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(05/06/21 9:58am)
For students studying remotely or taking a leave of absence, it has been challenging to find ways to engage with the arts scene at Middlebury. In addition to being away from campus, students are laden with additional burdens of navigating time zones, technical difficulties and lack of online promotion.
Studying from her home in Alaska, Ariadne Will ’22 recounted the difficulties of finding virtual events that she can attend at a reasonable time. “I think I’ve missed a lot of things because of time zone differences,” Will said.
Even for events that aren’t live and don’t require synchronized attendance, the open-ended nature of their viewing means that they run the risk of slipping through the cracks or simply getting put on the backburner.
“I’ve signed up for quite a few Hirschfield [screenings]” Will said. “They give you a few days or a whole week to watch it on your own time. But I’m really bad at doing that if I don’t do it right away. ”
For some, engagement with the arts typically goes hand in hand with social relationships, which have proven difficult to maintain with the distance the pandemic has created.
Cat McLaughlin ’21.5 is taking the semester off. She cites her friends as being an important avenue to her experience with the arts, saying, “It’s tricky because I think a lot of the ways that I connected with arts on campus were more severed by the pandemic itself than necessarily by me not being on campus. For example, I was really stoked about Hippo Campus performing for Winter Carnival because I love that band, but I didn’t know any friends who were planning to attend virtually. It felt kind of weird watching the livestream by myself, so I didn’t actually end up watching it for that long. Because so much of my experience of art is a social thing, I’d say being at home is the biggest cutoff.”
Oftentimes, it’s the virtual aspect of these events that make it difficult to find meaningful connections.
“Virtual connection doesn’t really facilitate my enjoyment of art as a multisensory experience,” McLaughlin said. “When it’s not exactly what you’re expecting, you almost don’t want to engage at all, because it won’t be quite the same. Although that’s not for a lack of trying. I do scan the arts newsletter, and you can see that [the arts department] is really trying to make it work. I don’t hold it against them, obviously. It’s just the nature of the whole thing we’re in right now.”
But this doesn’t negate the possibility of any connection at all. Last month, Will sat as a virtual audience member for “Same But Different,” a live show performed by visiting professor of dance Lida Winfield and associate professor of dance Christal Brown. Covering the performance of the show, Will was given the opportunity to talk to people in the dance department and set aside time to think and write about the production. She also attended the online premiere of the musical “CLOSE (But Not Too Close!)” and noted that an unexpected bit of entertainment came out of the event despite its digital nature.
“The comment section on Youtube Live was really cute and funny,” Will said. “It’s been interesting to watch the ways in which people want to express themselves at a performance digitally that would not happen live.”
For all the challenges of remote engagement with the arts, McLaughlin believes virtual accessibility is an important resource in which we should continue to invest. “Just because I don’t prefer to engage with art virtually doesn’t mean I don’t see value in it. I think people are going to incorporate the technological lessons we’ve learned in the last year into whatever tomorrow looks like, and I think that still finding ways to make art accessible virtually is important going forward.”
Editor’s Note: Ariadne Will ’22 is a Local Editor for The Campus.
(10/08/20 9:59am)
At Ilsley Public Library, staying safe during the pandemic doesn’t have to mean sticking to screens. Renee Ursitti, one of the librarians there, wanted to get people out of their houses, away from their Zoom meetings and back into nature. So, she planned a series of photography challenges that will take place over the coming months. The challenges are open to all amateur photographers and each challenge involves a different theme.
The theme for the first challenge, which is open for submissions until Oct. 24, is “The Beauty of Nature.” Participants are limited to one entry per theme and must submit original work. Ursitti oversees this series as part of her focus in programming and outreach.
Trent Campbell, a photographer for the Addison County Independent with 20 years of experience, will judge submissions alongside Jason Duquette-Hoffman, a prominent local photographer and assistant director at the college’s Center for Community Engagement, and Cyndi Palmer, a professional family portrait photographer. The panel of judges will choose two adult winners and two youth winners per theme. All winners will receive an enlarged, mounted print of their winning photo and be featured in a lobby exhibition.
“[In determining what the winners would receive], we thought about how it's such a digital world. If you looked on my phone, you would find thousands of images, and they’re wonderful — we love them, we post them, we do great things with them — but nobody prints them anymore. ” Ursitti said. “We felt that getting an actual enlarged, mounted print of your beautiful work might be a great incentive.”
Kate Tilton, a semi-retired artist and professional volunteer living in Middlebury, is one participant excited to submit her piece for the first prompt.
“They posted [the event] several times on the church forum, and every time I read it, I thought I should just do it,” Tilton said. “I'm constantly taking pictures of the natural world. I go out to the woods a lot with my dogs, and I'm always telling them to wait a minute ‘cause I gotta take a picture. I just love nature; it fills my heart.”
