GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
It's going to be a beautiful day! Sunny, low or mid 70s, low humidity, light winds. A day to lift the spirits. Tonight will be pretty decent, too, with a low in the low 50s, though clouds will be moving in ahead of some unsettled weather over the weekend. Winds pick up tomorrow afternoon ahead of some steady rain that'll arrive sometime late in the day or evening.Fox and crow: a more truthful fable. Ted Levin writes, about the fox and invisible crow on Erin Donahue's trail cam: "Did Aesop get the fable right? Did Fox cajole gorgeous Crow into opening his beak and singing sweet-voiced melodies ... thereby dropping the even sweeter cheese, which the crafty Fox eats? Well, Crow's voice is anything but lovely (unless you're a crow), and Fox does not engage in flattery. Crow ends the Fox's surprise stalk by alerting the world to a lurking predator. A case of long-distance mobbing ... and Fox glances up in recognition."Meanwhile, no explanation needed here: a nursing fawn caught on Devan Tracy's new trail cam in Meriden.Cyanobacteria warnings lifted on Mascoma, Pleasant lakes. The moves came this week—Tuesday for Pleasant Lake, yesterday for Mascoma Lake—reports the Valley News. The warnings were put in place by the NH Department of Environmental Services last Wednesday. For now, NH's Healthy Swimming Mapper shows problems on just a handful of waterbodies to the east or south of the Upper Valley. VT's Cyanobacteria tracker is up and running, though test reports are mostly clustered around Lake Champlain at the moment.E. Randolph man pleads not guilty in dog-shooting case. The plea came in the animal cruelty case filed against 71-year-old John Brown after an investigation by game warden Bella Kline into allegations that Brown had shot Halo, a two-year-old husky belonging to his neighbor, for eating one of his prize roosters. In an affidavit, reports Darren Marcy in the Herald, Kline noted that Brown told her he'd shot the dog after it attacked his bird. Kline also wrote that an x-ray of Halo's body found no evidence of chicken bones—which, hospital staff told her, would have been visible if Halo had eaten a chicken.Hanover police prosecutor drops criminal trespass charges for some May 1 demonstrators, downgrades charges for others. In all, reports the VN's Christina Dolan, 28 of the people arrested during the Gaza demonstration on the Dartmouth Green won't have charges filed against them by prosecutor Mariana Pastore, and another 35 will face "violation" instead of misdemeanor charges—with no criminal record attached; how Pastore will approach the remaining 24 cases is uncertain. Pastore declined to explain yesterday. Those seeing charges dropped included students, community members, and one prof.SPONSORED: Oak Hill Music Festival returns with three exciting chamber music concerts this July. Oak Hill Music Festival brings together star musicians from across the country to present stunning programs featuring masterpieces by Brahms, Schubert, Beethoven, and Dvorak. Hear “Folk Music” Wednesday, July 10 and “The Romantic Virtuoso” Friday, July 12, both at 7:00 pm at the First Congregational Church of Lebanon, and “Landscapes” Saturday, July 13 at 7:00 pm at the Norwich Congregational Church. Tickets here or at the burgundy link. Sponsored by Oak Hill Music Festival.ValleyNet embezzler gets 27 months in prison. “This was not to pay health care bills,” US District Court Judge Christina Reiss told 73-year-old John Van Vught at a sentencing hearing in Burlington yesterday. “You bought vacation properties and toys.” Van Vught, who worked as a contract accountant for ValleyNet during the years it oversaw ECFiber's expansion, pled guilty earlier this year to charges that he'd taken some $558,000 from the nonprofit over the course of nearly a decade. He went missing in 2022, and was discovered and taken into custody last year in Georgia. VTDigger's Alan J. Keays reports."I've been at the business of recovery for a long, long time. I'm blessed in that respect. Many people don't get the chance." Newbury, VT poet Sydney Lea has a new novel out, Now Look, in which he explores addiction, redemption, and the course of a long friendship in the Maine woods. VT Public's Mikaela Lefrak talks to him about the book, writing with his neighbor—who only read Louis L'Amour—in mind, and why he admires Robert Frost. "You can take those poems to the first grade, and you can take them to the graduate school, and the union hall, and the retirement dinner," Lea says.SPONSORED: Tonight at the Briggs Opera House! 