GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Mostly sunny, hot. Once the fog clears, of course. We're due to hit around 90, with humidity driving heat index values into the low or mid 90s. Light winds today and tonight, and a chance of rain starting this evening as a low pressure system approaches. We're also in store for another humid night, with lows in the upper 60s or even low 70s.Waiting for mom. In Quechee, Anne Charron woke up the other day to find a barred owl and her two youngsters outside. The mother, she writes, "was repeatedly dive bombed by songbirds that were disturbed by her presence" and finally took off—leaving the kids to doze, preen, and just hang out in their respective trees until she returned.Next week in New London, the I-89 northbound Exit 11 off-ramp will close for five days. NHDOT is closing the ramp starting Monday so crews can remove, replace, and widen the existing pavement. There are two detour options: Exit 10 to NH Route 114 to NH Route 11, then back onto I-89 northbound at Exit 11; or up to Exit 12, where you can reverse direction south to Exit 11. Monday's start date is weather-dependent. The other three Exit 11 ramps will get similar treatment in upcoming weeks.Mid Vermont Christian School will be able to compete in non-athletic co-ed events. We're talking the state spellilng bee, geo-bee, drama festivals, and the like. The agreement came in a US District Court hearing Monday, writes Mike Donoghue in the VT Standard, as MVCS pressed its federal case against the VT Principals Association and others for barring it from VPA-sponsored activities after MVCS withdrew from a girls’ varsity basketball tournament rather than play a team with a transgender player. With that resolved, the case now moves on to the federal Appeals Court level, Donoghue reports.Wednesday night's rain hit roads hard in Haverhill, Piermont, and Orford. In all, reports Liz Sauchelli in the Valley News, 4 inches fell in six hours. All that water damaged Flat Iron Road, Lime Kiln Road and Route 25 in Pike (part of Haverhill), as Oliverian Brook overran its banks in spots. “It reminded you a bit of Niagara Falls,” town clerk Carole Brooks-Broer tells Sauchelli. In Orford, Town Road 89 and Indian Pond Road took the brunt of the damage, while Piermont's Cross Road, Rodimon Lane and Piermont Heights Road were also hit. So, of course, was 25C. Crews were out yesterday repairing all of them.
And a quick correction: That VTDigger story yesterday about Leena Aly's near-death flood experience in Lyndonville was written by Emma Cotton, not Ethan Weinstein. My apologies to Emma for a mistake on the fly—all the more boneheaded because she deserves huge credit for finding and telling such a gripping story so well. If you missed it the first time, here it is.SPONSORED: The Craftsmen’s Fair returns to the Mt. Sunapee Resort in Newbury, NH August 3-11! It's the 91st year of The League of NH Craftsmen's annual showcase, with hundreds of artists and artisans showing their work and giving demonstrations over nine days. An iconic arts experience in a beautiful location with ample free parking; guests 16 and under admitted free. Tickets available in advance online for lowest prices and fastest time through the gates (valid for any one day of the event), and also at the gate each day. Open daily 10 AM - 5 PM. Sponsored by the League of NH Craftsmen.In Vershire, auto salvage yard owner agrees to be a better neighbor. Allen LaFlamme, who's run Allen Auto Salvage since 1982, had faced a petition from neighbors asking that he limit auto crushing to weekday business hours, fix the muffler on his loader, and not keep disabled or crushed cars along Route 113. In the Herald, Darren Marcy reports that the selectboard has been withholding a permit renewal because of the longstanding problems—and that LaFlamme now says he's addressing them: moving vehicles inside his fence, fixing the muffler, and getting his yard in order. "I think we're on track," he says.Four shoo-ins for the VT House talk about their priorities. The four Democrats in the greater Woodstock metro area—John Bartholomew, Elizabeth Burrows, Heather Surprenant, and Charlie Kimball—are running unopposed in both the Aug. 13 primary and the general election. Three are incumbents (Bartholomew and Burrows in Windsor-1, Surprenant in Windsor-4), while Kimball used to represent Windsor-5 before an unsuccessful run for lieutenant governor. In the Standard, they answer Tess Hunter's questions (something the three incumbents did not do for VTDigger's primary guide).SPONSORED: Osher’s Summer Lecture Series continues August 7! “America’s Role in Preserving Peace and Prosperity” addresses issues affecting U.S. global leadership. The final sessions of this year’s series will highlight “Disinformation, Misinformation–Finding the Truth” on August 7, and “Geopolitics, Lessons From the Cold War, and the Way Forward” on August 14. Sessions