Seven Days, June 4, 2025 by Seven Days

PET PROJECT

Meet the winners of the 2025 Best of the Beasts

COMPILED

SASHA GOLDSTEIN

emoji that

NEW ENDING

Out of Work 8

That’s the number of rainless days in May, NBC5 reported. Gulp.

Northlands Job Corps Center, a vocational training program for young adults in Vergennes, will shut down at the end of the month due to federal budget cuts.

e Addison County center is one of about 100 across the country that will end operations. In a statement announcing the closures, the U.S. Department of Labor said the programs operated at a $140 million deﬁcit in 2024 and are “no longer achieving the intended outcomes that students deserve.”

at won’t help the 150 at Northlands, which offers hands-on training in building trades, culinary arts, auto body repair and more. e program provides housing, meals and medical care at no cost to students or their families. It caters to low-income young adults ages 16 to 24.

“A lot of our students are unsuccessful in traditional school or need to support their families,” Michael Dooley, the center’s director, told Seven Days

On Tuesday, a coalition of job corps program providers ﬁled suit against President Donald Trump’s administration, alleging that the shutdown was illegal and “will have disastrous, irreparable consequences,” Bloomberg Law reported. e nationwide job corps program has been in operation since the 1960s. e Vergennes center opened in 1979 on the state-owned site of the Weeks School, a former reform school.

A funeral home in Milton is the ﬁrst in the state to use a water-cremation technique. The procedure has a smaller carbon footprint than incineration.

TEAR DOWN

Crews began to demolish Burlington’s downtown Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. The historic building has been vacant since 2018.

SETTING PRECEDENT

TOPFIVE

HUB DRUB

The Trump administration has canceled a $24 million grant that was intended to create a regional “tech hub” in Vermont. Waste of a good opportunity.

5. “Music News: Homegrown in Vermont Music Festival Returns” by Chris Farnsworth. e second-annual event will be held in August at Spruce Peak Arts in Stowe.

TOWNCRIER

LOCALLY SOURCED NEWS

Norwich Moves to Seventh Draft of Proposed Dog Ordinance e Norwich Selectboard has found itself spending many hours debating a new animal control ordinance. Most signiﬁcantly, the proposal would require dogs to be leashed in all town-owned recreation areas, the Valley News reported. at’s drawn barks of protest from dog owners who want to let their pups run free at Huntley Meadows.

Read the full story and follow the latest at vnews.com.

CALMING CANINE

Nervous about that ﬂight to Newark from Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport?

Have no fear — Ellie Mae is here. e 8-yearold dog, a spotted German shorthaired pointer, has a part-time gig providing emotional support at BTV.

“When ﬂiers meet Ellie Mae, it pops their anxiety bubble,” said John Wrobel, the pup’s owner.

Wrobel, 73, has trained German shorthaired pointers as therapy dogs for more than 20 years. He also used to work as the state airport inspector and knows how stressful ﬂying can be. So, in 2023, he pitched airport ofﬁcials on restarting its therapy dog program, which had shut down during the pandemic.

Wrobel and Ellie Mae can be found at BTV

most days of the week, working three-hour shifts. When they’re not able to come, Buddy, a 2-year-old golden retriever and his owner, Catherine Chamberlain, jump in. ere are about 75 airport dog-therapy programs across the country. ey’re often staffed by volunteers such as Wrobel, who go through training to ensure their pups remain calm no matter what.

e fur babies are in especially high demand now, as ﬂying has become more stressful, with crammed seats, delayed ﬂights, and close calls in the air and on the ground.

Last ursday afternoon, Wrobel introduced Ellie Mae to a group of ﬂiers waiting at a busy gate.

“Now watch the magic happen,” Wrobel told Seven Days

Sure enough, a small, eager crowd gathered around the placid dog. A young girl wearing

glasses giggled as she fed Ellie Mae a treat. Another man lamented a delayed ﬂight while stroking the dog’s head. Ellie Mae remained unfazed.

Ellie Mae has a serene demeanor and a storied lineage — she’s the granddaughter of CJ, the 2016 Westminster Kennel Club’s winner of best in show. But Wrobel makes sure people like dogs before approaching them. He also avoids encounters with other canines, especially Donna, the airport’s drug-snifﬁng German shorthaired pointer.

“ is airport is big enough for all of us,” Wrobel said.

At the end of her shift, Ellie Mae showed no signs of fatigue. Her tail was still wagging as she headed out of the airport, past the security workers. Wrobel, who said he was ready to go home, passed her a treat. She’d been a very good girl.

RACHEL HELLMAN

A ﬂier and Ellie Mae at BTV

Northlands students in 2024 with artist Kat Clear at the “Flower Stop” in Vergennes

COOL CATS.

Paula Routly

Cathy Resmer

Don Eggert, Colby Roberts

NEWS & POLITICS

Matthew Roy

Sasha Goldstein

Ken Ellingwood, Candace Page

Hannah Bassett, Derek Brouwer, Colin Flanders, Rachel Hellman, Courtney Lamdin, Kevin McCallum, Alison Novak

Sam Hartnett

ARTS & CULTURE

Dan Bolles, Carolyn Fox

Chelsea Edgar, Margot Harrison, Pamela Polston

Jen Rose Smith

Alice Dodge

Chris Farnsworth

Rebecca Driscoll

Jordan Barry, Mary Ann Lickteig, Melissa Pasanen, Ken Picard

Alice Dodge, Angela Simpson

Katherine Isaacs, Martie Majoros DIGITAL & VIDEO

Bryan Parmelee

Eva Sollberger

Je Baron DESIGN

Don Eggert

Rev. Diane Sullivan

John James

Je Baron SALES & MARKETING

Colby Roberts

Robyn Birgisson

Michelle Brown, Logan Pintka, Kaitlin Montgomery

‘INCREMENTAL’ MEANS ‘MORE’ [Re “Taxing Dilemma: A Bill Meant to Fund Housing Infrastructure Collides With the Need to Protect School Funding,” May 28]:

Sen. Emilie Kornheiser is concerned that tax increment ﬁnancing would be used by too many developers. Does that mean she is concerned developers would build too much housing? Or is she assuming these housing developments would be happening anyway?

Well, Sen. Kornheiser, then where are these housing development projects now? Why aren’t they happening? They aren’t happening because they aren’t economically viable. TIF ﬁnancing helps make them viable.

“Incremental” means “more.” Developers and municipalities across the state will access more development money that they otherwise couldn’t ﬁnd and build more houses that otherwise wouldn’t exist. Abundance!

Carolann Whitesell ADMINISTRATION

Marcy Stabile

Matt Weiner

Andy Watts

Gillian English CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Hint:

issue of Seven Days!

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Tell us where you ﬁnd him by Tuesday at noon and you could win a pair of tickets to a Vermont Lake Monsters baseball game at Centennial Field in Burlington.

To enter the contest, report Champ’s location at: SEVENDAYSVT.COM/ CHAMPSIGHTING

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CIRCULATION: 35,000

Seven Days is published by Da Capo Publishing Inc. every Wednesday. It is distributed free of charge in greater Burlington, Middlebury, Montpelier, the Northeast Kingdom, Stowe, the Mad River Valley, Rutland, St. Albans, St. Johnsbury and White River Junction. Seven Days is printed at Quebecor Media Printing in Mirabel, Québec.

DELIVERY TECHNICIANS

The incremental tax revenue from these houses would never have gone to the education fund in the ﬁrst place. No harm done to the education fund. More housing will be built that Vermonters need, which means more of other tax revenues to the state, more consumer demand and more development of our workforce.

Kornheiser must know this, but it doesn’t match with her absolutist ideology. It seems that, in Kornheiser’s view, if the very few projects that would’ve happened anyway beneﬁt, then the very many houses that wouldn’t otherwise be built shouldn’t be. That’s like opposing an entire social safety net because one undeserving person might be on beneﬁts.

When it comes time to remember which of our elected representatives are entrenching our housing crisis, I hope every voter in Brattleboro holds Kornheiser accountable and votes her out of o ce.

Harry Applegate, James Blanchard, Joe Bou ard, Pat Bou ard, Colin Clary, Elana Coppola-Dyer, Matt Hagen, Karissa Hummel, Nat Michael, Frankie Moberg, Liam Mulqueen-Duquette, Dan Nesbitt, Dan Oklan, Ezra Oklan, Matt LaDuq Perry, Danielle Schneider, Andy Watts, Tracey Young With additional circulation support from PP&D.

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Seven Days shall not be held liable to any advertiser for any loss that results from the incorrect publication of its advertisement. If a mistake is ours, and the advertising purpose has been rendered valueless, Seven Days may cancel the charges for the advertisement, or a portion thereof as deemed reasonable by the publisher. Seven Days reserves the right to refuse any advertising, including inserts, at the discretion of the publishers.

Jonny Adler STOWE

‘DON’T BITE THE HAND’

[Re “Food Fight: Plans to Relocate a Free Lunch Program in Burlington Just Got Messier,” May 28]: There is an old saying, “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.” Burlington is and has been a very generous and tolerant community. I ﬁnd it very sad that recipients of that tolerance and generosity express such vitriol toward the community that is working hard to support them.

Downtown is economically struggling. It doesn’t seem like those who benefit from businesses’ support recognize that when business declines there will be no more money to fund services they rely on.

I would like to think that the mayor and the city council would understand that the Church Street Marketplace’s success benefits the social services. And its decline would end them.

Brooke Hadwen BURLINGTON

FUN WITH PUZZLES

[Re Feedback: “Thoroughly Puzzled,” March 12; “Puzzle Pieces,” March 26; “Clue-less,” May 21]: In the past month or so, I have seen several letters to the editor complaining about my favorite part of Seven Days: the crossword puzzles. Here’s the thing: They’re not supposed to be easy; they are supposed to be challenging. I have been doing the crosswords almost every week for the past several years. Sometimes I can complete them in a few hours, but I frequently can’t because I’m not familiar with a foreign language or a

Regarding free speech, the article describes how the attempt by school counselor Aquilas Lokossou to speak at the school board meeting “was cut short by the board because he tried to discuss an ‘ongoing personnel matter’ involving superintendent Violet Nichols.”

Yet the superintendent then spoke about that very situation. The article states, “Her comments appeared to violate legal counsel [Joe] McNeil’s directive to refrain from discussing the situation publicly.” But the article does not report that the board interrupted the superintendent.

celebrity name. The point is, it’s a game and you don’t always win. That’s life. You win some and you lose some, but it was fun playing.

Regarding the May 7 issue, which seemed to frustrate Rachelle Rodriguez of Greensboro: I was not able to complete the puzzle either, because several of the clues were real eye-rollers to me, too. FYI, “OTOH” is “on the other hand,” and yes, that’s “conversely” to a texter. Maybe you never heard of it before, so now you have learned something and can text that to one of your friends.

You need to think outside the box of the normal parameters of your experience to finish these puzzles, but that’s what makes them fun.

Melyssa Bailey ST. ALBANS

‘STICK WITH IT’

[Re Feedback: “Clue-less,” May 21]: I want to offer some encouragement to Rachelle Rodriguez and others like her who struggle with the Seven Days crosswords. Doing crosswords is like any endeavor: Stick with it, and you’ll get better with time. They get much easier once you master the difference between AGRA and ACCRA; get minimally fluent in text-speak (IMHO, BRB, OTOH); and make new friends like ENYA, ERTE, Ernie ELS and IDRIS ELBA.

Michael Quaid WILLISTON

DON’T CUT COUNSELOR

Alison Novak’s [“South Burlington Educators Clash With School Board, Superintendent,” April 18, online] raises issues of freedom of speech and personal interests.

Moreover, even if the superintendent were right that Lokossou had influenced students, personal interest is certainly not the only possible reason for this alleged act. For example, is there not a deeply adverse effect on students, particularly Black students, when a school counselor, particularly a Black school counselor such as Lokossou, is terminated? If the effect on students is not good, the allegation of mere personal interest fades.

Furthermore, even if a cut in school spending is mandatory, choices of how to cut are available. For example, there is the choice for a high-paid administrator, like the superintendent, to take a cut in salary. In that light, isn’t it possible to allege that the act to instead terminate a counselor who directly serves students was for the personal interest of the administrator?

James Leas SOUTH BURLINGTON

CORRECTION

Last week’s art review, “Mixed ‘Signals,’” misstated the timeline for Kristen Grant’s decision to seek a new space for K. Grant Fine Art. She decided to leave 37 Green Street in Vergennes before the building was put up for sale.

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Not Cops lunch

INTO THE WILD

There’s more to the Animal Issue than cute pet photos. (But there’s lots of those, too.)

When batting around pitches for the Animal Issue each year, Seven Days scribes naturally gravitate toward stories about our furry companions — dogs and cats, especially. But this isn’t the Pet Issue. So we have to dig a little deeper and explore the full range of Vermont’s animal kingdom.

Once upon a time, that kingdom was ruled by the catamount — aka mountain lion. But the apex predator has been gone from the Green Mountains since the late 1800s. Now, lawmakers and biologists are weighing whether to bring CATAMOUNTS BACK TO VERMONT (page 14). Supporters cite the success of reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone National Park. Opponents cite the fact that they’re freaking mountain lions Ahem.

For some, spotting a catamount in the wild would be the thrill of a lifetime. BERNIE PAQUETTE feels that way whenever he spies a new bee. The citizen naturalist has photographed 114 of Vermont’s 350 wild bee species, including 104 in his own backyard (page 33).

While Paquette’s interest is largely rooted in science and curiosity, there’s an art to his work. So he might get a kick out of the “SCALY, SLIMY, SMOOTH, AND SLITHERY” EXHIBIT at North Branch Nature Center in Montpelier, where 32 artists celebrate frogs, toads, salamanders, turtles, snakes and lizards (page 52). Can’t get enough of these cold-blooded creatures? Don’t miss this weekend’s REMARKABLE REPTILE DAY in Quechee (page 65).

Meanwhile, “BIRDS AND MYTH,” a community exhibition at Birds of Vermont Museum in Huntington, features works by more than 50 artists and poets exploring often-obscure avian stories (page 54).

Of course, pets are still the stars of the show this week. That’s because we love our animal companions like family. AGING IN PLACE WITH PETS, a volunteer program in Burlington, helps prevent elderly and disabled people from having to relinquish their furry friends (page 15), because as any pet owner knows, they can give us purpose, love and comfort.

That’s one reason you’ll find THERAPY DOGS AT BURLINGTON INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT to calm anxious travelers (page 5). Perhaps someday BTV could offer other soothing critters, too. To augment her income from selling skyr, an Icelandic-inspired dairy product, Villa Villekulla Farm’s Lauren Gitlin has considered training her SNUGGLY RETIRED DAIRY GOATS as therapy animals (page 36).

Despite our best efforts, sometimes the call of the wild is too strong for our pets to ignore. They are still animals, after all. Should your dog or cat go missing, call South Burlington PET DETECTIVE SUE WEAR. She’s been tracking down lost pets for more than a decade (page 30).

Finally, we couldn’t do an Animal Issue without including several pages of ridiculously cute pet pictures. As always, the BEST OF THE BEASTS contest anchors this edition with an irresistible photo spread (page 26).

Or as catamounts new to Vermont might call it, a lunch menu.

Pet ProJect

NEWS+POLITICS 14

Here, Kitty?

Wildlife advocates want to bring catamounts back to the Green Mountains

State Abandons Wildlife Crossing Project

Old Pals

A volunteer-led program in the Burlington area helps people — and pets — age in place

Burlington Council Weighs Money Matters

Lawsuit Linked to the Death That Launched ‘Hooked’ Is Settled

Lawmakers Strike Deal on Housing Bill

Adjournment Delayed as Education Reform Bill Falters

FEATURES 26

Dogged Pursuit

South Burlington’s Sue Wear seeks — and ﬁnds — lost dogs and cats

Going Apian

Citizen naturalist Bernie Paquette spreads the joy of spotting wild bees and other bugs in one’s own backyard

Long Time Going

Book review: e Afterlife Project, Tim Weed

The Write Stu Rebel With a Clause follows one woman’s cross-country journey to answer Americans’ grammar questions

To the Max

A home and garden tour of Fern Crete’s maximalist oasis in Burlington Summer in the City Series

Aims to Cool Tensions in Downtown Burlington

It’s Not Easy Being Green North Branch Nature Center celebrates reptiles and amphibians

Myths Take Flight at Birds of Vermont Museum in Huntington

Jazz Prophet

Guest curator Anthony Tidd uses the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival to showcase the past and future of the genre

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FOOD +DRINK 36

Bleating Hearts

Villa Villekulla Farm’s herd delivers more than delicious dairy Say Cheesesteak

Starry Night Café’s new bar menu delivers on a Philly classic

Hi there, I'm Ian Doerner.

I own Burlington Records. I've been running the store since 2010, buying and selling vinyl LPs and CDs — new and second hand — in downtown Burlington.

There is nothing I enjoy more than providing a super clean and organized storefront, while offering 15,000 items across literally every genre and niche. From Fela Kuti to Fugazi, from Bob Dylan to your newest pop sensation, there is something here for everyone.

Every day I have deep conversations with locals and visitors about every topic imaginable. There is one thing that everyone shares who comes through our doors… a passion for music.

I feel like there truly is no other place quite like Burlington and look forward to many more years here. See you soon!

Fern Crete has been collecting antiques for the past 60 years, and many of them are displayed in his eclectic Burlington abode, which resembles a French château on the inside. Seven Days Eva Sollberger got a tour of Crete’s maximalist home and met his rescue pug, LouLou.

MAGNIFICENT

MUST SEE, MUST DO THIS WEEK COMPILED BY REBECCA DRISCOLL

“Portrait

ON DECK

on a vibrant, diverse display of local art at the Front’s “10th Anniversary Super Group Show 67” in Montpelier.

e gallery’s current member-

owners mark a decade of creative success by inviting former members to join them in a cheerfully crowded showcase of sculptures, drawings and paintings, emphasizing the importance of cooperatives within the visual arts sphere.

by Sam urston

WEDNESDAY 11

Second Act

Spring for Vermont Stage invites community members to celebrate the contemporary theater company’s 30th anniversary at Main Street Landing Performing Arts Center in Burlington. Delectable hors d’oeuvres, special performances and a subscription rafﬂe set the scene for a memorable evening, ensuring that thought-provoking, high-quality productions remain accessible for decades to come.

SEE CALENDAR LISTING ON PAGE 73

FRIDAY 6

Seas the Day

Avast, in the name of love! LGBTQ+ party pirates and their mateys revel in nautical nonsense at this year’s Pride Prom at Junction Arts & Media in White River Junction. Guests sport their ﬁnest eye patches and dive into a cruising-themed fête ﬁt for the high seas, complete with live music, arepas, a photo booth and that ceremonious high school rite of passage: crowning prom royalty. Ahoy, queen!

SEE CALENDAR LISTING ON PAGE 68

SATURDAY 7

Don’t Worry, Be Hoppy

Black Flannel Brewing & Distilling sends IPAs to the back of the line at the inaugural Lagerfest on the Green at the Essex Experience. e regional brewers’ bash toasts to lager-style beers only, with 23 of New England’s top purveyors on hand. Wort worshippers use a commemorative glass to sample a wide variety of the often overlooked brews, and the Seth Yacovone Band provide the soundtrack.

SEE CALENDAR LISTING ON PAGE 69

SATURDAY 7 & SUNDAY 8

Dream On

Montpelier’s Moving Light Dance marries William Shakespeare’s beloved comedy with a cast of 60 ballet dancers to produce “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at the Barre Opera House. Audience members of all ages watch love triangles (and squares) take shape in this choreographed adaptation brimming with mischief, magic, mythology and movement.

SEE CALENDAR LISTING ON PAGE 68

OPENS SUNDAY 8

e Game’s Afoot

Crew

Vermont Stage’s 2023 production of

Clue: On Stage brings snappy dialogue, outrageous slapstick and a murderers’ row of colorful characters to the Segal Centre for Performing Arts in Montréal. Lisa Rubin directs the dinner party whodunit based on the cult-classic ’80s ﬂick and iconic board game. e usual suspects — looking at you, Colonel Mustard — blend farce, murder, mystery and a cache of potential weapons in a comedic tour de force.

SEE CALENDAR LISTING ON PAGE 70

WEDNESDAY 11

Chronicles of the Caribbean

Journalist, activist and author Ana Hebra Flaster draws in listeners with her history-packed debut memoir, Property of the Revolution, at the Norwich Bookstore. e captivating work recounts her family’s journey from postrevolutionary Cuba to a mill town in New Hampshire, deftly weaving memories of political upheaval with profound cultural loss, courage and, ultimately, rebirth.

SEE CALENDAR LISTING ON PAGE 73

Cadillac

of Marjorie”

“I

Chris Allen, Burlington

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Collected Stories

Every June, Burlington’s Lakeview Terrace hosts a street-wide yard sale. One of my longtime neighbors ably organizes the yearly pop-up bazaar. Sometime in May, he puts a “save the date” ﬂyer in the door of every accessible dwelling on the three-block street. Closer to the event, he does it again, urging us to “Rake in some cash by clearing out your closets. Don’t forget to cruise the street to pick up some bargains while you’re at it.”

This Saturday, we’ll find out how many Lakeview residents heed his call. Soon to be revealed, too: Who is in the market for cast-o s? My neighbor advertises the sale, which doesn’t pretend to be the Brimfield Antique Flea Market; there’s an ad for it in this week’s paper and online in the newly redesigned classifieds.sevendaysvt.com. As long as my partner, Tim, and I have lived on Lakeview — since 2009 — it has drawn a steady stream of bargain hunters all day, rain or shine. Whether you’re buying, selling or browsing, shopping at this community market is really fun.

I want to sit out there with my stu ; every year the annual ﬂyer renews my resolve to purge the house of things we no longer wear, use or need. There are certainly plenty of them, the detritus of decades.

AS THE SOLE SURVIVOR IN MY FAMILY, I FEEL LIKE THE STEWARD OF THEIR STORIES. AND THEIR STUFF.

We have thousands of books, most of which we won’t read again. There are closets ﬁlled with clothes I haven’t worn for years, including some that date back to high school. Also, an embarrassment of linen tablecloths, impractical shoes and scarves. Less marketable: school notebooks, newspaper clippings, old hiking gear and every letter I have ever received.

But when it comes to culling the collection, I just can’t do it. I’m not a hoarder, but I ﬁnd it di cult to part with the items I have accumulated. They are the material evidence of history, the passage of time, memory holders. I equate shedding with forgetting, which is happening way too often these days.

In addition to my own ephemera, I have inherited that of my family members. My mom, dad and sister all predeceased me, so the loft space above my home o ce is stacked with their boxes and bins, containing my parents’ letters to each other, the immigration papers of my Italian grandparents and formerly Canadian father, my sister’s journals, my mother’s medical records, and black-and-white photographs of relatives I either never knew or no longer recognize.

As the sole survivor in my family, I feel like the steward of their stories. And their stu . I keep telling myself: Someday I’ll unpack it all.

Last Saturday I went to a memorial service for a former boyfriend — the ﬁrst of my past loves to die. After the program, atop Mount Philo, his sister presented a couple of us with items she’d found among his personal e ects. I got a thick envelope with my name on it. Inside was everything I’d written to him over our three-year connection 40 years ago: letters, notes, photographs, a birthday card from my mom — the hard-copy remains of what for me was an important relationship. Grateful, I brought the collection home and added it to the archive. If I ever ﬁnd time to write more than 600 words in one sitting, you might read about it someday.

Paula Routly

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State Abandons Wildlife Crossing Project

Here, Kitty?

Wildlife advocates want to bring catamounts back to the Green Mountains

BY KEVIN MCCALLUM • kevin@sevendaysvt.com

When Alexander Crowell shot Vermont’s last documented catamount in 1881 on a snowy Thanksgiving morning in Barnard, a local newspaper portrayed the hunter as heroic and his 182-pound prey as a monster.

“He had killed many sheep and lambs in di erent parts, and the people greatly rejoiced at his death,” the Standard newspaper reported.

Today, some wildlife conservationists would rejoice if the big cats could call the Green Mountains home again — and they are hoping the state legislature will do something about it. Reintroducing the animals remains a long shot, but the discussion has reanimated the debate about the catamount’s place in Vermont.

Despite their absence, catamounts — the animals known almost everywhere else as mountain lions, cougars, pumas or panthers — still have a claim on the public imagination. Dozens of alleged catamount sightings occur each year, though none has ever been veriﬁed by state wildlife biologists. (Most are actually bobcats, their

much smaller cousins). And the catamount is enshrined as the mascot of University of Vermont sports teams, with a life-size bronze statue on campus.

“The excitement for this idea spans the spectrum,” state Rep. Amy Sheldon (D-Middlebury) said recently of reintro-

ducing the big cats. “It goes from ‘We’re the Catamounts; of course we should have catamounts back!’ to a deep understanding of the importance of apex predators and everyone in between.”

Sheldon chairs the House Committee on Environment, which this session

considered a bill that would order a study about reintroducing catamounts. While Sheldon and some of her colleagues say the concept is compelling, scientiﬁcally sound and deserves exploration, the bill did not see much action this year. She expects to revisit the issue next year.

Supporters say reintroduction is not far-fetched. As mountain lion populations rebound across the western U.S. and Canada, researchers have been eyeing eastern forests in search of suitable landscapes.

Vermont has plenty of woodland habitat and abundant prey to support a breeding population of lions, according to Mark Elbroch, director of the puma program at the international big-cat conservation group Panthera. So do about a dozen other areas, including Minnesota’s North Woods, the Great Smoky Mountains, the Catskills, the Adirondacks and much of Maine.

But, Elbroch recently told Sheldon’s committee, Vermont has something many of those other places don’t: a human

BY KEVIN MCCALLUM kevin@sevendaysvt.com

Vermont transportation ofﬁcials have abandoned the idea of building a wildlife crossing under Interstate 89 and Route 2 near the Bolton-Waterbury town line, citing the high costs and other priorities.

Studies have shown the roadways to be a major obstacle to wildlife moving along the spine of the Green Mountains, particularly between the large forest blocks around Camel’s Hump and Mount Mansﬁeld state forests.

e idea was to connect those large areas of habitat by widening an existing culvert, giving the moose, deer, bears, bobcats and other animals in the area a way to safely cross under the roads and reduce the risk of vehicle collisions. Route 2 and I-89 run parallel to one another from Williston to Montpelier.

e existing ﬁve-foot-wide culvert allows a tributary of the Winooski River to ﬂow through it. But state biologists say it’s too narrow for most animals, especially after it rains.

In 2023, the state received a $1.6 million federal grant to design what’s known as the Sharkeyville Brook Wildlife Crossing. But its $50 million price tag forced the state to rethink its plans, according to Joe Flynn, secretary of the Agency of Transportation.

“ e project is not going to go forward at this time,” Flynn told Seven Days. “It’s a ﬁscal reality situation.”

Ofﬁcials had been planning to apply for a federal grant to help fund the project cost, Flynn said. But there was just $75 million in grants available for the entire nation, he said.

A bigger problem: Individual grants were capped at $25 million. Without a clear plan for raising the remainder, ofﬁcials did not even apply for the federal money, Flynn said, describing it as a difﬁcult decision.

Ponying up the other $25 million from VTrans’ existing budget would have “blown up our entire program,” Flynn said, and diverted money from higher-priority projects.

e decision comes at the same time that a new University of Vermont study found that wildlife crossings under roadways can be extremely effective at reducing the deaths of frogs, salamanders and other migrating amphibians. ➆

A mountain lion leaping in a creek in the western U.S.

Old Pals

volunteer-led program in the Burlington area helps people — and pets — age in place

BY COLIN FLANDERS • colin@sevendaysvt.com

Shawna Bishop felt herself slipping into a depression last summer following the death of her beloved beagle, Jackson, just a day shy of what would have been his 16th birthday. So, she drove to the Humane Society of Chittenden County and met a handful of the dogs that were up for adoption, in hopes of ﬁnding her next best friend.

THE Animal Issue

with the right mix of patience and persistence.

But three weeks after adopting Dexter, Bishop learned that she needed open-heart surgery to ﬁx a birth defect. She’d face months of rehabilitation, during which she’d be unable to walk or train Dexter.

One stood out: Dexter, a 95-pound pit bull.

“Well, actually, he’s got several names now,” Bishop, 53, said last week, as Dexter ping-ponged between visitors at her Shelburne apartment. “There’s also Diva Dexter and Dexter Dew,” she added, the latter in honor of her favorite beverage.

She worried she would have to give him away. But then a caseworker at the hospital introduced her to Blake Randell, a 27-year-old occupational therapist who was looking for people in this situation.

Randell had recently created an at-home program known as Aging in Place with Pets, which connects volunteers to older adults and people with disabilities in need of help caring for their animals. A rotating cast of volunteers began stopping by Bishop’s house to walk Dexter and play with him until she regained her strength.

Dexter provided Bishop a renewed sense of purpose and a reason to get going each morning. But he is not as well behaved as her previous dog. Dexter had never been taught how to act around people or other animals, causing some of her neighbors to worry that he was aggressive. Bishop was training him to behave, and she ﬁgured he’d get there eventually,

The volunteers took Dexter to a vet, who prescribed him Prozac for anxiety, and to a dog trainer, who’s been helping Bishop teach him how to be a better canine neighbor. On a recent walk, she successfully deployed one of the new techniques she’s learned: using treats to distract him from a nearby dog. Dexter, who’s prone to barking at other animals and pulling Bishop toward them, remained focused on the treats, and the two continued their walk uninterrupted.

“Once he calms down, he’s really such a good boy,” she said.

Socialization and Training for pups under

Shawna Bishop and her dog, Dexter

BURLINGTON

Burlington Council Weighs Money Matters

BY COURTNEY LAMDIN courtney@sevendaysvt.com

The Burlington Electric Department will increase rates by 4.5 percent this fall, the utility’s fifth rate hike in as many years.

City councilors unanimously approved the change on Monday. The bump will add about $3.80 to the average customer’s monthly utility bill, starting in September.

The item was one of several money matters councilors discussed at their meeting. They also debated the coming year’s city budget and deliberated on various fees and taxes, all of which could make it costlier to live and do business in Vermont’s largest city.

Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak’s proposed $106.6 million budget trims $1.9 million from the current year’s spending plan but will still result in a modest tax rate increase of 0.83 percent. Under the plan, the owner of a home valued at $500,000 would pay $35 more in municipal property taxes in fiscal year 2026. Education taxes, meantime, are projected to go down, meaning taxpayers could see an overall decrease on their bills, officials said.

Councilors debated on Monday whether to keep in place a 2.5 percent tax on alcohol and meals sales. The tax is normally 2 percent, and the extra 0.5 percent bump was meant to end after a year. But Mulvaney-Stanak said the city needs the extra revenue to balance the coming year’s budget.

Council Democrats raised concerns that keeping the surcharge would drive customers from downtown, which is already contending with a drug and homelessness crisis and a disruptive construction project on Main Street. They introduced a resolution to give the city until late August to decide what to do with the tax.

Progressives, meantime, argued that people don’t compare different towns’ gross receipts tax rates when deciding where to eat. If the rate is scaled back, the Progs said, the city would need to raise taxes or find other places in the budget to cut, to the tune of more than $700,000.

Ultimately, some Progs reluctantly voted for the Dems’ resolution. It passed, 9-3. ➆

population that’s open to the idea. Surveys show that Vermonters strongly value the protection of wildlife and want to see it thrive. This is “where Vermont shines” as researchers weigh reintroduction potential, he said.

“It’s the people that are going to make the difference in whether mountain lions can survive and grow into a full population in any of these regions,” Elbroch said.

Not everyone agrees that catamounts still have a place in Vermont — most crucially, the state Fish & Wildlife Department. Rosalind Renfrew, the department’s Wildlife Diversity Program manager, said she understands the enthusiasm, calling the prospect of reintroduction “intriguing, inspiring and forward-thinking.” In a time of increasing risks to endangered wildlife, it’s natural for people to get excited about the positive ecological impacts that can flow from restoring an apex predator to its former territory, she said.

There has been considerable research about how the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park has restored balance to the ecosystem. They’ve kept elk populations in check, giving vegetation along rivers the chance to mature.

“As an ecologist, I get it,” Renfrew said, adding that her department strongly supports reintroducing wildlife when appropriate. Recent successes include healthy populations of wild turkey, bald eagles and American marten.

But catamounts are another thing entirely, she cautioned. Any program

would cost millions of dollars, take years to establish and divert the department’s attention from efforts to protect the endangered species already here. It would be the first attempt to reintroduce mountain lions in North America, Renfrew said. “This is a much bigger deal.”

Vermont’s neighbors would also need to play a part, Fish & Wildlife Commis -

NOT EVERYONE AGREES THAT CATAMOUNTS STILL HAVE A PLACE IN VERMONT.

sioner Andrea Shortsleeve told lawmakers. “Mountain lions are really wide-ranging animals. They will not restrict themselves to Vermont,” she said.

A 2022 study by the group Panthera found that the primary suitable local habitat for mountain lions encompasses an area south of Interstate 89 as well as parts of western Massachusetts. At less than 12,000 square kilometers, that expanse is only slightly bigger than the minimum 10,000 square kilometers needed for a breeding population to maintain genetic diversity, Renfrew noted. By comparison, areas in Wisconsin and Minnesota are

Here, Kitty? « P.14

Mountain lion kittens in Yellowstone National Park

estimated to have nearly 60,000 and 40,000 acres of habitat, respectively.

And while Vermont is a rural state, it is crisscrossed by major highways and smaller roads that would pose a threat to roaming mountain lions. The number of endangered Florida panthers killed on roadways in that state should make people very concerned about the dangers catamounts would face in Vermont, Renfrew said.

Recent research is “not supporting the idea that Vermont is the best place to do this work,” she said.

Elbroch, the conservationist, counters that Vermont is part of a much bigger landscape across northern New York, Canada

recolonize the southern Canadian Rockies and perhaps west Texas but were unlikely to extend east of the Mississippi River on their own.

To succeed, any reintroduction program would need to focus on capturing and releasing males and females here, Morse said. The state would need to prepare residents with a robust education campaign and beef up its wildlife staff to manage public concerns and respond to incidents. In Washington State, where Elbroch works, conflicts tend to occur when a lion hunting for its primary prey, such as deer, comes across a pet or unsecured livestock such as goats or chickens.

and New England that can be viewed as a single contiguous patch of habitat.

Resident males out West usually avoid busy highways and stick to wild areas where they have formed social groups with a number of females, Elbroch said. The females tend to remain in even smaller areas, especially when rearing kits.

Younger males are more willing to cross major roadways and other barriers as they strike out in search of mates and new territory. That’s what a remarkable animal known as “the Connecticut Cat” was likely doing in 2011 when he was struck and killed by an SUV in Milford, Conn. Researchers confirmed that the cat had journeyed more than 2,000 miles from its birthplace in North Dakota, the longest trek by a mountain lion ever documented.

Such an impressive feat does not mean, however, that western cats will move east on their own, said Susan Morse of Jericho, a naturalist who has studied mountain lions extensively and supports their reintroduction to the Northeast.

One recent analysis using computer modeling estimated that over the next 77 years, breeding populations might

HEALTH

Lawsuit Linked to the Death That Launched ‘Hooked’ Is Settled

BY RACHEL HELLMAN

The family of Madelyn Linsenmeir, whose 2018 obituary urged compassion for people addicted to drugs, has settled its wrongful death lawsuit against authorities in Massachusetts.

Linsenmeir’s family will receive $1.5 million: $900,000 from the City of Springfield, Mass., and $600,000 from the Hampden County Sheriff’s Department.

Linsenmeir, a Burlington native who suffered from opioid-use disorder, died in police custody. Her sister, Kate O’Neill, wrote an obituary that dealt frankly with her drug use yet emphasized the person she was.

“To some, Maddie was just a junkie — when they saw her addiction, they stopped seeing her,” O’Neill wrote. “And what a loss for them. Because Maddie was hilarious, and warm, and fearless, and resilient. She could and would talk to anyone, and when you were in her company you wanted to stay.”

The tribute resonated around the world. O’Neill eventually agreed to take on a Seven Days project that became “Hooked:” a 2019 series that combined observations about her sister and reports from the front line of the larger opioid crisis.

Attacks on people are exceedingly rare, but when they do happen, they generate widespread news coverage, further complicating support for reintroduction programs, Elbroch said.

“If you have a healthy cougar population in Vermont, there will be conflicts,” he said.

These and other challenges should not deter the state and its neighbors from pressing forward with a broader mountain lion recovery plan for the Northeast, Morse said. The cats are adaptable and have shown, even in places such as California, that they are able to navigate human obstacles and humans themselves, she said.

Instead of citing a litany of reasons why reintroduction can’t or shouldn’t be done, she said, state biologists should collaborate with advocacy organizations such as Northeast Wilderness Trust, their colleagues in other states and Canada, and embrace the planning necessary to welcome the big cats back into what was, after all, once their home.

“Let’s get out of our own way and let the animals tell us what they can do,” Morse said. ➆

Linsenmeir was arrested on a probation violation warrant in Springfield on September 29, 2018. During her booking interview, which was recorded on a surveillance camera, she repeatedly said she was sick and needed medical care.

“I have a really, really bad chest, like I don’t know what happened to it. It feels like it’s caving in,” Linsenmeir said. “I can’t breathe.”

She had endocarditis — a dangerous heart infection common in people who use intravenous drugs.

Nevertheless, she was brought to a regional women’s prison run by the sheriff’s department, where her symptoms were ignored for days, the legal complaint alleged. She was taken to a hospital only after she could not be roused. That’s where she died.

She was 30 and left behind a 3-year-old son.

The settlement, finalized last week, includes a requirement for the sheriff’s department to improve the health and safety of people in its custody, as well as a payment of $600,000 to be placed in trust for the care of Linsenmeir’s son. ➆

Hello, we are Avery & Tim.

This is not Gaza or Ukraine or other inhospitable places... we live in Burlington, VT...Wow!

There are imperfections here, everywhere and within each of us. We live in Burlington, VT...Wow!

Stone Soup is blessed to be 28 years strong...we thank you. We cook great food...we bring comfort, smiles and joy to all who walk through our doors. Come listen to our music... watch us play/work...enjoy the art of our creation.

Burlington, Stone Soup, other businesses are struggling...as is the state...the country...the world... all of us in small and large ways. The luster of our town has faded... And it will return...

Come into town...say Hello... spend your dollars locally... we live in Burlington, VT...Wow!

Alexander Crowell in 1881 with the last documented catamount in Vermont

STATEHOUSE

Lawmakers Strike Deal on Huge Housing Infrastructure Bill

BY KEVIN MCCALLUM • kevin@sevendaysvt.com

After several days of tense negotiations, lawmakers last Friday struck a deal on a key housing bill that advocates say could make real progress toward solving the state’s housing crisis.

The breakthrough came after House members agreed to significantly expand the scale of the proposed Community and Housing Infrastructure Program.

They initially wanted a five-year program capped at $40 million per year. They ultimately agreed to a 10-year-program with a $200 million cap per year in the amount of tax revenue that could be dedicated to new housing infrastructure projects.

The final deal passed the House and Senate but must earn the governor’s signature.

Sen. Alison Clarkson (D-Windsor), who participated remotely due to her son’s impending wedding, blew kisses to her House colleagues and thanked them for their willingness to accept the Senate’s final offer.

“Thank you for this step, for really creating a new tool for housing creation,” Clarkson said.

Rep. Marc Mihaly (D-East Calais) was less exuberant.

EDUCATION

Adjournment Delayed as Education Reform Bill Falters

BY ALISON NOVAK • alison@sevendaysvt.com

The task before the Vermont House and Senate last week seemed relatively straightforward: Resolve somewhat minimal differences in their two versions of an education reform bill, pass it by Friday night and adjourn.

A conference committee, made up of three state representatives and three senators, convened on May 27 to work toward a compromise. By last Friday morning, it appeared as if they were making slow but steady progress. A late-night adjournment seemed within reach.

But that didn’t happen. Last Friday afternoon, senators on the conference committee caught their House counterparts off guard by introducing several entirely new provisions they wanted to see in the bill. The amendments blew up the negotiations and forced legislative leadership to delay the end of a session that already has been extended by several weeks.

Now, the full legislature isn’t slated to reconvene until the veto session on June 16 and 17. Though lawmakers would typically use that time to consider, and maybe override, bills that have been vetoed by Gov. Phil Scott, they now intend to spend at least part of the session trying to pass the ed reform bill.

The conference committee is expected to meet before then, but when, exactly, was

“Our work is not finished,” he said of creating housing in Vermont. “This is a hydraheaded problem.”

Let’s Build Homes, a coalition of groups supporting more housing, applauded the bill as a “major legislative victory that will remove one of the most significant barriers to housing construction.” The influential Vermont League of Cities & Towns also praised the bill’s passage after months of advocating for it.

The program lawmakers struggled with for days was a key part of S.127, this session’s signature housing bill. The bill would let housing developers, with municipal approval, take advantage of tax increment financing,

a tool cities and town have used for years to fight blight.

Three senators and three representatives negotiated for days to find ways to bridge the significant policy and philosophical gaps between the Senate and the House, which passed very different versions of the same bill.

Senators wanted the program to be big, bold and simple enough that it would be used by communities across the state. The House urged caution and sought to limit the number of projects that could tap TIF funding, hoping to prioritize low-income and moderateincome housing and protect the flow of tax dollars into the education fund.

The two sides were pretty far apart on the bill when they started hammering out a deal on May 28. They exchanged a flurry of proposals and counterproposals in an effort to find common ground as the end of the legislative session approached.

Concern about possible impacts to the education fund faded somewhat after legislative analysts shared information indicating that the CHIP program, if fully utilized, could boost the ed fund by up to $38 million per year.

House members also realized the financial cap was not the limiting factor for more infrastructure or housing. Instead, it’s the lack of workers and other market forces, Mihaly said.

“I don’t think any of us really believed that the cap was the problem,” he told Seven Days after the agreement was struck.

Austin Davis, lobbyist for the Lake Champlain Chamber, noted that over 10 years, the program could result in $2 billion invested in housing infrastructure. That would advance the housing the state desperately needs, he said.

“This is something that every legislator and advocate should be proud to have been a part of,” Davis said.

Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (D-ChittendenSoutheast), whose pointed policy questions ruffled some House members’ feathers, said she was glad the negotiations panned out.

“There were many moments anyone could have walked away from the table,” she said. “Staying at the table really was a benefit to Vermonters.” ➆

still an open question on Tuesday. Because the legislature was expected to adjourn weeks ago, some on the committee have prior commitments.

Even if the two chambers can resolve their differences, it remains unclear whether they will be able to reach an agreement that will satisfy the governor.

In a letter last week, Scott wrote that he would not support a bill that spends more on education than the current system does. He proposed implementing a new funding formula and governance structure by July

2027 — two years earlier than the date both the House and Senate set in their bills.

On Saturday, Scott took a more conciliatory tone in a joint statement with Senator Pro Tempore Phil Baruth (D/P-Chittenden-Central) and House Speaker Jill Krowinski (D-Burlington).

The trio said they were committed to working together to craft a bill “that works for a bipartisan majority of both the House and the Senate.”

“We always knew transforming our education system wouldn’t be easy,” they wrote, “and it’s clear a little more time is needed to get the job done well.”

Still, the chaos of last week left some questioning why lawmakers had waited until the very end of the legislative session to make major changes to a landmark bill that will have long-lasting impacts on schools across the state.

“This is some of the most consequential policy that any of us will ever vote on, and this is how we do it?” Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (P/DChittenden-Central) said last Friday night. “It’s embarrassing.” ➆

Kevin McCallum contributed reporting.

Lawmakers negotiating details of the compromise last Thursday

KEVIN MCCALLUM

KEVIN

MCCALLUM

Inside the House chamber last Friday

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That’s up to you. After carefully tallying 73,035 write-in nominations, we’re excited to present this year’s Seven Daysies ﬁnalists. Vote by June 10 at 5 p.m. at sevendaysvt.com/daysies-vote. The ﬁnalist with the most votes in a category wins! GET IN THE GUIDE!

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Hi, I'm Sipha.

I was raised in Vermont and fell in love with natural wine in 2013. What started as a personal curiosity quickly became a professional passion. After over a decade in the service industry, I knew I wanted to start my own business that felt warm and welcoming. I opened Wilder Wines to share the joy of lowintervention wine with the Burlington community, without the pretension.

At Wilder, we focus on sustainably made wines from small producers around the world. Every bottle is carefully selected for its integrity, transparency, and drinkability. Whether you're just starting to explore natural wine or you’ve been drinking it for years, the space is a welcoming space to learn, taste, and connect.

In Spring 2025, Wilder expanded into a new home at 210 College Street, just a few blocks from our original Cherry Street location. The new space includes many more shelves and a wine bar so you can sip while you shop. I can’t wait to welcome you in!

The idea for Aging in Place with Pets came to Randell while he was searching for a capstone project to complete his doctoral program at the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences in Florida. He said he was inspired by his grandfather, Robert Randell, who created a private foundation for animal welfare before dying of COVID-19.

“I kinda combined the two — older adults and pets,” Randell said.

Vermont has no shortage of either, which is why Randell chose the state in 2023 when he was looking for somewhere to launch a pilot program. He moved to Burlington and partnered with Cathedral Square, the senior housing agency, on a four-month project that earned high marks from both his professors and the eight initial participants.

Recognizing its potential, Randell stuck around Vermont and decided to continue the program after he graduated in 2023. He now serves about 45 people in the greater Burlington area, including some who were formerly homeless. (He also offers paid consultations for people who don’t need ongoing support.)

Randell recruits many of his volunteers from local colleges, where students pursuing degrees in animal or human health care are often looking to fulﬁll volunteer hours. He also performs visits himself, once he clocks out of his full-time job as a school occupational therapist.

“Speaking of, next month, vet time for Bam Bam,” Chittenden told Randell, while Pebbles nuzzled against his feet and Bam Bam hid in the bedroom.

The animals aren’t the only ones who beneﬁt. Much like those who participate in Meals on Wheels and other seniororiented services, the people enrolled in Randell’s program are primarily low-income and on their own. Many are lonely.

“Them being able to stop and pick up dog food or something for me, I can’t express enough how much that means,” he said, rolling down the sidewalk with Evie and Trixie in tow.

The program has allowed Linda Crossman, 74, to better support Marley, her 15-year-old “Morkie” — Maltese and Yorkie mix — as he enters the final chapter of his life. Randell recently helped Crossman change Marley’s diet to something easier on the old dog’s stomach. “Animals are fussy, especially when they’re sick,” she said. “But he liked it. He eats it right up.”

His referrals come primarily from housing or home health agencies, though existing participants will occasionally introduce him to a neighbor in need. Most of his human-pet “teams” are clustered within a few independent and assisted-living communities, allowing volunteers to see multiple clients in a short period.

On a recent night, Randell and one of his volunteers, Becca Senior, a rising sophomore at the University of Vermont, spent a few hours at Harrington Village in Shelburne, where more than a dozen participants live.

One is John Chittenden, a 63-year-old man with two cats, Pebbles and Bam Bam. Chittenden su ers from neuropathy that can make it di cult for him to get around. Volunteers have helped him clean his cats’ litter box, trim their nails and take them to the vet.

HAS BECOME AS MUCH OF A MENTAL HEALTH PROGRAM AS ANYTHING.

BLAKE RANDELL

“It’s nice for people to see collegeage students take interest in them,” Randell said. “This has become as much of a mental health program as anything.”

When Damian Currier, 48, had to put down his two aging dogs, Buddy and Daisy, within a few weeks of each other, volunteers came to his house and sat with him as a vet administered the drugs. One inked a sketch of the dogs that’s now hanging on his wall.

Currier, who has since adopted two new dogs, recently had part of his leg amputated and now uses a wheelchair. He said there are days when pain makes it di cult for him to leave the house.

Knowing she has someone to call on Marley’s “bad days” makes a world of di erence, Crossman said. “It feels like I’m not alone.”

Randell can take on about ﬁve new clients right now, he said, but his ﬁve-year goal is to increase his volunteer pool enough to serve 100 people, double his current capacity.

He’s reaching out to nonproﬁts in search of one willing to serve as a ﬁscal sponsor, which would allow people to make tax-free donations to the at-home program. He’s also brainstorming new ideas, such as a Meals on Wheels-style food delivery program for pets. And he’s striving to foster a sense of community among residents in the buildings he frequents, “so that when we’re not there, they still feel connected.”

The efforts have paid off at Harrington Village, where participants say they’ve gotten to know each other better because of their shared connection to Randell’s program.

“After COVID, our society kind of broke down,” Currier said. “Everybody became distant and kept to themselves in their own space.”

Crossman recently contacted Currier to ask about his experience with aging dogs — and how he knew it was time to say goodbye. Currier helped check in on Dexter when Bishop spent a week out West visiting her ailing father. And Bishop has started a weekly pet-themed arts and crafts group.

Last Thursday night, she set out watercolors and encouraged people to paint a picture of or related to their pets.

Chittenden painted Pebbles and Bam Bam frolicking on a grassy knoll. Bishop painted an array of multicolored, bovineinspired shapes — Dexter’s black-andwhite coat reminds her of a cow. And for Marley, Crossman depicted a green ﬁeld beneath a sunny sky, with a big heart smack-dab in the middle. ➆

Blake Randell with a cat

COURTESY

FEEDback

CALLING PHIL SCOTT

Gov. Phil Scott, where are you?

I heard your voice daily during the COVID-19 pandemic. You were a comfort.

I heard your voice during Vermont’s severe storms and flooding disasters. You were a reassurance.

Vermonters need you to speak out against the administration of President Donald Trump’s civil and human rights rollbacks, including the arrests and deportations of student activists and immigrants, regardless of free speech and due process. We need you to protest the massive budget cuts and firing of federal workers, incapacitating many governmental departments. But where are you now?

Instead of rising above national rhetoric, we must raise our voices against the inhumane chaos of the Trump administration.

If our state and country ever needed you, a person of power, to speak out against the increasing atrocities in the United States, we need it now.

Growing up in South Carolina, I looked to Vermont as one of the leaders of change in our country. We offer hope for many, and they look to us for it.

Mary Oliphant WILLISTON

PUB PRAISE

Congratulations to Seven Days on its amazing awards [From the Publisher “Making It Count,” April 9]! You should all feel very proud of your achievements.

While the association probably didn’t offer awards for publisher’s commentary, I have always felt that Paula Routly’s [From the Publisher: “Earth to Dad,” April 3, 2024] was her best! I believe she talked about her dad and how he taught her to have interest in the skies. It was truly a great story.

Keep up the great work. Even though I have a different perspective on some of your positions, I still look forward to reading the paper each week.

Dave Spaulding MONTPELIER

These benefits are for Family Members only:

•Enjoy time in the pool together during Family Swim.

