GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Cloudy, chance of showers later. The next of this week’s fast-moving systems arrives today from the northern Great Lakes, led by a warm front and bringing a chance of rain during daylight hours, temps rising to around 50 eventually. It’ll be windy out there tonight (gusts reaching 40 mph), as a cold front follows along, bringing a likelihood of rain overnight to most of us and a decent chance of snow down to around 1500 feet. Lows in the mid or upper 30s.
All of which makes tonight’s Beaver supermoon a dicey proposition. Though fortunately, it’ll still be near-full tomorrow night, too. Right around 5:30 this afternoon, the moon will reach its closest approach to Earth, some 2,800 miles closer than October’s. Where it’s visible low on the horizon, it’ll be impressive. Though as astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson once said, “In the overall scheme of things, is this relatively small increase in the Moon’s apparent size really so meaningful? I mean, if you turned a 14-inch pizza into a 15-inch pizza, would you then call it a ‘Super-pizza?’”
And what was that in the early-evening sky? If you happened to look up around 6:10 yesterday evening, you might have seen an odd swirl—as did people all over the Northeast. The photo at the link is from Thom Wolke, catching it as it appeared over the Upper Valley. As WCAX’s Gunnar Consol reports, it was the European Space Agency’s Ariane 6 rocket, launched from French Guiana a couple of hours earlier—the delay, he says, “likely due to the sun angle required to create that eerie swirling glow. What we saw was likely spent fuel floating in our atmosphere catching the sun’s rays just right.”
A sweep of woodland on a stoop. It’s moss, actually, growing between paving stones in Hanover, but as George Masnick writes, it sure looks like a forest.
Mid Vermont Christian School takes state to court over new ed reform law. As Alison Novak writes in Seven Days, Act 73 tightens up the requirements for independent schools to receive public funds, with an eye toward making sure public dollars “go primarily to private schools that have historically filled gaps in more rural parts of the state.” Some 30 schools lost access to public funding as a result, including religious schools. On Friday, Quechee’s MVCS filed court documents—amending an older suit—alleging the state has “gerrymandered-out” religious schools and “acted with hostility” toward them. Novak fills in the legal picture.
SPONSORED: A Forest of Lights is returning to VINS! Running on select evenings from Nov 21 - Jan 3, come experience the magic of the holiday season as thousands of lights transform the VINS Nature Center into an enchanted wonderland. Tickets are on sale now for VINS members, and open to the general public on November 11th. With new exhibits this year, it's sure to be our best season yet! Sponsored by VINS.
Leb’s caffeine-fix drive-thrus proliferate as Aroma Joe’s arrives. To Lucky’s outpost on Mechanic Street and Starbucks in Centerra, you can now add a 900-square-foot Aroma Joe’s at the corner of Old Etna Road and Route 120. It’s “among the more than 130 Aroma Joe’s that have cropped up across New England, Pennsylvania, New York and Florida” since the company was founded 25 years ago, writes Marion Umpleby in the Valley News. The new spot’s flavored energy drinks, Umpleby reports, have already attracted a crowd from nearby Lebanon High School.
Books that “capture this magical place where we live.” They all happen to be rooted on the Vermont side of the river, but as Granite Stater Susan Apel writes in Artful, “On the NH side of the UV instead of VT? Close enough.” Looking ahead to gift-giving season, she’s touting Ted Levin’s The Promise of Sunrise (“he sees in detail beyond the ordinary, and what he sees he turns into poetry”); The Vermont Almanac, Vol. VI (from a profile of a thriving fiber mill to how to buy an old tractor or build a stone wall); and Bill Mares’ Imagining 2050: Vermonters Take a Swipe at the Future—short essays imagining what the state will be like in 25 years.
Now at several Upper Valley libraries: blood pressure monitors. It’s a joint effort with the American Heart Association, reports WCAX’s Adam Sullivan, and you can check them out or use them on-site. Says Quechee Library director Michaela Lavelle, “People likely have access to a library in their community, maybe more so than they have access to a hospital. And so for something maybe as important a blood pressure, and health monitoring in general, we are a trusted information resource.” You’ll find them at the Bradford (VT) Public Library, the Etna and Howe libraries, the Quechee Library, and the Wilder Club & Library. Here’s the Heart Association’s info sheet.
From a beachhead in Walpole, NH’s wild turkey population has boomed. Back in 1975, state wildlife officials brought in a flock of 27 turkeys from southwestern NY in a bid to re-establish the birds, which had vanished from NH. It was actually the second attempt, NH Fish & Game’s Dan Ellingwood tells NHPR’s Julia Furukawa: a few years earlier, a West Virginia flock had been done in by winter weather. From 1975 to 1995, Ellingwood says, biologists “continued to trap and relocate birds across the state from that original nucleus of birds,” as did their colleagues in neighboring states. The result, these days, is a Granite State population of some 45,000-50,000 wild turkeys.
Suddenly, Burlington’s Beta Technologies becomes a multi-billion-dollar company. That’s because yesterday morning, the ultra-hot electric plane startup launched on the NY Stock Exchange with a share price of $34, “above the anticipated range of $27 to $33 and a sign of strong interest from investors,” writes Seven Days’ Derek Brouwer. It was the first initial public offering by a Vermont company in years; the company raised over $1 billion and, at its IPO price, Brouwer reports, is worth more than $7.5 billion. It’s developing small electric aircraft that can carry passengers or cargo, as well as the motor and charging technologies that undergird its planes.
