GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
An interesting day and night ahead. With temperatures around the freezing mark, this weather system will continue dropping rain and snow this morning, depending on where you are—though as temperatures reach into the 40s, it'll be rain. There's a chance of some break in the clouds later today—but there's also a strong cold front coming through, and from our mid-afternoon peak we'll drop precipitously overnight to the low teens or even low single digits. We're talking 2-6 degrees an hour, maybe a 40-degree swing in all.Hello out there! "When I was an undergraduate," Ted Levin writes of Erin Donahue's latest video, "the fisher was classified as a marten, Martes pennanti, a member of the weasel family, Mustelidae, the most diverse family within the mammalian order Carnivora (59 species spread across 22 genera). Although a close relative of the pine marten, M. americana, the fisher now resides in the monotypic genus Pekania and has been reclassified as P. pennanti. This male searches for love, writing a note with its penis and anal scent glands. It's not indelible, but it works. Fishers have roamed North America for 700,000 years."Woodstock voters face a series of expensive choices, even after March 5 voting. For starters, writes Frances Mize in the Valley News, there are two key votes at town and school meeting: on the budget, which bump municipal taxes up as much as 9 percent; and on a $99 million bond for a new middle and high school building, along with a school budget nearly $5 million than last year. Whatever happens with those votes, the town then faces expensive decisions on a bond to repair its aging wastewater treatment plant and whether to buy the Woodstock Aqueduct Company. Mize explores what's at stake.As Randolph tries to expand policing, it faces hurdles. Its current force is working long hours and facing burnout, a town committee has concluded, and needs at least two new officers. But the committee also wants the department, whose purview is limited, to serve more of the town, which would require two more officers. To make all this happen, four public votes have to pass, writes Darren Marcy in the Herald: to boost the budget at town meeting; to allow non-budget questions to be voted on by Australian ballot; agreement by voters within the current police district to expand its boundary; and agreement by residents of the expanded district to accept the new boundary. Stay tuned.Canaan foundry goes up in flames; firefighters save nearby home, sugar house. The foundry, writes VN photographer James Patterson, was where Tom Guillette melted aluminum to cast cemetery markers. Guillette, a former Timken engineer and facilities manager at the Hanover Co-op, tells Patterson that a box of magnesium he'd separated from the aluminum made extinguishing the Wednesday night fire more difficult, since it burns more intensely when touched by water. Crews from Canaan, Lebanon, Enfield, Hanover, Lyme, and Dorchester turned out. "The response was absolutely amazing," he says.SPONSORED: It’s time for our annual check-up on the globe’s health. You could say this was the year that climate change went off the charts! From devastating New England floods to record heat waves across the globe, the Earth is fast approaching a temperature limit that’s supposed to put a brake on global warming. You can help reset the pace by converting to solar energy this summer—using some of the cheapest power now on the market. Hit the burgundy link for a quick climatological recap of 2023, as told in six eye-opening charts. Sponsored by Solaflect Energy.
The Five Colleges Book Sale: What you need to know. The sale itself isn't until April (at Lebanon High School) which should give you plenty of time to find those books (all except the kind listed here) you've been meaning to donate. And as Susan Apel points out in Artful, the sale's got a new website that makes things easy—though she does a fine job of passing along the basics. If you want to dive in, here's the sale site."If you’ve seen one sugaring season, you’ve seen one sugaring season." That's the title of Tom Ayres' piece in the VT Standard, an old saying quoted by a UVM maple specialist. And it seems never truer than now, as warming and inconsistent temps force producers to adapt. Ayres surveys the scene, with sugarers tapping earlier, turning to technology to boost production, using forest management strategies to help keep sap flowing even as the season grows warmer and wetter. "It’s hard to say what’s going to happen this year," says Woodstock's Meg Emmons. "We’ll tell you in June how the season turned out.SPONSORED: Northern Woodlands seeks its next executive director. The Center for Northern Woodlands Education, a voice for forest stewardship in the Northeast, is looking for the right candidate to succeed our current executive director, who will step down later this year. We publish the popular quarterly magazine Northern Woodlands, as well as "The Outside Story" weekly ecology series and special publications. Our office is located in Lyme. For more information, please see the full job posting at the title link or here. Sponsored by the Center for Northern Woodlands Education.Hiking Close to Home: Mascoma Valley Regional High School Trails, Canaan, NH. The Upper Valley Trails Alliance calls them "a unique community recreation resource": The public trail network is on school property and partly developed and maintained by students as an educational opportunity. There are currently almost 2 miles of trails that have been put into use, including a few loops and a walk along the river to a viewpoint. Please defer to school trail users and park behind the school to get to the trailheads.More winter rain, declining snow cover: bad news all around. Two pieces this week make the point in different ways.
