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Brattleboro Subaru Supports Windham County Humane Society with Grant, Pet Adoption, and Food Drive Event

by Not Signed In | Pets

Brattleboro, VT – Windham County Humane Society (WCHS) is excited to announce a special Pet Adoption and Food Drive Event in collaboration with Brattleboro Subaru, located at 1234 Putney Road, Brattleboro, VT 05301. The event will run from October 1, 2024, through November 1, 2024, as part of Subaru’s nationwide Subaru Loves Pets® initiative.

This month-long event aims to raise awareness of the importance of adopting shelter pets and support local animals in need. According to the ASPCA®, nearly 6.5 million companion animals have entered shelters nationwide last year, underscoring the critical need for adoption. WCHS is committed to finding loving homes for as many shelter pets as possible, and this partnership with Brattleboro Subaru will help drive that mission forward.

Fauxliage Tours

by AnneODyne | Travel

A few years ago I took a workshop on Mt. Desert Island, and my classmates decided to take a trip up Cadillac Mountain. We asked our teacher if he’d like to join. He took out his phone, showed us a pic of the view, asking, “Does it look like this?” When the consensus reply was yes, but…and we pressed the invitation, his response was, “No thanks, I’m good.”

The incident stuck with me. On the surface it seemed sad, and limiting. But with more reflection, the thought of queuing behind RVs and SUVs and motoring up the snaking road to take a timed and allotted slot at the top just to pop out and gaze at the splendor for a fleeting moment, well maybe that isn’t so enticing after all. He may have had some insightful awareness.

Twenty Years And The Need Continues

by RDavis | Home & Garden

Twenty years ago Daryl Pillsbury and I wanted to do something to help people struggling to pay home heating bills. The price of fuel was high and we figured that, in a short time, the situation would get better and we could suspend our operations. We had no idea what we were getting into when we started the Windham County Heat Fund.

Over the years we have learned that the price of heating fuel has only a little to do with people’s ability to pay for it. There are a host of factors feeding into the situation. Global and national politics enter into the mix. The gap between the have’s and the have-not’s is wider than ever, and as long as that continues more and more people will struggle to pay for life’s necessities.
Wages have not kept up with the rate of growth of the economy and too many people who are making their best efforts to stay above water have to have two or three jobs and they still often teeter on the brink of homelessness.

The Four Second Rule

by cgrotke | Travel

I was at the DMV this summer helping a friend with some car stuff. While waiting, I re-read the Vermont driver’s handbook. You know the one – it is the guide that you study so you can pass your written test and know all of Vermont’s rules of the road.

Most things looked familiar but I was struck by one item that seemed a bit different than when I learned to drive. I was taught to keep three seconds between the car being driven and the vehicle ahead of you, or roughly a car length for every 10 mph. That was in ye olden days, though.

Brattleboro and VT COVID-19 Regional Dashboard Summary – September 2024

by cgrotke | Health

Here’s the September 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.

Perverse Incentives

by RDavis | Health

In a recent article in vtdigger it was noted that Vermont health insurance rates are among the highest in the nation. Just another painful fact for people to digest who live in a state that is also among the highest for property taxes.

Subsidies do lower the cost of insurance for many Vermonters who pay, on average, $243 a month for an individual marketplace plan. The article describes many of the details about the costs of health care but the only important information comes at the end of the piece when Mike Fisher, Vermont’s health care advocate, states, “Many of us have been looking at this health care financing ‘not-system’ – the way we finance care- have been saying for a number of years that it’s unsustainable and that it can’t possibly continue. But it feels like we’re in a much more acute stage of that.”

August Precipitation

by local | Nature

A wetter month with 5.28″ of rainfall compared to the average of 4.32″.  There was measurable rain on 10 of the first 11 days and on 20 of August’s 31 days.  For the calendar year 36.10″ compared to the NOAA average of 30.73″. Across Windham County I see monthly totals as high as 7.59″ in Marlboro and a low of 3.75″ in Rockingham.  My numbers are from the South east corner of Brattleboro.  For more information visit CoCoRaHS.org

New Program Supporting People with Serious Illness

by EileenBAH | Health

Serious Illness Program

Support for Those Going Through Life-Altering Illnesses

Have you or someone you love been diagnosed with a serious illness, or coping with an exacerbation of an ongoing serious illness such as organ disease or cancer?

The time of a new diagnosis, or treatment for a recurrence or exacerbation of an ongoing illness often calls for added support. If you or your loved one are going through cancer treatment, or experiencing a healthcare crisis due to cancer or organ disease we can help.

Addiction As A Form of Suicide

by RDavis | Health

I make no claim of being a therapist or an expert on human behavior. But when you have been around for nearly eight decades you do come to understand a few things. I have learned that people who are unhappy about the course of their lives, people, who feel they are trapped in their lives with no way out and people who feel that the world around them will not allow them to succeed, often turn to drugs and/or addictive behaviors to ease their pain.

This is not a judgment call but simply an observation. I suspect that if you were to do a survey among people who have turned to drugs or alcohol or who have any kind of addiction at the center of their life, you would find most of those people to be among the unhappy.

Will Jail Time Be A Deterrent?

by RDavis | Activism

A lot of people in Brattleboro are agonizing over how to make our downtown safer. There has been no lack of suggestions. I have done a little bit of research into how other communities deal with similar problems and, once again, there are no simple solutions.

Yet, I am beginning to think that we need to use a tool that has been rejected by most communities as being too cruel. That is having police and the court system lock people up who are breaking the law, no matter what level they are operating on.

Brattleboro and VT COVID-19 Regional Dashboard Summary – August 2024

by cgrotke | Health

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.

July Rainfall

by local | Nature

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.