GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
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Partly sunny, warmer. We’re getting into the mid 40s today under air flowing in this afternoon from the south and a mix of sun and clouds. There’s a cold front coming through later that’ll keep things a little cooler over the weekend. Upper 20s overnight.
There’s been marked improvement on the drought front. No part of either NH or VT is now in extreme drought, though NH’s northern two-thirds remain in severe drought and in VT, the eastern parts of Orange County and a smaller sliver of Windsor County do, as well. Still, pretty much all of Vermont and a large swath of New Hampshire, including the Upper Valley, were on the upswing over the past week. In the links below, you can see where things improved by hitting the “USDM 1-Week Change” tab.
Mark Zuckerberg, take note! As Ted Levin writes about Erin Donahue’s latest trail cam video, “Overwhelmed by an urge to mate, every November bucks engage in cervid social media. The rub, a species-specific signpost that predates Facebook by ten million years. Rubs inform the neighborhood of a buck's intentions. They're meant to be seen and smelled and edited. Glandular forehead secretions—fifty different compounds—smear a rub. And, in twilight, when our vision falters, rubs glow blue-purple, within the visual range of white-tailed deer. Every passing buck leaves a note on the message board ... up to four thousand per square mile.”
Bradford VT businessman pleads to federal wire fraud charges. Matthew Strong, who owned East Coast Van Builds, ran the Green Mountain Reggae Festival, and organized music events in Bradford, had been charged with using money from van conversion customers for personal use and at least one music festival. Mike Donoghue reports (via the JO newsletter, scroll to bottom) that Strong collected deposits but didn’t deliver vans, “sent misleading photographs to customers to suggest that work had been done on their vehicles when no real progress had been completed,” and diverted van deposits to personal use. He’s agreed to forfeit at least $477,502.
Upper Valley school districts in NH hit with whopping health insurance hikes for employees. We’re talking a 19.6 percent premium increase in Lebanon, 27 percent in Mascoma Valley, 16 percent in Cornish, 25 percent in Plainfield, and an average 25.6 percent in Hanover/Dresden. All of this, reports Liz Sauchelli in the Valley News, is affecting users of SchoolCare, a Manchester-based “risk pool management provider” that serves districts and municipalities around the state—and comes on top of a $30 million bill due Jan. 1 to help the non-profit resolve rising expenses and a deficit. Sauchelli checks in with each UV district on how they might respond.
Bethel SCIMPIs plumb a mystery. The Bethel part is Transcend Engineering, a small firm that specializes in water. Among other things, it makes modules that gather data from beneath the ocean floor, called a Simple Cabled Instrument for Measuring Parameters In-Situ. And among other things, writes Isabel Dreher in The Herald, those instruments are now investigating “a large reservoir of fresh water beneath the ocean floor off the coast of Cape Cod.” You may remember CEO Stephen Farrington from the flood alert app he designed. He talks to Dreher about SCIMPIs—and why finding unknown reserves of fresh water may be vital.
SPONSORED: Mark your calendars for the fourth annual Winterfest Artisan Fair on Saturday, December 6 from 9 am to 2 pm! Hosted by Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital, this event showcases local artisans and their handcrafted work. Come enjoy a festive shopping experience and find meaningful gifts for everyone on your list while supporting our local community. Sponsored by APD.
The politics around the mass resignation of Woodstock’s Village Design Review Board. Following up on her story in the Standard last week, Emma Stanton talks with various players to understand more. Former chair Phil Neuberg tells her that the issue first came up after it had recommended nixing the Woodstock Inn’s move to demolish two homes in the village—then learned that while the Development board ignored that recommendation, it moved ahead with two projects the design board hadn’t seen. Meanwhile, municipal manager Eric Duffy says town leaders came to the conclusion that the practice of requiring applicants to go before the board violating state law.
