GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Oh, heck, sure. We'll take more of this. As the weather folks put it yesterday, "It remains refreshingly quiet." As high pressure continues to build into the region, today we get lots of sunshine, light winds from the northwest, and sensible humidity. Highs today a lot like yesterday, in the low 80s, with clear skies tonight and lows in the mid or upper 50s. Ahhh...Hungry? Check out this rotting log. In Hanover, Lisa Grose's trail cam the other day caught this mom bear showing her cubs (only one's in the clip) how to look for insects. "They're a high-protein food," Lisa writes.That measles outbreak is growing. There are now five cases tied to that visitor to the Upper Valley, reports NHPR's Paul Cuno-Booth, including two NH residents and three from out of state. The state health department has put out an expanded list of exposure sites—which has grown to include the Sierra Trading Post in West Leb on July 1, the Dartmouth Co-op on July 3 and 5, and more. "Anyone who was at one of those locations – and is not protected against measles from vaccination or prior infection – should call New Hampshire’s Division of Public Health Services at 603-271-4496 as soon as possible and watch for symptoms," Cuno-Booth writes.Leb landfill among four drawing concern from NH officials over toxic "trash juice". Officially it's known as leachate, and NH Bulletin's Claire Sullivan writes that the Dept of Environmental Services has sent letters of deficiency to the landfills in Bethlehem, Rochester, Conway, and Lebanon's city-run facility documenting problems. In Leb's case, the landfill had 13 leachate breakouts, including five that traveled into the environment beyond the landfill, as well as “large quantities of litter” both in and beyond the facility. A city official says it has worked "diligently" to bring the landfill back into compliance.Departing Hanover town manager will get $135K severance. Alex Torpey, who still has a year remaining on his contract with the town, is set to leave after July 31, though his reasons for stepping down remain unclear, Patrick Adrian writes in the Valley News. At a selectboard meeting Monday, former board chair Athos Rassias praised Torpey's two-year tenure, saying, "the impact that Alex has had is going to benefit the town in a lot of ways for many years to come.” Torpey tells Adrian he's started a new organization focused on "rethinking" local government and civic participation, and is building a home in S. Royalton.SPONSORED: Visions for Creative Housing Solutions celebrates its 10th Anniversary next Thursday in Colburn Park with a concert and more! The free, family-friendly event will run from 4-6 pm Thursday, July 25th, with music from Flame the Band, a Disability Pride Parade, Farmer’s Market vendors, and Mayor Tim McNamara’s Disability Justice Day proclamation for the City of Lebanon. Join this celebration of disability pride and the many ways people with disabilities contribute to the Upper Valley. Information at the burgundy link or here. Sponsored by Visions for Creative Housing Solutions.“Every meal is a learning opportunity for a bear." That's VT bear biologist Jaclyn Comeau summing up for the Herald's Isabel Dreher how to think about bear interactions: They're smart and they learn quickly. As tempting as it is to enjoy seeing a bear, take photos, and then scare it off, Randolph-area warden Noelle (Bella) Kline tells Dreher, "the bears learn from those moments of peace; she recommends blowing an air horn or banging pots and pans together as quickly as possible." Dreher rounds up a series of recent bear encounters, most of which ended peacefully, but one of which did not (for the bear).The pull of music. This week is the Herald's annual features issue, while the staff takes a desperately needed break. It includes two profiles that are well worth your time, in which music features prominently.
Tim Calabro's writeup about retiring VT state Sen. Dick McCormack might not seem to be about music, but it is: McCormack started his life in VT in 1970 working as a musician in Killington, got a gig writing silly baseball songs for NBC’s Baseball Game of the Week pre-game show, worked as a DJ on WRJ's WKXE, got into politics but kept trying to pay the bills as a musician (and a delivery boy for EBA's—"I was the majority leader of the Vermont Senate and I was delivering pizza," he tells Calabro). Now, he says, "I really have to get writing again."