The library will be accepting submissions for the second challenge, the theme of which is “Our Town,” from Nov. 2 to Dec. 17. The prompt asks participants to submit a work that expresses what Middlebury means to them and how they feel about their community.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]'We've just gone through this long construction period, and I think that our town is changing,' Ursitti said. 'I wanted people to not only be able to reflect on their memories but also get out there and look at all these wonderful new things we have — to really be able to embrace this time of change as we're trying to reinvent our downtown.' [/pullquote]
Submissions for the final challenge, titled “We Are Family,” will be open from Jan. 4 to Feb. 14 and will revolve around the participant’s idea of family.
“I left [the prompt] vague on purpose because I think the definition of family is so wonderfully diverse right now that I wanted people to incorporate whatever their ideas were on that one," Ursitti said. "Submissions start in the beginning of January, which is after the big holiday season, so we're all going to have family subjects around … It just seemed like really good timing to let people express their love for their families.”
By the beginning of March, Ursitti hopes to have all winning photos printed and mounted for the library exhibit, where they will be on display on the walls of the main lobby for four weeks. Visitors will be required to abide by the most up-to-date Covid-19 guidelines in addition to the library’s current policies.
“Assuming we're in the same situation, it would be masks, social distancing and being allowed in the building for 20 minutes at a time,” Ursitti said.
While the Ilsley Public Library is open with limited hours, part of the motivation behind hosting the photography challenge is to foster greater engagement between the library and its community residents.
“Many people are missing the social aspect of going to the library, so I was just trying to think of a way to have people feel like they're still connected to the library even though we all can't sit in the same room together right now,” Ursitti said.
For some residents, this goal has been realized. “I know that the people at the library are working very hard on figuring out how to be available for the community and yet be safe,” Tilton said. “I realize that in normal times, loads and loads of people visit the library everyday, and they can't do that now. I appreciate that the library is doing an outreach event that can help people still feel connected.”
All contest submissions can be sent to renee.ursitti@ilsleypubliclibrary.org.
(09/10/20 9:57am)
The Middlebury College Museum of Art will be closed to all visitors for the fall semester as it undergoes a complete reorganization of its permanent collection. The museum will reopen its doors at the beginning of the spring 2021 semester, with a tentative date set for February.
Originally, the museum had planned to provide limited access for faculty and students during the reinstallation, yet a new plan was made following the college’s evacuation in March.
“We made the decision to ‘make lemonade from lemons’ and fast track the reinstallation,” Richard Saunders, director of the museum, said. “We are gambling that by spring, the pandemic cloud presently over us will be reduced to a level that makes visiting the museum a much more pleasurable experience.”
The reorganization of the museum’s permanent collection is part of a larger plan to reimagine the museum experience.
Currently, the museum’s gallery of Asian art is located upstairs, connected to the passage that leads into the special exhibition galleries. Every semester, the entire floor has to be closed to prepare for the debut of a new exhibit, creating stretches of time where visitors miss out on the art of the entire region. By moving the gallery of Asian art to the ground floor with the rest of the museum’s permanent collection, its contents will always be accessible — even as the second floor closes for new installations.
Jason Vrooman, director of engagement for the museum, added that another aspect of rethinking the museum experience is to shift away from traditional geographic and chronological organization of art.
“What ends up happening [with this approach] is, by accident, and maybe sometimes by design, there start to be these priorities put on different cultures and different time periods,” Vrooman said. “The truth is our collection is still pretty centered in European art, but we do have art from all over the world. So what we’re trying to do is a thematic approach to the gallery.”
By looking at art through a number of different lenses, including themes such as the body, rituals and devotion and environmental impact, the museum hopes to be able to connect art from multiple cultures while still telling their individual, unique stories. But, this kind of change will not happen overnight.
“I’ll be honest; it’s going to be a slow process because the history of most European and American museums have been so focused on European tradition,” Vrooman said. “But the hope is that when people come through the museum, it'll be a much more inclusive story of global history.”
Another key component of the renovation is its attention toward greater physical accessibility, such as implementing a larger font on the labels and creating a greater contrast between the wall color and the font in order to make it easier to read.
“I think it’ll look like a very different museum [in the spring],” Vrooman said.
On top of their newly launched database, which allows visitors to examine their collection of close to 6,000 works of art online, the museum will also begin to provide more information through virtual tours as part of their efforts to increase their digital presence.
“Museums have already had a digital presence, but it’s increased so much since March,” Vrooman said. “We’ve realized it’s not perfect; there are still kinks to iron out, but we can reach so many more people [with this], and that’s a different kind of accessibility. The goal would be to integrate what happens in the galleries online so that someone anywhere in the world can have a connection to the museum.”
Connection, especially with the Middlebury community, is one of the museum’s main goals for the fall semester.
Student Friends of the Art Museum (SFoAM) is a student-led group with more than1000 members that hosts a number of events throughout the year, which in previous semesters have included yoga, coloring sessions and scavenger hunts all located inside the museum.