How to tell a downy woodpecker and a hairy woodpecker apart. It’s not easy, writes Northern Woodlands’ Jack Saul in this week’s “This Week in the Woods”, partly because there’s evidence that the downy’s appearance has evolved to match the hairy’s appearance. Two clues: Hairy woodpeckers are larger and louder. They’ll both be around all winter, so you’ll have plenty of time to practice. Meanwhile, you can’t tell the the invasive winter moth from the native Bruce spanworm without very intimate examination. Also out there: oaks and beeches holding onto their dead leaves (and speculation on why) and the engagingly named maidenhair spleenwort.
SPONSORED: You’re invited to RVC’s 3rd Annual Unstuffathon! This Thanksgiving weekend tradition celebrates fitness, friends, and family. Work off that pumpkin pie in a group exercise class. Have a laugh in a pickleball match. De-stress in the saunas and hot tubs. There’s a raffle, prizes, and discounts throughout the Club, including 20% off in the Spa & Salon and up to 60% off in the FITshop. Come for a workout, stay for the community. Friday-Sunday, November 28 – 30. Day passes available all weekend AND SAVE $500 on new contract memberships! Hit the burgundy link or here to learn more. Sponsored by the River Valley Club.
Vandals hit trees at W. Leb’s Riverside Park. In all, six trees planted by the city’s tree advisory board were affected, reports Liz Sauchelli in the Valley News, with some “broken and destroyed entirely, while others were uprooted.” The park, which sits along the Mascoma River off Glen Road, is also home to the Rusty Berrings Skate Park. “We have an open investigation with no leads at this time,” Police Chief Phil Roberts tells Sauchelli. “Unfortunately there’s no cameras in that area and we have not identified any witnesses or anyone who has information on this.” The tree board’s Susan Johnson has tried replanting the three trees that have some faint hope of surviving.
The poet of tiredness. Please welcome back novelist, essayist, and writing prof Peter Orner to the Enthusiasms rotation. After finishing an acclaimed new novel (The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter) and then taking it on the road for countless readings, maybe it’s not surprising that he’d mark his return here with an essay about Cesare Pavese, the Italian poet, translator, and novelist. “He understood something fundamental about not only work, but life,” Peter writes: “yes it’s tiring, but somehow this tiredness also gives life to the stories we tell and tell.” Pavese used his poems to tell stories with remarkable concision: “It takes one or two lines, and we come to know his people intimately.”
Upper Valley Land Trust goes up with new app for its trails and conservation areas. The new Explorer app is a map-based guide to campsites, boat launches, parking, picnic areas, hiking trails, and more on the UVLT’s properties, from the Mary Elizabeth Kindcaid Woodlands up in Topsham down to Up on the Hill Conservation Area in Charlestown. Its designer, Micah Tilles, says he drew inspiration from a map in Massachusetts’ Essex County, aiming to give users all sorts of information about specific properties or trails, like recreational activities, property features, length of trails, and the like. It’s easy to use, and you’ll get all sorts of ideas for getting out.
Hiking Close to Home: Gile Mountain, Norwich. With family visiting for Thanksgiving, the Upper Valley Trails Alliance recommends a hike to remember. Gile Mountain offers 360-degree views of the Upper Valley from its fire tower, perfect for showing relatives what makes this region special. The trail is a moderate climb with two switchbacks, and you'll notice the benefits of trail volunteers’ work over the years: Between 2011 and 2014, UVTA and the Norwich trails committee installed over 350 stone steps on the trail to prevent erosion and make the climb more sustainable. The views from the tower are spectacular on a clear day. Parking’s limited.
Were you paying attention this week? Daybreak’s Upper Valley News Quiz has some questions for you, like: What change is coming to downtown WRJ’s streets? And what on earth is a “health closet”? Meanwhile, you’ll find both NHPR’s New Hampshire quiz and Seven Days’ Vermont quiz at this link.
