rule. I was going to visit a 94-yearold World War II veteran, James Hasson, at his rural Cavendish home for a story about seniors isolated by the pandemic. His social connections had been reduced to daily phone check-ins from a local senior center and socially distant meal drops.

Matthew suggested I call Hasson to ask if he needed anything. It was the decent

Rachael Beauchemin

“It’s in the Building: How COVID-19 overwhelmed a Burlington nursing home” By the middle of April 2020, nursing homes’ special vulnerability to the coronavirus was apparent. The numbers out of Birchwood Terrace Rehab and Healthcare were shocking nonetheless. Nearly 50 residents and two dozen staffers had tested positive since an outbreak was discovered on March 30. My colleague Colin Flanders and I wanted to report on what it was like inside the Burlington nursing home.

We scoured social media accounts and contacted anyone connected to the facility. Word spread that we were poking around. Soon a caregiver inside the building emailed to offer help, under the alias “fucked over frontliner.”

The details we began to hear sounded horrific. Sick employees were working, and infected patients commingled with others because Birchwood didn’t have enough healthy staff to maintain all three of its units.

The tragedy looked like it was also a scandal.

Colin and I were veering toward writing a story that said as much. But when we confronted the home’s executive director, Alecia DiMario, and the Vermont Department of Health with our findings, we realized that such a depiction would have been incomplete.

We’d expected to hear canned statements defending the home’s decisions, or nonanswers given under the guise of privacy concerns for residents and staff.

That’s what spokespeople often do when asked critical questions.

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DiMario took a different approach. She not only answered questions about the decisions the home had made and the staff’s efforts but also connected us with nurses and managers to interview. We came to appreciate just how long and hard the staff had been working in an environment that had become dangerous and emotionally draining. Many had also scrambled to find temporary shelter and childcare so they wouldn’t infect their families. The details we’d been hearing weren’t so ugly because Birchwood had given up. They were ugly because the home was a war zone.

So we kept digging. We compiled death certificates and tracked down family members for almost all of the 21 residents who had died from COVID-19. Before long, we had spoken to more than 30 people.

COVID-19 protocols prevented us from stepping foot inside the facility. Yet each phone call revealed an important detail or a heart-wrenching anecdote. Taken together, our sources’ accounts enabled us to tell a fuller story of the virus’ siege — and of the frontline workers who kept showing up to fight it.

We’re reminded of Birchwood each time we learn of a new outbreak at another Vermont home. One widow’s voice, in particular, is seared into Colin’s memory.

When he uttered her husband’s name, she broke down in tears. She wanted to talk, she managed to say over the phone, but was “just not ready.”

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 30, 2020-JANUARY 13, 2021

thing to do given the circumstances, he thought.

Without pause, Hasson told me there was one thing he could really use: bananas.

He hadn’t tasted a ripe one in months.

I brought a bunch. After our interview,

D E R E K B R O U WE R

DE RE K BRO U W E R

FILE: JAMES BUCK

BEST REASON TO GO THE EXTRA MILE

James Hasson

conducted across a picnic table in Hasson’s backyard, he insisted on reimbursing me.

I told him not to worry about it — the bananas only cost $2 — but Hasson went inside to scrounge for cash. He could find only one dollar. I accepted it and told him not to sweat the remainder. I also promised to mail him a copy of the story.

Nearly four months later, a letter from Hasson arrived at the newspaper’s office. “This note is shamefully overdue,” he wrote, explaining that sometimes his fingers were too stiff to write. “You brought some bananas for which I paid you only one dollar & paid the postage to send two issues of ‘Seven Days.’”

Enclosed was a $15 check made out to my name. In the memo line, Hasson wrote, “expenses, thanks.”

I still haven’t cashed it.

2020backstories

STRONGEST FANBOY IMPULSES

Nick Charyk

“First Contact: Vermonter Nick Charyk and Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor collaborate on ‘Ethan Alien’” It’s a good thing I mostly cover hard news.

Unlike Seven Days’ valiant arts and culture writers, I rarely find myself interviewing celebrities or artists whom I particularly admire.

When the bosses do let me cover the occasional story outside my beat, I tend to blow it. Take, for example, when I encountered Phish drummer Jon Fishman — one of my favorite musicians — testifying at the Vermont Statehouse in April 2015. Suffice it to say that, while interviewing him, I nearly pissed my pants.

“I’m wondering why you’re such an awesome drummer,” I actually asked.

That episode nearly repeated itself in June, when an old pal approached me with a wild story. Nick Charyk, whom I’d gotten to know in his days as a political operative, called to tell me that his band, the Western Terrestrials, had collaborated on a new song with another of my favorite musicians, Old Crow Medicine Show bandleader Ketch Secor. If I wrote about it, Charyk suggested, I might get to interview Secor.

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FILE: SARAH PRIESTAP

2H-VtTourism122320Concert 1

Didn’t take long for me to say yes.

When I connected with Secor over the phone a couple weeks later, I held my fanboy impulses in check — at least, for a time. Only toward the end of the call did the gushing commence. I didn’t quite say, “Dude, man, I really love your music.” But it was close.

Speaking of unprofessional, a good reporter never accepts anything of value from a source. But, come September, I heard from Charyk again — and this time he was offering me a cameo in a film adaptation of the Secor collaboration, called The Ballad of Ethan Alien.

Once again, I said yes.

Charyk told me I’d be playing a television news reporter — OK, a bit of a stretch for this scruffy scribe — and promised to get me my lines ahead of time. He didn’t. And when I showed up at the set at Middlesex’s Camp Meade, I learned that I’d be improvising.

Not exactly my strong suit.

What followed was an excruciating period of lineflubbing, bad acting and general awkwardness. I was amazed Charyk’s crew didn’t fire me on the spot.

Like I said, a good reporter never accepts anything of value from a source. But when Charyk handed me a tall boy of Upper Pass Beer’s Fred Red Ale to compensate me for my time, it again didn’t take long for me to say yes.

PAU L HE I N T Z

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12/20/20 9:46 AM

Backstories « P.19 FILE PHOTOS: JAMES BUCK

FIERIEST BACKLASH

“Battery Power: How Black Lives Matter protesters occupied a park, captivated a city — and got some of what they wanted” I’m a photojournalist. My job is to get up close, often dangerously so, to be a witness to history. If you hate my work and want to burn it, I will still take a photo that conveys your message.

When I began to photograph the racial justice protests around Vermont in the summer, I tried to approach the activists with sensitivity, and also with the assumption that they wanted their voices amplified by the media. At first, that seemed to be true.

I captured some moments that felt historic, such as when one of the Black Lives Matter leaders, Harmony Edosomwan, dumped fake blood at the feet of then-interim Burlington police chief Jennifer Morrison. I hoped I was telling an important story. People needed to know.

As the protests continued over the summer, though, things got uncomfortable. Protesters antagonized me, jabbed at my camera with megaphones and yelled at me to stop taking their pictures.

I was bewildered. I’ve documented protests for decades, both in the United States and abroad. For several years, I photographed the uprisings that led to the Arab Spring. I was arrested — kidnapped, really — while shooting protests in Egypt in 2008. That experience instilled in me a fear of crowds, protests and police, but also a renewed commitment to telling people’s stories. To summon the courage and compassion to do my job, I sometimes repeat a mantra in my head: I am here for you. I am here for you. I am here for you.

Emphasis on the you.

When someone puts a hand in front of my lens, it’s usually a paramilitary law enforcement officer for an authoritarian regime in a country other than America.

The people trying to stop the free flow of information are typically the ones who have something to hide and power to protect.

I tried to understand the protesters. I listened.

They said they were afraid of the police, of being targeted, of being attacked. One person told me that their tires had been slashed. Another thought they had been followed home. Right-wing aggressors threatened protesters on social media. In Burlington, a counterprotester brazenly paraded for days with an assault weapon.

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Protesters outside Burlington City Hall

PROTESTERS ANTAGONIZED ME, JABBED AT MY CAMERA WITH MEGAPHONES

Suddenly I understood: I was back in Egypt. When I photographed democracy activists there, I had to be careful about revealing their identities because they were being documented, cataloged and detained by the regime — just as I was.

I changed my tactics and went into conflict-reporting mode. I made the protesters’ safety my top priority. I suited up in my conflict garb: safety gear, a GoPro camera to document any violence, lights and emergency GPS tracking.

I told my editors that the protesters feared for their safety, and I sought to protect them in my photography, even when they were in public spaces where I had a legal right to shoot them. I used exposures and shallow depth of field to create blur, as well as drone angles to show the crowds in the street but not the individuals.

The protesters still didn’t want me there. I tried to explain to them one by one

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 30, 2020-JANUARY 13, 2021

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OCTOBER 2020

How Black Lives Matter protesters occupied a park, captivated a city — and got some of what they wanted

BY CHELSEA EDGAR, PAGE 26

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2020backstories Protesters with copies of Seven Days

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We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet For auld lang syne! how I was handling the assignment. Some trusted me — a little.

Cautiously, I ventured into the Black Lives Matter encampment that had sprung up in Burlington’s Battery Park to document the vibrant, growing community there: the free food, medical care, solarpowered internet. People shared Black art, culture, music, history, stories and multigenerational, mind-opening conversations — all within yards of the police station. It deserved to be seen.

On the eve of publication of the story, Seven Days editors considered using a photo that clearly showed protesters’ faces on the cover. I explained that would have shattered the trust I’d tried to foster.

The paper ran a drone shot instead.

The protesters were unhappy with the story — furious, in fact. They snatched up papers around the city and, that night, marched through Burlington holding copies defaced with words such as “toxic” and “fascist.”

One protester, a person with whom I had forged a fragile bond, angrily flipped me off while marching past, holding the newspaper. I kept shooting, gut-punched.

On Main Street, at the Black Lives Matter mural, leaders mocked the paper and lit copies ablaze. I edged forward with my camera, recording the whole event from start to finish. The small fires were quickly stamped out.

At the end, a leader commanded all the white men to pick up the torn pieces of Seven Days and recycle them, so as not to litter. I’m a white, trans man, so I joined in, stuffed the scraps in my pocket and brought them home as a reminder.

My lens can be biased. I can do wrong.

There are other voices that must be heard.

But my job is to document history. I am here for you, to tell your story. I do it the best I can, and I keep learning.

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JA M E S B U C K BACKSTORIES »P.22

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DEMOCRACY IS NOT A SPECTATOR SPORT.

TAG — YOU’RE IT!

“Soapbox Derby: Molly Gray and Scott Milne compete for the lieutenant governor’s perch” When lieutenant gubernatorial candidate Molly Gray accepted my request to ride along with her on the campaign trail over the summer, I did not expect that she would take it quite so literally.

Within minutes of arriving at Conant’s Riverside Farms in Richmond, the first stop on our tour-de-politics, I found myself in the bed of a Bobcat 3400 utility terrain vehicle, hanging on for dear life.

OK, we weren’t going that fast. And, frankly, in a year when face-to-face time was hard to come by, the writer in me brimmed with optimism. I had been desperate for something new to say about this campaign, and here I was, rumbling across West Main Street and into a field of potential metaphors.

There was only one problem: I couldn’t hear the candidate — or much of anything — over the roar of the Bobcat.

I extended my recorder and hoped for the best while our host, Alison Kosakowski Conant, steered us past patches of pumpkins and gourds and shared what I assumed was her assessment of farm life. But I knew that, when I listened to the tape hours later, I would be lucky to pick up every fifth word. It was a bust.

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—Thom Hartmann

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Determined to squeeze some usable material out of the ride, I jotted down everything I saw: the mud-brushed tackle box and crusty fishing net beside me in the bed of the ATV; the numerous cows who registered their indifference to our future LG by defecating as we drove past. Gray and Conant occasionally looked back to make sure I was still aboard. I gave a thumbs-up and hid the fact that my tailbone was feeling every bump Conant swore she was trying to avoid.

Thankfully, the two ended up talking for a while after we stopped and Conant turned the engine off, allowing me to snag a few quotes.

The following morning, I woke to messages razzing me for my off-road journey. Gray had apparently posted a video of us driving off, reporter in tow.

One of my colleagues even dubbed the video with the Lil Nas X song “Old Town Road.” I was, of course, the horse in the equation.

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2020backstories

BEST EXAMPLE OF ART IMITATING LIFE

“De-Stress Signals: Coping with anxiety in 2020” I needed a thermometer. I was feeling kinda flush — or I thought I was … maybe.

And was that a tickle in my throat? Hoo boy, I thought, paranoia creeping in as I turned over bathroom cabinets like a keyed-up FBI agent with a search warrant, maybe I really do have the COVID. Then: Where the hell is that goddamn thermometer?!

And that’s how I ended up gazing out upon the serene, wooded majesty of Tucker Pond from the kitchen window of my grandfather’s camp in Salisbury, N.H., checking my temperature with a large and very old meat thermometer under my tongue.

I was normal — or just shy of rare.

In early October I had gone to camp to pull the dock out of the water for the season. It’s a two-person job, so I invited a good friend who lives in Massachusetts with his wife and their son and daughter to come up and help. Before we met for the weekend, we discussed any potential coronavirus risks we might pose to each other. We’d both been leading fairly cloistered lives of late and were satisfied that the danger was reasonably low. So we went ahead with the plan.

We removed the dock with minimal fuss and no injuries. We grilled steaks and swapped old stories and older songs around the firepit. It was a great weekend.

I left feeling refreshed, almost normal. It didn’t last long.

As I cruised home on Interstate 89 that Sunday afternoon, my friend called. He’d just learned that on Friday, before he had come to New Hampshire, his youngest had been exposed to a child in his daycare who had since tested positive for the virus. Stunned, the events of the previous days tumbled into place in my mind like at the end of The Usual Suspects. In a flash, the reality of how easily and indiscriminately the virus could travel hit home: from a stranger’s young child in another state to my friend’s adorable son, to my friend, to me, to…

Oh, my God, I thought. How could I have been so stupid and careless?

Due to certain health conditions, my girlfriend is more vulnerable to the virus than most. We’d been hypercautious for much of the pandemic. But like many folks, we got lax as the months wore on.

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A

B

WHENEVER I FELT WARM OR A CHILL OR TIRED OR … ANYTHING, REALLY,

I WONDERED: DO I HAVE IT?

Complicating the immediate picture, she was due to have major surgery later that week. There was no way I could go home.

I called my girlfriend to tell her the news and ask her to pack me a bag with clothes and food and leave it by the door. I told her I’d grab the provisions and then return to camp to isolate for as long as necessary.

On my two-hour drive back to New Hampshire, the magnitude of what was happening set in. I might have COVID-19.

My girlfriend would have surgery, and I couldn’t be there for her. What was more, at the end of that week we were scheduled to buy our first house. The closing was going to be done remotely, but there was still a lot to do before then.

VERMONT’S INDE PENDENT VOICE OCTOBE R 14-21, 2020 VOL.26 NO.3 SEVEND AYSVT.C OM

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And there was the small matter of how I could still work, very remotely, from Tucker Pond.

Typically, one of the best things about camp is its isolation. There is no internet, and cell service is spotty at best. We have a landline for emergencies but no longdistance service. I chuckled as I realized what was on my work slate for the week: coordinating a cover package about stress in the pandemic. Wherever would I find the inspiration? I mused.

Inspiration wouldn’t be a problem.

Staying connected, however, would.

For the next week, I drove 15 minutes into nearby Warner a couple of times a day and parked/loitered at a Dunkin’ by the interstate to pilfer Wi-Fi from my car. I answered emails, made phone calls and reported my pieces of the cover package. I tried to respond to the flood of text messages from friends and family that came in while I was out of service. I got updates from my friend in Massachusetts as his family members awaited results of their tests. These were mostly encouraging, except for the morning his daughter woke up with a fever.

One day, I did the final walk-through of the new house via FaceTime with our real estate agent. My girlfriend was online, too, talking from her hospital bed. The next day, we got an anticlimactic email from our bank that basically read: “Congrats.

You own a house now.”

Another day, I had my first full session with my new therapist on Zoom. We had a lot to talk about.

At camp, I wrote and edited what I could and otherwise found ways to pass the time and stay sane alone in the woods.

I kayaked on the pond, hiked in the woods with my dog and noted the daily changing leaves. I watched movies from our super random assortment of old DVDs. I listened on the radio as Kamala Harris eviscerated Vice President Mike Pence in a debate. I waited for the landline to ring, hoping every time it would be my girlfriend as she recovered, or my friend with good news.

Most of all, I tried not to think about the virus. But whenever I felt warm or a chill or tired or … anything, really, I wondered: Do I have it? It was, in a word, stressful.

In the end, the cover package on that subject turned out well. My girlfriend recovered, and we love our new house. Most importantly, everyone involved tested negative for the virus, including, we later learned, patient zero in Massachusetts. The kid’s results had apparently been mixed up with someone else’s.

But when we open camp next year, I’m gonna bring a thermometer.

DAN BO LLE S

BACKSTORIES »P.24 SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 30, 2020-JANUARY 13, 2021

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2020backstories

Backstories « P.23

FILE: LUKE AWTRY

MOST RANDOM NEWS ALERT “After Biden Win, Election Celebrations Erupt in Burlington”

A car raced up Burlington’s Main Street toward the University of Vermont, the driver excitedly beeping his horn. Passengers waved and whooped from the windows; one held a Black Lives Matter sign.

As I drove along behind them that Saturday in November, a light bulb turned on in my pandemic-weary, sick-of-2020 mind.

“Can you turn on the radio?” I asked my wife, Carolyn.

If you’re like me, around that time, you’d been spending hours each day obsessively checking news websites trying to figure out who had won the presidential election. A step ahead of me, my wife was already on her phone and confirmed, via the New York Times, what I suspected: Major news outlets had just called Pennsylvania — and the election — for Joe Biden.

NOV

7

Above and below: Burlington celebrates the election of Joe Biden

MAT T HE W ROY

COURTESY OF UVM HEALTH NETWORK

STRONGEST REACTION TO A SHOT IN THE ARM

“Nurse Is First Vermonter to Receive a COVID-19 Vaccine” Reporters weren’t allowed into the University of Vermont Medical Center to watch Vermont ’s first COVID-19 vaccination, but the hospital livestreamed the event. So I stood at my kitchen counter, headphones on, taking notes as health officials discussed its momentous nature.

The camera panned to emergency department nurse Cindy Wamsganz, who was seated in front of a plastic banner bearing the hospital’s name. She rolled up her sleeve. A nurse swabbed a spot on her upper arm, then plunged in a needle.

Suddenly I was sobbing.

Nine months had passed since I’d returned from a data journalism conference in New Orleans with a long list of planned projects, only to learn that another attendee had tested positive for COVID-19 — unusual news back in early

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24

We headed into downtown Burlington, where people were already assembling at Church and Main streets, cheering and hollering. I parked, grabbed my iPhone and left Carolyn in charge of our two dogs so I could capture the historic moment.

People were pouring onto lower Church Street. A man waved a giant American flag in traffic. Couples danced.

Music blared, including the hip-hop tune “FDT (Fuck Donald Trump).”

People hugged.

Several Seven Days staffers and freelancers contributed images for a slideshow I put together on sevendaysvt.com that afternoon.

Not everyone in Vermont was happy, of course. Terry Allen later sent us her shots from the Statehouse, where Trump supporters sported T-shirts and signs with messages such as “Donald Trump Matters,” “#BlackGunsMatter” and “The Media Is Complicit.”

Complicit or no, the media wasn’t really how I learned that Trump had lost. It was a bunch of college kids in a beat-up SUV who couldn’t stop yelling, beeping and waving.

Cindy Wamsganz, the first person to receive a COVID-19 vaccine in Vermont

March. I told my coworkers that I’d be self-quarantining at home for the following two weeks. Just a few cases had been identified in Vermont at that point, and it wasn’t clear what the public health recommendations were, so I wrote about the

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 30, 2020-JANUARY 13, 2021

experience for Seven Days. I didn’t know then that I wouldn’t return to the office again in 2020.

The next months were a blur. As Seven Days’ data editor, I’ve been focused on massive federal and state data sets,

spreadsheets with grim tallies, death certificates, and a mind-boggling number of data methodologies. I’m now conversant in the many ways to calculate a test positivity rate, as well as how a person’s state of residence is determined for the purposes of federal data collection.

Focusing on COVID-19 statistics day in and day out requires forgetting, on some level, that behind those numbers are people. Each reported death represents an individual with a family, friends and a life story. So each day, I’ve put on emotional armor.

On that December Tuesday, though, the armor fell away. We were still in the midst of a record-breaking spike in cases, and herd immunity remains a long way off. But we had a vaccine — more than one, actually, developed in record time — that is reported to be highly effective. Distribution had begun for those at highest risk of infection. Watching the hospital scene, I felt something that had been in short supply over much of 2020: hope.

In just seconds, it was over. Wamsganz stood up and looked around the room, alone in the camera frame. The live feed cut out.

And I got to work on my story.

AN DRE A S U O ZZO

WEEK IN REVIEW

P.7

MAYOR HAS FAILED

[Re Off Message: “At Caucus, Burlington Democrats Offer Counter to Progressives’ ‘Extreme Ideologies,’” December 6]: The mayor launched his reelection campaign by railing against city Progressives for their “rigid” ideology.

With that line of attack, the mayor scored a goal — against himself.

No politician has been more rigidly ideological than this mayor: An ideology of obsequious servility to fellow real estate developers, a trickle-down economic development policy, and utter silence around growing economic inequality and thousands of affordable houses made uninhabitable by the blasting noise of F-35s. No matter how awful and no matter at what gigantic cost to the city, nobody has been more “dangerously devoted to ideology” than this mayor.

Think of the losses from the holein-the-ground CityPlace; privatized Burlington Telecom; the deservedly voter-defeated attempt to privatize downtown; the not-so-Great Streets; $6 million to pave and shear character and shade from City Hall Park; the unsafe, racially insensitive, ecologically disastrous Champlain Parkway; and 200 demolished affordable homes by the airport. All schemes to enrich fellow developers.

A mayor with so many failures that he must resort to an attack-based campaign.

But this particular attack unintentionally calls attention to his own “rigid ideology”: to prioritize the interests of people like Don Sinex and other large-scale developers over the public good.

Railing repeatedly on the word “ideology,” the mayor may be seeking to awaken fear by evoking the specter of Karl Marx. But a different 19th-century figure declared the American progressive ideology most clearly: “government of, by, and for the people.” An ideology 99 percent of us can support.

home design real estate

FEED back «

Most of the criteria in Act 250 require avoiding adverse effects. Act 250 allows mitigation in only four situations: historic buildings, sport shooting ranges, primary agricultural soils and impacts on transportation systems.

The standard of “avoid, minimize or mitigate” (H.926, which Gov. Phil Scott fortunately vetoed) allows, even encourages, adverse effects to happen. That’s what “mitigate” does. It allows one to create an adverse effect while easing one’s conscience about the adverse effect by doing this ambiguous thing called mitigation. In other contexts, mitigation has been shown to be ineffective.

The forest fragmentation and sprawl that are occurring now are the results of activities that do not need an Act 250 permit: scattered housing, one or two at a time, in forests or outside already developed areas; and clearing for energy such as solar, wind and wood. The bill that Scott vetoed would not have required permits for that activity, either.

WINTER 2020-21

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Inside a Winooski man cave of wonders

Hi, refi!

Vermonters act on low interest rates

Plant swappers spread joy during the pandemic

Architects design with the climate in mind

A lockdowninspired apartment makeover

Getting fired up about kachelöfens

Justin Lane

BRATISLAVA, SLOVAKIA

If one truly wants to reduce forest fragmentation, one needs to support an Act 250 that allows no adverse effects and no mitigation, and that requires an Act 250 permit for the scattered housing and energy projects, and for the subdivision that allows them. That’s what our forests need to reduce fragmentation.

James Marc Leas

Thomas Weiss

SOUTH BURLINGTON

FORESTS FIRST

[Re Nest: “Sustainable by Design,” December 16]: Protecting our forests from fragmentation requires stronger action than “avoid, minimize or mitigate.” This is the least protective standard used in Act 250’s criteria. A stronger standard is to avoid adverse effects, period.

debates and discussions at 481 Main Street.

In a recent petition, a student laments the impending demise of the department, suggesting that its emphasis on social justice is a strength of the department. As an alum who went on to receive a doctorate from the University of Oxford in the use of cognitive science to study religion, I feel that UVM’s administration is making a necessary and difficult choice, and the religion department’s emphasis on social justice over science may hinder the department’s ability to demonstrate its relevance to the modern world.

Religion is incredibly relevant to the world today, but we need a cross-cultural approach to what makes us human, not a perpetuation of ideologies rooted in interpretive paradigms and unfalsifiable but fashionable nonsense, which are not usefully generalizable to the modern world.

Students simply aren’t learning anything useful in departments focusing on interpretation rather than explanation and “problematizing” over answers. Such ideological argumentation doesn’t bring value in the world outside of academia.

As an alum, I’m saddened by this situation, but I’m more saddened to have seen this ideological trend develop in many departments over the past decade. I can’t sign the petition to save the department without some promise to reintroduce an emphasis on science of religion.

MONTPELIER

OLD-TIME RELIGION DEPARTMENT

[Re Off Message: “UVM Announces Plan to Eliminate More Than Two Dozen Academic Programs,” December 2]: I graduated from the University of Vermont more than a decade ago as a religion major, and many of my fondest memories are of

ABOUT CITYPLACE…

[Re “Solid Foundation?” November 4]: Three concerns about CityPlace Burlington: 1. Is Don Sinex the only one responsible for deciding what is built? There doesn’t seem to be an alternative plan to what he is proposing. Is anyone else in Burlington working on a plan? It seems there is agreement on building housing, but is Sinex’s plan the one? Is his the right number of units?

2. Why does the city want to build a road through the site? Adding traffic to CityPlace is a bad idea. If CityPlace were limited to pedestrians like Church Street, it could be an amazing destination for tourists and a home for residents! A road will just divide the property in half, cost a

lot of money and take away value from the site.

3. When I see Sinex’s new housing plans, I think: Where are the new residents going to get food and groceries?

One idea is to have a co-op annex convenience store at CityPlace, plus a Burlingtonscale Faneuil Hall with food vendors and indoor-outdoor spaces.

Steph Holdridge

BURLINGTON

A THERMOS IN HAND…

While devouring my Seven Days — my prime link to Vermont and the outside world — I was informed of so many things to take strong note of: The nuns at St. Joseph’s Orphanage did not murder children [Off Message: “Orphanage Task Force Finds Credible Evidence of Abuse — but Not Murder,” December 14]; Burlington City Hall knew of chief Brandon del Pozo’s fake media account [“Weinberger Knew of Burlington Police Chief’s Anonymous Twitter Account,” December 15], and Zoom productions are a new future of theater [“Zooming In,” December 16].

Then there was Jenny Blair’s letter about the horrors of not being able to get drinking water and coffee at Vermont rest stops [Feedback: “No Rest — or Coffee!”

December 16]. I was moved to tears — seriously. With the staggering food insecurities in Vermont — and the nation — and the livelihoods of so many businesses on the line, I was taken aback. Maybe it’s because I lived in California for more than 40 years. You learn to travel with food, water and, yes, coffee at all times — think floods, earthquakes, forest fires.

I will be starting a GoFundMe page to buy a thermos and water bottle set for Blair. I am only sorry it is too late for Christmas. On to a healthier and happier 2021 — and provisions once again at the rest stops.

Sean Moran

SHELBURNE

GET A THERMOS

[Re Feedback: “No Rest — or Coffee!”

December 16]: Jenny, have you ever heard of a thermos?

James Hudson

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 30, 2020-JANUARY 13, 2021

GLOVER

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arts news

COURTESY OF SUE HIGBY

YEAR IN REVIEW

Carrying On Looking back on stories that defined 2020 in the arts

B Y DA N BOL L ES, CHELSEA E DGAR, MARGARE T GR AYS O N, MAR GO T H AR R IS O N, A M Y L I L LY, PAMEL A POLSTON & ELIZAB E TH M. S E YL E R

T

wo words that got used a lot in 2020 are “resilience” and “pivot.” The former is always a good thing; the latter we’d be happy to dump in the vocabulary dustbin.

Pivoting was what everyone on the planet was forced to do this year when the coronavirus arrived — most definitely including the creative sector. The cancellations of performances and exhibitions, the closure of venues, and the loss of income for many artists and arts organizations were severe blows; we may not yet know the full extent of the effects.

