RABBIT RABBIT, UPPER VALLEY!
Partly sunny to start, then rain. Oh, well. There's a warm front lifting north, and though we'll get a bit of time with more sun than clouds, it looks like the skies will close up pretty quickly this morning, with a chance of showers starting in the early afternoon, rising to a likelihood not long after. There may be snow above 1500 feet, as well as mixed in lower down in some spots tonight. Highs today climbing toward 50, mid 30s overnight as the warm front stalls.A bobcat saunters. Across Erin Donahue's trail cam. Here's Ted Levin: "Across the globe, there are four species of wildcats in the genus Lynx: Iberian lynx, Eurasian lynx, Canada lynx, and bobcat (aka red lynx), the most common wildcat in North America. Some 2.5 to 3.5 million roam the US. Only Delaware, Alaska, and Hawaii are without. Although male bobcats rove up to 40 square miles, their defensible territories are less than 100 acres. Sexes are polygamous, often mating with several partners; for bobcats, the Summer of Love is late winter... otherwise, adults are secretive, solitary, nocturnal hunters."A belfry rises. Last spring, the belfry over the Great Stone Dwelling at the Enfield Shaker Museum was taken down so that the posts supporting it and its bell could be replaced. On Tuesday, it was lifted back into place. Valley News photographer Jennifer Hauck was there to capture the scene.Suspect in Burlington shooting grew up in Woodstock. Jason James Eaton, who's accused in last weekend's shooting of three college students, graduated from WUHS in 1994 and spent 13 years working at Woodstock's Maplecrest Farm, reports Tom Ayres in the VT Standard. Farm owner Ned Macksoud tells Ayres that he did see signs of depression in Eaton, but that "he was a good worker and he had a good attitude. He was happy to be doing something alternative to just sitting in a classroom." An old high school friend remembers that Eaton "was always a champion of oppressed people. When kids at school were getting bullied, he would always stand up for them."In Sharon, the USPS pauses delivering the mail. Kinda just like that, and without a word. It was town clerk Cathy Sartor who notified residents, via Facebook, reports Nicole Antal in the Herald. A SoRo postal worker cites a staffing shortage, "offering no further details of routes affected or if Sharon would continue receiving service," Antal writes. The Sharon PO has extended its weekday open hours to allow residents to collect their mail in-person. State Rep. Rebecca Holcombe emails that the postmaster in S. Royalton confirms that the problem is "a labor challenge," and that they are working on hiring.Valley News announces it will stop publishing Sunday print edition. Starting Jan. 6, publisher Dan McClory and editor Matt Clary write in a note to readers today, the paper will launch a new Weekend Valley News on Saturdays; it will include "many of the same features as the current weekend newspapers combined into a single edition." McClory and Clary cite the same financial pressures that have forced other newspapers to halt seven-day-a-week publishing, as well as the challenge of ensuring delivery of the Sunday edition, since the VN has begun mailing the paper to many subscribers.SPONSORED: Stay busy this winter! Osher at Dartmouth’s winter term registration is now open, and there are plenty of courses available! Enjoy explorations of Irish literature, Shakespeare, and the archives of The New Yorker. Challenge yourself by examining the history of Japanese internment during WWII, or test your knowledge of American civics. Learn how to solve Killer Sudoku, get your toes tapping to Big Band music, and enjoy the chance to create your own Valentine’s cards from scratch. There’s so much to do! Become a member today. Sponsored by Osher at Dartmouth.WRJ gets a new bookstore. Officially, it'll happen at 11 am today, when COVER Home Repair in WRJ holds a ribbon cutting for Cover to Cover Books after almost a year of renovations on S. Main Street. The mostly volunteer-run bookstore will accept and sell both used and new books and it's aimed, COVER says in its press release, partly at helping build community connections. "A bookstore can be an inviting space (books don’t judge!) where folks can linger without feeling rushed out the door. Everyone will be welcome regardless of their age, income or how they look."Also in WRJ: "A place for the local wine-head or tinned fish-obsessed." That's how Sabina Formanek, the general manager of Fontinalis, the "wine and provisions" store that opened in May where JUEL used to be, describes her goal to Susan Apel. "And what elegant provisions they are," Susan writes in Artful: wine, cheeses, and those fish, "an up-and-comer over the past few years at some fine restaurants." The shop's owned by Max Overstrom-Coleman, who also owns the cocktail bar Wolf Tree, just up the street.SPONSORED: Support Hanover Rotary's Bell Ringing Campaign! Tonight on Main Street, Hanover Rotary launches its annual Bell Ringing campaign to support LISTEN's Heating Helpers program. Heating Helpers assists Upper Valley neighbors in need with fuel and electricity bills and emergency heating repairs. With high fuel costs and inflation, the need is greater