GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
The cold starts to lose its grip. Not this morning, of course. This morning we began well into the minuses. But we’re due to reach the teens by around noon and the low 20s by mid afternoon under sunny skies, though winds from the northwest will keep wind chill values a good 10 degrees lower than the ambient temp. We may see some clouds move in tonight, but lows will still get into the minus single digits, colder in the hollows. There’s snow coming tomorrow, but we’ll talk about that then.
So maybe this is a good day to go visit summer. Last year, lakes videographer Peter Bloch stumbled on a family of loons with two chicks. You may vaguely remember from back then that, as he writes now, “their lives took an unexpected turn when they adopted a third chick from a family two miles up the lake. This extraordinary occurrence captured my imagination and heart.” He visited a lot, amassing a wealth of video clips and still photos, and for the last few months he’s been turning them into a film, with music by his wife, Kathy Lowe. It’s longer than usual for this spot, but just set it aside for when you need some sun and warmth (and loon calls).
Health education expands in the Upper Valley. In this case, in two non-med-school programs.
At Colby-Sawyer in New London, a large donation by John and Heidi Grey Niblack has helped create a $3 million fund to give “full-ride” scholarships to 16 undergrad nursing students, eight of them entering this fall, and eight in the fall of 2027. The idea, John Niblack says in the college’s press release, is to reduce barriers to nursing education at a time when the need for trained nurses far outstrips supply and will do so for some years. “The current nursing shortage continues to intensify, with a peak expected in the next few years, before abating sometime after 2035,” says DH’s chief nurse executive, Susan Reeves.
Meanwhile, reports Liz Sauchelli in the Valley News, Franklin Pierce University has moved its outpost from Airport Road in West Leb to Centerra Parkway and is boosting its master physician assistant studies program, focused on rural health care. The spot includes a new Rural Health Care Simulation Lab, aimed at helping students “learn the everyday real challenges of medicine in a controlled setting,” says director Jeffrey Waldron.
Sykes Mountain Ave. traffic stop turns into pursuit. Just after midnight Friday morning, a Hartford police officer stopped a car that had been traveling the wrong way. When he stepped out of his cruiser at the Station Market, the car took off—again on the wrong side—and headed south on Route 5 to Hartland, where officers initially ended their pursuit, until they spotted the car again and gave chase. It hit a snowbank and the operator got out and fled, heading for I-91—where “a concerned citizen called to report that a male was hitchiking on the interstate,” the HPD says in its press release. The Hamden, CT man was arrested for “attempting to elude” and is also wanted in CT.
SPONSORED: Upper Valley Adult Day Care open house Feb. 14. We’re a community-based day care program dedicated to supporting adults aged 60 or older (or those with early onset dementia), while also providing meaningful relief and partnership for healthcare providers and caregivers. We offer a safe, engaging, structured daytime environment with personalized care, social connection, and enriching activities that allow people who benefit from supervision and companionship to continue living at home with dignity. Open house from 10 am to 1 pm, 8826 Woodstock Road (Route 4), Quechee. Sponsored by Upper Valley Adult Day Care.
A jolt of color in S. Royalton. To see law student Leyna Schaeffer’ work, writes Dave Celone in his Upper Valley VT/NH Musings newsletter, is to immerse yourself in “the exuberance of her feelings, from dance to aerial painting, ocean fluidity to photographic freedom. Her joyful colors and the adhesion of thickly-laid paintings in swirls and orbs fascinates to tickle the senses.” From jellyfish to “canvases filled with abstracted brightly-brushstroked whorls and whirls,” Dave writes, “you’ll absorb the light of Leyna’s healing art.” On view in the VT Law & Grad School art gallery through February.
“The flinty independence for which rural New England is known can be both a set of virtues and a barrier.” So writes the VN’s Alex Hanson in his profile of Dartmouth sociologist Emily Walton, her family, and her new book, Homesick. The book, set against a backdrop of rising non-white populations in towns throughout the Upper Valley—though more pronounced in some than in others—focuses on interviews with people of color in the region. They tell Walton that, as one woman puts it, “there is a New England sensibility to give boundaries, to give people space. I think this is actually a courtesy in some ways, but it could feel isolating to somebody who doesn’t already have a community built in.” Hanson details the book and reactions to it.
So… What does county government actually do in Vermont? In most parts of the country, counties are robust, in charge of things like roads, social services, public health, and more. In VT, says VT Public’s Howard Weiss-Tisman in the latest episode of Brave Little State, “Very frankly speaking… the counties don’t really do very much.” You can find the origins of this back before Vermont was even a state: The towns came first, thanks to how NH’s governor divided up the land that would become Vermont. But as Weiss-Tisman points out, towns are struggling these days, and there’s growing interest in service-sharing and even, maybe, regional government. Like counties.
The Monday Jigsaw: Norwich place names. The Norwich Historical Society’s Cam Cross continues his string of puzzles that relate to a series of Zoom presentations the historical society is presenting this month—with this week’s program focused on how roads and place names in town got their labels: Boomer Point, the Crooked Half Mile, the Root School….
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from Friday’s Daybreak.
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HEADS UP
Dartmouth’s Dickey Center hosts a panel on “the Future of Science, Security, and Sovereignty in the Arctic and Greenland.” The panel brings together Marisol Maddox, a senior fellow at Dickey’s Institute of Arctic Studies; Sara Olsvig, chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council in Greenland (who’ll be zooming in); possibly Mike Sfraga, a former US ambassador-at-large for Arctic Affairs and currently interim chancellor of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks; and Matthew Druckenmiller, an Arctic Innovation Fellow at the Institute of Arctic Studies. In Haldeman 41 at 4:30 pm, no livestream but it will be recorded and you’ll need to register for tix.
And for today...
Let’s greet the new week with “Indigo Park” by Bruce Hornsby, the title piece from a new album coming out in April.
See you tomorrow.
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