IT'S FRIDAY, UPPER VALLEY!
I think I'm going to have to stop reading Daybreak, because this is getting depressing. No, wait! That was a joke! Except for the weather part. How many ways can we say "rain?" There's "drizzle," "showers," "spitting".... So today, some or all of the above, mostly after noon, this time a gift from the Great Lakes. Highs in the low 50s. Tomorrow, dryer and warmer but cloudy... then just a passing blip on Sunday before both warmth and sun at the start of next week. Can't even imagine. Stern's Quality Produce announces reopening. Bet you thought this was never going to happen, but they'll open the doors to the public next Friday, May 10, at 10 am. Lot of "likes" on that FB post...Is this the start of a trend? Lucky's to charge for single-use cups. Starting May 20, the café and bakery on the square in Lebanon will add on a cool 25 cents if you get your coffee (or whatever) to go in a single-use cup. "We want to encourage reusable vessels as part of a paradigm shift," writes owner Deb Shinnlinger. "Climate change is real, looming and scary. It’s businesses like us that can make the most difference by taking a stand." On their FB page (that's the link above) you'll find a graphic pointing out they've gone through 85,000 hot cups since opening, and that most of those on the market are neither compostable nor recyclable.Two former students join lawsuit against Dartmouth over sexual misconduct allegations. The suit was filed last fall, charging the college with ignoring years of evidence of abusive conduct by three psychology and brain sciences professors. The new plaintiffs are a former undergrad and a former post-doc, who detail unwanted sexual advances and coerced sex dating back to 2003 in one case, and 2012-13 in the other.ValleyNet to be run by former chief of VT's dept. of public service. Chris Recchia, who also happens to own Randolph's High Fields Farm, headed up the department from 2012 to 2017. ValleyNet designs, builds, and maintains ECFiber's and Lyme Fiber's networks, and Recchia will take over at a time when ECFiber's approach to building community-run high-speed internet has become a model in both states. “We look forward to having Chris on board, as soon as he finishes weaning the bottle-fed lamb that currently follows him everywhere,” says ValleyNet board chair Stan Williams.You know the "Yield" sign at the interchange as you go from I-89 north to I-91 north? Of course you do. It's the bane of our existence. There's a full-on debate over on FB about it: Mergers who despise the people who stop instead of merely slowing down, the stoppers insisting it's safer, and everyone ragging on the speeders who come close to causing accidents. "I feel confident that spot is used as a 'how not to' example in civil engineering classes somewhere," says a poster named Tris Wykes.There's a full day of talk about art and artists at the Hood today. Artists whose work is on display at the newly expanded and reopened museum will be talking about global contemporary art, about photography and its multiplying techniques and approaches, about painting, and, at the end of the day, about art and social justice. Followed by an open house and then a reception.Local startup College Pulse lands $1.5 million in seed funding. The company, begun by two Dartmouth students and nurtured at the college's DALI Lab, is developing an analytics platform to track and predict the opinions, interests and buying behavior of college students. It landed the funding after participating in Y Combinator, the Silicon Valley-based startup "accelerator."Bon Appétit gives a shout-out to Fable Farm cider. They're the Barnard fermentory who also happen to host Feast & Field. "I used to be a beer guy," writer Alex Delany says at the top of his piece about the whole merging beer/wine/cider trend. "On a trip to Vermont a few years ago, I was introduced to Fable Farm, and I pulled a U-turn on the whole 'cider is just sweet boozy apple juice' thing." There's lots more detail on lots more cider/wines as well.Dartmouth is going to hold a set of public meetings in upcoming weeks about its new master plan. The college is in the midst of figuring out its physical future, with issues on the table like potential expansion north, the buildout of its west end, finding a home for its new Arthur L. Irving Institute for Energy and Society, and finding a location for a proposed biomass plant to replace its downtown oil-burning plant. The meetings will be at Filene Auditorium next Thursday and May 22 (that one's specifically on the biomass plant) and at a "town hall" on Tuesday the 14th in Spaulding. (VN, subscription reqd)Did you know that the oldest airport in VT is in Springfield? Or that Woodstock has six church bells crafted by Paul Revere? Just in time for hitting the road (though maybe wait a week), the Center for Research on Vermont is out with an intriguing little spotlight on the various town historical societies and moments of note around the state. The US's first storage freezer in Williston, pipe organs in Brattleboro, wooly mammoth tusk in Mount Holly... You're just itching to go explore, right?Retail marijuana sales move forward in VT. The House Government Operations Committee voted last night to advance a bill that would open up a regulated pot market in the state. The measure also creates a saliva-testing protocol for police to check impaired driving, and requires a community vote before any retail pot shops can open in a town or city. There are major differences with the Senate-passed version. NH House votes to expand child protection agency. The Dept of Children, Youth and Families would gain 77 new positions at a cost of $8.6 million. The Senate has already passed its version, and the measure now heads to Gov. Chris Sununu's desk. Sununu had proposed 62 new positions, but only funded 26 of them to start.Just a head's up -- literally -- about this weekend. If you're a night-sky aficionado you may already know about the Eta Aquariid meteor shower, but for the rest of us: They come from the constellation Aquarius every year around this time. And this may be our last chance for a decent shower this year, because it's going to be at or near full moon for the Perseids and the Geminids. Best viewing time, Sunday 3-4:30 a.m. You setting the alarm? Thanks for the tip to Jonathan F.TONIGHT? I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHERE TO BEGINFor one thing, there's just so much music around. Della Mae, the brazen Grammy-nominated bluegrass band with former local Celia Woodsmith (you may also know her other band, Say Darling) is at the Chandler. Annemieke and Jeremiah McLane, along with soprano Mary Bonhag and bassist Evan Premo, are doing "Paris," an evening of Couperin, Debussy, Poulenc, and French café music, at the United Church of Strafford. Veteran folk legend Bill Staines (River, A Place in the Choir (that would be "All God's critters got...")) will be at Seven Stars Art Center in Sharon.And speaking of folk, there's the whole rousing Pete Seeger 100th thing. Tonight at the United Church of Christ at Dartmouth there's a singalong, though you might also want to sit and just listen for a bit, because the front-of-stage talent is pretty great. Annie Patterson and Peter Blood (who created the Rise Up Singing songbook) and Seeger collaborators Charlie King and Magpie will be leading everyone. It's all a benefit for the United Valley Interfaith Project's work on economic justice and support for immigrants. The VN's David Corriveau has a writeup on this and on tomorrow night's Guy Davis concert at the Briggs.Meanwhile, the Unitarian-Universalist Congregation of the Upper Valley will be showing Norwich filmmaker Signe Taylor's It's Criminal. The 2017 film is a documentary about incarcerated women and Dartmouth students who set out to write and perform a play together, but of course it's about much more than that. All of which will get explored afterward by a panel including Ivy Schweitzer, the Dartmouth prof who got the whole thing going, and Charlotte Rankin, one of the (now-former) inmates in the film. Starts at 7:30. Then there's the Parish Players' Five Lesbians Eating a Quiche at the Eclipse Grange on Thetford Hill. The officers of the Susan B. Anthony Society for the Sisters of Gertrude Stein are meeting for their annual quiche breakfast, and, well, big things happen, entertainingly. Their motto, by the way: "No Men, No Meat, All Manners." With a quintet of veteran Upper Valley actors: Kay Morton, Perry Allison, Katie Kitchel, Memory Apata, Jenn Langhus. Starts at 7:30, runs this weekend and next.Whew. That was a long one. Monday will be shorter. Whatever you do today, do it with spirit! And enjoy the weekend. See you in a few days.
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