GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Sunny. It's going to be cold, with highs today not much above freezing and winds from the northwest, but we've also got high pressure moving in and clouds moving out and we should see fine sunshine all day. We're also going to see clear skies tonight, which will help bring us the coldest night of the season so far: down into the lower teens, maybe single digits in the coldest hollows.Water views.
A river's-eye look at N. Hartland's historic Willard Covered Bridge over the Ottauquechee, from Wayne Adams;
And a blue view across to New Hampshire from Kilowatt Park in Wilder, from Catherine LaTouche.
Support in theory for Route 5 bike corridor, but VTrans' plans remain at "step zero." As you remember, the state transportation agency is soliciting feedback from towns up and down 200-mile length state road, gauging support for a potential bikeway. But in the Valley News, Frances Mize finds that while town officials in places like Fairlee and Thetford like the idea, turning it into reality would take a ton of work. “Route 5 is complicated geographically, and in terms of regulation, the route meanders through a number of municipalities,” says Rita Sito, head of transportation planning at TRORC.Around the region, apartment projects are coming online—or going offline. Surveying Lebanon, Hartford, Hanover, and elsewhere, the VN's Patrick Adrian finds a mixed bag. Rising construction costs and higher interest rates have caused some developers either to downsize their plans—as with the Woolen Mill in Leb—or stall, as with a proposed 152-unit complex across from Colburn Park. Meanwhile, Twin Pines is bringing two Hartford projects to the market next year, and a new complex for Dartmouth Health employees is scheduled to open next month. Adrian looks at what's on tap and on hold.“We have a lot of work to do to really figure out who this man was, why he might have done what he did, what led up to this incident." That was NH AG John Formella over the weekend, as details emerged in Friday's shooting at New Hampshire Hospital, the state-run psychiatric hospital for adults. John Madore, 33, entered the lobby Friday afternoon and shot and killed Bradley Haas, a security guard and retired Franklin NH police officer and chief, before in turn being shot and killed by a state trooper. Madore had been living in a hotel on the Seacoast. There will be a vigil for Haas in Concord this afternoon.NH municipalities trying to make public records harder to get. Local policies and new guidance from the state municipal association, writes Annmarie Timmins in NH Bulletin, are making it harder for people trying to track or understand local government's actions. Based on advice from the municipal association, she reports, some towns are now requiring people to collect documents in-person during office hours—rather than emailing electronic documents. And some towns have tried to restrict right-to-know requests to NH residents only—in clear violation of guidance from the state AG's office.NH judge dismisses teachers' union effort to overturn Education Freedom Accounts. In her ruling, writes NH Bulletin's Ethan DeWitt, Merrimack County Judge Amy Ignatius countered an AFT-NH argument that the program violates mandates for state lottery funds, noting the complexity of tracking lottery money within the Education Trust Fund. She also dismissed claims that the program unlawfully delegated the state's educational responsibility, writing, "The state does not have an obligation to provide a constitutionally adequate education to children whose parents opt to provide them a private education."Extreme masonry. So, what's it like to repoint one of those really tall brick smokestacks? As it happens, Bradford-based Hutch Crane Services was on the job last month in Burlington with a 175-foot-tall crane to lift and maneuver a 4 x 4 metal basket carrying two masons charged with fixing up the Chace Mill smokestack, which towers over the Winooski Falls Historic District. And Stuck in Vermont's Eva Sollberger went along for the ride with masons Jonathan Brownell and Will Devereux—in spite of her own fear of heights. The experience offered epic views—and a fine tutorial on brick work at height.And a view back in time to 19th-century New England. A few years ago, a documentary photographer and photo preservationist named Terri Cappucci, who lives in MA, came into a collection of 4,000 glass-plate negatives of photos taken on large- and medium-format cameras. She recognized some central MA landmarks, and began restoring and digitizing the images—and has now given the collection to U Mass-Amherst, which will make the full thing available. In the meantime, though, Cappucci's got a number of the photos on her own site, which My Modern Met collects, along with the background story.The Monday Vordle. With a word from Friday's Daybreak.
And music to start off the week.It's fair to say that some of the most intriguing and adventurous exploration of traditional music is taking place north of the border, where a range of Québecois groups are finding inspiration not just in French and Celtic musical soil, but—it turns out—in Scandinavia, too. At least, that's what Nordri, a quartet of musicians based in Quebec City, is about: using Nordic roots music and its proximity to Celtic music to spark their own tunes. They've got a new album out, Échos des mers du Nord (Echoes of the North Seas): Here's "Saisons" off that album. See you tomorrow.
Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Writer: Jonea Gurwitt Poetry editor: Michael Lipson About Rob About Michael
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