•Have fun in the Gym during Family Rec.

INFERNAL POLITICS

Eric Pomeroy PEACHAM

• Kids’ Night Out (Family Members only, June-August). Kids enjoy a fun night at the Y, while parents enjoy time to themselves.

•Bring your children 13 and older to a Group Fitness class.

•Work out on-site while the kids (age 4 months - 10 years) are safe and happy in Member Child Care.

•Have your next Birthday Party at the Y (openings this summer!) Family Members also register early and pay less for swim lessons and youth programs.

lifelines

OBITUARIES

George Sagui

MARCH 12, 1926OCTOBER 23, 2024 STAUNTON, VA.

George T. “Sag” Sagui, 98, was born on March 12, 1926, in Belmar, N.J., to Italian immigrants Walter and Charlotte (née DeLuca) Sagui. After graduating from high school in 1943 and winning the heart of Jean Pratt, he served in the U.S. Army, 9th Armored Division, from 1944 to 1946.

After George’s military service, he and Jean were married on September 15, 1948. Between 1949 and 1958, they had six children: Devida, Patricia, Susan, James, and twins Richard and Robert. Seeking a better life, the family moved to Vermont in 1961.

George, better known as “Sag,” had many gifts. He could ﬁx anything, played several instruments, and loved storytelling and jokes. Woodworking was his beloved craft. An avid reader and curious thinker, he was

Alex M. Boguzewski

JULY 6, 1991-MAY 27, 2025 MONTPELIER, VT.

Alex M. Boguzewski, 33, of Montpelier, Vt., passed away peacefully at the McClure Miller Respite House in Colchester, Vt., on May 27, 2025, after a long and courageous battle with brain cancer.

Alex was born to Sharon (Keefe) Morris and Michael Boguzewski on July 6, 1991, in Berlin, Vt.

Alex attended school in East Montpelier, Vt., graduated from Union 32 High School in 2010, and attended the International School of Earth Studies, an outdoor education and animal connection school based in Québec, Canada.

Alex worked in several occupations in his short life. He was passionate about public service. He was a

OBITUARIES, VOWS, CELEBRATIONS

interested in one’s thoughts and opinions.

George supported his family with his business M. George Hair Fashions and a handyman/kitchen cabinetmaking business from the mid-1960s to the late 1970s. After becoming empty nesters, George and Jean moved to Weybridge, Vt., where George purchased an electric motor repair business that he renamed Union Bridge Motor Repair. e business soared and created long bonds with farmers, restaurant owners and neighbors. George loved

proud member of the East Montpelier Fire Department from the young age of 15, serving many roles, including on its board of directors. Alex worked many years for Central Vermont Home Health & Hospice, delivering home care to those in need. He was awarded many times for his kind acts and above-and-beyond service. He also found time to ﬁll in at Tractor Supply … and gained many lifelong friends.

to ﬁsh and had a deep love of nature, especially trees. In Weybridge, he started a Christmas tree farm, which brought great joy as families and friends came to cut their own trees.

He also shared his love of trees by serving the town of Weybridge as tree warden for many years. His love of trees sparked an interest in helping bring back the American chestnut, devastated by an imported fungus in the early 1900s. For his part, George propagated and gave away chestnut saplings to be planted by the residents of Weybridge.

In the early 2000s, looking to move away from the Vermont winters, George and Jean relocated to Staunton, Va., in the Shenandoah Valley. eir ﬁnal years were quiet. George continued to garden and grow fruit and chestnut trees. Sag also continued to work in motor repair until no longer physically able to do so. When unable to work in motor repair, he became a member

Spanning that, Alex held many roles at Sugarbush Resort and Alterra Mountain, again winning awards for excellent service. His latest role, his dream job, was in human resources as international coordinator, managing logistics for the many international student work programs for the resort. Alex will be remembered for his charming personality and smile, kind and generous heart, quick wit, gregarious presence, and being a good friend to everyone, as well as having quite a bit of tasteful sarcasm. (OK, so maybe it wasn’t always tasteful.)

Alex is survived by his mother, Sharon Morris, and father, Michael (Karen) Boguzewski; stepbrother David (Brandie) Morris of Georgia; stepbrother Chris Plant of California; stepsister Lindsay (Chris) DeVits of New Hampshire; and several nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles

of Makerspace, a community space for all kinds of people looking for space to create and work. He cherished every moment he spent there.

He only “retired” to care for Jean, who passed away on August 8, 2013 … they had been married for 65 years.

Sag continued to live life to the fullest … his way. He passed away on October 23, 2024. He is survived by his six children: Dee; Pat; Sue; Jim and his wife, Liz; Rich; and Rob and his wife, Karen. Sag is also the proud grandfather of Will Young and his wife, Carrie; and their daughter, Sag’s great-granddaughter, Neoma.

ere will be a graveside service on June 7, 2025, 1 p.m., at St. Mary’s Cemetery, 144 Hillcrest Rd., Middlebury, VT. A gathering will follow the service at Town Hall eater, 72-76 Merchants Row, Middlebury, Vt. Please come and share memories of George (Sag). In lieu of ﬂowers, please make a donation to the charity of your choice.

and cousins; as well as many, many, many friends.

Alex was preceded in death by both sets of grandparents and his dear stepfather, Ron Morris.

A celebration of Alex’s life will be held on June 21, 2025, with full ﬁreman honors, at the Capitol Plaza Hotel in Montpelier, Vt. e celebration will be preceded by a procession to the plaza starting at 1 p.m. Friends and family are asked to gather outside on the sidewalk in front of the plaza (both sides of the street) to honor Alex’s passion for life and ﬁre service.

In lieu of ﬂowers, a donation in Alex’s honor for any amount would be so gratefully appreciated by Central Vermont Home Health & Hospice in Berlin, Vt., a community in which Alex was both servant and recipient of such love and care.

Arrangements are in the care of Guare & Sons Funeral Home in Montpelier, Vt.

William “Bill” Alfred Riley

NOVEMBER 21, 1939-APRIL 5, 2025

FREDERICKSBURG, VA.

William “Bill” Alfred Riley, age 85, passed away peacefully on Saturday, April 5, 2025, at the Spotsylvania Regional Medical Center, Fredericksburg, Va., of natural causes.

Bill was born on November 21, 1939, to Catherine (Patneaude) Riley and Harold E. Riley Sr. in Vergennes, Vt. His family eventually moved to Burlington, Vt., where he attended St. Joseph Elementary School and graduated from Cathedral High School in 1957. After graduating, he honorably served in the U.S. Air Force.

Bill was a hard worker his entire life; he began working side by side with his father in the construction business at a very young age. He eventually worked for Coyne Laundry as a route salesman/truck driver for more than 20 years. Bill was also a self-employed handyman. Bill then went on to work at IBM for the next 20 years. While working third shift at IBM, Bill owned and operated Grampy’s Old Fashioned Candy Store in the Burlington Square Mall, where he met his future second wife, Vivien Brehaut, who was also operating a business in the mall. ey were married on June 2, 1990, in Shelburne, Vt., honeymooning in Ireland. ey decided to venture into a business together. us, Giraf’s in Shelburne was born, offering ﬂoral arrangements, candy and gifts. After owning and operating Giraf’s for nearly 20 years, Bill and Vivien eventually retired and moved to Fredericksburg, Va.

Bill was an avid sports fan, speciﬁcally of the New York Yankees, and also a member of the Vermont Lake Monsters ird Base Club — just an arm’s length away from the beer tap. Bill loved playing cards, telling stories, bowling, playing pool, softball league, deer camp with the Boucher family and chasing balloons with “Jack.” Bill was also involved with Golden Gloves as a ﬁghter and trainer. He was a fourth-degree Knights of Columbus member and a Burlington Elks Lodge and American Legion member. When Bill moved to Fredericksburg, he took an active role in the Virginia Heritage HOA and met many people through those events. He played poker and bridge as often as he could and excelled at both. He also enjoyed watching women’s college basketball and playing sudoku. As Bill neared the end, his body was weak, but his mind was still very sharp.

Bill was predeceased by his daughter Shelly Riley; his parents, Harold and Catherine Riley; his brother Harold (Stuffy) and sister-in-law Jane (Cross) Riley; and his brother-in-law Gordon Gilbert.

Bill is survived by his loving wife, Vivien Brehaut-Riley; his son, William Riley, and his partner, Michele Fay; his daughter Brenda Riley; Jessica (Stephen) Stoops and Mark Ginsburg; his sister Margaret (Peg) Gilbert; his grandchildren: Alan (Ashley) Burnett; Angelina Pommerencke-Riley; Mark Stoops; Marissa (Blake) Pinello; Jason Shappy and his partner, Trinda Hibbard; Shona (Tom) Bruno and Jesse Shappy; nine great-grandchildren; and one great-greatgrandchild. Bill is also survived by his former wife, Sandra (Kirby) Riley; a special family member, Shannon May; and many nieces and nephews. A special thank-you to Stephen Stoops for all the care he provided Bill during this past year.

A Catholic mass will be held on Saturday, June 21, 2025, 11 a.m., at Christ the King Church, 136 Locust St., Burlington, VT; followed by an interment at New Mount Calvary Cemetery, 76 Plattsburg Ave.

Tyler “Ty” Bixler

FEBRUARY 27, 1984MAY 21, 2025

COLCHESTER, VT.

Tyler “Ty” Bixler, 41, passed away peacefully at home on Wednesday, May 21, 2025, surrounded by love and his ladies. Tyler was able to spend his final weeks at home thanks to the immense, round-the-clock and loving care provided to him by his own personal nursing team — his wife, Jen, and their best friend, Katie, along with support from the University of Vermont Health Network hospice team and the UVM Medical Center oncology team.

Born on February 27, 1984, in Rutland, Vt., Tyler grew up

Shelley Lyn Villemaire

SEPTEMBER 10, 1951MAY 10, 2025

BURLINGTON, VT.

Shelley Lyn Villemaire passed away peacefully in the early morning hours of Saturday, May 10, 2025, in Burlington, Vt., following complications from a major car accident on January 2, 2025.

A graveside service will be held on Friday, June 6, 1 p.m., in the New Mt. Calvary Cemetery. A memorial gathering honoring Shelley will follow from 3 to 6 p.m. at one of her favorite restaurants, Black Flannel Brewing, 21 Essex Way #201, Essex Junction, VT. Please join us to eat, drink and share memories of her beautiful life.

Arrangements are in the care of Ready Funeral & Cremation Services. To view a complete obituary or share a message of condolence, please visit readyfuneral.com.

in East Rupert, Vt. He graduated from Salem High School in Salem, N.Y., in 2002 and went on to earn his BA in criminal justice with a minor in business from Castleton State College in 2007. After college, Tyler was employed by the State of Vermont

Department of Corrections, most recently as a senior probation and parole officer in Burlington, Vt.

Tyler married his soulmate, Jen, on August 9, 2014, in Killington, Vt. They settled in Colchester, Vt., where they built a loving community around them.

Tyler is survived by his wife, Jen (Morgan) Bixler, and their bulldog, Vinny “TubTub”; his father, Bruce Bixler, and partner Mary Sullivan; brother, Michael Sullivan (Ashley); sisters, Erin Maloney (Tommy) and Brooke Bixler; in-laws, Bill and Dale Morgan; brotherin-law, Jimmy Morgan; and his nieces and nephews, Olivia, Grayson, Harper, Will and Levi. TyTy also played a cherished role in the lives

Richard Lee McCauley

AUGUST 12, 1955-MAY 29, 2025 RICHMOND, VT.

If you are reading this, I have gone to the great beyond. I was born and raised in Virginia by my parents, Hunter “Shorty” Melvin McCauley and Elfie Mae Summers McCauley. I had an older sister and great friend, Jackie Cooke, and her devoted husband, my wonderful brother-in-law, Sten. I attended McIntyre Elementary and the Miller School of Albemarle and graduated from Albemarle High. I learned the metal and slate roofing trades, as well as chain saw and lawn mower repair, from William E. “Bud” Sprouse, a mentor and father figure in my early years.

In 1983, I moved to Vermont as a self-employed roofer, working in tin, galvanized metal and copper. I also did slate repair. When I wasn’t roofing, I worked on post-and-beam construction, as well as trim and framing carpentry. I labored with several skilled contractors: Gary Bressor, John Devine and Barry Nelson. One winter, I hung drywall with Smokey Lyons. I lived with a blood cancer for 30 years, and for 28 of those, I was able to work full time and play volleyball three to four times a week, sometimes more. I enjoyed riding my mountain bike, exploring the woods around my home and going to bluegrass festivals. But my favorite pastime was playing my guitar, and I wish to be remembered as a singer-songwriter. A few of my originals have been recorded with the help of Tom Walters. Some are funny, some sad. Mostly, they are about people and places that

of many chosen nieces and nephews and leaves behind innumerable friends and loved ones, including many cousins and extended family.

Friends and family are invited to send Ty off in style at a celebration of life on Sunday, August 3, 2025, 1 to 4 p.m., at Higher Ground in South Burlington. Share your memories by emailing rememberingtybix@gmail. com.

In lieu of flowers, please consider donating to Tyler’s Legacy Fund (everloved.com/life-of/ tyler-bixler-colchester-vt/ donate).

For the full obituary, please see everloved.com/life-of/ tyler-bixler-colchester-vt/ obituary.

mattered to me during my lifetime. A sampling can be heard on my YouTube channel. I would like to thank my doctors, Chris Holmes and Robert Lobel, as well as all the nurses and hospital staff, for keeping me going for decades with their compassionate care. Thank you also to my friends John Devine, GC Morris and Cyrus Gile, who gave me countless rides to my appointments when I could no longer drive. I am grateful to Vicki and John Tilton in San Diego for all of their phone visits; Nicole Davis, Anna Foltz and Sara McMahon for their help in so many different ways; and Sandy Bissell, Kathi Dunsmore and their families for their loving friendship over the years. For many summers, I was lucky to be welcomed into the family of Susan Lavigne, Mandy, Joe, Orion and Orson in the Adirondacks. We had good times singing around the campfire.

I am eternally grateful to the O’Neil family for graciously allowing me to live on their beautiful land in Richmond for more than four decades. Tom O’Neil was a special friend and father figure to me in Vermont. Without the help of my steadfast friend and neighbor Tim Gray, I would not have been able to stay in my home until the end. This was the ultimate gift. And finally, thank you, Steve Shifflett, my lifelong friend and spiritual adviser. You were always there for me. Peace to all. Thank you for a good life. I love the Lord and Jesus Christ.

Funeral arrangements are with Gifford Funeral Home. A memorial service will be held on Thursday, June 5, 2025, 1 p.m. at Gifford Funeral Home, 22 Depot St., Richmond, VT.

IN MEMORIAM

Lisa Mills 1959-2025

Please join our family for a celebration of life on Saturday, June 14, 2025, 11 a.m., at the North Ferrisburgh Cemetery on Old Hollow Road. Reception to follow at the North Ferrisburgh United Methodist Church. A full obituary can be found at rochestercremation.com/ obituaries/lisa-mills.

Stephen Jay Goldberg

JUNE 2, 1939JUNE 30, 2024

“Being done looks okay back home into the nothingness feels okay feels right no big deal“

We are paying homage to Steve on June 21, 2025, 3 p.m., at the Unitarian Church in Burlington. Open to all; a mix of music, theater, friends and family.

Robert Chalmers

1930-2024

Friends and family are invited to attend a memorial service in honor of Robert Bruce Chalmers (January 24, 1930 to November 19, 2024) on Saturday, June 21, 2025, 1 p.m., at the United Church of Christ Congregational Church, South Street, South Hero, Vt. Light refreshments will be served at the church following the service.

CELEBRATION

John J. Saia

A celebration of life for John J. Saia, who passed away on February 25, 2025, will be held on Sunday, June 15, 2025, 11 a.m., at the Farmhouse at Sunset Pond at the Essex Resort & Spa, 70 Essex Way, Essex, VT. Remarks begin at noon.

lifelines

OBITUARIES

Anne McMillan Thompson

APRIL 17, 1950-MAY 11, 2025 FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA.

Anne McMillan ompson, 75, of Hinesburg, Vt., died peacefully on Mother’s Day, May 11, 2025, with her children by her side.

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Grant and Helen (Morrison) ompson, Anne grew up in Old Greenwich, Conn., where she developed a lifelong love of the water and spent joyful summers sailing, swimming and creating lasting memories with family and friends.

In her late teens and twenties, Anne’s adventurous spirit took her to Belgium and San Francisco before she was drawn to the beauty of Vermont. While working at South Burlington’s Sirloin Saloon, Anne met Daniel Stannard. ey married in 1978 on Nantucket, a place she cherished throughout her life. Together they spent years traveling abroad and exploring the country in their yellow Volkswagen bus before settling in Burlington, where they raised their two sons, Geoff and Dwight.

A talented writer and voracious reader, Anne worked as an editor at the University of Vermont before devoting herself full-time to motherhood, a role she considered her greatest calling. She shared with her sons her love of music, books and cooking, and she enthusiastically supported their many interests in music, sports, ﬁlm and law. Anne created a warm and welcoming home — whether serving generous portions of her famous chicken Caesar

Charles “Skip” Watts

MAY 4, 1926-MAY 15, 2025 ESSEX, VT.

On ursday, May 15, 2025, Charles “Skip” Watts, 99 years old, left this world for a new and unknown adventure.

salad to hungry football players or hosting deafening basement jam sessions, she loved having a full house.

Anne’s caring nature led her to work with patients at Timber Lane Allergy & Asthma Associates and to volunteer for many years at Hope Lodge in Burlington, where she provided comfort and support to cancer patients and their families. Even while confronting her own health challenges — including two cancer diagnoses — Anne maintained her unwavering optimism and dedication to caring for others. She had a special gift for befriending and appreciating every nurse, EMT and doctor she met.

In later years, Anne moved to Hinesburg, where her warmth and generosity quickly endeared her to neighbors. She spent her days cooking and baking treats for loved ones, reading extensively, enjoying British sitcoms and traveling regularly to visit her sons in New York and California. In quiet moments, she could be found relaxing at home with a dry martini and an extra-hard crossword puzzle.

She is lovingly remembered by her son Geoff and his partner, Tiffany, of Brooklyn, N.Y.; her son Dwight and his wife, Maria, of Orange, Calif.; her brother, Geoff ompson, and his wife, Karyn, of Templeton, Calif.; her sister, Christie Sumner, of Lincoln, Vt.; numerous beloved nephews, nieces and their children; and countless dear friends. A lifelong dog lover, Anne is also fondly remembered by her spirited companion, Gracie.

An outdoor celebration of Anne’s life will take place on Saturday, August 16, 2025, 1 p.m., at the Sumner property located on Lincoln Gap Road in Lincoln, Vt. A private green burial was held at the same location on May 14.

Memorial donations in Anne’s honor may be made to Hope Lodge in Burlington, Vt. Donations can be made online at cancer.org/supportprograms-and-services/ patient-lodging/hope-lodge/ burlington.html.

Born in Paterson, N.J., on May 4, 1926, Skip grew up near the ocean in Cranston, R.I., with his older sister, Harriet. He loved sailing and racing his Beetle Cat, Pinto, and S boats from the Edgewood Yacht Club. Skip’s love of skiing started in the early 1940s, when he often took the ski train to North Conway, N.H.

At the age of 17, Skip enlisted in the U.S. Army, where he trained to become part of the 101st Airborne “Screaming Eagles” Division. He spent almost two years on the European front parachuting into action, getting into mischief and bravely serving his country during World War II.

working with chemicals, and developing synthetic ﬁbers and transistors. ese special projects with GE relocated the family to many interesting places throughout New England and New York.

Skip was instrumental in starting and supervising the ambulance squad in Lake George, N.Y., and directing the ski patrol at North Creek Ski Area. While living in Pittsﬁeld, Mass., he became a regional Red Cross Water Safety ofﬁcial and was on the ski patrol at Bousquet Mountain. After moving to Rochester, N.H., Skip switched from the ski patrol to the ski school under Harry Baxter at Mount Whittier in Ossipee, N.H.

Returning from the war, Skip ﬁnished high school; married his sailing sweetheart, Beverly Ferguson from Fall River, Mass.; and started a family, all while studying physics at the University of Rhode Island and living in a Quonset hut on campus.

Skip’s professional career started with the U.S. Navy, working on a Volpe machine in New London, Conn.; it also included two years at DuPont and 15 years at General Electric, which involved many special projects. He often told stories of “vacuum systems,”

Antoinette “Toni” (Brouillette) Clements

AUGUST 23, 1927-MAY 14, 2025 CHARLOTTE, VT. Antoinette “Toni” (Brouillette) Clements, 97, a longtime resident of Charlotte, Vt., passed away peacefully in the early morning hours on Wednesday, May 14, 2025. Toni was born on August 23, 1927, in Richford, Vt., to Leopold and Helena (Juaire) Brouillette. She graduated from Richford High School in 1945 and from the Connecticut Institute of Hairdressing in 1947.

Many martinis and “snow dances” later, Skip answered a very small ad in Skiing magazine for IBM in Essex Junction, Vt. With Beverly and his family of ﬁve, Sally, Judy, Bonny, Betsy and Tommy, in tow, Skip ended up in Jeffersonville, Vt., buying the infamous Vagabond Ski Dorm and converting it to a home. Now, we all had our own bedroom with a number on the door!

For 25 years, Skip worked tirelessly supervising the computer chip manufacturing machines for IBM and became an advisory engineer who approved the purchase of these multimillion-dollar machines. Somehow, he found time to play tennis and golf and take boating trips on Lake Champlain, up the Richelieu and St. Lawrence rivers, and down the

After meeting at Blodgett’s, Toni married Ernest “Clark” Clements on May 27, 1950, at Christ the King Parish in Burlington, Vt. ey resided in Burlington for a short time and

Hudson River to New York City. He was a ski instructor for more than 30 years at Smugglers’ Notch Resort, starting in 1968, when it was called Madonna Mountain. Skip’s love of skiing was passed on to the entire Watts family, who have stayed involved in the skiing world for many generations.

As well as being an active father and husband to Beverly for 67 years, Skip was well known for entertaining people with jokes, singing, a comic routine or general tomfoolery. He loved to debate the pros and cons of any topic or to explain how to build a watch after someone asked him the time.

After he retired from IBM, Skip and Bev moved to Spring Hill, Fla., and later settled in New Bern, N.C. Skip returned to Vermont in 2019, residing at Mansﬁeld Place in Essex, Vt.

Our Dad, Skip, is now watching over his family with Beverly, who predeceased him in 2015. He left a legacy of working hard and enjoying life to Sally Watts, her husband, Randy Draper, and daughter, Whitley; Judy McCawley, her late husband, David “Squatch,” son, Matthew Petrick McCawley, his wife, Kate, and their twins, Micah and Cassidy; daughter Elizabeth and her ﬁancé, Saul Benitez; Bonny Mutty, her husband, Peter, and daughters, Sarah and Kali; Betsy Abare and her husband, Paul; and, last but very much not the least of Skip’s crew, omas Ferguson Watts. We love you, Dad. ank you to all who cared for our father with grace, kindness and dignity during his last weeks.

In lieu of ﬂowers, please tell a joke, go for a sail, help someone learn to ski with a qualiﬁed ski instructor or make a donation to skiinghistory.org.

To leave condolences and memories, please visit awrfh.com.

then moved to North Ferrisburgh, Vt. In 1955, they moved to Charlotte, where she lived until 2023. She then relocated to Green Mountain Nursing and Rehabilitation in Colchester, where she received exceptional care in the Champlain West unit.

She was a licensed ham radio operator, a hobby she enjoyed with her husband, Clark. Toni primarily was a homemaker and worked in various retail positions over the years. She was a compassionate caretaker, offering support and care to friends, neighbors and family during times of need.

After moving to Charlotte, Toni became a devoted member of Our Lady of Mount Carmel (OLMC) Parish. She enjoyed singing in the choir, teaching catechism, and giving her time generously to church

events and service projects. Her faith and the OLMC community were a very important part of her life.

Toni is survived by her daughter, Patty, of Florida; her son, David, and his wife, Laura, of North Ferrisburgh; her grandson, Brendan, of Charlotte; a sister-in-law; and several nieces and nephews. She was predeceased by her husband, Clark; her parents; and four brothers, one sister and their spouses.

e family is comforted by our memories of Toni in earlier times, her not mincing words and sometimes sarcastic humor, devotion to family and friends, and her seemingly unlimited energy.

A mass of Christian burial will be celebrated on Saturday, July 26, 2025, 11 a.m., at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, 2914 Spear St., Charlotte, VT 05445. Toni will be laid to rest on Monday, July 28, 11 a.m., at Lakeview Cemetery, 455 North Ave., Burlington, VT 05401.

If you would like to make a gift in Toni’s memory, please consider Our Lady of Mount Carmel or a charity of your choice.

Bruce Blackman

MARCH 4, 1941-MAY 30, 2025 ESSEX, VT.

On May 30, 2025, Bruce Blackman died surrounded by his wife, daughters, son-inlaw and grandchildren. He was 84.

Bruce was born in Detroit, Mich. His parents soon moved to Berea, Ohio, which became Bruce’s childhood home. Bruce attended the Berea Commons School. When he was in fifth grade, he met a young girl named Judy Taylor. In 1959, Bruce graduated from Berea High School, where he excelled at tennis, basketball and playing the saxophone.

Following high school, Bruce worked at a local radio station and attended Ohio University. He graduated with a bachelor of science in electrical engineering.

On October 5, 1963, Bruce married Judy Taylor in a small ceremony at the Middleburg Heights Congregational Church. They would be married for 61 years.

received his ham radio license from the FCC while in high school. The Ham Shack was one of the first rooms Bruce completed in their new house. After he convinced his wife that they should erect a large antenna in their backyard, Bruce (W1EJC) and his father (K8DPQ) and father-in-law (W8NZJ) talked frequently.

Having learned to sail on Lake Erie with his father-in-law, Bruce bought a Tanzer 22 sailboat and became a member of the Malletts Bay Boat Club.

In December 1966, Bruce and Judy welcomed their first child, Barbara. The next month, Bruce accepted a position as a junior engineer with IBM located in Essex Junction, Vt. Judy and their new baby flew to Vermont, and Bruce packed up their Volkswagen Beetle and drove to their new home. After a brief stint on Mills Avenue near the Burlington airport, in April 1968, Bruce and Judy built a new home in Birchwood Manor in Essex Center. Their second child, Heather, was born in 1971.

Bruce loved working at IBM, where he received multiple honors and recognition for his dedication. In 1973, Bruce took an assignment at IBM in Böblingen, Germany, relocating his young family to a foreign country for six months. In 1992, he was promoted to senior engineer. He retired in 2002.

Bruce’s interests and hobbies were numerous. He always wanted to try “something new,” and his curiosity about life and people meant that he rarely sat idle. He had a lifelong passion for ham radio. Following in his father’s footsteps, Bruce

Cynthia Ann DeBenedetto

AUGUST 23, 1956MAY 16, 2025

SOUTH BURLINGTON, VT.

Cynthia Ann (Smith, Shepard) DeBenedetto, 68, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and formerly of South Burlington, Vt., passed away unexpectedly on May 16, 2025. Cindy was born on August 23, 1956, to her beloved parents, Neil and Barbara Shepard of Colchester, Vt. She lived in Vermont before relocating to Florida in 2000.

The Great Bear was a small boat, but Bruce and his wife insisted that the family could cruise Lake Champlain, often bringing along their dog, Tramp, for good measure. When returning to the mooring, he always came in hot, under sail and never by power. Judy was not a big fan of this approach. Bruce also had a Lightning that he raced (without much success, he would confess) during Thursday Night Races. He was also a member of the Lake Champlain Retriever Club, where he and his black Lab, Finnegan, impressed onlookers with their teamwork during blind retrievals.

Bruce loved racket sports. He was a lifelong tennis player who played at Ohio University and continued to play after college. He later played racquetball and paddleball (usually outside in the winter) and fell in love with the sport of handball, which became his favorite. Notably, he was ahead of his time in pickleball, winning the Vermont Senior Games State Championship in doubles and mixed doubles in 2012. He also loved playing bridge, mah-jongg, backgammon, cribbage and any game that a grandchild wanted to play.

Bruce was a faithful member of the First Congregational Church in Essex Junction, Vt. Over the decades, he served as deacon and treasurer. He also sang in the choir and Men at First.

After a close friend had a near-death experience, Bruce began donating blood and blood platelets to the American Red Cross. In 20 years, he donated more than 88 gallons.

The love of her life was her devoted husband, Joseph DeBenedetto. Their 19 years

Bruce was a member of a neighborhood group called PBS — which was short for Potters, Blackmans, Stowes. This small group of three couples were close friends for more than 50 years. Bruce was predeceased by Ellie Potter in 2023 and Gail Stowe in 2024.

Bruce was a dedicated fan of any sport played by his grandchildren. He rarely missed a game. As Hockey Grandparents, he and his wife, Judy, traveled throughout New England, Québec and Ontario to watch their games. When his grandson was playing for the Thunder hockey team, the team parents convinced Bruce to do Jell-O shots, which he enjoyed.

Bruce saved everything. He never ripped wrapping paper. He often would use a pocketknife to slice the tape with ridiculous precision. He could fix anything, and if it involved buying a new tool, even better. He never ordered chicken at restaurants and was always willing to share food off his plate. His favorite dessert was angel food cake. Bruce was patient in manner and being. He was curious, honest and always interested in learning new things. He knew no strangers.

While his entire family mourns his death, Bruce’s absence is felt most profoundly by his wife, Judy. Bruce was always in her corner, a safe haven of love, patience and understanding. In return, Bruce would tell you that he relied on the certainty that Judy brought to decision-making in their lives. “Yes, dear,” he would say. He would also tell you that he lived in her world, not the other way around.

Bruce was predeceased by his parents, C.P. and Virginia, and his sister Bridget. Bruce is survived by his wife, Judy; his daughters, Barbara Blackman and Heather Blackman; his son-in-law, John Blackman (who took his last name); his grandchildren, Jack Buckley, Zackery Miller, Coby Miller, Brianna Miller, Kate Buckley and Ember Blackman; his sister Brenda and her children and grandchildren; and his brother-in-law Bill Taylor, his wife, Karen, and their children.

A Celebration of Life will be held at the First Congregational Church in Essex Junction, Vt., on Saturday, June 28, 2025, 11 a.m., followed by a private family burial. In lieu of flowers, the family encourages you to find a small moment of patience in your life — for yourself or another person — in memory of Bruce.

Alton Ray Sherrod

JUNE 25, 1937-MAY 27, 2025 SOUTH BURLINGTON, VT.

Alton Ray Sherrod, 87, passed away on Tuesday, May 27, 2025, at the McClure Miller Respite House.

of marriage were filled with joy, laughter and unwavering companionship. Joe was her greatest comfort and friend. Cindy will be remembered for her boundless creativity, her passion for life, and her kind and generous spirit. A successful businesswoman, she also found deep joy in painting and in spending time with her husband and family. Her warmth and laughter were a comfort to all who knew her. She will be missed more than words can express. She was loved deeply by many.

Her legacy lives on in the hearts of those who survive her, including her two children,

Adam Smith and Melissa Gebo; sister, Sharon Shepard (James Rinderle); and brothers-in-law Ben DeBenedetto (Adriana) and Steven DeBenedetto (Suzanne). She also leaves behind six beloved grandchildren — Anthony Towsley (Mariah Gutkopf), Chelsea Roy, Brayden Roy, Destiny Gebo, Macy Smith and Porter Smith — and one cherished great-grandchild, Sidney Towsley. Her nieces and nephews include Amanda and Allyson Rinderle, Ryan Shepard, Steven T. and Nicholas DeBenedetto, Kevin Lewis, and Melanie, Karen, and Ellen (LePage). She was predeceased by her beloved brother, Brian Shepard, and her first husband, Scott D. Smith, with whom she shared many happy years.

A celebration of life mass will be held on Saturday, June 7, 2025, 11 a.m., at Holy Cross Church, 416 Church Rd., Colchester, VT.

A. Ray, as he was known to many, was born in Tarboro, N.C., on June 25, 1937, the son of Mary Elizabeth (Sherrod) Lanier and the late Booker T. Lanier. As a young boy, he grew up on a sharecropper farm in North Carolina, picking cotton, shaking peanuts and cropping tobacco. He attended North Carolina and Philadelphia schools and graduated from Lincoln University in Oxford, Pa., with a degree in physics and as a member of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity. He joined the military at the Philadelphia Naval Reserves and received an honorable discharge. Ray was employed at U.S. government sites and Leeds & Northrup, then moved to Vermont, where he worked at IBM in Essex Junction for many years in engineering, management, teaching and college recruitment. He retired from IBM in 1992 as a senior engineer manager.

While in school, he played football, wrestled and ran track. He enjoyed skiing, hunting, hiking Mount Mansfield, boating, fishing in Lake Champlain and rollerblading along bike paths. He was the proud father of three children and had four grandchildren and three greatgrandchildren. Hobbies included painting with watercolors, reading and county fairs.

Ray was a Vermont Realtor/broker for many years after his retirement from IBM. He was a member of the Vermont Jaycees, the Black Professional Network of Vermont, New Alpha Missionary Baptist Church and First Baptist Church in Burlington. He was a faithful servant to the Lord and gave love, goodwill and hugs to all. He was friendly, caring and compassionate. He enjoyed smiling, giving and helping people.

Ray was predeceased by his parents; his son, Raymond Alton Sherrod; and his grandson, Jason W. Curley. He leaves to cherish his memory two loving daughters, Erica Lumsden and husband Matt of Essex Junction, Vt., and Monica Sherrod of Arizona; three grandchildren, Erin Dunning, Megan Curley and Asia Robinson; and his three great-grandchildren, Hadley, Solarin and Analeah. He also leaves a host of relatives and friends.

At Ray’s request, his ashes will be buried in the family plot during a private graveside ceremony at Lakeview Cemetery in Burlington. He asks those who mourn him to reach out and tell somebody you love them in his memory with big smiles and hugs. Donations in Ray’s honor can be made to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, 20 Trafalgar Square, Suite 447, Nashua, NH 03063. Arrangements are in the care of Ready Funeral & Cremation Services. To send your condolences online, please visit cremationsocietycc.com.

Pet ProJect

Meet the winners of the 2025 Best of the Beasts pet photo contest

Whoever had the brilliant/ terrible idea to put a camera in cellphones was undoubtedly a pet owner. Scroll through the photo library of anyone with a dog, cat, snake or parakeet, and the ratio of pet pics to those of friends and family will heavily lean toward our furry, scaly and feathered friends.

And why not? Animals are freaking cute. And more interesting. Here’s a hard truth: If you offer to show a stranger

photos of you at, say, Niagara Falls or of your corgi-Chihuahua mix, Sir Barney, doing, well, pretty much anything, said stranger will choose Barney. Every. Single. Time.

The only thing we love nearly as much as our pets are photos of our pets. For proof, witness the response to the annual Seven Days Best of the Beasts pet photo contest. Next to the Daysies awards — which you can still vote in! — it’s probably the most popular reader-engagement project we do.

Every year, we’re deluged with shots of puppies, kittens, horses, parrots, spiders and even the occasional hedgehog, all vying to be named the Best of the Beasts in a variety of cute-AF categories.

Read on to see who earned top honors this year, from Hank the Belgian Malinois doing doggy things to Bainbridge the cat reading up on her mortal enemies to Molly the mule munching on a wellearned snack.

DAN BOLLES

DOGGONE

ADORABLE

Winner: Hank (Human: Maggie Pyne)

is is a picture I took of my Belgian Malinois, Hank, playing with his favorite toy on the family farm.

Runners-Up

Left: Oakley (Human: Keller Longchamp)

Above: Tahiti (Human: Chelsea Tomat)

Sponsored by:

PURRFECT POSER

Winner: Bainbridge (Human: Stephany Goldzband)

Know thine enemy. is is our black cat, Bainbridge, doing some essential reading at home.

(Human: Emma Pearson)

Right: Loup-Garou (Human: Kevin Duniho)

Lady & the tramp (best pals)

Pippin & Birdie (Human: Tina Shoup)

Birdie (cat) & Pippin (llama) — BFFs furever!

Runners-Up

Below left: Marshall & Toby (Human: Lauren Traister)

Below right: Maddie & Poppy (Human: Rosemary Root)

PET PROJECT

Wild Card

Runners-Up

Winner: Molly (Human: Angela Paladino)

Molly the mule enjoying a snack in Topsham

Below left: Kiwi Cabana Taquito Burrito Hemenez (Human: Paige Bascom)

Below right: Sweet William (Human: Kasie Enman)

Best dressed

Winner: Igor (Human: Michelle Peters)

Igor the ghost dog haunts Burlington’s Old North End — the most adorable phantom you’ll ever meet!

Runners-Up

Below left: Zooey & Oliver (Human: Alexandra Lazar)

Below right: Acorn (Human: Emma Interlandi)

Dogged Pursuit

South Burlington’s Sue Wear seeks — and ﬁnds — lost dogs

and cats

THE Animal Issue

STORY & PHOTOS BY MARY ANN LICKTEIG • maryann@sevendaysvt.com

At 7:15 p.m. on a recent Tuesday, Sue Wear loaded a cat trap into the back of her Subaru Outback. Gustavo, a tabby on the lam since January, had been captured by Wear’s game cameras twice on Monday night and again that morning as he waltzed in and out of a trap, eating the food intended for a missing dog.

It was “game on.”

Gustavo had repeatedly returned to the wooded area o Dorset Street in South Burlington, and he was clearly comfortable walking into a trap. Wear expected to catch him that night. The cameras were already in place, and her car was stocked with other essentials: cat food and a dish. She grabbed a blanket to disguise the trap as a tunnel to make it more inviting and headed for the woods.

Over the past 12 years, Wear has recovered hundreds of lost dogs and cats. The 55-year-old South Burlington woman is a software systems analyst by day and a pet detective by night — and early mornings and weekends. She works “pro bono and with passion,” Alicia Daniel said. For 123 days last year, Wear helped Daniel and her family search for Ruby, the Mexican street dog who bolted from their Burlington home less than 24 hours after the family adopted her. Daniel, a naturalist who understands wildlife behavior, learned a lot from Wear, she said: “I got a PhD in lost dogs in four months.”

Ruby, Mabel, Max, Mama, Sweet Pea, Sugar Babe, Udon, Highway Kitty: Wear has tracked them all — along with a wild turkey, a parakeet and a goat, which she successfully trapped. She doesn’t advertise. Pet owners hear about her, and they text, email or message her on Facebook. Sometimes she sees a post on the Lost & Found Animals of Vermont Facebook page and concludes that a pet owner needs help, and she contacts them.

Two months ago, when the owner of a lost dog solicited opinions on Reddit about “lost pet investigators” who claim on Facebook to employ search teams and drones, another Reddit user replied, “Sue Wear is all u need.”

The self-taught sleuth understands lost pets’ patterns: They move at night. Dogs tend to loop and typically are found within two miles of where they went missing. Cats stay within a mile — indoor-only cats within a tenth of a mile — but they can take longer to ﬁnd because they hide. They’ll

hunker under a porch for two weeks. “They will not eat, they will not drink, and they will eventually pop out,” Wear said.

And Wear will wait. She repeatedly sat in the cold on a stakeout last spring to catch a cat in Colchester. Temperatures dipped into the 30s as she waited to drop a trap on the kitty, which would not walk into a regular one.

She also stayed on the case of Ruby, the Mexican street dog, when the trail went cold for weeks at a time. Ruby was sighted but not caught nine miles south of home on Quaker Smith Point in Shelburne and six miles north on Blakely Road in Colchester. In an attempt to understand the dog’s unusual behavior, Wear even corresponded

THE WORK REQUIRES PATIENCE, DEDICATION AND AN OCCASIONAL CAN OF VIENNA SAUSAGES.

with the rescue worker in Colima, Mexico, who had housed Ruby. She learned that the dog and her two puppies had been found near a restaurant. The worker sent a blanket the puppies had slept on so their scent could be used as a lure.

When she started out tracking pets, Wear refused to take compensation. Now she accepts donations from grateful pet owners to buy the supplies she needs, which include plastic sleeves for lost-pet signs and neon duct tape to stick them on stop signs and make them eye-catching. After she caught Ruby in December — behind the Mexican restaurant Casa Real in Colchester — Daniel’s daughter posted the news on Front Porch Forum, calling Wear “a hometown hero.” She included a link to Wear’s Amazon wish list, and packages started showing up at Wear’s door.

“Literally, at Christmas, it was Christmas,” she said.

Growing up, Wear lived in East Hartford, Conn., with a beagle named Penny and several cats. When she moved to Vermont after college, she volunteered at Greyhound Rescue of Vermont, a shelter for former racing dogs. “I don’t even fully understand why that appealed to me at the time,” she said, “because I wasn’t a real animal person.” Still, she stuck with it for years and adopted a shy greyhound.

She has had other dogs and cats since. None has gone missing, but she got into the pet-finding field in 2013, when she lived in Colchester and heard about a lost dog in her neighborhood. Her own dog Mysty, “a big flu y Lab,” had just died of cancer, she said, and she was looking for connection and something to do. On lunch breaks and after work, she drove around the neighborhood looking for Sugar Babe, a 35-pound American leopard hound, and bumped into Michele Rennie, an Essex woman doing the same thing.

Rennie had no experience, either. It took 64 days to catch the dog, so the two women got to know each other. A third woman joined them, “and we became this little unit ﬁnding dogs,” Rennie said. Eventually there were six volunteers in the Chittenden County group, but since then people have moved, switched jobs or stepped back for other reasons. Some still pitch in from time to time, but Wear is the only one working steadily.

She’s organized and patient, Rennie said of her friend, and she sympathizes with people rather than chastising them for losing an animal. If someone routinely lets a dog out and the dog gets away, “you just can’t play the blame game,” Rennie said, and Sue does not. “She’s really just willing to step in and do whatever is needed for that particular family, for that particular dog or cat.”

Sue Wear setting up a trap to catch Gustavo

Sue Wear

Alicia Daniel with Chalula, formerly known as Ruby

Step one, Wear tells pet owners: Get the word out. Report your lost pet to the police, on Front Porch Forum, and on the Lost & Found Animals of Vermont Facebook page, which has 27,000 followers. There are also lost-pet Facebook pages for Addison County, the Northeast Kingdom, Milton and other areas. Hang signs at intersections within a one-mile radius, and make them simple so drivers can read them while sitting at a stop sign.

Put out food and water where the animal went missing and where it has recently been seen. Place cameras there, if you have them.

And in the case of dogs, though it seems counterintuitive: Stop searching and calling the dog’s name. The most important factor in catching a lost dog is making it feel safe, not like it’s being pursued. Dogs lost for 24 hours or more are scared, and they don’t think clearly, Wear said. When people call them, even their owners, “it just sounds like someone yelling.”

Community help is crucial for homing in on an animal. “Every sighting matters,” Wear said, clapping to emphasize each word. Once the animal has been spotted, she sets up another food station, with another camera, in that location, and she maintains it until

evidence suggests the lost pet has moved on. If the dog or cat keeps coming to eat the food, she said, it’s “game on.”

Wear brings in a trap. First, she zipties the door open because some pets are

suspicious. Drawn to the trap by the liquid smoke food additive Wear sprinkles nearby and the pet food she scatters just inside, some animals hesitate to enter. Wear wants to see them walk calmly into the trap and eat from the dish in the back before she sets the door to close, because when it slams shut, it’s startling. “If that trap starts to close, and that dog gets hit in the butt and gets out, then I’m game over,” Wear said. The animal most certainly won’t be back.

The work requires patience, dedication and an occasional can of Vienna sausages. Sometimes, serendipity plays a role — as in the case of Gustavo the cat.

Wear’s trap in the Dorset Street woods had been tied open to lure a dog named Mabel when Gustavo showed up in May. The cat had been living with a family in a van parked in South Burlington when he slipped away as a 7-monthold in January. Wear heard about him and offered her help to his family, but their efforts failed to turn up a single lead for four months.

Then, in early May, someone posted a photo on the Lost & Found Animals page of a cat sitting in the parking lot at Barnes & Noble. Gustavo has distinctive dark patches, one on each front leg, which

together form a heart. But the cat at the bookstore sat with its tail curled over its front legs. Wear scrutinized the picture, comparing it to a family photo of Gustavo. Each cat had a white peak between its eyes, just off-center. Each had a black line on its nose. His family agreed: That was likely Gustavo. And then he disappeared.

About two weeks later, Wear got pictures of a tabby cat coming by to eat the food she left for Mabel in three locations about a mile from Barnes & Noble. Wouldn’t it be funny if that was Gustavo? she thought, though not seriously. More pictures came in, she said, “and I start to look, and I’m like, Holy shit, that is Gustavo.” He had marched into a trap left to lure Mabel, so that night, Wear took away the dog trap and set a cat trap. She pointed two cameras at it, then went home to sleep with her phone nearby. Pings around 11:15 p.m. alerted her to new photos: One taken at 11:14 showed a cat in the trap. Wear picked it up at 11:30 — “I’m on his schedule,” she said — and shined a flashlight on the cat’s legs. Their spots formed a heart. ➆

INFO

Contact Sue Wear at suewearvt@gmail.com or on Facebook.

Carmen Salvador’s reunion with Gustavo

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Bernie Paquette was easy to identify among the people enjoying Richmond’s Volunteers Green on a sunny spring afternoon. Amid the sunbathers, dog walkers and Frisbee players in the park, the wild bee enthusiast was the one wearing red kneepads, crouching like a baseball catcher behind home plate and pointing a 35-millimeter camera lens toward the ground.

Surrounded by a lush green lawn speckled with dandelions, the barren patch of sand that Paquette had chosen seemed an unlikely spot for photographing bees. But when the nearby Winooski River overﬂowed its banks in July 2023, he explained, the sediment it deposited in this field became prime habitat for the blood bees, cellophane bees and red-tailed mining bees that were poking in and out of holes or darting about in search of mates. Meanwhile, nomad bees were sneaking into other bees’ ground nests to lay their own eggs.

“It’s kind of cool to watch them dig in the sand like dogs,” Paquette said, his camera shutter chattering away. “When people think of bees, they only think honeybees and bumblebees. You’re missing out on the bigger picture, folks!”

In the past few years, Paquette has helped to bring that picture into sharper focus. An amateur naturalist from Jericho Center, he spends as many as eight hours a day photographing wild bees and other insects, then uploads the images to iNaturalist. The free, crowdsourced social network allows citizen scientists to identify and document plants and animals by location for research and conservation.

Since discovering this passion ﬁve years ago, Paquette, who goes by the iNaturalist handle “bugeyedbernie,” has logged more than 28,500 observations of more than 2,000 species. Of the approximately 350 bee species native to Vermont, Paquette has observed and photographed 114 of them, including 104 in his own backyard. One species he discovered in his garden, the mock-orange scissor bee, had never been previously documented in the state. About the only species Paquette doesn’t photograph are common houseﬂies and honeybees, the latter of which aren’t Vermont natives.

Paquette’s equipment isn’t fancy. He shoots with an entry-level 35 millimeter digital camera. Its hefty macro lens requires him to get close to his subjects but results in professional-quality images, which he willingly shares with anyone who wants them, including researchers. After up to eight hours a day photographing, he’ll spend another two to three hours cropping the images, then uploading the ones he likes to iNaturalist.

“I have 70,000 pictures on my computer,” he said. “I can’t save them all.”

Going Apian

Citizen naturalist Bernie Paquette spreads the joy of spotting wild bees and other bugs in one’s own backyard

BY KEN PICARD • ken@sevendaysvt.com

Paquette is now on a mission to get other people, especially young people, as buzzed about bee and bug watching as he is. When he realized that there was no word equivalent to “birding” to describe the practice of observing invertebrates, Paquette coined his own: “inverting.”

Paquette maintains a blog, called VT Bug Eyed, where he publishes his inverting-inspired articles, photos, comics and short stories. He also hosts free “backyard bug safaris,” during which he’ll visit people’s property for an hour or two to identify and photograph the ﬂying and crawling critters living there.

“Seeking insects is like treasure hunting, and observing their behavior is like

going on a wild safari,” he said. “It’s not about getting out a textbook and ﬁnding all the answers. It’s thinking about what you’re observing and asking why.”

Paquette’s wild bee chronicles are all the more impressive given that he has no formal training as a scientist. After 35 years of working at IBM in Essex Junction as a supply chain manager, the Winooski native retired in 2010. In 2016, he joined a nature walk hosted by Alicia Daniel, a University of Vermont instructor who founded the Vermont Master Naturalist Program. The experience inspired him in ways that his work at IBM never did.

“I wish that I’d been able to do something as a career that was like this,” he lamented. “This is the real thing.”

THE Animal Issue

Paquette rarely answers questions directly or succinctly, including a seemingly easy one about his age.

“I am old enough to have children and grandchildren yet young enough to have a curiosity that requires direct sensory experience,” he wrote in one of his many emails I received one morning. Paquette is nearly as proliﬁc at emailing as he is at photographing bugs.

“He’s a character. Half our o ce gets his emails,” Spencer Hardy said with a friendly chuckle. The Jericho farmer runs the Vermont Wild Bee Survey for the Vermont Center for Ecostudies. “But he’s sharp and doing things no one else is doing and asking good questions.”

Hardy sees a lot of value in Paquette’s documentation of wild bees, which are likely suffering the same population decline as honeybees. However, no one can say for sure, he noted, because no one was counting wild bees in Vermont until the mid-2000s.

“iNaturalist is now the largest data source for wild bee records in Vermont,” he added, “in large part because of Bernie.”

With his scruffy white beard and cornﬂower-blue ball cap, its brim dirtsmudged from years of digging in the garden, Paquette gushes with childlike exuberance about his discoveries. When recounting a story, he often flits from one topic to the next, like a bee gathering nectar. During our Richmond outing, he occasionally stopped mid-sentence and dropped to his knees to aim his macro lens at whatever ﬂying insect caught his eye.

“Probably not identifiable by species, but definitely a miner bee,” he surmised, squinting through the viewfinder. When asked if there’s a bee on his bucket list that he hopes to spot one day, he replied, “It’s kind of far-fetched, but if I saw a rustypatched bumblebee, I would—”

“You see him pop his head out of that hole?” he blurted suddenly, interrupting himself. “Isn’t that cool?”

Paquette lives in a 19th-century house o Browns Trace Road with his partner, Maeve Kim, a retired teacher, gardener and avid birder.

“I never paid attention to insects until Bernie and I hooked up about eight years ago,” she said. “It’s totally opened my mind.”

Kim learned, for example, that one pair of chickadees will consume 6,000 to 9,000 caterpillars to raise a single nest of eggs — a relationship that many birders don’t fully appreciate.

