GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Bundle up: building sun, dropping temps. As brisk winds and encroaching cold from the northwest continue to overspread the region, we'll see clouds dissipate...but temperatures continue to drop from this morning's mid-20s to single digits by around dusk—and into the minuses overnight. For all the world like it's watching the traffic go by... Althea Goundrey was on 25A east of Orfordville on Tuesday when she noticed a bobcat by the side of the road. Amazingly, it stayed put for her as she pulled over to grab a photo. Next time, Althea writes, "I will roll down the window."As Dartmouth looks to expand north, neighbors organize. In October, the college unveiled plans to build along Lyme Road north of the medical school, including possible undergrad dorms on the east side, where the golf "practice course" and Garipay fields are located. "We were taken aback" by news of the possible dorms, a letter to the college from 144 neighbors—part of the newly formed Garipay Neighborhood Association—reads. They cite a host of concerns, including noise, traffic, and environmental impact. They and Ford Sayre members will be showing up tonight to an online community meeting. More on VPR vs NHPR in the Upper Valley... Former NH ag secy and local historian Steve Taylor of Meriden writes: "I think a couple of factors help VPR dominate around here: It went on the air with a tower atop Mt. Ascutney and studios in the old Windsor House hotel in 1978, years ahead of NHPR, and it has that tower location and a powerful signal reaching from way up Newbury way down to Brattleboro, while NHPR's Hanover station scratches out 16 miles away here in Meriden. I was paid with a crisp one-dollar bill to complete a radio listening logbook for Nielsen back in the fall, and it was 89.5 all the way..."There's a method to her madness. Today is Day 51 of Suzanne Stofflet's 50-day "Hammocking for the Haven" challenge (she extended it by a a day as a birthday present to herself). You may remember that for the last 50 days, through cold and wind and ice and snow, she's been spending 15 minutes a day outside in her hammock as a fundraiser for the Haven. Her total raised as of last night: $12,000 even—and she's hoping for more to come today. Link goes to her YouTube channel; "About" tab has details.$25 million gift kick-starts new Dartmouth, DHMC cancer research institute. The money comes from Upper Valley philanthropist Dorothy Byrne, and leads off a $50 million campaign to create the new Byrne Family Cancer Research Institute. Housed in the Norris Cotton Cancer Center, it aims to expand biotech entrepreneurship and "fast-track world-class scientific discoveries from the laboratory to the bedside to benefit cancer patients in the region and around the world," according to a DHMC press release. SPONSORED: Not vaccinated or boosted? APD is here to help. While we are all tired of the back and forth that COVID-19 brings, one thing remains the same: vaccines and boosters save lives. Same-day COVID-19 vaccine and booster appointments are typically available at Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital in Lebanon. You can schedule for yourself through a myD-H account, or call (603) 442-5612. Sponsored by APD.Kevin "Coach" Christie, VT Human Rights Commission, Seven Days sued by VT state trooper. Christie, who represents Hartford in the legislature, chairs the commission. In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, Cpl. Andrew Leise contends his career was "unjustly ruined" by its finding last year that the VSP racially discriminated against Lydia Clemmons, director of the Clemmons Family Farm. Writing in Seven Days, Derek Brouwer reports that Leise's suit raises questions about the commission's handling of its three-year investigation — and about an alleged "arrangement" with Seven Days to publicize the results.“My mother would say that my grandmother had been an amazing dancer—that she could hand-dance and two-step like nobody’s business. I never experienced her in this light. I knew her as a born-again Christian." Samantha Spies is one of Urban Bush Women's artistic directors, talking to the Union Leader's Julia Ann Weekes about the dance troupe's production of “Legacy + Lineage + Liberation” at the Hop this weekend, a showcase of works from their founding in 1984 through today. It includes the premiere of "Haint Blu," a piece co-commissioned by the Hop.Thetford police still looking for that truck. In Sidenote, Nick Clark adds a few more details about the Freightliner that struck the Sayre Bridge: It "may have aftermarket black exhaust stacks, fuel tanks, and headlight trim." After hitting the bridge, the truck turned east on Route 113 and headed over Thetford Hill, where it was captured on a home security camera. The damage was relatively minor, Clark writes: a portion of the south-end wooden fascia was damaged, and though the damage to the north-end fascia was less severe, the truck broke the bridge's new landmark sign in half."What most people don't realize is that conducting an election is a very long process." For the first time in four decades, NH has a new secretary of state. After serving as Bill Gardner's deputy for 20 years, David Scanlan stepped into the lead role earlier this month. On NHPR, Peter Biello talks to him about election integrity, absentee balloting, a GOP legislative push to create a new class of ballots for voters without ID, supporting local elections officials in the face of public pressure, and more. "I don't see a factual basis to dispute the elections that take place in New Hampshire," Scanlan says.Protecting public health vs. protecting personal privacy in NH. One of the big issues at the legislature this year involves the state's new vaccine