GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Mostly cloudy to start, seasonably cool. High pressure's building in overhead, putting an end to whatever snow showers you encountered earlier this morning. Colder air is moving in too, though, so we'll see highs today in the low or mid 20s, lows tonight either side of zero under partly cloudy skies.Still life. On Whitcomb Hill in Strafford. "Just a calm image in this wild world," writes Annemieke McLane.Catching up with Macy Bettwieser. The Hartford High senior who made it to the finals of Broadway World's "Next on Stage" competition last month "hasn’t slowed down," writes Marion Umpleby in the Valley News. Bettwieser was one of three finalists to perform in NYC—and despite all the hoopla as she'd advanced through the rounds, “It was a very chill environment. Very relaxing, no high stress,” she tells Umpleby. Since then, she's been auditioning for musical theater programs, helping with tech for NCCT Teens' upcoming Hello, Dolly!, and eyeing Trumbull Hall Troupe's summer production of Six.Over the east branch of the Ompompanoosuc, "an ingenious and ambitious structure.” Come for the accolades for Thetford Center's Sayre Bridge, one of only two covered bridges in the country that possesses a truss like the one it's got. But stay for Li Shen's brief but engaging history of covered bridge construction and, in particular, the contributions to bridge design "from master builders and craftsmen who drew on empirical knowledge of what worked based on personal experience and history." Some 185 years after it was built, the bridge carries upwards of 900 vehicles a day, Li writes. Ascutney: How an outdoors hub became "the center" of a town and a community. Ascutney Outdoors, the group that revitalized skiing, biking, hiking, and more on Mt. Ascutney, is celebrating its tenth year, and in the VN, Patrick O'Grady recounts both its history and its impact. "We were desperate,” former W. Windsor selectboard member Glenn Seward recalls of the time around 2010, when the privately owned ski area was being dismantled piece by piece and Brownsville's general store had closed. Countless volunteer hours later, W. Windsor's thriving as an outdoors and food destination.Dresden Supt.: "I think we’re going to have a lot of legal bills just to get advice on things like compliance.” That was Jay Badams, who runs the Hanover-Norwich school district, at a presentation last month on the schools' equity plans in the face of new federal and state DEI mandates. NH's education department, reports NHPR's Annmarie Timmins, told school leaders statewide on Friday to "carefully evaluate" DEI-focused training, programs, and curriculum in light of a new prohibition on such programs at the federal level. The legal future, says the state schools association, is way up in the air.NH pockets foster kids' Social Security benefits. Here's the story behind an effort to change that. Daybreak rarely focuses on pending legislation, since so much can change. But this is interesting: NH is one of the few states in the country that doesn't put the SS disability payments it collects each year on behalf of eligible foster kids into accounts that get turned over to them when they age out. Instead, it keeps some $2.1 million a year. In the Concord Monitor, Michaela Towfighi talks to a 17-year-old challenging the practice before the legislature this week, and the Concord legislator trying to end it.VT's pandemic-era population boost reverses. In the WSJ (gift link), Jon Kamp traces the numbers—net gains through 2023, a net loss of 500 domestic migrants (ie, more people left for other states) in 2024. At the heart of the problem: "an insane housing market," a shrinking population of working-age adults, and a national drop in remote work. “We really began to feel that Vermont as a state was going in the wrong direction,” says one recent emigrant who'd struggled to run a business in VT. Kamp argues the numbers suggest "a broader national reset from Covid-era distortions." Thanks, JL!Catching up on the border patrol shootout. A quick roundup of events and reporting.
Youngblut pleads not guilty. The 21-year-old from Washington state was in federal court Friday after a grand jury returned two firearms charges, including using one "while knowingly assaulting, resisting, opposing, impeding, intimidating, and interfering with a U.S. Border Patrol Agent." In court, reports VTDigger's Alan J. Keays, prosecutors said they expect "to share a great deal of information during the discovery phase of the case."
Youngblut and her companion were in VT ostensibly looking at property. The week before the January shootout that killed border patrol agent David Maland, report VTDigger's Peter D'Auria, Alan J. Keays and Habib Sabet, Youngblut got in touch with a Northeast Kingdom realtor to look at a remote parcel in Wheelock. “I said, ‘Maybe it would be a better idea for us to go look at it in the springtime,’” the realtor says. “And she said, ‘We don’t want to wait till spring.’ She was very adamant.” Youngblut said she'd be paying cash.
That companion, who died in the shootout, was a "math whiz" who'd once been "the glue" of a Jersey City social group. Federal and court documents refer to Felix Bauckholt by the German national's birth name. But to friends, reports NBC's Rich Schapiro, Bauckholt was Ophelia, a "gentle, generous friend" who was at the center of a close-knit, mostly transgender, circle—until Bauckholt disappeared. Schapiro talks to three of Bauckholt's friends, and to the co-founder of a California group who tells him, “There are a lot of young people...who would have had OK lives except they bumped into the network" known as the Zizians.
VT health commissioner to step down. Mark Levine, who is 71, "became well known for his calm and reassuring presence at televised press conferences during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, fielding dozens of epidemiological questions and offering guidance to an anxious public," writes Colin Flanders in Seven Days. On Friday, Gov. Phil Scott's office said Levine will leave his post—which he's held since 2017—at the end of March.Bennington Battle Monument taking on water; could cost $40 million to save it. The 306-foot-tall tourist attraction was built from limestone in the 1880s. And last week, reports VT Public's Peter Hirschfeld, the director of preservation for the state's historic sites told lawmakers that over the years it's soaked in about 66,000 gallons of water, compromising both its structural integrity and the safety of the elevator that carries visitors to the top. "State officials have no current funding plan to pay for even the initial drying out of the monument," Hirchfeld reports; that alone could cost as much as $10 million.The Monday Jigsaw. "Can you figure out where this photograph was taken?" writes the Norwich Historical Society's Sarah Rooker. "Here's a hint—it's on Main Street in Norwich. It is interesting to see the horse team and sled juxtaposed with the gasoline pumps."
And to ease us into the week...A pretty much perfect trio: country and folk musician Mary Chapin Carpenter and Scottish folk singers and songwriters Julie Fowlis and Karine Polwart. They've got a new album out (and are touring the UK right now with a bunch of sold-out shows): Here's "Hold Everything", being recorded last year at Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios.See you tomorrow.
Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Associate writer: Jonea Gurwitt Poetry editor: Michael Lipson About Rob About Michael
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