Bicolored striped sweat bee

Halloween pennant dragonﬂy

Bernie Paquette

“A lot of people love birds but hate bugs,” she said. “You’ve still got people poisoning their lawns to kill them. And they wonder why they don’t have birds in their yard.”

About five years ago, in an effort to make their own yard more bird-friendly, the couple brought in as many native plants as they could. Paquette transplanted dozens of trees, plants and shrubs from his South Burlington house near the airport, which was about to be torn down. He now keeps a growing list of the more than 200 species they’ve put in, from alder and allium to witch hazel and yarrow. Their boggy and wild garden features 22 fruit-bearing plants, including, Paquette pointed out, the crabapple tree the couple planted for their commitment ceremony a few years ago.

“I’ll try not to tell a story about every plant,” Paquette said while we wandered the garden, then did so anyway.

“He has incredible energy. I don’t know how he does it,” said Donald Miller, a professor emeritus of zoology and ecology at Vermont State University. Miller, 92, taught for nearly four decades at what was then Lyndon State College. He met Paquette on a birding walk in South Burlington almost a decade ago, and the two have been friends ever since.

“I’ve always been amazed with his enthusiasm [for]working with natural history but especially with bees, which are among the more challenging categories of insects to work with,” Miller said. What makes them so challenging?

There are so many wild bee species, he explained, and they’re inherently difficult to identify because their anatomical

structures can be hard to detect. “And, of course, they sting,” he added.

Yet, in his five years of watching bees, Paquette has never once been stung. Maybe he’s just lucky. Or perhaps the bees sense that he poses no threat.

While Paquette spends his winters poring over entomology research papers,

he never claims to be an expert himself. He relies on other iNaturalist users, including an academic in Singapore, to confirm his identifications. His goal isn’t to memorize insect taxonomy or convince others to do so.

Instead, he prefers sharing the fascinating factoids he’s discovered through inverting: Some bees can recognize human

BERNIE PAQUETTE

faces; you can’t stare down a jumping spider; and bumblebees have been known to roll a ball around for no other reason than to play with it.

Last summer, when the couple’s buttonbush bloomed, it attracted more than a dozen species of bees, hoverflies, moths and wasps. From nine in the morning until dusk, Paquette sat quietly beside it, observing and photographing the insects as they took in nourishment.

“I was in heaven; no need to go looking for insects, they were all coming to me,” he wrote to me in an email. “They had little interest in me, but we were all together at the same diner.” ➆

INFO

Contact Bernie Paquette at bernie.paquette@ yahoo.com to make an appointment for a free backyard bug safari on your property or a bird and bug walk with him and Maeve Kim at a local birding hot spot. vtbugeyed. blogspot.com.

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Bleating Hearts

Villa Villekulla Farm’s herd delivers more than delicious dairy

BY MELISSA PASANEN • pasanen@sevendaysvt.com

Asign at Villa Villekulla Farm in Barnard reads “hand-hugged goats.” It could just as truthfully include “goat-hugged farmer.” Technically, of course, the goats cannot hug farmer-cheesemaker Lauren Gitlin, but their abundant, comforting nuzzles keep the one-woman, 50-goat dairy going.

“I got into this line of work because I loved food and I loved cheese and I wanted to learn how to make it,” said Gitlin, 44, a former Rolling Stone reporter, New York City cheesemonger and employee of several Vermont goat dairies.

But over the five years since she started her tiny farmstead operation, Villa Villekulla’s goat milk skyr has become “a means to an end,” said Gitlin, a longtime vegetarian who has an unusual no-kill policy when it comes to her herd. “The big-picture goal is just to be living with

these animals that are so incredible and that have been really nourishing for me.” Gitlin sells her skyr through specialty distributors to select stores and restaurants in New York, Vermont and other New England states. Hand-packed in 16-ounce glass jars, it retails for a minimum of $13 and fetches almost double that in the Big Apple. She describes the tangy, spreadable, creamy product as “if chèvre had a baby with labneh” — essentially, fresh French goat cheese meets Middle Eastern strained yogurt.

Skim-milk skyr from Iceland was Gitlin’s inspiration, though she makes no claims of authenticity for her version, which she crafts with whole milk in her small, aquamarine-colored hilltop creamery.

The creamery is one of four brightly painted farm buildings clustered with the home Gitlin shares with her husband, Teo Žagar, at the end of a steep gravel driveway that must be hair-raising in winter. As Gitlin chatted with a reporter at a picnic table, a striking, percussive rhythm emanated from the coral-red goat barn. Gitlin explained that the “amateur instrumentalist,” a goat named Rippy, likes to rub her teeth against the barn’s metal gate.

THE Animal Issue

“She’s a big John Cage head,” the farmer quipped, referencing the inﬂuential avantgarde composer.

The goats — “all of [whom] have distinct hobbies and interests” — motivate Gitlin to keep putting in 14-hour days as she plots how to steer her money-losing farming enterprise toward covering its expenses.

The ﬂame-haired farmer, who has a goat tattoo peeking from her décolletage, acknowledged that she did not set herself up for success, at least in capitalist terms.

“If I had had more business savvy, I may not have undertaken it at all or would have maybe made some di erent choices,” Gitlin said. “The economics aren’t great.” Gitlin had already made several trips to Vermont to study cheesemaking and visit dairy farms when, in 2014, she sublet her New York City apartment, “bought a crappy used car, and moved my cat and my books up to the Northeast Kingdom.”

Lauren Gitlin at Villa Villekulla Farm

Goats at Villa Villekulla Farm

SIDEdishes

SERVING UP FOOD NEWS

Offbeat Creemee Moves Into Uncommon Coffee in Essex

OFFBEAT CREEMEE fans will soon be able to get their plant-based creemees, scoops, sundaes and shakes once again.

Owner AISHA BASSETT has teamed up with MAYA NGUYEN, owner of UNCOMMON COFFEE, to share space in the Essex café — and yes, there will be affogatos and cold-brew floats.

Bassett is targeting a late-June opening for her new ice cream counter in the back of Uncommon’s spacious, library-like café at 19 Essex Way. She had been operating on a wholesale and pickup basis at a Burlington production space since last fall, when she closed Offbeat’s original scoop shop at Myers Memorial Pool in Winooski’s Landry Park. Now, she will move all production to Uncommon, and the two businesses will share the kitchen.

“Maya and I have been business friends for a couple years now, and we always joked about how cool it would be to team up,” Bassett said. “It happened naturally.”

The two businesses will overlap for a couple of hours in the afternoon, she said; Uncommon is open daily until 3 or 4 p.m., and Bassett expects Offbeat’s initial hours to be 1 to 8 p.m., Thursday through Sunday.

The Offbeat scoop shop menu will feature dairy-free flavors such as chocolate and vanilla creemees and creamsicle, ube and gluten-free brownie batter hard ice cream. Cold-brew floats

— such as one topped with housemade caramel and Biscoffstyle crumbs — will use Uncommon’s cold-brew.

“It’s really hard to sell ice cream by itself, and I think we’ll be able to feed off each other,” Bassett said of the partnership. “And we have similar names: Uncommon and Offbeat. The vibe is there.”

Jordan Barry

The Shopping Bag and Its Noted Burger Grill Have New Owners

An Old North End landmark corner store with a Food Network-anointed burger called the Sizzler changed hands on May 14. Manager MAX PATEL, 25, confirmed that his brothers, YOGESHKUMAR and JIGAR, bought the SHOPPING BAG from brothers JOSH CLAYTON and HOWARD MOODY but declined to share the price.

Don Clayton, Josh and Howard’s father, opened the store on the corner of Burlington’s North and Lafountain

CONNECT

4T-FarrellDist060425 1

Lemon meringue pie sundae in a cone at Offbeat Creemee’s Winooski scoop shop in 2021

Aisha Bassett

Bleating Hearts «

She was thrilled to have landed a job with trailblazing goat farmer and cheesemaker Laini Fondiller of Lazy Lady Farm in Westﬁeld.

From Fondiller, Gitlin said, she learned “what commitment and devotion and hard work it takes” to be a farmstead cheesemaker, which entails both tending the animals and turning their milk into products.

After working on a couple of other Vermont goat farms, Gitlin decided to launch her own in 2019. She started in a rented barn and creamery in Tunbridge with three of Fondiller’s pregnant goats and named it Villa Villekulla after the home of Swedish kids’ book heroine Pippi Longstocking, another spirited redhead.

“I was scared shitless,” Gitlin admitted. “I saw Pippi as a beacon of strength: playful, kind and extremely strong.”

Physical and mental strength are requirements for her job, and May is an especially exhausting month. It starts with kidding, during which Gitlin midwifed the arrivals of nine baby goats, eight of which survived. With the assistance of a shortterm apprentice, she has been juggling twice-daily milkings with bottle-feeding kids four times a day — on top of making and marketing her skyr.

That schedule leaves little time or energy to map the future, yet the need to do so gnaws at Gitlin. She knows she’s lucky that her husband had land on which she could establish Villa Villekulla, she said. But she also invested a signiﬁcant amount into erecting the barn, the kid and buck sheds, and the creamery with a second-ﬂoor apartment to house apprentices and interns.

Among the potential obstacles to ﬁnancial success that Gitlin listed was her decision to make skyr — something “that a lot of people don’t know” — and to package it in expensive glass jars, instead of the plastic she despises. While some have counseled her to add ﬂavors, she prefers to keep it pure, “a clean slate.”

Sticking to her guns, Gitlin has been able to sell the 60 to 80 jars she makes a week.

In Burlington, executive chef Nick Frank, 38, has used Villa Villekulla’s “tart, grassy” skyr at Hen of the Wood, combining it with handfuls of soft, green herbs and swirling the mixture into a base for a salad of local beets and watermelon radishes with Cara Cara oranges. He’s dreaming up a new ﬁsh dish with skyr under warm, coal-roasted spring onions.

Huntington pastry chef Cortney Lucia,

41, who makes desserts for caterers and private chefs with her business Backyard Briar, has long been a fan of “creamy, thick, custardy” skyr in general. She recently whipped Villa Villekulla skyr with a burnt honey-citrus caramel to top a citrus olive oil cake served with bitter orange marmalade, lemon curd and candied cardamom

Lucia ate some of the remaining plain skyr with granola, berries and a little honey. “It’s such a beautiful product,” she said. “It doesn’t need much.”

Andrew Clark, 43, owner of Manhattan’s Formaggio Kitchen, has known Gitlin since her New York City days. “Then she ups and goes to Vermont, tends goats, and makes a food that is unique and vibrant and very satisfying,” he said.

Clark described Villa Villekulla skyr as having “the feeling of the best dense Greek yogurts, and then the goat

A goat at Villa Villekulla Farm

cheese-ness follows for a long, long flavor.” The cheesemonger suggests eating it like any fresh cheese for breakfast, “topped with something crunchy.” Formaggio also sells it slathered on sandwiches with olive oil, prosciutto, figs and arugula.

With more marketing and milk, Gitlin could most likely sell more skyr. But, owing to another firmly held principle, she has no room to expand her herd.

Villa Villekulla is what Gitlin called a “no-kill dairy,” meaning she commits to keeping all of her goats until the natural end of their lives — or until she can find good homes for them elsewhere, a time-consuming task. Dairy operations need, at most, a couple of breeding bucks. So, after every kidding season, the farmer must invest time in rehoming young males, too.

“I’m really picky about where they go,” she said.

Gitlin has been vegetarian for most of her adult life — a choice with which she had always considered cheese to be aligned, she said. Then she learned from her work on Vermont dairy farms that milking goats must regularly produce

offspring to continue lactating and that efficiency-minded farmers cull less productive milkers. Both bucklings and mature goats are often sold for meat.

“The collateral of cheese is that animals are going to die,” Gitlin said flatly. “There’s no such thing as vegetarian cheese.”

Villa Villekulla skyr is as close to vegetarian as Gitlin can make it. Instead of traditional animal stomach rennet, her cheesemaking process uses rennet made from cardoon thistles.

Among her current herd are seven adult goats that are no longer productive milkers or are otherwise “charity cases,” Gitlin said fondly. They include Cuddles, who had an abnormal udder and needed a mastectomy; and Frida, who has deformed hooves and lost her ears to frostbite on another farm.

economic burden unless I start shipping them for meat,” Gitlin said, “and I’m not going to do that.”

Instead, she is investigating new income sources to cover her expensive ethical choice.

LAUREN GITLIN

Draining skyr generates a lot of whey, which she currently barters for vegetables to a neighbor who feeds it to pigs. Gitlin is talking with two other Vermont entrepreneurs about using the whey to make soda and skin care products. She’s also trying to offer a raw milk share, which requires minimal processing and could yield a better profit margin than skyr.

Some potential strategies leverage caprine assets other than milk, such as their omnivorous browsing appetites: A future apprentice will look into hiring out goats to manage invasive plants.

goat she first encountered while working on a southern Vermont farm and who later joined the Villa Villekulla herd. At that farm, Gitlin would often stay back in the field to fence off a fresh grazing paddock after a colleague had led the goats in for milking.

“Mouse had this habit of hanging back with me,” Gitlin recalled. “She’d be like, Not leaving you here, buddy . Like war buddies.”

As she shared this memory, Gitlin choked up. “They give me so much,” she said of the goats. “They’re so affectionate and funny.”

During years when she dealt with depression, “They saved my life,” she said of the goats. “I know that they can do that for other people, too.”

Gitlin has talked with a mental health care provider about training her retired milkers to become therapy animals. It’s another possible way for them to earn their keep — but mostly, she said, she believes others will benefit from the joy of goat snuggles. ➆

The farmer estimates that each goat’s care runs about $175 per month. “There’s no way to get out from underneath that

Another idea is deeply personal for Gitlin.

Her tattoo honors Mouse, a 9-year-old

INFO

Learn more at villavillekullafarm.com.

almost ready: A rhythmic clanging starts on the line as a cook repeatedly chops the whole mess, using metal tools Smith described as “paint scrapers.” Once the sandwich contents have become a gooey, undi erentiated mess, they slap the meat onto the seeded baguette.

That clanging was Pavlovian when I recently dined at Starry Night with my husband and son. I wasn’t that hungry, so we decided to split the cheesesteak, crispy potatoes — which come with sauce gribiche, a punchy dipping sauce that’s part egg salad, part tartar sauce — and a spicy, crunchy Calabrian kale salad ($16) from the main menu. (The meal came with complimentary housemade focaccia and vadouvan curry butter, as all meals at Starry do.)

Say Cheesesteak

Starry Night Café’s new bar menu delivers on a Philly classic

BY JORDAN BARRY • jbarry@sevendaysvt.com

When I dined at Starry Night Café last spring, I ate deconstructed steak tartare, coalroasted root vegetables with Cabot clothbound cheddar espuma and mafaldine with wild morel ragù. This spring, I got a Philly cheesesteak.

Starry Night’s rendition of the sandwich, which was about the size of my forearm, isn’t a concept shift or a one-o special for the Ferrisburgh destination restaurant. It’s an everyday addition to the new two-item bar menu, featuring just the cheesesteak ($25) and crispy ﬁngerling potatoes ($14).

Chef Robert Smith III’s full menu of Italian-inﬂected California cuisine is also available in the restaurant’s front barroom, which was renovated last year. Unlike the rest of the restaurant, the bar is typically saved for drop-in diners without reservations. The cheesesteak, Smith explained, is a more low-key option that he hopes will encourage more casual visits.

“It’s what people want to eat,” Smith said, noting that he never thought he’d put a Philly on the menu.

While a burger would have been the expected bar-menu move, the simplicity of a cheesesteak — just bread, onions, meat and cheese, no substitutions — makes it

more practical for the kitchen team. That simplicity also makes it hard to get right, especially for those who grew up eating the sandwich at the source.

“I’m from Philadelphia, and I rarely enjoy a cheesesteak outside of Philly,” said Katie Rose Seward, owner and farmer at Charlotte’s Head Over Fields. Starry Night’s version — with local beef, housemade hoagie rolls and Cooper Sharp, an American cheese that’s been a Philadelphia staple for more than a century — “rivals the best,” Seward said.

“Let me put it this way,” she continued.

Paper-thin rib eye is the classic cheesesteak cut. At Starry Night, Smith opts for chuck roll from Ferrisburgh’s Deer Valley Farm — a “fatty cut right where the rib eye and the chuck meet,” he said. Slicing it while it’s frozen is the secret to getting it super thin.

MY MOM MAKES THE BEST CHEESESTEAK I’VE EVER HAD … UNTIL NOW.

KATIE ROSE SEWARD

“My mom makes the best cheesesteak I’ve ever had … until now.”

That hoagie roll is the result of a two-day ferment, baked at a high temperature to ensure a nice rise. Each loaf — which ends up being two sandwiches — is coated end to end in benne seeds, an heirloom variety of sesame seed that packs an earthy punch and gives the bread a third contrasting texture: chewy, in addition to crusty and ﬂu y.

When a Philly ticket comes through — the busy kitchen can make up to 12 a night — chefs throw onions in a pan with beef fat, salt and pepper. When the onions are cooked, they set them aside and crank the heat before adding the meat while it’s still frozen, which keeps it from sticking together in the pan.

“The meat’s so cold that it drops the temperature, so you have to have the pan really hot,” Smith said. “Then it just sears right up.”

Then the onions return, along with the ever-so-important Cooper Sharp cheese, which melts as if it had no other purpose in life.

At this point, diners in the barroom will hear the telltale cue that their sandwich is

The chopping symphony immediately triggered my appetite. I sipped my Hill Farmstead Brewery Di erence & Repetition IPA to hide my drooling.

$25 might seem like a lot for a cheesesteak, though it’s a bargain at Starry, where entrées are typically $40 and up. And when one sandwich is enough for two people, the price is equally easy to swallow.

Smith said he can tell who’s eating a cheesesteak by watching heads nod through the window from the kitchen into the barroom. He certainly could have clocked my ﬁrst bite, as my satisﬁed nod stretched the range of my neck. My husband was less subtle, dropping an expletive loud enough that I thought our toddler might repeat it.

Then we got quiet, each eating our hefty half in one go and savoring every cheesy, gooey bit. Our toddler, nibbling meat I begrudgingly shared, looked around the room and broke the silence, asking, “Ball?”

He had clearly picked up on the vibe. There are no TVs in Starry Night’s elegant barroom, but with an excellent cheesesteak and a cold beer, watching a baseball game would have made perfect sense. ➆

“One Dish” is a series that samples a single menu item — new, classic or ﬂeeting — at a Vermont restaurant or other food venue. Know of a great plate we should feature? Drop us a line: food@sevendaysvt.com.

INFO

Starry Night Café, 5371 Route 7, Ferrisburgh, 877-6316, starrynightcafe.com. Bite-size cheesesteaks and other snacks will be available at Starry Fest — a community event celebrating the restaurant’s 25th birthday — on Saturday, June 7, 4 to 7 p.m.

Philly cheesesteak, cut in half, at Starry Night Café

JORDAN BARRY

SIDEdishes

streets with his father-in-law, John Vincent, in 1974. The Shopping Bag’s loaded half-pound burger, originally called the Scibek Sizzler after a local beat cop, was named the state’s best burger in 2009 by Food Network Magazine

DOUG OLSAVER, who started working at the Shopping Bag in 1991, at age 15, said nothing has changed substantially under the new owners and he expects to stay on.

The Patels have replaced the grocery shelving, the display shelves behind the checkout counter and the counter itself. Max said he hopes to upgrade the worn ﬂooring soon, too, but plans no other major changes.

The Patel family hails originally from the Indian state of Gujarat. The Vermont Secretary of State’s O ce business registry database lists Yogeshkumar and Jigar as principals of a Swanton gas station and convenience store. They have also registered as principals of a not-yetopened store in Lyndonville. Max said they own convenience stores in New Hampshire as well.

When asked why his brothers decided to buy the Shopping Bag, he said, “We like this store. We like the people here.”

Melissa Pasanen

Einstein’s Tap House Adds Fizzicks Craft Cocktail Lounge

EINSTEIN’S TAP HOUSE at 165 Church Street in Burlington has added a new space called FIZZICKS CRAFT COCKTAIL LOUNGE within its second-story venue. Co-owner RENBOURN CHOCK, 28, said he and ROGUEN CARLSON, 32, decided to remodel a former pool room o the main bar with intimate

from its founding owner, TOM MASSEY, for $225,000 about 18 months ago. The business partners have since expanded the entertainment calendar beyond DJs to include Latin dance nights and comedy, drag and burlesque shows. The main Einstein’s bar still o ers 32 beers on tap and standard cocktails.

The food menu is currently limited to chips and housemade guacamole, but the bar occasionally hosts pop-up food events. Customers are welcome to bring in takeout from neighboring restaurants, Chock said.

Entrées and Exits:

Dinner service returns on Friday, July 4, with Wednesday through Saturday hours. Led by recently hired director of food and beverage and executive chef MARC ST. JACQUES, the meals might include smoked ham with savory beignets and housemade mostarda; grass-fed, bone-in rib eye with crispy beef-fat potatoes and garden Béarnaise; and rhubarb-glazed half chicken with farm-foraged shiitake mushrooms. Reservations, which are required, go live on philoridgefarm.com on Monday, June 16.

booths, ambient lighting and a menu of creative mixed drinks.

“We thought we should have more fun with this cocktail thing. It’s a playground for us to mess around with drinks and a nice space to have a conversation,” Chock said. “We were craving the fanciness.”

In addition to classic cocktails, Fizzicks makes seven house specialties, such as a cereal milk punch featuring Froot Loops, Brazilian cachaça and the herbal liqueur Strega. Another creation, the Salad, “is a drink that’s worth two WTFs: the ﬁrst when you hear the concept and the second when you taste it,” Chock said. It includes house-infused cucumber vodka, a vinegar shrub made with bottled Italian dressing and olive juice.

Carlson and Chock have both worked at Einstein’s since it opened in February 2020. Chock said they bought the bar

Chittenden County Restaurant & Café News

PHILO RIDGE FARM in Charlotte has announced reopening dates for its market and restaurant, which have been closed since late 2023 as the regenerative farm transitioned to a nonproﬁt. The market — which features organic produce and grass-fed meat grown on the farm, as well as picnic lunches, pastries, co ee and local goods — will relaunch on Wednesday, June 18. Hours will be Wednesday through Sunday, 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The farm will also add two casual dining options this summer: the outdoor Summer Barn (no reservations required) and Sundays on the Ridge, a family-friendly weekly event with grilled dishes, tours and children’s activities, starting Sunday, July 20.

Elsewhere in Chittenden County, several food businesses have closed their doors. This spring brought the end of Burlington’s Café St. Paul — a counter-service breakfast and lunch spot at 196 St. Paul Street — and Sushi Maeda, which closed for renovations in mid-February.

Master sushi chef Kazutoshi (Mike) Maeda’s Cherry Street space now has a large “Building for Lease” sign in the window.

Despacito, the vegan restaurant at 294 North Winooski Avenue, announced its closure on social media on May 23. Earlier that month, the music venue attached to the business had stopped hosting shows, citing capacity changes imposed by Burlington’s ﬁre marshal.

The Despacito name and business are not for sale, the post said, but an open house showing the leased restaurant space and available kitchen equipment took place on May 24, along with “a proper goodbye.”

The Cup & Leaf, a specialty co ee shop in the Essex Towne Marketplace o Susie Wilson Road, has also permanently closed after a short run. Owner MICHAEL SANDS, who opened the café in late 2024, conﬁrmed the news in a message to Seven Days, writing, “Circumstances have forced my hand.”

M.P.

A burger at the Shopping Bag

Cocktails at Fizzicks Craft Cocktail Lounge

Philo Ridge Farm’s warm asparagus with green garlic, goat cheese mousse and fresh herb vinaigrette

Long Time Going

Book review: e Afterlife Project, Tim Weed

BY MARGOT HARRISON • margot@sevendaysvt.com

The big challenge for authors of climate ﬁction — often snappily shortened to “cli-ﬁ ” — is that environmental collapse doesn’t lend itself to inspiring stories. Early in Tim Weed’s new novel, The Afterlife Project, the author delivers a précis of the 21st century that could come straight from your daily doomscrolling:

BOOKS

Bills coming due for those heady decades of optimism and a uence and devil-may-care consumption built on fossil fuels. Deadly weather, raging wildﬁ res, melting icecaps, acidifying oceans. Drought and famine, dislocation and war, fracturing societies, mushrooming authoritarianism.

Sounds like a cheery tale to see you o to bed, right? Not quite. But The Afterlife Project , short-listed for the 2023 Prism Prize for Climate Literature, is no slog, either. In his third work of ﬁction, Putney author Weed sidesteps both The Roadstyle grimness and the preachiness of many more “upbeat” cli-ﬁ works. He’s crafted a dark yet hopeful story that is engrossing enough to be a beach read, if descriptions of reshaped coastlines and dead oceans don’t put you o .

In creating his near-future setting, Weed takes a page from P.D. James’ novel The Children of Men (source of Alfonso Cuarón’s ﬁ lm). In the 2040s, we learn early in The Afterlife Project, the release of Arctic methane turbo-charged global warming. Humanity’s efforts to save itself via technology backﬁred spectacularly, resulting in a “hyperpandemic” that killed most of the population and rendered nearly all the rest sterile.

Game over for the human race, right? Not according to Dr. Natalie Quist, genius scion of a tech billionaire, who has invented a “Time Dilation Sphere” with the power to transport a few people into the distant future. There she hopes

they will be able to reseed Homo sapiens on a restored Earth and “give our species a chance to get it right this time.”

The trick is finding subjects who can still reproduce — such as Natalie’s boyfriend, Nicholas Hindman, whose research work in extreme environments

conferred immunity to the plague. As the novel opens, Nick emerges from the Time Dilation Sphere to ﬁ nd himself 10,000 years in the future — and completely alone. Natalie’s quest to ﬁnd a fertile Eve for his Adam appears to have failed.

The Afterlife Project is actually two

THE DARK YET HOPEFUL STORY IS ENGROSSING ENOUGH TO BE A BEACH READ, IF DESCRIPTIONS OF DEAD OCEANS DON’T PUT YOU OFF.

stories, unfolding in alternating chapters. In one narrative thread, long after the collapse of civilization, Nick explores his surroundings in the former New Hampshire, survives as a hunter-gatherer and makes jaunts into the wilderness in hopes of finding an enduring human population. In the other thread, back in 2068, Natalie and a small crew set off on a voyage across the Atlantic in a vintage sloop. Their goal: to locate a fertile mate for Nick on the volcanic Italian island of Stromboli.

While the Nick chapters are in third person, Weed frames the 2068 sections as a found narrative: the journal of Alejandra Morgan-Ochoa, one of Natalie’s crew. A personable narrator, with just the right blend of idealism and acerbic relatability (“I would trade a few gold bars for a café Cubano or a hot chai with fresh cow milk,” she laments of post-collapse conditions), Alejandra doesn’t let the decline of humanity stop her from appreciating sunsets — or falling in love.

Weed draws on his experience as an international travel guide and cofounder of the Cuba Writers Program to depict this voyage with a richness of detail that makes it thoroughly plausible. The scientists’ last-ditch mission soon becomes a rip-roaring adventure, albeit one overshadowed by the enormous stakes of their endeavor. Weed keeps readers on the edge of their seats as we wait to discover whether, in Alejandra’s words, “this voyage in the twilight of humanity’s dominion on this ailing planet has been

COURTESY

Tim Weed

a fool’s errand or, as we hope, an inspired roll of the dice.”

Nick’s narrative is necessarily less eventful than Alejandra’s. As if living out a doomsday version of the kids’ classic My Side of the Mountain , he forages, hikes, redomesticates some domestic cats (clearly the evolutionary winners), and uses magic mushrooms to hallucinate companionship and meaning into his solitary existence. Convinced he’s the last person on Earth, he wonders with mounting urgency whether life is worth living when the whole “treasure trove” of human civilization persists “only in the dwindling memory of one pitifully inadequate mind.”

A story of one guy woolgathering in the woods might not sound riveting, but Weed ﬁ nds ways to keep our attention. Nick’s reflections yield passages of almost unbearable poignancy, whether he’s savoring the teeming life of a virgin forest or encountering all-but-e aced traces of the human footprint. (Boston? Mostly gone. Burlington? Totally.)

Remembering a trip to Dinosaur National Monument as a child, when he ﬁrst sensed the “otherworldly vastness of geological time,” Nick reminisces about a vanished world in which humanity’s own extinction was already foreshadowed:

From Dinosaur they drove west, into the heart of fossil gas extraction country, stopping for another picnic dinner at a highway pullout: cheddar cheese, summer sausage, and more of those improbably fat blueberries. Light and shadow; the golden-red dusk still hazy from the forest fires; the tall orange flames of the flaring wells like monumental torches arranged across the desert landscape.

In such passages, Weed reminds us why cli-fi matters: The tools of ﬁction, including elegiac literary prose, empower him to push past numbing statistics and bring home the impact of environmental crisis on the individual. Granted, addressing real issues with the free hand of a novelist can also have its drawbacks. If you’re a connoisseur of collapse-of-civilization stories, you know they often have a way of evolving (or devolving) into Garden of Eden fantasies in which a middle-aged protagonist discovers it’s his duty to breed with a nubile young survivor. Early on, Weed teases us with a scene in which Nick dreams of his Eve emerging from

her own Time Dilation Sphere, working every purple cliché of such ﬁ ction (“Suddenly they’re holding each other, the generous breasts beneath her deerskin tunic ﬂattening into his chest.”)

While I won’t spoil later developments, you can rest assured that Weed knows exactly what he’s doing, and The Afterlife Project is not that kind of fantasy. For this author, the antidote to despair is not wishful thinking about undoing original sin and returning to a Rousseauean state of nature. On the contrary, the novel’s central characters — Nick, Alejandra, Natalie — ﬁnd their strength in a quantum vision of time, in which the past is never past and every e ort matters, no matter how seemingly futile.

We still lack a word for the peculiar anticipatory nostalgia of stories about the end of the human race — stories that no one should be left to tell. If you were moved by Flow, this year’s Oscarwinning animation about a cat adrift in a post-human world, The Afterlife Project will likewise wrest tears from you. As Nick experiences the verdancy of a reborn Earth, he realizes that “nature will ﬁnd a way,” with or without human agency. The sentiment that rang so ominously in Jurassic Park (“Life ﬁnds a way”) reads here as a noble a rmation of hope against despair. ➆

INFO

e Afterlife Project by Tim Weed, Podium Publishing, 272 pages. $19.99.

Weed appears in conversation with Chard deNiord on Saturday, June 7, 6 p.m., at Northshire Bookstore in Manchester Center. timweed.net, northshire.com

The Write Stu

Rebel With a Clause follows one woman’s cross-country journey to answer Americans’ grammar questions

BY KEN PICARD • ken@sevendaysvt.com

Where do you stand on the Oxford comma? Do you struggle to remember when to choose “who” or “whom,” “a ect” or “e ect,” and “lay” or “lie”? Does hearing someone end a sentence with a preposition make your head explode? Or, when someone corrects you for doing so, perhaps you reply as Winston Churchill allegedly did: “This is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put.”

Some see grammar as a minefield of split infinitives, misplaced modifiers and subject-verb disagreements. But for Ellen Jovin — who has no objection to starting a sentence with “but” — it’s a joyous, messy and often laughter-inducing a air.

The 59-year-old author, teacher and selfdescribed grammar guru, who has studied more than 25 languages, spent years driving around the U.S. with her ﬁlmmaker husband, Brandt Johnson. In parks and on street corners, Jovin set up a folding table and answered people’s questions about commas, apostrophes, pronouns and pronunciation.

The couple’s epic road trip became the subject of Rebel With a Clause, an 86-minute documentary that is screening on Thursday, June 5, at New Hampshire’s Lebanon Opera House. The movie chronicles Jovin and Johnson’s visits to all 50 states with her “grammar table,” where she invited people to ask their language-related questions

JOVIN ASSERTS THAT MANY OF OUR SO-CALLED “RULES” ARE NOTHING MORE THAN CONVENTIONS THAT CONTINUE TO EVOLVE.

when people get that punctilious about punctuation.”

— and posed a few of her own.

Jovin, cofounder of the communication skills training ﬁrm Syntaxis in New York City, began the odyssey on September 21, 2018, by setting up her pop-up advice stand on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Within a minute, passersby were engaging her in oftenimpassioned discussions about word usage, sentence structure and their least favorite ways in which other people mangle the English language.

“I love grammar,” Jovin says in the ﬁlm. “I love language, and I just love talking about it.”

Clearly, Jovin is not alone. As Johnson, 59, watched his wife’s sidewalk encounters, he realized he was witnessing something more than tutorials for the grammatically impaired. Jovin was connecting with people on a level that transcended race, gender, ethnicity, class and politics. That December, he started ﬁlming it.

“It was beautiful to me,” Johnson told Seven Days, “and I wanted to share it with the world.”

By February 2019, Jovin and Johnson were on the road, making stops in

Milwaukee; Santa Fe, N.M.; Nashville, Tenn.; Austin, Texas; and New Orleans. They even paid a visit to Middlebury, Vt., which appears brieﬂy in the movie. By 2020, when COVID-19 forced the temporary tabling of the grammar table, the couple had already visited 47 states. By the time pandemic restrictions were lifted, Jovin had published her best-selling 2022 book Rebel With a Clause: Tales and Tips From a Roving Grammarian , and Johnson was nearly done editing the documentary. (He handled the entire technical production himself.) In all, the pair logged more than 50,000 miles, not including their ﬂights to the last two states: Alaska and Hawaii.

Jovin and Johnson are now in the midst of a multicity tour of Rebel With a Clause, which includes Q&As with Jovin at each screening. The couple sat down for a Zoom interview with Seven Days in a spare moment between their four daily screenings.

“I just had a long conversation with someone over the use of commas before ‘but,’” Jovin said. “It’s a little funny to me

Though Jovin refers to the stand as her “grammar table,” she also happily ﬁelds questions about punctuation, spelling, pronunciation, and even regional and generational di erences. (Jovin and Johnson were both born before 1970, so they say “by accident” rather than “on accident.”) Jovin is neither a scold nor a stickler for rules — “There are no judgments at the grammar table!” she proclaims — and she rarely gets irked. One exception: when people grumble that someone else’s question isn’t a grammatical point. “To me, that’s just really pedantic,” she said. Jovin asserts that many of our so-called “rules” are nothing more than conventions that continue to evolve. When, for example, people object to someone’s use of commas, she said, it’s usually because “it doesn’t correspond to their recollection of what Miss Smith taught them in sixthgrade English class.” Her prime directive is always clarity, not adherence to tradition.

People who aren’t word nerds may assume that Rebel With a Clause won’t be their cup of tea. Yet the movie is fun, upbeat, occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, and touching without becoming sappy or cloying.

In case you’re curious, Jovin and Johnson do occasionally disagree on points of grammar.

“Brandt is more likely than I am to preserve the nominative form of pronouns after a linking verb. In other words, ‘Was that he?’” Jovin said. “Whereas I don’t care anymore, and I feel that that’s a little unnatural and say, ‘Was that him?’” What married couple hasn’t squabbled over that issue?

Beyond illuminating how Americans write and talk, Rebel With a Clause speaks to our shared humanity.

“We’re all connected by the words we use,” Jovin says in the ﬁlm. “The grammar table is a constant reminder to me that you cannot know ... what’s inside people’s hearts and what’s inside their minds until they choose to share that with you.” ➆

INFO

Rebel With a Clause screening and Q&A, ursday, June 5, 7 p.m., at Lebanon Opera House in Lebanon, N.H. $20. lebanonoperahouse.org

Ellen Jovin

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To the Max

A home and garden tour of Fern Crete’s maximalist oasis in Burlington

AND

Walking into Fern Crete’s home in Burlington is an overwhelming sensory experience. Classical music plays nonstop, and an orchestra of clocks tick and chime. The house, which has a modernist exterior, resembles a French château inside and is packed with sumptuous antiques, including chandeliers and lamps with unique shades that gently illuminate a seven-foot-tall stu ed peacock in the Bird Room and a roaring polar bear head mounted in the living room.

painting six years ago. In contrast to the busy house, the backyard is a soothing, lush green space. It’s ﬁlled with art, too, but also bonsai, conifers and, of course, ferns.

In the latest episode of “Stuck in Vermont,” Seven Days senior multimedia producer Eva Sollberger got a tour of the maximalist dream home and walked through the peaceful gardens. Crete’s scene-stealing rescue pug, LouLou, tagged along.

can be, the green garden is restful and zen. Crete said working in it helps erase his “stinking thinking,” which is also why I love gardening. The two spaces balance each other superbly and perhaps represent two sides of Crete.

What attracts you to these unique homes?

I have featured dozens of interesting homes and gardens over the years, and this is my favorite kind of story. Peeking into people’s everyday spaces gives insight into the complex humans who live there. For me, it all started with Peter King’s tiny home in Johnson, which I ﬁlmed in 2008. That video has almost 300,000 views and still gets comments. The minimalist tiny house is the opposite of Crete’s maximalist home, and they both are fascinating character studies.

What are Crete’s plans for the future?

Like many other senior citizens on a ﬁxed income, Crete is concerned about being able to stay in his home with the rising cost of living in Burlington. He has put so much time and energy into this special space over the past 30 years. I hope he can spend the rest of his days there.

Sollberger spoke with Seven Days about ﬁlming the episode.

How did you hear about Crete?

How can people see his home and garden?

Crete, 79, is a retired nurse who grew up in Barre, and he has been collecting antiques since his early twenties. That’s also when he moved to Burlington and came out as gay. For the past 30 years, Crete has been adorning his home in the New North End with his treasures. The walls are covered in decorative hangings as well as his own artwork — he began

I got an email about Crete from his neighbor last fall. I waited until spring to catch his garden in bloom, and — oh, boy — it was worth the wait. I kept gasping as we walked through his house and backyard, which Crete found entertaining. I asked him how he would describe his house, and he responded, “Over the top. Maximalist.” Crete’s house and garden have very di erent vibes. As frenetic as the interior

Crete’s home was featured in Preservation Burlington’s annual Homes Tour in 2023. He told me that it created a bit of a roadblock because people didn’t want to leave — I felt the same way. If you missed that tour, Crete’s neighborhood has an annual garage sale coming up. On Saturday, June 7, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., you can visit Crete and his gardens on Saratoga Avenue. Maybe you’ll even score some beloved treasures of your own. ➆

producer Eva Sollberger has been making her award-winning video series, “Stuck in Vermont,” since 2007. New episodes appear on the Seven Days website every other ursday and air the following night on the WCAX evening news. Sign up at sevendaysvt. com to receive an email alert each time a new one drops. And check these pages every other week for insights on the episodes.

Fern Crete with LouLou

Summer in the City Series Aims to Cool Tensions in Downtown Burlington

BY ADELLE MACDOWELL

There’s no sugarcoating it: Downtown Burlington is at a challenging crossroads. Budget cuts, seemingly never-ending construction, homelessness, addiction and crime have darkened the Queen City’s once-bright cultural and commercial center. But this summer, two city organizations hope to remind locals and

tourists alike that Burlington still has a lot to offer.

Coproduced by Burlington City Arts and Love Burlington, the new Summer in the City series presents more than 80 free events in City Hall Park and on the Church Street Marketplace. Ranging from live music to art installations to movie nights, the lineup includes longtime summer staples such as the lunchtime Summer Concert Series and Sunday Classical performances. Splash Dance, a DJ dance party on the park’s splash fountain, gives people a place to cool off on Fridays and Saturdays.

Summer in the City kicks off at City Hall Park with local jazz band Bruce Sklar Trio on Wednesday, June 4. Andrew Richards Quartet and Splash Dance with DJ Richie Conte follow on Friday, June 6.

Bigger-name acts will balance a slate of community favorites and up-and-coming musicians throughout the summer. Highlights include two groups hailing from Boston: Copilot, an Americana-pop band, and Cold Chocolate, who combine folk, funk and bluegrass.

Later in the season, Thursday evenings will feature Party on the Bricks with live music on the Marketplace, as well as Flicks in the Park, an outdoor film series in partnership with Vermont International Film Foundation. A sidewalk sale on the Marketplace will take place from August 6 to 10.

A summer exhibition on display from June 6 through September 14 at the BCA Center will feature the work of Jacob Hashimoto, who uses collage and printmaking to create suspended three-dimensional art. His mesmerizing site-specific installation, “a lowercase sky,” will respond to the architecture of the building.

New this summer is the Twilight Block Party, happening in City Hall Park every other Saturday from June through September. The event combines BCA’s Twilight Concerts and BTV Market into one, with concerts by bigger regional bands, food and drink, and local artist vendors.

BCA festival and events director Zach Williamson, who curated the series, is most excited for these block parties. Merging the concert series and market also allows BCA to cut production and staff costs in a year of budget constraints.

“We’re economizing while also doing exciting things,” Williamson said.

While BCA navigates a tight budget, it is also concerned about the vitality of the arts on a national scale. Amid federal cuts to the arts, which BCA described in a press release as “devastating,” the organization remains committed to making art accessible to all, Williamson said.

“We can see that what we do in City Hall Park is more and more important every day,” he said.

Williamson added that BCA events in the park often help ease downtown tensions on hot summer days. Live events bring “a completely different feeling to the park,” he said — “a feeling of community, a feeling of safety, of understanding.”

Art, he continued, can be part of the solution to what ails the city.

“It really discourages inappropriate behavior and encourages really positive behavior,” he said. “So through that, you can see that art really is essential if we’re going to turn Burlington around.” ➆

INFO

Find the full Summer in the City schedule at burlingtoncityarts.org.

Job of theWeek

Program Ofﬁcer for Climate & Environment

Vermont Community Foundation

What are some speciﬁc challenges of this position?

is position sets strategic direction for grantmaking that supports programs and projects focused on climate resilient communities and environmental adaptions to changing climate conditions. is is urgent work. rough two years of ﬂood disasters, this boots-on-theground role continues to connect directly with communities and organizational partners to better understand their challenges and needs. Bringing that valuable information back to our Community Impact team helps direct grantmaking opportunities and allows us to work in partnership with stakeholders to strategize solutions for a resilient future.

What would you tell someone who is curious about VCF and interested in working there?

We connect deeply with communities and the people who are dedicated to supporting a strong and resilient Vermont. Our staff love working at VCF because we are making a positive impact. Knowing that a little piece of what we do contributes to vibrant communities makes for a great work environment! Staff describe our workplace culture as collaborative, friendly, supportive and welcoming. It is a great feeling to work alongside passionate, smart people who care deeply about making Vermont a great place to live and work for everyone.

Apply for this great local job and many more: jobs.sevendaysvt.com

Twilight Block Party bands Cold Chocolate and Cricket Blue

Get the scoop on this gig from Jessie Schmidt, Director of Strategic Initiatives

SCAN TO VIEW THE SCHEDULE, FAQ, AND MORE:

JUNE 4

4:30 PM FLYNNTONES JAZZ ENSEMBLE (CITY HALL PARK)

5:30 PM JAZZ FESTIVAL KICKOFF CELEBRATION FEATURING LINCOLN SPRAGUE TRIO (FLYNN SPACE)

8:30 PM JON MCBRIDE’S BIG EASY WITH SPECIAL GUEST RYAN MONTBLEAU (BIG JOE'S)

@ FLYNNCENTER

10 PM GRIPPO SKLAR QUARTET FEATURING JD HAENNI AND GABE JARRETT (BIG JOE'S)

11:30 PM SITTIN’ IN OPEN JAM HOSTED BY ANTHONY TIDD (BIG JOE'S)

JUNE 5

5:30 PM VORCZA (FLYNN SPACE)

7:30 PM PARIS MONSTER (FLYNN SPACE)

8:30 PM RACHEL AMBAYE QUARTET (BIG JOE’S)

9:30 PM JAMES FRANCIES (FLYNN SPACE)

10 PM PARKER SHPER ENSEMBLE (BIG JOE’S)

JUNE 8, 6PM

11:30 PM SITTIN’ IN OPEN JAM HOSTED BY ANTHONY TIDD (BIG JOE’S)

FEATURING RAVI COLTRANE & BRANDEE YOUNGER

TICKETED SHOWS ON THE FLYNN MAIN STAGE: TICKETS AT FLYNNVT.ORG ALL FLYNN SPACE, BIG JOE'S, & WATERFRONT PARK SHOWS ARE

JUNE

4:30 PM TAD CAUTIOUS (WATERFRONT PARK)

5:30 PM ROY HARGROVE BIG BAND (WATERFRONT PARK)

6:55 PM KAT WRIGHT (WATERFRONT PARK)

8 PM OKAN (WATERFRONT PARK)

9:25 PM A CELEBRATION OF THE METERS: DUMPSTAPHUNK FEATURING GEORGE PORTER JR. (WATERFRONT PARK)

5:30 PM NICOLE MITCHELL (FLYNN SPACE)

7:30 PM IMMANUEL WILKINS (FLYNN SPACE)

8:30 PM JANÉA HUDSON QUINTET (BIG JOE’S)

10 PM SARA SERPA & ANDRÉ MATOS (BIG JOE’S)

11:30 PM SITTIN’ IN OPEN JAM HOSTED BY ANTHONY TIDD (BIG JOE’S)

JUNE

4 PM DJ TAKA (WATERFRONT PARK)

5 PM SABOUYOUMA (WATERFRONT PARK)

6:20 PM ANTHONY TIDD’S QUITE SANE (WATERFRONT PARK)

7:40 PM BUTCHER BROWN (WATERFRONT PARK)

9:15 PM THE SOUL REBELS WITH SPECIAL GUESTS RAKIM & TALIB KWELI (WATERFRONT PARK)

12 PM STEVE LEHMAN TRIO WITH SPECIAL GUEST PAUL CORNISH (FLYNN SPACE)

8:30 PM TIFFANY PFEIFFER TRIO (BIG JOE’S)

9:30 PM TIDD SHIM LEHMAN REID: TRIBUTE TO THE SUN RA MARSHALL ALLEN CONTINUUM! (FLYNN SPACE)

10 PM DAN RYAN EXPRESS (BIG JOE’S)

11:30 PM SITTIN’ IN OPEN JAM HOSTED BY ANTHONY TIDD (BIG JOE’S)

JUNE

3 PM AVI SALLOWAY & FRIENDS (SKINNY PANCAKE)

5 PM SONIDO MAL MAIZ (SKINNY PANCAKE)

12:20 PM LYNDON INSTITUTE JAZZ BAND (TOP OF CHURCH ST.)

12:35 PM EDMUNDS MIDDLE SCHOOL JAZZ BAND (BOTTOM OF CHURCH ST.)

1:00 PM U-32 JAZZ BAND (MIDDLE CHURCH ST.)

1:25 PM HUNT MIDDLE SCHOOL JAZZ BAND (BOTTOM OF CHURCH ST.)

1:40 PM BRMS JAZZ BAND (TOP OF CHURCH ST.)

2:15 PM BHS JAZZ BAND (BOTTOM OF CHURCH ST.)

2:20 PM RUTLAND HS JAZZ ENSEMBLE (MIDDLE CHURCH ST.)

3:00 PM WINOOSKI HS JAZZ BAND (TOP OF CHURCH ST.)

3:35 PM THE COMMODORE JAZZ BAND (BOTTOM OF CHURCH ST.)

4:00 PM WINOOSKI HS CHORUS (BOTTOM OF CHURCH ST.)

JUNE 5

11:00 AM ST. JOHNSBURY MIDDLE SCHOOL JAZZ BAND (BOTTOM OF CHURCH ST.)

JUNE

11:00 AM LELAND & GRAY HS JAZZ BAND (BOTTOM OF CHURCH ST.)

11:00 AM HCS JAZZ BAND (TOP OF CHURCH ST.)

11:40 AM LUHS JAZZ (MIDDLE CHURCH ST.)

12:20 PM NE CLINTON HS JAZZ BAND (BOTTOM OF CHURCH ST.)

12:20 PM RUTLAND TOWN MIDDLE SCHOOL (TOP OF CHURCH ST.)

1:00 PM MILL RIVER JAZZ ENSEMBLE (MIDDLE CHURCH ST.)

1:40 PM ADL JAZZ BAND (BOTTOM OF CHURCH ST.)

1:40 PM SBHS JAZZ BAND (TOP OF CHURCH ST.)

2:20 PM KENMORE WEST BOMBO COMBO- MIDNITE BLUE (MIDDLE CHURCH ST.)

11:00 AM WESTSIDE JAZZ COMBO (TOP OF CHURCH ST.)

8:30 PM MELISSA ALDANA (BIG JOE’S)

10 PM MELISSA ALDANA (BIG JOE’S)

11:30 PM SITTIN’ IN OPEN JAM HOSTED BY ANTHONY TIDD (BIG JOE’S)

SCHOOL

BANDS ON THE CHURCH ST. MARKETPLACE

JUNE 4

11:00 AM SUSTAINABILITY ACADEMY (BOTTOM OF CHURCH ST.)

11:00 AM SHELBURNE COMMUNITY STAGE BAND (TOP OF CHURCH ST.)

11:20 AM CHAMPLAIN ELEMENTARY (BOTTOM OF CHURCH ST.)

11:20 AM BFA FAIRFAX CHORUS & JAZZ BAND (MIDDLE CHURCH ST.)

11:55 AM EDMUNDS ELEMENTARY CHORUS (BOTTOM OF CHURCH ST.)

11:40 AM CCS JAZZ BAND (MIDDLE CHURCH ST.)

12:20 PM THE FLYING TURTLES (BOTTOM OF CHURCH ST.)

12:20 PM CBMS JAZZ BAND (TOP OF CHURCH ST.)

1:00 PM AMHS JAZZ BAND (MIDDLE CHURCH ST.)

1:40 PM SUBMARINE BAND (BOTTOM OF CHURCH ST.)

1:40 PM MUMS JAZZ BAND (TOP OF CHURCH ST.)

2:20 PM MUHS JAZZ BAND (TOP OF CHURCH ST.)

3:00 PM MVU JAZZ ENSEMBLE (TOP OF CHURCH ST.)

3:20 PM COLCHESTER MIDDLE SCHOOL JAZZ BAND (BOTTOM OF CHURCH ST.)

3:40 PM BELLOWS FALLS UNION HS JAZZ ENSEMBLE (MIDDLE CHURCH ST.)

4:20 PM SENTINEL BIG BAND (TOP OF CHURCH ST.)

4:20 PM COLCHESTER HS JAZZ BAND (BOTTOM OF CHURCH ST.)

ADDITIONAL JAZZ FEST BURLINGTON VENUES:

• AMERICAN FLATBREAD

2:40 PM ESSEX JAZZ COLLECTIVE (BOTTOM OF CHURCH ST.)

3 PM ST. ALBANS JAZZ BAND (MIDDLE CHURCH ST.)

3:40 PM HARWOOD JAZZ COMBO (TOP OF CHURCH ST.)

