GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
And welcome to the final CoffeeBreak. Daybreak returns on Monday.Time for Lost Woods! It's Friday, and every week in this spot—CoffeeBreak, Daybreak, whatever—Lebanon author and illustrator DB Johnson (Henry Hikes to Fitchburg and other classics) chronicles the doings in Lost Woods. Scroll right to move on to the next panel or left to catch up on previous weeks. If you've missed a week (or more), check out the archive and synopsis behind the three little parallel lines at the top right.And it's also time for the News Quiz. Each Friday, Hanover's Kevin McCurdy and Bill Miles test your knowledge of what's gone on around the region that week—and ask your opinion on a burning question or two. "Inexhaustible, this mountain and I / gaze at each other, it alone remaining." David Hinton is a celebrated and much-honored translator of classic Chinese poetry who lives in E. Calais, VT. Over three decades, he figures he's climbed nearby Hunger Mountain over 300 times (its name graces his 2012 memoir, as well). So when To the Best of Our Knowledge radio producers Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson got together with Hinton to talk about mountains, their place in ancient Chinese poetry, and how they've shaped his view of life and spirituality, it made sense to head upwards...And sometimes, it makes sense to head downwards... Some years back, National Geographic photographer and Dartmouth alum Pete McBride set out to thru-hike the 750 miles of the Grand Canyon. Cramping and blistered, he had to stop after 60 miles. In the end it took him and a companion 8 trips over 13 months. "The canyon respects nobody," says McBride. But out of that effort came a book and documentary, and back in 2019 the Dartmouth Alumni Mag ran the story and a jaw-dropping set of his photos.Of course, sometimes it makes sense to... Well, actually, does it ever make sense to photograph potatoes? Apparently, because it turns out there's a "Potato Photographer of the Year" contest. The results were just announced. Finally, time to get lost. When I was young, I could do that for hours (not literally, although it's been known to happen in the fall around here) in mazes. This is an intriguing set by a New York artist named Sean C. Jackson that ran in The Guardian a while back. He gets his inspiration from cities. “I enjoy building a little world that you get lost in,” he says. “You’re almost pulled into exploring it.”
Let's ease out of CoffeeBreak with Fleetwood Mac. But... not Fleetwood Mac. Infinity Song, five brothers and sisters from NYC—born in Detroit but moved to NJ, just outside New York, by their musician/producer father, John Boyd, and now performers, songwriters, and producers in their own right—do a cover of "Dreams" that somehow manages both to be true to a song everyone's pretty much got in their DNA and also to be entirely original. (Thanks, TD!)
And that's it for this summer's version of CoffeeBreak! Thanks so much for sticking with it for so long. It'll be back from time to time—just for a day here and there—in upcoming months.
See you Monday.
Daybreak Where You Are: The Album. Photos of daybreak and sunsets around the Upper Valley, Vermont, New Hampshire, and the US, sent in by readers.
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Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Banner by Tom Haushalter Poetry editor: Michael Lipson About Rob About Tom About Michael
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