Gold panning and bingo help a good cause

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Posted on June 19, 2013 by nataliehormilla

Joanne Warner of Green Mountain Prospectors demonstrates how to pan for gold. Bryce Donahue, who said he’s panned for gold dozens of times, looks on. Photos by Tena Starr

by Tena Starr

WESTFIELD — Terrie Davis-Perry has long supported cancer research, maybe more than most people. She’s regularly donated to the American Cancer Society and fund-raising events, and she sponsors a Relay for Life team member. But when the disease hit home last winter with her brother-in-law’s diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, she was inspired to do a little more aggressive fund-raising than she’d done in the past.

So on Saturday, Ms. Davis-Perry and her husband, Mark Perry, put together a special day of events and camping at their Barrewood Campground in Westfield. Proceeds from the $5 fee ($2 for children) for daytime activities went to Paul Perry for out-of-pocket costs for his treatment: camping fees throughout the weekend — three nights — will go to Relay for Life.

Five-year-old Ryan Nathan Rice of North Troy was one of the few who decided to go swimming Saturday at Barrewood Campground’s cancer benefit.

Saturday turned out to be a rare sunny day, although the wind was brisk enough to knock over some of the tents that vendors had set up on the big green at the campground to sell jewelry, crafts, baked goods, books, clothing, and other items. Inside the pavilion, a rousing game of bingo was in progress called by Debbie Lucas, who donated her time, and Mary Lee Daigle was serving a hot lunch. Pauline Couture of Couture’s Maple was on hand with a variety of maple products, and several members of Green Mountain Prospectors demonstrated how to pan for gold.

There was plenty of interest in that activity — nearly as much as in the bingo game.

The first thing you learn about panning for gold is you’re not likely to get rich. The second is that it isn’t nearly as easy as it looks when an expert is handling the pans. My own efforts netted one tiny flake that I might not have recognized were it not for Joanne Warner’s careful eyes, although gold is quite striking and definitely stands out if you know what you’re looking for.

Ms. Warner and Donald and Tracie Cassady were on hand to demonstrate the skill of panning and had small vials of gold, as well as garnets, to show for their own efforts. Mr. and Ms. Cassady are from New Hampshire and said the river near Littleton is “loaded with garnets,” a deep red, semi-precious gemstone that, like gold, is heavy and settles in the bottom of the pan.

Ms. Warner offered up a small vial of startlingly bright gold flecks that she’d gathered. They were worth about $30 or $40 — not a huge take for a tedious job.

“Most of the gold in Vermont is glacial, you won’t find big nuggets,” Ms. Warner said. That means glaciers ground the gold down to fine particles, as opposed to out West where actual nuggets are more likely to be found,

These three Green Mountain Prospectors don’t sell the gold they find, although they know some who do. Foundries will buy it, as well as jewelers and some collectors, they said. The garnets also have some value.

Mark Perry and Terrie Davis-Perry, owners of Barrewood Campground in Westfield, held a special day of activities Saturday to help their brother Paul Perry with out-of-pocket expenses for pancreatic cancer treatment. Proceeds from camping for three nights went to Relay for Life.

At this point, I have to admit that my notes kind of vanished on me because I gave panning a shot under Ms. Warner’s able guidance. I was decidedly inept and soaked myself and my notebook, ending up with a runny blue blur instead of careful notes.

So — winging it. We started with a shovel full of material from the bottom of the nearby brook, and Mr. Cassady did a sift to filter out the biggest stones. Those bigger stones are worth looking at, he said, because there’s lots of quartz among them, and that’s where gold comes from. But keeping in mind that chunks of gold the size of white quartz aren’t likely to appear in Vermont, the next step is to get to the littler stuff that looks mostly like sand. And that’s when it gets tricky.

The prospectors used green pans with ridged openings on one side. The idea is that you mix the sand and its potentially valuable contents with water, then slur it around, constantly dumping off the top layer through the pan’s openings. You trust that the heavier stuff, the valuable stuff, will stay at the bottom, and what you’re sloughing off is just sand and tiny worthless pebbles.

The equipment is neither complicated nor expensive. Most any kind of filter works up to a point. Mr. Cassady said his wife is always telling him to leave her flour sifter alone.

If you’re not too overzealous, or just sloppy, it works. The heavy stuff does stay in the bottom of the pan, and after a while the dirt changes color. It darkens as the lighter, and lighter colored, sand goes out the pan’s slots, and what remains is what’s of possible value. “Tap it, and the gold goes to the bottom,” Ms. Warner advised me.

Pauline Couture of Couture’s Maple in Westfield was on hand at the fund-raiser with a variety of maple products.

Gold is 19 times heavier than water, someone said as I slopped muddy water all over myself. Trust it.

I sloshed the pan around in the water, then sifted out the sand and did see the color eventually darkening, but it wasn’t easy, and I was clumsy, and I soon appreciated Ms. Warner’s skill. She said she’d won an award in a panning contest, which didn’t surprise me once I’d tried it myself. She makes panning look easy. It isn’t.

At the end, I had one flake of gold. It didn’t look real, and, nope, I wasn’t going home rich. Ms. Warner had planted it, and it went back into her vial via a special little bottle that sucked it up and returned it to where it came from.

But there are entirely worse things to do with one’s time than wade around in a brook in the hope of finding gold.

“It’s like fishing,” Ms. Warner said. “You can be out all day and you may not get a fish. But you enjoy being out there.”

Don Cassady of Green Mountain Prospectors sets up some of the gear used to pan for gold.

Green Mountain Prospectors has members from all over New England, as well as New York State, and many of them are members of a national prospecting club, as well.

Meanwhile, back in the pavilion, my 13-year-old son had settled in with a couple of his great-aunts and was avidly playing bingo.

Bingo used to be a game I understood, but apparently no longer. There’s still the traditional way of playing, where you win if you get straight hits in a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal line, but there are “specials” I’ve never heard of, like a check mark. Colton and his great-aunts were each playing eight cards.

The last game was something I’d never heard of, a coverall. My aunts, being the experienced bingo players they are, knew just what that meant — the winner would be the first person to fill up an entire card.

Prizes for the bingo winners were donated by local businesses and others and included gift certificates, homemade pies, and jewelry.

Later in the day, there was a potluck dinner at the campground, as well as live music, and a bonfire.

contact Tena Starr at tenas@bartonchronicle.com

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In Newport: New gallery features art reflecting social concerns

Posted on June 12, 2013 by nataliehormilla

Artists Sam Thurston and Abigail Meredith check out the artwork at the opening of the 99 Gallery Sunday afternoon. The gallery will also serve as a meeting place for NEK 99%, a grassroots organization for social change. Photo by Joseph Gresser

by Joseph Gresser

NEWPORT — A new addition to Newport’s art scene opened Sunday, offering an exhibit with a title — “Politically Incorrect” — that pointed out the path the gallery means to follow.