In response, creatives got, well, creative. It didn’t take long for nearly every kind of artist to reposition themselves online. Many learned recording and livestreaming skills and realized farreaching opportunities; none of that will disappear when the virus does. Others repaired to the social-distancing-friendly outdoors — think drive-in movies and concerts, Vermont Shakespeare Festival’s “Bard in the yard” engagements, and the Flynn’s pop-up performances in Burlington parks over the summer.

We’ll be relieved to put 2020 behind us, yet we were totally here for the resilience and pivoting. Below, we follow up on seven stories that represent this year in the arts.

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The Almighty Dollar

In 2020 we’ve celebrated the ways artists and arts organizations have managed to bring creative works into the lives of Vermonters during the pandemic. But, while those endeavors have helped get us through the year, most haven’t resulted in significant income for creators. Monetizing digital offerings has been a common struggle, and, despite the promise of the vaccine, we won’t return to in-person shows or packed art openings anytime soon.

“There is no sign of any sort of return to normal operations much before fall of 2021,” said CHRISTOPHER KAUFMAN ILSTRUP, executive director of VERMONT HUMANITIES. The restart will be particularly slow in the performing arts sector, where tours and shows are typically booked a year or more in advance.

According to a Brookings Institution report, Vermont’s creative sector lost $216 million and more than 8,000 jobs between April and July of 2020. That sector makes up a significant portion of the state’s economy, accounting for 9 percent of Vermont jobs, according to the VERMONT ARTS COUNCIL. The federal coronavirus relief act, passed by Congress in late March, provided $781,000 that was distributed to 123 Vermont organizations

“Youth Triumphant” sculpture in Barre

through the arts council and Vermont Humanities. The council also offered emergency grants of up to $500 for artists, with funding from foundations and donors; it awarded $170,000 to 425 Vermont artists and issued special grants of $16,000 and $11,000, respectively, to the CLEMMONS FAMILY FARM and VERMONT ABENAKI ARTISTS ASSOCIATION. Those organizations issued grants, in turn, to individual African American, African diaspora and Indigenous artists.

In July, the Vermont legislature allocated $5 million to arts and cultural nonprofits, using funds the state received from the federal relief act; 115 organizations received up to $150,000 each. When arts leaders first lobbied the legislature for funding, they had requested $50 million.

Nonprofits and for-profit arts organizations were eligible for Paycheck Protection Program grants if they had enough employees to qualify.

CERF+, a Vermont-based organization with national reach that aims to provide artists with a financial “safety net” during emergencies, also offered pandemic relief funds to artists and makers. According to executive director CORNELIA CAREY, CERF+ distributed $1,000 grants to 592 craft artists for

COVID-19-specific relief and reached another 225 artists through a general emergency fund. Five Vermont artists received money through those programs.

Vermont Humanities and the arts council have warned since the early days of the pandemic that the state would see significant long-term effects, and even permanent closures, in the arts and culture sector. In Burlington, for example, two small theaters, OFF CENTER FOR THE DRAMATIC ARTS and REVELRY THEATER, announced that they would be shutting down and moving out of their spaces to conserve funds for a post-pandemic reopening, which they hoped would be feasible.

While Kaufman Ilstrup said private philanthropy appears to be holding strong in 2020, he could see that changing in 2021 if the hobbled U.S. economy further shrinks donor wallets. Members of small arts organizations that rely at least partially on funds from their town governments worry about whether voters will decide to tighten the belt on Town Meeting Day 2021.

“Without additional federal relief for the cultural sector, we will lose more organizations,” Kaufman Ilstrup said. “Probably a lot more.”

M.G.

GOT AN ARTS TIP? ARTNEWS@SEVENDAYSVT.COM

COVID-19 Compilations

“Listening in Place is about highlighting the connection and relationship building that can come out of deep listening,” VFC education and media specialist MARY WESLEY said. “What we wanted to bring to the forefront was intentionally setting aside time and space to talk to each other and share experiences and really listen to what people are going through.”

Listening in Place includes an archive of daily experiences crowdsourced from Vermonters; a series of virtual story circles; “Virtual Vox Pops,” a series of short interviews recorded by VFC staff; and “Show Us Your Masks!,” a visual record of homemade mask making.

“It’s only become more clear as the months have gone on what a symbol of this time masks will be,” Wesley said.

Another component of the project kicked off on December 21, the winter

COURTESY OF THE VERMONT COVID-19 ARCHIVE

When the pandemic is finally over, most of us are likely never to want to think about it again. But at least two local organizations are actively trying to preserve the moment.

No, they’re not sadists; they’re historians.

Since late March, the VERMONT HISTORICAL SOCIETY in Barre has been compiling the Vermont COVID-19 Archive, a digital collection of all things coronavirus in the Green Mountains. The open-source, preservation-level archive — which, at press time, numbered 543 user-submitted entries — covers everything from news reports to photos, written stories, and audio and video recordings submitted by regular Vermonters. There are also poems, letters, literary zines, and lots and lots of Zoom meetings.

VHS executive director STEPHEN PERKINS said the flow of submissions has ebbed and

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flowed over the months, along with the virus. So has the tone of the material.

“The first stuff that came in, there certainly was fear,” he said. “Then, shortly thereafter, there was almost a bit of joy, like, ‘Hey, this is what we’re doing. We’re making cookies with the kids or playing music.’”

Submissions slowed in the summer, Perkins said, then picked up in the fall as Vermonters moved back inside. But those more recent submissions, he noted, “don’t feel as lighthearted.”

Perkins likened the COVID-19 archive to VHS’ collection of Vermont materials from the 1918 pandemic.

“I think one of the biggest uses will be for writers and researchers in the future,” he said.

Meanwhile, in Middlebury, the VERMONT FOLKLIFE CENTER has been building the Listening in Place Sound Archive, a multifaceted project documenting Vermonters’ pandemic experiences.

solstice. Listening in Place: Winter Lights explores “how people are thinking about and responding to this darkest time of the year,” Wesley explained.

Short interviews with Vermonters will ascertain how they light up the cold season, whether with Christmas lights on cars and buildings, menorahs, bonfires, or other illuminating pursuits.

“We’re looking broadly at the different ways that people share light and make light in the darkness this time of year,” Wesley said. “In Vermont,” she continued, “darkness is something we all contend with.”

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INFO Visit the Vermont COVID-19 Archive at covid-19.digitalvermont.org. The Listening in Place Sound Archive is available at vermontfolklifecenter.org/listening.

CARRYING ON

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arts news Carrying on « P.27 Seeing the Light

Opera companies don’t typically present works that can be called emblematic of current times, but the OPERA COMPANY OF MIDDLEBURY managed it this fall with a streaming video of the micro-opera “Completing the Picture.” Only 10 minutes long, it showcases excellent singing, a Ken Burns-style collage of historical photos and some neat special effects to tell the story of the 20,000 Chinese workers who built the western end of the U.S. transcontinental railroad.

Chinese American Michael Ching composed the opera for children in 2019

for the 150th anniversary of the day the DOUGLAS ANDERSON, OCM’s director and eastern and western ends of the railroad impresario, adapted “Completing the met in Utah. “Golden Spike Day,” on Picture” for adult audiences, revising the May 10, 1869, was captured in a famous spoken narrative and eliminating a rap at photograph crowded with workers and the end. Having now seen the final product, stakeholders — not a single one Chinese. this critic can say that his version is far more Not only was interesting than the picture incomthe original (both plete, Ching ’s are on YouTube) opera reveals, but and uses video to Americans and excellent effect. their legislators The four singD O UG AND E R S O N went on to vilify ers, all OCM reguChinese immilars, are Black, grant workers, accusing them of stealing Cuban American, Japanese American and their jobs. (Plus ça change!) The Chinese white. A guzheng player from Singapore Exclusion Act of 1882 barred Chinese immi- contributed the arresting end-credit music. grants from entering the U.S. for 10 years.

In one impactful moment during the video,

WE’RE LEARNING HOW VIDEO CAN HELP TELL THESE STORIES.

a photo collage of Americans of every race and ethnicity emphasizes the story’s present-day ramifications.

Anderson said the video has garnered more than 1,000 views and even elicited comments from abroad. The experience of making it, he added, is “likely a turning point for our company.” OCM now plans a full production of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide on video in the spring, after the multistate cast has quarantined as a pod.

“A lot of theater has resisted virtual,” Anderson observed. “Now I see the light.

We’re learning how video can help tell these stories. It’s a powerful tool.”

A.L. COURTESY OF OPERA COMPANY OF MIDDLEBURY

"East and West Shaking Hands at Laying of Last Rail" by Andrew J. Russell, 1869

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GOT AN ARTS TIP? ARTNEWS@SEVENDAYSVT.COM

COURTESY OF JACOB TISCHLER

Permanent Moves

Jacob Tischler

Balancing Act

feed is currently a smorgasbord of bread pics.

Also this fall, he started a master’s program in screenwriting — virtually, for now — at the University of Southern California. Somehow, he found time to star in several virtual productions over the past few months, including NORTHERN STAGE’s radio-drama broadcast of It’s a Wonderful Life.

“I’d say I’ve been fairly overwhelmed,” Tischler said. “But I try to focus on feeling grateful for these opportunities, because this is exactly what I should be doing right now.”

As strangely liminal as this moment feels, Tischler is mostly happy with where he’s landed. “The idea of being in New York City right now totally freaks me out,” he admitted. “I’ve moved way past the desire to merely survive.”

Recently, WESTON PLAYHOUSE commissioned him to write a play that would fit on the back of a postcard — a blackand-white photograph of a kid carrying a stone mallet through a field. The play Tischler wrote, which he titled “Wiser,” contains just two lines of dialogue: A boy, who carries the mallet, tells his sister, “Let’s break sticks!” His sister responds, “I’d rather build things.”

“If this year has taught me anything,” Tischler said wryly, “it’s that I work pretty well under constraints.”

C.E.

viewable on Vimeo, features 31 dancers of all ages performing 30- to 60-second pieces in backyards and woodlands, on picnic benches and industrial stairs. Producer EXTENSITY CREATIVE of South Burlington elegantly wove them together, and this viewer found the blend a surprisingly intriguing, clever and satisfying way to watch dance.

A second memorable video of 2020 was “Forget Me Not,” directed by ANDREAS JOHN of Calais and produced by his company, IN THE HANDS OF BEAUTY. “Forget Me Not,” which can be viewed on John’s website, has won numerous awards, including Best Experimental Short at both the Los Angeles International Film Festival’s Indie Short Fest and the Toronto Alternative Film Festival.

In the video, eight dancers remove their face masks as they enter a forest blanketed with spring flowers on a warm morning. As a nearby musician complements birdsongs with chimes, gongs and a drum, the dancers lean on trees, hang from vines, wrap themselves in white silk and savor the breeze. The videography plays with perspective, speed and light to gorgeous effect.

Many Vermont dance artists have created videos during the pandemic, both on their own and in collaboration. Though the wide use of this medium began as a substitute for in-person experience, it may well continue to fuel the transformation of normally ephemeral dance into compelling, permanent art.

E .M.S .

CARRYING ON

» P.30 COURTESY OF IN THE HANDS OF BEAUTY

Nine months ago, actor JACOB TISCHLER filmed his first pandemic sketch — a one-minute Instagram video, posted shortly after he was laid off from his bartending job at a Broadway theater.

In the skit, Tischler bickers with his doppelgänger, also played by Tischler.

A few days later, he returned to his childhood home in Williston, where he’s been holed up ever since.

In the first few months of quarantine, Tischler wrote and performed almost 40 self-isolation sketches, which helped him process the weirdness of being unemployed and living under his parents’ roof again. A handful of his videos got more than 1,000 views, but none of them went viral in the way Tischler had hoped.

Then, in May, when racial justice protests swept across the country, Tischler redirected his considerable energy into baking and selling bread — he’d been on the sourdough train long before the pandemic — and donating the proceeds to social justice organizations.

Tischler’s baking enterprise, Starter, now has an official website. And, because he is apparently incapable of doing anything halfway, he built a masonry oven in his parents’ backyard in the fall with the help of THEA ALVIN, an instructor at Waitsfield’s YESTERMORROW DESIGN/BUILD SCHOOL. Tischler’s Instagram

Dancers often practice and develop new works on their own, but it can be exponentially more interesting, productive and fun to create in collaboration with others.

So, when the pandemic halted all in-person learning, rehearsing and performing, dancers were temporarily stumped.

It wasn’t long, however, before they rallied to keep moving, creating and connecting online. Instructors of everything from ballet to hip-hop learned how to teach via Zoom, YouTube and other platforms.

Students of all ages cleared space to practice in living rooms, attics and basements, and dance artists drew on the depths of their creativity to make art in isolation.

As the weather warmed, many gravitated to the outdoors to move together at safe distances. The freedom offered by being outside, combined with video acumen, gave birth to some truly remarkable creations — and may have launched a new mode of expression for Vermont dancers: artistic videos. These are not recordings of stage performances; they’re collaborative creations in which dancers, musicians, videographers and editors weave tapestries of movement and sound into cohesive works.

Two pandemic-era videos offer prime examples. In June, the VERMONT DANCE ALLIANCE, a statewide nonprofit that supports dance artists, released the video “TRACES 2020 Virtual Performance.” It’s the quarantine version of the group’s annual outdoor one-day event. The 11.5-minute video,

Still from "Forget Me Not"

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arts news Carrying on « P.29 Movies Under the … Snow?

Acting Accordingly

he sees in a weekend, offering only, “If they weren’t coming out, we wouldn’t be open.” He sees the drive-in as providing

About Nothing — in cars. But “the actors’ The show was also videotaped for later union basically laughed at us,” she said. viewing online; for its three other “Tiny” “We had to move our focus to entries, Northern Stage went fall.” straight to streaming.

Northern Stage “It turned out to be pivoted again, ‘Huge Exhausting creating a short Theater,’” Dunne series called said with a laugh.

Tiny Necessary “We did four Theater. The productions in company did just a couple of a live, onstage months.” Also presentation exhausting: of the onethe ongoing woman show effort to “make It’s Fine, I’m sure all of us Fine, written were healthy and performed by and safe,” she Stephanie Everett in It’s Fine, I’m Fine recent Dartmouth added. “We were College graduate getting tested [for STEPHANIE EVERETT. COVID-19] three times a Rigorous safety protoweek!” cols included severely restricting Northern Stage’s final show of the audience in the 240-seat theater. For the year is streaming right now: a radiothe first week, Dunne recounted, “We play version of It’s a Wonderful Life. A had 30 people a night. Then the governor photo on the company’s website docuclosed the Vermont border, and we had ments the social-distancing measures the eight people a night.” cast took while recording.

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said with a chuckle. “We’re looking at January.”

Handy declined to say how many cars

CO

White River Junction-based NORTHERN STAGE, like every theater company on Earth, was forced to change its plans abruptly in 2020. “We’ve pivoted so many times we are now tap dancers,” producing artistic director CAROL DUNNE wrote in an email.

And fast dancers at that. The coronavirus arrived in mid-March, shutting down just about everything. Despite having had to furlough much of its staff, by early April Northern Stage had launched a weekly series on Zoom called Play Date.

Entertaining and educational, the events were more than just staged readings. Participants were encouraged to sign up in advance, purchase and read the play and discuss it during the Zoom session with actors and a presenter.

“This is a chance to take a deep dive into plays,” Dunne told Seven Days in April. Play Date continued for 12 sessions.

MIDDLEBURY ACTING COMPANY is now taking a similar approach with its winter monthly series the American Dream Project.

In a phone call last week, Dunne revealed that in the summer company members wanted to “do Shakespeare” — Much Ado

EVA SOLLBERGER

When I went to Colchester’s SUNSET DRIVE-IN in August for a cover story on the resurgence of drive-ins as pandemic entertainment, the air was pleasantly steamy. Families were bedding down in truck beds and setting up lawn chairs under the stars.

Four months and change later, on December 17, when I reached Sunset owner PETER HANDY by phone, he’d just plowed the debris of a nor’easter from the drive-in. “I made some good tracks,” he said.

All the better to welcome the families who’d already bought tickets for early (4:15 p.m.) Friday and Saturday showings of movies such as Elf and The Muppet Christmas Carol. The Sunset added those kid-friendly screenings to its schedule by public request.

That’s right. While the drive-ins in Fairlee and Bethel have closed for the season, and the mobile ones that sprouted in fields across Vermont like summer daisies are long gone, the Sunset remains open two days a week, showing Christmas flicks in a winter wonderland. Handy said it’s the longest his season has ever lasted.

“We’re alive and still kicking,” he

From left: Saturn Roblee and Kai and Cavan Meese at a Moonrise Cinemas pop-up

a community service to the people who bundle up to see holiday classics or new releases such as The Croods 2: A New Age (which “has been doing fabulous,” he said) and Monster Hunter.

“People want a place to go out and be safe,” said Handy, whose employees enforce pandemic precautions and “make sure everybody’s parking COVID-ly,” as he put it.

What about those plummeting temperatures — in the teens when we spoke? “I tell people to dress warm, bring a blanket,” Handy said. “And if need be, start your vehicle up — as long as it’s not a diesel.”

When we spoke in August, Handy didn’t have much good to say about the 2020 season, which got a late start due to lockdowns. In December, he was more upbeat, saying, “I think we’re doing more business because of COVID.” The reason is simple: With social distancing built in, the drive-in offers a safe way to “gather.”

“We are a sense of normalcy for these people during these COVIDunsafe times,” Handy said.

Though Handy doesn’t “anticipate us going too much farther down the road,” he declined to specify an end date for his season. He’d already sold tickets for the long-delayed Christmas release Wonder Woman 1984.

M.H.

“We really needed a fresh reminder of all we have to be grateful for,” Dunne said, referring to the story’s redemptive theme.

“Especially in Vermont.”

What’s up next? In January, the company will livestream New Works Now, readings of three plays-in-progress with follow-up conversations. Though Dunne was reluctant to unveil other plans, she allowed that “Mud season will have something magical, and summer will have something very special.”

Getting through 2020 was a matter of careful planning and the crucial financial help of donors and federal and state relief funds, Dunne acknowledged. Though she’s worried about 2021, she is also just a little optimistic. “I think we’ll have a very cautious re-upping,” Dunne said.

P.P.

INFO It’s a Wonderful Life, directed by Carol Dunne, recorded as a radio play by Northern Stage, streaming through January 3. $15. northernstage.org

Want the kids in your life to grow up to be Good Citizens?

Help them take the Good Citizen At-Home Challenge!

Choose from a wide variety of 40+ civics-related activities, including:

News Literacy #3: Community Service #1: Shovel snow for a neighbor. Don’t know who needs help? Have an adult pose a question to your Front Porch Forum to find out.

History #6: Test your knowledge of Vermont by playing Virtual Vermont Trivia.

The Vermont Historical Society hosts these free, all-ages competitions on Zoom on Wednesday nights in January at 7 p.m. Each night focuses on a different theme: Geography and Place Names, Famous Vermonters, People and Customs, and Vermont Miscellany. Find more information at vermonthistory.org/calendar.

Government #2: Stream the 2020 documentary Boys State (rated PG-13).

Winner of the U.S. Grand Jury Prize for a documentary at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, the movie follows 1,000 teenage boys as they attempt to form a government during a weeklong summer camp in Austin, Texas. Available on Apple TV+.

Listen to an interview with Erica Heilman, host and producer of the podcast “Rumble Strip.” She’ll discuss how she creates her podcast, which airs on VPR, during “Making Rumble Strip in My Closet,” on Wednesday, January 6, at 7 p.m. This free, virtual event is part of Vermont Humanities’ First Wednesdays series. Find more information at vermonthumanities.org.

News Literacy #7: Get a copy of a local newspaper and read five stories. This issue of Seven Days counts!

Complete activities like these for a chance to win a $50 gift card to a locally owned independent bookstore or a one-year subscription to The Week or The Week Jr. in a prize drawing on January 27. There are 40+ activities to choose from.

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Empowering Vermont’s youth to close the opportunity gap.

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MARK PRENT, DECEMBER 23, 1947-SEPTEMBER 2, 2020 COURTESY OF SUE PRENT

LIFE STORIES 2020

‘There was nothing he couldn’t make with his hands.’

Remembering Vermonters who died this year B Y SEV EN D AYS STAFF

L

iving through 2020 has meant facing reminders of death on a daily basis.

As of mid-December, more than 1.6 million people had died of COVID19 worldwide, including more than 300,000 Americans. The numbers are less dramatic in Vermont — 107 deaths as of December 22— but the impact has nonetheless been profound: That’s more than 100 Vermont families, communities and circles of friends forever broken. Indeed, 2020 has been a year defined by loss and grief.

But, as author Jamie Anderson once put it, “Grief is just love with no place to go.” In that sense, perhaps we can measure 2020 as much by an abundance of love as an abundance of sadness. And one outlet for all that idle love is our remembrances of those who are no longer with us.

Since 2014, at each year’s end, Seven Days has published brief life stories of a handful of Vermonters who died in the preceding 12 months. There are no specific requirements for inclusion, and we’ve learned over and over again that there are far more tales than we could possibly tell.

In this issue, you’ll find seven stories about Vermonters who died in 2020. Some you might have heard about, others not.

Some were heroes and trailblazers. Others were quieter but crucial members of their communities or families. Some did the best they could in the face of daunting challenges.

Every one of them left a mark on the lives of those around them; every one will be remembered.

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Mark Prent with a model for illustrating a children’s book he cowrote with his wife, Sue

A

s an art student at Concordia University in Montréal, Mark Prent churned out photoperfect drawings of aesthetically pleasing things. Then, his printmaking instructor sat him down one day and told him she would fail him if he kept producing work that imitated reality.

“That one sentence changed my whole life,” Mark told the St. Albans Messenger in 2015.

About a decade after that epiphany, in 1974, he caused an uproar with an exhibition in Toronto. The offending piece, an installation titled “...And Is There Anything Else You’d Like, Madam?” consisted of an antique deli case filled with human body parts presented as foodstuffs: sliced breasts, smoked thighs, roasted feet, pickled penises. The Toronto police attempted to close down the show, charging the gallery owner with “knowingly, without lawful justification or excuse, publicly exhibiting a disgusting object,” according to a 1978 profile of Mark in Maclean’s, a Canadian weekly. The gallery owner refused to shut down the exhibition; a grand jury declined to hear the case.

For the rest of his life, Mark would make art that married beauty and obscenity. His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums all over the world, including New York City’s Gagosian gallery, the Akademie der Künste in Berlin and the Musée d’art Contemporain in Montréal.

Pink House Studios, the molding and casting business Mark founded with his wife, Sue Real Prent, has counted Yoko Ono among its clients. Guillermo del Toro, director of Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water, owns one of Mark’s pieces — a sculpture of a nude woman in repose on a leather chaise, her back covered in carbuncles. Sue, who titled all of her husband’s works, called the piece “The End Steals In.”

Mark spent hours each day in his studio, a peachy-pink stone carriage house next to the peachy-pink Victorian he shared in St. Albans with Sue, his partner of 48 years, right up until his death on September 2, following an aortic aneurysm. He was 72.

Mark was born in Lodz, Poland, in 1947, to Carl and Maria (Markowski) Prent, both Holocaust survivors who had endured Russian labor camps. When Mark was an infant, the family immigrated to Montréal, where he spent his youth and early adulthood. According to Sue, her husband’s parents rarely spoke about the war, and Mark resisted the theory, often promulgated by the press, that the dark preoccupations of his art came from his parents’ experiences.

“Mark didn’t like such a literal narrative, because he felt that it foreclosed any other possibilities,” Sue explained.

Later in his life, she said, he acknowledged that his parents’ past probably did resonate in his work, but he firmly believed that the ultimate source of his inspiration was, and should remain, a mystery. “It was just this impulse he had,” Sue said. “All of his work originated with an image from his imagination, like a living dream.”

Mark often used found objects in his work. His first forays into Vermont were the auction houses of Alburgh, which he and Sue frequented in search of macabre curiosities — cast-off prosthetic limbs, sinister-looking farm implements, antique medical devices. In 1983, priced out of studio rentals in Montréal, the couple moved to St. Albans. A few years later, their son, Jesse, was born.

(The invention of eBay was a huge boon for Mark’s career, said Sue, whose internet search history now teems with phrases such as “coffin trolley.”)

“Nothing was safe with Mark,” said James Lockhart,

VERMONT CUSTOM

PHOTOS COURTESY OF JESSE PRENT

a longtime friend who worked for Pink House Studios for many years. In 1986, Lockhart was fresh out of art school, working at a bookstore in St. Albans and longing to meet other artists. One day, Mark came into the shop and introduced himself. He invited Lockhart to his house and showed him his work. “I’d been looking at van Gogh and Rodin all my life, and then I saw Mark Prent,” said Lockhart. “I was like, ‘Holy shit.’ It was a sucker punch.”

Lockhart started coming to the Prents’ house almost every day. He worked on his own art alongside Mark; occasionally, he helped out with chores. Once, he was shoveling the Prents’ walkway when Sue came running out of the studio. “Mark needs you!

He needs you right now!” Lockhart remem-

Mark Prent with “Reptilarium”

“Ichthymorph Redux”

bers her shouting. “I thought something horrible had happened,” he said. When Lockhart got inside, he found Mark lying naked on the floor. “Help!” Mark pleaded.

“I need you to make me a body mold!”

“Mark saw humor in everything he made,” Sue said. “He’d say, ‘There are things in this world that are horrible and brutal, but my stuff isn’t real.’”

Lockhart remembers a time when Mark was working on a grisly piece — a sausage grinder he’d bought at auction, with a taxidermy alligator head sticking out of it. “At some point, he just started laughing, and it was contagious,” said Lockhart. “We were laughing, laughing, laughing, like a drug.”

Mark’s sense of morbid absurdity

often made its way into his son’s school projects. When Jesse was in sixth grade, his dad built him a scale model of a human torso, made of flesh-colored silicone, for a unit on the cardiovascular system. He inserted a replica of a heart in an open cavity in the chest. When Jesse presented the sculpture in class, wearing an apron smeared with red paint, he ripped the heart out. His teacher gave him an A. “My dad was kind of an engineer,” Jesse said. “Everything he made was extremely well-built.”

Mark was such a renowned moldmaker that, in the early ’90s, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police commissioned him to show their forensic artist how to make a mold of a skull that was being used as evidence in a murder trial. When researchers salvaged a single bronze cherub from the wreckage of the Titanic, Mark was hired to cast a mold of it.

“He was an absolute perfectionist,” Sue said. “Jesse and I came to think that there was nothing he couldn’t make with his hands.”

As uncompromising as he was in his work, Mark could be endlessly patient and generous with others. When Jesse was growing up, he and his father had a sacred bedtime ritual. First, Mark would tell him a story — the plot usually involved dinner vegetables that grew to horrific proportions and feasted on small children — and then he would take out an atlas, point to a region of the world, and ask Jesse to name all of its countries and capitals. Sometimes, Mark would substitute the geography quizzes for metric conversion exercises.

“He wanted me to know where things were in the world, how to think in another system,” Jesse said.

In 1987, Lockhart attended the opening of a retrospective of Mark’s work at a gallery in Montréal. One of the pieces on display was characteristically grotesque — a series of heads suspended in clear liquid inside glass jars, bubbles rising from their nostrils and mouths, accompanied by a life-size cast of the artist dangling from a crucifix on the wall.

“Mark’s chatting with this group of adults — you know, art people,” Lockhart recalled, “and suddenly, this little kid comes up to him and tugs on his jacket and asks, ‘What’s this about?’” Lockhart watched as Mark left the grown-up conversation and walked with the kid through the exhibit. “Mark told him, ‘It isn’t about anything,’” Lockhart said. “As they’re walking around, he asked the kid, ‘Do you like it?’ The kid said, ‘Well, yeah.’

And Mark went, ‘Then you know what it’s about.’”

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Life Stories « P.33 COURTESY OF J.D. GOODMAN

Shirley Chevalier with her plane

‘She was really a free spirit.’

SHIRLEY ANN CHEVALIER, FEBRUARY 27, 1942-SEPTEMBER 22, 2020

M

ost people who knew Shirley Chevalier immediately associate her with “Champ,” the 1959 single-engine Champion airplane she flew for decades out of Burlington International Airport as an aerial photographer. Shirley lovingly adorned the aircraft, like a Valentine, with red and white hearts. As she once described it, “If it’s going to be a lady’s airplane, it should look like a lady’s airplane.”