“Museums are not necessarily accessible spaces where everyone feels comfortable and welcomed,” former SFoAM coordinator Flo Montes ’21 said. “[SFoAM] attempts to break that barrier by creating an interactive environment that reminds students that it is our museum. We host events that invite students to view an art museum in a way they may have never before and thus reinvent their relationship with it.”
Although its physical doors are closed until the spring, the museum will continue working with SFoAM to plan events for students in addition to collaborating with other departments for events offered to everyone in the community.
“This fall, I hope that we can really have a virtual presence and get people engaged when they can't come through the doors,” Vrooman said. “Some of that is relying on partners: our Student Friends leadership group that will be chosen soon and the other departments. But, I also hope that working internally, we can deliver on those promises on having the museum look and feel very different [in the spring].”
(04/16/20 10:01am)
Middlebury-based Vermont Coffee Company successfully completed its campaign to match funds raised by local nonprofits, resulting in $142,000 given to local homeless shelters and food shelves impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.
Lily Hinrichsen, brand manager of Vermont Coffee Company, said the widespread impact of the Covid-19 pandemic prompted the creation of the campaign. “We responded quickly to support our neighbors in need of food and shelter when Covid-19 started radically changing our lives,” she wrote in an email to The Campus.
The business partnered with organizations such as John Graham Shelter, the Committee on Temporary Shelter (COTS) and Addison County’s H.O.P.E. (Helping Overcome Poverty’s Effects). Vermont Coffee Company matched dollar-for-dollar every donation made towards these organizations with the goal of raising $100,000, a benchmark that was surpassed by almost 50% at the completion of the campaign in early April.
Jeanne Montross, Executive Director of H.O.P.E., commented on the positive process of working with Vermont Coffee Company in this campaign. “Vermont Coffee Company is a very socially conscious and caring company,” Montross said. “When they offered to do the challenge grant, they did it quickly and efficiently. We met the match quickly as well.”
Jubilee McGill, the John Graham Shelter’s primary coordinator for Covid-19 response, also expressed her gratitude in an interview with The Campus last week. “They’re just a company that’s doing a lot of amazing things in our area pretty much always, but it’s really ramped up in this time,” said McGill. “It’s been amazing to see.”
Due to the pandemic, food shelves across America are feeling the stress of increased demand and are struggling to replenish their supplies. Donation challenges, such as the one undertaken by Vermont Coffee Company, are a way to ensure that food shelves have the funds to support their communities.
“[The campaign] was really helpful to us because now we need to purchase so much more food for people,” Montross said.
Although the Vermont Coffee Company has stepped up to bolster the efforts of local nonprofits during this national crisis, they have a long history of philanthropy. The company has long since been known to donate products, funds and time to those in need. “They’re a company that kind of quietly helps out a lot behind the scenes for social and community service providers in the area,” said McGill.
Living in the context of these times, Montross emphasized the importance of empathy.
“Community means people coming together and caring about each other,” Montross said. “It’s about reaching out and thinking of other people. It’s people accepting help when they need it and giving it back when they can do it. Addison County is an amazingly warm, caring, and generous community.”
Hinrichsen also cited community as the main reason behind the success of their donation challenge. “We couldn't have done it without the generosity of our Vermont communities.”
(02/13/20 11:06am)
Stonecutter Spirits ceased its gin and whiskey production, permanently closing both its Middlebury tasting room and its Burlington cocktail bar, Highball Social.
According to co-founder Sivan Cotel, the company began evaluating its options in the fall of 2019 and officially closed their two locations around New Year’s. One primary factor behind their decision was an inability to distribute to markets outside of Vermont.
“It was certainly a hard decision,” Cotel said. “We were very proud of what we’d built with Stonecutter: the relationships we had with customers, the products we created and the events we did. But without gaining any traction outside of Vermont, the business wasn’t growing enough in order to pay the bills. Over time we had to accept that we hadn’t achieved the size that we hoped in order to make the business sustainable, and so we really had to make some hard choices.”
Cotel and Sas Stewart founded Stonecutter Spirits in 2013 and worked to convert what was previously a tile factory into an aging facility while simultaneously perfecting their recipes.
“We decided to focus on making gin and whiskey because they’re our two favorite things to drink,” Stewart said. “Middlebury seemed like a beautiful space to be making something that we loved.”
Cotel and Stewart said they will miss the culture Stonecutter Spirits has fostered over the years.
“The community in Middlebury has been wonderful,” Cotel said. “I really can’t stress that enough. At our closing party on January 3, a number of folks said to me, ‘Wow it’s really sad to see Stonecutter leave. It will be a loss to our community.’ That meant a lot to us.”
Stonecutter Spirits has hosted numerous cocktail dinners and special events over the years of its operation. Elizabeth Tarr ’19 had been an employee at the company’s Tasting Room for six months before Stonecutter announced its closing. Tarr was able to see firsthand the impact that Stonecutter Spirits had on its community.