According to Diane Peel, its founder, the 99 Gallery is an outgrowth of NEK 99 %, an organization inspired by the Occupy protests of 2011 and made up of local activists. The gallery is tucked into a lovely old carriage house on School Street, just off Main Street.

On Sunday the space was filled with artists — some of high school age — and visitors. On the walls, a variety of works was displayed, most of them reflecting social concerns.

Abigail Meredith’s acrylic “Shockwave” shows a woman with her hair blowing back in a blast of intense white light. The North Country Union High School junior said the painting was meant to remind viewers that the peril of nuclear weapons remains.

She said she came up with the image when she heard that the energy of an atomic bomb can burn the silhouette of a figure into a nearby wall.

In Ms. Meredith’s image, though, the figure is not the result of a catastrophe.

“I put it in the middle of the explosion rather than the aftermath,” she said. “Movement is very interesting to me.”

Ms. Meredith, along with North Country freshman Ryland Brown, whose intricate pen and ink drawing of a skull and guitar also graced the new art space, is studying at the school’s Arts and Communications Academy.

One of their teachers, Natalie Guillette, also contributed a painting to the show, an eerie image of a face shrouded in a mask. According to her artist’s statement, Ms. Guillette was moved to create a series of similar paintings by a visit to a World War II museum where gas masks were on exhibit.

Other artists from the community also brought their works for the initial show. Jack Rogers showed a trio of pencil drawings, which included an image of a hand blocking the lens of a camera and Rodney King being menaced by the baton of a police officer.

In a very different vein, Sam Thurston of Lowell offered a drawing of a street life under a New York elevated train and a watercolor illustration of a verse by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

An improptu manifesto was chalked on the sidewalk in front of the 99 Gallery Sunday afternoon. In addition to presenting art shows, the gallery will also provide a home for NEK 99 %, according to its founder, Diane Peel. Photo by Joseph Gresser

The 99 Gallery, while it offers a home to artists living in and around Newport, was created in large part to display the work of a painter and sculptor who spent very little of his life in the area.

Ms. Peel’s father, Donald William Peel, was an active artist for most of his 89 years. He started making paintings in the magic realist style in the 1950s, moved on to abstract sculpture, and finally back to surrealist paintings in his final years.

Mr. Peel achieved recognition, especially on the West Coast, where he lived most of his life. His work is represented in museums and university collections in the Pacific Northwest.

Ms. Peel said that after her mother, a fashion designer, died in 2001 she wanted her father to move to Vermont and build a home and a studio that could handle the big painting he was making. Sadly, Mr. Peel died in 2010.

Left with a large collection of her father’s works, Ms. Peel said she had to make a choice. She could store the big surrealist paintings, but then they wouldn’t be seen and, without climate control, would suffer permanent damage. She decided on the alternative of creating a space in which her father’s work can be shown and, she hopes, purchased by collectors.

Her plans call for interspersing shows by living artists with displays of her father’s paintings.

Ms. Peel said she wants the new gallery to serve as a home for work that might not fit in at the MAC Center. Her gallery is not intended to compete with the more established art space, Ms. Peel said, but is meant to broaden the options available to artists and art lovers in Newport.

She said she hopes to offer “edgier” art than might be possible for a space that relies on sales to keep its doors open. The 99 Gallery, Ms. Peel said, is paid for out of her earnings as a nurse and can keep going whether or not any paintings are sold.

The gallery, like the NEK 99 % organization is nonpolitical, Ms. Peel said.

“We’re not involved with the political process,” Ms. Peel declared. “We’re involved with the people process.”

Pointing to Mr. Rogers’ drawing of the blocked camera, she said the image depicts the “surveillance state.” Government intrusion into the private affairs of citizens is not a political issue, but a people issue, Ms. Peel said.

She recalled criticisms of the original Occupy protests, which questioned the movement’s lack of leadership and formal structure. Those objections, she said, were based on a misunderstanding of the movement’s intentions.

“Occupy was trying to organize a horizontal system at the grassroots level,” she said. The 99 Gallery, Ms. Peel will embody the same principles.

Those who want to see how these principles look on the walls of a gallery can see “Politically Incorrect” through the end of July.

contact Joseph Gresser at joseph@bartonchronicle.com

At NCUHS: Choral director receives surprise send-off

Posted on June 5, 2013 by nataliehormilla

Retiring North Country choral director Anne Hamilton reacts to a musical tribute from present and former students. New words to the song “’Til There Was You,” were written by Adam (left) and Matt Podd, who have gone on to professional music careers in New York City. Photo by Joseph Gresser

by Joseph Gresser

copyright the Chronicle June 5, 2013

NEWPORT — The choral program at North Country Union High School has been successful long enough to have established traditions. For instance, the Christmas concert always ends with a performance of the “Hallelujah Chorus,” in which alumni of North Country are invited to participate. Similarly, the second part of the annual pops concert always features solos by graduating seniors set amid choral performances.

At this year’s concert, on May 29, the traditions were unexpectedly mingled. Anne Hamilton, retiring after serving as the school’s choral director for the past 13 years, planned a medley of Beatles songs for her final North Country concert.

During the performance, Ms. Hamilton said a few days later, she looked out into the audience and noticed that many of her former students were present.

“I didn’t want them to leave without getting to say hello to them,” Ms. Hamilton said. So shortly before the final selection, “Hey Jude,” she invited alumni in the audience to come down to the front of the auditorium and join in the final section of the song.

Ms. Hamilton couldn’t have prevented them from doing so. Unbeknownst to her, a conspiracy had been hatched by present and former students.

When the final strains of “Hey Jude,” were sung, accompanist Vivian Spates turned over the piano to Mark Violette.

“When I saw Mark at the piano, I felt things were spiraling out of control,” Ms. Hamilton said.

They were, perhaps, but not in a bad way. Sheets of music were distributed as Mr. Violette played the opening bars of “’Til There Was You,” a song from the musical The Music Man, that was actually covered by The Beatles.

“There were notes on the page

But we never knew their meaning

No, we never knew it at all

’Til there was you,” sang students past and present. Meredith Wilson’s original words had been replaced with ones written for the occasion by brothers Adam and Matt Podd.

“You put songs in our lives

And you taught us all sight-reading

Do Re Mi Fa

Ti Ti Ta La

’Til There Was You!”

Ms. Hamilton, seated next to Ms. Spates in the front row, seemed overcome by what was happening before her eyes and ears. At the next verse…

“And there was All-State!

