View of McCullough Turnpike on Route 17
Montpelier resident Brenda Greika has settled into a weekend routine during the pandemic. She packs up her car with ample food and drinks, pops a Starline Rhythm Boys or Patti Casey CD into her player, and drives to a Vermont town she s never been to before.
To celebrate Halloween, Greika visited Evergreen Cemetery in New Haven to see a gravestone with a window built into it. It belongs to 19th-century doctor Timothy Clark Smith, who feared being buried alive and was reportedly entombed with a hammer. In January, Greika ended up at the NorthWoods Stewardship Center in East Charleston, where she communed with a barred owl.
Thom Fleury For nearly eight years, Thom Fleury has operated a small weekend food pantry in Burlington s New North End. He started it in March 2013 when he realized that kids at C.P. Smith Elementary School, where Fleury then served as principal, could use some food on the weekends. On the first day, just three people showed up in the basement of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows Lodge on North Avenue. The enterprise has grown exponentially over the years, fueled by the need resulting from the coronavirus pandemic. Pantry usage exploded, with as many as 123 people visiting on a single day last spring.