Daybreak Monday 5/23/22

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

Now, that's more like it! As you could hear and feel, cooler air came in on the heels of last night's rain and (depending on where you were) storms. High pressure's building in, too, so we get a thoroughly pleasant day today: mostly sunny, highs in the upper 60s. Tonight you might want a blanket or two: lows in the lower 40s and maybe upper 30s in some spots.And we're into those lovely summer sunrises. Like this one, on Thetford Hill last week, from Robin Osborne.And heck, while we're noticing things... You know how you can drive over Quechee Gorge for years, muttering about the tourists, without ever stopping to look? The other day, a Windsor Reddit user, StreetTacoNamdDesire, stopped for the first time—and reminds us not to take these things for granted.It's only May and already jumping worms are disrupting our lives. The Baxter Memorial Library in Sharon has had to ban perennials from its plant sale. For the Plainfield Library plant sale, volunteers washed the roots of every plant. The Canaan library  decided just to cancel its sale altogether. In the Valley News, Claire Potter goes into why the invasive pests are so destructive—they rob soil of its nutrients—and what can be done about them, from coconut mulch to Mrs. Meyer's dish soap. "I sense frustration and panic from homeowners who call me,” says a UNH Extension garden educator.Efforts to reopen Taftsville Country Store hit yet another snag. It's been a bumpy road since Victoria and Courtney Brooks shuttered it in 2019. First John and Jennifer Endicott tried to give it a go, but ran into the pandemic. Then recent transplants from LA, Angela and Todd Ulman, began leasing it. In order to get tax credits and grants from the state to rehab the building, they've been pursuing a "village center" designation for Taftsville—a largely bureaucratic change. But it's gotten tangled up at the Woodstock Planning Commission—and now, writes Ethan Weinstein in VTDigger, there are hard feelings aplenty.SPONSORED: Affordable housing moves at the pace of community. Upper Valley Habitat for Humanity has been building affordable homes in our region for nearly 40 years. With the recent dramatic increase in cost of materials, your donations are more important than ever. A generous donor has come forward with a matching challenge: To secure their $10,000 gift, we need 100 new gifts between now and June 30. Donate now at https://www.uvhabitat.org/donate. Sponsored by Upper Valley Habitat for Humanity."The most challenging climate in decades for education leaders." That's how the VN's Liz Sauchelli describes the situation facing principals and superintendents in the Upper Valley and beyond. Nearly a dozen principals and at least two superintendents in the region have announced they won't be returning to those positions in the fall, Sauchelli writes, and though some of it is due to natural churn, the growing pressures of dealing with students'—and staff—mental health challenges, contending with social-service needs, and the ever-more-charged political climate for schools are taking their toll.Prelude, Help, Thanks, Wow, Amen. That's pretty much the order of composer Philip Silvey's Three Essential Prayers, which will get its premiere early in June at the Cantabile concerts in Norwich and Lebanon. In Artful, Susan Apel writes that Silvey took his inspiration from writer Anne Lamott's belief that genuine prayer falls into three buckets: a request for help, a statement of gratitude, and an expression of wonder.Also coming up: Thetford's Front Porch Concerts are back. As Li Shen writes in Sidenote, for the last two summers jazz master—and eastern horn and didgeridoo improviser—Bill Cole has been bring jazz performers to Thetford (and a few other local venues) "that you would otherwise have to travel to see in New York or other major cities." The first free concert of the 2022 season is this weekend, with the core group of Cole, saxophonist Ras Moshe, and horn player Taylor Ho Bynum; others will join throughout the summer.Warrant issued for Austin woman in murder of cyclist with Dartmouth, VT ties. The slaying of pro cyclist Anna Moriah Wilson, who grew up in E. Burke and skied for Dartmouth's nordic team, has become national news. On Friday, the Austin-American Statesman reported that police in Austin have accused another cyclist, Kaitlin Armstrong, of shooting Wilson after a surveillance camera showed a vehicle matching Armstrong's pulling up to the place Wilson was staying ahead of a race, just a minute after Wilson returned from swimming with Armstrong's boyfriend, also a gravel racer.If a vernal pool gets developed before it's been mapped, it’s hard to prove it ever existed. And that, writes Emma Cotton in VTDigger, is why the VT Center for Ecostudies is looking for help as it continues to develop its atlas of vernal pools around the state. They're vital to giving frogs, toads, salamaders, and other species a predator-free start in life—and the state considers them significant wetlands. But they're small and often hard to see, so identifying and adding them to the atlas will help protect them as development pressure grows."The top two knuckles of my left hand look as if I’d been worked over by the K.G.B." That was New Yorker baseball writer and fiction editor Roger Angell back in 2014, at the age of ninety-three, describing his arthritis. Angell, one of the best prose stylists of...well, several generations...died on Friday, and among other things, The New Yorker's re-running his meditation on old age, "This Old Man." With never less than good humor, it starts physical, but soon veers into the sustaining gifts of memory, friends, and how people over 75 "keep surprising ourselves with happiness."I've been there. You?And the Monday Vordle. Using a word related to Friday's Daybreak... 

Let's get the week going with some Vivaldi—but with a twist: played exuberantly by the marinda band from the Goede Hoop school in Boksburg, South Africa.See you tomorrow.

Written and published by Rob Gurwitt   Writer/editor: Tom Haushalter   Poetry editor: Michael Lipson  About Rob                                                    About Tom                                 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! You can subscribe at: 

Thank you!