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150 Years Ago (1864 3/30)

by BusyMom | History

Brattleboro, Mar. 30th, 1864.

Dearest Abiah, –

I received a letter from you this evening. It came in last night. You were wondering why I did not write, and before you get this you will wonder more, I am afraid. The fact is, last Thursday I was ordered to go out with a detachment of recruits to the Army of the Potomac. Had to hurry to get ready There was no time to spare. I got back last night. I am well, but pretty well tired out. Have not been paid off yet. Expected to have been paid while I was gone. Left an order with Lieutenant Fisher. I will give you an account of the trip.

Weekend Concert Series: Kraftwerk

by cgrotke | Entertainment

To contrast with our outer space visionary of last week, Sun Ra, I thought we might tilt ourselves in the other direction, toward our future robot overlords. (Did I say overlords? I meant protectors.)

Here is Kraftwerk in San Paolo, from March 2009. The German electronic music group formed in 1970, but I first heard them in the 1980’s, on dance floors and urban radio stations with crossover hits like ‘Tour de France,’ ‘Trans World Express,’ and ‘Numbers.’ They brought a futuristic, computery vocoded sound to music, and the rap and R&B world ate it up for a while, with much imitation as a form of compliment. Afrika Bambaataa’s ‘Planet Rock” is an homage, as are songs by Warp 9, and the Jonzun Crew.

Stroll Seeks Parade Units, Heifers, Entertainers, Volunteers, Vendors

by MartinLangeveld | Entertainment

Strolling of the Heifers is seeking heifers, strollers, marchers, and floats for its upcoming Parade, as well as entertainers, volunteers and vendors for various Stroll Weekend events.

Strolling of Heifers Weekend takes place June 6-8, with the agriculturally-themed parade scheduled for Sat., June 7 at 10 a.m. in downtown Brattleboro.

Registration or application forms for all events and functions, as well as guidelines for each, may be found at via , or via the pull-down registration menu at the top of any page on the website. For parade units, parade director Richard Chapin announced that the deadline for applications is May 1. He is seeking parade units of all kinds, including musical units, marching units, animals, clowns, acrobats and dancers.

Benefit for Morningside Shelter: Storytellers on a Mission April 19, Hosted by Peter Sagal

by Not Signed In | Arts

Southern Vermont-based The Hatch presents its third Storytellers on a Mission event featuring nationally renowned storytellers who will tell hilarious stories to raise money for a great cause. The event’s recipient is the Morningside Shelter in Brattleboro, Vermont, which is celebrating its 35th anniversary this year. The event will be held on Saturday, April 19 pm at 7:30 p.m. at the Latchis Theatre in Brattleboro.

The evening’s storytellers will be hosted by Peter Sagal, Host of NPR’s Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me! and will feature Cindy Pierce, Elna Baker, Peter Aguero and Ian Chillag, with additional special guests. All performers have performed on critically acclaimed stages that include The Moth, National Public Radio (NPR) shows, Comedy Central programming and much more.

The Vermont Jazz Center Presents: Emerging Artist Series – Carolina Calvache

by Not Signed In | Music

Innovative, original jazz, influenced by Colombian rhythms. Featuring saxophonist, Jaleel Shaw

The Vermont Jazz Center will present Colombian pianist, Carolina Calvache, performing as part of our Emerging Artist series. This young artist has all the qualifications that the VJC is celebrating in this series: she is launching her first CD with a major jazz label (Sunnyside), she is a creative composer, she is highly accomplished on her instrument. She is a rising star in the eyes of both critics and peers and she is traveling with her own band. Her musicians have studied and performed her complex material and are able to transcend its technical demands and add to the beauty of her vision. These musicians are Jaleel Shaw on saxophone, Yasushi Nakamura on acoustic bass and Rodrigo Recabarren on drums.

