GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Sunny and getting sunnier. High pressure out there is going to bring us a fine early-spring day, with temps getting up to about 50, dry air, and breezes from the northwest. Back down below freezing tonight.Cedar waxwings feast in Woodstock. They're "systematically knocking off tree after tree," reports Lauran Corson. This one, she writes, had just eaten its fill of berries and was puffed up to repel the rain.Yep, it was an earthquake. You probably knew that already: magnitude 2.2 and 3 kilometers northeast of Quechee at a depth of 4.3 km, the US Geological Survey says of Friday afternoon's loud boom and, for some of us, house rattle. Norwich's Doug Hardy, who was up on the Gile Ridge Trail in town, sends a link to a USGS explainer on how distance affects a quake's sound, and writes, "With an estimated depth of only 4 km, I suppose it isn't surprising that one could hear the earth fracture!" Reports came in from all over: Here's the USGS's map of where people in the region reported hearing it.Snowmobiler dies in race at Suicide Six. Jim Darrow, a 56-year-old long-time racer from Glens Falls, NY, was traveling down the mountain in Pomfret on Saturday afternoon when he "left the course area and crashed into a tree," the VT State Police said in a press release. In VTDigger, Maggie Cassidy reports the event was billed as the 1st Annual Mike Evangelisti Memorial Hillclimb. It was hosted by the VT-based snowmobile group Rock The Hills, which says on its Facebook page that it's setting up a fund for Darrow's family.“Look for the guy in the flowery rainbow button-down and zebra loafers." That's a Dan & Whit's cashier directing Boston Globe reporter Hanna Krueger to co-owner Dan Fraser. Krueger profiles D&W, along with country stores in Elmore, Marshfield, and Putney, VT, all of which are hanging on with different ownership models. "These often ramshackle buildings are in many ways a metaphor for Vermont itself," Krueger writes. "Small, but mighty. Torn between the present and the past." Best quote in the article: “Elmorians do not like kale. They are spinach people through and through.”SPONSORED: Howe Library seeks development coordinator. The Howe Library Corporation in Hanover is seeking a talented development coordinator to help galvanize community support for library programs and collections. Flexible schedule, generous compensation. Do you have a love of libraries, strong organizational skills, and excellent interpersonal abilities? We'd like to meet you! Learn more on the Howe Library website at the maroon link above. Sponsored by the Howe Library Corporation.Dartmouth to hand over Samson Occom's papers to the Mohegan Tribe. Occom was the Presbyterian minister, scholar, and educator, born on Mohegan land in CT, who helped Dartmouth founder Eleazer Wheelock raise funds for the college. Occom believed that Wheelock intended the money to support indigenous students; the £9,494 in donations that Occom raised in England "provided a critical foundation for what would become Dartmouth College," writes Hannah Silverstein for Dartmouth News—but for the sons of white families and in NH, not CT. The repatriation ceremony will be April 27."Stuff happens: pie crust crumbles, sourdough flatlines, frosting breaks, yeast bread falls, and banana bread is annoyingly raw in the middle." If you bake, you know what King Arthur Baking's PJ Hamel means. And here's the thing: It doesn't just happen to us mere mortals, it happens to King Arthur's pros, too. So Hamel rounded up stories—and photos—from the company's staff of "favorite baking fails," from poofed corn starch to Bundt-pan mishaps to pecans that spent just a tad too long in the oven.Got some favorites in the VT arts community? Artful blogger Susan Apel has been asked by the Vermont Arts Council to be an "official nominator" for four of the annual awards it'll be giving out later this year. "As you can imagine," she writes, "I already have a long list." But she's also looking for your suggestions of VT-based artists, art administrators and advocates, and arts educators she might consider. Details at the link.Boulders, wooden posts, planking, logs, steel bars, steel plates, reinforced concrete, stone walls, earthen embankments.... Guard rails on roads have come a long way since the 1930s, and though you probably don't give them a second's thought as you flash past, a lot of thought has gone into how they continue to evolve. In Sidenote, Li Shen gives a quick history—VT first started requiring towns to erect them in 1899, believe it or not—of how rails have changed as vehicles (think SUVs) have changed, and what catching up to current standards will mean for Thetford.Region struggles with how to address long commutes. A good number of people who work in the Upper Valley's core job centers—Lebanon, Hanover, and Hartford—face daily commutes of an hour or more, writes the Valley News's Claire Potter. Many of them are priced out or can't find anything in the local housing market and transit options are limited—and with high gas prices, might spend almost $700 a month on gas. The challenge, says