Close friends and family also remember Shirley’s other thrill: riding her Honda Gold Wing motorcycle, on which she logged more than 100,000 miles exploring New England and the Adirondacks.

But long before Shirley took up motorcycles and overcame her legendary fear of flying, her daughters Tammi Heath and Shari Mullen remember her driving a much slower vehicle: a white Volkswagen bus. When they were little, Shirley would remove the seats, load the bus full of neighborhood kids and their Shetland pony, and go trick-or-treating or joyriding around Colchester.

“We went to a bank one time and they were giving out lollipops,” Mullen recalled. “When we got to the window, [the pony] just whinnied. Mom said papers were flying all over the place.”

“My mom gave the best parties ever!” Heath added.

It’s fitting that Shirley once drove a ’70s-era bus. Heath described their blended clan of five kids, who lived for years on Marble Island, as “the Partridge family.” In all, Shirley married three times but ultimately answered to no one. As she put it in a 2017 Seven Days interview, “I’ve enjoyed 40 happy years of divorce.”

“She was really a free spirit, and she was inspiring,” Mullen added. “She didn’t let anyone else rule her life.”

Shirley was born Shirley Ann Guyette on February 27, 1942, in Berlin, Vt. She moved to Amsden, where for 34

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 30, 2020-JANUARY 13, 2021

years her parents, Leroy and Josephine Guyette, ran a general store.

Shirley’s first love was a horse named Babe, which she rode for pleasure and competition. A natural athlete, Shirley boasted that she could ride Babe while standing on its back at a gallop.

Shirley was introduced to aviation through a job at the Budget Rent-A-Car counter at Burlington International Airport in the 1970s.

“Oh, boy, do I like the airport!” she said in 2017. “I love the people, the atmosphere, just everything about it.”

When a tour guide position opened in the airport manager’s office, Shirley jumped at the opportunity. But because tours weren’t an everyday affair and she needed something else to do, her boss handed her a box full of old photos to organize — basically “busy work,” she recalled.

But Shirley, who also loved photography, embraced the job, eventually turning those old photographs into the first of three books she published, Burlington International Airport: A Pictorial History (1983). That project also introduced Shirley to Grace Pugh, Vermont’s first-ever licensed female pilot. The two eventually became lifelong friends.

Outgoing, exuberant and always wearing a smile, Shirley soon became the face of the airport as its public relations manager, giving tours, greeting dignitaries and, naturally, taking pictures.

But her own aviation career was nearly grounded before it took off. In 1978, a male pilot offered to take Shirley on a “freight hop” to Portland, Maine.

“This guy was kind of sweet on me, so I said, ‘Sure!’

So off we go into the wild blue yonder,” she recalled in 2017. But when the plane got to about 3,000 feet, the pilot, trying to impress her, switched off the engine.

“I have never been so frightened in my life. I completely fell apart inside,” Shirley explained. “When we got back [to Burlington], I got out of that airplane, slammed that door and said, ‘I will never get in one of those damn things as long as I live!’”

She did, of course. After Shirley’s longtime neighbor, Bill Hazelett, cofounder of Hazelett Strip-Casting in Colchester, heard about her fear of flying, he offered to take her up. Eventually, Hazelett gave Shirley free flight lessons, first at the old airstrip on Colchester Point — now Airport Park — then later in his seaplane on Malletts Bay. Shirley earned her pilot’s license in 1983. A year later, she bought Champ for $7,000. A small wooden model of Champ can be found below Shirley’s photo on BTV’s second-floor concourse.

“That airplane became her identity,” said Hobart “Hobie” Tomlinson, Shirley’s longtime business partner and close personal friend. “With it, she found her purpose in life.”

By October 2001, Champ was in rough shape and Tomlinson, a former airline pilot and Federal Aviation Administration examiner, was concerned about its flightworthiness. So he offered to buy half the plane from Shirley so she’d have money to rebuild it.

Two and a half years later, the plane came back fully restored, just about the time that digital cameras were becoming popular. In 2004, Shirley launched her aerial photography business, FliRite Aviation, which combined her two natural gifts — flying and taking pictures.

“She had an eye for photos,” Tomlinson said. “She could frame a picture in her mind.”

That much is clear from Shirley’s images, many of which still hang in the office she and Tomlinson shared for years alongside the airport tarmac. They include some of her favorite events to shoot: the cigarette boat races she regularly documented on Lake Champlain. She’d put the control stick between her knees, dip one wing and aim her camera out an open window.

“That’s probably the most exciting thing,” she explained in 2017. “Some of them are doing 100 miles per hour. I do 90, and it really ticks me off when a boat passes me!”

Shirley’s flights weren’t always smooth sailing. Jeff Houghton, maintenance manager at Vermont Flight Academy, remembers as a kid watching Shirley take off once — and seeing a wheel fall off her plane. Houghton’s father, BTV’s director of aviation at the time, radioed Shirley to immediately return to the airfield for an emergency landing.

Calling Shirley “a natural-born stick-and-rudder pilot,” Houghton said he was amazed by how she landed that plane on one wheel without spinning out or flipping over.

“I’ve been around airplanes all my life,” he said. “The scrape mark on that runway was perfectly straight.

Any other pilot probably would have dumped it in the grass.”

In November 2018, Shirley was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. She died on September 22, 2020, at the McClure Miller Respite House in Colchester. She was 78.

Despite Shirley’s illness, her daughters said, she remained upbeat until the very end.

“Even on her death bed,” Mullen recalled, “she was saying, ‘Life is good.’”

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Life Stories « P.34

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‘He was one of the most generous souls.’

RALPH PRESTON, JUNE 26, 1927-JUNE 8, 2020 FILE: EVA SOLLBERGER

alph Preston loved creating and solving puzzles on scales grand and small. An engineer by training, he built his own house in Hinesburg and, to ward off intruders, fashioned an elaborate, almost booby-trapped front door that was nearly impossible to open. Equally fascinated with minute detail and precision, he was a master builder of ships in bottles that he made using tools he invented for the purpose.

“It was like his brain needed to constantly create and invent,” said Kit O’Connor, one of Ralph’s close friends.

“Nothing was a problem that couldn’t be figured out.”

He was gracious with his knowledge, sharing it in talks for the public, giving away many models, and describing nuances of building ships in bottles on his website, still visible at natosongs.com/ hit-the-bottle.

Ralph died of natural causes in June, just shy of his 93rd birthday. But his legacy runs deeper than the nuts and bolts of model shipbuilding or impenetrable doors, according to his friends. They tell stories of a loving, gregarious, worldly, humorous and strong man — who sometimes struggled with the emotional wounds of war and loss.

“He was a complicated man. But, boy, he was one of the most generous souls,” said O’Connor.

Ralph was born in the Northeast Kingdom town of Lowell, where he lived with his parents, two sisters and grandfather.

“My father had a local repair shop, and the farmers depended on him to keep their tractors running,” he said in “Ralph’s Models in Bottles,” a 2016 “Stuck in Vermont” video. “He would take apart a junk car to get a part, and when he was gone, I’d go out and take a few more pieces off,” said Ralph with an impish grin. “And then my father would go out and say, ‘Just a minute!’ He was really quite tolerant of me,” he added, chuckling.

He often proudly recounted that his family was the first in town to have electricity, supplied by the generator his father built. The Prestons were not wealthy, and family relationships were sometimes strained, said Rich Arentzen, another of Ralph’s close friends. So Ralph read voraciously and, at age 8, began building models as an escape.

When work became scarce early in World War II, the family moved to Willimantic, Conn., where his father took a factory job. As the war intensified, Ralph decided he needed to contribute. So at age 16, he changed the date on his birth certificate, as did many teens at the time, and joined the Navy.

“He ended up in the South Pacific on a minesweeper,” said Ralph’s friend Greg

Ralph Preston

Burbo. “His ticket took him through the islands recaptured by American Marines and soldiers. He made it to China and then on to occupied Japan after the war ended.”

Ralph’s war experiences later fueled his penchant for storytelling. “He was such an amazing storyteller — the cadence, the mythic quality” had you “on the edge of your seat,” Arentzen recalled.

He and Burbo recounted a favorite they call “The Jeep Story.” Ralph was driving a jeep loaded with satchel charges, a type of explosive, to a military base. He rounded a curve on the rutted, muddy road and saw a two-and-a-half-ton truck, with six sailors on board, speeding toward him and spanning most of the road. “He did the only sensible thing,” said Burbo. “He drove down the hillside into the jungle.”

The sailors hauled Ralph and the jeep back onto the road and, despite some bruises, one missing satchel charge and a badly damaged vehicle, Ralph delivered his cargo to the base.

Arentzen recalled another harrowing story, this one about a plane crash. As Ralph and fellow soldiers were hiking on rough mountain terrain toward the wreckage to help, “One guy after another fell to the wayside, [but] Ralph managed to get

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 30, 2020-JANUARY 13, 2021

up to the plane and rescue the man,” said Arentzen. It took a long time to drag the wounded man down, but in the end Ralph became a bit of a hero. The man he saved was an admiral, and they kept in touch for years afterward.

In addition to uplifting stories, Ralph alluded to many atrocities, said O’Connor, including what he saw while liberating a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. His friends were aware that he struggled with those memories throughout his life.

After the war, Ralph earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in aeronautical engineering and worked at Saint Michael’s College, where he taught mathematics for more than 30 years. He took great joy in students who excelled, including a few who won Rhodes Scholarships, but he thrived on his three avocations: building models, befriending people and dancing.

Ralph built ships in bottles, airplanes in bottles, cars in bottles, and other models until his final days. He made about 100 in total, Arentzen estimated, many of which are in museums, and was world renowned for historical accuracy and precision.

Among his most prized models are the Charles W. Morgan, the most valuable ship in a bottle ever sold, owned by the

German Museum of Technology in Berlin; the USCGC Eagle, a Coast Guard training ship — he crossed the Atlantic on the real boat; and the Lunar Lander vehicle that he built for astronaut Michael Collins.

In an article on his website, Ralph offered three reasons he made ships in bottles: first, for “the aesthetic factor” of “putting a beautiful ship” in a hand-blown bottle of complementary shape and style.

Second, for the joy of creating and solving puzzles, such that “the audience becomes a part of the game.” And third: “In effect I am putting myself in the bottle. It is a different world in there. The model is, to a degree, protected from the ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,’” he said, quoting William Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Ralph’s one regret, said his friends, was not having a family. He lost his first love to a car accident and his second to illness.

But none of these experiences seemed to dampen his spirit. To the end, Ralph was outgoing, friendly, kind, generous and gentle, befriending people wherever he went and sharing his playful sense of humor. Though he kept in touch with his sisters and their families, who lived out of state, his chosen family of Vermont friends was central to his life and cared for him in his old age.

“So many people in Burlington knew who he was,” his friend Kim Burbo recalled. “I’d run into somebody, and I’d be talking about my friend Ralph, and they’re like, ‘Oh, I know him. Doesn’t he go dancing?’”

He certainly did. Ralph was a devoted swing and ballroom dancer into his late eighties.

“He had a couple of completely Ralph moves that were very swingy in that he swung us all over the place,” recalled Cate Lamb. Her husband, Terry Bouricius, noted that Ralph was at every dance with a live big band through the 1980s. “He loved leading pretzels and buzz step spins with any partner who was willing,” Bouricius wrote by email. “His joy during dancing was infectious.”

Ralph was just as ubiquitous at his favorite haunts, including Muddy Waters and Sweetwaters in Burlington and the 99 Restaurant in Williston. He never drank alcohol or smoked, but he loved good food.

“Ralph was one of our regulars and was always kind and engaging with all the staff,” recalled Lili Udell Fiore, a host at Sweetwaters in the late ’80s and early ’90s.

He was “like a member of the Sweetwaters family, a genuinely great guy.”

With Ralph’s passing, “Burlington and Vermont lost a real Vermonter and a real humanitarian,” said O’Connor. “He was just a man from a different time.”

E LI ZABE T H M. S E YLE R LIFE STORIES

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Life Stories « P.36

‘It was quite mesmerizing to watch him play.’

STEPHEN ROGERS ALBRIGHT, JULY 13, 1949-APRIL 19, 2020

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Stephen Albright at Burlington High School in 1971

COURTESY OF TOM LITTLE

obody played guitar like Stephen Albright. That was true musically: He was widely regarded as a groundbreaking player in Burlington in the early 1970s, according to friends and family. But his unique style was particularly evident in his strange stage manner.

“Especially when he was soloing, he’d do this kind of counterpoint between what he was playing on guitar and what his body would do,” Stephen’s friend and former bandmate Howard “Mitch” Mitchell said. He explained that Stephen would plant himself with one foot forward and one behind and, with his eyes closed and long hair trailing, rock back and forth “in a very slow motion that had absolutely nothing in common with the rhythm of the song.”

“It was quite mesmerizing to watch him play,” Mitchell continued. “And the people in the audience, especially the young women, fell head over heels for him.”

Onstage and off, Stephen moved to his own rhythms throughout his life, for better and worse. He was a prodigiously talented guitarist, singer and songwriter. He was also an expert leather worker and enjoyed drawing and screen-printing, among other artistic pursuits.

“He loved working with his hands,” said his sister Jody Albright. And he continued to do so, at least as much as the myriad mental and physical ailments that plagued his adult life would allow.

Stephen, 70, died on April 19 at Birchwood Terrace Rehab and Healthcare, one of 21 coronavirus victims at the Burlington nursing home in the early stages of the pandemic. While his death certificate lists COVID-19 as his cause of death, his brother Andy doesn’t think that’s quite accurate.

“Stephen died with COVID-19, not from it,” he said, noting a long and largely mysterious litany of health problems that made his brother especially vulnerable to the virus. “This was not a healthy person,” he said.

Stephen was born in Hagerstown, Md., to Roger and Jeanne Albright. Roger, a Methodist minister, moved the family to an old ski chalet in Mendon in the mid-1950s.

Stephen grew up there and in Rutland before the family, including siblings Andy, David, Jody and Libby, moved again, this time to Burlington.

As a student at Burlington High School and later at the University of Vermont, Stephen developed a love for music, especially guitar. He was largely self-taught, which partly accounted for his unique style — a fingerpicked approach Mitchell likened to that of Dire Straits lead guitarist Mark Knopfler.

“He was a very melodic guitar player,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell was the drummer for Sass, a Burlington band that had two incarnations in the early 1970s, one of which prominently featured Stephen. Like most local bar bands of the era, Sass traded in contemporary pop and rock covers by the likes of the Temptations and Yes. But Sass stood apart from other Queen City acts at the time by also playing original songs, which were penned and sung by Stephen.

“He was quite a unique songwriter,” Mitchell said.

“His songs were ethereal. They were about love, but it was a higher love, a spiritual love. So the meaning was

sometimes hard to decipher, which was an attraction to his music.”

But it was Stephen’s guitar playing that truly distinguished him, according to Andy, who is also a musician.

He suggested that his brother was, along with late local legend Kip Meaker, a trailblazer who raised the bar for blues and rock guitarists in Burlington.

“Kip and Stephen were the first to break out and play soulful guitar, experiment with different tones,” Andy said.

“Kip was better known by a broader circle,” Mitchell said. “But Stephen had a very dedicated circle of fans, musicians and nonmusicians included.”

After Sass, Stephen went on to play in a number of other local bands, most notably the Lights and Fake Cities.

Though short-lived, the latter group was a contemporary of early ’80s Burlington stalwarts Pinhead and the Decentz and included Stephen’s kid sister.

“It was thrilling to be a part of, for me,” said Jody, who later turned to jazz vocals. “To be in a band with your big brother is kind of a dream come true.”

Fake Cities would be Stephen’s last group, as the mental and physical health issues that dominated his later life were beginning to emerge.

“So much of his life was a struggle,” Jody said. “And it’s very complicated as to whether physical problems caused the mental health problem or vice versa.”

As his health declined, Stephen moved into a College Street apartment for the elderly and those living with disabilities, and he remained there for decades. He became a fixture on the Church Street Marketplace, spending most of his days downtown.

“All the shop owners knew him,” Jody said. “He was a street person, in that sense. He wasn’t homeless, but that was his crowd.”

On Thanksgiving, Jody recalled, Stephen would go to Sweetwaters restaurant, which hosts an annual community dinner. “And he would bring back meals for everyone in his building who couldn’t go,” she said. “He was just really friendly and very, very sweet. And I think that’s what saved him in terms of his mental health. He wasn’t mean or ornery.”

While Stephen wasn’t a danger to anyone else, he could be to himself. On several occasions he tried to take his own life.

“He was in and out of the hospital so much,” Jody said.

She suspects he became addicted to painkillers, which exacerbated his mental health challenges.

“There was significant era where he was a walking crisis,” Andy said.

Eventually, however, Stephen did experience some relief. He developed dementia in his later years and moved to Birchwood when he was no longer able to care for himself. When he got there, Jody said, “Something really changed.”

Stephen flourished at Birchwood, said Andy, who spoke with his brother daily by phone. It was surprising, given his previous, borderline calamitous stints at other facilities over the years. He became “the life of the party,” according to Jody, and attended every social function and church service Birchwood offered.

“He developed a neat social life,” Andy added.

Both he and Jody suggested that weaning Stephen off the pharmaceutical drugs in his system played a key role in his revival at Birchwood.

“He was finally kind of at peace and happy,” Jody said.

On March 30, Birchwood became the second eldercare facility in Vermont to record a positive COVID-19 case. Sixty-one residents and 30 employees would end up infected over the next six weeks, including Stephen.

Initially, he didn’t show any symptoms, according to Jody. But when they finally emerged, he declined rapidly.

On April 18, a Birchwood staffer recognized that Stephen had only hours to live and organized a pair of Zoom calls with Jody, Andy and their brother David to say goodbye.

“He didn’t seem to know he was dying,” Jody said, “which was great in lots of ways.”

She noted that, throughout his life, Stephen had a tendency toward vanity. He loved clothes and wearing jewelry and makeup and styling his hair. But when he got to Birchwood, she said, “He just abandoned all that.”

So it was a bit of a surprise when the family logged on to the first Zoom call to find Stephen wearing sunglasses on his forehead. And no one, Jody said with a chuckle, was quite sure where they had come from.

“It was like a last gasp of looking cool,” she said.

DAN BO LLE S

‘Calvin and Nellie worked endlessly to keep Granby at its very best.’

NELLIE M. NOBLE, SEPTEMBER 25, 1958-JUNE 10, 2020 • CALVIN D. NOBLE, MAY 5, 1953-OCTOBER 10, 2020

S

he was 15 and he was 20 when they met. Calvin Noble’s father was repairing the roof of the fall festival “cook shack” in Granby.

Nellie Mitchem’s father came from two towns over to help and brought her along.

It was love at first sight. Soon Calvin was tooling Nellie around in his pickup truck, she cuddling beside him on the wide bench seat.

Their meeting foreshadowed the couple’s more than 40 years together.

They would spend their lives devoted to each other and to the well-being of their 20-miles-from-anywhere Northeast Kingdom community and its handful of residents. They rarely would be separated, even in death: Calvin died in October, just four months after Nellie.

They married in 1976, two weeks after her 18th birthday, and moved into the ranch house they had been building behind his parents’ home.

Calvin had grown up in Granby, the youngest of six children. His mother’s ancestors had arrived there in 1815, and he was related to what seemed like half the town by blood or marriage. Electricity did not reach the small town northeast of St. Johnsbury until he was 10; his mother cooked on a woodstove, and the family read by the light of kerosene lamps. Calvin and his siblings and cousins fished for trout in Schoolhouse Brook and ranged through the vast woods. At 14 or 15, he killed his first deer with a single shot. “I believe he was playing a little hooky from school,” his brother John recalled.

Calvin loved that outdoor life, loved having his family nearby and never wanted to leave Granby. Soon Nellie agreed.

She was shy at first, in this new town, but she was a young woman with energy, a charitable heart and a talent for organization. As their two children, Jessica and Justin, approached school age, she volunteered to help audit the town books, dipping a first toe in the waters of town government.

In 1988, she was elected town clerk, a post she would hold for 32 years and manage so masterfully that the town leaders felt adrift when she died. “The selectboard kinda fell asleep during her time because Nellie kept track and told us what we needed to do,” board chair Bob Peters said. “The smartest thing Calvin

Nellie and Calvin Noble

Nellie and Calvin Noble

ever did was bring Nellie to town. That was one of his greatest achievements.”

Town clerking was just the start. Nellie also acted as town treasurer and delinquent tax collector. She served terms on the planning commission and the zoning board and helped run the Granby Central School PTO before the one-room schoolhouse closed in 2006. Starting in 1992, she worked in the blacksmith-shop-turnedpost-office, which she eventually ran.

(When she died, the post office closed for good.)

“If something needed to be done in town, she would be the one to get it going” is how her friend Betty Brown put it. Nellie was instrumental in the local campaign to conserve remote Cow Mountain Pond

from development. She ran the annual hunters’ supper. She made sure services were held a few times a year in the GranbyVictory Congregational Church. She created the community calendar (featuring residents’ birthdays) and organized the Christmas “memory tree” outside the church to remember Granby-ites who had died.

If anyone could ever be said to have their finger on the pulse of a community, it was Nellie. “Any day, she could tell you what color clothes everybody was wearing and where they were,” Peters said.

But what really made Nellie the heart of Granby — 2020 population: 60-plus; miles of paved road: zero — was her own big heart and desire to help.

When she wasn’t managing the town’s road repair accounts or sorting mail, she was crocheting afghans for cancer patients at Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital in St. Johnsbury or knitting hats for newborns and mittens for the disadvantaged. Over the years, she organized “sunshine baskets” of staples and treats for the homebound and drove two elderly residents to Lancaster, N.H., to do their shopping. When Sonia Peters was pregnant and fairly new to town, Nellie organized a baby shower attended by most of the town’s women.

Her daughter, Jessica Hook, summed it up: “At the heart of it, she loved people, and

all these projects allowed her to feel like she was part of something bigger.”

While Nellie worked for the town, Calvin commuted to Fairbanks Scales in St. Johnsbury, where he was a machinist and supervisor. Most autumns he shot his deer, some years adding a moose or a bear to the freezer.

On one of those hunts in 2008, Calvin was shot and nearly killed by a hunter who mistook him for a bear. The bullet pierced his abdomen and lodged in his hip. He lost his left leg and his bladder and underwent many operations and years of dialysis before a kidney transplant.

His extended family and the town rallied around him to help pay the transplant bills and buy Calvin an off-road utility vehicle to get around. Over time, he took up woodworking, restored a 50-yearold Case tractor, built himself a little metal ladder to mount it and won trophies in tractor-pulling contests. Together, he and Nellie organized a local historic preservation group to save the old one-room school as a future museum.

“It was his personal fortitude” that kept Calvin going, his friend Peters said. “He was more than remarkable.”

In 2019, Calvin was diagnosed with kidney cancer. Not long after, Nellie was found to have cancer of the bile duct. She died in June this year, leaving Calvin alone in their home — though perhaps not so alone.

“I was there one day with him, and I could not believe the line of cars that kept coming by, people wanting to see him,” Jessica recalled. But her father could not recover from Nellie’s loss. He died on October 10, one day after their 44th wedding anniversary.

“My father had a lot of health issues, but a broken heart was the top of the list,” his daughter said.

A stone memorial bench planned to commemorate Nellie in the churchyard now will honor her husband, as well. “Together, Calvin and Nellie worked endlessly to keep Granby at its very best,” the inscription will read. “Residents will always and forever be grateful and in their debt.”

C AN DAC E PAGE

LIFE STORIES

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Life Stories « P.39

‘How brave she was.’

VICTORIA ANTAO LORY, JUNE 6, 1947-MAY 5, 2020

V

ictoria Antao Lory was born in Nairobi, Kenya, on June 6, 1947, the third of five children of Jose Floriano Antao and Luiza Maria Antao. Her father and mother immigrated to Nairobi from Goa, India, after the birth of their firstborn.

Like her parents before her, Victoria would decide to leave her home country and travel to a new one: She moved to New York City as a young adult and eventually settled in Vermont, where she lived until her death on May 5, 2020, at age 72.

The daughter of a chef and a homemaker who had an interest in herbalism, Victoria worked for Catholic Relief Services in Nairobi after her graduation from high school. When the nonprofit organization sought staff to help establish its New York City office, Victoria signed on.

She was 21. She spoke four languages: French, English, Swahili and Konkani. And off she went by herself to the United States. Catholic Relief Services arranged for Victoria to live in an apartment building in midtown Manhattan that housed women from all over the world. Her office was on a high floor of the Empire State Building, where she was dazzled by the view. She saw snow for the first time.

As part of her administrative work for Catholic Relief Services, Victoria corresponded with an international aid worker, Jim Lory, who was working on hunger-relief projects in the Philippines. When Jim sought funding from the organization, it was Victoria who read his grant requests — and always came up with the money.

“She knew how to operate in that system, and they trusted her, and she got a lot of money for me to build these multipurpose [nutrition] centers,” said Jim, 79, now of Barre.

On a visit back to the United States, he met Victoria in New York.

“We met, and we locked on,” he said. “We hit it off immediately. And every time I had a problem and whatever I asked for, she got it for me.”

The two were married in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan in the spring of 1973. By then, Victoria had left Catholic Relief Services for an administrative assistant position at the Ford Foundation. With her marriage to Jim, she gave up that job to travel and live overseas, joining him in his humanitarian aid work. They lived and worked in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Liberia and India for some half dozen years.

“If you can imagine working at the Ford Foundation, and then being with me in Bangladesh,” Jim said, “that is the ultimate sacrifice.”

Their first daughter, Sandra, was born in India in 1978.

When she was 2, the family moved back to the United States, where they settled on a 20-acre homestead in East Hardwick.

“How brave she was,” Sandra said of her mother’s move to the Northeast Kingdom. Sandra now lives with her husband on a farm in Orange and, like her grandmother, is an herbalist.

A self-sufficient and independent woman, Victoria made a life in the country, where she appreciated the beauty of Vermont. She learned to drive, she gardened, 40

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 30, 2020-JANUARY 13, 2021

Victoria Antao Lory at the Empire State Building

Victoria Antao Lory

and she forged new friendships. Her former neighbor in East Hardwick, 90-year-old Joe Mucha, now of Westfield, Mass., called Victoria a “gem.”

Outside her home, Victoria built a career in state government, working as an administrative secretary for the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department; the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation; and the now-defunct Vermont Environmental Board.

At the Environmental Board, Victoria befriended coworker Martha Porter, with whom she took walks on

their 15-minute breaks. Later, they traveled together, exchanged flowers from each other’s gardens, talked and laughed about raising kids, and enjoyed suppers together.

“It would be just us two, us girls,” Porter, 70, said. “I didn’t care for kale until she made it for me. I never ate mangoes before she introduced me to them.”

Yet Vermont was a challenging place for a woman of color to live, Victoria’s daughters said. On occasion, Victoria considered moving back to a city, but she chose to stay.

“She was probably the darkest-skinned person in a 30-mile radius for some period of time,” Sandra said. “In East Hardwick, in the early ’80s, racism [was] alive and well.” Vermont was 98.5 percent white in 1980, according to the U.S. Census.

The Lorys’ second daughter, Yvonne, was born in St. Johnsbury in 1982. She recalled a time her mother drove her to prekindergarten in Waterbury and was pulled over by a police officer for going through a yellow light.

“It was hard to see that,” Yvonne said. “Because I knew she didn’t do anything wrong.”

When the girls were 10 and 6, the family moved from East Hardwick to Montpelier. Two years later, Jim and Victoria divorced.

“She struggled as a single mom to make ends meet,” said Yvonne, 38, an advancement and communications manager at Capstone Community Action in Barre. “I don’t know how she did it, but she did. She overcame a lot of obstacles to create stable housing for us. She invested in us as a family.”

Victoria planted a flower garden at her Montpelier condominium. She sewed clothes for her kids and costumes for their school plays. She made sure Sandra had the art supplies she needed for her projects. She loved to cook with garlic and ginger. She took her daughters on trips to New York City to visit relatives, see Broadway shows and walk in Central Park.

Faith was important to Victoria, who attended services at St. Augustine Catholic Church in Montpelier.

In the last years of her life, as Victoria experienced the cognitive decline brought on by Alzheimer’s disease, her daughters cared for her. They made sure she had the fruits she had loved since childhood, including mangoes.

“I always tell people: With Alzheimer’s, you actually lose [a loved one] twice,” Yvonne said. “You miss the person you could rely on. And then you learn to love the person who relies on you.”

