GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Yep. Scattered showers and thunderstorms. But also some sun. After today's pre-dawn drama and showery aftermath, there's still a system over Quebec that's due to drop this way later today, and it could bring another round. When that's not happening, though, we'll see clouds decreasing over the course of the afternoon, highs around 80. Lows tonight in the upper 50s.We may need to get used to this. NOAA came out last week with its three-month prediction for September-November, and New England is smack dab in the zones with high chances for both above-normal temperatures and above-normal precipitation.Styrofoam sea. On Saturday, the WRJ Rotary, Mascoma Bank, and Hartford's Climate Action Steering Team held an event on Sykes Mountain Ave. to collect styrofoam for recycling. Steven Thomas got this photo as he reached the head of the line—which, he writes, still stretched a long way down the road fifteen minutes before things were due to shut down."There are people who, no matter how dark their world gets, they can come back full circle to reach their potential." Former Woodstock Pharmacy pharmacist Jim Marmor and his wife, Sandy, have been volunteering at Hartford Dismas House almost since it opened a decade ago, helping the housing program for men leaving prison. With the program's 10th anniversary coming next week, the VT Standard's Tom Ayres talks to Marmor about their experiences; to resident Adam Adolph of Thetford, recently released after two years in prison on drug charges; and to Hartford Dismas director Tom Grillo. From a home run derby to a jigsaw puzzle race, the new Bugbee Games "show folks that just because you’re older doesn’t mean you’re inactive." Originally, writes Liz Sauchelli in the Valley News, the staff of the Bugbee Senior Center were just looking to hold events off-site—maybe lawn games, or pickleball. And then, says director Mark Bradley, "it turned into this big thing": softball, that home run derby, a 500-meter Walk/Roll/Run, cornhole, baby-hat knitting... In all, Sauchelli reports, 68 participants ranging from 57 to 93 years old showed up, coming from 22 different towns, including one from Maine.NH sees three fatal motorcycle crashes on Saturday, including one in Dorchester. The Dorchester crash occurred late in the afternoon, WMUR's Tom Garris reports, after a motorcycle headed east on Route 118 failed to negotiate a curve, then crossed the center line and into an oncoming vehicle; 23-year-old Madeline Tredo of Meredith, NH, who was a passenger, died of her injuries. Canaan's police and fire departments, Rumney's fire department, and Warren-Wentworth EMS all responded. Separate motorbike crashes, one in Greenville and one in Albany, took the lives of two Hudson residents.NH schools grapple with how to enforce restrictions on trans athletes. As you know, a new state law took effect Aug. 19 requiring middle and high school teams to be “based on the biological sex at birth" of participants. But the law's in court, and already a federal judge has temporarily blocked it from applying to one of the plaintiffs. And as NHPR's Kate Dario reports, school districts around the state are holding off on crafting policies. “Until the court challenges work through, we don't have a full picture of what it is that we're working with and what we'll have to try and enforce ultimately,” says one school board chair.NH sees progress on 18-year-olds registering to vote. The Globe's Amanda Gokee reported on Friday (newsletter, no paywall) that an estimated 21.2 percent of 18-year-olds had registered to vote by the end of June, according to a new report by The Civics Center, a nonprofit that encourages youth voter registration. That's up from about 9 percent at the start of the year. NH still lags other states—nearly three-quarters of 18-year-olds are estimated to have registered in Michigan—that allow online registration, DMV registration, or pre-registration starting at age 16. Portsmouth and Bedford lead the state.The NH gubernatorial candidates' views on the environment and climate. Over the last couple of weeks, NH Bulletin's Claire Sullivan has been taking a look at where Republicans Kelly Ayotte and Chuck Morse, and Democrats Cinde Warmington and Joyce Craig stand on a variety of issues. In three separate stories, she looks at:
Their approaches toward new landfills and whether NH should continue taking other states' trash;
How the state should address climate change, energy costs, renewable energy, EVs, and more;
And, today, where the candidates stand on continuing Gov. Chris Sununu's initiatives aimed at boosting offshore wind in the Gulf of Maine.
In VT, "Who is going to have the appetite to look at a downtown like Plainfield or Barnet and say, ‘This is a thing of the past’?” That's the question the state's environment commissioner, Jason Batchelder, has been asking himself since flooding last year and this wreaked havoc in downtowns and neighborhoods built along rivers and creeks. Ever since, the state has been turning down homeowners' requests to reroute streams that rerouted themselves during storms—sometimes to within feet of of their homes. VT Public's Peter Hirschfeld reports on the tough choices the state faces.VT Public gets a new CEO. Vijay Singh starts up Oct. 1 after leading Sacramento's NPR affiliate last year during a tumultuous stretch—he calls it "chaos"—when the station had to lay off staff; an audit reported this month found "misuse of funds and conflicts of interest" in the years preceding Singh's tenure there. Singh, who is 39, also worked at the LA NPR station. The son of Guyanese immigrants who settled in a town near Poughkeepsie, Singh tells VT Public's he considers himself "a story nerd. The way to communicate stories that have impact...is one of the best things that public media can do.”"Really? The world's first electric planes will make history by carrying boxes?" David Pogue, the former NYT tech columnist who now reports for CBS Sunday Morning, yesterday reported on where things stand with electric airplanes—and, in particular, with Burlington-based Beta Technologies' planes. Both Beta, which is focused on developing planes that can fly cargo, and California's Archer Aviation, which is developing air taxis, "have received millions of dollars' worth of orders from various airlines and military branches," Pogue reports, and expect to get FAA approval to fly in the US next year.And the Monday jigsaw. It's the Union Village School, back when it was a going schoolhouse serving both Norwich and Thetford—most likely in the 1940s, writes Cam Cross of the Norwich Historical Society. It reportedly separated students by town: Norwich students to the south, Thetfordites to the north. Here's a Norwich Times piece on its history, by David Callaway.
Heads Up
Here's hoping the weather's cleared by 6 this evening—this is the rain date from folk, rock, and Americana musician's postponed July 10 concert. The Orford Community Bandstand committee will be raising funds by selling strawberry shortcake.
What the heck, we'll just go with the flow.Because can nearly 12 million viewers in less than a week be wrong? Taylor Swift's latest video, "I Can Do It With A Broken Heart", went up late last Tuesday, the same day she wrapped up the European leg of the Eras Tour. It features backstage, in-front-of-the-stage, onstage, and hidden-onstage views of the tour. Flow? More like a tidal wave...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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