And other logistical nightmares

The drama of high notes and hormones,”

Ms. Hamilton burst into laughter. She kept smiling as the chorus concluded their serenade.

“So we thank you

For the time that we had

And the joy we found in singing

We’re so grateful for all those years

Singing with you.”

After their first time through the song, North Country graduate Phil Gosselin, an actor who usually resides in New York City, took the microphone and thanked Ms. Hamilton on behalf of his fellow alumni.

Ms. Hamilton and long-time accompanist Vivian Spates enjoy the witty lyrics and the enthusiastic performance. Photo by Joseph Gresser

He was followed by Joseph Cornelius who said he was taught by Ms. Hamilton in pre-school, a claim she later denied. Mr. Cornelius was one of Ms. Hamilton’s students when he attended elementary school in Island Pond and at North Country.

“I hoped that my two daughters would get to study with her,” Mr. Cornelius said, “but it was not to be.” He urged present North Country students to appreciate their good fortune in having the experience of Ms. Hamilton as their teacher.

After another chorus of “’Til There Was You,” the concert ended as present and former students surrounded and embraced Ms. Hamilton.

A couple of days after the concert, Ms. Hamilton reflected on the event and her time at North Country.

She said an all-Beatles concert was not a random choice.

“That’s the pops concert I wanted to go out on,” Ms. Hamilton said. The quality of the music and the opportunities it gave for her students to shine made for an ideal final concert, she said.

“I want the students to feel they can be successful, and that means to be truly successful,” Ms. Hamilton said. “Everyone’s a winner, doesn’t work.”

Ms. Hamilton said she was very pleased that the seniors who chose to perform solos all rose to the challenge of performing such familiar and beloved music.

She said she was caught completely by surprise by the tribute organized by her former students. The Podd brothers, she said, were at North Country giving a presentation to students on Tuesday.

“They were very coy about whether they would be able to make it to the concert,” Ms. Hamilton said. After the workshop with the students, she took them out to dinner and invited Mr. Gosselin, one of their former classmates, whom she knew was in town working with QNEK.

At dinner, the Podd brothers told Ms. Hamilton that Mr. Gosselin would be delayed by a rehearsal.

“They didn’t tell me that it was a rehearsal for their surprise,” she said.

Ms. Hamilton said she herself followed a popular choral teacher, Glory Douglass, when she arrived at North Country after six years teaching at North Country Union Junior High School and nine years cruising between Brighton, Morgan, Holland and Charleston teaching music to elementary school students.

Ms. Hamilton said she had 11 years between graduating college and beginning her teaching career. Although she was certified as a music teacher, Ms. Hamilton said, she felt she needed more training.

One of the benefits of going back to school, she said, was making the acquaintance of Sandi MacLeod, who today directs Music-Comp, a program that helps students learn to write music. Ms. Hamilton has been involved in the program since its inception and she said she plans to continue working with the organization after she leaves North Country.

Ms. Hamilton said she also plans to continue leading Northsong, a locally based chamber choir that performs around the Northeast Kingdom. Northsong will allow Ms. Hamilton to continue her collaboration with Ms. Spates, whose musicianship and generosity she praised.

Aside from that, Ms. Hamilton said she plans to take some time to think. She said she is “50 percent committed” to learning the violin. Her husband, Amos, after retiring from the Customs service, took up the clarinet seriously and frequently plays chamber music with friends.

After 13 years teaching at the school, Ms. Hamilton still has much good to say about North Country and the Newport community.

She said that the Rotary Club’s steadfast support of the annual music festival has translated into a general support for student artistic achievement.

“This community has always been supportive of the arts, it’s legend. People around the state can’t believe it,” Ms. Hamilton said.

She said that she has been very well supported by the administration and her colleagues at North Country.

“This is a very nice job,” Ms. Hamilton mused, “This is a very nice job.”

contact Joseph Gresser at joseph@bartonchronicle.com

Young composers get a chance to hear their works

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Joseph

North Country music teacher Anne Hamilton and Adele Woodmansee listen as musicians from the Burlington Ensemble, including violinists Michael Dabrowski and Sofia Hirsch, rehearse Ms. Woodmansee’s String Quartet in D Minor. Photo by Joseph Gresser

copyright the chronicle 05-08-13

by Joseph Gresser

DERBY LINE — At noon on a fine spring Wednesday, a stream of youngsters from elementary to high school age poured into the doors of the Haskell Opera House. In front of the entrance to the Haskell Free Library a man sat gazing intently at sheets of paper in his lap as he conducted an invisible orchestra.

That man, Eric Nielsen, is a distinguished Vermont composer and one of many who work behind the scenes as part of Music-Comp. That organization, once known as the Vermont Midi Project, encourages students in their efforts to compose music by having professionals mentor them through the Internet.

On May 1, preparations were nearing completion for the twenty-sixth in a series of concerts which allow student composers to hear their works performed by professional musicians.

Among the 26 composers whose pieces were to be featured on the evening’s bill were three from North Country Union High School — Adele Woodmansee, Erin Spoerl and Bradley Dopp. Their teacher, Anne Hamilton, has been involved with Music-Comp since it began in 1995, and has heard many of her students’ compositions played over that time.

She guided her students through the rehearsal process, sitting with Adele Woodmansee on the stage of the Haskell as four players from the Burlington Ensemble ran through her String Quartet in D Minor.

First violinist Michael Dabrowski asked Ms. Hamilton, “Is our goal to learn the piece?”

“The goal is to have a conversation with the composer,” Ms. Hamilton replied.

Her response reflected an attitude of respect that permeates the program.

The musicians immediately got it, and began asking Ms. Woodmansee technical questions about how she thought the piece should be performed.

Ms. Woodmansee, herself an accomplished violinist, answered easily in a manner that revealed that she had given the questions a great deal of thought during the compositional process.

That she did so is in part due to the work of Mr. Nielsen and his fellow composer mentors, who look over compositions e-mailed to them by the young composers and make suggestions for ways the pieces might be developed.

The exchanges often grow lengthy as compositions change and new possibilities open up.

One astounding aspect of the concerts is that young composers are afforded instrumental possibilities that a professional would envy. For the Opus 26 performance, composers had a string quartet plus a contra bass at their beck and call, as well as the forces of the Vermont Contemporary Music Ensemble, a wind consort that includes flute, oboe or English horn, bassoon and clarinet.

Mr. Dopp’s composition Frosk, a Norwegian word meaning frog, he explained, brought together bass clarinet, contra bass and bassoon.

He, the musicians, Ms. Hamilton and some classmates squeezed themselves into a tiny dressing room for his rehearsal.

