GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
System moving out, stuff still falling, temps rising. As always, most of the action is up above, where the low pressure system that brought us yesterday is moving slowly eastward. Here on the ground, we get a chance of showers pretty much all day: snow at first, then rain as temps climb toward the upper 30s or low 40s. Chance of snow mixing in again tonight as we drop back into the low 30s. No real accumulation to speak of.So how much snow fell? The National Weather Service has a snow total map that's much more robust for VT than for NH—and the numbers depend on the last time someone in a location reported in, but it's showing 18 inches in Tunbridge by yesterday afternoon, 14 in S. Royalton, 13 in Sharon, 12 in Newport NH, 11 in Unity... The Boston Globe also has a handy graphic map that lets you zero in on towns all over New England. If you're not a subscriber, you'll be able to close that "subscribe" popup box if it's got a barely visible "Close" in the upper left. If not, just use the weather service's map.As for outages... At one point yesterday, over 30,000 Vermonters and 230,000 Granite Staters were without power. The numbers have come down. As of this morning, it's about 16,500 in VT; going into yesterday evening, it was 140,000 in NH.
On the VT side, Windsor and Orange counties each have about 3,000 outages, with hundreds each in Royalton, Randolph, Bethel, Tunbridge, Chelsea, Sharon, Thetford, and elsewhere.
In NH, there are more scattered outages in Lyme, Canaan, Sunapee, and elsewhere.
Where animals go in a snowstorm. Erin Donahue's trail cam video is of the 3/22 storm, but you get the idea. Ted Levin writes, "Early spring snow, 27 inches on Hurricane Hill, nowhere less then 16 inches in the valley. Squirrels stayed home. Foxes curled in the open, snow piling high. Deer gathered beneath upturned hemlock boughs; robins and juncos panhandled along roadsides; voles and weasels scurried through dark tunnels, insulated beneath an overcoat of snow. Woodcock and snipe, desperate, exploited the fringe of springs and slow-moving freshets. Insects were undercover. Phoebes who came north early caught by the fickle fist of natural selection."Of course, others come out to play in a snowstorm.
Like Miss Piggy in Taftsville, from Caoimhe Markey. That's Denise Lyons in the photo—"Kermit applications pending," Caoimhe writes.
And this small but mighty snowroll creator, from Christina Chamberlain.
SPONSORED: Tonight! Free organ recital by Joy-Leilani Garbutt at the Church of Christ at Dartmouth College, at 7pm. Works by Nadia Boulanger, Cécile Chaminade, Joséphine Boulay, and other French women. Dr. Garbutt is an organist, musicologist, and ardent advocate for gender equity in music, and the co-founder of Boulanger Initiative, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting music composed by women. Hit the burgundy link or go here for more information. The concert is free and open to the public, 40 College St., Hanover. Sponsored by the Church of Christ at Dartmouth College.Rolling roadblocks today on I-89 in Royalton. They're scheduled from 11 to noon both northbound and southbound, VTrans says in a traffic advisory, "near Exit 3, at and before mile marker 21.4 (approximately 0.7 miles south of Exit 3)... The purpose of these rolling roadblocks is to facilitate the repair to utility lines spanning over the Interstate. Minor delays are expected."I-91 southbound between Bradford and Fairlee will have to close after all for cliff work. And it'll be for much of the summer, reports Christina Dolan in the Valley News. The work, which will involve workers rappelling down the cliff face and dislodging unstable rock, could send rock into the northbound lanes as well, so VTrans will be deploying rolling roadblocks there "to avoid endangering drivers," Dolan writes. Southbound traffic will be diverted to Route 5—during peak farming season, when farm equipment may slow things down. VTrans is also working to avoid disturbing nesting peregrines in the cliffs.“Think of this as peak foliage weekend on steroids." That was VT Gov. Phil Scott talking about eclipse day. No one knows how many visitors will actually show up, but it's safe to assume there'll be a lot and traffic will be nuts. So the Burlington Free Press's Megan Stewart rounds up what VTrans is saying and some pointers for locals. Like, stay off the highways. Expect tourists to pull over onto roadsides. And assume there'll be heavy traffic on VT Route 4 in Woodstock, I-91, I-89 around Hartford and Montpelier, and even on local roads. NHDOT is encouraging everyone to use NewEngland511 for conditions."Some people play golf. I do cabaret." For much of his adult life, Bob Wetzel was a management consultant—though he also sang in the Handel Society. Then, a while back, he did a summer intensive with Interplay Jazz & Arts, and, he tells Susan