GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
A lot like yesterday. For the moment, high pressure's still in control, and we'll see fog and clouds this morning followed by decent sun and temps getting into the mid-50s—maybe a few degrees cooler than yesterday, but hey. There is, however, a cold front pushing through, followed by some low pressure, and that could produce rain (around here) overnight, with temps only dropping into the low 40s. Light winds from the northwest today.Season of frosts. That'll be the theme this week. Starting with...
This extraordinary sunrise up in Groton State Forest, from Bob Wagner.
And this extraordinary drone shot in Quechee from Lisa Lacasse, who writes, "This morning it was so foggy there were times when I couldn’t see anything but the dirt road I was driving on - but after I got the drone in the air I found these really cool frosty trees..."
Co-op's Paul Guidone to step down as general manager. Guidone, who is 64, told the board on Oct. 31 that he'll be retiring in April, and announced the move to employees yesterday, reports the Valley News's John Lippman. In an interview, he tells Lippman that he has a variety of family-related reasons, as well as "a wish to pull back after a globe-trotting career in business and finance and nearly two years of managing through a pandemic crisis." Board chair Nick Clark says the board will form a search committee "as soon as possible."Body in CT River over weekend identified as missing Sharon bus driver. The discovery in Charlestown was called in to NH State Police on Saturday morning, and the state police, working with investigators from the Hartford Police Department, identified the victim as Randy Koloski, the bus driver who was reported missing last week after he failed to show up for work. "Foul play is not suspected at this time," the NHSP say in a press release. An autopsy was conducted yesterday in Concord.SPONSORED: Research opportunity for families with children between ages 9 and 12. Help us understand how media usage impacts children’s health! We at Dartmouth's Media and Health Behaviors Lab are looking for 9- to 12-year-old children and their parents to participate in our NIH-funded research. Participation involves watching TV shows, eating foods, answering questionnaires, providing health information, and receiving a painless and non-invasive fMRI brain scan. Financial compensation is provided. To learn more hit the link above, email [email protected] or call 603.646.5432."I doubt even he grasped the true nature of the wonderful beast he unleashed.” That's a commenter on a Facebook group, "Love for Larry Gordon," devoted to the Village Harmony founder. Gordon was in a bike accident last week and has been on life support ever since; with a poor prognosis and "no good scenario," he'll be removed from it this morning. "Then we will bring him home," writes Village Harmony's Patty Cuyler on the CaringBridge site maintained by several followers. They plan a wake this afternoon at his Marshfield home (details at the maroon link).Montshire names new director. Lara Litchfield-Kimber, who runs the Mid-Hudson Children’s Museum in Poughkeepsie, NY, and before that helped run Ithaca's Sciencenter, will take the reins at the museum in January. She replaces Marcos Stafne, who left last spring after six years to move to NYC's Wildlife Conservation Society. Litchfield-Kimber "will take the Montshire to new heights," board member Jeremy DeSilva says in a press release. "She is an innovative leader and a charismatic communicator who will be the voice of science in the Upper Valley and beyond for years to come.”“I Googled you on the internet and found pictures of you in a bikini." That is just one of a series of sexually suggestive lines and instances of outright harassment over years, reported by 11 women who spoke to the VN's John Lippman for his lengthy and detailed investigation into allegations against their former employers, Rob Kebalka and Dennis Goodrich, owners of two Upper Valley cleaning companies. Several of the women kept working there for a time—“I’m a single mom. I didn’t get any child support," explains one—but then quit. Several went on to set up their own cleaning businesses, Lippman writes.An unsung necessity in some rural towns: the fire pond. Living, as we do, in and among so many old, wooden buildings, we know that when they catch fire, they burn big, bright, and fast. And as Li Shen writes in Sidenote, fighting a fire can require tens of thousands of gallons of water an hour. For a town like Thetford, having “the dubious distinction” as one of the only VT towns along the river “that lacks underground water mains for fire protection,” says Shen, that means relying on nearby reserves called fire ponds. Thetford counts 24 fire ponds, most of which are still