GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
This week, this space is sponsored by St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Hanover. Today, Christians remember how Jesus suffered humiliation and death at the hands of an imperial power. Saturday night and at Easter the story continues as light overwhelms the darkness. Not even death can separate us from God’s love. Join us at St. Thomas as we prepare for and celebrate Easter.
Before anything else: Thank you to all of you who wrote in yesterday morning about that tech snafu. Your encouragement, reassurance, and good humor were pitch-perfect, and exactly what I needed. Daybreak’s readership is, simply put, the best!
And a tech note: On top of everything else, a behind-the-scenes issue led servers undergirded by Microsoft (including Dartmouth’s) to label every link in yesterday’s Daybreak as malicious. They weren’t, I promise. If you have a dartmouth.edu or other institutional address, try asking your IT department to add Daybreak’s sending domain to their “Safe Links allow list.” And should this happen again, head to daybreak.news and you’ll find that day’s newsletter.
Now, let’s get on with things…
Showers, then getting sunny and warm. It’s like a whole change of seasons in one day! We start the morning in the low 30s (keep an eye on the roads first thing) with rain, a chance of thunder, and cloudy skies. But up above, there are winds from the southwest and some fronts passing through: Any rain should taper off by noon, and this afternoon clouds will begin to part enough that we’ll see some sun, with highs reaching 60 late in the afternoon. Down to the mid 40s overnight, cooler Saturday and Sunday.
If it works, do it again. “Evolution follows a simple thread,” writes Ted Levin about Erin Donahue’s trail cam video of an ambling porcupine. “Life gives life; animals and plants slowly change; and eventually, they either become something new or die away. From this comes a second, quieter truth: distant species, shaped by similar pressures, grow similar traits and echo one another across time and the branches of the tree of life. A few examples: eyes (octopuses/mammals), echolocation (whales/bats), opposable thumbs (primates/opossums), long necks (sauropod dinosaurs/giraffes), and quills (New World and Old World porcupines).”
That’s one bad hair day! The female merganser that photographer Jim Block caught on the ice along the Ompompanoosuc recently is hardly the only waterfowl in his new blog post, but she’s got to be the most unforgettable. He also managed to get photos of a Eurasian Wigeon—which, as its name suggests, doesn’t show up in these parts very often—in Plainfield; a delightful photo of a male common merganser appearing to test the water temp; plus geese, mallards, and a series of photos of a soaring and landing bald eagle, any one of which could be on a postage stamp. And a hike along the newly conserved Black Bear Glen, below Moose Mountain.
Did you catch Dear Daybreak yesterday? If not, you missed Susan Ellison’s soul-settling photo from a while back of sunset over Little Lake Sunapee, Skip Sturman’s brainstorm on what a crash course for newcomers on all things Upper Valley might look like, Linette Wermager’s between-seasons poem, and Lori Fortini’s reflection on how driving in mud season offers good lessons for life in general.
A historic and slightly quirky Upper Valley music venue looks for the next generation of leadership. Seven Stars Arts in Sharon inhabits a building that was once a church, a garage, and a healing arts center (though not all at once). For years now, it’s been a volunteer-run performing arts and education center that happens to have some of the best acoustics in the region and an extremely loyal audience. “They love the hall, and they love the music,” says Anne Mapplebeck, who with her husband, Michael Barsanti, helps keep Seven Stars on track. As Erica Houskeeper writes for Daybreak, the pair also hope to figure out how to keep it on track after they step aside.
You can hear all this—with details not in the story—on Erica’s podcast.
SPONSORED: Yes, "April showers bring May flowers,” but for some, April showers bring leaky roofs they can’t afford to fix. Last year, with the community’s support, COVER replaced 11 roofs at no cost to qualifying homeowners. This April, help us raise $12,000—enough to replace two roofs—and a donor will fund two more as part of our Raise the Roof Challenge. That’s four weeks, four roofs, and four families helped. Donate today! Sponsored by COVER Home Repair.
Here’s a surprise: The race for Windsor County sheriff is getting crowded. It almost seems like the only person who hasn’t yet declared interest is current Sheriff Ryan Palmer, who’s dealing with the loss of his law enforcement certification while a state case against him for stalking and lewd and lascivious conduct is in the courts. Meanwhile, reports Darren Marcy in The Herald, five people have already declared their intent to run, including Palmer’s chief deputy, Claude Weyant, who’s running the department for the moment. Three other officers within the department have also declared, as has a Bellows Falls patrolman. Marcy details the state of play.
Green Mountain National Forest will burn grassland near Woodstock/Pomfret line. The prescribed burn in the area where the Appalachian Trail crosses Route 12 is part of a larger fire operation in 1,000 acres in southern VT, reports Justin Bigos in the VT Standard. It’s slated to begin this month and last through May. The goal, a Forest Service fire management official tells Bigos, is “to reduce heavy accumulations of grass and brush, which will also help to reduce the potential for large uncontrollable wildfires… The post-fire landscape will support a more diverse variety of grasses and forbs, which will be more palatable and nutritious for wildlife species.”
SPONSORED: Hartford Community Coalition seeks a part-time development director. HCC is looking for a hybrid, part-time, strategic, and relationship-centered development director to lead and manage all grants, fundraising, and philanthropic engagement efforts to strengthen and diversify revenue streams supporting HCC’s mission. Position requires strategic thinking, strong relationship management skills, and ability to implement a comprehensive development plan in a small, community-driven organization. Online job application at the burgundy link. Please apply ASAP/by Apr 10! More about HCC here. Sponsored by the Hartford Community Coalition.
