A PLEASURE TO SEE YOU, UPPER VALLEY!
And there's so much to catch up on! But first...
There's a slow-moving cold front coming through from northwest to southeast. It
might
bring some heavy rainfall along its boundary or in any thunderstorms, but there's uncertainty about timing and location—odds around here are highest in the afternoon and early evening. Meanwhile, highs today in the mid 70s, lows tonight in the mid 50s.
It's a blue supermoon—the first of four supermoons in a row (closer than usual to earth) and, because it's the third of four full moons in a three-month season, officially a blue moon. Fortunately, it's visible as a full moon through Wednesday, so maybe we've got a fighting chance of seeing it? CNN's Riane Lumer explains the nomenclature.
One good thing about the rain:
It might scour out the wildfire smoke. Before we forget, things were kinda hazy late last week, weren't they?
Here's a striking, almost painterly view across Lake Champlain, from Jane Masters.
And painting a picture with words, Ted Levin charts "a morning without buttery light." "I'm sure the sun's above Moose Mountain, sending invisible messages to the masses of birds preparing to head south," he wrote in his newsletter on Friday. "I just can't see it through the haze."
In Lyme conflict over two properties, neighbors step in to help clean up. To a lot of town residents, the lawn mowers, old cars, used tires, rusted appliances, and rotting wood in the yards owned by Jed Smith and his mom, Mary, are a longstanding eyesore; to Jed, they're ingredients—if he can get to fixing them up, writes Jim Kenyon in the Valley News. “Jed sees the value and potential in things that other people write off as junk," Mary Smith tells Kenyon. Tired of waiting, voters in March approved $150K to remove it all; the town has given the Smiths until Aug. 31 to do so. Sympathetic townspeople are pitching in, but as Kenyon writes, "progress is slow." He dives into the background.Bookstock to return. The fate of the annual Woodstock "festival of words" had seemed highly uncertain after organizers pulled the plug on this year's version back in April. But last week, reports Tom Ayres in the VT Standard, the board met, dissolved itself, named four new members—all from Woodstock—and announced a festival for next May. Organizers—led by new board treasurer Julie Moncton and former Norman Williams Public Library director Jen Belton—are aiming to boost community engagement, coordination with venues, and other fixes geared to avoid friction the festival has faced in the past.In WRJ, a skunk meets its match. Last week, Hartford police Cpl. Coriander Santagate got called out to deal with a skunk whose head was caught in a plastic "cylindrical container." The police report is a masterpiece. "I asked the caller for a towel or blanket to cover the suspect. Upon receiving this tactical equipment I approached with utmost caution.... I covered the suspect (No identification obtained) with the tactical fabric device and restrained it," Santagate writes. He then managed to free the skunk's head. "Cpl. Santagate is now officially certified in skunk rescue," HPD adds proudly. "Who knew?"Reading, VT will close Jenne Road again. Last month, Pomfret and Woodstock re-upped their leaf-season closure of Cloudland Road, after last year's successful bid to keep it from being overrun by fall tourists. Now, reports VT Public's Howard Weiss-Tisman, Reading is following suit. Beset by visitors hoping to photograph Jenne Farm—"You would end up with a huge line of cars parked along the side of the road...It [was] just really just a very, very, very bad scene," says a resident—the town last year closed Jenne Road to outsiders. It worked, and the selectboard has voted unanimously to do it again.Tomorrow's Hanover meeting on May 1 police response due to go ahead despite objections to timing, format. The opposition comes in a letter signed by more than 170 people, reports Patrick Adrian in the VN. It argues that the meeting should be held next month, after Dartmouth students—the bulk of the people arrested at the May 1 pro-Palestinian demonstration on the Dartmouth Green—and townspeople are back from vacation. It also asks that the format allow the public to speak directly to the selectboard and Police Chief Charlie Dennis. Board chair Carey Callaghan tells Adrian the meeting, scheduled for 7-9 pm tomorrow at the Howe, will go on as planned.Just what is a brigadeiro? It's a traditional Brazilian dessert made from sweetened condensed milk and other fine ingredients like chocolate or salted caramel, and in The Dartmouth, Katharine Bramante writes that she "adored" hers when, after two years of not setting foot inside Hanover's My Brigadeiro, she decided to get lunch there. "Something about the sunlight hitting the glistening croissants on this particular day finally drew me in," she writes. The upshot? "After a full lunch with dessert, I can’t help but agree with the shop’s enticing slogan, 'Sweets you can’t resist. Really. Can’t.'"Two chances to see the work of Upper Valley artists. But not for a whole lot longer.
