GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
We get the sun back for a day. High pressure and drier air worked their way into the region overnight, and after some early-morning fog today, we should see partly to mostly blue skies, with temps reaching 80 or so. Lows tonight in the mid 50s under partly cloudy skies, with a chance of showers starting up right after dawn.
Life on the streets. Plant life, that is.
Finding its own way in WRJ, at the edge of a curb, sidewalk, and street, from Jane Masters.
And with the help of a “guerilla gardener” in Lebanon, at Bank and Elm, from Andrew Garthwaite.
And sign life. An impromptu memorial rally for Dolly Parton broke out on a corner of the Hanover Green after news broke of her death yesterday, with supporters playing her music and waving signs encouraging passing motorists to honk. Eric Francis sends along a photo.
Lebanon reopens bike/pedestrian tunnel. You can get from the municipal parking lot to the Mascoma River Greenway again without taking to the streets. Closed for safety reasons earlier this month, it reopened yesterday, though the city notes, “There is a detour within the tunnel through scaffolding to protect from the compromised portion of the Hanover St bridge. Bike riders should dismount and walk through the scaffolding.”
After three years, Leb may finally be headed toward new child care facility. What began in 2023 as a plan for 200 slots on Airport Road, then became a proposal for repurposing the old SAU 88 building on Seminary Hill, now looks like it will become a childcare center for 50 kids on Mascoma St. Last week, reports Clare Shanahan in the Valley News, the city council approved a $1 per year lease agreement with the Boys & Girls Club, which would build a new facility on city-owned land just west of I-89. That move comes after the school board voted last month to deep-six the SAU 88 idea. The Boys & Girls Club, Shanahan reports, will “build, own, and operate the facility.”
SPONSORED: Immigrants and refugees need your generosity now more than ever. Hearts You Hold currently has over 300 requests from individuals and families trying to make a new start in this country, just waiting to be funded by caring people like you. Some are local to the Upper Valley or to VT and NH, others are in New York, Ohio, and elsewhere. You can sort the requests by state or category to find the folks you want to support. You’ll find them all—from basic household goods to basic clothing to swimming lessons to baby equipment—at the burgundy link or here. Sponsored by Hearts You Hold.
Standing out from the forest floor… and kinda blending in. Late summer isn’t a time of riotous color, and for this last week of August pretty much the only bright color in Jack Saul’s “This Week in the Woods” is the fruit of painted trillium, which likes to hang out in mountainous mixed woods. Also out there: a goldenrod crab spider, which uses disguise and surprise—not webs—to catch its prey; milkweed tussock moth larvae going to town on milkweed (which render the adult moths toxic to predators); common earthball puffballs, which need the wetter conditions of late summer to appear; and the aptly labeled dog vomit slime mold.
SPONSORED: Primary care physician Dr. Lorissa Segal is now open and accepting new patients in Woodstock. She provides personalized, preventive care and conveniences not usually available from traditional practices—including advanced screenings and diagnostic tests, and a customized Wellness Plan. Members of her practice can also book same-/next-day appointments and reach Dr. Segal after hours for urgent needs. Learn more here or at the burgundy link, or call (802) 557-9435. Sponsored by MDVIP.
What’s going on with NH’s effort to overturn the Claremont school funding rulings? In a very helpful explainer, NH Bulletin’s Ethan DeWitt goes deep on why the state AG’s office is arguing that the two ‘90s-era state Supreme Court rulings—”the legal bedrock on which the state currently is required to fund schools”—are flawed. He covers what the rulings said (the state has an obligation to fund an “adequate” education; the duty to support schools lies with the state, not just towns and cities), how the AG’s office is challenging the court’s reasoning, why current plaintiffs contend is the state’s failure to live up to the rulings, and where things seem to be headed.
A hiker who did everything right had to be carried off the Huntington Ravine Trail on Saturday. And why it’s a good lesson. In a long FB post, Lakes Region Search and Rescue dissects Saturday’s rescue of 30-year-old Sydney Cox after she fell and fractured an ankle. An experienced hiker, Cox misjudged a step, heard the crack of bone, and discovered she couldn’t walk. So for the next two hours, she crawled and scooted over rocky terrain with a companion until she realized going farther would put her and rescuers at risk. Even so, she saved rescuers three-quarters of a mile of carryout: “Anyone who has participated in a litter carry over White Mountain terrain understands how significant that is,” LRS&R writes. Lots more at the link.
Biting the hand that feeds you, fire truck division. We’ll just let the NH State Police tell the story after fire crews early yesterday morning responded to a house fire in Dalton. Troopers learned the homeowner had “stolen a Whitefield Fire & Rescue vehicle…then drove the stolen vehicle east on Faraway Road. Further investigation determined that while driving the stolen rescue vehicle, [he] struck another Whitefield Fire & Rescue engine actively engaged in firefighting operations, drove over multiple water supply lines, and narrowly missed three firefighters. Wooden fences at two separate properties were also damaged.” Oh, and there’s more…
Both NH and VT see improvements in youth mental health. The results from the federally mandated Youth Risk Behavior Survey for 2025 are in, and they both show, among other things, declines in the percentages of high schoolers reporting substance use and reporting feeling sad or hopeless.
In NH, the state Department of Health & Human Services said in its press release yesterday, students reporting persistent sadness or hopelessness fell to 34 percent in 2025, down from 44.2 percent in 2021. Students reporting their mental health was “not good” most or all of the time fell to 26 percent from 36 percent. And more students report feeling connected to their communities.