Even in illness, her daughters said, Victoria remained true to her core being: friendly, trusting and loving.

“Being a woman of color, living in Vermont, raising two biracial children — it’s pretty amazing what she was able to do,” Yvonne said. “And how she was able to leave her legacy in our lives.”

On November 7, the day news sources declared Joe Biden and Kamala Harris the winners of the U.S. presidential election, Sandra and Yvonne opened a bottle of Champagne. They drank a glass in honor of their mother.

They toasted what the election of Harris, a biracial woman of Indian descent, would have meant to Victoria.

“She would’ve been over the moon if she were with us,” Yvonne said.

S ALLY P O LL AK

‘He could talk with anybody.’

EDDIE TONEY, JANUARY 21, 1921-SEPTEMBER 19, 2020

E

ddie Toney’s first job was at a shoe factory in Littleton, N.H., just over the border from his hometown of St. Johnsbury. It was well into the Great Depression, and Eddie had quit school after eighth grade to help his family; he’d never much enjoyed classroom learning anyway.

The teenager made $8.75 weekly, until one week when his pay envelope contained just 42 cents. As Eddie told the story, he returned it to his boss, saying, “You can use it more than me” — and was summarily fired.

Other than a stint in the army during World War II, Eddie, who died in September of natural causes just four months shy of his 100th birthday, never worked for anyone else again.

His son, Paul Toney Sr., recounted that his father always told him, “You’re better off working for yourself than you are working for somebody else, because if you run out of money on Tuesday, you’re not going to get any more ’til Friday. But if you’re working for yourself and you run out of money today, you can make some more tomorrow.”

Eddie came home after the war and launched Tri-Corner Market in St. Johnsbury. He specialized in selling fresh fruits and vegetables, which he drove to pick up in Albany, N.Y., at least twice a week.

In the early 1950s, the family believes, his store was the first in Vermont to offer soft-serve, but his legacy is rooted in another sweet treat for which he’d become known throughout the region: his doughnuts.

Eddie knew nothing about doughnuts or baking, but, his son said, “He told my mother he was going to be gone for a few days, and he went down into Massachusetts.” He drove around until he found a small doughnut bakery, and he explained to them his goal. “They said, ‘You come in here first thing in the morning; we’ll teach you how to make doughnuts.’”

The entrepreneur started making the breakfast treats in 1956 and built the business into Eddie’s Bakery, which he later sold to his son, Paul Sr., and his son’s wife, Gloria. Today, Eddie’s grandson, Paul Toney Jr., owns the Waterford bakery with his wife, Heidi. It produces 18,000 doughnuts, crullers and doughnut holes weekly, plus other baked goods. The company ships nationwide, though most sales are to stores in Vermont and New Hampshire.

Eddie Toney during World War II

As with many new businesses, the bakery’s first few years were tough.

“He’d work all night making doughnuts, then he and my mother would bag them up and label them,” Paul Sr. recalled.

Eddie would hit the road delivering from Newport to Stowe, Barre to White River Junction.

Christmas 1957 was a low point before things turned around, according to Paul Sr. “I remember Dad and Mom going through the cushions in the sofa and the chairs in the living room, trying to find loose change,” he said.

Creating a solid family enterprise was a source of immense pride for Eddie. He was a first-generation American whose father, Joseph Toney, immigrated to the U.S. from Lebanon, illiterate in his own language and without a word of English.

Eddie especially loved telling everyone how accomplished a doughnut maker his grandson, Paul Jr., had become.

But for Eddie, the doughnuts were secondary to his true passion: people.

“My father made friends easily. He could talk with anybody,” Paul Sr. said. “He loved everybody. He’d stand and talk with anybody about anything.”

Eddie made friends wherever he went.

While stationed at Fort Riley in Kansas during the war, he became friendly with the boxer Joe Lewis, who was there for basic training. Eddie also liked to recount how actress Gene Tierney would frequently visit her first lieutenant

husband, fashion designer Oleg Cassini.

“She’d holler across the road to him, ‘Hi, Eddie!’” Paul Sr. said.

Longtime bakery customer Jim Rust, co-owner of Pettyco Junction Country Store in St. Johnsbury, said Eddie never lacked for something to share. “We’d talk about world things, political things, about how difficult his childhood was,” Rust said.

“He’d always have a story.”

One particularly vivid tale dated back to the historic 1927 flood when a very young Eddie and his dad were stuck on one side of the Concord Avenue Bridge, across the swollen, raging river from the family home. A policeman was blocking the bridge, preventing anyone from crossing. When he stepped away, “Eddie said he remembered his dad looking down at him for a moment,” Rust recalled. “He picked him up, threw him over his shoulder and

Eddie Toney

just started running over the bridge. As soon as they got over the bridge, the bridge went.”

Rust last saw Eddie a couple of months before he died, when he came to Pettyco to put gas in his car. “I even remember he was at pump No. 2,” the storeowner said. “He was still driving, still living in his house.”

Even in his later years, Eddie remained fiercely independent, mowing his own lawn and tending his beloved flowers and vegetables. The last time he went to Newport to renew his license, Paul Sr. recalled, “The guy said, ‘You’re still driving?’ and he said, ‘Why the hell wouldn’t I be?’”

Eddie loved children, big band music and Reader’s Digest. He was a jokester.

His good friend Elda Pessini remembers going with him to eat at nice restaurants.

“He would say to the waitress, all serious, ‘I’ll have two hot dogs,’” Pessini recounted.

“He kept a straight face, and I would start laughing.”

Through his 99th year, Eddie continued to ride shotgun on twice-weekly delivery routes with his son — until the pandemic put a stop to that in March. By then, his booming voice and warm hugs had become legendary at the Hanover Coop Food stores.

“He had more friends at those four stores than some people have in their entirety,” Paul Sr. said When Mark Romano, receiving manager at the co-op’s Lebanon store, first met the father-son pair, he thought the elder Toney was just along for the ride. But it soon became clear, he said, “Eddie was the ringmaster.”

They’d always shake hands, and Eddie would bellow, “Mark, how the hell are you?” Romano recalled, noting that Eddie truly wanted to know the real answer to the question. Eddie had seen his own troubles: His mother died when he was away in the army; his wife died in 1994.

Romano appreciated the fact that Eddie favored deeper discussions over small talk, he said: “I always felt myself smiling when he walked in.”

As the pandemic wore on, months of isolation and social distancing stifled a man who fed off the energy of his exchanges with others.

“Eddie was so bored. It was really depressing,” Paul Jr. lamented. “He would come to the bakery and stand at the screen door, wearing a mask, and holler to bring him some doughnuts.” Later they’d learn that he had taken the doughnuts to the local bank to share.

Some days, Paul Jr. said, Eddie would drive to the supermarket and sit in his car just watching people go in and out of the store.

“He loved to go places,” Paul Sr. said.

“He just liked to go anywhere, but he really loved to go to Maine.”

Paul Jr. recalled a couple summers ago when his grandfather was agitating for a family trip to that coastal state.

“He loved steak, and he loved lobster,” Paul Jr. said with a laugh. “He said, ‘Let’s just go to Maine and have a lobster.’ He kept bugging us. Finally, we made it happen, and we get all the way there — and he has a steak.”

ME LI S S A PAS AN E N

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 30, 2020-JANUARY 13, 2021

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food+drink

Bread Fairy loaves

Looking back on a salty year (with a touch of sweet)

S.P.

A COVID-19 Fairy Tale

Mary Jane Dieter has baked 179 loaves of bread for 70 different households, but it only took one loaf for her to earn the title of the “Bread Fairy.”

On March 23, Dieter posted on the Williston Front Porch Forum that she and her husband, Steve Kuhn, “would love to make homemade bread for those who are quarantined in their homes.”

Dawna Pederzani took Dieter up on her offer. As a self-described pessimist, though, she admitted she was shocked when a warm loaf showed up outside her front door. Pederzani, the founder of Vermont English Bulldog Rescue, was busy in a kennel when Dieter snuck up and delivered the bread.

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SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 30, 2020-JANUARY 13, 2021

“One of the rescue volunteers said, ‘Is there some reason that you have a loaf of bread sitting on your front step?’” Pederzani recalled. “I remember stopping and looking at her, and my brain was blank — What are you talking about, a loaf of bread? Then: Oh, my God! A loaf of bread!

It’s really here.”

As they gathered to share the bread, Pederzani’s daughter, Liana, exclaimed, “It’s kind of like she’s the bread fairy!”

The name stuck. On a subsequent delivery, Pederzani caught Dieter in the act and told her about the fanciful title she’d earned.

“It was heart-skip-a-beat delightful,” Dieter said. “I felt seen. And it felt The Bread Fairy by Dawna Pederzani like what I did mattered.”

Dieter’s follow-through made such an impact on Pederzani that she decided to share the story of the Bread Fairy in a children’s picture book. In 35 years as a foster parent, Pederzani said, But kids seemed like a good audience for she’s read more children’s books than the story’s message: In a time with little she cares to remember. It wasn’t a genre to be hopeful about, good things are still she planned on exploring as an author. happening.

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DAWNA PEDERZ

The Seven Days food team checked in with a “bread fairy” in Williston and other people and businesses we covered in 2020 to see how their stories have evolved over this eventful year.

COURTESY OF

T

he year 2020 has been a rollercoaster ride for restaurants and other food businesses. In midMarch, the State of Vermont ordered restaurants and bars to close to curb the spread of the coronavirus. The rules were relaxed in late May, and restaurants reopened with restrictions in place.

Current regulations limit restaurant diners to one household per party.

As rules shifted, so did the food and beverage industry. Takeout took off, and restaurants offered groceries and other provisions along with meals. Bars mixed cocktails to-go. Heat-and-eat meals popped up at farms, general stores and at least one brewery.

On the consumer end, demand increased for locally grown and produced goods, from beef to beets. Farmstands expanded their offerings, CSAs added members, and farmers morphed into truck drivers and made food drops on front stoops. Baking bread became a trendy activity — and a neighborly one, with some making loaves for folks in need.

ANI

BY J O R D AN BAR RY, ME L IS S A PAS ANE N & S AL LY P O L L AK

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PHOT0S COURTESY OF MARY JANE DIETER

Second Helpings

When she asked Dieter for permission to document her good deeds in a book, “she was astonished,” Pederzani said. “I don’t think she understood the impact she had on the folks that were touched by it.”

“I feel like I’ve gotten way more out of it than Dawna,” Dieter said with a laugh. “Though she did get a book.”

Pederzani published The Bread Fairy, with illustrations by Kate Cahill Vansuch, via AuthorHouse in November. The Bread Fairy and her family have since moved to Waitsfield, where she is once again offering warm loaves of bread to her neighbors, baking happily ever after.

“Bread Fairy” Mary Jane Dieter

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Struggles and Silver Linings

In mid-March, we started covering how restaurants were coping with the emerging pandemic. Our March 25 issue highlighted the responses of four restaurants. One of them was China Max in CityPlace Burlington, whose co-owner,

THE STATE HELPED US OUT. THE TOWN CLOSED THE STREETS. THE LANDLORD HELPED US OUT.

THAT’S WHY WE’RE STILL HERE. H E R V É MAHÉ

Yuki Wu, said she and her husband had reluctantly decided to close their doors.

“It is a tough time for every restaurant,” Wu said.

We’ve continued to cover how restaurants, one of the hardest-hit sectors of the local economy, are weathering this incredibly tough time. Here is an update from the March 25 quartet.

China Max will not reopen in CityPlace, Wu confirmed. The family is looking for a new space to serve up their American Chinese favorites and

Mandarin-menu dishes, such as tripe dry pot.

Also in downtown Burlington, Bistro de Margot had a strong summer with expanded outdoor seating. Since then, though, on-site dining has slowed to a crawl: Chef-owner Hervé Mahé reported just 30 meals served over five recent days.

He has turned away many patrons who do not meet quarantine requirements — “a tough call, because we all need the cash,” he said.

Federal and state grants and loans have been “lifesavers,” Mahé continued.

“The state helped us out. The town closed the streets. The landlord helped us out.

That’s why we’re still here.”

A recently launched online ordering system minimizes distractions for the skeleton crew. A deli case supplements the regular menu with grab-andgo items, such as quiches and chocolate mousse.

With tight cost control, “I think we will be able to float,” Mahé said. He must stay positive, he added, “or we would cry all the time.”

For Kortnee Bush, owner of Butch + Babe’s in Burlington’s Old North End, the hardest part of 2020 wasn’t businessrelated. Her grandmother, Babe, for whom

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Jackie Major (left) and Kortnee Bush at Butch + Babe’s

COURTESY OF SHIFTMEALS

Second Helpings « P.43 the restaurant is named, died this summer two months after a brain cancer diagnosis.

While Bush spent time with her family, executive chef Jackie Major and a small crew launched takeout favorites, such as Major Tso’s cauliflower and the Big Butch burger. Major and Bush chose to stick with takeout-only, with sales amounting to about one-third of normal revenue.

In October, Butch + Babe’s started working with the statewide program Vermont Everyone Eats (see “Eat It Up,” below). By the end of 2020, the restaurant will have cooked more than 6,000 meals for Vermonters in need, receiving $10 for each.

“Everyone Eats has really been keeping the lights on,” Bush said. It’s also buoyed spirits. One particularly “shitty week,” she recounted, “we got a thankyou note from a single mom … Our eyes just welled up.”

That program is due to end with 2020, and Bush is nervous about the future.

“Everyone knows restaurants only make money when the house is packed,” she said. Will enough people want “to be elbow to elbow with a stranger”?

In March, Bobcat Café & Brewery in Bristol scrambled to launch a lowerpriced, abbreviated takeout menu. It also chose to stay focused solely on takeout after indoor dining returned. “It was working, so we just kept doing it,” chef and co-owner Erin Wheeler said.

Wheeler acknowledged in March that “Restaurants are pretty unsustainable, but I’ve never felt brave enough to change anything.”

Since then, Bobcat has braved some changes, and that’s where Wheeler finds 44

a silver lining to her situation. One change that will stick is being open only five nights a week. Another is paying every employee $15 an hour and splitting tips evenly.

Thanks to generous tips, that means a line cook averages $25 an hour instead of the pre-pandemic $12. “It feels so good,” Wheeler said.

M.P.

Krishna Paudel at Indian-Nepali Kitchen

SPENDING THE MONEY TO BUILD

A RESTAURANT IS VERY HARD. K R IS HN A PAU D EL

Double Down

In a year fraught with challenges for the restaurant industry, a number of new restaurants bucked the tide by opening their doors for the first time, including Deep City in Burlington, the Drake Bar and Kitchen in St. Albans, Rockers Pizzeria in Vergennes, and Umami in Stowe.

One local restaurateur, Krishna Paudel, opened not one eatery but two: Kathmandu Restaurant in St. Albans and Indian-Nepali Kitchen in Montpelier, both specializing in Indian and Nepalese cuisine. The South Burlington resident owns the restaurants with her husband, Randeep Paudel. She was the founding owner of Everest IndianNepali Restaurant on Williston Road, which she sold to relatives to embark on her new businesses.

“Spending the money to build a restaurant is very hard,” Paudel, 35, said, noting that a pandemic is a particularly risky time to make that investment. But she wanted to bring the traditional foods of India and Nepal to Vermonters who live outside Chittenden County.

“My friends [in Montpelier], they gave me some strong hope,” Paudel said.

“They said, ‘Hey, why don’t you bring your restaurant to Montpelier?’ And I spend my money here.

“I like Montpelier and St. Albans be-

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 30, 2020-JANUARY 13, 2021

Chicken tikka masala at Indian-Nepali Kitchen

cause they are small communities,” she added. “The people are very nice.”

Since the summer, Paudel’s two restaurants have been open for in-house lunch and dinner with COVID-19 restrictions in place, but takeout is the strongest component of her business, she said.

Customers opt for traditional favorites

such as kormas, curries, saag paneer, dumplings and pakoras, she added.

In Montpelier, India-Nepali Kitchen occupies the space Down Home Kitchen vacated a year ago. The surroundings remind Paudel of Nepal. “We like it. It looks like my country,” she said. “There’s wood everywhere.”

The Farm Powered® Vermont Vision

food+drink While some restaurants opened during the pandemic, others have struggled to avoid succumbing to it. Right now, Vermonters are being asked to help save a Burlington restaurant.

New ownership of a long-established business turned out to be risky for chef Neil Solis, who purchased the Daily Planet in January 2020 with his wife and two business partners. Close to a year later, Solis announced a crowdfunding campaign to raise $50,000 to keep the business afloat.

“We’ve been operating at a loss since we opened (never mind the 4+ months we spent closed), and with our business reserves dwindling we stand at risk of closing the doors on this almost 4-decades old Burlington landmark forever,” the plea for funds reads. “Can you help save The Planet?”

of the Vermont Everyone Eats program (vteveryoneeats.org), a $5 million initiative funded by CARES Act relief money.

Rising from grassroots efforts around the state to address a double problem — food insecurity and ailing restaurants — Everyone Eats was formalized over the summer with a state allocation of federal funds.

The program pays restaurants $10 a meal to prepare food for Vermonters in need. Restaurants often partner with social service agencies to distribute the food.

At Piecemeal Pies, 60 to 80 percent of the ingredients in the meals were locally sourced, Barrett said. On Thanksgiving, he served organic turkey — brined and roasted with herbed butter under its skin — with gravy, wild mushroom stuffing, parsnip-potato mash, delicata squash with garlic and chile, juniper-cranberry sauce, and chocolate-bourbon-pecan

S.P.

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COURTESY OF JUSTIN BARRETT

Piecemeal Pies' chicken-and-leek pies for Vermont Everyone Eats

Eat It Up

In a year of unpredictability, chef-owner Justin Barrett of Piecemeal Pies in White River Junction came to rely on one steady source of business: the 160 meals his restaurant prepared every week for seniors in the Upper Valley.

The Piecemeal Pies meals were part

pie. Other menus have included macaroni and cheese with local chorizo and spinach, organic greens and herb salad; and chicken-and-leek pie with parsnippotato mash and salad.

“When you’re eating food that is nutritious and flavorful because it’s organic and picked that morning, you feel more fed,” Barrett said. “And you generally feel better inside.”

Barrett estimated that the $1,600 weekly payment he received from Everyone Eats covered a third of his payroll.

Organic vegetables that he purchased on Wednesdays from Root 5 Farm in Fairlee became part of meals that the Thompson Senior Center in Woodstock delivered the following day to seniors in the area.

“It has been such a financial lifeline,” Barrett said. “The dollars come to us, and we send it to other farms in our neighborhood. And the food goes to SECOND HELPINGS

The largest anaerobic digester in the Northeast located in Salisbury, Vermont, will collect and recycle commercial-scale food, beverage, and other organic waste into clean, renewable energy. The food and beverage community benefits by complying with the Vermont 148 organics to landfill ban, protecting Vermont's pristine environment, saving money, and helping to sustain a beautiful family farm.

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» P.46 Untitled-41 1

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TE S Y J US TI N BA R R E T T

FILE PHOTOS: JAMES BUCK

COU R

Piecemeal Pies’ chili and corn bread for Vermont Everyone Eats

Second Helpings « P.45 people in the neighborhood. So it really is a closed-circuit community.”

Piecemeal Pies is one of roughly 120 restaurants that has participated in the program since August, according to Southeastern Vermont Community Action, the Westminster nonprofit that administers Everyone Eats.

Through mid-December, Everyone Eats served about 370,000 meals at no cost to the recipients, according to Carolyn Sweet, SEVCA’s director of planning and development. The meals were prepared with food from 165 local farms. The program requires that restaurants use a minimum of 10 percent local ingredients, but the actual figure is about 28 percent. Roughly 120 restaurant jobs were maintained due to Everyone Eats, according to Sweet.

In Woodstock, an elderly recipient of the weekly meal from Piecemeal Pies expressed her gratitude in a video.

Looking into the camera and holding her dinner, the woman said she and another “girl” in her affordable-housing complex were “absolutely loving these pies.”

“We look forward to it very much,” she said. “It’s delicious.”

An infusion of new funds supported Everyone Eats through the end of December. Without additional funding from a source like the federal government, the program will end with 2020, according to organizers.

S.P.

Popping In

This winter, like every winter, Curly Girl Pops is hibernating. The seasonal nature of the popsicle business is one of the few things that remained constant for Arealles Ortiz in 2020.

In the spring, Ortiz decided to skip farmers markets and deliver her plantbased pops directly to customers. She crafted and hand-wrapped each batch of Blue Magic, Sweet Mango and Radical Razz in her certified home kitchen in Montpelier before heading out with packed coolers.

46

Curly Girl Pops

By the end of popsicle season, Ortiz had fully transformed her business into a wholesale one, adding her fruit- and veggie-packed treats to the freezers at the Roots Farm Market in Middlesex, Little Gordo Creemee Stand in Burlington and the Plainfield Co-op. She partnered with Brattleboro-based distributor Food Connects to expand to other area co-ops and farmstands.

“Turning towards wholesale was a really great way to get my product out there faster and in larger quantities,” Ortiz said in mid-December.

Despite that expansion, her 2020 sales were half those of 2019. “It wasn’t a year for sales,” she said. “It was a year for growing my brand and connecting to systems that will help me sell my product better.”

Grants from the Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development’s Expanded Economic Recovery Grant Program and the Hunger Mountain Cooperative Community Fund made up most of the difference. Ortiz will use those funds to turn a utility trailer into a commercial kitchen, which she hopes will be ready by fall 2021. She looks forward to the flexibility of a mobile space and to producing pops somewhere outside her home — even if it’s parked in her driveway.

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 30, 2020-JANUARY 13, 2021

Arealles Ortiz of Curly Girl Pops

food+drink

Please visit our website for

FILE PHOTOS: JEB WALLACE-BRODEUR

ONLINE ORDERING Thank you d for your kin support.

OPEN SIX NIGHTS A WEEK 4:00 - 8:30PM CLOSED TUESDAYS

24 Main Street, Downtown Winooski, 655-4888 • tinythairestaurant.net 6h-tinythai123020.indd 1

12/9/20 12:30 PM

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11/12/20 9:49 AM

The Capital City Farmers Market on Taylor Street

Capital City Farmers Market map

she made with businesses and community members into next summer, along with her new business model.

“So many unexpected things happened this year,” Ortiz said. “I just have to take what I can from the situation.”

J.B.

State of the Market

Curly Girl and other BIPOC-owned businesses received an influx of social media followers this summer, but Ortiz said some of the attention didn’t feel genuine — especially when people messaged suggesting “quick fixes” to help her business.

“That didn’t resonate with me, because people were being really halfassed,” she said.

But she’ll take the positive connections

As they learned to comply with pandemic protocols, farmers market managers around the state added new skills to their résumés this year: crowd control, tapemeasure wielding, sign making, route planning, website building.

“I really didn’t expect to be adding tent setup to the list,” Capital City Farmers Market manager Keri Ryan said with a chuckle. “We paid $5,000 for a 6,000-square-foot tent, and then had to figure out how to set it up.”

Ryan got the tent up with the help of volunteers, and on November 21, the Montpelier market hosted 40 vendors for its annual Thanksgiving market inside. It was a historic event: the first market ever held on the Vermont Statehouse lawn.

It was also the latest in a string of new locations for the market, which moved from 2 Taylor Street to 133 State Street in September. The Statehouse move was SECOND HELPINGS

» P.48

Thanks to everyone in our wonderful community for your patronage and support this year. We know deep in our hearts that— while we couldn't as much this year— food brings people together. We cherish that role at our restaurant and look forward to a time when our tables are full of friends and family again.

Happy New Year from your friends at Fire and Ice.

Fire & Ice

Vermont’s Iconic steakhouse

Prime Rib, Lobster, Local Ground Beef & much more!

26 Seymour Street | Middlebury | 802.388.7166 | fireandicerestaurant.com 6H-fire&ice123020.indd 1

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 30, 2020-JANUARY 13, 2021

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Second Helpings « P.47 only for that one celebratory day; market membership has voted to stay at the State Street lot for the 2021 summer season, Ryan confirmed.

In an email, she called 133 State Street “a wonderful home for the market, with green space, trees, plentiful parking and safe access for anyone walking from downtown. We’re hopeful that this could be a long-term home for the market.”

In winter 2019, the Capital City Farmers Market held an indoor market in Caledonia Spirits’ Montpelier distillery on Gin Lane.

“Unfortunately, hosting an indoor market this winter just isn’t an option,” Ryan wrote.

But the market’s board is evaluating different possibilities, including online platforms that other Vermont markets use for direct ordering and pickup.

Despite 2020’s challenges, Ryan said, customers made it clear that the market is an asset to their community. “Our main goal as a market was to continue to provide fresh, local food,” she wrote. “I was amazed that some of our vendors had their strongest sales of many years.”

J.B.

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12/20/20 9:29 AM

IT’S SNOW JOKE!

SEVENis onDAYS Vacation!

Look for our first issue of 2021 on January 13!

Want to reserve advertising space? Contact sales@sevendaysvt.com.

HIRING? Promote your job openings with us throughout the holidays and into 2021 by contacting Michelle Brown at michelle@ sevendaysvt.com or sevendaysvt.com/postmyjob.

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SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 30, 2020-JANUARY 13, 2021

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What’s in Store?

By early May, it was clear that 2020 would bring a bumper crop of business to Vermont’s farmstands. The continued demand has some farms winterizing their stands to forgo their usual seasonal slumber. And new stands are still popping up: At the beginning of November, Waitsfield’s von Trapp Farmstead opened its first-ever farm store.

“We always wanted a legit farmstand, and the pieces never came together,” said Sebastian von Trapp, who started the cheese business on his parents’ farm in 2009. The organic creamery has spent most of the past decade shipping its cheeses all over the country through distributors, which left the owners not always sure where their wheels of Mt. Alice or Savage would end up.

“When the pandemic happened, it became really clear that a lot of our cheese was going into high-end restaurants and cheese shops,” said Molly Semler, cheesemaker and von Trapp’s partner. “Overnight, we lost 50 percent of our sales. But, as you can imagine, the cows don’t stop making milk. So we shifted really quickly.”

At first, that shift involved adding curbside pickup and reducing prices to draw locals to the farm. By April, von Trapp was clearing out the northwest corner of the barn — where his grandmother had once raised sheep — to build a permanent farm store.

Von Trapp handled most of the renovation details, Semler said, because she was on maternity leave with the couple’s twins, born two and a half months before the start of the pandemic.

Eight months later, the couple opened their bright, cozy 320-square-foot store.

The coolers and shelves are stocked with the farmstead’s cheeses and meats, as well as vegetables, eggs, butter, maple syrup, prepared foods, crafts, beer and wine. Many of those goods are sourced from the Mad River Valley.

“It’s a limited space, and we really thought about where we draw the line,” von Trapp said. “We carry everything we like.”

“We want it to be a place where you can buy our products, obviously, but also get your basic groceries and really high-quality products from right around here,” Semler added. “We know how hard it is to make food, so being able to support other producers is really cool.”

Attached to the store is a new processing space where employees will cut and wrap cheese and pack gift boxes to ship to customers around the country.

As von Trapp Farmstead increases its presence in the Valley, its selection of everyday staples is also expanding.

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11/12/20 10:03 AM

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12/21/20 11:27 AM

Molly Semler and Sebastian von Trapp at the von Trapp Farmstead farm store

The von Trapp Farmstead farm store

TO OUR CUSTOMERS & FRIENDS

PHOTOS: JORDAN BARRY

Thank you. Thank you for shopping small, for supporting local, or for simply calling to check in.

We truly appreciate all of the ways you've supported us this year & are grateful to be part of such a special community. Wishing you all the best in 2021.

One is Mad River Shred It, a less expensive fresh cheese ideal for topping tacos and pizza. As soon as the equipment arrives, the creamery will start producing yogurt.

“It’s a direction that we’re psyched to go in, reengaging with the local community,” von Trapp said.

J.B.

INFO The Bread Fairy by Dawna Pederzani, illustrated by Kate Cahill Vansuch, Authorhouse, 34 pages. $20.99. Learn more by emailing staurolitefarm@aol.com.

Find recipes and instructions on how to be a “bread fairy” in your community at thebreadfairy.org.

