Rainbow Delight

Sunday 15

The Queer Craft Fair at the Old Labor Hall in Barre goes beyond your average winter bazaar: The one-day event offers more than 50 LGBTQ+ vendors, as well as an ancestor altar, a missed connections board, a community art project and on-site haircuts. There’s even a masked “access hour” at 10 a.m. for attendees seeking less sensory input while they peruse.

In Her Dreams

Thursday 12

Ukraine’s Grand Kyiv Ballet stages the scintillating spectacle The Nutcracker at Chandler Center for the Arts in Randolph. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s enduring masterpiece of sprightly movement and music awakens from its seasonal slumber, reviving the timeless tale of young Clara, her enchanted toy companion and their ethereal Christmas Eve cohort.

Mobile Bulbs

Thursday 12

Analog Cycles’ snazzy annual Xmas Lights Ride is a slow-paced three(ish)-mile bike parade beginning at the East Poultney Green. Cyclists of all ages mount festively decorated rides to mark the season, while less adventurous folks partake in a watch party at Poultney Pub. Thematic décor runs the holiday gamut, from reindeer to menorah and beyond.

Icy Adaptation

Opens Friday 13

Perfectly timed for these tanking temps, Vermont’s own Complications Company presents The Snow Queen and the Trolls at Off Center for the Dramatic Arts in Burlington. Adapted from Hans Christian Andersen’s 1844 fairy tale, this vibrant and less nightmare-inducing stage play uses puppetry, comedy and song to guide audiences through an unforgettable magical journey.

Raise the Dickens

Sunday 15

Yankee storyteller Willem Lange’s reading of A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story at Lost Nation Theater in Montpelier is a hallmark of the holidays, harking back to 1975. A bona fide believer in authenticity, Lange uses the original cutting of the novel that Charles Dickens himself once performed — and sticks to the story’s lesser-known full title. (It is a ghost story, after all.)

Winter’s Wonderland

Monday 16 & Tuesday 17

The Paul Winter Consort take the stage with vocal powerhouse Theresa Thomason for a “Winter Solstice Celebration” concert at New Hampshire’s Lebanon Opera House and the Flynn in Burlington. The Grammy-winning group is cited as an originator of world music, as well as a new genre — dubbed “earth music” — that interweaves classical, jazz and world elements.

Changing Tides

Ongoing

Furchgott Sourdiffe Gallery’s “Wintertide” exhibition in Shelburne is an annual group show spotlighting 16 diverse Vermont artists. The works are varied in style and range from abstract paintings to art glass — yet thematically unite in their evocation of wintry vibes. Notable names include watercolorist Anne Austin, sculptor Leslie Fry and marble magician Nancy Diefenbach.

For decades, Vermont Law and Graduate School has taught courses on animal rights and welfare. In 2021, the school officially launched the Animal Law and Policy Institute.

Now, the college offers an advanced degree for practicing lawyers to deepen their animal advocacy skills. It’s only the second such program in the United States.

The first four fellows arrived in South Royalton this fall from all over the world.

Delci Winders directs the VLGS’s Animal Law and Policy Institute, and she recently joined Vermont Public’s Jenn Jarecki to discuss it. This interview was produced for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We’ve also provided a transcript, which has been edited for length and clarity.

Jenn Jarecki: To get us started, what do we mean when we say animal welfare and animal rights?

Delci Winders: There is a sense that there is a division— that there’s a binary — between animal welfare and animal rights. And the argument goes: animal rights are focused on the interests in animals — animals’ interests in their own well-being, dignity, etc, whereas welfare is sort of focused on human interest in treating animals OK while we use them, but that it carries with it a notion that it’s OK to use them so long as we treat them as well as possible in doing so.

And so there are different perspectives on whether or not this is a continuum or not. I try really hard to approach it broadly and to accommodate students who come with any position on what I do tend to see as more of a continuum. And I think advocating for welfare can ultimately lead to rights in certain circumstances.

Jenn Jarecki: Delci, you’ve been with VLGS’s Animal Law and Policy Institute since the beginning. Can you briefly walk us through its history?

Delci Winders: The institute launched in 2021, when I was recruited to join the faculty to start the animal law program, and I brought with me our associate director, Laura Ireland. We both had experience in Lewis & Clark’s Animal Law Program. Laura was instrumental in starting a lot of that programming, and I founded and directed the Animal Law Litigation Clinic there.

Jenn Jarecki: What types of classes are taught at the Animal Law and Policy Institute, and what are some of the program’s aims?

