GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Daybreak is brought to you this week with help from The Prouty. Join the community where hope starts and cancer ends. Bike, walk, row and more to fuel lifesaving research and care at Dartmouth Cancer Center. Hope starts here. Hope starts with you. Join us July 10–11. Details here.
Heads up: No Daybreak on Monday. Have a good Memorial Day!
Sunny, warmer. Nothing like earlier this week, though: We start cold, but today’s high will get up to about 70. Winds from the north will be light, and some clouds will build in this evening and tonight, lows either side of the 40-degree mark. There’s low pressure and a warm front headed our way over the weekend, bringing showers late Saturday night or Sunday.
Keeping an eye out. Young foxes on the lookout between the Wilder boat launch and the picnic area. “Literally in backyards,” writes Kathy Lamb.
July 4 parade route stokes anger, dismay in Randolph; police chief considers resigning. You’ve got to feel for the town’s selectboard, which has dealt with heat over the library budget, a dog it’s ordered to be turned over to the town, and, maybe stickiest of all, a change to the annual Fourth of July parade. As Maryellen Apelquist writes in The Herald, this year’s licensed route bypasses a historically popular viewing area in a residential neighborhood; the reason, Police Chief Scott Clouatre explains, is to open up a downtown area whose overcrowding in the past has prevented access by emergency responders. But residents are ticked. Apelquist details the commotion.
Norwich selectboard agrees it violated open meetings laws, moves to change its habits. In 2023, the town settled a lawsuit with resident and attorney Chris Katucki over allegations that town subcommittees were violating open meeting laws. Then, earlier this year, Katucki filed a compaint with the selectboard itself over emails and vaguely worded meeting warnings that he later discovered involved issues—including development rights on fire district lands—that residents should have been alerted to. Now, reports Sofia Langlois in the Valley News, the board has released the full version of the emails in question and agreed to avoid vague language in future warnings.
SPONSORED: Help people who need a hand! Based in the Upper Valley, Hearts You Hold supports immigrants and refugees across the US by asking them what they need. These include a Haitian father in Leb who’s fleeing the threat of violence and has to come up with a fee for the lawyer who’s helping him through the immigration process; a med student from Ghana who lives in Leb and needs basic laptops for her kids; immigrants in Vermont who need mattresses, strollers, and other basics; and people across the country who need your help getting started. Sponsored by Hearts You Hold.
Bookstock puts troubles in the past. You may remember that weeks before the literary festival was due to begin in 2024, it pulled the plug as disagreement over its size roiled organizers and partners. Last year, with a smaller version, stormy weather forced organizers to cancel a day of events. But this year, with stunning weather, the event “proved to be a triumph in almost every way,” according to three organizers who spoke with the Standard’s Emma Stanton. The used book sale broke records, wifi on the Green made life easier for vendors, and events drew satisfied crowds. Stanton sketches everything that went right, and organizers’ early thinking about next year.
Hiking Close to Home: Lower Slade Brook Trail, Hanover. The Jim and Evalyn Hornig Natural Area at Lower Slade Brook is a 36-acre conservation area, offering a quiet retreat with easy walking terrain next to the brook. Slade Brook’s banks are undeveloped and graced by convenient hiking trails through varied forestland, says the Upper Valley Trails Alliance. The Hanover Conservancy’s protection of this property ensures that Lower Slade Brook will always be a pristine environment for people to enjoy and a spot where native flora and fauna can flourish. Trail and parking details at the burgundy link.
SPONSORED: The Pompy Memorial Day Sale is underway, so there’s no better time to invest in furniture built to last. Save 30% on new furniture orders and 40-60% on in-stock items while they last. For more than 50 years, Pompy's mission has been timeless design, quality craftsmanship, and complete customer satisfaction. Visit a Pompy showroom today to save on furniture you’ll enjoy for a lifetime. Sponsored by Pompanoosuc Mills.
Daybreak’s Upper Valley News Quiz. Were you paying attention this week? Because we’ve got questions! Like, one of the co-owners at Two, the new spot in Quechee, also owns another eatery. Which one? You’ll find that and more at the link. Meanwhile, you’ll find NHPR’s New Hampshire quiz here, and Seven Days’ Vermont quiz here.
Emerald ash borer keeps spreading. In an update, UVM Extension’s Ginger Nickerson writes that since it was first discovered in Orange County in 2018, the pestilential Asian beetle that pretty much sentences ash trees to death has spread to 145 of Vermont’s 247 municipalities. This happens to be National Emerald Ash Borer Awareness Week and there’s an online “toolkit” here with guides for identifying ash trees and assessing them for EAB—though she also lays out what to look for and what you can do. Her piece is on the VT Daily Chronicle, which features a map. Of NH. Where EAB has been found pretty much everywhere but the North Country.
