WELL HEY, UPPER VALLEY!
Yeah, I know. It's damp out there. This is what happens when we've got what the weather service folks call a "nearly stationary to stalled frontal zone" draped over us like a wet blanket. The low that brought us overnight moisture will exit at some point off to the east, but highs will remain about 10 degrees cooler than normal, in the 40s. And oh boy, more of this tomorrow (though a tad warmer). But Saturday! Dry, 60s... They promise. Really. Just hang on.After wrangle with state, Canaan mom-and-pop store set to open tomorrow. Stu Bean announced on Facebook last night that the old Pleasant Valley Store on Route 4, which he and his wife Cathy bought last fall, will officially open at 5 am tomorrow. "We will have everything up and running including full service deli, gas, store goods, beer, fresh cooked breakfast sandwiches, subs, bulkies, salads you name it we are ready to rock," he declared. The Beans had sunk $250,000 into the store and were ready to open a couple of weeks ago when NH denied them a food license because they couldn't prove the septic system was in compliance.Plainfield, Cornish to get new school superintendent. She's Cory LeClair, who'd been acting superintendent in Claremont and was recently runner-up for the full-time position there. LeClair replaces Frank Perotti, who moved over to take over the Croydon district. It's a four-day-a-week job, which will give LeClair time to run her family's farmstand and help out with her in-laws' Claremont dairy farm. (VN, subscription reqd)Hillary Clinton will speak at Dartmouth next week. She'll be visiting campus on Wednesday, hosted by the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding, which is where two guys who worked with her when she was Secretary of State now hang their hats. Daniel Benjamin, who runs the center, and Jake Sullivan, who's there for the year, will hold a public conversation with Clinton in Spaulding the afternoon of the 8th.Local food, drink folks head to DC for Taste of Vermont. Every year, the Lake Champlain Chamber hosts a "Taste of Vermont" extravaganza on Capitol Hill in an effort to catch the eye (and tastebuds) of politicians, lobbyists, bureaucrats, food writers, and hungry interns. There'll be about 60 VT food and beverage makers there, and this year they'll include Norwich's King Arthur Flour, E. Thetford's Long Wind Farm, Bradford's Red Kite Candy, Windsor's Silo Distillery and Vermont Farmstead Cheese Co.Hey, Lebanon! It's getting trashy around town! Starr Hill, Mascoma River Greenway, the rail trail by Ice House Road... People have been out and about, and they're noticing a lot of beer cans and general trash around. "I can’t believe the amount of litter on the sides of the roads right now. Who the heck does that?! I just can’t get over the mind set of people these days," writes one irate local on the FB thread that's gathering complaints. Just in time for CleanUp Day in town, which is on Saturday.Randolph, Springfield snag downtown improvement grants. The VT Downtown Development Board is handing out $600K overall to eight towns. Randolph is getting $73,000 of that to put in trees and rain gardens and make general safety improvements at the busy Pleasant/Merchant streets intersection. Springfield landed $70,000 to improve public green space along the Black River by Comtu Park. Pats unveil new decals for NH license plates. The gov signed a measure last fall allowing the Patriots Foundation to create stickers to go on the state's plates. Now they're here, making NH the third state, after MA and RI, to let fans pony up cash (in this case, $30) to make their loyalties official. The decals read "6X Champions" but words don't quite do them justice.NH grappling with effort to take politics out of legislative redistricting. Both houses of the legislature have passed bills to create a 15-member redistricting commission in a bid to sidestep gerrymandering. They've drawn criticism from Republicans and Gov. Chris Sununu has opposed them. Yesterday a bipartisan amendment surfaced to give House and Senate leaders the ability to nominate commission members. Sununu says he's looking the changes over.Amazon ranks VT 8th fastest-growing in country for small, medium-sized businesses...selling on the online retailer, that is. The internet giant looked at year-over-year sales growth for businesses selling through its "stores." The top ten states are all largely rural, led by Mississippi, Nebraska, and Maine.In case you've been following along, the Vermont House yesterday passed its school-lead-testing bill. It would require every pre-K-to-12 school and child care provider to test their drinking water. The House has to vote one more time for the bill to formally advance, and then it and the Senate can wrangle over the fairly substantial differences in their two measures. Vermont's also close to raising the smoking age to 21. The Senate and House have now agreed to having the change go into effect Sept. 1. Gov. Phil Scott says he expects to sign the legislation, which also extends to e-cigs. A dozen other states have already made the move.Firefighters rescue guy from tree. He was dangling 60 feet up in a park in Manchester, where his drone got stuck in the tree two weeks ago. Unable to get to it on an earlier attempt, he borrowed a friend's climbing gear, looked up "How to Climb" on YouTube, and headed skywards yesterday. Things didn't work out. The firefighters used a hook and ladder to get him down. His drone's okay, too.SO, WHAT'S ON FOR TONIGHT?Will Martin brings his one-man show, "Total Loss," to The Engine Room in WRJ. Martin's a Boston-based comedian who clearly likes to challenge himself, in this case with storytelling comedy about death that cuts close to the bone: his best friend, his brother. His model for it, he says, is Sarah Silverman. She's "always taking you so close to the moment where you’re about to cry and then she pulls the rug out from under you. It’s always very empathetic. She’s dark, but very kind. That’s a goal in the show." Starts at 8.Court Street Arts has Quebec's wildly original Le Vent du Nord. The celebrated prog-folk group "captures the energy and mirth of a Saturday night kitchen party, infusing old Québec with a breath of fresh, cosmopolitan air," says Court Street. But I like what The Scotsman had to say about a show at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall a couple of years back: "This was delivered at the kind of skelp that was clearly designed to grab you by the scruff of the neck and hurl you round a Quebec kitchen." Starts at 7 at Alumni Hall in Haverhill.Or you could steep yourself in two remarkable pieces of history: the film Who Will Write Our History followed by a discussion with Betty Lauer. The film is a documentary (with reenactments) about a clandestine group of writers in the Warsaw Ghetto who chronicled events and daily life there from its sealing by the Nazis in 1940 to its destruction. They eventually produced a 60,000-article archive, most of which survived the war--unlike all but three of its authors. Afterward, Dartmouth Hillel Rabbi Meir Goldman will talk with local resident Betty Lauer, whose book, Hiding in Plain Sight, chronicled her six years essentially on the run in Nazi-occupied Poland. At the HOP's Loew Auditorium, starting at 7.
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