AND WELCOME TO THE WEEK, UPPER VALLEY!
Which starts a little unsettled. We should see sun to start, but there's a low pressure system trundling along the northern border today, bringing with it a series of fronts. They won't produce much to speak of: a chance of scattered showers this afternoon, then more chances this evening and overnight. Otherwise, partly to mostly cloudy, highs around 70, winds from the south. Down into the lower 50s tonight.It was a very fine afternoon for rainbows yesterday... Big thanks to everyone who sent in photos. Here are two:
In Norwich, Kate Emlen caught a perfect treetop arc...
And there was a double rainbow over the Woodstock area—"the widest and brightest I've ever seen," writes Sonja Olson, "and I'm jaded... Everyone was stunned! Drivers whipped to the side of the road to jump out and take pictures. It turned into a bit of a festival."
It all began at EBA's. That's where Nick Yager, who now runs Gusanoz with his wife, Maria Limon, first met Mickey Dowd, whose family owned the shuttered-but-still-legendary Hanover pizzeria. Now Dowd, who's 67, is getting ready to hang up the apron at Mickey's Roadside Cafe in Enfield—and he and Yager and Limon have struck a deal for the Gusanoz owners to take it over, reports John Lippman in the Valley News. Dowd "was looking to find someone who would take good care of his people,” Yager tells Lippman. “Our intention is to honor the tradition they have at Mickey’s.”Mascoma Lake lands $135K in grants for park cleanup. Well, okay, the lake itself didn't land the grants. The money is a matching grant to the Mascoma Lakeside Park Committee in Enfield from NH's Land and Water Conservation Fund, reports Liz Sauchelli in the VN. It will go toward replacing a retaining wall, reworking the parking lot's drainage, and removing invasive species. In addition, there's an additional $4,200 to build a path from the Northern Rail Trail to the park.
SPONSORED: Seeking participants for polio vaccine study. This is a clinical research study at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center to test a new, live oral polio vaccine in healthy adults. We have wiped out 99 percent of polio from the world. We need a new, effective, safe vaccine to take us all the way. Compensation is provided. To learn more, email [email protected], call (603) 650-1383, or click on the maroon link. Sponsored by DHMC.French food? High-end chocolate? Well, both, says Susan Apel on her Artful blog. What more reason could you want for heading to Walpole, NH? They both involve Burdick's, though in two different spots. There's the Restaurant at Burdick's for the former (part-owned by filmmaker Ken Burns). And L.A. Burdick's next door, which has been expanding elsewhere but, as Susan Apel points out, this one's "the mothership." For good measure, there's the Walpole Grocery, a few doors down, with its "excellent housemade lamb sausage."Washboarding? Mud-season ruts? A primer on dirt roads. I know, I know, officially they're gravel roads. And, writes Li Shen in Sidenote, not just any gravel: It's a mix of stone, grit, sand, and finer particles, all in the right proportions, graded and crowned properly. But traffic kicks binder particles into the air and eventually coarser aggregates loosen and you get washboarding. Or the sub-base soil gets saturated in mud season and next thing you know you've left a muffler on the road. Whatever... If you've ever wondered about those roads you drive on all the time, here's a five-minute read."Bears have a social hierarchy, and when it comes to food, single cubs are down on the list.” That stark reality, from Lyme's Ben Kilham, is why Joppa, a cub without a mom, would not have survived the winter had the residents of Joppa Road in Warner, NH, not banded together to help find him. They saw him plenty of times, Monitor columnist Ray Duckler writes—"On a driveway. In the woods. Up a tree. While walking their dogs."—but it wasn't until Fish & Game's Dan Bailey set a trap using donuts and vanilla extract for bait that Joppa stayed put. He's now at the Kilham compound in Lyme.Headed elsewhere in VT and wondering about those low-flying helicopters? They're not hunting fugitives, writes Lisa Scagliotti in the Waterbury Roundabout, a hyper-local news site for the town that launched last year. Instead, they're a Pembroke NH-based helicopter company doing a "comprehensive inspection" of about a third of VT's electric grid. There's a camera on front to help create a video map that utility companies will use to pinpoint spots that need preventive maintenance. “It’s actually quite boring. But in aviation, boring is good,” the company's president tells Scagliotti.
