2+ mon, 1+ week ago (513+ words) Seven Days is 30, and we need your help to celebrate. With your donation, we'll stay on track, delivering rigorous reporting on Vermont news and'culture. It's been a busy few weeks on the local new releases front. Singer-songwriter and guitarist Ali McGuirk dropped her latest single, "Graveyard," last week. The tune, a sultry, almost trippy slice of R&B, was the last advance single from McGuirk's new album, Watertop, released on September 12 on Signature Records. McGuirk's lyrics on the new record lean heavily into her social activism, which is summed up nicely on opening track "Love Goes First." "Love is the thing that keeps us afloat," McGuirk wrote in a press release. "I like to frame love as a practice. It forces us to confront ourselves and it opens whole worlds and portals within us." Watertop is available on all streaming…...

2+ mon, 6+ day ago (487+ words) Jimmy Kimmel Live!" is back on the air Tuesday night after nearly a week's suspension. But Vermonters won't be able to catch the late-night show " live, anyway. That's because the local ABC affiliate, WVNY, is owned by Nexstar Media Group, which has said it will continue to preempt the show over comments Kimmel made last week about slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk. We stand by that decision pending assurance that all parties are committed to fostering an environment of respectful, constructive dialogue in the markets we serve," the media conglomerate said in a statement. Seven Days contacted the local station, also known as ABC22 & FOX44, where someone in the programming department confirmed the show won't be airing Tuesday night. They declined to comment further, referring all inquiries to Nexstar. Kimmel was pulled off the air by ABC's parent company, Disney, on September…...

2+ mon, 3+ week ago (370+ words) Dan Bolles is a culture coeditor at Seven Days. He joined the paper in 2007 as its music editor, covering Vermont's robust music, comedy and nightlife scenes for a decade before deciding he was too old to be going to the Monkey House on weeknights to see rock shows for a living. He became assistant arts editor in 2017 and culture coeditor in 2021. Bolles has received numerous local and national awards for his writing on Vermont arts, sports and the occasional celebrity canine murder mystery. He loves dogs, dark beer and the Boston Celtics. Since 1995, a procession of Seven Days music editors " that'd be cofounder Pamela Polston, Ethan Covey, Casey Rea, Dan Bolles, Jordan Adams and now Chris Farnsworth " have covered the best, worst and decidedly pretty OK of Vermont's bustling music scene. From the rise of Phish, Ana's Mitchell, Grace Potter…...

2+ week, 4+ day ago (106+ words) Cheer on Vermont's rising stars as they showcase their talents on Saturday, December 6, 2025 at Higher Ground in South Burlington. The local youth in Kids VT's 2025 Spectacular Spectacular talent show don't need a spotlight to shine " they are already stars! The young performers listed below impressed our panel of judges with their amazing auditions and now they're ready to perform in person. Cheer them on as they showcase their talents at noon on Saturday, December 6 at Higher Ground in South Burlington. Thanks to everyone who submitted audition videos " and to our sponsors: This article appears in Kids VT Winter 2025....

2+ mon, 1+ week ago (716+ words) Five Vermont state lawmakers visited Israel last week on a trip sponsored by the Israeli government, even as Vermont's congressional delegation and a United Nations commission accused the country of committing genocide. Reps. Sarah "Sarita" Austin (D-Colchester), Matt Birong (D-Vergennes), Gina Galfetti (R-Barre), Will Greer (D-Bennington) and James Gregoire (R-Fairfield) were among 250 state legislators from across the United States to participate in a conference organized by Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs called "50 States, One Israel" that ran September 15-18." During the junket, Israel's top government officials called on state lawmakers to pass laws barring boycotts, divestments or sanctions against the Jewish state, among other policy discussions. Conference participants also were invited to visit the Western Wall in Jerusalem, travel to the border region near the Gaza Strip and plant trees in the southern city of Ofakim. Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs…...

1+ mon, 1+ week ago (399+ words) Mike Kenny didn't intend to create an educational web app " he was just looking for a way to help students master their multiplication tables. "When I couldn't find anything," Kenny said, "I eventually realized I had to build my own." Then a fifth-grade math teacher at the Thomas Fleming School in Essex Junction, Kenny, a 53-year-old Burlington resident, designed hundreds of flashcards that each contained both a multiplication fact and a visual model of that fact. For example, a card with the equation 7 x 8 might show a picture of seven cubes with eight dots on each. For several years, he used the cards with his students, but paper copies were difficult to manage. When the school district gave students Chromebook laptops in 2016, Kenny realized he could create a digital version of the activity using slides. He began to see rapid…...

1+ mon, 1+ week ago (281+ words) Some of downtown Burlington's challenges feel intractable, such as the number of unhoused people living outside and the public signs of substance-use disorder. Others, like the pervasiveness of trash and syringes on the streets, are less daunting to tackle. That's exactly why Kason Hudman, 31, of the Peace & Justice Center launched a group called BTV Clean Up Crew. The volunteer members meet at the top of Church Street every Thursday at 7:30 a.m. Since May, nearly 100 people have logged more than 400 hours cleaning up the downtown area. Last week, a multigenerational group of 18 split into two crews that covered hot spots to the west and east of the Marketplace. They were armed with provided trash bags, latex gloves and sturdy bottles for collecting sharp objects. In the latest episode of "Stuck in Vermont," Seven Days senior multimedia producer Eva Sollberger followed the eastside…...

1+ mon, 2+ week ago (606+ words) With 54 feature films on offer (plus several showcases of shorts), this year's Vermont International Film Festival is exciting " and daunting, as you wonder how to plan your personal 10 days of cinema. We've combed through the offerings and created a quick quiz to help you make your selections. Seeking an advance peek at the movies likely to be nominated for awards this season? You'll want to catch Richard Linklater's Blue Moon (October 23), a period piece about the professional breakup of musical theater icons Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart (played by Andrew Scott and Ethan Hawke, respectively). This one's probably also a must for theater kids of all ages. Wagner Moura is getting tons of buzz for his performance in The Secret Agent (October 26), a Brazilian espionage thriller set in 1977. So is Carmen Maura " beloved star of many early Pedro Almod'var films…...

2+ week, 3+ day ago (811+ words) To say that the comedy scene in Burlington has come a long way in the past decade would be an understatement. I still recall the way local aspiring standups milled around shows at Nectar's and the Monkey House, hoping to pop onstage between punk bands to tell jokes to a boisterous, heavily intoxicated crowd that wanted to mosh more than laugh. Trust me, you haven't seen cringe until you've watched a neophyte comic trying to be funny at a Monday open mic between Sublime covers and poetry readings. But that was the standard comedy showing in Burlington not so long ago. "To be perfectly honest, we bit off more than we could chew when we opened this place," Hartswick told me as I sat down with the couple at the club's bar last week. "We had to bust our asses…...

11+ mon, 2+ week ago (459+ words) December 11, 2024 Arts + Culture " Outdoors & Recreation Published December 11, 2024 at 10:00 a.m. "Searching for Vermont's Lost Ski Areas, Part II" opened on Friday at the Vermont Ski and Snowboard Museum in Stowe. The exhibit looks back at more than 100 defunct downhill ski areas in central and northern Vermont. Part I, displayed last year " and on view in condensed form this year " features the bygone ski hills south of Route 4. "I'm sure there's a lot of people that know a lot more than we do about a lot of this stuff, and we'd love to know more," Gall said. (Anyone with information can submit it on the museum's website.) While the exhibition is thin on artifacts " mom-and-pop ski areas typically didn't issue lift tickets or sell merch " it is rich with stories. Vermont is home to the first ski lift in the country: a rope…...