GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Mostly sunny, things start to warm up. We start on the chilly side, but it should be both sunnier and warmer (by a few degrees) than yesterday, though winds continue to come from the northwest. Highs today in the low 70s, with plenty of sunshine despite some clouds. Clear skies again tonight, lows in the mid 40s—and it looks like we've got a warm, sunny weekend ahead of us.Porcupines wandering the woods. On Erin Donahue's E. Thetford trail cam. Ted Levin writes, "Porcupine quills are fishhook-tipped and hollow, stiff hairs that are water- and heat-absorbant. An expanding weapon holds off all but the most dexterous predators when embedded. Fishers solved the riddle by targeting the face and the soft, unprotected belly or forcing porcupines to drop to their death off spindly limbs. Catamounts flip them over (bobcats try). I've seen a great horned owl and a timber rattlesnake on the wrong end of a quilling (and many, many dogs). Even mating is a challenge ... a step-by-baby-step caressing love. No Texas death match like the hyper-aggressive mink."Owner of just-closed drug clinics in Grantham, Newport NH faces health-care fraud indictment in VT. Grantham's Adnan S. Khan, who owned New England Medicine and Counseling Associates, was charged by the feds in April with several counts of fraud and with illegal distribution of a controlled substance. This week, NH officials announced the company's six clinics had closed suddenly, reports Pat Grossmith in Manchester Ink Link. They also warned that ERs may see an increase in patients experiencing withdrawal symptoms or requesting buprenorphine. Includes help numbers in both states.With sewer work done, electricity overhaul on its way, Mangalitsa eyes fall opening in Woodstock. The refurbishing of the high-end restaurant by Peace Field Farm owner John Holland and restaurateur Matt Lombard is actually part of a three-way project to get Mangalitsa going again, build new workforce housing behind it, and then tackle an upgrade of Santé next door. In the Standard, Tom Ayres writes that plans also call for Lombard to reopen the Decant Wine Shop and Tasting Room in second-floor space. The four new apartments, for employees, could be ready by the end of summer.SPONSORED: Cindy Pierce is coming back to the Briggs! Renowned comic storyteller Cindy Pierce will perform her solo show, Keeping It Inn, at the Briggs Opera House June 7-9. The show is an intimate, rousing portrayal of Cindy Pierce’s functioning, dysfunctional family in which she plays the role of her mother, Nancy Pierce, through six decades of raising seven kids and running an inn. Tickets and info at the burgundy link. Here's a link to Cindy’s interview on Maine’s number-one news station, WCSH Channel 6, and for a look ahead, here's a trailer. Sponsored by Pinzer Productions, LLC.And it's not even fall: Sugar Hill residents inundated with lupine-peepers. The town's Lupine Festival has been a tourist draw for a quarter century, ever since Kathy Cote of Polly's Pancake Parlor got it going. But in the age of social media, things have gotten out of hand, locals tell WCAX's Adam Sullivan. “Drones, people flipping me off, people trying to dig up lupines out of my front yard,” says Holly Hayward—who mowed her lupines this year to avoid it all. Says Cote, "We want people to be here, but we also ask people to realize that we all live here and would just like our property and privacy respected."Norwich town clerk on dog licenses: "I really do feel bad having to chase people down for nine or eleven dollars.” Lily Trajman sees plenty of benefits to dog owners getting the licenses—it ensures their pets are up-to-date on rabies shots, and can help find the owners of lost dogs. But, she tells Ulla-Britt Libre in the Valley News, she wishes the registration process could move online—right now, the town can't accept payments that way. Dog licensing is an annual task for town clerks in VT, and Libre digs into the challenges. “I was constantly late at it until I became town clerk,” Trajman admits.From roots in a Hartford High “Rock and Roll Fundamentals" class, the River City Rebels celebrate 25 years. Not that the punk band was active all those years, Alex Hanson writes in a profile: The band scored a record deal early in its run, in 2000, had a solid decade of touring, but went on hiatus in 2014. "“My mom had just died,” co-founder Dan O’Day tells Hanson. “I was off the rails before, but then I was really off the rails.” Now, though, O'Day's back with a new lineup from around New England, and the band's marking its anniversary with a show tomorrow night at the Main Street Museum.SPONSORED: Attention, artists who need inspiration! Pastel painting and drawing open studio with Gaal Shepherd begins today and runs each Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Drop-in fee is $50 per day and many supplies are provided; registration not necessary. We will experiment with new surfaces and up to 10 different types of pastels, widening your knowledge and honing your skills. 