Occupy Burlington, the protest encampment in Vermont’s largest city, was largely gutted on Monday in the wake of the suicide of a 35-year-old occupier last Thursday.

Most of the tents were gone yesterday. Some of the protesters did take their tents and belongings with them, but many others left the city to clean up the tents.

Protesters, who had been camping in City Hall Park since Oct. 28, agreed to move over the weekend.

Three deaths have occurred in Occupy protest-related situations this week.

In Burlington, Vermont, a 35-year old military veteran committed suicide, while a Salt Lake City protester was found dead by unknown cause in his tent.

In Oakland, a man was shot in a fight nearby the protesters, but is supposedly not related to the cause.

The death in Burlington is raising concerns about the safety of the protests. Deputy Police Chief Andi Higbee said “Our responsibility is to keep the public safe. When there is a discharge of a firearm in a public place like this it’s good cause to be concerned, greatly concerned.” Whether or not the protests will be allowed to continue is still in the air.

Protesters in Salt Lake City are no longer permitted to camp out in the city park, and are required to remove their tents by Saturday. However, daytime protests will still be allowed.

Officials in Oakland are calling for the camp to be shut down. Despite leaders of the cause claiming that the shooting was unrelated, Mayor Jean Quan said “Tonight’s incident underscores the reason why the encampment must end. The risks are too great. We need to return (police) resources to addressing violence throughout the city. It’s time for the encampment to end. Camping is a tactic, not a solution.”

A man participating in a protest encampment Burlington’s City Hall Park was shot and wounded yesterday. The injury is, reportedly, life-threatening.

Police are unable to report whether or not the gunshot was self-inflicted, but they do not believe that the public should fear being at risk.

Occupy protesters have inhabited the park since late October in objection to the idea that the nation’s financial system is based on the needs of the wealthy.

Phish is going home to Vermont, where the band formed, to rock out for the victims of Tropical Storm Irene with a special benefit concert, The Burlington Free Press reported.

Phish will play a concert on September 14 at the Champlain Valley Exposition in Essex Junction.

It’s the band’s first Vermont show in seven years.

The band released the following statement: “Vermont experienced its worst flooding in a century, which devastated communities throughout the state.”

Today’s Vermont Cheesemakers’ Festival may be sold out, but cheese lovers everywhere can taste the festival’s star cheeses with the Best of the Fest sample package delivered to their doors.

Choose a four ($49) or six ($69) cheese sampler put together by Cheese Traders & Wine Sellers, featuring a varied selection of 4 to 8 ounce cheeses that will include at least one cow, goat and sheep milk cheese, at least one smoked or blue cheese, and, of course, Vermont’s famous aged cheddar.

“Every year, the festival sells out,” said Rachel Schaal, the festival’s event organizer. “The Best of the Fest is a way to expand the experience of the festival beyond just the one day, and a way for people to participate in the celebration of Vermont cheesemakers from their own homes.”

To order a Best of the Fest sampler, go here, and choose a one-time order or a monthly subscription (both samplers ship for free). To find out more about the Vermont Cheesemakers’ Festival, go to www.vtcheesefest.com.

Vermont Yankee, the nuclear power plant that was shut down on Sunday after a radioactive water leak, will be restarted as early as tomorrow as crews effect repairs.

The leak, discovered Saturday during routine surveillance, was found to be coming from a 2-inch access plug in a a water feed pipe, said Larry Smith, a plant spokesman. The leaky access plug had been installed during original construction of the plant and used for radiography of pipe welds.

“The decision to shut the plant down was conservative and based on industry experience with feed water systems as well as worker safety,” Smith said. “The plant had been operating for 163 days prior to the manual shutdown on Sunday evening.”

Repairs were underway, and the plant could reopen tomorrow or Wednesday.

The cause of the leak remains under investigation.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said the public was not in danger.

How does self-image affect your relationships and color your past? How can we appreciate different expressions of physicality while maintaining a respectful, artistic distance? How do you tell your 21-year-old son to stop racking up such high porn bills? These are a few of the questions raised during Body Awareness Week at Shirley State College.

