The Commons/issue of Dec. 8, 2010

Mountain greenery

season for the

Christmas tree farm looks toward its future

By Randolph T. HolhutThe Commons

DUMMERSTON—The mark of a good business is how many repeat customers it has.

There are so many of them at Elysian Hills Tree Farm that they keep an honor roll of the customers that have bought Christmas trees for more than 10 straight seasons. The “tree stars,” as they are called — some of whom have bought trees for 30 straight years — get a free wreath to honor each 10-year milestone.

That’s the kind of loyalty shown to Bill and Mary Lou Schmidt, who have run their farm on Knapp Road for 32 years and sell approximately 1,100 trees each holiday sea-son. Patrons from all over New England, New York, and New Jersey make the trip to Dummerston.

They have plenty of local customers, too, and if you see a large Christmas tree on display in Windham County, chances are it came from Elysian Hills. The Brattleboro town tree in Pliny Park came from the Schmidts’ farm, and several area businesses also get their

RaNDOLPH T. HOLHUT/THE COMMONS

Every tagged tree has a little thank you note attached to it.


Steven Meggiolaro of Dummerston hauls away his family’s Christmas tree as his son Travis stands ready with the rope that will tie it to their car.

season

Brattleboro man blocked from civil rights panelU.S. Commission on Civil Rights ousts Reed from state committee after Reformer commentary hits blogosphere

Bellows Falls chamber makes surprise moveBreaks renegotiations for lease in Waypoint Center

By Jeff PotterThe Commons

BRaTTLEBORO—a civil rights advocate has been ousted from the state advisory panel of the bipartisan U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) after a conservative majority objected to his commentary about the racial undertones of a political slogan in the November election.

The future of the USCCR’s Vermont S ta te adv i sory Committee (SaC) remains in political limbo after the com-mission voted Friday to renew the subcommittee’s charter, but without its chairman, Curtiss Reed Jr.

Reed, of Brattleboro, who had chaired the 17-member SaC since it resumed its operations

in 2008, charged that the deci-sion demonstrates the right-wing politicization of former President George W. Bush’s administra-tion’s political appointments to the civil rights agency.

The unprecedented move, made hours before two of the commissioners’ terms ex-pired, leaves the SaC without a chairman.

“I am really disappointed,” said Reed, the executive director of the Vermont Partnership for Fairness and Diversity.

“I speak for all the members of the SaC,” Reed said. He de-scribed them collectively as a “well-rounded, workable group to focus on Vermont issues” and said the SaC “works well together to address issues in a


Keri Latiolais shows of a tree to the Glejzer family of Putney.

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By Allison TeagueThe Commons

BELLOWS FaLLS—The recent decision of the Great Falls Regional Chamber of Commerce to vacate its home in the Waypoint Center on the Island and move to new digs came as a shock to many on the Waypoint Center Board, in-cluding Selectboard Chair Tom MacPhee and Chamber presi-dent Deborah Murphy.

The lease is a four-party agreement between the town of Rockingham, the village of Bellows Falls, the Bellows Falls Downtown Development association (BFDDa), and the COC. according to MacPhee and Murphy, negotiations were in play at the time of the meeting

discussing a better lease agree-ment that are more in line with the Chamber’s mission of pro-moting businesses in downtown.

However, during a regular November meeting that Murphy was not able to attend, Chamber Executive Director Roger Riccio was given permission by the board to pursue other options. Many of those present at the meeting felt the lease agreement with the town of Rockingham no longer served the organization’s purposes.

Chamber secretary Michael Smith confirmed that Riccio had signed a lease for the space formerly occupied by the former Hula Cat secondhand shop in the Staircase building just off the Square. Smith said the move will

Brattleboro Selectboard: more budget cutsBy Olga PetersThe Commons

BRaTTLEBORO—The Selectboard has asked town de-partment heads to review their proposed budgets once again and find more ways to cut the town’s fiscal year 2012 budget.

The draft budget discussed at Monday’s special meeting shows a 4.6 percent increase over last year’s level-funded budget.

Selectboard Chair Dick DeGray said he preferred to see only a 3 percent increase for FY 2012.

During the meeting, Town Manager Barbara Sondag and department heads suggested saving money by cutting funds for road paving and a trackless tractor used to clear snow from sidewalks. If made, these cuts would only reduce the budget

by 1-2 percent.DeGray urged them to find

more places to cut expenses.Selectboard members Martha

O’Connor and Daryl Pillsbury said they felt comfortable with a 4.6 percent increase for FY 2012.

DeGray and Selectboard members Dora Bouboulis and Jesse Corum wanted expenses lowered.

“I cannot see reducing what we’ve got,” said O’Connor.

O’Connor said she felt com-fortable with the increase be-cause cutting the budget meant cutting services.

“Every dollar has an advo-cate,” said DeGray.

“Every dollar represents a ser-vice and any [dollar] change rep-resents a change in services,” said Sondag in an earlier interview.

according to Sondag, the

Brattleboro, Vermont Wednesday, December 8, 2010 • Vol. V, No. 32 • Issue #79

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AbOUT ThE NEWSPAPERThe Commons is a nonprofit commu-nity newspaper published since 2006 by Vermont Independent Media, Inc., a nonprofit corporation under section 501(c)3 of the federal tax code. We now publish weekly. The newspaper is free, but it is supported by readers like you through tax-deductible donations, through ad-vertising support, and through support of charitable foundations.

SUbMITTING NEWS ITEMS/TIPSWe welcome story ideas and news tips. Please contact the newsroom at [email protected] or at (802) 246-6397. Most press releases and announce-ments of upcoming events appear on www.commonsnews.org, where they can be made available sooner.

VOICESThe Commons presents a broad range of essays, memoirs, and other subjective material in Voices, our editorial and commentary section. We want the pa-per to provide an unpredictable variety of food for thought from all points on the political spectrum. We especially invite responses to material that we’ve printed in the paper. We do not publish unsigned or anonymous letters, and we only very rarely withhold names for other pieces. When space is an issue, our priority is to run contributions that have not yet appeared in other publications. Please check with the editor before writing essays or other original submis-sions of substance. Editorials represent the collective voice of The Commons and are written by the editors or by members of the Vermont Independent Media Board of Directors. The views expressed in our Voices section are those of individ-ual contributors. Bylined commen-taries by members of the Vermont Independent Media board of directors represent their individual opinions; as an organization, we are committed to providing a forum for the entire community. As a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, Vermont Independent Media is legally prohibited from en-dorsing political candidates.

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SINCE SOME hAVE ASKED LATELY...Despite our similar name, The Commons is not affiliated with Ver mont Commons, a statewide journal that is strongly linked with a movement ad-vocating Vermont’s secession from the United States.

VIM’S MISSIONTo create a forum for community partic-ipation through publication of The Commons and Commonsnews.org; to pro mote local, independent journalism in Windham County; and to promote civic engagement by building media skills among Windham County residents through the Media Mentoring Project.

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By Randolph T. HolhutThe Commons

BRaTTLEBORO—They’re sleek, they’re computerized, and they’re about to change the way we maneuver around downtown Brattleboro.

a new traffic control system went into full operation this week, and from the black mast arms arching over Main Street to the higher pitched chirping sound coming from the pedes-trian crossing signal, it’s truly a new look and sound for motorists and others to get used to.

New lights, and the electronic control boxes running them, have been installed at the High and Elliot street intersections, as well as the infamous Route 5/142/119 intersection at the foot of Main Street known as “Malfunction Junction.”

“It’s definitely a lot more ad-vanced than what was here be-fore,” said Chris Barker, project engineer for the Vermont agency of Transportation. “This ought to keep traffic moving smoothly.”

Bill McElroy of Moulison North Corp., the subcontractor installing the traffic signals, said the three control boxes on Main Street have the ability to commu-nicate with each other and adjust the signals at each intersection based on traffic conditions as viewed from cameras atop the mast arms.

This means the traffic light cycles will change, he said. The flashing yellow lights seen down-town during the overnight hours will be a thing of the past, and likewise for waiting at an empty intersection and waiting for the


Bill McElroy of Moulison North Corp. stands in front of the computerized traffic control box at the intersection of Main and High streets.

New traffic lights for Main StreetComputerized system means changes for pedestrians, motorists

In the Nov. 24 story, “Town announces schedule for 250th anniversary celebration,” the in-correct location of the Guilford Historical Society’s museum was given. It is located in the old Town Hall, across from the Meetinghouse, in Guilford Center.

In the Nov. 24 story, “Digitizing history,” the effort to digitize the photos of Porter Thayer is be-ing funded with a $5,000 from the Windham Foundation. a grant application is pending with the Vermont Community Foundation. No application was made to the Vermont Humanities Council.

also, Brooks Memorial Library in Brattleboro does not house the Brattleboro or Benjamin Crown photo collec-tions, only the microfilm copies.

also, George Lindsay was a staff employee at Brooks Memorial Library. He never served as library director.

In the story, “Grace Cottage Hospital explores expansion

plan,” that appeared in the Nov. 17 edition, The Commons in-correctly reported the size of the proposed addition for the hospital in Townshend. Grace Cottage Hospital is planning a 20,000-square-foot addition.

The wrong caption described the photo of academy School Librarian Eileen Parks and par-ent Eric Pero — the academy School newspaper advisors — in the story “Read all about it!” [The Commons, Nov. 17].

The Commons wants to cre-ate the most thoughtful, accu-rate newspaper possible, but mistakes occasionally happen. If you notice one, please e-mail us at [email protected] or call the newsroom at (802) 246-6397.

C O R R E C T I O N S

lights to change.If there is no traffic on the

side streets, the lights on Main Street stay green. If a car arrives at an intersection, the lights will change.

The biggest change for pe-destrians is that they will have to initiate the crossing signals by pushing a yellow button on the signal poles. With the end of pre-set light signal patterns, if you don’t push the button, “you’ll be standing there all day waiting for the light,” McElroy said.

also, the pedestrian light has a countdown clock, so people will know how many seconds they have to safely cross the street.

as for the Malfunction Junction signals, McElroy said they have been tested and no problems were found.

“Like anything, it will take a few weeks to get used it,” said Selectboard Chair Dick DeGray of the new lights at Malfunction Junction. “We all sometimes have a lack of patience when we get in a car, but I’m optimistic that all this will work.”

With the new traffic lights, the first phase of the Main Street project comes to an end. according to Lane Construction Corp., the primary contractor for the project, the remainder of the downtown sidewalk repair and replacement work will be fin-ished in the spring.

Installation of permanent pavement markings, pouring new sidewalk panels from be-low Mocha Joe’s to the intersec-tion of Elliot Street, the removal of temporary pavement and the pouring of new sidewalk at the High Street intersection, and some pavement work in front of adagio Restaurant are all set to be completed then.

Barker said he was pleased at how well things went with the Main Street project. “I’ve worked in a lot of towns around the state, and Brattleboro has been one of the better ones,” he said. “The people here have been great.”

Blasting begins at new co-op siteBRaTTLEBORO — as part

of the excavation for construc-tion of the new Brattleboro Food Co-op building, the contractor will need to remove ledge rock by means of drilling and blasting. Blasting is scheduled to begin on Wednesday Dec. 8.

at this time, the drilling and blasting operation is projected to take between 30 and 40 working days. There will be multiple blast operations each day. During the blasting operation, the following standard safety procedures will be implemented:

• Installation of signage along Main/Canal Streets and the Co-op driveway alerting pass-ers-by to the fact that blasting is

taking place and describing what to look and listen for;

• Traffic control will be in place to stop traffic movement in the vicinity of the blast area during detonations;

• An alarm whistle will sound at intervals leading up to each detonation;

• The blaster will employ heavy rubber blast blankets to cover all blast areas;

• And the blaster will em-ploy seismographs at blast area periphery to monitor ground vibration.

all appropriate town de-partments have been informed of the commencement of this operation.

2 NEWS T h E C O M M O N S • Wednesday, December 8, 2010

By Olga PetersThe Commons

BRaTTLEBORO—The Brattleboro Selectboard showed support for the hir-ing of an assistant town man-ager for the first time in public during a special meeting this week.

Selectboard Chair Dick DeGray said the board had discussed the issue in execu-tive sessions dealing with per-sonnel matters, but Monday’s meeting marked the first pub-lic discussion.

“The major concern here is burnout,” said DeGray. “If [we don’t hire an assistant], we’ll burn out one of the bet-ter town managers this town has had in many a year.”

Selectboard members Jesse Corum and Martha O’Connor joined DeGray in voicing sup-port for funding the position, which the town has included in its organizational plans but has not funded since the cur-rent town manager, Barbara Sondag, left the assistant town manager position in 2007.

according to Sondag, the town has budgeted a tenta-tive $60,000 for the position.

Corum said last year he did not support hiring an assistant town manager but said this

week he changed his mind. In his opinion, losing a town manager from burnout would cost the town in institutional memory and direction.

O’Connor said the town manager job has changed in the past few years with the state heaping on more re-sponsibilities and the town’s increased project load.

Selectboard members Dora Bouboulis and Daryl Pillsbury felt the town should not fund a new position when it has to consider cutting the budget in other areas and possibly raise taxes in general.

Pillsbury previously sup-ported hiring an assistant, but said he could no longer justify the expense.

Sondag, the last person to hold the assistant town man-ager post, took over as an in-terim town manager after the departure of Jerry Remillard in 2007.

at the time, the Selectboard voted to sever Remillard’s contract following several rev-elations of sloppy bookkeep-ing and mismanagement of finances by town departments. Sondag eventually was hired as the full-time manager later that year and given the job in earnest in april 2008.

Selectboard supports hiring assistant town manager

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Free wellness clinic offered in Putney

P U T N E Y — P u t n e y Integrative Healing arts (PIHa) is hosting a free wellness clinic on Saturday, Dec. 11, from 1-5 p.m. It will take place on the sec-ond floor of the Putney Tavern, 133 Main St.

PIHa is a group of holistic health care practitioners and in-structors who have been meeting together on a monthly basis for several years as peer support and for community outreach.

The practitioners for this event are: Jane Collister (polarity ther-apy, energy balancing, massage); Rupa Cousins (The alexander Technique, a mind-body ten-sion reliever); Jill Keil (com-munity acupuncture, to reduce stress, anxiety, and trauma); Kelli Moran (neuromuscular body balancing); Nancy Redding ("power animal” retrieval, sha-manic healing); and Miriam Wolf (bodywork, muscle testing, ma-trix energetics).

Sessions are offered free of charge, although donations both large and small are gratefully accepted, to benefit the Putney Food Shelf. No advance sched-uling is necessary.

New support group for women forms at BMH

B R a T T L E B O R O — Brattleboro Memorial Hospital announces a new support group specifically for women who are experiencing or have experienced a diagnosis of cancer.

