A new year, a new name

Latchis Arts reflects the main project of the nonprofit that has purchased and preserved the historic theater

When the Brattleboro Arts Initiative (BAI) started in 1998, its primary mission was developing a thriving arts scene in the Brattleboro area.

But when BAI took ownership of the Latchis Theatre and Hotel in 2003, running and maintaining the historic 1938 complex on Main Street immediately took precedence.

Eight years later, the organization says it makes sense to take the name of what had become its main priority.

So now, BAI has renamed itself Latchis Arts.

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Farewell to 2011, one hell of a year

With this issue, we say farewell to 2011, one hell of a year for Windham County. The year started with a big party in Brattleboro, then Montpelier, as the county sent Peter Shumlin of Putney to the Statehouse - the first governor from Windham County in nearly four decades.

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State office complex could cost as much as $85.4 million to replace

Shumlin administration urges lawmakers to expedite plans for state hospital

Shumlin administration officials say they want to work with lawmakers to expedite plans for the flood-damaged Vermont State Hospital and the Waterbury State Office Complex during the coming legislative session. About 50 severely mentally ill patients and 1,500 office workers were displaced when Tropical Storm Irene flooded the Waterbury...

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‘We live as if we’re immortal, until we get sick’

Most people agree that doing advance planning for one's medical treatment is a good idea. Unfortunately, like so many good ideas, everyone talks about making out an advanced directive (AD), but few do so. An advance directive, as defined by the Vermont Department of Health, is a written document, signed by an individual and two witnesses, that outlines the individual's wishes for future medical treatment if he or she no longer can make decisions about how to proceed. Since the...

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Free workshops at BMH help people cope with chronic health conditions

Brattleboro Memorial Hospital will offer another series of free Healthier Living Workshops for people coping with chronic health conditions. Stanford University developed the six-week program to empower individuals with chronic diseases and their caregivers to better manage the condition through education, support, and skill-building exercises. Classes meet each Tuesday from Jan. 10 through Feb. 14, from 4 to 6:30 p.m., in Brew Barry Conference Room 1 at BMH. Two trained leaders will cover fun and practical techniques for dealing with...

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Bread for life

What does baking sourdough bread have to do with preparing for a world that will likely have to grapple with the triple threat of climate change, financial instability, and the end of cheap petroleum? For Transition Putney, the ability to bake healthy bread with local ingredients is just one of many skills for area residents to learn to prepare for an uncertain future. The goal of its members: to build community resilience by localizing food production, health care, and other...

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Clinicians at Brattleboro Retreat author new book on suicide assessment

The goal of preventing patient suicide is by no means a concern limited to professionals in psychiatric hospitals and mental health treatment centers. It's a serious issue that is gaining increasing attention from clinicians and administrators in hospital emergency departments, medical/surgical units, and acute care settings across the nation. And that's exactly the reason why the Brattleboro Retreat's Sharon Chaput, RN, CSHA, senior director of standards and quality, and Kirk Woodring, LICSW, CGP, senior director of access, evaluation and ambulatory...

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‘Chikin’ versus kale

The reaction to the challenge by southern fast-food giant Chick-Fil-A, whose ads feature cows exhorting people to “Eat Mor Chikin,” to Bo Muller-Moore, the Vermont artist who creates the “Eat More Kale” products, has been swift and strong, drawing righteous indignation and the solidarity of allies up to and including Gov. Peter Shumlin. The case brings to mind the recent difficulties of Matt Nadeau and his craft brewery, Rock Art Brewery of Morrisville, which found itself embroiled in a similar...

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Milestones

Obituaries Editor's note: The Commons will publish brief biographical information for citizens of Windham County and others, on request, as community news, free of charge. • Benjamin Joseph “Benny” Andrews, 89, formerly of Brattleboro. Died Dec. 9 at Vernon Green Nursing Home. Husband of the late Maxie L. Putnam for 21 years. Stepfather of Gary R. Sanderson, Brian A. Sanderson, Sharon L. Williams, and Sheila M. Crowley. Brother of Edward J. Andrews of Norwood, Mass., and the late Lucy Dowd...

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Colonel girls show toughness with wins against Conant, Monument Mtn.

If you like your girls' basketball with hard-nosed defense and plenty of intensity, you may want to check out the Brattleboro Colonels this season. The Colonels have a young team that, at least in the early going, is not going to light up the scoreboard. What they do have is the ability to keep the other team from scoring, while generating just enough offense to win. Brattleboro won its first game of the year with a 29-21 victory over the...

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Shame, shame, shame on The Commons

Re: “The shame of Bellows Falls” [Editorial, Dec. 14]. So a whole community is headlined in “shame?” It is my understanding that a town of Rockingham board made the decision based on state-required criteria. That board did not deny a warming shelter; it denied an application for a permanent location. There are some 3,000 people (more or less) living in Bellows Falls, and this newspaper has painted them all with the same tainted brush and labeled all under the same...

