GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Sunny, gusty. There’s high pressure building in today, bringing both drier weather and winds out of the northwest, getting into the 20 mph range. Highs today bumping up toward 70, overnight lows in the low 40s, with things cooling down some over the weekend, clouds thesun tomorrow, showers likely Sunday.
Ah, Cuisses de grenouille. “If you hear a loud, sharp kee-ahh, kee-ahh,” writes Ted Levin about Erin Donahue’s new trail cam video, “you’re hearing a red-shouldered hawk (blue jays do a fair imitation of red-shoulders, but their voices are neither as loud nor as piercing). Birds of deep woods, the hawks favor bottomland forests, often near beaver ponds, where they drop from their perches onto mice, chipmunks, garter snakes, and frogs—even crayfish. Divided into five subspecies, only the red-shoulders of northern New England and northern New York migrate south—and not very far. Gone by mid-October; back by late March. This red-shoulder dines on frog legs (and torso)...”
Time for eggplant parm! In this week’s Edgewater Farm blog, Jenny Sprague writes that the crew spent the week getting the packing shed ready for inspection and that its floor is now “as smooth as glass…the farm already owns its own disco ball—every farm needs one—now we just have to locate some roller skates.” And Kitchen Sense writer and home chef Mitchell Davis offers up two recipes to make use of all the produce that’s coming in: eggplant parmesan (use “whatever convenience foods (jarred sauce, shredded cheese, etc.) you’ve got to make it simpler) and a grilled corn and napa cabbage slaw.
For third time, Randolph will try to get its library funded. As Wilder Grimes writes in The Herald, the selectboard has already gone to voters twice this year with proposed library budgets, only to see them voted down. So on Tuesday next week, it’s putting two proposals on the ballot: a basic library budget of $491K, of which $402K will be raised by taxes; and a request for an additional $38K, which the library had requested back in the beginning. The split vote, selectboard chair Larry Satcowitz says, is designed to make voters’ funding wishes clear. Grimes delves into the debate in town, what’s behind the library’s request, and what the votes might mean.
The Valley News starts to rebuild—but also sees another departure. Yesterday, publisher Rich Wallace announced that the paper has hired Allison Rogers as its new managing editor. She replaces Geoff Hansen, a 37-year VN veteran who in the spring moved over to a position with parent company Newspapers of New England—but then, on Monday, gave notice. Rogers, Leb born and raised, has a long history in the region, as a writer for the now-defunct Connecticut Valley Spectator, founding editor of the Lebanon Times, media relations coordinator at King Arthur and a similar role at Vital Communities. More on both her arrival and Hansen’s departure at the link.
Leb opens lottery for planned workforce housing. The five houses, to be built on city-owned land on Barrows Street, would be roughly 950 square feet on lots of at least 4,000 square feet, reports the Valley News’s Molly Hughes. The target price is $425K, which as Hughes writes, is a good bit higher than the original goal of $300K apiece—and may explain why prospective buyers’ interest in the project has lagged. The original plan was to create a cluster of cottage-style dwellings with a shared courtyard, sidewalks, and parking, but high construction costs forced the city to fall back on homes on separate lots. Hughes looks at lottery qualifications and more at the link.
SPONSORED: See what your gift buys. $30 is 15 cans of tuna for our Community Food Market. $90 is 25 dozen eggs. $275 covers a full week of food for our after-school program. The market is free and open to anyone who needs it. Every gift this Hunger Action Month is matched up to $25,000. Give today here or at the burgundy link. Sponsored by the Upper Valley Haven.
Norwich Grange Hall hits goal for renovations. Well, strictly speaking, it’s the Norwich Community Collaborative, which bought the run-down building in 2023 and the following year set out to raise $2.4 million to revitalize it. Now, as Liz Sauchelli reports in the VN, it’s reached that target through a combination of grants and donations. In addition to ADA-accessible bathrooms, it’s adding a commercial kitchen and restoring the building’s second-floor meeting space. Grange Hall board chair Jess Phelps tells Sauchelli they hope to reopen the building next spring.
