the commons/issue of wednesday, dec. 1
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Award-winning nonprofit community newspaper for Windham County, Vermont.TRANSCRIPT
N E W S A N A LY S I S
for
STILL STANDING,
NOWTruck accident sparks fire at Calvary Chapel — and knocks the building off its foundation
Reversal of fortuneVermont Yankee will be a tough sell, even if Entergy can find a buyer in the aftermath of the company’s fall from grace
‘Not all jobs are created equal’Working group rethinks the region’s economy
Bringing it all homeBUHS students shift focus to local anti-hunger efforts
Last train to ChesterWith freight trains demanding more track resources, railroad discontinues scenic rail rides from Bellows Falls
n SEE ENTERGY, pagE 2
n SEE CLEA, pagE 12
n SEE RAILROAD, pagE 3
n SEE RAILROAD, pagE 13
By Allison TeagueThe Commons
BRaTTLEBORO—Having just returned from a trip to Cuba, three Brattleboro Union High School seniors found the transi-tion following a trip to such a dif-ferent culture noteworthy.
What they brought back to CLEa’s (Civil Leadership and Education in action, formerly the Child Labor Education and action project) involvement with project Feed the Thousands is an
awareness that goes beyond the scope of mere school projects.
For 11 years, a steady group of 20 to 30 students involved in CLEa at the high school have learned about community issues and problems and have worked on ways to change or help those affected by these problems in their community.
Ka i -Ming pu, S tudent Council president, arianna Wolfe and Sam Stevens, both co-presidents of CLEa, were among
By Allison TeagueThe Commons
BELLOWS FaLLS—green Mountain Railroad will not be running its green Mountain Flyer excursions out of Bellows Fal ls next year, Deborah Murphy, manager of passen-ger service for Vermont Rail Systems, confirmed last week — a consequence of increasing de-mand on the company for freight transportation.
The Santa Express trains that
were run between Bellows Falls and Chester Depot last Saturday and Sunday were the last sched-uled passenger runs on the line for the foreseeable future.
For now, the Depot remains open for intermodal services re-lated to greyhound and amtrak, according to Destination Bellows Falls (DBF) president gary Fox.
Regular hours for greyhound ticketing, and the greyhound embarkation and debarkation point in Bellows Falls, will con-tinue, Fox said, and the station
will remain open for the daily northbound and southbound stops for amtrak’s Vermonter.
Whether the intermodal ser-vice center will move its opera-tions to the Waypoint Center across the street in the spring re-mains to be seen, Fox said.
“We are considering propos-als,” Fox said.
There are no plans, for now, to dismantle the historic depot, according to Murphy.
“gosh, I certainly hope not,”
By Olga PetersThe Commons
go ahead. Blame the current credit crunch for the lack of jobs paying a livable wage and
businesses exiting the region.But economic crunches
are nothing new to Windham County. In fact, some say that the area has been in a recession for the last 20 years.
The Southeastern Vermont Economic Development Strategy (SeVEDS), a group consisting of community and business leaders, has the recession in its crosshairs.
SeVEDS participants met Nov. 16 in Bellows Falls for its second meeting, with its mem-bers hoping to rehabilitate the region’s economy by increasing wages, population and the re-gional gross domestic product within five years.
Wilmington hosted the inau-gural meeting in early autumn, other meetings have been held, or are planned, in Dover and Brattleboro.
Jeffrey Lewis, executive
director of the Brattleboro Development Credit Corp., and Brattleboro Town Manager Barbara Sondag estimated 50 people attended the Nov. 16 meeting.
Sondag said seven core com-mittee members worked for three years before bringing the devel-opment process to a wider au-dience of community, industry, and economic leaders. Fairpoint Communications is partially sup-porting the project.
Lewis said the energy and tone at the Bellows Falls meeting felt lighter than at the first meeting and the participants were excited about the process.
“We lit a fuse in Wilmington and the explosion happened in Bellows Falls,” said Lewis.
The state laws that define re-gional planning commissions define the Windham Region as the 23 towns in Windham County, plus Weston, Searsburg, Readsboro, and Winhall.
Lewis said that towns can no longer navigate the economic prosperity river alone.
W i t h t h e h e l p o f
aLLISON TEagUE/THE COMMONS
The Green Mountain Flyer prepares to pull out of the Bellows Falls station on an excursion in August. Last week, the Green Mountain Railroad announced it would now longer run passenger trains on its Bellows Falls-Rutland line.
By Roger WitherspoonSpecial to The Commons
VERNON—Entergy Corporation’s low-key announcement might well have been posted on Craigslist:
For Sale: Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant. Used,
unpredictable radioactive leaks, occasional fires, poorly run, finan-cially indebted, locally unpopular, politically shunned and currently not working. $180 million — or best offer.
“Selling an old nuclear plant is like trying to build a new one,”
said economist Mark Cooper of the University of Vermont Law School’s Institute for Energy and the Environment.
“No one in their right mind would buy it or try to build it to-day,” Cooper said. “Most of the projects that have been proposed
in this country have been delayed or abandoned. The simple fact is that the economics of nuclear power today are terrible and the market for these things is just not there.
“Why Entergy thinks they can sell it is hard to see. putting it up for sale is a sign of desperation.
gREENpEaCE USa
Entergy Nuclear has announced its willingness to sell Vermont Yankee. As it stands now, the substation cannot get state authorization to operate past 2012 unless the state Senate reconsiders its February vote.
WWW.CaLVaRYCHapELWRV.ORg
The 1817 Calvary Chapel.
THELMa O’BRIEN/THE COMMONS
David LeBlanc, left, and Chris Toles, center, members of the Calvary Chapel congregation, and Pastor Ron Millette, stand near the cracked stove, installed 100 years ago in the chapel.
By Thelma O’BrienThe Commons
TOWNSHEND—You might call the Calvary Chapel in West Townshend the church too tough to die.
How else would you explain why the building is still stand-ing after a runaway moving van careened down Windham Hill Road last Monday, flew across Route 30 and slammed into the ground between the cha-pel and the West Townshend Community post Office and art gallery building?
Ron Millette, the non-denominational Christian church’s pastor and also a logger, called the forces that rocked the original 193-year-old structure and all its addi-tions “shock waves.”
No one was hurt in the Nov. 22 crash, but the impact of the United Van Lines trailer truck cracked a 110-year-old wood stove, in place on the main floor for about 100 years, and started a fire beneath the main floor.
The fire was discovered and extinguished before it caused extensive damage.
But then church members discovered that the shock waves from the crash blew in a section of the stone apron beneath the timber structure,
shifting the chapel’s floor joists, beams and girders and tilting the building about six inches westward, once again casting doubt on the building’s future.
David LeBlanc, who serves with Millette at the church and owns a carpet cleaning busi-ness in Newfane, said the shock waves “had a cascading effect. Everything went northwest to-ward Jamaica.”
Firefighter averts disaster
The moving van, which was carrying the belongings of four families, reportedly was
traveling about 45 mph when its brakes locked on Windham Hill Road, about a mile before the stretch of steep road ap-proaching Route 30.
The vehicle finally came to a stop after overturning in the chapel parking lot, closer to the post office, but only a few feet shy of the chapel.
Household goods gushed out on impact, as did about 250 gallons of hazardous die-sel from the two recently-filled fuel tanks.
Townshend Fire Chief Doug Winot said he was working
P A I D A D V E R T I S I N G • T O P L A C E Y O U R A D , C A L L ( 8 0 2 ) 2 4 6 - 6 3 9 7 O R V I S I T W W W . C O M M O N S N E W S . O R G
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NewsVERNON
Vermont Yankee gets new resident inspector
page 12
VoicesJOYCE MARCEL
Caretaking, aging, and death by a thousand cuts
page 6
The ArtsNEW VPT fILM
Documentary looks at history of newspapers in Vermont
page 14
Life and Work
GObbLE, GObbLE
Thanksgiving in Brattleboro
page 9
SportsWINTER IS hERE!
Ski areas get a jump on the season
page 11
Brattleboro, VermontWednesday, December 1, 2010 • Vol. V, No. 31 • Issue #78
fREE
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n SEE ChuRCh, pagE 4
n Entergy FROM pagE 1
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That’s the last thing you do be-fore you give up and walk away.”
Walking away is not an option Entergy Corp. will comment on — yet. Nor will they declare that option off the table.
“For now we are just exploring the potential sale of the plant,” said Entergy spokesman alex Schott. “It is one option that we feel is in the best interests of the shareholders and the 650 em-ployees that work there.”
The company does not have a lot to explore. The plant recently shut down while Entergy offi-cials plugged a leak of radioac-tive fluid from 40-year-old pipes serving the reactor.
“This latest incident at Vermont Yankee definitely hurt,” said Justin McCann, se-nior industry analyst in Standard & poor’s Equity Division. “They announced they are looking to sell, and two days later this ra-dioactive leak had to happen and force a shutdown. at the same time, they had an explosion at Indian point.
“any company interested would have to do their own in-spections, of course, to see what needs to be done to run the plant profitably. But the bargaining will now all be on one side.
“Entergy doesn’t have any leverage. Vermont Yankee has become a major headache to the company, and their bar-gaining power will be curtailed significantly.”
The collapse of Entergy’s $180 million, 2002 cash invest-ment in the nuclear power plant providing the equivalent of 30 percent of Vermont’s electricity to New England, and its larger, mortgaged, purchase of the trou-bled twin reactors at Indian point on the Hudson River in 2001, signal a remarkable reversal of fortunes for a well respected power company and the once high-flying prospects of the na-tion’s nuclear power.
The billion dollar corpora-tion’s rating by Moody’s Investor Service has dropped to Baa3 – just one step above what is pro-fessionally termed “speculative grade” but is generally known as “junk” status.
Moody’s noted in September when it lowered the company’s rating that Entergy has borrowed $3 billion of its $3.5 billion line of bank credit for all its opera-tions, and continuing problems at Vermont and Indian point raised questions about the plants’ future ability to finance repairs or replace and maintain aging equipment and systems.
“In addition, lower [natural gas] prices in the Northeast make it highly unlikely that the busi-ness will continue to generate as much cash flow” when current contracts expire in 2012, and
will decline after that, Moody’s stated.
Entergy, like the rest of the nuclear industry, bet its future on an exorbitant, continually rising, natural gas price that did not materialize due to the reces-sion, energy efficiencies, and the increasing availability of huge natural gas supplies from previously locked shale sedi-ments. Hydraulic fracturing may threaten future water supplies, but it has already begun drain-ing the nuclear bank.
Entergy’s two troubled nu-clear plant sites – Vermont Yankee and Indian point – have graphically shown the strengths and weaknesses of the nuclear industry and the extremely high hurdles involved in launching a new commercial nuclear era.
On the positive side, these plants are extraordinary money makers, with Indian point’s plants each earning upwards of $2 million daily. Nuclear plants nationally had a checkered oper-ating past under the monopoly utilities like pSEg in New Jersey and Con Edison in New York, where Indian point was offline two thirds of the time.
But deregulation brought in professional fleet operators like Chicago-based Exelon, which partnered with pSEg in New Jersey to run Hope Creek and Salem, and Entergy, which bought Indian point 2 and 3 and turned them into steady, baseline generators producing electricity and making money 95 percent of the time.
That wasn’t easy.Entergy pumped some $500
million into Indian point to re-place decrepit, unreliable, and unsafe equipment and to re-train nearly the entire operating staff. Within two years, Entergy improved Indian point’s stand-ing with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) from that of the worst-run plant complex in the nation to one of its best.
at that time, deep pockets and corporate good will meant a lot. The purchase of Indian point 2 was held up for nine months due to legal challenges by the Westchester Citizens awareness Network – the sister unit of CaN, Vermont Yankee’s grass-roots nemesis.
WestCaN contended that Entergy Nuclear Northeast (ENN), the limited liability corporation running the power plants, did not have the financial wherewithal to cover damages to the region should anything go wrong.
That position was finally re-jected by a NRC administra-tive law judge who held it was “inconceivable” that Entergy Corp. would ever walk away from liabilities incurred at Indian
power plant. But that shattered the myth of corporate respon-sibility so carefully constructed during the Indian point court hearings just four years earlier. It would be noted by public Service Commissions around the nation.
“Entergy came in as a trust-worthy company and systemati-cally destroyed that trust over the decade,” said WestCaN or-ganizer Margot Schepart.
“Katrina proved that there was no such thing as corporate responsibility,” Schepart said. “We were right when we had said the profits would go south to the corporate headquarters, but if there was a problem, we were on our own and no money would come this way.”
But Entergy was confident. In 2006, the company filed its application with the NRC to ex-tend Vermont Yankee’s license 20 years past its 2012 expira-tion date.
The following year, it applied for extensions for Indian point’s reactors, which are due to expire in 2013 and 2015. It was then that the bottom began to fall out of the nuclear bubble.
Plumbing problems
The aging infrastructure
point even though it was legally shielded by a string of 21 LLCs under the ENN umbrella set up just for that purpose. Entergy officially took over Indian point Sept. 10, 2001.
It was a 24-hour, pyrrhic victory.
The following morning, a United Airlines 767 flew over the Indian point plants en route to crashing into the World Trade Center 25 miles south in Manhattan. Collateral damage was the destruction of the indus-try’s myth that nuclear contain-ment buildings were designed to withstand the crash of a 747.
The NRC acknowledged that jumbo jets did not exist when these plants were designed in the 1950s and early 1960s, and they were, in fact, vulnerable to suicide attacks.
In 2003 former Federal Emergency Management agency Commissioner James Lee Witt was hired by New York State to examine the emergency evacua-tion plans for the region around Indian point. He concluded they could not possibly work
and detailed flaws which had been systematically covered up by Entergy.
That prompted the surround-ing counties and the state to refuse to sign off on the plans and further tarnished the com-pany’s image. Three of the four surrounding county legislatures and scores of municipalities and school districts within 10 miles of Indian point went on record urging the NRC not to relicense the plants.
Then, in 2005, Hurricane Katrina blew away another pil-lar of nuclear stability.
Entergy Corp declared its damaged Entergy New Orleans LLC subsidiary bankrupt, and demanded the taxpayers pay some $600 million for repairs. president george W. Bush re-jected the request, saying it was obscene for the company to de-mand taxpayer funding while dis-tributing dividends of more than $1 billion to its shareholders.
In the end, however, the com-pany received some $400 mil-lion in public funds toward the restoration of its damaged
JEREMY OSBORN/SpECIaL TO THE COMMONS
Steam rises from Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.
SpOONSENERgYMaTTERS.
WORDpRESS.COM
Justin McCann, senior industry analyst in S t a n d a r d & P o o r ’ s Equity Division, said Vermont Yankee’s latest leak “definitely hurt” Entergy’s aspirations to sell the plant.
SpOONSENERgYMaTTERS.WORDpRESS.COM
David Lochbaum testifies to the u.S. Senate. Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer, works as director of the Nuclear Safety Project for the union of Concerned Scientists.
2 NEWS T h E C O M M O N S • Wednesday, December 1, 2010
n Economy FROM pagE 1
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designed a half century earlier began showing signs of wear at nuclear sites around the country.
Water contaminated with ra-dioactive byproducts of reactor operations – including heavy elements like plutonium, io-dine, and cesium – were leaking out of the nation’s 104 nuclear plants, including Indian point and Vermont Yankee.
The nation’s worst radioactive leaks into the local environment occurred at Exelon’s Braidwood plant, 30 miles south of Chicago.
“Exelon leaked over six mil-lion gallons over two years,” said David Lochbaum, nu-clear safety director for the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Braidwood had two leaks of about three million gallons each, and 18 smaller leaks of about 300,000 gallons.
“all of those leaks came from pipe carrying radioactively con-taminated water into the river. The assumption was that it would mix with the river water and by the time it got into peo-ple’s drinking water supplies it would be diluted enough that it would not be a hazard. But in-stead of going into the river, it leaked into the water table and got into people.”
It came as a surprise to most people that nuclear power plants, touted as “clean and safe” en-ergy, regularly dump contami-nated water and steam into the ground and air by design.
It was unfathomable that nei-ther the NRC, with its highly regarded corps of on-the-scene resident inspectors, nor the op-erators of the highly technical plant, nor its vaunted, redun-dant, electronic safety systems missed six million gallons of radio-active fluid dumped by accident.
adding to the consternation of the public was the refusal of the NRC to impose financial penalties on the company for unplanned contamination, no matter how severe, even though it violated their operating license and federal regulations.
The state of New Jersey, how-ever, did order Exelon to clean up its mess when groundwater under the company’s Salem nu-clear plants was discovered. But there were no financial or admin-istrative sanctions from federal regulators. and all the nation’s 104 nuclear plants have had leaks at some point.
In 2008, it was disclosed that thousands of gallons of tritium, a radioactive form of water, had been leaking out of Indian point, forming a lake under the plant site with its contaminated tributaries meandering into the Hudson River.
It was impossible for either Entergy or the NRC to state de-finitively how long the leaks had gone on, how much had leaked out into the river and water table, or even how many leaks there were. The NRC found indica-tions, however, that the site had been leaking for eight years.
That was a final straw for then-New York attorney general andrew Cuomo, who set up a special task force to challenge
the relicense application for the Indian point plants. It did not take long for Cuomo’s group to find that Entergy’s relicens-ing application was riddled with misstatements.
a key section of the nearly 800-page document, the Severe accident Mitigation assessment (SaMa), purportedly showed that the only danger from a ra-dioactive accident at the plant lay to the north, and the cost would be $403 million per square mile.
But Cuomo’s analysis of the statistical data revealed Entergy had decided that since there were more days when the wind blew north than when it blew to-wards the south, the south did not count — as if it had been bested in a celestial tug of war. and since there were equal days when the winds blew east or west, Entergy decided they can-celled each other out, as if they never existed.
That logic meant in a cata-strophic accident, no radia-tion could go south to New York City; southwest, covering northern New Jersey down to Newark; east as far as Hartford, Conn; or west past the Delaware Water gap into the pennsylvania poconos.
In Entergy’s scenario, most of the 21 million residents within 50 miles of the plant had nothing to worry about. That defied logic and the experience of radioactive fallout from Chernobyl or, more recently, the ash clouds from the Icelandic volcano that spread all over Europe and forced the grounding of the continent’s air fleets.
New York, with its 1,000-page challenge, became the only state to put its weight against a nuclear relicensing plan. and that raised more doubts on Wall Street about the financial viability of nuclear power.
