GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Cloudy but calm today, rain moving in tonight. With milder air flowing in from the south/southwest, we’ll be seeing temps reaching the mid or upper 40s today, even before a warm front arrives bringing rain overnight. Lows tonight in the upper 30s.
So just a reminder of how cool cold can be. Because, among other things, it brings us frost.
Driving down Route 5 along the Connecticut the other morning, writes Lynn Sheldon, “Every twig and blade of grass, every weed and wildflower was covered in frost and rime, and the fog was just barely lifting up the hills.”
And in E. Thetford, both frost and ice, from Robin Osborne.
Like Velcro, “only more state of the art.” This week in DB Johnson’s Lost Woods, Eddie and Auk launch a burdock battle—”the high-tech option of pine cone fighting,” as Eddie puts it—which has Auk confused about just how you spell “burdock.”
Three Upper Valley newspapers land VT’s first local journalism grants. In all, the Secy of State’s office announced yesterday, the new Local Civic Journalism Awards will hand out $100,000 to 16 publications, including $10K to the White River Valley Herald and $5K each to the Valley News and the Journal Opinion in Bradford. The papers were chosen by an independent panel hosted at UVM. As Guy Page writes in the VT Daily Chronicle, the money isn’t much, “but for many tiny Vermont newsrooms running on shoestring budgets, even modest support can be meaningful.” The big test: “whether government can help sustain journalism without influencing it.”
SPONSORED: Annual Pods for the Pulpit Crafts Fair this Thanksgiving weekend, Nov. 28-29. This is a major fundraising event for charity put on by the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Upper Valley in Norwich; proceeds will go to The Haven. You’ll find 35 crafters—with everything from woven goods, stained glass, and children’s clothing to pottery, jewelry, and Ukrainian eggs—all at a level of expertise such as those juried by the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen. The fair takes place at Tracy Hall, 300 Main Street in Norwich, 10-4 on Friday and 10-3 on Saturday. For more info, hit the burgundy link or go here. Sponsored by UUCUV.
Bid to add 300 units of housing to Enfield moves on to next step—if developers can figure out a water source. The Laramie Farms development—”the largest housing development ever proposed” for the town, writes Liz Sauchelli in the VN—has drawn opposition from some residents alarmed by the prospect of heavy traffic on Route 4, which Laramie Farms would empty onto, and by worries about its impact on the town’s water supply. Now, Sauchelli reports, the town has proposed that the developers either find their own water supply on their land, or pay to improve one of the town’s wells. The planning board this month let the proposal move on to a final review.
SPONSORED: Kick off the holiday season at Still North Books & Bar in Hanover! Friday through Monday, head to Still North to jump-start your holiday shopping with four days of festive fun, warm drinks, and community spirit. All weekend, the bookstore will offer a raffle with great prizes, blind dates with a book, and rotating daily book and cafe specials. The cherry on top? Parking in Hanover is free this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and with the garage open once more, your first hour of parking is always free. Sponsored by Still North Books & Bar.
After drops in NH drug deaths, “It’s not like we can say, ‘Oh, we’ve arrived. We did the work, and now we can just rest.’” The decline has been dramatic: 33 percent between 2023 and 2024. So NH Bulletin’s William Skipworth sat down with two substance use disorder treatment specialists at Elliot Hospital, Abby L’Heureux and Annette Escalante, to talk about what’s been working. It’s no single thing, they tell him, but a combination of medications for opioid use disorder, a range of interventions to get people access to them, anti-overdose meds, fentanyl screening, and maybe above all, state and federal money. Which is why coming Medicaid cuts worry them and others.
“Don't get me started on the dating scene in New Hampshire.” That comment comes Corinne Benfield, who runs the NH nonprofit Stay Work Play and was talking to NHPR’s Jackie Harris about the group’s new survey of Granite Staters aged 18-40. What it found is that overall satisfaction with quality of life in the state is high, but lowest for people aged 26-30 (and, by the way, second-lowest in the Monadnock/Dartmouth region). Driving those figures, Benfield says: housing affordability, concern about career opportunities, a sense of lagging upward mobility, and, yeah, dating. Conversation at the burgundy link, full report here, filled with interesting details.
And a report whose details you might not want to dig into… Among other things, the VT Dept. of Health’s Food and Lodging program responds to complaints about unsanitary conditions, bedbug infestations, inadequate cooking, contaminated equipment, and the like. Now, state auditor Doug Hoffer’s office has reviewed 45 of the 1,081 complaints the program received between 2022 and 2024. And what they found was that investigators were sometimes slow to look into allegations and didn’t always confirm that problems had been resolved. VTDigger’s Alice Finno has the synopsis at the burgundy link, but if you do want the details, here’s the full report.
VT’s legislators may try to make data-driven decisions, but state’s computer systems are a roadblock. They’re antiquated and unreliable, and as Hannah Bassett reports in Seven Days, have “slowed emergency response, wasted staff time, exposed citizens’ personal information and resulted in financial penalties.” Incomplete and inconsistent data provided by the state education department made the school redistricting task force’s work vastly more difficult, Bassett writes, as she details other mishaps: the release of confidential information; the unemployment system’s repeated crashes… She lays out the IT challenges and the cost in information foregone.
“I want you to close your eyes for a second and picture Rutland.” Brave Little State’s Burgess Brown has your number, because he knows what you’re thinking: “Here’s the Domino's Pizza, KFC, Dunkin' Donuts intersection. A couple of auto shops, the Bowlerama ...” But he’s not there to confirm Route 7 stereotypes, he’s there because Rutlandites know they get a bum rap in the rest of the state. So he goes downtown: “Mom-and-pop stores, locally owned restaurants. A historic theater.” And a tour from punk rocker and “unofficial mayor” Nick Grandchamp, who calls his city a “passionate underdog.” Brown digs deep, into the city’s shadows and reasons for pride.
The keys to one man’s happiness. When Paul Lundy, a facilities manager in Seattle, looked ahead to retirement, the decade-long stretch to get there seemed “like a prison sentence.” Then, writes Kurt Streeter in the NYT (gift link), he read about Bob Montgomery, a 92-year-old typewriter repair man who owned a dusty shop nearby. Lundy visited and was enthralled by Montgomery’s deft touch and skill in reviving the obsolete machines. A friendship followed, and soon Lundy had a new career and a fresh perspective on life. It’s an enrapturing scroll, and the readers’ comments—and author’s responses—are as lovely as the story and photos themselves. Thanks, TL!
Quechee, Post Mills, they’re great for balloon festivals. But in Jackson Goldblatt’s brief airborne GoPro video, floating through the Cappadocia Hot Air Balloon Festival in Turkey is pure magic.
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday’s Daybreak.
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The Tuesday poem.
Lose this day loitering – ‘twil be the same story
Tomorrow – and the next more dilatory.
Then indecision brings its own delays.
And days are lost lamenting over days.
Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute –
What you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Courage has genius, power and magic in it;
Only engage, and then the mind grows heated –
Begin it and the work will be completed.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749-1832, trans. by John Anster
See you tomorrow.
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