Daybreak Monday 11/15/21

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

Yesterday? Just a little interlude between systems. As you may have gathered late last night; it was brought in by a fast-moving low. There may be a few remnants this morning, but today will mostly be cloudy, with a slight chance of rain this morning and afternoon. Temps edging into the 40s today, winds from the south then west. High 20s tonight.Ascutney views...

1 per 3,405. That, reckons Susan Apel on her Artful blog, is the ratio of Thai restaurants to residents of Lebanon, now that New Thailand Cuisine has become the fourth Thai place in the city (if you count Phnom Penh, which does have some Thai dishes). She got there on its second day (it's where Stone Arch Bakery used to be) and reports that "every dish was beautifully presented, fresh, and delicious." Oh, and for comparison, the national ratio is one Thai eatery per 60,277 Americans.Imagine taking detailed inventory of everything in the Post Mills Airport's museum. Heck, counting the crutches alone... Anyway, that, in part, is what has to happen before the airport and everything it contains can move through probate in the wake of owner Brian Boland's death last summer. And it's one reason why the process of settling the airport's future has just begun, writes Alex Hanson in the Valley News. For the moment it's being run by Boland's companion, Tina Foster, and the loose-knit community of pilots and balloonists Boland welcomed to the grass strip. Hanson includes a brief history.AVA Gallery names Shari Boraz as new executive director. Boraz, who has a background in nonprofit management, has served on the board of the Children's Center of the Upper Valley for the past decade, and is a nationally exhibited fiber artist, "combines an artist’s spirit with a practical eye for leading AVA’s advancement as a creative hub for art and artists in the Upper Valley," board chair Alan DiStasio said in a press release last night. She replaces interim executive director Hilde Ojibway, who took over in July after the departure of Heidi Reynolds.Norwich closes Tracy Hall to public. "Any Town business needs to be conducted by phone, e-mail,...the US Postal Service, or other non-person contact means," the town has announced. Essential services "shall be by appointment only." The Covid-related move, among other things, means that the Norwich Farmers Market—which had arranged a full winter season in the building—is searching for an alternative. There's an outdoor market at its usual spot this coming Saturday, and manager Steve Hoffman writes that they plan markets 12/11 and 12/18 in the St. Barnabas Church parking lot.“Every town needs a gathering place.” You could argue that the Tunbridge Fair provides one, but Mike Gross has something smaller in mind. He and his wife, Lois, have bought the North Tunbridge General Store, closed since 2016, reports the VN's John Lippman. They hope to have it reopen and serving homestyle food and baked goods—Lois owned SoRo's Sticky Buns bakery from 2008-12—by January. Also in Lippman's rundown: Tunbridge/SoRo mainstay Upper Pass Beer Co. is seeking a permit to expand its Tunbridge brewiery so it can "just make a little more beer," says co-owner Chris Perry.What the market wants: #s 1, 2, and 5. "Recycling is subject to shifting market forces, not unlike the stock market," writes Li Shen in Sidenote, and that's especially true of plastics. Last year, NPR and PBS traced the history of those little recycling numbers in the plastics you buy back to an oil industry effort to upgrade plastics' image. What actually gets recycled, though, is up to the vagaries of market forces, and Shen looks at the Thetford recycling program as an example. She includes a handy guide to what each stamped number means, and whether there's actually a market for it.“The stranger who happens to drive over through Elm Street in Norwich just at this season of the year might be surprised at the groups of people husking great piles of corn by the roadside..." So wrote the Hanover Gazette in 1894 about the scene near the Norwich Canning Company, which operated each fall, starting in the early 1890s. The town historical society has just launched an intriguing series of blog posts exploring the town's history through individual items in its collection. Number 1 on writer Kevin Hybels' list: A tin of canned corn."I’d love to have a gown in that color—a coat and a matching handbag.” Those colors belong to the invasive spotted lanternfly, and the Black River Action Team's Kelly Stettner found one "at the bottom of a plastic pen cup as she cleaned her home office in Springfield (VT)," writes Claire Potter in the VN. The insects weaken their host plants, "pose a serious