GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Here comes the change. Today will still be warmer than normal, but there's a cold front coming in from the Great Lakes, and ahead of it we'll see generally cloudy skies (after the fog clears, of course). Slight chance of rain this afternoon, a chance this evening, a likelihood tomorrow. Highs today somewhere around 70, lows only around 60, winds from the south.An extremely curious deer family. Checking out Erin Donahue's trail cam in E. Thetford. Ted Levin writes: "For those skeptics of evolution—there are a few of you out there (more than one in six high school bio teachers present creationism as scientifically credible)—the SARS-CoV-2 virus is alive and evolving in white-tailed deer three times faster than in people. New host. New opportunities. While Covid is currently relatively rare in the human population, deer have become a reservoir for Alpha, Gamma, Delta, and Omicron strains. Spillover ... spillback. It's not a one-way street. We need wolves and catamounts to balance the scales."Regional planners to appeal permit for "farm outlet store" just off I-91 in Hartland. The board of the Two Rivers-Ottauquechee Regional Commission last week approved the challenge to a permit issued by the state environmental commission for a 9,000-square-foot, "traditional barn-style structure" that will include a take-out deli, bakery, and small eating area, with parking for 46 vehicles outside. In its initial filing, reports Tom Ayres in the VT Standard, the Florida-based company behind the plan says 60-70 percent of products (by revenue) will come from Sunnymede Farm just outside Hartland Three Corners.As S. Royalton High grad lies partially paralyzed in Idaho hospital, community rallies. Kyle Spaulding, who's 25 and grew up in Tunbridge, swerved to avoid an elk in Wyoming three weeks back and hit a tree. He was discovered by a passerby, reports Tim Calabro in the Herald, and airlifted to a trauma unit in eastern Idaho. Doctors have told him he may not walk again; Spaulding says he's determined to do so. His mother, Jonni Huntley, has been out there ever since he called her on his way to surgery. She's set up a GoFundMe campaign, and SoRo baseball supporters—Spaulding "was a fixture" on the team, Calabro writes—are organizing a benefit golf tournament.Ottauquechee is on her way to Guatemala. Nope, not the river—this one's a broad-winged hawk, banded near her nest in Taftsville as part of a VINS joint effort with the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary's Broad-winged Hawk Project. She also had a small GPS pack placed on her back, so researchers knew when she took off the second week of September. By the end of the month, she was out of the US and rounding the Gulf through Mexico. As of Oct. 2, she was flying through Chiapas. You can trace her route and learn more at the link.SPONSORED: Picture your family in golden afternoon light! Early fall colors + late summer glow = vibrant photos that capture and celebrate this moment in your lives. A photo shoot with Britton Mann is joyful and fun. You’ll come away with beautiful and enduring images, perfect for your holiday card or an inspired album. Hit the burgundy link or go here for a portfolio and more information. Sponsored by Britton Mann Photography.With proposed new downtown fire station, Leb officials face tough choices. They consider the $22.7 million project crucial for firefighter safety, reports Patrick Adrian in the Valley News; the current station, built in 1954, lacks decontamination facilities and its living quarters are subject to fumes from the vehicle bays. "We didn’t sign up to work in a facility that puts us at more risk," fire chief Jim Wheatley told the city council recently. The challenge, says city manager Shaun Mulholland, is that Leb has drained its reserves for capital improvements; the result is likely to be higher taxes and some service cuts.War, fate, death, sovereignty, fertility... The Celtic goddess The Morrígan covers a lot of territory, and for dancer and choreographer Erin McNulty, she's been at the center of her work for the past few years. Out of her research, McNulty has created a live music, dance, and poetry work specific to the Path of Life Sculpture Garden at Artisans Park in Windsor, to be performed next weekend. Susan Apel gives a sense of what's ahead in Artful, including six dancers and a trio led by fiddler Emerson Gale.Hiking Kinda Close to Home: Mount Israel, Sandwich, NH. The Trails Alliance checks in with a suggestion to check out Mount Israel, which sits at the southern edge of the White Mountains. The Wentworth and Mead Trails offer moderately difficult routes to the summit, which boasts views of surrounding 4000-footers and the Lakes Region. The Wentworth Trail, from the south, is the most popular and direct route. The Mead Trail, from the north, follows the Guinea Pond Trail before splitting off and heading toward the summit. As always, check weather and trail conditions before hiking in the Whites.So... How much do you know about what's been going on in the Upper Valley? Because Daybreak's News Quiz has some questions for you. Like... Where's that new pop-up café going to be in WRJ? And what did Reading, VT just close? Those and other questions at the link.But wait! How closely were you following VT and NH?
Because Seven Days wants to know if you know why a Plattsburgh man was banned from using the Lake Champlain ferry.
And NHPR's got a whole set of questions about doings around the Granite State—like, why was Keene libertarian activist Ian Freeman sentenced to eight years in federal prison?
