Get your MOTO running

Our golf research team tracks down former Brattleboro resident Eddie McKenzie, now a caddy in North Carolina

I called Eddie McKenzie the other day and got his answering machine. He claims it's one of three electrical devices at his home, along with the refrigerator and stereo setup, but unless he's reading by candlelight - and he's a great reader - I figure he's underestimated. He changes his message every day, and is as likely to quote Marcus Aurelius as the lyrics from “As Time Goes By.”

I had a few questions: when did he actually come to Brattleboro? When did he leave to begin caddying on the LPGA tour? When did he settle back down in his old hometown to begin caddying again at the Pinehurst Resort in North Carolina, which he's been doing for almost three decades?

I didn't know Eddie Mac in his Vermont era, but two of the MOTO Research Team members did, and so we arranged to have him caddy for us when we reached the high point of our investigative trip to the Carolina Sandhills.

For those who haven't been paying attention nor harvesting news from other publications, the MOTO Research Team is as dedicated to gathering golf information as the post office is to delivering mail. Though we prefer bright sunshine, neither rain nor snow nor gloom of night can ultimately stay these meshuggenehs from their duty. Once we played in the middle of winter on a frozen pond.

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‘It just brings joy’

Twice a month, people gather at an Open Music Collective jam session around their appreciation of the ukulele

Back in January, Ben Carr was thinking about the success that his friend and colleague Jamie MacDonald had had with the monthly jazz jam he had started. The Saxtons River musician, who teaches ukulele lessons at the Open Music Collective, a space in the Cotton Mill for lessons, rehearsals,

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Brattleboro’s July 4 fundraiser reaps $12,000

A century after Brattleboro celebrated itself with a 1912 theatrical extravaganza called the “Brattleboro Pageant,” the “By the People: Brattleboro Goes Fourth” citizens committee is planning a commemorative July 4 parade. The volunteer organizers of the town's 39th annual Independence Day celebration received everything from pocket change to two...

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Milestones

Obituaries • Herwood W. “Zeke” Curtiss, 89, formerly of New London, N.H. Died April 30 at Woodlawn Nursing Home in Newport, N.H. Husband of the late Phyllis Curtiss. Father of Wayne S. Curtiss and his wife, Michelle, of Sunapee, N.H., and Pamela C. Berlind and her husband, Bryan, of Chocorua, N.H. Brother of Ed­win W. Curtiss and his wife, Peg, of Guilford. Born in Lebanon, N.H., the son of Edwin J. and Susie E. (Hubbard) Curtiss, he was best known...

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Beyond the ordinary

In the grand tradition of circus grandstanding - think of Barnum & Bailey calling itself “The Greatest Show on Earth” - the New England Center for Circus Arts (NECCA) promises that its Professional Track Training Program show will be “like nothing you've ever seen before.” This time, however, such hyperbole just might be right on the money. “From Out of the Ordinary” features the graduation performance by advanced students. It's a full theatrical production in a full-sized theater featuring trapeze,

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Pink Pint Night benefits Brattleboro Museum & Art Center

Pink Pint Night, an event that combines beer sampling, shopping, being pampered, and eating food from local vendors, will be holding a fundraiser on Tuesday, May 22, from 5:30-8:30 p.m. for the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center. Pink Pint Night is hosted by g.housen beverages of Brattleboro as an event to educate women about beer and to benefit a local nonprofit. Participants will learn about and try and an assortment of beers - more than 50 will be available -

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Cash crunch threatens Legion baseball in Brattleboro

Brattleboro has long had the reputation of being a great baseball town, which is why the news that American Legion Post 5 has cut back its financial support of the Legion baseball program comes as a shock. But, according to Post 5 commander Richard Guthrie, the reality is that the post can no longer afford to support the baseball team in the way that it had for the past six decades. “We're losing membership every year,” he said in an...

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A neighborhood institution is gone, but the memories remain

Emil's Pub, the little barroom tucked away in the Fort Dummer neighborhood of South Main Street, closed for good on April 27. The owners, Tim and Mary Beth Grover, sold the building where the bar is located, but the new owner has not yet applied for a liquor license. With that, another piece of old Brattleboro disappears. The bar had been the oldest continuous holder of a liquor license in Brattleboro. Emil Kozlowski, who died in 1999, was the Emil...