4 PM TWINFIELD UNION HS JAZZ BAND (BOTTOM OF CHURCH ST.)

4:20 PM THE ASSEMBLY BAND (TOP OF CHURCH ST.)

• THE DISTRICT VT • BCA (CITY HALL PARK) • THE 126 • NECTAR’S • RED SQUARE AND MORE

on screen

Bring Her Back ★★★★

They say there’s no force in the world like a mother’s love — for better or worse. English thespian Sally Hawkins, whose many roles have included Paddington Bear’s adopted mom in the Paddington movies, puts her zany energy to a different and more unsettling use in this psychological horror drama from directors Danny and Michael Philippou, who brought us the fan favorite Talk to Me

The deal

Seventeen-year-old Andy (Billy Barratt) would do anything to protect his spirited younger stepsister, Piper (Sora Wong), who is blind. He shields her from bullies and tells her about the things and people she can’t see, often fudging the less pleasant details. But he can’t mute the shock of the day the siblings discover their dad dead in the shower.

Andy insists on accompanying his sister to her foster placement, planning to become her guardian once he turns 18. Their new foster mom, Laura (Hawkins), is a colorful eccentric who lives in a state of creative disorder. She welcomes Piper with open arms, and the siblings soon learn she’s grieving her own blind daughter, who drowned in the backyard pool.

Laura is so e usive and loosey-goosey that even Andy lets down his guard. But then he notices something is seriously wrong with her other foster child, the seemingly mute Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips). And Laura doesn’t seem particularly perturbed.

What Andy doesn’t see, and we do, is that Laura obsessively rewatches a grainy VHS tape depicting a murderous ritual. Its purpose? To raise the dead.

Will you like it?

To people who don’t like the genre, all horror movies may seem equally nihilistic. But if you do like it, you probably recognize a vital distinction between horror that provokes screams of glee more than terror (Final Destination: Bloodlines, say) and horror that evokes existential despair.

The talented Philippou brothers, who got their start on YouTube, are purveyors of the latter. Talk to Me, a clever modern twist on “The Monkey’s Paw” with a protagonist who spirals into supernatural

for

addiction, was unrelentingly grim even for me.

Bring Her Back shares that ﬁlm’s central motifs of protective guardianship, unresolved grief and mounting delusion. But this time, the Philippous have made the savvy choice to divide those traits between two central characters, one of whom is easy to root for.

Once Andy discovers that their foster mom doesn’t plan to let Piper go, his conﬂict with Laura propels the story. As Laura’s tactics escalate — drugging, gaslighting, playing the siblings against each other — Andy’s touching and believable bond with Piper keeps us on his side, even when his grip on sanity falters.

We watch in horror, but it’s mixed with pity, because the ﬁlm’s drifting point of view brings us into Laura’s secret world, too. The bizarre title character of last summer’s Longlegs was more meme than man, not real enough to be scary. By contrast, we’ve all known women like Laura, whose toomuchness teeters on the brink between endearing and appalling. And Hawkins’ unhinged performance connects us directly to her outsize emotions.

If watching this movie feels like bathing in a tub stained with decades’ worth of untraceable ﬁlth, that’s not because of anything supernatural. We never learn the details of the ritual depicted in the

videotape; no paranormal “experts” pop up to o er exposition. This vagueness allows viewers to ﬁll in the story’s gaps with their own conspiratorial theories — and many have. But the real dread sets in with the realization that it doesn’t actually matter whether the ritual works, only that Laura thinks it will.

She’s a cult of one, ruling over an airless house of madness, and the Philippous use all sorts of disorienting techniques to trap us there with the siblings. Ominous circular motifs repeat throughout the ﬁlm, penning the kids inside Laura’s domain. Some shots are in extreme shallow focus, putting us in Piper’s place as she navigates a world seen only as light and shadow. Sound often deceives us, too, as voices issue from the wrong mouth.

To call Bring Her Back a downer would be an understatement. Be forewarned: The movie depicts harm to children and animals — more graphic in the former case than in the latter. Phillips, as the mysteriously a icted Oliver, gives a harrowing performance in scenes that provoke the most primal of cringes.

But the siblings are likable, and Hawkins’ larger-than-life presence contributes continual jolts of energy, much like Toni Collette’s turn in Hereditary. Imagine visiting the quirky home of a creative type — a taxidermied dog! a chicken coop!

a truly grim horror ﬂick.

— and gradually realizing their interests run deeper and darker than you ever imagined. The ritual may be demonic, but the horror here is all human.

HARRISON margot@sevendaysvt.com

IF YOU LIKE THIS, TRY…

TALK TO ME (2022; Netflix, Paramount+, YouTube Primetime, rentable): e Philippous’ breakout first feature is also about the dangers of playing with the line between life and death — in this case, via a mummified hand that allows people to contact the spirit world.

THE BABADOOK (2014; AMC+, Philo, PLEX, Pluto TV, Tubi, YouTube Primetime, rentable): Australia also brought us this chilling work of “grief horror” in which a widow’s terrors complicate the job of raising her son.

LAKE MUNGO (2008; Fandango, PLEX, Prime Video, Tubi, rentable): An even deeper cut from down under is this mockumentary about a family struggling to comprehend the circumstances that led to a daughter’s drowning. A slow burn leads to one of the most effective jump scares ever.

MARGOT

Sally Hawkins plays a grieving mom with sinister plans

her foster children in

NEW IN THEATERS

DAN DA DAN: EVIL EYE: Two friends solve a paranormal mystery in this animated adaptation of the anime and manga series. Hiroshi Seko directed. (93 min, R. Essex)

DANGEROUS ANIMALS: A surfer (Hassie Harrison) must escape a shark-obsessed serial killer (Jai Courtney) in this horror-on-the-high-seas flick from director Sean Byrne (The Devil’s Candy). (98 min, R. Paramount, Sunset)

FROM THE WORLD OF JOHN WICK: BALLERINA: And the award for “most ungainly title of the year” goes to this action thriller about a young woman (Ana de Armas) who trains as an assassin to seek revenge. With Keanu Reeves and Anjelica Huston; Len Wiseman (Underworld) directed. (125 min, R. Bijou, Capitol, Essex, Majestic, Star, Sunset, Welden)

THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME: Wes Anderson turns his pastiching energies on midcentury spy capers in this tale of a tycoon (Benicio Del Toro) who wills his estate to his saintly nun daughter (Mia Threapleton). The ensemble cast includes Michael Cera, Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston. (101 min, PG-13. Essex, Majestic, Savoy)

CURRENTLY PLAYING

THE ACCOUNTANT 2HHH If you’ve been waiting for the return of Ben Affleck playing a brilliant number cruncher with autism who’s also an ass-kicking action hero, this one’s for you. (132 min, R. Majestic)

BRING HER BACKHHHH Directors Danny and Michael Phillippou (Talk to Me) return with a horror drama about two foster children who witness a disturbing ritual in their new home. Billy Barratt and Sally Hawkins star. (99 min, R. Essex, Majestic; reviewed 6/4)

FINAL DESTINATION: BLOODLINESHHH1/2 A college student (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) learns her family was never supposed to exist in the return of the horror franchise. (110 min, R. Majestic, Sunset; reviewed 5/21)

FRIENDSHIPHHHH A dad (Tim Robinson) eager to make an adult friend develops a fascination with his new neighbor (Paul Rudd) in this comedy from debut feature director Andrew DeYoung. (100 min, R. Essex, Majestic, Savoy; reviewed 5/28)

JANE AUSTEN WRECKED MY LIFEHHH1/2 A single bookseller becomes a writer to improve her love life (how that works isn’t clear) in this rom-com from Laura Piani, starring Camille Rutherford and Pablo Pauly. (98 min, R. Majestic, Playhouse)

KARATE KID: LEGENDSHH1/2 A young martial-arts prodigy (Ben Wang) struggles to adjust after a move to the U.S. in the sixth entry in the action franchise, also starring Jackie Chan. (94 min, PG-13. Bijou, Capitol, City Cinema, Essex, Majestic, Marquis, Star, Stowe, Sunset, Welden)

THE LAST RODEOHHH A retired rodeo star enters a bull-riding competition to save his grandson in this inspirational drama starring Neal McDonough. (118 min, PG. Majestic)

LILO & STITCHHH1/2 In Disney’s (partially) liveaction remake of its 2002 animation, a lonely girl (Maia Kealoha) makes friends with an alien who’s on the run. Dean Fleischer Camp directed. (108 min, PG. Bijou, Capitol, City Cinema, Essex, Majestic, Marquis, Paramount, Star, Stowe, Sunset, Welden)

A MINECRAFT MOVIEHH1/2 Jack Black plays an “expert crafter” who gives his assistance to four oddballs trapped in a cubic wonderland in this video game adaptation. (101 min, PG. Majestic, Sunset)

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE — THE FINAL

RECKONINGHHH1/2 Tom Cruise returns in the eighth installment of the action franchise about spies and stunts, again directed by Christopher McQuarrie and costarring Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg. (169 min, PG-13. Bijou, Capitol, City Cinema, Essex, Majestic, Star, Stowe, Welden)

SINNERSHHHH1/2 In this supernatural horror film set in 1932, twin brothers (Michael B. Jordan) return to their hometown to find unexpected evil. Ryan Coogler directed. (137 min, R. Majestic, Sunset; reviewed 4/23)

THUNDERBOLTS*HHH1/2 In the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe entry, a team of antiheroes band together on a perilous mission. (126 min, PG-13. Majestic, Sunset)

THE WEDDING BANQUETHHH1/2 In this remake of the 1993 rom-com, a traditional Korean wedding celebration complicates a gay man’s plans for a green card marriage. Bowen Yang and Lily Gladstone star. (102 min, R. Catamount)

OLDER FILMS AND SPECIAL SCREENINGS

THE ADVENTURES OF MILO AND OTIS (Catamount, Thu only)

THE ADVENTURES OF PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT (Savoy, Mon only)

CAUGHT BY THE TIDES (VTIFF, Thu only)

DOGMA: 25TH ANNIVERSARY (Essex, Thu-Sun only)

IMAGINE ME & YOU (Catamount, Wed 11 only)

LA CAGE AUX FOLLES (Catamount, Wed 4 only)

THE MIST (Catamount, Fri only)

OPEN THEATERS

(* = upcoming schedule for theater was not available at press time)

*BIJOU CINEPLEX 4: 107 Portland St., Morrisville, 888-3293, bijou4.com

CAPITOL SHOWPLACE: 93 State St., Montpelier, 229-0343, fgbtheaters.com

CATAMOUNT ARTS: 115 Eastern Ave., St. Johnsbury, 748-2600, catamountarts.org

*CITY CINEMA: 137 Waterfront Plaza, Newport, 334-2610, citycinemanewport.com

ESSEX CINEMAS & T-REX THEATER: 21 Essex Way, Suite 300, Essex, 879-6543, essexcinemas.com

*MAJESTIC 10: 190 Boxwood St., Williston, 878-2010, majestic10.com

MARQUIS THEATER: 65 Main St., Middlebury, 388-4841, middleburymarquis.com.

PARAMOUNT TWIN CINEMA: 241 N. Main St., Barre, 479-9621, fgbtheaters.com

PLAYHOUSE MOVIE THEATRE: 11 S. Main St., Randolph, 728-4012, playhouseflicks.com

SAVOY THEATER: 26 Main St., Montpelier, 229-0598, savoytheater.com

THE SCREENING ROOM @ VTIFF: 60 Lake St., Ste. 1C, Burlington, 660-2600, vtiff.org

STAR THEATRE: 17 Eastern Ave., St. Johnsbury, 748-9511, stjaytheatre.com

*STOWE CINEMA 3PLEX: 454 Mountain Rd., Stowe, 253-4678, stowecinema.com

SUNSET DRIVE-IN: 155 Porters Point Rd., Colchester, 862-1800, sunsetdrivein.com

*WELDEN THEATRE: 104 N. Main St., St. Albans, 527-7888, weldentheatre.com

art

It’s Not Easy Being Green

THE Animal Issue

North Branch Nature Center celebrates reptiles and amphibians

BY ALICE DODGE • adodge@sevendaysvt.com

Every year at this time, an alien force descends on Vermont. Stepping out into the twilight, we enter a shockingly loud soundscape of trills, peeps and otherworldly harmonies: The frogs are back.

While in some areas it’s hard not to hear these amphibian neighbors, catching a glimpse of them tends to be more challenging. Not so at North Branch Nature Center in Montpelier, where 32 artists celebrate frogs, toads, salamanders, turtles, snakes and lizards in “Scaly, Slimy, Smooth, and Slithery,” on view through June 27.

Though the subject might seem niche,

as the ecologists say, the show has range. In addition to great nature photography, viewers will ﬁnd paintings, embroideries, metalwork and even a satirical cartoon.

Curator and North Branch communications coordinator Chelsea Clarke Sawyer said the show started with an unusual gallery proposal from artist Heidi Albright, who turns sticks into snakes in her work.

The show contains a few of Albright’s sculptures, such as the twiggy “Northern Ring Snake,” on a shelf near the entrance, and a tangle of serpents dangling from the wall and anchored at the top by the dramatically angled “Black Rat Snake.”

Albright’s creations, like their subjects, are deceptively simple. She paints her smooth sticks, which are approximately life-size, with the creatures’ coloration. The wood’s natural angles and knobby twists give them dimensionality and movement that doesn’t feel planned. Since real snakes often camouflage themselves as sticks, ophidiophobes should beware: The backand-forth mimicry results in unsettlingly real-seeming serpents.

Another slithery standout is the demure green inhabitant of Susan Bull Riley’s “Stump With Snake,” a 15-by-32-inch graphite drawing painted with watercolor.

The scene centers on a rotting stump full of dead leaves, with the rest of the forest only lightly sketched in the background. Points of green — ferns, a sprouting oak sapling and the titular snake — reinforce the circular composition, bringing the eye around and into the stump. The shape of a leaf mirrors the snake’s uplifted head. Riley’s exquisitely delicate style works both to isolate identifying details, as in a botanical illustration, and to emphasize the connections between plants and animals in a cycle of decay and germination.

Spring green pops up in a few works in the show, such as Rick Powell’s coloredpencil “Frog With Bubbles.” A northern leopard frog surfaces from a pond through a mire of slick algae, surrounded by a cloud of reﬂective bubbles. The pollen and ick in the water are palpable, and the artist has achieved a real sense of buoyancy and air in the bubbles rising through the pond. The adoration with which he treats his subject might make even squeamish viewers reconsider the beauty of slime.

Caitlin Gildrien veers 180 degrees on the color wheel with “Red Eft,” a 24-by-24inch macro-view painting of the tiny newt. Vermilion, the eft slinks across the canvas

“Stump With Snake” by Susan Bull Riley

to rest on a shelf of dark-green-and-purple fungus. The unusual color combination and composition render a shy critter as bold and dangerous.

A few artists bring us close enough to their subjects to make the real seem abstract. Jenni Belotserkovsky’s painting “Orbs Beneath the Surface” is just that: clouds of amphibian eggs like a field of floating eyeballs, mysterious against a brushy green background. Likewise, in George Seiffert’s “Wood Frog Eggs From Beneath,” a photograph printed on metal, each of the squishy black dots resembles an eclipsed sun against a burst of light.

Other artists use their mediums’ strengths to emphasize the creatures’ fragility. Claire Dacey’s ink-on-paper “Snapper Hatchlings” are two wee black turtles — they seem life-size — swimming across the white page. Blobs of ink create shadow, the white edge of a shell, the folds of a collar as one hatchling brings its head in to hide.

Beside them, Ariela Paulsen’s etching “Toad” employs a range of soft gray textures to depict a creature that’s neither fully solid nor quite of the water. Her wobbly lines in rich, dark ink trace shapes that look a lot like the black strings of eggs found at the edge of a pond post-toad orgy. Threats of extinction and endangerment become explicit in a cartoon by O.W.

Wellard about the fate of the timber rattle snake, which was bountied in Vermont until 1971 and has been designated as endangered since 1987. It’s unclear if the quaking rattler in the picture is more afraid of being shot or of enduring the caricatured dialect of the hillbillies argu ing over its extermination.

Lindsey Benton addresses the issue more obliquely with “Wood Frog,” a chalk drawing of the amphibian considering a dragonfly snack. The subject is straight forward, but rendering it in chalk on a slate-black background highlights just how easy it would be to erase this peaceful scene permanently.

The theme of a precarious future aligns well with the show’s educational goal, which is to raise awareness of North Branch’s amphibian road crossing program, Clarke Sawyer said. Every spring for the past two decades, volunteers of all ages have helped usher amphibians on perilous journeys across wet Vermont roads, on their way from winter habitats to the greener pastures and ponds where they breed.

As well as averting unfortunate squishing deaths, the creatures’ human helpers record important data on weather, location and species that have helped scientists and transportation planners in their conservation efforts. North Branch’s website has videos and instructions for anyone who wants to join in next year.

The citizen-scientists’ practice has much in common with these artists’ approach to their slimy, scaly subjects. Both combine careful observation with an openness to understanding just how much these often-unseen creatures shape the spring landscape. ➆

INFO

“Scaly, Slimy, Smooth, and Slithery,” on view through June 27 at North Branch Nature Center in Montpelier. northbranchnaturecenter.org

In the nal analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this same small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future and we are all mortal.

— JOHN F. KENNEDY 35TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

“Frog With Bubbles” by Rick Powell

“Red Eft” by Caitlin Gildrien

Myths Take Flight at Birds of Vermont Museum in Huntington

BY ALICE DODGE • adodge@sevendaysvt.com

Birds aren’t real. So says a satirical conspiracy theory claiming that the U.S. government has replaced all birds with surveillance drones. It started as a joke in 2017 and ﬂew across the internet like a murmuration of starlings. Evidence for the theory is nonexistent, but its popularity underlines one truth: We’re still making myths about birds.

THE Animal Issue

“Birds and Myth,” this year’s community art show at Birds of Vermont Museum in Huntington, showcases that theme with works by more than 50 artists and poets. Executive director Erin Talmage said the museum received more than 200 submissions for the show, which runs through October. e jury has done a stellar job of offering art in a variety of styles while representing myths from all over the world — not to mention including a diversity of species, which Talmage said was one of the primary objectives. Initial submissions were heavily weighted toward crows and ravens, she said, but the exhibition includes all types of avian protagonists, from robins to phoenixes.

Denise Letendre’s clay sculptures of Hugin and Munin — the Norse god Odin’s surveillance ravens — greet visitors near the museum’s entry. e stylized birds frame a key and a clock representing thought and memory, elements that resonate throughout the exhibition. Many of the works on display gain meaning, depth and complexity from often-obscure myths.

Part of the fun of this show is that storytellers of the past have lent it some truly bonkers imagery. One strong example is Kristin Dexter’s collage “Pamola,” in which a moose-headed eagle flies over a mountain snowscape, his human torso and muscled arms pure beefcake. Dexter has cut each element with great precision, adding feathers and a waxed-linen thread rope belt; some details pop up from the background as though ready for a fight. Pamola is a legendary Abenaki thunder god who guards Mount Katahdin in Maine and causes winter weather. Here, he meets every definition of awesome.

Tonya Whitney’s subtler offering, “Caladrius Looks Right at You,” is a small ceramic bird, painted iridescent white and wearing an extremely smug expression. In Roman myth, Caladrius was a bird who could heal an illness by looking directly at you and absorbing your sickness into his own body, then ﬂying off with it. e sculpture reinterprets an archaic belief as something intimate and personal.

Marcia Vogler’s “ e Conference of the

Birds” takes a narrative approach. She has created an altarpiece to illustrate the 12th-century poem of the same name by Suﬁ poet Farid ud-Din Attar. Against a background made from the pages of old encyclopedias, brightly colored cut-paper birds look for guidance from the hoopoe, who addresses them from atop the composition. Central images show ﬂocks of birds on a quest for Simorgh the king, a divine bird in Persian mythology. e carefully crafted piece conveys a sense of reverence and joy.

Among these sometimes elaborate myths, visitors will also find many simpler ones. ere are a few storks, some early birds getting their worms and even an ostrich with its head stuck resolutely in the sand. Each bird is a character, and finding its story feels a lot like backyard bird-watching. Every flash of color may point to an epic tale. ➆

INFO

“Birds and Myth,” on view through October 31 at Birds of Vermont Museum in Huntington. birdsofvermont.org

OPENINGS + RECEPTIONS

NVAA JUNE JURIED SHOW: e 94th annual June juried show from the Northern Vermont Artist Association. Visions of Vermont, Jeffersonville, through June 28. Info, info@ visionsofvermont.com.

JEFFREY TRUBISZ: “On the Trail,” a collection of photographs taken over 40 years of hiking. Charlotte Senior Center, through June 30. Info, trubisz@comcast.net.

‘EARTHEN’: An interactive show featuring 20 artists who work with clay, including Jennifer McCandless, Chiara No, Curtis Fontaine and Aron Temkin. Reception: ursday, June 5, 5-7 p.m. Mad River Valley Arts Gallery, Waitsﬁeld, through July 31. Info, 496-6682.

‘GREEN MOUNTAIN MAGIC: UNCANNY REALISM IN VERMONT’: An exhibition exploring magic realism as it was practiced in Vermont during the mid-to-late 20th century, through the work of Ivan Albright, John Atherton, Vanessa Helder, Patsy Santo, George Tooker, Jared French, Pavel Tchelitchew, Luigi Lucioni, William Christopher, John Semple, Shirley Jackson and others. Reception: ursday, June 5, 5-7 p.m. Bennington Museum, June 6-November 2. Info, 447-1571.

RECILLE HAMRELL: A series of mixed-media collages using paint, decoupage, stencils and stamps. Reception: ursday, June 5, 5-7 p.m. South Burlington Public Library Art Wall, through June 30. Info, 846-4140.

JAMES JOHNSON: “Redemption,” an exhibition of 12 works on paper highlighting the texture and form of discarded cans. e graphite and ink studies were completed in 2025, after a 20-year hiatus from making art. Reception: ursday, June 5, 7 p.m. Poultney Pub. Info, analogcycles@ gmail.com.

‘MANY VISIONS: NINE CENTRAL VERMONT PASTELLISTS’: Works in oil and soft pastel by nine members of the Vermont Pastel Society: Judy Greenwald, Cindy Grifﬁth, Marcia Hill, Joyce Kahn, Linda Kiniry, Carole Naquin, Susan Ross Grimaldi, Diane Szlachetka and Grace Worcester. Reception: ursday, June 5, 4:30-6 p.m. Central Vermont Medical Center, Berlin, through July 12. Info, 371-4464.

‘10TH ANNIVERSARY SUPER GROUP SHOW 67’: A celebration of the gallery’s decade in existence, including works by all 23 current and many former members of the cooperative. Reception: Friday, June 6, 4-8 p.m. e Front, Montpelier, June 6-29. Info, info@thefrontvt.com.

‘DAVIS STUDIO EXHIBITION’: A collection of paintings, drawings and fused glass by the students and staff of the Davis Studio adult art program. Reception: Friday, June 6, 4-8 p.m. e S.P.A.C.E. Gallery, Burlington, June 6-July 4. Info, spacegalleryvt@gmail.com.

‘FAMILY JEWELS’: A glittering, joyful and unabashedly queer group show featuring 21 LGBTQ+ artists from across the country. Reception: Friday, June 6, 4-8 p.m. Hexum Gallery, Montpelier, June 6-July 18. Info, hexumgallery@gmail.com.

‘THE ART OF WATER’: A group show organized by the Art Resource Association and featuring 24 artists from across central Vermont. e exhibition showcases a diverse display of styles, techniques and media around the theme of water. Reception: Friday, June 6, 4:30 - 7:30 p.m. Vermont Natural Resources Council, Montpelier, June 6-July 31, 4:30-7:30 p.m. Info, 223-2328.

ARLENE HOLMES AND BILL COHN: An exhibition of functional and decorative ceramics by Cohn and mood-inﬂuenced oil paintings of land, water and sky by Holmes. Reception: Friday, June 6, 5-7 p.m. ART, etc., Randolph, June 6-July 26. Info, 279-5048.

Above: “ e Conference of the Birds” by Marcia Vogler; “Pamola” by Kristin Dexter

‘ANIMATION AS ART’: A collection of short films by nationally recognized animators and emerging artists Meredith Holch, Ana Mouyis & Zachary Zezima, Eric Power, Geneva Huffman, and Barry Doupé. Reception: Friday, June 6, 5-7 p.m. BCA Center, Burlington, June 6-September 14. Info, 865-7166.

JACOB HASHIMOTO: “A lowercase sky,” an immersive site-specific installation featuring suspended handmade disks of bamboo and elaborately patterned paper. Reception: Friday, June 6, 5-7 p.m. BCA Center, Burlington, June 6-September 14. Info, 865-7166.

‘INSPIRATION IN IRELAND’: An exhibition featuring six artists who traveled to the Ballinglen Arts Foundation in Ireland in 2024 and attended a collograph and drypoint workshop. Reception: Friday, June 6, 5-7 p.m. Two Rivers Printmaking Studio, White River Junction, through July 7. Info, 205-9501.

‘THREADS — FEATURING FIBER AND FABRIC’: A show of more than 30 pieces by local textile artists, including hooked rugs, quilts and other works. A selection of 19th-century samplers will also be on display as part of the 2025 Vermont Sampler Driving Tour statewide exhibition. Reception: Friday, June 6, 5-7 p.m. Chaffee Art Center, Rutland, June 6-July 18. Info, 775-0356.

‘FLAUNT: A CELEBRATION OF QUEER EXPRESSION’: An open-call group exhibition showcasing work by queer and allied Vermont artists. Reception: Friday, June 6, 5-7:30 p.m. T.W. Wood Gallery, Montpelier, through July 22. Info, 262-6035.

‘LOUD & LAYERED: A QUEER FASHION

EXHIBITION’: A show of sustainable designs by 19-year-old seamstress Kassidy Quinlan of Vergennes alongside Craig Harrison’s large-scale photographs of drag performers and members of the queer community in the Northeast Kingdom. Reception: Friday, June 6, 5-7:30 p.m.; artist talk at 6 p.m. T.W. Wood Gallery, Montpelier, through July 22. Info, 262-6035.

‘FLASH THE HEADLIGHTS’: A SEABA-curated show which asked artists to translate the concept of warning other drivers of an upcoming hazard into works that express feelings of care or concern for others. Reception: Friday, June 6, 5-8 p.m. The Vaults, Burlington, June 6-August 2. Info, outreach@seaba.com.

‘ICON’: A group exhibition featuring 19 international artists exploring the concept of an icon. Reception: Friday, June 6, 5-8 p.m. Safe and Sound Gallery, Burlington, June 6-August 1. Info, vip@ safeandsound.gallery.

LARRY BOWLING: An exhibition of mixed-media oil paintings and works in lucite vitrines made from layered photographs, art historical images and text. Reception with reading by Toussaint St. Negritude: Friday, June 6, 6 p.m. J. Langdon Antiques & Art, Montpelier, June 6-29.

LINDA HOGAN: “Our Revolutionists,” a show of photographs celebrating local community revolutionaries such as poets, protestors and “trash tramps” in conjunction with the run of the play The Revolutionists Reception and preshow party: Friday, June 6, 6:30-7:30 p.m. Lost Nation Theater, Montpelier City Hall, June 5-15. Info, 229-0492.

PEGGY WATSON: “Delighted,” a collection of low-relief paintings built from layers of cardboard and other repurposed scraps, thickly textured and depicting scenes of everyday life. Reception and artist demo: Saturday, June 7, 12-3 p.m. Frog Hollow Vermont Craft Gallery, Burlington, June 6-30. Info, 863-6458.

LEONARD RAGOUZEOS: “Works on Paper, 2005-2025,” an exhibition of black-and-white India ink drawings on Yupo and small color paintings in acrylic on paper. Reception: Saturday, June 7, 1-3 p.m. CX Silver Gallery, Brattleboro, June 6-August 24. Info, 257-7898.

‘BIRDS, BEES AND BENCHES’: Interpretations of nature and environment by featured artists Melanie Brotz, Zach Buzzell, Jon Forrence, Jennifer McCandless and Sarah E. Johnson-Brown. Reception features a live welding demo, a driftwood sculpture-making demo and a make-yourown clay pot workshop, first come, first served, hosted by artist Jennifer McCandless. Reception: Saturday, June 7, 1-5 p.m. Juniper Sculpture Park, Plattsburgh N.Y. Info, 518-569-7820.

EDITH BEATTY: “Sanctuary,” an exploration of climate destruction, ruin and rebuilding through mixed-media works in materials such as wood, beeswax, resin, sand and coffee grounds. Reception: Saturday, June 7, 5-7 p.m. Axel’s Frame Shop & Gallery, Waterbury, through July 5. Info, 244-7801.

CHARLOTTE DWORSHAK: “Color Shift,” a solo show of new paintings by the Burlington artist. Reception: Saturday, June 14, 10 a.m.-2 p.m. ATM Gallery, Shelburne, June 7-29. Info, atmgallerydirector@gmail.com.

‘MAKING IT’: A showcase of professional work from the past decade by members of the Middlebury College Department of Studio Art’s class of 2015 on

ART EVENTS

ASSETS FOR ARTISTS WORKSHOPS: Free professional development workshops for artists. This season’s workshops are all online and include topics such as project management, quarterly taxes, website design and project portfolios. Register online at assetsforartists.org/ workshops. Vermont Arts Council, Montpelier, through July 31. Free. Info, info@ vermontartscouncil.org.

OPEN STUDIO FIGURE DRAWING: Attendees develop their skills while working from a live model in a series of poses. This session will be a nude session with a combination of short and medium-length poses, ending in a longer-form pose. This is a community-facilitated group with no formal instructor present. 18-plus. Preregister online. River Arts, Morrisville, Thursday, June 5, 3:30-5:30 p.m. $15. Info, 888-1261.

LIFE DRAWING AND PAINTING: A drop-in event for artists working with the figure from a live model. T.W. Wood Gallery, Montpelier, Thursday, June 5, 7-9 p.m. Free; $10 suggested donation. Info, 262-6035.

SEASON OPENING: Self-guided walking tours of the collection, including 70 sculptures by David Stromeyer. Cold Hollow Sculpture Park, Enosburg Falls, Saturday, June 7, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Free or by donation. Info, info@coldhollowsculpturepark.com.

SOCIAL SUNDAY: An opportunity for children and caregivers to stop in and complete a 15- to 30-minute activity during the two-hour workshop. Milton Artists’ Guild Art Center & Gallery, Sunday, June 8, 1-3 p.m. Free. Info, 891-2014.

PORTRAIT DRAWING AND PAINTING: A drop-in event where artists can practice skills in any medium. T.W. Wood Gallery, Montpelier, Monday, June 9, 10 a.m.-noon. Free; $10 suggested donation. Info, 262-6035.

‘ARTS FOR EVERYONE: WATERCOLOR STAINED GLASS PAINTING’: A presentation and chance to try the medium with other artists and enthusiasts. Participants are welcome to bring their own projects to work on. First Church in Barre, Universalist, Tuesday, June 10, 6-7:30 p.m. Free. Info, 505-9555. ➆

Jazz Prophet

Guest curator Anthony Tidd uses the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival to showcase the past and future of the genre

BY CHRIS FARNSWORTH

• farnsworth@sevendaysvt.com

looking forward to jamming with the local players — I’m playing a jam session every night at Big Joe’s.”

That’s right: In honor of Burlington saxophone legend “Big Joe” Burrell, Vermont Comedy Club again transforms into Big Joe’s, a late-night jazz club, for the fest. With the Flynn Space back on the festival itinerary for the ﬁrst time in years, the two stages feature plenty of local showcases.

“This week is going to be awesome,” Tidd said. “I wanted to present a festival that showed the audience the wide breadth of what jazz is, and I think we’ve done that. What jazz sounds like today could — and should — be completely di erent than what it sounded like in the ’40s.”

Read on for some highlights of the ﬁve-day lineup. Aside from the two ticketed shows on the Flynn Main Stage that bookend the fest, it’s completely free to attend. For the full lineup and tickets, visit ﬂynnvt.org.

JON MCBRIDE’S BIG EASY WITH RYAN MONTBLEAU

Wednesday, June 4, 8:30 p.m., at Big Joe’s (Vermont Comedy Club). Free.

Ask three musicians to deﬁne jazz, and you’re likely to get three di erent answers. Perhaps more than any other genre, jazz is a constant source of debate about what it is and what it isn’t, where it came from and where it’s going.

Anthony Tidd doesn’t waste too much time trying to pigeonhole it. The Britishborn, New York City-based composer, bassist and Guggenheim Fellow looks at the genre and sees traces of so many di erent types of music, all of which shape the art form.

“Jazz is not a monolith,” Tidd told Seven Days in a phone conversation last week. “Within the art, there is this whole universe, so my vision of jazz is extremely broad. But, most importantly, jazz is a living music, and it’s still taking on inﬂuences and being shaped by young artists with new ideas, just like it was in the ’20s.”

was performing at last year’s iteration. According to Tidd, that gave him a “unique advantage,” allowing him to experience Burlington and the way he felt the city transformed during the festival.

WHAT JAZZ SOUNDS LIKE TODAY COULD — AND SHOULD — BE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THAN WHAT IT SOUNDED LIKE IN THE ’40S.

ANTHONY TIDD

That philosophy has guided Tidd as he has taken on the mantle of curator for this year’s Burlington Discover Jazz Festival, spanning the downtown and waterfront areas of the city from Wednesday, June 4, to Sunday, June 8. It’s the fourth year in a row to feature a guest curator: Tidd follows Adi Oasis, Lakecia Benjamin and Michael Mwenso, all of whom brought their own distinctive vision of jazz to the long-running festival.

The folks at the Flynn, which produces the fest, approached Tidd about curating this year’s lineup while he

“I looked around at it and thought, This is absolutely amazing ,” Tidd recalled. “This city is the perfect jazz destination. It’s got everything you would want to create an incredible festival.”

Tidd loaded the schedule with projects near and dear to his heart, such as the opening-night performance and world premiere of “Origins: Sounds and Stories of the African Diaspora.” The show will feature Tidd, along with a seven-piece band including top-notch musicians such as Fred Wesley and Greg Osby, laying out the musical history of the African diaspora and how it helped birth jazz. It will also showcase a slew of other genres — not limited to gospel, rock and roll, blues, reggae, and Afrobeat.

In recent years, there has been some hand-wringing over Burlington Discover Jazz Festival lineups, with some locals accusing the Flynn of ignoring the Queen City jazz scene. For Tidd, balancing the presence of touring artists and locals was of great importance.

“I want to foster a relationship between the local scene and the visiting musicians,” Tidd said. “I’m honestly really

With his Big Easy project, Burlington saxophonist Jon McBride and his band pay tribute to the early roots of funk in jazz music. A local standout, the band plays a weekly residency at the 126 in Burlington, but for the festival McBride joins forces with singer-songwriter Ryan Montbleau. Hailing from Boston, Montbleau is a familiar face around the local scene, particularly through his Yes Darling project with Vermont roots singer Hayley Jane. This Wednesday-night pairing is a good opportunity to catch some of the area’s ﬁnest holding their own.

PARIS MONSTER

ursday, June 5, 7:30 p.m., at Flynn Space. Free. Brooklyn’s Paris Monster have earned a reputation for high-intensity live shows. Working with a minimal setup of drums with bass and synths, the duo of Josh Dion and Geo Kraly creates a massive sound full of fuzzed-out low end, big grooves and shimmering synth-pop. Equal parts funk and soul, mashed together with a garage-rock band without guitars, Paris Monster achieve an idiosyncratic kind of electronic mayhem that’s built to start a party.

Paris Monster

Anthony Tidd

On the Beat

Burlington singer-songwriter and EASTERN MOUNTAIN TIME head honcho SEAN HOOD is tired of hearing about the rough state of the local music scene — and he’s doing something about it!

Last week, Hood released Burlington Does Burlington: A Compilation, which features 27 Vermont artists all covering, well, each other. Folk and country songwriter ERIC GEORGE covers roots rockers the WORMDOGS. Indie upstarts ROBBER ROBBER cover punk stalwarts

ROUGH FRANCIS. Punk singer LILY SICKLES takes on a track by indie popster MISSY BLY. And that’s just a taste of the wildly intriguing tributes on the album.

If the project sounds familiar, there’s a good reason. In 1996, local music zine Good Citizen released the two-volume Burlington Does Burlington comp, featuring 38 bands. The PANTS covered PHISH’s “Golgi Apparatus.” BELIZBEHA in turn covered the Pants’ “High Water Mark.” A pre-GOGOL BORDELLO EUGENE HÜTZ covered “Oh Hey” by DEATH COWS with his punk band the FAGS CHIN HO! singer and Good Citizen publisher ANDREW X SMITH spearheaded those comps. He said he’s excited to see his old idea dusted o and revitalized. “I look forward to buying the new Burlington Does Burlington, as I hope everyone else does,” Smith told Seven Days in an email. “It was a pleasant surprise to see a 30-year tradition come back to life. And, shameless plug,

Eye on the Scene

Last week’s highlights from photographer Luke Awtry

Listening In

(Spotify mix of local jams)

1. “End Early” by Chin Ho!, Andrew Ex Smith Plus None

2. “Mr. Jones [Working Title}” by Eastern Mountain Time

3. “More an Enough” by Ali McGuirk and Dwight & Nicole

4. “Simple Paris Dancers” by Birdcode, Amber deLaurentis, Tom Cleary

5. “MIA” by Night Protocol

6. “Curtain” by Greg Freeman

7. “About (Hall of Egress)” by Lutalo

Scan to listen sevendaysvt. com/playlist

you can also listen to Burlington Does Burlington Volumes One and Two on YouTube Music. Half the people on the originals are still playing today!”

It’s a ﬁtting time for a feel-good tribute to the local scene. “With all the shitty news about Nectar’s and Despacito closing, not to mention Waking Windows coming to an end, I felt this urge to do something,” Hood said. “I kept thinking

ROSE ASTEROID, WATERFRONT PARK, BURLINGTON, TUESDAY, MAY 27: As more Burlington music venues close, the DIY route is a good one for bands to consider. ROSE ASTEROID Burlington’s self-proclaimed “AlternaFunk Space Rock” power trio, are already way ahead of the game. With a small set of portable batteries and an unreasonably large set of amps, band members MARCUS BRETTO (guitar), MATS THURESON (bass) and AIDAN MARBLE (drums) took to the open ﬁeld between the FRAME and the Andy A_Dog Williams Skatepark. It was a near-perfect day on the waterfront. e skate park was packed, bikers ﬁlled both lanes of the Burlington Greenway, and the park itself was littered with lazy sun lovers. Rose Asteroid’s positive-energy instrumental music was equally well received by skaters, skate moms, frame climbers and casual sunbathers. e band even got a thumbs-up from Parks, Recreation & Waterfront employees passing by in their cart. I have only one piece of advice if you choose the renegade way: Leave the high-wattage tube amps at home. Your batteries will thank you.

about the old Good Citizen records, where local artists all covered each other, and just how cool something like that was for our community. We need that sort of connection again.”

Stay tuned to these pages for a deeper dive on the comp soon. In the meantime, the album is only available at easternmountaintime.bandcamp.com, and all proceeds beneﬁt the People’s Kitchen mutual aid nonproﬁt.

This might surprise some people, but, well, not everybody loves jazz. For those who have read just about enough of the bebop and the post-bop and the whatnot at this week’s Burlington Discover Jazz Festival, fear not! There are other, non-jazz fests happening all summer long, many of which announced lineups this week.

First, let’s take a look at the Vermont Yazz Fest. Launched in 2023 as the BTV Yazz Fest, founder and experimental musician/percussionist JB LEDOUX envisioned the event as a celebration of all things ambient and experimental. For the 2025 version, the fest is moving from Burlington to the Ferrisburgh Town O ces and Community Center for a one-day event on Saturday, August 30. The lineup includes space-jazz trio ASTRAL UNDERGROUND, ambient musicians THORNY and ND DENTICO, and Ledoux’s musical alter ego, JO BLED. Tickets are available at the door.

Looking to get your classical music ﬁx? Check out the fourth annual West Windsor Vermont Music Festival. Under the curation of artistic director, composer and pianist SAKIKO OHASHI, the festival features violinists JOANNA MAURER and AMADI AZIKIWE and pianist NICK SANDERS accompanying Ohashi at the West Windsor Town Hall from June 27 to 29. Check out westwindsorvtmusicfestival. com for more information and tickets.

The Maple Roots Festival is back for its ﬁfth year at Morse Farm Maple

Jo Bled

THE JANÉA HUDSON QUINTET

Friday, June 6, 6 p.m., at the 126. Free.

As great as it is catching all the big acts, one of the biggest advantages of the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival is the chance to discover the next up-and-coming jazz artist. Randolph native and Vermont State University alumni Janéa Hudson is ﬂying the ﬂag for local musicians. Hudson sings with local funk band Cheddar and performed in a funk-fusion ensemble in college, but for her festival shows — she also performs in “The Ladies of the 126 Showcase” on Wednesday, June 4, 7 p.m., and again on Friday, June 6, 8:30 p.m., at Big Joe’s (Vermont Comedy Club) — she’s bringing along a strong lineup of Vermont players, including bassist Bruno John, pianist Randal Pierce, drummer Gehrig Loughran and saxophonist Jake Whitesell.

THE SOUL REBELS WITH RAKIM AND TALIB KWELI

Saturday, June 7, 9:15 p.m., at Waterfront Park. Free.

Guest curator Tidd has made it clear that he has a wide definition of jazz — one that includes the genre’s influence on hip-hop. That connection will be on full display at Waterfront Park when New Orleans brass band the Soul Rebels take the stage. The eight-piece outfit has shown up on recordings by G-Eazy, Big Freedia and Lil Wayne, as well as scored the 2023 Disney film Haunted Mansion. The Soul Rebels will be joined by two hip-hop heavyweights – Rakim, one half of the legendary duo Eric B. & Rakim; and former Black Star member Talib Kweli.

TRANSLINEAR LIGHT: THE MUSIC OF ALICE COLTRANE

Sunday, June 8, 6 p.m., at Flynn Main Stage. $32-63.50. While John Coltrane’s legacy as one of America’s most renowned musicians has long been cemented, the music and accomplishments of his wife, Alice Coltrane, are lesser known. One of John and Alice’s sons, Grammy-nominated saxophonist and composer Ravi Coltrane, is doing his best to amend that with “Translinear Light: The Music of Alice Coltrane.” The performance features harpist Brandee Younger as she and the younger Coltrane pay tribute to the career of a woman who was inﬂuential both as a musician and as a spiritual leader. ➆

CHRIS’ PICKS

Here are our music editor’s choices of seven shows not to miss during the 2025 Burlington Discover Jazz Festival.

Sugarworks in Montpelier on Saturday, July 26. Jazz guitarist MICHAEL LOUISSMITH and a coalition of Vermont musicians launched the grassroots event in 2021 as a “festival by musicians, for musicians — and music lovers.”

This year’s lineup features DJ LOGIC, FREEWAY CLYDE, LARA CWASS, the VERMONT JAZZ ENSEMBLE and others across two stages. The fest is free, though there is a parking fee. Visit maplerootsfest.com for more information.

File under “Alas, we hardly knew you.”

The District VT, the Burlington

restaurant and venue formerly known as ArtsRiot, announced via social media on May 28 that it was closing. The news capped a turbulent period for the business, which, as we reported last week, had recently rebranded.

“After doing everything we could to push through an increasingly challenging landscape, The District VT (formerly ArtsRiot) has been forced to close its doors e ective immediately,” the club’s social media post reads. “As a result, we will be canceling all upcoming performances and halting all future booking activity.”

After years of turmoil and

ownership changes, rebranding as the District VT seemed to signal a new era for the venue. It had a full schedule of entertainment booked through May and into June, including music, comedy and dance nights.

“This decision was not made lightly,” the statement on the club’s closing continues. “We know how much time, energy, and artistry goes into preparing for a show, and we deeply regret the impact this has on you, your team and the community. Please know we are immensely grateful for your support and for being part of the vibrant creative community we have in BTV.”

Late Night Jazz Jam with Connor Young & Friends:

Anthony Tidd’s Quite Sane:

7. Blaque Dynamite: Saturday, June 7, 9 p.m., at Nectar’s

Alice Coltrane

Soul Rebels

Ravi Coltrane

On the Beat

Jazz Prophet « P.56

3 Nights! 8 Bands!

One Great Cause!

Local Music Competition

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 11

Hunaye

Salvaged

WEDNESDAY

WEDNESDAY,

music+nightlife

CLUB DATES

live music

WED.4

Alex Stewart Quartet (jazz) at Vermont Pub & Brewery, Burlington, 6 p.m. Free.

Avi Salloway and Friends (indie folk) at Hugo’s, Montpelier, 7:30 p.m. Free.

BBQ and Bluegrass (bluegrass) at Four Quarters Brewing, Winooski, 6:30 p.m. Free.

Birdcode (jazz) at Venetian Cocktail & Soda Lounge, Burlington, 8 p.m. $10.

The Breanna Elaine Band (singer-songwriter) at Red Square, Burlington, 6 p.m. Free.

The Dan Ryan Express (jazz) at American Flatbread Burlington Hearth, 5 p.m. Free.

Dead/Not Dead (Grateful Dead tribute) at Zenbarn, Waterbury Center, 7 p.m. $9.62/$12.21.

Grippo Sklar Quartet (jazz) at Big Joe’s (Vermont Comedy Club), Burlington, 10 p.m. Free.

Irish Night with RambleTree (Celtic) at Two Brothers Tavern, Middlebury, 7 p.m. Free.

Jazz Night with Ray Vega (jazz) at Hotel Vermont, Burlington, 8:30 p.m. Free.

Jazz Sessions (jazz) at the 126, Burlington, 9 p.m. Free.

Jon McBride’s Big Easy with Ryan Montbleau (jazz) at Big Joe’s (Vermont Comedy Club), Burlington, 8:30 p.m. Free.

Kafari’s Café (indie) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 7:30 p.m. $10.

The Ladies of the 126 Showcase (jazz) at the 126, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

Mannequin Fight, the Leatherbound Books, Young Laidy (indie rock) at Monkey House, Winooski, 7:30 p.m. $5. Phantom Airwave (jazz) at the Old Post, South Burlington, 5 p.m. Free.

Rachel Ambaye, Janéa Hudson, Bella Sances, Victoria Fern, Julianna Luna (jazz) at the 126, Burlington, 9 p.m. Free.

Ray Vega’s Afro-Caribbean Jazz Ensemble (jazz) at Hotel Vermont, Burlington, 8:30 p.m. Free.

Wallows, Porches (indie rock) at Higher Ground Ballroom, South Burlington, 8 p.m. SOLD OUT.

Wednesday Night Dead (Grateful Dead tribute) at Zenbarn, Waterbury Center, 7 p.m. $10.

THU.5

Alex Stewart & Friends (jazz) at the 126, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

Ali T (singer-songwriter) at Two Heroes Brewery Public House, South Hero, 6:30 p.m. Free.

Ben Clark (singer-songwriter) at the Den at Harry’s Hardware, Cabot, 7 p.m. Free.

Kick Like a Girl

Editor-in-chief and host of “The Women’s Game” podcast, SAM MEWIS knows something about being a champion. Her long and glittering soccer career includes winning the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup playing for the U.S. Women’s National Team and an Olympic bronze medal. After retiring in 2024 and moving to Vermont, Mewis has become a champion of a different sort, working to shine a light on the women’s game with the podcast she hosts for the Men in Blazers network, a soccerfocused media group. Mewis brings the podcast to the Higher Ground Ballroom in South Burlington on Friday, June 6, for a live taping.

The Blue Moon Band (jazz) at Vermont Pub & Brewery, Burlington, 6 p.m. Free.

Bob Wagner & Friends (rock, soul) at Nectar’s, Burlington, 8 p.m. $17.67.

Cooper (covers) at On Tap Bar & Grill, Essex Junction, 6 p.m. Free. Dan Ryan Express (jazz) at Foam Brewers, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

Familiar Faces Funk Jam (funk, jazz) at the 126, Burlington, 9 p.m. Free.

Florry, Blueberry Betty (indie rock) at Higher Ground Showcase Lounge, South Burlington, 8 p.m. $22.95.

Frankie & the Fuse (indie pop) at Red Square, Burlington, 6 p.m. Free.

Hip-Hop Showcase (hip-hop) at the Tropic Brewing, Waterbury, 8 p.m. $10.

Jaded Ravins (Americana) at South Mountain Tavern, Bristol, 7 p.m. Free.

James Francies (jazz) at Flynn Space, Burlington, 9:30 p.m. Free.

Jess O’Brien & Paul Miller (acoustic) at the Den at Harry’s Hardware, Cabot, 7 p.m. Free.

Matt Hagen’s Classy Boss (bossa nova) at American Flatbread Burlington Hearth, 5:30 p.m. Free.

Mono Means One, Joe Agnello, Lara Cwass Band (prog rock, jazz) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 9 p.m. $10/$15.

Paris Monster (jazz) at Flynn Space, Burlington, 7:30 p.m. Free.

Parker Shper Ensemble (synth, drone) at Big Joe’s (Vermont Comedy Club), Burlington, 10 p.m. Free.

Rachel Ambaye Quartet (jazz) at Big Joe’s (Vermont Comedy Club), Burlington, 8:30 p.m. Free.

Remember Baker (Americana) at Shelburne Vineyard, 6 p.m. Free.

Singer-Songwriter Showcase (singer-songwriter) at Old Soul Design Shop, Plattsburgh, N.Y., 7 p.m. Free.

Smokey Newfield Project (folk rock) at Black Flannel Brewing & Distilling, Essex, 6 p.m. Free.

Vorcza (jazz) at Flynn Space, Burlington, 5:30 p.m. Free.

FRI.6

Alex Stewart Trio with Rob Duguay (jazz) at Bleu Northeast Kitchen, Burlington, 7:30 p.m. Free.

Alternate Take (jazz) at American Flatbread Burlington Hearth, 5 p.m. Free.

Barbacoa (surf rock) at Foam Brewers, Burlington, 9 p.m. Free. Ben Clark (singer-songwriter) at Whammy Bar, Calais, 7 p.m. Free.

Bethany Conner Live (singersongwriter) at Vermont Cider Lab, Essex, 6 p.m. Free.

Brooklyn Circle with MLS (jazz) at Red Square, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

Colin McCaffrey & Friends (jazz) at Hugo’s, Montpelier, 7:30 p.m. Free.

Connor Young & Friends (jazz) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 11 p.m. $10/$15.

The Dan Ryan Express (jazz) at the 126, Burlington, 10 p.m. Free.

