GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Temps dropping a bit, light snow this evening. There's a cold front that's been making its way over the Upper Valley, though we'll see temps rebound (to around freezing or a bit above) for the afternoon. Mostly cloudy today, and light snow will likely overspread the region in the late afternoon or evening, bringing a dusting to an inch or so. Winds from the northwest, mid-20s overnight.Nature's design. A few days ago, when temps were ice-friendly, Debbi Franklin's metal roof in WRJ provided the perfect venue for an expansive ice sculpture Calder would have envied.At Hanover hearing, opposition and some support for Dartmouth housing proposal. The town's zoning board met last Thursday on the college's request for a special exception to build the 397-bed student residence it wants to place at the north end of the former golf course. At the hearing, Patrick Adrian reports in the Valley News, nearby residents raised objections about the buildings' scale—considerably taller than anything else in the neighborhood—and impact on traffic. “Students are not ‘adverse effects,’" countered one student. “They are human beings who also need housing.” The hearing resumes Thursday.N. Thetford Church gets a new owner—and farming will be front and center. The church is now in the hands of the Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust, reports Li Shen in Sidenote. NEFOC's roots lie in the Grafton, NY-based Soul Fire Farm, which among other things offers training to black, indigenous, and other farmers; the land trust's goal is to help farmers of color get access to land. The church will continue to host United Church of Thetford and other community gatherings, but will also become a site for training and potentially offer a kitchen for local farmers to create value-added products.Norwich, Dresden brace for school "tax bomb." The issue, writes Alex Hanson in the VN, is a change in the way VT funds public schools, giving greater weight to students in poverty or for whom English is not a native language. The result, after the state shifts its "equalized pupil" calculation, will be a 32 percent tax increase over five years. “I still talk to people who have no idea this is coming,” school board member Neil Odell tells Hanson. Odell points out that more affordable housing in town would affect the state calculation, but school officials are also looking into boosting tuition students at Hanover High."I’m happy to have been proven wrong." That's Fairlee developer and blogger Jonah Richard, whose new affordable housing effort in Bradford VT just landed a $650K grant from the state. "I didn’t expect a small-scale project like this to get the time of day," he writes, after his experiences putting up 501 Main in Fairlee, which he's been chronicling on Brick + Mortar. The grant, he writes, will allow the six apartments he plans in an old house and barn to rent at 50-70 percent of the Area Median Income. Even so, he writes, too few programs exist to fund small projects like his—but application creativity helps.VT Law mural gets another day in court. You may remember that for the last couple of years, what is now VT Law and Graduate School has been in a legal battle with artist Sam Kerson over two murals he painted at the school in the early '90s that students and others at the school eventually came to consider racially offensive. The school covered them over, Kerson sued—and lost in federal district court. On Friday, reports the AP's Lisa Rathke, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals heard the case, with Kerson's lawyer arguing he'd suffered "humiliation" and the school insisting it simply removed the work from display.A quick trip back to Iceland. If you've got a long Daybreak memory, you may recall former Dartmouth photographer Eli Burakian's Fastest Known Time hike across Iceland, top to bottom, last summer—which he recounted in a Daybreak article. Now, the Dartmouth Alumni Mag is just up with a new set of Burakian's photos of his adventure; the scenery's lost none of its ability to stun.Where NH's school choice funds go. Every year, the state's education department accounts for how money from the state's Education Freedom Accounts gets spent by parents. The money can go to online tutors, private school tuition, homeschooling supplies, and more, reports Sarah Gibson for NHPR. In 2022, the vast bulk of it went to private school tuition, with most of that—about $2 million—spent at private Christian schools. Parents also spent heavily on textbooks, computers, and other required materials. The accounts will figure heavily in legislative maneuvering on education this year."This car climbed Mt. Washington": Nope, not a bumper sticker. A snow sculpture. It was just one of the entries featured at this weekend's 2023 New Hampshire Sanctioned & Jackson Invitational Snow Sculpting Competition held in front of the Great Glen Outdoor Center and Mt. Washington Auto Road base lodge. It pulled sculptors (and gawkers) from all over New England, writes John Koziol in the Union Leader. "Everybody here is wildly talented,” said Brad Conant of West Haven, CT, the guy responsible for the climbing car.Logging right in the mix of industries hampered by this winter's warm weather. Loggers rely on frozen ground to get to sensitive parts of the forest, reports Vermont Public's Henry Epp. Instead, with temperatures often above freezing, projects are taking longer—and so will repairs to rutted and damaged forest floors come summer. Meanwhile, with less timber coming in, sawmills are having trouble building up inventory. Epp talks to veteran Orleans logger Brian Lafoe and longtime mill owner Colleen Goodridge. “They say, you know, ‘To live is to experience change,’” she says. “I guess we're living.”Looking for good pizza in VT? It turns out, if William Zimmerman IV—the editor and writer of a blog called East Coast Traveler—is to be believed, there's such a thing as "Vermont-style pizza." And he's got five spots around the state to check out, though none around here. But if you're down in Brattleboro, there's Hazel. And, of course, Parker Pie in W. Glover (which offers a maple syrup crust). Marigold Kitchen is over in N. Bennington. Hardwick, Plainfield (VT), and Montpelier have Positive Pie. And Burlington's got Pizzeria Verità. Guess he's never been to one of the community ovens in these parts.The Monday Vordle. With a word from Friday's Daybreak.
Heads Up
Today at 4:30, Dartmouth's Dickey Center hosts Dr. Lori Alvord on "Integrating the Healing Properties of Native American Traditional Medicine with Western Medicine." Alvord, who went to Dartmouth and then to Stanford Med School, was the first member of the Navajo Nation to be board certified in general surgery. With years of working in Indian health—as well as a dozen years as a dean and professor at what was then Dartmouth Medical School—she saw both how Navajo ceremonies "promoted mental and physical wellness and understood how ceremonies were effective in delivering a better state of mind in patients enduring a medical condition," the Center writes. In-person in Haldeman 41, and livestreamed.
And to start us off for the week...
Let's turn to French-Spanish singer Manu Chao (his mother was Basque, his father Galician, but he grew up in Paris)
He's joined on this Playing For Change version by Jamaican drummer Carlton "Santa" Davis (known for his work with Bob Marley & The Wailers, The Aggrovators, and others), along with a panoply of musicians from countries around the globe.
See you tomorrow.
Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Writer/editor: Tom Haushalter Poetry editor: Michael Lipson About Rob About Tom About Michael
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