GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Warmer, growing less cloudy. We're headed toward a glorious weekend, but we're not quite there yet. Today, there's patchy fog to start and a mostly cloudy sky that will get less cloudy as the day wears on, though there's a slight chance of showers this afternoon. High today around 60, breezes from the north. There'll be fog overnight, lows in the upper 30s.Bears. Yep, they're definitely around.
Like, checking out James Lantz's deck in Grantham. "Clever and curious," he writes.
And climbing trees, as in this video from Ben Keeney of a mom and three cubs on Sunday in the DHMC woods opposite Centerra.
King Arthur Baking "will continue to invest in the Upper Valley." So says co-CEO Karen Colberg as the company tries to address a raft of rumors—and an onslaught of phone calls, emails, and in-person queries—set off by the news last week that it's planning to shutter its Hartford-based online fulfillment operations. In an email Q&A with Daybreak, Colberg stresses that nothing's going to change at KAB's café, school, bakery, store, or headquarters, and that it continues to hire locally. "We are deeply committed to our ongoing presence in the Upper Valley," she says. Full interview at the link.Campion Rink renovation will require at least $2 million more than expected. When it was announced last April, reports Tris Wykes in the Valley News, Hanover Improvement Society president Don Derrick said the remake would need $5 million. But, he tells Wykes, "When the final (construction) bids came in, we went ‘Whoa!'” The rink reached its $5M goal in December, and work is under way on the first round of construction—planned to finish by early September—but Derrick says timing for the next round is uncertain, pending more fundraising and the vagaries of the construction industry.It's getting time to check out the Upper Valley's bounty. With the opening of the outdoor version of the Norwich Farmers Market tomorrow, the season is upon us. Next up: Enfield opens on May 13, Lebanon on May 18, Chelsea on May 19, and then others quickly follow, from Canaan to Sunapee and Royalton to Woodstock. The Valley News's Liz Sauchelli has done yeoman's work pulling together a handy list of days, times, and starting dates.Also bounteous: construction season. If you've been out on the region's roads, you know it's been going on for weeks. In the Herald, Carolyn Parker Fairbain rounds up what's on tap in and around the White River Valley. There's replacing the bridge for the rail crossing over Rte. 14 in Royalton, for instance, and paving on 14 in Sharon, work on the I-89 bridge over Route 107 near Exit 3, and more. Here's VTrans's map of projects underway or planned. And here's their list of major projects, including some extensive but not yet scheduled work (due to "changing funding scenarios") on the Quechee Gorge Bridge.SPONSORED: What’s up with net metering for solar? California just changed its rules, ushering in big changes to the nation’s largest solar power market. That has other states wondering where things are headed. Fortunately, with more affordable home battery systems coming and smart, app-based controls already here, consumers are gaining options beyond the utilities. Hit the maroon link to find out how net metering can work to the benefit of solar customers and utilities hoping to green the grid. Sponsored by Solaflect Energy.Former Woodstock Pharmacy buildings, renovated and restored, look to reopen this summer. One, writes Tom Ayres in the Standard, will be a restaurant or "other food emporium," while the other will house a home furnishings store on its ground floor, apartments above. But Ayres is more focused on the buildings themselves, which are being redone with "painstaking attention to authenticity by a pair of self-proclaimed historic preservation devotees." Ayres talks to the two about the work on 19 and 21 Central Street, from basic infrastructure to the fine points of windows, flooring, and finials."It was clear there would be no passive 'watching' that day": Inside the Native American cleansing ceremony at Dartmouth. You'll remember that the college last week brought in Diné medicine man Herbert Wilson to perform a spiritual cleansing ceremony after the discovery that Native American bones had been stored and used in teaching. Jana Barnello, a former broadcast news journalist who now works in the college's communications office, planned to observe and "engage" with media. Instead, she writes, she found herself joining in "the positivity we were creating together" under Wilson's guidance.No, labor organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was not also the editor of Cosmopolitan. As you read yesterday, Flynn, who also helped found the ACLU, was the