AND WHAT A PLEASURE IT IS TO SEE YOU, UPPER VALLEY!
Mostly sunny, chance of showers late. According to the weather folks, a frontal boundary is due to "sag" down from Canada today. Such a great word! Though are frontal boundaries really that listless? Because along with the chance of rain starting up this evening, there's also a slight chance of thunderstorms, though these are more likely to our north. Temps climbing nicely into the low to mid 80s by mid-afternoon. Dartmouth says alternative to biomass plant would cost more, use more space. It faces opposition to its plan to replace its oil-burning plant with one that uses wood chips. Three high-profile environmentalist alums point out that wood "generates significantly more CO2 than the fuel oil it would replace," and a public forum earlier this month generated calls for heat pumps and renewables. But chips are cheaper, the college says, and a system using solar, geothermal and heat pumps would need 60 acres, compared to the four for the proposed biomass plant. Next public forum is tomorrow. (VN, sub reqd)The intriguing local foundation you've never heard of. John Lippman looks at the Emily Landecker Foundation, the under-the-radar force behind the Upper Valley Aquatic Center and generous donor to about 40 UV nonprofits, funded by Hanover resident Andrea Reimann-Ciardelli and named for her mother. Landecker was the daughter of a Jewish father killed by the Nazis, but she herself fell in love with and had three children by a German industrialist who was an ardent Hitler supporter. Their heirs have since forced the company to confront its Nazi-era past and have plowed their wealth into community causes. A tangled, fascinating story. (Yep, VN again)Poets' Wilmot farm to become home for writing residency. Eagle Pond Farm, where Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon lived (she died in 1995, he died last June), had been bought by preservationists in May after it suddenly came on the market. Since then, they've been working to figure out what to do with it. The residency program "will serve as a reminder, not only of Don and Jane’s work but also of the place of poetry and writing in our lives,” says Mary Lyn Ray, a children’s book author and friend of the couple.VT agency calls for probe on GMP rate hike. The state's Agency of Commerce and Community Development is acting at the behest of large employers, who have “questioned why — as they make great strides toward efficiency and reduced usage — they still face continuing growing energy costs from the utility’s ever-increasing rates,” it says in a filing with the Public Utility Commission. GMP wants 2.92 percent annual increases over the next 3 years. You're not imagining things: This is the best year for monarch butterflies in a couple of decades. At least, that's what the Vermont Center for Ecostudies' Kent McFarland tells WCAX. Warm, dry weather and a solid milkweed crop have done wonders after our depressingly cold, wet spring. "I was pretty worried that it was going to be horrible for monarchs or other butterflies," McFarland says. "But then suddenly summer hit us and it's been great."Wait! You mean they're not just for dogs? There's this company up in S. Burlington that collects -- seriously -- 8,000 to 10,000 used tennis balls each day and recycles them. They come in from all over the country and are a tiny fraction of the 125 million that end up in landfills each year. What's got RecycleBalls excited these days? Producing horse turf for arenas: The rubber makes it soft, and the felt keeps the arena from getting dusty. "It feels a lot comfier when you're walking around and lighter when you're riding," says one rider.Do we have some catching up to do? I sure do, though you probably know all this already:
IT'S MONDAY. GOT PLANS?You could think about heading to Claremont to hear Papa Joe Gaudet tell stories. You don't get chances like this very often. He's an itinerant storyteller, "telling stories to anyone who will listen, from schools and cafes, to bars and busking," as NH-based storyteller Simon Brooks recently put it. And he's an elder within the shrinking coterie of traditional storytellers -- in other words, he's not confessional, as is the rage these days. He tells stories he's made up, or found, or learned on his travels. It used to be a thing. And could be again. Led by the NH Storytelling Alliance at Claremont Makerspace, starts at 6:45.Or you could catch Matthew Minicucci at Dartmouth. He's the college's poet-in-residence at the Frost place in Franconia this summer. He's also working on a novel about three students using their Greek translation skills to find a missing professor. "Here, there are only two men: one a poor horseman, the other a handsome prince. They run for miles each night. They sleep clothed only by a single strap of stars, far from the shield’s story, close enough to forget the armor they bear." That's from his poem, "Book Twenty-Five." Starts at 4:30.Or hey, you could go see -- or, really, listen to -- Yesterday in Woodstock. You know the premise, right? Young singer-songwriter bumping along; brief power outage; wattage returns and everything's the same except he and a few others are the only people in the world who know who the Beatles were or, more importantly, remember the songs they sang. Imagine the possibilities. The film, Anthony Lane said in The New Yorker, is "spry and engaging." Other critics vehemently disagree. Starts at 7:30. If you do go, your mother should know.Okay, okay, that was weak. But hey, it's my first day back. Got a better song title for that spot? Let me know. Bragging rights tomorrow. See you then.
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