A PLEASURE TO SEE YOU AGAIN, UPPER VALLEY!
Mostly cloudy, chance of showers, very nice sleeping weather. The low that’s bringing us today’s weather is to the south, so odds of rain today are strongest in that direction. Still, there’s a chance all day, and with partly to mostly cloudy skies, temps will be sensible: highs in the low or mid 70s. Down to the mid 50s overnight.
And speaking of clouds… Let’s bookend today’s issue (scroll way to the bottom if you can’t wait to see what I’m talking about)…
From Annemieke McLane, a Constable-like portrait of clouds piling in over Strafford.
And from Sally Duston, an equally painterly cloud over Strafford and Thetford.
A Lost Woods two-fer. In last week’s edition of DB Johnson’s chronicles, which you’ll find here, Lydia explains the remote work of Monet’s day while Wally gets chased by butterflies. This week (here you go) Henry and his sleep-twin talk multi-basking.
Heads up on Exit 20 northbound. The I-89 on-ramp that sends you from the 12A strip toward Vermont will be closed from 8 pm to 6 am through Friday morning, July 17, for drainage-pipe installation, NHDOT says. The work began last night, and weather permitting, is expected to take eight more nights. The ramp will reopen each morning following the overnight closures, and closures won’t take place on Friday or Saturday nights. The northbound right lane will also be closed during construction from the Exit 20 NB off ramp to the bridge over the Connecticut. In the Valley News, Liz Sauchelli notes that this is one of the final steps in the bridge project, which began in 2020.
VSP releases a squib of new information on Norwich death investigation. In a press release yesterday, the state police—who are running the investigation into the May 9 death of 82-year-old Noel Neely—announced that the state medical examiner has “determined the cause of her death was asphyxia by exclusion of oxygen. The manner of death is listed as ‘could not be determined.’” That’s all they’ll say, other than, “The state police investigation into the circumstances leading up to and following the death remains active and ongoing,” spokesman Adam Silverman writes in the release. “No further information is available.”
Despite public preference for competitors, Leb City Council recommends Cape Air to feds. You may remember that the contract for serving the Lebanon Airport is up for grabs, and that longtime provider Cape Air is facing competition from SF-based Boutique Air and TN-based Contour Airlines. Over 600 people responded to a survey seeking the public’s thoughts, reports Clare Shanahan in the VN, with 58 percent endorsing a shift to Contour, which offers different routes. But last week, the Council opted to recommend Cape Air to the USDOT, based largely on the perception that it’s used by business travelers, and Contour’s routes are more “aspirational.”
SPONSORED: Bring a blanket, a snack, and a friend—and come ready to dance! This summer, the Hop's free outdoor concerts bring high-voltage, accordion-fueled zydeco with Dwayne Dopsie & the Zydeco Hellraisers tomorrow, July 8, and soulful, fiddle-driven folk with the Ida Mae Specker Band on July 15. Both shows start at 5:30 PM on the Dartmouth Green. Rain location for both concerts is Spaulding Auditorium. Grab dinner from the food trucks around the Green—and before Specker’s concert, warm up at 4 pm with a pre-show square dance workshop with the band joined by caller Sarah Gibson. Sponsored by the Hopkins Center for the Arts.
Up there in the sky, pine pollen on its way out, grass, oak, maple, and birch pollens on the rise. How do we know? Because every week, allergy and immunology fellow Alex Zajack goes out on the roof at DHMC and pulls a sticky strip of petroleum jelly out of a drum where it’s been collecting airborne allergens. Then he spends hours analyzing what it contains. It’s the only device of its kind in New England, reports VTDigger’s Olivia Gieger, and the first summer it’s been able to collect continuous data (it was installed last year, but malfunctioned in May). And it can have immediate results: As the project’s director, Erin Reigh, says, “We want to customize allergy shots.”
