GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Sunny, warmer. There's high pressure building in for the weekend, leading to mostly clear skies today and temps hitting the mid 80s (hotter tomorrow and Sunday). Winds today from the west, mid or upper 50s overnight.Two speedy flyers, stopped. But only by the grace of Carol Majewski's remarkable photo. It's of a hummingbird and a bee in her backyard in Plainfield—although, she writes, "I was so focused on trying to capture the hummingbird that when I started reviewing the pics, the photo-bombing bee made me smile."
"What are you planting, Henry?" "Bird seed, apparently." Henry plants, Wally comments, and together they talk vegetables. As he does every week here, Lebanon writer and illustrator DB Johnson chronicles the doings in Lost Woods—and on his blog he writes about the joys of berry-picking. "I don’t think it’s insignificant that the first thing [Henry David Thoreau] did, after spending his famous night in jail for refusing to pay his taxes, was to set off straightway to the huckleberry field," he writes.Hartford to restart police chief search. Last week, the town said it was down to two finalists. But yesterday, Town Manager Tracy Yarlott-Davis told Ethan Weinstein of VTDigger that the preferred candidate has taken a job elsewhere, and that "we're back to square one." This news comes after questions raised by Digger about one finalist, Patrick Torneo, who was among three CT state troopers named as defendants in a 2016 federal civil rights complaint. Torneo tells Digger that he was "exonerated from any wrongdoing." Yarlott-Davis did not say whether his situation affected her decision.Strafford Selectboard reverses itself on Zoom meetings. Back in June, notes John Freitag in the Herald, the board voted 3-1 (with one member absent) to dump Zoom and return to all in-person meetings. In the following weeks, over 50 people either wrote to the board or commented on the town listserv, many of them raising concerns about the move. So at its meeting last week, the board changed its mind, opting 3-2 to move to both in-person and online meetings—and to look for volunteers to run Zoom, so that members can concentrate on the task at hand and "not the technology," Freitag writes.SPONSORED: Heat's hidden, devastating toll. As this summer’s sizzling temperatures start to wind down, it’s time to come to grips with how serious this dangerous weather phenomenon is becoming. Across the US, excessive heat causes more deaths than floods or tornadoes or hurricanes. The maroon link takes you to an explanation of why ever-increasing heat waves—here in New England and around the globe—have become so grave, and why the race is on to avoid the most extreme climate outcomes. Sponsored by Solaflect Energy.Newport NH decides airport will need to meet FAA standards. Currently, Parlin Field, the town-owned "Gateway to the Lake Sunapee Region" and surely one of the few airports with a rail trail across from a runway, holds to state but not federal standards for maintenance. Now, over its manager's opposition, reports the Valley News's Patrick O'Grady, the selectboard wants to make it an FAA airport—because of the funding that would bring. "I keep looking for Plan B, but it does not exist. There is no viable alternative that will get us the kind of money we need," Town Manager Hunter Rieseberg said.After "an absolute frenzy" of visitors in 2021, Woodstock tourism returning to normal. “Last summer was insane. It was everyone coming off of COVID,” Patrick Fultz, owner of the Sleep Woodstock Motel, tells The Vermont Standard. “Everyone just needed to get away.” Now, the Standard reports, numbers seem to be evening out—parking meter revenue is down a bit from last year and hotel/motel owners report that things are more manageable. And, Woodstock Chamber director Beth Finlayson says, restaurants are mostly back to full hours, so all those people are finding places to eat.A life lived "with grace, clarity and compassion." That's how one colleague describes Deb Nichols, Dartmouth's first tenured female professor of anthropology, who died of cancer July 27. In The Dartmouth, Farah Lindsey-Almadani writes that years before the college was explicitly thinking about building diversity in its academic pursuits, Nichols strove to ensure her field included students from ethnic and racial minorities. “Her wisdom, humor, knowledge and kindness will be sorely missed," says anthropology department chair Jeremy DeSilvaHiking Close to Home: Rattlesnake