Bassist Evan Premo mentioned in an offhand way that Mr. Dopp had marked the tempo for his piece in a way that was difficult for the musicians to understand. He took a moment to explain the math needed to figure how fast Mr. Dopp wished the piece to be performed, and made a suggestion about how to handle the matter in the future.

Clarinet player Steve Klimowski asked Mr. Dopp how he wanted a very quiet entrance performed.

The trio performed Mr. Dopp’s piece once and Mr. Klimowski made a major error, finishing long after the other two musicians. A second attempt corrected that mistake.

Afterward, Mr. Klimowski explained to a curious onlooker that, although musicians receive the pieces well in advance of the concert, it is hard to know how an ensemble will sound without playing together. He said there is time to work through any technical challenges an individual player might face, but only about ten minutes to play each work together.

The musicians worked through the afternoon until all trooped off to the Universalist Church for dinner.

As part of its Opus 25 concert, Music-Comp produced an e-book reviewing the organization’s history. Executive Director Sandi MacLeod said the book will be available on the organization’s website in the middle of May.

Ms. MacLeod said the book was part of a fund-raising effort. Grants that were available in the program’s early days are drying up, she said, and the organization is seeking new revenues.

One way they are going about it is by expanding Music-Comp’s horizons. Ms. MacLeod said the organization changed its name in part because midi is old technology and in part because it is now a national organization working with students in many other states, including New York, Indiana and California.

Among those testifying to the effect the organization has had on them are a number of students from Orleans County, many of whom are now pursuing music as a career in one way or another.

Twins Matt and Adam Podd graduated from North Country and are living in New York City working as freelance pianists, arrangers and composers. Matt Podd still maintains his connection with Music-Comp and works as a composer mentor.

Sam Schiavone of Greensboro, whose work was performed in four Opus concerts, is a graduate student in mathematics at the University of Vermont. Another Greensboro participant, Mavis McNeil studies music at Skidmore College.

When students returned to the auditorium, and the audience filtered in, there was a moment not usually seen in the concert hall as composers, musicians and teachers crowded the stage for a group photo. The performance began with a work by Susie Francy, a ninth grader from Leland and Gray High School.

Ms. Francy, who was the first from her school to have a work chosen for performance, was accompanied by her parents and her music teacher, Ronald Kelley. She stood when her piece, called Child, was introduced and again at the conclusion stood for the applause.

Two composers, Ivan Voinov and Ms. Spoerl took turns introducing the pieces and reading statements from the artists. Ms. Francy said her composition, written for flute, oboe, cello, bassoon and clarinet, was a depiction of a child’s growth to adolescence.

Ms. Francy received a good round of applause, and the concert continued with pieces by younger composers, all of which belied their years. It was only when a young composer stood to be recognized and was little taller than when seated, that his or her youth was apparent.

The younger composers took up the first part of the concert. After an intermission the program was to continue with works by older students.

Instead, Ms. MacLeod stood and announced that the musicians were not satisfied with the performance they had given of Ms. Francy’s piece.

The five players returned to their places and performed the work again as a gesture of simple respect.

contact Joseph Gresser at joseph@bartonchronicle.com

Gardeners asked to watch out for rare bumblebee

Posted on April 30, 2013 by BethanyMDunbar

Bombus terricola, the yellow-banded bumblebee, is found in parts of Vermont but it is so rare it is being considered for the endangered species list. Photo by Larry Clarfeld, courtesy of the North Branch Nature Center.

by Bethany M. Dunbar

copyright the Chronicle 4-24-2013

NEWPORT — Home gardeners rely on wild pollinators to help their gardens grow, but one species of bumblebee is in big trouble.
Others have already gone extinct, leaving the remaining species to fill in the gaps.
Larry Clarfeld, an educator for the North Branch Nature Center in Montpelier, studies Vermont’s bumblebees. He told a group at Newport Natural Foods and Montgomery Café on April 10 that while there are still lots of bees, biodiversity of the pollinators has dropped dramatically.
The meeting was part of a master gardener lecture series.
Mr. Clarfeld said there are, in all, 33 species of bumblebees in this country. Of those, there are 19 or 20 in Vermont.
“Why is biodiversity important?” he asked rhetorically. Without it, he added, “We’re making our ecosystem more and more fragile.”
He said each bumblebee species has a different lifestyle and niche. Some have long tongues to reach into deep-throated flowers. Others are active earlier or later in the season. Some are most attracted to one particular flower or do better in warmer or cooler climates. The more types there are, the more chance that various plants will get pollinated.
“Certain types of orchids are only pollinated by bumblebees,” he said.
Bumblebees are not the same as honeybees. He said honeybees can be compared to cows. They are domestic animals, useful to people, but not native to the places where they live now.
Honeybees have suffered recently due to a problem known as colony collapse disorder.
An article in the New York Times on March 28 says colony collapse disorder was first discovered around 2005, and the past year saw 40 to 50 percent losses. The article talked about California almond growers, where honeybees pollinate 800,000 acres, using two-thirds of all the commercial hives.
Mr. Clarfeld said some of the theories about what is causing problems for both wild and domestic bees include pesticide and herbicide use, habitat destruction and climate change, and viruses. Between 1994 and 1996 bees were taken to Europe and brought back, and a disease came with them.
Mr. Clarfeld said researchers really don’t know what is causing all the problems but are starting to try to find out.
“It’s hard to protect and conserve something if you don’t understand it and don’t know where it is,” he said. As it happens, some work had been done in Vermont by author Bernd Heinrich, who wrote a book called Bumblebee Economics in 1979.
New research has started to find and map all the bee species in Vermont, and Mr. Clarfeld decided to help as a volunteer.
So last summer he adopted six areas specified by researchers and systematically looked for bees.
“All my free time was spent chasing around bumblebees,” he said. He would drive around a particular quadrant, stop at a specific location and go catch bees. In most cases he killed the bugs he caught, rinsed them, blow dried them, and pinned and labeled them. The one exception was the species that is so rare, bombus terricola. He did not kill any of that species. Over the course of the summer he caught 700 bees.
“As a result, I saw almost every species of bee,” Mr. Clarfield said. Differences in markings are sometimes so small that it can be difficult to tell what species one is looking at until a precise measurement of jaw length is made, for example.
Bombus terricola, the yellow-banded bumblebee, still exists in Vermont even though it has died out elsewhere.
“It seems to have a stronghold in Vermont,” he said. “Something in Vermont is allowing them to survive.”
“This is a bee that is being proposed to be an endangered species,” he said, along with two or three others.
Bombus terricola can be distinguished from other bumblebees by its black body and wide yellow double band in the middle and two narrow yellow bands at the front and back. Mr. Clarfeld said these are sometimes hard to see on the back.
Gardeners who think they might have a bombus terricola in their garden are asked to take a photo and post it to a website about insects called The Xerces Society for Invetebrate Conservation. www.xerces.org.
Another website with good information is bugguide.net. Mr. Clarfeld said if you can’t figure out what bug you have seen, you can post a photo and a naturalist will identify it for you, sometimes in minutes.
More information about the Vermont bee study can be found at this website:
www.vtecostudies.org/vtbees/
Gardeners who want to encourage and help bumblebees can plant some of their favorite flowers. Mr. Clarfeld said these include red clover, purple vetch, milkweed and bee balm.
“Pollinators are important, and they’re in trouble,” he said.
contact Bethany M. Dunbar at bethany@bartonchronicle.com