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Necessary, usable gifts for those who need them

I love giving and receiving usable gifts. Little trinkets and knickknacks are not a part of my giving. On the morning of Dec. 12, I had the pleasure of assisting my fellow Vermont Yankee employees with an Entergy-sponsored grocery-shopping trip to support Project Feed the Thousands. The mission: purchase as many everyday food necessities as possible - soups, pasta, cereal, peanut butter, tuna. The employee shoppers dispersed in groups of two, armed with a shopping assignment, a list of the...

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Christmas in the aisle of Santa’s Land

A number of years ago, after having unsuccessfully applied for any and every job in the newspaper (and hanging the rejection letter from the Brattleboro dump right next to my undergraduate diploma), I was offered a position as a client advocate for the Windham County Day Program. I was an independent contractor, working 20 hours a week at $8 per hour, with no benefits, no vacations. My responsibility was to drive around with people who had developmental disabilities and “integrate...

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Around the Towns

Christmas closings schedule in Brattleboro BRATTLEBORO - In observance of the Christmas holiday, all Brattleboro Town offices will be closed at noon on Friday, Dec. 23, and all day on Monday, Dec. 26, with the exception of emergency services. Parking is free at all metered spaces and in the pay-and-display lots from noon on Dec. 23, all day on Saturday, Dec. 24 and all day on Dec. 26. All other violations, including extended parking, will be enforced. Brooks Memorial Library...

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My Christmas dinner menu

December is the final month. It begs contemplation of the year about to pass, it encompasses the darkest and longest night, and it embraces the commingling of mindless consumption and simple, lovely hope. I am far from a practicing Christian, yet I harbor a deep fondness for Christmas and its message of peace and goodwill. I love the ritual of bringing a tree into the house, yet I embrace my cynicism with a vengeance. I am drawn to the secular...

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Meeting Waters YMCA launches community support campaign

Meeting Waters YMCA is looking to people in Brattleboro, Bellows Falls, Springfield, and Fall Mountain regions for support for its programs and services. “Your charitable investment strengthens your community,” said board president Diane Myers-Miller. Last year, Meeting Waters YMCA's “out-of-school” programs (ASPIRE, Snow Days, Kindergarten ASPIRE, and Lewis Day Camp) combined to provide more than 300 kids and 500 working parents with year-round care after school on snow days and holidays, and during vacations and summer break. The young people...

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‘Happy Holidays’ is not the problem

When I was about 8 years old, my mother explained holiday greetings to me. It was simple. If someone is Christian, say “Merry Christmas.” If someone is Jewish, “Happy Hanukkah” is appropriate. And if you don't know, “Happy Holidays” or “Happy New Year” always work. For my mom, it wasn't about political correctness or hatred of Christmas. Far from it. It was about being polite, having good manners, and respecting the fact that our religious beliefs were not shared by...

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Was ‘shame’ headline appropriate?

Whether we like it or not, agree or disagree, it is a sad fact that the warming shelter/homeless issue is becoming Bellows Falls' “shame” by default [Editorial, Dec. 14]. It may be unfair - but it's there. And if villagers feel strongly enough about being mislabelled in the press, then they need to speak up and show by their actions that its an unwarranted criticism. Where are the voices of the other 2,997 Bellows Falls village residents raised in protest...

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‘In modern Montpelier, good ideas are clearly bubbling up from the ranks’

Panelists at last Thursday night's Transportation Cost Forum provided a review of the governor's brand-new Comprehensive Energy Plan, shed renewed light on the fast start of the state Agency of Transportation (AOT) after Tropical Storm Irene, and offered a glimpse of our own livable future. The forum was held under League of Women Voters' auspices. The Brattleboro chapter of the American Association of University Women of Vermont co-sponsored the forum. The plan stresses increased use of renewable energy sources (which...

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‘To give a helping hand up the ladder to safety, do we kick away the first rung?’

I am compelled to comment on Cathy Bergmann's letter [Voices, Dec. 12] on the subject of the Bellows Falls Warming Shelter. I find Ms. Bergmann's letter to be rambling, almost to the point of incoherence. We are told we are to be informed about the facts but instead we are provided in the most part with a litany of opinion and selfserving value judgments. The one comment I can heartily endorse is her statement: “Now I am truly confused.” The...