Winter Sunshine Series at Sandglass Theater Continues This Weekend With Vermont’s Own Crabgrass Puppet Theatre

by SandglassTheater | Entertainment

Crabgrass Puppet Theatre
The Pirate, the Princess, and the Pea
March 29, 1pm and 3pm
$8

Reserve tickets at info@sandglasstheater.org
or (802) 387-4051

Spring is here but the 2014 Winter Sunshine Series of Family Performances at Sandglass Theater in Putney continues! On Saturday, March 29th, Winter Sunshine curators Bonny Hall and Jamie Keithline of Vermont’s own Crabgrass Puppet Theatre present The Pirate, the Princess, and the Pea.

Love & Blackmail at Brooks Library

by Brooks Memorial Library | Entertainment

Escape the dreary weather and join us for a FREE MOVIE! Today, Wednesday, Mar 26, at 2 PM, the Classic Matinee Film Noir Series at Brooks Memorial Library continues with a story of a tangled web of blackmail and love with surprise twists.

For title information please contact the Brooks Library. What is film noir? Literally it means “black film” and it is a Hollywood genre of crime movie of the 1940’s and 50’s that developed mostly out of the Great Depression crime fiction.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: A Reading and Discussion Series –Final Discussion

by Brooks Memorial Library | Books

Join Vermont Humanities scholar Richard Wizansky for this reading and discussion series which features the shorter works by the great Russian writer, dissident, and former Cavendish, Vermont resident and includes his most read and highly regarded novella as well as several of his famous speeches. 

The final reading for the series is the 1970 Nobel Lecture; and the 1978 Harvard Class Day Address. Wednesday 26 March 2014, 4:30pm – 6:00pm. 

Study Shows Drop In Searches For Certain Terms Post NSA Revelations

by cgrotke | Sci-Tech

A since the NSA spying revelations. In it, the researchers say that U.S.-based search traffic fell 2.2% for terms perceived as likely to get one in trouble with the government. Internationally, there was a similar drop in terms that might be embarrassing to family or employers.

It doesn’t sound like much, but with the high volume of searches, the number is indeed quite large. (No wonder that tech companies are starting to push back against spying, at least in PR efforts. They see their numbers dropping more clearly than anyone, and that equates to lost profits.)

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Writing the Red Wheel in Vermont

by Brooks Memorial Library | Books

Please join us. Conductor and pianist Ignat Solzhenitsyn will discuss the writing of his father Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and their family’s life in Cavendish in the 1980s in a talk at Brooks Memorial Library on Friday, March 28, at 7 PM. (This talk was originally scheduled for February 5 at 7:00 pm.)

Solzhenitsyn will recollect his father’s painstaking crafting of the Red Wheel — a history of the Russian Revolution — and his family’s life in Cavendish during Solzhenitsyn’s exile from the Soviet Union. Ignat Solzhenitsyn was born in Moscow in 1972, the middle son of author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

UFAUXs Are A’ Comin

by Not Signed In | Entertainment

Things seem hard, in Brattleboro. It’s been a long winter, and spring is very sought for and very over due.

When things get hard, one of the best remedies I know of, is to launch a UFAUX. So we went and bought the supplies needed for a really BIG one. We hope to do so on Gallery Walk, in May. Yes, I know that is a long way away. But hopefully it gives us enough time to plan it well. Also, we can celebrate more spring like weather then !

So, look to the skies, in May, and smile.

BCTV Channel 8 & 10 Schedules for the Week of 3/24/14

by BCTVProg | Media

BCTV Ch.8 Schedule for the week of 3/24/14

                   Monday March 24  

12:00 am      Green Mountain Vets for Peace: Ep. 130

1:00 am       Pres. Coolidge Site Panel Discussion

2:00 am       FSTV Overnight

4:00 am       The Folklorist Ep. 6

4:30 am       The Vermont Healthcare Experiment

5:00 am       Common Good VT: The VT Community Foundation’s Food and Farm Initiative

Not In Your History Books – Part 3

by RLElkins | History

Authors Note: An Eidetic Memory is the ability to remember the intricate details of sights, sounds, and conversations during the adolescent’s years with no relationship to the child’s intelligence or learning skills. It is estimated that between two to ten percent of children are born with this aptitude. In the medical profession this memory phenomena is diagnosed as HSAM or Highly Superior Autobiographic Memory that some health professionals dispute.