The Women’s Network of Strength will have a ‘lunch and learn’ session every month on the third Wednesday, from noon to 1 p.m. The next meeting will be Dec. 15. These meetings will be held in the Women’s Resource Room on the second floor of the Richards Building at BMH.

You are invited to bring your lunch to this educational pro-gram where you can find support for your diagnosis of cancer. For more information, contact Kelly McCue, RN, at 802-251-8437, or [email protected] to receive a listing for upcoming programs.

McCue is the navigator for the BMH Comprehensive Breast Care Program, which offers di-agnostic treatment and sup-port services to patients who have questions regarding their breast health. The Breast Care Program was developed in part with funds from the Susan G. Komen Foundation. It is de-signed to help women with breast concerns navigate the health care system. It may also be helpful to patients who have other questions regarding their breast health.

The program will support physical, emotional, and spiritual recovery on an individualized, multi-discipline basis. The medi-cal director of the comprehensive program is BMH general sur-geon Joseph Rosen, MD, whose specialty is diseases of the breast.

Our Place food drive nets 176 bags of groceries

BELLOWS FaLLS — Our Place Drop-in Center filled a bus with the 176 bags of gro-ceries donated during a recent food drive at Shaw’s supermar-ket in Walpole, N.H., as part of the Project Feed the Thousands campaign.

Connecticut River Transit supplied the bus, which CRT executive director Mary Habig described as “completely full” at the end of the day with about 1,069 items. In addition,

$ 1 3 7 . 6 8 i n c a s h w a s contributed.

“We count on this early winter Project Feed the Thousands food drive to help folks get through the holidays,” said Our Place executive director Lisa Pitcher. “It’s gratifying that people are willing to think of others as they go about the hustle and bustle of the season.”

In addition to non-perishables, about a half dozen frozen turkeys were donated.

Project Feed the Thousands continues through Dec. 31 as an effort to meet the food needs of the one in five Windham County residents who is struggling to put food on the table. Contributions can be made by visiting the web site at www.feedthethousands.org or by sending them to Our Place at P.O. Box 852, Bellows Falls, VT 05101.

Our Place is a daytime shelter and food shelf located at 4 Island St. whose mission is to connect people to food and each other. It serves families in Rockingham and the surrounding area and in Walpole and North Walpole, N.H.

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T h E C O M M O N S • Wednesday, December 8, 2010 NEWS 3

By Allison TeagueThe Commons

BRaTTLEBORO—For the past 22 years, Melinda Bussino has been following her dream of helping others.

as executive director of the Brattleboro area Drop In Center, she has been one of the instrumental forces behind get-ting shelter, food, and clothing to the homeless of southeastern Vermont.

This week, this sixth-gen-eration Vermonter travels to Washington, D.C., to receive an award from federal Department of Health and Human Services’ Substance abuse and Mental Health Services administration (SaMHSa) division.

Bussino and the Drop In Center are being recognized with an Exemplary Practice award for its work in data collection and reporting for their Projects for assistance in Transition from Homelessness (PaTH) services.

In 2002, the Drop In Center was one of the first service pro-viders in the nation to implement PaTH data collection in Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Homeless Management Information System (HMIS), which helps state and national agencies get a real time picture of who is receiving assistance.

This data collection and re-porting system was beta tested by Bussino, and is specifically designed to track homeless cli-ents, help measure the progress of clients, and collect informa-tion that can find help find inef-ficiencies and unmet needs. The result is better data reporting to local and state agencies.

The system helps define the characteristics of clients seek-ing help through the Brattleboro Drop In Center. Bussino said her two data entry assistants — Ed Johnson, a client advocate and main data entry person, and as-sistant director William Davison — have both been doing data en-try and helped work the bugs out almost from the start.

Making it work The three of them sit in a

crowded office space where no discernible order is apparent. Yet in under five minutes, with staff and volunteers constantly in and out finishing up tasks for the day and checking in as they leave, it is clear a well-greased collaboration is what keeps the Drop In Center functioning.

Johnson and Davison sit be-fore laptops on desks crowded with paperwork to be entered into the system. Johnson, 24, is the more gregarious of the two. He was a Drop In Center client at one time, as was Davison, a somewhat older gentleman.

The two are considered pro-fessionals in their field now, Bussino says. Both are success stories of what can happen by giving someone the chance to prove themselves, and a can-do attitude that things will work out.

Bussino said they are faced every day with people who have given up hope, and it is their job to help bring it back.

“Sometimes hope is all they have,” she said.

Eventually, part-time jobs opened up at the center and the natural strengths of Johnson and Davison became clear. Bussino could see that Johnson was good at working with computers,even with his cerebral palsy that has left him with the use of only his right hand.

“He is faster on the computer than I am,” she said.

at the same time, Bussino said Johnson “has a natural rapport with people, so when we added the client advocate position, it was a good fit for him.”

Bussino said Johnson was an at-risk youth who first came to the Drop In Center at age 15, “and he just stayed on with us. He found a home with us.”

and Bussino says that is prob-ably the most important part of what they offer. Many people who come to the Drop In Center are just looking for camarade-rie and interaction with people who will not look down on or through them, and will look them in the eye.

“The homeless people in our world are invisible,” she said. “Most want to be invisible [be-cause of shame and guilt], and it can become a way of being.”

Bussino describes several cli-ents who have been on the streets so long that even getting in the door of the Drop In Center is difficult and too overwhelming for them.

“We get people who are not eligible at Morningside because they aren’t clean and sober, or have mental health issues, or can’t be around children,” Bussino said.

They are both the hardest to help and the people who need help the most, she notes, adding that “when people come here, they are treated respectfully. No one is turned away.”

Davison was homeless for six years, he said. The hard life is etched on his finely featured face, but it is obvious he has great pride in his work at the Drop In Center. His enthusiasm is engaging.

“People will talk to him,” Bussino said. “His specialty is getting help for at-risk youth.”

Johnson piped up, adding, “Kids will open up to him. I don’t know what it is about him, but they trust him.”

“They have become recog-nized by others working in the field of homelessness as profes-sionals,” Bussino said of Johnson and Davison.

Johnson has been there nine years, and Davison five. Neither has any inclination elsewhere.

Bussino said they are serving more clientele than they have services for. Out of 400 homeless people last year, they were able to house 143. Last year, they gave at least one service (food, cloth-ing, overnight shelter, or hous-ing assistance) to 7,700 people. On Thanksgiving Day this year, they gave out 840 food baskets.

Bussino said this year will be even harder for people as heating and food costs are higher than ever, and cuts are being made in fuel assistance.

“People are buying less food with their food stamps, because food costs more,” Johnson said. “and those who aren’t on food stamps have a choice between heating their homes and eating.”

Bussino said their food shelf is always understocked for the need. “We always need peanut butter, tuna fish and pasta,” naming the highest nutrition-ally efficient foods kids will eat. “The donors in the community, private and business, can’t give as much this year because of the economy. We aren’t getting the same amount of donations.”

But, Bussino said, “We’ve intervened [usually that means finding housing for people fac-ing imminent eviction or fore-closures] in 153 households in the last 14 months,” Johnson said. “We found them housing,” Bussino explains.

open to all The Brattleboro Drop In

Center is a humble place. People who walk in will find welcome, warmth, food, a shower and place to do laundry, free clothes, toys and books, and conversation if that is what they need.

Bussino said sometimes “it’s just the opportunity to use the kitchen to cook a meal to share together. One person will use their food stamps to buy some eggs, another bacon, another juice or coffee. and they’ll cook and eat a meal together.”

That simple act of sharing what little they have and do-ing something nice for and with one another makes them all feel good. Bussino understands, as do her staff and volunteers, that it is these simple acts that keep people feeling human and per-haps provide a little hope just when they need it.

“I am surprised every day by the overall basic goodness of people,” Bussino said. “Everyday one of my staff, a volunteer, someone in the community, one of our clients, or a stranger will do something that keeps my faith in people going.”

While not a faith-based ser-vice, sometimes faith that “some-thing will turn up” is all they have

to get from one day to the next.“I make sure everyone is paid

before I am,” Bussino said.She said this summer, she

went unpaid for five weeks. “I was paid eventually,” she said. “But these people need their pay-checks more than I do.”

Bussino described another time when they didn’t know how they were going to stay open, let alone meet payroll. That day, she picked up the mail and found a check for $6,000. “It covered just what we needed,” and was the last money out of the treasury of an entity that had shut down that year.

“They gave us what was left over in their account. How good is that?”

In addition to receiving the award from SaMHSa, Bussino will be a presenter at a workshop on the Drop In Center’s PaTH program.

The Drop In Center was one of three agencies honored. The other two are the Center for Urban Community Services in New York City and the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless in Denver. Thirty-three agencies around the country were nomi-nated for the awards.

aLLISON TEaGUE/THE COMMONS

Melissa Bussino, executive director of the Brattleboro Area Drop In Center.

Drop In Center honored in Washington for excellence

bELLOWS FALLS DUMMERSTON

n Tree farm FROM PaGE 1

BRaTTLEBORO—The Brattleboro Rotary Club has been selling Christmas trees for decades, so its members know a thing or two about how to keep them fresh. They offer some tips:

• Once you and your Christmas tree have safely returned home, make a fresh cut across the bottom of the trunk to open up the pores in the wood, allowing it to absorb water readily.

• Make the cut about 1 inch above the old base, at a very slight angle. The tree should be immediately set in the stand and placed where it will spend the season. Be sure to use a stand with a water reservoir large enough not to need re-filling too often.

• Depending upon the size, species, and location of the tree, it might absorb a gallon of water in the first day, so it should be checked frequently and re-watered as necessary. as long as the tree is able to absorb and transpire water, it will stay reasonably fresh and fire-resistant.

• It is important that the tree always be kept watered and not allowed to dry out. Once the reservoir dries, a seal of pitch begins to form on the cut. after six hours, the tree will no longer be able to ab-sorb water and will quickly dry out. To remedy this, it will be necessary to recut the stump again, or the tree will begin to

lose its needles.• Keep your tree away from

heat sources like fireplaces, radiators, and television sets.

• Make sure that all of your light cords are in good shape. If the insulation on the wiring has become brittle or cracked, discard it. It’s time to buy a new set!

• Be sure to unplug the lights before you go to bed or any time you leave the house.

• Never overload electrical circuits.

• After Christmas, recycle your tree rather than sending it to a landfill with the rest of your trash.

• Use common sense. Taking precautions such as these will help preserve the unique beauty and tradition that only a real Christmas tree can provide.

The Brattleboro Rotary Club will sell Vermont-grown Christmas trees in front of Brattleboro Bowl on Putney Road from 1-7 p.m., Monday through Friday, and 9 a.m.-6 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays.

P r o c e e d s f r o m t h e Christmas Tree Sale sup-port the club’s annual student scholarship awards of $3,000 each to eight students at local high schools.

F o r m o r e i n f o r m a -tion, visit the Brattleboro Rotary Club website at www.brattlebororotaryclub.org.

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trees, garlands and wreaths from them.

according to the Vermont a g e n c y o f a g r i c u l t u r e , Christmas tree farming is a $20 million business in Vermont, and there are 300 tree farms in the state.

But the Schmidts do things a little differently.

First of all, their customers don’t cut down the trees. Many of the trees the Schmidts sell are selected in October, when they hold their annual Christmas Tree Tag Days. Customers select the trees they want in the fall and set a time between the Saturday af-ter Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve to retrieve their choices.

“We had 125 trees picked u p t h e f i r s t w e e k a f t e r Thanksgiving,” said Bill.

For the procrastinators, the Schmidts do offer a select num-ber of pre-cut trees that range from “wee trees” that are 2 feet tall to 16-foot monsters. The price depends on the size and the species: Balsam fir, Canaan fir, white spruce, white pine, and blue spruce.

and, if necessary, they will custom cut a tree to order.

Richard Glejzer said his fam-ily just moved to Putney from Chicago, “and we really wanted to have a fresh tree.”

The freshly cut eight-footers in the racks near the road were nice, he said, but his family wanted something bigger.

So they went down the hill and picked out a 10-foot white spruce, which Bill cut down and hauled up the hill for them.

“Our neighbors said this was the place to go,” said Glejzer.

Bob and Sue Francoeur of East Longmeadow, Mass., were also going big. They were bring-ing back a 13-footer.

“We’ve been coming here for years,” Bob said.

The tree was so big, it took a winch and a lot of muscle to push it through the netting ma-chine the farm uses to secure trees for travel.

The tagged trees in the pick-up area above the Schmidts’ his-toric 1791 farmhouse were more modestly sized.

R e b e c c a S e y m o u r o f Brattleboro said her daugh-ters, seven-year-old Madeleine and four-year-old Clara, picked out the tree on the weekend af-ter Columbus Day, but the girls were reticent about why they picked this particular one.

Like the Seymours, Steven Meggiolaro and his son Travis of Dummerston are repeat custom-ers. Steven said he liked to get his tree early to use it in the family photo for their Christmas card.

Passing it on To be a Christmas tree

farmer, Bill said, you have to think long term.

The Schmidts grow about 19,000 trees on 20 acres of their property. “We plant about 1,000 each spring,” Bill said. “We used to plant 1,500, but we wanted to cut back a little since it is so much work. aside from this time of year, we do most of the work ourselves.”

The Schmidts “plant five-year-old seedlings, and it takes another seven or eight years for them to grow to 8 feet tall,” Bill said. “That 13-footer you saw was planted about 17 years ago.”

They also grow an acre of or-ganic heirloom rhubarb.

Bill is 75, and he said Mary Lou will only admit to being in her early 80s. They have be-gun to plan for the day when the farm will be someone else’s responsibility.

as the founding executive di-rector of the Windham Regional Commission and a regional di-rector of the Vermont Land Trust, Bill said it was important to him and to his wife to preserve his land as a working farm.

Since 1995, the farm has oper-ated under a conservation ease-ment from the Vermont Land Trust, which stipulates that the land must remain in active agri-cultural use.

The farm includes 138 acres of conserved land, including 100 acres of managed woodland.

None of their children were

Toys for Kids program seeks donations

B R a T T L E B O R O — Distribution has begun for the Marine Corps League Toys for Kids campaign in the Brattleboro area.

The Brattleboro detachment, its auxiliary unit, and volun-teers have scheduled 15-minute “shopping” sessions for parents or guardians of nearly 500 area children on the lower level of the american Legion post off Linden Street. The sessions are being held weekdays from 4-8 p.m. for those who registered by phone in November.

