GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Getting sunny. Cool, dry air began moving in last night, and though high pressure’s arriving, too, things will be on the breezy, colder side today, with clouds to start and highs only in the low or mid 50s even after they start to clear out. Gusty winds from the north later, with temps down to around the freezing mark overnight.
Snacking on pears. Well, figures this bear in Post Mills, they’re just there for the taking. That is one satisfied crunching sound… From Janet Frank.
Randolph’s Short Notice to close. “We have really appreciated being a part of the Randolph business community,” wrote Randi Taylor and Lucas Battey, the restaurant’s owners, in a Facebook post this past weekend. “Owning a restaurant here has been extremely rewarding and also extremely difficult…. We have loved creating this restaurant and sharing this experience with all of you, however we are ready to move onto new things.” The pair opened Short Notice on Main Street in June, 2023; its last day will be Sunday, Oct. 26.
West Leb child care center struggles to navigate NH’s child-care landscape. In the Valley News, Clare Shanahan offers up a snapshot of the issues small centers face. Twin River Children’s Center on Seminary Hill Road nearly closed early this year, “and it’s not out of the woods yet,” she writes, with neither the staffing nor the space to fill its allotment of 48 kids: It currently has 30 children enrolled, with 88 on its waiting list. Overall, Shanahan reports, the Upper Valley needs “as many as 3,800 more child care slots to meet current demand.” Shanahan talks to board chair Craig Babcock about the challenges, and looks at proposals in Concord that might help or harm.
SPONSORED: “Adapt and do your thing…” At 79, Bob Eaton is still gardening, golfing, fishing, and boating—and not slowing down anytime soon. His secret? Stay active, adapt when needed, and don’t be afraid to ask for help. “You’ve got to get out there,” he says. “You have to want to do something and make up your mind.” Read Bob’s story and get inspired to keep moving, no matter your age. Sponsored by Cioffredi and Associates Physical Therapy.
It’s fall, and for some Upper Valleyites, that means the knitting needles are coming out. One of them is Still North Books and Bar’s H Rooker, who in this week’s Enthusiasms writes, “All I want to do is sit and work on projects.” Though a committed sock-maker (“I rarely have the patience for larger projects”), H still turns regularly for more ambitious inspiration to Jesie Ostermiller’s The Colorwork Bible, which offers a clear, photo-illustrated how-to guide for using two or more yarn colors in a single row to create patterns or textures. Intarsia and brioche techniques, Continental knitting, mittens, jackets, shawls…and socks… It’s a whole warm world in there.
SPONSORED: Oak Hill Outdoor Center is back and better than ever! Winter’s coming and we’ve got world-class skiing right here in the Upper Valley. We've made some great improvements this summer, including a refurbished Top of Oak Hill loop, so get your season pass, or better yet, your Sustainer Pass now, for access to the full 25-kilometer trail system. Help support reliable, accessible skiing for the entire Upper Valley! Sponsored by the Oak Hill Outdoor Center.
"It’s maddening how hard it is to get people to go where you want.” That was the Appalachian Mountain Club’s Jon Szalewicz at a recent AMC workshop for town conservation commission members in NH who are interested in building trails. “The discussions during the day-long training dove into details like side-hill design, fall-line trails, the 50% rule (don’t ask), water bars and whether to use old logging roads,” writes David Brooks on his Granite Geek blog. A big problem: a lot of NH trails are old and too straight. But you don’t want to make things too tough, either. The goals? “Safety. Efficiency. Playfulness. Harmony with the surroundings,” said the AMC’s Erik Samia.
Rethinking ski season in NH. This year’s drought is complicating the picture for the state’s ski resorts, writes Molly Rains in NH Bulletin; they rely on lots of water for snowmaking to deal with warmer winters. More efficient snowguns help; so do adaptations like spreading snowmaking out over a season, rather than concentrating it at the start. But Rains also checks in with Dartmouth snowpack researcher Caitlin Hicks Pries, who points out that while snow and snowmaking weather may be declining early in the season, there’s some evidence that it’s getting snowier in early spring. “Do we have to sort of rethink when the ski season is?” she asks.
