GOOD OF YOU TO DROP BY, FRIDAY!
Interesting day out there yesterday, eh? Today will be different. Well, not totally different: It's still going to be windy, with gusts getting up to around 30 mph. On the other hand, there's high pressure building in, temps will get out of the 30s and climb all the way into the 50s, and it will be sunny all day. Winds from the west, back into the 30s tonight ahead of tomorrow's warmth.Nature throws a curveball. Earth Day dawned pretty sunny, with snow on the ground... and magnolias covered in ice and snow. Here they are in Thetford Center, from Sally Duston, E. Thetford, from Robin Osborne, and Hanover, from Lori Harriman. "I never knew the woods was so full of happy noise." It's spring, and Lost Woods is full of birds now, as Lebanon writer and illustrator D.B. Johnson checks in, believe it or not, with Week 21 of his comic strip, Lost Woods. You get a week's worth at a time: Scroll right to see what happens next or left to catch up on previous weeks. And if you've missed a week (or more), check out the archive and synopsis behind the three little parallel lines at the top right.Hartford aims to regulate homeless encampments. Town Manager Tracy Yarlott-Davis presented the new policy to the selectboard this week, reports Anna Merriman in the Valley News. It details "high sensitivity" areas in town, including parks, schools, waterways, floodplains, and critical wildlife habits, where encampments shouldn't be allowed. Enforcement, Yarlott-Davis says, would be complaint-based: In some cases, it will mean cleaning up a site; in others, the person will be asked to leave and helped to find a place to stay.VT Board of Ed tells Hartland, Mt. Ascutney school districts to reimburse families for sending kids to religious schools. The order also included the Rutland school district, and comes in the wake of a US Supreme Court decision last summer barring states from prohibiting taxpayer funding for religious entities solely because they're religious. The state board, reports VTDigger's Lola Duffort, said the districts did not show they were denying tuition reimbursements for any reason other than that the schools were religious.
SPONSORED: Want to go solar but don't have a good site for installing panels? Many houses in our region aren’t ideal for installing solar on the roof—due to shading, condition, or direction. Or maybe you rent a home, apartment, or condo and can’t install panels directly. Norwich Solar Technologies has the answer to your problem with a Community Solar Membership. Signing up is easy! Just hit the maroon link to learn more or receive an energy evaluation. Sponsored by Norwich Solar Technologies.Mud Season Mystery: The Lodger offers up "a novel delivery strategy." In a review earlier this week for Boston's Arts Fuse, which she reprises on her Artful blog, Susan Apel writes that Northern Stage's latest production "supplies welcome relief from what has become the all too ubiquitous mind-numbing Zoom gallery view of our daily lives." It's a mystery, sure, with a serial killer out and about in London, a landlady, her niece, the mysterious lodger they take in, a detective, and a narrator. But it's also staged live each night, with willing members of the audience participating. Meaning: Anything can happen.Walking/Wheeling/Strolling close to home: The Mascoma River Greenway. If you're looking for an easy stroller- and wheelchair-accessible trail, the Upper Valley Trails Alliance points you to the Mascoma River Greenway. It's fully paved and runs along a section of the rail trail next to downtown Lebanon. With plants popping up, leaves starting to burst from tree branches, and trail conditions often muddy elsewhere, this is a fun, easy trail for the whole family! Turns out, announcing it's a boy with 80 pounds of explosive and blue chalk gets people's attention. In two states. The blast, set off at a gender reveal party in a quarry in Kingston, NH Tuesday evening, shook homes, cracked a foundation, and fired up social media up and down the Merrimack Valley in NH and MA. Kingston police later said the family used a legal explosive, Tannerite; the guy who bought and set it off has turned himself in. “Are you kidding me?” one neighbor told Boston's NBC10 after police confirmed what was behind it. “I’m all up for silliness and what not, but that was extreme.”Climate change boosts risk of flooding—and cost of flood insurance. And not just on the seacoast, reports NHPR's Annie Ropeik. Overall, about 65,000 homes in NH, both inland and on the coast, are at risk of flooding; a new analysis finds another 3,700 homes will be at risk by 2050. In an interactive graphic, you can see what that means around here: about 15 percent of homes in Orford will be at risk of structural damage; 12 percent in Lyme; 10 percent in Lebanon—though in all three towns, homeowners are getting a slightly better deal on flood insurance than elsewhere in Grafton County.NH to reinstate job-hunting requirement for people on unemployment. The need to look for work while receiving benefits was waived for the pandemic, but at a press conference yesterday, Gov. Chris Sununu said that starting May 23, anyone on unemployment will be required to show they're looking for work. “There are tens of thousands of high-paying jobs across the state available today,” he said, especially in tourism-related areas, restaurants, hotels, tech, and manufacturing.So, should we take calling someone a "low life with daddy issues" as a No? That was just one line in an expletive-filled pair of emails that Slate Ridge owner Daniel Banyai sent to the town attorney for Pawlet, VT. As you'll remember, Banyai's been ordered to tear down his gun-training facility; instead, he held a picnic last weekend where attendees used the facility's gun ranges. Pawlet's lawyer, Merrill Bent, has asked a state court to hold Banyai in contempt, and yesterday filed his emails as proof that he "has no intention of making a good faith effor to comply" with the court's order.OneCare VT goes nonprofit. The Colchester organization contracts with the state to shift the health-care system from one that pays for each procedure to one that boosts the quality of care by providing hospitals and providers a fixed monthly fee, writes VTDigger's Katie Jickling. It's been under fire for lack of transparency, with its for-profit status to suggest that it had an incentive to drive up health care costs. The status switch, CEO Vicki Loner tells Jickling, is a “major milestone” that shows “we’re truly committed to Vermont’s health-care reform efforts.” Sort of like Telephone. Only much more complicated. This is pretty cool. In Seven Days, Pamela Polston writes about an international art project/game that launched last year in which, building from a single prompt (about a banyan tree), artists, writers, filmmakers, poets, dancers, musicians, and others took inspiration from one another's work, with multiple pieces leading to more multiples of pieces. In all, 950 artists in 70 countries took part, including nine from VT and eight from NH (though none from around here). The exhibit went online April 10. Fair warning: You can lose yourself for hours in there.Though don't you think the music should be "Wipe Out?" Or at least the Beach Boys? Whatever... Did you know that sea lions are ace surfers?