“Shoppers” are guided by age-categorized tables of toys, with potential gifts for infants to age 12. The volunteers will be at the site through Dec. 20.In addi-tion, toys are provided for needy children through the Drop-In Center and area Legion posts, with the final tally expected to reach over 700 children during

Audubon holds annual Bird Count

SPRINGFIELD — The ascutney Mountain audubon Society will hold its 111th annual Christmas Bird Count this year on Dec. 18 and 19.

There will be two counts, the first on Saturday Dec. 18, in the Saxtons River area, and the sec-ond, on Sunday, Dec. 19, for the Springfield area. Both will be all-day events with tally parties in the evening, so birders should be prepared for a long day.

For the Saxtons River area, in-terested people are asked to meet Don Clark at allen Brothers on Route 5, south of Bellows Falls in Westminster, at 6:45 a.m. Contact Clark at 802-843-2347 or [email protected] for a route assignment, or to say you’ll be watching and counting at your home feeders.

In Springfield, Hugh Putnam will meet counters at McDonalds at 7 a.m. for route assignments or to join a team. Contact Putnam at 802-886-8430 or [email protected] to let him know if you’ll be counting at your home bird feeders.

Evening tally parties will fol-low the days’ events. Clark’s group party location will be an-nounced at the Saxtons River gathering place. The Springfield group will meet at the Putnams, 29 Meadow Drive, Springfield, at about 5 p.m.

interested in continuing the farm, so the Schmidts put the word out last year that they were looking for successors.

Keri Latiolais and her hus-band Matt did some vegetable farming in the Burlington area, and were looking for a farm in southern Vermont. Theirs was one of about 30 inquiries about the farm, and now they are working the land alongside the Schmidts.

“Over the next few years, we’ll be doing more as they ease out of things,” Keri said. “We hope to run this farm as well as they have.”

Keri grows pumpkins, garlic, and flowers at the farm, but she said it is the Christmas trees that keep it in the black. She hopes

to grow more vegetables in the summer and perhaps start a community-supported agricul-ture (CSa) farm.

Keri and Matt’s plans suf-fered a setback last November when Matt, a forester, was badly injured in a fall and suffered a fractured skull and a traumatic brain injury. He has recovered from his injuries, but is still not at full strength.

Keri said that her parents have helped out on the farm during Matt’s recovery.

Bill Schmidt is hoping things will work out for the Latiolaises.

“They really value this place and want to keep it as a farm,” he said. “We were looking for stewards for this land, and they will do a good job carrying it on.”


Bill Schmidt cuts down a 10-foot white spruce as Keri Latiolais guides the tree to the ground.

the Christmas season.Donation of new, unwrapped

toys begins traditionally with a jamboree in late October at the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Specially designed barrels then begin appearing in late November at convenient loca-tions throughout the Brattleboro area.

The list of Toys for Kids collection barrels includes the following: Fireside True Value, Brattleboro Memorial Hospital, auto Mall, Ford of Brattleboro, River Valley Credit Union, Brattleboro Savings & Loan, Emerson’s, Perkins Home Center, Whitman’s Hair Stylist, Viking Tattoo, Landmark College, american Legion, VFW, the Eagles, Creative Moods, Garofalo TV, Wireless Zone, Members First Credit Union, agway, Brattleboro Subaru, and Zico’s Barber Shop.

Monetary donations are also accepted.The Toys for Kids campaign is in conjunction with the Marine Corps League and Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots program, but in Vermont, all donations are disbursed locally.

For further details, contact Detachment 798 Commandant and program chairman Richard Hodgdon at 802-257-7549 or [email protected].

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The workshop, by Sadelle Wiltshire and Grace Mrowicki, will cover ideas to repurpose used clothing into new clothing, household items and even gifts. Demonstrations and hands-on time will include how to rework old T-shirts into tote bags, pil-lows, pet toys, plus deconstruct-ing old sweaters into reusable yarn to knit, crochet and weave new items.

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occur “hopefully by February.”Murphy said that while she

was not aware of the intent to move before the meeting, her understanding of the new lease in the Square was that “it would be more expensive for the Chamber.” She noted renova-tions, utilities, rent and mainte-nance were either expenses they did not currently have, or were higher at the new location.

The Chamber’s monthly renta l fee of $300 at the Waypoint Center was waived by the Selectboard for the first two years it was in that space. The Chamber was supposed to start paying rent again in July 2010, but MacPhee said they have not “seen a nickel of it.”

Interim Town Manager Francis “Dutch” Walsh said he expected to have more discus-sions with the Chamber with regard to its notice to vacate the Waypoint, and noted that he was not second-guessing their intent or decisions.

Smith noted Riccio had told him before leaving on vacation that a registered letter had been sent to the town notifying offi-cials of the changes, on Nov. 29.

a federal case? Tangled up in all this is use

of the remaining $1.3 million dollars of a Federal Transit authority bus and bus facilities grant.

U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy’s office recently gave an exten-sion of the grant to the town of Rockingham, and the final pro-posal for using is still being ne-gotiated with the FTa.

The FTa and Leahy’s office confirmed that the Waypoint Center is being considered as an intermodal center and recipient

of $1.3 million for renovations, upgrades and accessories related to bus transit and bus facilities.

BFDDa president Gary Fox said that Greyhound has a daily stop at the Bellows Falls train sta-tion. Green Mountain Railroad owns the station, the current home to the intermodal center.

amtrak also uses the station for the Vermonter, the daily pas-senger train between St. albans and Washington, D.C.

“We need to be open and the space needs to be maintained,” Fox said. He said he understands the Chamber’s concern with meeting those daily requirements all year long.

according to Murphy, meet-ing those proposed maintenance, upkeep and hours of operation requirements at the Waypoint Center compatible with an inter-modal center were troublesome to the Chamber, whose purpose of promoting downtown busi-nesses is not directly related to keeping a visitors’ center open, cleaned and staffed. She said those points were in discussion via the Waypoint committee, and lease changes.

at this point, with the de facto chamber move, Fox said he wants to be certain he has ful-filled his contractual obligations with Green Mountain Railroad. Once that is achieved, using the Waypoint as the intermodal hub would make sense, he said.

Murphy — who also serves as the passenger rail manager for the Vermont Rail System, the owner of the train station — also agreed it was a good idea to “consolidate things into an in-termodal center and a welcome center.”

acknowledging she did not really want to lose tenants in the

train station, she said any deci-sion about amtrak moving its stop to the Waypoint Center will “ultimately rest with them.”

“It’s a nice package,” Murphy said of the Waypoint Center. “It needs to be marketed, though. If this is going to happen, we need to sit down and plan how to mar-ket it,” Murphy said. “It could make a great conference area. It’s great for events now.”

FTa representatives stated they were awaiting a more de-fined proposal from Walsh as to how the $1.3 million would be used at the Waypoint Center, and that eligibility for using the funds rested on it being a bus transportation facility-related proposal.

according to the FTa, the concept is to create a waiting and ticketing area for bus patrons, and the agency would like a bet-ter understanding of the purpose of proposed improvements and see how they related to bus rid-ers, whether local or Greyhound.

The grant funds are required to be used for bus transporta-tion, but the FTa noted that services beyond bus-related ac-tivities would be OK at the inter-modal center. For instance, the FTa said it would not consider a coffee shop or any other type of shop alien to the purpose of the center.

The FTa hopes to have every-thing finalized on how the money was going to be utilized “by the end of the calendar year.”

as yet, a time has not been es-tablished for a meeting with the FTa to discuss the final proposal for the town of Rockingham’s grant funding. The agency hopes to wrap it up “by January.”

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particularly Vermont way.”SaC members are considered

“uncompensated government employees,” according to the motion at the meeting to rechar-ter the commission.

Reed said the Vermont SaC includes “every political persua-sion, [a] good mix of ethnic [and] racial minorities.”

He described the diversity of backgrounds in the group as “particularly important” for the issues under consideration, in-cluding law enforcement and civil-rights issues specific to the immigrant community.

The SaCs “adv i se the Commission of civil rights is-sues in their states that are within the Commission’s jurisdiction,” according to Vermont’s state website, www.vermont.gov.

“More specifically, they are authorized to advise the Commission on matters of their state’s concern in the prepara-tion of Commission reports to the President and the Congress; receive reports, suggestions, and recommendations from in-dividuals, public officials, and representatives of public and private organizations to com-mittee inquiries; forward ad-vice and recommendations to the Commission, as requested; and observe any open hearing or conference conducted by the Commission in their states,” the site continues.

Other SaC members in-clude two Brattleboro residents: Tara O’Brien, a member of the Vermont Partnership’s board of directors, and Terry Martin, a former Brattleboro and state police officer. The commission produced a report on law en-forcement and racial profiling in 1999.

O’Brien, wary of speaking on the record out of fear of similar repercussions, said last week’s actions create a crisis of confi-dence for board members and a credibility problem for the fed-eral commission.

“How can they say they’re pro-tecting the rights of Vermonters when they can’t even do that for a member of their own commit-tee?” she asked.

“It puts the whole commit-tee in the position of being extra cautious about what we say,” O’Brien said.

objectionable remarks

after approving the SaC’s new charter and all members other than Reed, commissioners in a 5-0 vote rejected reappoint-ing Reed, rebuking him for a po-litical commentary that appeared prior to the November election.

Three other commissioners abstained.

The commentary, “‘Pure Vermont’ is pure invalidation,” appeared in the Brattleboro Reformer and on Vtdigger.com, a state government news and commentary website, as well as in other media prior to the state election.

In the piece, which described Republican gubernatorial can-didate Brian Dubie’s campaign slogan, “Pure Vermont,” as an example of “cross-cultural blun-dering,” Reed wrote that “for many Vermonters, the words de-note racial, religious, and cultural oppression.”

But it was 56 of the 498 words of the piece that drew the scru-tiny of several commissioners.

In addition to raising conno-tations of racial purity and the history in Vermont of the Ku Klux Klan, Reed’s commentary invoked early-20th-century eu-genics policies. “‘Pure Vermont’ raises the specter of Hitler’s aryan Nation and the Khmer Rouge, where the purifying agent was genocide,” he wrote.

The associated Press reported Tuesday that Dubie character-ized the slogan as a “positive message and a welcoming one.”

Reed also took heat for state-ments he made to Vermont Public Radio when the com-mission was rechartered in april 2008 after a hiatus of more than a year.

He told VPR reporter Neil Charnoff that “for reasons we don’t understand, the charters for Vermont and dozens of other states across the country were stalled.”

“I think there’s a history of the current [Bush] administration wanting to provide a more posi-tive view of civil rights,” Reed told Charnoff. “You can claim to have fewer reports of harass-ment, fewer reports of incidents of civil rights issues, if the eyes and ears in the states detect-ing that have been rendered inoperable.”

a commission staffer who spoke on condition of ano-nymity said that staff members of two conservative commis-sioners found links to Reed’s

commentary on several right-wing websites and listservs, re-sulting in a request to Reed that he apologize for intemperate remarks or step down from the state committee.

Reed did neither.Later, the USCCR’s staff di-

rector, Martin Dannenfelser, wrote to say that “taken together, commissioners are concerned that you have used these public platforms to impugn the motives of Mr. Dubie and the Bush ad-ministration and, in the case of Mr. Dubie, to associate his views with those of avowed racists and mass murderers.”

Dannenfelser said that several commission members wanted Reed to respond before the USCCR considered recharter-ing the Vermont SaC.

“I remind you that Vermont and our country have a long and distinguished history protect-ing the rights of free speech,” Reed replied, calling any contro-versy over his piece an issue that “seems to be reverberating only in Washington.”

“The decision to replace me as chair or to remove me from the committee altogether [be-cause of the op-ed piece] strikes at the heart of First amendment rights,” he added.

“Neither my employer, the VT SaC, nor the USCCR were referenced in the piece,” Reed continued. “Our democracy cannot afford the double stan-dard proposed by the suggestion that I, or any member of the VT SaC, step down because of our personal opinions and the act of expressing those opinions in the public square, while at the same time the USCCR purports to de-fend our civil rights.”

ideology on the commission?

The eight commissioners of the USCCR, a bipartisan com-mission created by the Civil Rights Act of 1957, serve stag-gered six-year terms. The presi-dent and Congress appoint four members each, and “not more than four members shall at any one time be of the same political party,” according to the com-mission’s website, www.usccr.gov.

Democrats have charged that the Bush administration circum-vented these rules, appointing Republicans who have disingen-uously declared their party affili-ation as “independent” to qualify for the bipartisan commission.

One such member, Vice Chair abigail Thernstrom, since reverted her affiliation to Republican. Commissioner Todd F. Gaziano, senior fel-low in legal studies for the conservative thinktank The Heritage Foundation, is listed on the USCCR’s website as an independent.

The subcommittee’s two-year charter expired in april, which legally disbanded the group un-til the commission’s Friday vote.

The terms of two members, Gerald a. Reynolds and ashley L. Taylor Jr., both Republican presidential appointees, ex-pired only hours after the vote. Reynolds had served as the USCCR’s chairman.

The USCCR staff member said the commission has been increasingly infused with ideol-ogy during the Bush administra-tion, speculating that the renewal of the Vermont charter was de-layed because commissioners wanted to include “some of their people” in addition to the incum-bent members.

Reed confirmed this ac-count, noting that SaC mem-bers rebelled against adding several candidates he charac-terized as “right-wing, really narrow-issue-focused.

“We stuck to our guns, which is one of the reasons it took so long to get rechartered,” he added.

The USCCR staffer cited a similar story with the renewal of the New Hampshire SaC’s charter.

That group submitted its application, and the charter was reauthorized with an addi-tional surprise member, Kevin Smith, executive director of Cornerstone Policy Research, a nonprofit research group that, among other conservative causes, opposes gay marriage equal-ity issues.

When that happened, the USCCR “got flooded with letters and e-mails, saying, ‘How dare you put this man who’s the an-tithesis of everything civil rights is?’” the staffer recounted.

Support from the state SaC

SaC members sent a unani-mous letter of support for both the charter reauthorization in general, and Reed in particular, to then-Chairman Reynolds.

“as you know, during the time

DaVID SHaW/COMMONS FILE PHOTO

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights reauthorized the charter of the vermont State Advisory Committee — minus its chairman, Curtiss Reed Jr. Conservative members of the USCCR took issue with a critical commentary Reed wrote about “Pure vermont,” the campaign slogan of Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Dubie.

Council, where he also served as the conservative Christian non-profit thinktank’s chief govern-ment relations official.

Matthew Lehrich, a spokes-man with the White House Press Office, when asked about a time-table for potential appointments, noted that “we generally don’t comment on nominations be-fore the President has announced them.”

an uncertain future

By all accounts, Reed’s future with the SaC remains in limbo, dependent on subsequent ap-pointees who might revisit the issue.

and even though the USCCR staff member described the me-chanics of Friday’s vote as po-tentially in violation of agency regulations or other federal pro-tocol, no one interviewed for this story could say whether those circumstances would render the outcome invalid.