377: How Many More Will It Take? Join Lebanon High student writers Seth Kelly and Arlo Hastings and their cast for this poignant play delving into gun violence, as told through the lens of high school students before and after a school shooting. 377 tackles this pressing issue with sensitivity—no onstage violence is portrayed—and deep research. Tonight at 7 pm, tomorrow at 2 and 7 pm, and Sunday at 1 pm. Donations at the door. Sponsored by Sarlo Theatre Productions.At a farm in Newport, NH, Pepper, Pimpernel, Cameo, and Nutmeg bring comfort, skills, and happiness, both on-farm and off. The four are the miniature donkeys used by Margaret Coulter and the nonprofit she runs, Road to Independence, to work with people with disabilities, visit senior living facilities, and even show up in schools to get read to by reluctant readers. On NHPR, Paul Cuno-Booth visits the farm with a group from Visions for Creative Housing Solutions, who go regularly. "They recognize us. They know when we’re here," Leb's Katherine Ryan tells him. “It’s nice to be recognized.”It won't be all fireworks on July 4. There'll be drones and lasers, too. In the VN, Liz Sauchelli reports that Sunapee and Lebanon are turning to the alternates, though for different reasons. Sunapee is hosting a drone show on Saturday night (9 pm, Ben Mere Park) after a group of residents raised concerns about the impact of the annual fireworks show on Lake Sunapee. Lebanon, on the other hand, is turning to lasers next Thursday after VT-based Northstar Fireworks notified the city it wouldn't be able to keep its 30-year July 4 run going; the company has also canceled shows in other NH towns."There was a toxic culture that existed at YDC and it thrived for decades." "YDC" refers to NH's juvenile jail, the Youth Development Center, which is at the center of an immense scandal, with some 1,300 former detainees having filed lawsuits alleging physical and sexual abuse over many years. With the whole mess now in the courts, an NHPR team led by Jason Moon has put together an investigative podcast series and—with the data journalism group The Pudding—a digital story looking into the allegations and how the abuse could have happened. "One hope I have for this series is that listeners who haven’t followed the daily coverage on YDC can hear it and come away with a global sense of this story," Moon tells the Globe's Steven Porter.A black racer snake makes an appearance in VT after 10 years of no-shows. For decades, Fish and Wildlife has been trying to entice the species to take up residence on public land. Now, it looks like keeping lands open and building dens for them is paying off, reports VT Public's Howard Weiss-Tisman. Black racer snakes aren’t venomous, but will “coil and try to bite you when cornered and threatened.” Wildlife biologist Molly Parren was on the team that found the six-foot-long visitor—her second coup after helping discover the false mermaid-weed that had been unseen in the state for more than a century.UVM's Center for Community News gets $7 million to expand. In the years since Richard Watts, director of the Center for Research on Vermont, started a program to train students as journalists, the effort has become a key player in buttressing news coverage in the Green Mountain State. Now, reports Anne Wallace Allen in Seven Days, it's landed $5 million from the Knight Foundation and another $2 million from other sources—which, managing director Meg Little Reilly tells her, will allow it to boost the number of student reporters working with local newspapers to 135 over the next five years.The emotion, passion, athleticism, and focus that are at the heart of sport. On My Modern Met, Jessica Stewart presents the winners of the 2024 World Sports Photography Awards. Stiff competition, with more than 9,000 entries submitted from dozens of countries. Belgian photographer Eric T'Kindt won the top prize for his image of gymnast Daiki Hashimoto—who also, as it happens, was the big winner that day. In winter sports, a near-mystical image of Mikaela Shiffrin racing the giant slalom at the World Cup took top spot. Benjamin Lau’s portrait of a table tennis player focuses on the critical role the tongue plays in making the shot. But truth is, they all capture a single, riveting moment.Let's just end the week by being transported. Fireflies in a Pennsylvania field at dusk, filmed a few years back by video artist Diana Lehr. You'll definitely want to click to expand it.