Last numbers for the week.
Dartmouth has 7 active cases among students (up 1), with 1 among faculty/staff (down 1). There are 12 students and 1 faculty/staff in quarantine because of travel or exposure, while 6 students and 9 faculty/staff are in isolation awaiting results or because they tested positive.
Colby-Sawyer is down to 1 active case, a student. There's 1 person in isolation and 1 in quarantine.
NH reported 515 new cases yesterday (about 100 of them tied to an outbreak at the federal prison in Berlin) for a cumulative total of 92,991. There was 1 new death, bringing the total to 1,274, while 112 people with confirmed cases are hospitalized (down 12). The current active caseload stands at 3,233 (up 143). The state reports 193 active cases in Grafton County (down 10), 69 in Sullivan (up 5), and 260 in Merrimack (down 1). In town-by-town numbers, the state says Claremont has 27 active cases (up 1), Haverhill has 15 (down 2), Newport has 14 (up 1), Lebanon has 11 (up 2), Hanover has 9 (up 1), Sunapee has 7 (down 1), Charlestown has 7 (up 1), Enfield has 6 (up 1), and Piermont has 5 (no change). Orford, Wentworth, Canaan, Orange, Grafton, Plainfield, Grantham, Springfield, Newbury, and Croydon have 1-4 each. Lyme and Dorchester are off the list.
VT reported 78 new cases yesterday, bringing it toa total case count of 22,325. Deaths remain at 243, while 26 people with confirmed cases are hospitalized (down 1). Windsor County gained 7 new cases and stands at 1,295 for the pandemic, with 65 over the past 14 days, while Orange County also added 7 and is at 701 cumulatively, with 107 cases in the past 14 days.
News that connects you. If you like Daybreak and want to help it keep going, here's how:
Starting today and running through tomorrow, Positive Tracks holds its Romp 5K/10K/Half-Marathon/Marathon fundraiser. All ages, any time, anywhere: choose a distance and run, walk, bike, hike, power-chair, or spin. Proceeds go to the Hanover-based nonprofit, which works with young people of all backgrounds and abilities "to use sport as a platform and catalyst for change."
This evening at 6, author, essayist, and Pushcart Prize winner Megan Baxter throws an online launch party for her debut memoir, Farm Girl, about her decision to leave college and a troubled relationship in Oregon and return home to the Upper Valley—she grew up in Hanover—and in particular to the lush fields of an organic farm in Thetford (Cedar Circle), where she re-rooted herself both in the soil and in writing.
At 7 pm, Grafton VT's Nature Center hosts naturalist and "Bird Diva" Bridget Butler with a talk, "Ladies Only: A Look at Female Birds & the Founding Mothers of Ornithology." She'll be focusing on new scientific studies of female birds, and telling stories about women involved in the development of ornithology. Sliding scale contribution starting at $5.
At 7 pm, the Upper Valley Music Center hosts the Boston-based Balourdet String Quartet for an online chamber music listening party. They'll be showing performances of pieces including Bartok's Quartet No. 4, and Beethoven's Op. 18 No. 1 and Op. 131, as well as taking questions from the audience about how they do what they do.
At 7:30 pm, Middlebury's Performing Arts Series closes out its season with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center performing all six of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos. Includes a Q&A session with the artists. No charge, but you'll need to register, and the entire presentation is available until April 30.
At 8 pm, the Hop presents a recorded concert by cellist and MacArthur Fellow Alisa Weilerstein and pianist and recent Artist-in-Association for the New York Philharmonic Inon Barnatan. They'll be performing the Suite Populaire Espagnole by Manuel de Falla and Sergei Rachmaninoff's Sonata in G Minor for Cello and Piano, Op. 19. Pick your price.
You no doubt know this already, but tomorrow is Independent Bookstore Day, and to mark the occasion the Norwich Bookstore is opening back up for its first day of in-store browsing after a year, as they put it, "of operating behind closed doors." They'll be celebrating from 10 am to 2 pm with literary gifts, music in Norwich Square by Lorrie Wilkes and Ford Daley, and the launch of the first Story Walk of the year, featuring Even the Smallest Will Grow, by New Hampshire writer Lita Judge.
And tomorrow at 7 pm, ArtisTree presents "Time to Shine," a virtual community talent show, with pre-recorded performances by a wide variety of local musicians and singers, including the Thetford Chamber Singers, Bob Totz, guitarist and baroque flute player Jesse Lepkoff, and others—all emceed by local comedian Collen Doyle. Tix are $25 per device.
Ha! You were expecting the Surfaris. But no, we'll jump into the weekend with Brazilian dancer, choreographer, and Michael Jackson impersonator Ricardo Walker and his Crew, going through not just 35 costume changes, but everyone from Gene Kelly to Elvis and Chubby Checker to Madonna, Beyoncé, the Backstreet Boys, and, of course, the King of Pop
In six minutes. (Though don't be fooled: It took 16 hours to film.)
(Thanks, DG!)
Get out there tomorrow! See you Monday.
Oh, okay
. What the heck. Here they are:
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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