run 9-11:30 AM at the Lebanon Opera House, or join via livestream. Open to the public. Be sure to check out the trailer on our website! Sponsored by Osher at Dartmouth.Valley Regional now part of Dartmouth Health system. The Claremont hospital, which has 25 beds and 350 employees, officially became part of DH on Wednesday, reports Patrick Adrian in the VN. Under their agreement, DH will maintain essential services at Valley Regional for at least 10 years, launch a capital campaign for a new medical center building on the hospital’s campus, and fund and operate an addiction and treatment center there. Currently, TLC Recovery Programs director Dan Wargo says, Claremont and Newport residents seeking addiction treatment have to travel to Lebanon.Hiking Close to Home: the Clark Lookout Trail, New London, NH. This week, the Upper Valley Trails Alliance highlights this trail up to a lookout that offers spectacular views of Lake Sunapee and Mt. Sunapee. Managed by New London's conservation commission, the trail is short—less than 0.8 miles round trip—and climbs just 100 feet. There's also a tiny library right by the kiosk, in case you want to do some reading up at the top. You'll find the trailhead on Route 103A, across from the Park & Ride by I-89's Exit 12.Speaking of hiking, how do you feed 30,000 hikers a season? That's the challenge the Appalachian Mountain Club faces at its eight mountain huts, which receive that many overnight visitors each year. In the Globe's newsletter (no paywall), Amanda Gokee has the answer: wooden packboards. Well, those and springtime helicopter flights toting nonperishables. Packboards, says AMC storehouse manager Ben Cargill, can carry much more than a regular backpack—especially boxes of food. Twice a week, hut crews use them to haul about 400 pounds of supplies up from the trailhead. Scroll down for a photo.Been paying attention to Daybreak? Because Daybreak's Upper Valley News Quiz has some questions for you. Like, what color is that new Advance Transit express route between Hanover, Lot 9, and Centerra? And what kind of food is gaining traction in the Upper Valley? 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 know in which Summer Olympics sport a Vermont native just medaled for the first time since 2016?
And NHPR's got a whole set of questionsabout doings around the Granite State—like, what group does a new law just signed by Gov. Chris Sununu aim to protect from harassment and attacks?
NH ports head subject of grand jury inquiry. Geno Marconi has been on administrative leave since April and now, reports NHPR's Todd Bookman, the AG's office has convened a Rockingham County grand jury, which has brought in several witnesses with ties to the ports to testify. Three people who were subpoenaed tell Bookman they were questioned "about a variety of interactions with Marconi and the Port Authority, including queries related to operations and leases at the state’s harbors." One went on to criticize the process as a “fishing expedition.” Marconi's wife, Supreme Court Justice Anna Barbara Hantz Marconi, was placed on administrative leave from the court last week.Finding mental health care for a child in NH is "almost like having a part-time job." Demand has been rising, but the shortage of therapists able to treat young people is especially dire, reports NHPR's Paul Cuno-Booth. A 2022 survey found that 90 percent of mental health clinicians serve adults while half work with teens and only a third with kids under 13. Part of it is pay, part of it is training (which often doesn't cover child and adolescent mental health), and part of it is the burdens of dealing with parents, school systems, and state agencies or courts. Cuno-Booth looks at efforts around Keene to find solutions.Let's go to the park. Which park? Well, you've got several dozen to choose from. One Minute Park is a project by computer artist Elliot Cost. It gathers up one-minute videos submitted by users of parks around the world—Brussels, Toronto, Barcelona, Berlin, Brooklyn, Chiba (Japan). You can browse and toggle sound (bottom left). Or you can just sit there and let the breeze blow and kids play and swans swim, one park per minute. Cost is hoping to get to 1,440 eventually, one for each minute of the day.
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We may be the middle of nowhere to everyone else in VT and NH, but
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, with restaurants and galleries welcoming all and sundry, stores staying open late (Revolution's having its annual summer sale),
for Elodie Blanchard's fiber sculptures, Two Rivers Printmaking
,
of oil paintings by Betsy Derrick (with music by Meadowlark), an open house at Junction Fiber Mill from 3-5, and from 6-8,
.
Erika Lawlor Schmidt, whose exhibit,
is currently on view, sits down with Axel Stohlberg, whose
The Architecture of Dreams
is also up at the gallery, starting at 5:30 pm.