Meanwhile, in VT, Vermont Public’s Lola Duffort reported Monday, 23 percent of high school students reported being sad or hopeless in 2025, compared to a high of 31 percent in 2019. They also report less vaping and alcohol use, though no significant change in misuse of painkillers. About one in ten reported being food insecure.
And in case you were wondering, neither state plans changes to mail-in voting in wake of US Supreme Court ruling. The ruling earlier this week allowed a controversial executive order signed by President Trump to proceed without actually ruling on its legality; the order gives the USPS a deciding role in whether to send mail-in ballots—and lets the Dept. of Homeland Security create lists of voters in each state it considers US citizens and therefore eligible to vote. But there are other legal challenges to the USPS directives, and they remain paused.
So, in NH, which allows absentee voting by mail, Secy of State David Scanlan tells NHPR he’s just keeping an eye out. “At the national level there is still litigation pending over the President’s executive order related to mail-in ballots,” he said in a statement. “Implementation of the Executive Order for the 2026 elections is uncertain. We are monitoring these actions along with the Attorney General’s Office and will make further comment when warranted.”
In VT, where all registered voters are due to receive mail-in ballots next month, Secy of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas said in a statement yesterday that it’s full speed ahead. “I am disappointed by the Supreme Court’s ruling,” she wrote, “but it does not change the status quo: USPS cannot move forward with its rule-making process until all legal challenges are resolved, and plenty remain. As such, my office and Vermont’s municipal clerks will continue our work to prepare for the General Election this November, which we expect will employ the usual universal vote-by-mail format Vermonters have become accustomed to.”
2.2. That’s, on average, how many people live in a home in Vermont—one of the smallest average household sizes in the country—and it’s key to understanding the state’s housing shortage, writes Carly Berlin in VTDigger. “Even without more people moving into the state, the same population is taking up more homes – and Vermont has not built enough new ones to keep up,” she writes. Partly this is because the state’s population is aging, but parents haven’t moved out of the house where they raised their kids, either because they can’t afford to or don’t want to. And the lower the household size, the more houses a town needs for the same number of people.
New words for our tech hellscape. In The Guardian, Stuart Heritage reveals 18 freshly coined words demanded by our tech-dominated world. Self-checkout registers that never fail to fail? Baggravation. “If you buy something light, such as a birthday card, you often have to slam it down into the bagging area for it to be recognized.” Trying to work on a train? Schrödinger’s wifi. “Either you are connected to a wifi signal so bad as to qualify as functionally useless, or your device is lying to you.” And parcel liveblogging, the stream of emails updating you on an order. “You will also receive the ‘We attempted delivery!’ email (accompanied by a photo of the corner of a shipping container nowhere near your house).”
So, could you keep your composure? In the Pyrenees earlier this month, a group of cyclists came on a flock of enormous birds, riding the thermals coming off the mountains. Then they rounded a bend and discovered dozens of the birds—griffon vultures, which have 9-foot wingspans—hanging out on the road and the cliff faces. The birds startled and took flight… and here’s what it looked like.
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday’s Daybreak.
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Temple Mountain at The Fells. The Peterborough NH-based singer-songwriter (who goes by Eric Impallomeni when not on stage) has been heading in a more pop direction, though his interest in psychology and day gig as a case manager have blended into his songwriting. 6 pm at the John Hay Estate at the Fells in Newbury, NH.
Rose Hip Jam plays Artistree’s Music on the Hill. The summer music series has a few concerts left. Tonight, the trio of Kerry Rosenthal, Steve Glazer, and Eric Bronstein with everything from 1930s classics to modern tunes across folk, country, blues, rock, and jazz. Green Mountain Food Truck will also be on site. 6:30 pm in S. Pomfret.
The Choral Arts Foundation’s Summer Sing. It’s the last of the Wednesdays-in-August series, open to anyone who wants to sing for fun. This evening, St. Thomas’s Ed Broms and organist/pianist-about-town Henry Danaher lead a session of The Duruflé Requiem and other choral works. 6:30 pm at the UU Church on Rte. 5 in Norwich.
Garret Keizer at the Norwich Bookstore. The celebrated VT essayist, poet, and novelist has a new collection of essays out, Starting From Paterson. That’s Paterson, NJ, and as Chelsea Edgar wrote in Seven Days back in June, in the book Keizer “traces his mature preoccupations — including, but not limited to, organized labor, God and married life — back to their north Jersey roots.” Even when he’s writing about the Price Chopper in St. J. He’ll be reading from the collection starting at 7 pm.
The Ellington Collective in New London. For tonight’s Summer Music Associates concert, The Ellington Collective “brings a vibrant and rhythmically charged concert celebrating the Latin and Brazilian–influenced repertoire of Duke Ellington, reimagined with fiery grooves and deep swing. Led by acclaimed saxophonist Dan Moretti, the ensemble explores Ellington’s music through Afro-Cuban and Brazilian rhythmic lenses.” 7 pm at First Baptist Church.
At the Center at Eastman: The North Country Chordsmen, the VoxStars, and Treble in the Valley Chorus. The three a cappella choruses show off the range and skills of the Hanover chapter of the Barbershop Harmony Society. 7 pm in the Draper Room.
And for today...
Dolly Parton, Jan. 19, 1946 - Aug. 25, 2026.
Too many things to choose from, but this’ll do.
See you tomorrow.
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Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Poetry editor: Michael Lipson Associate Editors: Jonea Gurwitt, Sam Gurwitt
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