“Stonecutter brought people together,” Tarr said. “Our events were always collaborative, [and] featured local musicians, chefs and organizations. People from Addison County to New Zealand would share a drink in the tasting room or [in] the comfort of their home.”
The company’s involvement extended not only to parties but also to fundraisers. Stonecutter Spirit’s annual Galentines Day event celebrated female friendships and business owners, while also raised money for WomenSafe, an Addison County organization that supports women who have been victims of domestic abuse. In 2019, Stonecutter Spirits raised over $5,000 for the cause.
“Being able to use our platform to raise awareness and money for worthy organizations has been an honor,” Stewart said.
As for the future, much is still to be determined. Cotel said that for the next half year, he will be working on selling off the equipment and inventory that’s left of Stonecutter Spirits. At present, there are still bottles of Stonecutter Spirits gin and whiskey on the shelves of liquor stores around the state.
“We still have a little bit of work to do to wind down everything with Stonecutter,” Stewart said. “I want to properly and gratefully close this chapter before starting the next.”
(02/13/20 11:04am)
After 48 years of supplying the town of Middlebury with handpicked clothing and eclectic thrift finds, Wild Mountain Thyme closed its doors on Sunday, Jan. 9. Paula Israel ’76, the boutique’s owner, cited retirement as the reason for its closure.
“I’ve known I wanted to transition to retirement for years,” Israel said. “I just wanted to wait until I was 65 until I made any moves because of Medicare and Social Security.”
Israel’s late husband Allen Israel established Wild Mountain Thyme in 1971. Israel herself started working at the store shortly after graduating from Middlebury. Over the years it became the oldest single-owned business in town.
When asked the secret behind its staying power, Israel emphasized the relationships with her customers.
“We have always prioritized customer service,” she said. “We’ve had incredible relationships with the people that come into our store. They’re more like family than customers, in a way.”
Kitty Hall, who worked at Wild Mountain Thyme for 40 years, said the most important aspect of helping a customer was being a good listener.
“You had to listen for when customers wanted your help, listen to what they were looking for, and then help them to the best of your ability by offering what you had in the store,” Hall said. “Clothing has the ability to change someone’s mood. When someone comes in saying, ‘Oh I don’t like what I’m wearing,’ or ‘I need something for this party,’ you listen to what they want and, with clothing, you have an ability to uplift them.”
Israel noted that, oftentimes, people would pop in the store just to stay and chat with the workers.
“You never knew what would happen,” she said. “It could be a therapy session, it could be whatever — just people talking. There were some great conversations over time. The relationships with my friends started with them coming into my store. That’s how I met everybody.”
This atmosphere of unpredictability extended to the store’s merchandise.
“You never knew what you would find here,” Israel said. “And I think that was something that people liked. They would come in, but they didn’t know what they were going to find, and they were always surprised pleasantly.”
In the final days of Wild Mountain Thyme’s operations, employee Jen Overkirch sold fixtures, racks and the last of the store’s merchandise thinned out by deep discounts.
“It’s been pretty amazing,” Overkirch reflected on her past years working for the store. “Paula and Allen have been really great employers, and I’ve been very fortunate to work for a small business — a family business at that. It really provided my family with comfort and security especially as I’m raising children. Not to mention I’ve had amazing customers who I’ve built long term friendships with.”
Overkirch’s next steps are to fill her days with being a mother. Israel, on the other hand, wants to focus on doing less stuff and enjoy retirement.
“I’m a very busy person, so I just want to dial back a little bit and be able to have some more time for myself,” Israel said.
Although Wild Mountain Thyme is now closed for business, Hall believes in the significance of the connections that the store created in its long history.
“When I started the job, I was young — of course I wanted my paycheck,” Hall said. “But as I evolved, it became more than just a job. It became a family. Not just with the people I worked for, Allen and Paula, but also my coworkers. When you have that much time go by — I started when I was 30 and I’m now just retired at 70 — lots happen in between. It was a happy time in my life.”
(01/23/20 11:02am)
As Burlington International Airport (BTV) celebrates its 100-year-anniversary, it is projected to receive a $10 million federal grant in the fall of 2020, which will be used to expand the size of the airport’s main terminal.
In a press release last November, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Elaine L. Chao said that the $10 million grant is part of a $485 million federal investment in American airports,“[to] address safer airport operations, fewer airport delays, and greater ease of travel for air travelers.”
For Burlington International Airport, these improvements will come in the form of an 18,000-square-foot expansion to centralize the two existing Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoints into a single facility. Creating a conglomerate TSA checkpoint would require less personnel, according to Vermont Federal Security Director Bruce McDonald.
“Running two checkpoints requires probably 20% more people than it takes to run just one that has four or five lanes,” McDonald said. “You get a much more efficient operation during surges. It puts all of our eggs in one basket, and it greatly enhances screening efficiency.”