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Around the Towns

Landmark College graduation Saturday PUTNEY- Landmark College will hold commencement ceremonies for its Spring 2012 semester graduates on Saturday, May 12, at 10 a.m. in the Click Family Sports Center. A reception to honor the graduates will be held under the tent in front of the administration building immediately following the ceremony. Rotary changes venue for weekly meetings BRATTLEBORO - Beginning Thursday, May 10, Brattleboro Rotary Club's weekly meetings will shift from the VFW Post to the Brattleboro Country Club...

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Local business students need help to attend national conference

From March 28 through 30, 29 members of Windham Regional Career Center's Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) traveled to Burlington to attend the FBLA State Conference. FBLA is a nationwide organization for students to learn more about the business world. Every spring, Vermont chapters come together in Burlington to further their knowledge of business through fun workshops, and to compete in events. These individual and group events included job interviews, client service, public speaking, global business, business ethics, and...

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Purple traps return as part of effort to defend Vermont from Emerald Ash Borers

As part of an effort to protect Vermont from a highly invasive and destructive insect, the Vermont Agency of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Inspection Service are once again hanging purple, prism shaped box traps from trees across the state. The traps are being set to detect the presence of a metallic green beetle called the Emerald Ash Borer, which has devastated trees in 15 states but so far has not invaded Vermont. The traps...

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‘The Other America’ persists

Another season of the Brattleboro Overflow Shelter concluded last month. According to Lucille Fortier, interim director of the Brattleboro Area Drop In Center: • Shelter volunteers served 133 individual adults and two children. This past winter, the shelter also saw an increase in women, with 33 individual women at the shelter this winter, compared to 10 last winter. • Those guests used the shelter 3,012 times (“bed nights”). • Volunteers served, between dinner and breakfast, more than 9,000 meals. •

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Workshop seeks to help artists with publicity, promotion of their work

The Arts Council of Windham County, in partnership with The Commons and Next Stage Arts Project, presents “The Art of the Press Release,” a free workshop that will be held on Wednesday, May 16, from 7 to 9 p.m. at Next Stage on Kimball Hill. Joyce Marcel of The Commons, Lynn Barrett of the quarterly magazine Southern Vermont Arts and Living, and WTSA-FM News Director Tim Johnson will share their perspectives in this free artists' forum. They will offer tips...

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New tax on VY is both baseless and punitive

Daniel Webster, the 19th-century senator from New Hampshire, argued before the U.S. Supreme Court “the power to tax is the power to destroy.” Responding to an attempt by one or more states to tax an entity out of existence, the renowned orator sounded a cautionary note that the governor and Legislature of Vermont would do well to consider. The current target for extinction by taxation is, of course, Vermont Yankee. Today, the state's largest electrical power plant pays $5 million...

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Holding out for a Mother’s Day gift

When I was a little girl in the middle of the last century, I celebrated Mother's Day by bringing my mother breakfast in bed and giving her a homemade greeting card with a tissue-paper flower drenched in her good perfume. Mom would dutifully eat the cold cereal, which she didn't really care for, and she accepted the reeking card graciously, despite regret for my copious use of Chanel No. 5. It was all part of a charade we were programmed...

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Brattleboro Women’s Chorus presents annual Mother's Day concerts

The Brattleboro Women's Chorus, with more than 6o singers directed by Becky Graber, will present “Enjoy Your Life,” the 16th annual Mother's Day weekend concert on May 12 and 13, with several special guests. For the third spring concert in a row, pianist Alki Steriopoulos will be the guest musician. He will be joined by clarinetist Anna Patton. In addition, Patton's Women's Vocal Harmony Ensemble class at the Vermont Jazz Center will perform. The concert will feature two songs by...

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McKibben to speak at 65th Marlboro College commencement on May 13

Marlboro College will welcome author and environmentalist Bill McKibben as commencement speaker at the college's 65th graduation ceremony on Sunday, May 13. McKibben authored a dozen books about the environment before founding 350.org, a climate change awareness campaign that has coordinated more than 15,000 rallies in more than 175 countries since 2009. “Solving global warming is going to take not just engineers and chemists, but every discipline - musicians and theologians and psychologists and economists,” said McKibben from his home...

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Sign-ups begin for Meeting Waters YMCA summer camps

Meeting Waters YMCA, the region's largest provider of camp programming, has announced plans for its 48th consecutive summer of providing enriching experiences for kids throughout the Connecticut River Valley. Among the many benefits, the regional Y is stressing how their camps keep kids' minds and bodies engaged over the summer break to prevent two challenges many kids face-learning loss and weight gain. Research shows that most kids experience both of these setbacks over the summer and that kids from low-income...

