GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Another stunning day on tap. It'll start out cloudy and cool, but the sky will clear and temps will rise quickly toward the high 70s, around where they were (or slightly warmer than) yesterday. Mid-50s tonight, rather than last night's 40s. High clouds will start showing up at some point, ahead of a front working toward us from the west. But that's for tomorrow...Leb City Hall renovations start next week. This is news because the city's been talking about the need to refurbish its 1923 building for a couple of decades, but has always found other uses for that money. Now, though, a $3.1 million first phase of a multi-year project is getting under way: to replace the roof and boilers and boost energy efficiency. Down the road, plans to change the layout. (VN, sub reqd)It's peak thru-hiker season. So Bob Totz headed south on the AT for his "Old Roads, Rivers and Trails" blog to meet some of them. There was Executioner (whose pic is not what you'd expect), and Yee-Ha from Oklahoma, and Mousetrap from Georgia, and North Star, a geologist from Texas. Just a reminder of the intriguing — if sometimes bewildered-looking — stream of humanity descending from the woods for a stretch these days.Steven Bourgoin gets 30 years to life. At an emotion-filled sentencing hearing for the man whose wrong-way driving on I-89 killed five teenagers in 2016 — including KUA student Janie Cozzi — families of the teens had a chance to testify. “Countless people have been victimized by Mr. Bourgoin’s actions,” Judge Kevin Griffin said. “The crimes are crimes that deserve a significant period of punishment.” Dartmouth and the Montshire collaborate to boost middle-school STEM education. The VN's Sarah Earle follows up on news of a $1.3 million federal grant that will link profs and grad students from the college, Montshire educators, and teachers from Claremont Middle School, Tunbridge Central School, the Indian River Middle School in Canaan, and the Barnet School to focus on hands-on STEM learning. “It’s about getting kids interested early and often,” says Claremont's Stephen Moss. (VN etc)Oops. This is why you want to be careful when you're tooling around on your 23-foot Chris Craft on Lake Winnipesaukee at 11:30 at night...NH state budget picture gets murkier with news that business taxes may bring in $91 million less than expected. State revenue forecasters now say that the taxes on business profits and on business activity will produce significantly less than budget writers had originally predicted. The report immediately became part of the Democratic legislature's ongoing battle with Gov. Chris Sununu, with Sununu saying he knew estimates were "volatile" and the Dems saying rounds of business tax cuts are catching up with the state.Syrian family in Rutland makes a home. Three years after the uproar over plans to resettle 100 refugees in the Vermont city, the AP's Lisa Rathke catches up with one of the three families allowed to settle there. Hussam Alhallak recently got a job as an accountant. His wife calls Rutland "magical," his kids are doing well in school, and his colleagues at Casella Waste Systems recently raised $16,000, which the company matched, to get construction started on a new Habitat for Humanity house for the family.Lovely pic of the Taftsville covered bridge. But as a commenter on Reddit notes, "YES it's pretty, YES it's historical...now get out of the MIDDLE OF A PUBLIC ROAD AND LET ME GET TO WORK."And speaking of tourists, here's a fall foliage predictor. Every year smokeymountains.com puts out a map forecasting the march of fall colors county by county across the country. They crunch "millions of data points," they say. Plus a nice primer on the science of it all. Use the slider at the link to go week by week...And speaking of tourists coming for fall foliage... "In mid to late September, the forests of Maine and Vermont are set ablaze with wondrous tones of sugar maples, silver birch beech and oak trees, which gradually spreads south through Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Connecticut." That's the stunningly named Aoife O'Riordain on Britain's iNews in her autumn travel guide. She also recommends Japan, Finnish Lapland, and the Catskills for leaf-peeping. So good to know that if you miss peak in VT, you can head south to NH...Vermont guy has only one job. No one in his Burlington neighborhood can understand it. “I looked in his basement windows one time, thinking he was maybe brewing craft beer or something to sell, but it turns out this guy doesn’t even have an Etsy shop. I have no idea how he survives," says a neighbor. Okay, yes: It's satire. From The Winooski. Imagine a pair of onions where the O's are.If you like Daybreak and want to help it keep going, here's how:
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Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard set out to get a film made about human arrogance in the natural world. He wound up with one about salmon. The film argues that fish hatcheries and the fish they raise have weakened the wild salmon population. “It’s about how we keep trying to control nature rather than allowing it to do what it does,” says director Josh Murphy. Not surprisingly, even hatcheries aiming for sustainable practices have taken exception. 6 pm.
The novelist who brought us
Empire Falls
and
Nobody's Fool
will be reading from and talking about his new novel,
Chances Are
. At Gibson's Bookstore starting at 6.
They've opened for Toby Keith and Travis Tritt, and you're as likely to find them performing at a NASCAR track as on a concert stage. They cover current country as well as original songs by band member Ed Leavitt, and Stack can belt with that throaty voice. At Grantham Rec Park starting at 6, Wicked Awesome will be doing bbq.
The Gilford, NH-based band has also done its share of supporting bigger acts (there's Toby Keith again, plus Tim McGraw, Keith Urban, and Jo Dee Messina). On the common starting at 6:30.
Enjoy the day! See you tomorrow.
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