Spotlights

Spotlights Brattleboro Literary Festival Oct 14-16, various locations around Brattleboro, brattleboroliteraryfestival.org Celebrating its 10th anniversary with over forty established and emerging authors coming to Brattleboro. Experience the magical alchemy between readers and writers featuring NPR personalities Tom Bodett and Roy Blount, Jr., best-selling authors Julia Alvarez and Luis Alberto Urrea, National Book Award-winning poet...

Read More

12 tips for buying hardwood furniture

12 Tips for Buying Hardwood Furniture by Brent Karner   Brent Karner is a master woodworker and founder of ClearLake Furniture in Ludlow, Vermont. He is a graduate of the prestigious North Bennet Street School in Boston, Massachusetts, where he fine tuned his craft. 1. Wood finish A smooth, lasting finish requires time. Ask about the finishing process. What product was used? Is it harmful to the environment? Is the finish...

Read More

Pumpkin Festivals

Pumpkin Festivals 19th Annual Keene Pumpkin Festival Oct 22, 12-8:30p, Main St, Keene NH pumpkinfestival.org Do you want to experience community spirit at its peak? Do you want to feel awe-struck as you gaze at towers shimmering with hundreds of jack-o’-lanterns, be touched by the personal messages and artistic renderings carved in orange gourds? Do you want to set a World Record for the most lit jack-o’-lanterns? Do you want to show...

Read More

Fall Food Festivals

Fall Food Festivals Southern Vermont, it has to be the food. In this region you’ll find a warm and sophisticated, yet rustic, lifestyle based on family traditions, with authentic and local food experiences. There are plenty of food festivals this fall, many of which offer a great way to experience the flavors of a new destination, while allowing you to try new foods and gather new recipes. Chow down! Check Web sites for updated...

Read More

Wine Observed

Wine Observed: Wines for Fall by Marty Ramsburg One of the wonderful thing about wines is that there are so many choices—from the light-bodied, crisp wines like Vinho Verde, Picpoul and a good, Provencal Rosé to full-bodied, sometimes tannic reds like Malbec, Grenache or Nebbiolo. A decision of what to open can be paralyzing in context of so many good choices. Fortunately, the calendar helps narrow our range. As we move from the long,...

Read More

Art Lovers Alert

Putney Crafts Tour, Thanksgiving weekend: Art Lovers Alert…Meet the Makers by Katherine P. Cox With more than 26 artists and craftspeople spread out over a 12-mile radius, The 33rd Annual Putney Craft Tour held during the Thanksgiving weekend is worth making a weekend out of it, suggests Ken Pick, who creates evocative functional and sculptural pottery and is one of the original members of the group that gathered to organize the first...

Read More

Vermont’s Woodworkers

  Vermont’s Woodworkers Are Creating the Antiques of Tomorrow by Greg Worden “A quarter of a million dollars! That’s unbelievable! The table has been in the family for generations, but I never would have guessed that it would be worth so much!” Just another day in the saga of Antiques Roadshow, you say. But, in our current world throw-away consumerism, will there be any furniture that will endure and become an antique of tomorrow? The...

Read More

Jazz story sidebar

A roundup of Southern Vermont Jazz destinations The Vermont Jazz Center is not the only source in the Green Mountain State for fans of the genre which the drummer Art Blakey said “washes away the dust of everyday life.” One of the important new jazz hubs in Vermont was founded two years ago and is located in the same building as the Vermont Jazz Center, the Cotton Mill in Brattleboro. With an emphasis on education and training, the...

Read More

Jazz and Vermont

Jazz and Vermont By Steve Noble They go together like maple syrup and New Mexico, right? Turns out, they fit together better than you think, and while Vermont will never be confused with Birdland, it is fertile ground for a lively and thriving jazz scene. You just have to know where to look. In southeastern Vermont, the jazz trail leads to the Cotton Mill building in Brattleboro, an old factory space, whose 145,000 square feet house...

Read More

At the Museums

At the Museums Bennington Center for the Arts 44 Gypsy Lane, Bennington benningtoncenterforthearts.org 802 442-7158 Thru Dec 18: Small Works Show with figurative, landscape, still-life’s and city-scapes. Thru Dec 18: The Laumeister Fine Art Competition, featuring artists from around the country, juried by Huihan Liu. Thru Dec 18: Impressions of New England, nationwide exhibit including images captured in paint and bronze. Bennington...

Read More

Jud Hartmann sculptor

Jud Hartmann, sculptor “Burn like the sun and have the power of storms” by Joyce Marcel When the explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano reached the new world in 1524, he wrote to the King of France about the Indians he met: “These people are the most beautiful and have the most civil customs that we have found on this voyage. They are taller than we are; they are a bronze color, some tending more toward whiteness, others to a tawny color;...

Read More

Readsboro

Readsboro A Little Town with Big Dreams by Arlene Distler Located along the Deerfield River whose waters once powered factories making cardboard boxes and furniture, and tucked into the foothills of the Green Mountains, Readsboro still has the appearance of a mill town. Back in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Readsboro was industrious and prospering. A postcard of the early 1900’s, captioned “Readsboro, Vt. In The...

Read More