Mountain, Rumney, NH. This week's suggestion from the Upper Valley Trails Alliance is a small mountain in the Whites with a moderate climb to the summit and open ledges overlooking the Baker River Valley. It's a family-friendly 2.5-mile hike, pretty much perfect for enjoying the early stages of fall foliage. Trailhead is on Buffalo Road, which you get to from the center of Rumney village."When it rains you probably don’t want to go swimming.” Every other week for the last 21 summers, the White River Partnership has been testing the river and its branches, amassing two decades' worth of data. And one thing is clear: after a rainstorm, bacteria levels "grow tremendously as the rain stirs up sediments in the river and causes runoffs from banks," writes Tim Calabro in the Herald. Levels drop quickly, though, and the Partnership's testing over the last few years has shown that most of the White's watershed "is quite healthy most of the time," Calabro writes.Been paying attention this week? The News Quiz has some questions for you. Like, what's Dartmouth Health requiring of employees come this fall? And what displaced downtown WRJ businesses this week? And why do male loons yodel? You'll find those and other questions at the maroon link.Okay, NH, absentee ballots are ready. They've now been delivered to every city and town clerk’s office, and though the regs that governed voting absentee in 2020 have expired, they're still an option for many voters. In NH Bulletin, Ethan DeWitt runs through the requirements, how to request a ballot, and an array of other questions you might have.Planting the seeds of NH’s indigenous people. At the Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, an agricultural revival of the Abenaki people is under way. NH Bulletin’s Amanda Gokee meets Anne Jennison, one of the museum’s interpreters and herself Abenaki, who is leading an effort to bring her ancestors’ gardening practices out from “under the radar” and educate the public on how the land was tended long before European settlers arrived. Despite generations of displacement and forced assimilation, Gokee writes, “Some Abenaki families preserved traditional crops by saving their seeds.”Exploring Vermont's growing network of rail-trails. "In the last few years," writes veteran journalist and explorer David Goodman in VT Ski + Ride, "miles of rusting steel ribbon that once crossed Vermont have been removed to make way for paths of crushed gravel and cinders, perfect for the rubber soles of running or hiking shoes or two not-so-knobby tires." He offers up a guide, including the Wells to Montpelier Rail Trail that runs from Groton State Forest to Marshfield, the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail that heads west out of St. J, trails through the Champlain Islands, over by Castleton, and more. Hey, not so fast on that "oldest potted plant!" Daybreak reader Jim McClammer was a botanist at the National Arboretum in 1976, when Japan gave the US 53 bonsai trees in honor of the Bicentennial. Jim writes, "I respectfully challenge" yesterday's item on the Cycad at the Kew Gardens, which a botanist there called the world's oldest potted plant. Among the bonsai now at the Arboretum, he points out, is the Yamaki pine, a nearly 400-year-old pine that "has been in training, ostensibly in a pot, since 1625." It's a survivor: It was in Hiroshima in 1945. The Kew plant? A mere stripling at 250 years old.There’s a purgatory for envelopes the postal service can’t read. And it’s in Salt Lake City. As YouTuber Tom Scott discovers, the place known as the last Remote Encoding Center in the US (down from 55 locations in 1997) is where scanned images of the most poorly hand-addressed pieces of mail go to be manually decoded. How inscrutable are these envelopes? Processing centers use optical character recognition (OCR) technology to correctly interpret 99 percent of mail sent. Scott gets a hands-on tour of how the remaining 1 percent are deciphered, a process that doesn’t look easy or, actually, like much fun.The Friday Vordle. Hey, a record number of you went for it yesterday! Kudos!
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Fair season in the Upper Valley speeds up today when the Cornish Fair opens its gates at 7 am. First event (the 4H horse show) starts at 9 am, the midway opens at 10 am. Horse pulls, dairy showing, oxen pulls, tractor pulls, magic shows, plenty of music, food and crafts vendors of all sorts... At the Cornish Fairgrounds until 11 pm tonight and tomorrow, 7 pm Sunday.
