Events

ANNUAL DINNER GALA
Date: Monday, June 25, 2012
Time: 6:30 pm
Location: Chantecleer Restaurant
Fee: $150
Description: Join us for an elegant evening of gourmet food and wine. This fundraising event will feature a live auction.

Seating is limited; please make reservations early.

Dorset Theatre Festival’s Good People with Dina Janis, Artistic Director
Date: Sunday, July 01, 2012
Time: 12:30pm lunch; 3:00pm performance
Location: Pre-performance lunch at Ferguson residence; performance at Dorset Playhouse
Fee: $$75 (includes lunch, discussion & ticket to play)
Description: Regional premiere of one of Broadway’s most recent hits! Pulitzer and Tony Award winning writer David Lindsay-Abaire has written a moving, funny, and thought- provoking play set in Boston’s Southie, which takes a brave look at the “have’s and have not’s” with this heartwarming story. “Mr. Lindsay-Abaire’s keenly observed drama Good People most directly engages with defining issues of the American moment, the ever-widening chasm between classes and the precarious hold that those on the bottom have on even the slenderest financial stability.” New York Times.

Join us for lunch at Connie and Bob Ferguson’s beautiful home at 12:30pm where you will be treated to a pre-performance discussion with Artistic Director Dina Janis. From there we will head to the theater for a matinee performance at 3pm.

Vermont’s Future Health Care Plans: What Will It Mean for Vermonters with Senator Claire D. Ayer, J. Churchill Hindes Ph.D., and Wendy Wilton
Date: Wednesday, August 08, 2012
Time: 12:00 - 1:30pm
Location: Maple Street School, Library
Fee: $FREE
Description: Vermont's latest legislation, Act 48 (H.202), was signed into law by Governor Shumlin in June 2011. The law recognizes the economic and moral imperative for Vermont to undertake fundamental reform of its health-care system. Health-care costs have been growing between 6.5 and 8.5 percent per year in recent years, at a time when growth in our economy was negligible. Act 48 puts Vermont on a path to a single-payer system, but the state must take several additional steps to reach that goal. These include development of a financing plan that assures a single-payer will cost less than the current system. This discussion will look at what progress has been made, how this will be funded, and what it will mean for Vermonters.

Claire Ayer has been a member of the Vermont Senate since 2003. During her first two terms, Ayer served on Senate Agriculture, Senate Transportation, Senate Finance and as Vice Chair of Natural Resources and Energy. She also served on the Judicial Retention and Health Access Oversight committees. In her third and fourth terms, Ayer was elected to serve as Senate Majority Whip. She currently serves as Chair of the Senate Committee on Health and Welfare. She is a registered nurse with a degree in environmental studies from Middlebury College and married to a physician, Dr. Alan Ayer.

Church Hindes is transitioning from his role as the President and CEO for one of the largest and oldest home health agencies in northern New England, the Visiting Nurse Association. Prior to joining the VNA, Dr. Hindes was Vice President for Finance and Administrative Director for Medical Group Operations at Fletcher Allen Health Care. He also served as the Deputy Secretary of Administration for the State of Vermont and as the State Budget Director/Vermont Commissioner of Budget and Management. An active faculty member of the University of Vermont College of Medicine, he lectures extensively on health policy, finance, and leadership.

Wendy Wilton has served as the treasurer for the City of Rutland since March 2007. She has successfully managed the financial operations of the City of Rutland to turn around a $5 million deficit under her predecessor to a $3 million positive fund balance, and attained a clean audit opinion for the City of Rutland for the first time in 32 years. Prior to her role as treasurer, she served as a Rutland County state Senator, was a Senior Business Advisor for the Vermont Small Business Development Center and enjoyed an eight year career in small business and mortgage lending. Most recently, she has developed a financial projection model to explore the impact of Act 48, and specifically the feasibility of Green Mountain Care.

Weston Playhouse’s Fiddler on the Roof
Date: Saturday, August 18, 2012
Time: 11:30pm lunch; 2:00pm performance
Location: Pre-performance lunch at Wilbur residence; performance at Weston Playhouse
Fee: $$75 (includes lunch, discussion & ticket to play)
Description: The Tony Award-winning smash! David Benoit (Weston’s Forum and Avenue Q, Broadway’s Les Miz) stars as Tevye the milkman, who navigates a world where tradition, uncertainty, and change collide. Based on the stories of Sholom Aleichem, Fiddler on the Roof has been lauded by critics again and again, and won the hearts of people all around the world. A timeless classic with a heartwarming score.

Join us for lunch at Sandy and Jim Wilbur’s lovely home in South Londonderry at 11:30am where you will be treated to a pre-performance discussion. From there we will head to the theater for a matinee performance at 2pm.

Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival: The Joffrey Ballet
Date: Saturday, August 25, 2012
Time: 9:30am - 6:00pm
Location: Ted Shawn Theatre at Jacob’s Pillow, Becket, Massachusetts
Fee: $125
Description: The legendary Joffrey Ballet, led by Artistic Director Ashley Wheater, closes the 80th Anniversary Season with style, substance, and phenomenal dancing. This knockout program includes the luxurious ballet Bells, by former Bolshoi Ballet dancer and resident choreographer for the San Francisco Ballet, Yuri Possokhov. The Chicago Tribune describes Bells as "passionately Russian, its various movements set to piano music by Sergei Rachmaninov...Possokhov embraces an often exhilarating tradition only to tease and tickle it whenever the mood strikes."

The company also performs Taiwanese-American dancer/choreographer Edwaard Liang's Age of Innocence, danced to music by Philip Glass and Thomas Newman. Liang drew inspiration from the 19th-century ballrooms of Jane Austen's heroines, where a glance or touch of the hand could ignite love, longing, and frustration. A world premiere by Houston Ballet Artistic Director Stanton Welch, commissioned by the Joffrey, closes out this sensational program.

Green Mountain Academy participants will be transported by bus to Jacob’s Pillow in the Berkshires of Massachusetts. The bus will leave from the Maple Street School parking lot in Manchester. Upon arrival at Jacob’s Pillow, the group will enjoy a buffet lunch followed by a 30 minute tour of the National Historic Landmark site. At 1:30 there will be a pre-show talk and then the matinee performance of The Joffrey Ballet at 2pm. We expect to return to Manchester by 6pm.