Entergy’s difficult debt deal
Entergy hedged its bets. In august 2009, it asked the New York public Service Commission and the Vermont public Service Board to approve a spinoff of its six northeast nuclear plants into a separate subsidiary called Enexus — which would start life with about $3 billion in debt.
“Typically,” said New York pSC spokesman James Denn, “nuclear power sells at rates less than natural gas prices, and nat-ural gas sets the price. Nuclear power can sell under it and that’s how Entergy makes its money.”
The two state agencies sep-arately and unanimously con-cluded in September that the debt was too high and the com-petitive, wholesale energy market too low for Enexus to be a viable company.
“There are a lot of questions as to where this company is go-ing,” said Michael Haggerty, vice president of Moody’s power and Utility group. “Other com-panies have been reducing their outstanding capital liabilities, but Entergy did not. They an-nounced over the weekend a share buyback program for $750
million and a dividend increase and they are sending more cash to their shareholders.
“But they have uncertainty now that the spinoff has been turned down. They banked ev-erything on this spinoff taking care of a large amount of debt. So what’s their plan B?”
That question loomed large in both states. The New York Department of Environmental Conservation ordered Entergy to install new, closed cycle cool-ing systems at Indian point and stop using billions of gallons of Hudson River water to cool its equipment. The retrofit could cost between $400 million and $1.5 billion, depending on the type of system used.
and the plants would have no income during the two to four years of construction. It re-mains an open question whether Entergy, with its financial belt tightening, will have access to sufficient capital to handle the project and any unplanned events.
Vermont’s impossible leaks
Then, in November 2009, a monitoring well at Vermont Yankee picked up contaminated tritium moving through the water table. Entergy could not find the leak until February 2010.
That proved embarrassing. Entergy officials had assured the Vermont legislature, under oath, that there were no underground pipes which carried radioactive liquids and, therefore, there were no aging systems which could threaten the region’s water.
The declarations were false.Vermont has a unique ar-
rangement with its sole nuclear power plant. The state requires its public Service Board (pSB) to issue a Certificate of public good as a prerequisite for op-erating the reactor, in addition to clearance from the NRC, for both the initial operating license and any license extension.
although the federal govern-ment squarely claims safety is-sues as the domain of the NRC, the state pSB can evaluate other issues, like effect on the state economy and general well-being. Vermont Yankee’s Cpg expires in March 2012, and as a condi-tion of the purchase in 2002, Entergy acknowledged the state’s jurisdiction.
In 2006, the state legisla-ture passed act 160, which re-quired legislative approval for the pSB to issue a renewal of the certificate.
“Entergy said they would have an independent investiga-tion of their underground pipes and wiring,” said former NRC Commissioner peter Bradford, now a teacher of energy pol-icy and law at the Vermont Law School. “It turned out the study was by a D.C. law firm that was representing Entergy in the Indian point relicensing proceeding.
“They were asking Vermont lawmakers to believe that a firm that was earning millions of dol-lars in fees representing Entergy
before the NRC could do a hard-hitting investigation of Entergy’s operation of Vermont Yankee. Entergy has created a hole for it-self by undermining its position in Vermont.”
In February, the state Senate brought the issue to the floor, and by a margin of 26 to 4, sena-tors voted not to approve issuing of the Cpg. Entergy is waging a battle to get the new Senate to vote again in the legislative ses-sion that begins in January, but the measure would go to the state’s new governor — peter Shumlin, the outgoing Senate president pro tem who orches-trated the vote.
Foreshadowing a sale
The sale offer should not have come as a total surprise.
In august, ISO New England, which regulates the regional power grid, held its fourth an-nual futures auction. The auc-tion, which was started in 2008 and is unique to the ISO New England, locks in power commit-ments — though not the price — for specified future years.
“We have enough capacity in New England to meet de-mand and ensure our reliability standards and reserve margins through 2019,” said ISO spokes-woman Ellen Foley.
But there was a surprise dur-ing the two-day august auction, intended to lock in power from June 2013 through May 2014. Entergy contacted the ISO at the end of the first day and asked to withdraw and make no future commitments.
“They submitted a bid to withdraw from the capacity auc-tion during the auction itself,” Foley said.
“That triggered an analysis on the part of the ISO to determine if we could let them delist. We declined the request because of reliability concerns around the area of Vermont.
“The studies showed that without Vermont Yankee, there is potential which includes ther-mal overloads on transmission lines and voltage instability. It could compromise equipment and cause outages.”
Vermont Yankee is a regional transmission hub, with electric-ity from several sources passing through its high-voltage lines. Rerouting that power would be difficult in the short term. But since the ISO can’t make Entergy produce electricity if it shuts down entirely, the agency is making long-0term plans for a possible future without the nu-clear plant in it.
In the meantime, Entergy is left committed to maintaining a transmission network it may not use, produce power from a plant which may or may not have a license to operate, and may not be able to afford producing electricity even if it gets permis-sion to do so.
That would be an extremely expensive way to boil water.
R o g e r W i t h e r s p o o n (www.rogerwitherspoon.com) has spent more than 40 years working in all forms of the media as a journal-ist, author, educator, and public re-lations specialist. Along the way, he has written extensively on state and national politics, foreign affairs, fi-nance, defense, civil rights, constitu-tional law, health, the environment, and energy. This piece originally appeared on Witherspoon’s blog, “Energy Matters,” and is published here with his permission.
representatives from Vital Economy, a consulting firm fo-cused on improving underper-forming and remote economies, participants worked through an exercise called asset mapping to pinpoint the region’s unique re-sources that could attract busi-nesses and people.
participants first identified Interstate 91 as an asset, but Sondag pointed out that White River Junction has Interstate 91, too.
participants identified in-creased passenger rail service as an asset unique to the region, but Sondag said many states are also attempting to increase rail service as well.
When the group pointed out that Brattleboro has the second highest level of rail usage in the country, its members had iden-tified a unique aspect of passen-ger rail in southern Vermont, said Sondag.
“It challenges you to think, ‘what really are assets?’” she said.
A reality check Doing a fiscal reality check
and instilling a sense of urgency in participants is a large part of the SeVEDS process.
“Our current [economic] state is a little bit scary,” said Sondag.
according to Sondag and Lewis, the Windham Region is caught in a downward spiral.
as businesses have left the area over the past 10 years, the workforce supporting them has also left. Eventually, real estate prices — the litmus test for a community’s economic health — have dropped.
Windham County’s popu-lation has shrunk by 3.64 per-cent since 2000, while the rest of New England has gained in population.
To thrive, communities need library trustees, volunteers for project Feed the Thousands, Selectboard members, and other community volunteers and officials.
Sondag said losing popula-tion erodes the “backbone of the community.”
according to SeVEDS, the average annual Windham re-gion wage is $36,291. This ranks $2,035 below Vermont’s average wage, $3,557 below the average for Northern New England, and $16,224 below the average for New England overall.
Only Maine ranks lower in wages than the Windham region.
“and Maine is in pretty rough shape,” said Lewis.
Sondag said that viewing the region’s economic health in black and white sunk a hole in the pit of her stomach.
Lewis describes data as pro-viding a point of view by contin-uously putting “the numbers” in front of people.
another eye-opener is the unbalanced ratio of unearned income (investments, Social Security, and trust funds) to earned income (wages). Residents living on unearned in-come outnumber wage earners.
The type on income on which residents live influences what they require from their commu-nities, said Lewis and Sondag.
Wage earners’ prosperity is tied directly to the economic health of their communities. Residents receiving funds from unearned income have their prosperity linked to sources out-side their communities.
Over five years, SeVEDS
wants to stop the decline in the region’s population, match the Northern New England average wage, and increase the value of goods and services produced an-nually by 2 percent a year.
according to representatives from Vital Economy, all three goals are connected to people and jobs.
If the Windham region wants to raise the average wage, it also must increase area employment by approximately 5 percent. The increase in employment trans-lates into creating 669 jobs pay-ing above the desired average, 446 jobs paying at the desired av-erage, and increasing the wages of 20 percent of jobs by $5,000.
Realizing that not all jobs are created equal is a paradigm shift for this area, said Sondag.
Lessons learned Lewis points to Malone,
N.Y., as an example of economic development derailed. after many of its longtime industries failed, Malone reinvented itself economically as the “prison capi-tal of New York.”
Lewis said the plan worked great for a time. prisons brought good-paying, steady work — until the prison population dropped.
Malone had built its economy on a single industry dependent on state taxes and subject to public policy. Many of its prisons closed, and the town ended in the same economic place it started.
The SeVEDS group plans to encourage a diverse economy founded on multiple types and sizes of businesses. It also looks to develop businesses indepen-dent of uncontrollable factors, such as Vermont’s haphazard weather.
It’s easy to look at the num-bers and say, “what we need is…” and start tossing around suggestions, said Lewis, but he says the area needs to match as-sets with businesses.
Creating jobs without having the skilled employees to fill them — or the population in general — thwarts economic sustainability.
Sondag said the question to ask is, “What can we do now to leverage and create linkages be-tween assets?”
“We don’t want a report col-lecting dust,” Lewis said. “We want action.”
Lewis said he hopes the par-ticipants have identified a col-lection of assets, strengths, and priorities. But, he warns, not ev-ery asset will equal an investment and survive the final cut.
“The strategy has to be thoughtful,” he said.
Actions not words Lewis and Sondag said the
SeVEDS group wasn’t designed as a traditional public process. The committee wants to attract members who are excited, com-mitted, and in a position to create change through actions like hir-ing more employees or expand-ing their businesses.
Sondag said the region needs to shift its thinking and take con-trol of its economic destiny in-stead of waiting for Montpelier or that one big employer to bail us out.
SeVEDS is a multi-year proj-ect, warned Lewis and Sondag, who both pointed out that it took the region 50 years to reach this economic cliff — and that it will take more than a year to navigate safely away.
MaRY SERREzE/NORTHaMpTONMEDIa.COM
A sign near the front gate welcomes visitors to Vermont Yankee.
T h E C O M M O N S • Wednesday, December 1, 2010 NEWS 3
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By Thelma O’BrienThe Commons
TOWNSHEND—They don’t have a name for their organization yet, but the peo-ple involved with the West Townshend Country Store and Community post Office — an actual U.S. post Office with designated “community” status — finally have the beginnings of a board of directors.
Clare adams of West Townshend — an artist, teacher, farmer and driving force behind this multi-purpose and good-humored center for art, music, food, education and social networking — was unani-mously elected president of the board of the nonprofit hopeful.
according to the rules of the game for nonprofits as set out by the preservation Trust of Vermont, a state organization devoted to preserving historic places and buildings for the past 30 years), the center must have a board with at least two official board members, the president and the treasurer.
“I think we’ve found a trea-surer,” adams reported. “I’ll let you know.”
Serving as general trustees are Robert Du grenier, the CEO of Du grenier associates, an amalgam of several com-mercial enterprises, most fa-mously his blown glass, of Windham and Leigh Merinoff, of agroLiving, a sustainable farm network, who lives in Vermont and New Jersey.
Du grenier was unani-mously elected vice-president of the board, and Merinoff was named secretary.
Three general trustees were named: Michael Donahue, a mus ic i an and re t i r ed
lawyer from West Townshend; Michael Longo, a tree special-ist and community activist from West Townshend; and alicia Moyer, a musician and social worker from West Townshend.
The goals of the board are ambitious, and could well start with a contest to name the place. Its members hope for a name that includes every-thing and excludes nothing, but connotes a West River space devoted to community enter-prises, especially music, art, food and children.
Several Thursday night con-certs have been scheduled for the gallery space in the center.
perhaps the major bar-rier the group faces is joining with the 160-year-old, two-story building’s owner. zach Caldwell, an Olympic-grade ski grinder and sports business person, now lives in Boulder, Colo. There’s been no conflict among members and Caldwell but, says adams, “he’s hard to pin down.”
They also have to deal with the legal red tape that comes with acquiring nonprofit status. They hope to find a lawyer who will help, said adams.
“We’re just beginning,” Du grenier added. His explora-tions into just getting a building appraisal and assessment found it would cost up to $3,000.
“One person mentioned $1,300 for an appraisal,” he said. “This is very preliminary.”
Insurance and other liability issues concern the board, not just for the building but, for ex-ample, for artists whose work is on exhibit. Du grenier said artists must carry their own insurance.
also on the board’s wish list: more general trustees, more
volunteers for their twice-weekly thrift shop (plus more shelves and racks), more crafts-people, a café/bake shop, a book and film club, an open studio time, a railing for the stairs to the second floor, an outdoor, wood-fired bread and pizza oven, and more classes for children.
There has been plenty of ac-tivity at the center over the past few months, including the thrift shop and the Thursday con-certs, which have earned the enterprise more than $500 in donations, adams said.
art and puppet-making classes for children are held now Mondays after school, taught by adams in her own studio in the back of the build-ing. They cost $10 per class. Sally Newton is planning a chil-dren’s concert for January, and adams said she hoped a puppet show could be included.
Someone has offered the group a wood stove, which they agreed to accept and to store in the basement until safety issues are resolved.
apart from the preservation Trust, adams and Du grenier have a lso met or ta lked with such independent but state-supported agencies as the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board and other organizations that assist Vermont-based community ef-forts with loan interest loans for housing and sustainable food projects.
The building itself had a close call on Nov. 22 when a runaway truck speeding down Windham Hill Road narrowly missed hitting the structure. No injuries resulted from the accident.
at the accident site from about noon on last Monday, monitor-ing the cleanup of the fuel.
Winot had responded to the original call reporting the acci-dent with two Townshend volun-teer firefighters, Michele Brooks and adam Bozetarnik. Jamaica had also responded.
Winot was standing in front of the post office when he was noti-fied by a state trooper that some-thing was burning in the church.
When the cleanup was well on its way, Winot said he sent firefighters home. He’d also dispatched his volunteers to get some lunch, and Brooks and Bozetarnik drove over to Harmonyville to get sandwiches.
So, at that point the only fire-fighter on the scene, Winot ran
to his truck and drove it next to the church.
“I went around to the back and went in the basement crawl space,” Winot reported, “and I could see sparks and flames.”
He said he went right back up and sounded the first of two more alarms, bringing engines and ladders from about nine lo-cal departments, including his two volunteers on their lunch quest.
In the meantime, he said the two state troopers began pulling hoses off his truck.
“We brought them to the back of the building and went back into the crawl space to knock down the fire from there,” he explained.
He then came out and brought
in another hose through the front of the church and knocked a hole in the floor to get at the flames from there.
It took only about 20 minutes to get the fire under control once everyone had responded, Winot said. Firefighters cut holes in the floor with chainsaws, moved the iron stove about a foot or so and got water to the hot spots from several places,
“It hadn’t spread very far and we caught it in time,” Winot said. “It could have been a disaster one way or the other.”
agreeing was Kelly Millette, who runs the West Townshend post Office and is pastor Millette’s wife.
She said how surprised ev-eryone was that the post office building, which had suffered serious fire damage in the past, went unscathed. Even the large blown-glass pieces on exhibit in the building were untouched by the crash.
The two United Van Lines employees reportedly suffered only minor injuries.
Townshend volunteer fire-fighter Michele Brooks re-members getting to the scene and thinking, “What a mess. It looked like a tornado hit. Four people’s personal belongings — Christmas decorations, bedding, tools everywhere. The two driv-ers were all shook up.”
She reported that former pas-tor David Onyon and family, as well as other members of the congregation, brought food and drink to the firefighters.
“I’d seen my brother loading wood in the furnace just a few hours earlier,” said Millette,
THELMa O’BRIEN/THE COMMONS
Clare Adams stands on the balcony of the West Townshend Post Office building, which avoided damage from a Nov. 22 truck accident. A damaged tree and the perilous junction of Route 30 and Windham hill Road across from the building, can be seen behind her.
speaking of his brother, pete Millette, the assistant pastor.
He also noted how strange the floor looked when first came on the scene. “It was all ruffled,” he said, adding “and part of a front pew just sort of exploded.”
But it looks like the chapel might be saved after all.
Structural engineers are ex-pected on the scene this week, and representatives from the church’s insurers have done in-spections, Millette said.
Carl Walters, vice-president of marketing and communication at United Van Lines home office in St. Louis, said on the telephone he had heard some reports of the accident and fire but would not be prepared to comment until he was in his office and could look at all the documents.
Congregation displaced
according to the church’s website, www.calvarychapelwrv.org, as a result of the accident, church programs will not take place in the damaged sanctuary “for the foreseeable future.”
The Tuesday mid-day wom-en’s Bible study will meet at the post office next door, the same location as the Wednesday eve-ning service. The men’s Bible study on Tuesday evening will meet at Dave LeBlanc’s home.
according to the website, the church “will be utilizing the Seventh Day adventist church facility a little further west on Route 30 in West Townshend.”
For more information, contact Millette at 802-874-7015.
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4 NEWS T h E C O M M O N S • Wednesday, December 1, 2010
bELLOWS fALLS
BELLOWS FaLLS—The Rockingham Free public Library (RFpL) will soon present “Teen Techie Tuesdays,” a series of programs designed to empha-size technological skill develop-ment and information literacy through gaming.
This project is made possible through the “Make a Change Closer to Home” initiative, sponsored by pepsi and price Chopper. The companies are donating a total of $30,000 to be awarded to local organizations who want to make a difference in their communities.
One of 15 grants in this cate-gory, Youth Librarian Samantha Maskell submitted her winning idea and was awarded a $2,000 grant to help fund the “Teen Techie Tuesdays” project.
“We are thrilled to be a recip-ient of this grant, said Maskell. “It will really jump-start this project.”
Funds from the grant will be used to purchase the necessary equipment for the series, but more funding would allow more teens to participate. Maskell said the library is looking toward the community for further support and invite local businesses, orga-nizations and residents to make donations to this program.
The “Teen Techie Tuesdays” series will feature three, six-week workshops, and also large-scale gaming events. Between each of the workshops, panels and dis-cussions will be presented for all ages, featuring local experts and business leaders on related subjects: “How to get a High-Tech Education;” “Emerging Career Fields” and “Working in Technology.”
“ B e a V i d e o g a m e
programmer” will kick-off the “Teen Techie Tuesdays” series in January. Learn how to create your own video game based on your favorite book, using online tools like “Scratch” from MIT, and “game Maker.” They will spend time learning how to pro-gram in python, an open source dynamic programming language.