Dave Mitchell’s Blues Revue (blues) at Red Square, Burlington, 2 p.m. Free.

Downtown Sextet (jazz) at Vermont Pub & Brewery, Burlington, 6 p.m. Free.

The Dusk Quartet (jazz) at the 126, Burlington, 8 p.m. Free.

Eric Hoh Trio (jazz) at Vermont Pub & Brewery, Burlington, 1 p.m. Free.

Grippo Funk Band (funk) at Nectar’s, Burlington, 8 p.m. $17.67.

High Summer (soul, jazz) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 7 p.m. $10/$15.

Horn of the Moon Orchestra (funk) at Bent Nails Bistro, Montpelier, 8 p.m. Free.

Immanuel Wilkins (jazz) at Flynn Space, Burlington, 7:30 p.m. Free.

Jakobs Castle, Jesse James Pariah, Strange Case (rock) at Higher Ground Showcase Lounge, South Burlington, 8 p.m. $19.84.

Janéa Hudson Quintet (jazz) at Big Joe’s (Vermont Comedy Club), Burlington, 8:30 p.m. Free.

The Janéa Hudson Quintet (jazz) at the 126, Burlington, 6 p.m. Free.

Jeff Salisbury Band (blues, jazz) at Two Heroes Brewery Public House, South Hero, 6:30 p.m. Free.

Losing Focus (acoustic) at Old Soul Design Shop, Plattsburgh, N.Y., 8 p.m. Free.

Madaila, Reid Parsons (indie pop, singer-songwriter) at the Lounge at Nectar’s, Burlington, 8 p.m. $22.87.

Mark Abair All-Star Band (covers) at On Tap Bar & Grill, Essex Junction, 5 p.m. Free.

McMaple (folk rock) at the Old Post, South Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

Mean Waltons (bluegrass) at Poultney Pub, 6 p.m. Free.

Meat Milk (rock) at Afterthoughts, Waitsfield, 8:30 p.m. Free.

MKTrio, Clive (jazz) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 9 p.m. $10/$12.

Moondog (jazz, classical) at the Phoenix, Waterbury, 7:30 p.m. $15-30 sliding scale.

Nicole Mitchell (jazz) at Flynn Space, Burlington, 5:30 p.m. Free.

Nobby Reed Project (blues) at von Trapp Brewing Bierhall, Stowe, 5:30 p.m. Free.

Phil Abair Band (covers) at On Tap Bar & Grill, Essex Junction, 9 p.m. Free.

Rap Night Burlington (hip-hop) at Drink, Burlington, 9 p.m. $5.

Sara Serpa & André Matos (jazz) at Big Joe’s (Vermont Comedy Club), Burlington, 10 p.m. Free.

Shane McGrath (acoustic) at Gusto’s, Barre, 6 p.m. Free.

VT Synth Society — Strange Synth Night (synth) at Standing Stone Wines, Winooski, 8 p.m. $10.

SAT.7

Ali McGuirk, Acqua Mossa (soul, R&B) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 6 p.m. $15.

Alternate Take (jazz) at the 126, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

Beaver Fever, Corrupt World, JudgexJudy, Squashed Beef, Augrah (metal) at 1st Republic Brewing, Essex, 8 p.m. $15.

Blaque Dynamite, Breathwork (jazz, funk) at Nectar’s, Burlington, 8 p.m. $22.87.

Bluegrass & Empanadas with Beg, Steal or Borrow (bluegrass) at Shelburne Vineyard, 6:30 p.m. $12.

Blues Without Borders (blues) at Charlie-O’s World Famous, Montpelier, 9 p.m. Free. Bow Thayer Band, Good Gravy (Americana, folk) at Zenbarn, Waterbury Center, 7:30 p.m. $17.32/$21.71.

BrattRock (rock) at the Stone Church, Brattleboro, 6 p.m. $10-20.

Brooklyn Circle with MLS (jazz) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 9 p.m. $10/$15.

Cal Humberto, Julia Randall (jazz, R&B) at Light Club Lamp Shop, Burlington, 8 p.m. $10/$15. Celebration of Life Music Festival (folk, rock) at Martell’s at the Red Fox, Jeffersonville, noon. Free. Cleary, Gagnon & John (jazz) at the 126, Burlington, 9 p.m. Free. COOP, moon ppl (jazz, fusion) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 11:30 p.m. $10/$15.

Dan Ryan Express (jazz) at Big Joe’s (Vermont Comedy Club), Burlington, 10 p.m. Free. Dead/Not Dead (Grateful Dead tribute) at Afterthoughts, Waitsfield, 8:30 p.m. Free.

Eric Hoh Trio (jazz) at Vermont Pub & Brewery, Burlington, 1 p.m. Free.

Fair Sparrow (folk) at Whammy Bar, Calais, 7 p.m. Free.

Gagnon & Vitek Quartet (jazz) at Vermont Pub & Brewery, Burlington, 6 p.m. Free. Gillian Margot & Geoffrey Keezer (jazz) at the Mill, Westport, N.Y., 7:30 p.m. $36.56. The Halluci Nation (EDM) at the Lounge at Nectar’s, Burlington, 8 p.m. $28.08.

High Summer (soul, jazz) at American Flatbread Burlington Hearth, 1 p.m. Free.

Hot Neon Magic (’80s tribute) at T. Rugg’s Tavern, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

Joe Capps, Geoff Kim Group (jazz) at Bleu Northeast Kitchen, Burlington, 7:30 p.m. Free.

Jonny Mop (rock) at 14th Star Brewing, St. Albans, 6 p.m. Free.

Julian Calv, Alex Stewart, Sarah Penna (Moondog tribute) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 4 p.m. $10. Kindness & the Bop Machine, Soaking Wet, Magic User (punk) at Montpelier Performing Arts Hub, 6 p.m. Free.

Kowalski Brothers (acoustic) at Poultney Pub, 6 p.m. Free.

Left Eye Jump, Mango Jam (blues, jazz) at Red Square, Burlington, 2 p.m. Free.

FRI.6 // “THE WOMEN’S GAME” LIVE WITH SAM MEWIS [LIVE PODCAST]

Marc Edwards (Americana) at von Trapp Brewing Bierhall, Stowe, 5:30 p.m. Free.

Michael Louis-Smith & Friends (jazz) at American Flatbread Burlington Hearth, 5 p.m. Free.

Michael Louis-Smith Trio (jazz) at the 126, Burlington, 11:30 p.m. Free.

Organized Dead (Grateful Dead tribute) at Bent Nails Bistro, Montpelier, 9 p.m. Free.

Rent Strike, Dirty Harry, Helga Pataki, Milk St, Marxist Jargon (rock) at Monkey House, Winooski, 7 p.m. $10.

Social Destruction, Jagged Little Thrill, Heart Shaped Box (Social Distortion, Alanis Morissette, Nirvana tribute) at Higher Ground Showcase Lounge, South Burlington, 8 p.m. $26.42.

Steve Lehman Trio with Paul Cornish (jazz) at Flynn Space, Burlington, noon. Free.

Tidd Shim Lehman Reid (jazz) at Flynn Space, Burlington, 9:30 p.m. Free.

Tiffany Pfeiffer Trio (jazz) at Big Joe’s (Vermont Comedy Club), Burlington, 8:30 p.m. Free.

Toast (covers) at On Tap Bar & Grill, Essex Junction, 9 p.m. Free.

Zach Nugent Duo (Grateful Dead tribute) at Hugo’s, Montpelier, 7:30 p.m. Free.

SUN.8

Andrew Richards (jazz) at Foam Brewers, Burlington, 1 p.m. Free.

Avi Salloway and Friends (folk rock) at the Skinny Pancake, Burlington, 3 p.m. Free.

Burly Girlies, Snake Lips, YABA! (punk) at Foam Brewers, Burlington, 8 p.m. Free.

California Guitar Trio (rock, jazz, classical) at Higher Ground Showcase Lounge, South Burlington, 8 p.m. $37.04/$47.78.

Chris Peterman Quartet (jazz) at Vermont Pub & Brewery, Burlington, 6 p.m. Free.

Freidman & Capps Quartet (jazz) at Vermont Pub & Brewery, Burlington, 1 p.m. Free.

Melissa Aldana (jazz) at Big Joe’s (Vermont Comedy Club), Burlington, 8:30 p.m. Free.

Paul Asbell Quartet (jazz) at American Flatbread Burlington Hearth, noon. Free.

REDadmiral (rock) at Lawson’s Finest Liquids, Waitsfield, 3 p.m. Free.

Sonido Mal Maïz (Latin, psych) at the Skinny Pancake, Burlington, 5 p.m. Free.

Sunday Brunch Tunes (singersongwriter) at Hotel Vermont, Burlington, 10 a.m.

Vermont Blues Society Presents: An Afternoon of Jazzfest Blues (blues) at Red Square, Burlington, 1 p.m. Free.

MON.9

Junior Brown (country) at Higher Ground Ballroom, South Burlington, 8 p.m. $47.50.

TUE.10

Big Easy Tuesdays with Jon McBride (jazz) at the 126, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

Bluegrass Jam (bluegrass) at Poultney Pub, 7 p.m. Free.

Cooie’s Trio (folk, pop) at Lawson’s Finest Liquids, Waitsfield, 5 p.m. Free.

EXTC (XTC tribute) at Higher Ground Showcase Lounge, South Burlington, 7:30 p.m. $37.04. The Faerie Godbrothers (Americana) at Black Flannel Brewing & Distilling, Essex, 6 p.m. Free.

Failure to Launch, Theo Manazir, Lissy and Erin K (singersongwriter) at Monkey House, Winooski, 7 p.m. Free.

Grateful Tuesdays (Grateful Dead tribute) at Nectar’s, Burlington, 8 p.m. $10.

Henbane (folk) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 8 p.m. $10.

Honky Tonk Tuesday with Pastel Panties (folk) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 9 p.m. $10.

Nora Meier, Roses & Rye, Fuzzy Bones (singer-songwriter) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 6 p.m. $5/$10.

WED.11

BBQ and Bluegrass (bluegrass) at Four Quarters Brewing, Winooski, 6:30 p.m. Free.

Dobbs’ Dead (Grateful Dead tribute) at Nectar’s, Burlington, 7 p.m. $12.47.

Jazz Night with Ray Vega (jazz) at Hotel Vermont, Burlington, 8:30 p.m. Free.

Jazz Sessions (jazz) at the 126, Burlington, 9 p.m. Free.

Jeff & Gina (acoustic) at Two Heroes Brewery Public House, South Hero, 6 p.m. Free.

The Native Howl, Tejon Street Corner Thieves, Fisher Wagg (rock) at Higher Ground Showcase Lounge, South Burlington, 7:30 p.m. $23.98.

Wednesday Night Dead (Grateful Dead tribute) at Zenbarn, Waterbury Center, 7 p.m. $10.

WED.4

DJ Blaine (DJ) at Bent Nails Bistro, Montpelier, 5 p.m. Free.

THU.5

DJ Chalango, DJ Tarzana Salsa Night (DJ) at Hugo’s, Montpelier, 7 p.m. Free.

DJ Chaston (DJ) at Red Square Blue Room, Burlington, 10 p.m. Free.

DJ JP Black (DJ) at Red Square, Burlington, 8 p.m. Free.

DJ Two Sev (DJ) at Red Square, Burlington, 11 p.m. Free.

Vinyl Night with Ken (DJ) at Poultney Pub, 6 p.m. Free.

The Bratt Pack

For a town of just over 12,000 people, Brattleboro knows how to rock. The southern Vermont burg bats way above its average when it comes to creative energy, with a vibrant community dedicated to supporting the arts. There’s no better example of that spirit than BRATTROCK. The youth music fest, which debuted in 2016, is a showcase for aspiring musicians to get on stage, in some cases for the very first time, and to connect and form their own scene. Considering Brattleboro has produced acts such as King Tuff and THUS LOVE, it’s always a good idea to keep on eye on what’s next there.

THE JACKETS, EMILY MARGARET BAND and MINC (pictured) are just a few of the bands ready to take the BrattRock stage at the Stone Church on Saturday, June 7.

FRI.6

DJ CRE8 (DJ) at Red Square, Burlington, 6 p.m. Free.

DJ Taka (DJ) at Light Club Lamp Shop, Burlington, 11 p.m. $10/$15.

Eric LaFountaine (DJ) at Gusto’s, Barre, 9 p.m. Free.

Flat (DJ) at Red Square Blue Room, Burlington, 10:30 p.m. Free.

maari (DJ) at Light Club Lamp Shop, Burlington, 9 p.m. $10/$15.

SAT.7

DJ Raul (DJ) at Red Square Blue Room, Burlington, 6 p.m. Free.

HAVEN (DJ) at MothershipVT, Burlington, 10 p.m. Free.

Jah Red (DJ) at Foam Brewers, Burlington, 8 p.m. Free.

Matt Payne (DJ) at Red Square Blue Room, Burlington, 10 p.m. Free.

Molly Mood (DJ) at Red Square Blue Room, Burlington, 8 p.m. Free.

SUN.8

Jester Jigs (DJ) at Red Square, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

Mi Yard Reggae Night with DJ Big Dog (reggae, dancehall) at Nectar’s, Burlington, 9 p.m. Free.

open mics & jams

WED.4

Open Mic (open mic) at Monopole, Plattsburgh, N.Y., 10 p.m. Free.

Open Mic with Danny Lang (open mic) at Poultney Pub, 7 p.m. Free.

The Ribbit Review Open Mic & Jam (open mic) at Lily’s Pad, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

THU.5

Open Mic Night (open mic) at Parker Pie, West Glover, 6 p.m. Free.

Open Mic With Artie (open mic) at Whammy Bar, Calais, 7 p.m. Free.

FRI.6

Red Brick Coffee House (open mic) at Red Brick Meeting House, Westford, 7 p.m. Free.

SUN.8

Olde Time Jam Session (open jam) at the Den at Harry’s Hardware, Cabot, noon. Free.

WED.11

Lit Club (poetry open mic) at Light Club Lamp Shop, Burlington, 6:30 p.m. Free.

Open Mic (open mic) at Monopole, Plattsburgh, N.Y., 10 p.m. Free.

Open Mic with Danny Lang (open mic) at Poultney Pub, 7 p.m. Free.

comedy

THU.5

Live, Laugh, Lava: A Comedy Showcase (comedy) at Radio Bean, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

SAT.7

Comedy Open Mic (comedy open mic) at Old Soul Design Shop, Plattsburgh, N.Y., 7 p.m. Free.

Trivia (trivia) at Four Quarters Brewing, Winooski, 6 p.m. Free.

Trivia Night (trivia) at 1st Republic Brewing, Essex, 6 p.m. Free.

FRI.6

Karaoke Friday Night (karaoke) at Park Place Tavern & Grill, Essex Junction, 8 p.m. Free.

“The Women’s Game” Live with Sam Mewis (live podcast) at Higher Ground Ballroom, South Burlington, 7:30 p.m. $37.24.

SAT.7

Queeraoke with Goddess (karaoke) at Standing Stone Wines, Winooski, 9 p.m. Free. Sugar on Tap (burlesque variety show) at Main Street Landing Performing Arts Center, Burlington, 8 p.m. $20 GA; $25 VIP.

SUN.8

Family-Friendly Karaoke (karaoke) at Old Soul Design Shop, Plattsburgh, N.Y., 5 p.m. Free.

Sunday Funday (games) at 1st Republic Brewing, Essex, noon. Free.

Venetian Karaoke (karaoke) at Venetian Cocktail & Soda Lounge, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

MON.9

Trivia Monday (trivia) at Black Flannel Brewing & Distilling, Essex, 6 p.m. Free.

TUE.10

Open Mic Comedy with Levi Silverstein (comedy open mic) at the 126, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

WED.11

Standup Open Mic (comedy open mic) at Vermont Comedy Club, Burlington, 8:30 p.m. Free.

trivia, karaoke, etc.

WED.4

Karaoke Friday Night (karaoke) at Park Place Tavern & Grill, Essex Junction, 8 p.m. Free.

Rock N’ Roll Bingo with Miss Jubilee (music bingo) at CharlieO’s World Famous, Montpelier, 8 p.m. Free.

Trivia (trivia) at Two Heroes Brewery Public House, South Hero, 6 p.m. Free.

Trivia (trivia) at Alfie’s Wild Ride, Stowe, 7 p.m. Free.

Trivia Night (trivia) at Parker Pie, West Glover, 6:30 p.m. Free.

Trivia Night (trivia) at Dumb Luck Pub & Grill, Winooski, 7 p.m. Free.

Trivia Night (trivia) at Venetian Cocktail & Soda Lounge, Burlington, 7 p.m. Free.

THU.5

Karaoke Friday Night (karaoke) at Park Place Tavern & Grill, Essex Junction, 8 p.m. Free.

Line Dancing and Two-Step Night (dance) at Zenbarn, Waterbury Center, 6 p.m. Free.

Trivia Monday with Top Hat Entertainment (trivia) at McKee’s Original, Winooski, 7 p.m. Free. Trivia with Brain (trivia) at Charlie-O’s World Famous, Montpelier, 8 p.m. Free.

Trivia with Craig Mitchell (trivia) at Monkey House, Winooski, 7 p.m. Free.

TUE.10

Karaoke with DJ Party Bear (karaoke) at Charlie-O’s World Famous, Montpelier, 9:30 p.m. Free.

Taproom Trivia (trivia) at 14th Star Brewing, St. Albans, 6:30 p.m. Free.

Trivia Night: Sports Ball Trivia (sports trivia) at Switchback Beer Garden & Smokehouse, Burlington, 5 p.m. Free.

Trivia Tuesday (trivia) at On Tap Bar & Grill, Essex Junction, 7 p.m. Free.

WED.11

Karaoke Friday Night (karaoke) at Park Place Tavern & Grill, Essex Junction, 8 p.m. Free.

Live Band Karaoke (karaoke) at Bent Nails Bistro, Montpelier, 8 p.m. Free.

Rock N’ Roll Bingo with Miss Jubilee (music bingo) at CharlieO’s World Famous, Montpelier, 8 p.m. Free.

Trivia (trivia) at Alfie’s Wild Ride, Stowe, 7 p.m. Free.

Trivia Night (trivia) at Parker Pie, West Glover, 6:30 p.m. Free.

Trivia Night (trivia) at Dumb Luck Pub & Grill, Winooski, 7 p.m. Free. ➆

SAT.7// BRATTROCK [ROCK]

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Connor Young, Here’s to Now

(SELF-RELEASED, DIGITAL, VINYL)

Hot on the heels of his monster 2024 LP, From Me to You, Burlington jazz trumpeter Connor Young’s latest album, Here’s to Now, is something of a return to form. On last year’s outing, the composer left his comfort zone for a world of unvarnished acoustic folk music, delivering two hours of thoughtful, rootsy songs replete with lyrics, another shift in his modus operandi.

Here’s to Now is a concept record, though its themes are ambiguous enough to provide room for multiple interpretations. Its title suggests timeliness, awareness and, in a way, a bit of control. It declares that people can choose how they live their lives. It’s a toast, or maybe a eulogy. It’s a decision.

album is imbued with a sense of balance, as is Young’s delightful eight-piece band, which expertly walks the line between cohesion and wonderful chaos.

Perhaps best categorized as jazzclassical fusion, or “third stream” jazz, Here’s to Now begins with the fourmovement “Solas Suite,” a study of light. Each section, titled in Gaelic — “Réalta,” “Luí na Gréine,” “Oíche” and “Éiri” — focuses on a di erent quality or form (starlight, dusk, nighttime and sunrise, respectively).

The tone of each piece reflects these di erent moods of light: yearning and wistful (“Réalta”), bustling and uninhibited (“Luí na Gréine”), anticipatory and uncertain (“Oíche”), mellow and satiated (“Éiri”). The suite also shows its creator’s stylistic range, floating from a folk-inflected opener to modern jazz stylings to a 20th-century-crooner-era easy-listening closer.

orchestral jazz. The marriage of classical and jazz traditions continues on the title track, also known as “Tate’s Song,” which Young wrote for his niece.

In an author’s note, Young describes the album as a transition, “from darkness to light [or] shadow to clarity.” The

Young continues his chameleonic streak after the suite closes. “Shadow Steppin’” is a loose swing groove that ﬂirts with big band. Supported by trills of strings, “Inner Voices” and “Winter Waltz” lean toward

Amid shifting tones and genres, Young’s powerful trumpeting remains constant. Rightly taking center stage on most of the album’s 10 cuts, the artist plays his instrument with ﬂuidity and versatility. He varies his musical language with precision, articulating ine able thoughts and feelings in a seamless ﬂow of staccato blips and languid drawls, depending on a piece’s mood.

Here’s to Now closes with hints of exotica and something just shy of traditional pop on the ruminating “Into the Sunset.” Young sends his listeners o with feelings of hopefulness and resilience, as if to say: We’re going to do this all again tomorrow.

Here’s to Now is available on major streaming services. Young hosts a weekly jazz session on Wednesdays at the 126 in Burlington. Check connoryoungmusic. com for upcoming performances at this week’s Burlington Discover Jazz Festival.

JORDAN ADAMS

Connor Young in the studio

calendar

JUNE 4-11, 2025

WED.4

activism

DISABLED ACCESS & ADVOCACY OF THE RUTLAND AREA MONTHLY

ZOOM MEETING: Community members gather online to advocate for accessibility and other disability-rights measures. 11:30 a.m.-noon. Free. Info, 779-9021.

business

QUEEN CITY BUSINESS

NETWORKING INTERNATIONAL GROUP: Savvy businesspeople make crucial contacts at a weekly chapter meeting. BCA Center, Burlington, 11:15 a.m.-1 p.m. Free. Info, 829-5066.

VERMONT

WOMENPRENEURS BIZ

BUZZ ZOOM: A monthly virtual networking meetup provides a space for female business owners to connect. 10-11 a.m. Free; preregister. Info, 870-0903‬.

crafts

YARN CRAFTERS GROUP: A drop-in meetup welcomes knitters, crocheters, spinners, weavers and other fiber artists. BYO snacks and drinks. Must Love Yarn, Shelburne, 5-7 p.m. Free. Info, 448-3780.

etc.

CHAMP MASTERS

TOASTMASTERS CLUB: Those looking to strengthen their speaking and leadership skills gain new tools. Virtual option available. Dealer. com, Burlington, 6-7:30 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, champmasterstm@gmail.com.

MED47 GARDEN SHOPPE: Local green thumbs revel in a jampacked pop-up sale of veggie plants, annuals, perennials, hanging baskets and décor. Proceeds benefit the Brendon P. Cousino Med47 Foundation. 3319 S. 116 Rd., Bristol, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Free; cost of plants. Info, 233-8334.

fairs & festivals

BURLINGTON DISCOVER

JAZZ FESTIVAL: A stellar lineup of musicians hits Queen City locales in this annual celebration of the genre — and its cousins funk, soul, bounce and Afrobeat. See flynnvt. org for full schedule. Various Burlington locations. Various prices. Info, 863-5966.

food & drink

COMMUNITY COOKING: Neighbors join up with the nonprofit’s staff and volunteers to make a yummy meal for distribution. Pathways Vermont, Burlington, 6-8 p.m. Free. Info, 777-8691.

These community event listings are sponsored by the WaterWheel Foundation, a project of the Vermont band Phish.

LIST YOUR UPCOMING EVENT HERE FOR FREE!

All submissions must be received by Thursday at noon for consideration in the following Wednesday’s newspaper. Find our convenient form and guidelines at sevendaysvt.com/postevent

Listings and spotlights are written by Rebecca Driscoll Seven Days edits for space and style. Depending on cost and other factors, classes and workshops may be listed in either the calendar or the classes section. Class organizers may be asked to purchase a class listing.

Learn more about highlighted listings in the Magnificent 7 on page 11.

health & fitness

CHAIR YOGA: Waterbury Public Library instructor Diana Whitney leads at-home participants in gentle stretches supported by seats. 10 a.m. Free. Info, 244-7036.

language

SPANISH

CONVERSATION: Fluent and beginner speakers brush up on their vocabulario with a discussion led by a Spanish teacher. Presented by Dorothy Alling Memorial Library. 5-6 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, programs@damlvt.org.

lgbtq

ST. ALBANS PRIDE: A weeklong series of events celebrating the LGBTQ+ community takes attendees “Over the Rainbow” with hiking, movies, trivia, a drag show and a colorful Main Street parade. See stalbans pridecorpscommunity.org for full schedule. See calendar spotlight. Various St. Albans locations, 7-11 p.m. Various prices; preregister for some events. Info, info@stalbanspridecorps community.org.

music

THE ALBANY SOUND: A local band plays a rich combination of country, folk and rock originals, paired with renditions of rarities by John Prine, Bobby Charles and other noteworthy names. The Tillerman, Bristol, 5-8 p.m. Free; cash bar. Info, 643-2237.

BCA SUMMER CONCERT SERIES: BRUCE SKLAR TRIO:

Three lauded musicians reunite to play original material in an exciting new format at an enchanting afternoon of jazz. Burlington City Hall Park, 12:301:30 p.m. Free. Info, 829-6305.

‘ORIGINS: SOUNDS AND STORIES OF THE AFRICAN DIASPORA’: Burlington Discover Jazz Festival curator Anthony Tidd presents an unforgettable evening of music, breathtaking visuals and insightful storytelling that spans genres and generations. Flynn Main Stage, Burlington, 7:30 p.m. $32-53. Info, 863-5966.

outdoors

CABOT CHEESE-E-BIKE TOUR: Cyclists roll through a pastoral 20-mile trail ride, then enjoy artisan eats, including Vermont’s award-wining cheddar. Lamoille Valley Bike Tours, Johnson, noon4 p.m. $120. Info, 730-0161.

québec

FESTIVAL TRANSAMÉRIQUES: Artists from across generations and continents converge in Montréal for two weeks of dance and theater shows. Various Montréal locations, 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Various prices. Info, 514-844-3822.

seminars

'THREE EASY WAYS TO CULTIVATE DEEP & MEANINGFUL FRIENDSHIPS FOR LIFE & BUSINESS': Confidence and business coach Celeste Hartwell shares tips and tricks for making friends at the office and out in the world. Hosted by Women Business Owners Network of Vermont. 8:30-10 a.m. Free. Info, 503-0219.

‘WHY DAD GUILD?’: Vermont’s largest fatherhood-focused organization hosts a lunchtime webinar for attendees interested in learning about its history, core values, current programs and impact. Noon-1 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 318-4231.

sports

GREEN MOUNTAIN TABLE

TENNIS CLUB: Ping-Pong players swing their paddles in singles and doubles matches. Rutland Area Christian School, 7-9 p.m. Free for first two sessions; $30 annual membership. Info, 247-5913.

talks

FIND MORE LOCAL EVENTS IN THIS ISSUE AND ONLINE:

Find visual art exhibits and events in the Art section and at sevendaysvt.com/art.

See what’s playing in the On Screen section. music + nightlife

Find club dates at local venues in the Music + Nightlife section online at sevendaysvt.com/music.

= ONLINE EVENT

= GET TICKETS ON SEVENDAYSTICKETS.COM

book, Limitless: Transform Your Life With Intuition and Creativity Phoenix Books, Burlington, 7 p.m. $3; preregister. Info, 448-3350.

JACK FAIRWEATHER: A best-selling author delights history buffs with his riveting new novel, The Prosecutor, following one man’s unrelenting quest to find Nazi war criminals. Phoenix Books, Rutland, 6:30 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 855-8078.

THU.5

business

GROW YOUR BUSINESS: Shelburne BNI hosts a weekly meeting for local professionals to exchange referrals and build meaningful connections. Connect Church, Shelburne, 8:30-10 a.m. Free. Info, 377-3422.

JOB FAIR: Curious and career-minded individuals meet with prospective employers and partner state agencies faceto-face. Northlands Job Corps Center, Vergennes, 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Free. Info, 828-4000.

community

COMMUNITY PARTNERS DESK: Neighbors connect with representatives from the Burlington Electric Department and receive answers to questions about its services. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 3-5 p.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

conferences

PEERPALOOZA: Washington County Mental Health Services invites interested folks to a twoday showcase of the vital work that peer specialists perform. Barre City Auditorium, 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, penny. martin@wcmhs.org.

VILLAGE MEET-UP: The Preservation Trust of Vermont hosts a day of panel sessions on housing, rural economic development and the town’s revitalization efforts. Breakfast and lunch provided. Reading Elementary School, 9 a.m.-4 p.m. $25; preregister. Info, 335-1753.

crafts

CHARLIE FARRELL: In “History of Vermont’s One-Room Schoolhouses,” a Milton Historical Society board member provides an in-depth overview of education during the state’s early years. Refreshments provided. Milton Grange, 6:30-8 p.m. Free. Info, 893-1604.

theater

‘THREE TALL WOMEN’: Edward Albee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning stage play tells the story of one woman’s life through three perspectives — her past, present and future. Appropriate for ages 16 and up. Grange Theatre, South Pomfret, 10 a.m. $30-35. Info, 457-3500.

words

GWYNETH FLACK: A Vermont author invites readers to help celebrate the release of her new

A. Hannaford Career Center, Middlebury, 5-8 p.m. $7.50. Info, 382-1012.

dance

QUAHOG DANCE THEATRE: Community members try out everything from ballet to Pilates in this group dedicated to movement and expression. Catamount Arts Center, St. Johnsbury, 1011:30 a.m. Free. Info, 748-2600. etc.

MED47 GARDEN SHOPPE: See WED.4.

NIGHT OWL CLUB: Astronomers and space exploration experts discuss the latest in extraterrestrial news with curious attendees.

Presented by Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium. 7 p.m. Free. Info, 748-2372.

fairs & festivals

BURLINGTON DISCOVER JAZZ FESTIVAL: See WED.4.

film

See what’s playing at local theaters in the On Screen section.

‘ANIMAL KINGDOM 3D’: Audience members are guided through an exploration of stunning animal worlds, from frozen snowy forests to the darkest depths of the ocean. Dealer.com 3D Theater, ECHO Leahy Center for Lake Champlain, Burlington, 11:30 a.m., 1:30 & 3:30 p.m. $3-5 plus regular admission, $16.50-20; free for members and kids 2 and under. Info, 864-1848.

‘ANTARCTICA 3D’: Never-beforeseen footage brings audience members to the farthest reaches of the coldest, driest, windiest continent on Earth. Dealer.com

3D Theater, ECHO Leahy Center for Lake Champlain, Burlington, noon, 2 & 4 p.m. $3-5 plus regular admission, $16.50-20; free for members and kids 2 and under. Info, 864-1848.

CRAFT & SKILLSHARE NIGHT: Guests bring their own supplies to get help with projects and soak up inspiration from experienced makers and menders. Light refreshments provided. Odd Fellows Lodge, Burlington, 6:30-8:30 p.m. Free. Info, 862-7300.

KNIT FOR YOUR NEIGHBOR: All ages and abilities knit or crochet hats and scarves for the South Burlington Food Shelf. Materials provided. South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 2-5 p.m. Free. Info, 846-4140.

KNITTING GROUP: Knitters of all experience levels get together to spin yarns. Latham Library, Thetford, 7 p.m. Free. Info, 785-4361.

WOODWORKING LAB: Visionaries create a project or learn a new skill with the help of mentors and access to tools and equipment in the makerspace. Patricia

‘CAUGHT BY THE TIDES’: Jia Zhang-ke’s bold 2024 drama uses footage shot over 23 years to create a beguiling mix of fiction and documentary. Film House, Main Street Landing Performing Arts Center, Burlington, 7-8:50 p.m. $6-12. Info, 660-2600.

‘OCEAN PARADISE 3D’: Viewers are transported to the far reaches of the Pacific Ocean for a glimpse into the pristine environments vital to our planet’s health. Dealer. com 3D Theater, ECHO Leahy Center for Lake Champlain, Burlington, 10:30 a.m., 12:30, 2:30 & 4:30 p.m. $3-5 plus regular admission, $16.50-20; free for members and kids 2 and under. Info, 864-1848.

‘REBEL WITH A CLAUSE’: Grammar nerds unite at a screening of Brandt Johnson’s documentary about Ellen Jovin’s rollicking cross-country quest to prove that disagreements about punctuation can bring folks closer in a divided time. A Q&A follows. Lebanon Opera House, N.H., 7 p.m. $20. Info, 603-448-0400.

FAMI LY FU N

Check out these family-friendly events for parents, caregivers and kids of all ages.

• Plan ahead at sevendaysvt.com/family-fun Post your event at sevendaysvt.com/postevent.

WED.4

chittenden county

BABY SOCIAL TIME: Caregivers and infants from birth to 1 gather in the Wiggle Room to explore board books and toys. South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 10:30-11:15 a.m. Free. Info, 846-4140.

GAME ON!: Kids take turns collaborating with or competing against friends using Nintendo Switch on the big screen. Caregivers must be present to supervise children below fifth grade. South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 5-6:30 p.m. Free. Info, 846-4140.

barre/montpelier

BABY & CAREGIVER MEETUP: Wiggly ones ages birth to 18 months play and explore in a calm, supportive setting while adults relax and connect on the sidelines. Jaquith Public Library, Marshfield, 10:30-11:30 a.m. Free. Info, 426-3581.

FAMILY CHESS CLUB: Players of all ages and abilities test their skills with instructor Robert and peers. KelloggHubbard Library, 2nd Floor, Children’s Library, Montpelier, 3:30-5 p.m. Free. Info, 223-3338.

mad river valley/ waterbury

TEEN HANGOUT: Middle and high schoolers make friends at a no-pressure meetup. Waterbury Public Library, 3-6 p.m. Free. Info, 244-7036.

TEEN QUEER READS: LGBTQIA+ and allied youths get together each month to read and discuss ideas around gender, sexuality and identity. Waterbury Public Library, 6-7 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 244-7036.

northeast kingdom

ENCHANTED KINGDOM MINI

GOLF: Putters of all ages hit the artist-designed course for some lighthearted competition, whimsy and thrills. Highland Center for the Arts, Greensboro, noon-8 p.m. $4-5. Info, 533-2000.

THU.5

burlington

BABY & ME CLASS: Parents and their infants ages birth to 1 explore massage, lullabies and gentle movements while discussing the struggles and joys of parenthood. Greater Burlington YMCA, 9:45-10:45 a.m. $10; free for members. Info, 862-9622.

BOOK LAUNCH & WORKSHOP: Vermont author Mima Tipper reads from her timely and uplifting young adult novel, Kat’s Greek Summer followed by delicious

Scale New Heights

Budding herpetologists hop to Remarkable Reptile Day at Vermont Institute of Natural Science in Quechee, where the riveting world of cold-blooded critters comes to life through education and entertainment. Native and exotic snakes, turtles, and other slithering, scaly beings get their time in the spotlight with interactive activities, crafts, games and presentations by passionate area experts. A reptile myth-busting program answers burning questions — Do snakes have ears, and can turtles leave their shells? — while knowledgeable pet rescuers from the Cold-Blooded Crusaders provide tips about responsible reptile ownership and the realities of caring for these special creatures.

REMARKABLE REPTILE DAY

Saturday, June 7, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., at Vermont Institute of Natural Science in Quechee. $17-20; free for members and kids 3 and under. Info, 359-5000, vinsweb.org.

fare from Honey Road and hands-on writing activities. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 5:30-7 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, shana@fletcherfriends.org.

chittenden county

MUSIC & MOVEMENT WITH MISS EMMA: Little ones and their caregivers use song and dance to explore the changing seasons and celebrate everyday joys. South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 10:30 a.m. Free. Info, 846-4140.

PRESCHOOL MUSIC WITH LINDA BASSICK: The singer and storyteller extraordinaire guides wee ones ages birth to 5 in indoor music and movement. Dorothy Alling Memorial Library, Williston, 10:30-11 a.m. Free. Info, 878-4918.

PRESCHOOL PLAY TIME: Pre-K patrons play and socialize after music time. Dorothy Alling Memorial Library, Williston, 11-11:30 a.m. Free. Info, 878-4918.

barre/montpelier

POKÉMON CLUB: I choose you, Pikachu! Elementary and teenage fans of the franchise — and beginners, too — trade cards and play games. Kellogg-Hubbard Library, Montpelier, 3:30-5 p.m. Free. Info, 223-3338.

STORY TIME: Kids and their caregivers meet for stories, songs and bubbles. Kellogg-Hubbard Library, Montpelier, 10:30-11 a.m. Free. Info, 223-3338.

stowe/smuggs

WEE ONES PLAY TIME: Caregivers bring kiddos under 4 to a new sensory learning experience each week. Morristown Centennial Library, Morrisville, 10 a.m. Free. Info, 888-3853.

mad river valley/ waterbury

BUSY BEES PLAYGROUP: Blocks, toys, books and songs engage little ones 24 months and younger. Waterbury Public Library, 10-11:30 a.m. Free. Info, 244-7036.

northeast kingdom

ACORN CLUB STORY TIME: Youngsters 5 and under play, sing, hear stories and color. St. Johnsbury Athenaeum, 10:1510:45 a.m. Free. Info, 745-1391.

ENCHANTED KINGDOM MINI GOLF: See WED.4.

FRI.6

chittenden county

LEGO BUILDERS: Mini makers explore and create new worlds with stackable blocks. Recommended for ages 6 and up. South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 3-4:30 p.m. Free. Info, 846-4140.

MUSIC TIME: Little patrons ages birth to 5 sing and dance with legendary local musician Linda Bassick. Brownell Library, Essex Junction, 10:30-11 a.m. Free. Info, 878-6956.

barre/montpelier

BASEMENT TEEN CENTER: A drop-in hangout session welcomes kids ages 12 to 17 for lively games, arts and crafts, and snacks. Kellogg-Hubbard Library, Montpelier, 2-8 p.m. Free. Info, 223-3338.

LEGO CLUB: Budding builders create geometric structures with snap-together blocks. Kellogg-Hubbard Library, Montpelier, 3:30-5 p.m. Free. Info, 223-3338.

STORY TIME & PLAYGROUP: Participants ages 5 and under enjoy themed science, art and nature activities. Jaquith Public Library, Marshfield, 10:30 a.m. Free. Info, 426-3581.

upper valley

LITTLE FARM HANDS: Children ages birth to 4 explore farm life in a way that’s just their size at this touch-friendly exhibit that sparks curiosity and builds confidence. Billings Farm & Museum, Woodstock, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Regular admission, $12-19; free for members and kids 2 and under. Info, 457-2355.

STORY TIME: Preschoolers take part in tales, tunes and playtime. Latham Library, Thetford, 11 a.m. Free. Info, 785-4361.

northeast kingdom

ENCHANTED KINGDOM MINI GOLF: See WED.4.

PRESCHOOL STORY TIME: Youngsters and their caregivers delight in beautiful books, silly songs, creative crafts and unplugged play in the library’s cozy children’s room. Craftsbury Public Library, Craftsbury Common, 10 a.m. Free. Info, 586-9683.

SAT.7 burlington

LEGO TIME: Mini makers ages 4 to 11 design and build original, colorful creations. Fletcher Free Library New North End Branch, Burlington, 11 a.m.-noon. Free. Info, 863-3403.

MARTIAL ARTS FOR KIDS: THE POWER OF HARMONY: Students ages 7 to 12 discover a noncompetitive Japanese martial art that emphasizes falling skills, pins and throws rather than strikes and kicks. Aikido of Champlain Valley, Burlington, 10-10:50 a.m. Free. Info, 951-8900.

SPLASH DANCE: Kiddos soak up sunshine and fun in the fountain while DJs spin family-friendly tracks. Burlington City Hall Park, 2:30-4:30 p.m. Free. Info, eindorato@burlingtoncityarts.org.

chittenden county

DRAWING WITH JASON CHIN: A Caldecott-winning author and illustrator teaches curious kiddos in grades four and up how to make a book dummy. South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 10-11:30 a.m. Free; preregister. Info, sbplkids@southburlingtonvt.gov.

barre/montpelier

ADAMANT BLACKFLY FESTIVAL: Folks of all ages celebrate the bug we love to hate with a nature walk, parade, fashion show, live music and tasty grub. (No, not that kind!) The Adamant Cooperative, 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Free. Info, 223-5760.

mad river valley/ waterbury

CHRISTINE FOSTER HARVEY: An author and former math teacher reads her charming new book, Pie for Breakfast, about a pastry-loving bear. Inklings Children’s Books, Waitsfield, 10-11 a.m. Free. Info, 496-7280.

SATURDAY STORY TIME: Stories and songs help children develop social and literacy skills. Waterbury Public Library, 10:30 a.m. Free. Info, 244-7036.

upper valley

JO KNOWLES: An author of young adult and middle-grade novels reads from her heartfelt new book, Someone’s Gonna

COURTESY

‘SPACE: THE NEW FRONTIER 3D’: Viewers witness history in the making — from launching rockets without fuel to building the Lunar Gateway — in this 2024 documentary narrated by Chris Pine. Dealer.com 3D Theater, ECHO Leahy Center for Lake Champlain, Burlington, 11 a.m., 1 & 3 p.m. $3-5 plus regular admission, $16.5020; free for members and kids 2 and under. Info, 864-1848.

food & drink

BILLINGS BACKYARD

WORKSHOPS: CHARCUTERIE:

Gastronomes discover how to balance flavors, textures and colors while crafting a stunning cheese board. Billings Farm & Museum, Woodstock, 5:30-7 p.m. $140-150 per couple; preregister. Info, 457-2355.

ST. ALBANS BAY FARMERS

MARKET: Local vendors’ art and crafts, live music, and a wide array of eats spice up Thursday afternoons in the region. St. Albans Bay Park, 4:30-7:30 p.m. Free. Info, 524-7589.

games

DUPLICATE BRIDGE GAMES:

Snacks and coffee fuel bouts of a classic card game. Burlington Bridge Club, Williston, 12:30-4 p.m. $6. Info, 872-5722.

WEEKLY CHESS FOR FUN: Players of all ability levels face off and learn new strategies. United Community Church, St. Johnsbury, 5:30-9 p.m. Free; donations accepted. Info, lafferty1949@gmail.com.

language

MANDARIN CONVERSATION

CIRCLE: Volunteers from Vermont Chinese School help students learn or improve their fluency. South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 11 a.m.-noon. Free. Info, 846-4140.

lgbtq

POP-UP HAPPY HOUR: Locals connect over drinks at a speakeasy-style bar, hosted by OUT in the 802. Lincolns, Burlington, 5:30-7 p.m. Free. Info, 860-7812.

music

FEAST & FIELD MUSIC SERIES:

Farm-fresh foods and live tunes are on the menu at a weekly pastoral party in the orchard. See barnarts.org for lineup. Fable Farm, Barnard, 5:30-8:30 p.m. $5-25. Info, 234-1645.

LITTLE RIVER SUMMER MUSIC

SERIES: Sixteen weeks of dynamic performers, local food vendors, craft cocktails, beer and mingling offer the perfect escape after a hot summer day. See bluebirdhotels.com for lineup.

Tälta Lodge Bluebird, Stowe, 5-8 p.m. $10-15. Info, 253-7525.

MOIRA SMILEY’S VERMONT

GARDEN SINGS: A singer, composer and multi-instrumentalist leads community members in a program of joyful, accessible songs. The Tillerman, Bristol,

6:30-8 p.m. $10-25 sliding scale. Info, 349-1946.

MUSIC IN THE VINEYARD SUMMER CONCERT SERIES:

RYAN SWEEZEY & THE MIDNIGHT WALKERS: An electric alt-rock group gets toes a-tappin’ while local food trucks serve up tasty treats. Snow Farm Vineyard, South Hero, 6:30-8:30 p.m. Free. Info, 372-9463.

ON THE DOOR RADIO: A laid-back summer series features tantalizing food-truck fare and a rotating pair of local DJs backed by sunset cocktail vibes. Coal Collective, Burlington, 5-9 p.m. Free. Info, 363-9305.

SILO SESSIONS: SPRINGTIDE: A trio combines high-energy traditional Celtic and Scandinavian fiddle music with heartfelt original compositions and creative improvisation. Bread & Butter Farm, Shelburne, 7-9 p.m. $17-22. Info, events@ breadandbutterfarm.com.

SPRUCE PEAK UNPLUGGED: THE BROOK & THE BLUFF: A Nashville indie-rock band shows off its knack for expertly crafted songs and musicianship. Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center, Stowe Mountain Resort, 7 p.m. $55-75. Info, 760-4634.

outdoors

E-BIKE & BREW TOUR: Pedal lovers cycle through scenic trails and drink in the views with stops at four local breweries. Lamoille Valley Bike Tours, Johnson, 11 a.m.-4 p.m. $85. Info, 730-0161.

SUNSET BIRD WALK: Novice and practiced birders gather to observe crepuscular critters. BYO binoculars. Birds of Vermont Museum, Huntington, 7-8:30 p.m. $5-15 sliding scale; preregister. Info, museum@birdsofvermont. org.

québec

FESTIVAL TRANSAMÉRIQUES:

See WED.4, 11 a.m.-4 p.m.

sports

MCGEE HYUNDAI OF BARRE

SUPER THURSDAY: The racetrack’s 2025 season continues with some seriously nail-biting competition. Thunder Road Speedbowl, Barre, 7-9:30 p.m. $545; free for kids 5 and under. Info, 244-6963.

TRY PADDLING DAY: Dragonheart Vermont invites locals to try their hand at dragon boating before joining as a new member. Ages 14 and up. Waterfront Park, Burlington, 5:30-7:30 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, info@ dragonheartvermont.org.

talks

TALKING ARCHAEOLOGY: ‘UNCOVERING THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION’: Executive director Chris Sabick dives into the history, artifacts and shipwrecks that lie in the depths of “the sixth Great Lake.” A Q&A follows. Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, Vergennes, 7-8 p.m. Free. Info, 475-2022.

JUN. 4-8 | LGBTQ

Love Out Loud

St. Albans Pride takes LGBTQ+ revelers and allies “Over the Rainbow” with a citywide program of scintillating events nodding to The Wizard of Oz. This year’s weeklong lineup continues on Wednesday with themed trivia and karaoke at the Depot, followed by Friday’s Fabulous Franklin County Drag Ball. Saturday brings more color, costumes and creativity at a kaleidoscopic parade down Main Street and afternoon festivities in Taylor Park. Later, guests dressed as Dorothy, Glinda and other famed film characters find home at the Emerald City Gala and silent auction. The celebration concludes on Sunday with a family funday featuring Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and “spiritual stations of pride” hosted by local churches.

ST. ALBANS PRIDE

Wednesday, June 4, 7-11 p.m.; Friday, June 6, 8-11 p.m.; Saturday, June 7, 10 a.m.-11:30 p.m.; and Sunday, June 8, noon-3 p.m., at various St. Albans locations. Various prices; preregister for some events. Info, info@stalbanspridecorpscommunity.org, stalbanspridecorpscommunity.org.

theater

‘THE REVOLUTIONISTS’: Four bold women try to keep their heads in this irreverent, rebellious, girl-powered comedy set during the French Revolution. Lost Nation Theater, Montpelier City Hall, 7:30-9:30 p.m. $10-41. Info, 229-0492.

words ART & WRITING SHARE GROUP FOR JEWS OF ALL STRIPES: Secular, spiritual or religious, all adult Jewish artists, writers and creators are invited to a monthly virtual meetup, presented by Jewish Communities of Vermont. 7-8:30 p.m. Free; preregister for Zoom link. Info, alison@jcvt.org.

FRI.6

conferences

PEERPALOOZA: See THU.5.

crafts

FIRST FRIDAY FIBER GROUP: Fiber-arts fans make progress on projects while chatting over snacks. GRACE, Hardwick, 10:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Free; donations accepted. Info, info@ruralartsvt.org.

environment

FOVLAP LAKE SEMINAR: ‘PROTECTING AND RESTORING LAKE TRIBUTARIES’: Environmentally focused folks gather for a day of talks by area experts about stream science and current practices aimed

Balfolk music to usher in a successful run of The Revolutionists Lost Nation Theater, Montpelier City Hall, 6:45-7:30 p.m. Free. Info, 229-0492.

fairs & festivals

BURLINGTON DISCOVER JAZZ FESTIVAL: See WED.4.

film

See what’s playing at local theaters in the On Screen section.

‘ANIMAL KINGDOM 3D’: See THU.5.

‘ANTARCTICA 3D’: See THU.5. ‘OCEAN PARADISE 3D’: See THU.5.

‘SPACE: THE NEW FRONTIER 3D’: See THU.5.

food & drink

RICHMOND FARMERS MARKET: An open-air marketplace complete with live music connects cultivators and fresh-food browsers. Volunteers Green, Richmond, 3-6:30 p.m. Free; cost of goods. Info, rfmmanager@gmail.com.

SOUTH END GET DOWN: Local food trucks dish out mouthwatering meals and libations while live DJs and outdoor entertainment add to the ambience. Coal Collective, Burlington, 5-9 p.m. Free; cost of food and drink. Info, 363-9305.

games

DUPLICATE BRIDGE GAMES: See THU.5, 10 a.m.-1:30 p.m.

MAH-JONGG: Tile traders of all experience levels gather for a rousing game. Dorothy Alling Memorial Library, Williston, 1-3 p.m. Free. Info, 878-4918.

health & fitness

THE ARTHRITIS FOUNDATION EXERCISE PROGRAM: Pauline Nolte leads participants in a low-impact, evidenced-based program that builds muscle, keeps joints flexible and helps folks stay fit. Waterbury Public Library, 10:30-11:30 a.m. Free; preregister. Info, 241-4840.

GUIDED MEDITATION

at reducing pollution in Lake Champlain. Virtual option available. South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, info@ vermontlakes.org. etc.

GOOD VIBES TO BEAT HUNGER: Dinner and dancing to live tunes by the Eames Brothers Band make for a memorable fundraising event to benefit the Lamoille Community Food Share. Lost Nation Brewing, Morrisville, 6-10 p.m. $100-1,000. Info, 888-6550. MED47 GARDEN SHOPPE: See WED.4.

OPENING NIGHT CELEBRATION: Thespians enjoy a preshow party complete with luscious libations, a new art installation and live

ONLINE: Dorothy Alling Memorial Library invites attendees to relax on their lunch breaks and reconnect with their bodies. Noon-12:30 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, programs@ damlvt.org.

MINDFULNESS MEDITATION: Community members gather for an informal session combining stimulating discussion, sharing and sitting in silence. Pathways Vermont, Burlington, 1:15-2:15 p.m. Free. Info, 777-8691. language

ENGLISH CONVERSATION CIRCLE: Locals learning English as a second language gather in the Digital Lab to build vocabulary and make friends. South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 11 a.m.-noon. Free. Info, 846-4140.

ITALIAN CONVERSATION: Advanced and intermediate speakers practice their skills

FILE: JAMES BUCK

This fun summer civics project for K-8 students is back — with a new set of 25 activities.

