GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Mostly sunny, slight chance of showers late. For the most part today, we're looking at plenty of sunshine, though clouds will build in over the course of the day ahead of a disturbance due to scoot through to the south. Highs today around 70, and if we do get rain showers this afternoon and tonight they'll be light and brief: High pressure's arriving overnight. Lows tonight in the lower 50s.The weekend, in pics:
For instance, the Québecois circus troupe, Cirque Kikasse, was at Thetford Academy on Friday evening, and photographer Diahann Tanke was there. This is definitely not your ordinary use for a food truck...
Meanwhile, on Saturday, Matt Giffin was in downtown Lebanon, where the old central fire station is being demolished. "The public entrance to the old fire station was small and discreet. People often didn't know how to find their way into the building," he writes. "Now for a few short days it gets its moment. Also, how fun would it be to walk through that door?"
And as you may have noticed, yesterday was a spectacular day for rainbows. Thank you to everyone who sent them in. Here's a double rainbow in front of Mt. Cube in Orford, from Paul Goundrey, who writes, "We didn't make it down to the pot of gold in time."
This evening at 6:30, the city's planning board will again take up the proposed 11-building, 474-unit project, reports Elle Muller in the
Valley News
. It's slated for a 133-acre parcel across Hanover Street from the high school and elementary school once occupied by the Densmore Brick Company. Nearby residents worry about traffic and flooding, and argue the project is out of scale. “It’s just simply way too big for that site,” says one. “Anyone who really cared about the town wouldn’t have made the proposal that way.”
In Lyme, residents pitch in to help clean problem properties. Jed Smith and his mother, Martha, "have made noticeable progress in cleaning up their two properties," writes Jim Kenyon in the VN, as an Aug. 31 deadline set by the town has come and gone. Voters in town, tired of the accumulated cars, parts, and other materials on the two sites (here's an aerial Google Maps view of one, sent by a reader), agreed to spend $150K on cleanup if the Smiths can't do it themselves. So far, with the help of volunteers, they've gotten rid of "five unregistered vehicles, filled three dumpsters with scrap metal and construction materials and hauled away two pickup truck loads of old tires," Kenyon reports.Not many people are left to tell the Romaine Tenney story. On Thursday, it'll be the 60th anniversary of the 1964 night that Weathersfield farmer Romaine Tenney burned down his barn and farmhouse—with himself inside—as workers prepared to blast the route of I-91 through his land. These days, writes Kevin O'Connor in VTDigger, "you won’t see much of a memorial, save a plaque near the sole remaining tree stump at what’s now a park-and-ride lot off Exit 8." As O'Connor writes, plenty of articles recount what happened, including Howard Mansfield's in Yankee, but as historical society president Ellen Clattenburg tells him, "there are fewer and fewer" people in town who knew Tenney.Sharon Selectboard orders dog that attacked joggers confined to property. The move comes after a July incident when a man and his pregnant wife were running past a Fay Brook Road home, reports John Lippman in the VN, and a German shepherd ran into the road and attacked the man, then turned on his wife. The board has ordered the dog to be “physically confined with appropriate fencing or other physical means" for the rest of his life. In August, the board in neighboring Strafford decided it couldn't act in the case of a dog that had been attacking other dogs, reported the Herald's Darren Marcy.Monkey bars are good for us, Dartmouth anthropologists say. Jungle gyms and monkey bars have come in for plenty of criticism from safety-minded parents and public officials over the past few decades, and there's been a movement to remove them from playgrounds. Now, reports Dartmouth News' Morgan Kelly, a Dartmouth team is arguing that risky play is a deeply ancestral need. "The past and the present point to children gaining physical and experiential skills by exploring their boundaries through play,” says anthro PhD candidate Luke Fannin. “Play is a way that the past is reflected in the present.”“I'm willing to go out on a limb here and say that this year's fall foliage display could be the best that we've seen in the past decade." That's the NH Forest Society's Dave Anderson, who also happens to co-host NHPR's Something Wild. And he's arguing that because of a "Goldilocks summer"—"not too wet, not too dry, not too many insect outbreaks, and there's a lot of green leaves remaining"—this year's shaping up excellently. His co-host, Chris Martin, says a lot will also depend on where you are: "the dry outwash plain of the Seacoast, or...in a rich mesic forest of the Upper Valley, with a lot of maple?”Gov. Heimlich: Chris Sununu comes to the rescue of choking lobster roll contestant. It was yesterday at Hampton Beach, when Christian Moreno got a piece of lobster stuck in his windpipe. He began gesticulating for help, but only Sununu noticed, reports WMUR's Arielle Mitropoulos. The governor jumped in, giving Moreno five or six Heimlich compressions before first responders took over. Once the emergency was done, Moreno went right on eating. "Which I couldn't believe," Sununu says. "He ate another seven lobster rolls after that. Right down the gullet."Speaking of the Sununus, former NH first lady and gubernatorial/senatorial mom Nancy Sununu dies. Married to former Gov. John H. Sununu for 65 years, she had eight children, NHPR's Todd Bookman notes, including current Chris and former U.S. Sen. John E. Sununu. She died on Saturday at 85. “I never heard her say an unkind word about anyone. She was incredibly gracious," says Christine Peters, president of the NH Federation of Republican Women. A family remembrance highlights her prowess at skiing, golfing, baseball, and carpentry.Coming soon: Metal barriers for Lyndonville's Miller's Run Covered Bridge. The bridge has repeatedly been hit by tractor-trailers and box trucks—so many times, in fact, that the town decided about five months ago not to replace the facades. Now, reports WCAX's Hailey Morgan, the town is working with a company called Techno Metal Post Vermont, based in Montpelier, to erect metal barriers at each end of the bridge. Works is slated to start Sept. 21.And the Monday jigsaw. It's a view looking north from the Elm and Main intersection in Norwich in the 1940s, writes Norwich Historical Society board member Cam Cross. He adds, "The building on the left has been replaced. Note the ALA sign [on the tree], similar to this one. The American Legal Association was a precursor to AAA."
And welcoming us to the week...
DarWin, with Matt Bissonette on vocals (he's also Elton John's bassist), Simon Phillips on drums, bassist Mohini Dey, guitarist Greg Howe, and more,
With a "What do we know?" tour around the world.
Anything is possible when it’s impossibleI know I know you know...
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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