Then there's Isabel Dreher's profile of Strafford fiddler and piano tuner Emerson Gale. The son of a musician, he got started on that latter path after a visit to Beijing, China as a student, when he got curious about a piano's innards and how to tune them properly. It's exacting work, Dreher writes: Pianos have 230 strings, between one and three for each of the 88 keys, and taking even a minute per string would require hours of work, Gale tells her. “A lot of these pianos are way flat when I get to them, so I need to quickly form a relationship with 230 pins and reset them to a stable place," he says—preferably in 10 seconds or less for each.
Immersive Worlds: Real and Imagined
is now on view. Featuring Hood Museum favorites, this exhibition invites personal, immersive exploration through a creative writing space, an opt-in scent station, and original poems by local poets. Museum Hours: Wednesday: 11:00 am–5:00 pm; Thursday–Friday: 11:00 am–8:00 pm; Saturday–Sunday: 10:00 am–5:00 pm; Closed Monday and Tuesday. The Hood Museum is always free and open to all.
Sponsored by the Hood Museum of Art.
From a high school grad just helping out at Sculpturefest to this year's featured artist. That's Lela Keen Jaacks, who's got two works set up on the land around Charlet and Peter Davenport's home in Woodstock. Sculpturefest 2024, which got its official start July 7, is underway, and in the VN, Alex Hanson pays a visit to Jaacks' sculptures. One series of nine panels embeds natural objects—pine cones, sticks, seed pods, sea shells, and the like—only some of the smaller pine cones are missing; Hanson's gaze falls on a chipmunk nearby. You can visit Sculpturefest, on Prosper Hill Road, dawn to dusk into the fall.Could Enfield get a microbrewery? That's what the planning board will start considering at a meeting next week, when it hears a proposal from resident Brian Degnan to turn the former laundromat he owns into a tasting room and brewing spot for Hoptimystic Brewing, which has a similar business in Sunapee. The idea's got backing. “This will be a nice win for us if we can get a little brewery going in there,” Rob Taylor, Enfield’s land use and community development administrator, tells the VN's Liz Sauchelli. Among other things, the building backs onto the Northern Rail Trail.Hiking Close to Home: Sunrise and Sunset Hikes. Sometimes, you just want to get out when the trails are empty and the skies are going to be beautiful once you get to the top. Like this weekend. So the Upper Valley Trails Alliance's Kaitie Eddington is reprising a 2022 guide to options both nearby and a bit farther away, from Ascutney's Summit Trails and Bald Top in Fairlee to the Welch-Dickey Loop and Sandwich Mountain. Wherever you go, hike prepared.$1.35 million project aims to buttress Franconia Ridge Loop. The effort's been going on for a couple of years and has a couple more to run, and it's desperately needed, Appalachian Mountain Club trails director Alexander DeLucia tells the Globe's Amanda Gokee (newsletter, no paywall). The 11.4-mile loop can get as many as 1,200 hikers a day, so erosion's a big issue—especially on sections like the Bridle Path, which opened in the 1850s. Crews are doing everything from laying stone to relocating steep sections to splitting up granite steps so tall that hikers try to go around them.Been paying attention to Daybreak? Because Daybreak's Upper Valley News Quiz has some questions for you. Like, how many trees in and around Lyme did Wednesday evening's tornado take down? And why does the repaving of the Miracle Mile have to start over? 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 can fill in the blank: A new UVM study found that listening to ____ had a positive effect on listeners' body image.
And NHPR's got a whole set of questions about doings around the Granite State—like, who does that performer at Canobie Lake Park look like?