~Your friends at Kiss the Cook KissTheCook.net • 72 Church Street • Burlington • 863-4226 6H-KTC123020.indd 1

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 30, 2020-JANUARY 13, 2021

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CHITTENDEN SOLID WASTE DISTRICT • CHORES AND MORE • CHRIS DISSINGER • CHRIS PALERMO • CHRIST THE KING SCHOOL • CHRISTOPHER HELALI FOR CONGRESS • CHROMA OPTICS • CHURCH HILL LANDSCAPES • CHURCH STREET MARKETPLACE • CIRCUS SMIRKUS • CITIZEN CIDER • CITY CLERK’S OFFICE • CITY LIGHTS • CITY MARKET, ONION RIVER CO-OP • CITY OF BURLINGTON • CITY OF MONTPELIER • CITY OF SOUTH BURLINGTON • CITY OF WINOOSKI • CITYPLACE BURLINGTON • CLARINA HOWARD NICHOLS CENTER • CLASSIC SHADES PAINTING • CLAUSSEN'S FLORIST, GREENHOUSE & PERENNIAL FARM • CLEAR PATH CLINIC, LLC • CLOSE TO HOME • CLOVER GIFT SHOP • COCHRAN SKI AREA, INC. • CODE STYLE CLUB • CODED BIAS • COFFEE ENTERPRISES • COLCHESTER AVENUE HOUSING, LLC • COLCHESTER PARKS AND RECRETION • COLCHESTER SCHOOL DISTRICT • COLD HOLLOW WOODWORKING • COLDWELL BANKER HICKOK & BOARDMAN REALTY • COMMITTEE ON TEMPORARY SHELTER • COMMON DEER • COMMON GROUND CENTER • COMMUNITY BANK • COMMUNITY COLLEGE OF VERMONT • COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT LAB • COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTER OF BURLINGTON • COMMUNITY HEALTH SERVICES OF LAMOILLE VALLEY • COMMUNITY SAILING CENTER • CONANT METAL & LIGHT • CONCEPT2 • CONRAD RACINE • CONTEMPORARY DENTAL ARTS • CONVERSE HOME • COOPERATIVE MEDIA SOLUTIONS (STICKS & STUFF) • COPLEY HEALTH SYSTEMS • CORALYN GUIDRY • CORE STUDIO • CORK WINE & MARKET OF STOWE • CORNELIA EMLEN • CORNELL COOPERATIVE EXTENSION CLINTON COUNTY • COUNSELING SERVICE OF ADDISON COUNTY • COUNTY OF FRANKLIN • COVENTRY CLUB AND RESORT • COVER HOME REPAIR • COVID-19 SITE • COYKENDALL & ASSOC. • CRAFTSBURY CHAMBER PLAYERS • CRAFTSBURY COMMUNITY CARE CENTER • CRAFTSBURY SAPLINGS • CRAIG DESLAURIER • CREATIVE EFFECTS • CREDIT HUMAN, A FEDERAL CREDIT UNION • CREMATION SOCIETY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE • CRIME RESEARCH GROUP • CRONIN CO. • CROW BOOKSHOP • CUPBOARD DELI • CURT E. KOONZ • CURTIS-BRITCH FUNERAL HOME • CUSHMAN DESIGN GROUP

SHOP • FOX & HARROW • FOX 44 • THE FRAME DAMES • FRANK CIOFFI • FRANK VON TURKOVICH • FRANKLIN COUNTY NATURAL RESOURCES CONSERVATION DISTRICT • FRANKLIN COUNTY REHAB CENTER, LLC • FRANKLIN GRAND ISLE RESTORATIVE JUSTICE CENTER • FRED'S ENERGY • FREEMAN FRENCH FREEMAN • THE FRIENDLY TOAST • FRIENDS OF THE MAD RIVER • FRONT PORCH FORUM • FULL CIRCLE MICROBES • FULL CIRCLE PROPERTY MANAGEMENT • FURCHGOTT SOURDIFFE GALLERY • FUSE, LLC • FUTURE GENIUS • GALLAGHER FLYNN & COMPANY • GARDENER'S SUPPLY COMPANY • GARDENVIEW ASSOCIATES, INC. • GARDNER CONSTRUCTION, INC. • GARNET TRANSPORT MEDICINE • GENERATOR • GENTLE TOUCH MASSAGE • GERALD LECLAIR • GERHARD ANDRES • GERI REILLY REAL ESTATE • GIANNA PETITO • GIRL SCOUTS OF THE GREEN AND WHITE MOUNTAINS • GIRLINGTON GARAGE • GLOBALFOUNDRIES • GO LONG VERMONT • GOBEILLE CATERING • GODDARD COLLEGE • GOLUB CORPORATION • GONZO'S GOLF ACADEMY AT KWINI GOLF CLUB, LLC • GOOD NEWS GARAGE • GOODWILL INDUSTRIES OF NNE • GORDON C. GEBAUER, ESQ. • GORDON'S WINDOWS & DÉCOR • GOSS FUNERAL SERVICES • GOVERNOR'S INSTITUTES OF VERMONT • GRAFTON CAPITAL • GRAHAM KEEGAN • GRAVEL & SHEA PC • GRAYSTONE GROUP ADVERTISING • GRAZERS • GREAT EASTERN RADIO • THE GREAT NORTHERN • THE GREAT TURNING TEAM • GREATER BURLINGTON INDUSTRIAL CORPORATION • GREATER BURLINGTON YMCA • GREEN LEAF CENTRAL • GREEN LEGACY BUILDERS • GREEN MOUNTAIN CAMERA • GREEN MOUNTAIN CENTER FOR GIFTED EDUCATION • GREEN MOUNTAIN CHORUS • GREEN MOUNTAIN CLUB • GREEN MOUNTAIN COLLISION • GREEN MOUNTAIN ECO FLOORS • GREEN MOUNTAIN HEMP CO. • GREEN MOUNTAIN MESSENGER • GREEN MOUNTAIN PAINTERS • GREEN MOUNTAIN SEMICONDUCTOR • GREEN MOUNTAIN SUPPORT SERVICES. • GREEN MOUNTAIN TECHNICAL CAREER CENTER • GREEN MOUNTAIN TRAINING CENTER • GREEN MOUNTAIN TRANSIT • GREEN MOUNTAIN VALLEY SCHOOL • GREEN MOUNTAIN YOUTH SYMPHONY • GREEN STATE GARDENER • GREEN TOP FARM • GREEN VALLEY MEDIA • GREENHAVEN GARDENS AND NURSERY • GREENTREE REAL ESTATE • GREGG GOODSON • GRISWOLD HOME CARE • GROUNDS FOR HEALTH • THE GRYPHON • GTO SALON • GUARE & SONS FUNERAL HOME • GUILD TAVERN • GW PLASTICS • H.F. GRABENSTEIN, BOWMAKER • HAGAN ASSOCIATES • HAIR-R-US • HALL COMMUNICATIONS • HALLKEEN MANAGEMENT • HALYARD BREWING COMPANY • HANNAFORD • HANZLIKMEDIA /AWN • HAPPY BELLIES • HAPPY HEALTH • HARBOR VILLAGE SENIOR COMMUNITIES • HARK • HARRINGTON REALTY • HARRINGTON'S • HARVEST MARKET • HARWOOD UNIFIED UNION SCHOOL DISTRICT • HEALD FUNERAL HOME • HEALING TOUCH FOR ANIMALS • HEALTHY LIVING MARKET & CAFÉ • HEART & SOUL • HEARTBEET LIFESHARING • HECO RENTALS, LLC • HEIDI CONANT • HELEN DAY ART CENTER • HELLO BURLINGTON • HENEY REALTORS • HENRY SHELDON MUSEUM • HERITAGE ENVIRONMENTAL PROJECT • HERITAGE WINOOSKI MILL MUSEUM • HIGH MOWING SEEDS • HIGHER GROUND • HIGHLAND CENTER FOR THE ARTS • HILTON GARDEN INN • HIMALAYAN CATARACT PROJECT • HINESBURGH PUBLIC HOUSE • HIRCHAK BROTHERS, LLC • HMC ADVERTISING • HOFF CURTIS • HOME BASE, INC. • HOME INSTEAD SENIOR CARE • HOME PLANET BOOKS • HOME PORT LTD. • HOMESHARE VERMONT • HOOKER WHITCOMB FUNERAL HOME • HOPE WORKS • HOPKINS CENTER • HOSMER POINT SUMMER CAMP • HOTEL VERMONT • HOUNDSTOOTH • HOUSING TRUST OF RUTLAND COUNTY • HOWARD CENTER • HOWARD CONTRACTORS • HULA • HUMANE SOCIETY OF CHITTENDEN COUNTY • HUNGER FREE VERMONT • HUNGER MOUNTAIN COOP • HUSKY • HYDRANGEA TOO • IDLETYME BREWING COMPANY • IN TANDEM ARTS • INCLUSIVE ARTS VERMONT • INSIGHT CPG • INSPIRED CLOSETS • INTEGRAL CONSULTING SERVICES, INC. • INTEGRATED ARTS ACADEMY PTO • INTERVALE CENTER • INVEST EAP • IRENE RACZ • IROQUOIS MANUFACTURING • ISTANBUL KEBAB HOUSE • IXIS DIGITAL • J & B LEASING, INC. • JACK F. COURSE • JACQUELINE DAGESSE • JAMES DAIGLE • JAMIE TWO COATS' TOY SHOP • JANE FRANK JEWELRY • JANET CARLSON • JARRETT & LUITJENS ESTATE & ELDER LAW • JASON & TIFFANY HUTCHINS • JASON LEO • JASON RUWET • JAY CONANT • JAY FURR • JEAN REINSBOROUGH • JEFF HARVEY • JEFF MONGEON • JENKINS NEWMAN FUNERAL HOME • JENNIFER RAND • JENNIFER ROWELL • JESS BOUTIQUE • JESSE PRENT • JESSE THOMPSON • JESSICA LEE • JEWISH COMMUNITIES OF VERMONT • JIM WILLARD • JIVANA SPA • JOAN FISCHER • JOANNA KAMHI • JOANNA PLUNKETT • JOB ELEPHANT • JODY ALBRIGHT • JOE BEAIRD • JOE GOLDEN • JOHAN JOSEPH LALLY • JOHN ABELE • JOHN FRANCO • JOHN GRAHAM SHELTER • JOHN KASSEL • JONATHAN EDDY • JONATHAN MILES • JONNY ROGER HOLDINGS, LLC • JS GARDEN DESIGN • JULIA RUSSELL • KAREN FAHEY ADVERTISING - LET'S GROW KIDS • KATHERINE CONNOLLY • KATHRYN WYSOCKEY-JOHNSON • KATHY & CO. FLOWERS • KATHY SPEAR • KATIE O'BRIEN • KATRINA ROBERTS • KAYCAN, LTD. • KC MECHANICAL • KD ASSOCIATES • KEEN'S CROSSING • KEEWAYDIN FOUNDATION • KELLOGG-HUBBARD LIBRARY • KELLY BRUSH FOUNDATION • KEN MUROSKI • KERR ADVERTISING • KERRI-ANN JENNINGS • KESHA RAM FOR CHITTENDEN COUNTY SENATE • KEURIG DR PEPPER • KEVIN E. SLEEPER • KEY MOTORS OF SOUTH BURLINGTON • KID LOGIC LEARNING • KIDS DAY • KIDS WEEK • KIDSGARDENING.ORG • KIDSTRUCTIVE FUN • KILLINGTON RESORT • KINDRED HEALTH CARE - BIRCHWOOD TERRACE • KING ARTHUR BAKING • KING STREET YOUTH CENTER • KINGDOM COUNTY PRODUCTIONS • KINGDOM CREAMERY OF VERMONT • KINGSBURY COMPANIES, LLC • KINGSTON FUNERAL HOME • KISS THE COOK • KITCHEN TABLE BISTRO • KJM GUARDIANSHIP • KLINGER'S BREAD COMPANY • KNOLL FARM • KOB KITCHEN • KOFFEE KUP BAKERY • KOHN RATH BLACKWOOD & DANON, LLP • KROKA EXPEDITIONS • L. RANDOLPH AMIS • LAKE CHAMPLAIN ACCESS TELEVISION • LAKE CHAMPLAIN BASIN PROGRAM • LAKE CHAMPLAIN CHAMBER • LAKE CHAMPLAIN CHOCOLATES • LAKE CHAMPLAIN COMMITTEE • LAKE CHAMPLAIN GYNECOLOGIC ONCOLOGY • LAKE CHAMPLAIN ISLAND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CORP. • LAKE CHAMPLAIN LAND TRUST • LAKE CHAMPLAIN MARITIME MUSEUM • LAKE CHAMPLAIN WALDORF SCHOOL • LAKESIDE OVENS, LLC • LAMOILLE COUNTY PLANNING COMMISSION • LAMOILLE FAMILY CENTER • LAMOILLE NORTH SUPERVISORY UNION • LAMOILLE RESTORATIVE CENTER • LAMOILLE SOUTH SUPERVISORY UNION • LAMOILLE VALLEY DANCE ACADEMY • THE LAMP SHOP • LANDSHAPES • LANGROCK SPERRY & WOOL • LARAWAY YOUTH & FAMILY SERVICES • LARKIN REALTY • LAUGHING RIVER YOGA • LAURE CARPENTIER • LAUREN-GLENN DAVITIAN • LAVIGNE FUNERAL HOME • LAVOIE FAMILY DENTAL • LAW OFFICE OF CLAUDIA I. PRINGLES, PLLC • LAW OFFICE OF DAVID C. BURAN, PC • LAW OFFICE OF NORMAN BLAIS • LAW OFFICES OF ELIZABETH L. HIBBITTS • LAW OFFICES OF FRED PEET • LAWRENCE MEMORIAL LIBRARY • LAWSON'S FINEST LIQUIDS • LCYC JR. SAILING • LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS OF VERMONT • LEAH M. RACINE • LEE PETERS • LEISA FEARING • LENNY'S SHOE & APPAREL • LEO'S ROOFING • LEONARDO'S PIZZA • LET'S GROW

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50

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 30, 2020-JANUARY 13, 2021

Sincerest thanks to the

A DV E R T ISE R S

who supported Seven Days this year and during the coronavirus pandemic.

We wouldn't be here without you!

CYCLEWISE • THE DAILY PLANET • DAIRY FARMERS OF AMERICA • DAKIN FARM • DANFORM SHOES • DANIEL NELSON • DANISH WOOLEN DELIGHT • DARBY KOLTER & NORDLE • DARTMOUTH-HITCHCOCK • DAVID BUDNICK • DAVID SCHERR FOR STATE SENATE • DAVIS MEMORIAL CHAPEL • DAVIS STUDIO • DAY FUNERAL HOME • DAYBREAK • DC CONSTRUCTION LLC • DEALER POLICY • DEAR LUCY • DEDALUS WINE SHOP MARKET & BAR • DEEP ROOT ORGANIC TRUCK FARMERS COOPERATIVE • DEERFIELD DESIGNS • DEFEND ELECTION POLL LETTER TO SCOTT • DELL'AMORE ENTERPRISES, INC. • DEMOCRACY LIVE • DENNIS AILOR • DESIGN SIGNS • DESIGNERS' CIRCLE • DESTINATION IMAGINATION • DIAN MUELLER • DINSE KNAPP & MCANDREW, PC • DISMAS OF VERMONT • DOBRÀ TEA • DON SHALL • DONNA JOHNSON • DOREMUS KANTOR & ZULLO • DOWNS RACHLIN & MARTIN • DOWNSTREET HOUSING & COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT • DOWNTOWN WINOOSKI • DR POWER EQUIPMENT • DR. ALICIA CUNNINGHAM MD • DR. DWIGHT NORWOOD, PHD, LICSW • DUKE'S PUBLIC HOUSE • DUNKLEY'S GYMNASTICS • DUY PHAM • DWAYNE WILLIAMS • EAGLE ISLAND, INC. • EARL'S CYCLERY & FITNESS • EARTHWALK VERMONT • EAST WEST CAFÉ • EASTVIEW AT MIDDLEBURY • EASY SELF STORAGE • EATINGWELL • EBI CONSULTING • ECCO • ECFIBER • ECHO LEAHY CENTER FOR LAKE CHAMPLAIN • ECU COMMUNICATIONS • THE EDGE, SPORTS & FITNESS • EDGEPHARMA • EDGEWATER GALLERY • EDLUND COMPANY • EDUCATION ANNEX VERMONT • EFFICIENCY VERMONT • EHLERVILLE, LLC • EINSTEIN'S TAP HOUSE • EIV TECHNICAL SERVICES • EL CORTIJO CANTINA & TAQUERIA • ELDERWOOD AT BURLINGTON • ELEANOR VANDER MEL • ELISE PETERS • ELIZABETH BELDOCK • ELIZABETH FUKUSHIMA • ELM HARRIS • EMERALD GROWS • EMILY PEYTON FOR GOVERNOR • EMPOWER MEDSPA • ENERGY ACTION NETWORK • ERHARD MAHNKE • ERIC PARKER • ERIC STRONG • ERIC ZELMAN • ERICKA REDIC FOR SENATE • ERIKA MONTGOMERY • ERIN DUPUIS, VERMONT REAL ESTATE COMPANY • ERIN E. HERRING • ERIN HANLEY • ESMOND COMMUNICATIONS • ESSEX COMMUNITY JUSTICE CENTER • ESSEX INN • ESSEX JUNCTION RECREATION & PARKS • THE ESSEX VERMONT'S CULINARY RESORT & SPA • ESSEX WESTFORD SCHOOL DISTRICT • ETS JOBS • EUROWEST RETAIL PARTNERS, LTD. • EVERGREEN EVALUATION & CONSULTING • EVERNORTH • EVERYONE EATS VERMONT • EVERYTHING IN ORDER • EVOLUTION YOGA • THE EXCHANGE • EXIT 16 SELF STORAGE • EXPRESSIONS • F&W FORESTRY SERVICES • FAIRBANKS MUSEUM • FAIRFAX PARKS AND RECREATION • FAITH FUNERAL HOME • FALCON PROPERTY MANAGEMENT PARTNERS, LP • FAMILIES FIRST • FAMILY NEEDS NANNY • FAMILY NETWORK MEDIA • FARM AND WILDERNESS • FARMERS TO YOU, LLC • THE FARMHOUSE GROUP • FARMHOUSE TAP & GRILL • FARRELL DISTRIBUTING • FAT SHEEP FARM & CABINS • FEDEX • FERRO JEWELERS • FIDDLEHEAD BREWING • FIRE AND ICE • FIT2EXCEL • FLEMING MUSEUM • FLETCHER CSI • FLOORING AMERICA • FLYNN CENTER • FOAM BREWERS • FOAM LAMINATES OF VERMONT • FOODSCIENCE CORPORATION • FORGET-ME-NOT

KIDS • LETGO YOUR MIND SUMMER STEM CAMPS • LEUNIG'S BISTRO & CAFÉ • LIGHT WORKS • LIGHTING HOUSE • LILIAN BILLEWICZ • LINCOLN HOUSE • LINDA HENZEL • LINDA PARDO • LINDA SCHIAVONE • LINDSEY M. HUDDLE • LIPPA'S JEWELERS • LISA ANDERSON • LISA MARTIN • LISA NORTHUP • LISA PARRO • LISAMARIE • LISMAN LECKERLING, PC • LITTLE & CICCHETTI, PC • LOCAL MOTION • THE LODGE AT SPRUCE PEAK • LORNA-KAY PEAL • LOUISE CALDERWOOD • LOYAL PLOOF • LUND • LYMAN STORAGE • LYNDA MORGAN-GARDENER • LYNN STEWARTPARKER • LYNN VERA • LYRIC THEATRE COMPANY • MAD RIVER VALLEY RECREATION DISTRICT • THE MAD TACO • MAGIC HAT ARTIFACTORY • MAIGUALIDA GOMEZ RAK • MAIN STREET LANDING • MAITRI HEALTH CARE FOR WOMEN • MAJESTIC AUTO • MALLETTS BAY SELF STORAGE, LLC • MALONEY PROPERTIES • MANDARIN • THE MANOR • MANSFIELD HALL • MANSFIELD PLACE • MANSFIELD TOWNHOMES CONDOMINIUM ASSOCIATION • MAPLE CORNER COMMUNITY STORE • MAPLE RUN MARKETING • MARATHON HEALTH • MARC E. WIENER LAW OFFICES • MARCOM GROUP • MARGARET G. HOWARD • MARGARET LEE • MARIA MCCLELLAN • MARIE LINE • MARILYN ROGERSON • MARK BBQ • MARK D'ANGELO • MARK'S VERMONT CHRISTMAS WREATH COMPANY • MARSH & WAGNER, PC • MARTIN'S POINT HEALTH CARE • MARY ADAMS • MARY ELKINS • MARY PORTER • MARYBETH BLAKENEY • MASCOMA BANK • MATER CHRISTI SCHOOL • MATTHEW HARDER • MATTHEW MARTENS • MATTHEW TAYLOR DESIGNS • MAYAPPLE CENTER FARM • MCCORMICK, FITZPATRICK, KASPER & BURCHARD PC • MCCULLOUGH, LLC, LUCY & JIM • MCFADDEN ACADEMY OF IRISH DANCE • MCGILLICUDDY'S FIVE CORNERS • MCKENZIE NATURAL ARTESIAN DELI • MCNEIL, LEDDY & SHEAHAN • MCSOLEY MCCOY & CO. • MEDIASPACE SOLUTIONS • MEG TIPPER • MEGAN LIPKE • MEITE MESHEL-ESPONDA • MELISSA MORAN • MENTOR VERMONT • MERCY CONNECTIONS • MERRILL AUCTIONEERS & APPRAISERS • METROROCK VERMONT • MICHAEL KEHOE • MICHAEL LYONS • MICHAEL PODHAIZER • MICHAEL'S ON THE HILL • MICHEL CRETE • MICHELE KIMPTON • MICHELE NOONAN • MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE • MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE ARTS • MIDDLEBURY INN • MIDDLEBURY NATURAL FOODS CO-OP • MIDDLEBURY PEDIATRIC DENTISTRY • MIKE BLOOMBERG 2020 • MILL RIVER BREWING BBQ & SMOKEHOUSE • MILLBROOK BUILDING & REMODLING, INC. • MILTON TOWN SCHOOL DISTRICT • MIMMO’S PIZZERIA & RESTAURANT • MINOR FUNERAL HOME • MIRROR MIRROR • MISERY LOVES COMPANY • MISSION CITY CHURCH • MJS CONTRACTING • MKI ARTISTS. • MOLLY GRAY FOR LT. GOVERNOR • MONARCH & THE MILKWEED • MONKEY DO PLAYGROUND • MONTESSORI SCHOOL OF CENTRAL VERMONT • MONTPELIER ALIVE • THE MONTPELIER BRIDGE • MONTROLL, BACKUS & OETTINGER, P.C. • MONTSHIRE MUSEUM • MONTSTREAM STUDIO • MOOV HOME & LOGISTICS CONSULTANTS • MORGAINE MADRONA • MORTON BOSTOCK • MOUNT ANTHONY UNION SCHOOL DISTRICT/ADDISON NORTHWEST SCHOOL DISTRICT • MOUNTAIN HEALTH CENTER • MOUNTAIN LAKE PLASTIC SURGERY • MOUNTAIN LAKE SERVICES • MOUNTAIN SCHOOL OF MILTON ACADEMY • MOUNTAIN TIMES • MOUNTAIN VIEW NATURAL MEDICINE • MOUNTAIN VILLAGE SCHOOL • MS WALKER • MSI VERMONT • MSK ATTORNEYS • MULE BAR • MYCUBE • MYER'S BAGEL BAKERY • NADINE L. SCIBEK, ATTORNEY AT LAW • NAN MURPHY • NANCY CALL MCGILL • NANCY JENKINS REAL ESTATE • NARTAK MEDIA GROUP • NAT WINTHROP • NATHANIEL JAMISON • NATIONAL ALLIANCE ON MENTAL ILLNESS • NATIONAL LIFE GROUP - DO GOOD FEST • NATIVEENERGY • NATURE CONSERVANCY OF VERMONT • NB PROPERTY SOLUTIONS • NBG TEAM • NDI (ASCENSION TECHNOLOGY) • NE YOUTH THEATER • NEDDE REAL ESTATE • NEW DUDS • NEW DYE MENSIONS (THE TIE DYE SHOP) • NEW ENGLAND AIR SYSTEMS • NEW ENGLAND FEDERAL CREDIT UNION • NEW ENGLAND FLOOR COVERING • NEW ENGLAND KENWORTH • NEW ENGLAND LANDMARK REALTY LTD. • NEW ENGLAND NEWSPAPER AND PRESS ASSOCIATION • NEW FRAMEWORKS • NEW MOON CAFÉ • NEW VILLAGE FARM CAMP • NEW WORLD TORTILLA • NFI VERMONT, INC. • NFP • NG ADVANTAGE, LLC • NICK JR. LIVE • NIGHT EAGLE WILDERNESS ADVENTURES • NINA L. ALBRIGHT • NINETY NINE SWIFT STREET ASSOCIATES, LLC • NOMAD COMMUNICATIONS • NORA SKOLNICK • NORTH COUNTRY FEDERAL CREDIT UNION • NORTH COUNTRY SCHOOL • NORTHEAST EMPLOYMENT TRAINING ORGANIZATION • NORTHEAST KINGDOM HUMAN SERVICES • NORTHEAST ORGANIC FARMING ASSOCIATION OF VERMONT • NORTHEAST WILDERNESS TRUST • NORTHERN LIGHTS • NORTHERN RELIABILITY • NORTHERN VERMONT REGIONAL HOSPITAL • NORTHERN VERMONT UNIVERSITY • NORTHFIELD SAVINGS BANK • NORTHLANDS JOB CORPS. • NORTHSTAR SELF STORAGE • NORTHWEST ACCESS TV • NORTHWEST COUNSELING AND SUPPORT SERVICES • NORTHWEST REGIONAL PLANNING COMMISSION • NORTHWEST TECHNICAL CENTER • NORTHWOOD GALLERY • NORWICH UNIVERSITY • NOTION FABRIC & CRAFT • NPI • NRC REALTY & CAPITAL ADVISORS, LLC • NRG SYSTEMS • O'BRIEN BROTHERS • O'LEARY-BURKE CIVIL ASSOCIATES • OAK MEADOW SCHOOL • OFFICE ENVIRONMENTS • OFFICE OF DEFENDER GENERAL • OFFICE OF MAYOR MIRO WEINBERGER • OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL • OFFICE OF THE COURT ADMINISTRATOR • OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE • OH MY DOG • OHAVI ZEDEK SYNAGOGUE • OIL N GO • OLD NORTH END VETERINARY CLINIC • OLD SPOKES HOME • OLD STONE HOUSE MUSEUM • OSHER LIFELONG LEARNING INSTITUTE AT UVM • OMNIMED • ON TAP BAR & GRILL • ONE DAY IN JULY, LLC • ONE DIGITAL • ONE GUITAR • ONE WITH LIFE TEQUILA • ONECARE VERMONT • ONECOWVT.COM • ONION RIVER CROSSROADS • ONION RIVER OUTDOORS • ONTA STUDIO - NINJA SCIENCE CAMP • OPAD MEDIA SOLUTIONS LLC • OPEN DOOR CLINIC • ORANGE SOUTHWEST SCHOOL DISTRICT • ORCHARD VALLEY WALDORF SCHOOL • ORTON FAMILY FOUNDATION • OUR COMMUNITY CARES • OUR LADY OF PROVIDENCE • OUTDOOR GEAR EXCHANGE • OUTRIGHT VERMONT • OWL'S HEAD BLUEBERRY FARM • PALMER'S SUGAR HOUSE • PAMALA SMITH • PAPA FRANK'S • PARAMOUNT THEATRE • PARTNERS IN ADVENTURE • PASCOLO RISTORANTE • PATRICIA DENISON • PATRICIA FISCHER • PATRICIA GUILBERT • PATRICK'S WORLD'S FINEST GRANOLA • PAUL ASBELL • PAUL, FRANK AND COLLINS • PAULA VERRASTRO • PAYDATA • PCC • PEACE & JUSTICE CENTER • PEARCE FAMILY • PEARL STREET APARTMENTS, LLC • PEASE MOUNTAIN LAW, PLLC • PEDIATRIC HOME CARE • PELLA WINDOWS AND DOORS • PEOPLE'S UNITED BANK • PET FOOD WAREHOUSE • PETER KEATING • PETER L. 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music+nightlife

Simply the Best

Recapping the most outstanding local albums of 2020

BY J O R D AN A D A M S • jordan@sevendaysvt.com

FILE PHOTOS

Clockwise from top left: Christopher Hawthorn; the Leatherbound Books; Francesca Blanchard; Pons; and Couchsleepers

T

hough the pandemic has disrupted the live music sector in ways we don’t yet fully understand, it hasn’t prevent bands and artists from making and releasing new albums.

