GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Heads up: Just looking ahead to the end of the week, there’ll be no Daybreak this Thursday. Back with CoffeeBreak on Friday.
Sunny, warm. High pressure moved in last night, and it’s going to be with us for a few days—along with a dry week from beginning to end. If you’re in the fog, it’ll clear out at some point this morning. Highs today in reaching toward 80, down to around 50 overnight.
Morning fog from above. Mark Sullivan had his drone out and flying on Friday morning, through and above the fog that had settled over Quechee.
VT State Police investigate Norwich selectboard chair for alleged financial exploitation. In the Valley News, Emma Roth-Wells reports that in June, not long before well-known Hanover lawyer Bill Clauson died of Alzheimer’s and dementia, his daughter filed a complaint of financial abuse against Norwich’s Mary Layton, with whom Clauson had lived since 2016. His family says he had over $200K in savings when the pair moved in together; last year, he had less than $1,400. Layton says that at Clauson’s behest, the money went to living expenses, travel, and home improvements. Clauson’s family, who cared for him the last year of his life after Layton returned him to his family home, contends Layton should have saved for “his anticipated care needs.”
Judge rules GWI can operate ECFiber through end of year. If you’ve been following the legal wrangling, you know that ECFiber has been trying to pry operations of its system back from GWI, and back in August a federal judge sided with ECFiber, ruling that GWI had to cooperate in that process. Last week, the court denied a move by ECFiber to end GWI’s control immediately, giving the Maine-based operator through the end of December before turning things over to a new operating company. Even so, says ECFiber board chair F. X. Flinn, “we continue to expect GWI and its new owner to… work cooperatively on a smooth transition."
Hiking the AT, beginning to end. A few months ago, as he likes to do, Demo Sofronas chatted up a thru-hiker from Philly in the parking lot at Dan & Whit’s. He asked the man—trail name Heike (hike-y)—if he’d share his story and photos once he was done. Heike agreed, and yesterday, Demo posted them on his About Norwich blog. The photos run from the start in Dawsonville, GA in February through to the summit of Mt. Katahdin in July, with some breathtaking stops (McAfee Knob in VA, sunset from Mt. Washington) along the way. He also provides Demo with a travelogue, from his battles with ticks to a couple of hypothermia scares to the literal high points.
“It’s like panning for gold.” That’s Bethel poet and piano-tuner Danny Dover, talking to Susan Apel for her Artful blog about turning experiences into poems. Danny (a Dear Daybreak regular) has a reading at the Norwich Bookstore coming up Oct. 7, and he tells Susan that poetry writing takes both vigilance—“You might just find something interesting and then the real work begins, probing for the heart of the story, what it’s trying to tell you. It might take just a few minutes or it might take years, or never”—and close editing. “I want every word to have to fight for its right to belong on the page!”
Dartmouth alum may be headed for space. Lauren Edgar, ‘07, is among the six women and four men just picked by NASA from among more than 8,000 applicants to become astronaut candidates. UVM med school grad Imelda Muller is, too. In the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, Nancy Schoeffler writes that Edgar—an earth sciences grad with a doctorate in geology—had already been involved in Mars programs, as well as training astronaut candidates prepping to go to the moon. “It’s certainly exciting to think about…getting to do geology on the surface of the moon,” she says. “But, I say, don’t hold your breath”—there are at least two years of training still to go.
Coming to Royalton in November: rallycross. It’ll take place in a 15-acre field off Rousseau Road, reports Marion Umpleby in the VN, a collaboration between E. Bethel’s Becky and Ed Best and the Sports Car Club of New Hampshire. Drivers will compete for time as they navigate courses marked by cones—at speeds that top out at 45 mph. “You can bring your daily driver and race it if that’s what you want to do,” Becky Best tells Umpleby. Hitting a cone gets a driver a 2-second penalty. The Bests have been driving SCCNH events for years, and are staging this event—on land owned by Becky Best’s family—in part to get people interested in the sport.
Facing steep revenue shortfall, Circus Smirkus appeals for help. The troupe, based in Greensboro VT, had to cancel a dozen shows this summer, most of them in the wake of a rigging accident that injured an 18-year-old aerialist. As Seven Days’ Mary Ann Lickteig reports, earlier this month board president Kate Hayes and executive director Rachel Schiffer—both Smirkus alums—told supporters in an email that “this is a moment of real uncertainly around the future of Smirkus”; the nonprofit needs to raise $400,000 to avoid bankruptcy. In a followup email Friday, Schiffer said it’s pulled in $100,000, and is “working with a pared down staff to support ongoing operations.”
“We have islands in the Great Lakes larger than Lake Champlain.” That’s a former port director in Duluth, MN, talking to Interlochen Public Radio’s Dan Wanschura about the nanosecond (in geologic time) that Lake Champlain was officially one of the Great Lakes. This month’s Brave Little State tackles a listener’s question about Champlain’s brief moment in the sun by turning to Wanschura and reporter Ruth Abramovitz for the story about how such a thing could have happened. Those of you with long political memories will recall that it all started with former US Sen. Patrick Leahy and, not surprisingly, a maneuver to land federal grant money for the lake…
The Monday jigsaw: Hanover’s Nugget Theater in 1938. It used to be down Nugget Alley, and on his Curioustorian blog, the Norwich Historical Society’s Cam Cross offers a history (including the 1944 fire that destroyed the theater), a photo of what things look like now (before Walt & Ernie’s gets torn down), and plenty more.
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from Friday’s Daybreak.
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HEADS UP
From Dartmouth’s Dickey Center, "New Fault Lines in the Middle East". Daniel Byman, who teaches at Georgetown U and directs the Warfare, Irregular Threats, and Terrorism Program at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, will be talking over directions the region is headed and the US’s future role. 4:30 pm in Haldeman 41, you’ll need to register for a ticket or for the livestream.
At the Orford Social Library, “55 years fishing on the Northwest Atlantic — sea stories, science, and management”. Retired commercial fisherman David Goethel, who these days splits his fishing time between Florida and the Gulf of Maine, will tell fishing stories and talk over ongoing research and fisheries management. 5:30 pm.
In Windsor, Steve Taylor and “Upper Valley? How a Newspaper War Created a Virtual State in Western New Hampshire and Eastern Vermont”. The former newspaperman, ag secretary, and font of UV lore will be at the Windsor Public Library this evening at 6 to talk about how the “Upper Valley” came to be and how all of us who live here came to be connected.
And for today...
Lyme musician James Graham debuted a new album on Friday with his band, which among others includes guitarist Jim Musty, from Piermont; bassist Toby Summerfield from Lyme; and trumpeter Don Hollis, from Bradford. Here’s a groove-driven taste…
See you tomorrow.
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