Reached on Monday, Yaki described politicization on the commission as “not unusual.”

“In the end, we just didn’t have the votes,” said Yaki, who added that some on the commis-sion have been concerned about the possibility that some or all of Reed’s colleagues on the SaC might resign.

If the commission member-ship dips below 10, he said, the whole SaC must be reorganized from scratch.

But Yaki also pointed out that some of Reed’s support came from commission members like him who strongly disagreed with the principle of reprimanding a SaC member for expressing an unpopular or disagreeable view, without agreeing in full with what Reed actually wrote.

“I understand political hyper-bole,” said Yaki, a former mem-ber of the San Franscisco Board

that Mr. Reed served as chair, the SaC produced a comprehen-sive report addressing the effect of perceived racial profiling by state and local law enforcement officers,” the members wrote.

“To have developed and seen through to successful resolution a report on a topic as politically charged and sensitive as racial profiling requires tact; the ability to engender trust and encourage openness; dedication; and the skills to advance the pursuit of knowledge and understanding in a manner that yield results rather than resistance,” they continued.

“The leadership and tone set by Mr. Reed proved invaluable during this work and, we be-lieve, earned the trust of those with whom we needed to inter-act, including members of the law enforcement officials across the state,” the members wrote.

David Carle, spokesman for U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), said the senator’s office was closely involved in the issue, first in trying to get the SaC reautho-rized, and then in trying to fig-ure out the “unsettling” aspects of Friday’s vote.

In the end, the commission-ers decoupled the approval of the Vermont SaC’s charter from Reed’s reappointment to the group.

The vote, according to the USCCR staffer, included “20 minutes — and someone timed it — of trashing Curtiss in a pub-lic meeting.”

after reading the transcript on Tuesday, Reed described his re-action as one of disbelief.

“I don’t think any of them fully read the piece,” he said.

a staff member represented Leahy’s office at the proceed-ings, which two of the senator’s other staffers variously described as “pandemonium” and “not well run.”

The meeting transcript, re-leased at press time, reveals a long stretch of commissioners interrupting one another and arguing over parliamentary pro-cedure, in between a heated dis-cussion about whether Reed’s reference to Hitler and the Khmer Rouge in his commentary

crossed the line.Several commissioners also

misinterpreted Reed’s letter of explanation as insisting that he had a first-amendment consti-tutional right to be seated on the SaC.

Gaziano took exception to Reed’s refusal to disavow his commentary and his “own sort of defiant, crazy, legally flawed defense of his action.”

“I was willing to hold my nose and vote for him before I got the e-mails from him where he once again demonstrated a lack of judgment [by defending the commentary],” then-Chairman Reynolds said.

Commissioner Michael Yaki, a Democratic Congressional ap-pointee, defended Reed’s VPR hypothesis that the state SaCs’ charters were systematically al-lowed to expire.

“Everything he said on [VPR] I’ve said twice over, five times over, maybe 20 times over,” Yaki said, adding that he believes the state SaCs “still are being ma-nipulated, run over, and other-wise packed.”

R e g a r d i n g R e e d , Commissioner Gail Heriot said she looks “for two things that I am not finding with this candi-date for the SaC.”

Those qualities, she said, are “a temperament that allows them to deal with complex and diffi-cult issues, and two, I am look-ing for someone who actually has some expertise on civil rights.”

Carle said Leahy’s staff has been in contact with the Obama administration consistently about the Vermont SaC issue, urging White House staff to pre-pare appointments to the vacant slots on the commission.

The administration has also been free all along to replace Dannenfelser, a Bush appoin-tee who had worked as a vice president of the Family Research

WWW.USCCR.ORG

USCCR Staff Director Martin Dannenfelser, appointed to the job by the George W. Bush administration.

HERITaGE FOUNDaTION

USCCR Commissioner Todd f. Gaziano.

USCCR.ORG

USCCR Commissioner Gail Heriot.

USCCR.ORG

USCCR Commissioner Michael Yaki.

USCCR.ORG

f o r m e r U S C C R Chairman Gerald A. Reynolds, whose term expired hours after the commission’s vote.

of Supervisors. “I’ve run for of-fice and managed campaigns in the political arena. But I want to point out how far out Curtiss’s rhetoric was.”

Yaki said Reed’s commentary had “a loaded connotation to it, in my own opinion,” with the result that even on a differently constituted commission, “there might still be some people who feel some queasiness about what he said.”

“I don’t know why he used that particular example,” he said. “It’s easy to toss around, but hard to take back.”

“The first amendment allows you to speak freely and disagree,” Yaki said. “While you have the freedom to do whatever you do and say whatever you say, some people will hold you accountable later on.”

Disclosure: By way of transpar-ency, we note that Reed serves on the board of directors of Vermont Independent Media, the nonprofit that publishes The Commons.


n vermont SAC FROM PaGE 1

E D I T O R I A L

Striking a balance

E S S A Y

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]

Guilford

IN SEPTEMBER of 2000, Beth Wood was diag-nosed with alzheimer’s disease.

It began with simply forget-ting to turn off the stove after she was done cooking one of her famous meals, or needing a reminder of her son’s phone number.

Then, as most alzheimer patients do, she began to for-get to eat or bathe. She would wake up unaware of where she was. She’d imagine peo-ple were stealing things, simply because she could not remem-ber where they had previously been. Her day-to-day life be-came full of stress and struggle; her own grandchildren went unrecognized.

Beth Wood is my grandmother.

almost 10 years later, all I see is a frail old woman barely holding onto reality. I see a child who whimpers and whines because she doesn’t know what else to do. and above all else, I see the remains of someone I had once loved so dearly.

I understand how that sounds; I am openly saying I no longer feel love for my grandmother.

But let me explain — I still care.

It’s the way you feel about your first dog after it passes away, or the way you look back on an old boyfriend whom you once loved. I loved my grand-mother, but in these more

recent years she has become someone else. I do not blame her, and I do not resent her for it.

I simply acknowledge that my grandmother is gone, and I must take care of what she left behind because I owe her that.

WHEN I WaS YOUNGER, I spent every Monday at my grandma’s. It was the one day both my parents worked, and she was the perfect babysitter. I had no grandfather, so it was always just her and me on these days.

Everything was better at Grandma’s; I have never tasted a grape juice Popsicle quite like the ones she would make. I was always promised my favorite meal (usually chicken nuggets or a cheese quesadilla) exactly when I wanted it. She loved me, and I loved her right back.

The afternoons were spent out in her garden. Now let me tell you, this garden was something to brag about. at first glance, the tangled vines, stems, leaves, and plump fruit and veggies gave the area what my grandma called an “out-of-control vibe.”

and I’ll be honest, it was a mess — but it was her mess.

She understood its crazy knots and interweaves, and could find exactly what she was look-ing for in a heartbeat.

I remember sitting cross-legged, my hands resting be-hind me buried in the cool soil. I would watch as my grandma weeded and plucked her way around the perimeter, and slowly worked into the interior — all the while chattering away to me.

It was like watching some-one cleaning a home; nothing was fully satisfying for her un-til she reached the final weed that needed to be pulled or the last tomato that needed to be picked, and the garden was clean for the day. Then she’d stand up and observe all the work she had done.

I knew what to do when I saw this; I’d get up from my sitting spot, brush bits of the earth off my little sundress or overalls, and pad my way over to her.

“Some fine work we did to-day, huh, girl?” she’d say, plac-ing her hand on my head.

“It looks better than yester-day,” I’d observe.

“Sure does. How ’bout a Reese’s?”

“Two?”“Only if you don’t tell your

father!”and off we’d go, leaving the

garden behind us for the time being. Once the old red door of her familiar home would screech open and my toes re-laxed over the cool tiled floor, a Reese’s peanut butter cup

hOLLY MCCARRICK is a senior at Brattleboro Union High School. This memoir orig-inally appeared on Teen Ink (www.teenink.com), a literary magazine and website featuring the work of young writers.

The art of dancingA young woman sees her grandmother’s lucid moments become fewer and fewer, until, finally, they are no more

MaRLENE O’CONNOR (WWW.MaRLENEOCONNORaRT.COM)

Detail from “Her Story,” by Brattleboro artist and illustrator Marlene O’Connor: pencil, ink, Xerox transfer and shellac (three panels).

The recent closure of alici’s Bistro, a res-taurant on Harris Place, shows the

inappropriate imbalance in the town of Brattleboro’s ap-proach between the need to increase parking revenues and the need to provide con-venient parking for local businesses.

The Harris Place lot was the last downtown parking lot that used meters until this summer, when the town re-moved all but 14 of the 64 meters in the lot and con-verted it into permit-only parking. anyone who parks in those spaces without a per-mit during enforcement hours — from 9 a.m. until 6 p.m. — gets a ticket.

Carol Coulombe, Brattleboro’s parking en-forcement coordinator, made the decision unilaterally. according to the Brattleboro Reformer, she decided that since her department did not have the money to replace the aging parking meters, she would remove them.

The parking enforcement department in Brattleboro is what’s known as an “enter-prise” agency, meaning that it has to generate the revenues to operate the town parking lots and the Transportation Center on Flat Street through parking fees and fines.

When your department has to fund itself, your job be-comes focused on maximizing revenue at the expense of all other considerations, includ-ing customer service.

Coulombe did not bother

to tell Musa alici, the owner of the restaurant that bore his name, that nearly all the parking in front of his estab-lishment was changed to per-mit-only. aside from notifying the police chief, she is not required to tell anyone if she makes such changes.

Suddenly, alici’s potential customers had to park in the High-Grove or Harmony lots, both a good distance away from his restaurant.

alici has not had an easy time of it since he opened his restaurant in 2007. He has had long-running battles with the Selectboard over signage and operating hours. an elec-trical fire in December 2008 and the lingering effects of the recession also cut deeply into his business.

But, in a Facebook post, alici squarely placed the blame for the closure of his restaurant on what he called “little town politics” and “un-fair, unequal, and anti-busi-ness” treatment by the town. He wrote that the parking change dealt the last, fatal blow to his business.

Granted, the town is un-der no obligation to provide parking spaces for down-town businesses. But for all the talk from officials about helping small businesses, the town does little to address the number-one peeve of down-town patrons — inconsistent and incomprehensible parking policies.

Brattleboro has developed a reputation for hyper-aggres-sive parking enforcement,

combined with parking fees and fines that are high for the size of this town.

The machines in the “pay and display” lots are balky — and, if you don’t have change in your pocket, unusable.

The town has a “smart card” system for some of the downtown meters, but it is poorly promoted and incon-venient for visitors.

and, there’s still talk about charging for parking on Sundays and extending the hours for metered parking.

If the town wants to posi-tion itself as a destination for shopping, dining, and the arts, it needs parking policies that don’t drive visitors away. It also needs to view parking as a service and not as a profit center.

would be plopped into my hand without any reminders of the promise.

“You’ll get the second after dinner,” she’d say. “What will it be?”

again, I’d find myself sit-ting and watching her. She’d prepare my dinner to order as I lay spread out on the peeling linoleum. Her grey hair curled around a sun-kissed face, and her callused hands were always busy at work.

activities would vary dur-ing the in-between moments of gardening and munching; on the best days, we’d simply dance.

I’d watch as my grand-mother cranked up the ra-dio, and she’d hop and swing to the music. She’d take my hands and twirl me around. I’d skip about the old kitchen, us-ing dishtowels as flags, all the while being cheered on by my grandma.

When I’d get too tired, I’d collapse on the floor and rest, but Grandma never tired. She danced and danced, her grey hair splaying wildly around and her hands above her head, wav-ing at the sky. Her energy was infectious, and I couldn’t stay down for long. She’d pick me up, spin me around, and bump my hips.

I felt loved, and rightly so — Beth Wood adored me.

IN 2000, a MONTH BEFORE she was diagnosed, my fam-ily took me away from her to my current home in Vermont. I remember missing her, but knowing she was not gone for-ever. I’d receive letters from her, all starting with, “My dear-est Holly,” and ending with “Love forever.” When arthritis plagued her fingers, she would call. During one of these phone conversations, I learned she wasn’t gardening as much as usual.

“I forget to some days,” she’d say, and my heart would ache.

It was 11 p.m. when my uncle called us, telling us my grandmother had called 911 because she was convinced someone had broken into her home and stolen from her — but it hadn’t happened. This was when, after a doctor’s ex-amination, we were informed of her mental health. Doctors advised her to move in with one of her children, or that her family place her in a nursing home.

I remember waking up in the middle of the night and hear-ing my parents arguing with my extended family about what to do.

We could not take her, as our home was too small. My aunt couldn’t take her because she did not have the money or time to care for her. My old-est uncle finally said he would take on the responsibility, as my grandmother was a sum-mertime woman, and my uncle lived in San Diego.

“It’s best for her to be in a place she can stay outside year-round,” the adults would rea-son. They were right, but the idea of taking Grandma out of her home where she’d spent her whole life and flying her across the country broke the hearts of my father and his siblings.

However, it was done.

aND NOW, almost 10 years later, that is where my grandma

still stays. I spend a week every summer taking care of her and giving my uncle and his family a break. Every year, the stress of the trip increases; I watch her progress further and fur-ther into the cruel and unfor-giving stages of dementia.

In the beginning, dur-ing some lucid moments, she would cup my face in her hands and cry, taking in every-thing she could about how I’ve changed. I cried, too.

However, slowly, these mo-ments became fewer and fewer until finally, they were no more.

This past summer, she spent every moment of every day confused and unsure of ev-erything. She knew nothing of who I was. But when I could calm her, she’d animatedly tell me tales of my younger self.

“Oh, my granddaughter Holly is a mischievous little girl!” she’d tell me, and I’d smile, knowing the truth in that statement.

It hurt too much for me, though, to keep hoping des-perately for her mind to reach back into reality. It took an emotional toll on me greater than anything I’d been exposed to yet in my life.

So, in a silent vow to the grandmother I knew in my memories, with no sense of re-morse or sadness, I took care of this dying woman. I did it for myself, however selfish that may have been. In this way, it was easier for me to deal with the constant asking of, “Where am I?” and “Who are you?” In this way, I distanced myself.

ON MY LaST NIGHT alone with her, I cried.

I cried for the woman I had lost, so long ago, to this awful disease. Though she did not understand why I was crying or who I even was, she patted my back and told me it would be all right. a couple minutes later, she forgot where she was and left me alone in the empty kitchen. Suddenly, I heard mu-sic coming from her room. assuming the music would confuse her, I pulled myself to-gether and followed the sound, knowing I should turn it off.

The door to her room was cracked open slightly.

