GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
After last night's drama, maybe some lingering showers this morning. And a chance all day. And with a cold front coming through, it'll definitely be cooler. Mostly cloudy, highs getting at best into the low 70s, and as the skies clear it'll get down into the upper 40s tonight. Winds from the northwest. #whereisthatboatgoing? Lake Sunapee! Remember that refurbished Mississippi River boat that was bought by Sunapee Cruises and got hung up by paperwork and road construction on its odyssey from Missouri up to Sunapee? Well, the Lake Queen arrived in town on Friday and a horde of people turned out to watch its progress. Which was...slow. Also, at one point, backward. Fortunately, one of the people with camera at the ready was Etna photographer Jim Block, who documented the whole thing.WRJ's The Village to get a new owner. In a news release yesterday, principal owners Byron Hathorn and Brooke Ciardelli announced that they are selling the prominent senior living facility to Columbia Pacific Advisors, which gave the project a $29 million refinancing loan. Though they remained silent on the reason, the Valley News's John Lippman reports that a resident last week received an email from a Columbia executive explaining that “the owners of The Village at White River Junction have failed to pay their debt." Asked about the email, Ciardelli tells Lippman, “Frankly, it sounded a bit off the cuff.”"My brainchild, my passion, my crazy idea." If you've driven Route 5 in Fairlee recently, you've probably noticed the new Red Clover Bikes, opened earlier this year by Sarah Pushee. John Lippman talks to Pushee—who spent years working for various plumbing and heating businesses around the Upper Valley before taking the leap. Lippman also writes about the 5-acre Lebanon Woolen Mill site on Mechanic Street, which until 2019 was the Kleen Laundry plant and has sat vacant since. Now, Lippman reports, there's a contingent sales agreement to a buyer who wants to redevelop it.SPONSORED: Live arts return to the Hop starting June 24! You'll find electrifying dance performances, imaginative musical concerts, and thought-provoking films unfolding in the open air of various spots across the Upper Valley. Audiences can also dive into the creative process of resident artists, sharing plays and dances in development and unique experiences created in collaboration with experts across various fields of study. Most events are free or pick-your-price ($5 or $10). Check out the Hop’s events calendar. Sponsored by the Hopkins Center for the Arts.Sheesh. You're napping in the sun and suddenly... humans come by. So you can get why the black bear in Elise Tillinghast's lead photo for "This Week in the Woods" looks a little put out. It's the fourth week of June, and also out there these days: chipping sparrows, Canadian tiger swallowtails, blue-eyed grass (which isn't a grass but a wildflower), and fleabane (which, sadly, doesn't seem to live up to its name, though crab spiders like it).“There are sheep loose on the interstate, any chance you know who they belong to?” That's what a caller once asked Thetford Town Clerk Tracy Borst. And, as it happens, she did. Borst moved to town when she was in third grade, and her deep familiarity has served her well in a role that, she tells Sidenote's Melissa Krzal, brings her all the questions that start with, "You probably aren’t the right person to ask, but I don’t know where else to go.”“On a scale of zero to impossible, it’s nearly impossible." That's Frederick Moe, a housing specialist at the Haven, on finding rental housing in the Upper Valley. The Valley News's Anna Merriman takes a deep look at the issue, and it's been tough for pretty much everyone—a combination of demand from people moving to the region, slow construction, rental houses going on the post-pandemic market, millennials preferring to rent over buying, and, of course, the region's longstanding shortage of workforce housing. Improvement, says Twin Pines' Andrew Winter, is "going to happen over years.” As it looks to upgrade, Whaleback gets its first executive director. He's Etna's Jon Hunt, who worked in development at Colby-Sawyer and spent 16 years as a lacrosse coach, reports the VN's Seth Tow. "Issues with its chairlift and financial complications left Whaleback in a tough spot" this past year, Tow writes, and Hunt's job in part is to build stronger community ties for the nonprofit mountain—to help it preserve its mission "to create family-friendly, affordable skiing and riding," says Hunt, and, board chair Norm Berman says, to raise the funds to expand its snowmaking and lift capabilities.NH 2nd, VT 4th in national ranking of child well-being. Every year, the Annie E. Casey Foundation releases its Kids Count Data Book, analyzing and ranking the states on economic trends, education, health stats, and a category it calls "family and community" that looks at stats on things like percentage of kids living in high-poverty communities or in families with single parents. Overall, New England had five states in the top 11: Massachusetts first, followed by NH, then MN, then VT. CT ranks 8th, ME 11th. RI is at 23rd.Sununu says he's likely to veto earlier primary. The NH House and Senate agreed last week to move the state's primary from September—it's got the third-latest primary in the country, notes NH Bulletin's Amanda Gokee—to August, with proponents arguing it would give primary winners more time before the general election to get established. “I just don’t see the benefit,” Sununu said at a press conference last week, when asked about the bill “Moving it four weeks doesn’t achieve some of the goals that they were trying to achieve....I think it creates confusion in our system."
