GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Hottest, humidest day of the week... and then a break. Basically, there's moisture coming in ahead of a cold front, which with temps in the lower 90s will help produce a heat index—especially in the CT River Valley—between 95 and 100. Mostly sunny, but with a chance of showers and thunderstorms ahead of the front, which begins arriving overnight, though we won't really feel its cooler effects until tomorrow. Lows in the upper 60s, winds from the west.State troopers' killing of mentally ill Claremont man in March was legally justified, NH AG's office says. In a report unveiled yesterday on the March 31 incident, in which 40-year-old Jeffrey Ely died after being shot nine times following a nearly six-hour standoff, state officials said the officers feared for their own and bystanders' safety after Ely had shot at a small group of people near the garage he was living in, and that they "believed he had difficulty distinguishing between their voices and voices in his head.” The Monitor's Teddy Rosenbluth lays out the day's events.Outbreak in Windsor nursing home. Cedar Hill Health Care has a 30-case outbreak, the Valley News's Nora Doyle-Burr reports—20 residents and 10 employees as of yesterday. “It’s a very, very difficult time,” executive director Patricia Horn tells Doyle-Burr. All but two of those with symptoms—both employees—were fully vaccinated, and most are experiencing mild symptoms, Horn says. The facility has boosted PCR testing to three times a week for residents and staff, and vendors entering the building are now using rapid tests.“The thing that changes a lot is what we’re requiring of audiences.” That's the Hop's Michael Bodel talking to the VN's Alex Hanson about moving ahead with live performances this fall. Hanson offers a look around the region, not just at what will be expected of audiences—think masks, at least initially—but at what's planned on stage: dance residencies; lots of music—Terence Blanchard and Lula Wiles' Mali Obomsawin at the Hop, the Oshima Brothers, Chris Thile, and Rosanne Cash at LOH; and theater, including the ongoing Million Dollar Quartet at Northern Stage and a full slate at Shaker Bridge.SPONSORED: There's always something happening at AVA Gallery! On Friday, Aug. 27 from 5-7 PM there’s an opening reception for three solo exhibitions: Winkie Kelsey, William Peabody, Jay Singh. Mask up and join AVA for great art, conversation, and a special announcement at 6:15 PM. Then, on Sept. 9 at 7 pm, it's "The Mudroom – I Didn’t See That Coming!," stories from Upper Valley community members. Enjoy the live stories and music with a friend! Finally, register for fall classes and stretch your creative muscles. Available for youth & adults. Sponsored by AVA Gallery and Art Center.Crowdsourced meat processing. Or rather, the funding for meat processing. On his Granite Geek blog, David Brooks writes about an effort by the owners of Short Creek farm over in Northwood, NH—east of Concord—to build a facility to handle turning their own and others' slaughtered animals into steaks, chops, sausages, and the like. NH has long faced processing bottlenecks, Brooks notes, "which has made it difficult for some small farms to expand." What's interesting is the Short Creek guys are looking for investors with as little as $100 to spend, with a promise of revenue share up to a 35 percent dividend.Sununu signs police-related measures into law. Probably the most notable of them, reports NH Bulletin's Ethan DeWitt, will eventually make public the so-called "Laurie List" of officers whose superiors "have flagged issues of abuse, unjustified force, and falsifying evidence." The same bill also opens police disciplinary hearings to the public. Sununu also signed a measure creating a fund to help police departments install body cameras and requiring schools to publish their arrangements with police for school resource officers.On the whole, Granite Staters support employer vaccine mandates, UNH poll finds. As protests against DHMC's requirement that employees get vaccinated continue in Lebanon and Concord, the UNH poll found that 53 percent of those surveyed back the right of businesses and institutions to require employees get vaccinated against Covid, reports Josie Alberton-Grove in the Union Leader. Of respondents who remain unvaccinated, almost half said they'd quit their job if they were forced to get the shot, while a quarter said a mandate would impel them to do so.Suit alleges Shumlin administration was complicit in Jay Peak fraud. The suit, filed on behalf of a group of immigrants who'd invested in a development at Burke Mountain Resort, contends that members of the Shumlin administration knew that "Jay Peak owner Ariel Qiros and CEO Bill Stenger had defrauded investors across all eight phases of the Jay Peak developments," reports VTDigger's Anne Galloway, who has led the news outlet's dogged investigation into the tangled story for a decade. The AG's office tells her it "is reviewing the complaint and anticipates responding