READY FOR THE WEEK, UPPER VALLEY?
Because the weather is on our side. Today starts out foggy and then cloudy, with the faintest little chance of rain first thing. But then things get sunny, with temps rising into the mid- or upper 60s. And here's the lovely thing: Forecasts get downright boring for a while. Let's just quote: "With strong high pressure building into the region, it's looking like we shouldn't see much in terms of either clouds or rain this week." I know you're disappointed.Police looking for sedan that killed Norwich U cadet on I-91 in Weathersfield early yesterday. Keanan Thompson, 22, of Stockbridge had been ejected from his jeep after he drifted off the road, hit guardrails, and finally came to a stop. He was lying in the roadway and witnesses were about to try to help when a gray four-door sedan with VT plates ran over him and kept driving. Thompson was a senior cadet at Norwich University and an infantry officer in the VT National Guard. He was planning to get married next spring.Marion Cross septic issues may drive tie-in to Hartford sewer system. Norwich blogger Chris Katucki notes that the school board is aiming to make a decision by December about how to deal with the school's failing leach field, which sits under the town green. One option is to connect to Hartford's sewers, which the Family Place, King Arthur Flour, and Norwich Commerce Park would be all for. Overhauling the leach field instead would mean fencing off a portion of the green. Engineering recommendations will come to the board next month.And while we're talking water infrastructure... Crews in Canaan think they've zeroed in on a leak that almost drained the town water supply. As of late yesterday, they were certain it's under Route 4, and plan to start repairs today. Townspeople have been asked to conserve water since Friday and the storage tank had gotten down to a day's supply, though it was refilling throughout yesterday. There's also a separate problem with a line carrying water from Canaan Street Lake to the town's treatment plant.19,000 square feet of alcohol. That's the size of the new NH state liquor store that opened Thursday in West Leb. It replaces the smaller version that was at the Powerhouse plaza, and is back by the Weathervane and the VN's offices. Given its location in the heart of big-box country it's expected to become one of the top ten liquor outlets (that's out of 77) in the state. As the VN's John Lippman reports, it's got "six bowling alley-length aisles stocked with 4,070 varieties and sizes of wines and 1,744 of spirits, and five checkout lanes." (VN)7,500 square feet of living space. WMUR does a regular eye-candy tour of high-end NH properties for sale called "Mansion Monday," and today's is about Windswept Farm in Enfield. It's 53 acres up on Methodist Hill Road, going for a cool $3.49 million. Salt-water swimming pool, heated five-stall horse barn...Leb officials want to develop large parcel by airport. They plan to set aside 86 acres off Airport Road for up to 14 new buildings that they hope will house tech companies. The city would create a tax-increment financing district (diverting taxes to pay for infrastructure improvements) to pay for a predicted $2.6 million for roadways, sidewalks, water and sewer lines and drainage improvements. The city council will take the question up at its meeting on Wednesday. (VN)There's an Upper Valley tie-in to the whole Giuliani divorce drama. A long and dishy New York Times piece on Friday focused mostly on the "operatic" divorce proceedings between former NYC Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and his third wife, Judith Nathan. But tucked in at the end was a line noting that there's "more scandal-ready fodder: intimations of Mr. Giuliani’s involvement with yet another woman." That would be Maria Ryan, CEO of Woodsville's Cottage Hospital. Her daughter Vanessa is Giuliani's personal assistant, and says any suggestion of an affair "would be categorically false." (Thanks for the tip, MT!)With this week's stunning weather coming up, you might just be thinking about taking a day off to head for the mountains. I'm not saying you'd do such a thing, mind you, but just in case you are, the weather service in Burlington has you covered. Here's an interactive map of recreational forecasts for a bunch of peaks in the Greens and the 'dacks, the Presidentials, and the waters of the Lakes Region.And in case you're thinking about Owl's Head... It's a nine-mile hike one way, eight of them basically flat through a corridor of trees, the last straight up a shifting, tricky rock-strewn boulderway to a treed-in summit. So why do it? NHPR's irreplaceable Sean Hurley starts his quest to climb all of NH's 48 4000-footers with the most enigmatic. VT losing older, lower- and middle-income residents. That's per the state legislature's Joint Fiscal Office, looking at 2011-16 IRS data. Overall, the state lost 4,167 taxpayers during that time, 11th worst in the country by percentage. The state "struggles to attract and retain lower- and middle-income taxpayers, particularly those between the ages of 45 and 64," the report notes. "In terms of the number of lost taxpayers over the period as a percentage of returns, Vermont looks like states in the Rust Belt (Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan), Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Mississippi." Ouch.That was quick. Proposed Marlboro College merger with U of Bridgeport comes undone. The two schools had announced in July that Marlboro would become part of the larger university. But Marlboro said on Saturday that they could not find "a compelling financial and academic model that supported both institutional missions.” UB's president, on the other hand, wrote in a letter to students, "While we hold Marlboro in great esteem, we have concluded that their challenges are too great for us to proceed.” Marlboro still has an endowment of $35 million, and other suitors are willing to return to the table.“One of the greatest proverb scholars of all times" gets a library. UVM prof Wolfgang Mieder is considered the world's premier paroemiologist — I know, right? — and UVM has just given his collection of 9,000 volumes a home. The books include everything from collections of proverbs in German, Chinese, Turkish, Hungarian, and other languages to dissertations on proverbs' function. One of Mieder's favorites? "Making a way out of no way," which Martin Luther King Jr. liked to use. Le Lion Couchant. That was the name first given to the mountain that Ira Allen, Ethan's brother, renamed Camel's Rump — which, by 1830, had become what we know as Camel's Hump. Mt. Abraham, of course, is named for Honest Abe; Lincoln Peak, on the other hand, for Major Gen. Benjamin Lincoln, a Revolutionary War hero. VTDigger delves into how VT's mountains got their names. So if you've been wondering about Bone Mountain, here's your chance. If you like Daybreak and want to help it keep going, here's how:
SO MONDAY, WHAT'S GOING ON?
It's Constitution Day tomorrow (it's been 232 years since delegates to the Constitutional Convention signed off on it). So Vermont Law School's got a panel of "some of Vermont's finest legal minds," as they put it, talking about rights. Starts at 5, but if you can't make it, it'll be live-streamed at
.
They'll be talking about self harm, suicide, co-occurring mental health and substance use, and bullying, and how to address them. Emily Galeva, who led a youth summit hosted by D-H in Concord in the spring, will be on the panel along with NH Ed Commissioner Frank Edelblut, NH Office of the Child Advocate counsel Emily Lawrence, and two nonprofit directors involved in the issue. Runs from 5 to 7:30, register at the link.
I'm just going to let Richard Roeper of the
Chicago Sun-Times
take it from here. "We recognize aspects of our own clan within the complicated, maddening, frustrating, head-butting, ridiculous, hilarious, terrible, wonderful, but most of all deeply loving dynamic of the extended family depicted in writer-director Lulu Wang’s semi-autobiographical, absolutely beautiful and memorably lovely
The Farewell
. This is a viewing experience to be treasured. It is one of the very best films of 2019." Starts at 7:30, details and trailer at the link.
Have a bracing dive into your week. See you tomorrow.
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