WELCOME TO THE WEEK, UPPER VALLEY!
Still warm, still mostly sunny. Though not as warm as it'll get later in the week. The weekend's high pressure seems to like it here, so it's settled in. Temps today into the low 60s, though we'll see clouds building in as the day goes on. Whatever winds there are will be from the south. Slight chance of showers overnight, lows in the lower 40s.Stick season? It's got its own appeal. It's a visually quieter time, but as this photo from Jay Davis along the Big Rock trail on Lyme's Grant Brook suggests, even in the woods views open up.In Norwich, school officials hope a fix for wastewater woes is on the horizon. For years now, the Marion Cross School has faced a wintertime dilemma when freezing temps keep effluent from filtering out of the leach fields on the green; instead, it's forced to the surface—which in turn has forced the school to collect wastewater and truck it out for treatment. After years of exploring alternatives, such as tying into Hartford or Hanover's sewage lines, writes Frances Mize in the Valley News, school officials have settled on an on-site "pre-treatment" system that would make overflows harmless.Randolph Union HS now faces lawsuit over volleyball-team controversy. Last Thursday, reports Alison Novak in Seven Days, lawyers from the Arizona-based Christian advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom filed suit against the school district and school officials on behalf of 14-year-old Blake Allen and her parents. The district had suspended Allen—the source of the WCAX story that broke news of the locker-room issue—for "verbal and physical conduct directed at a student on the basis of the targeted student's gender identity," as well as her father, Travis, from a soccer-coaching position.Coming a few summers from now: An augmented-reality app for Enfield's Smith Pond Shaker Forest. That's thanks to a $100K NEH grant to Dartmouth Italian lecturer Damiano Benvegnù—who, writes Matt Golec for Dartmouth News, is also an "environmental humanist." The forest, owned by the Upper Valley Land Trust, includes dams and a canal system built by early Shakers, as well as signs of Indigenous trails. “We want to give [users] the possibility to really connect, not just with the beautiful scenery, but with the deep roots that this environment has with the different human communities," Benvegnù says.Looks like this year's Winter Finch Forecast might be right. The forecast predicts which finches in the boreal forests up north might "irrupt" south because of a poor food supply on their home turf. And this year, writes Mary Holland on her Naturally Curious blog, it suggested purple finches might head our way because of a large spruce budworm outbreak that boosted the population up there. "The past few days have proven the forecast right and signaled the start to a large-scale [purple finch] irruption event," she reports. keep an eye out!Mt. Washington Commission approves 10-year master plan. At a packed meeting in N. Conway, reports Paula Tracy in InDepthNH, board members unanimously approved a 10-year plan for the 60-acre Mt. Washington State Park—a plan that does not touch on the highly controversial "Lizzie's Station" hotel project proposed by the Cog Railway for just outside the park boundaries. The plan does call on the legislature to fund an environmental assessment of the summit; some audience members charged that without an assessment first, the plan is meaningless. Union Leader (paywall) writeup here.UVM announces free tuition for students from households earning less than $60K a year. The scholarship program will begin with next fall's first-year class, reports Seven Days' Chelsea Edgar. The program, announced Friday by president Suresh Garimella, will cover the cost of tuition and the university's comprehensive fee for qualifying in-state students, Edgar writes. The Census Bureau puts median household income from 2016-2020 (the latest official figures available) at $63,477. Friday's announcement also said that, for the fifth year in a row, trustees agreed to a tuition freeze."I know the best places in Vermont to get ice cream. Ben and Jerry's isn't the only one." And 93-year-old Esther Farnsworth would know. When she was 90, she decided to visit all 251 of Vermont's towns. It took her 2 1/2 years, she tells CBS Sunday Morning's Conor Knighton. "I just decided I'd go." Knighton checks in with a piece on the state's 251 Club, which has kept its name even though, ever since Essex Junction became its own town, it officially has 252 towns. Visiting all of them, Congressman Peter Welch tells Knighton, "You get to see how much commitment is in each of those tiny little towns."Though for travel, you probably can't beat this: 8,435 miles from Alaska to Tasmania nonstop in 11 days. At least, that's what a young bar-tailed godwit appears to have just done, setting a new record for migratory birds, reports the AP's Rod McGuirk. The bird was tagged over the summer with a GPS chip and tiny solar panel and was tracked by Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Ornithology. Whether its somewhat roundabout course "is an accident, whether this bird got lost or whether this is part of a normal pattern of migration for the species, we still don’t know,” says BirdLife Tasmania's Eric Woehler.The Monday Vordle. With a very fine word from Friday's Daybreak.
And music to take us into the week...You probably read that Jerry Lee Lewis died at 87 Friday morning, after putting in several lifetimes in music. Though he'd been making waves ever since he began recording for Sun Records in 1956, his breakout moment came the following year, when he rocketed to international attention with his turn on the Steve Allen Show, performing "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On." Here it is.See you tomorrow.
Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Writer/editor: Tom Haushalter Poetry editor: Michael Lipson About Rob About Tom About Michael
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