RABBIT RABBIT, UPPER VALLEY!
High pressure gives us a July kickoff gift by building in from the Great Lakes. And boy, does it have a nice week in store. There might be some patches of fog at first, but it'll become sunny, high around 80. Clouds moving in tonight, then moving out again tomorrow morning. Today's the day new parking rates and fines go into effect in Hanover. The VN's Rohan Chakravarty pulls all the changes together. On-street meter rates are going up, as are 10-hour meter rates. Garage rates are up, and fines are rising by $5, to $15 for an expired meter. The goal, says town manager Julia Griffin, is Griffin to encourage longer-term parkers to park on the periphery, college employees to park on campus, and commuters who work downtown to use10-hour spaces. (VN, sub reqd)We're getting into Peak Flower, and "Gardening Guy" Henry Homeyer's pointing out some of his favorites. Ladyslippers, Japanese primroses, peonies, roses, clematis... It's all a feast for the eyes. With some tips for making them yours, too.Speaking of gardens, Willing Hands is asking gardeners to "grow a row" to donate. The nonprofit that gathers excess food from groceries and gleans the remainders from farmers' fields is looking for help from backyard gardens, too. It'll take any produce, but especially vegs that can be stored long-term, like beets, winter squash, cabbage, onions, and carrots. "We thought this program might be a great fit for someone who wants to help out on their own time from their own home garden,” says coordinator Sara Cavin. (VN, etc)Back in June, you might have noticed a hole in front of Baker-Berry library at Dartmouth. That was archeologists and volunteers digging up artifacts from what was once Ripley-Choate House, which stood on that site. What'd they find? Imported china, a medicine bottle, a small pipe, a child’s plate, marbles, a gold ring, and a row of false teeth. “This dig was every bit as good as I had hoped it would be,” says Jesse Casana, the anthropology prof who led it. And while we're on campus, remember the whole Kamala Harris-Joe Biden busing smackdown at the second Dem debate? NPR's got an interview with Dartmouth history prof Matthew Delmont on busing-for-desegregation. It was a fraught issue, and the problems underlying it haven't been resolved, he says. "There's a lot of...lip service given to the ideal of integration, but there's an extreme lack of political will and urgency and leadership to try to make any real integration happen in America's schools."Why's there so much pollen out there this year? NHPR's Sam Evans-Brown tackled that question for a listener. "Ah, pollen. Or as I like to call it (much to the dismay of nearly everyone around me) plant sperm," he says, though admits that it's not really. Short-term: bouts of rain then sun, and an unusually cold spring that meant the spring and summer pollen-spewers merged. Long-term? Global warming's produced a full extra day of allergy season.
Mountain lions in NH? If they're not here already, it's just a matter of time, says Sue Morse. In the wake of three recent unconfirmed sightings around Sunapee, the veteran tracker and founder of VT-based Keeping Track says, "Everything a cougar ever ate is here in plenty. The only thing missing is the apex carnivore. Those animals will come back.” The Union Leader has a nice rundown on the whole question.Sununu vetoed the NH budget on Friday, but it's "a dangerous game," says Garry Rayno. The veteran statehouse reporter takes a look at the history of budget vetoes in the state on InDepthNH.org, and concludes that they can backfire. Reviewing Maggie Hassan's 2015 veto, he says she "probably would have been seen in a more favorable light if she had let the budget go into law without her signature. And the same is likely to be true for Sununu as well."
VT's food composting law takes final effect next year, and the Agency of Natural Resources is trying to figure out how to get the word out. It'll no longer just be institutional food waste -- all food scraps from the likes of you and me will banned from landfills. Northeast Public Radio is up with a piece on the state of play. At best, the agency figures, 60 percent of what goes into landfills now will get diverted. Still, "[W]e estimate if we composted all of Vermont’s food waste it’d be the same as taking about 7,000 cars off the road each year.” Want to buy a college? VT's got two for sale. Amenities include a mansion at Southern VT College and Green Mtn College's carbon-neutral campus and working farm. But as VTDigger's Lola Duffort notes, there are some sticking points, too: the colleges are millions of dollars in debt. Neither has a listing price yet, but the guy handling one says a number of K-12 buyers "are in the market looking for turn-key campuses in New England.”Early childhood educators in VT are struggling. As Seven Days points out, "Conversations about childcare often focus on the high cost and shortage of care. Less frequently discussed is the fact that the providers themselves are barely scraping by." Many of them depend on Medicaid, have no retirement savings, and face VT's relatively high cost of living. The basic problem, says Janet McLaughlin of Let's Grow Kids, is that families who need childcare "can't afford to pay more, and early educators can't afford to make less."You know the guy on the Heady Topper can? That's the artist, Dan Blakeslee, who used a pic of himself as the inspiration -- only he never tasted the beer. "I've had three sips of beer in my life, and I didn't like any of 'em," he says in this CBS News piece on how craft breweries are embracing cover art.Okay, these guys are crazy, and you can lose your life, but oh my gosh! What do you do if you're into extreme sports but don't want to spend money on equipment more elaborate than shorts and the occasional costume? Cliff dive. From, like, 80 or 90 feet up. With twists and flips. It turns out Vermont's a good place for it -- all those quarries. So here's a pretty wild compilation. But diver number 3? Ouch, dude!SO WHERE YOU HEADED TONIGHT? LOOKS LIKE MAYBE WOODSTOCK.You could hear Cadwell Turnbull read from his debut sci-fi novel, The Lesson, at the Yankee Bookshop. Yes, it's aliens in the US Virgin Islands, but it's both more allegorical and more personal -- about the choices we make as humans and as aliens -- than that setup suggests. "A persuasively—almost musically—worded meditation on colonialism and whether it’s really possible to return home again," Kirkus wrote. Turnbull will be in conversation with Andrew Liptak, weekend editor for The Verge. Starts at 6 pm at the Yankee Bookshop.Or you could see Rocketman, which isn't about rockets or sci-fi. Though wait a minute. "The story reshuffles reality, especially time and facts," says the Chicago Reader's Leah Pickett. And at one point Taron Egerton as Elton John does levitate, both himself and his audience. Mixed reviews -- "grim slog" vs. "grand entertainment" -- but you pretty much can't miss with the music. At Woodstock Town Hall Theater. Starts at 7:30.Here's to your week and your month starting off on a good foot. See you tomorrow.
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