Chad Hollister
1. Live Aid Vermont musician Chad Hollister is known for his feel-good pop-rock tunes. The singer-songwriter brings his signature sense of positivity to a livestream concert supporting working musicians facing financial difficulties. Acoustic folk artist Ryan Montbleau, indie-pop musician Francesca Blanchard, members of the Vermont Symphony Orchestra and others join Hollister for VT Sounds A Bash to Bring Back Vermont Music, broadcast from ZenBarn in Waterbury at 8 p.m. on Friday, January 22. All proceeds go to the New England Musicians Relief Fund.
2. A Man Apart Courtesy of Jack Fairweather Author Jack Fairweather (left) with 89-year-old Bohdan Walasek, who fought with Witold Pilecki during the Warsaw uprising Do you have what this man had, to be not just a survivor but a helper,
Daily Telegraph and the
Washington Post. Now a resident of Charlotte, he spent years working with Polish researchers retracing Pilecki s travels, digging through concentration camp records, Polish government files and written testimonies from thousands of Auschwitz survivors. In January,
The Volunteer won the 2019 Costa Book of the Year award, one of the United Kingdom s most prestigious literary honors. A month later, Fairweather sold the movie rights to London-based House Productions and producer Tessa Ross, whose Oscar-winning film credits include
Slumdog Millionaire,
Ex Machina. Before interviewing Fairweather, I tore through
The Volunteer in a weekend, not bothering to look closely at its historic photographs. In March, however, while flipping through its pages again for a follow-up piece, one picture stopped me in my tracks. It was a black-and-white prison camp photo of Konstanty Piekarski, a Polish army lieutenant who was captured by the Gestapo, tortured and s