More enemies than friends? It's been a decade since Vermont established the Green Mountain Care Board to regulate the state's health care system and to move the state toward single-payer plan—which eventually became both overseeing and promoting the all-payer model that replaced it. In VTDigger, Katie Jickling looks at the Care Board, its many roles, the difficulty measuring what it's accomplished, what it has accomplished (possibly holding down the rate of increase in hospital budgets, maybe keeping health care costs from rising as high as they might have), and why some doctors want it abolished.Speaking of all-payer... In a new report, VT state auditor Doug Hoffer says that the cost of running OneCare, the company charged with spearheading VT's health-care reform efforts, are greater than the Medicaid savings it's produced. “There’s nothing wrong with the concept of all-payer," he tells VTDigger's Kit Norton. "The question is implementation.” Under the system, doctors and hospitals are paid a set monthly fee by OneCare, with the aim of focusing on preventive care and holding costs down. The state is preparing to negotiate a new five-year contract for the model with the feds."Did you know that you can eat whole grains and still get hit by a truck?" On July 27, 2019, Hana Schenk and her family were on vacation in Newbury, VT, when a driver in a pickup coming the other way pulled out to pass a motorcycle on a hill and hit their car head-on. Her husband and kids were taken to Central VT Hospital with various injuries; she was airlifted to DHMC with a traumatic brain injury. It's been a long two years of recovery, Schenk writes in The Atlantic, detailing with unflinching, grim humor an injury that has "shaken my confidence in my own personality, my own existence."I'll see your napping bear and raise you a nabbing bear. Over in Thornton, NH last week, a homeowner's security camera caught a black bear casually opening his car door and checking out the interior, prompting the town police department to note that there's been a rash of recent car break-ins and that this bear may be the culprit. Just fueling up for the Welch-Dickey Loop?
Let's catch up.
NH reported 25 new cases on Friday, 29 Saturday, 15 Sunday, and 10 yesterday, bringing it to an official total of 99,329. There was 1 new death during that time; they now stand at 1,367, while 18 people with confirmed cases are hospitalized (up 1). The current active caseload is at 196 (down 69). The state reports 3 active cases in Grafton County (down 3), 6 in Sullivan (down 13), and 13 in Merrimack (down 9). In town-by-town numbers reported by the state, Hanover, Canaan, Grafton, Claremont, and Newport have 1-4 each. Lebanon, Cornish, Croydon, and Charlestown are off the list.
VT reported 4 new cases Friday, 3 on Saturday, 2 Sunday, and 3 yesterday, bringing it to a total case count of 24,368. There were no new deaths, which remain at 256, while 4 people with confirmed cases are hospitalized (no change). Windsor County added 2 new cases over the last four days and stands at 1,511 for the pandemic, with 21 over the previous 14 days, while Orange County added no cases and remains at 822 cumulatively, with 4 over the previous two weeks. In biweekly town-by-town numbers reported Friday, Springfield added 16 new cases over the course of two weeks; Hartford, Randolph, and Windsor each gained 3; Hartland, Newbury, and Norwich added 2 apiece; and Bethel, Bradford, Killington, and Thetford each gained 1.
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At 6 pm, the Lebanon Opera House presents an online house concert with four-time Grammy-winning cellist Eugene Friesen. The Paul Winter Consort member has used the pandemic to launch his Royal Chilharmonic project, adding electronics and pre-recorded sound on top of his solo improvisation, and playing around with influences that from Bach and Brazil to the blues and the Balkans. No cost, but you'll need to register.
Also at 6, Sustainable Woodstock has an online showing of A Sense of Wonder. The 2010 documentary-style film takes the form of two interviews with Rachel Carson during the last year of her life, as she was battling both cancer and her critics in the chemical industry, government, and the media following the publication of Silent Spring. It uses Carson's own writing as the basis for the film, with writer and actress Kaiulani Lee playing Carson. Afterward, there's a Q&A with Tierra Curry, senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity.
And also at 6, Northshire Books hosts an online conversation between reporter, photographer, performer, and poet Shanta Lee Gander and writer Bianca Stone about Gander's debut book of poetry, Ghettoclaustrophobia. You may remember Gander from her lectures about and performances as Lucy Terry Prince, who was enslaved and in 1746 wrote “Bars Fight,” the oldest known poem in the United States written by an African American—she eventually moved to VT with her husband, Abijah Prince, where they took their battle for land rights to the state's highest court.
This evening at 7, the Etna Library hosts Hanover historian Jay Barrett for a talk on "Lost Hanover"—which is also the title of his book, due out in early July. He'll be highlighting the buildings in town that have disappeared, as well as the history behind them, from the New Hampshire College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts (which later became UNH in Durham) to Moor’s Indian Charity School, to the old Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital. Get in touch with [email protected] for the link.
Also at 7, Here in the Valley continues its "Tuesday Jukebox" series, in which fiddler and HiTV impresario Jakob Breitbach hosts a combination music/talk show, interviewing and sitting in with guest artists and bands at the Briggs. Tonight's guests are Carlos Ocasio and his longtime rockin' Upper Valley band, Frydaddy, both in-person and streamed. Tix are a minimum of $5, suggested price $20. Here's where to order if you want to see the livestream and here's where you can get tix for the live version.
And anytime, you can check out what's up on CATV, which among other things this week is highlighting a talk by Jen Ellis to the aspiring teacher candidates at the Upper Valley Education Institute about the joys of teaching...and the strange events in her life after Joe Biden's inauguration in January. Ellis graduated from UVEI's teaching program, and is an elementary school teacher in VT, but the reason you're sitting there thinking her name sounds familiar is that she is the Bernie-mitten knitter.
I would be for you rain,yet, might bring into yourlife, again, the storm; summer days exact their dues;troubled skies bring earth greenerhues. Lightning flashes throughthe heavy air, rending it withblinding light and thunderousswells which press against theinner drums of my still ears.Life stirs to be born again.The waters usher in flowersand grain. I would be for yourain.
— From "I Would Be for You Rain," by Sarah Webster Fabio,
on an old Smithsonian Folkways recording.
See you tomorrow.
Daybreak Where You Are: The Album. Photos of daybreak around the Upper Valley, Vermont, New Hampshire, and the US, sent in by readers.
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