WELL HI, UPPER VALLEY!
You knew it couldn't last, right? Very slight chance of scattered rain and snow showers this morning, then mostly cloudy and breezy. A warm front moved through overnight, bringing this possible moisture with it. Later today we'll get a jet of low pressure that'll kick up those winds. Highs not much above 50, and a chance of rain tonight. Tomorrow will be warmer... and a lot rainier. But let's just deal with that when we meet again.Rivendell hires Sharon Elementary principal as its new superintendent. Barrett Williams, who's run the school in Sharon since 2008, will take over the interstate school district for Orford, Fairlee, W. Fairlee and Vershire in July. The district has just under 500 students, and is looking for more. “He really grew programs” in Sharon, the chair of the search committee explains. “He worked with teachers and empowered teachers to help establish programs and find the funding to keep them going.” Williams went to Oxbow Union High, did teaching stints in Tunbridge and Chelsea, and now lives in Thetford.Grantham, Warner make list of country's safest small towns. The list is put together by a home security company, SafeWise -- which probably doesn't have much of a market in small-town America. This is the first year the company's distinguished small towns from the cities it usually ranks. None of the towns had any violent crime, and most had no property crime. Oh, and no Vermont towns made the cut. Here's the full list.Trees planted by Ottauquechee School after Irene helped during this week's flooding. Jon Bouton, the Windsor County forester, notes on FB that the cottonwoods, honeylocust and willows planted along the banks of the Ottauquechee by students and teachers broke up the force of the rushing water. Without them there, he says, "Monday’s flood would have been left more debris and silt on the Quechee Green."Woodstock alternative "milk" producer to get startup help. LaunchVT, a Burlington-based effort to help Vermont startups get off the ground, has picked Nutty Life, which makes nut and oat milks, as one of eight startups in this year's "accelerator" cohort. They'll get coaching, a set of advisors, and the chance to pitch for $150K in funding. Judge rules wrongful expulsion case against Dartmouth can move forward. After Green Key Weekend last year, the college expelled a male student, known in the case as John Doe, for sexually assaulting a female student. He sued, and a federal judge in Concord yesterday allowed the case to continue, though he expressed doubts about the strength of the student's argument that Dartmouth had breached its contractual obligation to provide a fair disciplinary process. There are at least two other suits against the college making the same argument.Cat Buxton's getting attention for her focus on soil as a solution to climate change. The Sharon soil-health educator has been running a series of discussions around Vermont to talk about the links between soil, human health, and climate change, and their implications for farming and land-management. Now Seven Days goes in deep, profiling Buxton and talking soil. Buxton's series runs through May 8.Dartmouth parking issues spill over into Hanover. This is mostly an article on how tight parking at the college is an inconvenience, but read through and you get a sense of how finding space for cars on campus affects life in Hanover. Younger faculty assigned to far-away lots decide not to bother coming in -- that reduces traffic on the streets. People having trouble finding on-campus parking use up public spaces -- that contributes to the town's well-known downtown woes. The new garage going up might help, but, says the chair of the government department, the college will probably need more of them down the road.Adam and Kevin Pearce's LoveYourBrainYoga just keeps expanding. The program, which the brothers started after VT snowboarder Kevin Pearce's 2009 accident, is now in 29 states and is opening today in Maryland for the first time. The Baltimore Sun is taking notice. The effort to bring the program to the state was spearheaded by a guy who suffered a traumatic brain injury after falling off a ladder, and eventually found yoga helped. "I was a typical guy raised in the city, and talking about yoga for a guy, I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s not for me,’" he says. "It was a stretch to get there, but when I did, I realized that there was a lot more there than just the physical aspect.”A group called EMF Safety for Vermont is trying to get legislators' attention on 5G concerns. It's called a meeting at the state capitol for this afternoon. There's legislation in Montpelier to pave the way for bringing the newest generation of cellular antennas to the state. The Brattleboro-based group worries about the health effects created by the variety of waves they generate. Expect to hear more over time...VT's Agency of Transportation wants the state to become a testbed for self-driving cars, towns want some say. It makes sense: rural roads, less-than-congenial weather conditions. Towns want to be able to limit where testing happens, companies don't want to have to get a permit from each town they want to test in. The legislature's trying to sort it all out.THERE'S SO MUCH TO DO! IT'S A DILEMMA...Because for starters, Margaret Atwood is speaking this afternoon at 4:30. The celebrated author of The Handmaid's Tale, Cat's Eye, and more than a dozen other novels will be at the podium in the HOP's Spaulding Auditorium, so maybe there'll be room. She's here because Dartmouth's Ethics Institute is bringing writers to campus this year to talk about ethics through the lens of science fiction. Though Atwood was pretty clear that Handmaid's Tale is speculative only in the particulars. "I did not want to be accused of dark, twisted inventions, or of misrepresenting the human potential for deplorable behavior,” she once wrote.Then there's a little time for dinner and a dash over to Tull-Head-a-palooza. Martin Barre, Clive Bunker, and Dee Palmer will be headlining a 50-year tribute to Jethro Tull at the Lebanon Opera House. I know, I know... No Ian Anderson. So maybe it's Tull lite. Except, of course, there's nothing lite about Barre's guitar work. Starts at 7:30. There are still some tickets left, but they're skating away as we speak...Or maybe you want live music, but quieter... The Rough & Tumble will be at Bradford's Space on Main. Mallory Graham and Scott Tyler started out in Nashville but for the last four years have lived on the road, touring. They call what they do "dumpster-folk, thriftstore-Americana," partly because they make instruments out of stuff they find. They also somehow manage to keep a food blog and a literary blog going, and are working on a followup to their 2018 album, "We Made Ourselves a Home."Or you could go quieter still: Free Verse Farm's Misha Johnson will be talking herbal remedies at the Norwich Public Library. Misha and his wife, Taylor Katz, run an herb farm in Chelsea and make teas, tinctures, tisanes, ointments, and other remedies. "I think of herbs as allies. They’re friends for a time," he says. He'll bring samples and talk about the role of naturally-grown herbs and herbal remedies in promoting health and wellness. From 5:30 to 7.That was some day yesterday, huh? See you tomorrow.
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