Former Brown’s Furniture in W. Leb gets a new occupant: a Claremont furniture store. As the Valley News’s Sofia Langlois reports, April Love owns two stores in Claremont: Love’s Furniture and Bedding, and Cash & Carry Furniture. The new Love’s Furniture Loft “slowly began moving into the [Brown’s] space last year,” writes Langlois; it held a soft opening on March 21. Love tells her that the new store “is a separate company with no legal relationship to Brown Furniture.” Which, given the tangle of complaints against Brown’s last owner being investigated by NH’s consumer protection bureau, is no doubt a huge relief. Langlois details all that, too.
Dartmouth professor’s tip led to New York Times investigation into Cesar Chavez. So runs the headline atop Alex Klee’s story this morning in The Dartmouth about Latin American studies prof Matthew Garcia, who first learned of sexual abuse allegations against Chavez from contacts for his 2012 book about Chavez and the farm worker movement. Those contacts forwarded Garcia a post from a private FB group, which Garcia in turn passed on to Times reporter Manny Fernandez, kicking off the years-long investigation that led to the paper’s blockbuster story. Klee details what happened, and the renaming spree in its aftermath.
152 knit hats, 27 scarves. For the Haven. There’s a story behind that delivery, which begins years ago when writer Sonja Hakala was doing a story on the nonprofit and asked if there were any donations they wished for but never got. The answer: hats. Hakala began knitting some herself, but as she puts it, “I’m only one person.” So last fall, she approached rePlay Arts in WRJ for help, and its community of yarn lovers responded with gusto: “With our near-infinite supply of yarn, rePlay became a pickup point for materials, a collection point for finished hats, and a place where knitters could share tips, ideas, and knitting patterns,” they write on their blog. Story at the link.
Hiking and Biking Close to Mud Season: Cross Vermont Trail. The UVTA is still urging people to stick to open, dry areas, and the Cross Vermont Trail is the perfect spring alternative. It's an 85-mile multi-use path from Lake Champlain to the Connecticut River, following river valleys and historic rail routes. Choose from easy sections of paved bike paths, gravel rail trails through Groton State Forest, or pastoral dirt roads. You can do a short section or the whole thing. This is ideal for mud season since these lower-elevation paths handle spring conditions much better than mountain trails. You’ll find trail info and detailed maps at the burgundy link.
Daybreak’s Upper Valley News Quiz. Were you paying attention this week? Because we’ve got questions! Like, why is Hanover headed for a debate over parking? And can you remember why NH can lay claim to cartooning history props? Meanwhile, you’ll find NHPR’s New Hampshire quiz here, and Seven Days’ Vermont quiz here.
Judge orders homeless NH man with tuberculosis to isolate and submit to medical treatment. For more than eight months, state officials have been stymied in their efforts to get treatment for Nearro F. Forbes, who has been wandering Manchester and Nashua with an active case of tuberculosis; he’s ignored three attempts to hospitalize him, reports Steven Porter in the Globe (paywall). “The complex situation has strained the state’s public health operations,” Porter writes. Or you can sidestep the paywall with the UK’s Daily Mail version: “Terror as New Hampshire homeless man with TUBERCULOSIS roams city streets - but he's refusing offers of help.”
Meanwhile, catching up on some news that should have been in yesterday’s Daybreak:
VT’s Labor Relations Board on Wednesday ordered Gov. Phil Scott’s administration to “rescind” its back-to-the-office order for state employees. The board argued in its decision that the state had “refused to bargain in good faith and interfered with employees’ exercise of rights” in requiring in-person work, reports VTDigger’s Theo Wells-Spackman. At a press conference later that day, Scott called the move “disappointing, but not surprising.” The administration has appealed the order to the state supreme court.
VTDigger itself announced on Wednesday that it had reached a contract agreement with the union representing its newsroom and other employees, a unit of the Provdence Newspaper Guild. The move caps a long-running and sometimes tempestuous bargaining process, during which Digger’s top two leaders—CEO Sky Barsch and Editor-in-Chief Geeta Anand—said they’ll be leaving in June. As Seven Days’ Kevin McCallum reports, the key issues revolved around future use of AI; among other things, the new contract gives the union the right to bargain AI use with management.
It’s not called the Smell Me State—yet. It’s enough to put you off of vegetarian food forever. The folks in Jerome, Missouri, are experiencing the same frustration many of us face: insurance companies dragging their feet. In this case, according to the Guardian, the claim is over a tractor-trailer that crashed down an embankment, spilling 40,000 pounds of extra-firm tofu. Thanks to the insurance companies’ three-week delay, the tofu began to rot, creating a smell that “was like a dead animal, but worse,” said the fire chief. “It’s probably one of the worst smells I’ve smelled in my life, and I’ve smelled some nasty stuff.”
Right place and definitely the right time. Imagine you’re in the only airplane in the sky above Cape Canaveral as Artemis II was launched into space. And you manged to be on the right side of the plane… Just click outside the popup box to get it to go away.
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday’s Daybreak.
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Okay, so not long ago, the French pianist and YouTube star Emil Jean Joachim Reinert—better known as Emilio Piano—was hanging out in Paris’s Gare de Lyon train station just playing a Steinway (as one does) when up walks the even more famous Chinese classical pianist Lang Lang. And there just happens to be another piano right there. And, well, Lang Lang asks if Emilio knows Rush E, the insanely difficult meme tune that began as a YouTube parody consisting of 16th notes on the E key. And they’re off to the races.
See you Monday for CoffeeBreak.
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Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Poetry editor: Michael Lipson Associate Editors: Jonea Gurwitt, Sam Gurwitt
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