“Booktrailers: Coming to a Library Near You” will begin in March. Create your own me-dia by making a book trailer for your favorite book. Book trailers are short films that describe and promote books similar to movie trailers.
also to come is “Hi-Tech Hide and Seek.” Using gpS technology and working with lo-cal government and historical re-sources, create a treasure hunting game. It will require reading, re-search, critical thinking, problem solving, and teamwork. Teens will get to know their community and develop an understanding of civic responsibilities. Once the game is created, it will be avail-able at RFpL for the whole com-munity to play.
“The skills considered part of 21st Century literacy now in-clude information, media, and technological literacy, in addi-tion to all the traditional skills,” Maskell said. “The public library is a primary youth access point for technology in the commu-nity, and we see ’Teen Techie Tuesdays” as providing a huge step toward providing these skills in ways that will really engage and inspire teens.”
Sign-ups for the workshops begin thismonth. Space is lim-ited, so stop by the library or call 802-463-4270 for more information.
Library gets grant for ‘Teen Techie Tuesdays’
More town news, pages 12-13
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T h E C O M M O N S • Wednesday, December 1, 2010 NEWS 5
Solid Waste Committee seeks public participation
BRaTTLEBORO — got good ideas about recycling? about reducing trash? Want to join an ongoing group work-ing on these issues? Just want to learn more about what’s going on and help out?
The town of Brattleboro Solid Waste Committee will hold its first evening meet-ing on Monday, Dec. 6, in the Selectboard Meeting Room, at 6 p.m. During that time, the new town recycling co-coordinators will discuss their work plan and obtain public input, and the committee will discuss its proj-ects, seek comments and help from the public.
In addition, the development of a Solid Waste plan for the town’s future will be discussed.
all are welcome, no experi-ence required, just ideas and a willingness to share them. Contact co-chairs Nancy Barber (802-246-0851) or Peter Cooper (802-257-0639) or board clerk Jane Southworth (802-254-8698) for more information.
DEA agent to lead forum on prescription drug abuse in BF
B E L L O W S F a L L S — The greater Falls prevention Coalition invites the public to a free dinner and community fo-rum on Tuesday, Dec. 7, from 6-8 p.m., to discuss prescription drug abuse in the community and what can be done to prevent such abuse.
The event will be held at the Moose Family Lodge, 61 Westminster St.
D r u g E n f o r c e m e n t administration (DEa) Special agent Lisa Remick will be the guest speaker. Through the DEa Demand Reduction program, Remick has aided substance abuse prevention programs across New England by develop-ing strategic alliances with state and local government, drug pre-vention organizations, treatment experts, community coalitions and the public.
after a presentation by Remick, a community discus-sion will be followed by dinner provided by the gFpC. For more information, contact Chad Simmons at 802-463-9927, ext. 210.
BRaTTLEBORO—Meeting Waters YMCa is, for the 10th consecutive year, offering its popular Snow Day program in Brattleboro.
The Snow Day program com-bines with the Meeting Waters YMCa’s aSpIRE and Lewis Day Camp to provide year-round “out-of-school” care for school-age children from the Brattleboro area and their working parents.
The Snow Day program will run from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on days when schools are closed due to inclement weather.
The program, which takes place at Oak grove School, of-fers recreation, art, and enrich-ment activities for children from kindergarten through age 12. The cost is $25 per day, which includes two nutritious snacks and all program supplies. Child Care Subsidy is accepted and the Meeting Waters YMCa offers fi-nancial assistance from its Reach Out to Youth fund.
The Snow Day program will be led by two of the Y’s veteran aSpIRE staff members — Lynn Cameron and alberta Seale.
This innovative program was developed by the Meeting Waters YMCa in 2001 after the Brattleboro area Chamber of Commerce and Windham Child Care association gathered business leaders, youth program providers, and educators to dis-cuss the challenges faced by area businesses and their employees on days when schools have an unanticipated closing for snow or other reasons.
The Snow Day program func-tions in much the same way that aSpIRE does on school vaca-tions, teacher conference days, and holidays. also the same, ac-cording to program Director Sue Fortier, is the reliability, quality and focus on enrichment. “Just like aSpIRE, the Snow Day program will involve children in a variety of activities that are fun, educational, and engaging.”
Enrol lment in the pro-gram is limited to 20 children. Registration is on a first-come, first-served basis.
More information and a reg-istration form are available at the Meeting Waters YMCa’s website at www.meetingwater-symca.org, by contacting their Brattleboro office (802-246-1036), or by emailing [email protected].
YMCA to offer snow day program
E D I T O R I A L
J O Y C E M A R C E L
a thousand cutsA 93-year-old mother bravely goes from doctor to doctor, procedure to procedure
Welcome home
V I E W P O I N T
Will we avoid Easter Island’s fate?
Isn’t there a lesson here that we get honest with ourselves about what we’re doing to our planet?
VOICES O P I N I O N • C O M M E N T A R Y • L E T T E R S Join the discussion: [email protected]
Dummerston
LINgCHI, also known as “the death of a thousand cuts,” was a method of public ex-
ecution in China that involved cutting off pieces of a per-son’s body until he or she died. Banned in 1905, this dras-tic punishment first became a metaphor and then came to rest in the English language as a cliché.
Which is why it jumped into my mind on the day my 93-year-old mother, a former dancer who lives alone in a tiny independent living complex apartment in Florida, had three skin cancers removed from her face.
In the next few weeks, she will also have two cataract sur-geries. and then there’s a re-curring urinary tract infection and chronic kidney disease.
all alone, my mother goes from doctor to doctor and pro-cedure to procedure. I’m her caretaker, her only living child, and I live 1,500 miles away. I talk to her every day, handle her business affairs, speak to her doctors on the phone, and tie myself into knots of worry and pain.
My mother’s mind is clear, and her heart, lungs, and he-moglobin count are excellent. I think she’s incredibly brave to be handling all this by herself, but I fear for her well-being ev-ery day.
HOW DID WE get into this sit-uation? First of all, Mom re-fused to move up north. The reasons she gave were the cold, the lack of a Jewish indepen-dent living facility, and the friends she has in Florida.
In September, after a lot of discussion, fact-finding, col-umns of numbers, worry, sweat, blood, and tears, I helped Mom move from her large house to the indepen-dent living facility. By luck, in a totally dreadful real estate market, we managed to sell the house for enough money to keep her going for the next three or four years.
The move alleviates her big-gest problems: aide roulette, loneliness, isolation, an inabil-ity to cook anymore, and the burden of maintaining a large house that was aging just as fast as she was.
In the two months she’s been in her new home, she’s unpacked, decorated, bought furniture, made friends, and joined a play-reading group. She’s gone on outings to the theater. She goes to dance classes. She has a physical therapist who comes to her apartment three times a week to help her with cramps and balance.
She’s secure and
well-protected — protected, at least, from everything except her own body. Sometimes, it appears that a thousand cuts isn’t the half of it. Call it “ling-chi light.”
CaRETaKINg MaY BE an-other form of lingchi. It might not cut away pieces of your body, but it certainly cuts away pieces of your heart.
My ability to take care of my mother is complicated by dis-tance. But geography is never the only problem. as people live longer and longer, I don’t know if there are any really good choices.
My friend Bunny, for ex-ample, decided that her elderly mother could no longer live alone and moved her into the home she shares with her long-term boyfriend. They were happy to do it, but they didn’t expect what happened next.
“I still don’t think I could park her in some hellhole of an institution,” Bunny e-mailed me. “But she’s pushing me. She’s pushing me. I seem to be in a constant state of near-rage, snapping at everything.
“Here I am, insisting she take her meds and breaking my butt trying to blast her out of her chair. I’m such an id-iot. I should let her do her own thing, and let the chips fall where they may.
“It might hasten the inevi-table, but she seems to prefer that option anyway. I’m not sure I’m doing her any favors by keeping her alive. Isn’t that sad?”
another friend of mine, Lee, built an apartment onto her spacious house and moved her mother in, only to see her quickly drop into dementia.
It’s so bad now that Lee had to install a pulley system just to change her mother’s diapers. She spends half her time find-ing and training aides, and the other half taking care of her mother when the aides quit.
Her mother’s physical health is excellent. Lee is wound as tight as a drum.
Bunny and Lee acted on their natural instincts to pro-tect and nurture their mothers. Then, there’s me — same in-stincts, but not being near, ago-nizing over everything that can possibly go wrong, and feeling helpless.
BaCK IN MY grandmother’s day, families were large and
relatives lived close to one an-other. Someone, usually an un-married daughter, took on the role of primary caregiver.
In my grandmother’s family, it was her aunt Leah, who lost a leg to a dreadful disease when she was young. It was assumed that no man would have her, so she obediently lived at home all of her life and took care of my great-grandfather.
Women’s lives were dispos-able then. They aren’t now.
When my grandmother started aging, she was a widow, and living happily in New York City. My mother virtually forced her to leave her friends and move to Florida so she could take care of her.
grandma bought a small condo apartment near my par-ents and hated it. Since I was unmarried at the time, she was furious that I didn’t move in and take care of her.
In her mind, I was the next generation of aunt Leah. She even tried to bribe me with a car. Luckily, my father stepped in and said no.
So grandma put herself into virtual solitary confine-ment, speaking to no one but her family for the next 18 years. She tormented my mother with guilt until she died in a nursing home at 94.
My mother may think that she’s protecting me from the same fate she suffered at the hands of her mother. I don’t know.
But I do know that I’m no aunt Leah. I’m not a selfless person. I’ve chosen to live my life in Vermont, emotionally supported by my husband, my work, and my community. I consciously decided not to sac-rifice my life, live in Florida, and devote myself to my moth-er’s care.
So there is Mom, far away, proudly independent, yet de-pending on the kindness of strangers — and so far they have been extremely kind. Her thousand cuts are of a physical nature. She bravely faces down each one, saying, “We will get through this, Joyce."
I’m only a plane ride away, so my thousand cuts are men-tal: guilt, aching fear, and helplessness.
We both know a time is coming when she will go so far away that no plane on Southwest’s schedule will be able to take me there.
Lingchi may be long and lin-gering, but we all know how it ends. n
We welcome Joyce Marcel, a journalist and columnist, to the Voices section of The Commons; her column will run monthly. You can reach her at [email protected].
Brattleboro
MOST OF US have heard of Easter Island, that re-mote place in
the South pacific where gi-ant-headed stone statues stare forlornly out to sea. In its story, there may be a message for us today.
archeologists and paleon-tologists, using carbon dating and pollen analysis, deter-mined that the island was first settled about 400 a.D. Settlers arrived in a subtropi-cal paradise with abundant resources.
By about 1400, the island was deforested. With defores-tation went the wood needed for cookfires, shelter, seafar-ing canoes, and the transport of those statues. Without ca-noes, fishing ended. Without forests, game birds and animals became extinct. Eventually, civil warfare and cannibalism devastated the population.
By the time Jacob Roggeveen, a Dutch ex-plorer, “discovered” the is-land on Easter Day, 1722, he reported that its wasted ap-pearance could give no other impression than of a “singular poverty and bareness.”
a SIMILaR FaTE is not im-possible for all of us on Earth Island. We too are depleting resources and compromising nature’s life-support systems.
about half the world’s tropical forests (the lungs of our ecosystems) are already gone. By 2030, perhaps only 10 percent will still be stand-ing. Half the world’s wetlands (the kidneys of our ecosys-tems) were destroyed in the 20th century.
We are polluting our lakes, rivers, and oceans. Dead zones are appearing in oceans at river deltas. patches of plastic garbage exist in both the atlantic and pacific oceans. Three million tons of plastic containing Bisphenol a, an endocrine disrupter, are produced each year. an aver-age square mile of ocean con-tains 46,000 pieces of plastic trash.
Every day, 2 million tons of sewerage and industrial and agricultural waste are dis-charged into the planet’s wa-ter supplies. As a result, 80 percent of the world’s rivers are now in decline, potentially affecting some 5 billion peo-ple. By 2030, global demand for safe, clean water will ex-ceed supply by 40 percent.
petroleum, natural gas, and uranium reserves around the world will one day be ex-hausted (or the materials too expensive to extract). Many ocean fisheries are collapsing from overfishing. Reservoirs and aquifers are shrinking.
The 80,000 industrial
chemicals currently in use are mostly untested on the most vulnerable among us. Babies are born with dozens of in-dustrial chemicals already in-corporated into their bodies. polar bears test positive for flame retardants. Industrial agriculture exposes millions of acres to wind so that top-soil blows away, which then requires using even more pet-rochemical fertilizers.
The 400 nuclear reactors in the world are aging and are susceptible to accident and sabotage. another Chernobyl or Three Mile Island disas-ter is probably just a matter of time. War zones from the Balkans to afghanistan are contaminated with DU (“de-pleted” uranium) from the firing of munitions. DU has a radioactive half-life of 4.5 bil-lion years.
Carbon dioxide and other man-made greenhouse gases are accumulating in the atmo-sphere. Oceans are acidifying, and coral reefs (incubators of sea life) are dying as a result of global warming. Weather is becoming more erratic. Storms are more severe.
Twenty million people in pakistan were recently displaced by flooding. (In Vermont, it’s not unheard of to see three or four thunder-storms in one day, or a pe-riod of drought punctuated by 8 inches of rain.) Plant and animal species are going ex-tinct worldwide at a rate not equaled in 65 million years.
WHO CaN DENY that hu-mans are waging war against the Earth? This war is largely as a result of the fantasy of unending economic growth (on a planet of limited re-sources) and the pursuit of short-term profit. It’s also a function of the gospel of con-sumerism, where americans, at 5 percent of the world’s population, consume roughly 25 percent of the Earth’s re-sources and produce 25 per-cent of the waste. Meanwhile, the country that came out on top in a recent study of “hap-piness” was Costa Rica. The U.S. was ranked at No. 114.
Coincidentally, human population is largely out of control. We are outdistanc-ing the earth’s carrying capac-ity, sentencing billions of our fellows to lives of despera-tion. given the depletion of resources, especially water,
conflict is on the rise. Civil war, ethnic cleansing and violence against immigrants, gays, the homeless, and per-sons of differing religions are rampant.
The penchant of some advanced countries to lord it over weaker ones has re-sulted in the United States and Russia each having 2,000 to 2,500 nuclear weap-ons on hair-trigger alert. Flocks of birds mistaken by radar to be hostile attacks have come close to trigger-ing nuclear missile exchanges and “nuclear winter.” Even a pentagon think tank has called climate change a “dan-gerous threat multiplier” that could lead to resource wars.
again, who can deny that we are waging war on ourselves?
WHEN SIMILaR calamities befell the Easter Islanders, there was nowhere to es-cape. Isn’t there a lesson here that we get honest with our-selves about what we’re do-ing to Spaceship Earth and to each other, and that there are things we must do before we ourselves have nowhere to go?
• Maybe by respecting Mother Earth and humbly ac-cepting our place in the web of life, knowing that what we do to that web, we do to ourselves?
• Maybe by directing our society away from arrogance, greed, and warfare toward compassion, equality, and peace?
• Maybe by substituting the gross Domestic product with a “National Happiness Index?”
• Maybe by seriously fund-ing safe, clean, renewable energy; and energy-effi-cient homes, businesses, and transportation?
• Maybe by wholeheart-edly supporting the interna-tional assistance programs of the United Nations (help-ing earthquake, tsunami, and flood victims), the Kyoto protocol, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Earth Charter, and the peoples agreement from the World people’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth?
Sadly, humans are capa-ble of self destruction. It hap-pened on Easter Island. Isn’t there now sufficient proof that we’re heading in the same direction?
Isn’t it time to take this threat seriously? Or will space travelers one day “discover” this blue planet in the Milky Way galaxy, and find a bar-ren and polluted wasteland devoid of life except for a pri-mordial soup of bacteria and microbes? n
The green Mountain Boys are marching home again.
Members of the 86th Infantry Brigade Combat team will be returning from afghanistan over the next few weeks. The 3,400 soldiers in the brigade — including nearly 1,400 Vermont army National guard members — have been lauded by civilian and military leaders alike as the best-trained, hardest who were-working unit in afghanistan.
This praise is not surprising. In every conflict in our nation’s history — from the capture of Fort Ticonderoga to combat in the “Sunni Triangle” in Iraq — Vermonters have shown their skill and their valor when called to fight, and the 86th has upheld that tradition in afghanistan.
Whether it was training afghan security forces, protect-ing the Bagram air Base, or engaging in combat against in-surgents, the Vermont guards-men lived up to the words of
gen. John Sedgwick at the battle of gettysburg that the 86th adopted as the unit motto: “put the Vermonters ahead.”
Three of the 86th’s soldiers — Specialist Ryan grady, 25, of West Burke; Sgt. Tristan Southworth, 21, of Walden; and Sgt. Steven J. Deluzio, 25, of South glastonbury, Conn. — were killed in action.
Others have been wounded, some horrifically. The exact number has not been revealed by guard officials, but it re-portedly could be as high as 125.
But after the homecoming celebrations are over and the yellow ribbons are taken down, the difficult task of readjusting to civilian life will begin for the returning guard members.
The personnel coming back from afghanistan are benefit-ing from the lessons learned after the Vermont guard’s last big deployment to Iraq in 2005-06.
It’s understood that being in a combat zone is stressful, but
coming home and not having a job is stressful too.
By federal law, guardsmen and reservists are guaran-teed that they’ll keep the jobs they left behind when they are called to active duty, However, it’s estimated that, on aver-age, 1 in 3 members of guard combat brigades will be unem-ployed when they return from their deployments.
The Vermont guard has scheduled job fairs for the com-ing months and has developed a standardized application for all the state’s colleges and uni-versities for those who want to continue their education. State agencies have been contacted to make sure every returning solider has access to help for those who need it. Financial advisers, mental health coun-selors, job placement workers, and benefits experts are being made available for soldiers and their families.
providing this inten-sive level of service is impor-tant. Unlike full-time soldiers,
guard members and reservists leave their families and civilian jobs behind for overseas de-ployments, and then go home to resume their lives without the support systems that active-duty soldiers have.
Working in the returning guardmen’s favor is the fact that veterans are treated with more societal respect today
than, say, soldiers returning home during the Vietnam era.
No matter how you feel about the war in afghanistan, we all owe our returning sol-diers compassion and under-standing. So, if you know of any Vermonters returning from afghanistan, give them a hearty welcome home and thank them for their service.
But perhaps the best way to honor their service is to sim-ply be aware that they have just gone through an unimaginably intense experience that few of us will ever know. Offer a hand if they need it, but give them space if they ask for it.