At 5 pm today, East Coast Van Builds (490 Lower Plain) in Bradford VT is throwing its first Lower Plain Block Party. It's featuring four bands, including three locals: East Corinth solo folk specialist Miranda Moody Miller, Doomsday Parade, "femme farmrock" trio Lavendula. Then come Brooklyn reggae rockers Sundub. No cost for the music, and there'll be food to buy from Groton's Darling Farm and smoked meat purveyor Smokey D's.
At 5:30 today, vocalist and trombonist Elizabeth Frascoia (who also happens to run the Governor's Institutes of Vermont) takes the patio between Salt Hill and Three Tomatoes in Lebanon for an evening of jazz. She'll be joined by David Westphalen on bass (who also happens to be her dad), Billy Rosen on guitar, and Fred Haas on piano. (No link -- just show up for good food and music.)
Starting at 6 this evening, Pentangle Arts' Music by the River brings veteran folk-rock troubadour Jay Nash to East End Park in Woodstock. The longtime singer-songwriter—who got his start on a subway platform in NYC, before hitting the road for years of touring the country and, eventually, settling down in VT—has a deep well of songs to draw from.
At 7 pm tonight and tomorrow and at 3 pm on Sunday, the Old Church Theater in Bradford, VT presents its second weekend of Sherlock Holmes and the First Baker Street Irregular. In Brian Guehring's play based on several of the Holmes mysteries, 14-year-old Wiggins, leader of a gang of street urchins, tries to pickpocket some old guy who turns out to be... well, you can guess. She and her gang and Holmes join forces to solve cases. At Bradford Academy.
Tonight and tomorrow at 8 pm, and again next Friday and Saturday, same times, "funk, gospel, soul, and testimony will echo through the Vermont landscape" as JAG Productions brings Tony Award winner Britton Smith and his band, Britton & The Sting, to the stage-on-a-hill behind King Arthur Baking in Norwich. Food and drink from Munchie Rollz available starting at 7 each evening. "It's going to be bright, it's going to be big, and it's going to make you feel so good! I promise you!" Smith says in a promo video.
Tomorrow at 7:30 pm and Sunday at 4 pm, Classicopia presents "Clara and Fanny," a program featuring "the remarkable, but sadly neglected Piano Trios by Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn. " Both were composed in 1846 and are dramatic, lyrical, passionate works. Violinist Ralph Allen and cellist Iris Jortner will be coming from Israel to join pianist Daniel Weiser for this program. At the First Congregational Church of Lebanon tomorrow and the Hanover home of Marilyn and Al Austin-Nelson on Sunday.
Also at 7:30 tomorrow, the Central Vermont Chamber Music Festival closes out its 30th season at the Chandler in Randolph with works by Gabriel Fauré, Witold Lutoslawski, and César Franck for strings and piano.
Sunday morning at 9, Billings Farm in Woodstock is hosting "Sunflower Sunday"—a free community event before the grounds open to the general public with stretching, yoga-inspired movement, and a stroll through the Sunflower House. No cost, but you'll need to register and admission closes at 9:10.
From 1 to 6 pm Sunday, Court Street Arts and the Cohase Region Business Community are presenting Uncommon Jam on the Newbury (VT) Common. Food trucks, a beer garden, and music by the Patrick Ross Band, the Kat Wright Trio, and the Dave Keller Band.
And Sunday at 2 pm, the Saint Gaudens National Historical Park in Cornish is presenting a summer concert by jazz and klezmer artists Pneuma and Kaleidoscopic Klezmer, along with jazz-infused compositions for voice and three clarinets. The event is "in solidarity and healing" as a response to the anti-Semitic vandalism incident at the park last fall. Community-created quilt squares around the themes of tolerance and solidarity will be joined together at the event. No charge for admission to the park that day.
And speaking of klezmer...
One of the great klezmer bands of North America, Finjan, got its start 40 years ago in Winnipeg, Manitoba. They were pioneers in Canada, and their sheer musicianship, inventiveness, and onstage gusto won them a devoted following in the US (and overseas) as well—they once performed with the Louisville Orchestra
at
the Louisville Zoo. Sadly, they've been quiet in recent years, but
(Yep, MT, this is for you.)
Have a very fine weekend. See you on 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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