In NH numbers showing a slight rise in unemployment, a silver lining. A new report from the state's Dept. of Employment Security shows that both claims and payouts rose in 2023 over previous years. But that may have been good news, Ethan DeWitt writes in NH Bulletin. For one thing, "a rise in unemployment claims is an indication that the labor market has healed somewhat, and that employers aren’t as desperate," a department official tells him. Employers are filling more jobs, though not evenly—office work has rebounded, but health care, retail, restaurants, and manufacturing still struggle.Carving granite in Barre: "It’s like you’re making an image almost seen through a veil." Ellyn Gaydos' new piece in Harper's is lots of things: a history of Barre's granite quarries and carving industry, a profile of a city beset by drugs and decline, and a close look at the artisans—much diminished in number—who keep the Granite Capital of the World a place where granite is still taken seriously. "I wanted to see how Barre, still an industry town, supports a rare type of vocational artist. It is a place that manufactures the passage of time for others yet itself seems to follow an older, slower clock," Gaydos writes. It's a closely observed, meditative piece. Set aside some time. Thanks, SL!"It isn't in the guards' manual. I looked in the index. I looked under unauthorized personnel, and people without passes, and uh, apes and apes' toes..." Comedian Bob Newhart died yesterday at 94. He "ruled TV" in the '70s and '80s, as Variety puts it, but before that he was a pioneer of what came to be known as observational humor, and he kept those standup chops long afterward. In a 1995 SNL monologue, he imagined what it would be like to be a new security guard at the Empire State Building the day King Kong showed up. "See, this, this isn't your standard ape, sir..."
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We may be the middle of nowhere to everyone else in VT and NH, but
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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!
. Sunday's performance is sold out, so ON has just opened up today's final dress rehearsal, $25 per person. There won't be the usual food vendors on site, but you're welcome to bring your own picnic. At Blow-Me-Down Farm in Cornish. Link above goes to the Rigoletto site for tix to next week's performances. For today's, email
for ticket information.
Pentangle Arts continues its summertime Music By the River series (which began last week) with the
Americana, folk, blues, and rock band. No charge (though donations are always welcome), starting at 6 pm at East End Park.
It's the 72nd season, and the touring orchestra presents "Beauties and Beasts", a program of works by Texu Kim, Shostakovich, Ravel, and Mozart. Led by conductor Yaniv Dinur and with special-guest cellist Sydney Lee. At 7 pm.
Hop resident artist Johnny Gandelsman closes out his year-long
This is America
project tomorrow with
Flamenco Suite
by Venezuelan musician and composer Gonzalo Grau.
This
evening, Grau will be on the Dartmouth Green (near the information booth, look for the large Hopkins Center flag) teaching flamenco rhythms to participants using his Cajón drum. No tix needed.
The title role goes to newcomer William Fitzgerald, playing an 11-year-old autistic kid in New Jersey who's kidnapped by his father, Max (Bobby Cannavele), an edgy standup comedian who wants to rescue his son from the educational bureaucracy, and is taken on the road, pursued by Max's ex-wife (Rose Byrne) and dad (Robert DeNiro). At the Loew.
The very talented NYC-based troupe led by Josh and Lyndsay Aviner has been in these parts before, with an earlier show,
Stars Above
. This one picks up where that one left off, following a troupe whose clown is struggling to ‘fit in’ and find his voice. Outdoors at the Richmond Middle School in Hanover, 7:30 pm tonight, 4 pm and 7:30 pm tomorrow.
The four-hands-piano twosome of Juliette Aridon-Kociolek and Clémentine Dubost specializes in French and Slavic repertoires, with works by Debussy, Ravel, Dukas, Saint-Saëns, Dvorak, Rachmaninov, Borodin, Moussorgsky, Stravinsky, and others. 7:30 pm at Next Stage Arts.
The trio started as a solo act by Will Sturcke as a UVM student, but he quickly added two compatriots (David Battit on bass and Jimmy Martucci on drums). Psych-rock,
funk, alternative, jam, and progressive rock. Starts up at 9 pm.