in the coming weeks.""Erosion of public discourse" as VT school boards and districts left to navigate mask mandates on their own. "One of my... colleagues has received a death threat," one superintendent wrote in a letter to parents. "Some principals are receiving letters from groups threatening to storm the schools on the first day." And at school board meetings where the issue's up for debate, reports Seven Days' Kevin McCallum, meetings are being disrupted, board members yelled at, and parents who speak in favor of mask mandates are getting heckled. The state, he writes, is sending mixed messages.Will Black travelers feel welcomed in a place like Brattleboro? The answer, writes Dwight Brown for NNPA News, a newswire serving Black-owned newspapers, is: You bet. He offers a quick tour, talking to Curtiss Reed Jr. about the African American Heritage Trail; citing Shanta Lee Gander and her contributions to the Brattleboro Words Trail historic sites app; stopping by SUSU commUNITY Farm, a collective for BIPOC users and customers that's part of the Retreat Farm; checking out the Vermont Jazz Center in the Cotton Mill; and offering a guide to the town's diverse and growing food scene.Given today's weather, there's only one choice: Think snow! Sämi Ortlieb is a Swiss animator, actor, filmmaker, punk rocker, and jaw-dropping skier. A few years ago, he began developing a stop-motion technique to "animate" the landscape on film, and about a week ago he dropped his latest try on Vimeo: Manöver is like a short dialogue between the snow and trees and hills and a trio of freestyle skiers speeding and caroming over, through, around, down, and off them. And seriously: If this happened in real life it would be so cool!
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Today at 12:30, the Hood Museum is offering an in-person "highlights tour" of its galleries, a chance for visitors to catch up on what they've missed while the museum was closed and to check out what's new. No need to sign up.
Starting at 4 in and around Colburn Park in Lebanon, it's Lebanon Rec's "Summer Celebration." The farmers market from 4-7 at Colburn Park, then a dance-fest on the Lebanon Mall powered by the Conniption Fits, then around 9, fireworks from the Storrs Hill Ski Lodge.
At 5 pm on the porch of the Norwich Inn, local author Katie Crouch will be signing copies and celebrating the publication of her latest novel, Embassy Wife, set among the embassy set in Namibia—where Crouch once lived. The book's enjoying strong national reviews: It's both "a sharp-eyed comic treatment of what the government refers to as 'trailing spouses'," the LA Times wrote, as well as "a sad-eyed testament to corruption and misogyny....Come for the romp but stay for the study of human nature and human survival." Sponsored by the Norwich Bookstore, no need to register.
From 5-8 pm at Denny Park in Bradford, it's the first-ever (in these parts) Black Musicians Matter community celebration, organized by locals Jennifer Grossi and Jill Baron, along with the Summer Street Music Series. It features Bradford-based free-form rock and soul singer Senayit (a Summer Street co-founder), Boston-based (but NEK-raised) singer-songwriter Kali Stoddard-Imari and Ancestors in Training, and Burlington-based, Madagascar-born master of traditional Malagasy music, Mikahely. All hosted onstage by "femmecee" Golden Mystique and supported by advance contributions, with Bright Sun Kitchens providing food.
And at 6 pm, Fairlee is hosting a "Main Street to Morey" celebration in front of town hall... and though there'll be refreshments, really it's more of an informational session. The town's gone through a planning process aimed at revitalizing Main Street and finding better ways than a pair of highway underpasses to link it to Lake Morey, and they'll be talking about what consultants hired by the town learned, what's been accomplished (a grant to beautify those underpasses, new businesses on Main St.) and get input on where things go from here. Masks required.
You may remember that Slim Gaillard made an appearance in this space a while back, but without any video. He played piano, guitar, and sax, was a bomber pilot during WWII, spoke multiple languages including his own creation ("Vout-o-Reenee"), showed up in Kerouac's
On the Road
("Slim looks just as sad as ever, and they blow jazz for half an hour, and then Slim goes mad and grabs the bongos and plays tremendous rapid Cubana beats and yells crazy things in Spanish, in Arabic, in Peruvian dialect, in Egyptian, in every language he knows, and he knows innumerable languages..."), played with the likes of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, and was known for his exuberant musical wordplay. He was an astoundingly talented performer,
(like the snippet of Debussy's "Clair de Lune" near the start).
(Thanks, DG!)
See you tomorrow.
Daybreak Where You Are: The Album. Photos of daybreak around the Upper Valley, Vermont, New Hampshire, and the US, sent in by readers.
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