GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Oh yeah! There's a tropical storm out there... But Elsa will remain off to east, and isn't going to be contributing much moisture to this region; the various flood watches have been lifted. Still, we'll get showers off and on most of the day, with a slight chance of thunderstorms this afternoon; at some point late today or tonight things wind down. High in the mid-70s today, low 60s tonight.All of which brings to mind the old saying, "Red eft at morning..." Usually we just see them from on high as we narrowly avoid stepping on them. In the Lyme Town Forest, though, Lynn Sheldon got up close. I know it's just an illusion, but doesn't that almost look like a smile?"How do you not get lost in the woods?" It's Lost Woods Week 32, and Auk and Eddie clearly have some time on their hands with nothing to do. As he does every week in this spot, writer and illustrator DB Johnson chronicles the Lost Woods crew's doings: Scroll right to move on to the next panel or left to catch up on previous weeks. If you've missed a week (or more), check out the archive and synopsis behind the three little parallel lines at the top right.Heads up: Sewer main break closes Leb's Packard Hill Covered Bridge. The depth of the main—by the Baker's Crossing Conservation Area along Hardy Hill Road—along with the amount of flow and rain in the forecast mean repairs won't start until Saturday. The bridge, a stretch of Riverside Drive, and the conservation area are all completely closed. "As of now," the city says, "there is no threat to the public water supply and water is safe for drinking."SPONSORED: Finding a Way Forward. Osher at Dartmouth's 2021 Summer Lecture Series begins next week, via Zoom webinar. The series examines vital issues confronting our country with speakers who include David Autor, William Frey, Julia Gelatt, Bill McKibben, and Douglas Brinkley. Matthew Slaughter kicks things off on July 15 by asking, “Is the American Dream Sustainable?” Each 2-hour webinar begins at 9 am Thursday mornings, from July 15 through August 19. Series tickets are $100 ($80 for Osher members) or $20 per person for single sessions. Sponsored by Osher at Dartmouth.A few seconds. That, grad students tell NH Bulletin's Amanda Gokee, is about how much time you have between when a rental listing appears on the Dartmouth Housing site and when it's snapped up. Things are always tough in the fall, Hanover Town Manager Julia Griffin says, but with study-abroad programs suspended and urban refugees flocking to the Upper Valley, "It’s the perfect storm of a housing shortage in a community that’s already got a housing shortage.” Griffin adds, “This community desperately needs the college to prioritize building 600-plus additional rooms." Gokee looks into the state of play."I just saw my peers drop like flies.” Hubert Galan-Vargas is a pre-med sophomore at Dartmouth, part of a cohort of first-generation, low-income students. The college, writes the NH News Collaborative's Kenneth Tran (via the Monitor), has made a serious financial aid effort for students like him—but adjusting to Dartmouth is tough. “We come in not really having a grasp on how to study properly and efficiently,” says Galan-Vargas. “We’re sitting next to students who went to the best high schools in the world; we’re at a severe disadvantage.” Tran explores the challenges—both academic and social.Two seats, five candidates. Hartford holds a special election on Aug. 10 for two selectboard seats, and in the Valley News Anna Merriman says that most of the candidates "have identified similar goals regarding reaching across ideological divides and establishing better communication and connection between the villages and residents of Hartford." She talks to most of them: town health officer Brett Mayfield, who's opposing former SB member Mike Morris; and retired teacher Mary Erdei, Dartmouth employee relations consultant Michael Hoyt, and frequent public commenter Lannie Collins,VT DMV's office in WRJ still in limbo. The agency announced Wednesday that it plans to reopen three satellite locations in August—in St. J, Dummerston, and St. Albans. But of its WRJ and Middlebury offices, it said only that it "is developing a reopening plan." All five have been closed since March, 2020. The DMV's Springfield location is open for in-person services by appointment only."Certainly enough drop right in the center for some whitewater." Following up on yesterday's item about the new whitewater park in Franklin, former Lebanon High social studies teacher Art Pease dug through some old course material and found an 1881 riverbed profile of the Mascoma River as it passes through Lebanon, with waypoints (a good number of which have changed their name) along the way. All in all, the diagram shows, it drops about 450 feet from Mascoma Lake to where it enters the Connecticut.Changes coming to CCBA courts. New England