GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Showers, cooler. A slow-moving swath of rain is crossing west to east today, bringing a likelihood of showers for much of the rest of the day and dragging a cold front along behind it. We'll be in the low or mid 50s throughout the day, then dropping toward the mid 40s overnight.So if you're out, keep an eye on the roads tonight. Wood frogs and peepers have already made it to ponds and vernal pools. Given the forecast, salamander-watchers say, tonight could be a Big Night for spotted salamanders, various rarer salamanders, and yet more frogs headed to water. If you've got to be in a car, try to avoid carnage; you'll find a map of known crossings in the region from the Hartford Salamander Team at the link.Baker's Store to reopen in Post Mills. You may remember that the store closed last year and went up for sale after former owner Cameron Gregory couldn't come to terms with his gasoline supplier. An ad hoc group of residents had been hoping to buy it and turn it into housing, but instead, reports Nick Clark in Sidenote, the store's been bought Ankit Patel and family, of Bow NH and East Meadow, Long Island. They own six corner and convenience stores in NH: in Orford, Piermont, Plainfield, Plymouth, Charlestown, and Albany. Hanover Hardware closes. After more than a century in Hanover, Its last day was Saturday, writes Justin Campfield in the Valley News. Owner Sonya Campbell and her husband, Mike—the store's manager—had been searching for over a year for a buyer as they headed for retirement, but were unable to find one. The store's closing, Campfield notes, "eliminates the last holdout from a time when shoppers could find basic necessities within Hanover’s downtown shopping core." Dartmouth, which owns the building, is planning to turn the space into three smaller storefronts.Brookfield's Ed Koren, cartoonist and volunteer firefighter, dies at 87. The news came Friday from Koren's wife, Curtis, via an obituary in The New York Times (gift link), where Robert D. McFadden wrote, "In a career that seemed oblivious to the wars, racial strife and calamities that bloodied the rapiers of more combative cartoonists, Mr. Koren forged his mythic realm of benign beasts and humans with snouts in some 1,100 cartoons for The New Yorker" and other magazines. Tributes to Koren's life, art, and four decades of chronicling Vermont's quirks poured in over the weekend. Here's:
Paul Heintz in VTDigger, with Koren's earlier reflections on his connections to the state;
Anna Van Dine on Vermont Public, where she talks to Koren's longtime friend and fellow cross-country-ski nut Bill McKibben;
And Sally Pollak in Seven Days, where she talks to Curtis Koren about what Vermont meant to the pair and about their excursion last Tuesday to Montpelier, where Koren—who had incurable lung cancer—"ate a New Yorker’s meal in a central Vermont barroom: a hot dog with a sauce full of onions and fabulous tater tots. 'He loved that hot dog,'" Curtis told her.
That's Meriden's Steve Taylor recalling longtime Plainfield Police Chief Gordon Gillens, who died in January. In the
VN
, Patrick O'Grady writes that Gillens—a Marine in Vietnam—combined a community-first approach to the town with firmness and courage when needed. That style was in the national spotlight during the 2007 standoff between federal authorities and tax protesters Ed and Elaine Brown and their followers. Gillens strove to keep things calm. "He had the demeanor and good judgment not to create problems that didn’t need to be created," says Sullivan County Attorney Marc Hathaway.
The case, reports Annmarie Timmins in
NH Bulletin
, revolves around a $3.8 million gift to the college two decades ago from Robert Keeler, who stipulated that the money
go to the “sole purpose of upgrading and maintaining its golf course.”
Which, of course, is now closed. Keeler's family wants the money back, arguing that the college took that step not for financial reasons, but to "
extract more value from the course by erecting housing and academic buildings," Timmins writes. The college, meanwhile, argues that it received permission from the state to repurpose the money for golf-related purposes.
"I think this is way too personal of a medication to just drop it in the mail." That's Rutland pharmacist Steve Hochberg talking to Williston's Edie Novicki about the prescription he was delivering: It would allow Novicki, under Vermont's medical aid-in-dying law, to die when she chose. The Rutland location of Hochberg's family-run pharmacy, Smilin' Steve Pharmacy, is the only one in the state that fills the necessary prescriptions, and Vermont Public's Mikaela Lefrak went along for the delivery. "We go to school to learn how to help people," Hochberg tells her. "And this is the ultimate help."
Catch up quick:
Head of Springfield VT prison placed on leave. The move was announced late last week by VT's Department of Corrections, which is investigating Mike Lyon for misconduct following a complaint. In a release, writes VTDigger's Patrick Crowley, officials said the investigation is not related to inmate deaths at the facility.
President of Vermont State U resigns abruptly. The announcement that Parvinder Grewal would be leaving before VSU even opened officially, writes Anne Wallace Allen in Seven Days, came "after weeks of intense criticism following his decision to remove most of the books from the system’s libraries" and changes to its member campuses' sports programs. The library plan has been put on hold.
One hundred different song patterns. From the male eastern meadowlark alone, writes Mary Holland on her Naturally Curious blog. They're back in the open country and fields of northern New England, she notes: "Should you hear this hauntingly beautiful series of notes, scan the horizon for the tallest tree or structure and you may be rewarded with the sight of a male’s bright yellow underparts and chest that bears a striking black chevron." What to listen for.Spring-Beauty flowers, spring beauty miner bees, Green Darners on the move, and other signs of April. The VT Center for Ecostudies is up with its "Field Guide to April"—including spring ephemerals, those green darner dragonflies (which can migrate up to 1,200 miles over multiple generations), spotted salamanders (just in time for tonight), American Kestrels, and more.The Monday Vordle. With a word from Friday's Daybreak.
Heads Up
At 6 this evening, Upper Valley Music Center's tour group—which is headed to NYC—is doing a performance of Camille Saint-Saëns' Carnival of the Animals to raise funds for the trip. At the First Congregational Church of Lebanon, admission by donation.
And to start us off for the week...
So many choices! Elephants, swans, tortoises, even fossils.
, by the
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.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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