Daybreak Monday 10/11/21

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

Partly sunny, warmer. We're still under the control of some high pressure that's parked off the Canadian maritimes, at least for a couple more days. Plus, a ridge of high pressure moved in last night, which will help to clear out some of the clouds we've seen the last few days. The result: Fog to start, but then clearing skies, high reaching around 70, winds from the southeast. Down to about 50 tonight.Before we plunge into the week... Let's look back to the start of fall. Photographer Jim Block has pulled together some of his greatest hits of the first two weeks of autumn, including rainbows in vivid color; scenes from Hanover, Lebanon, Lyme, Orford, Springfield, Grantham, and Norwich; and some striking clouds in Enfield and Canaan. Did you hear a boom or feel shaking around 11:25 am yesterday? People in southern NH and as far north as Lebanon did, WMUR reports. Neither the USGS nor the Weston Observatory reports any earthquake and there was no official military plane activity over the area. But a Germany-based site, VolcanoDiscovery, does report an "unconfirmed earthquake or seismic-like event" 25 miles west of Nashua. There seem to have been a cluster of reports around New Boston, NH—near what is now the Space Force satellite tracking center. Space Force officials didn't respond to an NYT inquiry.Dartmouth to divest from fossil fuels. The college announced the move on Friday, after years of protests from alums and similar moves by other colleges and universities. It was a formal acknowledgement of policies put in place in 2017, barring the endowment from new investments in fossil fuels, and then in 2020, directing its portfolio away from investments in fossil fuel companies, writes Taylor Haber in The Dartmouth. The investment office will allow existing holdings to expire as their contracts expire over the next few years.SPONSORED: Fall into Autumn at VINS! Experience the beauty of Vermont fall foliage at the VINS Nature Center in this video! Walk along colorful treetops on the Forest Canopy Walk, learn about the life history of raptors during our live bird programs, explore the Adventure Playscape, and get eye-to-eye with hawks, eagles, and owls in our Raptor Enclosures. We are excited to welcome you here! Sponsored by VINS."A revered place to those in the know." That's NECN's Mark Hurwitz raving about Worthy Burger, in S. Royalton, whose burgers are "among the best in New England." "Among food and beer geeks, restaurant owners, chefs and media folks in the Greater Boston area," he says, "you will often hear 'Worthy Burger' and 'favorite' in the same sentence." He's also a fan of the atmosphere: "a bit like an old watering hole in a frontier town out west...it certainly wouldn’t be out of place in a one-stoplight town in Montana or Idaho." For good measure he points visitors to First Branch coffee and Upper Pass beer, too.Less than a day's supply of Type O. There's an overall shortage of blood in northern New England, reports Liz Sauchelli in the Valley News: it's the biggest post-summer shortage since 2015, when the Red Cross put in place its current blood tracking system. The pandemic, in particular, has cut sharply into donation rates. So Erin Buck, the fitness director at the Upper Valley Aquatic Center, is organizing a series of four blood drives there starting Oct. 29, Sauchelli writes. There are also four Red Cross drives this week, in Lebanon, Springfield VT, Woodstock, and Woodsville.Checking soil temps with a meat thermometer. That's what Pattie Fried was doing the other day in Enfield's Mascoma Lakeside Park when VN columnist Jim Kenyon showed up. For 27 years, Fried and her husband, Toby, owned and ran Lou's in Hanover; they retired to the lake after selling the restaurant, and over the last three years Pattie Fried has devoted herself to becoming—and then practicing as—a master gardener. As locals work to improve and beautify the lakeside park, she and her "army" of volunteers have been clearing invasives, and are readying to plant 1,000 crocus and daffodil bulbs.That's one way to get rescued. Yesterday afternoon, a 33-year-old hiker from Maine was on the railroad tracks about a mile from the train station at Crawford Notch when she injured her ankle seriously enough that she wasn't able to walk. Turns out, the Conway Scenic Railway train was about to leave the station and "an experienced engineer was able to stop and pick her up while the train was descending through the notch,” NH Fish & Game said in a statement. She was dropped off at the Arethusa Falls trailhead and met by an ambulance, the Union Leader's Paul Feely reports.Riot gear in Bow, "officers of the peace" for Statehouse rally and disrupted Exec Council meeting. In the Concord Monitor, Benjamin Domaingue writes that activists and others are calling attention to the differing state police responses to climate protesters at the Merrimack Station coal plant in Bow, where 18 arrests were made, vs. none for "medical freedom" protesters in Concord, including those who shut down an Executive Council meeting. Counters St. Anselm College's Neil Levesque, "Most of the law enforcement do not really care whether or not they’re [the protestors] on the left or right.”Verbal abuse of VT high school athletes is common, say athletic directors. Last Thursday, coach Jeff Acker pulled the Hartford High girls soccer team from a game after sexual harassment from the stands. The day before, the Burlington High girls volleyball team endured racial and transphobic slurs. Last month, the Winooski boys soccer team faced racial harassment. Verbal abuse of student players "has been very consistent," S. Burlington High athletic director Michael Jabour tells VTDigger's Shaun Robinson."Nothing is permanent in politics." That's a sound reminder from historian Mark Bushnell, writing about the founding of VT's Republican Party in 1854 after "Free Soilers, discontented Whigs and anti-slavery Democrats" gathered in Montpelier, found common ground in opposing the enslavement of human beings, and joined together under the Republican banner. For a century after that, no Democrat won statewide office. Bushnell digs into the pre-Civil War politics to lay out why the Republicans' hold on the state was so firm.Hiking, sure. But also walks, paddling, scenic drives...and over 2,000 archaeological and historic sites. That's all stuff you can do in the 400,000-acre Green Mountain Forest, writes Erica Housekeeper on her Happy Vermont blog—with plenty of ideas for places to go. Including Kelley Stand Road, which winds over a high plateau through the forest and once—hard to believe—hosted 15,000 people come to hear Daniel Webster give a speech. Or Lefferts Pond in Chittenden (the town near Killington, not the county). Or the Robert Frost trail in Ripton (entirely accessible to people with disabilities). Friday it was moths in slo-mo. Today? Fungi sped up. Even if you haven't seen the Netflix doc Fantastic Fungi, this 8-minute Wired short is easily worth a visit. It goes behind the scenes with Louie Schwartzberg, who made FF, and explains, among other things, why it took 15 years: One time-lapse frame every 15 minutes produces 96 frames every 24 hours, which yields 4 seconds of film. Also, why he built a mushroom studio above his garage: Outside, the wind, insects, and changing light would have made time-lapse efforts impossible. Filming became "a spiritual practice," he says.Daybreak doesn't get to exist without your support. Help it keep going by hitting the maroon button:

As you probably know, Chris Thile is going to be at the Lebanon Opera House tomorrow. The mandolinist, singer, songwriter, MacArthur Fellow, and radio host (at least, until Live From Here was cancelled by the pandemic last year) first made his name with Nickel Creek, then went on to an inexhaustible set of collaborations; now 40, the NYT wrote earlier this year, he has been "the leading mandolin virtuoso of his generation since before its members could legally drink." He's touring his solo work, but here's a taste of him with his band the Punch Brothers, joined last month onstage in Colorado by fiddler and Crooked Still member Brittany Haas on "Flippen," a tune by the Swedish folk band Väsen. Starts slow, but hang on.See you tomorrow.

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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Written and published by Rob Gurwitt         Writer/editor: Tom Haushalter    Poetry editor: Michael Lipson  About Rob                                                    About Tom                                 About Michael

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