GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Sun to start, then clouds and showers arriving. It’s the start of an unsettled week, with a series of systems coming through. The first is a cold front that sweeps in this afternoon and evening with an embedded line of showers. We’ll get up into the mid or upper 50s this afternoon before temps start to drop; rain is due after 5, and might end as some snow tonight. Winds could get gusty this afternoon as the front arrives. Lows tonight in the mid or upper 30s.
And a little foretaste. But not the frozen kind of snow. Instead, it was milkweed “snow” in downtown Lebanon, where Victoria Hingston’s grandkids had been hard at work.
There’s a lot of uncertainty around food right now. Want to help your neighbors? Need help? As you probably know, November SNAP benefits did not go out on Saturday. The issue’s in the courts, but even if it gets resolved today—even temporarily—it’s unclear when food aid might start flowing again. Which leaves the Upper Valley to help itself. The Haven’s Food Market has already been seeing sharply rising demand; so have LISTEN and other food pantries. All are offering help, and all need community support. At the burgundy link, you’ll find a set of links: Willing Hands’ list of food pantries, the two state food banks’ maps of groups helping out, and more.
At the Valley News, Jim Kenyon calls it a day. “With my 66th birthday approaching, I figure it’s time to put down my reporter’s notebook,” wrote the longtime reporter and columnist over the weekend. “This is my last column, which a fair number of Valley News subscribers—and former subscribers—will probably say is long overdue.” He adds that “meeting people who allowed me to tell their stories was the best part the job, but not always the easiest,” and runs through some of them: the parents of a Hartford Marine killed in Iraq; fitness trainer Wayne Burwell and his civil rights suit against the Hartford PD; and Dartmouth’s treatment of Outing Club director Andy Harvard after he showed signs of what was eventually diagnosed as Alzheimer’s.
And in an appreciation, former editor Jim Fox—the guy who hired Kenyon as a reporter and then gave him his column—writes, “In a sense, his columns held up a mirror in which the Upper Valley could see reflected its compassion and its complacency; its privilege and its poverty; its benevolence and its blind spots; its individual struggles and sometimes its institutional indifference. His most controversial work was both revered and reviled, but rarely disregarded by readers.”
Leb’s Storrs Hill to offer free skiing for second year in a row. The local ski hill, run by the Lebanon Outing Club, drew national attention last year for deciding to make skiing free to all. On Saturday, it announced it’ll do it again, thanks to the Jack and Dorothy Byrne Foundation. The hill has a long history, with its first ski jump going up in 1925 and its first alpine ski trail getting cut in 1931. This summer, the city approved a plan to expand the lodge, and the hill’s advisory committee hopes to create a dedicated learn-to-ski area and either renovate or replace the 50M ski jump.
“If, decades from now, my work still brings people a sense of ease and belonging, then I will have done it well.” That’s Norwich-based interior designer Ann Sargent, talking to Armita Mirkarimi in the VT Standard. Sargent’s getting inducted into the New England Design Hall of Fame, and Mirkarimi talks to her about her philosophy—she’s after comfort, not awe; her design goals—she likes “little surprises,” she says; and her love for lived-in buildings: “Very few people get to experience having stairs that are uneven. But in my mind, you lose something when you don’t have that patina and that touch of the life that a building or a space has lived with over time.”
At the Hood Museum, 12 exhibitions “that aim to acknowledge and expand upon the ways American art has created and shaped this country.” They’re in recognition of the country’s 250th anniversary celebrations next year, and take a look at everything from how “significant works of global art from historical cultures” came to Dartmouth, to popular culture in art, slavery, the depiction of labor in American art, visual representations of the American Revolution, Hollywood photography focused on musicals, and plenty more. The museum’s press release explains it all.
In Franklin, NH and elsewhere, arrestees in DEA sweep were “addicts, low-level dealers, shoplifters, and people living at a homeless encampment”—not members of the Sinaloa cartel. That latter claim was made by the federal drug enforcement agency in August, when it announced 171 arrests around New England, including 27 in Franklin. But an investigation by the Boston Globe found many of them were low-level offenders with no link to the cartel. At the burgundy link, the Globe’s Steven Porter talks it over with NHPR’s Rick Ganley. In the Globe itself (paywall), the father of a Franklin arrestee says, “I can guarantee that he’s not part of the Sinaloa Cartel. He isn’t a high-ranking member of anything. He’s high-ranking dumb.”
Health insurance premiums on VT’s exchange to double or even triple. The window for plans on Vermont Health Connect opened Saturday, and in VTDigger, Olivia Gieger writes that with federal subsidies for health insurance set to expire at the end of the year, families and individuals that had been able to afford it are staring at whopping increases—one family with a teen being treated for leukemia will see its monthly rate jump from $1,066 to $3,386.47. As a result, insurers expect to lose thousands of paying customers, and are further raising rates. “Policymakers literally call this a ‘death spiral,’” Gieger writes. For now, the state has a plan comparison tool.
Where the Nordic skiing elite like to train: Stratton, VT. It’s “the best place in the world to train,” multiple Olympic and World Cup medalist Jessie Diggins tells VTDigger’s Kevin O’Connor. Diggins, along with fellow U.S. Olympians Julia Kern and Ben Ogden, Canadian Olympian Rémi Drolet, and U.S. development team members have been there since May, hiking, swimming, biking, running… “I think of it as stacking bricks,” Diggins says. “Every day that you work out you add another, and then the weeks build into a really strong base, an incredible fortress of fitness.” O’Connor recounts the program’s history, talks to legends like Bill Koch and Sverre Caldwell, and checks in on training.
The Monday Jigsaw: The Westboro Rail Yard. As the Norwich Historical Society’s Cam Cross writes, “Building this roundhouse in 1847 was a big step into the future.” At his Curioustorian blog, he’s got Daniel Webster’s speech at the ribbon cutting, a link to a Wikipedia article on the Northern Railroad, and a bonus jigsaw.
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from Friday’s Daybreak.
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HEADS UP
At Dartmouth, “Finding Hope Amid the Politics of Contempt”. Doug Teschner and Beth Malow, the two local writers whose new book, Beyond the Politics of Contempt: Practical Steps to Build Positive Relationships in Divided Times, grew out of their work with the national organization Braver Angels. It seeks to do exactly what the subtitle says. They’ll be talking about it all today at 4 pm in Filene Auditorium. Free copies of the book to the first 100 attendees.
And to start us off for the week...
A little Bach partita from mandolin great Chris Thile.
See you tomorrow.
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