In Artful, Susan Apel visits the small worlds created by Chris Groschner, which are on display in the small upstairs gallery above the business part of the Tunbridge General Store. The acrylic collages and assemblages don't so much tell stories as invite them: "It’s hard to just glance at Groschner’s work," Susan writes. "As soon as your eyes land, you’re drawn in for at least a short stay if not longer. And drawn back again." The exhibit runs until Sept. 1.
Meanwhile, renowned painter Henry Isaacs has an exhibition at Greensboro's Highland Center for the Arts. It's his first Vermont show in a quarter-century, Dave Celone writes on his Upper Valley VT/NH Musings blog, and well worth the drive—an opinion obviously shared by the "people a-plenty" who'd also made the trek from all over when Dave was there. "His eager curiosity to peer into light and reality captures nature’s beauty," Dave writes, and "conjures feelings of oneness with our natural world, buoyed by colors he helped field test long ago in a move away from petrochemically-produced oil paints to ones based in vegetable oil." He includes plenty of photos. Runs until Sept. 15.
An incident at Thetford's Treasure Island earlier this summer, when beachgoers objected after a lifeguard asked them to get in their cars as a thunderstorm approached, sent
Sidenote
's Li Shen into the lightning-safety trenches. She pulls together the arguments both for getting out of the water—lightning can strike from far away and usually hits the tallest object, and water conducts electricity well—and why being in a car (though not a convertible) is better than the beach.
In NH, getting firefighting PFAS "off the streets." Firefighting foam "has been a significant source of PFAS groundwater contamination in New Hampshire and elsewhere," writes Claire Sullivan in NH Bulletin this morning. Now, five years after the legislature required the state to establish a "take-back" program for PFAS-laden foam, it's about to become reality. Ten events have been scheduled for throughout this month for fire departments to offload the foam they've been stockpiling. It's all thanks to a technology called the PFAS Annihilator. Sullivan explains.A town-by-town look at how much VT homestead taxes went up (or down) this year. Property tax bills are coming due, and VT Public's data guy, Corey Dockser, has compiled what's happening with homestead tax rates. "Of the 257 towns and villages with tax data available," he writes, "87 percent of towns saw increases to their homestead tax in fiscal year 2025. Granville saw the largest increase, with rates increasing 38 percent, while Fairlee saw the largest decrease, at 20.6 percent." Interactive map and town-by-town data at the link.Front Porch Forum: "The friendliest social network you've never heard of." Well, if you live in Vermont, you've heard of it—though right around here, Vital Communities' listservs still hold sway. But if you're a Washington Post reader, it might be news that "a cross between a neighborhood internet mailing list and a small-town newspaper’s letters-to-the-editor section," as Will Oremus puts it, can outcompete the big players for attention (gift link). Oremus explores why it is that FPF "leaves its users feeling more informed, more civically engaged and more connected to their neighbors, rather than less so."
And Seven Days brings the numbers. That assertion just above is based on a new study of 13,000 FPF users by the nonprofit group New_Public and a group at the University of Texas at Austin. Rachel Hellman reports it found, among other things, that over 81 percent of respondents "felt they become a more informed citizen on Front Porch Forum, compared with only 26 percent of Facebook users and 32 percent of Nextdoor users." FPF's Jason Van Driesche tells Hellman that while the network isn't looking to expand, it's considering how to support other communities interested in building their own version.
A Monday jigsaw bonanza! Well, two of them, anyway, just so we can make up for last week.
First up: "Did you know that Dan and Whit's once had two stores in the same building?" writes the Cam Cross for the Norwich and Hartford historical societies. More on that background from Kevin Hybels here.
And then shifting towns, it's Quechee Main Street back when it was dirt, with the Parker House on the left and the Tinkham Block on the right. Here's more on the historic district.
Heads UpA conversation with the GOP candidates for NH's 2nd Congressional District. Lily Tang Williams and Bill Hamlen will be hosted by Dartmouth's Rockefeller Center today at 5:30 pm for a candidates' forum, with a meet-and-greet scheduled afterward. There'll be a livestream of the event as well. The college hosted Democratic candidates Maggie Goodlander and Colin Van Ostern last week, while Daybreak wasn't publishing. Here's Kent Friel's writeup in The Dartmouth.
And some music to ease us back into the routine.Here's acoustic guitarist Spencer Lewis, solo at Seven Stars Arts in Sharon a few years back, with "Resolve". See you tomorrow.
Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Associate writer: Jonea Gurwitt Poetry editor: Michael Lipson About Rob 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! Subscribe at no cost at:
Thank you!