Daybreak Monday 3/6/23

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

A quiet, sunny day. Today's high pressure will move out later, but for much of the day we get mostly or partly clear skies and temps getting into the upper 30s. There's a weak low pressure system rotating in offshore that will bring more clouds tonight, but today's more interesting feature is a set of winds descending on us from the northwest, bringing strong gusts throughout the day. Partly cloudy, lower 20s tonight."The woods are lovely, dark, and deep." In Thetford, from Robin Osborne.As COVER remodels, it's bringing a used bookstore to WRJ. The store, which along with the home repair organization's offices will front on S. Main Street, is part of a more extensive renovation aimed at untangling the warren of spaces COVER has occupied since it moved into the old Catamount Brewery in the late '90s, writes Liz Sauchelli in the Valley News. It will give the COVER Store a dedicated space for its collection of books, which has been growing rapidly over the last few years. WRJ has had neither a bookstore nor a public library for a couple of decades.Woodstock spurns appointed listers. In Saturday's floor voting, reports Ray Couture in the VN, voters rejected 46-32 a move to replace elected listers with professional property assessors appointed by the selectboard. Board members had argued, as former interim town manager Tom Yennerell put it in the town report, that the job “is complex and sometimes controversial," and that appointed assessors would bring expertise to the role. Voters approved the town's budget and a municipal sewer budget. All-day voting on candidates for town office is tomorrow, and the village meeting is March 12.In a subdivision that never happened, the seeds for Crossroad Farm's growth. In Sidenote, Li Shen delves into Post Mills land history, writing about a 56-parcel subdivision—eventually scaled back—planned by two developers in the late 1980s. Despite concerns about its impact on Thetford's public schools and on nearby wells, the plan was approved in 1990—and then, for unclear reasons, only a single home was built. When the lots were auctioned in the early '90s, Crossroad Farm owners Tim and Janet Taylor came away with an 18-acre field and some house lots, substantially boosting the farm's acreage. Local arts tackle "the world’s big gritty issues." That's Susan Apel, whose latest Artful post looks at four current or forthcoming events on the Upper Valley arts scene. Northern Stage's production of Sweat, which opens Wednesday for previews, looks at the human cost of manufacturing's decline; Shaker Bridge Theatre's Lifespan of a Fact, which opened last week, tackles fact and fiction in journalism; Dartmouth writing prof Jeff Sharlet's new book, The Undertow, is drawing critical praise for its look at the convictions underlying Christian nationalism; and an Andy Warhol exhibit coming to Reading, VT in May.Plow truck hit-and-run. From time to time recently, a post has popped up on one of the local listservs slamming private plow trucks in a hurry for crowding cars off the road. In Saturday's VN, John Lippman reported on one that did more than that. It took the turn off Route 4 at "Fat Hat Corner" and hit the first car in line at the stop sign—and then the second car, pushing it into a third. “He didn’t stop or slow down. He just kept going at a high speed. Then he was gone,” says one of the drivers in line. At the time of the story, Hartford police said they'd tentatively identified the plow driver but hadn't issued a citation.How do those little guys jump so far? On her Naturally Curious blog, Mary Holland dives into snow fleas, those little black specks that can jump up to 100 times their own length on snow at this time of year. They're not actually fleas, she writes, or even insects, "but close relatives to arthropods, specifically crustaceans," and live most of the year in leaf litter and soil. They possess "two tail-like spring projections, or furcula, which are held like a spring against the bottom of their abdomen by a kind of latch. When the snow flea wants to move, the latch is released and the furcula springs downward.""Now this is a well-placed trail cam." Or, really, nest cam. So writes E. Thetford's Erin Donahue about a cam overlooking an eagle's nest maintained by Friends of Big Bear Valley in California's San Bernardino National Forest. So, you remember all that snow California's been getting? Burgundy link takes you to a pair of eagles and their snow-covered nest. Here's FOBBV's FB page, which recounts events of the past few days—including the eagles' conclusion that their eggs aren't going to hatch this year. (Thanks, Erin!).The Monday Vordle. With a word from Friday's Daybreak.

Heads Up

And to start us off this week...An intro to one of music's quirkier byways: bardcore (also known as tavernwave), in which musicians recreate modern hit songs using medieval instruments. Here's Beedle the Bardcore's instrumental version of Wu-Tang Clan's "C.R.E.A.M", or "Cash Rules Everything Around Me."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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