LAST DAY OF APRIL, UPPER VALLEY!
So, you know, May flowers and all... Yesterday's system is hanging around, with a likelihood of rain all day and through the night before everything starts to clear out for a bit tomorrow. We'll only get up to the mid-50s today, and then as cold air starts to seep in, temps will drop into the 30s tonight—with a chance of snow mixing in overnight. Winds today from the west, with gusts above 30 mph in the afternoon.That was quite a drive... Coming back through Middlebury Gap from the Adirondacks earlier this week, Devan Tracy first spotted this statuesque moose along the road... and then, with ridgeline after ridgeline in the distance, the super pink moon—one of just two super moons we'll get this year. "Rescue rocks." Eddie's got them, and the rest of the residents of Lost Woods just have to deal. It's Week 22 of Lost Woods, as Lebanon writer and illustrator D.B. Johnson checks in with his next set of strips. Scroll right to see what happens next or left to catch up on previous weeks. And if you've missed a week (or more), check out the archive and synopsis behind the three little parallel lines at the top right.Water line break forces boil-water notice for Woodstock village. The break occurred in front of the town rec center on Route 4, reports Gareth Henderson on his Omni Reporter blog. Nate Billings, the Woodstock Aqueduct Company's general manager, first got the report early yesterday morning—water was flowing toward the rec center, creating a sinkhole. "There was a deep hum and rumbling, it was unbelievable," he says. Three water samples from different locations are being analyzed today, and if they're confirmed as safe the boil order can be lifted. The rec center is closed until at least Tuesday. "We’re looking for a book store to call home." That's what Emma Nichols and Sam Kaas, the new owners of the Norwich Bookstore, first told Penny McConnel and Liza Bernard when they heard the store was for sale, writes the Valley News's John Lippman. Nichols and Kaas are moving from Seattle and, writes Lippman, "sought to allay fears that their arrival would upend the store." “This is a great store. It doesn’t need big changes," Kaas says. In all, McConnel and Bernard fielded over 100 inquiries and held Zoom calls with "dozens" of possible buyers before settling on Kaas and Nichols, Lippman reports.Acclaimed Randolph newspaper publisher M. Dickey Drysdale dies. Drysdale, who was 76, took over what was then (and is again) the White River Valley Herald in 1971 from his father and changed the name to The Herald of Randolph. He was a legendary presence in town, driving the weekly paper to cover Randolph and its surrounding communities with both understanding and clarity. "He was really into seeing that Randolph was a thriving place, but he was also intent on making sure that the way that that happened was through good, honest news, an inspiration that drew people to him," current publisher Tim Calabro tells Seven Days' Matthew Roy. Calabro bought the paper in 2015.Hiking close to home: Amity Pond Natural Area. With mud season coming to an end, the Upper Valley Trails Alliance says the Amity Pond network in Pomfret offers "an excellent set of trails far off the beaten path." It has plenty of variety: sections deep in the woods, open areas with mountain views and benches that lend themselves to picnicking, stone walls, ponds and vernal pools, and multiple lean-tos for free camping. The network provides several loop options for various levels of physical ability from 3 miles with steeper terrain to an easy loop less than a half mile so gentle a toddler can walk it.Norwich will wait on hiring a police chief. Instead of moving quickly to replace former chief Jen Frank, the VN's Anna Merriman reports, the selectboard on Wednesday approved promoting Sgt. Simon Keeling to interim police chief for the next year, while town officials lead a townwide discussion of what policing should look like in Norwich. “The conversations are not going to get easier, they are going to get more difficult,” selectboard chair Roger Arnold said at Wednesday's meeting. "There’s always people, every day, asking, ‘Who can process my birds?’" That's UNH Cooperative Extension's Elaina Enzien talking to David Brooks for his Granite Geek blog. Just as in VT, NH has a shortage of meat processors. Things have gotten even harder for poultry farmers, Brooks writes, because a major state-licensed facility, Granite State Poultry in Milford, shut down earlier this year. Meanwhile, the pandemic produced a bumper crop of backyard poultry-raisers, who've been struggling to get them plucked and packaged.NH Senate passes bill to make public "Laurie List" of police officers. The secret list, explains the NH Bulletin's Ethan DeWitt, tracks officers whose supervisors have identified them as having credibility issues—and so may be a problem during a trial. Building on work by the commission established after George Floyd's killing last year, and after much negotiating among media outlets, law enforcement, and others, the measure would let the list become public after a six-month period during which officers could contest their presence on it. The bill passed unanimously and now moves to the House.Public money for religious schools in NH: State may test how far it can go. The state's constitution is quite clear on the subject, writes DeWitt in the NH Bulletin: It doesn't allow taxpayer funds to go to religious schools. But over the years the state courts have chipped away, and a pair of US Supreme Court decisions, in 2017 and 2019, have laid the groundwork for the voucher measure now in the state Senate, which would broaden what parents can use per-pupil public spending for. DeWitt explores the legal history and the arguments. If the measure does pass, he writes, it will certainly be challenged.Meanwhile, in VT, state board of ed ruling on religious school tuition leaves school districts confused. In the Valley News, Alex Hanson writes that for school boards, last week's decision by the state board requiring three districts—including two in the Upper Valley—to pay religious school tuition for district students attending them raised more questions than it answered. He delves into the legal maneuvering that has forced Vermont to grapple with the question.VT moves to phase out motel program for homeless. It was one of the state's signature pandemic efforts, and throughout the year has housed about 2,000 people. But state officials contend it's unsustainable, and have proposed to the state legislature that starting in July about a third of those residents would no longer be eligible for motel rooms. Those the state considers vulnerable would be able to apply for an extension—and keep applying if they can show they're seeking housing and working with a case manager, writes VTDigger's Katie Jickling. Businesses woo former Koffee Kup employees. As you'll remember, the company abruptly closed its doors on Monday, leaving 91 workers at Vermont Bread in Brattleboro and 156 at Kofee Kup in Burlington in the lurch. Now, writes Anne Wallace Allen in Seven Days, companies—including several around Burlington and one in Lawrence, MA, are interested in hiring them. This comes against a backdrop of a labor shortage as the economy ramps up: the state Department of Labor alone lists 6,000 open jobs.I don't even want to imagine how long it took to set this up. But however long it was, it was a lot longer than it took to knock this split-level domino extravaganza down.
