GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Mostly sunny, warmer. We’re at the start of a warming trend that’ll drive temps into the mid 40s by the end of the week. That’s due to a strong airflow moving in from the south—and though it begins today, we’ll still be below freezing for the moment, with highs in the mid or upper 20s after a morning’s-worth of partly clear skies before clouds move in later this afternoon. Lows tonight in the mid teens.
Bringing home the wadding. In rural WRJ the other evening, David Pelletier’s trail cam picked up an opossum, its prehensile tail wrapped around a wad of leaves, headed back to its den with some crucial insulation. It’s behavior that’s extremely rare to be able to see, writes Ted Levin.
Leaf litter. Everyone’s out raking in DB Johnson’s Lost Woods this week, as Wally ponders an interesting way of sorting and Auk wonders why he’s never seen Eddie’s dad.
Woodstock municipal manager withdraws from Montpelier candidacy. Eric Duffy had been scheduled to take part in a forum last night with the two other finalists for the Montpelier post, but yesterday afternoon, ABC22/FOX44’s Annabel Kusnitz reported that he’d pulled out. Duffy is also among three finalists for the manager post in Winchester, MA, where he was scheduled for interviews this week.
“We’ll cut the cuts that the campus needs.” That’s DeMetris Reed talking to The Herald’s Isabel Dreher about the new meat lab he runs at VTSU in Randolph. The lab is both a butchery and a classroom. Soon, the beef its students process will end up in Vermont State U cafeterias throughout the state. The project, a collaboration with the Northeast Grass-Fed Beef Initiative, aims to make sure that beef produced in the region is also consumed in the region. The lab is still awaiting inspection before it can provide dining halls with beef, but the first round of students got to try out its equipment this past weekend.
Leb’s Storrs Hill makes Travel + Leisure. “With a 300-foot vertical drop, 20 skiable acres, and seven trails (one green, four blue, a black-diamond glade, and one double-black), the terrain is modest but respectably varied,” writes Taryn Shorr-McKee in the mag, which appeals to upscale readers. Storrs is there, of course, because of its decision to make skiing free both for locals and for visitors “willing to trade high-tech frills for a taste of pure, old-school winter fun… When skiing is just, well, skiing, and you remove one of its biggest barriers to entry—cost—people show up,” she writes.
SPONSORED: 40 Years of Progress and Partnership. From a one-person clinic to a multidisciplinary practice, Cioffredi & Associates has grown tremendously over the past four decades. Through the eyes of longtime patients Konrad Kenkel and Jocelyne Kolb, discover how physical therapy—and our approach to care—has transformed to support the whole person. Read the full 40-year story at the burgundy link or here. Sponsored by Cioffredi & Associates Physical Therapy.
New home gets carefully set in place. Upper Valley Habitat for Humanity is prepping its first modular home on Nutt Lane in WRJ, and last week its two sections got delivered—with Valley News photographer Alex Driehaus on hand to catch the crane setting everything to rights. “Modular homes can be completed faster than traditional stick builds, but are more expensive for the nonprofit because construction labor is paid rather than volunteer,” Driehaus writes.
Little bundles of chemistry. Yesterday, VT Fish & Wildlife filled us in on brumation. On her Naturally Curious blog, Mary Holland gives real life examples for turtles, which are trapped below a pond’s ice in water that’s nearly freezing. Though brumation lowers their need for oxygen, it doesn’t entirely eliminate it. So they absorb oxygen through their skin. And if oxygen is especially scarce, Holland writes, snappers and painted turtles switch to an anaerobic metabolism—though it creates lactic acid, “which can cause a cramping sensation and can lead to death if it continues over a long period of time.” Painteds can release calcium carbonate from their shells to counteract the acid.
SPONSORED: Go deeper into the season—join St. Thomas Episcopal Church for Nine Lessons & Carols this Sunday at 6pm. Rejoice with the adult and children's choirs, accompanied by ethereal harp music, at this long-running tradition (now in its 91st year at St Thomas!) featuring The Ceremony of Carols by Benjamin Britten. Share the joy and help us support Heating Helpers, a program of LISTEN. Sponsored by St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Hanover.
A look ahead at tomorrow’s “veto day” in NH. As NH Bulletin’s Ethan DeWitt and William Skipworth write this morning, the GOP may control the governorship, House, and Senate, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t disagreements: “the governor’s approach to politics has at times clashed with the more socially and fiscally conservative approaches of lawmakers in her party.” She vetoed 11 House bills in the last session, including measures on transgender bathroom rights, book removals in schools, making it easier to get vaccine exemptions, and making school board elections partisan. Tomorrow, the House meets to take them up. At the link, a preview.
VT Air National Guard sent to the Caribbean. News broke early last week that the 158th Fighter Wing based in Burlington was headed out, but their destination was a mystery. Then, on Thursday, the national security website The War Zone (at the burgundy link) reported that the Guard’s F-35As would take part in the military buildup aimed at Venezuela, giving the US “the ability to drop 2,000lb-class guided bombs on targets deep inside Venezuelan airspace.” On Friday, Seven Days’ Kevin McCallum reported that the fighter wing and most of its F-35s are deploying to the Roosevelt Roads Naval Station in Puerto Rico, which closed in 2004 then reopened last month.
Stowe Mountain Rescue helps four skiers out of Spruce Peak backcountry. They were called out Sunday night—posting praise for the skiers for recognizing that, as darkness descended, they were getting into dangerous terrain, with cliffs below them in the Notch. The skiers were directed to retrace their route uphill to the Long Trail—and “Just as we reached the top, our four emerged from the darkness safe and sound.” Had the quartet not called, SMR writes, “We could have been facing a dangerous technical high angle rescue in darkness and frigid temperatures – and it could have cost them their lives.” One lesson: always carry headlamps.
An “absolutely preposterous (but real) view” of a skydiver passing in front of a fiery sun. Astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy and his friend Gabriel Brown, a skydiver, knew they had just one chance to capture a photo they call “The Fall of Icarus,” writes Margherita Bassi on Smithsonianmag.com. With multiple telescopes set up in the desert of Willcox, AZ, special filters that see the sun’s atmospheric layer, a light aircraft to convey Brown, and a whole lot of perseverance, the result is an astonishing image of a silhouetted figure tumbling to Earth against a background of a flaring sun. Here’s their video on how they did it.
The Tuesday crossword. It’s the “mini”—puzzle fiend and Dartmouth librarian Laura Braunstein’s short, do-it-in-a-jif Upper Valley-themed crossword. If you’ve missed her earlier ones, you’ll find them here.
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday’s Daybreak.
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The Tuesday poem.
Look, I’ve already ruined it
or it’s ruined me.
The dawn I see by doesn’t need me
like I need it
and any extra letters it brings.
What we call mountains
is a deep violet strip
narrowly rising and falling over the green.
You might call them clouds
and be right
or hand me something crisp
call it money or flowers
and set it alight.
— “After Lighght” by Tom Thompson. Remember last week’s one-word poem by Aram Saroyan? This is Thompson’s commentary on it. Meanwhile, for what Saroyan himself has to say (about “Lighght” and other things), poetry editor Michael Lipson points us to this video from the Poetry Foundation.
See you tomorrow.
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