SUCH A PLEASURE TO SEE YOU, UPPER VALLEY!
And welcome back! Ready or not, it's time to settle into 2023.Which looks disturbingly like the end of 2022. There's a warm front stretching our way from the Midwest and some low pressure along for the ride, and the result is that we start this morning with a chance of freezing rain, which pretty quickly changes over to all rain. Rain likely all afternoon and evening, dropping to a chance overnight. We'll only hit the mid-30s today, but that's where the thermometer will stick all night, before starting to rise toward dawn.It's a big world out there. When you're a young bobcat, anyway. Here's Lisa Grose's trail cam video from Hanover last week. "It was a super windy day and he is very alert as he listens and watches," she writes. "You can hear distant gunshots or fireworks—he sat there taking it all in for about 30 seconds. Lucky capture for me!"Meanwhile, things are creaking to a start on the news front. But before we get there... A couple of items from the Valley News this past week worth remembering:
Like, Patrick Adrian's story about two developers hoping to create a casino and restaurant on the Miracle Mile spot where Gerrish Honda used to be. Jonathan Gengras, who owns several Hartford CT-area car dealerships—and, since 2016, what is now WRJ-based Upper Valley Honda—and casino developer Stefan Huba want to build a 41-seat restaurant/bar and charitable "gaming center" on the site. Under state law, 35 percent of the proceeds would go to charitable entities. The Lebanon Planning Board was due to hold a first hearing on the plan last night.
And John Lippman's followup on last summer's Lebanon Airport attempted kidnapping and robbery—which now looks like it was neither a kidnapping nor a robbery, though two of the three defendants still face drug charges. The more lurid features of the original story—"including the supposed kidnap victim’s legs dangling out of an open door from a speeding getaway car and the deployment of a tactical police team three weeks later to extract two of the suspects from their hideout in West Lebanon," Lippman writes—are shaping up to be more a story about "how a group of friends and acquaintances betrayed and double-crossed each other over drugs and money."
Could be pine grosbeaks going to town on crab apples. "Snow discolored by bits of uneaten fruit usually indicates feathered consumers have been in the tree whose branches are above the snow," writes Mary Holland on her
Naturally Curious
blog. When it comes to crab apples, most birds just swallow the whole thing, but pine grosbeaks are pickier: They like the seeds. "The fleshy uneaten parts of the apples accumulate on their beaks until the load becomes heavy enough to fall to the ground, coloring the snow below red," Mary writes.
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Join the RVC in Lebanon before Jan. 24, check in at least eight times to work out before the end of January, and the club will credit your account with the $395 initiation fee. One check-in per day counts, so the earlier you join, the more time you have. And that $395 can be used for anything at the Club—including membership dues, Spa & Salon services, personal training, you name it. Start 2023 right, and let us help you get in—and stay in—the best shape of your life!
Sponsored by the River Valley Club.
