• School Board Update – Tim Maciel
– Tim provided the following updates from the latest board meeting:
– June 18th retreat scheduled
– Taking input from LC’s regarding district goals
– Board needs more data driven reports to direct goals
– VTCAP statewide results, Hiring data
In an article about the growing popularity of sandals…..:
“Let us pause for a moment to consider again the astonishing transformation of what was, at one time in the not-so-distant past, a niche hippie staple, mostly popular among commune dwellers and people who shopped in the Brattleboro Food Co-Op. Now, it’s the Type O blood of footwear, a fashion universal. Judging from my walking tour of Harlem, Midtown Manhattan, Greenwich Village and SoHo over several sweltering summer days, the sandal of the season is, without any doubt, the Birkenstock Arizona (or, for the more fashion forward, the big-buckle Madrid). Both models were so ubiquitous on city streets that it’s clear why the 250-year-old company reported revenues of nearly $1.6 billion last year.”
Calling all singers!
Enrollment in the Guilford Chamber Singers is now open to all choral singers for our Christmas concert, December 13 and 14 at Broad Brook Community Center in Guilford, Vermont. All voices are welcome, with the repertoire being several settings of O Magnum Mysterium (O Great Mystery). The text describes the animals’ wonderment as they look upon Christ in the manger.
Guilford Chamber Singers have been together for more than 50 years, and are essentially an a cappella group. We give two concerts a year, in June and December. Rehearsals are on Monday evenings from 7 to 9 at the West Village Meeting House in West Brattleboro, Vermont, starting on September 9.
Brattleboro will take possession of the new park at 250 Birge Street during their first regular meeting in August. The floodplain has been restored and the work is complete.
Emergency housing, water treatment plant construction, and “safety zones” will also be discussed. You can bring up other items not on the agenda during public participation.
My young nephew mailed me a picture he painted and I re-purposed it for my write-in campaign.
Then I took 6 more paintings my niece and nephew had done off the wall and photographed them and re-purposed them all for my write-in campaign. http://vt2024.com
Here’s the August 2024 dashboard summary. We continue semi-regular COVID-19 dashboard numbers from the Vermont Department of Health, and MA and NH counties that surround Brattleboro, as long as they continue providing them. Scroll down the new comments for the latest.
VT, NH and MA do weekly updates, near the end of the week, so we update on Fridays usually. All three have changed their dashboards since the start, so it is now tough to easily compare how things have changed. Variant updates are every two weeks.
The Next Stage Bandwagon Summer Series presents dance trio Soles of Duende, on Saturday, August 24 at 6:00 pm.
A Brooklyn-born Puerto-Rican from New Haven, a Mexican Puerto-Rican Jew from the Lower East Side, and a Bengali Indian from Jersey walked on to the wooden floor & the rest? History. Bonded by their deep love of music, their crafts, and true connection, Soles of Duende is on a lifelong mission to elevate the joy and music of true collaboration across disciplines and the celebration of the forms they practice. Based in the sounds of Tap (Amanda Castro), Flamenco (Arielle Rosales) and Kathak (Brinda Guha) , Soles of Duende’s fire is the spirit that lives within each of these women to celebrate their connection given their beautiful differences and to uplift the forms that made them.
“Live music meets dance from three different ethnic traditions sounds like a perfect way of exploring culture while seeing virtuosic talent,” says Keith Marks, Executive Director of Next Stage Arts. “This group has been getting a lot of attention in New York, and while they’re on the rise, we wanted to bring them to southern Vermont. There is so much about Soles of Duende that deserves attention – talent, merging of dance and live music, and the fact that these women are exploring connections of culture through dance is worth noting.”
Multiple concrete placements are scheduled for the next 3 weeks for the bridge approach from VT 142 as well as the sidewalks and rail copings. A placement for sidewalk and curb is scheduled for Monday, and the Vermont approach slab is to be placed Wednesday. Both will require multiple truckloads of concrete.
Work on cleaning and removing the remaining two tanks from the Pier 1 dewatering treatment system will resume next week. Finish work of berm repair, grading, and paving in the Barrows and Fisher yard around Pier 1 also remains.
Windham District 7 candidate Amanda Ellis-Thurber really answered the question “Why are you running?” in two recent interviews.
6:15 – 6:45 Request for Land Use Regulation Amendment
Review of letter received from SIT requesting consideration of rezoning two parcels (tax map parcel 00070223.000 and 00070268.210) to allow for mixed use development with housing development. Discuss staff input, additional information needed and determine next steps.
6:45 – 7:25 2026 Town Plan
Update on recent activity since the July meeting. Review and comment on summary of the Planning Commission and staff SWOT analysis performed at the June 3 meeting.
For my location a dry month with 2.27″ measured compared to the NOAA normal of 4.28″. The moisture we did receive was evenly spread across the month with 4 being the most completely dry days in a row. You can see the effects of less rain with lawns starting to turn brown in sunny areas. Within the CoCoRaHs network my location is the driest in the state for July.