This boost in the TSA’s screening capacity comes at a much needed moment for the airport. In recent years, BTV has experienced a significant growth in passenger traffic. According to a VTDigger article, the arrival of Frontier Airlines to BTV’s air service providers, upgrades in aircraft size among all airlines and new non-stop flights to Denver and Orlando resulted in a 14% rise in total passengers. The new expansion would meet the needs of an airport that is expected to continue to grow into the decade.
“At the present, the two separate checkpoints causes an immense strain because we have eight, sometimes nine flights compressed within an hour in the early morning,” McDonald said. “At some points, especially during the summer and fall, we’re running at 20-30% over capacity. You just simply can’t keep up.”
Presently, the airport’s two checkpoints are able to process an estimated 300 passengers per hour. In comparison, a centralized facility could process close to 800, Deputy Director of Aviation Nicolas Longo said in a Seven Days article. Many frequent travellers out of BTV, like Ella Kim ‘22, will benefit from a faster security screening process.
“The $10 million grant allowing for expansion would continue to allow us out-of-state students to get through the airport with ease,” Kim said. “It would remove a lot of stressors in being able to fly home. Anything to make the airport better would be great, and if that comes in the form of faster TSA checkpoints, I love to hear it.”
Aside from the expansion to its main terminal, the airport is also pursuing other projects related to infrastructure and innovation. This March, Dew Construction is set to break ground on airport property for a new 108-room Fairfield Inn by Marriott hotel. BTV is also developing a new walkway connecting the north and south terminals and completing the third and final stage phase of improvements to its Taxiway G. In the meantime, the grant is expected to be confirmed Fall 2020, which would allow construction to begin either late this year or early spring of 2021.
“I would say the expansion is a boon to the entire community including TSA,” McDonald said. “It’s a great thing, and we’ve needed it for years.”
(11/14/19 11:01am)
Caroline and Matt Corrente, owners of Haymaker Bun Co. and The Arcadian, are spending a lot of time reflecting on the last 12 months. This Sunday marks the one-year anniversary of both eateries, a milestone that the Correntes are celebrating by hosting a special four-course dinner. The event, announced on their Facebook page at the end of October, sold out within five days, capped at 60 reservations.
Both Haymaker Bun Co. and The Arcadian are located at 7 Bakery Lane. During the daytime, the riverside building is under Caroline’s domain, where her Haymaker staff serves French pastries, buns and café drinks. By night it transforms into the Arcadian, a restaurant that hosts an Italian fine-dining experience run by her husband, Matt.
“In the morning, I’m trying to channel this French, metropolitan-focused bakery with an excellent coffee program and a really tight collection of ever-changing pastries,” Caroline said. “Then it flips to nighttime, where we are trying to do modern Italian [food] with fresh, handmade pastas, wonderful fish, and great, Italian wines. They’re two different vibes which is refreshing, but they work very well together.”
The dual space, formerly The Lobby, opened in November 2018.
“The fact that it’s been a year [since opening] is crazy,” Caroline said. “In one sense it feels like the time has just flown by, and in another sense it feels like I’ve been doing this forever. I can’t really remember life before this place.”
Running the two businesses hasn’t been without trial and tribulation. Due to the old age of the building, the Correntes ran into heating issues in their first winter. Their hood system had sucked all the heat out of the building and caused it to run cold for a few months. The couple also had to replace a broken main oven. Caroline Corrente said that before Haymaker, she wasn’t very familiar with staff management, something that she credits her husband as having more experience with.
“It’s been a learning curve coming into restaurant ownership,” Caroline said. “Matt has a lot more experience than I do. Overall, we’ve been really lucky with just a great team here.”
Although the two restaurants are relatively new, the Correntes are not new to the area. The couple moved to Middlebury from Burlington in the summer of 2015, three years after Caroline graduated from the University of Vermont. Before starting on their own venture, Matt worked as the head chef of Two Brothers Tavern and as opening chef at Notte. Caroline worked as a baker at Otter Creek Bakery at that time.
“I think that we were attracted to Middlebury in the first place because it’s not just a plain old small town in Vermont,” Matt said. “The college keeps the town current. It brings in new faces year after year, and that to me gives Middlebury something that a lot of small towns don’t have: a sense of worldliness.”
Matt also mentioned that many Italian Professors from the College have come to the Arcadian. “It’s nice to have them show up and tell us that we have spelling errors in our menus and keep us honest in that regard.”
The couple emphasizes the importance of what the community brings to their business.
“I’m overwhelmed by the support that we’ve gotten from the community in general,” Caroline said. “At Haymaker, it’s so wonderful to see friends bumping into each other and sitting together when they hadn’t planned to see each other that morning. Members of the community having a place to come together is wonderful.”
Overall, Matt and Caroline emphasized the relationship between their businesses and their community.
“People are using us to celebrate the best things that are happening in their lives,” Matt said. “We are very humbled by that. Making other people happy through our food and service is what keeps us coming back every day to do it.”
