GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Daybreak is brought to you this week with help from Loch Lyme Lodge. Escape to Loch Lyme Lodge on Post Pond for a relaxing staycation with waterfront cabins, boating, tennis, and lakeside sunsets. Perfect for hosting overflow guests! Or just enjoy a delicious breakfast, lunch, or afternoon ice cream. 603-795-2141, more info here.
Sunny, heating up. Well, the skies cleared and now we’re in for a thoroughly pleasant day—by afternoon the weekend’s rains will be just a memory, with temps getting to about 80 in a mass of dry air. Winds today are from the northwest (that shifts mid-week, which is when things start to get steamy), with lows tonight around 50.
Looking down. Sometimes, keeping an eye on the ground brings a little jolt of pleasure.
As with these forget-me-nots in Thetford, from Sally Duston (“Just another pretty face,” she writes);
And this “fairy village” in E. Thetford, from Robin Osborne.
A pair of lane closures to keep in mind.
For about the next three weeks, starting today, NHDOT will be working on NH Route 10 both northbound and southbound in Newport. They write that it will “begin at the roundabout in downtown Newport traveling NB past Newport High School. This work will consist of paving, drainage, and repairing sidewalk tip downs with detectable devices. This paving work will continue into Croydon, NH to Sugar River Lane.” They’ll be closing and shifting lanes as needed between 7 am and 7 pm.
And starting last night, through this Friday, they’re doing nighttime work (6 pm to 6 am) on Newport Road in New London from Main Street to I-89. Paving, drainage, and other work will also create lane closures and shifts.
Leb City Council approves Vanier bench. The vote was unanimous at last week’s meeting, reports Clare Shanahan in the Valley News, as a group of Lebanon residents brought up their proposal to honor Jim Vanier, who died in December after a half century as youth center coordinator at the Carter Community Building. The bench will go either on the pedestrian mall or in Colburn Park—and the council “hopes to discuss” other ways to honor Vanier down the road. “I have four grandchildren,” Peter Decato said. “If I’m in Lebanon and I have them, I’m going to go over to that bench or whatever it is and I’m going to say, ‘Let me tell you about this guy and how wonderful he was’.”
Born out of the Black River’s 2023 flooding, VT’s volunteer “Culvert Crawlers” help prepare for the next time. The question that confronted Cavendish’s Margo Caulfield and Springfield’s Kelly Stettner as they helped homes and businesses in the flood’s aftermath: Where was all the mud coming from? One answer: culverts that had failed and sent water coursing over roads, carrying sediment downstream. And so, writes VTDigger’s Emma Green, when Caulfield and Stettner sat down with Dartmouth researchers Charis Boke and Sarah Kelly to talk resilience, culverts came up. The result? Lots of volunteers charting culvert conditions. Lots more of the story at the link.
SPONSORED: Early Bird Rates at Storrs Pond Recreation Area! There’s just one week left to take advantage of our pre-season rates! Plan ahead for a fun-filled summer in Hanover. Everyone is welcome! Come enjoy the pond, heated swimming pool, new seating options, splash pad, walking trails, disc golf, tennis, watercraft rentals, and more. You can choose the right membership for you and your family, based on your family size and the amenities you want. As an extra bonus, members will receive two guest pool passes or two Nugget Theater tickets (pick up at the SPRA office, along with your membership sticker). Sponsored by the Hanover Improvement Society.
Police identify man killed by Amtrak train in Claremont last week. He was 52-year-old Ralph Lapsley Jr., reports Alex Ebrahimi in the VN, who was hit by the Vermonter last Tuesday evening after he and another person got onto the tracks from a trail in Claremont’s Moody Park. The death “was a tragic accident,” Claremont Police Chief Brent Wilmot tells Ebrahimi. "There was nothing improper about the operation of the locomotive prior to the accident that would raise our concerns.” Police and Amtrak officials are still investigating.
After a quarter-century of teaching karate, Thetford’s Marshall Van Norden retires. It seems fitting, given that he’s 80, but as WCAX’s Joe Carroll reports in a “Super Seniors” profile, the martial arts have been a major part of Van Norden’s life. It began out of tragedy, after his three-year-old daughter was run over by a car. “After we lost our daughter, we had a lot of empty time,” he tells Carroll. He and his wife at the time took up taekwando and moved to Texas—and then Van Norden took up karate. He eventually moved back to VT and set up the Green Mountain Dojo. Carroll also talks to twin brothers Sam and Oliver Jackson, who after 11 years of training, are earning their black belts, and to Van Norden’s granddaughter Camdyn, who already has hers.
SPONSORED: Support Willing Hands for NH Gives tomorrow, June 9! NH Gives' 24 hours of giving starts at 5 pm tomorrow! Join your community in supporting Upper Valley food security. Your participation, at any level, helps us unlock matching gifts and incentive prizes, which means more food for our neighbors. NH Gives runs from 5 PM tomorrow until 5 PM Wednesday. Sponsored by Willing Hands.
In Hartland, “a botanical wonderland of cold-climate holdovers.” Eshqua Bog, writes Erica Houskeeper in Happy Vermont, contains everything from labrador tea to pitcher plants to larches and buckbean. But what it’s known for, far and wide, are the wild orchids known as showy lady’s slippers: They’re “found in other fens and wetlands around the region,” The Nature Conservancy’s Lynn McNamara tells Erica, “but for whatever reason, Eshqua is the showy lady’s slippers’ favorite.” Erica recounts the bog’s and the flowers’ natural history, as well as the efforts by locals to preserve the bog (which had been sold to a developer), and current research there.
The Monday Jigsaw—and a VT panorama video. Last week, the Norwich Historical Society’s Cam Cross ran a panorama of WRJ created using a Cirkut camera by Henry Barreuther, a Brooklyn photographer who toured Vermont between 1912 and 1917. This week, the puzzle photo is from 1950: a group of scientists at an international congress in Stockholm. That’s at the burgundy link. But on his Curioustorian blog, Cam has also created a video of Barreuther’s panoramas, sweeping across the Vermont landscape, including WRJ, Woodstock, Bethel, S. Royalton, and W. Hartford, along with Stowe, St. J, and Brattleboro, all in the early years of the 20th century.
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from Friday’s Daybreak.
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And for today...
The Derek Burkins Trio at last month’s season finale of the Anonymous Coffeehouse at the First Congregational Church of Lebanon. Here’s “I’ll Be Welcome Here,” thanks to the Upper Valley’s hardest-working music chronicler, Chad Finer (who’s got much more on his YouTube channel, including last Friday’s Triton concert in W. Newbury).
See you tomorrow.
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