GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Sunny, springlike. Amazing, right? Don't get used to it, but for today, anyway, we've got clear skies and temps expected to get into the low 60s eventually. Tonight a warm front moves in from the west and there's a chance of showers overnight, with temps dropping into the mid 40s.Here and gone. Remember the old 25,000 Gifts & Woolens? It stood for decades on N. Main Street in WRJ before closing in 2006; now the site's going to be used for the Haven's new 20-bed low-barrier shelter. Tony Luckino sends in two photos from last week:
Federal jury awards former DHMC fertility doc $1.1 million. It was a mixed verdict in Dr. Misty Blanchette Porter long legal battle against the hospital, reports the Valley News. On the one hand, the jury sided with her in her claim that DH had violated VT's disability discrimination law when it fired her after shutting down its infertility division in 2017. On the other hand, the jury rejected Blanchette Porter's charge that she'd been retaliated against for lodging complaints about “improper, incompetent and harmful conduct" by two of her colleagues. She now practices at UVM Medical Center.ECFiber at loggerheads with operating company. Since 2022, after an embezzlement case upended its finances, the regional fiber district's operations have been run by Maine-based Great Works Internet. But now, reports VTDigger's Habib Sabet, the two are trading legal charges, and ECFiber has shut down negotiations on a new contract and plans to work instead with a new nonprofit created by members of its board. It all stems from a leaked video of a February GWI meeting that board chair F. X. Flinn contends shows the company planned to axe VT-specific services. GWI rejects the charge and has sued Flinn. Sabet details the issues and the legal wrangling.Upper Valley confectioners grapple with rising cocoa prices. Red Kite Candy, My Brigadeiro, Claremont chocolate maker Amore di Mona, Leb's Katie's Cookies—all are "feeling the sting of cocoa prices," reports the VN's Marion Umpleby. It has less to do with tariffs (so far) than with above-average rainfall and warming temps during the 2022-2023 growing season in West Africa, which damaged crops, Umpleby explains. The result: Costs for dark chocolate have spiked, and businesses are looking at raising prices on their chocolates and candy. Umpleby talks to owners about what they're seeing.Junction Fiber Mill's journey: “From the moment we hung our shingle out, we were slammed." In a welcome addition to the region's newsletter scene, the Vermont Almanac has launched an every-other-week version, "Dispatches". And front and center in its first issue: Peggy Allen, Amanda Kievet, and their wool processor in WRJ. Patrick White tells their story—with yarny details—from the days when the two custom-processed wool for sheep farmers to now: 10 full- and part-time employees and a thriving business designing, producing, marketing, and selling their own line of yarn to shops around the country.In the market for a couple thousand gallons of old oil? "Vintage. Untapped. Stored underground for maximum terroir," writes Fairlee's Jonah Richard, tongue in cheek, on Brick + Mortar. In fact, as Richard and his partners work on a 19-unit affordable housing project in town, they discovered three underground tanks, one of them full. "I can almost understand hoarding old tools or leftover building materials," he writes. "But hoarding oil?" The problem: It would take nearly $100K to get rid of them, a cost that could have "iced the entire project," he writes, had the regional planning commission not stepped in.
Taking your feeders down? Don't worry about the birds, they'll be fine. "Removing feeders [in spring] concerns some people who question whether or not their bird feeder population has become dependent on this source of food," writes Mary Holland in Naturally Curious. No need. One study, she writes, "found no reductions in apparent survival after removal of bird feeders that had provided supplemental food in winter for 25 years, leading to the conclusion that bird feeding did not promote feeder dependency. Birds that visit feeders also circulate through the surrounding area, searching for natural foods."NH needs to spend $414 million on rehabbing state-owned dams. The schedule is a century long. Basically, writes Claire Sullivan in NH Bulletin, current funding for fixing dams—including the 33 "high hazard" dams (meaning failure would kill people) rated in poor condition—is inadequate. “This is not a case where if things aren’t funded, it’s OK," DES commissioner Robert Scott told legislators in February. "The dam deteriorates whether you fund it or not." Sullivan outlines the "uphill battle" that developing sustainable funding sources faces in the legislature.With House passage Friday, education reform in VT takes a first step. The House version of the far-reaching legislation passed 87-55, reports VTDigger's Ethan Weinstein, with most Republicans and some rural Democrats opposing it. The bill would phase in extensive changes on a slower timeline than in Gov. Phil Scott's proposal, but bears some similarities, including school district consolidation, class-size minimums, and a funding formula controlled by the state, rather than the sum of decisions by individual school boards. Now it's on to the Senate, where it's "expected to undergo substantial revisions."The Monday jigsaw. Featuring an epic woodpile in Hartland on May 1, 1906—with a foreground that "gives a little perspective on our mid-April snowfall," the Norwich Historical Society's Cam Cross writes.
Today's Wordbreak. With a five-letter word from Friday's Daybreak.And a jolt of pure energy to start the week...South African cellist and vocalist Abel Selaocoe is in Australia, where he's been performing with the Australian Chamber Orchestra. One piece from the concert: "Ka Bohaleng", off his debut album a few years back, which Selaocoe often performs solo but enlisted the full orchestra this time out. Here he is, rehearsing it with the orchestra earlier this month. "Every second of the concert was mind-blowing" writes an audience member in the comments.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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