I remember this moment as though it were yesterday; I re-member feeling apprehensive about looking inside, afraid of what I’d find. I didn’t think I could watch my grandmother, once so strong and loving, cry from fright and general con-fusion anymore. Part of me willed myself to walk away and just let the music play, but I peered into the room.

My grandma was neither crying nor confused.

She was dancing. n

KERRI HICKS/CREaTIVE COMMONS LICENSE (BY-NC-Sa)

The outside bar at Alici’s Bistro in the summer of 2009.

6 T h E C O M M O N S • Wednesday, December 8, 2010

V I E W P O I N T

Wilmington

WE TaxPaYERS reach into several different pockets to pay our vari-

ous taxes.We extract money from the

economic activities of our daily lives, and that money makes up the revenue streams that make possible the civic life from which we all benefit. When our money arrives in Montpelier, it lands in one of several buckets, called funds, the two largest of which are the general fund and the education fund.

Our public discourse is gen-erally about spending and, therefore, taxes being too high. Little is widely known about the actual structure of those funds and how their very de-sign can act as upward or downward pressure on spend-ing, regardless of policy choices made by the Legislature and the governor.

So, in the spirit of shining a bright light on our money, here is a brief discussion about the two largest funds, how their very design affects how tax dol-lars are spent, and how the in-terrelationship between the general fund and the educa-tion fund affects how deeply we taxpayers have to reach into our various pockets in the first place.

This walk admittedly will take us a little way into the weeds. But if you care about the ever-increasing burden of your property tax and about the future of your community’s schools, I hope you will find these observations instructive.

THE GENERaL FUND is the big-daddy fund used to pay for most of the obligations of state government. It is a very stable fund, and I suspect that most readers will be surprised to learn that your legislature and your governor and his admin-istration, regardless of political party, are very good stewards of your tax money.

Supporting our schools is a joint responsibility of both state and local governments, and we (lawmakers and constituents alike) have not yet figured out what tools can help us to arrive at a sustainable level of spend-ing that assures all our children a good education no matter where they live in the state.

Economists agree on con-sensus revenue forecasts, and lawmakers enact expenditures based on those forecasts, re-sulting in a balanced budget. Structures are in place to as-sure that it remains in balance

throughout the year, in spite of the fact that Vermont, unlike most states, does not have a constitutional requirement for a balanced budget.

all the wrangling over what to spend the money on hap-pens within this framework.

The General Fund, then, is revenue driven, meaning that spending is adjusted to meet expected revenues. One addi-tional element is present in the general fund, and that is the political pressure exerted on 181 elected officials (150 repre-sentatives, 30 senators and one governor) who have to publicly vote to increase the taxes that make up the revenues that are deposited into this fund.

all attempts to balance the budget without raising taxes act as powerful downward pressures on spending within the general fund.

THE EDUCaTION FUND, by contrast, works very differently.

School boards prepare bud-gets to be accepted or modi-fied by the voters in each of Vermont’s 246 school districts. Through a process that, in the opinion of many, is too com-plex and opaque, those budgets are then aggregated, and school property tax rates are set state-wide and locally.

The resulting revenues are then deposited into the educa-tion fund and redistributed to schools via a complex system based on an equal per-pupil expenditure. (a discussion of the complexity of the educa-tion revenue generation and distribution system is certainly needed, but best left to another day.)

The education fund’s design, unlike that of the general fund, actually results in upward pres-sure on spending. Here’s how:

First, the method by which the property tax is raised is so complex, it is not subject to the same political dynamic to “not raise taxes” that is present with the general fund.

Next, while just under 70 percent of the 2009 $1.3 billion education fund comes from property tax revenues, the bal-ance of the 30 percent is made up of several items.

Two percent of the 6 percent sales tax you pay goes into this fund, as do the lottery profits of about $21 million, and several other smaller items.

The larger part of that last 30 percent, however, is a trans-fer from the general fund.

This transfer represents a huge chunk of the budget — in 2009, it was 25 percent of the $1.1 billion general fund — and it has many other demands on it. This chunk has a power-ful structure that fosters down-ward pressure on spending.

Can you just see a hand creeping out of the general fund bucket and planting a few of its obligations into another bucket?

aND THEN there is the educa-tion fund bucket itself.

It was originally created in 1997 so that low-spend-ing districts were encour-aged to increase spending, paid for, theoretically anyway, by “excess” property tax rev-enues from sending towns. Subsequently, penalties were imposed on high per-pupil spending districts.

However, so many more districts are able to increase spending that, in the aggregate, the demand for revenues in the education fund escalates with few structural elements to stop it. Thus, the basic design of the education fund acts as upward pressure on spending.

It is certainly true that con-taining spending in both funds leads to the need for less rev-enue in both. But the power of the state to adjust spending in the general fund is direct.

Supporting our schools is a joint responsibility of both state and local governments. Policy makers have for several years focused on strategies aimed at shrinking school governance and closing small schools, strat-egies that the state does not have the power to implement unless it were to take over the running of schools in Vermont.

If we as citizens of Vermont (including legislators) collec-tively want our schools to re-main a central element of our communities, as they now are, if we want to get a handle on property-tax creep, and if we want to reduce the stress that exists between state and lo-cal officials, then state policy makers need to look at the root causes of these problems, one of which is the basic structure of the buckets into which our tax money is deposited. n

ANN MANWARING, D-Wilmington, represents the Windham-2 district in the state House of Representatives and serves as a member of the House Appropriations Committee. This piece originally appeared on VTDigger.org.

RaDIaNT BYTE/ISTOCKPHOTO

a tale of two funds

A lawmaker gives a tutorial about the political pull on two buckets of money

T'ai Chi Ch'uanin Brattleboro

Matt Skove/Audio DesignHome Audio/Flat Screen TV’sCar Audio/Remote Car Starters

Bluetooth Phone/Hands Free Car Kits

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• Donatenon-perishablefood and personal care items at drop-offlocationsinstores and businesses near you.

• Donateonlineat ProjectFeedTheThousands.org

• Orsendacheckdirectlyto your local food shelf to buy food at a special bulk discount, making the food go farther.

Let’s not ignore the problem. Let’s be the solution.Your donation helps provide nutritious food for thousands of hungry people at over 25 food shelves and community kitchens throughout southern VT and NH.

Mail your check toProject Feed the Thousands, c/o:

Brattleboro Area Drop In CenterPO Box 175, Brattleboro, VT 05302

Chester–Andover Family CenterPO Box 302, Chester, VT 05143

Deerfield Valley Food PantryPO Box 1743, Wilmington, VT 05363

Hinsdale Welfare Dept.11 Main Street, Hinsdale, NH 03451

Our Place Drop In Center (Bellows Falls)PO Box 852, Bellows Falls, VT 05101

Springfield Family Center365 Summer St., Springfield, VT 05156

Townshend Community Food ShelfPO Box 542,Townshend, VT 05353

Enclosed is my check for $_____________ made out to Project Feed the Thousands.

Name:______________________________

Address: ____________________________

Town: ______________________________

State: _______ Zip:__________________

Or donate online at ProjectFeedTheThousands.org

How can we live with ourselves if our neighbors are living with hunger?

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In early November, a deliv-ery of nuclear waste en route

to a “disposal site” in northern Germany met with some unan-ticipated obstacles. Dozens of farmers lined the route deter-mined to block roadways with their tractors, trees and stumps cut down by protestors blocked the routes, and more than 3,000 people gathered in pro-test outside the site deemed ac-ceptable to bury containers of highly toxic nuclear waste.

Several times police had stop and to clear flocks of sheep and goats from the roadway. a shepherdess who would only give her name as “Evelyn,” due to fear of reprisal, expressed the concern of the farmers and other protesters — that the toxic-waste disposal site repre-sented a poisonous long-term threat to not only their liveli-hoods, but also the health of the land and water.

along the roads, hundreds of people gathered to protest the

German government’s decision to extend the life of the coun-try’s nuclear power plants for several years.

Organizers stated that the protest was not only an effort to voice ongoing concern and dissent over the use of nuclear power but also an effort to show support for local renew-able energy sources.

One has to wonder how the fate of energy policy in the U.S.

would differ if people who re-gard themselves as stewards of the earth played an active role in the decisionmaking process rather than nuclear industry “professionals “ and regulators who give precedence to corpo-rate earnings over the well-be-ing of the planet.

Amelia SheaPeterborough, N.H.

L E T T E R S F R O M R E A D E R S

Taking nuclear policy into their own hands

T h E C O M M O N S • Wednesday, December 8, 2010 VOICES 7

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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.

• Robert “Bob” W. Adams, 85, of Bellows Falls. Died Dec. 2, at Grace Cottage Hospital in Townshend. Graduate of Bellows Falls High School. Served in the army during World War II, and from 1944 to 1946, he worked on the army’s mili-tary railroad in the Philippines. Worked for the Rutland Railroad for 18 years, and was also an au-thorized Lionel electric train re-pairman and clock repairman. after the Rutland’s demise, he was hired by avid rail fan F. Nelson Blount, the founder of Steamtown USa, to create the steam train museum and excur-sion railroad in Bellows Falls. He eventually helped Blount start the Green Mountain Railroad in 1965. After Blount’s death in a plane crash in 1967, he be-came the majority shareholder of the Green Mountain and was its president from 1968 until 1978. He served on the GMR’s board of directors until 1993. MEMOR I a L I N FOR M aT ION: a funeral service was held on Dec. 6 at Fenton & Hennessey Funeral Home in Bellows Falls, with burial in Oak Hill Cemetery.

• Kenneth Edward Brooke, 80, of Marlboro. Died Nov. 29 at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital. Husband of Margaret Nicholson for 50 years. Father of Carol Brooke-deBock and husband, Will, of Marlboro; Ellen Wanless and husband, Bill, of Seattle; and John Brooke and his part-ner, Monique Lary, of atlanta. Born in Dallas and raised in Des Moines, Iowa, where he was a graduate of Roosevelt High School, Class of 1948. Attended Northwestern University, where he earned his B.S. in business administration. Was a veteran of the Korean Conflict, serv-ing as a Navy aviator stationed in Japan and surviving a plane crash into the Pacific Ocean. after completing his active duty service, he served in the Naval Reserve. Worked in computer technology for I.B.M and co-owned and operated Creative Systems Interface, a computer systems consulting business lo-cated in Massachusetts. Was a lifelong Christian Scientist and had attended the Christian Science Church in Brattleboro. MEMORIaL INFORMaTION: a private funeral service was held for the family. Donation to The Gathering Place, 30 Terrace Street, Brattleboro, VT. 05301.

• Ellen (O’Prey) Clancy, 88, of Brattleboro. Died Nov. 28 at home. Wife of the late Joseph F. Clancy for 51 years. Mother of Joseph T. Clancy of Lido Beach, N.Y.; Daniel P. Clancy of Brattleboro; James J. Clancy of Long Beach, N.Y.; and Ellen P. Clancy of Brattleboro, with whom she lived the past eight years. Predeceased by a brother, Richard O’Prey. Born in Castlewellen, County Down, Ireland and grew up in New York City. Worked for New York Telephone for 20 years. Was active in the 82nd airborne association, the unit her hus-band served in during World War II, for many years. Spent her retirement years in Bayonet Point, Fla., before coming to Brattleboro. MEMORIaL IN-

FORMaTION: a memorial Mass was celebrated on Dec. 1 at St. Michael’s Catholic Church in Brattleboro, with burial on Dec. 3 in Florida National Cemetery in Bushnell, Fla. Donations to the Reformer Christmas Stocking, P.O. Box 703, Brattleboro, VT 05302-0703.

• Kylie Alexis Gay-Rounds, infant, of Bellows Falls. Was stillborn Nov. 24 at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital. Daughter of Nicole Kristen Gay of Bellows Falls and Ryan Miller

Rounds (currently serving in afghanistan) of Westminster. Grandaughter of Regina amidon and allyn Olney of Bellows Falls, Robert Gay III of Springfield and Orland and Terrilee Rounds of Westminster and annalee Webber, all of Westminster. Great-grandaughter of Reginald and Judy amidon of Brattleboro, Robert Jr. and Joyce Gay of North Westminster, and Harley and Cheryl Rounds and Joanne and Danny Muzzey, all of Westminster. MEMORIaL INFOR-

MaTION: a funeral service will be held at Fenton & Hennessey Funeral Home in Bellows Falls at a later date. Burial will follow in the Saxtons River Cemetery.

• B a r b a r a W. Hewes, 77, of Brattleboro. Died Dec. 3 at her home. Wife of Norman F. Hewes for 54 years. Mother

of Nathan Hewes and his wife, Barbara (Kaeppel), of Charlestown, N.H. Raised and educated in Brattleboro and was a graduate of Brattleboro High School, Class of 1951. Worked her entire career in the printing business as a proofreader starting work at the Brattleboro Reformer and later working for Page Setters, american Stratford, Country Journal Magazine and Publishers Composition. aaso worked out of her home proof reading for allyn and Bacon, Inc., and for several other publishers. She retired in 1998, but continued to do proof reading and editing for the author “Happy Hugo” on the Internet. MEMORIaL IN-

FORMaTION: a funeral service was held Dec. 7 at atamaniuk Funeral Home in Brattleboro with burial in Christ Church Cemetery in Guilford. Donations to Visiting Nurse association of Vermont, P.O. Box 976, White River Jct. VT 05001-0976., or Brattleboro area Hospice, 191 Canal Street, Brattleboro, VT 05301. Condolences may be sent to atamaniuk Funeral Home at www.atamaniuk.com.

• K e n n e t h Edward “Ken” L a n e , 8 0 , o f Bra t t l eboro . Died Dec. 1. H u s b a n d o f Juanita Pond for 45 years.

Father of alberta Seale and hus-band, Mike; and Jean Gilbeau and husband, aaron, all of Brattleboro. Predeceased by a son, Kenneth E. Lane Jr.; three brothers, Chester, arnold and Eugene Lane; one sister, Eva Nesbitt and a half sister, Lorene O’Bryan. Raised and educated in Brattleboro, he served in the Navy during the Korean Conflict on the USS Douglas Fox. Was employed at C&S Wholesale Grocers, where he retired from in 1992. Previously worked at Boise Cascade for 17 years and for aPW/Concel for 10 years. Graduated from Christ For the Nation Bible Institute in Stony Brook, N.Y. in 1991, and went on to serve as co-direc-tor of Mercy Ministries, a food and clothing ministry of agape Christian Fellowship, which he managed with his wife. Was a member and served as a deacon at agape Christian Fellowship. MEMORIaL INFORMaTION: a funeral service was held Dec. 4 at the Green Mountain Chapel; burial with full military honors will follow in Meetinghouse Hill Cemetery. Donations to Mercy Ministries, in care of agape Christian Fellowship, 30 Canal St., Brattleboro, VT 05301. Condolences may be sent to atamaniuk Funeral Home at www.atamaniuk.com. • Joyce Anne Pfenning, 77, of Vernon. Died Nov. 29, 2010 at Vernon Green Nursing Home. Wife of Bradford a. Pfenning for 56 years. Mother of Cheryl P. Deyo and husband, Peter, of Vernon; and Gay Pfenning, also of

Vernon. Sister of Gail Pelkey of Springfield, Vt. Predeceased by sisters Shirley Redo, Barbara Hall, and Gladys Chadbourne.