HERE’S HOW IT WORKS Participants do an activity and submit the evidence at goodcitizenvt.com. Each completed activity is an entry into drawings to win prizes including $50 gift cards to Phoenix Books, a Vermont State Parks 2026 vehicle pass and the grand prize — a free trip to Washington, D.C. The deadline is Labor Day, September 1.

• Playing or singing a Woody Guthrie tune • Designing a “Future Voter” sticker • Recruiting blood donors • Taking a quiz about AI-generated content

Students who complete all 25 activities will earn the title of “Distinguished Citizen” — and will be honored at the Statehouse. Submit activities as you go to win weekly prizes!

at a conversazione based on the “News in Slow Italian” podcast. Pickering Room, Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, noon-1:30 p.m. Free. Info, 863-3403. lgbtq

PRIDE PROM: Guests dressed in their best breeches sail Vermont’s high seas at this cruising-themed LGBTQ+ blowout featuring live music, cocktails and arepas. Junction Arts & Media, White River Junction, 7-11 p.m. $5-10 suggested donation. Info, 295-6688.

PRIDE OF WOODSTOCK: A celebration of love, diversity and community set against a picturesque small-town backdrop has something for everybody, from drag brunch to a high-heel race. Various Woodstock locations. Free. Info, prideofwoodstock vermont@gmail.com.

RPG NIGHT: Members of the LGBTQ community get together weekly for role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons and Everway. Rainbow Bridge Community Center, Barre, 5:308:30 p.m. Free. Info, 622-0692.

ST. ALBANS PRIDE: See WED.4, 8-11 p.m.

music

BCA SUMMER CONCERT SERIES: ANDREW RICHARDS QUARTET: A critically acclaimed contemporary vocalist, composer and songwriter leads the ensemble in jazz and traditional folk tunes. Burlington City Hall Park, 12:30-1:30 p.m. Free. Info, 829-6305.

CONCERTS IN THE COURTYARD: Music aficionados of all ages delight in a weekly summer series featuring live outdoor performances by noteworthy talent. See benningtonmuseum.org for lineup. Bennington Museum, 5-7 p.m. Free. Info, 447-1571.

CONCERTS ON THE GREEN: Folks get cozy with blankets and lawn chairs while local legends take the stage to perform feel-good toe-tappers. See campmeade. today for lineup. Camp Meade, Middlesex, 5-8 p.m. Free. Info, info@campmeade.today.

DAVID FEURZEIG: The prolific classical pianist continues a statewide series of shows in protest of high-pollution worldwide concert tours. Smilie Memorial School, Bolton, 12:30-2:30 p.m. Free; donations accepted. Info, 434-3819.

DENISE RICKER & ARTHUR

ZORN: A flutist and a pianist join forces to perform rousing works by George Frideric Handel, Franz Doppler and Cécile Chaminade at this concert for Montpelier Art Walk. Proceeds benefit flood recovery efforts. Bethany United Church of Christ, Montpelier, 4:30-5:30 p.m. Free; donations accepted. Info, 522-7649.

FRIDAY NIGHT MUSIC: New vinos, hopping live tunes, tasty food truck provisions and picnic blankets make for a relaxing evening at the vineyard. See lincolnpeakvineyard.com for

lineup. Lincoln Peak Vineyard, New Haven, 6-8 p.m. Free. Info, 388-7368.

FULL CIRCLE: A vocal trio draws on both secular and sacred folk traditions to produce stunning harmonies. Donations benefit Palestinian families in Gaza. Bethany United Church of Christ, Montpelier, 7:30 p.m. Free; donations accepted. Info, 448-0622.

GENTICORUM: A Montréal trio reminds listeners why it’s a leading force in the evolution of Québécois traditional music. Virtual option available. Next Stage Arts, Putney, 7:30 p.m. $1028. Info, 387-0102.

LE VENT DU NORD: A big name in Québec’s progressive francophone folk movement performs traditional French Canadian tunes with a contemporary twist. Court Street Arts at Alumni Hall, Haverhill, N.H., 7:30 p.m. $30. Info, 603-989-5500.

ROCHESTER CHAMBER MUSIC

SOCIETY: Cellist Peter Stumpf and pianist John Blacklow team up to perform stirring works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Felix Mendelssohn and Sergei Prokofiev. Federated Church of Rochester, 7:30-9 p.m. By donation. Info, 767-9234.

outdoors

CABOT CHEESE-E-BIKE TOUR: See WED.4.

E-BIKE & BREW TOUR: See THU.5.

seminars

HARM REDUCTION & NARCAN

TRAINING: Representatives from Vermont CARES teach helpful community members how to identify and respond to an overdose. Odd Fellows Lodge, Burlington, noon-1:30 p.m. Free. Info, 862-7300.

tech

MORNING TECH HELP: Experts answer questions about phones, laptops, e-readers and other devices in one-on-one sessions. South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 846-4140.

theater

‘OH YOU BEAST DESCENDANTS’: Audience members take in a brand-new, politically charged production of puppetry that evolves over the course of the summer. Bread and Puppet Theater, Glover, 7 p.m. $15. Info, 525-3031.

‘THE REVOLUTIONISTS’: See THU.5.

‘THREE TALL WOMEN’: See WED.4, 7 p.m.

SAT.7

agriculture

PLANT SALE: Green thumbs get their fill of gardening goodies at a celebration of things that grow. Milton Artists’ Guild Art Center & Gallery, 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Free; cost of plants. Info, 999-0516.

PLANT SWAP: Cultivators exchange garden starters from

Homeward Bound

It’s an almost universal experience to shout-sing with strangers at a bar or wedding when “Take Me Home, Country Roads” hits the speakers, but that just scratches the surface of one man’s musical legacy. Weston Theater Company digs deeper with its production of Almost Heaven: John Denver’s America at Walker Farm. Sherry Stregack Lutken directs the tender, nostalgic drama following Denver’s life, work and cultural footprint, including masterful renditions of the melodies that continue to move us more than 25 years after his tragic death. From the Rocky Mountains to the Green Mountains, Denver’s timeless tunes live on in the American zeitgeist, like a silver thread woven through the tapestry of communal spirit.

‘ALMOST HEAVEN: JOHN DENVER’S AMERICA’ Wednesday, June 11, 7:30-10 p.m., at Weston Theater at Walker Farm. See website for future dates. $59-92. Info, 824-5288, westontheater.org.

fruits to flowers at this horticultural happening hosted by the Swap Sisters. Caledonia Grange, East Hardwick, 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Free. Info, swapsisters@gmail.com.

bazaars

BOOK & PLANT SALE:

Phytophiles and bookworms get their fill of gardening supplies and gently used titles. Proceeds benefit the Essex Free Library. Essex Memorial Hall, 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Free; cost of items. Info, 872-8927.

CHURCH YARD SALE: Treasure hunters find gently used furniture, household goods, baby items and pet products to take home. Essex Junction St. Pius X Parish, 8:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Free; cost of items. Info, 878-5997.

community

ECOGATHERING: IN THE SHELL OF THE OLD: Community members engage in the opposite of small talk, connecting as they confront the fall of natural and human systems — and consider the shared labor ahead of us. Hard-Pressed Community

Print Shop & Zine Library, West Danville, 3-5 p.m. Free. Info, ncoit@sterlingcollege.edu.

SISTERHOOD CAMPFIRE: Women and genderqueer folks gather in a safe and inclusive space to build community through journaling, storytelling, gentle music and stargazing. Leddy Park, Burlington, 7-9 p.m. Free. Info, sisterhoodcampfire@gmail.com.

dance

BERLIN CONTRA DANCE: Dancers of all ages and abilities learn at a gathering that encourages joy, laughter and friendship. Bring clean, soft-soled shoes. See website for callers and bands. Capital City Grange, Berlin, 8-11 p.m. $5-20 sliding scale. Info, 225-8921.

‘A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM’: Moving Light Dance mounts a ballet adaptation of William Shakespeare’s beloved tale of magic and mischief set in the forests of Greece. Barre Opera House, 7:30-9:30 p.m. $1530. Info, 476-8188.

etc.

AFRICA DAY: Traditional music and dance acts, spoken word poetry, contemporary Afrobeat tunes, keynote speeches, and networking opportunities create a cultural celebration to remember. O.N.E. Community Center, Burlington, 3-9 p.m. Free. Info, 310-3672.

BLACK TIE & TAILS BENEFIT: Supporters of the Humane Society hit the red carpet for a fundraiser with signature cocktails, hors d’oeuvres and live music by the Patricia Julien Trio. Hula, Burlington, 6-9 p.m. $50100. Info, 862-0135.

MED47 GARDEN SHOPPE: See WED.4.

PRESERVATION BURLINGTON HOMES TOUR: Self-guided pedestrians explore eclectic and architecturally diverse abodes with ornate interiors and exteriors. Light refreshments provided. Various Burlington locations, noon-4 p.m. $25. Info, info@ preservationburlington.org.

RESCUE BREW HOUSE PARTY: Animal lovers sip Rock Art

Brewery beers, listen to live tunes and hang out with adoptable critters to raise funds for the shelter. North Country Animal League, Morristown, 2-6 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 888-5065.

SEASON OPENING

EXTRAVAGANZA: More than 50 exhibits, granite-carving demonstrations, live music and an indoor bouldering wall get things rockin’ at this summer kickoff. Vermont Granite Museum, Barre, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Free. Info, 476-4605.

TWILIGHT BLOCK PARTY: Locavores shop, sip and soak in the energy at a summer market replete with live music, talented artists, unique makers and area food purveyors. Burlington City

FOMO?

Find even more local events in this newspaper and online: art

Find visual art exhibits and events in the Art section and at sevendaysvt.com/art.

film

See what’s playing at theaters in the On Screen section.

music + nightlife

Find club dates at local venues in the Music + Nightlife section online at sevendaysvt.com/ music.

Learn more about highlighted listings in the Magnificent 7 on page 11.

Hall Park, 4-8 p.m. Free. Info, 829-6305.

fairs & festivals

BURLINGTON DISCOVER JAZZ

FESTIVAL: See WED.4.

LAGERFEST: New England craft breweries serve up some seriously high-quality lagers, backed by food-truck options and live music by the Seth Yacovone Band. Ages 21 and up. The Green at the Essex Experience, 4-8 p.m. $30. Info, 857-5629.

SPRING CARNIVAL: SafeArt hosts a full day of fun for all ages through music, art, tasty treats, wellness activities and games with participatory elements. North Common, Chelsea, 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Free. Info, 685-3138.

film

See what’s playing at local theaters in the On Screen section.

‘ANIMAL KINGDOM 3D’: See THU.5.

‘ANTARCTICA 3D’: See THU.5.

‘OCEAN PARADISE 3D’: See THU.5.

‘SPACE: THE NEW FRONTIER 3D’: See THU.5.

‘UNDERWORLD’: Pianist Jeff Rapsis provides a live score for this 1927 silent drama about a boisterous gangster kingpin played by George Bancroft. Brandon Town Hall, 7 p.m. Free; donations accepted. Info, 603-236-9237.

food & drink

FARMER’S TABLE DINNER: Head Over Fields brings the local bounty for a five-course feast and a pop-up farmstand. Adventure Dinner Clubhouse, Colchester, 6-9 p.m. $75. Info, christine@ adventuredinner.com.

NORTHWEST FARMERS MARKET: Locavores stock up on produce, preserves, baked goods, and arts and crafts. Taylor Park, St. Albans, 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Free. Info, 242-2729.

games

CHESS CLUB: All ages and abilities face off and learn new strategies. South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Free. Info, 846-4140.

D&D & TTRPG GROUP: Fans of Dungeons & Dragons and other tabletop role-playing games embark on a new adventure with a rotating cast of game masters. Virtual option available. Waterbury Public Library, 1-5 p.m. Free. Info, judi@ waterburypubliclibrary.com.

health & fitness

COLCHESTER CAUSEWAY 5K

& 10K RACE: Scenic views and diverse wetlands surround athletes at this fundraiser for the maintenance and improvement of the causeway. Airport Park, Colchester, 8 a.m.-noon. Free; $40 to participate. Info, seaton@colchestervt.gov.

lgbtq

MONTPELIER PRIDE: The Capital City overflows with a full spectrum of fun celebrating the LGBTQ community, including film screenings, dancing, a parade and other festivities. See pridecentervt.org for full schedule. Various Montpelier locations. Free. Info, 860-7812. PEOPLE’S PRIDE: ‘QUEER EXISTENCE IS RESISTANCE’: Coffee, snacks and sign making fuel a solidarity march through the Queen City, followed by a festival with tasty treats, live music and dancing. Battery Park, Burlington, 11 a.m. Free. Info, jazmojica@gmail.com.

PRIDE OF WOODSTOCK: See FRI.6.

ST. ALBANS PRIDE: See WED.4, 10 a.m.-11:30 p.m. music

ALEXANDER STRING QUARTET:

A prominent New York City chamber group plays riveting works by Joseph Haydn, Franz Schubert and Tarik O’Regan. South Hero Congregational Church, 7-9 p.m. $25. Info, 372-8889.

THE CONVERGENCE PROJECT: Vermont Jazz Center director Eugene Uman and his ensemble team up with vocalist Wanda Houston to perform original jazz compositions with Colombian folkloric rhythms. Chandler Center for the Arts, Randolph, 7 p.m. $10-40 sliding scale; free for kids. Info, 728-9878.

FULL CIRCLE: See FRI.6. First Unitarian Universalist Society of Burlington.

GLORIOUS LEADER: A musical project conceived by Vermont songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Kyle Woolard features songs that flow naturally from acoustic narratives to vibrant pop melodies. Highland Center for the Arts, Greensboro, 7-9 p.m. $5-20. Info, 533-2000.

GUY DAVIS: A Grammynominated blues musician performs original tunes with topical themes of social justice issues. Roots & Wings Coffeehouse at UUCUV, Norwich, 7-9 p.m. $25. Info, 649-8828.

OLD ROUND CHURCH CONCERT SERIES: FOREST STATION: A Vermont bluegrass group takes the stage for a captivating performance of originals packed with improvisational playing. Proceeds benefit the church’s maintenance fund. Old Round Church, Richmond, 7-9 p.m. $15 suggested donation. Info, 434-3654.

outdoors

CABOT CHEESE-E-BIKE TOUR: See WED.4.

E-BIKE & BREW TOUR: See THU.5.

seminars

3D PRINTING WORKSHOP: Former librarian Tyler Strong

leads participants in an introduction to the technology, modeling software and materials necessary for printing. BYO laptop encouraged. Royalton Memorial Library, South Royalton, 10 a.m.-noon. Free; preregister. Info, 763-7094.

NEW MEMBER ORIENTATION: Curious creatives and multimedia enthusiasts get a tour of the facilities and check out available gear. The Media Factory, Burlington, 1-3 p.m. Free; donations accepted; preregister. Info, 651-9692.

theater

‘THE REVOLUTIONISTS’: See THU.5.

‘THREE TALL WOMEN’: See WED.4, 7 p.m.

words

BOOK SALE: A wide selection of gently used books, movies, puzzles and games goes on sale to benefit the library. Middletown Springs Public Library, 8 a.m.-3 p.m. By donation. Info, 235-2435.

BOOK SALE: Lit lovers peruse an array of like-new titles for all their summer reading needs, to benefit Ilsley Public Library. Middlebury United Methodist Church, 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Free; cost of books; cash or check only. Info, 388-4095.

GREAT TRAVELS WRITING

WORKSHOP: Author, educator and photographer Caroline Joy Adams leads adventurers in an inspiring morning of sharing and penning memorable experiences. Haskell Free Library & Opera House, Derby Line, 10:30 a.m.-noon. Free; preregister. Info, library@ haskelloperahouse.org.

NER ALUMNI READING:

Wordsmiths flock to the school’s reunion weekend to hear five New England Review writers share stirring works. Axinn Center, Starr Library, Middlebury College, 10 a.m.noon. Free. Info, 443-5075.

TERRY LOVELETTE: A Vermont author signs copies of his new collection, Down-Back: Personal Essays and Poetic Thoughts From a Good Ole Boy , chronicling his journey of growth and self-discovery. Phoenix Books, Essex, 1-3 p.m. Free. Info, 872-7111.

WORDS IN THE WOODS: RAGE HEZEKIAH: Vermonters and visitors take in the state’s natural beauty while listening to an award-winning poet and educator share thought-provoking selections from her collections. Lake Shaftsbury State Park, 11 a.m.-noon. Free; preregister. Info, info@ vermonthumanities.org.

WRITE NOW!: Lit lovers of all experience levels hone their craft in a supportive and critique-free environment. Kellogg-Hubbard Library, Montpelier, 10 a.m.-noon. Free. Info, 223-3338.

� Saturday: 06/07/2025

0 10am -12:00pm

Join us f o r a tree walk through Champlain College and the surrounding neighborhood.

Directions:

Meet on Tower Terrace. Champlain College lots available for parking on left and right as you drive down Tower Terrace.

Additional street parking may be available where signs allow.

SUN.8

community

‘MY DENTIST’S SON’: Participants gather to swap mystical experiences at a facilitated storytelling circle. Ferrisburgh Town Offices & Community Center, 3-4:30 p.m. Free. Info, connect@ mydentistsson.com.

crafts

YARN CRAFTERS GROUP: See WED.4, 1-3 p.m.

dance

‘A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM’: See SAT.7, 2-4 p.m. MOVEMENT IMPROVISATION

LAB: Instructor Melisa Clark guides movers in a weekly practice encouraging play and exploration. Stone Valley Arts, Poultney, 10 a.m.-noon. $30 per session; $125 for 5 weeks. Info, stonevalleyartscenter@ gmail.com.

etc.

MED47 GARDEN SHOPPE: See WED.4.

fairs & festivals

BURLINGTON DISCOVER JAZZ FESTIVAL: See WED.4.

film

See what’s playing at local theaters in the On Screen section.

‘ANIMAL KINGDOM 3D’: See THU.5.

‘ANTARCTICA 3D’: See THU.5.

‘OCEAN PARADISE 3D’: See THU.5. ‘SPACE: THE NEW FRONTIER 3D’: See THU.5.

food & drink

WINOOSKI FARMERS MARKET:

Area growers and bakers offer ethnic fare, assorted harvests and agricultural products against a backdrop of live music. Winooski Falls Way, 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Free. Info, info@downtownwinooski.org.

games

DUPLICATE BRIDGE GAMES: See THU.5, 1-4:30 p.m.

health & fitness

KARUNA COMMUNITY

MEDITATION: A YEAR TO LIVE (FULLY): Participants practice keeping joy, generosity and gratitude at the forefront of their

FAMI LY FU N

End Up Crying exploring sibling relationships, school drama and divorce. The Norwich Bookstore, 7-8 p.m. Free. Info, 649-1114.

LITTLE FARM HANDS: See FRI.6.

REMARKABLE REPTILE DAY: Visitors discover the amazing world of lizards, turtles and snakes with up-close encounters, hands-on activities and cold-blooded crafts. See calendar spotlight. Vermont Institute of Natural Science, Quechee, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Regular admission, $17-20; free for members and kids 3 and under. Info, 359-5000.

northeast kingdom

ENCHANTED KINGDOM MINI GOLF: See WED.4.

SATURDAY STORY TIME: Tiny tots from birth to age 6 and their caregivers have fun with stories, songs, free play and crafts. St. Johnsbury Athenaeum, 10:30-11 a.m. Free. Info, 745-1391. brattleboro/okemo valley

SANDGLASS THEATER SUMMER

SERIES: ‘BOOK OF STARS’: Fiddler and folk artist Georgia Beatty entertains audience members of all ages with an enchanting tale told through magic lantern performance and original music. Sandglass Theater, Putney, 7-8 p.m. $20. Info, 387-4051.

minds. Jenna’s House, Johnson, 10-11:15 a.m. Free; donations accepted. Info, mollyzapp@live.com.

NEW LEAF SANGHA

MINDFULNESS PRACTICE: New and experienced meditators alike practice together in the Plum Village tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh. Hot Yoga Burlington, 6-7:45 p.m. Free. Info, newleafsangha@ gmail.com.

lgbtq

BARRE PRIDE: Attendees gather for a love-filled bake sale, family activities, drag performances and food trucks. All proceeds benefit Outright Vermont and the Ishtar Collective. Barre City Hall Park, 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Free. Info, barrepride@ gmail.com.

CRAFT CLUB: Creative queer folks work on their knitting, crocheting and sewing projects. Rainbow Bridge Community Center, Barre, 10 a.m.-noon. Free. Info, 622-0692.

PRIDE OF WOODSTOCK: See FRI.6. ST. ALBANS PRIDE: See WED.4, noon-3 p.m.

music

BANDWAGON SUMMER SERIES: BURNT SUGAR THE ARKESTRA CHAMBER: A multiracial “jam army” grabs listeners’ attention

SUN.8 burlington

DAD GUILD PLAY GROUP: Fathers (and parents of all genders) and their kids ages 5 and under drop in for playtime and connection. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 3:30-5 p.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: Tabletop role-players ages 9 to 18 practice their craft with the library’s newest dungeon master, Andrew. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, noon-4 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 863-3403.

FAM JAMS: Musician and early childhood educator Alex Baron facilitates an interactive morning of music and casual play. The Guild Hall, Burlington, 9:30-11 a.m. Free. Info, 318-4231.

SENSORY-FRIENDLY SUNDAY: Folks of all ages with sensory processing differences have the museum to themselves, with adjusted lights and sounds and trusty sensory backpacks. ECHO Leahy Center for Lake Champlain, Burlington, 9-10 a.m. Free; preregister. Info, kvonderlinn@echovermont.org.

chittenden county

DR. PHILIP A. GLOTZBACH: A former Skidmore College president brings a timely message to local students and families with his new book, Embrace Your Freedom, about launching teens and young adults into the world. Barnes & Noble, South Burlington, 12:30-2 p.m. Free. Info, 864-8001.

SOCIAL SUNDAYS: Families participate in fun and educational art activities with diverse mediums and themes. All supplies and instruction provided. Milton Artists’ Guild Art Center & Gallery, 1-3 p.m. Free. Info, 891-2014.

with freestyle acid-funk and jazz tunes. West River Park, Brattleboro, 6 p.m. $22-25; free for kids under 12. Info, 387-0102. CONCERTS ON THE GREEN: See FRI.6, 3-6 p.m. ‘TRANSLINEAR LIGHT: THE MUSIC OF ALICE COLTRANE’: Ravi Coltrane takes the stage with special guest Brandee Younger for a concert of works honoring the late American jazz musician and composer. Flynn Main Stage, Burlington, 6 p.m. $32-63.50. Info, 863-5966.

outdoors

EARLY BIRDER MORNING WALK: You know what they say: The early bird gets the worm! New and experienced avian admirers take a stroll to observe the area’s flying, feathered friends. BYO binoculars. Birds of Vermont Museum, Huntington, 7-8:30 a.m. $10 suggested donation; preregister. Info, 434-2167.

québec

‘CLUE: ON STAGE’: Mystery and mischief await at Boddy Manor in this stage version of the 1985 cult-classic flick featuring murder, blackmail and one sinister dinner party. Sylvan Adams Theatre, Segal Centre for Performing Arts,

barre/montpelier

GENDER CREATIVE KIDS: Trans and gender-nonconforming kiddos under 13 and their families build community and make new friends at this joyful monthly gathering. Various locations statewide, 2-4 p.m. Free; contact organizer for info and to preregister. Info, 865-9677.

‘A VISIT WITH AESOP’: Award-winning stage and screen actor J.T. Turner captivates audience members with the magic of storytelling at this one-man show bringing classic fables to life. Plainfield Town Hall Opera House, 4-5:30 p.m. By donation. Info, plainfieldartsvt@ gmail.com.

stowe/smuggs

‘THE LITTLEST COVE’: The Treehouse Shakers present an immersive discovery play for ages 3 to 6, offering endless wonder and tactile interactive experiences. Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center, Stowe Mountain Resort, 11 a.m. & 2 p.m. $20-38. Info, 760-4634.

middlebury area

TASTE OF SUMMER: Market vendors, a kids carnival with games and prizes, delicious eats, and live music make for an idyllic day of fun in the sun. Ferrisburgh Union Meeting Hall, 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Free. Info, unionmeetinghall@gmail.com.

upper valley

LITTLE FARM HANDS: See FRI.6.

MON.9 chittenden county

POKÉMON CLUB: Players trade cards and enjoy activities centered on their favorite strategic game. Dorothy Alling

Montréal, 2 p.m. $75-80. Info, 514-739-7944.

theater

‘THE REVOLUTIONISTS’: See THU.5, 2-4 p.m.

‘THREE TALL WOMEN’: See WED.4, 3 p.m.

words

ANGELA PATTEN & SCUDDER

PARKER: Two renowned Vermont poets share their latest volumes of prose and verse, Feeding the Wild Rabbit and The Poem of the World respectively. Highland Center for the Arts, Greensboro, 4 p.m. Free. Info, 533-2000.

BOOK SALE: See SAT.7, 10 a.m.-2 p.m.

MON.9 agriculture

SUMMER FARM TOUR: PIGASUS

MEATS: Vermont Land Trust invites locavores to tour a conservation-minded pork producer and learn more about how it stewards the land. Pigasus Meats, South Hero, 1:30-3:30 p.m. Free; donations accepted; preregister. Info, 262-3765.

Memorial Library, Williston, 4-5 p.m. Free. Info, 878-4918.

mad river valley/ waterbury

TODDLER TIME: Little ones ages 5 and under have a blast with songs, stories, rhymes and dancing. Waterbury Public Library, 10:30 a.m. Free. Info, 244-7036.

upper valley

LITTLE FARM HANDS: See FRI.6.

STORY TIME WITH BETH: A bookseller and librarian extraordinaire reads picture books on a different theme each week. The Norwich Bookstore, 10 a.m. Free. Info, 649-1114.

TUE.10

burlington

SING-ALONG WITH LINDA BASSICK: Babies, toddlers and preschoolers sing, dance and wiggle along with the local musician. Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, 11-11:30 a.m. Free. Info, 863-3403.

chittenden

county

NATIONAL FROSTED COOKIE DAY: Sweets fans use frosting and sprinkles to decorate a sugary confection in honor of the annual holiday. Brownell Library, Essex Junction, 3:30-4:30 p.m. Free. Info, 878-6956.

STORY TIME: Youngsters from birth to 5 enjoy a session of reading, rhyming and singing. Dorothy Alling Memorial Library, Williston, 10:30-11 a.m. Free. Info, 878-4918.

crafts

COLLAGE COLLECTIVE: Creatives of all experience levels cut, paste and make works of wonder. Virtual options available. Expressive Arts Burlington, 6:30-9 p.m. Free; donations accepted. Info, 343-8172.

FUSE BEADS CLUB: Aspiring artisans bring ideas or borrow patterns to make beaded creations. Kellogg-Hubbard Library, Montpelier, 3:30-5 p.m. Free. Info, 223-3338.

etc.

MED47 GARDEN SHOPPE: See WED.4.

film

See what’s playing at local theaters in the On Screen section.

‘ANIMAL KINGDOM 3D’: See THU.5.

‘ANTARCTICA 3D’: See THU.5.

‘OCEAN PARADISE 3D’: See THU.5.

‘SPACE: THE NEW FRONTIER 3D’: See THU.5.

games

BURLINGTON ELKS BINGO: Players grab their daubers for

barre/montpelier

BASEMENT TEEN CENTER: See FRI.6, 2-6 p.m.

mad river valley/

waterbury

WATERCOLOR FOR KIDS: Artist Pauline Nolte leads little painters in grades 2 to 4 in exploration and expression. Waterbury Public Library, 3-4 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 244-7036.

northeast kingdom

LAPSIT STORY TIME: Babies 2 and under learn to love reading, singing and playing with their caregivers. Siblings welcome. St. Johnsbury Athenaeum, 10:15-10:45 a.m. Free. Info, 745-1391. PRESCHOOL STORY TIME: See FRI.6.

WED.11

chittenden

county

BABY SOCIAL TIME: See WED.4. GAME ON!: See WED.4.

barre/montpelier

BABY & CAREGIVER MEETUP: See WED.4.

FAMILY CHESS CLUB: See WED.4. HOMESCHOOL BOOK GROUP: Kids ages 10 to 15 who learn at home bond over books. Kellogg-Hubbard Library, Montpelier, 1-2 p.m. Free. Info, 223-3338.

northeast kingdom

ENCHANTED KINGDOM MINI GOLF: See WED.4. K

ofPyramid Prizes

a competitive night of card stamping for cash prizes. Burlington Elks Lodge, 6 p.m. Various prices. Info, 802-862-1342.

health & fitness

business

CEDRR JUNE MIXER: Chamber and Economic Development of the Rutland Region hosts a night of networking, food, prizes and activities. The Gymnasium, Rutland, 5-7 p.m. Free. Info, 773-2747.

‘SPACE: THE NEW FRONTIER 3D’: See THU.5.

games

DUPLICATE BRIDGE GAMES: See THU.5.

health & fitness

LAUGHTER YOGA: Spontaneous, joyful movement and breath promote physical and emotional health. Virtual option available. Pathways Vermont, Burlington, 1:15-2:15 p.m. Free. Info, 777-8691.

language

GERMAN LANGUAGE LUNCH: Willkommen! Speakers of all experience levels brush up on conversational skills over bagged lunches. Kellogg-Hubbard Library, Montpelier, noon-1 p.m. Free. Info, 223-3338.

lgbtq

QTPOC SUPPORT

community

CURRENT EVENTS

DISCUSSION GROUP:

Brownell Library holds a virtual roundtable for neighbors to pause and reflect on the news cycle. 10-11:30 a.m. Free. Info, 878-6955.

LAKE CHAMPLAIN MEMORY

CAFÉ: Those living with dementia and their caregivers gather to make friends and have fun.

Fletcher Free Library New North End Branch, Burlington, 11 a.m.noon. Free. Info, 863-3403.

COMMUNITY MEDITATION: All experience levels engage in the ancient Buddhist practice of clearing the mind to achieve a state of calm. First Unitarian Universalist Society of Burlington, 5:15-6 p.m. Free; donations accepted. Info, 862-5630.

QI GONG FOR VITALITY & PEACE: Librarian Judi Byron leads students in this ancient Chinese practice of mindful movement and breath. Wear comfortable clothing. Waterbury Public Library, 9:15 a.m. Free; preregister. Info, judi@ waterburypubliclibrary.com. language

GROUP: Pride Center of Vermont facilitates a safe space for trans and queer folks of color to connect, share experiences, process current events and brainstorm ideas. 6:30-8 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 863-0003.

music

VERGENNES CITY BAND

REHEARSAL: Instrumentalists ages 12 to 90 join the town’s ensemble for rehearsals and concerts that fit their schedule. BYO music stand encouraged. Vergennes Congregational Church, 7-9 p.m. Free. Info, sodaniel27@gmail.com.

québec

‘CLUE: ON STAGE’: See SUN.8, 7:30 p.m.

words

READ LIKE A WRITER: New England Readers & Writers hosts a virtual reading group for lit lovers to chat about short stories, both contemporary and classic. 6:30-8 p.m. Free. Info, 372-1132.

TUE.10 agriculture

ALTERNATIVE LAND ACCESS WEBINAR: NOFA-VT hosts farmers, stewards, service providers and folks interested in creative land solutions for an enlightening conversation with worker-owned La Finca Cooperative. 5:30-7 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 419-0073.

bazaars

OUTDOOR GOODS SWAP: Neighbors exchange gently used camping and hiking gear, sporting goods, gadgets, and games. Odd Fellows Lodge, Burlington, 6:30-8 p.m. Free. Info, 862-7300.

THE MOTH STORYSLAM: Local tellers of tales recount true stories in an open-mic format. Burlington Beer, 7 p.m. $15; preregister. Info, susanne@ themoth.org.

crafts

ALL HANDS TOGETHER

COMMUNITY CRAFTING GROUP: Marshfield spinning maven Donna Hisson hosts a casual gathering for fiber fans of all abilities to work on old projects or start something new. Jaquith Public Library, Marshfield, 4:306 p.m. Free. Info, 426-3581.

dance

QUAHOG DANCE THEATRE: See THU.5.

SWING DANCE PRACTICE

SESSION: All ages and experience levels shake a leg in this friendly, casual environment designed for learning. Bring clean shoes. North Star Community Hall, Burlington, 8-9:30 p.m. $5. Info, 864-8382.

etc.

MED47 GARDEN SHOPPE: See WED.4.

N.H. GIVES & OPEN HOUSE: Philanthropic community members donate funds to benefit the nonprofit arts organization’s final performance in December. Revels North, Lebanon, N.H., 3-8 p.m. By donation. Info, 603-558-7894.

film

See what’s playing at local theaters in the On Screen section.

‘ANIMAL KINGDOM 3D’: See THU.5.

‘ANTARCTICA 3D’: See THU.5.

‘LOST NATION’: History buffs watch local filmmaker Jay Craven’s Revolutionary War drama about Ethan Allen and Lucy Terry Prince, set in the early upstart Republic of Vermont. A Q&A with the director follows. Barrette Center for the Arts, White River Junction, 7 p.m. $1325. Info, 296-7000.

‘OCEAN PARADISE 3D’: See THU.5.

FRENCH CONVERSATION

GROUP: French-speakers and learners meet pour parler la belle langue. Burlington Bay Market & Café, 5:30-8 p.m. Free. Info, 343-5493.

ITALIAN LANGUAGE LUNCH: Speakers hone their skills in the Romance language over bagged lunches. Kellogg-Hubbard Library, Montpelier, noon-1 p.m. Free. Info, 223-3338.

music

HIGHER GROUND PRESENTS:

MT. JOY: An acclaimed fivepiece indie-rock band performs dynamic original songs that NPR says “unfold like good political speeches.” Midway Lawn, Champlain Valley Exposition, Essex Junction, 8 p.m. $59.5063.50; free for kids 12 and under. Info, 652-0777.

INTERPLAY JAZZ JAM NORTH: Instrumentalists tune in for a night of melody, bringing six to eight copies of sheet music to pass around. Faith United Methodist Church, South Burlington, 6:30-9 p.m. Free. Info, 578-8830.

québec

‘CLUE: ON STAGE’: See SUN.8, 7:30 p.m.

seminars

BICYCLING BASICS FOR FUN & SAFE RIDING: Looking to hop in the saddle this summer?

Instructor Nancy Schulz elucidates topics ranging from e-bikes to helmet comfort in this six-part series. An optional, guided ride follows. Montpelier Senior Activity Center, 5:30 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, saddleshoes2@gmail.com.

DESIGNING VIDEO SLIDESHOWS: Photographers, artists and storytellers learn how to turn their photos into engaging videos using Canva’s built-in editing tools. The Media Factory, Burlington, 6-8 p.m. Free; donations accepted; preregister. Info, 651-9692.

TENANT SKILLS

WORKSHOP: The Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity brings renters up to speed on the fundamentals of tenant rights and responsibilities. Noon-1:30 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 660-3456.

tech

AFTERNOON TECH HELP:

Experts answer questions about phones, laptops, e-readers and other devices in one-on-one sessions. South Burlington Public Library & City Hall, 1-4 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 846-4140.

words

BURLINGTON LITERATURE GROUP:

Bookworms analyze Thomas Pynchon’s postmodern epic Gravity’s Rainbow over the course of 14 weeks. 6:30-8 p.m. Free. Info, info@nereadersand writers.com.

WRITING CIRCLE: Words pour out when participants explore creative expression in a low-pressure environment. Virtual option available. Pathways Vermont, Burlington, 4-5:30 p.m. Free. Info, 777-8691.

WED.11

business

QUEEN CITY BUSINESS NETWORKING INTERNATIONAL GROUP: See WED.4.

community

CURRENT EVENTS: Neighbors have an informal discussion about what’s in the news. Dorothy Alling Memorial Library, Williston, 10:30 a.m.-noon. Free. Info, 878-4918.

crafts

GREEN MOUNTAIN CHAPTER OF THE EMBROIDERERS’ GUILD OF AMERICA: Anyone with an interest in the needle arts can bring a project to this monthly meeting. Holy Family Parish Hall, Essex Junction, 9:30 a.m.-1 p.m. Free. Info, gmc.vt.ega@ gmail.com.

YARN CRAFTERS GROUP: See WED.4.

dance

ECSTATIC DANCES: A free-form boogie session allows participants to let loose in a safe space under the full moon and around the crackling fire. Dreamland, Worcester, 7-9 p.m. $10. Info, 505-8011.

etc.

MED47 GARDEN SHOPPE: See WED.4.

N.H. GIVES & OPEN HOUSE: See TUE.10, noon-5 p.m.

SPRING FOR VERMONT STAGE: A joyful celebration honors three decades of unforgettable theater and the people who make it all possible. Main Street Landing Performing Arts Center,

Burlington, 6:30-9 p.m. $69-139 sliding scale. Info, 862-1497.

film

See what’s playing at local theaters in the On Screen section.

‘LOST NATION’: History buffs watch local filmmaker Jay Craven’s Revolutionary War drama about Ethan Allen and Lucy Terry Prince, set in the early upstart Republic of Vermont. The Quechee Club, 5 p.m. $15. Info, 748-2600.

NXT ROCKUMENTARY FILM SERIES: ‘THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME’: Peter Clifton and Joe Massot’s 1976 Led Zeppelin concert documentary features surreal dream sequences, epic drum solos and indulgent guitar heroics. Next Stage Arts, Putney, 7 p.m. $8. Info, 387-0102.

food & drink

COMMUNITY COOKING: See WED.4.

games

CHESS TIME: Neighbors partake in the riveting ancient game of strategy in an informal setting. Brownell Library, Essex Junction, 5-6 p.m. Free. Info, 878-6956.

health & fitness

CHAIR YOGA: See WED.4.

lgbtq

MONTPELIER PRIDE: See SAT.7.

QUEER WRITERS’ GROUP: LGBTQ authors meet monthly to discuss their work, write from prompts, and give each other advice and feedback. Rainbow Bridge Community Center, Barre, 5:30-7 p.m. Free. Info, 622-0692.

music

BCA SUMMER CONCERT SERIES: THE SELKIES: A talented trio weaves together dynamic melodies, harmonies and rhythms spanning genres from rock to traditional Celtic music. Burlington City Hall Park, 12:301:30 p.m. Free. Info, 829-6305.

BLUEGRASS EXTRAVAGANZA: Local musicians take the genre to new heights while guests enjoy tacos and ice-cold beverages. The Tillerman, Bristol, 5-8 p.m. Free; cash bar. Info, 643-2237.

OLIVE KLUG: The center’s musician-in-residence assumes the spotlight to perform original indie-folk songs packed with poetic lyrics and fearless emotional honesty. Artistree Community Arts Center, South Pomfret, 6:30 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 457-3500.

outdoors

CABOT CHEESE-E-BIKE TOUR: See WED.4.

québec

‘CLUE: ON STAGE’: See SUN.8, 7:30 p.m.

seminars

SUSTAINING THE RENT WORKSHOP: The Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity helps tenants financially prepare and access resources to meet their housing needs. 5-6:30 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 660-3456.

sports

GREEN MOUNTAIN TABLE

TENNIS CLUB: See WED.4.

talks

SUMMER SPEAKER SERIES:

PAULA ROUTLY: In “Thirty Years of Seven Days,” the newspaper’s publisher, editor-in-chief and cofounder looks back at the stories, decisions and milestones that mark three decades of community journalism. Worthen Library, South Hero, 6:30 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 372-6209.

theater

‘ALMOST HEAVEN: JOHN DENVER’S AMERICA’: Weston Theater Company brings the Rocky Mountain high to the Green Mountain State at this uplifting production chronicling the singer-songwriter’s life, legacy and timeless tunes. See calendar spotlight. Weston Theater at Walker Farm, 7:30-10 p.m. $59-92. Info, 824-5288.

‘MOLIÈRE’S THE MISER’: “Bridgerton” meets “Schitt’s Creek” in 17th-century Paris when Vermont Repertory Theatre raises the curtain on the iconic French writer’s hilarious farce. Isham Family Farm, Williston, 7:30-10 p.m. $20-40. Info, admin@vermontrep.com.

words

ANA HEBRA FLASTER: A journalist, activist and author reads from her captivating new memoir, Property of the Revolution chronicling her family’s journey from postrevolutionary Cuba to a mill town in New Hampshire. The Norwich Bookstore, 7 p.m. Free. Info, 649-1114.

CHARD DENIORD & D. NURKSE: Two lauded poets read riveting selections from their recent collections and share brandnew works that have yet to be published. Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, 5:30 p.m. Free; preregister. Info, 257-0124, ext. 101.

HELEN WHYBROW: The Vermont author, editor and farmer invites readers to celebrate the release of her new book, The Salt Stones: Seasons of a Shepherd’s Life. Phoenix Books, Burlington, 7 p.m. $3; preregister. Info, 448-3350.

POETRY POTLUCK: Folks who are well versed in meter and rhyme gather to swap dishes and words in a welcoming environment. Whirligig Brewing, St. Johnsbury, 7-9 p.m. Free. Info, acampbell@ catamountarts.org. ➆

Embrace Your Inner Artist

Find joy in self-expression with support from encouraging instructors.

Enrolling all levels for Drawing, Painting, and Fused Glass Classes.

classes

THE FOLLOWING CLASS LISTINGS ARE PAID ADVERTISEMENTS. ANNOUNCE YOUR CLASS HERE FOR AS LITTLE AS $21.25/WEEK (INCLUDES SIX PHOTOS AND UNLIMITED DESCRIPTION ONLINE).

NEWSPAPER DEADLINE: MONDAYS AT 3 P.M. POST CLASS ADS AT SEVENDAYSVT.COM/POSTCLASS. GET HELP AT CLASSES@SEVENDAYSVT.COM.

food & drink

THE BASICS CAKE DECORATING CLASS: In this workshop, we will talk through the basics of ﬁlling and crumb coating a cake, working on getting nice smooth edges, and some rosette piping. You’ll go home with great new techniques as well as a two-layer 6-inch cake that serves eight. u., Jun. 5, 6-7:30 p.m.

Cost: $85. Location: Red Poppy Cakery, 1 Elm St., Waterbury Village Historic District. Info: 203-400-0700, sevendaystickets.com.

WILDFLOWER CAKE

DECORATING CLASS: In this workshop, we will frost a cake to look like a wildﬂower meadow! You’ll learn how to do a rustic smooth coat and many

buttercream ﬂower techniques on a two-layer 6-inch cake that serves eight. Cake kits are available in gluten-free, vegan or both. Please disclose all allergies in the ticket registration. Please note, we are not an allergen-free facility Tue., Jun. 10, 6-7:30 p.m.

Cost: $85. Location: Red Poppy Cakery, 1 Elm St., Waterbury Village Historic District. Info, 203-400-0700, sevendays tickets.com.

home & garden

BLOOM LAB PERFUME MAKING: Gather with friends and discover the art of botanical perfumery at this perfume blending event! In this two-hour class, you will learn the basics of perfumery while creating your own custom botanical eau de parfum that is hand-blended to reﬂect your unique personality. It’s part art, part science, and a whole lot of fun and self-discovery! For anyone interested in perfumery or simply enjoying good company while trying something new. Attendees also receive 20 percent off one regular-priced item from Addie

& Grace Boutique. Bubbles and charcuterie! Fri., Jun. 6, 6-8 p.m. Cost: $95. Location: Addie & Grace Boutique, 21 Essex Way, Suite 414, Essex. Info: sevendaystickets.com.

martial arts

AIKIDO: THE POWER OF HARMONY: FREE WORKSHOPS AT AIKIDO OF CHAMPLAIN VALLEY Free youth/family workshop, Sat., Jun. 7, 10 a.m.; adult workshop, Tue., Jul. 8, 7:15 p.m. Cultivate core power,

aerobic ﬁtness and resiliency. e dynamic, circular movements emphasize throws, joint locks and the development of internal energy. Join our community and ﬁnd resiliency, power and grace. Inclusive training, gender-neutral dressing room/ bathrooms and a safe space for all. Visitors are always welcome to watch a class! Vermont’s only intensive aikido programs.

Preregister for workshops on our website. Location: Aikido of Champlain Valley, 257 Pine St., Burlington. Info: bpincus@ burlingtonaikido.org, burlingtonaikido.org.

Buy & Sell »

ANTIQUES, FURNITURE, GARAGE SALES

Community »

ANNOUNCEMENTS, LOST & FOUND, SUPPORT GROUPS

Rentals &

Real Estate »

APARTMENTS, HOMES, FOR SALE BY OWNER

Vehicles »

CARS, BIKES, BOATS, RVS

Services »

FINANCIAL, CHILDCARE, HOME & GARDEN

Musicians & Artists »

LESSONS, CASTING, REHEARSAL SPACE

Jobs » NO SCAMS, ALL LOCAL, POSTINGS DAILY

Ronnie

AGE/SEX: 2-year-old neutered male

ARRIVAL DATE: May 22, 2025

SUMMARY: Ronnie is a whole lot of love wrapped up in one big, hunky, handsome package! is sweet and spirited guy is bursting with joy and ready to share it with his new family. Whether he’s zooming around the yard or leaning in for some head scratches, Ronnie does everything with enthusiasm and a tail that never stops wagging. He’s not a fan of other animals, so he’s looking for a home where he can be the center of your universe. If you’re looking for a joyful, lovable goofball, visit Ronnie at HSCC to see if he’s the pup for you!

DOGS/CATS/KIDS: Ronnie is seeking a home as the only pet. He has no known history living with children.

Visit the Humane Society of Chittenden County at 142 Kindness Court, South Burlington, Tuesday through Friday from 1 to 4 p.m. or Saturday from noon to 4 p.m. Call 862-0135 or visit hsccvt.org for more info.

DID YOU KNOW?

June is National Foster a Pet Month! Whether you can foster for a few weeks or just a weekend, opening your home to a pet in need is an irreplaceable gift to the most vulnerable animals in our care. Learn more about fostering for HSCC at hsccvt.org/foster.

GARAGE & ESTATE SALES

LAKEVIEW TERRACE

NEIGHBORHOOD YARD

SALE

More than a dozen families, selling everything from tools & furniture to toys & puzzles.

Something for everyone. Take a pleasant stroll on a quiet street! Sat., Jun. 7, beginning at 9 a.m. 3 blocks north of Battery Park, 1 block west of North Ave.

ANNUAL COUNTRYSIDE

NEIGHBORHOOD YARD SALE

Large neighborhood w/ all streets & many residents participating.

Something for everyone. Countryside Dr. off Brickyard Rd. in Essex Jct. You don’t want to miss it! Sat., Jun. 7,

S. Burlington estate. Furniture, Oriental rugs, accessories, antiques, kitchen items, recliners & more. rough 8:15 p.m. on Jun. 4, Info, estatesalesofvermont. com.

WILLISTON WOODS YARD SALES

Fri. & Sat., Jun. 6 & 7, 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Grilled hot dog lunch on Fri. Williston Woods Rd. is off N. Williston Rd. in Williston.

SPORTING GOODS

CROSSFIT AFFILIATE FOR SALE

Droptine CrossFit is looking for a new owner(s)! Serious inquiries only, please. Note: We do not own the building. Info, droptinecrossﬁ t@gmail. com, droptinecrossﬁ t. com.

WANT TO BUY

ALL MOTORCYCLES WANTED

Tag & Book SALE

Saturday, June 7 9am-3pm Shelburne

Books, furniture, housewares, collectibles, linens, tools, etc.

WakeRobin.com

Pets not allowed. Cash or check preferred.

Buying years 1930s2000s. All makes & models, any condition. Cash paid. Call 315-569-8094 or email cyclerestoration@ aol.com.

CLASSIFIEDS KEY

appt. appointment

apt. apartment

BA bathroom

BR bedroom

DR dining room

DW dishwasher

HDWD hardwood

HW hot water

LR living room

NS no smoking

OBO or best offer

refs. references

sec. dep. security deposit

W/D washer & dryer

EQUAL HOUSING OPPORTUNITY

All real estate advertising in this newspaper is subject to the Federal Fair Housing Act of 1968 and similar Vermont statutes which make it illegal to advertise any preference, limitations, or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, handicap, presence of minor children in the family or receipt of public assistance, or an intention to make any such preference, limitation or a discrimination. The newspaper will not knowingly accept any advertising for real estate, which is in violation of the law. Our

TOP CASH PAID FOR OLD GUITARS

Looking for 1920-1980 Gibson, Martin, Fender, Gretsch, Epiphone, Guild, Mosrite, Rickenbacker, Prairie State, D’Angelico & Stromberg guitars + Gibson mandolins & banjos. ese brands only! Call for a quote: 1-855-402-7208. (AAN CAN)

ANNOUNCEMENTS

TIME CAPSULE

You are invited to open a time capsule from the early 1980s. Free to all at ne-farmer.com.

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 Buy

(1667) BANKRUPTCY: VEHICLES & BOATS

Online Auction Closes: Tuesday, June 17 @ 11AM

Preview: (During Business Hours) Mon.-Fri. 9AM-4PM 298 James Brown Dr., Williston, VT 05495 Visit THCAuction.com for more

(1672) TORO EQUIPMENT, APPLIANCES & PATIO FURNITURE **BENEFITS JENNAS PROMISE**

FORECLOSURE: 2 BR / 1 BTH HOME ON 0.20± ACRES IN SWANTON, VT LIVE AUCTION: Thurs., June 26 @ 11AM 6 Gallup Court, Swanton, VT 05488

Info, 802-584-3769, chascall3@gmail.com.

STILL NOT BETTER?

We dig deeper. Chronic pain, fatigue, joint pain, gut issues, diabetes, Lyme, neurological concerns, concussions, ﬁ bromyalgia & cancer support. Whole-person care from a naturopathic doctor w/ 10+ years’ experience. Contact 802-556-4341 or admin@innata naturopathicmedicine. com. Info, innata naturopathicmedicine. com.

BREAST CANCER OVER? IT’S YOUR TIME TO THRIVE. Exhausted, foggy, anxious? Struggling w/ sleep, digestion, pain? Dr. Cheryl helps you reduce symptoms & rebuild physical & emotional resilience during & after cancer. Welcoming new patients. Info, 802-556-4341, admin@ innatanaturopathic medicine.com, innata naturopathicmedicine. com.

$5,000 REWARD

To ﬁ nd Christopher Harper, North Burlington, Vt. Must know exact location. Hair color: brown/ gray. Eye color: blue. Height: 5’8. Age: 38. Last seen on Nov. 15, 2024. Contact Burlington Police at 802-658-2700.

Preview: (During Business Hours) Wed.-Sat. 10AM-5PM

Online Auction Closes: Wednesday, June 18 @ 10AM OPEN HOUSE: Tuesday, June 10 from 11AM - 1PM Call Us: 802-888-4662 or Email us: helpdesk@thcauction.com

Items located: 405 Railroad St., Johnson, VT WE WANT YOUR CLASSIC CARS!

developing personal style. Paul Asbell (Big Joe Burrell, Kilimanjaro, UVM & Middlebury College faculty). Info, 802-233-7731, pasbell@ paulasbell.com.

