GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
A fine start to a warming week. There's high pressure building in, warm air making its way, and very little to speak of in the way of clouds. Highs today in the lower or mid 60s, breezes from the west. Low or mid 30s overnight.Wave clouds pay a visit. You sure don't see clouds that look like ocean breakers very often, but there they were over WRJ on Saturday. Leslie Barbour writes, "It was a small fluctus cloud—also known as a Kelvin-Helmholtz wave cloud. I watched as it drifted to the east and slowly flattened out." She was lucky: "A well-defined fluctus is the crown jewel in many a cloud collection," writes the Cloud Appreciation Society, "for it requires the CloudSpotter to be blessed with eagle-eyed sky awareness and sheer blind luck."Testing finds lead in Newport NH schools' drinking fountains, faucets; schools in three other towns also dealing with it. The tests, required by a law passed last year, found lead in 16 fountains and faucets across three Newport schools, reports the Valley News's Frances Mize. Testing last fall discovered similar problems in schools in Plainfield, Cornish, and Claremont; Plainfield Elementary fixed the issue, while Cornish is waiting to replace its current well, which has high PFAS levels. Mize includes this link to the state's database of lead-testing results in schools and child care facilities.Former N. Haverhill convenience store owner, fuel seller indicted by federal grand jury. John Pigsley, who owned North Haverhill Convenience and a related fuel business, now lives in Beverly, MA. Last week, the grand jury accused him and an alleged accomplice of defrauding Keolis Commuter Services, a French company that operates the MBTA's commuter rail lines. In today's Journal Opinion newsletter, Alex Nuti-de Biasi notes this isn't Pigsley's first brush with the courts: Back in 2010 he pleaded guilty to failing to make fuel deliveries to pre-paid customers, and was arrested for writing bad checks.“She had such a quiet life. A happy life.” That's Deb Van Arman describing Irene Moore, who died in January at the age of 97 at Hanover Terrace, and whose death—her nephew believes—is being investigated by the state and led to the facility's rap by federal regulators for failing to prevent abuse. In the VN, Nora Doyle-Burr talks to Van Arman, Dan & Whits' George Fraser, and others about Moore, who grew up in Norwich, was taught by Marion Cross, and eventually opened Norwich Optical in the early '80s.With interim bylaw, Thetford eases cumbersome process for building ADUs. As Li Shen writes in Sidenote, accessory dwelling units have come to be seen as a key approach for creating "modest housing units that are affordable with a single income"; single-member households are growing faster in VT than any other type of household. But Thetford's zoning regs "dampened" enthusiasm there, allowing ADUs under only limited circumstances. Now, Li writes, Thetford has re-jiggered its regulations—and, possibly, helped to rekindle interest in ADUs around town.More home runs in baseball? Thank climate change. That's the conclusion of a study by Dartmouth researchers, who analyzed over 100,000 major league games to correlate home runs "with the occurrence of unseasonably warm temperatures," writes Morgan Kelly for Dartmouth News. They then estimated the degree to which reduced air density caused by warmer air played a key role. "Baseball is a game of ballistics, and a batted ball is going to fly farther on a warm day," says geography prof Justin Mankin. In all, the study finds, 500 home runs since 2010 can be attributed to warming, and "several hundred additional home runs per season are projected due to future warming." With studios in Randolph and Norwich, Upper Valley musicians have places to record; now they just need more live-music venues. In the VN, Alex Hanson surveys the region's music scene, giving the background behind Randolph's The Underground—a recording studio and a listening room—and The Station, a studio set up in Norwich by musicians Seth Barbiero and Lisa Piccirillo. But, says Piccirillo, “There’s a shortage of listening rooms in the area"—though Here in the Valley and the Anonymous Coffeehouse have made strides and Sawtooth Kitchen is clearly having an impact.Catch up quick:
Norwich has scheduled a special school board election next month after it was discovered just before Town Meeting that two unopposed school board candidates were inadvertently left off the ballot. (VN)
After a decade's absence, DHMC has brought soft drinks back. Jim Kenyon takes a dim view. (VN)
It may have been dry the past week but it's still mud season, and the Green Mountain Club says to seek out durable surfaces and lower elevations before Memorial Day, so that trails have a chance to firm up.
NH AG's office says police shooting of man at the Space Force Station in New Boston, NH last May was justified. The victim had been dealing with mental health issues, and approached two officers with a knife and air pistol in hand. (Boston Globe, paywall.)
VT Fish & Wildlife Board approves expanded moose hunt for Northeast Kingdom. The move is aimed at reducing moose numbers to provide less chance for winter ticks to spread. (VP)
VT's career, tech ed system needs overhaul, says new report. Funding should go directly to career/tech centers, the report argues, rather than forcing them to compete with regular public schools, as they do now, and the entire system has suffered from a lack of centralized decision-making.
Birds are back, but it's so dang hard to get them to sit still. So the educational high-res video site 8K Videos has 20 minutes of them for you, in several-second snippets: up close, sound on. Today's a Monday: If the world seems a little overwhelming, just dive in for a few minutes.The Monday Vordle. With a fine word from Friday's Daybreak.
Heads Up
This evening at 7, the Howe Library and the Hanover Historical Society host a double bill: first, a discussion of Upper Valley women who've made history, and then, at 7:30, writer Carolyn Cook talking about her novel, Tell Them to Be Quiet and Wait, based on the life of Dr. Hannah Croasdale, Dartmouth's first female professor. Cook, a 2021 Dartmouth grad, did extensive research into life on campus and in Hanover in the 1930s, and will be talking about her research, women in academia, and her decision to turn Croasdale's story into fiction.
And to start us off for the week...
We'll let Brattleboro-based musician and longtime school music teacher Zack Danziger (cartoonist Jeff's brother) give us two views of "Moonlight in Vermont." There's the classic tune, first recorded in 1944—but Danziger writes that the lyrics left him "dissatisfied: They were not very much about Vermont." So he wrote new lyrics for the standard tune, which drew criticism for messing with a much-cherished song. Danziger threw up his hands and wrote his own music, too. Here's
, and
See you tomorrow.
Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Writer/editor: Jonea Gurwitt Poetry editor: Michael Lipson About Rob About Michael
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