GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
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Mostly cloudy, still warm, maybe some showers. The weather will remain unsettled over the next few days, as an area of low pressure takes its own sweet time getting from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Maine. We’ve got a chance of showers this afternoon and a likelihood tonight, as well as tomorrow and Sunday and even early morning Monday. Highs today in the mid or upper 60s, lows upper 40s.
In case you’ve been wondering: Yes, areas of drought in the twin states are expanding. In VT, 14 percent of the state was in moderate drought last week. In yesterday’s US Drought Monitor report, it’s nearly 32 percent, including most of Orange County (and the counties to its north). NH’s moderate drought area expanded from 33 percent to 40 percent from week to week, with the northern tip of Grafton County, Coos County, and the state’s eastern reaches, including the Lakes District.
“Before they sleep.” That’s what Lisa Grose calls her trail-cam video of two playful black bears, as they cut loose with the help of a couple of trees.
Advance Transit boosts Brown Route in Hanover and Norwich starting Monday. For starters, they’re adding a new stop at King Arthur Baking on Route 5, they say in a press release. They’re also adding a new stop in Hanover at Oak Hill/Storr's Pond, and will increase service to the Norwich Park & Ride at Huntley Meadow. “By adding two new stops and providing consistent, all-day service to the Park & Ride, we are making it easier for people to access jobs, businesses, and essential services,” says interim executive director Ashley Manning.
UVLists will revive Woodstock list. You may remember that back in June, after vitriolic posts kept popping up on the Woodstock list, Vital Communities shut it down—and never brought it back. Now, reports Erin Scott in the Standard, UVLists president Kevin Perron says it will return, “but emphasized that uncivil posts would not be tolerated.” It will join an already crowded field: Longtime list administrator David Brown started the Woodstock Community Exchange in July; it has 1,200 members. And Front Porch Forum has its own Woodstock forum, which drew members when the Woodstock list closed. It’s unclear when the new Woodstock Discuss will begin.
Orange and Windsor counties have new sheriffs. The elections cap off the kind of sagas no sheriff’s department would want to see. Back in 2022, George Contois defeated longtime Orange County Sheriff Bill Bohnyak, only to find when he arrived that most of the deputies and office staff had left and the bank account was near empty. He’s spent the last four years rebuilding. And in Windsor County, of course, outgoing Sheriff Ryan Palmer was arrested in January on various sexual assault and misbehavior charges. In The Herald, Darren Marcy takes separate looks at the election contests to replace Contois and Palmer.
In Orange County, voters chose Democrat Sean McRae, an assistant fire marshal for the state, over Republican Jacob Held, a sergeant in the sheriff’s office McRae will now run. McRae actually got his start in public safety as a dispatcher in the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, Marcy writes. Held, who said during the campaign that he’d continue with the department if McRae won, posted after the election, “I look forward to making the Orange County Sheriff Department better together.”
And in Windsor County, Democrat Claude Weyant will now get a chance officially to do the job he’s been doing as acting sheriff since Palmer was arrested. He easily defeated Republican Richard King, a lieutenant who oversees the Windsor department’s patrol division. “In what may have been the nicest campaign run this election season,” Marcy writes, “the pair agreed before the election that Weyant is kind of a self-described Andy Griffith. The candidates spoke respectfully of each other during the campaign and that continued after the votes were counted.”
SPONSORED: New Youth Pickleball Programs in the Upper Valley! Thanks to a generous donation from Paddleworks members, Paddleworks Pickleball Club is making it easier—and more affordable—for Upper Valley kids to get on court. New After-School Pickleball Programming begins Nov. 16, followed by a Youth Pickleball League starting on Dec. 3. Every participant receives a 40% grant-funded subsidy, with additional need-based scholarships available to help ensure cost isn’t a barrier. Learn new skills, build confidence and make friends! More information and register at the burgundy link or here. Sponsored by Paddleworks Pickleball Club.
In a region where dental care is at a premium, med student teaches oral health one elementary classroom at a time. Maureen Ng, a second-year student at Geisel, got started on her path, reports Sophie Levenson in the Valley News, when she was shadowing a doctor at DHMC and encountered “a patient whose whole body had been racked by infection. It had started in the person’s mouth.” Now, as part of a fellowship, Ng goes to elementary school classrooms to talk to kids about the basics, including the damage sugar can do. “I think oral health has been one of the most persistent and top unmet needs in our community,” she tells Levenson, who describes one visit.
In the woods this week: tamaracks. Well, sure, lots of other trees, too. But in “This Week in the Woods,” Northern Woodlands’ Jack Saul singles out the “famously deciduous conifers [that] give us a last, golden show of autumn color before winter sets in.” Then they lose their needles and, as a result, don’t need to worry about snow loading or “invest in thick, waxy coatings for enduring harsh winter conditions.” Also out there: puffballs, chipmunks, and blackberry seed galls, which host tiny wasps overwintering on blackberry cane.