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Volz doesn’t deserve another term

Activists seeking to close the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant are gearing up for a vote next month in the Vermont Senate on whether the state's top nuclear regulator - who many say has been too friendly to the industry - will get to keep his job. A federal judge is expected to rule any day on whether Vermont Yankee can run after March 21, 2012. The state has ordered the reactor permanently closed on that date. Vermont Yankee's owner,

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Toy headdresses: racist and offensive

I am Iñupiaq-Athabaskan registered tribally and federally with my village in Kaktovik, Alaska. I live in Colrain, Mass. and consider Brattleboro my adopted community of choice. The story fueling this letter began with much anticipation for the Holly Days Holly Nights celebration on Dec. 2. After a wonderful dinner,we set out for shopping right away. Our first stop was at our seven-year-old daughter's beloved store, Beadniks. I have seen Native American–inspired beadwork and even a buckskin shirt hanging on the...

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Reunited

Steve West tells a somewhat anticlimactic story of next week's reunion concert of a band that never really had a reason for disbanding and, for that matter, never really intended to get together in the first place. Relative Strangers, which will reunite for the first time in years for two performances on Dec. 22 and 23, came about sometime around 2000, when West got to know two young people who both worked at a bakery in Putney. As it happened,

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Funding a film, social networking style

Amanda Wilder has been working on her documentary since 2007 and is facing an ever-tightening financial environment in the current recession. So the Marlboro College graduate is trying a new funding source to complete the film. At the suggestion of Jay Craven, her teacher at Marlboro and the producer of the film, she has turned to an inventive online fundraising method called Kickstarter, which lets creative people from photographers to writers to filmmakers like Wilder seek people to donate money...

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Nineteen miles from Brattleboro

I was full of Christmas cheer as I took a trolley from Cambridge to Boston to wait for the train to Brattleboro. It was snowing heavily. I was excited about spending a Vermont Christmas with my brother Paddy, his wife Betty, and their little daughter Leish, but I was also excited at the thought of meeting my girlfriend Tina in New York after Christmas. To my surprise, I began to realize how very close we'd become in a short time.

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Vermont Yankee safety, Japan, NRC turmoil: 3 hot topics at advisory panel meeting

The legal world holds its breath awaiting Federal Judge J. Garvan Murtha's ruling on the Entergy v. Vermont case. Meanwhile, the debate over safety and the Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee power station rolls on. Representatives from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Entergy, and the public spoke before the Vermont State Nuclear Advisory Panel (VSNAP) on Dec. 14. NRC Senior Resident Inspector Scott Rutenkroger, previously stationed at James A. FitzPatrick nuclear power in Scriba, N.Y., outlined his daily work rounds for...

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Unoccupied

It began quietly on a warm October day. It ended quietly on a cold December morning. Without drama or attention, Brattleboro Police dismantled the Occupy Brattleboro encampment on the Common on Monday morning. Police Lt. Robert Kirkpatrick helped two other officers in taking down the remaining tents and bagging up the belongings in them. “This is abandoned property,” said Kirkpatrick, describing the empty tents as constituting a safety hazard. Police Chief Eugene Wrinn said that his personnel regularly checked the...

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Going with the flow

Pop quiz: What percentage of Vermont rivers do river engineers consider stable? “Twenty-five percent,” said Marie Levesque Caduto, the watershed coordinator for the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources (ANR). And that was before Tropical Storm Irene's rains flooded swaths of Vermont on Aug. 28. Caduto joined state Rep. David Deen, D-Westminster, and Windham Regional Commission (WRC) Executive Director Christopher Campany to explain how high-water events like Irene's floods and human interference affect rivers and aquatic habitats. The Brattleboro Conservation Commission...

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Last Night to offer New Year’s Eve fun

Once again, the town's Last Night Committee has planned what organizers describe as “a fun-filled, substance-free day of celebration” for New Year's Eve. The day kicks off with a senior potluck luncheon at the Brattleboro Senior Center from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. This year's featured guest is Wayne Billard, otherwise known as “Gin Mill Bill.” From 1 until 4 p.m., folks can have sleigh and hay rides at Fair Winds Farm at 511 Upper Dummerston Rd. Tickets are $6...

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Seminars offer a jump-start for young adults seeking career direction, jobs

If you are a recent college graduate, are graduating soon, or are a young adult seeking a job, you should be aware of two upcoming seminars to help jump-start your career. Scheduled during the Christmas holiday week, they will be held at the Marlboro Graduate Center, 29 Vernon St. On Tuesday, Dec. 27, from 3-6 p.m., national certified career counselor Allyson Villars, MS, will present “Setting or Confirming a Direction.” At this three-hour session, Villars will help the participants learn...

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A Vermont love poem

F.D. Reeve says he has no idea how long it took him to write Nathaniel Purple, which will be published Jan. 1. “There was an earlier version which some friends remember, some years back,” the Wilmington-based author said of his 31st book, his first novella. “Much was transformed, and the writing itself was very quick. It was a matter of a couple of weeks.” The title of the story refers to its distinctively named narrator, Nathaniel Purple, the librarian of...

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