than ever! This year, The Jack and Dorothy Byrne Foundation and Hanover Rotary will match up to $20,000 in community donations. Please help by clicking the burgundy link or see us on Main Street! Sponsored by Hanover NH Rotary Charities, Inc.With five years under its belt, Brownsville Butcher & Pantry has become "a cornerstone of the town." That's not just thanks to the hard work that Peter Varkonyi and Lauren Stevens have poured into it since they first signed a lease in 2018 with a local collective that had bought the vagrant old general store. It's also, writes Lauren Dorsey in the Standard, due to the outdoor cookouts and live music they hosted during the pandemic, the full-on support they've given local farmers and businesses, a cafe that's become a prime hangout, and shelves that go both high-end and what-can-I-grab-for-dinner.At Dartmouth's Rauner Library, a student-curated celebration of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's First Folio. “The Whirligig of Time: Shakespeare in the College Archive, 1623-2023" runs through March. Ironically, writes Aimee Minbiole for Dartmouth News, the college's First Folio won't be in the exhibit so that Rauner can "ensure ongoing access to the popular text." Dartmouth's collection, says English prof Matthew Ritger, covers the “whole spectrum of everything that Shakespeare can mean—from ephemera, playbills, and set and costume designs to books from the 17th century." Minbiole explores how the exhibit came about.Hiking Close to Home: Hemenway Ledges, Strafford, VT. This week's suggestion from the Upper Valley Trails Alliance is part of the Strafford Trail System. It offers a moderate 1.9-mile loop that travels through open hardwoods and along a ridge, passing large boulders and a wetland. From Strafford's upper village head north on Justin Morrill Highway to 1.8 miles from the village; take a slight right onto Taylor Valley Road then go 3 miles to the parking area on Taylor Valley Road. The trailhead is 1/10 mile up Taylor Valley Road on the left, just past a brook crossing the road through an exposed culvert.
So... Think you know what's been going on in the Upper Valley? Because Daybreak's News Quiz has some questions for you. Like... Who's buying the old Telegraph Building in WRJ? And which workers in the region are joining the Teamsters Union? Those questions and more at the link.But wait! How closely were you following VT and NH?
Because Seven Days wants to know if you know which classic novel the Center for Cartoon Studies' James Sturm is being acclaimed for adapting into graphic form.
And NHPR's got a whole set of questionsabout doings around the Granite State—like, what did former state Rep. Troy Merner just get charged with?
NH expands civil rights unit after "surge in complaints." When the office started up in 2017, writes Ethan DeWitt in NH Bulletin, it got 40 of them. Last year there were 186. The AG's office will be adding an investigator, an additional attorney, and a legal support staffer. Explaining the move, to respond more quickly to incidents, AG John Formella said, "When a hate crime occurs, it sends a message to that person and to their community that they should feel unsafe and unwelcome. Hate crimes encourage people to withdraw from the community out of fear.”VT tax commissioner projects 18.5 percent leap in property tax rates statewide. It's not a done deal, VTDigger's Peter D'Auria notes: Actual rates don't get set until spring, and depend in part on school budgets yet to be determined. But in his annual letter to the legislature, commissioner Craig Bolio says the spike is largely thanks to a projected 12 percent surge in education spending driven by such factors as the end of federal pandemic aid, rising health care costs, and the new Act 127, which redirects funds based on student demographics. Gov. Phil Scott called the projected jump "not acceptable."Affordable residential care for older Vermonters: "It's a crisis." "There are very limited resources for an aging person if something should happen, and we've got to figure this out," Rosemary Greene, executive director of the Southwestern VT Council on Aging, tells VT Public's Nina Keck. Keck and data journalist Corey Dockser have charted the 35 licensed residential care facilities that have closed since 2018, the decline in Medicaid-funded beds—and the "jaw-droppingly high cost" of care. Keck explores the numbers and what they mean, especially for middle-income families that can't afford private care.Snowshoeing person, meet snowshoe hare. Deena Sveinsson’s photo of a leaping hare in the Rocky Mountain National Park was shot in short order after a long wait for the right moment. It’s one of 25 nature photographs that are up for London's Natural History Museum People’s Choice Award for Wildlife Photographer of the Year, and you get to decide the winner. A lion cub’s facial? A trash-walking elephant? The tossing of the shrew? You have until January 31 to vote (early morning US time). See the entries and cast your vote at the link.The Friday Vordle. And hey! Are you new to Vordle? Did you know that fresh ones appear on weekends, using words from the Friday Daybreak? You can get a reminder email each weekend morning: Just sign up here.
