Daybreak Monday 3/27/23

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

Sun, then clouds, then maybe rain. Temps will be climbing pretty quickly toward the high 40s today, but a system off the coast will bring clouds this afternoon, a chance and then a likelihood of rain tonight, and then maybe snow toward daybreak tomorrow. Especially to the south, some rain could be snow above 1000 feet. Winds today from the northwest, low tonight around freezing.This in-between season has its own charms.

Tanker truck carrying washer fluid overturns on I-89, blocks lanes. It happened this morning a bit after 5 on northbound 89 near Exit 5 in Hopkinton, the NH State Police report, when the truck hit the right-hand guardrail and the driver over-corrected. The truck was the only vehicle involved, and "minor injuries" were reported. The photo's dramatic. The northbound highway was shut down for about two hours, the NHSP said a short while ago in a release.After February report finding "significant" problems, outside auditor gives Norwich better news. As you may remember, last month's audit found various accounting errors and a lack of internal controls. But last week, reports Patrick Adrian in the Valley News, the auditor told the town's selectboard, "I totally think that 2023’s audit is going to have a much better result in terms of the findings," given changes since the last audit. At the same time, the town's interim finance director has taken issue with the way financial documentation is shared between the town treasurer and its finance director.A "fly on the wall" as Dartmouth decides admissions. Back in 2002, NYT reporter Jacques Steinberg published The Gatekeepers, a widely read behind-the-scenes look at the college admissions process at Wesleyan. A few weeks ago, Dartmouth's admissions office invited Steinberg (an alum) to sit in on deliberations about the Class of 2027. On admission dean Lee Coffin's podcast about the process, the two talk over how the admissions committee works, the applicants they're considering come March, and how to choose when each student is "strong in some ways and [has] something to offer a place like this."Hartland town clerk calls out "abusive, aggressive, disrespectful" behavior in town hall. Though town clerk Brian Stroffolino's statement to the selectboard at a meeting last week didn't name names, Justin Campfield reported in the VN last Friday, his target appears to have been town manager David Ormiston, selectboard chair Phil Hobbie and Ormiston himself said. Hobbie tells Campfield the board has gotten "feedback from staff about instances in which they felt 'uncomfortable' during interactions with Ormiston," and has tried to address the issues. It's holding an executive session tonight.SPONSORED: Hop Film brings the Asian diaspora to the screen. A new weekly film series highlights the rich and nuanced stories of Asian peoples' migration all over the globe. Programmed together with the Dartmouth Asian American Studies Collective, the Asian Diaspora on Screen series features classic independent titles and mold-breaking new releases. It kicks off with seven-time Oscar winner Everything Everywhere all at Once. Other highlights this spring include a three-part Dartmouth Alumnae Film Series, exclusive shorts programs, Met Opera in HD and more. Tickets are on sale now."Disperse those milkweed seeds far and wide!" On her Naturally Curious blog, Mary Holland reports that the 2022-23 count of monarch butterflies overwintering in Mexico is down 22 percent from last year. In addition to climate change, one big culprit in monarchs' long-term population decline is the "devastating effect" of genetically modified crops on milkweed in the tilled fields where it used to flourish. And so, Holland says, creating milkweed habitat matters. Butterflies heading north "will lay eggs and die along the journey, but their offspring will benefit from the efforts we make now, " she writes.NH House budget writers take aim at governor's requests. The Ways & Means Committee is trying to close a $40 million gap between Gov. Chris Sununu's revenue estimates and its own. Looking ahead to this week, NH Bulletin's Ethan DeWitt, Annmarie Timmins, and Hadley Barndollar game out what may get cut, including: money for construction of a new men's prison; money for affordable and workforce housing; and the creation of a new Office of Regulatory Review. They may also try to axe the guv's bid to force hospitals to create beds for involuntary mental-health admissions.NH may have an open records law, but in the governor's office, everything from emails to memos gets axed after 30 days. The result, reports Amanda Gokee in the Boston Globe (paywall), is that "by the time someone requests certain emails or documents, they may have already been deleted or discarded." And so Louise Spencer, of Concord's Kent Street Coalition, and attorney Paul Twomey—whose suit to see records relating to Sununu's veto of an independent redistricting commission was stymied last month by the state supreme court—are planning a legal challenge to the 30-day policy.Meanwhile, in VT, former Gov. Jim Douglas sues Middlebury College over chapel name. Back in 2021, the college removed the name of Mead Memorial Chapel from the prominent marble building, explaining it was “because of Governor John A. Mead’s role in advancing eugenics policy in the early 20th century.” But on Friday, reports Mike Donoghue in the Bennington Banner, Douglas—a prominent Middlebury alum and the administrator of Mead's estate—sued, arguing that Mead had funded the chapel to honor his ancestors, and that the college had made a “grossly distorted claim of the type that has become all too common in the current ‘cancel culture’ society in which we live.”After Hawaii, NH, ME, and VT had lowest Covid death rates. That's the conclusion of a new study in the British medical journal The Lancet that tries to adjust for age and what are known as comorbidities, or underlying health conditions, in death rates from January, 2020 to July, 2022. The authors' conclusion is that "US states that mitigated...structural inequalities, deployed science-based interventions such as vaccination and targeted vaccine mandates, and promoted their adoption across society were able to match the best-performing nations in minimising COVID-19 death rates.""You might taste lichen or bog myrtle, goldenrod, or burdock..." That's how radio producer Erica Heilman describes what you might encounter when you taste beer made by Vasilios Gletsos, who forages ingredients from the countryside around Albany, VT, where he makes Wunderkammer beer in a huge copper kettle over a wood fire inside an old cheese cave. "It all feels a little bit medieval, or Druidic," Heilman says, "because unlike most craft brewers, who are after that one great flagship beer, Vasilly wants to make consistently great beer where no two batches will ever taste the same."The Monday Vordle. With a word from Friday's Daybreak.

And to ease us into the week...We'll go with the all-too-short "Echo of Spring" by pianist Luis Russell, who grew up in Panama then moved to New Orleans, then Chicago, then New York—where his band in the late '20s and early '30s recorded some of the earliest examples of swing, then began backing Louis Armstrong on some of his early recordings. Russell eventually became Armstrong's music director, then struck off on his own again in the '40s. He spent the '50s running a candy shop and a toy store. The song is off the newly released collection, At the Swing Cats Ball.See you tomorrow.

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

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