“Body Awareness,” is the first play that Amherst-born playwright, Annie Baker, set in the fictional town of Shirley, Vermont. All three of the Shirley Vermont plays are currently being performed at the BCA courtesy of three different local companies. While the other two, “Circle, Mirror Transformation,” and “The Aliens” are far more minimalist in form, “Body Awareness” makes it points with sharp dialogue.

Baker’s writing chops shine through in this often-hilarious homage to backwoods intellectualism, brutal honesty and familial warmth in its most unexpected incarnations. “Body Awareness” opens the door to an upstate universe of hand-knit sweaters and green tea with dialogue that is both lively and thoughtful, playful yet often painfully charged.

The short of it sounds deceptively quiet: a middle-aged lesbian couple hosts a visiting photographer who specializes in portraits of nude women. Phyllis (Adrianne Krstansky), organizer of Shirley State College’s annual Body Awareness Week, almost immediately becomes enraged at his work and presence. Her partner Joyce (Paula Plum), on the other hand, finds his work fascinating, and when the artist, Frank (Richard Snee), asks her to pose, the resulting clash threatens to unravel the relationship.

The presence of Joyce’s 21-year-old son Jared (Gregory Pember) takes the conflict to another level. Jared lives at home, works at McDonald’s, studies the Oxford English Dictionary and denies with all his strength that he may have Asperser’s Syndrome. Pember is spot on in rendering Jared’s relentless honesty, anti-empathic logic and unintentional humor. His remarks, actions and growth in response to Franks’ residency enhance not only the plot, but the canvas on which we gage the other characters’ actions and emotions.

Plum and Krstansky make a convincing and endearing couple (though ironically, Plum is actually married to Snee in real life); we get just enough of their personal histories and history as a couple to form a satisfying image of their life together. Plum presents a richly nuanced portrayal of Joyce, a high school teacher who was married to a man for ten years and has a haunting past besides. Krstansky is deceptively mellow as Phyllis, a smiling psychology professor who defends Body Awareness week as if it were her own daughter. Snee brings photographer, Frank Bonitatibus, to life almost effortlessly: though his presence ignites the main action of the play, his definitive maleness and controversial presence is neither hackneyed nor stereotyped. Every character in this play dares us to make assumptions about them, and then quietly—with a laugh—steps outside of our expectations.

Under Paul Daigneault’s fluid, unforced direction Phyllis leads us through the week as if we are students in a scarcely populated college auditorium. Days and nights blend easily and slowly into each other to Nathan Leigh’s mellifluous score, and we are given just enough time to digest what has happened in the day. The design team—Cristina Todesco’s scenic design, Jeff Adelberg’s lighting, and Bobby Frederick Tilley II’s costuming—certainly deserves an extra hand for creating the impeccable depiction of the house, characters and time of day.

This visit to Shirley is well worth the trip.

Presented by Speakeasy Stage Company, “Body Awareness plays at the BCA through November 20.

Sometimes it can be uncomfortable to sit in silence with a neo-hippie burnout on shrooms and his pissed off, chain smoking sidekick. In “The Aliens,” now on stage at the BCA courtesy of Company One, the experience turns out to be well worthwhile.

“The Aliens” is the second work by Amherst-born playwright Annie Baker, set in the fictional town of Shirley, Vermont; all three of which are currently being staged at the BCA by three different local companies. Each takes on a different intersection of Vermont personalities, mixing townies and transplants, straights and members of an array of counter-cultures.

This installment introduces us to K.J. (Alex Pollack), a 30-year-old college dropout who lives with his mother and spends most of his time in a meditative haze sponsored by a cocktail of legal meds and illegal psychedelics, chilling on the hidden terrace behind the Green Sheep Coffee Shop (which is rendered in exquisite, dead-on detail by set designer Christina Todesco).  Pollack’s K.J. is an impressive creation with a rich vocabulary of gestures, twitches, facial expressions and capering movements which combine to denote quick-shifting and dramatically varied emotional states. He is blissed out at rest but easily nudged into other extremes.

