Candidates and the Money Chase

* updated & corrected, see note below *

News flash: Candidates running for Vermont's highest office raise money from businesses, lobbyists and ordinary people. In some cases a lot of money, and in other cases not so much.

That's one takeaway from yesterday's campaign finance reports.

Another is that several candidates — Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie, former state senator and Google exec Matt Dunne, Secretary of State Deb Markowitz, Sen. Doug Racine and Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin — are treating their campaigns more like small businesses. How so? They don't pay their staff as consultants and some even provide health care to their key staffers.

Markowitz and Shumlin are providing health care through Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont, while Dubie is buying insurance through MVP Health Care, based in New York. Racine is paying one staffer's COBRA benefit, while another staffer is receiving coverage via Catamount Health.

Giant Fridge Poetry at St. Michael's College

OK, so maybe it's not fridge poetry. It's actually, er, concrete poetry. Or meditative stone garden poetry.

Last Monday, July 12, St. Mike's installed its Word Garden. It's a circle 60 feet in diameter bordered by boulders and shrubs and filled with tiny pebbles. And 350 words carved on shards of stone by artist Chris Cleary of Jericho's On the Rocks Stone-Carving Studio.

The garden will also have "two stone chess/checker boards, with colored stones for checkers and chess sets stored nearby" and an outdoor chalkboard that instructors can use for their classes, according to a college press release.

But the word-stones are the star attraction. You can arrange them any way you want -- and education prof Valerie Bang-Jensen, one of the forces behind the garden, says she trusts students not to make off with them.

Fixing the Potholes

Ken Picard's blog post about problems at the Bolton Potholes swimming hole has generated quite a bit of discussion on this blog, some of it civil, some of it not. Many words have been exchanged, but, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand of them. So here's one snapped yesterday by local Marty Dustin Kenney, showing the cars lined up on the side of the road near the Potholes.

Free to Good Home — TINY TOURIST CABINS!!!

If you've ever wanted to own a tiny, 12-by-12-foot roadside tourist cabin — and, frankly, who hasn't? — now's your big chance. How much, you ask? Why, it's free, save for the price of a tank of gas. Yes, you heard me right — FREE!

Well, not exactly free. You will have to pay to have the 1930s Craftsman-era cabin removed from its current location in Richmond. But besides those couple shekels and a little bit of sweat equity, the cabin is all yours. 

Here's the deal: Back in the days before highways destroyed our lives, there used to be these things called towns, and cutting through those towns were dirt roads. Sometimes, people would drive their autos on those roads to get from one town to another. Once they arrived at their destination, they'd be pooped from all that motoring, so they would book into these tiny roadside tourist cabins so that they might recover from their taxing 3-mile journey from South Stratbridgehillston to West Rockingdaleboroham. 

Alice Eats: The Bee's Knees

82 Lower Main Street, Morrisville 888-7889

Ask anyone where to find good food in Morrisville and they will tell you The Bee's Knees is the place. When I spent this past Sunday in Hyde Park, I did consider heading to the Stonegrill Restaurant & Pub, (You cook your meat yourself! On a hot stone!) but was lured to the Bee's Knees by the siren song of chicken and goat cheese pot pie.

You heard me right. As if chicken pot pie weren't already luscious enough, chef Jeff Egan adds Vermont Butter & Cheese Creamery chèvre to the already creamy sauce. I have salivated over that dish for years, and was not disappointed. I usually expect a conventional pie crust or puff pastry on my pot pies. This bowl of stew was topped with a buttery biscuit. Inside, free range Misty Knoll chicken practically melted, along with lightly tangy artichokes, which perfectly matched the character of the sauce. Caramelized onions and small leaves of fresh spinach gave the concoction further character, though it certainly didn't need more flavor.

