WAIT, IT'S MONDAY AGAIN?
Back to normal-ish. There's high pressure moving in, but also some weak systems meandering our way over the next few days. So today, for instance, it will be cloudy but calm most of the day, winds from the southeast, temps topping out in the low 30s. Then late in the day, a low from the Midwest will pass to the north, bringing a chance of some snow and maybe freezing drizzle. Down into the low-to-mid 20s tonight.Lease deal heralds possible wind farm for Claremont. A Maryland power firm has closed a long-term agreement on 800 acres on Green Mountain owned by a CT family. The company's focus on Claremont is preliminary, a spokesman tells the VN's John Lippman, though, "Everyone knows this is a windy part of the state.” One obstacle: The area's never been professionally surveyed, and property lines are uncertain. “I don’t know how a company is going to be able to put a wind turbine up on the mountain and say this is their property when no one knows where the markers are,” says an abutter.Norwich becomes latest town to opt for a community nurse. A group called Norwich Community Nurse, Inc, has gotten up and running and is looking both for funding and for the town's first "community nurse." The idea is an old one retrofitted for a more complicated world, providing a professional nurse who can help residents navigate the health-care system and supplement the network of volunteers already providing care, especially for elders. Lyme, Lebanon, Hanover, Thetford, Sharon, and Hartland already have them.Seed savers preserve Abenaki corn variety, part of effort to recover native seeds. Freelance writer Amanda Gokee takes a wide-ranging look in the VN at efforts, both local and regional, to preserve and nurture food varieties that have all but disappeared in the monoculture age. She focuses on corn grown by the Koasek band of Abenaki, and seeds handed down in Newbury, VT, for well over three centuries. Sarah and Charles Calley have been growing it for 40 years and say it's hardy, resists diseases and pests, and is "kind to the soil.”And Abenaki partner with Craftsbury's Sterling College on other native crops. Interestingly, VTDigger went up the same day with a look at a joint effort by Sterling and some of the people mentioned in Gokee's piece to grow Calais and Gaspé flint corns, Canada Crookneck and East Montpelier squashes, Penobscot pumpkin, and a variety of native strains of beans. In turn, says Abenaki ethnobotanist Fred Wiseman, the seeds have unlocked lost knowledge. “As we discover about the seeds, we discover about the cooking and all these things."One sunrise begets another. Remember last week's sunrise shot from Thetford? This one, by Adam J. Corcoran, who lives in Post Mills, is a little different: It catches what it looks like from Thetford Hill as the sun's rising over New Hampshire. Thanks Adam! (And DG for pointing it out.)Speaking of Thetford... It took two months for selectboard members to agree even on where the new (and now departed) town manager should work. You have to get through a thicket of Jim Kenyon's preoccupations as he tries to untangle what happened during the short tenure of Serena Bemis-Goodall as the town's first manager. The upshot: For a small town, the transition to a professional manager can be tough, and it exposes fault lines. (VN)And oh yes, if you were wondering: Northern New England set temp records on Saturday. It was 63 in Portland, ME, nine degrees warmer than the old record for the date. And 61 in Concord, 59 in Burlington. Lawsuit alleges abuse at NH youth detention center. The AP's Holly Ramer details a suit filed Saturday in which roughly three dozen men and women "say they were physically, sexually and emotionally abused as children at New Hampshire’s state-run youth detention center over the course of three decades." They were between 11 and 17 at the time."The people of New Hampshire will pay for Chris Sununu’s stubbornness." That's Boston Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham on Saturday, lighting into the guv's move to pull the state out of the regional Transportation and Climate Initiative. Her point: If other states agree to cut transportation emissions enough, TCI would raise about $6.25 billion a year, of which $120 million would come back to NH for clean transportation efforts. "Nothing would stop Sununu using that money to help rural residents," she writes. Regional gas prices may rise anyway, and outside the pact NH would get nothing."If this isn't peak NH I don't know what is." That's the comment/headline on a Redditer's pic of a highway sign in Manchester. I can't say anything more without ruining it.Zuckerman's website makes it official, even if he hasn't. Last week, VTDigger revealed that Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman intends to run for the Democratic nomination for governor, but Zuckerman himself would only say that he'd announce his plans today. Now Seven Days reports that his website got out ahead of him, declaring that he's in the race. Former Education Secretary Rebecca Holcombe has already announced.So, this is pretty fantastic. The Library of Congress houses a collection of 170,000 photos taken during the Depression and WWII for the Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information, including iconic examples by Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and Arthur Rothstein. Yale and the NEH have organized them online by location. At the link, you'll see a county map of the US. Click on, say, Windsor County, and you'll get to 449 pics of countryside, shops, workers, and "Townspeople of Woodstock, Vermont, discussing the severe winter on the street corner in center of town." (Thanks, JG!)
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Organizer Joseph Stallsmith writes, "The Hoot is a nice complement to the many open mics and jam sessions in our area: sort of a pub sing where each player gets to lead a song as we move around the circle." And it's a fine time to just grab a pint and listen. Starts at 6.
Vital Communities and Local Motion are sponsoring a workshop on how to plan and dress for a winter commute, what you need to know about snow and ice safety, and how to keep your bike clean. Indoors at the Norwich Public Library at 6 pm. No need to bring your bike, but register by emailing
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It's part of a series on Monday evenings put on by its business accelerator program, ReactUV. Tonight, Fairlee's All-Access Infotech, Bradford's Odell Insurance (part of the New London NH-based Colby Group), and Newbury's Housewright Construction. Starts at 5:30.
Ukrainian filmmaker Alexander Dovzhenko never lived to see the scripts for his three autobiographical films turned into actual films, but his widow, Yuliya Solntseva, took care of that.
Desna,
named for the river Dovzhenko grew up alongside in pre-revolutionary Ukraine, is "among the most ravishingly beautiful and poetic spectacles ever made," says critic Jonathan Rosenbaum. 7 pm.
Hey, don't lose your whole day to those Farm Security Admin photos! See you tomorrow.
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