GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Warming trend here we come! Things may have started out below freezing this morning, but we've got high pressure settled in for the week and warm air moving gradually into the region, so each day's going to be warmer than the last. Today: Sunny, getting into the upper 60s, light winds from the east. Mostly clear tonight, lows in the mid-30s though there could be patches of frost.Two things about this weather:
It may be warming up out there, but the water is still dangerously cold. If you go boating, the weather folks say, be prepared with a dry suit and life jacket.
Also, woods and fields have been drying quickly and all of Vermont is either in a high or very high fire-danger zone, while all of NH (which doesn't maintain a website) is rated High. "Best advice remains to limit activities that may cause unintended fire starts," says the weather service.
It's a bluebird day! Five of them, in fact They hatched Friday in the nesting box up in Newbury kept by photographer Ian Clark, who's got a camera trained on the activity. Scroll down to Friday to see the action start. Also, Ian's been out with his still camera catching some extraordinary shots of geese on the wing, muskrat and beaver in the water, crows insisting that a red-tailed hawk leave their part of the sky, and more.Croydon voters reverse course, reinstall school budget. In the end, reports NHPR's Sarah Gibson, nearly 60 percent of the town's voters on Saturday cast ballots in favor of restoring the $1.7 million school budget that had been cut in half at town meeting back in March. The final vote was 377-2—a lopsided margin that reflected the fact that opponents of the restoration move stayed away. “The way the law is set up," one of them told Gibson last week, “the way to vote no is to not show up.”The days of form-free free school meals are ending. For the last couple of years, thanks to universal free school breakfast and lunch policies, parents haven't had to fill out income forms for their kids to quality. But in NH the universal program's ending on June 30 and its future is uncertain in VT, reports the Valley News's Nora Doyle-Burr. To school districts that rely on the forms to track eligibility for federal grant programs that can boost education funding for kids in poverty, this might turn out to be helpful. But administrators worry that some kids who are eligible for free meals will wind up going without. SPONSORED: The Hop welcomes Martin Luther King III. On the evening of May 23, 1962, in Dartmouth Hall, an audience of students and Upper Valley residents rose to their feet to welcome the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for a lecture on the state of the US civil rights movement. This year, on the 60th anniversary of that speech, the Hop welcomes Dr. King's son to honor his father's life and legacy, and to celebrate Dartmouth community members who show continued commitment to social justice causes. All are welcome! Free registration required through the link above. Sponsored by the Hop.Saap: the backstory. You'll remember that Nisachon (Rung) Morgan is a finalist for a James Beard Award for best chef in the Northeast, thanks to the Thai restaurant she and her husband Steve run in Randolph. Turns out, reports VPR's Mikaela Lefrak in this profile, that when the two were putting their menu together Rung pushed for more familiar—and less spicy—dishes like pad thai to cater to American tastes, while it was Steve who insisted that she hew to the cooking of Isaan, the province where she grew up, with its pickled vegetables and meats, "epic spice levels," and sticky rice.And speaking of food... Artful's Susan Apel was in Bradford, VT over the weekend and reports in on her meal at Colatina Exit—51 years and still going strong—and visit to Out of the Whey, the new cheese shop on Main Street opened by Bradford's Jeri Martino. Also a drive-by (but not stop-in) at The Little Grille, now in the spot across from the waterfall that's hosted a rotating gallery of restaurants over the past few decades.How a new building takes shape. 501 Main, the new mixed-use building going up on Main St. in Fairlee, is getting framed out and rising before our eyes. Or, at least, in front of developer Jonah Richard's camera. And not without some hiccups, like a one-ton wall getting blown over in high winds last month (it survived). Richard documents the last month of construction on his Brick + Mortar blog (scroll down to "Two Things From Me") and details some of the costs to explain why new building is so expensive.The science of mud season. Let's just say that the epic ruts and quagmires we faced last month had several causes. In Sidenote, Li Shen talks to former CRREL engineer Bob Eaton, who among other things studied roads and airport runways, and details how frost and water interact within various roadways to produce the mess many Upper Valleyites confronted recently. There are fixes, Li writes, but none is quick or inexpensive and at heart they involve replacing much of what's there.New NH Senate, Exec Council maps signed into law. Gov. Chris Sununu set his pen to the new districts drawn up by the GOP-dominated legislature on Friday. And though he's been adamant that the state's congressional map sport two competitive districts, writes Amanda Gokee in NH Bulletin, the two maps he just okayed don't follow suit. The Senate map "could allow Republicans to establish a supermajority with 16 districts leaning Republican and eight Democratic," she reports; the Exec Council map shifts heavily Democratic towns like Hanover and Concord into a single district. Meanwhile, across the river, VT guv vetoes Clean Heat Standard while legislature overrides his pension veto. Both events took place on Friday. The Clean Heat bill is aimed at forcing fuel dealers to reduce the amount of fossil fuel they sell, writes Seven Days' Anne Wallace Allen; Gov. Phil Scott said it ignores costs and impacts and places too much authority in the Public Utilities Commission's hands. The House leadership may try to override the veto this week. Meanwhile, the House voted unanimously on Friday to override Scott's veto of the pension reform bill, joining the Senate and making it law."Why has no one parked a food truck next to Route 108 and named it Smuggler's Nachos?" That perfectly reasonable question on Twitter last month has sparked a fine (if somewhat wandering) Reddit thread of other proposed VT business names: Reading Reading Literacy Center; Squechee Clean laundromat and car wash; South Gyro...And the Monday Vordle. Using a word related to Friday's Daybreak. You'd think the weekend Vordles would have taken care of them all, but noooo...
Heads Up
Today at 5 pm, both in-person and online, Atlanta-based AP national politics reporter Bill Barrow delivers a Rockefeller Center lecture, "Covering American Democracy: It's Not a Game (At Least It Shouldn't Be).” In this divided era, "journalism too often advances shallow, oversimplified narratives—sometimes to the point of error," runs the description. "At best, this is lazy and reductive. At worst, this 'SportsCenter' brand of journalism exacerbates cultural divisions that are fraying American institutions, including the fourth estate." There's a better approach, Barrow argues, and he'll lay it out then talk it over with veteran journalist and Dartmouth writing prof Alexis Jetter.
Also at 5, Left Bank Books in Hanover is hosting a listening party for the electronic music composed by Dartmouth neuroscience postdoc Beau Sievers in response to poet and Left Bank owner Rena Mosteirin's Experiment 116, which runs Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 through successive machine translations.
And at 6:30 today, the Norwich Public Library hosts an online talk and Q&A on forest health with Orange County and northern Windor County forester AJ Follensbee, on everything from the emerald ash borer to current use policies to how to manage woodlots. Submit questions in advance here (though you can also ask them during the presentation), watch on Zoom here.
And just to ease into the week:
A mystery, this guy—maybe Israeli, but he's left almost no tracks on the web. Fill me in if you know anything.
And 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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