GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Showers off and on. That coastal system is bringing rain off and on to the region—more to the south, less to the north—with a likelihood this morning dropping to a chance this afternoon and evening. Otherwise, it’ll be cloudy and cool, with highs only reaching the low or mid 50s. Down to the mid 40s tonight.
Out for a stroll: A moose—with an admirable set of antlers—wanders by a trail cam in Grafton, from Lisa Grose.
Missing two-year-old in Dorchester found by K-9 rescuer. As temperatures dropped Friday evening, a large search team—NH conservation officers, state troopers, volunteers with New England K-9 and the Upper Valley and PEMI search and rescue teams, the Canaan, Rumney, and Grafton fire departments—all responded after state police and NH Fish & Game received a 4 pm call that the girl had wandered away. Shortly before 8, Jeremy Corson and his K-9, Freya, found her. “The first thing she says to me, like, ‘I'm cold, I think I'm ready for a bath,’” Corson told WMUR’s Maria Wilson. “And that just broke my heart. I'm like, ‘All right, let's get you home and have that bath.’”
VT officials approve Wells River water plan. Remember how the village has been hauling water to a hilltop holding tank after it stopped pumping water from its well in July, as a precaution after a nearby oil spill? In today’s Journal-Opinion newsletter, Alex Nuti-de Biasi reports that the state has okayed both of the steps village officials are proposing to avoid having to truck water up Roystan Ridge Road once winter weather makes it a challenge: delivering water from Woodsville to a tank lower down, then pumping it up; and installing additional filters on the village well. “Each has logistical hurdles, which is one reason the village is pursuing both options simultaneously.”
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Dartmouth edges Yale with field goal as time expires. With four seconds left and Dartmouth trailing by two points in its homecoming game Saturday, kicker Owen Zalc took the field—after having missed two previous attempts. This one was from 51 yards, with the score 14-16. “Zalc took four steps back, two to his left, and his kick passed through the uprights as time expired to win the game,” report Jack Zipper and Kyle Greason in The Dartmouth. “The crowd erupted as the players rushed the field to celebrate Zalc’s heroics. ‘I can truly say, I didn’t realize how heavy the linemen are until they all are on top of me,’” Zalc said.
“There’s art in them there hills!” Recently, the single-weekend Closet Artists show brought together the works of residents in and around the Thetford village of Rices Mills—centered on the community center just north of where Tucker Hill Road hits Route 132. As Li Shen writes in Sidenote, “Far from being unrefined and rustic, the works revealed a range of talent, ingenuity, and humor that was remarkable and refreshing.” Though the show is past, Li provides a full-on set of photos. “While some works were by recognized local artists, there were also unexpected names, residents who nobody guessed had been quietly making art,” she writes.
Nancy Nash-Cummings died as she lived: “clear-eyed and steadfast and determined. She was fearless.” That’s her daughter, Lucinda Walker, describing Nash-Cummings’ end Sept. 1, using VT’s Medical Aid in Dying law. In the Valley News, Lukas Dunford profiles the writer’s life, lived by “her own creed of being kind to people, to answer to needs that were apparent to her, to live in her community and do good,” as her friend Jean Burling puts it. Raising three kids as a single mom, she was enmeshed in the town, from helping found the Windsor Chronicle to teaching at Windsor’s Family Center—and eventually found fame as half the advice column “Ask Anne & Nan”.
Learning from dying ash trees to understand the loss of American chestnuts. As Molly Rains writes in NH Bulletin, scientists know that chestnut blight 100 years ago cost us an “autumnal chestnut crop that was nutritious for people and wildlife alike. They also suspect that the die-off disrupted tree-specific communities of insects and soil microbes.” But what impact this all had on forest ecosystems is unclear. Now, researchers at Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest are studying the unfolding emerald ash borer infestation in hopes of understanding its impact on organisms from microbes and fungi to plants and insects living beneath the tree canopy.
Trebuchet, meet pumpkin. Seems like a natural pairing, doesn’t it? Dave Jordan sure thought so. Sixteen years ago, he founded the Vermont Pumpkin Chuckin’ Festival, with five teams showing up with their versions of a medieval catapult—trebuchets were originally siege engines using a sling and a counterweight to hurl boulders. Some 300 people turned out. This year, writes Mollie Nicholson for UVM’s Community News Service, 2,500 spectators—including some from as far away as Georgia and Alabama—showed up in Stowe to watch trebuchets hurl pumpkins; the current record stands at 861 feet for the heavyweight version. Nicholson describes the scene.
New Englanders Are Fed Up With Leaf-Peeping Tourists Ruining Their Fall. Though really, the Wall St. Journal headline atop Jared Mitovich’s piece (gift link) casts too wide a net: Mitovich is focused on Vermont. Pomfret and Woodstock come up, of course. So do Reading and Huntington, which is grappling with parking issues at its Camel’s Hump trailhead. Across the river, the new one-way hiking trail at Artists Bluff in Franconia Notch State Park gets a fly-by. Then there’s Burlington artist Alex Bonson, who’s created collectibles with names like “Influencer Trespassing on Private Road” and “Leaf Peepers Blocking Traffic”.
Or you could opt instead to read the UK’s Daily Mail version, with its headline: “Irate locals living in plush foliage dreamscapes adopt cunning ways to keep fall tourists out”, which is based on the WSJ story but with photos.
The Monday Jigsaw: The World’s Only Water-Skiing Elephant. Queenie was one of the prime attractions at Bill Green’s Rare Bird and Animal Farm in Fairlee. Green and his daughter, Liz Dane, then 8, bought her at a pet store in NYC—a pre-arranged event covered by The Today Show—and in the 1950s and ‘60s, Queenie and Dane made waves water-skiing together at county fairs around the country, as well as on the Hudson, the Allegheny, and other rivers. The Norwich Historical Society’s Cam Cross has some old tv clips on his Curioustorian blog; here’s Dane’s reminiscence in Yankee about seeing Queenie for the first time after four decades apart.
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from Friday’s Daybreak.
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This coming Sunday, harpist and Upper Valley Music Center teacher Rachel Clemente and piper Dan Houghton (Cantrip, Prydein, and other bands) will perform together as If You Must Know at Roots and Wings. Here they are out in the woods of NH’s Madame Sherri Forest, with a set of three tunes to usher us into the week.
See you tomorrow.
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