GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Talk about a steep climb! As dawn approaches, it's somewhere around -8 out there. By the time we get to early afternoon, it'll be up in the lower 20s as yesterday's cold moves out and winds from the south pick up, bringing warmer air (for today and tomorrow, anyway). Interestingly, as it gets warmer it'll also get cloudier, though there should be patches of blue sky up there pretty much all day. Only into the mid-teens tonight. A breeze!Why we get outside in the winter:
Because it's sublimely beautiful... (A view while XC skiing on the Garipay trails in Hanover, by Robin Osborne);
And fun... (Ice skating on Occom Pond in Hanover, by Janice Fischel);
And peaceful, even in the city... of Lebanon, that is. (Nightfall on Pearl Street, by Patricia Corrigan.)
Hanover parents challenge Dresden schools' privacy policy on gender identity. The policy, known as JBAB and in place since 2016, directs staff not to tell parents, family members, or other school employees about students who may be transgender or gender-non-comforming without their permission or unless legally required to do so. However, reports Peter D'Auria in VTDigger, parents with kids at the Ray School have hired a Concord attorney to “demand that the (school) Board repeal or substantially amend” the policy, arguing it's not the schools' place to restrict "the flow of information" to parents. Pike Industries proposes to expand 12A quarry, level Finn Hill. In all, Claire Potter reports in the Valley News, the facility would grow from 57 to 250 acres, in the wiping out a couple of acres of wetlands. “The scale is enormous,” says city councilor Erling Heistad. In recompense, Pike has proposed paying $1.3 million into the state's Aquatic Resource Mitigation Fund. The city's conservation commission has recommended that the state's environmental services department approve a "dredge-and-fill" permit, but with conditions, including an evaluation of how the project would affect neighboring wetlands.Hop moves closer to actual renovation. Dartmouth's trustees last week approved $7.5 million to complete the designs for the performing arts center's $88 million renovation and expansion project. Details on what's actually going to happen won't be released for a few months, the college's communications office writes; the initial concepts from the design firm Snøhetta almost a year ago call for new recital halls, updated technology, improved acoustics, and 17,000 more square feet overall. Construction is expected to start late this year and last until 2025.SPONSORED: Junction Fiber Mill's Pop-Up Retail Yarn Shop is open TOMORROW 3 - 6pm. Come visit and see our latest splash of colors. We dye and spin 100 percent American wool into gorgeous yarn right in downtown WRJ. We also have locally sourced, natural-colored yarns made from area sheep farms. We're at 101 Maple Street/Route 14 across from town hall. See you tomorrow! Sponsored by Amanda + Peggy and the Junction Fiber Mill.VT Center for Ecostudies' Chris Rimmer to step down this fall. Rimmer helped launch VCE 15 years ago, and has been its executive director ever since. From the beginning, the organization has blended hard-core research—its staff includes ornithologists, herpetologists, specialists on pollinators, and others fascinated by the natural world—with citizen engagement on everything from bumblebee counts to helping bolster VT's loon population, becoming a force for preservation and public awareness throughout the northeast. Rimmer will step down as of Oct. 1; his research on the Bicknell's Thrush will continue.Windsor enacts indoor mask mandate. The Selectboard had rejected the idea by a one-vote margin last month, but at its meeting Tuesday night, reports the VN's Nora Doyle-Burr, members voted 5-0 for the temporary requirement in places open to the public. In an email to Doyle-Burr, town manager Tom Marsh said he believed “an impassioned plea” for help in managing an anticipated spike in cases from Jill Lord, director of community health at Mt. Ascutney Hospital, brought about the switch. The board will revisit the issue Feb. 22.Dartmouth researchers dig into 700-million-year-old geological mystery. In a time known affectionately to scientists as “Snowball Earth,” the planet was encased in glacial ice. One outcome of that period: significant erosion that effectively vanished layers of rock from a billion years prior. In Dartmouth News, David Hirsch highlights the work of earth scientists C. Brenhin Keller and Kalin McDannell, whose recent study explores what actually caused the erosion—shifting glaciers, tectonics, or both—that gave us the Grand Canyon, Colorado’s Ladder Canyon, and many other geological phenomena.First Thetford. Now Bradford. Next... the world? In a note to readers yesterday, Sidenote founder Nick Clark caught us up on what's been going on there. In the 10 months since Sidenote launched as "a platform for sharing stories that were too big for the Listserv but too small for the Valley News," it's run 165 stories, garnered many thousands of pageviews, and gained 450 subscribers (most, for the moment, in Thetford). You may have noticed Monique Priestley's piece on Bradford's "Community Visit" planning; from now on she'll be reporting regularly from there, and other UV content's in the works.Dance and astronomy. Dance and mind-body interaction. And soon, dance and the science of sight and hearing. They're all part of the Hop's ongoing "Big Move" series of community workshops connecting dance to other disciplines, writes Elizabeth Seyler in Seven Days. Over the past year, the effort has paired dance artists and research faculty to expand audiences' perception and understanding of movement's place in the world. "Dance artists are probing some really interesting stuff," says the Hop's Michael Bodel, and can inform an academic world "dominated by textual knowledge."NH Consumer Advocate asks state Supreme Court to address PUC's energy efficiency decision. Consumer Advocate Don Kreis yesterday filed an appeal with the court, challenging the Public Utilities Commission's November decision rejecting a plan to expand energy efficiency programs and cutting funding for them. The PUC, he wrote in an email to journalists, "repudiated the very...idea that New Hampshire should pursue all cost-effective energy efficiency." His appeal charges that the PUC disregarded due process and acted without proper public notice. Full doc here (just hit the PDF link).Oh, and yeah: Rapid tests coming soon to NH liquor stores. The Exec Council yesterday approved spending $12 million to buy 1 million rapid tests; they'll retail for around $13 per test, the Union Leader reports. They're expected to arrive in about 10 days, though at a press conference yesterday Gov. Chris Sununu said, "We are fairly confident but … I will believe it when they actually show up in New Hampshire.""I think that a lot of people are scared to talk about it. But the only way that we can ensure that it will never happen again is to be open about the real history." Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day, and in Bristol, VT, twin sisters Eliza and Emma Doucet have organized an event at Mt. Abraham High in a bid to counter what they see as general ignorance and casual anti-semitism among their peers. They talk to VPR's Mitch Wertlieb about what's motivated them, and about a bill in the legislature that would require VT schools to teach the causes and effects of the Holocaust and other acts of genocide.Middlebury College: an unsung incubator of Vermont clothing startups?There's Skida, the ski-hat company built by Corinne Prevot while she was a student. And SheFly, with its strategically placed zipper for women. And now, writes Steve Goldstein in Seven Days, there's Overeasy, founded by Norwich-raised Eva Shaw when she was a student (she now works for Goldman Sachs) and run these days by Sophie Snowdon Hiland...who happens to be a junior at the college. Its main product is the HoodE, a stretchy faux fur scarf. Shaw designed, sewed, and sold the first couple hundred herself in 2016.When art and ice (fishing) meet. Over 1,000 people visited the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center/Retreat Farm "Artful Ice Shanties" exhibition last year, which is a success by any measure, so they're doing it again. In three weeks, Susan Apel writes on Artful, the farm will host a popup collection of whimsical (last year's included an iridescent fish and a seascape with a 3-D octopus) decorated ice shanties (though no actual fishing). "Nothing pleases me more than art making a break for it, escaping its traditional hallowed halls as if it were desperate for a breath of fresh (and in this case, frigid) air," Susan writes.The ABCs of what it means to be human. Part paean, part meditation, laced with history and bits of whimsy—Priscilla Long’s “On Writing: An Abecedarian” in the Hudson Review envelopes you like any great poem might do. To each letter Long assigns a word with some significance to the act of writing, then dives into that word’s world of meaning. A for Alphabet: “As notes score music, so the alphabet scores speech.” H for Handwriting: “In the notebook of whatever size, you can practice making letters…You can dream, you can cross out words, begin again.” M for Mesopotamia, where writing was born.Tennis, anyone? Or, well, actually: a corgi, a stick, and an audience of cows.
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At 5 pm, Dartmouth's Rockefeller Center hosts Cornell government prof Jamila Michener for her lecture "Uncivil Democracy: Race, Poverty, and Civil Legal Inequality." The talk, both livestreamed and in-person in Filene Auditorium, looks at civil law, its importance to people—especially women of color—living in or near poverty, and how civil legal institutions affect the economics and politics of low-income communities.
At 6, the Hood will host an in-person workshop exploring some of the 160 Native and non-Native objects in its new "This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World" exhibition, aimed at giving participants "a range of strategies to make the most of this exciting exhibition."
And at 6:30 pm, the Norwich Historical Society hosts a Zoom talk by John Moody of the Winter Center for Indigenous Traditions (a Norwich-based nonprofit aimed at strengthening Native communities). Indigenous people have lived in the region for at least the last 12,000 years and still do so today; their agricultural practices were adapted by the Connecticut settlers and still appear today on our landscape. Moody will explore the history of the Upper Valley's Abenaki peoples and the enduring impact of Abenaki traditions.
At 7 this evening, Gibson's Bookstore in Concord hosts an online talk by author Chad Orzel, who'll be discussing his new book, A Brief History of Timekeeping: The Science of Marking Time, from Stonehenge to Atomic Clocks. Orzel will talk about the millennia of thought, experimentation, and discovery that went into what today seems simple: looking at a clock or smartphone. And about how all of that both depended on and contributed to advances in various scientific fields.
Also at 7, extreme skiers and adventurers Kit and Rob DesLauriers will be online via the VT Ski and Snowboard Museum to talk about their adventures ski mountaineering some of the world's highest peaks, and in particular about Kit's quest to ski the highest peak on each continent, which included climbs together of Vinson Massif, Mt. Elbrus, Kilimanjaro, Denali, and Mount Everest.
Also at 7, Dartmouth's Dickey Center and the University of Toronto's Centre for the Study of Global Japan co-host an online panel discussion, "China’s Growing Power and a New Era for US-Japan Alliance." Panelists in the US, Canada, and Japan will talk about the rise of Chinese power, the emerging challenges it poses to the US-Japan alliance, and how the two countries are responding technologically, politically, and militarily.
And finally, also at 7, if you've always wanted to explore the puppet-making part of artistic puppetry, the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center is offering an online puppet-making demo by artist B. Lynch, whose fantastical exhibition, Pull Back the Curtain, has been running at the museum since the fall. She uses oversized masks and puppets and figurines of all sizes in her installations.
Sofía Rei grew up in Buenos Aires, trained classically as a mezzo-soprano... and now lives in New York and both adheres to and ventures far afield from those roots. She builds from traditional South American rhythms and melodies, bending and infusing them with electronica, looping, and other techniques to... well, among other things, have fun.
filmed in NYC last year, from her new album based on the poetry of Chilean Nobel laureate Gabriela Mistral.
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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