UNH researchers pursue a way to get ripe tomatoes onto your table, even from a supermarket. Not by changing shipping logistics, but by changing ripening. As the university says in its writeup, “Once the stem snaps at harvest, a race begins between biology and decay, and when produce begins to decay, farmers lose income, grocers lose stock, and consumers lose flavor.” So Duoduo Wang, prof and ag experiment scientist, is delving into ripening and whether the genetic and molecular processes that govern it can be tweaked. “Our goal is to enhance ripening to extend shelf life and improve postharvest traits such as flavor, color, and texture,” she says.
As VT leaders get tougher on crime, there’s a problem: the state’s prisons are full. The call to crack down is coming from Gov. Phil Scott, among others: Last month, he came out with a public safety plan for Burlington that promotes more active prosecutions; last year, he pressed prosecutors and judges to lock up accused offenders. This month, though, the state’s prison population hit 1,648, the highest it’s been since 2019, writes Seven Days’ Colin Flanders, forcing corrections officials to ship prisoners out of state. But as prison staffing challenges continue and lawmakers press to keep VT offenders in-state, Flanders writes, pressure on the system is growing.
In VT, a national group presses a campaign to bring catamounts back. To be sure, there are people who’ll tell you that mountain lions are already back—or at least, that they’ve sighted one—but as Edward Helmore writes in The Guardian, “the apex predator was rendered extinct in northern New England in 1881 and the nearest confirmed breeding population is in North Dakota, 2,000 miles away.” Now, the DC-based “rewilding” group Mighty Earth is sitting down with Vermonters “and getting into what it would mean to live alongside this species again,” as the group’s Northeast director says. Helmore details what’s going on, and what it could mean.
Who’s the crab trap crook? Otters? Mink? Seals? Nope… and uh-oh. In British Columbia, the Heiltsuk, a Canadian First Nation, are dealing with an onslaught of invasive green crabs, writes Lesley Evans Ogden in the NYT (gift link). So they set baited crab traps in deep water, but when the traps were mysteriously moved and the bait stolen, researchers set up cameras. The video captured “the first documented instance of a wolf using a tool”—a lone female grabs the buoy and pulls the trap to shore with the attached rope, then scarfs down the contents. “This,” says one researcher, “wasn’t just random tinkering.” Wolves. Using tools…
Who’s on top? We’re talking musical artists, and bragging rights if you guessed The Weeknd (for the moment). Though on Eduard Lupu’s “World’s Top Artists” dashboard, things can change quickly. A software engineering student in Romania, about a month ago he created the dashboard as a programming exercise, tracking analytics from Spotify and Apple Music to see the trends in who’s getting follows and listeners. It’s a blast to play around with: Who’s gaining new listeners at a rapid clip (Wham!, but also Sinatra and the Eagles); who’s popular in, say, Dallas (Morgan Wallen) or Kuala Lumpur (Charlie Puth) or Istanbul (The Neighbourhood). This is one deep rabbit hole.
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from Wednesday’s Daybreak. If you want Wordbreak all weekend long, just use the same link tomorrow and Sunday.
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HEADS UP
Check out everything going on this weekend, from today’s livestreamed conversation between cartooning greats Alison Bechdel and Tillie Walden and tonight’s concerts by The Drop Offs, the Eric Mintel Quartet, Shawn Camp, and Triton, to the Parish Players’ cabaret, Artistree’s two days of staged play readings, and Bye Bye Birdie at the Chandler. Also, Saturday night’s belly dance showcase by the Raqs Salaam Dance Theater, which didn’t make it into yesterday’s email. Definitely no reason to stay home this weekend
Now. Let’s fly into the day...
What happens when you put two fleet-fingered guitar masters together on a ripping jazz/blues tune? Seriously, even if you don’t like guitars or jazz or blues or an infectious tune or finding it impossible to sit still as you listen, just watching the unspoken conversation between German jazz guitarist Joscho Stephan and Italian prodigy Matteo Mancuso is riveting. It’s a lift as we head toward the weekend. (Thanks, MR!)
See you Monday for CoffeeBreak.
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