GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Mostly cloudy, but maybe a little sun. That low pressure’s still around, and it’s got the skies covered, with a slight chance of showers this evening. Highs today about like yesterday, low 50s, and tonight’s lows will once again be in the upper 30s.
Which brings us to late fall. Twice, in fact.
On his latest blog post, photographer Jim Block covers the transition to stick season in the animal world (some incredibly colorful wood ducks and other birds), along area rivers and streams (the Ompompanoosuc, the Wells, Bloody Brook, Bicknell Brook, and more), a striking slideshow from the Etna Library’s Haunted Story Walk last month using a cool feature on his camera, and various landscapes around the Upper Valley.
Meanwhile, Peter Bloch sticks to one spot, with a short video of two “frosty early mornings on my favorite lake, with swirling mist, clear blue skies, mirror smooth water and the glorious remains of fall foliage.”
A writer, a laptop, and the chaos of the peaceful woods… In Lost Woods this week, DB Johnson has too much fun with Wally, who’s just out there with his laptop, trying to get something done. You’ll want to savor scrolling all the way to the end.
Ask Maggie: Why is there a dog park at the Haven’s new shelter? If you’ve driven by the soon-to-open new shelter in WRJ where 25,000 Gifts used to be, you’ve probably noticed it: some dog terrain-park features, all fenced-in, well-lit at night, and safe for pets. What lies behind it, Maggie Cassidy writes, is the Haven staff’s understanding of the place pets hold in people’s lives. “We don't want folks to have to choose between a safe place to sleep and a companion who's basically stayed by their side through their homelessness,” says the shelter’s supervisor, Gwen Williams. For Maggie, the idea is personal … but she can tell you about it herself.
More on that Windsor house fire. The victim of Saturday’s basement blaze in a home on Kennedy Drive, reports Sofia Langlois in the Valley News, was 66-year-old Michael Place—and, she reports, police had visited the home earlier that morning “for an unrelated reason in an attempt to make contact with Michael Place, though not due to an emergency or call for assistance.” Place didn’t answer the door when they got there. A second resident was able to get out unharmed, Langlois reports.
“I wanted to give a gift, if I could, to the Upper Valley. And I couldn’t think of any way to do that better than write a story.” Famed environmental advocate Gus Speth has lived in Strafford for two decades, but he and his wife Cece are heading back soon to their home turf of South Carolina. Speth’s gift, though, is an effort to capture in words and stories the essence of small-town life: a novel called Jericho River (after the fictional town where it’s set). He’ll be reading tonight at the Norwich Bookstore, and in the VN, Molly Hughes spoke to him about the book, community life, the forces buffeting small towns—and the old NewVistas fight in his neck of the woods.
SPONSORED: Forest of Lights tickets are on sale! Join us at VINS Nature Center for this cherished Upper Valley tradition, now in its fifth year. We add something new every season, and this time we're heading north! Follow glowing trails past narwhals, snowy owls, muskoxen, and a polar bear, each designed and built by hand using recycled materials wherever possible. Select evenings, November 20 through January 2. More information and tickets at the burgundy link or here. Sponsored by VINS.
Dust begins to settle on NH towns’ tax cap votes: Most school districts clear threshold. In all, reports NH Bulletin’s Ethan DeWitt, based on a GOP consultant’s tally (and helpful map) of AP results, 91 out of 168 districts cleared the 60 percent approval rate to impose a cap, with nearly 59 percent of voters statewide backing one. The big challenge, DeWitt writes: the state’s tax department says it will set final local property tax rates next November—meaning school boards will have to come up with budgets for March town meetings without actually knowing them. “It would be as if you decided in March how much money you were going to spend next year, but you weren’t actually going to have your salary until November,” says one board chair.
The challenges facing Granite State policy makers. They’re not for the faint of heart. But if you want a quick guide, NH Fiscal Policy Institute research director Phil Sletten’s got your back. There’s inflation, of course, especially hitting gasoline and fuel oil. There’s the cost of housing: While you might have paid $1,500 a month for the mortgage on an average home in 2015, by 2025 it was $3,900; rental housing’s even worse. Child care now costs the median family a quarter of their income. Health care costs are skyrocketing. Wages aren’t keeping pace, the state is aging, the upcoming budget offers tough choices, and revenues over the last decade are down.
Did any of your ancestors work in the Manchester mills? You can find them. As NHPR’s Jackie Harris notes, “People arrived in Manchester from all over the world to work in the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company’s mills in the 1800s, and some of their descendants still live in New Hampshire.” As it happens, the Manchester Historic Association has hundreds of boxes of documents on mill employees and their families and want to make them accessible—both online and to anyone who wants to head over to see them in person. (You can start your online search here.)
“Small number” of measles cases confirmed in VT’s Orleans County. “The risk presented to most Vermonters by the current situation is low,” state health department spokesperson Kyle Casteel tells VTDigger’s Olivia Gieger, but the department yesterday asked health care providers around the state to inform it immediately of any suspected cases, without waiting for confirmation. According to the department, the state reported one case earlier this year, two last year, two in 2024, and a total of two from 2011 to 2018.
