SO NICE TO SEE YOU, UPPER VALLEY!
Oh gosh, what are we going to do? Another sunny day! Some clouds to start, but that high pressure is still well established for the next few days, only now the flow aloft is cycling warmer air into the region. So while things will start out in the single digits this morning, they'll warm up briskly through the morning and we should see temps reaching the low 30s in the early afternoon before dropping back into the low teens overnight. Wind from the south.32 Dartmouth profs take issue with NYT article on Bucci suicide. In a column published today in the Valley News and spearheaded by Annelise Orleck of the history department and Ivy Schweitzer of the English department, they write: "Missing from the Times article was any discussion of the ongoing pain of the young women who were targeted by the predatory behavior of their male professors...or of the misogynist culture in the Psychological and Brain Sciences Department and across the college." Since then, they add, "people have been sending the plaintiffs hate mail, blaming them for Bucci’s death."Hanover's Jewel of India to move? Take this for what it is: a Facebook post. "Tonight I picked up dinner to go, and they told me that Dartmouth isn’t renewing their lease!" a user posted last night in the Upper Valley VT/NH group, adding: "[T]hey are looking for another space to occupy. Preferably in Hanover or Lebanon....They are asking their customers for help."Oops. “Plaza Closed Under Construction" signs on Leb Mall tick off merchants... who are open. The signs were put up yesterday by work crews moving electric and cable lines in the old rail tunnel that runs underneath the mall. “Today was a miscommunication. I understand why every single person in this room is upset,” Deputy City Manager Paula Maville told a meeting of business owners last night. Who were "similarly irked" to hear that some 30 parking spaces near the Lebanon Diner could disappear once tunnel work begins in earnest in April, writes the VN's Tim Camerato.A heck of an Enfield sunrise. This was on Saturday morning, 6 am, posted by Reddit user adamjackson1984. Can't quite tell: Is that Mascoma Lake? Crystal? George Pond? Lindt store at the Powerhouse Mall to close. The lease on the small West Leb chocolate shop expires at the end of this month, and with it, the big-name chocolate maker is pulling up stakes. But before it does: 50 percent off on remaining inventory. (VN)"It actually is possible for lovers of skiing and politics to combine their two favorite sports." That's veteran journalist David Shribman (Dartmouth '76) in the NYT, writing about the long tradition of reporters and politicians adding slope time (or, in Bruce Babbitt's case in 1988, Tuckerman's time) to the hustings. Amidst a tour of ski-stumping history, he offers a shout-out to Black Mountain, "the fustiest and most unreconstructed ski area in New Hampshire’s White Mountains."UNH anthropologist helps solve veeerrry cold case. Back in 1979, a family searching for arrowheads discovered a headless torso stuffed in a burlap sack in an Idaho cave. Late last year, researchers using genetic genealogy — and a piece of tibia — identified the man as Joseph Henry Loveless, a bootlegger and axe murderer (of his wife, anyway), who disappeared in 1916. Turns out one of those researchers is Amy Michael, a UNH anthropology lecturer who specializes in human tooth and bone microstructure. “This is the strangest story I’ve come across in 10-plus years of forensic casework,” she says.Offshore wind holds promise for NH, but it's probably a decade off. A dozen wind turbines, NHPR's Annie Ropeik reports, can produce as much energy as a nuclear power plant. And after years of neglecting alternative energy development, the Sununu administration is embracing the economic potential of wind off the coast. Ropeik looks at that potential, and at activists' point that there's lots more that should be done in the meantime.Several Vermont towns to consider becoming "2nd amendment sanctuaries." Gun rights advocates in Cavendish and in several Northeast Kingdom towns — including Barton, Irasburg, and Newport Town — are pushing measures to have the towns join a national movement to declare themselves "sanctuaries" from gun control efforts. Citing the paywalled Caledonian-Record, the AP reports that the leader of Gun Owners of Vermont says "the goal of the resolutions is to create litigation that would protect gun owners’ rights to bear arms."Vermonters are ahead of the game when it comes to keeping food waste from landfills, don't want to pay to have it hauled away. As urban areas look at mandating composting, a new UVM study finds that "a whopping" 72 percent of Vermonters already compost or feed food scraps to their pets or livestock. No surprise: They have no interest in paying for curbside pickup. "Our study," says UVM prof Meredith Niles, "suggests that, especially in more rural areas, people may already be managing their food waste in a way that leaves it out of the landfills."Scott lays out new vision for Vermont economy: become New Hampshire. Actually, the guv delivered his proposed budget to a joint session of the legislature yesterday. It would increase spending 2 percent without raising existing taxes or fees. Instead, Scott wants to legalize and tax online sports betting (as NH just did) and to introduce Keno lottery machines. He also proposed $1 million in tax incentives for nursing graduates from VT state colleges and universities who stay, and $150K to attract new Americans.VT spends more per pupil than most other states. Why? It has the smallest student-teacher ratio in the US. In a VTDigger commentary, economist Art Woolf burrows into education-spending numbers. Teachers' salaries are actually below the US average, but there are more of them (and of staff): Nationally, the ratio of students per teacher is 16-to-1, in VT, 10.5-to-1. That doesn't lead to noticeably better outcomes than surrounding states, he argues, and proposes reducing per-pupil spending to MA's level, which would free up $238 million.The second most expensive zip code in New England is in NH. But no, it's not Hanover or Etna. It's Rye Beach. The real estate website Property Shark crunched the numbers on 2019 home sales to come up with the rankings. At a median price of $535K, Norwich tops the Vermont listings, with Woodstock 2nd at $488K; Etna, at $560K, is 4th in NH. But they don't come close to making the top 50 zips in New England. Rye Beach's median of $1.9 million ties it with Laguna Beach, CA. Bragging rights? Back Bay, Boston, at $3.7 million. Median.
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You can play with the casting and the setting and the small particulars, but in the end Lear transcends all of that. Its power, director Stephen Brown-Fried says, "lies in its nature as both a deeply personal and deeply political play. On one hand, it’s the story of how a political regime ends, and of what is left behind after an autocrat is separated from his political power. On the other hand, it is also the story of a family facing the deterioration of its patriarch, and of that patriarch's descent into madness." 7:30 tonight, runs through Feb. 9.
But then, there's also "Polls, Pundits and Predictions: Sizing Up the NH Presidential Primary Race."
Three New Hampshire policy and political veterans — health policy expert Ned Helms, long-running GOP adviser Tom Rath, and UNH polling director Andrew Smith — will talk over why polling is so hard in primaries and what actually matters with Dartmouth's Charles Whelan. 5 pm, in Room 3 of the Rockefeller Center.
The fourth annual Paddock Music Library Sing-In will feature songs from the Civil Rights era, as well as some modern songs that continue the protest tradition. If you've been itching to pull out "We Shall Overcome," "Wade in the Water," or "This Little Light of Mine," this is your moment. And if you just want to jam along, feel free to bring your guitar, fiddle, mandolin, kazoo, whatever. 5:30, in the music library in the Hopkins Center basement.
Okay, you're right. Maybe not the kazoo.
See you tomorrow.
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