On Vermont Public, Mary Engisch talks to Carol Adair, who directs UVM's Aiken Forestry Science Lab and was one of the authors of a new study finding that snowpack stores nutrients, and when it rains those get washed into rivers and streams, rather than soaking into the ground as the snow melts the way it should. Similarly, the less snowpack and the more rain, the more nutrients get washed out of the soil. Next on the researchers' list: where those nutrients come from.
And for Northern Woodlands' "Outside Story", Michael Caduto writes that our "meteorological roller-coaster" and long-term decline in the snowpack "have critical implications for plants and wildlife." Snow cover safeguards both animals and plant life—which need about 20 inches for protection from harsh conditions. Without that, roots die off, small mammals have to eat more to survive, and predators that rely on them—think owls and foxes—"are unable to break through the hard layer of ice that accumulates on top of the snow during repeated freeze-thaw cycles."
So... Think you know what's been going on in the Upper Valley? Because Daybreak's News Quiz has some questions for you. Like... Which Hanover eatery just got sold to new owners? And where does "one of the best landscape photographers working in New England" have his day job? 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 how much people in Vermont bet on the Super Bowl.
And NHPR's got a whole set of questions about doings around the Granite State—like, where did Gov. Chris Sununu just get the go-ahead to send NH National Guard troops?
NH House rejects bill to allow people to voluntarily bar themselves from buying guns. Three states allow people to add themselves to the federal database of prohibited purchasers; thanks to a 179-200 vote in the House yesterday, NH won't be joining them. Backers, mostly Democrats, argued it's a personal health decision; opponents, mostly Republicans, worried people might be pressured to sign up, reports the AP's Holly Ramer. Here, NHPR's Rick Ganley talks to the Hooksett woman who's been in the spotlight backing it.After spate of rental snowmobile accidents, North Country executive councilor says legislation needed. Joe Kenney's call for finding a way—possibly through mandatory training—to ensure that renters know what they're doing comes after two Massachusetts women were killed in recent accidents and eight crashes in all over five weeks that involved rental machines. Kenney, a Republican, says critics have told him rental companies will just move to Maine, reports InDepthNH's Paula Tracy. He counters that regulators need to tell industry, "We have a problem here in our state... You better fix it."What Act 127 actually means for VT towns. Gov. Phil Scott yesterday signed H.850, which affects how some towns will be treated by the state when it comes to education taxes. But that measure didn't touch the essence of Act 127, which shifts how pupils are "weighted" and will have a dramatic impact on homestead property taxes. The state has put out data on those shifts, but now, VTDigger's Erin Petenko has made it accessible for us mere mortals with a district-by-district interactive map. And, even better, an explanation of why those changes in weighted share affect property taxes.In many ways, yesterday's H.850 signing was just a start. In Seven Days, Alison Novak reports on a legislative hearing yesterday that laid bare just how tough the road ahead will be. Representatives from the school board and superintendents' associations told lawmakers: the balancing act between safeguarding small local schools and keeping education costs reasonable has become impossible to pull off; spending on student mental health is skyrocketing; state mandates—for universal school meals and PCB testing—are straining the system; and there is a lack of leadership from the state.Every town needs one of these. Just sayin'. You know how, when it comes time to vote on candidates for local office, you often have no idea who they are or why they want the position? Sure, maybe selectboard. But what about cemetery commissioner? Well, in Seven Days, Kevin McCallum reports on a new website created by a couple of Fairfax, VT residents that gives nonpartisan, straightforward information about which positions are up for a vote, what they do, who's running for them, and why. That last part, McCallum writes, "took some nudging, but everyone eventually came around."“The emotional broken things and the mental broken things are difficult. You can’t glue that back together.” In LA, there’s a warehouse that holds the futures of thousands of the city’s kids. Inside, a small team fixes the musical instruments that the LA school system gives to students. In the lovely Oscar-nominated short The Last Repair Shop we meet the craftspeople whose own childhood traumas are mended as they plug leaks, replace pegs, and patch cracks, and kids whose lives they change. “When an instrument breaks, there’s a student without an instrument. No, no, no. Not in our city.” (Thanks, SP!)Don't even bother trying this at home. Four guys through a single airborne hoop—though not at the same time, which is somehow even more impressive. Of course, they are members of the Québecois hoop-diving troupe, Hoops Désolé. You can find their Insta channel here. Oh, and sure, since you asked nicely, here's that jump again in slo-mo. The Friday Vordle. With a word from yesterday's Daybreak. And are you new to Vordle? Fresh ones appear on weekends, using words from the Friday Daybreak, and you can get a reminder email each weekend morning: Just sign up here.