AUDITIONS & CASTING

GIRLS NITE OUT PRODUCTIONS ANNOUNCES AUDITIONS! Auditions for our 15th-year birthday production, “Paint Night” by Carrie Crim, Jun. 23 & 24 in Burlington. Looking for 6 women of diverse ages. All details are on our website. Come play! Info, 802-448-0086, info@girlsniteoutvt. com, girlsniteoutvt. com.

MUSIC LESSONS

GUITAR INSTRUCTION All styles/levels. Emphasis on building strong technique, thorough musicianship,

$1,500. Heated; tenants pay utils. Unfurnished 3-BR, 1-BA avail. soon at 31 S. Willard St. $1,700. Heated, tenants pay utils. Extra storage in apt. For full details: 802318-8916, jcintl0369@ gmail.com.

4t-hirchakbrothers060425 1 5/30/25 3:57 PM

COMMERCIAL & OFFICE RENTALS

R R eal Estate nt als &

APARTMENTS & HOUSES FOR RENT

BURLINGTON HILL SECTION, SINGLE ROOM FOR RENT Furnished 1-BR at 27 Latham Ct. Single furnished room w/ a shared BA. No cooking, NS & no pets. Sheets & towels provided. On the bus line. $200/ week or $867/mo. Call 802-862-2389.

$1,500 BURLINGTON 2-BR AVAIL. NOW, 3-BR SOON Good-size 2nd-ﬂoor 2-BR avail. now at 54 Spruce.

RETAIL SPACE FOR RENT, CHURCH STREET MARKETPLACE, BURLINGTON, VT. 1,116 sq.ft. avail. on the corner of Church & Bank streets. 824-sq. ft. ﬁnished basement, 3 large windows. Bright, clean space. $6,600/mo. incl. NNN, water & trash. Info, 802-238-6064, pizzamantjm@msn.com.

NOW LEASING AT MARIPOSA COLLECTIVE IN ESSEX JCT.

Are you a hairstylist, massage therapist, makeup artist, aesthetician, energy worker or holistic practitioner ready to grow your own business — but craving community along the way? Mariposa Collective is not your average salon. We’re

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Using the enclosed math operations as a guide, fill the grid using the numbers 1 - 6 only once in each row and column.

Complete the following puzzle by using the numbers 1-9 only once in each row, column and 3 x 3 box.

» Show and tell. View and post up to 6 photos per ad online. Open 24/7/365. Post & browse ads at your convenience. Extra! Extra! There’s no limit to ad length online.

WANT MORE PUZZLES?

Try these online news games from Seven Days at sevendaysvt.com/games.

Put your knowledge of Vermont news to the test.

CALCOKU BY JOSH

REYNOLDS

DIFFICULTY THIS WEEK: HHH

Fill the grid using the numbers 1-6, only once in each row and column. The numbers in each heavily outlined “cage” must combine to produce the target number in the top corner, using the mathematical operation indicated. A one-box cage should be filled in with the target number in the top corner. A number can be repeated within a cage as long as it is not the same row or column.

SUDOKU BY JOSH REYNOLDS

DIFFICULTY THIS WEEK: HH

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.

ANSWERS ON P.78

See how fast you can solve this weekly 10-word puzzle.

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ACT 250 NOTICE

MINOR APPLICATION 4C1363

10 V.S.A. §§ 6000 - 6111

below.

Dated this May 27, 2025.

By: /s/ Stephanie H. Monaghan

Stephanie H. Monaghan

District Coordinator 111 West Street Essex Junction, VT 05452 802-261-1944

stephanie.monaghan@vermont.gov

Vehicles

Asking $98,000. It has been garage-kept & only taken a handful of trips. Very low mileage of 18,095. ere is a very minor dent on the rear left bumper; I am more than willing to send pictures of that. I can send additional pictures via email or text message. Info, text 802-249-9958 or email makenzieolson2020@ gmail.com Please allow 1 day for a response if you email or text.

CARS & TRUCKS

2016 TOYOTA SIENNA XLE 7-PASSENGER, 4-DOOR MINIVAN 33K miles. 1 owner, excellent condition.

Application 4C1363 from Rivers Edge Building Development, LLC, 41 Gauthier Drive, Suite 1, Essex Junction, VT 05452 was received on May 5, 2025 and deemed complete on May 19, 2025. e project is generally described as construction of a 1,200 linear foot extension to Sweeney Farm Road and the creation of a subdivision called Hillside Meadows, consisting of 14 four-bedroom, single-family homes with conserved land, connection to municipal water and private septic systems. e project is located at 13 Sweeney Farm Road in Milton, Vermont. e application may be viewed on the Land Use Review Board’s website (https://act250.vermont. gov/) by clicking “Act 250 Database” and entering the project number “4C1363.”

No hearing will be held and a permit may be issued unless, on or before June 20, 2025, a party notifies the District 4 Commission in writing of an issue requiring 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, 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. To request party status and a hearing, fill out the Party Status Petition Form on the Board’s website: https:// act250.vermont.gov/documents/party-statuspetition-form, and email it to the District 4 Office at: Act250.Essex@vermont.gov. Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law may not be prepared unless the Commission holds a public hearing.

For more information contact Stephanie H. Monaghan at the address or telephone number

IN ACCORDANCE WITH VT TITLE 9 COMMERCE AND TRADE CHAPTER 098: STORAGE UNITS 3905.

Enforcement of Lien, Champlain Valley Self Storage, LLC shall host a private auction of the following units on or after 6/14/25:

Location: 78 Lincoln St St. Essex Jct , VT

Contents: household goods

Makayla Driscoll: #232

Location: 485 Nokian Tyres Dr Colchester, VT

Contents: household goods

Shanice Pires: # 2378

Auction pre-registration is required, email info@ champlainvalleyselfstorage.com to register.

ACT 250 NOTICE

MINOR APPLICATION 4C1349-3

10 V.S.A. §§ 6000 - 6111

Application 4C1349-3 from 764 Shelburne Road, LLC, Attn: Gary Bourne, 414 West Grove, Middleboro, MA 02346 was received on May 7, 2025 and deemed complete on May 21, 2025. is permit speciﬁcally authorizes the construction of a 3,240 square feet (SF) mixed use building on Lot 2 of the Bourne Planned Unit Development (PUD) just south of the corner of Shelburne Road and Swift Street. e project also includes the construction of parking areas, stormwater, and landscaping that will service all three lots of the PUD. e project is located at 764 Shelburne Road in South Burlington, Vermont. e application may be viewed on the Land Use Review Board’s website (https://act250.vermont.gov/) by clicking “Act 250 Database” and entering the project number “4C1349-3.”

No hearing will be held and a permit may be issued unless, on or before June 17, 2025, a party notifies the District 4 Commission in writing of an issue requiring 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, 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. To request party status and a hearing, fill out the Party Status Petition Form on the Board’s website: https:// act250.vermont.gov/documents/party-statuspetition-form, and email it to the District 4 Office at: Act250.Essex@vermont.gov. Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law may not be prepared unless the Commission holds a public hearing.

For more information contact Kaitlin Hayes at the address or telephone number below.

Dated this May 28, 2025.

By: /s/ Kaitlin Hayes Kaitlin Hayes District Coordinator 111 West Street Essex Junction, VT 05452 (802) 622-4084 kaitlin.hayes@vermont.gov

STATE OF VERMONT SUPERIOR COURT PROBATE DIVISION

NOTICE TO CREDITORS

TO THE CREDITORS OF THE ESTATE OF KATHLEEN MACLEAN, LATE OF COLCHESTER, VERMONT

I have been appointed to administer this estate. All creditors having claims against the decedent or the estate must present their claims in writing within four (4) months of the date of the first publication of this notice. The claim must be presented to me at the address listed below with a copy sent to the Court. The claim may be barred forever if it is not presented within the four (4) month period.

Dated: May 28, 2025

/s/ Jennifer E. Faillace, Esq for Executor Susan MacLean Daley

Address: Faillace & Reis, PLLC PO Box 285, Waitsfield, VT 05673

Telephone: (802) 496-6763

Email: jennifer@fr-law.com

Name of Publication: Seven Days Publication Date: June 4, 2025

Name and Address of Probate Court: Vermont Superior Court Chittenden Unit, Probate Division 175 Main Street, Burlington, VT 05401

ACT 250 NOTICE

MINOR APPLICATION 4C1361

10 V.S.A. §§ 6000 - 6111

Application 4C1361 from Mater Christi School, Inc. was received on January 7, 2025 and deemed complete on May 19, 2025. The project is generally described as the construction of a building addition and retrofit to the old “gymnasium” building to house an early education center for 40 students. The building will have four new classrooms and the old gymnasium will become the music hall. The project will also construct a permanent concrete floodable ice skating rink on the existing recreation field behind 50 Mansfield Avenue and stormwater improvements to serve the campus. The project is located at 50 Mansfield Ave in Burlington, Vermont. The application may be viewed on the Land Use Review Board’s website (https://act250.vermont. gov/) by clicking “Act 250 Database” and entering the project number “4C1361.”

No hearing will be held and a permit may be issued unless, on or before June 19, 2025, a party notifies the District 4 Commission in writing of an issue requiring 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, 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. To request party status and a hearing, fill out the Party Status Petition Form on the Board’s website: https://act250.vermont. gov/documents/party-status-petition-form, and email it to the District 4 Office at: Act250.Essex@ vermont.gov. Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law may not be prepared unless the Commission holds a public hearing.

For more information contact Aaron Brondyke at the address or telephone number below.

Dated this May 28, 2025.

By: /s/ Aaron J. Brondyke

Aaron J. Brondyke

State Coordinator 111 West Street Essex Junction, VT 05452 (802) 595-2735

Aaron.Brondyke@vermont.gov

STATE OF VERMONT SUPERIOR COURT

PROBATE DIVISION CHITTENDEN UNIT

DOCKET NO.: 25-PR-02024

In re ESTATE of Carroll Stygles, Jr.

NOTICE TO CREDITORS

To the creditors of: Carroll Stygles, Jr., late of Essex, Vermont

Dated: May 29, 2025 | 11:02 AM EDT

Signature of Fiduciary: /s/ Caroll N Stygles III

Executor/Administrator: Carroll Stygles III 18462 Indian, Redford, Michigan 48240 Phone number: (802) 730-2064 Email: styglesc19@gmail.com

Name of Publication: Seven Days

Publication Date: June 4, 2025

Name of Probate Court: Vermont Superior Court, Chittenden Probate Division

Address of Probate Court: 175 Main Street , Burlington, VT 05401

VERMONT STATE HOUSING AUTHORITY ANNUAL PLAN

Starting May 30, 2025, the Vermont State Housing Authority seeks comments on its FY2025 Annual Plan and substantive updates to the Administrative Plan.

These documents can be viewed, by appointment, during regular business hours, at the VSHA Administrative Office located at One Prospect Street, in Montpelier, VT or on VSHA’s website at www.vsha.org. You may also request a copy of these documents be sent via email, fax or USPS mail by contacting Jennifer Gray at jennifer.gray@vsha.org or 802-828-3020.

Written comments on these documents can be emailed to elizabeth.bacon@vsha.org or mailed to VSHA, Attn: Liz Bacon at One Prospect Street, Montpelier, VT 05602.

A public hearing and opportunity to comment will be held on Wednesday, July 16, 2025 at 11:00am. This public hearing will be held virtually via Microsoft Teams. For meeting login details, please contact Robert Abbott at (802) 828-4435.

TOWN OF JERICHO – SELECTBOARD

NOTICE OF PUBLIC HEARING

Pursuant to 24 V.S.A. § 4444, the Jericho Selectboard will hold a Public Hearing on Thursday, June 26, 2025, at 6:00 pm in the Jericho Town Hall, 67 VT Route 15, Jericho, Vermont, to hear public comment regarding proposed amendments to the Jericho Land Use and Development Regulations.

SUMMARY OF AMENDMENTS TO REGULATIONS

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE: The primary purposes of the proposed amendments are to support development of housing and create vibrant, walkable/ wheelable, mixed-use village centers. Proposed changes also streamline the zoning review and approval process and update an existing form-based code in the Riverside Village Center.

LIST OF SECTION HEADINGS: The amendments include changes to Section 2: General Definitions, Section 4: Zoning Uses, Section 5: Dimensional Standards, Section 10: Permit and Review Procedures, Section 11: General Development Standards, and Section 13: Riverside Character Based Zoning.

GEOGRAPHIC AREA AFFECTED: These amendments primarily affect the Town’s Village Center districts and changes to permit and review procedures affect all zoning districts.

PLACE WHERE FULL TEXT MAY BE EXAMINED: The complete text of the amended regulations may be found at https://jerichovt.org/bylaw-amendments. Alternatively, a fulltext copy may be examined in the Planning and Zoning office, Jericho Town Hall, 67 VT Route 15, Jericho, Vermont.

PERSON TO CONTACT: Additional information pertaining to these proposed amendments

may be obtained by contacting Chris Shaheen Town Planner, at the Jericho Town Hall by calling (802) 899-2287 x 103 during regular office hours.

NOTICE OF TAX SALE TOWN OF COLCHESTER

The resident and non-resident owners, lien holders and mortgagees of lands in the Town of Colchester, County of Chittenden, are hereby notified that the utilities and taxes assessed by such Town remain, either in whole or in part, unpaid on the following described lands in such Town, to wit:

Property Owner: Guido J. Bartolacci and Veronica L. Bartolacci

Property Address: 767 Sand Road

Parcel ID #09-041003-0010000

All and the same lands and premises conveyed to Guido J. Bartolacci & Veronica L. Bartolacci by Warranty Deed of 767-769 Sand Road LLC dated January 19, 2018, and recorded at Volume 832, Page 143.

Amount of delinquent stormwater fees, interest, cost and penalties: $921.61

Property Owner: Braelock Lot 4, LLC

Property Address: 0 Brae Loch Road

Parcel ID #76-002040-0000000

All and the same lands and premises conveyed to Braelock Lot 4, LLC, by Warranty Deed of Paul S. Pilcher dated July 1, 2005, and recorded at Volume 530, Page 128.

Amount of delinquent stormwater fees, interest, cost and penalties: $724.19

Property Owner: Ann Cordner and R. Lee Cordner

Property Address: 0 Brown Ledge Road

Parcel ID #58-016002-0000000

A portion of all and the same lands and premises conveyed to Ann Cordner and R. Lee Cordner by Quitclaim Deeds as follows: a) from Raymond H. and Dorothy Burnette dated December 15, 1999, and recorded at Volume 324, Pages 63-64; b) from Guy W. and Shirley H. Nichols dated December 10, 1999, and recorded in Volume 324, Pages 59-60; and c) from Dawn N. and R. William Hazelett dated December 8, 1999, and recorded in Volume 324, Pages 55-56. The above-referenced Grantors conveyed their remaining interest in the land and premises to Ann Cordner and R. Lee Cordner by the following Quitclaim Deeds: 1) from said Burnette dated January 31, 2000, and recorded in Volume 325, Pages 460-461; 2) from said Nichols dated January 13, 2000, and recorded in Volume 325, Pages 458-459; and 3) from said Hazelett dated January 17, 2000, and recorded in Volume 325, Pages 456-457.

Amount of delinquent stormwater fees, interest, cost and penalties: $796.61

Property Owner: Ann Cordner and R. Lee Cordner

Property Address: 54 Brown Ledge Road

Parcel ID #59-001002-0000000

Amount of delinquent stormwater fees, interest, cost and penalties: $796.61

Property Owner: John M. Cronin

Property Address: 1026 Blakely Road

Parcel ID #07-064003-0000000

All and the same lands and premises conveyed to John M. Cronin, by Warranty Deed of Homer E. Fuller and Margaret Fuller dated November 18, 1994, and recorded at Volume 242, Pages 195-196. Also being all and the same land and premises conveyed to John M. Cronin by Quitclaim Deed of Julie A. Cronin

dated May 13, 1999, and recorded in Volume 316, Pages 457-458.

Amount of delinquent stormwater fees, interest, cost and penalties: $1,083.13

Property Owner: John M. Duggan and Veronica M. Rathgeb

Property Address: 352 Malletts Bay Avenue

Parcel ID #06-009082-0000000

All and the same lands and premises conveyed to John M. Duggan and Veronica M. Rathgeb by Warranty Deed of D & L Construction, LLC dated January 15, 2013, and recorded at Volume 732, Page 89.

Amount of delinquent stormwater fees, interest, cost and penalties: $1,033.13

Property Owner: Rabie Faour

Property Address: 54 Orchard Circle

Parcel ID #08-111003-0000000

All and the same lands and premises conveyed to Rabie Faour by Warranty Deed of Bryan and Karen Fiekers dated August 19, 2016, and recorded at Volume 803, Page 744.

Amount of delinquent stormwater fees, interest, cost and penalties: $871.61

Property Owner: George R. Forguites

Property Address: 128 Indian Circle #3 Parcel ID #27-168003-0210000

All and the same lands and premises conveyed to George R. Forguites by Warranty Deed of Daniel and Lorraine A. Fitzpatrick dated March 17, 2006, and recorded at Volume 554, Page 50.

Amount of delinquent stormwater fees, interest, cost and penalties: $1,459.95

Property Owner: Christian Jakobeit

Property Address: 107 Bayview Road Parcel ID #67-032003-0000000

All and the same lands and premises conveyed to Christian Jakobeit by Warranty Deed of Patrick R. and Nicole A. Killoran dated June 8, 2018, and recorded at Volume 837, Page 731.

Amount of delinquent stormwater fees, interest, cost and penalties: $921.61

Property Owner: Charlene Johnson

Property Address: 57 Grey Birch Drive

Parcel ID #36-058022-0020000

All and the same lands and premises conveyed to Charlene Johnson by Warranty Deed of Robert J. Stahl dated August 4, 2006, and recorded at Volume 564, Page 304.

Amount of delinquent stormwater fees, interest, cost and penalties: $1,008.13

Property Owner: Timothy Kasun

Property Address: 48 Hegeman Avenue #100

Parcel ID #21-004030-0000000

All and the same lands and premises conveyed to Timothy Kasun by Warranty Deed of Judith J. Krizan dated November 21, 2006, and recorded at Volume 573, Page 224.

Amount of delinquent stormwater fees, interest, cost and penalties: $1,008.13

Property Owner: Shawn P. King

Property Address: 217 Meadow Drive

Parcel ID #40-052002-0000000

All and the same lands and premises conveyed to Shawn P. King by Warranty Deed of Kurt R. and Stacey J. Anderson dated July 17, 2002, and recorded at Volume 375, Page 212. Also being all and the same land and premises conveyed to Shawn P. King by Quitclaim Deed of Stacey L. Boldosser dated November 9, 2010, and recorded in Volume 675, Page 692.

Amount of delinquent stormwater fees, interest, cost and penalties: $1,058.13

Property Owner: Richard T. McNamara, Jr., and Nancy M. McNamara

Property Address: 105 Rudgate Road

Parcel ID #34-028002-0000000

All and the same lands and premises conveyed to Richard T. McNamara, Jr., and Nancy M. McNamara by Warranty Deed of Larry J. and Judith S. Olsen dated March 30, 2007, and recorded at Volume 582 Page 265.

Amount of delinquent stormwater fees, interest, cost and penalties: $983.13

Legal Notices

Property Owner: David Molnar and Brittany Mobbs

Property Address: 412 Porters Point Road

Parcel ID #41-022002-0000000

All and the same lands and premises conveyed to David Molnar and Brittany Mobbs by Warranty Deed of Anne M. Cross, f/k/a Anne M. Boisevert, dated April 8, 2013, and recorded at Volume 737, Page 578. Amount of delinquent stormwater fees, interest, cost and penalties: $1,033.13

Property Owner: Arthur Monaghan

Property Address: 355 Al Shir Road

Parcel ID #48-097002-0000000

All and the same lands and premises conveyed to Arthur Monaghan by Decree of Distribution of Stephen R. Peck, designated fiduciary of the Estate of William R. Peck, Jr., dated March 14, 2016, and recorded at Volume 795, Page 472. Also being all and the same lands and premises conveyed to Arthur Monaghan by Warranty Deed of Jean B. Marceau, Eileen Girelli and Arthur Monaghan dated February 13th, 21st and 23rd, 2017, respectively, and recorded at Volume 814, Page 718.

Amount of delinquent stormwater fees, interest, cost and penalties: $983.13

Property Owner: Brian Murray and Tommie Murray

Property Address: 51 Brae Loch Road Parcel ID #16-059000-0000000

All and the same lands and premises conveyed to Brian Murray and Tommie Murray by Warranty Deed of David T. Chenette dated March 18, 2016, and recorded at Volume 795, Page 276.

Amount of delinquent stormwater fees, interest, cost and penalties: $1,033.13

Property Owner: Jason T. Rich and Rebecca Rich

Property Address: 199 Lupine Drive

Parcel ID #48-001002-0150000

All and the same lands and premises conveyed to Jason T. Rich and Rebecca Rich by Warranty Deed of Village Associates, LLC, dated August 4, 2004, and recorded at Volume 497, Page 195.

Amount of delinquent stormwater fees, interest, cost and penalties: $1,009.13

Property Owner: James Ritchie

Property Address: 45 Causeway Road

Parcel ID #30-002002-0650000

All and the same lands and premises conveyed to James Ritchie by Quitclaim Deed of Gregory Ackel dated May 25, 2004, and recorded at Volume 489, Page 324.

Amount of delinquent stormwater fees, interest, cost and penalties: $1,108.13

Property Owner: Keith M. Schnabel

Property Address: 83 Maple Ridge Drive

Parcel ID #47-050042-0000000

All and the same lands and premises conveyed to Keith M. Schnabel by Warranty Deed of Keith A. Chapman and Beverly J. Chapman dated October 25, 1996, and recorded at Volume 269, Page 535. Also being all and the same land and premises conveyed to Keith M. Schnabel by Warranty Deed of Coleen A. Carey (f/k/a Coleen A. Schnabel) and Keith M Schnabel dated May 1, 2015, and recorded at Volume 782, Page 655.

Amount of delinquent stormwater fees, interest, cost and penalties: $983.13

Property Owner: Joseph M. Schraml, II, and Monique Schraml

Property Address: 665 East Road

Parcel ID #12-009000-0000000

All and the same lands and premises conveyed to Joseph M. Schraml, II, and Monique Schraml by Warranty Deed of Jeremy D. Gangl dated November 20, 2018, and recorded at Volume 846, Page 369. Amount of delinquent stormwater fees, interest, cost and penalties: $896.61

Property Owner: Feliciano Serrano

Property Address: 1414 Marble Island Road #4

Parcel ID #57-009002-0110400

All and the same lands and premises conveyed to Feliciano Serrano by Warranty Deed of Robert N. Bush and Virginia M. Bush dated July 19, 2005, and recorded at Volume 532, Page 60.

AN AFFORDABLE NOTICE AT: SEVENDAYSVT.COM/LEGAL-NOTICES OR CALL 802-865-1020, EXT. 142.

Amount of delinquent stormwater fees, interest, cost and penalties: $1,033.13

Property Owner: Joe Tanelli and Kristin Guptill

Property Address: 186 Woodbine by the Lake #1

Parcel ID #60-002002-0220000

All and the same lands and premises conveyed to Joe Tanelli by Warranty Deed of Barbara G. Barner dated October 28, 2004, and recorded at Volume 506, Page 364. Also being all and the same land and premises conveyed to Joe Tanelli and Kristin Guptill by Quitclaim Deed of Joe Tanelli dated June 24, 2010, and recorded in Volume 665, Page 308.

Amount of delinquent stormwater fees, interest, cost and penalties: $1,033.13

Property Owner: K&N Enterprises LLC

Property Address: 574 Prim Road

Parcel ID #49-020002-0000000

All and the same lands and premises conveyed to K&N Enterprises LLC by Warranty Deed of Andre J. and Gisele K. Thibault dated May 15, 2018, and recorded in Volume 837, Page 595.

Amount of delinquent taxes, stormwater fees, interest, cost and penalties: $28,988.25

Reference may be made to said deeds for a more particular description of said lands and premises, as the same appear in the Town Clerk’s Office of the Town of Colchester.

So much of such lands will be sold at public auction at the Town of Colchester Town Offices, 271 Blakely Road, Colchester, Vermont 05446, on July 9, 2025 at 10:00 a.m., as shall be requisite to discharge such taxes with interest, costs and penalties, unless previously paid. Property owners or mortgagees may pay such taxes, interest, costs and penalties in full by cash or certified check made payable to the Town of Colchester. At tax sale, successful bidders must pay in full by cash or certified check. No other payments accepted. Any questions or inquiries regarding the above-referenced sale should be directed to the following address:

Kristen E. Shamis, Esq. Monaghan Safar PLLC 27 Main Street Burlington, VT 05401 802-660-4735 kshamis@msvtlaw.com

Monaghan Safar PLLC, and the Town of Colchester give no opinion or certification as to the marketability of title to the above-referenced properties as held by the current owner/taxpayer.

Dated at Colchester, Vermont, this 29th day of May, 2025.

Julie Graeter Collector of Delinquent Taxes Town of Colchester

NOTICE OF TAXPAYERS

Agreeably to the provisions of Title 32, Vermont Statues Annotated, Section 4111, notice is hereby given that the undersigned Listers within and for the Town of Colchester have this day completed the abstract of individual lists of persons, co-partnerships, associations and corporations owning taxable property in said town on the first day of April, 2025; that they have this day lodged the same in the office of the clerk of said town for the inspection of taxpayers; that on the 13th day of June, at _9:00_o’clock in the fore noon, the undersigned Listers, to hear grievances of person, co-partnerships, associations and corporations aggrieved by any of their appraisals or by the acts of such Listers, whose objections thereto in writing shall have been filed with them as prescribed by statute, and to make such corrections in said abstract as shall upon hearing or otherwise be determined by them; and that unless cause to the contrary be shown, the contents of said abstract will, for the year 2024 become the grand list of said town and of each person, co-partnership, association or corporation therein named.

Given under our hands at Colchester, in the County of Chittenden, this 30th day of May 2025.

Geri Barrows

Charlotte Gardner

Angela MacDonald

Listers Town of Colchester

LISTER’S RECORDS OF NOTICES POSTED

We hereby certify that the Notices to Taxpayers of the time and place of holding the Grievance Meeting for 2025 and in the form as set forth on the opposite page were signed by us this day duly posted in the Town Clerk’s Office and in four other public places in said Town of Colchester to wit:

Town Clerk’s Office - 781 Blakely Rd.

Dick Mazza’s General Store - West Lakeshore Dr. Colchester Post Office - Malletts Bay Ave. Burnham Memorial Library – Main St. Simon’s Quick Stop – 6387 Roosevelt Hwy

Dated at Colchester in the County of Chittenden this 30th day of May 2025.

Geri Barrows

Charlotte Gardner

Angela MacDonald

Listers of the Town of Colchester

ACT 250 NOTICE

MINOR APPLICATION 4C1349-2

10 V.S.A. §§ 6000 – 6111

Application 4C1349-2 from 764 Shelburne Road, LLC, Attn: Gary Bourne, 414 West Grove, Middleboro, MA 02346 was received on May 5, 2025 and deemed complete on May 29, 2025. This permit specifically authorizes the construction of a 3,350 square feet financial institution on Lot 1 of the Bourne Planned Unit Development, on the former Shell Gas station lot at the corner of Shelburne Road and Swift Street. The project is located at 760 Shelburne Rd in South Burlington, Vermont. The application may be viewed on the Land Use Review Board’s website (https:// act250.vermont.gov/) by clicking “Act 250 Database” and entering the project number “4C1349-2.”

No hearing will be held and a permit may be issued unless, on or before June 24, 2025, a party notifies the District 4 Commission in writing of an issue requiring 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, 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. To request party status and a hearing, fill out the Party Status Petition Form on the Board’s website: https://act250.vermont. gov/documents/party-status-petition-form, and email it to the District 4 Office at: Act250.Essex@ vermont.gov. Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law may not be prepared unless the Commission holds a public hearing.

For more information contact Kaitlin Hayes at the address or telephone number below.

Dated this June 2, 2025.

By: /s/ Kaitlin Hayes Kaitlin Hayes District Coordinator 111 West Street Essex Junction, VT 05452 (802) 622-4084 kaitlin.hayes@vermont.gov

WARNING POLICY ADOPTION CHAMPLAIN VALLEY SCHOOL DISTRICT

The Board of School Directors gives public notice of its intent to act on local district policies dealing with the following at its meeting scheduled on June 24, 2025:

Code B2 Board Goal-Setting & Self Evaluation - Repeal

Code C2 Board Meetings - Repeal

Code C4 School Visits by Board Members - Repeal

Code C5 Regular Board Meetings - Repeal

Code C9 Delegation of Authority Due to COVID-19 Pandemic - Repeal

Code B1 Board Member Education - Adopt

Code B2 Community Engagement and Vision Policy - Adopt

Code B4 Board Committees - Adopt

Code C1 Board Meetings, Agenda Preparation & Distribution - Adopt

Code C5 Capitalization of Assets (FKA Code C8)

- Adopt

Code E8 Public Bidding/Contracts - Adopt

Code C2 Public Participation at Board Meetings (FKA Code C3) - Reaffirm

Code C4 Board Commitment to Non-Discrimination (FKA Code C7) - Reaffirm

Copies of the above policies may be obtained for public review at the Office of the Human Resources Dept. in Shelburne, VT.

NOTICE OF PUBLIC HEARING – SETTING COMMON AREA FEES FY26

MONDAY, JUNE 16, 2025, NO EARLIER THAN 6:00 PM BURLINGTON CITY HALL

A public hearing will be held during the regular meeting of Burlington City Council on Monday, June 16, 2025, no earlier than 6:00 pm, in person at Contois Auditorium, Burlington City Hall, 2nd floor, 149 Church Street, Burlington, Vermont 05401 or by video conference, accessible by link on the City’s website, to be posted no less than 48 hours prior to the hearing on the standards to aid in the determination of common area fees and on the annual common area fees for properties in the Church Street Marketplace District proposed by the Church Street Marketplace Commission.

The Marketplace Commission is proposing a continuation of the current standards, which include a per-square-foot cost based on a building’s ground floor square footage and maintaining the per-square-foot cost for FY26 of $3.02 per square foot for all properties. These properties and their measurements were audited by the City Assessor in FY25:

FY26 Common Area Fees by Taxable Parcel: https://churchstmarketplace.com/client_media/ files/charter/Common_Area_Fees_Taxable%20 Parcels_FY26_FINAL.pdf

The list of fees can also be found here: https://churchstmarketplace.com/ marketplace-commission

The provisions applicable to common area fees can be found in the Burlington City Charter, Title VIII, Section 326, which can be located on the City website.

Any assessed party who feels aggrieved by this proposal may appeal the assessment to the City Council by delivering the appeal, in writing, to the City Clerk at City Hall, 149 Church St., Burlington, Vermont. The written appeal may be delivered by any means but must be received by the City Clerk prior to the public hearing to be considered. Following the public hearing, the Council will make a final determination of the common area fees to be assessed.

For further information please contact: Kara Alnasrawi Director of Business & Workforce Development kara@burlingtonvt.gov 802-238-1910

CITY OF BURLINGTON IN THE YEAR TWO THOUSAND TWENTY-FIVE AN ORDINANCE IN RELATION TO IMPACT FEES

BCO CHAPTER 21, SECTION 41 ORDINANCE

Sponsor: C/T, City Attorney

Public Hearing Dates:

First reading: 2025-05-12

Referred to: Ord. Comm.

Rules suspended and placed in all stages of passage:

Second reading: 2025-6-2

Action: Approved

Date: 2025-6-2

Signed by Mayor: 2025-6-3

Published: 2025-6-4

Effective: 2025-6-25

It is hereby Ordained by the City Council of the City of Burlington as follows:

That Chapter 21, Offenses and Miscellaneous Provisions, of the Code of Ordinances of the City of Burlington be and hereby is amended by amending Sec. 41, thereof to read as follows:

a) Authority. This section is enacted pursuant to the specific authority granted municipalities to establish impact fees contained in Title 24, V.S.A. Chapter 131.

(b) Purpose. It is the purpose of this section to establish impact fees for new land development (as defined in Title 24, V.S.A. Section 4303) in the city that will appropriately allocate the cost of needed capital projects. To the extent that such capital projects are necessitated by new land development, it is appropriate that the new land development should bear an appropriate portion of the costs for providing capital projects. Further, insofar as current residents of the city have contributed to the cost of existing facilities through payment of taxes and other contributions to the city, it is appropriate that they should be relieved from payment for an appropriate portion of the cost of providing these capital projects.

(1) There is hereby established an impact fee within the city which shall be imposed on all land development commenced within the city, as further set forth in administrative rules described in paragraph(3) of this subsection (c) subsequent to the effective date hereof [November 13, 1992]. The amount of such impact fees shall be established by a resolution of the city council following receipt of the recommendations of the respective departments and the planning commission. Any such fees adopted through the resolution of the city council shall be based upon a reasonable formula developed pursuant to 24 V.S.A. Section 5203 and 22 to any amendments thereto. The resolution will set forth the impact fee schedule.

(2) An applicant for a zoning permit for any development, including new projects, revisions and 24 modifications to existing projects or subdivisions, shall be subject to the payment of impact fees for that project.

(3) An applicant seeking a zoning permit for development of a lot located in a subdivision shall be responsible for the payment of the impact fees for that project. However, upon documentation by an applicant that a fee for this project was paid prior to November 13, 1992, in any current impact fee category, the applicant shall receive a pro rata credit for the payment of the fee in that category. The pro rata credit shall be based on the number of lots in the subdivision.

(24) The city council mayshall, from time to timenot less often then every five (5) years , amend any impact fee which is established by resolution pursuant to this section in order to take into account new or changed information regarding the fee earlier established.

(35) Regulations regarding the implementation and application of this section shall be developed within six (6) months of the effective date of this section The city council shall adopt by resolution administrative rules governing the imposition and collection of impact fees. Those administrative rules shall describe the manner in which the fees shall be collected, the purposes for which they may be expended, any applicable fee exemptions or credits, and all such related matters that the city council

determines are necessary or convenient to address in the administrative rules.

(d) Payment of fees:

(1) Any impact fee established pursuant to this section shall be imposed as a condition of the zoning permit and shall be paid to the office of the city treasurer prior to issuance of the certificate of occupancy granted under the zoning ordinance. The zoning administrative officer shall not issue the certificate of occupancy for such development without first receiving proof of payment of the required impact fees from the office of the city treasurer.

(2) An impact fee not paid in full at the time required in subsection (1) above shall be a lien upon all property and improvements within the land development for which the fee is assessed in the same manner and to the same effect as taxes are a lien upon real estate under Title 32 V.S.A. Section 5061.

(de) Appeals. An individual or entity required to pay an impact fee imposed under this section may appeal the fee by filing a written notice with the zoning board of adjustment development review board within thirty (30) days of the imposition of the fee. The notice of appeal shall state the factual basis for the appellant’s claim that the fee is inapplicable or excessive. Within sixty (60) days of receipt of the notice of appeal, the zoningdevelopment review board shall hold a hearing thereon. The zoning development review board shall take oral and written testimony from the appellant. Within forty-five (45) days after the conclusion of the hearing, the zoning development review board shall notify the appellant of its decision.

(f) Accounting provisions. All impact fees collected pursuant to this section shall be maintained annually by the city treasurer in a separate, interest-bearing account. The city treasurer shall maintain a register of the date of payment for each fee collected, the amount paid and the name of the payer, by each capital facility category.

(g) Expenditure of impact fees:

(1) All impact fees collected pursuant to this section and accrued interest shall be expended only for the identified capital facility category which was the basis for the fee. Such fees and accrued interest shall be expended for such capital facility category within such time period as required by 24 V.S.A. Chapter 131, as the same may be amended from time to time.

(2) The city treasurer shall pay expenses associated with an identified capital facility category as they become due and upon receipt of appropriate documentation regarding such expenses.

(h) Refunds:

(1) If the actual costs to the city for the provision of a capital facility category to be funded in part by impact fees is less than originally was calculated or if an impact fee is reduced after fees have been collected, the city shall refund that portion of any impact fee and accrued interest which is in excess of the appropriate portion due to the then owner of the property for which the fee was paid.

(2) Pursuant to 24 V.S.A. Section 5203(e) upon petition by any affected property owner, if the city shall fail to expend any collected impact fee within the time required by this section, the city shall refund that portion of any impact fee and accrued

Support Groups

A CIRCLE OF PARENTS FOR SINGLE MOTHERS

Please join our parent-led online support group designed to share our questions, concerns & struggles, as well as our resources & successes! Contribute to our discussion of the unique but shared experience of parenting. We will be meeting weekly on Thu., 5:15 p.m. on Zoom. For more info or to register, please contact Heather at hniquette@pcavt.org, 802-498-0607, pcavt.org/ family-support-programs.

AL-ANON

For families & friends of alcoholics. Phone meetings, electronic meetings (Zoom) & an Al-Anon blog are avail. online at the Al-Anon website. For

interest to the then owner of the property for which said fee was paid.

(ei) Enforcement Any Pursuant to chapter 1, section 9 of this code, it shall be a civil offense punishable by a fine of $50 to $500 with a waiver penalty of $50 to occupy a structure in the city without first paying any required impact fee imposed pursuant to this section and any implementing resolution. Additionally, any unpaid impact fee shall constitute a debt to the city and a lien on the subject property, pursuant to 24 V.S.A. Section 5204. Each day that a violation occurs shall constitute a separate offense individual who occupies a structure in the city without first paying any required impact fee imposed pursuant to this section and any implementing resolution shall be subject to a penalty of two hundred dollars ($200.00) per day for each day that such violation continues, as well as injunctive and other relief as a court may order in a civil action commenced by the city.

(j) Exemptions:

(1) In order to encourage the development of additional housing for senior citizens, senior citizen housing projects are exempted from payment of school impact fees.

(2) In order to enable the development of housing that is affordable for all economic groups within the municipality, any residential project containing newly constructed housing units or substantially rehabilitated housing units that are affordable for households as described in subsections a., b., and c. below would be eligible to receive a waiver of impact fees for that portion of the project. In the application of this provision, the terms used herein shall be interpreted as defined in the “Low or Moderate Income Housing” zoning ordinance. In addition, the rules and regulations developed pursuant to that ordinance shall be used to implement this provision.

a. Twenty-five percent waiver of fees. Twenty-five (25) percent of the fees will be waived for any unit in a project that initially sells for a price that is affordable for households below ninety (90) percent of median income or that initially rents for a three-year period for a price (including utilities) that is affordable for households below seventy-five (75) percent of median income.

b. Fifty percent waiver of fees. Fifty (50) percent of the fees will be waived for that portion of a residential project that meets the dual test of initial affordability and continuing affordability. For purposes of this section, “initial affordability” would be defined as a unit that sells for a price that is affordable for households earning less than seventy-five (75) percent of median income or that rents for a price (including utilities) that is affordable for households earning below sixty-five (65) percent of median. “Continuing affordability” would be defined as affordability that lasts for a period of ninety-nine (99) years.

c. One hundred percent waiver of fees. One hundred (100) percent of the fees will be waived for that portion of a residential project that initially sells or rents for a price that is affordable for households earning less than fifty (50) percent of median income and that remains continually affordable as defined above.

(k) Off-site improvements. In categories for which impact fees have been charged, no exactions for construction of off-site public facilities will be required by the planning commission as a condition

for a zoning permit except for water distribution lines, sewer connection lines and stormwater improvements, and street and sidewalk infrastructure that are essential to the development of the project. For the purpose of this section, “off-site” public facilities are defined as those facilities which are not on or immediately adjacent to the private land proposed for development.

(fl) Severability In the eventIf any provision of this section is for any reason held by a court of competent jurisdiction to be invalid or unenforceable , such invalidity shall not affect the remaining provisions which can be given effect without the invalid provision.

* Material stricken out deleted.

** Material underlined added.

KK/ER/Ordinances 2025/Impact Fees June 2, 2025

CITY OF BURLINGTON IN THE YEAR TWO THOUSAND TWENTY-FIVE AN ORDINANCE IN RELATION TO GROSS RECEIPTS TAX

ORDINANCE

Sponsor: Clerk-Treasurer

Public Hearing Dates:

First reading: 2025-05-19

Referred to: Board of Finance

Second reading: 2025-6-2

Action: Approved as amended

Date: 2025-6-2

Signed by Mayor: 2025-6-3

Published: 2025-6-4

Effective: 2025-6-25

Rules suspended and placed in all stages of passage:

It is hereby Ordained by the City Council of the City of Burlington as follows:

That Chapter 21, Offenses and Miscellaneous Provisions, of the Code of Ordinances of the City of Burlington be and hereby is amended by amending Sec. 31, thereof to read as follows:

Paragraph (I), as written.

(II) TAXES IMPOSED:

(A) Restaurant Tax: There is hereby imposed a business occupation tax upon all persons engaged in the restaurant business of whatever name or character in the City of Burlington. The tax imposed shall be at the rate of two (2) percent of the gross receipts from taxable business, as defined herein, done per monthly period in accordance with the provisions of this section.

Subparagraphs (B) to (F), as written.

10 (G) Temporary Tax Rate: Notwithstanding any other provision of this section, for the fiscal year commencing on July 1, 2024, and ending on June 30August 31 2025, the restaurant, amusements, and admissions taxes on gross receipts set forth in subsections (A), (D), and (E) of this section shall be increased from two (2) percent of gross receipts to two and one-half (2.5) percent. Commencing SeptemberJuly 1, 2025, said tax rates shall again be set at two (2) percent.

Paragraphs (III) to (XV), as written.

* Material stricken out deleted.

** Material underlined added.

meeting info, go to vermontalanonalateen.org or call 866-972-5266.

ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS

If you want to drink, that’s your business. If you want to stop, that’s ours. Call the Vermont statewide anonymous hotline: 802-802-2288. Alcoholics Anonymous holds daily meetings all over Vermont, both in person & online. See burlingtonaa.org for meetings, news & events in Chittenden & Grand Isle counties. For meeting & events throughout Vermont, see aavt.org.

ALZHEIMER’S ASSOCIATION SUPPORT GROUPS Support groups meet to provide assistance & info on Alzheimer’s disease & related dementias.

They emphasize shared experiences, emotional support & coping techniques in care for a person living w/ Alzheimer’s or a related dementia. Meetings are free & open to the public. Families, caregivers & friends may attend. Please call in advance to confirm the date & time. The Williston caregiver support group meets in person on the 2nd & 4th Tue. of every mo., 5-6:30 p.m., at the Old Brick Church in Williston. Contact support group facilitators Molly at dugan@cathedralsquare.org or Mindy at moondog@burlingtontelecom.net. The Middlebury support group for individuals w/ early stage dementia meets on the 4th Tue. of each mo., 3 p.m., at the Residence at Otter Creek, 350 Lodge Rd., Middlebury. Contact is Daniel Hamilton, dhamilton@residenceottercreek.com or

802-989-0097. The Shelburne support group for individuals w/ early stage dementia meets on the 1st Mon. of every mo., 2-3 p.m., at the Residence at Shelburne Bay, 185 Pine Haven Shores, Shelburne. Contact is support group facilitator Lydia Raymond, lraymond@residenceshelburnebay. com. The telephone support group meets on the 2nd Tue. of each mo., 4-5:30 p.m. Preregistration is required (to receive dial-in codes for toll-free call). Please dial the Alzheimer’s Association’s 24/7 Helpline, 800-272-3900, for more info. For questions or additional support group listings, call 800-272-3900.

United States Probation Officer

ATTENTION RECRUITERS:

POST YOUR JOBS AT: JOBS.SEVENDAYSVT.COM/POST-A-JOB PRINT DEADLINE: NOON ON MONDAYS (INCLUDING HOLIDAYS) FOR RATES & INFO: MICHELLE BROWN, 802-865-1020 X121, MICHELLE@SEVENDAYSVT.COM

U.S. Probation Officers work for the federal court, conduct bail and presentence investigations, and supervise individuals released to federal community supervision. The District of Vermont is currently hiring one officer. The minimum requirement is a bachelor's degree in an approved major. The position is hazardous duty law enforcement with a maximum age of 37 at appointment. Prior to appointment, applicants considered for this position will undergo a full background investigation, as well as undergo a medical examination and drug screening. Starting salary range is from $60,340 to $117,565 (CL 27 to CL 28), depending on qualifications. For further information and application instructions, please visit vtp.uscourts.gov/career-opportunities Deadline for complete applications is the close of business June 20, 2025. E.O.E. 3h-USProbationDistrict051425.indd

Director, Center for Instructional and Program Innovation

Visit jobs.plattsburgh.edu & select “View Current Openings”

Director of Development & Communications

Join VWW’s dynamic team to provide leadership and set the strategic vision for all fundraising, marketing and public communications. If you are inspired by our mission of promoting economic justice by advancing gender equity and supporting women and youth along their career journeys, visit bit.ly/4kccQZ0 to learn more and apply.

Showroom Manager

Skida is looking for an experienced and motivated individual to lead retail store operations and personnel within a dynamic and fast-paced environment. This role is responsible for overseeing daily operations, driving sales performance, and maintaining a high standard of customer service and visual merchandising. The ideal candidate will bring a strong background in retail leadership, a passion for style, and a proven ability to manage & develop a team to achieve business goals.

Qualifications:

2+ years of experience in retail or showroom management

2h-PlattsburghState062425.indd

Nursery/Greenhouse Assistant

Now taking resumes and applications for immediate employment for an IN SEASON up to 40 hrs/OFF SEASON 20+ hrs per week position. Middlebury Agway is seeking an experienced, qualified and highly motivated individual to assist in a thriving retail plant sales department.

Responsibilities include Care and Sales of Greenhouse and Nursery Plants, Seeds and Bulbs, plus a genuine interest in providing knowledgeable customer service. Extensive Plant knowledge is a must! Any Cashier experience is a plus.

We are currently seeking a...

Must be available to work weekends and holidays

Excellent communication and interpersonal skills

Qualified Candidate must have a dedicated work ethic and be able to perform physical lifting as required and work hard in the spring and summer seasons.

Senior Designer

Ability to positively and proactively handle customer concerns

Experience with inventory management and merchandising

Organizational & multitasking abilities, strong team leadership skills

To apply: skida.com/pages/careers

Excellent Perks including an Employee Discount and Flexible Schedule but ability to work weekends is also a must.

Please stop in to pick up an application or send resume and references to: Middlebury AGWAY Farm & Garden, Attn: Jennifer Jacobs 338 Exchange St. Middlebury, VT 05753 Or by email to info@middleburyagway.com

Select is looking for a senior designer to deliver exceptional creative and inspired thinking to some of the world’s leading brands.

4t-Skida060425.indd 1

2v-VTWorksforWomen052825.indd 1 5/23/25 2:48 PM

Screen Printing & Embroidery

HUNTINGTON IS HIRING!

Immediate & interesting, full & part-time job openings available.

Zoning Administrative Officer (PT)

Administrative Assistant (PT)

Highway Road Crew (FT & seasonal)

For more info, please visit: Huntingtonvt.org

Select has immediate full-time opportunities within our screen printing and embroidery departments. The right individual must have the ability to work well in a creative, fast paced environment and man age several tasks simultaneously while maintaining attention to detail.

Qualifications: Prior experience preferred, but we will train the right candidate.

Competitive salary based on expereience and capa bilities. Benefits include 401K, profit sharing, medical and dental plans and an exceptional work environ ment. Select creates products and platforms built for ongoing consumer engagement.

To learn more check out selectdesign.com/careers

Are you a passionate leader with a commitment to helping communities build stronger systems for

Join our team as Program Officer for Climate & Environment!

We’re looking for someone eager to lead grantmaking programs and collaborative initiatives that help Vermont communities prepare for and thrive in the face of climate change.

Outreach Counselor

Vermont Student Assistance Corporation (VSAC) is hiring a student Outreach Counselor in our GEAR UP program in the Northeast Kingdom: Do you enjoy working with middle and high school students? Are you energized by the enthusiasm of teenagers? As a VSAC GEAR UP Outreach Counselor you’ll help students explore the possibilities their future can hold & help them create a plan to get there. This position works with middle through first year after high school students and their families to provide education, career, and financial aid information and counseling in support of their education goals after high school. Salary $47,000 - $50,000 plus excellent benefits, PTO, and 7 weeks off in summer.

Visit VSAC.org/Careers for full job description and to apply today. 3v-VSAC060425.indd

Fairfield Zoning Administrator

Manage and enforce Fairfield, VT’s Subdivision & Zoning Bylaws; provide permit and zoning information to the public; review applications for completeness; prepare materials and written summaries to the Planning and Zoning Board of Adjustment; plan and document meetings; serve as E911 coordinator. Understanding of state regulations and ability to prioritize multiple tasks is required.

Send cover letter and resume to Cathy Ainsworth, Town Administrator, PO Box 5, Fairfield, VT 05455; townadmin@ fairfieldvermont.us. Visit fairfieldvermont.us for a full job description.

3v-TownofFairfield100224.indd

MU LTIPLE POSITIONS OPEN!

our next Guest Services Representative? Buyer? Produce Associate?

Construction Inspector/Resident Engineer

Bowman has an opportunity for a Construction Inspector/Resident Engineer to join our team in Williston, VT. This position will be temporary full-time, which will end upon the completion of the construction project. The position is expected to last approximately six (6) months. Sites are located in Burlington and Hinesburg, VT. At Bowman, we believe in creating opportunities for aspiring people to thrive and achieve ambitious goals. That's why a career at Bowman is more than a job. It is an opportunity to be part of a diverse and engaged community of professionals, to be treated as a respected and valued member of a motivated team and to be empowered to do exceptional work that advances the best interest of everyone involved. We recognize the importance of creating a work environment that is both rewarding to our employees and supportive of our unwavering commitment to provide unparalleled service to our clients. For more information, please contact Jenn Desautels, Branch Manager, at jenn.desautels@bowman.com or (802) 879-6331

Administrative

Assistant/Office Coordinator

Songadeewin of Keewaydin seeks a highly qualified, detail- and systems-oriented administrative assistant to run the camp office full time this summer. Songadeewin of Keewaydin is a summer camp for girls on Lake Dunmore in Salisbury, Vermont which specializes in wilderness canoe tripping, with a capacity of roughly 200 campers and a staff of 75. Proficiency required in Microsoft & Google Suite as well as ability to learn our camp database and organizational systems. Dates include training: July 10 - August 21, 2025. Salary, if commuting $20/hour. Salary, if living on campus, $475/wk with room and board provided. 75% tuition benefit for children to attend a Keewaydin camp.

