GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Partly sunny, pleasant. Looks like we get another day of enjoyable weather, what with high pressure in place, temps into the mid 70s, and calm winds. Today’s a mix of sun and clouds, but we’ll see more clouds arriving overnight as a fading cold front comes through, though no rain’s forecast until tomorrow night. Lows in the low or mid 50s
Go-go topiary. It looks like someone designed it. But it’s actually some gumptious greenery in an old Bell System utility cover on the Dartmouth campus, from Jane Masters.
“My dad says, if you’re gonna work, everybody should hate what you do.” And in the case of Eddie’s dad, he thinks nature is too hilly. In DB Johnson’s Lost Woods this week, Auk and Eddie talk through what that means.
Wait. Exit 20? That’s this week. After all that back and forth last week about when NHDOT would close the Exit 20 off-ramp off I-89 South (that’s the exit to the 12A strip if you’re coming from VT), the agency last Friday announced that it’ll be either tomorrow or Thursday, depending on the weather. It will close from 9 am to 5 pm for repaving, and the detour will be down to Exit 19 and then back northbound. And here’s hoping they actually get it done this week, because…
Starting next week, the 12A “dry bridge” in West Leb closes for a year. That’s the bridge that’s already been under reconstruction, connecting downtown West Leb to the 12A strip, but it’s been open to traffic. Next Monday at 7 am, it shuts down to all traffic (though there’ll be a pedestrian footbridge) for 365 days. At the link, the city’s designated detours, which involve taking I-89 between exits 19 and 20. “The closure will affect residents, businesses, schools, public transportation, and other travelers in the area. Please allow additional travel time, follow posted detour signs, and expect delays, particularly during the first several days of the closure,” the city says.
VT Law & Grad School will get a new president. Melissa Hoffer, who became Massachusetts’ first climate chief in 2023 under Democratic Gov. Maura Healey and before that was acting general counsel and principal deputy general counsel at the US Environmental Protection Agency, will start up Dec. 1. In its press release, VL&GS says “Hoffer’s deep experience in litigation, regulatory policy and public service seamlessly fits the institution’s current and future goals.” She replaces Rod Smolla, who stepped down last year to write and teach, and remains on the school’s faculty.
SPONSORED: Join Willing Hands as a volunteer during harvest season! Upper Valley farms and gardens are growing strong, and Willing Hands volunteers are hard at work harvesting food to support our community’s food security needs. Join us this week to gather nourishing food for delivery to local food shelves and community meal sites. Together we can ensure that everyone in our community has access to fresh food. Find times and sign up here or at the burgundy link. Sponsored by Willing Hands.
“I said, 'Dude, let go. I don't want to kick you,' and it didn't let go, so I just had to kick it off." That’s Enfield’s Zack Howard, the guy in that now worldwide video of the “mystery animal” attack in the FitKids ChildCare parking lot at Centerra. Talking to WMUR’s Jon Schoenheider on Friday, he describes what happened as the animal dashed out, nipped his heel, grabbed the bag he was holding, then clamped onto his leg. He tells Schoenheider he’s convinced it was a fox, because of its tail and “kind of that orange underbelly.” He’s now undergoing a series of rabies shots, but says he feels for the animal. “He's got bigger issues than I've got right now," he says.
The Vermont Almanac ceases publication, at least for now. For six years, the Corinth-based collection of photos, illustrations, prose, and poetry devoted to the weather, local history and lore, and insights into both the natural and human-crafted worlds has landed like clockwork in the late fall. But in an announcement to readers on Saturday, editor and co-founder Dave Mance III wrote, “We went into the new year pretty exhausted… Throw in some staff health issues and retirements, and it’s become clear that we don’t have the capacity to publish Volume 7.” He and fellow founders Virginia Barlow, Amy Peberdy, and Patrick White, he writes, are talking with others about a new editorial team.
SPONSORED: Craving a new signature look? Start with your spex. Artisan Eyewear, the optical boutique known for bold and funky frames, is hosting two special events this autumn. Saturday, Sept. 19, 11am-2pm it's the Swissflex Trunk Show. More info here. Then, the week of Oct. 13-17: Create your new eyewear wardrobe with the shop's only sale of the year! Buy two pairs of glasses and get the third FREE, details at the burgundy link. Come see what makes Artisan Eyewear different! Sponsored by Artisan Eyewear.
