By Susan Smallheer, Vermont Country Toys — soft, cuddly animal toys — are what Mary Meyer Stuffed Toys is all about. The Townshend company designs and produces dozens of different kinds of animal toys and gifts, and has since 1933, when Mary…
Read More →‘Shaftsbury Murderer’ hangs for slaying of new mother Harriet Jane Bates By Lex Lecce, Vermont Country In the year 1838, a man named Archibald Bates lived in Shaftsbury. Archibald was 33 years old and a religious man. He would read the Bible…
Read More →By Noah Hoffenberg, Vermont Country I was raised in a Jewish home that also sported an annual Christmas tree, with lights and decorations, opening one present on Christmas Eve and the rest the next morning. My grandparents, all now gone, were never…
Read More →By Chris MaysVermont Country Bonnyvale Environmental Education Center’s “Forest of Mystery” is a fun way to celebrate the fall season by hiking at night and taking in a haunting but humorous story. James and Jess Gelter, a couple from Brattleboro, have been…
Read More →Vermont Country With the coming of spooky season, those of us who’ve waited eagerly all summer — enduring heat wave after heat wave — can finally engage in New England’s family-favorite fall pastimes: Apple-picking and cider-drinking, finding the best pumpkin in the…
Read More →By Gena MangiarattiVermont Country MANCHESTER — Do you think of yourself as a more likely witch … or vampire? If you lived in New England during the tuberculosis outbreaks of the 18th and 19th centuries — more than 100 years after the…
Read More →By Jim TherrienVermont Country WOODFORD — Ghost towns in the Old West are depicted with sun-bleached wooden storefronts, saloon doors creaking in the wind and tumbleweed rolling down deserted streets. But that wasn’t the case in New England when early settlements were…
Read More →By Shane CoveyVermont Country BRATTLEBORO — Halfway through a hip-hop class at Kelly’s Dance Academy in late July, all eyes were on a 9-year-old boy from Vernon. “C-Double-O-P” was about to bust a move. The fourth-grader at Vernon Elementary School squatted down…
Read More →Biennial festival by Sandglass Theater set for Sept. 9 to 18 By Susan SmallheerVermont Country PUTNEY — Sofia Padilla grew up in Mexico City, and it was there, after drama school, she fell in love with puppets. “They are more magical, you…
Read More →By Lex MerrellVermont Country Overlooking the town of Brattleboro is a stone tower on the grounds of the Brattleboro Retreat, formerly known as the Vermont Asylum for the Insane. The asylum was built in 1834 and is still a mental health facility…
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