85 N. Main St., Studio 240, White River Junction. Email [email protected] for more information. Sponsored by Gaal Shepherd Crowl.Hiking and Mountain Biking Close to Home: Profile Trails, Franconia, NH. Profile Trails, says the Upper Valley Trails Alliance, is an impressive network of hiking and mountain biking trails, with a bit under 25 miles of trails with bridges, gravel, and boardwalks that cover an incredibly diverse landscape with something for pretty much everyone. The trails, which range from Easy to Moderate to Advanced to Strenuous, are easily reached from downtown Franconia as well as on their east and west sides.Been paying attention to Daybreak? Because Daybreak's Upper Valley News Quiz has some questions for you. Like, where's the newest performance venue in the region? And what was it that a driver ran into at the VT Veterans Memorial Cemetery on Memorial Day? Those and other questions at the link.But wait! How closely were you following VT and NH?
Because Seven Days wants to know if you know which 185-year-old VT product has become a TikTok hit.
And NHPR's got a whole set of questions about doings around the Granite State—like, what kind of bill did the NH Senate recently pass after rejecting the move for years?
Guess it'll be 150 feet for wake boats in NH for a while longer. Remember how the state Senate and House disagreed over whether to set a 200- or 300-foot minimum distance from shore for wake boats? Well, yesterday, reports Claire Sullivan in NH Bulletin, that difference of opinion killed the bill—leaving the state's current minimum of 150 feet in place. That's closer than the restriction supported by industry groups. “This will be back,” said Sen. David Watters, a Dover Democrat. “I think we learned a lot this year.”NH cannabis legalization bill heads to conference committee. The state House yesterday handily rejected the version of the measure passed by the Senate, which in turn had made major changes to the version passed by the House. House members in both parties scorned the Senate version for adding strong control by the state Liquor Commission and other new features. The conference committee has until June 6: If members come to terms, writes NH Bulletin's Ethan DeWitt, "the bill will go to final votes in the House and Senate. If the committee cannot agree, the bill will die." Stay tuned.In VT, Phil Scott signs multiple bills, vetoes safe injection site, allows fossil-fuel-company measure to become law without his signature. The veto of a Burlington injection site had been expected—Scott called it a "costly experiment"—but it had broad support in the legislature and leaders say they can override. Meanwhile, WCAX reports, Scott yesterday signed 18 bills, including one to ban the sale of clothing, cosmetics, and other goods containing PFAS. And he allowed S.259, the bill requiring fossil fuel companies to pay for damage caused by climate change, to go into effect without a signature.Where there was once a circus tent, a "magical cone of energy" lingers. Circus Smirkus founder and Woodstock resident Rob Mermin has a new memoir out—it launched Wednesday—that both recounts his adventures and celebrates especially the tradition of the tented traveling circus. "Before a circus arrives, the field is empty," he tells Seven Days' Ken Picard in an interview about the book. "Then the circus arrives, sets up, has this magical experience and then — boom! — in the middle of the night, they take the tent down and disappear." The two talk clowning, mime, circus animals, and more."I cried out because the mountain under us was shaking, but nobody could hear me. Everyone was terrified.” Remember that footage last week of the crowd just before and after a snow cornice fell off a ridge on Mt. Everest, killing two climbers? That quote is from Nepali climbing guide Vinayak Jaya Malla, who took the video, talking to Outside's Ben Ayers. Ayers reconstructs what happened along the knife edge, how it might be that the two climbers weren't clipped in, and the aftermath—including efforts to get the Chinese government to allow a search. Includes Malla's panorama atop the summit.“By stripping away color, the focus shifts to forms, contrasts, and the scene's essence.” That’s photographer Paul Lukin, from Croatia, on why he’s drawn to working in black and white. His photo is one of a series of winners of the One Shot Photo Contest. On My Modern Met, Jessica Stewart runs down the awardees, including portraits, landscapes, conceptual works, and fine art, taken by professionals and amateurs around the world—Turkey, Bali, Tuscany. The winners capture emotion, motion, and stillness. Without color, “it’s more an interpretation of reality than a reflection of reality,” says Lukin.
