SO MUCH TO CATCH UP ON, UPPER VALLEY!
First, though: Meh. Even if it is a snow day in some places... It's basically a two-phase storm, and today's the second phase, with a few more inches expected during the day and then some more tonight. There's a chance of freezing drizzle mixed in all morning, but let's pretend we didn't hear that — unless you're out driving, in which case watch for slickness. The real snow's to the south. High around 30, into the low 20s tonight.HereCast to go dark Dec. 31. The six-year-old startup — you may remember it as DailyUV — wanted to re-envision local news for the digital age, but on Friday CEO Watt Alexander announced that it's "going on hiatus." While it had something on the order of 80,000 users a month checking out the mostly Upper Valley-focused content provided by its several-score bloggers, it appeared to be having trouble expanding to other regions in VT and NH. On the other hand, Report for America will deploy journalists to the VN and other news orgs in region. The nonprofit aims to buttress local journalism by placing young reporters in areas that have seen cutbacks. It's just announced its latest assignments: The VN will be boosting its coverage of environment and climate in the Upper Valley, as well as photojournalism in northern NH; VTDigger will get someone to cover southern VT, while VPR will get a reporter for the Northeast Kingdom. The Monitor and Union Leader also snagged reinforcements. Click on "Northeast" at the link.Andrew Yang will be in Hanover tonight. The Democratic presidential candidate is holding a town hall at the Richard W. Black Community Center, starting at 7 pm. Though, you know, snow, so double-check.Woodstock hoping to overhaul public safety building and build new middle-high school. At back-to-back public forums on Wednesday, town and school officials will make the case for a $3 million renovation and addition to its public safety facility and firehouse — which began life in the 1950s as a Chevy dealership — and then an estimated $68 million replacement for its jointly housed middle and high school. A three-year study of the school, which opened in 1957, found that simply renovating the school would leave basic structural and environmental problems unaddressed. (VN)"Stand for things without which humankind cannot survive." That was Fred Rogers, who attended Dartmouth for one year, in a 2002 commencement address at the college. With It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood out in theaters, the communications office has the full speech up online.“You’re buying the misery from the local people of northern Canada." That's an Inuit elder talking to former VN reporter Matt Hongoltz-Hetling, who's back with a searching look at the impact of Canadian hydropower — a significant part of the renewable energy portfolio for northern New England — on First Nations communities. Environmental disruption, elevated mercury levels, political marginalization... "Just because it’s your power doesn’t mean you shouldn’t examine where it came from," says a Labrador local.30,000 turn out for world cup at Killington. Despite the cold. And yes, Mikaela Shiffrin took first in the slalom, third in the giant slalom. Dartmouth's Nina O'Brien finished 28th in the GS, but still had a great time. "It feels like I have all my friends here cheering for me, which is fun. So I love it," she told VPR's Nina Keck.Speaking of ski towns, New England has the top two in the country, say USA Today readers. Those would be Bethel, ME and North Conway, NH. Stowe comes in 7th, right behind Steamboat Springs.And speaking of Stowe, here's what it looked like from on high yesterday morning. And that was before the storm!But, hmm, maybe don't get used to it. There's a new analysis out from Climate Central, a Princeton, NJ-based nonprofit that studies and reports on climate change, showing that winter temps have risen more in northern New England than anywhere else over the last 50 years. Nationally, they've warmed an average of 3 degrees Fahrenheit. Burlington, however, led cities around the country with an increase of 6.8 degrees; Concord was second at 5.6 degrees.17 ads in an hour: NH voters want Tom Steyer's campaign to leave them alone. That's the upshot of a Politico story making the case that the billionaire presidential candidate's heavy media spending risks outwearing his welcome. "There is a point of no return in terms of visibility," says one NH analyst. "At some point, you become the uninvited guest. He uniquely is becoming dangerously close."The two biggest nonprofits in New Hampshire? Dartmouth College and Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital. And that's just the hospital — if you add in the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Clinic and D-H's other affiliates, it's easily the largest. That's part of a deep look at the state's nonprofit sector by NH Business Review's Bob Saunders, who found that the top 100 of the state's nonprofit orgs brought in more than $11.5 billion in revenue and have nearly 90,000 employees.NH issue catch-up: Sununu likes exit signs just the way they are. You may remember that last week, NHDOT officials endorsed the idea of renumbering exit signs to match mileage markers, as most of the rest of the country does. The guv's having none of it. "The exit you grow up on, the exit you live on says something about us and your town," he told WMUR last week. "I grew up at Exit 3. I live at Exit 10. To have a bunch of faceless bureaucrats in Washington try to change our system, we're going to put up a fight on this one.”Inadequate staffing and care lead to indignities, injuries, deaths at VT elder-care facilities. That's the upshot of an investigation by Seven Days and VPR, which joined forces to look into five years of complaints and inspection reports from assisted living and residential care homes operating in the state. Inadequate care leading to deadly accidents, poor medical care, untrained caregivers, shortfalls in staffing... It's a sobering report. The news orgs also put together a database detailing deficiencies found by state inspectors at each of the 133 facilities. Could menstrual products get VT sales tax exemption? A group of Democratic lawmakers in the state want to know. They've asked acting tax commissioner Craig Bolio to look into whether tampons, pads and other supplies could get the same medical exemption as diapers and bandages. Bolio says VT is part of a 24-state agreement that standardizes such things, and that he'll probably recommend no action; if want to exempt feminine hygiene products from taxation, they should pass a law.
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SO IF YOU NEED TO GET OUT OF THE HOUSE...
. It's got Emilia Clarke (
Game of Thrones
), Henry Golding (
Crazy Rich Asians
), Michelle Yeoh (memorably formidable in
Crazy Rich Asians
), and Emma Thompson (you name it). It's also got a grab-bag of reviews, from "illogical and silly" to "silly but satisfying as a plum pudding." If you're in the mood, you can head to Woodstock Town Hall and decide for yourself. At 7:30.
. Whitlock's latest is a young adult fantasy novel: Young Ed Lewis finds a rune-marked arrowhead in his bedroll at a "medieval faire," which turns out to be a key to another world — one "locked in battle between his mother’s people and a Briton war chief and druid witch. It’s the world where his father was lost, where mad harpers pluck illusions from their tunes, and Beowulf’s saga is fresh and real." Latham Library at 7 pm.
. Two films focused on 60s-era black nationalist icons.
Muhammed Ali, the Greatest
is William Klein's assemblage of footage tracing the boxer's life from his unexpected defeat of Sonny Liston in 1964 to his '74 bout against George Foreman;
The Murder of Fred Hampton
zeroes in both on the young Black Panther leader's 1969 slaying by Chicago police and on his efforts around education, neighborhood health clinics, street gang cease-fires and other community needs. Plus a retrospective on Chicago independent film entrepreneur Milos Stehlik by film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum. Starts at 7.
So nice to see you again! Take some time to enjoy the snow, and see you tomorrow.
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