GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Daybreak Break Reminder: After this week, Daybreak will take a step back until Aug. 23 for rest and refurbishing. However, during that time I'll be publishing CoffeeBreak, a quick, just-the-fun-parts version on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. You can learn more and sign up here.Meanwhile: Rain. A warm front began moving into the region late yesterday, and we'll see rain or a chance of it into early this afternoon, before it moves off to the south. Winds shifting from south to the east, high in the lower 70s. Down to the low 60s tonight, slight chance of showers overnight.A visitor from points west. Bo Hopkins writes, "An Eared Grebe has been drawing birders (with kayaks) to Long Pond in Lempster. Eared Grebes are small water birds with peaked heads, large red eyes and thin bills. Breeding adults like this one have chestnut colored flanks, black heads and golden feathers that stream out from behind the eye. This time of year they are more normally found in large flocks west of the Mississippi." Seriously, those eye-feathers are a look.On the Hanover ballot tomorrow: Three selectboard candidates and a bid to dump the town manager. The candidates are incumbents Nancy Carter and Joanne Whitcomb, and Dartmouth student David Millman, who cites "bridg[ing] this divide" between students and town, writes The Dartmouth's Lauren Adler. You can see interviews with all three here. The move to deep-six the town manager form comes from an article petitioned onto the warrant by another Dartmouth student, an editor at the Dartmouth Review. Adler runs through the ballot, which includes zoning changes and community power.SPONSORED: Just a few weeks left for Vermonters to save on solar. Vermont is cutting back on financial incentives for homeowners who want to install solar—which could result in lost savings of over $2,000. But if you fill out a simple form before September 1, you'll lock in today's better rates for a whole year to give you time to decide on whether to go ahead, with no obligation to buy. Solaflect can even help submit the form to the State of Vermont. Click on the maroon link above to learn more. Sponsored by Solaflect Energy. Ryegate man killed in Charlestown plane crash. Paul Harrison, 54, and Ilya Rivkin, of Windham, ME, were flying a Bailey Dragonfly, a light sport plane that Morningside Flight Park in Charlestown uses to tow hang gliders, on Saturday afternoon. The plane went down around 5:30 afternoon; Harrison died at the scene, while Rivkin was taken to DHMC with non-life-threatening injuries, the Union Leader reports. The FAA and NTSB are investigating.Lebanon tunnel open. The grand opening celebration may have been postponed until Thursday, but the opening itself managed just fine without it, notes Susan Apel on her Artful blog. It's "beautiful and bigger than expected, bathed in light," she writes, with walls waiting for art, an info kiosk by the bike rack in the lower parking lot, and a pocket park at the other end. There are lenty of photos to give you a feel for it, but you can go check it out yourself—and, Susan suggests, "Pause just inside the entrance to play something—maybe an inspirational Sousa-type march—on the community piano there." Users take dim view of Forest Service proposal to close AT side trails in Norwich. At issue are a set of historic footpaths that cross the Appalachian Trail and unauthorized trails cut by mountain bikers in recent years. After discussions with local groups, the USFS has proposed closing all but three trails, writes Claire Potter in the VN, drawing opposition from people who've been using the walking paths for years. Education has been effective at ending illegal trail building along the corridor, says Norwich runner Doug Hardy. “To have someone say all these trails be closed, that really feels like a bit of an insult.” Hardy elaborates in a mini-essay here.Polly's scores big in Parade. The Sunday magazine carried by newspapers all around the country just came out with its list of 100 of the best restaurants across the US, two in each state. Polly's Pancake Parlor in Sugar Hill makes the cut for NH: "Imagine a place where you can go and have pancakes for breakfast, lunch and dinner!" the mag gushes. Also on its list: Surf Restaurant in Nashua, along with Burlington's Farmhouse and Prohibition Pig in Waterbury.A "narrow strip of a restaurant" comes to WRJ. It's The Chef & Butcher, shoehorned in between Funkalicious Market & Deli and Standard Tattoo, across from Hartford Town Hall. The restaurant opened Friday, and it's the brainchild of Funkalicious owners Kevin Halligan and Dee Sonthikoumanne, writes Isaac Lorton in Junction mag—along with butcher Tom Rendall. “I’m still doing what I love, and I’m going to do it even better here,” Halligan says. Expect the menu to change regularly: Halligan "likes to riff in the kitchen like an improvisational jazz artist," Lorton writes.Wakeboats become an issue on Lake