Seven Days hasn’t stopped reviewing local records, either.

We’ve featured more than 100 this year. Some were made before COVID-19 upended the industry, while others were put together

remotely, with artists and recording engineers doing their work from separate quarantines.

As usual, area musicians overwhelmed us with submissions for review in 2020. The following list offers only a smattering of the year’s best local music and showcases the variety of styles and sounds found in and around the Green Mountains.

20

18

(Self-released, digital)

Producer Christopher Hawthorn, known for his work with Burlington singer-songwriter Francesca Blanchard, delivered serene, thought-provoking compositions on his sophomore album, Homesick. Finely arranged and meticulously crafted, his work delves into glassy pools of neoclassical bliss and stormy electronica with a progressive, near-cinematic aesthetic.

CHOICE CUT: “Gene’s Song” See streaming options at christopherhawthornmusic.com.

19

Osage Orange, Snake Skin Chants

(Self-released, digital)

An eyebrow-raising detour from Osage Orange’s earlier work, Snake Skin Chants adds a prominent electronic element to the folk and rock sounds heard on 2015 album Souvenir Regrets. Dubbed “electric desert folklore” by its creator, Nick Varisano, the new songs are brittle and precise. They pair the rugged edge of the Americana genre with the slick tricks of the computer age.

CHOICE CUT: “All I Need” Listen on Spotify.

52

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 30, 2020-JANUARY 13, 2021

The Leatherbound Books, These Were the Days

COURTESY OF LUKE AWTRY PHOTOGRAPHY

Christopher Hawthorn, Homesick

(Self-released, digital)

Five years have passed since the Leatherbound Books released their last album. And the new record, These Were the Days, sat shelved for quite some time before its fall release. Through twee-pop, Americana, and good ol’ rock-and-roll songs, co-front people Jackie Buttolph and Eric Daniels spin yarns that have a homesickness, a longing for some forgotten time. But the album’s title indicates that the present is that time, underscoring a philosophical bent heard in the band’s lyrics.

CHOICE CUT: “I Doubt It” Available at theleatherboundbooks. bandcamp.com.

Matthew Evan Taylor

17

Matthew Evan Taylor, Say Their Names

(Self-released, digital)

Middlebury College assistant professor of music Matthew Evan Taylor released Say Their Names just as the summer’s protests against police violence were reaching peak intensity. Made as part

one guitar

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of the jazz multi-instrumentalist’s ongoing improvisational series, which he live-loops and posts to Instagram, Say Their Names is a modern, raw account of the overwhelming feelings Taylor experienced as he and the world reacted to the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other Black people killed by police.

CHOICE CUT: “Footfalls for Justice” Available at matthewevantaylor.bandcamp.com.

16

Couchsleepers, Only When It’s Dark

(Self-released, digital)

Indie-pop singer-songwriter Harrison Hsiang (aka Couchsleepers) is a night owl. His most intimate thoughts and desires spill out like deeply romantic pillow talk. A PhD student in neuroscience as well as an accomplished musician and songwriter, Hsiang is uniquely positioned to make work that subtly connects the dots between intense feelings and the body chemistry that fuels emotion. Though Hsiang is a multi-instrumentalist, his contemplative, keyboard-driven songs stand out on Only When It’s Dark — unsurprisingly so, as the artist has publicly stated that piano is his primary and most comfortable instrument.

CHOICE CUT: “All I Want” Available at couchsleepers.bandcamp.com.

Pony Death Ride

14

One Guitar is a live, one-hour, DJ-hosted internet radio show airing many genres of solo guitar instrumentalists with commentary on the music and performers.

Eric George, Lily Died for Love

(Self-released, digital)

Eric George is one of the most prolific young singer-songwriters in Vermont. He often releases multiple albums per year, more and more of which seem to diverge from the twangy sound established on his 2015 self-titled debut. His Harry Potter-themed album, Lily Died for Love, dabbles in folk and pop16T-OneGuitar123020.indd 1 rock, at times encroaching on an “easy listening” soft-rock sound. For a record that doubtlessly could have devolved into a gimmick wrapped in an inside joke, its 10 thoughtful, dynamic songs only use the popular book series as a jumping-off point to explore various shades of the CHANNEL 1074 human condition.

CHOICE CUT: “Draco”

Find info, schedule, playlists & weekly replay links at:

PETERNERIGUITAR.COM/ONE-GUITAR

Available at ericgeorge.bandcamp.com.

13

The ever-evolving Wren Kitz touched down in the rock hemisphere for his 2020 album, Early Worm. While still incorporating the grandiose impressionism of his earlier albums, as well as subtle flourishes of folk, Kitz’s new batch of songs comes closer to “conventional” than he’s ever been before.

Through psychedelic twists and turns and walls of sound, he still keeps it wonderfully weird.

CHOICE CUT: “Georgie”

FILE: LUKE AWTRY

15

Love and Japan, Tears for Vanishing Ways

(Self-released, digital)

(Self-released, CD, digital)

Veterans of comedy music but newbies on the local scene, formerly San Diegobased married duo Pony Death Ride dropped their new LP, Unthemed, a few months after settling in Burlington. A hodgepodge of observational humor, outlandish characters, and flawless execution of musical styles and themes, the album is just as much a groovy listen as it is a full-body convulsion of hilarity.

CHOICE CUT: “Crispin Glover Be My Lover” Available at ponydeathride.bandcamp.com.

Singer-songwriter and karaoke jockey Edward Jahn, who releases music as Love and Japan, lives for the slick sounds of ’80s new wave. Pre-pandemic, anyone who went to his Hotel Karaoke night surely witnessed his impeccable Sting impression.

On five-song EP Tears for Vanishing Ways, Jahn creates a pitch-perfect blast of nostalgic rock. He apes sounds and SIMPLY THE BEST

GET MORE INFO OR WATCH ONLINE AT VERMONTCAM.ORG

16t-vcam-weekly.indd 1

Available at wrenkitz.bandcamp.com.

Pony Death Ride, Unthemed

open 11-4 tues-sat 802-453-4797 11 MAIN ST BRISTOL

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Wren Kitz, Early Worm

from all of us at Emeraldrosegrows.com

all you want for your year round gardening needs

TUESDAYS > 6:30 P.M.

(Sophomore Lounge/Feeding Tube Records, LP, digital)

12

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Stay connected on facebook and instagram Emeraldrosegrows.com DON’T FORGET OUR NOVELTY SEEDS

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11/23/20 9:52 AM

music+nightlife FILE: BEAR CIERI

Simply the Best « P.53

Said Bulle (left) and George Mnyonge at an A2VT album release party

styles from artists such as Men at Work and the Police and houses them inside beautifully crafted and thoughtfully constructed tracks. It shows that he lives and breathes the era and has the chops to build on his forebears’ vision.

CHOICE CUT: “Cold War” Available at edwardjahn.bandcamp.com.

11

Rivan C., Teenage Apollo, Vol. 2

(Self-released, digital)

Rivan C. is one of Vermont’s best up-andcoming rappers, with skills that are sure to take him as far as he cares to go. The son of legendary local DJ Luis Calderin, Rivan was clearly raised on a healthy diet of old-school hip-hop. As a member of Gen Z, he fuses modern sensibilities, such as skittering trap beats, with elements culled from the genre’s golden era, including foundational samples of classic soul music. Teenage Apollo, Vol. 2 unveils a budding young rapper on the precipice of finding himself.

CHOICE CUT: “Stupid Qpid (featuring Eva Rawlings)”

frantic post-punk anthems and strobing bangers.

CHOICE CUT: “Subliminal Messages” Available at ponsbandofficial.bandcamp.com.

8

Fern Maddie, North Branch River

(Self-released, CD, digital)

When A2VT went locally viral back in 2012 with their music video “Winooski, My Town,” they were the new kids on the block — both musically and residentially.

And they were literally kids then, too.

Nearly a decade on, the group has become the flagship act for Chittenden County’s resettled African community.

A sparkling collection of cutting-edge Afropop, Twenty Infinity is flush with positive messaging, African pride and ridiculously catchy earworms.

CHOICE CUT: “You Ma Numba 1”

One of many striking 2020 debuts, folk singer-songwriter Fern Maddie’s North Branch River stands out in the way it so aptly captures the bleakness and often ineffable feelings implicit in North Country culture.

Indomitable and unique, Maddie’s six-track EP exhibits her grasp of the genre, both in terms of how she constructs her spare tunes and the emotionally complex themes and hardy characters within them.

CHOICE CUT: “Two Women”

Available at a2vt1.bandcamp.com.

Available at fernmaddie.bandcamp.com.

Listen on Spotify.

10

9

A2VT, Twenty Infinity (Self-released, CD, digital)

Pons, Intellect (Stick N’ Move Records, cassette, digital)

Pons are always pushing against genre constraints and expectations. The University of Vermont trio smashed through sonic barriers on Intellect, its debut full-length. Taking listeners to the maddening depths of the psyche, the album shudders and spasms through 54

7

Jewelry Company, Cheap Drugs

(Self-released, digital)

Cheap Drugs is a more than promising start for hip-hop duo Jewelry Company, the partnership of Ezra Oullette and Manriel Grant (the latter being the nephew of Burlington hip-hop authority Melo Grant).

Primarily exploring the house-infused

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 30, 2020-JANUARY 13, 2021

sounds of UK garage, the pair’s debut EP is a groovy dance party with sardonic undertones. Pivoting from rapping to singing throughout and dabbling in a full array of hip-hop styles, Jewelry Company establish an air of versatility with forward-thinking intentions.

CHOICE CUT: “Clapham”

Famous Letter Writer, Warhola

(Self-released, digital)

Anachronist, Stay Late

Holy concept album, Batman! A mesmerizing dissection of pop (and pop art) constructs, Warhola, from Plattsburgh, N.Y.’s Famous Letter Writer, is endlessly fascinating. Backed by a strong academic spirit, the married duo loaded the record with cultural touchstones through direct and indirect references. A throwback to the early days of indie rock and the prime new-wave era, the LP showcases the incredibly strong partnership of its quirky makers.

CHOICE CUT: “All I Do Is Win”

(Self-released, LP, digital)

Available at famousletterwriter.com.

Available at jewelrycompany.bandcamp.com.

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5

As Anachronist, Brian Clark and co. offered up a rock record with subtly polarized forays into folk and punk. The Vermont scene veterans’ first release since 2016, Stay Late is the kind of album that makes you long for wee-hours hangouts with friends that only come to an end with the sunrise.

The songs brim with pathos and melodic strength. Clark and vocalist/ percussionist Angela Paladino sound as if their voices were created solely to come together in harmony.

CHOICE CUT: “Happy High” Available at anachronist.bandcamp.com.

Famous Letter Writer

GOT MUSIC NEWS? JORDAN@SEVENDAYSVT.COM

4

Will Keeper, Bear (Anti-Golf, digital)

Will Keeper (aka Will Lynch) was perhaps the most exciting breakout local artist of 2020. His debut EP, Bear, is remarkably defined — an uncommon feat for a fledgling artist.

It landed him representation from Quiet Management, the same team that reps Vermont expat hip-hop outfit 99 Neighbors. An inviting collection of soft pop, the album finds a distinct, blearyeyed niche between its indie-rock and R&B influences. Somehow both poised and weary, Lynch’s work beckons listeners to rest their head gently in his lap, to either zone out or dig deeply into the mysteries of love and relationships.

No pressure either way.

CHOICE CUT: “Queen” Available at willkeeper.bandcamp.com.

Will Keeper

3

Benny Yurco, You Are My Dreams

(Little Jamaica Recordings/People in a Position to Know, LP, digital)

Benny Yurco’s You Are My Dreams

1

sounds as if it came out of a time capsule unearthed after 50 or 60 years underground.

The Grace Potter guitarist whisks the listener off on a lush, globe-trotting trip full of percussive, psychedelic compositions. Evoking greats such as Ethio-jazz legend Mulatu Astatke, exotica composer Les Baxter and TexasThai funk outfit Khruangbin, Yurco mines the language of the past to create one of the freshest local releases of the year.

CHOICE CUT: “Twin Reverb” Available at bennyyurco.bandcamp.com.

2

Francesca Blanchard, Make It Better

The much-anticipated follow-up to Francesca Blanchard’s 2015 debut, the bilingual Deux Visions, was well worth the wait. In the five years between them, Blanchard laid claim to herself and her artistry like never before, a process that caused the songwriter to push beyond what she thought possible. Blanchard also took on production duties for the first time, working closely with her sonic counterpart, coproducer Christopher Hawthorn. A shift from her debut’s folkleaning tunes, Make It Better displays an artist digging deep and confronting her own neuroses, fears and joys, packaged within subtly appointed indie pop that begs a close listen.

CHOICE CUT: “Make It Better” Available at francescablanchard.bandcamp.com.

Chuck Brewer, who records as the Röse Parade, delivered the best local album of the year only days into 2020. Released on January 4, Hyena Dream Machine set an impossibly high bar. A true hybrid of styles, it emulsifies elements of rock, R&B, synth-pop, disco and punk into an unparalleled cosmic blend. Brewer’s enigmatic poetry delves into complicated emotional states and points of view. In particular, his dissections of love, romance and carnality stand out, all framed within ruminations on power dynamics. The album is fierce and confrontational, and its wallop to the soul makes a lingering impact.

CHOICE CUT: “Lauryn Slays Daily” Available at theroseparade.bandcamp.com.

January 2-31

SPECIAL HOURS:

(Self-released, digital)

The Röse Parade, Hyena Dream Machine

(Marlvina Records, digital)

BUY ONE, GET ONE 50% OFF gardeners.com/store

Burlington: Closed for renovations Dec. 30-Jan. 31 Williston: Dec. 31, 9am-4pm | Closed Jan. 1, Jan. 4-5 Lebanon: Dec. 31, 9am-4pm | Closed Jan. 1, Jan. 18-19

HouseplantSale_7D.indd 1 1 4t-gardenerssupply123020

12/18/20 12/18/20 12:02 1:52 PM

Planning a webinar or virtual event?

S E V E N D AY S T I C K E T S . C O M

Need to register attendees?

Try using our free ticketing/registration service.

It's like Eventbrite, but run by Seven Days.

Not only is it a great tool for event promoters, it also supports local journalism.

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NEED HELP? HIT ME UP! Katie Hodges 865-1020, ext. 10 tickets@sevendaysvt.com SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 30, 2020-JANUARY 13, 2021

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12/19/20 2:05 PM

movies Highlights From a Most Unusual Year COURTESY OF FOCUS FEATURES

M

ost years, it’s tough to wrap up the year in film for Seven Days because so many awardworthy movies don’t reach Vermont until well into January. In 2020, however, release dates were weird all over.

For purposes of Oscar eligibility, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has stretched its official “year” through the end of February. Hence some of the likely Best Picture front-runners can’t currently be seen anywhere, such as the wonderful Nomadland. Others, such as Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Netflix), await you in your living room right now.

Meanwhile, Warner Bros. has announced plans to release all of its 2021 films — including the likely blockbuster Wonder Woman 1984 — simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max, dealing another blow to ailing theater chains. AMC Theatres warned the Securities Exchange Commission this month that it is nearly out of cash.

The year 2020 hasn’t been good for theaters (except drive-ins). But has it been a good year for movies? Here are some of my high and low points.

THE YOUNG AND THE MERCILESS Mulligan is on a mission of vengeance in Fennell’s disturbing satire Promising Young Woman.

REVIEWS

Most creative use of a low budget

Best midlife-crisis comedy (possibly ever?)

The hypnotic shoestring sci-fi period piece The Vast of Night (Amazon Prime Video) has a four-minute tracking shot that blew viewers’ socks off. Major Arcana, a Vermont-made film that saw its local release in 2020, did wonderful things with just actors and the landscape.

Homemade (Netflix), a collection of shorts made in quarantine around the world, is a celebration of creativity under pressure.

Radha Blank’s The Forty-Year-Old Version (Netflix) is a universally relatable movie about the pains of aging that pulls no punches in showing how racism manifests in supposedly liberal spheres such as the arts. And it’s hilarious.

Most impressive woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown Without Elisabeth Moss in the role of a woman convinced that her “dead” boyfriend is stalking her, The Invisible Man (HBO Max) might be just another horror flick. Moss (who’s also great in Shirley [Hulu, rentable]) makes it a rousing survival tale. Another actress who flipped victimhood on its head in 2020 was Carey Mulligan, whose combination of dry wit, flat affect and lust for vengeance is mesmerizing in Promising Young Woman (theatrical release December 25).

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Best isolation/cabin fever movie While Homemade has its creepy moments, none of them can match Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s arty horror flick The Lodge (Hulu, rentable), in which a remote holiday getaway becomes a route straight to hell. Also deeply claustrophobic is His House (Netflix), which explores traditional haunted-house motifs from a refugee couple’s point of view.

Best cinematic escape from your home In Nomadland (theatrical release February 19), Frances McDormand plays one of a new breed of Americans: Laid off by factory closings, they crisscross the nation’s

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 30, 2020-JANUARY 13, 2021

highways in vans or RVs seeking seasonal work. While Chloé Zhao’s film doesn’t sugarcoat the poverty of McDormand’s character, it does convey the grandeur of the landscape and the wanderlust that makes her way of life more than a grim necessity.

Most riveting monologues

Favorite movie I hesitate to recommend widely Talky relationship drama. Road-trip noir.

Semi-surrealist take on how it feels to live with depression. I’m not sure what to call Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Netflix). It’s undeniably selfindulgent, but it was one of my favorite films of 2020.

In Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Netflix), based on the August Wilson play about the blues legend, Viola Davis is riveting every second she’s on-screen, but especially when Ma talks about what the blues mean to her. As the fractious trumpeter Levee, the late lamented Chadwick Boseman has an equally electrifying monologue about the brutal history that shaped the character.

Most pointless remake

Movie likely to start the most Twitter threads

Movie I can’t believe I watched to the end

Part old-fashioned revenge drama, part rom-com parody, part up-to-the-moment #MeToo statement, Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman redefines “chick flick.” It has its flaws, but people will be talking about it for a while.

Director Ben Wheatley has made wickedly offbeat thrillers, but his Rebecca (Netflix) is neither as gripping as Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 version nor as odd and creepy as Daphne du Maurier’s source novel. Transforming the story into an age-appropriate romance with an “empowered” heroine just makes it painfully generic.

Free Lunch Express (rentable on various platforms), a Vermont-produced satire in which Bernie Sanders is a fun-loving buffoon who pledges his soul to Joseph Stalin and gets his political guidance from Ben and Jerry.

MARGO T HARRI S O N

CLASS PHOTOS + MORE INFO ONLINE SEVENDAYSVT.COM/CLASSES

classes THE FOLLOWING CLASS LISTINGS ARE PAID ADVERTISEMENTS. ANNOUNCE YOUR CLASS FOR AS LITTLE AS $16.75/WEEK (INCLUDES SIX PHOTOS AND UNLIMITED DESCRIPTION ONLINE). SUBMIT YOUR CLASS AD AT SEVENDAYSVT.COM/POSTCLASS.

drumming DJEMBE & TAIKO DRUMMING: JOIN US!: Hybrid classes (Zoom and in-person) starting Jan 4, 5, 6! Taiko Tuesday and Wednesday.

Djembe Wednesday. Kids and Parents Tuesday & Wednesday.

COVID-19-free rental instruments, curbside pickup, too. Private Hybrid Conga lessons by appointment.

Let’s prepare for future drumming outdoors. Schedule/register online.

Location: Online and in-person at Taiko Space, 208 Flynn Ave., Suite 3G, Burlington. Info: 999-4255, burlingtontaiko.org.

family ONLINE MUSIC CLASSES FOR TODDLERS & PRESCHOOLERS: Join Musical Munchkins for 10 weeks of interactive, family-centered fun at home this winter. Go

for a sleigh ride, dance with a bear, drum with a snow mouse! Embark on make-believe adventures like these while your kids sing, dance, drum and play with instruments and puppets. Age-specific for toddlers, preschoolers. Beginning Jan. 8, Fri., Sat., & Sun. Cost: $125 /10-weeks ($100 before 12/20).

Free demo classes avail. Location: Online. Info: 845-2311, musical munchkinswithandrea@gmail. com, musicalmunchkins.net.

Feldenkrais AWARENESS THROUGH MOVEMENT: Self-care at home with the Feldenkrais Method.

Feldenkrais Awareness through Movement Zoom classes will help you deal with stress and pain, keep you moving, feel good in your body and create a greater sense of well-being — the results can be

extraordinary. See online testimonials! Uwe Mester has 15 years of experience and will guide you verbally through simple and highly effective gentle movements — the instructions are easy to follow.

Pay what you can. Register with vermontfeldenkrais.com.

Tuesdays. Cost: $10/1-hour class.

Location: Online; please register w/ Uwe Mester. Info: Vermont Feldenkrais, Uwe Mester, 735-3770, movevt@gmail.com, vermont feldenkrais.com.

language ALLIANCE FRANÇAISE WINTER SESSION: Our six-week winter session starts on January 11, offering online French classes for adults.

We also offer private lessons for those who are more comfortable with one-on-one instruction. We serve the entire range of students, from true beginners to those who are already comfortable conversing in French. Six weeks beginning Mon., Jan. 11. Location: Online.

Info: Alliance Française of the Lake Champlain Region, Micheline Tremblay, 881-8826, education@ aflcr.org, aflcr.org.

EXPERIENCED NATIVE PROFESSOR OFFERING ONLINE SPANISH CLASSES: Premier native-speaking Spanish professor Maigualida Rak is giving fun, interactive online lessons to improve comprehension and pronunciation and to achieve fluency. Audio-visual material is used. “I feel proud to say that my students have significantly improved their Spanish with my teaching approach.” -Maigualida Rak. Read reviews on Facebook at facebook.com/spanishonlinevt.

Location: Maigualida Rak, Online.

Info: Maigualida Rak, spanish tutor.vtfla@gmail.com, facebook. com/spanishonlinevt.

SPANISH ZOOM CLASSES STARTING: Join us for adult Spanish classes this winter using online video conferencing.

Learn from a native speaker via small group classes, individual instruction or student tutoring.

You’ll always be participating and speaking. Lesson packages for travelers, lessons for children.

Our 15th year. See our website or contact us for details. Beginning week of Jan. 4. Cost: $270/10 weekly classes of 90+ min. each.

Location: Spanish in Waterbury Center, Waterbury Center. Info: 585-1025, spanishparavos@ gmail.com, spanishwaterbury center.com.

well-being SKY BREATH MEDITATION: This is a nine-hour holistic happiness and well-being program taught over three days in which the participants are trained in evidence-based SKY meditation practice, breathing techniques, yoga, social connection and mindful leadership. SKY has been shown to significantly reduce anxiety and depression, lower stress markers, and increase well-being, focus and optimism.

Fri., Jan. 8, 6:30-9 p.m. EST, Sat. Jan. 9-Sun., Jan. 10, 9:30-noon EST. Location: Online. Info: Art of Living, Rondi Sewelson, 718-2075684, rondi.sewelson@artofliving. org, artofliving.org.

yoga

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SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 30, 2020-JANUARY 13, 2021

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LIVESTREAM YOGA AT THE YOGA BARN: Bring movement back into your life with livestream yoga. The Yoga Barn offers daily group and private classes online. Organize a private class and practice with friends from afar. Peruse our schedule at theyogabarnstowe. com. Sliding-scale rates for those experiencing financial hardship. Questions? Email us at: theyogabarnstowe@gmail.com.

Location: Online. Info: The Yoga Barn, Erica Sussman, 825-5851356, theyogabarnstowe@gmail. com, theyogabarnstowe.com.

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12/17/20 11:53 AM

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SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 30, 2020-JANUARY 13, 2021

1T-AWN(LS)123020 1

12/21/20 7:07 PM

Humane

Society of Chittenden County

Rocco’s Happy Tail When Rocco arrived in June, he stayed in a corner of his kennel, making it very clear he didn’t want anyone coming near him. We knew Rocco was a sensitive guy who was often uncomfortable with strange people, new surroundings and males in particular. With time, space and gentle reassurances, Rocco began to seek attention and treats from his handlers.

He even gave us small glimpses of his silly side as he started playing with toys and bouncing around the play yard! With each new introduction, we heard fewer growls, saw more tail wags and often found him sitting right by the door, waiting for friends to visit.

Thanks to our dedicated staff and volunteers, Rocco found his match (a male adopter!) 161 days after he first arrived. His dad shares that Rocco wakes him up each morning with a smile, is enjoying all the fluffy blankets and toys he could ever want, and he already “can’t imagine not waking up or coming home to Rocco.”

housing »

APARTMENTS, CONDOS & HOMES

DID YOU KNOW?

on the road »

The New Year is a great time to confirm that your pet’s contact information is up to date! Proper identification (collars, tags and/or microchips for both indoor and outdoor pets) increases your chances of finding a lost pet who may have been mistaken for a stray. We love helping best friends meet, but keeping them together is even better!

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NEW STUFF ONLINE EVERY DAY! PLACE YOUR ADS 24-7 AT SEVENDAYSVT.COM. SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 30, 2020-JANUARY 13, 2021

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CLASSIFIEDS on the road

CARS/TRUCKS

We Pick Up & Pay For Junk Automobiles!

Route 15, Hardwick

802-472-5100

3842 Dorset Ln., Williston

housing ads: $25 (25 words) legals: 52¢/word buy this stuff: free online services: $12 (25 words)

fully applianced kitchen, fi tness center, pet friendly, garage parking.

Income restrictions apply. 802-655-1810, keenscrossing.com.

FERRISBURG ROOM FOR RENT $600/mo. incl. utils.

No sec. dep. req. 30 min. from Burlington.

Neighbor behind the house has livestock & a barn. Call Steven at 323-4573.

2015 RAV-4 & TIRES 802-793-9133 FOR SALE 2015 RAV-4 XLE AWD, 42K miles, excellent KEEN’S CROSSING IS condition, new rear NOW LEASING! sm-allmetals060811.indd 7/20/15 1 5:02 PM brakes, new tires, 1-BR, $1,054/mo.; 2-BR, 6-speed, 17” chrome $1,266/mo.; 3-BR, alloy wheels, moon roof, $1,397/mo. Spacious roof rack, etc. $14,950. interiors, fully appliAlmost-new mud & anced kitchen, fi tness snow tires: 225/55 R17 center, heat & HW incl.

Yokohama Ice Guards, Income restrictions used approximately apply. 802-655-1810, 3K miles. New $600, keenscrossing.com. price $450. Text only from 9 a.m.-8 p.m., PINECREST AT ESSEX 802-363-3422.

Joshua Way, Essex Jct. 2-BR & 3-BR NOW, BURL. VT Independent senior CASH FOR CARS! Roomy 2-BR & 3-BR in living for those 55+ We buy all cars! Junk, Burlington avail. now. years. 1-BR avail. now, high-end, totaled: It Great locations w/ $1,260/mo. incl. utils. doesn’t matter. Get free off-street parking. No & parking garage. NS/ towing & same-day pets. Refs. req. Joe’s pets. 802-872-9197 or cash. Newer models, cell: 802-318-8916. rae@fullcirclevt.com. too. Call 1-866-5359689. (AAN CAN) AFFORDABLE 2-BR APT. TAFT FARM SENIOR AVAIL. LIVING COMMUNITY At Keen’s Crossing.

10 Tyler Way, Williston, 2-BR: $1,266/mo., heat & independent senior HW incl. Open floor plan, living. Newly remodeled 1-BR unit on the ground floor, w/ restricted view avail., $1,110/mo. incl. utils. & cable. NS/pets.

Must be 55+ years of age. cintry@fullcirclevt. appt. appointment com, 802-879-3333.

housing

display service ads: $25/$45 homeworks: $45 (40 words, photos, logo) fsbos: $45 (2 weeks, 30 words, photo) jobs: michelle@sevendaysvt.com, 865-1020 x21

Homeshares

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50-pill special: $99 + free shipping! 100% guaranteed. Call now: 888-531-1192. (AAN CAN)

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Pay no rent (small utils. share) in exchange for cooking 1-2 x/week, sharing housekeeping & companionship. Shared BA.

