GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Mostly overcast, rain possible. There's low pressure parked over the Ohio Valley and moist air flowing into the Northeast, but what that means for today is a little uncertain. Clouds, for sure. Chance of rain starting up this afternoon, growing to a likelihood for a bit around dinner-time, then a chance again overnight. Highs today around 80, breezes from the southeast. Mid-60s tonight.When the river—but nothing else—is fogbound. That was the sight from the trail up to the Pinnacle in Lyme the other day, from Stephanie Carney.Lebanon in Service to Each Neighbor. You know it better as LISTEN, and in the 50 years it's been in existence it's far outgrown its original focus on organizing for affordable housing—and its initial little thrift store in a side room of ski-jumping star Ernie Dion's small ski shop. In yesterday's Valley News, early LISTEN organizer William Weismann and early 1970's VN reporter Dick Nelson look back at the community organization's founding. Over that half-century, writes Liz Sauchelli in a companion article, it's lifted up plenty of people—and is looking at taking its advocacy work beyond the Upper Valley.Only some WRJ businesses able to reopen so far. Hartford fire marshal Tom Peltier gave the okay on Friday for businesses in the flooded Gates-Briggs Building to reopen on a temporary, limited basis, the VN's Darren Marcy reported Saturday. Revolution's Kim Souza says her store is still dealing with silt, and won't reopen until next week; Tuckerbox and Piecemeal remain closed, as is the opera house, pending electrical repairs. Meanwhile, Marcy reports, an 8-foot sinkhole opened on the North Main sidewalk, and someone has to be on fire watch in the building 24 hours a day until the sprinklers are repaired.Tuckerbox closed indefinitely, asks for help. Owners Vural and Jackie Oktay were visiting family in Turkey when last week's basement flooding occurred, they told customers yesterday; Jackie's mom has taken charge of post-flood recovery. On a new GoFundMe page, they write that they'd just installed a 19-foot fridge/freezer in the basement, which had also been filled with a large order of ingredients from Turkey. "The basement is coated with several inches of mud. We do not yet have a sense of when we will be able to reopen," they write—and add, "We know we will get through this together.""Vacuuming my living room gets me a heart rate of 160 and soaked in sweat. So it's really kind of personal." Chris Flockton is a stage and voice actor who lives in Hartford, and he's had long Covid for a year and a half. On Vermont Public, he talks to radio producer Erica Heilman about the experience—mostly extreme exhaustion, he tells her, and "even though your heart and your lungs are fine, your brain tells them to do stupid things." Flockton considers himself lucky, since he can still do some work. "Our lives got smaller" during the pandemic, he says, "but mine has not been able to get big again."Summer may be ending, but the kayaking's still great. And Virginia Dean lays out some choice spots on GreaterUpperValley.com (the site of Here in Hanover, Image, and Woodstock mags). Grafton Pond, of course, but also the river, Silver Lake, and North Hartland Dam, plus recommendations for Goose Pond, Clark Pond in Canaan, Keysar Lake in Sutton, and spots farther afield like Chittenden Reservoir ("a hidden gem" near Rutland) and Newfound Lake.E-bike possibilities continue to expand in the Upper Valley. On his Omni Reporter blog, Gareth Henderson profiles Luke Hanson and Woodstock Wheels, which is now in its second season. It offers rentals for people to tour the Woodstock area, whose roads and trails Hanson grew up biking. "The bikes help you out a little bit, [and] you’re able to go 40-50 miles on them and see the scenery on roads you wouldn’t be able to access in a car," Hanson says. He joins Thetford's VT Bike & Brew and Norwich's Hanover Adventure Tours on the e-bike rental and sales front.Okay, policy junkies: Soon you'll be able to listen to NH Exec Council meetings live. Audio recordings have been available since 2010, but they're released days after the meeting. Last week, though, the Exec Council voted to broadcast live, reports NH Bulletin's Ethan DeWitt. It basically did this for a year during the pandemic, but stopped making its meetings available online when it returned to in-person gatherings earlier this year.A church in NH "where we can lose our mind and find our soul.” If, that is, you're up for the vomiting and diarrhea that often accompany drinking ayahuasca, the hallucinogenic tea used by tribes in the Amazon. NHPR's Todd Bookman reports on Pachamama Sanctuary in Canterbury, one of a growing number of "ayahuasca churches" around the country that exist in a legal gray area, since the tea's active ingredient is a federally controlled substance. Though "federal and state officials don’t appear eager to stop Pachamama Sanctuary," Bookman says, Canterbury's planning board "is raising concerns."How to deal with "stuckage." That choice word, reports VTDigger's Riley Robinson, is how VTrans staffers refer to tractor-trailers that get wedged in Smuggler's Notch—which, as you know, happens way too often. And when it does, George McRae, who owns a trucking company in Milton, sometimes helps drivers get unstuck. He talks to Robinson about what it takes—often, a bunch of winching, and then walking with the truck as its driver backs down the winding Notch road to a spot where he can safely turn around. Robinson also digs into possible solutions with a couple of VTrans officials.Hey, you want to buy an old ski area? Turns out that Snow Valley in Manchester VT, which closed in the 1980s, is coming up to auction next month. Of course, the minimum bid is $2.05 million, but that gets you a shot at 390 acres of mountain with north-facing slopes that average 120 inches of snow a year. Though, as Ian Wood points out on Unofficial Networks, you might have to contend with competition from Bromley, which is right next door, and Stratton, which is a couple of miles away. (Oh, ignore that "Manchester, VA" on the brochure. You wish, Virginia!)The Monday Vordle. A fine way to start your week!
Though there's always music to get the week going, too...Back in 1958, jazz great Dave Brubeck and his band did a celebrated "jazz diplomacy" tour of Europe and Asia. Their stop in Pakistan was at the elegant Nido's Hotel in Lahore, and the audience that night included an eight-year-old named Izzat Majeed. That concert sparked a lifelong love of jazz; Majeed became an economist but also went on to found a recording studio in Lahore and in particular its house band, the Sachal Studios Orchestra: a group of skilled classical Pakistani musicians who like nothing more than to riff on jazz and other western tunes ("Eleanor Rigby," say). Poetically, they came to international attention in 2011 with a tabla and sitar version of Brubeck's "Take Five." Here they are a couple of years later, hanging out with Wynton Marsalis and performing it again at the Marciac Jazz Festival in France.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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