WHAT A PLEASURE TO SEE YOU AGAIN, UPPER VALLEY!
Thanks for indulging that time away. Hope you got a chance to rest, too. And now…
Mostly cloudy, chance of showers. Today’s the hiccup in the stretch of sunny days we’ve been seeing, with a little gouge of low pressure sitting north of the border and a weak system moving along it that may—or may not—produce showers and possibly a thunderstorm today and tonight. The chance lasts until a bit after midnight. Otherwise, we’re looking at more clouds than sun, highs in the mid or upper 70s, and lows tonight in the lower 60s.
We’ll start off with a treat for the eyes. Sunrise in Post Mills, attended by a crop of lilies, from Laura Pulaski.
DH to close its Tele-ICU and TeleEmergency programs. The two services are part of the hospital network’s “Connected Care” suite that lets patients and doctors at hospitals both within and outside Dartmouth Health consult with emergency and ICU docs and nurses. In a statement Friday, DH’s director of media relations, Audra Burns, writes that “Tele-ICU and Tele-ED are two services whose costs, at our current scale, without external support, are simply unsustainable. We have begun conversations about sunsetting these two services.” Back in June, the Valley News’s Clare Shanahan reported a $63.5 million deficit driven by weather closures and high labor costs.
A quick VT primary catchup. Voting was last week, and just in case you weren’t paying attention, the VN’s Clare Shanahan rounds up key results. Among them: W. Windsor state Rep. Elizabeth Burrows will join incumbents Becca White and Joe Major as Democratic nominee for the state Senate from Windsor County, while state Rep. Monique Priestley will face GOP incumbent John K. Benson in Orange County in November. Two longtime incumbent Democratic state reps lost their re-election bids: John Bartholomew of Hartland, and Jim Masland of Thetford—in Masland’s four-town district, newcomers Dee Gish and Lauren Rhim got the Dems’ nod. Lots more at the link. The NH primaries will be on Sept. 8.
Wildfire in Rumney, NH grows. The fire was first reported Friday morning near the summit of the Rattlesnake Mountain Trail, reports WMUR’s Jon Schoenheider, and as of last night, NH’s Forest Protection Bureau said it had grown to about 30 acres. It’s on federal land, and a variety of federal, state, and local crews have been fighting it under trying conditions. "That's such a hard spot to get up to,” says Rumney’s fire chief. “It's pretty remote. It's about an hour and a half hike, and we do some bushwhacking to get out into there. (We use) hand tools, and we have five-gallon water bags that we carry like a backpack to extinguish what we can."
Woodstock-area schools hire former Claremont business administrator. Last week, the Mountain Views Supervisory District announced that it has hired Mary Henry as its new director of finance and operations; she began work in July, replacing Jim Fenn. Henry had been Fenn’s protégée in earlier jobs, notes the Mountain Times. Henry last drew headlines when she reached a termination agreement with SAU 6, the Claremont-area schools, after being placed on leave as the school district grappled with its $5 million deficit. In a suspension letter last fall, the district’s interim superintendent laid out a series of financial mismanagement allegations against her.
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Do you ever spend time in New London? The town and its bike and pedestrian committee are trying to map out new walking routes around town to “support small business activity, encourage healthy outdoor exercise and promote the aesthetic beauty of our Town,” in the words of the committee’s chair, Russ Moore. So they’re surveying visitors and residents as they shape their plans. Survey at the link.
In Bethel, a quarry hiding in plain sight. As Brave Little State’s Sabine Poux says, “You can see the quarry from Interstate 89. It looks almost otherworldly—great white walls rising out of the earth like a glacier or an ancient palace.” Its product—known as Bethel granite or Bethel white—is “known to be the whitest granite in the world,” she says. It’s been used all over the world, including for the Smithsonian’s natural history museum. But the Bethel quarry isn’t nearly as well known as its neighbors up the road in Barre, and that got two Bethelites curious about why Bethel granite is unique and the quarry itself. At the link, Sabine tells the story. Starting with magma…
An odyssey at the drive-in. Bethel’s got another uncommon feature—a drive-in theater. And last week, the VN’s Marion Umpleby headed over. While much of the US is seeing The Odyssey indoors—and, if they’re lucky and have the cash, in IMAX theaters—for some people a $10 ticket to the drive-in seems exactly right. Of course, there are the elements to worry about, like the rain and fog in Bethel the night Umpleby was there, but that didn’t seem to dampen spirits: not for the high school students hosted by Liam White in and around his Subaru with a broken trunk door, not for a couple “hunkered down on a pile of blankets in a small hatchback…” Umpleby describes it all.
Luna moth caterpillars, evening primrose, leaf mines… They were all at the Moth Ball. Northern Woodlands’ annual event was a couple of weeks ago, and cartoonist Ashley Jablonski was there, too, drawing what she saw. The luna moth caterpillar was already spinning silk, there was plenty of evidence of leaf miners—the larvae of flies, beetles, and other tiny creatures carving lines into leaves—and a fine example of a primrose moth, which looks a lot like the rosy maple moth, or “‘pink lemonade moth,’ as my friends like to call them,” Jablonski writes. Moth whisperer—and fiber artist—JoAnne Russo led the event, and she gets a shout-out (and sketch), too.
And while we’re talking things with wings… The VT Center for Ecostudies’ “Field Guide to August” came out while Daybreak was away, and it’s got a section on both evening primrose and the primrose moth, “an endearing species that has a specialized bond with this plant,” including the caterpillars’ ability to mimic primrose seed pods. The field guide also looks into the Monarch migration; though it’s tough to keep track, at least eight butterflies tagged in VT have been found later in Mexico—and this summer, a VCE team is raising Monarchs from caterpillars so they can be tagged with tiny solar trackers. Also out there: wasps, which get a shout-out from Amber Jones.
Behind the scenes at the Cog. You may remember that the VT Standard has launched a new video series with comedian Vicki Ferentinos, “The Inside Scoop,” in which she visits well-known and not-so-well-known sites around the region. The series’ latest just came out, with Ferentinos not just riding Mt. Washington’s cog railway to the top, but talking along the way to engineers, conductors, firemen (the ones who shovel coal), brakemen, maintenance staff, and a weather observer. Starting with reassurance from trainmaster Andy Vilaine that the Cog uses “a very simple yet scientifically sound way of climbing this very steep track”—and the story of the 1857 storm that convinced Cog founder Sylvester Marsh to figure out a way to help people get to the top.
The Monday jigsaw. Twice over, in fact, just as a welcome back. At the burgundy link, the Norwich Historical Society’s Cam Cross colorizes a photo from 1869, looking north up the Connecticut from the Ledyard Bridge, back before the Wilder Dam raised the river’s water level. On his Curioustorian blog, he describes what we’re looking at and how it’s changed over the last 157 years. Meanwhile, here’s his writeup on Gill’s Store in Norwich with a photo from the 1930s (puzzle link right below the top photo); the building, on the corner of Main and Beaver Meadow, now houses law offices.
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from the regional news.
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In an unusual move, the Lake Morey Resort is hosting two summer concerts this week, one tomorrow and the other in its usual slot on Thursday. Tomorrow’s headliner is singer-songwriter Andy Grammer, but if you’ve been a longtime Daybreak music follower, you’ll definitely know the opening act: It’s the Canadian indie pop band Walk Off the Earth, who are on tour (they’ve got a few more gigs in the US, one in Canada, and then head over to Europe for the fall). And if you don’t know them, here’s a fine introduction: a new version of their 2019 hit “I’ll Be There.”
See you tomorrow.
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