K.J.’s chief companion and principal nudger is Jasper (Nael Nacer), a more restless figure who wears a scowl and a bushy beard and chain-smokes American Spirit cigarettes. Jasper is a drifter from a small, dirt-poor New Hampshire town, who struggles in love with the same intensity with which he pursues his life’s work—fiction writing. How he pays his cell phone and coffee bills, we are not told. K.J. and Jasper both suspect that Jasper just may be a genius, and the excerpt we get of his novel-in-progress suggests that there is at least a real possibility this may be so.

Conflict, such as it exists, enters the play in the most innocent of frames, in the person of Evan (Jacob Brandt), a Shirley High School senior, awkward to the point of stutters and facial ticks, who starts a summer job at the café and is told to ask the vagrants on the terrace to loiter elsewhere.

The threat to our “Aliens” here is not great. As much their lives would be impacted if they were shooed form their refuge, it’s clear that Evan lacks the courage to take a stand Evan struggles, and not just to overcome his fear. He’s not popular, and he’s not a fan of his small-town crowd. The really conflict for Evan comes in the fact that, while they are in some ways threatening, there is a thrill in the possibility of being liked by these older, cooler, more dangerous young men. He has never met anyone like K.J. and Jasper, and as unimpressive as they may seem to us, to Evan they represent something exciting—a life outside the mainstream made so much the more alluring by the possibility that, like their hero, Charles Bukowski, Jasper may be literary diamond in the rough.

“The Aliens” spends a lot of time on simmer. Baker herself writes that “about 1/3 of the play should be silence.” It’s a Becket-like exercise in minimalism that makes each small event, each change, feel amplified.  The play really gets cooking in the second act when we begin to see hints that K.J. might not be as harmless a freeloader as he seems. Set around the 4^th of July, “the Aliens” features a fireworks display heard faintly in the distance. There aren’t a lot of metaphorical fireworks on display here either but there are some detailed and compelling character portraits that are just as worth viewing—and may stay with you longer.

Directed by Shawn LaCount, “The Aliens” plays at the Boston Center for the Arts, in Hall A at the Calderwood Pavilion, through November 20.

The East Dover, Vt. Fire Rescue Department fire truck that was reported stolen from the firehouse on Tuesday was found abandoned in a parking lot in the New York capital of Albany, according to officials.

The medium-duty 2005 Ford designated East Dover Rescue 4 was discovered missing after firefighters returned from helping a neighboring town fight a fire.

The rescue truck was found with the keys in the ignition, according to FireFighterCloseCalls.com. The truck was not damaged, and the rescue/medical equipment was still inside.

Vermont State Police went to Albany early Thursday morning to continue the investigation there. The truck was on its way back to Easy Dover.

Firefighters in the small southern Vermont community of East Dover returned from battling an early morning blaze on Tuesday to find one of their fire tucks had been stolen.

A medium duty rescue truck designated East Dover Rescue 4 was parked at the firehouse. The firefighters took other apparatus to nearby Williamsville at 3 a.m. to battle a fire there. They returned at about 5:30, and the truck was gone.

The truck was build in 2005. It’s pretty conspicuous. It’s red with emergency lights and the words “East Dover Fire Rescue” in big letters on the sides.

Theft from firehouses is a particularly despicable but all too common crime. Perhaps nearly as valuable as the truck are the medical supplies and expensive rescue tools located within.

If you see the truck or have any information, please contact Southwestern New Hampshire Fire District Mutual Aid at 866-352-1291 or the Dover, Vt. police department at 802-464-2020.

It’s so hot outside. You just want to take off all your clothes, right?

Yeah.

That was how an 18-year-old Vermont woman decided to cope with the hazy, hot, humid weather this week. She got naked and took a walk around the streets of Montpelier on Monday afternoon with a male companion.

The dude left his clothes on.

According to TimesArgus.com, a “flurry” of phone calls came into the Montpelier Police around 1:30 yesterday afternoon.

