GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Sunny, calm. We kick off a week of quiet, dry weather today with temps climbing back into the low 60s and few clouds in sight. That’ll change some overnight as a cold front dips its toes south from Canada, but it’s unlikely to produce much more than morning clouds tomorrow. Lows tonight in the mid or upper 30s.
The visitor. A healthy-looking moose on Friday, wandering through the yards of several homes along Route 5 in Norwich, just south of the Thetford line, from Doug Donaldson. “That is pretty unusual,” he writes.
On the roads. The pre-winter construction rush is in full swing, with several things to keep in mind this week.
For starters, you may remember that the deck planks on (in?) the Cornish-Windsor Covered Bridge are slated for a makeover: That work starts today and, weather permitting, the bridge will be closed to traffic on weekdays between 7:30 AM and 3 PM through the end of November while the work is underway.
Meanwhile, the bridge that carries Route 11 over the Connecticut River in Charlestown is getting inspected, also starting today. So from 8 am to 5 pm on various days this week, it’ll be down to one lane of alternating traffic. The inspection lasts into next week, but traffic shouldn’t be affected.
Finally, our old friend, the I-91/I-89 intersection is back. The I-89 South Exit 20 off-ramp is due to be closed for a portion of today while paving goes on. There’ll also be milling happening on the northbound Exit 20 off-ramp, but according to the City of Lebanon it shouldn’t require a ramp closure. However, NHDOT’s Jennifer Lane says, “Delays are expected in both directions on I-89 and at Exit 19 due to detoured traffic.” In fact, you can count on delays for much of the week: tomorrow (ie, Tuesday), I-89 northbound at the bridge over the river will be getting paved starting on the NH side. The Exit 20 Northbound on-ramp from the West Leb strip will be closed. And there’s more to come Wednesday and Thursday. Stay tuned.
Claremont’s public works department wins national “Build a Better Mousetrap” award. In this case, reports Liz Sauchelli in the Valley News, it’s not a mechanism for trapping rodents but a frame to hold the department’s culvert steamer on its trucks. The DPW uses the steamer in winter to thaw pipes and culverts, and before a crew of four came up with the design and built the frame, writes Sauchelli, they’d use a forklift or loader, requiring workers “to climb into the bed of the truck to operate the steamer, often during icy and slippery weather conditions.” Now it can be run from the ground, or workers can use a built-in ladder to get to it.
Hanover native’s feature film to screen locally and at NH Film Festival. If you’ve been a Daybreak reader for a while, you may remember Matt Golec’s 2024 story about the filming of Julia Coulter’s Road To L’Etape Du Tour in these parts. Coulter’s film—in which she plays a 29-year-old with a heart condition training for a mountainous stage of the Tour de France—is now out, and in the VN, Marion Umpleby talks to Coulter, director of two previous short films, about her own heart condition and about filming locally. The roads and hills of the Upper Valley, Coulter tells her, were "so much of a character” in the film. It’ll be at the Nugget on Wednesday this week.
It’s been an interesting bear week in Vermont. Middlebury was transfixed over the weekend by a mother bear and two cubs who got stuck in a tree downtown Saturday morning, unwilling to climb down while people were around. They spent the night and most of yesterday, as officials urged gawkers to stay away; eventually, they hit the road late yesterday. At the burgundy link, NBC5 has footage. Meanwhile, a sadder ending on I-89 in Brookfield, where a motorist was driving south Thursday night when a bear jumped the guardrail and headed onto the highway. The driver was unable to avoid it and the two collided; the driver was uninjured, but the bear died.
In Long Trail rescue, a reminder of conditions in the mountains. Overnight Saturday, a 19-year-old college student hiking the trail with a group became hypothermic, intermittently losing consciousness. The hiker’s companions were able to start warming and the Montgomery VT Fire Dept. Search and Rescue team then arrived, working overnight to improve things; the student was able to walk out yesterday morning. “This time of year can be perilous because the valleys are deceptively warm during the day,” writes Stowe Mountain Rescue. “Up at elevation it’s reliably cold, and darkness is falling earlier. There will be ice any day now. All hikers should err on the side of caution and carry more warm clothing than you think you’ll need.”
“This is the sound of a big butt log getting dragged out of the woods with a horse.” Even though the practice of logging with horses is two centuries old, says radio producer Erica Heilman in her latest report for VT Public, it has a place today: “Horses are great for sensitive places, steep places, small land tracts. And unlike a skidder, Ted”—that’s Cabot logger John Smolinsky’s powerful Belgian—”can pick up his feet when he drags logs out of the woods.” As Smolinsky tells her, he likes machines, but even a big horse is delicate next to a grapple skidder that can drag seven entire balsam firs through the forest. “You're talking about a 14-foot-wide swath of ground that's just like, everything's smoked.” The two talk over the job and working the land.
The Monday Jigsaw: Ye Candle Glow Tea House in Norwich. This week’s puzzle, writes Cam Cross, is of three Dartmouth freshmen in 1919, standing in front of the tea room on Main Street a bit south of the green. On his Curioustorian blog, Cam details the building’s history, from Captain Joseph Hatch’s home in the 1700s to tea room to Tuck prof Archibald Peisch’s house.
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from Friday’s Daybreak.
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HEADS UP
Sunapee’s Abbott Library screens The Wolf Man. Get your afternoon chills with Lon Chaney as “one of the earliest Universal Studios monsters” in the 1941 classic (which, among others, also featured Claude Rains, Bela Lugosi, and Ralph Bellamy in supporting roles). 2 pm.
At Dartmouth, “Free Speech in Polarized Times: Reflections on a Career Defending Flagburners, Communists, Palestinian activists, Christian fundamentalists, and the NRA.” David Cole, Law and Public Policy prof at Georgetown University Law Center and former National Legal Director of the ACLU, has litigated all sorts of cases at the US Supreme Court; he’ll talking about “the essential character of free speech in our polarized society.” He’ll be joined by his client, Mohsen Mahdawi, who will talk about his own current legal case. 3:30 pm in Filene Auditorium, as well as livestreamed and recorded.
The Darmouth Political Union hosts two former US education secretaries for a debate on “The Future of US Education Policy.” Miguel Cardona, who was Joe Biden’s education secretary, and Margaret Spellings, who served as education secretary for George W. Bush’s second term, take on what the future looks like for education issues at the federal level. 5 pm in Cook Auditorium in the Murdough Center.
And for today...
Let’s just get the week going with a group of people at the top of their art: Béla Fleck, Jerry Douglas, Sierra Hull, Mark Schatz, Molly Tuttle, and Stuart Duncan at Ryman Auditorium in Nashville a few years back, with “Strider.” Fleck’s new album of Ryman concerts, Live Heart, came out on Friday.
See you tomorrow.
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