A PLEASURE TO SEE YOU, UPPER VALLEY!
Trending hot and humid; thunderstorms possible. If you've got any lingering fog it should be gone soon, leaving us with what the weather folks—though aren't they supposed to know about such things in advance?—are calling "a sneaky heatwave." We're looking at temps reaching the high 80s or low 90s today, with humid air and not much relief tonight: around 70 at best. Slight chance of showers and thunderstorms this afternoon and evening.Well, that was quite a show in the sky for the Fourth. Thanks to all of you who sent in rainbow photos! Here's a small selection of what Thetford's Jim Zien neatly calls a "Declaration of Incandescence":
Developer sues Newport, NH over sewer, water fees. Avanru Development, which is building a 42-unit apartment building there, faces $100,000 in connection fees, and in their complaint say they were "told of [them] only after all approval and permits were obtained," reports Patrick O'Grady in the Valley News. As a result, O'Grady writes, the state has put a $420K grant for the project on hold. “No one from the town has explained the methodology or formula used to determine the amount of undisclosed ‘user fees’ imposed,” the suit alleges. Rieseberg told O'Grady last week he was not aware of the lawsuit.NH Community Power towns get base price. On Friday, reports NHPR's Adriana Martinez-Smiley, the electricity-buying collective of a dozen towns around the state, including Hanover, Lebanon, Enfield, and Plainfield, announced a base rate starting in August of 10.9 cents per kilowatt hour—lower than the three major utilities serving the state, and than the 11.42 cents per kilowatt hour just announced by the NH Electric Coop. “We have a different setup as to how the other utilities are procuring energy, and we want to take advantage of that as long as we can,” says the coalition's CEO.SPONSORED: Music by the River starts Friday! Pentangle Arts debuts its popular Music by the River outdoor summer concert series at scenic East End Park this Friday evening, July 7, with Prydein, a fan favorite from Burlington, VT, whose bagpipe rock features a blend of funk, soul, and rock in the Celtic style. Free, with donations welcome. Lawn opens at 5:30pm, with music from 6pm – 7:30pm. Parking at nearby Sunset Farms. Bring a picnic, bring the family, and bring friends for a fun evening that celebrates summer. Sponsored by Pentangle Arts. Tunbridge farm owner guilty of animal cruelty. In an unusual decision—unusual because animal welfare cases rarely go to trial—an Orange County jury last week found Debra Densmore guilty of providing inadequate shelter, food, and attention to medical care for six horses on her Hoofbeats and Dreams farm, reports VTDigger's Max Scheinblum. The charges arose from an investigation by state officials last year, when they removed 13 horses, a llama, a mini-mule, and six dogs; veterinarians had told police the horses were in "deplorable" condition.Longtime Norwich postal clerk heads to S. Strafford as postmaster. Maureen Chase begins her new job today, after two decades (with a three-year hiatus in Thetford) working the window at the Norwich PO, and in his About Norwich newsletter, Demo Sofronas (himself a former postmaster) offers up a photo essay and tribute. "I will miss you all," she says in response.After bill sponsor asks him to do so, Sununu vetoes eating disorder legislation. The seemingly innocuous measure would have required the number for the National Eating Disorders Association helpline to be added to student ID cards in NH. But, reports Ethan DeWitt in NH Bulletin, since the bill was introduced the association shut down the human-run helpline so it could create a chatbot version, then suspended that, saying that "some of the information given was 'harmful' to users." Democratic Rep. Rosemarie Rung of Merrimack says she'll try again next year with a different helpline. VT school districts sue Monsanto over PCBs. This is different from the state's suit filed a few weeks ago. This lawsuit brings together most school districts in the state—including in Windsor and Orange counties—to allege that the company's PCBs in school building materials "released chemicals into the air for decades, leading to a hazardous indoor environment," writes Alison Novak in Seven Days. The contamination, the suit says, will costs districts "in the aggregate hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars" to remediate. Monsanto responds the state's screening levels are "scientifically unsupported."In VT, a new carnivorous plant. Actually, the sticky false asphodel itself isn't new, but its suspected insect-digesting habits are, reports Lexi Krupp for Vermont Public. "It’s kind of a shock to the botanical world...that we’re still finding plants right under our noses that are carnivorous," state Fish & Wildlife botanist Aaron Marcus tells her. False asphodels are unrelated to other carnivorous plants, Krupp says: Sticky surfaces trap insects, then the plant absorbs their nitrogen. The VT version hasn't been confirmed as a bug-eater, says Marcus: "But I'm not sure why else they would be catching so many insects on their stems."It's begun! Boy, you take off for the weekend and look what happens: Not one, but two tractor-trailers try to navigate Smugglers Notch. The first one, on Sunday, got stuck and had to be helped to back out. The second one, yesterday afternoon, got caught by the state police following "multiple reports" as it was attempting to navigate the Notch—and had to be helped to back out. In both instances, the VSP says, the truckers—one from FL, one from CA—saw the warning signs (and in once case, frantic bystanders) but ignored them.The Wednesday Vordle. With a word from a story linked to in Friday's Daybreak (though not from Daybreak itself).
The Tuesday poem on Wednesday
Across the wide waters something comes floating–a slim and delicateship, filled with white flowers– and it moves on its miraculous musclesas though time didn't exist as though bringing such gifts to the dry shore was a happinessalmost beyond bearing. And now it turns its dark eyes, it rearranges the clouds of its wings,it trails an elaborate webbed foot, the color of charcoal. Soon it will be here.Oh, what will I do, what will I say, when those white wings touch the shore?— From "The Swan" by Mary Oliver. (And yep, if you're paying close attention, this is a different Mary Oliver "The Swan" from last time; this one's from her 1991 collection, House of Light.)See you tomorrow.
Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Writer/editor: Jonea Gurwitt Poetry editor: Michael Lipson About Rob About Michael
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