Apel, "My life was changed. I discovered that I could, in fact, sing by myself.” These days, he's a cabaret singer (with a show coming up here next weekend). In Susan's Artful, he talks to her about how it all came about and the challenges of building a cabaret show. "I personally love ballads, but an hour of ballads will have everyone sleeping by the 20-minute mark," he says.So, how do you costume dancing eggs and an omelet? We'll find out tonight—and for the next three weekends—as We the People Theatre takes over the Briggs stage for Something Rotten. The musical, Alex Hanson writes in the VN, is "an uproarious comedy about theater itself"—kind of like “The Play That Goes Wrong” around the corner at Northern Stage—about a pair of theatrical brothers struggling to bust out of Shakespeare's shadow. It's a big, ebullient show, and co-producer Perry Allison tells Hanson, "I hope [people] will come away feeling like, ‘How much wonderful local talent there is.'"Hartford's Jim Dow: "I'm kind of like a crow. If it's shiny, I take it home." You might remember a different Alex Hanson story from back in December: about Dow's bid to unload the collection of 64 chicken wishbones he'd amassed over the years. That piece caught the eye of Dartmouth student Eliza Dunn, who decided to go ask Dow just what had possessed him for her "Tell Me a Story" podcasting class. They sat down in his shop, filled with tools, drawers of lag bolts and wingnuts and battery cable ends and huge copper staples—"I have absolutely no use for them"—to talk about wishbones and what happened after Hanson's story ran and he was suddenly famous. Or infamous.West Leb's Cantore's Pizza sold to longtime employees. “The restaurant’s been left in very good hands and I couldn’t be happier,” Vinnie Cantore tells the VN's Patrick Adrian, of his January sale of the popular Glen Road Plaza spot to Caleb Barr and Keith Friend. Cantore opened in 2011; Barr's been there 11 years, Friend for eight, and the pair have no plans for changes—"We’re not looking to change what isn’t broken,” Friend says—though they'll have new lunch specials and just unveiled a new goes-with-anything sauce created by Friend that they call "Kiss Your Everything."As Randolph preps to get a hotel again, remembering a time when the town was filled with them. Ever since the the Three Stallion Inn closed in 2017, the town has been lodging-less. That will change this summer, when the My Place hotel opens near the I-91 interchange. But in the Herald, John Graham gives a short, intriguing history of Randolph and the hotels that grew with it, dating at least to 1790. There were hotels all over, including where the Cumberland Farms is now; where One Main is, the Red Lion Inn had 35 rooms and, one week in 1895, 250 guests. "That must have been cozy," he writes.Talk about pressure: Emery Gray takes over as executive pastry chef at the Trapp Family Lodge tomorrow, two days before the eclipse. You may know Gray's name because of her work at Billings, or you ate her desserts at the Woodstock Inn before that. In the Standard, Lauren Dorsey writes that Gray knew she wanted to be a chef from a young age, and was drawn by baking's exactitude: "the ratios and the rules," she calls them. But she's also drawn by the chance, she says, to have diners say, "‘That was the best that I’ve ever had.’” One goal at Trapp's: wedding cakes that both look and taste great.Vermont Standard looks to its future as Woodstock Region Journalism Foundation gets IRS nonprofit okay. The foundation was set up last summer with a board of locals and an eye toward undergirding the Standard by raising money for its work and keeping it in local hands. Getting IRS approval as a 501(c)(3)—meaning that contributions are tax deductible—"wasn’t in much doubt, really," publisher Dan Cotter writes in the paper's announcement. "But now it’s official." And, he adds, a huge relief. The Standard isn't the only paper turning to the public: The Herald did so last week. You can learn more here.Hiking Close to Home: Eclipse Day etiquette. The Upper Valley Trails Alliance has some thoughts. "Monday's total solar eclipse will be an amazing event to witness," they write. "But our trails will be snowy, wet and vulnerable and trail organizations across VT and NH are asking everyone to please be considerate of trail conditions when making plans to enjoy the eclipse. Luckily, Trail Finder has created an in-depth guide to all things trail-related during the solar eclipse (at the burgundy link) and we ask anyone considering a hike to read it carefully before making plans."So... Think you know what's been going on in the Upper Valley? Because Daybreak's News Quiz has some questions for you. Like... What is Officer Ollie, the Claremont PD's newest (April Fool's) member? And just what the heck is "foodscaping"? Those questions and more at the link.And how closely were you following VT and NH?