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FLETCHER Delightful, travelled senior gentleman with rural home to share in exchange for help w/ errands, laundry & property maintenance. Private BA. $200/mo.

WESTFORD Share beautiful home w/ easy-going, outdoorsy man in his 50s. Large property to enjoy. $500/mo. (all inc.). 10 miles to Essex Jct. No pets.

FOR RENT

CLASSIFIEDS KEY apt. apartment BA bathroom BR bedroom DR dining room DW dishwasher HDWD hardwood HW hot water LR living room NS no smoking OBO or best offer refs. references sec. dep. security deposit W/D washer & dryer

EQUAL HOUSING OPPORTUNITY All real estate advertising in this newspaper is subject to the Federal Fair Housing Act of 1968 and similar Vermont statutes which make it illegal to advertise any preference, limitations, or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, handicap, presence of minor children in the family or receipt of public assistance, or an intention to make any such preference, limitation or a discrimination. The newspaper will not knowingly accept any advertising for real estate, which is in violation of the law. Our

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TAFT FARM SENIOR LIVING COMMUNITY 10 Tyler Way, Williston, independent senior living. Newly remodeled 2-BR unit on 2nd floor avail., $1,410/mo. inc. utils. & cable. NS/pets.

Must be 55+ years of age. cintry@fullcirclevt. com or 802-879-3333.

TAFT FARM SENIOR LIVING COMMUNITY 10 Tyler Way, Williston, independent senior living. Newly remodeled 1-BR unit on the main floor avail., $1,200/ mo. incl. utils. & cable.

NS/pets. Must be 55+ years of age. cintry@

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 30, 2020-JANUARY 13, 2021

print deadline: Mondays at 4:30 p.m. post ads online 24/7 at: sevendaysvt.com/classifieds questions? classifieds@sevendaysvt.com 865-1020 x10

Finding you just the right housemate for over 35 years!

Call 863-5625 or visit HomeShareVermont.org for an application. Interview, refs, bg check req. EHO

fullcirclevt.com or Homeshare-temp2.indd 1 802-879-3333.

OFFICE/ COMMERCIAL OFFICE/RETAIL SPACE AT MAIN STREET LANDING on Burlington’s waterfront. Beautiful, healthy, affordable spaces for your business. Visit mainstreetlanding.com & click on space avail.

Melinda, 864-7999.

services

ADOPTION COUPLE HOPING TO ADOPT Kind & fun-loving VT couple can provide a safe & loving home for your baby. If you are pregnant & considering adoption, we would welcome hearing from you. jonandtessa.weebly. com, 802-272-7759.

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ACT 250 NOTICE MINOR APPLICATION #4C1334 10 V.S.A. §§ 6001 - 6093 On December 16, 2020, Jeffrey Haddock, Christopher Haddock, and Deborah Pyle, 428 Webster Road, Shelburne, VT 05482

LEGALS »

Show and tell.

Calcoku »

View and post up to SEVENDAYSVT.COM/CLASSIFIEDS Using the enclosed math operations as per a guide, fill 6 photos ad online.

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BY JOSH REYNOLDS

DIFFICULTY THIS WEEK: HH

DIFFICULTY THIS WEEK: HH

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Place a number in the empty boxes in such a way that each row across, each column down and each 9-box square contains all of the numbers one to nine. The same numbers cannot be repeated in a row or column.

THCAuction.com  800-634-7653

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ANSWERS ON P. 62

ANSWERS ON P. 62 9 7 8 3 6 1 2 4 5 H = MODERATE HH = CHALLENGING HHH = HOO, BOY!

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3. Jalbert leased a lot in the Park from HFI pursuant to a written lease. Jalbert paid HFI a security deposit of $250.00. See attached lease.

4. Jalbert’s last known mailing address is 66 Fire Lane 3B Coburn Court, North Clarendon, VT 05759.

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SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 30, 2020-JANUARY 13, 2021

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2. Jeffery Jalbert (“Jalbert”) is the record owner of a certain mobile home (the “Mobile Home”) described as 1968 Skyline F-K, 12’ x 60’, bearing Serial #1644249, located at the Coburn Mobile Home Park, Lot #24, 66 Fire Lane 3B Coburn Court in North Clarendon, Vermont according to the Town of Clarendon Land Records. See attached Bill of Sale.

5. The mobile home has been abandoned and is empty. The last known resident of the mobile home was Jalbert. All of Jalbert’s personal property is believed to have been removed from the mobile home and utility services have been terminated.

The Park attempted to communicate with Jalbert with respect to his intentions with his mobile home and has

9. HFI sent written notice by certified mail to the Town of Clarendon on May 5, 2020 of Plaintiff’s intent to commence this action. See attached.

WHEREFORE, HFI respectfully requests that the Honorable Court enter an order as follows:

865-1020 x10, homeworks@sevendaysvt.com

non-profi t corporation with a principal place of business in Montpelier, County of Washington, State of Vermont, is the record owner of a mobile home park known as the Coburns Mobile Home Park (the “Park”), located in the Town of North Clarendon, Vermont.

fees and court costs incurred by HFI currently exceed $1,200.00.

10. The mobile home is uninhabitable. Thomas Young, Property Manager, will testify under oath as to the poor and unlivable condition of this mobile home at the abandonment hearing.

Call or email today to get started:

App: Cisco Webex Meeting Website: 2020 Kristie Landon, Deputy https://vtcourts.webex.

Untitled-26 Clerk1 com Meeting Number: 179 VERIFIED COMPLAINT 381 8436 FOR ABANDONMENT Password: civilonhill PURSUANT TO 10 V.S.A. § 6249(i) If you do not have a (Uninhabitable) computer or sufficient bandwidth, you may NOW COMES The call (408) 418-9388 to Housing Foundation, appear by phone. (This is not a tollfree number). Inc. (“HFI”), by and through its counsel You will then enter the Nadine L. Scibek, and meeting number and hereby complains password listed above.

If you have technical dif- pursuant to 10 V.S.A. § 6249(i) as follows: ficulties, call the Court at (802) 775-4394.

1. HFI, a Vermont Date: December 17,

3

PUZZLE ANSWERS

A hearing on The Housing Foundation, Inc.’s Verified Complaint to declare as abandoned and uninhabitable the mobile home of Jeffery Jalbert, located at the Coburns Mobile Home Park, Lot #24, 66 Fire Lane 3B Coburn Court in North Clarendon, Vermont has been set for January 12, 2021 at 11:30 a.m. This hearing will be held remotely as no hearings are being held in person at the Courthouse.

To participate in this hearing, the WEBEX Login Information is as follows:

4

By: /s/Stephanie H. Monaghan Stephanie H. Monaghan, District Coordinator 111 West Street Essex Junction, VT 05452 802-879-5662 stephanie.monaghan@ vermont.gov

List your properties here and online for only $45/ week. Submit your listings

by Mondays at noon.

NOTICE OF HEARING

5

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

If you feel that any of the District Commission members listed on the attached Certificate of Service under “For Your Information” may have a conflict of interest, or if there is any other reason a member should

Parties entitled to participate are the Municipality, the Municipal Planning Commission, the Regional Planning Commission, affected state agencies, and adjoining property owners and other persons to the extent that they have a particularized interest that may be affected by the proposed project under the Act 250 criteria. Non-party participants may also be allowed under 10 V.S.A. Section 6085(c) (5). Dated at Essex Junction, Vermont this 21st day of December, 2020.

homeworks

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The District 4 Environmental Commission is reviewing this application under Act 250 Rule 51—Minor Applications. A copy of the application and proposed permit are available for review at the office listed below.

The application and a draft permit may also be viewed on the Natural Resources Board’s web site (http://nrb. vermont.gov) by clicking on “Act 250 Database” and entering the project number “4C1334.”

If you have a disability for which you need accommodation in order to participate in this process (including participating in a public hearing, if one is held), please notify us as soon as possible, in order to allow us as much time as possible to accommodate your needs.

STATE OF VERMONT SUPERIOR COURT CIVIL DIVISION RUTLAND UNIT CASE NO. 20-CV-00905 IN RE: ABANDONED MOBILE HOME OF JEFFERY JALBERT

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and Sterling Land Co., LLC, 1037 Hinesburg Road, Suite A, South Burlington, VT 05403 filed application number 4C1334 for a project generally described as subdivision of 18 lots; demolition of existing structures; and construction of 17 new single family and duplex homes, 700 linear feet of new roadway, and associated utilities.

The Project is located at 428 Webster Road in Shelburne, Vermont.

be disqualified from sitting on this case, please contact the District Coordinator as soon as possible, and by no later than January 13, 2021.

2

[CONTINUED]

before January 13, 2021, a person notifies the Commission of an issue or issues requiring the presentation of evidence at a hearing, or the Commission sets the matter for a hearing on its own motion. Any person as defined in 10 V.S.A. § 6085(c)(1) may request a hearing. Any hearing request must be in writing to the address below, must state the criteria or sub-criteria at issue, why a hearing is required and what additional evidence will be presented at the hearing. Any hearing request by an adjoining property owner or other person eligible for party status under 10 V.S.A. § 6085(c)(1)(E) must include a petition for party status under the Act 250 Rules. Prior to submitting a request for a hearing, please contact the district coordinator at the telephone number listed below for more information. Prior to convening a hearing, the Commission must determine that substantive issues requiring a hearing have been raised. Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law may not be prepared unless the Commission holds a public hearing.

1. Declare that the mobile home has been abandoned;

2. Transfer the mobile home which is unfi t for human habitation to the Park owner, HFI without received no response. a public auction so that See attached. it may be removed and 6/6/16 4:34 PM disposed of accordingly.

6. Jalbert was evicted from the Park 3. Order pursuant to for non-payment of rent 10 V.S.A. § 6249(j) that on February 4, 2020. A the mobile home and Judgment Order for any security deposit the outstanding lot paid be conveyed to rent and court costs the Park Owner in was entered against “as is” condition, and Jalbert on January 9, free from all liens and 2020 in the amount other encumbrances of of $3,231.39. See The record.

Housing Foundation, Inc. v. Jalbert, Vermont DATED AT Burlington, Superior Court, Rutland Vermont this 14th day of Civil Unit, Docket No. December, 2020.

583-10-19 Rdcv. See atBy: Nadine L. Scibek, tached Judgment/Writ Attorney for HFI of Possession/Sheriff’s return of service.

I declare that the above Jalbert has made no statement is true and efforts or attempts to accurate to the best remove the home from of my knowledge and the Park. belief. I understand that if the above statement 7. The following security is false, I will be subject interests, mortgages, to the penalty of perjury liens and encumbrances or other sanctions in the appear of record with discretion of the Court. respect to the mobile home: DATED at Montpelier, Vermont this 14th day of a. Jalbert is in arrears on December, 2020. obligations to pay propBy: Thomas Young, erty taxes to the Town Duly Authorized Agent of Clarendon, Vermont in for HFI the aggregate amount of $3,434.06, plus interest and penalties.

STATE OF VERMONT The delinquent property VERMONT SUPERIOR taxes are now a lien on COURT FRANKLIN UNIT, the property. See atCIVIL DIVISION DOCKET tached tax bills.

NO: 7-1-20 FRCV LAKEVIEW LOAN b. The Housing SERVICING, LLC. Foundation, Inc. v.

Jalbert, Judgment Order v.

ANDREW H. MONTROLL, dated January 9, 2020.

ESQ., ADMINISTRATOR OF THE ESTATE OF 8. Mobile home storage MARLENE L. SHAPPY fees continue to accrue OCCUPANTS OF: 519 at the rate of $414.00 Sand Hill Road, Enosburg per month. Rent, Falls VT storage fees, and late charges due HFI as of MORTGAGEE’S NOTICE December, 2020 total OF FORECLOSURE SALE $6,450.58. Attorney’s

OF REAL PROPERTY UNDER 12 V.S.A. sec 4952 et seq.

In accordance with the Judgment Order and Decree of Foreclosure entered October 12, 2020 in the above captioned action brought to foreclose that certain mortgage given by James J. Shappy Jr. and Marlene L. Shappy to Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. as nominee for PHH Mortgage Services, dated April 6, 2007 and recorded in Book 109 Page 642 of the land records of the Town of Enosburg Falls, of which mortgage the Plaintiff is the present holder, by virtue of an Assignment of Mortgage from Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. as nominee for PHH Mortgage Services to Lakeview Loan Servicing, LLC dated March 19, 2019 and recorded in Book 136 Page 181 of the land records of the Town of Enosburg Falls, for breach of the conditions of said mortgage and for the purpose of foreclosing the same will be sold at Public Auction at 519 Sand Hill Road, Enosburg Falls, Vermont on January 12, 2021 at 12:00PM all and singular the premises described in said mortgage, To wit: Being all and the same lands and premises conveyed to James J. Shappy and Marlene L. Shappy by Deed of Darlene Fowler of approximate even date herewith and to be recorded in the Town of Enosburgh Land Records. Said lands and premises being more particularly described as follows: Being all and the same lands and premises conveyed to Darlene Fowler, Thomas Fowler, and Michael Greenwood,

by Quit Claim Deed of Darlene Fowler and Thomas Fowler dated August 28, 2002 and recorded September 19, 2002 at Book 94, Pages 94-95 of the Town of Enosburg Land Records.

Darlene Fowler and Thomas Fowler took title as husband and wife, as tenants by the entirety and Michael Greenwood took title as joint tenant as between himself and Darlene and Thomas Fowler. The interest of Michael Greenwood was conveyed to Darlene Fowler by Quit Claim Deed dated January 5, 2008 and recorded January 28, 2008 at Book 106,

Pages 358-359 of said Land Records. Thomas Fowler is deceased with death certificate dated February 8, 2003 at Book 22, Page 61 of said Land Records, vesting title solely in the name of Darlene Fowler. Said lands and premises being more particularly described as follows: Being all and the same lands and premises conveyed to Darlene Fowler and Thomas Fowler by the following two Deeds: Parcel One: Warranty Deed of Timothy Hayes and Lori Hayes dated July 12, 1999 and recorded at Book 85, Page 27 of said land records.

This parcel is subject to State of Vermont Homestead Exemption Determination HE-60267 recorded at Book 85, Page 26 of said Land Records.

Parcel Two: Warranty Deed of Timothy Hayes and Lori Hayes dated September 29, 1999 and recorded at Book 85, Page 373 of said Land Records. This parcel is subject to State of Vermont Deferral of Permit number DE-62511 recorded at Book 85, Page 24-25 of said Land Records.

Reference is made to a survey prepared

by Harvey W. Chaffee dated June 22, 1999 and recorded at Map Book 3, Page 56 of said Land Records.

Reference is hereby made to the above instruments and to the records and references contained therein in further aid of this description.

Terms of sale: Said premises will be sold and conveyed subject to all liens, encumbrances, unpaid taxes, tax titles, municipal liens and assessments, if any, which take precedence over the said mortgage above described.

TEN THOUSAND ($10,000.00) Dollars of the purchase price must be paid by a certified check, bank treasurer’s or cashier’s check at the time and place of the sale by the purchaser.

The balance of the purchase price shall be paid by a certified check, bank treasurer’s or cashier’s check within sixty (60) days after the date of sale.

The mortgagor is entitled to redeem the premises at any time prior to the sale

by paying the full amount due under the mortgage, including the costs and expenses of the sale. Other terms to be announced at the sale.

DATED: November 19, 2020 By: /s/Loraine L. Hite, Esq. Loraine L. Hite, Esq. Bendett and McHugh, PC 270 Farmington Ave., Ste. 151 Farmington, CT 06032

THE CONTENTS OF STORAGE UNIT 0104902 LOCATED AT 28 ADAMS DRIVE, WILLISTON VT, 05495 WILL BE SOLD ON OR ABOUT THE 7TH OF JANUARY 2021 TO SATISFY THE DEBT OF ABDI DHERE. Any person claiming a right to the goods may pay the amount claimed due and reasonable expenses before the sale, in which case the sale may not occur.

TOWN OF BOLTON NOTICE OF VIRTUAL PUBLIC HEARING BOLTON SELECT BOARD 3045 THEODORE ROOSEVELT HWY. BOLTON, VERMONT 05676 The Select Board will hold a VIRTUAL public hearing on Monday, January 18, 2021 at 6:00 pm to obtain public feedback regarding proposed amendments to the 2017 Municipal Plan, and proposed amendments to the Bolton Land Use and Development Regulations.

The two proposed Municipal Plan amendments are a revision & expansion of the Energy Use and related sections of the town plan, and a change in Bolton’s current zoning map boundaries. Proposed Plan amendments would: 1. Strengthen the town’s commitments to reduce energy consumption overall, and take on a more ambitious agenda in meeting state renewable energy plan goals by enabling expansion of the town’s renewable energy generation capacity.

2. Adjust and expand the boundaries of the town’s Forest District and Conservation District to improve protections for existing contiguous forest blocks, and provide increased connectivity

for wildlife habitat. It would also expand the Village District to encompass several existing small, non-conforming lots along the south end of the Bolton Valley Access Road, to provide regulatory relief to property owners in that area who want to expand homes or accessory structures.

DIDN’T GET EVERYTHING YOU WANTED?

Proposed amendments to the Bolton Land Use and Development Regulations would: 1. Improve the protection and review of natural resources identified in the 2017 Bolton Town Plan.

2. Lessen the need for DRB review of certain projects by a. allowing administrative approval of boundary line adjustments b. allowing administrative approval of low impact recreation paths and tree removal within stream buffers c. rezoning pre-existing nonconforming parcels along Bolton Valley Road to decrease their required minimum lot sizes.

3. Disallow motor vehicle salvage yards as a conditional use in town.

4. Encourage energy efficiency in building design.

5. Allow for larger accessory dwelling units as associated with primary dwelling units of 1,400 sq. ft. or less and clarify the treatment of accessory dwelling units on wheels (“tiny houses”).

Treat yourself to something special.

You deserve it — especially after a challenging 2020.

Visit the Register for all the info on area shopkeepers who are selling their products online for local delivery or curbside pickup.

Browse by categories ranging from jewelry to electronics, outdoor gear to apparel.

Shopping online is safe and always in season — especially during the colder months ahead.

Here’s to a prosperous new year!

SHOP T H E R EGIS T E R .C OM

Copies of the proposed amendments are available by contacting the Town Office at 802434-5075, or emailing clerkbolton@gmavt.net, and are available on the Select Board page of the town website at http:// boltonvt.com/ The hearings are open to the public. See the Select Board page on the town website for hearing access information http://boltonvt.com/ If you cannot attend the hearings, comments may be made in writing prior to the hearing and mailed to: Town Clerk, 3045 Theodore Roosevelt Highway, Bolton, VT 05676, or via email to: clerkbolton@ gmavt.net

WITH GENEROUS SUPPORT FROM:

2V-Register123020.indd 1

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 30, 2020-JANUARY 13, 2021

63

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64 DECEMBER 30, 2020-JANUARY 13, 2021

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position, you’ll help make Brave Little State, VPR’s award-winning, people-powered journalism project.

You’ll engage with our audience and champion their experience, and help us maintain the highest standards of quality in our work. As VPR expands its engagement journalism offerings, you’ll also have the opportunity to shape listener-driven news projects across platforms. If you’re passionate about sound, story and public service journalism, then this is the job for you.

JOBS AND POST-EMPLOYMENT CASE MANAGER Are you looking for employment that will allow you to put your skills and talents with youth and young adults to use?

The Jump On Board for Success (JOBS) and Post-Employment Case Manager position is fulltime and ideal for someone with strong communication skills, knowledge of adolescent development, and an understanding of Vermont’s education, vocational training, and human services systems. Responsibilities include providing flexible and participant-centered case management services for teens and young adults. The case manager helps program participants develop the skills needed to live independently while focusing on their employment and education goals. Preference will be given to applicants with a relevant degree and work experience with individuals with emotional or behavioral disabilities.

Read the full job descriptions at vpr.org/careers. *VPR is also looking for a News Fellow and for a Host/Senior Producer for Vermont Edition.

Applicants are required to fill out the VPR Job Application form and send it with a cover letter and resume by email to careers@vpr.net.

LRC is a team-oriented, non-profit organization based in Hyde Park. Consider joining the LRC team if you’re interested in a workplace that promotes employee well-being and is known for its inclusive and collaborative work environment. Each of these positions come with a competitive salary. The full time Case Manager position includes a comprehensive benefit package that includes health, dental, and life insurance, paid sick and vacation leave, 15 paid holidays, and a retirement plan.

Vermont Public Radio provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment, and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type, without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local laws.

To be considered for either position, applicants must send a cover letter that describes the candidate’s interest in the position and relevant skills and experience, along with a resume, to this email address: info@lrcvt.org. Applications will be accepted until the positions are filled.

LRC is an E.O.E. More information is available at: lrcvt.org.

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ATTENTION RECRUITERS:

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

DECEMBER 30, 2020-JANUARY 13, 2021

Municipal Bookkeeper

Business & Advancement Associate

The Town of Middlesex seeks a qualified bookkeeper to work 24-30 hours per week processing accounts receivable and accounts payable and preparing timely and accurate financial reports. The bookkeeper will be responsible for the administration and reconciliation of the Town’s budget and all the Town’s accounts through the G/L, A/P, A/R, P/R, in addition to some tax administration and employee-benefits oversite. The bookkeeper reports to the elected Town Treasurer.

The Business and Advancement Associate reports to the Director of Advancement and the Business Manager and is responsible for providing administrative assistance in both departments. He/she will work closely with the Business Manager to manage accounts receivable and deposits and to manage the integration of our fundraising software with QuickBooks. He/ she will manage the donor database and provide additional administrative support for the Advancement and Business offices as needed.

Essential responsibilities: Provide monthly financial reports, all mandatory state and federal reporting, manage state & federal grant documentation and financial administration, plan and oversee the annual audit, depreciation schedules and budgeting process.

Proficiency in QuickBooks and advanced knowledge of Microsoft Office (especially Excel) required. Basic mapping knowledge a plus.

Experience with governmental and/or fund/ modified accrual accounting required and knowledge of NEMRC a plus, along with proficiency in spreadsheets & Word documents. This job has the potential to become a full-time financial position with excellent health-insurance and retirement benefits. Expected start date: March 2021.

* Hours: 20-30 hours/week. * Flexibility to work from home part time.

Send resumes to: tmacguffie@gmvs.org.

Please submit a letter of interest, resume and contacts for references to middlesxtreas@comcast.net or mail to Town of Middlesex, 5 Church Street, Middlesex, VT 05602.

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Invest in Yourself.

Train for your career in healthcare today!

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PROGRAM FEATURES: ➢ Dedicated student support

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Over the past twenty years, Vermont HITEC educated and employed over 1,600 individuals in the healthcare, information technology, advanced manufacturing, and business services fields. We are accepting applications for our latest healthcare program. The program offers eight weeks of Phlebotomy training at no cost and immediate employment and apprenticeship as a Phlebotomist with the UVM Medical Center (up to 8 positions) upon successful completion.

JOB FEATURES:

3Enrollment in a Registered Apprenticeship 3Up to 8 full-time positions available 3Guaranteed starting wages with shift differential (where applicable) 3 Performance-based increases 3Full benefits, including health, dental, paid vacation, 401k, and more 3No cost for qualified VT residents

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

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vthitec.org DEADLINE FOR WINTER 2021 SESSION:

Counseling Service of Addison County is seeing clinicians in several departments within the agency. Work with a creative approach to crisis work in homes, communities and schools with children, adolescents and families with emotional and behavioral challenges and developmental disorders or with adults to treat, understand and alleviate symptoms related to improvement of mental health, substance use, behavioral, and relationship distress. We believe in a team of supportive colleagues and the importance of high-quality supervision.

Master’s degree required, licensed preferred and/or license eligible after rostering. Full time positions with comprehensive benefits or part time available.

Send resumes to: hcamara@csac-vt.org Equal opportunity employer

Job seekers can: • Browse hundreds of current, local positions 4t-CSAC072920.indd 1 SCHOOL BASED from Vermont companies.

• Set up job alerts.

JANUARY 10, 2021

Start applying at jobs.sevendaysvt.com

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

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SOCIAL WORKER OR THERAPIST We have several positions available within our contracted schools. Hours may include some evenings.

The School Based Social Worker/Therapist is responsible for providing Diagnosis and Evaluation, Psychotherapy, Community Supports and Service Planning & Coordination to children/families to meet overall mental health service goals. Role will develop and maintain close working relationships with internal and external staff to provide coordinated, quality services. Master's Degree in Psychology, Counseling or Social Work required. Experience providing services for diverse range of school-aged children living with serious emotional disorders required. Able to support clients in crisis. Possess valid driver's license, reliable transportation with personal automobile liability insurance coverage. $2,000 end of school year incentive bonus available.

Send resumes to: kmckeighan@rmhsccn.org.

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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

67 DECEMBER 30, 2020-JANUARY 13, 2021

CLERICAL ASSISTANTS

TOWN OF CHARLOTTE

The Vermont Judiciary is recruiting for a full-time, permanent Docket Clerk, who will perform specialized clerical duties including data entry and extensive customer service over the phone.

The Town of Charlotte is accepting applications for a parttime Assessor. The primary responsibilities of this position are to maintain and update values and corresponding tax status, use, category and title for all properties in the town; the position is also responsible for preserving the integrity of the town’s grand list by ensuring accuracy and equity. The position also provides assistance to the public, property owners and real estate professionals. A job description can be viewed at charlottevt.org; see right-hand sidebar.

ASSESSOR

Located in Burlington. High School graduate and two years of clerical or data entry experience required.

Starting at $17.11 per hour with excellent benefits, paid holidays and leave time. Job code # 20028.

Candidates shall submit a complete and up-to-date Judicial Branch application and resume. An electronic version of the Application may be found at: vermontjudiciary.org/employmentopportunities/staff-openings.

This position is open until filled. Equal opportunity employer.

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This is a permanent position currently approved for 22 hours/week, paid hourly.

Compensation is in accordance with the Town of Charlotte Salary Administration Policy.

The starting wage rate is between $17.29 and $19.57, based on qualifications and experience.

Generous health, dental, vision and retirement benefits are offered.

To apply, please send a resumé and cover letter to Dean Bloch, Town Administrator at dean@townofcharlotte.com. Questions can be sent to the same address, or please call 425-3071 ext. 5. The deadline for submitting an application is January 13, 2021. E.O.E. 5h-TownofCharlotte1223&3020.indd 1

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Providing Innovative Mental Health and Educational Services to Vermont’s Children & Families.

Residential Counselors

Allenbrook Program, South Burlington NFI VT’s Allenbrook Program is seeking flexible residential counselors for full-time, part-time and relief positions. Allenbrook is a co-ed community based group home for teens. Qualified candidates will have a bachelor’s degree or equivalent.

Experience parenting and/or managing a household is desired. The ability to work some nights and weekends, reliable transportation and a criminal background check are required. Competitive salary, supportive team, and fun work environment included.

Excellent benefits, including tuition reimbursement, offered for positions of 30+ hours per week.

Relief Community Integration Specialist Community Based Services, South Burlington

NFI VT’s Community Based Services is seeking relief Community Integration Specialists to join our talented team of mental health professionals.

Responsibilities include individual and group activities with youth both in the community and their home. The ideal candidate would have a desire to help kids and families reach their goals, be flexible, and enjoy working as part of a team and independently. Bachelor’s degree or two years’ relevant experience, valid driver’s license, and reliable transportation required. This relief position requires afternoon/early evening availability.

PLEASE APPLY ONLINE AT

www.nfivermont.org/careers

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and celebrate the diversity of our clients and staff.

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Spread the word in the Seven Days Classifieds.

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7/14/20 3:32 PM

Have a deep, dark fear of your own? Submit it to cartoonist Fran Krause at deep-dark-fears.tumblr.com, and you may see your neurosis illustrated in these pages.

FREE WILL ASTROLOGY BY ROB BREZSNY REAL DECEMBER 31-JANUARY 6

pect so. It may not be the work of Dostoevsky, but I bet it will have an impact close to those of your original discoveries of love and the sea.