Sports Park, a company created by former Dartmouth and NHL defenseman Ben Lovejoy, newly appointed Lightning Soccer director Bill Miles, and former Leb High athlete Dan McGee, is aiming to construct an artificial turf surface for five-a-side soccer and a plastic surface for street hockey and other sports over two of CCBA's outdoor courts. “We’re always looking for ways to bring exciting things and ignite excitement around recreation and sports,” CCBA director Kerry Artman tells the VN's Greg Fennell. As of last week, the city had yet to issue a permit.Best coffee in Hanover? Dirt Cowboy, say News Quiz users. Though truth be told, the 30.5 percent of respondents who chose it last week were outweighed by the 32 percent who said they weren't sure which place is tops. Coming in second: Still North, at 7 percent. As for this week's quiz, you can try to remember the name of the new local restaurant-delivery app that's just launched... and, hmm, was it a dog or a cat that recently summited all of NH's 4000-footers? Want to be a kestrel host? You may remember the photo of those kestrel hatchlings from last week. They were in a nesting box installed as part of an effort by VINS to restore and protect kestrel habitats and populations, which have been on the decline. Those particular hatchlings—three female and two male—just got banded, says VINS research coordinator Jim Armbruster; VINS and other researchers are collaborating to understand their movement better and to try to gain insight into why the bird's numbers are dropping. They're looking to expand the box network this fall in preparation for next spring.Hiking Kinda Close to Home: Bucklin Trail in Coolidge State Forest. The Upper Valley Trails Alliance checks in with a 7.2-mile out-and-back hike up 4,000-footer Killington Peak. You will cross and parallel Brewers Brook, with chances to explore flora and fauna that change with the terrain and elevation. The first few miles are fairly easy, but the trail steepens over the final 1.5 miles or so. Be sure to read your map and note the unique intersection of the AT and Long Trail as you make your way to the best views. Use the Brewers Corner parking lot just off of Wheelerville Road in Mendon, VT.Peacham looks for someone to take over its community café. The effort to keep a community gathering place intact opened in 2014, after the town donated the building, residents ponied up to renovate and equip it, and tradespeople donated their services to make the actual work happen. Now the café board is looking for a new lessee to keep it running for two meals a day at least four days a week, according to a recently published RFP. Among the objectives: “Good coffee, good food, good company.” The board adds, "The biggest deal. People really love their Café." (Thanks, CD!)And it's not just Peacham. In E. Calais, writes Anne Wallace Allen in Seven Days, a community trust has raised $1.3 million to renovate its closed general store—and then will look for someone to run it. It's part of a trend around the state—think Brownsville Butcher & Pantry—of nonprofits looking to nurture the places that hold towns together. Along the way, Allen also writes that in S. Strafford, Melvin Coburn would "like to retire, but his children haven't shown much interest in permanently taking on the family's store. He thinks he'll probably put it up for sale in a few years.""There are so many versions of heroism for women that have not been explored." About halfway through her Author, Can I Ask You? interview with Charlotte, VT-based novelist and journalist Stephen Kiernan, Joni Cole asks him about his novels written from a woman's perspective. The 5,000-year literature of "male manifestations of heroism" might not be exhausted, he responds, but "certain ones have come up a few times." Cole and Kiernan talk about his WWII novels ("about ordinary, innocent folk caught up in something and getting in way over their heads"), hospice, and the craft of writing.If we'd just known it was that easy... Yesterday, the Border Patrol tweeted out video from Sunday—July 4, no less—of a car turning onto the Canadian side of the lawn belonging to the border-straddling Haskell Free Library in Derby Line, VT, crossing it, entering the US, narrowly missing a car as it turns onto a street, and then taking off. Agents caught up with it on I-91 and arrested seven people from France, Romania, and Canada. They were returned to Canada.Take that, Hampton Beach! Remember those photos of the sand sculptures over on the Seacoast last week? Well. Over in Blokhus, Denmark, they've just constructed the world's tallest sand sculpture—an intricately and beautifully decorated pyramid 69 feet high (beating the old record by nine feet) using almost 5,000 tons of sand. Its Dutch creator, Wilfred Stijger, topped it with a model of the coronavirus wearing a crown. Stijger got help from 30 sand sculptors—the BBC has a video of what it took.