Because Seven Days wants to know if you know what recently legalized activity it just gave one of its reporters $100 to engage in.
And NHPR's got a whole set of questions about doings around the Granite State—like, where are some of the USPS's Manchester mail sorting operations moving?
Yesterday morning, a flatbed truck carrying a dumpster was "traveling too fast for the existing road conditions" on the Everett Turnpike in Nashua, lost control and crashed into an overhead sign structure.
"As a result of the crash, the overhead sign became unstable and unsafe to pass under on the southbound side," the NH State Police say. The southbound turnpike was shut down for several hours; the driver, from MA, had minor injuries and was issued a citation. The snow played havoc on NH's highways: There were also tractor-trailer rollovers Wednesday afternoon and night in Grantham and Warner.VT Book Award finalists named. The awards, which are a joint effort between the VT College of Fine Arts, the VT Department of Libraries, and VT Humanities, celebrate "works of outstanding literary merit" by Vermont authors. This year's crop of finalists, for books published in 2023, includes some familiar Upper Valley names: nonfiction writer Jeff Sharlet for The Undertow, poet Vievee Francis for The Shared World, YA author Ken Cadow for Gather, and cartoonist Dan Nott for Hidden Systems.
When fire ripped through Notre-Dame in 2019, the world was bereft. The 860-year-old cathedral suffered what seemed like irreparable damage. But less than a year from now it will reopen, thanks to nearly 500 skilled craftsmen. In the
NYT
, Aurelien Breeden profiles timber framer Hank Silver, from MA, and talks to VT's Will Gusakov. Breeden writes about the “complex ballet of stonecutters, painters, stained glass restorers, gold leaf decorators, steeplejacks, crane operators, organ cleaners and roof coverers” devoted to restoring the cathedral. Working on Notre-Dame “has elevated all of the artisans in France and in the world,” says Silver.
So, say you accidentally left open the door to a pet café in a Chinese mall and 100 huskies escaped. What would that look like? Asking for a friend.The Friday Vordle. With a word from yesterday's Daybreak. If you're new to Vordle, you should know that fresh ones appear on weekends, using words from the Friday Daybreak. You can get a reminder email each morning Daybreak doesn't publish: Just sign up here.
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Today starting at 10 am is opening day not just for Billings Farm & Museum, but for its exhibition, "Portraits of Resilience". The artworks—in paint, print, fiber, and digital media—are drawn from Vital Communities' "Climate Farmers Stories" project and focus on farmers in the region and how they're dealing with climate change. Runs through June 23. Here's RJ Crowley's piece in the Standard on what you'll find, including the experiences of Billings itself, Kiss the Cow Farm in Barnard, and others.