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That's when the new home of the West Claremont Center for Music and the Arts opens for tours, with an open-air concert by the funk and sould band Bassel & the Supernaturals, led by Syrian-American Bassel Almadani. There'll be a jam session with the Villalobos Brothers indoors at 8:30. Ribbon-cutting tomorrow at 5:30, then the Villalobos Brothers at 6:30.
Max Ophüls' 1950 film charts a series of brief love affairs that dovetail in 1900 Vienna, with a cast of prominent mid-century French actors (Anton Walbrook as a sort of all-knowing master of ceremonies, Simone Signoret, Serge Reggiani...) TAC's Art Kahn writes about the film that the comedy isn't laugh-out-loud, but rather "the sophisticated, impish kind." 7 pm in the Martha Rich Theater at Thetford Academy.
Cole broke into public view in the mid-90s with her intensely personal, reflective, and powerful songwriting, part of the game-changing crop of solo singer-songwriters who made their way around the country with the Lilith Fair. She's touring now with her band and a new album, her 11th. Show at 7:30, doors at 6.
The veteran soul/blues singer and guitarist is back starting at 9 pm—bandleader for Johnny Rawls, sometime vocalist for Ronnie Earl, and "one of the finest soul and blues men of his generation," VPR once said.
Saturday
The event, put on by Vital Communities, Keys to the Valley, and others, brings together a host of groups and vendors focused on ways homeowners and small developers can add new housing, with workshops and information on financing, ADUs, converting a single-family home to multi-family, creating cottage clusters, and more. 10 am to 3 pm at the Hartford Area Career and Technology Center.
The Bandwagon Summer Series continues at Cooper Field starting at 6 pm tomorrow with the Brooklyn-based band, named for the neighborhood that's produced a raft of virtuoso klezmer musicians, including Pete Sokolow and Andy Statman. Formed in 2015 by fiddler Jake Shulman-Ment, the four-member band pulls from klezmer traditions, but isn't afraid to wander.
The seven-member troupe of young improv performers will bring their family-friendly blend of sketches, improvised musicals, game shows, film noir, and more in a show they liken to "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" At the RWB Community Center in Hanover.
But before they do, a bunch of other bands: Phrogs, Dead Street Dreamers, and The Worst open. See item in news section for more.
The show, which begins at 8 pm tomorrow, stars four LGBTQ comedians: Local standup star Vicki Ferentinos, NYC's Shawn Hollenbach, and Sawtooth Kitchen regulars Kevin McTaggart and Will Berman. There are still some seats left.
To kick off Pride month, Sawtooth writes, the pair spin "deep cuts and favorites alike, wear your whites and fluorescents to set the night aglow!"
Monday
I know, I know, it's not the weekend, but the Sunday tours are all sold out and so are Monday morning's. But there are still some slots for the Monday afternoon self-guided house and rhododendron tour offered annually by the Landmark Trust.
And to take us into the actual weekend...
, a nod to two big '90s bands she loved but mostly her tribute to her friend and musical guide Mark Hutchins—from Hanover—who died in 2016. "I needed to write a song for him, and it needed to be fun and kind of irreverent like he was,"
.
Have a fine weekend out there! 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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