SO GOOD TO SEE YOU AGAIN, UPPER VALLEY!
And thank you for indulging that time away.Look at this: We've got sun to start the week! It could be kinda gusty out there this morning and early afternoon, but those northwest winds are clearing away whatever clouds we see this morning, temps are rising toward the mid- or upper 40s, and around here, at least, things are dry. It's perfect sugaring weather: Down into the mid-20s tonight.And sheesh, we could definitely use some "dry." From Thetford, Margaret Stephens writes, "It is the worst mud season we’ve experienced in decades." If you've been out on some of the dirt roads around here, you know what she's talking about. If not, her pic gives you a fine idea.To drive home the point... "Alerts have been saturating Upper Valley social media groups and community Listservs with the latest bulletins about roads to avoid," John Lippman wrote in the Valley News yesterday. Bradford, Canaan, Sharon, Cornish, Woodstock... "I’m 80 years old and I’ve lived here 55 years, and I’ve never seen the roads this bad,” S. Royalton's Ted Kenyon, a contractor who's been pulling out cars stuck in the mud on Dairy Hill Road, tells him. "Back in 1978, I was on duty in the 'Tool Shed' in Mr. Dulac's automotive class. I borrowed these wire cutters..." It was just to install a new car stereo, explains the note that the Hartford Area Career and Technology Center's Erika Schneider received the other week—along with the wire cutters in question. "I meant to return them within a day or so..." But hey, what's four decades among friends?SPONSORED: Edgar Meyer is coming to the Hop. The New Yorker calls him “the most remarkable virtuoso in the relatively un-chronicled history of his instrument.” The masterful bassist and composer will be at the Hop on March 29 with the Glasgow-based Scottish Ensemble for a night of classical and bluegrass music. The program includes several of Meyer’s own compositions alongside works by Holst, Bach, Caroline Shaw, and Vaughan Williams. Get your tickets today! Sponsored by the Hopkins Center for the Arts.Meanwhile... This is probably as fine a spot as any to catch up on some news you might have missed over the past week. Like:
Nisachon Morgan, the chef at Randolph's Saap Restaurant, which specializes in northern Thai cuisine, is now a finalist for a James Beard Award for best chef in the Northeast. (Artful)
The New England School of the Arts, a private, arts-focused high school planned for a spot on the Lebanon Mall, moved closer to reality last week after the city's planning board voted unanimously to approve a conditional use permit in the space that used to houe offices for West Central Behavioral Health (the Women’s Health Resource Center is on the first floor). (VN)
Mask mandates are disappearing all over. The Co-op lifted its mandate as of last Friday. Earlier in the week, Hanover, Dartmouth, and the Dresden schools did likewise. And the mandate in Hartford schools is suspended as of this week.
Northern Stage announced an almost-full-on new season, starting outdoors in June with Side by Side by Sondheim, moving on to its own first-ever musical commission, Shook, and then mounting a series of plays that wind up next summer with Sense and Sensibility. (Artful)
Remember that shooting in the parking lot of the Northeastern VT Regional Hospital in St. J? VT State Police arrested the Brooklyn man who'd been seen fleeing the scene and who was eventually stopped in upstate NY. (VTDigger)
I'm sure there'll be more on this to come, but NH Gov. Chris Sununu said last week that he's going to veto the legislature's new congressional district map—the one that sorts voters to ensure one GOP-leaning and one Democratic-leaning district. (NH Bulletin)
As homelessness in NH rises, advocates and analysts alike point at restrictive zoning rules. In essence, writes the Granite State News Collaborative's Ryan Lessard, town zoning regs requiring large lot sizes and bureaucratic stumbling blocks in the way of development have made it tough to build workforce housing and high-density projects.