Graduate of Springfield High School, Class of 1950, and Castleton State College, where she earned her B.S. degree in teaching. Was the school sec-retary at Vernon Elementary School for 17 years, retiring in 1992. Previously worked as a sec-retary for 10 years at Brattleboro Union High School, and taught at both Green Street School and Canal Street School. MEMORIaL

INFORMaTION: Funeral services were held Dec. 6 at Vernon Christian advent Church with burial in Tyler Cemetery. Donations to Vernon advent Christian Home, 61 Greenway Drive, Vernon, VT 05354, or to The Gathering Place, 30 Terrace St., Brattleboro, VT 05301. Condolences may be sent to atamaniuk Funeral Home at www.atamaniuk.com.

• Emelea “Bobbie” (Gonder) Ward, 99, of Vernon. Died Dec. 1 at Vernon Green Nursing Home, 11 days shy of her 100th birthday. Wife of the late alexander T. Ward. Predeceased by two brothers, Henry and Herman Gonder. Survived by four generations of nieces and nephews.Born and raised in Jersey City, N.J., she was em-ployed at the Hallmark Card Co. for 21 years, retiring in 1975. An avid square dancer, she belonged to the Lone Star Square Dancers, and was invited to perform in Kyoto, Japan.. MEMORIaL IN-

FORMaTION: a graveside service was held on Dec. 6 at Springfield (Mass.) Cemetery, Springfield, Mass.

Births

• In Brattleboro (Memorial Hospital), Nov. 18, 2010, a daughter, Ryanne Jane Marie edson , to amber Lara and James J. Edson of Hinsdale, N.H.; grandaughter to Ramona Hervieux, Penny and John Corliss, and Jim and anna Edson.

College news

• Colin Hinckley, from Putney, is a first-year student this fall at Pace University’s New York City campus.

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 Teague

The 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 Teague

The 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 Peters

The 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 Witherspoon

Special 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’Brien

The 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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Second Chance Shoppe

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Cherry Street Artisans

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info: 365-4201, see ad inside

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Weddings $750

Karaoke, Lighting & MC

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Aoife O’Donovan Band

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Crooked Still vocalist

& friends

Friday, Dec. 10 7:30 pm

The United Church of Putney

Tickets and info:

802-254-9276

www.twilightmusic.org

ALLBEE’S Selling Fresh Cut VT

Christmas Trees!

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Verm

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NewsVERNON

Vermont Yankee gets

new resident

inspectorpage 12

VoicesJOYCE MARCEL

Caretaking,

aging, and

death by a

thousand cutspage 6

The ArtsNEW VPT fILM

Documentary

looks at history

of newspapers

in Vermont page 14

Life and Work

GObbLE, GObbLE

Thanksgiving

in Brattleboropage 9

SportsWINTER IS hERE!

Ski areas get

a jump on

the seasonpage 11

Brattleboro, Vermont

Wednesday, December 1, 2010 • Vol. V, No. 31 • Issue #78

fREE

www.commonsnews.org

W I N D h A M C O U N T Y ’ S A W A R D - W I N N I N G , I N D E P E N D E N T S O U R C E f O R N E W S A N D V I E W S

weeklyvYour membership in

Vermont Independent Media

can make this the

best free newspaper

you’ve ever paid for.

See page 5.

n SEE ChuRCh, pagE 4

N o w h i r i N gAdvertising Sales Representative The Commons is growing! We seek an additional energetic, organized person to serve as our ambassador to the business community by selling advertising on commission.Written response only, please; send letter of interest and resume to Betsy Jaffe at [email protected].

The

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First Methodist presents drive-through nativity on Dec. 12

BRaTTLEBORO — The members and friends of the First United Methodist Church will present a live drive-through na-tivity on Sunday, Dec. 12, be-tween the hours of 5 to 8 p.m.

The nativity is a re-enactment of the events that took place on the Road to Bethlehem 2,000 years ago. Nine of the Biblical scenes leading to Jesus will be portrayed by costumed charac-ters and live animals. There will be hundreds of luminaries and persons along the way to guide you through the nativity. a spot-light at each scene enhances and illuminates the reflection of the costumed characters and live

animals against the night sky.It takes many volunteers to

star in this production. If you are interested in being one of the characters, call the church office at 802-254-4218. It can count as a community service for high school students who need to fulfill that requirement for graduation.

There is no cost, but the church welcomes donations of either cash or non-perishable food for the Brattleboro area Drop-in Center. The church is located at 18 Town Crier Drive across from the Shell station on Putney Road.

Student work to be published in bilingual grant-funded book

BRaTTLEBORO — Students of Windham Southwest and Southeast Supervisory Unions together have the opportunity to be published in a book of art-work and writing through a grant from the arts Endowment Fund of the Vermont Community Foundation.

This project, “Learning Chinese Through art,” will consist of students from south-eastern Vermont of all ages cre-ating word art based on Chinese characters and, in response to the Chinese word art and its mean-ing, create poetry and other cre-ative writing.

at this time, the call is out for middle and high school students, teachers, school administra-tors, and community members to join the steering commit-tee to manage or assist in one

or more tasks for the project. Details on the different tasks needed and other information is available on the project blog, chinesewordartbook.wordpress.com.

Those interested to get in-volved should sign up on-line through the blog contact page or by contacting Project Coordinator Cai xi Silver at [email protected] or 802-257-7898, ext. 3.

The

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Farm Fresh, Local, Handmade, Homemade Lunch Café & Live Music

Christmas Eve Day Market Friday Dec 24 10-2

EBT Debit Cards Welcomed River Garden, 153 Main St.

802-869-2141 or [email protected]

Open Weekly Saturday 10-2 Nov – March For your holiday table or gift list


Selectboard has seen all the pro-posed operating expenses and revenue projections. They’re reviewing the capital plan and debt services schedule, a docu-ment detailing what old debt the town is paying off and what new debt it is taking on.

Sondag said decisions at this stage of the budgeting process mark “where the rubber hits the road.”

She said capital expenses for FY2012 will be higher because the town had decided to defer some maintenance in past years. Capital expenses are purchases of over $10,000 for equipment with long lifespans, like vehi-cles, or long-term infrastructure improvements.

“Projects are not cheaper if they have to be done on an emergency basis,” Sondag said, adding the town prefers to take proactive actions.

The town is considering re-placing a 1971 Maxim fire en-gine. The floorboards are rusted through, and the doors won’t close properly.

“If we ask, should we replace the vehicle it’s a simple ‘yes’ an-swer,” said Sondag. “But the an-swers become harder when the town asks, ‘Do we need the fire engine?’”

Sondag said the Selectboard isn’t insisting on level-funded budgets as it did for FY 2011. according to Sondag, the board witnessed how hard level-fund-ing became, and this year, in-creases in capital expenses and health insurance would make level funding nearly impossible.

Last year saw no increases in health insurance, but rates will jump 25 percent for FY 2012.

Changes in the federal health care requirements are contrib-uting to the rate change, as is the fact that Brattleboro’s work-force is in a high-risk pool, said Sondag.

“My goal is always get as close to level-funding as we can,” said DeGray in an earlier interview.

But it is probably not realistic for this fiscal year without ter-minating services, he said. Last year, for example, the town chose not to plow all the sidewalks to save money, but residents complained.

DeGray said there are some big-ticket items for the town to consider, like a $400,000 fire truck, a $150,000 highway de-partment truck, two police cruis-ers and a Parks and Recreation Department vehicle.

In addition, the town is con-sidering $400,000 in street pav-ing, as well as about $50,000 in repairs for the Brattleboro Museum and art Center — a building the town owns and leases to the museum for $1 — as well as repairs to buildings in-habited by the Women’s Crisis Center programs.

“Start adding all those things up, and it become almost over-whelming,” said DeGray.

During Monday’s meeting, DeGray made his pitch for a 1 percent sales tax to capture some of the revenue spent by visitors. The current 1 percent room-and-meals tax brings in about $300,000 a year.

DeGray said the town must

try “to garner another form of income” from an outside source.

S o n d a g i n f o r m e d t h e Selectboard that the $300,000 that the 1 percent meals and rooms tax brings in does not cover all expenses. She said the town needed about $800,000 in cash just to stay current with services.

“We do a lot of transient busi-ness,” said DeGray. “People come to Brattleboro because it is unique, and we need to take advantage of that.”

According to 2009 data, the most recent numbers on record, a 1 percent sales tax would have accumulated $673,069 in rev-enue for Brattleboro.

“at the end of the day, it would be a huge benefit for Brattleboro taxpayers,” said DeGray.

Selectboard Clerk Jesse Corum said he could not support the current proposed budget.

Corum said that to sel l DeGray’s sales tax to Town Meeting Representatives, the Selectboard would need to ear-mark the money for something tangible, like paving or sidewalk

repair. Selectboard Member Dora Bouboulis agreed.

DeGray said he would be open to making the sales tax temporary.

O ’ C o n n o r s a i d s h e couldn’t support the new tax. Brattleboro’s proximity to Massachusetts and tax-free New Hampshire made it too easy for people go elsewhere.

Bouboulis said she wished Windham County had a county-wide tax charged to the sur-round ing towns , ca l l ing Brattleboro a hub town that “bears the burden and [from which] other towns benefit.”

“I’m not angry with depart-ment heads [for increases], but at some point we can’t keep rais-ing taxes,” said DeGray.

The budget process began in September and will continue until January. Town Meeting Representatives will vote on the budget in March. The town will set the tax rate based on the bud-get and Grand List in July.

Sondag described passing a budget as the hardest and most important thing that the Selectboard does.

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By Anne GallowaySpecial to The Commons

VERNON—New rules under consideration by a Texas com-mission could hamper the de-commissioning of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in the near future, according to ex-perts and activists who oppose the change.

They say the proposal, which would allow a Texas landfill to accept additional waste from out-of-state entities, including nuclear power companies like Entergy Corp., could give away space that is allotted for antici-pated radioactive material from Vermont Yankee.

Texas formed a compact with Vermont in 1998 to establish a permanent repository for low-level radioactive waste gener-ated by nuclear power plants and medical and research facilities in Vermont and Texas. The com-pact was set up for the two states’ exclusive use. (Maine was origi-nally a part of the agreement but dropped out). In 2009, Waste Control Specialists received a license to open a radioactive waste landfill in West Texas for the compact that is now under construction.

Two weeks ago , mem-bers of the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission, includ-ing two Douglas administration officials representing Vermont, gave preliminary approval to procedures that would allow the commission to accept applica-tions for permits from entities in other states to dump waste at the site.

Critics say the new rules could transform the landfill into a na-tional repository for low-level nuclear waste and that it could fill up quickly because demand for landfill space is high.

Thirty-six states are not cur-rently part of a radioactive waste disposal compact. If the Texas Commission approves the pro-posed procedures after a 30-day public comment period that ends Dec. 26, the West Texas facility would be the only site of its type licensed to accept waste from anywhere in the coun-try, according to the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, an anti-nuclear group based in Maryland.

Members of the Texas com-mission who support the pro-posals, including Uldis Vanags, the state nuclear engineer for the Vermont Department of Public Service, say they are looking out for Vermont’s interests and that opening the site to “imported” waste from “noncompact” enti-ties will help to pay for the con-struction of the high-tech facility, which is slated to open at the end of 2011. Otherwise, they say, waste disposal costs for the two compact members, Texas and Vermont, would be prohibitively expensive.

Vanags and Steven Wark, director of consumer affairs and public information for the Vermont Department of Public

Service, both voted on Nov. 13 to support the rules, which will enable other states to apply for access to the landfill.

Vanags and Wark, the only two Vermont representatives on the commission, were among the five commissioners who ap-proved the change; two Texas members dissented.

Vanags said the new rule won’t have an impact on decom-missioning Vermont Yankee.

“We will not give up our ca-pacity that we need to fulfill the decommissioning of Vermont Yankee,” Vanags said. “The only way [we] would consider importation is if there is surplus capacity.”

Several Texas Compact com-missioners who cast dissenting votes on the rule have questioned whether “imports” will use up capacity at the facility before Vermont has a chance to move radioactive materials from a de-commissioned Vermont Yankee plant to Texas.

The proposed rules, which were promulgated in the Texas Register on Nov. 26, are now subject to a 30-day public com-ment period, which ends Dec. 27.

The commission is expected to make a final decision soon af-ter the public comment period — before the new Vermont gov-ernor, Peter Shumlin, is installed and Vermont lawmakers convene for the 2011 legislative session.

Shumlin, a Democrat, and leaders of his party in the Statehouse, have been critical of Entergy Corp.’s handling of maintenance problems at the nuclear power plant in Vernon, including a transformer fire, the collapse of a cooling tower and radioactive leaks, none of which affected public safety, according to the company and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Last year, Gov.-elect Shumlin led the charge, as president pro tem of the Vermont Senate, to nix Entergy’s relicensure effort.

Storage in Vermont, or Texas?

Vermont Yankee is licensed to operate until March 2012. Unless the license is extended, which would appear politically untenable given the Vermont Senate’s decision last year to block Entergy’s bid to relicense the 38-year-old plant for 20 years, the plant will be shut down next year, preparing the way for decommissioning.

at that point, where and how the radioactive waste is stored will become a crucial issue.

Entergy Corp. has proposed keeping the materials on the Vernon site in a system called SaFSTOR for six decades.

another alternative would be a more accelerated decommis-sioning process, in which the waste would be sent to the West Texas landfill overseen by the commission and operated by a Dallas-based private company, Waste Control Specialists, ac-cording to arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer who serves on

Controversial rules for Texas landfill could affect VY decommissioning

the Vermont Legislature’s Public Oversight Panel.

The compact legally entitles Vermont under a 15-year license to 20 percent, or 462,000 cu-bic feet, of the 2.3 million cubic feet at the nuclear waste dump. Under the proposal, however, space could be at a premium at the waste facility if “noncom-pact” entities are allowed to apply for permits to deposit ra-dioactive materials at the site in andrews County, Texas, accord-ing to Bob Gregory, a member of the commission from Texas.

Requests for waste “importa-tion” would be vetted on a case-by-case basis, according to the published rules.