It’s the least we can do.
bILL PEARSON, M. DIV., a Peace Corps vet-eran, serves on the Windham Environmental Coalition Steering Committee, on the board of the New England Coalition, and as past chair of the Landmark College Environmental Stewardship Coalition.
6 T h E C O M M O N S • Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Newspaper provides snapshot of life in 1832Messenger shows society’s attitudes toward Native Americans
L E T T E R S
Construction breaks body, spiritToday is another day I was
woken up by not one con-struction project but two using jackhammers and this horrible, awful machine that’s injecting cement into the foundation of our building.
I woke up with chest pains and I could not breathe. I had a dream that I had a violent acci-dent and my thumb was being sliced off.
I had what anyone could call a breakdown on Friday. I have had the worst Thanksgiving of my entire life due to the mal-feasance in not properly letting me know what was about to rain down on me.
What am I breathing? I will find out. I have recorded the machine on video making all of the fumes (three separate places are spewing filth) and the output this cement ma-chine is making. I can taste it, for god’s sake.
I am losing my hearing from this, and I’m being damaged — not just as a musician, but as a human. I have a hearing loss and a constant, constant hiss in my ears. I’m seeing my physi-cian and will get an assessment of the damage this has caused.
This is by any standards egregious for putting any hu-man through this — let alone a woman who is 62 years old and a recent breast cancer survivor. What is wrong with you?
Barbara hollidayBrattleboro
fRAN LYNGGAARD hANSEN reports regularly for The Commons and contributes occasionally to these pages. She is the author of Brattleboro – Historically Speaking (History Press, 2009).
V I E W P O I N T
Brattleboro
BEFORE THE Brattleboro Reformer, there was The Phoenix, and before that, the local newspaper was called the Brattleboro’ Messenger.
Bridie Carmichael of Dummerston recently shared the Saturday, Jan. 7, 1832 issue of this newspaper with me. It was found in her father’s home in Saxtons River and is remarkably well preserved and supple, aside from the a few places where the mice used it for bedding.
published by george W. Nichols, the paper was delivered by carriers at $2 per year, or mailed for $1.50 per year. Using the consumer price index, an 1832 dollar would now be worth $28.50, so the cost to have the newspaper delivered would cost the equivalent of $57 today.
The paper is four pages, folded.On the first page is a story, “Extracts from Mr. Read’s Journal,
a Storm at Sea.” The second story is called “The Last Journey,” a tale from the Bible. another piece in the newspaper is an ad-dress, “Of the National Republican Convention to the people of the United States, from president, James Barbour suggesting that Henry Clay should be a candidate for president.”
One typical announcement: “Windham C. Singing Society will hold its next meeting at the Hall of asa Knight, Esq. In Dummerston on Monday, the 23rd, at 1:00 p.M. a punctual at-tendance of members is requested, per order of the committee. Signed Isaac Knapp, Secretary.”
That election would take place in November of that year, and andrew Jackson would easily win the contest and remain president.
To get a feeling for the times, in 1832, the Civil War was still 29 years away. There were 22 states reaching as far west as Missouri and Louisiana, but white people had been exploring for years. Lewis and Clark returned from their expedition in 1805. They had been gone so long, president Thomas Jefferson as-sumed they would not be returning.
Still, the West was still unexplored. John Fremont wouldn’t be exploring the Oregon Trail for another 10 years. There were no towns, no railroads, and no roads for wagons. It could only be reached by foot, or by horseback.
people in the East had heard or read stories about the vast lands to the west, mostly from the folks that were called “Mountain Men,” who were solitary fur trappers.
IT IS THROUgH these lenses that the editorial in this edition of the Messenger, called “Indian Character,” must be read. Toward the end of the article, the unknown writer speaks of his own expe-rience with Native americans, and one can only assume that he is referring to those people living in and around the Brattleboro area.
The subjoined paragraphs we find in [Michigan territory Governor Lewis] Cass’s War Report; sentiments in relation to the removal of the Indians are in conformity with those of President Jackson, but of their moral condition and their capacity to become renovated and taught the arts and principles of civilized life — no man has had better opportuni-ties for forming correct estimates than Governor Cass.
A change of residence, from their present positions to the regions west of the Mississippi, presents the only hope of permanently establish[ing] improvement. That wit will be attended with inconvenience and sacri-fices, no one can doubt.
The associations, which bind the Indians to the land of their fore-fathers, are strong and enduring; and these must be broken by their migration.
But they are also broken by our citizens, who every day encoun-ter all difficulties of similar changes in pursuit of the means of support. And the experiments which have been made satisfactorily show, that, by proper precautions, and liberal appropriations, the removal and es-tablishment of the Indian can be effected with little comparative trouble to them or us. Why, then, should the policy of this measure be disputed, or its adoption opposed?
The whole subject has materially changed, even within a few year[s]; and the imposing considerations it now presents, and which are every day gaining a new force, call upon the Government and the country to determine what is required on our part, and what course shall be recommended to the Indians.
If they remain they must decline, and eventually disappear. Such is
the result of all experience. If they remove, they may be comfortably es-tablished, their moral and physical condition meliorated. It is certainly better for them to meet the difficulties of removal, with the probability of an adequate and final reward, than yielding to their constitutional apathy, to sit still and perish.
The great moral debt we owe to this unhappy race is universally felt and acknowledged. Diversities of opinion exist respecting the proper mode of discharging this obligation, but its validity is not denied.
And there certainly are difficulties which may well call for discussion and consideration. For more than two centuries we have been place in contact with the Indians. And if this long period has been fruitless in useful results, it has not been so in experiments, having in view their improvement. Able men have been investigating their condition, and good men attempting to improve it. But all these labors have been un-successful in the issue, as many of them were laborious and expensive in their progress.
The work has been aided by Governments and communities, by pub-lic opinion, by the obligations of the law and by the sanction of religion.
But is history furnishes abundant evidence of entire failure and ev-erything around us upon the frontiers confirms its truth.
The Indians have either receded as our settlements advanced, and united their fragments with some kindred tribe, or they have attempted to establish themselves upon reservations, in the vain hope of resisting the pressure upon them and of persevering their peculiar institutions.
Those who are nearest to us have generally suffered most severely by the debasing effects of ardent spirits and by the loss of their own prin-ciples of restraint, few as these are; without the acquisition of ours; and almost all of them have disappeared, crushed by the onward course of events, or driven before them.
Not one instance can be produced in the whole history of the inter-course between the Indians and the white men, where the former have been able, in districts surrounded by the latter, to withstand successfully the progress of those causes, which have elevated one of these races and depressed the other. Such a monument of former successful execution does not exist.
Without entering into a question which opens a wide field for en-quiry, it is sufficient to observe that our primitive people are well within their habits and opinions as in their customs and pursuits.
Other obstacles most insurmountable to any considerable or immedi-ate change of character. The Indian is unwilling to labor, improvident in his model; he has little foresight in providing or care in preserving.
Taught from infancy to reverence his own traditions and institutions, he is satisfied of their value and dreads the anger of the Great Spirit, if he should depart from the customs of his fathers. Devoted to the use of ardent spirits, he abandons himself to its indulgence without restraint.
War and hunting are his only occupations. He can endure, without complaining, the extremity of human suffering; and if he cannot over-come the evils of his situation, he submits to them without repining. He attributes all the misfortunes of his race to the white man, and looks with suspicion upon the offers of assistance that are made to him.
These traits of character, though not universal are yet general; and the practical difficulty they present, in changing the condition of such a people, is to satisfy them of our sincerity and the value of the aid we offer; to hold out to them motive for exertion; to call into action some powerful feeling, which shall counteract the tendency of previous impressions.
It is under such circumstances and with these difficulties in view, that the Government has been called upon to determine what arrange-ments shall be made for the permanent establishment of the Indians.
Shall they be advised to remain or remove? If the former, their fate is written in the annals of their race; if the latter, we may yet hope to see them renovated in character and condition by our example and in-struction, and by their exertions.
But, to accomplish this, they must be first placed beyond the reach of our settlements and with such checks upon their disposition to hostilities as may be found necessary, and with such aid, moral intellectual, and pecuniary, as may teach them the value of our improvements, and the reality of our friendship.
With these salutary precautions, much should then be left to them-selves, to follow such occupations in the forest or field as they may choose, without too much interference.
Nor have we any reason to do but that such a condition would be at-tended with its full share of happiness; nor that their exertions would be stimulated by the security of their position and by the new prospects before them.
By encouraging the severalty of soil, sufficient tracts might be as-signed to all disposed to cultivate them; and, by timely assistance, the younger class might be brought to seek in their farms a less precarious subsistence than is furnished by the chance. Their physical comforts be-ing increased, and the desire of acquisition brought into action, a moral stimulus would be felt by the youthful portion of the community.
New wants would appear, and new means of gratifying them and the great work of improvement would thus commence, and commenc-ing, would go on.
To its aid, the truths of religion, together with knowledge of the sim-ple mechanic arts and the rudiments of science, should then be brought; but if our dependence be first placed upon these, we must fail, as all oth-ers have failed who have gone before us in this field of labor.
And we have already fallen into this error of adapting our efforts to a state of society, which is probably yet remote among the Indians, in withdrawing so many of the young men from their friend, and educat-ing them at our schools.
They are there taught various branches of learning, and at some of these institutions, a partial knowledge of the mechanic arts and of the principles of agriculture. But after this course of instruction is com-pleted, what are these young men to do?
If they remain among the whites, they find themselves the members of a peculiar state, and look round them in vain for employment and encouragement; if they return to their countrymen, their acquirements are useless, these are neither understood nor valued; and with the ex-ception of a few articles or iron, which they procure from the traders, the common work of our mechanics are useless to them.
I repeat, what has a young man, who has thus been educated, to do? He has no means of support, no instruments of agriculture, no domestic animals, and no improved farm. Taken in early life from his own peo-ple, he is no hunter, he cannot find in the chase the means of support or exchange; and that, under such circumstances, he should abandon himself to a life of intemperance, can scarcely excite our surprise, how-ever it must our regret be.
I have been earnestly asked by these young men, how were they to live; and I have felt that a satisfactory answer was beyond my reach. To the Government only can they look for relief, and if this should be furnished, tho’ in a moderate degree, they might still become useful and respectable; their example would be encouraging to others, and they would form the best instructors for their brethren.
MY gRaNDMOTHER, Jenny Brown Russell, was born in Bethel, Vt., in 1905. She used to tell me stories of her encounters as a child with an elderly Native american man who lived in a teepee just outside of town. He was considered peculiar and was some-times teased by the local children. He occasionally walked into town, perhaps to purchase some supplies, but he preferred to live alone in the woods.
I can only imagine this man, likely the last person in his fam-ily or tribe, alone in his traditional home. It’s possible that he had been born around the time this newspaper was printed.
When I read the anonymous piece in the Brattleboro’ Messenger “Indian Character,” it easily becomes clear to me why a Native american of that era would have preferred the sanctuary of the woods over the townspeople of Bethel. n
Additional letters appear on page 8.
T h E C O M M O N S • Wednesday, December 1, 2010 VOICES 7
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Guy page [“VY: More criti-cal than ever,” Voices,
Nov. 24] calls the decision to close Yankee “political” like that was a bad thing. politics is how a democracy makes deci-sions. No patriotic american can really be against it.
and Yankee was brought into being by a decision that was both political and emo-tional. george aiken thought
his state should have a nuke, too. Vernon had an emotional attraction to the tax benefits. The state voted. Now we’ve voted again. We get to do that, and we get to base our de-cisions on both reason and emotion, ’cause this is a de-mocracy and we are the people in charge.
If you don’t like the results — and I often don’t — then
you have to work to change them. But don’t attack the only legal process you have to do that.
as Lyndon Baines Johnson used to say in his polished, el-egant way, “Don’t spit in the soup. We all have to drink it.”
Jessie haasWestminster
At once ephemeral and du-rable. Exquisite perfor-
mance art.For the second year,
November has been witness to power line contract crews working on the upgrade of high-voltage transmission lines on Fall Mountain in Walpole, N.H.
This is a small part of ongo-ing line upgrade work occur-ring throughout the region. Most notably, there have been many hours of small
turbine-powered helicopters unflinchingly hovering and deftly maneuvering in turbu-lent air with external loads, sometimes with external crews. These captivating perfor-mances won’t be pre-empted by a prime-time battle for the racetrack, the gridiron, the bully pulpit, the Statehouse, or by the revealing costume of someone’s dancing partner. Most never look up and have missed the show altogether.
Exactly when: Tough to
say, but it’s been most days when it’s half-decent weather. Where: Tough to say, but near the Rockingham Library look-ing southeast has been a good vantage point.
Dress: Casual and warm.Bring: Binoculars and hot
coffee.Etiquette: applaud loudly.
Andrew SmithBellows Falls
Electrical repairs: exquisite performance art
8 VOICES T h E C O M M O N S • Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Giving thanksBehind the scenes on
a Thanksgiving tour
around Brattleboro
LIfE & WORK
By Randolph T. holhutThe Commons
BRaTTLEBORO—It’s approaching noon in downtown B r a t t l e b o r o o n Thanksgiving Day,
and all is quiet. Main Street is empty and the stores are closed as the town collectively catches its breath before the holiday sea-son cranks up.
The River garden, however, is the exception to the calm. There is plenty of activity, as volunteers carry in tables and trays of food for the 37th annual Community Thanksgiving Dinner.
More than 600 meals will be served today, and there is more than enough food to go around.
“We’ve got enough volunteers and we’ve got enough food,” said Ray Branagan, who has spent more than 30 Thanksgivings helping to coordinate what he calls the “organized chaos” of making dinner for 600 people.
Over at the St. Michael’s School kitchen, volunteers pre-pare food, which is then shuttled to the River garden. There, little signs tell diners going through the line exactly what’s in the entree about to be served from the line of steam tables. Every possible dietary contingency is covered.
Volunteers old and new scurry about. Most have a common rea-son for being there — a desire to be with others on this day.
“I’m new to town, and I wanted to do this last year, but didn’t know how to volunteer,” said Cheryl Miller, who is origi-nally from Maryland. “My fam-ily is all over, and it’s hard for us to get together.”
Jane McCauley agrees. She is also a first-time volunteer with family scattered all over the country. “This is a community affair I wanted to participate in,” she said.
amy Cooper said she has been helping “on and off for about 20 years.” She and her father, peter Cooper, have volunteered since the days when the dinner was
served at the Common ground.a little after noon, the buffet
line is ready, and the first diners have their plates loaded up with turkey and all the trimmings. The line is not long, and peo-ple flow steadily throughout the afternoon.
Older residents and shut-ins who can’t make it to the River garden are not forgot-ten. Branagan said more than 100 meals are being delivered this day.
While the meal is free to all, a donation jar sits at the edge of the buffet line for those who wish to give. Near the front door, boxes of bread and other food sit for those who need another meal beyond this one.
Fried turkey and football
Thanksgiving is a holiday for most people, but for police, fire-fighters and EMTs, it’s just an-other shift to be covered.
at the fire station on Elliot Street, the Third platoon has been assigned Thanksgiving duty. Holiday shifts are planned a year in advance, based on the one-day-on, two-days-off sched-ule that each of the three fire pla-toons work.
The firefighters in the Third, who have already worked on the Fourth of July and are also penciled in for Christmas and New Year’s Eve, started their Thanksgiving day at 8 a.m., and will finish their shift the follow-ing morning at 8.
Capt. Bill Johnson, the duty officer, said the only call of the day so far was to St. Michael’s School, where some burned food
RaNDOLpH T. HOLHUT/THE COMMONS
Volunteers d ish up t u r k e y a n d a l l t h e fixings at the annual Brattleboro Community Thanksgiving Dinner at the River Garden.
RaNDOLpH T. HOLHUT/THE COMMONS
Brattleboro Fire Department Capt. Bill Johnson lowers a Thanksgiving turkey into a pot of boiling vegetable oil as firefighter Kurt Schmidt looks on at the Elliot Street station.
RaNDOLpH T. HOLHUT/THE COMMONS
Blissfully unaware that one of their cousins is frying away in the kettle, a group of pigeons attack the remains of a blooming onion behind the Elliot Street fire station.
RaNDOLpH T. HOLHUT/THE COMMONS
James and Mark White eat with their mom, Susan Campbell, at the Brattleboro Community Thanksgiving Dinner at the River Garden.
RaNDOLpH T. HOLHUT/THE COMMONS
Rescue Inc. EMTs Keith hermiz, left, and Joe Domenick couldn’t put much of a dent into the Thanksgiving feast that was brought to the Canal Street station.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010 • Page 9
n SEE ThANKSGIVING, pagE 10
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for the Community Dinner set off an alarm.
It’s become a tradition at the Brattleboro firehouse to deep fry a turkey for the Thanksgiving dinner. But the kitchen at the firehouse is always busy.
“The guys take turns cooking breakfast every morning, and we always cook a big supper so the next shift can have the leftovers,” said Johnson.
Behind the station, they’ve already deep-fried a “blooming onion” ahead of the turkey, and some of the burned batter and onion bits are in a neat pile by the propane tank that fuels the burner where the kettle full of vegetable oil is bubbling.
The neighborhood pigeons, sensing a meal, start moving in. First a couple of brave ones, then a few more, then a few more, and before long 50 or so pigeons pick away at the onion debris — so many that when they are spooked and fly off, the wind gust gener-ated by their wings blows out the gas burner.
Upstairs, the TV is tuned to the Thanksgiving game between the Lions and patriots, and the firefighters hope that it will be a quiet afternoon so they can en-joy the two staples of this day — football and turkey.
A moveable feast The Thanksgiving Day shift
at Rescue Inc. on Canal Street didn’t have to fight off pigeons for their holiday feast — it was brought to their door.
S h a r r a B i n g h a m , w i f e of Rescue Inc. EMT Scott Bingham, decided if her hus-band wasn’t going to be home for Thanksgiving dinner, she would bring Thanksgiving din-ner to him and his co-workers.
“I would have been home alone anyway, so I brought it in,” she said. “It’s good to bring food around on a day like this.”
It’s an impressive spread — turkey with crab meat stuffing, plenty of mashed potatoes and gravy, and veggies, with three pies for dessert.
“The seven of us tried to put a hurt on it, but we couldn’t do it,” said Drew Hazelton, the captain of the shift.
“at least it’s been quiet, so we can eat without having to go out on a call,” Hazelton said. “We’ve had Thanksgivings where we’ve never had time to sit down for dinner.”
Day is done Back at the River garden, it’s
about 4:30 in the afternoon and darkness is coming fast. But the lights burn brightly inside, late-comers are still dining at the long tables, and another Thanksgiving is winding down.