Shortage of dental staff hits nonprofit clinics hard. The HealthHub mobile clinic, which serves schoolkids in the White River Valley, has the funds to serve 1,000 kids this year, but may only be able to help 100, reports Nora Doyle-Burr in the VN. That's because its full-time hygienist retired this summer and HealthHub has been unable to replace her. It's not alone. The Mascoma Community Health Center in Canaan had to shut its dental clinic last summer after its dentist and hygienist left, and has been unable to recruit any replacements. In VT, the state health department is funding a "dental recruiter."NH's "most colorful and controversial political figure in modern times." That would be Orford's Meldrim Thomson Jr., who began the first of three terms as governor 50 years ago. In the VN, Meriden's Steve Taylor—former state ag commissioner and Valley News editor—writes a quick profile for those who could use a refresher. Thomson was "invariably courteous, even with those he knew hated his guts," Taylor writes; the controversy came from such moves as proposing to give nukes to the state National Guard. But Thomson's anti-tax, lean-budget resolve also "set the course markers" for politicians in the state.In NH: "Ski gems, if you will." In NH Magazine, Brion O'Connor writes that while the big areas have the reputation and the high-speed lifts, what small areas "lack in bells and whistles they more than make up for in character" and authenticity. "“The world is all about hustle and bustle — with most small ski areas, time slows down,” says Pats Peak's Kris Blomback. None of the areas O'Connor writes about—from Jackson's Black Mountain to Danbury's Ragged Mountain—is nearby, but none is far away. either. And everything he writes could apply to the Skiway and Whaleback.For second year in a row, VT leads country for in-movers in United Van Lines survey. The 46th installment of the company's review of where its customers left and where they were headed, released yesterday, finds that in 2022, 77 percent of moves involving VT were inbound; Oregon was second, with 67 percent. By contrast, New Jersey led the outbound list for the fifth year in a row. New Hampshire finished just out of the top 10 inbound states. Over two-thirds of in-migrants to the twin states were over 55, while newcomers to NH tended to have higher incomes.Out there in the woods right now: maple-scented steam. It's not totally unheard-of for sugar-makers to do some boiling in January, but it's rare. The last few weeks of relatively warm days, though, have the sap running, and larger operations that already have taps in are boiling because, as Eden, VT's Ruth Goodrich tells Anne Wallace Allen in Seven Days, “You have to figure out what you’re going to do with the darn stuff." Fairfield's Branon Family Maple Orchard has about 40,000 taps in so far and has already collected about 100K gallons of sap, Evan Branon tells WCAX's Kevin Gaiss.How do you land a story about a horse whisperer for VT's Amish? Go to a donkey's birthday party. You may remember Rachel Hellman's Seven Days story a couple of months ago about Gary Itzstein, the Australian-born horse trainer from SC who's become a celebrity in Vermont Amish circles for his talents. Well, once a year, Seven Days writers lift the veil on what went into getting their stories, and in Hellman's case, it grew from a chance encounter at a birthday party for Hamilton, a rare Baudet du Poitou donkey. You can find all of those "backstories" here.New England's longest rail trail close to being finished. The last six-mile section of the 93-mile Lamoille Valley Rail Trail is due to be finished next month, WCAX's Melissa Cooney reports, and towns along the trail, which will connect 18 towns from St. J to Swanton, are already counting on a slew of visitors. Wolcott, for instance, has spent the last few months smartening itself up, putting in a town garden and a park and acquiring a town forest alongside the trail. “We’re getting phone calls from across the country and even international calls, says Selectboard member Kurt Klein.Tonight's Quadrantids might turn out to be a bust, but never fear: There are lots of celestial events on the horizon. Skies will be cloudy tonight, so the odds of glimpsing any fiery dust grains from extinct comet 2003 EH1 are pretty slim—though hey, peak viewing time is 4 am, if you want to give it a shot. Still, Stacker's got us covered, with a list of 23 astronomical events to watch for this year. Next up: We should be able to see Mercury around dawn on Jan. 30. And there are supermoons in July, August, and September (one of which is also August's blue moon). Plus meteor showers and a solar eclipse in October.The Tuesday Vordle. Back where it belongs—with a word from the regional news.
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And the Tuesday poem...
Wise tribe, the old Romans—spiriting up an adequategod to attend to every angle,packing the Pantheon.Take this old retainer, erectedwhere you would nowadays expecta ticket booth or a hatrack:patron alike of low posternsand of exalted portals,god of gateways, steady-lippedgenius of entrance and egress.Pre-dating Peteras keeper of the keys,he carries a commanding bunchin his left hand, a hefty staffwarningly in his right.For a deity whose properfeast falls on New Year’she appears awfully sober,even a trifle dull,except for those alarming, doublefeatures from the neck up.
— "Janus" by
See you tomorrow.
The Hiking Close to Home Archives. A list of hikes around the Upper Valley, some easy, some more difficult, compiled by the Upper Valley Trails Alliance. It grows every week.
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