In 2009 , the Compact Commission determined that Vermont and Texas together need 6 million cubic square feet of capacity for the amount of radioactive waste generated by both states.

Gregory, one of the dissenting members, said the commission doesn’t have the staff capacity or financial resources to evaluate applications. (The annual budget of $125,000 covers only travel and meeting expenses.) In addi-tion, the subjective nature of the proposed permitting process, he said, could leave the commission vulnerable to lawsuits.

He doesn’t know how the commission will defend itself from legal challenges if the com-mission says no to one entity and yes to another.

“Waste Control specialists, Entergy, Santa Claus — any-one can sue us for not allowing radioactive waste to come in,” Gregory said. “What are we going to say if we can’t defend ourselves?”

Entergy, according to a Texas official, would have much to gain if the new landfill rules go through. The Louisiana-based corporation needs a place to put the waste from its fleet of 10 plants around the country. “Opening the Texas facility

WaSTE CONTROL SPECIaLISTS

A schematic of how waste would be stored underground taken from Waste Control Specialists’ 2007 license application. The facility would accept low-level radioactive waste from government and private sources in Texas and vermont, including vermont Yankee.

would allow them to take it from those other plants,” Gregory said.

a giveaway? G u n d e r s e n s a i d t h e

Douglas administration sup-ports Entergy’s proposal to put Vermont Yankee in SaFSTOR for 60 years, while the company waits for the decommissioning fund to grow enough to cover the cost of moving the material offsite.

SaFSTOR, in Gundersen’s view, is not necessary. He said Vermont Yankee could be de-commissioned in 10 years, but that scenario is contingent on access to landfill capacity in Texas. There is just enough cu-bic square footage on the site to accommodate the radioactive waste from the plant.

“There’s a limited amount of land (for radioactive waste dis-posal) in Texas, and the state is giving away Vermont’s land to 35 other states, which will make it impossible to decommission Vermont Yankee,” Gundersen said.

In June 2009, Vanags tes-tified to the Vermont Public Service Board that decommis-sioning Vermont Yankee would cost less than the $568 million spent on Maine Yankee, even though projections that include the SaFSTOR option have been higher. Vermont Public Radio reported in 2007 that decom-missioning Vermont Yankee could cost as much as $1.7 bil-lion. In September of this year, the decommissioning fund was at about $443 million. Entergy is responsible for making sure there is adequate money available for decommissioning.

Gundersen said Vanags’ testi-mony was based on the assump-tion that the radioactive waste would be shipped to Texas.

“If Vanags’ testimony un-der oath is correct, we could complete decommissioning by 2020, (but) he’s giving away the land to which you need to ship it,” Gundersen said. “If you give away the land, you force SaFSTOR to occur. With no place to send it, we’re sort of constipated.”

Vanags, who voted to publish the rules that will allow other states to apply for access to the landfill, said: “There absolutely will be enough space.”

“We will not give up our ca-pacity that we need to fulfill the decommissioning of Vermont Yankee,” he said.

In audio testimony, Vanags and Wark voted against amend-ments to the proposed rules that would have given Compact members first dibs to the landfill and also that would have delayed action and allowed the Texas and Vermont legislatures an oppor-tunity to weigh in on the matter.

“We’re actually under the closing phases of the Douglas administration,” Gundersen said. “We’re getting to the point where we, the state of Vermont’s administrative agencies, are actu-ally assisting Entergy, as opposed to looking out for the best inter-ests of the state.”

Gregory, a Texas commis-sion member who opposed the

adoption of the new rules, said he doesn’t understand why the rule has to be adopted by early January. He suspects the tim-ing has something to do with a changing of the political guard in the Vermont governor’s office.

“What on Earth is the rush?” Gregory said. “It’s rushing to beat a date for when the new governor comes to town. If the commissioners change, then the vote would be 4-4; now it’s 6-2.”

The terms for the commis-sioners from Vermont – Vanags, Wark and their alternate Sarah Hoffman – expire Feb. 28, 2010. Gov.-elect Shumlin, in the interim, will likely appoint a new commissioner for the Department of Public Service, who could in turn name new “ex-empt” employees, or appointed officials, who would take the place of the three who are now on the commission.

Tom Smith, of Public Citizen, an advocacy group that opposes the landfill, said the commission wants to get the rule rammed through before the Texas and Vermont legislatures have a chance to take action to block it.

“They’re afraid the new gov-ernor of Vermont might ap-point commissioners that might stand up for the state, as op-posed to going along with what the nuclear industry wants,” Smith said.

John C. White, vice chair of the commission and a radiation safety officer for the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, says nothing of the sort is going on.

“We’ve been talking about this for 16 months,” White said of the rule. “We can amend the rule if

necessary … I don’t see your new governor as part of this.”

the rationale for taking all comers

The facility, which is de-signed to take radioactive ma-terials such as contaminated clothing, glass, metal, reactor components and sludge, needs a certain amount of waste to cover the fixed costs associated with construction.

White, speaking as commis-sion vice chair, said allowing ma-terial from other states into the landfill would lower the operat-ing costs for the compact mem-bers tenfold.

Vanags said opening up the site to more entities will keep disposal fees at the site reason-able for Texas and Vermont. The commission hasn’t set fees for “imports,” but so far it hasn’t imposed up-front contributions from noncompact waste genera-tors. Vermont will pay $25 mil-lion to support construction of the site this year.

“The way to reduce cost per cubic foot is to increase your ca-pacity,” Vanags said in contend-ing the only way the commission would consider “imports” would be if there is surplus capacity.

Vanags said before the com-mission would accept appli-cations, it would conduct an updated study to determine how much capacity would be needed by the two compact states.

“We recognize as a commis-sion we have to have a process [for dealing with requests],” Vanags said. “We’re not opposed to importation. We’re open to it, but as long as our capacity is pro-tected. The facility in the future may be expanded, and they may amend their license. In future, there may be surplus capacity.”

White supports expanding the site to accommodate more waste. The limitations now placed on the landfill are under the terms of the current license issued by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, White said. The site itself, he believes, could be expanded.

In the meantime, demand is high, White said.

Medical waste vendors are al-ready coming in to the state of Texas in anticipation of the facil-ity opening a year from now, he said, and hospitals are having a difficult time disposing of waste used in research and in the treat-ment of cancer.

“So many people say you’re opening the door,” White said. “The door is already open. Waste is already coming into Texas, and we don’t have control over where the waste is stored. We don’t have procedures to say you can’t bring it in.”

GREENFIELD, Mass.—a Vermont Yankee decommis-sioning forum will be held on Wednesday, Dec. 8, from 7-9 p.m., at the downtown cam-pus of Greenfield Community College, 270 Main St.

a four-person panel will discuss what will happen if Vermont Yankee stops op-erating in March 2012, what might happen before that date, and what local residents, elected officials, and town and regional bodies can do to make sure Vermont Yankee is prop-erly dismantled and cleaned-up, with the radioactive waste safely stored.

The panelists will be Deb Katz, executive director of the Citizens awareness Network;

Rosemary Bassilakis, technical advisor for the Connecticut Citizens awareness Network; Robert Stannard, lobbyist for the Vermont Citizens action Network; and Dr. Marvin Resnicoff, nuclear physicist and international consul-tant on radioactive waste issues, Radioactive Waste Management associates.

a period of open discus-sion will follow the panel presentation.

This event is co-sponsored by the Safe & Green Campaign and Nuclear Free Vermont by 2012. Refreshments will be served. For more informa-tion, contact Deb Katz at 413-339-5781.

vY decommissioning forum planned in Greenfield

PUTNEY—Three student composers from The Grammar School traveled to St. Michael’s College in Colchester on Dec. 6 to hear their original musi-cal compositions played live by professional musicians in the Vermont Midi Project’s Opus 21 Concert. The se-lected pieces are Summer’s Dance by eighth-grader Jamie Lumley, a second time win-ner; Chaos by sixth-grader Russell Boswell; and My Friend The Wind by fifth-grader Isaac Freitas-Eagan.

In his notes for the program, Isaac wrote, “I really liked watching my piece come to-gether. I thought it was really cool to be able to connect with a music mentor through the in-ternet, and I was excited when my piece was selected.”

Jamie Lumley’s notes say, “as well as writing music, I also love to play piano and sing. Music has always been one of

my interests and I love to be able to have my thoughts writ-ten out on paper and expressed to others.”

When describing his piece, Chaos, Russell Boswell said, “The song’s name is not so much based on the attitude of the composition as it is about me…sometimes. The ending holds a surprise.”

In addition to the evening concert, each composer had dedicated rehearsal time with the performers during the af-ternoon and the opportunity to attend workshops and dis-cussion groups.

Other Opus 21 entries were composed by five TGS fifth-graders: Roselle Lovell-Smith and William Parkman; Ethan Foster and Robin McOwen; and Tyler Silbey.

Under the direction of alli Lubin, head of the mu-sic program and technology administrator, these young

composers join the list of 15 former TGS Opus selected composers: Jacob Knapp, Miles Hume, Colin Clark, Brooke Mooney, Katelyn Donovan, Julian Stolper, Tim Quimby, Nathaniel Todd Long, antonia Dufort, Michaela Shea-Gander, Lucie Foster, Ona Hauert, Claire Thomas, Jamie Lumley, and Libby Green.

“The live performance ex-perience is such a reward,” writes Sandi MacLeod, VT Midi Project coordinator. “When music comes from liv-ing, breathing musicians, there is an energy and vibrance that the computer can’t imitate.”

Celebrating its 50th anniver-sary this year, The Grammar School in Putney educates children in preschool through eighth grade. More informa-tion about the Opus 21 pro-gram can be found on the web at www.vtmidi.org/opus21.htm

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Jatoba will present a holiday concert Dec. 22.

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Music

• S tudent concer t at open Music Collective: On Thursday, Dec. 9, at 7:30 p.m., the Open Music Collective will host a student ensembles concert featuring the music of Wayne Shorter and other works by Mongo Santamarìa, Coltrane, Monk and Ray anderson.

Local favorites Steve Frankel (bass), Jon Mack (sax and flute), Kate Parsons (piano), Bahman Mahdavi (guitar) and Dan Borden (drums) have re-hearsed challenging Wayne Shorter compositions including Ana Maria, Armageddon, Speak no Evil, and Water Babies. Shorter is commonly regarded as one of the most important american jazz musicians of his generation which included extended rela-tionships with art Blakey, Miles Davis, and Weather Report.

The other group performing is a youth ensemble including

Bahman’s son Emmett on trum-pet, Quinn Darrow on bass, Fabian Gaspero-Beckstrom on drums, Jaoquin Borofsky on sax, and special guest Sam Indenbaum on piano.

Tickets are (a suggested) $5, available at the door. For more information, visit www.open-musiccollective.org or call 802-275 5054. OMC is located in the Cotton Mill in Brattleboro in Studio a335.

• O’Donovan, Courtin in Putney: Twilight Music pres-ents an evening of progressive folk music with vocalist/guitar-ist aoife O’Donovan (of the al-ternative bluegrass stringband Crooked Still and the folk-noir trio Sometymes Why) and vocal-ist/violinist Christina Courtin on Friday, Dec. 10 at 7:30 p.m. at The United Church of Putney, 15 Kimball Hill.

The pair of singer/songwrit-ers will share a back-up band of some of today’s top young roots musicians — Jed Wilson

(keyboards) of Dominique Eade and Heather Masse, Ryan Scott (guitar) of Josh Mease and Rumblefoot, Jacob Silver (bass) of The Mammals, and Robin MacMillan (drums) of Sugar and Gold and Tao Seeger.

Tickets are $16 general ad-mission, $14 for students and se-niors. For ticket reservations and information, call 802-254-9276. For more information, visit www.myspace.com/aoifeodono-van, www.christinacourtin.com and www.twilightmusic.org.

• Legion Band Christmas concerts: The Brattleboro american Legion Band will pres-ent its annual Christmas con-cert on Wednesday, Dec. 15, at 7:30 p.m., at the Legion Hall on Linden Street. There is no ad-mission charge, but donations are welcome.

From the opening strains of A Festival of Carols to the final notes of Let It Snow, the 45-piece Legion Band will feature popu-lar and familiar music of the holi-day season. The first half of the concert, led by Bruce Corwin, features old favorites such as Santa Claus is Coming to Town, a George Gershwin Christmas medley, and ends with We Need a Little Christmas, from the musi-cal Hello Dolly. The second half, led by Raymond Brown, features a short visit from The Grinch Who Stole Christmas and a sing-along of familiar carols.

The band will also do its an-nual “around Town” tour on Dec. 18.

•TubaChristmas returns to Brattleboro: The second an-nual TubaChristmas will be held on Sunday, Dec. 19, at 3 p.m., at the First Congregational Church on Western avenue.

TubaChristmas is a concert held in cities around the world that celebrates those who play, teach, and compose music for instruments in the tuba family, such as the tuba, Sousaphone, baritone, and euphonium horns. It was first held in 1847 in New York City, with more than 300 musicians playing together.

Last year, tuba players from Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and New York State came to Brattleboro for the inaugural TubaChristmas concert.

• Jatoba in Saxtons River: Vermont “groovegrass” trio Jatoba will present a holiday con-cert on Wednesday, Dec. 22, at 7 p.m., at Main Street arts in Saxtons River.

admission is $5 and concert-goers are asked to bring a non-perishable food item for a food drive for the Vermont Foodbank.

• Sing along at the River

garden: Join ali and your com-munity family members for a Music Together all ages Holiday Sing-along on Thursday, Dec 23, at 11 a.m., at the River Garden in Brattleboro

Regular Music Together classes will begin again the sec-ond week of January at New England Youth Theatre in Brattleboro on Wednesday mornings at 9:30 and 10:30, and Friday monrings at 9:30. For more information, or to reserve a space, contact ali at [email protected] or call 802-275-7478.

Performing arts

• Po e t r y r e a d i n g i n Bellows Falls: On Saturday, Dec. 11, at 2 p.m., Ben Mitchell will read from his book, Only The Sound Itself, at the Village Square Booksellers in Bellows Falls.

after the reading, the floor will be open for attendees to read their poems as well. This is part of the 2nd Saturday, Poetry Open Mic, hosted by The River Voices writing group. River Voices encourages participants to read from your own poetry, bring a favorite poetry book to read from, or just listen. Call

the bookstore at 802-463-9404 to get on the reader’s schedule.

• A C h r i s t m a s C a r o l i n Brookline: The Brookline Players stage reading of A Christmas Carol will be presented Sunday, Dec. 12, at 4 p.m., at the Brookline School on Grassy Brook Road.

The show is a fundraiser to restore the Historic Brookline Church. It is directed by Bob DuCharme.

