A small but enthusiastic crowd was gathered in Tappan Square with some people decked out in skirts and capes and sporting their finest piercings, while others were dressed in everyday clothing. But everyone was there last Saturday to experience the Beltaine Festival, which Tim Sullivan, an Oberlin resident and part-time student who helped organize the event, called a “Renaissance-esque Fair with a pagan bent.”

The Oberlin Pagan Awareness Network has been planning since September to get the festival — which is its biggest event of the year and the one most open to nonmembers — off the ground. The Beltaine holiday is an Irish tradition related to the May Day festival that celebrates renewal, rebirth and fertility in the moment between the spring equinox and the summer solstice. (more…)

Though Vermont has a reputation for being tolerant and accepting, one local high school student recently learned that disrespect has many faces. And sometimes it can be scary.
The student, a 15-year-old Marlboro resident who practices Wicca, never expected to have her beliefs attacked in the form of an offhand joke.

“I told him several times to knock it off, but he didn’t stop,” said Gwen Williams, about a classmate who was quoting from a Monty Python movie. (more…)