Arts & Life
NH beekeepers say climate change is stressing out their bees
By AMANDA PIRANI
Lee Alexander has been keeping bees most of his life, and learned from his grandfather and great uncle. He’s quick to mention he’s no beekeeping expert, but in 50 years, he’s seen a thing or two.And this year has really thrown him for a loop.“I've...
A Life: Catherine Butman Eastburn ‘would do anything for anybody, period’
By ULLA-BRITT LIBRE
ORFORD — Catherine Butman Eastburn would sit in a folding chair at Lower Baker Pond’s boat launch in Orford and watch the loons for hours at a time.As a community science observer for the New Hampshire Loon Preservation Committee and an amateur...
Annual Cornish Fair organizers take pains to make it worthwhile
By LIZ SAUCHELLI
CORNISH — Ruth Ferland carefully poured a jug of maple syrup into tiny containers lined up on a lunch tray in a red booth at the Cornish Fairgrounds.After the row was finished, she placed a lid on each one and put the tray aside. Next, she began...
Over Easy: Do cell phones make for geniuses or gnats?
By DAN MACKIE
Everyone is worrying about phones in schools. They are a powerful distraction, like slot machines for gamblers, or Cheetos for people addicted to enriched cornmeal and the color orange.If you’d been in a high school lately, you would have noticed that...
Upper Valley karaoke scene sees post-COVID revival
By MARION UMPLEBY
There’s something uncanny about performance spaces just before the first visitors arrive. A room that will soon be filled with bodies and sound is eerily quiet. The unused props are the only hint of what is to come. This is how it felt at 7:45 on a...
Out & About: Beech leaf disease threatens Vermont trees
By LIZ SAUCHELLI
Vermont officials are seeking the public’s help in tracking a new beech tree disease that’s spreading throughout the state.Beech Leaf Disease was first detected last October in Vernon and Dummerston, said Josh Halman, forest health program manager...
Mountain Lions in NH? Some locals believe the big cats still roam the Granite State
By KATE DARIO
The last mountain lion in New Hampshire was killed in Lee in 1853 — at least, that’s if you believe the state’s Fish and Game department. And plenty of people don’t.Despite a lack of any conclusive evidence for the past 150 years, people across the...
Public phones make a comeback in White River Valley
By ALEX HANSON
Patrick Schlott is still a young man, a 2016 graduate of what was then called Vermont Technical College, in Randolph. But he is old enough to remember when payphones were still ubiquitous.When he was a student at Montpelier High School, from 2008 to...
Art Notes: Joan Osborne to headline Lebanon Opera House’s Nexus festival
By ALEX HANSON
For its first three years, Lebanon Opera House’s Nexus Music and Arts Festival has specialized in bringing less-heralded acts to an Upper Valley audience.The thinking, as opera house Executive Director Joe Clifford has explained it in years past, is...
Barn beautification project
Jack Myers, of Norwich, works on painting one of the many barns at his family’s farm on July 25. Meeting House Farm has been in his family for 110 years. The family is sprucing up the barns for an August celebration.
Vermonters planting native gardens to help pollinators prosper
By KATE KAMPNER
Julie Parker-Dickinson, a master gardener and a second-grade teacher, was encouraging kids about their futures back in 2017 when she realized something: She didn’t feel she was doing anything to ensure a bright future would still be there for them.She...
A Look Back: Longtime Upper Valley dance band Woody and his Ramblers got its start with ‘kitchen junkets’
By STEVE TAYLOR
For many hundreds of Upper Valley folks, the soundtrack of their lives in the late 1940s, the 1950s and into the 1960s was the music of Woody and the Ramblers, a band composed of five local Greatest Generation guys who traversed the region for as many...
For many, this July was unusually hot
By CLAIRE SULLIVAN
No, it wasn’t just you. This July was extra hot in many places, setting records in some parts of New Hampshire and elsewhere. That includes for tens of thousands of people in greater Manchester, who had their warmest July at least this century,...
League of NH Craftsmen board sees wave of resignations, says annual fair will still go on
By KATE DARIO
When the League of NH Craftsmen kicks off its annual fair in Newbury, N.H., this weekend, it’ll be doing so without its board chair and four other board members.Those five people — representing half of the organization’s 10-member board — resigned in...
Dog Mountain cancels summer festival as St. Johnsbury floods wreak havoc
By THEO WELLS-SPACKMAN
Dog Mountain in St. Johnsbury, Vt., has canceled its “summer dog party” planned for this weekend following another round of flooding in the region. Saturday’s event should have seen the grounds filled with musicians, local food vendors and, above all,...
Couple expands Caribbean food operation with new West Lebanon restaurant
By LIZ SAUCHELLI
WEST LEBANON — Balvin Bowen and Carline Roberge never intended to open a restaurant — let alone two — but customers who love the couple’s Jamaican and Haitian food had other thoughts.The couple, who live in West Lebanon, got their start almost 15...
Art Notes: Voloz Collective brings physical theater to Upper Valley
By ALEX HANSON
Five years ago this summer, Olivia Zerphy had just graduated from a theater school in Paris and was on her way back to her native Vermont, where she’d secured a residency for the Voloz Collective, the small theater company she and some fellow students...
Why does Vermont keep flooding? It's complicated, but experts warn it could become the norm
By PATRICK WHITTLE and MICHAEL CASEY
Vermont is flooding. Not just this week, two weeks ago and a year before that, but experts say the state could see catastrophic events like these for the foreseeable future. Climate change is fueling stronger, more persistent storms and the state’s...
100 and still mowing
Betty Ward, of Hanover, center, breaks in to a round of introductions to remind her guests of her name, even though they were all gathered in her honor on her 100th birthday on Monday.Ward celebrated with 12 friends, former students and colleagues...
New data shows Vermont’s emissions trending slightly downward
By EMMA COTTON
In 2021, Vermonters emitted fewer greenhouse gases than any year since 1990 except 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically changed how much people traveled and heated their homes, according to a new inventory the Agency of Natural Resources...