RABBIT RABBIT, UPPER VALLEY!
And to usher in September, an okay day... And definitely cooler. There's high pressure up in Canada edging its way this direction and towing dry air along with it, so for today we get cloudy skies, highs around 70, winds from the northwest....but no rain. Tonight, though, it looks like we'll be on the northern edge of Ida's remnants, with a chance of rain this evening becoming likely as the night goes on, heavier the farther south you go. Mid-50s.Day's end. The tranquil waters and settling sky on Lake Fairlee Monday evening, by John Pietkiewicz.Meriden library may move... across the street. At least, that's what Thom and Amy Lappin are hoping. They operate Poor Thom's Tavern across from the current library, which is slated to disappear to make room for a new version approved at Town Meeting. The Lappins have proposed turning the current library into an event site and bed-and-breakfast next to the tavern, reports Tim Camerato in the Valley News. The town had originally planned to demolish the building, but then took out an ad in the VN seeking a buyer for "removal." If negotiations bear out, the town wants the building moved by mid-October.Dartmouth engineers land NASA grants to study icy planets. The grants include $750K to work with researchers at UNH and CRREL to develop ice "analogs" here on Earth that will help them study the chemistry of planetary ices and complex ice/brine/sediment systems; and $500K to investigate ice cores representing the icy oceans we may eventually find on other planets. "Given the importance of ice-ocean worlds in our search for life beyond Earth, understanding the geophysics of planetary ices is incredibly important in determining how these worlds work," says research scientist Jacob Buffo.SPONSORED: LISTEN has a $25,000 match! Please help us secure a generous anonymous matching donation to be used to stock the Food Pantry and Community Dinner Hall closets with groceries for the season. And we’ll set some funds aside to buy fresh produce all winter! Sponsored by LISTEN."Whenever we see a big invasive something come through—chestnut blight, elm—this kind of ecosystem vanishes. It’s gone; it never returns." That's Dave Lutz, an environmental scientist at Dartmouth, talking to the VN's Claire Potter about the efforts he and his team are making to document and record the college-owned Clement Woodlot in Corinth before the emerald ash borer decimates it. The forest is 40 percent ash, and sensors will record everything from snow depth to the amount of carbon released by the soil. They will also record the impact of different strategies to improve resilience."Covid in the 603." New Hampshire Bulletin is launching a series aimed at melding the hard data contained in the state's Covid dashboard with the stories of how people are coping—with the disease and with the pandemic. NH They're looking for residents to share their experiences—"the joyous ones and the difficult ones"—along with questions and insights. And in this intro article, Annmarie Timmins explores the dashboard itself and some of what it tells us: hospitalizations are highest along the I-93 corridor, the vaccination rate among women is slightly higher than among men...End of eviction moratorium ramps up pressure in NH to distribute rental assistance. So far, reports NH Bulletin's Ethen DeWitt, the federally funded, state-administered Emergency Rental Assistance Program has handed out $38 million of the $200 million available, with some 40 percent of applicants still waiting to hear. But with the US Supreme Court's rejection last Thursday of extending the federal eviction moratorium, housing advocates say the rental program is tenants' best shot at keeping their housing. Agencies that distribute the money have added staff to try to speed up the process.NH school choice program goes into effect despite concern about the rules. The program, passed by the GOP-dominated legislature this year, creates "Education Savings Accounts" for families below 300 percent of the federal poverty level to use taxpayer funds for tuition at private schools, home schools, or other non-public options. Its temporary rules were approved quickly by the state board of ed, reports NHPR's Sarah Gibson, despite questions from legislative lawyers about a lack of oversight of the private organization overseeing the program and unclear rules on how the money can be spent.
To the list of pandemic shortages, add another: ivermectin. Farm supply stores in NH are putting the anti-parasitic drug under lock and key or restricting sales to known customers with actual horses or livestock, reports Teddy Rosenbluth in the Monitor. That's because, of course, some people have come to believe the drug will cure Covid-19, though there's no evidence. “If you use it on goats, you have to withdraw from drinking the milk for seven days and from eating the meat for 14 days. So, why people think it's a good idea to put that into their body I have no idea," says one goat farmer."If the pest did get established, it could affect our grapes, hops, apples, and maple." That’s VT’s director of plant health, Cary Giguere, sounding the most Vermont alarm ever, regarding an invasive insect with devastating implications. The AP reports live specimens of something called the spotted lanternfly were found in a recent out-of-state shipment unloaded in Rutland. And if not snuffed out, this fecund, voracious (and deceptively handsome) lanternfly can threaten the agricultural economy. If you see one, says George Hamilton, an entomologist at Rutgers, “First thing you should do is kill it.”VT schools reporting Covid cases, but state won't start until mid-September. As of Tuesday, report Erin Petenko and Lola Duffort in VTDigger, six schools in the state have independently reported positive cases among students or staff. The state, meanwhile, hopes to have school-case data online "within the next two weeks," a health department spokesman says. “The state has put out a two-page recommendation that speaks to 10 days of masking and then evaluate,” says Rutland North Supt. Jeanné Collins. “And now they’re saying that we won’t even get statewide data until after 15 days.” Two Heroes walk into a brewpub... But no joke, one under-the-radar little beermaker in South Hero—Two Heroes Brewing—is humbly on the rise from digs in a former bagel shop to the new brewpub it’s about to break ground on. Along with two other nanobreweries profiled by Jordan Barry in Seven Days, Two Heroes signals a trend in brewing: small by design. Limiting production to a few barrels often means more room for experimentation. And we’re talking sour gose made with sumac and red currants, not just another double IPA. Put these on your foliage itinerary, and someday say you knew them when.Whose woods these are I think I know... You'll find those words—and the rest of "Stopping by Woods"—on the wall of the room in The Stone House in Shaftsbury, VT, where Robert Frost wrote them. In Seven Days, Sally Pollak makes a pilgrimage to the house, now a museum designed to show visitors the place where Frost lived and worked from 1920 to 1929 (and where, ironically, he was living when he won his first Pulitzer, for New Hampshire). Among the framed letters is one to Robert Untermeyer describing Frost's attempt to hike the length of the Long Trail. Added bonus: Jay Parini on "Stopping by Woods."So... What if all you had to play your chosen sport with was a bowling ball? Like golf, or darts, or field hockey, or ping pong? Sam Buchanan, an independent British filmmaker, pulls back the curtain on that world in his new short film, "Every Sport a Bowling Bowl." Fair warning: Do not be eating cereal and milk while you watch this. (Thanks to the wonderful newsletter The Browser for pointing it out.)
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Foy Vance did not follow the traditional path for an Irish singer-songwriter. He may have been born in Bangor, Northern Ireland, but as an infant he moved with his family to Oklahoma, where his father was an itinerant preacher. So Vance got to hear gospel, soul, and blues at an impressionable age, in the out-of-the-way churches his father visited. The family returned to Belfast when he was five, and as Vance grew up he kept those influences—he started out as lead singer with a Belfast-based soul group, Soul Truth, and the music on his albums has veered from his native land to blues and Americana.
part of a film shot at the historic Dunvarlich house in Aberfeldy, Scotland, where he lives now.
See you tomorrow.
Daybreak Where You Are: The Album. Photos of daybreak around the Upper Valley, Vermont, New Hampshire, and the US, sent in by readers.
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