At Stateline Sports, “the new guy” has been working there for two decades. Business “has not missed a beat” since Tracy Pelletier bought the venerable sporting goods and clothing supplier last year and moved it to Mechanic Street, writes Susan Apel in Image Magazine, with photos by Lars Blackmore. Though the store (founded in 1983) can supply everything from baseball gloves to running shoes and sharpened skates, its longevity also lies in a long legacy of customer service and deep familiarity: Both Pelletier and manager Dave Dupree (there since 1989) “realize that they are serving not just the children but the grandchildren of the business’s original customers,” Susan writes. (Format is clunky: Use the slider at the bottom to get to p. 48).
Lyme’s bald eagle chick isn’t little any more. In January, Northern Woodlands’ Jack Saul wrote about a pair of eagles that had begun building a nest on the NH side of the river. In last week’s “This Week in the Woods,” he writes that the eaglet “has shed its light-gray hatchling feathers, taken on a darker plumage, and begun to approach adult size but remains in the nest, accepting prey from the hunting parents.” If it’s about the same age as the Quechee eaglet, it should fledge toward the end of this month or in early August. Also out there: pearl crescent and black swallowtail butterflies.
Whatever your take on the Appalachian Mountain Club, they’ve had a huge impact on NH. The AMC gets its share of criticism for $100/night fees to stay in some of its lodges and for helicoptering propane tanks into the White Mountains, writes David Brooks on his Granite Geek blog, but it’s also played a major role in preserving the mountains’ wilderness. “One of the primary things they can take partial credit for in New Hampshire is giving shape to the larger cultural embrace of outdoor recreation, specifically in the White Mountains,” says the Forest Society’s Jack Savage. Brooks looks at the AMC’s model, its huts, its classes, and its impact on NH outdoors culture.
From Gov. Kelly Ayotte’s pen, a slew of vetoes. The nine bills she cut short last week brought her total to 24 for the year, write Ethan DeWitt and William Skipworth in NH Bulletin, underscoring Concord’s intriguing dynamic: “a moderate governor sharing uneasy power with an emboldened Republican Legislature.” Several education measures went down, including a bid to study turning all public schools into charter schools and another to make it easier to remove books from classrooms and school libraries. She also nixed a move to double highway tolls for out-of-state visitors, and another to protect the conscientious objections of medical providers to abortion.
On the other hand, Ayotte signed a measure allowing “balcony solar” – “solar panels that can be plugged into a standard socket without needing an electrician or permission from the power company,” as David Brooks explains in the Monitor. Though the max size is about enough to power a large microwave and the rules are still being written. And in NH Bulletin, Ethan DeWitt delves into Ayotte’s signature on a bill requiring teachers to disclose information requested in writing by parents about their child—unless the teacher deems that disclosure would put the student “at imminent risk” of abuse or neglect and reports it to the district superintendent.
FL minister says he’s new owner of Green Mountain College campus. You probably remember the long saga: bought by WhistlePig Whiskey founder Raj Bhakta, who failed for years to turn it into a destination and then, in February, announced he’d give it away to a religious—ideally, Catholic—group. Now, reports Brian Nearing in Seven Days, Florida evangelist Tommie Zito has announced he’s taking it over with “an intent to convert the property into something called Z University to train up to 1,000 students to preach Christian gospel.” Nearing couldn’t verify the claim: As of yesterday morning, no deed “reflecting any change of ownership” had been filed with the town.
A history of the American restaurant in 10 courses. Stephen Lurie, an NYC-based writer, dug into the 25,000 menus collected by Miss Frank E. Buttolph from the late 1800s to the 1920s, and now housed at the NY Public Library. From that vast buffet, Lurie crafts a 10-course meal in a scrollable, graphics-rich history showing how each dish figured into the social fabric of the times. Oysters for upper class Francophiles in the 1880s, à la carte options for a middle class pushing their way to the table in 1900, one-plate meals for rushed workers … Along the way we learn about celery vases, the NYC ice monopoly (iced coffee was expensive in 1900), chophouses, pepper pot…
The Monday Jigsaw on Tuesday: Honest Abe, 11 days before the Gettysburg Address. On his Curioustorian blog, Cam Cross looks at the speech (and includes it, in case you need reminding), and busts the “he wrote it on the train” myth. The first draft, Cam notes, was written “on Executive Mansion stationery, in ink…before he ever boarded the train. So much for the envelope on the way to Gettysburg.” More here.