This day, more than any other day, is a holiday for com-ing together around food and friendship.
and whether it is with friends, co-workers or family, the act of coming together is ultimately what gives Thanksgiving Day its meaning.
Obituaries
Editor’s note: The Commons will publish brief biographical in-formation for citizens of Windham County and others, on request, as community news, free of charge.
• Philip L. Jillson, 65, of Readsboro. Died Nov. 21 at the Southwestern Vermont Medical Center in Bennington. Husband of Martha (Morse) Jillson for 44 years. Father of Stephanie Taylor and husband Trent of Brandon; and Layle Luke and husband Chris of Murfreesboro, Tenn. Brother of Harold Sprague of Whitingham; Roger Sprague of gettysburg, pa.; Richard King of Newfane and Sandra King of Holliston, Mass. predeceased by a son, philip L. Jillson II; a daughter, Lisa Jillson; and brothers george and Timothy Jillson. graduate of Whitingham High Schol, Class of 1963. Worked as a li-notype operator throughout his life for many printing companies — including Capital City press and Leahy press in Montpelier, Elm Tree press in Woodstock, Yankee Typesetters in Maine, TJ press in Duxbury, page Setters and Stratford publishing in Brattleboro and H.a. Manning in Bellows Falls — before he re-tired in 2002. Was a member of the Readsboro Lions Club
and a long-time member of the Readsboro School Board. MEMORIaL INFORMaTION: a memorial service was held Nov. 27 at the Readsboro Community Club, with burial in the North Hill Cemetery. Donations to the Readsboro Lions Club, Whitingham ambulance Service or guy Hawkins Cancer Fund, in care of the Covey & allen Funeral Home, p.O. Box 215, Wilmington, VT 05363.
• Thomas Delbert Rafus, 72, of West Halifax. Died at his home. Husband of Betty (LaRock) Rafus for 50 years. Father of Jackie and her husband Steve Hill, Jr. of West Halifax; Tim and his wife Rhonda Rafus of Whitingham; Brad Rafus and peggy Webber of West Halifax; Jenn and her husband Kevin Birch of Whitingham; and Steph and her husband Dennis pike of Whitingham. Brother of george Minckler of greenfield, Mass.; David Smith of putney; and Hazel Robinson, of Harrington, Del. predecased by brothers Ray and Edwin Rafus. Served in the army and the army National guard f rom 1956-1962 . Worked for New England Box Co., Deerfield Valley Supply, greene’s Service and Kendall Mills for 34 years until retire-ment in 1997. Was a 40 year member of the West Halifax Volunteer Fire Department and
was assistant chief from 1981-85. Volunteered many hours in help-ing build the new fire station in 1975-76. Held various positions for the town of Halifax including assistant forest fire warden, se-lectman, Civil Defense coordina-tor and cemetery commissioner. MEMORIaL INFORMaTION: a graveside service was held Nov. 28 at the West Halifax cem-etery. Donations to the “Kick Butt angels,” the Rafus family’s american Cancer Society Relay For Life Team, at P.O. Box 82, West Halifax, VT 05358.
• Travis Ezra Richmond, 23, of Vernon. Died Nov. 21 from
in jur ies sus-tained in a sin-gle car accident on Route 142. Son of Mary Ellen McDurfee and Douglas R i c h m o n d .
graduate of Brattleboro Union High School, Class of 2005. While in high school, he started working at Vernon green Nursing Home and later at-tended porter & Chester auto Tech in Holyoke, Mass. He worked as an auto mechanic for the family business, Richmond auto in guilford. Enjoyed music and was an accomplished drum-mer. He loved his cars, cher-ished his family and friends, and was happiest hanging out with a
few good buddies. MEMORIaL
INFORMaTION: Funeral ser-vices were held Nov. 27 at the guilford Community Church in algiers. Donations to Windham County Humane Society, p.O. Box 397, Brattleboro, VT 05302 or to a charity of one’s choice. Condolences may be sent to atamaniuk Funeral Home at www.atamaniuk.com.
Births
In Brattleboro (Memorial Hospital), Nov. 2, 2010, a son, Mason John (Boulrice) Grindlay, to Mindy Boulrice and Jeff grindlay Jr. of Brookline; grandson to Rene and paula Boulrice Jr. of Reading, Michelle and Dave Stanch of Chichester, N.H., and Jeff grindlay Sr. of Brandon; great-grandson to William and Sally Smith of Reading, Rene and Estelle Boulrice Sr. of palm Coast, Fla., Joan Boulrice of Westfield, Mass., genevieve grindlay of Brandon, and Mary Nesci of Chichester.
I n L e b a n o n , N . H . , (Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center), Sept. 9, 2010, a son, Dominic Meyer McKay , to Christine D. Meyer and Tyler McKay; grandson to Bernadette and Jeffrey Meyer, and Kim and Ron McKay, all of Brattleboro.
COMMUNITY MEALS/fOOD ShELVESLocation Phone Day & TimeBrattleboro Drop-In Center 802-257-5415
Food emergency: ext. 225
Monday–Friday, 7a.m.–5 p.m.
Brattleboro Senior Meals 802-257-1236 Monday–Friday, noon–12:30 p.m.Breakfast on Tuesdays, 7:45 to 8:15 a.m. (Suggested donation $5; $3 for people over age 60.)
Meals on Wheels 802-257-1236 Deliveries to those 60 and older who are “food insecure” and unable to attend community meals.
Immanuel Episcopal Church Kitchen& Drop-In Center, Bellows Falls
802-463-3100 Monday: 8:30–10:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m., Our place. Meal at great Falls Community Kitchen, 5 p.m. Tuesday: 8:30–10:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m., Our place. Wednesday: 5–6 p.m., Our place. Thursday, 8:30–10:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m., Our Place. Friday, 8:30–10:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m., Our place.
agape Christian Fellowship, Brattleboro 802-257-4069 Soup kitchen: Sunday, 1:30–3 p.m. Food pantry: Thursday, 6:30–8 p.m.
Centre Congregational — Loaves and Fishes, Brattleboro
802-254-4730 Tuesday and Friday, noon–1 p.m.
First Baptist Church — grace’s Kitchen, Brattleboro
802-254-9566 Wednesday, 5:30-6:30 p.m.
Brigid’s Kitchen, Brattleboro 802-254-6800 Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, 11:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m.
Second Congregational Church UCC, Londonderry
802-824-6453 Third Friday, 1–4 p.m.
Jamaica/Wardsboro Community Food pantry 802-874-7234 Last Wednesday of the month, 6-8 p.m.Deerfield Valley Food pantry 802-464-9675
802-368-2942Third Saturday, 9–11 a.m.; Thursday before the third Saturday, 1–3 p.m.
Bellows Falls Warming Shelter 802-463-2567 Open every night during the winter season from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.
ShELTERSLocation Phone Day & TimeMorningside Shelter, Brattleboro 802-257-0066
(24 hours)8 a.m.–11 p.m.
First Baptist Church Overflow Shelter, Brattleboro
802-257-5415 5:30 p.m.–7 a.m., when Morningside is full (until the end of March, depending on weather)
If you need food or shelter...
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RaNDOLpH T. HOLHUT/THE COMMONS
Peggy Spencer serenades diners at the Brattleboro Community Thanksgiving Dinner.
10 LIfE & WORK T h E C O M M O N S • Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Latin America community dinner, dance planned at Compass School
WESTMINSTER — On Sunday, Dec. 5, Compass School will host Fiesta Dominicana — a celebration of the food and music of Latin america, featuring the band Clave Mundial. This event is the primary fundraiser for the Junior Class global Connections trip to the Dominican Republic in February.
The music and dancing begins at 7 p.m. and will be preceded by a silent auction and delicious Latin america dinner beginning at 5 p.m. Donations for the auc-tion are welcome. admission is $15 for adults, $10 for children and students, and $45 for fami-lies. Tickets can be purchased in advance by contacting the school at 802-463-2525 or at the door. an array of silent auction items will be available including gift certificates to area restaurants, stores and services, classes, art work and crafts, vacation get-aways and more.
The global Connections program focuses on social change and cultural immer-sion. It is an integral part of the curriculum for every Compass 11th-grader, inspiring students to broaden their horizons, bond as a group, and work for social justice. This year, students will travel to the Dominican Republic
to live alongside Dominicans in various locations including work-ing on a small organic farm and joining with village schoolchil-dren on service learning projects.
If you cannot attend the event, but would like to make the do-nation, visit www.compass-school.org. and click on the “donate” link. If you would like to arrange for a student presen-tation at your organization in the spring of 2011 email [email protected]. For more information call 802-463-2525 or visit www.compass-school.org/globalconnections.
Spirituality workshop planned in GuilfordgUILFORD — Nationally
recognized spiritual teacher, counselor, and speaker Ellen Tadd will present two events at the guilford Community Church.
On Friday, Dec. 10, at 7 p.m., she will give a gen-eral talk on spirituality. On Saturday, Dec. 11, from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., she will offer her “Wisdom of the Chakras” workshop, based on her new book of the same title.
The book and her work-shop are the result of years of
spiritual exploration and coun-seling. Tadd shows how the chakra system functions in ev-eryday life, how our thoughts, words, and actions affect this system, and how the chakras (our seven energy centers) shape us.
admission to Friday’s talk is $10. Saturday’s workshop fee is $100, and includes a simple lunch. For more infor-mation and to register, contact Connie Green at 802-254-9652 or [email protected].
Continuing the conversation
BRaTTLEBORO — post Oil Solutions will host its monthly Community Conversation on Wednesday, Dec. 8, 7 p.m., at the Elliot Street Cafe, corner of Elliot and Elm streets on the topic “Where do we go from here?”
Over the past two months, the group has discussed creat-ing the web of a healthy, sustain-able community for all citizens of greater Brattleboro, while maintaining a strong relation-ship between relevant activism
and people’s need for meaningful connection with each other have led participants to increasingly see themselves as a community.
Last month’s visioning exer-cise centered around what kind of Brattleboro would we like to see 10 or15 years from now.
Light refreshments will be available, and participants are welcome to contribute.
Waste-to-Energy Project discussion
B R a T T L E B O R O — Marlboro College graduate School, 28 Vernon St., will host a free, public presentation by
Carbon Harvest Energy presi-dent Don McCormick as part of its MBa in Managing for Sustainability Featured Speaker series on Friday, Dec. 3, at 5 p.m.
The talk, entitled, “Building Deeply Sustainable Food and Energy Systems through Integration” will examine the Carbon Harvest Energy land-fill gas-to-energy project in Brattleboro as a practical model of sustainable and responsible resource use.
n Thanksgiving FROM pagE 9
R A N D O L P h T . h O L h U T
Sports Roundup
For the Holidays, Consider a Gift Box of Vermont
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Mount Snow in West Dover and Okemo in Ludlow got an early start on the
skiing and snowboarding sea-son last week.
Mount Snow opened on Thanksgiving day with four lifts serving about 10 percent of the mountain, including the Carinthia terrain park for the boarders.
Okemo couldn’t wait for the holiday and started its season on Nov. 23 with two lifts and four trails on the upper part of their mountain.
Stowe and Killington were the only other Vermont ski areas to open before Thanksgiving — Stowe on Nov. 24 and Killington on Nov. 1.
Stratton Mountain Resort chose to wait out Friday’s rain and sleet, and opened Saturday for the season with about a dozen trails available.
Both Mount Snow and Stratton took advantage of the return of cold weather early last week to make snow, but it will be some time before conditions will be good enough to take off the “rock skis” and take to the slopes with the front line gear. Trails are icy, and the snow bases are generally in the 10-to-24-inch range.
as for other southern Vermont resorts, Bromley in peru is shooting for Dec. 3 as its opening day. Magic Mountain in Londonderry has Saturday, Dec. 18, as its antici-pated first day. However, they say if a big snowstorm or sus-tained snowmaking conditions intervene, they might open earlier.
ascutney Mountain in Brownsville will not be open for skiing this season. The mountain was foreclosed on this summer, and according to news reports, the chances do not look that the historic resort will ever reopen.
Biathlon comes to Grafton Ponds
as one of the few nordic ski resorts in New England that make snow, grafton ponds Outdoor Center in grafton hopes to open for the season on Saturday, Dec. 4.
For opening day, the re-sort will host a biathlon event, which will be free of charge to all participants.
Biathlon is a race in which contestants ski around a course, and the total distance is broken up by either two or four shooting rounds, half in prone position, the other half stand-ing. For each shooting round, the biathlete must hit five tar-gets. Depending on the shoot-ing performance, extra distance or time is added to a contes-tant’s total distance/time for each missed target. as in most races, the contestant with the shortest total time wins.
at 1 p.m., grafton ponds director Bill Salmon and for-mer U.S. Olympic Biathlete Michael Collins will host a
training session on how to use the laser guns for the race. Racing will commence at 1:30 p.m. with waves of 10 com-petitors going every two min-utes. The race is free of charge. For more information, visit graftonponds.com.
Lyman, Conarroe win Turkey Trot
The Red Clover Rovers’ an-nual 3-mile Turkey Trot road race may be a Brattleboro tra-dition, but out-of-towners won this year’s edition. Ned Lyman of Belchertown, Mass., won the men’s race in 16 minutes, one second, while Heather Conarroe of greenwich, Conn., was the top women’s finisher in 18:09, which was the 13th fastest time overall.
Landen Elliott-Knaggs of Brattleboro was the top lo-cal men’s finisher, coming in just behind Lyman in 16:18 for second. Tammy Richards of Williamsville was the top area female runner, she was 18th overall in 18:58. There were 226 runners who participated in the race.
Ethan Milsark, 12, of Northampton, Mass., won the 1-mile race in 6:49. There were 49 runners in this race.
Winter season about to begin
The Vermont high school winter sports season begins next Saturday.
The Brattleboro Union High School nordic skiing and hockey teams will be first into the fray. The nordic team opens at grafton ponds on Dec. 11 with a Marble Valley League race. The girls hockey team will be first on the ice with a 1:30 p.m. home game against Northfield at the newly-refurbished Nelson Withington Rink. The boys will also open at home at 4:45 p.m. against Rutland.
The BUHS varsity basket-ball teams will start play on Tuesday, Dec. 14. The girls will travel to St. Johnsbury, while the boys open at home against Hoosac Valley.
Bellows Falls begins its varsity basketball season on Friday, Dec. 17, when the boys host Black River at Holland gymnasium. The girls open their season on Monday, Dec. 20, at Springfield.
Twin Valley gets its var-sity basketball season going on Monday, Dec. 13, as the girls host Leland & gray in Wilmington, while the boys go on the road to face Otter Valley.
The Leland & gray boys basketball team opens at arlington on Wednesday, Dec. 15.
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Windsor and BF have been on each others’ football sched-ule for years, and the thought of ending the annual Dale perkins Trophy game doesn’t make either school happy. But under the new rules, playing Windsor would hurt BF’s in-dex rating because Windsor is a lower division school.
The VIFL is also consider-ing a proposal that would ex-tend the extend the preseason practice time for high school football teams to three weeks, which is the schedule that New Hampshire uses.
The Vpa requires two weeks of practice time before any player is eligible to play a var-sity sport, which is a reasonable amount of preparation for most sports. But given the physically demanding nature of football, and the element of risk that comes with playing it, another week of preparation would in-crease the margin of safety for players.
Terriers’ championship season available on DVD
If you didn’t get to the games, or if you are looking for a souvenir of a championship season, Falls area Community Television in Bellows Falls has
put together a DVD box set of the Bellows Falls Terriers’ march to the Division III state football title.
FaCT stepped up their pro-duction of BF’s games with a two-camera set up and in-stant replay. For $40, you’ll get all the home games at Hadley Field, plus the state champion-ship game against Windsor at Castleton State college. Visit www.fact8.com for more infor-mation, or call 802-463-1613.
A gift of the outdoors
Here’s a holiday gift where you don’t have to worry about sizes, or whether it comes with batteries — passes to Vermont’s state parks.
For $39, you can get the Day Tripper package, which is a punch card good for 10 state park day visits, plus a wa-ter bottle and a gift card for a
one-hour boat rental.The Weekend getaway
package, at $79, includes two nights of tent, RV or lean-to camping, two travel mugs, and a bundle of firewood for your campout.
If you know someone who really loves getting outdoors, you can give them the Full Season of Family Fun gift package for $149. It includes a Vehicle Season pass that pro-vides unlimited day entry into any state park, all season long for up to 8 people per visit, plus two VT water bottles, two Vermont State parks ball caps and two gift cards for one-hour boat rentals.
The packages come with at-tractively packaged gift boxes. Shipping is free and you can order them anytime at www.vtstateparks.com, or by call-ing 888-409-7579, Monday through Friday, 9 a.m.–4 p.m.
Changes to divisions could disrupt football rivalries
The Vermont Interscholastic Football League has proposed some divisional realignments for the 2011 and 2012 seasons that could mean some significant changes for high school football.
The VIFL’s proposal, which the Vermont principals’ association still has to sign off on, would incorporate out-of-division and out-of-state con-tests into its Quality point Rating index system. This would likely affect some of the traditional rivalries in the Connecticut Valley.
Under the divisional re-alignment, Champlain Valley, Mount Mansfield, Colchester and Middlebury would move up from Division II to join a new, 14-team Division I. also, Division I would have a quar-terfinal round added to its play-offs, which would be played during Week 9 of the season. Non-playoff teams would play a Week 9 game as usual.
Bellows Falls, the recently crowned Division III champs, and Springfield would move up to Division II as the VIFL creates two, 10-team divi-sions. That might mean that Windsor and Woodstock — two longtime rivals of BF and Springfield — might not meet up as often, because the new rules only allow no more than one out-of-division or out-of-state game.
MOUNTSNOW.COM
One of Mount Snow’s 251 fan guns pumps out snow last week in preparation for the West Dover resort’s opening day on Thanksgiving.
Mount Snow, Stratton get early start to season
T h E C O M M O N S • Wednesday, December 1, 2010 11
Vermont Citizens Campaign for Health to hold annual meeting Dec. 7
BRaTTLEBORO — The Vermont Citizens Campaign for Health will hold its annual meeting on Tuesday, Dec. 7, at 7 p.m., in the new Brew Barry Conference at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital on Belmont ave. There will be a presenta-tion on the topic of “achieving affordable Universal Health Care in Vermont: progress and Ways Forward,” by two of the members of the team assem-bled by Dr. William Hsiao of Harvard.
