Features
Art Notes: Canaan Meetinghouse showcase brings musicians and listeners together
By ALEX HANSON
CANAAN — A few summers ago, during the pandemic, Martin Decato and Peter Dionne got together to play music. Decato is a longtime pro, Dionne an avid amateur.They looked around for a good place to make music videos, and didn’t have to look far. They...
Upper Valley farmers markets 2024
Email additions and updates to calendar@vnews.com. Canaan: Sundays, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., May 19 through Oct. 6, Town Common, 7 On the Common Lane (intersection of Routes 4 and 118). Facebook: “Canaan Farmers and Artisans’ Market” or...
A Look Back: Upper Valley dining scene changes with the times
By STEVE TAYLOR
Before franchised fast food and corporate-owned restaurants hit the Upper Valley, there was a time when locally owned diners and a variety of family-run eating establishments flourished and produced many fond memories and much nostalgia. For at least...
The future of fertilizer? Pee, says this Brattleboro institute
By KATE KAMPNER
When Peter Stickney walks along his cow paddocks in the morning, he notes the scattered patches of greener grass across the pasture. He knows what this means: It’s where his cows have peed. So when the Rich Earth Institute, a Brattleboro organization...
From dirt patch to a gateway garden, a Randolph volunteer cultivates community
By AUDITI GUHA
RANDOLPH — On a sunny afternoon in late April, a woman with a shock of white curls was hunched over a corner of a park, digging intently in the dirt.Local resident Rosalind Burgess, 75, has been working to beautify that particular corner of town —...
Norwich author and educator sees schools as a reflection of communities
By ALEX HANSON
By his own account, Ken Cadow was a reluctant student.His father had been a teacher, but went to work at IBM to earn enough to raise a family. Cadow grew up mostly in Rhode Island.“I learned a lot of stuff with my dad in the shop,” Cadow said in a...
Out & About: Vershire joins Upper Valley communities with farmers markets
By LIZ SAUCHELLI
Vershire is the latest Upper Valley community to establish a farmers market.The Vershire Artisan & Farmers’ Market will begin Sunday, May 19 and take place every week from 12:30 to 3:30 p.m. through Sept. 15 outside Vershire Town Center, located at 27...
Art Notes: City Center Ballet celebrates 25 years
By ALEX HANSON
LEBANON — Jennifer Henderson was a senior in high school in 1999, when City Center Ballet came to life.For years she had been studying at Lebanon Ballet School, which Linda Copp had founded in the mid-1980s. “She had built up a really excellent...
Bald eagles are back, but great blue herons paid the price
By OLIVIA WILSON
After years of absence, the most patriotic bird in the sky returned to Vermont — but it might’ve come at another’s expense.Vermont finally took the bald eagle off of its endangered species list in 2022 following years of reintroduction efforts...
Out & About: Newport art center’s exhibition celebrates homes of all varieties
By LIZ SAUCHELLI
NEWPORT — When Kate Luppold put out the call for submissions for the Library Arts Center’s exhibition, she expected artists would take its theme of “home” literally.“I expected a lot of houses with white picket fences,” Luppold, the Newport-based...
Heat pumps and underground holes: Dartmouth announces $500 million investment in decarbonization
By MARA HOPLAMAZIAN
Dartmouth College announced this week it would invest half a billion dollars on climate mitigation efforts, including transitioning the school’s heating system off of fossil fuels.Sian Leah Beilock, Dartmouth’s president, said in a statement that the...
JAG Productions announces closure, citing ‘crisis facing the arts’
By NICOLA SMITH
JAG Productions, the White River Junction theater company that has championed the work of Black, queer and trans artists, announced last week that it is closing in June after eight years of bringing groundbreaking work to the Upper Valley.Jarvis...
Saint-Gaudens forest areas off limits for spring to protect ecosystem
CORNISH — To protect plants, Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park has closed a floodplain forest that sits between the Connecticut River and Route 12A during the months of April and May.Plants such as ramps and fiddleheads typically emerge in the...
How a hurricane and a cardinal launched a UVM professor on a new career path
By K. FIEGENBAUM
Before Hurricane Katrina hit her newly adopted city of New Orleans in 2005, Trish O’Kane knew next to nothing about the environment — let alone birds.O’Kane had spent much of her life working as an investigative human rights journalist in Central...
Out & About: Vermont Center for Ecostudies continues Backyard Tick Project
By LIZ SAUCHELLI
WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — The Vermont Center for Ecostudies is looking for people who are willing to allow researchers to study their lawns as part of the Upper Valley Backyard Tick Project.Jason Hill, a quantitative ecologist at the White River...
Art Notes: After losing primary venues, JAG Productions persists
By ALEX HANSON
For much of its history, JAG Productions, the small, White River Junction theater company that specializes in telling stories from deep inside the black, queer, American experience, has had to be nimble. Company founder Jarvis Antonio Green has...
Over Easy: Marvels in the heavens, and in the yard
By DAN MACKIE
It was Traffic vs. the Eclipse on Monday, a showdown of celestial proportions. Would I risk everything like Marco Polo who bravely set out to see the world, or follow the example of his brother Rocco, who said their hometown of Venice was “plenty good...
Amid financial difficulties, Lebanon-based Revels North cancels midwinter show
By LIZ SAUCHELLI
LEBANON — A Lebanon-based arts organization has canceled an annual production that has been an Upper Valley holiday season staple for decades.Revels North Creative Director Alex Cumming made the announcement about December’s Midwinter Show in a letter...
Art Notes: The Pilgrims to perform ‘last’ show Saturday in Hanover
By ALEX HANSON
The journalism and the arts can meet at a fraught crossroads. One relies on facts and on creating an account as close to the truth as possible in the time available. The other is interested in truths that are more personal, less grounded, and time...
Upper Valley residents witness total eclipse
By CHRISTINA DOLAN
ST. JOHNSBURY, Vt. — Scores of Upper Valley residents were among the crowd of about 7,500 people gathered in front of the Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium on Monday to cheer as Vermont Public’s Jane Lindholm announced the arrival of the eclipse’s...