subject of a debate on the NH Exec Council this week after a historical marker about her went up in Concord. But in one of those palm-to-forehead moves that Daybreak indulges in from time to time, yesterday's item referred to her as "Elizabeth Gurley Brown"—bringing to mind the legendary Cosmo editor Helen Gurley Brown. I'm committing the Wikipedia pages on Flynn and on Brown to memory.Hiking Close to Home: Brookside Park, Grantham, NH. The Upper Valley Trails Alliance recently published this trail on TrailFinder—it offers an easy, 1.5-mile loop featuring a section accessible by wheelchair. The park is entered over a bridge that leads to forested trails, a portion of which follows the cascading Skinner Brook. Picnic benches and interpretive signs are abundant, making this a lovely short outing. From Exit 13 off I-89, go north 0.3 miles on NH 10 to the trailhead on the west side of the road. Parking is available for 5-8 cars and, in the seasonal Little Free Library in the lot, a like number of books.Inside the VT Statehouse discussions about a new secure juvenile facility. Which is of intense interest to Newbury, where the state would like to place a 6-bed facility and the town very much would like it not to. "We are talking about a treatment facility for crisis stabilization,” new DCF commissioner Chris Winters told a legislative committee last month. But, writes Aubrey Weaver in VTDigger, while legislators agree the state urgently needs a place to house and treat troubled and violent young people, they want state officials to be honest about what's entailed. "I encourage you...to call it what it really is," says one.Been paying attention to Daybreak? Because Daybreak's Upper Valley News Quiz has some questions for you. Like, what's one reason there's been some tension in Hartland town hall? And how do you pronounce incoming Dartmouth president Sian Beilock's name? And what have road crews up on Mt. Washington been contending with? More at the link.But wait! How closely were you following VT and NH?
Because Seven Days wants to know if you know what's been going on around the state this week—like, what bill did Gov. Phil Scott sign this week that put VT in the national news?
And NHPR's got a whole set of questions about doings around the Granite State—like, why are state officials warning residents to be cautious as the weather warms?
"The true-crime industrial storytelling complex." That's how NHPR's Jason Moon describes the web of podcasts that sometimes affect criminal justice cases. Moon is the guy behind Bear Brook, NHPR's massively successful true crime podcast; Season 2, looking into the case of a man serving a life term for a murder in NH he confessed to but says he didn't commit, started in February. In the Laconia Daily Sun, Moon and Sun reporters Adam Drapcho and Julie Hirshan Hart talk over Bear Brook and much more. "These stories don't just ... it's hard to leave them at the office, you know?" says Moon.Got kids in a New Hampshire elementary school? They'll be learning cursive. Also, their multiplication tables. To be sure, they might already be doing this, but yesterday, Gov. Chris Sununu signed legislation requiring that both be taught by the end of fifth grade. Until now, Ethan DeWitt notes in NH Bulletin, they were only "encouraged." The requirements take effect in July.19,000 volunteers. 500 tons of trash collected. That was at last year's Green Up Day in VT, writes Olivia Q. Pintair in VTDigger. Green Up Day this year is on Saturday, and as Green Up Vermont's Kate Alberghini tells her, the volume of litter out there "tells us that we still have a problem, whether it's intentional littering, or (trash that blew out of a trash can) or whatever.” Pintair goes into the day's history—they actually shut the interstates the morning of the first one, in 1970—and advice for tomorrow: wear bright clothing, bring gloves and masks, check for ticks, and stay off railroad tracks.As promised, Phil Scott vetoes Clean Heat Standard bill. As Kevin McCallum writes in Seven Days, the measure "has become one of the most contentious pieces of legislation this session, sharply dividing lawmakers over whether it’s the right way to fight climate pollution from buildings in the state." Taking issue with what he contends is too much uncertainty about the bill's impact on revenues, Scott said in his veto message, "The risk to Vermonters and our economy throughout the state is too great; the confusion around the language and the unknowns are too numerous." Dems will likely try to override.VT House Dems give up on paid family, medical leave for this year. It's not because Scott opposed the plan for 12 weeks of leave and a payroll tax to pay for the program, though he did. It's because Democrats in the Senate have no appetite for it as they try to rework the state's child care system. So House Speaker Jill Krowinski is throwing in the towel, reports VTDigger's Lola Duffort. “With the Senate, we don't agree on the funding source. We don't agree on how it’s administered. We don't agree on who's covered with it,” Krowinski tells Duffort. She plans to try to build public support for the plan over the summer.