GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Daybreak is brought to you this week with help from Han Fusion Asian, Base Camp Nepalese, and Tacos Y Tequila. Three affordable, inventive dining choices, all in one place at Hanover Park in downtown Hanover. All offer fast, friendly service, take out, and catering. Free garage parking right next door. Explore the menus here.
Mostly sunny, pleasant. Things remain unsettled but mostly calm through the weekend, with highs today once again in the mid 70s and mostly clear skies, but with wind gusts throughout the day (though nothing like yesterday afternoon). Chance of showers overnight and throughout the weekend, lows in the low or mid 50s.
Speaking of yesterday’s winds: Weather service investigates possible tornado in Woodstock. As WCAX’s Connor Ullathorne reports, “High winds took down trees and damaged homes off Echo Ledge Road. Debris from roofs was scattered in yards and hanging from trees. Homeowner Joe Haynes said he stepped into his cottage to take shelter from heavy rains and stepped out to find pieces of his roof in the yard.” The National Weather Service says the hardest-hit area was along Route 4 between the high school and Bridgewater Mill Mall. They’ll have a team on site today.
You’ll find an interactive map of storm damage reports for northern New England here, maintained by the Burlington Free Press, plus a constantly renewing list from all over the country below it. Just search on VT or NH.
Scenes from the compost pile. That’s what Wilder videographer Roy Hatch calls the footage from a camera he’s got trained on his compost pile. It features “a clown car of raccoons” (and you know what? He’s not wrong) and one very pregnant, ultimately frustrated possum.
A bit more on that Chelsea fire. After word went out Wednesday morning, The Herald scrambled (and a former reporter volunteered to go cover it) and put together its lead story in less than a day. Though authorities haven’t officially identified the two people who died, The Herald reports, “Information gathered by local sources indicates the occupants of the home were believed to be the residents, Karen Snyder and Max Quayle.” As Marianne McCann’s photos illustrate, the home on North Common Street sat right next to other homes, and though firefighters kept the blaze from spreading far, flames did reach a vacant neighboring home.
Delving into how your schools stack up (if you live in VT). You may remember that back in March, Norwich’s David Tyler built a dashboard to help him understand education reform in VT. Then, last week, he published a Substack piece explaining plainly what this year’s tweaks to last year’s Act 73 do and do not accomplish. Now he’s gone a step further, crafting (at the burgundy link) “Your School Snapshot”: Type in your zip code and you get a handy report for your own town, with school test scores vs. the state median, what your district spends per pupil, your school property tax next to other towns, and where you'd stand with the funding formula that's on its way. It puts state data that’s scattered hither and yon online all in one place.
SPONSORED: Get a “moo-ve” on at Billings Farm & Museum’s first-ever 5K Milk Run! This family-friendly run or walk winds through scenic pastures and mowed farm trails, with check-in beginning at 8:00 a.m. and the race starting at 9:00 a.m. Celebrate at the finish line with milk and cookies, then enjoy live music by Ali T. Registration includes admission to Dairy Celebration, featuring butter, ricotta, and ice cream making, cheese tastings, games, and more. Costumes are encouraged and delicious prizes will be awarded. Sponsored by Billings Farm & Museum.
Okay, let’s just say it together: Strawberry Rhubarb Sour Cream Pie. Jenny Sprague’s CSA blog from Edgewater Farm in Plainfield is back—which means that Mitchell Davis’s tailored recipes for the week in farming are back, too. Mitchell’s a cookbook author, home cooking master, and writer of the Kitchen Sense newsletter on Substack. Jenny helps run Edgewater, and as she writes in her blog kickoff this week, “The thing about strawberries is their ability to meet us where we are. You take that first bite of the season and you are immediately right where you need to be.” You’ll find Jenny’s post, Mitchell’s recipe for that pie, and a bok choy recipe, too, at the link.
SPONSORED: Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital Express Care is here when you need it. Our Express Care team treats adults and children over the age of one for non-life-threatening conditions. And with evening and weekend hours, you get the right level of care when you need it. Get immediate care for coughs, colds, rashes, and sprains right at APD Express Care, and all without an appointment. Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital Express Care. Part of the best health system in the region, Dartmouth Health. Sponsored by Dartmouth Health.
At the opera: “The minute you hear the music, you get it; it’s a Broadway show.” That’s Opera North artistic director Louis Burkot talking to Nicola Smith in the Valley News about The Ballad of Baby Doe, one of ON’s three productions this summer (the others are Rossini’s La Cenerentola and Fiddler on the Roof). Baby Doe is set in mining-era Colorado, and as Smith writes, “Like many operas, Baby Doe doesn’t end well for its protagonists—financial ruin, alcoholism and in an unusual twist, hypothermia—but unpredictable turns of fate and tragic human flaws are the point.” It is also, says production director Linda Brovsky, “one of the great American love stories.”
