RABBIT RABBIT, UPPER VALLEY!
Daybreak is brought to you this week with help from Good Neighbor Health Clinic & Red Logan Dental Clinic, celebrating the 34th year caring for the Upper Valley! If you need care or want to make care possible for your neighbors, visit our website here. Access to care is changing, but Good Neighbor is always here to help.
Heads up: No Daybreak on Monday. But back as usual on Tuesday.
Mostly sunny, still cool. Yesterday’s front has come and gone, but we’ve still got low pressure overhead, which will keep things cool and unsettled for the next few days (with the possibility of frost tonight, too). Highs today in the mid or upper 50s, winds from the northwest, with patchy frost after midnight in spots where lows drop to around freezing.
Bobcat, Bobcat… Or as Ted Levin writes about Erin Donahue’s new trail cam video: “With apologies to William Blake: Bobcat, bobcat, burning bright/in the ink-black forest of the night. What burns so fiercely is the tapetum lucidum—Latin for “bright tapestry”—a moonlit reflector that hurls light back through the retina, summoning the photoreceptors to one more act of seeing. Most nocturnal animals have the gift; most diurnal animals do not. This radiant veil evolved separately in vertebrates and invertebrates, with shifts in color and gleam depending on angle, substance, and spell. Barred owls smolder red. Deer, silver-white. Opossums, pink. Bobcats burn amber, another draught from the thin cup of darkness.”
Not guilty verdict in Springfield VT murder-for-hire case. After nine hours of deliberations over two days, a Windsor County jury yesterday morning acquitted Paul Lachapelle Jr. of the 2022 shooting of Justin Gilliam, who was 38 at the time. Investigators believed that Lachapelle had been paid to carry out the killing, part of a series of gun and drug crimes around Valley St. in Springfield; he was arrested two years after Gilliam was found down an embankment. Eric Francis was in the courtroom for the trial, and in a photo essay recounts the prosecution and defense arguments, as well as the moment Lachapelle heard the verdict.
From high school and McDonald’s in Randolph to the World Cup in Boston. Fifteen-year-old Matteo Reyes is a right back for Randolph Union’s soccer team, a Sunday shift-worker at McDonald’s, a fan of the Ecuador national team (his dad has Ecuadorean heritage)—and, next month, will be a flag bearer in the opening ceremonies of the England vs. Ghana match at Foxboro. He was nominated for the role, reports Maryellen Apelquist in The Herald, by his manager at work, Kelly Stacy. “He loves soccer,” she tells Apelquist. “And he’s a great employee, great with customer service, very outgoing, friendly, and I knew that it would be his dream come true.”
The man behind Han Fusion. In The Dartmouth, Sarah Peng goes behind the counter to talk with Tom Liang, owner of the popular Hanover restaurant, who immigrated to the US when he was 15, went to hotel and restaurant school at UMass-Amherst, and can play any role his restaurant needs, including chef and delivery driver. He worked in Asian restaurants throughout New England before arriving in Hanover, he tells Peng, giving him a flexibility that he’s needed—adjusting not only to the pandemic, but to local tastes for authentic regional dishes. “Han Fusion is providing Chinese food for people who can't get it anywhere else,” he says.
SPONSORED: Community Day at the Hood Museum! Join us for a Community Day for all ages! Next Saturday, May 9, from 1:00–4:00 pm, explore American Pop, featuring artists from Ed Ruscha and Andy Warhol to contemporary voices like Jaune Quick-to-See Smith and Tony Abeyta, who remix familiar symbols from pop culture and art history into bold new expressions. Then spark your own creativity with artmaking using upcycled materials from rePlay Arts. Enjoy snacks and enter a free raffle—no registration needed. Coinciding with the Annual Dartmouth Powwow, this program highlights shared themes of art, culture, and community. Sponsored by the Hood.
fragments of cloth, bits of cotton, lumps of earth, records of speech… Those, James Agee once wrote, are what he wished he could assemble into a non-book that would have taken the place of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men—the book for which he’s most famous. In this week’s Enthusiasms, Jeff Sharlet considers not just the book Agee “actually cared about most: The book that isn’t there,” but the “1:1 ratio of life to art” that Agee pursued in A Death in the Family, his screenplay for The Night of the Hunter (which starred Robert Mitchum), and the “long, beautiful moon-dazzled streams” of his writing that, nonetheless, left him frustrated because they weren’t life itself.
