GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
A reminder: No Daybreak next week or the week after. Back as usual with CoffeeBreak on Monday, Jan. 8.And a note of thanks. This is the last Daybreak of 2023. To my gobsmacked astonishment, it will soon be five years old. This is wholly thanks to you: those of you who signed up, who've created space for it in your lives, who sent photos and ideas and encouragement, who drove its growth by passing it along to friends, and more than anything else, who kept Daybreak's doors open and lights on with your contributions and sponsorships. You've been a daily joy, a source of inspiration, and a constant reminder that local news can find an engaged and perceptive audience. Here's to seeing you again next year!Now, then... This bright, sunny weather continues. High pressure's still with us, and though it may be a tad warmer today than yesterday, you won't really notice. Mostly, we're looking at clear skies, plenty of sun, and temps climbing to either side of 30, depending on where you are. Down into the mid teens tonight.Looking back. The other day, I was checking out the really amazing array of photos Upper Valleyites sent along in 2023, and suddenly realized, you should be able to, too. The link takes you to an album with a taste of what Daybreak ran over the course of the year. It's not a best-of (also, it doesn't include photos from photographers who maintain their own sites or photo pages), but it is a reminder of how interesting and photogenic this out-of-the-way corner of an out-of-the-way corner of the country can be. Enjoy it!VT Supreme Court sides with state on Newbury facility. Yesterday's ruling on the town's challenge to the state's plan to put a secure, six-bed juvenile facility up a back road in town could "clear the way" for it to happen, writes Alan J. Keays in VTDigger. The ruling essentially focused on semantics: whether the facility would be a "detention center" or a "group home," which would limit the town's ability to block it. A 4-1 majority of the court ruled it's a group home for "youth who have a disability," with Justice Karen Carroll in scathing dissent. The selectboard will weigh whether to request a reargument before the court.In Randolph, Kuya's to close, One Main to return. Ever since the fall of 2022, the Filipino fusion restaurant run by Patty and Travis Burns has occupied the space long presided over by One Main Tap & Grill. Now, reports Darren Marcy in the Herald, the pair have decided to call it quits, in hopes that they can "cut their 100-hour work week back to 50 or 60 hours, 'while preparing for our next venture.'" That may include a new spot in Randolph. Patty Burns tells Marcy, but not until they've gone off to work for others for a bit. They'll close things out Dec. 30, and One Main Tap & Grill will be back in the spot Jan. 3.Thetford Selectboard opts against putting noncitizen voting on town meeting ballot. The issue, writes Christina Dolan in the Valley News, was first raised last year by longtime resident Heinz Trebitz, who is a German citizen. Though there was sentiment on the board that residents who live and pay taxes in town should have a voting say in town affairs, several members also argued that the way is clear for residents to obtain US citizenship and the right to vote. Pursuing the issue would be "a lot for everybody to go through when we only probably have two people that it would apply to," said chair Sharon Harkay.SPONSORED: Join us for Christmas Eve services. The Church of Christ at Dartmouth College, UCC, welcomes you to three Christmas Eve services on Sunday, Dec. 24. Our regular Sunday worship at 10:00 AM will feature the lighting of the 4th Advent candle and two student soloists. The 5 pm service will include a Children’s Pageant and Christmas carols. The 9 pm service is a candlelight service with choir and musical soloists. The entirety of evening service offerings will go to SHARe—supporting immigrants and refugees. CCDC is at 40 College St., in Hanover. All are welcome! Sponsored by CCDC.How one woman made sure that the 3,380 graves in the VT Veterans Cemetery got wreaths this year. Last year, while Gail Billings was visiting her father's grave at the cemetery in Randolph Center, she looked around and realized how many graves were going without—especially after she gave up her two wreaths to a