GOOD OF YOU TO DROP BY, FRIDAY!
Cloudy, a little cooler. That front that's been hanging around all week was south of us yesterday, then meandered north again overnight. It's actually going to get warm to the west of us, but cooler air is trapped east of the Greens, so we'll see mostly cloudy skies and highs at best in the low 60s. Down into the lower 50s tonight. Oh the times, they are a-changin'... Well, the leaves, anyway. Every day for the past month, Ben Gardner's been taking a shot of a row of maples behind his house, which happens to be near the Enfield Shaker Museum on Mascoma Lake. Maroon link takes you to their full-on splendor early yesterday morning. Here's what they looked like two weeks ago. Friday night lights... but no crowd. Octopus Athletics blogger Tris Wykes reports, via Facebook, that tonight's marquee football game between Lebanon and Hanover will go mostly unattended. Leb High School principal Ian Smith has asked his school's fans not to show up for the game in Hanover; Hanover students and fans aren't allowed either, except for two immediate family members for each player. (You'll need to be a member of the Upper Valley VT/NH group on FB to see the post.)Live in Hartford? Want to serve your community? No long-term commitment needed. Alan Johnson, who's been on the Hartford Selectboard the last four years, is moving to Montpelier, and announced Tuesday night he's stepping down after the Nov. 5 meeting. "I’m rapidly approaching a time when I cannot claim residence (in Hartford) anymore,” he said. The town's accepting applications to fill the position through town meeting in March. (Valley News)The rains aren't enough: Lebanon declares moderate drought. The city yesterday issued a "Level 1" alert, asking residents "to refrain from lawn and landscape watering and to limit the amount of water used outdoors for other purposes." There's an outright ban on watering between 8 am and 7 pm.SPONSORED: Solar is the "new king" of the global electricity market. So says the International Energy Agency in its recent World Energy Outlook. Renewables are the only energy source slated to grow this year, and are on track to meet 80 percent or more of the growth in global electricity demand by 2030. There are going to be winners and losers in the post-Covid, climate-changing world. To find out more, hit the maroon link or visit www.solaflect.com. Sponsored by Solaflect Energy.Boy, those NH engineers have a lot to answer for. In his latest Granite Geek post, David Brooks gets to wondering why NH is the only state in the immediate region that actually saw a net increase in energy use during the pandemic lockdown. A study using federal Energy Information Administration found a .6 percent rise, powered by a whopping 16 percent jump in residential electricity use. That compares to VT's 2.6 percent overall drop, despite a 10 percent jump in residential use. Brooks' conclusion? Engineers in southern NH "all stayed home, running all their computers 24/7 for remote work."NH gets pushback on proposed hockey changes. As you no doubt remember, Gov. Sununu has closed all ice arenas for two weeks, after health officials found 184 Covid cases directly related to hockey. At a hearing yesterday of the Governor’s Economic Reopening Committee, health officials talked about proposed reopening guidelines that include a PCR test for all athletes and staff. Parents objected, arguing that it would make their teams responsible for hundreds of people's health information, and that it would probably limit out-of-state play, since other state leagues don't require tests.As awareness of climate change in NH grows, gubernatorial candidates split. Sununu's made modest changes to state energy policy and supports the development of offshore wind, NHPR climate and energy reporter Annie Ropeik tells colleague Rick Ganley, but he's also vetoed efforts to move the state's solar capacity forward—many of them championed by his opponent, Sen. Dan Feltes. "There are a lot of state policy changes needed to enable that sort of transition to really happen in a way that affects people's lives and their wallets," Ropeik says, and they're points of contention between the two candidates.The forecast for VT: Heavy rains interspersed with drought, and some of those droughts could last years. Those are the preliminary conclusions of a UVM climate assessment due out next summer, which Seven Days' Kevin McCallum and Ken Picard cite in their in-depth look at the impact of "a water cycle increasingly driven to extremes." Water systems are focusing on infrastructure fixes to help with conservation, wildlife officials are fretting about dropping fish populations, cyanobacteria looks set to flourish, farmers are trying to adapt—in part by moving more growing indoors. Different wedding, but still... In the aftermath of a wedding on a farm in Cambridge, VT—up by Smugglers Notch—seven Vermonters and an unknown number of out-of-staters who attended have tested positive. The wedding was supposed to be outside, but a lightning storm forced it indoors. Staff reminded guests to wear masks and kept seating distanced at both the ceremony and dinner. “We have worked so hard," says Lauri Boyden, the venue's owner. "To have only had three [events], and still we end up in this position.”With eight Covid cases, St. Michael's College goes remote. The news came in a letter to the community yesterday from president Lorraine Sterritt, who said the shift will last through the week as health officials conduct contact tracing. "All in-person activities, including athletics, are also suspended through the weekend," she added. "Dining will be takeout only,”Even so, VT colleges look to replicate fall success as they prep for spring. As of Oct. 20, they'd reported only 51 cases—compared to over 300 individual schools around the country that have had at least 100 cases each. "Officials attribute that success to colleges conducting over 125,000 Covid-19 tests..., students coming from low-infection areas, and strict guidelines that students have mostly followed," reports VTDigger's James Finn. One big thing: Per state regs, schools will close for Thanksgiving and not reopen until Feb. 1 (or in Middlebury's case, March 1). 486 vertical feet up, down, repeat. Weather permitting, S. Burlington realtor Nicole Senecal will climb the I.B. Perrine Bridge in Twin Falls, ID tomorrow, BASE jump into the canyon below, land, climb back up, do it again... and again, and again. She's trying to set a Guinness World Record for most BASE jumps over 12 hours powered by human ascent, and to become the first woman to hold a BASE jumping record of any sort. “I drove 40 hours across the country just to be here,” she tells MagicValley.com. Her training regimen? Climbing Mt. Mansfield several times a week.Now here's a trail network! Not for the likes of you and me, though. It's for hedgehogs, and it passes through 60 properties—up ramps, down stone stairways, through holes cut in centuries-old walls—in Kirtlington, Oxfordshire, which The Guardian says is "home to the UK’s longest volunteer-run hedgehog highway." It's part of a national initiative run by the British Hedgehog Preservation Society (yes, I know: only in England), which has produced over 12,000 holes for the country's hedgehog highway network.
