GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Mostly (but not completely) cloudy. Another system is headed this way, but it looks like it won’t get here until this evening, so until then, we get more clouds than sun, with highs reaching about 70. Tonight’s weather system will probably be packing heavier rain than yesterday’s and will settle in overnight, along with a slight chance of thunderstorms. Overnight lows around 60.
Green pastures. Two iconic Upper Valley views during our recent spate of sunny days.
High on a hill in WRJ, late in the day, sheep contentedly grazing their fill along Jericho Road, from Lauran Corson;
And out toward the Strafford end of Sawnee Bean Road, cows lazily headed toward the barn, from Peter Burghardt.
Time again for Sketchbreak! Charity and Sylvia author and former VT cartoonist laureate Tillie Walden returns with “The Upper Valley Citizen Waits”—a cartoon whose subject will be instantly familiar to many of you, but about which the less said here, the better (guess you’ll just have to check it out). Hit the little image to the left, or the headline.
Leb Police say two more animal attacks reported around Centerra. As you’ll remember, the first occurred on Sunday. Since then, the LPD said in a press release yesterday, it’s heard of two more “involving what appears to be the same wild animal. The most recent attack occurred last evening. The animal has been described by witnesses as either a gray fox or a fisher and has reportedly displayed unusually aggressive behavior toward people." Anyone in the area should “use caution and remain aware of their surroundings, particularly when walking near wooded, brush-covered, or other areas where wildlife may be present.” WMUR last night went up with footage from a surveillance camera of the first attack
A new VT engineering college with Upper Valley roots. NPR’s Jon Marcus yesterday offered an early look at The Greenway Institute, which plans to open its doors next year in the former VT College of Fine Arts in Montpelier. Years in the making, it’s aiming “to change not only how higher education is delivered, but at what price,” Marcus reports, using real-world training (like how to cook your own meals) and avoiding layers of administration and nonacademic amenities. Students will take two years of classes before moving into supervised work. Norwich Solar co-founder Troy McBride and outgoing state Rep. Rebecca Holcombe are two key players behind it.
The World Famous Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum lives up to its name. Until recently, the little museum in front of KIS Thrift in WRJ, built and maintained by KIS’s marketing manager, Maggie Cassidy, was mostly famous in the Upper Valley. But last Friday, a woman from NH was driving by, noticed the sign, and made her boyfriend turn around. Her first Instagram post (at the burgundy link) took off; so did a followup. Suddenly, national interest in the little structure off of Route 5 has blown up, and the museum’s own Instagram page has decupled (yes it is a word) its own following in the past few days. Clearly: stay tuned.
SPONSORED: Osher at Dartmouth’s fall term has arrived! Offering more than 60 courses spanning history, science, the arts, current events, philosophy, and beyond, there’s sure to be a topic that matches your interest! New instructors, new topics, and lively discussion all await this term, with plenty of opportunities to engage your fellow learners face to face or online. Don’t miss the many special events and travel opportunities open to both members and non-members! Osher at Dartmouth: Where learning, connection, and discovery meet. Sponsored by Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Dartmouth.
Another reason to look forward to Labor Day Weekend: The bridge work on I-89 will be taking a break, too. At least, that’s the plan, NHDOT’s Andrew Silovich tells the Valley News’s Alex Ebrahimi. “As of right now, barring any major catastrophe, there won’t be any lane closures up here Friday, and we won’t be back on the road until either [next] Tuesday afternoon, more than likely Wednesday morning,” he says. On the other hand, Silovich also says that today’s the day the 10A exit ramp from I-91 northbound to I-89 south will “probably have to close.”
“When should I take my hummingbird feeders down?” No need to rush, writes Megan Massa in the new “Field Guide to September” from the VT Center for Ecostudies: Hummingbirds decide to migrate based on shortening days, not because you happened to keep your feeder out. Spencer Hardy tackles yellow jackets, whose reputation for aggressiveness “isn’t totally unfounded,” he writes—though he also describes them as “carnivores with a sweet tooth.” And after a year in the waters of northern New England, writes Michael Hallworth, Common Green Darners are starting to head south, possibly as far as the Caribbean—if they can avoid kestrels and merlins.