When looking towards the future, Haymaker Bun Co. and The Arcadian are thinking about extending their hours in the morning and expanding their lunch options. They also mentioned potentially expanding to a barn location due to their popularity.
“We want to be able to say yes to everybody who wants to come in and eat,” Matt said. “There’s always those big college weekends where we feel like we just need a big room that we can put everybody in and feed them. We’ll see if the barn ever turns into a reality.”
Ultimately, the celebratory anniversary dinner represents not only the passion the Correntes have for the food that they make, but also their fondness for the town of Middlebury.
“I love what we do here,” Caroline said. “I love making people happy with great food and great wine. I love giving people these great experiences both in day and night time. I love being able to support local farms and producers and give roughly 35 amazing individuals a job here. All these things accumulate and just make me wake up excited and energized every day.”
(10/31/19 10:01am)
Families dressed in costumes, posed for pictures, danced to live music and munched on bags of fresh-popped popcorn. A NASA toddler in a tinfoil hat and a painted cardboard rocket waited patiently in line for face-painting. A mini Evil Queen and a black fruit bat played a life-sized game of Connect 4. Multiple Spider-Men and one Spider Gwen chased each other in front of the bubble machine. In the meantime, parents holding umbrellas stood on the grass and waited for the parade, Spooktacular’s main event, to begin.
The Better Middlebury Partnership hosted its 12th Annual Spooktacular on the Town Green this past Sunday, Oct. 27. Despite a steady drizzle of rain, kids flocked to game stations and activity tables operated by volunteers. Visitors could enjoy games, face-painting, bubbles and a craft table, alongside dancing and halloween-themed treats.
Nancie Dunn, the primary organizer of Spooktacular, started the event 14 years ago and has been hosting it with the help of her husband, Bruce Baker, ever since. For Dunn, the idea for Spooktacular rose out of a need she saw for a community-based Halloween event.
“When my kids were little, there was a parade and a bonfire that the Middlebury Parks and Recreation put on, and then there was nothing,” Dunn said. “So I thought with this cute town we needed to make something.” That was when Dunn got the idea for Spooktacular, which she and Baker have been running ever since.
“We had good weather last year and saw about 500 kids,” Baker said. “Because of the weather, this year was the most challenging year out of the 14.” The covered gazebo in the middle of the Town Green served as not only a refuge from the rain but also as the center of activity from where Baker played live music.
“My favorite part is right here at the gazebo,” Baker said. “All the kids come up, and the ones that are gregarious dance with me and have fun.”
Lauren Laberge, in charge of face-painting station, is one of the committee members who organizes the event every year.
“It’s cute to see the families come out all dressed up,” Laberge said. “I think they love it because you don’t always get an opportunity with your kids to be a part of something with costumes.”
Sarah Stahl, who oversees the crafts, is another committee member.
“[Spooktacular] is different from trick-or-treating in the dark,” Stahl said. “This is a daytime event, and it’s free. Some mother even said to me: ‘Thank you for doing this. This is all we do for Halloween.’”
At 2:30 p.m., Dunn, dressed as the Spooktacular Witch, led the group in a parade through the town. All through Main Street, merchants, some in costume, stood outside their shop fronts with bowls full of candy ready to be dropped in the children’s waiting bags. Audra Ouellette has participated in Spooktacular for all the three years she has been an employee at Sweet Cecily, a local home goods retailer.
“My favorite part about the event are the little faces that come through with costumes on,” Ouellette said. “There’s almost no preparation the vendors have to do beforehand. Nancie supplies everyone with the candy. It’s perfect.” As kids walked past Dunn with bags heavy of sweets, they waved at the Spooktacular Witch and headed home.
“It’s a real nice community thing,” Baker said. “It gives people who might not be able to afford to do anything special on their own an opportunity to get dressed up with their kids and have a great time.”
(10/10/19 10:01am)
For 50 years, towns across America have laced up, stretched out and walked side-by-side as part of the Communities Responding to Overcome Poverty (CROP) Hunger Walks. Last Sunday, Oct. 6, 180 community members gathered for the walk in Addison County, now in its 42nd consecutive year. Live music and brisk autumn winds swept through the Town Green as families, pets and neighbors mingled around tables displaying donated boxes of donuts and pizza. When, at 1 p.m., the walkers began their three-mile course through town, they were sent off to the sound of trumpet fanfare.
CROP Hunger Walks are hosted across the country each year to raise awareness and funds for overcoming systemic poverty. They are sponsored by the Church World Service, an agency that provides disaster relief, development and refugee assistance internationally.
This year marks the 50th year of the CROP Hunger Walk and the 13th year of Patty Hallman’s involvement as co-chair of the Addison County walk. According to Hallman, the local board that organizes the walks has mastered the process. Preparation for the walk begins in the spring, when Hallman contacts all the community churches and organizations that have taken part in previous years and informs them of the date of the walk. As the walk draws closer, Hallman begins distributing registration packets and posters as advertisement.