Last numbers for the week...
NH hangs on below the 10K mark for one more day: It reported 82 new positive test results yesterday and an official total of 9,994. There was 1 new death, which are now at 470. The state's current caseload is at 832 (up 34), including 21 in Grafton County (up 2), 8 in Sullivan (up 2), and 160 in Merrimack (up 6). Lyme has joined Hanover in the solid-number category, with 5 active cases each. There are 1-4 cases each in Lebanon, Plainfield, Canaan, Enfield, Grantham, Orange, Grafton, Springfield, New London, and Newbury.
VT added 15 new cases yesterday, bringing its official total to 1,987, with 211 of those still active (up 6). Deaths remain at 58 total, and no one with a confirmed case is hospitalized. Windsor County gained 1 new case to stand at 114 over the course of the pandemic, with 17 cases in the past 14 days. Orange County remains at 31 cumulative cases, 6 of them reported in the past 14 days.
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Today from 4-6 pm, you could think about heading over to the terrace outside the Nugget Theater, where the Hanover Improvement Society's doing regular Free Popcorn Fridays. With the theater itself shut down, one of the region's main chance-meeting spots has disappeared, but for the moment popcorn's not a bad replacement. Also, since the theater was also one of the society's main sources of income, they probably won't turn you down if you offer a donation while you're there.
And speaking of replacements: The Norwich Fair didn't happen this year, which has hit the Lions Club hard. Instead, they're offering a series of raffles: Proceeds from the Fighting Hunger raffle will go to food programs around the region, with the winner snagging a quarter side of beef; another will support kids' programs in Norwich, winner gets a children's bike; and the Vision raffle helps the visually impaired in the Upper Valley.
Starting today and running through next weekend, the Vermont International Film Festival has gone all-streaming. They're running a set of a dozen paired films, with accompanying discussion, focused on journalism, the media, and how the news gets covered. Everything from 1931's The Front Page to The Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords to this year's documentary A Thousand Cuts on Philippine journalist Maria Ressa and her work on human rights abuses under President Rodrigo Duterte. Tix are $12 per film or $60 for a festival pass.
And tonight at 8, The Full Cleveland is doing a livestreamed Yachtoberfest concert from the Double E in Essex Junction. There'll be a live audience there, but you can also, as they suggest, push the coffee table to the side of the room and dance at home. They do yacht rock, and in Junction mag, Colleen Goodhue has a full-on interview and description. As she says, "Hearing a yacht rock song on its own is good, but back-to-back the songs weave together to create a warm, golden blanket of good feeling." $7 for the livestream, $20 if you just have to bust out of town and go up.
Tomorrow at 10 am, Cedar Circle Farm in E. Thetford is hosting a workshop on making fire cider, which combines "the heat of garlic and peppers with the sinus-clearing powers of horseradish, along with other anti-inflammatory and anti-microbial ingredients" to make some powerful wintertime immune-booster. Double-check to make sure there are spots.
On Sunday at 2 pm, BarnArts brings its barnstorming tour of Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here to Lyman Point Park in WRJ. It's the last performance of its staged reading of the classic novel everyone used to think was satire. It's also a tribute to cast member Jeff Tolbert of Randolph, who played Doremus Jessup, a Vermont newspaper editor; Tolbert, a documentary film maker, died on a Randolph-area mountain bike trail on Oct. 15.
Finally, Sunday at 8 pm, Music For Life is doing an "Accelerating Change" online house concert, hosted by the Upper Valley Music Center and emceed by Liz Sunde. The concert will feature vocalist and actress Emily Musty Zanleoni, Twin Cities hip hop artist and producer GeNreal, and local mix artist DJ Sean, all of them teaching artists leading programs at the UVMC. Tix are pay what you can.
Let's ease into the weekend with one more instrumental switch: classical guitarist Tariq Harb, who grew up in Amman, Jordan and now lives in Montreal, doing Bach’s magisterial Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (which he wrote for organ), adapted by Brazilian classical guitarist Edson Lopes. Have a very fine weekend. See you Monday.
Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Banner by Tom Haushalter Poetry editor: Michael Lipson About Rob About Tom About Michael
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