Saturday
You probably won't want to get up to watch the start, which is at 4 am for the ultra-marathoners and endurance riders doing the 100-mile version (9 am for the 100-kmers), but if you see runners and equestrians making their way through Taftsville, Pomfret, Woodstock, Reading, and Cavendish, then back to W. Windsor before 10 am Sunday, you're catching the only remaining race in the country where runners and riders share a course.
It's a day of performances tomorrow, starting at 11 am with
Thumbelina
by Avant Vermont Dance in Lyman Point Park, set to music by
Evan Premo. At 4 pm, the Lebanon Ballet School hosts
dance pieces by regional artists Julia Bair, Alexandra Bilodeau, and the Alewife Dance Collective. And at 7 pm at the Briggs Opera House, nine dance pieces featuring artists from VT and NH. And Sunday at 5 pm, a showcase of works by Vermont ChoreoLab residents, also at the Briggs.
Things kick off at noon tomorrow with a flag-raising at Hartford Town Hall, followed at 1 pm at the Bugbee Senior Center by
Emoji Nightmare and Katniss Everqueer finishing the drag story hour that got interrupted by a bomb threat back in January (here's a Stuck in Vermont episode about Emoji creator Justin Marsh). There's a full-on schedule of events all week at the first link: trivia and dance party tomorrow night, then lots more including a keynote by cartoonist and Tony winner Alison Bechdel Thursday.Neil J. Fitzgerald and Dan Roda on the S. Royalton Town Green, tomorrow at 5 pm. Both are folk singer-songwriters with a liking for new age, jazzy flair. They're longtime North Country performers—
this is their first time together for a special songwriters show.
It's indie/soul singer-songwriter Myra Flynn, who splits her time between LA and VT and is also the host of the VT Public podcast
Homegoings
, making up for a June show that had to be cancelled. At Fable Farm Fermentory in Barnard.
Violinist Johnny Gandelsman gives the final concert of his Hop residency tomorrow at 6 pm with a program that includes the world premiere of the Hop-commissioned piece
Flamenco Suite,
composed by Gonzalo Grau (with flamenco dancer Marianna Gatto on stage and Grau on hand), as well as works by Tomeka Reid, Akshaya Tucker, Dana Lyn, and Rhiannon Giddens. At the Church of Christ at Dartmouth College.
Traditional music teachers at Warren Wilson College, fiddler/vocalist Natalya Zoe Weinstein and multi-instrumentalist/vocalist John Cloyd Miller have somehow found a way to blend and expand on their respective musical traditions: klezmer and bluegrass. At 7 pm tomorrow.
Sunday
You can pick up tickets, maps, and descriptions at the Wells River Savings Bank office in Bradford, VT at 9 N Main St. and make your way over 25-30 miles to five gardens and an ‘art-barn’. "With beautiful views and ‘off-the-beaten path’ scenery, the drive between properties is as enjoyable as the gardens," the Chamber writes.
It's Medal Day at the prestigious and exclusive artists' retreat—this year's recipient is Yoko Ono, though she won't be there. The ceremony's at 12:15, there's a picnic at 1:15, and then from 2-4 pm it's open studio time and a chance to meet the writers, composers, and other artists in residence at the moment.
For the final show in its statewide tour, the chorus is joined by VSO violinist Laura Markowitz and cellist John Dunlop, and Strafford's own Annemieke McLane on piano, for a program exploring the intersection of folk traditions and classical music: Johannes Brahms’s
Zigeunerlieder
, Ludwig van Beethoven’s Scottish folksongs, and piano trio movements by Fanny Hensel Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann. At 3 pm Sunday.
And let's just jam into the weekend...
As great as they often are, NPR's Tiny Desk concerts don't generally appear in this spot, because they're longer than just a quick hit of music. That's true of this one, too, but heck: It's Phish, it just went up, and it's Friday. Also, how many guest bands parade through the newsroom with high fives and to a standing ovation afterward (not that there's much choice for listeners) then return to do a couple of encores?
Enjoy these next few days! 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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