SPONSORED: The fifth annual West Windsor, VT Music Festival starts next week! Everyone is welcome to these lovely chamber music concerts with Sakiko Ohashi and friends—concerts are in the Town Hall at 22 Brownsville-Hartland Road. Friday, June 26 at 7:00 pm; Saturday, June 27 at 11:00 am for a free children’s concert; Saturday, June 27 at 7:00 pm; and Sunday, June 28 at 3:00 pm. With pianists Sakiko Ohashi and Orli Shaham, the Salix Piano Trio, and violinist Helen Kim. Tickets are $25 for ages 13 +, $15 for Seniors 65+ or children 12 and under. Tickets at the door. Sponsored by the West Windsor Music Festival.
Hiking Close to Home (ideally, with your dad). This week, the Upper Valley Trails Alliance’s combined dads check in with their favorite hikes.
Trout Pond Forest: Hike to Trout Pond in Lyme, NH through a mature hardwood forest with clues of a rich agricultural history and 19th century settlements.
Wright's Mountain: Visit Bradford, VT's highest peak via its network of paths and old logging roads and enjoy the view of the Waits River Valley from the summit.
Faulkner Trail: Ascend the South Peak of Mount Tom by this well-maintained trail and be rewarded with incredible panoramic views of Woodstock, VT. The bottom third of the trail is universally accessible.
Appalachian Trail Section Hike via Cloudland Road Trailhead: From the small parking area on Cloudland Road in Woodstock, hike about a mile to a cleared lookout with views of Killington Mountain. For a longer hike, continue via an old farm road for views of Saskadena Six.
Daybreak’s Upper Valley News Quiz. Were you paying attention this week? Because we’ve got questions! Like, where is Hanover’s TukTuk Thai Cuisine moving? And what’s going on with Lucky’s Coffee Garage in Lebanon? You’ll find those and more at the link. Meanwhile, here’s NHPR’s New Hampshire quiz, while Seven Days’ Vermont quiz is here.
NH AG’s office will go to court to get rail trail in Andover reopened. Just catching up with the Northern Rail Trail saga, in which Leonard Caron, whose property abuts the trai, has place concrete barriers across it in a spat with the state. On Wednesday, an associate AG told the Exec Council that a title search proves the land in question belongs to the state, and that “We feel very strong in our position”; he said the state will seek a preliminary injunction soon to reopen the trail while the legalities play out. The Monitor’s Charlotte Matherly reports (here via NHPR).
As the dust settles on the Vermont legislative session just past, two looks at the legislature itself.
The first came in a recent public forum in Brookfield with GOP Sen. John Benson (R, Orange) and Reps. Jay Hooper and Larry Satcowitz (both D, Orange-Washington Addison). As Tim Calabro reports in The Herald, the most pointed remarks came from Hooper, who said not only that he probably won’t run again. “We really aren’t literally solving problems,” he told the audience. “We’re manufacturing disagreement and we are marketing opposition to one another.” While the conversation covered issues like health costs and education, much of it focused on what Satcowitz called the state government’s “system problem.”
The second comes from Seven Days’ Hannah Bassett, winding up her yearlong behind-the-scenes series on the legislature. Its key point is summed up by former GOP Gov. Jim Douglas: “Our political discourse here is better than it is in almost any other state or federal arena, but not as good as it used to be.” Bassett delves into Montpelier’s culture of cross-aisle friendships and resolving differences through conversation—and the forces that are straining it, including social media and the corrosive effects of national discourse.
Need some distraction this weekend? You could watch sand castles getting built on NH’s Hampton Beach. It’s been 26 years since Greg Grady (Sr.) founded the annual Hampton Beach Sand Sculpting Classic; it started up yesterday and runs through Saturday. “Everybody has pushed sand around, dug a hole, made something,” his son, also Greg, tells the Globe’s Steven Porter (no paywall). “And then to see sand defy the laws of gravity, being pushed to the limit, with such intricate detail, is just astonishing.” At the burgundy link: two livestreams of the competition area.
Ranch dressing, Buc-ee’s Beaver Nuggets, and Taco Bell’s Doritos Locos Taco hit the world stage. Okay, just one more World Cup item (for now), because it’s irresistible. Quartz’s Ambia Staley rounds up visitors’ “authentic responses to a food culture so specific to the United States that even its most mundane fixtures read as exotic spectacle…” For starters, expect a run on Hidden Valley: “Why did no one tell me ranch sauce is like crack?” one Swede posted. Those Beaver Nuggets? “Sweet enough to be addictive, salty enough to maintain urgency, and sized in quantities that make moderation more theoretical than achievable,” writes Staley. Lots more at the link.
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday’s Daybreak.
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HEADS UP
From the Quechee Balloon Festival to Juneteenth in WRJ and the first of the Oak Hill Music Festival’s chamber concerts, both tomorrow, to musicians giving free concerts all over the VT side of the river for Sunday’s Make Music Day: You’ll find all that and more in the Weekend Heads Up.
And for today...
“A squirrel is a two-timing no good cruel double crosser/They look real cute but you know who be stealing your food…” sings Jason Mraz in “Peach Pie,” off his new album, Grandma's Gospel Favorites. You need to hang with this one to the end.
Have a fine weekend! See you Monday for CoffeeBreak.
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Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Poetry editor: Michael Lipson Associate Editors: Jonea Gurwitt, Sam Gurwitt
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