Katz preaches the gospel of sauerkraut

Featured

Posted on April 16, 2013 by BethanyMDunbar

Author Sandor Katz speaks with a couple who attended his talk on fermentation. Mr. Katz, who grew up in New York City and has since moved to rural Tennessee, writes that his interest in fermentation comes from an early love of kosher dill pickles as well as a concern for health gained as a person living with HIV. Photo by Joseph Gresser

by Joseph Gresser

copyright the Chronicle 4-10-2013

CRAFTSBURY COMMON — A self-proclaimed “fermentation evangelist” preached the gospel of sauerkraut March 3 to a receptive congregation at Sterling College.

Sandor Katz has gained wide recognition for writing and teaching about different types of fermented foods. But his talk at Sterling followed his most recent book The Art of Fermentation on a more philosophical exploration of a method of food transformation that is practiced in one way or another by every culture.

The word culture itself is central to Mr. Katz’s new book and also to his talk. He noted the use of the word to indicate the specific microorganisms that are introduced to milk to make yogurt and particular varieties of cheese, as well as its common meaning, denoting a collection of activities, beliefs and artistic practices that are the hallmarks of a human society.

In Mr. Katz’s view, a culinary culture is, in part, made up of the microorganisms that help create foods and drinks that characterize a society. We consume many of these without giving much thought to their origins.

Beer, wine, bread, cheese, coffee, pickles, cured meats are all foods that rely on fermentation, a process that, in turn relies on a healthy society of microorganisms.

Mr. Katz said he has tried to find societies that do not use the process of fermentation to preserve foods or create dishes of extraordinary flavor. So far, he said, he has failed to discover one.

The key to fermentation, he said, is the world of microorganisms that have evolved along with humanity. In his book, Mr. Katz says that previous generations depicted these microorganisms as humanity’s tiny servants, working tirelessly to transform milk into cheese or grain into beer.

Another way of viewing the situation, he said, is to see these creatures as having tricked humans into working hard to provide a nice comfortable environment in which they can grow and reproduce, by producing flavors that we enjoy.

After the French scientist, Louis Pasteur, discovered the relationship between bacteria and disease, humanity’s relationship with these creatures has undergone a radical change, Mr. Katz said.

“All of us raised in the United States in the twentieth century have been indoctrinated to consider bacteria as bad,” Mr. Katz told more than 100 students, teachers and community members.

He said the current craze for soaps that kill up to 99 percent of all bacteria is a mistake, especially when our own bodies are mostly made up of bacteria.

Mr. Katz said research shows that bacteria outnumber human cells by ten to one in our bodies. “We are host to them,” he remarked, “but maybe they are host to us.”

These bacteria are not parasites, Mr. Katz said. They do things for us that we could not do without them, and contribute to processes as vital to our survival as digestion and reproduction.

Coexistence with these microorganisms is imperative, Mr. Katz said.

As a person who has conducted thousands of workshops to teach people how to make sauerkraut and similar foods, Mr. Katz said he has found many people who worry about the danger of getting the wrong kind of bacteria in their fermented foods.

Fermented foods made with raw vegetables are very safe, he said, although “more parameters for safety need to be followed when working with meat or milk.

“The number of reported fatalities from eating fermented vegetables, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture is,” Mr. Katz paused for emphasis here, “exactly zero.”

He continued, saying, “Once cabbage is chopped, salted and fermented in its own juice, natural bacteria take over, acidifying the environment and destroying invading bacteria.”

That process is one in which a group of bacteria create a stable environment for themselves, Mr. Katz said. Such a culture, propagated by the process of back-slopping — adding a portion of one batch of the ferment to milk or grains to create the next batch — can last for generations, he said.

Yogurt and sourdough cultures can last for years if tended carefully, he said.

Industrially produced ferments, such as commercial yogurt, generally rely on specific microorganisms purchased from catalogs, Mr. Katz said. These produce uniform results, but do not do well in the wild.

He told of how he tried for years to make yogurt by adding some commercial yogurt to warm milk. The first batch, he said, was satisfying with the flavor and texture he craved.

Each succeeding generation was less successful, he said. The specialized cultures purchased by the commercial yogurt makers were not able to ward off wild microorganisms and so deteriorated over time, he said.

In contrast yogurt made from wild strains in the Balkans can be cultured by back-slopping indefinitely, he said, because the culture is made up of a variety of organisms that work together to ward off invading bacteria.

In his talk, as in his book, Mr. Katz equates the cooperative interaction of the wild microorganism with people learning and teaching about fermented foods, and even experimenting with new foods, to create a culture apart from the large-scale commercial food industry.

In his book he explores the different ways people have learned to preserve foods as diverse as fish, grains and casava roots with the assistance of microorganisms.

He gives the loosest types of recipes to make most of these foods, but most importantly Mr. Katz gives encouragement and even permission to those who are on the brink of entering the world of ferments.

Mr. Katz’s talk was the first in a series sponsored by Sterling College and the Galaxy Bookshop in Hardwick that they say is designed to bring “contemporary perspectives and visionary speakers on local and global food systems to the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.”

During his stay Mr. Katz got to see the work on local food systems that has developed here over the past few years. In turn he provided an overview of a global system that predates, and will likely outlast, humanity.

The Art of Fermentation, by Sandor Ellix Katz. Published by Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, 2012, 498 pages, hardcover, $39.95.

Jon Somes creates hair and skin product line

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Posted on March 20, 2013 by BethanyMDunbar

Jon Somes. Photo by Bethany M. Dunbar

by Bethany M. Dunbar

copyright the Chronicle 3-20-2013

NEWPORT — In a culmination of years of creative process, Jon Somes of Newport is now selling hair and skin care products in his salon, under a label with his own name on it.