Meanwhile, over on the VT side, the state board of ed has enacted rules aimed at making it harder for private schools that receive state dollars to deny admission to students with special-ed needs. (Seven Days)
And while state wildlife officials usually recommend taking bird feeders down by April 1 to avoid attracting bears, what with warm temps and melting snow they're asking people to do it early this year. VT got its first bear report on March 7. (Press release)
And if you think of Wilder's Kilowatt Parks North and South as a single park, it's got one: Kat Meyerovitch, who also does social media for King Arthur. She's posting a poem (and photos) weekly this year as part of
The Kilowatt Project
, and in
Junction
mag, she and Isaac Lorton walk the park along the river, talking about trails, woodpeckers, dogs, snow and ice patterns, the moods of the river and its overhanging trees, a bird rave...
"The spouting whale gets the harpoon." Jim Hourdequin is CEO of Hanover-based Lyme Timber and, writes Bloomberg's Ben Elgin, "one of the planet's biggest sellers of carbon offsets." His company manages about 1.5 million acres of forestland and makes money both from harvesting timber and selling credits to polluters for the carbon its forests take up. Which makes it notable that Hourdequin has gone public questioning the carbon credit market and the misleading claims of climate progress it's produced. Elgin digs in.A bit of deep farm history. In the VN, the much-missed David Corriveau has an appreciation of Marilyn and Bob Stone, who started Cedar Circle Farm in the late '70s and farmed it until they sold it in 2000. Marilyn, who grew up in N. Branford, CT, died in 2019; Bob, who grew up on his family's dairy farm in Meriden, NH, died last month. “They made a hell of a team,” Meriden's Steve Taylor tells Corriveau. "They complemented each other so well."Coalition of local groups pushes restrictions on where wake boats can be used on VT lakes. A new petition to the state's Agency of Natural Resources documents the damage that can be caused by the boats' wakes—they're designed to create large artificial waves for surfing—and seeks to limit their use to larger lakes. In Sidenote, Li Shen notes the petition's backed by, among others, the Lake Fairlee Association, the Thetford Selectboard, the Aloha Foundation, the VT Center for Ecostudies, and conservation commissions in Fairlee, W. Fairlee and other towns. She offers a deep dive into the issue.Really? VT taxpayers sent $53,970 to a school in Sweden? School districts in the state regularly pay for tuition at private schools outside the district. Usually they're close by, but not always. There's legislation moving along to limit these tuition payments to neighboring states and Quebec, but in the meantime, VTDigger's Peter D'Auria takes a look at where tuition money's been going—including Michigan, Colorado, California, Oregon... and Sweden.Definitely the wrong fence to hop. Which is what this black bear in CT discovered when it climbed into a pen with two pigs. Their encounter was caught on a backyard security camera and posted by CBS News.
Heads Up
Vital Communities has just launched the Upper Valley chapter of the Vermont Welcome Wagon Project—tweaking it to include both Grafton and Sullivan counties in NH, as well as Windsor and Orange in VT. The idea is to "make the transition to New England life easier by connecting newcomers with local volunteers eager to meet and answer questions. It's seeking hosts (there'll be three per newly arrived participant) as well as anyone who's moved to the area recently and is looking for connections and some insiders' knowledge.
And CATV is launching a couple of new projects you might want to know about. Starting Sunday, 4/3, VT State Reps. Becca White and Jim Masland will join NH State Reps. Russell Muirhead and Mary Hakken-Phillips to host a new "casual commentary program" with guests to talk about legislation and politics in the twin states. And later in April, CATV is launching what it's calling jamLABs—three-hour, hands-on workshops to help anyone who wants build their media-production skills.
Should we keep this "Monday" music theme going for a little bit longer? Oh heck, sure. Jimmy Buffett wrote "Come Monday" back in 1973, the year after he met his future wife, Jane, during spring break in Key West. He performs it at most of his live shows, as he did here in Gulf Shores, Alabama, near where he grew up in Mobile.See you tomorrow.
Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Writer/editor: Tom Haushalter Poetry editor: Michael Lipson About Rob About Tom About Michael
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