woman whose son's friends had died in or just after the Iraq War. As Tim Calabro tells the story in the Herald, she eventually connected with ME-based Wreaths Across America, and then with donors, and then with Shaw's. The result: Hundreds of volunteers turned out to lay wreaths last weekend, covering all but maybe a dozen graves.New England ski areas, "well trained in the art of bending Mother Nature to [their] will," deal with Monday's storm. They lost snow and saw damage to roads and infrastructure, but as Dana Gerber and Sabrina Shankman write in the Globe (paywall), cold weather and an all-out snowmaking push are helping—though as one spokeswoman puts it, "I think that the name of the game for everybody is adapting." ME's Sunday River put in a temporary bridge; Mad River Glen made snow for its lower trails, but the higher ones will need the real stuff. “December has been so hit or miss over the past 10 or 15 years, that we’re happy when we get it, but we don’t count on it," says a spokesman there.Hiking Close to Home: A year-end wrapup. This week, the Upper Valley Trails Alliance is sending us to all its past recommendations. You'll find the archives at the burgundy link or, as always, at the bottom of Daybreak. No "Top Ten" list of overcrowded trails, this is a user's guide to getting out around the Upper Valley and beyond. There are almost 150 trails in there, with links to detailed maps and other info on Trail Finder, the official free trail resource for VT and NH, which posts only with local permission and approved maps.SPONSORED: Enjoy Hiking Close to Home? You’ve seen our trail recommendations every Friday in Daybreak, but did you know that Upper Valley trails face huge challenges? Climate change is doing a number on them. And landowners and trail managers need help to keep trails safe and accessible. The Upper Valley Trails Alliance is here to channel your support into advocacy and action. Trails connect us to nature, improve health and strengthen communities—but they won't last without your help. Join the Alliance today! Sponsored by the Upper Valley Trails Alliance.At Hubbard Brook, a keen eye on the rain's impact. The experimental forest in Ellsworth and Thornton, NH, "is on track to receive 77 inches of rain this year," writes Amanda Gokee in the Globe's Morning Report (no paywall), a definite jump from the yearly average of 55 inches. During Monday's storm, the brook itself was running at a depth of 6 feet, three times normal, as some 4.7 inches of rain fell in some areas. Scientists ther "have been furiously collecting measurements to understand the ecological impacts of the storm and track long term trends," Gokee writes.NH Audubon debuts new "State of the Birds" website. The site, writes Hadley Barndollar in NH Bulletin, went live last month, and details not just which birds are around, but the trends: steep declines among bank swallows, rusty blackbirds, meadowlarks, a variety of shore birds, and other species, growing numbers of bald eagles, Carolina wrens, Canada goose, and others. The increases, Aububon biologist Pamela Hunt notes, are not happening as fast as the decreases. “There has definitely been a net loss of birds,” she says. You'll find "State of the Birds" here.So... Think you know what's been going on in the Upper Valley? Okay, then, Daybreak's News Quiz has some questions for you. Like... What's the name of the place the new grocery store in E. Thetford is replacing? And do you know how much sugar it takes to make the big gingerbread house at the Woodstock Inn? Those and more at the link.But wait! How closely were you following VT and NH?
Because Seven Days wants to know if you know why a gun rights group is suing Vermont officials.
And NHPR's got a whole set of questions about doings around the Granite State—like, which NH community has decided to drop its longstanding tradition of midnight voting for the 2024 elections?
Several wastewater testing sites in the state are showing levels at or above their highest points in March, reports Erin Petenko in
VTDigger.
Ben Truman, a spokesperson for the state's health department, tells Petenko that rising wastewater levels are “not unexpected” at this time of year, and that Covid hospitalizations remain about where they've been for the last several weeks. The department is seeing a rise in two emerging variants, JN.1 and BA.2.86.
