WELCOME BACK, UPPER VALLEY!
Today pretty much sums up this spring: It'll start out sunny, then get cloudy, it'll be cooler than normal, and tonight it might rain. And yes, that's frost on your windshield this morning. Lower 50s by mid-afternoon. Oh, and that precipitation tonight? There could be a little, um, snow mixed in above 1500 feet.Barwood Arena to get $800,000 in repairs over the summer. Hartford's ice rink, which is home to everything from club and high school hockey teams to the Upper Valley Curling Club, will be getting getting a new refrigeration system, new boards, and a new electric Zamboni. The big expense is replacing the brine-based piping system of plastic pipes and glycol. The boards are designed to be more flexible when they get hit. But the big question: Wouldn't it be cool to pull up next to a Zamboni at an EV charging station? (VN, subscription reqd.)Speaking of the VN, editor Maggie Cassidy will be talking the future of local newspapers in NH this morning on The Exchange. The NHPR show, which begins at 9 and is rebroadcast at 7 pm, is taking a look at how the press in the state is weathering extreme upheaval. Host Laura Knoy will be talking with Cassidy, the publisher of a set of North Country papers, the editor of the free weekly Colebrook Chronicle, and the founder of InDepthNH.org, the online-only nonprofit newcomer. NH Dems trying to enlist presidential candidates in the fight over the state's voter law. The 2018 measure requiring college students to adhere to residency requirements in order to vote is scheduled to take effect in July. It's not like Democratic presidential candidates need a new excuse to criticize Republican-passed laws tightening voter eligibility requirements, but they're being pressed to do so here. “People often don’t think of New Hampshire as a place where voter suppression is occurring, but it is very real,” says Garrett Muscatel, a Dartmouth student who won a state House seat last fall. Republicans defend the measure as “an attempt to make our elections cleaner and fairer.”
VT legislators can't agree on lead limits in school water, so testing is unlikely before school lets out. The House and Senate have set different levels that would require remediation -- the Senate says anything above 3 parts per billion, the House says 5 ppb. The backer of the Senate bill says the House is putting kids' health at risk. The House says the state can't afford to meet the Senate's limits. Both are far below the EPA's 15 ppb limit -- which means that whatever the state requires school districts to spend, a lot of kids will probably be getting higher lead levels at home.
VT wants to revamp deer regs. State fish and wildlife officials are hoping to manage the deer population better and to entice more hunters into the woods. So they're proposing to: restrict hunters to one buck a year; add a new "antlerless" muzzle-loader season before rifle season; start archery season earlier; and add a "novice" season at the same time as youth weekend, which would be moved up to late October instead of early November. They'll be taking public feedback in Bethel on May 21. "Too many seasons," grumbles one VT hunter on the department's FB page.Vermont's home-based alternative to nursing homes is growing. The program, known as Adult Family Care, is trying to deal with a shortage of long-term care beds for people who need it. So families are opening up their homes: The people they care for pay room and board, and the state kicks in $80 to $160 a day in Medicaid funds, depending on the complexity of a resident's needs. Moving into a stranger's home felt odd at first, says David Calderwood, who'd lived in a residential care facility for eight years, until it closed. But "there is an openness here, a give-and-take, which I never had before," he says of his new home.Vermont's toxic-toy list is a nightmare... to use, that is. In 2014, the legislature mandated that the state health department create a list of toxics in toys, so that parents could know what they're buying. They're consider updating the regs, so VTDigger decided to look into how helpful the list might be to you or me. "The five spreadsheets contain 680,700 separate products reported by 142 different manufacturers," Digger's Elizabeth Gribkoff reports. "In some cases, there were 12-digit universal product codes that can be looked up, but there were also vague descriptions, like 'outerwear,' and five and seven digit codes that could not be so easily investigated." Oh, and all this is on spreadsheets in tiny font.VT middle-finger spite statue goes national thanks to Kid Rock. Ted Pelkey's a sculptor up in Westford, VT, northeast of Burlington, and he's in a spat with town officials over some building he wants to do on his land. So he carved a statue of a giant hand extending its middle finger and in December put it up by a main road through town. You'll be floored to learn it's become a tourist attraction. And it got the attention of rapper/musician Kid Rock, who ordered up one of his own. Pelkey obliged, and it'll get delivered to Nashville sometime next month.SO JUST WHAT IS THERE TO DO ON A MONDAY NIGHT AROUND HERE?Well for one thing, Pentangle Arts and the Nugget have The Mustang. This isn't a Western, but it's in the mold -- only its director, Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, is French and its star is the compelling Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts. He plays a convict in a Nevada prison who's drafted into a mustang-taming program (which exists in real life) and -- this will stun you -- finds redemption. It's "a touching and original piece of bare-bones sentimental humanism, and Schoenaerts is terrific in it," wrote Variety. And adds: "The movie is less about a convict who becomes a horse whisperer than about a horse who becomes a convict whisperer." Woodstock Town Hall, 7 pm. You can also see it at The Nugget, same time -- which is an hour after Avengers: Endgame starts there, so you'll avoid the marauding hordes. Or then, you might prefer to do something with your hands, like learn woodturning. Claremont Makerspace will take you from log to bowl, teaching you how to use a lathe and other woodturning tools. It actually will take two classes to get from green wood to tabletop conversation piece -- the second one is on Thursday. Runs from 5:30 to 8 both days.Whatever you do, have a great start to your week. See you tomorrow.
If you like Daybreak and think one or more of your friends would like it, too, please send this on to them. And hey, if you're that friend? So nice to see you! You can subscribe at:
Thank you!