A PLEASURE TO SEE YOU, UPPER VALLEY!
Well, look! Some sun! Sort of. Last night's snow, freezing rain, and rain have tapered off and low pressure's moving off to the northeast—though roads remained a mess for the morning commute. This afternoon should be much better: There's a slight chance of rain (snow at higher elevations), but even so, clouds will break up over the course of the day. Highs today should reach the low 40s, and winds could get gusty this afternoon as colder air begins moving in. Down to the mid or upper 20s overnight.Last night's heavy, wet snow left the region with some scattered power outages, mostly in VT: about 4,300 customers are out in Orange County, 3,500 in Windsor County (with the biggest concentration in Woodstock).
Here's a map for VT that includes all utilities (you can toggle between county and town tabs);
. So last Wednesday's first real snow was easily enough to get snow-person season off to a good start with Eliot Cougill's cheery creation in Lebanon, sent in by Shara Speer.
With contract on "Telegraph Building", Center for Cartoon Studies anchors itself even more firmly in WRJ. The school has actually been using the building at the corner of Gates and Currier streets since around 2007, writes Alex Hanson in the Valley News; now, it's reached a purchase-and-sale agreement with Consolidated Communications. Back in August, it landed a nearly $1 million federal grant to renovate the historic telephone building into studio and production space, a classroom, an applied cartooning lab, and more. A contractor is looking into contamination at the site.And speaking of contamination: "There seems to be no end in sight" on Westboro Rail Yard. That was an obviously frustrated Lebanon City Manager Shaun Mulholland, talking to the VN's Patrick Adrian about the latest hold-up in the city's plans to turn the old yards into a park: NH officials have backtracked on an agreement reached last fall in which the state would retain responsibility for dealing with existing contaminants if they have to be cleaned up, arguing that legal barriers stand in the way if the state no longer owns the land. State and city officials continue to negotiate a sales agreement.In Norwich, an ash comes down. It's unclear how old the large tree on Church Street was, but for decades, Demo Sofronas writes on his About Norwich blog, it had provided "some beauty, nice shade, sweeten[ed] the soil, and serv[ed] as a temporary residence for some birds, squirrels etc." But it had also rotted at the base, and recently, Pioneer Forestry took it down, piece by piece. Demo was there to capture the whole process in photos.With exterior walls going up and a roof scheduled for January, Randolph hotel takes shape. The project at Exit 4 has seen its fair share of setbacks, writes the VN's John Lippman, most recently the need to downsize as construction costs grew—and to find a new franchiser after Hampton Inn pulled out. The development is now planned to provide extended-stay units for area employers and for workers being trained at VSU-Randolph. "There is a huge housing shortage in the region, and these places are desperate to have places for their people to stay when they are here,” says co-owner Perry Armstrong.Suspect arrested in shooting of three students of Palestinian descent in Burlington. The three high-school friends, now students at Brown, Haverford, and Trinity College in Hartford, were visiting relatives of one of them over the holiday; on Saturday night, as they were out walking—two of them wearing the traditional scarf known as a keffiyeh—a man approached and, without a word, shot them. The incident attracted international attention, and yesterday afternoon, federal ATF agents canvassing the area "encountered and detained" 48-year-old Jason J. Eaton, who lived in a building at the site of the shooting. The Burlington Free Press rounds up everything that's known so far (via MSN).As Newbury lawsuit continues, VT plans temporary juvenile rehab center in Middlesex. It'll be at a state-owned facility that provided temporary housing for patients displaced from the state psychiatric hospital following Tropical Storm Irene, reports Will Thorn of UVM's Community News Service. A proposed spot in Newbury to replace the shuttered Woodside juvenile rehab facility has faced determined opposition from townspeople. Middlesex's selectboard chair tells Thorn, "Our interaction with the state has been totally them being courteous and trying to act like good neighbors of the town."In Bennington, the story behind "The Norman Rockwell Mystery." It involves one of Rockwell's most popular paintings, "Breaking Home Ties"—of a farmer seeing his son off to college. For years, writes VTDigger's Kevin O'Connor, the painting hung on display at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA, until it was eventually discovered to be a forgery created by the man who'd bought the painting in 1962, cartoonist Don Trachte, creator of the comic strip Henry. Trachte's kids found the original behind a panel in Trachte's old studio. Both are now on display in Bennington.And closer to home... As you remember—heck, maybe you were even there—the women's alpine World Cup circuit came to Killington over the weekend. Where Mikaela Shiffrin delighted a sort-of-home crowd by winning the slalom and taking third in the giant slalom. Link takes you to NBC's coverage of her second slalom run and post-race interview.The Monday Vordle. With a word from the regional-adjacent news.
And to ease us back into the week...Here are singer-songwriter Adam Melchor and the chamber ensemble known as yMusic with Melchor's "Moon in the Morning" in a "stripped-down" acoustic version produced by stories, a cover-making project by the funk band Scary Pockets. Whew. That was a mouthful. The music can speak for itself.See you tomorrow.
Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Writer/editor: Jonea Gurwitt Poetry editor: Michael Lipson About Rob About Michael
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