Daybreak Monday 1/18/21

WELCOME TO THE WEEK, UPPER VALLEY!

May be showery this morning, temps returning to normal. There's a disturbance moving through this morning that could add a little snow, but mostly it's going to be a cloudy day, temps hanging out around freezing. Down into the teens tonight. Winds from the west.And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk... "This is an intimate landscape of these birches in the middle of a Vermont snowstorm," Lisa Lacasse writes. She was in Pomfret on Saturday, looking closely at the woods, and caught this painting-like moment.Meanwhile, in case you've been wondering: Yes, there's snow in the backcountry. Photographer Kate Seymour was out exploring around Brandon Gap yesterday and there's obviously plenty of powder—though she says rock skis wouldn't hurt. Is Sierra Trading Post coming to West Leb? Also, new fiber-optic firm aims at Mascomba towns.  As the former Kmart gets turned into a Target, the Valley News's John Lippman noticed that floor plans call for some of that space to be subdivided, with “Sierra” marked on "a retail space that would be created between Target and Jo-Ann fabric and crafts store." His query got a noncommittal answer. Meanwhile, Lippman also reports (first item) on the arrival of Hub66, a startup based in MA that's joined with FirstLight to connect Mascoma Valley homes to a fiber-optic backbone.UV artists' work makes it to Phnom Penh. Works by VT painters, photographers, and textile artists, including Norwich's Kate Emlen and Randolph's Bhakti Ziek, are part of an exhibition in the residence of US Ambassador W. Patrick Murphy, who's from Brattleboro. "The Kingdom’s agrarian traditions and emerald landscapes bear many resemblances to Vermont’s farming traditions and famous green mountains,” Murphy writes in a catalogue intro, the Free Press's Brent Hallenbeck reports. Donation of Winslow Eaves sculpture to Andover brings Black Heritage Trail of NH to town. Eaves lived in Andover for decades and taught sculpture at Dartmouth. He created the sculpture of singer Marian Anderson as a tribute to her famous 1939 concert at the Lincoln Memorial. It will become part of the Heritage Trail's permanent collection, reports the Monitor's Teddy Rosenbluth. The town historical society will also get one of the Trail's historic markers, commemorating Eaves and 19th century magician Richard Potter.With minimum wage back in the news, contrast between VT, NH stands out. The VN's Lippman notes that with movement to raise the federal minimum wage to $15/hour, the issue will be in play locally and in the Twin States. On Jan. 1, VT's rose to $11.75 and is set to go to $12.55 next year. NH is one of 20 states using the federal minimum of $7.25. Plenty of local companies—from King Arthur to Boloco to the Lyme Country Store—pay above their state minimum, Lippman writes. Any change in NH, at least, is likely to depend on what happens at the federal level.Guess who got there faster. The NH and VT National Guard both sent troops to DC yesterday to assist with the inaugural. The NH Air Guard got their Army colleagues down there in this (they're also helping bring in troops from other states). Meanwhile, here's the VT Guard's very Vermonty pic of troops lined up to board their buses.Big police presence, tiny showing by protesters in Concord and Montpelier. In the wake of the Jan. 6 violence at the US Capitol, law enforcement had been prepping for possible armed protests in state capitals around the country yesterday and remain on alert for this coming Wednesday. In VT yesterday, writes Seven Days' Kevin McCallum, "the only things descending on Montpelier were anti-fascists and snowflakes — the latter the frozen kind." In Concord, reports WMUR's Mike Cherry, five protesters carrying rifles and pistols showed up at the State House, easily outnumbered by police.So, that Lake Champlain chocolate you just bought? The company on Friday issued a voluntary recall for milk chocolate products because of "potential foreign objects," after a customer reported finding pieces of plastic. The recall affects various chocolate bars and packages of wrapped chocolates. Details and lot numbers at the link. (Thanks, JC!)VT conserves 100-mile wildlife corridor. The milestone comes with the purchase of 350 acres that finishes an effort dating back 30 years, writes Emma Cotton in VTDigger. The land connects portions of the Green Mountain National Forest, Okemo State Forest, and Coolidge State Forest, and "provides critical habitat for bears, coyotes, moose and bobcats," Cotton writes. Says one bear expert, "There’s no more land being made. To the greatest extent possible, to conserve whatever we can that is still viable habitat keeps those critters in existence.” “You see it in the news and think, ‘Oh, that happened far away or one time, maybe two,’ but that’s my life. We see ourselves as targets." Rohan Providence grew up in Guilford, VT, one of three sons of a mixed-race marriage. VTDigger's Kevin O'Connor profiled them in the hopeful days around the inauguration of Barack Obama in 2009 (and not long after a series of racist incidents at Brattleboro Union HS, where they went). Now, in the wake of George Floyd and the summer's unrest,  he sits down with them to talk about growing up Black in Vermont—and events even their mom didn't know about."I’m smitten with what lies ahead: a skinny, ribbonlike trail that snakes and plunges through the snow-covered trees and brush." Seeking an escape from the "cacophony of anxiety" of his normal life, Miles Howard rented a cabin to do some snowshoeing in the North Woods. On a slice of the Cohos Trail, which stretches from the Whites to the border, he heads in around First Connecticut Lake, exhilarated by the silence and the woods...and, after a few minutes, getting really sweaty. "I feel like a slab of meat in a North Face marinade bag," he writes. (In the Washington Post, you may hit a paywall.)The North Woods? Pshaw. Where the forest meets the tundra: That's north. Sheila Watt-Cloutier has a revelatory, deeply layered piece in Granta about springtime in the Arctic. "I write this from my home in Kuujjuaq, an Inuit community in Nunavik, northern Quebec, Canada," she begins. Impossible to summarize: It's about traditional Inuit community life, relationships with land and animals—"care was taken to avoid mingling creatures of the sea with those of the land," she writes—the gradual, destructive impact of modern life, and the threat posed by climate change. Maybe we all just need to listen to this and we'll write better. “Bessie had the beat. In that icy wilderness, as far removed from Harlem as anything you can imagine, with Bessie and me… I began…” That's writer James Baldwin talking to Studs Terkel back in 1961 about listening to his two Bessie Smith albums as he sat in the Swiss Alps writing Go Tell It on the Mountain. He eventually moved to Provence and expanded his record collection, and now Ikechúkwú Onyewuenyi, a curator at LA's Hammer Museum, has created a 428-track, 32-hour Spotify playlist of all the music Baldwin listened to while he lived, wrote, and partied in France from 1971-87. 

News that connects you. If you like Daybreak and want to help it keep going, here's how:

You may know pianist Ben Sidran from NPR—his old jazz show or his appearances on

Piano Jazz—

or, if you're a music trivia buff, from his days as a bandmate of Steve Miller and Boz Scaggs back in the early '60s in Madison, WI. When they left for the West Coast, he stayed behind to get an English lit degree. But he never stopped playing, and still is. He's going to start the week off with his jaunty 

from a couple of months ago.

Want to catch up on Daybreak music? Check out the Spotify playlist generously maintained by Sarah and Nelson Rooker!

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