On the Noah Kahan trail? Don’t visit Strafford. Kahan tourism has become a thing, and McClatchy Media’s Hanna Wickes has just gone up with “A Noah Kahan-Inspired Vermont Trip: 7 Things to Do Besides Visiting His Family Home”. That’s because, Wickes writes, “As his fame has grown, fans have started turning up in Strafford — and Kahan has asked them, plainly, to stop.” So she recommends things to do and places to visit that give you “the texture — the small town, the cold air, the maple, the lake, the long drive”: creemees, breweries, maple syrup, you get the idea. Intriguingly, she recommends only two spots in the Upper Valley, both in Woodstock.
Meanwhile, in The Herald, Darren Marcy looks at that Strafford angle as Kahan’s world tour sells out and his Netflix documentary gets raves. “This is a place where nobody goes,” Kahan told an interviewer. “They started selling my t-shirts and merch at the local general store, and people drive through Strafford and they stop at the signs [for photos]. I kind of felt this thing where I’d taken this place that I love [where] people live a very quiet, private life, and opened it up to the world. I was part of the commercialization of this place without the consent of the town.”
Lebanon police investigate shooting of Vermont man. The incident took place yesterday morning shortly before 7, and “is believed to have occurred on Hardy Hill Road in the area of [the] Interstate 89 overpass,” the LPD writes in a press release. Emergency responders found a 33-year-old man with a gunshot wound who was treated at the scene and then taken to the hospital. Police Chief Phil Roberts told reporters yesterday that “as of right now, the victim is not being cooperative, and we're still trying to sort out some of the details of what was reported."
We’re in the gap between when the snow’s gone and the forest canopy closes over. And, writes Northern Woodlands’ Jack Saul in “This Week in the Woods,” it’s kind of a miracle that some spring ephemerals ever make it. The one percent of trout lilies that ever bloom take at least five years to do so, though they do provide a meal for “sloppy” red-necked false blister beetles. Also out there this week: round-leaf violet, trailing arbutus, bright red fungi like scarlet elf cup, and wood frog eggs, much to the delight of eastern newts, which feast on them (and try, in turn, to avoid being eaten by fish, herons, and amphibian blood leeches).
Hiking Close to Home: Eshqua Bog Natural Area, Hartland, VT. The Upper Valley Trails Alliance says that with mud season conditions still in place, this is a fine choice for getting out, especially now. The one-mile primary trail includes a 460-foot accessible boardwalk, and the trail to the boardwalk is 4 feet wide with a hard-packed fine gravel surface. Two of the viewing platforms have benches. From the boardwalk, visitors can experience the unusual and rare natural history of this plant community first-hand, without impacting its fragile ecology. See access info at the link for more details.
Daybreak’s Upper Valley News Quiz. Were you paying attention this week? Because we’ve got questions! Like, who’s Dartmouth’s commencement speaker going to be? And what valuable metal did the USGS just say might be plentiful in NH? You’ll find those and more at the link. Meanwhile, you’ll find NHPR’s New Hampshire quiz here, and Seven Days’ Vermont quiz here.
Mt. Washington Commission aims for UNESCO World Heritage Site designation. That would put it alongside the Grand Canyon and Philly’s Independence Hall on the list of 1,248 sites (so far) in 170 nations that have “outstanding universal value to humanity.” But it’s a very long, very drawn-out process. The commission’s 9-1 vote at its April 17 meeting, reports NH Bulletin’s Molly Rains, was to pursue getting on the US’s “Tentative List,” which already has 17 sites, including Ellis Island and Mount Vernon. And then there’s the question of what happens if it actually happens: the sole “no” vote believes the mountain can’t handle any more traffic than it already has.