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Well, it's First Friday in WRJ, and there'll be no shortage of things to do in town this afternoon and evening. For starters, there's that book store ribbon cutting at COVER that you read about above—it's at 11 am. At 5 pm, Kishka Gallery is kicking off a monthlong exhibition by West Leb's Denver Ferguson, who's also a cashier at the UV Food Coop, where he often worked on his drawings between customers—as the VN's Alex Hanson put it in February, "Are there elements of cartoon art, of Afro-futurism, of psychedelia, of science fiction, of progressive rock album cover art? I think so. But the only category it fits in is art made by Denver Ferguson.'" And at 6 the Main Street Museum kicks off its show of paintings by WRJ arts-scene mover and shaker (and lead guitar for the band Time Life Magazines) Matt Mazur (and here's Hanson on Mazur's journey into painting). JAM is hosting a hip-hop holiday party and Light River Junction projections by local artists from 5-7, Long River's got a wall-sized painting by Thetford's Jean Gerber and music by Meadowlark, Revolution's got The Original DJ Skar, and—just so you know—Trail Break is open at its old spot until Dec. 31 after it got a lease extension, and through tomorrow it's offering 10 percent off if you bring in a receipt from any locally owned Upper Valley business or restaurant that you got the same day. There's lots more at the first link in this ridiculously long paragraph.
And from 4 pm to 7 pm today, downtown Hanover will be doing it up with a chili-cook-off on Allen Street starting at 5:15 and lasting until samples run out (Boloco goes bean-to-bean with Black House Real Estate, Berkshire Hathaway Verani Realty, author Julie Glynn, PINE, and Visions for Creative Housing); Dartmouth's tree lighting will happen at 5, and downtown businesses will be open for extended hours.
At 5 pm today, online, NH Humanities will host Dartmouth Middle Eastern Studies profs Tarek El-Ariss and Ezzedine C. Fishere for a "Humanities at Home" discussion of events in that region, focusing in particular on the historical background and political context for the crisis involving Israel and Hamas.
Also at 5, the VT Ski and Snowboard Museum launches a new exhibition, "Searching for Vermont's Lost Ski Areas." It's a drive away, in Stowe, but it'll last until next fall and in addition to highlighting some 70 spots like—really?—Hedgehog Hovel, Buckturd Basin, and Freak Peak, it pays particular attention to Woodstock, Ascutney, and a handful of other VT places that were in on the earliest days of downhill skiing in this country.
At 5:45 today (no link), a group from the Handel Society will be caroling on S. Main and Allen streets in Hanover, to support the launch of Hanover Rotary's annual bell-ringing campaign on behalf of LISTEN's Heating Helpers program.
At 6:30 pm in the Black Box Theater at Colby-Sawyer in New London, the Center for the Arts presents a holiday concert by the North Country VoxStars, with its mix of barbershop and contemporary a cappella arrangements. No charge.
At 7 this evening, Artistree in S. Pomfret hosts The Faux Paws. Made up of Brattleboro-based singer-guitarist Andrew VanNorstrand and his brother Noah, who got their start in the contra dance band Great Bear with their mom, and saxophonist Chris Miller, they've been playing together for a decade, fluidly exploring the edges of bluegrass, jazz, folk, Americana...
Also at 7 pm and also at Artistree (in The Grange Theater), the Vermont Comedy Festival presents "Holiday Hysteria: a dysfunctional yuletide romp" with a quintet of comics and musical-comedians.
At 7:30 this evening, Classicopia is back with a weekend run of its crowd-pleasing "Four-Hand Holiday"—20 fingers (supplied by Daniel Weiser and Philip Liston-Kraft) and 88 piano keys, with Christmas carols, holiday favorites, the Nutcracker, and more. Tonight at the Old South Church in Windsor, tomorrow at 2 and 7:30 pm in house concerts in WRJ and Hanover, and Sunday at 2 at the First Congregational Church of Lebanon.
