GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Partly to mostly sunny, cooler. Drier, colder air began arriving overnight—some of the coldest we’ve had yet—and what with steady winds from the north, things might be brisk when you first step outdoors this morning. We’ll be getting into the mid 50s today under skies that should be mostly blue by later this morning as high pressure settles in briefly. Then, sometime overnight a new frontal system arrives, with rain starting up toward morning. Tonight’s lows in the upper 30s, maybe 40.
Seeing blue. Well, there’s the sky, of course, as in Jan Sensenich’s photo of a mirror-like pond in Hartford. And there’s the single vibrant morning glory Marcy Bartlett caught in Wilder, just as last week’s frost arrived.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before… Just a heads up that NHDOT will be closing ramps again today. The I-89 southbound Exit 20 ramp to the West Leb strip will be shut down between noon and as late as 5 pm for milling and paving operations; they’ll be doing the same thing next Wednesday, too. Meanwhile, the I-91 northbound Exit 10A ramp to I-89 south will be closed from 8:30 am to 4 pm, both today and next Wednesday as well. Usual detours apply.
Leb’s workforce housing plan on hold again. You may recall the saga of the city’s hopes for Barrows Street: the plan for building five homes on city-owned land first stalled in February when costs came in too high, then was back on the table last month. That’s when the city opened up a lottery for prospective buyers—only now, reports the Valley News’s Molly Hughes, it’s had to pause things because it only got four of the five qualified buyers it needed to move forward; staff will take up what comes next with the city council. “I can only imagine how much work and effort the city put in,” video producer Chris Johnson, one of the applicants, tells Hughes.
Hanover plans to add deputy town manager. At least, the selectboard approved a job description for the post earlier this month, reports Sofia Langlois in the VN, though no job’s been posted yet and the salary remains undetermined. The idea, though, is to get help for Town Manager Rob Houseman managing the various town departments, do budget and capital planning, oversee projects like the Ledyard pocket park and the upcoming reconstruction of South Main St.—and, potentially, step in once Houseman, who is 63, retires, though that decision will be up to the selectboard.
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At Shaker Bridge, “the dizzy joy of a heroine coming of age with staging that topples theater’s rules.” So writes Seven Days theater critic Alex Brown about the theater company’s production of Northanger Abbey, which runs through Oct. 25 at the Briggs Opera House. Zoe Cooper’s adaptation gives Jane Austen’s various characters to three actors—along with a trunkful of costumes for quick changes and, Brown writes, “improvised fun.” “With scenes abbreviated into witty exchanges wrapped in commentary, the performance flies as fast as thought,” Brown writes, “…[and] what exhilarates us is watching live performers make these tight turns.”
How Katie’s Cookies takes to the road. Katie Boardman opened her Leb Mall shop in 2023, and it’s been a success ever since. So early this year, writes Saanvi Goyal in The Dartmouth, she and her crew expanded with the Katie’s Cookie Van, which extends their reach around the Upper Valley. “Everything we put on our cookies we make,” Boardman says. “We’re baking fresh every day. We’re just passionate home bakers. None of us are professionals, but we enjoy it, and I think our love of the job comes out in our product.” Among others, Goyal talks to driver Bill Finn. “It’s the best job I ever had,” he says. He feels the same about the chocolate chip cookies. We can all relate.
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“We will save what we love.” That’s world-renowned musician Paul Winter, who’ll be at the Chandler Center for the Arts in Randolph a week from today, in Mark Rosalbo’s latest Randolph Vibe post. Rosalbo recounts their hour-long conversation, while Winter crunched through the leaves in his Litchfield, CT woods, and the “earth music” Winter’s best known for—through albums like Common Ground, Icarus, and Light of the Sun—which began in 1968, when he first heard Roger Payne talk about the songs of humpback whales. Winter’s Chandler performance is connected to its exhibit about Marjorie Ryerson’s book Water Music, for which Winter wrote the introduction.
“Oh my gosh, Anne is in New York City!”: WRJ butterfly-tracking effort hits NPR. You may have caught Abagael Giles’ report for VT Public last month about Desirée Narango and her VT Center for Ecostudies team’s use of tiny, solar-powered backpacks to follow monarch butterflies as they migrate south. Now, Giles has adapted her piece for a national audience. As monarch populations shrink, she reports, the effort gives scientists their first real chance to study the butterflies’ challenges. “It really blows your mind how much these individuals need to go through in order to make it all the way to Mexico,” Narango says. Want to see the tags in action?
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Mother relates events before daughter’s shooting by police in Bath. Jeanne Seto, 36, was shot by police as she headed from Concord toward her mother’s home in Bath, intending to kill her after a dispute, reports the Monitor’s Sruthi Gopalakrishnan (here via NHPR). Police intercepted her and discovered she was armed; she was fatally shot during the encounter. Seto, who had a history of mental illness, had given birth two weeks before, and her mother, Sonja Kull, had filed for temporary guardianship. Kull tells Gopalakrishnan that her daughter was in the grips of a crisis, describes the complex circumstances that led to her daughter’s death, and says things might have ended differently had police in both Bath and Concord behaved differently.
