GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Snow, drizzle ending. If it hasn't already. Mostly what fell last night was snow, but in some northern stretches there was freezing drizzle early this morning, complicating the morning commute. Whatever falls the rest of this morning will be the last remnants, as cold air filters in from the north and high pressure builds tonight. Otherwise, mostly cloudy today, highs in the lower or mid 30s, then down into the lower teens overnight. Winds today from the north.You can get a clear picture of where the snow fell from this Weather Service map. It was heaviest in a belt across southern VT and NH—though annoyingly, not so much right around here.But it sure did make things pretty. Especially at night, illuminated from below by the lights wrapped around a tree trunk, from Janice Fischel in Hanover.In parking lots and dumpsters, abandoned buildings and lone RVs, Lebanon seeks to count its homeless. Last Wednesday, teams of social service workers and volunteers fanned out to over 100 sites around the city, looking for people living without their own roof. The point, Jim Kenyon reported in the weekend Valley News, was to count them and to make sure they know the resources available to them. Kenyon outlines the history and impact of the annual "point in time" count—and he and photographer Alex Driehaus followed two teams as they searched for, and spoke with, people without a home.Plan to expand solar array at Thetford Elementary gets approval—but there's a hitch. As you may remember, the proposal by TES Solar to quadruple the size of the array owned by the school had been hung up over how much GMP would pay for the power it generates. As Li Shen reports in Sidenote, VT's Public Utilities Commission has given the project a go-ahead, but at a rate lower than the developers had sought. Now, Li writes, there's a remaining question: about TES Solar's ability to distribute electricity to low-income households. The town energy committee is seeking applicants anyway.Hartford residents face tax increases, though it's still unclear how much. The big driver, Patrick Adrian wrote in the VN over the weekend, is taxes to pay for the $52.4 million budget sent to the voters by the school board last week—the town will see a 42 percent increase in the homestead tax rate thanks to its grand list being out of step with the market value of homes in town; at the same time, school board members are hopeful that the blow will be softened significantly by a 5 percent cap in Act 127, though the specifics remain uncertain. Hartford is also seeking a $21 million school renovation bond.It was a busy weekend on the police scanners. Among other things...
In Claremont, a teenager was shot early yesterday morning after he confronted a man stealing from a car on Front Street. The teen, whose name hasn't been released, was struck in the shoulder; he's in stable but serious condition at DHMC. Police tracked down and arrested a 24-year-old Claremont man, and say that they anticipate "that more arrests and more charges are imminent." WMUR reports.
In Randolph, a 40-year-old Randolph man was arrested late Saturday night on attempted arson charges after the state police received a call "advising of a male trying to make entry into a dwelling, carrying a flammable device" and, according to the VSP report, trying to light a fire. Officers found him at his home, and took him to Southern State Correctional Facility.
And in Londonderry, VT, state police were called in the the backcountry near the Magic Mountain Ski Area Saturday night after a 60-year-old southern VT man collapsed during a snowshoe with a group. "Lifesaving efforts by bystanders and the Magic Mountain Ski Patrol were unsuccessful," the VSP reports, and he was pronounced dead by EMS responders. Police are withholding the man's name until next of kin can be notifified.
The health club chain, which began in Dover, NH and now has over 2,500 locations worldwide, is slated to open the new spot in the Upper Valley Plaza—also the home to Kohl’s, Barnes & Noble, Old Navy, Petsmart, and Five Guys—sometime before the end of the year, reports Patrick Adrian in the
VN
. Adrian spoke with two other local gym owners—Sean Kuit of Anytime Fitness and Marc Garza of Crom Fitness—who both said they were unconcerned about any competition.
Investigation into Springfield prison death finds medical staff "didn't know what they were doing." You may remember that in the days after 46-year-old David Mitchell died in the prison last April, several people housed near him came forward to report that he'd begged for help, and was seen only briefly by medical staff. Now, reports Ethan Weinstein in VTDigger, the state's Defender General has issued a report on Mitchell's death that finds medical staff didn't recognize or treat his case of pulmonary disease, and that nurses "bumbled around" as they tried to administer CPR and a defibrillator—though Defender Genl Matt Valerio says corrections staff "responded well."In NH, legislating got done despite the primary. Pretty much all the media attention recently was on NH's presidential primary, but as Ethan DeWitt and Hadley Barndollar write in NH Bulletin, it's not like the legislature shut down so everyone could go gawk. They round up some of what's taken place, including: Senate passage of a fast-tracked bill allowing schools to hire part-time teachers who haven't been certified by the state board of ed, which has drawn opposition from teachers unions as an effort to undermine standards; the Senate also agreed to a constitutional amendment enshrining NH's first-in-the-nation presidential primary status. Those, and more, now go to the House.Meanwhile, the NH House saw some entertaining byplay, too, last week. It came on a proposal to require that legislative leaders of both parties be notified if law enforcement officials are investigating a legislator thought to have moved out of his or her district. It's a clear response to the case of former GOP Rep. Troy Merner; the AG's investigation of his move went unreported by House GOP leaders for nearly a year. Directed by a House committee chair to address only the language of the bill, writes Steven Porter in the Globe's Morning Report, its Democratic sponsor described what had actually happened in the Merner case entirely in hypothetical terms, to onlookers' amusement.And the Twin States gear up for the eclipse.
NH tourism officials see the April 8 event as a massive opportunity” for the state, writes Hadley Barndollar in NH Bulletin, encouraging businesses to offer "eclipse lodging packages, restaurant watch parties, special menus, cocktail events, 'eclipse swag, and community gatherings in town squares." Meanwhile, the state's Dept of Safety is holding planning sessions with small towns on to coordinate local fire and emergency response, traffic control, cross-border communication, and other issues. encouraging businesses to offer,
And while similar efforts are gearing up in VT, so is a citizen-science effort to "capture a lengthy view of the inner corona of the sun," writes VTDigger's Erin Petenko. It's led by a recent UVM grad, Hazel Wilkins, who's part of a national effort during the eclipse. Some 35 teams across the northern part of the state—everyone from high schoolers to experienced astronomers, Wilkins says, is applying—will be trained to use solar telescopes to capture the data. Afterward, the project will donate the telescopes to community groups.
The Monday Vordle. With a word from Friday's Daybreak.
And to bring us into the week...Nora Brown was six when she started learning the ukulele in Brooklyn from a scholar of traditional American music named Shlomo Pestcoe. She began moving over to the banjo shortly before he died, and by the time she was a young teenager was turning heads nationally among old-time aficionados. When she was 16, she cut an album in the tunnels below her home—once used to store beer, now used by her parents for their cheese-aging business. Now Brown's 18 and considered a full-on banjo star. Here she is with Kristina Gaddy, both of them on gourd instruments—Gaddy on violin, Brown on banjo—playing "Happy Hollow".See you tomorrow.
Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Associate writer: Jonea Gurwitt Poetry editor: Michael Lipson About Rob About Michael
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