For Louise Glück, the sublime "filtered in through the cracks of everyday existence." Glück, former VT and US poet laureate and Nobel Prize winner, died in October. In Seven Days, Chelsea Edgar looks back at her complex life, exacting approach to writing, and even her stint helping to found and then run the New England Culinary Institute (she was by all accounts "a brilliant cook"). Anorexic as a teenager, she looked hard and unflinchingly at herself and others. "Anything generalized did not interest her," says a close friend. "But the particulars of you, your life—she was very interested. And she really listened.""Then an idea struck me that all I needed to do was just create something right here right now, no matter how small." “Right here” is Cuba, Morocco, Laos... And “small” is small indeed: the back of a receipt. Wang Ruijia (aka Odding) lives in Japan, loves coffee, and has a talent for drawing. She's traveling the world, detailing her experiences through tales and sketches that fill the back of her café receipts. Concise and charming, her perfectly penned stories capture “the inspiration and frustration, the complexity and simplicity, the lack and the abundance” of travel. You can try just dipping in, but you won't stop. Joey Levenson has the backstory on It’s Nice That.Eye candy. The International Landscape Photographer of the Year awards are out, and as often happens, the website itself is a bear to navigate but My Modern Met does the hard work for us. There's some surpassingly beautiful work in there that'll stop your scrolling in its tracks. Sadly, they don't describe what we're looking at. But hey, how often do you read a candy wrapper?The Friday Vordle. Did you know that even when Daybreak's not publishing, the Vordle just keeps going? You can get a reminder email each day during the next two weeks, as well as each weekend morning once Daybreak starts up again: Just sign up here. And Vordlers: As usual, this weekend's puzzles will include words from today's Daybreak. After that, you're on your own.
Daybreak doesn't get to exist without your support. Help it keep going by hitting the maroon button:
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There's that Daybreak jigsaw puzzle, 252 or 520 pieces, just in time for these long nights by the fire. Plus, of course, fleece vests, hoodies, sweatshirts, even a throw blanket. And hats, mugs, and—once you work up a puzzle-piece sweat—tees. Check it all out at the link!
From 4 to 6 pm today, Cover to COVER Books in WRJ holds its first-ever book event: "Adapting Watership Down: From Prose to Panel" with cartoonist and Center for Cartoon Studies co-founder James Sturm. He'll both be talking about his wildly successful illustrated adaptation of Richard Adams' classic, and hanging around before and after his talk for a meet & greet. New soft- and hardcover versions of the book will be on hand to buy. 158 S. Main Street, one door north of Big Fatty's.
This evening at 7, violinist Cecilia Blencowe and pianist/organist Henry Danaher will give a fundraising concert for Willing Hands at the Church of Christ at Dartmouth College in Hanover. Danaher is music director at the church, as well as a pianist for the Dartmouth Glee Club and the Handel Society and the college's organist. Blencowe graduated recently from the Royal College of Music in London, performing both there and around Europe. Their program includes works by Elgar, Paganini, Bach, and others, as well as Christmas classics. No tickets, all donations go to Willing Hands.
Saturday
At 4 pm tomorrow, the Enfield Shaker Museum is hosting a Community Carol Sing in the former La Salette Chapel, led by Norwich Congregational Church organist Joshua Brown and community instrumentalists. Music and words will be provided, and there'll be a brief presentation on how the Shakers celebrated Christmas by Mary Ann Haagen, along with a chance to learn a Shaker Christmas song.
Pianist Elizabeth Borowsky had been planning to take advantage of visits from her equally musical parents and sibs (they all tour together as part of The American Virtuosi) to give a free concert. But then she mentioned the idea to friends... And now, tomorrow at 7 pm, there'll be an additional 17 performers at the First Congregational Church of Lebanon, including soprano Rebecca Maggi, tenor Brian Clancy, organist Henry Danaher, the Suckow and Slater families, and a clutch of young performers, with works by Handel, Bach and Gounod, carols, and Vivaldi's "Winter" with a backdrop of wintry scenes taken by drone videographer William Daugherty. Ice sculptor Tony Perham will be working his magic out in front during the afternoon. Any donations will go to the Haven.
And while Daybreak's on break...
