Dec 24-30, 2014
Year in Review: News Updates, Best Eats, Film Ups and Downs, Top-10 Vermont CDs
Obituary: Paul E. Dufresne, 1929-2015, Winooski
Paul E. Dufresne, age 85, a lifetime resident of Winooski, passed away on 01/03/2015 at home surrounded by his family. Paul leaves his loving, caring…
Obituary: Robert L. Ayres, 1941-2014, Bethesda, MD
Robert L. Ayres, an internationally acclaimed political economist whose career spanned four decades in California and Washington, D.C., died on December 23 in Rockville, Maryland….
Obituary: Thomas John Rock, 1939-2015, Burlington
Thomas John Rock youngest of thirteen children went to be with the Lord on January 1, 2015. Tom was born on July 8, 1939 the…
Obituary: Leo P. Latimer, 1926-2014, Grand Isle
Leo P. Latimer, 88, of Grand Isle, VT passed away December 31, 2014. He worked as a machinist. He was born on May 23, 1926…
Obituary: Jannette Daignault, 1928-2014, Burlington
Jannette “Janet” (DuBrule) Daignault, 86, of Burlington, VT passed away peacefully on Sunday, December 7, 2014 with her family by her side. Janet was a…
Obituary: John Robert Roos, M.D., 1953-2014, Hinesburg
John Robert Roos, M.D., age 61, died on December 24, 2014, at the VNA Vermont Respite House in Williston, as a result of esophageal cancer….
Obituary: Kathleen Ondis Eardensohn, 1952-2014, Marshfield
MARSHFIELD, VT—Kathleen Ondis Eardensohn, 62, died at her home on December 19, 2014, with her friend and companion Gregory Sanford and their daughters Dosia and…
Update: Bull Market for Ye Olde Vermont Documents
Several documents related to early Vermont history were recently offered for sale at Swann Auction Galleries in Manhattan. The items came from the collection of…
Lyric Theatre to Buy $1.3 Million Home
Lyric Theatre Company, a pioneer in Burlington’s theater scene, has produced biannual musicals on the Flynn MainStage for more than 40 years — since before…
Update: Family Wants a South End Deli With the Works
In the service of journalism, we spent a day hanging out at the bustling Pine Street Deli, trying to fight off hunger pangs as we…
Update: South End Apartments Project Has Been on Hold
Last spring, a proposal to build a four-story apartment complex on a quiet plot occupied by the St. Anthony Church stirred panic among Burlington’s South…
Update: In the Pipeline Battle, a Temporary Ceasefire
For more than a year, Jane Palmer had been a vocal critic of the Vermont Gas pipeline that would carry natural gas from Chittenden County…
The Big Not-So-Easy
“Well, this might be forward of me,” I said to my customer, Brenda White, who was sitting beside me and enjoying the ride, “but your…
Update: An Iconic Mad River Valley Inn Has New Owners
For more than 25 years, Waitsfield’s Inn at the Round Barn Farm has been a cultural magnet and economic driver in the Mad River Valley….
Update: Feds Push for Cleaner Lake Champlain
The problem? Too much phosphorus is running into the lake, both from so-called “nonpoint” sources — think roads and farm fields — and wastewater treatment…
Locals Weigh in on the Best Music of 2014
We here at Seven Days spend a lot of time listening to local music. It often makes us wonder what the musicians who make that…
Update: Health Problems Plague Jailed Winooski Drug Dealer
U.S. Customs and Border Protection provided Winooski police with a helicopter in the predawn raid that busted Deirdre Hey, 47, on charges of selling heroin….
Remembering Vermonters Who Died in 2014
More than 5,100 people died in Vermont in 2014, according to the Vermont Department of Health. Some of them — such as former senator Jim…
Kisonak and Harrison at the Movies 2014
I have seen the future and it is wet. It smells a little like burning rubber, too. I’m sure you’ve been keeping up with the…
Update: Time for Burlington’s ‘Bicycle Moment?’
Cyclists roll cautiously along Burlington’s North Avenue, one of the city’s few main, north-south thoroughfares that is bikeable year round. The suburban section north of…
Update: ‘Barbaras’ Lawsuit Drags On Amid Lakeshore Drama
In early March, Barbara Ernst and Barbara Supeno filed a lawsuit in Addison Superior Court alleging discrimination and outright harassment on the basis of sexual…
Recapping the Top Local Records of 2014
Top Vermont-made recordings of 2014 Anders Parker, There’s a Bluebird in My Heart Barbacoa, Italian Medallion Caroline Rose, I Will Not Be Afraid The DuPont…
Soundbites: 2014 Music News in Review; Locavore NYE
Welcome, friends, to the last Soundbites column of 2014. With New Year’s Eve looming, there is certainly a lot to get to. But before we…
Update: First Seeds in Vermont’s Budding Hemp Industry
Hemp activists scored a big victory in 2013, when Gov. Peter Shumlin signed into law a bill that legalized the cultivation of cannabis sativa, a…
Art Review: ‘Preoccupied’ at Vermont Metro Gallery
There’s no devil in the details that abound in “Preoccupied,” a show at the BCA Center’s Vermont Metro Gallery. Instead, there’s beauty and bedazzlement in…
Update: Sen. Dick Sears Protects Vermont Children
The Political Is Personal: Sen. Dick Sears Protects Vermont Children Sen. Dick Sears was born in prison to a mother he never knew. The Bennington…
Update: Smart Parking? New Meters, New Ideas for Queen City Spaces
When Nate Wildfire, assistant director of Burlington’s Community & Economic Development Office, began asking people in 2013 how they felt about parking in the city,…
Free Will Astrology (12/24/14)
ARIES (March 21-April 19): “Hell is the suffering of being unable to love,” wrote novelist J.D. Salinger. Using that definition, I’m happy to announce that…
What Are the Long-Term Effects of Anal Sex?
