GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Mostly cloudy, breezy, showers likely tonight. It’ll be pretty quiet this morning, though there’s another system approaching and things’ll be clouding up ahead of it. We’ll may see wind gusts pick up again in the afternoon as it draws near, with a chance of rain starting up around dinnertime. Highs today in the upper 40s, lows overnight around 40 ahead of somewhat warmer weather tomorrow.
The rain’s been helpful, but in case you were wondering, the Upper Valley’s still in extreme drought. Things improved marginally in VT through Tuesday, mostly to the west of us, according to the US Drought Monitor; NH saw no changes. Here are the maps, which went up yesterday:
A barred owl hunts. “Ancient Israelites had no use for owls,” Ted Levin writes about Erin Donahue’s latest trail cam video. “The Book of Leviticus portrays them as grim, shadowy birds, dwellers of desolation. (The authors weren't birders.) The internet perpetuates owl untruths, too. Several websites claim an owl can hear a mouse's heartbeat from thirty feet away. An unverifiable statement ... perpetuated. Owls peer into the dark with laser eyes. Parabolic faces channel sound into exquisitely sensitive ears. A barred owl hears rustling footfalls and misguided squeaks. After thousands of years, only the medium of misinformation has changed.
And did you see Dear Daybreak yesterday? If not, you missed Sarah Davie’s photo of the morning sky in Orford, Robin Dellabough on the unlikely chain of events that got a forgotten rain shell back into her hands from Quebec City, Kathy Manning’s haiku about a moment with her cats, and Lynn Kisselbach’s discovery of just who caused the strange noise that spooked her on Halloween night. Dear Daybreak always needs submissions. If you’ve got something to share, please send it in.
Bethel library gets gifts after computer theft. Remember those two computers that got stolen in a break-in at the library? Well, in The Herald, Darren Marcy reports that the children of Ola O’Dell, an extremely active Bethelite who died in March, have given the library a donation of $3,000 toward new computers in honor of their mom, who frequented it. Trustees are also weighing a Tasco proposal for a new security system, which the library has lacked. Though the family gift may not be enough to cover replacement computers, an additional unrestricted contribution by an anonymous donor who read about the theft in Daybreak should also help.
Lebanon voids immigration policy; Hanover still considering. The two communities have been under pressure from both the state and the feds for policies barring police (and, in Lebanon’s case, other employees) from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement. In an 8-1 vote Wednesday, reports Clare Shanahan in the Valley News, the Lebanon City Council decided to repeal its Welcoming Ordinance rather than lose up to a quarter of its state funding. Hanover’s selectboard, meanwhile, met Monday, hearing from a series of residents who urged it to keep the policy in place. The board opted to put off a decision until later.
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Around the Upper Valley, student theater productions ramp up. If you like the energy and creativity that go into the stage work of young actors, tech crew, and others, these are going to be a bumper few weeks. In the Valley News, Marion Umpleby checks in with cast members of some of the upcoming productions—Trumbull Hall Troupe’s Matilda the Musical at LOH this weekend, and White River Valley High School’s The 39 Steps and Hartford High’s Nice Work If You Can Get It, both next weekend. She also helpfully rounds up what else is on tap, including Lebanon High’s Water for Elephants and Thetford Academy’s Puffs.
More about those two Woodstock houses slated for demolition. Following up on her story about the Village Development Review Board meeting in private to okay a Woodstock Inn request to raze the two historic homes it owns, the Standard’s Emma Stanton spoke to two members about the 3-2 vote. Both were “yes” votes, and argued that the Inn met the criteria the board has to consider. “Every decision we make is one based on the evidence presented in the application,” says one. “Approving the Inn’s permit request doesn’t necessarily mean that the board sees value in demolishing historic homes.” The two members who voted “no” declined to comment on their votes.
In Canaan, Potato Road bridge closed indefinitely. The bridge crosses the Indian River a little south of Route 4, and NHDOT last week determined that “the steel has deteriorated to the point where it no longer has the bearing capacity for traffic,” as the agency’s Julie Avenant tells the VN’s Liz Sauchelli. The town closed the bridge on Monday, and a current state timeline calls for replacement bids to go out next fall. Detours involve using South Road from Route 4 near the high school, or Gristmill Hill Road from Canaan Village to a dirt portion of South Road.
“If there is any other game that Dartmouth can play better than foot-ball, it would be well to encourage it.” That was an editorial in The Dartmouth back in 1882, after Harvard thrashed Dartmouth 53-0 in their very first football face-off. Somehow, the rivalry continued. Just before last weekend’s game (which Harvard won), the Dartmouth Alumni Mag published a long online-only piece by David Shribman tracing the history of the competition through times of peace and war (and, at one point, the Cuban Missile Crisis) while reflecting on universities’ standing these days. Shribman’s a columnist and a Dartmouth alum, so his political and academic allegiances show, but it’s also an entertaining historic ride with a range of voices from both schools weighing in.