UVM's Gregory Rowangould: “How do you make this work in a rural place without making the rural place an urban place?” Potter explores the options.A sign of spring: killdeers patting the ground. They're among the first migratory birds to return in the spring, writes Mary Holland on her Naturally Curious blog, and when foraging "will often pat the ground or mud in shallow water with one quivering foot in hopes of scaring up a meal" of grasshoppers, earthworms, beetles, snails, or other invertebrates.Hey, want a vintage jukebox? It spent decades entertaining the residents at the NH Veterans Home in Tilton, NH, and is loaded with singles like "Rock Around the Clock," "Mr. Sandman," and Elton John's "Crocodile Rock". The state has put it up for auction (listing at the maroon link). Bidding right now is at $500 and ends tomorrow. "It definitely deserves to be well loved and well utilized," the veterans home's Sarah Stanley tells the Union Leader's Shawne Wickham (here via Yahoo, so no paywall).VT will keep its highway rest areas on limited pandemic hours. The state plans to keep its 16 welcome and information centers open, reports Shaun Robinson in VTDigger, but because of funding constraints has opted to keep them at the reduced hours that were imposed at the start of the pandemic. In 2019 they drew 3.3 million visitors, and were back up to 1.7 million last year. Data so far this year "shows more than triple the amount of year-to-date traffic over 2021," Robinson reports. Also, the Randolph center may get a makeover.Vermont Community Sampler to close. You may have seen the free monthly at coffee shops and outside general stores. Daybreak reader and VCS subscriber David Humphrey writes, "I was saddened today to get a letter from them announcing that the Sampler has stopped circulation 'due to medical and financial constraints.' The letter was as polite and charming as the paper itself has been, and the writer made clear that they will miss their readers as much as we will miss them. And believe it or not, they actually went to the Post Office and got a $14.00 money order for me so they could refund the unused balance of my subscription. Who does that these days?" Link's to the March issue."Earth that tastes like the sun/Memory, seas, vineyards &/ Olive trees moved by dance." This will do for both diversion and music today: Spanish filmmaker Jaime Dezcallar's short film, Carácter, starring the astounding Flamenco artist and innovator María Pagés. It explores Spain's food culture through dance. "Carácter translates as personality, flavor, taste, vibration, strength... Carácter is not leaving anyone indifferent," Dezcallar writes. Not bad for an assignment from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Food. (Thanks to The Browser for pointing it out.)
Heads Up
Today at 1—and the rest of April's Mondays at 1—you can drop in to Woodstock's Norman Williams Public Library to create Ukrainian painted eggs, known as pysanki. The library will provide provide dyes, candles, spoons—and wouldn't mind donations of eggs. The NWPL's Danelle Sims, who's been doing pysanki for the past quarter century, will be on hand with advice and encouragement.
And today's the start of the Dartmouth music department's New Music Festival—including a community sing of Pauline Oliveros's Tuning Meditation today at 3:30 pm and at 7:30 in the Hop's Bentley Theater, a showcase from the college's digital music students, including experimental dance music in English and Yiddish, the sounds of Black life, a video game musical, and more.
Meanwhile, the region's traveling e-bike lending library returns later this month for its third year. It starts April 27 at the Sharon public library, and sets up for a couple of weeks at a time at the libraries in Norwich, Hartland, Hanover, Thetford, New London, Lebanon, Cornish, Woodstock, Windsor, and Andover NH. Vital Communities has all the details.
And it's April, National Poetry Month, which means that PoemTown Randolph is back up and running. The town has become a walkable anthology, with over a hundred selected poems by poets from all over Vermont on display in the windows and doors of Randolph businesses and organizations, and along the river walk that runs through the forest from the Valley Bowl parking lot to the Third Branch of the White River. Readings start later this week.
Finally, anytime this week you can check out what CATV's got on offer:Common Ground, the new series from VT state Reps. Becca White and Jim Masland, joined frequently by NH Reps. Russell Muirhead and Mary Hakken-Phillips, "bringing Upper Valley elected officials together to decipher current legislation, evaluate impacts, and share and compare how democracy functions in the Green Mountain and Granite States"; a "crown care event" organized by the Pi Theta chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, dedicated to "black hair-care education, empowerment, and civic engagement"; and Mexican art historian Luis Vargas-Santiago discussing popular depictions of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata.
See you tomorrow.
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