maintained and in use today.Artist, humanities prof, Film & Media Studies chair... and now, Guinness world record holder. That would be Dartmouth's Mary Flanagan, who in 2006 built a 9-foot-tall video-game joystick out of wood, rubber, and steel. She wanted to celebrate her own childhood love of Atari games—and build a joystick that required collaboration, since, at 14 times the size of the original, it needs two people to maneuver. Guinness World Records has just named it "Largest Joystick." You can check it out next time you're at the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany.Before you turn the page on the NYC Marathon... Let's just note that Hanover's Ben True, running his first marathon ever at the age of 35, came in 7th overall (missing 6th by about a second) and 2nd among American men behind Elkanah Kibet. That was after working his way toward the front from 13th place at the 35K mark. "I may have gone a little conservative at the beginning, a little too much," he tells Track & Field News. "I had a lot of ground to try to make up at the end, but got the first one under the belt. Hopefully I can learn a lot from it and come back.”Sykes Mtn. Ave consolidates itself even further as region's Auto Row. Key Auto, which already has the Chevy dealership on the strip, is moving its Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep/Ram dealership from Route 120 in Lebanon to the former Gateway Motors site on Sykes, the VN's John Lippman reports. They'll be expanding and renovating, and expect to be able to handle 300 new vehicles there. “Everybody has moved to that area to operate,” Key Auto's CEO tells Lippman. “We want to be there, too.” Lippman also reports that SoRo's 5 Olde Tavern & Grille has shut its doors.A gray fox and plenty of berries... including some you definitely don't want to pick. It's the second week of November, and out there in the woods, writes Northern Woodlands' Elise Tillinghast, you'll find red winterberries—not much of a food choice for animals in the abundance of fall, but handy to have around in the dead of winter—along with nannyberries (popular at all times) and poison ivy berries (do we even need to talk about them?). That gray fox? Caught by a camera at nighttime at the edge of an apple orchard.Now that Killington's open, how about everyone else? WPTZ's got a list of opening dates for ski mountains in VT... except Suicide Six, which hasn't announced an opening date yet. On the other side of the river, SkiNH has some estimated dates. On neither list: the Dartmouth Skiway, which opens Dec. 17.Curse you, global supply chain problems! Look: cars, consumer goods, groceries, computer chips—fine, we'll deal. But now you're messing with xc ski season! "I already know I’m gonna get shorted on stuff," Nick Mahood, who runs the Woodstock Inn's nordic center, tells VTDigger's Grace Benninghoff. Couple general supply-chain problems with a fire at Fischer's Ukraine plant, skyrocketing interest in getting out on nordic trails during the pandemic, and suppliers' earlier-than-usual deadline for retailers this year, and everyone who sells or rents xc equipment is worried about turning away customers.Retreat Farm's Buzz Schmidt doesn't mince words. The nonprofit farm in Brattleboro, whose aim is to "connect people to the land and one another," is jettisoning its use of Facebook to reach out. “Facebook’s abuse of power is so detrimental and erosive to people, communities and our democracy that without government action, it is up to private institutions like Retreat Farm to seek new (and old) ways of communication that prioritize face-to-face connection and relationships,” Schmidt says in a statement, reports VTDigger's Kevin O'Connor. The farm will use traditional media, Front Porch Forum, and email.Their brains may be tiny, but spiders are pretty clever. If you’ve ever marveled at the precision and strategic genius of a spider’s web, probably you aren’t surprised to hear that these crawly creatures are exceptional. Betsy Mason writes for Ars Technica about one kind of arachnid, the jumping spider, which exhibits cognitive behavior on a level with “animals with much larger brains, like dogs or human toddlers.” Scientists have observed its cunning means of outsmarting prey, often adjusting on the fly if one attempt fails. And in experiments designed to confuse them, the spiders refused to be fooled.I'm sure we all feel this way about our first frost. Especially if we've never encountered "crunchy grass," as the guy who filmed this young fox puts it.
The numbers...Daybreak reports Covid numbers on Tuesdays and Fridays.
Undergrad cases have fallen to 6 at Dartmouth(from 10 last Thursday), but there are now 2 cases among grad and professional students, and 10 among faculty/staff (+3). 13 students and 15 faculty/staff are in isolation.