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Courageous and touching

RE: “Remembering Kate” [Memoir, April 25]. A courageous and touching personal story, beautifully told. Thank you, Mary Ellen Copeland!

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Neighborhood Schoolhouse plans 200-mile Bikeathon fundraiser

The Neighborhood Schoolhouse's sixth annual Bikeathon (May 10-13), is a 200-mile biking adventure that begins in East Franklin (near the Canadian border) and finishes in Jamaica. It is a major fundraiser to support scholarship opportunities and extracurricular programs for kids ages 3 to 12. Fifty-four percent of families depend on the scholarship fund each year to send their children to Neighborhood Schoolhouse, an independent and progressive preschool, kindergarten and elementary school. Through its integrated curriculum, students are taught to think...

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NEYT holds summer Shakespeare auditions

New England Youth Theatre has scheduled auditions for “Titus Andronicus,” by William Shakespeare. Actors aged 14 to 19 are encouraged to audition for any of the roles, which will be filled through gender-blind casting. Auditions will be at the theatre on Flat Street from 2 to 4 p.m. on Sunday, May 13. Those interested should prepare a short Shakespeare verse monologue to perform, be prepared to discuss the piece, and stand by for the possibility that participants might have to...

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Grateful for VY book’s shout-out to Shadis

It is gratifying to see the powerful results of our media outreach and its impact on public opinion about Louisiana-based Entergy and its insidious campaign to wrest profits from Vermont Yankee [“A great story,” Arts, May 2]. Entergy's secret three-part strategy was first uncovered and revealed to the media by NEC's Raymond Shadis. The strategy: 1) Purchase the plant for pennies on the dollar; 2) Boost the power output by 20 percent; and 3) Procure a 20-year license extension. Ray...

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Social justice and money in politics

Carrie Madden Our supposedly great country exhibits wider disparities between the rich and the poor than any other developed nation, and when you compare us with a nation such as Sweden or Denmark, it is a dismaying sight indeed. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, the middle class is drastically shrinking, and our democracy gets weaker and weaker. A healthy democracy relies on both political and economic justice, and there is absolutely no economic justice if...

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Sanders is pandering on opposition to VY

Last month, the usual suspects lined up in protest of Vermont Yankee once again. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and other speakers appeared in Brattleboro and made their typical confident projections that all we need in order to solve our energy problems in Vermont is more zeal for energy efficiency. While we can all agree that using energy more efficiently is a good thing, and worthy of government attention and funding, it is not the silver bullet to our energy challenges.

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Valuable real estate

RE: “Brattleboro task force asks: What can we do about parking?” [The Commons, May 2]. Parking spaces are real estate - real estate that is not earning its full value. Parking rates should be higher than they are.

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N.H. lawmaker: State has sense of cultural, historic worth

Bravo for Dummerston and Vermont [“Dummerston bridge: repairs done at long last,” The Commons, May 2]. The notion that the bridge “represents a lot of what Dummerston is all about,” as Paul Normandeau said, sums it up for me. You cared. Contrast this with my state's attitude towards its civil engineering heritage. The most historic bridge in the Granite State, the Memorial Bridge in Portsmouth, N.H., was just replaced. The bridge was one of two Granite State properties listed on...

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Just the spot for me

RE: “'Just don't burn all your bridges until you've spent a rainy season,'” [Letters, May 2.] OK, OK, Central America is not perfect, but the people there have respect for the family and each other. They are not militarized as a culture. The young are educated and healthy, and it has been my experience that they are a happy crowd for sure. They have much respect for the land and live very simple lives rich in daily colors, flavors, and...

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Getting the facts right: that’s the morality

When questioning how many more will be killed because of dangerous nuclear radiation, Bill Pearson [“Nuclear power: a moral issue,” Viewpoint, May 2] failed to note how many have been killed so far. I'm not going to do your legwork for you, but look up the number of people who have been killed harvesting crops, in the last year, in Vermont, and that number will almost certainly exceed the number of deaths from dangerous radiation. There were no deaths or...

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As the crow flies

Large, black, ubiquitous, and noisy, the crow does not make many people's list of favorite birds. Maybe that's because the crow is also intelligent. Edward Howe Forbush wrote that the crow “knows too much; his judgment of the range of a gun is too nearly correct. If Crows could be shot oftener they would be more popular.” The Birdwatcher's Companion says: “Some taxonomists believe the crows to be the most highly evolved of all bird families, based on the charming...