“It had been on my mind for years and years,” he said in an interview at the salon Friday. In 2006 he started thinking about it seriously and looking for the right chemist. He found someone in Oregon and has been working on the recipes ever since.

These recipes aren’t something you can cook up in a regular kitchen.

He tried to find someone in Vermont, but he could not find the right person or lab. So for now, the products are shipped in bulk to Vermont and bottled and labeled here. If sales quantities justify a change in the future, he will set up a lab to make it here too and possibly create local jobs.

But for now he’s just really glad to have finally settled on the right recipes and be able to offer his products for sale — at the shop or from his website.

“At first I was just going to do shampoos and conditioners,” he said. But he decided that facial products are also really important for someone’s overall look.

He read a lot about various ingredients and tried lots of combinations before settling on the right mixtures. One important ingredient for skin is hyaluronic acid, which was originally made of roosters’ combs. These days the same ingredient is made in a lab with a fermenting process.

The ingredients are 83 to 93 percent organic, but Mr. Somes said he finds that completely organic shampoos and conditioners have a tendency to leave hair somewhat too dry, not shiny, and staticy — especially in winter in Vermont with wood stoves drying out the indoor air in a lot of homes.

Getting the right fragrance for the shampoos and conditioners was another whole process.

“I had a feeling about how I wanted it to smell,” he said. He found a perfumery in Pennsylvania that was able to help him come up with scents that he had described to them, with ingredients he wanted. Some of the ingredients are amber, citron, and mandarin.

He said it should have one scent when it first comes out of the bottle and hits the air in the shower, and another one later after one’s hair is dry.

“There’s undertones to it,” he said.

He’s had the products in the shop for a while already, long enough to get some reaction from clients. The very first person he used the shampoo and conditioner on immediately mentioned it.

She said, “I don’t know what this is, but I love this.”

He said he’s pretty sure many of his clients are enjoying the products. If they had only bought one bottle he might think they were trying to be polite, but they have been coming back for more.

The products are expensive due to the expense of some of the ingredients. One of the ingredients, argon oil, is critically important and only comes from Morocco.

Mr. Somes said once the perfumery had put together the fragrance he wanted, the people there gave him some feedback that really pleased him. They told him the fragrance could be a perfume, not just a shampoo. Their comments were:

“A sophisticated, modern, fine fragrance type, opening with a citrusy sparkle of citron and mandarin, leading to a floral heart of night blooming jasmine, ylang ylang, vetiver and rose, and finishing with an ambery, mossy, patchouli, sandalwood and then an exotic, spicy dry-down.”

Mr. Somes has just finished his website: www.jonsomes.com/index.php. It’s getting some attention already on the Internet. He doesn’t know where this will take him, but he’s extremely happy with the products themselves.

“I had an idea that manifested into an incredible finished product,” he said, and having it done is completely satisfying. “My intention was to make the very best thing possible.”

The Jon Somes Salon has been on Main Street in Newport for three years and draws clients from out of state and Canada. Mr. Somes had a salon in Derby Line in the late ’90s until 2001, then spent some time out west.

He started in his career as a hairstylist after working in real estate and marketing and deciding he wanted a change to something more personal. He studied hairstyling in Paris, and he has been a stylist for 25 years. He serves on the Vermont Board of Barbers and Cosmetologists.

He grew up in New York and Michigan. When he was working in Taos, New Mexico, his reputation as a hairstylist grew to the point where film industry clients sought him out.

contact Bethany M. Dunbar at bethany@bartonchronicle.com

Chase Gosselin makes theatrical waves with Moby Dick

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Posted on March 4, 2013 by BethanyMDunbar

Michael Chase Gosselin, back in the days when he was just Chase Gosselin, performs in a production of The History Of America, Abridged. Mr. Gosselin directed himself and two friends in the show just after he graduated high school last June. Photo by Joseph Gresser

by Joseph Gresser

copyright the Chronicle 2-27-2013

It has taken Michael Chase Gosselin little time to make his mark on the New York theater world. Last week, Internet sites that cover Broadway were ablaze with the news a cult musical might finally hit the Great White Way.

They did not necessarily realize that the man behind this plan graduated only last year from North Country Union High School. Mr. Gosselin was admitted to the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, but postponed his freshman year to check out the theater scene in New York.

That has proved to be a smart move.

In a telephone interview Tuesday, an excited Mr. Gosselin tried to explain how he found himself working with one of the world’s most successful producers on a project that may see him make his Broadway directorial debut.

Mr. Gosselin said it all began with his interest in Moby Dick — A Whale of a Tale, a show that notoriously flopped when it ran in London’s West End in 1992. The show presents the Melville novel as enacted by high school girls who are trying to raise money to keep the doors of their boarding school open.

In a reverse drag role, the headmistress of the school, played by a man, also portrays the monomaniac Captain Ahab.

As Mr. Gosselin described it, the young ladies use whatever they can find to put their benefit on, even draining a swimming pool to serve as their stage. It first opened in a small theater in Oxford, England, and quickly gained popularity.

Cameron Mackintosh saw the show and decided to take it to a large theater in London, where it famously bombed.

“I call it the Spiderman of 1992,” said Mr. Gosselin, speaking of the presses delight in the show’s failure.

Though a commercial disaster in its first major run, Moby Dick gained the kind of notoriety shared by The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Mr. Gosselin said. Many small companies have presented productions of the show in varying versions over the past 20 years.

Mr. Gosselin said he had considered it as an offering for Third Act Productions, the theatrical company he ran during his high school years. It never seemed like the right choice for Newport audiences, he said.

While in New York, he said, he started looking at the script again and decided to try to rework it so it would play better. There had been attempts to rewrite the show over the years, he said, but they had taken out much of the salacious humor of the original.

“I wanted to open it back up,” Mr. Gosselin said.

He describes the show as combining elements from a wide variety of musical theater traditions, ranging from British musical hall and Gilbert and Sullivan to Riverdance. He said the show is a fluff piece, but is also the most accurate translation of Moby Dick to the stage.

What Mr. Gosselin didn’t realize was that the show was owned by Cameron Mackintosh, the producer of such hits as Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera, Mary Poppins, Oliver!, Miss Saigon and Cats. What’s more, Mr. Makintosh told Mr. Gosselin that Moby Dick was his favorite show.

Mr. Gosselin said he got in touch with Mr. Mackintosh’s office in London to get permission to work on the show, but soon found himself emailing the producer directly.

“Cameron was very involved in rewriting,” Mr. Gosselin said. “We were sending lines back and forth.”

When Mr. Mackintosh was in New York recently to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of Phantom of the Opera, he took three hours to meet with Mr. Gosselin and go through the script with him.

