GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Quiet today, less so tonight. The high pressure of the last few days is exiting east while low pressure is approaching from the west, but today things remain calm, albeit cool. Skies will cloud over as the day goes on, high today only in the mid 40s—which is about where things will stay overnight even as a front arrives bringing showers, wind gusts, and, for tomorrow, rising temps.Stripes at dawn. "Amazing shafts of light!" writes Jill Marshall about the sky the other morning over Meriden, NH.Fugitive in decade-old embezzlement case involving Leb firm captured in Miami. The case, writes John Lippman in the Valley News, involves $10 million allegedly diverted by Roberto Montano in 2014 from clients of Global Forest Partners, a firm on Etna Road that manages billions in forest industry investments. Montano, a Guatemalan national who's been on the run since, had told GFP he'd been using money they invested in teak plantations his company was developing for his own purposes instead. He was apprehended at Miami International Airport last week and will face trial in NH.The rebirth of the Mt. Cardigan fire tower, up close and personal. If you tried hiking the mountain this summer or fall, you're no doubt aware that there's been work going on up top—the tower's encased in scaffolding and netting, and crews have been at work since July. On Oct. 27 it all came to a head as crews atop the mountain—in typically windy weather—rebuilt the cabin atop the tower, timing it just right for a helicopter flying in a new roof at the end of an 80-foot cable. VN reporter Frances Mize and photographer James M. Patterson were there to talk to crew members and show the rest of us what happened.In Bradford and other VT towns, rising homelessness has townspeople searching for answers. For years, the Bradford Public Library has made itself available to the occasional homeless person who comes through, but this past summer about a dozen people were camped out there. “I don't want to tell anybody that they're not welcome here, but at the same time, it [was] definitely causing a disturbance,” the library's Gail Trede tells VT Public's Liam Elder-Connors. The ad hoc group Bradford Resilience and others in town are now looking into possible responses, Trede is taking courses on mental health and de-escalation—and everyone's wondering where the state is.Norwich grange hall now in the hands of nonprofit group looking at restoration, community gathering space. “It’s a great building in decent shape,” says Jackson Evans of the VT Preservation Trust, about the one-time harness shop on Main St. that the Norwich grange (now the Upper Valley Community Grange) has inhabited since 1916. “It’s just ready for new life.” Now, reports the VN's Liz Sauchelli, a community collaborative has bought the building for $1, with an eye toward taking on restoration work the grange itself—down to 15 members, 10 of whom are older than 85—can't handle. One goal, collaborative members say: bringing back the pancake breakfasts.Stories "are moving targets and they change every time we read them." So says essayist and fiction writer Peter Orner, who teaches creative writing at Dartmouth and now, thanks to Texas Public Radio, has a new podcast on short stories, The Lonely Voice. It's a spinoff from an occasional conversation Orner has had with Yvette Benavides, who hosts TPR's BookPublic podcast. In the inaugural episode, they talk short stories in general. "Give me a story that 'means something' I'm going to run the other way," Orner says. "There's such a malpractice in the way this is approached in academic settings."NH judge dismisses challenges to provisional ballot law. Back in January, a new NH law took effect requiring voters who don't have proper ID and proof of residency to provide it within seven days of voting—or their votes will be thrown out and the vote total adjusted. This means, of course, that officials would need to track how individual voters cast their provisional ballots. Voters and advocacy groups challenged the law in court, but on Friday, reports the AP's Holly Ramer, a Merrimack County judge said the plaintiffs didn't have standing because they're already registered to vote, and wouldn't be affected.Sixteen days to fly from Burlington to Florida—and it's a milestone. That's because the Beta Technologies CX300, which the Burlington-based company was delivering to the Air Force, made the trip entirely on battery power. It "offered a vision of what aviation could look like years from now—one in which the skies are filled with aircraft that do not emit...greenhouse gases," writes Niraj Chokshi in the NYT (gift link). And, pilot Chris Caputo tells Chokshi, it's fun to fly. “You’re almost one with the plane,” he says. “You can kind of hear and feel the air going across the flight control surfaces." Lots of photos.Definitely cause for rubber-necking. Back at the end of October, a tractor-trailer on the Trans-Canada Highway in British Columbia hit a pickup truck parked on the side—which happened to be towing a trailer of fireworks. They ignited. For the next hour, drivers behind the collision had no choice but to sit and watch as the sky filled with what one onlooker called "the best fireworks show I have ever seen." A variety of people got video. Neither driver was seriously injured.The Monday Vordle. With a word from Friday's Daybreak.
And let's ease ourselves into the week...
"‘Umbra’ refers to the darkest part of the shadow, but this piece was created to try to put some light in it," writes the Québecois pianist and composer Alexandra Stréliski about her new piece of that name. By the time she was 10, Stréliski knew she wanted to be a pianist—and maybe a film composer, which is how she suddenly came to international attention in 2014, when the film Dallas Buyers
Club
, with her music on board, got big play at the Oscars.
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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