From 3-5 today, the Junction Fiber Mill in WRJ is holding an open house for anyone who's curious about what spinning wool into yarn is all about. Owners Peg Allen and Amanda Kievit will be on hand to show off the equipment and talk wool, yarn, and fiber till the sheep come home. Or, at least, 5 pm, anyway.
At 4 pm in Dartmouth's Rollins Chapel, it's the North American premiere of Amadoka,with Ukrainian composers Albert Saprykin, Boris Loginov, and Maxim Kolomiiets setting Sofia Andrukhovych's 2020 novel of that name to music. Their works will be performed by an ensemble of musicians both from Ukraine and the Upper Valley, and the concert will be followed by a discussion with curator Veronika Yadukha and the composers designed to givethe audience further insight into both the novel and the music.
It's First Friday in WRJ, with stores and restaurants opening their doors and three art exhibits opening for viewing: At Kishka Gallery & Library, Cuban and Dominican artist Amalia Angulo's "Big Bear"; at JAM, "In Security // In Community", a multimedia exhibit by local artists Corrine Yonce, Jordyn Fitch, and Maeve Littau exploring home and housing and how we relate to them; and at the Main Street Museum, "The Art of Jesse Barrows", who grew up in Lebanon and now lives in Hartford Village and whose art style, the MSM says, "is abstract, his process, spontaneous, and untraditional."
From 5-7 pm today, Upper Valley Music Center and Cornish's Stowell Library are throwing a barn dance at Cornish Town Hall, with traditional New-England style dances taught and called by David Millstone and live music from a band led by Carol Compton. All ages and experience levels welcome to dance, and musicians are welcome to join the open band. Bring soft-soled shoes and a full water bottle.
At 6:30 this evening, the Newton Middle School brings back its annual musical with a production of The Wizard of Oz at Barrett Hall in S. Strafford. With a dedicated set designer, costumer, choreographer, and music supervisor, and directed by stage veteran Kay Morton. Runs through Sunday.
This evening at 7, the Ives Recital Series at the Church of Christ at Dartmouth College presents organist Joy-Leilani Garbutt in a concert of works by French women composers, including Nadia Boulanger, Jeanne Demessieux, Mel Bonis, and others. More info in the sponsored post above.
Also at 7 this evening, in West Newbury (VT) Town Hall, veteran Upper Valley Patrick Ross (fiddle, mandolin, cello) and Doug Perkins (guitar) will give a benefit concert for Music Helps, a nonprofit dedicated to increasing access to music education through scholarships, grants, and more. Ross has done everything from small-venue concerts in the region to perform at the Kennedy Center and tour with Guster, while Perkins is a founding member of the Vermont-based Smokin' Grass and a side-project partner with Phish's Jon Fishman; the two have been playing music together for a quarter century now.
Tonight at 7:30, as you saw above, is opening night for We the People Theatre's Something Rotten at the Briggs Opera House in WRJ. The mash-up Shakespeare and Broadway runs for the next three weekends, at 7:30 pm on Fridays and Saturdays, 3 pm on Sundays.
Also at 7:30 this evening, the Lebanon Opera House brings in comedian Tom Papa on his "Good Stuff Tour". With a long career in stand-up, as a contributing writer for The New Yorker, three books to his name, multiple stints as a panelist for Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me, radio and podcasting—it sometimes seems like the guy's everywhere. But tonight, he's at LOH. There are just a few tickets left, so if you're interested, now's the time.
Also at 7:30, across Colburn Park, the Anonymous Coffeehouse will be at the First Congregational Church of Lebanon. Western Mass. singer-songwriter Grayson Ty starts things off; he'll be followed at 8:15 by the bluegrass/folk trio of Derek Burkins, Mitch Barron, and Tim Berry; and then at 9 by country, blues, and folk singer Christian Beck, who began songwriting on a farm in Kentucky during the pandemic, developed a following on TikTok, and was discovered there by American Idol.