But it’s not illegal to walk naked in Vermont.

“As long as they’re not exhibiting any kind of overt gestures or communicating any kind of lewd act, then they’re within their rights — if we’ll use that word — to do that,” Montpelier Police Sergeant Neil Martel told the local news site. “We watched her and there wasn’t anything going on that would have violated the ordinance. … She just said it was a hot day, I guess, and she was taking a walk.”

No pics.

This is one in a series of New England winter travel articles.

WOODSTOCK, Vt. — When several of my friends were alerted that Woodstock, Vt. has an annual tradition, the "Wassail Weekend," most scratched their heads, and said, "What’s wassailing?" Understandable. In fact, I hardly knew what wassailing was myself, so I went to find out.

Woodstock is an adorable town about an hour shy of the capital, Montpelier, and about a four-hour drive from New York City. The drive itself was beautiful. As you head into the mountains, the scenery is forest and field, with the integrity of farmland and early-settler-village-styled towns  very much intact. Woodstock lays in a valley, surrounded by ski country, dairy farms, and still has addresses on “The Green” — a circular park which the town’s roads  wrap around. It was here that the "Wassail Parade" was to commence.

For my parade weekend stomping grounds, I chose the Woodstock Inn and Resort, which was founded by Laurance S. Rockefeller, grandson of John D. Rockefeller. As we all know, those Rockefellers were smart, forward-thinking men, and Laurance was no different. Herenovated the Inn in the early 1960s, envisioning a property that could bring sustainability to the area, not just a singular facility in the town. His family had owned property and farmland in the town for decades, and he converted the Billings Farm into a museum, and preserved 550 more acres of land to ensure that Woodstock would remain as it always had. Because of his efforts, Laurance received a Congressional Gold Medal, the first ever awarded for conservation and historic preservation. His focus is still apparent in the Woodstock Inn today; the proceeds from the Inn and the still-working Billings dairy farm go to the Woodstock Foundation in order to continue conservation efforts.

There is a purposeful connection to history, nature and tradition at the Inn and this consciousness is carried well by the courteous staff. The d©cor is rustic, but modern, with clean lines and a soft color palette, which is a nice atmosphere after spending the day out in winter’s playground. Upon entering the reception area, a grand 10-foot hearth with roaring fire warms the toes, while in the library next door, cookies, hot cider and coffee are offered to warm the soul. The extremely family-friendly facility offers Wii games, and a variety of off-site activities. The Inn boasts its own golf course, ski slope, recreation facility and a new spa, which is set to open late summer of 2010. The Inn also incorporates on-site award-winning restaurants, The Red Rooster and Richardson’s Tavern. The former carries a large variety of native foods, artisanal breads, cheeses, wines and the latter offers lighter fare and live music on the weekends in a casual-overstuffed-chair environment.

The Billings Farm and Museum is a delightful visit, offering an educational center and tours of the dairy farm, where guests can view the nursery and adorable baby Jersey calves and the remarkable farmhouse, built in 1890. Again, as with the Inn, proceeds are funneled back into the Woodstock Foundation, so as to guarantee future generations can experience the joy of generations past.

Across the street from the farm is where the Rockefeller Mansion sits, in what is now the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park, and is run by the Parks Dept. I had a chance to tour this amazing home, consisting of 4 floors, 10 bedrooms, and a fallout shelter in the basement. This was included as part of a Home Tour offered in celebration of Wassail Weekend. This was the first time the home was included on the tour, and although most of the mansion was closed to visitors, the peak into the life of the Rockefellers was inspiring. Another neat home on the tour was the DAR Mansion, on The Green near the Woodstock Inn, which originally housed Vermont’s traveling legislature, and is currently up for sale for just under $1.1 million. Homes on The Green pride themselves on having the title of "Woodstock’s most beautiful addresses,” in what has been coined as "the prettiest small town in America.”

