GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Another tranquil day ahead. Any fog will burn off first thing this morning. Otherwise, sunny all day, highs in the low 80s. There's a very slight chance of showers if you're headed to the mountains, but nothing around here. Cooling nicely tonight. We could definitely get used to this. But probably shouldn't.Flatbed trailer hauling 65-foot construction lift flips -- in a really bad place. A dump truck towing the trailer turned right from Route 4 onto Route 5 just opposite the old "25,000 Gifts" building on the outskirts of WRJ, and the trailer flipped, snarling traffic for hours yesterday afternoon as crews tried to keep diesel fuel from leaking into nearby storm drains. "It's been a bad day," the driver told Eric Francis. "I was late for work. My motorcycle broke down on the highway this morning and now this." As usual, Francis has plenty of pics.VT side of Upper Valley to get $3 million for electric buses, charging stations. VT's congressional delegation announced the grant in a press release yesterday, though provided few details. The money will come from the US Dept of Transportation and go to a VTrans partnership with Advance Transit and Green Mountain Power to expand AT's electric-bus fleet and the area's network of electric-vehicle charging stations.Barnard filmmaker wins best director at Italian film festival -- but neglects to attend. Josh Melrod's indie film, about a troubled carpenter who returns home to VT to build a cabin and remake his life, is called Major Arcana, and stars Tara Summers of "Boston Legal" and Barnard's Ujon Tokarski. The festival was held on Ischia, an island off Naples. Melrod had other things to do, so didn't go. As Seven Days puts it, "Here's a life tip: If you ever successfully submit your cool indie flick to an Italian film festival, especially if said film fest occurs on a spectacular island in an ancient castle, go to the damn festival."Cardigan Mtn. School fires store/mailroom manager after "sexual contact" with student. According to the VN, Kimberly Wennick was fired after Canaan police received a complaint about an employee at the all-boys boarding school and informed school administrators they were investigating. In a letter sent to parents, the head of school and its board chair said she "admitted this misconduct" and was let go and ordered to leave her home on campus. (VN, sub reqd)Dartmouth researchers find new planet. It's been given the euphonious name DS Tuc Ab, and it orbits a relatively young star about 150 light years away--taking just eight days to make a full orbit. Because the star is bright and DS Tuc Ab is essentially a "pre-teen" in planet years, researchers believe they can learn a lot about young solar systems from it, says Elisabeth Newton, a physics and astronomy prof at Dartmouth who leads a team of scientists from around the world.NHPR's up with the opioid pill numbers from last week's Washington Post data dump. Overall, New Hampshire got 280 million oxycodone and hydrocodone pills between 2006 and 2012, or about 36 pills per person, per year. A full 5 million of those went to a single pharmacy in Londonderry. “We knew that they were coming, but not in these numbers,” says a commissioner in Rockingham County, where Londonderry is located.NH emerges as epicenter in movement of cooperatively owned manufactured home parks. That's the term of art these days for "mobile home parks" because, well, the homes aren't mobile. Which is the point. Private equity firms are seeking to snap them up and raise rents because the homes are so hard to move. “It’s like having a restaurant where the customers are chained to the booths," says Chris Villeneuve, who organized a three-park, $48 million sale to residents, the largest such buyout in the nation. The state's Community Loan Fund has been helping residents seal such deals.As berries and nuts ripen in the woods, bear-human interactions likely to wane. That was the message yesterday from Vermont's top bear biologist. If you've been reading Daybreak, you know that state game wardens have put down two bears in the last couple of weeks, one that was approaching AT hikers, the other after it broke into a home in Underhill. Forrest Hammond, the biologist, says he isn't sure if there are more encounters this year, or they're just getting more publicity. Also yesterday, the US Forest Service put in place new bear-proof-container rules for the Green Mountain National Forest.SHORT NEWS DAY TODAY. BUT PLENTY TO DO TONIGHT!You could go hear Jay Buckey at the Howe, for instance. These days Buckey teaches at Geisel, runs the "hyperbaric" medicine program at DHMC, and conducts research for NASA. But in these parts he has another distinction: He's the only guy around who's been an astronaut -- as a payload specialist on Spacelab. And that's what he'll be talking about tonight. Or as the Howe puts it, "Learn about space from someone who's been there." Starts at 6:30.Or if you want to be more down to earth, you could head to Claremont Makerspace to learn about socially responsible investing. Sally Boyle will be talking about what it is, how it performs, how to get into impact investing, and in general how to put your money where your mouth is. Starts at 6 and is free, but you have to register. Tonight's the third of Canaan's Meetinghouse Readings. It features poet Gregory Pardlo with Air Traffic: A Memoir of Ambition and Manhood in America, part a memoir of growing up with his father, one of the air traffic controllers fired by Ronald Reagan in 1981, and part essay collection. He'll also read from Digest, the poetry collection for which he won a Pulitzer. Alice Mattison will read from her novel Conscience, about the Vietnam War era's reverberations for two characters living in modern-day New Haven, CT. Starts at 7:30 pm.If you want more than just the spoken word, there's an homage to Mary Oliver in poetry and dance at ArtisTree in S. Pomfret. Oliver died in January, and this is a kickoff to Bookstock (more on that tomorrow), with readings from her work, tributes by local poets, and the Moving Spirit Dancers picking up the written themes and making them visible. Starts at 7:30 pm.Or look, it's going to be a fine evening. You could pack a picnic and go hear the South Royalton Town Band. Set up in a bandstand. On the Green in, of all places, South Royalton. Whatever you do, enjoy the day. See you tomorrow.
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