Delci Winders: We’ve got a pretty broad array of classes. We’re the fastest-growing animal law program in the country, probably in the world, so we’re adding classes all the time.

So we’ve got your core animals in the law class, and then we’ve got a lot of more specialized classes. So we’ve got a class on undercover investigations, we’ve got a class on science and animal law, we’ve got wildlife law, we have the law of animals in agriculture, the list goes on and on. And our mission is to train the next generation of animal advocacy leaders while centering animals in the fight for environmental protection and environmental justice.

Jenn Jarecki: Delci, I’d love to turn to this new fellowship program. I understand four practicing lawyers from around the world are at VLGS for the next year. Can you tell us who they are and what they’re doing?

Delci Winders: Absolutely. We’ve got four amazing people. So we’ve got Carlos Contreras, who is originally from Colombia. He’s licensed to practice in Colombia, he’s also licensed to practice in Spain. And he had a practice in Spain where he worked on a very high profile case on behalf of a whistleblower, and has come to Vermont law graduate school to study — he’s focused on American legal studies, so that he can sit for the bar exam in New York and practice animal law in the United States.

And then we have Lana Nadj, who is an Australian attorney who has practiced in Australia for many many years. She’s focused on money laundering issues and things like that, but has increasingly wanted to dedicate her practice to animal law, and so she’s focusing on that with us.

And then we have Pius Ubenyi, who is a Nigerian lawyer who, as a practicing lawyer in Nigeria, got to do some wildlife law work, and decided that he really wants to focus on animals. So, this is the theme here. And so he’s joined us to focus entirely on animal law and develop expertise there.

And then we have Anette Sikka, who is originally from Canada, but has been living in Alabama, and is, again, has practiced for many years. Primarily focused on human rights issues, but wants to focus on animal issues and go back to the Deep South, where there’s so much need for that work.

Jenn Jarecki: How are they settling into Vermont so far? I mean, I know they’ve been here for a few months, but how are things going?

Delci Winders: It’s been so amazing having them around, they’re an incredible cohort. We’re working on a research and writing project together, so, me with the four of them. They also are working on their own targeted research projects, and they’ve really just dived in. They’re having a great time, I’m having a great time with them, and they’ve really built impressive communities here in Vermont very quickly.

Jenn Jarecki: Delci, you’ve taught animal rights law around the country. You also directed the world’s first law school clinic dedicated to farm animal advocacy. Why move your family across the country for this program? And how are you finding Vermont?

Delci Winders: It was not an easy decision. I had a great job at Lewis & Clark, but really, the opportunity to start a program at such a special institution was too good to turn down. So, I had been teaching in the summer program at Vermont Law and Graduate School for a few years, so I knew how special it was. I knew that it’s a mission-driven institution. It’s not just a school with really strong programs, it’s a school where those programs, which are focused on the public interest, are at the heart of the identity of the school.

And I also knew that it had this long history of animal law, going back to offering one of the very first animal law classes in the world, and that students had been pushing for more offerings for many years. So it just seemed like the perfect opportunity, too good to give up, and so I took a giant leap.

Jenn Jarecki: Well, sticking with Vermont for a second, Delci, this past year, lawmakers cleared the way for an animal welfare division within the Department of Public Safety. Can you talk about the significance of this move here in Vermont and how it compares to some of the other states you’ve worked in?

Delci Winders: So this came about because there was a sense that the animal protection laws were spread out across a lot of different agencies for enforcement, and so that ended up with a lot of uncertainty as to who was responsible for certain things, and it ended up with things falling through the cracks, sometimes with finger pointing. And that’s common, we see that in all of the states. We also see that very much at the federal level.

And so something I’ve been urging at the federal level for a while now is the creation of an animal protection agency, and I think we need that at the state level as well, and I think this is a step in that direction, and I’m very excited about it. We don’t have a person in that position yet, so it’s something to keep an eye on and see how it goes, but I think it could be a model for the rest of the country.

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The town of Colchester has issued several violations against the Vermont Construction Company for housing company workers in “grossly hazardous and unsafe” spaces.

The company was issued an emergency order to vacate a portion of its office space at Hegeman Avenue last week. Part of the building was being used to house an estimated 17 people “despite having no approvals for life safety features for human occupancy of a public building,” the town’s complaint reads.

Town zoning and state fire marshal officials who visited the building last week said the property was “structurally unsafe,” with no smoke or carbon monoxide detectors, no fire extinguishers and several electrical violations, according to the complaint.

