GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Maybe some fog and clouds first thing, but they'll all give way to sunshine. Again. Remember yesterday? Maybe a degree or two warmer today, highs reaching around 70. And with dry, clear air in place, it'll also probably be a few degrees cooler tonight. Champ? Nessie? Hungry largemouth bass? "I feel it my duty to report on what was a curious...series of incidents which occurred this past summer in the waters at Lake Morey," begins a new HereCast blog, "Going Nuts." The writer, who spent the summer as a greeter at the boat launch checking for milfoil and other invasives, said he kept hearing about "disturbances in the water, reported by fisherpersons and pleasure boaters." Yeah, maybe...In visit to Lebanon, Sununu says budget deal getting closer. While a small knot of protesters outside the Upper Valley Senior Center held signs like “Veto Sununu” and “Sign the Budget,” NH Gov. Chris Sununu told the crowd inside that he'd met with legislators yesterday morning and offered to boost education funding to within $7 million of what they'd been seeking. Dems say his plan doesn't steer enough money to property-poor communities. (VN) Suspect in Colson death agrees to plea deal on federal gun charges. Richard Whitcomb, the WRJ man who was identified as a suspect in the 2018 killing of 19-year-old Austin Colson, would go to prison for 37 months on charges that he was a felon in possession of a firearm. Colson's body was found at a Norwich property Whitcomb maintained, and his murder remains unsolved.Canaan water troubles stemmed from separated elbow joint. The town's public water reserves had dropped from 300,000 gallons to 40,000 gallons before crews working yesterday found the problem at the intersection of Route 4 and Bruce Road. While they were repairing it, they found another crack in the water main as well. (VN)This looks like a fine week for apple picking. Thanks to "Weekend Wanderers" here are five suggestions for orchards — in Springfield, Lebanon, Plainfield and Quechee. Oh, and hey: If you go to Poverty Lane, bring your own bags. They've just announced they're not providing free bags any more, and though they'll sell you some, they don't want to. Dartmouth, MIT researchers unveil tool to detect "noise" that hampers quantum computing. The computers' fundamental components are known as qubits, or quantum bits, and their properties are affected by "noise" stemming from control electronics, heat, or impurities in the qubit material itself. Researchers had already zeroed in on managing "Gaussian" noise, which is akin to white noise. This latest advance addresses Non-Gaussian noise, which is more complex. "This research moves us toward understanding the noise, which is a step toward cancelling it, and hopefully having a reliable quantum computer one day," says one of the Dartmouth co-authors. Maroon link is to the Dartmouth release, here's MIT's.NH ethics enforcement weak, VT's even weaker. The Center for Integrity is out with a study rating state ethics agencies around the country. NH ranks 34th, largely because its executive-branch agency doesn't have jurisdiction over the vast bulk of state employees. VT is one of only three states whose ethics commission is purely advisory, with no authority to investigate or enforce ethics laws.Veto override sessions start in Concord tomorrow. Hot on the heels of a Wall Street Journal story noting Sununu's record streak of 55 vetoes — with two more in the offing — legislators return to the statehouse to try to override them. InDepthNH's Paula Tracy notes that only about a fifth of the bills were passed along partisan lines; the rest had GOP co-sponsors or got Republican votes. The likeliest bills to make it involve net metering and subsidies for biomass plants.Why Burton is joining the climate strike. The "Global Climate Strike" launches on Friday, and the Vermont snowboard maker says it'll be taking part. "Vermont has fallen behind on its existing climate commitments and CO² emissions in the state are on the rise. As a state that touts its environmental legacy and outdoor brand, it is well past time to take meaningful action on climate," says a press release from the company. It notes that days with snow cover have dropped by one to two weeks since 1970.The climate strike "is a massive temper tantrum orchestrated to intimidate legislators and citizens into supporting a radical climate change agenda." That's Vermont's Ethan Allen Institute in a rival press release calling on police and state officials to arrest and prosecute climate protesters who break the law. "Here in Vermont," the conservative think tank notes, "climate activists are currently holding training sessions to teach people how to disrupt and/or shut down events, block roadways, close off buildings, and to skip school and work in order to impact policy decisions."And speaking of climate change, its impacts are here and measurable. VTDigger's Elizabeth Gribkoff is up with a sobering rundown of the stats showing what's going on. Summers are already hotter — July was the hottest month on record in Burlington. Winters in the city have warmed by 7 degrees since 1970. While most of VT was in USDA "hardiness zone" 4 until 2000, southern Vermont has crept into zone 5, and by 2040 the area south of Route 4 will be in zone 6. VT had 17 federal disaster designations in the last decade, up from 12 the decade before. And there's more: changes in snow depth, planting seasons, invasives...Andalucia's roads, the Great Alpine Highway in New Zealand, Iceland's Route 1, the Monadnock loop in autumn... Yep, NH shows up in a Daily Mail list of "10 of the world's best road trips" (here by way of South Africa's Independent). "The vibrant displays of colour in the forest are unforgettable," it says, with a must-see add-on of antique shops in Keene and Marlow. Those people in southwest Vermont sure know how to hurt a weather system... Bennington's food truck fest went ahead this past weekend despite threats of rain, but that's not quite what the headline on the Bennington Banner says. (Thanks for the tip, MP!)
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The road runs from Newbury to just shy of the Canadian border, and Northern VT University humanities prof Alan Boye has walked its length. He'll be talking about the road's history and the people who've lived along it (including the Joe of Joe's Pond in Danville and author Wallace Stegner, who spent half a century of summers in Greensboro). At Haverhill's Alumni Hall at 7.
Timney tackles one of the tougher conundrums of modern life, which is how easy the internet's made it to find information and how hard it's made it to find reliable information. Digital sources evolve rapidly, and Timney looks at how to evaluate them. Presented by the VT Humanities Council, at the Norman Williams Public Library in Woodstock at 6 pm.
Mary Bridget Davies, who played Joplin when the show ran on Broadway (and netted a Tony nomination for her work) fills the role in the touring version, as well. "Her ability to match Joplin’s highly emotive style could probably give members of the audience who saw the real woman something close to a contact high," Charles Isherwood wrote in the
Times
when it first opened. She's joined by a quartet of talented singers who channel Joplin's influences: Aretha Franklin, Etta James, Odetta, Nina Simone, and Bessie Smith. At 7:30.
Have another fine day out there. See you tomorrow.
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