Daybreak doesn't get to exist without your support. Help it stick around by hitting the maroon button:
We may be the middle of nowhere to everyone else in VT and NH, but
we
know what's good! Strong Rabbit's Morgan Brophy has come up with the perfect design for "We Make Our Own Fun" t-shirts and tote bags for proud Upper Valleyites. Plus you'll find the Daybreak jigsaw puzzle, as well as sweatshirts, tees, a fleece hoodie, and, as always, the fits-every-hand-perfectly Daybreak mug. Check it all out at the link!
Cover to COVER Books in WRJ hosts Renée Bergland and Natural Magic: Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and the Dawn of Modern Science.
"Just as Darwin’s work was informed by his roots in natural philosophy and his belief in the interconnectedness of all life," the publisher's notes go, "Dickinson’s poetry was shaped by her education in botany, astronomy, and chemistry, and by her fascination with the enchanting possibilities of Darwinian science." At 5 pm.
Pianist Sakiko Ohashi has pulled together a small ensemble of world-class musicians for a weekend of music at W. Windsor Town Hall. Tonight at 7 it's Piano Four Hands with Ohashi and Orli Shaham, then concerts tomorrow (7 pm) and Sunday (3 pm) with violinist Doosook Kim, cellist Maxim Koslov, cellist German Marcano, and Ohashi.
The production, written and directed by Leb High School students Seth Kelly and Arlo Hastings, tackles school shootings from the perspective of the students for whom they're an ever-present threat. With a cast of students from Lebanon, Hartford, Hanover, and Oxbow high schools (and three college students).
Shows tomorrow (2 & 7) and Sunday (1 pm) as well.
As Interplay puts it, it's "world-renowned jazz artists sharing their gifts with the Upper Valley community." In Hayes Auditorium at Kimball Union Academy. Tomorrow from noon to 4 pm, students give their closing jazz festival in the Barrette Campus Center at KUA.
—Vermonters Kate Gibbel and Carlene Kucharczyk and Los Angeles' Alexandria Hall—for an evening of readings and conversation.
at
Our Savior Lutheran Church (5 Summer St., Hanover). Offered by Upper Valley Casineros, a Cuban dance group that started up last fall, it's an evening of casinos, which can be danced as couples or as a group—"a dynamic and elegant dance rooted in the music of son and timba." No experience needed.
And two films at 7 pm:
, in the Martha Rich Theater at Thetford Academy. And
, in the Loew Auditorium.
The final show from Jarvis Green's ambitious theater project brings stage and television star (
A Strange Loop, Abbott Elementary
) Larry Owens to the Northern Stage stage with his solo show dedicated to exploring time, love, and ambition through the music of Steven Sondheim. At 7:30 pm both nights.
This evening at 7:30, South African cellist Jacques Pierre Malan and pianist Daniel Weiser give the first of three concerts highlighting folk influences in music for cello and piano. Works by Grieg, Piazzolla, Popper, and "the little known, but very beautiful,
Five Pieces on Georgian Folk Themes
by Sulkhan Tsintsadze." Tonight at Windsor's Old South Church, tomorrow at 2 pm at the home of Andrew Bauman in WRJ, and Sunday at 2 pm at the First Congregational Church of Lebanon.
. Tonight at 8 pm, it's "20/20 Foresight"; tomorrow at 4 pm, "Everyone Loves Difficult Music". Pre-concert discussions with Chosen Vale director Edward Carroll a half-hour before each concert. In the Mary Keane Chapel at the Enfield Shaker Museum.
Brandon, VT-based singer-songwriter Breanna Elaine brings along her band, with both originals and covers that are "
dripping with plenty of earthy folk sounds, but also [have] undertones of rock, country and even punk."
Saturday
. Parade at 10, followed by an oxen pull at 11 (two classes), a food tent, lots of activities, Brooks Hubbard at 5 pm. On the Hanover Center Green.