economic threat to multiple U.S. industries," per the USDA... and are coming this direction. Stettner's find is one of the few reported sightings: one last year and four this year in VT, and three in NH. But they're established in CT, NY, and MA."A radical repudiation.” That's NH Consumer Advocate Don Kreis reacting to the state Public Utilities Commission's decision Friday night to deep-six a statewide energy-efficiency plan that had been hammered out by utilities and environmental groups...and then sat unaddressed for 10 months. The decision came on outgoing chair Dianne Martin's final day, writes Garry Rayno in InDepthNH; incoming chair Daniel Goldner also signed off. In a letter yesterday to his advisory board outlining his objections and indicating his intention to appeal, Kreis writes, "this order is highly vulnerable...and, indeed, makes something of a mockery of established principles of administrative law."New NH education complaint form draws differing responses. You remember: It's the one unveiled last week for parents or students to allege discrimination under the state's "divisive concepts" law. Not surprisingly, reports the Monitor's Cassidy Jensen, NH's two teachers unions take a dim view—with the AFT calling it a "war on teachers" and going so far as to call for ed commissioner Frank Edelblut's resignation. Meanwhile, the NH chapter of the national group Moms for Liberty on Friday offered $500 to "the person that first successfully catches a public school teacher breaking this law.”“There’s a Midwest thing of bonding together, but in New England, the cranky Yankees, we come together, too.” And that, NH Food Bank director Eileen Groll Liponis tells the Union Leader's Shawn K. Wickham, is one reason the food bank has been able to meet demand throughout the pandemic. Things started off well because acquisitions manager Ann Cote had placed big orders before the pandemic locked everything down, then kept placing big orders as items became available. “Things happen with the supply chain, but if you’re always planning for something to go wrong, usually things go right," Cote says.What a tight market looks like: not enough refrigerators, car mechanics running flat out... and predicted Christmas tree shortages. Even in VT, writes Fred Thys in VTDigger. The tree issue is partly because wholesalers expect high demand in cities and have jacked up prices, and partly because cut-your-own farms sold more of their crop than usual last year so have fewer to sell this year. Appliances of all sorts are in short supply, too, Thys writes. And as for cars, the challenges of buying a new car are leading a lot of people just to get their ailing ones fixed. Oh, also, jars for maple cream are in short supply.Yours! For just $2,586 per night. That would be the Airbnb known as Honey Pond Farm Estate in Middletown Springs, VT, a bit southwest of Rutland. Sleeps 16 and it's got tennis and bocce courts, reports Travel + Leisure, along with ponds equipped with paddle boats and fishing equipment, horse pastures, over 10 miles of private hiking trails, a wine cellar, a pizza oven, and a personal gym. Also, golf carts to get around. Because it goes without saying that there's a private golf course. Plenty of openings this winter, though wouldn't you know that next summer and early fall are already booked.“Yes, my words are made up — but then, all words are made up. Every single one. That’s part of their magic." Ever since 2009, John Koenig has been compiling The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, first on Tumblr, then on his blog, now in a new book. It's kind of a dictionary of made-up words, but really it's a discourse on modern life. One of his words, sonder, “the realisation that each random passer-by is living a life as vivid and complex as your own,” is passing into accepted use. But there's so much more: austice, "a wistful omen of the first sign of autumn...," and ringlorn, "the wish that the modern world felt as epic as the one depicted in old stories and folktales," and etterath...

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Seems like a week to just ease into, don't you think? Nashville guitarist William Tyler is the solo guitarist "whose songs are most likely to get stuck in your head,"

Pitchfork

's associate editor wrote a couple of years ago. "He never aims to dazzle with virtuosity; he’s got too much ground to cover."

which Tyler wrote after coming across a church with that name out in the Mojave—"the most stark, remote place you could possibly have anything," Tyler says. "There was something about having a church there that felt like an oasis."

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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