The White Mountains in words and music. Two years ago, acclaimed NH author Howard Mansfield published a collection of essays on the history of Americans seeking their own Eden. One essay was on how 19th century painters transformed Americans' views of the White Mountains—and basically created NH's tourism industry. This year, Mansfield and equally acclaimed musician Ben Cosgrove took to the road for performances of Mansfield reading about the history of people who lived and worked in the mountains, and Cosgrove accompanying him. Filmmaker Elizabeth Myer captured it, and VT Public has just put it online; Mary Engisch also talks to her and to Cosgrove.Pumping out the tank just couldn't wait? We'll report it straight: At about 5 yesterday morning, the VT State Police received a report that a septic truck had been stolen from along Route 5 in Westminster. It was found later in the day in New York State. The VSP's asking anyone with information to give them a call."The three minutes are not up! You just said that because what I’m saying is the truth. It hurts.” Things got a little heated at a Pawlet, VT Selectboard meeting Tuesday night attended by Slate Ridge owner Daniel Banyai—including an argument over how long he'd been speaking. Earlier in the day, an environmental court judge had declined Pawlet's request to extend Banyai's arrest warrant, so he was free to attend, and he had some choice words for the board: enough of them that the board suspended its meeting and police escorted Banyai out of the building, reports VTDigger's Ethan Weinstein.In VT, Covid hospitalizations double in a week. The state reported 64 admissions over the past week, writes Erin Petenko in VTDigger, compared to 31 the week before. At the same time, state health department spokesman Ben Truman tells her that other indicators haven't jumped. On the other side of the river, NH has also seen an uptick, with 93 hospitalizations as of Oct. 5, compared to 84 a week ago.If chestnuts are so great, why don't we see more of them? The American chestnut tree numbered some four billion in the 19th century. By the 1950s, zero. Now, there’s a movement to raise new varieties that can resist the blight that killed them off. Seven Days' Suzanne Podhaizer spoke with Allan "Buzz" Ferver about his efforts to grow varieties that will thrive in VT’s colder climate. He raises chestnut saplings, which he sells to customers, along with hazelnuts, butternuts, and other trees. "We want trees that produce the most, tastiest chestnuts every year so we can reinvent chestnuts as a staple food."Photographing wild animals is serious business. Except when it isn’t. Finalists for the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards have been announced, and there's not a dud in the lot. The winners will be announced in November, so now's your chance to vote for the People’s Choice Award… Bear cubs sharing a chuckle? Grey fox enjoying a stogie? Me, I'm pulling for Air-Guitar-Roo.The Friday Vordle. If you're new to Vordle, you should know that fresh ones appear on weekends using words from the Friday Daybreak, and you can get a reminder email each weekend morning. If you'd like that, sign up here.
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Well, for starters, it's First Friday in WRJ and there's a lot going on around town.
The Center for Cartoon Studies' new Applied Cartooning Lab is holding an open house from 5-8 with cartoonists, zines, and comics on hand.
From 5 to 6:30, COVER is celebrating its new bookstore and its 25th anniversary with an open house, live music, Red Kite Candy ice cream and free tastings of a new River Roost brew (maybe not together?), and stories about downtown WRJ and that building in particular from Steve and Rob Taylor—the VN's Liz Sauchelli has the details and the backstory.
From 5-9, JAM is throwing its first-ever JAMmy Awards party with music from Allison Fay Brown, circus by Liam & Ripley, an awards ceremony, and a dance party.
At the Main Street Museum, folklorist and explorer of VT's darker byways Joe Citro will be on hand starting at 7 pm for a reading and discussion highlighting “Vermont's Top Ten Terrors.”
Long River Gallery is launching the 2023 VT Pastel Society Juried Show with an opening artists reception, Kishka Gallery opens a show by California painter Max Gleason exploring spirituality after the 2019 deaths of his wife and kids in a car accident, and over at the TipTop, musician Jakob Breitbach and photographer Will Freihofer host a new exhibit by large-scale painter Tim Sargent, followed by music from Route 5 Jive.
Meanwhile, at 5 pm today, AVA Gallery hosts an opening reception and artist talk for painter Joan Feierabend's new show, "Multitudes". It's an unusual exhibition: Feierabend began by wondering, "Would viewers have a different experience looking if they were able to own a painting and not worry about the cost?” So during the exhibition's month in the gallery, visitors will get a chance to consider whether any of the 100 or so works on the walls speak to them, and if so, to name their price and take it home—Feierabend will donate all the proceeds to AVA. She'll be speaking about it all at 6 pm during the reception.
At 7 this evening, the Chandler in Randolph launches a weekend run of AR Gurney's The Dining Room by its community theater program, Just the Players. First produced off Broadway in the early 1980s, the play, in NYT reviewer Frank Rich's comment at the time, is "a series of snapshots of a vanishing culture”—upper-middle-class WASPs—who, in fact, are very much alive on stage as different families in different eras share the same dining room set.
Also at 7, Hop Film presents Shortcomings, Randall Park's 2023 rom-com for the '20s—adapted from Adrian Tomine's graphic novel of the same name—about a witty but thoroughly unlikeable failed Bay Area film student and the people around him. In the Loew.