In Windham County there are a couple of stations reporting over 4″ for the month so many locations are not as dry. Up north it is a different story with near record rainfall. A station in St. Johnsbury has measured 17.73″ for the month.
The alarm is being sounded. Vermont’s health care system is in crisis and if we don’t take serious measures to change things the non-system we have will become financially unsustainable by 2030. According to a recent article in The Commons, “Dr. Bruce Hamory and his team were hired by the Green Mountain Care Board (GMCB) in response to the Vermont Legislature passing Act 167 for health care reform. The legislation is intended to create a sustainable, affordable, and equitable future for Vermont’s 14 hospitals and health care providers in general.”
Act 167 has a few good elements and I am sure that Hamory and his team have come up with a some good ideas to make the delivery and accessibility of health care in Vermont better. At one of a number of state-wide meetings held in Brattleboro on July 17 Hamory said that we have to stop tinkering around the edges and make changes to help health care in Vermont financially viable.
But everything I heard makes me believe that all of the ideas that have been presented recently continue to tinker around the edges, as have all of the efforts of health care reform since the failure to enact a single payer system in Vermont played out during the Shumlin administration.
The Next Stage Bandwagon Summer Series presents Vermont native indie/soul singer/songwriter Myra Flynn, on Saturday, August 17 at 6:00 pm at Cooper Field, 41 Sand Hill Road, in Putney.
Singer/songwriter Myra Flynn spends her career embracing dichotomy. Half Irish and half African American, her original indie/soul songs blend soulful vocals with a lyrical delivery that doesn’t let one get too comfortable. As the New England Deli Magazine puts it, “Her vocal influences have as much in common with Ani Difranco and Shawn Colvin as they do with Rihanna and Jill Scott.”
“We love being able to present Vermont-based artists, and Myra has been on her way to building a national name for herself. As a regular at the Flynn’s Jazz Festival, Myra’s name is getting around for anyone interested in soul, funk, R&B, and beyond,” says Keith Marks, Executive Director of Next Stage Arts. “Myra’s range as an artist is a model for how Vermont artists can tackle a national stage. Her presence as part of the series is an opportunity to ensure that southern Vermont knows the power and presence of Myra Flynn.”
Update on recent activity since the July meeting. Review and comment on summary of the Planning Commission and staff SWOT analysis performed at the June 3 meeting.
6:55 – 7:25 Downtown Bike Parking
Decide the process we will use to assess bicycle parking in the downtown / UC district and to formulate recommendations for the Town. Review a proposed work plan for this project and review the 2018-2021 Downtown Brattleboro Bike Parking Inventory.
July 29 Spaghetti & Meatballs
Yellow Squash
Garlic Bread
Pineapple
Well, it’s that time again, people are voting on mail in ballots and the Vermont primary election is August 13, 2024 and instagram, twitter, tiktok and facebook are like a bunch of vicious attacking pecking roosters block, block, block, block, block, block, block, blocking me.
I have been banned from so much social media that in my sleep at night visions of notices, “you have violated community guidelines” run through my head. I am innocent. I am falsely accused.
The Health Ministry in Gaza reports that as of the end of July, 2024, more than 39,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been slaughtered in Gaza by the Israeli military using hegemon U.S.A.’s mighty weapons of mass destruction.[1]
A good deal of people in the awakening Global South have learned that those tens of thousands precious Palestinian lives of mostly women and children were ordered taken by the criminally insane Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
This week billions of majority Humanity watched on TV or heard of the obnoxious killer Netanyahu being welcomed by the assembled entire U.S. government that provides Israel with the bombs, missiles, guns, planes, tanks, ships, munitions, and diplomatic and military protection that has made the murder of those 39,000 fellow Global South men, women and children possible.[2]
The Glyptodons, an indie folk duo from Portland, Oregon, will present an outdoor concert on the backyard patio at 63 Cedar Street in Brattleboro on Saturday, August 3 at 7:00 p.m.. They play original as well as cover songs.
The concert is free and open to the public but donations will be accepted. All proceeds will go to the musicians. Refreshments will be available. Seating is limited so please bring a chair.
The Brattleboro Tree Advisory Committee will meet on Thursday, August 1, 2024 at 4:15pm in the Hanna Cosman Meeting Room.
AGENDA
I. Call to Order / Introductions / Recognition of Visitors
II. Review of Programmatic and Performance Equity Committee mission:
a. Mission: Monitor school equity and performance, and work with district staff to develop recommendations to increase equity and performance throughout the district.
III. Committee focus / items for discussion (listed here are items that were considered in 2023/2024):
a. Food Services in the district: how can the board assess equity in food access across schools in the district?
b. Leadership Councils: how is the board doing with communications with LCs?