The Wassail Parade is the main attraction during Wassail Weekend. Asking locals what their take on Wassailing was, the bulk of the answers consist of "spreading merriment and drinking grog” (Grog is any warm libation, aiding of course in the distribution of seasonal cheer.). The temps in Woodstock during this past Wassail Weekend were as low as 4′F at night, with light flurries and rose only to the 20s in the day. The he parade is an amazing spectacle of horsemanship, with the owners dressing themselves and their horses in holiday wears, some antique or antique-replicas. Carriages, imported horses from Ireland, and the man who follows behind on rollerblades scoopin’ the poop complete the lineup for the parade.

The Wassail Parade isn’t the only activity for Wassail Weekend, but is certainly the highlight. Aside from visiting the farm, the homes, the Vienna Boys Choir sang a concert at the Town Hall, which also serves as the town’s movie theatre. Many of the local farmers joined in The Green for a bake sale, offering chili, pies and all sorts of Christmas treats. Ice skating was offered at the local rink, and a bonfire and luminary lighting followed the parade.

Woodstock is a charming dip into American history, and a shining example of preservation of American culture and tradition, made available through forethought towards a sustainability and conservation of the area’s natural resources. So get up off the couch, and head to Vermont. Dive into hot cider, red wine and local foods to comfort the nip from Jack Frost.
Additional photos: Candace Nirvana, CNirvana.com

North End, South End, Back Bay, Malden, Quincy, Milton, Natick. There’s no utterly amazing pizza in our area. There’s nothing that would make you walk across a bridge like the stuff in Brooklyn. There’s nothing that reminds me of my native New Haven, with a style all its own.

I love the Greeks. Great olives. The cheese. Grape leaves are terrific. But Greeks own most of the pizza parlors in Boston, and Greeks can’t make a decent pie.

Travel & Leisure Magazine agrees about Boston, because they didn’t name any area pizza restaurants to their list of the best in America, but they did list a little place in Stowe, Vermont called Piecasso Pizzeria & Lounge.

The Sicilian pizza restaurant, if you believe the magazine, has the best pizza you’ll find in New England. They recommend a “Tree Huger” with fresh spinach, garlic and red onion.

“We have always strived to have a place where guests enjoy great pizza, the positive vibe of our staff and the ambiance of an upscale lounge to relax and watch a game or enjoy dinner without breaking the bank,” said Eduardo Rovetto, owner of Piecasso. “I owe most of my success to my family that has been making incredible pizza throughout New York and Vermont for over 40 years. It’s really nice to have all the blood, sweat & tears of being a restaurant owner validated.”

Piecasso is in good company. Also named to the list are Di Fara and Motorino in Brooklyn (you’ll never get in, so be ready to stand there for a while), Great Lake in Chicago, and Famous Joe’s in Manhattan. The magazine failed to include New Haven, so they clearly got that part wrong.

One note: A reader made a compelling argument for Santarpio’s Pizza in East Boston. I’m going to try it and get back to you.

Unsurprisingly, the tiny state of Vermont (population 600,000) was called for Barack Obama first. The votes have not all been counted but pundits are already calling it a mammoth blowout.

It should come as no suprise that Vermont went this direction. The state. arguably the most tolerant and liberal in the nation, has a self-identified socialist in the Senate, a vibrant third party with seats in the State House, and openly supports the impeachment of Bush.

The state is known for it independent streak. 80 years ago, President Calvin Coolidge, said of the Green Mountain State, “If the spirit of liberty should vanish in other parts of the Union and support of our institutions should languish, it could all be replenished from the generous store held by the people of this brave little state of Vermont.”

There is also a curious gubernatorial race going on in the state. Incumbent Gov. Jim Douglas, a Republican, is going to beat out a Democratic challenger, Gaye Symington (speaker of the Vermont House) and progressive Anthony Pollina, who is tied for Symington in second place, with about 24 percent of the vote, according to recent polls.

Interestingly, Douglas will win, but may not be re-elected right away. If he wins with less than 50 percent of the vote, the Legislature (which is dominated by Democrats) gets to choose the governor by secret ballot. I think they would likely choose Douglas, who will win with a double-digit lead, but I imagine the Douglas campaign is hoping they never have to find out.