Out in the woods this week: fungi, milkweed floss, and signs of deer rut. Did you know that during WWII, people collected milkweed floss to use in life preservers? So writes Northern Woodlands’ Jack Saul for “This Week in the Woods”. More commonly, though, mice use it to line their nests. Also out there: bolete mushrooms and northern tooth mushrooms (which parasitize hardwoods and cause heartwood rot). And, of course, male deer rubbing velvet from their antlers and marking their territory visually and by scent, leaving info on their identity, physical condition, and status.
“I wanted to indulge the ebb and flow of the seasons, then translate weather into words, and the geological bones of land into the lyrics of dawn.” Recently, the British Substack publication Auraist, which is dedicated to the writer’s art, highlighted Ted Levin’s book The Promise of Sunrise and did a remarkably in-depth interview about his inspirations, how he writes, what attracts him to a piece of writing, and what he strives for. He gives examples of fact—turkey vultures spend most of the day in the sky—and what he does with it: “Born on a breeze, hatched amid a fortress of stone, turkey vultures are the essence of a hot summer day.” There’s lots more.
Hiking Close to Home: Bear Hill Nature Trail at Allis State Park, Brookfield VT. For sweeping 360-degree views of central Vermont, the Green Mountains to the west, and the White Mountains to the east, the Upper Valley Trails Alliance says, head to the lookout tower at Allis State Park. After the tower, take the Bear Hill Nature Trail, a moderate one-mile loop through the forest with numbered interpretive signs that connect to a downloadable guide. The park is accessible year-round for day use, though off-season (meaning, now) requires parking outside the gate and walking in, making for a longer hike, but also quieter trails and fewer crowds.
Were you paying attention this week? Daybreak’s Upper Valley News Quiz has some questions for you, like: What’s that new caffeinated drinks spot that just opened in Lebanon? And just how many wild turkeys would you guess there are in New Hampshire these days? Meanwhile, you’ll find both NHPR’s New Hampshire quiz and Seven Days’ Vermont quiz at this link.
From noticing a handful of deer walking across a road to one of the biggest poaching cases in NH history to… crimes at an NH state prison? NHPR has just gone up with the first podcast episode in Outside/In host Nate Hegyi’s three-part series on Operation Night Cat, which began as an NH Fish & Game investigation of illegal hunting in Gilmanton, then mushroomed into a broader case that led to the arrests of five men—all of them former or current (at the time) NH corrections officers. Which led Fish & Game’s Ron Arsenault to wonder, “If you’re abusin’ animals like this, are you abusin’ humans?” Episode One is out, about NH’s clash with poachers.
“Having [veterans] share their feelings openly is such a change from my experiences from family members, friends, and my ex-husband.” E. Thetford’s Bonnie Holbrook was at the Vets Town Hall at the Montpelier Statehouse last weekend, moved to go because, as Katie Lyford writes in central VT’s The Bridge, she’d “spent her life around veterans and none of them would talk about their experiences.” There are six more such events around Vermont this weekend and next (none in the Upper Valley), geared—as journalist Sebastian Junger first envisioned—toward creating a place where vets speak openly about their experiences. Lyford details Montpelier’s.
What’s your partner doing while you’re cleaning the house? Nathan Yau, the statistician behind the website FlowingData, thinks visualization—charts, graphs, animations—is the best way to help as many people as possible understand data. So Yau’s created a “difference chart” of US Census data (2022-2024) that shows how men and women spend their time. Some results are predictable—women are still doing more housework—but toggle the inputs between employed and unemployed, weekday and weekend, and it gets more interesting. Try it with volunteering, or sports and exercise, or eating, to see some flips in who’s doing what, and when.
Fantastic news, arachnophiles! “The only thing everyone loves more than spiders is a lot of spiders all in the same place,” writes Lou Bodenhemier for Explorers Web. “The only way this scene could be improved…is if the many spiders are in a pitch-black flooded cavern deep underground, which smells like brimstone.” He’s tongue-in-cheek, of course, but the facts aren’t: Researchers have discovered possibly the world’s largest spiderweb in a sulfuric cave on the border between Greece and Albania, woven by some 110,000 spiders. Bodenhemier delves into the study, whose lead author is from Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania. No comment.
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HEADS UP
And for today...
Spencer Lewis, Pappy Biondo, and Eric Graham, who’ll be at Seven Stars Arts tonight, earlier this year in Plainfield, VT, filmed by Chad Finer, with “a little funky bluegrass” in “Nine Pound Hammer".
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Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Poetry editor: Michael Lipson Associate Editor: Jonea Gurwitt About Rob About Michael
