WELCOME BACK TO MONDAY, UPPER VALLEY!
Mostly cloudy, but some interesting potential for snow late in the day. Highs topping 40. Warm air moved through the region last night, a cold front's coming in late this afternoon. If there's snow it'll probably be north and west of us, but you never know. This week should kick off sugaring for real: Temps comfortably above freezing during the day, below at night (except maybe Thursday). Sure signs of spring: NH Fish & Game warning that black bears will be extra-hungry. They went into their dens under-fed. They're dreaming about your bird feeders right now. Oh, and probably your trash cans, too. Grafton church on Route 4 not just an eyesore, but a danger, engineer says. The Peaceful Assembly Church, historically a meetinghouse, burned in 2016 and has been ignored since then. It's in danger of collapse, and at a minimum should be boarded up. "All work should be done from the outside,” the report notes. (VN: subscription required)Claremont/Unity school district has a new superintendent. Michael Tempesta started out as a high school English teacher, most recently ran the Central Massachusetts Special Education Collaborative in Worcester. He replaces Middleton McGoodwin, who resigned last spring after the school board handed him the option of resigning or being fired.Bernie Sanders touched down in Concord on Sunday, running first in polls in NH. He held up Town Meeting as a bracing contrast to an America where "the very concept of democracy is under attack." Heads to SC and NV later this week.Vermont is the most European state in the union. And that's not a compliment. It's losing residents to other states, has a smaller share of children under 15 than any other state, has the second-lowest fertility rate in the country... Missed this when it first hit the Washington Post, but now papers in Maine and NH are gleefully rubbing it in.Meanwhile, VT Digger looks into why Vermont colleges keep closing. The state's college-age population is declining, pressure from larger institutions makes it tough for small colleges to compete. "I think it's going to get worse," says the president of the Vermont College of Fine Arts.Some lawmakers in NH want to move the state to the Atlantic time zone. As in the same time as Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Katy Burns at the Concord Monitor thinks this is a bad idea. "If the 6:30 network news for us won’t be on until 7:30, what do we do during dinner? Talk?"New Hampshire lagged northern New England in exports last year. They grew 2.7 percent, which is well south of Maine's 4.2 percent, Vermont's 5.2 percent, and NH's own 24 percent the year before. Germany is now the state's top trading partner.Vermont out of "Bump" signs, forced to borrow from NH. "If it were my state, I’d just pull it up by its bootstraps and tell it to have roads that were less bumpy," says Sununu. Or, actually, he doesn't: It's satire. But don't you wish?NOW, JUST WHAT IS THERE TO DO ON A MONDAY EVENING?Well for starters, there's Moscow beating back the German invasion of 1941-42. Moscow Strikes Back was a front-line documentary filmed during the Battle of Moscow, under unbelievably harsh conditions. It won an academy award for Best Documentary in 1942, and small wonder. As the New York Times review that year put it, "[H]ere is a film to knot the fist and seize the heart with anger, a film that stings like a slap in the face of complacence, a scourge and lash against the delusion that there may still be an easy way out." On a double-bill at the Howe Library with part III of War and Peace, "The Year 1812." Go luxuriate in the Russian winter.Or you could veer 180 degrees the other direction: Stress Management at Bethel University. Every year in March, Bethel VT puts on a remarkable "pop-up" university -- anyone can teach, anyone can learn. It's become a thing. For tonight's stress class, the instructor will be covering techniques for beating back stress. "It is just a matter of retraining ourselves," she says. Sorry, registration's already closed for tonight's "Quilts Unplugged" class. Have a fine start to the week out there! See you tomorrow.
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