GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Changing weather on its way. Last night's showers are just a memory by now, as high pressure builds in and we get plenty of sun and warm temps. Through about mid-afternoon. But much colder air is shouldering its way into the region—we'll see gusty winds from the west this afternoon as it begins to arrive. Temps dropping from a high in the upper 60s to lower 30s overnight.And speaking of weather... John Pietkiewicz caught a magical stillness the other evening during a light rain over Lake Fairlee as, off in the distance, the sun was setting.Quick note: For those of you who get Daybreak through a DH or other institutional account that uses Microsoft, or who use Apple email services (iCloud, me.com or mac.com)... You may have been unsubscribed several times over the past few weeks (DH, Dartmouth, and other universities) or not seen several Daybreaks (Apple inboxes). Believe me, I'm not doing this on purpose. It's due to some obnoxiously bossy anti-spam algorithms. DH users in particular, you might think about switching Daybreak to your personal email. And all of you: Thank you for your patience.Exit 19 on-ramp reminder: Today's the day that NHDOT closes the northbound on-ramp to I-89 at Exit 19 (Miracle Mile) for a week or more. Their detour has you get on I-89 southbound to Exit 18, then back onto the northbound highgway.Hike in Lebanon property tax bills "something we really haven’t seen before.” That's City Manager Shaun Mulholland talking to the Valley News's Patrick Adrian about the impact of the "white-hot" residential real estate market in the city. The assessed value of single-family homes has jumped 27 percent in the last year and a half, and apartment buildings with four or more units by 55 percent, Adrian reports. The result has been a shift of property tax burden from commercial and industrial to residential owners.Meanwhile, in Thetford and Fairlee, thinking outside the box on new housing hits roadblocks.
In Sidenote, Li Shen writes about a resident in town who's living in a tiny home on wheels—which, it turns out, is considered a house for property tax purposes while "under current state law, it appears illegal to live in a tiny home year round if it is onwheels." State Rep. Jim Masland tells Shen the legislature's got work to do on non-traditional housing.
And in Fairlee, even as Jonah Richard's new 501 Main apartment house is coming together, he writes that small-scale developers like him struggle to find the kinds of subsidies available to bigger affordable-housing developers; a proposal for a six-unit building was turned down by the Upper Valley Loan Fund (the consortium of local employers trying to stoke more workforce housing), he writes, because it's too small.
In the
VN
, Jim Kenyon zeroes in on the plight of Steven Dupont, who spent the spring in a tent off the AT in Hanover and then, four months ago, was able to move into the Sunset Motel on Route 10, thanks to the federal Emergency Rental Assistance Program. But ERAP funding is ending, and at the end of October, Dupont was told he needed to move out. Instead, Leb human services director Lynne Goodwin intervened.
In Montshire exhibit, employees pair art and science. It all came about, writes Susan Apel in Artful, when public relations manager Honor Hingston-Cox and exhibitions manager Katie Kalata Rusch "started suspecting that their colleagues might be artsy." They invited Montshire employees to come up with original works based on their interests, and the results are now up on the walls: Katie Price's photos of the microscopic life in the fish and turtle tanks, Courtney Adams's photos of the daylilies she raises, Gary Collins' steel-bladed knife with a cherry handle, Bob Shanahan's "Whirligig" contraption... Through Jan. 2.Claremont tech company wins NH Tech Alliance "product of the year" award. The recognition goes to Mikros Technologies for its TU3, which allows computer chips to get tested despite the extreme heat they can generate in real use, reports Patrick O'Grady for the VN. Mikros focuses on liquid cooling for data centers, lasers, EVs, and other applications. At last month's awards ceremony, VP Drew Matter explained, “Chips in a few years will be giving off as much as 1 to 2 kilowatts of power in a few square inches. That is a whole lot of heat in a very small space and it is hard to get that heat away from the chip.”How have NH schools in the region been spending Covid relief money? Over the course of the pandemic, about $500 million in relief funding has flowed to schools for everything from staffing to new technology. Now, the state education department has a new online tool that lets you track where that money has gone (at least, in general terms) by school district. Hanover's schools, for instance, have spent the bulk of their $279,000 on technology; about half the Mascoma schools' $1.5 million on staffing and maintenance; and almost half of Claremont's $8.7 million has gone to staffing. Background here.You probably didn't feel it, but there was an earthquake in NH yesterday morning. It hit around 4:23 am near Lake Winnisquam, a bit west of Laconia. At only 2.3 magnitude, it got noticed in neighboring towns, but that was about it.A tour of one of VT's "life-giving places" for Asian Americans, fresh eel deliveries, eating "off-menu" in Chinese restaurants...To pursue a listener's question about the Asian American experience in Vermont on Brave Little State, Vermont Public's Myra Flynn casts a wide net, talking to people from Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Filipino, and Japanese backgrounds about their experiences, their lives in Vermont, and, always, their food. Flynn describes the state's Asian community as "huge and connected, and busy and strong, but it is quiet. There are no pats on the back for this community."The Monday Vordle. With a word from Friday's Daybreak.
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Today at 5 pm, Dartmouth's history department hosts University College London historian Matthew Smith for a lecture on the history of slavery and resistance in Caribbean nations. Smith, who directs the university's Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slave-Ownership, will focus especially on Jamaica, and look at how past events inform current culture. In-person in Haldeman 041.
And this evening at 7, the Norwich Bookstore brings in novelist and essayist Douglas Bauer. He'll be reading from and talking about his new novel, The Beckoning World, which follows the arc of a coal miner turned baseball player turned farmer in the first quarter of the last century, with guest appearances by Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and others.
And to get us going this week...
Hey, if Springsteen's going to keep putting up new videos from
Only the Strong Survive
, his album-length ode to the Great American Songbook of the '60s and '70s, then how can we say no?
written by Atlantic Records co-founder Ahmet Ertegun and Betty Nelson, the wife of Ben E. King, first recorded by King and then most memorably recorded by Aretha Franklin in 1970.
See you tomorrow.
The Hiking Close to Home Archives. A list of hikes around the Upper Valley, some easy, some more difficult, compiled by the Upper Valley Trails Alliance. It grows every week.
The Enthusiasms Archives. A list of book recommendations by Daybreak's rotating crew of local booksellers, writers, and librarians who think you should read. this. book. now!
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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