Last numbers for the week...
NH reported 36 new cases yesterday, bringing it to an official total of 99,685. Deaths remain at 1,374, while 15 people with confirmed cases are hospitalized (up 3). The current active caseload is at 212 (up 17). The state reports 11 active cases in Grafton County (up 4), 6 in Sullivan (down 1), and 17 in Merrimack (up 2). In town-by-town numbers reported by the state, Hanover, Enfield, Plainfield, Grantham, and Claremont have 1-4 each.
VT reported 5 new cases yesterday, bringing it to a total case count of 24,445. Deaths remain at 258, while 3 people with confirmed cases are hospitalized (down 1). Windsor County saw no new cases and remains at 1,523 for the pandemic, with 6 over the previous 14 days, while Orange County likewise had none, and remains at 824 cumulatively and 2 over the past two weeks.
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Live music is back this evening at Skunk Hollow Tavern in Hartland Four Corners—popular dance band Sensible Shoes starts up at 5:30 pm, on an outdoor stage, with a mix of covers and their original tunes. If it's raining hard they'll cancel, so you might want to call to check: (802) 436-2139.
Also at 5:30 pm—and then again at 7—at Cedar Circle Farm in E. Thetford (or in the pavilion across the road if it's raining), local circus artists Liam Gundlach and Ripley Burns (you'll remember them from Circus Smirkus, CirqueUs, or the summertime streets of Quebec City) will present a new half-hour show they've created over the course of the pandemic. It's playful and humorous and features Liam's world-class diabolo artistry, Ripley's lyrical foot-juggling, and their ace acrobatics and hand-to-hand showmanship. Here's a YouTube preview. No charge to see it, but in the grand busking tradition, they'll be passing a hat.
At 6 pm, Pentangle Arts' "Music by the River" series continues with Interplay Jazz, which has been inspiring jazz musicians of all ages for a quarter-century now. The program will include a variety of original Fred Haas compositions and styles ranging from swing to blues to samba; it all ends with a blues jam. Musicians include a bunch of names you may know, including Sabrina Brown, Chloe Brisson, David Westphalen, Elizabeth Frascola, Michael Zsoldos and others. At Woodstock's East End Park if it's not raining, in the Woodstock Little Theater if it is.
Tomorrow at 6 pm (and again Sunday at the same time) at Lyman Point Park in WRJ, the Vermont-based Loom Ensemble is presenting its new dance/theater performance, “Twenty Twenty / Twenty Twenty-One: Dance-Theater for Collective Liberation”—as they describe it, "We are coming back together, to heal through song and laughter, and dance-into-being a more beautiful world." Created by Open Door's Kate Gamble, Sandglass Theater's Raphael Sacks, Pilobolus' Neva Cockrell, and Hanna Satterlee, it features an accomplished set of Upper Valley dancers and performers.
Also tomorrow at 6, musicians Peter Dionne, Paul Mylod, and Martin Decato—Peter, Paul, and Martin—will reopen the Canaan Meetinghouse for music with a mix of covers and original music. The show (as well as one tonight at the Green House in Warren) is dedicated to Decato's son George, also a musician, who died in an accident last fall.
Finally, Sunday at 6 pm, the new Friday-night (it was postponed) Weathersfield VT summer music series kicks off at Hoisington Field (sometimes called the Perkinsville Soccer Field) in Perkinsville. It's the brainchild of Springfield's June and Bill Brink, who wanted to create a new performance chance for local musicians who've been sidelined during the pandemic. Music Sunday by guitarist Bill Brink, with the Jamaican Jewelz food truck on hand to get you dinner.
A small departure today: music and science. John Boswell is a filmmaker, composer, and all-around video and sound artist who, as melodysheep, has created a series of videos that blend clips from science documentaries and lectures with music, animations, and some very slick film editing that Boswell creates himself. The result is a thoroughly enjoyable little journey through, say, the end of the universe or what space sounds like or, in this case—that's why it's in this slot—the nature of sound. Featuring Bill Nye, Yehudi Menuhin, and a slew of others. "We are like gods, building huge cathedrals of sonic beauty from minute, invisible physical forces that surround us," Boswell writes. Sure, but you can just groove out, too.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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