In Concord, legislators look at a plan to help Claremont schools—but don’t hold your breath. The idea, writes Ethan DeWitt in NH Bulletin, comes from Haverhill GOP Rep. Rick Ladd and GOP Sen. Ruth Ward, whose district includes the city; it would create a state-backed revolving loan fund aimed at helping the fiscally imperiled school district get its house in order. “It’s a loan—not a gift—based on existing funding, and it must be repaid in full,” Ward wrote in an op-ed last week. It’ll face tough sledding in the House, where Majority Leader Jason Osborne tells NH Journal the core issue is mismanagement. And, DeWitt writes, Republicans “agree on one takeaway from the city’s crisis: The state should impose more oversight.”
VT political leadership calls on state senator to resign after social media leak. There was a few hours’ pause yesterday afternoon while Montpelier caught its collective breath following a Politico story about a chat group among a faction of Young Republican leaders in NY and elsewhere. Among their number was Orleans County GOP state Sen. Sam Douglass, and you can get a sense of the group chat from Gov. Phil Scott’s description: “vile, racist, bigoted, and antisemitic.” As Guy Page and Paul Bean report in the VT Daily Chronicle, Scott and the entire GOP leadership of the legislature called on Douglass to step down. Douglass did not respond yesterday.
Understanding the implosion of VT’s Medicare Advantage universe. Blue Cross Blue Shield is pulling out of the market entirely—for both individuals and employers. UnitedHealthcare is dropping its individual plans in most counties. Part of what’s going on, writes Compass Vermont, is BCBS’s financial state: Its decision “was not a strategic choice but an act of financial survival,” since its Medicare Advantage division accounted for 20 percent of a $152 million loss between 2021 and 2024. Meanwhile, Compass notes, federal policy shifts have added both risk and cost to Advantage plans, especially in rural states. They offer some advice for navigating the changes.
In case you were wondering: Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller trails and grounds are still open during the federal shutdown. The national historic park is run by the Park Service, notes VT Public’s Myla van Lynde, and while the park’s offices are closed, the rest is there to enjoy; so, of course, is Billings Farm, which isn’t part of the government. The same is true of trailheads, campgrounds, and scenic sites in the Green Mountain National Forest—and, for that matter, over in NH in the White Mountain National Forest, where trailheads, parking lots, and public restrooms remain open and key personnel, including firefighters and some rangers, remain on the job.
The loneliest tree in the world. Maybe there’s another that’s even lonelier, but surely the Sitka spruce on Campbell Island—almost 400 miles south of New Zealand’s South Island, well on the way to Antarctica—is in the running. The intriguing thing, says Joss Fong, the former Vox science journalist who last year launched the Howtown YouTube channel with former NPR science YouTuber Adam Cole—is that Sitka spruce are from the west coast of North America. A colonial governor had one planted on the island, and it’s grown happily since then—though core samples show a spike in radiocarbon 60 years ago… two years after the peak of US and Soviet nuclear bomb testing.
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday’s Daybreak.
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HEADS UP
At Lyme’s Converse Free Library, an opening reception for “In Their Own Voice: Pastels x Four”. The show brings together the works of four local artists—and members of the Vermont Pastel Society: Kate Cone, Connie Filbin, Barbara Mason, and Ann Wickham. 5 pm, show runs through December.
At the Howe Library in Hanover, “Saving the Slipper Orchids from Extinction in New England”. Students from area high schools—who’ve published their research internationally—will talk about their slipper orchid conservation and propagation research as well as their work to create slipper sanctuaries on public and private land. 6:30 in the Mayer Room and online.
At the Norwich Bookstore, Shodo Spring and Open Reality. Spring, who grew up in Ohio, is a psychotherapist and Zen Buddhist practitioner and teacher. Open Reality, writes the bookstore, “opens practical possibilities for creating a shared, flexible culture that knows the natural world both as family and as a working partner.” 7 pm.
At Dartmouth, a screening of On Healing Land, Birds Perch/Đất Lành, Chim Đậu. Director Naja Pham Lockwood’s short 2025 documentary takes on AP photographer Eddie Adams’s iconic Vietnam War photograph of ARVN Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan shooting Viet Cong Capt. Nguyen Van Lem in the head—by turning to those most directly affected, including Loan’s daughter and Lem’s children. 8 pm in the Loew Auditorium, with Lockwood on hand for a discussion afterward.
And for today...
There’s some serious domestic blues talent in this Playing For Change collaboration with Visit Mississippi—Cedric Burnside, Keb’ Mo’, and Christone "Kingfish" Ingram, for instance, or Kirby, Vasti Jackson, and even Sierra Hull. But the musicians elsewhere—from Bombino in Niger to Moussa Diakite in Mali—can more than hold their own.
See you tomorrow.
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