“When he read the headmistress’ lines he sounded just like Mrs. Doubtfire,” recalled the delighted Mr. Gosselin.

The composer of the show, Hereward Kaye came over from England for several weeks to work on revisions, including reviving songs originally written for the show but left out of its first production, Mr. Gosselin said.

One of the outcomes of all the work was a staged reading of the show as revised by Mr. Gosselin. The reading, which took place on February 25, featured seasoned Broadway professionals directed by Mr. Gosselin.

Heading the cast as the headmistress was Tony Sheldon, an Australian actor nominated for a Tony award for his work in the Broadway production of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

“A brilliant, brilliant guy,” said Mr. Gosselin.

He said he was very pleased to have a person with not only musical theater skills but with a deep acting background.

“The show needs to be grounded by a really great Ahab,” Mr. Gosselin said.

Other members of the cast included Nicolas Dromard (Mary Poppins), Jacey Powers (Falling), Erin Crosby (Shout! The Mod Musical), Christina Bianco (Newsical), Kirsten Wyatt (A Christmas Story) and Noah E. Galvin (Our Town).

Mr. Gosselin said that Mr. Mackintosh was unable to attend the reading because he had to attend the Oscar ceremonies in Los Angeles. Representatives from his New York office were there, Mr. Gosselin said.

The reading didn’t include stage action, Mr. Gosselin said. The actors read and sang from behind music stands.

Whatever happens from here on out, Mr. Gosselin said, it is a thrill to be able to list himself on his resumé as a co-producer with Mr. Mackintosh, if only for the reading.

Where things will go is unclear. Mr. Gosselin is aiming for a Broadway production. He said Mr. Mackintosh may not want to be the producer if it opens first in New York, because he is based in London and has always opened his shows there first.

Mr. Gosselin said he would like to start working with the spatial elements of the show, but said Mr. Mackintosh does not like the idea of tinkering with a musical in a rehearsal studio, a process pioneered by A Chorus Line. Mr. Mackintosh prefers to go straight into the production process in a theater, Mr. Gosselin said.

Some shows begin their runs off-Broadway, but that move is questionable, he said. Because since the success of shows like Rent critics keep a sharp eye on work opening downtown, and both Moby Dick and Mr. Mackintosh would be targets for intense and distracting press scrutiny, Mr. Gosselin said.

“I’d like to try the show out in New Bedford,” Mr. Gosselin said, referring to one of Massachusetts’s famous whaling ports.

No firm plans are in place, but Mr. Gosselin said he is devoting himself fully to the show.

“I’ve never taken so many meetings in my life,” he said. The verb “taken” signals that he is truly finding a place in the theater’s major leagues.

contact Joseph Gresser at joseph@bartonchronicle.com

Lydia Spitzer Demonstration Forest dedicated

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Posted on February 11, 2013 by BethanyMDunbar

Lydia Spitzer cuts the garland created for grand opening of the demonstration forest named in her honor. The garland was made by NorthWoods Stewardship Center program assistant Meg Carter because it seemed more appropriate than cutting a ribbon. Left to right are NorthWoods Stewardship Center board president Nancy Engels, operations manager Jayson Benoit, Ms. Carter, Ms. Spitzer, and Sam Perron, NorthWoods’ sustainable forestry specialist. Photo by Bethany M. Dunbar

by Bethany M. Dunbar

CHARLESTON — “I can’t imagine anything I would be more proud to be associated with,” said Lydia Spitzer at the dedication of the Lydia Spitzer Demonstration Forest at the NorthWoods Stewardship Center on Friday.

Ms. Spitzer donated 1,300 acres to the center in 2008. She had donated conservation easements to the Vermont Land Trust in 2007. It is the largest donation the land trust has ever received, Tracy Zschau, regional director of the trust, said Friday.

“All I did was buy a piece of land a long time ago,” said Ms. Spitzer.

She said when she bought the land in 1993, she had thought she might be a visionary entrepreneur and start an enterprise with a school, trails, and other features that would support nature, forestry, and conservation.

She said by her fiftieth birthday when she had not done it, she thought it might be better to connect with her neighbors instead. Coincidentally Bill Manning had created the Vermont Leadership Center in 1989 with some of the same goals in mind. In the beginning the center owned no land at all, but in 2005 it got about 100 acres. The name and structure changed and the center became the NorthWoods Stewardship Center.

Ms. Spitzer has been more than a neighbor all along — more like a friend and fan. She described her relationship with the center as: “the absolute joy of being in love with this organization.”

She said the staff and board of NorthWoods are the ones who should get the credit, along with her grandfather, Ward Canaday, who made money during World War II with a company called the Willis Overland company that produced Jeeps used in the war.

Mr. Canaday made enough money to start a large trust, and the Canaday Trust has supported lots of arts and educational causes over the years. In the fall, the NorthWoods Stewardship Center was awarded a grant from Canaday of $185,000 to create the Forest Stewardship Institute. The grant will cover staff and the institute’s purpose will be to teach sustainable forestry practices to landowners and others.

There are already some hiking trails on the land, and plans are to make some more and link the existing trails, said Trails Coordinator Luke O’Brien. The land stretches over Tripp Hill to the shore of Echo Lake, where there is one trail already.

When Ms. Spitzer first bought the land, most of it had been cut off with little old growth remaining. One of her goals was to improve its value for forestry as well as educational purposes.

Mr. O’Brien said there were, at one time, 30 kilometers of groomed cross-country ski trails, but they were too expensive to maintain as groomed trails. The new trails will be more likely ungroomed, basically self-service access to the land.

Logging roads will become available as trails as well, he said, for backcountry skiing and snowshoeing in the winter and hiking and horseback riding in the summer.

Mr. Benoit said the plans are to build a bunk house and more parking lots and access spots over time. There are three new kiosks with information and a map, and three more are planned.

The institute will be working with the land trust and local Audubon societies, Mr. Benoit said.

Ms. Spitzer lives in North Pomfret. She has a kitchen designing business called Design Discovery. She said the land is beautiful, but as an absentee landowner it’s been difficult to keep an eye on it.

“There’s a lovely swamp. And somebody was putting out half a cow carcass,” she said, to bait coyotes to shoot. It’s an activity she didn’t like but it was hard to do anything about it from North Pomfret.

Donating the land is a win-win, she said.

“There is nothing I could have done with it that would be better,” she said. “It’s nice for me.”

NorthWoods Operations Manager Jayson Benoit spoke on behalf of the center, and presented Ms. Spitzer with an ash walking stick. The NorthWoods Stewardship Center has four permanent full-time employees and other seasonal help. In the summer there are 80 people working at the center, including the Conservation Corp student workers.