registry, which collects data on Granite Staters and their vaccinations of all sorts. It's currently "opt-out," which means that the data's entered unless a resident chooses not to allow that. But there's a push in the legislature to join two other states (TX, MT) that make their registries "opt-in." In NH Bulletin, Annmarie Timmins explains the issues involved as the state strives to get the system up and running. During a pandemic.NH, VT hospitals struggle with staffing shortages as Covid surge continues. In New Hampshire, report NHPR's Alli Fam and Casey McDermott, over 1,000 hospital workers were out last week because of Covid, the vast majority because they had it themselves. And in Vermont, write Liora Engel-Smith, Erin Petenko and Ethan Weinstein in VTDigger, hospitals are struggling with the same issue. In both states, the result is fewer hospital beds, ICUs at full capacity (and more), and scrambles to shift staff and expand capacity.VT gives up on collecting school Covid data. As it shifts the testing burden from schools to families themselves, reports Peter D'Auria in VTDigger, schools are no longer doing contact tracing or testing, and so don't have data to report to the state. Instead, parents are testing their children themselves, and are asked to report the results to the state using an online form. At a press conference earlier this month, Ed Secy Dan French said it's a trade-off: “We’ll lose control of that data in exchange for having more broadly distributed tests in the public.”"Oh, I get giddy, you know?" Stuart Merusi is president of the White River Valley Snowgoers, and he's talking to WCAX's Adam Sullivan about this week's snow dump. His snowmobile club and others around Vermont have been prepping as much of the Vermont Association of Snow Travelers' 5,000-mile trail network as possible since the snow fell. VAST expects about two-thirds of the network to be open by this weekend. “Anybody who can cook can do freakin’ culinary medicine.” That’s Deb Kennedy, former Norwich resident and DHMC wellness center director, talking to Seven Days’ Melissa Pasanen about kicking sugar cravings and how to chart a viable course toward healthier eating. Kennedy’s new book, The Culinary Medicine Textbook, while intended for nutritionists, maps out a mindful approach to food that applies to all. Key tip: modularize your kitchen spaces (fridge, counter, pantry), she says. “Declutter them and then put the healthful items within easy reach. Always make the healthy item the easy option.”Why is watching this soap bubble turn to ice so inspiring? Maybe it's the video’s tender, uplifting musical score. But even on mute, it’s easy to be awestruck by something so elemental as watching ice crystals form on the surface of a bubble in what is undoubtedly very cold weather. The photographer is Anton Maltsev, based in Russia, which explains the weather. Do this in full-screen mode to catch the high-def detail of rapid dendritic growth—like fern fronds fanning out across a newly formed world.
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At 5:30 pm today, Sustainable Woodstock brings in Ham Gillett from the Greater Upper Valley and Southern Windsor/Windham Counties solid waste management districts for an online chat and Q&A about recycling, composting, and waste in general. He'll go into detail on the ins and outs: what's valuable and what's not, what to do with your electronics, how to handle that growing pile of stuff in your basement that you haven't figured out how to dispose of properly...
At 7 pm, Hop Film shows Paper & Glue in the Loew. It's by and about photographer/muralist JR, who grew up in French public housing, became a graffiti artist, and then, once he got his hands on a camera, became famous for his immense compositions—you may remember his 2015 project involving a giant Mexican baby peering over the border fence, or his 2016 installation that turned the Louvre courtyard into a giant optical illusion. But as Susan Apel notes in a writeup about the film, the real art lies in "the interchange he fosters among those who participate in his projects: prisoners, dwellers near the border, forgotten inhabitants in the slums outside of Paris and Rio de Janiero...."
Also at 7, the Orford Social Library hosts an online talk by Helen Hiller Frink, "Oil, Ice and Bone," delving into the 1871 journals of Arctic whaler Nathaniel Ransom, whose ship was among dozens lost in the ice that year—two of them were discovered in 2016. Frink, his descendant, counts two families of Yankee whalers in her ancestry "and lives too far from the sea in Acworth, NH," the library says. Register for a zoom link at [email protected].
And at 8 pm, the Green Mountain Club delves into a summer of serious family togetherness, when Matt Krebs and his three kids—Charlie (16), Ruth (14) and Joe (8)—recount their adventures hiking the Long Trail together during the pandemic and talk about what it takes to get out there as a family.
There's just something memorable about being able to type the words "Dutch Delta blues guitarist," but there's really no other way to describe Hans Theessink, who's got something like 20 albums to his name—part of a remarkably robust European blues scene that began taking shape in the '60s. He's admired on both sides of the Atlantic... as is Big Daddy Wilson, a North Carolina-born blues singer who's lived in Germany for decades
(Thanks, CG!)
See you tomorrow.
The Hiking Close to Home Archives. A list of hikes around the Upper Valley, some easy, some more difficult, compiled by the Upper Valley Trails Alliance. It grows every week.
Daybreak Where You Are: The Album. Photos of daybreak around the Upper Valley, Vermont, New Hampshire, and the US, sent in by readers.
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