The emergency order was posted to the Colchester Selectboard’s upcoming meeting agenda scheduled for Tuesday. Town manager Aaron Frank said in an email that the violations were “concerning enough from a life and safety perspective to include” in the agenda.

It’s the second time in recent months that Colchester has cited the company for housing its workers in unsafe and unpermitted housing. In September, town and state fire marshal officials found that 60 people were living in similar conditions in a house at 28 Vermont Avenue.

Tenants, who officials said were seasonal workers employed by the company, were living in small, congregate sleeping areas, in bunk beds and in some cases on air mattresses.

Like the Hegeman Avenue property, there were no sprinkler or fire alarm systems in place, which the state requires when more than 10 people are housed in a single space, according to Robert Sponable, the deputy director of the Vermont Division of Fire Safety.

Visible mold was found at the Vermont Avenue home, with no carbon monoxide alarms and broken smoke detectors, officials said.

Cathyann LaRose, Colchester’s planning and zoning director, said that property was also issued an emergency order to vacate in September and has remained empty since then. She described the property as “derelict.”

“It is far from habitable, so nobody can live there — not without a significant amount of work and quite a bit of approval,” she said.

In an emailed statement, Dana Kamencik, one of the owners of Vermont Construction Company, said the company was “working closely with the appropriate authorities to address these issues and ensure compliance moving forward.”

The company, he said, was a “young and growing business.” He added that, “While we are still gaining experience, we take the recent violations in Colchester very seriously.” The company was incorporated in early 2016, according to the Better Business Bureau.

Vermont Construction Company owns at least four other residential properties in the county, including two in Williston, one in Essex Town, and one in Shelburne, according to business filings.

According to LaRose and town records, the company moved tenants from the Vermont Avenue property to a similar residential property it owns in Williston after the violations were issued against the Colchester property.

Sponable said the state had identified “issues that we’re working through” at both the Shelburne and Essex properties but it hadn’t identified hazardous conditions similar to those observed in Colchester. 

“We understand the housing issues and the housing shortages — the last thing we want to do is put anybody out on the street,” Sponable said. “But we do everything that we possibly can to make these buildings safe, or at least safe enough for them to be in there until these other issues can be corrected.”

Dormitory-style living is more common in areas closer to ski resorts, which employ seasonal workers, Sponable said.

“But most of the ski areas, they have buildings that they’ve built that are set up more like a college dormitory,” he said. “The building’s got a sprinkler system and a fire alarm system and things like that.”

Vermont Construction Company purchased a single-family home at 281 Hedgerow Drive in Shelburne to house company employees, according to state fire marshal inspection records. At one point it had 15 residents.

That property has since racked up several violations, including failing to provide sprinkler and fire alarm systems, according to state fire marshal records.

A follow-up inspection on Sept. 20 found that, because sleeping quarters had undersized windows, the rooms “cannot be occupied at this time.”

A representative for the company told fire marshal officials at the time “that the plan is to find new housing for the majority of the residents, leaving two staff to rehab the house,” according to inspection records from May.

The property has since generated numerous written complaints from residents, and police have an extensive call log originating from the property, Shelburne Town Manager Matt Lawless said in an interview on Monday.

“There have been quite a number of complaints on it and those have continued over the better part of a year,” he said.

The complaints center around parking, late-night noise, and trash build-up outside of the property, but Lawless said the town has not chosen to issue violations against the property.

“The balance that they have to strike is, what rises to the level of disorderly conduct or disturbing the peace,” he said, “because there’s a set of things that you may do at home… that I think is annoying, but that is within your rights as a neighbor.”

Police haven’t issued any citations against the property, according to Shelburne dispatcher James Mack.

The company owns two more properties in Williston and one at 235 River Road in Essex Town, but it is not clear whether these properties are used to house company workers.

Sharon Kelley, the zoning administrator and health officer for Essex Town, said in an email that there have been several verbal complaints about trash build up at the property on River Road, but said no violations have been issued.

In Williston, residents have similarly complained of trash at 192 Aspen Lane in emails to VTDigger. The company also owns a residential property on White Birch Lane.

Kamenick did not respond to an interview request, and did not respond to a follow-up email with detailed questions on Monday afternoon, but said in his initial email that the company “would respond to any complaints promptly.”

“We view community feedback as a critical part of our growth, and we are committed to resolving any concerns and continuing to build trust with the people we serve,” he said.