• Loading and unloading trucks at customers’ locations, Booska Warehouse, and other areas within the state.

• Heavy lifting of furniture, boxes, hot tubs, pianos, safes, boilers, and others items as needed in accordance with moving industry.

• Running areas as needed, box deliveries, equipment deliveries, light truck maintenance.

• Operating forklifts, loading and unloading of delivery trucks, box orders.

• Equipping trucks with all necessary equipment before leaving the yard.

• Pre-trip inspections before operating any Booska owned vehicle.

• Wood working, building crates, rigging, hoisting furniture.

• Pack jobs.

• Paperwork on moves, Bill of Ladings, Inventories, and other paperwork as needed.

• Performing the work in a safe and friendly maner.

For more about Songadeewin & Keewaydin, visit keewaydin.org. To apply or view a full job description, please email your resume to Annette Franklin: annette@keewaydin.org

Development Associate/ Grant Writer

The Vermont Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired (VABVI) seeks a detailed-oriented, creative individual to research grants and write proposals, coordinate VT town solicitations, and process donations. Additional responsibilities include contributing to social media and newsletter content, and supporting the administration of the Development Dept. as needed. Position requires excellent written and verbal communication and organizational skills. VABVI offers an excellent benefit package. Compensation of $41,000-$44,000, commensurate with experience. Full job description available upon request. VABVI, founded in 1926 and one of the oldest non-profits in Vermont, is a great place to work, a great mission to support and offers work that makes a difference in the lives of others.

Please send cover letter, resume and three letters of reference to: VABVI - John Thomas 60 Kimball Ave., South Burlington, VT 05403 Or: jthomas@vabvi.org

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ATTENTION RECRUITERS:

Teacher/Community Coordinator

Seeking a Full-time (40 hrs/week) Teacher/Community Coordinator in our Barre Learning Center.

The right candidate will have:

• Enthusiasm for working with adult students;

• Familiarity with the service area;

• Proven capacity for providing high quality education;

• Proficiency in Microsoft Office.

The candidate may be teaching:

• English as a Second Language (ESL);

• Reading, writing, math, computer skills and financial literacy;

• High school diploma and GED credentialing;

• Career and college readiness.

Experience developing personalized education and graduation plans a plus. The ideal candidate will be flexible, find joy in teaching, and have the ability to teach multiple subject areas.

Starting salary: $48,000+. Compensation is commensurate with experience. CVAE pays 100% of individual health, dental and shortterm disability insurance, and employer 403(b) contributions. Six weeks paid vacation annually.

Submit cover letter and resume to: info@cvae.net Position Open Until Filled. cvae.net

Studio & Operations Manager

Lemon Zesty is an art studio and highvolume merchandise business seeking an experienced studio / operations manager.

Must be efficient, detail-oriented, and able to prioritize in order to meet production and delivery deadlines. Duties include: ﬁlling online orders, shipping products, managing inventory, communicating with customers and vendors, ordering supplies, making merchandise, troubleshooting production issues, and handling day-to-day operations.

Ideal candidate is an organized, efficient, detail-oriented multi-tasker. We do the majority of our business in NYC during the holiday season, so you must be a responsible self-starter who is comfortable working through to-do lists on your own while I'm on location.

Requirements: experience with Mac, Excel and Google sheets.

Bonus: experience with inventory management and/or point-of-sale systems (Square).

You can learn more about the business at lemonzesty.com or instagram.com/hellolemonzesty

Start date: mid-June

Rate: $22/hr to start, 30-40 hours / week

Maintenance Workers

Seeking Maintenance Workers with an enthusiasm for the routine maintenance and repair of all school facilities, grounds, and equipment. The ideal candidate will be an excellent communicator with a willingness to learn. This work includes a variety of basic plumbing and electrical maintenance, troubleshooting, and repairs as well as other special projects that ensure a clean and safe learning environment for all students and sta . To apply, visit: csdvt.org/jobs

Seasonal Baker

HEARING PANEL COUNSEL

VERMONT JUDICIARY

Immediate need for contract attorney to provide legal advice to hearing panels under the Professional Responsibility Program. Vermont licensed attorneys eligible for $200/hr for an average of less than 8 hours per week supporting formal attorney disciplinary and disability hearings. Must have strong experience with trials or contested evidentiary hearings.

If interested, find more information at: vermontjudiciary.org/ ProfessionalResponsibilityProgramRFP 4t-VTCourts052125.indd 1

ATTENTION RECRUITERS:

1:14 PM

We are seeking a Baker to join our team. This role requires a keen understanding of food safety practices and the ability to work efficiently in a fast-paced kitchen environment. As a Baker, you will be responsible for making donuts & apple crisp. Send resumes to: hackettsorchard @gmail.com

4t-CVCOA051425 1 5/9/25 11:46 AM

POST YOUR JOBS AT: SEVENDAYSVT.COM/POSTMYJOB

PRINT DEADLINE: NOON ON MONDAYS (INCLUDING HOLIDAYS) FOR RATES & INFO: MICHELLE BROWN, 802-865-1020 X121, MICHELLE@SEVENDAYSVT.COM

will have all

fees paid.

and

solar installers receive a sign-on bonus and competitive wages. To apply, call (970)-618-7151 or email resume to jacob@hellbrook.io

FLORAL MERCHANDISER

MILTON, Part time

Floral Associate

3 mornings per week (Tuesday, Friday, Sunday) approximately 15-20 hours. Fun and flexible job, perfect for a creative person who likes to work independently

Please contact Nathalie at the number below: 518-420-3786

2h-SimplyReady071421.indd 1 7/12/21 6:20 PM

Unique opportunity! SimplyReady, a division of the Bill Doran Company, is looking for a Floral Associate in Burlington, VT. Days of service are Tuesday, Friday and Sunday mornings. Hours vary per week depending on seasonal volume. Ideal candidate will have some working knowledge of both cut flowers and plants, as well as a solid work history that includes at least 5 years of sales, merchandising or retail experience. Job entails walking, pushing, and repetitive lifting of up to 30lbs. Reply to: drose@simplyready.com

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TOWN OF MILTON IS HIRING:

Police Dept Administrative Assistant Maintenance Mechanic

Water/Wastewater Technician

Police Officer

Please visit miltonvt.gov/employment for additional details & to apply.

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THE VERMONT STATE COLLEGES SYSTEM IS HIRING!

We’re looking for dynamic, mission-driven people who want their work to make a positive difference in Vermont and for Vermonters.

The VSCS is deeply rooted in Vermont communities, providing students of all ages opportunities for academic and professional growth through ﬂexible, innovative programs and exemplary support services. We are looking to ﬁll the following positions across the state. Come join our incredible staff!

Information Security Engineer (Campus Flexible)

Information Security Operations Lead (Campus Flexible)

HR / HCM Senior Business Process Analyst (CCV Center Flexible)

Systems Analyst and Workday Integrations Specialist (Campus Flexible)

Beneﬁts for full-time staff include 14 paid holidays, plus vacation, medical, and personal time, automatic retirement contribution, and tuition waiver at any Vermont State College for staff and their dependents (eligible dependents may apply waiver to UVM).

Visit vermontstate.edu/about/careers

VSCS values individual differences that can be engaged in the service of learning. Diverse experiences from people of varied backgrounds inform and enrich our community. VSCS welcomes all qualiﬁed applications, including those from historically marginalized and underrepresented populations.

VSCS is an Equal Opportunity Employer, in compliance with ADA requirements, and will make reasonable accommodation for the known disability of an otherwise qualiﬁed applicant.ate Colleges

When you work for the State of Vermont, you and your work matter. A career with the State puts you on a rich and rewarding professional path. You’ll find jobs in dozens of fields – not to mention an outstanding total compensation package.

OUTREACH PROGRAM MANAGER – MONTPELIER

The Vermont Public Service Department is hiring an Outreach Program Manager to support public outreach and communication on state energy policy and programs, working with internal and external partners. The position will contribute to projects on issues like energy planning and program development. The ideal candidate will bring skill in synthesizing input from diverse audiences, excellent written and verbal communication ability, and the ability to clearly explain technical information. For more information, contact Claire McIlvennie at claire.mcilvennie@vermont.gov. Location: Montpelier. Department: Public Service. Status: Full Time, Limited Service. Rate of Pay: $33.78. Job ID #52734. Application Deadline: June 8, 2025.

Join Our Team as a Wide Format Printer Operator!

Are you passionate about print production and love working with cutting-edge printing technology? We’re looking for a Wide Format Printer Operator to join our dynamic team and help bring bold, beautiful visuals to life! Job Type: Full-Time

What You’ll Do:

• Operate and maintain wide format printer (HP Latex R2000)

• Operate and maintain flatbed cutter (XL2599 Zund digital router)

• Prepare and load print files using RIP software

• Perform routine maintenance and troubleshoot printer issues

• Handle media types including vinyl, fabric, canvas, PVC, aluminum and more

• Trim finish printed materials as needed

• Ensure color accuracy and print quality standards are met

• Collaborate with the design and production teams to meet deadlines

What We’re Looking For:

• Experience with wide format printing

equipment and RIP software

• Strong attention to detail and color accuracy

• Ability to work independently and manage multiple projects

• Basic knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite is a plus

• A team player with a positive attitude and strong work ethic

What We Offer:

• A creative and supportive work environment

• Health benefits and paid time off

• Access to latest print technology & tools

Ready to make your mark in print? Apply today by sending your resume info@CatamountColor.com or visit CatamountColor.com.

Church Admin. Assistant

Charlotte Congregational Church

20 hours/week. For details and to apply: bit.ly/CCCadmin

Marketing Manager

Hybrid, Burlington, VT.

All Learners Network (ALN) seeks a highly-motivated, self-starting Marketing Manager: Institutional Partnerships. You will be instrumental in driving revenue growth by generating awareness & qualified leads for K12 district and state accounts.

The hiring range for this position is $70,000 - $80,000/year. Apply at: alllearnersnetwork.com/marketing-manager. E.O.E.

Burlington Housing Authority (BHA)

Are you interested in a job that helps your community and makes a difference in people’s lives every day? Consider joining Burlington Housing Authority (BHA) in Burlington, VT to continue BHA’s success in promoting innovative solutions that address housing instability challenges facing our diverse population of low-income families and individuals.

We are currently hiring for the following positions:

Building Operations Technician: Performs general maintenance work in BHA owned and managed properties. This includes building exteriors, common areas, apartments, building systems, fixtures, and grounds. Our Building Operations Techs are required to participate in the on-call rotation, which covers night and weekend emergencies.

Offender Re-entry Housing

Specialist: Provides support to men and women under the VT Department of Corrections supervision from prison back to Chittenden County. The ORHS focuses on high-risk men and women who are being released from jail and graduating transitional housing programs and in need of permanent housing. The ORHS provides intensive retention and eviction prevention services and works collaboratively with the Burlington Probation and Parole Office. Additionally, the ORHS works with various case workers, Re-Entry staff and the Administrative Staff from the VT Department of Corrections and the broad network of COSA staff, as necessary, throughout Chittenden County.

Permanent Supportive

Housing Specialist: Provides assistance to community members within Chittenden County who are without housing and have significant medical/ mental health barriers to locating and securing housing in Burlington Housing Authority’s service area.

Property Manager: Serves as a critical member of our Property Management team. This position will provide oversight of day-to-day operations of BHA’s properties ensuring long-term viability of the properties within the portfolio. This position requires independent judgment, timely management of deadlines as well as discretion in carrying out responsibilities.

Receptionist: Fields questions at the front desk and via the phone, while providing great customer service. This position also processes office mailings and provides administrative support. (Position works between 32 and 40 hours weekly.)

For more info about these career opportunities, our robust benefit package, and to apply, please visit: jobs.appone.com/ burlingtonhousingauthority

Burlington Housing Authority Human Resources 65 Main Street Suite 101 Burlington, VT 05401-8408

P: 802-864-0538

F: 802-658-1286

BHA is an Equal Opportunity Employer

GO HIRE.

Job Recruiters:

• Post jobs using a form that includes key info about your company and open positions (location, application deadlines, video, images, etc.).

• Accept applications and manage the hiring process via our applicant tracking tool.

• Easily manage your open job listings from your recruiter dashboard

• Search for jobs by keyword, location, category and job type.

• Set up job alert emails using custom search criteria.

• Save jobs to a custom list with your own notes on the positions.

• Apply for jobs directly through the site.

a quote when you post online or contact Michelle Brown: 865-1020, ext. 121, michelle@sevendaysvt.com.

Manager of People & Culture

Join the Vermont Land Trust as our People and Culture Manager. Do you like helping people thrive in service to a cause?

We are seeking a People and Culture Manager who can:

• Manage all aspects of People Operations including talent development, comp and benefits, compliance, and more.

• Foster a positive work environment through effective employee engagement.

• Collaborate with leaders and peers with strong attention to detail, integrity, and tact.

Learn more and apply at vlt.org/employment. The position will remain open until 6/6/25. The annual starting salary is $67,200 - $75,200 depending upon years of experience, plus a cafeteria allowance of $25,561 to pay for health care and other benefits.

The Vermont Land Trust is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We honor and invite people of all backgrounds and life experiences to apply.

Graduate Nurse Residency Program

Build your skills – with support.

Kickstart your nursing career with the support you need at our not-for-profit, rural critical access hospital. Apply for our Summer 2025 program on the Medical-Surgical Unit. Receive hands-on training with experienced preceptors, exposure to diverse patient populations, and education on essential nursing skills in a mentorship-driven atmosphere. Why NVRH? Collaborate with a dedicated team, gain valuable experience, and enjoy work-life balance in a welcoming rural community while making a meaningful impact on patients’ lives.

Requirements: Enthusiastic new graduates with a Bachelor’s or Associate’s Degree in Nursing and eligibility for a Vermont or multi-state Compact RN license. Benefits Include: Competitive compensation, student loan repayment, tuition reimbursement, paid time off, and more. About Us: Located in St. Johnsbury, Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital serves over 30,000 people in a picturesque, bustling community. Apply Now! nvrh.org/careers.

OUR DYNAMIC TEAM!

Orchard Valley Waldorf School is an independent school that integrates the arts, academics, and social learning on two campuses close to Montpelier, VT. Our faculty works collaboratively to serve children from 3 months through 8th grade. We are hiring for the following positions:

3rd/4th Grade Class Teacher

Toddler Class Teacher

Infant/Toddler Assistant Teacher

3rd-8th Grade Strings/Orchestra Teacher

Pedagogical Chair

Buildings and Grounds Steward

Student Support Team member

Visit ovws.org/employment-opportunities for more information. To apply, submit a resume, cover letter, and three references to employment@ovws.org

Custodial Manager

Performs custodial maintenance duties, including dusting, mopping, finishing and buffing floors, vacuuming and shampooing carpets, cleaning and restocking restrooms. Works in cooperation with school administration to address facility emergencies, needs, and regular maintenance, including the monitoring of a facility maintenance log.

For full job description, requirements and to apply: klafferty@materchristischool.net.

Operations Director

The Mitzvah Fund seeks a nimble and creative problem solver to fill the new role of Operations Director to manage the nonprofit’s daily work including the mobile veterinary hospital. This is a full-time position with benefits located in Central VT. $60,000 starting salary.

For more information: themitzvahfundvt. org/jobs

Run Your Dream Biz

Inside a Collective That Feels Like Home

Now Leasing at Mariposa Collective – Essex Jct, VT

Are you a hairstylist, massage therapist, makeup artist, aesthetician, energy worker, or holistic practitioner ready to grow your own business— but craving community along the way?

For details and info, visit: mariposacollectives.com

Why not have a job you love?

Make a career making a difference with a job in human services at Champlain Community Services.

Benefit package includes 29 paid days off in the first year, comprehensive health insurance with premium as low as $30 per month, up to $6,400 to go towards medical deductibles and copays, retirement match, generous sign on bonus and so much more.

And that’s on top of working at one of the “Best Places to Work in Vermont” for seven years in a row.

Great jobs in management, and direct support at an award-winning agency serving Vermonters with intellectual and developmental disabilities. ccs-vt.org/current-openings.

Educational Outreach Coordinator

Basic function: This position will help implement workforce development goals of the VT EPSCoR 5-year grant, including helping recruit undergraduate students for a 10-week summer research internship and conduct outreach to schools and community groups to meet the grant deliverables.

Minimum qualifications: Bachelor’s degree in a related field. 1-2 years of related experience. Or a similar combination of education and experience from which comparable knowledge and skills are acquired.

Location: VTSU Williston Campus with predicted travel to other campuses, field sites, and organizations located statewide. Hybrid/Remote working will be possible.

Benefits package: Medical Insurance, Dental Insurance, Vision Insurance, Retirement Plan, Tuition Waiver to Vermont State Colleges, Tuition Waiver to UVM for dependent children, Employee Assistance Program, Long Term Disability, 14 Paid Holidays, Medical, Personal, and Vacation Leave.

Apply online at Vermontstate.edu.

fun stuff

JEN SORENSEN

HARRY BLISS

KYLE BRAVO

JULIANNA BRAZILL

MAT BARTON

GEMINI

(MAY 21-JUN. 20)

It’s time for your Uncle Rob to offer you some fundamental advice for living. These tips are always worthy of your contemplation, but especially now. Ready? Being poised amid uncertainty is a superpower. You may attract wonders and blessings if you can function well while dealing with contradictory feelings, unclear situations and incomplete answers. Don’t rush to artificial closure when patience with the unfinished state will serve you better. Be willing to address just part of a problem rather than trying to insist on total resolution. There’s no need to be worried or frustrated if some enigmas cannot yet be explained and resolved. Enjoy the mystery!

ARIES (Mar. 21-Apr. 19): You have had resemblances to cactuses in recent days. It hasn’t always been pleasant and cheerful, but you have become pretty skilled at surviving, even thriving, despite an insufficiency of juicy experiences. Fortunately, the emotional fuel you had previously stored up has sustained you, keeping you resilient and reasonably fluid. However, this situation will soon change. More succulence is on its way. Scarcity will end, and you will be blessed with an enhanced flow of lush feelings.

TAURUS (Apr. 20-May 20): I foresee abundance emerging from modest sources. I predict breakthroughs arising out of your loving attention to the details of the routine. So please don’t get distracted by poignant meditations on what you feel is missing from your life. Don’t fantasize about what you wish you could be doing instead of what you are actually doing. Your real wealth lies in the small tasks that are right in front of you — even though they may not yet have revealed their full meaning or richness. I invite you and encourage you to be alert for grandeur in seemingly mundane intimate moments.

CANCER (Jun. 21-Jul. 22): Acclaimed Cancerian poet Lucille Clifton published 14 books and mothered six children. That heroism seems almost impossible. Having helped raise one child myself, I know how consuming it is to be a parent. Where did she find the time and energy to generate so much great literature? Judging from the astrological omens, I suspect you now have access to high levels of productivity comparable to Clifton’s. Like her, you will also be able to gracefully juggle competing demands and navigate adeptly through different domains. Here’s my favorite part: Your stellar efficiency will stem not from stressfully trying too hard but rather from good timing and a nimble touch.

LEO (Jul. 23-Aug. 22): One of the seven wonders of the ancient world was the Colossus of Rhodes, located on a Greek island. Symbolizing power and triumph, it was a towering statue dedicated to the sun god Helios. The immediate motivation for its construction was the local people’s defeat of an invading army. I hereby authorize you to acquire or create your own personal version of an inspiring icon like the Colossus, Leo. It will symbolize the fact that the coming months will stimulate lavish expressions of your leonine power. It will help inspire you to showcase your talents and make bold moves. PS: Be alert for chances to mobilize others with your leadership. Your natural brilliance will be a beacon.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sep. 22): The Great Barrier Reef is the world’s biggest structure built by living things. Lying beneath the Coral Sea off the east coast of Australia, it’s made by

billions of small organisms, coral polyps, all working together to create a magnificent home for a vast diversity of life-forms. Let’s make the Great Barrier Reef your symbol of power for the next 10 months, Virgo. I hope it inspires you to manage and harness the many details that together will generate a robust source of vitality for your tribe, family and community.

LIBRA (Sep. 23-Oct. 22): One of my favorite poets, Arthur Rimbaud, wrote all of his brilliant work before he became an adult. I suspect that no matter what your age is, many of you Libras are now in an ultra-precocious phase with some resemblances to Rimbaud from age 16 to 21. The downside of this situation is that you may be too advanced for people to thoroughly understand you. You could be ahead of your time and too cool for even the trendsetters. I urge you to trust your farseeing visions and forward-looking intuitions even if others can’t appreciate them yet. What you bring to us from the future will benefit us all.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Blacksmiths still exist. They were more common in the past, but there are many 21st-century practitioners. It’s a demanding art, requiring intense heat to soften hard slabs of metal so they can be forged into intricate new shapes. The process requires both fire and finesse. I think you are currently in a phase when blacksmithing is an apt metaphor. You will need to artfully interweave passion and precision. Fiery ambition or intense feelings may arise, offering you raw energy for transformation. To harness it effectively, you must temper your approach with patience, restraint and detail-oriented focus.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): JeanPaul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir were two feisty, independent, strong-minded French writers. Beauvoir was a trailblazing feminist, and Sartre was a Nobel laureate. Though they never officially married, they were a couple for 51 years. Aside from their great solo accomplishments, they also gave us this gift: They proved that romantic love and intellectual equality could coexist, even thrive together, with the help of creative negotiation. I pro-

pose we make them your inspirational role models for now. The coming months will be a favorable time to deepen and refine your devotion to crafting satisfying, interesting intimate relationships.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): More than 2,600 years ago, ancient Babylonian astronomers figured out the highly complex cycle that governs the recurrence of lunar and solar eclipses. It unfolds over a period of 18 years and 11 days. To analyze its full scope required many generations of researchers to carry out meticulous recordkeeping with extreme patience. Let’s make those Babylonian researchers your role models, Capricorn. In the coming months, I hope they inspire you to engage in careful observation and persistent investigation as you discover meaningful patterns. May they excite your quest to discern deep cycles and hidden rhythms.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): I invite you to try this visualization exercise, Aquarius: Picture a rosebud inside your body. It’s located in your solar plexus. Imagine it’s steadily and gently opening, filling your body with a sweet, blissful warmth, like a slow-motion orgasm that lasts and lasts. Feel the velvet red petals unfolding; inhale the soft radiance of succulent fragrance. As the rose fully blooms, you become aware of a gold ring at its center. Imagine yourself reaching inside and taking the ring with your right hand. Slip the ring onto your left ring finger and tell yourself, “I pledge to devote all my passionate intelligence to my own well-being. I promise to forever treat myself with tender loving respect. I vow to seek out high-quality beauty and truth as I fulfill my life’s mission.”

PISCES (Feb. 19-Mar. 20): I foresee the arrival of a living fossil, Pisces. An influence you thought was gone may soon reappear. Aspects of your past could prove relevant to your current situation. These might be neglected skills, seemingly defunct connections or dormant dreams. I hope you have fun integrating rediscovered resources and earmarking them for use in the future. PS: Here’s a lesson worth treasuring: While the world has changed, a certain fundamental truth remains true and valuable to you.

Fern Crete has been collecting antiques for the past 60 years, and many of them are displayed in his eclectic Burlington abode, which resembles a French château on the inside. Seven Days’ Eva Sollberger got a tour of Crete’s maximalist home and met his rescue pug, LouLou.

MUSICAL, SENSITIVE, NEURODIVERSE, FUN, KIND

I am in the process of a gentle divorce. I only recently found out that I am on the autistic spectrum. I am retired, and I would love to find someone to sing or play music with as well as getting exercise outdoors. I get compliments on my massages. Please tell me about yourself. I will send photos. Comfyguy 64, seeking: W, l

Respond to these people online: dating.sevendaysvt.com

WOMEN seeking...

IF YOU LIKE PIÑA COLADAS

Middle-aged, dog-loving woman with a badass job, sharp humor and no patience for small talk. You: stable, kind, weird in the best way. Let’s laugh over dinner, maybe escape town (separate rooms!) and see what happens — no pressure, no script, just two grownups figuring out if this could be something worth exploring. vtpinacoladagirl 49, seeking: M

SEEKING AUTHENTIC CONNECTION

Charmingly active and young-for-myyears woman looking to share my life and experiences with an intelligent, romantic and genuine man. I’m passionate about social justice and progressive ideas. I’d love for you to join me for dancing, skiing, cooking, writing poems and exploring openheartedness. VTJewel, 75, seeking: M, l

AWAKENING HEART YOUTHFUL OLD SOUL BLESSINGS!

Compassionate and discerning heart mind, joyful lens, justice orientation with homesteading tendencies welcomes aligned connections to explore: meditation, cultures, nature, inner outer landscapes, diverse languages, grow compassion culture. Growing chosen family. Read to meet life partner. Inquisitive, thoughtful, playful, kind, adventurous, content, open. Conscious communication. Speed of trust. Grateful to connect, tend, nurture, hold, be held, offer, share. youthfuloldsoul, 49 seeking: M, l

WANT TO RESPOND?

You read Seven Days, these people read Seven Days — you already have at least one thing in common!

All the action is online. Create an account or login to browse hundreds of singles with profiles including photos, habits, desires, views and more. It’s free to place your own profile online.

l See photos of this person online.

W = Women

M = Men

TW = Trans women

TM = Trans men

Q = Genderqueer people

NBP = Nonbinary people

NC = Gender nonconformists

Cp = Couples

Gp = Groups

DO YOU LIKE INNER STILLNESS?

Looking for someone with a similar lifestyle, not a tagalong. Someone desiring relationship as a life journey. I observe some who want to use another as escape or rescue from having a relationship with themselves, to avoid loneliness, to fit in, or just because it’s what they’ve always done. If that’s you, it’s not me you’re looking for.

NotOutOfTheWoodsYet 61, seeking: M

HIGH ENERGY, POSITIVE, NATURAL BLONDE

I live and play in Vermont and the D.C. metro area, splitting my time between the two when I am not chasing snow! I adore both the outdoorsy-ness of Vermont and have owned a home here for 15+ years. Positivity and lightness run through me. Expect to laugh with me — and bring your energy. I am highly carbonated! braidsatanyage 53 seeking: M, l

FINDING JOY AND LOVE

Opening my life and heart to experiencing the joy and love that exists in between the spaces of this troubled world. Looking for a partner for traveling to amazing places, communing with the forest fairies and mycelium networks, and playing in the water. Young at heart, embraces the wonders of this life, has compassion for the difficulties facing our planet and its inhabitants. Halfpint, 72 seeking: M, l

SMART FUNNY ROMANTIC

SEEKS SAME

Are you an optimist? Enjoy an active, engaged lifestyle? Downhill skier a plus.

Romantic, fun-loving person seeking someone who loves music, traveling, hiking, biking, concerts and comedy. I’m living a full life, but if it can be enhanced with a partner, I’m up for that. If you think the cup is half empty, do not apply! apresski711, 68 seeking: M, l

DRAMA-FREE!

Mom of two. One grown, one at home. Vermonter, born and raised. Water is my happy place, especially the ocean. I work part time. Divorced 17 years, single most of that. Ready to try again. Could you be the one? poeticbabs 55, seeking: M, l

HIKING BOOTS AND FUN EARRINGS

I’m happiest when in the forest with snacks! I care about social and environmental justice and hope to leave my corner of the earth better than I found it. Outgoing introvert. I value solitude but am also fun at parties (especially if given enough caffeine). Looking for an outdoorsy guy with compassion and good sense of humor. Trailhobbit, 30, seeking: M, l

WHY WE’RE HERE

Looking for friendship and joy. I’m a dogand cat-loving, independent, outdoorsy and indoorsy central Vermonter. I’m a busy volunteer. I love to hike, read, write, think, make things and help out. I am most comfortable with people who are confident, independent, liberal and very kind. Let’s go have some amazing adventures while we still have our marbles! FourSeasons, 67 seeking: M, l

I’M OLD SCHOOL

It’s been almost three years now. I’m a hardworking woman looking for dinner and a movie and wonderful company. Lmhemond 59, seeking: M, l

OPEN TO MOST THINGS

I work a great deal because it is also my passion and purpose. I care about doing what is right even if it’s harder. I’m patient, to an extent, and can be coaxed into having fun. Cleeb4381, 43, seeking: M

MOUNTAIN GAL

Curious, crunchy, adventurous and independent. You can find me outdoors exploring the woods, wandering up streams, saying hey to all the plants and critters. I love to learn and care deeply about community. Looking for someone who is intelligent, goofy, resourceful, engaged in their community and actively pursuing their passions — be that through work or extracurriculars. spottedsalamander 29 seeking: M, l

RELAXING FORMER MULTITASKER

Native Californian, Vermont resident for 10 years. Came to retire, found myself working at the college nearby. I live in a rural area outside Middlebury. Mom to two dogs. I like bird-watching. I revel in nature that is all around me on my little farmlet. Also enjoy the city, good restaurants, fine wine, nightclubs. Always happy traveling to distant lands. Chamois009, 69, seeking: M, l

GLASS HALF FULL, WILLING TO SHARE Kind, smart, intuitive, SWW, 63, with a wry sense of humor. Financially independent and resourceful, civicminded, and involved in the community. Health conscious in body, mind and spirit. Work part time at a job I love and am ready for more. More travel, more play and deeper connection. Seeking meaningful relationship with vital, active, emotionally available and intellectually curious man. Is that you? Love2Read, 63, seeking: M, l

EXPLORER

Creative, reflective, edgy, sarcastic, traveler, independent, generous, fair. titanbuff 77 seeking: M, l

WARM, WATER SIGN, WORDS MATTER

I’m a people person and love connecting on a deep level. I would like to find someone to read and talk about books with, to laugh, to sail, to swim, to eat well, to listen to music, to walk and bike and enjoy small adventures, and to find comfort together, despite the current insanity. Connecting, 65, seeking: M, W, l

MEN seeking...

ADVENTURE IS MY LOVE LANGUAGE

I like hiking, visiting museums, reading, video games, but I’m undecided on long walks on the beach and piña coladas. I crack a lot of jokes; there are pieces everywhere. I can hold on to an apartment, a car, a job but not a train of thought. If this sounds appealing, hit me up. TwitchyRabbit, 34 seeking: W, l

LOOKING FOR EXCITEMENT

Just looking for excitement and a break from the everyday-to-day tasks. db0103 40, seeking: W

I’M OFTEN CALLED MARK HELPIN

Full of energy, laughter, curiosity and the kind of spirit that says, “Why not?” I live for music, whether it’s getting lost in a live show, jamming on my guitar or psyching myself up for my first open mic. I love to dance, camp under the stars, soak in hot tubs and have deep talks that lead to big laughs. MarkHalpin1965, 59, seeking: W, Cp, Gp, l

FUN AND OPEN-MINDED

I’m looking for a sweet, submissive woman to spoil me and end up being spoiled through my loving and caring nature. I’m in pretty good shape. I love women who take care of themselves. Your reward is me showing you great affection. Summer of love? 8ohdude 54 seeking: W

LET’S SHARE LIFE’S ADVENTURE!

I have a lot of love and adventure in me to give! I am a caring and passionate person. I don’t ask for much! Life is full of adventure and I am yearning to share this adventure with someone special! Let’s have a chat and see where the adventure goes! Virtualpilot 47, seeking: W, l

ARTSY AND FUNNY

Bald, funny (looking) and slightly musical dude seeks friendship, laughs, deep explorations of the arts and a perhaps slightly serious relationship. Adores the Earth and the outdoors, all animals domesticated and wild, and the mythical power of the universe. Owns some nice land and a small house. All shapes and sizes and hair and personalities and religions and lifestyles respected. baldmaneden 54 seeking: W, l

LOOKING FOR DISCREET NSA FUN

I am not looking for a relationship. I am looking to appreciate you and your beautiful body safely and discreetly. The truth is, I feel I have never been appreciated sexually, so I don’t have tons of experience, but I want to grow that experience. Photos only after initial contact. That_Thing, 37 seeking: W

NATURE-LOVING RAMBLIN’ MAN

Buckle up! I’ve been living a very nontraditional life. I’ve been full-time RVing for the last 17 years. It’s been a wonderful lifestyle. I’m a huge lover of nature and have spent time in national parks, estates and ranches on both coasts. Really seeking a woman with passion for the things in life that really matter. Namaste! YoungPhilip, 66, seeking: W, l

OUTDOORSMAN SEEKING LIKE-MINDED ADVENTURER

Desk jockey by day, outdoorsy fun seeker by night/weekends. I spend my free time with friends, running, hiking, biking, enjoying live music/ sports, traveling, cooking/dining out and reading. I’m passionate, empathetic and witty. Seeking someone who I can have a deep connection with. Someone who’s passionate, honest, humble, communicative and playful. You should be financially stable, work hard and play harder. Jaycee412, 52, seeking: W, l

ENERGETIC AND ADVENTUROUS

Will write more soon. Fall_ foliage, 57, seeking: W, l

LAID-BACK AND LOVES TO LAUGH

I am an easygoing guy who loves being outdoors. Canoeing, hiking and snowshoeing are my favorite activities when not playing golf. People tell me that I am a great listener. GreenMountainZen 49, seeking: W, l

I WANT LOVING WOMEN!

I love the outdoors, fishing, walking, watching older TV shows. I’d love to meet a beautiful woman who would like me for who I am and likes to just spend time with me. I like to listen to Fallout 4 radio, from the game. The song “Worry Worry Worry” is one that fits me, LOL. Walleyedeerhunter12, 35 seeking: W

HARDWORKING, HONEST MAN

My name is Phil. I have been a heavy equipment technician for 31 years with the same employer. I like to fish, camp, ride motorcycles and be in nature. I am looking for friendship that has the potential for long term. Mechanicinvt, 53, seeking: W, l

CAMINO DE SANTIAGO THIS FALL?

Today is the only day. Yesterday and tomorrow exist only as thoughts in our heads. So what could we do today? Buen camino! ThinkLess_ DoMore 67, seeking: W, l

TRANS WOMEN seeking...

TRANS WOMAN LOOKING FOR NEW EXPERIENCES

Hello, trans woman looking for new experiences, sexually and as friends. Open-minded, bisexual but like women, trans women and shemales more than men. Want to try things and see what I like with clean, nice people. If a relationship or besties, our views would matter; otherwise, just being civil and not discussing our differences would be the way to make FWB work out.

TransRebecca 32 seeking: W, TW, l RECENTLY RELOCATED, ADVENTUROUS, FREE SPIRIT

I’m a gorgeous, white, 100 percent passable trans lady who is 57 and could pass as 30 — yes, 30! I long for love, laughter and romance, along with loving nature. I want a man who’s all man, rugged, handsome, well built but prefers a woman like myself. It’s as simple as that. We meet, fall in love and live happily ever after. Sammijo 59, seeking: M, l

NONBINARY PEOPLE seeking...

SEEKING COMMUNITY WITH MULTIGENERATIONAL LESBIANS

Okay, here’s the deal. I’m trying to figure out how to build friendships with lesbians who are older than me. The dream: Lesbians of all experiences swapping stories, cracking jokes, maybe sipping beverages and learning from one another. Interested? Let’s do it! Does a group like this already exist somewhere in VT? Can I get in on it? LMK. ilovelesbians 30 seeking: W, TM, TW, Q, NC, NBP, Cp, Gp COUPLES seeking...

KNOTTEE COUPLE

Complicated couple looking for woman or couple for friends with benefits. We would like to boat and grab a beverage with like-minded couple or woman and see where it goes from there. knotteecpl 66, seeking: W, Cp

i SPY

BTV SHOWED UP!

I could have quit, but you kept cheering us on. The most positive words I’ve heard in a while. So many smiles, good vibes and treats to keep us going. Hoping we can continue the good time, BTV! When: Sunday, May 25, 2025. Where: Burlington. You: Group. Me: Woman. #916336

HALF-MARATHON BEAUTY

At mile six I yelled that you made it look easy. Saw you finish the half — fast! Later, you were celebrating with two friends at the finish line. I didn’t see any opportunity to say hello without intruding. You have blonde hair, electric blue eyes, running shoes with a blue or green cushion. Care to go for a run? When: Sunday, May 25, 2025. Where: Burlington marathon. You: Woman. Me: Man. #916335

TRADER JOE’S PARKING LOT

You were a distinguished-looking man in a brown linen blazer. I was a tall woman wearing jeans, a navy puffy jacket and a baseball cap. You got into a black Range Rover. I was looking at you because I thought you were hot. You were looking at me, too, reason unknown. Care to connect? When: Thursday, May 22, 2025. Where: Trader Joe’s parking lot. You: Man. Me: Woman. #916334

TALL, SPARKLY EYES, GREAT LAUGH, CHURCH DATER

Rise on my toes to see eye to eye; tell my best jokes to tickle her laugh; worship her open, kind heart like a child in church seeing God for the first time. On our first dates we sat together, stood together, sang together. I miss the eternity I see in her soul when we share a pillow, as we giggle at everything and nothing. Yes. When: Sunday, May 11, 2025. Where: St. J. You: Woman. Me: Man. #916333

If you’ve been spied, go online to contact your admirer!

CORVETTE GIRL PURPLE PINKISH RIDE

Last Sunday I was checking out the graffiti under the bridge and you rolled in driving a purple Corvette. Was your first ride of the year. You let me take a picture with the graffiti backdrop. You told me it was the first ride out, and how you came to own it. I kicked myself for not asking. When: Sunday, May 11, 2025. Where: Montpelier. You: Man. Me: Man. #916326

HOT TRAIN CONDUCTOR

W.O.W.

You really don’t think that it’s over between us, do you? After 12 years, it’s still going strong — hot and steamy. You are blind if you can’t see the signs. When: Thursday, May 29, 2025. Where: Serving at IBM. You: Woman. Me: Couple. #916337

JEAN JACKET

You caught my eye near the “stage” area at Two Brothers in Middlebury. I wanted to introduce myself, but you seemed to be meeting friends and I was doing setup/breakdown both times I saw you. I’d love to chat. When: Wednesday, May 21, 2025. Where: Two Brothers, Middlebury. You: Woman. Me: Man. #916332

WILDERADO CONCERT

Standing next to each other toward the end of the show, making eye contact. You told me you thought my hat was cute and were wearing a red shirt. I wish I returned the compliment! I was with my friends, but maybe we could grab a drink sometime. When: Thursday, May 22, 2025. Where: Higher Ground. You: Woman. Me: Man. #916331

TALKING FURNITURE MISHAPS, KARENS, WINE

What a nice surprise to have such an unexpected conversation on a dreary Monday on Williston Rd. I’d love to talk more, meet for drinks, hear more about you! When: Monday, May 19, 2025. Where: South Burlington. You: Woman. Me: Man. #916329

MAGYAR-BESZÉL? CSAJ SCOUT-BAN

I really dig hearing you speak Hungarian. Wanna get together some time and csevegjünk egyet? When: Wednesday, May 14, 2025. Where: Scout in NNE. You: Woman. Me: Man. #916323

I was riding my bike with a root beer float in hand; you were a train conductor leaning out the window as detritus was being dumped. I noticed you and thought, No way. Why is he hot? You waved at me and smiled. Confirmed. I’d love to see the cockpit and if you’re funny we could check out the caboose. When: Wednesday, May 14, 2025. Where: train yard. You: Man. Me: Woman. #916328

SMILES ON THE PLANE

You couldn’t stop looking at me and smiling. You sat across the aisle to my right and one seat ahead. I didn’t know what to do with the attention from a cute girl. I wish I smiled back more. Me: Green shirt. You: Dark blue(?) tank top and gray sweats. Maybe we don’t need to sneak glances. When: Thursday, May 15, 2025. Where: in the airport/on the plane. You: Woman. Me: Man. #916327

I CAN’T GIVE YOU WHAT YOU WANT

Most crushing words. “I can’t give you what you want.” So I settle. But it’s OK. I accept it. I wasn’t supposed to feel that way, but I did. When: Tuesday, April 22, 2025. Where: South Burlington. You: Man. Me: Woman. #916322

MATISSE TOTE, SHIRETOWN MARKETPLACE, MIDDLEBURY

I was intrigued by your black shawl and enchanting Stevie Nicks aura. I’d love to chat about art and magick. When: Thursday, May 1, 2025. Where: Middlebury. You: Woman. Me: Man. #916319

HIKER ON HONEY HOLLOW

Sunday afternoon, you were hiking down Honey Hollow Trail; I was walking up. You were carrying poles. I asked you about the trail. You have a beautiful, friendly smile. Want to go for a walk sometime? When: Sunday, May 11, 2025. Where: Honey Hollow Trail. You: Woman. Me: Man. #916321

Dear V. Deferens,

Dear Reverend,

My wife and I have two young children, and we both agree that we don’t want to have more. She wants to quit being on birth control and has been trying to convince me to get a vasectomy. I really don’t want to do it, so how do I get her to quit bugging me about it?

I can understand your hesitation, because getting a vasectomy can seem a little scary. But you know what’s a bigger deal? Growing a human inside your body and giving birth.

Your wife has taken two for the team by bearing the children. Not only that, but pretty much every form of birth control for women has some sort of side effects that are no fun. I’d say she deserves a break.

Of course, no one should try to force a person to do something to their body that they don’t want to do. It’s not cool if your wife is really twisting your arm about getting a vasectomy, but you might want to keep an open mind.

A vasectomy is an easy procedure done under local anesthesia. It usually takes between 15 and 30 minutes, and you probably won’t feel a thing. Recovery is fairly speedy, and any pain can be managed with ice and ibuprofen. Most men are

SHANNON ON THE LCRT

Hey! I’m glad to have made your acquaintance this afternoon in Jeffersonville, and to have said hi to Dweeb. I hope the unleashed dogs on the trail didn’t bother him. If you’re a regular on the rail trail, I hope to get to say hi to you again. When: Wednesday, May 14, 2025. Where: the rail trail in Jeffersonville. You: Woman. Me: Man. #916325

SUNNY RUNNER ON BIKE PATH

You were running southbound on the bike path behind ECHO. With a big smile and a sparkle in your eye, you reached out to give a high five. I was running northbound and — a bit disoriented — barely managed to wave before you passed. Let’s go for a run together sometime? When: Monday, May 12, 2025. Where: Burlington bike path. You: Man. Me: Woman. #916320

ORANGE JACKET

Spotted in the returns line at Lowe’s today: super smile, orange jacket, three pink paint rollers that just didn’t work out for ya. I was the one who suggested you cut in line ahead of me, hoping to catch a brief hello. When: Friday, May 9, 2025. Where: Lowe’s in Essex Junction. You: Woman. Me: Man. #916318

KEY LIME PIE CAR

There’s a green car that keeps parking on our street — little dead-end street. It’s the shade of a key lime pie — the key lime filling. Stop it: You’re making me hungry for key lime pie every day. Go away. Stop. When: Sunday, May 4, 2025. Where: little dead-end street. You: Man. Me: Man. #916316

VISION ON ELM STREET

Spotted on Elm Street, Montpelier — you were getting out of a cab. Long, dark hair, beautiful eyes. Tall, mysterious lady. Did you notice me staring? I thought you met my eyes briefly. When: Friday, April 25, 2025. Where: Montpelier. You: Woman. Me: Woman. #916315

I LOVE YOUR HARE (SHIRT)

Hello. On Saturday (I think?), you let me know you appreciated my “red” outfit as I was leaving the grocery, and I admired your Hare T-shirt. I’m not too quick on the uptake, but if you might be interested in a new friend, kindly reach out. Thanks. When: Saturday, April 19, 2025. Where: Shaw’s in Montpelier. You: Woman. Me: Man. #916314

RADIO BEAN TEMPTRESS

You asked how old I was. It was loud so I showed you with my fingers. You liked the tiny tattoo on my arm, helped me get a drink, and then caressed my face and looked into my eyes before disappearing into the crowd. Hardest I’ve been hit on. Would love the chance to prove myself to you. When: Saturday, April 26, 2025. Where: Radio Bean. You: Woman. Me: Man. #916317

AMORE EN ESPAÑOL

Your calm poise while dismantling a hefty plate of nachos and sipping a spicy margarita was something to behold! Blond and busty, oh, my my! I’ll see you again at Chico’s soon! When: Saturday, May 3, 2025. Where: Chico’s Tacos and Bar. You: Woman. Me: Woman. #916313

¡QUÉ RICO, PUERTO RICO!

We got lost in the music together at Einstein’s. Bailas muuuuy bien. When: Friday, April 25, 2025. Where: Einstein’s. You: Woman. Me: Woman. #916312

WATERBURY RESERVOIR

G — It’s been months since we were last together for a fun weekend with your daughter in tow. I miss us singing, the long phone calls, 40 miles apart, psychic phenomenons between us and almost mythological history together over the years. I guess it was too much for you to do the off-and-on, but I’ll never stop my love for you. Nothing compares to you. — J When: Saturday, January 18, 2025. Where: Waterbury/ Groton. You: Woman. Me: Man. #916311

CATCHING EYES IN ESPRESSO BUENO

After a smile on the way in, I caught your glance on your way out of the café before you drove off in a red car. Maybe you’re just a friendly guy — maybe. When: Tuesday, April 29, 2025. Where: Espresso bueno, Barre. You: Man. Me: Woman. #916310

EAGLES FAN

We met at a small store on a few occasions. You were buying beer and flirtatious. I’m sorry I’m not that good at flirting or reading people. We chatted about the Eagles. Would love to see your beautiful smile again. When: Monday, April 28, 2025. Where: Lamoille County. You: Man. Me: Woman. #916308

back to normal after a couple of days. As with any surgery, complications are possible, though rare. If, for some reason, you ever decide you want the vasectomy reversed, that’s an option.

I imagine that you and your wife had conversations about having children before you took the leap. The same goes for this situation. If you both don’t want another pregnancy, you need to work together to figure out the best solution. Perhaps the two of you should make an appointment with a doctor to go over all of your options.

Like having children, getting a vasectomy can be a daunting decision to make. But if you can conquer your fear, it might just be one of the best things you ever do.

Good luck and God bless,

The Reverend

What’s your problem? Send it to asktherev@sevendaysvt.com.

Retired male. Financially secure with stable housing and good transportation, healthy, active and ﬁt. Seeking lively big game — female cat, lioness, tiger, black panther or cougar — for adventures in the jungle. #L1864

I’m a 68-y/o bi male seeking a 60- to 70-y/o man. Bi guy in NEK seeking like-minded guys for relaxing fun. Enjoy being nude, BJs, BBQs, drinks. Casual, easygoing, wanting to share being gay. #L1863

I’m an 81-y/o woman seeking companionship and romance. I am a widow of ﬁve years. It’s time to get back in the ﬁeld. Life is too short to be alone. #L1862

Beautiful woman looking for great guy, 60s-70s, to go away with. Maybe Greece or another new adventure together. Sincere gentlemen, sophisticated, intellectual and sweet only, please. Handsome a plus. #L1861

I’m an older man seeking a trans woman and fun! I love makeup and drag queenies. I love beer and cars and piña coladas by the lake. #L1859

I’m a 40-y/o male seeking a kayaking, outdoorsy type for company and also to stay at home. I like to read, cuddle, walk, drive. Time together is important. I like a good cook, and I like to cook, by myself or together. #L1858

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Woman of 28 seeking older woman of any presentation for our own proverbial Desert Hearts. Shy but good with words. Seeking acceptance, refuge and freedom, not explicitly “from” you, but with you. #L1857

M, 61, fit, tall, compassionate, mission-driven and W/E who loves music, sports, film and writing ISO confident, funloving sensual soul F, 45 to 65, for texting and banter in anticipation of intense mutual pleasure romps (weekend lunchtime lovers). Discrete, drama-free, HWP and D/DF. Please be same. #L1856

Emotionally and spiritually mature, attractive woman in mid-60s seeking smart, witty, tall, ﬁt, decent man. If you have a broken heart which makes you appreciate joy and peace even more, have friendships that span decades, or perhaps are widowed, please write. #L1854

27-y/o female who is looking for something more serious/ long term. I am funny, smart, witty, communicative, loyal and empathic. I’m looking for those same things in a person. I love to try new coffee places, adventure around, be on the lake/reading by the water, 4/20 and play with my 5-year-old cat. All genders are welcome. #L1853

Int net-Free Dating!

Reply to these messages with real, honest-to-goodness le ers. DETAILS BELOW.

70-y/o divorced male looking for companionship and romance. If you’re not looking for a romantic relationship, don’t respond. Looking for a friendly female, age not important, but not a friend. Tired of numbers game, wanting to connect. Let’s chat and see! Phone number, please. #L1852

I’m a 40-y/o female seeking a male who is a conﬁdent, smart, funny, loyal, devoted, passionate and compassionate person. I love walks in nature, yoga, reading, writing, art museums, hiking, travel and sharing heartto-heart energy. #L1851

I’m a SWF in her mid-60s, N/S, N/DD looking for a very ﬁne gentleman who is true-blue nice and able and willing to work. Likes: tropics, exotics. Dislikes: Vermont and criminals. #L1850

I’m a 34-y/o man seeking a woman 19 or older. Avid journalist, songwriter, into poetry, sports, driving, hiking. In search of humor matching mine and a new attraction, that’s lasting, in a set of an open arms. #L1845

Describe yourself and who you’re looking for in 40 words below: (OR, ATTACH A SEPARATE PIECE OF PAPER.)

I’m a

AGE + GENDER (OPTIONAL) seeking a

AGE + GENDER (OPTIONAL)

Single woman, 60. Wise, mindful. Seeking tight unit with man, friend, love. Country living, gardens, land to play on. Emotionally, intellectually engaged. Lasting chats. Appreciation for past experience. Please be kind, stable and well established. Phone number, please. #L1849

I’m a SWF, 71 y/o, seeking a white or Black man. Long-term relationship. Cook. Warm, open, caring, friendly. I live in Woodstock. Phone calls. #L1844

I’m a happy, healthy, ﬁt 29y/o female med school student described by the friends penning this submission as “adorable, hot, with a great sense of humor.” Seeking a 26to 28-y/o male who is athletic, sweet but also “cool.” Looking for fun on the lake. #L1847

I’m a vibrant, creative fairy and forester seeking a dance partner for elaborate home-cooked meals, nude figure drawing, line dancing and massage. Proficient swimmer, enthusiastic figure skater. Queer freaks only, come kiss. #L1843

(MORE)

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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.

Intro to Tubeless Tires

WED., JUN 4

OLD SPOKES HOME COMMUNITY WORKSHOP, BURLINGTON

"The Basics" Cake Decorating Class

WED., JUN 4 RED POPPY CAKERY, WATERBURY

Bloom Lab Perfume Making

FRI., JUN 6

ADDIE & GRACE BOUTIQUE, ESSEX

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Preservation Burlington Annual Homes

Lagerfest

Sugar on Tap: Burlesque Variety Show