GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Hot, humid. The calendar says we're eyeing fall, but there's this dome above us going nowhere, with heat building a bit each day and no real relief in sight until the weekend. This morning's fogginess should be disappearing around now, and temps will be headed toward 90—with the heat index several degrees hotter. Things will be most intense, the weather service says, from noon-4 pm each day, thanks to "light wind, high sun angle, limited cloud cover, and high temperatures and dew points." Lows tonight in the mid or upper 60s. By turns cool and sunny. Though not in the same photo. Here are two from Annemieke McLane:
Along a beautiful, mysterious trail in the Barre town forest;
Thetford man identified as boating accident victim. Kristopher Perkins, 27, was out in a small boat on Levi Pond in Groton, VT on Sunday night when the boat overturned. Two others—Tim Perkins of Groton and an unidentified juvenile—made it to shore, but the younger Perkins did not. Search efforts continued during the night; early yesterday morning, a state police dive team found his body. "At this time this death does not appear to be suspicious," says the VSP press release.Suspected bomb in Dartmouth parking lot turns out to be...stew. Just in case you missed this over the weekend: On Friday afternoon, a "suspicious item resembling a pressure cooker" was found in Dartmouth's Dewey Field Lot. Hanover police and firefighters cordoned off the area, evacuated nearby buildings, and called in the state bomb squad—which x-rayed the device. "It was determined the pressure cooker was not an explosive device and contained food"—"clearly stew," Hanover Police Chief Charlie Dennis told Eric Francis. Speculation centered on a nearby potluck event.Hung up by road repairs? You can blame trucks. Or flooding. But in her survey of all the road work going on in Thetford, Li Shen writes in Sidenote that "surging high-tonnage vehicle traffic is wearing out rural roads designed to last twenty years in as little as seven." There's been work this summer on Academy Road, Tucker Hill Road, and Sawnee Bean Road, on Rte. 113 approaching Thetford Hill, and, of course, to repair flood damage on Rte. 132 acros the town line in S.Strafford. Also, a 48-hour closure of 113 at the town line with W. Fairlee is coming up this weekend. Li describes what's going on with them all.Lebanon gets a new history. You know those sepia-toned "Images of America" books you can find all over the region? Lebanon's city historian, Nicole Ford Burley, has just written one about the city for Arcadia Publishing; “I basically lived and breathed this project for six months,” she tells Liz Sauchelli in the Valley News. Her biggest challenge, she says, was boiling history or lives down into 70-word captions, like for Phineas Gage or Nettie Stevens—who grew up in Cavendish VT and attended Lebanon High for a few years before going on to discover the role of X and Y chromosomes in determining sex.SPONSORED: You can improve someone's life right now! Hearts You Hold is a VT-based nonprofit that supports immigrants, migrants, and refugees by taking the time to ask them what they need. There are many requests waiting to be funded for people who are trying to build their lives: footwear and rain suits for farm workers in Randolph Center, basic kitchenware for a Grafton County farmworker trying to start a side business—and, always, cards that help with gas and laundry. Hit the burgundy link above or here, pick something to fund, and make a difference now! Sponsored by Hearts You Hold.With bike shop deal, Claremont aims to turn Arrowhead into mountain-biking magnet. The deal, inked last month, allows The Wheel House bike shop to lease the ground floor of the base lodge at the Arrowhead Recreation Area and accelerates Claremont's effort to make the city-owned ski hill a year-round destination. WCAX's Adam Sullivan reports that a mountain bike race earlier this year drew 1,000 people; another is scheduled for this coming Sunday. “Couldn’t be more excited for the Wheel House, having a place right at the bottom," says one biker. "It will be great for us who notoriously break stuff."Thanks to the Webb telescope, we may have to rethink—well, pretty much everything. So says Dartmouth physicist and astronomer Marcelo Gleiser in a bracing NYT essay (gift link) written with U of Rochester astrophysicist Adam Frank. They point to several inconvenient findings from its work, including