GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Today's a transition to tomorrow. Temps will rise all day, reaching at least the high 30s before nightfall. The day will cloud over, too. There's a high out in the Atlantic, a high up in Canada, and low pressure developing to the southeast sending moisture our way. The combination will bring a chance of rain late today, then higher temps and rain in these parts tomorrow, some potentially serious icing up north, and a threat of flooding over the weekend. Oh boy.Just a heads up that Leb City Hall is closed today and town offices won't be where you're expecting them on Monday. The building, after years of planning, is finally getting asbestos removed, a new heating system, a renovated city clerk's office, and some sporty new solar panels. While all that's going on, most city offices will be down the street at the old Citizen's Bank building; council will meet in the basement of City Hall. All this lasts to October.Bolaski pleads guilty, gets 7-15 years in Tamburello killing. It's been nearly a dozen years since Kyle Bolaski and a group of friends got into an argument with Vincent Tamburello at a softball field in Chester, VT that ended with Tamburello shot and bleeding to death. Tamburello had been chasing Bolaski with a splitting maul. After a decade of legal wrangling, Bolaski wound up taking a plea deal. “Neither of them planned to use lethal force,” Windsor Co. State's Atty David Cahill said. “This was a horrible miscalculation.” (VN)Hey you! Yes, you. Stay off the dang ice! They don't quite put it that way, but the folks in charge of the Lake Morey skating path, which draws nordic skaters from all over North America, say they've roughed out the trail for this year and this weekend's rain and warm temps could set it up nicely for the rest of the winter IF people keep away. Footprints and snowshoe prints will ruin it.Speaking of this weekend's weather, here's the Weather Service's updated map of the icing expected. It's still not going to reach here, unless storm tracks change. But if you have any plans to travel north, be prepared.Resort mogul comes to the rescue of Dixville Notch. Remember how midnight voting in tiny, four-resident Dixville Notch has been threatened by the state's requirement that at least five people live in a town? Well, Les Otten, who owns the Balsams resort (where the voting tradition began) has announced he's going to move from Greenwood, ME to become the fifth resident. “Having the New Hampshire primary without Dixville voting first is like having winter in New Hampshire without snow," he says."Man with Sophocles beard and chamois shirt posed among the supporters behind the candidate." Matt Taibbi is Rolling Stone's political reporter (you may remember him from his instantly classic line about Goldman Sachs a decade ago: "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.") He's been reporting on the NH primary for years, and just went up with his Ten Laws of NH Primary Reporting. That one above is #7. #9: "Your 'tiny Dixville Notch' story is filed from the Radisson in Manchester."“Next thing you know you’ll have to bring your own coffee mug to Dunkin’ in the morning in some towns.” That was NH House GOP leader Dick Hinch yesterday after the House voted to give towns the power to set their own single-use plastics regulations. The Democratic-controlled body also voted to require stores to charge 10 to 50 cents for plastic bags at the point of sale. The House has been on a roll with measures (an independent redistricting commission and a minimum wage boost) headed for likely vetoes if they pass the Senate.Scott signals rough sledding for regional climate initiative in Vermont. In a State of the State speech disrupted by climate protesters, the GOP governor made clear he's unlikely to sign up for the Transportation and Climate Initiative, the multi-state compact to reduce vehicle emissions. VT was one of the 12 original states negotiating the agreement, but in his speech yesterday Scott said, "I simply cannot support proposals that will make things more expensive" for Vermonters who have to travel long distances to get to work.OneCare Vermont to file for nonprofit status under state pressure. The accountable care organization, which leads the state's health-care reform bid, has been a for-profit joint venture between UVM Medical Center and DHMC. But on Wednesday, state Human Services Secretary Mike Smith told legislators that he wants the organization to go non-profit in exchange for $5.7 million in public money. If it can't, he'll impose the same transparency requirements, including public information on finances and salaries, as nonprofits face.VT legislators step into public records morass. You may remember how, last fall, the VT Supreme Court ruled that state agencies could charge the public for copies of records but not for merely viewing them. AG TJ Donovan interpreted that to mean that people taking photos of records could be charged; Gov. Scott and Secy of State Jim Condos disagreed. Yesterday, Bradford Rep. Sarah Copeland Hanzas, who chairs the House Cte on Govt Operations, held hearings on how to "clarify the public's right to access the operations of its government." Her Senate counterpart is looking into it, too.Okay, maybe not so fast on that freezing-air-to-energy project. In a piece in E&E News, John Fialka writes that VELCO, the company that manages Vermont's electricity transmission system, isn't sold. "It's an intriguing technology and holds some promise, but the jury is very much still out over whether this project makes sense for VELCO or Vermont in this particular context," says the company's VP of strategic innovation.Only one US soldier, a Vermonter, represented the US at the Austrian Military Sport Climbing World Championship. He almost won. Troy Anger's in the VT National Guard, and officially competes for the Guard-run Army Mountain Warfare School in Jericho. The championship attracted elite climbers from the armies of Austria, Germany, Serbia and Spain, and competition, as you might imagine, was fierce. The Free Press's Ryan Mercer recounts Anger's hair-raising (seriously, jump three feet off a toehold that can only get the tips of your toes?) trip to second place.
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THERE'S SO MUCH TO DO TONIGHT!
Tonight's the Wolf Moon, and though it's going to be cloudy (and well, yeah, a slight chance of rain) some of that light should still filter through. There'll be telescopes. They'll provide snowshoes. Starts at 5:30, but you should check the link a) to register; and b) in case they decide to cancel.
You know the drill by now: Time to go shed the cares of the world! Food tonight by Boloco, drinks from the Norwich Inn, music from the d.j. collective Booth. Even better, you can do some astronomizing from inside: the museum's portable StarLab Planetarium will be available, as will its collection of meteorites — just to help you figure out the difference between any old rock and one that's touched the void. Doors open at 6:30.
Over in Tunbridge, meanwhile, it's “Vernal Pools: Wicked Big Puddles, or Critical Wildlife Habitat?”
Here's guessing you already know the answer. Steve Faccio of the Vermont Center for Ecostudies will talk about these rich bodies of biological diversity. Tunbridge Public Library at 7 pm.
You know how effervescent a mandolin sounds on its own? So imagine three of them, wielded by Jamie Masefield, Will Patton, and Matt Flinner, who rank atop Vermont's talented corps of mandolinisti. They'll be playing everything from Bill Monroe to Django Reinhardt to J.S. Bach, and a bunch more. At ArtisTree, starting at 7:30.
The first is Northern Stage's main-stage readings of works in progress, starting tonight with Francisco Mendoza's
Machine Learning
, which won last year's Neukom Institute Literary Arts Award for playwriting at Dartmouth. Meanwhile, two ten-minute plays will pop up at Wolf Tree Cocktail Bar (Marisa Smith's
Dinosaur Woman
) and Piecemeal Pies (Ben Beckley's
Outside Time, Without Extension).
All free, but you need to make reservations.
Susan Apel has all the details at the link above.
In 2015, DeLanna Studi and her father retraced the Cherokees' Trail of Tears, the 1838 forced relocation that pushed them out of their homeland in the southeastern US 1,000 miles west, to Oklahoma. Studi wove that experience into a multimedia, multi-character spiritual coming-of-age/father's re-blossoming/oral history play and visual
tour de force
. 7:30 tonight and tomorrow.
Told ya! See you Monday.
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