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There's that Daybreak jigsaw puzzle, perfect for 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!
Today at noon, Dismas of Hartford launches a free speaker series on "Alternatives in Recovery and Incarceration" with a talk by Vermont filmmaker Bess O'Brien and writer and teacher Gary Miller, co-founders of Writers for Recovery. The project grew out of O'Brien's 2013 documentary about opiate addiction in Vermont, The Hungry Heart, and works with recovery groups, residential treatment facilities, recovery organizations, and in prisons to help people use deeply personal writing and storytelling to "process trauma, build self-esteem, and support healthy, sustained recovery." At the Norwich Public Library, which is a co-sponsor.
At 7 pm, Hop Film screens All of Us Strangers, Andrew Haigh's 2023 film with Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Claire Foy and Jamie Bell about the developing relationship between Scott and Mescal, the sole inhabitants of a new apartment building, and the redeveloping relationship between Scott and his parents, who were killed in a car crash 30 years before. "On an initial viewing," wrote The Guardian, "it’s the picture’s wrenching emotional impact that strikes most emphatically—during the first screening I attended, the whole row of seats shook from the collective sobs of fellow film critics. But on a second viewing, you start to fully appreciate the immaculate craft of the picture."
At 7:30 this evening, the Anonymous Coffeehouse will be at the First Congregational Church of Lebanon, starting with Boston-based performer and guitarist Dean Stevens. At 8:15, a definite departure for the Anonymous: 2022 Philadelphia rapper of the year Kuf Knotz and harpist Christine Elise. "Their music is genre-defying, combining elements of hip hop, jazz, classical and folk—and you can dance to it!" Finally, at 9, the wide-ranging local duo of Mallory Graham and Scott Tyler, also known as The Rough & Tumble, who are some of the moving forces behind Bradford's Bringalong Singalong and spill their own travels into the genre they call thriftstore Americana.
Saturday
Tomorrow from 10 am to 4 pm, VINS throws its Winter Wildlife Celebration, with everything from a visit from the Vermont Reindeer Farm to time at the chickadee feeding station to a story about tracking an otter through the winter forest.
At 2 pm tomorrow, the North Country Chamber Players will perform at Alumni Hall in Haverhill. Their concert, "Paris Rendezvous", will feature works by Jean-Michel Damase, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Jean Françaix, Gabriel Fauré and Francis Poulenc.
Tomorrow at 4 and 7 pm, Hop Film screens the 2024 Oscar-nominated animated shorts. "Traditionally among the year's most creative and surprising work, these gems are also the most difficult to find," the Hop writes. Not for kids under 13.
And from 6-8 pm tomorrow, the Orford Conservation Commission and Upper Valley Land Trust host a moonlit snowshoe at Mountain View Farm. No reservations needed, headlamps and snowshoes recommended, children welcome (but they need to be accompanied by an adult at all times). Parking at the lot on Mousley Brook Road.
Sunday
At 7 pm Sunday, the Grand Kyiv Ballet will take the Chandler stage in Randolph with its performance of Giselle,Adolphe Adam's classic ballet about a peasant girl who falls in love with a count disguised as a commoner—and Giselle's after-death brush with the Wilis, the ghosts of unmarried women who died after being betrayed by their lovers. Ukrainian ballet dancers Kateryna Kukhar and Oleksandr Stoianov dance the leads. There are still tickets left, but not a lot.
And for this weekend...
Curious about just how hip hop and harp work together on stage? Or, more specifically, Kuf Knotz and Christine Elise?
And, of course, a cheesesteak shoutout.
Have a very fine 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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