Daybreak Monday 12/16/24

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

Temps rising, some more flakes possible this morning, maybe freezing drizzle this evening, rain tonight. Mostly it's a quiet day today, with temps rising into the mid 30s under cloud-laden skies. There's moisture headed our way from the coast, and the big question is whether it'll arrive as temps dip right around commute time this afternoon: If it does, we're in for a period of freezing rain before temperatures start rising again tonight and things shift over to all rain. We're looking at about 40 degrees by daybreak tomorrow.Yesterday's sun, yesterday's moon. It's a frozen world out there.

As Leb City Council debates budget cuts, vacant police, library positions go but Rec & Park, Advance Transit dollars stay. In its effort to avoid a nearly 12 percent tax increase on city residents, the council last Thursday agreed to preliminary staffing cuts that would take one librarian and one patrol officer out of the budget, along with along with an electrical inspector. At the same time, reports Clare Shanahan in the Valley News, councilors rejected a variety of cuts to Rec & Parks, AT, and outside human services agencies. This Wednesday, they'll look at the fire department and the city's energy manager.The story behind the Dartmouth hazing story. Over the weekend, the VN's Jim Kenyon profiled Dartmouth sophomore Ulysses Hill and his mom, Olivia Sanchez—the two people behind the hazing allegations that led the college to suspend a frat and the Hanover police to issue three arrest warrants. Hill and his sister grew up with their single mom in "a hardscrabble neighborhood" of Pasadena, CA, Kenyon writes; Hill was salutatorian at his high school and is goaltender on Dartmouth's (club) water polo team. He talks to Kenyon about Dartmouth and his decision to go public with his frat hazing allegations.After multi-state manhunt, suspect in shooting of St. J police officer found next door. The tense weekend began Friday afternoon, when 38-year-old Scott Mason is accused of shooting St. J Police Capt. Jason Gray after Gray and his partner responded to a domestic violence call. Gray's partner rushed him to the hospital and he was airlifted to DHMC, where officials said he was still sedated yesterday afternoon. Police launched an all-out search for Mason, calling in help from agencies in VT, NH, and elsewhere. He was found early yesterday morning, hiding in the apartment next door to where the shooting took place. The Caledonian-Record's Andrew McGregor reports.Hartford High student makes the next round in Broadway competition. After finding herself among the top 10 finalists last week in Broadway World's Next On Stage competition for high school students, Hartford senior Macy Bettwieser on Friday was among the five budding performers to move on in the public voting rounds, reports WCAX's Lucy Caile. Bettwieser tells her that the competition itself has been "a learning tool." “Slowly each week of sending auditions in...for each round I feel like I kinda improve on little skills that I didn’t know before," she says. Voting continues: the top three finalists head to NYC.On the road delivering Meals on Wheels in Randolph and Brookfield. “People need food, and they need companionship," driver Richard Skarrow tells Myla van Lynde in her profile for UVM's Community News Service. Skarrow's been driving his route for the Greater Randolph Senior Center long enough to become fast friends with some of the people he serves each Thursday—poking his head in to say hi and to make sure they're okay. “You guys, rain or shine, you get here,” one woman tells him. “You’ve come out in some really bad weather.” “We’re like mail-people, basically,” Skarrow responds.

A highly technical rescue in the Whites after ice climber falls. A 55-year-old New Jersey man was injured Saturday when he fell 60 feet on a steep section near the top of Shoestring Gully, a well-known ice-climbing route on Mt. Webster. NH Fish & Game got the call around 7:30 pm—after Slavek Zaglewski's climbing companion climbed to the top of the ridge to get cell service. Officers and volunteer rescuers reached Zaglewski from both below and above, ultimately raising him 400 feet in a litter, then carrying him two miles—occasionally using roped belays—to get him out around 5 am yesterday.In NH legislature, training to listen despite differences: "I think it really starts by looking at the other person as a real human being with value.” The “Managing Difficult Conversations” session is organized this week by former state Rep. Doug Teschner of West Leb. It's part of a larger national effort by the nonprofit Braver Angels to address the country's stark polarization, and will be the group's sixth workshop in Concord. One goal, Green writes after talking to Teschner: listening to another person’s viewpoint "to boost your understanding, not just to formulate your own response."As the fifth edition of the Vermont Almanac hits bookshelves, it "starts to look like a counterweight to the digital age." That's deliberate, Alex Hanson writes in the VN—or as editor Dave Mance said at the volume's launch party last weekend, “In this TikTok world, we’re still making a book.” But its founders and moving forces are aiming at more than just print you can hold in your hand: The series, Hanson writes, is "a yearly immersion in Vermont’s rural life, one that’s meant to be grounded, documentary, free of politics and cant, yet open to the way the state is changing, in its climate, its population, its habits."The Monday jigsaw. "Now that skiing has begun," writes the Norwich Historical Society's Cam Cross, "let's remember a tiny ski area once found on the Hanover Country Club golf course." At the center, a rope tow shack that was taken down after the tow was abandoned in the early 1970s. Cam includes a reminiscence from a Ford Sayre participant in the early 1950s, who helped pack the snow by side-stepping up the slope—and notes the ice rink at the bottom of the photo, used for skating during the Dartmouth Carnival. "The evening ended with skiers...carrying lit torches."

Heads UpThe Paul Winter Consort at the Lebanon Opera House. As LOH writes, the consort for year presented its Winter Solstice Celebration at NYC's St. John the Divine cathedral, "where it was beloved as New York’s holiday alternative to The Nutcracker and Radio City’s Christmas Spectacular." But since the pandemic, the event has toured, instead, and "is now bringing it to the finest acoustic halls in New England in a ten-venue tour." On stage tonight: Winter on sax, Eugene Friesen on cello; Brazilian pianist Henrique Eisenmann; Bulgarian bassist Peter Slavov; Brazilian drummer Rogerio Boccato; and "the beloved voice of Theresa Thomason." 7 pm.

And to get us going this week...Nashville finger-style guitarist Kevin Coleman, who earlier this year released a new three-track album, Imaginary Conversations. Its first piece, "Mammut Americanum", is an engaging, richly toned blend that starts out as a sort of country Leo Kottke—Jack Dungan comes in on fiddle a little way in—before veering off into freak folk toward the end. Just set it going and let yourself get carried along.And see you tomorrow.

Written and published by Rob Gurwitt   Associate writer: Jonea Gurwitt   Poetry editor: Michael Lipson  About Rob                                                                                                  About Michael

If you like Daybreak and would like to help it keep going and evolve, please hit the "Support" button below and I'll tell you more:

And if you think one or more of your friends would like Daybreak, too, please forward this newsletter and tell them to hit the blue "Subscribe" button below. And thanks! And hey, if you're that friend? So nice to see you! Subscribe at no cost at:

Thank you!