GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Getting sunnier, eventually. There’s a ridge of high pressure moving in briefly, but yesterday’s winds were also a sign of colder air arriving. Increasing clouds tonight ahead of a new round of snow tomorrow, lows in the mid single digits.
Hanging out in the snow. Two birds, doing what birds do in winter.
In Norwich, Cynthia Crawford caught this goldfinch literally hanging out, “waiting her turn ‘on ice’ at the feeder.”
And is there anything more striking than a cardinal in a storm? Here’s the one Lauran Corson saw in Woodstock.
Auk opens a window. It’s still winter in D.B. Johnson’s Lost Woods, and Auk, Eddie, Henry, and Wally adjust in their own ways—though it’s an open question how much longer Wally’s going to insist on wearing shorts.
More Ryan Palmer complaints come to light. The Valley News’s Alex Ebrahimi has been digging into the Windsor County sheriff’s career and “internal investigations, suspensions, resignations and termination” at the Claremont, Canaan, and Windsor police departments. Now the Ludlow PD has become the last department to respond to his records request—”though Ludlow officials withheld documents, such as annual performance evaluations, that other Palmer employers made public.” Even so, they revealed a sworn 2023 affidavit from a woman who complained about “trauma” and PTSD caused by Palmer. Ebrahimi details the allegations.
Palmer, meanwhile, has stepped down from his seat on Windsor’s selectboard, though he continues to run the sheriff’s department. His move came in a letter to the board for its Feb. 11 meeting, reports NBC5’s Sophia Venturo. "The selectboard will not comment on the specifics of the allegations or the ongoing legal process, but we do recognize the concern that this has created in the community," board chair Tera Howard said. "Our focus now is moving forward and continuing to serve the town of Windsor." The board hopes to choose a replacement at its meeting tomorrow night.
Vital Communities gets an interim executive director. You may remember that current director Sarah Jackson is leaving to move to the Middle East. While the WRJ-based nonprofit searches for a permanent replacement, it will be led by Ellen Hender, a current staffer who’s worked on housing, transportation, leadership, and civic engagement programs, reports the VN’s Liz Sauchelli. Sauchelli also digs into the organization’s finances.
SPONSORED: Final call for the Burger Battle. Who takes the crown? Through the end of February, the battle continues for best burger in the Upper Valley. Scan the QR code you’ll find at every participating restaurant to vote. This year's lineup includes: The Baited Hook, Harpoon Brewery, Hungry Bear Pub & Grill, Jasper Murdock’s Alehouse, Lebanon Village Pizza, Lou’s Restaurant, PINE Restaurant, Poor House BBQ, Poor Thom’s Tavern, Quechee Inn, Revo Casino & Social House, Salt hill Pub, and Worthy Burger! Each vote earns a chance to win a $25 Local LUV Gift card! Brought to you by the Upper Valley Business Alliance and sponsored by Casella Waste Management.
In divided times, “How do we claw our way back to something that resembles normalcy?” That’s how Seven Days’ Ken Picard describes the question that West Leb’s Doug Teschner, Quechee’s Beth Malow, and Michigan’s Becky Robinson ask in their book, Beyond the Politics of Contempt. You may have run across it at one of their readings around the Upper Valley; now, Picard talks to Teschner (a former GOP state rep) and Malow (from a Democratic family) about why people are so drawn to division, what it takes to be able to talk to people you vehemently disagree with, and their work with Braver Angels and its work with state legislatures.
This week in the woods, shrews below and samaras above. Northern Woodlands’ Jack Saul looks on—and under—the snow to find short-tailed shrews busy surviving winter. They can’t go more than three hours without food, and they have the highest metabolic rate of any North American mammal. Their fair-weather diet of worms, snails, and beetles changes to seeds and a fungus in the winter. Also other small mammals, which they kill or paralyze with venomous bites. Up in in the air, things are more peaceful for maple samaras, those mini helicopters that carry seeds. They hang tight to their trees throughout the winter, providing food for birds and small mammals.
SPONSORED: Celebrate Women’s History Month at Artistree's Grange Theatre with "Witty Women: A Month of Stand-up & Storytelling." This high-energy March takeover features a brilliant lineup, from the viral wit of national headliner Ashley Gutermuth to the raw, hilarious honesty of local favorites like Cindy Pierce and Vicki Ferentinos, and a never-seen-before performance by Abbey Glover. From stand-up debuts to professional residencies, these women are reclaiming the narrative through humor. Don’t miss out on this bold celebration of the female perspective. Tickets and more info at the burgundy link or here. Sponsored by Artistree.