The Tuesday Crossword. A clever little start to your day, from Laura Braunstein.
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from recent regional news.
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HEADS UP
Catherine Tudish and Brett Ann Stanciu at Woodstock’s Norman Williams Public Library. Both authors have new novels set in small-town Vermont. Tudish’s linked stories in A Thousand Souls were inspired by a Strafford mail driver: “As one story opens into the next…the web of connections, and our sense of this very particular place in rural Vermont, deepens,” wrote novelist Margot Livesey. Stanciu’s Call It Madness looks at family baggage through the eyes of a 25-year-old trying to piece together how she landed in a wreck of a life. 6 pm.
The Montshire launches Twilight Tuesdays. Each Tuesday this month, the museum will stay open until 8 pm, giving you a chance to head somewhere with friends after work, wade in the Granite Cascade, check out biomimicry and questions like “How does a kangaroo gain energy as it bounces?” in the Creatividad Silvestre/Wild Creativity exhibit, and, more than anything, get some time in a less-crowded museum.
Fairlee Community Arts kicks off its Tuesday-evening Summer Concert Series with Flagship Romance. Let’s let them describe it: “Shawn Fisher and Jordyn Jackson effortlessly fuse technical precision in their impeccably tight vocal blend with an invigorating sense of emotional abandon in their energetic live persona. Performing each show as if it could be their last, this duo will have you questioning how their larger-than-life sound can come from just two voices and an acoustic guitar.” 6:30 pm on the town common unless it’s raining, then indoors in town hall.
At the Howe Library, “Investigative Genetic Genealogy and the DNA Doe Project: A Crash Course.” Chelsea Hanrahan, a volunteer investigative genetic genealogist with the DNA Doe Project and UNH-affiliated researcher, will talk about how genealogists use DNA research to help law enforcement and solve crimes, using share real-life case examples. 6:30 pm in the Mayer Room and online.
Tim Weed and The Gatepost at the Norwich Bookstore. Set in central VT, Weed’s new novel is about a woman searching for her vanished dad—but it goes well beyond the typical thriller. “Mostly I just wanted to tell a good story,” Weed writes about the book while also being “thought-provoking on topics like geological history, the shared insights of ancient cosmology and modern science, and the nature of human consciousness.” 7 pm.
Hop Film screens Deepfaking Sam Altman. Adam Bhala Lough really wanted to understand AI, and in particular the ethics of generative AI. So he set out to interview OpenAI’s Sam Altman—only to be rebuffed. He pivots: to India, where he creates Sambot, a deepfake Altman… and, to his surprise, develops feelings. 7 pm in the Loew Auditorium, discussion afterward with four Dartmouth profs.
The Tuesday Poem.
The emotion is to be found in the clouds,
not in the green solids of the sloping hills
or even in the gray signatures of rivers,
according to Constable, who was a student of clouds
and filled shelves of sketchbooks with their motion,
their lofty gesturing and sudden implication of weather.
Outdoors, he must have looked up thousands of times,
his pencil trying to keep pace with their high voyaging
and the silent commotion of their eddying and flow.
Clouds would move beyond the outlines he would draw
as they moved within themselves, tumbling into their centers
and swirling off at the burning edges in vapors
to dissipate into the universal blue of the sky.
— From “Student of Clouds” by Billy Collins. You’ll find the whole poem here.
John Constable, Cloud Study with birds in flight, 1821
See you tomorrow.
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Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Poetry editor: Michael Lipson Associate Editors: Jonea Gurwitt, Sam Gurwitt