“A distinctly Vermont way of dealing with a basic problem: What do you do when your town is too small to have its own school?” The answer is the state’s hybrid public/independent school system, which has been around for a century and a half—long before “school choice” became “a political buzzword,” Brave Little State’s Burgess Brown notes. But as the state’s education system has come under severe stress, the old structure is showing distinct cracks, so Brown goes all-in on tracing how the state got here—from its founding constitution, through a pivotal time in the 1860s (with Norwich’s Neil Odell as guide), to today’s controversies.
The Old Man, the Spaniard, and Blueberry. Those are three roosters up in E. Calais, VT, and recently, a post went up on the Calais Front Porch Forum offering them to any taker. As it happens, radio producer Erica Heilman lives a few minutes away, and she’s starting up a new series based on Front Porch Forum posts, so she headed over to talk to the rooster owners. Turns out, The Spaniard and Blueberry, who are brothers, like to get into tangles. There’s also a parrot. And, thanks to a fox, these days an even number of roosters and hens, which as anyone who keeps chickens knows is definitely not a good scene… One innocent FPF post, and a whole saga behind it!
The very long arm of the law: how a stuffed polar bear got to UVM’s science building thanks to two undercover VT game wardens. The bear’s been there since 1975, and the story that Sonia DeYoung tells in UVM Magazine starts with a 1972 US Fish & Wildlife Service sting targeting an Alaskan poaching ring. Two game wardens from Montpelier got in touch with a Seattle taxidermist posing as trophy hunters, then headed to Barrow (today’s Utqiagvik) and wound up shooting two bears (but not before, as one later told a reporter, “My guide made it perfectly clear that he would leave me dead in the mountains if he thought I was an investigator.”) Read on…
The Tuesday Crossword. Just to get your brain in gear this morning, from Dartmouth librarian Laura Braunstein.
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday’s Daybreak.
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HEADS UP
Dartmouth’s Dickey Center hosts a Veterans Day observance with Norwich University president John Broadmeadow. The retired US Marine Corps lieutenant general served multiple tours in Afghanistan and Iraq before winding up running the Marine Corps Staff in the Pentagon during the pandemic. He’ll be reflecting on how veterans’ “leadership and character forged in the crucible of military service continue to serve our nation.” 4:30 pm in Haldeman 041 and online.
Veterans Town Hall in Hanover. Organized by the Vermont Vets Town Halls, the gatherings pull together veterans who want to speak about their time in the service and what it means to them, and members of the general public who simply want to listen. Sponsored by Dartmouth’s Veterans Employee Resource Network, the event “is free, non-political, and all perspectives are valued. There will be no debate on American foreign policy.” 6 pm in Tuck’s Raether Hall, 42 Engineering Drive.
At Lebanon Opera House, Upper Valley Music Center presents a choral concert featuring Sol y Canto. UVMC’s two resident choruses, the Children’s Chorus and Community Chorus, along with Lebanon-based Harmony Night, will each perform a repertoire that includes an original song composed and arranged by the pan-Latin duo of Puerto Rican/Argentine singer/percussionist Rosi Amador and New Mexican guitarist, singer and composer Brian Amador, along with cellist Queralt Giralt. 6:30 pm.
At the Howe Library in Hanover, Brian Porto and “Twin States, Different Paths: The Politics of New Hampshire and Vermont.” The retired Vermont Law prof talks about why the two states have taken such diverging political paths and approaches to public policy, starting with the soil. 6:30 pm in the Mayer Room and online.
Gus Speth reads from and talks about Jericho River at the Norwich Bookstore. The longtime national environmental leader, who’s lived in Strafford for the past couple of decades but is returning to his home turf of South Carolina, has turned his attention not just to fiction, but to fiction about the community life of small towns—with a general store at its heart. See more above. 7 pm.
Story Night at Still North Books & Bar. Seven local storytellers on “Service,” emceed by Belinda Chiu and Courtney Cook Williamson. With Tatum Barnes, Ray Chin, Jim Creighton, Keysi Montás, Morgan Ogreen, Alanna Ojibway, and Laura Vestal. Things get going at 7 pm.
Eli Burakian on hiking in New Hampshire (and elsewhere) in Claremont. The author, photographer, and adventurer (with a raft of FKT’s, including his traverse of Iceland) will be at Claremont’s First Congregational Church to talk about his latest hiking guidebook for Falcon Guides, 101 Classic Hikes of the Northeast. Sponsored by The Well Collaborative, he’ll share images and stories and explain what it takes to put a guidebook together.
Dartmouth Dance Showcase at the Hop. The college’s student-led dance ensembles (Street Soul, Fusion, Sugarplum, Dartmouth Dance Ensemble, and Native Hawaiian hula dancer Ali Kamaha'o Lum) take to the Moore Theater stage. 7:30 pm.
The Tuesday poem.
Full even when it seems not to be:
of light, in day, and day and night,
of air, holding it secretly—
curve of your kneecap, noggin, armpit,
cheek, elbow, bowel, hand,
into which much may be poured
or spooned or spun—half sphere, half moon,
or not quite half—wood or porcelain,
stoneware or steel ellipse, depending
on the angle, or a circle
perfect as potter or carver could find—
the almost perfect, a better vessel
for what’s most precious: shelled beans, butter,
sugar, an egg, salt, water—
— “Bowl” by Anna Lena Phillips Bell, from the forthcoming chapbook One Thing Only.
See you tomorrow.
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Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Poetry editor: Michael Lipson Associate Editors: Jonea Gurwitt, Sam Gurwitt
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