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VTC production of ‘Arsenic and Old Lace’ concludes this weekend

The Vermont Theatre Company's presentation of the classic comedy, Arsenic and Old Lace, concludes May 11 to 13 at the Evening Star Grange in Dummerston Center. Arsenic and Old Lace is considered to be one of the most famous and most successful comedies of the American theater. It debuted on Broadway in 1941, and was made into a film starring Cary Grant in 1944. The story tells of the charming old Brewster sisters, Abby (Sue Rowell) and Martha (Nancy Groff),

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Remembering ‘Miss Peggy’

The Clark/Canal neighborhood has lost one of its great champions. Peggy Longueil, president of the Clark/Canal Neighborhood Association and a tireless volunteer on behalf of its residents, died of brain cancer on April 30 in her Clark Street home. She was 69. Longueil was best known for running the summer lunch program at the Agape Christian Fellowship on Canal Street for nearly 14 years. The program provides free weekday meals for low-income children while school is out, but Longueil went...

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Other salvos in the ‘war on women’

If Joyce Marcel wants to end the war on women [“Kunin calls for a truce in the war on women,” Column, April 25], she should tell other people to stop. Bill Maher called Sarah Palin the “C U Next Tuesday” word. David Letterman “joked” about knocking up Palin's then 14-year-old daughter. Ed Schultz called Laura Ingraham a “right-wing slut.” Andrew Sullivan questioned the parentage of Palin's baby. James Opico, a popular liberal blogger, called Arizona Governor Jan Brewer an “ugly,

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300 trees replanted in Green River watershed

On Sunday, April 29, in Green River and in Guilford, 300 trees were planted by a grassroots group of local citizenry and students, led by landscape designer and Green River resident Dina Iris Kail, and made possible with grants from the Connecticut River Watershed Alliance and New England Public Radio's “Root For Your River Programs” to replant trees along the Tropical Storm Irene–damaged Green River watershed. A big thanks to Nasami Farm, the New England Wildflower Society, and the Hampton-Hampshire...

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Donovan campaigns for Attorney General in Brattleboro

With a boyish smile and a campaign sticker stuck on the lapel of his gray suit, T.J. Donovan paused, making quick eye contact with the nearly 30 Brattleboroites who didn't know him from another lawyer in a suit from Burlington. “I know I'm the underdog,” said Donovan, a Democratic candidate for attorney general, as he stood in a horseshoe of potential supporters at his second Brattleboro meet-and-greet on May 3. Local attorney Thomas W. Costello hosted the gathering to help...

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Citizens call on town to dig deeper into dog shooting, cite issues with police communication

The shooting of a dog on the Green Street School's playground on March 21 has reignited some citizens' concerns about communicating with the Brattleboro Police Department and undermined their faith in the town's response. According to an internal investigation led by Brattleboro Police Capt. Michael Fitzgerald, two officers responded to a call at the Crowell Lot on Western Avenue that a dog appeared sick and dying. The shooting prompted two citizens' complaints to the BPD, and a request to discuss...

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State senator resigns from committee over campaign finance bill

State Sen. Peter Galbraith, D-Windham, famous for causing stirs at the Statehouse, has caused another. The senator resigned from the Senate Committee on Government Operations (SCGO) on April 13. His decision - called problematic by other legislators - is unprecedented in the Legislature. Not known for sitting politely in a corner while the elder lawmakers speak, Galbraith decided to resign from his committee post, accusing the committee chair, Sen. Jeanette White, D-Windham, of “deep-sixing” the campaign finance reform bill by...

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Department of Public Service Commissioner Miller tells federal appeals court that VY license renewal by NRC was improper

The state of Vermont's case against Entergy Corp., the owner of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, took another turn on Wednesday, this time on the issue of water quality. Department of Public Service (DPS) commissioner Elizabeth Miller presented oral arguments before the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., and argued that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) violated its own regulatory requirements and those of the Clean Water Act, in issuing a new 20-year license to Entergy Vermont...

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Correction: Double vision

A production error in last week's Commons inadvertently duplicated a photo by Phoebe Green, which accompanied a story about In-Sight Photography's student art exhibition. The second photograph, by Arcadia R-F, is shown here. We regret the error.

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