GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
A heads up for this week: Daybreak will be off on Thursday and Friday, back as usual with CoffeeBreak next Monday.Still cold, mostly cloudy. In case you feel the need to keep track, today's the eighth day of below-normal temps—with another cold front moving in (despite which, it'll actually be warmer tomorrow). Low to mid 30s today, and winds out of the southwest will be noticeable with some stronger gusts possible this afternoon. Skies clearing tonight, mid-20s.Are these people nuts? Today's photo comes courtesy of Bradford Journal-Opinion photographer Richard Swenson, who was there on Saturday for Haverhill Park and Rec's Cold Turkey Plunge in Mountain Lakes and whose photo is in this morning's JO daily newsletter. More than two dozen people hit the water.NH Fish & Game asks public for any info on missing hiker. Yesterday morning, 20-year-old Emily Sotelo was dropped off at the Lafayette Place Campground in Franconia, from which she planned to hike Lafayette, Haystack and Flume. But last night around 7:20, the department announced she hadn't returned. With temps along the ridge nearing zero and 30-40 mph winds, Pemigewasset Valley Search and Rescue sent out three teams yesterday evening. Fish & Game is asking anyone who might have seen her along the route to call state police dispatch at (603) 271-1170.Leb school board votes to fund resource officer. As Patrick Adrian notes in the Valley News, the city's been divided all year on whether to keep a police officer in the schools, with opponents arguing it "creates an intimidating environment for many students," he writes. In a 5-3 vote Saturday, the board rejected a move to strip funding for the position from the schools' '23-'24 budget. Board members' vote came despite city voter's approval in March of a non-binding proposal to eliminate the school resource officer's position.In a week when food is on our minds... The VN over the weekend highlighted a couple of intriguing initiatives. With the disappearance of federal and state pandemic funding for universal free breakfasts and lunches in NH schools, writes Liz Sauchelli, the Mascoma schools and Friends of Mascoma have opened food pantries and make sure teachers are supplied with cheese, fruit and other snacks for kids who clearly need them. And in Hartford, Frances Mize reports, Willow Tree Community Compost is now stoking much of Sunrise Farm's compost—and keeping the food system highly local.The deer problem: It's not just lack of predators, it's house lots in the woods. In Sidenote, Li Shen notes that in some swaths of Thetford, beech saplings are the only species that are thriving; that's because deer like maple and oak—which are now ailing in the woods. Deer are causing other forest changes, too, including the disappearance of native wildflowers and of ground-nesting birds. Part of the solution, she writes, is for hunters to concentrate on does; but homeowners have a role, too. "Gardens, lawns, and clearing edges offer a very nutritious diet to deer, allowing them to breed more successfully."It's not totally quiet out there in the woods. One of the hallmarks of winter is how quiet things get outside once songbirds head south. But, writes Mary Holland in Naturally Curious, some do stick around, including Northern Mockingbirds, Black-capped Chickadees, and Northern Cardinals—and these days, the Carolina Wren, "whose range has extended north as our climate has warmed." An individual male Carolina Wren (they're the ones who sing) can have 17 to 55 different song types; she includes a link to hear them.“I think we’ll see no drama.” That's GOP Rep. (and now state Sen.-elect) Tim Lang of Sanbornton, NH, talking to NH Bulletin's Amanda Gokee about the remaking of the Belknap County delegation by voters this fall. Several of the legislators who'd most aroused residents' ire with their strongly held views on limiting government—which surfaced most notably in the bitter to-do over Gunstock—lost their seats, though in the Republican-leaning county some also hung on. Still, "I think Belknap County woke a lot of people up to the extremism within the party,” says GOP Rep. Mike Bordes. Gokee tots up the results.Questions swirl around Rutland County sheriff's deputy shot in encounter with Saratoga Springs police. Early yesterday morning, officers patrolling the nightlife district in that New York resort and college town heard shots fired, rounded a corner, and found two groups facing off, shooting at one another. They "commanded everyone involved to get on the ground and drop their weapons," writes Maggie Cassidy for VTDigger, but one man did not, and the officers shot and wounded him. He was later identified as an off-duty Rutland County sheriff's deputy. The incident stemmed from a barroom argument."I think one of the things we’re trying to do is provide an avenue for people who have lost hope.” That's Maplefields CEO and former US ambassador to Slovakie Skip Vallee, talking to VTDigger's Paul Heintz about the Charles M. Vallee Foundation and its efforts to fund long Covid research and serve as a resource for people seeking information about the illness. Charlie, Vallee's son, was a Defense Intelligence Agency officer who developed long Covid and, in May, died by suicide. “He was just the most solid dude and you could always count on him," a longtime friend says. Heintz profiles Charlie Vallee and his parents' work to help other long Covid sufferers.Yep, downhill season's started. Killington opened to the general public on Friday. Saturday, Okemo and Stowe followed suit. And yesterday, Mt. Snow opened its trails, writes Chris Mays in the Brattleboro Reformer. Among the other southern VT mountains, Stratton and Bromley plan to open this week. “It’s great to have people back on the mountain doing what they love to do," says Mt. Snow general manager Brian Suhadolc."Lavishly hydrated." That would be us, NH and VT, where rivers run "with wild abandon, often forming lakes that are called headwaters," writes Rishad Saam Mehta in Architectural Digest India. The twin states, Mehta tells readers, are a "treasure trove of discoveries" for anyone interested in architecture of the 19th century. He ranges widely, but is especially struck by the region's covered bridges and their engineering. "Because, just think of it, when these bridges were built they needed to just get pedestrians and carts and carriages across, a fraction of the tonnage that crosses them today," he writes.The Monday Vordle. With a fine word from Friday's Daybreak.
And for music to start the week...
Back in 2014, Nashville-based singer-songwriter Todd Snider published a short essay—more a poem, really—about stumbling on a group of freight-hopping "rail kids" hanging out behind a joint he was playing in West Virginia. He wrote:
they had a young woman about 20 some years old traveling with themsomebody told her to singand when she did i was so stunned by the song and the sound of itthat i called my wife and asked if i could bring her homeshe is here now and so is her dogand we made an amazing album on her just last week
That young woman was Sierra Ferrell, whose genre-busting blend of mountain music, honky-tonk, country, folk, jazz, and even tango—and her force-of-nature presence on stage—have taken her a long way from busking and homelessness.
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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