WHAT A PLEASURE TO SEE YOU AGAIN, UPPER VALLEY!
Though hmm, this weather... This may sound familiar: Today's going to be hot and humid, with possible showers and thunderstorms. For starters, we're headed toward 90, with the humidity making it feel a few degrees warmer. There's also an upper-level disturbance coming through from the west later today, bringing the potential this afternoon and tonight for showers and thunderstorms—and possible downpours, especially to the north. Lows tonight in the upper 60s.Break of day. Okay, this is CoffeeBreak and dawn, such as it was, was hours ago. Even so, here's a calming, we'll-have-days-like-this-again photo from Robin Osborne in Thetford. "A true Upper Valley daybreak," she writes.Sheesh. It's been a week. Let's do some catching up.
For starters, if you missed John Lippman's great story in the Valley News about Henry Swayze and his glider crash in the Whites, you should read it. You'll remember that back in early June, Swayze, an 84-year-old glider pilot from Tunbridge, wound up hanging for hours from a pair of trees in the mountains until rescuers could reach him. Last week, Lippman reconstructed events—here's your chance to learn about thermals and glide paths—and Swayze's unruffled response to it all.
There was also the death of Dartmouth undergrad Won Jang, whose body was found in the Connecticut River July 7. Hanover Police Chief Charlie Dennis reported at the time that the department had received an anonymous tip that hazing might have been involved; on the 9th, the college suspended two Greek organizations—Jang was a member of one, and had attended an event hosted by the two the night before his body was discovered. Here's The Dartmouth's roundup.
There have been no new measles cases reported since two—one in NH, one in VT—were confirmed early last week, both linked to that visitor to Hanover and Dartmouth who was here in late June. Here's the NH announcement, and here's VT's. Even so, NH state epidemiologist Benjamin Chan said late last week, "Given some of the levels of community exposures that we've made public, I think it's very likely there will be other measles infections identified in the coming days or weeks." NHPR's Paul Cuno-Booth reports.
And tonight's Hanover Selectboard meeting will be Town Manager Alex Torpey's last. He announced last week that, after two years in the job, he'll be stepping down as of the end of this month. Planning, zoning, and codes director Rob Houseman will take over Aug. 1 as interim town manager. "There is a vibrancy and energy in the Upper Valley I wouldn’t have even believed before moving up here," Torpey wrote in his announcement, "and I’m grateful to get to live and work in such a dynamic place (which I will be continuing to live and work in)."
And then, of course, there's the flooding.
You've no doubt been following the Beryl-aftermath news, so there's no need to recap. But here are some things to keep in mind:
For one thing, you only have to glance at the Connecticut in these parts to know it's really not water you want to be in right now. In a news release Saturday, the NH State Police made that abundantly clear: currents are strong, debris is an ever-present danger, high water can "create undertows that can affect even experienced boat captains and swimmers," and the safety buoys around the Wilder Dam are gone. The NHSP lists a series of local boat landings affected by all this. Here's a statewide map of all the NH boat landings, and here are VT's.
As if to put an exclamation point on the issue, rescue teams from the Hartford, Lebanon, Hanover, Plainfield, and Hartland fire departments responded on Saturday to help inner-tubers who were in trouble near Sumner Falls in Hartland on Saturday. "It’s probably not safe to do water sports in the river at the moment,” Hartford Fire Chief Scott Cooney told the VN.
The flooding was narrower in scope than last year, but farms in the way of rampaging waters took it on the chin. As VT Secy of Agriculture Anson Tebbetts tells VTDigger's Emma Cotton and Chloe Jad, “One of the challenges of this event is, the crops are just coming in, so this is the time for income for our farm community. With crops destroyed, they don’t have any income, but they still have employees that need to be paid.” Cotton and Jad round up where things stand right now. And here's video footage from NBC5's Amanda Martin-Ryan of the damage to Joe’s Brook Farm and Cross Farm in Barnet.
And though VT's dams so far seem to have emerged unscathed—only one, in Barnet, was overtopped—the AP's Michael Casey doesn't mince words on why officials are paying attention: "Like the rest of New England, Vermont has mostly older, small dams built to power textile mills, store water or supply irrigation to farms. The concern is they have outlived their usefulness and climate change could bring storms they were never built to withstand." The state ramped up its inspection abilities after last year's flooding, and responded quickly this time around, Casey writes.
They’ll remember this all their lives": Thetford Academy students forced out of Adirondacks campsite in flooding. The seven students, along with outdoor coordinator
Scott Ellis, group leader Austin Borg, and Borg’s dog, Summit
, had spent two days rock climbing last week near Keene Valley, NY. But then, in heavy rain Wednesday night, the Boquet River began rising. And rising. There were "massive great arcs of flowing black water — you could watch it growing," sophomore Kit Payson told the Adirondack Daily Enterprise. TA librarian
Kate Owen, from those parts, showed up with a school bus to rescue them.
(Hat tip to the Journal-Opinion's Alex Nuti-de Biasi for noticing.)
That was steamboat inventor Samuel Morey, venting his fury at the better-known and commercially successful Robert Fulton, the guy who gets the credit for the steamboat—even though, Mark Bushnell writes in VTDigger, Morey had successfully tested his version on Fairlee Pond by 1790 and on the Connecticut three years later, while Fulton didn't make his way up the Hudson until 1807. On the other hand, there was a guy in Philadelphia in 1786, another in West Virginia in 1787... Bushnell digs into the history and Morey's life and inventions—including a motor that ran on turpentine.
Banding geese: "You want to hold them with a firm grip. If they feel you loosen up, they'll squirm." A bit over ten days ago, about 50 volunteers and VT Fish & Wildlife staff showed up at the Dead Creek Wildlife Management Area in Addison for the agency's annual banding effort—a chance to collect basic information about the Canada geese who summer there. Seven Days intern Jack McGuire went along and got one lesson right off: Don't show up in shorts and sneakers. "After all," he explains, "we'd be walking through large muddy puddles, along riverbeds and plains with tall grass up to our knees."The Monday jigsaw. It's back! With a Civil War-era photo of a prominent downtown Norwich building in its earlier days, and a group of guys you don't see hanging around on the town green any more.
Hold onto this one for tonight. If thunderstorms do show up, you'll want this on hand: The Polish saxophone quartet The WHOOP Group with Vivaldi's "Storm", part of Autumn in The Four Seasons. You can't help but wonder if it would have been placed differently if Vivaldi had ever spent a summer in New England. (Thanks DM!)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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