GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Showers moving in from the west. As a low pressure system drifts by to our north, it's going to feel more like fall today. After last night's rain we've got a brief dry spot this morning, then a chance of rain throughout the day until this system passes by. Temps in the 60s, down into the high 40s or low 50s tonight.Yet more Mechanic Street mayhem. Reports late last night of a sinkhole — possibly a burst water main — opening up in front of the Jakes on Mechanic Street in Leb, leading to a road shutdown between Slayton Hill and Maplefields. Link is to the Upper Valley Road Conditions FB group, with word just in that the road's re-opened.Hartford career/tech center replaces human services with teaching and leading effort. After enrollment in its human services program dropped to two students, HACTC — which draws students from all over the Upper Valley — launched a new K-12 education program and a "Coaching and Leading" track, the first of its kind for technical ed in Vermont. “It’s really about life coaching and business leadership and ethics and morals,” principal Doug Heavisides tells the VN's Sarah Earle. "There are a lot of developing students who have great leadership qualities that could really benefit from a leadership program.” You can dig deeper into the science on that Arctic expedition that'll take four Dartmouth researchers to the top of the world. The Thayer School is up with its own take on MOSAIC, the huge international effort to understand the changing Arctic climate and its impact on polar marine life. “Our climate models are informed in an enormous way by field data,” says grad student Ian Raphael. “MOSAiC is so critical because the sheer volume of data that we will collect simply isn’t feasible any other way.”Jack Elliott, cidermaker. You may know him as the owner of the Lyme Inn. But this time of year he spends a good bit of his day scouring the town for apples and turning them into liquid gold, both hard and sweet. Blogger Dave Celone captures the whole process with his camera.And speaking of bloggers with cameras, Nancy Nutile-McMenemy was at the Leb skate park on Saturday. It was Rusty Berrings Skatepark Day, the third annual event thrown by local music promoter Buddy Kirschner in honor of his son, Tyler. Little kids, big kids, and grownups all showed up on their trick bikes, skateboards, scooters, bicycles, and rollerblades to do things that just leave you shaking your head in awe. A little taste at the link, more on Nancy's Smugmug page. Constabulary notes from all over... The rank-and-file members of the Lyndonville, VT Police Department — all two of them — will be voting next week on whether to unionize. Chief Jack Harris is management, so he has to stay out of it.As big VT ski resorts get snapped up, the independents are joining forces. VTDigger's Anne Wallace Allen reports that Bolton Valley, Suicide Six, and Magic Mountain have joined up with Indy Pass, which for $199 gets you two lift tickets each at 34 independently owned resorts around the country. “We don’t have the deep pockets for marketing that other ski areas do,” says Lindsay DesLauriers, Bolton Valley's CEO. “They can blast a lot of marketing into major metro areas, which is really expensive. But we can pool our resources.”Speaking of consolidation, VT state regulators have approved a deal to give a Canadian investment company ownership control over GMP and Vermont Gas. The company, Noverco, is partly owned by Canadian pipeline company Enbridge, and activists had worried that the move would lead Enbridge to push for pipelines in Vermont. The PUC argued that the reshuffle “will not result in any change to the operations, customer service offerings, or service quality of GMP or Vermont Gas." New England porcupines succumbing to ringworm. A new UNH study has found that the fungal infection, an annoyance to humans, is killing porcupines by causing them to produce layers of skin that cause their quills to stick out, making it difficult to move. Veterinary pathologist David Needle told the Union Leader that it "represents a disturbing trend of fungal diseases decimating wildlife that have little or no natural immunity" — think White-Nose Syndrome in bats and the chytrid fungus affecting amphibian populations. Hey Daybreak, use a computer much? That 404 error you might have gotten on Lori Harriman's Jericho Road mist/tree/fields photo yesterday? My fault! Here it is again, with apologies. To make up for it, here's the Milky Way from right by an old barn in the Northeast Kingdom. Just a reminder of a night sky we don't always get to take for granted.A stat: Daybreak's got nearly 2,400 subscribers. About one in 10 of you have ponied up to keep it afloat. If you're one of those majestic souls: Thank you! If you're not, I'd like you to think about doing so. You can give small or give big: Either way, you'll be helping keep yourself and the people around you informed every day about life in these parts. 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SO, ABOUT TONIGHT...
. That would be Mary Jo Slattery (vocals, guitar, uke, washboard), Andy Stewart (fiddle, harmonica), and Joseph Stallsmith (vocals, 4-string banjo, uke, guitar, kazoo/jug) playing jug blues and Cajun two-steps. Food and Upper Pass beer start at 5, music starts at 6:30.
. She's 84 now, and spent decades teaching vocal music in public schools in NY and NJ. In the '60s she moved to Greenwich Village for a couple of years to sing, "just to find out if I could do it." Her songs tonight "are a mixed bag of some of my originals, traditional folk, singer/song-writers from the 60s on, some blues, and pop classics." She'll be on guitar and piano, and will be joined by ArtisTree's Kathleen Dolan and Mark van Gulden. Free, starts at 7:30.
. Set in Leningrad just after the end of World War II, this is a "slow, ferocious, and extraordinary second film from blazing 27-year-old Russian talent Kantemir Balagov," writes
Variety
's Jessica Kiang. It is not an easy film. "Seldom," Kiang writes, "have we seen such a powerfully pessimistic depiction of the absolute ruination that war can visit on the psyche of an entire nation." At 4 and 7:30 pm.
Have a fine day out there. See you tomorrow.
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