On the other hand: Vermont declared drought-free, while New Hampshire improves. In the US Drought Monitor reports released yesterday, no areas in VT were facing drought conditions, although about 25 percent of the state—notably, almost all of Windsor and Windham counties and a large swath of Orange County—are considered abnormally dry. In NH, a fifth of the state, in a wedge from the Seacoast over to Lebanon, is in severe drought—though there’s been some improvement since last week—while much of the rest of the state is abnormally dry or in moderate drought.
SPONSORED: It’s a historic night for wind band music! The Dartmouth College Wind Ensemble will present the world premiere of Sinfonía Nómada by Arturo Márquez this Saturday at the Hop at 7:30 pm. Márquez is one of Mexico's most celebrated living composers and the program will feature his first symphony for stand-alone wind band, exploring migration, commissioned by the Hopkins Center, as part of a program entitled A Portrait of Arturo Márquez. Get tickets today! Sponsored by the Hop.
“We are a whole different breed of nursing.” Radio producer Erica Heilman was mostly unaware of what home health and hospice nurses do until her family needed them. That experience led to her newest episode of Rumble Strip: riding around central VT and the NEK with nurses like Sharon Porter, who drives an F-150 “with a back seat stuffed with about 18 duffel bags stuffed with medical supplies.” It’s not just taking vitals and doing wound care. It’s also making sure someone’s eating after a parent has died, or talking them through a personal crisis so they can focus on learning about their meds, or even shoveling their walkway. Erica listens in as the nurses go about their days.
“That time of year when hordes of very, very pale Vermonters scurry out of their hobbit holes, squint at the sun, throw on tie-dye shirts and immediately start dancing.” Summer music festivals! Chris Farnsworth has highlights in Seven Days. The Next Stage Arts Bandwagon series features jazz, rock, and afrobeat. Burlington City Arts has lunchtime and evening gigs by local artists, but big names—Cake, Mt. Joy, Head and the Heart, Jack White—will also hit town. In Shelburne, Concerts on the Green has Modest Mouse and indie-rocker Gregory Alan Isakov with the VT Symphony Orchestra. In Stowe, jazz, Grace Potter … Your summer is booked.
Or you could just spend it chasing creemees. There are 153 possible spots in Vermont, and a guy from New Haven, VT has pulled them all together into the VT Creemee Passport. Adam Rice originally created it for his father-in-law’s 85th birthday, then stuffed it with gift cards to some of his favorite creemee stands. Then he took it bigger. “We wanted to celebrate the creemee, which could happen anywhere, and I liked the idea of supporting small businesses and getting people to engage with small businesses they wouldn’t otherwise,” he tells myChamplainValley.com’s Rilee Lucas. Passports cost $10, some of it goes to charity, background at the link, passport here.
"And you guys are literally eating caviar for brunch on a random Sunday in April?" True, YouTuber Sam Reid was doing the same on that Sunday in April — eating mounds of caviar, in fact — but not for the same reasons as the suit-clad diners around him. Unlike Reid, they probably didn’t manage to get their money's worth at that particular $195 all-you-can-eat brunch buffet, but, also unlike Reid, that was not their goal. In “Can I Beat the Most Expensive Buffet in America?”, Reid starts easy, trying to eat more than he paid for at four increasingly expensive all-you-can-eat buffets. It is as much a feat of strategy as it is of awe-inspiring appetite.
A++ for effort! At the National Whitewater Center in Charlotte, NC on Tuesday, one of the rafting guides got tossed out—with a full complement of rafters on board. As they careened around, he managed to get over to land, sprint out ahead of the raft, and dive back in. Not quite nonchalantly, but impressive anyway. TikTok video from Allison Venning.
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday’s Daybreak.
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HEADS UP
Update: In the hours between when I finished prepping yesterday’s Weekend Heads Up and when it went out, the Valley News updated its Memorial Day page and gave it a new URL. You’ll now find it here.
Also: Contra dance Saturday at Tracy Hall in Norwich. Kevin Donohue calling, Missing Lynx (Alex Fortier on keys and Oliver Scanlon on fiddle) return after playing in March. 7:30 pm. Last one in Tracy Hall before they move to the East Thetford Pavilion.
And if you’re looking for other things to do, it’s all at the Weekend Heads Up.
And for today...
Well, heck, let’s just catch up with last night, Stephen Colbert’s final Late Show, with Colbert, Louis Cato, Jon Batiste and Elvis Costello performing Costello's "Jump Up" and then Paul McCartney and The Great Big Joy Machine joining in for The Beatles' "Hello Goodbye”.
Have a lovely long weekend! See you Tuesday.
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Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Poetry editor: Michael Lipson Associate Editors: Jonea Gurwitt, Sam Gurwitt
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