galaxies that formed far earlier than the "standard model" of cosmology would allow, a worsening "tension" over how fast the universe is expanding, and ongoing problems with the standard model to suggest that we need to rethink not just models, but "possibly even the nature of space and time."Young beavers emerge. In general, Mary Holland writes on her Naturally Curious blog, they're born between May and July—fully furred and with eyes open—but they're consigned to the lodge for the first four or five weeks. That's because their fur doesn't become water-repellent until their anal glands become functional; the oil's used for grooming and waterproofing. "At this time of year," Holland writes, "you can see them swimming and feeding with their parents."In black and white, New Hampshire's old meetinghouses. Paul Wainwright is a retired scientist at Bell Labs who turned to photography—and to capturing NH's colonial-era meetinghouses. “When I'm in one of these buildings, I get a feeling,” he tells NHPR's Paul Cuno-Booth. “Not a spooky feeling, but just a presence—a feeling of the people who built and used this building.” Though many have been updated over the years, about 20 remain in something "close to their original state," Cuno-Booth notes—including Canaan's. Wainright talks to Cuno-Booth about his work and his favorites. Gallery here.Montpelier inching back to life. As you know, Bear Pond Books reopened Friday, and elsewhere downtown, Pho Capital has reopened and other stores have their doors open even if they're not fully back, reports Lola Duffort in VTDigger. Many of them, she writes, haven't yet gotten the grants or loans they need to reopen fully; some are selling at the farmers market on Saturdays. A bit over half the 120 businesses affecting by flooding are doing business in some fashion. "I would say it could be up to a year before some businesses reopen to the capacity that they were previously," says Montpelier Alive's Katie Trautz.Burlington Airport sees uptick in car thefts—and in people leaving their keys in the car. "Police have found that thieves look for people who leave their vehicles without clicking an automatic lock button," reports VT Public's Adiah Gholston. "This is a sign that they might be in a hurry to catch their flight and have left their keys inside." Police have this advice: "Locking doors, removing valuables and securing vehicle keys would go a long way to prevent these."Say it ain't so! Ben & Jerry's factory tour ranked among world's biggest "tourist traps." That word, reports WCAX, comes from USA Today, which crunched the numbers on 20 million Google reviews of popular tourist attractions around the world, looking for words and phrases like "tourist trap," "overrated" or "expensive." B&J's comes in at #22—behind the Four Corners Monument (in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah), which is #1, Voodoo Doughnut in Portland, OR., and more. Ben & Jerry's response: “It’s an honor just to be nominated with the likes of Graceland, Stonehenge and the Waitomo Glow-worm Caves of New Zealand. Otherwise, no COWment.”The Tuesday Vordle. Still with a word from Friday's Daybreak.
Heads Up
Today from 1 to 2:30 pm, the Hanover Garden Club presents Chittenden County state forester Ethan Tapper on "Old Forests: What They Are, Why They’re Important, and Opportunities for Management." Tapper, who's also a columnist for Northern Woodlands, will talk about the few remaining old forests left in the state, why they matter, and "how forest management can help make Vermont’s young forests more like old forests, creating many of the unique conditions and habitats found in old forests centuries sooner than they would naturally occur." At the Montshire.
And the Tuesday poem...It is a kind of love, is it not?How the cup holds the tea,How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,How the floor receives the bottoms of shoesOr toes. How soles of feet knowWhere they’re supposed to be.I’ve been thinking about the patienceOf ordinary things, how clothesWait respectfully in closetsAnd soap dries quietly in the dish,And towels drink the wetFrom the skin of the back.And the lovely repetition of stairs.And what is more generous than a window? — "The Patience of Ordinary Things" by Pat Schneider.See you tomorrow.
Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Writer/editor: Jonea Gurwitt Poetry editor: Michael Lipson About Rob About Michael
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