Greg Worden is a mainstay of downtown Brattleboro, bringing beauty and ingenuity through art and crafts at Vermont Artisan Designs. A tireless advocate for Brattleboro, Greg serves the community with heart, insight and experience.
I had to laugh last night during the Selectboard meeting. Dick DeGray, a former board member, called in to suggest putting lights in a park to illuminate a monument at night. It’s a good idea – flags and monuments should be lit, in my view – but it reminded me of our sock puppet selectboard special in which the sock puppet board debates putting lights in a park.
Enjoy the memories:
Traditionalists here are missing the old animated history calendar for the month of December. We are, too.
There is good news to report, though. A group of programmers has been working to build a Flash emulator to play old Flash-based content. The Internet Archive is using their work to preserve old Flash files, and they are also making it available to the rest of us.
From the 1950’s film “White Christmas”
• What would be a novelty up here in Vermont? (Bing Crosby)
• Who knows? Maybe we could dig up a Democrat? (Danny Kaye)
• They’d stone him (Crosby)
I promised you a new holiday treat for this year, and here it is: A COVID Christmas Anti-Viral Holiday Special. It is a super cute animated Christmas story made especially for a special year, featuring a masked snowman, masked singers, socially-distanced Santa, toy shopping, Mom, and a decorated tree by a fire. And lots of mask jokes.
I didn’t set out to make a new holiday special. I was working on some Christmas card ideas and Lise saw what I was doing and suggested they might make for some nice animation. That got me thinking, and before long I was able to string together a series of card ideas into a parody of a couple of my favorite holiday films.
It’s back. The annual tradition has not yet ended, though the most recent computers and browsers might have trouble as Flash really is coming to an end. That makes this a special gift for people who don’t upgrade!
The iBrattleboro Christmas Calendar is a daily animated look at downtown Brattleboro, with new bits of local history thrown in every day. Follow along as the scene builds up, and keep a special eye out on the 24th.
In observance of the Christmas holiday:
Brattleboro Town offices will close at 12:00pm on Tuesday, December 24, and will be closed on Wednesday, December 25, 2019, with the exception of emergency services.
Brooks Memorial Library will close at 12:00pm on Tuesday, December 24, and will be closed on Wednesday, December 25, 2018.
Guilford, Vt. — Friends of Music at Guilford (FOMAG) presents “An Olde New England Christmas” at 7:30 on Friday, December 13, and again at 4:00 on Saturday, December 14. By tradition, this 47th annual Christmas at Christ Church event includes choral and instrumental music for the season, a dramatic reading, and a few carols for everyone.
The a cappella vocal program was drawn from tune books by New England composers born in the middle of the 18th century: William Billings, Supply Belcher, Oliver Holden, Timothy Swan, and Samuel Adams Holyoke, as well as one English composer, Joseph Stephenson. These itinerant singing masters traveled the region from about 1770 through 1810, teaching sight-singing to select groups in church parishes. They gave concerts for local folks and then moved on to the next town. This practice fundamentally changed the place of music in worship, which finds its legacy in church choirs today.
Around this time of year, it’s common to hear the phrase “Peace on earth,” which is what the angels reputedly said to the shepherds out abiding in the fields. “Peace on earth, good will to men,” they sang in glorious harmony. They were heralding the coming of the prophet Jesus, who was foretold to be the Prince of Peace. Christianity seems to have arisen out of a desire for peace — the absence of war, the presence of good will amongst humans. It was deemed so important that this soon to be major religion was founded in part on these corniest of virtues, peace and love.
In observance of the Christmas holiday:
Brattleboro Town offices will close at 12:00pm on Monday, December 24, and will be closed on Tuesday, December 25, 2018, with the exception of emergency services.
Brooks Memorial Library will close at 12:00pm on Monday, December 24, and will be closed on Tuesday, December 25, 2018.
One of the by products of the new ban on Baby, It’s Cold Outside is that I can’t stop humming it. It’s so eminently hummable. It doesn’t help that we listened to four hours of Christmas music last night, or that I’ve heard everyone from Dolly Parton to Dean Martin sing it in cover versions going back to the 1940s. In our extensive seasonal music collection, we must have at least a dozen versions and there are many more.
