GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Chance of showers, maybe thunderstorms. After this we get a couple of dry days, but at the moment there's a cold front dropping in from the north, and it'll bring some rain and maybe thunderstorms this afternoon. The weather folks are not impressed: "Thunderstorms will be of garden variety and sub-severe," they write, though they note there could be frequent lightning, so stay aware if they show up. Otherwise, a mix of sun and clouds, highs in the lower 70s, low 50s tonight.It's definitely butterfly season. And here are two:
And an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on a butterfly bush in Hanover. "I couldn't resist," writes Fran Brokaw.
As its "economic backbone" shifts, Hanover seeks to boost streets' liveliness. The challenge the town faces, explains the Valley News's John Lippman, is that services that don't produce a lot of foot traffic, like real estate and financial firms, are replacing retail. Farmhouse Pottery is closing its Hanover store Aug. 6 (to "consolidate retail operations" in Woodstock); Traditionally Trendy and Hanover True Value are already gone. A group of business, town government, and Dartmouth people has been meeting to talk it all over: a new website for visitors, public space by town hall, pop-up events on Allen Street, and eventually, widening sidewalks are all in play.Missing AT hiker's body found, death believed "related" to flooding. On Friday, search crews looking for 67-year-old Robert Kerker of Rhinebeck, NY, found him along Stony Brook in Stockbridge, about 1.5 miles downstream of where the brook crosses the Appalachian Trail. A witness who'd seen him the night before flooding struck the region July 10 said the severe rains "had elevated water levels on the Stony Brook and made the trail’s crossing of the stream dangerous,” VT State Police said in a press release Friday night. The official cause of death is awaiting an autopsy.“We’re at that point where it just really isn’t going to make any financial sense to ignore things until they break." That's Liz Royer, executive director of the Vermont Rural Water Association, which focuses on community water systems, talking to the VN's Frances Mize about drinking-water vulnerabilities uncovered by the floods. With water disrupted for users in S. Royalton and Woodstock and a close call in Bethel, writes Mize, infrastructure remains "vulnerable to the same problems that damaged it, and the risk will increase as climate change brings more rain, and more drought."The AT: "stretched, shrunk, rerouted and redesigned"—not to mention, longer than when it opened. "Originally 2,050 miles, it is now almost 2,200 miles. And it continues to get longer," write Lizzie Johnson and Lauren Tierney in The Washington Post (gift link). Far from being the static trail of the public imagination, they write (with a cool scrolling graphic that shows route changes over the years) the trail has been adjusted multiple times—as many as 1,500 to 2,000 modifications, one digital history scholar estimates. Johnson and Tierney dive into some of the bigger changes, and what spurred them. (Thanks, CJ!)With heavy rains comes more work—lots more work—on NH's trails. And it doesn't help, Amanda Pirani writes in NH Bulletin, that unlike the switchback-happy west, trails in NH tend to run right up a mountain's fall line. "That is not the greatest way to lay out a trail," says Carrie Deegan of the Society for the Preservation of NH Forests, since water likes taking the path of least resistance. Put together more precipitation, high trail usage, and the Whites' thin soils, notes the Appalachian Mtn. Club's Alex DeLucia, and it's a recipe for major erosion. Pirani writes about the volunteers trying to keep hikers happy.Meanwhile, when it comes to rivers, VT officials want to keep them "beautifully messy." Logs, boulders, silt, sediment: They all help rivers recover from flooding, writes Emma Cotton in VTDigger. “We don’t need hydraulically efficient rivers. We need hydraulically inefficient rivers," says Rob Evans, the state's rivers program manager—noting a history of clearing and channelizing rivers has made them faster, more powerful, and more dangerous when they flood. “If you don’t have to do anything in the river to protect human investments and infrastructure,” says Evans, “then leave it alone."Young ospreys can catch fish as soon as five days after they fledge. But unlike many other young birds, Mary Holland writes in a paragraph accompanying her photo of juvenile ospreys prepping to leave the nest, they stick around at home for a while as their parents supplement their catch. Generally, within a month of fledging, they head south.So. Those butterflies up above? You can find them and their brethren all over, with some particularly choice spots in VT including Hildene (Robert Todd Lincoln's former summer home in Manchester), the Greens, state and town parks, and Merck Forest in Rupert, writes Erica Houskeeper on her Happy Vermont blog. As it happens, she adds, it's "been a big year for Vermont butterflies." Not only did did Bryan Pfeiffer find that bog elfin back in May, but VCE has launched its second Vermont Butterfly Atlas effort to help detect changes in butterfly populations. Here's one handy guide.Speaking of flying. Or, actually, spectacularly not flying... On Saturday, one of those planes that tote banners over crowded beaches hit the water just off NH's Hampton Beach. The pilot was uninjured and he and the plane were rescued by lifeguards. Police said the pilot had reported engine problems. WMUR has the story and footage collected from beachgoers who filmed the whole thing."Corn sweat." Seriously, it's a thing, though more in the Midwest. It turns out, according to the National Weather Service, that a single acre of corn can put some 3,000-4,000 gallons of water into the atmosphere each day in late July and August. "That added moisture in the air then increases already high dew points," writes The Weather Channel, "making it feel even more humid on a localized scale." Just figured I'd share.The Monday Vordle. With a choice word from Friday's Daybreak.
Heads Up
This evening at 7, celebrated novelist Anthony Marra visits the Norwich Bookstore to read from and talk about his latest, Mercury Pictures Presents. You may have run across Marra before—either through his debut, a collection of interlocking stories about Russia called The Tsar of Love and Techno, or his extraordinary A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, a deeply human, moving, and much celebrated novel about the Russian war in Chechnya. Marra's newest follows '30s and '40s Hollywood through the eyes (in part) of a young Italian emigrée—and weaves her experience there together with the far darker events she left back home.
Also, you might want to know that both the VT and NH branches of the Northeast Organic Farming Association are collecting donations to help farmers on both sides of the river who were devastated by flooding, and to help out, Tunbridge artist Cecily Anderson has created a set of t-shirts, tote bags, and posters, with all proceeds going to NOFA-VT. Vital Communities has more on its page here. You can also contribute directly to NOFA-NH or NOFA-VT.
And to ease us into the week...The Italian-born, NYC-based jazz guitar virtuoso Pasquale Grasso and skyrocketing singer Samara Joy with Duke Ellington's "Solitude."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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