Twenty-five percent of the money raised during the event is directly distributed to seven local hunger-fighting organizations, including the Middlebury Summer Lunch Program and the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity. One of the biggest portions of the funds goes to Helping Overcome Poverty’s Effects (H.O.P.E), Addison County’s largest food shelf.
“This walk is really important to the people in this community,” Hallman said. “Every year, the mission continues to be the same: feeding our neighbors that live right around our corner and our neighbors that live around the world.”
Last year, Addison County CROP participants raised $26,400. Nationally, participants spread over 800 walks raised a total $8,300,000.
The route started at the Town Green and passed through many key landmarks in town, including Middlebury Union High School, the Middlebury Natural Foods Co-Op and the Davis Family Library. During the walk, volunteers in neon orange traffic vests — several high school students from the youth group at the Congregational Church of Middlebury — directed crowds of walkers safely through the main intersections of the course.
Geography Professor Peter Nelson has been helping direct event traffic for around eight years.
“One of the nice things [the walk] has is a broad reach both globally and locally,” Nelson said. “I also think it’s a way in which youth in the area can get involved in something that’s good. My youngest son — he’s 12-years old — raised nearly $400. He felt really good about that and thought that was cool. It was something where he could see himself making an impact.”
Children brought a lively energy to the walk. Every so often, a group of kids would run to the front of the pack, laughing and weaving in between the legs of adults. The event hosted people from a diverse range of ages and experiences, such as Mona Rogers, a Middlebury alumni class of 1962.
Rogers has lived in Vermont for 41 years and started participating in the hunger walk her first year here. She has attended regularly since 1979.
“The first year I joined, I knew it was something good that the church and the world should do,” Rogers said. “There’s so many hungry people in the world, so we need to do what we can in our small areas.”
(10/03/19 10:31am)
Though corn and dairy are the staple crops for farmers in Addison County, Boundbrook Farm owner Erik Andrus decided to grow something different — rice. At his five-and-a-half-acre property, located 20 minutes north of Middlebury, Andrus maintains rice paddies on the largest rice farm north of the Mason-Dixon Line and east of the Mississippi River.
Boundbrook is not only distinctive for its crop choice, but also for its farming methodology. Andrus follows the traditions of “Aigamo,” or “duck-and-rice farming:” a Japanese farming practice where ducklings are released into rice paddies. Their activity clouds the water, destroying weed competition, as well as getting rid of snails and other bugs that could potentially harm the rice plants. Sticking to practice, owner Erik Andrus keeps 600 ducks on his farm each year, most of which are of the Khaki Campbell variety.
This past summer, Middlebury College students Lucy Kates ’20.5 and Katie Cox ’20.5 worked at Boundbrook Farm through the Middlebury FoodWorks internship. On their first day, they were told they needed to build two hutches to transport the ducks to and from the paddies.
“We kind of embarked on this small-scale construction project with [Andrus],” Cox said. “I didn’t have a bunch of construction experience, so it was my first time using staple guns, power saws and stuff like that. We made these two kinds of fortresses, and [Andrus] named both after French battleships.”
Other tasks included putting up fences around the fields to keep the ducks inside and transplanting rice seedlings in the paddies.
“We got to drive these Japanese-imported specialized rice planting machines,” Cox said. “They were unlike any machine I’ve ever seen.” Andrus taught Cox and Kates how to drive the equipment in one afternoon before sending them out to the paddies.
“It felt like we were definitely being entrusted with a very important task,” Kates said. “That was the foundation of the whole growing season.”
One week, Andrus attended a rice grower’s conference in Japan and left Cox and Kates to manage the farm. Among other responsibilities, the two were tasked with herding ducklings in and out of their hutches every day.
“That was often a pretty fun process,” Cox said. “It wasn’t super hard to coral them all, but sometimes we would have to chase the ducks down and grab the ones that were freaking out and trying to run away.”
Overall, the work environment on Boundbrook Farm is driven by Andrus’s commitment to flexibility and innovation.
“[Andrus] himself is still very much figuring out what ways work best for him and trying to navigate this import of a traditional method of agriculture, which has been practiced in Japan for thousands of years, into New England,” Kates said. “He was very open to different approaches, and it was very cool to feel like we could contribute new ideas.”
Andrus started out growing wheat in his early years in Addison County, but after struggling to dry the soil sufficiently, he switched to rice in 2010. He was inspired by the works of Takeshi and Linda Akaogi of Akaogi Farm in Putney, who had come to test Japanese rice varieties in Vermont. After attending their workshop at a Northeast Organic Farming Association conference, he committed himself to creating a commercial pilot operation for rice. Ten years later, he currently oversees six acres of the biggest rice installation in the Northeast.
Still, as a pioneer of this agricultural venture, he faces challenges.
“We just don’t have the extent of experience, knowledge or community resource for rice,” Andrus said. “When we encounter difficulties, we have to look to the other side of the world for peers that can help us. So that’s what makes the kind of farming we do also a cross-cultural communication project.”
