GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
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Getting sunny, sultry. Okay, it’s fall and the air is dry, so maybe not sultry. Let’s just call it unusually warm. A combination of the warm front responsible for yesterday’s rain lifting away and air continuing to move in from the south will raise temps into the 70s today under eventually clear skies. Clouds return overnight ahead of a cold front, with lows maybe a bit below 50.
“Just look at that sunset!” Sharon Beaufait writes: “There are frequently pigeons on the overhead wires above the bridge at Mascoma Lake. Typically they face the southeastern end of the lake and have a view of cars and pedestrians crossing the bridge. The other evening was the first time I ever saw them all facing northwest... guess even they can't resist a beautiful sunset!”
On a big Democratic night in both Vermont and New Hampshire, Republicans Scott and Ayotte hold on to governorships. But they’re going to be kinda lonely…
As counting winds down in New Hampshire, GOP Gov. Kelly Ayotte holds on to a 51-47 percent lead over challenger Cinde Warmington, a margin of fewer than 23,000 votes with 90 percent of ballots counted. The AP called the race for Ayotte shortly after midnight. Lower on the ballot, Democrats appear to have taken over the Executive Council, with Democratic candidates holding leads in all five districts; and they’re on track to flip both the state House and state Senate, with the potential for veto-proof majorities in both, WMUR’s Kirk Enstrom reports. You can find statewide and district-by-district results on WMUR’s results page: scroll down to find the links for Exec Council, state Senate, and state House.
In Vermont, with 244 of 247 towns and cities reporting, GOP Gov. Phil Scott holds a 52.0-45.5 percent lead over challenger Amanda Janoo, with about 20,000 votes separating the two. Janoo conceded shortly before 11 pm last night. Democrats took every other statewide seat, with Molly Gray defeating incumbent Republican John Rodgers for lieutenant governor 61 percent to 36 percent to take her old post back. Meanwhile, Democrats also won key legislative contests across the state: At the moment, VTDigger reports, they hold 19 seats to Republicans’ 7 in the state Senate, with two independents and two races still to be called. The margin in the state House is 87-30, with several races still undecided. The VT Secy of State’s website carries unofficial results for every contest, with overall as well as town-by-town numbers for every race. This link will land you on the US House race, but use the tabs along the top and just below to toggle among statewide, legislative, and county offices.
Meanwhile, in the Upper Valley…
On the NH side, GOP incumbent state Sen. David Rochefort has a 1,200-vote margin in Senate District 1 (which reaches from the far north down to Piermont) with 72 percent of the votes counted, while Democratic incumbent Suzanne Prentiss is the overwhelming winner in District 5 in the heart of the Upper Valley. In the Claremont-to-Weare Senate District 8, Republican Jim Creighton and Democrat David Trumble are separated by less than 200 votes with just two-thirds of the votes counted. You’ll find state Senate results at the link just above, while state House numbers so far are here.
One other key question on the NH ballot was the town-by-town decision on whether to impose a tax cap on school district spending. Results in the Upper Valley are mixed, with many towns approving it but Hanover and Lebanon, for instance, rejecting it. You’ll find the town-by-town results on WMUR’s page here; what it means for multi-town districts will no doubt be sorted out today.
In VT, Democrat Monique Priestley holds on to a 350-vote lead over Republican John Benson for the Orange County state Senate seat with 95 percent of votes counted, while Democrats Rebecca White, Joe Major, and Elizabeth Burrows have taken the Windsor County (plus Thetford) seat. There are too many state House contests to separate out this morning, but here’s the VT Secy of State’s page again: choose the “House” tab and then click on the map to find the districts you’re interested in.
SPONSORED: Help your neighbors tomorrow!!! Join Willing Hands at Edgewater Farm’s Cornish location for our final Shared Harvest glean of the season tomorrow, Thursday, November 5th, 10 am-12 pm! Harvest carrots for the community and take a household-size share for yourself. Register at the burgundy link or here for the exact location and directions. Sponsored by Willing Hands.
New UVLists see growing pains. The changeover of 38 town listservs from Vital Communities to the new nonprofit overseeing them went smoothly, administrators report, but this week the lists were snagged by overeager anti-spam algorithms. In a nutshell, says the group’s president, Kevin Perrin, the explosion of 50,000 emails in a week to 22,000 subscribers “is something that seems suspicious.” Or as tech lead Kurth Bemis puts it, “The days of a friendly network of network operators (the internet originally) has become a no-man’s land, making it very difficult to bootstrap organizations like UVLists. Mad Max-like.” With a workaround, mail is moving again. The status page is here. Perrin’s explanation at the burgundy link.
SPONSORED: You don’t have to be a Baroque expert to be swept away by this. Les Arts Florissants, described by The Guardian as “astonishingly beautiful,” brings Monteverdi’s finest madrigals to the Hop, led by William Christie and Paul Agnew. The program includes Il Combattimento, a thrilling musical duel that still stuns audiences four centuries on. One night only: November 9. Get your tickets now! Sponsored by the Hopkins Center for the Arts.
