GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Sunny, pleasant. We might as well just bookmark that forecast for the entire week. High pressure is settling in over the region, and though there’ll probably be fog to start most mornings—along with possible frost in the coldest hollows of the NEK and the mountains—days will be mostly sunny with light winds, low humidity, and, through mid-week, warming temps. Today, highs around 70, lows in the upper 30s.
Anatomy of an islet. The water’s pretty darn low in Grafton Pond…
Claremont sheds a little light on how its school funding crisis came about. In a presentation to the city council last week, reports Patrick O’Grady in the Valley News, the school board’s Candace Crawford told the crowd that problems began in 2016, “annual audit process began to fall into delinquency” after the schools’ longtime business administrator retired and the district deferred audits for three years. They resumed in 2019, but have never caught up—and the school's acting business administrator has found about $5 million in “outstanding, overdue invoices and liabilities,” O’Grady reports.
As black bears reestablish themselves in CT River Valley, researchers want to understand why. VT’s bear population, reports VT Public’s Adiah Gholston, is estimated at 6,800 to 8,000, well above wildlife officials’ goals, and seems to be growing. Traditionally, state bear biologist Jaclyn Comeau says, beech nut habitats— primarily in the NEK and southern Greens—have driven the state’s planning, but as bear populations in the CT River Valley rise, researchers have been wondering whether they’ve been finding a more diverse “buffet” that also includes acorns, corn from fields, and the like. They’re tracking females here and in the southern Greens.
SPONSORED: Don’t Miss Willing Hands’ Final Garden Walk & Talk! Join us on Sept. 18 for our final Garden Walk & Talk, held at a very special location: our Sunny Fields garden at Cedar Circle Farm. Come soak in the magic of the late-season garden, learn about its long history, and get an insider’s look at the growing practices that reduce food insecurity in our community. We invite you to stay afterwards for a volunteer session. Learn more and sign up at our Events page. Sponsored by Willing Hands.
Sunflowers, jewelweed, hazelnuts—it’s “This Week in the Woods”. Thin-leaved sunflowers, writes Northern Woodlands’ Jack Saul, aren’t just eye candy: They host “the larvae of painted lady and checkerspot butterflies; feed numerous nectaring insects, rodents, and seed-eating birds; and go into the construction of muskrat lodges.” The flowers of spotted jewelweed, meanwhile, “are tailored to hummingbirds,” which happen to be migrating while they bloom. And, Jack writes, if you can find beaked hazelnuts “before the rodents, bears, fishers, and blue jays do, they’re as edible and tasty as commercially grown hazelnuts, which they resemble”—he’s got tips.
While you’re sleeping, the sky’s filled with NFCs. It stands for “nocturnal flight calls,” and as the VT Center for Ecostudies’ Kevin Tolan writes in the new “Field Guide to September,” for birds, migrating at night has its advantages: “cooler temperatures, fewer avian predators, and the heightened visibility of celestial navigation cues.” Still, they need to keep track—and down on the ground, recorders are helping humans keep track of who’s passing overhead. Much quieter: Green Darner dragonflies, which are also prepping to migrate to the deep South or even the Caribbean. And the Bicknell’s Thrush? Turns out they’ve got their own version of I-95, with rest stops in Maryland.
SPONSORED: Pay 50% of a 2026 individual or family membership at Eastman Golf Links NOW and play the rest of this season free*! Enjoy our great course conditions, two-week reservations, friendly staff, leagues, tournaments, and more at the course rated #1 in the Valley News Readers Choice Awards for 9 straight years. Visit the burgundy link or here for complete information. *Must pay before play can begin; remainder of the membership fee plus any incremental increase must be paid by March 31, 2026. Address questions to [email protected]. Sponsored by Eastman.
August Canaan homicide: “We’re as mystified as anyone else.” That was Jeff Pentland, the brother-in-law of William Colao, whose body was discovered by police doing a welfare check at his property on Sawyer Hill Road Aug. 16. In the VN, Jim Kenyon talks to Pentland and to Colao’s sister, Marta, about the case and about Colao himself: a history degree from Columbia, a collector of scholarly books, a keen student of Zen Buddhism, but also a man who “struggled with mental demons that were all too real to him,” Marta wrote in his obituary. “He was determined to understand and vanquish these forces making his life a quest for understanding reality and the truth.”
NH AG’s office identifies final Bear Brook victim, unveils new mystery. Using DNA analysis and genealogical research, investigators with NH’s cold case unit have given a name to the body known until now as “the middle child,” found in a barrel in Bear Brook State Park along with three others in 1985 and 2000. Jason Moon, the reporter who’s been following the case since he hosted NHPR’s award-winning Bear Brook podcast, reports that the girl has been identified as Rea Rasmussen, who was just three when she was killed; her father, Terry Rasmussen, is the suspected murderer. Now they hope to find Rea’s mother, Pepper Reed, unseen since the late 1970s.
NH orchardists learn to cope with summer weather’s intense mood swings. “It seems to be feast or famine—we’re either flooded or dry,” Hollis apple grower Zoe Hardy tells NH Bulletin’s Molly Rains. In particular, Rains reports, they’ve been installing drip irrigation and soil moisture sensors, and deploying data programs aimed at helping them get a bead on daily moisture uptake. They’re also paying close attention to soil health and shifting rootstocks to introduce larger trees, which can “grow deeper root networks that allow them to tap into water deep underground in times of drought,” Rains writes. She surveys steps growers around the state.
20,000 pounds. Of trash. Removed from VT’s rivers by volunteers at 140 sites around the state. It turns out that rivers are too cold, run too high, and are too fragile to clean safely in May, when it’s Green Up Day around the state. So, Lyn Munno, director of Watersheds United Vermont, tells Compass Vermont, September’s a fine time: “our waters tend to be low—this year, very low—and warmer.” In past years, volunteers have found everything from tires and appliances to dolls, bicycles, and, once, a full refrigerator. “We do have a prize for the weirdest, grossest item,” says Friends of the Winooski River’s Taylor Litman. Though many cleanup days were this weekend, the CT River Conservancy is running a Source to the Sea Cleanup Sept. 26-27.
The Monday Jigsaw. Manchester’s Gulf Station at School and Main streets in Hanover, 1961. The Norwich Historical Society’s Cam Cross writes that it closed in 2005—but of course, that corner has seen a lot of changes over the decades. You can see the original photo, a modern street view, Nancy Wasserman's historic overview of Main Street in the Dartmouth Alumni Mag, and more on his blog,
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from Friday’s Daybreak.
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It’s pretty much impossible to go to the New World Festival in Randolph without stumbling on some band you’ve never heard before but, now, will absolutely make time for whenever they’re in these parts again. This year, for a lot of people, that was first-timers Sky Consort & Emma Björling, a group of Canadian musicians who, with Swedish vocalist Björling, mix Scandinavian, Celtic, French-Canadian, and other traditions along with their own tunes. Just to get us going this week:
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