Culture story sections
For our final December historical advertisement, let’s see what I. B. Thorn has to offer downtown on Main Street, across from High.
Thorn is thinking ahead. Not only does he offer Christmas gifts, but also gifts for the New Year. It’s “the finest display of holiday novelties ever seen in town,” after all. Not bad for a drug store.
ACT 46 STUDY COMMITTEE
Representing the Brattleboro Town School District, Dummerston Town School District, Guilford Town School District, Putney Town School District, and the Vernon Town School District
http://www.wssu.k12.vt.us
NOTICE OF MEETING
The Act 46 Study Committee will meet at 6:00 p.m. on Tuesday, December 29, 2015 at the Academy School.
Hawley sells clothes. Each season he goes to New York City to find the latest and greatest fashions and best prices for his Brattleboro customers. He returns with a new load, tells us all what he has for sale, and we buy it from him.
Here is his complex advertisement for December 1886. Get your holiday goods and staple supplies!
An annual tradition since 2007, An Extra Special Selectboard Winter Holiday Thing captures the spirit of both the holidays and the selectboard, regardless of who is currently serving.
Presented in glorious Sock-o-rama.
1888: Seventy-seven feet of Faraday cable have been added to the telephone circuit this week to take the place of the wires which run from the switch-board in the exchange to the large standard on Harmony block. This makes a total of 481 feet of the cable in use.
Essentially, this means they are replacing bare wires with insulated wires and a multi-wire system. That’s the nutshell version; it took a lot of research and technological advances to get there. A lot of that work was spurred on by the effort to lay a transatlantic telegraph cable, which finally succeeded in 1866, and made use of Michael Faraday’s research into electromagnetism and induction.
http://ethw.org/Transatlantic_Cable
BCTV channel 8 schedule for the week of 12/21/15
Monday, December 21, 2015
12:00 am Vermont Humanities Fall Conference 11/14/15
1:30 am Hunger Mtn Coop Workshop Series: Living Tiny Conversations with Lisa Rochelle
2:50 am 1st Wed: Face to Face with the Emotional Brain
4:00 am A Retrospective on Vermont Environmental History
5:20 am Rights & Democracy Summit: Building an Economy for People & the Planet
Mr. Drown is excited to share the news of holiday sales of soles. He has good goods!
In this ad, we see a cannon exploding with shoes and slippers, blasting them to residents of Brattleboro and all of Windham County. Trade is “booming,” of course. Get it?
Light & Shadow: Cyanotypes and Drawings by Tom Fels will be on view at Mitchell • Giddings Fine Arts, in downtown Brattleboro, from January 7 to February 7, 2016.
A public opening for the exhibition will be held on Thursday, January 7, from 5-7 PM. An artist talk is scheduled for
Friday, January 22, at 7 PM.
Works on display include large cyanotype prints from the Arbor and Catalpa Series from 2011 to 2014, and a selection of smaller minimalist drawings from the Linea Series of 2014. Concurrent with this exhibition, several of Fels’s large drawings from his recent Classics series are included in the biennial Open Call show at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center.
Creativity comes in all flavors. This week it involves chocolate, baking, and Julia Child.
Watch this episode to see how common items such as flour, sugar, and eggs can be creatively combined to make an edible yule log.
Ambrose Knapp has some business news to share this holiday season. A new partnership has been formed between Knapp and Santa Claus.
The text says that “they expect by their joint efforts to give everybody a good time,” and warn us “Do not let anyone deceive you into believing that Santa Claus is in any way invested in any other stock or store.”
If one looked at recent major media, one conclusion that could be reached is that only Republicans are running for office. There are endless stories about Trump, Carson, Cruz, Rubio, Bush, Graham, and the others. They get headlines and air time for simply existing. They get featured on Sunday political shows, and discussed and promoted by the Washington insiders and elite, as if nothing else was happening. All republicans are “serious candidates” even if they have no visible support.