Dear Athena, I’ll cut right to the chase. My husband and I really enjoy anal sex. I need a lot of foreplay, and it always…
Update: Burlington’s Changing Taxi Scene
The Queen City’s taxi industry has been in overdrive all year. Benways, the biggest and best-known cab company, shut down in July, leaving the roads…
Vermont’s Drive-Ins: And Then There Were Three
In our 2014 Summer Preview issue (May 21), staff writer Ken Picard asked, “Is the Curtain Rising or Falling on Vermont’s Drive-Ins?” The owners of…
Update: Private Prisons, Public Documents: A Magazine Gets the Inside Scoop
Prison Legal News is a national monthly magazine for incarcerated people and their families. More than two years ago, it set out to learn how…
Update: South End Business Will Sell to CCTA
Officials at the Chittenden County Transportation Authority say it needs more room for a growing fleet of buses. More than a year ago, it expressed…
Aptronyms 2014: Are Descriptive Monikers Coincidence or Fate?
Are people destined to a certain fate because of their given names? That question has been kicking around for centuries, at least since Samuel Alexander…
A Shum-Dinger of a Year: 2014’s Top Political Stories
If you’d told us a year ago that Gov. Peter Shumlin would come within 2,500 votes of losing reelection and then abandon his signature policy…
Update: New Chancellor, Same Struggle for Vermont State College System
The Vermont State College system, which educates about 10,000 Vermonters every year, has long suffered repeated strikes from a double-edged sword: declining enrollment and diminished…
Letters to the Editor (12/24/14)
Fare Not With all the rancor about taxi laws, Uber, etc., it’s annoying — if not improper, inappropriate or illegal — that a Vermont state…
Update: A Legal Quandary for Burlington and Planned Parenthood
In late June, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the buffer zone that kept protesters away from abortion clinics in Massachusetts. By ruling that no-protest…
Opera Theatre of Weston to Stage The Secret Garden
It’s not often that a new opera premieres at the San Francisco Opera, then heads straight to Vermont. Yet the Opera Theatre of Weston has…
Update: Sanders’ Forgotten Folk Album Was Bernie Beat’s First Viral Scoop
By now, almost everyone knows Sen. Bernie Sanders is mulling a run for president. Digging deep into the archives, Seven Days unearthed long-forgotten news that…
![Van Gogh Makes Friends [SIV381]](https://sevendaysvt-test.newspackstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/episode381-1200x900.webp)
Van Gogh Makes Friends [SIV381]
12/8/14: Whether he’s warming laps at Pillsbury Manor South in South Burlington or learning how to read with kids at the Dorothy Alling Memorial Library…
Update: Vermonters Fight Ebola in Liberia
As Ebola raged across West Africa, a handful of Vermont health care workers quietly left for Liberia to help. One of them was Brant Goode,…
News Quirks (12/24/14)
Compiler’s note: Chronicling human folly gets harder every year because as foibles proliferate, the odd seems commonplace. These unbelievable-but-true news stories, however, stand out as…
Update: A Hole in the Ground Was His Home
Over the course of three chilly fall days, nearly 80 volunteers fanned out across Burlington collecting information about the city’s homeless population. Part of the…
Hood Museum Receives Two Large Collections of Art
It was a very good year for the Hood Museum of Art. In 2014, the Dartmouth College institution received two major donations of artwork from…
Update: Approval of School District Merger May Signal Trend
On Election Day, voters in the five towns that make up the Chittenden East Supervisory Union weighed in on a proposal to streamline the decision-making…
Bob Spear’s Legacy Lives on at Birds of Vermont Museum
Bob Spear, cofounder of Huntington’s Birds of Vermont Museum, always considered his remarkably lifelike wooden bird sculptures to be purpose-built. A lifelong conservationist and educator,…
The Best Things to Happen to Vermont Food in 2014
What are you eating this year? To some of our readers, that may seem like an odd question. Dinner is dinner, right? But Seven Days’…
Best Bite of 2014: Pascolo Ristorante
For years, when readers asked me where to stop for a meal on Church Street, I told them to keep walking. It’s no surprise that…