As a follow-up to the high school student interview in Part 2, the one sided dialogue in Part #3 is with the same individual who discussed the events surrounding the implementation of the Vermont Sales Tax in 1971. When asked one question about the Hinsdale Raceway, the twenty-six hundred word response revealed an incredible detailed description of what transpired during a three hour timeframe fifty-four years ago. This is a very personal and poignant remembrance about growing up in Brattleboro.

Weekend Concert Series: Sun Ra – A Joyful Noise

by cgrotke | Entertainment

This week a mix of poetry, cosmic vibrations, and space philosophy. A discussion of magic and myth to help cleanse and transcend. Sun Ra can help guide us to a deeper reality with a trip with his Arkestra.

Not part of history, but part of mystery.

This is a documentary about jazz musician Sun Ra, who comes from Saturn.

Spring Limericks

by cgrotke | Creative

They say it is Spring, this I know.
Yet when I awoke there was snow.
I can’t take much more,
But need things at the store,
So off to shovel I go.

BCTV Video Calendar: 3/20/14 – Windham Orchestra/Bratt Senior Meals, Bratt Town Mtg, More!

by BrattleboroTV | Media

Get the scoop on the Windham Orchestra’s food and music fundraiser for Brattleboro Senior Meals straight from Maestro Hugh Keelan himself, on an edition that includes details on Brattleboro Representative Town Meeting, Chris Smither and Next Stage Arts in Putney, Scott Ainslie at Brooks Memorial Library, and a Tag Sale fundraiser at the Dummerston Community Center.

3/26 Spaghetti Supper to Benefit Guilford School Music Program

by fomag | Music

Guilford, Vt. – Friends of Music at Guilford has been providing the Guilford Central School with a Music Enrichment Program residency for the past six seasons, with partial funding from the Max Y. Seaton Trust. The balance of the budget is raised by a public concert in Brattleboro featuring the program’s residency artists and also, for the past three seasons, by a Spaghetti Supper held at the school.

This year’s pasta supper is set for Wednesday, March 26, from 5 to 6:30 p.m., and is followed by a School Music Night concert; the school is at 374 School Rd. in Guilford Center. The menu includes pasta with a gluten-free option, a vegetarian sauce made from scratch, homemade meatballs for carnivores, green salad, artisan bread with plain or garlic butter, beverages, desserts and a sundae bar.

Host An International Exchange Student

by ann.newsmith | Education

It is that time of year !!! Planning your summer? Got an idea for you. Host
an exchange student from Spain in July…just 3+ weeks. Bring an international dimension to your life and share Vermont with an eager teen. For more info contact Ann, 802-257-4710, exchangevt@gmail.com. Host families also needed for the coming school year for kids from around the globe.

Wooly Mar and Home Body At Future Collective Show

by Lise | Music

We arrived fashionably late for the Future Collective show Friday night and missed Wooly Mar’s opening. We regret that but we had the bill upside down.

Wooly Mar is Maria Pugnetti, an “intermedia artist” living in Northampton, MA, who has done various musical things through the years, usually described as some kind of folk music. Currently, she’s doing her own thing with a fluctuating group of musical collaborators, of whom we heard one, a bass player named Kurt. Armed with a compact array of keyboard, drum machine, effects units, and other gear, she coupled sounds and effects with her own sinuous voice in a way that was frankly mesmerizing and slightly levitational. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that this woman was luminous, or as one girl shouted out, “pure magic.”

Community Radio Station WOOL Completes Historic Upgrade

by Not Signed In | Media

In 2006, Great Falls Community Broadcasting Company submitted an application for a new radio license. WOOL-LP, the community radio station started by the organization had only been broadcasting a short while when the opportunity arose to increase their broadcast power. Today, after more than eight years of finagling, strategizing, fundraising, and borrowing, WOOL finalized the process and is now operating on a new frequency with a more powerful transmitter and is heard in many towns where its first station had been silent. The station has stopped broadcasting on 100.1FM. Its new frequency is 91.5FM.