Combo Platter: Saigon Subs

The craze for Vietnamese banh-mi sandwiches is spreading across the nation, but until now, there was only one place to get 'em made to order in the Burlington area. 99 Asian Market on North Winooski Street has been serving up pork roll and beef versions of the veggie-filled sandwiches for nearly a year now. Today, M-Saigon owner Tom Nguyen will throw his hat into the baguette ring with at least seven varieties of the dish.

Nguyen's brother and chef, Khoi, has been working hard to perfect his home-baked baguettes. He will fill them with the traditional paté, cucumbers, cilantro, vinegary carrot and daikon slaw and optional hot peppers. From there, diners have plenty of options. Those include chicken, beef, meatball, barbecue pork and a paté-free vegetarian sub. Nguyen says sandwiches will start at $3.25. Frequent eaters can keep a punch card, and when they've bought ten banh-mi, the next one will be free.

Sidewalk Sitting Ban Downgraded to 'Move Along, Please'

The Burlington City Council tonight will review a revised plan to deter people from sitting on sidewalks throughout the city's inner fire district — largely the streets feeding into the Church Street Marketplace.

The revised plan would establish a pilot program to educate sidewalk sitters about the American with Disabilities Act guidelines that recommend a minimum five-foot-wide pedestrian right-of-way for all sidewalks. The education effort would inform people about two other city ordinances which prohibit "unnecessary interference" and "obstructing" city sidewalks.

The new effort stems from the rejection of a more strict ordinance that would have banned people from sitting or lying down on select downtown sidewalks.

The rejected ban would have affected Pearl, Cherry, Bank, College and Main Streets between South Winooski Avenue and St. Paul Street. It would have created a six-foot pedestrian right-of-way from the edge of a building. The Church Street Marketplace already has a nine-foot ban in place.

Photo credit: Matthew Thorsen

Moody's Downgrades Burlington Credit Rating (Again)

In keeping with the practice of releasing bad information late on a Friday, Burlington officials late today announced that Moody's downgraded the city's general obligation credit rating two notches and moved the city's status from a “negative watch” to “negative outlook."

This means the credit rating company will not review Burlington’s status until the city next pursues a bond sale.

Bolton Town Selectboard to Propose Closing Access to Bolton Potholes

As the mercury has risen in recent weeks, so too have the tempers of residents living along Bolton Valley Road near the Bolton Potholes. The usual crush of summertime visitors to the popular swimming hole has brought with it an unusual amount of public annoyances and safety concerns, including broken bottles, uncollected trash, illegal parking, fireworks and public urination and defecation. Several residents living near the falls have even reported been sworn at and verbally harassed by swimming hole visitors.

In response, the Bolton Town Selectboard is putting its foot down. According to newly appointed town selectman David Parot, the board has scheduled a special meeting for Monday to discuss ways of closing access to the swimming hole, which is located on private property. 

"All of us on the selectboard, our phones have been ringing off the hook through this heat wave," says Parot. "It's been a disaster."

According to Parot, traffic along Bolton Valley Road is now down to one lane of traffic every day due to all the cars parked on the town's right of way. Last week, Parot says, he nearly T-boned another vehicle as it was turning around on a blind curve. However, he says state police can't be expected to spend all their time trying to deal with this problem.

Photo credit: Matthew Thorsen.

Sanders Visits Vietnam During Congressional Recess

While his two Washington, D.C. counterparts criss-cross Vermont during the one-week congressional recess, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders has been visiting Vietnam.

Sanders is part of a delegation led by U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) who chairs the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions  (HELP) Committee, of which Sanders is a member. Joining Sanders and Harkin on the trip is U.S. Sen. Al Franken (D-MN).

The delegation returns to the United States tonight.

One focus of this week's trip has been the lingering health effects of Agent Orange, the mix of herbicides and defoliants used by the U.S. military in southeast Asia.

In a meeting late Wednesday, Vietnamese officials urged the delegation to provide more help to the country as part of their ongoing effort to combat the chemical's effects on its people.

Congress recently extended benefits to veterans whose exposure to Agent Orange has led to heart disease, leukemia and Parkinson’s disease.