Dr. Hsiao is one of the world’s foremost health policy experts and has designed the single payer system now in place in Taiwan as well as health care systems for many other countries. He has been hired by the Vermont leg-islature to design three possible health care systems for the state of Vermont. His report will come out at the beginning of January. Two members of his team will discuss how Vermont can be-come a model for the rest of the country for health care reform.
ashley Fox, phD, is a post Doctoral Fellow in Health policy and administration at Yale University. Nathan Blanchet,
is a phD candidate in the Department of global Health and population at the Harvard School of public Health.
Light refreshments will be served. For more information, contact Richard Davis at 802-251-0915 or [email protected].
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those involved in the student-or-ganized Cuba project, a trip they happened to travel on together unrelated to CLEa.
Both Stevens and Wolfe have grounded and mature airs about them.
pu, the student liaison to CLEa, is open, engaging, and willing to share what he has learned.
While in Cuba, pu said, they met with high school students.
“We told them about students organizing a food drive for the hungry in our community,” he said. “They were amazed. They don’t have any hungry people in Cuba. The government feeds them. They had a hard time un-derstanding hunger here.”
Wolfe, a petite young woman with a strong sense of commu-nity, speaks with authority and passion of her involvement with CLEa. Her “pet project” is child trafficking.
“I was shocked to learn how prevalent it is, and not just else-where in the world,” she said. “It’s going on right here in this country.”
In CLEa, “we are mainly con-cerned with three things: human trafficking, child soldiers, and world hunger,” Wolfe said.
CLEa leaders do a lot of re-search. They also show films or give presentations at their weekly meetings.
“We try to set up a solid foun-dation so we know what we are talking about [when we go to schools to teach],” said
Momaney. “We try to focus on hunger in the community be-cause it is …tangible and we can do something about it. We can really make a difference, as we’ve shown every year we’ve done [food drives].”
“We try to connect the com-munity with international is-sues,” Wolfe said, including long term projects that take years and many successive CLEa mem-bers to achieve.
The group’s biggest success came in 2008, when after years of education and lobbying by CLEa members, the Vermont Legislature passed a bill requir-ing the state to only buy clothing and uniforms that are sweatshop-free, fair trade products.
“We did it,” Wolfe said proudly.
Hunger there and here
In a state with a seemingly low unemployment rate — last reported at 5.7 percent for October, according to the Vermont Department of Labor — people accessing food services has increased.
The Vermont Foodbank has seen a 60-percent increase in us-age, and soup kitchens all over Windham County are having a difficult time keeping up with demand for food.
pu said he had helped at sev-eral kitchens recently. “I saw a diversity of people. It wasn’t all homeless people. There were families, working families who
just couldn’t afford food.”Wolfe said CLEa is about
looking at global issues and how they play out in their own com-munity, thus explaining their partnership with project Feed the Thousands, a community anti-hunger effort co-founded by Larry Smith and george Haynes 17 years ago.
CLEa members also partner with SIT/World Learning stu-dents in coordinating and car-rying out CLEa’s stated goals.
‘A good start’ Stevens noted that in the first
week of launching project Feed the Thousands through CLEa, the students collected 75 to 100 pounds of food, or about 400 food items and $100 in cash.
The goal is 2,010 items, “it be-ing 2010 and all,” pu explained.
“I think we’ve got a good start. We go all the way through Dec. 25,” Stevens said. “I’m confidant we’ll reach our goal.”
pu noted boxes and a shop-ping cart with posters of project Feed the Thousands are in the high school lobby, where stu-dents are reminded every day about the need to give. He said a volunteer goes through the lunch room with a can so students can donate pocket change.
“It all counts and it adds up,” he said.
CLEa students are doing what they can to help through their participation in project Feed the Thousands, but remain aware that hard times affect even
aLLISON TEagUE/THE COMMONS
Brattleboro union high School students Arianna Wolfe, Sam Stevens and Kai-Ming Pu discuss hunger and their work with Civil Leadership and Education in Action (CLEA).
Stevens and pu share leader-ship of CLEa with BUHS ju-nior and co-president Nicole Momaney. “We didn’t want to have anyone above anyone else. We wanted everyone to have an equal say,” explained Stevens.
CLEa members get commu-nity service credit for being in-volved in these projects, but that seems secondary to their goals, in this case, of helping with project Feed the Thousands.
all the students interviewed had served in food kitchens; all had been involved in community food projects since elementary school. all showed an under-standing of effects of the current economic recession.
Wolfe, pu and Stevens all showed the somber knowledge that in places like Cuba, the gov-ernment feeds the people and no one goes hungry.
In Cuba, pu said, “they don’t have homeless people. They don’t have people who are hun-gry. [The Cuban] students found it reassuring that people here are willing to help the hungry.”
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B R a T T L E B O R O —accord ing to the U.S . Department of agriculture’s 2009 Food Security in the United States report, 57 per-cent of those reporting food insecurity — the lack of access to food — had participated in federal food and nutrition as-sistance programs.
Food secure households spent 33 percent more on food than the food insecure house-holds. a little less than a half million families with children experienced “very low food se-curity” — defined by the gov-ernment as disrupted meals and reduced food intake — in 2009.
While 85.3 percent of fami-lies were food secure, the re-maining 14.7 “had difficulty at some time during the year providing enough food for all their members due to a lack of resources,” according to the report.
In Vermont’s population of about 620,000 people, 13.6 percent report food insecurity, and 6.2 report very low food security, as compared with current rate of 5.7 percent un-employment in the state.
The main government pro-gram dealing with hunger is the Vermont Department of Children and Families’ 3SquaresVT, formerly known as food stamps. The program provides food assistance for families and children.
The federal poverty level is currently set at $22,050 for a family of four. according to the National Center for Children in poverty (NCCp), in 2009, 10 percent of Vermont children live in homes where earnings are at or below this level.
The NCCp estimates that in 2009, 27 percent of chil-dren living in poor families in Vermont do not have an em-ployed parent, and 60 percent of those families are living with a single parent. Education is a factor, according to their
findings, as 45 percent of those poor parents living on or below the poverty level did not complete high school.
Currently, about 1 in 8 Vermonte r s r e l y upon 3SquaresVT each month. That number sounds high, but it could be higher: state officials say about 25 percent of people who are eligible for the program haven’t signed up for it.
One of the nonprofit agen-cies working on the problem of persistent hunger is the Vermont Foodbank, which helps supply food for 280 food shelves, meals sites, se-nior centers, shelters and af-ter-school programs around the state.
among these programs are several geared toward feeding kids, such as the Kids Café through the Boys and girls Clubs in Brattleboro and other chapters across the state, and teen centers. The backpack program provides nutritious food in brown bags that are put in children’s backpacks while they are not present to avoid stigma.
The summer food service program provides breakfast and lunch as well as recre-ational activities to families in need through the Vermont Foodbank. Hunger 101 pro-vides education and teaching tools about how to talk about hunger, and increasing aware-ness of hunger issues for el-ementary, middle and high school students.
The Vermont Foodbank has numerous other pro-grams, such as the commu-nity kitchen. In its agricultural programs, excess food grown is gleaned, farm collectives sell produce to the food bank, and participating “U-pick” orchards that encourage Vermonters to “pick for your neighbor.”
For more information, visit www.vtfoodbank.com.
that project as family incomes are stretched to the max.
“It’s always hard,” said pu. “With the recession, many stu-dents and parents don’t have the extra 25 or 50 cents. There’s been a definite drop off this year [in donations]. It’s hard to ex-pect them to give [in these cir-cumstances]. It’s always tough to get food items [from the stu-dents] because it’s not the first thing on their minds.”
One student in the lobby con-firmed that he had not donated anything but he planned to “give 50 cents.”
“There is no socioeconomic divide anymore,” pu said, in people needing food.
Community service
CLEa was the brainchild of BUHS Social Studies teacher Timothy Kipp and Col in
Robinson, a founding student member.
But Kipp refuses credit for the program. “It’s all the kids,” he said. “They get all the credit.”
‘a world-class downtown’BaBB’s zip code collection shows Brattleboro’s popularity, and how it could be betterBy Olga PetersThe Commons
BRaTTLEBORO—For eight days in October, downtown mer-chants collected patrons’ zip codes to assist Building a Better Brattleboro and consulting firm arnett Muldrow & associates develop a long-term economic development strategy.
Data culled from the zip code collection helped snap a vir-tual group photo of downtown Brattleboro shoppers as they an-swered questions like what types of goods and services they spend money on, questions designed to find out what types of retail items “leak” money away from downtown.
The survey was a preliminary step. arnett Muldrow will file a full report and recommendations with BaBB in January.
More than 1,900 zip codes were collected by 23 merchants from Oct. 13 to 22. They re-vealed that 70 percent of the zip codes were local, or from the nearby tri-state region.
Of the local zips, 42 percent belonged to 05301, one encom-passing Brattleboro, guilford and portions of Marlboro and Dummerston.
andrea Livermore, BaBB ex-ecutive director, said people have expressed concern that 42 per-cent seems low for zip covering such a large geographical area.
Visitors also came from 41 states and the District of Columbia, four provinces, seven countries and two unidentified military locations.
“There’s no way we can dis-count the importance of visitor traffic,” said Tripp Muldrow, a planner with arnett Muldrow.
Muldrow said that among the towns he has evaluated, Brattleboro ranks in the top five for visitor traffic.
Livermore said “it was a shot in the arm” to hear Muldrow refer to Brattleboro as a “world-class downtown.”
“Now, you have to start acting like it,” he told Livermore.
Markets, opportunities and leaks
Muldrow told BaBB mem-bers at a Nov. 16 meeting that the zip codes broke shoppers into primary, secondary and unique markets.
Brattleboro and Marlboro res-idents comprised Brattleboro’s primary-market customers, shopping almost exclusively in town.
The secondary market — customers who frequent downtown, but who a lso shop elsewhere — included those from Jamaica, Newfane, putney, Townshend, Vernon, Wilmington, and Chesterfield and West Chesterfield, N.H.
greenfie ld, Mass. , and Hinsdale, N.H., held the “unique” market, showing up in downtown the least.
Muldrow calculated a poten-tial $375 million in spending for downtown if, and only if, cus-tomers don’t “leak” their money to outside areas, instead buying all their items or services from Brattleboro merchants.
He said only $234 million of that potential is flowing through downtown.
But , s a id Muldrow, i f Brattleboro could prevent the dollars leaking away it could ex-pand its cash flow by $100 mil-lion. persuading downtown’s secondary market alone to stop shopping elsewhere could har-ness a potential $78 million.
The firm found would-be local customers tend to buy furniture, clothing, shoes and jewelry from out of town.
Muldrow suggested build-ing businesses through a two-pronged approach to stopping the leaks.
The first entailed a process of growing from within, by expand-ing existing businesses and help-ing them thrive. The next step would involve attracting new businesses.
Working with existing busi-nesses will be important because downtown is almost at 100 per-cent occupancy, said Livermore and Muldrow.
grocery stores pull in sales from residents of towns other than Brattleboro. Restaurants also pull in outside traffic and contribute the strength of down-town. Muldrow said quick-serve family restaurants — but not fast-food franchises — would help that market grow.
Muldrow told BaBB members the town does well with sport-ing goods and could “grow” its book sales. He suggested adding a general electronics store to the downtown mix.
M u l d r o w p o s i t e d t h a t Walmart, which absorbs about $22 million in sales, could lurk behind the lack of general mer-chandise in town.
The big take-aways
Muldrow said none of the merchants he interviewed told him they were in “dire straits.” according to Muldrow, mer-chants spoke with “guarded op-timism,” while acknowledging how special Brattleboro is.
Other communities currently working with Muldrow are mired in a sense of desperation that is absent in Brattleboro.
“I don’t want to sound too pollyanna-ish,” said Muldrow. “But it leaves you feeling really good.”
Muldrow said the economic shakeup of the Walmart in Hinsdale, built in 1992, has “played itself out.” any stores that were going to close due to losing sales to Walmart have al-ready done so, he said, describ-ing Walmart and the state liquor store in Hinsdale as “a two-trick pony” — two types of retail that Brattleboro has moved beyond.
When the existing Walmart
moves up Route 119 and re-opens as a Super Walmart that sells groceries, it might cut into Brattleboro’s grocery trade, but Muldrow doesn’t anticipate any of the town’s grocery stores clos-ing as a result.
Rarely does Muldrow see a faraway zip code — a sign of a singular customer, one whose movements can be tracked with obvious precision — hop from shop to shop as it did down-town. alaska and Hawaii ap-peared in the survey — a good sign, he said, that tells him visi-tors coming downtown tend to browse, whereas locals tend to “target shop.”
“Downtown Brattleboro is a specialty district friendly to visi-tors, yet still relevant to locals,” Muldrow said.
Muldrow views this as a strength. He hopes people in town will take a long look at how best to maintain a balance between services for locals and services for visitors. He used the Latchis as a symbol of this bal-ance. The Latchis Hotel caters to visitors, yet the theater and Flat Street Brew pub and Tap Room Restaurant welcome both.
“and that’s a wonderful mix,” he said.
Muldrow hopes residents realize they have a “high-per-forming” downtown that still has staple retail stores like the Brattleboro Food Co-op and Brown & Roberts Hardware.
He hopes residents will think about how their downtown grows and continue to acknowl-edge the engine it is for the eco-nomic health of Brattleboro, “because it could be taken for granted,” he said.
Downtown will face a few challenges, such as the New England-wide challenge of flat population growth.
But, Muldrow feels there is one “fun” strategy challenge ahead for Brattleboro, a town high on quality.
“How can Brattleboro con-tinue to play in the big league? Because it is big league,” Muldrow said.
Livermore said she looks forward to reading arnett Muldrow’s full report in January and will use the data to apply for grants toward long-term eco-nomic development strategies.
By Olga PetersThe Commons
VERNON—The regulatory wheels of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission continue to turn as the clock ticks down toward the expiration of Vermont Yankee’s federal operating license in 2012.
The NRC has appointed Sarah Rich as the new resident inspector at Entergy’s VY plant. She joins NRC Senior Resident Inspector Dave Spindler.
“Sarah’s Rich’s education, training and commitment to safety will help the NRC in its mission of protecting people and the environment by help-ing ensure that Vermont Yankee meets the high standards set by the agency,” said NRC Region I administrator Bill Dean.
previous to her October as-signment to VY, Rich had been based at the NRC Region I of-fice in King of prussia, pa., where she conducted a “variety of inspections.”
according to an NRC press release, Rich joined the com-mission in August 2008 after earning a bachelor’s degree in nuclear science and engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Rich graduated from the agen-cy’s Nuclear Safety professional Development program, a two-year program that provides spe-cialized training in nuclear safety and a broad perspective of NRC regulatory activities. She has also completed the NRC’s inspector qualification program.
Nuclear science combines Rich’s interest in physics and
engineering, she said. The Massachusetts native said she decided on the field after a high school field trip to a local re-search reactor.
The NRC assigns at least two resident inspectors to each U.S. commercial nuclear plant. They act as the commission’s “eyes and ears” conducting inspec-tions, monitor work projects, and interact with plant workers and the public.
Resident inspectors, accord-ing to NRC regulations, rotate from one plant to another with a maximum of seven years spent in each location. Rich will assume the post held by Junior Resident Inspector Heather Jones.
Though the federal licensing process proceeds, the plant will still need legislative approval for the state public Service Board to issue a Certificate of public good, required for VY to operate beyond 2012. The state Senate voted not to issue that approval in February [The Commons, March].
NRC assigns new resident inspector to VY
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she said. “That would certainly be a shame.”
Murphy does not see the DBF lease with green Mountain Railroad changing before it ex-pires in the spring.
“We have contracts with amtrak and Destination Bellows Falls,” Murphy said, so the de-pot building will still be in use.
Fox noted the Waypoint Center had been designed and built with intermodal transpor-tation in mind.
“Long buses can pull up [and discharge their passengers] with ease in the parking lot,” Fox said. Shelter and facilities are available.
He noted that rail passengers could potentially embark and disembark there as well.
Fox remarked that should the Depot fall out of use by both the railroad and the intermodal cen-ter, “there are many uses it could
be put to that would celebrate its cultural heritage.”
However, Fox noted, “it would have to be a function that makes sense economically.”
A victim of success Murphy said Vermont Rail
Systems made the choice to fo-cus on moving freight on the Bellows Falls to Rutland line because “it comes down to not enough room on the rails for two trains at a time.”
“We’ve gotten so busy with our freight-related traffic that we need the extra scheduling freedom to accommodate in-creased Vermont Rail System freight traffic,” she said. “With the schedules for passenger train employees mandated by the Federal Railroad administration, it’s difficult to find people who can work the necessary sched-ules to accommodate passenger
rail traffic.”Besides scheduling, Murphy
said there there aren’t enough sidings — or pull-off spots for passing trains — to accommo-date the scenic trains as well as the freight traffic, and that it would be too expensive to build them.
In a previous interview, Murphy said that Vermont Rail Systems’ main focus is freight hauling, which provides the railroad’s major source of reve-nue. green Mountain Railroad cut back service for the green Mountain Flyer to Fridays only this year, and relocated the pas-senger service offices to White River Junction.
While the green Mountain Flyer is being discontinued, Vermont Rail Systems still of-fers scenic train service in White River Junction and occasional special trains in Burlington.
By Anne GallowaySpecial to The Commons
MONTpELIER—The last time Elizabeth Bankowski served as a member of a gubernatorial transition team was in 1984 — the year Madeleine Kunin be-came governor. Bankowski was Kunin’s campaign manager and became her chief of staff. Back then her liaison to gov. Richard Snelling’s office was Tim Hayward.
as she works to help gov.-elect peter Shumlin establish his footing for his ascent to the Fifth Floor of the pavilion Office Building on Jan. 6, Bankowski is working with Hayward again. This time, he is gov. Jim Douglas’ chief of staff, while Bankowski is representing Shumlin’s transition team.
“It’s quite a bookend, and it’s very poignant for me,” Bankowski said in an interview.
The seasoned political opera-tive who worked for the Clinton administration in the early 1990s said she identifies with alex MacLean, Shumlin’s campaign manager, and now his director of civil and military affairs. “I was older than alex when I did this, but I was still someone of that generation.”
Twenty - s i x yea r s ago , Bankowski said Kunin’s elec-tion was also “determined the next day with 50.2 percent of the vote.”