“A great time for a jailbreak.” On April 8, 2024, Vermont will experience its first total solar eclipse in nearly a century. As it happens, says Peter Shea, the path includes the prison in St. Albans. In Seven Days, Steve Goldstein speaks with Shea about the various stages, the best places for viewing, and his publication, Vermont’s Total Solar Eclipse, which comes complete with a pair of solar glasses. It’ll be another 50-plus years till the next total eclipse in Vermont, so get this one on the calendar. “Useful as steamboats were, they came with one big problem.” That would be, as Greg Daugherty writes in Smithsonian, the natural progression from handy mode of transport to “mine’s faster than yours.” Captains, owners, and gamblers revelled in the competitions. Passengers got in on the act, spurring crews into impromptu races. On the Hudson, the Henry Clay caught fire while racing; some 80 people died. Even at normal speeds, steamboats were inherently dangerous, what with the boilers, which tended to explode, and cargo that often included gunpowder and cotton bales. “Western steamboats usually blow up one or two a week in the season,” wrote Charles Dickens.The Friday Vordle. If you're new to Vordle, you should know that fresh ones appear on weekends using words from the Friday Daybreak, and you can get a reminder email each weekend morning. If you'd like that, sign up here.
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Well, it's spring and there's
a lot
going on. So let's get started...
Because for one thing, it's First Friday in WRJ and there are art openings (Becca Lowry's wall-hung sculptures at Kishka, Lynn Graznak's video art installation, "I Dream the Ghosts of Houses," at JAM), along with an open house and resource fair at the Bugbee Senior Center (3-6 pm) and a full slate of stores, galleries, and restaurants open for wandering.
And another art opening—actually, four of them. At 5 pm, AVA Gallery hosts an opening reception for Kathy Black and Michael Heffernan, both of whom "use toys as muses"; Susan Calza's video installation Our Hour; and Harrison Halaska's oil paintings.
At 7 this evening, the Roots & Wings coffeehouse at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Upper Valley presents classical pianist Claire Black, principal pianist for the Barn Opera of Brandon, VT and accompanist for the Burlington Choral Society. She'll be performing a program that includes works by Schubert, Clara Schumann, Bartók, Field, and Albéniz. By donation, masks required.
Also at 7, Hop Film screens Juniper, one of the films in its "Dartmouth Alumnae Film Series." Katherine Dudas's 2021 coming-of-age story centers around a young woman grieving her sister's death in a remote cabin—suddenly crashed by her best childhood friend and one of her pals. That childhood friend is played by Decker Sadowski '14, who'll be on hand for a discussion afterward. At the Loew.
This evening at 7:30, Next Stage Arts in Putney is about the closest that Kalos is going to get to the Upper Valley on its tour this season. The world-class Celtic and folk trio of Strafford's Jeremiah McLane, along with Eric McDonald and Ryan McKasson, will share the stage with central VT balladeer Fern Maddie.
Also at 7:30 at The Little Theater in Woodstock, the Chandler presents Balaklava Blues in a fundraiser whose proceeds go entirely to the nonprofit Razom for Ukraine. The band is led by Mark and Marichka Marczyk, who met during the 2014 protests in Ukraine—she's an ethnomusicologist specializing in Ukrainian polyphonic folk songs, he's a musician from Toronto, and together, the Chandler says, the two fuse "Ukrainian polyphony and other folk traditions with EDM, trap, dubstep, and more as a launching pad to explore the seemingly never-ending blues that have long emanated from the Ukrainian steppe."
Tomorrow from 10 until 3, Vital Communities, the Town of Hartford, and the Two Rivers-Ottauquechee Regional Planning Commission host a Home Creators Expo focused on creating ADUs, or accessory dwelling units. The series of workshops for homeowners will cover everything from the basics to construction and design to the pros and cons of doing it yourself to navigating the permit process and the politics of advocating for ADU-friendly regs. Plus a pile of exhibitors from both sides of the river. At the Hartford Area Career and Technology Center, 1 Gifford Rd., WRJ.