Saturday
Tomorrow at 10 is the kickoff event for Week of the Young Child, with a celebration honoring early childhood education staff and providers. Sponsored by Vital Communities, Lebanon Rec, and others, it will feature live music, child safety resources, a fire truck tour, food to purchase, and more. At the Upper Valley Senior Center at 10 Campbell St. in downtown Lebanon.
At 6 pm tomorrow, Upper Valley Improv stages its first improv jam at the West Lebanon Congregational Church. Improv games and a chance to try out the art and craft just for kicks. "We hope that anyone who wants to will get to perform, but it is fine to come and just watch," they write.
Tomorrow at 7 pm at the Little Theater in Woodstock, there's a fundraising concert for the Ottauquechee Health Foundation featuring Laurie Marshall and Zack Danziger: "original and cover songs with a little humor in the mix (Pickleball Wizard?!?)" they write. Cash/cc bar provided by Silo Distillery.
Also at 7 pm tomorrow, the Central Vermont Chamber Music Festival will be at the Chandler Music Hall in Randolph with just one piece on the program: JS Bach's Goldberg Variations, arranged for violin, viola, and cello, played in its entirety and without intermission by Michael Roth (violin), Joana Miranda (viola) and Peter Sanders, (cello). Reception with the musicians to follow.
This becomes Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me weekend at the Lebanon Opera House at 7:30 tomorrow evening when comedian Paula Poundstone takes the stage. Or maybe you know her better from her podcast, Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone. Or her book, The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness. Whatever, she probably needs no introduction. And, as with Tom Papa, there are just a handful of seats left, so act now.
Sunday
At 10 am Sunday, the Etna Library hosts an eclipse prep party, with eclipse-themed crafts, photo booth, and sweet stuff (moon pie, anyone?), along with eclipse info.
At 10:15 Sunday, VINS kicks off two days of eclipse events with an "immersive" session in the VINS StarLab and a chance to learn about moon phases and features. "Then," they add, "dive into an explanation of eclipses and explore the mythology of eclipses from cultures throughout history." Seatings at 10:15 and 12:15, and reservations are required. They'll also be hosting eclipse-viewing events on Monday.
The Montshire's also got its own eclipse days going, starting at 10:30 on Sunday with sessions in StarLab (the museum's portable planetarium) running until 3 pm, and then at 5:15 pm a presentation about the eclipse, our solar system, and stellar research by Dartmouth researchers Graham Edwards and Aylin García Soto. No admission required for that latter program. On Monday, there'll be more StarLab sessions, pinhole-viewers and other make-and-take astronomy tools, and then the eclipse itself with Montshire educators.
At 3 pm on Sunday, Artistree in S. Pomfret hosts pianist Matthew Odell in a solo recital of works by Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann, and Johannes Brahms. Odell, who grew up in NH and began his studies at age 10, has gone on to perform both solo and with chamber groups and orchestras, at NYC venues including Alice Tully Hall, at the Kennedy Center, and all over Asia and Europe.
At 7 pm Sunday, The Notch Climbing Gym (due to open this fall in Lebanon) and the Dartmouth Mountaineering Club host Reel Rock 18, the film tour of climbing films. Japanese climbing phenom Sachi Amm as he becomes a climbing purist; Angie Scarth-Johnson and adventure climber Hazel Findlay exploring Mallorca's deep-water solos; alpinists Josh Wharton and Vince Anderson attempt a free ascent in the Peruvian Andes; and journalist Matt Groom discovers a climbing community in war-torn Ukraine. In Filene Auditorium at Dartmouth, no charge but they'd like you to register.
Also at 7 Sunday, Vermont filmmaker Bess O'Brien's tour of her new film about the state's working poor and the housing crisis, Just Getting By, makes its closest approach to the Upper Valley when it screens at the Randolph Playhouse Theater.
Whew. That was a lot.
So let's just keep this short:
What's that? Oh, right!
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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Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Poetry editor: Michael Lipson Associate Editor: Jonea Gurwitt About Rob About Michael
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