And at 9 tonight, Sawtooth Kitchen in Hanover brings in NJ- and NYC-based Americana-rockers Mojohand: childhood friends Elijah Klein and Joe DiNardo, keyboardist Ian D’Arcy, and drummer Jasper Mahncke, who have built a following (and a DIY summer music festival in Toms River, NJ) from countless gigs at bars, clubs, and colleges around the country.
Saturday
Starting at 1 pm tomorrow, local author and retired university administrator Tom Martz will be at the West Leb Barnes & Noble for a book-signing—and, for interested visitors, conversation about what it's like to be dyslexic and write a novel. Martz wrote The White Light Within, whose plot was developed by his wife, Mary, before she died of breast cancer in 2020; it's a political and art-oriented thriller set in Paris, Moscow, DC, and England. Royalties from the book support study-abroad scholarships for students at three universities.
Tomorrow from 2-4 pm, the Howe Library in Hanover holds an opening reception for a new exhibit by artists Amy Fortier and Cyndy Duade, "When Worlds Kaleidoscope." What began as sketchbook doodles by Fortier turned into paintings and then turned into hooked rugs by Duade. The exhibit displays Fortier's originals, Duade's rugs from those patterns, and additional rugs and art pieces "that were not created in collaboration but highlight how in sync the two artists are in their creativity and aesthetic.”
At 7 pm tomorrow, BarnArts presents a conversation and concert with Puerto Rican jazz pianist Carli Muñoz at the North Chapel UU church. Muñoz spent over a decade as the keyboardist for the Beach Boys, went on to tour and record with George Benson, Les McCann, and Chico Hamilton, and then, relatively late in life, launched his own jazz trio in San Juan. He's got a new memoir coming out, A Fool's Journey: To the Beach Boys and Beyond.
Tomorrow evening starting at 7:30, Pentangle Arts presents "Vanish: Disappearing Icons of a Rural America," a documentary chronicling photographer Jim Westphalen's travels across the country seeking out and creating imagery of America’s disappearing rural structures. "I was spending every free moment in the wilds of Vermont, trying to capture these old structures that I loved,” Westphalen told the Standard's Tom Ayres recently, and over time he realized there was a body of work that captured both their decay and their appeal. The film, Pentangle says, is "equal parts art, history, and seat of the pants storm chasing," a record of the grace and beauty of aging barns, one-room schoolhouses, grain elevators, prairie churches, and other markers of the rural American past.
Also at 7:30 tomorrow, actor Rusty DeWees brings his one-man comedy—and, these days, music—show The Logger to Court Street Arts in Haverhill. DeWees's "Vermont play in two ax" has evolved over its 28 years, but is still filled with yarns, reminiscences, keen observations, and physical showmanship about the rigors and edged humor of life in the woods and countryside.
If dancing to high-energy Motown, pop, and rock covers is your thing, at 8 tomorrow night Sawtooth Kitchen brings in the UV's own The Party Crashers.
Sunday
At 4 pm Sunday, Hop Film is presenting an advance screening of Episode 1 of the new Ken Burns film, The American Buffalo, at the Loew. It's a "biography" of the animal that played a central role in North American history for over 10,000 years of coexistence with native peoples and less than a century of encounters with settlers that nearly wiped it out. Producer Julie Dunfey and consulting producer Julianna Brannum, an Oklahoma-based citizen of the Comanche Nation, will be on hand to talk about the film afterward with Dartmouth prof N. Bruce Duthu.
At 5:30 pm Sunday, you can check out the 16th Annual Domino Toppling Extravaganza at the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center without actually traveling to Brattleboro—it'll be livestreamed. Superstar dominist (yeah, just made it up) Lily Hevesh and three of her colleagues have been in town since late yesterday, setting up tens of thousands of colorful little planks in an elaborate pattern that, when the time comes, will collapse in an equally colorful but less geometric heap. In-person tix are sold out.
Well look, the weekend's almost here...
So you've got a little time, right? You may remember that back in 2021, a book of Paul McCartney's lyrics came out, called
The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present. It was the result of a five-year collaboration between McCartney and the Pulitzer-winning poet (and songwriting prof) Paul Muldoon. Well. They captured hundreds of hours of their conversations on tape, and the result is
McCartney: A Life in Lyrics,
a new podcast from Pushkin (co-edited, by the way, by the UV's Sophie Crane)
.
Each episode centers around a single song, with conversation and music building a picture of how it came about.
, in which Nivea, a liquor business, and Allen Ginsburg all figure.
Oh, and "Back in the USSR" is out, too.
Have a great weekend, whatever the weather. See you Monday for CoffeeBreak.
The Hiking Close to Home Archives. A list of hikes around the Upper Valley, some easy, some more difficult, compiled by the Upper Valley Trails Alliance. It grows every week.
The Enthusiasms Archives. A list of book recommendations by Daybreak's rotating crew of local booksellers, writers, and librarians who think you should read. this. book. now!
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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