TAURUS

CAPRICORN (DEC. 22-JAN. 19):

The mathematically oriented website WaitButWhy.com says that the odds of winning a mega lottery can be compared to this scenario: You know that a certain hedgehog will sneeze just one time in the next six years, and you place a big bet that this sneeze will take place at exactly the 36th second of 12:05 p.m. next January 20. In other words, WaitButWhy.com declares, your chances of winning that lottery are very small. But while their analysis is true in general, it may not be completely applicable to you in 2021. The likelihood of you choosing the precise moment for the hedgehog’s sneeze will be higher than usual. More realistically and importantly, your chances for generating positive financial luck through hard work and foresight will be much higher than usual.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Author Jorge Luis

Borges (1899-1986) carried on a long love affair with books. He read thousands of them, wrote more than 20 of them and further postulated the existence of numerous imaginary books that were never actually written. Of all the writers who roused his adoration, a certain Russian novelist was among the most beloved. Borges wrote, “Like the discovery of love, like the discovery of the sea, the discovery of Fyodor Dostoevsky marks an important date in one’s life.”

I’m wondering if you will experience one of these pivotal discoveries in 2021. I strongly sus-

(April 20-May 20): VietnameseAmerican novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen has won numerous awards for his work, including the Pulitzer Prize. Here are his views about the nature of accomplishment: “We don’t succeed or fail because of fortune or luck. We succeed because we understand the way the world works and what we have to do. We fail because others understand this better than we do.” I bring these thoughts to your attention, Taurus, because I think that in 2021 you will have an extraordinary potential to enhance your understanding of how the world works and what you must do to take advantage of that. This could be the year you become both smarter and wiser.

GEMINI

(May 21-June 20): Modern civilization has not spread to every corner of the planet. There are at least 100 tribes that inhabit their own private realms, isolated from the invasive sprawl of our manic, frantic influence. Among these enclaves, many are in the Amazon rain forests, West Papua and the Andaman Islands. I have a theory that many of us civilized people would love to nurture inner qualities akin to those expressed by indigenous people: hidden away from the mad world, content to be free of the noise and frenzy, and living in attunement with natural rhythms.

In 2021, I hope you will give special care and attention to cultivating this part of you.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Hurricane Maria struck the Caribbean island of Dominica in 2016. Scientists studied two local species of anole lizards both before and after the natural disaster. They were amazed to find that the lizards after the hurricane had superstrong grips compared to their predecessors.

The creatures were better able to hold on to rocks and perches so as to avoid being swept away by high winds. The researchers’ conclusion? It’s an example of one of the most rapid rates of evolutionary change ever recorded.

I bring this to your attention, Cancerian, because I suspect that you, too, will have the power to evolve and transform at an expe-

dited pace in 2021 — in response to positive events as much as to challenging events.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): I hope that in 2021 you will spend a lot of time meditating on your strongest longings. Are they in harmony with your highest ideals, or not? Do they energize you or drain you? Are they healthy and holy, or are they unhealthy or unholy — or somewhere in between those two extremes?

You’ll be wise to reevaluate all your burning, churning yearnings, Leo — and decide which ones are in most righteous service to your life goals. And as for those that are in fact noble and liberating and invigorating: Nurture them with all your tender ingenuity!

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): “You can’t move mountains by whispering at them,” says singer-songwriter Pink. Strictly speaking, you can’t move mountains by shouting at them, either. But in a metaphorical sense, Pink is exactly right. Mild-mannered, low-key requests are not likely to precipitate movement in obstacles that resemble sold rock. And that’s my oracle for you in the coming months, Virgo. As you carry out the project of relocating or crumbling a certain mountain, be robust and spirited — and, if necessary, very loud.

LIBRA

(Sept. 23-Oct. 22): In his masterpiece the Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci applied 30 layers of paint that were no thicker than a single human hair. Can you imagine the patience and concentration that required?

I’m going to propose that you be inspired by his approach as you carry out your big projects in the coming year. I think you will have the potential to create at least one labor of love that’s monumentally subtle and soulful.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Climate change is proceeding with such speed in central Mexico that entire forests are in danger of perishing. In the hills near Ejido La Mesa, for instance, the weather is getting too hot for the fir trees that shelter millions of monarch butterflies every fall. In response, local people have joined with scientists to physically move the fir forest to a higher, cooler elevation. What might be your personal equivalent, Scorpio: an

ambitious plan to carry out an idealistic yet practical project? According to my analysis of your astrological potentials, you’ll have a lot of energy to work on such a scheme in 2021.

SAGITTARIUS

(Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Author Gérard de Nerval (1808-1855) made the following observation: “I do not ask of God that he should change anything in events themselves, but that he should change me in regard to things, so that I might have the power to create my own universe, to govern my dreams, instead of enduring them.” If you have a relationship with the Divine Wow, that will be a perfect prayer for you to say on a regular basis in 2021. If you don’t have a connection to the Supreme Intelligence, I suggest you address the same prayer to your Higher Self or Future Beauty or whatever source of sublime inspiration you hold most dear.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Author Anaïs

Nin was supremely adaptable, eager to keep growing, and receptive when life nudged her to leave the past behind and expand her understanding. At the same time, she was clear about what she wanted and determined to get what she wanted. Her complex attitude is summed up in the following quote: “If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise.” I hope you will heed her counsel throughout 2021. (Here’s another quote from Nin: “Had I not created my whole world, I would certainly have died in other people’s.”)

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): In 2013, workers

at a clothing manufacturing plant in Gazipur, Bangladesh, staged a mass protest. Did they demand a pay raise or better health benefits?

Were they lobbying for air conditioning or longer lunch breaks? None of the above. In fact, they had just one urgent stipulation: to dispel the ghost that was haunting the factory. I’ve got a similar entreaty for you in 2021, Pisces. I request that you exorcise any and all ghosts that have been preventing you from fully welcoming in and embracing the future. These ghosts may be purely metaphorical in nature, but you still need to be forceful in banishing them.

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SWEET, SALTY AND SPICY I consider myself fun, charming, creative and an interestingly varied individual.

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LET’S PRETEND Let’s pretend the world is healing, and we can celebrate together. I love comedy improv, swimming, my family and great food, reading and being read to, travel and adventures. Looking for a healthy, funny, intelligent guy who likes jazz and world music, cooking, travel, and the outdoors.

Are you comfortable with yourself and with me, a strong and independent gal? Mangosmom, 60, seeking: M, l JOYFUL Looking for a funny person ’cause I’m funny, too! Creative type! I love going to galleries and museums. Kind, compassionate, like to travel, go boating and be on beaches. I see life through optimistic eyes. Scout, 67, seeking: M, l ADORABLE, WITTY AND UNIQUE! Ah, the beginning of another season in Vermont. The one made for playing in the snow, hot chocolate, popcorn and movies, a warm fire. The one I seek is mellow yet full of life. Stories to share, being silly and looking at life positively. Arms to hold me, kisses at a whim. Meet and see where it goes? Pollyanna, 59, seeking: M, l OPTIMIST RETIREE SEEKS COMPANY A bit crazy even thinking of trying to get together with someone right now, but why not? Hope to travel as soon as humanly possible to a warm place in the spring. Spring training? Golf? Beach? I feel we are all in a transformative time now.

It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine! ihappy2, 67, seeking: M, l COUNTRY GIRL LOVES MOTORCYCLE RIDES Affectionate country girl looking for a man who knows how to treat a lady. I have a great sense of humor, and you should, too!

Love to horseback ride, take walks, bike ride, hike and enjoy each other’s company.

I can also make a mean cheesecake!

CURIOSITY22, 62, seeking: M, l FLAVORFUL, SPIRITED. I CONTAIN MULTITUDES. It’s virtually impossible to condense a personality into such a small container.

I happily contradict myself, if the spirit moves me. I say “yes” to life while remaining grounded. I value connection, honesty and personal insight. I’m looking for someone courageous enough to also say “yes” to life. katya, 54, seeking: M, l YUP, I’M A DREAMER...

Are you into conscious living?

Spirituality? Nature? Honesty?

Compassion? Laughing? Maybe you’re a hopeless romantic? I am seeking a lasting relationship with a likeminded man. Looking for my best friend to share adventures, love and life’s ups and downs. I like to hike, ski, relax, talk, ponder especially with you. naturgirl, 67, seeking: M, l LOYAL, KIND AND HONEST I’m a very gentle person, drama free.

I love to cook, and I keep myself busy doing all kinds of art. I like to walk (with a partner will be better). I’m living my dream, and I want to share it with my partner. Pepita13, 70, seeking: M, l

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STRONG, INDEPENDENT, INTELLECTUAL Ski? Dinner? Speak any foreign languages? No rednecks or men who will break under heavy use. Must be well educated, well traveled and cultured.

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I’ve been involved in activism around racial equity, health care and disability rights ... but don’t take myself too seriously! AnnieCA, 67, seeking: M, l INTUITIVE, CREATIVE, A GOOD LISTENER! I’m a good person who enjoys good food to eat, good wine to drink, good books to read, good stories to share and good friends to spend time with.

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EXCESS IN MODERATION Too many years in school, just about long enough in architecture, divorced with three adult children nearby. Recently retired, into design and build projects, gardening, outdoor adventure, health and fitness.

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I also like to travel and enjoy live theater when it’s available. I’m also a dog lover. callisto, 67, seeking: W SILVER FOX ARTIST I’m creative, passionate, a problem solver, an adventurist, a respected business owner (30 years), well traveled, educated, secure. Now open to a fit, energetic, passionate female to share adventures and intimacy with. Must love animals, laughing, affection. I’m an artist who has spent the past 30 years creating custom artwork for thousands of clients around the world. Pleasant surprises in many ways! hawaiiartistinvt, 61, seeking: W, l I LIKE TO HAVE FUN Looking for friends with benefits, love, sex. Male/female/transgender.

Dishpit5811, 62, seeking: M, W, TM, TW BACKCOUNTRY SKIER, HIKER, LEFT ACTIVIST Looking to share recreation, deep friendship and love. About myself: cerebral, intense and passionate. Crave touching, sharing affection. Enjoy sharing hiking, backcountry skiing, mountain biking with peers or a lover. Enjoy the company of big dogs, most music and love to dance. Active for my age. “Retired” into an engaged life doing progressive-socialist organizing, a radio show and outdoor activities. SkiDog, 73, seeking: W, l LOOKING FOR HER Looking for her with a flashlight in the daytime. Is it you?

Kinglondon, 36, seeking: W, l SEEKING COMPANIONSHIP Would like to find someone to hang out with. Matthew5618, 43, seeking: W, l NEED SOMEONE IN THE EVENING? Male, 70s, Mad River Valley, recently widowed, wishes to have Zoom meetings with women 55 and up. Hopefully we want to meet in person after the vaccine becomes available. Looking for someone to relax with, talk in the afternoon, or the evening, get to know each other. I want someone to know me and remember who I am, don’t you? jemd, 77, seeking: W, l THE SIXTH EXTINCTION I have been arrested twice, closing down Vermont Yankee and organized a counterrecruiting group to go into school and convince the youth that maybe going to another country and killing folks is not something they want to do. We are now in a pandemic. Lost my girlfriend to it, so maybe talk and write for now.

Memyselfandi, 73, seeking: W, l

LIFE IS A BANQUET Hello, world. I’m a father, engineer, musician, handyman, Vermonter. I’m a far better conversationalist than writer.

MusicAndPancakes, 45, seeking: W, l NEW TO THIS I have a poetic nature and an adventurous spirit. I’m seeking a woman to share conversation and take walks with. Let’s get together for a cup of tea. Chapter2, 67, seeking: W, l CHAOSFACTORINCARNATE I’m just looking for anything.

Strength: making funny. Wekness: spelin. CollyRog, 21, seeking: W BOND ... JAMES BOND Man of mystery, ethically polyamorous, creative. Nerdy scientist, but not usually the smartest guy in the room. My quietude belies my depth.

1109sm, 58, seeking: W, Cp, l THOUGHTFUL, EVOLVING MAN I am the quintessential optimist, a realist and young at heart. My interests include listening to music, traveling both near and far, reading fiction and nonfiction, cooking, various forms of working out, spending time with a few close friends. I would like to meet someone who enjoys good conversation, who is passionate, playful, sensual and curious. not2complicated, 64, seeking: W, l

GENDERQUEER PEOPLE seeking...

LONELY AND WAITING FOR YOU Lonely Carolina immigrant looking for an amazing woman. I love to cook, clean and generally make my partner as happy as possible. I’m comfortable both with my full beard and burly coat, or with my pretty pink lacy dresses and blond curls, whichever makes you happiest. I value trust above all else. Oh, and I give killer foot rubs! Neneveh, 24, seeking: W, l

TRANS WOMEN seeking...

GENEROUS, OPEN, EASYGOING Warm, giving trans female with an abundance of yum to share (and already sharing it with lovers) seeks ecstatic connection for playtimes, connections, copulations, exploration and generally wonderful occasional times together. Clear communication, a willingness to venture into the whole self of you is wanted. Possibilities are wide-ranging: three, four, explorations, dreaming up an adventure are on the list! DoubleUp, 63, seeking: M, Cp, l

COUPLES seeking...

LOOKING FOR COUPLE OR PERSON We want to meet others in the mood to open themselves to another couple for whatever happens.

Cpl4fun, 32, seeking: Cp, Gp

GRATEFUL, HUMBLE AND HAPPY I’m not gonna bore you here; I’ll keep it short. I’m first and foremost a skier; I could ski every day of the year and not get tired of it. Also am really into biking and now running, along with hiking. Looking for someone I can share a few similar interests mentioned above. Jbvt, 32, seeking: W, l

HELP US BRANCH OUT We are a couple of over 30 years. We love to spend time together, enjoying good food, good beer/wine and good company. We enjoy the outdoors, camping, hiking, skiing. Looking for other couples to become friends with that can help us explore and branch out. We love each other very deeply and want to share that love with others.

CentralVTCpl, 54, seeking: Cp, Gp

LIFE IS TOO COMPLICATED Nature is the path to peace and salvation.

I am tired of game players. If you are one, don’t waste my time. I am kind, and you will find me to be fair and fun to be with. I like adventures, road trips, Maine seacoast. thoreau1, 64, seeking: W

COUPLE SEEKING WOMAN We are very open and honest. Clean, safe and totally discreet. We are looking for a woman who wants to try new adult things with a couple. We want to role-play and try some kink.

Newboytoyvt, 50, seeking: W, l

i SPY

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

dating.sevendaysvt.com

WERE YOU SERIOUS? BOOH Just want to find out if the flirt that you sent me was sincere! What is the next step? When: Monday, December 14, 2020. Where: Seven Days. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915204 EAVES, SMILE IN THE EYES! You were checking out with wine and a wreath. I was making coffee. We said hello! I miss seeing the smile in your eyes more regularly. I wanted to tell you about the Côtes du Rhône in my car and ask if we could share, but my confidence eluded me. Share a bottle and a walk sometime? When: Saturday, December 12, 2020. Where: City Market South End. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915203 SWEET CLOVER LOVE Hey. You checked me out at Sweet Clover Market — and, wow, did you catch my eye.

The SpongeBob mask made me know that it was love at first sight, because I, too, love SpongeBob. I couldn’t see under the mask, but your smile lit up the room. I think this could be the one ... but I don’t know your name. When: Saturday, December 12, 2020. Where: Sweet Clover Market. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915202 DUTTON BROOK DRIVE-BY You: rugged and courteous in a pickup truck. Me: fit but flustered runner with music playing too loud. Us: hiking together next weekend? When: Tuesday, December 8, 2020. Where: Addison County. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915201 SILVER FOX IN SILVER YARIS I saw you pulling out of the skate park in your silver two-door Yaris. Driving all slow. So laid-back you don’t even use your blinkers. I just thought to myself, Damn, he’s fine. Let’s grab a taco? And fries? When: Saturday, December 5, 2020. Where: A_Dog Skatepark.

You: Man. Me: Woman. #915200

‘DO I DARE?’ A question on your plate; time for you and time for me? And time yet for a hundred indecisions, and for a hundred visions and revisions before the taking of a toast and tea. In the room the women come and go talking of Michelangelo. And indeed there will be time to wonder... When: Saturday, November 2, 2019. Where: on our feet.

You: Woman. Me: Man. #915199 PUMPING GAS AT VALERO You: black hair wearing a mask in your zippy Nissan Titan. Me: sitting in my tastefully stickered Kia while my gas pumped. Shot in the dark, but you look fun; meet up over a drink? When: Wednesday, December 2, 2020. Where: Barre-Montpelier Rd. Valero station.

You: Man. Me: Woman. #915198 HEY, SMOKING IN THE RAIN It was Center Rd., not Hardwick St. I should have said something while we were moving that tree out of the road in the rain. Your dark eyes struck me. Still thinking about them. We did wave to one another as I drove past you in your truck. Wanted to say hello.

Curious. When: Monday, November 30, 2020. Where: Greensboro.

You: Man. Me: Woman. #915197 SMOKING IN THE RAIN You jumped out of your truck to help me and a few others move a tree out of the road in the pouring rain. Your eyes were deep and dark. Hope to see them again. When: Monday, November 30, 2020. Where: Hardwick Street.

You: Man. Me: Woman. #915196 SHAMWOW Not a moment passes that I don’t think of you. —Scoots. When: Friday, May 18, 2018. Where: in my dreams.

You: Woman. Me: Man. #915195

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

You: Woman. Me: Man. #915194

NORTHFIELD SEPTUM RING GIRL You complimented my septum ring, and I think yours is perfect. Maybe we can do the coffee thing outside of me buying it from you? When: Friday, November 20, 2020. Where: Northfield.

You: Woman. Me: Man. #915188

LISA ON BURROWS TRAIL SUNDAY We leapfrogged and stumbled down the Burrows Trail. I’m still feeling your warmth. Wondering all sorts of things.

Walk in beauty, dear one. When: Sunday, November 22, 2020. Where: Camel’s Hump. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915193

MIKE B. OF NYC/BUMBLE MISS? Perhaps you were home for a short time, or COVID restrictions made you leave? I saw your match, but my right swipes are rare and can be painstakingly slow. When I finally decided, alas, you were gone. If you return to Colchester sometime soon, try again! Or reach out here. Me: 53, happily independent and active. When: Tuesday, November 10, 2020. Where: Bumble. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915186

THANKS FOR THE SMILE Thanks to the Goodwill worker in Williston who appreciated my mother’s antique lantern. Even small interactions can turn a bad day right around. I really appreciate it! You asked for my name and said it was great meeting me. I wish I had asked for yours. I’ll have to find more things to donate. When: Saturday, November 21, 2020. Where: Goodwill.

You: Man. Me: Woman. #915192 TO MY MARILYN MONROE To my forever love, MM. Every lifetime we are drawn to each other. I am so grateful to keep finding you. Our connection is everlasting and worth everything to me.

This life and the next, I love you always.

Your James Dean. When: Sunday, October 9, 2016. Where: Jericho barn. You: Woman. Me: Nonbinary person. #915191 MISSING BEAN-DIP DAYS To the woman who needs fancy leggings and cozy at-home leggings: I miss the carefree days of 2019 when we could sit and laugh right next to each other, even high-five if compelled. Hopefully soon we can study and make an epic bean dip, just like old times; until then, wash your hands, wear your mask and stay home. When: Wednesday, November 20, 2019. Where: buck hunter at Akes.

You: Woman. Me: Woman. #915190

My girlfriend gets angry at me for keeping my socks on when we have sex. I don’t do it on purpose. I guess I just forget to take them off because they’re comfortable. And I hate having cold feet. Why is it such a big deal, anyway?

Sock-critiques (MALE, 24)

KINNEY DRUGS, BARRE-MONTPELIER ROAD We chatted while waiting. You liked my dreads, and I liked your black T shirt that said something about “good people on earth.” We spoke again, but I should have asked for your name. Care to chat again, maybe exchange names?

When: Wednesday, November 11, 2020.

Where: Kinney Drugs, Barre-Montpelier Road. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915183 BREAK LIGHTS, BREAK LIGHTS Break lights near the barn you have spied. It’s too bad it’s still dark out.

Be nice to see your smile. When: Friday, November 6, 2020. Where: ???. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915179

COLCHESTER AVE. Kelly, I am sorry. Please forgive me.

—David. When: Thursday, November 19, 2020. Where: Burlington. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915187

HOPEFULHEART You have been spied! Tag, you’re it! When: Tuesday, November 3, 2020. Where: Seven Days. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915178



Dear Reverend,

SUSAN Saw your profile on Match.com. I found it quite intriguing, to say the least. You are around 70. Let’s chat. Oh, you live in the Burlington area. When: Thursday, November 12, 2020. Where: Match.

You: Woman. Me: Man. #915184

GREG, WE MATCHED ON MATCH Not sure how to connect with you. We have a lot in common, and you seem very fun!

When: Friday, November 20, 2020. Where: Match. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915189

Ask REVEREND Dear Sock-critiques, Irreverent counsel on life’s conundrums

HANNAFORD-UPON-ESSEX You were shopping with your daughter, and we made eye contact a couple times.

Was it a coincidence or something more?

If you would be up for meeting from a distance, I would, too! When: Monday, November 16, 2020. Where: Hannaford, Essex. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915185

Ah, yes, the age-old sock debate. I’m not exactly sure why it’s such a controversial topic, but I do know that socks in the sack can be a total deal breaker for some people.

You have to admit that a person wearing nothing but socks does look a little goofy. Unless you’re into that sort of thing … and lots of people are.

What kind of socks are you wearing? If they’re old, nasty, stained gym socks, it’s no wonder they ruin the mood.

You shouldn’t wear those any time, so just throw them away. Scratchy wool

socks? No fun. Get some super-duper cushy-soft ones that will feel good on her skin.

BERLIN POND I thought I’d lost my keys (but didn’t).

You offered to lend us your car. I appreciate your very kind gesture.

It’s people like you who bring light into the world, and it’s my hope our paths will converge again soon. Thank you. When: Monday, November 9, 2020. Where: near Berlin Pond.

You: Woman. Me: Man. #915181 LOOKING GOOD IN THOSE JEANS Looking right. Hella tight. Would love to take you out for a night. As long as you wear those jeans, anything is possible. K, if you’re waiting for a sign, this is it. Just give me the signal, and I will send her to the airport with a one-way ticket to Santa Fe. With us, we could be magic. When: Wednesday, November 4, 2020. Where: Main St. You: Man. Me: Woman. #915177 COLLIN AT COSTCO Saw you this morning in passing while running errands. Curious what’s under the mask. Caught a glimpse of your name badge as you passed by me a second time: Collin. Figured I’d take a shot in the dark here. When: Saturday, October 31, 2020. Where: Costco.

You: Man. Me: Woman. #915175 BLUE TOYOTA TACOMA To the Blue Toyota Tacoma: Almost every morning I’m heading south and you are heading north. Would be nice to catch up sometime. You have been spied back. When: Saturday, October 31, 2020. Where: Route ???.

You: Man. Me: Woman. #915174 BOBBIE I found your profile very interesting, and I am looking for a way to communicate with you. Here works for me. When: Thursday, October 29, 2020. Where: Match. You: Woman. Me: Man. #915172 BIRTHDAY GIRL AT GUILTY PLATE 1:45 p.m. Birthday girl with an amazing smile. You were with a friend with black hair. You smiled when I walked in, and we waved to each other as you drove away in your white Subaru. I would love to see you again. Maybe meet for a coffee? Me: black down jacket. When: Wednesday, October 28, 2020. Where: Guilty Plate restaurant, Colchester.

You: Woman. Me: Man. #915171

Better yet, get her a pair, too, and tell her this juicy tidbit: A 2012 Dutch study found that half of the women in a research group had orgasms with bare feet. When wearing socks, the number increased to 80 percent.

If that doesn’t change her tune, you know what I bet would do the trick?

Your ice-cold tootsies all over her legs in bed. Do that a couple times, and she’ll be begging you to put your socks back on.

Good luck and God bless,

The Reverend What’s your problem?

Send it to asktherev@sevendaysvt.com.

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 30, 2020-JANUARY 13, 2021

73

I’m a mid-aged male seeking a male or female in these reclusive, masked times. I’m a long-distance runner, walker and aerobic distance-goer looking to share runs in the spirit of Joy Johnstone, Ed Whitlock, Larry Legend, George Sheehan — connecting to that endorphined tranquility and making sense of our lives. Any age. #L1462 I’m here now, and you knew me as Yourdaddy921, etc. and Boomer2012, etc. Contact me via mail, please. #L1458

SWF, 59 y/o, seeking “playmate” (M or F) for companionship and increased joy! Prefer my age, but open. “Old souls” seeking to expand their worlds. Avid reader, writer and news junkie.

Love animals, music, food and adventures. I follow the golden rule and expect the same.

420-friendly. Let’s have coffee.

Chemistry would be a miracle, but who knows. #L1464 I am a 68-y/o male seeking an advanced lady skier between 45 and 58. Jay and Smuggs pass. 19 countries + ALK. Five years Beirut. Zero Druidic. Last reads: Candide, How Fascism Works, Story of O. Adventures best shared. #L1463

I’m a gay male seeking a gay male, 65+. Inexperienced but learning. Virgin. Love giving and receiving oral. #L1465 49-y/o SWM seeking female for friendship with benefits.

I am feminine, fit, mostly vegan. I enjoy yoga, hiking and biking, books, some cooking, and cuddling to a good movie.

Seeking romantic lady for friendship. #L1457 I’m a 71-and-a-half-y/o male from Rutland County seeking a female. Netflix, cable junkie.

Hope to dine again post-COVID. Love the Maine coast a couple times a year. Sedate lifestyle.

Retired law enforcement. #L1461

HOW TO REPLY TO THESE LOVE LETTERS: Seal your reply — including your preferred contact info — inside an envelope. Write your penpal’s box number on the outside of that envelope and place it inside another envelope with payment. Responses for Love Letters must begin with the #L box number.

MAIL TO: Seven Days Love Letters

P.O. Box 1164, Burlington, VT 05402

PAYMENT: $5/response. Include cash or check

(made out to “Seven Days”) in the outer envelope. To send unlimited replies for only $15/month, call us at 802-865-1020, ext. 10 for a membership (credit accepted).

PUBLISH YOUR MESSAGE ON THIS PAGE!

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

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We’ll publish as many messages as we can in the Love Letters section above.

3

Interested readers will send you letters in the mail. No internet required!

SEVEN DAYS DECEMBER 30, 2020-JANUARY 13, 2021

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

Interests are hiking, gardening, dogs, creativity, Scrabble and pillowtalk. #L1455 I don’t live in Vermont anymore, but I’m here semiregularly. I’m a 39-y/o lady friend seeking men, but anyone for friends to write to, maybe more. Hike, ski, lounge, eat, drink, converse. It’s COVID; I’m bored/lonely. What about you? #L1454

Internet-Free Dating!

Reply to these messages with real, honest-to-goodness letters. DETAILS BELOW. SWM, 60s, seeking woman around 58 to 68. Handyman.

Enjoy skiing, cooking, weekend getaways. Tired of quarantine.

Are you? NEK. #L1453 SF, 42, living in Chittenden County seeks SM for potential LTR. I’m a nerdy gamer, morning person, coffee drinker, nonsmoker. Kind, industrious.

Seeking similar. The world is our opportunity! #L1452 53-y/o discreet SWM, 5’10, 156 pounds. Brown and blue.

Seeking any guys 18 to 60 who like to receive oral and who are a good top. Well hung guys a plus.

Chittenden County and around.

No computer. Phone only, but can text or call. #L1451 SWF seeks conservative male age 62 to 72, Addison/ Burlington area only. Turnons: har cut, shave, outdoorsy, hunter, camper. Turn-offs: smoker, drugs, tattoos. Me: 5’8, average build, blue/brown, glasses, enjoy nature, have a Shelty, birds, old Jeep, farm raised. Need phone number, please. #L1450

I’m a bicurious 41-y/o male seeking bicurious married or single men, 18 to 45, for some very discreet fun. Good hygiene, hung and H&W proportional a must. Let’s text discreetly and have some DL NSA fun. #L1449 Attractive SWM, 51, living around the Burlington area.

Seeking a curvaceous female for some casual fun with no strings attached. All it takes is some good chemistry... #L1447 I’m a mid-aged male seeking a M or F any age or gender.

Wonderful youth, caring person. Male, 5’9, 147. Older mid-aged loves long-distance running, writing, literature, poetry, drawing, folk and jazz.

Looking for a great friendship for hikes, walks, talks. Best to all. #L1446 I’m a single female, mid60s, seeking a male for companionship and adventure.

Retired educator who loves kayaking, swimming, skiing and travel. Well read. Life is short; let’s have fun. #L1445

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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THIS FORM IS FOR LOVE LETTERS ONLY. Messages for the Personals and I-Spy sections must be submitted online at dating.sevendaysvt.com.

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