Also at 7:30 this evening, the Anonymous Coffeehouse is back at the First Congregational Church of Lebanon with a full evening of music and, in the back, food. First up is Massachusetts-base singer-songwriter Erin Ash Sullivan, followed at 8:15 by southern NH folk, blues, swing, and country favorites Decatur Creek, and at 9 by the duo Jaded Ravins: Americana and country originals by Kelly Ravin, former lead singer and guitarist of Vermont’s “outlaw dirt rockers” Waylon Speed, along with Halle Jade.
At 9 pm, soul and funk band Soul Porpoise returns to Sawtooth Kitchen in Hanover.
Saturday
Tomorrow starting at 9 am and running all day, Lebanon joins the celebrate-the-holidays scene with "'Tis the Season": horse-drawn carriage rides, musical entertainment, crafts, refreshments, a tree-lighting ceremony, characters from Frozen just hanging out waiting for you, plus APD's Winterfest Artisan Fair, at Harvest Hill; an open house at AVA and a full day of music from Upper Valley Music Center; a Lebanon Women's Club bazaar at the Marion Carter Home; an all-afternoon DB Lights carnival downtown with food trucks and food vendors, craft vendors, rides, and more; and a light display starting at 5:15.
Also starting at 9 am and running until 4 pm tomorrow, the Family Place holds its 21st annual Gingerbread Festival, with a roomful of often awe-inspiring gingerbread houses and demonstrations on how to make them at Tracy Hall in Norwich, and a "Gingerbread Country Store" next door in the parish hall of the Congregational Church with handcrafts, gift items, and pre-made food.
At 11 am and again at 2 pm tomorrow, Hop Film screens the New York International Children's Film Festival—seven animation, live action, and documentary shorts from 13 countries, from a spider dreaming of capturing the moon to a boy dreaming of getting past a soccer-playing goose so he can make it to the big time.
Ordinarily, you'd have found City Center Ballet in the Lebanon Opera House with its annual performance of Clara's Dream, but since LOH is indisposed for a few more months, the ballet's costumed dancers will be at the Powerhouse Mall in West Leb from noon to 4 both tomorrow and Sunday.
From 1 to 4 tomorrow, the Lyme Utility Club is holding its 9th annual tree festival on the town common, a fundraiser for its scholarships and financial support for local groups. Live music, a cookie sale, hot cocoa... and 70 trees.
At 2 pm tomorrow, pianist, composer, and, really, all-around classical music entertainer and educator Michael Arnowitt will take the bench at the Chandler for a program that includes works by Mahler, Victoria Poleva, Arthur Lourié, Bach, Schoenberg, and Debussy.
At 3 pm tomorrow, and again at the same time on Sunday, Billings Farm's ongoing film festival continues with Breaking the News, a new film by trio Heather Courtney, Princess A. Hairston, and Chelsea Hernandez that follows the launch and growth of The 19th*, an online nonprofit news organization launched by former Texas Tribune editor-in-chief Emily Ramshaw and colleagues in 2020, amid the pandemic, focused on reporting by women and LGBTQ+ journalists on "the intersection of gender, politics and policy." Both days, Washington correspondent Amanda Becker will be on hand to talk about the film and the news organization afterward.
Tomorrow at 7 pm, Seven Stars Arts in Sharon hosts guitarist, violinist, and folk singer-songwriter Spencer Lewis, on his own. As they write, "He performs on stage by the live looping of guitar and violin overdubs, allowing him to move in unpredictable directions, often spontaneously"—and add: "The concert is designed as a meditational experience, to absorb the quietude of his music."
At 8 pm tomorrow, the Vermont Comedy Festival presents its headliner, Colin Quinn. "From MTV’s 'Remote Control' to SNL to Comedy Central’s 'Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn'," they write, "Mr. Quinn is not one to take a hint and bow out gracefully." At the Woodstock Town Hall Theater.
And finally, just in case you feel like a drive, there are still tix left for Indigo Girls at the Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord at 7:30 tomorrow evening.
And to get us in a weekend frame of mind...
We're going to turn to Ghost Hounds, the Pittsburgh-based blues-rock band that's opened for, among others, the Stones and ZZ Top and was co-founded by Thomas Tull—billionaire, former CEO of Legendary Entertainment, co-owner of the Steelers, and guitarist. It's fronted by singer Tre’ Nation, whose voice, a reviewer once wrote, "was simply made for rock."
—that link takes you to the studio version, which has some deft mic work by Nation but doesn't include Tull;
, Tull on acoustic guitar.
Have a lovely weekend. 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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