GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
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Mostly sunny, warmer. Not warm warm, but we’re at the start of a mild warming trend that will get us to around 40 today and toward the mid 40s at the end of the week. The weekend’s low pressure has shifted east and high pressure is hot on its heels, and we’ll see this morning’s clouds drift off as it builds in today. Modest winds today from the west, calm with clear skies tonight, lows in the upper teens.
Meanwhile, we’ve been getting some remarkable sunrises.
Here’s the view from Norwich the other morning, from Din Seaver.
And looking out over Lake Sunapee and Mt. Kearsarge, from Susan AuBuchon.
Sowin’ the seeds of our own distraction. Over in DB Johnson’s Lost Woods comic strip this week, Auk and Eddie are mixing it up in a pine cone war and, while they’re at it, spreading pine seeds. As Auk says, “If everybody just stuck to pine cone fights, things would be fun.”
As even the deep fall crops give way… “We are all looking to tidy up the rising stack of outdoor projects so we can get going on our fave indoor farm sport of drinking tea and going hubba hubba over seed catalogues,” writes Jenny Sprague in this week’s Edgewater Farm CSA blog. “But before we dive into the hygge of it all, it feels like we have miles of carrots to harvest…” Which is why Plainfield cookbook author and ace home chef Mitchell Davis is offering up a recipe for Moroccan carrot salad, heavy on the carrots. Jenny’s also got an Ali Slagle recipe for baked spaghetti squash.
A story about a bathroom retrofit, wheelchair ramps, and a group of neighbors “coming together to help a new family in town.” Against all odds, Harlei and Melvin Pierce last year found a house in Reading they could afford on Melvin’s wages as a plumbing and heating tech—and with a daughter, Astraea, who can’t walk or talk and needs regular medical care. The house needed a lot of work—including weatherizing by Reading volunteers, and wheelchair ramps and a new shower that COVER volunteers installed. As COVER points out in its narrative, the story’s both about “the complexities of housing in the Upper Valley” and what it takes to overcome them.
SPONSORED: Pompanoosuc Mills showcases Vermont craftsmanship during Holiday Savings Event. Vermont designer and maker of handcrafted fine furniture marks the season with up to 30% off furnishings for every room of your home. Through Dec 1, you'll find 30% off new dining room orders, plus 20% off all other new orders—in-stock items available for delivery before Christmas. Timeless designs and exceptional artisanship make this event a tree-topper. Call before you shop to schedule a free workshop tour. Sponsored by Pompanoosuc Mills.
“Michael was a very small man, but he had a very big personality.” Michael Currier stood 4’8” when he was fully grown; when he was born, he had “lifelong cognitive delays and physical challenges that do not match any current diagnosis,” writes Clare Shanahan in the VN. But what he lacked in stature he made up for in enthusiasm, volunteering with his mother, Karen Currier, at DHMC, the Upper Valley Senior Center, LISTEN, and elsewhere—putting in so much time at DHMC that, for his 30th birthday, he was given a ride on the DHART copter. He died just before his 48th birthday, on Oct. 7; Shanahan recounts what it took for him to live his life.
NH ski area smackdown: At the last minute, Black Mountain slips by Bretton Woods to open first. It began with a Friday-morning FB post from Bretton Woods, writes Boston.com’s Kristi Palma: BREAKING NEWS: BRETTON WOODS OPENS TOMORROW — FIRST IN NH. It set 9 am Saturday as its opening moment. But then, that evening, Black struck back, announcing its lodge would open at 7:30 am Saturday, “edging out our friends at Bretton Woods by a mere 90 minutes. Are we making a statement? You bet.” As Palma notes, Black had a near-death experience in 2023 after its longtime family owners announced it would close; IndyPass’s Erik Mogensen—who made that “statement” statement—stepped in to buy it.
National ski area smackdown: “Winter Is Raging in Northern Vermont While Western Ski Resorts Lag Behind.” That’s Powder mag’s headline late yesterday atop a story noting that snow out west has been anemic while it’s been anything but up north: Jay Peak already has 68 inches for the season—”We are not easing into winter, we are nosediving straight into the thick of it,” it crowed, though before the lifts have even opened, over-eager uphillers have also yielded two lift shack break-ins, two fires, and one season-ending injury. Stowe and Killington have been equally jubilant. Palma includes a Stowe snowfall timelapse at the stake Sunday night into yesterday.
Vermont’s Chester Arthur is suddenly back in the limelight. That’s thanks to the Netflix hit Death By Lightning, which tells the story of President James Garfield’s assassination and the machinations that left him with the presidency, his assassin Charles Guiteau with a grudge, and Arthur the vice presidency and eventually the presidency, after Garfield succumbed to poor doctoring. In VTDigger, Mark Bushnell tells the whole story—and marvels, “How did anyone convince the streaming service that viewers today would love a story focusing on a group of 19th-century politicians who can vie with Arthur for the title of most obscure.’”
Deer season: “a time of pause from everyday life, spending so much time in the woods by yourself, listening, observing.” That’s photographer John Miller, whose book Deer Camp: Last Light in the Northeast Kingdom offered “a rare window into these secretive backwoods fraternities of 30 years ago, where most would rather stay mum than tell a reporter which ridge holds the biggest bucks,” writes VTDigger’s Ethan Weinstein. Rifle season started on Saturday, and Weinstein talks deer camp with Miller, Essex County’s Lake View Store owner David T. Leidy—“It’s almost like a county fair,” Leidy says of deer season; and UVM prof and hunter Cheryl Frank Sullivan.
Need a hand? If you’re casting about for that extra-special holiday gift, you might consider one of the winners of the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève, announced at “the Oscars of Watchmaking” awards ceremony last week. Grand prize, writes Thor Svaboe in the Robb Report, went to the sleek, single-handed Breguet Classique Souscription 2025. On the other end of the spectrum is the dazzling Dior La D de Dior Buisson Couture, a “watch made for pleasure—which is why one barely notices the hands for telling the time.” Winners, descriptions, and worshipful videos are on the GPHG website. Most have prices (in Swiss francs): Okay, pick your jaw off the floor…
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday’s Daybreak.
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HEADS UP
At the Etna Library, “Writing, Rocks and… Magic!” Amy Mucha, author of the middle grade novel Geo's Fortune, talks about writing and about “the science and the magic behind rocks!” Hands-on rock activities. 4:30 pm.
Beth Malow and Doug Teschner in Woodstock with Beyond the Politics of Contempt: Practical Steps to Build Positive Relationships in Divided Times. The pair of Upper Valley authors and Braver Angels regulars will be talking about their book and about how people “can stand up for what they believe while also building bridges across the political divide.” At the Norman Williams Public Library, 6 pm.
The Handel Society at the Hopkins Center. Under the baton of Filippo Ciabatti, the mighty chorus performs Benjamin Britten’s “Te Deum in C” and “Les Illuminations”, then tackles Haydn’s “Lord Nelson Mass”. Haydn called it Missa in Angustiis (Mass in a Time of Anxiety), composing it in the summer of 1798 as Napoleon’s armies appeared unstoppable—until about a week before its first performance, when Horatio Nelson defeated the French fleet at Aboukir, Egypt. 7:30 pm in Spaulding.
The Tuesday poem.
I have a feeling that my boat
has struck, down there in the depths,
against a great thing.
And nothing
happens! Nothing...Silence...Waves...
--Nothing happens? Or has everything happened,
and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?
— “Oceans”, by Spanish Nobel literature prize winner Juan Ramon Jimenez, translated by Robert Bly.
See you tomorrow.
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