In My Son’s Story, riveted by “the good men and women… the wounded, the warped, the compromised, and above all, the human, good ones.” Nadine Gordimer’s 1990 novel (explicitly cited by the committee that gave her the Nobel Prize in Literature the following year) is about a family being torn apart by politics, apartheid, and an affair. That affair between an anti-apartheid activist and a white woman, Peter Orner writes in this week’s Enthusiasms, “can’t be simply an affair or a love story or whatever you want to call it. Like it or not, the domestic can’t be separated from the national… The book is a personal tragedy brought on by a decades-long crime against humanity.” It is, he says, a book for these times.
SPONSORED: Winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race returns to Lebanon Opera House! On Saturday, Sept. 19, Sasha Velour—the acclaimed theater artist and graduate of White River Junction's Center for Cartoon Studies—returns to LOH with Travesty, “one of the most outstanding performances presently on stage” (Broadway World). This theatrical tour de force features runway-worthy looks, inventive stage design, and a killer soundtrack. Travesty will leave you dancing in the aisles and inspired to change the world. Sponsored by Lebanon Opera House.
NH has sidestepped the data center fight. But that may end. On Monday, state consumer advocate Don Kreis tweeted out that in a meeting, an Eversource Energy exec had brought up a data center project of “up to 200 MW” for the town of Bow. Now, in NH Bulletin, Molly Rains reports that federal filings by Eversource “describe an agreement for a preliminary, exploratory study on the ‘viability’ of connecting a 350-megawatt project to the grid”; Eversource is acting at the request of the owner of the former Merrimack Station coal-fired power plant in Bow. The study is the first step in a long process; Gov. Kelly Ayotte has backed a moratorium on data centers.
People in NH’s disability care system still are suffering abuse and neglect. Last November, NH Bulletin’s William Skipworth sparked legislative reforms and drew national attention with a three-part series on abuse, neglect, and deaths in NH’s disability care system. Now, newly obtained records show that 21 people were sexually, physically, or emotionally abused in the system in the first half of 2026, 53 were neglected, and 30 people within the system died. As Skipworth puts it, the records “show that the harm has continued.” In July, Gov. Kelly Ayotte signed a bill into law creating an oversight commission for the system.
A lovely reminder of the wonders of running water, a printed book, a pair of glasses. Jordan Dworkin’s Ordinary Abundance leads us through an apartment filled with—we might think—commonplace items. But scroll through the quotes and notes about what life was like before each one existed, and they come into focus. Edward Bellamy in 1888, about electric lights: “The people, almost with bated breath, stood overwhelmed with awe, as if in the presence of the supernatural.” Elizabeth Barrett Browning in 1843, about photographs: “The very shadow of the person lying there fixed for ever!” Clicking on each person’s name takes you to an original source.
Turns out, a Ring camera at night is the perfect spot for a spider to spin a web. Especially when the web and the spider are all lit up. (Just click anywhere to get rid of the popup.)
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday’s Daybreak.
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HEADS UP
The Jim Yeager Band at Artistree’s Music on the Hill. The VT singer-songwriter “brings nearly three decades of writing and performing experience to the stage, blending rock, folk, blues, and Americana with heartfelt, original songwriting.” 6:30 pm, with the Green Mountain Gumbo food truck on site if you don’t feel like bringing dinner.
The Etna Library hosts Jay Barrett on the history and geology of Mink Brook. The local author and historian has a new book, Mink Brook & Home, and he’ll be basing his talk and presentation on his research: How glaciers shaped the present-day landscape; the origins of the stones that were used to build the many stone walls that still exist in the region; rural Hanover to this day; how glacial Lake Hitchcock intertwined with Mink Brook, and how the “Hanover Plain” came to be. 7 pm in Trumbull Hall.
Michael Brosnan at the Norwich Bookstore. The Exeter, NH-based writer and poet has a new collection out, Pareidolia. He’s the author of several previous collections, as well as of a 1997 profile of a school in Providence, RI: Against the Current: How One School Struggled and Succeeded with At-Risk Teens. 7 pm.
And for today...
You probably know Peter Bence, the Hungarian pianist and composer who's got a massive following for his reworking of rock classics that make imaginative and athletic use of the piano's various parts. But, unless you’re Hungarian, you may not know Péter Besenyei, the 70-year-old aerobatics pilot, world champion air racer, creator of several mind-bending aerobatics moves, the first guy to fly upside down under Budapest’s Széchenyi Chain Bridge (just a few meters above the Danube), pretty much the creator back in 2003 of the Red Bull Air Race World Championship, and, someone once said, “the third most famous citizen of Hungary.” Put them together, along with a Steinway in a field, and you get this…
See you tomorrow.
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