Daybreak Monday 10/10/22

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

Overcast, cool, maybe some showers. Oh well, I guess we have to pay for that weekend, eh? There's a chance of rain showers for a bit longer this morning and a slight chance early in the afternoon. Mostly cloudy throughout the day, temps only into the upper 50s, winds from the northwest. The skies clear overnight and we'll get down into the lower 30s with patchy frost.On the ground and in the sky...

Hartford police still investigating Comfort Inn shooting. On Friday morning, a member of a crew working on an artificial turf playing field at the Cardigan Mountain School left his room at the hotel just off Sykes Mountain Ave. to get breakfast and was shot by the elevator. In a later press release, Hartford Police identified the suspect as Nathan Fuller. “It doesn’t appear that [Fuller and the victim] know each other, but we are continuing the investigation to figure all those things out,” interim chief Connie Kelley told WCAX. In the Valley News, John Lippman details what happened and gets guests' reactions.Computers, printers, coffee makers, bread machines... Ever wonder what happens after you drop off electronics for recycling? Thetford held an electronics recycling day a couple of weeks ago, and in Sidenote, Li Shen follows the "mountain of miscellany" that was collected to Middlebury, where workers at Good Point Recycling laboriously figure out what can be salvaged. About 10 percent of the haul, Li writes, goes to the reuse market, another 10 percent can be repaired and sold, hard drives get wiped, circuit boards and other parts get sold, and then raw materials get extracted.Now that we're passing peak, maybe you can get a reservation. In Eater, Valerie Li Stack tells readers "How to Spend 24 Scenic Hours Around Woodstock." She recommends breakfast at Soulfully Good, a mid-morning stop by Abracadabra, lunch at Mon Vert, a pre-dinner visit to Whistlepig's tasting room in the Parker House in Quechee (or a beer at Long Trail), dinner at Simon Pearce or any of a number of places around Woodstock, and evening cocktails at Au Comptoir. Plus, of course, hiking, Billings, and strolling (and shopping) Woodstock and Quechee Gorge Village. (Thanks, CJ!)And speaking of eating, WRJ's Tuckerbox reopened last week for dinner. In the VN, Ray Couture paid a visit to talk with owners Jackie and Vural Oktay about all that happened in the Gates-Briggs flood: the loss of food and ingredients, over 175 pieces of kitchen equipment gone, the basement made unusable, the dining room floor destroyed... “We were at the point where we were (wondering) how we’d even move forward from this,” Jackie tells him. And then the emails and GoFundMe support starting flowing in. "It just gives you such an energy and makes you want to come back even stronger," she says.And speaking of WRJ, a storm of "ignorance, confusion and despair, [and] rage against the establishment" at Northern Stage. That's how Susan Apel describes Spring Awakening at the Barrette Center, NS's version of the Broadway-musical adaptation of Frank Wedekind's 1906 play, set in that time but with a rock score. The band, she writes, is talented, the choreography is "first-rate, angular, jabbing, as if to punctuate and reinforce the lyrics and mood," and the play itself is "dark and disturbing, not so much entertaining as thought-provoking."NH passes on chance to expand free-lunch program. Last month, writes Ethan DeWitt in NH Bulletin, a bipartisan group of senators appealed to Gov. Chris Sununu to join 27 other states and enroll NH in a federal effort that signs up eligible public school students for free and reduced-price lunches based on their families' Medicaid enrollment. It could have added some 7,000 low-income students to the program, they noted. But Sununu turned down the request, contending that the legislature some months earlier had voted down a move to require the state to join. Now, writes DeWitt, the deadline has passed.In VT, a legislative look at school choice comes into view. The reason, writes Alex Hanson in the VN, is a pair of lawsuits, one addressing state funding for religious schools, the other seeking to expand access to the state's tuitioning program to allow any student to get state funding to go to school out of district, not just students in the 90 towns currently in the program. The questions before the legislature, Hanson writes, will most likely be whether the state should place restrictions on funding going to religious schools, and whether the state should end public tuition dollars going out of state.“Ticks are here to stay, but that’s not a reason to stay inside. We just need a level of awareness we didn’t used to have." That's Patti Casey, who runs the VT Agency of Ag's environmental surveillance program. This fall, she and a colleague are on the road to 28 towns around the state to spend a couple of hours dragging a fabric "flag" over the ground to collect hitchhiking ticks, writes Chanc Orzell in The Herald. Then they'll take the tick nymphs and adults to a lab in Randolph Center, identify them by species, and test for pathogens—data that then gets passed on to the state health department and the CDC.Ummm.... Last night at around 11 pm up in Sheldon, VT, a guy driving a 2000 Jag Type S hit a cow on Route 105. Both the cow and the driver were killed; a passenger survived. "The investigation shows that speed is a major factor," the VT State Police write in their press release. "This includes the passenger advising Troopers on scene that they were traveling over 100 mph at the time of the crash."Come for the photos, stay for the science. UVM's Gund Institute for the Environment has a drone slideshow of fall foliage (at the top), and a helpful article by Ellie Scott and Basil Waugh on what's behind all those colors that have been lifting our collective spirits the last couple of weeks. Forest scientist William Keeton explains that, as you'd expect, it's complicated, and previous seasons can have an impact on what we see during any given fall—though he adds that reds and purples are still not well understood. (Thanks, JF!)The Monday Vordle. Still with a word from Friday's Daybreak.

And let's just launch into the week with...Springsteen in fine and playful form a couple of weeks ago, covering Frank Wilson's 1965 song “Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)." (Thanks, MT!)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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