Last numbers for the week.
Dartmouth remains at 4 active cases among students and 3 among faculty/staff. There are 4 students and 4 faculty/staff in quarantine because of travel or exposure, while 4 students and 6 faculty/staff are in isolation awaiting results or because they tested positive.
NH reported 298 new cases yesterday for a cumulative total of 94,676. There were 5 new deaths, bringing the total to 1,301, while 87 people with confirmed cases are hospitalized (up 3). The current active caseload stands at 2,610 (up 47). The state reports 173 active cases in Grafton County (up 10), 52 in Sullivan (up 3), and 222 in Merrimack (up 12). In town-by-town numbers, the state says Claremont has 22 active cases (no change), Lebanon has 18 (up 6), Hanover has 16 (up 9), New London has 9 (no change), Haverhill has 8 (down 2), Newbury has 6 (up 1), Charlestown has 5 (no change), and Newbury has 5 (up at least 1). Warren, Orford, Wentworth, Enfield, Plainfield, Grantham, Springfield, Wilmot, Cornish, Croydon, Sunapee, and Unity have 1-4 each.
VT reported 98 new cases yesterday, bringing it to a total case count of 22,824. Deaths remain at 246, while 19 people with confirmed cases are hospitalized (up 2). Windsor County gained 13 new cases and stands at 1,337 for the pandemic, with 80 over the past 14 days, while Orange County added 12 cases and stands at 734 cumulatively, with 74 cases in the past 14 days.
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At noon today, Hartford's Dismas House continues its speaker series on restorative justice with Jessica Brown, who's the supervising attorney in the Chittenden County Public Defender's Office. Brown has had a 23-year career as a public defender in both NH and VT, She'll be talking about the need for reform in the justice system and what it should entail.
And this evening at 7, the Chandler presents an online house concert with fiddler, guitarist, and banjo player Katie Trautz. Trautz, who founded Montpelier's Summit School of Traditional Music and Culture before serving a stint as the Chandler's director. In addition to Americana, Appalachian, and other traditional music, she'll be playing a new set of songs written over the past year. Show is by donation on Facebook Live.
At 7:30 pm, UVM's Lane Series presents Burlington-based, French-American songwriter Francesca Blanchard. She'll be bringing new as well as fresh arrangements of older songs (she went through a much-heralded shift from folk to indie-pop a few years back), working on the recital-hall stage with the Vermont Quarantine Collective (John Dunlop, cello; Brooke Quiggins, violin; Matt LaRocca, viola, acoustic guitar, electric guitar; Kyle Saulnier, double bass, electirc bass; Michael Hartigan, piano, keyboard; Ezra Oklan, drums). Tix are $20.
If you're not out tomorrow afternoon taking advantage of one of the few days with actual sun over the next little bit, at 4 pm NHPR and the Monadnock Farm & Community Coalition are bringing together four cooks and farmers who also happen to be storytellers for a broadcast version of “Stories from the Field: A Special Broadcast." They'll be offering up stories about about growing, preparing, advocating for, and above all, eating locally grown food.
In normal times, a Saturday in May would find the Hanover Conservancy hosting its annual Kite Day on the summit of Balch Hill. After canceling last year's outright, they decided to reimagine what it might look like. Working with Red Kite Candy in Hanover (of course), tomorrow they're launching a month-long "Create A Kite Challenge": You make a kite at home, bring it to Red Kite, where it'll be displayed (and you score some caramels), then at the end of the month drop by to pick up your kite and go fly it.
Finally, if you live in (or spend time in) Vermont, midnight Sunday is the deadline to get nominations into Seven Days for its collection of Vermonters who "went above and beyond" during the pandemic—a replacement for the weekly's usual "Best Of" effort because, writes publisher Paula Routly, "it still feels premature to be choosing favorites." They're taking nominations for everyone from grocery workers to health care workers and tech-savvy high schoolers who helped their neighbors, and from restaurants that "took takeout to a whole new level" to VT businesses that "pivoted the most to serve a greater good." Shouldn't be hard to make sure the Upper Valley is well represented.
It's Friday, so just a little jolt to get us through the day: Springsteen & the E Street Band, Madison Square Garden in 1979 just ahead of Bruce's 30th birthday,
Hey,
what else can we do now/Except roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair?
Have a fine weekend. See you Monday.
Daybreak Where You Are: The Album. Photos of daybreak around the Upper Valley, Vermont, New Hampshire, and the US, sent in by readers.
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