Posted By Margot Harrison on Mon, Feb 18, 2019 at 10:39 PM

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Courtesy of Save the Children Action Network

Jennifer Garner and two friends

Jennifer Garner is known for her ass kicking on "Alias," her winsomeness in 13 Going on 30, her red-carpet outfits, her celebrity marriage to (and recent divorce from) Ben Affleck and, perhaps slightly less prominently, her work as an ambassador for the international charity Save the Children. This Thursday, that charity work brings the movie star to Burlington, where the public can see her — space permitting — at a "special conversation on the importance of high-quality child care" at Merrill's Roxy Cinemas in Burlington.

Garner's conversation partners will be Save the Children Action Network CEO Mark Shriver and Aly Richards, CEO of Let's Grow Kids, a Burlington-based organization that aims "to ensure affordable access to high-quality child care for all Vermont families by 2025," according to its website.

Tags: Jennifer Garner , Merrill's Roxy Cinemas , Save the Children Action Network , Burlington , movie theater , Vermont , Image , Web Only

Posted By Ken Picard, Dan Bolles, Chelsea Edgar and Jordan Adams on Tue, Feb 12, 2019 at 10:57 AM

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Image: Dreamstime

On Tuesday, February 12, middle and high schoolers who are members of Our Voices Xposed (OVX) and Vermont Kids Against Tobacco (VKAT) — Vermont’s youth-led movements to reduce youth smoking and vaping  —  are scheduled to march to the Vermont Statehouse for a rally against the perils of electronic cigarettes and flavored tobacco among their peers.

As the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Monday, nearly 5 million American youth used e-cigarettes in 2018. The U.S. Surgeon General  also warned that their use is skyrocketing among minors, with one in five high school students reporting last year that they used e-cigarettes at least once in the last month. Many teens assume that vaping nicotine is a "safe" alternative to other tobacco products, such as its combustible cousin, the analog cigarette (aka, the "cancer stick"), the cigar ("ye olde stogie") and snuff and chewing tobacco ("Mr. Spitty McBrown Teeth.")

This week, Seven Days staffers weighed in on the e-cig craze among Vermont youngsters:

Tags: health , e-cigarettes , Image , Web Only

Posted By Jordan Adams on Tue, Feb 5, 2019 at 2:19 PM

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File: Luke Awtry Photography

!!! (Chk Chk Chk) at Waking Windows 2017

Strap in, folks. The Waking Windows music-and-arts festival has just revealed its 2019 lineup. The highly anticipated three-day indie-music bonanza kicks off in Winooski on Friday, May 3, and concludes on Sunday, May 5.

Tags: Waking Windows , music festival , Winooski , Tune-Yards , Rough Francis , Twin Peaks , Caroline Rose , Image , Web Only , Video

Posted By Margot Harrison on Sat, Feb 2, 2019 at 10:00 AM

Slideshow

Shelburne Farms' Poplar Drive

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Can you mourn the end of an era when you weren't there for the beginning? That's what I wondered on the bright, frigid morning of December 19 as I took a run at Shelburne Farms, zipping up the walking path from the entrance to the inn and back.

On my way, I saw something that chilled me even more than the scathing wind. I'd already heard that the majestic Eastern Cottonwoods of Poplar Drive were slated to be removed; that the trees were dead or dying and increasingly posed a hazard to passersby. But I'd put the news out of my mind, as we often do with unwelcome news we can't change.

Tags: Shelburne Farms , Poplar Drive , Vermont , landmark , landscape , Eastern Cottonwood , Slideshow , Image , Web Only

Posted By Dan Bolles on Sat, Feb 2, 2019 at 7:00 AM

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Courtesy of the Vermont Folklife Center

A Legends & Lore marker in New York state

The Vermont Folklife Center has partnered with the Syracuse-based William G. Pomeroy Foundation to bring the latter's Legends & Lore Marker Program to Vermont. The VFC is the sixth cultural center to join the program, along with organizations in Alabama, Connecticut, New York, North Carolina and Oregon.

According to the Pomeroy Foundation website, the program is "designed to promote cultural tourism and commemorate legends and folklore as part of cultural heritage." It does so by placing markers at sites of local cultural, if not precisely historic, significance. Like, as in the example pictured above, the site of the Ichabod Crane Schoolhouse in Kinderhook, N.Y., where Jesse Merwin taught. Merwin was the real-life inspiration for the protagonist Ichabod Crane in Washington Irving's classic "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."

Tags: Vermont Folklife Center , Joe Citro , William G. Pomeroy Foundation , Legends & Lore Marker Program , folklore , Image , Web Only