A look at what two years of Russo Hall construction have produced. The new Dartmouth residence building on West Wheelock—eyed as it went up by many thousands of the region’s motorists—opened to students last week. In The Dartmouth, Jared Gonzalez Arce tours the apartment-style residence for juniors and seniors with undergraduate housing projects director Lindsay Walkinshaw. There are apartments (283 beds in all) with full kitchens, living rooms, and storage space. There’s also a “reading room,” laundry room, back patio, and bike rack with charging ports for e-bikes. The article also looks at the renovations to Fayerweather Hall. Photos throughout.
Rabies suspected in dead cat in Sharon. The cat, which died on Monday, “may have recently been in contact with other animals and humans while infectious,” the town says in a public notice posted Wednesday. And while the rabies diagnosis is unconfirmed by lab testing, “it is highly suspected that the cat had rabies and was likely infected by local rabid wildlife.” It was not vaccinated against the illness, though the law requires owners to have their dogs and cats vaccinated. In all, writes Sofia Langlois in the VN (burgundy link), there have been 46 confirmed rabies cases in VT, mostly raccoons; the Upper Valley has seen three.
Hiking Close to Home: Holt’s Ledge, Lyme, NH. One side is a precipitous cliff, fenced off to protect nesting peregrine falcons in the summer. The gentler northern slope is home to the Dartmouth Skiway. The trail ascends through northern hardwood forest along the white-blazed Appalachian Trail, climbing steadily for about a half mile, then continues along the AT to the top of the ridge, where the trail reaches a junction at the edge of the cliff line. To the right, the AT south continues uphill to the wooded summit of Holt’s Ledge. To the left, an orange-black-orange blazed side trail follows along the cliff edge to a clearing with open ledges and fine views.
Daybreak’s Upper Valley News Quiz. Were you paying attention this week? Because we’ve got questions! Like, why did DH make headlines in both states this week? And do you know the two Upper Valley roads that towns have once again opted to close for leaf-peeping season? You’ll find those and more at the link. Meanwhile, here’s NHPR’s New Hampshire quiz, while Seven Days’ Vermont quiz is here.
New report finds high reliance on seasonal foreign workers by NH’s tourism, hospitality, and landscaping industries. The report, by a New York law firm specializing in immigration, found that NH “has one of the highest concentrations of requests for H-2B visas in the country,” reports NHPR’s Jackie Harris. The HR director for one hotel chain says her company tries to hire US workers, but it’s struggled to find them, and has used the visa program to recruit workers from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. “If we can't fill the positions with U.S. workers, and if we can't fill those positions with H-2B, we will have to shut hotels down,” she tells Harris.
A look behind the curtain at performing arts this coming season. Seven Days’ culture writers fan out to tell the stories behind some of the highlights. Ken Picard looks at Samantha Bee’s “How to Survive Menopause,” coming to Lebanon Opera House in February. Dan Bolles writes about the Ragamala Dance Company’s Ananta, the Eternal, which is headed to the Hop in January. Chris Farnsworth covers Judy Collins’ farewell tour, which will be in Rutland in November but also at LOH in March. Mary Ann Lickteig writes about Gravity and Other Myths, the Australian circus troupe pulling into the Hop in April. And there’s lots and lots more, so get out your calendars!
Ecologists, evolutionary biologists, and zoologists offer “the visual stories behind their work.” Here’s a twist on the typical photo contest: invite researchers, not photographers, to show what's happening in the field. On My Modern Met, Sara Barnes has the winners of the 2026 BMC Ecology and Evolution and BMC Zoology Image Competition, which highlights “the beautiful diversity of our planet through the eyes of the people researching it.” Sritam Kumar Sethy’s “Window to the Wetlands” won top honors for its image of an orange-tailed marsh dart damselfly peeking through a leaf, and for the reality behind the portrait—the staggering loss of its wetland habitat.
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday’s Daybreak.
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HEADS UP
As always, check out the Weekend Heads Up for a full slate of things to keep you busy the next few days.
And for today...
The weekend’s coming up, so we’ll turn to Rochester, NY born-and-raised blues-rocker McKinley James, who spent an apprenticeship sweeping floors at Dan Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound studio in Nashville while learning from the Black Keys frontman. He signed with the studio this summer. Here’s his hard-driving “Hooked on You.”
See you Monday for CoffeeBreak.
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