"Oh, it hurt like hell." That's Elle Purrier St. Pierre about the finals of the Women's 1500 in the Tokyo Olympics, which she ran in 4:01.75, seven seconds slower than the winner, Faith Kipyegon of Kenya. Hundreds of people turned out in Richford, VT on Saturday to celebrate Purrier St. Pierre and to welcome her home officially from the summer games, though she's actually been home for a while—training again and working on two farms. There were speeches and a parade that included, VTDigger's Shaun Robinson reports, a large tractor and a cow draped in an American flag. Forget the fried dough! Head for the smoked-salmon-on-a-stick. It's the Big E (that would be the Eastern States Exposition in W. Springfield, MA) and if you've ever been, you know that each New England state has a building where it showcases its wares and, more importantly, food. In the past, writes Nick O'Malley for MassLive, the Vermont and Maine buildings were the places to eat. This year? Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He's got a rundown of each state's highlights. But I dunno, nitrogen ice cream? And believe me, you won't find peanut butter bacon pizza on the real Wooster Street in New Haven, CT.Thunderstorms. They never cease to amaze. Remember that enormous "jellyfish sprite" above a thunderstorm in Texas last year? Well, that was a still photo. A week ago, Frankie Luceno was in Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico, and caught brief video of a giant jet of plasma shooting out of the top of a thunderstorm over toward the Virgin Islands. In the morphology of weird storm phenomena, this one is known as a "carrot" jet (as opposed to the more common "tree" jet), with bright balls of light hundreds of yards wide. (Thanks, JF!)Daybreak doesn't get to exist without your support. Help it keep going by hitting the maroon button:
At 5 pm, Dartmouth's Rockefeller Center hosts Lewis Eisenberg, who served as US ambassador to Italy from 2017 to 2021. He'll be discussing the paths he took to the role, including "the impact of Dartmouth (he was Class of '64), Wall Street, politics, and government service," the Center writes. He'll also look more broadly at whether "democracy and freedom [are] at significant risk in America and the world."
This evening at 6, DHMC presents an online Covid-19 webinar with Chief Quality Officer Michael Calderwood. Called "The State We're In," the presentation will cover the variants, the vaccines, what modeling suggests might happen in NH and VT, and how to keep yourself and your family healthy as the temps cool and flu season begins. No charge, but you'll need to register.
At 7, Ciné Salon is back for the season with Italian film scholar Enrico Camporesi talking about film historian and archivist Robert Haller and the early French experimental film movement, Cinéma pur, which Haller documented and which began in Paris in the '20s, declaring that film should not borrow from literature or the stage, but constituted its own art form. Will include several short art films. Online.
Finally, this is the second year the Norwich Lions Club has been unable to hold the Norwich Fair, which has traditionally been its chief raiser of funds for the regional organizations it supports (Willing Hands, The Family Place, Good Beginnings and others). Starting today, however, its silent auction goes live, offering everything from a mailbox installed by former Norwich postmaster Demo Sofronas to tix to Northern Stage to services or goods from businesses all around the Upper Valley. Plus, the Fair's Meadow Muffin Contest is back—your chance to buy a numbered square on the Norwich Green, with up to $1,000 in prizes to be determined Oct. 9 by the heifer or heifers they let out on the Green that day.
I'm not saying Monday's a day for grumbling, but if there is a day for complaining, Monday would be it, right? So today, we're headed to a train station and other spots in Helsinki, Finland, where the Helsinki Complaints Choir set up some years back. Turns out, there is an actual word in Finnish that translates as "complaints choir," which founders Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen decided to make literal, putting up flyers and running newspaper ads to collect material—and singers. And just why is it that you can never find a tissue when you need to sneeze?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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