Pentangle Arts continues its Music By the River series at 6 pm in East End Park with the veteran folk-rock troubadour, who got his start busking on a subway platform in NYC before hitting the road for years of touring the country. He eventually settled in VT, with a deep well of songs to draw from. If it happens to rain, they'll cancel.
Yep, Hop Film is screening the prequel to
Mad Max: Fury Road
—
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
. We'll just let the Hop take it from here: "As the world fell, young Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy) is snatched from the Green Place of Many Mothers and falls into the hands of the great Biker Horde led by the Warlord Dementus (Chris Hemsworth)..." 7 pm tonight.
Some 30 teens and a full-on production with original staging, costuming, choreography, and a live band take over Barnard Town Hall this weekend. The production opens this evening at 7, with performances at 2 pm and 7 pm tomorrow and 2 pm on Sunday.
The "live band experience" has been touring the country, "bringing the communal experience of celebrating Taylor’s music in a live setting to Swifties near and far," they write. Starts at 7:30 pm, just a handful of tickets left.
Or maybe it's more like "slacker rock for yachts," as they describe themselves. Or is it "
Louisiana beach music (or tropical shoe-gaze),"
as they also describe themselves. Whatever, the New Orleans-based band is on tour, and they're here tonight starting at 9.
Saturday
The work-in-progress is the second installment in a three-part series,
ALAA: A Family Trilogy
, focused on Egyptian-British blogger Alaa Abd El-Fattah, a pro-democracy activist during Egypt's 2011 uprising who's been imprisoned for most of the last decade. The play, the Hop writes, "juxtaposes physical storytelling and projections with Abd El-Fattah's testimonials and interviews conducted with Alaa's family matriarchs." 7 pm at the Theatre on Currier.
Hartland native Olivia Zerphy brings her physical theater troupe to Woodstock Town Hall Theatre at 7 pm.
, it's "built around the idea of a man whose morning routine is interrupted and as a result avoids being blown up in an explosion. The play takes him on a global quest to find his would-be assassin." That link takes you to Hanson's article about Voloz, Zerphy, and physical theater.
Hop Film screens seven shorts from the 2024 Sundance Festival, including the animated
Bug Diner
; Alison Rich's
Pathological
, in which a liar discovers her lies have come true; the Japanese short
Pisko the Crab Child is in Love,
about a half-human, half-crab dealing with unrequited love; and grand jury prize winner
The Masterpiece. 7 pm.
The Colorado-based jamgrass pioneers, known to their ardent followers for bringing rock-and-roll spirit to bluegrass, have seen personnel shifts over the years, but they just keep on moving along. As usual for the resort's summer concert series, the concert's free. Food and gates at 6 pm, music at 8.
The upstate NY rock, pop, and soul duo is fronted by vocalist/drummer Melanie Krahmer (who also plays bass on a keyboard with her drumstick, as well as flute). Guitarist (and husband) Rich Libutti plays a Rickenbacker guitar through a pedal board. Hence the
Globe
's description: "Little band. Big sound." At 8 pm.
Flooding in St. Johnsbury wreaked havoc with Dog Mountain's grounds and roads, writes Theo Wells-Spackman in
VTDigger
.
Sunday
Food under the tent, oxen in front of the grandstand, plus a pony pull, live music, and a farmers market, all of it a fundraiser for the Pomfret -Teago volunteer fire department. "
It’s close to a lost art and this keeps the old Vermont tradition alive,”
says fire chief Kevin Rice. Starts at 10 am.
Need we say more? Restored antique tractors parade, pull wagons, race—and there's a kids' pedal-tractor obstacle course. 10 am to 5 pm.
You've seen plenty of Tig's photos here in Daybreak (often in "This Week in the Woods"), but not like this: large and on a gallery wall. In this case, the Howe Library's Ledyard Gallery. Reception runs from 2 pm to 4 pm on Sunday.
They're VT's own traditional jazz band, playing Dixieland and classic swing. 3 pm Sunday on the North Common in Haverhill Corner, unless it's raining, in which case they'll be in Alumni Hall on Court Street in Haverhill.
And whenever
All of it in JAM's video highlights for the week.
To take us into the weekend...
Sarah Jarosz was at The Sinclair in Cambridge, MA back in May, showing once again that although she made her name in bluegrass and Americana, she can head any direction she wants with a voice that, as a reviewer once put it, "lingers long after she’s left the stage." Here's
.
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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