GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Well, there was snow and sleet and freezing rain, and there's more of it on the way. It'll change to all snow at some point this morning — be careful driving. The storm's going to taper off over the course of the morning and early afternoon, and we're headed for a sunny day tomorrow. But we're also headed for dropping temps, into the low 20s by this evening and the single digits around the time you wake up tomorrow. Speaking of being careful driving, there were slideoffs and rollovers all over yesterday. Sharon, WRJ, Lebanon, Weathersfield... Eric Francis was out and about, snapping pics.And speaking of roads, a Hanover guy was clocked doing 106 mph on I-93 down by Bow yesterday. What he didn't know was that there was a state police aircraft up above him, and he was eventually pulled over in Hooksett. Where the trooper discovered that he was driving with a suspended license. Not surprisingly, he's making the papers today.Federal judge allows D-H discrimination suit to move forward. The case involves the Rev. John Nwagbaraocha, a Catholic priest from Nigeria, who in April, 2018 sued the hospital for firing him because of his “accented speech and Nigerian manner of communicating.” Judge Landya McCafferty found that there's "sufficient evidence" of discrimination by Nwagbaraocha's supervisor based on national origin, race, religion and age to proceed. (VN)Jason Lutes becomes first graphic novelist to win VT Book Award. Lutes, who lives in Hartland and teaches at WRJ's Center for Cartoon Studies, won for Berlin, his three-volume chronicle of the rise of German fascism. "To work in solitude on a project for 22 years, and then to receive a standing ovation for that work from a roomful of strangers, was an unimaginable and deeply humbling experience. I could barely keep it together at the podium," he tells Seven Days. In addition to the $5,000 award, he took home a paper sculpture by Norwich artist Luciana Frigerio. Love this: The Weather Service has tips for measuring snow. Turns out it's not quite as simple as sticking a ruler in. Also, in the comments, people were checking in with totals around the region last night. We're pikers, but then, as someone from the Weather Service comments, we're in the "messy" part of the storm.Reading program "shows promise" in White River Valley schools. They've lagged the rest of Vermont in reading proficiency, and the supervisory union is spending over $500,000 on a new approach across all its elementary schools. New methods of teaching, new texts, new ways of analyzing texts — “It sounds really high-falutin’, but they’re really just making sense of the book," says Sharon 5th grade teacher Dulce O'Hare— have school leaders optimistic, reports the VN's Sarah Earle.Ethics committee rebukes NH House majority leader. After months of looking into conflict-of-interest allegations, the Legislative Ethics Committee decided that it was not actually okay for the House's second-ranking Democrat, Doug Ley, to hold down a job as president and lobbyist for the state's leading teacher's union and vote on bills affecting union members. In opting not to punish Ley, the committee noted that the legislature has not set out clear guidelines on conflict of interest.Cheesemakers help Consider Bardwell Farm start coming back to life. You may remember that the West Pawlet farm had to recall its cheeses after it found listeria contamination. The farm has laid off all but one of its employees, and its milk suppliers are struggling, too. But Woodstock's Vermont Farmstead has offered the use of its cheesemaking facilities to owners Angela Miller and Russell Glover, and Grafton Village Cheese is talking with them about a partnership. Even so, Miller tells VTDigger she's still picking up the pieces."A Filipino restaurant in the middle of Nowhere, Vermont." Unlike, say, Thai or Chinese spots, says the Philippines' Inquirer.net, Filipino restaurants in the US "tend to survive only in urban areas with a good number of Filipinos." So what's George Salas's popular Pica-pica doing on Main Street in St. Johnsbury? Especially when, as Salas points out, he has neither Filipino workers nor passers-through to draw on? A good, long interview about what it takes to run the only Pinoy restaurant in the state.Well, yeah, it's snow, but that doesn't mean you actually have to ski. NH Mag is up with its list of "the 10 best options for skis-off fun." There's snowshoeing, of course, and snowmobiling, plus ziplining and dog-sledding and tubing and fat biking and the Mt. Washington cog railway. And let's not forget ice climbing, though the mag helpfully points out that it can be "a high-consequence activity." Yep, that's one way of putting it.
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SO.... WHAT'S ON TONIGHT?
Let's just say that time burnishes reputations. As
Kirkus
put it in its review of Wren's book,
Those Turbulent Sons of Freedom
, "The successes of the Green Mountain Boys were miraculous given their drunken lack of discipline and Allen’s reckless military calculations." Also, he and Ira tried to keep Vermont British. Wren, who walked to Vermont after retiring from a long career as a foreign correspondent and editor for the
NYT
, talks about it all at Fairlee Town Hall at 6:30.
. It's about the people of one small border town in Arizona helping border-crossers in the midst of all the geo-political goings-on focused on their patch of turf. Co-sponsored by the ACLU, NAACP, Migrant Justice and a host of other groups. At St. Paul's Episcopal Church at 6:30.
Zukerman, one of the world's great violinists, grew up in Israel and was brought to New York by Isaac Stern at 14. He steeped himself in the city's flowering classical scene during the '60s and '70s, sneaking into Carnegie Hall — "Security was not what it is today," he told an interviewer — to hear Bernstein, Rubinstein and others. Tonight, his first Hop appearance in 23 years, an all-Beethoven program with pianist Angela Cheng. In Spaulding at 7:30.
Tonight includes the weekly acoustic jam at WRJ's Filling Station led by Jakob Breitbach and Jes Raymond. Here they are in
, talking about what the jams are like and giving a quick intro to bluegrass along the way.
You could go check out the Ephemera Choir at the Upper Valley Music Center in Leb. It bills itself as a "no-time-for-choir choir," and comes together Tuesday evenings until the week before Christmas. Music is "wildly diverse," drawn from myriad folk traditions, the classical repertoire, living songwriters, chant, rock, country, and the American songbook. You just show up and sing, though you'll want to be able to match pitch and hold your own in a round. 7-8:15
And what the heck, just for a jolt to get you up on a snowy day:
with, yes, Steve Martin also on banjo, Glen Duncan on fiddle, Vince Gill, Paul Shaffer, Jerry Douglas, Leon Russell...
The world sure looks different out there this morning, doesn't it? See you tomorrow.
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