Andrus’ own life has been marked by cross-cultural experiences. He studied Arabic in Morocco from 1993 to 1994, has worked in construction, and for a while even lived in Japan as an English teacher. His biggest influence, however, was his study of Renaissance instrument making in Australia from a master lute maker named Bruce Tekle. Tekle was a handyman, gardener, adventurer, activist and a friend to Andrus.
“It was the growing things and living out in nature that stayed with me more than the lute making; just that envy of having a place around you that you could shape and create your own contract with away from the pressures of having a regular job,” Andrus said. “That was kind of the vision I held onto.”
Boundbrook Farm is currently preparing for harvest, which begins Oct. 7. But Andrus’ long-term enterprise is to expand ecological rice growing regionally, nationally and internationally.
“If the Northeast had been settled by Asians and not by Europeans, we would already have a lot of rice knowledge,” he said. “But because of the European mindset that we brought to this region, there’s a lot of opportunity for wetland growing that’s part of Asian tradition that has been totally underutilized and misunderstood by the current population.”
Andrus is looking to change that.
(09/26/19 10:02am)
Doug Butler warmly welcomed visitors to his property last Saturday, Sept. 22 but the canine members of his greeting committee were the ones who stole the show.
Dog barks and yelps echoed around Butler’s property — located three miles northeast of Middlebury center — while county residents and college students chatted, played music, grilled burgers and enjoyed the grand opening of the new Cobble Hill Kennel. Butler, a native Vermonter, worked for years alongside Middlebury students Ben Barrett ’20.5 and Jules Struzyna ’19.5 to establish a kennel for recreational dog sledding. Now open, the Cobble Hill Kennel will offer wintertime sled tours, as well as dry-land sledding in the fall.
The grand opening was an opportunity for visitors to see the kennel before they decided to spend money there, Struzyna said.
“It’s also a beautiful time of year to meet dogs, hang out, sell locally sourced burgers and celebrate the opening of our business,” they added.
Attendees, many of whom found the event through Cobble Hill’s social media posts, mingled around picnic tables and puppies at the event.
“I saw pictures of the puppies on Facebook, and I texted my friend, ‘We gotta go’,” Lucy Emptage ’22 said. “I like to get off campus just to see the surrounding town and landscape. It’s beautiful out here. But also, my favorite part of the event is the four-week-old puppies.”
While the puppies played in their pens, they greeted each passerby with barks. For every neck scratch, they gave enthusiastic, wet kisses to the adoring audience; some jumped on their hind legs to give guests full-body hugs, paws on shoulders and noses in necks. Butler’s dogs, all husky and pointer mixes, are used for sledding in groups of four to 16, pulling 20 pound sleds. In the right conditions, a pack can pull a rider up to 25 miles per hour.
“We don’t have to do much training for the dogs. It’s all in their genes,” Barrett said. “You just hook them to a sled and they pull on their own. They love doing it. When we get the sleds out and start hooking them up, they go wild.”
Both Barrett and Struzyna talked about the conception that dog sledding is exploitative.
“The [sport] can get a lot of flak from certain animal activist groups,” Struzyna said. “But the thing is, many of those people have never spent a day in a kennel with a musher. They don’t understand how loved and well cared for all our dogs are, or how our dogs are athletes to Olympic standards. The people who mush love dogs more than anyone, and we wouldn’t be literally devoting our entire lives to it if we didn’t.”
Struzyna has been dogsledding since they were 16 years old. When Butler expressed interest in hiring people to work for him, someone from the Middlebury College community contacted Struzyna, knowing that they had dogsledding experience from their Febmester.
“I’ve been at [Butler’s] side ever since, pretty much,” Struzyna said.
Butler has been mushing since 1975 and raising dogs since he was young. He has represented the U.S. in dryland races and even went to Fairbanks, Alaska in March 2018 to race in the Open North American Championships.
On top of managing a kennel of 50 dogs, Butler is also a seasoned farmer.
“Most mushers are pretty rich,” Barrett said. “Doug is unique in that he’s a struggling farmer; [dogsledding] is just his passion, and he does it in his spare time.”
In order to convert Butler’s property into a dogsled tour venue, Butler, Barrett and Struznya were busy mowing lawns, cutting trees and putting together tables up until last week.
“I feel like opening day went really well,” Struzyna said. “There was a huge turnout. I think that people got to see a side of dogsledding that they never had before. This place has been essential to my four years here, and I’m glad I got to share it with everyone. It seemed like everyone had a really great time”
Butler, Barrett and Struzyna have worked to make the dog sled tours accessible and affordable to the Middlebury community in hopes that more people would be able to experience their world. All students receive a 50% discount on tours, which begin in the fall and last throughout winter.
“It’s such an amazing experience,” Barrett said. “When you’re out there in the snow and the dogs are pulling you, it’s completely silent. You can’t hear anything else except their panting. It’s gorgeous.”