SO NICE TO SEE YOU, UPPER VALLEY!
Let's just take whatever we can get today. It should start out feeling a lot like yesterday, though gosh, that was a hard day to beat. Clouds will filter in over the day, ahead of a system from the west that won't reach us until later tonight. Meanwhile, Dorian will be working its way up the coast to our south and east; it shouldn't affect us much, but winds may pick up slightly in the afternoon and it's possible there'll be some related rain at night -- though how to tell Dorian rain apart from western-system rain is beyond me. Highs somewhere around 70. Border Patrol stop on I-89 gums up traffic, creates hoo-hah. Yesterday's checkpoint between exits 19 and 18 southbound in NH had cars lined up on the highway and bumper-to-bumper on construction-laden Mechanic St. as people got off to avoid it. Activists stood on an overpass with a large "Border Patrol Ahead" warning banner, and tried to engage with officers on the highway. The NH-ACLU offered advice. Dartmouth issued a statement calling the checkpoint at odds with its "open and welcoming values." FB lit up with the pros and cons. (VN, sub reqd)Meanwhile, there was a police presence of a different sort in Hartford. Annoyed by frequent reports of dangerous and distracted driving around school buses, Hartford PD officers, along with Windsor County sheriff's deputies and the state DMV boarded school buses and accompanied them in cruisers on their routes. They issued two tickets, one to a woman talking on her cellphone while driving and another for speeding.Norwich "unusual financial activity" case comes into focus. The SB put out a press release in the wee hours yesterday morning explaining that it's a cyber-scam, and that an unnamed employee — presumed to be finance director Donna Flies — has been placed on paid leave. Blogger Chris Katucki quotes the FBI on the ruse, in which "scammers target employees with access to company finances and trick them into making wire transfers to bank accounts thought to belong to trusted partners."Peacham Fall Fondo will benefit LoveYourBrain Foundation. Tour de France cyclist Ian Boswell, who suffered a severe concussion in March during a race in Italy, has been working his way back through yoga and meditation with Kevin and Adam Pearce's organization. So it seemed right, he decided, to dedicate some of the proceeds from the Fondo, a 45-mile tour of gravel roads around where he lives in Peacham, to the group. "Maybe more than anything, it’s just the community that LoveYourBrain has fostered for people to connect and realize that they’re not alone, which oftentimes, especially in the state of Vermont, you can feel very isolated," he tells Seven Days.There's a new way to keep track of all the theater going on in the region. Dominic Spillane, an actor-turned-director/producer who lives in Northfield, VT, has started up TheaterEngine along with his dad, John. The site ultimately aims to help actors and producers build audiences, but right now it makes it easy to keep track of what's on stage — in VT and the Berkshires at the moment, and in NH soon. "As an audience member, I'm still shocked by how hard it is to find shows," he says. "You need to be such an educated consumer before you can attend theater with any regularity. I think this hurts the industry."Want to get off the beaten hiking path in NH? The Society for the Protection of NH Forests will lead five hikes for families and beginning hikers during the fall on Society-owned tracts. They'll be along the Merrimack and the Contoocook, around the Ashuelot River headwaters, on Pine Mountain in Alton, and in Powder Major's Forest. Even if you don't go on the organized hikes, there are plenty of ideas for your own exploration.VT Ethics Commission reverses course on Scott. Last year, it issued an advisory opinion criticizing the VT guv for violating the state ethics code because a company he had co-owned did business with the state. Now it's withdrawn the ruling — not on the merits, but because it came after the VT Public Interest Group requested an opinion in the case, and the commission has decided that outside groups can no longer file requests for opinions. “They are rewriting history to benefit the powerful and keep the public in the dark,” fumes VPIRG's director.VT Airbnb hosts earned a combined $20.4 million this summer. Some interesting stats in this release from the company. The top five city destinations for guests were Burlington, Rutland, Stowe, Montpelier and Lyndon, and most of them came from NYC, Boston, Montreal, Philly... and Burlington. In all, Orange County hosts drew 2,700 visitors and made $327,000, and Windsor County hosted 9,600 guests and pulled in $1.5 million.If you've ever hiked the AT, ever wanted to hike it, or even just wondered about it and its lore... There's a long, detailed, fascinating look at the life of "Baltimore Jack," a legendary thru-hiker who lived in Hanover back in the '90s, made his name up and down the trail as an "everywhere-at-once presence," and died in 2016 at the age of 57. The piece is in Outside, by Dan Koeppel, who knew Jack as Adam Tarlin when they were students together at Hampshire. Oh... Why Hanover? It had the best library along the trail.If you like Daybreak and want to help it keep going, here's how:
SO WHAT'CHA GOT FOR US, FRIDAY?
. Music pretty much everywhere you turn, including the monthly jazz jam at Café Renée,
plus
a parking lot party thrown by Revolution (complete with burrito and wine bar from Trail Break, smoothies by JUEL, pizza from the Green Mtn Pizza Co)
plus
ice cream at both Shambhala and Ava's Candy Corner. Dare you to stay away.
Jazz guitarist and singer Rowley Hazard and bass player/vocalist Madonna Gordon (she's also a pediatric critical care nurse practitioner at DHMC) started working together a year ago. They jazz up everyone from Cole Porter to Antonio Jobim (well, okay, he doesn't need jazzing up) to Amy Winehouse. They'll be accompanying cocktails/dinner at the Inn at Weathersfield starting at 7.
Meanwhile, author Tom Ryan will be at Woodstock Town Hall talking about his books Following Atticus and Will's Red Coat.
Presented by Pentangle, it's a fundraiser for the Lucy Mackenzie Humane Society.
Atticus
was Ryan's 2011 bestseller, about his transformative quest to hike the Whites' 4000-footers in winter with his miniature schnauzer — who, it later turned out, was most likely blind. He followed that up with
Will
in 2017, about an elderly dog he adopted out of a kill shelter in NJ and brought back to NH... where Will, unexpectedly, thrived. Remarks at 6, book signing at 6:45.
Pentangle's busy tonight: They're starting a four-night run of
David Crosby: Remember My Name
. The film's ostensibly about one of his comeback tours, but it's really about Crosby, who takes a hard, unflinching, irascible look at himself. "I was not easy. Big ego. No brains," he says, and later, "All the guys I made music with won’t even talk to me. All of them." Oh, yeah: There's also some glorious music. 7:30 at Woodstock Town Hall.
I know, I know, you're thinking "Guinnevere" or "Déjà Vu" but nah,
which The Byrds recorded in 1967 just before they kicked Crosby out of the band.
See you Monday.
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