Visual arts

• Quilt display in Newfane: The Crowell Gallery of the Moore Free Library, 23 West St., is featuring an exciting ex-hibit of 16 quilts and wall hang-ings made by members of the Sew What’s Group of Newfane. The group has met for over a decade on Tuesday evenings for dinner and craft work at the local Congregational Church.

Members exhibiting work are Pat Bellou, Judy acampora, Leona Tabel, Jean Wilson, Winnie Dolan, Jane Robinson, Jan Becket, Flo Staats, Jan Knowles, Shirley Hendricks, Betty Horton, Ginny Grabowski, Elsie Garbe, and Betty ann Nelson.

Opus 21 selects three compositions from Grammar School students

The show will run through December and be open during library hours: Saturdays 9 a.m.-1 p.m., and Tuesday–Friday 1-5 p.m. For more information, call librarian Meris Morrison at 802-365-7948.

• Grassy Brook Arts Festival in Brookline: The first-ever Grassy Brook art Festival will be held on Sunday, Dec. 10, from noon until 6 p.m., at the former Brookline School building.

Formerly known as The artists of Brookline, the group has expanded and changed its venue from an open studio tour to a new holiday event showcas-ing locally made crafts for sale, including pottery, fiber arts, photography, and other arts and artisanry; a group exhibit showcasing the talents of pri-marily Brookline artists and ar-tisans; craft demonstrations and a weave-your-own-ornament ta-ble. Box lunches will be offered for sale from noon until 2 pm to enjoy while browsing and shop-ping; baked goodies will also be available.

This event is the first re-use of the school building since its closing and is part of the initia-tive to explore new uses for the facility, with the hope of building interest in a multi-purpose com-munity center where all types of programs can be held to benefit this community.

The Grassy Brook art Fest is the newest event of the group formed in 2008 to promote lo-cal artists, and by doing so en-hance and support the image of Brookline as well as provide an opportunity for sharing ex-periences and resources among artists and artisans in the com-munity. artists include Carolyn albee, Paul Madalinski, Trish Naudon-Thomas, Windmill Hill alpaca Farms, Whitney Hill Design, Z-pots, Rae Rice, Dandelion Designs, The Ladies Benevolence Society Crafts of the HBCPI, Gary Lavorgna, Suzanne D’Corsey, Chris Thomas, Treah Pichette, The NaTCH!, and more.

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

SaxTONS RIVER—On Dec. 6, 2006, Susan Bourne of Saxtons River offered and facilitated the first gathering of KnittingTogether at the Rockingham Free Public Library in Bellows Falls.

Her goals was simple: offer knitters of all levels a time and place where they could meet freely each week for a few hours to knit hats, mittens, scarves, and sweaters for local children and families.

after two years at the public library, KnittingTogether moved its weekly sessions to the Saxtons River Inn in Saxtons River, where they have been sitting and knitting together since then on Wednesdays from 1-3 p.m.

also around that t ime, Bourne began graduate school and asked Mary Guild if she would kindly handle active fa-cilitation and distribution for KnittingTogether. For the next two years, Guild did just that and kept KnittingTogether hum-ming, right up until her death this fall.

Now, after four years of KnittingTogether, group mem-bers share all aspects of knitting, sorting, storing, and distribut-ing items made throughout the year for gifting to local children when the weather turns cold and another Vermont winter sets in.

as with any volunteer group, members come and go for vari-ous reasons, but — as witnessed by this month’s four-year anni-versary — the personal dedica-tion of each member carries on.

KnittingTogether welcomes new members each week and will show (or remind) folks how to cast on, knit up, and bind off. The group wishes to thank Caroline Naberezny, Donna Golec, Felicia Cuming, Joanne Russo, Susan Bourne, and other knitters who continue to bring their willing hearts and hands to KnittingTogether as they join in this effort to help warm local community children.

For information or to offer time and/or yarn, contact Bourne at [email protected].

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River Gallery School plans trip to Tuscany, Umbria

B R a T T L E B O R O — The River Gallery School in Brattleboro will sponsor a trip to Italy this spring for a week of making art and exploration of the Tuscan countryside.

Travelers will spend seven nights in a small hotel/villa south of Siena, with a day trip to assisi, home of St. Francis, and an ex-cursion to Siena, among the most beautiful cities in all of Italy. There will also be wonderful Italian food and wine.

Tour guide Cicely Carroll of Putney will lead the group in painting, drawing, and photo-graphing the rolling hills around Pienza and Montepulcino, an area designated a UNESCO Cultural Landscape Site.

an informational meeting will be held for those interested in participating in this art trip on

Dec. 15 at 6 p.m. at the River Gallery School, 32 Main St., in Brattleboro. Call 802-257-1577 for more information.

The trip will be held from April 9 to 16, 2011. An option for participants will be a cook-ing class, featuring preparation of Italian specialties. as an ad-ditional option, participants can add a side trip to Florence or Rome to visit museums and other sights.

Travelers will be encouraged to bring their own journals and sketch pads, pastels and water-color supplies, but since activi-ties are all optional, non-artists are welcome, and will equally enjoy the trip.

For more information outside this meeting, contact the River Gallery School at 802-257-1577 or [email protected].

BRaTTLEBORO — On Thursday, Dec. 9, at 7:30 p.m., the Windham World affairs Council of Vermont will host anthony DePalma, former New York Times correspondent and Writer in Residence at Seton Hall University, at the Marlboro Collge Tech Center on Vernon Street.

also joining the presenta-tion will be students from the Brattleboro Union High School who recently returned from a hu-manitarian trip to Cuba.

DePalma wi l l speak on “Cuba’s Why Generation: Shifting attitudes in Policy and the Population.” The students will offer a PowerPoint presenta-tion on their trip, which included work with Down Syndrome chil-dren and meetings with officials from the Cuban ministries of Health, Education and Finance.

Coffee with the speakers will begin at 7 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

DePalma is the author of The Man Who Invented Fidel, Here: A Biography of the New American Continent, and the recently released City of Dust: Illness, Arrogance and 9/11. He was the first foreign correspon-dent of The New York Times to serve as bureau chief in both Mexico and Canada; he has also reported from Cuba, Central and

South america, Montenegro and Albania. After 9/11, he wrote more than 85 profiles for the Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning Portraits of Grief series, and was a 2007 Emmy nominee for his work on the documentary Toxic Legacy.

To join the Windham World affairs Council of Vermont and receive regular mailings of events, send an e-mail to [email protected].

Cuba’s ‘Why Generation’ is subject of Windham World Affairs Council talk

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Knitting group celebrates fourth anniversary

T h E C O M M O N S • Wednesday, December 8, 2010 ThE ARTS 11

LIFE & WORK

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By fran Lynggaard HansenThe Commons

BRaTTLEBORO—“When my grand-father, whom we called John, went deer hunting, he wore

his simple plaid jacket, carried his Winchester rifle from the 1940s and went out to the woods at sun up. He walked patiently all day, and came back when it was dark,” says native Brattleborian Michael Fairchild, now 59, who spent part of his youth growing up on Marlboro avenue, the backyard to Oak Grove School.

“He taught me patience. For a young boy, that’s a wonder-ful skill to be taught to you by a grandfather. John was a lean, kind, quiet sort of guy who was sensible and practical in every kind of way. He was humble; he didn’t have a lot, but he didn’t need a lot either. I was fortunate to have lived two houses away from my uncle, and he, John, and I used to go hunting and fishing together. We’d take a Thermos and a simple sandwich and we’d head on out into the woods,” re-members Fairchild.

John Russell lived with his wife Jenny on Highland Street. Before they were joined, Jenny owned the house, and since she was raising two sons alone, she used to rent out rooms in the 1930s. Russell was a boarder there and eventually the two were married.

Working at the C.F. Church factory on Elm Street, he helped make the toilet seats that earned the company its motto, “the best seat in the house.”

Russell walked to work ev-ery morning because he’d never learned to drive and spent his weekends doing the things that renaissance men who had grown up in the country did on the weekend — hunting, fishing, and bee keeping.

“Many years later,” says Fairchild, “I moved with my family to Westminster West. Initially, my father was a tailor who owned Fairchild’s Clothiers on Main Street (where Zephyr art Store is located today), and my mother ran a store in the basement selling fabrics and notions. She was a dressmaker by trade. When we moved from Marlboro avenue, my parents closed their stores, and my fa-ther bought the Putney General Store, which he ran for many years.”

Bob Gray, the two time U.S. Ski Team Olympian from Putney, was a good friend to Michael Fairchild. Gray’s par-ents were friends of Scott and Helen Nearing, who lived in Jamaica. The Nearings were

back to the land enthusiasts who published the classic book Living the Good Life in 1954. The Grays worked at Putney School and were familiar with, and practiced a lot of the same skills as, their friends the Nearings.

“Their son Bob was about my age and knew bees. He intro-duced me to the old time skill of tracking bees,” says Fairchild. “If you think about the term ‘mak-ing a bee line,’ you’ll understand what we were doing.”

Fairchild explains that these days, those thinking about be-coming bee keepers can go to a catalog and purchase anything that they might have needed, including the bees themselves. In older times, skills like “lin-ing bees” or tracking them were common.

“It’s the kind of skill that gen-erations of people passed on to their children,” he says, “the kind of thing that my grandfather John was raised with. When I was growing up post-World War II in the 1950s, these were skills that the old timers around still had. and bees were different then, too. In those days you could go out in the backyard, and if there was a patch of clover, you’d find a wild bee working it. That isn’t so common anymore because of disease and pesticides, among other things,” he says.

While Fairchild knew that his grandfather had many of the old skills of his day, he didn’t real-ize that John also knew about bee keeping.

“I was in my early 20s. I’d al-ready been exposed to the hunt-ing and the fishing, but John was getting hives set up in the back-yard of his house on Oak Grove avenue and had been track-ing bees to fill his hive,” says Fairchild. “I doubt there were many old time skills he didn’t know about, but I hadn’t real-ized until that day he knew bees.”

Bees can be “tracked” back to their hives because they are a working community. The bees responsible for finding pollen are out looking for flowers and grasses to provide them with the means for creating honey, their food. an experienced bee keeper has the patience and the skill to see a bee working a flower and with a good eye, can track it back to its hive. Other than perhaps a small initial circle of flight, a bee will travel from the flower on a “bee line” back to its hive.

Sometimes, bee keepers put out a jar of sugar water to at-tract a wild bee. From there, a bee keeper can either follow it or take some colored chalk to dust the top of the bee to see how long it takes for the bee to collect the sugar water, bring it

back to the hive, and come back for more, giving the bee keeper an idea of how far away the hive might be located.

Fairchild remembers, “I got a call from my uncle that John had tracked a hive and needed help getting the bees to the hives that he built in his back yard because he didn’t drive. The remarkable thing is that he tracked that one bee from his house on Oak Grove avenue, all the way across the Connecticut River to the side of the Wantastiquet Mountain in New Hampshire. That takes some serious skill.

“This was the early 1970s. We jumped in my truck, and John brought me to the area where he found the hive on a steep embankment on the side of the mountain, in the hollow of a big pine tree that was almost dead. He was nervous because we were on state land. The bees were buzzing all over the place. He didn’t want to fell the tree be-cause he didn’t have permission, but I looked at it and decided that we were only going to fell a dead tree and leave it in a bet-ter condition than we found it. I went home and came back with a chain saw to take the tree down. We didn’t want to have to climb a dead tree to remove the hive.”

Fairchild brought the tree down and then, with a few swift hits of his axe, opened up the hive.

“There was now sawdust in-side the hive, and there were about 20,000 bees flying around in a panic. The bees are really more concerned about what hap-pened to their home than getting the bear that did the deed. That’s why people use a smoker to calm the bees down. It brings their attention to the hive and not to you,” says Fairchild.

The pair had brought along one of the hive boxes that Russell had made. They laid a white sheet on the ground, put the box on top of it, and then looked in-side the hive for the queen bee.

Fairchild says, “There are sev-eral sections to a hive. There is a brood area and a storage area where the honey is kept as their food supply, and there is an area where the queen lives. It’s im-portant to find her right away because once in the bee box, the other bees will follow her into the hive. We were able to do that pretty quickly, because if you know what you’re looking for,

she’s a very distinct bee.”The pair placed the queen into

the bee box on the white sheet.“It is a miracle. Bees are in-

credible. I’ll never get tired of watching an event like that. It’s fascinating. We put the queen inside the box, and you could watch the other bees walking across the white sheet and mov-ing right into that bee box. It’s like an army of 20,000 men just marching together. We let them get settled, and then in the early evening went back to the box, closed the top, put them in the truck and took them back to Oak Grove avenue.

“These days, well even then, you could go to another bee keeper and purchase hive ma-terials. There is a sheet called a stamping that you can buy that is like honey comb. The bees will start building out their comb from there, but not John. He didn’t buy anything; he made all of it himself. Where someone might spend some serious money to get started with bee keeping, John spent hours instead. He bought himself about $8 worth

of pine boards and built every-thing himself. That’s the old school way of doing things, and I really respected him for that,” recalls Fairchild.

“I know that he put up a lot of honey over the years. One of his granddaughters used to sell it at the Farmer’s Market for him. But the next time that I was in-volved, it was the early 1990s and it was because John had died. My uncle called and asked me if I’d like to have his bee hives and equipment. It was so great to have these pieces that he had handcrafted himself. In fact, I also am the proud owner of his rifle,” says Fairchild.

“I was really lucky. I feel like, even though I still live in Brattleboro now, I grew up in a time that is no more. These were the good old days, and it feels like they’re gone. We had the black-and-white television that only had three stations, so we didn’t sit around watching that. Instead, we ran around Marlboro avenue like a pack of dogs. Our parents didn’t always have to know where we were. We’d walk

down the street with guns, go-ing off to practice shoot at the sand pit near the high school or over in Wilson’s Woods, practic-ing for hunting season. Can you imagine now what would hap-pen if five boys walked down the street with guns? There would be a SWaT team over there in minutes,” says Fairchild with a shake of his head.

“John grew up in an orphan-age somewhere over in western New York State and made his way here by foot. He wouldn’t tell us about his growing up, but I imagine he was raised at an old orphanage that was a county farm. Every town has a road called County Farm Road or Town Farm Road. Those were usually the roads, just outside of a little town, where the poor peo-ple, the single mothers, the or-phaned kids lived, supported by the state and by the farm where they all worked. John had a lot of skills that he must have learned in those places, and I feel lucky that I grew up having him teach me what he knew.”

COURTESY PHOTO

John Russell stands with his bee hives in this 1978 photo.

Life lessons from a beekeeperBrattleboro resident recalls grandfather’s skills and values


The Commons/issue of Dec. 8, 2010

Documents

Transcript of The Commons/issue of Dec. 8, 2010