The festival—
a gathering for people who play, listen, sing, or dance to the music of Irish harper and composer Turlough O’Carolan (1670-1738)—starts up at noon at Salt Hill Pub, moves on to workshops and teaching sessions at Upper Valley Music Center and the First Congregational Church of Lebanon, and comes to a grand close tomorrow evening at 7 with a concert by harpers Dominique Dodge and Rachel Clemente.
Usually, public readings of Douglass's "What to the American slave is your Fourth of July?" take place on the fourth of July. But this year, the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire has organized 15 readings all across the state at the same time, with volunteers taking turns reading paragraphs.
"It is surprisingly moving to hear friends and neighbors speaking Douglass' words from more than 170 years ago
," writes organizer Carol Rougvie.
The rock school for Upper Valley kids has been turning out musicians for the last 15 years, and tomorrow starting at 3 pm it's celebrating by gathering current students, established performers—including
such Brooks Hubbard (he's got a busy day), Hans Williams, and Shy Husky—and alums bringing their bands from places like Philadelphia, Montreal, Arizona, and New Orleans.
The music's free, but there'll also be food trucks, wood-fired pizza, and a raffle for a PRS SE 245 electric guitar.
At 6:30 pm tomorrow, the West Claremont Center for Music and the Arts presents pianists Eva-Maria Zimmermann and Keisuke Nakagoshi: two people, four hands, 20 fingers, one piano, and everything from Balinese gamelan to Stravinsky's
Rite of Spring
. At Claremont's Union Episcopal Church.
Using artwork, photographs, and song, Brown "takes the listener inside the lives of 14 fascinating characters," telling their stories alongside projections that illustrate it all. 7:30 pm tomorrow in Haverhill's Alumni Hall.
Sunday
Starting at 10 Sunday morning, it's the very first Pollinator Garden Tour in Lebanon. Organized by Green the Ground, a project of Sustainable Lebanon focused on bird habitat, soil health, and boosting pollinators, it will start in front of 39 School Street (which, among other things, boasts a fine stand of milkweed), move on to a native plant garden in Colburn Park, and then finish up near the Lebanon Library. No link.
at 11 am at the Braintree Hill Meetinghouse in Braintree, VT. Actually, it really gets going at 10 am, when a mountain bike ride organized by the Ridgeline Collective heads out. Food starts up at 11, and then at noon bluegrass quartet Audrey Mae brings the music, followed by Bow Thayer, Krishna Guthrie, and Steve Ferraris and their Choirs of Aether project.
It's a blend, they write, "of Impressionism, folk roots, and a touch of jazz," with Occitan folk songs, the works of Gabriel Faure, Caesar Frank, Cecile Chaminade, French folk songs, dance tunes, Django Reinhardt, Edith Piaf and more. At 3 pm on the Artistree hillside if the weather's okay, in the Hayloft if not.
Stanley Kramer's 1960 film pits Spencer Tracy channeling William Jennings Bryan against Frederic March's Clarence Darrow as they face off in the 1925 "Scopes Monkey Trial". 4 pm at the Loew.
And as we head for the weekend...
We'll pause a moment to pay our respects to Kinky Friedman, who died yesterday at his ranch near Austin at the age of 79. He was an unvarnished character from beginning to end—or, as the
NYT
obit yesterday put it, "Mr. Friedman occupied a singular spot on the fringes of American popular culture... He leered back at the mainstream with songs that blended vaudeville, outlaw country and hokum, a bawdy style of novelty music." He also ran for governor of Texas in 2006 (and hey, pulled in 12 percent of the vote), ran a free camp with his sister for the kids of fallen service members or first responders, opened the Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch—which, at one point, was taking care of over 1,000 stray and abandoned dogs—and never really stopped joking. "I had a very harrowing experience a while ago playing with my chihuahua,” he told an interviewer a few years ago. “To paraphrase my father, ‘If you find yourself in a fight with a chihuahua, you’ve already lost.’”
, which heralded a more reflective phase.
"
Resurrection
has a spiritual definition and it has a religious definition," he said after it came out. "Mainly it’s being down for the count, being knocked out and getting up after all that, after people think you’re done, and being able to fight again."
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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