GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Mostly (but not entirely) cloudy, chance of showers. The front that brought us last night's rain is slowly moving eastward—but emphasis is on "slowly." There's a chance of showers all day, and with skies remaining mostly cloudy, temps today won't get out of the mid 70s, if that. Which is pretty much the forecast for the next few days. Light winds, low tonight around 60.In a fog... Those foggy mornings late last week made not just for some nice relief from the heat, but for cool views, too.
Here's the view across a meadow in S. Royalton, from Katrina Wagner;
And across gardens and fields in Lyme, from Barbara Woodard.
In Strafford, police arrest man for setting his own home on fire. Saturday morning, a caller reported that the house on Taylor Valley Road belonging to Edward Gallagher III had burned to the ground; based on evidence they saw at the scene, volunteer firefighters asked a state fire team to look into it. Their investigation identified Gallagher as a suspect; he was found at a nearby store and arrested. He'll be arraigned this afternoon; the investigation is ongoing.Rt. 132 work almost done. Speaking of Strafford, Selectboard Chair John Freitag took to the listservs over the weekend to say that the project to repair flood damage that has closed the busy roadway between Thetford and S. Strafford since July is almost finished. "While we had hoped [it] would have been completed this weekend, the contractor informed us the pavers took longer than anticipated and the road will not be open until after line striping is completed on Tuesday," Freitag wrote. "Thanks...to all for your patience and driving carefully on the detour route. We are almost there."As Dartmouth football season starts, Buddy Teevens' wife says he won't be returning this fall. News about the coach has been scant ever since he was struck by a pickup in Florida in March, and, reports Tris Wykes in the Valley News, that continued on Thursday last week when Kirsten Teevens announced only that he wouldn't be back on the job this season. Wykes looks at the college's football program, which opens at UNH this coming Saturday, under interim head coach Sammy McCorkle. “It’s going to take a village to keep this thing going and successful,” McCorkle says."What makes our life better?" That, says Deborah Greene, is the question at the root of this year's TEDxHartlandHill—the second time she's organized a Woodstock offshoot of the global TED franchise. This year's will take place Sept. 23 and, writes RJ Crowley in the Vermont Standard, it brings a blend of national and local figures to the stage, including Adrian Tans, the Woodstock Smiler chalk artist; Jen Ellis, the "Bernie's mittens" crafter; Bon Allen, endurance athlete and coach; and Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, in the news recently for his theory that interstellar debris could be a sign of alien life."I hereby dub Lebanon the Fish n' Chips Capital of New Hampshire!" So writes Matt Giffin, after discovering that, unlikely as it seems, the city has not one, but two spots on Americantowns Media's "10 Best Places to get Fish and Chips in New Hampshire." Those are Salt Hill (you'll "feel like you've booked a plane ticket without going through airport security") and The Baited Hook ("will bring back all your fondest childhood memories"). The rest are mostly in the Lakes Region or Seacoast.Trying to avoid "many a teary afternoon" at Boston Lot. Which is what WRJ's Emily Strizich faced when she was trying to get her young daughters interested in mountain biking—only to discover that there were no easy trails for young beginners. And so, writes Liz Sauchelli in the VN, Strizich became the moving force behind a new, 3-mile track at George Ratcliffe Park, just off Latham Works Lane at the south end of downtown WRJ. Open since July, it's got pathways, a small jump, and maybe most important, grass to fall onto. Plus, says Parks and Rec director Scott Hausler, "It’s easy access for kids to get to."
For small towns, headaches when it comes to dealing with FEMA. Case in point: Thetford. In Sidenote, Li Shen writes that town manager Brian Story has opted not to go for FEMA funding for a culvert on New Boston Road that blew out in the July floods. The reason? FEMA will only reimburse for work to restore the pre-storm status quo, when what the town needs is a bigger culvert. A detailed engineering or hydrological study would help, but as Li writes, small towns can't afford studies for every bridge or culvert. Along the way, she details just how complex working with the federal agency can be for a town.VT, NH among the country's least "sticky" states. Nope, not a measure of duct tape use. Instead, it reflects the share of people born in a state who still live there (as of 2021), and the Dallas Fed is just out with a new study that finds—hmm—TX is the "stickiest" state in the country, WY is the least, and the New England states are all in the bottom half. Of the six, ME is the stickiest, with 63 percent of native Mainers still living there in 2021. VT is near the bottom, with 56 percent, just ahead of RI, at 55 percent. NH is a bit ahead of VT, at 58 percent. The biggest factor, say the researchers: the economy.NH pushes to help charter schools find more space; school boards say it's removing local control. Charters have been growing, reports NHPR's Grace McFadden, and several new state laws have sought to make it easier for them to buy permanent spots: a 2021 law gives them right of first refusal when a school district sells an old school building, and a measure signed in August sets a timeline. But, says the director of the NH school boards association, the state shouldn't not be "stepping in and telling local school districts what they have to do with their property and what they have to do with their buildings."Fall foliage: Fingers crossed for sunny days and cool nights. That's the import of articles in both the Keene Sentinel and VTDigger looking ahead to what we can expect.
In the Sentinel, Christopher Cartwright writes that a lot of beech and oak trees lost leaves in the May cold snap, and the leaves they regrew are smaller, which will affect their brilliance. And, says Cheshire County forester Matt Kelly, "sunny days bring out more sugar production, and then the cold nights kind of restrict the movement of that sugar down through the trees so that they stay in the leaves. And although we’re having sunny days now, we’re still kind of having warm nights. So, it’s really hard to predict how it’s going to shake out.”
Meanwhile, Emma Cotton writes in Digger, Josh Halman, forest health program manager for VT's Dept. of Forest, Parks and Rec says, “In general, things look really good." The summer's rains created perfect conditions for leaf fungi, which haven't been widespread but have affected some of the state's maples. “For those trees that don’t have those fungal pathogens," Halman says, "the color really is going to be driven by what’s happening between now and peak color.”
Here's how to identify and remove them. There are three different species of the invasives in VT and NH, says VT Public gardening expert Charlie Nardozzi. And, he adds, "When these guys are around, forest and garden soil is not living its best life. All of that heavy consumption of plant debris, seeds and insects leaves in its wake a less diverse ecosystem." You can identify them by a light-colored band that encircles them near the head. To get rid of them... well, you'll want some yellow mustard seed, a black plastic garbage bag, and a sunny day.
The Monday Vordle. With a word from Friday's Daybreak.
Heads Up
Today at 4 pm, Dartmouth's Rockefeller Center presents an online-only Constitution Day presentation by Univ. of Virginia historian William Hitchcock, "Don't Join the Book Burners: Eisenhower at Dartmouth, 1953." Hitchcock, along with moderator Edward Miller, who teaches history and Asian studies at Dartmouth, will talk about Ike's "stealth campaign" against Sen. Joseph McCarthy during the 1950s, and in particular his 1953 commencement speech at the college, which made headlines for his exhortation, "Don't join the book burners" and was widely seen as the president's understated way of calling attention to McCarthy's excesses without directly confronting him.
And let's put a little swing into the week...With Nataly Dawn and Pomplamoose, along with Larry Goldings and Jack Conte on keyboards (not to mention Matt Rubin on flugelhorn), and “À Cabo,” a French bossa nova piece about a Mexican vacation, off Dawn's project this year to create an entire album of original French songs.See you tomorrow.
Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Writer/editor: Jonea Gurwitt Poetry editor: Michael Lipson About Rob About Michael
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