GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
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Showers, cooler but still warm. We start out mostly sunny first thing (that was a heck of a red sky, wasn’t it?), but then a weak cold front will bring what look to be two rounds of showers, with a few hours of rain likely starting up mid-morning, and then a chance of rain again after midnight. Even so, temps will get into the mid 60s on the back of winds from the south. Down into the low or mid 50s tonight.
Reasons to look up. We start with Cynthia Crawford’s autumn sky above WRJ, move on to Laura Pulaski’s view of a balloon high in the autumn sky above Post Mills, and finish with Rita Temple Brooks’s rose-tinted autumn sky above Lake Fairlee the other morning.
In most NH Upper Valley towns, tax cap didn’t pass. In all, reports Sophie Levenson in the Valley News, seven of the 22 towns in the paper’s coverage area will get tax caps on education spending in their school districts, 14 will not, and one—Sunapee—hasn’t yet released results. The cap failed in the Mascoma Valley district (though a couple of towns supported it), as well as in Cornish, Grantham, Hanover, Lebanon, and Plainfield; it won a majority in Croydon, Lyme, Orford, and Piermont, but failed to clear the 60 percent threshold to go into effect. Voters in Charlestown, Haverhill, Claremont, Unity, and Newport passed it decisively, Levenson reports.
As NHPR’s Annmarie Timmins notes, even passage of the cap doesn’t mean property tax increases will be limited, because voters at an annual school district meeting decide each warrant article separately, and a 60 percent vote can exceed the limit. Conversely, Barrett Christina, executive director of the New Hampshire School Boards Association, tells her that even if the cap didn’t pass the threshold with voters, “If a majority of the people in your specific community voted for this cap, that should be a sign to school boards that they're going to have to make some tough decisions come budget season.”
“I think that there’s going to be an appetite for true accountability on the Supreme Court and at all levels of government.” That’s Leb’s Karen Liot Hill, who has spent the last couple of years as the sole Democrat on NH’s five-member Executive Council and suddenly finds herself as one of—most likely—five Democrats. As NH Bulletin’s William Skipworth writes, the council is “a little-known arm of government that holds immense power in the state,” and looking ahead, Liot Hill tells him the new council will likely approve state contracts that had been rejected by the GOP majority, including with Planned Parenthood for services like cancer screenings, as well as address the ethical issues that have beset the state Supreme Court.
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Election takeaways. In the VN, Sofia Langlois has two pieces rounding up events both in the Upper Valley and more generally in VT and NH. Among them: NH Senate District 1 remains uncalled, with incumbent Republican David Rochefort still in the lead; same with District 8, where Republican Jim Creighton held onto a 307-vote lead as of late yesterday afternoon. Langlois breaks down which NH towns in the region voted strongly Democratic (most of them) and Republican (Haverhill, Grafton, Croydon). On the VT side, she runs down several of the contested races in which incumbents won (including House Democrats Larry Satcowitz, Kirk White, John O’Brien), and Democrat Claude Weyant’s win as Windsor Sheriff; he takes over Feb. 1.
And, no surprise, the election re-ordered things in both state capitals.
For starters, several prominent Republican legislators in Concord lost re-election, including House Speaker Sherman Packard and Weare Rep. Ross Berry, author of the tax cap. In NH Bulletin, Ethan DeWitt runs down the scale of the Democratic victories in the legislature—“I did not expect a historic majority like this,” said House Democratic Leader Alexis Simpson, who announced yesterday she’ll run for speaker—and how Democrats might use them, and checks in with Republicans, who are still digesting their losses and, in some cases, blaming GOP legislative leaders.
Meanwhile, Democrats will have veto-proof majorities in both chambers of the legislature. According to the state’s unofficial results, reports Vermont Public’s Peter Hirschfeld, they boosted their numbers from 87 to 102 in the House (out of 150 House seats total), and from 17 to 20 in the Senate (out of 30 total—there are also two independents expected to vote with Democrats). Republicans lost 18 seats in the House, “entirely eliminating the historic gains they made during the 2024 election,” Hirschfeld notes. Senate Republicans numbers will fall from 13 to eight.
Rhotic? Non-rhotic? You might not immediately see the connection between the Upper Valley and today’s announcement of a new “Voice of Logan” Airport, but in Artful, Susan Apel makes it. One of the leading experts on how “r” is or is not pronounced after it follows a vowel—non-rhotic speakers use the classic Boston “pahk”—is Dartmouth linguist James Stanford. And as Susan writes, his research has focused in part on the Upper Valley and the work of fellow linguist Sarah Villard, who found that “‘r-lessness’ is more common among older Upper Valley residents” and people with lots of local pride “and [a] more negative attitude toward Dartmouth.”
Wildfire growing in White Mountain National Forest. The Wild River Fire, near Gorham, NH and the Maine border, has burned 1,000 acres and as of yesterday afternoon was only 11 percent contained. “For a fire of this size on the White Mountain National Forest, it’s very uncommon. It is the largest since the forest was incorporated,” a US Forest Service spokesman tells NHPR’s Todd Bookman. More than 50 forest service personnel, along with two helicopters and a drone are fighting the blaze, but they’re being hampered by needing to hike into it on foot and by plenty of dry leaf litter and highly flammable spruce and fir trees feeding the flames.