A growing effort to “make the outdoors more open and accessible to all.” Speaking to Valley News writer Liz Sauchelli, Upper Valley Trails Alliance executive director Russ Hirschler says that towns around the region are finding that making some local trails and walking paths more manageable for a wide range of users provides an array of benefits: for the community at large, for kids in schools, and for visitors. As a result, Sauchelli reports, UVTA has ramped up its work on building accessible trails, both around the Upper Valley and as part of a network focused on the issue elsewhere in VT. She looks at what it takes, and checks in with users of a new trail in Randolph.
Word for the day: hyperphagia. It means an insatiable hunger, and it’s what black bears are feeling these days as they go through what Mary Holland describes as their annual feeding frenzy to bulk up for winter’s hibernation. Foraging for berries, nuts, tree fruits, and whatever they can scavenge, she writes on her Naturally Curious blog, they put on two to three pounds a day: “By hibernation time many bears will have added about 4 inches of fat and gained between 20 percent and 50 percent of their summer body weight.”
Planning to vote in NH today? NHPR has “A procrastinator's guide to the NH state primary.” It covers the basics: how to check your registration, how to find your polling place to vote in person, the documents you’ll need to prove ID, and NHPR’s “primers” for the state’s high-profile primaries (US Senate and House), plus a link to the Citizens Count candidates guide, which includes the primaries for governor, Exec Council, and the two chambers of the state legislature.
VT Air National Guard wing returns after eight months abroad. Members of the 158th Fighter Wing, based in South Burlington, arrived home Sunday night. As Kevin McCallum reports in Seven Days, the unit—which has about 1,000 active and part-time National Guard members—initially mobilized in mid-December to Puerto Rico to aid in military efforts in the Caribbean, then redeployed to the Middle East. “You all have endured the longest deployment of an Air National Guard fighter wing since the Vietnam War,” Col. Michael Blair wrote to families in a Friday email. WCAX has footage of the return.
“We are a small town masquerading at a state, because everybody knows each other here.” That’s Christopher Kaufman, head of VT Humanities, in a new episode of “American Stories: A Reading Road Trip,” put out by PBS Books and the Library of Congress. Focused on Vermont, the episode pulls in a variety of authors, including Montpelier’s Kekla Magoon, Norwich cartoonist Tillie Walden, poet Bianca Stone, and novelist Julia Alvarez (“Part of the beauty of Vermont is its drama,” says Walden); talks about everyone from Sinclair Lewis to Ruben Jackson and Louise Glück; and shouts out a variety of libraries and bookstores, including the Norwich Bookstore and the Yankee Bookshop in Woodstock. Thanks to Susan Apel and Artful for spotting it
The Monday Jigsaw on Tuesday: downtown WRJ in 1919. And in particular, what was once a swamp, then a tree-planted square, and is now the parking lot wedged between the train tracks and S. Main Street, facing the Coolidge/Briggs block. The puzzle image chosen by the Norwich Historical Society’s Cam Cross catches it in its square days, though “for most of the nineteenth century,” he writes on his Curioustorian blog, “it was not a square at all. It was a triangular swamp, and the village used it as a dump. A footbridge ran across it so travelers could walk straight toward the depot.”
The Tuesday Crossword… on Tuesday. Laura Braunstein’s quick little “mini” puzzle timed just right…
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from Friday’s Daybreak.
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HEADS UP
Brighton Rock at the Thetford Arthouse Cinema. It’s based, TAC organizer Art Kahn writes, on “the darkest of all [Graham] Greene’s novels and the film version is early, bedrock film noir. Believing that hell is real and heaven at best a maybe, young gangster Pinkie (Richard Attenborough) tells his girl, he’s one of the most hellhound protagonists in all of film. With an intriguing plot borrowing from the writer’s lifelong joust with his Catholic faith, this is a thriller with a conscience.” 7 pm in the Martha Rich Theater at Thetford Academy.
The Tuesday Poem.
How quietly I
begin again
from this moment
looking at the
clock, I start over
so much time has
passed, and is equaled
by whatever
split-second is present
from this
moment this moment
is the first
— Wendell Berry, “Be Still in Haste”
See you tomorrow.
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