“I have just felt a real sister-hood with alex and what she was doing,” Bankowski said. “and to stand there with her and the gov-ernor-elect, I thought, where did those years go? When I did be-come the older wise one. When did that happen? I have to re-mind them not to worry about what they didn’t know, because I didn’t know those things either when I started.”
Shumlin named Bankowski and former gov. Howard Dean as the co-chairs of his transition team on Nov. 4. Bankowski has taken the lead on the transition duties, managing the “launch,” as she calls it, from the second floor of the Dewey building at 128 State St. in Montpelier.
The transition has three main objectives, she said: Hiring mem-bers of the cabinet, planning the inaugural and reaching out to Vermonters who didn’t support Shumlin’s candidacy.
at the moment, the most im-mediate exigency is combing through resumes.
From her vantage point in the recently renovated Queen anne- style Victorian home (which fea-tures shiny copper roof flashing) — on loan to Shumlin and the transition staff of a half-dozen paid and volunteer staffers — Bankowski tries to stay ahead of the resume curve. So far, the team has received “hundreds” of inquiries from job seekers. She starts her day at 6 a.m. (waiting outside the Capitol grounds cof-fee shop until it opens) with a large coffee and a small.
“I come here and I put the lights on and I say good morning house,” Bankowski said. “I try to list the five things I’m going to get done before everything else that takes me away from those things. and then I try to work through those things during the day, and the day flies.”
The next thing she knows, it is 8 p.m., and Bankowski, who lives in Brattleboro, retires to her daughter’s house in Montpelier.
Bankowski is not only helping Shumlin find a transition team, she’s also been instrumental in helping the governor-elect him-self transition from his “transac-tional” role as the president pro tem of the Senate to his strategic role of chief executive.
Her biggest task in that de-partment? Trying to get Shumlin to stop using his cell phone. Bankowski jokes that she’s in-troduced the governor-elect to a 12-step program to address his separation-anxiety issues. The first step? awareness. Success, so far has been elusive. Shumlin is in constant communication via cell.
“Everyone in Vermont has the number,” Bankowski said. “The issue with that phone — I’m just being zen about it — who doesn’t have his phone number? It’s never far from his body.”
Bankowski said Shumlin and his team are carefully selecting candidates for the 50 or so key positions in state government be-cause they know they will have an impact on policy for years to come.
“What change are we re-ally trying to bring about, and how do we affect that now?” Bankowski asks rhetorically. “It’s not just what’s happen-ing under the dome this week, it’s got broader implications. He’s well aware of that. Both he and alex, they’re both aware of that; they’re beginning to un-derstand that the dimensions of this are very different (from the campaign).”
Bankowski said at first she was determined to use Shumlin’s ti-tle, but she soon relented.
“These are offices that de-serve respect, and my intent was to address him as the governor-elect … but I just can’t do it, he’s peter,” Bankowski said. “and then I thought I really like that about him. He is in your space as peter, he’s also the governor-elect, and I have realized myself that those aren’t contradictory. and that’s the whole issue of the phone and everything. He just is peter. He doesn’t want to give that (his identity) up, and hope-fully — and again in Vermont be-cause government is so accessible and the governor is so accessible — unlike many of his colleagues, he won’t have to give that up.”
Shumlin doesn’t vacillate be-tween moods, and he brings a steady equanimity to the po-tential frustrations of the job, she said. For example, his re-turn trip from a recent National governors association meet-ing in Colorado Springs, Colo., looked like it would be delayed. Bankowski said he wasn’t dis-mayed by the schedule change, and that’s typical of his generally positive, calm attitude.
“This is what I’m enjoying about his presence,” Bankowski said. “It’s just a great trait. I think he has confidence and optimism, and that’s exactly where we want him to start.”
Building Shumlin’s team is her first priority. Bankowski said the objective is to find good people to fill “slots, not silos.” Shumlin has said he wants cre-ative thinkers who can work across departments.
“The governor is really en-trepreneurial, and that’s the ap-proach he brings,” Bankowski said. “He wants people to push through walls.”
Bankowski said a number of the applicants are well known
to the transition team. “I have somewhat observed that if there are three different people recom-mending the same person, and they’re not people who talk to each other regularly, that person gets on my list,” Bankowski said. “and that’s been happening. Lawrence Miller (the new secre-tary of the agency of Commerce and Community Development) – in our first conversation — said I couldn’t possibly. His second response was, ‘well, maybe.’”
appointees often take a pay cut, Bankowski said. Douglas administration officials who are hoping to stay on are submitting resumes for review, she said, and they have been asked what they hope to accomplish under the new administration.
“I’m very grateful about peo-ple’s openness, given that there can be no illusions about the challenges that we’ll face, and they know that,” Bankowski said. “Hopefully, the enthusiasm peo-ple feel going in is going to trans-late to people and organizations. These have been tough times for them, and I’m hoping that it is a fresh start.”
priority No. 2 is translating campaign promises regarding broadband, health care, cor-rections reform and energy into policies. “It’s our job to get those things teed up and ready, which is what we are doing,” Bankowski said.
Douglas administration offi-cials “have gone out of their way” to be helpful, she said.
“Everyone has been more than helpful, and I don’t know what we’d do without their support because we have virtually no re-sources,” Bankowski said.
She is especially delighted with the office arrangements — typically transition teams are squeezed into whatever space is available, and in this instance the Shumlin team has the run of a whole house.
“I have been so grateful for the way this was set up for us. It’s just the best about government especially in Vermont it doesn’t matter what party or differences (there might be), there’s just such a commitment to getting it done right. The people who are leaving state services are very invested in doing well for Vermonters, and they know doing well for us is do-ing well for Vermonters.”
aNNE gaLLOWaY/SpECIaL TO THE COMMONS
Elizabeth Bankowski stands behind Governor-elect Peter Shumlin. Bankowski is co-chair of Shumlin’s transition team.
BILL ROSE/SpECIaL TO THE COMMONS
Reed Webster of Bellows Falls and his granddaughter, Savannah Rose of West Dummerston, ride the Green Mountain Flyer’s Santa Express train between Bellows Falls and Chester. Savannah is the daughter of Amber and Bill Rose.
In transition Role in Shumlin’s administration is a bookend for Liz Bankowski
T h E C O M M O N S • Wednesday, December 1, 2010 NEWS 13
bELLOWS fALLSCOUNT Y & REGION
BFMS plans ski swap, sports equipment sale
BELLOWS FaLLS — The Bellows Falls Middle School pTO is sponsoring a ski swap and sports equipment sale on Saturday, Dec. 4, from 9 a.m.-noon, in the gymnasium at the middle school.
This is a chance to get used winter equipment, such as skis,
boots, snowboards, ice skates, clothing, and more, for a great price. Donations and consign-ment equipment is welcome and must be in working condition and no older than five years old. No straight skis, please. For more information, call 802-463-1558.
All Souls Church hosts holiday bazaar
BRaTTLEBORO — The an-nual Holiday Bazaar at the all Souls Unitarian-Universalist Church will again offer unique artisan wreaths and greens on Saturday, Dec. 4, from 9 a.m.-1 p.m.
Handmade swags, wreaths, table arrangements made from locally cut fresh greens and nat-ural wonders will be available to decorate the largest and small-est of spaces. The berries, cones and other natural contributions adorn the wreaths make an ar-tistic statement celebrating the beauty of our Vermont environ-ment. The hand-made wreaths attract many returning customers and it is not uncommon to find a line waiting at the door for peo-ple to get first choice. poinsettias will also be for sale.
Lunch is served from 11 a.m. until 1 p.m., with a menu offer-ing soups, bread, and desserts. There will be baked goods in-cluding traditional holiday pas-tries and breads, cakes, cookies, and candies.
Children can make their own natural wonders for gifts at the Elves’ Workshop for Kids, and enjoy a visit from Santa at noon.
a silent auction will run con-currently with gift certificates to local restaurants, musical offer-ings, artwork, books, and more, as well as a raffle of their historic Universalist quilt.
all proceeds benefit the all Souls Church Unitarian-Universalist at West Village Meeting House, whose build-ing is also used for the garland School and as a gathering for special occasions, commu-nity events, and conferences. For more information, call 802-254-9377.
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By Anne GallowaySpecial to The Commons
In chronicling headline-mak-ing the old-fashioned way — in print — Vermont public Television tells the story of the newspaper industry through interviews, archival images and re-enactments in a new docu-mentary that debuts on Dec. 1.
Headline Vermont chronicles the art of newspapering from the frontier era to the present and features interviews with histo-rians and journalists, including Nick Monsarrat, who started his 40-year career in Vermont jour-nalism at the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus and the Rutland Herald.
Recent changes in the world of newspapering, including the impact of Internet publishing on print, are also addressed in Headline Vermont, which
highlights the continued success of community weeklies across the state, despite a marked de-cline in the news coverage pro-vided by the state’s largest daily newspapers.
Jeff potter, editor of The Commons in Brattleboro, a weekly newspaper founded in 2004, is featured in the film.
“Vermont is unique in its sense of community,” potter says in the film. “It’s a very in-timate state, and that gives us the opportunity for very inti-mate news.”
Headline Vermont also fea-tures historian Howard Coffin, who earned his writing chops as a reporter for the Herald as well. Coffin explains the state’s pas-sion for newspapers this way: “There seems to be something in Vermonters’ blood … maybe a little printer’s ink.”
That printer’s ink began to
run from the time colonial-ists began to inhabit the green Mountains.
perhaps the most famous newspaperman from Vermont, Matthew Lyon, made his mark when he criticized the adminis-tration of John Adams in 1798. Under the alien and Sedition act, Lyon was imprisoned for seditious libel. He was elected to Congress from jail, and, after four months of incarceration, he emerged as a champion of the First amendment. (another editor from the colonial period, anthony Haswell, who printed the Vermont Gazette, the state’s first weekly newspaper, also went to jail for publishing an ar-ticle in support of Lyon.)
The producer of Headline Vermont, Daniel J. Lyons, of Brattleboro, said in a press re-lease: “It may surprise view-ers to find that the idea of
newspapers as pillars of de-mocracy is fairly recent. Early papers often sprang up to ad-vocate for causes, not to report objectively. They were packed margin to margin with adver-tisements, fiction and poetry. They included spicy stories of the rough-and-tumble young state that would never make it into today’s papers.”
Much of that “spicy” history is recounted by Monsarrat, who had a front-row seat for much of Vermont’s recent history.
He covered Barre and Montpelier city governments for the Times Argus from 1969-1970, then served as a reporter for the Vermont press Bureau for both the 1971 and 1972 leg-islative sessions and 1972 elec-tions. He was the editorial page editor of the Times Argus until 1985 when he became man-aging editor of the Herald. In
1988, he embarked on a 20-year teaching career as an adjunct professor of journalism at St. Michael’s College. Monsarrat was the editorial page editor of the Burlington Free Press from 1995 to 1996.
Windham County connections
a freelance television pro-ducer, director of photogra-phy and cinematographer, Lyons lives with his family in Brattleboro, and several of his professional colleagues and friends — like Frederic Noyes, access coordinator at Brattleboro Community Television, Tim Wessel of Vermont Digital productions and Wessel’s son, Cal glover-Wessel — make cameo ap-pearances in the production’s historic re-enactments. (Wessel said he appears in the film as
a runaway slave, “a role I was born for.”)
Lyons has worked with a list of nationally recognized clients, including National geographic, pBS, Discovery Channel, TLC, the History Channe l , Showt ime , the Sundance Channel, and pBS, where he worked on the net-work’s Scientific American Frontiers and Nova series.
With additional reporting by Commons staff. Headline Vermont premieres at 8 p.m., Wednesday, Dec. 1, and will be rebroadcast at 8:30 p.m., Dec. 3 and 6 p.m., Dec. 5. The project was funded by Vermont Public Television, the Vermont Humanities Council and the Windham Foundation.
about doing her admissions essay in 10 chapters, each “designed to appeal to an admissions offi-cer at a highly selective univer-sity.” Dean Dorman, who reads her letter, is impressed and gives Tapioca permission to send in her unique long essay.
Between its chapters, the book contains the correspondence between Dean Dorman and Tapioca. He becomes interested in her as more than just an ad-missions prospect.
Thompson describes the book as a “spoof and comic relief.” He understands the stress and anxi-ety that goes into the admissions process.
“Some kids send out five, six, or 10 applications. It can get pretty hairy,” he says.
Getting In is Thompson’s first foray into the complex world of self-publishing, which he describes as being “much more challenging” than regular publication.
“The thing is, once you get your foot in the door with regu-lar publishing, you just send your agent the manuscript and he or she sends it to a publisher who likes your stuff. Then the author gets a call saying ‘You have an offer.’ and that’s it. With self-publishing, there are all sorts of steps that involve a great deal of computer work. Thousands of books are being written that are never seen by publishers. Self-publishing does cost money; we took the cheapest route we could find,” Thompson said.
He’s not shy about including strong messages in his books, and that’s earned him some crit-icism from adults who feel that parents are portrayed unfairly in his stories.
“There are lots of things I feel really strongly about,” he said, “ranging from safe sex to kids being misunderstood by their parents. Group 6 has a very big message: Some parents really misunderstand their kids. The book is about six kids whose par-ents have said ‘I could kill that kid!’ Though it’s basically black humor, it points to the fact that for various reasons, sometimes parents don’t like the boys and girls they end up with. There are a lot of good parents in my books, but I don’t hesitate to point out that some can be pretty dreadful. In my books, I try to tell the truth about many of the things teenagers have to face and deal with.”
Thompson is now at work on a sequel to Getting In. “I’m work-ing on a book called Getting Out, about Tapioca’s senior year at Riddle interviewing for jobs,” he said.
In the meantime, Getting In can be purchased on amazon.com for $14.95.
By Nell CurleyThe Commons
BELLOWS FaLLS—Julian F. Thompson, author of 18 young adult novels, including The Grounding of Group 6, and the newly self-published author of Getting In, says he is one of a small number of adults who ac-tually likes and gets along with teenagers. as such a person, he enjoys writing about and for them.
He founded and ran an al-ternative high school for seven years, during which he learned more about the demographic he would later write for.
“I started life as a teacher and
after teaching here and there, I joined with a group of kids to start an alternative high school, which I directed for seven years with great enjoyment. With one of the teachers from that school, I left teaching, and she became my wife. all during my teaching career, I had written short stories and even a couple of novels that never saw the light of day, but were very useful in helping me to understand what I didn’t know about writing,” Thompson said.
From his experience working with adolescents, Thompson was inspired to write what he thought would be a book that might be published.
“I decided I would write about
something I knew a lot about – teenage kids. I sent a friend from college who was an agent man-uscripts of two novels. He said, ‘You’ve written a young adult novel.’ I said, ‘What’s that?’ and he told me. One of those books was The Grounding of Group 6, which became a Ya classic. Lately, the Ya market is full of books about vampires and zom-bies; mine tend to be more about regular kids.”
Thompson was inspired to write his latest book, Getting In, about how one ingenious ap-plicant induced a letter of ac-ceptance from america’s most selective university, partly by his experience as the director of an
alternative high school.“One of the chores I put on
myself was advising kids about college admissions, which col-leges might be a good fit for them. When the school had to make up transcripts for kids, I decided to do something very dif-ferent. I consulted a friend who was then Dean of admissions at Yale about how they would han-dle our transcript, which didn’t look like any other. He said, ‘It’s going to stop the process in its tracks; we’re going to have to se-riously look at what you send us. I think you’re on to something.’ I wrote to 43 other colleges tell-ing them what we planned to do, and only one wrote back to say
they didn’t like the idea.”Getting In centers around
Tapioca Strangeways, a girl from Rising gorge, Vermont who wants to be accepted by the very selective Riddle University. She writes to the admissions director
Brattleboro filmmaker produces documentary on the history of newspapering in Vermont
Pick me! Pick me!Bellows Falls novelist writes a different take on the college admissions process
14 T h E C O M M O N S • Wednesday, December 1, 2010
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E x o t i c T h a i C u i s i n e
BRaTTLEBORO—The Vermont Jazz Center will be swinging into the holiday sea-son again with the fabulous sounds of the big band era pre-sented by their own 17-piece big band accompanied by spe-cial guest vocalists on Friday, Dec. 3 at 8 p.m. at the Jazz Center on 72 Cotton Mill Hill.
The big band concert has become an annual tradition for the VJC and is truly an expres-sion of community. It includes some neighbors you might not have known were excellent musicians like trombonist Bob Thies from Hotel pharmacy, BUHS Music Director Steve Rice on drums and younger performers arthur Davis on trumpet (from BUHS) and anna Johnson on trombone (from Keene State).
Other Big Band members include some of the areas finest jazz musicians includ-ing featured soloists Charlie Schneeweis on trumpet and Scott Mullett on saxophone and this year The Big Band will be catering especially to dancers as they interpret ar-rangements made famous by some of the swing era’s most famous bandleaders. a sampling of the program in-cludes Take the A Train writ-ten by Billy Strayhorn for the Duke Ellington Band, Count Basie’s All of Me, Lionel Hampton’s Flying Home, Benny goodman’s Jersey Bounce, Thelonious Monk’s Little Rootie Tootie and of course, a selection of Mambos for Latin dance fans.
Our special guest vocal-ist this year is Boston’s own amanda Carr, who Nat
Hentoff, in The Wall Street Journal calls “a true jazz singer in a time of wannabes.” She’s the daughter of a big band vocalist (Nancy Carr) and a big band trumpeter (Nick Capezuto, most known for Herb pomeroy Band). She be-gan her singing career at a very young age, singing and play-ing keyboards in rock and pop bands. She initially rejected her calling, but in recent years she has acquiesced to her nat-ural tendencies and focused on creating fresh interpreta-tions of the great american Songbook.
Carr will sing a selection of big band arrangements of familiar tunes like Over the Rainbow, Blue Moon and Almost Like Being in Love. She will be joined by resident vo-calist and VJC Board member, Mark anagnostopoulus, a lo-cal favorite whose enjoyment of jazz is contagious. He will offer his upbeat interpretation of All Right, Okay (you win, I’m in love with you).
There will also be tasty desserts, beer, wine and soft drinks available to make your evening especially sweet. You can even reserve seating at a table so you will have a place to rest your wine glass when you are not on the dance floor.
Tickets are $25 for general admission, $28 to reserve a ta-ble (limited seating, so reserve early). Tickets are available on line at www.vtjazz.org or at In The Moment Record Shop at 143 Main St. Call for reser-vations or information at 802 254-9088. This concert venue is handicapped accessible.