Tomorrow's graduation for the Center for Cartoon Studies (11 am at Northern Stage's Barrette Center, open to the public, with Lee Lai, an Asian-Australian award-winning cartoonist living in Montreal as the speaker), and in conjunction, CCS is presenting a thesis exhibit featuring original work by the graduating class throughout May. In the CCS Gallery in the Colodny Building located at 94 South Main Street.
At 1:30 pm tomorrow, Upper Valley Music Center presents "Take Pause, Take Courage," a recital by violist Jennifer Elton Turbes and pianist William Ögmundson. It includes work by Reena Esmail for people experiencing homelessness, with poetry read by Rabbi Ilene Harkavy Haigh of Shir Shalom in Woodstock; Mary Kouyoumdjian’s A Boy and a Makeshift Toy from the Children of Conflict Series; and works by Jessie Montgomery, Harry T. Burleigh, and Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber "that inspire reflection and highlight the power of music to make an impact." At the First Congregational Church of Lebanon.
At 2 pm tomorrow, the Main Street Museum is celebrating the opening of "Zoom Portraits from the Plague Years," an exhibit of art work by music producer and veteran guitarist Ed Eastridge. Eastridge learned to do portraits while serving a 58-month sentence in federal prison for selling marijuana; that was also where he learned to teach guitar, which he's been doing at Hanover Strings for decades. He painted many of the portraits on display from stills captured on Zoom teaching calls.
Also at 2 tomorrow, the Norman Williams Public Library in Woodstock presents a spring concert by Wrensong, "Mysteries, Conundrums, Surprises, Wonders & Conceits." The Upper Valley-based vocal ensemble focuses on music of the Renaissance, and more broadly on "presenting the best in small-group choral music." No charge to attend.
At 7:30 pm tomorrow, the Bel Canto Singers present the first of their two spring concerts this weekend (the second is on Sunday at 4 pm). Both are at the First Congregational Church of Lebanon. The program ranges from Mendelssohn and Brahms to Scottish and Swedish songs to spirituals to a collaboration with the Church of Christ at Dartmouth College's handbell choir for Dan Forrest’s “A Bronze Triptych”, all centered around journeys of every sort, from physical to spiritual to metaphysical.
And at 9 tomorrow night, the stage at Sawtooth Kitchen in Hanover brings in Upper Valley rock cover band The Wheelers (not to be confused with the Atlanta and Tuscaloosa bands of the same name).
Sunday morning starting at 10 (onsite registration opens at 9), the Out of the Darkness Dartmouth College Campus Walk sets off from Tuck Circle, at the end of Tuck Mall. It's a fundraiser for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, and the first such event on campus since before the pandemic. The VN's Liz Sauchelli has the background, including organizer Ethan Dixon's comment that the event "is a reminder to those who are facing struggles that our community is here for them. Too often, students and community members sit alone with their mental health struggles.”
Also at 10 am on Sunday (actually, there's also a bird walk at 7 am), the Herricks Cove Wildlife Festival gets going in Bellows Falls. Sponsored by the Ascutney Mountain Audubon Society, VT Fish and Wildlife, and Great River Hydro, it's a full day of birds, butterflies, and bugs, a canine search and rescue demonstration, animal presentations by the Squam Lake Science Center and the Southern VT Natural History Museum, and a whole lot more. Jamaican food and locally made ice cream there for the eating.
And finally, on Sunday at 4 pm, Hop Film brings back The Animation Show of Shows after a three-year break. It's been touring the country and pulls into the Hop for one viewing only, with ten short films from animators all over the world. Most of the films are recent, but the screening also includes the Canadian director Frédéric Back’s digitally remastered 1987 Oscar winner, The Man Who Planted Trees, based on Jean Giono's tale. There'll be a virtual Q&A with the filmmakers after the screening.
And to take us into the weekend...
at the big-time Colours of Ostrava Festival last year in the eastern Czech Republic.
Get out there this weekend! We deserve it. 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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