He said the center is approaching its twenty-fifth anniversary and has recently developed a recreation plan and new mission statement.

After each brief speech on Friday there was a round of applause, which included enthusiastic barking by the dogs on hand. Two of them were Ms. Spitzer’s golden doodles, which are half golden retriever and half standard poodle. They are named Milo and Hopper.

For more information, see the center’s website: www.northwoodscenter.org

contact Bethany M. Dunbar at bethany@bartonchronicle.com

Bloodhound and owner help find lost pets

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Posted on January 30, 2013 by BethanyMDunbar

Redford the bloodhound. Photo by Chris Braithwaite

by Chris Braithwaite

copyright the Chronicle 12-26-12

ALBANY — Lisa Robinson spends a good deal of her time crashing through the woods or running through the brambles behind a big rangy dog named Redford who might quite possibly be pursuing a cat.

Though she’s not a young woman, and runs on two surgically replaced hips, Ms. Robinson’s accounts of these expeditions suggest that she enjoys every minute of them.

Redford is a bloodhound, and Ms. Robinson makes him — and herself — available to people who have lost household pets.

She and Redford have looked for a Westy that wandered off from his new home in Pownal, in the far southwest corner of Vermont, and a Chinook sled dog in Richford, on the Canadian border.

They’ve looked for a Siamese cat in Barre and a mother-and-son pair of Labrador retrievers in West Glover.

James and Lisa Ash of Barre sent Lisa Robinson this photo of their recovered cat, Pogo, who followed them home the day after Redford the bloodhound led them on a search. Pogo disappeared on a Monday evening, and Redford wasn’t called in until the following Saturday. The cat came back on Sunday.

Ms. Robinson doesn’t think there are any other bloodhounds available in Vermont to search for lost pets. She’d like people to know about Redford so they’ll call her when their pet’s trail is still fresh. All too often, she says, by the time people locate her by word of mouth their pet has been missing for several days.

That doesn’t stop Redford. Ms. Robinson says her young bloodhound exhibits the tracking skills his breed is famous for, and can track a missing animal long after it has disappeared from home.

The problem, she says, is that she and the dog can only cover so much ground in a day. She hangs on tight to his leash on a hunt, for fear that his exuberance for his job will lure him so far ahead of her that he will become one of the missing pets himself.

Redford doesn’t always track down a missing pet.

On several searches, Ms. Robinson says, he’s led her and the missing pet’s owner over long distances to surprising locations, where the animal was eventually found.

But sometimes the trail just comes to a bewildering end, leaving Redford wandering around in uncertain circles. When that happens, Ms. Robinson suspects the worst — someone picked the pet up and made off with it. That, sadly, is how the search for the West Glover dogs ended, several miles from their home.

In Barre, the missing Siamese cat showed up the day after Ms. Robinson and Redford had climbed into her aging Subaru and headed home to Albany. The happy owners believe Redford led them close to it — what self-respecting Siamese would rush out of hiding to greet a drooling bloodhound? — and the cat followed their familiar scent home.

Redford, at three and a half, is a relatively new recruit. Ms. Robinson got him from a bloodhound rescue group after he was abandoned in Alabama.

He’s a replacement for Thurber, the bloodhound who taught Ms. Robinson the art of tracking. Thurber is memorialized, in a way, on the sweatshirt his owner was wearing during an interview last week. It’s decorated with a sketch of a big dog, most likely another bloodhound, by the great American humorist James Thurber.

Ms. Robinson’s first bloodhound was named after the humorist — she has a friendly but offbeat cat named Dillon, and a matching pair named Cassidy and Sundance — and Thurber, like Redford, was a rescued animal. Their owner thinks the dogs’ difficult early lives only enhanced their ability to find lost animals. They know what it’s like to be out on the streets, she says.

Thurber was killed by a condition called bloat, and Ms. Robinson is anxious that other dog owners — particularly owners of large dogs — be more aware of its dangers.

“It’s something that really worries me,” she says. “It affects the large breeds, the big-chested dogs that tend to gulp their food.”

When the condition strikes, Ms. Robinson says, the dog’s stomach swells to look like a barrel and, if tapped, to sound like one too. The condition is also called torsion, she says, because the dog’s stomach can start to twist, and actually flip over.

If it strikes, Ms. Robinson says, “there is no time. You’ve got to get to a vet.”

Untreated, she says grimly, a stricken pet faces “a horrible, painful death.”

Since Thurber’s death, Ms. Robinson watches her three bloodhounds closely for bloat, and tries to keep them as still as possible for an hour or so after eating.

At home when he’s not working, Redford is a big, floppy, affable young dog. This visitor had just left a dog at home, so Redford took a careful inventory of boots, pant legs, shirt cuffs, gleaning heaven knows how much information in the process.

He shares a big fenced enclosure with Simon, a seven-year-old bloodhound who quickly demonstrates a timidity that, his owner says, makes him unfit for tracking.

A good tracker, she says, “needs to be bold and friendly.

“Bloodhounds are stubborn,” she adds. “They want to find that scent. They don’t care what’s at the end of it.”

When working, she says, Redford ignores people he would otherwise spend time visiting, and anything he finds along the trail. She’s been amazed to see him stride heedlessly past bear scat, moose scat, deer scat, even a deer. But he proudly brought her the frozen scat left behind by that missing Westy.

A third bloodhound, Waseeka, has settled pretty permanently on a rug under a table in Ms. Robinson’s log house. More than 12 years old, Waseeka has lost much of her vision and her hearing.

There are two horses in a paddock, a Morgan and a Tennessee walker, along with three outside cats and five inside cats, all rescued animals.

Ms. Robinson and her dogs haven’t gone looking for lost people. That job involves a lot of legal regulations, she says, and a lot of paperwork.

She held a job for years at Kodak in Rochester, New York, before she and Thurber moved to the Northeast Kingdom almost 12 years ago. Working with that large corporation left her “tired of doing what somebody told me to do.”

But when she’s looking for a lost pet, Ms. Robinson strives to do what Redford tells her to do.

When a dog and handler team makes a mistake, she says, it’s almost always the handler’s fault.

“It’s all about Redford,” she says. “I’m just his translator and his transportation. He’s the one who knows what’s going on.”

To help dogs like Redford do their job, Ms. Robinson suggests that pet owners wipe each of their animals with a bit of clean cloth, and put the cloth aside in a sealed and labeled plastic bag.

If the pet ever should come up missing, she says, that will give Redford something to work with.

Ms. Robinson can be reached at 755-6331 or by e-mail at allcritters@wildblue.net.

contact Chris Braithwaite at chris@bartonchronicle.com