NHPR says it “erred” when it agreed to sponsor Live Free Anarchist Book Fair in Hanover. The fair was held at the Richard W. Black Community Center last Saturday, and by Sunday, Steven Porter writes in the Globe (sorry, paywall), NHPR had put out a statement acknowledging it violated its own ethics code, which bars participation “in anything that can be viewed as political.” The statement noted that the newsroom wasn’t involved in the sponsorship decision, but didn’t say who was. The event, Porter notes, “was advertised as a celebration of ‘radical ideas, collective care, and grassroots organizing.’” “We are evaluating our internal processes to ensure mistakes like this don’t happen again,” NHPR said.
“I just realized how few people are using liquid nitrogen around the home”: the moment Bill Nye became The Science Guy. He wasn’t always, you know. Among other things, he worked as a mechanical engineer at Boeing in Seattle. And then he made one of those out-of-left-field career shifts, into sketch comedy on a low-budget Seattle TV show called “Almost Live!” And that’s where, in 1987… well, you can see for yourself.
The Thursday Crossword. This should keep you busy for a few minutes, thanks as always to Dartmouth librarian and ace puzzle constructor Laura Braunstein.
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday’s Daybreak.
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HEADS UP
Opening reception for AVA members’ new art show at DHMC. The exhibition includes 43 works by 21 artists who are a part of the AVA Gallery community, and runs through Dec. 18. 5 pm in the 4th Floor Williamson Gallery (Main Entrance) at DHMC.
Za’atar at Fable Farm’s Rumney Sessions in Barnard. The VT-based trio of Craig Macrae (oud), Valerie Ritter (violin and viola), and string-band veteran Will Wright (frame drums) play a wide variety of music from the Middle East and Turkey. Doors open at 5:30 pm.
Parish Players’ Ten-Minute Play Festival kicks off. This year’s festival features eight short plays, directed variously by Dorothy Gannon, Perry Allison, Terry Samwick, Hetty Thomae, and John Langhus. At the Grange Theater on Thetford Hill this week and next, 7 pm Thursday to Saturday and 2 pm on Sundays.
Poets Alyssa Moore and Katherine Gibbel at Still North Books & Bar. Moore was the inaugural winner of Poetry magazine’s Editors Prize for Visual Poetry. Gibbel, printer and Dartmouth English department administrator, recently published her debut collection, Little Sound—here’s Rena Mosteirin’s recent Enthusiasm on it. 7 pm.
At the Norwich Bookstore, Ashley Woo talks about Wildwood with Flynn Berry. Woo’s debut novel is a gothic mystery about “a house with dark secrets beneath its floorboards”—in this case, a sprawling estate in the wilds of rural VT. Berry’s latest thriller, A Good Man on a Dark Night, is due out in January. 7 pm.
The Travelin’ McCourys at the Flying Monkey in Plymouth. It’s a bit of a drive, but the band—led by Del McCoury’s sons Ronnie and Rob—doesn’t make it up this way all that often (if you miss them tonight, they’ll be at Spruce Peak in Stowe tomorrow night). Bluegrass for the 21st century. 7:30 pm.
The annual Indigenous People’s Fashion Show at the Hood Museum. As the Hood writes, it’s a “celebration of Indigenous fashion, creativity, expression, and design.” 8 pm.
Amy Tee at Lebanon Opera House. LOH writes: “With her self-proclaimed ‘boyish charm’ and dry wit, comedian Amy Tee brings the laughs…but there’s a poignancy to the punchlines. Amy’s stigma-busting comedy shines a light on her own struggles with alcoholism and bipolar disorder.” You’ll be seated on the stage, facing the house. 8 pm.
And in this week’s highlights, JAM looks at: Dartmouth prof Bijan Mazaheri’s recent “Back to Class” talk about his efforts to compare competitive runners and why he thinks the liberal arts will become more valuable; Insun Park and the Generals’ performance last month at LOH; and poet Michael Brosnan at the Norwich Bookstore.
And for today...
It’s been nine years since the three guys who make up the indie Irish band Kingfishr—Eoin ‘Fitz’ Fitzgibbons, Edmond ‘Eddie’ Keogh, and Eoghan ‘McGoo’ McGrath—met at the University of Limerick while studying electronic and computer engineering. They all liked music, they formed a band, they released a single … and, well, they don’t do engineering any more. Their breakout came last year, after they released the hurling anthem “Killeagh,” which hit number one on the Irish charts; this past summer they did it again with “The Sun Will Never Settle”—topping it off with packed shows in Belfast, Dublin, Cork, and elsewhere. Here’s that jubilant scene, that song, and a look at why they’ll no doubt be even bigger next year.
See you tomorrow.
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Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Poetry editor: Michael Lipson Associate Editors: Jonea Gurwitt, Sam Gurwitt
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