Daybreak Monday 4/5/21

WELCOME TO THE WEEK, UPPER VALLEY!

Sunny again today. Low pressure off Nova Scotia will be producing gusty winds out of the northwest, especially this afternoon, and with the dry conditions over the last few days there's a "red flag" fire warning for eastern Orange and Windsor counties. Mostly, we get a repeat of yesterday: temps climbing into the low 50s and sunny a good bit of the day, though there may be some clouds around during the afternoon. Down to around freezing tonight.I don't know about you, but I can never get enough of a good sun pillar. This one's from Friday evening over a still snow-covered Caspian Lake in Greensboro, VT, from Norwich's Valerie Rooney.Element Hotel to become short-term housing. The hotel on Route 120 has been closed since an explosion and fire shut it down Christmas Eve of 2019; now, reports John Lippman in the Valley News, the building's owners plan to turn it into "an interim housing solution, a place where newly hired employees can stay for 30, 60 or 120 days while they look for a permanent residence,” in the words of David Leatherwood, one of the principals in the hotel group that owns it. Lippman also delves into other new housing options either coming online or in the works, including in WRJ, Lyme, and elsewhere in Lebanon.Thetford Elementary water has a lead problem. In January 2020, lead in higher-than-allowable concentrations was found at 11 sinks and water fountains in the school. They were replaced, but the new fixtures weren't tested until last November, write Nick Clark and Laura Covalla in Sidenote. Five had to be retested, and results are now back: Water fountains in three classrooms were found to have even more elevated lead levels. Meaning, Clark and Covalla write, that some kids "may have been exposed to lead on a regular basis for the past seven months since returning to in-person learning."Dairy Twirl owners build towing empire. Okay, maybe that's a little exaggerated. But Brent and Cinnamon Murray have recently taken over both Bob's Service Center in WRJ and Grizzafi's Towing & Recovery in Leb (along with GT&R Auto Sales & Service). "That puts the Murrays in command of a fleet of a dozen AAA-contracted tow trucks, making them one of the largest tow operations in the Upper Valley," the VN's Lippman writes. In other news: The Green Mountain Economic Development Corp.'s Bob Haynes is retiring; he'll be replaced by Erika Hoffman-Kiess, moving over from Vital Communities. Lots of performing arts will be outside this summer. It's not just Northern Stage's new Courtyard Theater, which opens with The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Abridged in two months. Opera North's tent will go up again this summer at Blow-Me-Down Farm in Cornish, writes the VN's Alex Hanson, and the New London Barn Playhouse will have its own tent—set up on Colby-Sawyer's Ivey Field—to figure out how to hang lights in. Pentangle Arts, the Hop, and ArtisTree will all be staging outdoor concerts and events, and the Lebanon Opera House plans a downtown Leb music and arts festival in August.NH taps pond hockey maestro to run new outdoor industry effort. The Office of Outdoor Recreation Industry Development was actually created in 2019, to build the state's "outdoor economy" and attract outdoor recreation businesses. It's taken until now for it get a director, but the state has now tapped Scott Crowder, who a dozen years ago created the Pond Hockey Classic in Meredith (Crowder's dad played for the Bruins and the Flyers). Skier slides 1,000 feet down Mt. Washington slope. Forest Service rangers tried to call in a DHART helicopter to rescue the 61-year-old Delaware man, who was injured after falling the full length of the Main Gully in the Gulf of Slides, but it couldn't land. Eventually, a Guard helicopter with a cable hoist was able to lift him out, the Union Leader reports. The Mt. Washington Avalanche Center posted Saturday, "Four of the multitude of long sliding falls yesterday and today resulted in serious injuries and required rescue. Firm to icy snow on 40 degree+ slopes is much harder to ski than you might think." (Thanks, JF!)So they're probably not that excited by "Equipment, pandemic fuel explosion in popularity of backcountry skiing." That's the headline atop a story in VTDigger by Seamus McAvoy, which takes a look at the sport's growth in recent years, and especially this winter. Changes to equipment have made it more accessible (though not cheap), and in both VT and NH, community alliances are working to create glades and ski zones that are still hard work to get to, but open up the backcountry. One thing that hasn't changed, as McAvoy writes: "In nature, the only consistently enforced law is Murphy’s."Holocaust education effort sprouts in VT. Like most states, VT does not require learning about the Holocaust in school, and surveys have shown widespread ignorance of it among younger Americans. Two eighth-graders in Bristol, Whitney Dykstra and Hazel Guillmette, are trying to change that, reports the Addison Co. Independent. They're enlisting the public and school principals in a bid to require it in secondary schools. The effort comes at a time when "we see the continued necessity of learning hard history, and not just learning about it but doing something about it,” says one of their teachers. (Thanks, HF!)Back to the drawing board for VT pension reform plan. Friday morning, state House Speaker Jill Krowinski announced she was pulling a reform proposal that came out of Bradford Rep. Sarah Copeland-Hanzas' Government Operations Committee. The move, writes Seven Days' Kevin McCallum, came after "fierce blowback from public employees and the erosion of support among Democratic leaders." The plan would have increased employees' costs and cut benefits; instead, a task force over the summer will look at governance changes focused on improving investment returns."I think to make one be still for a moment and pay attention—to anything—is a good thing." VT's poet laureate, Mary Ruefle, is about 400 poems along in her project to send 1,000 poems to Vermonters at random. She's got a collection of phone books, chooses a recipient, and sends something off: contemporary, or ancient Chinese, or Norwegian in translation.... "It's sort of a random act of poetry, an act of surprise," she tells VPR's Mitch Wertlieb, "and I'm quite sure that half of them end up in the trash and are met with confusion. But I'm also confident that some of them hit the right person at the right time."Dang! Let's just try that again... Somehow, lost in the kerfuffle over the cargo ship that brought the Suez Canal to a halt for five days was just how incredibly hard it is to pilot a large container ship through the canal. But it turns out you can try for yourself! The fine graphics folks at CNN have created a simulation, with the help of a master mariner and a ship's captain, that puts you at the mouth of the canal at Port Tawfiq and lets you try to navigate a stretch without mishap. They throw some winds at you, but spare you the changing water depths and other ships. Piece of cake, you say?

Time to catch up.

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Let's just ease into the week... It's not really clear how the oldest known Welsh lullaby wound up in the margins of a 7th century collection of elegies to a generation of warriors lost in battle. But there "Dinogad's Smock" is, and somehow the tune's made it down the centuries.

, an Irish cellist who during the lockdown has become a sensation by posting his performances from outside his astoundingly picturesque cottage in County Mayo, sometimes with his equally picturesque dog.

See you tomorrow.

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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