One might think that Democrats no longer exist. But this is silly. Vermont’s Bernie Sanders just broke a record for having 2 million online donations, more than any other candidate ever. He also just picked up the endorsement of an enormous union, the Communications Workers of America. And poll after poll show that he would trump Trump at the polls.
It was 116 years ago this week that Booker T. Washington came to Brattleboro…
will be on view at Mitchell • Giddings Fine Arts, in downtown Brattleboro, from January 7 to February 7, 2016. Works on display include large cyanotype prints from the Arbor and Catalpa Series from 2011 to 2014, and a selection of smaller minimalist drawings from the Linea Series of 2014. Concurrent with this exhibition, several of Fels’s large drawings from his recent Classics series are included in the biennial Open Call show at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center.
Tom Fels’ cyanotype series stem from his lengthy engagement with a single subject: a tree in his garden and its dappled shadows. These’ cyanotypes are cameraless photographs, popularly called “sun prints” or “shadow prints.” There is no negative; each is unique. The prints are life-sized, 1:1 scale renderings of their natural subject matter. The cyanotype is an early process of great simplicity and unique color (a deep blue, cyan). Typically, the method has been employed to produce silhouettes – of leaves, for example, as in the botanical illustrations of the pioneer British photographer Anna Atkins (1799-1871) – but the same process was also used to make photographic prints from negatives, as well as architectural blueprints.
You will want to get down to Emerson & Son on Main Street this 1887 holiday season to take advantage of the great deals they are offering.
Bargains include rocking chairs priced $1 to $6, an easy chair for $5, a sled for fifty cents, easels, ottomans, work boxes, music racks, and more. Get an entire parlor set for $30 if you have the money.
$1.50 buys you a foot rest and a portable desk can be had for a dollar.
With such good prices, I wonder if this store will be able to last?
ACT 46 STUDY COMMITTEE
Representing the Brattleboro Town School District, Dummerston Town School District, Guilford Town School District, Putney Town School District, and the Vernon Town School District
http://www.wssu.k12.vt.us
NOTICE OF MEETING
The Act 46 Study Committee will meet at 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, December 17, 2015 at the Putney Central School.
Another in our series of old December ads from the Phoenix.
This is for that popular downtown store in the Crosby Block, Van Doorn & Son. Have you been there recently?
This holiday season they are offering special bargains on silverware, as well as decorated tea, breakfast, and dinner sets. They also have fancy wares and novelty items, and both hanging and table lamps.
Orchard Street Pottery will be offering its 4th annual Solstice and Seconds Sale this Sunday afternoon, December 20th, from 12 noon until 5pm in the studio and showroom at 658 Orchard Street, Brattleboro.
Potter Walter Slowinski makes wood-fired, salt-glazed stoneware and porcelain teapots, pitchers, bowls, cups, mugs, vases and other ware. This annual sale features deeply discounted prices on pieces with minor flaws or on discontinued designs.
BCTV channel 8 schedule for the week of 12/14/15
Monday, December 14, 2015
12:00 am North Branch Nature Center Lectures – Living with Black Bears
1:30 am Vermont Humanities Fall Conference 11/14/15
3:00 am Six Figure Farming – Pt 3
4:00 am VT Workers’ Center: Brattleboro Beats, Bluegrass 6/7/15
6:25 am DCC: Chris Schadler – Becoming Wolf 11/13/15
In December 1881 we see an ad for Cheney & Clapp announcing their store as a “Holiday Bazaar and Christmas Museum,” which is quite a boast.
They can make the announcement, though, because of the wide range of items available for you to buy from them, including Teaching Bibles for the teachers out there that you know, a “bewildering variety” of cards from the best makers, diaries, books, statuary (who doesn’t need a statue?) and work baskets. They also have dolls and toys.
This week we’ll study some color theory with Scott Naismith, a Scottish landscape painter, and dive into aspects of hue and saturation with him.
I’ve been doing art all my life, yet still struggle with color. I love black and white lines and using pens and pencils to shade things with hatch marks and smudges. The 256 shades of greyscale suite me well, and they could keep me busy forever.