Forget Maine and Idaho: Behold the NEK spud. Up in Guildhall, VT, Matt Linehan grows 30 varieties of potatoes on 60 acres, selling them throughout New England—from “high-end Boston restaurants to the University of Vermont and Vermont Foodbank,” Melissa Pasanen writes in Seven Days. After farming in other states, in 2019 he bought the third-generation potato farm he now runs, along with its potato storage barn—“It was state of the art in 1928,” he tells Pasanen. She describes the operation, why potatoes (he doesn’t like managing people, and they lend themselves to mechanization) and how he’s become VT’s go-to guy on potato growing.
Now, here’s a reason to check out the security cam before answering the doorbell. In Killington last weekend, reports NBC5, the owner of a vacation rental was more than a little surprised when he checked his cam app and discovered the doorbell-ringer was a black bear. “That learned behavior, it will go house, to house to house and I see it all the time up there in Killington,” says VT Fish & Wildlife’s Abigail Serra. “Bears make the rounds.”
A dramatic rescue in Utah’s Wasatch Range. Last week, a solo hiker slipped and fell off the summit of Mount Timpanogos, an 11,700-foot peak, sliding several hundred feet until she landed on a small cliff ledge. In a video posted yesterday, the Utah County Sheriff’s Office shows the course of the fall, and then the helicopter rescue by the state’s Dept. of Public Safety. The unidentified woman was badly injured in the fall, but yesterday’s post reports, “We have heard that the hiker is recovering well.” You’ll want the sound up.
The Thursday Crossword. This’ll give you something to chew on this morning. From puzzle maestro Laura Braunstein.
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday’s Daybreak.
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HEADS UP
Upper Valley Music Center’s “A Little Lunch Music” with Ben Kulp and Ludovic Sardain. Culp on cello and Sardain on piano will play “favorites from classical and contemporary repertoire.” Noon at UVMC in Lebanon.
Chuck Sams at Dartmouth, with “The Law Since Time Immemorial: Creation, Law, and the Rights of Nature.” This Montgomery Fellows conversation features the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation member on a Natural World ethic that emphasizes “stewardship and reciprocity with flora, fauna, air, water, and land.” 4:30 pm in Filene Auditorium.
Artist talk with Linda Bryan at AVA Gallery. Bryan’s show, Falling Leaves, has its roots in her discovery of a handwritten childhood note to her mother, “prompting questions about memories of family life that no longer aligned with the stories she thought she knew,” AVA writes. She’ll discuss “her process of revisiting family photographs, documents, objects, and ephemera preserved across generations.” 5:30 pm.
Borrow The Bones at Fable Farm Fermentory’s Rumney Sessions in Barnard. The VT-based duo of Paul Boffa and Danielle Pratt meld Americana, folk, roots, and R&B “into original music shaped by expressive vocals, thoughtful songwriting, and rich harmonies.” Food and doors at 5:30 pm.
GeoGuessr Tournament at the Howe Library. “You will be dropped into a Google Street View somewhere on the planet and navigate through the streets until you're ready to guess your location. Compete in teams of 1-4 people to earn the most points over five rounds,” they explain. Winners get a Still North gift card and a compass. 6:30 pm in-person only in the Mayer Room.
The Grand Kyiv Ballet at the Chandler with "Swan Lake: Symphony of Lights.” Their production “re-imagines Tchaikovsky's classic ballet with vibrant lighting design, innovative technology, and illuminated costumes.” 7 pm.
Hop Film hosts “Stories from the Siberian Arctic.” Filmmaker Evgenia Arbugaeva presents “two short documentary films that reveal a shifting landscape through science and the myths of her people, the Sakha of northeastern Siberia.” She’ll be joined after the screening by Snow Raven (Khaar Suor), an Indigenous Sakha singer and educator. “This evening brings these two Sakha artists together for the first time,” the Hop notes. 7 pm in the Loew Auditorium.
The Dartmouth College Gospel Choir fall concert at the Hop. Director Knoelle Higginson leads the ever-popular mixed student-and-community choir as it delivers a jolt of spirituals and contemporary gospel. 7:30 pm in Spaulding.
Classicopia launches three days of “Wind Power: Fun trios for oboe, bassoon, and piano.” Margaret Herlehy, Janet Polk, and Dan Weiser play music by Mozart, Bruch, Glinka, Bonis, and Corticelli. Tonight at 7:30 at the First Congregational Church of Lebanon, tomorrow at 7 pm at the home of Peter and Annie Hanaway in Norwich, and Saturday at homes in WRJ and Contoocook.
Willy Porter at the Flying Goose in New London. The finger-picking guitarist and storyteller from Wisconsin starts up at 7:30 pm. Call (603) 526-6899 for reservations.
And for today...
Maybe you saw Trampled by Turtles at Lake Morey this past summer (or in 2025)? The Duluth, MN folk-bluegrass band has a new song out, written for season 2 of Apple TV’s animated series, The Sisters Grimm—and ordered up by the series’ showrunner, who’s a fan, to run as an emotional thread throughout the story of two girls trying to figure out why their parents disappeared. Here’s “Wild Winds.”
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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