The NH Republican legislators who voted against open enrollment in public schools explain their thinking. You may remember that last week’s defeat of the controversial measure came as a shock to pretty much everyone. For the Monitor, Jeremy Margolis talked to some of the key GOP votes behind it. “I voted against it because I live in a very poor community, and I think it will be a very heavy fiscal impact on the poor community I’m in,” Newport’s Skip Rollins told him. Claremont’s Wayne Hemingway supports the idea, but was worried about its impact on Claremont as it struggles to improve its finances. At the link, Margolis surveys the concerns.
With governor’s signature, VT will allow some psychologists to prescribe drugs. The bill that Gov. Phil Scott signed this week was adamantly opposed by both the state medical society and the state psychiatric association, reports VT Public’s Lola Duffort. But it’s not like the new law makes it easy, she writes: “Under the new law, psychologists who seek a license to dispense drugs will need to complete postdoctoral training in psychopharmacology, pass a certifying exam, and complete a clinical rotation for at least 14 months.” Moreover, the new licensing system is unlikely to be in place before 2029.
The “abundant eccentricities” of Montreal—favorite under-the-radar highlights. If you’ve already seen Montreal’s popular sights and have a hankering for something more unusual, Seven Days has you covered. They asked Vermont writers for tips on where to wander and what to see. Among the responses are the “stranger, sexier and occasionally sublime” circus acts of Le Monastère, a nonprofit circus that performs in a former church. And a stroll through the 165-acre Mount Royal cemetery, with a beautiful view of the city. For an evening out, try La Sala Rossa, a converted community center that’s now “one of the hippest clubs in a city full of hip clubs.”
“We didn’t build those floats for 2,000-pound animals.” Try telling that to Chonkers, the massive Stellar Sea Lion who has taken up residence at San Francisco’s Pier 39. Chonkers—named by one of his many adoring fans—is about three times the size of the harbor’s typical California sea lions, writes Robert McMillan in the WSJ (gift link), and he’s certainly making a splash. Stellar sea lions are usually found in the Pacific Northwest; they occasionally show up for brief visits to California, but this time … it’s all working out so well for Chonkers, what with an endless buffet and the viral frenzy he’s caused, that he’s already stuck around for a month.
Crossing to safety. Two years ago, conservationists at the north end of Sumatra, in Indonesia, built a rope bridge to connect the forest canopy on either side of a busy road that divided a population of orangutans. They set trail cams in place to watch whether any of the critically endangered primates used it. Then they waited. Black giant squirrels took to it quickly. So did long-tailed macaques, gibbons, and other animals. But orangutans? Not at all. Until now. The link takes you to the Sumatran Orangutan Society’s triumphant footage, which went up a few days ago.
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday’s Daybreak.
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HEADS UP
For starters, here’s something you should know about that didn’t make it into yesterday afternoon’s listing: The Bel Canto Chamber Singers’ spring concert, “Songs of Loss, Love, and Longing”. It’s tomorrow at 7:30 pm and Sunday at 4 pm at the First Congregational Church of Lebanon, with works by Beethoven, Brahms, Massenet, and Whitacre for voices, piano, and string quartet.
And for everything else going on this weekend, check out the Weekend Heads Up.
And for today...
It’s the weekend! Let’s go for some New Orleans gutter jazz from the Dirty Rotten Vipers, which formed a few years ago when the same dozen musicians kept showing up at the same corner to busk. Singer and pianist Will Harrington, who grew up on Cape Cod, has created a sort of cultural exchange, in which some of the Vipers head to Provincetown for the summer—and Harrington finds whatever beat-up piano some local joint is willing to give him. “Somebody’s always getting rid of a piano,” he says. “I’ll fix it up a little bit, and then I’ll keep it on the street, bang on it for a summer, right? Then it falls apart.” Here are the Vipers in NO, with “Swing it Brother, Swing”.
See you tomorrow.
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Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Poetry editor: Michael Lipson Associate Editors: Jonea Gurwitt, Sam Gurwitt