Here are a few events to keep you out of trouble:
If you're looking for something to do on a Wednesday evening, the weekly acoustic jam session at The Filling Station in WRJ doesn't stop for anything—it'll be there on both Dec. 27 and Jan. 3 (and most other Wednesdays in 2024). You can join in or just sit back and listen while some of the area's best get together to make music.
On Thursday, Dec. 28, Pentangle Arts offers up an unusual afternoon and evening of things not from around here. It's a collaboration with Astral Projections, and starts at 4 pm with a reception for film producer Michael Clark, on tour with his new film Jules, directed by Marc Turtletaub and starring Ben Kingsley, who's just minding his own business in a small western PA town when a UFO and its passenger, whom Kingsley befriends, crashes in his backyard. The film screening starts at 5 pm, followed by a Q&A, and then a screening of John Carpenter's 1982 film, The Thing. At the Woodstock Town Hall Theatre.
Saturday, Dec. 30 at 3 pm (and again Sunday, same time), the Woodstock Film Series at Billings Farm screens Pianoforte, director Jakub Piatek's 2023 "fly-on-the-philharmonic-wall" documentary about the International Chopin Piano Competition, which has been held in Warsaw every five years since 1927. It's "one of those kind of events that can change your life entirely, for a young pianist, overnight," Piatek told NPR a few days ago, and the film follows several of the young pianists as they prepare, rehearse, pace and fidget, and perform.
Starting at 7:30 on Sunday, Dec. 31 and lasting all evening, there'll be a New Year's Eve contra dance in Tracy Hall in Norwich, hosted by Norwich Community Dances and featuring music by Red Dog Riley, with Don Stratton calling.
And starting at 8 pm on New Year's Eve, the Main Street Museum in WRJ hosts "Oh What a Night", with dinner and desserts, dancing to music by Route 5 Jive, midnight champagne toast, and bonfire. Tix are $35.
On Friday, Jan. 5 at 4 pm, former US Rep. Liz Cheney will give her postponed keynote address for Dartmouth's Democracy Summit, "An Oath to Defend Democracy". The in-person event at the Hanover Inn is limited to Dartmouth audiences and has been sold out pretty much forever, but there will also be a livestream, which you'll find here.
On Saturday, Jan. 6 at 1 pm, Hop Film presents the Met Opera in HD version of Verdi's early opera, Nabucco, with baritone George Gagnidze as the imperious king Nabucco, alongside Ukrainian soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska as his vengeful daughter Abigaille.
On Saturday, Jan. 6 at 6 pm, the Main Street Museum will hold its annual tree burn and start to Carnival. Music, gumbo, punch, and "of course," they write, "mayhem. Lots of mayhem!" Drop off your gently or not-so-gently used tree and/or greens behind the MSM before 1/6.
And in case you missed it when it was around earlier, TAYLOR SWIFT | THE ERAS TOUR will be at the Loew on Saturday, Jan. 6 at 7 pm, thanks to Hop Film. It's the almost full-on concert experience (minus, you know, an arena-ful of other people), right there in front of you.
And to carry us into the break, a waltz that's not a waltz.
But it'll have you stepping out in style, anyway. Here's Mr. Sun, the kinda bluegrass, kinda dawg, kinda Americana band made up of Darol Anger, Grant Gordy, Aidan O'Donnell, and Joe K. Walsh,
, their swinging little homage to Tchaikovsky's "Waltz of the Flowers" from the
Nutcracker.
Just to get us in a good mood heading into the long weekend.
And now... If you're celebrating Christmas on Monday or Kwanzaa starting Tuesday or heading into the night to mark New Year's or just hanging out and appreciating family or friends or this place we all live, I hope your next two weeks are filled with warmth, peacefulness, community, good food, plenty of time outside, and a promising start to the new year.
Oh, and would it be too much to ask for some decent snow?
See you Monday, Jan. 8 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.
Want to catch up on Daybreak music?
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Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Poetry editor: Michael Lipson Associate Editor: Jonea Gurwitt About Rob About Michael
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