WELCOME TO THE WEEK, UPPER VALLEY!
No complaints. The high pressure bringing us these days of spectacular weather isn't just low-level or high-level. Nope, the weather folks say, it "exists throughout the entire atmospheric column." So today's going to look a lot like yesterday (and also like tomorrow): Things may start out foggy in spots, but it'll burn off quickly and we get brilliant skies, highs in the low-to-mid 70s, winds from the south. Down into the high 40s tonight.Sky, water... A triplet of recent views from around the Upper Valley during this spate of stunning days and evenings:
Looking down the Ottauquechee in Woodstock as a pastel evening settles in, from Patricia Corrigan;
Sunset over Bucklin Beach on Little Lake Sunapee, from Susan Ellison;
And colors just arriving at Occom Pond in Hanover this weekend, from Janice Fischel.
“They took a two-lane road and turned it into five lanes with no traffic control devices.” Enfield police chief Roy Holland drops his son off at Mascoma Valley High School regularly, and he's one of a number of locals calling on NHDOT to find a way to improve traffic safety on the stretch of Route 4 that passes it. An accident last week, reports Liz Sauchelli in the Valley News, brought calls and social media posts about the problem. Over 7,000 vehicles pass that intersection every day, and it's the scene of regular near-misses. SPONSORED: Join Kimball Union Academy on October 2 for an On-Campus Admission Open House. You’ll engage with Head of School Tyler Lewis, faculty, and students; experience our breathtaking campus in Meriden; and see how we create a sense of belonging for all members of our community. Register today to learn about the wide-ranging opportunities available to our boarding and day students. Sponsored by KUA.Looks like there might actually be some movies on the Miracle Mile again. For the last 18 months, writes John Lippman in the VN, the Entertainment Cinemas and the owner of the shopping plaza it sits in have been engaged in a legal donnybrook over unpaid rent and bankruptcy. Now, say lawyers for both sides, the litigation is coming to an end, "paving the way for the six-theater, 800-seat multiplex to be upgraded and reopen," Lippman writes. The marquee was recently changed from "Opening Soon" to "Opening in October."What happens when technology and forestland meet. The stretch from the Adirondacks over to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia "is the most intact temperate, broadleaf forest in the world," writes Li Shen in Sidenote, with crucial wildlife corridors and micro-environments. Which helps explain why even the most local of disruptions—like, say, AT&T's forthcoming cell tower in the Thetford Town Forest—gets complicated quickly. It should be finished next spring, but only after three separate biologists weighed in on what's needed.Architectural history in one easy walk. You may have seen the cluster of mid-century Modern houses perched on the hillside along and off Hobson Road in Norwich. They have an illustrious pedigree, writes Norwich Historical Society director Sarah Rooker on the website of Docomomo US, a nonprofit "dedicated to the preservation of modern architecture, landscape and design." Starting with modernist architect Walter Curt Behrendt, who fled Germany and came to Dartmouth, then Ted and Margaret Hunter, students of Walter Gropius, then Allen Gelbin, a disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright...From first Tibetan at Dartmouth to international banker to Hanover rug entrepreneur... In the VN, Jim Kenyon details the life of Kesang Tashi, the "mountain boy from Tibet" who for years ran the Tibetan rugs-and-goods store Khawachen on Main Street (and the weaving center in Lhasa that still produces handmade rugs). The oldest son of a family that fled Tibet for India, he devoted himself to helping his family after his father died, supporting Tibetans in the US, and "revitalizing and growing Tibet’s centuries-old weaving tradition,” says Kathy Harvard, his colleague at InnerAsia Trading Co. Tashi died in May.So that's what they're doing on I-91 near Fairlee... It's a culvert replacement, to be exact. If you travel I-91 or along I-89, you know it's full-on construction season, but the "Left Lane Ends" signs don't tell you what for. Fortunately for the curious, VTrans puts out a weekly construction report giving a little more detail. The CT River bridge project on 89, lane closures in Hartford, Sharon, and Weathersfield, resurfacing on 113, bridge closure in Hartland... It's all there.NH schools may have reopened, but they're struggling to find teachers. “If it’s not every school board or every school district, it’s certainly statewide,” Barrett Christina, executive director of the state School Boards Association tells NH Bulletin's Ethan DeWitt. It's not unusual for a school to post half a dozen openings in a day, he writes. The teacher exodus is particularly acute among veterans who don't want to deal with remote learning and young teachers struggling with the pandemic. The intensity of all-day, all-night interactions with students and parents during the pandemic may also be contributing to burnout."Nobody wants the farm to end on their watch.” That's Jamie Robertson, who runs a dairy farm in Hopkinton, talking to NH Bulletin's Amanda Gokee about the stress farmers—especially those stewarding a farm handed down by their parents—face in a tough market. A 2020 CDC study, Gokee reports, found that farmers are among the occupational groups with the highest rate of suicide nationally. Now, UNH Extension and other groups are using $500K in federal funding to design ways of providing mental-health support to farmers, from counseling to training in farm financing and the like. Gokee digs into the details.One of these days... Bedrock Gardens is clear on the other side of NH, in Lee (over by Durham), but it's 20 acres of manicured grounds with water features, a Japanese tea house, a three-quarter-acre grass painting, a fence of espaliered apple trees, an allée, sculptures (some constructed from salvaged farm equipment, kitchen implements, and automotive parts), and plenty more. It's open just a few more weeks (through Oct. 11).VT schools gear up to boost local food in cafeterias. Act 67, signed into law this past summer, creates a set of incentives for school cafeterias to buy from local farmers—defined as within 30 miles of the school. It's a pilot program this year, writes freelancer Ethan Weinstein in VTDigger, with $500K set aside to reimburse schools for their purchases. And the state's food hubs, which help small and medium farms reach wider markets, have been working with school nutrition directors to help them prepare. Still, Weinstein writes, costs are a huge factor for schools, and local food tends to be more expensive.It's Monday. Time to procrastinate. And, thanks to this wonderful Twitter thread from PR account manager Lucy Hughes, it's easy with her list of 24 of "the most underrated websites." Plus more being added regularly. There are some previous Daybreak favorites on here—Radio Garden, Window Swap—but also, like, the scale of the universe (with a kind of mind-blowing slider function), a map of lightning strikes in almost real time, caffeine amounts for thousands of food and drink items, how to design a custom sex toy for 3D printing, diagrams of skyscrapers around the world...
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Dartmouth's Rockefeller Center is back for the academic year, launching its season with a Constitution Day lecture, "The Science of the Constitution: The Supreme Court & a Practice of Disagreement." Government prof Sonu Bedi will talk about "Frederick Douglass as the first political scientist of the Constitution, the friendship between Justices Ginsburg and Scalia, and the practice of disagreement on the Supreme Court as a way to explain how the science of the Constitution works." It will be both livestreamed and in person at Filene Auditorium at 5 pm.
"The Honky-Tonk Nun of Ethiopia." That's what music historian Ted Gioia calls Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, who will soon celebrate her 98th birthday. She lives in a tiny room in a monastery in Jerusalem and has devoted fans all over the world. Even though, Gioia writes, "There is no genre for funky Ethiopian nuns. They don’t fit into any radio format. There’s no club in your town where you can hear them perform. She is in a class by herself." You can hear why from the first trills of "The Homeless Wanderer," which Gioia links to, along with another piece off her album and a video of her a few years back.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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