Fairlee. Unlike power boats, writes Li Shen in Sidenote, wakeboats are designed to displace as much water as possible, creating big wakes that help the wakeboarders behind them get big air. Those same waves, Shen writes, erode shorelines, deposit phosphates in the water, disturb lake bottoms and fish breeding areas, and threaten loon nesting sites. The boats are becoming more common on lakes around the region—and, Shen writes, "in many places where wakesurfing has caught on, there has been a fierce backlash against the sport."Speaking of fast-moving water... Remember that 1881 riverbed profile map for the Mascoma River that Art Pease dug up? Well, Nicole Ford Burley, curator of the Lebanon Historical Society, transposed those old waypoints onto a Google Maps version of the river so that you see their actual location. That's at the maroon link; here's Art's profile, again, so you can compare. Just to orient yourself—housebuilders Muchmore & Whipple were right opposite where Phnom Penh Sandwich Station is now. You'll want to zoom in.New model takes shape at Tunbridge farm. The effort is being spearheaded by Shona Sanford-Long and her mom, Luna Bleu Farm's Suzanne Long, along with VLS's Fran Miller and S. Royalton resident Sarah Danly. Their new collaborative worked with the VT Land Trust to buy the land, which now houses Sanford-Long's livestock, is slated for a community solar array, and aims to make room for other farmers and other community uses. "We want to be able to use this as a model going forward for how young people can stay in farming,” consultant Jenn Hayslett tells the VN's Claire Potter (a recent Report for America transplant from Chicago who clearly has hit the ground running). On another Tunbridge farm, cows suffer from telecom wire mixed into feed. Last fall, Amber and Scott Hoyt started finding pieces of what's known as lashing wire, used to wrap strands of fiber-optic cable, in the silage they were feeding their dairy cows. They've since "pulled the wire from the bodies of three cows that recently died," writes Emma Cotton in VTDigger. The Hoyts believe the wire was left behind by a subcontractor to Brookfield's Eustis Cable, which was stringing wire for ECFiber's buildout in Tunbridge, then chopped up as they mowed. Eustis "hasn't confirmed" the wire came from its project.Summertime, and the paving is...well, not easy, but definitely here. And after last year, writes John Lippman in the VN, there's a long to-do list. There's a pile of state and federal resurfacing projects on both sides of the river—along routes 12A, 4, and 10 on the NH side, 113, 14, 4, 5, and, of course, I-89 in VT. Plus town-funded projects pretty much everywhere you look. "Towns are making up for their lack of ability to get the work done last summer," says Stuart Close, CEO of W. Leb-based Blaktop. Here's NHDOT's map of projects; and here's VTrans's map.A trooper with an eye for detail. The writeup on a two-vehicle Saturday-night crash involving a moose up near Lyndon is hair-raising. A Camry hit the moose head on, sending the animal flying into a Toyota Tundra, which in turn was sent over a guardrail and down a 40-foot embankment. The occupants of both were in their 60s, 70s, or 80s, and all were taken to the hospital with minor injuries. But then the state police report adds this: "There was also a small dog name[d] Pebbles in the Tundra that was not harmed from the crash." "Imagine just getting hit with a 360, no-scope, back-flip McTwist... How do you come back from that?" Well, as Jake Laser points out, it's a Captain America movie, so you don't. Laser grew up in Norwich but is now out in LA being a YouTube star and building crazy gizmos that his over 2 million followers ask him to build. Like, in this case, Captain America's shield, which has to be both super strong and, much tougher, bounce back to the thrower however many caroms it takes. It needs a high "elastic limit," like a superball, but also has to fly. He gets there... but, too bad about the roof, Cap... er, Jake.
The NH and VT Covid data people take weekends off, too, so we'll catch up on the numbers tomorrow.Daybreak doesn't get to exist without your support. Help it keep going by hitting the maroon button:
Ray Lema, who was once musical director of the National Ballet of Zaire, told an interviewer a few years ago, “I must admit that while I feel furiously Congolese, from Kinshasa, and at the same time I have so many friends that I care about from all over the world: Brazil, Cuba, China, France … that I can’t allow myself to be locked up anymore." Which makes sense, given that he's worked with everyone from Les Voix Bulgaires to Johnny Clegg. For the last few years, he and French pianist Laurent de Wilde have been collaborating on duo piano compositions that give the ear an entire world's worth of rhythms to play with. Here they are on "Human Come First," recorded in February.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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