ICE’s proposed Merrimack detention center sits in the town’s PFAS contamination zone. You probably remember that Merrimack, NH is where the former Saint-Gobain plastics plant left behind a legacy of toxic chemicals in the soil and the water. Now, NHPR’s Mara Hoplamazian and Kate Dario report that the warehouse ICE is hoping to use as a detention facility is within the 65-square-mile area where “residents have long faced issues with chemical pollution in their drinking water.” It’s unclear whether the soil near the current warehouse is contaminated; it gets its water from a public utility with limits on levels of allowed PFAS chemicals.
In a place “enclosed in ice…you lean in and you live with the ice.” That place is North Hero, the Champlain island just north of Grand Isle, and for a lot of people there (and elsewhere in the twin states), living with the ice means ice fishing. For Brave Little State, VT Public’s Sabine Poux went up to explore this question from a North Hero resident: “How do they know when it's safe to go out on the ice, and how do they know when they have to stop?” So they head out onto the lake to talk to ice fishermen, explore some pretty deluxe shanty set-ups, talk fishing and ice strategy (one tip: don’t be the first one out on the ice), and more.
“When winter lasts half the year, you either resent it or organize around it.” Though the national press fell back on maple syrup clichés to explain VT’s success in these Olympics, lifelong Vermonter and veteran winter sports writer Peggy Shinn finds the answer in things familiar to anyone living in VT or NH: “a culture that treats winter not as an inconvenience but as infrastructure”; “parents in puffy jackets running youth programs on volunteer time” and who “treat Saturday practice as a social event and a chance to enjoy skiing themselves”; and what Jessie Diggins describes as “team dinners, send-off parties, and the feeling that entire towns are tracking her splits.”
Before we leave the Olympics behind us… One of the cooler things to come out of them is a set of composite photos by Getty Images photographers—basically, the action on the ice or on the slopes or in the halfpipe in a single image captured by a fixed camera. They’re mesmerizing: the Women's Freestyle Slopestyle qualification; the Ice Dance - Rhythm Dance; the end of Breezy Johnson’s downhill run. Hard to explain, you should just go look. Left and right arrows to scroll through.
And speaking of skiing, the snow at Tuckerman’s looks pretty epic. So on Sunday, Andrew Drummond of the White Mountain Ski Co. (ie, a guy who knows what he’s doing) dropped into the headwall, his trip down caught by cyclist, all-around athlete, and photographer Ansel Dickey.
The Tuesday Crossword. It’s time for Dartmouth librarian and puzzle artist Laura Braunstein’s Tuesday “mini,” a short little brain stretcher for your morning. And if you’d like to catch up on past puzzles, you can do that here.
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday’s Daybreak.
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HEADS UP
“Greenland: A Place and Its People” in Etna. The Etna Library hosts a speaker from the Greenland Advocate organization talking about “how global warming is affecting the Arctic, spectacular images of places and people, amazing facts, and an introduction to the Inuit people who live on the largest island in the world.” 2 pm in Trumbull Hall.
In Woodstock, Julia Cooke and Jeff Sharlet talk over Starry and Restless: Three Women Who Changed Work, Writing, and the World. For her new book, Cooke, a journalist, essayist, and author of two previous books, delved into the lives and work of Rebecca West, Emily “Mickey” Hahn, and Martha Gellhorn, “three reporters whose curiosity, grit, and ambition expanded the possibilities for women and meaningful work.” She’ll be talking it through with fellow journalist and author Sharlet at 6 pm at the Norman Williams Public Library.
And the Tuesday poem.
Has my heart gone to sleep?
Have the beehives of my dreams
stopped working, the waterwheel
of the mind run dry,
scoops turning empty,
only shadow inside?
No, my heart is not asleep.
It is awake, wide awake.
Not asleep, not dreaming—
its eyes are opened wide
watching distant signals, listening
on the rim of vast silence.
— “Has My Heart Gone to Sleep” by Antonio Machado, translated by Alan S. Trueblood.
See you tomorrow.
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