WELL HEY, UPPER VALLEY!
That was a day yesterday, huh? Today, not so much. You know you're in trouble when the weather folks use the word "interesting." The long and short is that there are various waves and fronts converging, which might or might not combine to produce or suppress serious storms this afternoon. If those storms develop, there could be heavy rain, heavy winds, and lightning. Regardless, the day will start out cloudy with rain likely in the afternoon and showers into the night. Highs in the high 70s.Junction Magazine to ride again. For a time, it looked like the quirky arts and culture mag would fold after founder James Napoli decamped for Minnesota. But a six-member "collective" has stepped forward and announced they're reviving it, with the new version due in September. They've put out a call for submissions related to arts and culture, food and farm, people, the wild, photo essays, and a calendar. For the moment they're just referring to themselves as "the collective," but say they'll reveal who they are early next month. Joe Biden's headed to Hanover on Friday. While the rest of the Dems are out in California at the DNC's big summer gathering, Biden's got the state to himself. He'll be doing a "health care town hall" at 3 pm on Friday in Alumni Hall at Dartmouth, an invitation-only event in Croydon that evening, and then a community event at Keene State College on Saturday. Norwich library loaning out e-bikes, Hartford to follow. Thanks to the Burlington-based mobility nonprofit Local Motion, you can (literally) check out an e-bike at the Norwich Public Library; the bikes move on to the Hartford Public Library for a five-week stint on Sept. 11. The bikes are available for four-day loans, and all slots in Norwich have been booked -- but Wednesdays this month, from 11-4, you can drop by the library and try them out for a half hour at a time. This is, by the way, a growing thing around the country. Once the bikes leave, the NPL is setting up a bike repair station, with basic tools available.While we're in Norwich, the controversial crossing lights outside Tracy Hall are now up. Demo Sofronas photo-chronicles the whole effort on his blog. Grafton Center Meetinghouse sale set to move forward. With a final push to raise $2,500 to meet a challenge grant for the same amount, Mascoma Valley Preservation pulled in the money it needs to buy the dilapidated church building, cover the back taxes owed by the Peaceful Assembly Church—the current owners—and pay the town’s legal fees in its wrangle with the church. The selectboard met last night to discuss the contract with MVP. Donations came in from as far as Lithuania. (VN, sub reqd)So all Dartmouth needs is an area farm to step forward. Middlebury College is moving forward on its plans to generate 40 percent of its power from methane (the rest will come from biomass). Yesterday, construction began on a biodigester on a Salisbury, VT dairy farm that will turn 180 tons of food waste and 100 tons of cow manure a day into methane. The $20 million system will separate solids out for farm bedding, and produce liquid fertilizer as well. Just a head's up to all of you who like to tool along on Heater Road: Leb's going to be putting in a speed table. It'll go in sometime during the next two weeks between Old Etna Road and Hanover Street Extension. "Several traffic studies conducted on that stretch of roadway have shown consistent unsafe speeds," the PD says. (Non-Facebook users, let me know if you want to see this.)Feds appeal court ruling on lottery, could cost NH $100 million. You may remember that back in June, a US district court in Concord sided with the state against the Trump Justice Department, ruling that the federal Wire Act does not apply to lotteries and that lottery business conducted online could continue. The Justice Department has decided to appeal, setting up what is likely to be an eventual Supreme Court case. Hackers show that VT voting machines can be breached. At an annual hackathon in Las Vegas, they demonstrated that they could manipulate results on the Accu-Vote, the type of machine used by 135 towns in Vermont: resetting the memory card to zero, or making the machine think voting had ended even when it hadn't. But the only way to make this happen is to get access to the machine's insides, which is tough to do. "Someone's not going to be able to come up and try to plug into it or take a screwdriver and pop it open to get into the thing," Secy of State Jim Condos tells VPR.
“If it rains at your house, you should probably look at [flood insurance].” That was FEMA's Rita Egan on VPR yesterday, talking about preparing for the inevitable next big flood—or even deluge. She points out that the average cost of repairing a home with one inch of standing water is about $26,000. The show also delved into Vermont towns' mitigation efforts, trying to limit development in floodplains and to buy and remove homes that are in river corridors.Well, that was embarrassing... but not as much as it could have been. Prepping for a public opening on the 50th anniversary of a time capsule that was sealed in 1969, the library staff in Derry, NH wanted to make sure they could open the safe that contained it. After several tries they got the old safe open, only to find nothing inside. "We were a little horrified," says library director Cara Potter. No one even knows what was supposed to be in it, though Potter speculates there might have been items related to astronaut Alan Shepard. SO... WHAT TO DO ON A WEDNESDAY?For starters, you could check out the virtuoso musicians of Big Galut(e) at the Chandler in Randolph. They do klezmer, tango, classical (Shostakovich, Brahms, Mahler), Eastern European dances, show tunes, and jazz — much but not all centered around Jewish themes (the galut is the Jewish diaspora). The group was formed by clarinetist Robin Seletsky and violinist Sasha Margolis, who each grew up with nationally known klezmer-playing fathers. Part of the Central VT Chamber Festival, starts at 7.Or you could go sing your heart out at String Band Karaoke at the Skinny Pancake in Hanover. He's-everywhere roots virtuoso Jakob Breitbach puts together a live band alternate Wednesdays to back whoever wants to come up and sing. "The band," he says, "can do just about any request." Kids and family sing-along at 6, karaoke starts at 6:30.Or, since there's a decent chance water will be on our minds today, you could go hear Adair Mulligan talk about the Connecticut River in Canaan. She's the director of the Hanover Conservancy and for two decades was the conservation director of the Connecticut River Joint Conservancy. She'll lead "an armchair tour" of the river, its natural and human history, and its future. At the Canaan Street Meeting House starting at 7. Whatever the sky brings us, have a fine day. See you tomorrow.
If you like Daybreak and would like to help it keep going and evolve, please hit the "Support" button below and I'll tell you more:
And if you think one or more of your friends would like Daybreak, too, please forward this newsletter and tell them to hit the blue "Subscribe" button below. And thanks! And hey, if you're that friend? So nice to see you! You can subscribe at:
Thank you!