HOW NICE TO SEE YOU, UPPER VALLEY!
Blech. Overnight a low imposed itself on the region, and there's a chance of freezing rain first thing, enough to warrant being careful if you're out on the roads early. But what's interesting is that there's a large-scale low and associated warm front coming our way from the Great Lakes. Temps will rise quickly this morning, reaching the mid-40s by noon and continuing upward; we'll see rain much of the day and into the night.In case you missed the Gingerbread Festival... The annual display of confectionery architecture, a fundraiser for the Family Place, was on Saturday in Norwich. Demo Sofronas was there with his camera and takes us on a tour.Randolph area snags another advanced tech manufacturer. East-central VT has become a center for it, with GW Plastics, LEDynamics and security tech firm Applied Research Associates all headquartered there and Vermont Technical College just up the road. Now Brian Kippen, who grew up in Tunbridge, plans to open a facility in E. Randolph for his Alameda, CA-based custom prototype builder, KAD Models. Why? VTC. "I’ve seen other places that teach [advanced manufacturing], but VTC does it the right way,” he says. (VN)Woodstock sets out to turn vision to action. Over the summer, the town's community visioning effort, Our Woodstock, Our Future, gathered lots of ideas about where Woodstock should head as its population ages and economy changes. Now it's put them together into a draft vision, and tonight, starting at 5:30 at the Norman Williams Library, it holds its first forum to figure out how to make it reality.Leb council preps for vote on $1.5 million gas-to-energy bond. The money would let the city complete a long-awaited effort to convert methane at the landfill into electricity to power its municipal buildings. “If we get the project done by December, we will offset the city’s entire (energy needs) with renewable energy," City Manager Shaun Mulholland told the city council last week. It's expected to vote a week from Wednesday. (VN)“Every single conversation...came with a conversation about how hard it is to find housing.” That's Sarah Currier, D-H's vice president of workforce strategy in the Union Leader, on talking to job recruits about the Upper Valley's housing crisis. The region needs 5,000 or more units, and the hospital and Dartmouth are looking into how to develop them for their own employees. Developers are proposing apartments for Leb, but Mulholland worries they won't be affordable for police officers, firefighters, and other city employees."Tony, there is a deer in the front seat of your car." Doug Heavisides, the very proud principal of the Hartford Area Career and Technology Center, explains why it's sometimes hard — no, impossible — not to sniggle (you know that snort/giggle thing you sometimes do when you're trying not to but can't help yourself?) in the course of his very serious job.“It’s unbelievable, how much waste you see when you just walk around. It’s everywhere." Former VN reporter Matt Hongoltz-Hetling is up with the second part of his series on renewable energy in the region, the environmental and social cost of Canadian hydropower, where green energy's headed in the twin states, and, as the president of the Granite State Hydropower Association's quote suggests, the importance of conservation. It's a thoroughgoing look at dams big and small, Labrador locals' protests against the immense Muskrat Falls project, and how it all figures in policymakers' calculations down here.It's a double drone-shot day! William Daugherty was out and about this weekend. The link is to footage he took Saturday of VTrans repair work after a tractor-trailer jackknifed on the I-91 bridge in North Hartland the night before and nearly went into the Ottauquechee below. No truck, but some vertiginous shots of the bridge and river below. Yesterday, he was up with a still of the Walker xmas tree farm in Meriden, the rows of trees casting shadows on the footprints of tree-seekers meandering through the snow.The secret to success? Cutting back. VTDigger's Anne Wallace Allen has a profile of Fat Toad Farm, the Brookfield goat's-milk caramel-maker. Judith Irving and Steve Reid started making it in 2007 on their kitchen stove, caught the eye of national distributers and ramped up accordingly, only to discover it's an erratic market. “We were chasing something that we were in no way capable of managing," Reid tells Allen. Still, they'll be in 1,000 stores this year.Climate activists try to block train delivering coal to NH power plant; 20 arrested. About 100 people delayed the train at three points yesterday: in Worcester and Ayer, MA, and then again in Hooksett, before it got to the Merrimack Station power plant in Bow, the largest remaining coal plant in New England. There'll be more protests. "We're not going to allow coal trains to arrive to Bow unhindered, and...we are going to do everything in our power to make sure that the plant cannot run," an organizer tells NHPR.NH ski resort lands spot among best ski resorts in the world; VT shut out. Condé Nast Traveller asked its readers to vote for their favorites. The winner was Gstaad, in Switzerland. Bretton Woods came in #12 out of 30. Stowe did crack the US & Canada top 30, at 28th.Want to move to Dixville Notch? A voting tradition needs YOU! For six decades, reporters have camped out to catch the results of the tiny hamlet's midnight vote in the New Hampshire primary. But there's a problem. Only four people live there now, and state law requires at least five people to staff a polling place. It's been a gradual decline, longtime NH political writer James Pindell reports in the Boston Globe, and the tradition's disappearance "would chip away at New Hampshire’s very identity."Scott instructs VT DMV to stop giving personal info to private investigators. The governor's move comes after a VTDigger report that over the last 15 years the agency had sold or given away Vermonters' personal data to insurance companies, employers, and investigators. Federal law requires some of this, but Scott wants to "take a step back" when it comes to private investigators. Meanwhile, legislators are looking into limiting the release of information without drivers' consent. Seriously? Chicken samosas and barbecue chicken pizza? After crunching the numbers on orders from over 21 million users on its platform, GrubHub has come out with a list of the most-ordered food items in each of the 50 states. Looks like NH has a yen for Indian food, and VT for cheesier fare. Of course, in Oregon it was fried tofu and in Michigan something called a wet burrito. Nationally, the single most-ordered food was cauliflower pizza, followed by spicy brussels sprouts. Okaaay...
If you like Daybreak and want to help it keep going, here's how:
TONIGHT MIGHT BE A GOOD NIGHT FOR A MOVIE...
Samantha Ball, who coordinates the Windsor Community Health Clinic at Mt. Ascutney Hospital, will be at the Norwich Public Library to talk insurance. She'll review the basics, compare the plans offered by the exchange, and offer some strategies for selecting a plan. 6-8 pm.
The film revolves around two "charismatic purists," as David Edelstein called them in
NY Mag
's
Vulture
: Matt Damon as a car designer (and ex-racer) working for Henry Ford II, and Christian Bale as the attitude-laden driver and racecar
savant
Damon enlists to help build a car that can obliterate Enzo Ferrari's best in the 24 Hours at Le Mans. Don't count on your pulse slowing down much. 7:30, Woodstock Town Hall.
Along with
Queen & Slim, The Aeronauts
, and
Marriage Story
. Meanwhile,
have
Knives Out, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, 21 Bridges, Frozen II, Last Christmas
, and, on the early side,
Playmobil: The Movie
.
Whatever you do, stay dry. See you tomorrow.
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