Two people die in Quechee crash. That head-on collision Monday night on Route 4 was between a Ford Mustang and a Kia Sorento, the Hartford Police Department said in a press release yesterday, and when firefighters arrived, they found the Mustang in flames and the Sorento partially on fire with an occupant trapped inside. The Kia’s driver was able to get out, and was taken to DHMC, but rescuers were unable to free the Kia’s passenger, who died; they also found the Mustang’s driver dead. The Kia, with Georgia plates, had been traveling west “and came to a position of uncontrolled rest against the guardrail.” Police are withholding names.
Elementary school students uninjured in Grantham school bus crash. Yesterday morning, reports Alex Ebrahimi in the Valley News, a Croydon School District bus with a driver and 12 students aboard collided with a four-door sedan at the intersection of routes 10 and 114 in downtown Grantham. Grantham Police Chief John Parsons tells Ebrahimi police believe the southbound sedan was about to turn onto 114 as the school bus was headed north. Everyone on the bus was unscathed; the sedan’s driver was taken to DHMC. An investigation is still ongoing.
“I leaned into this short book as I would opening a box formerly packed by a family member to find contents I couldn't imagine.” That’s Peter Money in this week’s Enthusiasms, writing about John Berger’s story, The Red Tenda of Bologna. It’s one of two “calming” books he happened to pick up after ducking into a store out of the rain. The other is Italo Calvino’s The Distance of the Moon, a “love story to a planet that grows distant, a kind of ‘fight song’ to collective problem-solving, coming to the rescue, and to the weary, working, persistent.” At the link, Peter describes both.
“There’s something about the kitsch of it.” Musing to Seven Days food writer Melissa Pasanen, Maggie Cassidy points out “a set of dollhouse-size radiators and an open fridge paired with a woman in hair rollers and a bathrobe. ‘It’s fun to see what people have thought of to put a little bit of personality in something we use every day.’” The former VN editor and current “Ask Maggie” columnist, of course, is talking about the World Famous Salt & Pepper Shaker Museum she created, and Pasanen visits for a close look, including at “a Noah’s ark of small animal pairs” that has so many examples Maggie has created a specific section for “well-dressed animals.” There’s a grand opening coming up this Saturday.
VT looks to Nova Scotia for possible wind energy. Last week, Gov. Phil Scott and Premier Tim Houston signed a memorandum of understanding “to explore the possibility” of importing power from wind, reports VT Public’s Abagael Giles. The province “has opened its doors to development and is already soliciting bids to build some 15 gigawatts of offshore wind power starting in the next few years. Hydro Quebec has also expressed interest in developing offshore wind farms there,” Giles writes. It’s unclear how the power would get to the state; a high-voltage converter in Highgate might offer a path, but would need upgrading.
To creep, perchance to dream. When the pandemic kept German ecologist Daniela Rössler out of her lab, she caught some jumping spiders and set them up on her window sill, writes Sara Hashemi for Smithsonian. Their habit of hanging from threads, seemingly dozing, led to a paper, and, once back in the lab, more research, day and night. “We can now confidently say that spiders do sleep, and that their sleep is structured and regulated,” says Rössler. In fact, one phase of sleep so strongly resembles humans’ REM that the researchers wonder if spiders can dream. In any case, the studies help shed light on the evolutionary origins of sleep.
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday’s Daybreak.
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HEADS UP
Dartmouth’s Dickey Center hosts “The Greatest Story Seldom Told: PEPFAR and How It Happened.” The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief was launched by the George W. Bush administration in 2003 and has been credited with saving millions of lives in the decades since. This panel pulls together a range of people who were involved, including the program’s former deputy assistant secretary, a Kenyan doctor, a former Boston Globe writer who chronicled it, and more. 5 pm in Haldeman 041 and online.
At Dartmouth’s Rockefeller Center: “Buying What Doesn’t Exist Yet: Market Shaping for Global Innovation.” A look at a joint effort known as the Market Shaping Accelerator, which aims to create “incentives [to] drive innovation for social good.” “From rapid diagnostics for newborn infections to technologies that make drinking water safer and new uses for existing off-patent medicines, learn how market shaping can turn unmet needs into opportunities for innovation…” 5 pm, Rocky 002.
And for today...
Stevie Wonder. It’s the 50th anniversary of Songs in the Key of Life this year, and recently he released four songs recorded at those sessions that never made it onto the album itself. “We’ve lived with Songs in the Key of Life for fifty years, but there’s still more to hear,” Wonder said when the announcement came out. “We didn’t add these songs to the album, but they were part of what I was feeling and discovering as we made it. They bring me back to that time in my life. The album’s original engineers came back to mix them. He’s on tour in Europe right now playing the entire album in concert, and gets back to the US (Madison Square Garden) Nov. 19. Here’s “It’s Easier.”
See you tomorrow.
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