You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a pygmy seahorse up close. Which you can now do, thanks to the Close Up Photographer of the Year awards, which just released their (long) collection of finalists. There’s plenty check out at My Modern Met’s selection at the burgundy link (including Rafael Steinlesberger’s shot in Costa Rica of an insect atop a pit viper), but if you want the full range, here’s CUPOTY’s shortlist page, starting with animals but with links down at the bottom to insects, arachnids, butterflies and dragonflies, the ever-popular fungi and slime molds, and more.
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday’s Daybreak. If you're new to Daybreak, this is a puzzle along the lines of the NYT's Wordle—only it's not just some random five-letter word, but one that actually appeared here yesterday.
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THERE'S SOME GREAT DAYBREAK SWAG! Like Daybreak tote bags, sweatshirts, head-warming beanies, t-shirts, long-sleeved tees, the Daybreak jigsaw, those perfect hand-fitting coffee/tea mugs, and as always, "We Make Our Own Fun" t-shirts and tote bags for proud Upper Valleyites. Check it all out at the link!
HEADS UP
“Small Towns, Big Ideas” pitch event at the Hanover Inn. Five rural entrepreneurs from around the country will compete live for the $10,000 prize in the annual event staged by the Center on Rural Innovation and Dartmouth’s Magnuson Center for Entrepreneurship. It’ll feature tech startups from the Northeast Kingdom, MI, OH, VA, and KY, pitching a panel of judges on their work. Software funder Bill Veghte will also talk about “building and backing high-growth companies” in a fireside chat. 5 pm, in-person in the Hayward Room as well as livestreamed.
Dartmouth’s Dickey Center presents “Seeing the World Clearly: Alumni Shaping the Future of Global Eye Health”. Three alumni opthalmologists—Sara Wester, Nikhil Batra, and Erin Salcone—will talk about their own stories and experiences working in international vision care, why it matters, lessons they’ve learned, and models that hold out hope. 5 pm in Haldeman 41, no livestream but a recording will be available afterward.
At the Howe Library in Hanover, “GLP-1 Medications: the promise, passion and problems”. Internist Adam Schwarz and endocrinologist Benjamin Boh will talk about GLP-1 medications being used for treating diabetes, obesity, and other health challenges, and “sharing some of the barriers, complications, and pitfalls of these exceedingly popular medicines.” 6 pm in the Mayer Room as well as online.
The Vermont Circus Festival down in Brattleboro. It’s a drive, sure, but it’s also a rare assemblage of circus talent of all sorts. Tonight at 6 pm at the Brooks Memorial Library, Circus Smirkus founder Rob Mermin and illustrator Karen Gersch will talk about Mermin’s memoir, Circle of Sawdust; tomorrow Mermin gives a lecture on 200 years of circus in Vermont. There are workshops, an astounding array of classes, and, starting Friday, a weekend of performances. Full schedule at the link.
Cindy Pierce and Glitchy Business live at the Nugget Theater in Hanover. The popular comic storyteller, author, innkeeper, and educator brings her bawdy, honest show to the Nugget as a fundraiser for the Hanover Improvement Society. 7 pm.
Tyler Alexander and If I Can Get Home This Fall at the Norwich Bookstore. A history buff, Alexander teaches at Champlain Valley Union High School, and some years back came across a trove of letters from a Civil War soldier named Daniel Mason—who served in the same unit as one of Alexander’s ancestors. His book collects those letters, filled with accounts of battle and the details of a soldier’s daily life. He might also talk about his discovery of an 1872 painting, Vermont Brigade at Chancellorsville, which is now hanging in the VT Statehouse. 7 pm.
The Hanover High band and orchestra fall concerts. Tonight, the symphonic band, wind ensemble, jazz lab, and jazz ensemble strut their stuff; tomorrow night, it’s the orchestra’s turn. 7 pm both nights in the HHS auditorium.
“The Fast Radio Sky” with astrophysicist Victoria Kaspi. In this Dartmouth Physics and Astronomy department public lecture, Kaspi, who teaches at McGill University and directs the McGill Space Institute, will talk about fast radio bursts, first discovered in 2007 and apparently ubiquitous in the universe but still of unknown origin, and about a new Canadian radio telescope allowing astronomers to start untangling the puzzle. 7 pm in Wilder Hall 104 and via Zoom.
At Dartmouth, Charmaine Lee and “Awaken the Dragon: USA 50 States Tour”. We’ll just let the college’s music department explain it: “Charmaine Lee’s solo performances are visceral sonic rituals. Using voice, feedback, and electronics, she sculpts volatile, deeply embodied soundscapes that slip between intimacy and intensity. Drawing from noise, improvisation, and extended vocal technique, her sets are unpredictable, immersive, and alive with risk.” Opener is “SEED” by Dartmouth’s own Bethany Younge. 8 pm, the WAREHOUSE at 4 Currier.
And for today...
The setting may be the High Point Barbershop in Richmond, VA, but the music? A smoky bar somewhere deep in a sprawling city on a rainy night as the hours stretch toward morning, thanks to the Richmond-based quintet Butcher Brown.
See you tomorrow.
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