“In my cupped hand, the snakelet’s body warmed, but his attitude remained frosty.” Raking leaves on Wednesday, Ted Levin writes on his Another Morning in Paradise substack, he revealed a tiny milk snake, “the width and length of a number 2 pencil. The snakelet rode the leafy cascade down … more free-fall than surfing.” It’s late in the year for “a non-basking snake” to be out, he notes, which is why he carried this one indoors—both so it could warm up and so that he could go eye-to-eye through a hand lens. “The entire time I held him, he held me. Mouth wide open, his tiny, recurved teeth anchored in my forefinger,” Ted writes.
Hiking Close to Home: the Lost Mine Trail in Chester, VT. This moderately challenging two-mile loop includes steep climbs, switchbacks, and a viewpoint overlooking Mt. Ascutney, the Upper Valley Trails Alliance says. The trail is open year-round and is popular for hiking, snowshoeing, and cross country skiing. It features the remnants of a historic abandoned mine that operated in the late 1800s and is one of only three known sources of Chesterite—an exceedingly rare mineral with no practical uses but that geologists and mineralogists like to study—in the world.
Daybreak’s Upper Valley News Quiz. Were you paying attention this week? Because we’ve got questions! Like, what notable accomplishment did a local Eagle Scout notch this week? And how closely did you follow election results? You’ll find those and more at the link. Meanwhile, here’s NHPR’s New Hampshire quiz, while Seven Days’ Vermont quiz is here.
Parents can wear politically charged wristbands on the sidelines at games, court rules. And at today’s state championship girls’ soccer game between Bow and Hollis-Brookline, several no doubt will. That’s because yesterday, U.S. District Judge Steven McAuliffe put an end to the two-year-long legal case that began after the Bow School District banned two parents from school grounds for wearing wristbands marked “XX” to a 2024 soccer game that included a transgender girl on the opposing team, reports the AP’s Holly Ramer. McAuliffe initially ruled in the district’s favor, but in August his decision was overturned by the US Court of Appeals on free speech grounds.
NH AG’s office says Tuesday’s voting was (almost entirely) disruption-free. In all, the office’s election hotline got some 277 calls that day, mostly about long lines, electioneering near polling entrances, and the registration of new voters at polling locations, the office said in a press release yesterday. It did not get hotline complaints about celebrities like Rob Gronkowski, Nicki Minaj, and Mike Tyson showing up at polling locations in connection with Turning Point Action activities—though yesterday, Gronkowski issued a statement denying any affiliation with the group, NHPR’s Todd Bookman reports.
Fighting the good fight. So… There’s this Italian chef in Australia. He worked for a restaurant in Brisbane that did its best to channel the Italian Riviera. But back in May, he was fired because he considered putting pineapple on pizza “an insult to his culture” and refused to do it—in the heart of an Australian region that, as The Guardian’s Joe Hinchliffe writes, reveres “the spiky tropical fruit.” “We had a large function come in, and they were spending in excess of $15,000, and the guy paying for the whole thing says: ‘Look, I need to get some ham and pineapple pizza,’” his former boss says. On Tuesday, the national Fair Work Commission ruled in the boss’s favor.
And we’ll finish up with the night sky. Back in September, New Zealand astrophotographer Brendan Larsen set up his camera in a field to take eight-second-long shots of the sky over Mount Taranaki, on the North Island. He wound up with 578 photos, and then spent 45 hours layering them and getting rid of the stars, so that he could reveal what turned out to be 14,000 satellite trails created by 1,400 satellites. Then he posted the photo to Instagram. He’s been accused of using AI, but as The Guardian’s Eva Corlett writes, he documented the whole thing on video. The story’s interesting, the photo’s mind-blowing.
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday’s Daybreak.
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HEADS UP
You’ll find a full weekend of events—seriously, there’s a lot to do!—right here.
And a reminder that the Norwich Farmers Market moves back indoors at Tracy Hall tomorrow, from 9-1. Coffee Fix coffee truck will be serving up hot espresso drinks outside, and inside there’ll be 30 vendors on site with fresh vegetables, meats, cheeses, baked goods, local crafts, and more.
Finally, JAM’s highlights for the week are here, from four of the short films that featured in its Halloween-o-thon last weekend, including the Special Needs Support Center-created “The Girl Who Cried Fox”; Lebanese journalist Kim Ghattas at Dartmouth recently; and musicians Mamadou Diabaté of Burkina Faso and Balla Kouyate of Mali with their differently tuned balafons.
And for today...
We’re going to let Massachusetts guitarist Lyle Brewer (Sunday afternoon at Artistree) ease us into the weekend with “Acorn Tree.”
See you Monday for CoffeeBreak.
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