NH reported 744 new cases Friday, 590 on Saturday, 906 Sunday, and 425 yesterday,bringing its total to 141,317. There have been 7 deaths over that time, bringing the total to 1,599, and at the moment the state reports 5,164 (+603) active cases and 212 (+18) hospitalizations. It's reporting 308 (+38) active cases in Grafton County, 294 (+66) in Sullivan, and 562 (+27) in Merrimack. In town-by-town numbers, the state says Claremont has 162 (+39); Charlestown has 53 (+12); Newport has 44 (+7); Hanover has 32 (+5); Haverhill has 21 (+9); Lebanon has 17 (-3); Warren has 9 (up at least 5); Enfield has 7 (+2); Grantham has 7 (+at least 3); Cornish has 7 (+at least 3); Newbury has 7 (+1); New London has 6 (-1); Sunapee has 6 (-1); Canaan has 5 (+at least 1); Orford has 5 (+at least 1); Piermont has 5 (no change); and Wentworth, Rumney, Dorchester, Grafton, Plainfield, Springfield, Croydon, Wilmot, and Unity have 1-4 each.
VT reported 374 new cases Friday, followed by 288 Saturday, 375 Sunday, and 235 yesterday. The state's total now stands at 42,547 for the pandemic. There were 4 new deaths over that time; they now number 340. As of yesterday, 55 people with confirmed cases were hospitalized (no change). Windsor County has seen 107 new cases reported since Thursday, for a total of 2,966 for the pandemic, with 259 new cases over the past two weeks; Orange County gained 59 cases, with 180 over the past two weeks for a total of 1,493 for the pandemic. In town-by-town numbers posted Friday, Springfield saw +25 new cases over the week before; Chelsea +18; Hartford +17; Randolph +15; Bradford +10; Newbury, Royalton, and Weathersfield +6; Vershire and Windsor +5; Bethel +4; Barnard, Cavendish, Corinth, Hartland, Norwich, and Thetford +3; Fairlee, W. Fairlee, and Woodstock +2; and Pomfret, Reading, Sharon, and Tunbridge +1.
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You probably didn't know that there's a Sherlock Holmes Club of the Upper Valley, but there is, and it meets once a month online with a presentation by a guest speaker. Today from 4-5:30 pm, former Geisel librarian and historian Fred Lerner will talk over his theory on what Holmes was doing during the period Sherlockians call "the Great Hiatus"—between his supposed fall to the death at the Reichenbach Falls in 1891 and his reappearance three years later. In the high-profile Baker Street Journal this summer, Lerner intriguingly suggested Holmes was working undercover for the British Foreign Office... but you'll have to email [email protected] for the link if you want to learn more.
And from 6-to-8 pm, Vital Communities and the Upper Valley Adaptation Workgroup are hosting an online conversation about planning for climate migration in this region. This and other rural regions in New England, Conservation Law Foundation VP and senior attorney Elena Mihaly will point out, are considered among the most "climate-resilient" regions in the country by the EPA, which makes the Upper Valley extremely likely to draw growing numbers of migrants. The challenge, Mihaly and other presenters contend, is how to plan for them. As she put it to the VN recently, "Access to the outdoors, open space, scenic beauty, they’re the very things that are going to be most threatened if we don’t adequately make sure we’re protecting environmental protections and laws.”
If you need to get out and bop, the Hop's got your back at 7:30 pm. That's when breakout Venezuelan singing star and Latin Grammy winner Nella will take the stage. She got her start singing along to American pop songs in her bedroom each afternoon, then eventually headed to Boston's Berklee College of Music. "In Berklee there are 4,000 students. One thousand of them are singers," Spanish guitarist and composer Javier Limón, who teaches at the school, once told NPR. "Everybody sings amazing—perfect tune, perfect rhythm, perfect technique, whatever you want, any style. But to be original, to be different, to be someone special, that's what Nella had, and that's what she is now."
Whenever you're called on to make up your mind, and you're hampered by not having any,the best way to solve the dilemma, you'll find, is simply by spinning a penny.No - not so that chance shall decide the affair while you're passively standing there moping;but the moment the penny is up in the air, you suddenly know what you're hoping.
— "A Psychological Tip," by
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