Music
• Sweetback Sisters at Hooker-Dunham: Twilight Music presents The Sweetback Sisters Country Christmas Sing-along at Hooker-Dunham Theater & gallery on Friday, Dec. 3 at 8 p.m.
Led by zara Bode and Emily Miller, New York’s premier al-ternative country swing band performs a wide range of holi-day music, from well-loved Christmas carols to classic win-ter-themed songs to lesser-known country Christmas gems. all the songs are presented with the Sweetback Sisters’ signature mix of harmony singing, rollick-ing telecaster and twin fiddling along with a healthy dose of holi-day cheer.
Words are provided so that ev-eryone can sing along with zara, Emily, Stefan amidon (drums), Jesse Milnes (fiddle, guitar), Ross “Rolling Thunder” Bellenoit (guitar, lap steel) and peter Bitenc (acoustic bass).
The Sweetback Sisters’ high-energy stage show reveals the players’ deep roots in tradi-tional american music while at the same time betraying their youth. The band’s line-up in-cludes some of the rising young talent in today’s old-time and traditional country music scenes: Stefan amidon of Brattleboro’s amidon Family and assembly; two-time West Virginia state fid-dle champion Jesse Milnes; Ross Bellenoit, who recently finished a tour with amos Lee opening for Bob Dylan; and peter Bitenc, of Heather & The Barbarians and several other cutting edge bands.
The band was chosen as one of six finalists to play on A Prairie Home Companion as part of the program’s 2007 People in Their Twenties talent contest, and more recently, began a partner-ship with independent record label Signature Sounds. Their latest CD Chicken Ain’t Chicken mixes country classics with a handful of new songs, all topped with a healthy dash of winking irreverence and freewheeling enthusiasm.
Hooker-Dunham Theater & gallery is located at 139 Main St. in downtown Brattleboro. Tickets for the show are $16 gen-eral admission/ $14 students and seniors. For ticket reservations and information, call 802-254-9276. For more information, visit www.thesweetbacksisters.com and www.hookerdunham.org.
• Nordic Harmoni joins Christmas in Weston celebra-tion: as part of the Christmas in Weston (www.westonvt.com) festivities, the community is in-vited to Weston’s Old parish Church to hear a performance of seasonal music by Nordic Harmoni on Saturday, Dec. 4, at 1:30 p.m.
N o r d i c H a r m o n i i s a Scandinavian-american chorus of more than 20 voices, whose Sankta Lucia pageants and other local performances have been extremely popular ever since the group’s formation in 2001. The program will include sea-sonal Christmas songs, a brief Sankta Lucia pageant, as well as a community sing-a-long of tradi-tional Christmas carols. Nordic Harmoni members belong to the american Union of Swedish Singers and are directed by Ken Olsson.
The Lucia pageant, a Nordic festival, commemorates the martyrdom of an early Italian Christian, who is represented in the pageant by a young woman dressed in white wearing a crown of burning candles. Saturday’s Lucia will be Stephanie arndt.
In Sweden, the celebration of the Lucia pageant is considered to be the true beginning of the Christmas season. There is no specified cost to attend and par-ticipate; any free-will offerings will graciously be accepted.
• C o h e n , M e r f e l d a t M a r l b o r o C o l l e ge : The Marlboro College Music for A Sunday Afternoon series pres-ents a performance by cellist paul Cohen and pianist Robert Merfeld at 3 p.m. on Dec. 5 in Ragle Hall.
The first half of the program will consist of J.S. Bach’s Cello Suite #1 in G Major, a premier of David Walther’s composition, Crumb Cakes, for solo electric cello, and Robert Schumann’s solo piano piece, Waldszenen. after the intermission, past members of the apple Hill Chamber players, Betty Hauck on viola and Moby pearson on violin will join Cohen and Merfeld for a reading of the Piano Quartet in A Major by Johannes Brahms.
Music for a Sunday afternoon concerts are free and open to the public. all performances during the 2010-11 season are dedicated to Luis Batlle, who is retiring from the Marlboro College mu-sic faculty after 30 years. Batlle
has handpicked many of his fa-vorite performers for the sea-son. a complete schedule can be found at www.marlboro.edu/batlle. In the event of inclement weather, call 802-451-7151 for cancellation information.
• Westmoreland Town Band in Westminster: On Sunday, Dec. 5, the Westmoreland (N.H.) Town Band will give its annual Christmas concert at the Westminster Congregational Church on Route 5 from 4 to 5:30 p.m.
There is no admission charge, but free will donations will be accepted.
• Holiday concert at Main Steeet Arts: Main Street arts will offer Songs for a Winter’s Eve, its annual musical gift to the community, Friday and Saturday, Dec. 10 and 11, at 7 p.m. at the Saxtons River com-munity arts center.
The adult chorus will offer songs of the season, includ-ing Christmas Time is Here from A Charlie Brown Christmas and andy Beck’s version of In the Bleak Midwinter. an enthusiastic 30-member children’s chorus will add its own magical touch to the program.
The evening will include a community sing and will con-clude with the traditional Celtic blessing sung to a special light display. Elizabeth giguere-Kimball is director of the adult chorus, and the children’s chorus is directed by Valerie Kosednar.
There is no admission charge for the concert, but donations for Main Street arts are wel-come. Those attending are en-couraged to bring a donation of non-perishable food for Our place Drop-in Center in Bellows Falls. The Jelly Bean Tree crafts cooperative located in the MSa building will be open from 6 to 7 p.m. prior to the concert for holiday shopping.
Further information is avail-able by contacting MSA at (802) 869-2960, e-mailing [email protected] or accessing the center’s Web site at www.MainStreetarts.org.
• P i a n i s t Ja c q u e l i n e Schwab plays in Bellows Falls: Celebrate the holidays in traditional style and improvised with extraordinary skill and nu-ance. Jacqueline Schwab, pia-nist, will take up the keys of the Steinway, nine foot grand con-cert piano in a holiday concert at the Immanuel Episcopal Church, 20 Church St., at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 11.
She will perform her own ar-rangements of vintage american carols, as well as american “heart songs” and dance tunes from Mark Twain’s era, plus some contemporary Scottish and English tunes.
Chosen by the renowned Ken Burns for numerous public tele-vision documentaries due to the emotional expression in her play-ing, Schwab has performed on the soundtracks for the grammy award-winning The Civil War, the Emmy award-winning Baseball and Mark Twain, among others.
Admission is $17 for adults ($13 for seniors and children under 12) in advance and $20 ($15) at the door. Tickets are available at Village Square Booksellers (Bellows Falls), Toadstool Bookshop (Keene, N.H.), Brattleboro Books, Misty Valley Books (Chester), and at www.brattleborotix.com or available at the door. For more information, call 802-463-3100.
• Live at the Met presents Don Carlo: The Metropolitan Opera’s first new production of Verdi’s Don Carlo since 1979 will continue The Met: Live in HD series, transmitting the live performance on Saturday, Dec. 11 at 12:30 p.m. and an Encore presentation Sunday, Dec. 12 at 11 a.m. at the Latchis Theatre in Brattleboro.
This production of Verdi’s monumental work — a dark and intense epic in which love, war, politics, and religion com-bine in Spain at the height of the Inquisition— stars Roberto alagna, Marina poplavskaya, Simon Keenlyside, and Ferruccio Furlanetto.
It is directed by Nicholas Hytner, the artistic director of London’s National Theatre. Don Carlo will be conducted by philadelphia Orchestra Music Director Designate Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who led last sea-son’s Live in HD transmission of Carmen.
Met star soprano Deborah Voigt, currently in rehearsals for the title role of La Fanciulla Del West, is the HD host for Don Carlo. gary Halvorson directs the transmission and Jay David Saks is music producer.
• Open Music Collective salutes Billie Holiday: On Dec. 12th at 5 p.m., the Open Music Collective will be hosting A Tribute to Lady Day. This con-cert will feature five vocalists who participated in OMC’s vo-cal class dedicated to the music of Billie Holiday.
Sarah Ellis, anushka peres, patti Smith, Molly Steinmark, and anne Thomas will sing se-lections from Billie Holiday’s repertoire with musicians Jamie MacDonald (bass), Kate parsons (piano), and special guests Ben Carr (drums), and Mike Wakefield (saxophone).
Billie Holiday is known as one of jazz’s finest female vocalists. Her use of phrasing, musicality, and emotional vulnerability are high standards most singers as-pire to reach. These five vocal-ists have worked hard on these
qualities throughout this course, each speaking to a different as-pect of Billie’s persona as a vo-calist and a musician.
Tickets are (a suggested) $5 at available at the door. For any questions regarding this concert or other OMC events or courses, visit www.openmusiccollective.org or call 802-275-5054. OMC is located in the Cotton Mill in Brattleboro in Studio a335.
Books
• Lisa McCormick releases 3-Chord Christmas song-book, DVD: Singer/songwriter Lisa McCormick celebrates the release of her first songbook and DVD with a book-signing and singalong bash at The Book Cellar, 120 Main St., Brattleboro on Friday, Dec. 3, from 5-7 p.m.
The Easiest Holiday Songs Ever for Guitar: 12 Holiday Classics You Can Play with Just 3 Easy Chords features simple guitar arrangements us-ing just the chords g, C, and D.
a Brattleboro resident and one of the lead instructors at online guitar lesson giant guitarTricks.com, McCormick specializes in teaching guitar to beginners and intermediates. McCormick will offer free mini-lessons at the book-signing event, teach-ing songs from the holiday songbook.
• Archer Mayor at The Book Cellar: The Book Cellar wel-comes the return of archer Mayor on Saturday, Dec. 4, from 2-3:30 p.m. Mayor is the author of the highly acclaimed, Vermont-based mystery series featuring detective Joe gunther. Mayor will be in the store chat-ting with folks and signing cop-ies of his new novel, Red Herring. Copies of Mayor’s most recent paperback release, The Price of Malice, as well as the rest of his catalog will also be available for purchase.
In Red Herring, VBI (Vermont Bureau of Investigation) head Joe gunther and his team are called in to investigate a series of vio-lent deaths that appear unrelated
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until telltale clues reveal a link-age between them and that all of the deaths are, in fact, murders. Faced with more questions than answers, the VBI must plumb the depths of every suspect’s past, every victim’s most intimate de-tails, and examine each piece of evidence down to the smallest detail — an examination which includes a trip to the Brookhaven
National Lab on Long Island and an exploration of cutting edge fo-rensic technology.
The Book Cellar is located at 120 Main St, in downtown Brattleboro. For more informa-tion about this event or to reserve your copy of Red Herring, contact the store at 802-254-6810 or www.bookcellarvt.com.
Visual arts
• “5 Artists, 3 Days” exhibit: artists petria Mitchell, Mallory Lake, Jim giddings, Carolyn Dinicola Fawley and Bobbi angell will hold a joint show, “5 Artists, 3 Days,” at the Gallery at Headroom Stages, 17 Elliot St., Brattleboro, on Dec. 10-12.
An opening reception will be held on Friday, Dec. 10, from 5:30-7:30. The studio will be open on Saturdan and Sunday, Dec. 11-12, from noon-5 p.m., both days.
For more information, call 802-257-4021.
Jim Giddings Lake Dinicola-FawleyAngell
Petria Mitchell
T h E C O M M O N S • Wednesday, December 1, 2010 ThE ARTS 15
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BRaTTLEBORO—The first Friday of the month has come around again, so Brattleboro’s gallery Walk celebration of the arts will liven up the downtown and a few satellite locations within a short drive of Main Street.
There are 47 listed venues, some with meet-the-artist recep-tions or live music to enhance the experience for art lovers.
New or rejoining venues in the lineup this month include Brattleboro Historical Society at the Beal House, 974 Western ave., West Brattleboro; Trinity Lutheran Church, 161 Western ave., hosting a show of artwork and culinary delights by several members of the congregation; Brooks Memorial Library, 224 Main St., hosting a Holiday Book Sale during the Walk and on Saturday; Marilyn Buhlmann’s gallery 215 in the Latchis com-plex on Flat St.; Maple Leaf Music, 23 Elliot St., hosting an exhibit of paintings by owner
Kate Spencer; Inferno, the for-mer Weathervane Music Hall at 19 Elliot St.; the Book Cellar, 120 Main St., hosting a holiday guitar book-signing and sing- and play-along with singer-song-writer Lisa McCormick; The River Garden, 157 Main St., where the asian Cultural Center is presenting some martial arts and calligraphy demonstrations, as well as a video installation; and Biologic Integrated Healthcare, 205 Main St., where photo-graphs by Nathaniel W. Casey are on exhibit.
Official gallery Walk hours are 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., though most venues are open earlier and several remain open later into the evening. patrons are encouraged to begin their artis-tic explorations a little early and stop on the way into town from West Brattleboro at american Traders, 257 Marlboro Rd. (Rte. 9); the Tasha Tudor Exhibit and the Historical Society at the Jeremiah Beal House, 974
Western Ave., open till 7; C.X. Silver Gallery, 814 Western Ave., and Trinity Lutheran Church, 161 Western ave. Or catch an early bite and enjoy the exhibit at Danielle’s Sandwich Shop (for-merly d’Angelo’s), 648 Putney Rd, just north of town.
The 32-page December edi-tion of the gallery Walk guide and magazine contains complete descriptive listings and a map. This issue’s cover story is about Brian D. Cohen, featured artist at the Catherine Dianich gallery; he is showing watercolors rather than his renowned prints (though there’s a holiday sale of prints on hand).
another article offers informa-tion about an upcoming show and sale by five prominent area artists in a newly repurposed gal-lery space downtown. gallery ads and samples of the art among the listings pages help patrons choose a route for their walking tour. Online explorers may also visit www.galleryWalk.org for
BRaTTLEBORO—Friends of Music at guilford presents its 40th annual Community Messiah Sing on Saturday, Dec. 4, at 1 p.m.
The event takes place at Centre Congregational Church at 193 Main St., which has co-sponsored the event since 1980. This seasonal program provides an opportunity for everyone to join in singing the Christmas choruses and a few choruses from later sections of Handel’s Messiah. Friends of Music pro-vides vocal soloists for the arias, a trumpeter, an organist, and a conductor.
The Sing has always been free of charge to participating singers and other fans of the music who come only to listen, with dona-tions encouraged to help cover the event’s expenses. Since 2007, however, all door donations have been divided equally between the Brattleboro area Drop In Center and Morningside Shelter, two local agencies serving the homeless.
again this season, the Drop In Center will park its van at the church from about noon to 4 p.m. on the day of the Sing, to receive donations of food and new, unwrapped toys; win-ter outerwear, longjohns, and warm socks; blankets, towels, and sleeping bags; as well as cash from the general public shopping during Brattleboro’s Holly Days
weekend.Soloists include two veterans
and two newcomers to the event: Evelyn McLean, alto, sang the soprano arias at our first Sing in 1971 and for the next 19 sea-sons, then joined the roster as alto soloist in 1995-97 and again in 2007. She also stepped into the role unexpectedly in 2003, when a snowstorm prevented the advertised soloist from get-ting to Brattleboro. Her 26th appearance this season is a Sing record that has little chance of being surpassed.
Larrimore Crockett, bass, debuted at this event in 1982 and performed for six of the next eight years, then three times more recently. New to the Sing are amy green, so-prano, featured in Friends of Music’s “Telephone Operas” program in 2009 and many other regional music theater productions, and John Coons, a tenor from portland, Maine, and Boston who recently earned his Master’s in Voice performance from the University of Southern Maine and has performed a wide variety of operatic roles for many New England-based companies.
Returning as participants for another year are trumpet solo-ist Charlie Schneeweis, skilled in many musical genres, and or-ganist William McKim, playing for a 26th season with the Sing. Conductor anthony Speranza
is leading the event for a 14th season, having served in an un-broken string of years from 1989 through 2001.
Singers can bring their own score or borrow one at the door; a few copies are also for sale at the event, and a supply is avail-able for purchase in advance at Maple Leaf Music, 23 Elliot St., Brattleboro. Bottled water is also available at the door; no food or drink other than water is allowed in the sanctuary.
For further information, con-tact the Friends of Music office at 802-254-3600, or visit online at www.fomag.org.
Friends of Music’s annual Christmas at Christ Church pro-gram, entitled “Warm Holiday Wishes,” follows on Friday and Saturday, December 10 and 11, at the historic church on Route 5 in guilford.
This musical journey through warmer climes moves west from Cuba and Costa Rica to the philippines and Hawaii, on to australia, New zealand and papua; Don McLean reads Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory, and a few carols are shared with the audience.
These concerts are also of-fered free of charge, with door donations benefitting equally Friends of Music and the Christ Church Restoration Fund.
current listings, full-color photos of work featured in this month’s exhibits, and an archive of arti-cles published since april 2003.
The printed guide is available at each participating location, the Interstate 91 Welcome Center, the Brattleboro area Chamber of Commerce, and area lodging es-tablishments, among other out-lets convenient for visitors and residents alike. Since stopping at every venue in a single eve-ning is virtually impossible, art lovers are encouraged to choose exhibits of particular interest on gallery Walk night and then re-turn for a personal tour of other shows later in the month.
More details and a map are found online at www.galleryWalk.org and in this month’s issue of the gallery Walk guide and magazine.
g R a F T O N — T h e Vermont Symphony Orchestra Brass Quintet and Robert De Cormier and the vocal group Counterpoint will present music of the season Saturday, Dec. 18, at 5 p.m., at the his-toric White Church.
The musicians will present carols and Renaissance pieces, as well as The Nutcracker Suite, The Christmas Story, and more.
The Brass Quintet will per-form The Cordoban Puppet, a new composition by 18-year-old composer Joshua Clinger of Newport. Clinger, a recent graduate of North County Union High School, is a mu-sic education major at Johnson State College. In writing the piece, Clinger envisioned a “Latin-feeling composition”
with a hip-hop beat, incorpo-rating melodies with charac-teristics of that of Jewish folk songs from Spain.
This will be the last year that Counterpoint is led by De Cormier, its founding di-rector, before Nathaniel Lew assumes the role.
The VSO will also sell its CD, Christmas in Vermont, with organist David Neiweem, which presents a blend of rarely heard gems and sea-sonal favorites. It’s available at concerts and through the VSO office for $15 (plus $3, handling and shipping).
For tickets or additional in format ion , ca l l 800-VSO-9293, ext. 10, or visit www.vso.org.
VSO to perform in GraftonGallery Walk set for Dec. 3
Messiah Sing to benefit the homeless
16 T h E C O M M O N S • Wednesday, December 1, 2010